Part Two –
//All I can commit to is maybe//
When Faith returned to the hunt that night, Wesley insisted on accompanying her. The Watcher's council insisted that he always patrol with his Slayer, but, if it came down to it she performed rather better when he wasn't in the midst of the battle and she had the duel role of protecting him and killing the enemy. More than that Faith style was free and somewhat relied on her enthusiasm for battle, an enthusiasm that often left her unaware that there were things around her not trying to hurt her. It was a defence mechanism, probably psychologically influenced and he was slowly trying to tear it down, having her accidentally stake him wouldn't help. The pair returned to Restfield cemetery to find Faith's fan club had retired for the night.
"Maybe they found someone else to piss off." Faith voiced matching Wes' though train.
"I imagine they're just biding their time." Wes glared up at the star-filled sky and was almost irritated to see that not a single cloud marred his view. "Although if that is the case, one can assume that they do not have good intentions. Perhaps I should invest myself in some research."
"In what? Annoying stalkers of the twentieth century?" Wesley gave her a piercing glare, and she sighed. "Sorry. It's just we don't know anything about them, it's a little frustrating."
Any further conversation was disrupted by the distinctive clatter and muffled curses of a fight nearby. There were no screams piercing the air hinting at two possibilities: One, A skirmish between some local gangs or two, drunken pub-crawlers roaming the streets. Still the noise they were making was enough to attract the attention of the local demon population who would see drunken mobs as easy pickings. Whether the brawlers were asking for it or not, Faith had a sacred duty to protect them.
Faith led Wesley noiselessly through the woods alongside Restfield and into the half-darkness of the warehouse district beyond that. Industrial units were packed in together. Broken glass littered the sidewalk where a street light had been smashed. Wesley trailed after Faith his throat dry in anticipation of what they might see. He had thought, when he first applied to be a Watcher that the Fear would lesson, that the now familiar sight of bloody tracks and broken bodies would stop pulling at his heart strings and seem more like the business it was supposed to be. But it had never really worked that way and the visions that seared his inner eye were the only thing that made him want to give up his vocation, and yet compelled him to stay at the same time.
Faith swaggered into the warehouse block under the broken street light, giving an imperceptible visual sweep of the interior of the run down shed and Wesley half-proudly remembered teaching her that. He stood to her left and slightly behind, making it clear to those inside that she, Faith the Vampire Slayer was the boss. The motley crew of demons inside seemed unperturbed by the gesture and after a pause threw themselves back into the argument. The argument centred on a demon and a vampire in the centre, the demons around the edge could be disregarded. Their anxious stance and manner told that they knew this underworld and were easy to manipulate.
For every few demons there was a vampire, with the flash of a red ribbon around the waist. The red ribbons were the nark of the order of Aurelius, each vampire had a collection of teeth, scales, pendants and horns, scrounged as trophies from battles past. The one with the most battle spoils was the one at the centre with probably the eldest demon staring each other off. The lead vampire wasn't particularly tall perhaps five and a half feet but the way he held himself made him infinitely more threatening to his opponent. His beaten jeans, combat boots, shirt and leather duster were all black. And except for the flash of red around his waist the only colour was a red shirt poking out from under his duster. His face was angular but not lean, the raised cheekbones matched with swept back bleached hair probably had girls rolling at his feet.
Wesley noted Faith take in his appearance and hesitate for a fraction of a second longer than she should. He hoped she didn't find the vampire attractive emotional attachment with the enemy even if it was nothing more than lust was not to be suggested. It tended to complicate things.
When Buffy slipped into her dad's flat late that night the image of the ruined Hyperion Hotel flashed back to her. Her parents were divorced and now lived on opposite sides of America this rather upset the usual weekend at dad's child care arrangements. Instead they'd come up with the idea of Buffy swapping between the two every time the school system permitted. So after finishing up Junior High in Florida with her Mom, Buffy had come to Los Angeles to attend Hemery High School and stay with her Dad. It had been fine to start, not great, but she was spending more time with her Dad then she ever had before her parents had divorced.
But then he'd left on business leaving her with the made and a full bank account, but his two weeks away had turned into three, then two months and now it had been two years and he still hadn't returned. The letters stopped as well. Maybe he had thought that she would return to Florida after a while but she couldn't shortly after he left she had been called to be the Slayer of Los Angeles, the money was slowly running out and she'd had to let the maid, Carlotta go. Though she came and visited sometimes, Buffy suspected this was to make sure she was still alive. Buffy knew that if Carlotta had ever seen the bruises and cuts left after her nightly fights, that if she had ever seen them before Buffy's super healing powers made them fade Carlotta would have called Social Services and she'd have been taken away. Buffy's ardent begging to remain where she was the only thing that stopped her sometimes.
She hated the flat any good times she'd spent there were now heavily outweighed by the visions of every day she had been alone. Giles lived here now. He'd moved in last year when he found out what had happened with her father, and she suspected Carlotta had something to do with that. The thoughts of Giles reminded her that he'd probably been worried about where she was. She was seventeen, still a minor though Giles was always bemoaning her loss of innocence to the world of darkness. That she had seen too much for a girl of her age, but it was her life, as much as she hated it.
"Buffy?" Giles asked, he'd been sitting in a dark corner of the room watching as she stood still by the door for fully five minutes. "Are you feeling okay?"
"I'm fine." Giles said nothing more about it but she could tell he was worried, her silent reveres had become worse lately and there was little he could do about it.
"Your brother called."
"Doyle?" Her face lit up. "Did he say where he was?"
"You know he can't. It's safer for him to be isolated from you, the council…" The council. The Watchers council had decided that her disobedience was not in fact due to their rules being ridiculously stupid but her half-demon elder brother. They were related on her father's side, her Father having gotten a women pregnant while engaged to her mother and then abandoning the women and his son denying any knowledge of the affair when it had all been dragged up during the divorce. His problem was that Joyce Summers had known for a long time about the other child, and had in fact been skimming his wages and help raise the child with the other mother, a woman who used to be his secretary called Colette. Truthfully he hadn't known of the child's existence, having paid Colette to have an abortion but Colette's morals hadn't allowed her to, and she'd quit her job to hide the child. Buffy never knew why her mother hadn't left her father earlier given what she knew, but she suspected it was because of herself. Whatever the stories behind it all Buffy was extremely glad Colette hadn't gone ahead with the abortion and Buffy had Doyle.
"He said he had a vision, a demon on demon fight near Éire Shaor." Besides the fact that Doyle's mother was a demon, he had other secrets, even Buffy didn't know some of them, but one was that he was a messenger for the Powers that Be receiving visions of things she was supposed to know about. Doyle hated the visions, receiving them gave him migraines and he was only half demon, he thought she didn't know but someday the damage to his brain would be irreparable.
"Demon on demon? Surely it's easier to just let them kill each other." She replied curtly.
"Buffy, if Doyle had a vision of it then it's important that you are there." Giles half-heartedly scolded her. He couldn't help it, he was as frustrated as she was by the way the forces of darkness in LA seemed more unstoppable than ever, an endless stream of unforeseen evil. "We'd best deal with this quickly."
"School tomorrow. I know." She gave him a short smile before turning to unlock the door again. Giles followed her out and she locked it before starting down the corridor while Giles attempted to start a conversation about her night out.
Inside the empty flat a single lamp light still burned.