The Head of a Slayer
A Buffy-Highlander Crossover
by David Pontier
This story takes place in the spring of 1999 toward the end of season three in Buffy and well after the last episode of Highlander.
Chapter 1
Buffy Summers sat in the back seat of the Ford Taurus looking absently out the window. The scenery along Interstate 15 had ceased to be that interesting once they had left the foot hills of the Providence Mountains, and now they traveled through the low, flat land that led towards the Pacific Ocean known as the Mojave Dessert.
Vacationing in the mountains had been fun. Her parents were too busy trying to control her to be fighting with each other. Buffy hated it when they fought and shouted at each other and found out early that it was better if they were occupied with her than with themselves. There were lots of things for a six-year-old to get in trouble with on a camping trip in the mountains, and Buffy had done her best to try them all.
It was early August and only a couple weeks before school started. Buffy would be in first grade this year. That meant a full day of school; no half days like in kindergarten. This meant she would be away from her parents for seven hours a day. Sure, they both worked, but when she was home, she could always get into something to distract one of them from the other. Now, with her being babysat by the Los Angeles Public School System for seven hours a day, they would have the luxury of thinking about things other than her. She would have to try and change that.
It was half an hour past sundown, and the already boring landscape was getting very dark. Though six-year-olds are not normally tall anyway, Buffy was particularly short and could not see the ground out her window. She could only see the occasional tree tops now, and in the fading light, they were becoming less visible every second. She should probably take a nap for the rest of the trip home, but she needed to stay awake so if her parents did start to argue about something stupid, she could break in and distract them.
Still, she wanted to be able to look at something. She knew that the mountains should still be visible behind her, but with her seatbelt fastened she could not turn around to get a look at them. She looked down at the seatbelt, frustrated by her limitations. In the few years since she had graduated from her car seat, she had thought that she would have a much freer existence in the car. Instead it had been just the opposite. Her legs were too short to hang over the edge of the seat, and instead, her feet could barely touch the back of her mother's chair. With her seat belt holding her tight against the back seat, there was little she could do.
As she looked down at the offensive restraint, she imagined for a moment that she had the strength to rip it. She could sense that the fabric of the belt was no stronger than toilet paper, and she could tear it with her bare hands. She shook those images out of her head. She had been having those types of visions more frequently as of late, and they were very confusing.
Instead, Buffy focused on the belt clasp. She did not need super strength to press that. As her finger slowly went toward the shiny, silver button, she heard her father from the front seat. "Buffy Anne." Her head popped up, and she saw her father's eyes in the rearview mirror. "Leave your seat belt alone."
"But I can't see anything," she argued back.
"Look at the cars honey," her mother responded.
Buffy gave a loud, frustrated sigh but left her belt alone. She did look at the cars. The road was two lanes, and Buffy's dad was driving in the left one. He was passing cars quite regularly. Buffy could see that they were going well over the speed limit. No matter how excited her parents seemed to be to go on vacation each year, they were always far more eager to get home afterwards. Buffy could only see the top half of the cars, but she looked at each of the drivers, hoping they would turn to look at her so she could make a face.
Suddenly her father made a startled noise from the front seat, and quickly slid into the right lane. The reason why became clear a moment later when a Suburban came rocketing past in the left lane. It must have been doing over 90 miles per hour. "That guy is going to kill someone," Buffy's dad said as he watched the car accelerate towards the next two vehicles on the road.
The next two cars were a pickup in the left lane and a semi in the right. The semi was going slow, which was to say, only five miles over the speed limit. The pickup on the left was in the process of passing, but not fast enough by the Suburban's thinking. The large vehicle swerved into the right lane in front of Buffy's family car, and her dad wisely applied the brakes.
Buffy could tell something exciting was going on, and she strained herself against her seatbelt to see out the front window. There was a narrow gap for the Suburban to squeeze through between the pickup and the semi, but the pickup driver had no intention of getting cut off by the reckless Suburban. He accelerated and the Suburban was denied.
Then it happened. The semi slowed down. Perhaps another, slower truck was in front of him, or maybe there was a bump in the road. Whatever it was, the Suburban had no chance. It was just swerving back into the right lane when the semi's brake lights glared bright red in its face. The Suburban hit the brakes too and tried to swerve back left, but the tailgate of the pickup was still there. The Suburban swerved back to the right, and the top-heavy vehicle had had enough.
With its traction lost from the skidding brakes and its momentum rocking back and forth at over 80 miles per hour, it spun and flipped. Buffy's dad had been slowing down consistently since the Suburban had first approached the back of the semi, and now he slammed his own brakes, making sure not to go into a skid. Buffy was already leaning forward against her seatbelt, so the shock of being thrown forward was not that great, but the pain of her belt digging into her stomach made her scream out. She was only silenced as she was thrown back into her seat when the Taurus came to a sudden stop.
They had out paced the cars behind them by enough that there was no danger of being rear-ended, but that was not the major concern now. As they had come to a stop, the three members of the Summers' car had their eyes transfixed on the tumbling Suburban in front of them. As it hit the roof on its first roll, the heavy car popped into the air like a spring, flipping completely over in the air before crashing back on its top. The driver was thrown from the vehicle when it hit the ground a second time and followed his car as a gruesome shadow to the vehicle's tumbling routine on the interstate.
