DR2: The Cross of Changes, book III

by Nick Midian

Broderick Egoyan has carefully chosen the right moment to strike, when friends are against friends and all trust seems about to vanish between Slayerettes and Archangels. It’s right when you think things couldn’t get worse that they get worse.

6. Part 6 of 10

DR2 - The Cross of Changes by Nick Midian, Book III, part 6 of 10
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

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.

SUMMARY: Broderick Egoyan has carefully chosen the right moment to strike,
when friends are against friends and all trust seems about to vanish
between Slayerettes and Archangels. It's right when you think things
couldn't get worse that they get worse.

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 III

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

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
Benjamin Bratt as Santero
Trevor Goddar as Backlash
Dolph Lundgren as Havoc
Rob Rowland as Chopper
Jake Busey as Sniper
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Matthew Ferguson as Chip

Bill Paxton as Major Stephen Marsden, USAF
Tom Sizemore as Master Sergeant Ricky Perkins, USAF
John Leguizamo as Airman First Class Charlie Martinelli, USAF
Mario Lopez as Airman First Class Alonso 'Bear' Vasquez, USAF
Patrick Labyorteaux as Sergeant Edwin Walters, USAF

Richard Dean Anderson as Col. Jack O'Neill, USAF
Michael Shanks as Dr. Daniel Jackson
Amanda Tapping as Maj. Samantha Carter, USAF
Christopher Judge as Teal'c
Don S. Davis as Gen. George Hammond, USAF
Teryl Rothery as Dr. Janet Fraiser
Tom McBeath as Col. Harry Mayborne, USAF
Peter Deluise as Airman Shepard, USAF

with

Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls

and

Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red


~~~~~~



She was just a couple of blocks away from the bookstore when the 'buzz'
hit her, and Rachel instinctively braked her red Suzuki bike, stopping it
with a screech and leaving a black mark of burnt rubber on the gray
asphalt of the road.

Bringing a foot down to the ground and with the other one still leaned of
the rider's stirrup, the brunette Immortal raised the shield of her
helmet. She looked back over her shoulder as a huge black Lincoln Town Car
emerged from a near alley and slowly rolled closer to her until its
massive frame stopped just a few meters behind her back.

With the engine of the bike still growling beneath her, Rachel scanned the
interior of the car, trying to see something through the darkened windows.
But they were so deeply tinted and the ambient light was so low, that it
was nearly impossible to even distinguish the figure of the driver behind
the steering wheel.

All she could say was that there was an Immortal inside that car, and that
he, or she, wasn't anyone she would consider a friend.

The car remained quiet, its long hood still shaken by the vibrations of
the powerful Ford V-8 engine below it, illuminating her back and the rear
side of her red sports motorcycle.

Raising an eyebrow, the brunette Immortal revved her bike a couple of
times and, holding the handlebars as if they were the bridles of an
enraged stallion, she made the Suzuki turn around 180 degrees. She traced
an arc with the rear wheel as it madly spun against the road, bathing her
in a white-gray cloud of burnt rubber.

Then, after a short acceleration and a warning roar, she killed the
engine, set the kickstand and dismounted from it. The brunette Immortal
slowly took off her helmet as she went and stood in front of her red bike,
her silhouette trimmed on the dark asphalt by the Suzuki's still turned-on
headlamp.

Still holding her helmet on her left hand, Rachel unzipped her leather
jacket with her right one and, very slowly, extracted one of her short
Japanese swords from its interior, lowering it and almost nonchalantly
holding it with the blade down against her thigh.

She raised an expectant eyebrow and the car, still quiet about five meters
in front of her, seemed to come back to life. Its huge engine revved up
and roared into the growing darkness of the night, as its massive body
started to shake, only restrained by the action of the brakes.

Rachel sighed and a small smile appeared at the corner of her full sensual
lips, but not an inch else of her body moved away.

The roar of the V-8 engine died and the Lincoln remained quiet and silent
like a big but tired mechanical beast. There was a moment of absolute
silence, a moment of expectancy, like the calm before a storm.

Then the driver's door was opened and the tallest and darkest man she had
ever seen came out of the huge sedan, carrying a broad and curved scimitar
on his right hand and a cold look in his bottomless dark eyes.

=Remarkably handsome in a dark way,= she thought. He reminded her of a
proud African prince, a Massai warrior with his Nubian chiseled face
sculpted into pure black ebony. His cold, almost absent expression, his
distinguished looks, his elegant clothes... he was a man with class, there
was no doubt of that.

And the way he moved, with smooth and controlled movements, like a black
panther, was the unmistakable signal of a real, experienced fighter.

Still, she was sure they hadn't ever met before.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Curran," he greeted her as if
he had read her mind, making a soft and elegant bow with his head but
never losing sight of her. "I've waited with impatience for this moment...
for a very long time."

Rachel couldn't help but raise an incredulous eyebrow. "I'm afraid the
pleasure will have to be all yours. I'm in the middle of something at this
very moment, something that requires my whole attention and I can't afford
to waste time here with you. However," she added politely but with an
edged smile, "if you want to set a future date, I'm sure we'll be able to
have a little... tête-à-tête."

The tall dark man shook his bald head slowly. "I'm afraid I can't wait
anymore. And you shouldn't worry about your current... obligations, or the
state of your friends." He smiled with courtesy but coldness and Rachel
frowned at hearing him, the hand holding her sword tightening her grasp on
it.

"The truth is, at this very moment you shouldn't be worrying about
anything except yourself... and me."

The brunette Immortal let out long and controlled breath, and finally
nodded in agreement. "Well then, do you have a name, or is this going to
be a one-sided meeting?"

The black man's smile grew wider, but not warmer. "The name's Smith, Mr.
Smith."

Arching her brow, Rachel had to make an effort to hold back the laughter.
"I would make a funny remark, but I'd guess that you've heard them all by
now."

At the man's soft nod, the Immortal woman entered into a fighting stance,
raising and crossing the short blade of her wakizashi in front of her at
the same time that she planted her feet on the ground. "There can be only
one."

Mr. Smith imitated her stance, flexing his knees as he held his scimitar
high above his bald head and his free hand stretched out in front of him,
balancing his body. His face lost all trace of his former smile, becoming
still and expressionless. "There can be only one."

There was a second of silence, in which they locked eyes, fighting a quiet
battle as they measured each other's strengths and weakness.

Then, the left corner of Rachel's mouth rose in an almost imperceptible
smile and she started to move with the speed and precision of a wildcat,
her short Japanese sword flowing in a flash of light.

The tall black man received her with a powerful slash of his curved blade
directed straight to her neck that she blocked with her wakizashi, locking
hilts with him. The blow carried so much force that Rachel felt a pulse of
electric pain running all throughout her right arm.

But she just bit her lower lip and swallowed the grunt of pain that came
to her mouth, pushing her opponent's blade away. She spun around and,
bringing up the helmet that she still carried on her left hand, smashed it
against his face, making him backpedal away from her.

Making good use of her momentary advantage, Rachel completed the 360
degree spin with a high kick that elicited a moan of pain and a spray of
saliva and blood from his lips. Smiling with satisfaction, the brunette
woman jumped ahead and, leaning her left foot on Smith's own bent knee to
gain momentum, executed a high crescent kick.

It reached his chin with the point of her boot-clad right foot, before she
completed her movement with a backflip that made her spin in the air and
land heavily on her feet like a cat.

Suddenly finding himself trapped between the front of his Lincoln and the
fast brunette tornado, the black-skinned Immortal took the initiative. He
pushed against the hood of the car with his free hand and let out a roar
of rage, as he slashed madly with his scimitar, making Rachel duck down to
a crouched position to avoid getting beheaded.

The curved blade passed over her head with a 'swoosh' of sliced air and
she had to let herself fall back and roll over her shoulder, to escape
from Smith's large foot when he tried to stomp her head.

"Oh, that was quite clumsy, to say the least," she observed as she nimbly
jumped to her feet and regained her fighting stance.

The tall man simply shrugged. "I prefer effectiveness, I'll leave the
flourishes to you," he said with his deep and vibrating tone, after
spitting away a disgusting phlegm stained with blood.

Making a grimace of distaste, Rachel groaned and charged forward. At the
last possible moment she threw her black helmet to his face, and used the
moment of distraction that it produced to launch herself forward and to
the ground, as she initiated a roll over her right shoulder.

As Smith swung his scimitar like a baseball bat, cleanly slicing the
plastic helmet in half in mid-air, the brunette woman passed neatly under
his moving sword and dived between his separated legs, rolling on the road
and turning around on her bent knees as she stood up.

Smith's heavy blade hadn't finished its arc when Rachel was already facing
his back, her left knee to the ground and her short sword slashing the
back of his right thigh, severing flesh, muscle and tendons.

A normal man, even an Immortal one, would have fallen to the ground,
screaming at the top of his lungs as a spray of blood erupted from the
recently opened wound. But, as Rachel discovered at that very moment,
Smith was far from being normal.

He just grunted as if he had been pricked by a mosquito and brought back
his sword, brutally hitting the woman in the middle of her face with its
pommel.

Profusely bleeding from her nose, Rachel was propelled up and backwards
until her back collided with the hood of the Lincoln, the metallic flesh
of the car painfully digging in the small of her back.

Spinning around on his wounded leg, ignoring the pain and the blood coming
out of the gash in a spurt, Smith attacked his enemy, tracing out a
circular slash with his heavy sword and making her roll to one side in
order to dodge it.

The scimitar passed barely a couple of inches away from her face, and hit
the hood of the car at Rachel's side. It opened up a wide gash on the
metallic surface, and provoked a cascade of sparks with the impact, that
rained between the two of them in a shining fall.

Using the momentum of his own spin, Smith turned around again, and this
time the aim of his sharp and curved blade was directly towards the
Immortal woman's chest.

Knowing that a stroke as powerful as the upcoming one would probably cut
her in half, Rachel jumped backwards, leaning on the large hood, and then
rolled over it away from the black man.

With a growl, Smith pressed on her with short stabs and controlled slashes
of his scimitar, making the brunette woman recoil away from him until she
was about to stumble upon the windshield of the car.

Noticing her slight hesitation when the heel of her right boot collided
against the glass of the windshield, Mr. Smith brought back his curved
blade and discharged an unstoppable blow that targeted her legs just at
the height of her knees.

Rachel jumped up into the air and flexed her knees, until her heels were
touching her buttocks, leaving the blade to pass harmlessly under her
body. Then she landed back on the hood, producing a decent dent on the
black metal with her boots and making the entire frame of the car bounce
on its suspension.

But Smith countered her with a spinning high kick, that hit her on the
back of her knees and flipped her legs from behind her body, making her
painfully crash down on the windshield. The glass surface yielded under
the impact, shattering into a thousand sharp fragments.

The brunette Immortal ended up in an awkward and painful position, with
her shapely and beautiful but pained ass sticking into the car and her
arms spread out, holding onto the upper edged of the now broken windshield
for support.

"Oh, shit," she grunted when she realized that she was practically
trapped.

"I couldn't have said it better myself," Smith observed with a smile on
his thick lips, already tracing a devastating arc with his sword straight
towards Rachel's neck.



