Things Unseen

By Gidgetgirl

Chapter Eleven

Cordelia shifted Hopie in her arms as their group stood outside of the Watcher’s compound. Hopie squirmed a bit, wanting to get down.

“Momma,” she said in a fake whisper, “are we gonna play battle now?”

Cordelia smiled at her daughter and shook her head. “Maybe,” she whispered back. She thought about everything she had been told about the Watcher’s Council. “Probably,” she corrected herself, “but promise Momma you’ll be a good girl and not run off.” Hopie nodded seriously. “And try not to hurt anyone too badly,” Cordy added, knowing that most of the inhabitants of the Council were human, and therefore infinitely weaker than the four-year-old child she held in her arms.

“Crossbow?” Hopie asked hopefully.

Cordelia looked in her Hopie supplies bag. She had graham crackers, juice boxes, some crayons, the tiara Spike had been wearing earlier, a beat up teddy bear, and… she found the crossbow and handed it to the little girl who returned a huge smile.

Buffy, Giles, and Faith inspected the gate that fenced in the complex.

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. “Well, I suppose I could try to get them to open the gate for us,” he said.

Faith snorted, and she and Buffy, thinking in tandem, kicked the gate, causing it to fly open.

Hopie clapped her hands joyfully before shooting a mischievous look back towards Connor and Dawn.

“To each a half,” Hopie giggled.

Connor looked at Dawn.

“She keeps saying that,” Dawn said, a touch of whine entering her voice.

Connor shrugged. “She’s a little kid,” he commented. “She says a lot of things.”

Hopie stuck her tongue out at Connor. “He bends his arms like this in front of the mirror,” Hopie said to an amused Dawn, demonstrating by flexing her well-toned little muscles. “And then he makes a funny grunting sound. And sometimes, when he’s the princess…” Cordy, sympathetic to Connor, gently clapped a hand over Hopie’s mouth.

“Mr. D says you’ve got your Da’s pride,” Hopie commented. “And his hair gel.” Connor’s hand went self-consciously to his hair. He’d been wearing it gelled lately.

Connor rolled his eyes. “I’d like to meet this friend of yours sometime,” he commented.

Hopie batted her eyelashes at him. “Oh, you will, My Connor,” she replied, grinning at her brother. “You will.”

Jordy prowled outside the window of the first floor corridor of the compound, humming his wolfie version of a song he couldn’t seem to get out of his head. Somehow, it made him think of Anni and how cute she was when she had a little drop of soda on her lip.

Suddenly, his wolf ears perked up. Inside the compound, he could hear someone talking to herself.

Joss was giving herself a pep talk, trying to talk herself out of the belly rumblings that were shouting at her not to turn the others in.

“They’ll hate you if you turn them in,” she whispered to herself, as always, concerned with how these action would affect her. She completely disregarded the fact that the other girls would be beaten within an inch of their lives if they were found out. “But Travers would like you. He’d see that you were special, and it’s really their own fault for breaking the rules. They’re only doing it because they think that Anni is so special.” Joss’s voice wavered with bitterness.

Hearing Anni’s name, Jordy cocked his head slightly to the side. This girl was obviously the enemy. A growl emerged from the back of his throat, and his muscles braced themselves for his next action.

Colette walked with a confidence in her gait that the others had never seen. Finally, they came to a hallway none of them had ever seen before. “In here,” Colette said, motioning them forward.

Anni was the first to follow.

In the center of the room, suspended in a dark mist, were many babies, of all stages of development, none of them old enough to have yet been naturally born. As in a trance, Anni walked toward the one whose essence was calling her.

He was so tiny. So innocent, and somehow she knew, so scared. Anger clouded her face. She would get him out of here.

“Well, well, well,” came a voice from the doorway. The girls whirled around to see Travers, who knew quite well where Joscelyn had gone and got a perverse pleasure out of the fact that she would discover to late that her betrayal was to be without benefit, as he had known all along to keep an eye on the girls. The Wyndham-Price girl was trouble. Travers shot her a lazy look.

“I see you found what you came for,” he commented.

Fury in her eyes, Anni turned toward him, willing him to come within striking distance.

“You’re a monster,” he said.

“No,” Travers corrected. “Genetically speaking, you are.”

After much squirming, Cordelia finally put Hopie down, allowing her to skip joyfully down the hallway. Angel and Wes had made short work of the Council’s guards.

“No skipping with the crossbow, baby,” Cordelia reminded the little girl. Hopie hummed to herself before coming to a dead stop. She tilted her head, listening and then nodded.

“We’re supposed to go this way,” she said, and, ignoring Cordy’s warning, started running in that direction, Buffy, Faith, Angel, Spike, and Connor right on her heals. Those without super strength followed at a distance.

