The Book of Fours

by Nancy Holder

  For Angel, however, it was an unexpected factor he took into account before he slid it out of his way.

  Rain slammed down on his head and shoulders with the force of a fire hose. He clung to the ladder, regrouping, and fought against the torrent as he climbed out.

  He tried to stand. The wind was like a jet engine. His duster flapped behind him like a pair of wings, and it was a major struggle to stand upright.

  Then he saw what had caused the extra weight on top of the cover.

  It was a man, and the storm was rolling him down the street like an empty trash can. Angel ran after him, staggering against the force, ducking as a wooden door whipped past him, Frisbeelike. A streetlight on a pole crashed inches from his feet, bringing down electric lines that snapped and sizzled. Sparks flew everywhere.

  He dodged the live wires, not because they could kill him but because getting hurt would slow him down. The man, still rolling, flipped up over the curb and rammed into the corner of a building at the waist, where his upper half bent backward at a sharp, spine-snapping angle.

  Angel finally got to him, not at all surprised to find him dead. But he was disappointed at the man’s identity: he was Carlos New Mexico.

  He gathered the old homeless man up in his arms and pressed himself as closely as he could to the wall to keep free from the wind shear. At the first alley, he fell into the shelter of the close walls. He began to feel through the dead man’s pockets.

  An old woman in a man’s filthy overcoat was huddled beneath a set of concrete stairs leading down to a basement. She was holding two kittens against her chest, and her face was covered with grime. She smelled of cheap alcohol, and fear.

  “It’s the end of the world,” she told Angel.

  He figured she was right.

  * * *

  After Angel left, Willy started acting even more nervous than usual. He knew he was doing it, but he didn’t know how to stop. He kept washing the counter over and over, like somebody with that obsessive-compulsive thing that made you do everything in threes or whatever. The only thing he was obsessed about was staying alive, and the compulsion to make a little money, well, hell, he was a red-blooded American and that was in his genes.

  So after he started humming a little too loudly, a couple of out-of-town vampires looked at some other out-of-town vampires, and a couple of vampires who’d been around since before the Slayer moved to Sunnydale. They gave Vampire #1 a nod, and he walked over to Willy and grabbed the front of his shirt, hauled him so they were nose to nose, and then vamped out. His glowing eyes lasered directly into Willy’s, and he made a mental note to put Depends on his grocery shopping list.

  “What is wrong with you?” the vampire demanded.

  “Nothing,” Willy squeaked.

  Vampire #1 was joined by several others, who just stared at Willy as they let their vampire features take over their human faces.

  “Um, I’m having trouble breathing,” Willy said.

  “Get used to it.” The vampire pulled tighter.

  “He was gone too long, getting the ‘good stuff,’ ” one of the vampires said, air-quoting the last.

  “It’s hard to reach. I’m short,” Willy offered.

  “Wanna be shorter?” Vampire #1 asked.

  “Um, you guys with the ritual to bring back the Master? You might want to speed it up a little.” Willy tried so very hard to smile. “I think the um, cops know about it.”

  “The cops,” Vampire #1 said, glancing at the others. “Are your cops a problem around here?”

  “Not usually,” said one of the previously silent vampires. “In fact, you might argue that they turn their heads the other way more often than not.”

  “Or bury them in the sand,” said a third. “They know what’s good for them. And what’s bad.”

  All the vampires chuckled with not so much bad as evil humor.

  “Please,” Willy said. “I gotta live here, okay? I’m just saying, bump it up. Um, if at all possible.”

  They looked at each other. “Those two bounty hunters of Tervokian’s should have showed up with the axe by now,” one of them said. He glared at the barman. “You know anything about that?”

  “No. I swear,” Willy said. He sighed. “Okay, I shouldn’t tell you this, okay? I’m dead if he finds out. Angel came by, asking about the axe, too.”

  The vampires looked very unhappy.

