Chapter 17: Passover

The halls of Castelul Drakul drizzled into place around her - gradually at first, then in a mad rush. Like everything else, they glowed.

Nancy Stark rose to her feet, and felt the ground quake beneath them. A titanic blast of air entered and exited her lungs, every nerve in her body flaring like a firework.

She crossed to a set of steel doors, tore directly through them. Suddenly, the whole world seemed to be made of paper and porcelain.

A wafer thin voice cried out from somewhere in the dazzling landscape. “Mistress Stark! We thought you were dead.” Nancy sought out the speaker through the haze. The girl glowed too, like fine crystal in candlelight. All Nancy could see was heat and heartbeats, action and blood. She moved toward the blood.

“Hello Jasmine, dear,” she drawled, emerging from a pile of shadows. The girl’s name came to her as if in a dream, and she dangled it from her lips like fresh bait.

“Mistress,” said Jasmine. “The General and her team are on their way. They were attacked in the mountains, ambushed by…” The girl fell silent, mesmerized by the being that drew near.

“That so?” Nancy whispered. “My, my. How dreadful.” Jasmine didn’t reply. She was inches from the girl’s face now, and she could smell the wonderful, wonderful light pulsating inside. “Well, is anybody hurt? I am a doctor, you know.”

“I know. I mean… I duh-don’t know,” Jasmine stammered. Her entire body trembled with an instinctual, animal fear. She had the look of a gazelle on the edge of the water, in that precise moment where it smelled the lion. ”What’s?  What’s wrong with you?”

“Fit as a fiddle, hun’. Why d’you ask?”

She was sobbing now. “It’s just… your… your… eyes… your…”

Something black unzipped at the bottom of Nancy Stark’s soul. A sea of burning wasps poured out, racing like buckshot though every vein. The universe shuddered like a leaf.

“My eyes,” she repeated.  Her voice was ringing like a savage church bell. Casually she took the girl’s hand in her own. Crushed it like a flower petal.

“Please child. Tell me all about my eyes.”

***

The tank roared across the drawbridge, perfectly mimicking its driver’s mood. A dozen Slayers scattered out of the path as a pair of the battle-scarred Wolf Spiders limped in behind it.

“Close the fucking gate,” Kennedy screamed, leaping down from the hatch. Lieutenant Marsden scampered up like a handmaiden.

“General! What happened?”

“I want recon and defense teams online,” barked Kenned, mid-stride. “We have a Code-fucking-Red.”

Marsden went white as a sheet. “Sir?”

“Yes, that means we’re under attack. Yes, that means now.” As the Slayer scuttled off, Kennedy dropped her assault rig and made a beeline for the keep, eyes peeled for pasty nutjobs.

Much as she hated to admit it, she needed the albino’s brain on this one. Those G.I Joe punks had chased them all through the mountains, harassing them with blind fire the whole way. Kennedy ordered the demons’ carrier to hit the brakes near Mount Orsiva, and cover their retreat. She lost contact with them twenty minutes later, and assumed they got chewed up by the helicopters’ guns. It was only a matter of time before they tracked her here.

Kennedy roared into her cell phone as she approached Dracula’s court. “Nancy, get your fucking ass up here NOW!” She slammed the gilded doors wide, and then she froze dead in her tracks.

“Hello, darlin’,” Nancy purred. “Lovely of you to join us.”

The Nurse lounged catlike in the old devil-king’s throne, bare legs draped lazily over an armrest of human skulls. Her uniform was stained brown with blood.

“Nancy?” Kennedy stared in horrified wonder. Something shuddered at the edge of Dr. Stark’s outline, and staring at it, Kennedy felt like she might lose her mind. Power seemed to pour off the Nancy Stark in thick, black waves.

And.

Her eyes…

“They,” Kennedy droned. “That is. We were. We were chased.”

“Shhhhh….It’s okay sugar,” the Nurse soothed. She slithered from her throne (a chair, only a chair) and closed the distance between them, shedding clothing as she went. Finally the thing that had been Nancy Stark stood before her, alabaster nude, radiating the heat of a hundred suns. She leaned in close, and for a moment, Kennedy wasn’t sure if she was about to be kissed, or bitten in half.

Mercifully, it was neither.

“Awwww…. don’t fret, now, Miss Kennedy,” Nancy whispered, and spread her arms wide. Unable to resist, Kennedy fell into them.

"And, don’t you go worryin’ bout them  fishy Finns, neither” Nancy cooed, rocking her in a warm embrace. “The doctor is in."

