Chapter 42: Inca Mummy Girl Part 3

Dawn and Ampata went into the Bronze and saw first Cordelia who wore only a blue bikini top with a stylized white flower pattern, a matching sarong, a pink-and-white lei, and had a pink hibiscus flower in her hair.

Dawn rolled her eyes. She knew that Cordelia had only picked what looked like a traditional Hawaiian outfit because it showcased her body. She then caught sight of Xander and Willow. Xander was wearing a cowboy outfit and Willow was dressed in an eskimo outfit, complete with furry hood and spear.

"Aren't you hot, Will?" Dawn asked as she and Ampata walked up to them.

"Very," Willow admitted.

"I told you should have chosen something else," Xander said. He looked around and noticed that Buffy wasn't with Dawn and Ampata. "Where's Buffy and Jo?"

"Crime club stuff," Dawn said. "Giles had something that had to be done right away. You know how these faculty advisers get."

"You guys look great," Willow said looking at the princesses before her.

"I love your costume," Ampata said. "It's very authentic."

"Thanks," Willow muttered.

Dawn looked at Ampata. "Do you, uh—would you like to, uh, you know . . ."

"I'd love to dance," Ampata said, saving Xander some embarrassment.

Smiling, Dawn led Ampata to the dance floor.

Oz scanned the crowd. This particular song was pretty straightforward. It was a ballad with no changes and a bunch of open chords that Oz could pretty much do in his sleep. Oz didn't much care for ballads, but at a dance like this, you had to cater to the crowd.

Oz scoped out the people. He'd never seen so many costumes before when it wasn't Halloween. He had to admit, it looked pretty cool.

Two things grabbed his attention. The first was hard to miss, 'cause everyone else was looking at them, too: a couple who were dancing in the middle of the floor. One was dressed up like an Egyptian goddess and the other like a South American goddess. Most people were just dancing normally, but these two were completely locked into each other. It was like something out of West Side Story.

The second thing was just beyond them. It was a girl wearing an eskimo suit, standing next to a guy in a cowboy outfit. It was the cutest thing he'd ever seen in his life.

Oz had seen the couple on the floor and moved on. But this girl completely—and uncharacteristically—had him riveted.

They had gotten to an instrumental part, and Oz backed away from the mic and leaned over to Devon.

"Hey. That girl. Who is she?"

"Which one? The one in the South American costume? She's an exchange student. I think she's from South America."

Oz shook his head. "No, not her. The eskimo."

Devon shrugged.

Ampata had never been so happy in her life. True, the music was a trifle strange, but she found she liked it. And ultimately, it didn't matter. The important thing was that she had Dawn in her arms. She liked how it felt.

Her heart started racing as Dawn leaned in for a kiss.

As she angled her head to accept the kiss, she saw her hands, currently resting on Dawn's shoulders.

They were starting to wither.

No!

The Guardian's energy should have lasted for days, not hours. Something was wrong. Maybe because the Guardian is not truly human.

The reasons didn't matter. She had to get away from Dawn before she saw.

Before Dawn could kiss her, she broke the embrace and ran away.

She tried to keep her hands at her sides, counting on the poor lighting in this place to keep anyone from noticing.

Gazing quickly around the room, she saw a boy sitting alone on the staircase. She didn't recognize the culture he was supposed to represent, nor did she much care. All that mattered was that he was alone and so would be easy prey.

It took only a few moments and a bright smile to lure the boy—Jonathan was his name—into the backstage area. She removed the straw hat he wore as part of his costume and started stroking his hair. Jonathan was a bit nervous. "Your hands feel kinda—rough. Aren't you with Dawn?"

In as seductive a voice as she could muster, the princess asked, "Does it look like I am with Dawn?"

She leaned in to kiss him.

"Ampata!" called Dawn's voice from nearby.

No, my love, Ampata thought in anguish, not now!

However, the damage had been done. At the sound of Dawn's voice, Jonathan said, "That's my cue to leave," and dashed off.