  “How come that bastard always finds out about everything?” said Previously Silent. “You told him, didn’t you? He knows we’re gunning for the Slayer.”

  “Gonna carve her up and bring the Master back with her blood,” #1 gloated.

  “If we ever find the axe.”

  The door to the bar opened and a really tall vampire stood dripping wet in a long raincoat. He was vamped, and he was smiling.

  He stuck his hand in the pocket of his coat and said, “Check it out.”

  He had the axe.

  Willy’s inquisitioners laughed and cheered. Then they got back to the business of making life hard for Willy.

  “You told Angel what we’re planning,” #1 insisted.

  “I didn’t. You people always talk too much. And too loudly,” he added.

  “We are not people,” one of them huffed.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Demon,” Willy groveled. “But anyways, he came to my office recently because, um, he wanted to know . . . something else. Anyway, it was an entirely different subject. But then you guys started muttering about the ritual and raising the Master and all that stuff and he knows about it, and I didn’t tell him nothin’. ”

  One of the good things about bad guys was that they were always suspicious of each other. So even though the next five minutes of Willy’s life revolved around each of them protesting that they had not said one single word about the ritual to raise the Master. But the more they protested, the more positive each of them became that someone among them had spilled the beans.

  “So, I’m thinking, hurry it up or just forget it,” Willy concluded.

  Everybody got into grumble mode at that suggestion. Then Previously Silent said, “Let’s move to plan B.”

  “Plan B being the plan to not do it?” Willy suggested.

  “The plan to kill you if you don’t shut up,” Vampire #1 shot back. He turned to the others. “Let’s get her now, before Angel tells her what we’re doing. We’ll split up into search parties and get moving through the tunnels. And on the surface, too, if the weather holds.”

  To Willy, he said, “Go get us a round of O-neg. On the house.”

  “Hey,” Willy protested, then thought the better of pissing these guys off when they were already fairly pissed off to begin with. “Okay. My pleasure.”

  He hurried back to the office, to the fridge where he kept the really, really good stuff.

  The stuff that would keep these guys from ripping his throat open, hopefully.

  * * *

  “Wow,” Cordelia murmured, and that was an understatement.

  The town of Sunnydale was aflame, whole blocks blazing despite the hurricane that was yanking palm trees straight out of the ground and sending billboards sailing like guillotine blades, topping off power line poles. The streets here, on higher ground than Main Street, were anything but dark, although most of the power was out: firelight flashed on the crowd of people intent upon breaking every single unbroken window in every single building.

  On the lower streets, the water had risen to the level of car windows, and stalled vehicles had been abandoned long before now. The force of the water was beginning to move them, and Giles figured more damage would be inflicted once they built up momentum.

  Giles rather regretted the need to get to the school library, where he had additional books on weather-related portents and signs. He’d exhausted his research materials at his apartment.

  “This is so bad for my skin,” she bellowed, since they could only be understood by yelling at each other. “All this stress, you know? I’ve had more emotional trauma on
the drive over here than I was planning on having in my entire life. And you know what happens? Your skin ages. Before you know it, dermabrasion won’t work. I’ll have to go the Botox route. Then it’s only a matter of time before real surgical lifting.”

  “It’s rather amazing, the lengths you’re willing to go to to help us save the world,” Giles shouted.

  “Thanks.” She gestured to the school. “Well, it’s still here, thus proving there is no God after all.”

  She jerked to a stop and they both jumped out, racing as fast as they could to the main entrance. Giles had a key and he let them inside. When the door slammed behind them, Cordelia let out a whoop.

  “Thank the Lord,” she said.

  “That would be the one that doesn’t exist,” Giles replied.

  They hurried into the library and Giles went into his office to check his voice mail. There was no word from Buffy or Xander, which concerned him.

  Where can they be? he wondered. Is she all right?

  “Okay, so books?” Cordelia asked.

  “Books.”

  It was, for the moment, the best he had to offer.

  Chapter Ten

  The mummy was coming straight for Buffy.

