Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0739461176, Hardcover)

With the closing of the Hellmouth and the awakening of hundreds of potential slayers, Buffy Summers thinks she's earned a well-deserved break. But the thrill of victory is short-lived, for the forces of darkness are not willing to accept defeat, and their collective rage makes them more eager than ever to regain dominance. Willow's magical distribution of the Slayer essence has left girls across the world discovering their latent power and flocking to a charismatic figure called the Immortal. While Giles stays in England to reorganize the much-needed Watchers Council, Buffy goes to Rome to round up Europe's Potentials...and is drawn to the Immortal, an inscrutable millennia-old expert on the occult. But then comes word that a number of Potentials are being coerced to join an army of Slayers governed by the mysterious Queen of the Slayers, an awesome evil determined to claim the intoxicating Slayer essence for herself. Xander is sent to Africa to learn more about the origin of the slayer essence. Instead he returns to report that, alarmingly, there's not enough good in the world to counteract the overabundance of evil and that the deciding apocalypse is drawing much too near. Alliances are formed and loyalties betrayed as it comes down to Slayer versus Slayer, leading to an ultimate battle of championsfrom Buffy's past and present. And then an unimaginable gift arrives....