~~~~~~



After removing the painting covering it, Havoc only needed a couple of
seconds to open the safe door, using the combination that Swann had
extracted from the British man's mind.

"Open Sesame," he said cheerily, spinning the handle and opening the heavy
door to reveal the vault's contents.

As the large Scandinavian mercenary started to rummage through the
safe-box's contents, Santero yanked roughly at Giles' handcuffs, bringing
the Watcher to his knees with a grunt of pain.

He covered him with his rifle as the one-eyed warlock sat down on a corner
of the large bed, and took one of the numerous volumes piled up on the
bedside table. He flipped through its pages, in an attempt to alleviate
the deep boredom that was clearly reflected in his elegant but cold
features.

"You do have an interesting selection for your nightly readings, Mr.
Giles," he said with a sigh, taking a new look at the books and reading
their titles aloud.

"Hagens' 'Deimonicus et nosferata', DePaula's 'Criaturas de pesadilla'...
a good selection, indeed. Tell me Mr. Giles, do you have usually any
trouble falling asleep?"

"Because if you do," Swann observed, shaking the book he held in his hand
and giving him a twisted smile, "this is not going to help you, my friend,
not at all."

Giles sighed and tried to find a more comfortable position on the floor,
extracting his tired legs from under his body so he could sit down on the
carpet.

"Hey," Santero warned him, quickly taking off the safety of his HK
carbine, "stay still."

The British Watcher just sent an hostile look to his captor, but when he
spoke he did it with his usual coolness and controlled politeness. "If
you're going to kill me or, as you've previously and so... distastefully
said before, put a bullet into my brain, the least you could do is allow
me to be a little more comfortable. Don't you think so, young man?"

Santero stared down hard at him and brought the muzzle of his gun closer
to Giles' face, practically leaning it on his temple. "Don't try anything
weird, or it will be the last thing you ever do."

"Leave the man in peace, Mr. Santero," Swann patiently told the younger
mercenary before looking back at Giles with a polite smile.

"Please, excuse him, Mr. Giles. He and his friends have just suffered a
very embarrassing episode at the hands of your younger associates, and
they're all a little wounded in their small egos, so to speak."

"How are they?" the British Watcher asked, barely succeeding in
maintaining his calm tone. A sudden surge of worry ran through his whole
being when he thought of his young protégés, the brave people he loved and
liked to call his family.

The Hispanic mercenary smiled cruelly at him. "That pretty redhead tried
to bite off more than she could chew and the sexy blonde... well, she got
really intimate with my friend Backlash. With three bullets from his gun,
to be exact."

"Bastard!!" he shouted at the Cuban man, scrambling to his feet and
charging against him furiously. Taken by surprise, Santero wasn't able to
react fast enough to dodge Giles' attack.

The British Watcher, still with his hands tied behind his back, hit him
like a football linebacker; with his shoulder on the mercenary's stomach,
he raised his frame off the floor and dragged him backwards, until
Santero's back collided with the near wall.

Santero grunted in surprised pain and tried to push Giles back, but the
older man kneed him in the crotch before he could even move. He also hit
him in the forehead with a powerful head-butt that broke his right
eyebrow, and made a line of blood start to roll down his temple.

Swann rolled his only working eye and, sighing, made a soft gesture as if
he was grabbing some invisible object and yanking at it. Giles felt like
somebody with prodigious strength had grabbed him from the back of his
jacket and pulled him back and towards the ground, away from the Hispanic
mercenary.

Santero, with a twisted grimace of rage, shouldered his rifle and aimed
down at the British Watcher's fallen and still dazed figure. Swann made a
new gesture, this time with his index finger, and the same invisible force
pushed the gun away, removing its muzzle from Giles' head before Santero
could open fire.

"I told you to leave him in peace," the warlock warned the mercenary with
a no-nonsense tone, receiving a hard stare of rage from him.

He turned to Giles and said, "And you, try to stay a little calmer, my
good friend. Where has all that well-known British impassivity gone to?"

"I've been in this country for too long a time," Giles grunted as he
struggled to a more upright position, leaning his back on the foot of the
bed, "and I've acquired some nasty American habits."

Then, looking up at the one-eyed warlock, he stabbed him with his hard and
shining green eyes. "Like always keeping my promises. I will kill you."

The warlock arched his brow, in a mix of wonder and surprise. "Well,
you're certainly not what I would expect from a member of the Council.
What are you, Travers' black sheep or something?"

At the mention of the ancient Council of Watchers, the organization Giles
worked for and supposedly was faithful to, and its leader, the British man
half-closed his eyes and looked at Swann more carefully, measuring him.

At first he had thought that he was some kind of rented, itinerant
magician that sold his powers to the best bidder, like Ethan Rayne,
although this man had a control over the dark powers that he had rarely
seen before.

Obviously, his assumption had been wrong.

"Let's just say that I'm 'or something'," Giles answered him, choosing his
words with great care. "Are you associated with them in any way?"

Swann let a wide, genuinely amused smile cross his lips and shook his
head, as he took a new Gauloises from his golden cigarette-case. He put it
into the jade holder, before bringing it to his lips and lighting it.

"No, no... they offered me the chance to be a part of the Council some
years ago, but I've always found them too old and musty for my taste.
Furthermore, my personal interests differ from the Council's in
practically every way," he said.

Giles raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean that they're not a bunch of
psychotic and greedy criminals?"

The one-eyed warlock practically burst out in laughter. "Truth be told,
that was the only thing we had in common, my dear friend. Greed? Yes, I
won't deny that I like a good, easy life, and that I love all the luxuries
and advantages that money and wealth can provide."

He told the man at his feet, leaning down to speak to him practically in
his ear, "And that I'm inclined to do almost anything to get them. But do
you want to know what real greed is, Mr. Giles? Greed is to have power and
crave for more, greed is to dwell in the shadows, playing with others as
pawns in a secret war, using their lives as if they weren't worth a
thing."

He continued, "Greed is using a young and inexperienced girl as a thing,
to take her in the prime of her life, shape her, use her and then get rid
of her when you can't utilize her anymore. Are you familiar with what I'm
telling you?" the warlock asked, tilting his head to one side and smiling
like a snake.

"You're a bastard," Giles whispered to him, with less conviction than what
he would have liked.

"Am I?" Swann nodded slowly, as he leaned back and away from Giles.
"Probably, but what does that makes you and your dear Council, Rupert
Giles? How was it again? 'A Watcher's responsibility is to train, help and
care for his Slayer', right? That's what your people have been telling
those poor children, practically since the dawn of time. That you're there
to be their mentors, their friends, their only family..."

The warlock shook his head and exhaled a cloud of smoke from his lungs,
the gaze of his lonely blue eye boring into Giles like a nail into a
coffin.

