Mothers Chapter 32

Fighting Till the End

Buffy's POV

Ugh... I don't feel so great. I feel like I got hit in the back of the head with a steel baseball bat wrapped in velvet or something.

All my joints ache as I reach behind me and feel the back of my head.

Well, I'm not bleeding so that's good.

I try and shake my head but a massive headache puts a stop to that.

Ow!

I put a hand to my forehead and something cold and metal hits my face.

What the?

I open my eyes despite the pain and there's a shackle around my wrist. It's attached to a metal chain which I follow to the hook on the wall. I try to use my other hand to grab the chain but I'm stopped half way by the shackle around that wrist.

I'm chained to the wall.

I step away from the wall but my feet are held back by more shackles.

"What's going on?"

I struggle against my bonds but I'm still groggy from whatever happened.

"Don't bother trying to get free."

I look in front of me and there are at least 5 guys standing in front of me. I think I recognize the middle one when he speaks.

"You should still be pretty out of it from the Mickey I slipped into your drinks."

It's the waiter from the restaurant.

The waiter was evil? I guess if he's evil then he isn't really a waiter, but I didn't really see that coming. He seemed nice enough.

"And even if you're not, you don't have enough time to stop it anyway."

Stop it?

"Stop what?"

"The return of our Lord and Master..."

All 5 of them vamp out and part like the sea to reveal Faith's mother standing about 20 feet away, smiling at me like a housewife with a knife in hand and some weird robe on. She waves at me by curling each finger one at a time.

"The all powerful Omega, so he may be with his lover."

Faith's mom and Omega are lovers?

Just then she moves out of the way of a large slab of stone, and Faith is lying there, shackled to the flat top of some sort of altar.

I think she's still out.

I pull as hard as I can on my chains.

What the hell is going on?

Faith's POV

Damn... what the hell happened? I remember feeling dizzy and needing some air, then B was standing over me, and then nothing. I think I passed out.

"FAITH!?"

That's B's voice. Why is she yelling?

"Faith, wake up!"

I open my eyes and stare up into a massive hole in the stone ceiling. The moon is about 3 quarters of the way covering it.

I'm definitely not in a hotel restaurant. How long was I out? What's going on? And why do I feel like I was hit by a ton of bricks?

I try to get up but I can't. Something is holding my hands and feet down.

"Oh good, you're awake."

What the hell?

My mom is standing a few feet away in some kinda robe with a knife in her hands. I look around and we're in the cave where I killed Omega.

I'd remember this place anywhere. The world was saved and ended for me at the same time in this place. It's not something you forget.

"I was worried you might sleep through it all and we couldn't continue catching up. That would've made you a very bad girl Firecracker. Thank god for slayer metabolism."

"What?"

"Yes, I know. There isn't much a mother doesn't know about her daughter."

I knew it, this thing can't be her. It's just some evil demon thing that made itself look like my mother.

"You're not my mother. She's dead."

That thing wearing my mother's face comes up and kinda dangles the knife over me.

"Oh no honey, I'm very much alive. It's just that..."

Her eyes meet mine and it's like the air around her shifts.

What the?

I'm suddenly getting some massive vampire energy off her instead of the human one I had a second ago.

"I've never been quite what I seemed."

"What are you?"

She grins at me.

"More than meets the eye my little Firecracker, so much more. See I can remember every moment of you squirming inside my belly, your father's humanity giving you that horrible soul of yours that made me sick. I always remember it every time I have one, yet I can't seem to ever stop it from happening."

She shudders.

"Anyway, I am very much the woman who gave you life. Just like your human father provided the seed that created you, unfortunately, but you have so much more in your blood than humanity. Didn't you ever wonder where your incredible strength came from?"

I glare at her.

"I'm a slayer."

"Yes, and I'm so very proud of you for that. But you're not like other slayers, and I'm the reason. That's why I had Omega's henchmen create that formula and use that spell on you while you were in a coma. I knew that if I brought out that part of you then you'd have enough power to kill your cute little ex over there."

She points to where B is chained to a wall. I struggle to get out of my bonds but I'm still a little weak.

"Course she wasn't your ex at the time, but I had my suspicions about you two being 'Two into one' from the moment you met. What I didn't count on was the terribly annoying Powers That Be stepping in and screwing it all up with the whole amnesia thing. I figured they wouldn't on account of who your parents are, but they did. So instead you became the greatest slayer since, well, me."

