Thine Own Self

By Gidgetgirl

Chapter Eleven

Maddy looked around the room she had been thrown into, giving the two guards standing at the door a seemingly pleasant smile. “So,” she said. “This is what it’s like to be kidnapped.” The young British girl paused for a moment. “I don’t much care for it myself. Getting kidnapped seems more of a Dawn thing than a slayer thing to me.”

The two people standing guard said nothing. Maddy crossed over to them, and hands on her hips, stared up at them. “What?” she said. “Just because you’re evil you can’t tell me what the hell is going on?” The two guards said nothing, and as the little hairs stood up on the back of her neck, Maddy realized that they weren’t entirely human.

Thoughtfully, Maddy chewed her bottom lip. “Bitch,” she said, looking at them expectantly. Nothing. “Damn. Shit. Bastard. Asshole.”

“Nothing?” she asked. She paused. They said nothing.

Maddy frowned. Somehow, without someone there to despair over her use of language, it just wasn’t the same.

Shrugging, she walked to the other side of the room.

“What do we do with her until She gets here?” the one with the uneven biceps asked.

The guard with the one continuous eyebrow shrugged. “Stand watch,” he replied. “She doesn’t want the girl harmed.”

Maddy smiled wickedly. She didn’t really know where she was or who had orchestrated her little kidnapping, but if they couldn’t lay a hand on her, she had the distinct feeling that things were about to get very, very interesting.

Maddy beamed at the guards. Unibrow averted his gaze. Bicep boy wrinkled his brow a bit.

“Boys,” Maddy said, making the two huge non-humans shudder, “I think that we’re going to have a lot of fun together.”

The two mammoth automatons looked at each other. They didn’t like the sound of that.

For a moment, there was complete silence.

Joss broke the deafening quiet with a typically petulant sentence. “Great,” she muttered to Kendall. “Now there are two of them.”

Kendall, her voice low, turned back to Joss. “Could be worse,” she replied good-naturedly. “There could be two of you.”

Joss said nothing, and as Ari turned her glare in their direction, Joss shrank back against Kendall a little. Surprisingly, Kendall struggled to stand in front of the younger Potential.

Ari shrugged, tossing a bit of hair back over her shoulder, and as she did so, Kendall shrank back down to the ground.

“Are you okay?” Joss hissed, never taking her eyes off of Ari.

Kendall narrowed her eyes at the girl who looked exactly like Anni, but wasn’t. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice low. Ari arched an eyebrow. If she had her way, once the sun set, they wouldn’t be fine at all.

In the sewers under ground, the rumors were flying. “She’s back,” a particularly scrawny vampire whispered in awe to a female vamp easily twice his size.

The female nodded, barely perceptibly, feeling the way the air around her buzzed, calling her, calling all of them, to their queen. Turot had returned, and with her, the power of the arch slayer.

Oz felt Kate tense next to him as Kendall was thrown to the ground, and he took her hand gently in his, squeezing it softly.

Kate took a deep breath. These things weren’t supposed to scare her anymore. She was supposed to be strong. For Cale. As his name crossed her mind, Kate jerked her hand out of Oz’s, and though she was still held to the ground by whatever magic Ari had managed to work, she crawled, scraping her way along the pavement. Her knees began to bleed long before she reached her son.

Cale stood up with ease, and ran toward his mother on chubby baby legs. When he reached her, he patted her back. “Mommy okay?” he asked, his sensitive nose smelling the blood in the cuts on her legs.

“Not hung-y now,” he said, mispronouncing the word ‘hungry,’ though he’d often pronounced it just fine. “Why Mommy bleed?”

Kate, still laying on the ground, reached an arm up to him. “Shhhhh, baby,” she shushed him, pulling him into her arms. Cale, with all of the energy of a two year old who’d slept the entire car ride to Los Angeles, wriggled out of her arms.

“Brother,” he said, gesturing toward Connor and completely unaware of the danger around him. “Come see, Mommy.”

Hopie turned to Cale. “That’s My Connor,” she told him, keeping one eye on Ari all the while. Cale giggled.

“Hi-Hi!” he said. For lack of something better to say, he pointed at Kate, who, like the others, was still on the ground.

