Outside The Refuge
16.36.pm.
Getting Andrea Peters and Alicia Saunders.
(Angel gets fed up with The Order Of Taraka, and pulls an Angelus)
Andrea and Alicia were stumbling towards a shelter. Both of them were more tired than they had thought it possible. Most of the day they had been running for their lives. Always followed by a dark clad man. Finally they had managed to loose him. But now it was close to sundown, and then the danger would increase tenfold.
The attack on the Council's Tower had been terrible. Both had lost family members and close friends. And the days after, had been Hell. Sleepless and with little food, they had now reached a state of permanent fatigue and paranoia. They sat down by a table and silently ate the soup they were offered. They didn't notice the suspicious looks they got because of their torn, but obviously expensive clothes. And they didn't see the dark clad man before he sat down by their table.
Alicia scraped the last of the soup onto her spoon, and swallowed with a sigh of contempt. Then she noticed something dark in the corner of her eyes, and raised her head. She found herself looking at the most handsome man she had ever seen. He was clad in dark earthly colours and a black leather coat. Except for the coat, it was as if he came straight out of a fashion magazine.
That was, if he didn't have that aura of power and mysticism over him. But when he smiled to her, his whole appearance changed to that of a boyish charm.
"Finally," he said. "Finally I reached up with you two." He flashed a friendly smile to Andrea who was about to run away. "Andrea Peters and Alicia Saunders, I have been chasing you for hours now.
"No, no! Don't be afraid. Let me introduce myself. My name is Angel O`Rourke, and I have been sent by Christopher Giles, to get you into safety. Christopher couldn't come himself because he is badly injured. But he made sure you got the protection you need. My wife is the current Slayer, and I have the powers of a Master Vampire, which I used to be. But I am absolutely no threat to you. As I said, I am not a vampire anymore.
"Now please come with me. We need to get out of here as a member of the Order of Taraka is approaching."
The two women stood there, and didn't really know what to do. Could they trust this man? Or was it a trap? Yeah. It had to be a trap. Almost synchronised they turned around to run. Only to face a woman with guns pointed at them.
Suddenly, the whole shelter was a swirl of running and screaming people. Except Andrea and Alicia. They had reached their limit. With no strength left to fight, they just stood there, waiting for their death.
"Damit!" Angel growled. "I said we had to get out of here!"
Quick as a mongoose he grabbed them and sent them flying through the door and out on the pavement. Then vamped out, and with one single punch sent the Tarakan crashing into the wall.
"When are you guys gonna learn not to mess with me or those that are under my protection?"
He grabbed the assassin's hands and with a brutal twist shattered her wrists. The guns went flying across the room, as he almost broke her neck with a vicious forehead.
"I'm getting tired of fighting you guys. Ever since you tried to recruit me some hundred and fifty years ago, I have been wiping the floor with you guys. But you never learn, do you?"
He kneed her hard between the legs and punched her right in Solar Plexus. As she bent forward, desperately gasping for air, he lifted her by her long red hair and stared into her now frightened eyes.
"Now take this message to Taraka. If you ever try to meddle in my affairs again, I will gather every living, souled vampire and halfling in the world. And I will wipe out the whole Order."
With one last punch to her stomach, he turned around and walked out. There he found The Watchers struggling to free themselves from Cordelias grip. "Well, mission accomplished," he said. "Lets get back to Christopher."
"What took you so long in there," she said, as she pushed the two into the car.
"Oh. Nothing special," his smile was down right evil."I just delivered a message to The Order Of Taraka about not getting in my way again. They have messed with me and my friends one time too many."
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6. July. 2014.The city of Swansea.Blarney Park
19.02.pm.
A little rusty on the surface.
(But the engine is still running smoothly.)
The three of them walked the park with arms on each other's shoulders. The dusk fell silently over the park. To a bystander it looked like the man with raven black hair, the red-haired woman and the Latino beauty were having a friendly walk in the park.
The truth was entirely different. Arthur and Rose were practically carrying Constanza towards a tool shed.
"How is it," he asked Rose. "Are they still searching for us, or have we finally shaken them off?"
"No," Constansa forced out between lips so tightly knitted that they were white. "They are still after us. Those two are definitely not ordinary criminals. They are after us for a definite reason."
Antonov opened and sprayed something into the room. Instantly they were surrounded by the most intense smell of garlic. Then they walked in and closed the door behind them.
Constanza Gonzales gave up and sank down on an empty crate. Low whimpers of pain escaped through her lips.