"What a load of crap, if you'll pardon the vulgarity. You're their
guardians, yes, that much is true – but in the sense that you're their
jailers. You care about them just because you need them to maintain the
status quo... to keep your little parcel of power."

Giles shook his head, with more tiredness than conviction. The truth was,
all these words and the ideas behind them weren't really alien to him.

He had already known them, and for the last few years Buffy and himself
had drifted away more and more from the Council's designs and control. And
the suspicions about his superiors and supposed commanders had grown
within his mind and soul.

Still, he wanted to believe that there were good people working within the
Council, and that the power-hungry characters like Quentin Travers were
more an aberration than the norm.

If it was the other way around, he wasn't sure how long he would be able
to protect Buffy, what with her recently discovered... specialty.

And, above all, he wasn't going to give this man the pleasure of allowing
his words to hurt him.

"So what?" he asked, with a snort of mild amusement and deep scorn. "Are
you going to tell me that you're the good guy, and that they are the real
evil? Are you going to try and convince me that you are on the side of the
right?"

The one-eyed man shook his head in denial. "There's no right or wrong side
to this, Mr. Giles, only different shades of gray. But truth be told, yes,
I do believe myself better than your friends on the Watcher's Council. I
am sincere, at least; I want money and power, and I don't need to use a
little girl to cover my actions."

"No, you only hurt them," the Watcher stated with a hateful stare, "and
you cover your rear with a group of hired mercenaries."

A hostile, furious expression flashed across Swann's tarnished face for an
infinitesimal second, but then it vanished as if it had never existed.
Instead, the warlock smiled at the man at his feet softly and charmingly,
before turning his head around to look at Havoc.

The mercenary was kneeling down beside the safe-box, and still rummaging
through its contents, discarding and throwing them over his shoulder with
careless abandon. "God, I haven't seen so much trash in my whole life," he
protested with a ragged accent.

Swann shook his head with incredulity. "Like throwing daisies to swine,
eh, Rupert?" he told the Watcher with a new smile, this time of
complicity. The warlock leaned down, and rummaged carefully thought the
discarded items on the floor.

Books, papers, documents and other unclassifiable items. A small statue of
an ancient Greek goddess, a thick bronze necklace with a latched-on
emerald, what seemed like Celtic wristband... out of all of them, the
one-eyed warlock chose a small volume, bound in leather and with ancient,
yellowed-by-time pages.

"Is this what I think it is?" he asked, with a reverent expression of
surprise and wonder. "The Pergamumn Codex?"

Giles exhaled a long sigh, and nodded. "The very same."

Slowly turning the yellowed pages with great care and with a wondered,
reverent gleam in his blue eye, the warlock couldn't help but smile like a
child on Christmas morning. "Well, I have to admit it, sometimes life
truly rewards you. I've been searching for a copy of this book for years,
and I find it here in an old man's safe-box!"

He barked out a dry laugh. "Life not only rewards you, it can be also
damned ironic, don't you think so?"

Ignoring the fact that he had been called old by a man that was probably
the same age as him, and not wanting to think on the implications of it,
Giles frowned with puzzlement. "What do you find so interesting about a
book of Slayer lore? You of all people could hardly find something useful
in it."

Swann laughed again, closing the book and tapping his chin with its edge
as he looked back at the Watcher, his lonely eye shining with a spark of
heartfelt amusement and his mouth open with a wide, unrepressed smile. "Do
you know what it is this book contains?"

Giles nodded again, his green eyes half-closed with weariness. "The
prophecies about the Slayer's role in the end years."

"Yes, yes, that's what the Watcher's textbook says," the warlock told him,
mildly bored and disappointed. "But what exactly does that mean, Rupert?"

This time, and without losing his distrust for the man in front of him,
Giles couldn't help but to shake his head, admitting his lack of
knowledge. "Well, the Slayer... it was foretold that she would have an
important role before..."

"...the end," Swann finished for him. "That's the problem with all of your
kind, Mr. Giles. You're so narrow-minded, that you can't see what things
are really like beneath the surface."

"And you do?"

"I do. The end years, Rupert. The signs are out there, in everyday
newspapers and you only have to read them: war, death, ethnic cleaning...
horrors we thought had been banished from the surface of earth are coming
back with a vengeance: pestilence, hunger. The old ways are coming back,
the lines are being drawn and the moment is getting closer by the minute,
Rupert."

Leaning closer to the Watcher so he could speak right into his ear in a
low, intimate tone that only the two of them were able to hear, the
warlock parted his mouth into a devilish grin.

"The end is near, my dear friend," Swann whispered, "and it's time to
choose the side you want to be on when it comes for you."

Giles gulped at the coldness in his tone and the fanatical conviction in
his words. When the warlock leaned back and away from him and he was able
to see right into his face, the British Watcher wasn't sure of what to
think about him.

Either he was a madman, or there was something that he, that nobody, had
realized before and that was beyond his worst nightmares.

The inner voice of his mind played the same words again and again, inside
his head. The end was near.

The end was near...

"Eureka!!" Havoc exclaimed with enthusiasm, bringing him out of his
momentary reverie. The mercenary took something out of the safe-box, a
shapeless object wrapped in a bundle of white linen, and held it up
triumphantly "I found it!!"

Carefully putting the Codex in the pocket of his jacket, Swann got up from
the bed and neared the knelt-down mercenary, taking the object he was
holding into his hand and methodically pulling apart the folds of fabric
enveloping it.

Looking at him with an enraged expression, Giles couldn't do anything more
than to sigh with impotence. "Let's see if we have a winning ticket," the
warlock said with a whisper.

The artifact's golden surface was finally exposed and, at that very
moment, the last ray of the fading sunlight entered through the bedroom's
window, hitting it and making it shine with a golden glow that looked
unreal to all those present.

The corners of Swann's mouth rose up in a smile of pleasure, his face
illuminated by the bright reflection of the gold and the jewels engaged in
it. He carefully removed the rest of the linen envelope and moved the
artifact to one side and the other, examining it with a critical and
expert eye.

It was a cross, large enough to be held with both hands, and completely
forged in gold and valuable jewels. Although, as all of them knew, its
value lay beyond the materials used in its fabrication.

"The du Lac Cross," the warlock said reverently, his lonely blue eye
captivated by the intricate engravings of gold. "The work of a genius, the
ransom of a king and the key to powers that can't be even conceived, not
to mention described. Beautiful, isn't it?"

"I guess so," Santero observed with half-closed and bored eyes. "Is it
what we were looking for?"

The warlock read carefully the engravings for a short moment, and then
yanked at the upper arm of the cross, exposing the sharp and bright blade
hidden inside it. "It is," he stated.

Outside, the sun vanished and the darkness started its nocturnal reign.

"Can we go now?" Havoc asked, as he started to get up off the floor. "I'm
getting hungry."

The warlock nodded, his attention still captured by the silver blade.
"Yes, there's nothing more keeping us here. And you can do whatever you
please with Mr. Giles, Mr. Santero – we don't need his services any
longer."

With an absent, expressionless face, the Hispanic mercenary began to lift
his rifle as if he was about to lean its butt against his shoulder. But
instead, and as the middle-aged British man raised his defiant eyes to
him, he just let the weapon go.

Plastic and steel bounced on the carpeted floor, as he raised his hands in
the universal sign of surrender.

Frowning, both Swann and Havoc looked at him with identical expressions of
confusion. "Santero," the Scandinavian man said, one of his knees still on
the floor, "what the hell...?"

And then, the last thing that any of those present would expect emerged
from behind the Hispanic mercenary. A barefoot brunette beauty with torn
and revealing clothes, wildly tousled hair and a daring, almost perverse
smile stretching her sensual lips apart.

Without taking the muzzle of her HK submachine-gun she was holding in her
left hand from the small of Santero's back, Cordelia raised her right
hand, wielding the compact and nasty-looking 9mm weapon she had stolen
barely minutes ago.

"Oh, please," she told the men, the smile never leaving her face, "don't
tell me that the party's over already now that I've finally come! Why
don't you stay and we have a little fun?"

The warlock looked alternately at the armed young woman, the two
mercenaries and the handcuffed Watcher, before letting his head fall back
and barking a dry but genuinely amused laugh.

