Chosen

  . . . the Earth.

  “What is this?” she demanded.

  The Men answered:

  We are at the beginning.

  The source of your strength. The well of the

  Slayer’s power.

  This is why we have brought you here.

  “I thought I brought me here,” Buffy said.

  The Men . . . the Shadow Men . . . made no answer, only pounded the Earth in a strange, hypnotic rhythm with their staffs.

  “Listen, you guys,” she said, “I’m already the Slayer, bursting with power. Really don’t need any more.”

  Then one of them said to her, The First Slayer did not talk so much.

  Then, as she yanked on her chains again, the men continued to pound the Earth. The one who had spoken brought a box to the center of the circle. Cautiously he opened it, and the three Men stood away, standing like sentinels with their staffs in their hands.

  Herein lies your truest strength.

  The energy of the demon. Its spirit.

  Its heart.

  Comprehension dawned. “This is how you?”

  Created the Slayer? Yes.

  Slowly, a black ether undulated out of the box, tendrils curling and extending, reaching and growing; it danced to the rhythm, it sought . . . home.

  The Men were impassive, alert.

  It must become one with you.

  “No!” Buffy struggled harder against her chains.

  This will make you ready for the fight.

  “By making me less human?” Buffy demanded.

  This is how it was then. How it must be now. This is all there is.

  And she struggled as the mist rose, growing fuller, taking shape, entering her through her nose and ears. She screamed, fighting against it, and it must have been her screaming that blocked its entry, for it rose to the ceiling of the cave and came back down to her, encircling her hips. Still, she resisted.

  “Make this stop!” she gritted, her jaw clenched.

  This is what you came for.

  “No! This isn’t the way!”

  Do not fight this.

  * * *

  You can tell by the way I wear my coat . . . Spike thought to himself, as he went through the boxes he’d left in the school basement, where his soul had nearly driven him insane. He found his old duster, shook it out, put it on. His armor.

  Robin had come back to the school to see if he could find something more to help with the magics. Hearing Spike’s footsteps, he leaned out of his office.

  Where you going?” he asked Spike coldly.

  “Got a job,” Spike returned.

  Then Robin saw . . . oh, my God, my mother had a coat like that. She was wearing a coat like that last time she said good-bye to me . . .

  “Nice coat,” he managed neutrally. “Where’d you get it?”

  “New York.”

  Spike walked on.

  * * *

  Black-eyed Willow sat in the middle of the living room, her hair whipping, the eye in the storm. The others gave her wide berth, wary and watching.

  “Via, concursus, tempus, spatium, audi me ut imperio . . .” Unable to deal with the strain, she shouted, “Screw it! Mighty forces, I suck at Latin, okay? But that’s not the issue! I’m the one in charge, and I’m tell you, open up the portal, now!”

  “It’s not happening, Will,” Xander said after a moment.

  “Give her time,” Kennedy protested. “She’s getting it.”

  “Or something’s getting her,” Xander shot back. “Will, thinking you better back up a little—”

  “No!”

  Feral, half-crazed, Willow extended her arms toward Anya and Kennedy and hoisted them into the air. Power drained from them in waves, surging into Willow. They writhed; she gave them no quarter. Her hair went black; she opened her mouth and from her, and energy vortexed out.

  The portal shimmered before her.

  Xander broke the protective barrier, grabbed her up in his arms, and carried her out of the circle.

  Her hair immediately turned red . . . and Kennedy wobbled brokenly in shock over what she had done.

  * * *

  Gonna get this job done in record time, Spike thought as he engaged the enemy, which he had found raging about in one of Sunnydale’s darker and more loathsome alleys. Spike was tricked out in duster and vamp-face. Demon not hard to find, gonna be a piece of cake to kill.

  “Oh, come on now, Nancy, call yourself a demon? I thought you were up for a proper fight!”

  They traded blows, big ’uns; head-butting and kicking and all the rest, Spike was up for it the way he used to be before he got all nice and soul-filled. He was a monster, same as the other one—two demons, and if his pockets had been jingling he’d have bet it all on himself. Hell six crowns and tuppence, even more . . .

