The Book of Fours

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Tervokian said. “What do you suggest?”

  Before Cameron had a chance to reply, Tervokian whirled around, grabbed him around the waist, and smashed his forehead against the side of the altar.

  Blood gushed from the Servant’s forehead and, by gum, he saw stars. But he drew back his hand and delivered a bright blue fireball that exploded with a crackling flash and ignited Tervokian like a cord of firewood.

  Tervokian laughed as the flames rose along his covering. His clothes burned away and he stood naked. He said, “You don’t know much about my kind, do you? Fire’s an aphrodisiac to us.”

  “Cecile! A little help, ma chere!” Cameron shouted.

  From the lower shelf of the cocktail cart, Cameron grabbed a chainsaw and pulled the cord. It roared to life, and he advanced, just like Leatherface at the big showdown.

  The flames died down. Tervokian was no longer laughing. He turned and started retreating, unknowingly drawing close to the pit.

  Yessssssssss, the Gatherer whispered.

  Cameron waved the chainsaw at the demon, who stumbled backward, glancing over his shoulder.

  “What is that, a well?” he shouted at Cameron.

  Cameron didn’t answer. He just kept thrusting the chainsaw at the demon.

  “Better keep a move on,” he suggested, “or you’re gonna start losing parts of yourself that you may miss on future social occasions.”

  Yesssssssss.

  “What’s down there?” Tervokian cried, sounding really frightened now. He tried to grab at the chainsaw, maybe figured that for a dumb idea, and stumbled. “I’m not going in there!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Cameron waved the saw at him.

  “Nor would I, mon amour,” said a voice behind Cameron.

  Cameron didn’t really have a chance to register what was happening before Cecile waved her hands. A sphere of green energy emanated from her palms and smacked into Cameron, her beloved. The force of the impact forced the chainsaw from his grasp; and Cameron, the Servant of the Gatherer, teetered on the edge of the pit for a heartstopping five seconds before gravity got the best of him and he fell, screaming.

  Tervokian and Cecile hurried to the side and stared in revolted fascination. Cameron lay screaming and sizzling on an enormous, puddinglike mass all black and bumpy. Smoke rose from his body and he writhed wildly, giving forth an odor not unlike the stench of burning tires.

  “I am Cameron,” the Servant said, with bulging eyes. “I am Cameron.”

  Tervokian winked at him. “Not for long, old son,” the demon said, mocking his accent. “Looks like y’all are going to get et all up.”

  “You, I’ll get you. Cecile, you bitch!” Cameron shouted. “How could you do this to me?”

  “I’m sorry.” She blew him a kiss. “You’ve outstayed your welcome.”

  “When I’m with the Gatherer, I’ll kill you.”

  Something popped and Cameron shrieked so loudly the sound echoed off the walls. Tervokian figured it for the back of the Servant’s head. If he understood the Gatherer’s mode of existence, it was now absorbing all the knowledge and personality of Cameron. But Cecile had explained that the Fourth Servant would be the one to fully commune with the entity that was the Gatherer. Whoever was the Fourth Servant would have the full power of the Gatherer at his disposal, not the other way around.

  Then the Servant’s body deflated and began to be pulled into the blob, arms and legs trailing in like popped balloons. Within seconds, the entire carcass had been sucked into the Gatherer’s mucky form.

  Tervokian smiled at Cecile. He knelt at her feet and said, “I did it.”

  She put her arms around his neck and beamed at him. “You were magnifique. Now, I think it’s time for you and me to go to Sunnydale ourselves.”

  “Really?” He beamed. “Um, about the axe . . .”

  “Don’t have a care,” she said. “I knew you had lost control of it. I handled it.” She chucked him under the chin. “We all make little mistakes. Look at me. I chose Cameron to be the Third Servant, and he was a terrible choice. So crazy.” She made a circle with her finger, pointing it toward her head.

  “Huh.” Tervokian shuffled his feet.

  “We’ll need to put the Gatherer in the trailer,” she said. “There is no way I will fly my god in a plane in that weather. I need a few minutes to prepare everything.” She handed him Mariposa. “Watch my dog. Don’t eat her.”

