by Nancy Holder
Buffy could see nothing, just the blackness. And what she felt was totally alien: like no skin she had ever touched. It was slick and scaly and tough, all at once.
She clawed her way across the thing, finally finding an opening. Her fingers closed on the side of the opening—like a great maw of some kind. She pulled with everything she could, and heard a sound like flesh tearing. Then the beast made its first noise, a high-pitched keening that sounded like it came from everywhere at once.
Since she couldn’t see the creature, could only vaguely sense its whereabouts and dimensions, she made sure to keep at least one hand on it at all times.
She turned to face it again, still holding one arm, and threw herself on top of it. She felt something that seemed enough like a neck to take a chance on. Letting go of the arm, Buffy grabbed the neck and twisted.
The monster went limp in her arms.
Buffy, stood, panting, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath.
Which was when the next one hit her.
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NANCY HOLDER AND JEFF MARIOTTE
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Historical Note: This trilogy takes place between the fourth and fifth seasons of Buffy, and between the first and second seasons of Angel.
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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—Nancy and Jeff
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
The authors very gratefully thank the casts, staffs, and crews of both Buffy and Angel, especially Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, and of course, Caroline “Coywoman” Kallas. Thanks also to George Snyder of Mutant Enemy and Debbie Olshan at Fox. Many thanks to friend and agent Howard Morhaim, and Stacy Schemehorn, his assistant. At Pocket: we love you, Lisa “Termineditor” Clancy, Micol Ostow, and Liz Shiflett.
On the home front: thanks indeed to Maryelizabeth Hart, David and Holly Mariotte; Belle Holder; Elise Jones and ohana; the one and only Ida Khabazian, Lee Sigall, Andy Herron-Sweet, Karen Hackett and family; and the Mysterious Galaxians: Terry and Todd Gilman, Patrick Heffernan, Beth Orvis, Linda Tonneson, and Elizabeth Baldwin.
Prologue
Sunnydale
IN SUNNYDALE, IT WAS HOT AS HELL, AND THAT WAS NO JOKE.
A week into summer and the deceptively placidlooking little town was like a blast furnace, even closing in on midnight. In Weatherly Park, the trees sweated and the sidewalk along the fence was ready for scrambling a few eggs. Touch the chain link and one would get a painful burn that resembled a tattoo, or the diagonal grill patterns on the steaks at Steer Town.
In the twelve graveyards within the city limits, friends and foes alike rotted faster.
Buffy wiped her forehead with her hand, glad she had picked the T-shirt and lightweight pants instead of the long-sleeved shirt she’d been thinking about. This was no weather for sleeves.
This was no weather to be on patrol. But that wasn’t up for negotiation. She was the Slayer, she patrolled. End of story.
Although there hasn’t been a whole heck of a lot of slayage to commit, the last few nights. Since the end of school—well, since the end of the Initiative, and Adam, and Maggie Walsh, if one wanted to get specific—Sunnydale had been positively somnolent. The way people who really didn’t get it thought Sunnydale always was.
But, quiet or not, she was the Slayer so she went through the motions, going out on patrol at night to see what manner of creepiness might be skulking in the dark. Elsewhere, Riley Finn was doing much the same. Usually Slayer and Boyfriend of patrolled together; other times, to cover more territory, they split up. Tonight, they had split up. Leaving Buffy with no one to talk to and nothing to kill.
And just what kind of person am I, she wondered, that I would wish for creatures of the night to inhabit the planet just to give me something to do?
As if in answer, someone screamed, in a fairly coy way.
Buffy tried not to smile. Earlier d
ays of slayage, major faux pas, she thought. About now, I’d have dashed off to majorly intrude on some lusty couple, and they’d both look at me like I was a psycho.
There was another scream; same screamer, totally different message. This was not a fooling-around-scream, this was truly a something-is-trying-to-eat-me scream if Buffy had ever heard one.
And in her time, Buffy had heard more than a few.
She ran, ran like the oh-so absent wind.
The scream sounded like it came from a couple of blocks to the east, pretty close to downtown Sunnydale. It sounded again—definitely female, and terrified. Then it was cut short.
Buffy poured it on.
As soon as she came around the corner she knew where the victim was. There was an alley, midway down the block, and open on both ends. People sometimes used it to shortcut from Main Street to their car, if they’d parked a block or so away. Someone had probably been walking back from the Espresso Pump, or dinner, and been accosted by, well, something.
