Chapter 3: Aysha
Rena was careening through the tunnels of the small warren, her bare feet were kicking up the layers as sand beneath as she passed by. "Aysha". Rena called out within each small hall wherein the camels were tended. "Aysha, where are you? father has been ready since the noon-passing." She spotted the camel that the merchants names 'kings-eye' and stopped to search out the shadowed areas behind the animal. Areas not lit from the apertures sited in the roof above. "Aysha… are you there sister?"
A small girl child's face slowly emerged from the dark alcove behind the obstinate camel. The animal stood as in in watchful guard over the child.
"I am down here Rena!" The girl's timid voice hailed in response. Her face could be made out barely lit between the animals legs.
"What are you doing down here with this stubborn beast? Mother says the hunters will come out tonight. We have to reach the Kuwali oasis by close to nightfall."
Aysha pulled herself out into the main hall, and there she sat beneath the sunlight beams from the high ceiling exits. Aysha was smaller and clearly younger than her sister Rena. "I like Kings-eye, he never spits on me like Big-She does to father, and he's warm to sleep up against during the cold desert evenings."
Rena grabbed her younger sister's small hand and pulled her toward the linking corridor which led to the tunnel exit. "Never mind all that Aysha… hurry along now or father will leave you here to be kings-eye's personal slave." Rena pulled the girl along into smaller hallway where her father was loading the last of supplies into a small oxen drawn cart.
"Where have you two gotten to, we are nearly ready to go. Hurry up and get yourselves aboard, go on, get in now the pair of you."
Rena nodded "yes, father". She picked her small sister up underneath her arms and lifted her into the rear of the little cart. Rena had to lift a large sheet of covering cloth to give her little sister access to the wooden bed. Underneath the cloth lay their mother who held a pained expression adorning her face.
"Rena, Aysha, my sweet little darlings, come here to me. Rena climbed up onto the flat bed whilst Aysha fell into her mother's open arms.
"Be more careful Aysha, mother is pregnant and soon our little… one… will come out.
"It is a boy child Rena, I believe it this time around surely."
"Do not fill Aysha's head with silliness mother how could you know that?"
"I have the feeling Rena, my own mother left me with the power to feel things. You will see it will be a little boy child." The cart lurched as Rena's father Suliman cracked the whip lightly and began the oxen to pulling.
The girls settled next to their mother for the journey to the oasis. "Father will be pleased if that is true mother, and Aysha will have a smelly brother to torment." However, she presented a toothy grin as she said it.
Rena's mother smiled back with a rueful expression. "You are so precocious Rena, but I know and trust you to be the responsible one when I am healing after the child is born."
"Father is very clever mother, I know he only shouts gruffly because must. He is a man and it is a man's duty to keep the women in discipline."
"Your father means well Rena, but he is a simple man and the disease is growing in him. I fear for our future should he fall and suffer."
Rena looked seriously at her mother for a few moments. "Then I will be the second mother of this family, you may rely on me."
Her mother reached out and stroked Rena's cheek gently with loving softness, and then did the same for Aysha. "So young, and so much older than I was at your age. Do not lose your youth too quickly my little love."
The small group settled down to sleep beneath the cart cover, and slowly Rena fell into sleep next to her sibling.
The cart jolted and woke Aysha up with a start. "Oh! Where are we" She cried. Her mother drew her into an embrace.
"I do not know little Aysha. Rena, see if you can peek out. Is the sun in the sky outside."
Rena lifted the sack cover slightly and peered out into the desert. "Yes, but it's in the later part of the day… and…and there is a sand storm building on the far horizon."
"That is not good. We must be many dunes still from Kuwali even now."
"I can see smoke from the chieftain's fire in the distance. If the oxen can keep the pace we will reach safety perhaps just in time."
Her mother lurched suddenly and fell back with her face gritted in pain.
"Mother? Mother, what is wrong?"
"Oh, Rena! I think your brother is choosing now."
"W-what…? We do not know it is a boy. W-what? Now?"
Aysha stared in open horror at her family who each stared in open horror at each other.
"Now! Rena."
"I will tell father quickly." Her mother's arm caught Rena's hand before she could clamber from the cart into the desert sands.
"No!, Rena no. I can do it with your help. Your father is too busy; if he is distracted we shall stay here a long time. We cannot do that. Not now."
Rena remained still a moment looking to her mother and terrified little sister. "You will cry loudly and yell well."
"I will bite upon this cart rope." She said lifting a length of rope. "I will strain much, but I shall not scream if you work quickly."
Rena remained still for s short time. Her face was a visage if indecision and abject fear. Nonetheless, it was not long before she settled down between her mother's knees and prepared herself for what was to come. Her mother placed the rope piece between her gritted teeth and bid Aysha to sit toward the back of the cart. "I am ready mother." Rena said with grim determination.
Rena's mother was well versed in childbirth. She only cried once or twice and the knotted muscles of her features were almost trapped forever in pain when the deed was completed. Teeth marks remained visible in the rope length. Their mother was sleeping soundly now whilst Rena washed what blood she could with a piece of linen from the supplies. Aysha had silently crept back into the exhausted woman's protective arms and a little baby boy lay breathing quietly across her mother's chest.
Aysah peeked out from the cart cover behind Rena's back and it was clear that the smoke from the oasis shelters were only two or more dune lengths distant. "We are nearly safe little Aysha, but the storm is almost upon us also." Outside the terrible whining din of the sandstorm was growing about them all. "Father needs to whip those lazy beasts into shape." The wine rapidly began to grow in intensity and sand bursts threatened to pull the cart cover from the woman, and her children.
The power of the storm even awoke their mother from her rest. "My goodness girls. How far are we now from Kuwali?"
"Almost there mother. But outside father must be unable to see anything now; the sandstorm has become so powerful." Rena had to shout now to make her-self heard over the storms din.
The cart very suddenly lurched to an abrupt stop. "What is happening now?" Rena's mother said.
"I do not know." Rena lifted the cover to peek out.
"What can you see?"
Rena's voice floated back over the wining drones of chaos which drowned most of her words. "It is too thick to see anything but I cannot make out father anywhere. I cannot see the beasts either."
"What do you mean Rena? Where could they have gone to?" Aysha could only see the back of her sister blocking the gap in the cart's cover. Beyond Rena she could make out nothing but inky brown dust.
"I am going to try to walk ahead and see what is wrong, or where father has taken the oxen."
Aysha's mother cried out in alarm. "No! Rena, No. Do not go out into that madness." There was no reply and Aysha watched, scared as her sister's form disappeared through the gap and out into the thick brown whirl of the storm.
The all-encompassing storm had blocked out the sun and almost nothing could be seen beyond a foot into the desert. Aysha's mother gripped onto Aysha and the new born brother. The little huddle waited for a long period in fearful silence it seemed for ages. All of a sudden the cart cover was flipped up and Rena appeared within the opening.
"Quick! Quick mother, Aysha, get out of the cart and run with me."
Her mother protested. "What! Rena no. I cannot run across the desert into that storm. I have just given birth, how can I carry your brother like this?"
"Mother, there is no time. There is something dangerous in the storm; father is gone, and there is a ripped carcass of one of the beasts behind the dune ahead. We have to run on to Kuwali on foot and hurry. I have seen dark shadows moving behind the storms wails. If we do not go, we may die here."
Aysha's mother pulled herself out of the cart with loud grunts of pain. She held Aysha's hand and the new-born in her other arm. No better moment had she landed to stand beside Rena than the cart cover was ripped away from deep within the dust storm, and the cart thrown behind them by some hidden titanic force. The girls all cried out as one and Rena took her mother's arm with the younger children, and pulled her in the direction she believed Kuwali to lie. The small group half staggered and half ran across the sands below, and the raging, blinding dust ahead.
"Sulaman, Sulaman, where are you?" Cried her mother into the storm.
The little group stopped as they passed a small open well. Not a single sign of activity existed in what could be seen of a nomad camp.
"Mother, keep Aysha close and keep going. Just beyond the rise now, and we are upon Kuwali…." Her mother was standing rooted with shock upon her face barely noticeable through the clouds of dust. From out of the swirling sands which filled the very air around the small group a huge, darkened shadow appeared behind Rena. Her mother stared at the great figure in open mouthed silence and merely choked and pointed. Rena stared back toward her mother and family with open mouthed fear but could not summon the strength to turn and meet the danger. All of the hairs on her neck stood on end, and she became rooted in the sand in fright.
"Rena!" Her mother tried to shout, but her voice only croaked within her throat.
Two huge clawed hands emerged from the darkness and clamped around the scared child's torso. Rena was lifted and pulled as she screamed into the storms dark, and dusty depths. Aysha threw her small arms about her mother and gipped tightly. Her mother's body was shaking and she seemed unable to speak or move in any direction. She crouched down to place two hands either side of her young daughter's terrified features.
"Aysha, I need you to listen to me very carefully now. I need to you take your new brother in your arms…." She did not finish. Two great hands came out of the dust and grabbed her mother about the shoulders. Together, with her little brother still clutched tightly in her mother's arms; mother and son were lifted with a scream into the storm.
Aysha stood alone.
The screams of her mother could barely be heard above the raging sandstorm. It was only a short time before her mother's cries ceased altogether.
Aysha remained rooted to the spot upon which she stood. She rapidly looked about searching for any signs of her family, tears coursed down her dark puffy cheeks whilst she was barely able to stifle the demanding sobs. Nevertheless, with grim determination which her mother had always instilled into her children she turned and remembered that the safe haven was nearby. She stumbled toward the next few tents in the little camp, she called and cried but if she could be heard through the storm none were present to answer.
She could not see which way to go to find Kuwali, so Aysha fled toward a tent and prepared to climb inside. If she could hide until the storm abated, then maybe, maybe she could see the low entrance to Kuwali in the moonlight. But Aysha became suddenly frozen where she stood. The presence of something huge, terrible, ancient could be felt behind her. She attempted to turn slowly to meet her tormenter with her last breath of childlike defiance… great talons came out of the darkness to take hold of her. Aysha's screams were swallowed by the rage of the storms darkness as she was torn into the darkness of the storm….
