Author's Note – if there are events in this story you don't recognize from canon that's because this is a story in a series and they refer to the stories that came before this stand-alone
CHAPTER TWO
LONDON - 1978
Giles wanted to do anything but go home and commit the Wynne-Jones Grimoire to memory like a good little Watcher-in-training. He ducked into the Stillwaters Pub for a pint, unprepared for what he found; two Potentials, one of whom was underaged. The younger one looked ready to take flight at the sight of him. The older, barely legal, girl watched him with hard eyes. She didn't seem particularly concerned and that disappointed him. Giles thought he had been getting through to her.
She cocked her head at him, which was like looking a porcupine in the face with the way her hair was slicked up into punky spikes. She smirked, the silver chain going from earring to nose ring rolling along her cheek as it moved. "Come to spy or to play, Rupert?" she asked in her rough, New York accent.
"Neither. Coincidence," he said, heading to the bar. Seeing neither girl had left, Giles sat with them. He took a swing from his pint of ale.
"You going to tell on me?" Jackie Birdsall, the younger Potential, asked in a sullen tone.
Giles shook his head. "Not this time but you know if Mrs. Ainsworth finds out you were here, there'll be hell to pay."
Jackie's nose wrinkled as she shoved back her blond hair. "It's not fair. Mr. and Mrs. Dillingham don't hound Benny."
"That's because I'm too old to be Chosen now...or so they tell me," Benny replied, a bitter tone in her voice.
Giles understood it. His parents had told him about this frame of mind in unChosen Potentials. Benny, like other Potentials, had been found by a locator spell soon after birth. She had been adopted by the Dillinghams as an infant and raised by the Watchers with one goal in mind; she might be a Slayer one day. Instead of dolls and toys, Benny spent her childhood learning martial arts. Adolescence didn't give way to worries about hair and clothing. Instead, it was dominated by weaponry and memorizing demonology. As was typical of Watcher training, she was allowed no friends. Nor was she allowed to date and she was rarely in public by herself.
And now it was for nothing. Slayer powers seemed to have a preference for younger girls. Giles wasn't aware of any being Chosen once they were older than eighteen as if the bloom of adulthood interfered. Benny had come to his attention at a different club where he had seen the fire in her, the recklessness and worse, the near sociopathic isolation imposed by Watcher training. Here was a girl trained to kill who now had no targets, a weapon set aside and forgotten.
It was one of his own father's pet causes, the rehabilitation of these passed over Potentials. More often than not that meant tossing them into Special Ops where their life long training made them excellent soldiers and procurers when rare books and objects surfaced and needed 'liberated' into the Watchers' vaults. Giles had decided to take Benny on as a project. Her Watcher parents had given up on controlling her and she was rebelling against everything, right down to tossing out her adoptive parents name and resuming her birth one. Giles understood that all too well. Maybe in redeeming himself for his own misdeeds, he could save her, too. There was one slight problem; he thought maybe she liked him a little too much and that it might be a two-way street. In spite of being punked out, she was cute and only a few years younger than him.
"Be that as it may, you both know better than to be here but it'll remain our secret," he promised the girls.
"Good because we're actually talking business," Jackie said innocently and Benny kicked her under the table.
Giles caught the furious look on Benny's face and interpreted it to mean the girls were considering doing something dangerous. "What business would that be?"
"Nothing," Benny snapped.
"Oh, just tell him." Jackie lifted her pint glass to her lips, pursing them against it for a moment. "We think that some I baobhan siths /I are killing dancers at various clubs in town."
Giles' eyes narrowed. "And what makes you think you can take on a I baobhan sith /I ? They're not like regular vampires."
"They're wraith-like until it's time to feed," Benny said, fingering the metal studs that riveted up the curve of her ear. "When they feed, they're vulnerable to attack."
Giles refused to corroborate that. The I baobhan sith /I were very dangerous fey, incorporeal until they selected a man to dance with and kill, and then Benny was quite right.
"Besides, we'll have my sister, Elinor with us. Her magic will help," Jackie said, with far too much innocence for a Potential. "We'll save lives."
Giles knew what she meant was 'we'll be heroes.' He glanced over at Benny who looked away. He had no doubt the sisters had talked her into this. She knew it was a bad idea. "It's too risky."
Jackie made a lemony face. "You're just old."
Giles stared, taken aback. He had used that accusation many times in his life and hadn't expected to hear it applied to him. It was jarring but it didn't change his opinion of the situation. In his mid-twenties, he was several years older than Jackie, old enough to know Potentials and young mages had no business taking on such dangerous creatures and in a public place no less. Of course, it was difficult to corner I baobhan siths /I in non-public place. "You will not do this and that's final."
