Slayer Read online

  “I’ve . . . I’ve been feeling weird. For a couple of months now.”

  The timing is not lost on her. “A couple of months generally, or a couple of months precisely?”

  “Do you remember the day with the big transdimensional demons?”

  Artemis chokes out a laugh. “I do, in fact, remember that day.”

  • • •

  We had been outside, on one of Artemis’s rare breaks.

  I shifted on the blanket and squinted up at the sky. “What does that cloud look like to you?”

  Artemis didn’t look up from her sandwich. “Water vapor.”

  I elbowed her in the side. “Come on. Use your imagination.”

  “I can’t. My imagination died a long, agonizing death due to inhaling too much weapon polish.”

  I shifted onto my side to face her. “You don’t have to do all the grunt work, you know.”

  Artemis rolled her eyes. Sometimes I watched her face and wondered if mine looked the same when I made those expressions. We had mirror features, but mine didn’t work like hers. Everything she did was pointed, precise, powerful. Everything I did was . . .

  Not.

  I shooed away a fat black fly buzzing close to my face. “You’re smarter than all those stuffy old layabouts, anyway. You should be doing the research and writing while they do the polishing.”

  “I didn’t pass the test, so this is my role. And it’s not like there’s anyone else to do it.”

  Rhys collapsed onto the blanket next to me. He and Artemis had been training since they were children. As soon as we rejoined the Watchers, Artemis was put straight into full potential Council training. Our mother insisted on it. She never even let me try. But why couldn’t we have Council members who were focused on healing? Who viewed the world—both natural and supernatural—as something to be fixed, not fought?

  “What does that cloud look like to you?” I asked, pointing.

  Rhys’s voice sounded like a scowl. “Do you know how hard it is to get rid of bodies? I just spent four hours testing different chemicals to try and dissolve an Abarimon skeleton, only to be informed by Wanda Wyndam-Pryce that in the case of those types of remains, they just drop the bodies in the ocean.”

  I clucked sympathetically. “Makes vampires look considerate, what with the poofing and all. No cleanup.”

  “Least they can do. Anyhow, they made me leave. The Council’s freaking out over something.” He yawned. “Above my ranking, apparently.”

  “They kicked me out too,” Artemis said.

  I didn’t mind the company. “If you all need something to do later, I’m cataloging inventory in my clinic.”

  Artemis’s hand rested on my forehead. “Have you been taking your vitamins? You look pale.”

  “So do you.”

  “It’s almost like you’re twins,” Rhys said.

  Artemis ignored him. “Have you eaten yet? I can make you something.”

  “I can make you something. Your cooking is awful.” I stuck my tongue out at her so she would know I was teasing her. Though Artemis cooked breakfast and lunch, we all took turns with supper. No one liked it when it was my week. Half the time when I arrived in the kitchen, Artemis had already prepared everything for me. I couldn’t decide if I loved her for it or wished she would just give herself a break and let everyone deal with one night of my overcooked spaghetti with canned sauce.

  She closed her eyes, relaxing. It was rare to see her face at peace. Rhys, too, was trying to catch a nap. A skill I far surpassed both of them in. Probably the only one.

  I looked back up at the sky, enjoying that for these few minutes, Rhys and Artemis were shuffled to the side like I always had been. The clouds really were putting on a show. They pushed together faster now, swirling and billowing. And growing. And behaving decidedly uncloudlike.

  Then the first tentacle appeared.

  “Um. Guys?”

  “Mm.” Artemis shifted so her head was closer to my shoulder. She froze, listening to my breathing grow strained. She pushed herself to sitting, looking only at my face. “What’s wrong?”

  I pointed upward. “Is it just me, or does that cloud look like a giant demon emerging through a tear in the sky?”

  “Oh,” Rhys said. “Oh. Yes. I don’t know what classification that one is.”

