Chapter 10: "Got like, facets and stuff."
Last place they hit was Perditions, partly to give Abby a view of the non-hostie scene, and partly to let Faith wind down a bit. She really wasn't expecting any info there, yet.
She gave the bartender a not-unfriendly wave as she came in, a couple of vampires a Look that caused them to decide to finish their blood-toddies and leave abruptly, and led Abby off to the back table. The brown skinned demon smiled wide with far too many teeth as they reached his table. His bodyguards/button men nodded, but remained expressionless.
"Slayer." He set his fork down in a plate of what looked-and-smelled suspiciously like lasagna. Faith's stomach growled. He looked at Abby. "Slayer-s."
Faith smiled. "This is the new Sheriff in town once I move on. Try to not let her get broken. I'd be displeased."
He nodded and put out a hand. "Vince Kronenen. Call me Vince."
Abby raised an eyebrow, but put her own hand out. The night's previous experiences hadn't prepared her for the cautiously friendly vibes given off by both this demon and the bartender. "Whistler. Pleezeta meetcha." She made it come out not-unfriendly, but put just a touch of sarcasm into it. The demon's grip was warm, and he didn't make it a strength show.
"Heh. I like her, she's got attitude," He glanced at Faith. "Sit. Something to eat?"
She pulled over a chair, and gave his plate a dubious look, raised an eyebrow. He laughed, "Beef, chicken, pasta. Swear."
"Cool. I could eat."
He made a motion to one of his err... men, and held up two fingers. The button-thing nodded and got up, heading for the back. "We have a pretty good Italian kitchen in the back. Not for customers usually, but I like to eat good, and like my help and guests to do so."
Faith nodded as the bartender brought over a couple of dark beers. She twisted off the top of one, and took a deep swig. "Ahhh."
"Heard you've been having a busy night, Slayer."
"Naw. I've been having fun," she grinned. "They've been hopping."
He grinned back. "Was thinking on calling." She raised an eyebrow and he went on. "Dunno if it fits in anywhere, but rumor has it that the Hellmouths at Chicago and Cleveland spiked recently, and then died down to lower levels. Several days apart. That mean anything?"
"Hrmm... " Faith considered. "No idea." She made a mental note to check with Vi and confirm it. And run it past Wesley. "But it's something."
He shrugged. "You said 'anything'."
"'Preciate it."
Food came after a bit, and they passed the time with small talk. A week ago, Abby'd have found 'small talk' with a demon to be beyond bizarre - still did - but it felt weirdly comfortable once she learned to damp down the tingle along her nerve endings. Threaten and kill demons, eat, chat, joke, and drink with other ones. 'Vince' seemed charming and personable in a brutal sort of way... not what she would have expected from the type of things she'd seen Faith kill with remorseless lethality earlier.
And the brown skinned thing seemed to be oddly comfortable sitting and joking with someone who'd walked into one place earlier and left it uninhabited by anything of his kind except the dead and dying.
After a time, Faith pushed her chair back and said, "We're motoring. Thanks for the tip."
"Hey - least I could do. You left me a LOT of business opportunities to pick up tonight." He winked. "Stay tight, Slayer. Don't die."
"No worries. Ruins your day. Laterz."
When they got back to the compound, Blade and King were still out. Faith yawned, stretched, and stated she was going to grab a shower. They agreed they could trade tales with the others after they woke up. Abby thought about it... but decided her questions on Vince and Perditions could wait. She had a lot of other, more important stuff, in her head to sort out, anyway.
Getting ready for bed, she wondered at herself. Getting almost as bad as B with the long speeches. But she'd never really had anyone to talk to about this stuff before... not really. Faith hit the mattress after showering and was out almost before her eyes shut.
The Dream was always the same. She'd been through enough repetitions that she was coming to recognize that, by now. They were trying to hold the Gates of Hell, keep them from opening all the way. Making sure the crunchies made it clear before those Gates came open all the way and all freaking Hell broke loose. And losing the battle: there was too damned many of them, not enough of them, and the fucking winches were too heavy for mortal hand and sinew to turn. She screamed in frustrated rage and whirled and slashed and killed, not enough, never enough, but it made the hellspawn mutter and swirl away until the press of their fellows forced them back into the range of her blades to die. She was the Thing the Darkness Feared, and they damned well knew it and didn't want a piece.
More were coming though, bigger bads that didn't know enough to fear, and the best they could hope for was that their loved ones made use of the time they bought and made it clear.