Jackie gave him a baleful look. Benny maintained her blank, bored expression. Giles knew nothing short of locking them up was likely to stop them. He quickly finished his ale and left the now silent girls, intending to report their plans to Ainsworth, the Birdsalls and the Dillinghams immediately. He heard the heavy footfalls behind him and he turned to see Benny following him, her Doc Martens clunking along the sidewalk. He couldn't help looking through the holes in her jeans to the laddered hose underneath.
"This is a very bad idea, Benny," he said.
She nodded, her spiked hair wavering like quills. "I know. Elinor and Jackie are determined to prove themselves. I figured they might just survive if they had someone with more experience."
Giles cocked an eyebrow at her, amazed at the teenaged arrogance in that statement. "Did you ever think to just tell Jackie's Watcher or her parents?" Benny's stare told him all he needed to know. He was reminded again that the gulf between teenagers and twenty year olds might as well be as big as the Atlantic. Benny was too young to know better, too young to trust adults and like most teens, completely self-assured that she knew everything.
"You'll tell them, won't you?" she stated matter-of-factly, fingering a rip in her shirt.
"It needs to be done."
"Siouxsie and the Banshees will be at the Vortex Club," she said, indicating that she didn't think that a grounding by Watchers or parents would stop the sisters, who were too determined to prove themselves.
Giles knew she wanted his help should it come to it. "What makes you think I'll come and help you?"
Benny grabbed him roughly, crushing her darkly painted lips to his. It was mere promise of something more to come. "Because I think you care what happens to me." She whipped around with all the grace years of training how to move and fight bestowed. She was inside the pub before he could formulate a response.
A cold weight seemed to sink into his belly. Maybe he was still raw with the knowledge of the wrongs he had done with Ethan and the others but he knew too well how arrogance coupled with power could go oh so very wrong. Benny was right; he did care.
Even though he knew that the Birdsalls and Mrs. Ainsworth had gotten together to ground the girls, Giles still swung by I Sex /I , McLaren's shop on King's Road, to buy an appropriate outfit. Once there, he decided to save money and only bought a T-shirt with a stunningly vulgar saying on it. To complete the look, he forewent the shop's overpriced trousers and jackets and went home, ripped up some old jeans, dug out his leather jacket and put in his earring. He headed for the Vortex club. He wasn't at all surprised to see Benny there. Jackie and Elinor weren't as easy to spot but he knew they had to be around somewhere.
Benny's blood red lips parted in a smile but Giles couldn't keep his gaze off her eyes and the dark lines of kohl arching toward her temples. It gave her a predatory feline appearance. A length of chain like a dog collar circled her neck, padlocked into place. "I knew you'd come."
"And I knew that you wouldn't listen to reason," he countered, his eyes straying to her tartan mini-skirt and torn fishnets that clung to her athletic legs. When she moved and the leather jacket she wore gaped open, he could see her tight little halter top and the nipple rings pressing against it.
"I would have. Jackie and Elinor wouldn't," she countered, fingering the new safety pin she sported through her eyebrow.
He tore his eyes away. "Where are they?"
She shrugged. "Around. Elinor is convinced she has a spell that will stop the I baobhan sith /I ."
"You don't sound as convinced," he said as someone crashed off his side and careened back out onto the dance floor. He had to admit there was something about Siouxsie's lyrics, a certain bleakness that fired up her audience.
Benny shook her head, the spikes of her hair slashing dangerously. "I don't think she knows as much as she thinks she does."
Giles was sure Benny was right. "Is this the music you were listening to in the library?" He vividly recalled the ruckus when she had come in with a tape deck, got out the book she was assigned to study and let fly with some cacophony that infuriated every Watcher in earshot.
"Nah, that was the Slits." Benny pointed. "There they are."
Giles followed the line of her arm to where Jackie and Elinor were across the room. He and Benny started pushing their way through the crowd. Giles stopped, seeing something that stood out even among the human pond of wild hair and horrid fashion sense, seven women in white dresses were winding their way through a group of angry youths. They looked like they should be at a wedding, not a club. Instead of drawing sneers from the crowd around them, several mohawked heads turned to watch them with appreciation. "They're beautiful," Giles said softly, almost worshipfully.
"The I baobhan sith /I ," Benny whispered, her voice tight with fear. Reading about them was one thing, facing them was another. "Rupert...Rupert!" Her voice sharpened, breaking him out of the demonesses' spell. Benny dug in the pockets of her leather coat and pressed a knife into his hand. "Stakes don't work with them, right?"
He shook his head. "Cold iron." He looked at the knife in his hand. It was old. He knew the blade. Benny had borrowed it from the Watchers' collection.
Jackie didn't wait for them to reach her. She went after one of the I baobhan sith /I but the creature turned incorporeal as her knife flashed towards it. It became solid enough to slap her away hard. Benny shoved her knife in the back of one as it fed of a tri-hawked young man, grunting with the force needed. The I baobhan sith /I died in a flash of light and Giles saw Benny rubbing her arm. She wasn't a Slayer, just a normal girl finding out how much strength was required to shove metal through tissues.