“Maybe he’ll beat little Miss Anni,” Joss mused, hating herself for thinking that way. Joss spent a good deal of time hating herself.

She jumped as the window next to her shattered, and a lean, powerful wolf came through it, teeth bared and growling.

Jordy backed the girl into a corner, wanting to give her a good scare.

A very relaxed voice came from behind him. “Not that I don’t understand the draw of a good growl,” Oz said, “but didn’t you outgrow this a few years ago?”

Jordy ignored him and advanced on the terrified girl, determined to give her a good scare.

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite,” Oz said, and then, realizing the irony of the sentence, he shrugged.

Joscelyn was somewhat less than comforted.

The Potentials stared at Travers as Anni advanced on him, slowly.

“You see,” he said, “it’s really quite ironic. We thought the mythos of slayers being imbibed with the power of a demon was little more than a fishwives tale, but alas,” Traver executed a dramatic shrug, “the genes don’t lie. You see,” he said, gesturing around him, “your blood revealed a certain variation on chromosome six, one that is, oddly enough, shared by every demon, vampire, or otherwise evil creature we could find.”

Anni took a deep breath, making every effort to keep her cool.

“You see, girls,” Travers said, a satisfied glint in his eyes as he addressed all of the Potentials except Anni, “you’re little more than demons.” Anni took a step forward. Travers wasn’t in the least threatened. “If I’ve had to beat you like the animals you are occasionally,” he said with a cruel smile, “well, I suppose it was for your own good.” He stared at them, the threat clear in his eyes.

Nicolaa stood in front of the others, staring Travers evilly in the eye. “It was my fault,” she said, her voice ringing with authority. “Only mine.”

Maddy made a sound of protest.

“Interesting,” Travers said. “Then I suppose their scars and their blood will be on your hands.” Anni’s hand fisted. “Blood,” the man reiterated, never losing his exterior polish, “is what we needed for the tests. Of course, yours alone was not sufficient to establish the heredity of the genes. That’s what these things here were for.” He gestured to the babies.

With a battle cry, Anni ran towards him. Two men and a demon came into the room.

“Tut, tut, Annabella,” Travers said. “Such temper.”

One of the large men made a grab for Anni. He found himself lying on the floor in less than a second, unconscious. Travers stared at Anni as she took out the second man just as easily and began to focus on the demon.

The demon was easily thrice size, and as he watched, thoroughly entranced, Travers heard a voice from the doorway that sent chills up his bones.

“Consider yourself a dead man,” Wes said, somehow beating the lot with super speed to the door.

Travers simply arched an eyebrow. “Your sister is well taught,” he said, as one extending a compliment. “Funny, one would almost think she was the slayer.” Buffy and Faith both appeared in the doorway beside Wes.

“Yeah,” Buffy said, “one would almost think.”

Faith grinned at Travers, her eyes deadly.

Travers hit a button on the wall, releasing the demons from their cages throughout the corridor. In the hallway, Angel, Spike, and Connor easily took out a handful, and the others added their strength as the battle raged.

Wes, completely oblivious to the chaos around him, took one step after another toward Travers, never blinking and never taking his eyes off the man.

“THIS IS FUN!!!” came a voice from the hallway.

Anni, ducking a blow from the large green demon in front of her, giggled.

In the hallway, Hopie reloaded her crossbow like an expert, taking down her fourth vamp before turning her attention to a very large, hideous Tguthor Demon who was leering at the little girl, salivating at the thought of what a tasty little morsel she would be.

Hopie giggled. “Do you want to play with me?” she asked, batting her eyelashes.

“Come here,” he said.

“What’s the magic word?” Hopie asked, mimicking Cordelia.

He bent down to pick up the child, but she was no longer standing where she had been the moment before.

Moments later, and arrow was firmly imbedded in his skull, and a microsecond after that, his neck had been snapped, even though the tiny girl had to crawl up his back to do it.

“You shoulda said please,” she said sweetly.

Between the two slayers, the two vampires, Hopie, and Connor, they had managed to talk out all of the demons except for the two which had wandered into the room with the Potentials.

Maddy, imitating Anni, let out a war cry and launched herself at the first demon. Kendall, letting out a curse in Maddy’s general direction, followed, both of them putting their training to good use. Nicolaa faced the second demon alone, but it knocked her across the floor. As it advanced on her, she scrambled to her feet.

“Hey ugly!” Colette yelled from behind him, suddenly overcome with inspiration. Travers reached out and grabbed Chance by the hair before she could jump into the fight. The little blonde girl winced in pain as the older man cruelly ripped her head backwards.

