Part XIII
Janet watched through her kitchen window, amazed by what she was seeing. Cassie and Teal'c were in the back yard, each of them with a six foot wooden staff. The big man was backing away, barely managing to fend of the flurry of blows coming from her daughter. Cassie's staff was a blur of motion, almost too fast for her to see.
They had started out slowly, with Teal'c teaching Cassie the basic moves: how to hold the staff, how to block and parry, how to strike. He was still giving her pointers on her form, but it was all he could do to fend off her attacks now. What she lacked in style she more than made up for in strength, and reaction time.
Most of the time, he would make her slow down: go through the motions at low speed, training her muscles and reflexes into the most efficient motions; to get the most out of her attacks, and to put up the most effective defence, but at least once a session he'd let her cut loose, and come at him full force. After a couple of weeks he started wearing some protective padding when they did that. If Cassie kept improving at the rate she had been, Teal'c was going to have to start showing up in his full Jaffa armour.
This had been going on for weeks. Some days it would be Teal'c, on others Sam, or Colonel O'Neill. Teal'c was the only one who could actually give Cassie a challenge now. Sam focused on teaching Cassie to do katas and such. Jack took an entirely different approach: figuring that one of the things Cassie needed practice with was her hand-eye coordination, he taught her how to juggle. At first Janet had preferred the juggling to most of the other things that Cassie was being taught, but she developed the habit of juggling anything handy when she got a little bored. One day Janet had come into the kitchen and found Cassie juggling knives. Her good, sharp, knives.
Harris and Russell had left Colorado Springs the day after their meeting at the hotel. Sam had been quietly tracking their movements around the continent. After leaving Colorado Springs, they'd spent a week in Spokane Washington, and then another in Drumheller Alberta. They were still criss-crossing North America, spending no more than a week in any of the towns or cities that they visited.
Janet still didn't like the explanation that they had given her for the changes in Cassie, but she and Sam hadn't been able to come up with any of their own that made any sense. Other than the measurable changes in Cassie's strength, stamina, reaction time, etc. she hadn't been able to find any underlying physiological change. None of it made any sense, but if she was going to believe Russell and Harris's explanation, she might as well start believing in fairies.
She had spent some time with Sam and Colonel O'Neill discussing the idea that WCI's "demons" were some sort of alien incursion. The Goa'uld liked to pretend they were gods, after all, and the Norse gods had turned out to be an alien race too. Why couldn't there be some other alien species that were mistaken for, in had inspired, the demons out of folk-lore? That theory hadn't really fit the facts they had, though. The Goa'uld, and the Asgard still operated under the constraints of physics. From what they read in the Initiative's files, that didn't seem to be the case with demons.
She had a lot more information now than what Harris and Russell had been able to give her. WCI had set up several Internet based resources for the new Slayers and their friends and families. Cassie got to chat online with other Slayers from around the world: both the newly called, and with Faith Russell, and Buffy Summers. Other forums had been set up for the friends and families of the Slayers: a mutual support group where they could talk with each other about the problems associated with their children's new calling. Some of the people involved in that had long personal histories of coping with a loved one being placed in danger. Dawn Summers was Cassie's age, and had been coping with the knowledge that her sister was a Slayer since she was twelve. Robin Wood's mother had been a Slayer, but she had died while he was still a very young child. The DeSilva family had known that their daughter Kennedy might one day become a Slayer since she was a child.
Some of what she learned frightened Janet badly. Other things gave her hope. Nikki Wood had died young, but she had had a child, and now that there were so many of them, it was possible for Slayers to have normal lives: go to school, have a family, and someday to die from old age.
She didn't learn much that satisfied her scientific curiosity about how the Slayers did the things that they did. Sam had had little more luck talking with Willow Rosenberg about the scientific underpinnings of magic. They'd had several long on-line discussions on the subject, going off onto tangents about super-string theory, zero point energy, multidimensional space, quantum fluctuations and a dozen other things that Janet couldn't follow.