  He looked surprised but pleased to be holding her pet. “She’s a cute little thing.”

  The dog licked his scaly face.

  Chapter Four

  The sun was up, and Angel was down.

  In the tunnels, collapsing by the yard because of the earthquake, and back in Willy’s basement.

  Willy found him on the stairs and looked stricken. “Angel, so glad you’re here,” he said, obviously lying.

  Angel kept silent, following up the rest of the stairs. Willy stood aside while Angel moved the cable calendar. He put his face up against the peephole while Willy stood behind him, fidgeting.

  The bar was packed, and a tall, dark-skinned vampire was conducting some kind of meeting. He stood beside the varnished bar with a marker in his hand. An easel held a white board with the words, OUR BELOVED MASTER, CECILE LAFITTE, CAMERON DUVALIER, TERVOKIAN, SLAYERS DIE! scrawled on it.

  “So, next,” the vampire said, “Tervokian’s assassins were killed. But good news, brothers. It looks like the axe we took from Carlos New Mexico is the thing we need to kill Buffy Summers.”

  “And we need to kill Buffy to bring the Master back, right?” asked a skinny vampire who looked like he hadn’t had a decent feed in decades.

  “Right,” said the dark-skinned vampire. “You got it, baby.”

  The skinny vampire nodded. “Righteous.”

  Then Willy knocked over something behind Angel in the office, and everybody scattered.

  “Willy, you’re in trouble,” Angel growled as he vamped out.

  Angel thundered into the bar room. He grabbed a pool stick off the table, cracked it over his knee, and took out a female with a sharp jab to her chest. He caught the dark-skinned male with a really vicious heel to the groin. When the vamp doubled over, he grabbed it by the belt loops of its jeans, thwapped it on its back, then pulled its knees back from their fetal position against its chest, kind of like opening a hot dog bun. As soon as enough surface area was exposed, he staked the sucker.

  Another vamp jumped him; Angel registered its presence while he started pummeling a vampire directly in front of him. The backrider was getting in some powerful blows to Angel’s head, but the punching bag was standing up to a lot of abuse. In fact, it was almost—but not quite—giving as good as it got.

  Angel headbutted it, sending the vamp on his back sailing, and the other one staggering back just in time to collide with the other vampire as it cleared Angel’s head.

  Another vampire crashed a chair over Angel’s head. Angel grabbed the chair and broke off one of the chair’s legs, whipped around, and staked the vamp with it. Then he leaped onto the bar to get a bird’s-eye view of the action, discovering in the process that the vampires had conscripted a couple of other species of demon in their bid to raise the Master. Which made sense: part of the Master’s previous campaign platform had been to open up the Hellmouth and let the creepy-crawlies out.

  From his vantage point, Angel peered around the bar, to find Willy there, cradling his head in his arms.

  “Hi,” Angel said cheerily.

  “You’ve killed me, Angel. These guys are gonna kick my butt from here to Santa Monica once they realize I let you in.”

  “Gimme your baseball bat,” Angel said. “I know you’ve got one.”

  Willy obeyed.

  Angel cracked the bat against the bar to give himself a jagged, somewhat pointed end. A barroom brawl whipped up, vamp vs. vamp, Angel doing a grand dustorama, with Willy covering his head and moaning about insurance a
nd death.

  Then the room began to shudder, rock and roll. Some of the vampires freaked out, but most of them got very excited.

  “The Master! The Master!” the skinny vampire one cheered. “He’s on his way!”

  That was a fairly logical assumption, seeing as an earthquake had trapped the Master in the sunken church he’d made his lair, and an earthquake had freed him. He didn’t know if these clowns knew it, but earthquakes had also presaged Buffy’s untimely death at least once before.

  “Axe, axe, who’s got the axe?” he said to himself.

  Then he got back to looking for it.

  * * *

  The Red Cross nurses obviously detected that the gang was using their great secret Scooby code, even if they couldn’t directly translate it. They were polite about it; actually, they didn’t seem all that interested in it, and they filed out quietly after they dug their little bars of soap and washcloths out of their backpacks.

  “Bye,” Cordelia said, waving to them. “See you later.”