“Mommy,” he said, smiling broadly. He sniffed the air. “Mommy bleed,” he said, the puzzled tone in his voice expressing clearly how very silly Mommy was to be bleeding at that moment. A thoughtful look crossed Cale’s face, as he gestured to himself.

“No red,” he said, concern in his voice as it occurred to him that perhaps Mommy wasn’t being silly after all.

“Silence,” Ari hissed. “I have no patience for you, child.”

Cale looked at her and took a step towards her.

“Cale…” Kate’s voice caught in the back of her throat.

“Pretty,” the little boy said. “Purple.” He wrinkled his nose then and sneezed a baby sneeze.

“Purple?” Wes said from the ground, his mind spinning. He remembered well the significance of that color: the ancient slayer turned vampiress Turot had carried a purple jewel around her neck, and her essence, the essence of the so-called arch slayer, had taken on that color, stored in vampire after vampire as its keepers searched for the one girl who could house such an essence. A girl destined to be a slayer who was also magically gifted, a girl whose anger and hurt after years of betrayal would fuel Turot’s kcyna, her essence, turning her into the ultimate evil.

Anni.

Sitting on top of the expensive mahogany desk, Maddy kicked her legs against its edge in a constant steady rhythm. With each successive thud, the guards at the door winced a bit. Maddy began exploring the contents of the desk. She’d already been through the rest of the room. Finding a permanent pen, she smiled and hopped off of the desk.

As she walked across the room, she hummed under her breath.

“What’s she humming?” Unibrow asked.

Lopsided grimaced as the sounds of the song ‘I’m too Sexy’ floated across the room. The two watched in horror as Maddy took the cap off the pen and began drawing a rather inappropriate appendage on a ceremonial statue sitting in the corner of the room.

One of the guards stepped forward, but the other held out his hand to stop her.

“We have very specific orders not to harm her,” he said.

The other gritted his teeth and watched as Maddy continued on to give the ceremonial statue of the Ventnor, warrior demon, a very petite pair of breasts.

A furious sputter caught in Bicep’s throat.

Maddy looked at him, batting her eyelashes innocently. “What?” she asked, sticking out her own small chest. “We can’t all be C cups, you know.”

Neither of the guards said anything. Maddy continued singing to herself. She would crack them, and then she’d know where she was and why. It was only a matter of time.

Unibrow’s eyes dropped to look at the first bit of decoration Maddy had added to the statue.

Maddy looked at him seriously. “Ancient embodiments of evil can be hermaphrodites too,” she said, watching the two henchmen in anticipation.

Neither of them said a word. Maddy shrugged and looked around to see what else she could find to decorate.

It was only a matter of time.

“Turot,” Wes said the name out loud, and Ari turned to look at him.

“I’m not Turot,” she said gaily. “You lot would be so lucky.” Wes kept his expression carefully blank, even as his gut wrenched at how much the girl sounded like Anni, his Anni. Though she looked like a thirteen year old, he knew that the person standing directly above him was the furthest thing from it.

“Two!” Cale said happily, his voice loud. “I’m two!”

“Technically,” Dawn said, an inappropriately impish grin on her face, “so is Connor.”

For the first time, Kate took a look at the man-boy her son was beaming at, and it hit her directly in the gut that this male with the too-long hair and too-thin frame was somehow Angel’s son. He was the one who’d caused Cale to be born the way he was. Kate had been prepared to forgive a little boy of that, but staring at Connor, her heart still pounding with fear for Cale, she narrowed her eyes slightly.

Had he been breathing, Angel would have let out a deep breath. He almost did so just for effect, but he remembered at the last second that Cordelia was lying directly beside him.

“Kate,” he said instead, no emotion in his voice.

“Angel,” Kate said, meeting his eyes with accusations of her own.

“Aunt Anya,” Hopie said to fill the silence that followed.

“Sexcapades,” Anya said brightly due to lack of impulse control. “And stock portfolios.”

Ari cleared her throat, and all of the adults, still trapped on the ground, looked up at her. Anni, a new tasting fear gripping her throat, stared as well, standing tall beside her evil other half.

“Excuse me,” Ari said, walking carefully through them all. “I believe you all have more pressing concerns.” She leaned over and pressed a violent kiss to Jordy’s lips, and as if under a trance, he kissed back. Anni never took her eyes off of Ari.

