The Evil That Men Do

  “I know that you went to each one of the Slayer's

  friends, and offered them their freedom if they

  would kill her in her chains.”

  Julian clapped his hands.“Bring in the vampire.”

  Naked to the waist, wearing a leather gauntlet that extended from his shoulder and was strapped over his chest, Angel was brought into the arena.

  “If you kill him, Slayer, all your friends go free. If you refuse, they die. Horribly."

  The amphitheater was abuzz. Boos and cheers mixed in a chorus of reaction to the scene played out in the arena. In the din, Buffy stared at Angel.

  “We won't fight.”

  “Buffy, if you have to kill me, do it.”

  “Part them,” Julian commanded in a ringing voice.

  Two vampires roughly pulled them away from each other. Angel looked over the head of his handler and stared hard at Buffy.

  Then he hefted his sword.

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  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.

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  ISBN: 0-7434-3150-2

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  This book is for Nicole Kallas,

  and her daughter, Caroline.

  Acknowledgments

  My sincere thanks to my editor, Lisa Clancy, and her assistant, Liz Shiflett; to Joss Whedon, Caroline Kallas, and the entire cast and crew of Buffy; to Debbie Olshan at Fox; my agent, Howard Morhaim, and his assistant, Lindsay Sagnette. For their love and support, thanks to my husband, Wayne, my sister, Leslie, my friends Stinne and Karen, my baby-sitters, and my dearest daughter, Belle. And of course, a big thank-you to Christopher Golden.

  The

  EVIL THAT MEN DO

  Prologue

  HELLSAPOPPIN ’. . . .

  The cemetery was going up in flames as the hooded figure soared through the air and slammed its boots directly into the CENTER of Buffy Summers's chest. With a grunt of pain, she smacked against the stone wall so hard that for one startling moment, she thought her heart had exploded.

  The breath was completely knocked out of her. But Buffy had no time for pain, or injuries. Not if she wanted to live.

  Her attacker was bent o’n killing her, of that she was certain. Buffy didn’t have a chance to suck in air, even to think, as she instinctively fought back a rain of punishing blows. First to her face, then to her midsection, even to her thighs and kneecaps. The punches and kicks came hard and fast.

  She fought back with every trick in her Slayer’s repertory. Pushing away from the cemetery wall, she whirled in the air with a vicious roundhouse kick that caught the faceless figure across its throat. She followed that with a double-fisted blow to its solar plexus and jammed her fingers in and up below the rib cage.

  Nothing seemed to faze it. It came back at her, hardly winded, and rammed its fist into her abdomen. Buffy doubled over, but managed to headbutt it as hard as she could.

  They kept at it, maybe for five minutes, maybe for five hours. Buffy was way beyond tired. But gradually she began to get used to its fighting style, and she blocked more of its blows. Her open hand stopped a sock to her jaw. Then she used the meat of her hand to undercut the figure’s chin, and threw in a quick jab to its cheek.

  Still, way too many blows were hitting home. Sweat streamed down her face and arms as she kept up the killing pace. It was blazing hot in the cemetery, and the heat was sapping her energy. The trees were on fire and the ground smoldered. The headstones gave off steam, shattering into pieces that sizzled as they fell. It was hot as Hell.

  And Buffy should know.

  As she did a 360 in the air and landed a good solid kick on the side of its head, a strong wind whipped through the crackling branches and scattered burning leaves that darted and flickered like sparks. With a whoosh, the figure’s robe burst into flame. It didn’t seem to care. Still, Buffy seized the moment and rushed the figure, slamming it to the ground.

  It didn’t fight her.

  Buffy’s hands blistered as she grabbed at the dark fabric across the figure’s face.

  She tore the mask away.

  Then suddenly, the figure was no longer beneath her.

  Buffy called out, “Hey!” and whirled around.

  Across the cemetery — which now was eerily silent and not on fire at all — the figure stood in a strange aura of flickering black flame. It slowly pulled its robe away from its chest.

  A human heart pulsed in the cavity.

  “Evil dwells here,” the figure whispered.

  Then it stepped from the ring of black flame, revealing at last its face to Buffy.

  She caught her breath.

  Her own face stared back at her. The eyes were narrowed, the mouth hard, cruel.

  The laugh, however, was hers.

  Then it stepped back into shadows, laughing, and vanished.

  In the hot winds that blew across Sunnydale, Buffy Summers dreamed. She moaned in her sleep and threw a protective arm over her face. Perspiration beaded her forehead.

