Resurrecting Ravana Read Free Page A

began to struggle to get to her feet, and hands gripped her arms, helping her up. Giles and Xander were with her, and Willow and Cordelia were standing just outside the door.
    “C’mon,” Buffy said urgently, dismissing the carnage inside the bar with a glance. “We’ve gotta follow them. Let’s go!”
    The five of them ran to the van and got inside.
    “Which way did they go?” Giles asked as he started the engine.
    “Straight ahead,” Cordelia said. “I saw them.”
    “Do me a favor, Giles?” Buffy asked quietly.
    “What’s that?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.
    “Forget you’re British and step on it.”
    He did, and the van shot forward. He turned his head and said over his shoulder, “Seatbelts, please? Everyone?”
    Everyone in the van remained silent as Giles sped through the night, his foot pushing the accelerator to the floor, breaking the speed limit in a very non-Englishman sort of way.
    The road was curvy, but with their windows rolled down, it wasn’t long before they heard the roar of the motorcycles up ahead. The sound of the motorcycles led them west. The area around them became more and more wooded, until they were driving between tall pines and firs, beyond which lay thick woods on both sides of the road.
    And then the sound of the motorcycles stopped.
    It didn’t stop instantly, it faded. But it faded very quickly . . . and was gone.
    Giles let up on the accelerator and the van slowed.
    “Where did they go?” Giles asked. “I can’t hear them anymore.”
    “Neither can I,” Buffy said, leaning her head out the window.
    “Maybe they outran us?” Willow said uncertainly.
    “No, no, they didn’t do that,” Buffy said. “It sounded more like they . . . like they . . .” Buffy suddenly spun around and clutched Giles’s shoulder. “Stop the van. Stop it, now.”
    Giles slowed down, his mouth moving nervously, but silently.
    “No, no, Giles, pull over and stop! Now!”
    He did as she said, parking the van on the slanted gravel shoulder.
    “What do you have in mind, Buffy?” he asked.
    “They went into the woods,” she said, looking out the side window into the dark woods on the western side of the road. “On those motorcycles, they could drive right in there . . . and they did, I know it. Somewhere along this road, maybe a little ways behind us, they went right into the woods.”
    “You think they’re hiding in there?” Xander asked.
    Cordelia let out an annoyed huff of breath and said, “No, Xander, they’re collecting frogs for a class biology project.”
    “We’ve got to go in there after them,” Buffy said, ignoring the exchange in the backseat.
    Giles pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands as he let out a long sigh. “All right, then,” he said. “We’re hardly equipped for it, but . . . we’ll go into the woods.”
    There was a long, tense silence in the van.
    “Into the woods?” Cordelia asked. Her voice was a quiet whimper. “At night?”
    “What are you afraid of?” Xander asked.
    “Well, aren’t there . . . you know . . . snakes and spiders and —”
    “Cordy, we’re going into the woods after hellhounds,” Xander said with a chuckle. “Snakes and spiders should be the least of your worries.”
    Cordelia sighed and shook her head. “You people are so priority-impaired.”
    Buffy smiled faintly at Giles, then at the others in the backseat, then at Giles again. “So . . . what are we waiting for?”
    Things on the porch went downhill almost immediately.
    As the creature flung the severed arm over the porch railing, blood spattered in all directions. Buffy raised her crossbow, aimed, and fired. But the hellhound had already leapt from the porch and flew over her head with a loud growl. The stake sliced through empty air and disappeared into the open doorway.
    Buffy reached beneath her jacket for another stake as she spun around on the porch. Through the old wood slats beneath her boots, she could