once I'm finished with it because I'm just not satisfied with the quality of writing that went into it, so if you have
any suggestions, please feel free to leave them. I would appreciate the help. This chapter is longer than the others.
Lots of stuff happens. This is the big showdown, so enjoy and tell me what you think. *^_^*
Chapter 7
"She's going to be okay?" Tara looked at Willow's unconscious form and then at Buffy and Giles for
reassurance. "She's going to be fine." Giles
placed a hand on the witch's shoulder to comfort her.
"The doctors say she just needs some rest."
Tara didn't seem completely convinced yet. "But she's not awake. Why hasn't she waken up yet?"
"She's suffered a head trauma. They said it will probably be a few more hours before she wakes up."
Giles offered.
"Yeah, but like any member of
the Scooby gang, she has developed a hard head over the years." Once
again, Xander was trying to lighten the mood with humor. He was rewarded with a shy quiet smile.
Buffy broke the personal moment
with her slayer-business voice. "Katherina did this. She attacked
Giles,
then she hurt Willow and kidnapped Dawn. She won't
stop unless I stop her, and I mean now. She left a
message for me. Willow was able to pass it along
before she totally lost consciousness. Katherina's got Dawn
in the old factory. She wants to fight me." Giles stood off to the side with his arms crossed looking very
unhappy. Buffy was going to do what she wanted,
and there was nothing he could do to stop her. At least she
had enough sense to wait till everyone was assembled
before going after the council's slayer.
"Tara." The witch jumped
slightly at the sound of her name. Though she had been listening,
the majority of
her focus was on massaging the back of Willow's hand,
gently. Buffy softened her voice for the sensitive girl.
"Tara, do you have everything you need for the spell?" Tara nodded and held up her back pack. "I though, just
in case, I'd bring it."
"Good." Buffy smiled. "We need whatever time we can get."
"Let's not forget that we are walking into a trap here." Giles felt it was time to reassert himself.
"I know. We'll have to
be careful. Look, when we get there, I want everyone to stay clear
of Katherina.
Just get Dawn, and stick to the plan." It suddenly
became very quiet. Each member of the Scooby gang looked
at each other. How many times had they been here
before? How many times had they experienced this erie
calm before going off to face some monster or yet another
apocalypse? It seemed now like there was a new
crisis every week, and each time they went to face evil
and doom, they took a moment to reflect on battles past.
The moment passed, and as a unit
the four friends left the hospital room. They made their way to Xander's
car. Once in the car, Tara began sorting through
the ingredients in her pack. She divided them up and gave half
to Giles, as they would both be performing identical
spells. They once again explained to Xander exactly what his
part in all of this would be. Xander kept half
of his attention on the road, and the other half on the two magic
users behind him.
"Now you won't have to do anything exactly." Said Tara.
"No incantations or brewing." Said Giles.
"You'll need to focus our energy."
"It will feel like gravity pulling
your arms in opposite directions."
"Just focus on keeping that feeling,
like you're holding onto two...um" Tara thought for a second. "...dog
leashes! Like you're holding onto two dog leashes."
"I get it." Xander assured them. "I'm the dog sitter of this mission."
"Xander, you must understand
how vital you are to this spell. If you loose concentration, even
for a second,
the effect will be broken and Katherina will know exactly
what is going on. We can't let that happen." Giles
scolded the younger man.
Xander nodded from the driver's
seat. "Giles, I get it. I really do. You can trust me
with this. You know you
can." Xander was right of course. Giles would
trust any of the young adults present with his life.
**********
The old bleached cement walls,
crumbling with neglect, looked as though they were burning in the light
of
the sunset. Typically, the abandoned factory, where
once many nasty creatures had planned their mischief, was
swarming with vampires at this time of dusk. For
the last few weeks however, no vampires had come anywhere
near the place. Not since a pale slip of a girl
had walked in and taken out an entire nest of vampires with a pointy
stick and her bare hands.
