SLAYER, SLEW, SLAIN
By Niels van Eekelen
TelltaleProd@Hotmail.com
www.TelltaleProductions.tk
That following morning--way to early, for my taste--I remember thinking that my expectation had been pretty damn accurate. Fortunately, there is no job or holy duty that prepares you better to go work on little sleep than slaying does. So sure, I was abit slower, a bit less inventive in how I beat on padding-strapped Maria, but there were plenty of days when I didn't feel like exerting myself over essentially nothing, so there wasn't even anything remarkable for Maria to notice had she been looking for it.
Maria, though, was as distracted as I was. Every few minutes, she would glance at the phone. It wasn't a smart thing to do in the middle of a training session.
I started thinking. Maybe, if Maria had things to do today, I could get away and scout out my old neighbourhood. It's a little silly, I guess. There was no way that I was going to go home--to my old house, that is- -but I just wanted to see if everything I remembered was still there. I mean, my mother had changed enough. Who knew what had happened to the rest of the neighbourhood. I even had an urge to go to the pond just ouside the city, where I'd sometimes gone to swim with other children before my family life had been screwed up too badly, and jump off the high rock. Once, after things had gone bad, I'd returned to that pond. Having had more experience with falling, the high rock had suddenly looked a lot riskier than it had when I was smaller. I'd jumped off it anyway, not really caring if I broke my neck. After I'd landed in the water, perfectly all right, the high just lost its excitement, and I hadn't returned to the pond since.
Unfortunately, Maria had other plans.
In the middle of a sparring session, my absent-minded Watcher simply stopped, dropping her arms. I had a hell of a a time breaking of the swing that would practically have taken Maria's head off. Losing my balance, I had to grab the table so that I wouldn't fall. After I'd recovered, I glared at Maria, who didn't seem to have noticed anything. If I had done something like this, shewould have taken my head off, with words.
"He should have called by now," she told herself, irritatedly. Then she turned to me. "Faith dear, we're going out." Noting Maria's sudden bad mood, I decided not to demand an explanation. I changed clothes quickly, not bothering to really wash.
Maria did the same, and in no time we were on the road in her car. Maria didn't lose her patience very often, but when she did, she tended to move very fast. I never had any problems with that. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm kinda bordering on hyperactive myself.
"Where exactly are we going?" I dared ask. Maria was tapping the fingers of her right hand on the dashboard, and it was grating my nerves, though obviously no more than the red light we were waiting for or the heavy traffic in the city centre were grating on Maria's nerves.
"Do you recall Mr Duke?" she asked me.
"Not really," I claimed. "I was fast asleep as soon as he first opened his mouth."
Maria looked at me over her shoulder, and gave me a little smile.
"It's green," I said, because, of course, the moment Maria had looked away, the traffic light had turned green.
My Watcher put the pedal to the metal and continued her explanation while driving. "I'm sure you still recall he was from the Watchers' Council, Faith. He was supposed to call me concerning a decision we had to make." I gave M extra points for vagueness. If I hadn't been listening in on the conversation between Maria and Dukie earlier, I would have been thoroughly confused. Maria's irritation shone through when she continued. "He was supposed to have called me last night, or this morning at the very latest. Well, it's past noon, and frankly, I've waited long enough."
I shrugged. "Can't you just call him?"
"Mr Duke didn't see it fit to give me the phone number of the place he is staying at."
"So the Council has a 'Don't call us, we'll call you'-policy."
"Not usually, Maria replied, "but in this case, yes." She muttered something in a chagrined voice which I don't think I was supposed to have heard in the back, but Maria forgot about my Slayer-enhanced senses. " Why didn't they just go bother the Summers girl if they wanted someone toy with?-- she's older anyway. Stupid aristocrat half-wits."
We drove the rest of the way in silence,until we got to where we were going. I'd noticed already, with only a passing interest, that Maria was heading to one of the richer suburbs, but I hadn't expected the mansion we stopped in front off. It was one big shit-hole. Which I only got a chance to notice after we'd passed through a whole lot of garden. "What is this place?" I wondered, getting out of the car.
"This mansion has been in the possession of one of the most senior Watcher families for generations," Maria informed me.
I stood there for a moment, before rushing up the steps after my Watcher. "The Council has a place like this, and they leave their Chosen One and her Watcher to find their own place to stay?"
But Maria's attention was already focussed elsewhere. She gave the front door a push with two fingers, and it swung open easily. Not good. A watcher ought to know a lot better than that. Inside, the house was dark, all curtains still closed though it was one in the afternoon. I cursed silently, pulling a stake out from inside my jacket. I didn't trust it. Something was definitively smelling fishy here.
"Stay behind me, M," I ordered my Watcher, and she did as I said. I silently stalked through the hallway. Maria, now holding a cross and a stake of her own, was right behind me. This could still be nothing, I told myself. Maybe Duke was sleeping late because he was still suffering from jetlag, him being an Englishman and all. Or maybe he had company.
But I didn't believe any of it. Funny, actually, considering how good I can be at lying to myself.