Rose searched and found a light switch. Then she took off her friend's leather jacket and lifted up her blood-soaked shirt. She quickly took of the bandage and could see what she had been afraid of. The wound had been infected. She did what little she could and dressed the wound again.
"Stanza!! Please listen to me. You should be in a hospital. A belly wound like that can bee lethal."
"No," she wheezed behind closed teeth, and looked at them with feverish eyes. "The hospitals are the first place they would look. I have already told you that. I know I am dying, so just leave me. Please leave me, and save yourselves."
"The hell I am," Arthur said. "We are not leaving you behind. Remember the prophecy. The Council must not die. And we are stronger together. Even if you can't fight, your psychic abilities have helped us avoid enemies every night since Enya attacked. We owe you our lives!" He saw that Rose was finished with the bandages. "So. Then lets get out of here."
In the short time they had been inside, the darkness had engulfed the park. And they realised they had made a great mistake. To be in a park at night was to ask for trouble. They had just gotten a few meters away from the shed, when Stanza shouted out in fear, 'Vampires!!' Then fainted."]
Within seconds they were surrounded by at least five vampires. Arthur and Rose went into a fighting stance with Constanza protected between them. Knowing that they didn't have an snowball's chance in hell to survive, at least they wouldn't give their lives easy. The vampires were about to attack them, when suddenly a man and a woman came to their assistance.
The woman seemed to be in her fifties and the man to be in his sixties. But God, how they could fight! The woman mastered a sort of martial art they never had seen before. She was never where her opponents thought her to be, constantly and fluidly moving, while she dealt out slashes with a short sword, like they were candy.
But the man, he was even better. He fought with a strength and speed that was inhuman for a man his age. And his eyes were those of a merciless killer. He was fighting with classical slayer style, with a little streetfighting. He lashed behind him with a wooden stake and was sprayed with dust as the vampire trying to ambush him disintegrated. Without turning to see if there were more, he simply somersaulted over the head of a vampire, turned around and staked him from behind.
Suddenly the woman yelped in pain as the vampire she was fighting backhanded her. Before she could get to her feet, he was over her.
"Nice fight, granny," he smirked as he lowered his fangs to her neck. "But now it's my turn."
"Nope, I don't think so," she said and poked out his eyes with her long nails. Then she kneed him of all her might in the groin, before she twisted around so that she was on top of him. "Merry Christmas, jingle bell," she said as she staked him through the heart.
"Oh shit!" she mumbled. "That has to be the worst pun in the history of slaying. Buffy made it sound so easy." She turned to Arthur who was still fighting his first vampire.
"Well, I'll make it simple this time. From dust you came, and to dust you go," she said as she staked him. The cloud of dust became double as Rose finally managed to stake her vampire.
"Come with us if you want to live. Lets get out of here as fast as hell." The man said, lifted Constanza Gonzales up and led them to a waiting limo. When they all sat in the back of the limo, the couple collapsed, heads between legs, exhausted, breathing borderline hyperventilation. Ten minutes passed before they sat up. And Arthur and Rose noticed that the man seemed to have undergone a complete personality change. Gone were the eyes of a killer. Instead he seemed incredibly British and somewhat bookish.
"You'll have to excuse us for not presenting ourselves. My name is Rupert Giles, and this is my wife Joyce. We were sent by my brother Christopher, to get you to safety."
"Yeah," Joyce said, "but all day we have done nothing but chase shadows. Every time we thought we had you, you somehow escaped. How on earth did you do that?"
"I'm psychic," it came from Constanza that just had regained consciousness. "I could sense you. And we were afraid you were working for Enya."
"No, we are not. But you should know that we have gotten an unsuspected ally in the fight against Enya. The Invulnerable has resurfaced. And believe it or not, she is on our side when it comes to saving the world. In that fact she is like her Sire, William the Bloody. He didn't want the end of the world, either. She saved the life of The Councils leader. And we have been working with her since yesterday."
"And you are still alive ?" a stunned Antonov asked. "That doesn't sound like The Invulnerable, are you sure it is her?"
"Yes we are," Joyce stated sadly. "For the first, I am the mother of Buffy Summers. And second, Rupert here was her Watcher. So yes, it is The Invulnerable. But now, let me see that wound of yours," she said and made Constanza lay down in one of the seats. From under the seat she took out a bag of medical equipment. As they were on the way to Cardiff, she tended to the wound in such a professional manner that Giles watched in stunned appreciation.
"What?" she said when she noticed his surprise. I was training to be a nurse before I got pregnant with Buffy."
"You never said, Joyce."
"No, I guess I haven't thought about it for years. But it sure comes in handy."
