Chapter 9: "Evil in the air and thunder in the skies"
"How you want to do this?" Hannibal asked, checking over his weaponry. Faith looked at him sideways. Why the hell were they asking her? Their town, their team, dammit. She glanced at Blade, who was standing with his arms crossed... just watching. Waiting. No help there, dammit.
She shrugged. "K. Why don't you an' and B-man go hit the various vampire bars and hangouts and see what you can run across or shake out. You guys know that scene better'n me." She jerked her thumb at Whistler. "Me and Abs here'll hit the demon bars and stuff. I know those better, and she needs to learn where they are and what the drills are. Then we meet back here at the end of the night and pool stories, have beer, count missing body parts. Works?"
Blade nodded. "Works. Do it." He strode off towards the garage with King in tow.
Faith did a quick run down, settling her definitely unsettled mind back in the groove. Bare-midriff Ghostbusters tee, check. Black leather pants, check. Long leather coat with hidden surprises, check. Various weapons: check, check, check, checkerdy-check. Steel toed HD Faded Glory's, Check. 'Tude in place, check. Mostly. She checked her companion over: Whistler had brown leather pants and vest, long brown duster, a big handgun under her arm, short sword, and compound bow cased in her hand. Good 'nuff. Girl'd do - nice working with pros for a change.
She straddled her bike and waited while Abby did a last check on her own. "Ok... " she paused, thinking.
"These aren't 'friendlies' like Lorne gave me. I got Vi to text me a list of the known demon hangouts and demonic underworld bars in the area and on the NYC side of the bay, so it'll be new ground for me. They haven't seen much Slayer activity down here yet, I don't think, so they're not going to be 'well trained VC' if you catch my drift."
Abby snickered, nodded.
"Don't fuck around, don't take chances, don't die. If it gets hostile, kill it dead, make an impression, question the ones that don't attack. Follow my lead, watch your back, cover mine." She considered, thinking things through, "I got weight just with the name, but you guys mostly concentrate on vamps, so don't count on the Nightstalker handle getting you much right at first. Gonna have to make a splash before word gets around there's a Nightstalker Slayer in the burg."
"'Don't Die'," Abby quoted. "You keep mentioning that."
"Rule Number One: Don't die," Faith replied, gazing out into the night. "Because if you die, you fail, and everything counting on you dies. Because a dead Slayer lets the monsters know they can win. Because we don't know much about what's happened since we Awakened everyone, and if there'll ever be another one Called. Because then someone has to go in and make sure it gets known that none of us die for free, and they might die making a point over your careless dead ass."
She looked at Abby and there was something ancient and inhuman gazing out of there, "Because dying's easy, girl. It's living that's hard." She held her gaze until Abby's head jerked in a nod, then looked away again.
"Spike always said 'Every Slayer has a death wish, and that's what gets them in the end'," Faith continued. "And he was right, damn his black heart."
"Spike?"
Faith nodded. "Souled vampire. Bleached blonde smartass. Authentic bad ass. Killer of at least two Slayers. Fuckin' Hero. And dead dead, now." She crossed a leg over the saddle, relaxed. "Every Slayer has a death wish. The Slayer Essence is pure predator: no remorse, no fear, no self preservation. If it takes over... we forget to watch our ass and something gets us. It comes with a cost, and that cost can kill your soul, a little at a time, until the pain and deadness gets to be too much and you go out looking for death. Death is your Gift, Abby, and your gift too: in the end it's the only thing life has left give you, and you reach out and take it."
She gave a grin that had no humour in it. "Unless you drill Rule #1 between your ears until it's a reflex."
"Heh. Any other Rules to it?"
Faith nodded. "A few. But that's the important one." She listed them off...
"Rule Number 2: Don't kill Humans, unless you're absolutely deadly certain there's no other option and it's justified.