It was time. Giles padded over to his Sunnydale apartment front door and opened it in readiness for his guest's arrival. It was not a few moments before her could hear dawn's falsetto voice echoing around the courtyard fountain.
"So everybody thinks he chopped all their heads off." She was saying. "But the books all say he only executed the second wife; oh! And some crazy chick who all his advisors said was plotting to overthrow him."
It was Spikes voice which pierced the night in reply. "Yeah! I didn't really get on too well with English history in my old school, the teacher spent more time thwacking the little kids with a cane than writing on the black board."
Dawn's voice took on a sarcastic edge to it. "Oh yeah! In your day education was strict military mind washing, soapy mouths and permanently bruised behinds. Hey! Things have moved on since then, the mind washings still there but the mouth wash comes with real pink elephant warnings; and to ward off canings these days half the kids are carrying mace." The echo's indicated that his evening's guests had entered the court-yard outside.
Further mumblings in the background indicated the arrival into the yard of Xander with an active Anya giving him her usual take on Sunnydale financial progress. Behind them could be heard Willow and Tara, their lightly positive voices locked in bright conversation. 'Ah! Thank god for small mercies.' Thought Giles.
Giles moved to prepare a tray of tea and coffee in the kitchen as the small crew sundered into his apartment. Dawn marched confidently, though in a manner Giles perceived designed to conceal the real pain belying her feelings of loss. She laid out her small lap-top computer upon the kitchen serving ledge. Spike flopped unceremoniously into a chair beside the small table where he stared, it seemed contemptuously about the room. Meanwhile, Buffybot trailed behind both of them sporting it,s ineffable, if irremovable smile. The robot settled into one of the three small chairs set by Giles about Spike's table.
Xander and Anya took up positions about the larger dining table next to each other. Tara came into the apartment arm-in-arm linked with Willow, then the two Wiccans settled into chairs opposite Xander and Anya at the dining table.
"Hi! Giles." Said Willow cheerfully with a small wave. Tara mirrored her wave and smiled shyly to the waiting watcher.
"Hello all!" Giles welcomed them whilst carrying to the dining table a tray of hot beverages.
Dawn started up the flatly fangled machine set before her. "Hope you're okay with it Giles, I've got to research Middle-ages history homework for the morning."
"No, no, that's all fine." He smiled back speaking softly.
"Spikes gonna' help me with his insider knowledge of those days."
Tara sat beside her partner opposite a bored looking Anya, and a lost looking Xander. "Well, I suppose he lives closer to those times so it's good to get insider knowledge."
Spike snorted reaching into his long duster for a box of matches. "I'm not medieval people… I was born in the nineteenth century, remember? Practically modern."
Tara took her girl-friends hand and smiled back coyly. "If women without any rights, racial slavery and child chimney sweeps can be called modern."
"I just need someone who had a higher education in history, and experienced some of the old time, you know?" Dawn volunteered. "I'd ask Giles but he's always consumed these days with some world threatening crisis or another."
"I'm not that old, that I know anything about what the middle-ages were like. And Spike I do wish you wouldn't smoke in my flat."
"It's for medicinal purposes ain't it." The white haired vampire said beneath a cocky grin, and ignoring the irritated librarian."
"What about Buffybot, doesn't she have any history files to help." Anya finally took an interest in the group's proceedings.
Spike looked uncertainly back at the ex-demon. "I don't know let's ask the metal mickey brain. Buffybot! What do you know about medieval history?"
The robot stared back with its innocent features unreadable. "I don't know anything about that."
Spike shrugged. "I rest my case M'Lud."
Aren't you and Buffybot supposed to be chaperoning Dawn around patrol tonight?
"They're taking her out?" Xander asked with some surprise.
"Seems like a good idea to get the youngest members of the Scooby gang familiarized with the locations and dangers that we all have to face." Willow explained with an uncertain edge to her voice, then with a lower voiced effort to speak privately to her best friend. "And to take her mind off of you-know-who being gone."
Dawn cocked her head to one side and stared at Willow. "I can read your lips you know Willow."
The red headed witch sat back and looked elsewhere in the room innocently without answering.
"Are we sure it's safe?" Tara said in an aside to her partner.
"She'll be with Spike and Buffybot all the time. Besides, Spike's only going to show her around one cemetery then walk her to spend the night in his tomb. She'll have the crazy vampire and a half intelligent super strong robot looking out for her all the time. That's safe… isn't it?" She said, but her expression showed that she did not necessarily agree with her own convictions.
"I think she'll end up in therapy all her life," Anya said with some real conviction in her own voice.
"Can we all get on?" Giles said standing up.
"Yeah… sure. If interrupting the ex-demon is a normal part of your day. British guy!" Anya looked back to the watcher accusingly.
Giles ignored the tirade, and then pulled out a small spoon which he placed next to a wine glass. "Ignoring Anya's sarcasm." Giles said. "I have been asked… by certain nameless parties..." Giles continued looking with raised eyebrows toward Xander who in return merely smiled confidently around the table. "… To bring a little lighter humor and brevity into the… Scooby gangs..." He sighed. "… Proceedings at our meetings. " He picked up the spoon and glass then tapped the spoon lightly against the wine glass. "Hear, Ye… Hear, Ye… Hear, Ye… I bring this… some sort of numerous times Scooby meeting to open order. Prepare to be..." He looked with resignation at the smiling carpenter. Xander merely looked back and beamed to everyone present again. "… Dazzled and amazed by Anya Jenkins's tale of ancient horror, spine-chilling adventure, and distant times. There are Scooby snacks available on the table should all you… Scooby dudes… get the munchies." He sat back down and pointed brusquely toward a dish of chips and pretzels in a large bowl.
Willow and Tara clapped the Watchers performance with wide smiles. Dawn listened with an equally widened grin on her features.
Anya stood up with a folder filled with printed sheet writing in one hand. She looked about to the gathered throng and cleared her voice to begin reading. "I…." She pointed toward herself. "Anya Jenkins… ex-feared vengeance demon, and punisher of evil man-crimes." She paused and pointed toward her filled folder. "Have uncovered a whole load of new information about our new evil enemies. It occurred to me when I saw… I mean… when I heard about this Sa'Rena character that her name reminded me of something."
"That's just disgusting!" Dawn suddenly piped in. Everyone looked at her. Dawn smiled in embarrassment apologetically. "Sorry, I was just talking to Spike about horrible medieval things."
"Oh! I remember flaying alive as being a big crowd puller." Anya said cheerfully.
Dawn merely grimaced.
"I could show you the torture of the opening pear some time."
"Please don't." Dawn replied, looking as if ready to vomit.
"Yes… Let's get back to the things that you have begun to translate please Anya." Giles said in an effort to save the day.
"S-so what is it all a-about, Anya?" Tara asked quietly.
"I remembered, I had read of a similar name like that before. A very long time ago."
Willow and Tara smiled to each other, the red witch looking suddenly confident. "What did you remember?"
"A story about two little girls who were taken by a Llamashtu clan long, long ago when humans hid below the ground at night."
"Whoa! What time was that?" Xander asked.
"Thousands of years ago before your time sweetie. There was a period in human history, for many centuries after the fall of the pure demons; when those few who were still most near to the pure ones walked the earth. Humans weren't in strong enough numbers to unify, or fight them together so they built their towns, and cities deep below the world's mountains and deserts."
"I thought the ancient people built, like, huge colosseums, amphitheaters, culture, and bloody gladiator slaughterhouses." Willow said with raised eyebrows in surprise.
"Well, they did… much later… but this was even earlier by many, many centuries. Before even places, like Jericho, or Sodom and Gomorrah. Humans lived and moved quickly through the sunlight from place to place to hide from the wandering monsters which ruled mainly the night." Anya finished with a peremptory head nod.
Giles took his glasses off from his face, and whilst cleaning them carefully added by way of explanation…. "It's not so surprising really, in Turkey, Southern Europe, and the Middle-East, many deep and vastly ancient underground cities have been dug out by archaeologists. It was obvious that they were constructed at some very distant point in antiquity, but any mention of the builders has long since vanished from record. Nonetheless…." He said remounting his now very clean glasses. "These underground communities were huge, complex, and built to keep out almost any invader."
Xander raised his hand ceiling-ward. "What's a Lama shat-yu?"
"Sounds more like a sneeze." Tara chuckled.
But Anya merely regarded her partner pitifully. "Llamashtu, honey. They were the daughters of Ninhursag… you know her as Lilith."
"Lillith?" Willow echoed.
"You mean "the" L-Lilith. From the Bible?"
"Not like the way they talk about her…I mean she never got into a huff over Adam or that stuff. But, yeah! That Lilith."
"Didn't she take babies from their cribs at night and… I don't know eat them, or drink them dry or something horrible?" Tara asked.
Anya seemed to feel that the question was not needed. "Well, yeah! She was a vampire demon."
Everyone looked at her questioningly.
"But aren't vampires … like… you know… vampire?" Asked Xander with a shrug.
"Different demons have different attributes. Drinking human blood, exploding into green mush, or covering themselves in coypu droppings."
Willow looked up with a disgusted face. "Coypu droppings?"
"It's an extinct and very rare South-American species."
"Thank the goddess."
"Lilith was a hybrid from a great demon, similar to the old one which created the first vampires, just slightly different as a species."
"Did they have the same weaknesses as normal vampires?"
"Mostly, I think. They exploded in sunlight, could be killed by stabbing or tearing out the heart, or cutting off the head, and hated garlic."
"W-what about crosses?"
"No Christianity then. So there was no reason to fear them."
"Are there any still around today?"
"I thought not. Not since the few which sired Cain, or his line were wiped out."
Tara raised her hand. "Cain! Cain, as in the one who murdered his own brother."
"He was attacked, and forced to have long bouts of sex with Lilith."
Xander trembled. "Man 'o' man. That's a way to make real women's rights."
