Resurrecting Ravana (5 page)

“You have a radio in here, right, Giles?” she asked, speaking so fast that it sounded almost like one big, long word.

“Is something wrong, Buffy?” Giles asked. He looked very concerned as he turned away from the books, his task forgotten.

“The radio, can you get it? It’s important.”

“Well . . .” Giles went into his office and returned a moment later with what looked like a battered old silver-and-black lunchbox with two knobs on the side and an antenna on top. It was a portable AM/FM radio of indeterminate, but considerable, age. Maybe Giles bought it as a kid and didn’t even know radios had changed since then. For all Buffy knew, it was the first portable AM/FM radio ever made.

“Is it safe to use this thing?” Buffy asked as she stared at the old radio on the counter in front of her. Giles reached down and turned it on. “I heard a rumor,” Buffy said, turning the dial quickly, “and I just want to see if it’s true.” She fumbled up and down the dial, passing music and talk shows. “C’mon, isn’t there an all-news station around here?”

“Twelve-thirty AM,” Willow supplied.

Buffy turned the dial back. “Local news, right?”

“Yeah,” Willow said with a nod. “Every fifteen minutes. Or maybe it’s every half hour, I’m not sure.”

Buffy found the station and turned up the volume. A male voice was finishing up the local weather, giving the forecast for the next couple of days.

Xander and Oz joined them at the desk, curious. “Buffy,” Giles said, “why don’t you tell us what’s wrong?”

“Because I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

“What difference does that make?” Xander said.

“I don’t want to cause a panic and then find out it was over nothing,” Buffy replied impatiently.

“Panic?” Oz asked. His eyebrows were raised high as he exchanged a look with Xander, then Willow.

“What are you guys doing?” Cordelia asked, approaching the desk. She stood beside Xander and looked at the radio with distaste. “You’re listening to the news?”

Xander turned to her. “Hey, you never know what that Saddam Hussein is gonna do next. Or, more importantly, Madonna.”

“Buffy, I’m really quite busy,” Giles said. “Perhaps you could —”

“Ssshhh!” Buffy shushed, holding up a hand. “Listen!”

“More cattle have been killed at a farm just outside Sunnydale,” the newsman said. “The cattle were eaten to the bone, leaving only skeletal remains. This is the second such incident in three days. The cattle were found this morning by farmer Leland Rhine, who then called the police. Police have speculated that mountain lions may be to blame, but local wildlife authorities say the remains bear no resemblance to the work of a mountain lion, although they had no suggestions as to what the cause might be.” He paused for a moment, then moved on to a story about the apprehension of a telephone sales con artist who had been preying on old people.

“Oh, my God,” Willow whispered. The others were staring silently at one another with expressions of dread, so her quiet remark was not out of place. But Willow’s expression of dread was prompted by a reason known only to her.

Her magic may have brought those hellhounds to Sunnydale, and even though they’d been killed just last night — the last night of the full moon — her magic had brought them back again . . . and Willow had no idea if there was any way to stop it.

Chapter 3

“I
T CAN’T BE THOSE HOUNDS,”
B
UFFY SAID, SHAKING
her head slowly. Her jaw was set firmly, her forehead lined with a frown, and her voice was solid with confidence, certainty.

“How do you know?” Cordelia asked.

Everyone turned to her, waited for her to continue.

“Well, you should know by now, all those things you people deal with . . . I mean, they’re dead, they’re not dead, they’re undead. You never know what they’ll do! Right? So, maybe they came back. Did you ever think of that?” She turned to Oz. “Can you guys do that?”

“What?” Oz asked, frowning.

“Come back from the dead.”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Haven’t been killed yet.”

“The creatures we encountered last night,” Giles said, “were most definitely hellhounds. And hellhounds most definitely do not come back from the dead.”

“This is something else,” Buffy said. “I don’t know what, but it’s not hellhounds, and it’s not . . . well, it’s definitely not something we’re familiar with.” She turned to Giles and leaned forward with her hands flat on the countertop. “Unless you’re holding out on us.”

Giles folded his arms across his chest and frowned as he lightly chewed his lower lip, thinking. He dropped his arms suddenly and turned to Buffy.