Rule Number 3: Not all monsters are evil, but it's the way to bet. If it's not human, it's Prey. Trying to sort out whether something's good, evil, or harmless on the fly gets you dead. When in doubt, kill it.
Rule Number 4: Don't read ancient books or inscriptions out loud.
Rule Number 5: If it looks stupid and it works, it isn't stupid.
Rule Number 6: The End of the World is a Bad Thing, don't let it happen."
Abby put in: "And Number 7: Incoming fire has the right of way."
"I see you've read the handbook," Faith grinned, nodding. "And others. And all of them are modified by Rule Number One: Don't Die. Because dying makes the rest of them kind of a moot point, eh?" She looked thoughtful and then gave a small shrug, "My personal version, Rule #2 is 'Do the Job'. Everything else falls into place inside of 'Don't die' and 'Do the Job'."
Abby nodded. "You do this often? Break in new Slayers and make sure it's done right?"
"No," Faith shook her head. "A few times. And I've done a lot of gym training with 'em. I usually get them after they've had the basics."
"Ah, so I'm your first. If it kills me, I'll know who to blame," Abby put in the earplugs for her headphones, made sure her new play list was keyed up.
"Right." Faith stood and kicked her bike alive, "K', s'night, gotsa a halfapack o' stogies, heavily armed, and wearing sunglasses. Let's rock." She led the way out into the night.
...
Even running with Blade for the time she'd been, Whistler'd never quite seen a night like that one turned out to be. There was a lot of waterfront in Jersey City, and as it turned out, an awful lot of demon bars and hangouts tucked away hidden within it. She didn't think they quite hit all of them... but they managed quite a few. She saw things of every nightmare's description, and with the exception of vampires, only a few of them could be mistaken for human. Faith proved to be a deep well of information of habits and ways to kill things that Abby'd never even heard of, and more than willing to share it. She also proved to be on a conversational basis with things Abby'd have run screaming from, if she'd met them alone and unprepared.
Not like she'd been unskilled, even before getting involved with King and the Nightstalkers. She'd trained all her life, almost, and had been hunting vampires for years now. By the time she'd been what Faith called "Awakened", suddenly getting shot through with a burst of power and strength the likes of which she'd never felt before, she'd already had more combat experience than a lot of professional soldiers. Since, she'd gotten to where she could come close to running with Blade on an almost equal basis for strength, speed, and agility.
Faith was something else. Abby was power based on training, muscle and discipline, hard learned. Faith was an instinctive, sensual intensity wrapped around a core of pure predator. Skills and combat discipline were gilding on that core, and extension of it, rather than the source. Deadliness was ingrained in her, not a skill she'd acquired. Abby had the feeling that even if she'd never been awakened... Faith would have been like a force of nature just on intensity of sheer will.
Watching and listening to her was kind of educational, if your taste in textbooks ran to Lovecraft and Brother's Grimm...
First place they hit was an old, abandoned truck stop looking building, rusting pumps still mouldering away in front. Things went in and out, and loud, dissonant music drifted out through the doors when they did. The first idea anything inside had that they'd pulled up was when the reinforced front door blew in under the mass of the horned, scaled bouncer that Faith casually picked up and used as a knocker when he'd tried to bar their way.
She stalked in after like an amused, indolent cat, Abby prowling just behind, walking across the door and groaning thing underneath it radiating unconcern.
Abby had been expecting a scene like out of Mos Eisley cantina, but the majority of the clientèle looked like large, tired, steel workers, truckers, and dock hands Only with horns, claws, scales, and glasses of indefinable substances in their hands rather than beers.
Faith glanced around casually into the ominous silence and headed towards a table at the back with a small cluster of beings at it.
A pair of humanoid looking beings stepped out to bar their path when they got near, one male, one female and both with fangs and glowing eyes, reaching under their lapels. Faith brought her sword out from under her coat and decapitated the female in one smooth motion, sidestepping past the male and elbowing him off-balance toward Abby. Whistler activated her UV-arc and brought it up through him from crotch to shoulder in a single slice that left dust and ash drifting down. Faith stopped before the table, sword extended, point at the jeweled looking eye of the scaled toad like being sitting there, remaining two bodyguards behind him frozen in place suddenly with their hands still inside their jackets.
