Chapter Nine
My stomach puncture healed, but my heart felt wounded. The First started visiting me in the forms of various people I had known through the ages. It was bad enough to see fallen comrades and enemies, but the sight of Lida, my long dead viking princess, was almost more than I could take. I went upstairs and actually struck up a conversation with Andrew to try and take my mind off the First's ghostly presence. True to form, Andrew asked me an annoying question,
"On a scale of one to ten, with the Highlander Immortals being ten, a Slayer five, and a human one, how would you rate the speed of your healing power?"
"I would have to say a five because from the stories I've heard Slayers seen to heal slight to moderate injuries faster than me, but they seem to have more trouble with massive trauma and near death injuries like gun-shot wounds and comas. I heal everything at the same pace no matter how bad it is. "
"Okay, but I was wondering how do you account for the fact that the First hasn't appeared as you although you have technically died many....." he was asking when Giles and Willow brought the police files back to the house. Grateful for the interruption, I helped Dawn dig into the research for some trace of Caleb's past activities. We eventually picked the account of the deaths at the church up north in Gilroy as the best lead to investigate. Giles spotted Caleb's symbol in photograph of the site and sent Spike and Andrew to investigate.
Thankful to be free of Andrew's questions for awhile, I went out to the grocery store to do some shopping for the night's meal. Shortly after I left the house and starting walking down the sidewalk, I heard a car engine start and then rev up and take off at full speed. I turned around to the sight of the car coming straight at me. I ran for the porch of a neighbor's house, but it was too far away and the car coming too fast. I turned my head back towards the car and time froze for a second with the car right on me and then the next thing I remember I was lying in a bed, staring up at the ceiling.
I tried to figure out who had run me over and why. It didn't seem like the First and the Bringer's style. It could be people sent by my former employer or some other military type I had pissed off over the years, but they would have shot me. About an hour later Giles came in to check on me and provided an answer.
It seems the driver of the car had hit a brick column after he hit me and sent my body flying against the side of a house. The driver hadn't been wearing his seat belt and his older model mustang didn't have an airbag, so he had burst through the windshield and fatally cracked his skull against the remains of the brick column. Giles had checked the body and found a Brotherhood of the Lamb tattoo on his wrist. He had also found a notebook detailing my movements for the past few weeks. The last few pages of it were filled with "Must Kill The Beast" written over and over. Gile's working theory was that my watcher had "gone hellmouthy" and decided to kill me instead of just keeping track of my movements. Either the Brotherhood had gotten better at surveillance to escape my notice for so long or they had lost track of me and just recently picked up the scent. I would be willing to wager on the latter.
I tried to get out of bed, but my legs didn't want to work right. Giles thought that my pelvis had been shattered. I hadn't actually "died," but my injuries would have been catastrophic for a normal person. It would take awhile to heal. Luckily I had retrieved a medical kit and some other supplies from the safe house that my team was using, so the pain was a dull throb instead of the roaring torrent it could be. I asked about what happened with the police and people who lived in the house that had been hit, but he said that thankfully just about everyone else had evacuated Sunnydale and that no one had paid any notice to the wreck. I asked what had been happening while I was out, and Giles gave me some very evasive answers.
I stayed in the bed and healed over the next day or so, but could slowly move by the time they brought a badly battered Faith back from the abortive raid on the tunnel arsenal. She took my place in Buffy's bed and I slowly made my way down stairs to the make-shift Potential hospital ward. I had picked up some battlefield medicine over the years, so I helped Anya and Andrew tend to the Potentials and watched over them while the pair went to raid the abandoned hospital for proper medical supplies.
While the Potentials had a lot of wounds, none of them seemed to life-threatening or non-treatable with the supplies on hand. So they healed as Buffy went to search for the origin of her new scythe and Willow helped them along with some restorative spells. Later Spike slammed the front door and went down to the basement in a huff shortly before Buffy came back. She told us the good news about killing Caleb, gave us a folder full of papers concerning the First, and went down the stairs to see Spike.
"The Study Buddies" as we had begun thinking of ourselves looked over the papers. They contained accounts of the First being able to imbue the most supremely evil and twisted humans with superhuman strength that needed to be replenished from time to time. That explained Caleb. It also contained reports that indicated that the Turok-Han, while stronger than ordinary vampires, weren't normally as strong or fast as the first one Buffy had faced. It stood to reason that the first Turok-Han had been enhanced somehow. Hopefully the First Evil wouldn't be able to do that with the rest of its vampire horde. It did seem that the First would be able to enter and influence everyone in the world after it got to the surface with its army. The Wolfram and Hart letterhead on the papers gave us some concern, but the new information felt genuine.
The First didn't visit me that night, but it did visit Buffy. I later found out it had provided Buffy with the inspiration for creating the new Slayers. The new plan felt like a breath of fresh air to everyone. For awhile I'd constantly had the image in the back of my mind of the First reviving me over and over again like it had done with Spike. Buffy made me forget about that image. That's what good leaders do.
Later I caught Buffy alone and talked about something I knew she would probably not agree to, but felt I had to put forward."
"That was some speech, Buffy."
"Really-as good as the 'we few, we happy few' speech?"
"Yeah-And I was there for the original St. Crispin's day speech before Shakespeare jazzed it up," I said while suppressing a grin. "But I wanted to talk about something else too."
"Go ahead, shoot," she said.
"Well that's just it, maybe its time we started shooting and blowing things up," I said as she got a concerned look on her face.
"I don't know about that...."
"You're the one who said we need to change the rules...."
"But my instinct is telling me we don't need that Rambo stuff," she said with her arms crossed. "I have been known to take care of problems with rocket launchers every now and again, but I've also learned to trust my Slayer instinct. There may be something down the road that we'll need that stuff for, but we need to get medieval with the First."
"Well I'm very good at medieval," I said with a grin on my face.