Chapter 1
LIFE GOES ON, BUFFY THOUGHT SADLY AS , WILLOW Rosenberg looked up from the computer in the school library and grimaced. Or not.
“Another one, Buffy,” she said unhappily.
They sat in the gloomy stillness of the large, musty room. The books that Giles loved so much were dusty from disuse. Very few Sunnydale High students ever used the library, making it the perfect Slayer’s HQ. Over the years, it had become Buffy’s home away from home, but never a refuge. She’d gotten wind of more dire prophesies, end of the world scenarios, and various other forms of bad news here than she ever wanted to think about.
And here was more.
It had been a week since Buffy’s first bad dream. She had had a similar one every night, and she was slagged. But what was worse was that the homicide rate in Sunnydale had risen very sharply in that week, and the murders were brutal in the extreme.
And there seemed to be no way she could stop them.
Standing behind Willow, Oz put his hand on her shoulder as the two studied the computer screen. “You might not want to click on that window.” To Buffy, he added, “The one labeled ’Autopsy Photos.’”
Nevertheless, Willow clicked. “Not if you want to keep your breakfast,” Willow said, growing pale. She touched Oz’s hand and he squeezed her shoulder. “Skip it, Buffy.”
“No. I have to look.” Buffy got up from her chair and steeled herself. “So I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”
“You still won’t know,” Oz said. “Trust me on this one.”
Buffy cleared her throat and he moved aside.
She stared at the screen. Felt everything inside her heave. She tried to swallow, and couldn’t. Without really seeing where she was going, she managed to sit back in her chair.
The library doors opened, and Xander called cheerily, “Anybody for lunch?”
Rupert Giles came out of his office, looked at Buffy, and said to Willow and Oz, “You two go on ahead.”
Willow spoke for both of them. “We’re not hungry.”
“Still,” Oz murmured, taking Willow’s hand.
Willow looked puzzled. Then she glanced at Giles, raised her brows, and said, “Oh. Yes. Going now.”
They walked away, leaving Buffy with her Watcher. He perched on the edge of the study table and folded his hands, leaning toward her with an expression of concern on his face.
She folded her arms over her chest and said, “You’re going to tell me those murders are not my fault. Again.”
“Yes. Until you believe it.” He cocked his head. “Buffy, I truly believe these recent killings are the work of a madman. A garden-variety, mortal madman. Not a supernatural madman. The police should be good for something, don’t you think?”
She guffawed bitterly. He shrugged, took off his glasses, and polished them.
“Giles, evil is evil. How can you separate it into stuff I handle and stuff I don’t? Did you see those pictures?”
“Yes.” He regarded her. “You’re exhausted, Buffy. It’s dangerous to put yourself at risk taking on burdens which don’t belong to you. Heaven knows you have enough responsibilities. I want you to stay out of this.”
She frowned at him. “But Giles, how can you say this is something normal? It’s so not.”
“Nevertheless,” he said, and then his phone rang. He went into his office to get it.
Buffy took the opportunity to make a break for it. She called out, “I’m catching up with the gang,” and hurried out of the library.
Oz and Willow were holding hands and Xander was trailing behind them. They all looked pleased to see her, and she brightened a little.
Willow said, “Need to talk?”
Buffy shrugged. “Naw. I’m fine.” She looked at each of them in turn. “Really.”
They looked back at her. “Okay,” Willow said, but she looked a little hurt.
* * *
School was out, and she was free.
She was only eight years old, and she was not supposed to ride her new two-wheeler any farther than the entrance to the reservoir. But the shiny lavender-and-pink bicycle was like a magic pony that could take her anywhere in Sunnydale, and she wanted to see the water.
The license plate on the front of her bike said Lindsey in strawberry-colored letters. The pink and white plastic streamers fluttered from the handlebars as she excitedly pumped the pedals.
She zoomed past the gate and waved at Mr. Bitterman, the chubby man who worked there. He and his wife knew her mom and dad from church. Her daddy said they did not get along very well.
“Hey, Lindsey, new wheels?” he asked. He was sweating in the heat.
