MONSTER ISLAND Christopher Golden & Thomas Sniegoski PROLOGUE Cambodia Demon bones and the scribblings of madmen. That was the life of Harry Doyle. As an ethnodemonologist she spent her days sifting through the remains of ancient civilizations and far more recent demonic settlements, and her nights playing Jane Goodall anthropology girl amongst the monstrous tribes of the world. In places an ordinary human woman would be torn to shreds by a thousand species of hellbeast, Harry was offered a warm welcome and safe passage. Even some of the most vicious breeds respected her for her courteous and contemplative approach to her study of their kind. Right about now, though, Harry Doyle needed a break. A party, even. A couple of shots of tequila and a reason to laugh. Music to dance to. Anything but another steamy day sweat streaming down her face, streaked with dirt from the pit she and her team had dug in the middle of the jungle. The insects were worse than any demon she had ever come across. Hell, she had been married to a Brachen and, after their divorce, had nearly married an Ano-Movic demon. Mosquitoes were about the most infernal creatures she had ever seen. Pretty much proof of the existence of evil. "Damn it," she snapped, slapping at one of the insects on the back of her neck. Not all demons were evil. That was the first thing she taught members of her team when they came on board. Or, at least, the human ones. It was the most important lesson she herself had ever learned, and the most important she could teach them. After all, if they were going to work for her, they were also going to have to work with demons. Harry felt another bug alight on her cheek and brushed it away. Frustrated, she headed back to her pack to retrieve her repellant. She passed Al Gray and Jasvig, a wisp-thin Fawquilla demon. They smiled and waved, and Al tried to act nonchalant. Harry waved back, resolving to tease the big man mercilessly later about his flirtation with Jasvig. She thought it was sort of sweet, actually. They were cute together. Harry herself found nothing attractive about the deep purple, almost skeletal Fawquilla tribe, but she had to work only with Jasvig and her brother Vist-yiq. But later, there would definitely be teasing. It wouldn't be tequila shots and wild dancing, but in the middle of the Cambodian jungle, a girl had to take her pleasures where she found them. At her pack, she sprayed on some more insect repellant, then quickly returned to the site. Al and Jasvig were no longer on break, and when she returned to the dig, they were hard at work once more. Harry stood back and surveyed the project. Vist-yiq was calling out instructions to the team, who were digging carefully around the Rhajadhow temple that had been unearthed there. Of all the digs she had participated in, as a student or as the team leader, this was by far the most exciting. Volumes of the occult history of the world, compendia of demon lore—even the oldest such books she had ever been able to get her hands on—all of them offered the suggestion that the Rhajadhow might have been entirely mythical, never really having existed at all. There were records of sightings of the species before the Mahkesh Wars, but then afterward, nothing. Nothing at all. But now Harry had found proof. More than proof. Not only had they discovered wall etchings inside and weapons that matched the descriptions in the ancient volumes of Rhajadhow blades, but she had instantly connected the temple with human places of worship in the region, both Hindu and Buddhist. One only had to look at the line of carved stone heads that rose on pillars near the entrance, or at the hideously grotesque, massive faces that loomed out from the stone spire that jutted from the top of the structure, to realize that places like the temple of Angkor Thom—perhaps a hundred miles distant—owed a great debt to Rhajadhow architecture. Once this demonic temple was completely unearthed and she was able to document it, get it photographed and mapped, even filmed, there wasn't an occult scholar in the world who would be able to deny that she had made the first truly vital contribution to ethnodemonology of the twenty-first century. A tiny smile played at the edges of her lips. Maybe sweat and dirt and a few mosquitoes are a small price to pay, she thought. "Okay, fine," she whispered to herself. "But I'd still kill for a shot of tequila and a wedge of lime." With a sigh she leaned her head back and looked up through the trees, trying to gauge the time by the color of the sky and the slant of light against the leaves. Midafternoon—still far too early to quit. But even though she herself was not doing the digging, just looking at the members of her team who were made her hotter and more exhausted. Harry knew that the sooner they finished