Resurrecting Ravana (17 page)

“You go, girlfriend,” Willow muttered.

Rama went on a long journey and faced many perils to search everywhere for Sita, and it finally ended on the island of Lanka. But to get to Ravana and Sita, Rama first had to pass through a vast forest that was alive with Rakshasa. That last stretch of the journey was a daunting experience, even for Rama, but he got through the forest and confronted Ravana with his bow and arrows. It was a gruesome battle, with a good deal of bloodshed and a lot of disorienting and frightening shapeshifting. Rama’s arrows struck, but were pushed back out by Ravana’s indestructible body. Finally, Rama used an arrow that had been crafted by the god Vishnu and carried his power, thus fulfilling a prophecy that Ravana would be defeated by a mortal.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of Ravana. Nobody ever just died in Hindu mythology; they came back again and again.

“So what’re the Rakshasa doing in Sunnydale?” Willow mumbled to herself. She clicked on a link to an illustration of the Rakshasa.

The confused, dreamlike illustration looked as if the artist had been unable to decide exactly how to draw the creature. It was short and squat, dwarflike, and wore a long cloak that concealed its limbs and body. A lizardlike face peered out from the cloak’s hood. Small but elephantlike earflaps hung from the sides of its overlarge head. Just above each slanted, bloodred eye was a small nub that came to a rounded point; it took a moment for Willow to realize they were horns, like cow horns just beginning to sprout. It almost looked as if the creature were smiling, with the tips of razorlike fangs visible over the lower lip.

Something about the illustration gave Willow an icy chill. She stared at it intensely. She felt almost as if the creature were . . . familiar. That was ridiculous, of course. She knew nothing of Hindu mythology and was sure she had never seen anything like the Rakshasa on the screen before her. But still . . .

The Rakshasa were the minions of Ravana, feverishly devoted to his every whim. They did his bidding without question or hesitation, killed for him, sometimes died for him — and apparently they still managed to find the time to eat a few dogs or a horse now and then.

So, if the Rakshasa are Ravana’s posse
, Willow thought,
then why isn’t he here with them now?

“Maybe he is,” she replied to herself with a chill down her back.

Willow read through more text, more stories of curses and conquests, and found a list of links to other Ravanarelated Web sites. She clicked on one called Abyss. The link took her directly to a page within the site, rather than going to the main page first. In ornate gold letters at the top of the light-blue page were the words “Resurrecting Ravana.” The black text below was about that very thing — bringing the demon back to life.

Willow felt the slight nervous tremble she felt whenever she found something important. This felt very important. She started the printer, then read from the screen. Her shoulders drooped and she sighed heavily a moment later, when she read that the most important element in raising the Hindu god had been lost.

Nothing could be done without the Ravana statuette. No one knew how old it was or where it had come from, but for something so enigmatic, quite a bit was known about it. The statuette stood a little over two feet tall and was said to be carved from the bones of some of Ravana’s countless victims. It allegedly contained the essence of Ravana, a living force waiting to be reborn. But that rebirth could not be accomplished without the Rakshasa.

Six smaller pieces symbolizing the Rakshasa had to accompany the Ravana statuette. For the resurrection to be completely successful, the Rakshasa had to be summoned first. They moved ahead of their lord and master and prepared for his arrival by sewing seeds of paranoia and suspicion in the immediate area. It was said that their very presence, known or unknown, could have a powerful negative effect on the emotions and behavior of people in the surrounding area. They stirred anger and turned hearts cold. They turned people against one another, turning love into anger, anger into hatred, and finally hatred into murder.

“Yeah!” Willow exclaimed at her laptop. “That’s what we’ve got! They’re here already!”

What started out small after the arrival of the Rakshasa grew into chaos, which was precisely the goal. Ravana stepped with ease into that environment of hatred and murder, and in his presence, it grew. Ravana’s new rule spread out around him with the help of the Rakshasa, and before long, Ravana’s new kingdom would be complete, built on the blood and bones of the human race.

