Immortal

by Christopher Golden

  “Buffy,” Angel said quietly.

  The body was twitching, just a little. Buffy sighed, stepped forward, and rammed the piece of wood through her chest.

  The newborn vampire exploded in a rain of dust.

  Grimly, they walked back down the alley together.

  “Y’know what’s weird?” Buffy said. “That whole riff about Slayers. She was pretty much raw talent. What do you think that was all about?”

  Lost in thought, Angel didn’t respond. Buffy didn’t really expect him to. After a moment, though, he glanced at her. “She called me brother,” he said. “In medieval French.”

  “How does someone like Pepper Roback know medieval French?”

  Angel shrugged.

  Buffy sighed. “Weird.”

  They were down among the dead men, and Cordelia was really beginning to lose it. She, Xander, Willow, and Oz were seated in a close circle on the floor of the vault, but the smell of the dead was closing in on her. Every time she heard a sound, she imagined the skeleton they had seen, its empty eye sockets staring at them, its mouth opening slowly, as it crept toward them. In the pitch dark, she saw hazy white shapes and tried to remind herself that if you stare at nothing long enough, you’re bound to see something. Sort of like falling in lust with a loser like Xander.

  “Wait, here,” Xander said quickly. “I found my flashlight.”

  He clicked the light on, and Cordelia breathed a small sigh of relief. Its beam was dim, almost as though the light were being sucked up by the gray of the Hart family crypt and the shadows around them. But it was something. It was light.

  Even though it was getting colder by the minute inside the tomb, she could barely breathe. She was certain they were using up all the air and that they would suffocate. One by one, they would lose consciousness, and the next time the family who owned this vault opened it to lay a loved one to rest, the Mystery of the Missing Teens would be solved. Four dead seniors, so close to graduation . . . now just more Sunnydale statistics.

  “In the olden days,” Xander said, “they used to string up little bells on pull cords inside tombs and coffins. In case you were buried alive. You could sound the alarm, and they’d come and let you out.”

  “Have we looked for one of those?” Cordelia asked anxiously. “No?”

  The beam from Xander’s flashlight darted around the crypt. “No bell. So, any thoughts on getting out of here?”

  “I’m trying to remember the words to a spell,” Willow said helpfully.

  “Are we sure leaving is the safest idea?” Xander asked. “Or are we thinking those were imaginary vampires?”

  “They left!” Cordelia protested. “They had something they had to go do.”

  “Which might be done by now. And they might come back.” Xander actually sounded kind.

  “So much for my beauty rest,” she snapped.

  Silence fell over the group. There was some shifting as muscles cramped; with each movement, Cordelia stared at the indistinct shapes moving in the shadows beyond the reach of the flashlight — just my imagination — and thought about the bones in the coffins.

  For a time, when she’d been little, she had become convinced that there was a dead woman inside her mattress. She was afraid to go to sleep, because if she did, the dead woman would stab her through the back with a huge, sharp knife. Now she didn’t remember how she’d gotten over the fear, because as she thought about it, the hair on the back of her neck rose, and she shivered, just like a little girl. In fact, part of her couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it, even though it was wigging her out.

  “If we were about six years younger, we’d be telling each other ghost stories,” Xander said. “I used to think there was this —”

  “Don’t,” Cordelia said. “It’s bad enough without you babbling on about some dumb nightmare of yours.”

  “It wasn’t dumb.” Xander sounded defensive. “It made perfect logic. My Uncle Roary’s AA sponsor told me so.”

  “Scary stories. Maybe not such a good idea at the moment,” Oz remarked.

  He doesn’t sound scared at all, Cordelia thought enviously. Maybe werewolf and all, he doesn’t get scared much anymore.

  “Guys, please, I’m trying to think,” Willow said.

  “Yeah, Xander. Zip it,” Cordelia snapped. “Willow, what do you think? I mean, even if you can get us out of here, do you think the vampires are gone?”

  “Let’s worry about getting the door open first,” Oz suggested.

  “Everybody join hands,” Willow asked.

