RETURN to CHAOS

by CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

  “No,” George said. “No. You and yours will create a distraction. You and yours will help end the terror. But I must finish this myself.”

  The Druid, the room, the mysterious figure—all were gone. Giles wanted to wake up.

  Why couldn’t he wake up?

  George had to do it. He had to.

  No! Don’t let them nearer! Don’t let them!

  The failure of all their work. The failure of his brother’s spell. The failure of his spell.

  He had to make up for everything, not just in front of the boys, or before the other elders, but in front of the world.

  The stone had showed him the way. He had looked within its facets and seen blood. He was not close enough to the ancient symbols. To triumph, they all must return to the ancient ways.

  In a sense, this whole past year had been a dream. He had lived with the visions, every moment of every day. For months, he had only wanted to shut them out. Now he wished to embrace them and make them his own.

  He had lived his brother’s death over and over again. But worse than that. He had tried to block the images that had flooded him in that instant before his brother’s passing. He had seen the other side. Even now, he could not find the words to express what he had witnessed—the overload on his senses, the cries of fury, of panic, of despair; the feeling of corruption, of an evil more powerful than anything he had ever known; a million faces, two million hands, all trying to drown him in their midst.

  Eric was a vampire. George knew about vampires. This was much worse than vampires. Vampires could drain your blood; they could turn you into a creature without a soul. But these creatures would tear apart his immortal soul throughout eternity.

  No! Don’t let them nearer! Don’t let them!

  He relived the moment, dreamed the dream. Sometimes in the dream he was his brother, screaming for salvation. In those dreams, part of him wanted to let them come. He needed to be punished for his failure. He needed to be punished for making the wrong choice. He needed to be punished for letting his brother die.

  The agony was waiting. Perhaps, in the end, he would offer up his soul to save the world. But it would be a form of redemption. He could have a new life, and an honorable death.

  It had all begun with Eric. George had been woken by a vampire. Eric had found him nearly a year ago, after the failed spell. Eric said he had been drawn to the blood in the magic.

  They had had conversations from time to time thereafter. Eric was beyond morality, reprehensible—yet he was so old and wise in his way.

  Eric was the first to tell George of the Hellmouth. It was the strongest of all the points of power, yet its true nature had been hidden from the Druids until they had employed the proper counterspells to reveal its deceptive nature. And Eric had helped him in so many other little ways.

  George had thought himself rid of Eric when he came to this side of the world. When the vampire had first appeared, George had been horrified, afraid that he would never be rid of him.

  Now he sometimes found the vampire’s presence oddly reassuring.

  He planned to use Eric, the same way he was sure Eric planned to use him. Any cooperation would have to be very short-lived, and monitored carefully.

  Desperate times called for desperate measures. Eric would be used to dealing with average humans. He would have no knowledge of the depths of power and strength available to a Druid.

  So he would use the undead. And so he would kill to protect the living. He hoped, in the end, that his nephews—and the elders of his order—would forgive him. They’d see the truth when they were living in that better world.

  He remembered how Eric had surprised him at the cottage. How had the vampire found his way in? Permission from an earlier occupant perhaps. That was the problem with a rental: you had no idea who had been there before you.

  Then again, it could have something more directly to do with the Hellmouth. The rules were different this close to the center of power.

  The Hellmouth was playing havoc with his basic skills. Ever since he reached the high school, he could swear he was being followed by a werewolf. A werewolf? The moon wasn’t even full. The odd sense stayed with him even after he began driving the van, all alone on the streets of Sunnydale.

  He would be glad to be done with this.

  He looked in the rearview mirror and spoke to the floating girl in her trance: “I am sorry, young lady, but your death will usher in a whole new world.”

  Now why had he done that? Mostly, he guessed, to hear the sound of his own voice. He was grateful for any noise that might break the darkness.

  The spell might have closed Willow’s eyes, but her brain was still working. She felt like she was drifting in a swimming pool, except, of course, this particular pool didn’t have any water, and her obnoxious cousin Ronnie wasn’t splashing her at every opportunity. But she had that same weightless sensation.

  The Druid George had silenced Giles with a single look, then done this to Willow without too much more effort. Oh, there had been some business with lightning jumping from his fingers; Willow couldn’t exactly remember it. Or maybe it was more that she couldn’t make sense of it. That was a problem with magic; many times, on the surface, it didn’t appear to be very logical.

  Well then, brute force was out, not, frankly, that Willow ever considered that much of an option. But Buffy was pretty good in the force department, except—in this case—by the time she had gone into the windup for one of her fabulous flying kicks, George would have turned her into a stone or tree or something.

  But, even though they’d never faced Druids before, they’d faced other nasty things. Some probably even nastier. There had been a way out of everything else; they had won out over all sorts of creatures—the Master, the Annointed One, Moloch, Angelus. Why would this be any different?

  If Willow had been awake, she would have sighed. If only she knew what was going to happen.

  Of course! She did know what was going to happen. Sort of.

