"Voice of the Opposition"
III.
"V for Vendetta"
The slender red haired girl, wearing dark clothes and with a knapsack thrown over her shoulder, walked alone down the alley between warehouses. She abruptly stopped and looked both ways. Seeing no-one, she lifted a rifle she had been hiding against her side and aimed it up in the sky just over the angular roof-line of one of the warehouses and pulled the trigger.
The noise seemed loud as the grappling hook went out, trailing a length of rope behind it. Vi dropped the rifle and began to climb. Within moments, she was on the roof.
She reached into her pocket and remove a phone and a length of wire with an earpiece on it. Vi put the earpiece in her ear. She pressed and held down one of the buttons on the phone for a second or so until it automatically began to dial. The phone rang once before it was picked up.
"I'm in," Vi said curtly.
"According the to the blueprints from the planning office there should be a skylight nearby that you should be able to use to get inside."
"I see it, Casey." Vi unshouldered her backpack. From within it she produced a rope and tied it off, dropping the other end into the darkened room below through the open skylight. Sliding the pack back onto her shoulders took hold of the rope and stepped back to the edge of the skylight.
"Be careful, Vi. You know what you're walking into."
"That's why I know it has to be done." Without another word Vi slipped back into the darkness.
It was well known among those that worked for him that Dunhaven didn't like to be disturbed. But if disturbing him was necessary he wouldn't bite your head off, which wouldn't exactly be an uncommon penalty in the business they worked in.
Cameron entered Dunhaven's office. The boss, Dunhaven, was sitting behind the desk in the middle of a large dark office. The only major source of light in the room was around the desk in the middle of it where the boss was sitting.
Dunhaven was a mid-sized man. He was neither large nor was he particularly small. He had dark hair. It was his actions that defined him, and this man was capable of being incredibly ruthless and cruel.
"Sir," said Cameron quickly. "Something's off. Samuel and Fitzpatrick aren't answering any radio calls."
"I think it will be quite a while before you hear from either of them again," a voice spoke up. A dark figure stood framed in the doorway. There was light behind her, but the figure remained cloaked in it's own shadow. "But, then again, theology was never exactly my thing."
Dunhaven stood up from his desk quickly. "Who the hell are you?"
"I am the vanguard," Vi answered Dunhaven cryptically.
Cameron lifted his radio and murmured quietly into it.
"A single, vibrant-haired vixen, a valkyrie, vowed to vouchsafe the world." The slender red haired girl moved a few steps closer, a casual playfulness visible in her every movement and tugging at the corners of her small, thin mouth. "I am the vexation of a veritable variety of villainous vampires, vehement and voracious in their vileness and violence. Though vaunted in my venture versus the vampires, my verbiage has become very much . . . verbose. Any more than that, for the moment, will remain strictly verboten." She smiled teasingly. "A girl has to have some secrets. But, I suppose, holding ourselves to at least a veneer of veracity, you may simply call me Vi."
A voice laughed softly in Vi's ear. "We really have to keep you out of Andrew's comic book collection. It's starting to get to your head."
Vi simply allowed herself a quiet smile.
"So you're like a crazy person."
"I've been called worse. Often by people who like to call themselves friends. But what is crazy anyway? Is it crazy to walk into a building that's full of people who would love to see you dead?" Vi glanced over as a few guards came into the office. She seemed unconcerned as they kept their distance from her. "Then call me crazy. I've done it more than once. But, when it comes down to it, I prefer the term . . . Slayer."
"Slayer." The word didn't seem to phase Dunhaven at all. He spoke it the mildly curious way of someone who as discovered something just the slightest bit odd. "Vi the Vam . . ."
The words were cut off with a silent drawing of breath. Dunhaven's eyes had gone wide as he looked at her.
"You're Violet McClanahan." Despite himself he had taken a step back. In spite of that it took Dunhaven only the briefest moment before he had collected himself. He now looked at her with a far more calculating eye, and certainly with far more interest. "You're the one they call the Untamed Flame. The one bright spot in the Watcher's Council's brand new army of mediocrity. You've made quite the name for yourself. Oh, I've heard of you."
"I see our reputations precede us," Vi replied. A coldness had slipped into her voice. A harsh chill that would give even the most battle tested of soldiers pause. "I wish I could say yours was as sterling.
"Brian Michael Dunhaven, born in Glasgow in nineteen seventy three. A murderer. A wannabe mafioso. Certainly someone who doesn't shy from using vampires and demons as his enforcers in his hopes of carving himself a little empire. A man who was confronted by operatives in the employ of the Watcher's Council on more than one occasion in the past few years. Some of the operatives ended up dead, others with the most ghastly of injuries. Like your other opponents, the Council never stopped you, never managed to strike a decisive blow, but they forced you to be cautious. They certainly made your gradual expansion slower than you might have hoped.
"But," Vi looked around almost carelessly, "you seem to have flourished since the Council floundered." Expensive art and a few elegant pieces of furniture filled the shadowy edges of the room. "Business is . . . good.