***

The sky was a band of pink, pockmarked with a rash of fading stars. A second copter wove into view beside them, dangling a massive cargo drum full of Yuck.

On the far side of the fuselage, three friends slept like broken dolls in their flight harnesses. Buffy studied their faces, soft and silent at last. They were getting older. She marveled at the purple hollow under Xander’s good eye, noticed the puffy dollops developing at the edge of Andrew’s jowl. Was he a drinker, now? It suddenly didn’t seem too far-fetched.

And Giles. Giles seemed ancient, a crumbling antique. What had been everyday mortal weakness was slipping into frailty. Had his heart withered too? Cloudy with regret. Gray rainbeats. Death was the aftertaste of age. How long did any of them have?

(sound like him now you sound like him)

Don’t you ever shut up?

The costumed vampire dangled motionless beside her, a limp corpse in a flight harness.   Ageless and soulless.  A Swanson’s frozen TV dinner of Darkness, skulking through a century of midnight snack attacks. She’d been warned early on not to romanticize them.  As Giles once said, the world was already “steeped in their pornographers.”  It wasn’t just that namby-pamby Anne Rice crap, either. Everywhere you turned these days there were plastic surgeons and anti-fat pills and Super Sweet Sixteens. Grown men collected toys, virgins were Born Again (and again and again and again). Somewhere along the way, it seemed that people had quietly agreed to lock themselves inside time capsules of their former lives.  To stop changing.

An old memory of Merrick intervened. Drunk on dessert liqueur, four days before his own, violent death.  “A sticky proposition,” he’d groused, eyes like two swollen red grapes. “Lots of people seem to like the idea. Being strong, staying young. But at the bottom of it, eternal youth means never having to hurry. And if you asked me, I’d wager that’s where evil begins…”

She glared at the black shape. Spike had hurried plenty. Dumbass was always in a rush.

And she loved him.

It was impossible to know whether he slept or not, or if he dreamed when he did. She’d have to ask him some day.

“Sorry about the rough chop.” Sam Finn’s arms were braced in the cockpit’s archway, the loose fabric of her flight suit flapping like the wings of a bat. “That Chinook over there would’ve been a smoother ride. Of course, we had no idea you ran with such a big crowd these days.” Buffy nodded vaguely, unsure how to answer. Sam tossed her a Cheshire grin. “Anyway, we’re making good time. Should be in ‘Jolly Old’ by noon.” She cast a dark glance at Spike’s motionless form. “Unless there are any more surprises, that is.”

Buffy gritted her teeth. “Surprises,” she muttered. “Yeah, I guess we’re all full of those today, huh?”

Sam prowled across the deck to meet her, the smile fading from her lips. She took a military knee, offered a strip of brown jerky.

Buffy made an eww mouth. “No, thanks. All good on the dried cow face tip.”

Sam shrugged and snapped off a healthy chunk.

“Riley?” Buffy asked.

“Five-by-five,” Sam chirped sarcastically, then squeezed the salty snack down her throat. “No thanks to you, I guess.”

Buffy stifled a chill. “I couldn’t help him,” she explained. “I mean, I wouldn’t have left him behind.” For a fleeting moment, she wondered if that was true.

“Well, like I said, Ri’s fine. The brass gave him the standard ass-kicking, of course, but that was just for show. You know how bureaucrats can be.” She shot a sly glance at the sleeping Watcher. “But everything’s straightened out now. He got a full brief from the new chain-of-command. We all did.”

“Sounds great. Mind filling me in?”

Sam chuckled wryly. “Sorry, cheerleader. That info’s about as classified as you can possibly get. Besides, you’ll get the scoop when we reach home base. I know someone who is just dyin’ to tell you.”

Buffy felt like throttling that smirk off her face.   She took a yoga breath, let it go. “So where is he?”

“My husband, you mean?” Buffy nodded, careful not to signal anything but palsy walsy concern. “Well, if you must know we passed him, already.  About forty miles south of Milan.”

“Passed him? I don’t get it…”

“I mean he’s on route to the target. Riley’s leading the assault team. They’re going back to clean up the Council’s little mess.”

Buffy shook her head, horrified. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Kennedy’s little Slayer junta. We’ve deployed a full air complement to take out Castle Dracula.”  She studied the shock on Buffy’s face. “No reason to worry, Summers. They’re fully trained to handle this sort of situation, I assure you. Drop a few J-Dams to soften ‘em up, then move in with heavy infantry to mop up the stragglers. It’s a standard counter-terrorism op.”

“Counter … Are you insane? Do you have any idea what you’re dealing with?”

“Sure I do,” Sam replied. She leaned in close, a bitter leer spreading across her face. “We’re dealing with the same batch of sad, delusional little freaks we dealt with back in that bunker. You know.  The sort that imagine they’re special ‘cause they know a few karate moves.”

Buffy felt a sharp twist in her gut. “Please. Samantha - I’m telling you to call this off. Before it's too late.”

“Already is,” she shot back. “Besides, I don’t have the authority.”

“Who does?”

Samantha snapped off a big hunk of jerky, chewed it with her smile.  “It’s like I told you," she said.  "As soon as we’re home, you’ll find out all about it.”

***

Incoming text message…
RE: dinner
Hey farmboy. In transit w/ BS and crew. ETA 1200 hrs. Let’s get steaks at Le Jardin at 1900.
Blondie says hi. Swear I won’t kill her if you get home soon.
And remember what you promised, K?
XO
S

Riley tapped END and tried to get some goddamn focus. The Carpathian mountains stretched out before him like a hillbilly banquet, all craggy dips and dollops. As they scrubbed in low over the foothills, he thought of the first time he’d ever seen the Rockies. Six years old. Felt like forever, but when he closed his eyes he could still see them, as invincible as they were beautiful. When they got stateside again, he’d have to take her.

The ‘right’ her, he thought. What a long strange trip that was, finding her.

It made him think of a certain lost, awkward country boy. Eighteenth birthday. Signed up for the Army like he was writing a ten dollar check. Sometimes Riley wondered why the hell he didn’t go to cow college like everybody else. Just wanted to get the hell out of Iowa, he guessed.

It was murky waters, after that. Riley had the sort of rough competence that field commanders loved, and the patience for more delicate operations. His old C.O John Healey once told him he was “born to be ‘deleted.’” Those early days were tough on him. He’d seen some pretty bad things. He’d humped through Sudanese killing fields with the safety on, saw warlords slaughter infants in the name of dead fathers. Then black ops in Uzbekistan, Bali, Argentina. Sometimes things would get fuzzy, and it got hard to remember who the good guys were. Mostly, it was just hard staying quiet, never being able to share the things he’d seen or done.

Then, in the summer of ’97, he shipped out with a strike team to Nepal. It was there that everything changed forever. He met his first “scaly” on a dusty highway near Buranj, just a short walk from the Chinese border.

Years afterward, he’d learn its name, its origin - everything anyone ever wrote, spoke or whispered about it. The Initiative called it a G’longa demon. They were lightbenders, leftovers from a failed demonic invasion that happened 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. G’longas were mostly scavengers these days, preferring to feed quietly on the fringes of third-world conflicts. But that night, young Riley Finn didn’t know any of that stuff. That night it was just the Monster; a fairytale bogeyman come to life. In less than twenty minutes, the thing had ripped his entire squad to bloody, bite-sized shreds. It would’ve have killed Riley too, if it wasn’t stuffed full of Green Beret. He remembered how it ambled so slowly towards him, like some huge, drowsy toddler, a bib of blood and steaming entrails smeared across its matted chest.

Riley had waited for it to get close. Real close.

He’d made it back to central command on foot the next day, humping sixteen sweltering miles across the rocky wasteland. He filed his report with his C.O, curled himself up in the brig’s rickety green cot, and fell into a deep, deep sleep. The psyche-test was administered later that evening when he awoke; the court martial, the following morning. Col. Taggert handed him his discharge papers and a one-way ticket to the Madison International airport in Cedar Rapids. He’d have to find his own bus fare from there.

And that’s the reason he was boarding that Army airbus one fateful June morning, eleven long years ago. A strange woman named Margaret Walsh had intercepted him on the tarmac, offering a sly smile and the “adventure of a lifetime.” Riley never did make it back to Iowa.

Now, he was flying again, crossing yet another set of mountains. Alpha squadron formed a sloppy wing formation nearby. It reminded him of a damn redneck air show, and he felt his blood pressure spike.

“C’mon, tighten up people! This isn’t a goddamn exercise.” Two heavy-duty Blackhawks instantly flattened out on either side, rotors huffing out a perfect trancelike rhythm. Hunched low in the pilot’s seat, old Captain Gault pulled their own chopper narrowly ahead of the pack. Riley’s rule: If anything was gonna happen, it would happen to them first. They hugged low to the foggy ridges, eyes sharp for enemy guns.

Suddenly, Marco’s voice came crackling over the headset. “Yoo-hoo, boys,” he chided. “Poppa’s got some sweet-ass visual for ya.”

“The castle?” Riley barked.

“Well, if it’s big, old, and creepy as a three-tittied whore, then yeah, I’d say so! Transmitting coordinates. Finn, you owe me fifty bucks and a blowjob.”

Riley grimaced, “Make it a hundred and call it even. Alright ladies, you know the drill. I want everyone locked and loaded, but no independent fire. I don’t care if you see King Kong in a hejab down there - nobody fires without my mark! Understood?” A wave of half-hearted “oohrahs” was answer enough, and Riley tapped Gault to home in on Marco’s dots. Within seconds, a dark structure loomed on the horizon, peering through a cloud of spectral mist.

“Yep. That’s our bingo tent, alright,” Riley murmured to Gault. “Take us in a half-a-click, skipper, then call in the bomb-boys.” That last part made him scowl. Personally, Riley wouldn’t have minded getting in close for some fast-and-furious with the uber skanks, but he’d promised Sam: no “cowboy shit.” Plus, the B-52s were the safest bet. Barring any major fuckups, two bombers would drop 4000-pounds of Happy New Years right in Kennedy’s lap. He’d once seen those things powderize a M’lok Tharian War Hive in a single run. Compared to that, ol’ Drac’s crib would be a walk in the park.

Riley’s Blackhawk crawled into position a half a mile out, with Marco’s Cobra assault copter falling in tight on his left flank. Gault’s fingers fluttered over the transponder, punching in the attack code with the skill of a concert pianist. He uttered a quick string of Greek letters to verify coordinates, but it didn’t go through. For some reason, the short-band had gone all wonky on them.

Riley tapped his earpiece. “Diamond-One this is Escrow. Do you read me, over.” The only reply was a long hiss of static. “Diamond-One, we have a visual confirmation of target, please respond, over.”

Gault flipped a switch on the console, dumping the radio feed to the cockpit speakers. Deep in the nest of feedback, a female voice was humming a ghostly tune. “Some kinda wave-jammer,” Gault theorized.

Before Riley could respond, a blanket of black smog rolled overhead, blotting out the pre-dawn sky. The darkness seemed to enshroud the entire squadron, and the Hawk’s instruments were freaking out about it.

“Christ,” Gault whispered. “What in the sweet and sour ketchup is that shit?”

“Bad,” Riley suggested, watching the altimeter spin like a pinwheel. Dead ahead, a long crack of light appeared in the sky. It seamed the air like the lips of a nightmare womb. At its center, Riley could see something huge wriggling through. A pair of massive batwings folded away from serpentine flesh as it tore its way into their dimension. “Real bad.”

“Holy Stripper Christmas, Finney!” Marco screamed from the comm’. “You assholes seein’ this shit?”

Gault gritted a set of brown teeth. “Okay. Now, somebody please tell me that ain’t what I think it is?”

As if in answer, the dragon flexed its gigantic wings, giving them all a textbook view of its anatomy. The scales glistened like luminous copper plates as it swooped toward Marco’s Cobra. The chopper slid sideways a half-second too late, and Riley watched helplessly as a set of man-length talons sheared off the vehicle’s tail.

“Evasive maneuvers!” Riley yelled, and stormed back into the fuselage. The hatch was already jammed wide. Sgt. Kane manned the gatling gun, scanning a sea of black chaff for their mythical foe. The remainder of the squadron was almost invisible in the dark cloud. Miraculously, Marco’s pilot had managed to steady his craft into a smoking tailspin. But the dragon had already completed its lazy arc, and was on its way back to finish the job.

“Marco!” Riley yelled. “Take it down! I repeat, put your ride down now!”

“Rear engine’s toast,” replied a crackling voice. “Switching to auxillary…lost all visual. Dark… Can’t see shit, man. Where the hell did it g…” Just then, the dragon slammed through the Cobra’s cabin, the rotors shattering across its scales like toothpicks. A ball-shriveling scream echoed over the speakers. Then the radio just rolled over and puked. No static, no song. Just silence.

It didn’t last long. Kane opened fire with the gatling, pouring an avalanche of tracer rounds into the void. The monster didn’t even slow down. Instead, it executed a slow roll until it was hovering directly in front of their formation, like a drill sergeant at roll call. The snakelike head rotated, calmly selecting a new target. When it found one it liked, the thing’s throat puffed out like a terrible lung. An instant later, the copter on Riley’s right flank vanished in a cloud of flaming dust.

The next twenty seconds were pure mayhem. The formation busted apart at the seams, helicopters scattering left and right, trying to find their range. The dragon wove through their ranks like red ribbon. The Hawk’s crew watched in horror as the monster made short work of the squadron, slicing through the other crafts one-by-one. Just as the last friendly disintegrated, the dragon carved a sharp u-turn and headed straight towards them. “Everybody hold on,” Gault screamed, and banked hard.

Riley grabbed hold of a loop of leather. The Hawk was kicked sideways by a heavy gust of wind. He breathed a sigh of relief as they watched a canvas of lizard skin whip harmlessly past the windshield. The beast let out a cheerful screech, pirouetted, then dipped into a long, lazy dive. The monster suddenly reminded Riley of a sea lion at the Zoo, like it was putting on a show or something.

Toying with us, he thought. Only a matter of time...

“Captain,” Riley hollered. “Get us up to three-thousand feet.”

Gault peered back at him in astonishment, headgear jammed sideways across his leathery neck. “Whoa! You wanna go higher?”

Riley nodded. “We’re jumping. Set your vector and grab your ‘chute, Captain.” Riley flung open a strongbox and started handing out parachutes. As the dragon arced in for another strike, Riley shoved a squad of nine grizzled vets into outer space, watched their parachutes blossom like white flowers. With each bailout, Riley found himself counting down the remaining packs. He smirked grimly as he reached the bottom of the pile.

One short. Fucking Congress.

“Okay, skipper,” he said. “Time’s up!” He watched as Gault thumbed the auto-pilot and hauled ass into the fuselage. The old vet eyed Riley suspiciously as he wrestled his pack on.

“Where’s yours?”

“Hid it under the front seat,” Riley said. “You know I don’t trust these jarheads.”

“Bullshit!” Gault observed, his lower lip trembling. John Gault was an oldie but a goodie, the sort of man who would have been brass by now if he didn’t love flying so damn much.

“It’s your bird, Cap,” Riley muttered. “You wanna go down with her, I guess I can’t stop you. Here… at least let me help you off with that thing.” Gault nodded warily and turned his back. In the same instant, Riley charged the old dog, shoving him sideways into the black void. Seven seconds later he cracked a smile when he saw the chute pop open and sweep lazily out of view.

Okay, he mused. Now what, smarty pants? Heart racing, he jammed himself down in the pilot’s seat and lit up the engines. It had been awhile since he’d driven one of these things, but as he curled out of a hard arc it all started coming back to him. In the corner of his eye, he saw the dragon shift, swinging low in the direction of the parachutes. It was probably hoping for a quick snack on the go. Riley popped a few hundred rounds into it from the Hawk’s turrets and changed its mind.

C’mon, you ugly sonovabitch.

Twirling in space like a ballet dancer, the monster came slashing towards him. As it passed on his left flank, the spiny tail lashed the Hawk like a whip, crippling the chopper’s horizontal stabilizer and turning the rear engine to pudding.

Reflexes on overload, Riley flipped on the auxiliary motor and yanked the throttle hard, gradually drawing the thing into his sights. With no time to lock-on, he took a wild guess and blasted off a trio of Hellfire missiles in quick succession. Just as he’d hoped, the beast dodged sideways to avoid the first two, then slammed into the third. There was a blaze of light and a terrifying shriek. Pieces of the thing’s carcass fell away in burning hunks.

“Wooo-hoo!” Riley cried. “Say hallo to my leeeetle friend!”

It wasn’t over. Howling, streaming blood and fire, the creature hurtled blindly towards its executioner. Riley Finn tore desperately at the console, but it was no damn use. The Hawk’s flight controls had died just a few seconds after that tail walloped the holy-hell out of it. The fact that the missiles still worked was just a sweet little bonus, the consolation prize of some half-assed God.

“Figures,” he murmured.

The dragon was a screaming fireball now, running on pure instinct. Six seconds to impact. He still had one rocket left, but he was waiting for it to get close.

Real close.

Just then, a funny little thought occurred to him. It made him smile, despite himself. The monster was closing in fast, its smoking carcass gradually blotting out the world. He had to type faster.

RE: dinner
S
don’t wait up
love always
R

Riley Finn hit SEND. Closed his eyes.

Went home.