DR2 - The Cross of Changes by Nick Midian, Book II, part 4 of 8
Written by Nick Midian
Content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Duncan
English grammar, spelling, slang, Highlander continuity and general corrections
by Theo
French slang, content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Mash
French slang by Alan
EMAIL: jcaballero@euskalnet.net
WEBSITE: http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/thedarkages
SPOILERS: For Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3rd season, BUT no Xander/Willow kissing
and no Lover's Walk (welcome to the wonderful State of Denial, Land of
'Shippiness). Hmmm, I've messed with the third season's timeline to accommodate
it to my necessities. Let's just say that 'Band Candy' happened a lot later than
it did, around the first days of February, OK?
For Highlander: None really, the characters of the TV series and films are only
tangentially mentioned. You just need to know the basics of Highlander-style
immortality, BUT I've always thought that whole 'Immortals have no parents and
are found in a little basket' is a... um, the Spanish word for it is 'chorrada',
so let's just ignore it, OK?
KEYWORDS: Romance, Angst, Action-adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe,
Crossover.
RATING: PG-13 with some mild R parts for violence and sexual innuendo.
DISCLAIMER: This story has been written with no intention of profit, merely for
the pleasure of writing and sharing it.
The concept and characters of BTVS (Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, Xander, Willow, Oz,
Giles, Joyce, Spike, Drusilla, Snyder, Faith, Harmony, Lyle Gorch, Quentin
Travers and the rest) are intellectual and legal property of Joss Whedon, Warner
Brothers, Mutant Enemy, etc. Also, the concept of Highlander and the characters
mentioned here (Duncan MacLeod, Amanda Darieux, Richie Ryan, Joe Dawson and the
Society of Watchers) are the property of Panzer-Davis and Rysher Entertainment.
Michael Deveraux, Rachel Curran, Crystal Parker, Kyle White Owl, Robert
Coltrane, Elvis the Dog, Broderick Egoyan, Damon Frost, Mr. Smith, the World
Committee for Civil Defense and the rest are my own creation.
All the songs and lyrics here are used without permission, they are copyright of
their respective rights owners.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Please, understand that English is not my native language, so
any grammatical or spelling errors are my fault, not of any one of my wonderful
beta-readers. If you're thinking of sending any flames, please be kind with me.
I'm a grown man, but I still can cry like a child, believe me.
Additional Author's Note: The songs performed by Oz's band are 'Loli Jackson'
and 'Serenade' by Dover. It appears courtesy of Subterfuge records. All rights
reserved, yadda, yadda, yadda...
SUMMARY: After the events in 'Dark Reflection' a new threat menaces both the
Slayerettes and the Archangels as new and old enemies come to Sunnydale, merging
past and present. This time, it's something personal - ta-da-da-dam!!! (sorry,
but I just had to say that)
And now, on with the show. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen, because
it's going to be a long, hard and jumpy ride...
~~~~~~
The cast for Book II
Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
David Boreanaz as Angel
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Seth Green as Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
Matthew Perry as Michael Deveraux
Paula Trickey as Rachel Curran
James Marsters as Spike
Nikki Cox as Crystal Parker
David James Elliott as Kyle White Owl
Elvis the Dog as Himself
Eliza Dushku as Faith Adams
Donald Sutherland as The Old Chess Player, Broderick Egoyan
Sebastian Spence as Damon Frost
Avery Brooks as Mr. Smith
Mercedes MacNab as Harmony Kendall
Armin Shimerman as Principal Snyder
Amy Chance as Aphrodesia
Persia White as Aura
Alan Rickman as Conrad Swann
Wesley Snipes as Talon Pantera
Dennis Rodman as Rush Pantera
Tom Berenger as Colonel Cabbot Ashe
Michael Ironside as the Sergeant
Trevor Goddard as Backlash
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Jet Li as Bushido
with
Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls
and
Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red
~~~~~~
The first thing that Faith thought at seeing the people gathered inside the huge
and gloomy library, was that they had to be the weirdest and most colorful group
she had ever met.
The first one that captured her attention was the same young man that had
accompanied Mr. Smith last night during her abduction, the one that had shot her
with a tranquilizer gun. The one with the crooked smile, and incredible piercing
black eyes.
The young sandy-haired man, who was sitting on a huge armchair with his legs
nonchalantly crossed, turned around slightly when he heard them coming into the
library, and offered a twisted and leery smile to the former Slayer.
=Nice,= she thought, =good enough for a couple of hours of fun in the sack.=
With the tight black jeans he was wearing and his white turtleneck, he looked a
very tasty dish. Nevertheless, what she found the most surprising was the dark
ebony Catholic rosary he was playing with, making it spin and roll around his
index finger.
In front of him, seated on another seat that was a twin of the sandy-haired
young man, there was another man. He was older, seemingly in his early fifties;
and much more distinguished than his younger counterpart, wearing an elegant and
expensive-looking black suit of British style.
This man, with light brown hair graying at his temples, had only one blue eye on
his face: his left one. His right one was covered by a black leather eye-patch
that wasn't big enough to hide the long and wide scar that crossed his otherwise
handsome face from the brim of his hair down to his chin.
The man looked at her coolly with his one eye, sipping delicately from a
porcelain cup of tea.
Standing by the huge fireplace that was lit even though it was quite early in
the morning, and was the only source of light in the room, there was a third
man. He also seemed to be in his fifties, but that had a much more rough-looking
than the one-eyed man.
He was wearing a cheap gray suit that seemed completely out of place on him
because, with the way that he held himself – firm, back straight as a board and
a severe expression – Faith thought that it would be more fitting for him to be
wearing a military uniform.
Nevertheless, no matter how strange these three men looked, they couldn't hold a
candle against the other two occupants of the huge library. The two young black
men had to be the some of most extravagant and weird people she'd had the chance
to meet, especially the taller one.
He was very tall, more so even than Mr. Smith, although his body was thinner and
less overtly muscular. The tall guy was wearing a striking and clashing outfit,
that seemed to be a mix between a fluorescent orange jumpsuit without sleeves
and a black leather vest, and his naked arms had almost each square inch of skin
covered by some kind of elaborate tattoo.
His face, that had a twisted expression that was a mix of amusement and disgust,
had enough piercings to make the metal detector of an airport think that he was
a walking armory. At first glance, Faith was able to count at least seven rings
on his ears, eyebrows and nose.
Still, the most striking thing about him was his freaky hair. Although it was
cut short, it was dyed in a complicated pattern that included a screaming
version of all the colors of the rainbow. Green turquoise, indigo blue, lemon
yellow... she even caught some glimpses of light pink.
His companion, who sat beside him in a tall chair identical to the one of the
tall freak, was way shorter than him, but all that he lacked in height was
compensated for by his much broader shoulders and bulging muscles.
That, and the hard expression of his face made him look like a walking machine
of destruction.
His hair, although natural in its color, was shaved at the sides of his head.
And the chocolate-brown skin was covered by an intricate web of black tattoos,
which resembled the ritual ones of a Maori warrior that disappeared under the
collar of his leather jacket.
The two men looked as one to her when she entered in the room following Egoyan's
wheelchair, but their expressions were as unreadable as the moa statues of
Easter Island.
"Lady and gentlemen," the old crippled man said while he wheeled himself to the
middle of the irregular circle formed by the men, where a chessboard had been
placed on a tall pedestal. Faith thought that there was something strange about
the little figures on it, but she wasn't close enough to fully appreciate them.
"First and foremost, let me give all of you my warmest welcome to my home and
express to you how... thankful I am for you being here. I know that some of you
have had to abandon other pursuits to be here."
Egoyan stopped by the chess board and took a long and slow look at the small
figures on its surface, losing himself as if they had a mesmerizing quality that
was lost to the rest of those present. Then, as if he was coming out of a
trance, the old man softly shook his head and offered a twisted smile to his
'guests'.
"My name is Broderick Egoyan," he told them, "some of you know me just from a
few moments acquaintance; but with others, instead, I've shared long years of
mutual collaboration and knowledge." Here, he directed a small nod towards the
distinguished one-eyed man, that was returned with the same measure.
"But I'm afraid that few of you know each other, so I'll play my role as your
host and introduce you to one another."
"First of all," he continued, rolling away from the chessboard and making a soft
wave towards Faith, "gentlemen, I would like you to meet Miss Faith Adams, the
vampire Slayer."
"No more she truly is," the shorter and leather-clad black man said with a voice
that sounded like the hiss of a feline, "vampire she is now. Can smell her."
"Yeah," the sandy-haired young man muttered, looking at her sideways with a
lustful expression, "D.B.W. Dead Babe Walking."
"I can assure you that you don't have anything to fear from Miss Faith; she will
behave, won't you my dear?"
Sitting down on a big and comfy seat, almost making a show out of it, Faith
crossed her long legs and smiled charmingly. "I don't promise anything."
Shaking his head, Egoyan allowed a new vulture-like smile to cross his thin
lips. "You also know my aide-de-camp, Mr. Smith." The huge black man made a soft
nod as a salute, before retreating back to the dark spot he had taken as a
refuge.
"And the gentleman with the quirky sense of humor is Mr. Damon Frost," he
introduced the sandy-haired man, who just waved at the rest with that twisted
smile on his lips.
"And the two gentlemen over there," the old man made a short sign towards the
two black men, "are the Pantera brothers, Talon and-"
"Pumba?" Faith ventured, with an innocent sweet smile.
The joke seemed to pass over everybody's head except Damon's, who just snorted,
hiding his laughter behind his fist.
"Rush," the tall freak corrected her with a voice that sounded like his
brother's, only a little more high-pitched. "Me called Rush."
"If you've finished," Egoyan gently continued, regaining their attention, "the
man beside the fireplace is Mr. Cabbot Ashe."
"Colonel Ashe," the man sternly corrected him.
"You have my apologies, Colonel," the old man offered a slightly annoyed smile
and the man just raised a cool eyebrow, crossing his hands behind his back and
making his chest stand out like a proud soldier.
"And last but not least, Mr. Conrad Swann," Egoyan finished, nodding at the
one-eyed man.
"Great," Faith said, resting her arms on the back of her seat, "now that we know
each other, could you tell us why we're here? Or am I the only one who's been
left in the dark?"
"That would be a nice idea, Broderick," the man called Swann spoke for the first
time. "I'm still wondering why you called me and, frankly, my businesses require
a time that I can't afford to waste on... games. No matter how beautiful and
charming the players are," he finished with a slight nod of appreciation towards
Faith.
The former Slayer just raised an eyebrow. She was beginning to get tired of
being treated like an airheaded girl, with nice tits and a shapely little ass.
If the things didn't begin to get more interesting soon, she would start
breaking necks and ripping out hearts. Maybe some of these guys would be useful
if she turned them.
Egoyan's voice brought her out of her reverie. "How's your eye, Conrad?" he
asked the distinguished man, who immediately glared at the crippled old man with
his only working eye.
"Does it still weep if you let the air touch it? Do you still hurt when it's
cold, so much so that you think that someone's stabbing your brain with an
ice-pick?"
With his only working eye half-closed and his lips clenched tightly, Swann
caressed his eye-patch absent-mindedly, and everybody noticed the slight shaking
of his fingers when he did so.
"You know that it's so," he whispered raggedly.
"And wouldn't you like to make the person who did that to you pay for it?
Wouldn't you like to recover your most precious possession?" Egoyan smiled at
him with a cruel grimace. "I know that you miss her, even more than what you
miss that eye."
"I do," Swann admitted with his ragged voice. "I want her back."
"Each one of us here wants something," he said, wheeling himself away from the
one-eyed man and taking a good look at each of the people present.
"And that something is the reason why we are here today. Our greed is what we
have in common. For some of us, like Colonel Ashe, that something is just money;
a simple exchange in which he offers me his services and that of his mercenary
team, and receives back an astronomical amount of cash."
He continued, "For others, that something is more personal, more... twisted. My
friend Conrad here wants to recover something that was stolen from him, and make
the people who did such a thing pay for it. Mr. Frost has a family debt to pay,
and the Pantera brothers want payback too; in their case, they want to destroy a
man that killed somebody who was very dear to them."
"He must die," the black man called Talon growled viciously. "Same way we
suffered, he will suffer. Honor and blood demands it."
Egoyan shrugged with disinterest. "If you ask me, revenge is a waste of time, a
vicious circle in which you can only lose time and effort, Mr. Talon. But," he
continued before Talon or his brother had the chance to protest, "it's not my
business. What matters to me, is that we can help each other to attain our
respective goals; if you help me to get what I want, I will help you to get what
you want. Money, revenge..." His cold gaze settled on Faith, "...your heart's
desire."
"And what is it you want?" Damon asked, never stopping his restless play with
his rosary. "What is so precious to you that you've run the risk of gathering us
here? Where run is a figure of speech, of course."
The old man's grim expression left no doubts of his seriousness. "I'm a very
rich man, Mr. Frost, some people would even say that I'm awfully rich. And what
I want is the one thing that my money, that my wealth, no matter how large it
is, can't get me. The only thing I can't afford."
"Which is?" Faith asked, all her sarcasm lost at the man's mesmerizing tone.
He looked at her, smiled and, just for a second, looked almost human. "Time, my
dear. Time." Sighing like a broken flute, the old man wheeled himself away.
"I want you all to understand something; I have enough money to buy this nation,
this continent, maybe this entire world if I wanted to. And to gain this
incredible wealth, I've had to spend my whole life working very hard. A long
life it's been, too."
He said with a slight grimace, "Now, I don't think that any of you can
understand this – some of you are too young to even think of how your life will
be when you grow old and weak. And some others," he sent a brief and meaningful
look towards Faith, "won't ever have that problem. But I do, and every passing
day is just a delay in my death-sentence."
"Humans die," Talon stated, deadpan. "Everything dies. Way of nature that is."
"Not if I can help it," the old man growled with disdain. Pausing, he stared at
Talon.
"Broderick Egoyan," he continued, accentuating each word with a soft knock on
the armrest of his wheelchair, "will not be defeated by something as feeble as
nature. And that's what I want, that's the thing you're going to help me to get.
You're going to help me to regain that time I've lost."
He took a long and slow look at them, making the chair spin around. "You're
going to give me Eternity."
~~~~~~
"I feel like something that the cat spat out," Kyle mumbled before taking a
greedy and blind sip from his mug and grimacing at the taste.
"Holy cow," he grunted, making an effort not to spit out the mouthful, "what is
this... thing?"