I stopped in mid- stride--sudden enough so that Maria bumped into me--and sniffed the air. My eyes widened as I recognised what I was smelling. Because something was smelling. It wasn't fishy, as I'd optimistically thought. It was blood--human blood.
"Fuck!" I rushed off towards the end of the hallway.
"Faith! What is it?" Maria called after me, worried. She sprinted to catch up with me, which she did as I kicked the wooden door to the living room off its hinges, so that we got our first look at what was behind it at the same time.
"Oh, my god," Maria gasped. I half-looked over my shoulder and saw that she had paled considerably. She raised the hand holding her stake to cover her mouth.
When I had kicked open the door, the stench of raw meat drifted freely into our breathing space, and I, too, raised my hand to hold my nose closed. Still, I crouched down by the corpses to investigate.
"This is Trick's work," I told Maria. "Or, his demon's." The scene was a lot like what I'd seen before, at the mall--only worse. There were no neatly drained bodies here to provide the horrific contrast they had at the mall, but the bodies that were here were so badly mutilated that I could barely tell where one ended and another began. It didn't take much investiging before I was certain of the claim I'd made to Maria; these bodies featured identical claw marks as those in the clothing section of the mall had, and like with those, their jaws had been removed and their tongues were gone. A shiver ran down my back, and I looked at Maria. Somehow, with her there, it was a lot harder to joke and pretend that the blood didn't bother me and the stench wasn't nearly enough to make me scramble to a corner and throw up. I noted one other thing--these bodies were fresher than the others I'd seen. They couldn't have been killed earlier than the night before. "I think ... Yeah, I think this one used to be Duke. Dunno who the others were." There were at least six corpses that I could make out without doing more than prodding with my stake here and there.
"Undoubtedly the servants," said Maria. She had recovered from her shock, and though she was still at least as freaked as I was, she put her Watcher training to good use and put on a detached air. "They must not have known vampires are real, and invited the wrong person in."
They have servants? I wondered. I shook my head. Any other day, I would have made some snide remark about that, but not today. Not out of any respect for the dead--when the dead tended to get back up and try to kill you, you were quickly relieved of any such silly notion--but out of simple disgust with the whole situation. With the bulk of humanity being looked upon by vamps as snacks, and Slayers fighting the creatures of the night to the death, one way or another, Watchers had alsays seemed to me to be the one group that was safe from vampires. I should have been used to the fact that each time I put some tiny bit of faith in the world, my feet were cut down from under me, but I wasn't.
I looked at Maria for the guidance she was supposed to be able to give me. "What do we do now?" I wanted to know.
Suddenly, a double door, behind the mess on the floor, was slammed open, revealing a dark, but large-looking room beyond it. Idly, I wondered just how large this mansion was. Then I turned my mind to the matter at hand: the two vamps who had opened the doors. But they weren't attacking yet.
"I suppose it would be just a tad corny," a voice came from the darkness, "to say that now you die, wouldn't it?"
If I had jumped into a fighting stance when the double door had opened, I was now a spring wound up tight. "Trick," I recognised the voice of the speaker.
The black-skinned vamp walked into the light. "And oh so nice to see you again, too, Slayer, and your lovely Watcher. I see you've figured out who I am--well, having a reputation is good for any sort of business."
"Why did you come here, Trick?" Maria interjected authoritatively. "And for that matter, how did you know where to come?"
Trick shrugged "It's Mr Trick, if you don't mind," he said. "And what can I say? The master just had a sudden craving for blue blood, and it is so hard to come by it fresh here in the States."
"I'm going to kill you, Trick," I said threateningly. "I know it. You probably know, too. It wasn't smart to come looking for me." In fact, I couldn't have been happier about it. Not only could I deal with him now, before he could hurt anyone else, but a good bit of violence would also help me get all the unwanted emotions I was feeling out of my system.
Trick made a gesture of powerlessness. "That's what I told the master. 'Don't let her see us coming, just kill her and be done with it.' But the master wanted a hunt. Thus, the master is getting a hunt. And that, to answer Ms Bandera's question, is why we are all here." I was startled by the vampire's carefully placed warning that he knew who Maria was, but didn't let it show. "Slayer, the master wants you to know that we are after you. We are taking out everyone you care about."
I made myself chuckle. "Then you're off to a bad start. I only met Mr Duke once, and I can't say I cared for him much. Plus, of course, that I'm going to kill you right here and right now."
Trick just smiled knowingly and stepped back into the darkness.
I rushed forward to get him. The two vampires at the doors moved to block my path, joined by four others coming forward out of the darkness. Their presence wasn't entirely surprising, 'cause I'd already sensed something back there when Trick was talking. The undead formed a half-circle blocking the door, and I stormed straight into it. I wanted to break through fast and go after Trick while he was still close, but I knew that was what the vampires were expecting. Even if I dusted the one in the back of the circle and managed to rush on, I would be leaving Maria alone with five bloodsuckers. I cursed and managed to do what my head knew was right.
