Disclaimer: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1.
SHADOWED SOULS Part 3
Chapter 2
"Kill me or release me," Wesley ordered, "because I don't have time for this." Heedless of the stake pressing into his jugular, he moved forward.
Justine backed up, lowering the stake but still looking at him like a T-Rex eyeing up the juicy humans in Jurassic Park; she adopted an atrocious attempt at an aristocratic English accent, "Oh come on, I bet the scar has all the girls just panting for a good old British jolly roger...ing."
Wesley didn't respond to this, instead reloading the spring-loaded retractable stake before pulling his jacket down to cover his forearm. He began to walk forward, but his Watcher training wouldn't quite let him just go. The Watchers had been created for the Slayer, after all. "Go to Sunnydale," he advised. "What you need to know is there."
Justine snorted. "Kill vampires and demons? I think I've grasped the concept, thanks anyway."
Wesley raised one eyebrow. "Do you really think if it were that simple I'd be stood in this alley today?"
"I bet the reason you're in this alley has everything to do with your pet vampire, and not a lot to do with Slayers." Justine riposted. "And like I said, doing okay so far – I've dusted fifteen vamps in the three weeks I've been dumped with this gig."
Wesley paused. "You've been a Slayer for three weeks?"
"Yeah," Justine shrugged. "Silly me, decided to take your advice – never going to make that mistake again – and live a life. Nice little duplex in suburbia, wonderfully dull admin job with Fox Studios, then one night – whammo – I get this cramp in my toes and then I collapse on the carpet writhing with multiple-orgasms. When I manage to wipe the silly grin off my face and clamber back to my feet, I discover I need never worry about opening a pickle jar again, courtesy of the biceps of steel." She flexed her arm mock-dramatically like an old Mr Universe competitor.
"'The Slayer dies, the next Slayer is Called.'" Wesley unconsciously quoted the old adage. "The Oligarchs killed Fallon Mady, and you were Called. But why not when Buffy used the Scythe last year?"
"Whoa. Who? Did what?" Justine scowled.
"But being a Slayer is simple." Wesley commented blandly.
Her hand tightened round the stake again. "Maybe I should extend that scar on your neck for you."
"Maybe you should jettison that attitude you have and try to learn something for a change." Wesley retorted. "I'm not expending valuable oxygen I could be using for better things telling you this because I like you. I'm a – I was – a Watcher. It was my job to help a Slayer."
Justine looked him up and down. "Yeah right, I've been reading those Watcher Diaries on the 'Net. Real hard life for you; talk about gift-wrapped – a bunch of guys with a legitimate reason to spend their lives ogling teenage girls."
Without a word Wesley crossed the road to his car. Before he could open the driver door, Justine was there, her face twisted like she'd just bitten into a raw lemon. "Okay! Okay! Please tell me what's going on, O Oracle of all Wisdom and Knowledge."
Explaining the edited highlights about Buffy Summers, the Scythe, the First Evil and the Potentials, Wesley finished up by summarising the history of the Slayers. He mentioned the institutionalised Slayer Dana Parvati, stopping when Justine's face became stricken.
"Dreams? Race memories?" The bitter woman turned her back on him and began to walk away, hugging herself in the classic self-defence gesture.
Silently cursing the sense of duty that wouldn't just let him walk away from the psychotic woman who had, after all, slit his throat and left him to die, Wesley went after her. "Justine…"
"That was Julia."
"I don't understand?" Wesley waited, though he was aware of time going by – he'd just explained the Slayer oeuvre and even sticking to the Cliff Notes it was a longer than ten-minute job; the defining moment of Justine Cooper's life had been the murder of her twin sister Julia by vampires. Everything she said, did and even thought revolved around that event, like planets orbiting a sun.
"Julia and I were identical twins, and I mean identical. Half the time not even our parents could tell us apart." Justine said quietly, staring vacantly at the LA cityscape. "We were the stereotypical peas in a pod, except for one thing - Julie's night terrors."
"She had bad dreams." It was a statement, not a question.
"She had bad movies in her head – as in bring popcorn and sit down for a couple of hours – they were narratives with coherent plot and dialogue." Justine grimaced. "By the time we were three, mom and dad had taken to putting the kitchen cutlery in locked drawers because they were so used to coming downstairs in the middle of the night and finding Julie standing in the middle of the kitchen, eyes wide open but staring at nothing, wielding a steak knife as she fought 'monsters' only she could see and hear. Other kids used to cry if they saw a horror movie; at five years old Julie would sit there trying to give the actors instructions on how to kill the chomp thing. We had a friend, Jaycie, whose dad was some Delta Force or 'black ops' Special Forces guy – he sat there with us one day and couldn't get over this little girl having more savvy about special ops' tactics than some of the trained soldiers in his unit. When we were seven we went to Marseilles, in the south of France, for a vacation, first time ever outside the US of A – Julie suddenly started spouting French like a native, with a Breton accent no less – Brittany is in north west France. Scared the hell out of us."
"Is that when your parents sent her to a psychiatrist?" Wesley judged perceptively.
"Yeah. He said that Julie was otherwise healthy but incredibly over-imaginative, and she would probably grow up to be a millionaire novelist." She snorted, "In other words he had no idea what was going on, but by that time, Julia was learning to live with it anyway. I knew the weird dreams and her suddenly acting as if she were somebody else entirely never went away, but from that age she disguised them so well that half the time she didn't even notice herself. Mum and Dad and our family were just so relieved she'd 'grown out' of the 'phase' finally they ignored her occasional slips that showed she hadn't."
"And after she died, you began to dream…?"
"No. Those blood-drenched, starkly terrifying fun-fests started last year. I was just trying to deal with them when I got all Slayered."
Wesley put the pieces together. Julia had been the Potential, but to paraphrase Spike, until and unless she became a Slayer, she was just a slightly unusual Happy Meal on legs, like the rest of humanity. When Buffy used the Scythe, Julia was already long dead; the extremely close match of their DNA meant that Justine had been caught by the mystical ripples caused by Willow's sorcery with the Scythe.
"So…I'm Justine, the Vampire Slayer." She smiled at him, suggestively. "Maybe you ought to tell Angel to be careful."
"Why? There's nothing for him to worry about here." Wesley slapped her down. "Go to Sunnydale, don't go to Sunnydale, I don't have time to care."
"Surely you're my Watcher?" Justine said coolly.
Unable to avoid giving forth a startled laugh, Wesley looked at her incredulously. "I don't think so."
"It doesn't strike you as a bit coincidental that when this Fallon girl was killed the next Slayer Called just happened to be a Potential on your doorstep: Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Watcher?"
"I'm not a Watcher anymore."
"Maybe you're supposed to be."
Wesley moved into her path and faced her, not backing down from the mockery in her green eyes. "You think you have some profound insight?"
Justine folded her arms. "You're always singing from the Redemption song sheet, Wes' – on Angel's behalf. Holtz constantly said: Know thine enemy, so last year I dug up the skinny on you, old boy. You didn't leave the Watchers - you were thrown out. Tell me, what happens if all this scuttlebutt going around the demon underground about Angel actually does come off and he actually gets to go Pinocchio and become a real boy - again? What do you do then?"
"That's irrelevant."
"In the Big Picture, I'm sure it is, but it's sure as hell not irrelevant to you. You've got a second chance at being a proper Watcher standing right here in front you. A golden opportunity to collect brownie points, the chance to prove you can walk the walk as well as talk the talk on a plate. This is your chance to stick two fingers up at the Watchers Council and wave the big banner: REDEMPTION for yourself and not just Angel. Are you really just going to walk away? Can you?"
To be continued in Chapter 3…© 2005 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers