The Xander Years, Vol.2

by Jeff Mariotte

  “No matter,” Giles suggested. “Have Xander make another run.”

  Buffy spoke firmly. “No. Xander’s out of this. He nearly got killed last time we fought. This whole thing will be easier if we know he’s safe.”

  * * *

  “Oh. Gosh, Jack. Are you okay?” Xander asked, trying not to sound panic-stricken. He looked at the cars. His was fine, but Jack’s had a broken taillight and some damage to the fender. “I am really sorry about that. Your car came out of nowhere.”

  “I was parked,” Jack said. His voice still had that sinister hush to it.

  “Exactly,” Xander said. “Look, I can cover the damages. I don’t have insurance in the strictest sense of the word, but I have a little money . . . the important thing is that we’re all all right, and we can work this out like two reasonable —”

  There was the faintest ting as Jack whipped his knife from its scabbard. He held it up in front of him and the broad blade caught the glow from the streetlights.

  It was the biggest knife Xander had ever seen outside of a pirate movie.

  “— frontiersmen . . .”

  “Where do you want it?” Jack asked. Like it was a foregone conclusion that Xander would take it somewhere.

  “What?”

  “Where do you want it?” Jack repeated.

  “I’m fairly certain I don’t want it at all,” Xander said abruptly. “But thank you.”

  “Wow, cool knife,” Lysette said from behind Xander. He was beginning to regret ever having given her that first ride.

  “Yeah, great knife,” he agreed. “Although I think it may technically be a sword.”

  “She’s called Katie,” Jack said. He moved it back and forth, letting the light play across its blade.

  Her blade, Xander corrected.

  “You gave it a girl’s name,” Xander noted. “How very serial killer of you.” To the girl, he said, “Lysette, I think we should be going.”

  But Jack grabbed him, turned him around, and held the knife against his face. He could feel the sharp edge on his cheek, not quite cutting. Shaving the day’s whiskers, though.

  “Are you scared?” Jack asked.

  Xander was pretty sure what answer Jack wanted to hear. “Would that make you happy?” he asked. He caught the cracking sound of his own voice. Affirmative, he thought. Scared.

  Jack moved the cold blade back and forth across Xander’s cheek and neck. Takes good care of her, too. Nice and sharp. “Your woman looking on, you can’t stand up to me? Don’t you feel pathetic?”

  “Mostly I feel Katie,” Xander answered sincerely.

  Jack pressed the blade a little harder into Xander’s flesh. “You know what the difference between you and me is?”

  “Again, Katie’s springing to mind.”

  “Fear,” Jack said. “Who has the least fear.”

  “And it has nothing to do with who has the big, sharp —”

  Jack whipped the knife away from Xander’s face and slapped the pommel into Xander’s hand. Now Xander had the big sharp knife. Jack took a step back, motioned Xander toward him with both hands. Giving him a clear shot.

  “Come on,” he prompted.

  Xander felt the comforting weight of the weapon in his hand. Tried to picture plunging it into Jack’s bullying heart. Just like staking a vamp, he thought.

  But he couldn’t do it. Difference is, a vampire’s already been dead once.

  “I wanna go for a drive,” Lysette whined, uninterested in this latest turn of events. “I’m bored.”

  “Oh, gee,” Xander said, looking away from Jack for a moment. “I’m really sorry my life or death situation isn’t exciting enough —”

  Jack took advantage of Xander’s divided attention. He grabbed Xander, slamming him backward onto the Chevy’s hood. Snatching Xander’s hand, he turned it, pushing the point of Katie’s blade up against Xander’s throat. Xander could almost taste the sharp, oiled steel.

  From the outside.

  Then a bright light shone in Jack’s eyes. “Hey! What’s going on?” a voice demanded. The thug let Xander go and backed away, Katie suddenly vanishing.

  Xander straightened and saw a police officer approaching. He trained a flashlight on Jack and took in the scene.

  “Nothing,” Jack said. “Just rasslin’.”

  “O’Toole. What a surprise.” The cop knew him. Guess that figures, Xander thought. Then, to Xander, he said, “He attack you?”

  Say yes! Xander thought. With a knife the size of Rhode Island!

