Immortal

by Christopher Golden

  “All right,” Giles said tiredly. “Another fifteen minutes, and we’ll make a pass in the car through the dock area and around the Fish Tank, where Pepper Roback disappeared.”

  “I’ll need to wear a hat and cover my license plate with mud,” Cordelia said with resolve.

  Giles didn’t even want to ask.

  “Hey,” Oz said.

  Over the past year, Giles had come to understand that just as the Eskimos had dozens of ways to say snow, a simple “Hey” from Oz could carry a greatly varied array of meanings. This one, very plainly, meant “Here comes what we’ve been waiting for, guys, have a look.”

  Giles narrowed his eyes and gazed at the two couples emerging from the front door of the Bronze. Immediately, he recognized the male in front. He was tall and wiry but muscular: one of the vampires who had been with Veronique that first night in the cemetery.

  “Follow them,” Giles said, his voice low.

  Quietly, Cordelia, Oz, and Giles slipped around the car. As the vampires whispered sweet words into the ears of their intended victims and led them along the street in the general direction of the cemetery several blocks away, Giles flashed back to the first time he’d been to the Bronze. That night, Buffy had saved Willow and Xander from a fate almost identical to the one these girls were surely headed for.

  “Not tonight,” he whispered.

  The vampires, however, had no intention of going as far as the cemetery. As they passed a dark, open alley, one all too familiar to the Watcher and the others from past conflicts, the two male vampires attempted to herd the girls into the darkness. One of them seemed to be going along willingly enough, but the other balked. Instantly, the vampires gave up their charade. Their faces changed, fangs protruding, and they clapped their hands simultaneously over the girls’ mouths and began to drag them, kicking, into the alley.

  “Move,” Giles spat.

  They ran as one. Cordelia’s great show of reluctance was gone completely, and she kept pace with Giles and Oz as the three of them burst into the alley. The vampires had pressed their intended victims against opposite walls of the alley. As Giles pounded into the alley, one of them, a stout bulldog of a creature, saw him and snarled.

  “What the hell —”

  But that was all he managed before Giles shouldered the girl aside and slammed the vampire against the wall with all his weight behind him. The girl screamed and ran from the alley, nearly knocking Cordelia down. By then, the bulldog had recovered and gave Giles a mighty shove that sent him sprawling in the garbage-strewn alley.

  “Nobody likes a hero,” snarled the stout vampire, and lunged for Giles.

  “Not exactly true,” Cordelia told him, and splashed holy water into his face.

  He brought his hands up, shrieking in pain. Giles leaped to his feet, took out his cross, and drove it against the vampire’s forehead. He slammed the creature against the wall and held it there with all his strength.

  “Now, Cordelia!” he shouted.

  She slammed the stake home, and the vampire erupted in a cloud of ash. Giles breathed a sigh of relief. But it didn’t last long. They turned to aid Oz against the other, the one Giles had recognized.

  Oz was bleeding.

  The girl had run off, but Oz had twin scrapes on his throat from where the vampire must have tried to bite him before being shoved away, raking his fangs over the flesh. Oz was struggling to bring his stake into play, but the vampire was very strong and held his arm away, moving in once more with his fangs.

  Giles brought his cross up and shoved it between Oz and the vampire. The creature hissed, turned, and hit Giles with a vicious backhand across the face. He staggered backward, but his interference had been enough to allow Oz time to recover. Now, he and Cordelia stood facing the vampire, moving on him with stakes.

  “You just think you’re something else, don’t you?” Cordelia said dismissively to the vampire.

  Who looked disconcerted for the moment. Then he grumbled something angrily under his breath, turned, and ran off.

  “I’m intimidating,” Cordelia announced.

  “Always thought so,” Oz agreed.

  Giles stood up, leaning against the wall for a dizzy moment. Then he frowned and looked at them. “What was that he said?”

  “Something about how he had to stay alive. ‘For the Harbinger,’ ” Oz explained.

  Giles frowned but put off wondering too much about the vampire’s words until he had taken a closer look at Oz’s neck. It wasn’t going to require stitches. But they’d have to find a rather large bandage.