Toadthing moved his head slightly from one side to another, desisting when that gleaming point never left it. Faith smiled, gently. "Tell everyone to ease off." That purring voice suggested she didn't care much, either way.
Her other arm moved suddenly, blurring, and a silvered 8" throwing spike grew out of the forehead of the bartender, who'd been raising a shotgun just above the bar top at the time. Abby, who'd had her gun out covering the rest of the table by then, noticed she'd never even looked in that direction - before, during, or after the throw.
"Ok, so who the fuck are you?" Toadthing asked, making a slight motion with one hand. Bodyguards brought their hands carefully back out, empty, and the rest of the bar eased carefully back into chairs.
"Venkmann. My associate is Spengler." Faith grinned. "What, the chest emblem didn't clue you?"
"I like to know who I'm dealing with," he rasped. "Before we go much further."
Faith cocked her head slightly. "Faith."
"The Dark Slayer, huh?" Toadthing gave no reaction whatsoever, but the two childer behind him stiffened, eyes slightly wider. "Heard you were in town again. Whattayou want?"
"Right now?" Faith paused, looked considering. Abby tried to watch everything without showing she was doing so. "To know whether you'd like to keep living."
Toadthing stared at her, ignoring the blade point. He appeared to be giving it careful thought. "I wouldn't mind. Depends on what it takes."
"Cool. Good attitude." Faith hooked a chair around with her foot, propped a boot up on it, and rested her sword forearm casually across the upraised knee. "Let's dicker."
"Something big's brewing. I want to know what. Business will be absolutely dead in this town until I find out, if you catch my drift." She grinned, eyes reflecting silver in the bar light, slid a card across the table with her off hand. "Let me know anything you hear, and once I shut it down, I'm gone. Fuck me around and you're dead."
"What if I don't know anything and I don't care to dig around?" The rasping voice was casual, curious sounding.
Faith's left hand flickered again and a stake appeared in the chest of one of the bodyguards momentarily, before it and he dusted. His companion went partway into game-face and froze, stiffening. "Then I come back, kill you and everything in this place, and burn it to the ground as an object lesson," she said in a bored, conversational tone.
His eyes narrowed slightly, "I thought we were bargaining?"
"We did. That was it. Take it or croak." She spun on her heel and headed for the open hole where the door used to be, eyes riveted to her back. Abby backed out after, covering everything. Not a single being moved.
Outside and a number of blocks away, Faith looked over at Abby after pulling into a parking lot. "What was the light-bow thing? Other than 'nasty' and 'effective'." She lit up a cigar and stretched.
Whistler drew it off of her belt and showed her how it unfolded and activated. "Called a 'UV-arc'. Bow shaped, but the string's a concentrated UV/full-sunlight-spectrum frequency laser set. Cuts through almost anything, and ashes vampires like nobodies business."
"Wicked cool." Faith's eyes widened. "Light-bow, huh? Jedi Abby." Abby giggled, then sobered.
"Yeah. Only one of them now though, plus parts to keep it fixed." She sighed. "We lost our main tech-head dealing with Drake and the vampire nation."
"Ouch. Sorry. Happens like that, a lot." Faith made a sympathetic face. "Ko. Ready to move on?"
Place number two was a former topless bar. The old name and the ubiquitous Live! Girls! Live! could still barely be read on the faded sign in the parking lot, although the new name read "Hellkitties" over the door. Faith left a pile of dust where the bouncer'd been, threw a five at the femaleish looking thing behind the cage for the cover, and sauntered in.
There were dancers on the stages scattered around the place dancing to music, but none of them looked completely human, and not all of them had only two breasts. All of them did have g-strings filled with dollars, and drooling male-ish looking things clustered around hooting: showing that demon strip clubs weren't that much different from human ones.