Now, in the shadow of the large
building, a single unassuming automobile rolled to a halt. Four figures
cautiously stepped out and swiftly glided into the unlocked
front door.
On the outskirts of the parking
lot there was an empty lot, overgrown with wild underbrush. Unbeknownst
to the four heroes, they were being watched by two other
figures, hiding in the bushes.
The one on the right, a scrawny
man with a dark, unkempt beard and ratty jeans, tee-shirt and sneakers
looked on in wonder. "Was that who I think it was?" He asked in a voice abused by centuries of tobacco.
"The slayer." His companion,
taller with a medium build, and soft brown hair and eyes that disguised
the
raw power and viciousness the man possessed, replied. "The other slayer."
"So they're gonna fight, again?"
"This is just like when the Mayor's pet Slayer came to town."
"Yeah, this might get ugly. Let's get out of here."
The brown haired vampire turned to his friend. "You wanna head down to the park and get a bite to eat?"
"Yeah." The scruffy vampire
replied. "But this time let me pick. You have terrible tastes. Every time we
eat what you want, I get indigestion for a week." They laughed and ran off, sticking to the long shadows cast
by the faded light.
**********
Tara, Giles and Xander followed
Buffy through the winding passages of the factory. They were in the
building's bowels, and still they had not seen hide nor
hair of Katherina or Dawn. As the three mere mortals
followed Buffy, Buffy followed her elevated senses. She was moving purely on instinct, a slight breeze
from this corridor-turn right, a scraping sound in the
walls-go straight, a whiff of Dawn's perfume-right again.
Then she heard it. The
others heard it too. Not too far away, there was a cry of frustration. It was Dawn's
voice. Buffy took off at a dead run towards the
sound and the others struggled to keep up. They stopped
when they caught up to Buffy, who was standing in the
doorway of one of the many storage rooms. Buffy
was talking to someone, but the rest of the Scoobies
couldn't see past her to see who it was.
Giles didn't need to see past her, though. He recognized the voice.
"Well are you going to come in,
or are we going to stand here all night?" Katherina asked of Buffy.
Buffy shifted her gaze. "Dawn, are you alright?"
"Yeah." Came a shaky response from a far corner.
"Alright, lets do this." Buffy ran into the room with a sudden jolt. The sounds of fighting
quickly
followed. Just outside the room, Giles turned to
the two young adults beside him. "Alright, make sure
you're both positioned correctly. Stick close to
the walls and stay away from the fighting. I'll be closest
to Dawn from the sound of things, so wait till I cut
her loose, Tara. We have to start together." They
all nodded and ran into the room.
It wasn't a large room as far
as storage facilities went. It had a high ceiling, and apart from
some
moldy cardboard boxes and stray bric-a-brac, it was empty. Since the power had been cut after the band
candy incident, the room had been rigged with torches
set into the walls at regular intervals. It gave the
utilitarian space a savage medieval look. Tara
and Xander made a sharp left as soon as they entered, and
Giles turned right.
Up till that moment, both Slayers
were fighting cautiously, throwing punches and kicks and blocking
them easily. However, when the Scoobies entered
the room, Katherina smiled grimly and stepped up the
fight. She executed a series of punches and kicks
aimed at Buffy's head, chest and stomach, all of which
Buffy blocked with her hands. "Brought you seconds,
I see." Katherina grunted.
Buffy threw a punch at Katherina's
left shoulder. As Katherina blocked it, Buffy sent a hard kick up
at
her chest. The kick connected, sending Katherina
back a few steps. "I just want to make sure it's a fair
fight." She said.
"And who will make sure that
it's fair for me?" Katherina threw a roundhouse kick, aimed at Buffy's
head. Buffy jumped backwards into a handstand,
avoiding the kick and managing to catch Katherina under
the chin with one of her own. Katherina swiped
her feet under Buffy, kicking her hands out from under her,
and sending the blond slayer to the floor.
