Out of the Madhouse ( Buffy the Vampire Slayer ) - Softcover

Golden, Christopher; Holder, Nancy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671024345 ISBN 13: 9780671024345

Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 1999

Synopsis

KNOCKIN' ON EVIL'S DOOR Werewolves. Trolls. Sea Monsters. Rain of toads. Skyquakes. Sunnydale is being besieged by dark forces. But even with Buffy providing her unique style of damage control while Giles is hospitalized out of town, it's more than one Slayer can handle -- especially since the abominations are coming from a centuries-old portal through time and space. Somehow, the hell-hole must be found and corked at its source. For Buffy, Angel, and the rest of her gang, that means a road trip to Boston where an ailing Gatekeeper resides over a supernatural mansion that has been, until recently, holding the world's worst monsters at bay. Once there, Buffy discovers the catastrophic truth: the magical structurehouses thousands of rooms, all of which are doorways to limbo's "ghost roads," and all of which may bring her face-to-face with the most nefarious forces in hell and on earth -- forces bent on horrific plans far worse than the Slayer ever imagined.

About this title

About the Author:

Christopher Golden is the best-selling author of the epic dark fantasy series The Shadow Saga, as well as the X-Men trilogy Mutant Empire and the current hardcover Codename Wolverine. With Nancy Holder, he has written several other Buffy projects, including the Gatekeeper Trilogy and The Watcher's Guide. He is currently at work on a series of YA mystery novels for Pocket Books. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

Bodies gyrated, music pounded through pitiful speakers, drinks were poured, imbibed, or spilled in mass quantities. A watered-down gin and tonic in hand, Rupert Giles stood in the far corner of the room and took it all in, careful not to show his disdain. That would be unforgivably rude. This might be New York City, the capital city of rudeness, but that did not mean Giles had to behave in a boorish manner. Come to think of it, there were plenty of boors in London.

Surprised as he was by it, he was forced to admit, at least to himself, that he missed Southern California. At least a little bit. Certainly he missed Buffy and the other students with whom he spent so much time. But there was a certain comfort to the West Coast's laissez-faire attitude that he had begun to enjoy...and which, despite the bacchanalia surrounding him, the East Coast distinctly lacked.

In truth, great forces had conspired to bring him to Manhattan in late winter. Not the least of which was pressure from his employer, the principal of Sunnydale High School, to at least make an effort to become better versed in modern library science. It seemed the Dewey decimal system just wasn't good enough for some people anymore. In some ways, books weren't even the answer. It was all about information now, he thought sadly. And much of that information, however incomplete, however orphaned from any pedigree, was drawn from computers these days.

His only previous interest in computers had been generated by Jenny Calendar, the woman he'd loved. And that meager interest had died and been buried along with her.

The other primary reason that Giles agreed to attend this function -- "Libraries 2000," sponsored by the American Library Association, among others -- was the fact that many of the events were to be held in the Warwick Hotel, a grand old dame of a building whose granite and gargoyles looked down on 57th Street with all the haughtiness of Britain's proudest structures. He had stayed at the Warwick on one of his first visits to the United States, and recalled with pleasure an enormous mural of Queen Elizabeth knighting Sir Francis Drake in the downstairs dining room.

Indeed, in spite of his misgivings, Giles had managed to enjoy himself for the past few days, both with the other librarians he'd met and exploring New York alone. It was an extraordinary city. It was true, he'd discovered (or at least, hypothesized), that one could find literally anything in this city, if one knew where to look. The seminar had, thus far, been a relaxing escape from Sunnydale and from the pressures of his role as the Watcher.

He felt a bit guilty for having abandoned Buffy, even for a week, but she had nearly forced him to go, even instructed him on what to pack. He had disappointed her, he was sure, in his refusal to "go more cazh" and "leave all that tweedy stuff in the library, where it belongs." She also arranged for Cordelia to drive him to the airport, a trip he hoped never to repeat, given her penchant for checking her makeup in the rearview mirror. She had even supplied him with an ancient, weather-worn copy of New York on Five Dollars a Day, thoughtfully marking sights she imagined he might enjoy, and which, frankly, he had: the museums and a number of bookshops. It seemed fairly clear that Buffy had actually wanted him to go. Who could blame her? He was, at least officially, an authority figure in her life. It would be nice for her to be free of him for a time. Still, Giles looked forward to returning home, and suspected that Buffy would be pleased when he did return. And, thus far, there seemed to have been no urgent aim requiring his attention at home.

Reluctant as he was to admit it, Giles was having...well, fun.