His own knife thrust met wispy air and he nearly stabbed the young man the creature had been feeding on. He heard Elinor chanting and realized what she was trying to do. She was attempting a spell to keep the I baobhan sith /I in their corporeal forms to make the fight more equal but she mispronounced some of the words. It wasn't going to work.
"Benny, get to Jackie. We have to get out of here. Elinor can't cast the spell," he shouted over the noise.
Benny nodded and tried to push her way through to Jackie who was quickly being backed into a corner of the room. Giles grabbed Elinor's arm, trying to drag the young woman away. She yanked free.
"I can do this!" she shouted at him.
"No, you can't. You have the words wrong," he replied.
She grabbed his arm, shaking it. "Then help me."
Giles glanced over at Benny and Jackie and saw there was no choice. The two Potentials were surrounded. Even as he started casting the spell, he knew it was too late. He heard Jackie scream until her throat was torn out. Benny's knife couldn't kill the I baobhan sith /I fast enough, not with them becoming wraiths at all the right times, and she, herself, was being lifted off her feet, pinned to the wall. Elinor was screaming Jackie's name as he completed the spell. Giles shoved through the crowds and finished off the demoness before she could kill Benny. Together, they managed to slay the rest of them. They were left bloodied and exhausted. Jackie lay dead on the floor.
Elinor collapsed at her sister's side. Cradling the fallen girl, she looked up at Giles and Benny with pure hate in her eyes. "This is all your fault. You let her die."
"Your fault? It sounds like it was more Elinor's fault than anyone's that her sister died," Buffy said after listening to Giles and Benny's story.
"It's not an easy thing to blame yourself," Giles said, pouring more scotch.
"You were a punk." Buffy grinned as if seeing Benny for the first time as something other than a potential enemy.
Benny laughed. "I still like the music."
"Should have met Spike," Buffy snorted. "But if you were a Potential, why aren't you a Slayer now?"
Benny ran a hand through her curly hair. "Possibly because I'm just too damned old. Or maybe I never really had the potential after all. The locator spell is not infallible, just look at you and Faith. You were both missed by the spell. So, if there are false negatives, it stands to reason there are false positives. I could have been one of those."
"So you went through all that stuff, lived like Kendra." Buffy shuddered a bit. "For nothing."
"You could look at it that way but I was slated to grow up in a Catholic orphanage otherwise," Benny said. "Don't know where Mom came from or where she went but she went to New York City to have and leave me."
"Sorry," Buffy mumbled, looking like she thought she had to say something. Benny just shrugged it off.
"How soon afterward did Elinor try to kill you two and end up in this prison?" Angel asked, sitting on the couch.
"Unfortunately not right away," Benny said. "If she had, I wouldn't worry much about her. She let it stew for a few years until she got better at the dark magics and then tried to kill us. She did manage to kill Ainsworth for not training Jackie well enough. Quite obviously she's gone off her rails a long time ago and has just enough power and knowledge to be very dangerous."
"So now what do we do about her?" Buffy asked, leaning back on the couch then sat up as if realizing she was perilously close to Angel.
"Lure her out," Giles and Benny said almost in one voice.
"She has to be dealt with," Giles added uneasily.
"Preferably before she decides going after my three remaining children would hurt me more than actually killing me would," Benny put in, her hazel eyes dim.
"Remaining? You've lost one?" Buffy's tone was more sympathetic towards the Watcher than it ever had been.
Benny's fingers twisted on the knobby end of her cane. "My eldest daughter was killed by the Harbingers along with the Potential she was training."
"I'm sorry," Angel said softly, his whole body seeming to sag. "We aren't meant to bury our children."
Even Giles wasn't immune to Angel's pain and the vampire's words generated what little sympathy Giles could ever imagine himself feeling for him. While Angel might be silent on the matter, he knew the vampire worried greatly over his son's nebulous fate. Buffy ran a comforting hand over Angel's arm.
Benny smiled gratefully. "No, we are not. My two sons are in college and have magic enough to protect themselves and my youngest is living with her father right now where she'll hopefully learn I'm not the world's biggest bitch and discipline isn't her enemy." She sighed. "Caprice is the most vulnerable of my three kids."
"It's a shame that the coven is scattered at the moment trying to keep a lid on all the paranormal outcroppings," Giles said. "We could use them."
"Well, you aren't so bad at the magic stuff," Buffy assured him. "Do we have a plan?"
"That's what we need to work on and I think the place to start is to let it be known I'm hiding out and I've hired a body guard," Benny said, looking at Angel. "Who's big on strength and magic. She'll try to take you out first then move on me. That should give us time to handle her."
"Um, will this magic hurt Angel?" Buffy cast a worried glance at him.
"Well, it'll be killing magic knowing Elinor but Angel should be immune...I guess," Benny said without conviction. "I don't honestly know."
Angel gave Buffy a determined look. "I guess we'll find out."