Fanfiction: A Tale Of Slayers : Part 1-5
CHAPTER FOUR
Buffy walked up to Angel but stopped herself before her hand started rising to touch his shoulder. Ever since Angel got better, and especially after he regained all his strength, they took extra care whenever they were close to each other. Thankfully, he didn’t need her constant attention anymore and they didn’t see each other as often, which was better for both of them. At least, that’s what Buffy told herself… for comfort? She would have frowned at her own strange take on logic if she were alone.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Gazing down into her eyes, he said, “Yeah.”
“I guess you get to meet a lot of interesting people in two and half centuries.” She smiled. “So you and Oranstine are old friends?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call us `friends.’”
“She seemed pleasant enough to you, from where I stood.”
“Were you spying on me?” There was no accusation in his voice, but the words still hurt.
“I like to think of it as `looking out for a friend.’”
Looking into her eyes, he knew she was telling him the truth. “Thank you. But she wouldn’t have harmed me.”
“Why is that?” Giles asked.
Angel met the Watcher’s gaze. “Because I have my soul back.”
They did not say anything else to each other and the silence began to linger. Buffy spoke up. “She said she was both yours and Angelus’ friend. What did she mean by that?”
“If I were still Angelus she would have attacked me, or tried to hold me captive. There’s no love lost between those two.”
“So what she said about not preying on humans is true?” Giles asked.
“To an extent. When she wants to infiltrate into the vampire ranks; such as with Spike and Drucilla, she would take on a vampire appearance to hunt, and feed on, humans just to keep up the act. She would have no regrets afterward, but she won’t kill humans if she doesn’t have to.”
“But she can’t turn anyone into a vampire, can she?” Giles sounded fascinated.
“No. Only real vampires possess that ability.”
Buffy stared into the fireplace. “I shouldn’t have let her leave.”
“I understand how you feel, Buffy,” Giles said, as he took a step closer. “The idea of allowing a monster —any monster— to go free is not at all appealing to me, either.” He praised himself for not glancing at Angel.
Buffy looked at him. “Do you `really’ understand, Giles? I’m the one who let Spike and Drucilla go. Spike I even let go twice! Lord knows how many they’ve killed since then.”
“And how many people have you saved by doing what you did, Buffy? You always do what is necessary. No matter what the personal cost to yourself. I only hope that if I’m ever in that kind of situation that I’ll have the courage to do what is right.”
She regarded her Watcher. And she was glad to have him back. The tension and concern for Faith was still there, but he was with her completely now. Having no time to worry can help.
Her expression softened. “Sorry, Giles.”
“It’s seems we’re all under a lot of stress right now. But we can concern ourselves with Oranstine at a later time. Right now, we need to find Faith.” He directed his gaze to Angel. “And we could use your assistance, Angel.”
Angel was unable to tell how Giles felt about asking him for anything, his expression was tightly controlled. “Of course. Just let me grab some clothes.”
Buffy watched him disappear then turned to Giles. “We’re not going to tell him about the next Slayer being summoned?”
“Well, it really doesn’t concern him. And it has no relevance to our situation either. Whether Faith is alive or not, we are going to look for her.” He paused for a moment.
“And you’re still not sure about Angel,” she voiced his thoughts. “But then, giving away Watcher secrets to vampires is probably one of the big `don’t do’s in your Watcher’s Handbook.”
“Actually, it is.” A little smile was evident on his lips and he shrugged slightly. “But, ever since I’ve met you, Buffy, it seems as if I’ve broken almost all the Council’s `don’t do’s.”
Buffy lowered her head and looked up at him with her infamous puppy-dog eyes. “They won’t take away your pension for that, will they?”
He almost chuckled.
“Giles?” she said, her voice suddenly serious again. “How does the Council know who’s going to be the next Slayer?”
“I don’t know.”
Buffy’s eyebrows narrowed in a frown. “You don’t?”
“There are a great many secrets the Council must safeguard. Being the Watcher of the current Slayer does grant me access to quite a bit more information than I was privy to before, but that secret is known only to a handful of individuals on the Council itself.”
