Here Be Monsters, page 6
“Says who?” Buffy asked. “The Young Vampire Book of Etiquette and Good Living?”
“I think you mean dying,” Angel said.
“I don’t like you,” Webster told him.
“Well, that certainly ruins my night.”
“Don’t worry,” Buffy consoled Angel. “I won’t let him hurt your feelings. I’ll take care of him for you.”
“Mama!” Webster screamed. “Mama, help me! Where are you?”
“Webster!” Buffy heard a far-off voice bellow.
Instantly, Angel spun around, placing himself so he was back-to-back with Buffy. “I vote we wrap this round up,” he said. “Sounds like the cavalry’s coming.”
“Don’t you just hate parental interference?” Buffy muttered.
Webster rose from the nest of tumbled trash cans like a phoenix from the ashes. He had a Snickers bar wrapper stuck to the front of his shirt. Buffy figured that was appropriate.
“You can’t kill me,” Webster taunted. “Not now that my Mama’s coming. She’ll protect me, you’ll see. And she’ll make you sorry for what you did to Percy.”
“Webster! Percy!” a voice from the mouth of the alley cried. “Boys, where are you? You know how I feel about you sneaking off behind my back. It’s not nice to tease your mama.”
At her own back, Buffy felt Angel abruptly tense. “Don’t turn around,” he cautioned.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“I’m here, Mama!” Webster yelped. He took a few faltering steps away from the garbage and pointed a trembling finger at Buffy. “She killed Percy, Mama! She stabbed him in the back. She didn’t even let him die with honor.”
Buffy heard the mother vampire growl low in her throat, and felt her stomach twist at the sound. She didn’t have to turn around. She’d heard that sound before. Enough times to know what evil sounded like, and that it always sounded the same, no matter what it looked like.
“Brazen hussy,” the mother vampire’s voice snaked through the alley to wrap around Buffy. “Coward.”
“Well, make up your mind,” Buffy called back. “Which is it?”
Her only answer was the sound of high-heeled shoes moving inexorably down the alley.
“Get away from my boy,” the vampire mother hissed. “If you do, I promise to go easy on you. I’ll only kill you.”
“I told you so,” Webster taunted, his tone triumphant. “My mama’s here now. You can’t—”
Without warning, the back door of the Bronze opened and a figure stumbled into the alley. One who had consumed a little more libation than could be considered good for him, it might be said. One hand was clapped across his mouth, the other across his stomach.
“Get back!” Buffy shouted.
Startled, the figure lifted its head. In the fitful light of the alley, Buffy saw his bleary eyes focus not on her, but on something over her shoulder. Saw his eyes go wide, wider, widest—his face turn the color of milk.
He whirled around, doubling over. And lost his evening’s worth of bar snack food.
“Eeewww!” Webster cried out. “Look what you’ve done to my new shoes!”
Okay, Buffy thought, that’s it. Time to wrap things up and get out of here.
She took two quick steps, shoved overindulgence boy back inside the Bronze and slammed the door behind him with a swift kick.
Behind her, she heard the vampire mother roar into action. Heard the heavy sound of bone against bone as she and Angel slammed together, then parted. The mother vampire growled again, the sound wild and feral. Buffy raised the stake that was still held tight in her fist, and took one more step forward.
“My mama’s right behind you,” Webster warned nervously, trying to back up a step. His feet skidded on the new substance on the floor of the alley. “You can’t—”
This time, it was Buffy who cut him off. She took one final step, her foot sliding as her arm flashed out in a short, swift jab. The stake caught Webster, square in the chest.
“You wanna bet?” the Slayer asked.
“Hey!” Webster said. “You did it anyway. That’s no fair! You weren’t supposed to do that.” Then, like his brother, he crumbled into dust. The Snickers wrapper hovered in the air, then dropped back down to lie among the rest of the refuse.
Buffy heard the alley go absolutely still behind her.
Slowly, she turned around, then froze. Now, she, too could see the vampire mother, standing just beyond Angel about halfway down the alley.