Beside him, Crystal raised a cool eyebrow while sipping from her own mug.
"Herbal tea, it's good for you."
"In the name of my gods and ancestors, Cris," the tall Texan growled, rolling
his bright blue eyes and getting off his chair to change the contests of his mug
for a good dose of black coffee, "this is like poison to my system. Do you wanna
kill me or something?"
The red-haired witch's expression didn't falter, and she just looked at him with
her cool jade-green eyes when the tall man sat back in front of her and drank
his coffee. "I'm just worried about your health. All that caffeine, all that red
meat and fat you eat can't be good for you. I can see it in your aura," she said
making a soft wave around his head, as if she was picking invisible things from
it.
She continued, "By the Goddess, it looks like it could use a good cleansing. I
just don't get it, Kyle. You were trained as a shaman, you know more about
spiritual ways than most of the people I've ever met – why don't you try to be a
little more..."
"Spiritual?" he guessed, his attention more focused on fixing himself a huge
salami sandwich.
"Yeah, something along those lines."
Kyle shrugged, removing importance to the matter. "I don't know, it's never
really been my style. When I was a kid at the reservation, all I really wanted
to do was go out and see the world. I trained in the old shaman ways to please
my grandfather who, as you may know, was the one who raised me. Then I got my
scholarship to MIT and I thought that it was my chance, but something happened
and..."
The red-haired witch looked at her friend with worry, seeing with surprise the
flash of sudden sadness that flashed across his usually bright features.
Something did a flip-flop inside her, a feeling so unexpected and so unusual in
her that she almost wasn't able to identify it.
"What happened?" she gently inquired, placing a comforting hand on his much
larger one.
For a second, Kyle looked at the small and fair-skinned hand of the witch on his
slightly tanned and callused one. With amazement, and feeling his heart beating
a little faster, the tall Texan let his fingers entwine around her slenderer
ones.
"It doesn't matter," he whispered, captivated by the image of their hands linked
together. "It's in the past now, and it was a long time ago."
He raised his eyes to hers and managed a weak, almost shy smile. "Mmm, ah, I was
thinking that you and I never really do anything together, alone, I mean. And I
was wondering, if you don't have any plans, we could... wha-what?!?" he asked
with surprise when she let go of his hand and leaned back in her chair, looking
at him through half-closed eyes. "Is it, uh, something I've said?"
"I just can't believe you," Crystal shook her head with incredulity, "we were
having a moment, and you have to come out with this."
Kyle blinked in confusion. "This?"
"Yes!" For the first time in the few years he had known her, Kyle White Owl saw
Crystal Parker express something that was closely resembling anger. She had a
slight blush covering her milky-white cheeks, and her jade-green eyes blazed
bright and shiny.
He weakly thought that he had never seen her look so beautiful. "This crap, this
joke! 'Ooh, we could be alone, baby,'" she mimicked him in an acceptable
impersonation, "we could have some fun together between the sheets.'"
She finally rose up from the table, sending him an angry look. "When are you
going to grow up, Kyle?"
He watched her retreating back as she disappeared in the general direction of
her private room, and then leaned his forehead on the surface of the table.
"Asshole," he muttered, slowly banging his head on it, "I'm a complete, total
and absolute asshole."
"I couldn't 'ave put it more accurately meself, Cowboy," a voice with a deep
British accent and dripping twisted sarcasm told him.
Raising his head slightly, Kyle took a look at Spike as he crossed the kitchen
and, opening the fridge, took a can of beer from it. "Great, just what I needed,
Mr. 'I've been wearing the same clothes for the last fifty years'. Why don't you
go and take a walk in the sun, Spike? Leave me alone with my misery."
The bleached-hair vampire chuckled, letting himself fall onto a chair in front
of the tall Texan. "Nah, it's just sooo funny to see you squirmin', Cowboy. How
could I miss the chance to do this?"
Kyle just sent a hostile look towards him.
"Anyway," Spike continued with a wide smile, "did I miss anything interestin'
last night or what?"
The tall Texan's expression changed from amused hostility to somber worry in a
heartbeat. "Yeah, you could say so."
~~~~~~
The door of Xander's room opened wide violently, and the young dark-haired
vampire raised his eyes with surprise from the task that had been holding his
attention; the almost ritual sharpening and cleansing of his sword.
In front of him, right under the door's frame, there was a fuming and quite
unsettled Spike.
"Are you bloody nuts or what!?!" he practically screamed, shaking his clenched
fists.
"Good morning to you too, Spike," Xander calmly greeted him with a slightly
amused expression. "Nice to see you, did you have a good time with Willow last
night?"
"That's none of your business," he said, a little more quickly than what both of
them expected and, walking into his blood-brother's room, slammed the door
behind him violently.
"I thought you said you'd call me if somethin' went wrong, mate, and I've 'ad to
learn about what 'appened last night through the damn Cowboy. What you were
thinkin' about? Were you suicidal, or what?"
Xander, who was kneeling down at the foot of his bed, sighed and returned to his
task, carefully sliding a sharpening stone along the edge of his katana. "You
wouldn't understand it."
"Oh, I wouldn't?" he asked with deep sarcasm. "Trust me on this, brother, if
there's one vampire who knows about wantin' to rip his sire's head off, that's
me."
Xander sent to him a brief look from under his dark eyebrows, but said nothing
at all. Spike shook his head in a mix of anger and amusement, and let himself
fall onto the only chair in the room, carefully avoiding the thin rays of sun
that entered through the venetian blinds.
He took a look at the naked walls and spartan furniture, and snorted. "When are
you gonna decorate in 'ere?" he inquired. "This place is so borin', that it's
like Angelus who's livin' 'ere instead o' you."
The younger vampire shrugged with disinterest. "I have better things to think
about."
"Yeah, like suicide, for example? Lemme guess, you're gonna go face Faith when
ya learn where she is, ain't you? Wow, that's a great plan, Xander. Way to go,
boy."
Ignoring his sarcasm, Xander checked the edge of the blade with his thumb,
seeing that it was so sharp that it almost cut him to the bone just with the
merest touch.
With absolute fascination, he observed the thin drop of blood that flowed from
the wound to the palm of his hand and the small arch of blue electricity that
ran over it, closing the cut as if it had never been there. Then he licked his
blood, closing his eyes.
"You're too emotionally involved in this, Xander," Spike told him softly, "you
should step aside and let the rest of us do this for ya."
The look that Xander sent him could have burnt an iceberg. "This is my fight,
not yours."
Spike shook his head in denial. "You made it mine when you decided to be my
friend and let me be yours, mate. You're not ready to kill 'er, I can almost
smell it."
"I will be when the time comes," Xander said stubbornly, making the
bleached-hair vampire sigh as he let his head fall backwards.
"I swear to you that I dunno how it is that I've ended up with you, mate.
Sometimes I wonder what I was thinkin' about, when I decided to save your asses
back in Seattle."
Xander frowned slightly and with heartfelt amusement. "You saved us? It's
curious, but I don't remember it that way."
"Oh, no?" Spike stated with incredulity. "Let's see... it was you who was naked
and helpless on the floor of that warehouse..."
"Semi-naked," Xander corrected him, "where semi is the key word."
"Whatever," the bleached-hair vampire shrugged, "it was you who had those
strange purple things tyin' you up, and it was me who entered through the
skylight in the roof and saved the bloody day."
"Yeah," Xander chuckled, shaking his head, "there's two things I've never
understood about that."
"Which ones?"
"Why did you help us?" he asked gently, almost in a whisper. "Why didn't you
just go away when you had the chance?"
The bleached-hair vampire shrugged. "If I 'ad the answer to that question, I
think that a lotta things would be easier in my life." They stood in silence for
a few seconds, until Spike broke it with a small frown. "And the second one?"
Xander smiled widely. "Who the hell taught you to yell exactly like Tarzan?"
The two vampires burst out in laughter, that grew until there were red tears
rolling down their cheeks and Xander was practically rolling on the floor,
holding his gut.
The door of the room opened and Kyle stuck his head into the semi-darkness,
raising an eyebrow at seeing the vampires in the middle of what looked like an
attack of hysterical laughter.
"I'm sorry to interrupt such a, uh, weird scene, but you have a call, Xander."
"Unless it's Cordy, tell whoever it is that I'll call him later," Xander said
with a wave of dismissal, shaking his head with amusement. "And bring a couple
of beers on your way back, Kyle. Join us, we're remembering old times."
Kyle grimaced, almost painfully. "Although it sounds appealing, I think I'll
pass. And you should take that call, Xand," he added, sounding suddenly too
serious and pointing upwards with his thumb, "it's the big boss."
Rolling his eyes and grunting, Xander got up from the floor and sighed. "What
the hell could they want now?"
"Knowin' them," Spike shrugged, "anything. Wanna bet?"
"Five bucks says big, green, nasty thing menacing the world," Kyle said,
searching inside the pockets of his jeans. "Uh, could anyone lend me five
bucks?"
Shaking his head in amusement at his friends' behavior, Xander went out of the
room and began to walk to the laboratory, where the secured telephone lines were
installed, noticing that Kyle quickly hurried his pace, following him.
"Something else, Mr. White Owl?" the young vampire inquired.
"I've finished the analysis of the traces we found yesterday," he informed
Xander with an all-business tone.
"The small glass fragments?" Xander sighed, not really knowing if he wanted to
go into that matter right then. "What do you have?"
He shrugged. "Not much, the fragments were too small for a complete trace. A
huge sedan, probably a Ford or a Lincoln of a recent model, no more than two
years old."
"Anything from the police?"
"Nope," he shook his head. "I've hacked into their database, but nobody's made a
report about the loss or theft of a car with that description. But it's still
too soon, so..."
"Something else?" Xander asked, taking the phone.
"Xander, the blood..." the tall Texan looked at him warily. Covering the phone
with the palm of his hand, Xander motioned to him in silence. "... it was
Faith's, there's no doubt about that."
Xander took a long and deep breath, and closed his brown eyes for a second.
"Thanks, Kyle," he finally said, going back to the phone.
The tall Texan nodded and squeezed his friend and leader's shoulder, giving him
a soft pat on the back. "I've still got a couple of tests to run, call me if you
need anything, OK?"
Xander just nodded and smiled softly at him, bringing the phone to his lips.
"It's me," he simply said.
"That's good, Xander," a very-well known voice said, from the other end of the
line. "It's also me here."
The young vampire chuckled softly, and leaned on the tall counter of the small
laboratory. "What can I do for you today, Robert?" he asked with a smile to his
superior.
"The truth is, today it's something that I can do for you," the older man told
him and Xander frowned slightly; noticing that, in spite of the usual humor that
his voice carried, there was a note of tension in his tone. "We have to meet
ASAP."
"This is not exactly a good time, I'm having some..." for a second, the young
vampire thought on lying to him, but he quickly shrugged that idea away. Robert
Coltrane was not only his boss, but a good friend and he didn't want to betray
the deep trust he had placed in him.
Nonetheless, maybe for that same reason, he couldn't completely explain to him
what was going on. He didn't want to fail him. "Well, let's just say that I'm
having some personal problems. Can't you tell it to me right now or postpone it
for a couple of days?"
"It's just too important to delay it," the older man told him with a deep tone,
"and too personal to speak about it on the phone. We need to meet face to face."
Sighing, Xander passed a hand over his tired expression and through his dark
hair. "Alright, a rendezvous at the same place as always? The pier on Venice
Beach?"
"No," Robert said, taking Xander by surprise, "I'm in Sunnydale. There's a nice
French restaurant on Main Street, do you know it?"
The young vampire stood in silence for a couple of seconds, his face turned into
an unreadable mask. "Yeah, Didier's Bistro."
"Let's meet for lunch in a couple of hours, my treat," the older man suggested.
"You're paying?" Xander snorted with light sarcasm. "It must be something really
important."
"See you later, Xander," the man told him goodbye. "And take care."
"Same here, Robert," Xander whispered, before he heard the line going dead in
his ear. Then, for a few moments, he remained in silence, thinking at top speed
and absent-mindedly tapping his chin with the telephone.
"Kyle?" he finally called the tall Texan, who was not far away, running the
tests he had told him about.
"Yeah?" he absent-mindedly answered, his eye glued to the visor of a potent
electronic microscope.
"I'm going out for a while," Xander told him, gently putting the phone on its
cradle. "I need a couple of things."
Finally, Kyle raised his eyes from his task and looked at him with half-closed
eyes and a curious expression. "Sure, what do you need?"
"A car," Xander told him, his eyes turned into darker and harder versions of
themselves, "and a gun."
~~~~~~
Xander parked Spike's Chevy Monte Carlo a couple of streets away from the
restaurant and, before going out, reached to the small of his back and took out
the pistol that Kyle had given him from the warehouse's ample armory.
Carefully making the slide chamber of the semi-automatic go back half an inch,
the young vampire checked there was a round already loaded in the Heckler und
Koch USP Compact and then engaged the safety, returning the gun to its holster.
Taking a deep breath, Xander checked on his appearance in the rear-view mirror
of the car and frowned with worry. There was something here that wasn't feeling
right.
Even when the organization's rules establishing the relationships between the
field teams and their respective supervisors were kinda hazy, he, as the leader
of the Archangels, and Robert had developed a sort of schedule for their
irregular meetings and reports.
Thus, it was very strange that the older man would have traveled all the way
from headquarters to California without notifying him beforehand. And the mere
fact that he was in Sunnydale, was definitely weird.
It was against all the rules, against everything that he had been taught was the
right procedure. It was stupid, dangerous and a serious threat to the internal
security of the organization.
So, to be perfectly honest, Xander was freaking about it.
Getting out of the blue and slightly tattered car, the young vampire took a
careful look at his surroundings, his trained and sharp eyes searching for any
possible trace of vigilance or suspicious behavior. It could seem paranoid on
his part, but he knew that sometimes it was only paranoia that kept one alive.
He had taken on the decision of swimming in shark-infested waters, and he knew
that the only way to survive was to have eyes in the back of your head and a
mouth with sharper teeth than the ones of your enemies.
He finally arrived at the restaurant, one of the most expensive and exclusive in
the town; then he carefully smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles in his elegant
silk tie, and arranged the jacket of his equally elegant and really
expensive-looking brown suit.
He wasn't used to wearing these kind of clothes – they were more Michael's
style, and he felt the tie around his neck was tight enough to suffocate him;
but if there was one thing he had learned, it was that sometimes it was better
to pass unnoticed in the crowd.