  Willow thought about the prophecies. She had studied them often enough, as much to try to determine how the computer program had come up with the darned things as anything else.

  The first one went:

  “There is a shift in the undead. There exists a potential for a gathering of vampires.”

  Well she didn’t think that had anything to do with the Druids. Well, unless that was what the Druids were fighting against. They had spoken of a “Great Evil.” But it didn’t look like any of them had come forward to tell them exactly what the Great Evil was. Vampires were bad, but they hadn’t been anywhere near as awful as some of those world-destroying demons Buffy and the gang had had to face.

  If anything, the first prophecy was only a small part of the answer. The second one went:

  “A new wave will sweep the surface clean. Beware of those lurking below.”

  Were the Druids the new wave? And was Uncle George lurking below? She supposed it fit, sort of. If George was running around with a secret agenda, and he had kind of knocked Giles out and now was taking Willow who knew where—she guessed that counted as a secret agenda. But it didn’t seem very lurkinglike. Well, at least not now.

  The final paragraph on the computer printout had read:

  “A single night will mean the difference. The power could change everything.”

  Well, that was probably why she was getting abducted. The program was trying to tell them about the importance of power on a single night—the night George and the Druids were going to perform their spell.

  The prophecies still seemed to go from the ridiculously general to the specific but vague. Neither one of the extremes was exactly very useful.

  Well, if she or any of them lived through tomorrow, maybe they’d figure out if the prophecies meant anything at all, and she’d save herself another twenty years of work trying to figure them out.

  Actually, working for twenty years on a computer program sounded very good right now.

  But maybe
the prophecies would show her some other way to free herself. Maybe George would let her talk, and she could wriggle her way out of this. Maybe the prophecies would mean something to him. Especially something to make him stop.

  Hey, it was worth a try. If they still meant “sacrifice Willow,” she hadn’t lost anything, had she?

  Maybe she could put George to work making sense of all of it. She wondered if Druids ever used computers?

  She heard car doors slam and another thump above her, in between the first door slam and the second, like something landing on the roof of a car. An engine started up.

  So George was taking her somewhere, inside something? This floating around didn’t give her much information at all.

  The engine was a gentle purr. She would float forever.

  An old children’s rhyme drifted into her head:

  Row, row, row your boat,

  Gently down the stream

  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

  Life is but a dream.

  Row, row, row . . .

  Drifting, forever drifting . . .

  The voice brought her back from her deepening dreams. She was drifting away from reality. Reality? The only reality she had was in her own head.

  It was the Druid’s voice. What was he saying?

  “I am sorry, young lady, but your death will usher in a whole new world.”

  Oh yes, her death. Well, it was nice of the Druid to confirm her suspicions.

  Her death. That was why she had to stay awake.

  The engine purred in her ears.

  Her death. That was why she had to plan.

  Row, row, row your boat.

  Nothing but floating.

  There had to be some way out of this.

  Gently down the stream.

  Surely someone would find Giles. He would tell them what happened.

  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

  What else could she do? She was lost in darkness, with only the soft roar of a car—or maybe a truck—or maybe—or—or . . .

  Life is but a dream.

  Oz was still hanging in there. And the van, while not exactly speeding, was moving along at a steady pace.

  Sometimes he thought the werewolf thing gave him extra stamina, even when he wasn’t the hairiest thing in Sunnydale. He could easily outlast his bandmates, practicing for hours. And when he did decide to take a test—he’d promised his mother he would graduate some day—he could stay up all night studying and still be able to read the test paper the next day. And, so far, he’d managed to hold on to the aluminum bars of the luggage rack over some pretty impressive bumps.

  At least they kept to the back roads. George probably wanted to call as little attention to this rental van as possible. They’d driven in sort of a circle around the center of town, heading for the new developments out beyond the cemetery. Briefly, Oz thought George might be heading for the rented cottage. But the van roared on by the entrance to the development and traveled maybe another half a mile before it turned at last onto a short gravel road that dead-ended in front of some old concrete warehouse.

  Oz jumped from the van as soon as it stopped. He was still more or less in one piece. The way his arms felt, though, they could be three inches longer than when he’d started this ride. The Druid turned off the engine as Oz sprinted to the nearest hiding place, a set of rusted gas pumps in the middle of the parking lot.

  Instead of opening the back of the van and retrieving Willow, George walked directly to the warehouse.

  Uh-oh. Decision time again. Should Oz try for the big Willow rescue, or should he see what George was up to?

  It was time to review his options one more time. First, the Willow scenario:

  What would he do if he opened the back door of the van, assuming it wasn’t locked, and Willow was still floating? Push her home? And how could he hide that eerie glow? He supposed he could have stolen the van if he knew how to hot-wire a car. Guys in movies always knew how to hot-wire cars. For one fleeting moment, he wished he had taken auto shop instead of music.

  No, he didn’t. He took music to get away from those guys in auto shop.

  He decided it was time to take Door Number Two. George had walked into the warehouse and left the door open behind him. There was someone else inside—Oz could hear voices.

