Pike and Oz : Prologue – Chapter 1 : U.S. 50
1 Highway 50, Somewhere in the Nevada desert
The harsh desert sunlight was incubating Pike's headache as he drove down the empty expanse of the U.S 50 in his slate grey band van. The van was travelling well over the speed limit raising an immense cloud of dust in its wake. So much so he almost didn't see the hitchhiker standing on the side of the road. He hit the brakes and the van screeched to a halt about 15 metres past the lone traveller. Pike gazed upwards at the rippling sun and around at the flawlessly smooth, endless expanse of the bleach yellow sand pavement.
'What the hell is a hitchhiker doing out here?' he thought. Glancing into the rear-view mirror he could just make out through the gentle, swirling twisters of sand that the weirdo was carrying an acoustic guitar case. Pike turned his head down and punched open the glove compartment, sliding out a wooden stake expertly and mechanically chiselled into a needle fine point. He looked back into the rear-view, and slipped the instrument under his thigh.
There was a demon bounty out for Pike's head ever since he slayed the vampire Master Kin in Normandy…
…After Buffy left him he put out and ad for a bass player, a drummer, and a lead vocalist, and Pike started a band called, aptly, 'The Slayers'. They travelled the U.S playing gigs in the seediest, piss smelling, scabies infected bars and clubs on the earths crust. In their spare time, they slayed vampires. Pike wanted to help people, save lives, for the band, killing demons was their idea of fun. It is Pikes nocturnal activities that drew him to the attention of one Maegan Willicks. She was a demon hunter, ex-member of something called the Initiative. She had been tracking Pikes movements for months before she finally approached him one night while he was slaying amphibian bone eaters on the Miami boardwalk. Maegan was impressed with Pikes skill and passion, and invited him to join her operation. When she left the Initiative, and organisation she claimed was run by 'ignorant fools who think demons can be captured and tagged like Labradors', when she left, she started up her own operation composed of ex- military, shamans, experts in demonology and rogue slayers, like Pike. This organision was called 'The Ravens', a closely knit group of sixty or so demon hunters who travel the world taking out prime targets, what Maegan liked to call 'The Mothers', the big boss guys at the centre of demon regimes.
'Cut out the heart' she used to say 'and that wrinkly ass demon body falls to the ground baby!'
From the moment Pike met Maegan there was a definite attraction. She was beautiful, ballsy, smart, dangerous, and she looked great in hipster jeans. Pike skills proved exceptional, and he quickly moved up the ranks of 'The Ravens' corp. and became Maegans right hand man.
Four years ago, Maegan, Pike, and a backup team dispatched to Russia to take out a growing cult of vampires with and appetite for the blood of newly born babies. The mission was a success. Pike and Maegan celebrated with a meal of canned meatballs and beans on the steps of a burning church within which lay the ashes of a dozen Russian sicko vamps. In spite of the location, and the less than amourish cuisine, it felt like a date. They laughed, hugged, touched. And as Pike and Maegan handed the kidnapped babies into the ambulance when it arrived, they just looked at each other. Pike blushed and looked away. Maegan smiled and took his red cheeks in her hands.
'What the heck.' She whispered in a voice so gentle it was almost a hush, and she kissed him on his dry, chapped lips. In spite of the dryness and the cold, it was great.
They decided to keep the most recent evolution of their relationship from the team, but they couldn't hide it anymore when, three weeks later, Maegan fell pregnant with his child. It wasn't planned, but it was far from unwanted. The moment they both sat, hand in hand, and watched the test turn the colour of 'expecting, they felt like the happiest two people in the world. They went for a romantic dinner that night in the Mess Hall in Raven corp., and over desert, Pike proposed. She accepted without hesitation. Life was ripe. Life was wonderful. Six days later, Maegan was Turned by Kin as she writing her wedding vows in the sitting room of their private hideaway in Canada.
