“Go on,” Buffy says. “We got this. You’ve got places to be.” She turns and intercepts the First Slayer, and I open my eyes.
* * *
When I wake up, unstabbed but still unsettled, we’re nearly to the village. I wish I could have dragged Faith and Buffy out of the dream and into this car. They’d be able to fix this. They’d know exactly what to do.
I want to laugh at this newfound confidence in the most notorious Slayers in history. A year ago I would have lectured myself about their unreliability, violence, poor decision making, and general bad apple–ness.
I look out the window, wondering how they’ve survived this long. Not only facing the evils outside, but the ones inside, too. If they can do it, surely I can. Can’t I?
The village appears like a growth of mushrooms in a lawn. This area of the countryside has loads of these small remnants of bygone eras. Most of them are barely clinging to life via farming and tourism. But the younger generations are abandoning them for the greater job opportunities of Dublin and other cities. This one’s not on the way to anywhere else, all by itself at the end of a long, wandering road.
And, unlike the waning villages elsewhere, this one seems especially, aggressively abandoned. Overgrown dead weeds, chipped and faded paint, sidewalks and walkways eaten by plants. Cillian slows way down as we work our way deeper in. Nothing is boarded up. There are cars neatly parked, the wheels covered in cobwebs. There’s even a stroller on the sidewalk. It was like everyone up and walked away at the same time, leaving everything exactly as it was.
“Pull over.” There are two children’s bicycles lying on the pavement. No kid would leave a bicycle like that. Back before my dad died, Artemis and I spent every summer day on our bikes. I can almost feel the sunshine, the wind, my tennis-shoed feet furiously pedaling to leave her behind and her shouting at me to wait up.
I get out of the car and walk to the bikes. There’s nothing there. Except … I crouch, looking at the concrete. There are two scorch marks. And ashes.
My stomach clenching, I look up at the store. It’s an ice cream shop. A bell chimes with rusty weariness to mark my entrance. The power is off, dust hanging in the air. There’s nothing and no one in here. The scent of spoiled milk is more a memory than anything else. I peer over the counter where someone would stand to serve the ice cream, and sure enough, there’s a scorch mark and some ashes.
I back out.
I don’t want to see anymore. The stroller haunts me as I climb back in the car. The second car of our convoy is idling behind us, waiting.
“Something bad happened here,” I say. “Maybe ten or fifteen years ago.” I wonder if the news reported on it, or if everyone in this part of the country just sort of … knew. That sometimes people disappear. And sometimes towns do. Esther figured it out with her fairy-tale research; she’s probably not alone.
“Is that why everyone left?” Cillian’s hands grip the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are bloodless and pale.
“They didn’t leave.”
Rhys’s eyes widen. He shudders once. “Maybe … maybe when he was free, he wasn’t so happy on his way out of our realm.”
“We don’t want him coming back,” Doug says. “We really, really don’t. Right? I’m not alone in this.”
I shake my head. “Not alone.”
No one gets out to explore. Cillian continues steering us through town. It’s built like a wheel, all the lanes like spokes leading out from the central point. His mother had drawn a diagram of it. An ancient stone in the center of a grassy meadow. No one ever tried to take it down, or build there. They knew what it was, and they respected it. They were careful.
And now they’re all gone.
“Well, this is a problem.” Cillian brakes as several cloaked people detach from the shadows of abandoned buildings to step into the road and block our way. They all have shock sticks. Their hooded expressions are hidden from us. “What do I do?”
A car comes screaming around a corner ahead of us. The cloakers aren’t so fanatical they’re willing to be bowling pins. The car squeals to a stop, and my mother and Cillian’s mother climb out. “We got this!” my mother shouts.
Cillian’s mother is holding a canister of pepper spray in one hand and a club in the other. “Don’t let him come back, okay? Whatever his third form is, we don’t want to find out. The portal was the stone at the very center of town. Destroy it. And if that doesn’t work, well, break everything else until something does.”
Cillian nods. “Thanks, Mom.”
She beams at him, then shouts a battle cry as she chases after a few of the confused cloakers, followed by my mother.
We make it all the way to the center of the town without any more foes. But once we’re there, a single figure is blocking our way, his back to us as he stares at the rock in the middle of the meadow.
He doesn’t move. Cillian slams on the brakes and stops just shy of him. He’s white, wearing a pin-striped suit, his hair straight and dark, neatly trimmed. He turns around slowly, tilting his head as he takes us in.
“Da?” Cillian says.
“Oh god,” Rhys says, not inaccurately.
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