  The hurricane is good for something, Buffy thought. Blows the fog away. We finally have a perfect view of the enemy, and it looks just like what I dreamed about.

  She and Xander had been following some vamps sneaking around in the Shady Rest Cemetery. Got ’em dusted, and then Xander had turned around and let out a yell.

  And there it was, gliding above the ground between SONIA BUCHANAN REST IN PEACE JAN. 2, 1907–FEB. 17, 1953 and LLOYD BUTTNER U.S. ARMY 1912–1989.

  It was carrying one of the boxes.

  “Buffy, don’t go near it,” Xander cautioned. “It’s after you.”

  “I can handle it. Get out of here.”

  “This is no time for heroics, Buffy.” He feinted a punch at the mummy—well out of the creature’s reach.

  “Xander, I’m the Slayer. My time for heroics is 24/7.” She ran up to the mummy and executed a sharp kick to its midsection. It was pushed slightly backward by the force; otherwise, it hung in the air, unaffected.

  Buffy went to work on it, punching-bag style. She pummeled it, kicked it, smacked it, doubled her fists and got brutal.

  Nothing.

  As she stopped, trying to figure out what to do next, it glided toward her. Then it reached its hand inside the box.

  “This is wiggin’ me,” Xander said. “Let’s go.”

  It brought out the axe.

  It raised the axe above its head.

  It froze.

  Buffy and Xander both said, “Huh” at the exact same time. Then Buffy sidled up to the thing and stood on tiptoe to peer into the box.

  “Buff, watch it,” Xander pleaded.

  She couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black.

  But she could hear something. Something awful: the screams of girls in mindless agony. The cries echoed against the sides of the box, then faded.

  Then stopped.

  Buffy felt sick at heart, as if her soul had been stripped of something precious and vital. The despair in the voices seeped into her, making her cold and tired. She was threaded through with a terrible sense of loss.

  “Not liking this,” Xander said firmly.

  “Okay. We’ll go,” Buffy agreed, her voice weak.

  And we can’t get away from that thing fast enough.

  * * *

  “Damn it,” Faith muttered, from the shelter of her newly stolen umbrella.

  The National Guard had come to town.

  The Sunnydale Fire Station was surrounded by green trucks of every shape and size, and men and women in drab uniforms barked at each other in the storm like feisty German shepherds. Faith could only go so far in comprehending the allure some people had for the commando lifestyle. Weapons, maybe, and the authority to use them. But otherwise, it struck her as a lot of strutting around without getting much done.

  Thing was, they were also preventing her from getting much done. If one of the axes was actually inside the fire station, it was going to be pretty hard to waltz in and snag it. Lifting a bottle of perfume at a department store or snagging an umbrella that had rolled down the street was one thing—okay, two—but locating and squirreling away a very fancy axe was quite another.

  Then Faith remembered hearing about the wacky hi-jinx that had ensued when Xander got turned into a soldier two years before. If anybody in the Scooby Corps could do the soldier-boy swagger, it’d be him.

  Nodding to herself, she slipped away.

  * * *

  The only thing the pilot of the Watchers Council jet knew was that he should expect two passengers. Two had come aboard, and soon he had filed his flight plan and taken off for America.

  Micaela cast a warding spell and said, “Perhaps I’ll manage to decipher these pages before one of Tony’s confederates figures out what we’ve done.”

  Belted in across from Micaela, the Watcher smoothed her skirt and moved her neck in a slow circle. The strain was telling on her. And yet she remained quite elegant, and kind, and Micaela was sorry the woman had become involved in this situation. People were going to die.

  Neema pursed her lips. “How long were you going to be incarcerated by the Council?”

  “Years.” Micaela threaded her hands together. “I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them cornered me. At first I dared to hope that Lord Yorke was a good man, trying to do something noble. He lied very convincingly.” She moved her hands. “That’s not quite true. I wanted to believe his lies. I didn’t want to have to make any more moral choices.”

