Mutant Enemy Television, Inc. owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My use is in no way meant to challenge any established copyrights. This piece is not intended for any profit on the part of the writer, nor is it meant to detract from the commercial viability of the aforementioned, or any other, copyright. Any similarity to any events or persons (either real or fictional) is unintended.
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VIII – Questions and Answers"Are you awake yet?" Anya asked Xander. She only received a moan in response. "Is that a yes?" she asked. She'd been awake for over an hour reading a book that contained legends about her own exploits in Medieval Spain, and had finally decided that she wanted to begin her day. No reaction was yet forthcoming from her boyfriend, however.
"What time is it?" Xander asked, not bothering to open his eyes to see the clock that was sitting a few feet from his face.
"Ten-thirty," Anya answered pleasantly. Xander's only reaction to the information was to move just enough to grab the pillow from under his head, and burrow underneath it, preventing the bright sunlight from keeping him up. "It's time to get up, Xander," Anya said firmly.
"It's Saturday morning," Xander replied from under his pillow, as if that should have explained everything. "You do this every Saturday morning," Anya complained. "We spend all this time in this bed, but far too much of it sleeping, if you know what I mean." She knew what he was thinking – it was just a half-hour until College Gameday started. She refused to spend a half-hour trying to get her boyfriend to wake up to have sex, only to have him shun her in the end so that he watch previews of college games. She never understood it – every week he spent over an hour watching previews, then several hours watching the games, and then at night he would watch Sports Center to watch all the highlights that he had already seen, and find out scores he already knew. It made absolutely no sense.
"Yes, I know I'm like this every Saturday," Xander replied groggily, finally realizing that Anya wanted him awake to have sex. Part of his mind fought to wake up, but the rest of him resisted, knowing that Anya would probably still be in the mood later, and time to sleep was rare and precious. "Just give me a little longer."
"I've given you an extra hour," Anya said proudly, amazed at the restraint and patience she had shown so far. The phone rang, though, before she could present her case any more. "Damnit, who would be calling at this hour."
"If it's late enough for you to wake me up, then it's late enough for people to start calling," Xander replied as he sat up to answer the call. "Hello," he asked weakly as he picked up the phone.
Anya waited expectantly, hoping it was a telemarketer. Usually they were the most annoying people in the world, and she secretly held a hope that a new vengeance demon would be created just to deal with telemarketing firms. If they got Xander to wake up enough to answer the phone, though, then at least this time their call would be welcome.
"Oh, hi Will," Xander said, his voice immediately pepping up. "What's wrong?"
"Oh, great," Anya muttered. Anya liked Willow, really she did, but she found it disconcerting how Xander would do things like wake up at ten-thirty on a Saturday to take her call, while he wouldn't even wake up enough to have sex with his own girlfriend. If Willow had not turned into a lesbian, her relationship with Xander would have been very troubling. "Tell her to call back later," Anya suggested. She could sense victory in the air. Xander was awake, he seemed to be alert, and football preview shows would not be on for twenty-five minutes. That was more than enough time.
"Oh, my God," Xander said into the phone. "Are you sure she didn't just go out somewhere and not tell you? Maybe she told you and you forgot or something."
"Can't this wait a little?" Anya asked. "Can't she give us about twenty minutes and then call back?" She knew she asked her last question loudly enough for Willow to hear her, and that made her grin. It always made Willow feel weird to have to think about her childhood friend having sex. Strangely, and disconcertingly, Xander didn't seem to have the same problem when he was confronted with information about Willow and Tara. In fact, in some perverse way he seemed to enjoy it. Anya made a mental note to ask about that at some time in the future.
"We'll be right over," Xander said quickly.
"We will?" Anya asked, suddenly starting to wonder what was important enough to get Xander out of bed before noon on a Saturday.
Xander hung up the phone and looked over at his girlfriend, his eyes containing something that had never been there until recently. He had a certain intensity that Anya found alluring... and arousing. She pushed the thought from her head quickly, though, knowing it would be useless to get turned on again when she and Xander would be going out. She knew what the look was, though – it was responsibility. Xander had only recently developed it, and it gave him a demeanor that she had never thought possible. It had led him to get a real job, to move out on his own, to get more serious with her, and finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, to take seriously his responsibilities as a human being. In the old days, he had often gone along with Buffy, Angel, Giles, and the others because he'd felt it was fun. Now, however, he felt it was his duty to go out and join Buffy's battles against the forces of darkness. Anya knew the look all too well – she had seen it before. Many a stoic hero had taken up the mantle of protector of humanity, and all of them had died, usually painfully and violently. Xander's newfound sense of purpose was both thrilling and frightening, and Anya knew that she and Xander would one day have to sit down and get him to think seriously about what he was doing. Until then, though, she would follow along with him, to help keep him from getting himself killed. Then, after the fight, she would put him back together, and comfort him, and bathe him...