Kin was a Master vampire with a perverse desire to have a hundred pretty little daughters and a hundred handsome little sons. She travelled the world, Turning what she saw as perfect human specimens. She saw perfection in Maegan. Kin had chosen her to be one of her daughters when she was a little girl, but Maegans father, a member of the Watchers Council sent her away to live with her Grand Uncle in Dallas Texas. But Kin never gave up searching for her. She wanted her, yearned for her, needed her to complete her perfect family. But when Kin tasted Maegans blood she knew she was with child, and brutally and mercilessly murdered her. The idea of her little girl being with child disgusted her, it made her impure. Pike returned to their idealic cabin hideaway in the mountains to find his fiancés head removed from her body and burned charcoal black in the fire place, and her body sprawled out on the floor with her swollen stomach gouged out. Pike lay on the floor beside the body for two days before a few members of The Ravens arrived for a scheduled meeting and discovered the horrific scene. It took four people to pull Pike yelling, kicking and screaming from his massacred wife and unborn child.
After that, Pike was not the same man. He became cold, withdrawn. As the new commander of The Ravens he sent teams on impossible, in some cases suicidal missions. Following a unanimous decision, he was asked to step down honourably. Before he departed he requested one last favour from a close, long-time colleague, friend and confidant of Maegan's within the Initiative, he asked for the precise location of Kin's nest.
'Killing Kin' Maegans friend divulged 'would be like megaside. Every vamp on the planet will be after your blood. She is considered and excessive risk target, even by the Initiative.'
After all the time he had known Maegan, loved Maegan, she hadn't explained exactly what the Initiative was, and he didn't care. The friend told him that Kin was never in one place, with the exception of Halloween, when she returned home to shower her perfect children with gifts. It was like some bizarre, macabre twist on the fairytale of Santa Claus. The informant eventually gave him the information he sought, and so Pike travelled to Normandy, France and, using the coordinates given to him, he located Kin's nest, an ancient, Pre World War 1 orphanage that was crumbling at the seems. The kaleidoscopic orphanage was located on a cliff face a world from anywhere. Gates that must have been fifty feet high surrounded it, Pike guessed, so that Kin could prevent her children from leaving. It was daylight. Early morning a day after Halloween. The children and Kin were inside. Pike looked from left to right, up and down at the endless, gothic expanse of the building. Waves were pounding the cliffs relentlessly as Pike heart was doing against his ribcage. He thought, as he stood alone and vulnerable with his heart quickening like a fever, he thought that this must be what happens when you live long enough, you go completely, morbidly insane. Even for a vamp she was twisted. Pike blew the black iron gates from their hinges with a small amount of plastic explosive, stormed into the deserted playground, secured his issued Raven crossbow against his shoulder and popped the stake Maegan had given him on his birthday out of his chest strap and into his hand. It was suicide. Storming into a nest of a hundred plus 'perfect' vamps that also housed a Master was nuts. Pike was going to die, that was a given, but he didn't care…
The hitchhiker opened the door, placed his guitar behind the passenger seat, jumped into the van.
'Thanks' he held out his hand 'Oz!'
Pike looked him over. He was short. Has long dark bronze hair, deeply set, wild eyes. Pike shook his hand. The guy had a pulse, and he smelled human. First valuable lesson Maegan ever thought him was that vampires either smell like road kill, or more often than not like strong cologne. Those who like to live among humans practically bathe in the stuff to cover up the smell of death. No, this guy wasn't a vamp, but there was something strange about him all the same.
'Pike' he said as he withdrew his hand. The guy's hair was down to his shoulders, loose, not tied back. Pike put his hand on the wheel and turned the key in the ignition with the other. The engine revved into life.
'So' Pike said as the car slowly gained speed. The sun was beating down heavily now and the van was like an oven. Pike undid the top four buttons of his grey shirt. His sleeves were already rolled up, revealing his thick, hairy forearms.
'So. Do you mind telling me just what the hell you are?'
Pike was squinting. He took his shades off the dash and slipped them on. Oz looked at him, and in a cool, calm, mellow voice he said 'Excuse me?'
Pike put his hand under his shirt collar and rubbed his neck.
'You're not a vampire. I can smell them. Most people can't but I have keen senses. They smell like a butcher shop. Or a dead cow doused in Old Spice. Gross I know. So you're a half-breed? A demon maybe? Nothing against demons. I've met a few. Some are cool. Some feed on the bones of children. Some are bent on the destruction of the human race. You're not bent on the destruction of the human race are you? Cos I gotta tell ya man, that ain't cool.'
Oz laid his hands on the dash, still unbelievably calm given the intense grilling.
'You got me.'
He looked at Pike.
'I'm a werewolf.'
Pike nodded.
'I'm down with that! So what are ya doin' out here in the middle of the Nevada desert. Scratch that how the hell did you end up out her in the first place?'
