Big Bad, page 5
Andrew cleared his throat and held up an index finger. “There is. . .one more thing. Warren was in the middle of Ascending into a demon. Maybe she wanted to stop the second coming of Shaak’garar?”
“The Scorpion King?” Angelus scoffed. “All of the insectoid Old Ones eventually go mad from the leakage of their own venom sacs. He’s better off dead.”
“Hey! That’s our friend you’re talking about!” Jonathan said, anger overtaking sense. Warren wasn’t better off dead. He was the only reason that Andrew and Jonathan had survived in Demondale this long. “He didn’t deserve to die!”
Angelus frowned, confused. “Didn’t you kill him?”
“The slayer made me!” Jonathan said, his voice coming off as whiny even to his own ears.
Anya slid herself onto the closest stool, propping her elbows on the bar and squinting at the draft taps.
“Can I get a pint of Black Frost?” she asked Spike, the blond bartender. “Go ahead and start me a tab.”
“Sure thing,” Spike said. He retrieved a fresh glass from under the counter, flipping it in the air and catching it under the tap. “You want a bloomin’ onion with that? Best thing on the menu. And they’re half price through happy hour.”
“Oh, that does sound good,” Anya said. She wet her lips in apparent relish and slapped a couple of bills down on the bar. “Half price. I’ll take one. I’ll be here for a while. You know how long it takes for vengeance demons to get drunk.”
“That I do,” Spike said, inclining his head to her as he gathered the cash. “I’ll keep the drinks coming, then, shall I?”
“Please,” Anya said. “I’ve got a pocketful of cash just waiting to become a hangover.”
“What?” Andrew asked, his face pinched. “You aren’t giving up on searching for the slayer already? Just like that?”
“Like this,” Anya said. She accepted the ice-cold cup of quitting from Spike and raised it in cheers to Jonathan and Andrew.
“But what about Warren?” Jonathan asked, helplessly.
“You killed him.” Anya shrugged, licking away her beer foam mustache.
“By accident!” Jonathan yelled. Panic tightened his chest. He couldn’t just sit back and eat happy-hour snacks. The only reason he’d agreed to brave the inside of this godforsaken club was so that they could get the gem back from the slayer and get Warren back from the dead. If Anya gave up, then all hope was lost.
This never would have happened to Warren. He would have known exactly what to say to make the vampires believe him and to make Anya agree to keep searching for answers. Jonathan struggled to imagine how Warren would respond to this situation. He would have been effortlessly authoritative, cool, and threatening. Like Magneto.
“We paid you!” Jonathan said, prodding Anya in the shoulder. “You promised us a Wish, and you promised your supervisor you’d look for the gem.”
“And I looked,” Anya said, exasperated. Her beer glass clinked against the bar. White froth sloshed over the rim. “We followed our lead, boys. I’m done playing detective. As long as that little girl has the Marnoxon gem, I have no magic. That means no portal-hopping, no telekinesis, no Wish-granting. I’m basically as useless as you two. Except prettier. And with the good wristband. All I can do is wait and see if the slayer makes any more trouble in Demondale. But if I were her, I would cruise into a pocket dimension where slayers are queen shit of the universe and stay there.”
Onstage, the music was cut off by a bloodcurdling wail. Thrashing in the fabric of her own skirt, the vampire singer fell to the floor. The microphone landed with a thud beside her, amplifying her horrified, helpless keening. Rose petals shredded to mulch in her hands. Screams rent the air as her face flickered between vampire and human guises, both contorted into masks of abject despair.
In an instant, Spike was jumping over the bar. One of his leather motorcycle boots kicked over Anya’s beer moments before he shoved past Jonathan and Andrew. Audience members flew against the walls as Spike bum-rushed the stage screaming “Dru!”
“Time,” the vampire girl shrieked between sobs. “Time is dying!”
“Don’t mind Drusilla,” Angelus told Anya. He shook out a towel and mopped up her spilled beer. “Just one of her fits. That’s the trouble with having an insane clairvoyant in the house band. It’s my own fault.”