"Oh! Don't get me wrong. Lilith was no human; she was a vampire demon all through. She just used Cain to begin her merging of the line of the Llamai. The daughters of the night which would cover the world in a new reign of darkness."
The ex-demon sighed in wistful nostalgia and prepared to deliver her lecture.
Aysha became conscious as her sister's voice whispered into her ear. "Aysha, Aysha." She was barely able to make out Rena's face lying a few inches away from her own, her older sisters eyes staring directly into Aysha's.
"Aysha, awaken you listless cattle, someone is coming; I don't know where mother is."
The younger sister allowed Rena to help her into a kneeling position, and the two girls held each other in a terrified embrace. "Rena what has happened?"
"Shush! Whisper quietly, and listen to me. We are in very great danger both of us as well as mother."
"Where did she go?"
"I have only heard her crying, I think out in an area beyond that cave entrance." Rena indicated with a nod of her chin toward a dark corner.
Aysha looked about but could only see cave rock surrounding them beyond the light of two, wall mounted torches. Most of the cave area was cloaked in a deeply enveloping darkness. A sound of heavy thudding upon earth and a low female sobbing could be detected toward them from the even darker entrance. Rena could see over her sister's shoulder, and the sobbing grew louder, was identifiable as her mother's sounds. "Mother?" She called out softly.
It was at that moment that the soft thumps came to an abrupt stop seemingly just beyond the small cave areas shadow darkened entrance. Rena caught a gasp in her hand, and then she placed her hand over Aysha's eyes. "Aysha! Close your eyes do not open them and look." Through the gaps in Rena's fingers, Aysha was able to see movement within the entrance shadows. She gasped and shifted deeper into her sister's embrace. At that moment a vast hoof attached to a huge fur-clad leg stepped into the torchlight. Meanwhile, the earthen ground within the cave shuddered with the heavy footfalls of the creature barely revealed.
The two young sisters remained caught together trying not to look up, and hoping not to draw the attention of the mysterious giant. Aysha, though could now hear her mother's soft whimpers come from above them. A dark alluring feminine whisper seemed to waft down from the entirety of the blackness surrounding the girls. "Come now little ones." It seemed to suggest. "We will not make so little of you, it is time to bid your mother, and your father farewell."
"Mother." Aysha said into the shadows above her.
"Shhhh! Aysha, do not listen to it."
"But mother is here."
A single gurgling cry rendered the caves silence from within the far corner. It was a male voice, and the single voice was ended abruptly.
Rena sobbed softly. "Father! That was father, and he is gone."
"Mother?" Aysha cried out again.
"The father has passed on into the shadows little girl." The deep, feminine voice which held promises and terrible dreams together whispered gently down to her.
A single scream pierced the silence. It was her mother's high-pitched voice. The cry rang long into the caves walls, and then it too was cut off abruptly.
"Your mother has joined him in the shadows beyond children. What is there for you now?"
Rena gripped onto her sister and her small body shook with tears.
"Do not despair; we will remove the pain of living sorrow from within you. We will make you as we are… powerful, immortal, unstoppable, my sweet man-lings."
Aysha felt a sudden emptiness where Rena gripped onto her. A single huge claw ridden hand came out of the darkness above, and took hold of Rena. The small girls screamed, and her legs kicked out wildly.
Rena looked down upon her sister,s terrified features staring back at her. She fought, and struggled whilst held within the hand's mighty grip. Up, she was lifted to the caves ceiling where she could feel something coldly terrible moving beside her. Rena shivered, and shed rivulets of tears across her cheeks, whilst from out of the darkness above an over-sized woman's face began to emerge into the torchlight. The length of the face was almost as long as Rena's own body, the features were incredibly beautiful. Rather than being more terrified, Rena found herself mesmerized by the cold beauty, the ancientness of the evil' and the hypnotic energy behind the featureless black eyes. Nonetheless, she began to scream again when the face opened its lips to reveal pairs of long fanged teeth within.
"Ssshh! Come close, and let me revel in your life giving warmth." Slowly Rena was pulled toward the teeth, her head tilted upon her neck by unopposable fingers to reveal her neck to the waiting teeth. Rena screamed long and loudly when she felt those fangs pierce into her warm flesh.
Aysha was left kneeling, cold, alone, and shivering below, and within a cave of terrible silence. Rena's last cry had ended moments ago; her soft tiny body had fallen from the shadows above to lay lifeless beside Aysha. The smaller sister had nothing left, and she was ready to die. Aysha remained silent when the great clawed hand came out of the dark shadows above to take her up. The small child only closed her eyes and prayed as hard as she was able, and slowly the hand pulled her toward the terrible overwhelming beautiful cold horror of the tooth sharpened maw.
Aysha remained silent when she felt her life-blood drain from within her. Her small heart ceased to beat, and her legs ceased to kick feebly. The body lay beside that of her mother, and her sister on the caverns earthen floor. The great hooves of the giant thudded patiently without haste from the cave. "Soon, my little ones… soon… my little hatchlings." The whispers floated back to settle meaninglessly upon the corpses of children.
"What time is it…?"
"W-what?" Anya paused.
"I was just thinking we'd better get something started before ten." Dawn stood up and began to pack her flat computer into a bag.
"Too right, missy." Willow looked over. "Saturday, or no Saturday, I want you home in bed at a good hour. Or you won't be seeing any more patrols for a long time, no siree!."
"It's cool Willow. I'll make a phone call back to every half an hour after eleven that I don't get home. Spike's going get me to his crypt where I'll stay with Buffybot until Xander can pick us up."
Xander stifled a yawn. "Oh! Yeah, I'd forgotten about that little part." Then in an aside question to Willow…. "Are you sure about this." Too loudly.
"I've got Spike and Buffybot with me all the time, just one cemetery circuit, and I'll be in the warm… well… cold, dank bunker safety of Spike's lovely home. Really, guys… anything bigger than a Bunyip' and I'm falling in behind these two."
"Okay, Dokey then… don't forget to phone me then or I'll make sure your pancakes are cold in the morning for a month."
Tara stood up and went to hug Dawn. "See you soon sweetie, I'm off tonight so I won't see you in the morning. Just stay safe please."
Dawn held the blond witch tightly. "I will come home soon okay?"
Tara smiled and shared a secret knowing smile with the youngest Summers girl.
"Anything else I really need to know about Lillith, the ancient vamp?"
Giles smiled softly. "No… I'll let you catch up later when we have more. Otherwise, I will see you after I get back from the Watchers retreat next week."
"I forgot you have to go Kayaking."
"More an excuse for a beer garden fest this time around I think."
Xander raised his hand. "What's a Bunyip?"
Spike stepped forward and grabbed Dawn by her shoulder and pulling her toward the front door. "Look it up Harris." Spike looked back whilst opening the door, and dragging a 'struggling to keep up Dawn through it. He looked back once and snorted at the bemused looking Xander.
"What's a Bunyip… pheugh!." He rolled his eyes and slammed the door behind him.
"I'm still not sure about…." Tara said to Willow.
"She needs some idea of how dangerous things are out there, or she'll just keep asking until she goes out and looks for herself baby. This way she's at least got the big "two" looking out for her. A-and she says it'll only be for around half an hour. I made Spike promise."
"It's just being away, I'm going to worry about things back here, and she's like our own little sister you know. W-w-we owe it to Buffy…."
"I am owing it… I am…."
Tara took hold of Willow's hand under the table as her partner seemed to stop with a lump in her throat.
"I'm still lost as to where all this was happening, I mean, were there like Romans, or knights and things around?" Xander said looking up to his fiancée.
"It was thousands, and thousands of years ago honey. It's hard to be sure but I know that people were building cities under there for at least twenty thousand years before the desert was inhabitable."
"Jericho began to be built around seven thousand years before the events suggested in the bible. So I would suppose it all occurred many centuries before then." Giles explained whilst sipping a fresh cup of tea.
"Where did you find all of this Anya?" Tara said bringing her attention back to the reading.
"Oh! I didn't find it, Giles did. Seems that he's been sitting on this old watcher book in his collection since he came over here."
Willow raised her eyebrows in surprise. "The watchers had this information all along."
"Just like the watchers. No offense Giles but you British guys like to hold on to everything important just to seem even more important." Xander let the accusation hang but did not back down from Giles annoyed look.
"I didn't know I had it. I just tripped over it when doing an alphabetical search in my small library. But it proves that there are other books within the full watcher collection that do contain further information."
"What book did you find it in Giles?"
Giles did not immediately answer Willow and looked down with an expression of embarrassment upon his face. He removed his glasses and began to wipe them extremely cleaner.
Anya answered for him. "It was a recipe book."
Willow raised her eyebrows again. "A cookbook?"
Giles put his glasses on and turned to face the group. "Uhm! Yes. The twenty-five cakes of barley. It's a seventeenth-century baking book from the Uighur exiles of the Altai Mountains. I recognized the introductory script in Hungarian from the young adventurer who stayed with the Altai people. I couldn't read the majority of the rest…."
"…So he called me in." Anya finished. "My six-hundred-year-old demon brain was a little scratchy on Franciscan secret codes, but I was able to translate most of it."
"So, like these 'Igor' people were hot on this Sa'Rena. What! Did they sorta' worship her or something?"
Giles sighed quietly. "No! They have superstitions of a desert demon called "Aysha" but her story includes an ancient origin in connection with the sister, Rena. I remember that a strange creature named Aysha has been known of in legends all throughout central Asia and North Africa." Giles said with some small irritation in his voice.
A loud sigh of reading readiness was emitted from Anya, and the group around the table fell silent and attentive to the ex-demon as she began to read aloud….
…An unhallowed silence flitted loudly through the maze of the warren, the passing of its presence left the very walls of solid rock colder than before its presence made manifest...
In her personal cavern quarters sat Aysha upon the reed matting of her makeshift bed. The dim smoldering wall-torch allowed barely perceptible light to dance with dark shadows across the rocky interior. Aysha's eyes could see the very shadows move alive with a life all of their own, and made clear the withering darkness which beset every corner of the small personal quarters.
