by Various
That was a good lead. Damn good lead.
I stood slowly, smiling at my host. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this, Frank.”
He looked skeptical. “You don’t mind my saying, Mrs. Winters—you don’t look so tough.”
I smiled. “But you don’t have to look tough to be tough, now do you, Frank?”
“Good point,” he said. “Good point. But this Hunyadi? He’s tough too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And he looks it.”
And the dapper mobster, ever the gentlemen, showed me out.
* * *
Normally, I would have gone back uptown and changed into something better suited for the potential fight ahead—creature comfort, let’s call it—but I didn’t want to go down into those tunnels with night time closing in, nor did I want to wait another day and let Hunyadi feed on even one more soul, even one that might already be damned. Criminals or not, no one deserved to go out under the fangs of a monster like Hunyadi.
I parked between Michigan and Wabash on Fourteenth, picked up my sack full of stakes, and made my way down into the tunnel at the corner. Forty feet below the surface the freight tunnels held a two-gauge electric railroad and nearly sixty miles of track. I was at the extreme southern end of the network and decided to work my way east toward the Field Museum. If that failed, then I would start on the daunting trek north.
The tunnel—barely six feet wide and just over seven feet high—was constructed of concrete that glowed white under the occasional incandescent lights. I knew the tunnels better than most since my father had worked down there for years. I remembered him telling me there were 3800 lights strung through the sixty miles of track, roughly one every eighty-four feet. They provided some light and made for tons of shadows, especially near the curves.
The air down here was far cooler than back up on the surface, and suddenly my short-sleeved dress didn’t seem heavy enough to stave off the chill. I could hear a train or two clattering along in the distance, but before I’d gone very far, the sound faded to silence.
I was alone. Or anyway, I was the only living soul down here.
Walking carefully so as not to break off a heel—or, more importantly, not to stumble into the third rail of the electrified tracks—I made my way up a block to the corner of Thirteenth and Wabash, then turned east. My heels clicked against the concrete floor that rose like narrow sidewalks on either side of the rails. The tunnel got darker as I moved deeper in that direction, and it became obvious that someone had broken out most of the bulbs in this wing. A lonely offshoot of the main system, this single tunnel ran to the museum but was hardly ever used.
The deeper I got, the more shadows I encountered, and my progress slowed even more. I was careful not to let the bag of stakes move around too much. Jostling it would cause the stakes to rattle like dancing skeletons, and in the tunnel that sound would echo all the way to the end.
After a while I couldn’t tell if I’d gone a hundred yards or a thousand as the darkness closed in like an ever tightening shroud. My heartbeat accelerated; I could feel it pounding in my chest, and my breathing became rapid and more shallow. I started wondering if I was worried about what I might find or if I was just becoming scared of the dark. Then the first cramp hit.
As it did a shape appeared out of the shadows and loomed over me, blocking out any light from the few bulbs left ahead of me. It growled like a wounded animal, and, as it closed in, the shape became that of a man, not Hunyadi, but a wide shaved-head monster with his fangs bared and his breath strong enough to kill, even if he never laid a pearly white on my neck.
It took a powerful vampire indeed to form alliances and attract followers.
Taking two quick steps back, I dropped into a combat stance—Redmond had taught me well—and yanked one of the stakes from the bag. The vampire lumbered toward me, and when he reached out, arms spread, I ducked, stepped in, and jammed the stake up and into his heart, flesh and tissue tearing, blood burbling. Screaming in anger and pain, he grabbed for the stake instead of me, and his momentum almost took me with him as he tumbled forward and hit the ground in a shower of dust.
His noise served as a warning to his ghoulish buddies, and four more of the creatures filled the cramped tunnel in front of me. The only thing I had going for me was that the small tunnel made it impossible for them all to come at me at once.