She had armor somehow, of black. All dark leather plate, with chain and gilded with gold and metal trim. Damned good thing, for even with it she was cut and bleeding from a dozen places by the things it hadn't stopped. Moeller axe and darkling sword whirled in a deadly blur of steel and ichor, dancing as they bit.
That face again, glimpsed through the dark and the mean and the bloody, curious eyes meeting her own. And then was gone, a knot of pit-things roiling between with Spike in the middle of it giving tooth and claw and blade back to them for all he was worth. Obviously having the time of his unlife, all the while. Damn' Powers. She was going to have to tell them they need to put labels on their puppet strings.
But not now, never now. No time for that and there wouldn't be time, ever, if they went down. She wiped blood from her eyes with the back of a hand, and drove herself back to it, sword and axe blurring...
Giles pushed his glasses back up on his nose, hair wild. Then went back to beating demonlings to death with the stump of a shattered crossbow. Not Giles. Ripper. Having wayyy too much damned fun for any librarian. And then a huge head, no - three - canine and scaled, came thrusting up through the gap in the Gate, clawed feet splattering hellings and defenders alike. She leaped into the gap, not sure what the fuck to do about it, but game-all for trying.
Abby pushed in beside her, that damned UV-Arc slicing through a tree trunk leg and drawing a hell shattering howl from the thing. Looking a little white around the edges: hell on wheels for vamps, but this whole demons and 'Stopping-the End-of-All' thing had her a bit wigged. She scraped up reassurance she didn't feel and shoved it into a blazing grin and said, "Welcome to your first Apocalypse, kiddo. Don't die: I hear it absolutely ruins your fucking day."
"Are they always like this?" She gasped out, slicing the forked tongue out of a snapping head, ducking teeth.
Faith narrowed her eyes, buried a blade haft deep in the brain of a head that dipped too low as she leapt over it. It shrieked like a dying locomotive and the lights went out in the eyes. "Naw. Apoco-scale of one to ten, this one's about... a 12.5." She ducked, flashed a smirk at the girl. "But I hear they get worse the longer you last"
She laughed, spattered with blood and ichor. They'd lost sight of Blade and King, long ago. Knew they still lived, from the slayer feel. "You are fucking Insane!"
She jerked her head towards the feeling non-combatants. "Goes with the Calling. We fight and die, so they can live." She leapt and slashed again, slicing a long gash across a massive throat, dropping another massive head onto the ground. Blocking just a bit more of the gap: buying that much more bloody space that someone else didn't have to die holding. "It's not just a Job, it's no pay and all the demons you can kill. Double your misery back if you're not satisfied."
She stepped back, absently decapitated a spawnling that tried to scramble over a head and past. Nodded decisively. "But it's damned fucking satisfying."
Blade made his re-entry then, burying sword with a full body-strength strike into a remaining head and dropping it into the gap. Ripping it free and standing, rolling his shoulders with a growl. She jumped up on the head, from there to the high mound of hairy scaled shoulders. Looked out over the terraced depths of The Pit and the roiling waves of hellspawn still coming.
"We gotta close those damned Gates," She slumped, massively tired, and no rest for the wicket in sight.
"I'm open to suggestion."
"Heh. Me too.."
She could feel that damned sword from here. Waves of power roiling off of it, as black as the hell spawned metal of its forging. Hungry. And the albino that wielded it, weaving it in slow arcs of warning that cleared a space not even hellspawn wanted to venture near. They didn't want to Know. She shuddered as that ravenous power flowed past her, licked her soul and yearned for a deeper taste. Beyond it, dwarven strength added itself to the windlass, and that of a big, big man with more than Human strength and all-too-Human soul. And the winched turned, just a fraction - and one of the Gates creaked an inch more shut. Hellspawn wailed in dismay and surged forward, to be met by a wave of mini-Slays and all too mortal, all-too-spent heroes.
A rare break in the killing field revealed dark leather-woman, sans balls of light, arguing with a lean, muscular looking fellow. Black and gray in fairly archaic pattern covered him, with a heavy-bladed rapier at his hip. A pair of winged lizards with far too intelligent eyes rode on his shoulders, and there was a sense of far too many weapons concealed under that cloak. She couldn't make out their words over the sounds of combat...
And He was there, 'I'm still fine so the World's ok' smirk intact in spite of the dripping ichor covering his blade arm to the shoulder, and the bone-deep, soul-deep tired in his laughing eyes. A nod and a sigh, a rolling of the shoulders. "Other one's not going to shut from here," he mused to the elf. He locked eyes with hers. "You with?"
