Resurrecting Ravana (16 page)

The first ones Buffy had encountered that night had been wandering along the sidewalk, peering into mailboxes and then crushing them and knocking them into dark yards. A male and female appeared out of the misty darkness, their dark clothes crusted with mud and bits of grass, the ridges and creases of their vamp faces perfectly etched in deep shadow and the slightly yellowish glow from the streetlights above. They’d been so busy laughing and talking and looking into mailboxes before the strutting guy knocked them off their posts that they hadn’t noticed her at first. “You expecting a package?” Buffy had asked before roughing them up and sending them on their way with a couple quick sticks of the stake.

The cemeteries teemed with them. They gathered in alleys and whispered their secret plans as they licked the remaining smears of blood from their teeth. But they walked the streets, too, as if they planned to do some shopping or had just gotten out of a movie, fangs glimmering wetly as they tilted their heads back and laughed or grinned dangerously. And none of them flinched when she brought out her stakes, as if their confidence were great enough to steady their gaze and ease their minds.

It’s like vampire’s night out
, Buffy thought. She imagined a sign at the city limits: Vampire nite! No cover charge for vampires! Bring your mummy and get a free Bloody Mary!

But it wasn’t funny. Something was up.

Could they know about the Rakshasa?
Buffy wondered as she crossed the street to the next cemetery’s pedestrian entrance on the other side.
And if they do, how much do they know? Maybe I should start quizzing them before I stake ’em.
She shook her head slightly.
Mmm . . . nah.

The cemetery’s pedestrian entrance was a regular-size doorway in a large, ten-foot-tall stone wall.

Buffy froze a few feet from the stone doorway. She heard a soft, gritty sound above her, the sole of a shoe on wet cement. Half a heartbeat later, the sound was behind her. Buffy spun and threw herself toward the sound, punched, and connected with a flat stomach that gave way beneath her knuckles.

A sound burst from Xander like a tuba dislodging an obstruction as he stumbled backward and landed on his butt on the sidewalk.

Buffy and Cordelia rushed to him from different directions and knelt on either side of him.

“Xander!” Buffy said with a horrified squeak in her voice. “I’m so sorry! When did you get so quiet?”

“He usually never shuts up long enough to be quiet,” Cordelia muttered.

Xander groaned and leaned forward with his arms crossed over his belly.

“Jeez, I’m glad that wasn’t any harder,” Buffy said.

“Harder?” Xander barked in a voice like grinding metal. He tried to say more, but gave up and went on groaning.

“Don’t you dare throw up on me,” Cordelia said sternly.

A minute or so later, Xander’s breathing had stabilized and he was able to talk without sounding like the emergency brakes on a train. “I’ll speak up next time,” he said. He got to his feet slowly and walked in a circle, trying to straighten his body out.

Buffy heard the sound again — shoes crackling grit against a surface of concrete or stone — overhead. She looked up and took a stake from beneath her jacket almost in the same second.

A female hunkered atop the stone wall, hands dangling between her knees, fangs bared in a broad, black-lipped grin. Then she was a blur, coming down at Buffy.

Buffy took half a step back and plunged the stake forward the instant she heard the feet hit the sidewalk. The female was vaporized before she could make a move, or even a sound.

“C’mon, let’s get away from this zombie Holiday Inn, okay?” Buffy said. She walked fast across the street and Xander and Cordelia tried to keep up. Xander was still hunched forward slightly and held a hand to his stomach, but he didn’t lag behind.

“Are you late for a very important date?” Cordelia asked.

“I don’t want to be so close to the cemetery if you’re here,” Buffy said distractedly. She looked over her shoulder at the cemetery across the street. “Too much activity. I can’t be expected to talk to you guys and battle the Denizens of Hell, can I?”

A low rattling sound came from up the sidewalk — the plastic rumbling of a Big Wheel being driven by a child.

Buffy stopped and turned around. “Look, Xander, I’m really sorry I hit you, but what are you doing here, anyway?”

“We came to see how you are,” he rasped out.

“How I am? You mean . . . as in, ‘Hi, how are you?’”

The Big Wheel got closer, louder.

“Giles was worried,” Cordelia said, then turned to Xander. “And I’m getting soaked from this drizzle. Can we go now?”

