Chapter Seven
Late June 2003 ad
Los Angeles, California
"Okay I believe that finishes the plans for the recruiting trips, we'll just need to have the recruits sign the new 'Slayer's Covenant' when they report for training. Lord I'm glad to see Dawn get something out of her schooling. That was a good idea she had," Buffy thought to Willow, Giles, Angel, and Wesley as they silently sat in a circle of chairs in a hotel suite. After taking into account the ability of the First to possibly hear and see anything it wanted to and also the fact that Wolfram and Hart might have some untraceable means of eavesdropping, it had made sense to start having telepathic meetings to discuss the most secret details of their plans.
"Faith and Robin will leave for Georgia in shortly and then the rest of us will leave at the first of the month," Giles summarized.
"The trips should give everyone a chance to visit friends and family and start unwinding and get Sunnydale out of our systems,"thought Buffy.
"And we do need to make contact with the new Slayers as soon as possible. All we need to do is look at that poor Dana girl we found in the mental ward as an example of the things that could go wrong with Slayer power," Wesley projected.
"Yes, she probably would have ended up killing someone if we hadn't taken charge of her. Its too bad the Galactics aren't as advanced in human mental health as they are in other fields. And sane Slayers can kill just as easily if they don't properly know how to use their power," Giles thought to the group.
"We're going to need all the power we can get," Angel conveyed to them. "The new Slayers and the fighters that Nabbit will make for us still won't be enough though. I hate to admit it, but we're going to have to go with the plans for using vampires and demons."
"I didn't like Spike having that chip in his head when he had a soul," Buffy projected. "It denied him the chance to choose be a good man. But Spike told me himself that he wouldn't have gotten his soul in the first place if the chip hadn't forced him to control his urges and want to be something better."
"I know what's its like to be without a soul. Not many can resist evil in that condition," Angel thought to the others. "Vampires are no use to anyone in their natural state. Well except for when Angelus killed the Beast, but Jasmine would have done that anyway. At least with chips, vampires can be used to fight the Posleen. But demons are going to be a trickier proposition because many of them have souls and some of them don't need conditioning to do the right thing."
"Lorne will help a lot with determining which demons need chips ," Willow added. "We'll need to get into contact with the government again. Hopefully they'll be able to design a new chip that won't start misfiring like Spike's did. One that won't let them hurt humans or demons, but will let them fight the Posleen."
"The government will also be able to help with the new weapons we're thinking about. Nabbit can do a lot, but he doesn't have all the resources we'll need," Wesley projected.
"But we can't let them dictate how we put together the army," Buffy thought to the others. "Once we get the army together and find a governor that's willing to grant us National Guard Unit status we'll fall under Federal control, but by then our tactics, personnel, and weapons should be fairly well set. Our best chance at success is fighting the way we think we should fight."
Buffy's words gave Willow butterflies in her stomach. Everyone had agreed that magic would be a big part of effectively fighting the Posleen. And Willow was their go-to-gal for the mojo. She wouldn't be able to do it alone. They would need big magic. Willow had already contacted a couple of local covens looking for recruits and she was also searching the internet for fellow wiccans. In addition to finding Slayers, the coming recruiting trips would also be used to make contact with promising witches, warlocks, and other mystics.
Willow knew she had great power. Still not as much as she'd wielded during her few days of grief and madness, but more than any human in recent memory had. She would be able to do a lot of damage against the Posleen. But the magic would drain and possibly corrupt her again. She thought it was a good bet that she would be dead or evil before it was all over.
She accepted that as the price she might have to pay for her past sins. But she didn't want to leave Kennedy. Against all her expectations she had found someone to love and who loved her back. If Willow could hold on, it would ultimately be for Kennedy and the memory of her departed Tara. She didn't want to think what might happen if Kennedy fulfilled a Slayer's destiny and died.