The car flipped almost a dozen times before it crumpled unevenly and spun off the road into the ditch. The driver stayed on the road, rolling over the asphalt as if he were falling down a steep hill. When he finally came to rest, Buffy's dad quickly accelerated toward the still figure. All the fading light of the late afternoon had seemed to suddenly disappear, and the headlights of the Taurus were the only thing that illuminated the scene. Buffy's dad stopped the car and leaped out. Buffy released her seatbelt so she could stand on the floor of the car and see what was happening.
Her dad crouched next to the obviously dead man and propped him up so the headlights would illuminate his face. The image was burned into Buffy's mind. He was not that old, Buffy could tell, but being only six herself, everyone over sixteen looked like an adult. He had a massive head wound over his left ear, and a few cuts and scrapes across his face from the glass he had been thrown through, but for the most part, his face was not badly mutilated. This made it worse. The look of death was upon him. Every bit of shock that man must have faced as his death came upon him was evident on his face. Buffy wanted to look away, but time seemed to come to a stop, and her eyes were glued to the scene in front of her.
Images flashed through her mind then, bloody images. As she stared at the dead man visions of fire and demons, blood and bone were superimposed over his face. She heard noises too; voices that called out to her. She was too young to understand most of what they were saying, but the guttural sounds did not need a strict translation to be understood.
The dead man's eyes suddenly popped open, and Buffy screamed.
She sat bolt upright in bed, the noise bringing her from the frightful slumber. She reached over to her clock to shut it off, but after a few useless poundings, she realized it has her screaming, and not the clock. Buffy tried to calm herself and relax, but her body was shivering and sweating. She glanced over at her clock to see how much longer she had till it really would go off, but in her post nightmare frenzy, her strength had gotten the best of her and the clock was no more than a pile of scrap wires and plastic.
From the light streaming into the room, she knew it was going to be time to get up soon, and she reluctantly got out of bed. She sat for a moment, on the side of her bed, her toes brushing the carpet, thinking about the dream.
She had had dreams before, vivid dreams that rivaled this one, but those had all been about things to come. She had dreams about the master or about Angel and Druscilla. They were not strict translations about what was going to happen, but they had been prophetic none-the-less. This dream had been of her past. And it had been very realistic. Buffy remembered the incidence well. Though she had seen many dead bodies since and scenes much more horrific, the first one always stays with you.
Everything in the dream had happened exactly like it had. The little things like playing with her seat belt and looking at the trees were things she did not even know she remembered, but now that she saw them again, she knew they had to be dead-on accurate. Everything in the dream had been right, except for the dead man opening his eyes. That had not happened. The man had stayed quite dead all the way up until the ambulance had arrived and Buffy's family had continued home.
"It was just a normal nightmare," Buffy said to herself. "Teenagers have them. Not everything I do has to be supernatural." She tried to convince herself of this as she went to the bathroom to shower and get ready for school, but she was less than successful.
* * *
Giles and Wesley were in the library when Buffy walked in, later than usual. She plopped her bag down on the table and collapsed dramatically into one of the chairs. "You know, I appreciate the vacation when it comes to the slaying. Since the mayor and Faith have taken charge of the town, the vamp activity has taken an appreciated dive, but is there anyway to get rid of the rest of my burden for a while without introducing a syringe."
Giles cringed at her reference to when he had stripped her of her slayer powers during her 18th birthday. That discomfort only lasted as long as it took him to realize that something else was bothering her. "What is it?"
"Dreams," she responded.
"Dreams?" Wesley echoed, sounding a little too excited. "You have been having dreams?"
Buffy looked at him. He might be her official watcher, but she rarely "officially" cared. Giles helped her out. "Yes, Buffy on occasion has semi-prophetic dreams. They rarely come to pass because of actions she has taken, but they are also rarely good news."
Wesley was almost giddy as he put down the book he was reading and skipped over to a bookshelf, undoubtedly to retrieve a book about dream interpretation. Giles was less excited, but no less intrigued. He sat down in a chair next to her, removing his glasses as he did. "What was it about?"
"When I was six, I saw a man die in a car accident. It was very violent and for years afterwards, I used to have nightmares about it. Of course, ever since I came here, I've had more pressing and more viol-"
"Was there blood?" Wesley asked from the end of the table, interrupting Buffy. He looked up after a while when there was no response. "Was there blood in your dream?"
"It was a car accident," Buffy said irritated, "not bumper cars at Disney World. Yes there was blood," she turned back to Giles, "lots of blood."
"Did anything change?" he asked. "I mean, was it similar to your previous nightmares about the incident."
"That's just it," she replied. "In my previous dreams when I was a kid, things always got switched around. Sometimes it was me in the car accident. Depending on which parent I was hating most at the time, it was them. Sometimes the man's body would be dismembered and sometimes he would be driving a school bus. The dreams got so confusing that it was hard for me to remember exactly what did ha-"
"Were there snakes?" Wesley asked again, having flipped to the section of the book that dealt with bloody dreams. "In your dream, were there snakes?"
"What?!" Buffy was incredulous.
"Right," Wesley said, flipping over a page, "no snakes."