Buffy was about to say something more when Angel returned. He was in his usually black attire of leather pants, boots, and had on a gray long sleeve shirt under his long black coat. He looked hot —ready— to go.
Faith couldn’t remember when she had lost consciousness, but it must have been right after the demonic Leader introduced her to the Vampire Slayer. Or was that Slayer Vampire? she wondered. But the next thing she knew was that she was waking up in a real dungeon this time, lying on a real stone floor. Her head hurt and her mind was reeling out of control.
How could that be possible? A Slayer who was a vampire. Faith knew that when it came to the studies, she was not the first to ask which page to turn to, nor would she even … care. But her previous Watcher never said anything about Slayers becoming vampires, nor had Giles in the few short months he had been her Watcher. Nothing like this must have ever happened before, she figured. If it had, one of them would have brought the subject up already. Buffy definitely would’ve known also.
Big deal, she told herself. It’s happening, girl, just deal with it and concentrate on getting your ass out of this dump, so you can start killing these creatures.
But there was something else. Something she was trying to keep out of her thoughts. Faith even clutched her hands to her head as they invaded her mind and her brain started to process them.
If this new vampire was really a Slayer; which she already knew was the truth; then that meant a Slayer must’ve died. A new Slayer was called only when the previous Slayer died. That had been one of the first things that was taught to her even before she herself was called. When Buffy died, briefly, that Slayer, Kendra, was called. But that chick hardly lasted a year when the vamps claimed her ass, thus, activating Faith.
So, she thought. Either Buffy died…again, or she herself must have…..
“No!” she screamed through clenched teeth. Still clutching her head, she pushed off with her legs and slammed her back into the rocky wall she’d been sitting against, and felt the sting of pain in her shoulder blades and spine. But her brain was still working against her, trying to figure everything out logically.
“NO!” she screamed, and swung around fast and took a chunk out of the wall behind her with her fist. The pain in her hand succeeded in distracting her brain from its train of thought and she slid back down to the cold floor.
And for the first time, she noticed she was barefoot. Of course, she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she returned to her motel room from her patrol. The tight black pants and maroon long-sleeve midriff. She had taken off her boots before hopping onto the bed, planning on watching the snowy programs on the TV. But she had barely gotten comfortable when her door had burst opened and these special forces looking creeps attacked her.
That was the last thing she remembered before waking up in these caves.
Breathing heavily, the sudden surge of adrenaline quickly fading, the pain in her hand really flared and she examined it. Her knuckles were badly scraped and bleeding but, flexing her hand, she found nothing was broken. With her strength finally returning to her she could now focus on trying to get the hell out of here.
She rose to her feet and walked to the wooden door with a small barred window. It looked thick and very sturdy. Not stopping when she reached it, she kicked with all her might and the heavy door trembled but did not give. She took a couple of steps back to do it again.
“What are you doing in there?” growled a voice from the window.
“How cool, a visitor,” she said, and kicked the door again. The door continued to hold, but it seemed to weaken.
“Stop that!” commanded the voice.
“I’d very much like to see you make me!” she shouted back.
She was about to kick once more when she saw another head appear in the window and she heard those less than human voices start to converse with each other.
She was about to kick the door again when she decided to change her tactics. She made a show of wavering on her feet, putting a hand to her forehead, as if she were dizzy. As she swayed, she saw the two faces watching her and Faith collapsed to the ground in a sitting position, but made it look as if she was having a hard time staying in that position. Then she heard what she wanted to hear.
Her cell door opened with a groan on its tortured hinges and the two creeps walked in carrying chained manacles. Faith watched them from the corner of her eye, still playing the weak prisoner, and it looked like they were falling for it, too.
“Pick her up,” said the one with the chains.
