Disclaimer: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1...
SHADOWED SOULS Part 6
Chapter 2
Again Sirk tried to shove forward, but had no effect, as the rapier didn't budge, and instead the building seemed to rock to the point that Angel expected to see cracks hazing up the walls.
Faith stirred from her stupor, rolling her head from side to side and grasping the blade with both hands, as if trying to pull it from her body, but she lacked sufficient strength.
Like a hologram flickering on and off, a figure manifested itself in the doorway of Angel's office, looking down at its own white arms in amazement; Angel had only ever seen the man once, long ago, but he recognised the ghost-youth. "Dennis? Dennis Pearson! I thought you couldn't manifest a visible appearance?"
The ghost looked up, startled, then around him. His features suddenly changed to alarm, "I can't. They've hijacked my energy matrix – they're coming, god, there are dozens of them –" He winked out of sight as suddenly as he'd appeared.
"What? Who?" Angel called desperately, trying to keep his attention simultaneously on Sirk and Faith and the other Slayers and what was happening around him.
A stiff breeze whipped through the outer lobby, wrapping clothing around people's bodies and making the window blinds rattle.
"Willow?" called Xander nervously.
"I'm not doing this!" Willow responded helplessly.
Another figure, her image so strong she was as solid-looking as if really present, slowly coalesced next to Dana Parvati, who was frozen by Sirk's magic.
"Fallon!" exclaimed Giles, his eyes widening.
Twisting up from the floor, segueing out of the walls, floating down from the ceiling, amorphous shapes writhed and spun, expanding and contracting, seething up in plumes of energy that solidified into translucent forms that had one thing in common – all were female.
Bar one; out of the corner of his eye Angel saw a flickering in his office behind his desk and saw Dennis Pearson manifest once again in front of the office safe holding the Vessel of Troas. Catching Angel's eye Dennis shrugged helplessly. Angel turned back to the main event – Dennis seemed to be ok for the moment.
Faith's eyes widened as a beautiful black teenager shimmered in the air: Angel, after a moment, recognised her – Kendra, the Vampire Slayer killed by Drusilla, resulting in the Calling of Faith. Sirk, indeed, everyone moved closer together as the ghosts appeared from everyone, crowding around the living Slayers, filling up available space. Next to Buffy there appeared a shorter, slender brunette with a grave, solemn face and huge velvet eyes. They'd had never seen her before, but most people, clued-in by the fact that Fallon had appeared next to Dana and Kendra next to Faith, realised instantly who she had to be: India Cohen, whose death had made Buffy the Slayer.
Wildly flailing, Sirk batted at the apparitions with his free arm, as if to drive them away, but his hand passed through them like they were mist. "NO!" He shrieked as the black vapour that had been pulsing up the blade not only stopped but also began to fade, "What are you doing? Stop!"
With a gasp, Buffy managed to take a step forward; her eyes wide and storm-lashed, Faith grasped the rapier blade and pushed herself backwards, slumping down to the floor once she was free of the blade, blood trickling down from the puncture point to pool on the carpet. Angel managed to move a foot to his right, but it was still like moving through treacle. The other Slayers began to twist and arch, trying to throw off Sirk's holding spell even as he sought to maintain it, sweat soaking his face that was contorted with rage and desperation.
A soft noise intruded, growing to an ominous crescendo – the beating of drums. At the top of the stairs another apparition formed, ink-black skin swathed in white strips of cloth like a mummy's bandages, the black woman's face streaked with white stripes of thick paint. His voice cracking, Sirk cried something but nothing happened – the black vapour remained quiescent, as if waiting.
Moving in a fighting crouch, the First Slayer stalked down the stairs, moving through the ghosts of the dead of her kind as if they weren't there, twisting around the bodies of the living Slayers, sinuous and deadly, like a panther stalking prey, her bottomless eyes fixed on Sirk.
As he looked into them, Angel felt himself being sucked in…he shook his head sharply to dispel the sensation.
"I will destroy you!" yelled Sirk, panting as if he'd run a marathon.
"We are forever." The First Slayer's voice had a slight echo to it, like she were speaking from the bottom of a deep well up, Angel thought - or as if it were in fact many voices, speaking together.
"You – are – just - a – savage," Sirk gasped. "You came before speech, you cannot be real!"
"My daughters give to me the gift of Voice." The First Slayer stalked around Sirk freely, unimpaired by the defensive shield he had mystically created to protect him from the living Slayers. "To speak what we have said in heart and mind and soul. We have Chosen. We shall abide."
Sirk lashed out at the First Slayer, but then noticed his rapier sword. "No! NO! What are you doing?"