'I came out here to the desert..'
He looked at Pike, then once again out the window.
'Actually forget it, I think its kinda personal.'
Pike nodded.'
'That's cool. Where you headed?'
Oz rubbed his eyelids. He seemed tired, very tired, like only an old man could be.
'How far can you take me?'
Pike bit his lower lip, then smiled.
'Vegas far enough for yeah?'
'Vegas? What's your game? Poker? Roulette?
Pike shook his head, smiled
'Vampires!'
Oz looked at him eyes wide in an expression of mild interest.
'You're a slayer?'
'More of a demon bounty hunter' Pike answered 'I was hired by a law firm called Wolfram & Hart to take out a virgin blood dealer. He owns an underground vamp casino in Vegas.'
'This law firm' Oz asked, his voice husky, parched 'Regular clients of yours?'
Pike nodded.
'They probably have me in their rolodex.'
'Pay?'
'Better than my day job.'
Oz scratched the back of his neck.
'What's your day job?'
Pike glanced back at the guitar case.
'You play professionally?'
Oz leaned his head against his hand and yawned.
'From time to time. These days I travel a lot, drifting from one white trash trailer park town to next. I must have played in every red neck bar in America. I only play when I need the cash for food, gas money, a place to sleep.'
Oz blinked hard. His eyes were bloodshot.
'You still haven't told me what your day job is.'
'What? O h right, yeah, ah, well, I guess you could call me semi- professional lead guitarists. I'm not very good. In fact, I sound like a cat with a finger up its ass, but it serves as a cover.'
There were a few minutes of awkward silence, then Oz wiped his glistening brow with the back of his hand and asked 'Do you work alone? I mean, do you have back up?'
'Two bass guitarists and a drummer. I'm looking for a guy to play keyboard but we have to make do with what we got right?'
'I meant, backup when your, you know.'
'Kickin vamp butt? I gotcha. Yeah, I have some guys, but I prefer to work alone. No distractions. Pass me out a beer from the back.'
Oz looked at him without expression.
'Should you be drinking man? I mean..'
'Ah jees man!' Pike butted in 'what can happen? Are you afraid I'll crash into some sand coz that's..' Pike looked around 'Yep, that's all that's out here man!'
Oz sighed, shrugged, and reached into the icebox behind him. He passed a cold bottle of beer to Pike.
'Cheers man.'
He prised the top off with his teeth, spat it out, and took a deep, lingering gulp. His lips sparkled with moisture.
'Mmmm. Nothin' like drinkin' a cold beer while driving down an empty desert highway!'
Pike smiled and looked at Oz who seemed totally indifferent. He was quiet. Pike didn't trust quiet people. It usually meat they had something to hide.
'Tell me how you got out here Oz. And don't tell me you walked.'
A hint of a smile appeared on Oz's face.
'No, no I didn't walk. I had a van, but it was jacked.'
'Jacked? You mean stolen?'
'That's right, by hell beast bikers with fangs and leather straps across their faces. I don't know how I'm gona explain it to my insurance company.'
Pike laughed, put the bottle between his legs, raised his finger.
'Now, I don't believe that for one second.'
'And why not?'
Pike shook his head as if Oz was stating the obvious.
'Cos you're sitting here man!'
Oz's mouth dwindled between a wisp of a smile and an all out smirk.
'Let's just say that when somebody pisses me off they bring out the demon in me.'
Pike thought about this for a moment before saying 'You're not telling me you went all wolfy are ya?'
Oz didn't say anything, just looked ahead at the throbbing mirage of the U.S 50.
'Nah, nah, nah.' Pike said 'Werewolves..'
'..only change under a full moon' Oz finished 'I know. That's what most people believe but it's not true. Well, if you think it's true it kinda is. It's very hard to explain. All I can tell you is that, after a long, long, long time, I learned to control my transformations, well, to a certain degree,'
Pikes brow wrinkled in amazement.
'Wow, I did not know that.'
'It's okay, to error is human.'
'No man, it's not okay! I totally bought into to stereotype of the wolf man myth. All vampires are evil though right?'
'More or less.'
'Good. Cos I don't wanna think twice about stakin', decapitatin' or burning every god damn vamp close enough for me to smell butcher shop and old spice!'
'Oh, watch out for a guy called Angel though, his one of the good guys.'
Pike laughed hysterically.