Santero sighed, and stifled a curse under his breath. "I had a bad hunch."



~~~~~~



The moment that the lights went out inside the warehouse and all the
computer screens turned black in front of his spectacled eyes, the
mercenary hacker called Chip removed his fingers from the keyboard as if
it was burning him.

He looked around, completely clueless about what was going on.
Nevertheless, and as a prudent measure of precaution, his right hand went
promptly to the grip of the silenced pistol holstered under his left arm,
drawing it out.

Chip got up from the chair and moved smooth and silently towards the exit
of the lab area, his hand tightly gripping the gun as he walked. He cursed
his slightly myopic eyes and lack of good night vision, which rendered him
almost as blind as a mole in the middle of the reigning darkness – but
without the aid of the animal's other heightened senses.

He was about to get out of the lab, carefully stretching his arm in front
of him so he wouldn't stumble upon anything, when he saw a large bulk,
darker than the darkness itself, cross his path in the middle of an
unnatural silence.

"Hold it!" Chip warned the shadow, with a trace of nervousness on his
voice. "Or I blow your brains out!"

"Hey, please don't shoot me, mister," Beast's deep and amused voice came
from the bulk as the black giant raised his hands in surrender and walked
closer into the smaller man's field of vision, his white teeth shining in
the darkness, "I'm a poor and helpless lady."

"Oh, hell," Chip sighed, raising the silencer-equipped muzzle of his
Beretta and leaning its cold metallic surface against his forehead as he
closed his eyes and let out an exhalation of relief. "I was about to open
a new hole in that ugly face of yours, man."

"Ugly? Who, me? Well, I'm offended," the way taller black man said with a
twisted smile. "Now, care to tell me what you've done to return us to the
Dark Ages?"

"I've done nothing," the hacker said while looking around, trying to spot
something beyond his partner's large figure. "Did you get that damn dog?"

Beast shook his head as he checked his wounded arm, which he had
precariously bandaged with a torn piece of his own shirt. "Nah, he'll
probably be hidden in some dark corner, and I don't think we'll be able to
find him with the lights off. We should get out."

Chip nodded in agreement. "The parasite program is almost completely
loaded, the moment they restore power we'll have complete control, and
then..." he made a gesture with his hands, bringing one closed fist
against the other and then suddenly opening them, "...ka-boom."

"Then we have nothing else to do here, let's go," Beast told him, turning
around and beginning to walk towards the exit without waiting for him.

"Still," Chip observed as he hurried his pace to reach his partner's
larger steps, "I'm a little worried. We've left too many giveaways here."

The tall black man shrugged as they reached the spinning staircase, and
started to walk it down to the garage. "So what? They won't have enough
time to react if they-"

His words were cut short when a large and shapeless bulk emerged from the
pitch-black darkness, jumping into the hood of a tattered VW Beetle. It
propelled itself into the air with a soft growl and landed on Chip's
unaware back, pushing the mercenary hacker over the thin banister and to
the floor below.

Chip grunted in pain when, after falling down two meters like a stone, his
shoulder hit the hard floor followed by the rest of his body. Then a
heavy, hairy bulk pinned him down and choked the air out of his lungs.

His pistol slipped away from his grasp, sliding away over the concrete,
and the mercenary tried to turn around as he madly slapped around with his
hands in an unsuccessful attempt at freeing his body from the weight of
the dog pressing him down.

As he grunted, gasped and swore, grasping handfuls of long, silky hair and
yanking at them as two large paws ended in hard and surprisingly sharp
nails scratched both side of his face, his nostrils were filled with a
pungent and musky animal scent. And a deep, vibrant growl resounded inside
his ears.

"Beast!" he called his partner as he struggled with the animal, grabbing
him by the thick neck and trying to stop him from locking his powerful
jaws around his throat. "Get this thing off me!!"

Quickly walking down the stairs as he raised his own gun, Beast tried to
get a good aim at the dark bulk covering most of Chip's figure. As he
found that it was nearly impossible to shot the attacking dog without
hitting his partner in the process, the large black mercenary cursed
between his teeth and, lowering the pistol, charged against the animal.

He grabbed the growling German shepherd by his thick torso and, using the
total strength of his massive body, Beast pushed the dog off of his
smaller partner, his nails leaving bleeding furrows on the skin of Chip's
cheeks and his growling gullet spraying foam and saliva everywhere.

The two of them ended up in a shapeless pile of flailing limbs on the
floor, with the black-skinned mercenary lying on his back and his large
arms surrounding the animal's thick torso. Elvis growled and barked,
shaking his body to get free from the human's grasp with his loins to his
chest.

"Help me out here!!" Beast shouted. "This monster is very strong!"

Chip scramble to his knees and hands and, after rearranging his lopsided
spectacles over his nose, started to pat the floor in search for his
weapon.

"What are you waiting for?!?" his partner roared with annoyance.

"I'm looking for my gun!" Chip answered, frantically doing so.

"Forget about that," the dog finally managed twist his body around and
lean his four paws on Beast's body, his long, saliva-dripping fangs going
quickly in search for the flesh of his left shoulder, ripping the fabric
of his clothes, "just use your damn knife!!"

Nodding absent-mindedly, Chip brought his hand to the back of his belt and
unsheathed the short SOG dagger he carried there. The hacker mercenary
hurried on his knees to the struggling form in front of them and, slipping
his left arm between them so he could grab the dog's hindquarters, he
raised his right hand and sank the blade down, stabbing the animal in its
side.

Elvis whined in pain, warm and sticky blood immediately spurting out from
the open wound as the mercenary hacker took the sharp blade out from it.

He was ready to plunge it down again, but, at the same time, the pain that
engulfed Elvis' whole being drove him crazy, a red veil of rabid rage
covering his warm and large brown eyes and a furious, uncontrolled roar
escaping his snout.

The German shepherd twisted, bit and flailed about between the two men,
suddenly turned into a faithful resemblance of greased lightning.

"Kill him!!" Beast shouted.

Chip snorted, fighting to regain his grasp on the animal. "What do ya
think that I'm trying to do?!"

And then with a new shake and a growl, Elvis was free from them and
running away in search for the cover offered by the rusty frame of
Cordelia's Beetle.

Struggling with Chip, who without the dog's body to lean on had fallen on
his partner's legs, Beast retrieved his gun and blasted a couple of wild
rounds against the German shepherd's moving figure. He missed the target
by a couple of meters, and the bullets bounced inoffensively on the car's
rear bumper.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" the black man cursed out loud as he stood up, and
helped his friend to do the same. As Chip finally found his Beretta lying
on the concrete and raised it to cover his partner's back, Beast rounded
the car as fast as his long legs allowed him, chasing the dog's trail and
ready to put a couple of bullets into his hairy body.

But, once more and in spite of the bleeding wound in his side, it seemed
that the large German shepherd had vanished into nothingness.

"I can't believe it," Chip whispered suddenly behind him, startling the
taller man. Beast sighed and, wiping a thin layer of cold moisture that
was covering his lower lip, the mercenary knelt down and examined the
concrete floor. "That dog is a ghost."

"More than what you think," Beast said with a respectful tone.

"What do you mean?"

"You cut him, didn't you?"

Chip nodded but, nevertheless, he raised the short dagger to his eyes and
examined the blade to be completely sure. It was tainted with red blood.
"Yes, I did. And pretty deep."

"Then where's all the blood gone?" the black man asked him.

Before he could answer, a low rumble ran along the whole warehouse as the
emergency power generator finally kicked in and the set of lights in the
garage's ceiling switched on, bathing the interior into a weak golden
haze.

The two mercenaries instinctively raised their eyes to the lamps above
them and a cold, almost unreal chill run through their bodies as one.

"What do we do now?" Chip asked in a hushed tone.

"Let's get out of here," his partner said.

The shorter man pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose and,
nodding his agreement, followed the black man out of the warehouse, the
two of them constantly looking over their shoulders. Checking that nobody,
no man and no ghost dog, was following in their steps.

It wasn't until their figures had disappeared beyond the closed door of
the warehouse that the hairy figure of the German shepherd emerged from
his hiding spot under the Beetle's frame and slowly walked to the middle
of the practically empty garage, severely limping from his rear right leg.

Growling softly, with his angry brown eyes nailed to the doorway they had
just crossed, Elvis twisted his neck and started licking the wound on his
side, cleaning the already drying blood from it and the hair surrounding
it with his fat and spongy tongue.

Then, when it was completely clean, he returned his gaze to the closed
door and sat down on his hind legs.

Very slowly, but without any pause, the wound in his side started to heal,
the separated edges knitting together by themselves until, a few moments
later, there was only a thin scar on his flesh. And, after the hair
completely grown around it, not even that was visible anymore.

Standing up, Elvis padded softly to the door, the limp as vanished as the
wound on his side. He sat down beside it, his chest to the floor and his
large snout cradled between his front paws, getting ready to spend the
next few hours guarding it.



~~~~~~



Rachel saw the bright flash of the curved blade tracing out an arc
straight towards her neck, and couldn't help but to feel like a chicken
about to be sacrificed. But then, if there was one thing that she had
learnt from Michael Deveraux, it was not to lose her head and allow panic
to overwhelm her.

So, as the distance between the upcoming scimitar and her unprotected
throat got smaller and smaller, the brunette Immortal let the short sword
she was holding in her right hand fall to the ground.

Acting even faster than her own thoughts, she crossed her arms over her
chest and bent her thin waist, leaning to one side and rolling through the
shattered windshield and into the interior of the huge Lincoln.

