Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Carnival of Souls Read online

  One down, and she counted five more as she ran through the vampire dust, waving her hands in front of her face to keep it out of her eyes. It looked like none of the others were stupid enough—at least so far—to take up where this guy had left off. The remaining five were all busy dogging David and Stephanie.

  Then one of the vamps began to lose ground. It was a female wearing a Sunnydale High School letter jacket, and as it turned to glance over its shoulder at the Slayer, Buffy recognized it. Her. Her name was Mariann Palmer, and they both had had Dr. Gregory for science before Miss French the giant praying mantis had decapitated him. Buffy felt a pang that she had not been able to save Mariann from becoming a vampire any more than she had been able to save Dr. Gregory from getting beheaded. But this was not the time for sentimental reunions or regrets. This was time to deal more vamp destruction.

  Buffy used a flat gravestone in her path as a springboard to vault high into the air, and landed piggyback-style on Mariann’s back.

  Mariann—or, more correctly, the demon now inhabiting her body—stumbled forward as Buffy shouted, “Ride ’em, cowgirl!”

  Mariann whirled in a circle, her arms flailing, trying to grab Buffy’s legs and/or throw Buffy off. It was like riding a mechanical bull—or so Buffy imagined.

  Although Buffy’s thighs were clamped against Mariann’s sides and her ankles were locked across the vamp’s stomach, Mariann kept trying to grab her arms, which was an indication that this particular evil undead was really stupid. If their positions had been reversed, Buffy would have (a) gone for her feet, which were dangling right in front of her; or (b) tucked into a forward roll, which might have resulted in her rider doing a face plant as she went over and down.

  However, Mariann had yet to learn some strategic moves.

  “And time is up!” Buffy exulted. “I win a silver buckle, and you win a trip to hell!”

  Arcing both arms over the vampire’s shoulders, she jabbed the stake toward Mariann’s dead, unbeating heart, hard.

  The stake hit the mark, and the demon inhabiting Mariann screamed. That’s how Buffy had to think of it as the face and body of a girl Buffy had known exploded into dust.

  As Buffy landed, the ground beneath her left heel gave way—a little sinkhole, a common problem with Sunnydale cemeteries, on account of all the tunnels and empty graves—and she swayed left and right, straining to maintain her balance.

  Vamp number three, a big burly guy in a sleeveless denim vest, with closely shaven black hair and a goatee to match, took advantage of the moment to turn and charge her like a bull, head-butting her just beneath her rib cage.

  With an “ooph!” Buffy tumbled backward, landing on her butt, then slamming her lower back against the edge of a low stone border outlining a grave. Her head smacked the gravestone proper. She saw stars and little birdies, but she ignored them as she scrabbled back up. No lying down on the job, especially if she didn’t want to die on the job.

  Rather than follow through with his attack, the vampire whirled around and caught up with the other three. She wondered why the forces of darkness stopped to take her on under any circumstances. If she were one of these vampires, she would take off as soon as she realized the Slayer had spotted her. Of course, if she were a vampire, she wouldn’t be Buffy, who thought like that. She’d be a demon inhabiting a human body, with a whole new set of operating instructions: Bite, rip, suck, maim, kill.

  The little birdies blurred into a gray haze, and Buffy steadied herself by grabbing on to the monument at the head of the plot—an obelisk topped with a cross—and realized she had let go of her stake. The world took shape again, pretty much; she glanced down and scanned the plot, her eyesight smeary. The dim, watery moonlight didn’t help. If only she had some light.

  It was le grand boo-boo—hey, she was thinking in French!—to have carried only one flashlight. There was so much to keep track of in the exciting world of slayage. Problem was, while she was still learning on the job, other people sometimes paid the price for her ignorance.

  If she didn’t get a move on, the other people might be David and Stephanie.

  She reached up and broke off an overhanging tree branch, tapping her fingertips along the break to make sure it was good and sharp.

  Ouch. It so was.

  She broke off another one and slid it inside the sleeve of Angel’s jacket.

