Tales of the Slayer, Volume II Read online

  Giles smiled as he mentally returned to the room. The group waited, but he was putting away his books as though the lecture were complete.

  “But, the spirit?” asked Willow.

  “Hmm? Oh well, there should be little to hold him to this plane without his body to return to, even with support from the local Hellmouth. I expect his powers will fade all on their own. His true search, you see, is for his body, and as there are no Ancient Egyptian burial sites in Sunnydale, we may not even have to search him out.” He looked at the ground and then sidelong at Josh. “Our young man here may have a little to answer for, though.” Giles looked long at Josh, measuring, but said nothing further.

  “Oh boy. There is a mummy in town,” said Buffy suddenly.

  “That’s right. We just came from seeing it!” said Willow, lighting up. “Let me get my notes.” She pulled out her backpack and found a spiral-bound notebook. “Here: ‘Remains of a first dynasty mummy, as yet unidentified, though the spells and incantations on the wrappings and outer casings suggest a connection to the priesthood of Anubis.’ That’s what the display said.”

  “Oh, God,” came from Josh, sinking into his chair. They all swiveled to look at him with one movement. “Sesostris said that he thought he would be drawn down if he were near his body! I just remembered that.”

  Giles light attitude had faded during these revelations and he now looked quite ashen.

  “Rather a different light on things,” he muttered, then added more forcefully, “If we are indeed to be facing this spirit vampire reunited with his Earthly remains, we could be preparing for a difficult battle. This is a very ancient creature, and may be almost indestructible.”

  The gang was quiet for a moment, then Buffy, always preferring action, grabbed her pack and started for the door. “Right. I’m off to fight mummies again. I can get to the body before the spirit does.”

  “Wait,” said Giles rising. “I’ll join you, Buffy. Willow, Tara, and Josh, go back to Josh’s rooms and see if you can find a way to reverse the conjuring. Try to use the same formula Josh began with. Perhaps between you, you can send him back before he reaches his body. And for Heaven’s sake, protect yourselves!” He opened the door for all to leave and Xander jumped back, his hand outstretched to knock.

  “Yikes! I was just seeing where everyone had got to. I left Anya at the Bronze to come find you. Why do you look all apocolyp-ty?”

  “Explain on the way,” clipped Buffy. “Got a mummy to rebury.” She grabbed a bewildered Xander by the shoulder of his jacket as they filed out the door.

  “Noooo!”

  * * *

  “So you two knew each other in high school?” Tara ventured.

  “Yeah, we used to hang.” Josh said, a little quietly—quietly enough that Tara knew there was a little more to the story. They were in Josh’s room back at the campus, and Tara and Willow were sifting the piles of belongings for a place to settle.

  “It was kind of my fault,” Willow spoke up. “I really didn’t mean to freak you out with that spell that time.”

  “It’s okay. We just sorta drifted. No biggie.” Josh shrugged off the apology.

  “No, really. I want you to know that I really liked spending time with you.” There was an awkward pause. Tara looked around.

  “Well, we should get started. Do you have any ritual supplies left?” Willow asked, mainly to ease away from the conversation that seemed to be going nowhere. “We’ll need salt and sulfur, and copper sulfate if you have any. I think three rings of protection should do it.”

  They went to work quietly. The process wasn’t hard, and the two girls seemed to really have the system down. Soon they all sat inside the protective circles strewn with herbs and were ready to start.

  “Call the quarters,” said Willow, and Tara responded, going to each direction and inviting the protective spirits of the elements to watch over them. Josh held the old grimoire and handed it over to Willow, who seemed to be in charge.

  They began the ritual and reversed the incantations from the order Josh had used. This time the results were instantaneous. As soon as the word “Sesostris” passed into the air the creature itself appeared. Josh had not exaggerated; Sesostris was much more “present” than the girls had imagined.

