Chapter 8
Ella

Ella dreamed of her parents. She could hear them arguing in quiet voices while she was hiding inside a cupboard. Somehow, even though the cupboard door was closed, her mother's face was clear to her view, pinched and scowling, her pale eyes narrow. Such an uncommonly plain woman – downright ugly when she got that expression on her face.

"I don't think that woman is even his daughter," her mother said. "She looks too old - and Lord knows how old she really is, seeing how she looks just the same as she did ten years ago."

"Her hair's different," her father said.

"Thomas!"

"Even if that's true, I don't see why it's any of our concerns."

"Is that really a man you want near Ella?"

"We've known him for ten years..."

"You have occasionally done business with him over the past ten years. That's not the same as knowing a man, Thomas. I don't think you know him at all. I certainly don't."

"It never seemed to trouble you before."

"She was a child before. She's not one now."

"Are you worried that he might want to marry her?"

"No. I'm worried that he won't."

Ella closed her fists hard in anger, her nails making marks in the skin. She could smell the blood seeping through, which surprised her even in the dream, because she wasn't supposed to do that, she was still human...

...Her mother's pale eyes stared up at her, unseeing. And her father – her other father – was licking the blood away from his lips.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "Would you like a taste? I'm afraid she's already dead, but the blood is still warm."

She laughed and took the corpse from his arms, placing her teeth at the mark his had left, and for the first time, she felt her face change as she drank deeply from her mother's throat.

"You're a wicked child," her mother told her, eyes still cold and dead.

Patience was poking at the other corpses with the toe of her mauve silk shoe. "She should have killed them herself," she pointed out. "You can't go around eating all of her relatives for her."

"Never let it be said that I don't take care of my children," Mr. Merriweather said.

Horace laughed and broke a finger off Ella's youngest brother, gnawing on it like a peppermint stick. It was still decades until Horace would be born, but there he was never the less.

Patience stepped up to Ella, taking her face in long, slender hands. "She's not your child anymore now that she's human." Her fingers drew circles on Ella's cheeks, and she smiled. "She needs her family back."

"I don't remember their names," Ella whispered. It seemed important to know their names, but she didn't. They were just corpses.

"Don't worry about it," Patience said. "It's all over for them. It's all over for me. Is that what you want? Do you want me to take you with me?"

Ella closed her eyes. "Yes."

When she opened them again, the first of the Slayer girls was staring at her. She turned her face away to avoid the gaze. There were drops of something wet on her mouth, and when she licked her lips she realized that it was tears. Clumsily, she dried them away with a manacled hand.

"Whose names is it you can't remember?" Faith asked.

"Fuck you," Ella said.

"How did you like the pizza?"

Ella glanced down at the dry pizza crusts on the floor. She had eaten the rest. More than that, she had enjoyed the rest. Raw meat was one thing - she could justify raw meat to herself, claim that it was just blood with a bit of flesh on it. But pizza? Even with the anchovies, it wasn't much of a kill. Any day now, she'd turn as veggie as the guy rotting on the couch - not that he was there now, she noticed. Maybe he was eating or going to the bathroom or doing another of those gross human things she'd been reintroduced to lately.

"Are you here to prod me with crosses again?" she asked, trying to avoid the issue.

"Nope. We're gonna have a little talk."

She grimaced. "I'd rather have the crosses."

"What were you dreaming?"

She leaned her face on her arms and sighed. Suddenly she missed her parents something fierce - her nagging mother who could suck the fun out of every endeavour, and her spineless, bland father. She had watched them die, and she had laughed.

This was ridiculous, she told herself. They would have been dead now in either case. Not like Patience and the others, whose lives had really been cut short by their murder.

"Well?"

"None of your business," she mumbled.

Faith grabbed her by the hair and lifted her head up, slamming it into the wall. "Me and Buffy are going in tonight. That means everything is my business. Everything you know, I want to know."

"You do know everything I know!" Ella hissed. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm stuck in this place. Have you seen my f... any vampires bringing news to me?"

The sarcasm she had been going for was destroyed by her slip-up. She had started to say "father", but with the dream still fresh in mind, it gave her a bad taste in her mouth.

"You've known this guy for hundreds of years," Faith said. "I'm figuring you learned a thing or two that would be useful."

Ella had to laugh at that. Wow, the Slayer was really reaching for straws now. "You're not getting anywhere near him."

Faith remained silent at this.

"You know that, don't you?" Ella continued after a moment's pause. "You're gonna get the cannon fodder - dozens of new vamps with their heads up their asses. There's no way you can kill them all. You're gonna die tonight - you and Blondie. Your lover's gonna die here of old age, and I..." She swallowed hard. "I suppose I'll starve to death chained to this wall. Unless the doc decides to take me home and dissect me."

"No one's gonna dissect you," Faith said, clearly irritated.

Ella scoffed. "You don't even know what to do with me. Why should I tell you anything?"

Faith slapped her, but she only raised her head higher.

"Fine," she said. "You hurt me. Big deal. It doesn't change anything. You've already done all you will do to me, and I'm bored. You won't kill me, and you won't set me free. I don't even care what you do anymore."

"Which would you prefer?" Faith asked icily.

The question wasn't serious, but Ella considered it anyway. At long last, her answer was: "Either. Offer me either, and you're on."

Faith stood up abruptly and turned away, hands in her pockets.

"Come on, Slayer," Ella said. "Haven't you ever killed someone with a pulse before?"