'A vamp? Good? As in good good? As in a vamp with a soul? Give me a break!'
'Oh it's true. I think there was some gypsy cursage. Oh, but if his wearing leather pants I suggest immediate heart piercing or head removal.'
'Because leather pants for guys went out with the eighties?'
'When Angel experiences a moment of 'true happiness'' Oz made quotation marks with his fingers 'then he turns bad, and I mean bad. And the whole leather pants thing? Well evil Angel and leather pants go together like, like The Slayer and cemeteries.'
Pikes eyes widened.
'Do you mean The Slayer? As in Buffy?'
Oz looked at Pike.
'You know her?'
Pike laughed with unashamed delight and punched the steering wheel.
'Know her? Man I slayed vamp ass right along side her. Back in L.A we were like Bonnie and Clyde, accept for the whole outlaw thing and getting shot to pieces in a blaze of gunfire. You know Buffy? Seriously, you know Buffy?'
'Yeah. I was a Scooby for a while. Dated Buffy's best friend Willow.'
Oz turned his gaze toward his intermingled hands.
'Then she became a witch' He in a self mocking way 'among other things. It didn't work out.'
'So you split?'
'Yeah, but' Oz sighed 'That's not exactly the reason. It was part of it but, no, it was bound to happen. I was a werewolf. The only other werewolf I've ever met tried to eat her and..' Oz paused '..And I slept with the bitch, not sure if that's an insult considering she was technically half bitch. There was something in me that didn't care about Willow..'
Oz looked at Pike seriously. 'There was something in me that didn't think twice about hurting her. Didn't care about risking all we had for raw, animal..' he sighed' I had to leave.'
For around fifteen minutes neither of them said a word. Pike wanted to. God knows he wanted to. He wanted to ask so many questions about Buffy. He didn't love her anymore of course, what they had died a long time ago, and his heart would always belong to Maegan. Even though she was dead, a part of her was still alive inside him. Pike wanted to find out what Buffy was doing with her life now. He had always wondered if she would even lead a normal life.
'Who knows?' Pike thought 'Maybe she's working in a burger joint.' He couldn't help but smile at the idea of Buffy, the chosen one, working in a grease factory. The flimsy blue hat. The yellow and red uniform. He imagined her wearing a skirt and a plastic nametag with 'Slayer' written in it. It was a ridiculous notion. It would never happen. Maybe in some alternate dimension or something. No, Pike guessed that she was probably in college now, or maybe poppin' caps into featureless cardboard cutouts in a police academy somewhere. He wondered if she was still living in Sunnydale. When Oz seemed relaxed, not that he ever seemed overtly otherwise, Pike said 'So, ah, Buffy, you know, is she good?'
Oz licked his lips and rubbed the stubble on the side of his face before answering 'Well, last I heard she died'
A bolt of electricity shot through Pikes body.
'Wha-What?'
'Yep. Jumped into a key blood summoned apocalypse cloud born from the fen of a loco goddess. It happens.'
Pike's mouth hung open, the blood drained from his face. Oz continued 'Then my ex-girlfriend who, if you've been listening you would have gathered that she is a witch, brought her back from the dead. So I'm guessin' ya, she's good.'
Pike turned the steering wheel slightly as the endless road approached a needless bend. Slowly, the colour returned to his cheeks and he smiled with relief.
'Wow.' Pike said 'So she sees a lot of action in little ol' Sunnydale huh?'
Oz shrugged. 'Well if Sunnydale is still built on the Hell Mouth then I'm guessing affirmative.'
Pike's fists tightened on the wheel. Pike thought of how Buffy had left L.A shortly after Merek her Watcher was killed and she slayed the Master. She didn't want anything to do with vampires. She wanted to forget they even existed. Pike had insisted that her job wasn't finished, that there were millions of vamps out there in need of some immediate slayage. That is the reason she left L.A. That's the reason they broke up. And now this guy is telling him she's living on a Hell Mouth? That fact didn't bother him. What bothered him was that he was thinking about Buffy, pining for her the way he used to before Maegan. It seemed to him that in doing so he was disgracing Maegans memory in some way.
Pike turned on the radio and Nickleback blared from the speakers. As Pike's head swayed to the beat and his lips mimed the words, something Oz said that just didn't make sense entered his conscious mind. He turned his eyes toward Oz, eyebrows overlapped in confusion.