She nodded. Why the hell not? "Who the fuck are you, mister?"
"I'm not the Cheese. And you're still not moving your buns."
"Bastard."
She almost saw it, then, and then waking snatched it out of her mind's eye's grasp...
"Sum total of fuck-all abides," she mumbled. Sat up wild eyed. "What?"
"Jeeze," groaning. "I'm really beginning to hate this."
Waayyyyyyyyy too early to be up after last night, but no chance of getting to sleep again. She made coffee, ate, and sat browsing news for awhile. Cleaned and sharpened her weapons. Called Vi to confirm the tidbit on the Hellmouths spiking, exchanged some discussion on the latest dream, and then both hung up with a growl of shared frustration. Called Wes and filled him in, making sure she hit every detail, cut the call short on any of the usual banter.
Data data everywhere, and not a clue in sight. Blue sky pieces all. Dammit.
Dammit to hell, for that matter... and wasn't that all too close to the possible for comfort? She growled and lost herself in a frenzy of katas and weapon drills in the gym.
She was almost glad when her phone went off while she was testing the upper limits of Blade's weight machine. Not the council phone, but her new Trac. She glance at the call-ID and hit the answer button.
"Little-D. What's up?"
The girl sniggered on the other end. "Oh... other than me and everything even semi-sane within a hundred mile radius digging foxholes and pulling them in behind us to keep out of the blast radius, not much."
Snork. "B's having a ment, huh? And you can tell from the smoke and sparks that it, like, shorted something?"
splutter "Clairvoyance now, huh? 'Swami Fai sees all'? What the hell did you say to her last night, anyway?"
"Didn't take clair-V," Faith shrugged. "Gave her a reality check. She called. We had a short sharp chat and only one of us enjoyed it. Clue: it wasn't her."
"Ha. That'd do it. Sometimes reality and my sister both have sharp corners that don't mesh." Dawn laughed. "You ok?"
"No. Now I'm frustrated and pissed. Had another dream last night, and woke up just when I think it was starting to click." Faith sighed. "Driving me buggy."
"Short walk. No need to drive."
"Thanks ever so." She grinned. "You call for something, or just wanted to send your last will to someone before big-sis paves you over while she's what we laughingly call 'thinking things through'?"
"Wanted to see if you had anything yet," Dawn sighed. "Genius here drawing blanks so far."
"Join the Club. Wes and Fred aren't having any joy either." Faith snorted. "Looks like the Finest Minds in Universe are leaving it to Deadliest Babe in Leather to figure. We're allll dooooooommed," she intoned.
Laugh, "Naw. Something will break. Vi shot me the info you snagged on the Hellmouths spiking. It checks: both of them suddenly put out a lot more power, according to the people there, and then suddenly died back down to less than a quarter of the intensity they'd had before. Almost like someone fired them up, drained them, and shut them down. Briefly drew lots of vamps and demons, they've been hopping. But no signs of who, and no rituals performed at either."
"Hrrmmm... " Faith frowned. "That possible?"
"Shouldn't be." Dawn sighed. "But so far nothing about this matches anything we know as 'should be possible'. Describe the Dream?"
"Hrrm. Waiting for people to wake up so we can trade tales and events, brainstorm. Shouldn't be much longer... " She thought. "Why don't I get Wes to shoot you the detailed descriptions of all of them over the wire? He's got them all so far."
"Works. I like detailed data, even when it doesn't make sense. Want me to let you go?"
"Yah. Best." Faith nodded. "Laters."
Hrrrm. Occurred to her that for someone who's 'lone wolfing it', she'd been spending a lot of time having conversations. And that might bear having a ment on sometime. She snorted, and found a place to plug in her laptop.
She spent most of the rest of the morning into early afternoon jotting down details from all of the Dreams, and all of what pitiful little data they'd encountered into a document file, and then arranging and rearranging it into lists. Not really working at anything - just the computer equivalent of 'thinking out loud'. Moving stuff around and seeing where it fits, what kind of images it jelled, if any. She wasn't anything close to a computer wiz, or a 'hacker', not like Dawn or Fred... but she got by as far as the basic stuff. And this was pretty basic.
She was staring off into space, not-watching a movie on one of the satellite channels when the others started drifting in. One pot of coffee ahead of them already. Hannibal waved, grunted, and went to start another pot, sipping the dregs of the previous one while he waited for it to drip. Abby coming in shortly after, yawning. Blade ambled in a bit later, looking annoyingly far too wide awake for someone who'd just got up. She passed the time between staring at the computer screen, and quietly watching them go about their morning routines.
