The Game by SLynn

Chapter 3: The Discovery

Buffy had quickly located the third card at the museum. This time locating and retrieving the card were two different things. It seems that the third card, the Emperor, Roman numeral IV, was actually wedged under a marble bust of Julius Caesar. Still she did manage to get it, and for that Giles was relieved. She had phoned in the information, but did not need assistance. The card, marked RUPERT with the letter H had written on it, "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funerals." Obviously the cemetery. She was already headed that way when she called them.

It was just as well, Giles had his hands full with what he few remaining contacts on council could provide him on Constance. At first he had been startled by the sheer volume of it. While most demons, vampires, or other such creatures were generally noted in the archive, he could not think of even one that was so well documented. Even Angelus' record had only been four, maybe five pages, and one of those had been contributed by Giles. There were at least twenty pages so far, and more printing. But to have so much information and Giles to never even have heard her name before today didn't seem right.

Scanning the pages what first caught him as strange was the fact that nothing was dated before 1688. If this Constance was an immortal records could arguably go back to much, much earlier times. The council had been around since the 1200's.

'Why does it all start here?' he thought to himself.

"Anything?" Willow asked, startling him a bit.

"No, it doesn't really read like an archive index typically does. It seems more, familiar."

Willow picked up a page or two and began reading.

"Wouldn't hurt if you'd change the toner in your fax machine."

He ignored her and kept reading.

"Giles," Willow interrupted again, her face lined with thought.

He looked up briefly to ask her what she'd found.

"This reads like a watcher's journal."

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2:03pm. This was taking longer then Buffy had thought. She'd been up and down the cemetery seemingly a hundred times and still nothing. She was sure this is where it should be. Giles had called twenty minutes ago and told her once she found it she needed to get back, regardless. She had been reluctant to agree, sunrise was still a long way off, but who knew how many cards had been planted for this little "scavenger hunt". Only Giles' determination that she should return made her agree to. The whole thing was so frustrating, she felt helpless. The thought of what Xander might be going through was almost too much to take. The only thing keeping her going at this point was the prospect of getting even. She would make her pay.

Going back over the ground she'd covered not ten minutes ago, something finally caught her eye. There, stuck in amongst some flowers, was a card. She wasn't sure if it had always been there, but she was so honestly relieved to see it that she didn't much care. As she got closer, she paused, catching the name on tombstone. It was Jesse's grave.

Buffy picked up the card. For a moment, it was all she could see. It was the card of Death and it was marked for XANDER.

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Buffy had made it back in record time. Rushing in, she made her way back to where her friends were pouring over a table full of pages in complete silence. Buffy watched as her friends sat transfixed; as one of them would finish a page they would hand it round the table to the next eager reader.

"Guys?"

Only Giles looked up, briefly. Anya actually shushed her.

"In case you didn't know, we're kind of in a time crunch. I found the last card, but no one's really listening to me…" Buffy said, gradually trailing off, seeing there wasn't really a point to continuing.

"Sorry," Giles said, and after a moment, putting down the page, "sorry. It's just, we have more information on Constance then, well, then we'll ever know what to do with."

"I can see that."

"So, you found the card. What was it this time?"

"Here," Buffy said quietly, handing it over.

Giles said nothing, but she could tell he was disturbed.

"Can't wait to see mine," she said, trying to lighten the mood.

"Actually, in tarot cards this one isn't so bad, it usually means re-birth or change."

"What about the quote, because frankly I'm stumped."

Giles read it to himself. 'Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.'

"I'm not sure," he said after a pause.

"Anybody figure out the letters yet? The latest is marked with an L."

"No, we've all been absorbed in the archive, which is why I wanted you to come back."

"Okay, I'm here, what's the scoop?"

"I think you can destroy her."

"That's good, because after that whole 'immortal' lecture I got this morning, I wasn't so sure."

"That's just it, she isn't immortal."

"So she lied."

"Not exactly."

"Giles, please just spill. We don't really have time…"

"Okay, Constance is a slayer. Well, was a slayer, back in the 1600's."

"What?" Buffy said, not believing it.

"She was a slayer in puritan New England, right around the time of the witch trials. It seems that her and her watcher, a man named only as Samuel in the archive, had a, um, a closer then normal watcher-slayer relationship."

"I don't need the details," she smiled, amused at his embarrassment, "just skip to the important part."