"This time it was different," Buffy said, turning back to Giles, "or it was the same, uh, I don't know. I think this time it happened exactly like it had, I think. I mean I remembered little things like playing with my seatbelt. In the past, when my dream focused on little things it was always because those little things ended up turning into something horrific. This time it was-"
"Symbols," Wesley interrupted a third time. "Where there symbols anywhere in your dream. I mean, on the dead man. Did he have-"
"Giles," Buffy pleaded.
Giles pulled out his handkerchief and began to clean his glasses. "Wesley, please."
"I'm trying to help," he pleaded.
"Your not," Giles said. He put his glasses back on. "It sounds to me like you were just having a normal nightmare."
"But the man opened his eyes at the end," Buffy said. "Everything happened like it had when I was six, but at the end of the dream the dead guy opened his eyes."
"Were they red?" Wesley asked.
Both Buffy and Giles leveled a glare at him. "Or not," Wesley said. He snapped the book closed. "I don't think there is anything in this one. I'll find another."
"Do you mean he came back to life?" Giles asked, returning to Buffy.
"I don't know. Maybe it was just death staring at me, not necessarily him. Most things I kill just turn to dust or burst into flames or get sucked into hell. There haven't been too many things I've killed that have had a chance to stare back at me."
"But you didn't kill the motorist. He died in front of you, but you didn't kill him."
Buffy thought about this for a while. "You're right. I don't see to many dead things that I haven't killed. And this guy wasn't a demon or anything. I haven't seen too many dead people-"
"The mayor's aid," Giles said, just as Buffy too thought about it.
"The look on their faces was strikingly similar," Buffy agreed. "I didn't kill him, but I had to watch him die. Do you think he might be coming back somehow?"
"I don't know," Giles said, rising from the chair, "but I'll look into it."
"Thanks," Buffy said as the bell for her first class rang.
"Maybe it refers to cars in general," Wesley said. Buffy was picking up her bag as she looked at him, expecting the watcher to be holding another book. He was not. "Maybe your dream was telling you to be wary of traveling in a car.
"Nice try," Buffy said, "but the gang and I are going to see a movie out of town, and there is no way I am not going."
"But you need to patr-" Wesley called after her, but she was gone.
* * *
Buffy sat in the back of the car, looking out the window. The scene was different from her dream, but the similarities were there. Oz's van was nice for hauling musical equipment and stolen military hardware, but it mate a lousy date vehicle. His parent's car was much nicer. The four of them were not really on a date, and Buffy had made sure of it by placing both her and Willow in the back seat. Willow had wanted to sit next Oz, but Buffy had not wanted to sit in the dark next to Xander. It was not that she did not trust him, but she did not want him to get any ideas either.
"So what did you think of the movie?" Xander asked, spinning around in his front seat to look at the girls in the back. He was holding a large cup that Oz had referred to earlier as a "Tub-O-Cola." It had the words "Free Refill" printed in big letters across its side, and Xander had made good on that offer, twice.
"It was too long," Willow said. "Plus, it made no sense why she got together with him at the end, I mean he killed her father."
"Yea but her father was the evil dictator," Xander came back, shifting in his seat a little.
"Still, he was her father, and he did treat her fairly."
"No, he was evil and heartless and ruthless and, uh, bad."
"Kinda reminds me of a mayor we know," Oz piped in.
"Still," Willow said, "she should have cried for him a little bit, I mean, granted, there wasn't a whole lot of time for her to cry with them having to disarm that nuclear weapon and all, but I mean afterwards, they just shrugged it off and fall into each other's arms. I mean no one falls in love that way, plus, who wears that kind of skin tight outfit to political convention."
"I didn't think she was invited," Oz said, "wasn't she crashing it?"
"No," Xander insisted, "she was the representative from Australia."
"But she had a British accent," Willow countered.
"I thought it was Irish," Oz said.
"No, that was that other chick who looked just like her," Xander replied.
"What movie were you watching?" Willow asked. "There was only one chick."
"She was acting undercover that other time," Oz said.
"Oh," Xander said quietly, shifting in his seat again. "That would explain why she slept with that drug dealer." He was quiet for a while. "What did you think of the movie, Buff?"
"Huh," she said, pulling herself away from the window.
"The movie," Willow said. "What did you think of it?"
"Oh, I thought the plot was ill-contrived and underdeveloped yet over-told. The characters were one-dimensional and shallow. The special effects overshadowed any acting that might have existed, and the fight scenes were poorly choreographed."
"Whoa," Xander said, turning in his seat to look directly at Buffy. "Who died and made you Roger Ebert?"
"No one," Buffy said, "but as the Slayer, someone who is blessed with super strength and agility, I can professionally say that those fight scenes were unrealistic."
"And by a freak coincidence of phrases," Oz said, "someone did die to make you the slayer."
"Hey, yea." Xander started to say, but stopped as the reality of what Oz had said sunk in. Usually he was the one who put his foot in his mouth, and he did not want to join Oz in that awkward position now.
Not only was her calling something Buffy rarely wanted, but now she realized that some other girl had died to give it to her. Buffy also knew that she was good. From what Giles had told her of other slayers and by how Spike had killed two by himself, she knew that she was better than the average Vampire Slayer. The Hellmouth required that kind of skill and proficiency and she could not help but think that fate had picked her because of that skill. If that were the case, then fate had killed the other slayer when it had so Buffy could be called. It was her fault.