  But he couldn’t do it. He’d defused Jack before. He knew he could do it again. The guy’s not all bad, he thought. Better to stay in his good graces. Getting Jack arrested would just aggravate him, and he wouldn’t stay locked up forever.

  “No,” he finally said, giving the officer a big, we’sall-just-friends-here smile. “Just blowin’ off steam. Two guys rasslin’. But not in a gay way,” he hastened to add.

  “Do it somewhere else, huh?” the cop said. He left them alone.

  When Xander looked back at Jack, he realized Jack was just staring at him, grinning.

  “What?”

  “That was all right,” Jack said. “Coulda narked on me, didn’t do it. Decent of you.” He paused. “I like you.”

  Suddenly Xander wasn’t at all sure if being friends with Jack was better or worse than being enemies. “Yay?”

  “You two wanna have some fun?” Jack asked.

  Now Lysette was interested. “Like, with driving?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said.

  Xander knew this had to be a bad idea. What he didn’t quite know was how to get out of it. “What do you have in mind?” he stalled.

  “I was on my way to get the boys,” Jack said. “Gonna cruise around.” He gestured toward the convertible. “We’ll take your wheels.”

  “What about your car?” Xander asked.

  Jack gave the damaged vehicle a long look. “It ain’t mine.”

  Jack climbed into the Chevy’s passenger seat. Lysette slid in beside him, in the middle. Xander sat behind the wheel. “Great,” he said, without enthusiasm. “Where to?”

  “Gonna get the boys!” Jack announced.

  “Yeah. Great,” Xander said. “Where are the boys?”

  It just had to be, Xander thought, something like this. Had to.

  They were in the cemetery. One of Sunnydale’s many. Jack stood next to a grave, waving a chicken foot over it as he recited an incantation. Xander wouldn’t have taken him for a student of the Black Arts, but, so much for stereotyping.

  “He calls forth, the spirit of Uurthu, the restless, no one shall speak,” Jack was saying. “He shall arise! Hear me, the blood of the Earth shall restore him —”

  He dropped the chicken foot, drew Katie, and sliced open his own palm. Blood from his hand dripped onto the grave.

  “And he shall arise,” Jack continued. “Shall arise!”

  Didn’t seem like much of a ritual to Xander, who had seen one or two doozies in his time. Lysette didn’t seem too impressed either — bored to distraction was more like it.

  But results were what counted, in the ritual business. And this one got results. Someone — presumably the “he” of which Jack had been speaking — arose.

  Two fists shoved their way through the grave’s hard-packed earth, followed by a crewcut-coiffed head. As he clawed his way up from the ground, Xander saw that he’d been buried, in a questionable display of taste, in a letter jacket with a big Sunnydale “S” on the chest, and a dirty T-shirt.

  And that, sometime before being buried, he’d been shot in the head. There was a big, puckered bullet hole just over his left eye.

  He looks like Moose, from the “Archie” comics, Xander thought. Well, if Moose was real. And had been shot, and then buried.

  “Buddy!” the dead guy shouted.

  Jack spread his arms wide, a huge smile on his face. “Bob, you big hideous corpse, come here!”

  Bob threw himself into Jack’s arms an
d gave him a big dead-guy hug.

  Lysette, no longer bored, gave a blood-curdling scream and ran for her life.

  “I’ll call you —” Xander called after her disappearing form.

  Jack and his friend were still doing the reunion thing, laughing and pounding each other on the back, the way manly guys did. Even manly zombies, it seemed.

  “Man, you raised me!” Bob shouted. His normal speaking voice seemed to be a shout. Xander wondered if that was a side effect of having spent time in the quiet of the grave. But Bob was a big side-of-beef kind of guy — Xander figured quiet and low-key were alien concepts to him.

  “I told you grandpappy could work that mojo,” Jack said. “Big Bob is back in action!”

  Bob pumped his fists in the air. “Yes!” he shouted. Then he and Jack butted their heads together in a bonding ritual Xander wasn’t familiar with. “D’ahh!” Bob grunted as they collided. He grabbed Jack’s arms. “I can’t believe you raised me! That is so awesome. You are the coolest!”

