RETURN to CHAOS Read online

  “You’re going to leave Giles as a statue?”

  “Oh, you’re right. It would be easier to just put him to sleep.”

  George nodded toward Giles without turning his gaze from Willow. The librarian moaned and fell gently to the floor.

  “Willow.” George smiled gently. “I cannot think of a more appropriate name for what must be done.”

  Willow looked around. The Druid had her backed against a shelf of books. “Uh, I think I really should be staying here—”

  “I’m sorry. That is no longer under your control.” He frowned for an instant as his index finger touched his brow. “Willow—Rosenberg, that is correct? You are about to do a very important thing. You are about to save the world.”

  Oh, Willow thought. That doesn’t sound so bad.

  “I promise you there will be no pain.”

  Where is Buffy when you need her?

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer™

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  RETURN to CHAOS

  CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

  POCKET BOOKS

  New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

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  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-3139-1

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  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  This one’s for Barbara and Connie (the secret Goth girls)

  Prologue

  EVERYTHING WOULD BE BLOOD AND FIRE.

  They were all so simple, so easy to manipulate. The humans were so young, so inexperienced. What kind of knowledge could you gain if you were only given a lifespan of eighty years?

  The common vampires were little better. When the first signs of his plan became evident, most of them scattered, leaving the Hellmouth behind, frightened of the power that would come. But moving a few short miles away—moving a continent away—would not save any from his wrath.

  The vampires who remained—the foolish, the naive, the inexperienced—these he would use. The humans, no matter their backgrounds or their supposed knowledge, he would use so much more easily.

  Already, he could sense the beginning of the change. His plan, years in the making but an instant in his existence, was gathering force. He could feel the minions of chaos nibbling at the edges of reality. Others less trained than he might sense it soon, but none would be able to discern his true purpose until it was far too late.

  And what of the Slayer?

  He smiled at that. What irony that the very nature of things would change in the Slayer’s own backyard. The Slayer was charged with protecting the world. But when chaos had returned and he was lord of all, the world that the Slayer knew—the world of families and work and high school, the world of human emotions and concerns—would cease to exist.

  What would the Slayer protect then?

  He decided he would let the Slayer live long enough to see the change; to realize that humans still existed only to serve the whims of the lord of chaos, that he would decide whether they would live or die or go mad. And most of them would certainly go mad. Not that this caused him undue worry. Mad or sane, their blood was still the same.

  Only when the Slayer knew the true hopelessness of all that surrounded her—only then would he destroy her. Would he kill her? Would he make her one of his own?

  Whatever he decided, it would be a most delicious choice.

  Chapter 1

  HE SAW IT FIRST IN THE SHADOWS: MOVEMENT IN THE places where the streetlights no longer reached. Quick movement, with hardly any noise. He knew what that meant.

  They were being followed by vampires.

  Xander Harris sighed. Why did nighttime strolls through Sunnydale always have to come to this?

  One of those following them stepped out of the darkness. He just stood there, waiting for their approach. This, Xander thought, is also not a good sign. But then, vampires and good signs weren’t exactly the Doublemint Twins.

  “Don’t look now,” he announced to the young woman walking at his side. “Unidentified Walking Creep at ten o’clock.”

  Buffy Summers frowned back at her friend. “Ten o’clock. Where’s that?”

  Xander pointed up at the next corner. “Actually, he’s standing under that lamppost.” He glanced at his watch. “My mistake. He’s standing there at 10:17.”

  Buffy nodded as she regarded the large, pale fellow who waited farther up the street. “I’ve noticed a little activity out in the bushes. That’s definite vampire material. And check out those clothes.”

  Xander saw what she meant. The silent, hulking figure wore a dented football helmet, dirty jeans, and a torn, yellow jersey sporting the number thirteen. Xander guessed that was appropriate. Unlucky thirteen. When you were a vampire, Buffy was definitely bad luck.

  “Play seventeen,” the vampire called.

  “What?” Buffy quickly rummaged through the large bag she often carried at night. “What does ‘play seventeen’ mean?”

  “Maybe he just got back from Las Vegas,” Xander suggested. Actually, he had no idea what the words meant. So, as usual, he made a joke.

  Of course, Xander wasn’t exactly the football-player type. After the less-than-wonderful time he’d had on the high school swim team—what with almost being turned into a fish monster and all—he’d sworn off high school athletics for good.

