Enemy IncognitoBy Wynn
Chapter Forty-One: Event Horizon
“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that? With all the blood and ickiness and possible concussion I’m not sure I heard you right.”
“My name is Christina. Emilia’s my mother. Technically.” Christina shrugged and smoothed her silver and black hair out of her face. “I was raised by her sister and brother-in-law.”
“Oh.” Dawn nodded, struggling to hide the confusion she knew was sweeping across her face. A person’s mind could only take so much before it entered into severe meltdown mode, and Dawn’s mind was dangerously close to becoming a warm puddle of grey goo. First, she learned she was still the Key, capable of opening mystical locks with her mystical unlocking blood. Whatever the hell that meant. Second, she had to deal with the fact that Lilah, Lilah, supposedly evil lawyer lady, helped her and Connor escape from Travers. And now there was this English chick, who called herself Christina, claimed to be Emilia’s daughter, and said she was here to rescue them.
Oooookay.
Not that she and Connor needed any help. They were only on the run from the British Intellectual Mafia, stranded in some hole in the wall airport in jolly old England with no money, no food, no shelter, and no plan whatsoever to get them out of this mess and back home in Sunnydale.
* * *
Alright, so maybe they did need a bit of rescuing. But not from unknown tiny persons with really shiny hair.
Peering through the dim room, Dawn examined Christina. She looked a little older than Dawn, closer to Buffy’s age. Long silver hair fell down her back, tips slightly curled and inky black. She wore cropped black and blue striped pants, a sheer black shirt over a red tank top, and pointed black boots. Dangling earrings and sparse make-up completed the ensemble.
Dawn broke out of her perusal at the sound of Connor’s voice. “How do we know you’re who you say you are?” he asked, dark eyes narrowing at Christina. “Why are we supposed to trust you?”
“I thought you were supposed to have enhanced senses, superpowers. Can’t you just tell I’m who I say I am?”
Shifting a bit, Connor glanced at Dawn before looking at Christina again. “No,” he mumbled.
“Well, that’s disappointing, isn’t it?” Christina said, her lower lip jutting out in slight pout. “It would’ve been neat if you could.” She drew in a deep breath and sighed. “My first encounter with the supernatural, besides me and my family of course, and it’s turning out to be less than super.” Shaking her head, Christina crossed the room and looked closely at Connor. Her eyes were large, with cloudy grey irises that glowed faintly in the dark room. Scrunching up her nose, she said, “Can you do that thing with your face?”
“What thing with my face?”
“The bumpy forehead thing. I saw a picture of a vampire once. His face was all screwed, and he had the foulest teeth imaginable.”
Casting another glance at Dawn, Connor slowly shook his head. “No. I can’t do that bumpy forehead thing. I’m not a vampire.”
“That makes sense. There’re only faint traces of vampirism around you. I can’t be sure though. Sparky over here’s about to blind me.” Christina stepped back, a wide grin appearing on her face as she said to Connor, “Good for you though. The vampire look is really quite dreadful, don’t you think?”
Sparky? Dawn pulled the sling off her arm and threw it down on the ground. Placing her hands on her hips, she said, “Sparky? I have a name. It’s Dawn. And what the hell do you mean you can see vampirism?”
An apologetic smile appeared on Christina’s face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. You’ve just got the brightest life energy I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been around some real glow worms before.”
Blinking once, Dawn arched an eyebrow and said, “Would you mind a little exposition for those not in the know about your life? You can see life energy? How can you see life energy? And you still didn’t explain about seeing vampirism? What is your deal?”
Head snapping towards the closed door, Christina held her hand up in the air, signaling for silence. Her infectious excitement melted into a subdued seriousness as she approached the door and placed a hand upon the smooth grey surface. Drawing in a sharp intake of breath, she ran to Dawn and Connor, grabbed Dawn’s arm, and began to pull them towards the opposite end of the dark room.
“What are you doing?” Dawn asked. “Where’re we going?”
“Quiet,” Christina whispered, glancing over her shoulder at the door.
“What do you see?” Connor asked as they reached the other side of the room. The edge of another door was barely visible in the darkness; cardboard boxes were stacked in front of the door, the haphazard pile reaching about four feet high and stretching three feet wide.