None of which made her feel any better about what WCI wanted with Cassie. She didn't mind the physical training. Cassie did need to learn to control her strength, and being able to defend herself from an attacker was a good thing too, but the emphasis that was put on combat techniques only underscored that Slayers were meant to go in harm's way. That wasn't the life that she wanted for her daughter.
She looked out the window again. Cassie and Teal'c had switched to a drill in which she was using her staff to fend off blows from his. There was a quickness, and fluidity to Cassie's motion that made it look easy. Teal'c was pressing his attack, but Cassie almost casually deflected every blow.
She switched back to the offensive. Janet could hear the cracks of staff against staff as Cassie beat against Teal'c's defence. Teal'c raised his staff to fend off an overhand blow from Cassie, and there was an especially loud crack as Cassie's staff broke against his. Cassie didn't hesitate for even an instant. She jabbed the sharp, broken end of the shard of staff she was holding toward Teal'c's heart.
Janet's breath caught as she saw Cassie strike Teal'c. He had tried to pull away from her, but he wasn't quick enough to evade the blow completely. She could see blood on his shirt as he fell back. Cassie stood frozen in place, not moving as Teal'c fell to the ground.
Janet pulled her eyes off the scene in the yard, and ran to get her medical bag. When she reached the back yard she could see Cassie kneeling beside Teal'c, holding her folded t-shirt over his wound. Teal'c wasn't lying all the way back on the ground, anymore; he was propped up on his elbows.
"I'm so sorry!" Cassie was saying. "I didn't mean to— I don't know how that happened!"
"It is all right Cassandra," Teal'c told her. "The wound is not deep. Accidents when training are to be expected."
Janet knelt on the other side of Teal'c from her daughter. "Let me see that," she said.
Cassie pulled away her crumpled t-shirt. Janet cut Teal'c's shirt open so she could see his injury. The flow of blood from it had already nearly stopped. "He's right. It's not too bad. You barely broke the skin."
"I didn't mean to," said Cassie again. "My staff broke, and I just…reacted. I didn't even think about it."
"You have the instincts of a warrior," said Teal'c. "You saw an opening in your opponent's defence, and you took advantage of it."
"I'm sorry!"
"One time, when I was Master Bra'tac's apprentice, his bashaak broke in a similar fashion, allowing me to strike a blow which rendered him unconscious. I am sure that had he witnessed today's events, he would be feeling some satisfaction that his student suffered a similar mishap."
Janet used some tweezers to pull some wood splinters from Teal'c's chest, and cleaned and stitched up the wound, with Cassie acting as her assistant. Teal'c rose to his feet after she had finished applying the bandage. "Thank you Dr. Fraiser." He picked up the pieces of Cassie's staff, tossed them to her, and then grabbed his own. "When broken, your staff becomes two weapons," he told Cassie.
"If you pull your stitches, I will not be happy," said Janet.
"Uh, yeah," said Cassie. "Maybe we should call it a day."
"After a mishap, it is important to…get back on the equine," said Teal'c.
Cassie's brow creased. "You do that deliberately, don't you?"
Teal'c tried to look innocent. "Moi?"
"Colonel O'Neill's having a very bad influence on you," said Janet.
"Indeed," said Teal'c. "Now, defend yourself, Cassandra." He swung his staff at her head. Cassie deflected it with the shard of staff in her left hand.
Janet seemed to drop out of both Teal'c and Cassie's attention as he attacked her. She shook her head as she watched them, seeing the muscles ripple under Teal'c's skin. "Down girl," she told herself, and shifted her attention to Cassie, now wearing just her sports bra, and shorts, a light sheen of sweat showing on her skin as she fended off Teal'c's advance.
There were no more incidents like the one with the broken staff, partially because Teal'c started wearing chest protection. Cassie had developed a new hesitancy to her attacks, which Teal'c strongly berated her for. He would not accept anything from her that he did not think was her best.