The first one, a skinny guy in a baggy suit, charged at me; I swept him past as I jerked out another stake. The second one had greasy hair and wild eyes; he stepped forward and, as if accepting an unexpected award, took the stake right in the chest. Spinning, I kicked the first one in the head and dropped him to his knees. As the last two came at me, I pulled out a stake and, to their surprise, I charged them. I tripped the one on my left as I rammed home the stake in the one on the right. Pulling my last two stakes from the bag even as I spun around, I threw one at the first vampire as he rose and caught him in the chest.
He died instantly and fell like a snipped-stringed puppet, dissolving to dust, his buddies already just mounds of powder where they’d fallen.
I had one stake left, with a vampire blocking my path out of the tunnel and Hunyadi was still somewhere down here to boot. Suddenly I didn’t feel like rushing down here had been such a good idea.
The remaining vampire got up and turned to face me. He was muscular, olive-skinned, and looked to be a fairly recent recruit judging from the fresh scabs on his neck. Baring his fangs, he stepped toward me and I backed up a step. We kept up this bizarre tango for four or five steps until it became evident to me that he wasn’t going to attack; he was merely guiding me to his master.
My breath caught and I decided that discretion might truly be the better part of valor. Time to ice this underling and get the hell out. His boss could wait until I was better armed; the vampire slayer who gets herself killed is not doing anybody any good . . . particularly herself. Just as I’d made my decision, I felt an arm curl around my neck and tighten.
Hunyadi!
The vampire in front of me took a step forward and I tried to lunge with the stake, but Hunyadi swiped it out of my hand, the wood clattering on the pavement as it bounced away. Hunyadi lifted me, my heeled feet leaving the pavement, my air supply dwindling. Stars started shooting off in front of my eyes, and as those stars began to turn to blackness, I felt the killer’s grip loosen, and I could feel his hot breath on my neck as his fangs came closer.
Struggling not to pass out, I went limp, hoping my sudden relaxation would convince Hunyadi that I had no fight left in me. Seemingly secure in the feeling that he had the upper hand, the vampire moved me farther away to give himself easier access to my neck.
That was a mistake.
Forcing my weight down, I slipped through Hunyadi’s arm, dropped to the ground, and came up with a kick that caught the underling in front of me between his undead legs. He yowled and howled and backed up a step, while I felt around the darkened tunnel for the stake.
I couldn’t find the damned thing and the light was so dim I couldn’t see it anywhere.
Hunyadi caught my hair in his hand and jerked.
I screamed, and when he pulled me toward him, I backed up even faster, practically leaping into him, the back of my head smashing into his face. He bellowed and let go of my hair. I scrambled away just as the other vampire charged. I managed to stick out a foot and trip him, and he rolled into Hunyadi, knocking both of them to the ground, sparks shooting up from the third rail.
I crawled around on the concrete, my hose ruined for sure now, searching frantically for the lost stake. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hunyadi and the other one wrestling to get away from each other and get to their feet. I crawled forward, my hands scraping off the rough cement, my nails getting as tattered as my hose. Then, just as I was about to give up and simply try to outrun them, I touched something: the stake.
Only it slipped away. They were rising now, and I scrambled along, touched it again, and this time pul
led the stake to my chest.
Turning, I threw it at the nearest figure. The stupid damned tertiary vampire yelped and dissolved to dust. That left Hunyadi royally pissed . . . and me fresh out of stakes.
He leaped forward, covering the distance between us in an instant. I finally got a look at him in the dim light. He had a full head of thick, curly black hair, angry bloodshot yellow-set brown eyes, ghostly pale flesh, and thin, colorless lips. He wore a black undertaker’s suit with a vest over a white shirt and blood red tie.
“So,” he said coldly, his voice deep and regal. “The Slayer has finally found me. How I’ve waited for this moment . . . and how I will savor it.”
He punctuated the remark by slapping me so hard I flew backward, rolling off the concrete onto the tracks, my hair crackling as it touched the third rail, burning the ends away. My ribs hurt—something was cracked, if not broken—and my breath came in short, raspy gulps.
“You’re going to die so very slowly,” he said, leaping to my side again.