Ari broke away from Jordy, a small smirk settling over her face. “More pressing problems like me,” she said. Jordy let out his breath, and with it came a small, purple mist that rose like smoke into the air.

“Two!” Cale said again brightly. Ari beckoned the child forward, and Spike and Angel felt pulls in their stomach to move toward the girl as well, but anchored by their respective women, they stayed put.

Cale shook his head mischievously, and Kate was reminded of all of the times that she had been forced to chase the little boy to put him down for his nap.

Cale pointed at Connor. “One,” he said. He pointed to himself. “Two,” he said again, clapping.

Ari concentrated her will on the vamp child, but at that moment, Hopie stepped forward and put her hand on Cale’s shoulder. She looked toward Dakota and Chance.

“One,” she said, pointing to Chance, then Dakota. “Two.”

Cale jumped up and down, giggling madly. Hopie bent down and whispered something in his ears.

Ari narrowed her eyes at the children, genuine worry entering her over confident face for a moment.

“Bonzaiii!” the little boy yelled, his voice loud and high pitched. Ari arched on eyebrow.

“That all you got?” she asked Hopie. “Amateur.”

“I know you are, but what am I?” Hopie replied tauntingly.

Gunn couldn’t help but snort. Kindergarten had taught Hopie many things, but including what passed for the five year old version of the retort.

Ari looked towards the west, and as she noticed that the sun was no more than an hour away from setting, she laughed, a child’s laughter.

Maddy laughed out loud at the expression on guard number two’s face. After defacing every valuable painting and sacred artifact in the room, she’d moved on to something slightly more near and dear to the guards hearts. Their faces were now adorned with some of her sketches as well. These fellows sure took their orders not to hurt her seriously.

Walking back to the desk, Maddy put the cap on the pen. “So,” she said conversationally. “Ready to let me leave yet?”

The guards were ready to kill her, orders or no orders, but they knew that they could not harm her in any way.

Maddy thought for a moment. They just needed one last push. She looked around, and seeing an urn that she’d yet to shatter, she opened it and looked inside curiously.

“Okay, that’s it,” Unibrow said. The other guard stopped him.

“We can’t hurt her,” he reminded his colleague.

“But those are the ashes of the first of my line,” Unibrow replied, “used in many torture spells as befits our murderous breed, and a personal matter of honor to me.”

The wheels in Maddy’s head turned at rapid pace. “You know,” she said. “You guys really shouldn’t leave valuable stuff like this lying around. It can get broken,” she pretended to drop the urn, making the guard lurch forward, “or spilled.” She tilted it dangerously to one side. Finally, Maddy looked up, and the two guards felt a moment of fear. “Or,” Maddy said, her voice the very sound of innocence, “it could get overly dry.” The guards looked at her blankly.

“This isn’t exactly a humidity controlled environment,” Maddy said, “and I’m afraid that these ashes have just dried straight out.” Maddy walked over and patted the guard on the shoulder, convinced by the results of her earlier actions that they were under strict orders not to hurt her in the least.

“Don’t worry,” Maddy said, consoling the guard, before walking away from him again, tossing the urn from hand to hand. “I’ll dampen them up a bit for you.”

She turned her back to the guards, and they had no idea what she was planning to do until the heard her unzip the fly of her jeans and position the urn just so. A few moments later, it was too late.

“AAAARRRRRRRGGGGG!” the guard yelled. “I don’t care that we’re ordered to keep her here until Ms. Morgan can make her offer. I’m going to kill her!” He started towards her, and Maddy, realizing that she wasn’t near strong enough to fight him off, shrank back.

“Oh, stop it,” a voice came from behind him, and he instantly stopped. “Die,” Lilah said, angry that he’d disobeyed her commands, her fury truly fueled by the fact that these imbeciles had managed to kidnap the wrong girl. The guard exploded in front of Maddy’s eyes, and she looked at Lilah, the question in her eyes.

Lilah shrugged. “He’s bound to do as I bid him,” Lilah said. “Sorcery, it’s a beautiful thing.”

“Lilah,” Maddy said, recognizing the woman from the scant hour they had met in England months before.