  Buffy made a Good!-I’ve-found-it! sound as she glanced up from her bag. “Too bad he’s about six months early for football season.”

  “Looking at his clothes,” Xander replied, “I’d say he was about ten years too late.”

  “Play seventeen!” the football guy shouted this time. It echoed down the silent street. Xander noticed the shadows moving again.

  “Is that all he says?” Buffy remarked as she pulled free one of the sharpened wooden stakes she always kept handy.

  “Mayb
e he stopped one-too-many plays with his head,” Xander suggested.

  Buffy smiled grimly as she stood, stake in hand.

  “I think,” she said softly, “that his playing days are just about over.”

  “Play seventeen!” the big lug announced one more time. He waited, looking to either side. Besides the three of them, the street stayed empty.

  “Stood up again, huh?” Buffy called. “I tell you, blind dates can be really disappointing.”

  The vampire looked startled, as if he never expected anyone to talk to him in that sort of tone. Buffy took a step forward, stake in hand.

  With your basic bestial roar, the vampire rushed to meet her.

  Buffy ran to intercept him halfway, her actions a simple mix of the finest Olympic gymnastics combined with the moves of a Jackie Chan. Every time Xander saw her in action, it still was incredible.

  Her rapid approach took the vampire by surprise, too. He made a noise halfway between a shout and a growl, charging forward like he was trying to take out the quarterback. Buffy simply cartwheeled out of the way as the vampire lumbered past.

  The big fellow staggered to a halt as Buffy spun about, ready for his next charge. He turned very quickly for one so large, and rushed to meet her. But Buffy was already into her windup, plunging the wooden stake right into the vampire’s heart.

  He disintegrated, turning in an instant from a marauding bloodsucker into a bursting pile of dust.

  “He had some moves. Too bad they were all wrong.” Xander breathed a sigh of relief. No matter how many times he and Buffy ran into this sort of trouble, he’d never get used to it. Well, he reassured himself, they are vampires, after all. This sort of thing could be even more terrifying than high school.

  “Uh, Xander?” Buffy called. It was the Slayer’s turn to point. “It looks like he brought more of the team.”

  Three other hulking figures had gathered under the streetlight. If anything, their football uniforms were more torn and disgusting than that of the recently departed number thirteen.

  But Xander had other things to worry about, like a rustling, stomping noise in the bushes behind him. Xander was not big on things moving in the bushes. Or, with all that noise, maybe the things were just plain moving the bushes.

  The three vampires under the streetlight ran forward. They didn’t make any sound at all. Actually, it’s worse when they don’t make any noise. It looked like Buffy would have her hands and feet full for the next few minutes.

  Xander turned around.

  He saw seven or eight large shapes coming forward through the undergrowth. Even before they stepped free of the shadows, Xander knew what they were. Old number thirteen had brought the whole team. If not for the different colors and numbers on their jerseys, they might have been exact copies of the bloodsuckers Buffy had already faced.

  “Hey, fellas,” Xander called. If he couldn’t beat them, maybe he could distract them. “A little late for a scrimmage, huh?”

  The football team paused and stared at him. Well, the distraction bit was working so far. Well, sort of. The whole group of them had begun to growl.

  “Sort of mad you didn’t get those endorsement contracts, huh?” Xander offered.

  Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. They lumbered forward with a collective roar. He guessed football-playing vampires were not big on subtlety.

  Xander took a few quick steps backward. He depended on Buffy for most of the slaying. And Buffy was pretty busy.

  Oh, Xander had managed to kill a vampire or two, mostly by accident. He’d also gotten knocked out, roughed up, and almost killed. He expected, facing a half-dozen vampires, that getting killed was the real option here.

  The vampires formed a ragged line as they crashed past the bushes. As they came into the light, Xander saw there were a lot more than a half-dozen of them. Like, really the whole team. He was not only going to get killed, he was going to be ripped apart. And then they were going to use his head for a football.

  “Excuse me, mate!”

  Someone—male, young, maybe Xander’s age, his head and upper torso hidden by a hood and a flowing cape—had run between Xander and the football line. The newcomer had something in his hands—it looked like a crossbow—and quickly shot a pair of those little arrow things—bolts, yeah, that’s what they were called—at the two nearest vamps.

  Both vampires staggered back, disintegrating a second later. Whoever the mystery man was, he had great aim.

