Part 22: Newcomers and Misunderstandings
#
Buffy, flanked by Willow, Xander, and Giles, stormed into the waiting area of Sunnydale General, her heart beating a thousand times a minute. Wide eyes searched the room, looking for anyone or anything that might put the horror scenarios in her head to rest. The phone call had been brief, she did not know the whole situation yet. Maybe it was not as bad as it sounded. Maybe ...
She spotted Riley standing near the nurse station and darted toward him.
"Riley," she yelled, catching his attention. The moment he turned toward her she almost stopped dead in her tracks.
Riley's face was a mess of bruises, a large bandage covering half his forehead. One eye was completely swollen shut and the other was bloodshot, seeming to take too long to focus on her. Riley leaned heavily on the desk, his body language screaming of pain and discomfort. She could see more bandages around his chest through his half-buttoned shirt.
"What happened?" she demanded.
"King attacked us," Riley managed to tell her, his speech sounding slurred. "Broad daylight, right in the middle of the street. Which was our luck, I guess. Apparently he ran off when some pedestrians came along. At least that it was they told me. I was out cold by that time."
"Where ... where is Angel, Riley?"
He looked down, wringing his hands.
"He ... he was the one King was after, Buffy. The bastard took just enough time to ... to make sure I didn't interfere. I got off easy, all things considered. Angel, though ..."
"Tell me," Buffy pleaded, the look on her face breaking Riley's heart.
"I don't really know," he finally admitted. "He's still in the emergency room. Has been for over two hours now. They ... they won't tell me anything."
Buffy immediately turned toward the nurse behind the desk.
"I ... I need to know about a patient. His name is Angel, Angel O'Connor. How is he?"
Angel's legal identity was only about a year old, established with some assistance from Willow. O'Connor had been his real name back when he had been alive in 18th century Ireland. According to current public records, though, he was a man of 26, born in New York, no living family.
"Are you a relative?" the nurse asked.
"I'm his wife," Buffy answered without hesitation.
The nurse looked through her files for a moment. "I'm afraid they are still busy with your husband, Mrs. O'Connor. I can't tell you anything at the moment. Sorry."
"They've been at it for two hours!" Desperation crept into her voice. "There must be something, please! I need to know that he's all right!"
The nurse was about to repeat her earlier statement, but the lost look on the young woman's face swayed her.
"I'll see what I can find out," she told her. "I'll be back in a minute."
It was the longest minute of Buffy's life and she did not even hear the encouraging words her friends said to her, telling her that Angel was tough and had survived worse. The only thing she could think of was the fact that he had been back in her life only so short a time. It was not fair that this had happened. Did they not deserve a break just once? A little happiness after everything they had gone through?
"King must have figured out that Angel and Buffy are a couple," Giles mused. "Maybe he hoped that getting rid of Angel would ... help things along."
Buffy's head snapped toward the Watcher, the look of fury in her eyes making him take a step back.
"If something has happened to Angel then King is a dead man, Giles!"
The absolute honesty in her voice sent a chill down everyone's spine.
"He is human, Buffy," Giles reminded her, "and not in control of his actions."
"I don't care! If Angel ..."
The nurse came back out in the company of a tired-looking doctor and Buffy was upon them in a heartbeat.
"What is it? How is he? Will he be okay?"
"We have just moved him into intensive care," the doctor told her with a sad look on his face. "He ... it's a small miracle that he is still alive, Mrs. O'Connor. Your husband is a very strong man."
"Will he pull through?" Giles asked from behind Buffy, his hand on her shoulder doing nothing to calm her down.
"It's too soon to tell," the doctor admitted. "He has taken some spinal damage and we are not certain how severe a concussion he has sustained. It ... it all depends on him now. If he wakes up within the next few days there is a good chance he will survive. The longer he stays unconscious, though ..."
Buffy closed her eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks as her small body trembled with sorrow and anger.
"Have you spoken to the police yet?" the doctor asked. "They should be out looking for whoever did this to him. I've never seen a human being so methodically beaten up."
"Oh, you will," Buffy whispered, clenching her fists.
"Thank you, doctor," Giles quickly said, pulling Buffy aside. "Please keep us informed on Angel's condition."
Buffy did not resist being moved and Giles maneuvered them towards a deserted corner of the waiting room.