“Did you know she was insane when you hired her?” Andrew asked. Jonathan fought the urge to clamp his hand over his friend’s mouth. If Andrew could tamp down his undead curiosity for a minute, the vampire girl’s freak-out would have been the perfect cover for the two of them to sneak out of the Bronze unnoticed. But Andrew couldn’t help himself. Vampires were his current chief obsession, taking the top slot from Legend of Zelda and the Star Wars expanded universe. He just couldn’t shut up about them when the opportunity presented itself. No matter how dangerous that opportunity might be.
“Of course I knew,” Angelus said. He blinked rapidly, seemingly perplexed by the question. “I’m the one who tortured the sense out of her.”
Jonathan felt faint. He dug his fingernails into his palms, doing his best to stay alert. If he lost consciousness, there was no way he’d live long enough to leave the club.
Angelus glanced over at Anya. “Can I pour you another Black Frost?”
“Please,” Anya said with an easy smile, as though vampires confessed to torturing each other every day. Maybe they did. Jonathan knew that plenty of vamps were regular customers at Best Pressed Juicery. Andrew was always coming home with stories of customers who paid in ancient coins or who were so recently turned that they still had the fang marks on their necks.
Under the stage lights, Drusilla shrieked and clawed at her face until red rivulets wept down her forehead and cheeks.
“Stop her!” Drusilla screamed, staring up, unseeing, at the ceiling, even as Spike made it onstage and scooped her up. She pitched in his arms, wailing, “Stop the slayer!”
His brow creased in a pained furrow, Angelus released the beer tap, leaving Anya’s fresh pint half-filled. There was no sign of his mocking smile now. His eyes were hard and appraising as his gaze traveled evenly over Jonathan and Andrew.
“You better come with me.”
The band’s name—Drusilla and the Dollies—made a lot more sense after Angelus ushered Jonathan, Andrew, and Anya backstage into the singer’s dressing room. The walls were thick with dolls. Porcelain dolls so old that their skin was cracked and flaking. Barbies plucked bald. Baby dolls missing eyes. So many of them it was hard to see the shelves they were seated on.
Jonathan’s shoulders crept toward his ears. He had the overwhelming urge to pull his turtleneck over his face and run screaming in the other direction. Especially when he spotted Drusilla babbling on a red velvet fainting couch, her face continuing to flicker between human and vampire.
Spike knelt on the floor beside her, holding out a glass of blood. A pink Krazy Straw bobbed up and down in the gore.
“Relax,” he murmured, stroking the singer’s bumpy forehead as she cried out again. He nudged the Krazy Straw against the corner of her mouth. “Drink your juice, pet. It’ll pass.”
Jonathan had never seen a vampire show overt tenderness before. He looked down at his shoes, embarrassed to witness such a private moment.
Angelus obviously felt no such embarrassment. He strode into the dressing room, his shadow falling over Spike’s face.
“We don’t want the vision to pass, Spike,” the larger vampire rumbled. “It could be important.”
Spike’s eyes blazed at his employer, the gentle lover transformed into a menacing beast of prey in a blink. “Look at her, you massive-foreheaded git. She’s in anguish. And not the kind she enjoys.” He peered around Angelus at the group assembled in the door. “So, thank you for the snacks. You can leave the boys and take the girl back to the bar. Can’t you smell a vengeance demon when you meet one?”
“If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter!” Drusilla howled in a Cockney accent even thicker than her boyfriend’s. She slapped the Krazy Straw away from her face. “The bitter blood spills secrets, the slayer laps them up. Bitter batter secret keeper.”
Jonathan’s courage bottomed out. He spun on his heel, barreling into Anya, who forced him back into the room. It felt like being thrown into the lion’s cage at the zoo. Except with a million times more creepy dolls.
“They’re not snacks,” Angelus told Spike, gesturing at the door without looking back. “You think it’s a coincidence that these blood bags came in talking about the slayer and then Dru gets a vision of her? We need to know what she’s seeing.” He bent down, drawing Jonathan’s gaze to a miniature fainting couch. It was the same color and shape as the one Drusilla lay upon. A single porcelain doll was seated there. This doll, nicer than any on the walls, wore a dark pink silk dress trimmed with lace. Her blond hair was curled in the same style as Drusilla’s. Disconcertingly, her painted mouth was gagged with a red silk ribbon. Angelus handled the doll with great care, lifting it off the tiny chaise and holding it out to Drusilla. “Here you go, Dru. Why don’t you tell Miss Edith what you see? What’s coming?”