Watching the easy familiarity and almost visible connectedness there was both all too comfortable and gave her a pang in the gut, almost out of nowhere, that she didn't want to think about. 'oh. So that's what family looks like. I didn't know.' She swallowed it away with cold coffee and went back to work. Not important.
They traded information and events from the previous night, catching everyone up. Faith let Abby carry most of the effort of relating their end of the night's work, interjecting only to provide details Abby'd missed, or her impressions of things that the girl didn't have the background to interpret. She caught-and-ignored the occasional glances of near disbelief King slipped at her during Abby's recital, at times when he thought she wasn't watching. Blade and King's night sounded like it'd pretty well paralleled theirs, minus a few events. She picked up after, relating the latest installment from Slayervision.
After, they'd mused around on various ways it might all click together, and then broke to do separate things. Blade wandered out to where ever it was he went doing things in the day, while Abby went to the computer banks and started searching. Faith went back to staring at her lists and document screen, trying to make sense out of them. Gave it up.
Finally wandered over to where King'd settled in at his workspaces, taking apart and working on the firearms collection. Not picking things up and being a 'fuckwith' today out of boredom, just watching him work.
'Man thinks with his hands,' went through her mind. She lost herself for a time, watching the sure, deft, precise movements. She'd always enjoyed seeing someone who was good, doing what they were good at. It startled her when he suddenly asked her, "See anything that interests you?"
Brrr. 'Get out of my head, King,' she thought.
"Lots," she said. "But nothing that really grabs me there." She made an encompassing gesture across the table. "Never really been gun people, y'know?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Not a hopolophobe, obviously, though. Don't tell me: 'Guns are bad, should be banned!' But swords and knives are like, different and shit." He laughed.
She snorted. "Put your right-wing back in your pants, La Pierre. Didn't say I didn't like them. Just said I'd never had much use for them."
"Heh. Down, Quigley." He grinned, unoffended. "And it'd be Cooper - Wayne La Pierre's a sellout. NRA's for losers who think you need 'permission' for Rights. So... not much use? What then?"
She shrugged, "Never been around guns much. Never had anyone show me anything about them. Never really have fired one much." She looked pointedly at the one he was disassembling, "And I know enough about them to know that not knowing makes it all too easy to accidentally hurt yourself or someone else. Knowledge is Power, what you don't know about can hurt you. Or someone else."
He nodded, "Ok, I was wrong. That's a good attitude."
She quirked an eyebrow then. Wouldn't have figured him for someone who could toss out an 'I was wrong' that casual, like it meant nothing. She nodded. "'Sides. For a lot of what I deal with, guns aren't much use. Bullets only piss them off."
He did cock an eyebrow then, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest and eying her.
"What?"
He shook his head. "Been around you for what, several days now? You've watched us working? I know you're not dumb, Faith, no matter the act you give out."
"Huh?" She boggled. Made a conscious effort to bite down something sarcastic, and folded her arms across her chest and regarded him back. "So explain it to me, Watson."
"You know we use guns, right? Me, Abby, Blade. According to Abby's recap of last night, you saw a number of demons carrying firearms, yes?"
She nodded, slowly. "Yes... ?"
"You figure that what... majority of demons in that underworld are going to be just like human mobsters in some ways, right: they deal with humans, but the majority of their violence is going to be 'Scumbag Kills Scumbag, No Humans Involved', other demon mobsters, right?" He nodded. "Think they're going to bother lugging around something that doesn't work? Organized crime isn't stupid, human or supernatural."
She wrinkled her forehead. Made sense. "K. Never really thought it through, I guess. So what're you telling me?"
He cocked his head, considering. "Ok... why do Slayers mostly use melee weapons?"
"Crossbows, bows, and throwing stuff too, but yeah... Hrrmm." She thought about it, looking inside and examining her own preferences she'd never really thought about, trying to work out the 'why's' behind them. "Ok... " She ticked off on her fingers. "We're trained that way, most of us. We have an affinity for weapons and hand-to-hand: like I said, we can pick up combat styles and weapons just by watching techniques, or with only a bit of instruction. Plus... I'm not sure what the slayer essence is, but I know it is predator: it seems to like the 'up close and personal, get into the guts and gore thing'. If we don't keep control, we fall into that too, lose our brains. No thought, just 'Rend. Tear. Beat. Kill.'"