WCI had started inviting the new Slayers to come visit Cleveland, one or two at a time, from the start of August. Cassie had been the first invited, but neither Janet, Jack, nor Sam could get leave on such short notice—not without telling General Hammond what was going on, anyway—and there was no way that they were going to let Cassie take the trip alone. It wasn't until the last week of August that Janet managed to get a week's leave approved, to take a bit of a "vacation" with Cassie.
Their flight from Denver landed in Cleveland just after six in the evening. They were met in the terminal by a red-headed girl wearing a red wool cap, despite the warm weather. "Hi!" she greeted Cassie and Janet. "I'm Vi. Welcome to Cleveland!"
"Hi Vi!" said Cassie. "Good to finally meet you!"
Janet recognized the girl. They had been emailed a picture of her when the arrangements for the trip were being made. "Hello Vi."
"Oh, let me get that, Dr. Fraiser," said Vi, reaching to take her bag. "I'll carry it out to the car for you."
"Thank you, Vi."
"No problem. Like Xander says, 'super strength comes in handy when there's stuff that needs to be lugged around.'"
Janet was very glad when the car finally pulled into the parking lot of a Travelodge hotel in Akron. Vi had chattered the whole drive from the airport, hardly seeming to pay any attention to the road, or the traffic. She talked about the five months leading up to the destruction of Sunnydale, becoming a Slayer, the Cleveland Hellmouth—which wasn't actually in Cleveland, it turned out. No one had been dumb enough to build a city on top of this Hellmouth, or at least there hadn't been any powerful sorcerers planning an Ascension, to found a town on top of it. The Cleveland Hellmouth was really located in a remote corner of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park that hardly anyone ever visited—which was why they were now in Akron. It was just as close to the Hellmouth, and WCI had managed to find space here that suited their needs better than the temporary offices that they had originally settled into in Cleveland.
Vi mentioning Ascension got Janet's attention, but it didn't take her very long to discover that what Vi was referring to had little or no relationship to what had happened to Daniel. He hadn't transformed into a giant demon snake after all.
"I wasn't there for it," Vi finished up, as she carried Janet's bag up to the hotel lobby reception desk. "You really ought to talk to Xander about it…though it would probably be best to do it when Faith isn't around."
"Why's that?" asked Janet.
"I really can't say," said Vi, which Janet took to mean that she wouldn't say. She couldn't ask about it, because they had reached the reception desk. Vi smiled at the man behind the desk. "Hi Rob, we've got a couple more visitors. They've got a reservation under the name Fraiser. It's going on WCI's tab."
Vi escorted them to their room, after they got checked in to the hotel. She checked her watch, after placing Janet's bag on her bed. "Okay, you've got almost an hour to freshen up a bit. Principal Wood is going to meet you at eight for dinner in the hotel restaurant."
Cassie spotted Faith, before she saw the others with her. There was something about another Slayer that stuck out in a crowd…not that the restaurant was very crowded. The booth Faith was sitting in, along with with Xander, and a tall, good looking black man that she took to be Mr. Wood, had lots of clear space around it. He rose to his feet as the hostess led her and her mother to the table.
He extended his hand to her mother. "Dr. Fraiser, I'm pleased to finally meet you. I'm Robin Wood."
Janet shook his hand. "And I, you, Mr. Wood."
He indicated some vacant seats at the table. "Please, call me Robin. Would you care for anything to drink?"
Cassie took the seat beside Faith. "A coke would be good."
"I'll just have a water," Janet told the hostess.
"Very well." She gave Janet and Cassie their menus. "Your waiter will be here in a moment. Enjoy your meal." She left.
They spent the first part of the meal just getting acquainted, without talking about Slayers, vampires, demons, or anything else supernatural. The real reason for their visit to Akron didn't come up until they were having their coffees, and desserts. "You know, that's one of the great things about being a Slayer," said Faith as Cassie ate her slice of Triple Chocolate Delight Cheesecake. "None of us ever seem to get fat, no matter what we eat."