"Thank you," he said, clearly relieved, "Well, from what we can tell, he was accused of witchcraft and hung at the gallows. Even when pressed to name her as an accomplice, he refused. She had been the real target of the accusations. Enraged, she summoned the immortal Zothos to possess and invoke into her his powers."

"Wait, I thought a Zothos was a type of immortal?"

"No, we've all been mistaken in that. Zothos is actually the name of an immortal. He is a deity, apparently the deity of wrath, or something like that. No one is exactly sure how she managed to summon him, just that once it was done it was apparently irreversible."

Giles paused a minute. By now all eyes were on him, listening as he told the story most of them had already read.

"The first thing she did was to destroy the entire village she'd lived in, and she really seemed to have taken her time doing it too. The archive is full of second-hand accounts of the destruction she left. There were just over three hundred people and not one survived."

"After that, she just disappeared. Occasionally the council would get reports of massacres they could safely attribute to her in the then colonies, but they were sporadic at best."

"Okay this is what lost me," Anya interrupted, "she's a slayer, but if she just invoked his power it shouldn't have killed her. Shouldn't she still be the only slayer?"

"Good question," Buffy asked, turning back to Giles, "why am I here if she's an immortal slayer?"

"That confused the council then too," Giles said, getting excited as only he can over the details, "because communication between the Samuel and the council had been so slow, the first wind they had of anything being wrong was when a new slayer was called. They assumed, of course, that like most slayers, Constance had died rather young. It was only after the fact, when word of the village's destruction reached them, did they suspect otherwise. Constance personally delivered the news some fifty to sixty years later. As best as they could guess the invocation of Zothos did kill her."

"So she is sort of like a vampire," Willow added.

"Yes," Giles nodded, "accept impervious to harm."

"I thought you said we could destroy her?" Buffy asked, looking irritated.

"If we can find a way to separate Zothos from Constance, we can."

No one knew what to say next.

Finally Giles began again.

"Buffy, she's done this sort of thing before. She seems to have a rather large grudge against the council. Blames the whole for her watcher's death."

"What's she done?" she asked, her voice a steady, low, monotone.

"Much the same as she's doing now."

"And?"

"She's killed three slayers, seven watchers and at least twelve members of the council."

"Not this time."

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Xander woke where he had been left, sitting with his back up against the wall. Not immediately recalling where he was, he tried to stand. As soon as he moved white streaks, like lightning, filled his vision as pain, red hot, sailed up his arm. Regulating his breathing, mostly to keep from passing out, he tilted his head back and just stared at the ceiling, trying hard to regain his composure. Now he remembered.

Slowly the pain subsided. Realizing he wasn't going anywhere with a busted leg and an arm he wasn't even sure was still attached, Xander had nothing else to do but think. It was the first time he'd actually gotten a good look at the room he was being held in. And it was also the first time he hadn't been completely terrified in it. When he'd first woken up here, sometime after midnight last night, she had been standing over him.

She had seemed almost normal at first. She greeted him, told him he'd be her guest for at least the next day and that he should get comfortable. He still wasn't sure if she had just been trying to lull him into a false sense of security or if she had meant it at the time. Whatever it was, it didn't last. As she began to talk, and talk, and talk, incessantly about the game she had planned for Buffy, she grew agitated. And the more agitated she grew the more she began to take it out on Xander.

Xander didn't know why she'd be so bent on taking out Buffy, other then that she was obviously evil and evil things like to hurt slayers. But for Constance, it seemed personal. Like Buffy had wronged her some how and this was how she was getting her revenge. During one of her early rants on the subject, the one where she repeatedly broken, healed, and then re-broke his leg, she almost sounded jealous of Buffy.

Not that he could pay a whole lot of attention to what she was saying while he was having his leg broke. It might have fascinated him, how she could break and heal bones just by touching the skin, if it hadn't been his bones she was practicing on. He'd never seen or heard of anything like it.

'Don't really care to again either,' he thought, 'once I'm out of here…'

He couldn't finish. He didn't really believe that was going to happen this time. Xander had never seen anyone as strong as Constance. She said she was immortal and he believed her. This game of hers, she was using him for bait, making Buffy play. As much as he wished he could tell her not too, beg her not too, he knew Buffy well enough to know that she'd do anything for her friends. She'll play. Even for her stupid ones who always find themselves in situations like this. It made him want to smile and cry at the same time.

Closing his eyes, he shook his head slightly.

"I'm so sorry Buffy, I've killed us both."