SLAYER, SLEW, SLAIN
By Niels van Eekelen
TelltaleProd@Hotmail.com
www.TelltaleProductions.tk
I first ran into Andrea--naturally--the first time Maria had left me alone for the weekend to go to a Watchers' meeting in the Old World, so I had no one to find out who I was up against.
That night, I was on graveyard duty. A guy called Isaiah Clark had turned up dead with a tear in his throat and, what puzzled the so-called authorities to no end, blood on his lips and in his mouth and throat. I always wondered what it must be like for a fresh vamp if they perform an autopsy on him before burying him. I like to think that it hurts a whole lot.
Isaiah was scheduled to rise again that night, but he didn't seem to be in much of a hurry. I was bored to tears. The sticks I had brought to sharpen into stakes were sharper than my knife after cutting them, the batteries of my diskman had run out, and I knew that if I was going to be busy much longer, the others would have gone home before I got to the club.
When the fledgeling vamp finally crawled out of his grave, I knew he'd ruined my night. He was gonna pay for that, sure as Hell is hot. Driven purely by instinct, as newborn vamps always are, Isaiah came at me, growling for all he was worth. Instead of staking him through the heart, I slashed my stake along his arm, almost hard enough to take it off.
He turned around and came at me again. "Gimme all you got, Fang Boy," I taunted him. "It's payback time!" This time, I cut open his face from cheek to cheek, crushing his nose. He looked like he had been a handsome guy, before he grew fangs and all. He wasn't anymore then.
Suddenly, I heard someone scream loudly behind me. "Nooo!" I spun around quickly, thinking that maybe something had crawled out of another fresh grave and was attacking someone. I didn't think there were anymore undead births scheduled for that night, but, though I took the sacred duty stuff pretty seriously, researching the coroner's latest finds just seemed a whole lot of work, which I wasn't all that good at, so I wasn't sure.
Instead, what I got was my first look at Andrea. She looked like a normal, living human--she had a kinda self-hatred thing going, where she thought her vamped out face was unbearably ugly--but she shot at me with absolutely inhuman speed. I've never encountered another vampire who was as fast as Andrea was.
Before I noticed what was going on, she'd slammed me onto the ground and held me there, glaring furiously. "He was the prettiest male I've found in over five decades," she told me.
"Don't worry, I grunted, "I'll take your eyes out, so you won't have to look at him."
Andrea raised one hand to slash at me with her long nails, but that slight release was all I needed to flip her off me and jump to my feet. We fought for a while, which, with her superhuman speed, pretty much amounted to me getting the crap kicked out of me. Still, I managed to hold my own until I got an opening. I threw all my weight against her, and got a hold of her arm. Thinking that I only needed to keep Andrea in one place long enough to be able to kick her ass, I pinned her hand to a tree with my stake.
She screamed ferally and tossed me aside. When I got back to my feet, She had somehow pulled herself loose and was running off, cradling her injured hand to her chest. "You haven't seen the last of me, Slayer!" she called at me.
Annoyed that she had escaped, and that Isaiah had apparently run off while we were fighting, I called some insults after her, but my heart wasn't really in it. I just wanted to get away.
I wanted to go see if Kenny was still up, but I knew that I had trouble enough explaning my various scraped and bruises away on a normal night, and Andrea had given me areally good pummelling. So I just went home. Once there, I pretty much emptied the fridge, and then slept straight through to the following afternoon.
I woke up at the ringing of the phone. It was Maria, calling from England to hear how things were. I gave her an extremely sketchy report of what'd happened the night before, leaving out some stuff because I didn't want her to worry. Besides, I didn't really think there was anything to worry about.
I was still a bit sleepy--that's part of the Slayer healing process. Wounds are gone in no time, but you have to pay for it in energy. Fortunately, energy is something I usually have an abundance of.
