May 22nd, 2006, Hanselstadt, Germany, 6:00 p.m.
Giles waited until they were halfway back to the church before speaking. "You did well back there – thinking on your feet."
Nearly at the end of her rope, Faith hardly bothered to look away from the cobblestones in front of her. She had one arm locked beneath Courtney's shoulders and was half-carrying, half-dragging the teenager along with her. The younger Slayer had yet to say a word since being towed out from the basement. Her eyes were glazed over, and if Faith stopped paying attention for five seconds, she stumbled and almost fell.
"Little britches is in shock." As if to prove her point, at that exact moment Courtney tripped over the toes of her own Converse and tried to take a header. Faith caught her before she could collide with the pavement. "Easy, Court." She passed her crossbow to Giles and lifted the fourteen-year-old into her arms, supporting her beneath the knees and the small of her back. The Slayer grunted lightly with the effort, her burning muscles protesting the extra load.
"I . . . I would never has suspected that Duncan had that in him," mused Giles, more to himself than to her.
"Don't take it too personal. People are all screwed up in the head. How many . . ." Faith wavered. She really didn't want the answer to this question, but at the same time, she knew that she had to ask. "How many Slayers do you think he fed to Octobitch?"
Startled by the moniker, the Watcher glanced at her. "Octo . . .? "
"Octobitch. You know, cause it had all those tentacle things, and it was a bitch to kill."
Giles cleared his throat. "You have a novel approach to taxonomy."
Faith shrugged. "It's simple, and it makes sense. So . . . how many do you think?"
The former librarian removed his glasses and polished them carefully on the inside of his sleeve, it being the cleanest spot on his clothing at present. "I don't know. I expect we shall have to go to Duncan's apartment and see if he left anything in his papers."
"I can't," grumbled the Slayer. "Unless you want me to torch the whole place. I'm in a torching mood. But I guess if you need backup?"
Giles surveyed her more thoroughly, taking in the pain and exhaustion written upon her face. "No, I have the crossbow. And my sword. I hardly think anyone will cause problems. Besides, you should take Courtney back to the car. Maybe get yourselves cleaned up, talk about things . . . I shall go make inquiries."
For once, the Slayer's heart leapt at the prospect of babysitting. "No problem, G."
They parted, and Faith slowly toiled her way up the mountainside to the church parking lot. Along the way, she stopped at a small corner grocery store, along the lines of a bodega. Leaving Courtney propped up in the doorway, she waltzed her way into the store and raided its shelves. When the shopkeeper protested at her in sharp sounding German, the Slayer drew her dirk and turned to face him straight on.
The streaks of rusty blood and dark green ooze covering her torn clothing was enough to give the man pause. He stuttered something unintelligible, and Faith dismissed him as a threat. She continued her browsing, reaching into the fridge at the back of the store for a bottle of Jaegermeister (it had the highest alcohol percentage that she could find) and grabbing a couple of packs of cigarettes from behind the counter.
Faith lifted two packages of cookies and a handful of Kinder Bueno bars. Upon reflection, she dug in her wallet and pulled out a crumpled American ten dollar bill, which she tossed onto the counter. Since she still had not changed any of her money into euro, it was the best she could do.
As an afterthought, she looked at the merchant. "Phone," she demanded, holding her hand out. When he only looked at her in incomprehension, she rolled her eyes. "Mobile," she repeated, louder this time, miming holding a cell phone to her ear.
Shocked by the scruffy apparition that had invaded his store, the shopkeeper stared at the naked blade in the woman's hand for a long moment before handing over his cell phone.
Mission accomplished, Faith left the shop. She took Courtney by the elbow and continued leading her back to the church. It was like dealing with a sleepwalker. At the top of the hill, she used Giles' keys to unlock the Volkswagen. Dropping her stash into the front seat, the Slayer popped the trunk and pulled out Courtney's suitcase.
"Change," she ordered, not unkindly. "You look disgusting."