  Maybe if he listened in, it might give him some clue what to do next. This, he realized, might not even be George’s final stop with Willow in the back of the van. Heck, before the night was done, Oz’s arms could be six inches longer.

  He ran to the side of the building, careful to crouch below window level as he approached the open door. The voices grew clearer as he approached. He could start to make out the words.

  “See?” one of the voices was saying. “Isn’t it everything I told you it would be?”

  “Yes, Eric, it is close to the source, it has a great deal of room, and there’s a place to lock up our sacrifice.”

  Sacrifice? Not that Oz hadn’t suspected something like that, but his heart sank just the same. Now he really had to get Willow out of there!

  “I have influence in certain circles around here,” Eric went on. “I got the electricity turned back on.”

  “It will save me from having to use illumination spells,” George replied. “Thank you. I don’t think I’ll be using the electricity directly—”

  “I know more about your magic than you might imagine. It’s amazing, if you have a few hundred years, how it helps you to catch up on your studies.”

  “Please don’t remind me of your vampire past. This is a simple agreement!”

  “From which both of us benefit.”

  “It ends tomorrow night.”

  “Oh yes, it ends tomorrow. But by then the world will be a very different place, for both of us.” Eric chuckled. “I will take my leave.”

  “When we see each other again,” George insisted, “it will be as enemies.”

  “Then perhaps we never need to see each other again.”

  Oz saw movement inside. Whoa! Someone was coming out. He scrambled to get out of sight around the corner of the building.

  The Eric person said he would be back later; there were still things that he had to do. George reluctantly agreed, saying they could start being enemies tomorrow night.

  Oz hadn’t seen any second vehicle outside the warehouse. He wondered how Eric had gotten there and how he was leaving. He hoped he wasn’t walking by Oz’s particular corner of the building.

  They spoke about tomorrow night. Oz guessed Willow would be safe until then. Did he dare look at the setup inside? Well, maybe just a peek. But then Oz had to get the reinforcements.

  Whoever this Eric was, along with George, they were going to have to deal with Buffy.

  Buffy walked alone. Where was she? The shapes of town were gone, replaced by the vaguest of shadows.

  She saw a streetlight before her. A figure dressed in black waited underneath. He smiled, showing his fangs.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” the vampire said. “You may call me Eric.”

  “I may also call you dead.” Buffy reached for the bag, but she didn’t have it. Where had it gone?

  “Things are not that simple,” Eric said.

  Buffy frowned. “Things don’t seem to be real.”

  “Then this could be a dream?” Eric still smiled. “People can die in their dreams, you know.”

  She heard Willow’s voice, calling her name. Willow sounded very far away.

  “You won’t be able to save her,” Eric said. “You’re already too late.”

  “If this is a dream,” Buffy shot back, “I could just wake up!”

  “You could, if you were in control.”

  “And who’s in control?” another voice called from Buffy’s side.

  The smile fell from the vampire’s face. “What are you doing here?”

  Buffy turned to see Ian standing beside her. He winked at her.

  “I’m a Druid,” he said. �
�Druids are very good with dreams, you know.”

  Eric seemed to be completely undone. “How can you do this? You don’t have the power!”

  Ian smiled at Buffy. “Who says that I’m the one who is doing this? After all, this vision at my side is the Chosen One. But why is she having this dream in the first place?” He turned to stare at Eric. “Could it be someone is attempting to intimidate her, to fill her head with doubt so that she might make the wrong move at a crucial moment? Oh, Eric . . . how you underestimate the Slayer!”

  Buffy grinned at Ian. “If this is a dream, all I have to do is dream up a tool or two.”

  A wooden stake appeared in her hand.

  “I will not allow it!” Eric shouted. “You can’t do this!”

  “Sure she can,” Ian replied pleasantly. “Slayers can do anything.” He looked to the vampire again. “How little you think of those who oppose you, Eric. It will be your undoing.”

  “You pitiful children!” Eric growled. “You may be able to influence her dreams, but you cannot change what is meant to be!”

  “And what exactly is meant to be?” Ian countered.

  “I think a vampire was meant to be staked.” Buffy ran forward, weapon in hand.

  Eric vanished, leaving only an angry roar behind.

  Ian whistled. “Most vampires are cowards, aren’t they?”

  Buffy looked at the boy, somehow once again at her side. “Are you for real?”

  Ian shook his head. “This is a dream. I’m not even sure how I got here, or if I’ll even remember this in the morning. But I’m glad I had a chance to see you, even like this.”

  “Well, yeah,” Buffy agreed. “I’d like to get to know you better, even if it’s in a dream. Maybe we could—I don’t know—go vampire hunting together.”

  “Vampire hunting is only one of many things we share. I know what it’s like to be an outsider. We have a lot in common, Buffy Summers.”

  She was in his arms. She wanted to be in his arms. He leaned forward for a kiss.

  Buffy woke up.

  What did that mean? Well, it was a dream, but a dream not entirely of her own making. Part of it came from a vampire. Part of it, maybe, from Ian.