"I will kill him, Giles," she whispered.
"Buffy, even leaving the issue of him being human aside, it's a very bad idea for you to go looking for him. Especially now."
"He's right, Buffy," Willow agreed. "You barely managed to pull away from him last time. There is no telling ..."
"Oh, I won't pull away this time," Buffy interrupted her and started moving toward the exit without another word.
"Buffy, you really shouldn't ...," Riley began, trying to hold her back. A moment later he found himself shoved into the wall so hard his bandaged ribs cried out in protest, the Slayer storming past him without another word.
Moments later she was gone.
"This is not good," Xander said.
"Riley, I believe you should call your colleagues," Giles told the younger man. "It is imperative that we find King before Buffy does."
Riley nodded. Never before had he seen the Slayer like this, so full of anger and rage. He really did not want to get in her way on this. If she found King first ...
#
Her first night in Sunnydale had been rather uneventful, something Julia was thankful for. Simply being here was enough to bring back all sorts of memories she would have preferred to forget. It was bad enough in the light of day, but during the night ...
This second night she finally found a trace. Daniel's contacts had been unable to say where in Sunnydale this 'Special Domestic Operations' unit was holed up, but she was bound to run into one of their units if she kept to those places she remembered the demons hanging out in. Cemeteries, the warehouse district, and the area around the town's only nightclub. Julia did not remember it being called the Bronze, but after twenty years she rather expected a name change or two.
Everything looked much too similar as it was; she was thankful for every little difference.
The sounds of a struggle drew her in, her nose picking up the characteristic stench of vampires. They smelled of old blood and death, cold and metallic. Julia had not been fooled by a vampire's human face since her change, she could always tell. Maybe this was just some vampires besetting a human victim or two. If so, she could use the exercise. If not ...
Julia had barely turned the corner, looking into an alley between two warehouses, when she realized that she had found what she had been looking for. There were vampires, all right, but they were in a situation vampires seldom found themselves in.
There were four of them and they were tossed around by a girl half their size.
"I'm really in a bad mood," the girl growled at her stunned opponents. "But hey, if one of you can maybe tell me where I can find this guy I'm looking for, you'll die quickly."
The vampires just snarled at her and attacked again, no more successful then the first time around. Julia watched with dread as the girl destroyed two of them almost casually, demonstrating a strength and speed so that was far beyond human. Just to make certain Julia took in her scent. Human, but with something else mixed in. Something that was definitely more than human. It erased whatever doubts she might have had left.
Taking her cell phone from her pocket Julia quickly sent an SMS to Daniel. Just one word.
Confirmed.
#
Buffy had never been so angry in her entire life and the unfortunate vampires she had come across in her search for Jackson King were paying the price for it. She did not really think that any of them might know where he was. She just took her fury out on them.
It did not mean she missed the movement at the end of the alley.
"You might as well come out," she yelled as she finished the last vampire. "I know you're there."
It was not King, that much she could tell even without turning around. Now that she knew what she was looking for she could tell when he was close. The feeling was not strong enough to help her zero in on him, unfortunately. Right now she could only tell that he was not in the immediate vicinity, but something else was. Something else that was not quite human.
A woman stepped out into the alley, cold eyes fixing on Buffy. For a moment she thought it might be one of Burke's commandos. She wore black combat suit and her body was in the stance of a trained fighter. But no, she had never seen this woman before and she was, by the looks of her, a good few years older than any member of SDO expect maybe Burke. She looked to be about Buffy's mom's age. That was the only similarity between the two women, though. The woman in front of her looked hard and menacing. Like a killer.
"Why am I not surprised you can sense me," the stranger said. "Like attracts like, does it not?"
"Like?" Buffy asked, confused.
"They didn't tell you about us, did they? Did they even mention that you were not the first, little girl?"
Buffy frowned, but then shook her head and glared at the stranger. "Look, I don't know what your problem is, but I've had a really bad day and there is this guy I have to beat within an inch of his life. So you better get out of my way."
She started stalking past the stranger, but the woman cut her off.
"I'm sorry, but I can't allow that."
"Sister, you just ..."
Before Buffy could finish her sentence the woman in front of her suddenly began to change. Her body hunched over, black fur flowed across the few visible patches of skin. Bones broke and rearranged themselves, fingers lengthened into claws, fangs grew out of her mouth. Only a second or so later Buffy found herself facing a werewolf. A werewolf still standing upright and still wearing a black combat suit.