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"Are you okay?" Xander asked Willow as he walked into her dorm room. He had rarely heard her voice sounding as it did on the phone, and he'd only hoped that she hadn't turned into a complete basket case before he arrived.
"I'm okay for now," Willow said softly.
"So when did she leave?" Xander asked.
"I don't know," Willow answered with a weak shrug. "She was here when I fell asleep. Then I had this awful nightmare, and she was gone."
"Okay," Xander said calmly. He was getting a little nervous himself, but he knew the last thing he wanted was to let on to Willow how anxious he was. He couldn't see how that would help anything. "You're sure she wasn't planning on going out anywhere?"
"I'm sure," Willow said.
"And you've looked around in all the normal spots?"
"I've been up since three this morning," Willow replied, "and I've already checked all the usual places two or three times."
"Maybe she doesn't want you to find her," Anya suggested, appearing that she was trying to be helpful. Xander wondered silently how Anya thought a suggestion like that would help much, though. He reminded himself to speak to her once again about filtering – she really had to learn to think about what she was going to say before she said it, and remember to edit when necessary.
"Why wouldn't she want me to find her?" Willow asked evenly, her face seeming puzzled.
"Well, maybe she's got a man on the side," Anya suggested bluntly. She looked at the horrified gaze from Willow, and shrugged her shoulders. "Well, maybe it's a woman," she added.
"Anya, please," Xander said sternly. "You're really not helping."
"Oh, and you making sure that Willow looked around the school in the dead of night was useful," Anya replied.
"Has she been acting weird at all lately?" Xander asked, deciding to get back to the issue at hand and leave any reprimands for Anya until later. "Is there some kind of spell she might have cast that might have gone wrong?"
"Maybe she turned herself invisible," Anya suggested. "Tara, are you here?" she asked as she began to spin slowly, looking for any telltale sign of an invisible coed in the room with them.
"I think she would have said something by now if she was invisible, Anya," Xander said. "Is there anything you can think of, Will?"
"She's been normal," Willow assured them. Then her nose crinkled slightly, a sign Xander meant that Willow had suddenly thought of something. "Well, she seemed to feel something was important enough to talk to Father Raine instead of me, but that's it."
"Father Raine?" Anya suddenly asked. Xander immediately turned to his girlfriend, recognizing the tone of her voice. He had heard it only one time before – when Anya ran into her old demonic master. On her face he saw a light of recognition, and a chill ran up his spine as she gasped. "That's the priest we saw at Angelino's last night, right?"
"Yeah," Willow said. Xander guessed that Willow saw the same concern on Anya's face that he did.
"See? I knew I knew him," Anya said proudly. "It's just been so long, and he looks a little older."
"You know him?" Xander asked. "How?"
"From back in my demon days," Anya explained. "Back in... I don't know for sure... I think it was 1343. Maybe 1344. I never did keep really good track of time back then."
"1343?" Willow asked. "He's a vampire?"
"A demon?" Xander added.
"A ghost?" Willow suggested.
"No, he's human," Anya replied. "At least, he was back then. He probably still is, I don't know."
"Then how is he so old?" Willow asked, her curiosity seeming to temporarily displace her concern for Tara.
"He had some kind of magic," Anya explained cryptically. "I'm not really sure what it was, and I wasn't about to hang around long enough to find out. He scared the hell out of me."
"He seemed nice enough," Willow commented. "How bad could he be?"
"You want to know?" Anya asked. Xander's stomach sank as he realized it had become 'Story Time With Anya.' He knew she was about to tell one of those tales of hers that would inevitably keep him up for hours. He hated hearing about his girlfriend's tenure as a vengeance demon, and he certainly thanked his lucky stars that he had no plans to break up with her in the near future.
"What happened?" Willow asked.
No, don't ask her! Xander screamed in his mind. I don't want to hear this. Despite his wishes, though, Anya told her story with the same glee that she always displayed when she realized she had information that the rest of the group wanted.