The other one reached down and grabbed her arm and started to pull her up roughly. Faith let him lift her so that she was on her knees and threw her other arm up between his legs, slamming his privates with a hard uppercut. Not being human, at least they had the same weaknesses, she thought. And as he bent forward around his pain, Faith rose quickly, planting her knee in his face. She didn’t even see him fly off the ground and land on his back, as she used the momentum of the move to spin around and face the second monster.
He was already moving in on her, having pulled a small club from his belt, the chains still hanging from his other hand. The Slayer ducked from side to side as he swung the weapon at her, then captured his wrist as it came at her again in a backhand swing. She smashed the side of his elbow with a forearm, forcing him to release the club, and caught it with her free hand. Faith side-stepped the bastard, spinning on her barefeet, and broke the club off the back of his skull with a resounding crunch.
The goon flopped on his face, never to move again, and a real wave of dizziness swept through Faith.
“Whoa,” she said, trying to steady herself, and waited for the world around her to stop spinning.
Before it faded, Faith was already moving for the door. She needed to find her way out of here as soon as possible. Not knowing where she was, where the exit could be, and not even knowing how many bad guys there were, she decided to look on the bright side. And she would as soon as she found it.
Faith knew it had only been just a few minutes since breaking out of her cell, but wandering around these caves seemed to stretch the time into hours. She would have worried that she was lost if she didn’t already not know where she was going. But every turn she took there were still torches lit on the walls about every twenty feet, so she figured she was still in the enemy’s domain.
The dizziness had completely faded by now, but whatever had been done to her to bring her to this place must have really taken a lot out of her, because she was definitely not one hundred percent yet. Then another sensation swept through her head. But this was a very familiar feeling, one she was born to perceive.
Faith had just reached the next turn and pressed her back against the rough surface, just a few feet away from a torch on the wall. The vampire that rounded the corner had been about Faith’s age when she had been turned, but she had to be several years older than the Slayer. This had possibilities, she thought, as she grabbed the vampire by the lapels of her dark jacket and swung her face-first into the wall. Her head impacted on the stone with a smack that would gross out the stoutest Wes Craven fan and Faith moved in as she dropped to her knees.
She grabbed the vampire by her red hair to continue the head trauma against the wall, and the bitch drove her elbow back into Faith just below her belly button, the force of the blow sending the Slayer to the other wall. The vampire sprung to her feet and faced her, blood coursing down her prominent vampiric brow, and snarled, her jagged teeth and fangs flickering in the torch light.
Faith quickly composed herself. “Does the number 3:16 mean anything to you?”
The passage was less than ten feet wide and the vampire would be on her in an instant. As soon as the creature sprung, Faith used whatever speed she could muster so that she leapt almost at the same time and they met in the middle of the space. The Slayer had aimed her lunge lower, catching the vampire in the middle and slammed her back against the wall. They fell in a tumble to the ground and Faith was under the vampire, but it was dazed from the impact and her fangs were closer to Faith’s neck than she preferred. Before the creature could recoup, Faith head-butted her in the nose and the vamp flopped off her. That last move sending waves of nausea through her, Faith got to her knees as fast as she could and moved up behind the vampire, who was still struggling to rise. She wrapped her arms around her neck and with a strong twist, filled the corridor with a deathly snap.
The vampire flopped limply to the ground next to her, and Faith let herself slump as well.
“Too, bad,” she said, to the vamp but her voice was just a tired whisper, “because I just whipped your ass.”
Faith took just a few seconds to catch her breath, reminiscing how she used to be able to take on three vampires like this without breaking a sweat. But even through her fatigue, she still felt the rush that went through her with each kill. Okay, it was a somewhat tiny sense of accomplishment due to her predicament, but at least it lifted her spirits a little.
She pulled the jacket off the vampire and found it fit her just about right. Wouldn’t want to let such fine accessories get turned to dust along with the vamp, she thought. It would be such a waste. At least it would keep the cold away that even the torches couldn’t seem to lessen. Next, she took the vampire’s high heel boots. But they turned out to be too small for the Slayer.
She threw them away with a curse. “All the vampires in the world I could have killed and I have to snuff one with feet smaller than Buffy’s.”