He yanked me up by the hair, my insides hurting so much I didn’t think I could scream out loud, though I certainly heard the wail in my head as he flung me in the direction of his lair. I bounced once on the concrete, smacked my head on the wall, and came to rest in a heap near the end of the tunnel.
Hunyadi walked slowly toward me, clearly relishing all this. Obviously he was just going to keep throwing me around like a doll until he got tired of it, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. Every fiber of my being hurt, and I knew I only had enough strength for one more move. If only I knew what that move would be. . . .
I managed to roll over on my back and I watched as Hunyadi closed in. As he stood at my feet and began to bend down, I raised my knees to my chest, my feet coming up so I could try to roll him over the top of me; but my heel caught up in his tie and we both just hung there for an impossible second until I remembered I was wearing my new ebony heels.
Ebony wood!
I smiled at him and drove my foot forward, the heel of the right shoe breaking off as it plunged into Hunyadi’s heart. He grimaced, coughed once, then closed his eyes and—much too quickly—died in a shower of death dust.
This time, maybe it would take.
* * *
Judy, bless her heart, was still at her desk when I finally trudged back into the office.
“Oh, God,” she blurted. “What happened to you?”
I gave her a tired smile and limped through the office on my one good heel. She rose to follow me, but as I reached the inner door to my office, a small, dark man in an ill-fitting suit walked through the door.
Judy looked from the man to me. I nodded toward the man, who gaped at my appearance, then I trudged through the door and closed it behind me. I wanted a shower, I wanted to cry, I even wanted to laugh; but I settled for plopping into my chair and putting my feet up on my footstool.
A second later, Judy poked her head into the room. “Okay to come in?”
I waved and she came in holding what looked like a check.
She held out the check from across the desk. “It’s a thousand dollars.”
I nodded.
“And . . . it’s signed by Frank Nitti!”
I nodded again.
Judy’s eyes were huge. “You’re going to explain all this to me, right?”
I looked down at my one bedraggled shoe, then looked up at her, and gave her all the explanation I intended to. “I busted a heel doing a job for Mr. Nitti.”
Again
Jane Espenson
SUNNYDALE, CALIFORNIA, 1999
“Anya? Anya, what’s going on?”
Xander was mumbling, still half-asleep. Maybe even three-quarters. But not entirely. And he absolutely knew something was wrong.
Part of it was the light. Even face-down, face smooshed in to the pillow, blankets up around his ears, he could sense it was wrong. The light was too bright, and even stranger, it was coming from the wrong side. “Anya?” She was probably responsible somehow, like maybe she moved the bed while he was asleep. Some bizarre prewedding preparation? Everything she did these days was about the wedding. The very thought of that made him want to bury himself even deeper in to the bed. Warm, warm delightful bed . . .
Except something was still wrong. The light. Right. And more than the light. Like . . . where was Anya? Still face-down, eyes still closed, he sent one sleepy hand out on a reconnaissance mission. Anya wasn’t in her half of the bed. And, in fact, her half of the bed was missing entirely. That didn’t normally happen.
He flipped over and sat up in one panicked motion. His heart kicked in his chest. He looked around the room with suddenly clear eyes. He found himself in a twin bed, narrow and too soft and extremely familiar. In fact the whole place was familiar. He was in his old room. Not the basement, but the room upstairs, the room that was his from first grade through twelfth grade. It had never really been a great place to be, but now, now it was positively alarming.
He took it in quickly. Everything was there. The olive-colored shag carpet. The poster of Tyra Banks in unlikely swimwear. His skateboard, leaned against the wall next to a pile of untended laundry. His old bulletin board with his name doodled messily across the cork. On the dusty bookshelf, next to an abandoned pizza box, his Spider-man action figure recoiled from an imminent attack from G. I. Joe. “Whoa . . .” It was all Xander could manage. “I was pathetic.”