Just in time too, as at that same moment the blade hit the edge of the
car's roof right where her neck had been leaning upon just a fraction of
second before, deeply biting the metal and ripping a rain of golden sparks
from it.

She held back a whine of protest when the broken pieces of glass still
attached to the border of the windshield scratched the unprotected skin of
her face and hands as she slipped over the dashboard, painfully hitting
her ribs against the steering wheel.

Dodging it with an effort, the brunette woman fell on the front seat as
Mr. Smith yanked at his weapon to extract it from the metallic grip of the
roof and jumped on the hood, making the entire car bounce up and down on
its punished suspension.

"Do you think you're going to get out of this that easily?" he asked as he
turned the scimitar around on his hand, holding it blade-down. "Then
you're very wrong, my dear."

Smith plunged the curved sword down, stabbing the roof and burying the
blade deeply into the car's interior. Inside, Rachel pressed herself
against the seats and exhaled all the air out of her lungs, trying to
avoid the upcoming blade as it broke into the false safety of the car's
interior.

But this time, she wasn't fast enough and the sharp edge hit her right
behind her left shoulder, cutting through the thick layers of her leather
jacket and shirt.

It opened a bleeding gash on her smooth skin and ripped a scream of sudden
pain from her mouth, that died as a muffled grunt when she bit her lower
lip to silence it as she helped her pained arm with her other hand.

And then, practically at the edge of her vision, she noticed the keys of
the car, softly rocking in the ignition.

With one foot on the hood of the car and the other leaned on the edge of
its roof, Smith yanked at his sword with both hands and extracted it,
ready to plunge it down a second time. "Time to face the end, young one,"
he growled.

Rachel smiled and reached out for the keys, twisting them and giving life
to the powerful Ford V8 engine with a roar. "Let's see you face this!" she
yelled back to him, as she put the car in reverse and slammed her foot on
the gas pedal.

The rear wheels slid madly on the pavement for a short second and then the
car jumped backwards with a sudden shake of its whole body, a cloud of
smoke coming out from the burnt tires.

Losing his balance with the unexpected movement of the car beneath his
feet, Smith's shoes slipped off the polished surface of the hood and the
black-skinned Immortal fell down on his ass.

He rolled over until his body finally fell off the car, painfully crashing
against the hard concrete while Rachel kept driving in reverse with her
foot glued to the gas pedal.

She struggled to get into a straighter position in the driver's seat, and
took the steering wheel in her hands. But, before she could get complete
control of the car, its rear reached the edge of the road and crashed
against a parked Toyota, the impact smashing the Lincoln's backside into
an unrecognizable mass of twisted parts of steel and plastic.

At the same time, the innocent small car was thrown over onto its side on
the walkway and then upended itself, its windows exploding into a cascade
of glass fragments.

Rachel was launched forward with the impact and her head hit the steering
wheel, opening a wound on her brow that started to bleed immediately.
Shaking her brunette head to clear up her suddenly fogged brain and sight,
she spotted Smith about 20 meters ahead of her, standing on his unsure
feet.

He had some wounds on his face and was bleeding profusely from his nose
but, although his elegant clothes were a little dirty and torn, he didn't
look really harmed at all.

He raised his dark and intense eyes and locked them with Rachel's usually
soft brown ones, which were now so hard that they looked like twin pieces
of glass. Never moving her gaze away from him, the Immortal woman shifted
the car into gear and, firmly holding the wheel, slammed on the gas,
launching the Lincoln against its owner.

"Who should be the worried one now, jerk?" she asked in a low, menacing
tone as the car quickly reduced the distance between them.

Instinctively, the black-skinned man raised his hand to cover his eyes as
the bright flash of the headlamps blinded him.

Just a second later, the Lincoln's wide nose hit his body with a sickening
sound of crushed bones, dragging him for a couple of yards before his
whole figure finally disappeared under the hood and away from Rachel's
sight.

If he screamed, cursed or yelled at her, his voice was covered by the
deafening roar of the engine and the bounce of the car's frame, as the
thick tires ran over the Immortal man's body.

With a serious expression that was devoid of any kind of amusement, Rachel
kept driving for a couple of yards until she finally released the gas
pedal and stepped on the brake. She turned the wheel violently around,
making the car skid and finally stop right beside her own bike.

Looking through her side's window, the brunette Immortal spotted Smith's
broken and fallen figure in the middle of the road, each one of his limbs
twisted in impossible angles and snapped like thin straws of hay.

His clothes were torn and dirty and the blood seemed to flow from a
thousand different wounds on the dark skin of his bald head, forming a
slow and sticky pool behind him.

But still, he wasn't quiet, or seem even close to being defeated.

"Oh, come on," she whispered to herself, as she looked at the Immortal's
figure with wide and incredulous eyes. "You have got to be joking!"

If she wasn't eye-witnessing the whole thing, she would have never
believed it. Not far away from her, Smith's arms and legs twisted of their
own volition as the broken bones snapped into place and the open wounds
closed by themselves at a speed she had never seen before, in any other
Immortal.

So fast that, in just half a minute after being run over by the heavy
sedan, he was already starting to stand up to his feet, leaning the point
of his scimitar on the ground to help himself.

Not losing her calm, Rachel killed the engine, opened the door and got out
of the car as she extracted her second wakizashi from the secluded
scabbard under her plain leather jacket.

Spotting the first one fallen on the asphalt more or less between her and
Smith, she lightly jogged then quickly ran towards it.

Running now at top speed, the brunette Immortal retrieved her lost sword
from the ground. Just when Smith was completely up, she jumped smoothly
into the air, tracing a perfect flying kick against his chest as she let
out an enraged war cry.

Her right foot came into contact with the man's breastbone and, just with
that mere touch, she knew that the strike would have the same effect as
that of kicking a wall made of concrete. Smith anchored his large feet to
the asphalt and withstood the impact, his body not moving an inch.

Rachel stifled a curse and flexed her knees, to absorb the momentum of her
own blow. She leaned her two boot-clad feet firmly on the man's chest, and
flipped herself backwards and away from the seemingly unmovable black man,
tracing an arc in the air with her slender body and finally landing on the
ground with her knees bent.

Letting out an inarticulate roar, Smith responded to the attack with a
savage forward blow, his heavy weapon falling on his female opponent with
devastating speed and force. Rachel raised her twin swords and crossed
them over her head, barely blocking the blow at the juncture of the
blades.

Knowing that couldn't give him the upper hand in the fight, the brunette
Immortal spun around her right leg and extended her left one on a round
sweep directed against the back of his knees.

Once more, it felt like hitting concrete.

Smith barely flinched at the blow and discharged a second strike, forcing
Rachel to make herself fall back in order to roll away from him and his
incoming sword. Pushing with the heels of her hands against the rough
asphalt, she flipped herself up in time to block a new slash with one of
her twin blades, this time directed against her midriff.

She used her other sword to return the attack with a double cut that
crisscrossed the man's chest, opening near identical gashes on his clothes
and skin.

This time, as she noticed the grimace of pain that crossed his handsome
face and the way in which he recoiled away from her, she realized that she
had finally obtained a small victory and pressed on, trying to keep him
off-balance.

She spun like a twister, her twin blades flowing like liquid metal in the
cold air of the night and the long mane of hair swinging around her head
in a tousled, mad cloud of shiny mahogany.

The sharp edges cut Smith along his broad chest and arms again and again
as the shorter and way slenderer woman kept on hitting him with everything
she had, slashing him, kicking him, using the sword's guards like steel
knuckles to punch him in the ribs and his chin.

The blood spurted out of a hundred cuts, raining down on her and staining
her face and clothes, but Rachel didn't stop, didn't slow down, didn't
even think of doing so. She just kept moving like a lightning bolt, turned
into a furious wind of death.

She completed a new spin and her swords were suddenly turned into twin
stingers; the right one entering the man's left wrist right below his
hand, the blade appearing at the other side of his forearm, cutting
through flesh, muscles and tendons.

The left one stabbed him in his right kidney, digging into his abdomen
until the wakizashi's guard touched bottom.

Pushing him to keep his arm away from her, Rachel twisted her blade inside
the wound of his stomach as she locked gazes with him. She gained a pained
grunt from him, but nothing more than that and a slight frown of
discomfort from his stone-faced expression. =Who the hell is this man?=

"Why don't you do me a favor, and just drop dead?" she asked him, deeply
annoyed.

"Sorry," he growled back, "but I'm not accepting special petitions today."

Bringing his egg-shaped head back and suddenly forward, Smith hit her with
a powerful head-butt that smashed her nose, turning it into a bleeding
parody of its beautiful self.

He repeated the movement, shattering the arch of her brow, and once again
and again until she was finally pushed away from him and fell to the
ground, holding onto the very limits of consciousness for dear life.

Towering over her fallen body, Smith grabbed the handle of the sword
protruding from his abdomen and yanked at it with decision and nothing
more than a slight frown of pain crossing his features. The blade came out
from his flesh stained with his blood, and with a sucking sound. He
discarded it away, then took the other one and repeated the procedure.

