Prophecies

by Christopher Golden

  “You’re by yourself? What happened to Willow?”

  Buffy stiffened slightly. “I called Oz’s, but she was out. I explained to him about the computer search, but I’m thinking we’re going to have to postpone the magick until morning.”

  “Did you impress upon Oz the urgency of our situation?”

  She shrugged. “Willow wasn’t around, Giles. Oz isn’t a witch. I guess we can call and see if she’s come back, now, but is another twelve hours going to make that much difference? If she does her Internet magic, we may not even need the witchy stuff.”

  Buffy raised an eyebrow as she regarded him.

  Giles cleared his throat and shot her a withering glance. “Twelve hours could make an enormous difference, Buffy. Another night could cost any number of lives.”

  Buffy glanced out the window at the dingy street. “I’ll stick around, patrol all night if I have to. As you know, tomorrow’s Saturday. So I’ll sleep in. Maybe I’ll even do some sleuthing in Docktown, come up with something. You guys can keep researching the burning eyes thing, right?”

  “Xander and Anya are doing precisely that. I’ve begun to believe this isn’t a separate, undiscovered breed of vampire, merely vampires who have somehow been enhanced by Camazotz. They are following that line of research. However, regrettable as Willow’s absence is, we should exhaust all avenues presently available to us in our efforts to locate their lair.”

  Giles started up the car and put it in gear.

  “Hey!” Buffy said, startled. “Look, Giles, I’m serious. You can be of more help with the books. When it comes to patrolling, maybe handing out some bloody noses to get the information we need, that’s Slayer business, right? I’ll start with the harbormaster and go from there. Xander and Anya are probably canoodling back at your place. We’re not going to figure out what we’re up against with them hitting the books. I stay, make with the fisticuffs. It’s what I do. You go, make with the cross-referencicuffs. It’s what you do.”

  Giles shot her a brief, sidelong glance, one eyebrow arched curiously. “Buffy, I have been on patrol with you dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. Why are you so insistent upon excluding me? After all this time you cannot possibly be worried about my safety.”

  “I’m not,” Buffy said dismissively.

  “Well, that’s a comfort, I suppose.”

  Buffy glanced away, then up at him again. “I’m worried about mine. You’ve told me yourself, Giles, that traditionally Slayers operated alone. They didn’t have friends around like I do, people they could rely on. They also didn’t have lives outside being a Slayer. Well, I do, or at least I’m trying to. If I’m going to lead two lives, I’ve got to work twice as hard at both. For the Slayer, that means I take the responsibility of being the Chosen One, of my duties, on myself. I was Chosen, no one else. Sometimes it sucks, but I have to learn not to rely on anyone else but me. One girl in all the world, remember? That’s what you told me when we first met. Not ‘one girl in all the world and her Watcher and her best friends and their boyfriends and girlfriends and whoever else we happen to pick up along the way.’

  “It’s on me, Giles. You go. I stay.”

  “Everyone needs help sometimes, Buffy. That’s why Slayers have Watchers in the first place,” Giles argued, gazing at her with obvious concern.

  “But The Powers That Be don’t choose Watchers. Just Slayers.”

  Giles removed his glasses and let them dangle from his fingers as he considered her words. At length he looked over at her again.

  “Now is probably not the time to argue the point, Buffy. But have you forgotten what I said about threatening the harbormaster? I tend to think that, particularly if he’s not involved, the local authorities might be a bit agitated. We’ll drive over there, and I’ll speak to him first. If he seems suspicious, then perhaps you can have a go at him.”

  Buffy started to argue, but Giles was obviously determined. She also had to admit to herself that it would be better if he approached the harbormaster first. Not that she was happy about it. But there was little she could do except go along with him.

  For the moment.

  * * *

  There was still a light burning in the harbormaster’s office. Buffy had argued the point again, but Giles had insisted she wait in the car. Contrary to what she was trying to prove, Buffy could not do everything. Case in point, he was certain that the harbormaster would be much more likely to have a conversation about his work with an adult than a teenage girl.