“Worried?” Buffy asked. “About me? Why?”

“You weren’t exactly happy when you left,” Xander said. “Giles was worried and concerned.”

Another sound joined that of the Big Wheel as it drew closer: wet breathing, like a child with a cold trying to breathe through his nose.

“Look, I don’t have time to talk now,” Buffy said. “Go home. You hear me? It’s dangerous out here. I’m not kidding.”

The plastic wheels grew louder, the wet breathing became a snarl, and Buffy turned toward it as it launched itself out of its wobbly vehicle. Cordelia screamed as a round, childish, bat-like face with a runny nose swallowed up her field of vision.

Buffy’s arm snatched out, her hand closed around the throat, and her body absorbed the impact as she brought the creature to a halt. The toddler’s inhuman eyes glared at her as its tongue peeked out between its fangs.

“Way past your bedtime,” Buffy said as the stake went in. The vampire child shrieked and became a part of the night. The Big Wheel bumped into Cordelia’s leg and she kicked it aside with her foot.

“Look, kids, I’m serious here, okay?” Buffy said with no humor. “Go home. It’s not safe to be out tonight. It’s like it’s getting worse every night.” Her eyes darted all around Xander and Cordelia, looking for the slightest movement as she listened intensely for sounds from behind her. “If Giles wants to worry about anybody, he should worry about you guys.”

Xander frowned. “Hey, what’s going on? Is it that time of the month for the undead, or what?”

Buffy turned around slowly, watching, listening, her expression grim. “From what I’ve seen so far, I’d say they need to switch to decaffeinated. It’s almost like they know something that’s made them pretty sure of themselves.”

“You think they know about the Racketeers?” Xander asked.

“You mean the Rakshasa?”

“What about them?” Cordelia asked.

“Do the vampires know anything about them?” Xander asked again, frustrated.

“Oh,” Buffy said. “I don’t know.”

“No, they don’t.” Angel’s voice came from Buffy’s right.

She turned to see him coming from the darkness of a yard with a For Sale sign on it in front of a house with no curtains hanging in its dark, empty windows. He joined them on the sidewalk.

“Hey,” Angel said.

Xander nodded once, but Cordelia’s face brightened. Buffy watched Cordelia look Angel over as if she were considering bidding on him.

“Hi, Angel,” Cordelia said with a bright smile.

Some people never learn
, Buffy thought.

Angel focused on Buffy. “They don’t know anything the way you’re thinking of knowing. But they — we — sense something. A shift of something.”

“What are you —” Buffy stopped and coughed dryly to clear her throat. Every time Angel looked directly into her eyes and spoke to her in that quiet, level voice, her own voice gave out on her like a bad lightbulb. “What are you talking about, Angel? A shift of what?”

He shrugged faintly and his eyes narrowed slightly. “A shift in the balance of power, maybe. Or maybe a shift in you.”

Buffy felt her heart pierced, as if by one of her own stakes. “Are you saying I’ve gained weight?”

“Buffy, I’m being serious,” Angel said.

“You think I’m joking here?” Buffy asked. “What do you mean?”

“Look, Buffy, you’re not focused.”

“What?”

“They do know,” Angel went on. “You’re not focused. You’re spreading yourself thin because of those killings, or maybe because you’ve got personal stuff on your mind. But they sense your distraction and they’re taking advantage of it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you need to solve your other problems so you can focus on your work.”

Buffy sighed. “I have to do everything around here.” She turned to Xander and Cordelia. “Why are you still here? Why aren’t you on your way home?”

Xander spoke in a mocking, childish voice: “Can we stay up and watch Letterman, Mommy?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Do whatever you want. Just do it someplace else, okay? I’ve got vampires to take care of.” She turned and headed back across the street to the cemetery’s entrance.

Angel walked at her side. “Need a little company?”

“A little company?” Buffy chuckled. “Tonight I could use a whole multinational corporation.”

At home, where Willow should have been studying, she was instead silently traveling the endless highways, biways, and subways of the Internet. Ninety minutes ago, she had typed “Rakshasa” into a search engine, and she’d been busy ever since.