She knocked on the window to the drivers seat. "What can I help you with Mrs Giles," the driver asked.
"We have an medical emergency here. Would you please step on it? We need to get to Mr Giles' mansion as fast as possible."
"Consider it done, Mrs Giles," the driver said and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
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7. July. 2014.New YorkThe Residence of Willow and Daniel Osbourne
08.43.am.
Mix together Wesley, a Ford Mustang and Area 51.
(And you get a high-speed chase.)
Xander woke up to the sound of somebody pacing the floor. He opened his eyes and saw Buffy mechanically pacing while curling her arms around herself. Clear human tears were running down her cheeks.
Her head snapped up as she heard him. And what he saw in her eyes was the outmost terror and fear. And in a flash, he realised why she had pretended to still be The Invulnerable. She was afraid. Afraid that if she told them she was Buffy again, they would still hate her for what her demon had done. Not surprising, after how he had treated Angel and now Buffy, he realised with a pang of guilt.
And as always she was afraid to get close to them, because she truly believed that she brought danger to them. She was protecting them against herself, afraid of losing them completely.
"Are you still fighting your demon," he asked.
She stopped pacing and stared at him. She answered with a counter question. "Does this mean that you believe me when I say I am Buffy, and not some soulless killingmachine.?"
He nodded, and stroked a strand of hair away from her face. She jerked away, as if it hurt. And for a split second her eyes turned bright yellow. She took in a deep breath.
"No," she said then. "I am in full control. I'm using its powers as I see fit. Except for two things. If I feel strong pain or experience very strong emotions, my demon resurfaces. Then I have to fight it. But it doesn't happen very often, and it's usually quite easy to gain control again.
In seventeen years I have only lost it once, and that was when Enya killed Marco. Then I went completely nuts for a week. Practically hunting down every single vampire I could find, and giving it a very painful death. But even then, there must have been some kind of control, cause I didn't kill anything living, except for a Moira Demon. I just acted upon a rage that is similar to nothing I have ever experienced -- except maybe for the rage I felt when I fought Faith after she had poisoned Angel."
"And now when I thought they had killed you, I was about to go crazy. Do you remember what I used to call you? I called you my bestest Xander-shaped friend. And throughout all these years, you remained that. At least to me you were, regardless of your feelings towards me. Never in my life have I felt such a relief as when you regained consciousness."
Xander sensed a felling of warm and quiet joy well up in him. He got his friend back. He felt like hugging her and never let got. Seventeen years of loss and fear was finally over. Buffy was back.
For a moment a suspicious voice in his head told him not to trust her. But were quickly silenced, when Buffy dried her tears and calmed herself down.
"Well, we better get going with the rest of our mission. Enya doesn't wait for us. And neither does The Order of Taraka." She smiled at him, and her eyes had a glimmer of enthusiastic determination he hadn't seen since her Slayer days.
And then only when she was in the best of moods, and felt invincible, he realised that not only was Buffy back, the Slayer was also back.
Fifteen minutes later, after checking up on the Watchers, they walked towards her car.
"Well Xander, do you want to drive," she asked?
"You bet I would," he said and jumped into the Lamborghini with a smile so boyish that Buffy for a moment were brought back to when they all were teenagers.
"Nice to se you still have some of the boy in you Xander. It's kind of cute. Now. Lets see where Lightfoot, Sorenson and bloody Price is."
She took up the tracker. "Well, finally some good news. They are together. And they are actually driving just ahead of us. Lets see if we can pinpoint which car they are in." He pressed the accelerator to the floor, and manoeuvred between the other drivers. Five minutes later, they were driving right behind a black Ford Mustang.
"Nice driving Xander," she said. "Now. Show me that you have earned your reputation for being the best in high speed chases." With that she opened the glove compartment took out the bluelights and placed it on the roof.
7. July. 2014.New YorkBlack Ford Mustang
10.04.am.
Full Throttle
(And I certainly don't mean the pc game.)
Wesley Wyndham Price was driving for the city limits in a stolen Ford Mustang. For the first time in his life he had seriously broken the law. He felt bad for it but they had no choice. It was too dangerous to buy a car out in the open. And they needed transportation.
For the last five days they had been running from vampires and The Order Of Taraka. And now they were all totally exhausted. As he sat behind the wheel he actually had to bite his inner cheeks in order not to fall asleep.
His only thought was to get them out of New York and in the direction of Roswell, and the extremely well guarded military station called Area 51. He hoped that there they could be safe enough to regain their strength and spirits. Twenty years ago, he had sworn the Watcher oath: Never to tell somebody outside the Watcher society about vampires and demons. But now he was desperate. And who would be better to ask for help than people that were used to dealing with aliens.
