Buffy the Vampire Slayer 3

by Nancy Holder

  Giles hurried to his office, retrieved Monday’s paper from the trash can, and had opened it to the article about Callie’s disappearance before he realized Buffy was right on his heels. He handed her the article, but the serious disappointment on her face as she studied the picture told him all he needed to know about Callie’s fate.

  “I’m sorry, Buffy,” he offered gently. “I suppose we should alert her parents as to her … whereabouts. Where exactly did you find her?”

  “At the park, swinging,” Buffy replied angrily.

  Giles was suddenly confused. He’d assumed Buffy had intended to confirm the identity of a body she’d found, but if the child was still alive …

  “She wasn’t—?” he began.

  “Oh, she’s dead,” Buffy replied quickly. “In fact, she’s undead.”

  “But …” Giles truly didn’t know where to begin. “Are you certain?” he asked.

  “She transformed right in front of me, Giles,” Buffy countered. “How much more certain do I need to be?”

  “It’s just—”

  “What?” Buffy demanded.

  “W-well…,” he stammered, “it’s just that most vampires instinctively shy away from siring children as young as Callie.”

  “Then somebody’s tossed out the rule book,” Buffy replied, then added, “No prizes guessing who.”

  With all the questions running through Giles’s head at the moment, it took him a few seconds to catch her meaning. “Angelus?” he said.

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “You said he’s big with the psychological warfare. I have to hand it to him. He did catch me off guard this time.”

  For the first time since she’d called, Giles regretted not making some coffee. He didn’t feel particularly well rested from his night sleeping upright, and it was already promising to be a spectacularly long day.

  “Then I take it you found it difficult to—”

  “Stake her?” Buffy finished for him.

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “What?” Giles said with genuine concern. “Didn’t stake her, or didn’t find it difficult?” he clarified, wondering who was responsible for teaching America’s youth proper grammar, and wishing them all great bodily harm.

  “She ran off before I had a chance.”

  Giles considered Buffy carefully. He had a hard time believing that Buffy couldn’t have fairly easily dealt with one vampire, particularly an immature vampire.

  Buffy looked into Giles’s eyes, the battle between anger and sadness clearly raging. He instantly pitied her the encounter and the difficulty of the choice she’d faced that night. He had to remind himself again that much as she’d grown since he’d become her Watcher, she was still, in so many ways, just a girl.

  “Buffy, you must understand that Callie is already dead. Her appearance may be startling, but she is still a demon and, unfortunately, must be destroyed,” Giles said as compassionately as possible.

  “I know,” Buffy answered glumly. “But it was so strange.”

  “I can well imagine,” Giles replied.

  “She said she didn’t like to eat people,” Buffy offered. “Is that even possible?”

  Giles paused before answering. “To be honest, Buffy, there is very little known about child-vampires. As I said, most vampires are extremely reluctant to turn children. Though they do gain the expected strength and stamina of an adult vampire, children do not mature instantly when they are turned. Though they couldn’t be called innocent,” he continued, choosing his words carefully, “they do tend to retain the willfulness and impulsiveness of their former age. They are difficult to manage and, frankly, usually more trouble than they are worth—at least from the point of view of a potential sire.”

  “I hesitated, Giles,” Buffy said simply. “I knew what I had to do, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “It’s perfectly understandable,” Giles said, placing a comforting hand on Buffy’s shoulder. “You were taken by surprise. But I must tell you, I have a hard time believing that Angelus would trouble himself to do this, despite your quite natural misgivings. I understand that dealing with Angelus is your primary focus of late. But any number of vampires could have been responsible for this. Frankly, it strikes me as the act of either a very young, or a very unstable, demon.”

  “Either way, I guess I know what I have to do,” Buffy said softly.

  She turned away and started toward the doors. Giles struggled to find words to either comfort or inspire her, but he hadn’t settled on any when she turned and said, “By the way, have you noticed anything odd about Principal Snyder the past few days?”