  Xander figured this was his best opportunity to make a getaway. “Maybe I should let you guys catch up —”

  Jack pointed at Xander with the knife. “Bob, this is Xander,” he said. “He’s our wheel man.”

  I have a job description, Xander thought. Does that mean I’m hired? Because, retiring sounds like a good idea.

  Bob took a step toward Xander, gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. Didn’t quite dislocate it, but it knocked Xander back a couple of steps. “Hey,” Bob said.

  “Howdy,” Xander replied, with a grimace of pain.

  “Dude, where are the other guys?” Bob asked Jack. “We gotta go get ’em!”

  “Absolutely,” Jack agreed.

  “All right,” Bob said.

  Jack started walking toward the car, Bob following.

  Xander stayed by the grave. “Are, um . . . are all your friends dead?” he asked. Not really wanting to know the answer.

  Jack obliged him by not answering. “Xander, let’s roll.”

  Xander brought up the rear.

  “How long I been down?” Bob asked as they walked.

  “Eight months. I hadda wait till the stars aligned.”

  “Oh, eight months! Man. I got some catchin’ up to do.” Bob stopped, jammed a finger into Jack’s chest. “‘Walker Texas Ranger.’You been tapin’ ’em?”

  “Every ep,” Jack assured him.

  “All right,” the zombie said. “We’re gonna get the guys together, we’re gonna party, man.” He slapped Xander on the other shoulder. If Xander had any feeling at all left in his arms by the end of this, he’d be happy. “This is gonna be a night to remember,” Bob went on. “Yeah!”

  “I’m sensing that,” Xander agreed quietly.

  “The blood of the Earth shall restore him, and he shall rise.”

  Jack was repeating the same scene at another graveyard. He was, Xander noted, even more efficient with practice.

  A horrible head pushed up through the dirt. This one’s skin was all discolored, missing in patches, toasty looking, like he’d survived a terrible fire.

  Only, without the surviving part.

  “Dudes,” he said.

  And they were off to the next cemetery. As Xander peeled away from the curb with a screech of tires, Bob waved his fists in the air and screamed, “Beeeeer!”

  * * *

  Giles stood in Restfield Cemetery, a lighted candle in his hand. Torches were lit and jammed into poles before the door of a mausoleum.

  Giles spoke the required incantation in Latin. “Do not deny me, spirit guide!” he said. “Let the wisdom of those who have passed be showered upon me!”

  Above the mausoleum door, a bright cloud was forming. From within the cloud a deep voice boomed, also speaking Latin.

  “These secrets belong to time and the dark regions!” the voice said. “To reveal them would bring Chaos down upon the living Earth!”

  “The beast must be fought,” Giles insisted. “Our only hope lies in finding its weakness!”

  “Seek not! Disturb us no longer!” The cloud blew away on a sudden wind. The torches and candle went out, leaving Giles alone in the dark.

  In more ways than one.

  Xander saw the end of it. Jack and his pals were repeating their ritual, a few graves over, and he’d wandered this way when he heard Giles’s voice. “Giles,” he said, relieved to find someone he knew. And who’s alive. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “Oh, I was just trying to gain access to the spirit guides — not going very well, I’m afraid,” Giles said. He sounded frustrated as he gathered up the equipment he’d brought with him. “What are you doing here?”

  Xander wasn’t sure how much he dared to say. It wasn’t just that Jack was dangerous and scary. Although that enters into it. It was also that he’d been helping Jack, even if somewhat unwittingly. Xander knew how much Giles disapproved of Willow’s occasional forays into spellcasting on her own.

  Gotta figure raising the dead is even worse, in his book.

  “Oh, we were just raising . . . some heck.”

  Jack’s voice called from the other grave site. “Xander! Let’s go!”

  Xander realized that Giles might be his last chance to leave these zombies behind. If there was a way he could latch onto Giles, without confessing what he’d been up to . . . “Listen, do you guys need any help?”

  “Hmm?” Giles asked, distracted by his own worries. “Oh, no. Thank you. Probably best if you stay out of trouble.”

  “Not much chance of that,” Xander said.

  Jack and his buddies — including a new one — stood beside the Chevy. “Xander!” Jack yelled. “Motor!”