  A brief, silent moment passed, and then—

  “Weapons!” Artemis shouted. Rhys snapped out of his stupor and tore across the courtyard to an outbuilding. He returned with crossbows, pikes, and as many swords as he could carry. He had a nasty-looking rifle as well, already loaded with darts I knew could knock out even the biggest demons.

  But this was bigger than the biggest demons. This was a monstrosity, a behemoth. Most demons we saw were hybrids or vessels for true demons in another dimension.

  The thing coming from the sky didn’t look like it belonged in this world. It looked like a world killer.

  I heard chanting and turned to find Imogen and Ruth Zabuto gesturing, the charmed boundaries of the castle activated by their words. The air shimmered like a dome over us, marking the edges of the protection. Artemis gave instructions to Rhys. And I sat on the blanket.

  Doing nothing.

  Because all I had been trained to do was heal people. Fix them. And right then, I doubted any of us would have enough left for me to fix when this was over.

  After the fire, maybe because of my nightmares, my mom had always insisted I couldn’t handle stress. I was supposed to avoid intense situations. But a giant demon with one eye and teeth-covered tentacles descending from what had been empty sky only moments before? Pretty impossible to avoid.

  We were dead.

  Everyone was dead.

  The demon settled over the magical boundary. The scent of burning flesh made my stomach turn, my throat feel ragged. The demon didn’t pause. Pustules along its underbelly burst, coating the barrier in steaming, sizzling orange putrescence. Tentacles encompassed the entire shining dome. The demon was as big as the castle itself.

  Ruth Zabuto’s voice was trembling. Imogen ran back into the castle, presumably to find and protect the Littles. My mother burst out, but she didn’t come to us. She stayed at Ruth’s side, adding her fierce voice to the older woman’s. I wanted her with me, but, as always, she chose to protect someone else.

  I looked over at Artemis. She looked at me. This time our mother was choosing the Watchers over both of us.

  “I’m getting Nina out!” Artemis grabbed my arm, hauling me to my feet. My heart pounded so hard in my chest that it hurt. My vision was narrowing, the world blurring around me.

  “Help them,” I said, barely able to push out the words. Something was wrong with my body. Every nerve was on fire, everything exploding.

  “The barrier won’t last much longer. We need to run while it’s distracted.” She dragged me toward the forest, where a stone archway was unaffected by the magical barrier. It was the only way out. As we passed through, I glanced behind us.

  The last Zabutos. The last Smythes. The last of all of us. My mother turned toward us, the same expression on her face I had seen once before when she chose to save Artemis and leave me behind. Now Artemis had chosen to save me, and we had left my mother behind. My mother lifted a hand in farewell.

  But the Littles were still in the castle.

  I stopped, Artemis stumbling with the loss of momentum. “Nina, we have to go!” She took a few steps, waiting for me to follow.

  I tried to squeeze out the words to tell her I couldn’t leave them behind. And then I looked up and saw a single tentacle, gray and green with fangs instead of suction cups, swinging through the air. Right toward my sister.

  The world narrowed to a single point: Artemis. I threw myself at her, and as we collided, three things happened at once.

  The magical barrier disappeared as though it had never existed.

  A pulse of energy like I had stuck my finger in a socket hit me so hard I flew off Artemis and rolled into the trees.r />
  And the demon exploded.

  Later we’d learn that the demon exploded when Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder and cut off magic and our connections to other dimensions. But that day all we knew was we were going to die, and then we weren’t.

  And I was absolutely drenched in interdimensional demon goo.

  • • •

  “So you’re saying,” Artemis says, “that you felt changed at the precise moment the Seed of Wonder was destroyed? The last possible second before magic left the world forever?”

  I pick up one of her boots and fiddle with the laces. “Yeah.”

  “This happened months ago, Nina. Why didn’t you tell me?” Castle Artemis is back—the softness is gone, and there’s a chiding edge to her tone and expression. I half expect her to pull out an “Is Nina a Demon?” checklist.