  Giles had often suffered serious mental whiplash at the myriad twists and turns of his Slayer’s mind, but this caught him entirely unprepared. “I beg your pardon?”

  “After I saw Callie, I almost ran into Snyder. He was out for an early morning walk. But it was like he didn’t even see me. And his foot was bleeding.”

  Though Giles found this puzzling, his focus on Callie and her effect on Buffy made him quick to dismiss it.

  “Well, I’ll make it a point to speak to him later, if you like, but I’m certain it’s nothing to worry yourself about.”

  “Right,” Buffy said.

  “Your priority must be to find Callie,” he reiterated.

  “Got it.” She nodded, then added, “Thanks for coming in early. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “Never a problem,” Giles said cordially as she disappeared into the hallway. “Have a good morning,” he offered much too late.

  “Wait … he was doing what?” Xander asked, pausing before he bit into a fried fish stick.

  “He was walking down the street, just before dawn, and leaving a trail of fresh blood behind him,” Buffy replied as she toyed with her fruit salad.

  “What kind of socks was he wearing?” Willow asked.

  “Can we not start with the socks again?” Cordelia pleaded, stifling a yawn.

  “Guys, you’re missing the point,” Buffy said briskly. The entire gang had gathered in the cafeteria for lunch: Xander and Cordelia, Willow and Oz, and Buffy and her salad. Normally the sight of her friends and their respective romantic interests didn’t trouble Buffy, but lately she had started to feel too much like a third, or in this case, fifth, wheel. Xander’s passion for Cordelia had been difficult to accept in its early days, but over time, Buffy had come to terms with it. Willow’s newer romance with the sweet but taciturn Oz, who’d only recently discovered he was a werewolf, was truly a source of happiness for Buffy. Still, there was something in the new couple’s cuteness and playfulness that brought Buffy’s loneliness into sharper focus than she could ever say. Most days it simply brought vivid images of all she’d lost in Angel to the forefront of her mind. On afternoons like this one, when she was both troubled by her slaying duties and insufficiently rested, it almost made her crabby.

  “Am I the only one here who thinks that’s just too weird?” Buffy continued as diplomatically as she could.

  “I’d give it an ‘odd,’ but I’d like to withhold ‘weird’ until we get a judge’s ruling on the socks,” Oz said simply.

  “No, I’m with Buffy on this one,” Willow decided. “Only because Snyder didn’t say anything mean to her.”

  “Thanks, Will,” Buffy replied.

  “So you’re thinking demon, Buffy?” Xander asked.

  “I don’t know,” she retorted sharply. “Giles didn’t seem to think it was that big a deal.”

  “Then what are you worried about? If Mr. I’m-All-Smart-and-British doesn’t care, I say let it go,” Cordelia offered, clearly exasperated that Xander was, once again, paying more attention to Buffy than to her. “So the little twerp exercises. So he does it first thing in the morning. If you ask me, it’s the most normal thing Snyder’s ever done.”

  “Were your ears in the upright and open position when I mentioned the blood?” Buffy snapped.

  “Maybe he cut himself shaving,” Will
ow offered.

  “How many men do you know who shave their toes?” Buffy asked.

  “Well … ,” Oz began.

  But before he could continue, the attention of everyone at the table was drawn to the cafeteria line, where Larry, a likable enough jock who had recently and inadvertently revealed to Xander that he was gay, and Jonathan, a sweet, rather quiet junior who always seemed to find himself in the line of fire, were screaming at each other at the top of their lungs.

  “I called dibs on the red Jell-O, man!” Larry shouted, shoving Jonathan into a gaggle of freshman girls who were trying to pay for their lunch at the counter.

  Jonathan recovered quickly and shouted back, “What are you, five? There are no dibs in the lunch line! It’s first come, first served.”

  The next few moments were a blur. Larry grabbed Jonathan by his shirt, and a few of Larry’s football buddies who were behind him in line piled on as Jonathan started swinging for dear life. Without thinking, Buffy jumped into the fray, dodging punches, and, with no small effort on her part, succeeded in pulling the entire Sunnydale High School offensive line off of Jonathan, who ended up on his back and covered in red Jell-O.