the dig the better. The Cambodian government had not been too much of a nuisance yet, but she figured it was only a matter of time, particularly once they realized there was something of value in the ground out here. But there were probably only a few more weeks of digging before the entire temple was unearthed and they had already uncovered enough so they could enter all of the rooms, save several ritual chambers that had caved in, probably hundreds of years past. Harry watched Al and Victor Kelso and the others on her team. She glanced at Vist-yiq, who was digging out a window on the side of the temple, sweat pouring off his purplish-black torso. Her first thought was that maybe she had been hasty in thinking she could never find his species attractive. He was a powerfully built creature, that was for sure, the males of the species being so unlike the females. Her second thought was that there had been enough digging for today. Harry called to Vist-yiq in his native tongue, which she knew she spoke well enough for a human but also knew probably sounded crude to him. He had been tearing through the dirt bare-handed, his talons better than any shovel, and now he glanced up at her. Harry started to walk over to the edge of the pit, several of the team members glancing up at her curiously. Vist-yiq wiped his hands on his pants and strode to the bottom of a ladder that leaned against the wall, looking up at her. "Yes, Harry? Is there a problem?" "No problem," she said, smiling and thinking wistfully of music and dancing. "But why don't we cut out the digging early today? Give everyone a break. We can work on the mapping and photo survey and leave off the back-breaking stuff till tomorrow." The demon grinned, showing yellowed fangs, and ran his talons through his thick, matted hair. "The team will be pleased." "Good," Harry replied. "Do we have any tea left?" "Lots," Vist-yiq said simply. No lemon, Harry thought. No ice. No tequila, either. But it'll have to do. Vist-yiq turned to relay the news to the rest of the team. In that same moment, something shrieked behind Harry. It lunged past her, swift and deadly, covered in copper fur. It landed on Vist-yiq's back. Its maw opened impossibly wide, revealing rows of teeth like daggers. It clamped its jaws down on Vist-yiq's neck and tore his head off with a snapping of bone and a rending of flesh, sounds that echoed across the dig, insinuating themselves in the space before the screaming began. They were under attack. Harry turned back toward her tent. There were weapons in it and she thought if she could only reach them, she might be able to drive the marauding demons off. In her path was a hideous thing with a flat, triangular head and filth dripping from what appeared to be armor plating that covered its body. It had vestigial legs and slithered on its belly, long arms reaching for her. "Yesss," it hissed. "You are the one. Harry Doyle." The thing grinned, and Harry wanted to vomit. "A pleassssure to make your acquaintansssss." The horror of its words knocked the breath out of her, and Harry stared at it wide-eyed. These demons weren't marauders. This thing knew her name. They had come for her. CHAPTER ONE Sunnydale Buffy Summers closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and wished she were anywhere else. She didn't tap her heels together three times, though. That was just dumb. When she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. Not that she had expected it to, of course, but deep in her heart she wondered if maybe there wasn't something to that heel-tapping business after all. The soles of her shoes clung to the sticky, warped wooden floors as she walked into Willy's, the notorious watering hole for those of a not-so-natural nature. The oppressive stink of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and other things she really did not care to think about lingered in the air, and Buffy wrinkled her nose in distaste. Yet it was not just Willy's that she wanted to be away from. It was so much more than that. In the time since she had . . . come back, she had begun to see the world through new eyes. It was still difficult for her to really digest the truth, but the previous spring she had actually died. She had been dead for months. And in that time, she had been at peace. Her friends had resurrected her. Ever since, the whole world had seemed just as gray and dingy as the interior of Willys. Still, here she was. Alive. And now she had work to do. Buffy stood in the middle of the poorly lit bar, gazing around at the tables and the clientele. Willys was not very busy tonight, a smattering of demons and wanna-be sorcerers—and even a few ordinary humans—scattered about the room, drinks in front of them. From the corners of their eyes, they watched her, some with fear and