  “I was scared. I mean . . . I was worried that I had been infected: demonic power transference. There’s precedence. I kept waiting to grow tentacles. When that didn’t happen . . . I don’t know. I didn’t know how to tell you.” Because you aren’t the same you. And we aren’t the same we And now I’m not even the same me. “I hoped it would go away,” I say aloud. “And nothing has been different. Not really.” Except the way I feel, all the time. And my sleeping habits. And the nightmares.

  Artemis has not failed to catalog this information. “You haven’t been sleeping nearly as well. And your nightmares are different. Fewer about the fire, more about . . . monsters.”

  “But look at what we do! Of course I dream about bad things. I spend half of every morning researching doomsday prophecies and demon family trees.”

  Artemis leaves our closet and sits on the edge of her bed. I follow. We stare at her quilt. Mine is handmade from all the T-shirts we grew out of. Hers is so blank and scratchy it looks like it belongs on a hospital bed.

  “If you felt this change right before magic was destroyed, then there’s a chance that you could be a—” She pauses. Revulsion and anger flicker over her face.

  Demon, I think.

  She says something even worse. “Slayer.”

  Slayer.

  I burst to my feet, wanting to run from the word. It’s as abhorrent to me as what I did to that hellhound. I am not a Slayer. I’m a Watcher. Besides, there’s no way the seers we used to employ would have missed a Potential Slayer in our own ranks.

  I pace in tight circles. “I can’t be. There aren’t any more being activated. The magic ended along with everything else. No more Slayers. Besides, does it make any sense that I would be a Slayer?”

  “No!” Artemis says, and the force of her exclamation is a little insulting. She didn’t have to agree quite so quickly. It confirms what I’m saying, though. None of us would want to be a Slayer, but if any of us were going to be, I’d be the least obvious choice.

  She stands, perfectly still. Her eyebrows are drawn together, her expression troubled. “But I think . . . we know latent Slayer abilities are triggered by a big moment of fear or bravery, which you’ve never had to face since the fire because I kept you so safe—I’ve always kept you so safe!” She takes a deep breath and rubs her forehead. “It seems impossible. And wrong. But this doesn’t sound like demonic transference. And the timing works. What if you were changed into a Slayer at the last possible second before the Slayer line was ended forever?”

  “No,” a voice snaps, as cold and dark as the castle cellar. We look up to see our mother standing in our doorway. Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.

  4

  WE HAD THREE MOTHERS, EACH with a distinct time period.

  The first: dream mother.

  In my memory, she smells like snickerdoodles.

  She sang to us. Read books with pictures of happy things instead of scaly demons. Laughed. I think she laughed, anyway. Whenever I try to picture it, I can’t quite manage to match up sound with image. It’s like watching a silent movie. And the end of the movie is my dad, with his graying mustache and his kind eyes, kneeling to give each of us a hug.

  Mom says something to him—what does she say?—then kisses him. We wave as he walks out the door. Mom looks proud and sad all at once and shoos us into the kitchen for cookies.

  My dad never came back, and that mom—snickerdoodle mom—was gone too. In a way, Buffy took both of them from me. I never met the Slayer. I don’t even know if she knew we existed. But when my dad died for her, dream mother died too.

  The second: ghost mother.

  After that night we were attacked in the cemetery, Mom was always there, but . . . she wasn’t. We moved constantly. I can’t remember her working or doing anything.

  There were no cookies. There was only the two of us and our mother, hovering. Haunting and haunted. Standing by the window with the curtains drawn, peering out the crack where they didn’t quite meet. We had lost our father, and we lost our mother too. She was a shell of herself. We looked to her for comfort and found only fear. So Artemis and I whispered, played quieter. Hid our stakes in less obvious places so she’d stop taking them away. Figured out how to care for each other so we wouldn’t disrupt her vigil. It wasn’t ideal, but it was okay.

  And then everything burned down.

  The third: not mother.