At the last moment, I threw myself to the left and crashed into the front-most vampire, stake first. He hadn't expected me to hit him--in fact, he was already moving forward to close the circle, to catch me in the middle. We went down and hit the floor hard. The impact drove my stake al the way through the vampire's heart. He gurgled a moment, then exploded in a cloud of dust. His body suddenly gone from beneath me, I fell the rest of the way to the floor. My stake got stuck between me and the floor, and its blunt end poked painfully into my right breast, but I twisted and rolled before it could do any damage. The next vampire landed down on the floor next to me as my roll knocked his feet out from under him.
Quickly, I flipped myself back to my feet. The rest of the baddies were moving in on me. I dodged the fist one of them swung at me, and landed a return blow in his stomach. He doubled over, and I was ready to ram my stake through his back, but unfortunately, he must have been well-loved among his pals, because another vampire rather broke his hand on my skull than see his drinking bud dusted. I tumbled back to the floor, passing the vamp I'd tackled halfway, as he was just getting up.
My head was ringing, but I grinned like a maniac. This was what I lived for! All my worries, everything that complicated my life faded away, until there were only the vampires, and the desire--the need for mindless violence. The vampires and I fought in a ballet of punches, kicks and leaps. I'd lost my stake when I'd been knocked to the ground, but there was another one in my jacket. I was lying on my back on a table with my legs in a stranglehold around one of the vamps' neck, twisting until I heard a satisfying snap, when my pleasantly mindless violence was suddenly interrupted.
"Faith!" Maria called. "Focus!" Thus far, my Watcher had been ignored by the undead, but as I turned to her, I saw that two of the remaining vamps were advancing on her. For a human with no superpowers, Maria was a good fighter--you have to be, to be a Watcher--but she was no match for two strong vampires. With a quick kick, I shoved aside the lone vamp that was still attacking me--I'd staked a second vampire during the fight--and leaped after the vampires attacking Maria. I caught the legs of one, and pulled him down to the floor, confident that Maria would be able to at least hold the other off for a while. The vampire kicked me in the face, and I almost yelped in pain as blood started to rush from my nose. Of course, I managed to keep quiet. I wasn't about to let it show that he'd hurt me.
All of a sudden, I had an idea. I'd insinctively grabbed the leg that had kicked me, and I kept my hold on it as I climbed to my feet. The vampire kicked with his other leg, trying to make me let go, but I just grabbed that one, too, with my other hand. I started turning around, faster and faster, until the vampire swinging through the air, my hands all that held him where he was. He flailed his arms around wildly, but there was nothing to grab onto. Then I let him go. The vampire shot straight at the window. The curtains were, as I said, closed, and they looked heavy, but they barely slowly the vampire down as he flew though the window out into the sunshine. I grinned broadly. His scream was almost human, and yet nothing like it. There was a brief burst of fire, and then the vampire was gone.
Where the vamp had knocked open the curtains, sunlight flooded the room. We were all too far into the room to be hit by it directly, but the remaining members of the undead legion couldn't prevent there instinctive reaction to shrink back. We took maximum advantage of their distraction; Maria quickly staked her vampire, while I did the same to the last remaining one. No, not the last, I noticed. The one whose neck I'd broken was still gurgling. I went down on one knee next to his body and watched with satisfaction as I let him explode into dust. Nothing, nothing was as releasing as a kill after a good fight.
I raised my head and glared into the darkness of the next room. "I'm going after Trick," I stated, getting up.
But Maria held me in place with a firm hand on my shoulder. "No," she said, way calmer than she should have been after such exercise as we'd just had. "He'll be long gone by now."
"In the daylight?"
"This house doubtlessly has some underground escape route Trick could have taken. He seemed to prepared to let us capture him. Besides," she changed the subject smoothly, "you're hurt."
I quickly wiped away the blood that had gathered under my nose, and then sniffed loudly, sucking up the fresh blood. "I'm fine," I said. "Five by five."
Maria sighed, probably realising that she wasn't going to get me to slow down. "I suppose we should inform the police."
"Definitively not," I objected bluntly. "It's not like they'll be any fucking help or anything."
"At least then we'll be able to give these poor people a decent funeral," my Watcher argued, indicating the remains of Duke and the others.
I shook my head. "The police'd ask to many questions. We don't have time for them if we want to hunt Trick down." Besides, it wasn't unlikely that someone in the Boston PD still remembered a little troublemaker called Faith Mandorf. I wasn't sure precisely how much Maria knew about all the trouble I'd got into over the years--though, knowing Watchers as I do now, I suspect she knew everything all along. I didn't want her to know any more than she did already, and I definitely wasn't up to dealing with the inevitable trouble that would come up if I was connected to a murder scene.
Maria finally gave in. "Don't worry," I told her, "we'll take that bastard down." In a whisper, I added, "and then I'm going to make him hurt like no vamp has hurt before."
Story written by Niels van Eekelen. © Copyright 2004 Telltale Productions.
In a perfect world, I would own the series 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Angel'. Alas, it is not, and I bow my head to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Ah, well. It's probably for the best, me not having a contract to put the show on the air and all.
A special thanks to Paul Leone and Teresa Owens, from whose story 'The Deliverer' I nicked the name of Faith's Watcher, though not the character.