He looked aside to the passenger seat. At the age of sixteen she was the youngest member ever of the Council. Indra lay back in the seat. Eyes closed, in what he knew was a trance. She was so beautiful that he felt a rush of fatherly pride. Not only was she beautiful. But she was also intelligent and gifted in the art of a shaman, which she was training to be. She had taken her mothers last name in honour of the last of a long line of female Indian Shamans.
A tinge of sorrow went through him as he thought of her mother. Aya had truly been his soulmate. And when she died, he for the longest time had stopped living; merely existing. She died giving birth to Indra, and for the three first years he had hated the child for that. Then he met Kristin, and slowly he had come back to the land of the living.
Sweet loving, and unbelievable sexy Kristin, he wondered how she was now. Luckily, she had been away on an archaeology seminar when Enya attacked. He thought sixteen years back in time. When Aya died he shut of all emotions, except for his hatred towards the innocent child. But Kristin had changed that. He had fought it at first. He never had thought that it was possible to have two soulmates. But still he soon found himself loving Kristin just as much as he loved Aya. And that love had made him capable of loving his daughter.
And over the last days they had grown together as father and daughter, in a way they never had before. Together with Katharina Sorenson they found that they were a magnificent team. Wesley had a vast knowledge of demons and vampires. After the ordeal with The Invulnerable, he had sworn never to feel helpless again. And over the years he had become a very skilled warrior.
Indra had her mother's ability to go into a trance and sense where the vampires and other threats were. And she was a more than capable fighter.
Katharina had black belts in Judo, Karate and Jiju Jitsu. And she was an experienced street fighter. She knew how to melt into a crowd and disappear in a city. More than once, they had narrowly escaped traps because of her skills in living on the streets; skills she had achieved as a homeless teenager, before she by accident came to see a slayer in action, and the Watcher had taken care of her. This was ten years ago, but she still had that fine-tuned radar that was so common amongst people that were constantly on the run. Wesley looked in the back mirror. She looked so tired. Blood was seeping through a makeshift bandage on her left shoulder, made necessary by an encounter with The Order Of Taraka.
Wesley turned back to his daughter. "Do you sense something," he asked as he gently stroked her hair.
"No." Her voice was so low he almost didn't hear it. "No, I don't sense any hostile activity." Suddenly she bolted upright and her eyes went wide open, as she clutched her temples.
"What is it, Indra! What is it!!" Katharinas voice sounded almost panic stricken from the backseat.
"Oh God. I can feel a power signature from the Lamborghini behind us. Oh dear. It's the most powerful signature I've ever sensed."
"Enya," Wesley growled and pressed the accelerator.
"No Wesley. It's not her. This signature is at least as powerful, but it has a stability that Enya lacks. Who ever it is, we are dealing with someone that may be even stronger than Enya, and is far more controlled."
He continued to speed up, despite the fact that he had no chance of getting away from a Lamborghini with this old Ford. He clenched his teeth and levelled the accelerator to the floor. Rapidly weaving in and out between the other cars. He could feel his heart turn to ice as he with a start realised who was in the other car. The Invulnerable was back.
Vaguely he noticed the blue lights on the roof of the sportscar. And shortly after it drove up to the side of the Mustang. With a start he recognised the driver. Although he had long and blonde hair, there was no doubt: it was Alexander Lavelle Harris, Motioning for him to pull over to the side of the road. Wesley tried to escape for a little while longer. But then he was actually forced to the side of the road.
Wesley waited 'til Xander opened the door, before he pressed the accelerator to the floor, turned the car around with screaming tires, and drove for their life, but to no use. It took Xander less than two minutes to force them to stop again. And this time he was out of the door before Wesley even had killed the engine. With a swift movement he opened the door on Wesley's side and snatched the keys.
"Well, Wesley. Finally we found you and your fellow Watchers." And as he spoke, the door on the passenger side of the Lamborghini opened and A blonde woman clad in black leather from top to toe, came over. And before Wesley knew it, The Invulnerable had forced Xander aside, and pulled him out on the asphalt.
Wesley looked into hazel eyes that seemed pitch black from rage. A second later he lay flat on the shoulder of the road, waiting for the deathstroke. When it didn't come he opened his eyes and looked around. The Invulnerable was pacing back and forth over by the Lamborghini.
"What was that about," he asked Xander?