"But here is where the story takes a particularly tragic turn. Two weeks ago, more or less, you came across a girl. A spunky little blond thing named Mika Hughes. Fun-loving, a free spirit I think people would call her. Certainly not without a particularly colorful vocabulary. Your "boys" gave her a particularly rough go." Vi cast a cold look in the direction of the shadowed figures in the far reaches of the room before her eyes came back to Dunhaven. "I'll spare you the details, because I can't stomach them. She spent the last week or so in the hospital. You see how I'm not smiling. Mika is one of my sisters, and I really don't like it when people fuck with my sisters.
"For that crime, among your many others, the penalty is death." She delivered the sentence in a cold and merciless voice. "You have two choices here, Brian. You can die quiet, or you can die screaming. It's your choice."
"I think . . ." Dunhaven cast a nervous look around. His gaze went from his soldiers and then back to the single girl standing against all of them again. "I think you overestimate yourself."
"Do I?"
Dunhaven simply looked at her for a long moment.
"I think we're gonna have to play this one out, princess. I'm not exactly the die quietly kinda guy." He glanced meaningfully at his soldiers, which had begun to spread out in anticipation of the combat that was to come. "And whattayaknow, I like my chances."
Vi smiled nervously. "I think this one's gonna be messy."
"I think you're right."
The next moment was chaos. One of Dunhaven's men moved and suddenly the small girl exploded into motion.
A knife flashed across the room and one man fell to the floor with an abrupt cry.
There was a sword in Vi's hand. The sword came around as one of the men came at her. It sliced into one side of his neck, across, and down into his opposite shoulder, taking his head away from his body. The man was betrayed as a vampire a moment later as the body crumbled into ash.
Dunhaven's men were professionals, but Vi moved through them like water between fingers, and one body fell to the floor after another. Severed necks. Spilled guts. Her sword dealt with most of them, but at least one guard died in grotesque spasms as a momentarily distracted Vi was forced to reach out and rip his throat out with her bare hand. She ended up covered with his blood.
She turned from this barbarity to see Dunhaven standing opposite her, raising his hand, palm out. Fire erupted out of his hand, exploding out at her. Vi rolled out of the way of the fireball as the floor where she was standing turned blackened and cracked. She twisted out of the way of another fireball a moment later. A statue standing against the wall behind her cracked like thunder beneath the intense heat.
Vi stepped sideways this time, avoiding a third fireball, but she had finally gotten in close as Dunhaven backed up toward the wall, and her sword swept down, cleaving his hand clean from his body. The final stroke came as Vi drew her sword back and stabbed it straight through Dunhaven's chest and into the wall behind him. His mouth opened in silent agony. His eyes bulged out.
"For Mika," she told him in that final moment as she twisted the sword. Moments later she pulled the blade free and the body fell limp limbed to the floor in a pool of blood.
For a long time after that everything was quiet. Just Vi standing silently in a room with a whole mess of bodies. Her arms fell to her sides. The bloodied sword slipped out of her loose fingers and fell to the floor.
After an undeterminable moment she came to realize someone had been calling her name.
"I'm still here, Casey," said Vi. "I'm still here."
"So it's finished then."
"No," said Vi, as she unshouldered her pack so she could fetch the digital camera from her bag. "I don't think it ever will be."
"This is good work, Vi," Giles said distractedly as he looked down at the glossy photographs, vivid in all their horror. Blood stained surfaces and the pained faces of corpses on display in haunting clarity. "Very good work. I'll fax these over to MI5. I can't say that they'll be particularly sad to see this bastard go."
Vi looked at him incredulously. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
Giles glanced over at her. "What do you want me to say, Vi? You knew this was a kill mission when you went out. Human or no, not even the government wanted this son of a bitch brought in alive. It's a little late to worry about the pinch of morality."
"Not about him, Giles," Vi responded harshly. "Fuck him. I'm not losing any sleep over that bastard. Not a fucking wink. I'm talking about Mika. You knew what you were sending her into, and you sent her alone."
Still holding the photographs Giles took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses briefly. "Adversity helps build us. We get hurt and we pick ourselves up. How else are we ever to discover what we are capable of? When Buffy faced the Master she became stronger for it. I was trying to help Mika discover that for herself."
"She was raped, Giles. It's not like she's home recovering from a few bruises and a slight shock to her ego."
Giles frowned. "That's not something I enjoy being reminded of. But it's a risk every one of our girls takes when they walk out into the dark."
"And there is a difference between a small nest of vampires and some kind of fortified crime syndicate that has lasted this long. It was a fucking mafia, Giles. Organized. Efficient. Ruthless. Sending a green slayer into that was just asking for a corpse."
"There are things I regret," Giles admitted sadly. "But every slayer has to learn what it's like to be alone against the darkness. Every slayer has to find something inside to give them the strength to persevere in spite of that."
"But that's kinda the point. Mika never had to be alone."