  He also had the rest of the team after him. Xander was forgotten as the vampires rushed the real threat. The mystery guy somersaulted past their first clumsy attack, rolling to a crouch beneath a tree to release another pair of wooden bolts. And he was doing all this in a flowing cape. If Xander ever tried something like that, he would already have tripped and shot himself. Who is this guy—Batman?

  Two more vampires bit the dust.

  “Xander!”

  Xander looked over to where Buffy had just impaled the last of her assailants with a dead tree branch.

  “Yeah!” he called back to her. “We’ve got some action over here, too! Somebody new has—”

  Buffy had rushed over to join in the attack before Xander could finish his explanation. The mystery guy shot another pair as Buffy kicked a third vampire in the stomach. Xander was feeling pretty useless.

  But, hey. The superstars might be on the field, but they needed an equipment guy, didn’t they? Xander squatted next to Buffy’s bag and fished out another pair of stakes.

  “Buffy!” Xander called as his friend went whirling past. He held a sharpened stake in either hand. He felt, more than saw, her pull them away. An instant later, two more of the bloodsuckers were dead.

  As, he realized, were all the others. Dead, that is. Mr. Hood-and-cape silently regarded the now quiet and empty street. That was one nice thing about vampires. Since they disintegrated once they were staked, there was no messy cleanup afterward.

  Buffy smiled at the newcomer. “Hey, thanks. But we haven’t been introduced.”

  The stranger shook his hooded head.

  “I shouldn’t be here!”

  He turned and, with three quick strides, disappeared into the shadows.

  Buffy and Xander were alone.

  Buffy sighed. “Oh, well. Just another night in the Hellmouth.”

  Chapter 2

  JOYCE SUMMERS HEARD THE KEY IN THE FRONT DOOR.

  “Buffy? Is that you?”

  It had to be Buffy, of course. Only Joyce and her daughter had a key. She wasn’t really asking if Buffy was home. She was really asking what shape her daughter was in.

  It was a part of Buffy’s job—that nighttime patrol. But every second or third night, Joyce would look at her daughter and see the danger Buffy was in. It usually wasn’t much—a black-and-blue mark on her arm, a cut on her cheek—but Joyce felt every bruise personally.

  Buffy healed remarkably fast. She’d look like she had just been in the fight of her life at 11 P.M., then look perfectly fine the following morning. Joyce knew it had something to do with her being the Chosen One. Or the Slayer. She shivered every time she thought of that last word.

  Once they had let Joyce in on their secret, both Buffy and Giles had tried to explain it to her. And she guessed she did understand it somewhat—intellectually at least. Emotionally? That was another matter.

  Only one in every generation was chosen, apparently, one who would push back the forces of darkness. It was a great honor, Joyce supposed. Why does it have to be my daughter?

  It was difficult enough moving to a new town, trying to start up a business. Not that her gallery was doing badly. There was something about Sunnydale, some devil-may-care attitude that let people take chances, and that included buying art. But establishing a new business was very time consuming. In their first year or so here, Joyce was afraid she gave far too much time to her business and far too little to her daughter. How else could she not have suspected what was going on? It was only after Buffy had run away
from home that Joyce had learned the truth. Now, all she had to do was learn to accept it and find a way to talk to her daughter so she would never feel she needed to run away again.

  “Buffy?” she called again.

  “Yeah, Mom,” her daughter replied in an exhausted voice as she shuffled down the hall toward the kitchen.

  Joyce bit her lower lip as Buffy came into view. Her daughter’s pants were torn, and she had a long, ragged scrape running from her left wrist to her elbow. Her blond hair looked like it had been tossed three different ways in a wind tunnel, and her pretty face was marred by a half-dozen smudges, a couple of which looked like blood.

  Joyce took a deep breath and tried on her best understanding-mother smile. “Rough night?”

  “The worst,” her daughter agreed. She gave her mother a quick glance with those piercing blue eyes of hers, as if realizing she might be being too honest. She shrugged. “Not that I was in any real danger or anything.”

  Joyce really didn’t want to know any details. Her imagination was just much too vivid when it came to things happening to her daughter. Still, they needed to keep on talking. And one of the best ways to communicate was to show an interest in your child’s pastimes. All the best books said so.

  Joyce swallowed. “Vampires?”

  Buffy nodded. “The usual, except this time they were wearing football helmets.”

  “Football helmets.” Joyce considered this. “Football playing vampires?”

  “We’ve got all kinds in Sunnydale.”

  Joyce decided she wanted to change the subject.