"I have a reservation for one Robert Coltrane," he told the maitre'd, his brown
eyes more interested in scanning the interior of the restaurant in search for
both his boss and friend, and for any possible menace other than this man with
the cheap tuxedo.
"I'm sorry, m'sieur," the man said with a horribly fake French accent, "there is
no reservation under such name."
Xander rolled his eyes. "Try Alexander Harris."
"Très bien," the maitre'd said, running through his list of names with the point
of his index finger. "Effectivement, Alexander Harris, lunch for two. If you
follow me, m'sieur."
The young vampire followed the man in the tuxedo between the tables, walking
with the sureness and automatic confidence of someone related to the most
wealthy and distinguished side of society.
Quite a number of feminine faces, and some male ones, turned around to follow
his movements and he couldn't help but return some of the smiles and looks with
the crooked and slow rise of one of the corners of his mouth. At one point, he
even thought that someone had sighed at seeing him passing by.
It felt like being James Bond, only a little better.
But any fun he was having went out the window in the next few seconds, when he
finally spotted Robert at one of the most secluded and reserved tables, in a
corner almost at the end of the restaurant, with a dish of food already in front
of him.
It wasn't seeing his friend that made Xander lose his smile, neither was it the
fact that he sat with the two walls at his back so he could see who was coming;
all that was usual for him.
What worried him were the two men sitting a couple of tables away from him. The
cheap gray suits stood out like sore thumbs in the general ambience of elegance
of the restaurant, as did the way they tried to look at him without being
noticed, and the unmistakable bulk of concealed weapons under their jackets.
And if that wasn't enough, his sharp vampire senses immediately brought to him
the sound of their heartbeats, which speeded up the second they saw him, and the
pungent smell of the sweat breaking out on their skins.
They were nervous.
"Xander!" Robert greeted him with a wide smile, getting up from his chair to hug
him. "Hey! Where has all the black and the leather gone to? Are you going for a
new look?"
The young vampire returned the hug halfheartedly and offered a tight smile to
the older man, accepting the chair he offered him and sitting down in front of
him. "You know what they say, Robert, 'when in Rome...'"
The middle-aged man smiled at him widely and retrieved his fork, picking at the
food on his dish. "Something's wrong with the food?" Xander inquired with a
risen eyebrow, crossing his legs and tilting his head to one side.
"I don't know why I chose this place, we should have met at a McDonald's." The
middle-aged man shook his head. "French cuisine is a load of crap," he stated
loud enough for some heads to turn and look at him with offended stares, that
were just ignored by the two men.
"If Michael ever heard you saying something like that," Xander told him with a
smile, "he'd cook you and serve you to Spike for dinner."
"Look at this, for God's shake," Robert continued, picking at his food. "Steamed
spinach? It looks like something my dog sneezed out, it tastes even worse than
it looks, and the helpings are so small..."
Xander smiled at him with a twisted grin. "Why don't you call your guys over
there and tell them to bring us a couple of hamburgers?"
Robert placed his fork on the table and smiled at him, shaking his head. Xander
looked at the two men over his shoulder and waved at them playfully, making them
groan with a mix of incredulity and shame. "I'm sure that they'll be glad to
help us."
"They are good, aren't they?" Robert chuckled, still shaking his head in
amazement.
"They stink to CIA," Xander snorted. "Please, tell me that they're with you."
The older man nodded sheepishly. "I'm afraid so, I'm not fool enough to come to
the Hellmouth without somebody covering my back."
"Oh, come on," the young vampire protested, "I know we have all this bad press,
but Sunnydale really is a nice place to live."
"Yes, if you're a bloodsucking creature of the night," Robert snorted with
sarcasm.
"On behalf of my species: hey! Anyway," he continued, accepting the menu that
the waiter offered him and absent-mindedly running over its contents with his
eyes, "why don't you explain to me what's so important that it's brought you
here all the way from Virginia, and a couple of bodyguards from Langley – which,
I'm guessing, are both completely outside of official channels? What's up,
Robert?"
"Order first," the middle-aged man told him with a mischievous look in his eyes,
"I want to see you dwelling on this."
Raising an eyebrow and smiling smugly, Xander summoned a waiter. He then
returned the menu to the man and said, "Je commencerai par une soupe de légumes,
puis un foie aux oignons. Accompagné d'une bouteille de Chateau Seauvignon, s'il
vous plait."
"Rouge ou blanc?" the waiter inquired, taking note of Xander's request.
The young vampire looked at him as if he was retarded. "Rouge, bien sur."
"Immediatément," the waiter nodded sharply and went away with Xander's order.
"And you just did all that, how?" Robert asked in amazement.
The young vampire shrugged. "You can't live with a French guy for three years,
and not pick up some things in the process. And now, spit it out, Robert."
The older man sighed, his eyes returning to the food on his plate. "I want you
to understand a couple of things, Xander. I'm not here, and we're not having
this conversation. If the brass knew that I was leaking this to you, both our
asses would be out of the organization in less time than it takes to say 'you're
fired'. I'm doing this because I consider you a good friend, and an
indispensable member of... our little merry band."
The young vampire nodded slowly, frowning and looking at him through half-closed
eyes. "Is the risk that high?"
Robert shrugged. "I would probably end up in charge of a substation in Anchorage
or Finland, and quite frankly I'm too old and I don't like the cold. And you...
well, you know your position is still compromised. Some people just don't like
vampires, souled or not."
After a few seconds of silence that the older man used to clear his throat with
a good gulp of wine, he locked his eyes with Xander's. "Do you remember Jonah
Whalls?"
Xander nodded after a few moments, as his mind conjured up the face of the young
man and the few facts that he knew about him. "Yes, we've met a couple of times
but we've never shared more than one or two words."
"I shouldn't tell you this, but he aspired to lead the original Hellmouth team
until you joined the organization and the Archangels were officially
sanctioned," Robert told him, his voice gaining a secretive tone and lowering
practically to a whisper.
"I'd heard some rumors about that," Xander admitted, "I guess he was relieved
when we took the hot potato off his hands."
The older man shook his head. "Far from it, the guy is a social climber of the
highest class; leading the Hellmouth team would've been a great step up in his
career. I don't have to tell you how... disappointed he felt, when you were
nominated for the post."
"And?"
"They gave him another team, Team Prosecutor. Have you heard about them?"
Xander paled noticeably, but he didn't try to his lack of comfort and, when the
waiter finally came and placed his order in front of him, he just served himself
a large glass of red wine and took a long gulp. "Who hasn't? They were massacred
in Europe last year."
"Yes, in Cologne to be exact. Whalls was the only survivor. But I will say in
his defense that he wasn't entirely responsible for the whole debacle, and that
at least they managed to prevent a new Hellmouth being opened there. The case is
that he was, ah, taken off active field duty for a time."
"Where is he now?" Xander asked, not having enough appetite to consume the dish
of soup in front of him, but making himself do so in order to keep up
appearances.
"LA, he's one of our moles inside the LAPD. I don't need to tell you that all
this is classified info, Xander," Robert warned the young vampire, "it has to
remain strictly between you and me."
"My lips are sealed," Xander accepted it, "but how does all this affect us?"
The older man rolled his eyes and put on a strange face, as if to say 'you
should have deduced it yourself by now'. "He's tired of the undercover work, and
has requested to be reassigned to field duty. He still won't be given command of
a team, but he has some good friends in high places. They're pressuring to
relocate him as the organization's direct link with Team Archangel."
Xander stared in silence at his boss and friend for an endless second. "Shit!"
he finally exclaimed, once more making some heads turn around to look at them.
"Xander," Robert told him calmly, trying to placate the young vampire's
obviously growing anger. "You have to understand, your team's status is unique
in the organization. You operate practically in an autonomous way, you alone
don't report to a local substation chief, you're the only ones that don't
include a direct link in your ranks... for God's sake, Xander, you even have a
soulless vampire on your team!" he concluded almost with amazement.
Coltrane continued, "There's a lot of people who don't like it that you have all
that freedom, especially when you're assigned to one of the most conflicted
spots in the world."
The young vampire sighed, leaning back in his chair. "We work hard, you know
that. We have the highest success rate of all the field teams," he stated,
pointing out the facts with soft taps of his index finger on the surface of the
table.
"And that's why you've been allowed to have all that freedom, and why you can't
allow yourself any misjudgment or error."
Xander looked at him with a frown. "What is it that you're not telling me?"
Robert crossed his hands over the table, leaning closer to Xander and looking
around to assure himself that there wasn't anybody close enough to hear them.
"The Watcher's Council knows about you."
It was as if a lightning bolt had struck Xander right in his heart, paralyzing
him. But a burning fire soon replaced the freezing cold he felt first at hearing
his boss's words, as the anger began to grow again inside his belly. "What?
How's that possible?"
The older man shrugged. "Someone leaked the information to them; someone
interested in putting you in a bad position, if you know what I mean."
"Whalls?"
Robert shook his head, with his mouth tightly shut in a twisted grimace. "No, he
wouldn't do it personally, but maybe someone close to him."
Xander leaned back again in his chair, playing with and pinching his lower lip
as his brain worked hard and fast. It couldn't have come at a worse time; now
that he had his mind in twenty different places after Faith's arrival, he just
didn't need this to make him lose focus even more.
"Do they know about Buffy's Immortality?" he asked, almost as an afterthought.
"No, at least not yet. I don't think whoever it was told them anything really
more than a few vague hints, but they were enough to make their little old
brains jump. Especially Travers'."
"That manipulative old bastard," Xander mumbled, barely keeping himself under
control. "If he learns about Buffy, we'll have real troubles with the Council."
"There's something more."
Xander raised his eyes in surprise. "What?"
"This is what Whalls is using to pressure your situation," Robert grimly told
him. "Yesterday, a man claiming to be a collaborator of the Sunnydale PD,
arrived at an LAPD precinct and asked some uncomfortable questions regarding a
rather, ah, gruesome incident that took place at the Kobayashi Towers during
Sunday night. Do you want a description of the man?"
Xander stifled a curse between his clenched teeth. "Tall, impossibly British and
wearing ten layers of tweed?" he guessed. Robert nodded, without uttering a
word. "Damn it."
As the young vampire hid his face between his hands and sighed, his older
companion looked at him sympathetically. "Do you have any idea of what you'd do
if they find out something?"
"Better to say when they find out something," Xander grunted. "Giles can be a
lot of things – but he's a bright guy, he'll figure it all out sooner or later.
And it'll probably be 'sooner' than 'later'." He shook his head heavily. "I just
don't know."
"If you tell them about the organization you'll be breaking all the rules
regarding internal security, and that will leave an open path right to your
team's heart for Whalls," Robert warned him.
"And if I don't, I'll be lying to someone that is more than just a friend to me,
and the relationship between my team and the vampire Slayer's one will be
seriously damaged..."
"...which will also made you look bad in the high brass' eyes," Robert
concluded.
Xander seriously wished he had a good wall at hand to bang his head against it.
"Damned if I do, damned if I don't."
I'm sorry, Xander," Robert softly told him, "but when you accepted this line of
work, you knew that there would be some hard decisions and that only you could
make them."
"I know," Xander sighed, shaking his head. "But sometimes I wish things were
just a little easier."
~~~~~~
It was barely fifteen minutes later that Robert Coltrane came out of the
restaurant, five minutes after Xander had left, and followed by his two
bodyguards he walked to the long black limousine parked in a secluded alley not
far from there.
One of the men held the back door open for him as the other one monitored their
surroundings, his eyes protected by dark sunglasses and his hand inside his
jacket, placed on the butt of his gun.
Once Coltrane was safe inside the bulletproof body of the limousine, the
bodyguard closed the door and both he and his partner walked to a nearby
unmarked Ford, ready to follow the longer vehicle's path.
Inside the semi-dark interior that was produced by the deeply tinted windows,
only lit by the small inner lamps, the middle-aged man made himself comfortable
on one of the ample seats.
He chose the one that faced backwards, and took a long and slow look at the
person who sat in front of him. She was practically completely covered by a
thick and heavy crimson velvet cloak, her head covered by its hood.
The only parts of her he could really see were her hands (beautiful, with long
and slender fingers that had long, deep scarlet polished nails). And the lower
part of her face (a perfect chin and cheeks, the end of a perfectly defined nose
and two of the most sensual lips he had ever seen covered by a thin layer of
blood-red lipstick).
Even so, Robert Coltrane's stomach did a serious flip-flop.
As it did whenever he was close to her.
"It's done," he told her, feeling suddenly shy.
The woman just nodded once, so softly that he doubted if she had really done so.
"There is something you want to ask?" she whispered and her voice, so soft that
it was like a caress, bathed him like a balm.
Robert Coltrane was a good man, a hard worker, a faithful husband and a loving
father. But not for the first time, he wondered how it was possible that he was
completely and hopelessly in love with a woman whose face he hadn't ever really
seen. And with whom he had never spent more than half an hour at a time.
"I'm wondering if all this is really necessary," he told her, expressing his
doubts. The idea of hiding the truth from her was simply too stupid even to
consider, she would know it anyway.
She always knew, and that was one of the things that attracted him to her, the
way she was able to look inside a man or woman's soul and see what was really
there. "I'm wondering why we can't just tell him the truth."
She shook her head, and smiled at him. "He's not ready yet. He still has a lot
to learn, a lot to discover about himself and the world, before he learns what
the truth is. And so does she. Neither of them are ready," she concluded.
Robert nodded in acceptance, returning the smile to her. "I would just like to
be able to help him more. I really like the kid."
"We all like him, Robert. But there's too much at stake to risk; the time is
near, and we cannot fail."
Robert sighed, rubbing his left temple. "The Chosen Ones," he chuckled, "if
someone had told me about all this just ten years ago, I would have ordered them
be put into a straightjacket."
The woman just smiled at him without saying anything.
The darkened window that separated the driver's space from the passengers' one
rolled down with the buzz of an electric mechanism, and the young man at the
steering wheel turned around to face them.
Jonah Whalls' voice was serious and no-nonsense, when he spoke. "Where do we go
now, milady?"
"Let's go home, Jonah," she said to him, "it's getting late."
~~~~~~
The library in the dark mansion was practically empty, and its only occupant was
totally engrossed in examining the small figures of the chess game.
Faith was fascinated by the exquisite details in them, the perfectly way in
which the expression of their faces had been captured; it was almost like
looking at the original people.
She knew most of them, she had just met the other ones and others plagued most
of her dreams of hate and vengeance.