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Late June 2003 ad
Blitchton, Georgia Sol III
Faith had one foot hanging out the passenger side car window and was grooving to an old Aerosmith song that was playing on "classic rock I-95." She was a little confused that "I-95" was the name of the radio station, but also the name of the interstate she and Robin had briefly traveled on to get from the Savannah airport to the city itself. And now she was traveling down I-16 to the middle of god knew where to find the "Green Eyed Lady," whatever the heck that really was. She wasn't used to the ninety percent and above humidity of South Georgia in the summer, but at least the breeze felt good on her foot.
Thankfully she was away from all the boring meetings in LA and headed towards some action. After the first week of planning, she had zoned out most of the noise until Robin said, "I think we need to send someone as an observer on the military expedition that's being sent to Diess. We need to see first hand what the Posleen do. If we don't, then the first tactics we use against them have a higher chance of failure. The steeper the learning curve, the more of us die. I volunteer for the mission, of course."
"And I volunteer to go with him," Faith had interjected. "He may be the mr. secret military past man, but I'm a Slayer and we have good instincts about fighting. I'm so ready to blow this popsicle stand anyway." She was a little upset that Robin hadn't discussed this with her first, although the prospect of the trip to another planet did excite her.
She'd groaned when she found out the Diess expedition wouldn't be leaving until September, but another chance at escape had offered itself when Giles told of a former Watcher in Georgia that had found and contacted him and was asking for helping in fighting some kind of mystical monster. Since they also had strong indications of a new Slayer in North Georgia, it made sense to send Faith and kill two birds with one stone, or at least one stone and some Wood.
So she and the Woodman had flown to Savannah and met up with Brian Todhunter, the former Watcher, who was now a history professor at a local college. He was a tall and skinny, but wiry man in his early fifties with a bushy mustache and greying hair. He had taken them to an Irish pub on River Street to outline what they were up against. Walking down the cobblestoned street and surrounded by buildings that dated from the nineteenth and even eighteenth century, she had a brief flashback to her pre-Sunnydale trip to the New Orleans French Quarter which in turn reminded her of the battle with Kakistos and the death of her first Watcher.
She shrugged it off and headed into Kevin Barry's. There was a man playing Irish songs on an acoustic guitar on the small stage of the pub. It was funny, but she could never recall hearing any Irish music (except for U2) during her years in Boston. At first it sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but over the next couple of hours she kind of got into it. The melodies and words were strange to her, but the music was meant to be fun, if also a little sad. She could relate to that.
Todhunter told her and Robin that a month earlier five boy scouts had disappeared from their campsite in a hunting club while playing in the woods. The Watcher had done some research at local libraries and found a 150 year long string of accounts about missing hunters, fishermen, loggers, motorists, and even a Civil War era slave. The first disappearance had been of a twenty-eight year old unmarried woman named Amelia Evans in 1855. There were gaps between three and twenty-one years between the disappearances, although the average was fifteen years. All of the missing people had been thought to be in the area around the hunting club just before they vanished. Todhunter had checked some of his old Watcher books and determined that each disappearance took place during some kind of mystical alignment. He had consulted with Giles and determined that the last known disappearance before the scouts went missing had taken place during the time of The Master's Harvest in Sunnydale. And there had been a very powerful alignment the night the scouts disappeared.
There was also the local legend of the "Green Eyed Lady." The boy scout troop had been camping at the hunting lodge for thirty years and during that time there had been numerous sittings of a rag-covered woman with glowing green eyes. The boys of the troop made all the first time campers stay in an old house at the center of the hunting club for an hour their first night and then walk back to the campsite. The older scouts would throw rocks, rattle chains, shine colored flashlights, and do other things to scare the rookie scouts, but sometimes they saw something that seemed real. And many hunters, loggers, motorists, fishermen, and residents of the area had seen the apparition too. It was mentioned as part of some of the popular Savannah ghost tours, but people rarely drove the thirty miles out of the city to try and see it. All the sightings seemed to be at night and never more than a mile or two from the old house.