After Maria's call, I shook off the sleep and spent the day as usual. Which meant, hanging around most of the time and practicing a bit when I felt like it. I went to the supermarket to restock the fridge--I remember wondering at how much money Maria had left me for those few days. Turned out later half was for possible emergencies. And she didn't consider my growling stomach an emergency.
When I went out for patrol that night, I had all but forgotten about Andrea. She sure hadn't forgotten about me.
I was touring the most likely places for vamps to hang out when I was suddenly attacked. At first I was glad to get the work-out, but that passed over pretty quickly.
They were all pretty stupid, fresh from the grave. Probably some master vampire was trying to gather minions and build a power base quickly. That kind of minions are the easiest vamps to take care of. But they just kept coming. I took at least half a dozen out before the overpowered me. As I went down beneath that tangle of punching arms and kicking legs, I panicked. I heard Maria's voice from that time in the beginning.
"Being a Slayer isn't exactly the safest job in the world," she'd said. "Slayers, as an historical fact, die young. Few Slayers have ever lived to be twenty years old. I can't promise that it will be any different for you. We live in particularly dangerous times, now. What I can promise you, is that we'll stand together and face whatever the night throws at us. Together, we'll be strong."
I can't begin to explain how much that idea that I wasn't alone comforted me. I mean, I may have been pretty used to taking care of myself, but despite what I wanted to believe, this vampire and saving-the-world stuff was way out of my league, especially at the beginning.
I realised then and there that I was, after all was said and done, alone.
Maria, she meant what she had said, but I knew that she couldn't always be there for me. And I had the evidence to prove it happening to me right at that moment. Even aside from all that, it was a simple fact that I was the Slayer, and Maria was not.
Somehow, I managed to stay conscious while the vamps dragged me away, though I was too dazed to twitch a finger. The whole situation gave me the wiggins. OK, so being captured by vampires would be fairly high on anyone's freakometre, but I'm talking about the part where they took me with them, instead of ripping my head off, or draining me or something. That, I couldn't understand.
Guess I'm not so bright after all. By now, I should have recalled Andrea's promise. Then again, it wouldn't have made much of a difference, now would it?
When my head cleared, I was in the largest subterranean hall I'd ever seen. You think Sunnydale has a lot of sewers and tunnels and what not underground, but Nowhereville isn't the only place that has those, and apparently the bigger city wants the bigger tunnels. It's tunnel-envy.
There were about a billion candles there lighting the hall brighter than I would have thought vamps would want, and several huge portrait paintings hung on the walls, all depicting Andrea.
The minions tied me to a bunch of drainage pipes that came up out of the floor near one wall, and then they opened up a path to let their leader through. I counted at least nine minion vamps left after our big fight, and cursed the fact that I hadn't even known so many bodies had gone missing. I hated the guilt I felt at not being able to save them. But the guilt was only gonna get worse. Andrea had killed all these people, just so that she could get at me.
She finally showed herself to me then. Came up to me and lifted my chin in that annoying way the baddies have when their enemies are tied up, so I had no choice but to look her in the face.
"You're not so pretty now, are you, girl?" she taunted me, prodding painfully at my black and blue face.
"Don't you worry your ugly little head over that," I spat back. "I'll heal."
I did not at all like the smile that formed on her face then. "Oh, you would, no doubt, if you got the chance. Which you won't, by the way."
She gestured at one of the vamps, one of the type I tend to refer to as Big Bruiser, and he stepped forward eagerly. Big Bruiser grinned and vamped out--unfortunately for him, that's how I found out about Andrea's very own weirdness.
Maria explained it to me in more detail later, when we'd figured out who Andrea'd been. She was a hundred, a hundred and ten years old, and she abhorred ugliness. The sicko even let herself get turned into a vampire, 'cause she couldn't stand the thought of growing all old and wrinkly, and she spent her days--sorry, nights--as a vampire searching for a man who was her equal in beauty. I know beauty's in the eye of the beholder and all that crap, but I honestly don't think that should have cost her ninety years.
