Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Buffy Season4 02 Read Online Free Page B

though. A frisson of fear went through him. There was something about the woman that had always given him the creeps a little bit. She was warm and soft, like all humans, and yet there was something almost haunting about her, almost mystical. There was a promise in her eyes every time she looked at him; a promise of payback.
    Brossi extended his arm through the open door, stun-prod in hand. Maddox stood back a little, just in case the door should be slammed shut suddenly, his own electrical prod held up at the ready. As Maddox watched, Brossi tagged the downed Slayer with the prod. Electricity sizzled through her with a crackle and the smell of sizzling hair. The girl did not so much as twitch. There were none of the muscle spasms that electrocution brought.
    “Dammit,” Maddox whispered. I’m screwed.
    The girl looked badly beaten. There had been a knock-down, drag-out brawl inside that cell. One Slayer was dead. But what of the other one?
    “I’m coming in, Summers. Keep away from the door!” he called into the cell. Then he motioned Brossi out of the way and kicked the door with all the strength he could muster. Something broke in the corpse on the floor when the door collided with it, but it slid open another half-foot.
    Just enough for Maddox to see Buffy Summers lying in a pool of her own blood, bruised and beaten, throat slit, eyes wide and cold and staring right at him.
    “No!” Maddox screamed. He struck out at the air, then rammed a fist against the door with a clang and did not even feel the pain. “Dammit, no!”
    Furious, and filled with terror as he began to wonder what fate awaited him now, Maddox strode into the room. His stun-prod hung at his side. Astonished, he stared around at the shattered plastic shelving, the clothes strewn about. From a distance, he examined the splintered piece of plastic that had obviously been used to slash Buffy’s throat.
    “Maddox, how …?” Brossi began to ask.
    His words trailed off when Maddox glared at him. “New girl cut Summers’s throat. Summers broke her neck before she died.”
    “I don’t know,” Brossi said slowly. “Better keep back from her. Give her a few volts before you get too close.”
    Maddox hesitated. Then he studied the Slayer’s eyes, the haunting eyes that had promised him death so many times. There was nothing there now. Like tarnished marbles, they were. The way she lay, mouth partially open, the blood from the wound in her throat had pooled up against her lips. That was the thing that convinced Maddox. That whole side of her face, her hair, her nose, lay in blood, and with her mouth open like that, if she were alive, well… she would have been able to taste it. Her own blood. Like a vampire.
    Her chest did not move. Her eyes were dead ice fragments. But it was that one detail that convinced him.
    Still, Maddox was cautious as he reached out with the stun-prod. The eyes still gave him a chill. The tip of the prod swept toward the woman’s eyes, but there wasn’t so much as a flinch. Just for safety’s sake, he touched the prod against her shoulder. The body jerked slightly, but he’d seen that before. The electricity that surged through the corpse was enough to do that. The hair on the dead woman’s head shivered and even floated a bit with the static.
    “She’s dead,” Maddox said, forlorn. “What the hell do I do now?” He was about to prod her eyes when a thought occurred to him. Maddox turned and looked at Brossi.
    “Or is she?” he said, grinning. “I mean, he never comes here, right? We’ll just lock it up again, leave them here.”
    Brossi’s expression was grave. “When the new Slayer shows up, he’ll know.”
    “We could be gone by then,” Maddox replied sharply. “It’s a big world.” Brossi hung his head, all the tension going out of him. In the corridor, the other guards were wide-eyed with the realization of their fate. One of them, Haskell, cut and ran right then, his footsteps echoing back down the