  “Yeah!” he shouted, laughing maniacally.

  * * *

  In the desert cave, Buffy glared at the Men, who continued to watch, but did not see . . .

  As the mist probed for its prey again, Buffy was half-mad with anger. “You think I came all this way to get knocked up by some demon dust?” she demanded. “I can’t fight this. I know that now. But you guys? You’re just men.” She ripped her chains free. “Just the men who did this . . . to her. Whoever that girl was before she was The First Slayer.”

  You don’t understand.

  “No, you don’t understand!” she shouted. “You violated that girl, made her kill for you because you’re weak, you’re pathetic, and you obviously have nothing to show me.”

  She let loose with the chains, which were connected to her manacles, swinging them at the legs of one Man, at the staff of the other. She knocked them down. They rose, and with their staffs, began to fight her. The black mist rose and undulated, presiding over the violence.

  Then two of the Men were down, and the third stood with his staff, steady as she approached. She grabbed his staff and broke it.

  The black mist vanished.

  “I knew it,” she crowed. “It’s always the staff.”

  We offered you power, the Man said, looking very sad, and not at all wise.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  As you wish.

  And with great sorrow, and reverence, he placed his hand against Buffy’s head. . . .

  * * *

  The demon and Spike kept on with the fighting. The demon pinned him against the wall, but Spike did what he did best: grabbed the bastard’s head and gave it a right yank. Its neck snapped, the demon died, and Spike contemptuously tossed its carcass to the ground.

  Fully vamped, loving it all, he took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. “I don’t know your feelings, big guy,” he said, “but to me, a tussle like that . . .” He struck a match on the demon’s ear and lit his cig; let his face go back to human again. “. . . is good for the soul.”

  He hoisted the wreckage over his back, carried it back to Buffy’s place, and tossed it into the portal.

  As fast as it flashed through . . .

  . . . Buffy reappeared.

  No one greeted her aloud; no one ran to hug her. No one moved. No one could manage to do anything but . . .

  What I saw . . .

  What I saw her do, what I felt, Kennedy thought, as Willow approached her. My God, I thought it was about fairy tales. I was so naïve . . .

  “Hey, you okay?” Willow asked anxiously. “You’ve been kind of quiet since . . .”

  “You sucked the life out of me?” Kennedy accused her.

  Willow took it straight on the chin. “Yeah. Since that.” She regarded her young lover and said, not pulling any punches herself, “It’s important you know. What I am. What I’m like when . . . I’m like that.”

  Kennedy faltered. “I thought it would be . . . I don’t know, cool somehow.” A beat, and then, “It just hurt.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Willow said. “It’s just, you were the most powerful person nearby and . . . well, that’s how it works.” Sh
e added with rigorous honest, “That’s how I work.”

  “I got that,” Kennedy said. “You told me.” She took a breath. “I’ll . . . see you in the morning.”

  Kennedy went into her room . . . and shut the door.

  * * *

  Willow walked on, pausing on the threshold of Buffy’s room. Buffy was awake, staring straight ahead, seeing things Willow could only imagine. Or not.

  “Thanks for bringing me back. Again,” Buffy said.

  Willow walked over. “Well, that’s what I do.” She perched on the edge of the bed.

  “I was hard on you guys today,” Buffy began.

  “Aw, it’s all right. You needed to be.” She wrinkled up her nose and gently added, “Although, Twinkies and kisses? Also peachy motivational tools.”

  That failed to make Buffy smile. Somberly, she said, “I think I made a mistake.” She turned to Willow. “Those men that I met? You know, the Shadow Men? They offered me more power . . . but I didn’t like the loop hole.”

  Willow raised her brows. “So you turned it down? It’s okay, Buffy. We’ll get by.” She added, “We always do.”

  “I don’t know.” Buffy gave her head a little shake. “They showed me . . .” She trailed off.

  “Showed you what?” Willow asked her.

  “That The First Slayer was right,” Buffy replied, ticking her glance toward her old friend. “It isn’t enough.”