“But what’s the point of ruling if you’re just gonna trash the place?” Willow asked herself at a whisper. The next line she read served as somewhat of an answer to her question:

“Ravana rules in chaos, but it is his own chaos.”

Willow waited for the printer to finish. Her hands were trembling again. She’d been right the first time; the information she’d found was important. It meant — at least, to Willow — that someone was trying to resurrect Ravana . . . if they hadn’t already. They’d gotten at least halfway through the process, because the Rakshasa were active in the town already.

Was it possible that Mila had something to do with it? That she was involved? She understood why Buffy was so certain that Mila was the source of the problem. It was so obvious, such a natural conclusion to reach, but Willow couldn’t believe it. Even when she tried, she could not buy it. Giles had said it was only a possibility, but even that was too much for Willow to accept. She tried to see their side, and she could see it, but it didn’t alter the gut-level trust she had in Mila.

Willow pulled the chain out from beneath her shirt and looked at the tiny figure of Rama that Mila had given her. Was her blind certainty a sign that Buffy was right? Had Mila done something to her? Cast some kind of spell on her? And did it have anything to do with the little stone Rama? If so, then why Rama? He was benevolent, beloved, a hero, a godlike man, the guy who got all the prettiest and most popular girls. If Mila were going to do something bad to her, why would she use the star quarterback of Hinduism to accomplish it? It didn’t make sense.

There was always the chance, of course, that Mila knew absolutely nothing about the whole thing, and would laugh hysterically if Willow told her.

The Ravana statuette and accompanying six Rakshasa pieces had passed from hand to hand over the centuries. They had been owned by royalty and stolen by common thieves; people had killed and died for them, and they left a path of blood and madness wherever they were. There were periods of decades when no account could be made of the Ravanna statuette’s whereabouts, and then it would turn up in a prestigious museum or in the hands of some prominent collector. It was last seen in a museum in London, from which it had been stolen, around the turn of the century. It had not been seen since.

Someone had found it, though. And for some reason, they had brought it to Sunnydale. Willow clicked on a link to a picture of the statuette. It was a copy of an old black-and-white photo that had yellowed and creased and lost a corner. Little detail could be made out, but what was obviously the statuette stood with three Rakshasa on each side, all seven figures dark and grainy, as if hiding in the shadows.

As if waiting.

She felt a chill on her neck and shoulders and broke out in gooseflesh.

Willow needed to take what she’d found to Giles. But she couldn’t do that until she’d put her own mind at ease about Mila. If Willow was able to stumble over some doubts, then she would be irresponsible not to consider it a possibility, at least. But she felt confident enough to ask Mila to her face. Even though it was late, Willow decided to get a telephone directory and find Promila Daruwalla’s address, then go knock on her door.

If her new friend was trying to resurrect an ancient Hindu demon that was going to spread mayhem and chaos from Sunnydale to the four corners of the globe, Willow wanted to find it out for herself.

Chapter 13

B
UFFY AND ANGEL APPROACHED A CONVENIENCE STORE
. Angel waited outside while Buffy went in. Inside, the store was like a flourescent bath with awful music. A boombox behind the counter played the deafening white noise of some skater band that probably had a sick name. The clerk sat slumped on a stool, head hanging forward over an open magazine on the counter. There was a dark-haired guy wearing a long black coat in the corner hunched over a pinball machine, his whole body jerking as he hit the bumpers. The machine’s backboard was entirely made up of a demon’s red, horned, grinning face. Each time a player lost a ball, the demon’s eyes glowed green and the mouth opened and closed repeatedly as a deep, hellish laugh made the whole pinball machine tremble.

Buffy hated the machine instantly. It gave her the creeps. Of course, all convenience stores gave Buffy the creeps. The unnatural light with its grating, gnatlike hum, and the shelves of junk food . . . fake food, filled with all kinds of chemicals and preservatives, stuff that would survive a nuclear war without even glowing. Buffy saw something sinister in their cases of fake drinks with fake sweeteners and fruit slooshies in cups the size of milk buckets.

Maybe it was just so normal she found it jarring. Buffy hadn’t been on very good terms with “normal” in a long time.