  “Jackal! Again you play with your tiny sparks of magick,” boomed Sesostris. “And whom have you brought with you? More mortal souls for me to judge?” The tall, lean figure of the Egyptian priest stepped forward but suddenly stopped. His foot lay outside the first of the three circles on the ground. “Sorceresses? Be you high priestesses? Be you servants of Aten?” He shot the questions out rapidly, not giving the stricken girls a chance to answer. “What manner of trickery is this, jackal?”

  “Spirit of low order, spirit of ill intent, you cannot enter this circle,” spouted Willow. The three rings on the floor began to glow first a deep violet-blue, then the color intensified. At the same moment, the room began to fill with smoke and wind, like the elements from outside had just begun a polite little gale inside Josh’s room. Books and papers, socks, and furniture began to spin around the room.

  “Fools!” thundered Sesostris, who suddenly morphed into his true vampire face. “Look at you, animals waiting to be butchered in a slaughter-tent. Tiny sparks of life will not threaten me. That one is mine already! He called me forth from the spirit realm but had no pretty circle of sulfur to burn arrant ghosts. I claim what is mine.”

  Suddenly Josh made a little croaking noise and fell to the ground. He lay there blinking and shivering as Sesostris watched and conjured from the center of the storm.

  “What’s this?” said Sesostris abruptly. “I have his thoughts! There is more trickery here! There is a slayer in this place. So the lineage of demon-blooded fighters for humanity still lingers. Where, boy? Where?”

  Josh began to turn white and his skin began to show tiny little wrinkles. It was like a frost descended on this face and the veins and tendons were peaking through the cold parchment covering.

  “What connection have you with a slayer? There! I see it.” The monster’s furrowed brow reddened with his concentration; his gold jewelry glinted in contrast to his white skin. Suddenly he leaped back and cried, “My body! You know where it lies. And this secret you would keep from me. You work to separate me once again from the mortal world. A jackal is but a dog after all.” Sesostris raised his arm and made a grasping motion in the air with his hand.

  As suddenly as Josh’s fit began . . . it stopped. Josh didn’t move again. A thin line of spittle leaked from his open mouth to the floor. Willow and Tara pulled back from cradling Josh’s body and held each other in the center of the three protective circles. Sesostris turned to face the two girls.

  “You are true sorceresses then. I cannot reach you now, but I judge you vile tools of Aten, and you shall feel the price of your chosen path after I have been made flesh once again.” And with that, the spirit was gone, and all the flying socks and debris dropped to the ground as silent and still as their owner.

  * * *

  The Sunnydale Natural History Museum rose up rather more menacingly at night than it had in the warm California sun that afternoon. The reddish bricks looked somehow rougher, with more of a sandpaper finish, and the wood frames to the old doors and windows seemed dingy with crackled paint. The entire building had an abandoned and disused feeling. Giles, Buffy, and Xander veered from the streetlights and the open entryway to creep along the side of the building, flattening themselves against the wall.

  “Just a nice cool beer at the Bronze with my buds. That’s all I wanted: good friends, my girl Anya at my side, a pleasant never-another-school-night evening,” said Xander, continuing the constant stream of chatter he had kept up since they told him where they were going. “But no. Alexander Harris has to be a hero. Has to fight the mummy-monster. Has to look after his Buffy-friend. . . . Anya is going to kill me. She thinks I’m having secret meetings.”

  “Do be quiet, Xander,” snapped Gile
s from ahead of him. Xander looked around. The trees on the grounds were wagging and waving. One looked just like a dragon’s head. He could see the crest of scales surrounding the leafy neck and the tongue wagging around in the yawning mouth.

  “Gotta get a grip.”

  They had reached the back entry to the museum. From here it was an easy path through the delivery bay. They just needed to get in.

  “Okay, Xander. Do your military shtick,” whispered Buffy.

  “What? You mean I’m supposed to get us in?” stammered Xander back.

  “Of course. Who else?” said Buffy. “Now get to it.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake.” Giles pulled out a lock-pick kit. “I will attend to this. You two watch for the security guard.” The lock was undone with alacrity.