Egoyan in his little wheelchair in the Black King's square. Conrad Swann and Mr.
Smith as the two Black Bishops. Damon Frost and Colonel Ashe were the two Black
Knights. The Pantera brothers had been placed in the Black Rooks' squares, and
the whole line of pawns were filled by identical military-like figures.
And herself as the Black Queen.
=Cute,= she thought, raising an eyebrow.
In front of the small ebony-black army, their marble-white counterparts faced
them. The blonde Slayer as the White Queen, the souled vampire Angel as the
White King's Knight, the Watcher as the White Queen's Bishop and a certain
peroxide-blonde vampire wearing a long duster as her White Rook.
Some of the white pawns were familiar to her too; the bitch, the teen witch, the
silent werewolf and the Slayer's mother.
But some people were completely unknown to her.
The White King's Bishop for example, was a young man with a roguish smile and a
sword, and the White King's Rook a gorgeous woman bearing twin short swords. She
wasn't able to recognize some of the white pawns either, a tall man with a rifle
and a woman wearing vaporous robes.
Two of the pawn squares were empty, as was the White King's one.
But the White Queen's Knight... =My, oh my...=
She carefully took his figure between her fingers, bringing the image of the boy
that had captured her heart and mind closer to her.
He was so beautiful... Faith closed her dark eyes and rolled him between her
fingers, using her sensitive fingertips to trace every feature of his face and
body, letting them trail over the muscles of his chest and the smooth planes of
his coat-covered back.
=So perfect for me...=
The former Slayer opened her eyes, and examined his face. As she rolled him, the
flickering light of the fireplace cast strange shadows on his features and, just
for a second, his whole appearance seemed to change between her fingers. He
became darker, his features melted and turned demonic, almost evil.
Faith gulped, and had to swallow a little yelp of surprise. Another turn; and
the effect of the game of lights and shadows vanished as if it had never
existed; despite however much she tried, it was impossible for her to reproduce
it again.
"He is special, isn't he?" Egoyan asked at her back, rolling into the library.
Faith just nodded, her eyes still captivated by the small figure between her
fingers. "He's unique."
The old man chuckled, shaking weakly his head. "You don't have any idea how much
so he is," he practically muttered to himself. "Well, my dear, what do you think
of our little band?"
Finally leaving the Xander-shaped figure on the chess-board, the former Slayer
turned around to face her host with half-closed eyes and her head slightly
tilted to one side, as if she was seriously thinking her answer.
"Interesting," she finally concluded. "Although I'm still wondering why you need
to complicate things so much. There are easier ways to gain immortality."
Egoyan sighed, rolling his chair to come closer to her. "I know that, but the
kind of immortality that someone like you can offer doesn't interest me. No..."
he shook his head, "I'm searching for something more... special."
Faith shrugged. "It's your call – as long as you keep your promise and I get
what I want from this, I'm on your side."
The old crippled man smiled at her with his vulture-like smile, and nodded. For
a moment he seemed to consider whether to tell her something, as he played
absent-mindedly with the silver ring around his ring-finger, making it turn.
"This is going to be an interesting relationship, my dear. I'm looking forward
to finding what the two of us can do together," he said.
"I'm sure of that," Faith answered with a tight smile, as she walked to the
doors of the library.
"Do you remember the way to your room?" Egoyan asked her gently. "Do you want
Mr. Smith to accompany you?"
Faith looked at him over her shoulder. "I'll find my own way. I always do."
For a few moments, Broderick Egoyan looked at her silk-clad back as she
disappeared into the dark hallway, and then at the empty spot left by the former
Slayer with half-closed eyes.
Then, he turned around in his chair to look at his chess game, and noticed with
amusement that Faith had displaced the Black King's figure out of his square;
placing Xander's one there, right beside her own image.
~~~~~~
Feeling that she hadn't anything better to do until the sun went down, Faith
decided to spend the following hours walking around the whole gloomy mansion.
She was thankful of the fact that all the blinds in the opened rooms had been
closed, preventing the lethal rays of the sun from entering the building.
She felt at first like a little girl in an endless toy shop, walking along the
impossible long hallways, the dark corridors and the gothic rooms. Looking at
the baroque statues of marble, stone and bronze, the paintings and all the
artifacts that seemed to be taken out of an Indiana Jones movie.
They had all the right features, the right layer of dust, the right mystery, and
the right appearance.
For a lonely kid as she had been for most of her life, a good imagination was
often the only company one could have, and hers was one of the best. She
wondered what stories were behind those objects, what kind of treasures they
would be, what exotic places they'd visited before ending up in the possession
of the crippled old man.
When Xander and herself were finally together, she wanted to live in a place
like this. Maybe in this very same house, it would just be a matter of choosing
the right moment and then... well, out with the old, in with the new so to
speak.
In her pointless wandering, Faith finally found herself back again in front of
the marble bust that represented who she thought had been Egoyan's late wife.
Like the first time, she marveled at how beautiful she had been and felt the
same strange sensation. There was something oddly familiar in her face, as if
she had met her before, as if she had seen her somewhere else.
Shaking her head in amazement, Faith examined the stoic face of the statue,
tilting her head to one side and the other. Now that she noticed it, the bust
seemed to be the only piece inside the whole mansion that was actually taken
care of and the only one that hadn't a layer of dust covering it.
Much to the contrary, its white surface was shiny, smooth and clean.
Curious.
As curious as it was how the artist had captured the woman's gorgeous features:
in a way that, on one hand, they looked heart-clenchingly tender. And from
another, hard and resolute, although they always remained beautiful.
As said, curious.
Shaking her shoulders with a shiver, Faith suddenly felt a little strange and
uncomfortable under the statue's gaze, as if it could really see her. It was
stupid to feel that way, but she couldn't help it.
The idea of taking the bust and throwing it to the floor so it would shatter in
a thousand pieces passed through her mind, but the former Slayer dismissed it as
quickly as it had come. There was something in that face that suddenly made her
feel... scared.
She just went out of the room as fast as she could without actually running,
leaving the whole incident behind her as if it had never happened. It was just
too freaky, even for her.
So, trying to forget everything about statues and odd feelings, Faith hurried
her step trying to find the way back to her room. Mr. Smith had politely
informed that he had installed some entertaining appliances there for her use,
like a color TV and a stereo and that she would have fresh blood at her
disposal.
And heck, she ached for a long drink and some hours of mindless fun that only
the idiot box could offer.
Nevertheless, the former Slayer soon found that it was going to be a little
difficult for her to find the way back, the damn mansion was so huge and so
intricate the corridors were like the web of a spider.
She began to get the feeling that she had gotten lost, and could've sworn that
she had passed by the same statue of bronze with the form of a huge griffin
twice.
Sighing and trying to calm down, Faith closed her eyes and used her other sharp
senses to place herself.
With a smile, she quickly noticed a human heartbeat not far from where she was
and carefully followed the beating trace to its source, crossing some darkened
hallways until she found herself in front of a closed door, a thin beam of light
filtering under the lowest part of it.
The former Slayer knelt down and dared to quickly pass through the gauzy line of
light, finding with pleasure that it was from an artificial source and couldn't
harm her. Smiling, Faith applied her ear to the door and, feeling once more like
a kid, listened to the soft sounds coming from the interior of the room.
Metallic sounds, clicks and snaps, as if somebody was assembling a piece of
machinery. And the same heartbeat she had followed, young, strong, sure.
With unnatural silence, Faith turned the handle of the door and opened it just a
little, peeking inside through the small crack.
The room was almost exactly like the one that had been given to her, only that
the bed had been moved to one of the corners. That had left a large and empty
space in the center of the floor, that currently was filled by a large green
sheet surrounded by a series of open vaults and boxes.
Sticking out of the vaults and placed on the sheet, Faith was able to see what
looked like an endless series of weapons and guns, from ordinary pistols and
shotguns to more specialized weaponry like crossbows, swords and high-tech
assault rifles.
In front of the sheet, kneeling down in the seiza posture – a classic Japanese
position – on the heels of his feet, was Damon Frost, with his back to her.
He was almost naked, only covered by a couple of white silk pants, and the
movements of his hands were slow and sure, almost ritualistic, as he assembled
together some metallic pieces and gave form to a dark and nasty-looking gun.
Nevertheless, what got Faith's attention the most was the huge burn scar that
practically covered the whole of the man's back, almost from his hip to his left
shoulder, where it seemed to continue onto his chest and left arm, although she
wasn't able to confirm that from her position.
The skin was a furious shade of pink, and was criss-crossed with a web of
wrinkles that established a rough contrast with the rest of his fair and smooth
skin.
Damon completed the assemblage of the weapon and drove a fresh magazine into its
butt, quickly bringing back the slide and feeding a round into the chamber with
a noise of perfectly adjusted and oiled machinery.
Trying to get a better look at his actions, Faith leaned slightly on the door,
trying to increase a little the size of the opening but only succeeding in
making the wood creak.
Immediately, Damon seemed to come back to life, launching himself to the floor
and turning around as he rolled over his shoulder and raised his gun with a
smooth and sharp movement of his hands.
In barely half a second, there was a red spot on Faith's forehead as the gun's
laser sight aimed at her.
Raising a smug eyebrow, the former Slayer opened the door wide and leaned on its
frame, looking a the young man's semi-naked figure with appreciative eyes. The
scar barely reached under his left collarbone and covered the first five inches
of his left arm, leaving the rest of his chest untouched.
She didn't minded those imperfections either, she believed that those kind of
things gave character.
Damon stood up slowly, the gun still pointing at the former Slayer. "Didn't
anybody ever teach you to knock?" he asked her, grabbing a shirt from the
surface of the bed and throwing it over his bare shoulders with his free hand.
Faith shrugged as she walked into the room, an expression on her face that was
naughty and innocent at the same time. "I've never liked being expected, I'm
more the impulsive kind of girl."
"I bet you are," he whispered with an edged smile, finally lowering the gun but
not dropping it. "What brings you here?"
"Boredom," she told him with a small pout, "and curiosity. Do you intend on
facing an army?" she asked, with an slight shake of her head towards the
scattered weapons.
"Something like that." Damon's mouth twisted into a weird grin, as if he knew a
secret he wasn't going to share with her. "I'm just a grown up Boy Scout, I like
to be prepared."
She took a step closer to him, so there were only a few inches of air separating
their bodies. If the sandy-haired man felt uncomfortable at the proximity of the
vampiress, he didn't show it. "Somehow, I can't imagine you with one of those
Nazi-like little uniforms. It wouldn't be your style."
Damon raised an eyebrow. "And what would be?"
"I don't know," Faith shrugged. "I'm still trying to classify you."
She took his left hand in her cold one and lifted it to her eyes, examining the
bronze ring on his finger and the symbol engraved on the seal.
"I didn't see this before," she told him, while she looked carefully at it. "You
sure don't look like one of them."
"I didn't know there was a stereotype look for us."
She shrugged once more. "They tend to be colder and meaner."
The young man snorted. "And I'm not cold and mean enough?"
Faith didn't say anything, she just locked her brown eyes with his hard black
ones and brought his ring finger to her mouth, softly enveloping it between her
full lips, and licked its whole length with a slow and sensual gesture. Damon
couldn't help but hiss and groan in pleasure.
Smiling triumphantly, Faith took the seal and slid it easily off of his
saliva-coated finger, taking a step back from the sandy-haired man as she
playfully launched the ring upwards and grabbed it back when it fell.
"Not as much as one would expect," she whispered, turning around and sending him
a challenging look over her shoulder as she walked back to the door with a very
feminine swagger, all the time playing with his ring.
Damon just raised an eyebrow, crossed the space that separated them with two
long and fast steps, grabbed the former Slayer by her shoulder just when she was
about to go out of the room and made her violently turn around, practically
slamming her back against the wall.
Faith moaned in half-pain and half-pleasure, looking at him straight in his
eyes, still with that challenging expression that was so her; her lower lip
trapped between her teeth, in a sensual gesture.
Then, the sandy-haired man slammed his mouth against hers, kissing her violently
and roughly, his tongue roaming her mouth as his warm body pressed her cold one
against the wall, feeling each one of her soft curves.
Faith returned the kiss with the same fierce animal passion, one hand running
over his back and the other one lost in the short strands of his hair. Damon,
still holding his gun in his right hand, cupped her perfect tight ass with his
left one, practically holding her when the brunette vampiress jumped into his
lap and enveloped his waist with her legs.
"Aren't you going to drop that pistol?" she asked him with a husky voice, as he
carried her to the nearby bed, and their lips and tongues ran one against the
other in rough and sensual kisses.
Damon chuckled, genuinely amused. "Baby, you may be hot, but you're still a
vampire," He let her fall onto the bed, and looked down at her with a twisted
and edged smile on his lips, while he took off his pants. "And I do believe in
safe sex."
~~~~~~
It wasn't until a couple of hours later that Damon was able to relax enough to
close his eyes, and try to get some rest. All his experience with vampires,
souled or not, wasn't exactly good and he was not inclined to take any chances
with Faith, no matter how good the sex with her had been.
Sighing, he finally engaged the safety of his Beretta M93R. After hiding it
under the pillow, he opened and closed his hand, trying to loosen the knots and
cramps he had there because of the long time it had been holding the
fully-automatic weapon.
He took a short look at her sleeping form beside him, and couldn't help but
smile at the irony of it all.
=If just a couple of weeks earlier, someone had told me I was going to end up
shagging Xander's sire...= he shook his head in amazement, sometimes life dealt
you cards that were just too weird.
"What do you find so funny?" she asked softly and Damon turned around to look at
her again, finding that she was fully awake and had her head propped up on her
hand.
"Nothing important," he told her with a smile, "just a personal joke."
Faith looked at him through half-closed eyes, as if she still wasn't able to
file him into any known category.
"I though that the ones like you only did this for the money," she said,
pointing at his left hand, which was wearing again the bronze seal, with her
chin. "Egoyan said you had a family debt to pay."
The sandy-haired man nodded, his black eyes lost in the ceiling above. "You
could say that."
"Someone I know?"
He shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, if you don't mind, I'd like to get some
hours of sleep," he said, closing his eyes. "Tomorrow is gonna be a long day,
and we humans need to restore our strength."
"Oh," Faith pouted, a little disappointed. "Some interesting plans?"
Damon opened his eyes and looked at her in silence for a second, before smiling
with a cruelty so intense that it even made her shiver like a leaf about to
fall.
"Yeah," he told her closing his eyes again, "I have to kill a friend."
