Snowblind
Chapter 5
She hated being used like that.
She was half a block away before she remembered she left her purse and coat at the bar. She couldn't go back to get them. Not after the scene. She could feel the goose pimples forming on her arms. And the shivers took control of her arms every few seconds.
She found herself unable to see through her tears. She stopped, leaned against a store window, and let the crying take over her.
That bastard. How could he do that to her?
She tried to stop, to think of other things, like her cat or Dad's farm, but everything ties back.
He's with that bitch.
He called the cat 'Tigger'. He bought her catnip and scratched behind her ears.
She covered her face and hoped nobody saw her.
"Are you alright?"
Her first two attempts foundered in fluids. She could barely see through her hair. Just his legs. Big black shiny boots with silver tips. Black jeans. "Nguh."
"Here."
A white blur appeared before her face. A handkerchief. She blew her nose. "Thank you." She still couldn't control her breathing yet. It still hitched.
"Is there something I can do? You crying like this, that's just wrong."
"It's B-B-Bria...." She can't control the waterworks.
His boots scuff across pavement and he's leaning next to her, holding her shoulders. "Y'know, I could go in, give him a big atomic wedgie. That'd show him for doing what he did."
That turned something around. Laughs mixed with her sobs.
A gentle touch to her chin moved her face up. "Unthinkingly causing such tears on such a pretty face? That is truly a crime."
She took a deep breath, trying to take control over her breath again. "C-c-cold." A hitch stopped her breath. "Left m-m-my coat."
"Here," he said, pulling his black jacket off his shoulders.
"No. I can't. You'll freeze."
"No, I'm good." He smiled and winked his pale blue eyes. "I don't mind the cold."
"So, Selene. What kind of name is that?"
Xander thumb ran his finger distractedly over her belly chain as they walked down the sidewalk. Her forearm hung over his left shoulder, her thumbnail scratching against his neck.
"I dunno. Greek or something." Selene bumped with her hip. "I'm down here."
Xander leaned against her tug. "Down a dark alley?"
She turned in his embrace and took his hand in hers. "Best entry is in the back."
"Um." Xander followed her lead. "You meant to say that, right?"
Selene backed herself against a wall and pulled him into a kiss. She ran her fingers through his hair. His hands reached to her waist, then wandered higher. Her leg snaked its way around his, her thigh rubbing against him. She pulled back, holding his lower lip between her teeth until it snapped back. Her lips pulled back into a hungry smile. "That'll ruin the surprise."
It looks so normal. A guy and a girl just walking and talking. Anyone would think it was a love story.
Unless you knew. Unless you recognized his face.
Beth was half a block away, kneeling on the roof of the photography studio. Her bow sat beside her. She had the shot. Even without practice, even on Xander's bow, she had the shot.
She wouldn't take it.
The dream was too real. The script was set. Beth was waiting for her cue to come in.
The girl leaned her head against his shoulder. His arm reached up around her and squeezed gently. Beth looked down, avoiding the scene. She noticed a black stain on her knee. Roofing tar, more than likely, from one roof or the other.
She sinks to her knees and feels the teeth tear into her neck....
She'd never get that out.
"We seem to have stopped progressing."
Selene's leather jacket had slipped off her shoulders. Her hands were wandering
across Xander's chest. She leaned back against the brick wall and smiled.
Xander's hands were hidden by her jacket. A smirk and a slight trace of her
lipstick were spread across his face. "This feels like progress to me."
"But we're not moving."
"I'm kinda worried about you inviting me in. Well, not so much worried. More
like curious. Or amused." Xander kissed her again, first on the cheek, then on
the neck. "Selene, Selene, Selene."
"That's my name." She shook her hair back and smiled. "I've heard the phrase,
but I've never seen a deliberate attempt to wear out a name."
"I was just thinking. It's the perfect name for all the wanna-be vamp girls with
no self-esteem. Let's meet up with Lestat and we'll sit in the basement blasting
Bauhaus. Thank you, Kate Beckensale."
Selene looked confused for a second, then all emotion drained from her face. She
began to back away, but Xander held her fast.
"You know what I don't get? I understand going after loved ones. Really, I do. The look on someone's face when trust shatters? That's powerful stuff. What I'm not getting is why you left the youngest daughter for last. Why you didn't feed from her."
"What? You think I'm involved in...."