Without waiting to see if the girl would obey, she removed her own clothing, stripping down to her underwear in the empty parking lot. Unconcerned about any potential Peeping Toms, Faith neatly folded her green fatigues and gray t-shirt. The Octobitch goo didn't seem corrosive, so she could probably get it out of her clothes. It would be a shame to lose a favorite pair of pants. Unzipping her duffel, the Slayer found clean jeans and a black shirt. They'd do the trick.
Courtney was slower to adapt, tugging at the sleeves of her jacket for almost a minute before actually taking it off. Silent, she lingered over each item of clothing, minimizing her state of undress and vulnerability as much as possible.
Once they were both cleaned up as best they could manage without soap or water of some kind, Faith led the way around the back of the church to its quiet little graveyard. Finding a low, solidly built headstone, she perched on top of it. Courtney took the tombstone opposite, a box of the precious cookies clutched in her hands.
"Bon appetit," said the older woman as she opened the bottle of Jaegermeister and took a long, slow drink. It burned like hell, somehow managing to get her nose as well as the roof of her mouth and her throat. Faith took another pull from the bottle and gave herself over to the fire. When the first quarter of the liquor was downed, she set the Jaegermeister down and lit up a cigarette. She chain-smoked while Courtney unconsciously devoured half the package of cookies.
As a general rule, the Slayer never left cigarette butts in a cemetery. She found it a little disrespectful. But this whole damn village was so awful that she didn't much care if the entire graveyard was littered with dogends.
"Can I have one of those?" Courtney broke her silence at last.
"No." Faith tossed another half-smoked cigarette to the ground. She was on number four now, and the tension flooding through her body was well on its way to being replaced by an ethanol and nicotine buzz. "I got you the cookies. These are mine."
Latching onto the conversation like it was her last hope of normalcy, Courtney persisted, "Why not? Why can't I have one?"
The woman exhaled a long stream of smoke. "Because you're fourteen."
"How old were you when you smoked for the first time?"
She had to give her that one. Faith flicked ash off the end of her cigarette. "Younger than fourteen," she admitted.
"So stop being a hypocrite. Let me try one." The girl attempted to grab the pack of cigarettes, but Faith moved it easily out of her reach.
"No. You're a kid, Courtney. You need vegetables and crap like that. Not an addiction."
"And you do?" she fired back.
In no mood to have this particular talk, Faith pulled out the merchant's stolen cell phone. She tossed it a few feet across the graveyard, and the younger Slayer caught it on instinct. "Call your parents."
"What?"
"Now. They at least deserve to know where you are."
Courtney stared down at the phone in her hands, afraid it might bite her. "But I –"
"Do it," advised the woman, blowing a smoke ring. "Or I will."
It was a relief when Giles finally came rounding the stone wall of the mini-cathedral. Faith's spirits rose at the familiar silhouette and then plummeted back to earth when she realized he was not alone. An envoy of five villagers trooped at his heels: two middle-aged men, another two middle-aged women, and one of the elderly grandmothers who had been so prevalent at the market earlier.
"Courtney." It served as both notice and warning to the teenager, who was fifteen yards deeper into the cemetery, still talking to her parents at sixty miles an hour.
Sheepish, the girl hung up the phone and came to stand at Faith's side. It was amazing how your first big fight could change things, reflected the older Slayer, one hand resting comfortably on the hilt of her dirk. Just in case. It looked like Giles was leading these people, but he might also be their prisoner.
"What's the word, G-man?" she called out as the Watcher stepped through the church yard gate. "Who're your friends?"
"Leaders of the community." Sarcasm dripped from his every word. "They have a request to make of us."
"Oh, yeah? What's German for 'go to Hell'?"
Some of the welcoming committee blanched. Good. So a few of them did speak English, then. Faith threw the idea of caution and go-betweens to the wind and addressed the wincers. "Did you know?" she demanded, in a voice that was biting and devoid of feeling. "Did you know what he was doing to those girls?"