  “We seem to have more than our share of rotten apples,” Neema said, concerned.

  Micaela silently agreed. If someone as high up as Anthony Yorke could do so much harm undetected, there was no telling what else might be going on within the Council walls . . . and beyond them. There were Watchers and operatives all over the world, and they were often incommunicado with the rest of the organization for months. It was a system with a potential for great misuse. Unfortunately, the snafu with William the Bloody during the 1940s had convinced many members of the Council that the less centralized and formal their structure was, the more likely that they would never be rendered so vulnerable again.

  Micaela said to her, “It’s the power. There’s so much of it. If evil is strong, good has to become stronger. There’s a relentless escalation.”

  “Very true,” Neema agreed. “I’ve read so many Watcher’s diaries. Not all of them withstood the temptation to send their Slayer out on a mission for purely personal reasons. And when you add magick use into the mix . . .” She moved her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness.

  Micaela nodded. “Many people never stop to consider that each spell, each magickal ‘event,’ if you will, costs some kind of energy. Sometimes it’s simply the expenditure of physical energy. Other times, a minor bit of karmic pollution. Other times, it’s a piece of one’s soul.

  “There are always repercussions. Consequences. But since it’s magick, even seasoned spellcasters forget that there’s always a cost.”

  Neema took that in. Then she ducked her head to look out the small window. She jerked, startled.

  “The fog’s building,” she said worriedly.

  Micaela flashed her a small, proud smile. “I’m creating it. It’s laced with magickal barriers, to make it harder to detect us.” She closed her eyes and intoned, “ ‘Clearly I see, but it touches me not.’ Don’t worry. Our pilot will have good visibility. He won’t even realize what I’ve done.”

  Neema glanced away.

  “I can’t quite forgive you for helping Lord Yorke. I know you didn’t do much, but . . .”

  Micaela’s sigh was world-weary. “I can’t quite forgive myself. Fulcanelli taught me to be a survivor, above all else. But I would like to depart this life with some sense that my good deeds outweighed my bad.”

 
Neema looked at her, studying her face. Micaela was used to life as a chameleon-like person, able to convince people of her sincerity when it suited her. Truth be told, it made for a lonely existence.

  But in her statement, she was utterly sincere. She wanted to die a good person.

  Wanted that very much.

  * * *

  Buffy called Giles’s apartment to fill him in on her and Xander’s recent exploits and discovered that he’d recorded a phone announcement directing everyone to convene at the school library, where he and Cordelia would be researching.

  “Oh, I’ll bet she’s loving the books,” Xander said, grinning at Buffy as they headed on over. “She only put up with all that stuff so she could be with me, you know.”

  Buffy gave him a sly glance. “And now that you two have broken up, she does it because . . . ?”

  “She wants me back.” His expression dared her to make fun of him, and then he laughed wryly and said, “Women. Can’t live with ’em, can’t change ’em all into ferrets.”

  “Xander, that’s gross,” she said.

  He made another face. “Didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  “Good. And changing the subject . . . arms dealer convention?”

  Their school campus was overrun with National Guardsmen and vehicles. Jeeps and trucks were parked all over the grass; soldiers in raingear were marching beneath the shelter of the second-story overhang in the quad. It was as if the entire population of Sunnydale had driven up outside and parked their cars, trucks, and armored tanks wherever they felt like it.

  Buffy and Xander managed to slip inside the main building. They headed for the library; there was so much activity that the floor was shaking as if they were having another earthquake.

  They entered their usual meeting place to find Giles and Cordelia surrounded by stacks of books. Also, to find the floor surrounded by stacks of books. There had been some earthquake damage to the walls—long, deep cracks and chunks of chipped-off stucco.

  “Good,” Giles said. “Everyone’s trickling in. Faith’s on her way. She wanted you especially, Xander.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” he piped.

  Both Cordelia and Buffy stared at him.