Aysha sensed, rather than felt the body of her once living sister stopped outside of the small dormitory cave-room that was her home, albeit; felt more like a prison at times. Though she seemed to be idly resting, Aysha sensed two pairs of inscrutable eyes upon her, studying her from the rocky entrance. "Why do you not enter sister?" Aysha asked of the lingering shadow watcher.
"Because I find such great difficulty in being subjected to your emaciated, self-denials." Rena stepped forward into the barely existent light cast by the wall torch. Her face was blood filled, her features beautiful as any Llamashtu is, whilst the talons of her hands were long, sharp, and able to render flesh from bone. However, in contrast, Aysha's face was sallow, her cheeks sunken, and her body skeletal and emaciated. No human blood had she taken, and no human flesh had she allowed her needs to partake of. "Look at you Aysha, you are wasting away into nothing. Do you seek death?"
Aysha glanced into the trash storage corner of her quarters, a pile of rotting dead animals of varying kind's filled one corner. "I feed."
"On desert vermin." Rena stepped forward and stood over the weakened frame of her living sister upon the bed. "We are daughters of the Great Lilith, we feed on the blood of human younglings whilst we drain the corpses of their parents dry. It is who… wh-what… we are, it is what we are. Strong, immortal and privileged beings special servants of darkness, protected by darkness. Aysha, the lair sister's whisper of you, Lilith begins to question your worth in the clan; she may banish you if you continue to refuse to take up your clans responsibilities."
"I do everything I can in the warren."
"Except hunt! Aysha. You cannot be part of this world if you cannot take part in the hunt of the cattle. I cannot protect you forever sister, and I am not the simpering little newt which you knew so long ago." Rena turned to leave but paused at the cave-mouth. "Lilith is going to make a decision about you. I will take your side as much as I can but I cannot protect you any longer, and I do not know she will decide."
"Where is our brother?"
"What do you mean? He was killed as a babe with our mother, Lilith has told us this; all who are not of turning potential, they go to feed the clan you know this."
"I feel him still Rena… I feel a hole within my dead heart that our brother lives in some manner, still."
Rena snorted and then left. She moved deep into the darkened warren halls, but she faltered a while within the great hall before a stone seated dais. The shadows crept along the walls as if seeking solace within the darkness that dwelt upon that platform. "Well, Rena. What does the hungry one tell you?"
"Great Lady. Aysha will hunt for the clan I know she will. She feels the presence of our birth sibling, a male babe born when you fed upon the parents."
"I need actions not the words of someone biased in her concerns."
"I… I think only of the needs of our clan great Lilith, that bony wraith means nothing to me as a sister. I place the good of all the sisters above any misbegotten squeamish weakling. How… how can she be a true sister of mine when she spurns the ways of our race?"
"Hmmmm! Maybe … little Rena. Maybe. Nonetheless, I cannot risk her troublesome presence any longer without testing her resolve." The huge vampire demon paused a moment as if considering something. " The manling sibling… you say?"
"Yes Mistress, that quivering lump of flesh our human sire spawned from her loins. You made a barely palatable meal of its sustenance."
"Did I? Little-Rena. Did I? Do not presume to imagine you understand my motivations."
"I wouldn't…I… I mean."
"Enough! Bring her to the North cave this afternoon; I have something for you, and for her particularly to see."
"Yes, Great Lillith." The huge figure of the clan leader had already turned to seemingly float into the cavern tunnels away from Rena.
The she fox's carcass fell lifeless at Aysha's frail, emaciated feet. Aysha had found her starving nearby the larder warrens. The fox was only hours from death through lack of food, and Aysha had taken it easily, snapped the animals frail neck then fed upon what little blood remained within the tiny body. For Aysha it was not much, but it helped to ease the discomfort which racked her own lifeless form.
"Better than nothing huh?"
Aysha turned to find her sister observing her from the cave-room entrance.
"You would not understand."
"Never want to." A silence enveloped the small area for a short while as the two demon's looked into each other's black pitted eyes. Eventually, Rena blinked and spoke. "Lilith wants you to come to her, now; up in the canyon overlooks."
"Why? What does our leader want with my frail uselessness?"
"It is not for me to know that. Come, you know how angry she becomes when kept waiting."
Aysha silently followed her older sister into the depths of the vast clan warren. The demons passed through the mountain larders for leaner times filled with prisoners locked in magically suspended animation. Hence, she travailed further along the darkened routes, and then upward high into the canyon caves past ancient carved stairways old even when Lilith came to this world. Through long tunnels of the warren, she was walked until finally exiting out into a shaded area high up within a shielded canyon. The place was a small overhanging rock looking out into the canyon's depths. Lilith stood waiting wrapped within her deeply set cloth coverall which hid her face beneath a veiled mask.
"I have bought my sister for you, Lilith." Rena edged Aysha forward and moved back slightly into the dark cave mouth.
Nearby, a wooden frame construction sat upon the rocky shelf beneath which lay a wooden trap door which seemed to cover a single pit within the floor. Within the door was a barred opening allowing the viewer to look down and within the pit.
The figure of Lilith concealed within her fully covered smock bid Aysha to stand beneath the animal skin covered frame. Lilith was protected from what sunlight reached within the canyon by her thick full-body outfit. "Stand beneath the frame Aysha and look down into this hole."
Aysha moved to stand under the bare shadows of the frame with uncertain movements. "W-what will I see?"
The dark figure of Lilith remained silent a few moments and then seemed to shrug whilst turning away to gaze along the canyon's length. "What has ailied you most completely? This obsession which prevents you from being a real huntress of my house. It lies within."
"Aysha stood over the trap-door, and she peered deep between the bars, and for a short while found herself looking only into total darkness. However, movement could be made out by her sensitive hearing within the depths. Suddenly, and without a warning, a small face appeared at the barred opening. The face was child-sized, blue scales adorned the powerful little creature's body whilst long silver talons gripped the strong bars. The small creature's silver, cold eyes stared deep into Aysha's and appeared to promise only death.
Aysha studies the tiny monster, its face was a mass of snarling hatred; it shook the strong trap-door in a vain effort to break through to commit violence upon the larger demons which studied it.
A cold numbness ran throughout Aysha's body when the small piece of remaining familiar resemblance became clear.
"He has mother's fine looks doesn't he Rena?" Lillith asked slyly. But Aysha's sister merely hissed from within the caves deep shadows.
"Behold Aysha, the boy child that you have been so obsessed with since your ascension. It has made a good pet since I took sustenance upon you, and upon your dear sister." Lillith moved to stand towering over the emaciated Llamashtu which stared down into the blood hungry eyes of the little blue monster below.
Silently Aysha asked… "What does he feed upon?"
"It sucks dry the rats and scraps of meals I throw down occasionally. It's very adept at snatching prowling desert birds which gamble too close to the opening." Lillith pushed a piece of cloth cover to cover the barred aperture of the trap-door. "And now Aysha I have given you something to believe in me. I expect you to give something back."
Aysha looked up at her giant sire. "You want me to hunt among the trade caravans."
"I want you to feed, grow strong for your clan, and fill my larders which blood rich younglings." She turned suddenly to leave the starving demon alone on the canyon ledge, but spoke behind her as her long covering trailed in the winds. "And no more nonsense about your weakling past do I want to hear from you Aysha. That time is gone, and you must embrace the gift of immortal life that I have given you."
Aysha did not listen deeply to the final words of Lillith; instead, she gazed for a long time at the fabric covering the trap-door to what was once her little brother.
"I have to get going everybody." Tara stood to explain her interruption of Anya's tale.
"Which means of course that I'm going too." Willow said whilst moving to join her partner.
Giles also stood up in deference to his younger female friends. "Of course, I am sorry to see you leaving us just when we are making such headway with this. But I understand that education is the most important thing for your stage of life Tara."
Tara laughed nervously. "I'll get home as soon as I'm finished with my… you know… courses."
"So that'll be me headed off as well for tonight, to give my honey a goodbye finale." Willow stood also taking hold of her coat.
"I shall be off to England in the morning Willow, so I shan't see you again until next week."
"Oh! Who's in charge till you get back?" Willow paused whilst all the rooms' eyes were settled upon her. "Me then."
"I would very much prefer it if you take any decisions till then Willow."
Zander raised his hand. "He doesn't trust my decisions, guys."
Giles took on a pensive and sardonic expression as he answered. "It's not that I don't trust your decisions… alright… I don't… but I do fully trust Willow to make the decisions best where Dawn or even the whole town is at stake."
"Don't fret Giles, I've got it. If the big Sarena, or whoever decides to get antsy on my watch… well, she'd better bring friends that's all. Cos' with my honey away I'm bound to be more than a teensy bit cranky."
"Don't take risks… any of you. We don't know truly what we're dealing with here yet."
"I got it." Willow gently waved off Giles further comments.
Xander looked up from studying the demon engravings in Anya's scrolls. "Yeah! Don't sweat we got it covered. Jeez, watchers just have to micro-manage every little detail don't they?"
"I'll see you in a couple of months, Giles. Enjoy your… fest… thing." Tara included whilst making headway for the front door.
"Hoping Sunnydale's still here." Giles mumbled. Tara was already being followed by her partner out the door. The remaining group settled down when Willow carefully closed the door into place behind her.
Giles made a final coffee and settled down with a nod toward Anya to continue her story of the two sisters.
Aysha retreated back into her small cavern side room. She could hear the squeals of pain, combined with the cackles of evil pleasure hailing from the central lair chamber. The ancient Lilithian creature that was once a small human girl curled up into a ball in the room corner. Meanwhile, above where she coiled into herself the forch flames dancing shadows of the unfolding events onto the caves wall. The clawed hands of the demon women pulled the unfortunate creature onto the chamber floor; their arms ripped into her body, and the creature's jaws gaped fangs of agony. Her screams filled the warren, and the shadows suggested the orgy of violent tearing, ripping, and rendering that sat beyond the entrance to Aysha's den.