Then, he placed each one of his legs at each side of Rachel's prone body
and looked down at her, his eyes hard but strangely warm at the same time.
He even managed a small smile for her benefit.

"It's been a good fight, young one," he told her politely, wiping a trace
of blood from his brow with the back of his hand. Then, as he checked the
weight of his own scimitar held in both hands, Smith placed his right foot
on the woman's stomach, pinning her to the ground. "But all good things
come to an end, sooner or later."

Grabbing Smith's ankle with her two hands, she dug her nails on his skin
and struggled with him as he increased the pressure and choked the air out
of her lungs.

"I know that," she whispered, with her throat dry and sore by the bile
running up her esophagus, "but mine hasn't come yet. I still have a lot of
things to do, buddy."

Then, taking him by surprise, she bent her right knee and shot her foot up
like a dart, hitting him right in the crotch with all her strength.

Smith whined like an agonized pig and fell away from her, letting his
sword go so he could hold his intensely pained area. Free of the pressure
on her stomach, Rachel gasped for fresh air, her chest rising and falling
as she weakly tried to stand up.

The last time she'd felt this exhausted and pained, it had been after an
awesome 24-hour session of lovemaking in Michael's bedroom.

=But this time,= she thought with a deep note of sarcasm, =somehow, I
can't find that feeling of satisfaction that Jean-Michel always manages to
give me.=

On that thought's trail, the memory of her French lover came back to her
mind and she wondered where he was, what he was doing. If he was safe, and
what was the reason why she hadn't been able to contact him before going
out of the warehouse.

=Stop that,= she told herself, =he's a grown man. He can take care of
himself, and you still have to see if you can say the same about
yourself.=

"You're a bitch," Mr. Smith grunted, still holding his family jewels.

Rachel snorted with sarcasm and, standing up in unstable feet, kicked him
in the face. "And you're a bastard, a jerk and an asshole," she insulted
him in retaliation, resting on her bent knees to regain some resemblance
of even breathing. "And a lot of other things that I can't think of right
now."

At that very moment a wailing siren was heard and a large ambulance
rounded the corner at the end of the road, illuminating the darkened
street with its red lights as it quickly neared them.

"I don't like witnesses," Smith said, looking sideways at the upcoming
vehicle as he got up and retrieved his scimitar.

Quickly following his movements, Rachel did the same with her wakizashis
and stood up in front of him, the blades down but her body ready to enter
into a fighting stance at the man's slightest intent of attack. "So, what,
do we set a new meeting for a later date?"

He tilted his head to one side and smiled, as he slowly started to walk
away from her. "If you want to call it that..."

As the black man opened the door of his tattered sedan and sat down behind
the wheel, Rachel looked hard at him through the shattered windshield.
"Next time you won't be so lucky, Smith."

The man smiled again and, this time, he managed to look genuinely amused.
"This doesn't have anything to do with luck, Ms. Curran. At all."

She shook her head and, when the car started its engine and began to
slowly roll away from her, she stepped aside. "It's been a pleasure," the
man told her with a soft wave as the car passed by her, "I look forward to
our next rendezvous."

The car rolled away, increasing its speed, and Rachel looked at its
smashed back with a mix of confusion, anger and wonder.

"So do I," she whispered, almost to herself, "so do I."