  “There’s something different about this menace,” Giles went on. “Something in the air. The stench of death.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s Bob,” Xander said.

  “We may all be called upon to fight when it happens.”

  Xander was getting a little tired of this “nobody trust Xander with the info” thing. But maybe Giles isn’t in on the conspiracy, he thought. Worth a try . . . “When what happens, exactly?”

  “Come on!” Jack was growing impatient.

  And Giles dodged the question. “I’d better go,” he said. “Hopefully, we shall have time to prepare. All we need is a few weeks.”

  “Tonight?” Buffy asked.

  “Before sunrise,” Willy answered. “That’s what they said.”

  Willy’s Alibi Room was completely trashed.

  Not that it was particularly stylish in the first place. Calling it a dive would be kind, Buffy thought. It was the kind of place demons and serious drinkers came to seek oblivion, company, and bruised knuckles. She’d heard about legendary bar brawls that had taken place here, but she was pretty sure that tonight’s damage rated pretty high even by Willy’s somewhat flexible standards.

  Willy himself was a bloody mess, crumpled on the floor behind the bar. His cash register was down there with him, both surrounded by broken bottles. The rest of the place was in the same shape: furniture smashed, mirrors broken, light fixtures torn from the ceiling.

  “Why did they do this?” Buffy asked him.

  Willy sounded more upset than she had ever heard him. “They were looking for Angel.”

  “Angel, why?”

  “Said they were coming after you, too. Said nothing could stand in their way because tonight was the night.” He coughed, clutched his bleeding chest. “Ahh, man.”

  Buffy was worried about the barkeep. He was a transplanted easterner who had never quite acclimated to southern California. His dark hair and pale skin didn’t look like they’d ever seen the sun — not because he was a vampire, but because he worked nights and slept days, she figured.

  Willy’s wasn’t a place she and her friends hung out in — you were supposed to be twenty-one to even get in the door, for one thing. And most of his regulars were demons and other undesirables. Willy always made perfectly clear that his own interests were his number-on
e priority, and his assistance, when he gave it at all, usually carried a steep price. But she didn’t wish him any harm. She’d called 911 as soon as she’d found him. “The ambulance is on its way.”

  “Look, kid,” he said. “My clientele ain’t exactly nuns and orphans. But I never seen anything like these demons.”

  Coming from him, a statement like that carried some weight. But she wanted to sound confident. “I’m gonna stop them,” she promised.

  “That Hellmouth opens, they’re gonna be the least of your problems, is my train of thought,” he said. “If I were you, I’d go find Angel, go somewhere quiet together. I’d be thinking about how I wanna spend my last night on Earth.”

  The radio was blasting as Xander drove through the normally subdued streets of Sunnydale. Dickie, the burn victim, and Parker, who had been drowned, sat in the back. Both Dickie and Parker, at least, had been buried in the traditional dark suits and ties.

  Jack rode shotgun. Bob stood in the middle, between Dickie and Parker, fists raised to the sky.

  “Let’s get some beer!” he wailed.

  Parker had his own ideas. “Let’s go pick up some girls, man. We’ll hang out Taco Bell, get some girls, go cruise around.”

  They all laughed at that — but then, Xander noted, they all thought pretty much everything was hilarious. A side effect of being returned from the dead, he figured.

  “I wanna bake a cake,” Dickie said, to another round of laughter.

  “Hey, we need some beers, though,” Bob insisted, taking his seat. The big guy had a one-track mind.

  “I can’t believe you got shot, man,” Parker said. “Was it them Jackals?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jack responded. “We wiped them out after they threw you off the bridge.”

  “Oh, man,” Parker said, voice quaking with emotion. “You guys are the best, man. I mean it.”

  “It was a liquor store,” Bob told them. “Little Armenian guy, runs the place, he had a gun behind the counter. Hey, we should go kick his ass!”

  “Yeah!” Parker screamed.

  “Yeah!” Bob echoed.

  Xander couldn’t believe he was chauffeuring a bunch of zombie thugs around town. My folks would have my license if they knew, he thought. Not to mention what Uncle Rory would do if these guys left some kind of residue, embalming fluid, anything like that, on his pristine seats. “If you guys want me to drop you somewhere, that’s —” he began.