Chapter Eleven The Truth

"How many times do I have to tell you?" King was saying exasperatedly, "It's not a truth, or the truth. It's the Truth!" Faith and the rest of the group just stared at him blankly. He'd been trying to explain the prophecy Xander had relayed for what seemed like hours now, and in all that time, Faith still didn't think they had gotten anywhere.

"That's all well and good mate." Spike said, "but you still haven't told us what this Truth is." King looked at him like he was a complete fool.

"You really don't know what it is do you." He said. It was a statement, not a question.

"That's why we need you to tell us." Said Angel. He'd been pacing agitatedly since King had begun. King leaned back on the couch, as if pondering whether or not to tell them.

"The Truth," he began, looking at each of them in turn, his eyes lingering on Faith for an uncomfortable amount of time, "is not what you think. It's not the reality behind a lie and it isn't the answer to a question. It is a ritual that plays a part in an ancient vampire philosophy, a philosophy of which my Sire was an avid follower."

"I've never heard of any kind of vampire philosophy." Said Faith; intrigued by all the talk of vampire culture she'd heard over the past few hours. "I always thought it was pretty much just crush, kill'n destroy with you guys."

"That is a thinking more common among the young." Said King in reply, glancing at Angel as he did so. "The older members of our race see a little more behind our existence than that, namely that vampires are merely part of a process set in motion at the death of a mortal body, and that our ultimate goal should be to complete this process, and move beyond this stage of our existence."

"You mean like a caterpillar and a butterfly." Said Dawn, after considering his words. King nodded slightly.

"In a manner of speaking." Faith leaned forward as he continued. "The Truth is a ritual designed to complete the process, a blood rite that will allow a full blooded demon to pass into this world through the body of the vampire at the centre of the ritual. I suppose you could call it a kind of vampire ascendancy, where we leave behind the frailties of this human shell and transcend to something even greater."

"Don't you mean worse?" said Gunn, glaring at King dangerously. King shot him a look of total derision.

"It depends entirely on your viewpoint."

"So you think that Shinji is trying to perform the ritual, and turn himself into some kind of pure demon?" said Faith, her mind working desperately to keep up with events. King shook his head.

"He's not planning to perform the ritual on himself. Shinji was a Japanese samurai, and even as a vampire, the code of Bushido to which he adhered was impossible to break. I twisted and manipulated it, but it was so ingrained I could never rid him of it. He sees my turning him as something of a favour, and Bushido will not permit that. He is in my debt and he often told me of how it was a debt he could never repay. Now I believe he thinks he's finally found a way to repay me."

"You mean he's going to perform the ritual on you." Said Angel understanding immediately. King nodded again.

"It will clear the debt, and I will be the purest of my kind."

"So why does he need Buffy?" said Dawn, sounding more distraught and angry than ever. Faith felt her heart go out to the teenage girl. From what Angel had told her while she was in jail, Dawn had had a tough time of it this last year or so. With everything that had happened to her and now Buffy's kidnapping, she wasn't in the least surprised that the girl saw it all as being so unfair. She'd felt the same about her own life once.

"Why does he need her, when all he wants is you?" her eyes narrowed. "Is he trying to bargain her for you?" King stared at her levelly, not blinking once. Faith was amazed that Dawn didn't look away. She had her sister's stubbornness that was for sure.

"It's a blood rite girl." He said finally. "And for a blood rite Shinji needs blood." He glanced briefly at Faith.

"Slayers blood to be precise."

"So why would Wolfram & Hart be so interested in clearing a blood debt between you and your prodigy?" said Angel curiously. "And why would Shinji seek their aid in the first place? If you taught him to be anything like you, he'd sooner die than accept help from a bunch of humans." King sat silently for a moment, mulling over the possibilities. Finally he spoke.

"Many vampires, myself included, considered the ritual to be too dangerous and set about destroying all the copies of the rite we could find. To pull it off you had to quite literally smash a crack in the barrier between the dimensions, and just like glass, those cracks would spread, slowly at first but as the barrier weakened with each new crack more would appear. One pure blooded demon would quickly become two, then four and so on, until the entire barrier became so fragile that it would simply collapse under the pressure."

"Armies of hell on Earth." Said Wesley, a touch too dramatically for Faith's liking. King nodded.

"Armageddon again!" groaned Xander. "Can't you guys come up with anything more original than that?"

"And you think Wolfram & Hart would have a copy of this rite?" said Angel ignoring Xander. "Hardly surprising. The Apocalypse always seems to be somewhere on that companies plans."