Again, a pair of bodyguard looking types in suits, these purplish and scaled, moved to intercept as they headed towards a table near the back with a group of more important types settled at it. The thugs proved to be completely incapable of dealing with a quick, dark-haired blur that tumbled between them, leaving a pair of knives buried in their diaphragms as she rolled to her feet past them. The two behind the table also proved to be incapable of dealing with a slender leather clad girl with a bow who left a silver tipped arrow in each one's eye and came to a stop with her bow trained on the forehead of a third.
The.. being... in the head position at the table was a humanoid gray skinned thing with orange eyes, and wasn't nearly as imperturbable as the toad thing had been. There was a similar looking being standing just behind his right shoulder, and self-important looking beings or other types around the table in an arc.
Greyskin half stood and snarled as Faith came to a halt in front of the table, sword level with his adams apple. "Do you have any idea who you've just annoyed, human?"
Faith looked quizzical, relaxed and loose. "Guess? I'd say a table full of this end of J-City's demon-mob heads and their toadies. But I could be wrong. If so... " she snickered. "Ehrmm... oopsie?" She inclined her head slightly. "Name's Faith."
Several people at the table and nearby stiffened slightly. Grey-skin came closer to looking apoplectic than Abby'd have guessed it was possible for something like that to look. His eyes narrowed as he said, very quietly, "Your name is corpse," and started to motion something.
Faith's smiled gently and asked, "Is that your consiglierrie?" She inclined her head slightly to the one just behind him, who nodded fractionally, eyes never leaving her.
Her hand blurred and a spike stuck out of the seated one's eye. She met and locked the eyes of the standing gray skinned being. "Congratulations on your promotion."
He merely met her eyes back, levelly, and said "Seems somewhat abrupt."
"Could be brief, too." She swept her gaze around the table. "Faith. Slayer. My associate here is the new Sheriff in town. This is now a business meeting. Slayer business."
Her eyes returned to the newly promoted demon's. "Apocalypse season's here. I want to know what's going down. Nothing, but nothing, moves through this town until I do. You run across anything I should know, make sure it gets to me." She tossed another card on the table.
"You don't, and I'll devote whatever time I have before the world ends to making sure you don't live to enjoy it." She met eyes around the table. "Have a nice night, gentlemen."
They both backed out that time, watching carefully as they left...
...
Wash, rinse, repeat. Next several places were variants of the first. They left bodies and piles of dust behind, threats, soft voiced promise, and moved on to the next. They fought their way out of two of them, leaving wreckage and piles of corpses. Abby was starting to wonder if they were going to live to see morning. She was also, she was surprised to suddenly realize, having the time of her life.
"I thought you said Rule 3 was 'When in doubt, kill it?'" She asked as she pulled in behind Faith a couple of blocks from the next target. "We're leaving a lot of demons behind us."
Faith looked over at her. "When you three are hunting, do you kill every vampire you encounter? No matter how big the nest or lair you walk in on?"
She looked thoughtful. "Not always."
"Right." She leaned against a doorway. "Why... ?"
Abby shrugged. "Sometimes we're hunting for information. Sometimes we're looking for someone specific, and don't want to spook them."
Faith nodded. "And Rule One always modifies." She gestured back towards the places they'd already been. "We're looking to shake things, not hunting. If we'd tried to kill everything in every bar, we'd probably be dead by now. Instead, we made an impression, got in, got out, and left the word spreading: 'there's Slayers in town, and they're dangerous'. Called 'showing the flag'."
She held up a hand and ticked off items: "Rule 3a: dead demons don't talk. Rule 3b: you can't kill everything. Rule 3c: sometimes you have to build a rep before they take you seriously."
Abby nodded. "So... you think we'll get any information from this?"