others with hatred, even a few with open curiosity. Those were the ones who had no idea who she was. The Slayer. The Chosen One. The one girl in all the world gifted with the power to combat the forces of darkness. She'd heard the line so many times when she had first discovered her destiny that it seemed hollow to her now. And it had been a long time since she had thought of her duties and her abilities as a gift. Tension brewed in the air as she stood there, letting all the demons and demon/human half-breeds soak up her presence, and she wondered how they would react if they knew how she felt these days about being the Chosen One. A table in the far corner caught her attention. There were three of them, two men and a woman. Most of the ordinary humans who spent time at Willy's were lowlife barflies who didn't care who they drank with, or those who'd tinkered with the supernatural before. This trio appeared at first glance to be so normal that Buffy wondered what they were doing there. Then one of the men nervously licked his lips with a tongue that was impossibly long, bright pink in color, and forked at the end. So much for normal, Buffy thought as she watched them. The one with the tongue was some kind of half-breed, and she assumed the other two were as well. The trio grew increasingly agitated by her attention, and at last stood as if suddenly remembering a previous engagement. They left the premises through a fire exit at the back of the bar. Buffy considered going after them. Someone had been hunting and killing demon/human half-breeds in Sunnydale in the past week, with three dead already that she knew of. That was her job—slaying supernatural beings. But whoever was killing these half-breeds was not interested in figuring out first if they were actually evil. One of the guys, a Dakini-Swedish mix, had been an accountant, for God's sake. When you started killing the demon accountants, something was really wrong with the world. But Buffy could not go chasing after Tongue Boy and his amigos at the moment. Not only could she not muster the enthusiasm, but she was not about to provide personal security for every part-demon who passed through Sunnydale. Nope, she was going to have to take a more direct route. That meant information about the dark underbelly of Sunnydale. And that, more often than not, meant Willy. Bartender, proprietor, snitchy weasel of the dark underbelly. Willy stood behind the wooden bar, a variety of liquors in fancy bottles at his back, and worked furiously at drying a beer mug with a towel Buffy guessed might once have been white. He smiled nervously, avoiding eye contact, and continued to work at the mug. She'd done this so many times before that it took everything she could muster not to turn away and leave, to forget about the murdered half-breed demons and return home—to go to bed, to dream—to escape this world and remember the peace that had been taken from her. Paradise. The memory lingered like the stab of a knife. It pissed her off. The problem was, her friends had thought she was trapped in some dark dimension, suffering eternal torment. They had thought they were doing her a favor by using sorcery to pull her out of that place. But they were wrong. Terribly wrong. Still, she could not take out her anger and frustration and despair on them. Which meant she had to take it out on someone else. "Willy," Buffy said. "Look at me." He glanced up as she stepped to the bar. A pale smile twitched at the edges of his mouth. "Buffy. Hi. Been a while. Thought you might'a forgot about us or something." He laughed anxiously, still rubbing the towel against the drink glass. "You're not that lucky," she said, her ire on the rise. "But if you want to change your luck, maybe we can skip right past the beating to what I need to know." "Okay, okay." Willy set the mug down, convinced that it was finally dry, and slung the dirty towel over his shoulder. He held up his hands and gestured for her to keep her voice down. "I'll tell you everything I know, just don't call any more attention to yourself than you already have." He looked past her to make sure that none of his clientele was paying close attention. "Business has picked up a little since you haven't been around much. I don't need you to start spookin' the regulars." He put a coaster in front of her that advertised something called a Shoggoth's Spritzer, as if he expected her to order a drink. Buffy sighed and slid onto a stool, playing along. "What'll it be?" Willy asked her. "On the house." She wasn't the least bit thirsty and, even if she had been, she doubted she ever would have accepted this sleazeball's charity. "I'll just have a few of these," she said as she reached for a bowl of cheese balls that sat just a little ways down the bar. Her fingertips touched one of the cheese