She got to her feet and looked at the vampire again. “Thanks for the jacket though. But don’t bother getting up, I’ll find my own way out.”
With that, Faith started for the corner again. Not slowing down, she plucked the torch from the wall and tossed it on top of the vamp and was half way down the next corridor when she heard the combustion behind her.
Faith continued to follow the torches and, luckily, she didn’t run into many forks or intersecting corridors; and those she did come across were not lit with torches so she avoided them. She didn’t run into any more monsters, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. Then she started to get the nagging feeling that she was being followed, but every time she looked behind her there was always nothing there.
After a few more twists and turns, and the sensation not fading, she decided that her escape had finally been discovered. No need for discretion, she started running half speed. When she rounded the next turn she did become aware of something, a lot of somethings, chasing her. She still couldn’t see them and picked up a little more speed, tapping into her Slayer strength for help, which was still at less than nominal levels.
Around the next turn the cave became a cavern the size of a tennis court with a high ceiling. And she saw two large ugly looking creeps who must be the guards to the lobby. Behind them, on the far side, was a smaller passage which Faith guessed led to the outside world. All she needed to do was get past these two. One of them was a vampire, she could tell even without her Slayer sense, but the other … all she knew was that he was no more human then the other two from her cell.
Faith sighed resignedly, as she looked at them. “Okay. I suppose I can make time for you two. But this better not take long, okay?”
She readied herself in a fighting stance as the inhuman and vampire split to surround her, forcing her to only keep one in sight at a time. Faith could not have that and launched herself at the vampire. She came in with a front kick that the vamp blocked but was already following through with a series of punches to its face and chest, which the vampire also managed to block, to the Slayer’s surprise. She found her opening when he retaliated with a kick of his own and Faith stepped in, as she blocked it, kicking his supporting leg out from under him.
She was already turning around, as he dropped, and just barely blocked the punch the inhuman sent at her head. She ducked the swing of his other arm and sent a flurry of punches into his mid-section, topping off with a viscous right hook to the face that sent him spinning off the ground. She used the momentum of the punch to send a spinning back kick into the vampire’s gut, as he came at her, from behind. She grabbed him, as he bent over, and shoved him into the inhuman, just halfway to his feet, sending them both down again.
With the field wide open, Faith booked it triple time, making a dash for the exit. Ten feet from it, two figures stepped through the entrance and her feet skidded on the dirt, as she stopped.
It was the Demon Leader, still wearing the hooded robe; for which Faith was grateful, and the Slayer Vampire. Out of the two, Faith suspected that the vampire was the more powerful, but she knew the Leader could give her one hell of a fight even if she had been at full strength. There was no way she was going to be able to pass them.
But that wasn’t going to keep her from trying. Faith took a step forward, readying herself. She looked over her shoulder and saw that the vampire and inhuman were already on their feet and moving towards her. But what caught her eye, was that the inhuman’s face was hanging off the side of its cheek revealing its true demonic features. It yank the mask off and pulled the short wig off its fleshless head. Then, behind them, she saw another five assorted creeps and vamps pour into the room.
The Demon Leader tilted its head at her. “Now, child, do you really think you can escape us?”
“Actually,” Faith sneered, “I don’t care. Suddenly, I’m just wanting to see just how big a mess I can leave in this room.” She grinned sardonically at it. “Are you gamed?”
“Very interesting,” the leader said. “But no. I do not have time for this.”
The Demon Leader raised a hand toward Faith and the Slayer tensed. Then she staggered as a sharp pain pierced her chest. No longer able to breath, she clutched her chest and sank to her knees. With a fright, she realized that her heart had stopped beating. She opened her mouth to gasp but nothing came out, not even a tiny breath. She fell forward and caught herself with her outstretched arm, her other hand still pressed between her breasts. She looked up to see the Leader, hand still raised, and struggled to get back up. But she wavered and fell on her side. Darkness began to creep around the edges of her vision and she could feel the emptiness start to consume her.