Faith shrugged, "No. Possibly. Hard to tell, but I doubt if anything will come out of this directly. But - YNK: You Never Know." Her phone went off, the council one, and she glanced at the display. "Fuck."
She moved off a step and flipped it open. "B. Not a good time."
"What the hell are you doing, Faith?" Buffy sounded annoyed.
"Working. Wanna call back later?"
"No. I want to do this now, Faith."
"Fine." Faith sighed. "Go for it."
"Robin says you freaked and put him in the hospital for no real reason."
"Oh, really?" Faith rolled her eyes. Flat voice, "And what did Giles and Vi tell you?"
"I'm asking you, not them."
"Cool. So you blew off the two people who actually got the straight skinny, Wood gave you a sad one-sider, and you decided to call me and tell me what really happened from the Buffyworld perspective, huh?" Faith's voice dripped sarcasm. "Want me to apologize, go kiss Wood and make it all better so we can do it all again in a few?"
"No, I want you to tell me what really happened."
"I told G and Vi. They told you." Faith's voice got soft. "B, you either trust me enough to figure I gave it to them straight, and what Vi saw was level - or you don't. Figure it out."
"So you had a spat, hurt Wood, and rode out and left us a mess to clean up. Again."
Abby couldn't hear the other side of the call, only Faith's, but she saw Faith wince and then her eyes go narrow and colder than they had at any of the demons they'd terrorized earlier.
"Oh, yeah?! Lemme get this straight:" She laughed, bitterly. "Robin slept with a barely 18 year old student, but I left you a mess, huh. Wood couldn't keep his in his pants around his students, but I left you a mess to clean up."
"That's not what - "
"Gee, thanks ever so, 'Sister Slayer'," she cut across the other woman. "Xander caught Woodie in the gym with another student months ago, and you guys blew him off and shipped him to Africa, but I left you a mess to clean up. Woodie sleeps with the students under his care, but I left you a mess to clean up. My soon-to-be-ex boyfriend gets annoyed at getting called on his shit and takes a swing at me, but I left you 'a mess to clean up'."
"... "
She sniffed, "I'm all like, tears and shit now, B. I think I'm actually all feeling your pain and shit. Not."
"But, that's not it... " Faith cut over Buffy again, too angry to let her finish what 'it was'.
Faith cut across her, voice a harsh whisper. "Yes. It. Is." She paused. "So much for 'The Chosen Two, Sister Slayers' after the First, eh? Didn't mean jack shit. No trust there. One of your fucking decisions came apart and broke it off in me, but I left you a mess and ruined your perfect Buffyvision with like, reality and shit."
Buffy spluttered, "... "
"No, B," she continued, on a roll. "I came the fuck home after three weeks on the road, ready to kick back and rejoin what I thought was a relationship. Found my 'loving boyfriend' in our fucking bed with a barely 18 year old mini-Slay. And when I chewed him out over it, he took a swing at me. I left so I wouldn't lose it further and hurt anyone until I cooled down. Like maybe that fucked up kid he was boffing. If that's not what you wanted to hear, too damn bad. Way. It. Is."
"... "
"If the peroxide hasn't killed too many braincells yet, grab a fucking ment, 'sis': This. Ain't. About. You. Ain't about me either." She snorted. "It's about you guys putting someone who has no business in charge of a bunch of girls entrusted to you and ignoring the warning signs. And about you not keeping an eye on him while I'm off all over the country more time than I'm in doing IWC Council business instead of actually managing the girls, and I can't be keeping an eye on it. Because some months, I ain't fucking there but maybe three days out of every 20."
Faith paused, "Don't put this shit solely on my shoulders, B. I didn't make this 'mess'. I just walked into the kitchen and stepped in it after it was there."
There was a long silence on the other end, followed by, "Not quite what I had in mind... "
"Yeah, I know," Faith sighed. "You just had an 'oh-of-course-the-psycho-slayer went off again' moment and shot your mouth off without thinking, and without listening to the people who had a clue. You just happened to have a blonde moment when I wasn't in the mood to pad your corners right now."