"Yeah," Faith admitted. Her face was still turned in the other direction, but there was something in her voice that resembled anguish. So, good news and bad - because what was the point of Faith having murdered someone, if she wasn't willing to do it again?

"What are you waiting for, then?" Ella said, egging her on.

Faith's reply was long in waiting. Finally she turned back, suggesting: "I have a... friend, in Brazil. She's a pretty powerful witch. Went over the edge there for a while, so she knows... well, she'd know a thing or two on how to come back from that. If she's willing to take you on, you could go there."

Ella raised her eyebrows, trying to figure out that suggestion. It wasn't freedom, that much she understood. "Are you saying you want her to mentor me?"

"Something like that, yeah," Faith said, sounding a little embarrassed.

"I don't even speak Portuguese!"

"She's American. She just lives there."

Ella considered that. It was a shitty option, being forced into the goody two-shoes mold by some smelly herb-squisher in South America. But she couldn't deny that it was better than being chained to a wall. "Got a question," she said. "If I don't like it there... can I still die?"

Faith looked puzzled. "Why wouldn't... oh." Her expression went from puzzled to sick. "Sure. Knock yourself out."

Ella nodded thoughtfully. "Okay, it's a deal."

"Good."

"Still think it'd be easier if you just killed me."

"Easier for you, maybe," Faith said, and there was a hint of a cynical smile on her lips. "I'm selfish enough to not want to. Okay, settled then! First thing tomorrow, I'm calling her."

"What if you die tonight?" Ella countered.

"Then I'll write my will today and let her inherit you."

Oh, great, a joke. Her entire future was on the line here, and the Slayer thought it was all a chance to be witty. So now she'd have to wish for the safe return of a Slayer - and a Slayer fighting her fucking father. It was unnatural.

She sat down cross-legged and started to talk. "He only ever made three people before. Patience, Horace and me. Horace made Pearl, Patience made Jeremy and Dean. Those two are the only ones he's got left now, and they never made anyone before this. Dean's a fuck-up anyway. Jeremy..." She wrinkled her nose. "Jeremy's a jerk, but he's smart. He'll play dirty tricks on you."

"And your sire?" Faith asked.

She'd told them over and over again that she was a vampire, not a human. So why did that word, "sire", bother her so much? "He's good. Very good. Clever and persuasive, will fuck with your head every way from Sunday. Maybe not much of a problem in a fair fight - but you're not gonna get him in a fair fight. Not him. You'll get the new ones, just like last time."

"Yeah, well, the only problem with them is that there's so damned many of them."

"They're idiots," Ella agreed, "and it's not hard to get idiots to be loyal. Doesn't change the fact that he's only known them for a couple of nights. Sooner or later, they'll start figuring out that he doesn't give a shit what happens to them, and they'll scatter all over town. And when one starts, they'll all go - well, almost all, anyway," she amended, thinking of the floozie who'd shown her hots for Dean. Probably a few others like that in the bunch. "If that TV broadcast is anything to go by, it's already happening. He'll keep turning them, but I doubt you'll even find as many vampires in there as you did last time."

"I'll just have a whole city full of them instead," Faith said sarcastically.

"And a chance to take them out one at a time. They're not gonna keep turning new ones without him to tell them to. You'll stand a chance of winning the upper hand again. Supposing you survive tonight, of course. There'll still be enough of them left to give you real trouble. If I were you, I'd wait until I was sure the tables had turned."

"Wouldn't that mean more people dying?"

Ella snorted. "Well, yeah."

"Kinda rules out that option, then."

Slayers and their sense of nobility. Ella rolled her eyes. She wouldn't have figured Faith for the type, but sometimes you were wrong about people. Didn't matter to her, though. She'd kept her part of the deal, and if Faith was playing fair, she'd be heading off to Brazil whether the Slayers survived the night or not.

If Faith wasn't playing fair, she figured she was screwed either way.

The tall old guy with the prodding fetish entered the room. Ella wrapped her arms protectively around her knees, but he barely seemed to notice her existence.

"I just got off the phone with Wyndam-Pryce," he told Faith. "He has dug up an old spell that will let a Slayer connect to previous Slayers through their possessions. It seems it was used in the old times as a method to pass down wisdom through the generations."

Faith rose to her feet, frowning. "You mean I could use it to talk to Signe?"

"Get information directly from the source. Yes. The only downside is that it has to be performed at night."

"Yeah, fine," Faith said, and then she thought about it. "Oh. Well, okay, we do that tonight and postpone the slayage until tomorrow."

"Faith," old proddy said, exasperated, "If you would just try to think like a Slayer instead of a girlfriend..."

"If you would just try shutting up, that would help too," Faith countered. "We get this done first, and that's one load off my chest. Tomorrow day we take care of the vamps. That way they're weaker, I'm a more focused fighter, and if we're real lucky, we've even got Robin back."

Ella noted with interest that Faith didn't mention anything Ella had told her, and yet the revised plan would allow for more time for things to go wrong at the Merriweather house.

"I know what I'm doing," Faith continued, "so stop Watchering me."

He stood silently for a while, and then his mouth twitched a little. "Old habits are hard to break."

"Yeah? Well, you were a plastic surgeon for longer than you were a Watcher. I don't see you offering me a nose job."

"Would you like one?"

She growled at him. "Fuck off. We're doing it my way?"

"We're doing it your way," he agreed.

The two of them started to leave for the kitchen. Ella was suddenly worried that this turn of events would mean that Faith forgot everything about her, and she called out, "Hey, Slayer?"

Faith turned back, caught her eye, and after a moment's pause nodded. "Right. I gotta call Willow."