The car was quiet, no one wanting to breach the subject further unless Buffy did. Willow could see the look on her friend's face and knew that was not going to happen. As Xander shifted in his seat one more time, she broke the uncomfortable silence. "Xander, can't you sit still."
"I'm sorry," he replied, shifting again, "but something is wrong with this seat."
"Or perhaps your Tub-O-Cola has turned into a Bladder-O-Cola," Oz pointed out.
"That could be it," Xander squirmed.
"I can't believe you got another refill after the movie was over," Willow said.
"But, Will, it was free. Who in their right mind would turn down this much free soda?"
"A show of hands?" Oz asked, taking one hand off the wheel to raise it in the air. Buffy and Willow did likewise.
"Okay," Xander admitted, "maybe I over did it a little, but I'm fine." A pained expression crossed his face. "Really." He shifted again. "But, Oz, just to be on the safe side . . ."
"I've got ya."
A block later, Oz guided the car into the parking lot of a restaurant. "Thanks, buddy," Xander said as he leaped out of the car, almost while it was still moving and walked/ran awkwardly into the restaurant.
"I can't believe him," Willow exclaimed as soon as he was out of the car. "He's like a kid really. Like an immature adolescent."
"Willow," Buffy said, "we are adolescents."
"Yea, but, uh, he's like a really adolescently immature kid. An immature kid who drinks too much. He just drinks and drinks and," her eyes fell on the huge cup that Xander had stuffed into the inadequate cup-holder, "and he didn't even finish." She reached for the cup and continued to berate him in between slurps.
Inside, Xander ran past the hostess like a running back dodging a defensive lineman and made a straight line for the restroom in the rear. He glanced briefly at the bar, and saw a dozen people swigging beer, and an overwhelming urge rolled through his bladder. He nearly burst right there, but he managed to squeeze it off just long enough to get himself into the bathroom and in front of a urinal.
It was like the floodgates had been opened, and the urinal flushed itself twice automatically during the discharge. Xander shuddered as the last of it was out and let go a very long sigh. He turned away from the line of urinals and saw he was alone in the bathroom and he made his way to the sink. "Who died and made you Roger Ebert," he muttered to himself. "Idiot, how could you not see where that was going to lead." He continued to scold himself as he washed his hands. As he looked up to pull a paper towel, he yelped and turned around.
Behind him stood a very haggard young man dressed in a black trench coat. He looked and smelled drunk, but his eyes seemed to hold some penetrating power as they glared into Xander. "Uh, hi," Xander fumbled, quickly side-stepping from between the stranger and the sink. "I was just finished here, uh, finished meaning done with it and you can use it now, uh, take care, bye." He left.
Outside, the three occupants of the car watched him exit the bathroom hurriedly and work his way back through the restaurant to the front door. As he got in the car, Willow saw that his hands were still wet. "You didn't even dry your hands?"
"Either that or he has lousy aim," Oz said, starting the car.
"That's gross," Willow cried.
"Hey it happens," Oz came back.
She slapped her boyfriend in the back of the head. "It does not."
"I'm just saying, he was in a hurry."
"They were out of paper towels," Xander said unconvincingly.
Willow and Oz were too busy hitting and driving respectively to hear him, but Buffy did. She could also see and hear how shaken he was. As the car pulled out of the parking lot, she looked back at the restaurant to see what could have frightened him, not that it usually took that much. She caught a glimpse of the mysterious man leaving the bathroom and an odd sensation went through her. The man seemed to sense the same thing and turned to look out of the restaurant at the departing car. Their eyes locked and Buffy gasped. It was the man from her dream. It was the dead motorist that her dad had propped up in their car's headlights. The eyes were the same that had popped open and stared into her soul.
Then he was gone. Oz had pulled back onto the highway, and Buffy could no longer see him. She just about told him to turn around, but did not. It couldn't have been him, she thought to herself. He was dead. She had seen him die. She must just be experiencing a waking nightmare. She shook her head and tried to listen to the conversation within the car. It was about peeing on things, and Buffy was considerably distracted from her other worries.
* * *
Buffy knew it was a dream this time.
She stood in the old mansion holding a sword. Though she knew it was a dream, she did not have control of it and could only see what the dream let her. She, therefore, could not look down, but some how knew she was holding the sword that Kendra had given her. It was the sword she had used to kill Angel.
A dark figure stepped into her line of vision. He held a sword too. Though she could not see this man's face, she knew it had to be Angel. The sword was the same one he had pulled from Acathla. Buffy knew that the demon statue must be behind her, the vortex even now growing.
She remembered this scene all too well. The trauma she had gone through as a child after the car accident had been nothing to the depression and trauma she had gone through after this event. It had not even been a year ago yet, but she had so distanced herself from it, with Angel back and all, that it seemed like a century ago. Now it all came flooding back to her.
As Angel walked toward her, Buffy tried to run away. She wanted to get out of this dream as fast as possible. She could not move. What kind of torture was this? Was there some demon controlling her dreams, forcing her to relive her most horrifying moments each night?
Against her will, she readied her sword as her adversary approached. They engaged. The opening volley was fast and furious, the swords seeming to come alive in their hands. Buffy still had no control, and she felt like a puppet as her body was thrown through the violent motions of the sword fight. Something was not right.