"I know it." Xander smiled. "And you know it too."
The sound of her change mixed with the creak of her leather jacket as she struggled to free her arms. She looked at him with hungry yellow eyes and ran her tongue over her sharp fangs. "So that was a stake in your pocket."
Kennedy took a long time to learn the bow. When she first shot an arrow, it only made it halfway to the target. This made her angry and she stomped off, refusing to even touch a bow for a week afterward. She'd play with foil and epee, poking at the cutout of a large and brightly-colored dinosaur. She'd use the crossbow. She'd run laps and swim. She'd read the Demons do the Most Amazing Things books. She just refused to try the bow again.
Then her Watcher gave her half-sister a bow.
She tested herself on her thirteenth birthday. She could hold her bow, a 20-pound pull recurve out in position for 20 minutes, and could get eight arrows in the red at 40 yards. Her sister couldn't hit half that, and soon stopped shooting, moving on to tennis and boys, two subjects she had no interest in.
She didn't really get into bowhunting. Her Watcher thought it was closest to slaying as they could get. With a bow, at least. A guide took her out into Wyoming. He wasn't "in the game", as her Watcher put it, and despite pleas, he took her hunting for mule deer instead of predators. He insisted she take a compound bow, not a crossbow. He told her that the difference between an archer and a bowhunter is that an archer wants to know how far away from a target he can be and still hit it, while a bowhunter wants to know how close he can get to the prey.
Kennedy sat a block back, on a roof, watching. She knew that if she got too close, she'd be an actor in the drama, and it is far too early for that. It was time for her to sit and watch, and get ready to be an archer.
Now she just needed to figure out what she was looking at.
"Not that I'm not loving the intimacy here, but you do know it'll have to end."
Xander looked impatiently left and right, up and down the alley. He made a point of not looking forward, avoiding her dark brown eyes and the caresses he could feel through the heavy sleeves of his jacket.
"Your hands are full. You let go of me, I'll be all over you before you have a chance to whip anything out."
"Cue the standard sex-and-death trip. Spare me."
"What else is there? Taxes? Boy bands? Reality TV?"
"Duty?"
"We have a Boy Scout here!" There was an edge to her laugh, a cruel edge. "I would've banked on 'Love'."
Xander shook his head, then dropped it.
"My, my, my." Selene laughed and flashed a pityless smile. "I think we've found the weak spot in your armor."
The laughter stopped when Xander slammed her against the bricks. "I'm going to enjoy killing you."
"Funny," Selene said, still smiling. "I was just thinking the same thing."
She really shouldn't be kissing him.
She shouldn't be kissing anybody behind the drug store.
She shouldn't be wearing his jacket. Not when she hadn't officially broken up yet.
She shouldn't let his hand on her leg like that.
She didn't know anything about him, beyond having a warm leather jacket and messy long brown hair. She shouldn't be getting involved with someone she didn't know.
She shouldn't kiss him this enthusiastically. She shouldn't be kissing him at all, but certainly not this enthusiastically.
She shouldn't let her knees shake when his lips trailed down her neck.
She shouldn't.
Really.
It's never fun to be blindsided.
Xander was in mid-sentence when he felt the grip on his shoulder, and he dropped his grip on Selene as he felt himself flying. Well, less flying than rolling. Not a strong throw at all.
He winced as he pulled a cross from his coat. He had lost focus, got caught up in the talking. Stupid. He backed up, trying to get hls bearings. His attacker came at him, long red hair under his baseball cap and white wife-beater t-shirt under his parka.
The cross came out. Xander held it at arm's length, relying on it as he tugged desperately at the stake in his back pocket. He couldn't spare a look to see how it's jammed. He turned his head, counting people. One, two, three, many. Selene's laugh echoed through the alley.
"You shouldn't have gone to all this trouble. Really. A card would've been enough."
The redhead pulled the cross from Xander's hand and hit him with a right cross.
"Excuse me. Can you help me?"
It was the best thing Beth could think of. It fit right in. It's his move, of course. The girl's blissed out right now. Just wait a few minutes.
"What do you need?" It was the guy. Thinking about getting greedy.
"I'm really sorry about this, but I was supposed to meet some friends here, but they never showed, and now I'm stranded. I live halfway to Windom and I'm really desperate. If I could just borrow a cell phone for a second, I'll get out of your hair. I'm just so sorry."
A glance and she can tell she's in. The bottom-feeding catfish can't resist a bright shiny little Daredevil.
"This is all you had? A cross and a stake?"
"You're forgetting fear, suprise and ruthless efficiency. The almost fanatical devotion thing doesn't work as --" Then a slap silenced him.
"I don't accept this." Stossel-vamp paced across the alley, trying to work his black pea-coat like a horror-aisle big bad. "He killed the Queen. He cannot be working alone."
"Just for my own curiosity, when you say Queen, is that a heredity thing? Like she's the oldest, or was the first turned by the last leader? Or is this some creepy brood thing? Becau--aah!"
Xander didn't know his arm could bend that way. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. No, he was sure he didn't want to know.
"He's a fool." Selene talked about him like he wasn't there. "I led him here. I talked to him. If he has friends, they haven't shown up yet, and I'd think they'd want to."
Her face turned. The ridges spread from the bridge of her nose at perfect angles, disappearing into her hair. Xander struggled against warm hands but couldn't budge.
Six of them. Selene and Stossel, Slim Shady and posse behind them. Plus the two guys holding him. Eight. Not the good odds. The Hello, Larry odds.
"You're alone, aren't you? You thought you could get us one at a time, that we wouldn't catch on." Now who has a hook through their mou-?"
Her words were replaced by a scream, then a gurgle. The razor edges of the broadhead stuck four inches beyond her face. She fell to her knees.
Xander jerked his right arm out of that shocked thug's hand, following it with an elbow to his face. He turned and pulled up a fist in time to see a shaft fly into the brick, pinning the man's forearm.
Two exploded in quick succession as he turned around. He quickly grabbed his gear, looking for a threat. Stossel went at him, fangy and yellow-eyed until a cross pushed him back. Boots scraped to his right and he knew it was a Slayer. He lunged but stopped short at the sight of a barrel.
"You just back it up, yo."
He held it sideways, like in the hood movies. It took the pistol moving back and forth for him to notice Kennedy next to him. The gun backed up slowly, Stossel and and another guy behind it, then it turned a corner and was gone.
Kennedy took pressure off the draw and put the arrow back on the quiver. "So, that's the plan? I take it back. Buffy's not the worst leader ever."
"We're missing someone. Two bows and nobody walks away."
"She decided to go look around, a couple blocks north. I thought I'd keep up with you."
"You should've followed her."
"I do that and you're a blood donor."
Xander just pocketed his weapons and started walking.
"Gee, Xander. You're welcome. I'm always glad to help." Kennedy sighed and followed after.
She started shreaking when the girl hit him, and her voice stripped itself when he growled and hit back. He growled! People don't growl!
She found herself on asphalt, backing away on hands and feet while the fight went on. The girl had something in her hand. A knife?
His face is unrecognizable, changed. He seemed seven feet tall, dark and scary. He kicked and the girl flew across the alley, into the darkness behind a dumpster, then jumped out swinging.
A voice cries out to her left. Then the girl got up in front of her, kicking and angry and he was down.
She got on her feet and ran.
Xander started running when he saw Kennedy draw her bow. Damn it, he thought, show somebody The Two Towers on DVD and they think they're Legolas. A head-butt staggered the vampire on Beth's back, and she had turned. A powerful hit to the gut dropped the vampire to his knees, and she had his collar in her left hand and her stake in her right, about to swing down. He was still looking left, crossing the road and checking for traffic, when it hit.
When he looked forward again, she was on her knees. A dark stain was spreading on the side of her brown fleece coat, and he could hear the vampire's laugh over his deep breathing and his footfalls. This one was a young, stupid one, he knew, because -- pulling him off Beth and plunging a stake into his heart -- the smart ones don't get so distracted by a bleeding Slayer they forget about everyone else.
He heard the next running steps behind him and he didn't even bother to look. They had barbed heads, so they'd rip her all up more if he pulled it out more, or even jostled it. Beth's eyes were wide with fear and wet with tears, and she took short, noisy breaths and trembled.
"We can't move you with this arrow. I'm going to break it. It'll hurt. Ready?" He saw Beth nod quickly.
He grabbed the shaft as gently as he could with both hands
"Xander? Did I...? What did...? Is she....?"
"Get the van. Now!" He heard Kennedy run off. "And leave the bow! We wouldn't want you shooting anyone else."