  He parked the Citroën a block and a half away and walked down to the office. It was a small building, not more than two or three rooms, overlooking the ocean, appropriately enough. The hours were posted on the door and it was long past official closing time, but Giles took the light on inside as a good sign.

  There was no bell, so he rapped lightly on the door. Just when he would have rapped again, the doorknob rattled and then the big oak door was hauled open.

  “What the hell do you want?” growled a bearded, gray-haired man with a cigar jutting from between his clenched jaws.

  Giles stared at him. The man was almost a caricature of what he imagined a harbormaster ought to look like. He tore his eyes away, though. The last thing he wanted was to offend the man with such improprieties.

  “You’re the harbormaster, I take it?”

  “Do you see the time?” the man demanded.

  “Indeed I did, sir. But if I might have a moment. I’m an . . . investigative journalist and I had a few questions about recent goings-on here in Docktown. Gang presence, to be precise.”

  The harbormaster narrowed his eyes and puffed on his cigar, regarding Giles with great suspicion and likely more than a touch of xenophobia.

  “You’re British,” the man said.

  “Yes.”

  “What the hell does a Brit want with poking around Docktown asking questions? What business is it of yours what goes on down here?”

  Giles hesitated. He had been afraid that this would not work, but it was not as if the man would have believed him a police officer, or answered questions if he had told the truth.

  “As I said, sir, I’m an investigative journalist working for the L. A. Times and I’m looking into recent gang activity here,” he insisted. With nothing to lose, he pressed on. “Apparently there has been a spate of violence by a group of ruffians with a very distinguishing mark. They all have a bat tattooed on their faces.”

  “Hrrrm,” the old man grunted. He scratched his beard and puffed on his cigar. Then he let out a blast of smoke that swirled around Giles’s face and nearly made him retch. “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Robert Travers.”

  After another moment’s thought, the harbormaster rolled the cigar around between his teeth and then nodded. “Might be I’ve heard something about that. Might be one of the dock rats I know’s even seen something. You payin’ for information?”

  Giles smiled. “Of course.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed. “You just stay right there while I make a call.”

  “Absolutely. I’m at your service.”

  The old man closed the door.

  Gulls cawed overhead in the darkness. The sky was a bit overcast, with very few visible stars. A car horn beeped far off and it drew Giles’s attention to the road. So few cars down here this time of night, though he could hear a truck rumbling nearby. Metal clanked as the rise and fall of the ocean rocked the floating docks just down from the harbormaster’s office.

  Time went by.

  Eventually, with a frown, he glanced at his watch and pressed the button to illuminate it. Nine-seventeen. He hadn’t checked the time before, but he had the impression it had been at least five minutes, perhaps closer to ten, that he’d been left standing out here on the stoop. He wondered if the old man had simply been pulling his leg, making a fool of him.

  Giles stepped away from the door and glanced up the street at his car. It was dark inside, though, and he could not see Buffy. With a sigh he w
ent back to his post and tapped his foot as he waited.

  At nine twenty-two, he rapped on the door again, more loudly than the first time.

  It took longer for the harbormaster to open the door this time. When he did, he wore a cruel smile.

  “You’re a persistent one, ain’tcha?” the old man grumbled.

  “It’s my job,” Giles replied.

  “You do yours,” the harbormaster said, chewing his cigar and hitching up his ragged blue jeans, “and I’ll do mine.”

  With that, his hands flashed out with inhuman quickness and latched around Giles’s throat. The old man spat out his cigar as he hauled Giles inside the office and tossed him across the room.

  Giles crashed into the harbormaster’s desk, shouting as his back struck its edge, then went down on the dirty wooden floor.

  The harbormaster hissed at him. Even under the scraggly gray beard, Giles could see the fangs.

  CHAPTER 6

  This is taking too long, Buffy thought. She leaned over the dashboard and peered through the windshield.

  Giles stood just outside the door to the harbormaster’s office. As Buffy studied him, he glanced at his watch. So I’m not the only one who thinks this is taking too long, she thought.