  * * *

  Xander and Angel had been through Hammersmith Park and had come up with nothing. When Angel pulled the Citroën to the curb in front of Weatherly, it backfired loudly, and Xander jumped in his seat, heart trip-hammering wildly.

  “God, this car’s even more crotchety with you behind the wheel than it is when Giles drives it,” he huffed as he got out and slammed the door.

  “The car’s ancient. It’s falling apart,” Angel argued.

  “The car’s ancient? What about the driver? You’re used to horse and buggy, right? These newfangled contraptions are a little confusing for you, I guess,” Xander said.

  “I’ve spent more time driving than you’ve spent breathing,” Angel said, his jaw set angrily. “Could you just shut up and get on with it? The only reason I agreed to this is to give Buffy some space.”

  Xander turned to look at him. “Give her another few thousand miles, why don’t you? I mean, her mom’s sick, maybe with cancer, maybe gonna die, and you hanging around is only a reminder that one of these days it’ll be her in a hospital for ‘tests.’ And you’ll be just as perfectly dead-alive as you are now.

  “Space. Yeah, you’re a champ.”

  Angel glared at him but said nothing. Instead, he turned and started across the street. Xander swallowed uncomfortably. He regretted his words, his anger, but that didn’t make them any less true. He’d never really liked Angel, but the vampire had saved his bacon enough times that he knew he should ease off, especially now.

  With a sigh and a shake of his head, Xander followed Angel across the street and through the gates of the park. According to the sign, they had half an hour before the gates would be locked for the night. As they walked in, a couple with their arms slung around each other exited the park.

  “Looks pretty deserted,” Xander said as he came abreast of Angel.

  “Only an idiot or a tourist would hang around in here after dark,” Angel replied darkly.

  “Guess we’re from out of town?” Xander asked hopefully.

  A small smile played over Angel’s features. “I am.”

  Before Xander could balk, he spotted two women sitting together on a park bench. They leaned against each other, talking quietly and laughing in that girlish way that . . . girls have. Friends on their way home from a party, maybe, Xander thought. Stopped for a rest. A little too much spiked punch.

  As he and Angel drew closer, one of them, a sweet-looking honey who didn’t look much older than Xander himself, glanced up at him and smiled.

  “Oh, my,” Xander whispered.

  Angel looked at him dubiously, but Xander ignored him and quickened his pace, strutting over to the girls on the bench. He set his foot on the edge of the bench and gave them his most debonair grin.

  “Evening, ladies,” he said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help noticing you two sitting over here, and I knew I’d be betraying my civic duty if I didn’t warn you that it gets awfully dangerous in here after dark. Maybe you should let us walk you somewhere safer. Say, home?”

  The girl who’d smiled at him did so again, but her grin was even broader now.

  “That’s so sweet,” she said. “And I’d heard chivalry was dead.”

  “What are we supposed to be afraid of, anyway?” the other asked.

  Xander fumbled with that one. “Um, well, there’s muggers and . . . wild dogs . . . and gangs. On drugs. Don’t you read the
papers?”

  The Asian girl laughed. “Oh, is that all?” She rolled her eyes. “We thought you were talking about the vampires.”

  “Vampires?” Xander said, alarmed.“What vampires? Oh, you guys are a riot. Vampires!”

  He looked at Angel for some help in recovering from the spot he was in, for some kind of verbal backup at least. Angel only shook his head, raised his eyebrows, and shot Xander an impatient look.

  “Xander, look around,” Angel said. “The park is deserted. They’re going to be locking the gates. Nobody’s around.”

  “Missing your point, big guy,” Xander replied.

  Angel sighed. “They are the vampires.”

  Xander’s eyes went wide, but even as he turned to face the girls, he saw that their features had changed. They were horrible to look at now, hideous, with their fangs bared and their yellow eyes blazing. Even as he whipped out a stake, he heard someone hissing and turned to see Angel, also in vamp face.

  He froze. Note to self. Make it a point never to be the only human at the party.