Big Bruiser had dared to remind Andrea of the uglier side of the whole vampire-thing, and she smacked him hard for it. Like most vampires, she was stronger than she looked. Unfortunately, it didn't take Big Bruiser long to recover, nor to realise his mistake. He didn't look very happy about yielding to Andrea, but I guess she had made damn sure the Sire-Childe relationship was plenty strong. Big Bruiser took his frustration out on me.
It was one of the less memorable experiences of my life. The guy was muscular even without the added vampire strength. I had to bite my lip until it bled three colours of blood to keep from crying out. But I didn't. Cry out, I mean. Instead, after a while, I used a weakness all vampires suffer from to gain some time.
I pretended to have lost consciousness. I haven't met a vamp who wouldn't like to think he could put any human to sleep with one fist.
Andrea, Big Bruiser and the rest moved some distance off, and I could vaguely hear them talk. I used what little time I had to take some deep breaths, and to test my bonds. The rope was pretty strong, and I didn't think that I could break it, but the pipes were old. There were three pipes in all. Two smaller ones, to which my arms were tied, and one really big one in between. They had squeaked horribly when I had bounced against them, and a tiny stream of disgusting-smelling water had started dripping on my head. I waited.
One of Andrea's goons noticed that I was awake 'again', and they came back. About half of the minions were gone, probably hunting for food while it was still dark. Since Andrea had turned them to get to me, I knew I was indirectly responsible for every death they caused. But there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it then, was there?
Andrea came to make some more conversation before letting Big Bruiser at me again. Big Bruiser, I noticed, was now armed with a wicked-looking knife. It was quite a beautiful thing, actually, but I wasn't in a position to fully appreciate that at the time. I knew that the vamps would expect what little resistance I could muster in response to Andrea's taunts, so I surprised them by attacking before she'd even had the chance to open her mouth. I jumped forward, pulling at the ropes and the pipes with all my strength.
What I expected to get out of it was a choice between an extremely small chance of escape and a chance to scar Andrea, maybe for the rest of her unlife. If you want to know, I hadn't been able to make that choice yet.
What I got was completely unexpected. The pipes burst just as I'd hoped, but they spouted out a deluge of sewage. I collided with Andrea's body, but we were washed apart almost immediately. Breaking free had taken most of my strength, and it was a struggle to get my head abovewater often enough to breathe.
After what seemed like hours, but what probaly were only seconds, the flow of sewage tuned down to a slow trickle. The hall had been plunged into near-darkness, because the bulk of the candles had been flushed away. I ended up on the other end of the hall, and though I hurt pretty much everywhere, I got to my hands and knees and made my way away from the vamps through one of the smaller tunnels ending in the hall.
I could hear Andrea shrieking loudly behind me, and for a moment I thought that she was right behind me, but the bitch was probably just screeching because I had messed up her make-up and her clothes. After a few minutes, I entered a part of the sewers that was still actively used--by the living, that is. I was moving slowly and could barely keep my head above the sewage. I didn't think I would be able to make it upstairs to the world before someone undead found me.
So, in what was probably one of my more stupid, though, in the end, very satisfying moves, I turned back in the general direction of the underground hall. I was determined that if I was going down and out, I would do it someplace where I'd cause a whole bunch of destruction.
It was all just an idea in a head that wasn't all that clear, though. When a side tunnel offered me a dry route, I suddenly cared considerably less about where I ended up. It was little more than coincidence that I ended up on a flight of stairs that brought me straight above the hall where the vamps had originally brought me. The floor, or ceiling, or whatever you wanna call it, wasn't very solid. It was a wooden floor--or ceiling, there we go again--and when I peered through a crack when I heard voices, I could see Andrea and her lapdogs some dozen feet below.
The goons were just reporting in, and Andrea was pretty pissed off because they hadn't found me yet.