balls, and they shrieked. Black spindly legs emerged from the sides of their yellowy-orange bodies and they scrambled over the side of the bowl and across the bar-top. "Son of a—I am so sorry," Willy said, staring at her with a gaze both penitent and fearful. "They were supposed to be dead. I can't believe they sold me the live ones again. Here, have some of these." He snatched away the now empty bowl and replaced it with one full of what appeared to be pretzels. But then again, one never could tell. Buffy wrinkled her nose and pushed the pretzels away, watching for telltale signs of movement within the new bowl. "Me, having questions. You? Having answers." "Sure, sure," Willy said, again glancing nervously around at his customers. "Whatever you want." "Someone's killing half-breeds. If they keep it up, I figure that'll end up being most of your customers dead. The kind of dead when they can't still come in and pay their tab. What do you know?" "Not much," he said as he used the dirty towel to wipe down the bar to her left. "But you're right. Things picked up when you did your disappearing act, but these killings have seriously cut into my business. Look at it in here, it's a freakin' cemetery." A demon dressed in a powder blue leisure suit, its white shirt opened at its throat to reveal pale green mottled flesh and a gold chain as thick as a suspension cable, sidled up to the bar beside her. It gazed at her with eyes covered by a milky, nictitating membrane that moved aside when it blinked to reveal moist, bloodred orbs. Willy seemed to panic. "What'll you have, pal?" he asked the demon. But it refused to answer his question. Buffy attempted to ignore the horrible creature, looking just about everywhere other than those nasty scarlet eyes. But it was staring at her. And smiling. "Come here often?" the leisure-suited demon asked her. "More often than I care to," she muttered beneath her breath as she attempted to read the label on a skull-shaped bottle across from her. The demon laughed. It sounded wet, as if there were something it should spit out just at the back of its throat. "Hey, barkeep," it gurgled to Willy, "you'd better call the cops, 'cause this little firecracker just stole my heart." Buffy tried to stay calm; she really did. She tried to ignore the monster and hoped it would eventually be bored by her unresponsiveness and return to its table in a really dark corner at the back of the bar. But then it touched her. It was like somebody had taken that nasty jelly stuff from inside the can of a processed ham and slapped it down on top of her hand. She reacted out of utter revulsion, snapping an elbow up into the demon's squishy face and then flipping it off the barstool beside her to land upon the floor. "Touch me again, it's your own personal apocalypse." Behind the bar, Willy rubbed his forehead like he had suddenly come down with a really bad headache. The demon thrashed about where it had fallen, and its body seemed to expand. The sound of polyester ripping and seams bursting filled the barroom as the creature grew to more than twice its size. Black, razor-sharp protrusions emerged from along the limbs that jutted from its gelatinous body. "Gonna make you pay for that, girly-girl," it growled as it rose slowly from the floor to tower over her. Buffy realized that any thoughts of leaving Willy's without violence were simply wishful thinking. She should have known better. "How about a drink and some free potato skins, huh?" Willy asked the demon, voice erupting with mock enthusiasm in an attempt to defuse the situation. 'We'll call this a little misunderstanding and get on with our night." The creature flexed its bulbous mass as it prepared to defend its wounded ego, and Buffy heard Willy muttering something behind the bar about insurance premiums. The disgusting thing lunged at her, but Buffy was ready. She leaped high over its quivering, thundering mass to land in a crouch behind it. Like some amorphous blob of Jell-O, the thing had completely enveloped her empty barstool. Now it searched its own globby mass for some sign of her, apparently assuming it had absorbed her as well. Buffy reached toward the demon from behind, careful not to cut herself on its nasty spines, and took hold of the cable-like gold chain still around its neck. With a jerk she twisted the chain tight, cutting off the demon's oxygen. Whatever its body was made of, it still had a mouth and a nose in the front. She hoped that meant it still needed to breathe. Score one for the Slayer. The oxygen-deprived demon gasped and clutched at its throat. Its body shivered in undulating waves as it struggled to breathe. "Now that I've got your attention, Mr. Suave," Buffy said, twisting the chain a little tighter, amazed at how thin the demon's neck had become, "how about