Chapter Two
Surprisingly the vampire or the blonde-haired woman didn't harm me. They just tried asking me questions. Given the strength of the vampire, I decided my best course of action was to stay silent and wait for an opening when I could escape. This mission was a scrub, but somehow I would have my revenge on the vampire and the black robes.
"Well this wanker isn't dead after being stabbed six or seven times and being buried in a hole, so I wager he's something more than human," the target said.
"Yes. We need to take him home and sort things out. I really wish we could find Giles. He would know more about the thrall you were under and Mr. Hardtokill over there."
They made me help the vampire rebury the bodies of my men and then they tied my hands up in the front, draped a jacket over them to make them less conspicuous and led me out of the house. I guess they hadn't found the cuffs. We walked about a klick before we came to a white house with a boarded up front window.
They led me into the house where a teenager and an attractive brunette and redhead greeted them. A black haired male wearing a tool belt was making repairs. It looked like a tornado had torn through the house. They exchanged stories as they sat me down in a chair and tied my hands to the arms of the chair. They were obviously amateurs. This set-up wouldn't hold me for long. All I needed was to wait for the right time.
The blonde said that the vampire had called her to the killhouse where something had taken over his body and tried to use his risen sires to kill her. But she had taken care of the vampires and broken the target out of his spell. She called him Spike. I upwardly revised my threat estimate of the blonde.
She also said that they had seen some more freshly turned earth and had dug up nine bodies, including mine. They had also found at least twenty bloody, tattered black robes and assorted weapons and gear at the bottom of the hole. She finished up the story and took the vampire up the stairs.
That night I heard talk of the teenager fighting evil appliances and talking with the spirit of her dead mother and the redhead being egged on to kill herself by some sort of ghost. I began to match names to the faces. The blonde was Buffy, the teenager her sister Dawn, the redhead Willow, the brunette Anya, and Xander was the tool man. Their stories seemed very odd, but then again my story was pretty odd too.
At various points all of them tried to get me to talk, but I stayed silent and didn't look them in the eyes. There was constant traffic through the living room all night and someone was always awake watching me, so I bided my time. In the morning the redhead went out to get some blood for the vampire. When she came back she had a short blonde-haired man in tow. It was obvious that he was also a prisoner. They took him upstairs and Dawn stayed to watch me.
After awhile I heard the brunette yelling and a thump on the floor. They were probably playing "good cop, bad cop." When I was young it had been "bad centurion, worse centurion." I heard a loud crash and then a couple more thumps on the floor. Then the blonde carried the vampire down the stairs and into the basement. She or someone else had worked him over pretty good.
It was now evening and I felt pretty hungry, but didn't want to ask for something to eat. The blonde took a clothe and a bowl down to the basement. A few minutes later black robed figures came crashing through the front door and window. The redhead went down but the teenager kept them from finishing Willow for a half a minute until she too went down. A black robe was raising his knife hand for the killing blow, but by that time I was on my feet and flying into him. The fall to the floor broke the chair into kindling.
I did a leg sweep to knock a black robe to the floor and then chopped his windpipe and took his knife and slammed it into the other black robe's chest. I got to my feet, blocked a knife thrust, and threw a black robe to the ground using a judo sweep. Another one knifed me in the back, but I gave him a sharp back hand and kicked him in the crotch and then gutted him. Another one came running down the stairs and bowled me over on his way out the door.
As I was slowly making my way to my feet, the blonde came down stairs.
"Dawn, Willow are you alright?"
"Yeah we are," Dawn said rubbing the back of her head. "Thanks to him."
Buffy gave me a long look and then walked next to me to look at one of the fallen black robes. For the first time I realized that their eyes were sewn shut somehow.
"I know these guys," she said. "I've fought them before. They're the first."