Chapter 21
The Dark Age
Giles' phone line is dead. You curse under your breath and snatch up your short sword, strapping it to the webbing hidden under your letter jacket. You grit your teeth and jog as fast as your leg will allow.
The sky is deep red, the sun low, flashing at you through the alleys as you limp on. The streets are darker than usual, and you realize suddenly that the lights are all out. All of them. People are out in the street when you get to Oak Park, some with torches, some candles. They are talking and joking among themselves. Giles and Violet are not among them. The stairs are agonizing, your leg feels full of needles of shrapnel, but you have to get to Giles. Because you think, why would a vampire slit a Slayers throat and let her precious, powerful blood bleed out?
I will drink you like champagne.
Because what of it wasn't a vampire that killed Kennedy at all?
The Queen killed her.
Because vampires lie too.
I won't hurt you. I promise.
You struggle in the near dark, your senses straining. You hear a crash and a scream or growl. No time for pain, you roar and lean into a sprint. Without breaking stride, you take the door, shoulder down, ripping it clear of its hinges and sweeping it aside. The room is lit with candles, Giles holding Jenny back as she brandishes the blade toward his throat.
You keep your momentum, tackling her hard, crashing you both into the plasterboard wall. She turns and buries the blade into your shoulder, deep- your arm spasms and tears into the plaster. The blade twists, shooting pain through you like a stun baton- muscles feel like they are punching you from the inside. You scramble in the plaster dust, grabbing for flesh, finding her ribs. Your punch is weak and awkward, but hear her cry out. She staggers, and claw your way out of the ruined wall.
Oh god, Giles is laying on the floor, blood flowing from between his fingers. You were too late. She stabbed him.
"You... you..." She cries, squaring off against you in the center of the room. "You have to understand. I had no choice. I am bound by blood… Faith, I had no choice, don't you s-"
Suddenly, the lights snap back on, the television too, and Jenny startles and looks right at it. You seize the handle of your sword and draw, smashing her blade with all your strength, embedding it deep into a ceiling beam. Your punch drops her cold. It takes everything you have not to drive the sword through her heart.
Collapsing onto the debris, the pain and fatigue start to swim over you. Your sword thuds to the floor, and you shortly follow. Giles tries to reach for you, but slumps and goes limp. One last task before you can rest. Just one. You crawl to the phone and dial with bloody, shaking fingers.
The night air is chill. From the high position of the hospital, you can watch as all over Sunnydale, blackouts roll. Suburbs go dead, flickering back to life minutes later. A dance of chaos in the night.
Thankfully, the hospital remains unaffected, it's backup generators working full bore. Somewhere inside Giles is in surgery. You hate hospitals. Slayer healing what it is, your stab wound has sealed up by the time you reached triage. You want to see him. To follow him in. But you hate hospitals. You breathe the cold night air instead and wait.
"You okay?" Violet says, appearing at your side. She looks terrible. Eyes red from tears. Ginger hair poking out haphazardly from her beanie.
"Nothing a little sleep won't fix. You know us." She nods, and hands you a coffee, which you hold purely for the warmth.
"Why do you do that? You know it's not what I meant." Vi says. "You really liked Jenny. Didn't you?"
"Doesn't matter. She killed Kennedy. Nearly Giles, and she would have come after us next. Whatever she was trying to hide, or protect, it meant more to her than any of us."
"I really thought she was one of us good guys. I just can't see her as anything but this kind, giving, brave woman."
"Maybe she is. But good is relative to the side your on. Isn't it?"
Violet looks away. Processing this, perhaps. Her world is still simple. The innocence of light and dark. You both watch as another blackout rolls across the town.
"Just so you know, Vi, Kennedy was screwing a vampire. I murdered my watcher. If you learn anything from this goddamn mess, it's that you never trust anyone. Ever."
She doesn't react, but you feel her hands close around yours.
"I trust Giles." She says. "And I… I trust you."
You pull you hands free and dump the coffee. "Then you are as big an idiot as I am." you say.
Violet watches as you leave.
It's midnight and Buffy doesn't answer her door. You climb the tree by her room, and her bed is made and quite empty. The window and curtains are open. She hates it shut; she is horribly claustrophobic.
You feel like a monster standing in her room uninvited. Your boots feel rude and cruel upon her carpet. Your heart hammers against your chest like a warning.
Your picture is by her bed. A Polaroid you remember someone taking of the two of you at the last game. Buffy's arm around your shoulder, pom pom held high, you look past the camera whilst she looks at you clearly with desire. This was before she kissed you. You touch the picture with your fingertip, almost afraid it might pop away to nothingness.