'What the hell is a Scooby?'
1 Highway 50, Somewhere in the Nevada desert
The harsh desert sunlight was incubating Pike's headache as he drove down the empty expanse of the U.S 50 in his slate grey band van. The van was travelling well over the speed limit raising an immense cloud of dust in its wake. So much so he almost didn't see the hitchhiker standing on the side of the road. He hit the brakes and the van screeched to a halt about 15 metres past the lone traveller. Pike gazed upwards at the rippling sun and around at the flawlessly smooth, endless expanse of the bleach yellow sand pavement.
'What the hell is a hitchhiker doing out here?' he thought. Glancing into the rear-view mirror he could just make out through the gentle, swirling twisters of sand that the weirdo was carrying an acoustic guitar case. Pike turned his head down and punched open the glove compartment, sliding out a wooden stake expertly and mechanically chiselled into a needle fine point. He looked back into the rear-view, and slipped the instrument under his thigh.
There was a demon bounty out for Pike's head ever since he slayed the vampire Master Kin in Normandy…
…After Buffy left him he put out and ad for a bass player, a drummer, and a lead vocalist, and Pike started a band called, aptly, 'The Slayers'. They travelled the U.S playing gigs in the seediest, piss smelling, scabies infected bars and clubs on the earths crust. In their spare time, they slayed vampires. Pike wanted to help people, save lives, for the band, killing demons was their idea of fun. It is Pikes nocturnal activities that drew him to the attention of one Maegan Willicks. She was a demon hunter, ex-member of something called the Initiative. She had been tracking Pikes movements for months before she finally approached him one night while he was slaying amphibian bone eaters on the Miami boardwalk. Maegan was impressed with Pikes skill and passion, and invited him to join her operation. When she left the Initiative, and organisation she claimed was run by 'ignorant fools who think demons can be captured and tagged like Labradors', when she left, she started up her own operation composed of ex- military, shamans, experts in demonology and rogue slayers, like Pike. This organision was called 'The Ravens', a closely knit group of sixty or so demon hunters who travel the world taking out prime targets, what Maegan liked to call 'The Mothers', the big boss guys at the centre of demon regimes.
'Cut out the heart' she used to say 'and that wrinkly ass demon body falls to the ground baby!'
From the moment Pike met Maegan there was a definite attraction. She was beautiful, ballsy, smart, dangerous, and she looked great in hipster jeans. Pike skills proved exceptional, and he quickly moved up the ranks of 'The Ravens' corp. and became Maegans right hand man.
Four years ago, Maegan, Pike, and a backup team dispatched to Russia to take out a growing cult of vampires with and appetite for the blood of newly born babies. The mission was a success. Pike and Maegan celebrated with a meal of canned meatballs and beans on the steps of a burning church within which lay the ashes of a dozen Russian sicko vamps. In spite of the location, and the less than amourish cuisine, it felt like a date. They laughed, hugged, touched. And as Pike and Maegan handed the kidnapped babies into the ambulance when it arrived, they just looked at each other. Pike blushed and looked away. Maegan smiled and took his red cheeks in her hands.
'What the heck.' She whispered in a voice so gentle it was almost a hush, and she kissed him on his dry, chapped lips. In spite of the dryness and the cold, it was great.
They decided to keep the most recent evolution of their relationship from the team, but they couldn't hide it anymore when, three weeks later, Maegan fell pregnant with his child. It wasn't planned, but it was far from unwanted. The moment they both sat, hand in hand, and watched the test turn the colour of 'expecting, they felt like the happiest two people in the world. They went for a romantic dinner that night in the Mess Hall in Raven corp., and over desert, Pike proposed. She accepted without hesitation. Life was ripe. Life was wonderful. Six days later, Maegan was Turned by Kin as she writing her wedding vows in the sitting room of their private hideaway in Canada.
Kin was a Master vampire with a perverse desire to have a hundred pretty little daughters and a hundred handsome little sons. She travelled the world, Turning what she saw as perfect human specimens. She saw perfection in Maegan. Kin had chosen her to be one of her daughters when she was a little girl, but Maegans father, a member of the Watchers Council sent her away to live with her Grand Uncle in Dallas Texas. But Kin never gave up searching for her. She wanted her, yearned for her, needed her to complete her perfect family. But when Kin tasted Maegans blood she knew she was with child, and brutally and mercilessly murdered her. The idea of her little girl being with child disgusted her, it made her impure. Pike returned to their idealic cabin hideaway in the mountains to find his fiancés head removed from her body and burned charcoal black in the fire place, and her body sprawled out on the floor with her swollen stomach gouged out. Pike lay on the floor beside the body for two days before a few members of The Ravens arrived for a scheduled meeting and discovered the horrific scene. It took four people to pull Pike yelling, kicking and screaming from his massacred wife and unborn child.