you promise to retire your oh-so-promising career as a pickup artist, and I let your neck return to its normal size." "He don't look so good, Slayer," Willy warned from behind the bar. Nervously, he poured himself a shot. "He's turning green." "Turning . . . what do you call the color he was before?" Buffy asked as she let go of the chain. The demon sucked in a heaping lungful of air and dropped to its knees, where it gazed up at her with gratitude. The scream came from outside, tearing into the bar through the open fire door that led to the back alley It was the kind of sound that made the tiny hairs on the back of Buffy's neck stand at attention. The first wail was followed by another, equally unnerving, but this one was dramatically cut short. The sudden silence inside the bar seemed to close in around the Slayer. Buffy rushed across the barroom. Many of the demons she passed on her way flinched as she ran by. The fire door in back stood partially open—left that way by the half-breeds who had taken off at the sight of her. Buffy pushed through it and found herself outside in a winding alleyway that separated the backsides of two city blocks. The largest of the buildings just along the alley was a huge brick structure that had stood empty for ages. Windows were shattered, some of them boarded, and the brick still bore the faint ghost of a painted logo for the family-run furniture business that had flourished in Sunnydale once upon a time. The alley stank like a toilet, the stench made all the more fragrant by the unusually humid weather that the region had been enduring the past few weeks. The air was so thick and foul, she could practically taste it, and it made her want to throw up. Hell. She'd been in paradise once. But this was hell. Another scream ripped through the oppressive night and it spurred her to move faster. As she rounded a corner she nearly ran headlong into a barrel-chested demon in black jeans and a white muscle T-shirt. Buffy stepped back into a battle stance, ready for anything, and studied the face of the demon. It grinned, showing off a smile that looked like a visit to a cutlery store. With its leathery brown skin and those nasty jagged teeth, the monster reminded her of a crocodile. "Where's that nutty Australian guy when you really need him?" she muttered beneath her breath. Her gaze ticked past the reptilian creature. Farther along the alley a quartet of hideous creatures, demons of various species, were lashing out with hard kicks and swinging brutal weapons, putting a serious hurt on someone or something curled into a ball upon the alley floor. "Four on one. That doesn't look too fair." Croc-boy shrugged. "What in life really is?" it replied, leaning down to grab at her. Buffy snapped her fist forward, putting her weight into it, and gave it a hard shot in the face. There was an explosion of blood and teeth and a sound like tree branches snapping. The crocodile demon moaned in pain, eyes wide in surprise as it stumbled back away from her. The Slayer sighed. "Nothing I hate more than philosophical demons." The croc started to choke on something—probably teeth, she thought—and she took the opportunity to glance around for something that would pierce the thing's thick, armor-plated hide. Buffy spotted a wooden pallet leaning against the factory wall and she snapped a side kick at it, shattering it into pieces. Keeping an eye on Croc-boy, she picked up a jagged piece of the wood from the ground. It wasn't a fancy crossbow or an antique sword, but it would do in a pinch. The croc-demon threw itself at her with a ferocious roar, its jagged maw looking like the front of a Halloween pumpkin. She sidestepped its lunge—but the demon was faster than she'd anticipated. It stopped abruptly and spun to lash out with a solid blow to her face. Her head snapped back and to the side and the bitter taste of blood flowed into her mouth. Buffy didn't care for that in the least. The demon lunged in closer and threw another punch—one that could very easily have sent Buffy's head into orbit if she allowed it to connect. The Slayer tilted her head out of the way and felt a breeze as its fist passed dangerously close to her cheek. Croc-boy gaped stupidly at her, apparently stunned that its punch did not find its destination. It seemed even more surprised when she gripped its massive, tree limb-like arm and savagely bent it in a direction it was clearly not meant to turn. The whip crack sound of breaking bones and the bellow of pain that came from the demon were strangely satisfying. Croc-boy cradled its broken arm to his chest. "Don't be such a baby," Buffy said, snapping a high kick to its throat, cutting off its wails of pain. She snatched up her piece of wood from the ground and plunged it through the tough, scaly hide of the demon's chest. Buffy