“Yup.”
She skidded to a stop, nearly falling off, and put her foot down just in time. Then she carefully flipped down the kickstand and parked.
She started to head for the little building where the bathrooms were, but he hurried over and said, “The toilets are closed today. We had a backup.”
“Ew,” she said.
He chuckled and crossed his arms over his chest, watching her as she meandered down to the water’s edge, stepping over pebbles and some reeds that had washed up.
“It’ll be getting dark,” Mr. Bitterman said. “You should go home.”
“Not for a long time,” she answered, but he was an adult, so she had to do what he said.
“Go on, now, honey.” He gave her a smile and walked toward the bathrooms.
As she turned to leave, something caught the glint of the long afternoon sun. She bent down to retrieve it from the shallow water. It was a pretty little bottle with sparkles on the top. It was empty.
She held it up and inspected it. It wasn’t quite empty. There was some kind of blue liquid inside.
Maybe it’s perfume.
She popped off the top.
Hurry, sundown.
Jordan Smyth was on sched and in control. He was jamming. He was fresh. This was a new gig, and so far it was très/ cool.
He scratched his shaved head as he followed Willy the Snitch down to the basement of the Alibi, Sunnydale’s ragtag loser bar. The lightbulb on a string over his head caught the glint of the signet ring Brian Dellasandro had given him in partial payment for the wicked high he had sold him. Never mind that the initials were “M.D.” Jordan figured Brian had swiped it from his little brother, Mark.
Jordan practically whistled as he and Willy wound through the tunnels to the secret rooms that were carved like caves out of the rock.
And there they were, just like before, the blond Englishman with the goatee and his beautiful, dark lady. The one they called the Queen. They had some candles going, very Goth, and he chuckled at their need for drama.
The Englishman turned and smiled at the visitors. “Good evening.”
“Hiya,” Willy replied, with a little bob of his head. “I, uh, got customers upstairs.” Willy was afraid of his new renters. He was sorry he’d let them move in down here. But Jordan knew better. These were really fine people.
As in, useful.
“Yes, leave us,” the blond man said, dismissing the bartender.
Willy scampered away. Jordan joined in the looks of contempt on the faces of the couple.
The man looked Jordan over. “Willy was right to bring you to us.”
Jordan had done a few illegal things for Willy, bought stuff for some of the bar patrons, fenced stuff for others. Half of it, Jordan didn’t even know what it was. Willy had suggested he work for “the newcomers,” and now Jordan realized it was because Willy wanted to put as much distance between them and himself as possible. Which was stupid. These people were rich.
The Queen touched his forehead, tracing her long fingernails down to the corner of his mouth. Jeweled rings glittered in the candlelight.
“You gave the Madness Potion to our contact?” the woman said.
Jordan nodded, chuckling to himself at her use of the word “potion.” Drugs were drugs no matter what fancy name you gave them. He was cool with that.
He’d dealt before, and he’d deal again.
What he didn’t mention was that he had also sold one of the vials to a customer of his, name of Brian Dellasandro. In return, Brian had given him the ring. But they didn’t need to know about his private side deals.
The man looked pleased. “Now Sunnydale will scream.”
Jordan wasn’t sure what that meant, but he let it go for now.
The man smiled at Jordan again. “There’s an art gallery in town. It has something that belongs to us. Something that was stolen from us a long time ago.”
Jordan squared his shoulders proudly and tugged at the row of earrings in his left ear. It was an old habit and he didn’t care at all about breaking it. He had a lot of habits.
Some of them were expensive.
He announced, “I’ve done time for robbery.”
The man’s smile grew. “I know.”
The Queen wrinkled her nose at him. “We have a group here. It’s like a family. Part of the reason we came here was to look for people who might fit into our family.” She flattened her hand on his chest. He caught his breath. Her fingers were ice-hot.
“People who need people. People like you,” she continued.
Her voice was calm and sexy, and it wrapped around Jordan like a silken scarf.
“I’ve got a family. On the streets,” he said, raising his chin. He was Jordan Smyth — with a Y — and he didn’t need anybody. Needing was for losers.