"The opposite seems to be true, too," said Xander. "You can eat like birds, and your energy levels never seem to drop."
"So, why are we here, Robin?" asked Janet.
"First of all, we would like to discuss Cassie's education," said Mr. Wood. "The Old Council was pretty much destroyed, and we are rebuilding from scratch. The new situation, with so many Slayers, gives us an opportunity to change the way things are done. Throughout most of recorded history there was only one Slayer, and the Council was set up to support her." That got a snort from Faith. "How good a job it did, is subject to debate."
"Most of the debate is over just where on the scale of badness to place them," said Xander.
"Yes," said Mr. Wood, "but that is not relevant to our current discussion. Because we are having to recruit new people for the Council, and those that we are recruiting still need to be trained, anyway, we have an opportunity. With so many new Slayers, we are planning to train them to take over many of the roles that had traditionally gone to the Watchers."
"What sort of jobs?"
"Research, translations of ancient manuscripts, training new Potential Slayers." Mr. Wood shrugged. "There are many possibilities."
"What if Cassie wants to go to medical school?" asked Janet, causing Cassie to cringe a bit. Janet had been sort of pushing her that way for a while now. Cassie really hadn't wanted to tell her that she wasn't interested in becoming a doctor.
"Slayer is a high risk job," said Wood. "We need doctors who know what the risks are, and who can treat mystical injuries that normal hospitals can't…which brings me to something else we wanted to discuss with you. Would you be interested in a career change, yourself, Dr. Fraiser?"
"Me?" Janet seemed genuinely surprised by the offer.
"Your résumé is quite impressive," said Mr. Wood. "You are a trauma surgeon, with sub-specialities in virology, genetics, and half a dozen other fields. Someone with your expertise could be invaluable to us."
"I'm also an Air Force officer," said Janet.
"We were rather curious about that," said Mr. Wood. "What's someone with your background doing in your current posting? Surely there is little use for someone of your talents buried under a mountain in Colorado."
Cassie watched her mother trot out the standard answer for that question: "In the event of an emergency, the NORAD infirmary has to be ready to treat any and all medical conditions. We hope that it will never be required for such, but we have to be prepared for the worst. In the meantime, it gives us a first class research and training facility. I am very happy where I am." At least her answer made more sense than the "Deep Space Radar Telemetry" story that most of the rest of the SGC was stuck with.
"Even if you aren't interested, the possibilities are wide open for Cassie. "You name it, we can probably use it. Doctors, lawyers, managers, computer scientists…"
"Astro-physicists?" asked Cassie. Sam had been nudging her in that direction.
"Sure," said Wood. "Some of our people are trying to get an understanding of the underlying scientific principles of magic. We are ready to offer you a full scholarship to study pretty much any subject you're interested in."
"Where?" asked Janet.
"The Old Council was primarily a British organization, and as such, we have our best ties with their universities. If Cassie can meet their academic standards, we can get her into Oxford, or Cambridge."
"If I can meet their standards," said Cassie.
"We've seen your school transcripts," said Mr. Wood. "That shouldn't be a problem for you."
Janet turned her attention to Xander. "What's your role in all this?"
Xander shrugged. "I'm the guy who gets the donuts."
"Hey, don't sell yourself short!" said Faith.
"I don't!" said Xander. "Donuts are an integral part of Slaying. Sending out a Slayer without her daily minimum dosage of sugary goodness is never a good thing."
"Ignore him," said Faith. "There's no one I'd rather have watching my back in a fight than Xander."
Cassie could sense Faith's sincerity, even as Xander tried to shrug off her compliment. She'd spent enough time around SG-1, and other soldiers of the SGC to know that there was really no higher compliment that she could pay to a person.
The second reason for their visit to the Hellmouth came later that night. Robin Wood pulled the van he was driving over to the side of the road, just outside of the gate to the Northlawn Cemetery, near the border of the park.