  “Why, Buffy?” Willow asked. “What did you see? What did they show you?”

  * * *

  A cave. beneath. And in it, a Turok-han roared with battle fury, wild, frenzied, its blood fever raging.

  And behind it, and around it, and beneath it . . .

  Thousands more.

  Thousands upon thousands more, a sea. An army, massing.

  Apocalypse.

  Hundreds of thousands, preparing to march.

  To devour.

  Chapter Sixteen: “Storyteller”

  INT. MY ELEGANT STUDY—NIGHT

  My camera pans across my elegant study—there they are, my Time-Life collections of Nietzsche, Joseph Campbell, and Tolkien—the masters! Then my Science Fiction Book Club leather-bound editions of the seminal works of Wager’s Kane and Edgar Rice Burroughs; then my backed and bagged Spiderman’s, my Batman’s, and the complete Gor saga . . .

  Then my first close-up, my elegant smoking jacket and my pipe. Diana Rigg, where are you now? I don’t notice the camera at first, and then I do.

  I close the book on my lap.

  ME

  Oh! Hello there, gentle viewers!

  (closing my book)

  You caught me catching up on an old

  favorite. It’s wonderful to get lost in a

  story, isn’t it? Adventure and heroics and

  discovery, don’t they just take you away?

  (puffing on my pipe except that if I cough, just

  set it down on my beautiful crystal ashtray)

  Come with me now, if you will, gentle

  viewers. Join me on a new voyage of

  the mind, a little tale I like to call, “Buffy,

  A Slayer of the Vampeers.”

  ME SOME MORE

  It was cold last night, and the wind was crew-ell, but the Slayer had a job to do. . . .

  * * *

  Buffy was on patrol in a hot outfit, and the vamp that was after her was eager to turn her into his vampiric spawn, perhaps even his bride of blood. But ah ha! She tricked him, flipped over him to vault to a very tall tombstone, and pause in a handstand there, a total 10 if she were in the Slayer Olympics. And then she shot him with her custom crossbow.

  Little did she realize, however, that another vam-peer lunged from the shadows, ready to spawnize her as well.

  AND YET MORE ME

  Ouch! My goodness! Things look bad

  for the Slayer, don’t they?

  * * *

  And then someone was pounding on the door. Andrew, sitting (fully clothed) on the toilet set as he taped himself, jumped as Anya burst into the bathroom.

  “For God’s sake, Andrew!” she cried. “You’ve been in here thirty minutes. What are you doing?”

  Flustered, the young auteur of the cinema replied, “Entertaining and educating.”

  “Man,” she barked. “Why can’t you just masturbate like the rest of us.”

  Oh, hot, Andrew thought, using his USC Film School–quality imagination.

  EXT. CEMETERY—NIGHT

  Buffy was being attacked by Vampire #2, then yeaah! dust! and Andrew thrilled. He ran up to her, and enthusing, “That was great! I completely got you dusting that guy on film. Hey, why do vampires show up on video?”

  Buffy scowled. “I told you I didn’t want you doing that! It’s distracting!”

  And off she stomped, totally breaking his fourth wall, as he caught up beside her and said, “Okay, I’ll cut the footage together and do the intro tomorrow. ‘She was a woman in danger . . . or was she?’ ” He added, “It’s a valuable record. An important document for the ages: a Slayer in action.”

  She glared at him. “A nerd in pain. Would they like that? “ ’Cause we could do that.’ ”

  AND WE JUMP CUT TO . . .

  Anya dragging Andrew out of the bathroom. There was quite a line of Potentials waiting to use the bathroom, with their little toiletry bags and fuzzy slippers, so young, so sweet, too young to die!

  “The world is going to want to know about Buffy,” Andrew told Anya as she dragged him along the hall. “It’s a story of ultimate triumph tainted with the bitterness for what’s been lost in the struggle. It’s a legacy for future generations!”

  Anya was unmoved. “If there are any. Buffy seems to think that this apocalypse is going to actually be, you know, apocalyptic. Your story seems pretty pointless.”