Aysha placed her claws over her demon ears whilst she hummed a soft song which her mother used to sing to her when she was but a babe. The screams turned into soft dying gurgles, and the shadows grew less frequent in the violent action outside. The silence descended once again within the warren whilst the harpies moved off into the caves to attend to their tasks with full bellies. Aysha fell into a deep and welcome sleep remembering her mother.
"Wake up Xander."
"Wha- what?" The carpenter Scoobie raised his face where it had begun to deliver drool onto his left arm. He blinked through blurry vision to see Giles and Anya staring impatiently at him.
"Do try to keep up Xander." Giles tired voice drifted across the table.
"Wha-what did I miss?"
"The messy bit, when Lilith and her girls tore a condemned Llamashtu demon apart in a feast orgy."
"And I fell asleep through all that. Well… the things I miss."
"At least it shows that something was different about this Aysha, she wasn't like the others. In some unknown manner, her vampire demon side had not melded properly with her human soul."
"Plus all that Lamb-atishoo juice gets stuck between the teeth."
Giles merely looked at the young carpenter and rolled his eyes.
"No, really… it's hell to get the stain of demon vampire out of the carpet."
Anya raised her face from where she was sifting through the ancient bound text. "You know… despite Xander's failed effort at humor… He's actually right. Not about Llamashtu maybe, I've never actually met one. But six hundred years ago I attended the demon prince Xarloteska's blood orgy in Kandahar. I was scrubbing Gero were-rat blood out of my cassock for months."
Only stony silence pervaded the room.
Giles finally shifted in his chair whilst letting out a brief sigh of resignation. "Yes… well… moving on."
"Couldn't you just… you know...?' Xander gulped. "Magick the stains out."
Anya shrugged in further resign. "Not allowed to use vengeance power for cleaning bills. You know what's worse? D'Hoffryn wouldn't even supply a subsistence allowance to find a professional wash facility."
"If we can get finished before the apocalypse, I would like to get up to scratch and find my bed eventually."
"Same here I've gotta put out seventeen toad mustache potions for the window display in the morning. I need my beauty sleep." Anya remained silent whilst staring at Xander meaningfully. She raised her eyebrows when he made no reply, then kicked him once, briefly under the table.
"Ow..! I mean… no… no! you don't my dearest." He nodded in final understanding and fear of further violence.
Satisfied, Anya flipped open the ancient tome. "I think we should skip this bit, it's all about cart loading science for fish traders."
"Yes… let's." Giles piped in wearily.
"Here we are." She read the passages for a few moments pausing to murmur at certain places within the text. "This part begins at some point much later. It seems that Aysha was expected to partake in the blood hunts after meeting her brother. She seems to have agreed to take part in…." She read a little further in silence. "Yep…! The girl got caught up in a blood hunt somewhere in the deep desert. A caravan from I guess what later must have later become ancient Persia going into the primitive Euphrates river."
"Just one question." Xander held up his hand. "Who is actually taking note of all this stuff? I mean was there someone there with her, or was she interviewed by demon 'this is your life'?"
"Maybe she related this to a chronicler… it was held in the watcher archives as a being one of their first listed texts on cultural bakery. Hallie found it in the possession of an old Bohemian sorcerer who was preparing a wedding gift for his wife. She wasn't really into reading history much so she gave it to me."
"So how did the watchers like, get the book; were they interviewing monster chefs through history?"
"No! I think it was done through scrying. A sorcerer's magical viewing of past events through water and mirrors. Some of the handwriting looks like it might belong to Nostradamus."
"You knew…?"
"Can we get on?" Giles irritation showed by placing emphasis on the word "can".
Anya shrugged, and pointed to the lines where her finger was stopped. "It roughly translates as, the caravan…."
The hunt party moved unseen within the eldritch summoned desert storm. Aysha shifted with them, alone; as no hunt sister other than her once living sister would hunt with Aysha. The night was drawing in upon the face of the deep sands, and a trading caravan had been foreseen to attempt a crossing by Lillith's visions. The interception party had been dispatched to raid the best pickings and to leave none alive to tell the story.
The huntress that Aysha became whilst hidden within the sand maelstrom melded with the storm to move as one entity. The maelstrom enfolded the hunters, hid them, and caressed them with tender darkness carrying them as if they were not there. Aysha occasionally witnessed a brief flitting shape through the morass of flying dust, but mostly her clan-sisters were as invisible to her as she was to them. The demons needed no good eyes to sense the prey though; the feeding huntresses of the clan just knew where to find prey, how to take the prey; and how to feed the gnawing hunger.
A whisper drifted to Aysha across the swirl ridden sands from deep within the surrounding storm. "Ahead Aysha, the train lies ahead, you may join the first hunters this time in destroying the camps guards."
Aysha was full in the strength of her body these foul nights of late. Her body was flush with feeding; all signs of the years of emaciation were gone. Aysha had hunted in many trains over many months; she was practiced, bloodied, and excited for the kill. Her cloven hooves would thunder to be heard by prey only when she wished to instill the fear sign. Tonight she would work for the first time as a clan prowler, in concert with other clan hunters to annihilate a well-defended trade caravan.
"There! The caravan encampment is ahead."
The dust storm was no hindrance to the inhuman eyes of the hunters. The low tents, animal stockades and the hastily erected camp fortress stakes could be seen easily by their eldritch the hunters, the night was transparent.
The caravan was clearly a long established and well-practiced group with long-understood methods of desert defense against the night demons. Indeed, the camp brought its own array of pointed stake camp walls arrayed around the perimeter of the tent areas. The huge sharpened trunks pointed outward to transfix any demon who thought to rush among them or any which thought to try to jump the spear-point wall. Additionally, arranged at small entrance gaps were a few ready guards with even longer stakes mounted into the desert soil, and then pointed outward. Several bowmen stood within the camp prepared to shoot any folly-ridden night-gaunt which reached the inner sanctum.
The hunters of the desert moons would need a better plan than a frontal assault. But the Llammashtu possess many other weapons other than tooth and claw in their arsenal. Hence, the ruse of beguilement and the sneak of the serpent would gain entry to this spiked fortress….
… Haluda was bored, tired, and very, very bored. There was only one guard change over during the night, the fat merchants of the towns refused to pay a tithe for more soldiers to go with the caravans. Indeed, more soldiers meant more water to carry, more food, more camels. The hot beverages would not arrive at his post for another two hours, and the desert nights were freezing. Haluda had never actually seen the monsters whispered about by the desert caravan riders, and in all truth to be told he did not believe in them. The real monsters threatened the town warrens or came in the nights to the streets to steal the children from their cribs.
Haluda's arms were tired supporting the huge spiked stake that the caravan leader insisted he wield as a weapon. He stared out into what could be made out within the gathering desert storm. A strange mystical dust sworl which had risen up as if from nowhere and this had made Haluda uneasy with fear.
A distant noise within the dunes caused Haluda to try to pierce the night with his eyes, nd he cocked his head to pick up the sound with his ears... "Help…." A weak distant voice was carried from out of the dust laden air.
Haluda strained to listen.
"Please… help me…." It sounded like a young woman's voice calling, perhaps a child.
"Someone's out there." He shouted above the storm to his comrade beside him.
The man strained an ear to listen with Haluda. "I do not hear anything brother." The other guards replied. "It is the wind; the sand witches play tricks with your mind pay them no heed brother."
"Please… someone help me." The small, weak voice called again from the darkness.
"Stay here friend; I am going to see what is happening." Haluda stood up releasing the long sharpened stake to stand upright at his side.
"No, stay here… we must maintain the wall of stakes it is vitally important they say."
"Some poor girl could be alone, lost and hurt out there. You stay here and watch for me, it won't be long."
He handed the other guard his stake and moved forward into the unlit night of the storms edges. The other guards all stood in a huddle with their stakes upright and watched to see what Haluda would find.
The concerned guard walked slowly forward into the cold night desert and toward the plaintiff little voice which seemed to be on the verge of tears. "It is alright little one, my name is Haluda, and I am here. Come forward, and come to our camp we will give you water, and our protection."
"Please…please… help me." The voice cried piteously… just over that small rise. He was very near.
It appeared before him in the darkness. A beautiful, almost child perfect face. Young, sweet, innocent, he must protect this small creature. He would protect her with his life.
"Come here little one." She was wearing a long, dark desert cloak. Slowly, the lost waif glided toward him across the sand. "How is it that you are out here in this storm sweet one?" he began to walk back to the other guards with the lost creature following him.
"I am … lost… just lost."
He almost reached his fellows who stood in a relaxed group waiting for his return. "It is a young girl my friends. Get her some hot wine, and bring the poor thing some food….
… This was all he was ever able to say again. The huge claw which removed his head hurled it with a wet thud into the midst of the huddled guards. The same surprised soldiers were slow to respond. That was enough time for the other demons to rush from the gathering maelstrom of the storm upon them; the one-sided battle was finished in seconds. Each guard falling into the sand red with blood, their throats were torn open; or their torsos ripped.
The bowmen fared little better as the hunters turned the guard's stakes into javelins. The long spears were thrown with unnatural force to run through two bowmen with one spike. It was all over, and an eerie silence outside of the storm raged even louder within the camp.
Aysha pulled off the black silken cowl to stand in her resplendent glory amidst the prey's pathetic tents. Her sister came to stand beside her, her face adorned with lustful hunger.
"Let the feeding begin my clan." Aside to the gathering hunters, she turned. "Go my hunters… feed upon the flesh of the unwary."
The demons fell upon the tents with unbridled fury, uncomprehending hunger drove their voraciousness and fired the ecstatic lust of murder.
"Care to join me, sister?" Rena said aside to her one-time human sister.
"Go sister… I wish to find something special for tonight." With a shrug, the other demon rushed to fall upon the screaming chaos of fear, and terror building within the caravan encampment. Screams split the night, gurgles sounded from within the merchant tents. "Hmmm! Hungry." Rena said, whilst entering a particularly large tent.
