CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE PATROL

"We're surrounded!" Buffy yelled, punching one of the twelve vampires that had the two Slayers circled in. 

"You noticed that too?" Faith asked rhetorically, ducking a punch that a vampire sent her way.

The two Slayers fought ferociously, back-to-back, fighting with perfect synchronicity.  If their Watchers had been there, they'd have been proud of their two Slayers.

With five vampires dusted and seven to go, Buffy and Faith found themselves tiring.  The brunette Slayer had to admit that she was grateful to Buffy for 'popping' in, as it were, and she knew that without the blonde Slayer at her side, she wouldn't have made it out of the fight.

"Why are there so many?" Buffy yelled above the fighting.

"Beats the hell outta me!" Faith replied, staking another of the vampires that fought against them.

Lightening streaked across the sky, followed by a roll of thunder that echoed in the dark evening.  Rain began spitting down on the fight, the ground beneath them becoming muddy.  Buffy flicked her hair out of her eyes and fought even harder, the rain spurring her on.

Faith fought like a wild tiger, spinning, kicking and grunting at every opportunity. 

Their clothing clung to their bodies, and Buffy threw off the leather coat that was beginning to restrict her movements.  Her black t-shirt was immediately soaked through, and her skin was prickling with the cold.

The fight continued, lasting another twenty minutes before the vampires were gone completely and the two Slayers were seated on a nearby park-bench, their faces upturned to the sky as the down-pouring rain washed away the grime of the fight. 

"You hungry?" Faith asked breathlessly.

"Starved," Buffy replied.

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The two Slayers ran into a nearby all-night diner, shaking their wet hair out as they left the rain outside.  The owner of the shop looked up with disinterest as the two girls found a seat.  A bored waitress came to take their orders before leaving the two Slayers to skull their bottles of Coca-Cola.

"Shit that was fun!" Faith exclaimed.

Buffy grinned.  She couldn't deny that the fight hadn't been a rush.  Plus, fighting beside Faith had been a new and incredible experience.  There was something freeing about the way Faith fought and thought. 

"That is was," Buffy agreed. 

"God...before you showed up, I thought I was a goner."

"Good thing I got bored with my little Forest then," Buffy commented.

Faith grinned.  She'd seen the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts, and had even patrolled in there a few times for herself.  She couldn't imagine ever getting bored of the place that was crawling with centaurs and acromantulas and unicorns. 

Their orders of steak and fries arrived and the Slayers ate heartily, talking between bites, dissecting the fight and talking about their respective lives.  Buffy couldn't help but laugh at some of Faith's antics.  The story about the alligator and Faith was something that always made her laugh.

The rain stopped and the two Slayers ventured outside, breathing in the cool and fresh air.

"You still wired?" Faith asked.

"Yeah," Buffy replied.  "I could go another round…or six."

Faith chuckled.  "I thought you had your boy-toy for that."

Buffy laughed loudly.  "Yeah…he's great.  But…well, Slayer and all.  Wouldn't want to kill him or anything."

Faith grinned and shook her head.  "Is it true that you really got it on with a vampire?" Faith asked.

Buffy blushed and nodded.  "Yeah.  It's true.  He was good though.  He had a soul."

"Yeah, Red explained that to me, but I never really understood it," Faith said.  "But, hey…to each their own."

Buffy grinned and shook her head, the two Slayers wandering down the empty street.  They heard a clattering of a can coming from an alley, and they silently exchanged a glance before moving to the alley opening.  Buffy walked down first, stake in one hand, her wand in the other.  Faith followed behind her, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness of the poorly lit alleyway.

The clattering sounded again, and both girls froze in their tracks.  Silence reigned, and the Slayers began moving again.  Buffy didn't have time to even form a counter attack when she felt someone tackle her to the ground.

Buffy rolled into the attack, jumping to her feet.  Her stake had already plunged into the depths of her attackers heart before she could even fully register what her senses were telling her. 

"B, no!" Faith yelled frantically.

The man cried out in pain, and Buffy's stomach dropped.  There was no sudden telltale poof.  There was no tumble of dust in the wind.  Just the sick sound of her stake being withdrawn from bleeding flesh, and the man falling to the ground in pain, screaming for all he was worth.