  Buffy resumed her pursuit, down a small hill and into a shallow stream sloshing over smooth, round pebbles. It was artificial, part of the landscaping of the cemetery. Her mom, Joyce, had once said it might be nice to be buried beside the little brook, which gave Buffy a wiggins, because who on earth wanted to think about their mom dying?

  Speaking of dying, the twins had stopped screaming, but she was relieved to see that they were still running. That happened; people ran out of breath if they tried to do both. For most people there were usually two reactions to being attacked by vampires: fright—freezing in one’s tracks, unable to move; or flight—running faster than you had ever dreamed was possible, usually without any plan for survival beyond putting as much distance between you and the thing that was after you.

  For the Slayer there was another option: fight. That was what a slayer was born to do, lived to do—well, besides shopping and smoochies with Angel—and Buffy knew she was in full kick-ass mode as she burst into a record-breaking sprint after the vampire quartet. She wished Giles could see her. Maybe then he would let up on the training.

  “Go to your right! There’s a hole in the fence!” she shouted to David and Stephanie. “Go right!”

  She had no idea if they could hear her, or if they would hear her. Blind panic could turn “Go right!” into “Smarfhsufl!” or make someone completely forget the difference between right and left. It was the adrenaline. It told you to forget everything except being afraid. She knew how that worked. Panic made you do the wacky.

  “Go right!” she yelled again. Of course the vampires were listening to her, so they started cutting to the right, in anticipation of David and Stephanie’s doing the same.

  But the twins kept running forward. In fact, they were flying full speed ahead, not seeming to compute that they were about to run straight into the chain-link fence that bounded the perimeter of the graveyard. She grimaced, her mind fast-fowarding to the inevitable collision with the fence, the collapse to the ground, and the vampires either trying to tear out the twins’ throats right there or carrying them off like so much delectable takeout.

  “Stop going straight!” she ordered them, legs and arms pumping. She wasn’t even sure they could put on the brakes in time, even if they could make sense of what she was saying.

  Then she heard the weird music again, the weird tootling or organ or whatever—oh, it was a calliope.

  A calliope?

  And it was closer this time. Or maybe just louder.

  She filed that away for a time when she could think about it, and kept running forward. The vampires had figured out that David and Stephanie weren’t going to go toward the hole in the fence, and had veered back to the left, hot on their heels.

  “Help!” Stephanie screamed.

  That told Buffy that Stephanie wasn’t completely out of her mind with fear, so she shouted, “Go to the left! Left! Left, left, left!”

  But it was too late. Stephanie and David slammed into the fence at the same time, really crashing into it; and Buffy grimaced as she put on a burst of speed in hopes of getting to them before the vamps did.

  Then, to Buffy’s utter amazement, that section of the fence gave way. Clanging and rattling, it dropped forward just like a drawbridge on a castle. David and Stephanie ran right over it.

  And so did the vampires.

  Shrieking and clinging to each other—which was slowing them down—the twins disappeared into the dense forest just behind the graveyard. The vampires followed after, and Buffy brought up the rear.

  The treetops sucked up the moonlight, and within seconds Buffy was running through pitch-black
woods. Tree branches whipped her face and neck as the vampires pushed through them, then let them fwap backward. She smelled pine and tree resin.

  “Stephanie! David! Where are you?” she shouted into the blackness as she raised her hands to shield her face and kept running.

  That was when vampire number three tackled her again and the two sailed backward. Buffy kept hold of the vamp as her back slammed hard against a tree trunk. Straightening her arms, she immediately slid downward, hauling the vamp’s face against the trunk. It roared in pain as it fell, and Buffy executed a totally righteous snapkick into its groin for good measure.

  Then she rolled to the right, extricating herself before the vampire landed on top of her. Twigs snapped beneath its weight. Before it could react, Buffy flipped it over, straddled it, raised her arms above her head, and staked it.

  Dustorama!

  Three down, three to go.

  Then it started to rain again.