  “No, sister,” said the one Xander’d had his eye on. She laid a restraining hand on the other girl’s arm. “This one must be the Angelus. He is with the Slayer. Our mistress had given us instruction.”

  “Yeah, well, so has ours!” Xander shouted before he realized what he’d said.

  Then he went after the one closer to him, stake in hand. But the vampire women weren’t attacking. They turned and ran along the path, toward the street. Xander looked at Angel, dumbfounded.

  “What’s that about?” he demanded.

  But Angel was already in pursuit. Xander ran after him, after them. Angel was much faster than he was, but the girls had a head start. Just as Xander started across the street in front of Weatherly Park, he saw Angel staking one of the vampires up against Giles’s car. The girl was dusted.

  The other one, however, the cute one, had disappeared between two houses across from the park and was long gone.

  Xander looked around in confusion. “So that was weird.”

  In the parking lot behind the Sun Cinema, Willow stood up and brushed dead vampire dust off her shirt and then shook it out of her hair. That was part of the reason she had cut it shorter to begin with.

  This particular vampire had given her a rough time. Her head hurt where she’d banged it on the side of the van. And the guy had made fun of her taste in clothes, called her “Sweet Polly Purebred.”

  Willow was cranky and tired. As she brushed the dust from her hair one last time, she muttered under her breath. “Yeah, well, Sweet Polly Purebred kicked your vampire butt in righteously medieval fashion.” Then she smiled to herself. “Getting the tough chick lingo down pret-ty good.”

  Then Buffy shouted her name.

  That was right before the Slayer came flying over the hood of a car and slammed into the side of the van. Willow looked across the car and saw Pepper Roback — or Veronique, she reminded herself — grinning at her.

  “Another night, Slayer,” Veronique said. “You have my promise.”

  Then she turned to run.

  Buffy was already up, and together the girls ran after the redheaded vampire.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Buffy grumbled.

  She jumped up onto the hood of the car, then dove after Veronique before Willow could even begin to get around it. Buffy tackled the vampire and slammed her head through the driver’s side window of another car. Its alarm began to sound, blaring.

  Willow glanced around guiltily.

  “Stake!” Buffy shouted.

  Without a moment’s thought, Willow spun and tossed a stake through the air. Buffy snatched it in mid-flight and brought it down hard into Veronique’s chest. The vampire was struggling like a hooked fish, her head inside the broken window. Then Pepper Roback’s body exploded, dusting the floor and the upholstery inside the car with the screaming alarm.

  “Um, we should —”

  “Go, yep,” Buffy agreed. “We’ll come back for the van in a bit, so no one sees us driving away like vandals or whatever.”

  They marched away quickly, even as people started to stream out of the movie theater’s rear doors.

  “So,” Willow said hopefully a few minutes later. “Guess that takes care of her for a while, huh?”

  “Who knows? “ Buffy replied, preoccupied.

  Then she turned to look at Willow. “Thanks for hanging with me tonight,” she said earnestly, eyes wide and lost. “I really needed just to be with you.”

  Willow gave an embarrassed sort of shuffle and smiled. “I’m sorry I don’t really know the right things to say.”

  Buffy nodded, managed a half smile. “That’s why I needed you. There isn’t a right thing to say. You’re my best friend, Willow. I just didn’t want to be feeling all this alone.”

  After a moment, Willow reached out and pulled Buffy to her. In all the time they’d known each other, even when the worst had happened with Angel, she’d never felt as if she was the strong one, as if she was the one protecting Buffy.

  That’s how she felt now, and part of her hated it.

  “You’re not alone, Buffy. Not ever,” she promised.

  Chapter Nine

  There was a knock on Giles’s door. It was quite late, but he was still awake, surrounded by reference books, a half-eaten combination plate from Sunnydale Tandoori, and a cold cup of tea laced with sugar and lots of milk.

  He wore an old navy-blue Oxford sweatshirt and a pair of dark gray sweats. Perhaps that was the reason Buffy looked caught off guard when he opened the door.

  “Buffy,” he said. “Come in. Has something happened?”

  “Yeah.” She flashed him a smile. “I dusted her butt.” Her smile faded. “Oh. You mean about my mother.”