As she grabbed the first box and moved it off the pile, Christina said, “Nothing. I don’t see anything. That’s the problem. Now, help me with these boxes.” They cleared the boxes from in front of the door, and Christina twisted the handle, pulling it and revealing a murky corridor on the other side. Exposed white bulbs shined on cracked concrete at sparse intervals; the end of the passageway was not visible, swallowed in the midnight black gloom.
Turning to Dawn, Christina attempted to push her into the stone hallway. Dawn jerked out from under her hands and folded her arms across her chest, adopting the patented Summers’ glare of stubbornness. “I am not going in there. Not until you tell me what is going on.”
Christina reached for Dawn again. “There isn’t any time for Twenty Questions. We need-”
The closed front door burst open. Light from the airport flooded the dim room, backlighting burly shapes standing within the doorframe. One figure stepped into the room, and Dawn gasped as she recognized Quentin Travers. He held a flat, round ebony disk in one gloved palm. A slow smile spread across his face as he caught sight of Christina.
“Miss Samuel. How wonderful to see you again.”
“The pleasure’s all yours, you slimy git.”
“Such harsh language from such a lovely young lady as you pains me, Miss Samuel.”
“And I feel so bad about it. Truly I do.”
A strained expression crossed Travers’ face at her flippant tone. Moving closer to Christina, Connor, and Dawn, he said, “I wondered if they would send someone here to wait and see if I would arrive. I never expected it would be you.”
“Happy to disappoint you.”
“On the contrary Miss Samuel, I am far from disappointed. You see, aside from Miss Summers and the young man here, you are the one thing in this world I have longed to study the most.” His thin lips curved into a smug grin. “Remind me to thank your parents for presenting me with the opportunity.” The smile faded off his face, replaced by a cold, indifferent mask. “Seize them.”
Four hefty shapes ambled into the room, moving towards Dawn, Connor, and Christina. Stepping in front of Dawn and Connor, Christina held up her hand and the four men stopped in their tracks, eyes widening and muscles straining against whatever bond held them in their place. She pointed towards the door and said, “Turn. Walk to the door.” Like marionettes controlled by a puppet master, the four men stiffly turned and moved back toward the door, their movements jerky as their joints locked in protest.
“Impressive,” Travers said, delight shining in his eyes. “Most impressive.”
Teeth gritted, Christina said, “Dawn… Go. Now.”
“I don’t think so,” Travers said. He moved towards Christina, the ebony disk gripped tightly in his hand. As he drew closer, she fell back, dropping to one knee, body starting to shudder violently. The four men slowed to a stop, remaining motionless before the open door. Smirking, Travers glanced down at the disk in his hand and said, “An event horizon. It sucks all available psychic energy into it, creating a sort of black hole amongst psychic waves. It’s particularly dangerous to those with enhanced psychic abilities.”
“Go…” Christina said to Dawn and Connor. Her face was ashen, mouth pressed into a thin, hard line.
Dawn looked from Travers to Christina to the four men, who shook off whatever control Christina had over them and started walking towards her and Connor, weapons drawn and at the ready. “But…”
“Go!” Over her shoulder, Christina locked eyes with Dawn. “Now!” She lifted her hand and Dawn stumbled back into the murky corridor, her hand latching on to Connor and dragging him with her. The door slammed shut behind them, plunging them into the dank dark. Dawn shook her head, clearing the fog that had invaded her mind when Christina looked at her. Her conscious control over her body had faded; Dawn felt as though she had had the reins of power snatched from her and her body moved against her will, making her fall into the dark passageway. So not an experience she wanted to have again.
Standing, Connor pulled Dawn to her feet and started down the corridor. His hand was tight on her wrist, the muscles in his hand like cords of steel beneath his callused skin.
“What about Christina?”
“We can’t do anything for her now,” Connor said. “They would have captured us too if we would have stayed. We need to get help.”