"That was probably payback for you sending her to her certain death seventeen years ago. When you ordered her to check out that warehouse, you sent all of us straight into the hands of Spike and his men. And even for the best slayer in history, it became too much, fighting off fifty vampires. If you had done your homework, you would have known that it was an ambush."
"So the reason she punched you, is that you indirectly are the one that turned her. You see. Buffy is back. And this time it is to stay. But quite frankly, we would like nothing more than to see you rotting in hell for what you did to her. However, we have been sent by Christopher Giles to get you into safety. So move over and let me drive. We are going back to Britain."
Without a word Wesley sat down in the backseat next to Katharina, and prayed for their lives.
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7. July.2014. Christopher Giles mansion.Willow and Oz's room.
1.30am.
Moonshine in a black pond.
(Never buy circuits made in Taiwan)
Willow stretched her body as she woke up, and whimpered in pain. Her neck ached after all too many hours by the computer. It turned out that their communication system had partly broken down. The tracker worked. But their secure cellphones had for some reason broken down. She and Oz had been working on it the whole day, until 12.30am.
She checked the clock and found it to be only 1.30am. What could have woke her up in the middle of the night. She lay there and wondered. Then she felt it again. Her witchtalent went through her body like a strong omen. Someone was coming. Quickly she got out of bed and got dressed.
After listening to her witchtalent again, she decided to let Oz sleep. She could sense no danger, so there was no need for both of them to get their sleep disrupted. She watched him as he, still asleep, moved over to her side of the bed. Her heart beat faster. He was so breathtakingly handsome. She felt tempted to snuggle in next to him and slowly wake him. Making love to him until they both fell asleep again. But her witchtalent wouldn't let her be.
On bare feet, she walked downstairs and out in the garden. She sat down by a small pond. The water seemed pitch-black, with a weak screen of silver from the moon. And for a moment she felt the wolf writher within her. She did a magic gesture. Every movement in the water disappeared. And the silverscreen densed until the pond looked like a magically glittering mirror. Softly she started to chant.
Water of secrets, essence of life.
Show me the hidden, show me the truth
Fire of clarity, essence of life
Burn the weils of distance, show me the truth
As the last words left her lips, flames seemed to run over the surface, and then an image appeared. Slowly it increased in clarity, until she could see it was a black limo. The picture shifted. Suddenly she looked inside the car. She saw Joyce and Rupert, together with three Watchers. Both of them seemed exhausted, like after a hard fight. Joyce treated a nasty belly wound on one of the Watchers. And Willow heard a broken piece of dialogue, Joyce asking the driver to step on it. Then a shiver went through the image, and the water was again pitch black.
Willow stood up and walked back to the house, where she set up the emergency equipment in a small room. She was just finishing when she heard the limo drive up in front of the house.
The next hour she and Joyce spent doing everything they could for Constanza Gonzales. With the combined resources of modern medicine and magic, they managed to stop the beginning blood poisoning and Gangria that had attacked the Watcher. Finally she fell into a peaceful and healing sleep. Then the two women took care of the others. It showed that both Arthur and Rose had injuries from that dreadful day when Enya attacked. When finished Rupert and Joyce barely managed to get upstairs to their room before they collapsed from exhaustion.
After showing the Watchers to their rooms, Willow silently returned to her own room. Exausted she snuggled tightly into Oz, and laid her arm around him. She kissed him gently on the cheek.
"What's the matter honey," he murmured as he halfway woke.
"Nothing, beloved. Just hold me," she said. He did, and she felt secure and almost peaceful for the first time since the concert. She hugged him, and together they drifted off into sleep again.
It was 11:00am before Willow again felt the omen. As with last time, it didn't take long before Angel and Cordelia arrived. With their three Watchers, more than half of the Council was now present.
Now they were only waiting for Xander and The Invulnerable. And as the time slowly creeped on its way, Willow found herself more and more afraid. What could have happened to Xander? Her imagination came up with increasingly terrible images of what could have happened. And one that sort of got stuck, was that he had been turned by The invulnerable.
She and Oz were back in the computer room. Both of them were working like madmen in order to fix the cellphones, as well as to try to get their mind off what could have happened to Xander. Finally they found that the fault was on the circuits inside the transmitter. Oz began working on that while Willow saw to it that they kept the control over the NASA satellite. This became more and more difficult as NASA put more and more effort in getting the satellite back. She was in the middle of a hacker war when Oz came with one of his rare outbursts, meaning he was either extremely happy or unhappy about something.
"YES!!" "Finally I got it right. Now, here is a cellphone. I'll take over for you, while you call Xander." Willow took the phone and punched in the numbers with shaky fingers.