Buffy rolled out of the way and
jumped to her feet again. "Let me remind you that you are the one
trying to kill me. Why don't you just go back to
the council, and save us both the fight?"
"Not bloody likely!" The
fight continued, growing more vicious by the second. Dawn, who was
chained
to an iron ring, imbedded in the cement floor, also saw
Tara, Xander and Giles enter. She had been relatively
unharmed during her imprisonment, but she was hungry,
exhausted, frightened, and bruised. She sat, huddled
in her corner, ignored by the dark slayer. When
she saw Giles coming towards her, she perked up visibly.
She couldn't stand; her chains were too short for that,
but she did climb to her knees and shuffle as close
to Giles as possible.
He knelt beside her and pulled
out several pieces of curved metal wire. He quickly went to work
picking
the padlock on Dawn's chains. At the same time
Tara began setting up her supplies for the coming spell,
Xander arrived at the far wall of the storage room, and
sat down cross-legged, watching events unfold, and
Buffy was dealt a bone jarring blow to her jaw. She reeled backwards from the force of the hit, and had to
shake her head to clear her vision.
The next series of events happened
in a blur. Buffy refocused her attention on Katherina just as the
other
slayer pulled something glittering out of her knee-high
black boot. Xander shouted out an inarticulate
warning. Katherina pulled back her right hand and
let loose the small dagger. Buffy twisted to her right, just
out of the path of the weapon. She felt the
displaced air create a slight breeze as it past her throat. What
she
didn't realize was that Dawn, just released from her
chains, was standing directly behind her. Her younger
sister's eyes grew wide with horror when she saw Katherina
wield the dagger. Giles, who was kneeling with
the lock picks still in his hand, saw Dawn's apparent
alarm, but not the cause. He stood to ask her. "Dawn...?"
He was thrown into the young girl by the force of the
dagger hitting him behind his right shoulder.
Time stood still. Buffy
looked from Giles and Dawn, motionless on the ground, to Katherina, standing
casually several feet away. "Oops." She smiled. "My mistake." Buffy's complete demeanor changed in
a matter of seconds. She became cold and calculating. "You kidnapped my sister and you hurt my watcher
and my friend. I'd call that more than a mistake." Buffy attacked with full force. Punch, kick, kick, punch,
jab, punch, punch; she moved too fast for Katherina to
counter, and although Katherina also managed to get
a few punches through Buffy's defenses, they didn't have
much effect.
In the right corner of the room,
Dawn struggled out from under Giles. Giles groaned, rolling painfully
into a half sitting position.
"Giles! Are you okay?" Dawn asked, sitting beside him and wondering what, exactly, she should
be
doing to help.
Giles winced as Dawn touched
him lightly on the arm. He tried to reach the dagger with his left
hand,
but the motion sent a wave of pain through his back. "I'm fine, Dawn." He fought to keep his tone
even. It might not have been entirely true, but
it was half true. He would be alright. He was breathing;
he didn't feel like he was drowning, which led him to
believe that the knife missed his lungs. Still, it
bloody hurt! "Listen, I can't reach the knife,
so you're going to have to pull it out for me. Can you
do that?"
"Yeah. I can do t hat. Just like they taught us in the first aid unit of health class, right?" Her voice
shook with nerves and her face had gone pale with the
realization of what she had to do. Giles was not
encouraged by her lack of confidence. He wanted
to ask how well she did on the first aid unit, but decided
it was probably better not to.
On the other side of the room,
Xander scuttled over to Tara, who had finished setting up for the spell
and was now watching events unfold with bewilderment. "Xander!" She exclaimed when she noticed
him at her side. "This is not good. We need
to help."
"Yeah, you noticed that too,
huh? I know I'm just focus guy, and why does that sound so odd coming
from my mouth, but is there anything I can do; you know
with the spell?"