Cassie felt a chill as she got out of the van, despite the warmth of the summer night. "Now, remember," Xander told her. "You're just here to watch. Let Faith and Vi handle the vampire."
"A vampire is really going to rise from its grave tonight?" asked her mom.
"We're pretty sure," said Xander. "He was definitely a vampire victim. Cause of death was blood loss, through puncture wounds in his neck. We're less sure about whether or not he was turned. The autopsy showed someone else's blood in his mouth and stomach, so we know that a vamp tried to sire him. Some of them don't always get it right though, especially the young ones. We got the vamp that we think killed him last night, and he was only about ten years old. Not experienced enough to get the timing down right all the time."
Xander reached into the bag he was carrying, and pulled out a couple of large crosses, and water pistols. He gave one of each to Cassie and Janet. He pulled out some stakes that got distributed among the others, and he stuck one into his belt.
Janet looked dubiously at her cross. "Uh…don't you have to believe in these for them to work?"
"That's a myth," said Xander. "If they work for a Jewish Wiccan, I figure they'll work for anyone."
"The cross is an ancient symbol for the sun, predating Christianity," said Mr. Wood, as he opened the cemetery gate. "And in magic, a symbol can act as a stand-in for the thing that it symbolizes. It doesn't work as well as the real thing, but all vampires fear a cross, and and will be burned by it, if they touch it."
"I figure that the cross won out over the fish in the early Christian argument over what their symbol should be, because if you wave a fish at a vampire, it just looks at you like you're crazy."
"So what are we supposed to do with them?" asked Cassie, holding up her own cross and squirt gun.
"Hopefully nothing," said Vi. "If the vamp gets away from us, and comes for you, hold up the cross and aim for its eyes with the water pistol. One or the other ought to discourage it."
Mr. Wood led them through the cemetery. There were puddles on the path, and the grass was wet from a thunder storm that had passed over the area earlier that night. "Uh…should we be quiet?" whispered Cassie.
"Nyah," said Xander. "The vamp's buried under six feet of dirt. It'd have trouble hearing us, if we'd brought a band along. Even if it does hear us, it'll just think that it won't have to go far to find its first meal."
They reached a fresh grave. Cassie shivered as she looked at it, and rubbed her hands over her arms.
"You feel it, don't you?" asked Faith.
"I feel cold."
"It's the vampire that's doing that to you. You're reacting to its presence. Looks like we're going to have a customer tonight."
"You feel it too?" asked Cassie.
"Not so much," said Faith. "Some of us sense them better than others. Most of us who spent too much time in Sunnydale can hardly feel them at all."
"Why's that?" asked Janet.
"Too much time living with the Hellmouth," said Faith. "It tended to drown out everything else, and it overloaded our spider-sense. Kinda like what too many rock concerts will do to your hearing." She nodded at Vi. "Nearly all the newbies can feel vamps better than I can, and I've got better spider-sense than Buffy. She's almost completely deaf in the vamp detection department."
Cassie looked at Vi. "You feel it too?"
Vi nodded. "Yeah. If you close your eyes, and concentrate, you can probably feel the Hellmouth too."
Cassie closed her eyes, and tried to focus her attention on what she was feeling. She could sense something stirring in the ground beneath her feet, and something else in the distance. Something powerful, and evil, but far away. She pointed to the northwest. "That way."
"Pretty much dead on," said Faith.
"I thought you couldn't feel it," said Janet.
"I can't." Faith held up something. "But I've got it programmed into this." Cassie recognized a hand-held GPS unit.
Cassie looked back down at the ground. "It's moving."
"Yeah, it is," said Vi. "Time for you to stand back."
Xander and Mr. Wood pulled her and her mom back several yards from the grave. Vi and Faith stood over it, waiting. Cassie shivered again from the wave of cold that seemed to sweep through her.