Then, the ambulance reached her spot and she quickly went to her bike,
ready to follow it. She had the strangest suspicion that she knew where
that ambulance was going, and she didn't like it the least.



~~~~~~



Santero was wounded in the innermost core of his professional pride. To
say that he was furious would be an euphemism; he had allowed the brunette
girl, barely anything more than a high school cheerleader if the reports
didn't lie, to sneak up on him and place a gun right in his backbone,
catching him by surprise and completely off-guard.

He remembered his previous words of reprimand to Backlash and Havoc, and
wanted to kick his own butt for his own failure.

Still, something at the back of his mind told him that there was something
that he hadn't known, that there was one thing that the briefings hadn't
told him.

He had seen her moving, shooting and fighting back in the bookstore, she
had been acting like a brunette whirlwind and there was something that, no
matter what the reports would say about it, he was sure of.

This kid was a pro.

"You, don't even think about it, and keep your hands where I can see
them," Cordelia said harshly, moving the Glock on her right hand to aim at
Havoc when the Scandinavian mercenary's hand made an attempt to reach out
for the pistol under his jacket.

The large mercenary looked at her with rage but obeyed her, raising his
hands. "Giles, are you alright?" she asked.

The British Watcher looked at the young woman with what could be only
described as a flabbergasted expression, his mouth so open in wonder and
surprise that a whole freight train could have gone through his lips.

"Jeez, Giles," Cordelia said him with a frown, "don't look at me like
that, you're giving me the creeps. Well, are you alright or not?"

Giles shook his head, and finally came back to his senses. But the image
of the brunette young woman, who he still sometimes saw as the annoying
and spoiled brat she had once been and who he would always see like a
child he had to protect, turned into a merciless Amazon, was carved onto
his mind.

It made him feel proud, relieved and unnerved at the same time.

"Never been better," he finally answered her question, his eyes glued to
the nasty-looking pistol on her hand as she softly but firmly moved it
from Havoc to Swann, and then to Havoc again.

"OK then people, this is what we're going to do," she said, licking her
lips and thinking fast as she took a look over Swann's shoulder to the
bedroom's window, trying to spot Oz and wondering what was keeping the
young werewolf.

"You," she ordered Santero, pressing the muzzle of the HK submachine-gun
against his back, "on your knees, and hands behind your head."

"This is way out of your league, little girl," the Hispanic mercenary told
her, not following her instructions. "You should do the most intelligent
thing and get away from here as far as you can, before you hurt yourself
with one of those guns."

Raising an eyebrow, starting to feel really pissed off, Cordelia brought
back the HK and hit the man brutally on the back of his knees with it,
right on his bandaged wound. Letting out a yelp of surprised pain, Santero
fell to the floor and the brunette quickly placed the muzzle of the gun
right behind his ear.

"I said on your knees," she coldly told him, increasing the pressure of
the gun to the point that it became painful, her other hand still aiming
at the Scandinavian mercenary, "and don't try anything stupid, because
you're not fast enough, OK? Now, with two fingers get your weapon out and
throw it on the bed. I said now!"

Santero and Havoc finally obeyed her, the Hispanic man placing his hands
behind her head and the Scandinavian one taking out his Desert Eagle and
throwing its heavy frame onto the bed. Cordelia aimed at Swann, tightening
her grip on the semi-automatic pistol so none of them would notice the
shaking of her hands.

Because they were shaking. The adrenaline was pumping out into her veins
like liquid fire, fueling her, and she had never felt this excited, scared
and hilariously alive in her whole life.

Was this what Xander had told her about? The thrill of the hunt, the
suicidal joy of the fight? She had thought she'd understood him, but she
had been wrong... until now.

God, it was fantastic, scary, wonderful and horrifying at the same time.
And she wasn't sure if she was loving or hating every second of it.

=OK, Cordy,= she told herself with a voice that sounded surprisingly like
Xander's silky one, =don't lose your head right now. You're in control,
you can do this. Damn it, you are doing it.=

"Giles, can you stand up?" she asked the Watcher.

"I think so," he whispered, struggling to get up and grimacing in pain
when he leaned on the edge of the bed for support. He flexed the broken
finger of his hand.

He swallowed a curse and sat down on the bed, regaining his breath for a
moment before leaning back and stretching his arms out as he attempted to
pass his handcuffed wrists beneath his folded legs and feet.

"Bloody hell," he grunted, "this was easier when I was 18."

Shaking her head at the image that came to her mind on the trail of Giles'
comment, she noticed the slight movement of the one-eyed man's hands and
her Glock moved in a flash to aim at him. "Don't do anything weird, I'm
aching to put a bullet into your sick brain for what you did to my
friends."

"Are you?" the warlock asked with a playful smile, slowly moving his hands
to sheath the blade he was still holding, turning it back into a cross.
"Do you think you can pull that trigger, darling?"

"Cordelia..." Giles warned her as he made a final effort to free his bound
wrist under his left foot, the only one that was still trapped. "Don't
listen to him, don't listen to his words!"

The one-eyed stranger's smile was mesmerizing, she thought, and the
brightness of his only blue eye was so intense that it was almost
blinding. But, at the same time, it was calling her, trapping her whole
attention into its blue depths. It was a whirlwind, a maelstrom, and she
was starting to feel drown into it.

"Cordelia..." Giles' voice called her name again, sounding distant in her
ears, as if he was very, very far away...

"Interesting..." he whispered, slightly tilting his head to one side and
looking at her with more attention as he felt the young woman resisting to
his hypnotic manipulation.

"You're strong, much more than what meets the eye... you're special,
aren't you? You're a diamond, amidst a pile of coal. You have it inside
you, I can perceive it, the strength... the force... but you're not ready
yet, aren't you? You can't take a life..."

Very slowly, as if the pistol on her hand suddenly weighed a ton, she
started lowering it, slowly but without any sign of stopping. "You can't
pull that trigger, you can't..."

"Cordelia!!!" Giles shouted again as he finally managed to slip the chain
of the handcuffs below his folded leg.

In an instant so short that it couldn't be perceived, the brunette young
woman was snapped out of her entranced state by the Watcher's voice. She
raised her gun again.

At the same time, the sorcerer started to unsheathe the bright blade of
the du Lac Cross, and Havoc moved to retrieve his pistol from the surface
of the bed.

And then, even before any of them knew what was happening, Cordelia fired
the gun.

The thunder of the gunshot stilled all four men in the room and all their
faces turned to her, looking at her figure in amazement as she wielded
firmly the smoking Glock on her hand, her hazel eyes hard and resolute.

Then, the clatter of metal was heard when Swann let the cross fall to the
floor and he raised his left hand to his temple. In the wall behind him,
just beside his head, there was a new little hole.

When the warlock brought his hand to his only eye after checking his skin
right where he had felt a soft breeze caressing his silver hair, he found
that his fingertips were stained with his blood. Still holding his
bloodied hand up, he looked back at the young brunette, his mouth opened
in surprise.

"I told you not to do anything weird," Cordelia told him with a half, one
could even say even cruel, smile. "Now you have two scars, do something
like that again and you'll have a hole in your forehead to match them!"

Swann looked at her with a hateful gleam in his only eye, clenching the
blood-stained fingers of his hand into a tight fist. "You will pay for
this," he growled, his tone becoming low and ragged.

Something sparked in his only blue eye, a flash, a bright pulse of
electricity gleaming on its surface that started to grew, coming out of
the blue globe in crackling rays.

Biting her lower lip, Cordelia sent a short look towards Giles, asking
silently for help or, at least, advice. She knew that she was losing
control of the situation, and doing it pretty quickly. She wished that
Xander was here with her more than ever in her life.

The British man looked back at her and then, out of the corner of his eye,
at Havoc's figure, noticing how the Scandinavian man's eyes wandered from
the warlock and his knelt-down partner to the huge gun on the bed.

"Shoot him!!" Giles shouted as he and Havoc seemed to think the same at
the same time and the two of them jumped onto the bed, their arms and
hands in search for the discarded gun.

Everything happened at the same time or, at least, that was how it looked
like to the young woman's eyes. The electric blue glow coming out of
Swann's eye engulfed his head, bubbling and swinging around him like a
cloud of steam.

Suddenly, as he spread his arms wide, his feet abandoned the floor as his
body started to levitate. His lips moved, silently mouthing words she
wasn't able to understand, not even repeat. Cordelia's finger tensed on
the trigger, and her sights centered on the warlock's head.

She was close, so close that to miss was nearly impossible. She could even
picture the moment of the shot in her head, the explosion of the
gunpowder, the deceptively small projectile coming out the barrel of the
gun within a cloud of smoke and tiny metallic fragments, slicing through
the air and hitting the man right in the forehead.

And then... then his brains flying out from the back of his head, and a
rain of gray tissue and red blood spraying out like a fountain, staining
the wall behind him as his body fell down to the floor into a shapeless
pile...

Killing a human being. Taking a life. Becoming a killer.

She felt suddenly breathless. And she doubted...

Santero, almost forgotten by everybody at Cordelia's feet, seized his
chance. He started to move, letting himself fall face-first to the floor
in front of the young woman and then rolling to his back as he trapped her
slender legs between his ones, scissoring them and making her fall to the
floor with a grunt.

Giles and Havoc fell on the bed with their hands stretched out to grab the
Desert Eagle, struggling to gain the upper hand. "Let it go, old man," the
Scandinavian man growled, his fingers twisting around the thick barrel of
the gun.

"Over your dead body," Giles grunted back as he brought his knee up to hit
the mercenary on his side. The man moaned his pain and returned the blow
with his elbow, ripping the spectacles from the Watcher's face.

Then, as they both yanked at the pistol, trying to gain it, Havoc managed
to grab Giles' broken finger and twisted it, making him scream at the top
of his lungs.

"Bastard!" the Watcher shouted, smashing Havoc's already bloodied nose
with his forehead. Then, as the man's head fell back and the tampons on
his nose came out followed with twin lines of blood, he let all his weight
fall on him, pushing him out on the edge bed and to the floor.

As both of them were still grabbing the Desert Eagle as if their lives
depended on it, Giles fell behind him, pinning his body to the carpeted
floor. "I told you to let it go, old man!"

Frowning and knowing that the lack of movement of his handcuffed hands
would give his opponent the ultimate advantage, Giles decided that it was
time for more unorthodox tactics.

Yanking once more at the gun and bringing the man's hands closer to his
face, the middle-aged Watcher bit him savagely on his wrist, pressing with
his teeth until Havoc's skin broke.

Giles' mouth was filled with the man's warm, coppery blood, and a scream
of pain escaped his lungs as his grasp on the pistol weaken enough for the
Watcher to rip it away, gaining the upper hand.

"And I told you," Giles shouted back as he grabbed the pistol by the
barrel and swung it like a mace, "over your dead body!!"

The massive butt of the gun hit Havoc in his temple, and the Scandinavian
mercenary's head jerked to one side violently. Giles, taking advantage of
the moment, straddled his chest and hit him again with the butt of the
gun, this time on his lower jaw.

"And don't call me old man!!"

As she fell to the floor, feeling its carpeted surface coming closer and
closer to her body, Cordelia cursed herself for her slow reaction and
pulled the trigger wildly and almost without taking aim at all.

She sent a compact group of bullets in the levitating warlock's general
direction, and then rolled to one side to escape from Santero's foot. The
mercenary, still on the floor much in the same way that she was, raised
his leg and then let it fall like a mace, trying to smash Cordelia's
pelvic area with the heel of his heavy combat boot.

The three rounds erupted by the dark pistol stabbed the air, tracing tense
paths of smoke on it as they went in search for their target and, for an
infinitesimal second, the brunette young woman thought that she had just
achieved it, that she had killed the one-eyed man.

But then, still levitating and with his only eye flashing small lightning
bolts, Swann moved his hand even faster than the own projectiles, placing
it with his palm facing them.

There was a pulse of energy in the air and the three bullets stopped dead
in the air, floating as if in space without gravity, and then fell down to
the floor, inoffensively bouncing on Giles' thick carpet.

"Shit," Cordelia grunted, making an effort to roll away from him and
Santero and then getting to her knees. The brunette remembered the
submachine-gun in her left hand and raised it, pulling the trigger and
sending a burning wave of lead against the warlock until the weapon
clicked empty on her hand.

Once again, the bullets erupted from the gun and, when they reached the
mark set by the warlock's hand, reduced their speed until they remained
floating in mid-air.

Swann, his face transformed into an eerie glowing version of itself,
smiled widely at her. "My turn," he whispered at her, tilting his head to
one side.

As the shining glow enveloping his body seemed to get more and more
intense with each passing second, the warlock brought his two hands back,
and then slapped them together violently.

Instead of the usual clap to be expected, a sound of thunder was heard
inside the room, and the one-eyed man figure shone like a nuclear
explosion, blinding all those present.

And then, as the rumble of a thunderstorm shook the entire place, the
shock wave emerged from him, a ball of propelled hot air advancing at the
speed of sound, swallowing everything and everybody in the room.



~~~~~~



After leaving Cordelia, Oz rounded the building until he was under the
window of Giles' bedroom and took a grip on one of the drain pipes coming
down from the roof. He kicked off his sneakers and socks, and started to
nimbly climb up the pipe with the aid of his claws and talons, his
enhanced strength and agility turning the task into an easy matter.

He was halfway to the bedroom's window, using his sharp ears and nose to
learn as much as possible from what was happening inside the room, when
something else caught his attention.

Something that made the wolf inside him shake and growl, and the hairs on
the back of his neck stand up to attention as if he was under the effect
of a strong electrical field.

Something... he wasn't able to define it. It was a smell, a sensation,
something inside him, something he wasn't able to understand. Something
that was coming.

Then something clicked inside his mind and, as he held onto the pipe,
digging with his sharp claws on the hard metal, Oz turned his head around
and looked up to the quickly darkening sky.

The moon. Bright, shining, full like a tasty dish of milk.

In the heat of the moment he had completely forgotten about it. It was the
night after the full moon. It was the moment of the change.

"No," he whispered and, when it came from his lips, his voice sounded
exactly like a growl.

He was in a hurry, he couldn't lose any time, he had to...

But, at that very moment, as the bright light of the moon above mesmerized
his golden eyes, his blood started to run inside his veins like molten
lava. His heart started beating at a fast, furious rate and the air came
out of his lungs in short, uncontrolled breaths.

There was nothing more than him, the moon and the wolf.