What? That's a load of crap.

"Now that's bullshit. How the hell could you be a slayer too? And what about the fact that you were buried back in Boston?"

She grins at me with a coldness I've never seen, even back in Boston.

"Well, to answer your second question first... you did bury me back in Boston, that wasn't a hallucination. I just wasn't actually dead at the time, just sleeping. See when I realized there was a chance you would be a slayer, I decided to leave and travel the world for a while. But I couldn't very well just up and disappear, I knew The Council would try and track me down if you ever did become one... annoying little British people. So I decided to use a technique I use every century or two so no one catches on to what I really am. I injected myself with a sleeping potion. And since I knew it would be suspicious of me to rise from the grave, I had my dear sweet Omega's vampires perform a couple spells I learned over the years on random people in Boston cemeteries to make it seem like they weren't there for me. The Council may be a bunch of assholes for what they did to me, but I will admit they've gotten smarter over the years. As for how I'm a slayer... what do you know about The First Slayer?"

The First Slayer?

"I was never much for history MOM!"

"She was the one who sent Omega out of this dimension."

Whatever it is that calls itself my mother turns to B.

"Very good Buffy..."

"But she was killed during the battle and after that the next slayer was called."

"Well, that's the part of the story the Watcher's Council likes to tell, bunch of ungrateful pricks. What they like to leave out is that in order for The First Slayer to do what she did, she had to be up close and personal with Omega and the portal to do it. She was the closest person to Omega at the time he got kicked out of this dimension. And the conveniently 'unconnected' story of The First Vampire is that Omega fed off a human before leaving this happy little dimension. And who was closest to Omega at the time? Me, that's who... so here I am. I've spent the last billion years or so as part human, part vampire..."

The air shifts again and there's a new energy from her... a familiar energy, a slayer's energy.

"... and part slayer..."

She does a twirl like she's in a fashion show.

"Which brings us to where we're here..."

"How's that?"

I struggle against my bonds but I'm still too weak.

"Well, you see, my dear sweet Omega and I have had an on again, off again thing going on since about half a billion years ago or so."

She sighs like she's remembering happy times and then turns to me with that glare.

"That is until you had to go and kill him."

"Yeah well, you can probably see I'm horribly broken up about it."

She rolls her eyes.

"Just like you were broken up about your sweet little Dawnie being pushed off that tower."

I pull at my bonds to attack her but they don't break.

"Don't talk about Dawn that way!"

I look at B as she says that before I can. My mother just laughs at both of us. We struggle to get free but we don't budge.

"You know, I had such high hopes for you my darling daughter. You had the potential to be a truly evil person, especially after you started killing people. But you have too much good inside, too much humanity in you to ever really give in to evil. It's disgusting really, too much of your father in you I suppose. He was always talking about the difference between right and wrong, until I got him drunk anyway. He was always a lot more fun once he was drunk. But you just had to be a good little girl like him and do the right thing."

She scoffs at the thought.

"You HAD to kill Omega. So now I'm going to have to kill you to get him back. It's kind of poetic if you think about it."

My mother looks up at the huge hole in the ceiling and I follow her gaze while trying to get loose. The moon is almost completely covering the hole.

"Looks like it's almost that time..."

She grabs my shirt and starts cutting it off me with her knife. I squirm to try and stop her but there isn't much I can do.

"What are you doing?"

She takes what's left of my shirt off me and then starts cutting into my pants. I hear B struggle and scream in vain.

"Stay away from her!"

Mom just chuckles at Buffy's plea.

"I'm making sure you don't get blood on your clothes honey. I always taught you to be cleanly Firecracker, you know that. The ritual calls for the blood of the one who killed him to be sacrificed on an altar in the place where he was killed. Then the real ritual can begin."

As she pulls off the last of my pants, the ground starts shaking. It isn't long before the whole place is shaking.

"It's time..."

Then I feel it, the blade slices into my skin above my shoulder. I hold back from screaming as she cuts my other shoulder. I can feel the warmth of my blood on my skin as she cuts me just above the elbow on each of my arms.

"I'm sorry Firecracker..."

I feel a little weak as she cuts me in two places below the ribs.

"But Omega is a lot more important to me than you ever will be. And ritually spilling the blood of the one who killed him until they're dead is the only way to begin to bring him back."

I feel a worse kind of light headed as the knife slices into each of my wrists. My eyes get blurry and it's hard to breathe. The world starts to fade around me.