Wes sucked in a breath. None of the Potentials looked surprised by Travers’ actions. If he had in any way hurt Anni…

Anni finished her demon and bounded across the room, sending one deadly blow in the direction of the demon looking back and forth between Nic and Colette. She turned to help Maddy and Kendall, but someone beat her to it.

Hopie tugged on the demon’s leg. “Excuse me, Mr. Demon,” she said, distracting him as he was about to send Maddy flying across the room, “but I gotta tell you something.” The demon, confused, bent down to the little girl’s level. In a motion so quick none of the others saw what she had done, Hopie sent the demon flying across the room.

Anni turned to Travers. “Let her go,” she said, her voice deadly.

Before he even had a chance to respond, Travers found himself slammed into a wall, Chance pried out of his grip. Wes tightened his fingers around his throat.

“Did he lay a finger on you, Anni?” he asked, his voice still low and dangerous.

“Once,” Anni replied steadily. “It didn’t hurt.” She felt like a failure. She hadn’t saved his son. She hadn’t stopped Travers. Wes would realize by now that she didn’t suit. That she couldn’t do anything right. Wes practically heard the worries as they flew through Anni’s head. Reluctantly, he loosened his hold around Travers’ neck.

“I trust you can handle this, Anni?” he asked. Anni nodded not understanding.

“You leave me to a mere girl?” Travers asked, laughing. “A Potential is still a Potential.”

In an instant, Anni had Travers raised high over her head, his eyes bulging in fear.

Giles took his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt. “Funny thing,” he said. “Did I ever, in any of my Council reports mention that Anni was magically gifted and through her own will, called by the strength of Turot as a non-slayer?”

Anni waited until Travers had turned a nice shade of purple before she dropped him to the ground.

“I believe you forgot to mention that, Rupert,” Travers gasped, his hands going to his throat.

Giles shrugged. “How terribly odd,” he commented.

Anni wanted to kill Travers, but she couldn’t do it. Hopie spat on him.

“Hope!” Cordelia and Angel both scolded at once. “Spitting isn’t nice.”

Hopie shrugged. “Can I kick him once real hard?” she asked.

“Sure,” Angel said.

“Try not to puncture anything too important,” Cordy cautioned. Hopie gave the man one good kick to the ribs. Travers groaned. Chance and Kendall were both grinning wildly at the sight of the tiny domineering over the man who had ruled their lives for so long.

Travers coughed.

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you,” Buffy said, her voice hard.

The Potentials stared at her in awe.

“You don’t kill humans,” he replied. Faith raised an eyebrow at him, trusting that he didn’t know that she would never again take a human life. “You’ll never get them back without me,” Travers wheezed, referring to the babies that still hung, suspended magically in the air. “You don’t know the spell or have that kind of power.”

Lilah finally spoke up from the doorway. “He’s right,” she said. “If we want it back, we need him.” Wes couldn’t help but notice that she referred to their baby as “it.” He felt his heart sink as he realized that getting the baby back was more of a matter of pride to Lilah than a matter of love.

“No we don’t,” Hopie said.

Lilah glared at the child. “Yes, we do,” she commented.

“No we don’t,” Hopie said stubbornly. Lindsey chuckled at the look on Lilah’s face.

“Hopie, baby,” Cordy commented, “we might need the bad man to help us.” Travers raised his eyebrows at being referred to as “the bad man.”

Hopie stomped her foot. “Mr. D. and Miss T. say we don’t,” Hopie said.

The Potentials were confused.

“Her imaginary friends,” Angel explained.

“They aren’t make believe!” Hopie insisted. Everyone rolled their eyes. “Come out now?” Hopie asked nicely.

Suddenly, a man and a woman materialized in the middle of the room.

“Still a bit o’ a skeptic, aye Angel?” the man asked. The woman standing next to him smiled gently at the faces she recognized in the room.

“Doyle!” Cordelia said, her voice catching in her throat.

“Tara?” Willow’s voice was disbelieving.

“Told you they were real,” Hopie said in a sing song voice.

There was a deep silence, which Maddy gladly filled after just a moment. “Bloody hell!” she exclaimed.

Spike raised his hand. “I second that,” he said.

“Bloody hell!” Hopie echoed.

Cordy shot a death look at Spike.

“I didn’t say it,” Spike said, shooting a look at Maddy.

Maddy shrugged. “It seemed appropriate,” she said with a grin, completely unabashed.

Doyle was the next one to break the silence. “You have eyes,” he said in Dawn’s direction. “See.”

Dawn stared at Chance for a moment and gasped. “Buffy,” she said, her mouth dropping open in shock, “she’s you.”

Continue