A muffled cry sounded through the corridor, and Dawn’s blood froze in her veins as she recognized the scream as Christina’s. Wood scraping against concrete followed the cry; thudding footsteps echoed in the stone hall. Connor tightened his hold on her arm, and they raced down the corridor, speeding through shafts of brilliant white light interspersed with pools of shadows, the strobe like effect dazzling Dawn’s eyes. They arrived at the end of the hall, where it branched off into opposite directions, the twin hallways twisting into oblivion.
“Which way do we go?” she asked. The sounds of pursuit grew louder in the hall as Travers’ men drew closer. Dawn nervously looked from one path to the other.
“This way,” Connor said as he pulled her into the left pathway. The corridor slanted down as they ran, and they slid across the slick stone ground. They ran twenty… thirty… forty feet and the passageway forked again. Darting into the right branch, Dawn could see light at the end of the hall, a hazy whiteness against the all encompassing black.
“Look!”
“I see it,” Connor said. He increased their pace, and she struggled to keep up. Her muscles began to burn in her body; she drew in gasping breaths of air. She could hear their pursuers closing in on them with each passing second, and Dawn knew she would never make it to the light and to whatever lay beyond it before the men reached them. But Connor could. If he let her go. If he left her behind. He could outrun the men and be able to contact someone who would help.
“Connor…”
His dark eyes darted towards her. “What?”
Something pale and blurred shot out from the left side of the corridor, crashing into Connor’s face. His hand was wrenched from hers as he collided with the stone wall, the impact of skull on stone a sickening crack in the corridor. He slumped to the ground, blood dripping down his face, fighting to stay conscious. “Dawn… look…”
She slowly turned from Connor, mouth going dry, eyes wide with fear as her blue gaze locked onto the feral grin of Tyler. Rooted to the spot, icy snakes of panic slinking through her body, Dawn opened her mouth to scream an instant before his fist shot out and struck her, sending the world into dizzying swirls and then blackness.
* * *
She was bored. There was no other word for it. Lilah was bored. It was an emotion she rarely, if ever, felt. She was intelligent, rich, and beautiful; she worked for a demonically controlled law firm. Her life never lacked excitement. Until now. Now was the hurry up and wait phase of what she dubbed “The Plan.” Phase One of “The Plan” had gone off without a hitch; the Summers brat knew of her existing Key related abilities and had immediately put her mystical blood to the test on the specially designed Wolfram and Hart shackles Lilah had conveniently placed on Connor. It was too bad the brat and her boy weren’t smart enough to actually escape. Although the twenty minute will-they-or-won’t-they-escape had provided a break from the boredom, as had the unexpected arrival of the other girl, but thrill had worn off and everything was soon back to business as usual. Scheme. Gloat. Repeat. And Lilah couldn’t complete Phase Two of “The Plan” until Angel and his merry band of men rode in on their shiny white horses, with their heads held high, shoulders thrust back, and virtue waving behind them like big, bright flags. And surprise, surprise, they were late.
Typical.
But it wasn’t as though death was imminent for Dawn and Connor. They were bait, irresistible lures dangling in front of the California White Hats to pull them into Travers’ trap. And no doubt Angel, Buffy, and crew knew this fact and were thus taking their sweet time in arriving, all the while planning the best way to rescue the babes in distress and vanquish the black hearted foe.
Still, Lilah wished they would hurry their pristine asses up. Show a little initiative. Put on the thermal boosters for that extra burst of speed. Otherwise she was stuck in Watcher Central for longer than absolutely necessary, forced to listen to Quentin Travers brag about the genius of his devious plot or to Tyler rant about his severe beat down at the hands of Anya. Both of which were boring, boring, boring. Lilah had things to do and playing audience to one psychotic man’s delusional fantasies of revenge was not one of them. Lilah shook her head. Men. If it’s not sex on the brain, it’s violence. If it’s not violence, it’s evil schemes to take over the world. If it’s not evil schemes to take over the world, it’s back to sex.
Typical and boring.