Todhunter had done some more research and found that people captured in a binding spell popular with nineteenth century witches had glowing green eyes and often appeared as ghosts near the spot where they had been bound. But these people couldn't take corporal form and usually faded away from this plane within twenty years. But he and Giles had come up with the theory that a witch caught in the binding spell might be able to work a counter spell to briefly fully materialize during the night of a mystical alignment and then capture someone, trap them in a ghost dimension, and use their living energy to stay connected to this plane of existence until the next alignment. There had been a coven in Savannah in 1855, so its possible one of the witches had bound Amelia Evans to the land of her family holdings.
Faith was drinking a black and tan when Giles had called Todhunter on the ex-Watcher's cell phone. Usually she didn't like warm beer, but the black and tan was surprisingly good. After a few minutes on the phone, Todhunter announced that Giles had just found out that a little-known mystical alinement was taking place that very night. It was one of the few cases when more than one alinement took place in a given year. Giles and Todhunter feared that the "Green Eyed Lady" would employ this night's alinement as an opportunity to use the fresh and powerful lifeforce of her captives to cast a permanent materializing spell and break free of the original binding spell. In the process of doing that, she would drain the lifeforce of the five scouts and kill them. She would also be likely to kill anyone that crossed her path after she became corporal. So she had to be stopped tonight. Faith didn't have a problem with that. She was lubricated and ready to go.
They pulled off the interstate and went down a long series of dirt roads to the hunting club gate. Todhunter finally got off the phone with Giles and Willow and said, "We shall need to get that gate open. I meant to bring a bolt cutter when we came here tomorrow, but I don't have it with me tonight."
"Not a problem," Faith said as she got out of the car and broke the chain on the gate as the car's headlights cast her shadows into the deep pine barrens.
"Let's proceed, then shall we," Todhunter said as Robin drove the car through the open gate and down the dark dirt road. The road had a grassy strip down the middle and the sandy strips on either side shone bright in the light of the nearly full moon. After a mile they came to an old, ramshackle house. It was big, but probably had not been designed to be a family residence. Todhunter said the present house had been put up by the hunting club in the late 1940s, but that it had been built on the site of the original Evans family plantation house that had been constructed in the 1840s. Across from the house there was some benches, a shed, and a water pump that hunters and the scouts probably used. Todhunter said that the scout's campsite was another mile down the road, right next to the interstate.
The three of them got out of Todhunter's old volvo and walked to the front porch.
"I hope the authorities don't choose tonight to resume their search for clues about the disappearances," Todhunter said as he strapped a small, but powerful reading light to his head and opened a big spell book. "I came by here a few days ago to get the lay of the land and just barely missed running into several deputies. There was a presence here that even a poorly trained warlock like myself could feel."
"What's the plan now?" Robin asked as he finished strapping on his gloves.
"We go into the house, I cast a materializing spell and....."
"And then I slay the green eyed monster," Faith said.
"Indeed. But I will need to drain some of the life force from both of you to cast the spell," Todhunter said as he stepped through the front door.
"Don't worry, I have plenty to spare," Faith said.
"Save some for me," Wood said "We don't want that hotel room bed to go to waste, do we?"
Faith shined her flashlight around and saw bare wooden walls that looked really old, a chimney, and some newer, but extremely decrepit and uncomfortable looking chairs. Todhunter sprinkled some kind of powder in a big circle, then arranged some trinkets in the center of the circle. He had Faith and Wood gather in the circle with him and then began some kind of mumbo-jumbo chant.
After a few minutes, Faith began to feel a breeze in the stifling heat of the room and then saw some white, yellow, and green flashes of light. Todhunter's chanting reached a climax and then something explosively materialized at the center of the circle and blew Todhunter, Robin, and herself against the walls of the room.
"I hate it when that happens," Faith said under her breath as she reached for her axe and flashlight.