  After the fire, she stopped being our mother and started being a Watcher. I didn’t realize how odd it was that we had been raised apart from them until we rejoined them in London and I saw how Watcher society functioned. We didn’t even live together as a family anymore. Artemis and I went to the dorms, and my mother had her own apartment in the Council’s wing.

  It felt like she was rejecting me again. But maybe part of her decision to switch from being a mother to being a Watcher was so that she didn’t have to face me. We never once talked about why she picked Artemis first. I sometimes thought about forcing it, but in the end, I preferred not knowing. It couldn’t be any worse than what her actual explanation would be for why she left me behind.

  I hadn’t died that night, but sometimes, when I was with my mother, it felt like I had. Like I was as missing from her world as my dad was.

  • • •

  With our mother standing in the doorway, illuminated with rage, I feel very, very seen.

  “Mom,” Artemis starts, but our mother raises a hand like a sword, cutting off her words.

  “Nina is not a Slayer.” She isn’t confused or even worried. Why did she move straight to anger? It doesn’t make any sense.

  I want to agree with her—I don’t even want to be a Slayer!—but the way she dismisses it triggers my latent teen rebelliousness. Like me, it hasn’t had any opportunity to flex its muscles, but its reflexes are superb.

  “How do you know?” My voice raises an octave. “You haven’t even been here.” We haven’t seen her in two months. This entire time I’ve felt different, afraid I was infected by demon or worse. Slayer counts as worse.

  Would she have noticed? I doubt it. But now she’s back, and she’s telling me how I feel instead of asking me. Just like she told me I wasn’t right for full Watcher training. Just like she told Artemis that she was. How much of our life has been controlled and determined by her?

  She doesn’t even ask about the hellhound. It’s like she doesn’t care. And maybe she doesn’t, since I’m the one at the center of it. She likes me to be invisible.

  Artemis faces our mother. Her back is to me, blocking me out of the conversation. “She killed a hellhound! If you’re so sure she’s not a Slayer, then there’s something else, and we need to take care of it.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Artemis. Nina never should have been put in this position. She never should have come in contact with a demon in the first place.”

  “I was twenty feet from the castle!” I throw my hands up in the air. They’re talking about me like I’m not even here. “What, should Artemis walk me around on a leash? She can’t protect me all the time! And apparently she doesn’t need to.”

  Artemis flinches. I didn’t mean to hurt
her. I know how much she defines herself as my protector. And I’ve let her take that role without question. Maybe that was a mistake for both of us. I reach out to place a hand on her arm, but she crosses her arms tightly instead. “Regardless,” she says. “Slayer or something else. We have to figure it out.”

  Our mother stares at the space above my head. Her face is tight and pinched with anger. Her own soft, auburn hair is pulled back into a severe ponytail, her gray eyes beginning to wrinkle in hard lines. What right does she have to be angry with us? None of this is my fault. Or is she mad that this means she has to actually interact with us? Then I realize she has . . . tears pooling in the bottoms of her eyes?

  Oh gods. Buffy. The Slayer. My mom lost everything because of a Slayer. If it’s hard for me to think about Buffy, how much harder is it for my mother?

  “Mom,” I choke out.

  She turns away on one sharp heel, cutting me off. “I have to go speak with the Council. There’s no need for you to come. We’re still on lockdown, so don’t leave.”

  Artemis and I look at each other in confusion. It’s not that I’m surprised to be ignored by our mother. But for her to refuse to even talk about something so obviously dire?

  My sister quickly shifts from confused to pissed. “That’s it? She comes home to the news that the castle has been breached by a hellhound that you killed, and we get dismissed?” Her jaw sets in determination. “Let’s go to the meeting.”

  “I think it’s pretty clear we’re not invited now that Mom’s here.”

  “We can go if she doesn’t know we’re there.” Artemis stands, her face as cold and hard as the stones of our walls. She storms out of our room; I follow more warily. But she turns in the opposite direction of the Council chambers, sideways across the dormitories. We’re in the rear of the castle, a confusing warren of hallways connecting a tangle of mostly unused rooms.