There were countless Web sites that mentioned or made brief reference to the Rakshasa, but few with any of the real information she needed. So she’d gone to a Web site she visited frequently called, Gods, Demons, and Mortals. It was a poorly laid-out site with text that tended to ramble, apparently manned by a single person who referred to himself only as Metaphysical Phil.

Willow had exchanged e-mails with him a couple of times. He was an old hippy who spent most of his time on the road in a motor home with his wife — known only as She, practitioner of a cross between Wicca and some kind of transcendental aerobics — traveling the country in search of things to add to their already enormous collection of supernatural lore, much of which was for sale in Phil’s online store.

Phil once wrote in an e-mail to Willow, “The Internet is like a worldwide Woodstock for all the misfits and outcasts on the planet; only instead of mud we’ve got comfortable seats, and instead of bands we’ve got bandwidth, and instead of sex and drugs, we’ve got . . . well, sex. Sort of.” Willow stayed off the Internet for days after that.

Metaphysical Phil might not know much about creating an attractive and organized Web site, but it turned out he knew a whole lot when it came to the Rakshasa. Willow read from the monitor as she printed.

The text included links that led to more text. She found everything Giles had told her easily enough, but there was much more. The Rakshasa had a king who, like them, was a shapeshifter, but a shapeshifter that was not like them at all. The king of all Rakshasa was named Ravana, and his shapeshifting powers were limitless. He could take the form of a large piece of granite jutting up from the earth, or a storm cloud in the sky, or a tuft of woodsmoke curling upward in the distance. He could create enormous storms at sea and tear a mountain down with his bare hands.

“Not that big a trick if you’ve got twenty hands,” Willow muttered at the screen.

Ravana had ten heads, twenty arms, and twenty eyes that burned like the hottest fires. In the accompanying illustration, his thick neck sprouted a carousel of heads that allowed him to see in all directions at once. The arms extended from all around the upper body, ending in powerful-looking, black-clawed hands.

If he started spinning around
, Willow thought,
he’d look like some kind of way-creepy carnival ride.

Willow remembered Mila mentioning Ravana, but couldn’t remember in what context until she read further. The stories of Ravana all intertwined with the stories of other Hindu gods, weaving a sprawling tapestry of interconnected tales of vengeance, love, betrayal, death, and sometimes murder among gods and demons.

Ravana gained his power through thousands of years of poverty, self-denial, and meditation. When he’d gathered enough power, he went to Brahma — one-third of the Hindu Trinity and creator, with his daughter Vak, of humankind — and asked for the boon of immortality. Brahma refused at first, but was willing to negotiate. Finally, Brahma decided to grant Ravana protection from all the elements, which made him, if not immortal, then virtually indestructible. There was one thing, however, from which Ravana did not want to receive protection. Because he felt such contempt for them and thought them to be less significant than the smallest fly humming around him, he left himself vulnerable to human beings.

Being indestructible made Ravana a boastful tyrant, and he expected women to fall at his feet, swept away by the very sight of him. When they did not, he dragged them by the hair to his harem, where they were forced to live only to please Ravana. When she got to Ravana’s encounter with Rama, Willow put her hand to her chest and fingered the small hand-carved Rama beneath her shirt, hanging from a delicate silver chain.

Mila kept coming to mind as Willow read. She did not want to consider even the possibility that Mila was involved somehow with the killings in town, but she couldn’t avoid it. It gave her slight feeling of nausea that made her nose wrinkle and her upper lip curl unpleasantly.

Rama, a mortal, was a god incarnate. He was a great hero whose exploits were renowned, and he was happily married to the beautiful Sita. Ravana, an indestructible demon who even had a flying chariot, was never content and always hungered for more of everything. His envy of Rama had long ago turned to a burning hatred after years of fantasizing about how he could reduce Rama to nothing and take all he had. When Ravana heard that Rama had encountered and insulted Ravana’s own sister (who was skanky in ways only the sister of a demon could be), he decided it was time to make his fantasies real.

Ravana kidnapped Sita, dragging her back to Lanka by the hair in his flying chariot. No matter what he did, no matter what form he took or what he said, no matter if he was kind and charming or showed her the storming, shrieking monster he was, Sita resisted him. Given Ravana’s tremendous powers, Willow assumed that meant Sita was pretty damned strong herself.