Giles intervened. He knew that no matter what story the townsfolk told her, it would only serve to further piss the Slayer off. And she was already quite close to the edge. Best if she heard the news from him, then. "I found Duncan's diary and his notes."
"Yeah?"
"Thankfully, his plot has only been in effect for the last twelve months. However, in that time, he managed to lure about seventeen Slayers here. He recorded their names and where they came from. I have hope that we can identify them and will be able to give their families some peace. At the very least, we will be able to tell them what happened to their daughters."
Overlooking the growls that emanated from both Slayers, he continued, "I also discovered that this monster, the, er, Octobitch as you so memorably described it, had a remarkable effect on the vampire population of the village."
"What do you mean?" asked Faith with a sinking feeling.
"The monster's presence drove vampires away from Hanselstadt. According to Duncan's notes, they were somehow able to sense it – perhaps psychically. Whenever the beast had not been fed for a while, the vampires would begin moving closer to the village. And now, with the monster destroyed, the people fear that they will be attacked by a horde of vampires."
"I'm not doing it."
"Faith. I haven't asked you to do anything yet."
"I know what you're about to say, and the answer is no."
"I find this as distasteful as you do –"
"Giles! They knew about Octobitch. They knew what it was doing. They let girls die – they let Slayers die! And now they just expect it to be all hunky dory and for us to protect them? After what they did? No. Not a snowball's chance in Hell."
"Not all of them knew, Faith. In fact, only those closest with Duncan were told."
Faith threw her latest cigarette to the earth and stomped it out beneath her moto boot. "And you believe them?"
"I do," sighed the older man. "The majority of these people are innocent. And we have a duty to defend them."
"Like hell we do!"
For the first time, Courtney interjected. "I don't like it either, Faith. They . . . they let girls like us die. But if vampires are coming . . . we're Vampire Slayers, aren't we? That means that we have a job to do."
Glaring ferociously at everyone, the older Slayer shook her head in defeat. "Fine. But when this is over, I'm getting drunk for a week straight."
Grateful to have avoided another potential meltdown, Giles smiled. "When this is over, I'll join you."
May 22nd, 2006 Hanselstadt, Germany, 9:30 p.m.
"How are we going to teach all these people to fight?" whispered Courtney, pausing partway through sharpening her twentieth stake.
Once Faith had agreed to help, Giles had organized the townspeople in a surprisingly brief period of time. Kinda impressed a girl. The Watcher set up camp inside the old church, and the village spokespeople gathered all of the townspeople together to hear what he had to say. Faith skipped this part. She had a pretty good idea of his main message: "If you want to live, you'll have to fight."
Not to mention, someone had to start gathering wood. If the entire village was planning on arming themselves to fight off whatever vampires came their way, they were going to need a lot of stakes. And maybe some flamethrowers. Unfortunately, and to Faith's great dismay, the likelihood of getting a flamethrower in a village this small was next to none. This did not prevent her from finding a few of the engineering types and setting them to work on improvising. With all the panic going around, this place needed as much vamp-targeted firepower as it could get.
After the big camp meeting, people were divided into groups. Some were sent back down into the village proper to find whatever tools – shovels, hoes, rakes – they had in their garden sheds. Others joined Faith and Courtney in carving stakes out of any piece of wood at hand. Giles gave quite a vigorous and impromptu lesson about human anatomy – where exactly the heart was located and the best angles for piercing through muscle and pericardium to reach it.
"Honestly?" Faith answered the question after a long moment's thought. "I dunno."
"You think we'll win?"
The Slayer glanced around the church, now filled with people praying loudly, vocally to their God while they prepared to fight the fanged demons of their nightmares. "I think they'll do better than you expect. Desperation's a powerful thing."
"Do you forgive them?"
"No."
"But you're helping them."
"it's like what you said earlier, Court. We're Vampire Slayers. I fight vampires. That doesn't mean I have to like who's fighting alongside me."
"Should we trust them?"
"Not particularly. But they need our help right now, so I reckon we're safe enough."