"Then we need to stop them." Said Gunn, from where he sat while Cordelia set about splinting his ankle. "We need to go rescue this Bunny, or whatever her name is before they can pull off the ritual."

"You need to stop them from triggering off the end of the world." Said King glancing round the assembled group in front of him. "I need to get the hell out of dodge." And with that he clambered to his feet and strode off up the stairs, the rest of them staring after him in dumbstruck silence.

"What the hell was all that about?" said Spike, staring up the stairs at King's departing figure.

"Angel," said Wesley, already seeming to mull over the possibilities of an attack on Wolfram & Hart in his head. "This would be a lot easier…"

"…If we had someone like King helping us." Angel nodded. "I know Wes." He turned and stared off up the stairs, a slight sign escaping from between his lips.

"I'll go talk to him." He was just about to start up the stairs after him when Faith clambered to her feet.

"Wait." She said hurriedly. "Let me talk to him."

"You!" said Dawn, letting loose a disbelieving snort. "Since when have you been good at reasoning with people?" Faith turned away, unable to meet the young girls accusing eyes.

"It's just that I…" she swallowed slightly, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. "I think I remind him of someone." Angel watched her silently for a moment, before finally nodding.

"Go on."

"Angel!" Dawn's voice was high with incredulity.

"We don't have time for this Dawn," Angel snapped back, "and I think Faith and King have more in common than the rest of us."

"Yeah." Dawn shot back. "They're both cold blooded killers!"

"Dawn." Said Spike quietly, "would you just drop it." She turned and glared at him.

"A killer sticking up for a killer. What a surprise." Spike stared at her like he'd just been stung, as the young girl clambered to her feet and stormed out into the back yard of the hotel. Faith watched her go. She couldn't blame Dawn. The girl was perfectly justified in her dislike for Faith but it still hurt when someone who she'd once got on with so well now displayed such an open dislike for her. Slowly she turned and began to trudge off up the stairs.

*****

Dawn sat miserably on the cold stone that surrounded one of the flowerbeds, her legs dangling a good inch or so off the ground while she picked idly at the leaves around her. She would pluck one from the branch, fold it over on itself and then begin to methodically tear it apart until only little pieces were left, before simply plucking another from the branch and beginning all over again.

"What's wrong nibblet?" Spike's thick English brogue filled the still night air. She didn't have to look to tell he was standing behind her.

"Go away." She said simply.

"Not 'till you tell me what's wrong." Said Spike, sliding into a sitting position alongside her.

"I don't want to talk to you."

"Hard luck little bit."

"Stop saying that!" she growled from behind gritted teeth.

"Stop saying what?"

"Stop calling me those pet names! You don't care enough to use them!" Spike groaned.

"Bloody hell Dawn!" he muttered. "What's wrong with you? You've been like a cold fish with me ever since we left Sunnydale! I thought we were mates!"

"I could never be friends with a killer!" she snapped loudly at him. Spike looked slightly taken aback.

"It never stopped you before!" he said, looking genuinely hurt. "You knew what I was before this sudden change of heart."

"That was before I'd seen you in action." She said quietly, a feeling of nostalgia for all the times she'd sat in his crypt while Spike told her his scary stories about all the things he'd done sweeping over her as she spoke. She'd never even tried to imagine him actually doing them. They'd just been something cool then. Now all she could think about when she thought of those stories was his face, and the pleasure he'd taken in ending each and every one of those lives.

"You saw what I did to that vampire didn't you." Said Spike. It was a statement, not a question. Dawn nodded.

"He was in so much pain," she said, feeling a painful lump of anguish at the back of her throat. "You hurt him so much…"

"For Christ's sake Dawn, the thing was trash! I was trying to get answers out of him so we could find Buffy!"

"But the things you did to him…" she whispered sadly, tears beginning to drip gently down her cheeks.

"He might already have done to her." Spike said, in a voice begging for her to see the rational side of it. But Dawn couldn't see any rationality in what Spike had done. She clambered to her feet, staring sadly at him from behind tear stained eyes. God, she wished she'd never snuck in there to see what was going on.

"It's no good Spike." She said, choking back a sob. "You can't just explain away what you did! It… It went beyond interrogation. You…" she paused as she stared at him a look of horror spreading across her face. "You enjoyed it!" she said sadly, and with that, she turned and fled back inside. Spike watched her go, then turned and plucked sadly at the leaves of the plants.