The blond man snapped his fingers. Some weird scarred guy came out of the darkness with two cups filled With something that smelled a little rank. The man handed one of the cups to Jordan and kept one for himself. Jordan looked down. The liquid was thick and kind of brownish-red. His stomach rolled. It looked like blood.
“So, are you two, like, boyfriend and girlfriend?” Jordan asked contemptuously, to hide his fear.
“One thing you’ll learn in our family,” the man said, “is that there’s a lot of room in our hearts for many people. Many different kinds of relationships.”
Then the Queen trailed her fingernails down Jordan’s stomach. Jordan reacted, he couldn’t help it, but he kept the mental part of himself away from her. He was a good-looking guy. Maybe not too lucky, up until now. He’d gotten himself kicked out of Sunnydale High, but he still hung around. Nobody would have much to do with him, though. They were all too busy trying to make it, not realizing most of them were going to end up in a dead-end life in this dead-end town.
Not him, though. He had just gotten himself connected.
“Will you break into the gallery for us?” the man asked. “I’ll reward you. Well.”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
He got the gun out of the storage cabinet in the garage.
Take them out.
He loaded it.
He lurched down the hall.
He opened the bedroom door and aimed the weapon at the first sleeping body.
He pulled the trigger.
Kill them.
Stuff splattered all over him.
His mother jerked awake with a shriek, saw what he had done, and started screaming.
None of it registered: not that this was his mother, or that he had just blasted his father into the dead zone. He pulled the trigger again, and as her body was thrown against the wall by the impact, he pulled it again and again.
The modest three-bedroom, two-bath Dellasandro house sat on the outskirts of town in a tract called Sunnydale Estates that had not made it. For some reason, no one wanted to live there. As a result, only a few houses were built, and they were far apart from each other. The Dellasandro house was surrounded by empty lots, where kids congregated to drink and make out until either Brian’s father chased them away or the police drove by and made them scatter.
By two-thirty on this Friday morning, they were all long gone. So the gunfire went unheard and unnoticed throughout the sleeping town of Sunnydale.
As did Brian’s shuffling, stiff-legged gait as he headed mindlessly toward town.
There was nothing in his brain but fury; nothing in his heart but rage. He wiped his mouth, barely aware that he had a mouth. His Hellboy T-shirt and blue sweatpants were splattered with blood and gore, but he didn’t notice as he cradled the gun across his abdomen. He was barefoot, but he didn’t feel the warm sidewalk.
The hot winds blew, and perhaps he was aware of them, for he threw back his head and howled like a wolf. Then he laughed deep in his throat, a feral, edgy laughter that was nothing like the pleasant laughter of Brian Dellasandro, a popular boy, an excellent student.
Portions of his mother’s brain were matted in his chestnut brown hair.
It was a long walk to the school, but it was only two forty-five A.M.
Brian would arrive well in time for first period.
“Take ’em out,” he whispered to himself.
His finger caressed the trigger and he trembled with the need to empty a clip into the calico cat trotting across the street. At the next corner, a few pieces of stray lava rock from Mrs. Gibson’s front yard cut into the soles of his feet. Then he stepped on a broken beer bottle as he stumbled from the curb, but he didn’t so much as blink.
He staggered on, leaving a trail of blood.
Overhead, the pink moon was tossed by the winds and the stars were sizzling. When Brian looked up at them, they jittered and blurred, and they told him to kill anything that moved.
“You talked to Mr. Giles about your dreams,” Joyce Summers ventured, as she and Buffy sat in the kitchen in the middle of the night.
Buffy was not into talking about it. “Yeah.”
They finished their bowls of ice cream in silence. Then Joyce suggested microwaving some popcorn.
“What’s with these munchies?” Buffy asked, smiling finally, as her mother rooted for the last envelope of low-fat butter flavor.
“Look, we forgot about the vanilla wafers,” Joyce said, displaying the box like a spokesmodel. “Shall we bag the popcorn and stick with sugar?”