~~~~~~
To be continued...
Written by Nick Midian
Content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Duncan
English grammar, spelling, slang, Highlander continuity and general corrections
by Theo
French slang, content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Mash
French slang by Alan
EMAIL: jcaballero@euskalnet.net
WEBSITE: http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/thedarkages
SPOILERS: For Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3rd season, BUT no Xander/Willow kissing
and no Lover's Walk (welcome to the wonderful State of Denial, Land of
'Shippiness). Hmmm, I've messed with the third season's timeline to accommodate
it to my necessities. Let's just say that 'Band Candy' happened a lot later than
it did, around the first days of February, OK?
For Highlander: None really, the characters of the TV series and films are only
tangentially mentioned. You just need to know the basics of Highlander-style
immortality, BUT I've always thought that whole 'Immortals have no parents and
are found in a little basket' is a... um, the Spanish word for it is 'chorrada',
so let's just ignore it, OK?
KEYWORDS: Romance, Angst, Action-adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe,
Crossover.
RATING: PG-13 with some mild R parts for violence and sexual innuendo.
DISCLAIMER: This story has been written with no intention of profit, merely for
the pleasure of writing and sharing it.
The concept and characters of BTVS (Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, Xander, Willow, Oz,
Giles, Joyce, Spike, Drusilla, Snyder, Faith, Harmony, Lyle Gorch, Quentin
Travers and the rest) are intellectual and legal property of Joss Whedon, Warner
Brothers, Mutant Enemy, etc. Also, the concept of Highlander and the characters
mentioned here (Duncan MacLeod, Amanda Darieux, Richie Ryan, Joe Dawson and the
Society of Watchers) are the property of Panzer-Davis and Rysher Entertainment.
Michael Deveraux, Rachel Curran, Crystal Parker, Kyle White Owl, Robert
Coltrane, Elvis the Dog, Broderick Egoyan, Damon Frost, Mr. Smith, the World
Committee for Civil Defense and the rest are my own creation.
All the songs and lyrics here are used without permission, they are copyright of
their respective rights owners.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Please, understand that English is not my native language, so
any grammatical or spelling errors are my fault, not of any one of my wonderful
beta-readers. If you're thinking of sending any flames, please be kind with me.
I'm a grown man, but I still can cry like a child, believe me.
Additional Author's Note: The songs performed by Oz's band are 'Loli Jackson'
and 'Serenade' by Dover. It appears courtesy of Subterfuge records. All rights
reserved, yadda, yadda, yadda...
SUMMARY: After the events in 'Dark Reflection' a new threat menaces both the
Slayerettes and the Archangels as new and old enemies come to Sunnydale, merging
past and present. This time, it's something personal - ta-da-da-dam!!! (sorry,
but I just had to say that)
And now, on with the show. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen, because
it's going to be a long, hard and jumpy ride...
~~~~~~
The cast for Book II
Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
David Boreanaz as Angel
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Seth Green as Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
Matthew Perry as Michael Deveraux
Paula Trickey as Rachel Curran
James Marsters as Spike
Nikki Cox as Crystal Parker
David James Elliott as Kyle White Owl
Elvis the Dog as Himself
Eliza Dushku as Faith Adams
Donald Sutherland as The Old Chess Player, Broderick Egoyan
Sebastian Spence as Damon Frost
Avery Brooks as Mr. Smith
Mercedes MacNab as Harmony Kendall
Armin Shimerman as Principal Snyder
Amy Chance as Aphrodesia
Persia White as Aura
Alan Rickman as Conrad Swann
Wesley Snipes as Talon Pantera
Dennis Rodman as Rush Pantera
Tom Berenger as Colonel Cabbot Ashe
Michael Ironside as the Sergeant
Trevor Goddard as Backlash
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Jet Li as Bushido
with
Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls
and
Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red
~~~~~~
The first thing that Faith thought at seeing the people gathered inside the huge
and gloomy library, was that they had to be the weirdest and most colorful group
she had ever met.
The first one that captured her attention was the same young man that had
accompanied Mr. Smith last night during her abduction, the one that had shot her
with a tranquilizer gun. The one with the crooked smile, and incredible piercing
black eyes.
The young sandy-haired man, who was sitting on a huge armchair with his legs
nonchalantly crossed, turned around slightly when he heard them coming into the
library, and offered a twisted and leery smile to the former Slayer.
=Nice,= she thought, =good enough for a couple of hours of fun in the sack.=
With the tight black jeans he was wearing and his white turtleneck, he looked a
very tasty dish. Nevertheless, what she found the most surprising was the dark
ebony Catholic rosary he was playing with, making it spin and roll around his
index finger.
In front of him, seated on another seat that was a twin of the sandy-haired
young man, there was another man. He was older, seemingly in his early fifties;
and much more distinguished than his younger counterpart, wearing an elegant and
expensive-looking black suit of British style.
This man, with light brown hair graying at his temples, had only one blue eye on
his face: his left one. His right one was covered by a black leather eye-patch
that wasn't big enough to hide the long and wide scar that crossed his otherwise
handsome face from the brim of his hair down to his chin.
The man looked at her coolly with his one eye, sipping delicately from a
porcelain cup of tea.
Standing by the huge fireplace that was lit even though it was quite early in
the morning, and was the only source of light in the room, there was a third
man. He also seemed to be in his fifties, but that had a much more rough-looking
than the one-eyed man.
He was wearing a cheap gray suit that seemed completely out of place on him
because, with the way that he held himself – firm, back straight as a board and
a severe expression – Faith thought that it would be more fitting for him to be
wearing a military uniform.
Nevertheless, no matter how strange these three men looked, they couldn't hold a
candle against the other two occupants of the huge library. The two young black
men had to be the some of most extravagant and weird people she'd had the chance
to meet, especially the taller one.
He was very tall, more so even than Mr. Smith, although his body was thinner and
less overtly muscular. The tall guy was wearing a striking and clashing outfit,
that seemed to be a mix between a fluorescent orange jumpsuit without sleeves
and a black leather vest, and his naked arms had almost each square inch of skin
covered by some kind of elaborate tattoo.
His face, that had a twisted expression that was a mix of amusement and disgust,
had enough piercings to make the metal detector of an airport think that he was
a walking armory. At first glance, Faith was able to count at least seven rings
on his ears, eyebrows and nose.
Still, the most striking thing about him was his freaky hair. Although it was
cut short, it was dyed in a complicated pattern that included a screaming
version of all the colors of the rainbow. Green turquoise, indigo blue, lemon
yellow... she even caught some glimpses of light pink.
His companion, who sat beside him in a tall chair identical to the one of the
tall freak, was way shorter than him, but all that he lacked in height was
compensated for by his much broader shoulders and bulging muscles.
That, and the hard expression of his face made him look like a walking machine
of destruction.
His hair, although natural in its color, was shaved at the sides of his head.
And the chocolate-brown skin was covered by an intricate web of black tattoos,
which resembled the ritual ones of a Maori warrior that disappeared under the
collar of his leather jacket.
The two men looked as one to her when she entered in the room following Egoyan's
wheelchair, but their expressions were as unreadable as the moa statues of
Easter Island.
"Lady and gentlemen," the old crippled man said while he wheeled himself to the
middle of the irregular circle formed by the men, where a chessboard had been
placed on a tall pedestal. Faith thought that there was something strange about
the little figures on it, but she wasn't close enough to fully appreciate them.
"First and foremost, let me give all of you my warmest welcome to my home and
express to you how... thankful I am for you being here. I know that some of you
have had to abandon other pursuits to be here."
Egoyan stopped by the chess board and took a long and slow look at the small
figures on its surface, losing himself as if they had a mesmerizing quality that
was lost to the rest of those present. Then, as if he was coming out of a
trance, the old man softly shook his head and offered a twisted smile to his
'guests'.
"My name is Broderick Egoyan," he told them, "some of you know me just from a
few moments acquaintance; but with others, instead, I've shared long years of
mutual collaboration and knowledge." Here, he directed a small nod towards the
distinguished one-eyed man, that was returned with the same measure.
"But I'm afraid that few of you know each other, so I'll play my role as your
host and introduce you to one another."
"First of all," he continued, rolling away from the chessboard and making a soft
wave towards Faith, "gentlemen, I would like you to meet Miss Faith Adams, the
vampire Slayer."
"No more she truly is," the shorter and leather-clad black man said with a voice
that sounded like the hiss of a feline, "vampire she is now. Can smell her."
"Yeah," the sandy-haired young man muttered, looking at her sideways with a
lustful expression, "D.B.W. Dead Babe Walking."
"I can assure you that you don't have anything to fear from Miss Faith; she will
behave, won't you my dear?"
Sitting down on a big and comfy seat, almost making a show out of it, Faith
crossed her long legs and smiled charmingly. "I don't promise anything."
Shaking his head, Egoyan allowed a new vulture-like smile to cross his thin
lips. "You also know my aide-de-camp, Mr. Smith." The huge black man made a soft
nod as a salute, before retreating back to the dark spot he had taken as a
refuge.
"And the gentleman with the quirky sense of humor is Mr. Damon Frost," he
introduced the sandy-haired man, who just waved at the rest with that twisted
smile on his lips.
"And the two gentlemen over there," the old man made a short sign towards the
two black men, "are the Pantera brothers, Talon and-"
"Pumba?" Faith ventured, with an innocent sweet smile.
The joke seemed to pass over everybody's head except Damon's, who just snorted,
hiding his laughter behind his fist.
"Rush," the tall freak corrected her with a voice that sounded like his
brother's, only a little more high-pitched. "Me called Rush."
"If you've finished," Egoyan gently continued, regaining their attention, "the
man beside the fireplace is Mr. Cabbot Ashe."
"Colonel Ashe," the man sternly corrected him.
"You have my apologies, Colonel," the old man offered a slightly annoyed smile
and the man just raised a cool eyebrow, crossing his hands behind his back and
making his chest stand out like a proud soldier.
"And last but not least, Mr. Conrad Swann," Egoyan finished, nodding at the
one-eyed man.
"Great," Faith said, resting her arms on the back of her seat, "now that we know
each other, could you tell us why we're here? Or am I the only one who's been
left in the dark?"
"That would be a nice idea, Broderick," the man called Swann spoke for the first
time. "I'm still wondering why you called me and, frankly, my businesses require
a time that I can't afford to waste on... games. No matter how beautiful and
charming the players are," he finished with a slight nod of appreciation towards
Faith.
The former Slayer just raised an eyebrow. She was beginning to get tired of
being treated like an airheaded girl, with nice tits and a shapely little ass.
If the things didn't begin to get more interesting soon, she would start
breaking necks and ripping out hearts. Maybe some of these guys would be useful
if she turned them.
Egoyan's voice brought her out of her reverie. "How's your eye, Conrad?" he
asked the distinguished man, who immediately glared at the crippled old man with
his only working eye.
"Does it still weep if you let the air touch it? Do you still hurt when it's
cold, so much so that you think that someone's stabbing your brain with an
ice-pick?"
With his only working eye half-closed and his lips clenched tightly, Swann
caressed his eye-patch absent-mindedly, and everybody noticed the slight shaking
of his fingers when he did so.
"You know that it's so," he whispered raggedly.
"And wouldn't you like to make the person who did that to you pay for it?
Wouldn't you like to recover your most precious possession?" Egoyan smiled at
him with a cruel grimace. "I know that you miss her, even more than what you
miss that eye."
"I do," Swann admitted with his ragged voice. "I want her back."
"Each one of us here wants something," he said, wheeling himself away from the
one-eyed man and taking a good look at each of the people present.
"And that something is the reason why we are here today. Our greed is what we
have in common. For some of us, like Colonel Ashe, that something is just money;
a simple exchange in which he offers me his services and that of his mercenary
team, and receives back an astronomical amount of cash."
He continued, "For others, that something is more personal, more... twisted. My
friend Conrad here wants to recover something that was stolen from him, and make
the people who did such a thing pay for it. Mr. Frost has a family debt to pay,
and the Pantera brothers want payback too; in their case, they want to destroy a
man that killed somebody who was very dear to them."
"He must die," the black man called Talon growled viciously. "Same way we
suffered, he will suffer. Honor and blood demands it."
Egoyan shrugged with disinterest. "If you ask me, revenge is a waste of time, a
vicious circle in which you can only lose time and effort, Mr. Talon. But," he
continued before Talon or his brother had the chance to protest, "it's not my
business. What matters to me, is that we can help each other to attain our
respective goals; if you help me to get what I want, I will help you to get what
you want. Money, revenge..." His cold gaze settled on Faith, "...your heart's
desire."
"And what is it you want?" Damon asked, never stopping his restless play with
his rosary. "What is so precious to you that you've run the risk of gathering us
here? Where run is a figure of speech, of course."
The old man's grim expression left no doubts of his seriousness. "I'm a very
rich man, Mr. Frost, some people would even say that I'm awfully rich. And what
I want is the one thing that my money, that my wealth, no matter how large it
is, can't get me. The only thing I can't afford."
"Which is?" Faith asked, all her sarcasm lost at the man's mesmerizing tone.
He looked at her, smiled and, just for a second, looked almost human. "Time, my
dear. Time." Sighing like a broken flute, the old man wheeled himself away.
"I want you all to understand something; I have enough money to buy this nation,
this continent, maybe this entire world if I wanted to. And to gain this
incredible wealth, I've had to spend my whole life working very hard. A long
life it's been, too."
He said with a slight grimace, "Now, I don't think that any of you can
understand this – some of you are too young to even think of how your life will
be when you grow old and weak. And some others," he sent a brief and meaningful
look towards Faith, "won't ever have that problem. But I do, and every passing
day is just a delay in my death-sentence."
"Humans die," Talon stated, deadpan. "Everything dies. Way of nature that is."
"Not if I can help it," the old man growled with disdain. Pausing, he stared at
Talon.
"Broderick Egoyan," he continued, accentuating each word with a soft knock on
the armrest of his wheelchair, "will not be defeated by something as feeble as
nature. And that's what I want, that's the thing you're going to help me to get.
You're going to help me to regain that time I've lost."
He took a long and slow look at them, making the chair spin around. "You're
going to give me Eternity."
~~~~~~
"I feel like something that the cat spat out," Kyle mumbled before taking a
greedy and blind sip from his mug and grimacing at the taste.
"Holy cow," he grunted, making an effort not to spit out the mouthful, "what is
this... thing?"
Beside him, Crystal raised a cool eyebrow while sipping from her own mug.