But it wasn't like things were going my way all of a sudden. I got dizzy for a moment, and I flailed my arms around searching for something to hold on to, and knocked over some pipes leaning against the wall.
My downstairs neighbours had damn sensitive ears. They all looked straight up.
"She's upstairs!" Andrea screeched. "Go get her, you fools!" The minions rushed out to the stairs. They would be with me in just a minute. There was no place to hide. There was no way I could outrun them. So I did the only thing I could. I prepared to defend myself. I punched through the floor, ripped part of one board loose to use as a weapon, and got back up.
For once in their unlives, the vamps didn't underestimate me. The first ones waited at the top of the stairs for the rest to catch up with them, even though they must have noticed that I could barely keep my feet under me as I held my makeshift stake out between us. Probably thought that as a Slayer, I might still take out one or two of them, and they weren't eager to be that lucky vampire.
I've always had my doubts about that idea that patience is supposed to be a virtue, and that day, because it must have been day by then, I was proven right. The vamps all moved forward simultaneously, and the floor creaked beneath us. Remember I said that the floor was anything but solid? Big understatement. I couldn't resist kicking down hard right on a supporting beam.
Boom.
To this very day, I have no idea what came down with us when we all fell, but it was a lot more than just that rickety wooden floor. It was the wood that did the trick, though. Two were impaled and turned to dust. Most of the other vamps were injured by the shower of splinters, if not by the fall itself. When they saw me get up, re-energised for a brief moment by the enormous adrenalin rush and still holding on to my stake, they wisely fled. Even a Sire-Childe bond only goes so far.
When I thought I was alone, the adrenalin no longer supported me, and I felt as shitty again as I had before. There was no hurry in getting out of the tunnels, my muddled brain decided. I could stay and rest for a while.
Then I noticed the moaning sounds. I looked around, and I saw that I wasn't alone after all. Andrea had been standing right beneath us when I'd brought the ceiling down. She was pinned down beneath a large piece of concrete which had crushed her waist and hid her legs from sight. And yet, still, her face, her most beloved possession, was unmarked. After fighting me, being washed away by a few thousand gallons of sewage, and now this, her face still didn't even have a scratch on it. I started laughing and couldn't stop. Somehow, I found that enormously funny.
Andrea looked at me really frightenedly. "You're going to kill me now, aren't you?" she asked in a little girl-voice.
I didn't feel like replying to that, not even with a wisecrack. Instead, I made good on the promise I'd made her. I took her eyes out, one at a time. Dusting came shortly after, when Andrea's screaming went from a satisfying retribution to nerve-grating.
Sometime later, a hand gently shook my shoulder, and I woke up. I was disoriented for a moment, before I recognised the hall, or what was left of it, around me, and Andrea's dusty remains nearby, and then realised that I must have lost consciousness. Then I noticed my Watcher crouching over me, looking worried.
"Maria!" I called, and noticed that sitting up was not good. "You're back."
She raised an eyebrow at me. "And I had to come looking for you almost straight from the airport," she replied. "Don't worry, I'll get you out of here, Faith dear. How are you feeling?"
I shrugged best as possible. "I'm five by five, really." I just needed a moment...
Maria sniffed disdainfully. "Of course," she said, obviously not believing me, "I should have guessed. Can you tell me if there are any of our nocturnal friends left around here?"
"Those who got out in one piece are probably still running," I told her. I began to drift off again--I was really sleepy--but a question popped up in my mind and refused to wait. "Maria, how did you find me?" I asked her.
She just smiled. "Why, I followed the path of destruction, naturally. It led me straight to you."
Maria's arrival right then did a lot to lift the despair that had been clinging to me ever since I'd been captured by the vamps. I might have been alone, and sometimes I'd have to fight that way, but in Maria I had the closest thing to a fellow fighter I could possibly get.
Much to my chagrin, I never did catch Isaiah, but he probably wasn't smart enough to stay out of the sun on his first morning out of the grave.
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.