Although not all men were that monotonous. Angel, on occasion, had proven to be very interesting, particularly in his less soulful days. And from all her gathered intel, Spike was a bundle of interesting contradictions, so much so that it was damn near impossible to predict what he would do next. Lindsay, despite all his other faults, could never be described as boring or monotonous. And Wesley… A slow grin curved Lilah’s lips. Wesley was a cornucopia of interesting layers and facets, all bundled together under one sexy, scarred surface. Definitely a far cry from the simpering do-gooder of old. Maybe that was the key to salvation from monotony: moral ambiguity covered in a sexily scarred exterior. It worked for Lilah.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Not remotely,” Lilah said smoothly, flashing Tyler a saccharine sweet smile. They were in Travers’ office. Dark wood permeated the spacious office. Bookcases stretched along three walls housing the requisite amount of musty leather bound books and various rare and expensive supernatural objects. Interspersed around the cases were heavy oil paintings depicting scenes of battlefield blood and gore. A massive desk resided in the center of the room, surrounded by three lush leather chairs. “Why would I want to listen to your oh so eloquent bitching and moaning about your little cuts and bruises?” Lilah asked. “You can’t even handle a few bruises and broken ribs.” She shook her head sadly. “And you call yourself a real man…”
Eyes narrowed, Tyler said, “I’d like to see you go toe to toe with a Vengeance Demon, sweetheart. You’d be dead before you could even breathe.”
“Ah, no, I wouldn’t.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I wouldn’t be stupid enough to get myself into a situation where I would have to go ‘toe to toe’ with a Vengeance Demon. It’s called possessing a modicum of intelligence. You had the chance to let Faith go, but you chose to play Jack the Ripper and thus had to pay the consequences. Deal with it.”
Tyler shook his head as he paced back and forth in front of Lilah. Bruises still marred his face and neck, courtesy of Anya’s vengeance induced beating. Cream colored bandages were wrapped tightly around his torso, binding his broken ribs. “No,” he said. “That’s not intelligence. That’s cowardice.”
“So says the walking bruise.” Stifling an eye roll, Lilah said, “Might I make one suggestion though?”
“You might.”
Leaning forward in her chair, Lilah brought forth a condescendingly concerned expression upon her face and locked eyes with Tyler. “Next time you come across Anya, particularly after you’ve pissed her off by trying to murder her best friend, don’t try to play Superman. There might not be someone around to save your miserable life.”
“I won’t need someone around. Next time I’ll be prepared.” Off of Lilah’s skeptical expression, Tyler continued, “You think all I’ve done for the past day is bitch and moan about my cuts and bruises? Hardly. The Council has the best archive this side of the Atlantic of ways to kill demons. All kinds of demons. Including Vengeance Demons. A little research here, a little research there, and bam! The most effective way of slicing and dicing a Vengeance Demon.” He plopped down onto the chair beside her, mouth twisting into a predatory grin. “So next time I come across Miss Demonic Goldilocks, and believe me when I say I will come across her again, she’ll be the one walking away with the cuts and bruises. That is, if she walks away at all.”
* * *
The first thing Christina noticed was darkness. She tried to open her eyes but found to her horror that they were already open and staring blindly out into the world that she could no longer see. It was then she felt the cool touch of metal on her forehead. She knew the metal encased a modified event horizon and that no matter how much she wriggled or shifted the metal band would not miraculously slip off her head, allowing her to see again. For the metal band was an inhibitor, a man made device constructed to contain any and all psychic abilities, ranging from telepathy to telekinesis, from soul reading to her own psychic sight. Inhibitors were specially constructed for one person, magically calibrated using the darkest of dark magicks to that person’s unique brain patterns, an unfortunate turn of events that prevented the wearer of the band from removing it from his or her head. Only another person would be able to remove the inhibitor from her head, and Christina knew there wouldn’t be anyone around for miles willing to help her.
Damn Travers.
Christina wondered how he knew of her unique condition, her physical blindness and her psychic sight. Her grey eyes saw nothing, but the dark recesses of her mind saw everything, her brain waves bouncing off the outside world and reflecting it back to her like bat sonar. Not something that happened everyday, or every millennia, and it was all thanks to her inimitable heritage. Children of elves and humans were rare, the resulting offspring a strange hybrid of the two different species; Christina’s Elfish psychic abilities twisted in such a way as to account for her physical human blindness, which was a result of her mixed DNA. Talk about irony. She wouldn’t be blind if she wasn’t half Elf, but she wouldn’t be able to see with her mind if she wasn’t half Elf. Her family had done everything in their power to hide her strange abilities from the rest of the world, particularly from men like Quentin Travers, whose obsessive drive for knowledge took no account of right or wrong, who only saw Christina as a human sized science experiment to be manipulated and tested at their whim.