She was tall, almost as tall as Angel was, and she was definitely a whole lot wider. She was wearing a dress of turquoise blue, splattered with enormous white flowers. They looked like daisies but it was hard for Buffy to be sure. They were so large. And there were so many of them.
She could see that the centers of the flowers were the same color as the vampire mother’s eyes, though. A fierce and blazing yellow.
Her hair was piled in a great twisting mass on top of her head, held in place by a huge clip studded with rhinestones. Her feet were encased in turquoise shoes with daisy buckles on them.
Buffy could feel the tension whipping through the air, so thick she could have sworn it had substance, form, its own body. And there was something else as well. Something that would have loved to tear her limb from limb right where she stood.
Hatred. Pure. Simple. Potent.
Angel’s right, Buffy thought. I don’t like this. Not at all.
Into the charged silence, Angel spoke.
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
Buffy opened her mouth to answer, but she never got the chance. The vampire mother threw back her head and opened her jaws. A wild keening filled the air of the alley.
Angel staggered back and pulled Buffy against him as if to offer shelter as the cry roared around them, cold and biting as a winter wind. Seeking. Scourging. Longing for their destruction.
Buffy’d known evil had a sound, a voice, and so did grief. But she’d never known the two could speak with the same tongue until that moment.
On, on, on, the cry wailed, until it was Buffy’s entire world, her entire universe. All she knew, all she’d ever known. All that she’d be able to remember. It would echo throughout the ages, the sound of this cry. It would still be going on when Hell froze over.
For all she knew, it would even cause it.
Buffy wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but forced herself to remain still. If she gave in to her impulse to do whatever it took to block out that sound, the vampire mother would have an advantage over her, she was sure of it.
From somewhere deep inside, she summoned up a single thought.
And the “Jeopardy” question is, what is bloodcurdling?
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the cry ended. Once more, there fell a silence. So pure and complete, Buffy could hear the rush of blood through her veins. The expansion and contraction of her breath. Her heart, desperately pounding.
I am alive, she thought. I am human. The creature before her might be able to produce a cry wild and fierce enough to wake the dead. But then it only made sense. She was one.
Then Buffy saw the mother vampire take one step forward.
“Uh oh,” Angel said from his position beside her.
“No kidding,” Buffy answered. “Do you see the size of the flowers on that dress?”
“You killed my boys,” the mother vamp hissed through her jagged teeth. “And now I’m going to make you pay for it.”
* * *
Joyce Summers sat in her living room, pictures of her daughter spread out around her.
Buffy’s earliest years were already in the scrapbook. Her infancy. Her toddler years. Kindergarten graduation. The beginnings of the progression of grade-school pictures.
Joyce had put in the photograph of Buffy sitting in her first red wagon in the driveway of their house in Los Angeles, her father, with his hand on the handle of the wagon, kneeling down beside her.
And then there was the one of her sitting naked in the bathtub, surrounded by mounds of ethereal white bubbles and holding out her rubber ducky like she’d just won the Oscar.
There was an early birthday party, with a cake that contained a real doll. The cake itself was the doll’s skirt. It had taken her an entire morning to do the ruffle icing decorations, Joyce remembered. And Buffy and her friends about five minutes to demolish the whole thing.
Buffy still had the doll.
It had been one of the things she’d insisted on packing herself when they’d moved from LA to Sunnydale, along with her stuffed pig, Mr. Gordo.
Joyce flipped to the next blank page, pulled the clear, sticky film back and stared at the photographs on the coffee table in front of her. After a moment’s consideration, she selected a picture of Buffy and her favorite cousin, Celia. It was one of the few pictures she had of the two girls together. Celia had died when she was eight years old.
The two girls stood together with their arms around each other. Celia was wearing jeans and a tee shirt. Normal kid clothes. But Buffy was wearing her Power Girl costume. She’d been so into being Power Girl she never wanted to take the costume off.