  When everyone had settled for a moment, Buffy grabbed Larry and demanded, “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know,” Larry replied lamely. “I just wanted my Jell-O.”

  Buffy’s anger downshifted to concern. Larry wasn’t the brightest bulb in the package, but he was also no longer the overcompensating school bully she’d first come to know. He seemed as confused as she was by his actions. He shook his head and looked about, almost as if he were just now realizing where he was and what he was doing.

  “Step away from the lunch line,” Buffy said both calmly and commandingly, handing Larry his very own bowl of Jell-O and turning him toward the cashier.

  “Right. Sorry,” Larry said, then added, “I guess I’m just really tired. I don’t think I slept last night. Maybe it’s low blood sugar.”

  Buffy turned her attention to Jonathan and, as she helped him to his feet, suddenly realized that everyone in the cafeteria was now looking at her. One of these days I’m going to remember to think before I act, she chided herself. She didn’t necessarily mind being the center of attention, but this really wasn’t the kind of attention she enjoyed. Still, she was gratified to see that Larry and his buddies were moving slowly away from the lunch line.

  “Thanks, Buffy,” Jonathan said quietly.

  “What got into you?” she asked him. “In what bizarro universe was that a fight you were going to win?”

  “It pissed me off,” Jonathan replied. “This is supposed to be high school. No one has seriously called dibs on anything since the fifth grade.”

  “Okay, but next time, you might want to think before you take on the entire football team over the last of the red Jell-O,” Buffy said. “There’s something to be said for picking your battles, you know?”

  “I know. I’m just so tired of those guys picking on me. Really tired.”

  As he spoke, Jonathan stifled a yawn, and Buffy saw his eyes start to glaze over with weariness. All the energy seemed to drain from his face as he turned to find a lunch table.

  That’s weird, Buffy thought. One minute, they’re at each other’s throats, and the next … well, it wasn’t a chorus of “Kumbaya,” but it was pretty darn close. Her musings were interrupted by Cordelia, who, along with the others, had gathered her things from the lunch table and was heading for the door.

  “Gee, Buffy, if this whole Slayer thing doesn’t work out, you clearly have a brilliant future as a hall monitor,” Cordelia said, grabbing Xander by the sleeve and dragging him into the hall.

  “Stuff it, Cordelia,” Willow snapped.

  Cordelia feigned deafness to Willow’s jab, but Buffy turned to her friend, concerned.

  “Are you okay, Will?” she asked.

  Willow thought about it for a second longer than it usually would have taken.

  “Yeah, I don’t know.”

  “I mean, I know you’re still the acting president of the I-Hate-Cordelia Club, but that was a little harsh, don’t you think?”

  “I can’t help it,” Willow said defensively. “She just makes me cranky.”

  It seemed clear to Buffy that everyone had taken their edgy pills this morning. To lighten the mood she waited for a “Later, guys” from Oz as he headed upstairs to his next class, and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial level, she asked Willow, “So, last night … any good Oz dreams?”

  Willow blushed instantly, but then seriously considered the question. “No,” she finally replied remorsefully. “I don’t remember any of my dreams from last night.”

  “Well, fear not,” Buffy said, placing a playful arm over Willow’s shoulder, “there’s always tonight.”

  As they made their way through the hall, Buffy was stopped in her tracks by the sight of Principal Snyder standing outside the chemistry lab holding a freshman boy, whose name Buffy couldn’t recall, by the ear.

  “Sleeping in class, young man? Maybe on somebody else’s campus,” he said in his typical I-have-all-the-power tone.

  Willow, Xander, and Cordelia immediately dodged into the nearest classroom to avoid Snyder. But Buffy paused, toying with the right way to ask the principal what the hell he’d been doing that morning, when he caught sight of her and, still holding the boy’s ear, remarked with a snide smile, “Ah, Miss Summers, how goes the tutoring?”

