Read Resurrecting Ravana Online
Authors: Ray Garton
Tags: #Fantasy & Magic, #Juvenile Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Media Tie-In
Giles called, “Are you all right, Buffy?”
“Yeah. In one piece.”
“Doubtless more than can be said for Ravana,” he said with the quiet satisfaction that softened his clipped words when he was especially impressed with her work. Looking around he said, “Phyllis and Rayne seem to have gotten out of danger’s way.”
The corner where Ravana had materialized was black. The candles were gone, and there was no fire. Buffy went to the corner, looking over the floor. She turned her head up; no red eyes glowing in the darkness up there. There was no sign of Ravana or the Rakshasa. Even the Ravana statuette and its accompanying pieces had not been left behind.
Buffy walked toward the others as Xander asked, “Can we go now?”
“One of those things bit me,” Cordelia said, sounding angry and still afraid. “Would somebody please, please tell me this isn’t gonna make me turn into something! Because I probably don’t get to pick what, do I?”
Giles straightened his glasses. “You’ll be fine, Cordelia. We’ll just need to treat the wound back at the library. There are, after all, bacterial concerns.”
The albino man was gone. But another absence stabbed Buffy.
“Where’s Angel?” she asked.
The rain had stopped, but the air was cloyingly moist.
Buffy was not surprised to see the white limousine outside, or the old man in the wheelchair beside it. Nor was she surprised to see Angel fighting with the tall albino guy with the sunglasses and the nasty lump on his head. What caught her off guard was the fact that Angel was really working the guy over . . . and he was coming back for more. With the others following, Buffy ran to the man in the wheelchair.
There was a square black pack attached to the back of the chair. From it extended four tubes that curled around to the front of the seat and disappeared into the man who could only be Benson Lovecraft. A tube provided oxygen for his nose and thick glasses sat on his nose, which was narrow, a little too long, and ended in a lumpy, fleshy bulb.
A shattered Phyllis and wounded Rayne slumped against the car.
“Is that man a vampire?” Buffy asked.
“Man? What man?” Benson looked around, his voice soft, low, and gravelly, wheezing.
“The albino guy! Is he a vampire?”
“Oh, no. He’s my chauffeur. But apparently the other one is. A young one . . . preoccupied, it seems.”
“Well, don’t you think you should stop your chauffeur before he gets himself killed?”
“He’s holding up well, I think. But . . . you’re right. Otto!” When raised, his voice still held power, even at his extremely advanced age. But the shout seemed to drain him, make him shrink in his chair.
The ghost-faced man immediately turned away from Angel and hurried to Lovecraft’s side.
“Put Phyllis in the car,” Lovecraft said. “In the back with me.”
Otto went to Phyllis’s side, put a hand to the small of her back, and led her to the car.
“You lying bastard!” Phyllis spat at Rayne over her shoulder. “The things I did for you . . .” Then she was invisible inside the car, lost in the darkness, though her sobs could be heard, stifled and painful.
Angel moved to Buffy, put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her intensely. “Are you all right?”
She smiled up at him. “Dirty and wet, but fine.”
“I came out here after” — he jerked his head toward Otto and Rayne — “them. To keep them from getting away. Guess I was wasting my time. What happened in there?”
“They destroyed my Ravana statuette, that’s what happened,” Lovecraft said with a particularly unattractive cough.
Heat flared in Buffy’s throat and her knuckles whitened as she clutched the sword’s handle. She turned to man in the wheelchair and said, “Well, I’m sorry if I broke your precious little statue, but if you wanna know the truth, it was uglier than you, and it was about to —”
“If all you did was break it, dear, then we’re all up to our necks in raw sewage, if you get my meaning.” Lovecraft smirked up at her as he reached over and patted her arm with genuine warmth. “It had to be done, and I’m glad you did it. But I wouldn’t recommend interrupting a process like that before completion. You could potentially rip the fabric of time and space and next thing you know, you’re an enzyme in the stomach of a warthog at the bottom of an ocean. And none of us wants that, do we? You have too much to contribute. Where is your Watcher?”
