Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Buffy Season4 02 Read Online Free

now.
    Teeth gritted together, a violent surge of adrenaline making Buffy bounce slightly on her feet. She used her good hand to drag August around near the front of the cell, only inches from the door. It would hit her when it opened.
    Where August’s corpse had lain, she knelt, took a breath, and whacked her broken nose with an open hand. She let the cry of pain come, and sagged a bit. Then she bent over and let blood flow onto the floor. After a couple of minutes, she rolled up the back of her shirt and felt for the puncture wound left in her side by the broken plastic that had impaled her. The wound had already begun to heal. Buffy used her fingernail to dig it open.
    Again, she bled.
    But the loss of blood did not weaken her. For it was not her own lifeblood that drove her now, but hatred for her enemy, like nothing she had ever felt before. Her world had been gray for so long that she could remember almost nothing else. Gray and numb and lifeless.
    It had color again. The world was crimson as her blood, and black as a vampire’s heart. She allowed herself only one more minute to recover, to breathe slowly. Then she stood and went to the sink, still cradling her dislocated arm. She sat on the floor. With some difficulty, she managed to wrap both hands around the pipe that came down from beneath the sink. Strong hand over the weak one, holding it in place, she planted her feet against the wall under the sink, took a breath, and pushed out as hard as she could.
    An awkward angle, but there was enough force behind it to snap the shoulder back into the joint. It felt as though someone were dying to separate the bones with a jagged knife. Buffy could have stopped the scream by biting through her lip. She did not.
    Her mouth opened and she shrieked loud and long, releasing all the pain and misery she had been holding inside. Somehow she managed to find her feet and stumbled to the shattered plastic shelving. She snatched up a splintered piece, brought it to her flesh, and sliced a long, clean, horizontal cut across her throat.
    Buffy hissed air in through her clenched teeth, for the cut stung, but it was superficial. Nothing vital was hit. After her shoulder, it was almost nothing.
    Quivering from the pain and her emotional turmoil, she staggered to the place where she had made herself bleed. A small pool of her blood was there on the stone. Not enough, to her eyes, but it would have to do.
    She dropped the plastic dagger to the floor a foot away, then lay down on her side, right cheek already sticky where it touched the edge of the puddle of her blood. Maddox stormed down the corridor with a cigarette clenched firmly in his lips and a two foot stun-prod gripped in his right hand. One of the guards—a rookie named Theo who was practically a newborn— followed behind him like a puppy.
    “Whaddaya think’s goin’ on, Maddox?” Theo cooed excitedly. “There were screams and everything. Sounded pretty nasty. Got a serious Slayer catfight, I think. Woulda loved to’ve seen that.”
    “We’ll see.”
    They rounded a corner and Maddox saw four other guards up ahead, the two who were supposed to be on the door, and two others who had likely come down from the upper level when the commotion began.
    “What the hell’s going on?” Maddox demanded.
    “Told you, Maddox,” Theo said, grinning. “They’re tearing each other apart in there. When you said put the new girl in there, that’s the last thing I expected.”
    With a grunt, Maddox froze. He turned to stare at Theo. “Who sired you?” Theo blinked. “Um, Harmony did.”
    Maddox sighed. “Of course she did.”
    Then he tapped Theo’s chest lightly with the stun-prod. The vampire jerked and shuddered as electricity surged through him. His eyes were wide, white against the black tattoo Maddox thought he brought shame to. Theo slumped to the ground, jerking a bit. He opened his mouth and a tiny bit of bloody drool spilled out with the tip of his tongue, which he had