Tara thought, and then nodded. "Yes. See how everything is set up in front of me? Can you
go over
to Giles bag and set everything up the same way? That way, when he's ready, everything will be, you
know, ready."
Xander looked at Tara's set up. "Okay, empty bowl in the middle, brushy stuff and lighter to the left,
and three little bottles to the right. Would you
like fries with that?" He turned without waiting for a
response and ran, half crouched, over to Dawn and Giles.
Dawn had just removed the knife
from Giles' shoulder and was trying to stop the flow of blood with
a handkerchief Giles had been carrying in his back pocket. "Xander, what are you doing here? You
should be in place." The Watcher, whose face was
three shades paler now, scolded.
Xander was already unpacking Giles bag and placing
the items in their proper places. He kept his voice
light and conversational in order to hide his concern
for everyone. Willow was in the hospital, Giles was
hurt, Buffy was fighting for her life, Dawn looked petrified. In fact, he and Tara seemed to be the only
ones holding it together, and he was just barely doing
that.
"Well G-Man, I'll tell ya. It looks like our plan has been delayed slightly. I just thought
I'd pop on
over here and lend a hand." He surveyed his work
with satisfaction. "See, just like Tara's. Now when
you're ready we can get this shindig started." All three of them looked in the direction of Buffy, who was,
at the moment, being throttled by Katherina on the cold
cement floor. The fight had turned again, this time
in Katherina's favor, but Buffy managed to gain some
leverage and push her opponent off.
"Let's get to it then, shall we?" Giles suggested, taking the bloodied handkerchief from Dawn.
"You got it." Xander answered. "Time's a-wasting!" He returned back to his place at the far wall.
From his place sitting cross legged against the wall,
Xander looked at Tara, who nodded her readiness.
Then he looked at Giles, who also confirmed that he was
prepared. Then Giles and Tara made eye contact.
**********
It started off as a whisper;
not even a noticeable breeze in the back of Katherina's mind. However,
the whisper grew, as whispers often do. It was
easy to ignore at first. It was soft and unintelligible; Latin
maybe. She never understood Latin. Travers
had tried to teach her, but she wasn't the best student.
The whisper became a distraction when out of the babble
came words that had meaning. "...home...family..."
"What?" She tried to determine
where the sound was coming from. In her distraction, Buffy was
able to get in a few good hits. A kick to the chest
finally floored Katherina, but she took advantage of
her position, swiping a leg first at Buffy's stomach, and then at her legs. Buffy jumped back to avoid the
blows, giving Katherina the chance to get back to her
feet.
The two opposing slayers circled
each other cautiously. Both were beaten badly and showing signs
of exhaustion. Katherina was dealing with the added
distraction of the voices, that apparently only she
could hear. Buffy knew what was happening. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Tara chanting
softly while burning some kind of plant over a bowl. She knew that Giles was doing the same exact thing
on the other side of the room. They were doing
their job. Her job was to keep Katherina busy until the
spell took full effect. She couldn't let Katherina
notice what was going on on the sidelines. That meant
that she would have to cut this little break short.
"Ready to give up yet?" Buffy asked. Katherina shook her head and smiled a wolfish smile. "But
f you want to quit, I'll completely understand." At that, she pulled a second dagger from her other boot.
"This one won't miss." Katherina promised, as she
advanced on Buffy with her weapon.
Katherina took several swipes
with the dagger. Buffy avoided them by twisting and bending out of
the way. She didn't attack. Just stay
out of the way of that dagger and keep her swinging. Buffy
thought grimly. And Katherina did keep swinging. As the spell grew stronger, she became more
distracted; more disoriented. Her attacks became
wild and unfocused, and it became easier for Buffy
to avoid them. Then...
"Ahh!" Buffy exclaimed
as the steel point finally met it's mark. A thin red line ran across
her ribs.
It wasn't deep and would probably stop bleeding in a
matter of minutes, but it served as a reminder as
to how dangerous a disoriented opponent could be.
