Ghost Roads

by Christopher Golden

  Souls who wander, free of form,

  Allow these passage safe from harm.

  Do not make them tarry, these three yet breathe,

  Do not cause them mischief, they’ve no power to relieve.

  The breach hovered in the air, shimmering and pulsing. Willow looked at Giles and said, “Angel saw Jenny.” He saw that she tried to smile, but she just couldn’t pull it off. “She’ll make sure we’re all right.”

  Giles could not respond to that. It would be too easy to believe that some part of Jenny still lived, just out of reach, beyond the veil that separated the world from the ghost roads. It would only cause him pain to consider such a thing.

  He was terrified. There was no other word for it. All of them knew that there was a good chance this wouldn’t work. If it were possible for humans to travel the ghost roads, someone would have done it by now. II Maestro would have sent his followers traveling that way. Surely the Gatekeeper and his mother would know of any instance where a normal human being had walked the roads and lived to tell the tale.

  He hated sending these young people on this journey. Everything in his being cried out for him to go himself, but Willow was right. His first duty was to the Slayer. And for her, he had to find a way to rescue Joyce.

  This was the only way.

  He looked down at Xander. Willow took Xander’s ankles and Cordelia took his wrists. Just for them to lift him was an enormous effort. There was no other way for them to carry him, and no time to fashion a travois or any other sort of stretcher.

  Giles had no idea what it was like to walk on the ghost roads, nor for how long they would have to actually carry him. How they would manage.

  It was the best he could do.

  But it was not very much at all.

  “Come on, come on,” Willow said frantically. “We have to go!”

  “Take care,” Giles said to Willow. “Willow, I . . . I want so badly . . .”

  She nodded.

  “We’ll be okay,” she said.

  They stepped into the breach.

  In case they could see him, Giles stood facing it and stared straight ahead into the void.

  * * *

  Okay, just for the road, one last pack of desperate dead people.

  The dozen or so wraiths were so out of control that not even Micaela could calm them down. Maybe they’d heard rumors about the impending arrival of squatters from Hell, or that they might be stuck in here forever, but whatever their deal, she and Angel took them out one by one, battering at the fragile creatures, who disintegrated with each roundhouse kick or one-two punch.

  Finally the way was clear; except for onlookers, who lined the rows here and there like people cheering on marathon runners. Angel had draped Oz back over his shoulder, and Micaela was holding Jacques’s hand. The complete Dorothy foursome . . .

  “Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome, Mister Wizard,” Buffy said cheerily, smiling over her shoulder at Jacques, who, she supposed, had grown up watching the Cartoon Network; then again, maybe not if he was raised in England. Most of the decent shows never made it there.

  “Here we are, Jacques, safe and sound,” she said, running for the breach that led to a spot directly across from . . .

  “Sunnydale?” she asked in complete confusion as she burst from the breach and stared across the street at her high school. It was supposed to be Boston. But it most definitely wasn’t. It was dark out; the fat, round moon shone above the silhouette of the roof.

  “Buffy?” someone called to her.

  She took one look at the figure by Cordelia’s car and loped toward it.

  “Giles!” she cried. “What’s going on?”

  He took a step backward, then grabbed her and gave her a tight hug. “Oh, thank God. You’re alive!”

  “Looks that way,” she said, staring at him. In the moonlight, his face was chalk white. She wasn’t sure she had actually seen someone’s face so pale. Someone who wasn’t dead, anyway. She added slowly, gingerly touching the bruises on her face, “But looks can be deceiving.”

  He frowned. “Where have you been? Are you returning from Boston? Did you see—”

  “We thought we were going to Boston.” She turned back around, to see Angel with Oz draped over his shoulder. He was holding the heir’s hand, and she gestured them forward to show Giles. “Rupert Giles. This is Jacques Regnier.”

  As the group approached, Giles held out his hand. “Thank heaven. I’m so glad you’re all right.” He sounded about as thrilled as a guy who’d been fired from his job.

  “Thank you, sir,” the boy replied.