stepped aside as the monster crashed to the ground like a felled oak. Another night, in a better mood, she might have muttered, "Timber." But not tonight. Not when there were four other demons twenty yards away, still intent upon their victim, as though her presence did not bother them at all. Only when she started cautiously toward them did they look up. One was a Fyarl, with the hooves and ram horns and bony protrusions that went along with that. One was a Polgara, judging by the massive spike that jutted from its wrist. She thought the third was a Vahrall, but she didn't have a clue what the fourth one was. Nasty-looking bugger, though. Yellow skin, like something diseased. What the hell are they all doing together? Buffy thought. Most of the demon breeds kept pretty much to themselves—at least in her experience. These things working side by side like some street gang ... it baffled her. "So," she said, with a razor-edged, humorless smile, "which one of you is Justin?" "Pretty fancy moves against one enemy, Slayer," hissed the Fyarl. "But how will you fare against us all?" A Fyarl that speaks English. Curiouser and curiouser, she thought. Buffy crouched and snatched up another jagged shaft of wood from the broken pallet. "Only one way to find out." With a cacophonous roar of demon voices, they all charged her at once. The Vahrall reached her first, the other three stepping back as if to allow it first dibs. The eye symbol of its tribe, nastily carved into the mottled flesh of its forehead, bore down on her as it attacked. Its large hands reached for her neck. "So what's your story?" she asked, slapping its clawed hands away. "Night out with the boys, things got a little out of hand?" She drove the piece of wood into its left eye and gave it a nasty twist for good measure. There was a wet squelching sound, and black ichor spurted out onto her fingers. "You should've stayed home," Buffy said. But the demon wasn't listening. It cried out in agony and reared back away from her, its hands feebly attempting to remove the splintered board from its eye socket. A moment later it fell to the ground, twitched, and was still. The Polgara snarled and circled, looking for an opening. The towering Fyarl eyed her warily now and took a step back, but the thing with the pus-yellow skin only hissed, crouched low, and lunged for her, its slitted eyes gleaming madly. "We are legion," it whispered as razor-sharp claws extruded from the tips of its fingers, lashing out as though to rip the flesh from her bones. Buffy ducked beneath the swipe of the claws and lunged up to drive an upturned palm into the creature's jaundiced face. It stumbled back from the blow, stunned. The Polgara had been lingering, waiting for an opening. Now it charged in at her, the long, deadly spike that protruded from its left arm slashing swordlike down at her. Buffy's entire body was raging with the adrenaline that surged through her now, and it was as though the warrior part of her had taken over. She moved fluidly, almost without thinking, and with a roundhouse kick to the side of its misshapen skull, she stopped the Polgara cold. As the Polgara stumbled to one side, dazed, she gripped it by the wrist. "Mind if I borrow this?" Careful not to injure herself, Buffy snapped the bonelike protrusion off at the base. The demon screamed in agony. "Oh, stop whining. I'm gonna give it right back." With a grunt of effort, she drove the point of the organic blade through the Polgara's throat, killing it with its own weapon. Buffy hefted the swordlike appendage in one hand. "Much nicer than splintery pieces of wood," she said with a smile, liking its feel and weight. "Lightweight but durable." The jaundiced demon had recovered from the kick to its face and came at her now, a chittering noise like a swarm of locusts escaping from its thin-lipped mouth. "Gotta say, yellow? Even pukey yellow? Just not a color that makes me tremble with fear." Buffy thrust the Polgara's spike forward, using a fencing move that Giles had taught her in her early days as the Slayer. The demon dodged and lashed out at her, its claws raking across her wrist, causing her to drop the Polgara appendage. "You are but one of the obstacles we will surpass on our way to supremacy," it growled. Buffy drove her fist into the creature's abdomen. "Is there a direct route to supremacy, or do you need to transfer to another bus?" She jumped up into a high, spinning kick, but the demon ducked, her kick passing over its head without connection. "Would you mind standing still?" she asked, perturbed. "How am I supposed to kick your ass if you keep moving around?" From ten feet away—a safe, spectator-type distance—the Fyarl roared its displeasure. "Kill her, you idiot! She's only one! A human! Kill her and you shall have an army to command!"