Katherina shook her head, still
trying to clear the half coherent voices from her mind, and then lunged
at Buffy one last time. Before she even reached
the blonde slayer, a voice made her stop in her tracks.
"Katherina, stop!" This
voice was not a whisper. It rang out with confidence. That
wasn't what
made her stop. She recognized the voice. It had been nearly 14 years, but she would never forget
that voice. She spun around and found herself looking
straight into the eyes of her mother; 14 years
older than when she had last seen her, but her mother
none the less. She had the same long dark hair,
the same porcelain doll face, and a long flowing midnight
blue dress like she always used to wear.
Katherina's jaw dropped opened,
the fight forgotten in the shock of seeing what she was certain
was a ghost. "Mum?" She whispered, fearful
that any abrupt sounds would chase the apparition away.
"Kathy." This time it was
a male voice that spoke her name. It came from behind her. Katherina
didn't turn around right away. She mentally prepared
herself for what she knew she was about to witness.
Just behind her, her father took several steps closer
to her. He seemed less real than her mother, more
ghostly, but it was unmistakably her father; very tall,
light brown hair cut short and tidy, and big hands.
He always gave the best hugs with those big hands.
Katherina shook her head in denial. "It's a trick. It's a bloody conjure or something. Y-you're
dead." She said breathlessly, but she made no move
towards action other than to shift her attention
back and forth between each parent. This couldn't
be real. Her parents were dead, weren't they?
Travers had told her that himself. They were killed
by vampires. But the sight of her parents standing
in front of her, talking, moving, smiling even, began
to unravel 14 years of conditioning.
"We're not dead." Her mother said.
"Travers lied to you. Think
about it and you'll remember." Her father added. "He took you
from
us. Hid you."
"We looked for you. For
the past 14 years we looked for you, but we never found you." Her
mother
stepped
closer. It wasn't a threatening move, but it was
filled with caution. Both of her parents seemed well aware
of the danger she posed even to them.
"You never found me?" Katherina's
voice was faint, but gaining strength again. There was a hint of
her usual sarcasm in the question. Obviously they
had found her if they were, in fact, standing in front of her.
"We didn't." Her father
explained. "Someone found us. Now listen very carefully, this
is important."
He walked towards her, reaching into a pocket inside
his sports coat. Katherina saw the movement, and
returned to a defensive posture, brandishing the knife. "Don't come near me." She growled dangerously,
like a trapped, wild animal. Her reason was beginning
to reassert itself. She knew that these weren't her
parents. They couldn't be. Her parents were
dead, despite what her senses told her.
Her father, pale and translucent,
froze in mid-stride. Their eyes locked and in that moment, Katherina's
suspicions were confirmed. They definitely weren't
her parents. The man in front of her seemed to
realize what she was thinking; what she now understood. He withdrew his hand from his coat pocket,
holding a strip of paper. From behind Katherina,
her mother's voice floated like a wisp of smoke.
"When did Travers say we died?"
Katherina was thrown by the question. She whirled to face the woman behind her; the witch she
assumed; the one that came in with Buffy's entourage. She decided that the Watcher must be playing
the part of her father. She didn't know what became
of the third one, or of the slayer and her sister.
They seemed to have faded away. In fact, the whole
room seemed to have faded away. She would
just have to play their game until she got a chance to
kill them.
"You died when I was five. Travers adopted me. He told me about my calling and trained me.
If he hadn't, I would have been left in an orphanage." She felt like she needed to, on some level,
defend her guardian.
"You have to remember." Her mother said. Her voice was sounding slightly more urgent and
desperate. She probably knows I'm about to rip
her throat out. Katherina thought. "Remember
the last time you saw us. We were at home in Bath. You had just turned five and we were celebrating.
There was a knock at the door."
"I was coloring."
There was a confused silence. Katherina didn't know where the memory had come from. She saw
herself sitting in the living room. Her mother
wasn't there, she was in the kitchen, but her father watched
admiringly as Katherina put the finishing touches on
a dragon from her unicorn and dragon coloring book.