Aysha, meanwhile, felt herself drawn to a small tent set slightly apart from the others. It was perhaps the tent of a slave, set alone from the rich traders. It lay without motion, but Aysha could detect the scent of something special happening within.
She slowly approached the small tent, and half lifted it to see beneath. A darkly skinned woman lay in some obvious pain underneath. She gasped quickly and seemed to be in enough pain that fear was not even being considered. Something stayed Aysha's claw strike and prevented her from taking the woman instantly to satiate her need for blood.
The chaotic screams of the camp had grown to a fearful crescendo. The sisters were occupied with killing Nonetheless, Aysha continued to stare down at the fast breathing woman, whose full belly rounded with a struggling babe was exposed before her.
The woman spoke to her between gasps. "Please… kill me… but spare my baby"
Aysha was lost for words to speak back with. She studied the expanded belly for a moment, and in that moment the lust to kill departed her.
"What did you say?" Was what she replied.
"Eat me, demon. Feed upon my carcass I am finished anyway. My child will not emerge, and I will die this night in agony. Save her, for I know it is a she. Save her, and use me as you will."
"I…."
"Take me for your sustenance, but please save my baby from the other monsters; let her have life."
For a few moments, Aysha remained still… but then she moved to kneel beside the agonized woman. "Yes… I will do as you ask." She looked about to see that her clan was engaged in the red murder of their night pleasures. "How can I remove her?" She ran a single talon across the taught, pregnant skin of the woman's belly. Aysha could sense the female heartbeat of a small, frail being beneath the flesh of the dying woman below.
"Take her from me. I am almost done now anyway."
Aysha was moved to gently run her enlarged hand across the woman's sweaty brow. "Soon, little human thing… soon … I will wait a few moments, and take her with silence." She looked down to the small feet which poked against the belly. What will be her name woman?"
"Come down, I will tell you… so that you may one day tell her." Aysha lowered to hear the woman's final words. The telling of which she expired moments later.
Aysha stroked the dead woman upon her forehead one final time and moved her talon down to the belly which concealed new life beneath it. She worked the task quickly, but carefully not to damage the prize beneath. The wet tear of skin filled the night air with the scent of blood whilst she pulled the new-born free of its fleshy prison.
Aysha lifted the package of blood and kicking feet to eyes. "So tiny, tiny, tiny little human thing." She took the cloak and wrapped the child within.
"What have you found sister?" Rena's voice sounded behind her.
Aysha turned, which exposed the torn, and bloody corpse which lay beneath her.
"That is better. Very exquisite work. My little lair sister is truly finding her hunt lust now. Lillith will be pleased to hear of this"
"Y-yes… I was hungry, and crazed with the need to feed quickly."
"What have you found there? Some morsel to save for later?" Rena indicated the wrapping.
"Y-yes, something to keep. P-perhaps this corpse could go into Lillith's stocks for immediate use, the flesh is still good for rendering."
Rena was distracted by the question. "Yes! Yes, of course, the best corpses should be returned for our mistresses feasts."
Silence had fallen over the area. All of the people once living were now dead, or made unconscious prisoners for larder storage. Aysha carried her small bundle which kicked feebly upon occasion within the folds of cloth. The demon vampire held the tiny kicking bundle low, so as to avoid showing that movement occurred within. She used all of her mental control to order the weak mind of the baby to silence. She moved silently back into the storm with her charge and left the carnage of her lair sisters behind her to their celebration of flesh feeding.
"Is that all there is?" Giles said trying to ignore the fact that Xander was making snoring wheezes into the elbow his chin had fallen into.
"Only otherwise what's printed in that museum text of yours." Anya carefully tapped Xander on the shoulder to bring him around.
"Oooh! Did I drop off again?"
Giles stood whilst pondering deeply, but deigned to give an offhanded reply to the young carpenter. "Yes, but I hardly noticed."
Anya rolled her eyes to ignore the English Watcher's comments about her very human fiancée'. "Giles has to get his special tome out from the British museum. How did you steal that one anyway?" She asked addressing the pre-occupied watcher who was now searching through a small trunk.
Giles peered up from the other side of the trunk lid. "I didn't steal the text, I-I sort of bought it. From a very dear friend… who badly needed to some fast cash for divorce going badly."
"So he stole it then?"
"Yes… well." The watcher stood up carrying a flat and very large book which looked to have seen better centuries. It's not as if anyone was going to be translating this one anytime soon."
"They never really got the chance did they?" Xander added.
"Are you going to sit, and judge my book obtaining methods all night?"
"I'd love to… but I don't think we'll last all night.
Giles sat back down and lay out with very careful handling the sensitive pages of the ancient book.
"What's this now?" Xander blinked to look awake, and attentive.
"It's the Von Juntz testimonies."
"He was a minor warlock in the Chinese holdings of the East India Company." Anya furnished to her fiancée', and patted him gently upon his shoulder.
"He was also part of Elizabeth 1'sts occult secret service force. They had a brief alliance with the Watchers during her reign, and some of them could still be found operating right up to the Second World War." Giles looked very proud of these facts.
Xander yawned and began fidgeting. "Really fascinating, so good luck with yer von's, and yer hoonzez in Scotland there. But I gotta go get some down time."
"Not yet, I want to hear how this worked out for Aysha, having the kid an' all." Anya said putting a loving arm around Xander's shoulder. Xander sighed, and satisfied himself with leading Anya to Giles love seat to both lie down in it.
Giles ran his forefinger along the fading ink of the pages until he found the important words being searched for. "Here it is, I've found it, very exciting. Von Junts didn't even try to use code, the arrogance of the man. But he adds a whole section about the Aysha texts now lost to time.
Xander was snoring quietly into Anya's left ear, and she lay half on top of him with her head poked over the chair's arm to view Giles. "Mages! Always full of themselves. They think that just because they can they can summon four demons in Sumerian that all their party guests should bow at the door on entry. One time, I turned this stuffy mage inside out because his ex-wife wanted to know if that throughout himself he really was a complete…."
"… Iswailihiri!..."
"… What?"
"Iswailahiri. That's the region where Aysha worship was finally annihilated by the Mongol Khan's in the thirteenth century. Somewhere up within those ancient mountains was where Lillith's lair was located."
"I remember Kublai... He had a concubine named 'Lai Ming' who wanted this general to lose all of his teeth… it's a funny story…."
"… One that I might ask can wait for another time. Look!" Giles held up the fading pages to show a medieval portrait of a stained glass window." This was in a Byzantium church once placed on the island of Kolkos." The figure depicted walking across lush agricultural fields was a monstrous demonic form, but the face of the being was deeply feminine and disturbingly beautiful. Nonetheless, under one arm the figure carried a squirming male shepherd herder; he was clearly limp or dead. "Young shepherd sacrifice probably, some miscreant, given over to the demon in the hopes of bringing a better crop yield that year."
"That doesn't work." Anya interjected. "This one time, this Turkish village had the youngest maiden call me down to bless the wheat fields once. I told her 'I don't do acts of charity lady, I do vengeance'. Instead, she persuaded me to make the headman of the village run up the volcano and jump in. She said he used to always look at her funny. I don't think she was telling the truth, but he sure gave the crowd something to bet on. I won three crates of wine guessing whether he'd dive in head first or feet first."
Giles wasn't listening but was instead absorbed with the passages that he was preparing to translate. "He was obsessed by the tales behind the fall of the demons in the mountains, and the manner in which Aysha became ensconced within the regions folklores. "Ah yes, here we begin…."
"So where does she go?"
The lair sister shrugged. "I was told that she is making human followers among the local tribes beyond the canyon pass. She has been seen collecting some sort of tithe from the humans who worship her in the form of human foods."
"Having human thralls is not impermissible by Lillith's order."
"No, but tainting the lair with human contaminants is, and what is she doing with what she obtains. None here will eat the muck the cattle make in their rock-hole settlements, so what does…?"
"…She has been keeping solitude from me; I do not know what Aysha does in her quarters these days. Nonetheless, she joins the hunt; she feeds her share whilst she gives to the clan's stocks all required."
"I can only tell you what I know; the food must be for something she keeps hidden from all of us."
"I will watch her, my one-time sibling is very strange, never has she shown the behavior expected of one of us. The need to find that little brother, refusing to feed and considering the possibility of being ejected from the clan instead. I cannot protect her any longer if she doing more stupid things."
"The mistress may eject you also Rena, for vouching for her good behavior in Lillith's service. You will both become night wanderers without a home, a lair, perhaps hunted by bands of human nightsmen."
"Do not test me Jokolanthe, I will see what my sister does so secret but what I discover you will keep secret even if you must help me deal with Aysha personally. I am your clan senior; I have the right to end you if you fail me." The lesser demon was new to the clan and folded her membranous wings whilst lowering her head in deference.
Aysha slid into her quarters, beneath her arm she carried a goatskin filled with freshened milk from the herders in Kuwali. The shaman which supplied her now was becoming well respected among the tribe for his collusion with desert demons. She was forced to employ her races 'natural' glamor ability to persuade the child to remain silent in her cave quarters. Nonetheless, Aysha had come to feel something toward the girl-child that she had not imagined possible for some centuries, and was something akin to love. 'Love', she remembered a feeling once held long ago for her mother. How was it that this small human cattle 'bulb' was attracting her need to protect it so diligently? Perhaps the pup had some magical ability; in addition, Aysha recalled how a misplaced sense of forgotten love left her hungry and emaciated for long, long years of un-life.
Aysha lifted the furs that she took form desert foxes, and had knitted together to form a cocoon for the human pup. The little creature was still there, quietly breathing in a deep sleep. She had destiny and power that was certain. Aysha was very aware of that. No other human child would lie under the weaning of a monster, and within a monster's lair after being torn from its human mothers belly. Nonetheless, the pup survived, even thrived on the milk from the village shamans stocks.