“You,” Lilah said, not able to place the girl’s name. “You aren’t Dakota.”

“Give the lady a cookie,” Maddy said, in very good imitation of Dakota. Despite her bravado, she felt a slight chill run up her back as the woman looked at her.

“We aren’t always dealt the cards we want in life,” Lilah said. “Sometimes you win, and hell, sometimes your unborn child is stolen from your womb by a demon-spawn child with more power than the rest of the world put together.” She chuckled lightly, her eyes dark. “But you know, what are you going to do?”

Maddy looked at Lilah, her eyes blazing. “Don’t call Hopie that,” she said. “And you didn’t deserve that baby.”

Lilah wrapped her hand around Maddy’s neck, and for a second, the young girl couldn’t breath. “Didn’t I?” Lilah asked. After what seemed like eternity, she lightened her grip, and Maddy realized that the older woman didn’t mean to kill her. As soon as she realized it, the wheels in her head started turning.

“You’ll die,” Lilah said conversationally. “You all will, but I’m starting with the hellspawn child who stole my baby, and I think, my dear Potential, that I know just the way to get to her, thanks to you of course.”

Maddy didn’t reply. She set her mind to thinking. She needed a plan, and no matter the plan, stage one, she knew, was bound to be irritating Lilah. Maddy didn’t know how it would help anything, but irritating Lilah was guaranteed to be fun.

As these thoughts were running through Maddy’s head, her eyes settled on a bluish gray ball sitting on Lilah’s desk.

Finally, after a moment more of silence, Anni found her voice. “What’s going on here?” she asked.

Ari smiled at her, a slow grin that spread across her face, Anni’s face, as the girl took a step forward. “You know what’s going on,” Ari purred, inching forward, step by step. “You’ve always known.”

“Known what?” Anni asked.

Wes tried to get to his feet, but as Ari waved her hand, he was thrown again to the ground.

Willow stood, and Ari failed to throw her to the ground. She smiled at Willow, sensing the power the woman held, and moreover, sensing the darkness that held tight to such power.

“Known what? I’ve always known what?” Anni asked again, her voice tense.

Ari looked back at her. “That you were me,” she replied.

Casting a careful eye at Willow, Ari disappeared from where she stood.

Willow looked at Anni. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Anni looked around, avoiding the question.

Faith got to her feet. “What the hell just happened here?” she asked.

Dakota pulled away from Chance’s touch as she stood. “You don’t know?” she asked, her voice dripping with lazy sarcasm. “I’d figure you for being big with the knowing when something freaky-slash-slutty happens.” Kody cast a lazy glance at Anni. “No offense,” she said, realizing that she’d referred to the other Anni as ‘freaky-slash-slutty.’ Anni shrugged.

Gunn stood up. “Damn powers,” he said. “They can’t give a guy a little warning before something like that happens?”

Buffy, still on the ground in a rather compromising position involving Spike and her own extreme flexibility, cleared her throat. “That’s the question of the moment, isn’t it?” she said, her voice a little hoarse. “Something like what happens?”

Her question hung in the air, unanswered for a moment.

“I have a different question,” a deep British voice said. “Where is my little sister, who is she kissing, and who in their right mind would want to kidnap her?”

Dakota looked at the ground, a carefully blank expression settling over her face.

Faith looked at her. “Look, Muffin,” she said. “It ain’t your fault, kid.”

Clay narrowed his eyes at Dakota. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said.

Faith shot him a dangerous look. “Back off, British,” she said, a bite in her voice and her hand on her pregnant stomach.

“There’s no sense in bickering,” Giles said reasonably. “We simply need to find out exactly what happened with Anni and this Ari, and how to stop her, discover where Maddy is being held, and disperse field teams to overpower both Wolfram and Hart and the arch slayer I assume that Anni has become.”

Anni waved her hand in front of Giles. “Still standing here,” she said.

He shrugged.

Angel looked wryly at Giles. “When you put it that way,” he said sarcastically, “sounds like this should be a piece of cake.”

The others made it to their feet.

“So where do we start?” Connor asked.

Kate stared at him, trying to conceal the animosity she felt toward the one whose very existence had condemned her son. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and Kate moved her head slightly and found herself looking into Oz’s steady eyes.

