TITLE: Foreign Devils
AUTHOR: Indri
SUMMARY: The tale of the Chinese slayer.
SPOILERS: "Fool for Love".
RATING: PG-13.
PART: 3 of 3. Series is complete. 4800 words total.
DISCLAIMER: The Buffyverse is not mine.
FEEDBACK: archaeoindri@yahoo.com
This owes more to Tsui Hark than history, but corrections of glaring
errors more than welcome.
THANKS: To my brother "Inego" for answering my strange questions about
the uprising. All errors mine, though.


FOREIGN DEVILS

3. FANGS

The streets are on fire. The Fists are here. They are burning the
missionaries' compound and the opium merchants' stores. Other
buildings are ablaze also, set alight by accident or design. The town
is in chaos. Anyone suspected of working for the foreigners is being
chased out and men armed with guns and swords roam from house to
house, killing, it seems, without reason. And the demons have arrived.

Shuhao and Master Bao are outside the doctor's. The wounded are
being brought here and so the demons flock for an easy meal. Shuhao
swings her swords, beheading demons one by one, while Master Bao
inspects each new patient to ensure that he or she is not some demon
in disguise. The doctor treats each patient in turn while his
assistants run hither and thither, fetching what is needed.

The magistrate is among the wounded. So is one of Shuhao's brothers
and one of the missionaries. Her mother, she is glad to know, fled the
day before yesterday, at Shuhao's urging. Her mother has promised
not to return to the town until all the fires are out.

The demons are running from Shuhao now, racing back up the street. She
has time to pause. "You can't leave the patients in the shop," Master
Bao is explaining to the doctor, "but if we move them into your home,
the demons cannot enter. Or at least, some of them cannot." So Shuhao
helps them carry the wounded into another part of the shop.

But there's no rest after that. "The inn next," says Master
Bao. "That's where they will congregate next." So Shuhao blows the
dust from her blades and puts them back in their scabbards.

They race towards the market square. A dozen Fists are there, beset by
half-a-dozen demons. The Fists are shooting the demons and stabbing
them, which enrages but does not kill this kind of monster. The Fists
are dying right and left.

Shuhao reaches the melee, swords in hand. The first demon dies
before he even sees her. "Like this!" Shuhao cries, "behead them!"
She slices another demon from hip to throat before she's able to land
the killing blow. One Fist, faster and smarter than the others, has
followed her lead, dropping his gun and slashing his sword towards a
demon's neck. Shuhao fends off two of the remaining demons, sliding
under their blows, kicking one to his knees. Behind her, Master Bao is
also fighting, wooden stake in hand.

She kills another; the quick Fist finally manages a clean severance of
his opponent's head. There are only two demons left: one for her and
one for Master Bao. She hears a rip of cloth as Master Bao's demon seizes the
man and tears open the cloth at his throat, but when she can spare a
glance away from her fight, she sees that the demon has been repelled
by Master Bao's silver cross, and that the stake has found its way to the
demon's vulnerable heart. There are now five piles of dust where their
assailants have been and Shuhao returns her concentration to the
sixth. She feints. She lunges. And then the last demon is gone.

A shot rings out, close to her ear, almost deafening, even in the
cacophony of the flame and riots. She turns her head.

To watch Master Bao flung back from the force of the shot, shattered bone
and meat exploding from his face. His fingers lose their grasp on his
stake as his body smacks against the ground.

For perhaps a quarter-second, Shuhao pauses, rocking slightly on the
balls of her feet. Master Bao does not magically come back
together. No illusion is dispelled. Her mentor gives her neither
instructions nor a grudging smile. He just skids a little further back
from the momentum, his remaining eye staring heavenwards. He cannot
see her.

Then Shuhao's steel sword seems to move of its own accord, tearing
through the air, cleaving the wrist of their attacker, sinking its
blade deep into the barrel of a gun. The silvered sword moves in a
more horizontal arc, divesting their enemy of his head.

The head rolls down the street. The body collapses at her
feet. Neither one turns to dust.

The remaining Fists look at her. They see, as their fellow had, the
crucifix at Master Bao's throat. "You're a Christian?" one of them
asks. They start to turn on her, their weapons at the ready. Shuhao
says nothing. She wants them to attack. She wants to kill them.

The steel sword is useless now, chipped and too firmly embedded in the
gun. She drops it. But her other sword is ready when the first Fist
begins to raise his gun at her. He's dead before the others have
blinked.

She takes a step forward. The Fists take a step back. The smart one
reads her expression and turns to run.

She can't let him escape; she's too full of rage. So she draws a
knife and throws it deep between his shoulderblades, at the base of
the neck. The man falls and does not rise. Some of the Fists turn now
to attack her; others are fleeing into the nearest building, the
temple, even though it's already been set alight. They fear her more.

Shuhao's sword moves once, twice, thrice, and two more Fists lie
dead on the ground. From inside the building she can hear
screaming. Her first thought is that the building must be falling
apart. She ignores it.

The next Fist is in his middle years, a veteran who actually knows
what to do with a sword. He will take more than two strokes. She bends
and weaves, but the veteran parries, so after a while she loses all
patience and closes in tight, too close to use their swords. With her
free arm she grasps around his head and twists. His knees give way
under him.

A man emerges now from the temple. He clings to the doorway as if his
left leg has been broken and he seems to have lost his nose. He starts
stumbling towards her, but then something pulls him back into the
burning building. She hears a snap and a scream and nothing more.

It is then that some part deep inside of her finally reaches up
through her rage. It says, demon! Kill demon! Kill demon! She sways a
little on her feet, clutching her sword in both hands. She blinks
several times. The bodies of dead Fists lie around her. If any are
still alive, they are inside the temple.

She starts to shiver. She can't stand the sight of the blood on her
sword, so she wipes it on one of the fallen men's clothes. There are
still human sounds coming from behind the temple door.

Slayer, slayer, she thinks, forcing herself to breathe properly and to
stop shivering. I am The Slayer. I kill demons, not men. She rubs at
her face, as if to wake herself. She must go into the temple
and---save these men.

She breathes deep, draws herself together, tries not to think of
Master Bao lying dead a dozen yards down the road. She knows her
duty. She will be brave. She steps up to look at her true foe.

And stands back in shock. He's a foreign devil, an ocean man, but
unlike every other ocean man she's ever met, this one does not smell
of milk.

He smells of blood.

His skin's pale as bone, his hair looks like thatch, and his eyes are
the colour of the sky at noon. He has killed all but one of the
remaining Fists.

He says something to her then, in a language she does not understand,
but she recognises the tone: low and mocking. The surviving Fist
strikes out at him, knife in hand, but the ocean devil seizes his
attacker's arm easily and breaks it. The devil kicks away the Fist's
lower leg and the man crumples. A foot smashes into the man's neck and
crushes his throat. The devil isn't even bothering to drink from his
victims, he's just pulling them apart for the fun of it. He's a
savage.

But she thinks, am I any better? She's spilt human blood
tonight. There's no honour in that, it's not part of her
calling. She's betrayed Master Bao and she's betrayed her
mother. She's the Slayer, and that's not what she's supposed to be
about.

Does he know what she is? Can he tell? She thinks so---he was offhand
in killing the man, but he's being more careful of his movements now
that she's here. He seems to be sizing her up. He's starting to smile.

And she knows that there is nothing she can do to make right what she
has done wrong tonight, but she knows that her duty still needs to be
done. She must still try to kill the demon in front of her.

She thinks, "Try? Why am I thinking 'try'?", but then the demon is
upon her, and she has no time left to think and no remaining sense of
self. She is motion and she is fury: she is the warrior of the people.