After that, Pike was not the same man. He became cold, withdrawn. As the new commander of The Ravens he sent teams on impossible, in some cases suicidal missions. Following a unanimous decision, he was asked to step down honourably. Before he departed he requested one last favour from a close, long-time colleague, friend and confidant of Maegan's within the Initiative, he asked for the precise location of Kin's nest.
'Killing Kin' Maegans friend divulged 'would be like megaside. Every vamp on the planet will be after your blood. She is considered and excessive risk target, even by the Initiative.'
After all the time he had known Maegan, loved Maegan, she hadn't explained exactly what the Initiative was, and he didn't care. The friend told him that Kin was never in one place, with the exception of Halloween, when she returned home to shower her perfect children with gifts. It was like some bizarre, macabre twist on the fairytale of Santa Claus. The informant eventually gave him the information he sought, and so Pike travelled to Normandy, France and, using the coordinates given to him, he located Kin's nest, an ancient, Pre World War 1 orphanage that was crumbling at the seems. The kaleidoscopic orphanage was located on a cliff face a world from anywhere. Gates that must have been fifty feet high surrounded it, Pike guessed, so that Kin could prevent her children from leaving. It was daylight. Early morning a day after Halloween. The children and Kin were inside. Pike looked from left to right, up and down at the endless, gothic expanse of the building. Waves were pounding the cliffs relentlessly as Pike heart was doing against his ribcage. He thought, as he stood alone and vulnerable with his heart quickening like a fever, he thought that this must be what happens when you live long enough, you go completely, morbidly insane. Even for a vamp she was twisted. Pike blew the black iron gates from their hinges with a small amount of plastic explosive, stormed into the deserted playground, secured his issued Raven crossbow against his shoulder and popped the stake Maegan had given him on his birthday out of his chest strap and into his hand. It was suicide. Storming into a nest of a hundred plus 'perfect' vamps that also housed a Master was nuts. Pike was going to die, that was a given, but he didn't care…
The hitchhiker opened the door, placed his guitar behind the passenger seat, jumped into the van.
'Thanks' he held out his hand 'Oz!'
Pike looked him over. He was short. Has long dark bronze hair, deeply set, wild eyes. Pike shook his hand. The guy had a pulse, and he smelled human. First valuable lesson Maegan ever thought him was that vampires either smell like road kill, or more often than not like strong cologne. Those who like to live among humans practically bathe in the stuff to cover up the smell of death. No, this guy wasn't a vamp, but there was something strange about him all the same.
'Pike' he said as he withdrew his hand. The guy's hair was down to his shoulders, loose, not tied back. Pike put his hand on the wheel and turned the key in the ignition with the other. The engine revved into life.
'So' Pike said as the car slowly gained speed. The sun was beating down heavily now and the van was like an oven. Pike undid the top four buttons of his grey shirt. His sleeves were already rolled up, revealing his thick, hairy forearms.
'So. Do you mind telling me just what the hell you are?'
Pike was squinting. He took his shades off the dash and slipped them on. Oz looked at him, and in a cool, calm, mellow voice he said 'Excuse me?'
Pike put his hand under his shirt collar and rubbed his neck.
'You're not a vampire. I can smell them. Most people can't but I have keen senses. They smell like a butcher shop. Or a dead cow doused in Old Spice. Gross I know. So you're a half-breed? A demon maybe? Nothing against demons. I've met a few. Some are cool. Some feed on the bones of children. Some are bent on the destruction of the human race. You're not bent on the destruction of the human race are you? Cos I gotta tell ya man, that ain't cool.'
Oz laid his hands on the dash, still unbelievably calm given the intense grilling.
'You got me.'
He looked at Pike.
'I'm a werewolf.'
Pike nodded.
'I'm down with that! So what are ya doin' out here in the middle of the Nevada desert. Scratch that how the hell did you end up out her in the first place?'
'I came out here to the desert..'
He looked at Pike, then once again out the window.
'Actually forget it, I think its kinda personal.'
Pike nodded.'
'That's cool. Where you headed?'
Oz rubbed his eyelids. He seemed tired, very tired, like only an old man could be.
'How far can you take me?'
Pike bit his lower lip, then smiled.
'Vegas far enough for yeah?'
'Vegas? What's your game? Poker? Roulette?
Pike shook his head, smiled
'Vampires!'
Oz looked at him eyes wide in an expression of mild interest.
'You're a slayer?'
'More of a demon bounty hunter' Pike answered 'I was hired by a law firm called Wolfram & Hart to take out a virgin blood dealer. He owns an underground vamp casino in Vegas.'
'This law firm' Oz asked, his voice husky, parched 'Regular clients of yours?'
Pike nodded.
'They probably have me in their rolodex.'
'Pay?'
'Better than my day job.'
Oz scratched the back of his neck.
'What's your day job?'
Pike glanced back at the guitar case.
'You play professionally?'
Oz leaned his head against his hand and yawned.
'From time to time. These days I travel a lot, drifting from one white trash trailer park town to next. I must have played in every red neck bar in America. I only play when I need the cash for food, gas money, a place to sleep.'
Oz blinked hard. His eyes were bloodshot.
'You still haven't told me what your day job is.'
'What? O h right, yeah, ah, well, I guess you could call me semi- professional lead guitarists. I'm not very good. In fact, I sound like a cat with a finger up its ass, but it serves as a cover.'
There were a few minutes of awkward silence, then Oz wiped his glistening brow with the back of his hand and asked 'Do you work alone? I mean, do you have back up?'
'Two bass guitarists and a drummer. I'm looking for a guy to play keyboard but we have to make do with what we got right?'
'I meant, backup when your, you know.'
'Kickin vamp butt? I gotcha. Yeah, I have some guys, but I prefer to work alone. No distractions. Pass me out a beer from the back.'
Oz looked at him without expression.
'Should you be drinking man? I mean..'
'Ah jees man!' Pike butted in 'what can happen? Are you afraid I'll crash into some sand coz that's..' Pike looked around 'Yep, that's all that's out here man!'
Oz sighed, shrugged, and reached into the icebox behind him. He passed a cold bottle of beer to Pike.
'Cheers man.'
He prised the top off with his teeth, spat it out, and took a deep, lingering gulp. His lips sparkled with moisture.
'Mmmm. Nothin' like drinkin' a cold beer while driving down an empty desert highway!'
Pike smiled and looked at Oz who seemed totally indifferent. He was quiet. Pike didn't trust quiet people. It usually meat they had something to hide.
'Tell me how you got out here Oz. And don't tell me you walked.'
A hint of a smile appeared on Oz's face.
'No, no I didn't walk. I had a van, but it was jacked.'
'Jacked? You mean stolen?'
'That's right, by hell beast bikers with fangs and leather straps across their faces. I don't know how I'm gona explain it to my insurance company.'
Pike laughed, put the bottle between his legs, raised his finger.
'Now, I don't believe that for one second.'
'And why not?'
Pike shook his head as if Oz was stating the obvious.
'Cos you're sitting here man!'
Oz's mouth dwindled between a wisp of a smile and an all out smirk.
'Let's just say that when somebody pisses me off they bring out the demon in me.'
Pike thought about this for a moment before saying 'You're not telling me you went all wolfy are ya?'
Oz didn't say anything, just looked ahead at the throbbing mirage of the U.S 50.
'Nah, nah, nah.' Pike said 'Werewolves..'
'..only change under a full moon' Oz finished 'I know. That's what most people believe but it's not true. Well, if you think it's true it kinda is. It's very hard to explain. All I can tell you is that, after a long, long, long time, I learned to control my transformations, well, to a certain degree,'
Pikes brow wrinkled in amazement.
'Wow, I did not know that.'
'It's okay, to error is human.'
'No man, it's not okay! I totally bought into to stereotype of the wolf man myth. All vampires are evil though right?'
'More or less.'
'Good. Cos I don't wanna think twice about stakin', decapitatin' or burning every god damn vamp close enough for me to smell butcher shop and old spice!'
'Oh, watch out for a guy called Angel though, his one of the good guys.'
Pike laughed hysterically.