After Ampata ran off the dance floor, Dawn stared after her, completely confused. She went after Ampata, but couldn't see her in the crowd. She did pass by Xander and Willow, though, who hadn't moved. "Have you seen Ampata?"

"No," Xander answered as Willow made an odd sort of shrugging motion.

Working her way through the crowd, Dawn caught sight of one of Cordelia's legion of followers dressed as a medieval Japanese woman. She was talking with Sven, the Swedish student who was staying at the Chase house.

"I thought this exchange student thing would be a great deal," Sven was saying, "but look what I got stuck with. 'Memento'? 'Punchy fruity drinky'? Is Cordelia even from this country?"

Under any other circumstances, Dawn would have relished overhearing this. Now, though, she had to find Ampata. For the first time in her life she was filled with the possibility of being rejected. The first girl she had ever admitted having feelings for and that girl had run off. She had no intention of leeting Ampata go without telling the girl how she felt.

Dawn went to the back hallway, calling out Ampata's name. After a minute, she found her. Ampata seemed somewhat out of sorts. "There you are. Why'd you run away?"

"Because—" Her voice broke. "I do not deserve you."

Dawn gasped. "You think you don't deserve me?" She laughed. "I love you."

Ampata turned away. Tears poured down her cheeks.

"Are those tears of joy? Pain? Revulsion?" Dawn asked.

"I am very happy. And very sad."

"Then talk to me," Dawn said. "Let me know what's wrong."

"I can't," she said, and fell into Dawn's arms, crying into her shoulders.

"I know why you can't tell me. It's a secret, right?"

Ampata looked up at him and nodded.

"And if you told me, you'd have to kill me?"

She started crying again.

"Oh, that was a bad joke," Dawn admitted as she looked into Ampata's eyes and Ampata's eyes looked back. Right now, she wanted nothing more in the world than to kiss Ampata. And Dawn was fairly sure Ampata wanted the same thing.

They kissed.

It was an amazing kiss.

Then Dawn felt like the life was being sucked out of her, and the kiss suddenly became somewhat less amazing . . .

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Sudden blue and white orbing lights appeared in Buffy's living room as Paige and Giles solidified into existence before Buffy.

"Thank heavens your home," Giles said.

"Yup. Not at the dance with Paige," said Buffy. "Not with our friends. Not with a life. What are you guys doing here? I thought we were going to meet at the museum to find the bodyguard."

"No, I found him in the girl's restroom at school—mummified," Paige said.

Buffy frowned. "Okay, I don't get it. Why would the mummy kill her own bodyguard?"

"Well, I've cross-referenced and I've looked at the pictograms anew. He was a guard all right, but it was his job to ensure that the mummy didn't awaken and escape."

"So Ampata translated wrong?" Buffy asked.

"Perhaps," Giles said.

"Hang on a sec. She was wiggy about the seal from minute one."

"Yes, I suppose she was," Giles agreed.

"Her trunks," Buffy said, and ran upstairs.

Paige and Giles followed. "I beg your pardon?" Giles said.

"Dawn had offered to unpack for Ampata but Ampata was dead set against it," Buffy said. "Dawn said for the split second she had Ampata's luggage open she saw something weird." She went into Dawn's room. A suitcase and two trunks were present. Buffy noticed that Ampata had put a padlock on one of the trunks. "Take a look at the clothes."

Paige and Giles looked through the luggage a bit hesitantly at first, until they realized that all the clothes were of the male variety.

"Okay that is definitely weird," Paige said. "No bras, no underwear, just boys' clothes. A girl would never have packed this stuff."

Buffy knelt down at the second trunk, broke off the lock with a flick of the wrist, and opened it. She got a whiff of staleness. And decay. Not surprising, really, considering that the trunk contained a mummified corpse.

"How about this one? What kind of girl travels with a mummified corpse and doesn't even pack lipstick?"