*****

King stood, rifling noisily through Angel's wardrobe as he searched for clothes to wear. Did the vampire have nothing but black leather dusters and tight fitting sweaters in here? He snatched up a pair of sturdy looking boots, grunting only slightly as he forced his feet into them, despite the fact they were a good size or two too small for him. He reached up and snatched at the least long and billowy of the leather coats then grabbed one of the charcoal grey sweaters from a neatly folded pile.

He'd just finished pulling it over his head when he caught her scent in the air. The smell was intoxicating, so close to what Soonan's aroma had once been. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. It took all his effort just to calm himself when this Faith girl was around, so much did she remind him of his long dead wife.

"Planning a trip?" she said. God she even sounded like her. What was she? Some new kind of torment devised by some ultimate power that had it in the neck for him?

"I've got an evil law firm with the intention of triggering off an apocalypse using my body, and a demented former student thinking he's doing me a favour by having something probably green and spiky rip its way out from inside me hot on my heels. Under the circumstances I'd say that a trip is a very good idea."

"So you're running." King glared at her.

"Wouldn't you?" her response puzzled him.

"I've run enough, and I think so have you."

"And so it starts." He chuckled dryly. "It must be fun for you Slayers, to take the high ground on all these rocky little moral issues you find yourselves in, to kill for nothing more than duty from behind a shield of righteousness." He shook his head slightly.

"All so easy."

"And I suppose you think you've got it hard." Said Faith, advancing across the threshold and into the room itself. "Tormented by the faces of those you've killed over the centuries, all you can see is them and their hatred, or maybe even their innocence? How many you killed deserved it King?" King felt his anger flaring. Who was she to judge him, this slip of a girl, barely more than twenty in his estimation? How dare she try and judge him! As his anger began to rage silently, he felt it stirring at the back of his mind. He could hear it spitting and cursing both him and her as it charged into the forefront of his thoughts, a whirlwind of hate and bile ranting desperately for death and destruction.

"You're damned right it's hard!" he roared at her. "Do you think I wanted to feel this way? Do you think I wanted to feel at all? I became a vampire,  because I was done with feelings! All I wanted was revenge!"

"It's not meant to be easy King, and it doesn't matter whether you wanted it or not! The point is you deserved it! It's punishment, punishment for everything you did and I'm going to make sure you don't run away from it." King glared at her. She was just as aggravating as Soonan that was for sure. He began to stride purposefully toward the doorway. Faith stepped into his path, her arms folded firmly across her chest.

"You're not leaving." She said sternly.

"And who are you to stop me?" he hissed. "Playing judge and jury to me, when you could never possibly understand the things that I've done." He could feel the sadness at those words, and for once he welcomed it into his heart, the cursing and spitting in his head subsiding a little as he calmed.

"Other than Angel I'm the only person in this building who has any right to judge you!" said Faith, glaring sharply back at him.

"Oh really!" snapped King. "Have you ever killed a person Slayer, a real flesh and blood person, not just someone who turns to dust on the wind? Have you ever felt the warmth of blood on your hands, the exhilaration of knowing that a lifetime of experiences and possibilities has died at your hands? Have you ever felt that power?" Her answer was chillingly simple.

"Yes." King blinked, unable to hide the surprise that was spreading across his face.

"Wh… What did you say?" he said, completely taken aback by her admission.

"Two nights ago I was freed from prison by Wolfram & Hart. I'd been serving a life sentence for murder."

"But… But you're a Slayer!" said King. How could this be possible? How could someone so like Soonan have so much in common with him? He felt and overwhelming surge of sadness. What had happened to this girl? What had driven her to commit the darkest of crimes?

"You think I don't know that?" said Faith, her eyes filling with tears at the thoughts of what she'd done. "I'm supposed to protect people, and instead I ended them! I know everything you're going through because so am I! But running away from it, praying that everything'll just stop, that never works!" she stared at him for a moment before speaking again, her voice almost pleading this time.

"These people King, they're good people! They can help us, but first we need to help them. We need to stop running and face up to what we are! If you're too much of a coward then you may as well run to the end of the Earth. Everything you've done will catch you eventually." King watched her as she turned and began to walk away, the tears of frustration and pain staining her cheeks. He closed his eyes and sighed. Just when had he started caring about her? That was easy, the moment she'd walked into his warehouse.

"Alright." He said slowly. Faith turned to regard him cautiously. "I'll help, but not for them, not for Buffy, not even for me." Faith's brow creased in a confused frown.

"I'll help for you." He said.