She continued, "I sent G a message so he could get it covered. I made sure the school was covered before I left. I did the responsible things. Vi's pretty good at admin. My assistant's been handling most of the training when I'm out on the road troubleshooting. She's ready to move up. It's not like I left a huge hole there for you to rush in and fill."
"But we need to... " Buffy started.
"Y'know what?" Faith snorted. "While you're figuring out what you did have in mind and what 'we need to', I've got something going here. I told Giles I quit. Find a replacement, for both me and Woodie. Later, B: I got people to do and things to kill." She paused. "I'll be in touch."
click
"Grrrr. Twank." She shut the phone and turned it off. She gave Abby a bright, false smile. "Don't ask. Let's go kill something."
...
If Abby had thought that Faith was intense and dangerous earlier... she was pure, concentrated predator from that point on. They hit the next six bars and a couple of lairs in a whirlwind of deadliness and a sudden thunderclap of violence. Faith walked in, killed, delivered her message to what was left, and left large numbers of very, very quiet demons scattering in their wake. Abby concentrated on making sure Faith didn't die - she was far past watching her own back. Faith killed without hesitation or mercy... and things that should have been as far past being intimidated by the small woman as a doberman was by a hamster, froze into stillness and did their best to avoid notice til she went by. Or told her what she asked in very quiet voices, often over the body parts of their recent associates.
When they paused finally for a cold drink and a breather, she was torn between awe and sheer terror of the woman on the other bike.
"'The Thing That The Monsters Fear'." She said, softly.
Faith looked over at her and smiled, softly. "You thought it was mostly bravado when I said it, huh?"
"No... no.. well... " She looked embarrassed
Faith grinned, "C'mon. Enough." She put her bike in gear and headed out, away from the trail of demon bars they'd been hitting.
She wandered seemingly aimlessly for a bit, then pulled into an abandoned construction site. Parked, said "C'mon", and without a word leapt. Grabbed a girder and pulled herself up in a blur of movement, swinging out and up from handhold to foothold like she had eyes in her hands and feet. Abby gritted her teeth and followed, surprising herself when she was able to match the stunt.
She hit the top and swung up and onto the scaffold there, settling in lightly atop a girder. Balanced lightly on the balls of her feet, twelve stories up, unconcerned about the sheer drop or the smallness of her perch. Abby settled in beside her on the somewhat more solid scaffold top.
Faith waved her hand. "Look. Listen. Extend your senses as wide as they can go. Hear it. Feel it."
A refinery, lit up and sparkling with lights, belched smoke and shot gouts of flame upwards into the night some distance off, like some demonic city. Police and ambulances wailed, off in the night. Voices came to her, faint on the wind. Salt air filled with the scent of sewage hit her nose. Building lights, headlights, and windows glowed through the streets. Heat lightning flared, far off, and a low rumble made its way to her ears after a time. Flared again.
She heard a soft sound and realized it was Faith's voice, singing softly into the wind...
After listening for a few minutes, "Meatloaf," Abbey said, quietly. "A rock and roll Hell where nothing's ever worth the cost." Faith nodded.
"Ala LeHane. Jim Steinman could have been talking about all of this when he wrote that." Faith nodded her head toward the night and the lights. "Lights, demons, killers. Night sounds. Voices. Bodies. Heat and evil. Death." Her voice was soft. "All of the things that they don't know about, and don't want to know."
"And where ever we are, and where ever we go - there's always gonna be some light." Faith looked at Abby, and her eyes were soft. "Or some dark. Our choice."
She snorted, gently. "And you're one of us now. The Things that the Monsters Fear." She continued on, quietly. "And we're just as fucked up as anyone else. We're not heroes, we're not perfect... we're just among the only things that stands between what you saw earlier tonight... and those who have no real hope of dealing with them on their terms. A little bit of the light, in the dark and the bad."