Giles breathed out slowly. "Obviously, Ampata is our mummy."

"And our murderer. She's at the dance with Dawn!"

Paige took Buffy and Giles hands and orbed out and into a restroom of the Bronze.

"I should've guessed. Remember? Ampata wanted us to hide the seal," Buffy said.

Giles nodded. "And then she wanted us to destroy it, because—wait."

After a moment, Buffy prompted, "Waiting."

"Well, we already know that the seal was used to contain the mummy. If breaking it freed her—"

"Reassembling it will trap her," Buffy finished.

"Paige, we should orb to the museum," Giles said. "We'll try to piece together the fragments there."

Paige took Giles' hand and orbed out.

Dawn's experiences with kisses were appallingly limited, but even so, she was pretty sure that this was intense as it got. It really did feel like the life was being sucked out of her.

Then, again, Ampata broke it off. "No!" she cried. "I can't!"

Dawn fell to the floor, completely drained. She'd heard about kisses that could take your breath away, but this was ridiculous.

Ampata knelt down beside Dawn. "Dawn, I am so sorry."

Dawn wanted to ask Ampata what she was sorry for, but she couldn't work up the energy to form the words.

Suddenly, Ampata stood up and put her hands to her head. "The seal," she said through clenched teeth, like she was in pain or something.

Then she ran off.

"Ampata . . ." Dawn croaked. Then she just lay there. Her strength started to come back to him.

"Dawnie? Are you okay?"

The voice startled Dawn. She looked up to see her sister, Xander and Willow.

"I think so," Dawn said slowly in answer to the question. "Boy, that was some kiss."

"Where's Ampata?" Buffy asked.

Dawn had just been about to ask the same question. She tried to bring her thoughts into focus. "She said something about the seal."

Buffy stood up. "The seal. Paige. Giles. Come on!"

The conversation was making less and less sense. "What's going on?"

"Dawn doesn't know," Willow said.

Doesn't know what? Dawn thought.

"Ampata," Buffy said. "She's the mummy."

Dawn's eyes went wide.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The princess had sworn she would never come back to this hated place, but she found herself once again at the Treasures of South America exhibit.

When that idiot boy with the braces had broken the seal, she at last attained freedom after five centuries of dying hell. No matter what, she could not allow the seal to be repaired. She would never go back to her former existence. She had a reason to live now.

She had Dawn. And she would let nothing take Dawn away from her.

As she approached the exhibit, she heard a familiar voice. "'Inca cosmology unites the Bird-Head with its paler twin.'" A pause, then: "Oh, yes—its paler twin."

It was that archivist, Giles. He was obviously attempting to patch the Seal. Damn him! He reminded her of the high priest. So smug, so superior. Always telling her how noble it was for her to die for Sebancaya. As if he had any idea what it was he askedof me. As if this fool has any idea what he is condemning me to.

She saw Giles and Paige, kneeling by her tomb. Giles was reading from one of his texts. "'The Condor soars, but the prey is in his talons.' That's it."

Paige was piecing more of the seal together. The princess could feel its power calling to her.

No!

Her arms and legs had completely withered. Soon her entire body would decay, and then she would be helpless. She summoned her strength and moved to the dais.

"'The spondylus shell evokes Mamacocha, Mother of All the Water.' Well, that's it. Just one more piece."

Reaching with a gnarled hand, she tore the seal from the Paige's grasp and hurled it away. It shattered, its hold on her broken forever.

With her other hand, she swatted Giles away. He hit a nearby wall hard and was knocked unconscious. She then grabbed Paige by the throat and squeezed rendering Paige unconscious from the lack of oxygen.

As Ampata leaned in to kiss Paige, to suck out her life, a voice sounded from behind and below her. "I'll say one thing for you Incan mummies, you don't kiss and tell."

The princess whirled around to see Buffy standing at the entrance. The American girl then leaped up to the platform on which the sarcophagus sat, and landed in a fighting position. The princess was surprised.