"Okay, this is new."
Moments later she was fighting for her life as the wolf woman attacked her, claws lashing out so fast that even Buffy's accelerated reflexes had trouble keeping up. The wolf was not fighting like an animal, she quickly realized, but like a trained combatant. Whenever Oz had turned into the wolf he had been pure animal, nothing of the human remaining. Things seemed to be different here.
"We won't allow it," the wolf growled as she tried to eviscerate Buffy with her claws. "Project Inferno is dead and it stays dead."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Buffy ducked a claw swipe and drove her attacker back with a roundhouse kick that would have taken the head off a normal human. The wolf just took a step back.
"They made you strong," she growled. "I'm sorry about this, but if you were in your right mind you'd thank me for it."
"The only one not in her right mind here is you!"
Again the stranger attacked and again Buffy fended her off, though barely. Not only did she seem to have a degree of control over her werewolf form than both Oz and Veruca could only dream of, she was a vicious fighter and fought with a ferocity that, on any other night, Buffy would have found hard to match.
Not tonight, though. Not with Angel in the hospital, hanging onto life by a thread. Not with Jackson King still out there, the blood of her lover still on his hands.
Three minutes into the fight the attacker broke off, cradling a broken arm to her chest and bleeding from a cut above the eye. Buffy was winded as well, but had managed to avoid any hard contact. No scratches from those claws, either. She remembered Giles lecture about avoiding infection by werewolves very well.
"Tell your masters this isn't over," the woman growled as she quickly retreated. "They will suffer the same fate Elling did!" Then she was gone.
Buffy stared after her for a moment, breathing hard and trying to figure out what had just happened. The woman had talked as if Buffy was some kind of lackey. Either this was the weirdest case of mistaken identity she had ever seen or that lady was seriously out of her mind.
Whatever the case, Buffy did not particularly care right now. She could tell Giles about this when she got back. Right now she had a job to finish. King was still out there and she intended to find him.
"I wonder who Elling is," Buffy muttered as she continued her search.
TO BE CONTINUED
#
Buffy, flanked by Willow, Xander, and Giles, stormed into the waiting area of Sunnydale General, her heart beating a thousand times a minute. Wide eyes searched the room, looking for anyone or anything that might put the horror scenarios in her head to rest. The phone call had been brief, she did not know the whole situation yet. Maybe it was not as bad as it sounded. Maybe ...
She spotted Riley standing near the nurse station and darted toward him.
"Riley," she yelled, catching his attention. The moment he turned toward her she almost stopped dead in her tracks.
Riley's face was a mess of bruises, a large bandage covering half his forehead. One eye was completely swollen shut and the other was bloodshot, seeming to take too long to focus on her. Riley leaned heavily on the desk, his body language screaming of pain and discomfort. She could see more bandages around his chest through his half-buttoned shirt.
"What happened?" she demanded.
"King attacked us," Riley managed to tell her, his speech sounding slurred. "Broad daylight, right in the middle of the street. Which was our luck, I guess. Apparently he ran off when some pedestrians came along. At least that it was they told me. I was out cold by that time."
"Where ... where is Angel, Riley?"
He looked down, wringing his hands.
"He ... he was the one King was after, Buffy. The bastard took just enough time to ... to make sure I didn't interfere. I got off easy, all things considered. Angel, though ..."
"Tell me," Buffy pleaded, the look on her face breaking Riley's heart.
"I don't really know," he finally admitted. "He's still in the emergency room. Has been for over two hours now. They ... they won't tell me anything."
Buffy immediately turned toward the nurse behind the desk.
"I ... I need to know about a patient. His name is Angel, Angel O'Connor. How is he?"
Angel's legal identity was only about a year old, established with some assistance from Willow. O'Connor had been his real name back when he had been alive in 18th century Ireland. According to current public records, though, he was a man of 26, born in New York, no living family.
"Are you a relative?" the nurse asked.
"I'm his wife," Buffy answered without hesitation.
The nurse looked through her files for a moment. "I'm afraid they are still busy with your husband, Mrs. O'Connor. I can't tell you anything at the moment. Sorry."