Starting at the tip, the silver metal of the rapier was turning as black as the vapour that was now still, having sunk to the floor like a heavier than air gas; spreading up the blade the blackness spread to the handle until Sirk dropped it with an alarmed cry, and the weapon hit the floor and disintegrated in a small poof of ash. Shaking her head as if released fully from the thrall, Buffy lashed out with one boot, but Sirk's defensive shield still held.
"Damn! Oh, Faith!" Dropping down to kneel beside the Dark Slayer, Buffy gripped her hand as Robin was able to finally dart forward and press his hand to his lover's abdominal wound. "You're dead, Sirk!"
"No, it worked! The spell worked!" Sirk was babbling in shock. "You can't stop me."
"We have chosen." the First Slayer hissed the words to Sirk. "Your sacrifice was as nothing compared to what was offered, with tears and with blood, for the Champion to be brought forth. You cared not for what you yielded, therefore you have been judged unworthy to steal the Gift that was granted."
"No! I'll give more! Empty my bank accounts! Take double the amount I paid!" howled Sirk, almost stamping his foot in outrage, "I paid a fortune to take the Slayers' power!"
"It is nothing. Worthless fibres of plants." The First Slayer hissed softly.
"Then what?" cried Sirk in almost a soprano shriek, "What?"
"Love is sacrifice."
Wesley jerked at the words, exchanging a startled look with Angel – the First Slayer had uttered the same words the insectoid creature had said to Wesley before it intended to kill him as an offering to Jasmine.
"Blood?" demanded Wesley sharply to the First Slayer. "Sacrifice greater than words? Sirk offered money to take the Slayers' powers but it wasn't powerful enough? Listen to me, First One, I will offer my blood as a sacrifice to restore the Slayers' powers!"
Sirk yelped furiously and a fireball appeared in his palm before suddenly sputtering and dissipating as Willow cried a counter-spell. Although nobody was able to get to Sirk, they could act with ever-increasing speed as his repelling magic began to falter.
"Love is sacrifice," the First Slayer repeated. "The Slayer-Queen did not understand this – she saw, but she did not understand."
"What didn't I understand?" snapped Buffy sharply from her position next to Faith. "Damn it, we have to get Faith to hospital before we lose her as well as the baby! I don't have time for riddles!"
Somehow Illyria was standing barely a foot away from Sirk, pressing a hand inexorably against the protective mystical barrier he had erected, its crystalline eyes glowing sky-blue. Looking at Sirk as if he were some creature it had never seen before, Illyria said in its strangely soft voice, "A sacrifice is not a sacrifice if it has no value to the one offering it."
"Illyria?" Wesley looked at his mate sharply. "We don't understand. What is the First Slayer trying to tell us?"
Illyria looked around at those looking back at it; it was Illyria, it had been god to a god. These creatures were mortal, ephemeral, yet so arrogant in their power. They did not comprehend.
So Illyria explained: "The worshipper who petitions for a great gift must be prepared to give up something of equal importance to itself, as proof that it is both worthy and sincere in its offering. The Sirk human sacrificed worthless slips of pulped wood. They were no great loss to him; he was not giving up anything he really cared about. The being that made your kind understood this for he made within humanity an instinctive desire to worship but also gifted you with innate knowledge that great gifts come at great price, hence your kind grew powerful through your offerings, for you sacrificed blood and tears and love to the Great Ones of old."
"Wait! Wait!" Dawn cried as she followed the demon's words, half-pulling away from where she had been clinging to Spike. "You mean that the Shadow Men made a great sacrifice to create the Slayer?"
"A sacrifice so profound…" Wesley began slowly, his face bearing an almost agonised look as if he had suddenly realised that he understood everything, "…that nothing, no sacrifice ever offered by any evil since, trying to negate the Slayer, has been worthy enough to outweigh it, to be of sufficiently greater value enough to undo what the Shadow Men did?"
"That is what I just said." Illyria pointed out rather tartly to its mate.
"What are you talking about?" demanded Buffy frantically.
"B., shut up a minute," chastised Faith in a raspy whisper even as she clutched Robin's hands in a death grip, "I think this is important."
"There wasn't any sacrifice!" Buffy told her sister Slayer. "Three magicians grabbed a girl, chained her to the earth and mystically forced a load of demon energy into her! That doesn't help us here!"
The First Slayer looked at her. "Love is sacrifice."
"Yeah, so you keep saying." Buffy retorted. "What's love got to do with it?"
A ripple went through the ghosts of the Slayers. Angel stared at them in awe and disbelief. The lobby of his office was packed with them – several thousand of them; had they been corporeal, like Spike, the lobby would have been the sardine tin from hell. The Slayers whispered sibilantly and the sound of the drums increased in volume.