"Herbal tea, it's good for you."
"In the name of my gods and ancestors, Cris," the tall Texan growled, rolling
his bright blue eyes and getting off his chair to change the contests of his mug
for a good dose of black coffee, "this is like poison to my system. Do you wanna
kill me or something?"
The red-haired witch's expression didn't falter, and she just looked at him with
her cool jade-green eyes when the tall man sat back in front of her and drank
his coffee. "I'm just worried about your health. All that caffeine, all that red
meat and fat you eat can't be good for you. I can see it in your aura," she said
making a soft wave around his head, as if she was picking invisible things from
it.
She continued, "By the Goddess, it looks like it could use a good cleansing. I
just don't get it, Kyle. You were trained as a shaman, you know more about
spiritual ways than most of the people I've ever met – why don't you try to be a
little more..."
"Spiritual?" he guessed, his attention more focused on fixing himself a huge
salami sandwich.
"Yeah, something along those lines."
Kyle shrugged, removing importance to the matter. "I don't know, it's never
really been my style. When I was a kid at the reservation, all I really wanted
to do was go out and see the world. I trained in the old shaman ways to please
my grandfather who, as you may know, was the one who raised me. Then I got my
scholarship to MIT and I thought that it was my chance, but something happened
and..."
The red-haired witch looked at her friend with worry, seeing with surprise the
flash of sudden sadness that flashed across his usually bright features.
Something did a flip-flop inside her, a feeling so unexpected and so unusual in
her that she almost wasn't able to identify it.
"What happened?" she gently inquired, placing a comforting hand on his much
larger one.
For a second, Kyle looked at the small and fair-skinned hand of the witch on his
slightly tanned and callused one. With amazement, and feeling his heart beating
a little faster, the tall Texan let his fingers entwine around her slenderer
ones.
"It doesn't matter," he whispered, captivated by the image of their hands linked
together. "It's in the past now, and it was a long time ago."
He raised his eyes to hers and managed a weak, almost shy smile. "Mmm, ah, I was
thinking that you and I never really do anything together, alone, I mean. And I
was wondering, if you don't have any plans, we could... wha-what?!?" he asked
with surprise when she let go of his hand and leaned back in her chair, looking
at him through half-closed eyes. "Is it, uh, something I've said?"
"I just can't believe you," Crystal shook her head with incredulity, "we were
having a moment, and you have to come out with this."
Kyle blinked in confusion. "This?"
"Yes!" For the first time in the few years he had known her, Kyle White Owl saw
Crystal Parker express something that was closely resembling anger. She had a
slight blush covering her milky-white cheeks, and her jade-green eyes blazed
bright and shiny.
He weakly thought that he had never seen her look so beautiful. "This crap, this
joke! 'Ooh, we could be alone, baby,'" she mimicked him in an acceptable
impersonation, "we could have some fun together between the sheets.'"
She finally rose up from the table, sending him an angry look. "When are you
going to grow up, Kyle?"
He watched her retreating back as she disappeared in the general direction of
her private room, and then leaned his forehead on the surface of the table.
"Asshole," he muttered, slowly banging his head on it, "I'm a complete, total
and absolute asshole."
"I couldn't 'ave put it more accurately meself, Cowboy," a voice with a deep
British accent and dripping twisted sarcasm told him.
Raising his head slightly, Kyle took a look at Spike as he crossed the kitchen
and, opening the fridge, took a can of beer from it. "Great, just what I needed,
Mr. 'I've been wearing the same clothes for the last fifty years'. Why don't you
go and take a walk in the sun, Spike? Leave me alone with my misery."
The bleached-hair vampire chuckled, letting himself fall onto a chair in front
of the tall Texan. "Nah, it's just sooo funny to see you squirmin', Cowboy. How
could I miss the chance to do this?"
Kyle just sent a hostile look towards him.
"Anyway," Spike continued with a wide smile, "did I miss anything interestin'
last night or what?"
The tall Texan's expression changed from amused hostility to somber worry in a
heartbeat. "Yeah, you could say so."
~~~~~~
The door of Xander's room opened wide violently, and the young dark-haired
vampire raised his eyes with surprise from the task that had been holding his
attention; the almost ritual sharpening and cleansing of his sword.
In front of him, right under the door's frame, there was a fuming and quite
unsettled Spike.
"Are you bloody nuts or what!?!" he practically screamed, shaking his clenched
fists.
"Good morning to you too, Spike," Xander calmly greeted him with a slightly
amused expression. "Nice to see you, did you have a good time with Willow last
night?"
"That's none of your business," he said, a little more quickly than what both of
them expected and, walking into his blood-brother's room, slammed the door
behind him violently.
"I thought you said you'd call me if somethin' went wrong, mate, and I've 'ad to
learn about what 'appened last night through the damn Cowboy. What you were
thinkin' about? Were you suicidal, or what?"
Xander, who was kneeling down at the foot of his bed, sighed and returned to his
task, carefully sliding a sharpening stone along the edge of his katana. "You
wouldn't understand it."
"Oh, I wouldn't?" he asked with deep sarcasm. "Trust me on this, brother, if
there's one vampire who knows about wantin' to rip his sire's head off, that's
me."
Xander sent to him a brief look from under his dark eyebrows, but said nothing
at all. Spike shook his head in a mix of anger and amusement, and let himself
fall onto the only chair in the room, carefully avoiding the thin rays of sun
that entered through the venetian blinds.
He took a look at the naked walls and spartan furniture, and snorted. "When are
you gonna decorate in 'ere?" he inquired. "This place is so borin', that it's
like Angelus who's livin' 'ere instead o' you."
The younger vampire shrugged with disinterest. "I have better things to think
about."
"Yeah, like suicide, for example? Lemme guess, you're gonna go face Faith when
ya learn where she is, ain't you? Wow, that's a great plan, Xander. Way to go,
boy."
Ignoring his sarcasm, Xander checked the edge of the blade with his thumb,
seeing that it was so sharp that it almost cut him to the bone just with the
merest touch.
With absolute fascination, he observed the thin drop of blood that flowed from
the wound to the palm of his hand and the small arch of blue electricity that
ran over it, closing the cut as if it had never been there. Then he licked his
blood, closing his eyes.
"You're too emotionally involved in this, Xander," Spike told him softly, "you
should step aside and let the rest of us do this for ya."
The look that Xander sent him could have burnt an iceberg. "This is my fight,
not yours."
Spike shook his head in denial. "You made it mine when you decided to be my
friend and let me be yours, mate. You're not ready to kill 'er, I can almost
smell it."
"I will be when the time comes," Xander said stubbornly, making the
bleached-hair vampire sigh as he let his head fall backwards.
"I swear to you that I dunno how it is that I've ended up with you, mate.
Sometimes I wonder what I was thinkin' about, when I decided to save your asses
back in Seattle."
Xander frowned slightly and with heartfelt amusement. "You saved us? It's
curious, but I don't remember it that way."
"Oh, no?" Spike stated with incredulity. "Let's see... it was you who was naked
and helpless on the floor of that warehouse..."
"Semi-naked," Xander corrected him, "where semi is the key word."
"Whatever," the bleached-hair vampire shrugged, "it was you who had those
strange purple things tyin' you up, and it was me who entered through the
skylight in the roof and saved the bloody day."
"Yeah," Xander chuckled, shaking his head, "there's two things I've never
understood about that."
"Which ones?"
"Why did you help us?" he asked gently, almost in a whisper. "Why didn't you
just go away when you had the chance?"
The bleached-hair vampire shrugged. "If I 'ad the answer to that question, I
think that a lotta things would be easier in my life." They stood in silence for
a few seconds, until Spike broke it with a small frown. "And the second one?"
Xander smiled widely. "Who the hell taught you to yell exactly like Tarzan?"
The two vampires burst out in laughter, that grew until there were red tears
rolling down their cheeks and Xander was practically rolling on the floor,
holding his gut.
The door of the room opened and Kyle stuck his head into the semi-darkness,
raising an eyebrow at seeing the vampires in the middle of what looked like an
attack of hysterical laughter.
"I'm sorry to interrupt such a, uh, weird scene, but you have a call, Xander."
"Unless it's Cordy, tell whoever it is that I'll call him later," Xander said
with a wave of dismissal, shaking his head with amusement. "And bring a couple
of beers on your way back, Kyle. Join us, we're remembering old times."
Kyle grimaced, almost painfully. "Although it sounds appealing, I think I'll
pass. And you should take that call, Xand," he added, sounding suddenly too
serious and pointing upwards with his thumb, "it's the big boss."
Rolling his eyes and grunting, Xander got up from the floor and sighed. "What
the hell could they want now?"
"Knowin' them," Spike shrugged, "anything. Wanna bet?"
"Five bucks says big, green, nasty thing menacing the world," Kyle said,
searching inside the pockets of his jeans. "Uh, could anyone lend me five
bucks?"
Shaking his head in amusement at his friends' behavior, Xander went out of the
room and began to walk to the laboratory, where the secured telephone lines were
installed, noticing that Kyle quickly hurried his pace, following him.
"Something else, Mr. White Owl?" the young vampire inquired.
"I've finished the analysis of the traces we found yesterday," he informed
Xander with an all-business tone.
"The small glass fragments?" Xander sighed, not really knowing if he wanted to
go into that matter right then. "What do you have?"
He shrugged. "Not much, the fragments were too small for a complete trace. A
huge sedan, probably a Ford or a Lincoln of a recent model, no more than two
years old."
"Anything from the police?"
"Nope," he shook his head. "I've hacked into their database, but nobody's made a
report about the loss or theft of a car with that description. But it's still
too soon, so..."
"Something else?" Xander asked, taking the phone.
"Xander, the blood..." the tall Texan looked at him warily. Covering the phone
with the palm of his hand, Xander motioned to him in silence. "... it was
Faith's, there's no doubt about that."
Xander took a long and deep breath, and closed his brown eyes for a second.
"Thanks, Kyle," he finally said, going back to the phone.
The tall Texan nodded and squeezed his friend and leader's shoulder, giving him
a soft pat on the back. "I've still got a couple of tests to run, call me if you
need anything, OK?"
Xander just nodded and smiled softly at him, bringing the phone to his lips.
"It's me," he simply said.
"That's good, Xander," a very-well known voice said, from the other end of the
line. "It's also me here."
The young vampire chuckled softly, and leaned on the tall counter of the small
laboratory. "What can I do for you today, Robert?" he asked with a smile to his
superior.
"The truth is, today it's something that I can do for you," the older man told
him and Xander frowned slightly; noticing that, in spite of the usual humor that
his voice carried, there was a note of tension in his tone. "We have to meet
ASAP."
"This is not exactly a good time, I'm having some..." for a second, the young
vampire thought on lying to him, but he quickly shrugged that idea away. Robert
Coltrane was not only his boss, but a good friend and he didn't want to betray
the deep trust he had placed in him.
Nonetheless, maybe for that same reason, he couldn't completely explain to him
what was going on. He didn't want to fail him. "Well, let's just say that I'm
having some personal problems. Can't you tell it to me right now or postpone it
for a couple of days?"
"It's just too important to delay it," the older man told him with a deep tone,
"and too personal to speak about it on the phone. We need to meet face to face."
Sighing, Xander passed a hand over his tired expression and through his dark
hair. "Alright, a rendezvous at the same place as always? The pier on Venice
Beach?"
"No," Robert said, taking Xander by surprise, "I'm in Sunnydale. There's a nice
French restaurant on Main Street, do you know it?"
The young vampire stood in silence for a couple of seconds, his face turned into
an unreadable mask. "Yeah, Didier's Bistro."
"Let's meet for lunch in a couple of hours, my treat," the older man suggested.
"You're paying?" Xander snorted with light sarcasm. "It must be something really
important."
"See you later, Xander," the man told him goodbye. "And take care."
"Same here, Robert," Xander whispered, before he heard the line going dead in
his ear. Then, for a few moments, he remained in silence, thinking at top speed
and absent-mindedly tapping his chin with the telephone.
"Kyle?" he finally called the tall Texan, who was not far away, running the
tests he had told him about.
"Yeah?" he absent-mindedly answered, his eye glued to the visor of a potent
electronic microscope.
"I'm going out for a while," Xander told him, gently putting the phone on its
cradle. "I need a couple of things."
Finally, Kyle raised his eyes from his task and looked at him with half-closed
eyes and a curious expression. "Sure, what do you need?"
"A car," Xander told him, his eyes turned into darker and harder versions of
themselves, "and a gun."
~~~~~~
Xander parked Spike's Chevy Monte Carlo a couple of streets away from the
restaurant and, before going out, reached to the small of his back and took out
the pistol that Kyle had given him from the warehouse's ample armory.
Carefully making the slide chamber of the semi-automatic go back half an inch,
the young vampire checked there was a round already loaded in the Heckler und
Koch USP Compact and then engaged the safety, returning the gun to its holster.
Taking a deep breath, Xander checked on his appearance in the rear-view mirror
of the car and frowned with worry. There was something here that wasn't feeling
right.
Even when the organization's rules establishing the relationships between the
field teams and their respective supervisors were kinda hazy, he, as the leader
of the Archangels, and Robert had developed a sort of schedule for their
irregular meetings and reports.
Thus, it was very strange that the older man would have traveled all the way
from headquarters to California without notifying him beforehand. And the mere
fact that he was in Sunnydale, was definitely weird.
It was against all the rules, against everything that he had been taught was the
right procedure. It was stupid, dangerous and a serious threat to the internal
security of the organization.
So, to be perfectly honest, Xander was freaking about it.
Getting out of the blue and slightly tattered car, the young vampire took a
careful look at his surroundings, his trained and sharp eyes searching for any
possible trace of vigilance or suspicious behavior. It could seem paranoid on
his part, but he knew that sometimes it was only paranoia that kept one alive.
He had taken on the decision of swimming in shark-infested waters, and he knew
that the only way to survive was to have eyes in the back of your head and a
mouth with sharper teeth than the ones of your enemies.
He finally arrived at the restaurant, one of the most expensive and exclusive in
the town; then he carefully smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles in his elegant
silk tie, and arranged the jacket of his equally elegant and really
expensive-looking brown suit.
He wasn't used to wearing these kind of clothes – they were more Michael's
style, and he felt the tie around his neck was tight enough to suffocate him;
but if there was one thing he had learned, it was that sometimes it was better
to pass unnoticed in the crowd.