The only way I could wash it was by taking it off her while she slept, Joyce recalled.
She slid the photo onto the page and swiftly selected another, one of Buffy and her father standing side by side. Buffy was wearing a frilly pink party dress, tights, white patent-leather shoes with a matching purse. Her lips were curved up in honor of the camera, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
This was Buffy’s eighth birthday, when she hadn’t wanted a party because Celia couldn’t be there. Celia wasn’t ever coming to one of Buffy’s parties again. She was dead; she was gone. As a special treat, to try to cheer her up, Buffy’s father had taken her to the ice show for the very first time.
Below the birthday picture Joyce placed one other from several months later. Buffy holding her own pair of ice skates. Her eyes still had shadows in them, but this time, they smiled.
Joyce slid the photo into the scrapbook, smoothed the sticky film over it, her own eyes suddenly blind.
How did it happen? she wondered.
How had her daughter grown up so fast? Grown up to be something neither of them could have predicted, perhaps even something neither of them wanted. Joyce understood that what Buffy was, what she did, was terribly important. Something literally no one else could be or do.
But choosing was not the same as being chosen.
And whatever Buffy might have chosen had been lost along the way. She was the Chosen One, the Slayer. Everything else was secondary. And the fact that her mother might grieve in moments for all the things Buffy would never have the chance to be didn’t change a thing. What Joyce wanted, what Buffy might have chosen, could no longer be considered relevant.
Abruptly, Joyce slid the scrapbook off her lap and padded into the kitchen. She opened the freezer. Just as she thought. Buffy’d finished the ice cream and forgotten to say anything about it. If Joyce wanted some, she’d have to do a quick run to the store.
But suddenly, she longed for something sweet. Something cold. Anything that would drive this hot, dry ache from the back of her throat. She loved her daughter. Was working hard to honor what she was. But there were times, quiet nights like this, when the work was very, very hard.
Purposefully now, Joyce strode back into the living room, kicked off her slippers, and yanked her sneakers on. She wasn’t going to sit around brooding about things that couldn’t be changed or helped. She was made of sterner stuff than that, same as her daughter.
Besides, the scrapbook was supposed to be a celebration of Buffy, wasn’t it? Of course it was.
But still, one hand on the door, the other holding tightly to the strap of her purse, Joyce Summers, the mother of the Slayer, paused. And uttered the same prayer a thousand mothers, a million, uttered on a million different nights, in every language a mind could think of. Though none prayed more fervently than Joyce did, or with such cause.
Please, she thought. Just let my child be safe.
Whatever she was doing. Wherever she was.
CHAPTER 6
“Any suggestions?” Buffy asked.
“Sorry,” Angel said. “Fresh out.”
“We could flip a coin,” Buffy suggested. “Heads, we fight. Tails, we fight.”
“Okay, we fight.”
“I just knew you’d say that.”
The mother vampire raised her arms, exposing half an inch of lacy, white slip and a sneaking suspicion of the top of panty hose. Buffy was unable to resist a shudder.
She’d had to fight things that turned her stomach before, but she hadn’t figured they’d include somebody’s mom. And definitely not a mom dressed in a glow-in-the-dark turquoise blue dress adorned by daisies the size of dinner plates. And who accessorized with rhinestones.
She guessed it was true, what they said. Whoever “they” were. There really was a first time for everything.
Feet planted, Buffy and Angel stood side by side, their backs to the back door of the Bronze. Buffy could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins.
“I get to count this time.”
But before she could start, the mother vampire threw back her head and gave another great undulating wail. Fisting her hands in her hair, she pulled it down around her shoulders to lie in a seething mass, tangled and wild. She scraped her nails down her cheeks. Tore at her clothes.
Then, step by step, she began to move toward Buffy and Angel. Instantly, by mutual, silent accord, they took a step apart. It was harder to fight two moving targets than one. Buffy didn’t even have to be the Slayer to figure that one out.
The mother vampire laughed low in her throat.