Jonathan held his breath, terrified at the idea of the doll coming to life, choking against her restraining ribbon. But Miss Edith only stared, inanimate.
Drusilla didn’t seem to notice that the doll was inert. Gripping Miss Edith’s arms, she drew the doll’s nose close to her own, transfixed by her painted eyes.
“Don’t you see, Miss Edith? The slayer is coming. And going,” Drusilla said, speaking softer for the doll’s ears. Her features flickered again and she set Miss Edith’s forehead against her own, rubbing the smooth porcelain against her vampire bumpiness. “She’s everywhere. Torturing demons and men for information. I can hear their screams echoing through time. There’s such exquisite rage in her, such hopelessness. So far from home and still running. She’s got a sack of toys like Father Christmas, but there will only be coal for presents. She means to unmake us, unravel our stitches. She’ll make it so we never are and never were.”
Jonathan didn’t like the sound of any of this. Being unmade sounded painful. He and Andrew exchanged a worried glance.
“Oh, you wicked dolly,” Drusilla said, giving Miss Edith a firm shake before plucking the ribbon off the doll’s face. It fluttered onto the floor next to Spike’s knee. “You knew, didn’t you? This is punishment for Mummy telling you to keep quiet. You’ll be pleased as punch to watch us all die, won’t you? But we’ll see who’s laughing when the slayer comes calling. You won’t exist either, my dear. We’ll all be squelched and swallowed by the great nothing.”
Angelus lifted the red ribbon, twining it between his pale fingers like a garrote. “What’s that about the great nothing? A new big, bad fellow in town?”
“Oh no,” Drusilla said, her head lolling toward Spike. Clamping down on the Krazy Straw, she sucked greedily. Pulling back to smack her lips, she sent a dreamy smile around the room. “There won’t be a town left when the slayer is done with us. She means to kill everyone in Demondale.”
With a wince, Spike turned to face Jonathan, Andrew, and Anya.
“So, uh.” He sucked his teeth. “What kind of magical item did you say the slayer stole from you?”
THE PORTAL DUMPS her onto a residential street she doesn’t recognize. Small houses and more chain-link than picket fences. She assumes she must be on the edge of the Docktown district. If there is a Docktown in this Hell on Earth.
Leaves cover the ground, choking the gutters in crispy orange and brown. Jack-o’-lanterns crowd porch steps. There’s a chill in the air.
Autumn.
The Slayer had nearly forgotten seasons. Without the sun, Demondale was always a temperate midnight, rarely warmer than sixty-five degrees. The first week after she was sent there, the Slayer couldn’t sleep a wink. She had been obsessed with waiting for the sun to rise. The morning hours would tick by—six, seven, eight o’clock—and the sky wouldn’t fade. The first Demondale vamp she slayed attacked her at ten-thirty in the morning. Ten-thirty! Vampires weren’t meant to walk around during brunch hours.
Not that the Slayer had been enjoying any brunches in Demondale. She has taken to robbing vamps before dusting them, just so she can buy fast food and tickets for the one bus with a route out of town. She would never feel safe enough under the sunshade to sleep there. In the month since she fell through her first portal, she’s only slept in broad daylight, on the bus or in the stiff-backed armchairs of the Santa Barbara Public Library. She’d slink back into Demondale when it was time to hunt. For information. For vampires. For vengeance demons.
If she ever gets home, she worries that she’ll never get used to sleeping in the dark again.
Here, in this new dimension, the sun is out. It isn’t warm, but it’s bright. Looking up and seeing blue sky rather than the matte-black disk of the sunshade is a relief. Even though there must be something evil enough to lure the magical staff here, the Slayer feels herself relax. How bad could anything be in broad daylight?
Daydreaming about a cardigan left behind in her closet, she wishes she had a change of clothes. Maybe if she sneaks over to Revello Drive, there will be a closet of similar clothes and similar smells and a similar mom to tuck her hair behind her ears and tell her everything is fine. . . .