The ground shifted in front of the headstone, and a head and shoulders pushed themselves up out of the dirt. Faith and Vi reached down, grabbed the man's suit shoulders, and dragged him out of the grave. They wrestled him down onto the grass, pinned his arms behind his back, and Faith slapped a heavy set of handcuffs onto his wrists. Vi had a set of manacles that went around his ankles. Faith rolled him over onto his back. "So, Doc, ready to take a look at your first vampire?"
What Cassie wanted to do was grab the stake out of Xander's belt, and drive it through the vampire's heart. Every instinct she had seemed to be screaming at her to kill that thing. She forced herself to keep those feelings in check as she came forward with her mother.
The vampire shouted obscenities and threats at them, his words slurred by the fangs in his mouth. Xander produced a stethoscope from his bag, and held it out to her mother. "So, you want to confirm for yourself that this guy's dead?"
Cassie didn't need her mother's confirmation. She knew that the thing on the ground in front of her was dead, even if he was moving and shouting. His face didn't look very human anymore. His forehead was distorted, and he had yellow eyes.
Janet hesitated for a moment before taking the stethoscope from Xander. She placed it in her ears, and knelt by the vampire on the ground. She started to reach for his collar, to open his shirt, but the vampire snapped at her hand.
Faith took hold of the vampire's hair. "Be a good demon, and you might live longer." She yanked back, and held him firmly. "Okay, try it now."
Janet opened his shirt, and placed the stethoscope on his chest. She moved it around, listening carefully. "No heart sounds… Breathing is irregular… Just what he needs to talk." She placed a hand on his neck to feel for a pulse. "I don't see how this is possible."
Xander handed her an IR ear thermometer. "Want to check his temperature too?"
Janet did. "64.3…that's below air temperature."
"He's been in the ground for a while," said Mr. Wood. "Let him keep struggling like that, get him some blood to drink, and he might warm up into the 90s."
"Show her the mirror, Xander," said Faith. "That's the one that really convinces most people."
Xander already had the mirror out of his bag. "Take a look."
Janet took it, and tried to see the vampire's reflection in it. She saw nothing. She shook her head. "I still can't believe this. What do we do now?"
"Now, we kill it," said Xander. He pulled his stake out of his belt, and held it out to Cassie. "You want to do the honours?"
Cassie didn't hesitate. She reached for the stake.
"Cassie! What are you doing?"
"Mom, it's a vampire. It has to die."
"It's a sentient being. How can you justify just killing it?"
"You kill vampires for the same reason you put down a rabid dog," said Mr. Wood. "This thing is worse than any dog. A dog doesn't attack for pleasure. It doesn't plan its kills. It just does. If we let this thing go, it will kill. In all of recorded history, there has never been a vampire that willingly gave up killing."
"There has to be some other way."
"What?" asked Xander. "Lock it up and throw away the key? Keep it in a cage for eternity? It will keep living as long as you keep feeding it. A hundred years, a thousand. And then what? Keep it locked up for another millennium? Or we could try one of those nifty little mind control chips the Initiative developed. The one they put in Spike lasted about three years before it started to kill him. Of course, from what we managed to learn when Willow hacked into their files, Spike was the only vamp that the chip didn't just kill outright, or turn into a vegetable."
"Spike?" asked Janet.
"A government experiment," said Xander. "They put a chip into his head that gave him killer migraines if he tried to hurt anyone. He'd spent the previous 120 years as a vicious killer, though. One of the people he killed was Robin's mom. He also killed some of the kids I went to school with."
Faith pointed to the headstone. "This isn't William Downing anymore. This is the same sort of creature that killed William Downing. It needs to die."
"But—"
Cassie decided to put an end to the argument. She plunged the stake that Xander had given her into the centre of the vampire's chest. It exploded into a cloud of dust, accompanied by a noise like none she had ever heard before. Her mother looked at her in shock.
"It was a vampire, Mom," said Cassie. "And I'm a Slayer."