The child's face was darkly hued in color, as the deep tans of the southern buffalo-herders. Her brown eyes would look into those of Aysha's inhumanly perfect features, and her small features would smile. At least they would when Aysha used her brief hypnotic influences telling the pup that Aysha's cold, grey eyes were a mother's loving gaze. The dark gods curse Aysha, she loved this small drooling little blood bucket. She would fight to the death if any of her lair sisters tried to take it from her.
With a worried sigh, she let the furs fall back carefully over the girl, her form barely noticeable within the fading torch lights. It was time to make a sojourn to the feeding vats. Her connection to the human girl had recalled a sense of revulsion within Aysha for taking the essence from the stored, and comatose slaves. It was not good though, Aysha must maintain a sense of normality about her habits if she was to hide the human pup.
The demon stood up onto her high hoofs, she clattered out of the entrance heading for the tunnels which led to the clan larders.
Sa'Rena waited until the last distant clatter of Asyha's hoof was vibrated through the tunnel quarters area. Carefully, and with a covert silence, she pattered her way through into Asha's abandoned side-cave home. The room was barely lit by a single wall torch, but the light provided a Llamashtu with enough vision strength to see all of Aysha's possessions. 'Possessions' because Aysha never termed what she took as loot. Aysha's cave was full of memories. Sa'Rena snorted loudly from her dead nostrils. The noise resonated a little about the cave, and Sa'rena caught herself when a slight answering sound seemed to emerge from some far corner. She waited for a further noise, but nothing came.
The huge demon moved with cautious suspicion now. Llamashtu did not make mistakes of the senses. Sa'Rena had heard what she had heard. Indeed, there was something in here. The noise had sounded like an animal's whimper or a distant murmur of weak human children. Was Aysha keeping a pet? Sa'Rena had heard of such things among other sisters before, where small foxes or desert spiders were kept at items of amusement. That was until it was employed as a snack at some point the demon became slightly-hungry.
What type of pet was she feeding? Sa'Rena covertly stepped over to a pile of furs situated next to Aysha's straw bed. 'Llamashtu do not need heat, why would she have furs?'. The huge demon lifted the section of fur to see beneath. Sa'Rena stood, staring down at her once human sisters little secret and her mind whirled in several directions at once. She saw so many possibilities and not all those were so bad as seeing the unclean thing which assailed her vision beneath the pile of furs. With her great talons she reached out toward the child….
Aysha was satiated, there was little guilt felt in these times. Nor was the reason that she kept the child one of a sudden return of the old weakness. Aysha just needed something to define herself by, to know that she was a monster but did not have to be a monster. She made her way back through the tunnels to the courtyard caves of the clan quarters. The area of the warren seemed deserted, Aysha re-entered her personal cave whereby she lifted the furs to check on the child.
If Aysha could breathe, she would have gasped in panic. The furs were empty, the human girl was gone. She dropped the furs and made a desperate search of the cave. 'Could a human child stand, or run away at that age of life?' No! That answer did not make any sense. There was only one possible answer….
Aysha made her way from the cave quarters back into the lair concourse. She stood a moment looking around at the seemingly deserted tunnels. Aysha was in trouble, and she was ready for whatever punishment would be meted upon her. This time it would be the end of her living death.
"How did you stop, from eating it? I would have thought that the scent of blood filled flesh would have kept you awake all night." The voice of her sister floated across the halls from behind Aysha. She turned to meet the unavoidable. Sa'Rena stood there with Llamashtu sisters emerging from the side corridors.
"You just could not be normal could you, could not do what the calling in even your own dead veins drives you to be. You were never one of us Aysha." The other Llamashtu increased in presence until Aysha was standing amidst a large mob all around. She turned about in a circle, to see hostile if porcelain perfect faces staring back at her, and with cold, dead eyes promising only slaughter.
Sa'Rena stepped forward and held out a fur bundle at arm's length. "Is this what you bring into our sacred warren?" The tiny child hung suspended in mid-air on the end of Sa'Rena's sharpened talons.
Aysha remained silent staring with unsurprised, but nevertheless, accusing eyes at her blood twisted sibling. "You have not killed it then?" She asked.
Sa'Rena was silent by way of reply. She lowered the human baby and stared back into Aysha's dead gray eyes. "The evidence determines guilt sister."
"And my judgment shall be that Aysha will now end her days in the sundering." The great form of Lillith peeled from the darkness hithertofore where she had not been noticed by any. Only the untrammeled perfection of her innocent features pierced the torchlight shadows. Nonetheless, her night-black eyes spoke of murder, Aysha had no other recourse now than death. Indeed, she would be torn to pieces in front of her sibling by the entire lair of demons present. Her body would be consumed as she screamed, her bones crushed, and her name forgotten.
"First, I would know why this little cur is so different from me. Why one of my own daughters is not like her beloved sire-mother. Come closer Aysha that I may smell if you are one of my own."
Aysha was compelled by Lillith's far more powerful hypnotic control to stand closely before the ancient demon. Lillith towered over Aysha with a snorting disgust upon her face. She bent down to hold her nostrils onto Aysha's long blond flowing hair, and she smelt the scent of Aysha's self-essence.
"Suddenly, Lillith reared backward with a loud growl. "A soul…." She screamed. "This cur has a soul stinking within her flesh… the flesh I gave her." Lillith turned to the assembled Llamashtu with an angry glare to each one. "Let it be done." Shouted Lillith whilst extending her great height toward the cave ceiling.
The morass of thronging Llamashtu begun to move menacingly toward Aysha.
"No! Stop, and hold sisters!" Sa'rena leapt forward to stand in front of Aysha and faced the advancing crowd.
Lillith adopted and irritated tone of voice. "Step aside Rena lest you challenge me. You are not grand enough yet, little Rena."
Sa'Rena circled about and addressed the assembled Llamashtu. "Lillith has been clan leader for as long as any of us can recall. That has been a very, very long time. I say it is time for a new leader." She turned back to face the much larger vampire demon Lillith, who stood three feet taller than Sa'Rena. "I cannot fight you alone that is true, But… There are many in the clan who are tired of your tyranny. You keep us here locked within these valley caves; we pass great communities of humans in the night. Places where we can feed, and slaughter; as we wish."
"I have preserved the strength of our race little Rena. What are you but the overgrown residue, of a mere stripling of a cattle child? You believe that you can lead this clan now eh? You cannot even control your own sibling, you cannot even tell that your sister is an abomination." Lillith turned to the horde of Llamashtu which gathered in the open tunnels. She pointed then directly at Sa'Rena. "Ignore the abomination… kill this traitor now, tear out her heart."
The assembled throng of demons looked at each other uncertainly, but none moved to obey.
"Obey me, or die!" Lillith's angry screams thundered throughout depths of the tunnel-born lair. Nonetheless, no Llamashtu leaped to pay obeisance to her desires. The assembled begun to murmur angry growls; once irresistible faces of beauty became grimaces of darkly demonic snarls.
Sa'Rena witnessed her opportunity to make her move if the flame of change died here in front of her maligned sister it would never come again. Indeed, Sa'Rena and her sibling would be no more. The Llamashtu were ready as a group, but fear of uncertainty reigned in more than half who continued to look about in worry. Sa'Rena must seize her time. "Here's your beloved blood bag." She threw the child at Aysha, who deftly caught the child in her outstretched claws. Sa'Rena then grabbed a wall torch, and whilst Lillith was transfixed in confusion by events; Sa'Rena thrust the torch fire into the giant monsters face.
Iillith roared loudly, and with one great sweep of her arm sent Sa'Rena soaring through the air to crash into the cave walls.
Lillith ducked back with her talon bared fingers covering her demons face. "You will both die very slowly… I will stake each of you beneath a small mirror where you will each be burned to dust piece by piece. Whilst you watch, Aysha… I will tear the cattle brat to shreds; once I have drained it dry."
Sa'Rena stood up. Lillith growled deeply, and spun to leap forward, and thrust her claws into Aysha's belly. "First watch your sister lose her innards." As she thrust forward with a terrible aim, two of the assembled Llamashtu stepped from behind. Two small talons swept through the air, they left sharp gouge marks into Lillith's winged back ripping the membrane. Lillith roared in pain and turned to face the two attackers. Two more Llamashtu struck her from behind. Once again, Lillith spun with outstretched talons. Instead, All she was able to see were that all of the demons were moving cautiously toward her. "How dare you all, I am your mother! I am your home. You insult me this way."
The massed Llamashtu stepped back a moment as a group, whilst Lilith raised herself to her full height and stretched out her wings in the pose of a threat. Lillith howled in pain suddenly; she looked down to see that Sa'Rena had set fire to the pelts of animal furs around her waist using a torch. Lillith leaped to the cave ceiling but struck her head against a rock. She crumpled back to the hall floor. Whilst she lay stunned for a moment, the huge throng of Llamashtu closed about her.
"It is now… or never again my clan." Sa'Rena pronounced.
Aysha, meanwhile, remained standing with her dead body covering the crying child. It was clear what ging to happen next was. She turned with the girl in arms and ran into her cave quarters. Once inside, she lay back into the pile of furs with her adopted human girl. Aysha looked up to see the torch shadows flicker upon the entrance wall. The shapes showed only the great gathering of the Llamashtu clan about Lillith.
"Haaaa! Touch me, and I will kill you all…." Lillith was cut off by a swipe of somebody's claws. The cut must have ripped into her throat; because Aysha could hear liquid gurgling sounds from the hall. The shadows then became a writhing mass of winged figures moving in the rapture of vampiric slaughter. Talon born arms could be seen within the shadows flicker raising, and coming down upon the dead meat below. Pieces of what were once Lillith were thrown into the air to be snatched by other demons only to be torn asunder further. Aysha held the human child and closed her eyes.
Sa'Rena stood with the throng, she watched down with a triumphant expression7, and witnessed the death sundering of Lillith. The Llamashtu were rendering her dead flesh to shreds. For a moment, the bare flayed remains of the monster stopped moving pitifully. A sizzling sound could be heard within the demons torn carcass. The demon throng stepped back with Sa'Rena, as a liquid black cloud arose from the flesh of Lillith. The amorphous billow filled the air and hovered over the dead Lillith for a few moments.