  Xander looked at the coffin shaped opening in the rough wall facing him, seven feet by four feet. He froze. “I’m not facing another mummy. One mummy is all anyone could ask me to fight, right?”

  “Well you could stay and guard the door, but it hardly seems of much purpose, and you’re sure to encounter the guard on his rounds,” Giles said.

  “Really, Xander, you’re safer with us than waiting here,” Buffy added as she dropped her pack and began pulling out an armament of stakes and a stout ax. As always, Xander had to smile to himself to see the petite girl he’d known since high school, wielding an incongruously huge ax. But he knew she could use it, too.

  “Okay. A priest of Anubis, you say. I’m in. How bad could it be?”

  * * *

  The Sunnydale Hospital was one place Willow had seen just a little too much of. She was glad to have Tara there with her. Of course, in a town where a Hellmouth happened to yawn open in the ground, the hospital would naturally be a bit busier than most.

  As soon as Sesostris had vanished, the girls had hastily taken down their protections, cleaned up the salt and chemicals on the floor, and removed the magickal trappings from the room. They knew that they needed to call the police and an ambulance and Josh’s family, but things would just be difficult if there was evidence of a witchcraft ritual all around. Josh’s withered state would be oddity enough.

  The two girls worked very fast to tidy the room but not move the body. They also took the big book out of Josh’s hands. It was only a few minutes to Tara’s room from Josh’s, so she went to drop off the stuff while Willow made the calls and waited for Josh’s family to arrive. It had been a long wait and unsettling to be in the room with the body of someone who had once been a friend, lifeless now and awfully still.

  The girls had done their best to come up with an explanation about what happened, how Josh had had a sudden seizure and collapsed. Josh’s mother was taking the news very badly, and it broke the girls’ spirits to see the family’s grief in such a raw display. Josh had always told Willow about his parents’ extraordinary support.

  Willow and Tara had gone to the hospital on their own, letting the family take charge and following along after. Now they sat outside the emergency ward in the little reception area. It was odd how the colors, textures, and low lighting in that room were deliberately set to induce calm, but achieved the opposite. The atmosphere was edgy. Maybe it was that ever-present hospital smell. Whatever it was, it made the mood somber, and Willow and Tara sat together on the stiff couch, not talking.

  “I guess this was what Mr. Giles was talking about,” ventured Tara.

  “Oh, sweetie, I don’t think he meant that Josh would die from working that spell. He just meant that there would be a negative reaction of some kind.”

  “I know, but the whole thing makes me worry. You know. About us. The magicks we’ve been experimenting with.” Tara’s eyes were beginning to well up with tears. Willow realized for the first time how terribly sensitive Tara was to the events the Scooby Gang was forced to witness. It came with the territory. She thought about how much she herself had been through since the little gang had formed. Was she getting immune to the deaths and the violence? No, seeing Mr. and Mrs. Headly tonight had assured her that wasn’t the case. She turned and gave Tara a reassuring hug.

  Tara just sat looking down, but she kept speaking. “You are really strong, Willow. I mean, you’ve survived the end of the world. A couple of times.” She sniffed and made a little laugh at how impossible that sounded. Looking up to meet Willow’s eyes, she said, “I didn’t know Josh. We’d just met, and now he’s gone. And that creature threatened us. I guess I’m a little overwhelmed.”

  Willow loosened her hug just a little bit. “Tara, we’re going to be fine. There is nothing to worry about. What happened to Josh was because he mishandled his spell. He didn’t use any protection and that allowed the spirit in. Josh was under the spirit’s control because he was careless. That will never happen to us, because we know how protect and defend ourselves. Right?”

  Tara nodded but didn’t say anything.

  * * *

  It was a quick climb past the labeling and sorting offices, with their trestle tables of artifacts, and up into the main gallery of the museum. Buffy, Giles, and Xander entered the marble hall single file from the opposite side from the cafeteria and got their bearings.