"Well, as I said, it was somewhere back in the 1340's," Anya began with a wistful, faraway look. No one knew her innermost thoughts shifted momentarily to the delight of the Black Plague, which swept through Europe less than a decade after her story took place. She knew enough to keep such things to herself, and she focused again on the story at hand. "There was this girl named Marisol, and her fiancée... I think his name was Henry, or maybe Harold... he accused her of being a witch. He knew the accusation alone would be enough to get her killed. This was the height of the Inquisition, remember. People were pretty superstitious."
"Every time I think about the Inquisition, it just pisses me off that so many innocent girls were killed just because everyone was ignorant," Willow commented in her trademark self-righteous tone.
"Oh, she wasn't innocent," Anya responded, not seeming to notice the look of shock on Willow's face. "In fact, probably about eighty percent of the women executed for witchcraft were guilty." This time she noticed as Willow's expression moved from shock to horror. "You're looking at the situation through twentieth century eyes," Anya explained. "Sure, there aren't many witches now, but there were back then. You really think there could have been irrational mass hysteria on a continental level? You think all that fear came from nowhere? No, there were witches everywhere. They were practically crawling out of the woodwork, just like Mormons now. It was a wonderful time. Well, except for all the burnings, and hangings, and stonings, and mob justice --"
"Just get on with the story, Anya," Xander requested. He could see the growing look of distress on Willow's face, and he wanted to get this particular bedtime story done as quickly as possible.
"Fine," Anya said, settling her lips into a pout. "Anyway, Marisol's fiancée accused her of being a witch because he was apparently having an affair with Marisol's sister, Jane. Jane was apparently fine with the whole plan."
"Her own sister?" Willow asked, aghast.
"Well, she was a witch, too," Anya replied. "She'd made a deal with a demon named Arak'nor-Izall. She set up her sister, which she knew would cause quite a furor in the town. The demon apparently fed on fear, and with a witch in town, the one thing you could be assured of was fear. Jane hoped to receive some kind of amulet or something. I never found out much about that.
"So anyway, Marisol's father was an eyre," Anya continued. She saw the blank looks on her audience's faces, and decided to explain. "An eyre was a travelling judge. So he had some connections and was able to get Marisol imprisoned until an Inquisitor could be brought in. He knew Marisol would be hung by an angry mob without a trial if there wasn't an Inquisitor, so he took a chance that he would be able to pay off the judge. That didn't work, though. Father Raine was the priest that showed up."
"Oh my God," Willow muttered.
"Yep, Father Azrael Raine, one of the most feared and zealous inquisitors in all of Europe," Anya said. "Marisol knew she was doomed, so she summoned me. She was apparently daddy's little girl, and followed in his footsteps. She wanted justice, and nothing more. While lots of girls would have just asked for a plague to befall her sister and fiancée, or wish for an anvil to fall on their head from the sky or something, she only wanted justice, to have them share in whatever fate their treachery caused her. So I answered the wish, and both Jane and Henry were accused of witchcraft on the eve of Marisol's own trial. Of course, as they were all guilty, they were all killed. Here's the thing, though. Raine doesn't burn his victims at the stake or something like that. He tortures them, endlessly if he has to, until they decide to repent and give themselves to God. Once their souls have been 'cleansed' he uses some kind of magic to drain the life force from his victims. That's how he's lived so long."
"An Inquisitor using magic?" Xander asked. "Nothing hypocritical about that, huh?"
"Hypocritical or not, he's probably cleansing Tara right now," Anya pointed out.
"Cleansing?" Willow asked, suddenly remembering her dream. "That's what they talked about in my nightmare."
"Wow, he sent you a nightmare?" Anya asked, sounding impressed. "I didn't know he could do that. I guess he picked up some of the magical abilities of his victims along with their life force. I wonder what else he can do?"
"You're not helping," Xander said.
"He's here to judge us, isn't he?" Willow asked Anya. "He's probably using Tara and the dreams to get me to come after him."
"You and anyone else that has a stake in protecting witches," Anya said. "You know, I told you that whole coven thing was a bad idea, but you didn't believe me. You witches never listen."
"Anya, quit it," Xander said harshly. "She doesn't have the benefit of a thousand years' experience." Xander saw the deeply hurt expression on his girlfriend's face, and he was overcome in a wave of guilt. "I'm sorry," he said, grasping her in a tight embrace. "I didn't mean that," he whispered softly in her ear. "It's just that Willow's already a little freaked out. We have to help her."
"I know," Anya muttered in reply, fighting tears that were threatening to well up in the corners of her eyes. "I didn't mean it like that, Willow," she said, turning to the witch. "We'll help you."
"Thanks," Willow said. "But I also have some other people that might be interested. Let me make a phone call.
To be continued..................................