Buffy shrugged, amused. “Sure.”
As her mother opened the box, Buffy glanced at the clock and stifled a yawn. It was almost four. But she didn’t want to go back to bed. Bed meant sleeping. Sleeping meant nightmares. There really was no point.
“Good grief, it’s already so hot,” Joyce said. It’s going to be a scorcher today. Remember in L.A. when . . .“
But Buffy wasn’t listening. Someone was moving past their house. Somebody walking way too fast, and not in a straight line. Drunk maybe.
But maybe not.
“Mom, stay here, okay? Stay in the kitchen,” Buffy said, getting to her feet.
“Buffy?” Joyce asked, but did as Buffy requested as her daughter unlocked the kitchen door and walked out into the yard.
It was a little girl in a nightgown. Buffy vaulted down the driveway and over a bush. She landed in front of the girl.
“Hi,” Buffy said cheerily. “Sleepwalking?”
A growl tore out of the girl’s throat and she launched herself at Buffy. Buffy grabbed her hands, which were drawn into claws, and said, “Whoa, jump back, little frog! Wake up!”
The girl fought and struggled, baring her teeth as if she wanted to rip Buffy’s face off. She didn’t look like a vampire. Her skin was pink and her teeth were just regulation humanoid teeth. But one never knew.
Buffy shot a glance around her perimeter for a weapon, and broke a fairly sizable branch off the bush she had jumped over. It wasn’t sturdy, but in the hands of the Slayer, even a No. 2 pencil could turn a vampire into dust.
“Back off, okay?” Buffy said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The girl raked Buffy’s cheek with her fingernails. Buffy batted her hand out of the way and threw her to the ground. Straddling her, she held the branch over her head while she pressed the girl on her back with a firm hand over her carotid artery.
There was a pulse. That rules out vampire. But not much else . . .
Then her mom was at the door, shouting,
“Buffy, stop! That’s Lindsey Acuff!”
Buffy didn’t let go of the branch, but she didn’t impale the girl with it, either. The gift thrashed and struggled, and Buffy was afraid she was going to have to knock her out.
“Whatever’s come over her?” Joyce rose. “Let’s take her inside.”
“Good idea.” Buffy kept her eye on Lindsey. “You get the door and I’ll carry her —”
“Ouch!” Joyce cried out.
“Mom?” Buffy said, turning her head to see what had happened.
In that moment of distraction, Lindsey pushed Buffy away, leaped up, and rammed into Joyce. With a wild scream, she bit Joyce hard on the shoulder. Then she bolted and tore down the sidewalk for all she was worth.
“Hey!” Buffy shouted, but concern for her mother reluctantly took precedence over catching the girl.
Buffy bent over her, to find her mother holding the wound as blood seeped between her fingers. She looked a little gray. She said, “I’m sorry I distracted you. I stepped on a sprinkler head.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Buffy said, easing her mother to a standing position and slinging Joyce’s arm over her shoulders. “My bad. I should have paid better attention.”
“My God.” Joyce’s voice was shocked, breathy. “My God.”
“It’s just another night on the Hellmouth,” Buffy said grimly, as she slowly walked her mother to the open kitchen door. But it wasn’t, not when her mother was involved.
She really hated this place. Exiled from Los Angeles for burning down the gym at her old school, Hemery High, Buffy had not loved moving to this “one-Starbucks town,” as Xander had once put it. But her mom had snagged a great opportunity in the form of the town’s art gallery, and they had to live somewhere. How were either of them to know that the Chosen One had been destined to end up in a town called Boca del Infierno by the Spanish explorers who settled them? The mouth of Hell was what it was, a mystical convergence that both drew and expelled demons and all other manner of ooky bad guys.
Thus preventing the Slayer from wasting her time with frivolities like going to school on any kind of consistent basis; dating anyone who didn’t like the notion of their girlfriend running out of the Sun Cinema in the middle of Shakespeare in Love without being able to explain; shopping, or being anything like she had been in L.A.: Fiesta Queen, a cheerleader, a party animal, and a shallow, spoiled brat.