"Hey Faith?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think those vampires could hurry up and get here? 'Cuz I'm kind of ready to go home."
"Me, too, kid. Me, too."
In the end, Faith decided, they really shouldn't have worried. When the vampires did show up at the gates of the city, they were met by a crowd of villagers two hundred strong, brandishing their torches, shovels, hoes, and pitchforks. It was a long, hard fight, but ultimately the seventy-odd vampires were all dusted or incinerated. And luckily, although many of the townspeople were injured in the melee – some of them severely – no more humans died.
Dawn came at last, illuminating the smoldering piles of vampire ash and the scorched and cut faces of the villagers. Somewhere in the night, Courtney and Faith had managed to bury their hatchets with a few people. The mayor of Hanselstadt, a heavy-set man in his early fifties, had tackled a vampire from behind when it tried to sneak up on Faith. Made it kinda hard to hate him after that.
As she clambered into Giles' rental car at long last, the Slayer admitted that while she would never like these people, and she did not think that she could ever forgive these people, they had fought bravely for their village. And frankly, she was too damn tired to care about anything another than washing her clothing and climbing into bed. She was getting too old for battles that lasted all day and all night.
Buckling her seatbelt, she returned to her bottle of Jaegermeister. The rental company had rules about smoking, but at least she could get drunk and try to forget about these utterly miserable last twenty-four hours. Maybe, if she was lucky, Giles would not notice until she had finished the whole thing. Faith did not feel like sharing. Not today.
May 26, 2006, London, England
Faith had never been one to use homework as an escape, but when Giles had told her that Courtney and her parents were coming by the apartment to "talk over some things," she had instantly remembered an incredibly important college algebra test that she had to study for. And so the Slayer sequestered herself in Giles' spare bedroom and opened her textbook. She actually did have a test on the horizon, but perhaps there was less impending doom than she had implied.
Still, it was nice to have a reprieve from the past three days of calling the families of the girls on Duncan Fillworthe's list. In the last seventy-two hours, Faith had learned the proper way to express one's regrets and condolences, and she wished more than anything that she could have skipped that particular tutorial.
Frowning, the Slayer stared intently at the page of linear equations on the desk in front of her. As she checked and double-checked her answers, she chewed on the inside of her lip. Her stomach rumbled, but she ignored it. No way was she risking a confrontation with Courtney's parents. Food could wait.
Satisfied with her responses, Faith fired up her laptop and opened the course page to type in her homework and download the practice exam. Out of habit, she checked her email. There was a brief missive from Becka, asking if it was okay for her to throw an end-of-the-semester party at Faith's place during finals week. Apparently Lily had some big audition coming up and had put the kibosh on any big celebrations. Faith typed in a quick affirmative and continued scrolling.
Just as her practice exam finished downloading, her computer beeped as another email came in.
From: ZepHead_79
To: FyreCracker5x5
Date: March 26, at 9:15 a.m. CST
Subject: People are Crazy
Hey,
How did your thing turn out? Ours was batsh-t insane. Sam deserves an Oscar for his turn as damsel in distress.
Dean
. . . .
From: FyreCracker 5x5
To: ZepHead_79
Date: March 26, at 9:16 a.m. CST
Subject: RE: People are Crazy
Hey,
It's a long story. Short version, it started out ehhh, went full Dark Side, and ended up okay-ish. What happened with Sam?
. . . .
From: ZepHead_79
To: FyreCracker5x5
Date: March 26, at 9:17 a.m. CST
Subject: RE: RE: People are Crazy
You ever see Deliverance?
. . . .
From: FyreCracker5x5
To: ZepHead_79
Date: March 26, at 9:19 a.m. CST
Subject: Deliverance?
Maybe? It's been a while. Remind me how it goes?
. . . .
From: ZepHead_79
To: FyreCracker5x5
Date: March 26, at 9:21 a.m. CST
Subject: Idea
Hey, Sam's got an idea. Do you have a webcam?
. . . .