Bastard.
The second thing Christina noticed was pain. Dull. Throbbing. Inside her head. Overextension of one’s psychic abilities coupled with a meaty fist slamming into one’s temple led to dull throbbing pain and concussions. But not to the sharp, stinging pain down in her arm. She tried moving her arm and ridding herself of the sharp pain jabbing into her arm, briefly panicking when she realized both of her arms were strapped down, tied to the smooth, hard chair beneath her body and immobilized by thick bands. Her feet were also bound to the chair.
One Christina Ariana Samuel reporting for experimentation.
She shook her head softly and sighed. It was her own fault she was captured by Travers. She knew Charles and Emilia had used her as a last resort and sent her to the least likely airport Travers would fly to, sent her there with instructions only to observe and not to interfere. But they hadn’t known Travers would choose that airport and that Connor and Dawn would be able to escape. What was she supposed to do? Sit there and watch those two run for their lives while she twiddled her thumbs? She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that. So she interfered. But her excitement at finally being able to do something, anything, other than sit in her gilded cage far, far away from Quentin Travers had briefly overshadowed her common sense, costing Dawn and Connor precious seconds, and resulted in her capture.
Definitely not the brightest thing Christina had ever done in her life. But she didn’t regret it. Inaction was far worse than action, even if the action was the kind that led straight to kidnapping and experimentation. For at least now she was within striking distance of Travers, the man who had ordered the death of her aunt Ariana, who had been her mother most of her life.
She felt something slide out of her right arm. A needle. Great. Struggling against her bonds, Christina froze as she heard the cold voice of Quentin Travers.
“It is quite useless to struggle, Miss Samuel,” he said from somewhere off to her left. “Those restraints are quite strong. I doubt even a Slayer could break them, much less a half-breed Elf.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” Christina said, tilting her chin into the air. “You can kill me, but you’re still going to die.”
“Young lady, I hardly think you are in the position to make threats, idle as they may be.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a fact.”
“A fact? Really. Are you having a portent of the future?” Travers asked his voice tinged with barest hint of excitement. “I didn’t think you possessed the ability of divination. Fascinating.”
“It’s not a portent of the future, you halfwit. It’s just a fact. Call it karma, if you want a fancy name. You killed my mother. You will die. Simple as that.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Your meddlesome mother is still alive, undoubtedly working on a plan to rescue you along with Miss Summers and the vampire spawn. Pity your fantasy of revenge will have to remain only that, a fantasy.”
“I never said I would be the one to kill you. I just said you would die. Ariana was a good, kind woman who you ruthlessly had murdered. If there’s any justice at all to the universe, you will pay for her death with your life.”
“Miss Samuel,” Travers said condescendingly, “you will soon realize that there is no such thing as a cosmic scale of balance that weighs one’s sins against one’s virtues, or one’s crimes against one’s punishments. There is only the strong and the weak, the powerful and the powerless. And no amount of wishing by a deluded child will change that.”
“I suppose you think you’re powerful. But whatever power you have is from manipulation and fear and that never survives. Never.”
Sighing, Travers said, “I grow tired of this conversation.”
“And I grow tired of you sticking sharp objects in my arm. I guess we’re both out of luck.”
“You’re right on one count. You, my dear, are very much out of luck. I, on the other hand, am not. You think your family will come storming in and rescue you from the Big Bad Wolf, all the while saving the day and defeating the enemy. The world does not work like that. I have not made it that way.”
“Your overconfidence is your weakness.”
“And your faith in your friends is yours. They may be effective against demons and vampires and other supernatural creatures, but this is an altogether different playing field. The Council has influence in virtually every walk of life, from the worlds of finance and business to the realm of the judicial and governmental. The brute force utilized by the Slayers and their friends is of no use here. The sooner you realize that the better. There will be no miraculous rescue. Your family and friends are walking into a trap, and they are going to die. Nothing you can do will prevent this. Nothing.”
To Be Continued….