'A vamp? Good? As in good good? As in a vamp with a soul? Give me a break!'
'Oh it's true. I think there was some gypsy cursage. Oh, but if his wearing leather pants I suggest immediate heart piercing or head removal.'
'Because leather pants for guys went out with the eighties?'
'When Angel experiences a moment of 'true happiness'' Oz made quotation marks with his fingers 'then he turns bad, and I mean bad. And the whole leather pants thing? Well evil Angel and leather pants go together like, like The Slayer and cemeteries.'
Pikes eyes widened.
'Do you mean The Slayer? As in Buffy?'
Oz looked at Pike.
'You know her?'
Pike laughed with unashamed delight and punched the steering wheel.
'Know her? Man I slayed vamp ass right along side her. Back in L.A we were like Bonnie and Clyde, accept for the whole outlaw thing and getting shot to pieces in a blaze of gunfire. You know Buffy? Seriously, you know Buffy?'
'Yeah. I was a Scooby for a while. Dated Buffy's best friend Willow.'
Oz turned his gaze toward his intermingled hands.
'Then she became a witch' He in a self mocking way 'among other things. It didn't work out.'
'So you split?'
'Yeah, but' Oz sighed 'That's not exactly the reason. It was part of it but, no, it was bound to happen. I was a werewolf. The only other werewolf I've ever met tried to eat her and..' Oz paused '..And I slept with the bitch, not sure if that's an insult considering she was technically half bitch. There was something in me that didn't care about Willow..'
Oz looked at Pike seriously. 'There was something in me that didn't think twice about hurting her. Didn't care about risking all we had for raw, animal..' he sighed' I had to leave.'
For around fifteen minutes neither of them said a word. Pike wanted to. God knows he wanted to. He wanted to ask so many questions about Buffy. He didn't love her anymore of course, what they had died a long time ago, and his heart would always belong to Maegan. Even though she was dead, a part of her was still alive inside him. Pike wanted to find out what Buffy was doing with her life now. He had always wondered if she would even lead a normal life.
'Who knows?' Pike thought 'Maybe she's working in a burger joint.' He couldn't help but smile at the idea of Buffy, the chosen one, working in a grease factory. The flimsy blue hat. The yellow and red uniform. He imagined her wearing a skirt and a plastic nametag with 'Slayer' written in it. It was a ridiculous notion. It would never happen. Maybe in some alternate dimension or something. No, Pike guessed that she was probably in college now, or maybe poppin' caps into featureless cardboard cutouts in a police academy somewhere. He wondered if she was still living in Sunnydale. When Oz seemed relaxed, not that he ever seemed overtly otherwise, Pike said 'So, ah, Buffy, you know, is she good?'
Oz licked his lips and rubbed the stubble on the side of his face before answering 'Well, last I heard she died'
A bolt of electricity shot through Pikes body.
'Wha-What?'
'Yep. Jumped into a key blood summoned apocalypse cloud born from the fen of a loco goddess. It happens.'
Pike's mouth hung open, the blood drained from his face. Oz continued 'Then my ex-girlfriend who, if you've been listening you would have gathered that she is a witch, brought her back from the dead. So I'm guessin' ya, she's good.'
Pike turned the steering wheel slightly as the endless road approached a needless bend. Slowly, the colour returned to his cheeks and he smiled with relief.
'Wow.' Pike said 'So she sees a lot of action in little ol' Sunnydale huh?'
Oz shrugged. 'Well if Sunnydale is still built on the Hell Mouth then I'm guessing affirmative.'
Pike's fists tightened on the wheel. Pike thought of how Buffy had left L.A shortly after Merek her Watcher was killed and she slayed the Master. She didn't want anything to do with vampires. She wanted to forget they even existed. Pike had insisted that her job wasn't finished, that there were millions of vamps out there in need of some immediate slayage. That is the reason she left L.A. That's the reason they broke up. And now this guy is telling him she's living on a Hell Mouth? That fact didn't bother him. What bothered him was that he was thinking about Buffy, pining for her the way he used to before Maegan. It seemed to him that in doing so he was disgracing Maegans memory in some way.
Pike turned on the radio and Nickleback blared from the speakers. As Pike's head swayed to the beat and his lips mimed the words, something Oz said that just didn't make sense entered his conscious mind. He turned his eyes toward Oz, eyebrows overlapped in confusion.
'What the hell is a Scooby?'