"Screw you Mom..."

Everything goes black.

Buffy's POV

I pull as hard as I can on the chains holding me against the wall as I see that THING cut up Faith's pants.

I can't let this happen. I can't let her kill Faith and bring back Omega.

I pull hard on my bonds but again they don't budge. My head is starting to feel better but I don't think I'm up to full strength yet.

I have to save Faith though. I don't care if she is The First Slayer and The First Vampire or whatever. I'm gonna kill her for doing all this. She's going to sacrifice her own daughter to bring back the worst demon in the world. The one that killed me... I can't let that happen. There has to be a way to stop it.

I pull on my chains but it doesn't do anything. All of the sudden the place starts shaking. I hear Fray say two words.

"It's time..."

No, it can't be.

I pull with everything I am on my chains. I feel the chains give a little.

Yes...

I pull a little harder and they give more. The five vamps in front of me have kinda turned around and stopped paying attention to me. The shaking of this cave gets so bad that pieces of the cave ceiling are falling. I make one last try at my chains with as much power as I can muster and they come off the wall. Immediately I drop into a crouch and pull at my ankle chains. They break a lot easier.

My strength must be coming back. I don't know if it's enough to stop that bitch who calls herself Faith's mother, but I have to try. Faith was right about her. I should never have trusted her. Faith was more of a mother to Dawn then Fray will ever be.

I can see Fray cutting into Faith as I come up behind the five vamps, my chains in hand. I raise my hand and swing the chain at the vamps, hitting the one that drugged us in the back of the head. He goes down hard as the other four turn to me. Again I raise my hand above my head, swinging the chain in a circle to keep them at a distance as they surround me. I glance over at the altar and Fray has stopped cutting Faith.

I have to get to Faith, fast.

One of the vamps attacks and I swing the chain at him, smacking him in the side of the face. Two of the vamps are crushed as a piece of the ceiling comes down on them. I knock the other one out with a couple fists to the face and a swing of the chain.

Now to save Faith...

I turn to Fray who is standing between me and Faith. I grip the chains in my hands tightly.

"Let her go!"

"You're too late bitch. It won't be long before my daughter joins little Dawnie and her mother in the great beyond. Then the rest of the ritual can begin."

My fists clench so hard that I think I might break my hand.

"I'm gonna kill you a little more than usual."

I rush at her, swinging the chains. She ducks my first few swings but when she blocks the next, it wraps around her wrist. I twist the other chain around my hand like brass knuckles as I pull her towards me and hit her right in the face. She stumbles back but recovers quickly and grabs the chain around both our wrists and pulls me forward. I duck her first punch as I stumble forward but get my balance back enough to tackle her at the midsection to the ground. As soon as we hit the dirt she kicks her feet up into me and I go flying, jerked to the ground by the chain.

Ow!

After a second I do a break dance spin to bring my foot down on Fray's shoulder. The cave where Omega was killed continues to shake as I twist her arm at the wrist with my foot firmly pressed to her shoulder.

"How could you do this, to your own daughter?"

She looks up at me, despite the pain.

"She did it to Dawn. This isn't any different."

I twist her arm more while undoing the chain from her wrist.

"It IS different."

She pulls her feet up and I have to roll away to keep her from kicking me. We face each other again.

"She killed Dawn to save the world. You're killing her to destroy it. Faith loved Dawn like a daughter, what's your excuse?"

She comes at me and I dodge her punch, kicking her in the back of the knee. She goes down on one knee long enough for me to get behind her and wrap the chain around her neck. I pull back on the chain and force my foot into her back for more leverage. She grabs at the chain as she starts to choke.

I separate my arms to hurt her a little more and feel her neck squeeze under the pressure. She bleeds a little where the chain digs into her neck. I add to the pressure by pushing my foot into her back more and her spine starts to crack in her neck. With one final tug I pull my arms as far apart as they'll go, separating her head from her body. I let go of the chains as her body falls limp to the floor, setting itself on fire before dusting.

Faith...

I run over to the altar where Faith is lying as the cave stops shaking.

Oh god...

"Faith?"

I check her neck for a pulse.

It's barely there.

"Faith, don't die..."

I break the shackles holding her to the altar.

"God Faith don't you dare die on me."

I cradle her head in my hands and check to see if she's breathing.

"You're all I have left."

End of Chapter 32