Chapter Six

The next day Buffy led an older man wearing glasses down the basement stairs.

"Hello I'm Rupert Giles," he said with a slight English accent. "We want to verify your story so could you please tell us the name of the organization that has been watching you since shortly after the death of Christ?"

"The Brotherhood of the Lamb," I answered.

"That's correct," Giles told Buffy. "The Watcher's Council always considered them the new kids on the block and pikers since most of the time they can't even keep track of one man through the ages. They were the butt of jokes."

"Yeah they were never much of a threat to me," I say. "Their leader cut off my hand once, but the worst thing they ever did to me was killing people close to me. I punished them for that. I haven't found any evidence of them shadowing me the last few decades. I guess following me so they can have a front row seat at the apocalypse just isn't as exciting for them as it used to be."

"We know you are who you claim to be now, but we still don't know your intentions towards us," Buffy said as she and Giles walked back up the stairs. "You're going to have to sit tight for awhile longer."

"I can understand that," I said while thinking to myself that much of the time I didn't know my intentions very well either.

I didn't see much of Buffy the next week or so. I heard that she got badly beaten by some kind of super vampire. Xander worked on patching up the hole in the basement. He and I talked about military history and tactics sometimes. He'd never been in the military, but he had become a soldier for one night due to an enchanted Halloween costume. His soldier memories had mostly faded away by now, but he had done some research on the subject since then. I told him some details about my life and he reciprocated by telling me more about him and his friends, especially about his relationship with Anya.

A group of young girls, ones they called Potentials, started coming down to the basement to use the training equipment Xander had put together for them. A blonde named Eve never actually trained, but she gave her mouth quite a workout. It seemed like she wanted to make the other girls more afraid than they obviously were. This behavior raised my hackles. I'd seen men executed for far less mutinous talk. But it wasn't my business, so I didn't say anything.

One evening after dusk, Buffy came storming down the stairs and confronted Eve. Up until the point when I saw the thing that was pretending to be the young blonde Potential wink out of existence I had been rationalizing to myself that this First Evil thing couldn't be as bad as everyone said it was. The First was gonna have a ball with me. 99.9% of the people I knew were dead.

Later that evening Buffy came back down and unchained me.

"Look we've got Bringers outside the house and the Chaka Khan vampire is on its way," She said to me. We can't leave you as a sitting target for them. We also can't let you harm us."

"I give you my word that I won't harm you or any of your people, even if they aren't really people," I said. "I owe the black robes some payback."

"Good enough for me," Buffy said.

Upstairs I saw that they had also unbound Andrew. The Slayer was handing out weapons to the Potentials. Andrew asked for one and only got a bottle of holy water. I walked over to the chest and said, "I can do a lot of damage with a sword or axe. I can help."

"I believe you can," she said tossing me a double-headed axe. "Just do what Xander and I say, ok?"

A short time later the ubervamp broke through the door and Willow put up her mystical barrier. It was obvious that the barrier wasn't going to hold, so Buffy told us to run. I led the way out the back door and, without missing a step, I sliced the head off the first Bringer I saw. I swept another one off his feet and Kennedy put a crossbow bolt in his chest.

I ran towards the alley where two more Bringers were waiting. I blocked the knife thrust of one and sent him to the ground with a spinning back kick. Dawn finished off that one as I buried my axe in the chest of the other one. I looked back towards the house and Buffy was taking down a Bringer that was about to stab Xander. All of us ran down the alley and out into the street.

Shortly afterwards Buffy separated from the group to try and lure the ubervamp away from the Potentials. We ran to a construction site and climbed down into the pit. The vampire caught up with us, but Buffy startled it by turning on the night construction lights. Everyone else was climbing up scaffolding, but I was going to stay and help Buffy fight the vamp. Xander put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come on, this is the Slayer's show."

It was the fastest and most savage fight I had ever seen. Each blow from the vampire or Buffy would probably have crippled a normal human. Buffy was getting pounded until she stuck a broken crossbow bolt into the vamp's eye. That seemed to daze it long enough for Buffy to get the upper hand and pummel it until she could garrotte it with a length of barbed wire. She pulled its head off and then I heard a whoosh sound and the vampire turned to dust.

Willow patched up a gash on Buffy's face with a butterfly bandage from the first aid kit in the construction site office trailer and then we headed to the tunnels to rescue Spike. I was hoping for another chance to kill Bringers, but there were none to greet us. From the way Buffy and Spike held each other on the walk home, I could tell they cared a great deal for each other. I still wasn't sure about Spike, but sometime on that walk home I decided it was time to play on the side of the angels.