She paused, then continued. "And like I said, bullets don't really work on a lot of things. So watchers concentrate on what works, and train us in that."
He snorted, "Sounds like from what you've said, for some pretty smart guys, a lot of Watchers don't use their damned brains much."
"Heh." She laughed. "I won't argue." She thought for a moment, "And from a few things I gathered, there's a theory that we're not supposed to use modern weapons, because that ups the stakes and upsets the balance, so lore has it that there was an agreement long ago to keep things on a more medieval level. No arms race." She remembered Wes using a shotgun in that wild hunt for Angelus...
"Ok... " He looked thoughtful, "That makes no sense. I've yet to see licks not use human society and human tech, except for the ones that are so old they're more comfortable with ancient stuff."
She snorted, "I never bought that one either, but I didn't have anything to counter with, so I let it go. My theory is that most demons are too stupid for much past 'Beat. Smash. Kill.' and minions are idiots. A rock is 'high tech' to a majority of them." She grinned.
He laughed, "Hell, I know people that rocks have too many moving parts for." He considered. "Ok. Since you've stated you don't know anything about firearms, I'm going to break it down carefully. I am not talking down to you. I'm explaining things you don't have the concepts for in a way that they make sense, right? Don't hit," he grinned.
"Ha." She nodded, fascinated.
"You know what kills vampires, both types, now: fire, sunlight, silver, wood, decapitation, sanctified items..." He paused. "Run down for me what kills most demons? I know that your blades aren't just steel, but beyond that, I'm the one without the concepts."
She raised an eyebrow at that, but ran down a list of common demon types and their vulnerabilities, and then some of the more uncommon and esoteric ones. "Had access to the IWC databases right now, could show you files."
He nodded. "Good enough, anyway. For the stuff that takes something really strange, like beating it with a sheep soaked in dragons bane or whatever, doesn't matter: you can plan for the exceptions - principle is you look for what covers the majority of situations. Like your silver melded blades, no?" She nodded.
"All right." He reached over and picked up a large handgun, broke it open and showed it to her with the cylinder out. "A Taurus .44 Magnum revolver with a concentrated UV-laser sight. Good choice because it has a large enough bore-size to handle a lot of ammunition choices." She nodded.
He continued: "A firearm is a launching platform, right? All a gun does is load and fire a projectile. Like a crossbow, bow, or rocket launcher. It's the projectile that really does the work. A firearm without ammo isn't even a good club. With me so far?"
She smirked. "Five-by-five."
Grin. "That's important. Means that as long as you can figure out what you need to do the job, if you can make it fire, you can load whatever the hell you need. Firearm is a launcher, firearms load cartridges, cartridges contain propellant and bullets. Bullets hit target."
"Give tarmangani battle yell, party much after." She snickered. He laughed. "Makes perfect sense... but not if you'd never been shown any of it."
He nodded. "Ok. So." He brought up a manual page on the computer screen, showed it to her, picked up an example of it off the table and handed it to her. "A mag-safe bullet. Used for shooting things where you don't want the projectile going through them and killing a bystander three blocks away. Jacket, filled with a jell, which is filled with small shot. Goes in, jacket breaks up, shot chews up the innards. Not much penetration." He picked up a thicker plastic cylinder. "Sabot slug. Plastic casing with a shotgun slug in the center. Used for firing small things through a larger bore size." He twisted the cylinder apart and showed her the wasp-waisted slug inside, then gestured around the bench. "Manuals, components, tools, moulds, reloading presses, measures, propellants, lathes, swaging dies, computer with database and ballistics programs: everything you need to make one of these do whatever you want within reason." He picked up a cartridge and waved it.
She leaned on the counter with an elbow, fascinated. Studied him for a moment, then widened her eyes slightly. "You're a Geek!" she said, accusingly. "Abby's a tech geek, you're a Gun Geek! Cool!" She grinned.
"Hey! Am not!"
"S'cool," she said. "I like geeks. Geeks are cool. Geeks make the world work. Wesley's a book Geek. Watchers are Geeks: feed Slayers 'how to seek, find, kill' info. Knowledge is Power. What you don't know Kills. Don't Die." She nodded decisively, "I just never knew there was geek-shit involved with firearms. Or an entire world of geeks and geek lore associated with them. Cool."
"Heh. If you only knew." He laughed. "But we won't get in that deep for now. We're interested in how to kill shit." Grinning.