A creature with eyes that glowed like powerful little green flashlights now stood in the circle. It was covered in rags that might have been a dress at some point in the distant past. Its skin was grey and dry looking.
"Girlfriend, you need some moisturizer," Faith said.
The creature looked at Faith and said in a low gravely voice, "You saved me the work of breaking the bonds of my hellish prison. Now I have more power to kill you with," it said as it took a swing at Faith.
"I'm the power girl around here," Faith said as she blocked the punch and used her attacker's momentum to throw the monster against the far wall.
"Kill it fast," Todhunter said, "the more it fights, the more she drains the boys."
Robin dusted himself off and gave the creature a punch, jab, punch combination with his fighting gloves. The creature wasn't fazed and threw Wood into another room. Faith tried to bury her axe in the creature's back, but it was unnaturally fast and ducked her stroke and pushed her to the floor. The creature then kicked the Slayer several times, until Faith knocked the creature off its feet with a leg sweep.
Faith quickly got to her feet and lined up a perfect punch as the creature was pulling itself off the floor. It flew against a boarded up window and burst through the rotten wood and landed on the ground below. Faith jumped through the window after it as Todhunter shined a flashlight on the creature. Faith stood over it and delivered blow after blow to its face as it lay on the ground. It was like punching sandpaper. The creature stopped moving and Faith heard Robin say, "Your axe" as she looked up, saw him toss it to her through the window, and then brought it down on the creature's neck.
The creature's head parted from its body and glowing green energy poured out and coursed through Faith and then into the house with Robin and Todhunter. Faith had felt a little drained after the creature materialized. Now she felt great-better than normal in fact. She looked back at the body and saw that it was fading from view. "Convenient evidence disposal," she thought, not for the first time.
When she walked back into the house, Todhunter was standing over one of five forms lying in the circle. He did a quick medical and mystical check up on the boys and said they were in a light coma, but not in any immediate danger. With proper medical attention, they should awaken in a day or two. They would be sore and lifeless for a couple of weeks, but they would have no memory of what happened to them.
They decided that the best course of action was to leave the boys in the house and stop outside a nearby convenience store and call for ambulances. They did that and then drove back towards Savannah. They cranked up the radio and had a sing-along with Bad Company's "Shooting Star" and other hits from "classic rock I-95." The trio all felt so good, they decided they should go dancing when they got back into the city. Their clothes weren't really messed up, so Faith and Robin didn't need to go back to the hotel room. There were advantages to fighting non-slime filled creatures.
Soon they were pulling off the interstate and driving around a maze of squares towards the dance club. Each of the squares seemed to have some kind of park in the middle. "This is the old part of town," said Todhunter. "Savannah was the first planned city in the new world-they were really big on squares. See that house over there," he said as they passed a big two story house. "It was used in the 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' movie."
"I saw the movie," said Faith. "Not as bad as, say, 'Glitter' by any stretch of the imagination. But still kind of boring."
"Well it was also used in 'Glory."
"Now THAT was a movie," Robin said as they pulled into a parking lot. They could see the entrance to a club half a block down the street. A group of women walked past the car.
"Umm, a couple of those women didn't entirely look like women," Robin said.
"It must be drag night at the club," Todhunter said.
"Drag night?" asked Robin.
"As the 'Midnight in the Garden' book and movie made very clear, there are gay people in Savannah. And they like to have fun. This club has the best dancing in town, plus a white russian to die for."
"Well I...." Robin started to say.
"You had me at 'best dancing in town," Faith said as she got out the car and walked to the club.
Robin reluctantly followed and even started having a good time after a few drinks. Todhunter saw some of his male friends, introduced everyone and spent most of the time talking with them. But before the night was over, Faith was doing the 'sandwich dance' between Robin and the ex-Watcher. It had been a good night. "I slayed the monster and partied afterwards, just like old times. If only B could be here right now," Faith thought as she pulled Robin closer.