  “No, not at all,” he said quickly, but it was true. The first thought to pop into his mind was that Joyce had taken a turn for the worse.

  “You’ve got how’s-your-mom face,” she accused, stepping in. She wore her dark blue hooded sweatshirt and gray sweats. Giving him a look, she grinned and said, “Aren’t you glad there’s an Old Navy outlet in town? For those Slayer-and-Watcher matching outfits?”

  “Quite.”

  “Easter, I’m thinking floral patterns.”

  He led the way into his living room, saw her glance idly down at one of his books splayed open on his desk. It was a thick text entitled Soul Possession and Transmigration: An Annotated Bibliography.

  You’ve always been one for a little light reading before bed,” she commented. “Even the footnotes have footnotes.”

  He smiled faintly. “The sort of thing to thrill a librarian to his soul.”

  She chuckled in return. “You’re not a librarian, Giles. You just play one on TV. You’re really Indiana Jones. Your little hat and whip will be on the next plane from Adidas Arriba.”

  “Addis Ababa,” he corrected. He gestured for her to sit down. “You said you dusted Veronique?”

  “Yup.” She looked mildly proud of herself as she got comfortable on the couch and picked up a throw pillow, cradling it against her chest. “Not to brag. Just like the Terminator, she’ll be back.”

  Buffy shivered at the thought. No matter how many times she rolled it over in her mind, no matter what kind of references Giles might dig up on Veronique, the whole thing still gave her the creeps.

  “It’s quite probable,” Giles allowed. “I’m hoping that in the interim — however long we’ve got — I can figure out a way to stop her.” He scratched his chin. “It would help if I had more information, perhaps if more of Peter Toscano’s journals had survived the fire. Or if I could find some other writings on her that were more than the usual twaddle about her immortality. It seems anyone who got close enough to her to learn anything useful died before they could pass that information on. If only we could discover what she wants. Her purpose in coming to Sunnydale.”

  Buffy nodded. “If the demon she’s kissing up to is anything like some of the others we’ve de
alt with, Veronique’s probably playing travel agent, trying to get it a one-way ticket Earthbound.”

  “I’d thought of that.” Giles nodded. “It seems likely, which is why I’m continuing to look into the nature of the Triumvirate. Still, if we can stop Veronique, perhaps we won’t have to concern ourselves with whatever the Triumvirate might be planning.

  “But you didn’t really come here at this hour to discuss my research,” Giles said with certainty. “What’s on your mind, Buffy?”

  “Nothing, really,” Buffy said, then hesitated.

  “Would you like some tea?” Another English person would understand that this was a gentle hint to get to the point.

  Buffy, however, frowned and said, “Do you have any Diet Coke?”

  “Sorry. Tea,” he said firmly.

  “Okay.” She tapped on the pillow.

  Giles headed for the kitchen. He put the kettle on and got out a cup and a spoon, filled the tea ball with some Twinings Prince of Wales. He found some biscuits in a tin and put them on a plate. Buffy remained in the living room. He glanced through the breakfast nook arch, curious about what she was doing. She wouldn’t be reading, of that he was sure.

  Curled up with her legs beneath her, Buffy’s head was on her hand. Her eyes were closed. For a moment, he thought she had fallen asleep. Then she opened her eyes and stared off somewhere he could not follow. The look on her face was haunted, hollow.

  Just how much pain is one girl supposed to endure? he thought with a flicker of anger. She can’t have the man she loves. She can’t have the life she wants. And now this.

  It took a long time for the kettle to whistle, and in that time Buffy sat silently on the couch. It was unusual for her to be so open about her feelings: by saying nothing, she was speaking volumes. The Buffy he had first met — it seems so long ago — would have blustered on about something completely unrelated to the root cause of her distress. But this Buffy, seasoned by loss as well as years, invited conversation with her silence.

  He made the tea, reminding himself that she usually took neither milk nor sugar, fetched up the plate of cookies, and returned to the living room. She barely glanced up when he put the things on the coffee table and sat a distance away from her on the couch. Quietly, he folded his hands and waited.