"I have a reservation for one Robert Coltrane," he told the maitre'd, his brown
eyes more interested in scanning the interior of the restaurant in search for
both his boss and friend, and for any possible menace other than this man with
the cheap tuxedo.
"I'm sorry, m'sieur," the man said with a horribly fake French accent, "there is
no reservation under such name."
Xander rolled his eyes. "Try Alexander Harris."
"Très bien," the maitre'd said, running through his list of names with the point
of his index finger. "Effectivement, Alexander Harris, lunch for two. If you
follow me, m'sieur."
The young vampire followed the man in the tuxedo between the tables, walking
with the sureness and automatic confidence of someone related to the most
wealthy and distinguished side of society.
Quite a number of feminine faces, and some male ones, turned around to follow
his movements and he couldn't help but return some of the smiles and looks with
the crooked and slow rise of one of the corners of his mouth. At one point, he
even thought that someone had sighed at seeing him passing by.
It felt like being James Bond, only a little better.
But any fun he was having went out the window in the next few seconds, when he
finally spotted Robert at one of the most secluded and reserved tables, in a
corner almost at the end of the restaurant, with a dish of food already in front
of him.
It wasn't seeing his friend that made Xander lose his smile, neither was it the
fact that he sat with the two walls at his back so he could see who was coming;
all that was usual for him.
What worried him were the two men sitting a couple of tables away from him. The
cheap gray suits stood out like sore thumbs in the general ambience of elegance
of the restaurant, as did the way they tried to look at him without being
noticed, and the unmistakable bulk of concealed weapons under their jackets.
And if that wasn't enough, his sharp vampire senses immediately brought to him
the sound of their heartbeats, which speeded up the second they saw him, and the
pungent smell of the sweat breaking out on their skins.
They were nervous.
"Xander!" Robert greeted him with a wide smile, getting up from his chair to hug
him. "Hey! Where has all the black and the leather gone to? Are you going for a
new look?"
The young vampire returned the hug halfheartedly and offered a tight smile to
the older man, accepting the chair he offered him and sitting down in front of
him. "You know what they say, Robert, 'when in Rome...'"
The middle-aged man smiled at him widely and retrieved his fork, picking at the
food on his dish. "Something's wrong with the food?" Xander inquired with a
risen eyebrow, crossing his legs and tilting his head to one side.
"I don't know why I chose this place, we should have met at a McDonald's." The
middle-aged man shook his head. "French cuisine is a load of crap," he stated
loud enough for some heads to turn and look at him with offended stares, that
were just ignored by the two men.
"If Michael ever heard you saying something like that," Xander told him with a
smile, "he'd cook you and serve you to Spike for dinner."
"Look at this, for God's shake," Robert continued, picking at his food. "Steamed
spinach? It looks like something my dog sneezed out, it tastes even worse than
it looks, and the helpings are so small..."
Xander smiled at him with a twisted grin. "Why don't you call your guys over
there and tell them to bring us a couple of hamburgers?"
Robert placed his fork on the table and smiled at him, shaking his head. Xander
looked at the two men over his shoulder and waved at them playfully, making them
groan with a mix of incredulity and shame. "I'm sure that they'll be glad to
help us."
"They are good, aren't they?" Robert chuckled, still shaking his head in
amazement.
"They stink to CIA," Xander snorted. "Please, tell me that they're with you."
The older man nodded sheepishly. "I'm afraid so, I'm not fool enough to come to
the Hellmouth without somebody covering my back."
"Oh, come on," the young vampire protested, "I know we have all this bad press,
but Sunnydale really is a nice place to live."
"Yes, if you're a bloodsucking creature of the night," Robert snorted with
sarcasm.
"On behalf of my species: hey! Anyway," he continued, accepting the menu that
the waiter offered him and absent-mindedly running over its contents with his
eyes, "why don't you explain to me what's so important that it's brought you
here all the way from Virginia, and a couple of bodyguards from Langley – which,
I'm guessing, are both completely outside of official channels? What's up,
Robert?"
"Order first," the middle-aged man told him with a mischievous look in his eyes,
"I want to see you dwelling on this."
Raising an eyebrow and smiling smugly, Xander summoned a waiter. He then
returned the menu to the man and said, "Je commencerai par une soupe de légumes,
puis un foie aux oignons. Accompagné d'une bouteille de Chateau Seauvignon, s'il
vous plait."
"Rouge ou blanc?" the waiter inquired, taking note of Xander's request.
The young vampire looked at him as if he was retarded. "Rouge, bien sur."
"Immediatément," the waiter nodded sharply and went away with Xander's order.
"And you just did all that, how?" Robert asked in amazement.
The young vampire shrugged. "You can't live with a French guy for three years,
and not pick up some things in the process. And now, spit it out, Robert."
The older man sighed, his eyes returning to the food on his plate. "I want you
to understand a couple of things, Xander. I'm not here, and we're not having
this conversation. If the brass knew that I was leaking this to you, both our
asses would be out of the organization in less time than it takes to say 'you're
fired'. I'm doing this because I consider you a good friend, and an
indispensable member of... our little merry band."
The young vampire nodded slowly, frowning and looking at him through half-closed
eyes. "Is the risk that high?"
Robert shrugged. "I would probably end up in charge of a substation in Anchorage
or Finland, and quite frankly I'm too old and I don't like the cold. And you...
well, you know your position is still compromised. Some people just don't like
vampires, souled or not."
After a few seconds of silence that the older man used to clear his throat with
a good gulp of wine, he locked his eyes with Xander's. "Do you remember Jonah
Whalls?"
Xander nodded after a few moments, as his mind conjured up the face of the young
man and the few facts that he knew about him. "Yes, we've met a couple of times
but we've never shared more than one or two words."
"I shouldn't tell you this, but he aspired to lead the original Hellmouth team
until you joined the organization and the Archangels were officially
sanctioned," Robert told him, his voice gaining a secretive tone and lowering
practically to a whisper.
"I'd heard some rumors about that," Xander admitted, "I guess he was relieved
when we took the hot potato off his hands."
The older man shook his head. "Far from it, the guy is a social climber of the
highest class; leading the Hellmouth team would've been a great step up in his
career. I don't have to tell you how... disappointed he felt, when you were
nominated for the post."
"And?"
"They gave him another team, Team Prosecutor. Have you heard about them?"
Xander paled noticeably, but he didn't try to his lack of comfort and, when the
waiter finally came and placed his order in front of him, he just served himself
a large glass of red wine and took a long gulp. "Who hasn't? They were massacred
in Europe last year."
"Yes, in Cologne to be exact. Whalls was the only survivor. But I will say in
his defense that he wasn't entirely responsible for the whole debacle, and that
at least they managed to prevent a new Hellmouth being opened there. The case is
that he was, ah, taken off active field duty for a time."
"Where is he now?" Xander asked, not having enough appetite to consume the dish
of soup in front of him, but making himself do so in order to keep up
appearances.
"LA, he's one of our moles inside the LAPD. I don't need to tell you that all
this is classified info, Xander," Robert warned the young vampire, "it has to
remain strictly between you and me."
"My lips are sealed," Xander accepted it, "but how does all this affect us?"
The older man rolled his eyes and put on a strange face, as if to say 'you
should have deduced it yourself by now'. "He's tired of the undercover work, and
has requested to be reassigned to field duty. He still won't be given command of
a team, but he has some good friends in high places. They're pressuring to
relocate him as the organization's direct link with Team Archangel."
Xander stared in silence at his boss and friend for an endless second. "Shit!"
he finally exclaimed, once more making some heads turn around to look at them.
"Xander," Robert told him calmly, trying to placate the young vampire's
obviously growing anger. "You have to understand, your team's status is unique
in the organization. You operate practically in an autonomous way, you alone
don't report to a local substation chief, you're the only ones that don't
include a direct link in your ranks... for God's sake, Xander, you even have a
soulless vampire on your team!" he concluded almost with amazement.
Coltrane continued, "There's a lot of people who don't like it that you have all
that freedom, especially when you're assigned to one of the most conflicted
spots in the world."
The young vampire sighed, leaning back in his chair. "We work hard, you know
that. We have the highest success rate of all the field teams," he stated,
pointing out the facts with soft taps of his index finger on the surface of the
table.
"And that's why you've been allowed to have all that freedom, and why you can't
allow yourself any misjudgment or error."
Xander looked at him with a frown. "What is it that you're not telling me?"
Robert crossed his hands over the table, leaning closer to Xander and looking
around to assure himself that there wasn't anybody close enough to hear them.
"The Watcher's Council knows about you."
It was as if a lightning bolt had struck Xander right in his heart, paralyzing
him. But a burning fire soon replaced the freezing cold he felt first at hearing
his boss's words, as the anger began to grow again inside his belly. "What?
How's that possible?"
The older man shrugged. "Someone leaked the information to them; someone
interested in putting you in a bad position, if you know what I mean."
"Whalls?"
Robert shook his head, with his mouth tightly shut in a twisted grimace. "No, he
wouldn't do it personally, but maybe someone close to him."
Xander leaned back again in his chair, playing with and pinching his lower lip
as his brain worked hard and fast. It couldn't have come at a worse time; now
that he had his mind in twenty different places after Faith's arrival, he just
didn't need this to make him lose focus even more.
"Do they know about Buffy's Immortality?" he asked, almost as an afterthought.
"No, at least not yet. I don't think whoever it was told them anything really
more than a few vague hints, but they were enough to make their little old
brains jump. Especially Travers'."
"That manipulative old bastard," Xander mumbled, barely keeping himself under
control. "If he learns about Buffy, we'll have real troubles with the Council."
"There's something more."
Xander raised his eyes in surprise. "What?"
"This is what Whalls is using to pressure your situation," Robert grimly told
him. "Yesterday, a man claiming to be a collaborator of the Sunnydale PD,
arrived at an LAPD precinct and asked some uncomfortable questions regarding a
rather, ah, gruesome incident that took place at the Kobayashi Towers during
Sunday night. Do you want a description of the man?"
Xander stifled a curse between his clenched teeth. "Tall, impossibly British and
wearing ten layers of tweed?" he guessed. Robert nodded, without uttering a
word. "Damn it."
As the young vampire hid his face between his hands and sighed, his older
companion looked at him sympathetically. "Do you have any idea of what you'd do
if they find out something?"
"Better to say when they find out something," Xander grunted. "Giles can be a
lot of things – but he's a bright guy, he'll figure it all out sooner or later.
And it'll probably be 'sooner' than 'later'." He shook his head heavily. "I just
don't know."
"If you tell them about the organization you'll be breaking all the rules
regarding internal security, and that will leave an open path right to your
team's heart for Whalls," Robert warned him.
"And if I don't, I'll be lying to someone that is more than just a friend to me,
and the relationship between my team and the vampire Slayer's one will be
seriously damaged..."
"...which will also made you look bad in the high brass' eyes," Robert
concluded.
Xander seriously wished he had a good wall at hand to bang his head against it.
"Damned if I do, damned if I don't."
I'm sorry, Xander," Robert softly told him, "but when you accepted this line of
work, you knew that there would be some hard decisions and that only you could
make them."
"I know," Xander sighed, shaking his head. "But sometimes I wish things were
just a little easier."
~~~~~~
It was barely fifteen minutes later that Robert Coltrane came out of the
restaurant, five minutes after Xander had left, and followed by his two
bodyguards he walked to the long black limousine parked in a secluded alley not
far from there.
One of the men held the back door open for him as the other one monitored their
surroundings, his eyes protected by dark sunglasses and his hand inside his
jacket, placed on the butt of his gun.
Once Coltrane was safe inside the bulletproof body of the limousine, the
bodyguard closed the door and both he and his partner walked to a nearby
unmarked Ford, ready to follow the longer vehicle's path.
Inside the semi-dark interior that was produced by the deeply tinted windows,
only lit by the small inner lamps, the middle-aged man made himself comfortable
on one of the ample seats.
He chose the one that faced backwards, and took a long and slow look at the
person who sat in front of him. She was practically completely covered by a
thick and heavy crimson velvet cloak, her head covered by its hood.
The only parts of her he could really see were her hands (beautiful, with long
and slender fingers that had long, deep scarlet polished nails). And the lower
part of her face (a perfect chin and cheeks, the end of a perfectly defined nose
and two of the most sensual lips he had ever seen covered by a thin layer of
blood-red lipstick).
Even so, Robert Coltrane's stomach did a serious flip-flop.
As it did whenever he was close to her.
"It's done," he told her, feeling suddenly shy.
The woman just nodded once, so softly that he doubted if she had really done so.
"There is something you want to ask?" she whispered and her voice, so soft that
it was like a caress, bathed him like a balm.
Robert Coltrane was a good man, a hard worker, a faithful husband and a loving
father. But not for the first time, he wondered how it was possible that he was
completely and hopelessly in love with a woman whose face he hadn't ever really
seen. And with whom he had never spent more than half an hour at a time.
"I'm wondering if all this is really necessary," he told her, expressing his
doubts. The idea of hiding the truth from her was simply too stupid even to
consider, she would know it anyway.
She always knew, and that was one of the things that attracted him to her, the
way she was able to look inside a man or woman's soul and see what was really
there. "I'm wondering why we can't just tell him the truth."
She shook her head, and smiled at him. "He's not ready yet. He still has a lot
to learn, a lot to discover about himself and the world, before he learns what
the truth is. And so does she. Neither of them are ready," she concluded.
Robert nodded in acceptance, returning the smile to her. "I would just like to
be able to help him more. I really like the kid."
"We all like him, Robert. But there's too much at stake to risk; the time is
near, and we cannot fail."
Robert sighed, rubbing his left temple. "The Chosen Ones," he chuckled, "if
someone had told me about all this just ten years ago, I would have ordered them
be put into a straightjacket."
The woman just smiled at him without saying anything.
The darkened window that separated the driver's space from the passengers' one
rolled down with the buzz of an electric mechanism, and the young man at the
steering wheel turned around to face them.
Jonah Whalls' voice was serious and no-nonsense, when he spoke. "Where do we go
now, milady?"
"Let's go home, Jonah," she said to him, "it's getting late."
~~~~~~
The library in the dark mansion was practically empty, and its only occupant was
totally engrossed in examining the small figures of the chess game.
Faith was fascinated by the exquisite details in them, the perfectly way in
which the expression of their faces had been captured; it was almost like
looking at the original people.
She knew most of them, she had just met the other ones and others plagued most
of her dreams of hate and vengeance.
Egoyan in his little wheelchair in the Black King's square. Conrad Swann and Mr.