  The Santa Ana gale forces whipped through the pines outside her window, making them scratch against the siding and the open frame. It might not make sense for someone with as many enemies as Buffy had — many of whom could levitate, fly, or simply prop a ladder against the two-story house on Revello Drive — to sleep beside an open window.

  But Buffy trusted her instincts. She was the Chosen One, she who must go up against the demons, the vampires, and the forces of darkness. With her Watcher, Giles, she trained to do her job as if her life depended on it. Which it did. Most Slayers had a notoriously short life span. Buffy herself had buried a dear friend who had been a Slayer — Kendra, who had been called because the Master, Buffy’s first foe when she had come to Sunnydale, had actually succeeded in killing Buffy . . . for a very short time.

  Death was part of the Slayer’s business. A very big part.

  So was evil. And the hooded figure was very real evil, and very near, no matter that it came to Buffy in a dream.

  For the dreams of Slayers were rarely simple flights of fantasy. They foretold the future, revealed the present, clarified the past.

  The nightmares of Slayers were even more telling.

  When Buffy realized she was dreaming, she bolted upright with her hands in fists and her shoulders tensed, ready to defend herself. The things that walked her dreams were often things that could hurt her.

  And which she in turn could hurt.

  She listened carefully for sounds the night did not usually own. The blistering wind blew hard, sounding almost like surf. As it rose and fell, like waves, the scraping of crickets lent a counterpoint to the rapid beating of Buffy’s heart.

  “Evil dwells here.”

  Buffy frowned. What was that supposed to mean? That everybody had some evil in their heart?

  This is news?

  Even Buffy had bad secrets, done things she wasn’t particularly proud of. You couldn’t wrestle with the dark on a nightly basis without a bit of shadow creeping into your soul. That was the cost of doing business.

  In a Slayer’s case, the cost of staying alive.

  She scanned her room — gaze sweeping over her umbrellas, her butterflies, her stuffed animals, especially Mr. Gordo — and saw nothing unusual. Nothing out of place. Still, she kept her guard up. The dream had seemed so real. Buffy’s dre
ams often did. Usually did.

  Tense and alert, she wiped her forehead and got out of bed. She wore a white spaghetti-strap baby T-top and a pair of satin boxers her mom had brought home from the gallery gift shop. Circles of blue and black coiled around yellow stars. The design was called Starry Night, and the lunatic who had done the original painting had also cut off his ear.

  Some people are so versatile.

  Like Buffy herself. She smiled faintly as she crept across her floor and opened the door to the hallway. She could slay, and she could now also salsa dance, thanks to Oz, of all people. Oz, with his bowling shirts and his cool band, had his secret side as well. Besides being a werewolf.

  He danced very well.

  But she was digressing. The dream was the thing to deal with. Giles wanted her to write her dreams down, but that took too long and besides, she always remembered them in perfect detail. And it was more important at the moment to find out if some hooded evil Buffy twin with her heart hanging out of her chest was tiptoeing through the hallways of Buffy’s own home.

  There! At the end of the corridor, a figure stood motionless. Buffy rushed it, ready to inflict major damage, when she realized about halfway to her destination that it was her mother, looking very apprehensive and very sleepy.

  “Honey?” Joyce Summers queried muzzily. “Is something wrong?”

  Buffy shook her head. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Oh.” Her mom still looked just as apprehensive, and only slightly less sleepy. “And so you were going to attack me?”

  “Not you,” Buffy blurted, then shrugged with a little laugh. “Just my demons. Slayer in-joke there. Which is,” she added quickly at her mother’s look, “not so funny.”

  Joyce frowned. “Is there a demon in the house, Buffy?”

  For a guilty moment, Buffy thought she meant Angel. Then she realized her mom was just spooked, so she firmly shook her head.

  “No, Mom. It’s all clear. Go back to bed.”

  Joyce cocked her head. “What are you going to do?”

  Buffy smiled sheepishly. “Attack. The rest of that quart of Cherry Garcia ice cream.”

  “Not if I get there first,” Joyce shot back. She darted around Buffy and loped down the hall.

  “Mom!” Buffy shouted, tearing after her.

  She was the Slayer; she could have easily outdistanced her mother. There was not a human alive she couldn’t best in a skirmish. But she fussed and fumed all the way to the kitchen for her mother’s benefit, only to find Joyce pulling out two bowls and two spoons, and the prize — the half-empty carton of Cherry Garcia.

  Buffy sat at the table and watched her mom dish out the ice cream. A wave of longing for this kind of life all the time, this normal mom-and-teenaged-daughter life, swept over her.

  “I’ve been thinking, Buffy,” her mom said, in a very serious tone of voice.

  “Yes?” Buffy croaked, struggling to hide her emotion.