With the car crash, Buffy had not consciously remembered all of the little details of the time leading up to the accident, but when she was shown them, she knew they were exact. This was different. Buffy had been in countless fights, but few stood out in her memory like this one. She knew all the little details. These were different. This was not how it had happened. They had not been this good.
Buffy had no formal sword training, but then, as far as she knew, neither had Angel. They both were trained fighters though, with supernatural strength and dexterity. Sword fighting had not been that difficult to pick up. Now they fought as if they were grandmasters.
Buffy tried to look Angel in the face, but she could not control her vision, and the shadowy figure remained cloaked in darkness. She grew frustrated at her inability to control her actions and she fought desperately against the force in her dream that was controlling her. As if the controlling power of the dream understood her desire, it slowly relinquished its hold on her.
As Buffy began to regain her motor skills, she instantly fell behind in the fight. This attacker – she was having doubts it was Angel – was very good. If he too was regaining control of his actions as she was, it was in no way diminishing his skill. If anything, the attacks seemed to come faster and with more precision.
Even before Buffy regained all of her motor skills, she knew she could not hope to block all of the strikes. She back-peddled and ducked around and under them until she could figure out a way to get out of this situation. Her attacker did not relent and refused to give her an opening to escape through the door behind him. Seeing that she could not block his complex routines, and that he would not be able to hit her if she continued to dodge, he simplified his attacks.
Buffy was not savvy enough in swordplay to realize the change in attack had to be a conscious effort, instead she thought that she had just fell into the rhythm of the fight finally and was able to parry the blows. The dark attacker quickened his strikes, but speed was not a problem for the Slayer, and she matched tempo. The attacks were basic swipes at her torso from left and right. All Buffy needed to do was swing her sword back and forth like an inverted pendulum, and she had no problem.
Finally her attacker faltered on one of his attacks, and Buffy blocked it high on the inside, forcing it down to her foe's left side. She brought her weapon back up and in toward her enemy's unprotected chest. He was quicker, though, and had in fact set her up. His blade snapped back into place, pushing Buffy's in the opposite direction, high and to her left. Instead of attacking her vulnerable chest, as Buffy had done, he went for her left side. Buffy, with her speed, could have gotten her sword back in place to protect her front as her attacker had, but in order to protect her side, she needed to rotate the blade straight down. She released her right hand from the grip of her weapon and rotated it in and then out.
The two weapons collided, but her more skilled opponent slid his weapon to the inside of her block and flung it wide so Buffy's arm was out parallel to her shoulders. The dark man spun his blade by his side and brought it down hard on Buffy's loosely held sword, ripping it from her hand and throwing it to the ground.
Buffy froze. It was partly out of fear, but mostly because her dream had just grabbed hold of her again. Her attacker grinned. The idea confused her at first since she could not see his face, but then he stepped into some unseen light beam that illuminated his features. It was the man from her car dream and from the restaurant. Something inside of her had already figured this out, but having it revealed to her now, as she stood helpless in front of him with his sword poised at his shoulder, shook her with fear.
"There can be only one!" he screamed and swung at her head.
She sat bolt upright in her bed again, this time both hands clutching at her throat. She wanted to scream, but she could not produce a sound. It felt like her vocal cords had been severed. They had not, and as she came back down from the high of her dream, she moaned in frustration. She fell back down on her bed, and glanced at her new bedside clock. It told her she only had five minutes before she had to get up anyway. If these dreams were going to torture her each night, at least they had the decency to do it close to 7:00 so she did not have to try and go back to sleep.
She got out of bed, and on a sudden impulse gave Willow a call, hoping she would be up early too.
* * *
"So what are we looking for," Willow said as she booted up the computer in the school library. It was a good half-hour before school was going to start, and Giles must have slept in because they were alone in the library.
"When I was six I saw a man die in a car accident," Buffy said. "I've been dreaming about him lately." Buffy gave Willow the particulars of the accident such as when and where so she could begin her search.
"What kind of dreams?" Willow asked as she surfed.
"Last night he cut my head off."
"Oh, those kinds of dreams," Willow swallowed, thanking fate for the thousandth time that she was not a Slayer. "So I'm looking for a dead guy," Willow quickly got back to the point, not wanting particulars from the nightmare. She had enough of her own. Most of them dealt with vampires and demons, but a surprising amount of them contained frogs for no reason that Willow could properly grasp.
"I think he's dead," Buffy said slowly. "I thought I saw him last night in the restaurant that we stopped at for Xander."
"Oh, about last night," Willow interrupted. "Oz wanted to say he was sorry for bringing that up about someone dying to make you The Slayer."
"Oh, huh," Buffy said, having a hard time switching tracks. "Oh, that."
Willow cringed. "You had forgotten. Sorry. Now I brought it up."
"I don't know," Buffy admitted. "I've never thought about it before. It's not like I killed her. Is it?"
"Here it is," Willow said quickly, pulling up an old obituary to the screen and changing the subject. "Anthony Marcus. Died in a car accident on I-15, August 5, 1987. He's kind a cute, don't you think?"
Willow turned and saw Buffy frowning at her. She gulped. "Though . . . I suppose . . . if he is cutting off your head, you might have missed that."
"Does it say anything else about him?"