From: FyreCracker5x5
To: ZepHead_79
Date: March 26, at 9:22 a.m. CST
Subject: RE: Idea
No, but I bet Giles does. I'll be right back.
. . . .
The Slayer snuck into the hallway. If she was careful, no one would notice her. Treading silently, she tiptoed into Giles' office and found his laptop on his mahogany desk, complete with webcam. Faith unplugged the webcam and unclipped it from the top of the laptop screen before sneaking back into her room. She set the camera up on her own computer.
From: FyreCracker5x5
To: ZepHead_79
Date: March 26, at 9:26 a.m. CST
Subject: RE: RE: Idea
Webcam is go. Now what?
. . . .
A moment later, a window popped-up on her laptop, asking if she wanted to video conference with ZepHead_79. Faith clicked 'accept,' and the image of a grungy motel room gradually swam into view. She maximized the window so that it occupied the entire screen. In the middle of the picture, Dean smirked at her.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"I guess Sam has his uses after all."
A blurry figure moved at the back of the field of view. "Dean. I can hear you. And, just sayin', I'm not the one who got beat up by a thirteen-year-old girl this week."
"You got beat up by a thirteen-year-old?" the woman crowed in delight.
Dean shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "That's outta context." He looked over his shoulder to his brother in the background and made an obscene gesture. Turning back to the screen a little too quickly, the hunter winced.
Even with the bad connection, Faith caught that. "How bad did the thirteen-year-old beat you up?" she asked, more seriously.
"What? I'm fine."
"He's not fine," yelled Sam from somewhere offscreen. "Show her your shoulder."
The Slayer raised an eyebrow. "What happened to your shoulder?"
"It's nothing. Sam just thinks it's funny to play Mother Hen."
"Dean . . ."
"And you're not any better." Rolling his eyes, Dean slowly tugged his undershirt over his head to reveal a thick white bandage wrapped around his right shoulder. "See? All fine. And I'm not taking this off, so don't bother asking."
"What got you?"
He paused, grimacing. "Short version, hot poker. Long version, crazy hillbilly trying his hand at interrogation with a hot poker. I think it's gonna scar. And it's gonna be ugly."
"Worried it'll affect your ability to pick up girls?"
"Hadn't gotten there yet. Mostly hoping it won't heal weird and mess up my ability to move my arm."
In commiseration, Faith decided to share her own newest battle wound. "Good point." Standing, she removed her own t-shirt and turned to the side, pulling up at the edges of her bra to better display the series of inflamed red marks arranged in circles. She showed him identical marks on her back.
Dean leaned closer in to his laptop, frowning. "What the hell happened to you?"
The Slayer retrieved her shirt and covered back up. "I went a few rounds with Audrey Two."
"A plant – really?"
"Close. An ancient demon that was like a cross between an octopus and a plant. And that thing from Fellowship of the Ring."
It was easy for him to follow her line of reasoning. "The Watcher in the Water? How did you find one of those in – where were you again?"
"Middle of nowhere, Germany."
"Right. So . . . what happened?"
"I share with the class, you gotta tell me how you got your ass handed to you by a teenage girl."
The hunter turned away from the screen. "Hey, Sam! Faith was in Little Shop of Horrors – you know, that musical you did in high school, when you played with the plant puppets."
"What?" Sam dragged a chair over to join his brother in front of the computer. "I thought Faith had a case in Germany?"
"Same thing."
Faith snorted. "Okay. Here's the thing. I landed in Berlin about five days ago . . . "
A/N: I took the week off from Synch to write a 6,000 word Horatio Hornblower ficlet that hopped out of the bunny garden in a navy coat and white linen britches and started demanding a double ration of ale and the choicest cuts of mutton . . . Thanks, H'ratio.
But now I am off the frigate Indefatigable and back on the good ship Synch, so we will be moving full steam ahead into Faith and Dean's next adventure. Feedback and concrit are always appreciated over here, so drop me a line, type a few sentences into that little text field to the bottom right of your screen, and let AiH know what you think!