Buffy raised her eyebrows, blinked. How could he know?
Giles stepped forward. His face was thoughtful but alert, neither smiling nor frowning, but in his eyes, he was a little boy approaching Santa Claus on Christmas Eve at the mall.
“Rupert Giles,” he said, offering his hand uncertainly. They shook, and Giles was surprised by the strength remaining in the man’s grip.
“Benson Lovecraft. But you can call me Mr. Lovecraft.”
“How . . . how did you know?” Buffy asked.
“At my age, everything is in shorthand. Even me . . . whatever that means.” He smiled approvingly at Giles. He still had his own teeth, though they hadn’t fared as well as he. “You’ve done a good job.” He turned to Buffy again. “She’s got a lot of life in her. Not the usual rigid look in the eyes, with all the individuality beaten out of her by the council’s endless rules and edicts.”
Giles’s face registered surprise. “You know the council?”
Lovecraft’s wrinkles deepened and his rubbery lips curled up in distaste. “Yes. But don’t tell anyone. I seldom admit to it myself.” He coughed again. “We’re in different branches of the same business, Mr. Giles. My approach differs considerably.”
“In what way would that be, Mr. Lovecraft?” Giles asked.
“They do it their way, I do it mine.” He waved a hand. “Otto, kindly show Mr. Rayne to his seat in the front of our limousine.”
Otto moved toward Rayne, who produced his gun.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Rayne snapped, aiming the gun at Otto.
The tall albino casually slapped the gun from Rayne’s hand and twisted his arm behind his back in a single motion. Rayne cried out in pain.
Lovecraft said, “Mr. Rayne, I once had my head trapped in the mouth of an enormous Egyptian cat demon that was hungrier than a Texas cattle rancher after finishing a meal in a French restaurant, and I’m still here to tell about it. So you can imagine how little patience I have for the likes of you. Your way or mine, you’re leaving in the limousine. We have some accounts to settle. I’ve found that most people prefer doing things their own way, especially considering how the opportunity seldom arises. So if I were you, I’d get my ass in the car before my fair friend here kicks it up and down the street like a crushed can.”
When Otto escorted Rayne to the limousine, the Englishman was clearly unhappy, but he did not resist. Otto closed the door after him with a sound of finality.
“I, uh . . . there, um . . . there are laws, Mr. Lovecraft, and as troublesome as Ethan is, perhaps it would be best if you left him —”
“Mr. Giles, your friend here —”
“He’s hardly my friend!”
“My granddaughter is very special to me. She’s a sensitive, delicate creature who . . . well, let’s just say she’s not really equipped to make some of life’s more challenging decisions. That’s why she lives with me. I take care of her because no one else in the family wanted to, which was fine with me, because I love her. But somehow” — he pointed at the front of the limousine — “that piece of work got over the back fence, took advantage of my granddaughter, seduced her, gained her trust, and used her to get to something else of mine, so he could steal it and use it for his own imbecilic purposes. Now, if you’re concerned about that man’s welfare, don’t bother. After a brief stay on my lovely island, he will leave unblemished and pain-free, I promise. But I can also promise you that at some point during that stay” — his voice lowered — “he will beg me to kill him.”
Lovecraft fingered a toggle on the armrest of his chair and wheeled over to the limousine. Otto accompanied him, detached the pack from the back of the chair, and gently lifted the old man out and into the backseat of the limousine.
As Otto folded up the wheelchair, Lovecraft said, “Don’t forget to call ahead and have somebody waiting to wash off my wheels.” Once his door was shut, the darkened window eased down with a vague hum, and Lovecraft smiled at them, turned his gaze to Buffy. “Good job, young lady. Remember, be true to yourself and to those who are true to you and all the rest of life’s junk pretty much takes care of itself, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But . . . I suspect you already know that.”