“Uh, ho-holding out? Me? No, no, of-of course not.”

“You’re not aware of anything that . . . eats cattle?” Buffy asked.

Xander cleared his throat. “Do hamburgers count?”

“Doubt it,” Oz said quietly.

“I have never encountered anything quite like this before,” Giles said as he reached down and turned off the radio. “I will consult my books, particularly the more obscure volumes, but . . . if this violence is confined to cattle, perhaps we need not worry about it.”

“But what about the cows?” Willow asked, a touch of pain in her voice.

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Cows? Oh, God . . . don’t tell me you go around splashing blood on fur coats, too.”

“No, it’s just that . . .” Willow paused and looked around at the others. “We don’t know exactly what’s going on out there. The thing that’s . . . or the things that’re doing this might start eating those cows while they’re still alive, if they’re not already. I mean, if that’s the case . . . well, it’s horrible. Right?”

There was no response for a few ticks of the whitefaced institutional-style clock on the wall.

“Cows feel pain,” Oz said with an agreeable shrug.

Willow turned to him, the beginning of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She took his hand, curled her fingers between his, and said, “Thank you, Oz.” To the others she said, “I mean, maybe they’re just cows to us, but . . . well, to Bessie and the girls, they’re, like, other cows! They’re like company . . . friends, even. So how could we —”

“Whoa, wait, wait, scoot back a sec,” Xander interrupted, holding up a hand. “I’m down with the pain thing, but . . . you don’t really think cows are capable of socializing? Or having names for each other? I mean, what, you think they’re out in the field playing Bingo when nobody’s looking? I just wanna be clear about what I’m agreeing with, here.”

Willow asked, “Well, shouldn’t the whole being-eaten-alive possibility be enough to —”

“Yeah, that’s what I agreed with,” Xander said, nodding. “I don’t buy cow barn dances or toga parties on the pasture, but yeah, we should do whatever we can to prevent the being-eaten-alive thing.”

Cordelia said, “God, you’ve sure got a lotta sympathy for beef all of a sudden, Xander. It doesn’t seem to keep you out of Burger Barn, though, does it?”

Xander sighed as he turned to Oz. “See? I
knew
hamburgers would come into this somehow.”

Giles took off his glasses and walked slowly around the desk. “Why cattle?” he asked. “There’s no apparent danger to human beings, and nothing indicates a supernatural element to any of this, but the similarity is enough —”

“Oh, I think there’s something that indicates a supernatural element,” Buffy said. “There’s no meat left on those cows. The bones are cleaned, practically spotless. That’s not natural. And there’s not that much in the way of cattle around Sunnydale. What happens when it, or
they,
run out of their favorite food? Sunnydale would become a smorgasbord. Especially if there’s a lot of them . . . and I’m guessing there’s more than one . . . whatever they are.”

“No doubt,” Giles said. He put his glasses back on as he took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He headed toward a shelf of books, his steps quicker now, more determined. Everyone turned, their eyes following him. “Well, no point in delaying any further. I shall see if I can find something with a habit of . . . well, eating cattle to the bone.” He winced with disgust. “Willow, depending on my success, I may need you to —”

“Surf the ’Net?”

“Precisely.” He climbed onto a stepladder, scanned a shelf, and carefully removed a thick, heavy volume with yellow-edged pages and aged leather binding. He came down off the ladder and turned to see the others watching him. His eyebrows popped up and he said, “I believe you were all otherwise occupied a few moments ago. Weren’t you?”

The small group broke up as Xander and Oz returned to their table and Cordelia returned to hers.

“Like you said, Giles,” Willow said, “no point in delaying any further. I’m online, anyway, so I think I’ll just start looking now and see what I can find.” She went back to the computer, typed a search engine into the address window and hit the Enter button.

Giles stood in front of Buffy and put the large book on the counter. “If you’d like, you could peruse another book while I’m looking through this one.”

One side of her mouth curled up into a weary look of disinterest. It quickly disappeared when she put a hand over her mouth to cover a long yawn. “No . . . thanks, I should probably study. But I feel like taking a nap. I’m wasted.”

“Drop in this evening, would you? Maybe we’ll have something by then.”

She lifted a hand and waved once as she turned and left the library.