A vampire? A demon from the darkest pits of Hell? No telling, around here, she thought.
Sneakers providing traction, Buffy swung around the corner into the alley. She vaguely registered the stench of broiling garbage as she leaped over a limp cardboard box oozing with oranges and lemons.
Midway down, she saw them: a woman, struggling, a dark shape hulking over her, tearing at her with flailing arms.
Vampire.
Buffy slipped a stake from her belt, adjusting her grip as she ran.
Before she could reach the bloodsucker, she was blinded by lights, blasting at her from the other end of the alley. First white ones, then flashing red. A police car, she realized, being someone who had intimate knowledge of being pursued by same; well, not intimate, exactly, but in her line of work, she had learned how to avoid them.
The car was barreling toward the struggling couple, its headlights washing over them and its roof-lights flickering against the alley’s brick walls like flame in a fireplace.
As the light beamed at Buffy, she hugged the wall.
The vampire released his victim, and the woman yanked her purse from his grip by its strap.
Two Sunnydale police officers leaped from their squad car, guns out and aimed at the guy. He quickly raised his hands in compliance.
“Don’t shoot!” he pleaded.
He’s no vampire, Buffy realized. He’s a garden-variety purse snatcher, performing a dark-alley mugging on a summer’s night.
And he was surrendering to the cops.
A Slayer wasn’t required here, after all.
She didn’t think they’d seen her yet, so focused had they been on the mugger and his prey. This is crazy, she thought. I’m going nuts here. Resolving to go find Riley, just to have someone to talk to—and maybe with some kissing mixed in—she slipped from the alley, unnoticed.
Unneeded, she knew. Extraneous. Unnecessary. And all those other words that mean useless.
Unseen.
Chapter 1
“LOOK,” WILLOW ROSENBERG SAID, MAKING A SCRUNCHY face and shaking her cute red hairdo as she shivered theatrically. “And also, ick.”
“Ick?” Buffy asked her, looking around, semipoised for battle. “What ick?”
“This ick.”
Willow pointed to a sign on the cosmetics counter. The model on the sign was stick-thin, with sunken cheeks and bruise-colored makeup ringing her eyes, and she was draped over a tombstone in a dress that may or may not have been made of old dust rags. “Dead girl chic ick.”
“I don’t get it,” Buffy said, shaking her head. “I mean, looking good is one thing. We all like to be fashion forward, right?”
“Some more than others,” Willow observed.
“But what’s the point of looking like you’ve already died?” Buffy went on, idly picking up one of the lipsticks, pulling off the cap and swiveling it open. It was the exact shade of Sunnydale graveyard dirt.
Grimacing, she showed it to Willow.
Willow shook her head, nowhere close to testing it on her mouth. “Vampires leave you alone?”
“Sure, but then the vultures picking at you are just as bad.” Buffy picked up another tester and revealed the truly unappetizing bluish-black color to Willow.
“And I say it again,” Buffy’s best buddy added. “Ick.”
They were in the Sunnydale mall, browsing but not really buying at Robinson’s-May, the department store that anchored the west end of the shopping center. Neither had much need for new clothing or makeup right now, but they hadn’t had much opportunity to spend time together of late. Willow had been hanging with her girlfriend Tara pretty much nonstop since finals week, and Buffy . . . well, Buffy hadn’t been far from Riley.
So, the afternoon shopping trip. They’d started at one end of the mall, and were working their way toward the other. Shoes, dresses, even eyeglass frames—there was nothing that was out of bounds for trying on. By now, each carried a paper shopping bag with a few small purchases inside. Buffy had been telling Willow about the relative scarcity of monsters and demons on the street since the cataclysmic collapse of the Initiative, the paramilitary demon-hunting unit of which Riley Finn had been a part. Her fear was that the nasties would take the disappearance of the Initiative’s hunters as a good reason to flood the city, but instead they seemed to be keeping their distance. Now that classes were over for the summer and she had time to worry about the Hellmouth, it was all quiet.
Buffy was sniffing a bottle of Charlie—it smelled like her mother—when Willow called out, “Oh, Buffy, look!”
“Another ick?” Buffy inquired.
“No, not at all.” Willow held up a tiger-striped vest of some fuzzy, remotely furlike fabric. A fuchsia zipper ran up the front. “Look. Is it me?”
Buffy regarded it carefully. Her slender, redheaded friend clutched the vest against her body. “I don’t know if it is you,” Buffy finally said. “It could be you, I guess. If you were, you know, somebody else. Who isn’t you.”
“But I want it to be me,” Willow said plaintively. “I want to be one of those women who wear the really amazingly cool clothes and look great in them.”
“There’s no law that says you can’t change,” Buffy pointed out, flipping over the tag. “Except maybe for the law against stealing, since that’s probably what you’d have to do to get your hands on something like this.”
“Humph,” Willow said. “I . . . could have the bucks.”
“Yeah, for fall tuition and books,” Buffy countered. “Besides, you look fine, just the way you are. Wonderful.”
“I guess,” Willow agreed, looking at the price tag. “But this . . . this is calling my name.”
“A leopard can’t change his spots,” Buffy said. “But maybe a tiger can change her stripes if she wants. Okay.” She nodded eagerly, loving the thrill that inevitably came on when a fellow consumer nailed a buying decision. “I definitely think you should go for it.”
“It’ll mean doing without for a while.”
“Without what?”
“Pretty much everything,” Willow said glumly. Then she brightened. “Water’s cheap, though. And on the bright side, if I starve myself for a few weeks, I could start to look fashionably dead.”
“Buy the vest,” Buffy urged. “You love it. You may not want to wear it until the weather cools down, but it will. Someday. And when we’re finished here I’ll treat you to a scone. Or one of those great big carrot muffins.”
Willow’s face broke into a smile that Buffy found infectious. Willow threw her arms around her friend and crushed her, with the vest imprisoned between them.
“Thank you, Buffy. You’re just the corrupting influence I need in these trying times of growinguphood.”
Buffy’s eyes widened as the hug continued.
“Um, Willow?”
“What?” she asked joyfully.
“I think you’re imprinting tiger stripes in my skin.”
“Oh, sorry.” Willow released her and backed aw
ay.
“Not to mention zipper,” Buffy added, rubbing herself. “But I think, unlike a tattoo, zipper marks fade with time.”
“Let’s go pay for this,” Willow said, all resolve face. “I mean, I’ll pay for it.”
“Right,” Buffy said. “I pay for the food.”
There was a coffee shop a few stores down from Robinson’s-May. Buffy tugged open the glass door and held it for Willow, who was still fairly beaming from her purchase. The scents of fresh-brewed coffee, cinnamon, and baked goods on the air drew Buffy like iron filings to a magnet. Soft jazz emanated from unseen speakers like music from heaven.
Once inside, Buffy headed for the shiny wooden counter to place her order. It took her a moment to realize that Willow had paused behind her. Buffy turned and looked at Willow, but Willow was staring hard into the farthest corner of the deep, narrow coffee shop.
“I think I know that girl,” Willow said quietly.
Buffy followed her gaze. There was a young woman sitting alone at a table in the back. She was pretty, with onyx-black hair and smooth olive skin, but tears had streaked her eyeliner down her cheeks, and she dabbed at her nose with a napkin. A coffee cup steamed on the table in front of her.
“Looks bummed,” Buffy observed.
“She’s one of the happiest girls I know,” Willow said, concerned. “I mean, she used to be. I thought.”
“I can see that,” Buffy said, speculatively tilting her chin. “Not.”
Willow said, “I need to talk to her.”
“I’ll give you guys a minute, then join you. Bearing yummies.”
“Okay,” Willow said. Then she was headed toward the crying girl. Buffy turned to the counter to place her order.
A few minutes later, Buffy put two cups of iced mocha on the table, then returned to the counter for her three scones. She brought them back, warm from the oven, and put them in the middle.
“Maple oat nut, currant, and cranberry,” she announced. “Dig in.” She looked at Willow’s friend and held out her hand. “I’m Buffy.”
The girl managed a smile that revealed even white teeth. Even though she was dressed very casually, in a UC Sunnydale T-shirt and a pair of jeans, she exuded class. She had her hair up, held in place with a simple tortoiseshell comb that looked old and expensive. A simple gold crucifix hung from a chain around her neck, matching two reddish-gold bangle bracelets, and a gold signet ring on her right middle finger. One small gold post per ear finished off her look.