Buffy had shown no such abilities before.

Dropping the Paige's unconscious form into the tomb, the princess said, "Looks like you've been keeping some secrets from me. You're not a normal girl."

Buffy snorted. "Oh, and you are?" And then she whirled and kicked at the princess twice, then followed it with a punch.

Anyone else would have been felled by these blows, but the princess was stronger than that, even in her weakened state. She grabbed Buffy's wrist in midpunch and flipped her around to the edge of the sarcophagus.

The girl is powerful. She should last me for days, the princess thought as she leaned in to kiss Buffy.

But Buffy was more difficult prey than the archivist. She head-butted the princess, sending her reeling.

Buffy followed that with another kick, which the princess ducked.

Buffy charged, and again the princess was able to turn her attack against her and toss her into the sarcophagus. Then she closed the lid. She and Paige would keep.

The princess needed to feed before she could take Buffy on again. She could feel the strength flowing out of her. She had to find another victim.

Turning a corner, she crashed into Willow, no longer wearing the outfit of the people to the north. Forcing her weakening fingers to work, she clasped one hand around a now-terrified Willow's throat. "This won't hurt."

Suddenly Ampata found herself being thrown backward off Willow.

Ampata turned to see Dawn standing next to Xander. Dawn. No, my love, please, I did not want you to see me like this!

"If you're gonna kiss anybody, it should be me," Dawn said. She looked at Xander who nodded at the unspoken order and he moved toward Willow.

The princess could feel the tears welling in her eyes. "Dawn, we can be together, just let me have one."

"Never happening," Dawn said.

The feeling was leaving Ampata's arms and legs. Soon they would be useless unless she could feed. "I must do it," she said urgently. "I must do it now, or it is the end. For me and for us." She moved in on Xander and Willow just blue and white orbing lights appeared and solidified into Buffy who was blocking Ampata from Willow and Xander.

Dawn moved in front of her friends.

The princess did not have the arm strength to resist. The weakness had crept up to her torso now. She barely had the ability to put her hands on Dawn's shoulders.

Dawn looked into her eyes. Those same eyes that gazed upon her with love less than an hour ago now stared at her with anger. "You want life, you're gonna have to take mine. Can you do that?"

Fear gripped the princess. The seal had kept her preserved, but she had destroyed the seal and killed the Guardian. The instruments of the curse were removed, and the only pracitioners of Sebancaya's will were centuries dead.

If she died now, she would die forever.

She could not face that. She had finally tasted life, and she would not, could not let it go.

Not even for Dawn.

"Yes," she said hungrily, leaning in with the last of her strength to kiss him for one final time.

Dawn saw behind Ampata orbing blue and white lights that solidified into Buffy. Buffy grabbed Ampata by the shoulders and tore her away from Dawn.

The last thing the princess saw were her arms, which had been ripped from their sockets, still clinging to dear, sweet Dawn.

The last thing she felt was the impact against the floor.

Then, oblivion.

Dawn hadn't slept well that night. The rather gross image of Ampata's disembodied arms still clinging to her shoulders even as the rest of her shattered into a thousand pieces after Buffy threw her to the floor simply wouldn't go away.

The next morning, Dawn sat at the counter in the kitchen. Buffy sat next to her sipping on a soda. She silently offered Dawn a sip, which Dawn just as silently declined.

Buffy could see that Dawn felt like her heart was broken. "I'm sorry," she said.

"I know," Dawn said.

"Ampata wasn't evil," Buffy said. "At least not to begin with. And I do think she cared about you."

"Yeah, but I think the whole sucking-the-life-out-of-people thing would've been a strain on the relationship," Dawn said.

"She was gyped," Buffy then said. "She was just a girl and she had her life taken away from her."

"A girl I loved," Dawn said. "Buffy, did you know before I asked her to the dance?"

"That you like me are gay?" Buffy asked. "I had a feeling."