"They've been at it for two hours!" Desperation crept into her voice. "There must be something, please! I need to know that he's all right!"
The nurse was about to repeat her earlier statement, but the lost look on the young woman's face swayed her.
"I'll see what I can find out," she told her. "I'll be back in a minute."
It was the longest minute of Buffy's life and she did not even hear the encouraging words her friends said to her, telling her that Angel was tough and had survived worse. The only thing she could think of was the fact that he had been back in her life only so short a time. It was not fair that this had happened. Did they not deserve a break just once? A little happiness after everything they had gone through?
"King must have figured out that Angel and Buffy are a couple," Giles mused. "Maybe he hoped that getting rid of Angel would ... help things along."
Buffy's head snapped toward the Watcher, the look of fury in her eyes making him take a step back.
"If something has happened to Angel then King is a dead man, Giles!"
The absolute honesty in her voice sent a chill down everyone's spine.
"He is human, Buffy," Giles reminded her, "and not in control of his actions."
"I don't care! If Angel ..."
The nurse came back out in the company of a tired-looking doctor and Buffy was upon them in a heartbeat.
"What is it? How is he? Will he be okay?"
"We have just moved him into intensive care," the doctor told her with a sad look on his face. "He ... it's a small miracle that he is still alive, Mrs. O'Connor. Your husband is a very strong man."
"Will he pull through?" Giles asked from behind Buffy, his hand on her shoulder doing nothing to calm her down.
"It's too soon to tell," the doctor admitted. "He has taken some spinal damage and we are not certain how severe a concussion he has sustained. It ... it all depends on him now. If he wakes up within the next few days there is a good chance he will survive. The longer he stays unconscious, though ..."
Buffy closed her eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks as her small body trembled with sorrow and anger.
"Have you spoken to the police yet?" the doctor asked. "They should be out looking for whoever did this to him. I've never seen a human being so methodically beaten up."
"Oh, you will," Buffy whispered, clenching her fists.
"Thank you, doctor," Giles quickly said, pulling Buffy aside. "Please keep us informed on Angel's condition."
Buffy did not resist being moved and Giles maneuvered them towards a deserted corner of the waiting room.
"I will kill him, Giles," she whispered.
"Buffy, even leaving the issue of him being human aside, it's a very bad idea for you to go looking for him. Especially now."
"He's right, Buffy," Willow agreed. "You barely managed to pull away from him last time. There is no telling ..."
"Oh, I won't pull away this time," Buffy interrupted her and started moving toward the exit without another word.
"Buffy, you really shouldn't ...," Riley began, trying to hold her back. A moment later he found himself shoved into the wall so hard his bandaged ribs cried out in protest, the Slayer storming past him without another word.
Moments later she was gone.
"This is not good," Xander said.
"Riley, I believe you should call your colleagues," Giles told the younger man. "It is imperative that we find King before Buffy does."
Riley nodded. Never before had he seen the Slayer like this, so full of anger and rage. He really did not want to get in her way on this. If she found King first ...
#
Her first night in Sunnydale had been rather uneventful, something Julia was thankful for. Simply being here was enough to bring back all sorts of memories she would have preferred to forget. It was bad enough in the light of day, but during the night ...
This second night she finally found a trace. Daniel's contacts had been unable to say where in Sunnydale this 'Special Domestic Operations' unit was holed up, but she was bound to run into one of their units if she kept to those places she remembered the demons hanging out in. Cemeteries, the warehouse district, and the area around the town's only nightclub. Julia did not remember it being called the Bronze, but after twenty years she rather expected a name change or two.
Everything looked much too similar as it was; she was thankful for every little difference.
The sounds of a struggle drew her in, her nose picking up the characteristic stench of vampires. They smelled of old blood and death, cold and metallic. Julia had not been fooled by a vampire's human face since her change, she could always tell. Maybe this was just some vampires besetting a human victim or two. If so, she could use the exercise. If not ...
Julia had barely turned the corner, looking into an alley between two warehouses, when she realized that she had found what she had been looking for. There were vampires, all right, but they were in a situation vampires seldom found themselves in.
There were four of them and they were tossed around by a girl half their size.
"I'm really in a bad mood," the girl growled at her stunned opponents. "But hey, if one of you can maybe tell me where I can find this guy I'm looking for, you'll die quickly."