Otto got behind the wheel and started the engine.
Turning to Giles, Lovecraft said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Giles. Don’t take any rubber pentagrams.”
The window slid up as the limousine drove away, bright white in the night’s darkness, glaring back at them with two large, red eyes.
“Is that what we’ll be like in ninety years?” Willow asked nobody in particular.
“Not if we’re lucky,” Buffy replied, sheathing her sword.
Chapter 23
O
NCE THEY RETURNED TO THE LIBRARY, THERE WAS A
good deal of bandaging to do. Along with the contents of the first-aid kit, Giles kept some back shelves stocked with enough gauze, tape, disinfectants, and aspirin to keep a small clinic functioning for a week.
“So, it was magic,” Buffy said. “Right?”
“I’m not sure,” Willow replied. “Maybe. Sort of.”
Xander said, “You’ve gotta stop being so specific, Will. It’s gonna give you a tumor.”
“Giles says magic isn’t something we do, but something we harness,” Willow went on. “Right, Giles?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, what if magic isn’t the only way to harness that . . . thing . . . that power? What if simple, perfect belief in something can harness a little of that power? I mean, you were right, Buffy, when you said Rama had to really believe that arrow was going to work when he fired it into Ravana, he had to have absolute and total faith in Vishnu about that arrowhead. Because if it didn’t work, you know, like, he wasn’t gonna take it back to Target and exchange it for one that works. Well, Mila’s brother is a very devout Hindu, he has that kind of belief, and he carved that stone into the shape of something he believed in that strongly. Maybe . . . maybe he left a little of that belief behind in his work.”
Buffy said, “Or it was because we were human, and Ravana never thought enough of us to cover his butt from us in the first place.”
Willow nodded. “Or that.”
Angel came up behind Buffy’s chair, got down on a knee, and put an arm around her. “I’m going to go,” he said quietly. “You know . . . keep an eye on things out there. You should go home, get some sleep.”
“I don’t think the jungle will be quite as wild from now on,” she said, matching his volume and tone. She put a hand to his cheek. “Thank you.”
They kissed briefly, with warmth, then Angel stood and went to the door.
“Thank you very much, Angel,” Giles said. He turned to the others. “I’d like to thank you all. You were very brave tonight. You risked your lives and beautifully accomplished what we set out to do.”
“But what if they come back? What if they aren’t all dead? What if someone else . . .” Xander looked a little nervous, as if he were being forced to consider eating brussels sprouts without catsup.
“That’s always a possibility,” Giles replied. “All we can know is what we saw. They seemed to be gone.”
Angel left the library and Buffy gazed at his departing figure.
“This power you were talking about harnessing, Willow,” Xander said. “Is it an energy field created by all living things? Does it surround us? Penetrate us? Does it bind the galaxy to —”
Cordelia groaned. Her injury had been dressed, but she looked miserable. “Come back to earth, guys! Can’t you see I’m in pain here?”
Xander stepped over to her and asked, “How do you plan to explain that to your parents?”
“Explain that?” she croaked. “How am I going to explain my hair? And now I’ll have to wait weeks for another appointment with Froi.”
“Why don’t you just go to someone else, Cordelia?” Buffy asked.
“Buffy, please. Life is filled with challenges . . . and then you find the perfect hairstylist. And you do not let go.”
“Buffy,” Willow said, and they looked at each other across the table. “Rama believed in Vishnu, and Mila’s brother believed in Rama, Vishnu, and Ravana . . . what did you believe in when you shish-kebobed that thing?”
“Well, it was your idea. You told me the Rakshasa were afraid of the carving. I just sorta went with it. So . . . I guess . . . I believed in you.” And they both smiled.
About the Author
Ray Garton is the author of thirty-seven books and numerous short stories. He and his wife, Dawn, live in northern California with their six cats and assorted outdoor wildlife. Garton is hard at work on his next novel.
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