  “Great,” she muttered, getting to her feet as big, ploppy drops tapped her on the head. She had to go and buy the suede boots, didn’t she. Even after her mother reminded her that they weren’t very practical. Joyce didn’t know the half of it. But for a few brief weeks, they had been Buffy’s pride and joy.

  You’d think the Watchers Council would at least give her a clothing allowance, but no. Here she was saving the world and she could actually make more baby-sitting. No pay, no tips, no rewards, nothing. That was the definition of a sacred duty, she supposed: no gain, all pain.

  Oh, well, nothing to be done about it now.

  The rain muffled sound as she crashed through the dense stands of trees. There were fifty percent fewer vampires to deal with than when she had first given chase, but she figured they had been the slower, stupider ones. The vamps that were left were probably going to be able to run the twins to ground unless she got to them first.

  Problem was, she couldn’t tell where David and Stephanie had gone. She ran blindly into a thick tree limb and then very nearly got tripped by a root.

  She looked upward and squinted into the rain, hoping for a slice of the moon to steer by, but the tree coverage was thick. A burst of helpful lightning, then? Or even the winking lights of a plane bound for Anywhere But Here?

  Nada.

  She exhaled, trying to come up with a plan B. But all her plan B’s included flashlights.

  She listened hard, hoping one of the Hahns would scream. Or not. Not screaming might mean they successfully got away. But few humans managed to outrun vampires. Which was why no one in Sunnydale seemed to know there were vampires. City Hall called them gangs on PCP, and everybody bought that, just another example of how hard people around here just didn’t want to know.

  She couldn’t just stand here. She was all about moving and getting it done. Buffy tried to remember if she had ever seen a map of the forest. It was so hard to pay attention during Giles’s stuffy, scone-y lectures. She had been startled to realize that what he called “training sessions”—air quotes there—were occasionally more like study hall, with quizzes on crystals and all kinds of stuff. Instead of whacking at Giles with a quarterstaff, she was forced to sit in a chair and memorize useless facts—

  —useless facts such as the layouts of the graveyards, the school, and the rest of Sunnydale, including the forest.

  Not using air quotes now, are you, Buffy?

  She started running. Her boots squished in mud and tufts of grass. Her knitted cap grew sodden and heavy and she whipped it off as she galloped along, wondering if her eye makeup was running. She had gotten smart; she always wore waterproof mascara against just such an occasion as this. A girl watcher would have tips like that for a slayer. Whoever got to have a female watcher was lucky.

  A bolt of lightning lit up the forest perimeter and she took note of the locations of the trees. Buffy saw a colorful flash of movement just before the shadows swallowed up the light. Purple splotches? Yellowish gray polka dots? She wasn’t sure. But neither twin had been wearing busy patterns like that. None of the vamps, either, from what she had seen. But what she had seen was a pattern, or something mottled by the play of light and shadow.

  That could only mean that someone else was in the forest. She approached cautiously, rain sluicing down her head to drip off the tip of her nose as she kept herself pointed in the direction of the flash. Thunder rumbled and she crossed her fingers for another crash of lightning. She wondered if he or she of the nonconformist outfit had spotted her and was just waiting for her to walk straight into his or her clutches—or his or her tentacles, or his or her huge, gaping maw.

  Before I moved to Sunnydale, I thought “maw” was Southernspeak for “mom.” And I didn’t realize that “exsanguinated” meant “completely drained of blood.” Being the Slayer has certainly improved my vocabulary. There’s a plus.

  She reached a hand forward, grabbing a hunk of pine branch and bending it out of her way.

  A few more steps forward, and she realized she was at the same impasse as before. Options, options, who’s got the options? Maybe she could climb a tree and—

  Then she felt warm breath against the back of her neck, and a low, gravelly voice whispered, “Boo!”

  Buffy whirled around with her arms outstretched.

  There was nothing there, accompanied by a loud flapping of wings, and noisy cawing, like from a crow. Several. Birds were fluttering out of their sentry stations and flying away.

  From…what?

  “Okay, you got me. Very funny. Tag, I’m it,” she said, raising a hand. Was it a ghost? Didn’t matter, though. The Slayer motto was “Feel the wig and kill it anyway.”