  A moment later Oz’s van pulled up behind her. Buffy grimaced. This was complicating things even further, and she did not want that. With a glance up at the harbormaster’s office to check on Giles and to make sure no one was looking out the window, Buffy climbed out of the car and went back to the van.

  Willow was in the passenger seat. Buffy was simultaneously annoyed and pleased with her arrival. Above and beyond the call of duty. The window was down.

  “Hey,” Willow began.

  Buffy shushed her. “Open the back.”

  The back door popped open and Buffy went around and climbed in, only to find herself face to face with Xander.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s Giles doing, just standing there?”

  Buffy narrowed her gaze, worried. “I don’t know, exactly. Waiting for the harbormaster. The guy came to the door once, then shut it, and now Giles is just waiting. What are you guys doing here, anyway?”

  Oz kept his eyes on Giles, but Willow turned around in her seat to face Buffy and Xander in the back.

  “We thought we should back you up,” Willow said. “When Oz told me you called, I tried calling back. Obviously you’re not there, so I called Giles’s. Xander told me what was going on. We picked him up and came here. Just in case. Figured Anya could handle the research for a little while.”

  “Thanks.” Buffy smiled. “But we’ve got it covered, I think. You guys should get back. Research. Pizza. No worries.”

  “Already ate the pizza,” Willow explained. “Or Xander did.”

  “Hey!” Xander protested. “Research makes me hungry.”

  “What doesn’t?” Buffy asked.

  “You didn’t mention a spell,” Willow said.

  Buffy looked at her. “What?”

  “When you talked to Oz. You didn’t mention anything about a spell but Xander said Giles wanted me to get some stuff, do a locator spell or something. I could have gotten the ingredients together.”

  “You weren’t around, Will. I thought we could just do the spell tomorrow. Besides, Giles wanted to talk to the harbormaster, see if he knows anything,” Buffy replied.

  There was a sort of tension in the van, but Buffy pretended not to notice and hoped Willow would just let it go. As if the conversation were over, she leaned forward slightly and looked past Willow through the windshield, to see that Giles still stood impatiently at the front door of the office.

  “You think something’s up?” Xander asked.

  Buffy thought about that, let it roll around in her mind a little. This part of Docktown was deserted late at night. Just a short walk would take them to The Fish Tank, where there would at least be a few people stumbling in or out of the place. But down here . . . nothing. Too much of nothing, in fact.

  Through Willow’s open window, she heard a siren wail somewhere far off. Out on the sea, the bell of a buoy tolled on and on as if it were forever midnight.

  Buffy studied the doors and windows of the buildings around them. In several, the silver gray flickering of television sets cast eerie shadows. Most were dark, though. A horrible, queasy feeling roiled in her belly and the fine, downy hairs on her arms and the back of her neck prickled as though an electrical storm were about to sweep down upon them. Her heart beat a little faster.

  “This isn’t right,” she said.

  Willow and Xander also seemed spooked. They were staring out from the van as though at any moment the shadows themselves might come alive.

  “You feel it too?” she asked.

  Xander shrugged. “I don’t know. I always feel a little bit like this when we’re on monster duty.”

  But Willow met Buffy’s gaze directly. “Something. You’re right. I don’t know exactly what it is, but . . . something.”

  “So you’ve got spider-sense, too?” Xander asked her.

  “There’s nothing supernatural about it,” Willow told him. “Maybe we’re all just paranoid. It is a bit freaky down here. But I’m with Buffy.”

  “I never should have let him go up there. Look, you should all go home,” Buffy said as she rifled through her bag, pulled out the crossbow and handed it to Xander. “You’re riding shotgun. I just want to be prepared if anything—”

  “Buffy!” Xander interrupted. He pointed past her head, out the windshield.

  The Slayer turned around just in time to see the old man haul Giles inside the harbormaster’s office with inhuman strength. The door crashed shut behind them.

  “Back me up, but don’t get out of the van unless I tell you to.”