  “Now, if all is as it should be, the protective bindings and amulets hidden within the mummy’s bandages should hold the body of Sesostris inviolable. Before he gained strength from the Hellmouth, he would have been unable to affect anything in this dimension, thus preventing him from ever removing the protections. Now we must reach the corpse before he does, since he is substantial enough to take action here. This will be a battle of wits and timing, Buffy. In his semispirit form he will be too insubstantial for you to inflict any real damage with traditional fighting techniques,” relayed Giles.

  “Great. Do I talk him to death?”

  “While I have little doubt about the efficacy of your skills in that area, I hardly think it necessary.”

  Buffy blinked. “Did you say what I think you said?”

  “Never mind,” Giles continued. “Here is our approach. I will try to reinforce the protective spells and keep the spirit at a distance. You will stand prepared to fight the creature should my efforts fail.”

  “What do I do?” asked Xander earnestly, caught up in the planning. Giles and Buffy just looked at him.

  “No, no. Not bait. I’m not the bait. Been there, was almost eaten.”

  “Don’t be silly. The spirit is here for the body he once inhabited. There need be no bait but that,” Giles said. “You will be the second line of defense should Buffy and I need assistance.”

  “I can do that. Assist in the mummy snuffing. Then back to the Bronze to explain everything to Anya, which is the really scary task.”

  “Very well then. On we go.” Giles took the lead and they filed across the entrance hall, made cavernous in the half-light, toward the featured exhibit. Once inside the faux tomb entrance, it seemed as though they were a thousand miles away in Egypt, ascending an ancient stairway to the king’s chamber. At the top of the stairs the way was barred by another stage prop entrance, and Buffy pushed aside the Styrofoam stone doors to allow them passage to the tomb proper.

  Inside, the elaborate museum display gave all appearances of being a real underground tomb. Piled in the corners was rubble and broken crockery. The only giveaway was that the artifacts themselves were encased in display boxes artistically built into the walls. Here and there would be a freestanding display with a pinpoint spotlight making the treasures they contained appear to be lit from within.

  At the far end of the room, and partially hidden by a turning in the stone wall, was the mummy itself. The stone casing and protective sarcophagus were lovingly presented in situ as if they had just been uncovered. But the body of the high priest himself was eerily propped on a slanting board, protected in its glass case, and made to look particularly creepy by the overhead light—like a kid might hold a flashlight over his head.

  “Nice,” said Xander.

  Buffy stood on her tiptoes to look down in
to the casing at the mummy’s face. The skin was nearly black and stretched like saran, taut over the bones of the face. The mummy’s features were aquiline, with a high bridge of nose making him look regal and noble somehow. The neck had shriveled down to look like that of a vulture, but the effect on this long-dead body was aesthetic, bookish—like they were looking down on a sleeping scholar who had neglected his meals in favor of his studies.

  “Look, here . . . and here,” said Giles as he pointed out the little amulets hidden in the bandages and revealed only by the telltale bulges against the tight wrappings. “We are in time; the body hasn’t been touched.”

  Before any of the trio could prepare for it, however, there was an explosion of wind and smoke. The room shook as if to make room for the sudden intrusion of mass in it’s confined space. Giles was thrown against a display cabinet where he slumped unconscious.

  Buffy and Xander were on the other side of the mummy and received less of the blow. They landed together in a heap.

  “Slayer!” bellowed Sesostris. “Prepare to die. You will witness the rebirth of an ancient, then give up your blood to me in sacrifice.”

  “Do we know each other?” quipped Buffy. Xander crept over to Giles and pulled him into a far corner near the door.

  “I know your kind, born as I was in the Zep Tepi, the First Times. You are mortal, but made from other-than-mortal. Your kind emerged from the dim times to plague us who were rightful rulers. I was given the strong blood of Anubis himself, and through him I have many memories from the before-times. If you understood your powers you would find these memories too, for your blood is like unto mine. And your blood will swell my dead skin and invigorate my petrified tendons.”

  Buffy didn’t wait for this speech to reach its conclusion. “I’ve heard it,” she said as she threw a powerful kick into the spirit’s midsection. As Giles had predicted, the kick landed, but felt like it went through thin Jell-O.