  “We’ll have breakfast set up in the gym,” Monica told them. “Please come join us.”

  “Hello, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and heaps o’ sugar.” When Giles looked at him in puzzlement, Xander said, “That’s code for ‘donuts.’ ”

  “Oh, I see.” Giles paused. “Do you suppose they’ll have jellies?”

  “I’ve got my fingers crossed for fat-free muffins,” Cordelia chimed in.

  “I was just thinking to myself the other day that I haven’t had a decent maple bar in the last, oh, say four or five potentially fatal crises I’ve participated in. Which reminds me,” Xander continued, looking to Giles. “Are we going to be able to list Scooby Gang as one of the extracurriculars in the yearbook? Or get little pins or something?”

  “Pins would be nice,” Cordelia said.

  Giles just rode them out, like a wave beneath his surfboard of adulthood, and finally said, “Everyone, eat as much breakfast pastry as you can possibly stand, and then Buffy and Faith will accompany me to the condo.”

  “Sure.” Faith rubbed her hands together and joined Buffy as she headed for the library’s double doors.

  “Oh, and Buffy?” Giles said, raising a finger. “Do see if they have any jellies, will you?”

  “Second choice sprinkles?” Buffy asked. At his nod, she smiled and left the library.

  * * *

  The school corridors were clogged with people—hurt people, scared people, and people who were there to help those people. Buffy was not loving having to see the vast numbers of small children who were in tears; it made her more determined to do something about what was happening, and now she was sorry she’d been such a pain about going to Giles’s to check on the diary.

  “B.,” Faith set, as they walked into the crowded gym. “I had a wicked-weird dream.”

  “Me, too. Voodoo stuff?”

  Faith nodded. “There was this chick, and she was explaining to me about how much the Gatherer loves to devour Slayers. Gives it, like a turbo charge. My words.” Faith smiled crookedly. “I can’t exactly remember how she put it.”

  “Maybe ‘scrumpdiddlyumptious?’ ” Buffy suggested.

  “Had to be.” Faith chuckled. “We’re like a sugar rush, or something.”

  “Huh. If it tries to eat me, I’ll give it some major cavities. Say, Xander,” Buffy called. “I had a funny saying for you. ‘The Hellmouth’s bad breath.’ Get it?”

  Xander frowned, exhaled against his palm, and checked it. “I do not.”

  “Oh . . . forget it,” Buffy drawled. She looked at Faith. “It’s pretty clever, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Faith said. “I’m in stitches.” She touched her cheek. “How’s it looking?”

  “Truth?” Buffy asked. Faith nodded. “Like stitches might have been a good idea.”

  Canetown Plantation, Jamaica, 1998

  Kendra moved from her Watcher’s plantation house into the thick overgrowth. The midnight sky ringed the moon with clouds; the air sweated, releasing the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine and frangipani from its pores. Kendra had rubbed her skin with a protective unguent Mr. Zabuto had concocted from an ancient native spell stick; around her neck she wore a mojo bag, to keep the night’s evil away from her.

  “Viens, vite,” he had said to her in French, as he did upon occasion. Even after being raised by him since childhood, she didn’t know what his native language was, English, French, or Swahili. But she understood, and nodded once.

  He made the sign of the cross above her—he was a religious man—and she walked out of the house and into the jungle. Birds coo-cooruu-coo’ed; the lush growth rustled and shivered with movement. Kendra was alert and unafraid. Determination surged through her. Muscle and sinew, she was the Slayer. Her long-awaited destiny had been fulfilled: she had been chosen.

  Because of the death of another, Kendra thought, and that was the very last thought she allowed herself on that subject. Slayers who thought about dying, did so.

  Parting the growth before her, she moved soundlessly. For a time the jungle was still, craning its ears to detect her movements. Then its heartbeat began to pulse through the ground. Shimmering ferns jittered. A drop of moisture, clinging to a vine, formed an elongated arc and dripped onto Kendra’s forearm.

  The heartbeat grew louder.

  Drums.

  Kendra set her jaw. She made circles with her shoulders and flexed her wrists. It was time to stay loose and ready for action. Precision timing and quick reflexes were part of her weapons cache.