“We start,” Kate said, her voice low and hoarse, “with my son.”

“Me!” Cale said happily.

“That’s what we came here to do,” Kate plowed on, “and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“The situation has changed,” Buffy said, her voice sharpening with dislike for the woman before her.

Willow chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “Kate may have a good idea, Buff,” she said. “Whatever happened to Anni has something to do with Cale, Connor, Chance, and Muffin…” Willow shot Dakota an apologetic look. “Sorry,” she said, hoping the mini-Faith realized that she was pregnant and therefore not to be scorned, “I don’t know your real name.”

“Anyway,” Willow continued, “if it involves Cale and Connor, maybe it has something to do with the balance thingie.”

Kate arched one eyebrow at the word ‘thingie.’

“What about Maddy?” Nicolaa asked.

“Yeah,” Kendall said, throwing her support toward the girl she had trained with and been friends with for years.

Lindsey stepped up. “I know Wolfram and Hart,” he said. “And I know Lilah.” He inclined his head toward Nic and Clay. “You two come with me,” he said. “We’ll see about Maddy.”

Gunn stepped forward. “You guys are going to need some muscle,” he said.

Dakota looked up. “I’m going too,” she said, her voice casual. Faith saw right through the exterior.

“Sorry, um, Little Faith,” Willow said, “but you’re part of the balance thing, and we might need you here if we want to undo it, assuming it can be undone.”

Faith saw the refusal on Kody’s lips.

“I’ll go,” she said. Dakota said nothing, and Faith took her silence as some sort of acceptance.

Hopie wrinkled her nose a bit, and the others looked at her expectantly.

“How long until sunset,” the youngest in the circle of vampires asked.

The oldest looked at him, feeling disgust for a vampire so young that he could not taste the sunset in the air and approximate its arrival time.

“A little over two hours,” the oldest vamps mate replied, saving him the trouble of replying.

From places hidden from the sun, all of the city and all of the world, vampires felt the pull toward their queen as she beckoned them.

On the surface, Ari smiled. She would have her army soon, and then, there’d be no need for them to hide from sunlight. It was only a matter of time.

Maddy picked up what appeared to be the little glass ball.

“Put it down,” Lilah said, mild annoyance entering her voice.

“What is it?” Maddy asked.

“Put it down,” Lilah replied, reigning in her temper.

“Tell me what it is and I will,” Maddy replied.

“Put it down or I’ll have your hands chopped off,” Lilah said simply.

Maddy just stared at her, expectantly.

“Fine,” Lilah said, thinking that the sooner she got her plan in motion, the sooner she would be able to see those who’d robbed her of what was hers die slow and painful deaths. “It’s an Orb of Lagassis. There used to be three in the world. Now there are only two.” Lilah thought unwittingly of the way that the last orb had met its demise.

Maddy threw it against the wall, and it shattered. “Now there’s only one,” she said.

For no reason, Maddy felt compelled at that moment to try one last thing.

Hopie, she thought. Can you hear me?

“Hopie, baby, what’s wrong?” Cordy asked, approaching her daughter as the little girl cocked her head to one side.

Hopie turned to Colette, who was standing behind Nic and Clay, as if the near-invisible Potential had said something.

As usual, Colette said nothing.

I can hear you, Hopie thought back. But just barely.

Whatever you do, don’t come, Maddy thought briefly. Lilah’s going to kill you. All of you.

And then, Maddy felt the connection with Hopie slip, and she crossed her hands over her waist, looking directly at Lilah and wondering what else she could do to stop the woman from killing her friends.

Colette shifted slightly under Hopie’s intense gaze. Finally, the little girl spoke up. “Maddy said that Lilaaaaah wants to kill us. She’s in a mean building.”

With that piece of information, Lindsey set off, Nic, Clay, Gunn, and Faith in tow, to find Maddy.

“Don’t worry,” Faith told Hopie, “we won’t die.”

“I know,” Hopie said. “You’re pregnant.”

Faith looked down. Was it her, or was she more pregnant than she had been five minutes ago?

“And I’ll get all research-y,” Willow said, taking a step toward the hotel lobby. The remaining people followed.

They had just under two hours until sunset.

In Lilah’s office, the second to last Orb of Lagassis sat in shards on the floor.

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