  Cordelia sneered at Xander, who was sitting next to her.

  “Please,” Willow urged.

  Reluctantly, Cordelia took Xander’s hand in her left and Oz’s in her right. When they’d all joined hands, Willow closed her eyes and started chanting something. It was English, but she was whispering so low that Cordelia could barely hear her. Then, suddenly, Willow sucked in her breath, and her eyes went wide.

  “Will?” Oz asked, concerned. “What is it?”

  Willow’s eyes darted around the crypt. “We’re not alone,” she said.

  Then her eyes rolled back in her head. Oz called her name, but Willow didn’t seem to hear him.

  Angel was concerned by how sluggish Buffy was. At his insistence, they skipped the Bronze, and he walked her home.

  “I never wonder if you’re still alive.” Did I actually say that to her?

  Does she actually believe it?

  While it was true that Buffy was the Slayer, she was still human at the core. In the netherworld where he dwelled, another word for human was mortal. The life spans of humans were terribly short, but for Slayers shorter still. She had been so right. He could die. But she would die.

  He wouldn’t be able to see that. Maybe it was cowardice, or an excess of love, but even the thought of Buffy lying dead somewhere was more than he could bear. As soon as he pictured it, his mind shut the door, and a voice inside his head said, Never.

  “Buffy,” he said, turning to her on the street. For one insane moment, he thought of turning her, not even asking her if she wanted him to, because that would grant her some measure of immortality. Then he came to his senses; Buffy would be gone, and a demon would inhabit her body.

  There was no easy way, then. In all the fairy tales, loving someone was enough to tame the beast, awaken the princess, live happily ever after. But in the real world, loving someone was often the shortest route to misery.

  She didn’t answer. Perhaps she didn’t hear him. He doubted that; they were often so close that one knew — or suspected — what the other was thinking. So he kept his silence and was relieved when the house on Revello Drive came into view. Soon she would be in bed, and safe, and she’d live to fight another day.

  They climbed the porch steps, and she unlocked her door. Whispering, she said, “My mom might be asleep. She tries to stay up for me, but she dozes off a lot.”

  He nodded. They tiptoed in and, without speaking, headed for the kitchen. Another night, years ago, she had innocently shouted, “Come in!” when they’d been chased by the Three, warrior vampires sent by the Master to kill her. She had had no idea at the time that her handsome Danger Guy was a vampire, too. Nor had she known, as she dressed the wound he had sustained in battle, what the tattoo on his back had signified: Angel had once been Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, one of the most savage vampires ever to have lived.

  They went into the kitchen. It was then that she saw the note propped in front of a bouquet her mother had bought at the grocery store.

  Dear Buffy,

  I called Dr. Martinez from the gallery, and he told me to go to the emergency room at the hospital. I don’t think it’s anything, and neither did he, but I was just a little dizzy and my chest hurt. I guess you were right; I did overdo it. Please call before you come to the hospital. I’m sure I’ll only be here a little while, and we might miss each other coming and going.

  Love,

  Mom

  “Angel.” Her eye
s welled. “My mom’s in the hospital.”

  He took the note. “At the hospital,” he corrected gently.

  Wearily, she slid off the stool. “I’m going there,” she insisted. “No arguing.”

  Without a word, Angel put his arm around her and led her toward the door.

  Willow could still sense her friends around her. She knew that they were safe, for the moment. She also felt no threat from the presence — the many sentient spirits — that swirled around her. She had begun the spell she thought would free her friends, and it had failed. Unable to recall the incantation completely, she had been about to give up when she felt them gathering, prodding her mind, trying to touch her.

  Who are you? she thought.

  The dead are reaching out to you, spellcaster, a voice echoed through her mind, and possibly even through the crypt, for all she could tell. They are those whose bones lie here, in this sepulchre. Your magick spoke to them, touched them. They had long since surrendered any hope of ever having contact with the mortal world again, and you have given them a great gift merely through your presence.

  But why are they here, and not . . . Willow didn’t even finish the thought, but she didn’t need to. She sensed that the being she was communicating with understood her question regardless.