“You think I’m going to fight you, don’t you?” she asked, her voice filled with scorn. “You think I’m going to waste the chance to avenge my sons’ deaths by trying to deal with you myself.”
The vampire mother halted her advance, her face wreathed in a horrible smile.
“Okay, now I have a bad feeling about this,” Buffy said.
“You should, girl,” said the vampire mother. “I’m going to make you wish you’d never been born.”
Once more, the mother vampire threw back her head.
“Vengeance,” she shouted, her voice harsh, distorted. “Powers of the Underworld, Powers of Darkness, hear my call. Hear the cry of a mother, begging for retribution. Answer my plea! Give me justice! Rise up and avenge the deaths of my sons!”
Above their heads, as if in answer, from a clear night sky, rolled one clap of thunder.
“I really hate it when they call for reinforcements,” Angel said.
“I say we finish this now, before anything else shows up,” Buffy said.
“I’m definitely with you on that.”
Buffy took a gliding step forward. The mother vampire lowered her head and looked straight at her.
“Get ready,” she said. “Your doom is coming.”
“I think you mean it’s at hand,” Buffy said. “Only you’ve got it backward. Your doom. My hand.”
She hefted the stake just as a blast of icy wind swept through the alley. So strong it stopped her in her tracks, then pushed her back. Buffy threw up her hands to protect her eyes from the biting, scouring air. She thought she could hear Angel shouting her name, but she couldn’t be sure. The wind had its own voices.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the sudden gust was over. The air around Buffy grew perfectly still, absolutely quiet. Then, it began to shimmer with heat, as if the pavement of the alley was resting on some enormous stove top. Fine tendrils of mist began to rise. Red mist, dark as heart’s blood. A mist the color of brimstone.
Hellfire.
“Why do I have the feeling this just isn’t my night?” Buffy muttered.
Something exploded out of the air before her.
A woman. Towering. Majestic. Enormous. So tall she dwarfed all the other inhabitants of the alley, including the vampire mother. And that was saying something.
Atop the huge column that was her neck, four faces stared outward. Or at least Buffy assumed that there were four. She could only actually see three, the one staring straight at her, and the two glaring at the alley walls. But if ever anything was going to have eyes in the back of its head, Buffy figured this was it.
From nearby, Angel spoke. “I’d take a wild guess and say that’s why.”
“You win what’s behind door number three,” Buffy said. “Um—I don’t suppose that’s anyone you know?”
“Sorry,” Angel said. “Not from my neighborhood.”
The woman’s skin was a strange, flat gray, a color Buffy had seen only once before. In pictures of what the Oregon countryside had looked like after the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
A color that wasn’t a color. That was alive, yet denied life. In the barren landscape of that ashen face—those ashen faces—four pairs of red eyes glowed.
“I am Nemesis,” the figure spoke out all four mouths at once. The tones diverged, then slid together, weaving around and through one another. Unified, then discordant, then unified once more. As if each voice told a slightly different version of the same story. Buffy felt their power resonating in the marrow of her bones.
“Nemesis,” the figure repeated, “called the Balancer. Why have I been summoned?”
“To right a great wrong,” the vampire mother shouted hoarsely. She strode forward to the side of Nemesis which faced Buffy. She threw herself at the giant figure’s feet. “My beautiful boys, my babies, have been murdered, cut down. I call upon the Powers of Darkness to help me avenge their deaths.”
“I have a better idea,” Buffy said. “How about if you just join them?”
She took a step forward. Before she could take another, Nemesis raised a hand. The icy wind returned to sweep the alley. Buffy could feel it cut through her like knives. She faltered back a step, and the wind ceased.
“Okay,” she panted. “I get it. No staking at the present time. But is it too much to ask for a little reality check?”
She pointed at the kneeling woman in the turquoise dress. “She is a vampire. Her beautiful baby boys were vampires. That makes them the bad guys. I’m the Slayer. I hunt vamps and wipe them out. That makes me the good guy.”