  Angel came up behind Buffy. “What’s going on? How’d we get here?”

  Buffy frowned at Giles. “You’re not exactly cheering our arrival,” she said. “Which I assume means adbay ewsnay.”

  Jacques tensed. Buffy made a face and said, “And I’m guessing you speak pig Latin.”

  “Buffy,” Giles said, and then he must have seen Micaela, for he hesitated a moment. He bowed his head and blinked. When he looked back up, Buffy saw tears in his eyes.

  “Oh, God, what?” she cried.

  “You didn’t see them, then. On the ghost road. And if you couldn’t get to Boston, how can they?”

  “See who?” she asked, frantic.

  “Oh, dear Lord, Buffy,” Giles said. “It’s Xander. Xander’s dying.”

  “What?” Buffy shouted. “Giles, what—”

  Then the sky erupted with thunder. Lightning stabbed the ground in half a dozen different places. The earth beneath them shook so hard that Giles staggered and fell to his knees. The others followed suit, crashing to the ground.

  Icy rain pelted them, and then slimy, cold toads plummeted from the sky. As Buffy got to her hands and feet, she heard screams. She didn’t know where they were coming from, but they were filled with terror.

  From the breach, a pair of hideous demons lurched out. They raced across the street, making for Buffy and the others.

  Buffy leaped to her feet. Angel did the same.

  “It’s happening!” Micaela cried. “The barriers between Hell and the ghost roads have opened. They’re tearing their way through to Earth!”

  Buffy looked around wildly, then said, to Giles, “Protect the heir. Do whatever you need to do to save him.”

  “He must go to Boston!” Giles shouted, above the gale winds that had erupted. “Now! There’s no time to lose!”

  * * *

  It was like a very bad day at the beach, only with no beach, just the slate sky above and below her. Overcast, dull, gray. It wasn’t hot, it wasn’t cold. It was nothing.

  Cordelia caught her breath and fought like crazy to stop from going completely nuts. Something was wrapping around her like a ghost, an evil fog or a fingertip or something. Shadows crossed over her, only there were no shadows.

  Ghosts, she thought. It’s a place of ghosts. Antoinette was a ghost and she was nice to us.

  Then suddenly, the ground beneath her became solid, and she stumbled slightly.

  “Don’t drop him!” Willow cried anxiously.

  “Of course I won’t,” Cordelia retorted, although she had almost let go of Xander’s wrists.

  Slung between them, his body was completely limp and his eyes were closed. If she didn’t look at the wound in his chest, she could pretend he was asleep.

  No. She couldn’t.

  Anxiously she glanced from his face to Willow’s, to find Willow also staring at him.

  Then they gazed at each other, and if Cordelia looked like Willow, then she looked nauseous with fear.

  “Cauldron,” Willow said. “It’s magickal. It’ll restore him.”

  “If they let us use it,” Cordelia replied.

  Willow’s face softened. “They will. They’re on our side, Cordy.”

  “Yeah, well, if the Gatekeeper needs—”

  A rumbling drowned out the rest of her words. It grew louder and louder, and Cordelia gasped as they were shaken from side to side.

>   “Willow?” she asked, her voice shrill. “What’s happening?”

  Without warning, a blinding white flash burned away all the gray. The road beneath Cordelia turned to charred ash. She covered her eyes, blinking, as her eyelids glowed red.

  Then suddenly, she, Willow, and Xander were surrounded by blurred bits and pieces of people. Faces. A hand. An arm. Most of the people were crying. Others looked blank, as if they had seen something they just couldn’t handle. There were a few at first, but as Cordelia focused on them, she realized there was hundreds of them, maybe thousands.

  They began to take shape.

  They began to close in on the three of them.

  “Um, we’re just passing through,” Cordelia said, smiling brightly. “Right, Willow?”

  “It is the last days,” said a young girl dressed in a sort of toga. There was a huge, gaping cut down the center of her face. “It is over.”

  “Willow?” Cordelia said.