Buffy dropped to her knees, the stake falling from her hands as she realised what she'd done.  Her attacker hadn't been a vampire.  Her attacker hadn't even been a demon.  It had been a human, and she'd plunged a stake into a man's heart.

"Shit," Faith whispered.  "We gotta call for help."

Buffy could barely see the man in the dim light, but she could tell by the way the man's breathing was slowing, and the dilating of his pupils that he was going to die before any help could come for him.

"Lumos," Buffy muttered.  The alley lit up and Buffy winced.  She hadn't been wanting to create such a vast quantity of light.  The Lumos spell was mainly used for creating a small beam of light, but somehow she had made the entire alley feel as though it was entrenched in daylight.

Faith knelt beside her, shucking off her sweater and pressing it to the bleeding wound. 

"What do we do?" Faith whispered, her voice slightly shaking and panicked.  She knew the difference between killing a man and killing a demon.  There was no satisfaction in watching a human man die, no matter who it was.  And from the looks of it, the man that Buffy had inadvertently attacked was merely a homeless man who'd been worried for his own safety.

"You've done me proud."

Buffy was muttering curses…that being swear words, not actual spells…under her breath.  She couldn't think properly and the voice whispering in the back of her head wasn't helping either.

"My Elizabeth.  I always knew you would follow the path I set for you."

"B, come on, snap out of it!" Faith yelled.  "He needs help!"

Faith's words penetrated the haziness in Buffy's mind.  She forced herself to remember the healing spells that she'd researched over the last year and a half, and recalled one that would stem the bleeding of a wound.  She muttered the proper incantation while pointing the wand at the man's heart. 

The bleeding slowed, but the wound wasn't healing. 

"He needs proper treatment," Buffy said.

"We should get him to a hospital," Faith replied.

"It killed Celia…"

Buffy shook her head.  "There's not enough time."

It was stupid to even try it, and Buffy knew that she was setting herself up for exhaustion, but there were no other options.  She grabbed hold of the man's wrist, and took hold of Faith's hand as well.  Praying that it would work, she apparated, taking both Faith and the dying man through the impenetrable walls of Hogwarts and landing them all in the all too familiar infirmary.

Buffy quickly erected a small bubble that would make the space she'd apparated into completely silent to all outside observers.  She didn't want Madam Pomfrey bustling down from her quarters, and she definitely didn't want any of the students spending the evening in the infirmary beds to be awoken by the noise.

She tried to ignore the pounding headache that was building up behind her eyes, her strength waning as she used up too much of her power with the spells she'd been performing.  She hadn't been this tired since she took on the Dementor within the Ministry of Magic.  She breathed in deeply, trying to centre herself and her magic, trying to find a source of strength to draw upon.

Buffy quickly raided Pomfrey's cabinets of potions, locating the quicker healing potions that were always kept on hand.  She quickly forced them down the man's throat, ignoring his cry of pain as the potions worked their magic. 

"What did you give him?" Faith asked.

"Healing potion.  It'll expel the splinters in his chest and close up the wound." Buffy's reply was cold and clinical, and Faith couldn't help but notice how frightening it was to hear Buffy being so indifferent.

Buffy, on her part, was having a hard time not to have a complete breakdown.

"Finish him off," a voice whispered.  "It would be so easy."

"Geez, that was easy," Faith commented.

"Kill the spare…"

"Got any of those potions to spare?"

 "You've done me proud."

"And geez, no wonder Dominic's so damn proud of ya…god, if that'd been me who'd staked the guy…I wouldn't have had the first clue what to do."

Buffy couldn't take it any more.  She was exhausted from the past weeks events.  Talking with ghosts, and fighting with vampires, staking a man and apparating with two other people had sucked her energy out of her.  She was tired, cold and more than a little temperamental.  She looked up at Faith, her eyes dark and stormy.  Faith had to force herself not to take a step back at the look of coldness reflected in her sister Slayer.

"He should be fine," Buffy said.

Faith nodded.  She knew when she was getting the brush off, and she wasn't about to make a big deal out of it.  Especially not with the stormy look in Buffy's eyes.

"Think you could give me a ride home?" Faith asked.