"Well the police report said he was found dead on the scene. From eyewitness reports, the accident was his fault and no one else was injured. Unsurprisingly he was drunk at the time." Willow clicked a few pages further. "Here, he was a freshman at UCLA, and he was on the football team, a defensive back, whatever that is. He was on scholarship. Ooh, this is interesting. His funeral was empty casket. Someone stole the body from the morgue. The police blamed it on gang activity in the area."
"Police are idiots," Buffy said.
"So you thinking vampire?" Willow asked.
"Could be," Buffy said, "though vampires don't usually play football at UCLA."
"Could be that he was just recently changed."
"Or somebody could have stolen his body and reanimated him," Buffy thought out loud.
"Whatever his deal is," Willow said, "why is he after you?"
"Maybe he isn't." Buffy said. "I don't know. I mean if he is a vampire, does he need a better reason than because I'm The Slayer. He did say something interesting in my dream last night. He said, 'There can be only one.'"
"One what? One slayer?"
"Yea, there is only supposed to be one slayer, but when Xander brought me back, we created two. Maybe this guy is some vampire that thinks we aren't playing fair."
"Then he should kill Faith," Willow said with more than a little venom.
"Who knows, maybe she is having the same dreams."
The two fell silent as they heard voices entering the library.
"I don't care what the counsel says, these are my books," Giles was saying.
"But you are no longer a watcher," Wesley argued back.
"But I am the librarian, and these are library books."
"Did the school pay for them?"
Giles stopped his argument when he saw Willow and Buffy were already in the library. "Good morning. What are you doing here this early?"
"Wondering where you are," Buffy said quickly walking away from the computer. She did not want to tell Giles or Wesley about her second dream just yet. She could interpret her dreams just fine without the books. "I thought you lived here."
"You know I don't, Buffy. Now why are you here?" Giles cast a glance at Willow who was busy changing sites on the internet, realizing Buffy did not want to talk to Giles about it.
"Who died to make me The Slayer?" Buffy asked instead.
"Oh," Giles said, removing his glasses and taking a seat, "that. No one died to make you The Slayer."
"Huh," Buffy said. "I thought that's how it works."
"To each generation a slayer is called," Wesley started the familiar mantra.
"Yes, yes, I know all that, in order to get a new slayer, the old one has to die, right?"
"To each generation, Buffy," Giles said. "You are your generation's Slayer."
"Actually," Wesley jumped in, "Faith is now your generation's Slayer. When you died, the line was kept alive in her through Kendra."
"But I came back," Buffy argued.
"It didn't matter, Kendra was already called." Giles said. "When, or if, Faith is killed, another Slayer will be called, but after 20 years, a new slayer will be called somewhere else."
"What if Faith, or whoever, is still alive then?"
Giles hesitated, but Wesley, lacking all tact, jumped in. "Slayers don't normally live past their 25th birthday."
"Buffy will," Willow was quick to jump in.
"She already hasn't," Wesley disagreed. "Besides, she is no longer part of the direct line. If she dies, uh, again, no new slayer will be called. But according to the books, when The Slayer turns 36, ie 20 years after the first slayer of her line is called, her powers begin to fade, and when she turns 38, they are gone. Since Buffy is no longer part of that line, there is no telling how long she will retain her powers."
Buffy chewed on this for a while. "Then why do I have them at all? I mean if when I died, they were passed on to Kendra, then shouldn't I have not had them when I woke up?"
Wesley was stumped on that one. "That is a good question."
Everyone in the room was quiet for a while. The bell rang. "I'll look into it if you want," Giles said.
"Don't worry about it," Buffy said, though it was obvious to everyone by the tone of her voice that she was worrying about it. Still lost in thought, Buffy, followed by Willow, left for class.
* * *
Anthony Marcus gasped sharply as he woke up. He was alive, again.
He lay on a pile of old lumber at the end of an alleyway that was just now brightening from the morning sun. He had passed out here last night and should not have woken up. His alcohol blood percentage had been way above the 0.4% that most doctors would tell you is lethal. He should have never woken up, but he did. Anthony was immortal.
Anthony struggled to his feet. His head was swimming. Alcohol poisoning had been his death of choice lately, and he was very frustrated to find out he still woke up with a hangover. The regenerative powers of his immortality might clear his body of the poisonous alcohol, but he was still dehydrated. As he stood, an intense nausea came over him, but he fought it down. Then he grew suddenly afraid and looked around. In his current state he would not be able to tell if another immortal drew near. The warning sensation would be indiscernible from his hangover.
He calmed when he saw no one else around. He had not sensed another immortal in several months. He thought he had last night, as he stepped out of the bathroom in the first bar he had visited, but the sensation had passed quickly, and he had ignored it.
He tried to walk, and found that as his life came back to him, his coordination became more natural. Still, as he took his first few steps his head swam. He looked around again, and this time did see someone walking toward him. Was he immortal? Would he kill him in his weakened state?
The other man was hunched over some, moving quickly toward Anthony. He reached inside his jacket, and Anthony saw the glint of the sun on steel. He had a sword! Anthony was still fighting for his balance, but some motions he had done so often that he would never forget. He reached inside his trench coat and pulled out his sword. He took two quick steps toward his adversary and swung.