Smith as the two Black Bishops. Damon Frost and Colonel Ashe were the two Black
Knights. The Pantera brothers had been placed in the Black Rooks' squares, and
the whole line of pawns were filled by identical military-like figures.
And herself as the Black Queen.
=Cute,= she thought, raising an eyebrow.
In front of the small ebony-black army, their marble-white counterparts faced
them. The blonde Slayer as the White Queen, the souled vampire Angel as the
White King's Knight, the Watcher as the White Queen's Bishop and a certain
peroxide-blonde vampire wearing a long duster as her White Rook.
Some of the white pawns were familiar to her too; the bitch, the teen witch, the
silent werewolf and the Slayer's mother.
But some people were completely unknown to her.
The White King's Bishop for example, was a young man with a roguish smile and a
sword, and the White King's Rook a gorgeous woman bearing twin short swords. She
wasn't able to recognize some of the white pawns either, a tall man with a rifle
and a woman wearing vaporous robes.
Two of the pawn squares were empty, as was the White King's one.
But the White Queen's Knight... =My, oh my...=
She carefully took his figure between her fingers, bringing the image of the boy
that had captured her heart and mind closer to her.
He was so beautiful... Faith closed her dark eyes and rolled him between her
fingers, using her sensitive fingertips to trace every feature of his face and
body, letting them trail over the muscles of his chest and the smooth planes of
his coat-covered back.
=So perfect for me...=
The former Slayer opened her eyes, and examined his face. As she rolled him, the
flickering light of the fireplace cast strange shadows on his features and, just
for a second, his whole appearance seemed to change between her fingers. He
became darker, his features melted and turned demonic, almost evil.
Faith gulped, and had to swallow a little yelp of surprise. Another turn; and
the effect of the game of lights and shadows vanished as if it had never
existed; despite however much she tried, it was impossible for her to reproduce
it again.
"He is special, isn't he?" Egoyan asked at her back, rolling into the library.
Faith just nodded, her eyes still captivated by the small figure between her
fingers. "He's unique."
The old man chuckled, shaking weakly his head. "You don't have any idea how much
so he is," he practically muttered to himself. "Well, my dear, what do you think
of our little band?"
Finally leaving the Xander-shaped figure on the chess-board, the former Slayer
turned around to face her host with half-closed eyes and her head slightly
tilted to one side, as if she was seriously thinking her answer.
"Interesting," she finally concluded. "Although I'm still wondering why you need
to complicate things so much. There are easier ways to gain immortality."
Egoyan sighed, rolling his chair to come closer to her. "I know that, but the
kind of immortality that someone like you can offer doesn't interest me. No..."
he shook his head, "I'm searching for something more... special."
Faith shrugged. "It's your call – as long as you keep your promise and I get
what I want from this, I'm on your side."
The old crippled man smiled at her with his vulture-like smile, and nodded. For
a moment he seemed to consider whether to tell her something, as he played
absent-mindedly with the silver ring around his ring-finger, making it turn.
"This is going to be an interesting relationship, my dear. I'm looking forward
to finding what the two of us can do together," he said.
"I'm sure of that," Faith answered with a tight smile, as she walked to the
doors of the library.
"Do you remember the way to your room?" Egoyan asked her gently. "Do you want
Mr. Smith to accompany you?"
Faith looked at him over her shoulder. "I'll find my own way. I always do."
For a few moments, Broderick Egoyan looked at her silk-clad back as she
disappeared into the dark hallway, and then at the empty spot left by the former
Slayer with half-closed eyes.
Then, he turned around in his chair to look at his chess game, and noticed with
amusement that Faith had displaced the Black King's figure out of his square;
placing Xander's one there, right beside her own image.
~~~~~~
Feeling that she hadn't anything better to do until the sun went down, Faith
decided to spend the following hours walking around the whole gloomy mansion.
She was thankful of the fact that all the blinds in the opened rooms had been
closed, preventing the lethal rays of the sun from entering the building.
She felt at first like a little girl in an endless toy shop, walking along the
impossible long hallways, the dark corridors and the gothic rooms. Looking at
the baroque statues of marble, stone and bronze, the paintings and all the
artifacts that seemed to be taken out of an Indiana Jones movie.
They had all the right features, the right layer of dust, the right mystery, and
the right appearance.
For a lonely kid as she had been for most of her life, a good imagination was
often the only company one could have, and hers was one of the best. She
wondered what stories were behind those objects, what kind of treasures they
would be, what exotic places they'd visited before ending up in the possession
of the crippled old man.
When Xander and herself were finally together, she wanted to live in a place
like this. Maybe in this very same house, it would just be a matter of choosing
the right moment and then... well, out with the old, in with the new so to
speak.
In her pointless wandering, Faith finally found herself back again in front of
the marble bust that represented who she thought had been Egoyan's late wife.
Like the first time, she marveled at how beautiful she had been and felt the
same strange sensation. There was something oddly familiar in her face, as if
she had met her before, as if she had seen her somewhere else.
Shaking her head in amazement, Faith examined the stoic face of the statue,
tilting her head to one side and the other. Now that she noticed it, the bust
seemed to be the only piece inside the whole mansion that was actually taken
care of and the only one that hadn't a layer of dust covering it.
Much to the contrary, its white surface was shiny, smooth and clean.
Curious.
As curious as it was how the artist had captured the woman's gorgeous features:
in a way that, on one hand, they looked heart-clenchingly tender. And from
another, hard and resolute, although they always remained beautiful.
As said, curious.
Shaking her shoulders with a shiver, Faith suddenly felt a little strange and
uncomfortable under the statue's gaze, as if it could really see her. It was
stupid to feel that way, but she couldn't help it.
The idea of taking the bust and throwing it to the floor so it would shatter in
a thousand pieces passed through her mind, but the former Slayer dismissed it as
quickly as it had come. There was something in that face that suddenly made her
feel... scared.
She just went out of the room as fast as she could without actually running,
leaving the whole incident behind her as if it had never happened. It was just
too freaky, even for her.
So, trying to forget everything about statues and odd feelings, Faith hurried
her step trying to find the way back to her room. Mr. Smith had politely
informed that he had installed some entertaining appliances there for her use,
like a color TV and a stereo and that she would have fresh blood at her
disposal.
And heck, she ached for a long drink and some hours of mindless fun that only
the idiot box could offer.
Nevertheless, the former Slayer soon found that it was going to be a little
difficult for her to find the way back, the damn mansion was so huge and so
intricate the corridors were like the web of a spider.
She began to get the feeling that she had gotten lost, and could've sworn that
she had passed by the same statue of bronze with the form of a huge griffin
twice.
Sighing and trying to calm down, Faith closed her eyes and used her other sharp
senses to place herself.
With a smile, she quickly noticed a human heartbeat not far from where she was
and carefully followed the beating trace to its source, crossing some darkened
hallways until she found herself in front of a closed door, a thin beam of light
filtering under the lowest part of it.
The former Slayer knelt down and dared to quickly pass through the gauzy line of
light, finding with pleasure that it was from an artificial source and couldn't
harm her. Smiling, Faith applied her ear to the door and, feeling once more like
a kid, listened to the soft sounds coming from the interior of the room.
Metallic sounds, clicks and snaps, as if somebody was assembling a piece of
machinery. And the same heartbeat she had followed, young, strong, sure.
With unnatural silence, Faith turned the handle of the door and opened it just a
little, peeking inside through the small crack.
The room was almost exactly like the one that had been given to her, only that
the bed had been moved to one of the corners. That had left a large and empty
space in the center of the floor, that currently was filled by a large green
sheet surrounded by a series of open vaults and boxes.
Sticking out of the vaults and placed on the sheet, Faith was able to see what
looked like an endless series of weapons and guns, from ordinary pistols and
shotguns to more specialized weaponry like crossbows, swords and high-tech
assault rifles.
In front of the sheet, kneeling down in the seiza posture – a classic Japanese
position – on the heels of his feet, was Damon Frost, with his back to her.
He was almost naked, only covered by a couple of white silk pants, and the
movements of his hands were slow and sure, almost ritualistic, as he assembled
together some metallic pieces and gave form to a dark and nasty-looking gun.
Nevertheless, what got Faith's attention the most was the huge burn scar that
practically covered the whole of the man's back, almost from his hip to his left
shoulder, where it seemed to continue onto his chest and left arm, although she
wasn't able to confirm that from her position.
The skin was a furious shade of pink, and was criss-crossed with a web of
wrinkles that established a rough contrast with the rest of his fair and smooth
skin.
Damon completed the assemblage of the weapon and drove a fresh magazine into its
butt, quickly bringing back the slide and feeding a round into the chamber with
a noise of perfectly adjusted and oiled machinery.
Trying to get a better look at his actions, Faith leaned slightly on the door,
trying to increase a little the size of the opening but only succeeding in
making the wood creak.
Immediately, Damon seemed to come back to life, launching himself to the floor
and turning around as he rolled over his shoulder and raised his gun with a
smooth and sharp movement of his hands.
In barely half a second, there was a red spot on Faith's forehead as the gun's
laser sight aimed at her.
Raising a smug eyebrow, the former Slayer opened the door wide and leaned on its
frame, looking a the young man's semi-naked figure with appreciative eyes. The
scar barely reached under his left collarbone and covered the first five inches
of his left arm, leaving the rest of his chest untouched.
She didn't minded those imperfections either, she believed that those kind of
things gave character.
Damon stood up slowly, the gun still pointing at the former Slayer. "Didn't
anybody ever teach you to knock?" he asked her, grabbing a shirt from the
surface of the bed and throwing it over his bare shoulders with his free hand.
Faith shrugged as she walked into the room, an expression on her face that was
naughty and innocent at the same time. "I've never liked being expected, I'm
more the impulsive kind of girl."
"I bet you are," he whispered with an edged smile, finally lowering the gun but
not dropping it. "What brings you here?"
"Boredom," she told him with a small pout, "and curiosity. Do you intend on
facing an army?" she asked, with an slight shake of her head towards the
scattered weapons.
"Something like that." Damon's mouth twisted into a weird grin, as if he knew a
secret he wasn't going to share with her. "I'm just a grown up Boy Scout, I like
to be prepared."
She took a step closer to him, so there were only a few inches of air separating
their bodies. If the sandy-haired man felt uncomfortable at the proximity of the
vampiress, he didn't show it. "Somehow, I can't imagine you with one of those
Nazi-like little uniforms. It wouldn't be your style."
Damon raised an eyebrow. "And what would be?"
"I don't know," Faith shrugged. "I'm still trying to classify you."
She took his left hand in her cold one and lifted it to her eyes, examining the
bronze ring on his finger and the symbol engraved on the seal.
"I didn't see this before," she told him, while she looked carefully at it. "You
sure don't look like one of them."
"I didn't know there was a stereotype look for us."
She shrugged once more. "They tend to be colder and meaner."
The young man snorted. "And I'm not cold and mean enough?"
Faith didn't say anything, she just locked her brown eyes with his hard black
ones and brought his ring finger to her mouth, softly enveloping it between her
full lips, and licked its whole length with a slow and sensual gesture. Damon
couldn't help but hiss and groan in pleasure.
Smiling triumphantly, Faith took the seal and slid it easily off of his
saliva-coated finger, taking a step back from the sandy-haired man as she
playfully launched the ring upwards and grabbed it back when it fell.
"Not as much as one would expect," she whispered, turning around and sending him
a challenging look over her shoulder as she walked back to the door with a very
feminine swagger, all the time playing with his ring.
Damon just raised an eyebrow, crossed the space that separated them with two
long and fast steps, grabbed the former Slayer by her shoulder just when she was
about to go out of the room and made her violently turn around, practically
slamming her back against the wall.
Faith moaned in half-pain and half-pleasure, looking at him straight in his
eyes, still with that challenging expression that was so her; her lower lip
trapped between her teeth, in a sensual gesture.
Then, the sandy-haired man slammed his mouth against hers, kissing her violently
and roughly, his tongue roaming her mouth as his warm body pressed her cold one
against the wall, feeling each one of her soft curves.
Faith returned the kiss with the same fierce animal passion, one hand running
over his back and the other one lost in the short strands of his hair. Damon,
still holding his gun in his right hand, cupped her perfect tight ass with his
left one, practically holding her when the brunette vampiress jumped into his
lap and enveloped his waist with her legs.
"Aren't you going to drop that pistol?" she asked him with a husky voice, as he
carried her to the nearby bed, and their lips and tongues ran one against the
other in rough and sensual kisses.
Damon chuckled, genuinely amused. "Baby, you may be hot, but you're still a
vampire," He let her fall onto the bed, and looked down at her with a twisted
and edged smile on his lips, while he took off his pants. "And I do believe in
safe sex."
~~~~~~
It wasn't until a couple of hours later that Damon was able to relax enough to
close his eyes, and try to get some rest. All his experience with vampires,
souled or not, wasn't exactly good and he was not inclined to take any chances
with Faith, no matter how good the sex with her had been.
Sighing, he finally engaged the safety of his Beretta M93R. After hiding it
under the pillow, he opened and closed his hand, trying to loosen the knots and
cramps he had there because of the long time it had been holding the
fully-automatic weapon.
He took a short look at her sleeping form beside him, and couldn't help but
smile at the irony of it all.
=If just a couple of weeks earlier, someone had told me I was going to end up
shagging Xander's sire...= he shook his head in amazement, sometimes life dealt
you cards that were just too weird.
"What do you find so funny?" she asked softly and Damon turned around to look at
her again, finding that she was fully awake and had her head propped up on her
hand.
"Nothing important," he told her with a smile, "just a personal joke."
Faith looked at him through half-closed eyes, as if she still wasn't able to
file him into any known category.
"I though that the ones like you only did this for the money," she said,
pointing at his left hand, which was wearing again the bronze seal, with her
chin. "Egoyan said you had a family debt to pay."
The sandy-haired man nodded, his black eyes lost in the ceiling above. "You
could say that."
"Someone I know?"
He shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, if you don't mind, I'd like to get some
hours of sleep," he said, closing his eyes. "Tomorrow is gonna be a long day,
and we humans need to restore our strength."
"Oh," Faith pouted, a little disappointed. "Some interesting plans?"
Damon opened his eyes and looked at her in silence for a second, before smiling
with a cruelty so intense that it even made her shiver like a leaf about to
fall.
"Yeah," he told her closing his eyes again, "I have to kill a friend."
~~~~~~
To be continued...