But no. The staff has a singular purpose. Inside a portal, when the gem shows her the fork in the road leading to any Hell on Earth of her choosing, the staff is pliant. But once she makes her choice and leaps into a new world, it grows heavy and sluggish in her hands if she dares turn it in any direction other than the one it wants, like a compass with an attitude problem. She can follow it, or she can leave it behind, abandoning her mission.
The staff wouldn’t have brought her to this dimension if it weren’t evil. Who’s to say that Mom in this reality wouldn’t also be evil? That the clothes in her other self’s closet wouldn’t be off-brand, ill-fitting, or—God forbid—unstylish? Better to follow the plan and destroy it all. Once there’s nothing left to distract the staff’s evil sensor, the gem will have to ship her home. All she has to do is carve out the path for herself, one extinguished Black Flame at a time.
It’s either fight or live in Hell on Earth. Fighting is what she was born to do.
A black cat runs past her on silent paws, setting off a parked car to flash its lights without an alarm. Behind a short chain-link fence, a Rottweiler opens and closes its jaws in the pantomime of a bark. Where there should be noise, there is only silence. A silence that presses hard into the Slayer’s ears, blocking out everything but the sound of her own pulse. It’s as though there’s a finger on the lips of the whole neighborhood, a breath held while listening for approaching footsteps.
Welcome to Silentdale, she thinks, and a chill runs up her spine.
She’s all too happy to follow the staff’s urging and leave the sidewalk for the center of the street. There are no cars driving here, although she’s unsure if she would be able to hear their engines even if there were. The thought makes her paranoid. She looks repeatedly behind herself. Checking for jump scares.
Nervously moving forward, the Slayer whistles to keep herself company. She’s relieved at her own noise. The whistle is startlingly loud, echoing tunelessly through the empty neighborhood. But it’s better than the oppressive hush, so she keeps going, swishing the wizard staff in time. The movement helps push her forward, keeping her going even as a prickle in the back of her mind tells her that there’s something very wrong here.
Duh. Of course something’s wrong. Otherwise the staff wouldn’t have dropped her here.
At the end of the street, she finally sees another person. A girl with long braids and brown skin runs at full speed, eyes wide and hands waving.
Run! the girl mouths. They’re coming!
The Slayer stops walking, reaching out to the girl. “Who’s coming?” she asks. She wishes she knew sign language. Speaking out loud feels so rude, like shouting at someone who can’t speak English.
The girl mouths something else, gesturing first at her mouth and then at her chest. The Slayer repeats the gesture, hoping to discern its meaning. But, after a glance over her shoulder, the other girl is off and running again. Leaving the Slayer alone in the middle of the street, shivering, as an icy wind picks up the dead leaves in the gutter.
When she turns back, the Slayer finds the answer to her question.
Three loping figures, shaped like humans but hunched over in the postures of men in gorilla suits, elbows and knees akimbo. Their faces are bandaged like half-dressed mummies. Buckle-covered white coats are tight against their chests, but are so long in the arms that they flop against the asphalt. Only as they caper closer does the Slayer recognize the coats for what they are. Straitjackets. The dragging arms are meant to be fastened in the back, to hold their wearers prone.
Behind the straitjacketed figures are four besuited creatures that must be demons. Smiling horrible smiles on faces frozen and cadaverous. Whiter than even the palest vampire. So upright, with ramrod posture that reads as aristocratic rather than hellish. Their black suits are tailored to their tall, skeletal bodies. They float down the street. Actually float, like Thanksgiving Day balloons with shiny leather shoes six inches from the ground, casting shadows beneath.
The one in the center holds a sharp metal scalpel. The tallest has his long-fingered hands wrapped around a small wooden box. The other two twirl their hands, as though each is spinning a cat’s cradle with invisible thread.
The Slayer is rooted to the spot watching these demons approach. She rarely feels the urge to retreat, but seeing sunlight reflecting off an ordinary surgical scalpel makes her want to run screaming in the other direction. Monsters have come at her with plenty of weapons in the past—swords and clubs and claws. But doctors’ instruments? The implied precision is spine-chilling.
Without warning, the straightjacketed cronies surge toward the Slayer. Their footsteps make no noise, even as they gallop on their knuckles. The three of them surround her, bodies bouncing and spinning like people forever hyping themselves up to break-dance but never actually getting down to business.