The approaching man was not an immortal. He had not pulled a sword, but a long knife. He had spotted Anthony and recognized an easy mugging. He was wrong. As this stumbling drunk pulled a fabulous sword from his cloak and then moved quicker than he should have been able to, the mugger stopped still, his dagger at his side. He never had a chance.
Anthony cut his head off in a practiced motion. The other man did not even have time to cry out. Anthony dropped to his knees and held his arms up to the sky waiting for the quickening. It never came. After waiting for a full minute, he glanced down at the dead man. Blood was still pouring out of dead man's neck, and Anthony backed away to keep his clothes clean. Well, he kept them from getting bloody. They were a long way from clean.
He saw the knife lying on the pavement and realized his mistake. He shrugged. His head was clearing now, and he realized he was hungry. He stooped to relieve the dead man of his wallet, and went to find a nice restaurant.
* * *
As usual, the gang assembled after school. Buffy had found it hard to concentrate during her classes, which was not anything unusual, but thinking about what they had talked about in the morning brought even more despondence to her already vacant personality. She was looking forward to a good night of patrolling. Giles came through in prime fashion. "There's been a beheading."
"A beheading?" Xander echoed.
Buffy and Willow said nothing but exchanged knowing glances.
"Yes, someone's head was cut off this morning," Giles repeated himself. "The police have just recently started to investigate the scene. I have a scanner."
"Welcome to the twentieth century, Giles," Buffy said. "What are the details?"
Giles shrugged. "I'm not sure, but there are several demons who specialize in the removing of heads and this might be something you want to look into."
"Are ya sure?" Xander said. "I mean beheadings are pretty common around here, aren't they? I mean next to mailbox baseball, beheadings are the kids' favorite past time."
"Actually," Wesley started, but everyone gave him a look, and he caught on. "Oh, right, sarcasm. I got it."
"So," Buffy started to give orders, "I check out the scene. Willow, why don't you and Xander see if you can find any other beheadings elsewhere to see if this is something that's just cropped up or if it is someone we know." Buffy gave Willow a wink, and she understood. She would try to track down Anthony Marcus.
"Giles, you and Wesley can hit the books to see what kind of demons take-"
Buffy stopped as she heard someone enter the library. She turned to see a stranger walking toward them. "Excuse me," he said in very British accent, "is Rupert Giles here?"
"Yes I am," Giles said, peering at the visitor inquisitively. "Patrick, is that you?"
"Rupert," he said, recognition flooding over his face. The two walked toward each other quickly and looked like they might hug, but settled on a warm handshake.
"It has been a long time, Patrick, what, about 12 years?"
"Yes," Pat responded, "about that. How have you been?"
"Well, quite well," he looked around at the rest of the room and remembered for the moment that they lived on a Hellmouth. "I've managed," he settled on. "How about you? You left quite suddenly, and I never heard from you again."
"Yes, well a Watcher's duty is very demanding."
"So you were called away on business?" Giles asked. "Because some of us had our doubts. I mean you left right before the rugby finals, and our team could have really used you. It was August I think, bloody hot and all, it was a heck of a game, you-"
Buffy cleared her throat. Giles was pulled away from his reminiscing to look at her. She drew a line across her throat and made a choking noise while her head lolled to the side as if falling off.
"Uh, right," Giles said, "we kind of have work to do."
"Business?" Patrick asked in a tone of voice that told everyone he knew what they were about.
"Yes, business."
"Right," Buffy said aloud, "You two can get acquainted later, right now things are a foot. We've got work to do and it would be nice to get a HEAD start."
"Uh, Patrick Erwin," Giles said in a way of introduction, "Buffy Summers."
"Charmed," Buffy smiled and did a mock curtsey.
"Is that the . . ." Patrick started.
Giles cocked his head. "So you know?"
"When I found out you were in the area, I checked why." He turned from Giles to look at Buffy. "So you are the . . ." he let the comment go as he spotted Willow and Xander standing behind her.
"The Slayer," Willow finished for him.
"Protector of the Innocent," Xander added.
"Killer of Evil," Willow continued.
"Destroyer of the Undead."
"And rather busy at the moment," Buffy tried one last time to get everyone on track.
"We've had a beheading," Giles said to Pat.
Pat stiffened very visibly. "Uh, beheading, here?"
"Can you believe it?" Buffy said in a sarcastically innocent tone. "A peaceful town like Sunnydale. What were they thinking? Don't worry," she snapped out of it. "It's nothing to lose your head over. We are taking care of it, RIGHT GUYS!"
"Uh," Giles stammered, "yes, quite."
"Good, I'll be back in the morning to talk about what you've found." Buffy gave Giles one last look and left.
"Nothing to lose your head over?" Pat repeated.
"Yes, well, a Slayer's wit is never, uh, wet."
* * *
It was dusk when Buffy made it to the crime scene. There was not much of a crowd. Buffy had expected a throng of people to be gathered, but the population was minimal and mostly official. "Probably all getting eaten by vampires," Buffy muttered to herself. She did scan the people present though. Most were police investigators. A few photographers flashed pictures of the chalk outline and the vivid bloodstains. A few others were talking with bystanders asking what they had seen or heard. One person in particular caught Buffy's attention.
He was dressed in a dark trench coat, dark hair, and an inquisitive face. She could feel something else about him too. She could not quite place it, but she sensed something inside him. He looked up suddenly and their eyes met from across the crime scene. Then it hit her. It was the same type of feeling she had gotten last night when she thought she had seen Anthony. It was similar to what she felt when picking out a vampire from a crowd, but not identical.
