The Elder Slayers Chapter 5
AN: So Kendra is around, and I'm going to take the suggestion I received. She will be a disciple of Meridia in the ES-universe. Problems will arise
Giles' eyes switched between the two young women, trying to form a coherent response. All he could manage was a string of barely comprehensible wh- sounds.
The Blond slayer waited for her Watcher to respond in some intelligent way. As the seconds ticked by she was beginning to doubt the chances of him speaking for a while. Turning from the confused watcher she looked to the other adults in the room.
Jenny and Ethan were looking at Giles with varying degrees of amusement. Jenny was watching as her boyfriend crashed harder than the last computer he tried to use, and it was just hilarious. Ethan was watching his old friend react like he did the one time Robert had suggested he swung the other way. Both adults were far too amused to do anything about the current predicament.
Kendra da Vampire Slayer had no such reservations. She walked calmly up to the elder man and slapped him in the face to stop his irritating babbling. The Watcher stopped, and his companions calmed themselves. Giles reached up to his face and took his glasses off for cleaning. Rubbing the lenses he told the girls, "Start at the beginning."
Buffy nodded and started her story, "Well, after you told me about the Order earlier today I sort of exploded at this kid. I didn't hurt him, but I realized that I could really hurt somebody if I didn't calm down. So I left school to avoid Snyder and went to Angel' apartment. I would have gone to the Sunset Club but the people there would have driven me crazy faster than the Troll, so Angel's it was. He wasn't there, but I decided that I could take the alone time to calm down a bit. I fell asleep and then she showed up."
Buffy pointed at Kendra when she said that and with a nod from Giles the girl began her story, "Ma Watcha' heard from one of da seers we use dat da 'Ellmout' was in danga from somet'ing. Da seer couldn't say what, but she did say dat there was also a new playa dere. Somet'ing powerful. So Mr. Zabuto got me on a plane and told me to find Mr. Giles, the watcha of da last Slaya. I did not expect to find da last Slaya still alive."
Giles carefully looked the girl up and down before asking, "Are you referring to Sam Zabuto?"
At the Jamaican slayer's nod, Giles nodded, saying, "I have met Sam several times. Good man. Now as to the situation here, I would assume that the danger that the seer felt would be the current problems we have been having. Somebody has placed a contract of Buffy's life with the Order of Teraka. I think we will have to figure out why there are two Slayers later."
On hearing the name of the Order, Kendra's eyes perked up and she began to exchange mental notes with the aged watcher. The blond slayer and the two adults looked between each other and shrugged, the adults went back to what they had been doing with the girls help.
The Sunset Club, Same time
The bleached vampire rubbed his wrists and waited for the two to speak. Alexander asked the obvious question, "What did you mean when you said it explained what happened to yours?"
Spike shrugged his shoulders, explaining, "the last few weeks, my boys have been turned to dust. Not all my gang, mind you; only the ones I sired personally. So if Dalton wanted to take over that would explain their dustings. I thought it was the slayer going on a bloody crusade."
Alexander nodded at the reasoning; if not a Slayer, a coup. A similar tactic had been used on him several times in the original Alexander's reality. Sitting in his throne, he contemplated his next move. Thinking it over he said, "I offer you sanctuary, on the condition that you be re-ensouled. I do not wish to have demonic vampires within my walls."
Spike was confused, and a bit angry. Growling at the man in the throne he asked, "And how do you intend to get me a new soul, eh? I don't think they sell them at bloody Costco!"
Alexander smiled and signaled to Tara. The nightingale was instantly in front of the startled Spike, where she plunged something directly into the vampire's chest. Spike roared in pain and horror as the blond lass destroyed his heart and replaced it with whatever she had just shoved into his chest.
The Demon that was Spike was instantly destroyed, but before it could take the body with it there was a presence taking its place. The presence was an immature soul that had been stored in a soul gem several hours earlier. The demon tried to corrupt the gem, but it could not find purchase and instead all it did was get absorbed into the new soul.
The now ensouled Spike stood from where he had fallen to his knees and rubbed his chest. The hole was already healing over, but there was a new heaviness to him now. He figured it was the soul they had apparently shoved into his chest.
"Alexander created this method after he decided to let you live. He considers the vampires in this reality a personal insult," Tara explained to him before moving away.
Spike watched her walk away. He was distracted enough that he did not notice Alexander until the blue man was standing directly in front of him. Looking up at his face, Spike wondered what would happen now. His trepidation increased when Alexander gave him a grin.
Alexander looked down at the former demon and said, "Now let us discuss the terms of your sanctuary. And how to deal with the assassins."
Sunnydale library, ten minutes later
Giles placed the last of the tomes he and Kendra had been collecting onto the table, looking at the neat pile. There were a grand total of five books that had any solid information about the order, with the information in each wide and varied. His gaze traveling up to the three other members of the group present he said, "It appears that the Order always sends three of their assassins to eliminate a target. Only three. I have been able to locate two instances where the Order had failed to kill the target, in both cases the three assassins sent were killed. It appears that the order sends only three, and should they fail they do not send more."
Buffy decided to ask the needed question, "Why would they stop at three?"
"Well, they do not actually stop trying to kill the target. Instead they send the worst of their assassins to be killed, "Giles explained. When he saw the confused looks that the others had he expanded, "The three are the best option to eliminate the target, and if they fail the order does not wish to risk losing more valuable resources. If they lost all their good assassins to a single target, it would be a fiscal waste. The Order of Teraka is nothing if not financially savvy."
The others were still a mite confused but they decided to take away the important facts; three assassins, one down and two to go. Buffy nodded, then turned her gaze to the other library dwellers, "So what's the plan?"