Then something thundered through her head and a gasp exploded from her lungs, and she started to cough. Desperately, her lungs inhaled another labored breath and she expelled that with a ravage cough as well. The thunder in her head continued to pound into her, and Faith realized it was the beat of her heart she was hearing.
She tried to move, but her strength was gone again. She couldn’t even move her head. Then a pair of legs walked across her sight and a booted foot flopped her onto her back, and she found herself looking up at the Slayer Vampire.
When the girl was human, she had been either Chinese or Japanese and had probably been very popular with the boys, Faith thought. And there was still a touch of innocence in the face that Faith new had faded from herself a few years ago. Had Buffy looked that innocent when she was called to be the Slayer? she wondered.
Then the Slayer Vampire’s face changed as she kneeled down next to her, fangs sprouting as her mouth opened slightly. Her brow furrowed but did not turn into the usual demonic features that took over regular vamps when they vamped out. She grabbed Faith by the hair and raised her upper body, exposing her neck.
Faith could do nothing but glare at the creature, filling as much rage into her face as she could. She swore, silently; because she could not speak, that she was going to kill this creature. Even if it turned her into a vampire, she would somehow kill her.
“No, my child,” the Leader said, as the vampire was about to sink her teeth into the Slayer’s neck. The creature looked up at the demon and Faith could tell she wasn’t going to obey its master. The Slayer Vampire looked down, opened its mouth, and bent towards Faith’s neck again.
Before the fangs reached her skin, Faith saw a bright flash flare from the creature’s left arm. She dropped the Slayer and shot to her feet, as if she had just been shot. The vampire clutched the arm and looked at it when the light faded. Faith saw that there was a strange tattoo design just below the shoulder. The Slayer Vampire glared at its master.
“Not this one, my child,” the Demon Leader spoke in that same mild voice it had. “We still have need of her. Go out, now. There are plenty of other mortals to feed your hunger. But you must avoid the other Slayer at all cost. You need time for your strength to grow.”
The creature looked at Faith, then at her master again. Then, with incredible speed; faster than Faith ever could’ve moved, she ran out of the chamber and disappeared through the passage. That strange tattoo must be some way for the Leader to control her, she thought.
The Slayer was starting to move again, and she was able to move her head to watch what was happening around her. The Demon Leader walked passed her and spoke to its minions.
“Take the Slayer back to her cell. And this time, make sure she will not escape again.” The tone of its voice had not changed one octave, but Faith was able to recognize the promise of great punishment in its words.
Its goons obviously believed this too and the inhuman and vampire hurried to lift her from the ground and dragged her away from the chamber, her barefeet scraping uncomfortably against the rough surface. But she hardly noticed, she was too busy trying to force herself to concentrate, find a way to get out of this. When they reached the dungeon, she knew they were going to throw a ton of chains on her and then there would be no chance for her to escape. She could not let that happen.
She raised her head and saw they had already taken several turns through the passage she had come from. Soon, they would reach the spot where she had killed the vampire, which meant she was half way back to her cell. They were coming toward an intersection in the corridor and Faith noticed something she had not when she had first passed this way. There was a steady roar coming from one of the passages. They had just reached it, when she realized the sound was running water, like a waterfall.
Not taking a moment to consider her actions, she planted her feet against the ground and pushed herself into the inhuman who was holding her left arm. This took her captives by surprise and she slammed the inhuman against the corner leading into that intersecting corridor. The vampire had lost its grip on her and he was moving quickly to grab her again. Faith lashed out with a back kick with as much strength as she could summon, which wasn’t much, and when she connected it served to push her and the inhuman away from the vampire who hardly budged from the blow. The inhuman fell back, Faith holding tight to his coat, and they tumbled into the passage, which was an incline, and rolled over each other as they descended into the darkness below.
They reached the bottom, which was even ground again, and Faith rolled away from the goon. Still very weak, and now feeling dizzy, Faith pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. And was punched across the face. She spun around and fell. But instead of hitting the ground again, she continued to fall through open air, and the roar of the running water was suddenly rushing up at her.