At least, he had been until he'd entered this room. The invitation, a splashy foldout from something called stacks.com, which was apparently an Internet meeting place for librarians, had announced a cocktail reception in the Cary Grant Suite of the Warwick Hotel. Well, seeing the Cary Grant Suite had proven to be an irresistable lure for Giles, and it was, indeed, something to see.

There was a large bedroom on either side of the enormous parlor that served as a reception room. The suite was at the southwest corner of the hotel, and there were two sets of French doors that opened out onto an absolutely extraordinary balcony. It wasn't at all like any balcony Giles had ever seen, and certainly not something twenty-seven stories above the city. The enormous stone edifice was more like a large terrace one might see at a stately home in the Cotswolds. At least twenty-five feet wide, it ran the length of the Cary Grant Suite's outer wall. The granite color matched the sky; it was apparently quite chilly outside, and the forecast had called for snow, but so far none had fallen.

Giles wondered if he ought to escape to the balcony, despite the cold. It would be a welcome relief from the party. As a rule, the librarians who were attending the stacks.com "cocktail reception" were younger than he, and American. The men wore blue jeans and sneakers with their button-down shirts, and the women, perhaps eager for a chance to dress, wore tiny black dresses or silk pants.

With his gabardine suit and old-school burgundy tie, Giles knew how out of place he must have appeared. Even that was only a fraction of how out of place he actually felt. He brushed a hand through his slightly graying brown hair , then pushed his glasses up his nose for the hundredth time.

"Good Lord," he muttered to himself. "These are librarians?"

But if he were honest with himself, Giles would be forced to admit that it wasn't the dress or behavior of these people that had him wanting so desperately to retreat. Nor was it the fact that, with his love of dusty old books and getting lost in the stacks -- ironically, the place he felt the most at home, and the polar opposite of the stacks.com party -- he felt positively antique, though even the youngest person in the room was little more than a decade his junior.

No. Worst of all was how much they all reminded him of Jenny. With their sense of fashion and their technical knowledge and the confidence with which they spoke, moved, danced, even breathed, the people crowding the Cary Grant Suite gave him great cause for lament.

It wasn't exactly grief, or mourning. Enough time had passed that those wounds had begun to heal. He'd even caught his eyes roaming appreciatively from time to time. The thought had occurred to him that he might, at some point, meet someone else whom he would like to have in his life. Someone else to love.

But he still missed her terribly. Still ached to tell her little things that he'd discovered in his research and wanted to share, only to realize that he had no one one to share them with. No one who could truly appreciate what such utter trivialities meant to him. It still hurt.

With a sigh, Giles edged around several people who were talking loudly together about a "chat room" where they'd apparently spoken with Frank Herbert, the author of Dune. Giles didn't have the heart to tell them that Herbert had been dead for years, and was dismayed that they didn't realize it themselves. Dismayed but not particularly surprised. After all, it all boiled down to Web sites and URL's not frontispieces and back matter. A pity.

He opened one of the French doors and let himself onto the stone balcony, where a large group of people had already gathered. The sharp wind brought the scent of smoke. Instantly, Giles understood the hardiness of his fellows. Most of them were smokers, exiled to the frozen outdoors by law and the demands of political correctness.

With a shiver, he turned up the collar of his suit coat, and shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his gabardine trousers. In his room, he had a very nice pair of leather gloves, which he wished he'd brought. Exhaling, seeing his breath curl as if he, too, had lit a cigarette, his eyes scanned the cityscape, the lights and the activity far below. Sixth Avenue was bright with the electricity of life, vivid with every bit of excitement and bluster and spectacle that humanity could muster. That was New York City to him.

"Breathtaking, isn't it?"

Her voice was soft, her tone thoughtful, with none of the razor edge of the city in it. Giles blinked, glanced just to his left, uncertain at first if the woman was speaking to him. But he couldn't see her in his peripheral vision. Giles turned, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe.

She was divine. A tall, yet lithe woman with the most delicate features imaginable. Her faced seemed to glow, and though it might have been the neon burning in the city beyond, Giles chose to deem it some ethereal light. In either case, it made her look almost angelic. A splash of her honey-blond hair fell in a gentle wave across her face, while the rest was done up in a long, elaborate braid that fell down past her shoulders. It was unfashionably long, but Giles thought it quite lovely.

She wore a crushed red velvet dress with tight sleeves that accentuated the golden color of her hair. It wasn't the most daring dress he had ever seen, but the way it fell across her body, few women could have worn it well. She wore it very, very well.

The Watcher realized that he was staring.

"I'm...I'm sorry," he stammered. "Did, uh, did you say something?"

The woman smiled at him, and Giles felt himself offering a silly, lopsided grin in return.

"You seemed to be appreciating the city," she said. "I merely commented that it was breathtaking."