  It might have been a record. In less than a second Buffy had gone from actually worrying a little about the man to wishing she could have just a few minutes alone with him in a dark alley to teach him the meaning of power.

  “It’s going great, Principal Snyder,” she replied, raising her chin in a small act of defiance.

  “I hope so, for your sake.” He smiled. “As I understand it, the tutor the school board recommended for you is the most demanding in the business. Not that I think it will do much good,” he added with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

  “He’s great,” Buffy replied, as if she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. “Really very helpful.”

  “Aren’t you late for class?” Snyder asked, oblivious to the fact that he was still holding the freshman’s ear and said freshman was writhing in considerable agony beneath his fingers.

  “Nope. I have study hall this period,” Buffy replied with a smile. “I’m library bound to complete some of my extra assignments.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Snyder sneered. “Go.”

  Buffy did as he suggested. Only when she reached the library did it occur to her that Snyder was wearing the same suit today she’d seen him in earlier that morning, a light blue polyester blend, but he’d matched it with a pair of white wingtips that, apart from being out of season, were totally wrong for daytime.

  Maybe his foot is still hurting, Buffy mused. She knew it was wrong to enjoy that thought, but she just couldn’t help herself.

  Buffy was a Slayer. Not a saint.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Angelus was having the most delectable vision. Buffy was bound and gagged at his feet. Her friends Xander, Willow, and Giles were already eviscerated, their respective guts pouring from their bellies and spilling out onto the blood-soaked ground. Todd was kneeling before him, a picture of smarmy tutorial terror pleading for his life, when Angelus was startled out of his reverie by the sound of breaking glass. It only took a second to discern the direction from whence it had come: Drusilla’s sitting room.

  He flirted with the idea of leaving Dru and Spike to whatever they were doing, settling himself down to continue revising Todd’s last moments of life, when a second shattering of glass and muffled raised voices met his ears.

  What the hell?

  He hurried down the main hall toward the master suite. Before he could enter, Callie flew past him screeching, pausing only to kick him hard in the shin before darting into the living room and jumping onto the couch, holding one of Dru’s many prec
ious china dolls above her head and shrieking, “You are not the boss of me!” at the top of her little lungs.

  Dru was right behind her, alight with rage.

  “Put her down, Callie,” Dru demanded. “She sings beautiful songs to Mummy. Bring her to me at once!”

  But that was all Callie needed to hear. The moment Dru made it clear that the doll meant something to her, Callie brought her arms down, thrusting the porcelain doll to the floor, where its face shattered when it met the hard stone.

  “No!” Dru cried out, as if physically struck by the loss. She rushed to the floor and began gently picking up the pieces in a vain attempt to reassemble them.

  “Welcome to the village of the damned,” Spike offered drolly as he rolled himself into the entryway, holding Dru’s beloved pet dog, Sunshine, on his lap.

  Callie continued to rampage through the room, tearing into pillows, knocking over tables, and upending anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Angelus retorted sharply. In a few quick steps he was across the room, and, grabbing Callie securely by the shoulders, he bent to say firmly, “Callie, it’s not nice to destroy Mommy’s things. Now play nice and say you’re sorry.”

  “Make me!” Callie screamed back, struggling in Angelus’s grasp and punctuating her disdain by attempting to bite his hand.

  “Gladly,” Angelus replied. His patience didn’t extend to spoiled brats, and in a flash he had dragged Callie to the heavily curtained French doors that separated the living room from the main courtyard and opened them just enough to show Callie the bright patch of afternoon sun that still fell onto a corner of the patio.

  “Sounds like someone needs a time-out,” Angelus said as he threw open the doors with one hand and, with the other, tossed Callie unceremoniously toward the sunlight. As she struggled to regain her feet, Angelus noticed approvingly that one of her hands had tumbled into the light. It singed only slightly in a sweetly scented, smoky vapor before she pulled it back and retreated into the late afternoon shadows, hissing at him between cries of “Owie!”

  Content for the moment, Angelus turned on Drusilla. “Look, honey, I know how much you love your pets,” he began.