She was really quite good at coloring her father had
said. The images that followed hit her with more
force than Buffy ever could.
"Look Daddy, a dragon!"
"Very good sweetheart! Show your Mum when she comes in, alright?"
There was a knocking at the
door, and her mother's voices floated from the kitchen. "I'll get
it
dear."
Katherina contentedly flipped
to a new page in her book. She had no concern for who was at the
door because she had no notion what was about to happen. As far as she was concerned, life would
go on as normal and perfect as it had for the last
five years.
Her mother was opening the
door as Katherina picked up the blue crayon. She wanted to make
a blue unicorn. "How can I help..." Her
mother's voice trailed off, then took a different tone, one
that Katherina had never heard before. "What
are you doing here?" It was a dangerous sound,
like the dog down the street that always growled if
you got too near his territory. The hairs on
the back of her neck stood on end. She stopped
what she was doing to look over her shoulder at
the front door. Her father rose from the couch
and walked purposely to the door to help his wife.
Whoever was at the door(Katherina
couldn't see from the living room floor) began to speak then.
It was really more of a whisper and she couldn't understand
what he was saying. She understood her
father's response. "Get the hell out of my house! We told you no! She'll have no part in your
secret society!"
Katherina jumped to her feet
as though she had been stung by a bee. Her father never spoke like
that, not even when she accidentally broke the old
grandfather clock last year. Something was very
wrong.
The person at the door pushed
past her parents and strode into the house. "Well, it's really not
up to you is it?" He was tall. Not as
tall as her father, but still very tall. He had short black hair
and wore a dark suite. He frightened Katherina
as he menaced towards her, so she began to back
away. Her parents moved to block him from her,
but he turned calmly to them and uttered a few
words that Katherina didn't know. Her parents
fell to the ground, sound asleep. Katherina's
eyes opened wide with horror. She tried to run,
but the strange man said the same words and
everything faded away.
Katherina's stared blankly into
space, the implications of her memories sinking in slowly. These
were memories, not a spell. They had always been
there, she just hadn't noticed them before. The
council kidnapped her; it had stolen her childhood from
her. It had stolen her parents from her.
Reality snapped back into place viciously. She
felt a cold fury start to form in her gut, but also an
overwhelming need to reclaim what was taken. She
turned once again to the Watcher and the witch
that had impersonated her parents. They no longer
bore any resemblance to her family. Buffy
looked at her cautiously; watching every move she made;
reading her body language in hopes of
preventing some possible violent outburst. The witch watched everything. She was reading everyone
at once, trying to decide where she was most needed. The Watcher seemed less concerned. He saw
what had happened to her. He saw the change in
her eyes, and he knew that she was no longer a threat.
He approached her with the piece of paper that he tried
to give her earlier as her father. She noticed
that it was stained with a couple of drops of his blood. She had done that. She hurt him, and he was
still trying to help. "They're still living in
Bath. That's their phone number and address. We haven't
contacted them yet, so it might be best if you called
them first."
Katherina stared dumbly at the
piece of paper that Giles offered to her. He knew that there was
still
doubt in her mind, but it wasn't enough. She took
the paper quickly, her hand resembling a striking
snake as it whipped the paper from his hand. Her
eyes darted from one person to the next. She said
nothing; asked none of the questions that were buzzing
in her mind like angry bees. She simply backed
out of the room, never letting any of them out of her
sight. Then she was gone. She left so quickly
and so quietly that everyone in the room was left questioning
whether the last several weeks had even
happened.
The tense silence was broken
when, simultaneously, both Buffy and Giles collapsed to the ground;
Buffy from the injuries sustained in her fight, and Giles
from the blood loss from his shoulder wound.
They made a soft thudding sound when they fell, but that
little noise broke the spell that Katherina
herself had left. Everyone collectively breathed
again.