  This crypt was desecrated by dark forces not long after it was first built, the voice told her. Three generations of the Hart family have lingered here after death, lost, unable to find their way on the ghost roads to the afterlife that awaits them. Only if the crypt is reconsecrated will they be able to depart.

  “You keep saying ‘they.’ If you’re not part of their, um, family, then who are you?” Willow asked aloud.

  Xander, Oz, and Cordelia stared at her.

  “Will? Is it flashback time?” Xander asked.

  “Not funny,” Oz told him. “Willow. Are you all right?”

  But Willow didn’t respond. She was talking, all right. But not to them.

  I am a wanderer, the voice explained. I have traveled the ghost roads for a very long time, but I have done so by choice. I have done my best to guide the lost souls of the dead to their final reward, giving them the direction that the circumstances of their death might have robbed them of.

  Willow understood. During a previous crisis, she and Buffy and the others had discovered a great deal about the ghost roads, the paths the spirits of the dead follow after they leave the human plane to move onto the next. Some people, victims of murder or other violent death, particularly, had a hard time finding their way. If what this spirit told her was true, she must have been an extraordinary individual in life to choose such a selfless existence after death.

  But who are you? she asked again. What’s your name?

  In life, I was called Lucy Hanover.

  Even within the landscape of her mind, Willow was startled into silence. Lucy Hanover’s ghost sensed her astonishment and hesitation.

  You know of me? the ghost asked.

  You were a Slayer, Willow replied. The current Slayer is my closest friend. We’ve . . . read about you. But what are you doing here, in Sunnydale?

  Ah, I knew you were no ordinary girl, battling vampires and casting your spells. As to my presence here, it is the Hellmouth, is it not? There are always a great many lost souls here. I return from time to time, hoping to aid them if I can. The spirits of the Hart family were crying out to you, but you could not hear them, so I came to speak in their stead.

  Willow’s heart beat faster. Can you help us?

  After that, there was silence for a time. Willow sensed that Lucy had gone away, but not far. The spirits swirled all around her. Oz was beside her, stroking her hair and her face, but even he felt like no more than ghost to her now.

  Then Lucy returned. They will help, she said. We all will. But we must do so through you, spellcaster. And the spirits desire your help in return.

  Let me guess, Willow thought. They want us to get the crypt reconsecrated?

  That is part of it, yes, Lucy agreed. But there is more. They would like you to come back, when you may, and let them be with you, within you, for a time, so that they may see the world when the sun is high and the birds sing, see the world that their children and grandchildren live in. Then they can move on. Will you help?

  Of course, Willow replied. It would be an honor.

  Very good, spellcaster.

  Willow. Call me Willow.

  Willow. It’s a fitting name for a soul so grand. Prepare yourself, then, Willow, for we enter you now.

  “Thank you, Lucy,” Willow said, eyes still rolled back to white.

  “Willow?” Oz asked in a soft, amazingly calm voice.

  An incredible chill washes over Willow’s skin, giving her goosebumps, making her scalp prickle. She shivers violently. The shiver becomes a tremor. Earthquake, she thinks.

  She is lying in a box, staring up through the lid, seeing people veiled in black as they weep and bend over her. Their faces swim above her, as if they are growing farther away. Rose petals float down over her face; she smells them. Then dirt clods drop down on her, clog her nose and throat, cutting off her air.

  A deep, soul-wrenching grief settles on her chest like a nightmare goblin; she tries to take a breath, but her chest is constricted. Her throat aches with unshed tears. She is dizzy and disoriented, floating in free-form despair.

  We die alone. The thought is unbidden, unwelcome. We deny it all our lives. We fall in love. We have children.

  But the fact is, we die alone.

  She hears distant voices, but they are drowned out by a chorus of moaning and sobs. She is aching with the sound. It is a funeral dirge; it is a lamentation.

  Grief is a thing, she realizes. It’s heavy, and cold, and its edges are hard and jagged. It can kill you.