Ethan looked at the Slayers, then his old friend before saying, "I vote we head to the new power's place!"
Kendra's head whipped around to look at the chaos mage and demanded, "You knew who da power was? Why did ya not say so?"
"Well you were looking into the bloody assassins, and I'm not the only one who knows the 'power.' Stupid bloody Slayers," Ethan told the enraged black girl. He didn't notice both Kendra and Buffy tense and narrow their eyes at his remark about them.
Before the pair of super powered teens could act on their hurt feelings, Jenny broke the tension, "So we're going to the Sunset Club? Lets go! We'll take my car, Giles' would fall apart before we got there."
As the group exited the library Giles retorted to the jab at his ride, "The Citron is a bloody classic!"
The Sunset Club, Later
Alexander shook the hand of the bleached vampire and asked, "Are we in agreement?"
Spike nodded his head, not pleased that he could no longer kill but happy that he and Dru would be taken care of. Plus he didn't know how his shiny new soul would react to him draining some bitch. Better to not risk crippling guilt, he didn't want to turn out like the Poofer.
"Yeah we are," He replied with a sigh. Looking to the three corpses on the other side of the bar that Alexander's minions were looting, he said, "Still doesn't tell us how we're gonna deal with the rest of these berks."
Alexander smirked at the frustrated vamp and took him by the shoulder. Leading him over to the corpses he explained, "That is the beauty of live bait mixed with over eager assassins. They will come to us and not bother being prepared to deal with our combined might."
Spike's eyes roamed between the dead assassins and the grinning Vampire Lord. He knew that he was stuck with his choice, and was unwilling to risk Dru. Thinking of Drusilla he turned to look at his lover and saw she was in the middle of a fit, getting a vision of some kind.
Alexander released his new charge and allowed him to rush to the seer's side. Drusilla was ranting about something big and blue but not a box. Alexander chuckled at the reference to the television show but kept one ear on the ravings. When he heard Spike cursing up a storm he assumed the bleached vamp knew what she was referring to.
Willow waited for Spike to finish before slapping him in the face. When he whirled on her in shock and anger she simply pointed her index finger dancing with fire, "Language mister! Now tell us what that was about like a person."
"A few weeks ago Dru started asking about the Judge. Its this great powerful smurf from the dawn of the millennium. It was powerful enough to burn the humanity out of any living thing, only got killed by chance during a crusade. But I've been having Dawson write down everything Dru rants about since we got him. The son of a bitch must be collecting the bloody thing's pieces. That's why the assassins are after us!"
Willow furrowed her brow and thought of all the tomes she had read from the library. She remembered reading about the Judge in one of the Tomes. Turning to her oldest friend she nodded to him and said, "He's right, the Judge is bad news. An agent of Demonic order."
Alexander growled low in his throat and snarled, "Jyggalag! I had thought him destroyed!"
Willow nodded and said, "He was, yet his disciples still live."
Spike looked between the two and asked, "Who?"
The pair would have responded were it not for the bang on the door and the sound of cursing. Alexander looked to the read head and she nodded before rushing to the door.
Outside the Sunset Club, Same time
Buffy leapt out of the way of another flying spike as she looks for her target. Her eyes fail to notice the bugs creeping towards her until they are almost at her feet. She looks down and screeches as the bugs take the form of a bespectacled man carrying a wicked looking knife.
Jumping back she manages to avoid being impaled, but is almost struck by a fireball heading her way. The ball just passes her and strikes the bug man before he can dissolve. The demonic insect begins to shriek and flail, sending burning grubs all about the place. Buffy turned around to see her friend had come from the bar to help her.
Turning back she made sure that the bug man was dying before looking to the source of the spikes. An orange skinned demon was in battle with the new Slayer.
The Slayer was losing.
Kendra moved with the grace of the Slayer, but she lacked the economy of motion and the motivation that made Buffy so good at what she did. The black Slayer had been trained in fighting all her life but because of the way she was taught she failed to fight like a human. With every attack she made she calculated and assessed, taking up valuable time while the demon did no such thing.
It charged and slashed and stabbed with its head spines. It did not stop or falter and it did not contemplate. It took advantage of the lag in the Slayer's attacks and slowly drained the girl.
Buffy saw her fellow slayer failing and rushed to help her. She had almost made it when the demon gave an unexpected thrust, lunging at the girl with a head but that stabbed his head spines into the startled girl's chest. The demon straitened itself as the black girl fell.
Buffy watched her fellow fall with shock and horror. It was almost in slow motion as she lid to the ground unmoving. As she settled, Buffy gave a startled gasp, then a roar of anger as her gaze turned to a glare and rested upon the smiling demon.
The orange skinned demon grinned evilly at the Slayer and waited for her to charge him in a blind rage. What he did not expect was that when she began charging him she shifted. He did not even have enough time to fully grasp the horror of the beast charging him before he was grabbed by clawed hands and torn in two.
The werewolf gave a roar of triumph at threw its fallen foe to the ground. She growled at its remains, anger still simmering. But then she recalled her downed comrade, and she rushed to her side. She began to paw at the still girl and whimper.
The sound of rushing feet attracted her attention and she turned to growl at the intruders before she realized who they were. Willow ignored the growling were-Buffy, sliding to the Slayer's side with a healing spell ready. The slayer was slowly healed but her condition continued to deteriorate.
Eventually, her heart stopped.
Boston, Apartment building
A dark haired teen awoke from her nap screaming. Her guardian rushed into her room to see what was wrong and found her charge clutching her chest with tears in her eyes. They hugged tightly before the new Slayer fell back to sleep. The Watcher smiled at her sleeping charge and kissed her forehead. She crept from the room and closed the door softly.
Neither noticed the rose that had appeared in the vase on the side of her bed.