She turned, graceful on the small space, and Abby saw that her eyes were wet. "And we got started because some ancient assholes poured power into a young girl, and we got chosen because of no real virtues of our own... just because we happened to have something the Slayer spirit could hook onto. Get used by the Powers as chew toys." She paused. "We fuck up and we accidentally kill people, do it by purpose sometimes, hurt each other, hurt ourselves, drive off our friends, and we fight and we die. And we fuck up relationships and break things... just like regular people, because that's what we are. Human. With a little something extra."
"But the thing that makes it worthwhile, makes it worth something... " She paused, "is that we let the monsters know that they don't own the night, and they don't get past us to harm the defenseless without a cost."
"'A haunt is a place where animals come to feed'." She looked back out over the lights and movement again. "Steinman was wrong. Some things are ever worth the cost. We let the monsters know they don't feed on those under our protection. That something more dangerous stands in the way."
"Us," Abby said. Faith nodded. "Blade. Hannibal... "
"And Angel, Wes, Giles, Xander... " Faith said, quietly. "And far from enough other all too human champions." There was a long silence, then she said, "It took me a long time to figure it out. I screwed up a lot along the way. Still do. But I'm getting better... You have a chance to do it better than I did."
"I don't know if I can do the things you did tonight," Abby's voice was just as soft. "I lied a bit earlier: I'm not that much different from Hannibal and Blade. I've been fighting these things since before my father died. This is a war, and up until recently, humans have been losing. Still can... I'm a part of it, and I like it. I'm good at it. But the type of things you deal with are maybe past what I can handle."
"Sure you can. Just takes experience and knowhow. And guts. And a little bit of don't-give-a-fuck." She straightened suddenly, flipping up, back, and off of the girder end to land lightly in a crouch next to Abby, plywood flexing under her weight. "You're one of the strongest newly Awakened I've seen, as strong as Vi or Rona or any of the Sunnydale potentials. You got training, skills, and nerve."
She took out one of those cards, scribbled something on the back, handed it to Abby. "Keep that. You decide you want to meet the others and find out more about all of this, give that number a call. Ask for Vi and tell her that Faith sent you." She paused. "But don't cut off your friends and family. I never had that. You do. It's important."
"I'll think about it." Abby nodded and put it away. "Hearing your end of some of the conversations with those people doesn't make me want to rush out and join them."
"Ha. Not surprised," Faith stared off into the distance. "Don't... judge by me. We all have... histories there. Lots of pain and bad on both sides." She glanced sideways at the girl. "Vi's good people. Dawn. Xander. Giles, when he pulls his head out of his ass. B's a pain, but she knows her shit." Faith shrugged. "Aren't any manuals for this. We're making it up as we go along. Slayer's and watchers been around for a long time, but not like this, now. We're... unprecedented."
'Yes, you are,' Abby thought. What she said was: "Are we likely to run into any of the others out here?"
Faith shrugged. "Possible. Majority of the NYC slayer group concentrate on demon and vamp haunts on the other side of the river, and on keeping an eye on the big hot spots like the Hellfire Club."
"Hellfire? I thought that was a myth."
"Naw. It's real. Secret society of demonic mages, warlocks, businessmen, and politicians and lawyers. Imagine Vi and the others are doing what we're doing: shaking them up and trying to get a line on what's coming down." Faith shrugged, "But if when you guys are out working, you come across a group of heavily armed young women, maybe with one or two normal people along, going into the types of places we hit tonight... stay clear unless you have a real good reason to get involved."
Abby raised an eyebrow and Faith said "Friendly fire don't discriminate. Ain't no such thing as 'friendly' fire. Blue-on-Blue misunderstandings happen too easy."
"Ah." She nodded. "Yeah."
Faith rose gracefully. "C'mon. We're wasting moonlight." She swung over the edge and made her way down more carefully than they'd come up, Whistler following.