Buffy nodded and grabbed Faith's hand.  Reaching into herself, she found a small well of power that hadn't yet been used.  She quickly apparated them into Faith's bedroom within Wesley's apartment.  Before Faith could even thank her, Buffy was gone once more.

"Geez that girl is moody," Faith whispered to herself in the darkness.

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Buffy looked down at the body of the man she'd staked earlier that evening.  The only sign that anything had even happened to the man was the massive blood stain on the front of his clothes.  There was blood on Buffy's hands as well, and she knew that it would take several coats of soap before the stains came off her hands.  The ring that Harry had given her was dangerously close to slipping off her cold fingers, and she placed it on the bedside table, her coat having come off earlier, and her pants having no pockets to place anything in.  She made a mental note to come back for it later.

She knew that the man couldn't stay at Hogwarts.  It would bring up too many questions that she didn't want to answer.  She gripped the healed man's hand and quickly apparated back to the alley that they'd disapparated from earlier.  Arranging him on the bed of rags and newspaper that he'd jumped out from earlier, she left him to his healing sleep.  She stepped back and stumbled slightly, tripping over her discarded stake.  She bent down to pick it up examining the wooden weapon carefully.  She could feel the blood coating the stake, and the tip of the sharpened weapon that had so easily slid into the man.

She looked down at his sleeping form, the stake itching to be used.

"Finish it.  Make me proud…"

She knelt beside the man, her fingers touching the ripped clothing.  She looked at the stake, wondering how easy it would be to end the miserable existence of the man before her.  He obviously had no family, no money and no real reason to continue living.  In fact, he probably would be thankful that she'd ended his life.

"We shall rid our world of impure blood, and finally eradicate those whose births were not as Salazar Slytherin deigned them to be."

The tip of her stake touched the man's chest and the sudden solidity of what she was about to do finally hit Buffy.  She fell backwards, landing hard on her backside.  The man's eyes fluttered open and he looked at her in fear.

"You…you did it.  You killed me," he whispered.

The familiar words hit Buffy hard.  She stood and pointed her wand at the man.  She didn't want to hear those words ever again.  Not from strangers, and not from her boyfriend.  The words 'Crucio' or 'Avada Kedavra' were on the tip of her tongue. 

"Obliviate!" she yelled.

She turned and ran, knowing that the spell had worked.  She'd wiped the man's memory.  He wouldn't remember the first thing about the girl that had accidentally staked him.

When she'd run out of energy, she stopped and leant against a wall to keep herself from falling.  She tried apparating back to Hogwarts.  Nothing.  She sighed.  She knew that the last few days would wear her down eventually.  All she wanted to do was be back in her room, asleep in her bed, but now she was stuck in muggle London, with blood on her clothes and on her hands. 

Buffy closed her eyes and let her focus wander inwards, searching through herself to find any source of power that she could use.  In the depths of her soul, in a place she'd never consciously tried to touch before, she found her power.  It was the same power that had aided her in using the Killing Curse against Voldemort.  It was the same place that the Dementor's darkness had taken residence in when Buffy had drained the Dementor of its strength only nine days ago.  And it was from that power well, the darkest place of her soul, that she was able to apparate away from London, and away from the man who now had no memory of being attacked, thanks to her.

She disapparated with a loud crack and apparated into a dark and dusty building, the closest she could get to Hogwarts, whose barriers would not let her enter when she was so drained of her magic.  She barely had a chance to look around before falling onto a filthy mattress and closing her eyes.

The wind blew in the window of the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade, the floorboards creaking and the pipes groaning.  Buffy curled up on the abandoned four-poster bed with dusty hangings that had been shredded to pieces long ago.  Closing her eyes, she finally succumbed to the oblivion that was sleep, bloody stake still clutched tightly in her hand.

In the corner of the Shrieking Shack, a tall figure stepped out of the shadows and crouched beside the sleeping Slayer.  He brushed a ghostly hand against Buffy's cheek that was still coated with dirt, grime and blood. 

"My beautiful child of darkness," he whispered, a proud smile tinging his lips.  He stepped back and watched Buffy fall into a dream-filled sleep.

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Creepy, no?

Grrr at ff.net.  Still wanting to know why my account was locked dammit.  What did I do?! 

Anyways, many thanks for your feedback and stuff, you guys are awesome!
Toodles.

DKG.