  “From now on . . .” — she turned around dramatically — “we only buy half-gallons. Quarts are for wimps. And we are not wimps.”

  “No, we certainly are not.” Buffy thrust out her chin. “This house is wimp free.”

  “And . . .” Joyce turned back to the ice cream. Facing away from her daughter, she said a little uncertainly, “And you’re sure everything is okay?”

  “Just peachy,” Buffy assured her.

  In the morning, she’d have to tell Giles about her dream. Because Buffy had the sense that things were not completely peachy.

  But that was not something she was going to tell her mother at three-thirty in the morning.

  If ever.

  She walked.

  Down the dark passageways, a candle in her hand, she crept silently. If she knew he was following her, she didn’t let on.

  She rarely slept, haunted as she was by what he had done to her. He wished he could regret his actions, but they had been necessary at the time. Her obsession with butchering Slayers had made them both into targets. The primary mission of each succeeding Chosen One was to avenge the death of the Slayer before her. For centuries.

  The madness that ensued, well, that was . . . unfortunate. He wished he had the heart to feel worse about it than he did.

  Now she unsheathed a long, vicious dagger. He knew what was coming, and his own bloodlust rose. She and he were creatures born of a ruthless and brutal age — the time of Roman Empire — and his passion for the Games had never abated. To see another writhe in torment, to know their life hung by a thread that he could cut — there was no greater excitement. Save one . . .

  “Slayer,” Helen hissed. The knife edge gleamed in the candlelight.

  In the darkness, someone whimpered. Helen laughed to herself, the low, flat laughter of the mad and the damned — she being both — and held the knife in the flame of the candle.

  “Slayer, I come. I challenge you.”

  “I — I — lady, I’m not a Slayer,” the voice babbled. It was a young girl. She would be their seventh victim since arriving in this strange little town. Within the fortnight, they must kill eighteen. Seven was the first magickal number, the first requirement to set the Transformation into motion. Eleven was the next. And eighteen, the last, which must occur on the Night of Meter, the very next full moon.

  “You are the Slayer, and you must die for your betrayal,” Helen whispered, moving toward the voice. “But first, you must suffer. Horribly.”

  Julian smiled in anticipation.

  “The first cut I dedicate to Angelus,” she whispered.

  Rage filled him. He had tried to tell himself that it was merely a coincidence that Angelus was here, in the same town that had become home to the reigning Slayer. That the gods had chosen to send the Urn of Caligula to this place had been a portent he and Helen could not ignore. That the stars would align in the correct position at the next full moon was indeed a sign.

  If the rites were correctly performed, they would unleash the power to rule this world.

  But the matter of Angelus . . . that was a different affair entirely.

  He had learned that Angelus had changed. He had no idea if that would please or distress Helen.

  He did know that he would kill Angelus at the first opportunity.

  There was a scream. Julian had heard hundreds of Helen’s victims scream. Thousands. And among them, more Slayers than could be counted.

  Slayers were her passion. She had destroyed them in many ingenious ways — through various forms of torture, starvation, even freezing them to death. Drowning them.

  “Beg me for your life, Chosen One!” Helen shouted. “Beg me on your knees.”

  “Please, lady, please!”

  Julian came up to Helen and put his arm around her waist. His darling was very tall and muscular. Her long black hair spilled down her back to brush her hips. She wore an exquisite white gauze toga, leaving nothing to his imagination. After all these centuries, she still stirred him. She looked like a goddess, which she would soon become, if all went according to plan.

  “My darling,” he murmured.

  The girl in the cell had once been very lovely. Now her nose was broken and some of her teeth were missing.

  “Mister, help me,” she pleaded, cowering as Helen ran the knife through the candlelight again.

  “I had a dream, Julian,” Helen said, staring at her captive. “This very Slayer faced me, young, fresh-faced, and full of virtue. A Slayer is a noble creature, chosen by the Fates for a special purpose. A goddess brought to earth for the benefit of mankind.

  “A Slayer is a lie.”

  “Indeed, my darling.” It would do no use to explain to her that this child was no Slayer.

  “The first cut,” she said, then smiled and turned to him. “For you.”

  Julian felt the renewed flare of rage, knowing she was thinking once again of Angelus. But he hid his anger behind a very pleasant smile.

  “Helen, you are all heart,” he said sincerely.

  “A heart where evil dwells,” she replied, touching his face. Then she glanced over at the girl. “And soon, I will take her heart. The pure and sacrificial heart of a Slayer. And our Dark Mother will rise, and turn us into gods.”

  “That is true,” he said, simply.