  As she leaped out of the van, Buffy’s heart felt like stone in her chest. A feeling of profound dread, bone-deep, welled up within her. Though she sprinted down the street toward the harbormaster’s office, it felt to her as though the world had slowed around her, as though the small shack was miles, rather than feet, away.

  “Giles,” she muttered under her breath, her friends almost completely forgotten in the car behind her. She heard the engine rattle to life and knew they would be following her in a moment.

  But Giles might not have a moment.

  Her legs pumped, the soles of her shoes slapped the cracked pavement, and her face felt suddenly cold, despite the exertion. The rest of the world disappeared and the only sound Buffy could hear was her own breathing. Everything else was muffled, as though she were underwater.

  Buffy sprinted up to the door of the harbormaster’s office, whipped a stake out from its sheath, and kicked the door in with such force that the frame splintered and was torn off its hinges. The place was trashed. Paperwork was strewn about the huge oak desk in the far corner. A lamp lay broken on the floor next to a phone that was off the hook. Both had been knocked off the desk. An old framed painting of a schooner about to crash onto the shore by a lighthouse hung nearly sideways on its hook. A shelf of books had been knocked over. Two other lights still burned in the room, dim, but plenty of illumination to allow Buffy to see the horror that was unfolding before her.

  In a narrow doorway that led into another part of the office, Giles lay half in one room and half in the other. His pants leg was torn and blood had begun to seep through the cloth. He tried to sit up, eyes glazed over as he shook his head, blinking rapidly. His face was already bruised and cut, blood dripping down his chin from some unknown wound inside his mouth.

  The vampire was hunched over him. In his sharp-clawed fist he held Giles by the front of his shirt. With his other hand, the gray-bearded vampire gripped Giles’s throat. When Buffy crashed through the door, the vampire looked up at her and snarled. His appearance was startling to her. Rarely did she see vampires who looked old. Existing vampires usually bred only with the strongest and most attractive humans, which was why most of them looked so young and vibrant. Then it clicked in her m
ind; Camazotz’s followers had made this man a vampire because he was the harbormaster. With his aid, their entry into the U.S. would be that much simpler.

  The harbormaster hissed at her, bared his fangs. His brow was ridged and hideous, his eyes alive and feral, yet not burning like the others. Another mystery.

  “Let him go,” Buffy demanded.

  The vampire laughed, a deep, throaty, gurgling sound. “Or what? You’ll kill me? And if I free him, what then? You’ll let me go? We’re not all that stupid, you know.”

  With a grunt, the creature hauled Giles up and spun him around, holding him as hostage, as shield.

  “Buffy . . . you must . . . go.” Giles croaked.

  The vampire rammed his head forward into the back of Giles’s skull. The impact was loud, and sounded perilously fragile, as though something had broken. Buffy cringed and felt as though she might throw up. Giles’s eyes rolled up to white and he went limp in the vampire’s powerful hands.

  Fury kindled within her like a furnace. She gripped the stake in her right hand even more tightly.

  “Maybe you don’t know who you’re dealing with, moron,” she snapped. “Or maybe you’re just too stupid to know better. I’m Buffy Summers. I’m—”

  “The Slayer.”

  The voice came from behind her. Buffy spun, put her back to the wall so that she could see both the doorway and the harbormaster. Amidst the shattered remains of the door stood a creature whose appearance made her breath catch in her throat. Naked from the waist up, the tall, hideous thing was hunched over and a pair of skeletal wings jutted up from his back. They looked as though they had been torn apart, or ravaged by fire. On his chest was an enormous scar, and at the center of the scar an open wound that seemed partially healed, as though it might never close completely.

  His hair was black and thickly matted, as was his long beard. He had a short, ugly snout with wet slits for nostrils, and his chalky, green-white skin was pockmarked all over. Upon his forehead were ridges that resembled those of a vampire. From his mouth jutted rows of teeth like icicles, and his fingers were inhumanly long and thin, white enough to have been little more than bones.