Oz let his head fall back and opened his mouth in a twisted grimace,
baring his long and sharp fangs, and then he let out a long,
blood-chilling howl that echoed into the dark night like a haunted cry.



~~~~~~



The Pantera brothers drove along the long residential street, with the
engines thundering as they rode on their bikes side by side, making use of
the whole width of the road as if it belonged exclusively to them.

Their faces were cold, expressionless, and if there was any sign of life
in their eyes, it was completely hidden by the dark sunglasses they were
wearing. Which, in conjunction with the clothes they were wearing and the
bikes they were riding, made them look like a couple of modern-day
barbarians.

As the sun slowly settled down in the horizon, the last rays elicited
shining sparkles of light from the chromed parts of the two
Harley-Davidson motorcycles, the metallic tacks on the shorter man's
leather clothes and the whole surface of the reflecting and spaceman-like
silver jumpsuit of the taller one.

Without uttering a word, as if they were thinking the same thing, they
stopped the bikes when they reached the spot marked by the black Humvee,
keeping the engines alive. Being the one closer to the military vehicle,
the man called Talon leaned slightly on the passenger's window and took a
look at the interior.

He saw the unconscious form of the mercenary inside it and turned his head
around to look at his younger brother, giving him a feral smile.

"Pathetic," he said simply. "Good that here we are."

The taller man shared his brother's smile, shaking his wildly colored head
and sniffing the air. His nostrils flared, opening, closing and making the
two rings he had pierced on them tinkle in the process.

"You smell it?" Rush asked, licking his thick lips with hunger.

As if on cue, the heart-wrenching cry of the werewolf came to them,
brought by the wings of the night breeze.

Talon nodded slowly, the smile disappearing from his lips, replaced by a
grim expression. "Wolf. May cause problem."

His brother's mouth parted into a wide grin and his tongue darted out
again, this time to pass slowly over his ivory-white teeth, tracing the
sharp edges of his canines.

"Will be funny," he said, bringing his left hand to the edge of his
sunglasses and tilting them down his nose so he could look at Talon over
their black plastic frame. "And me hungry."

His eyes, dark as twin pieces of coal, shone under the gleam of the moon.
Then, just as he blinked, they seemed to house a couple of whirlwinds as
the dark brown orbs changed into jade-green, and his pupils stretched out
into twin-edged cracks, like the ones of a cat.

Talon nodded slowly and, without uttering any other word and as Rush
pushed the shades up his nose, covering his eyes again, the two Pantera
brothers revved up the Evolution engines until it seemed that there was a
thunderstorm menacing to tear the sky down.

Then, they speeded up and moved to the near apartment building, leaving
dark clouds of smoke behind them.



~~~~~~



A searing pain engulfed his body and the semi-turned werewolf felt his
limbs weakening, until he wasn't able to keep his hold on the drain pipe
and his claws slipped off the cold and rough metal, finally losing their
grasp on it.

Oz fell for ages, the cold night air breezing the peach-fuzz grown all
over his body and drawing salty tears from his golden eyes, until his back
finally collided with the fresh and muddy grass of the garden surrounding
Giles' apartment block.

A grunt of pain, too inhuman to be considered a moan, escaped from his
wolfish lips and the young musician squirmed on the ground as a myriad of
sensations, some of them white-hot painful and some others exquisitely
pleasurable, went through his body in the blink of an eye.

"No," he moaned, fighting the change, "not now, please. I can't... they...
Willow... Cordelia... they need..."

His voice disappeared into a growl as his still-human features melted
away, and his mouth transformed into the gray and sharp snout of a wolf.
His skin broke out into a cold, acidic sweat that covered every squared
inch of his skin, drenching the growing hair, plastering it to his body.

"Noooo!!!!" he screamed once more as he fought to stay in control,
clumsily scrambling to his knees, his clawed fingers digging into the wet
mud. Raising his face to the dark sky above, he focused his yellow eyes
onto the blinding white disc that was the moon.

"Don't do this to me!!" he shouted, feeling suddenly more angry than what
he had felt in ages. "What do you want from me? What do I have to do to
please you? Do you want my body? Do you want my life?"

The moon above, cold and serene, didn't answer him. Growling, roaring,
feeling the tendrils of his human consciousness slipping away as a surge
of primitive, feral impulses replaced them, Oz grabbed the torn remains of
the T-shirt covering his torso.

He yanked at them furiously, ripping them off and baring his heaving chest
to the cold air of the night. A cloud of white steam abandoned his
nostrils as he breathed deeply, his eyes full of pungent tears and his
heart heavy and pained inside his chest.

He couldn't give up. His friends' lives could depend on him, they might be
in his hands, on what would happen on the very next seconds. And he wasn't
going to fail them. So, gathering all the strength of his will, steeling
his heart, armoring his soul, Oz fought to keep on thinking as he had
never done before.

Clenching his hands into tight fists, his own claws broke the skin of his
palms and his dark, thick blood oozed between his fingers.

And the change stopped. His face reverted back to his human features, the
hair grew back, abandoning his fair skin and his mind, his pained,
exhausted mind, was clear again.

Nevertheless, he was still able to feel his long fangs inside his mouth
and his elongated nails scratching his own skin. His tears, whether of
physical pain, of pure exhaustion or heart-felt sadness he didn't know,
rolled down his face, leaving cool and wet tracks on his cheeks.

Still, the wolf was fighting to roam free. Still, the moon was calling to
him. Still, it seemed that there was nothing he could do to prevent the
change.

He thought back to the very first time in which he was able to control, to
provoke the change, that day after Gilles de Rais broke his neck and took
away his precious Willow.

Everything had been so clear back then; lying on the stretcher of the
warehouse's infirmary, feeling the pure rage fueling the turning, running
through his veins like burning acid, making his heart beat so fast and so
strong that he thought it was going to burst out of his chest.

=What had happened then?= he wondered. What had allowed him to control, to
provoke the change? He had thought that it had been the primal impulse of
the fury, the anger boiling up inside him that had put him in final
contact with his inner wolf.

But, after that day, he had been always able to provoke the change and he
couldn't remember being as angry as he had been back then.

So, maybe it wasn't the anger. What had it been then? He breathed deeply
and closed his eyes, trying to stay calm.

Immediately, the wolf resumed its attack, yanking at its boundaries,
trying to get free. Grunting in pain, Oz fell forward onto the muddy
grass, holding his guts.

And then the answer came to his mind, so obvious, so clear that he had to
make an effort not to burst out laughing at his own stupidity.

It was not the fury. It was acceptance. Of the wolf. Of himself. Of what
he was. Of what he ever would be.

He wasn't a man possessed by some strange beast, by a werewolf. He was a
werewolf.

He thought on what had happened that very morning, in Willow, Spike and
himself, in the way that, as always, he had kept his own feelings to
himself, boiling inside him.

The rage, the fury was a primal, powerful impulse, so much that it was
scary, but it was a part of him and he just couldn't keep it inside him
anymore, he couldn't hide it.

Struggling with his own limbs, that suddenly felt like they weighed a ton,
Oz stood up laboriously and raised his face again, dirtied by the mud, to
the bright moon above.

"Do you want me, Mother? You got me!" he shouted to the full moon, feeling
suddenly deliriously happy, his mouth stretched out into a wide smile,
maniac smile.

Reaching out to his nipple, he dug the sharp claw of his thumb into his
flesh and slowly opened a thin, bleeding wound across his fair chest,
hissing at the exquisite pain he felt.

"Do you want my blood? You got it! Do you want my soul?" he roared,
shaking his fists at the bright satellite. "You got it, damn it!!"

And then, he just let it all go.

A last exhalation of air came out of his lungs, becoming white rivulets of
steam into the cold air. Oz closed his yellow eyes, letting his head fall
back as his mouth opened into a grimace that could be the moan of a dying
man, or the one of a man on the brink of orgasm.

The wolf was free, filling him, becoming one with him.

He opened his eyes, and they blazed furious gold into the darkness of the
night. Hair sprouted out all over his body, reddish-brown locks of silk
covering his smooth fair skin as his muscles grew, over-sizing his tense
skin, becoming thick and powerful.

His whole body became larger, seven feet tall with broad shoulders and
muscles like the one of a weight lifter.

He heard a ripping sound and, for a second, he thought that it was his own
skin breaking to show his new self. But then he realized that it was just
his faded jeans, the ones that weren't baggy enough to contain his lupine
form and were breaking under the pressure of his new, larger thighs.

In the end, when his ears had retreated to the top of his head and his
face turned into a sharp snout, a faithful resemblance of a wolf, the only
thing covering his new lupine body were the tensed remains of those same
jeans. They barely covered his crotch and upper tights.

He thought he must look a little like the Incredible Hulk.

But, the good thing was that he was still able to think. He was himself.
Daniel Osborne. Musician. Werewolf. Oz.

His snout parted into a wolfish smile and he raised his new face to his
mother the moon. And then, his howl stabbed the night, shattering it into
a thousand pieces of darkness.



~~~~~~




To be continued...