  “You have my attention,” Buffy said. “What do you want?”

  As if in response, there was that weird music again. Yes, it was a calliope. The notes sounded off, very…very…She didn’t have a good word for it, like exsanguinated or maw.

  Just…weird.

  Cascades of notes, barrels of them, rolled through the trees. The music sounded as if it were coming from the other side of the forest. Maybe whoever was playing it was trying to make some kind of statement. Maybe it was the supersized version of “Boo!” Or David or Stephanie had found the calliope and were sending out a distress call. Or the vamps were having a dinner show bizarro-world style. Someone was playing the hits of Zombie Broadway while the others sucked the Hahn twins dry.

  The calliope music rose like a scream. The forest quaked as if every living thing was screaming right along with it.

  Lacking any other plan, Buffy kicked it up a notch and ran like a bat out of hell, toward the music.

  And voila! She heard the Hahns screaming again, and they were close. She followed, veering around some large bushes.

  Whoa. Where on earth did this come from?

  An illuminated white-painted wooden archway stretched about fifteen feet across a clearing. Baseball-size lightbulbs spelled out words: PROFESSOR CALIGARI’S TRAVELING CARNIVAL. Two columns formed an entryway decorated with painted clowns holding balloons.

  Brrr. Clowns.

  Behind the entrance, wind whipped the canvas flaps of a trio of two-story, multistriped tents. A darkened Ferris wheel cut a sharp silhouette in the night sky. Where did the twins go?

  Inside the carnival, Buffy flew past a silent Tilt-A-Whirl and other rides, surrounded wooden buildings in crazy cartoon colors with garish, hand-painted signs proclaiming DOGS ON A STICK! CONES! COTTON CANDY!

  And then she heard Stephanie scream.

  Buffy followed the sound, shouting, “I’m right behind you!”

  A calliope began to play, slowly, eerily. Up the scale, down the scale, warbling and trembling. The volume made the bones in Buffy’s head vibrate.

  There was another scream, barely audible above the playing. She followed it toward a large oblong tent. Above the tent flap door, which was popping in the wind, a curlicue sign read FUN HOUSE.

  Buffy ran inside and found herself in a narrow, dark tunnel made of wood. Fake cobwebs draped overhead.r />
  As Buffy took a step forward, a green light winked on about two feet above her head, revealing a realistic-looking skull and crossbones. The jawbone dropped open and the skull cried, “Arrr!” Crazy laughter bounced off the walls.

  The skull was at the top of a T-intersection. She took advantage of the light to consider whether she should go right or left. The light went out. The cackling stopped.

  She glanced quickly in both directions, and still had no clue which way to go. On the right: darkness. On the left: darkness, too.

  She thought she heard another scream, but it was hard to be sure. Still, her Slayer reflexes responded to it the way mothers jump at the cry of a baby, and she resumed her dashing in the dark, hands outstretched. She hated running blind.

  “Gah!” she shouted as a light flashed on and a clown hopped from the darkness on long, flappy shoes. Its lifeless eyes widened and its mouth opened in a wicked, spooky grin.

  Just a statue, Buffy told herself, and ran on by. A chill ran down her spine. Stupid clown statue.

  More lights flicked on overhead, dim-colored lightbulbs of blue, green, and red. Buffy spared a thought for the high-school boys who would traipse through here and take breaking those bulbs as a personal challenge.

  Then she encountered another clown statue, this one with black Rasta braids and an evil, leering grimace that reminded her of Spike. It stood at the end of the next corner, light bearing straight down on it, concealing its eyes while highlighting its mouth.

  Just for good measure, she said to it, “Stay.”

  It stayed where it was, and she jogged on, safe from her childhood fears.

  But as for her sixteen-year-old fears, those were alive and kicking.

  Another corner—she was in a maze that folded back upon itself, and back again—and then the lights got brighter, although no less colorful, and she put on the brakes when she realized she was running full tilt toward a mirror reflection of herself.