The hall is silent, the moonlight raking across the floor and banister. You check each room. And each is empty. Not a scrap of furnishings. Not even a bed.
You make your way down the stairs to the living room. Still, dustless. That museum feel. Paintings and artifacts from all over the world. Masks and rings and jewels and weapons. How obvious they are now to you. You have seen such things time and again in Giles' books. Upon a red velvet pillow, rests a gauntlet, wicked claws about the wrist. Another, a box engraved with arcane symbols.
And there, beneath the Inca Mummy picture, upon a table in perspex cube, a wooden octagonal box, with a familiar sphere. An Orb of Thesula.
Your eyes begin to blur with tears. Your throat clenched hard. If someone was to rip out your heart right now, it would probably feel no worse. You are no longer in command of your feet, they tread on, drawn towards the door. That one door that calls to you.
The cellar is key code locked. But you crush the steel and watch it spark between your fingers. The lighting on the stairs flickers on as you spiral down the stair. Slowly, so slowly.
The room has white walls of brightly lit plastic. A row of refrigerators with bags of blood to your left, a small sink and a medical incinerator. To your right another display cube, this one holding what appears to be a weapon. A long, double handled axe of bizarre red metal, the tip buried into stone. From an ornate fringe of metal at the end of the handle, a wooden stake protrudes. And whatever it is, you feel that sensation you had near Kennedy, near Violet, that spine deep pull, drawing you towards them, like they belong to you. Of course, they do, you are part of a whole. This belongs to you. It feels like yours.
"It's called The Scythe." Buffy says from behind you. You feel like you should go on guard, but your body is exhausted, numb from pain, your heart crushed. And so don't bother. Just keep on gazing at the rich red blade as it sings to your being.
"You feel it too, don't you?"
"You lied to me." You say.
"You lied to me too." She says.
You touch the cube. You feel the hum of deep magics inside you, stirring, like that feeling when you dream of the line of slayers. Of Kendra's death. Of India's. The line back and back until the faces blur into a savage roar.
"What are you?" You say.
"I am the same as you. That's why it calls to you." she sighs. "You are The Slayer, right?"
"And you are a vampire. I don't know how, but you are."
"I don't know what I am now." She sighs, sitting down upon the step. "But lifetimes ago when I wielded the Scythe, I was you. The Slayer. But I allowed myself to be seduced into the darkness. I broke the line. I bet you don't even dream of me. In that dream? The one we all have."
"You where turned."
"I was." she sighs. "And, so help me, I wanted it."
"What happens now?" you say.
"In your place? I would break the glass, take the weapon that was forged especially for me, and plunge it through the vampires heart."
You turn to look at her. She looks just like she always does. Small, innocent, tanned. Green eyes sad in the harsh white light.
"And what if I can't?"
"Because you are wounded? That I am a Slayer and a Vampire? Believe me, I won't stop you. I thought I could do this. Live a normal life, in the light. A do over. Be everything I always dreamed of being. Fall in love. Of course it had to be that of all the girls in all the world I could have fallen in love with? You had to be The Slayer. The powers-that-be have the sickest sense of humor, Faith, and when they have you, they never, ever let you go."
"You know what I meant. Why I can't."
"Funny thing about lies, go long enough, we start to believe them ourselves. I was lying to myself that I could be free of them. The powers and their games. I see that now. Because I can't change what I am. I can only hide it. And I am tired of all the lies. Aren't you? So let me make it easier for you."
She plays with the ring on her finger, a green gem set about with gold. Holding her breath, she pulls it from her hand and tosses it at your feet. Another follows, a Claddagh blackened with age that crackles blue as it hits the floor.
She watches as the skin of her fingers becomes pearlesent white, turning her hand this way and that. And, like milk flowing up her skin, the California girl tan melts in its wake, the freckles sink into that dreadful, crawling pallor. As it reaches her hair, the sun blonde gives way to raven black. Her face grows deathly white, the lips and chin stained pink like the master, and those lips curl to reveal teeth like you have never seen before on a vampire, serrated and spiteful. The last of her image to drown is those beautiful, kind hazel eyes. You feel the blood in you chill as those eyes bleed to red, the pupils piercing dots of black flecked around with gold and crimson.
The silver cross at her neck hisses against her skin.
She rises to her feet, and turns her palms towards you. You see an image of a naked woman, raven hair, rising from a bath of blood.
You smash the glass, feeling your body surge with power as you seize The Scythe, your demon part roars in the light, roars with a strength and purity you have not known. With a shudder your leg crackles as it knits together perfectly. Your skin sings as muscles tighten. You feel part of something deep and primal and… oh, how to be one with your purpose. One with yourself.
You are The Slayer.
And you roar as you bring down The Scythe with all your might.