  In her mind’s eye, she reaches out a hand. Icy fingers grip hers. Tears like brittle, frigid diamonds pelt her cheeks.

  She stands, reaches out her fingers . . . but they are not her fingers any longer, they are tendrils of smoke and spirit and death. She reaches for the door . . .

  “Oh, God, Oz, what’s happening to her?” Cordelia cried.

  Oz didn’t know how to answer. He’d been keeping it together, assuming it was all part of the enchantment, or whatever. Something of the Wiccan persuasion. But this was too much.

  Without warning, Willow stood and started toward the door. Her pupils moved now, but her eyes were wide, searching, as though seeing everything for the first time. She reached out her hands, and a swirl of glittering mist stretched from each finger.

  Xander’s mouth dropped open. “Whoa.”

  There was a shriek of metal, and the door opened, scraping against the granite floor of the crypt.

  “How did she do that?” Cordelia asked, astonished.

  “That’d be magick,” Oz replied. But even he wasn’t quite sure.

  Willow seemed to deflate. She swayed a little on her feet, and Oz went to hold her up. She wrapped her arms around him, leaning on him heavily.

  “Lucy,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Who’s Lucy?” Oz asked.

  Willow looked at him, focusing at last. Finally, it was really her, back among the conscious.

  “Oz,” she said. Then she hugged him tightly.

  He didn’t ask anything else, just happy to have her back. Willow, for her part, didn’t offer much of an explanation. At least, not at first. But as they walked out of the crypt, and Xander and Cordelia started to badger her, Willow finally relented.

  “Sorry, guys,” she said. “I’m just trying to take it all in.”

  “Well, I, for one, say way to go, Will,” Xander piped up.

  Willow smiled. “Actually, it isn’t me you need to thank,” she confessed. “And . . . it isn’t exactly over.” Then she told them about Lucy Hanover and the ghosts of the Hart family and what they had done.

  “So, what you’re saying is we’re in debt to a bunch of ghosts,” Xander said, clearly not thrilled at the pr
ospect.

  “Up to our eyeballs,” Willow confirmed.

  “It could be worse,” Oz reminded them. “We could still be in there.”

  They all looked back up at the crypt. Oz’s arm was around Willow’s shoulders, and he felt her stiffen.

  “Lucy,” she said.

  They all looked. There, moving smoothly among the gravestones toward them, was the shimmering form of a dark-haired girl, perhaps in her early twenties. Below her waist there was nothing but a kind of green mist, and her body itself was translucent, seemingly ephemeral.

  Before Oz or any of the others could react, Willow pushed past him and walked toward the ghost of Lucy Hanover. The ghost smiled, and Oz thought that, though her features seemed sad and cold, that smile revealed the beauty of the girl she had been, once upon a time.

  “I . . . I mean, we can see you,” Willow said happily.

  It is possible for me to manifest my spirit, if I focus my will, Lucy explained. I wanted to meet you all properly. The Harts will finally be able to move on once you have fulfilled your end of the agreement.

  “We will,” Willow agreed. “As soon as we can.”

  I have no doubt, Willow. Thank you. The Slayer is fortunate to have such friends as you. Please tell her I wish her well. Now that we have met, perhaps I will visit in the future.

  “That’d be great,” Willow replied, grinning. “Um, just, not around my parents, okay?”

  The ghost actually chuckled a bit at that. Of course. Goodbye, spellcaster.

  “’Bye, Lucy,” Willow said.

  As they watched, the ghost shimmered brightly and then simply disappeared.

  “Wow,” Cordelia whispered.

  “Yeah,” Xander agreed. “There’s something you don’t see every day.”

  “Not even in Sunnydale,” Oz added. Then he took Willow’s hand and led her toward the gates of the cemetery.

  As far as he was concerned, they’d spent enough time among the dead.

  With Angel at her side, Buffy approached a half-moon desk in the center of the lobby of the Sunnydale Hospital. An elderly lady with silver-blue hair and wearing a pink-and-white-striped jacket smiled up pleasantly from a Chicken Soup book and said kindly, “Yes, dear? May I help you?”