Clouds were gathering in the blue sky, creating an early false twilight and taking the sun’s warmth from what was already a chilly afternoon. The clouds were large and dark, big bullies ganging up on what remained of the day, and it was clear they intended to stay awhile.

As she went up the front steps of her house, Buffy wondered if it was getting cloudy and dark all over southern California . . . or if the clouds were just gathering over Sunnydale. Sometimes it felt that way, and given the fact that Sunnydale was a Hellmouth, it wasn’t out of the question.

In the house, she went into the kitchen, dropped her books on the table, took off the black leather jacket she’d been wearing over a light-blue sleeveless shirt and gray pants, and draped it over the back of one of the chairs. Her mother wasn’t home, as usual, and that was fine with Buffy, because she didn’t feel up to any cheerful chatter at the moment. She found a container of raspberry yogurt in the refrigerator, got a spoon from the drawer, and sat at the table for a snack.

The wise thing to do would be to study until it was time to go on patrol. The quarterlies were getting closer and closer.
Like the giant tarantula in that old movie, closing in on the small desert town to eat everyone and crush anyone it might miss,
Buffy thought grimly. But she knew if she studied, there was no way she would absorb or retain anything, not as tired as she was.

There had been a lot of excess slayage lately, complete with late hours and little sleep, and she was feeling overworked. Unfortunately, the job of being the Slayer didn’t come with vacation time, or even sick time. And the benefits were . . . well, there were no benefits. When she slept at all, it had been fitful sleep the last few nights. She’d had an odd nightmare that she couldn’t quite remember. It made her wake up suddenly, feeling angry and a little scared, but at the same time, feeling as if everything was going to be fine because all of her problems had been solved . . . or at least taken away, abolished. She could never get back to sleep after waking from the nightmare, and each time, she’d gone back outside to patrol some more.

The very thought of taking a nice, restful nap made Buffy feel good all over. She threw away the empty yogurt cup, washed the spoon, and took her books and jacket to her bedroom, where she flopped onto her bed with a long, weary groan.

As tired as she was, all she could do was stare at the ceiling of her room. She couldn’t stop thinking about those cows.

What would do such a thing? The kind of creatures typically found around a Hellmouth did not usually waste their time with something as boring as cattle. Their tastes usually went beyond the mundane . . . and straight for the jugular. Whatever it was, Buffy knew in her gut — and she trusted her gut — it was going to be trouble. The fact that it was something completely unfamiliar to Giles was a bad sign. There were many kinds of hellhounds with many kinds of talents, but this seemed to go beyond that. They didn’t know what it was, what it wanted (besides cows), or how to stop it.

Buffy propped herself up on an elbow, reached over and turned on the radio on her nightstand, then dropped back down onto the mattress. Music helped, a little. She closed her eyes, took a few slow, deep breaths, and felt herself starting to relax.

What felt like a moment later, Buffy opened her eyes and found she was lying on her stomach. The gray light that had shone through the curtains over her window was gone and her room was dark except for the hall light shining under her door. She could hear her mother’s voice somewhere in the house, words muffled.

Buffy sat up on the edge of the bed, turned on the bedside lamp, checked the clock. She’d gotten over two hours of sleep. Not bad. No nightmares, no dreams at all, very restful. Even better. She yawned and stretched, feeling like she could use a couple hours more. But she needed to go back to the library and check with Giles, and she was feeling a bit hungry, so she’d have to get some dinner before she started patrol. And at some point that night, she might even study.

Buffy found her mother moving around in the kitchen, preparing a salad as she talked on the cordless phone, which was held between the side of her face and her shoulder.

“Of course I told her no,” Joyce Summers said. She waved and smiled at Buffy, who flopped into a chair at the kitchen table. “The pictures she showed me, well . . . you had to see them. I mean, the pieces were awful! And she was so . . . so . . . well, annoying. At first, I thought maybe she was, you know, challenged in some way. But I’m pretty sure she’s just annoying.”

Buffy smelled something cooking. While her mother made the salad, she went to the oven and took a peek. Tuna casserole. A boring dish to some, but her mom made the best. She closed the oven, hoping it would be done soon so she could have some before going back out.