American, he presumed, because of her lack of accent. But an American who used the word merely in casual conversation! Giles felt himself falling rapidly into infatuation.

"Indeed it is," he said, after what felt like an embarrassingly long pause. "For such a depraved city, it certainly has its charms."

The woman smiled broadly, and laughed softly, comfortably. There was a sort of gentle lilt to her laughter that gave it the ring of authenticity. She meant it.

"There is always a certain charm in depravity," she said boldly, grinning at Giles.

As his cheeks flushed crimson, she turned her gaze away from him and out toward the city he had been admiring moments ago. "It is a wonderful place," she said. "Though I suspect most of the tech-head numbskulls slobbering all over each other in the other room have rarely if ever even looked out a window."

Giles chuckled, dropped his gaze, then brought his hand up quickly to keep his glasses from plummeting twenty-seven stories. He gave her a sidelong glance and thought, whimsically, It could be love.

"Rupert Giles," he said, turning to hold out his hand.

With a firm grip, she shook it. "Micaela Tomasi," she said. "It's very much my pleasure."

"You must be cold."

She raised her face and nodded. "I am."

He gave her his suit jacket, and felt warmer than he had since landing at JFK.

That was the beginning. For nearly an hour, they spoke of New York, its culture and museums, its depravity, and then of other cities they'd visited or yearned to visit. They talked of books and bookstores, and Giles was astonished to find that she was aware of some of his favorite used bookstores, some so out of the way he'd nearly forgotten about them himself. From Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston, to Cobwebs on Great Russell Road, across from the British Museum in London, Micaela knew them all.

The party ended, the other librarians leaving very reluctantly. The bartenders in their white shirts and black vests left their posts. A man came with a noisy industrial vacuum cleaner, whose hum could be heard through the closed balcony doors.

Still, Giles and Micaela talked on. There seemed to be so much to say. A few minutes before midnight, Giles looked regretfully at his watch.

"I hate to bring this up, but..."

"Yes," she immediately agreed. "It is getting late. Perhaps we could pick up our conversation at breakfast?"

The Watcher nearly laughed out loud. In his experience, there was nothing like avoiding the discomfort of asking a woman out by having her ask first.

"I can't think of anything I'd rather do," he said with great certainty. "Shall we say nine o'clock, in the lobby?"

"I'll be there, stomach rumbling," she replied.

They walked together out to the elevator. When they had stepped in, and he had pressed the number 16, she chuckled to herself.

"Hmm?" he asked. "Did I miss something?"

"We're on the same floor," she said. "I was just thinking what a lark it would have been if they'd double-booked me into your room."

Giles blinked, blushed once more, but his only reply was a slightly embarrassed smile. His mind, however, was racing with the possibilities. So much so, that when they stepped off on the sixteenth floor, and Micaela turned in the opposite direction, he felt a bit of disappointment.

"Good night, Miss Tomasi," Giles said. "Sleep well."

"And to you, Mr. Giles," she replied, almost primly. Then mischief crept into her eyes as she said, "Pleasant dreams."

As he walked down the hall toward his room, Giles whistled jauntily, his jaw muscles already somewhat sore from the smile that threatened to stretch his face for eternity. Somewhere, he heard a phone begin to ring. Around the corner, he heard a door open. He reached the juncture in the corridor, rounded the corner, and was nearly barreled over by a broad-shouldered man wearing a Yankees baseball cap.

"'Scuse," the man grunted, but didn't look up; his face was obscured by the bill of the cap.

"Yes, well," Giles said, affronted. "Perhaps if you watched where you were walking..."

But his reproach was lost on the man, who had hurried around the corner. Grumbling Giles turned back down the corridor. Only then did he notice that the phone was still ringing. The sound was coming from the open door of room 1622, just down the hall.

His room.

The phone stopped ringing as Giles rushed to the open door, eyes darting about with caution. He pushed the door fully open and flicked on the light. The place was a shambles. Many of his things were in tatters, the clothes thrown about the room, drawers open, mirror shattered. A thief, he realized immediately. Searching for valuables. And the phone ringing? A signal, perhaps, from a cohort, lying in wait to warn the burglar should the room's registered occupant return.

It had just happened. The phone, the sound of a door opening.

The man in the Yankees cap.

Giles ran from his room, sprinted along the corridor and around the corner. Down the hall, he saw the stairwell door swinging shut under the glowing red EXIT sign. The anger that began to build inside him was a distant memory, but all too familiar. There existed within Rupert Giles a man capable of great bouts of rage. It didn't matter if the thief had actually stolen anything, for Giles had little of value with him save for a few antique books.

No, it was the principle of the thing. The violation.

The anger boiled up inside him and his heart pou...

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0671024345
• ISBN 13: 9780671024345
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 384