  “Oh, and I was going to interview you later today,” he said offhandedly, but with the guile of Anthony Perkins in Psycho (why did Van Sant even bother? Heresy! Except that Viggo was in it, pre-Aragorn, and that was cool) “You know, ’cause you have that unique perspective on the whole thing. Give it editorial balance and . . . glamour . . .” He trailed wistfully off.

  And . . . bingo!

  “Balance is important,” she said. “People don’t always take that into account. I could bring you that, absolutely.”

  THE EXPOSITORY NARRATIVE

  . . . provided by me, standing in front of the Big Board, and shot in the basement . . . and on the board, the school with the Hellmouth beneath with a big bunch of black Dry-Erase (I’ll make a demon shoot out of it for emphasis); then some Bringers—say, five, with their eyes Xed out and pumpkin mouths; then big, red scary THE FIRST in the upper right . . . cool . . . I can probably storyboard for Lucas someday . . . he needs me, I can help him write more interesting stories than that hideous Episode Numero Uno, that’s for sure . . .

  “Let’s explore the world of our story, shall we? Buffy lives in Sunnydale, California. There’s a Hellmouth underneath the high school. And now there’s that thing in the basement of the high school called the Seal of Danzal-Danzalthar. Um, due to some circumstances it got opened up . . . a little bit . . . recently . . . and this nasty, nasty vampire thing came out of it. It was just awful. Awful!

  “This whole thing is being orchestrated by something called The First. It’s made up of all the evil in the whole world. Oh, there’s also these guys.” I point to the Bringers. “They work for The First. We don’t know much about them except that they’re very ugly, and they’re very mobile from blind people.” I smile. “Is that clear?”

  MIDDLE SHOT

  Andrew brought his camcorder into the kitchen as the Potentials prepared them hearty repasts of kids cereal and cried loudly and lustily for the low-fat milk. Xander the man who was the heart of the Slayer machine, was fortifying himself right out of the box, and tension was rampant over some new development.

  “Oh, um, we’re out of Raisin Bran,” the young sister of the Slayer informed Anya, the twice-ref
ormed former vengeance demon and now glamorous spokes-woman for balance.

  Then there she was, in a total Ridley Scott commercial, pouring herself a bowl of cereal . . . Buffy, her hair windswept and free. With a lion’s heart and the face of an angel.

  “She’s never afraid because she knows her side will always win,” Andrew breathed.

  Then Spike appeared in the viewfinder, shirtless, and brushed his hand against his Slayer-woman. They moved to embrace, the tamed alpha male and the woman who had conquered him . . . their clinch every inch a Fabio moment . . .

  “You can feel the heat between them,” Andrew murmured, “although technically, as a vampire, he’s room temperature.”

  Anya appeared next, sucking grapes off the stem . . . popping one into her delectable mouth . . .

  “Anya, a feisty waif with a fiery temper and a vulnerable heart that she hides even from herself . . .”

  IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Buffy said to Xander, “Is he doing that again? Can’t we make him stop?”

  Rona looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. If we save the world, it will be kind of nice to have a record of it.”

  “If we don’t save the world,” Amanda added, “then nothing matters.”

  Her spoon halfway to her mouth, Kennedy stared at Amanda. “That’s catchy, Amanda. Let’s make that our slogan.”

  Xander said, “It is kind of a shame you keep saving the world and there’s not any proof.”

  “And it helps the girls with their training,” Willow offered. “You know, reviewing the tapes.”

  “Come on,” Buffy said. “No one else thinks this is idiotic?”

  Spike—wearing a shirt in real life—shrugged. “Long as he’s not pointing that thing at me, seems like a fine way to keep the boy busy.”

  “This is not about keeping busy!” Buffy said, frustrated. “This is about war.” She paused, then added, “I’m sorry to jump all over you guys, but . . . I have to tell you what’s going on. There’s something new.”

  Oh, my God, this is like the Osbournes, Andrew thought.

  “You have to get ready. No one here is ready. We can all survive what’s coming . . .” Buffy was saying.

  Oh, God, rewind, Andrew thought.

  He wandered into the dining room and trained the camera on a far more interesting subject: