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  THEN SHE WAS SURROUNDED BY SCREAMING, AGONIZED AND HOPELESS.

  It went on and on until she thought she wouldn’t be able to stand it for another second. Then it grew louder.

  She heard Willow cry, “Buffy!”

  Then she was burning up, standing inside a firestorm that ate away every inch of her being. She writhed as flames whooshed around her, burning through her lungs, her vocal cords, her ears.

  She trembled, freezing, in utter silence. She looked left, right; but where she was, endless blackness stretched in all directions. She tried to move, but she was frozen to the . . .

  to the . . .

  to nothing.

  She was utterly, vastly nowhere.

  Somewhere, very far away, she heard a voice she once had known very well. With a laugh, it spoke:

  “I have won.”

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  To Tom.

  I’m sorry there are no monkeys.

  —C.G.

  To the memory of my father, Kenneth Paul Jones, and the happy memories of our years in Japan.

  —N.H.

  The authors would like to thank: our agents, Lori Perkins and Howard Morhaim, and Howard’s assistant, Lindsay Sagnette; also, our editor at Archway/ Minstrel, Lisa Clancy, and her assistant, Elizabeth Shiflett. Our gratitude to Caroline Kallas, Joss Whedon, and the entire cast and crew of Buffy. Thanks to our patient and supportive spouses, Connie and Wayne, and to our children, Nicholas and Daniel Golden, and Belle Holder, who remind us daily what it’s all about.

  PROLOGUE

  The front row of the old Majestic Theatre was filled with corpses. Glassy-eyed, their throats ripped out, the dead had the best seats in the house.

  But the final curtain had yet to fall, and as far as Buffy Summers was concerned, until it did, there was no telling how the show would end.

  Time for a little improv, she thought.

  She’d have been way more confident about the whole scene if not for the fact that she was without a clue as to what the hairy, loud-mouthed, badly-in-need-of-Weight-Watchers vampire—who called himself King Lear, of all things—had done with Xander and Cordelia.

  A single spotlight shone down from the balcony on the heavy red velvet curtain that hung across the stage. The Majestic was ancient, but still beautiful despite its state of disrepair. Kind of like Mrs. Paolillo, who had subbed as Buffy’s English teacher for three days the week before. Dust spun in the beam of the spot, and the rest of the theater was dark.

  Amazingly, the Majestic had existed as a venue for musicals and stage plays until two or three years earlier and had never been transformed into a movie theater.

  “I . . . well, I do suppose you realize that this is a trap?” Giles whispered behind her.

  Buffy rolled her eyes. “Come on, Giles, give me some credit,” she said, sighing. “I may not like being the Chosen One, but I’ve been Little Miss Vampire Slayer long enough to know when I’m being set up.”

  “Yes, um, quite right then,” Giles mumbled. “It’s only that . . .”

  “Only that there are four majorly ravenous blood-suckers in the balcony above our heads?” Buffy whispered.

  “That would be it, yes,” Giles replied. “Remind me again why I persist in joining you on these excursions. You do seem fully capable of handling them on your own.”

  Buffy reached into her Slayer’s bag and handed Giles a large wooden crucifix and a long, tapered stake.

  “One hundred people surveyed, top five answers on the board,” Buffy quipped. “Number one answer: Giles has no social life!”

  Despite the tension that filled the darkened aisles of the theater, Buffy had a half-smile on her face as she turned to look at Giles. He sputtered, cocking his head the way he did when he wanted to look as though he were majorly offended. Rupert Giles was her mentor. As her Watcher, he was responsible for the Slayer’s training and general well-being. As her friend, he had to put up with all kinds of teasing. Starting with the fact that he was Sunnydale’s high school librarian—so totally the honey-magnet occupation of all time—as well as a bit of a stiff, especially if you thought Bryant Gumbel was just all crazy.

  But Giles was her uptight Englishman, and Buffy wasn’t about to let anything happen to him. Which meant that in about two seconds she was going to have to knock him on his woolen-clad behind yet again.

  “Giles, down!” Buffy snapped.

  Her smile disappeared as the Slayer went into action. She was all business as she stepped forward, bumped Giles with a hip to send him stumbling into a row of wood-and-metal folding seats, and held a sharpened stake above her head.

  It was rainin’ vampires.

  The first one came down on her stake. He weighed close to two hundred pounds, and she started to buckle under his falling corpse. She’d planned to fall, roll, spring up again. But she didn’t need to bother. The second the stake pierced his heart, the vamp exploded in a shower of ashes. Two others came down at the same time, and one of them tagged her arm, grabbing the fabric of her blouse as he landed. A button popped at her neck and her sleeve tore.

  “Ooh!” she grunted. “You are not my friend.”

  Buffy launched a kick at the vampire’s jaw that snapped its head back hard. She followed with a roundhouse kick at its solar plexus. The other one came at her from the side, and she ducked and used the vamp’s own momentum to send him flying into the seats. The one who had ripped her blouse came after her again, snarling.

  Buffy snarled back. She blocked his attack and drove the stake up through the vampire’s ribs and into its heart.

  “That was silk,” she snapped, and turned her back on him even before he turned to dust.

  A few rows up the aisle, Giles cracked his heavy cross across the head of the vampire Buffy had thrown into the seats. As she watched, her mentor staked the vamp in fine style for a guy who was fortysomething going on seventy something and, well, not the Slayer. Still, Giles knew his stuff. Knew enough to teach Buffy more than the average red-blooded American high school girl ever needed to know about fighting vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness.

  But, hey, who wanted to be average, anyway?

  Well, actually, Buffy did. But they’d been over that so many times that bringing it up again would be like making an O.J. joke. It was over, but not way over, like, say, Keanu. No, it was more like Travolta before Pulp Fiction: just waiting for the perfect wave.

  “You seem a bit rusty, Buffy,” Giles said, straightening his tie. “Which leads me to wonder if I’ve been too lenient of late.”

  “Am I the only one who’s noticed you’re still breathing?” Buffy asked.

  “Hmm?” Giles said, focusing on Buffy again. He did have a tendency to get distracted. “Of course not. And I do thank you for that, very much indeed. It’s simply that I’m concerned that against a more powerful vampire, your technique might require—”

  “Giles,” Buffy said.

  He prattled on. “—a bit more of a—”

  “Giles!” Buffy shouted.

  She ran for him, but too late. Another vampire had leaped out from the balcony above them and fallen on him. Buffy felt her adrenaline surge as she considered the horrible idea that something awful might actually happen to somebody close to her. It had happened before.

  Fortunately, Giles was quicker
on the uptake than his absentmindedness seemed to indicate. He fell under the weight of the vampire, but even as Buffy reached for the bloodsucker, the vampire did that extremely rewarding dust-detonation thing. Giles had managed to turn the broken end of his large wooden crucifix up, and the vampire had impaled himself on it.

  “You did remember that I said there were four of them up there, didn’t you?” Buffy asked as she helped Giles to his feet.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes,” Giles replied as he wiped the dead-again ash from his glasses. “Just a bit distracted is all.”

  “Maybe you should work on your technique,” Buffy said.

  “Yes, well, you do have a point,” he conceded. “But perhaps we should concentrate on finding Xander and Cordelia before this Lear fellow decides they’ve outlived their usefulness as bait,” Giles replied.

  Buffy grimaced, eyebrows knitted. She was plenty focused; nothing was more important than getting Xander and Cordy out of there safely. That’s why she and Giles had split up from Willow and Angel to begin with. But she was nervous and angry, and sarcasm helped her with both feelings.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of whistling in the dark?” she asked.

  With a sudden, metallic whoosh, the curtains began to draw open. Buffy and Giles moved quickly down the aisle toward the stage. The Slayer was careful not to pay too much attention to the not-so-grateful dead in the first row, right in front of the orchestra pit. She’d seen more corpses than a serial killer, but it never got any easier.

  “Why am I always the life of the party?” she whispered to herself, and grimaced at her silent answer. Because I’m always the only one still alive!

  There was a second curtain at the back of the stage. Buffy figured the layout of the Majestic was a lot more complicated than the auditorium at Sunnydale High, where they’d held their recent talentless show. But even that stage had four or five curtains. It looked like they were going to have to go onstage, maybe take the spotlight, even, if they wanted to find out what Lear had done with Xander and Cordelia.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t as if the huge bad dude didn’t know they were there. Which gave her an idea.

  “What are you waiting for, Lear?” she shouted. “The audience is here!”

  Giles stared at her like she was, well, her, and Buffy had to admit that, though she enjoyed taunting pompous vampires who looked like Santa’s evil twin, doing so when said obese, bloodsucking actorguy was holding some of your friends hostage was generally a not so specially good idea. But she’d figured with an ego like Lear’s . . .

  “ ‘Attend the Lords of France and Burgundy!’ ” came the deep bass voice of Lear. The vampire strutted onto the stage in full Shakespearean costume.

  Buffy might have laughed if not for the lives that hung in the balance. Instead, she looked at Giles for some kind of understanding. After all, the only Shakespeare she knew was that rock-and-roll Romeo flick with Leo and the girl who played Angela on My So-Called Life. Well, that, and the one Mel Gibson did. Her mom had insisted on renting that one. Not bad. “Lear’s first line in King Lear,” Giles whispered to her.

  Buffy watched Giles for a moment as he muttered to himself as though he were trying to remember song lyrics. On the stage, Lear walked into the spotlight, staring out at the “audience” but not even glancing down at Buffy and Giles.

  “ ‘I shall, my liege!’ ” Giles shouted suddenly, making Buffy jump. On stage, Lear smiled.

  “ ‘Meantime,’ ” Lear smiled smugly, so pleased with himself he was practically drooling, “we shall express our darker purpose.’ ”

  At that cue, the second curtain began to draw apart behind the corpulent vampire, and Buffy couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped her lips as she saw Xander and Cordy. They were both gagged, and locked into a wooden contraption that snapped down over their wrists and necks, leaving them completely helpless. Maybe it had been a stage prop, once upon a time. But right now, it was all too real.

  The worst part was, they were awake. Buffy could see their eyes, and though both of them had seen a lot since the Slayer had come into their lives, she could tell that they were terrified.

  “Oh, my,” Giles murmured.

  “ ‘Is man no more than this? Consider him well,’ ” Lear roared madly.

  A chill ran through Buffy. She’d thought Lear was just a cruel moron. But that was wishful thinking. The only thing worse, in her opinion, than a fat, slobbering, undead, bloodsucking show-off was one who was also completely out of his head, a few bricks shy of a mausoleum.

  She saw rustling behind Xander and Cordelia, where the backstage curtains hung. There were other vampires there, she knew—others who followed Lear. But she didn’t know how many.

  A quick glance at Xander’s face, at the fear in Cordelia’s eyes, and Buffy realized it didn’t matter how many. But what could she do? How could she get to Lear before he could get to the rack Xander and Cordy were trapped in?

  Suddenly, Giles began to applaud.

  * * *

  Willow followed Angel up the stairs that led to stage left. They had discovered a tunnel that ran under the stage from one side to another, which would allow actors to move from side to side without disturbing the stage crew. She’d been certain they’d find some vampires in it, but, so sad, no joy.

  Not that there was any shortage of vampires. From stage right they’d seen at least six of them, lurking behind various curtains and off stage in the wings, working pulleys to open curtains and move props.

  Willow shivered. She hated vampires. Well, present company excluded, of course, despite the fact that Angel had tried to kill her once. Well, tried to kill them all. But that hadn’t really been Angel, that . . . made her head hurt to think about.

  Angel glanced back at her as if he could read her mind, and she offered him a helpless, why-me smile. Frankly, she didn’t know why he’d agreed to let her tag along. She didn’t have a clue why Buffy even wanted her around when it came to stuff like this. Giles knew his stuff, and he was the Watcher, after all. Xander at least could fight. Angel was Buffy’s boyfriend, and, there was that whole thing about him being a vampire—but the only good vampire they’d ever heard of.

  Not to say Willow hadn’t held her own before, for at least seven or eight seconds. She had. And she wanted to be there, in a kind of Three Musketeers solidarity thing kind of way. But once the research was done, she’d already served her purpose in the little cadre of Friends of Buffy that Xander affectionately referred to as the Scooby Gang.

  Willow, sad as she was to admit it, was Velma. The brainy but relatively useless one. And she hated being Velma.

  She sighed as she followed Angel into the rows of curtains that hung in the wings at stage left. Willow had a stake, but that was more for protection than offense.

  There was a thump ahead of her, and the curtains swayed. Angel peered around them, his serious, soulful eyes—and wasn’t that ironic, soulful?—making her feel a little safer. He motioned for her to follow.

  Clawed hands grabbed him around the throat and drove him hard to the floor. The vampire on Angel’s back was leaning forward, trying to rip out Angel’s throat, when Willow moved in to stake it. She didn’t see the willowy blond vamp girl coming at her until the last second, and then she got the stake up just in time to have it knocked from her hands. The vampire girl reached for Willow, but she ducked, pulling the curtains between herself and her attacker.

  That bought her three whole seconds. Then the vampire girl was there again, smiling at her—until the one who’d attacked Angel body-slammed her to the ground. Only when Willow saw Angel going after them did she realize what had happened.

  No second-string vampire was going to take Angel out of the game.

  Willow shook herself. Sports analogies, she thought, I must be in shock.

  Angel made short work of the two vampires. But there were at least two others, possibly three, making their way across the stage behind the backstage curtain. Onstage, things had gotten
way tense. Buffy had to do something, or Lear was going to kill Xander and Cordelia.

  Willow and Xander had been best friends since forever. She just couldn’t let that happen. She looked down at a pile of old, dusty props. Flagpoles, broomsticks, wooden swords, chairs, a wooden cart . . . a three-foot metal crucifix.

  With two quick strides, she bent to pick up a wooden sword and threw it to Angel.

  “Help Buffy,” she said.

  Angel looked at her, frowned, glanced at the curtains moving as the vampires came across the stage—obviously too terrified of upsetting their master to disturb his performance—and then he ran out on the stage, holding the wooden sword in front of him as though he knew how to use it. Which, given the fact that he grew up in the eighteenth century, Willow figured he probably did.

  Willow picked up the huge metal crucifix. She was Jewish, of course, but she figured that, hey, whatever worked. It was heavy, but the weight felt good in her hands. She tried to make herself feel tough, tried to look mean. Tried to be more like Buffy.

  * * *

  It all happened quickly for Buffy. One second, Giles was applauding, and Lear had a supremely pompous, pleased grin on his face. He was playing them like a total media harlot, and their job was to adore him. Giles’s applause had him so slaphappy, Lear actually stepped forward and executed a deep bow.

  Idiot.

  Buffy took three strides, put her foot on the armrest of a front row chair, and did an aerial somersault to land behind the obese vampire on the stage. She’d put herself between her friends and death.

  That was where she belonged.

  That was why she was the Slayer.

  “No curtain call for you, Urkel,” she sneered. “I may not know Shakespeare, but I’m pretty sure this is not his proudest moment.”

  Unfortunately, Lear was faster than he looked. He batted the stake from Buffy’s hand, grabbed her by the throat and lifted her high off the stage, fury burning in his eyes.

  “Everybody’s a critic,” he growled.