It was obvious that something supernatural was going on. In Sunnydale it was almost always easiest to just start with that assumption. Time travel. Gotta be. Someone sent me back, years back, probably because they’re evil and somehow this is part of their plan, which probably ends with me all eviscerated and dead. It wasn’t a comforting thought. He got up and went to the dresser. He might end up eviscerated and dead, but he wasn’t gonna be eviscerated and dead and naked. Not in front of Tyra. The top dresser drawer was full of comic books. Right. He sighed and turned to the pile of laundry. Oh yeah, this routine.
* * *
Willow’s hair was tangled. Her eyes were squinty and they had little crusty bits at the corners. Her cheek was imprinted with a diagonal crease from her pillow. And she wore flannel PJ’s with pictures of tiny purple pigs on them. She wasn’t at her sharpest. She was, in fact, at her unsharpest.
Willow’s bedroom was on the ground floor of her parents’ house. So the knocking on the front door had awakened her right away. She stumbled out of bed, ran into an unexpected wall, ricocheted, then finally careened to the door, which was in entirely the wrong place, and opened it. And found Oz. Absurdly, the first thing she registered was that his T-shirt read “Robot Baby Gat.”
“Hey,” he said.
When Willow imagined the human brain at work, she always pictured it as a kind of machine. Not a computer, but a sort of H. G. Wells steam-powered cogs-and-gears kind of machine. And right now the gears were locked up and the steam valves were backing up. She couldn’t fathom how she’d come to be here, in the doorway of her parents’ house, in purple pig pajamas, looking at her high school boyfriend-slash-werewolf.
“Um. Maybe I should come back when you’re less . . . comatose,” Oz suggested.
Willow blinked at him, which made her aware of the crusty things at the corners of her eyes. She rubbed at them while she stumbled through, “Um . . . Oz . . . what the heck’s going on?”
“Willow?” Suddenly Oz didn’t even sound so sure she was really herself. Which was understandable, since she was a little vague on that very same point.
The phone rang. The laboring machine of Willow’s brain recognized that sound right away.
“How ’bout I go ahead?” Oz volunteered.
The phone rang again as Willow nodded at him blankly. Oz turned to walk away. Willow closed the door and stepped to the phone. She picked it up cautiously. “Hello?”
It was Xander.
* * *
They walked toward the high school as they talked.
“It’s just so weird.
And why’d we get our old bodies back, anyway? I mean, what kind of time travel is this? It seems all nonstandard if you ask me,” said Willow. She felt better just having Xander to talk to.
“Gimme a sec to look it up my Big Book of Time Travel—oh yeah, don’t have one.”
“Right. Sorry, Xander. Hey, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“Me and Anya, going to bed. Like every night.”
“Me too.” She hesitated. “Only, you know, not with Anya, obviously. Alone.”
“Oh. So when do you think we are, Will? Exactly, I mean.”
Willow watched as Xander idly kicked at a rock on the sidewalk. She answered slowly.
“Three years ago. Senior year. A couple months before . . . you know, graduation. I saw my calendar at home. I forgot I used to cross off the days. Neat little Xs and small notes about papers being due. Then I’d go back and write down what grade I got on each one.”
Xander looked at her. “Wow. I’m glad I didn’t know that then. New heights of teasing would have been scaled.”
Willow glanced at Xander. “It’s weird how weird you look.”
“I didn’t realize how much the construction work kinda changed me. I mean, look at this arm. It’s all scrawny. How’d I live like this?”
“I don’t know. Oh, Xander, watch this. I noticed right before you came by.” Willow pointed at a passing dog-walker and muttered something Xander couldn’t hear. Obviously a spell. Xander looked at her.
“What did you do?”
“I turned the dog into a turnip.”
Xander looked at the dog. It was small and fluffy and not very much like a turnip.
“Xander, I can’t do magick, I mean, not well. It’s like that went back to how it used to be too! I don’t even get how that happened! Isn’t that creepy?”
“Oooh. Yeah. That’s by far the creepiest part of unexplained nonstandard time travel.”