She grabbed a bottle of diet cola, a package of Twinkies, despite all their accompanying chemicals and carcinogens, and went to the counter.

The pinball demon in the corner roared with laughter.

The clerk did not move when Buffy put the soda and Twinkies on the counter. He remained staring down at the magazine, the top of his head covered by a red uniform cap with a yellow bill. His hands were palm-down on the magazine.

Buffy reached over and nudged his arm.

The clerk slowly slumped forward and Buffy pulled her hand back just before his head clunked onto the counter. The red cap came off, tumbled over the counter and dropped to Buffy’s feet. The clerk landed facedown, and when Buffy leaned forward slightly, she could see the ragged fang marks in his neck.

The demonic laughter stopped. The pinball machine did not ring or buzz or play any explosive sound effects.

Buffy turned just as the vampire in the long black coat reached her, clamped a hand on to her neck and pressed his thumb into her throat. He smelled of mud and decay. She crushed his nose with the soda bottle in her hand; it hit the vampire’s face so hard that the glass, thick as it was, shattered and cola sprayed in all directions. With a sharp movement of her forearm, Buffy fractured his elbow with a loud crack and bent it backward. The vampire did not make a sound, but it loosened its grip on her throat.

Her fists closed over the lapels of the black coat and she swung the vampire around hard. He crashed into the counter and she pushed him onto his back. The clerk’s body slid backward and dropped to the floor in a heap on the other side of the counter. Buffy reached under her jacket for a stake.

There were no stakes.

She punched the vampire in the face a few times when he tried to sit up, setting off his broken nose. It just pissed him off.

There was a cup by the cash register stuffed with pens and pencils and a couple fat magic markers. She pressed her right hand to the vampire’s chest and reached for the cup with her left.

The vampire knocked her right arm away and clutched her left elbow.

Buffy closed her hand on something — a pen, a pencil, she couldn’t tell — just as the vampire bent a knee back to his chest and slammed his foot into Buffy’s chest and kicked outward. Her feet left the floor for an instant and she crashed into a lottery scratcher machine. She grabbed the magazine rack to keep from falling, but he was on her before she could recover fully.

He hauled Buffy up by her jacket and slammed her hard against the scratcher machine, pressing his body against hers. Her left hand was pinned between them, so even if she was lucky enough to have grabbed a wooden pencil, she couldn’t use it.

Buffy did two things almost simultaneously. She smacked her forehead into the vampire’s forehead, shot a knee between his, curled her leg around his, and twisted powerfully. When his head dropped back in response to her headbutt, and his body started to twist away from her, Buffy raised her left arm and brought it down fast, without even looking to see what she held in her fist.

The tip of the Number 2 pencil snapped at first when it hit his shirt, but the rest of the pencil went in, anyway.

The vampire collapsed in a cloud of dust and disappeared just before landing on the
Weekly World News
rack, where headlines warned New York City of a coming ratboy invasion.

How did I lose track of the number of stakes I had?
Buffy wondered, angry at herself. She pushed the glass door open hard as she hurried out of the store, thinking out loud. “Shit! How could I not have any stakes?”

“What took you so long?” Angel asked. He was standing by the ice freezer, swallowed in shadows.

“Vampire,” she said, picking up her pace. He joined her and they started across the small parking lot. “They’re getting their food at convenience stores now. If this keeps up, they’ll be running for political office by Monday. And I can’t believe I’m out of stakes! What kind of brain-freeze was that?”

They were on the sidewalk, putting the store behind them.

“You’re bound to use them up faster than usual with all this activity,“ Angel said. “And with all this activity, it’s not a good idea to be without stakes.”

Before Buffy could respond, she saw headlights up ahead, growing closer, and heard an engine get louder. It was the same gleaming white limousine she’d seen the night before.

The back window on the passenger’s side lowered slowly. The black glass peeled back over a long dead-white face wearing silver-rimmed reflective sunglasses. The face seemed to hover there without a body, or even a full skull . . . just the face, held up by the thick darkness inside the car. Hidden eyes latched onto them and the face turned to watch them as the limousine passed.