The man paid a little too much attention to Buffy, and she looked away. It was not Anthony, she told herself. And she was pretty sure he was not a vampire. He was just a distraction. She was here for a different reason: the crime scene.
The first thing that struck her was how much blood there was. If Anthony had done this, and she believed he had, and he was a vampire, he sure was wasting a lot of blood. Biting someone and then cutting off his head to disguise the bite marks seemed a little out of the way. Buffy could see why a vampire would do that in another town to hide their presence, but in Sunnydale, it seemed a bit ridiculous. She imagined that here killers who were not vampires probably jabbed forks into their victims' necks just to make it look normal.
Still, if this was a special vampire out to reduce the number of Slayers, it was possible he was not in the loop and had his own methods. Still, it was a lot of blood. She knew that an alcoholic's blood did not clot well, and this victim's blood could have drained long after he was killed. Still . . .
Buffy looked at the outline to see how the dead man had been standing when he had been killed. If his neck had been drained locally before the beheading, there would be no spray, if it had not been drained . . . Buffy knelt next to a dumpster, looking at the vivid red spots that were streaked across it. She glanced back at the chalk outline a good twenty feet away. That was quite a distance. She looked back at the spray pattern. This Anthony was definitely aggressive and either not a vampire or not very hungry.
"Is that blood?" a voice asked from behind her.
Without looking, Buffy knew it had to be the trench coat. "Let me guess," she said, reaching into her coat and closing her fingers around a stake, ready to lash out behind her if he answered wrong, "you can smell it?"
A very puzzled expression crossed the man's face. "No, it's red." Buffy relaxed. "If you don't mind me asking," he continued, "you seem a bit more interested in this situation than the average bystander."
"And if I do mind you asking?" She said, as she stood, still not turning to face him. As she stood she noticed blood on the wall next to the dumpster as well. This was quite the spray.
The trench coat saw it too. "A typical sweeping arc," he said. "The attacker was taller, or perhaps the victim was on his knees. By the size of the blood spots, I'd say the attacker was quite fit. He is also right handed."
"Good," Buffy said, barely listening to the observations, "if one of the suspects has a profile that contains the words 'Bats Left' I'll be sure to cross them off the list." She stepped over a pile of garbage that had spilled out of the dumpster and no one had bothered to replace and moved next to the wall.
"Why are you interested in this?"
This guy was not going to give up, was he? Buffy finally turned around. "What, I don't look like a special investigator to you? Just because I'm not tall, dark, and mysterious doesn't mean I can't be interested in the super-natural too. Being short, blonde, and obvious has its advantages."
Now that she had a chance to look at him closer, she knew he was not a threat. He had a gentle face and a disarming composure. He wore a solid green sweater and dark jeans under his trench coat. He also wore a puzzled expression. At least he tried to make it look puzzled. Buffy saw through it. "Who said anything about the super-natural? The cops said the victim was robbed."
"Yea, by a real cocky mugger, and nothing says 'Nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah, nyah,' like cutting the victim's head off," Buffy turned back to the wall, "with what must have been a really big sword."
"From the pattern, it was a curved blade," the trench coat added.
Buffy had had enough. "Okay buddy, who are you?"
"Duncan," he replied.
"The . . ."
"The?" he asked.
"Yea, you guys always have these made up titles, you know like Bob the Demon Hunter or Mickey the Giant Killer. So what is it? Duncan the . . ."
"Just Duncan," he said. "And you?"
"Buffy."
"The?"
"Just Buffy," she said. "So why are you interested in this?"
"I'm after the one who did it," Duncan said.
"Out of the goodness of your heart, or some other reason?"
"We have business."
"What kind of business? What, do you work for the IRS and this guy owes eleven and a half years of back taxes?"
Duncan flinched, and Buffy saw it. Eleven and a half is not a common number by any stretch of the imagination. It was, by no coincidence, the amount of time that Anthony Marcus had been immortal. Eleven and a half years ago, Buffy had seen him die. She was hoping for a reaction and was not disappointed. "Something like that," he replied.
"Well you better hope you find him first, because if I do, you are going to have to sift through the dust to find his wallet."
The thrust of the threat was lost on Duncan, but he understood its meaning. She meant to kill him. Buffy no longer thought Anthony was a vampire, and turning him to dust was not a viable option anymore, but she was happy to see the confused look cross Duncan's face. He was not familiar with vampires. He also was not going to give her any useful information.
"So don't get in my way," Buffy said as she walked passed him toward the entrance to the alley. "And change your clothes. I've never seen anyone look so obviously suspicious in my life. I mean what are with the trench coats and you people? Is it a requirement? Full marks on the sweater, but you suck at under cover. And remember, this is my town and I don't want yo-"
She moved out of earshot and Duncan MacLeod let her go. She seemed confident enough, and he could sense the power in her, but Anthony Marcus was no one to mess with. This beheading here was nothing. If anything, it foolishly gave away his presence. By the condition of the relatively undamaged alley, there had been no quickening, meaning the victim was not immortal. Still, if Anthony had killed Kelron, he was someone to be careful around. Duncan would just have to make sure he found him first.