"Heya, don't stop now. Take me all the way, baby," she smirked.
ahem "So you see where I'm going now," he blinked, continued. Ballistics gel is a rubbery stuff made with water and a chemical. Can take a bullet jacket, fill it with dense wooden and silver shot, and ballistics gel mixed with holy-water, and it'll annoy hell out of both types of vampire. As long as you can get the weights, velocities, and propellant charges right. Lathe-turn projectiles out of a heavy dense wood like lignum vitae, tulip wood, or ironwood, and make 'stake sabot rounds'. Silver bullets... can get the silver consecrated first if you can find a priest that's nuts, and even make a mould that'll indent a cross in a flat bullet nose. Or swagged jacketed soft points Solid bronze, for things you mentioned that require that. Incendiaries exist already... " He looked at the table. "We already have silver bullets and 'Sun-dog' rounds: projectiles that penetrate and set off a concentrated UV-laser burst inside. Works great on leeches."
"Tease." She laughed. "Can see now that if I ever get involved with a slayer school again, I'm going to need to stock it with gun geeks and gear." Grin.
"Couldn't hurt."
"Makes sense, when you know how it works and put it all together. Where'd you learn all this, anyway?" She asked. "And how come no one ever bothered to explain it all like that before?"
"Mostly from friends who were into guns. Got interested, starting reading... one thing led to another." He waved at the workspace. "As for the other? You grew up in Boston, right?"
She nodded. "Mostly."
"Insane gun laws and attitudes toward firearms. Not much chance to get into shooting if you're a kid. Not many places to shoot." He grinned. "If it'd been a ranch in Montana or Colorado, you'd probably have grown up around firearms and all this'd be old hat."
"Ha! Can just picture me with horses and cows, dude. Yipie kiyay muthafuck." She cocked her head. "Ok, so pretty much, as long as you're careful with the components, you can load pretty much anything into a cartridge and fire it. And tailor it to what you're trying to shoot. Simple, not easy, right?" He nodded. "Would imagine the really hard part then is making sure you're loaded with the right thing at the time... " she paused, thinking, "or just make sure you cover for the most likely targets and improvise on the special cases. Like always. Vamps and typical demons... silver, wood, and iron." She raised an eyebrow. "Gun's a platform, right? Can you alternate loads in the same firearm, say... the mag-safe you mentioned and sabot/stakes? Or sabot-silver-sabot-silver?"
"Yeah. But your point of impact changes unless you load the cartridges carefully to shoot together, and that's hard. Revolver's easiest for that: semi-auto's are a bit finickier about ammo." He considered. "You seem to pick up on things like this pretty fast when you get the chance," he cocked his head, smiling.
She laughed and struck and insouciant pose. "That's me. Fast. Gots like, facets and shit. Hidden depths." She grinned, but there was a smirk behind the eyes that belied the easy quip.
"That you do." He nodded, thinking: 'Absorbs and thinks through the implications, and fast. So who ever managed to beat into this girl that she was stupid? And why didn't someone beat the crap out of them for it?' She managed to fit in well here when she relaxed and stop beating herself up. Might be interesting if she stuck around.
"So. Can you like teach me how to use these things now?" She leaned on her elbows on the counter, looking up at him.
"Sure. Well, basics anyway. Depends on how long you'll be around... takes awhile to really learn how to shoot, but the basics aren't that hard." He looked like he was having a thought. "Or... does that slayer thing work with stuff like this? Picking up weapons... ?"
"Hrmm. Dunno." She frowned. "Helps with crossbows and bows, but you still have to learn those and practice, not just absorb it and instinct. Melee weaps and HTH are almost instinctive. Have to see."
He nodded. "Well... can teach you the basics, principles, and how-to-learn stuff. And get in a bit of shooting practice." He looked at her, "And if you don't stay long enough, depending on how things go, I can give you a couple of places you can get more." She raised an eyebrow. "Ayoob's Lethal Force Institute and there's Col. Cooper's Gunsite in Arizona, in that order. A bit expensive, but they're the best. LFI'll give you the combat shooting plus all of the legal aspects of working with firearms and self-defense." He held up a hand, "I know, not much help on demons, but good to know just in case. And Gunsite'll give you mindset and about as intense a skill set in pistol, rifle, and shotgun as you can get."
"They have academies for this stuff, huh? Not hurting for money, for a change." She laughed. "Gonna learn, learn from the best, right?"
She made a face. "Don't know how long I'll be around here. We'll see. Something'll probably come up and I'll move on. Something always comes up." Dammit.
Abby looked up from her computer. "Hate to interrupt the ever important 'bonding with implements of destruction' thing, but I may have something interesting here... "