  “Safe passage,” Willow said firmly. “We said the ritual of safe passage. We’re alive.”

  The girl shook her head. “It is the end.”

  There was another rumbling, and the girl looked terrified. A high keening filled the air, like one sad, lost person. Shivering, Cordelia remembered her uncle’s funeral. She had been nine; it was her first funeral. Now, after so many years in Sunnydale, she’d been to a lot of them.

  But at nine, the crying and the grief had frightened her. Her uncle had lain in his coffin with the lid open, and all through the service she could barely see his profile.

  Then everyone got up to file past him, past the dead body, and her mother had whispered to her, “What a terrible makeup job. Your aunt must be devastated.”

  And Cordelia had thought, Yes, that must be it, when her aunt was led to the coffin and she began to cry so hard it was like screaming.

  That was what this was like.

  Only now it was worse, because deep within the foggy distance, Cordelia saw some kind of shading in the gray, and within that shading, a huge, glowing circle appeared. It pulsed and throbbed like a breach, only flames poured out of it. And inside the circle, something huge, mottled, and slimy tumbled out and flopped into the gray. It rose on its hind legs and let out a horrible roar.

  The girl turned in its direction, screamed, and pointed. “It is Hell! They are coming!” she shrieked. Then she turned to Cordelia, panting with fear, and said, “You must go quickly, you who are living. You who can leave,” she added bitterly.

  “Okay. Thanks. And, don’t worry. We’re going to the Gatekeeper,” she assured the girl. But as she spoke, another fiery circle appeared. “He can stop this stuff.” To Willow, she gritted, “Let’s go.”

  They began to move with Xander between.

  “No,” the girl said anxiously. “Only the living may leave.”

  “Right.” Cordelia blinked at her.

  From the second circle, a tentacled creature flopped out and rolled into the fog. A ghostly scream seared Willow’s nerves as she nervously tightened her grip around Xander’s feet.

  The girl said, “These are the ghost roads. The dead travel here.” She gestured toward Xander. “He travels here.”

  Together, Willow and Cordelia looked down at Xander.

  His eyes were half open, as if he were looking at her, but they were vacant and unseeing. His lips were tinged with blue, and the hollows in his cheeks were dark gray.

  “Willow?” The charging demon’s roar almost drowned out Cordelia’s voice. The ghost in the toga screamed again and disappeared.

  The monster lunged for them.

  TO BE CONTINUED

  About the Authors

  Christopher Golden’s latest novels include Of Masques and Martyrs and X-Men: Codename Wolverine. With Nancy Holder, he is the author of several previous Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels, including Blooded and Child of the Hunt. The team also wrote BtVS: The Watcher’s Guide. Christopher is currently writing a new series of young adult mysteries for Pocket Books entitled Body of Evidence: The Jenna Blake Mysteries, and has recently completed a new, original novel, Strangewood, which will be published by Signet Books in fall 1999. He is also a comic book writer, whose latest projects include Marvel Comics’ Punisher and several Buffy the Vampire Slayer specials and miniseries from Dark Horse Comics. Please visit him at his web site: www.christophergolden.com.

  Nancy Holder is a four-time Bram Stoker Award winner for her supernatural short stories and her novel Dead in the Water. She has sold thirty-five novels and over two hundred short stories and edits a column for a writing newsletter. Her most recent novels include the science-fiction novel Gambler’s Star: The Six Families and the upcoming Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: Scarabian Nights. She received the Amazon Sales Report Award for Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Angel Chronicles, Vol. 1, which was also on the Locus magazine bestseller list. She has written computer game fiction and manga and TV commercials in Japan. She and Christopher have also written a number of short stories together, including “Ate” for Vampire Magazine and “Hiding” for The Ultimate Hulk.

  Christopher and Nancy started working together when Nancy sold an essay to Christopher’s Bram Stoker Award-winning collection, Cut! Horror Writers on Horror Films. They write together via the Internet. Christopher lives in Massachusetts with his wife and sons, and Nancy lives in San Diego with her husband, Wayne, and their daughter, Belle.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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