  As was the blow gun she pulled from the bodice of her sleeveless leather top. Moving swiftly, vigilant and attuned to the language of the drums, she inserted a poison dart into the hand-carved pipe. The needle-sharp tip was dipped in curare, the same paralyzing compound Baron Diable injected into his victims. They would lie unable to move in their coffins, anticipating the horrifying moment they would be buried alive. Resurrected, they would be dead—in spirit, mind and body—alive only in the ability to move, and to obey.

  Kendra would rather go to hell than live such an existence. Mr. Zabuto had explained to her that suicide was not an option for a Slayer; there was no honor in it and it would upset the balance of things to come. But Kendra was sorely tempted to disobey, rather than fall into the clutches of Monsieur Lafitte.

  If all goes well, I won’t have to worry about that, Kendra reminded herself. And it will only go well if I pay attention to what I’m doing.

  In the moist, tropical night, crickets and frogs scraped and sang. Birds furled their crests. Somewhere nearby, water splashed. Kendra paid attention to it all, but allowed nothing to disturb her concentration.

  The Chosen One guided herself toward the encampment of the Devil Baron by the light of the gauzy moon, veiled and mysterious, what Mr. Zabuto called “an occult moon.” Monkeys cackled in the distance.

  The pace of the drums increased; the timbre deepened, like gods tossing waves against the shore. They thrummed through the tree trunks and the feet and teeth of the Slayer.

  The forest transformed.

  Palms drooped, burdened by the sounds. The forest thrashed and protested, and changed, no longer a friend to the Slayer, but an adversary that sought to block her path. Vines trailed across her feet; branches scratched her chest.

  Birds swooped on her as if to take a nip.

  She stayed calm. She was used to the hostile vibrations that emanated from black magicks. As a new Slayer, she had a lot to remember, a lot to learn, and a lot to prove. Around the earthly world, powerful followers of the dark forces were waiting for the results of her first few battles as the reigning Slayer. If she failed tonight, yet survived, they would be on her like locusts.

  If she died, they would rejoice and thank their evil deities.

  Now the wind picked up as she crept within the vicinity of the camp. Flashes of firelight and vivid color swept past her field of vision, obscured by the intermittent waving of ferns.

 
Kendra crouched, and peered through the foliage.

  Wearing traditional African-inspired dress, the baron’s people were dancing around a bonfire. Their shoulders jerked and shook; their hips swiveled lasciviously. All of them were barefoot and the women had wrapped turbans in parrot hues around their heads.

  Bare-chested men leaped through tongues of flame—not over the tall height of the inner flames, which roared over ten feet if not more—and whooped as they put out the smoldering portions of their khaki-colored trousers.

  Kendra edged closer.

  Behind the bonfire stood a hut with a darkened doorway. Mr. Zabuto had explained that Mirielle would probably be inside the hut, restrained, if not drugged. If Kendra could execute a surprise attack and get her out of there, so much the better. But she had a few other chances to save the woman before it was too late.

  The drumming increased in rhythm and vibration, until Kendra sensed the pulsations through her body, through her veins themselves. That was a form of sympathetic magick, Mr. Zabuto had explained. If she ignored it, it would eventually go away.

  The rhythm sped faster, faster. Her heart raced and perspiration poured down her face. To her right, a boa constrictor stretched its coils around the trunk of a mango tree, as if reminding Kendra that the night held many dangers, both natural and unnatural.

  The throng rippled, and a cheer rose up.

  Something swayed in the doorway of the hut. The dark silhouette of a woman in a full, lacy gown with full, curly hair tumbling down to her shoulders appeared.

  Mirielle, Kendra thought. My target.

  Suddenly, the drums picked up. Everyone shouted once, loudly, and a looming shape rose up behind the woman. It wore a huge, glowing mask. It was painted purple, green, and white, the distortion of a man’s features primitive and sophisticated. Its eyes were misshapen and its mouth, a maw. Knives planted inside the mouth caught the firelight and threw rainbow glints on the bark and leaves of the surrounding trees.

  Then the masked figure raised its hands to the sky and chanted in a language Kendra didn’t know. Lightning flashed and thunder roared; the dancers lifted their hands as well.