Table Of Content“Buffy barely had time to channel her revulsion at the horrible images in her
mind, for outside the house an engine roared and tires skidded to a halt and car
doors opened and slammed closed.
For a moment she stared at Spike, then her gaze fell upon the Moruach Queen.
The monster reached out and dragged its talons along the line of Spike’s jaw as
though she might tear his head off any second. Then the Queen gazed at Buffy,
that dark intelligence commanding and brutal, and she slithered toward the
Slayer on her powerful serpentine trunk.
The Queen waved toward the door and the Moruach cleared away. Buffy
hesitated only a second before moving swiftly to the front of the room and
peering through the open door. In the moonlight she could see five figures
walking up toward Talisker House from an SUV parked sideways across the
drive. They were silhouettes only. Two female and three male.
And she recognized the walk of one of the females.
Faith, Buffy thought.
All of them were armed.
They had come for war.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer™
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The Wisdom of War
Christopher Golden
An original novel based on the hit television series
by Joss Whedon
SIMON PULSE
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY SINGAPORE
Historian’s note: This story takes place in the second half of the fifth season of Buffy.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used
fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and
any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Simon Pulse edition July 2002
™ and © 2002 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
All rights reserved.
SIMON PULSE
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All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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ISBN: 0-7434-6666-7
This one’s for all my friends in the United
Kingdom. You guys throw a hell of a party.
And for Sally.
Acknowledgments
Thanks, as always, to Lisa Clancy and Micol Ostow at Simon Pulse, and to
Debbie Olshan at Fox. I’m always grateful for the green light, but this time even
more than most. What a rush.
Thanks are also due to my wife, Connie, and my boys, Nicholas and Daniel, who
I hope when they’re old enough will be able to look beneath the lunacy in these
pages to see what the story is about. And thanks to the irregulars—Tom, Jose,
Rick, Stefan, and Meg. You guys help keep me sane.
Finally, a special thanks to U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Jaimie Browne, who
came through in a pinch and helped me face the monsters.
PROLOGUE
Buffy Summers was the town skank.
Not really, of course, but on this night she had chosen to play that role. When
patrolling as the Slayer consisted of spending all her time trawling cemeteries for
the latest accountant or high school student to rise from the grave as a vampire—
just so she could put them back there again—Buffy could wear whatever she
liked. Comfortable clothes: sweats, jeans, boots, even sneakers. Some nights she
grew bored with the practical look and attempted to be a bit more fashionable in
her war against the forces of darkness.
But tonight was different.
She wore torn low-rider jeans that showed her hip bones and felt as though they
might slip that last precious, strategic inch at any moment. Her half shirt
revealed a fake navel ring and Celtic patterns henna-tattooed around her belly
button. Black fingernail polish, too much makeup, and hair in a wild tangle that
fell across her face finished the picture.
More than anything, she looked as though she had raided Faith’s closet.
But if she was going to go unnoticed in Docktown, get people to talk to her, she
was going to have to fit in. As a rule, Buffy’s detective work generally consisted
of pummeling secrets out of demons and their disciples. Woman of a thousand
faces she was not. Yet three nights of patrolling Docktown in the usual fashion
had yielded no leads on the trio of violent murders that had taken place there in
the last three weeks and so she had been forced to endure two extremely difficult
trials. The first was to disguise herself in this fashion—she felt like an
advertisement for Sluts “R” Us—but the second trial was even more challenging.
In order for her to discover what was killing people in Docktown, Buffy was
going to have to be patient.
“Hey, darlin’,” drawled a stout, brutish man with shaggy hair and thick, dark
sideburns. He had moved up next to her at the bar with elephantine stealth and
waited for her to notice his Popeye-size biceps, complete with anchor tattoo.
The music of The Black Crowes poured out of the throbbing sound system, and
at the other end of the bar a pair of stringy-haired girls danced suggestively with
one another, to the whooping delight of the men around them. In the back sailors
and fishermen played pool and swore loudly each time money was lost or won.
Tables were jammed full of people drinking beer and eating fried clams and the
catch of the day.
It was a typical night in the Fish Tank. If you lived in Docktown, chances were
your family made its living on or from the sea, on a fishing boat or a merchant
ship or at one of the transport companies or warehouses that lined the waterfront.
And for young people in Docktown, filled with blue-collar pride but not yet old
enough to be worn down by their work, the Fish Tank was what passed for
clubbing.
There had been three mutilation murders in the past three weeks in Docktown,
all between the Fish Tank and the wharf. It was possible that human beings had
done the killing, but not likely. Not here in Sunnydale, where the Hellmouth—a
place where the barrier between Earth and the demon dimensions had worn thin
—drew monsters like moths to the flame. That meant Buffy had to look into it. It
wasn’t her job exactly, but it was her responsibility. She was the Slayer, the one
girl in all the world Chosen to receive a gift of power, power with which she
must combat the forces of darkness.
Not fun. Of course if it had been fun, the Powers wouldn’t have had to choose
someone to foist the duty on, would they? There’d have been a line around the
corner. But no line. Nobody actually wanted the job.
So it was down to her.
Tonight that meant making herself fit in at the Fish Tank, trying to overhear
some conversation that would give her a clue as to what was killing people down
here, or better yet, chancing to see some behavior that was even more suspicious
than the usual. Sherlock Holmes she was not, but she hadn’t been getting
anywhere by skulking in the shadows.
Instead, here she was, humiliating herself by putting on a costume many months
before Halloween and dealing with morons like this stumpy little muscle head in
need of a shave, a shower, and a lesson in manners.
“Snap out of it, babe. I’m talkin’ to you.”
Buffy flashed him her best faux cheerleader smile. “Oh, I’m sorry, did you not
realize I was ignoring you? Wait, is this better?” She tossed her blonde hair back
and spun away from him so that her back was to him completely.
Stumpy sputtered, rendered incapable of human speech by the depth of his
offense. Buffy figured he was used to being rejected by women, but that the
average girl in the Fish Tank would have spent more energy on that rejection.
Her focus was elsewhere. She tipped back her virgin screwdriver—a glass of
orange juice—and scanned the bar again over the rim of her glass. Under normal
circumstances she would have been watching for someone a little shady, perhaps
somewhat edgy and suspicious looking. At the Fish Tank, that description
covered all of the regular clientele.
Yet there was one patron there in the bar that had drawn Buffy’s attention. He
was a slim, well-tanned man in a business suit and bright green tie. In every way
he was ordinary looking. There were many women who might have thought him
mildly handsome, but few who would later be able to recall his face. The graying
hair at his temples perhaps, and the verdant brightness of that tie, but not his
face.
Not for the first time he caught Buffy looking at him. Rather than smiling
uncertainly, intrigued by the attentions of a woman—skanky barfly chick or not
—he glanced away and loosened his tie. This guy wasn’t a dockworker and he
wasn’t a sailor. He wasn’t skipper of some fishing trawler and he wasn’t a
factory worker or warehouse security guard. And it wasn’t only the suit that gave
him away; he might have been any of those things and just come from a funeral
or a day in court. No, it was everything in his presence, in his carriage, that cried