Sa'Rena flinched as the cloud seemed to suddenly thrust toward her violently. Equally, as suddenly, the mass was torn back into something smooth around Lillith's rendered neck. Sa'Rena crouched down whilst silent tension gripped the rebellious Llamashtu mob. She snapped a necklace from Lillith, and held it into the torchlight. It was a small black crystal of some form, within the clear, but black material a tiny dark clouding could be seen shifting back and forth as if in great anger. Sa'Rena smiled and placed the crystal necklace about her throat.
"I take the mantle of leader of the clan." Sa'rena announced to the Llamashtu mob. "I hold the torn demon soul of Lillith within this prison, and forever will she remain there as it is the mark of my power." The Llamashtu as one nodded in approval, but remained in the silence which was the nature of a night-llamashtu." Nonetheless, as one clan, they bowed to Sa'Rena.
The furor had ended. Aysha was softly feeding the goatskin of milk to her tiny charge. Once finished, She used dropped a hypnotic command into the child's mind to sleep. She had been left alone for long through the night hours but remained alert. Aysha did not know whether she would be banished by her sister, or whether they would come to render her to tatters, and to bone.
She detected the soft pads of hoofs just beyond her quarter's entrance.
"You insist on keeping that little piece of disgust?" Sa'Rena appeared within the torchlight that hung around the entrance. Her perfect features were beautiful in contrast to the murder she held within her eyes.
"If you are going to end me… do so sister. But I ask you not to take the human heart beat in my arms. If there is any sense of feeling that you still hold for me from our living childhood."
"Do not fear, I have not come to finish you. I do not understand your strangeness, but you are one of us."
Aysha gazed down at the girl. "What will you do now?"
"I am moving the clan. Probably east, to follow the trade roads. We shall become night nomads. No longer shall my clan skulk in the fox dens afraid of cattle. The night will be our empire." She remained silent.
"And I...?"
"I will not destroy you Aysha, but I will not tolerate you either. Remain here in these tunnels with your brat, the locals you may feed upon, let them worship you if you must. But know this Aysha… my sibling… you may never leave this land on pain of destruction. Forever will this become your endless prison, I leave you now, and we may not meet again." The vampire demon turned to leave.
Aysha , stared silently at the retreating back of her one-time older sister. The girl who had taken such good care of her, when her mother was ill or away. She watched her sister fade into the cave shadows, silence, loneliness, and peace fell upon Aysha where she ley back upon the furs.
She wandered through the cave tunnels alone. The warren was silent now. Some of the larders still contained a few fresh prisoners in the final stages of life. Aysha fed sparingly, she needed to retain some supplied until she could persuade her human followers to bring new prisoners. She held the human girl's frail body in one arm, whilst making her quiet way deep into the valley. Once she was at the highest viewing point she stood out upon the small ledge which oversaw the enclosed rocky area. Her form was draped within the same body covering deep fabric which Lillith had worn to stand within sunlight.
Aysha stopped beneath the animal skin covered shelter which sat over a trap door set within the valley overlook floor. Aysha lifted the skins which covered a barred entrance through which a prisoner may look out at a visitor. There was a distant rustle below; something was aroused and snorting angrily. Indeed, in the next moment the snarling face of the tiny vampire child appeared at the barred gap, its small arms pulling at the hard iron, trying desperately to tear its way through to Aysha. She gazed back down into the creature's naïve eyes, only anger, and hatred boiled there. This tiny denizen of hell would tear out Aysha's heart if it could.
With a single sweep of her clawed arm, Aysha swept the shelter from above the trap-door. Hence, she watched down as the suns burning rays swept into the canyon, then down upon the snarling little beast which ravenously clawed beyond the door. It seemed no pain was evident upon the child demon as the burning rays thundered through its tiny vampire's body. The face darkened the flesh crisped; but some degree of surprise appeared in the creature's eyes as it exploded into dust beneath the trap-door.
Aysha turned away from the scene; some of the dust was floating upward carried by the canyon winds into her face. "Goodbye… little brother." She said. Then Aysha turned about and swept silently back into the shadows of the valley caves. Never again, she vowed, to see the sun… and she never would.
The snoring filled the canyon….
Giles stopped his enraptured reading and looked over to see that Anya had fallen into a loud snoring billow on top of Xander.
"Typical." Giles said. He made his way over to the sleeping partners and shook Anya gently by her shoulder.
"Wha-what… Oh! Giles. Did I fall asleep?"
"If that noise you make is sleep, I rather think it's the eighteen-twelve overture." She stared upward with a sneer.
"But-but, yes, you fell asleep."
"What time is it?"
"Time to go home. Go on you two get off. There is nothing more we can learn without some help from the Council now." Anya woke her fiancée', and with murmured goodnights the two left Giles apartment.
Giles sat with a fresh cup of steaming tea at his kitchen bar. He pondered the telephone in front of him upon the counter. "Looks like I have to make that call… blast! Makes us look so helpless not having this information where it should be… with the slayer herself." He remembered at that moment with some recalled sadness that his slayer was now no more. Nonetheless, he dialed the cross-Atlantic number to the United Kingdom. Eventually, it was answered.
"Hello, yes, this watcher Rupert Giles calling. Oh!... hello Gavin. Yes… it's me. Not too bad… not too bad… still on the front lines over here you know. What?. Buffy...? Uhm… yes! she's good. Look… Gavin old chum… I need some help with a demon investigation. What can you look up on the council records about a desert demon called Aysha..?"
It was some time later that Giles council contact faxed across the information needed. Giles rifled through the copy of the few pages which had been translated many years previously. The text was from an Islamic page reputed to have been discarded from religious consideration by the imam's. Giles read through, and the result left him in some shock as to why this text had not been locked away within the deepest council dungeons. He could only suppose that it had been too obscurely placed within an unimportant area of the records, and had never come to notice before.
He sat quietly, and this time he poured himself a glass of whiskey. "What do I do now?"
The old goat herder had recently been accepted into shaman's good graces. He needed extra rations to support his very ill wife. The shaman's groups were very well organized and had gained complete protection from the desert monsters by taking one as their goddess. The herder was happy to worship any god if that god would put grain within the herder's hearth. For the moment this early evening as he went out beyond the village looking for a missing calf. The herder suspected that the creature had wandered off and become injured among the dunes.
After wandering a short while he stopped beside one of the small well's which was used to water the passing caravans that only traveled by day if they were wise. He pulled some water up within the rotten wooden bucket and used a cup to draw himself a drink. Whilst he drank he was interrupted by a soft whispering that seemed to be carried upon the almost imperceptible night-desert breeze. The herder looked about as he felt somebody was watching him. His hair stood on end at the nape of his neck, and he spun about. Twenty paces distant stood a hugely tall figure garbed within a deep encompassing covering which shielded the stranger from head to toe. The herder was a small child beside this giant. "W-who are you? What do y you want?" The herder challenged the imposing figure.
The herder was transfixed to his unmoving feet as the tall stranger approached him and stood not three paces distant. The herder looked up toward the veiled face; of what he was certain was a giant.
The giant looked down. A voice emerged of such feminine gentleness that he felt caressed throughout his entire body, but equally of such dire grief that he felt compelled to unending tears. "I need you help worshiper."
The herder gulped… he knew now by whom he was being addressed.
"Y-y-yes great one. I am your h-humble servant."
"You must look after something for me. This thing you must care for all of your days. Protect it, care for it. You and your wife will be the keepers."
"M-my wife is ill great one… she cannot walk far."
"The shaman's herbs will end her pain… she is tasked to this along with you."
"Yes! great one… but what is it?"
The tall figure held out a bundle to the herder, who took it gently. It was very clear upon examining the huddle of furs that a human baby lay curled within. The herder was lost for words.
"The child is now your child… but understand… she is also my child…you will teach her, care for her. Raise her. She has destiny, I feel this very strongly. Do this task only and the shaman will be ordered to take care of your wife in her illness. She will want for nothing, and neither shall you."
The herder merely stared back in confused shock.
"Go now herder, and do my bidding." The tall figure turned to leave, no sound did her clothing make, and only the shifting sands could be heard.
The herder suddenly snapped his head up from gazing into the sweet girl child's sleeping face. "Great one, wait!"
The tall figure stopped and turned back to the herder. "You know that I am Aysha… night feeder of the desert sands?"
"Yes great one, I know you. But I need something that I must know of this little one before we part."
Aysha waited for the herder to gather his breath.
"What-what is her name?"
Aysha considered the question, which drew her memory back to the night hunt where she took control of the human girl. The mother had whispered some dying words into her dead ears.
"Sineya… Her name is Sineya." Then Aysha swept into the desert without another word.
The goat herder gazed his long years lined face down upon the innocent face of the girl child. "Sineya." He said beneath his breath.
Giles finished his drink and put the faxed papers away safely in his secure trunk. There was no reason for the others to have this knowledge he could not see how it would be of value in stopping Sa'Rena. It was good enough that the group now knew what kind of monster the demon was. A vampire it was, ancient, powerful, dangerous; but a vampire as any other.
He recalled his, and the Scooby gang's last run-in with that ancient strange girl's long dead spirit. She had nearly killed them all within their dreams. Sineya… the first slayer.
Giles became aware that there was an insistent knock occurring at his apartment door. He looked up at the door with a sense of trepidation; there was no good reason for any of the others to come back over. People who lived in Sunnydale knew better than to answer midnight door calls, even though none would admit his or her fears during the day hours.
The knock on the apartment door became rapid and insistent. "Who is it?" He called out. The knock turned louder and grew more frequent. Giles picked up a brass fire poker and tried to see out of the side window, but it was too dark to make out who was there. The knocking continued, becoming a desperate plea for entry now. Giles made up his mind, with the poker ready he pulled open the front door; and hoped that it was a friend.
He stood motionless as he stared at the person beyond the door. His eyes wide, His expression muted, Giles dropped the poker, now forgotten to the floor.
Gile's face was ashen as he simply stated. "Good lord..!"