The vampires just snarled at her and attacked again, no more successful then the first time around. Julia watched with dread as the girl destroyed two of them almost casually, demonstrating a strength and speed so that was far beyond human. Just to make certain Julia took in her scent. Human, but with something else mixed in. Something that was definitely more than human. It erased whatever doubts she might have had left.
Taking her cell phone from her pocket Julia quickly sent an SMS to Daniel. Just one word.
Confirmed.
#
Buffy had never been so angry in her entire life and the unfortunate vampires she had come across in her search for Jackson King were paying the price for it. She did not really think that any of them might know where he was. She just took her fury out on them.
It did not mean she missed the movement at the end of the alley.
"You might as well come out," she yelled as she finished the last vampire. "I know you're there."
It was not King, that much she could tell even without turning around. Now that she knew what she was looking for she could tell when he was close. The feeling was not strong enough to help her zero in on him, unfortunately. Right now she could only tell that he was not in the immediate vicinity, but something else was. Something else that was not quite human.
A woman stepped out into the alley, cold eyes fixing on Buffy. For a moment she thought it might be one of Burke's commandos. She wore black combat suit and her body was in the stance of a trained fighter. But no, she had never seen this woman before and she was, by the looks of her, a good few years older than any member of SDO expect maybe Burke. She looked to be about Buffy's mom's age. That was the only similarity between the two women, though. The woman in front of her looked hard and menacing. Like a killer.
"Why am I not surprised you can sense me," the stranger said. "Like attracts like, does it not?"
"Like?" Buffy asked, confused.
"They didn't tell you about us, did they? Did they even mention that you were not the first, little girl?"
Buffy frowned, but then shook her head and glared at the stranger. "Look, I don't know what your problem is, but I've had a really bad day and there is this guy I have to beat within an inch of his life. So you better get out of my way."
She started stalking past the stranger, but the woman cut her off.
"I'm sorry, but I can't allow that."
"Sister, you just ..."
Before Buffy could finish her sentence the woman in front of her suddenly began to change. Her body hunched over, black fur flowed across the few visible patches of skin. Bones broke and rearranged themselves, fingers lengthened into claws, fangs grew out of her mouth. Only a second or so later Buffy found herself facing a werewolf. A werewolf still standing upright and still wearing a black combat suit.
"Okay, this is new."
Moments later she was fighting for her life as the wolf woman attacked her, claws lashing out so fast that even Buffy's accelerated reflexes had trouble keeping up. The wolf was not fighting like an animal, she quickly realized, but like a trained combatant. Whenever Oz had turned into the wolf he had been pure animal, nothing of the human remaining. Things seemed to be different here.
"We won't allow it," the wolf growled as she tried to eviscerate Buffy with her claws. "Project Inferno is dead and it stays dead."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Buffy ducked a claw swipe and drove her attacker back with a roundhouse kick that would have taken the head off a normal human. The wolf just took a step back.
"They made you strong," she growled. "I'm sorry about this, but if you were in your right mind you'd thank me for it."
"The only one not in her right mind here is you!"
Again the stranger attacked and again Buffy fended her off, though barely. Not only did she seem to have a degree of control over her werewolf form than both Oz and Veruca could only dream of, she was a vicious fighter and fought with a ferocity that, on any other night, Buffy would have found hard to match.
Not tonight, though. Not with Angel in the hospital, hanging onto life by a thread. Not with Jackson King still out there, the blood of her lover still on his hands.
Three minutes into the fight the attacker broke off, cradling a broken arm to her chest and bleeding from a cut above the eye. Buffy was winded as well, but had managed to avoid any hard contact. No scratches from those claws, either. She remembered Giles lecture about avoiding infection by werewolves very well.
"Tell your masters this isn't over," the woman growled as she quickly retreated. "They will suffer the same fate Elling did!" Then she was gone.
Buffy stared after her for a moment, breathing hard and trying to figure out what had just happened. The woman had talked as if Buffy was some kind of lackey. Either this was the weirdest case of mistaken identity she had ever seen or that lady was seriously out of her mind.
Whatever the case, Buffy did not particularly care right now. She could tell Giles about this when she got back. Right now she had a job to finish. King was still out there and she intended to find him.
"I wonder who Elling is," Buffy muttered as she continued her search.
TO BE CONTINUED