Out of nowhere the metal shadow puppet pieces appeared on the coffee table – the tree, demon, three shamen, and girl casting huge, entirely unnatural shadows on the walls. The desert landscape seemed to surround them, bright white sand and stunted trees under a harshly bright sky. Shapes began to appear, figures that became people – the scene was so much like a home-movie projector slide show that Angel almost looked around for it before his attention was captured by what was being played out.
There came the discordant wail of loss, over-cut suddenly by the indignant screech of birth. The scene shifted in the blink of an eye and the oldest of the Shadow Men, but a younger version of him, stood before a dreadfully familiar-looking mound of earth, looking down at it with a squirming bundle in his arms. Scenes flashed by – the tribe moving from place to place, attack by monsters and demons that were fought off, vignettes of soundless pre-history in which the black girl grew older, she and the Shadow Man her father walking hand in hand through the harsh landscape. The demons became more ferocious, often the tribe sought succour in caves with the warriors driving the monsters away with spears from the entrances at great risk, while the girl child buried her face in her father's chest like her peers clung to their parents.
Fear, uncertainty, struggle…then the scene shifted to a far more familiar one – the Shadow Men in a circle raising hands skywards in supplication. Her body concealed in the crepe-like swathes of white cloth, the First Slayer watched them. Without voice, the eldest of the Shadow Men turned to look at her, reaching out a hand. Ignoring it, the First Slayer sinuously moved forward to the centre of the circle, her predatory motion flawless mimicry of the pre-attack stalk of a vampire. Suddenly the First Slayer was chained to the Earth, as oily black vapour seethed and swirled around her, wrapping around her faster and faster until Angel felt dizzy –
Suddenly they were back in the lobby of his office at Wolfram & Hart, the whole scene having disappeared without trace.
"The Shaman chose his daughter as the First Slayer…" Giles murmured to himself, "his only child. He sacrificed the most precious thing he had, she was of his own blood…"
"And I'm supposed to go 'Aww, well in that case…'?" Buffy cried out, her face twisting in distress. "Why? Tell me why her? Look at those guys – most of the warriors in that tribe make Conan the Barbarian look like Andrew Wells! If they wanted a Champion, why not pick the tribe's greatest warrior. I don't understand, Giles!" Unconsciously she implored the closest thing she had to a father.
"Because only women bleed."
The words echoed slightly in the air as if a playful zephyr had snatched them up. Spike folded his arms across the front of his body in a gesture that Angel recognised as innately peculiar to Spike; it was the manner he had where he crossed his arms over his chest, but then instead of tucking his hands in, he instead habitually clutched his hands around his own upper arms in the way that resembled the classic human self-protective gesture of hugging him or herself.
"Every month you do, pet. Remember why Glory wanted Dawn – blood is life." Spike looked at Buffy's uncomprehending face. "A man has the spark of creation, love, but he can't hold on to it. The man starts life, but he can't carry life; he can't hold it within him, nurture its sweetness, nourish it and protect it. Only the woman can carry another life inside. You're all looking at the Shadow Men from the viewpoint of Western society where women have been treated as inferior for centuries, but in their culture, the most valuable thing they had were their women. In their society Woman was revered because the woman nurtured life - daughter, sister, mother."
"That's why they chose a girl for the Slayer?" rasped Faith, her eyes fever bright but her voice strong as she lay cradled against Robin.
"Who better to choose?" Spike asked softly. "If you want to defeat Death, who better to choose as your Champion than a Vessel of Life? The Shadow Men lived in a world of savagery and unbridled power run amok. They wanted a great gift, so they made a great sacrifice that went far beyond the actual girl herself. When Staavuz came after Dawn, Wesley gave us that scary speech pointing out how it only takes a couple of men to sire hundreds of children, but without the women, you hit extinction almost immediately. Why do you people think so many rituals demand a female sacrifice, the spilling of a virgin's blood or that of a holy woman, or ritual copulation with a woman as part of the rite? It's sex and life, the most potent power in the universe."
Spike's voice wove around them with enrapturing power, "In their society, the death of a warrior man in his prime was unfortunate, but the loss of a woman of reproductive age was a disaster. The tribe and their Shaman gave up not only his daughter, but all her daughters. He could have had thousands, maybe millions of descendents today through her children, but he gave up the opportunity to continue his bloodline for his people, for his species. She was his world and he had nothing more precious than her to offer. The Shadow Man's daughter was a resource their tribe desperately needed, which was why their giving her up was an act of such profound worth."
"And nothing ever since has equalled what they did." Buffy whispered, her eyes filling with tears as she looked at the silent First Slayer, finally understanding what had been given up so humans could have a fighting chance in that merciless world where nightmares walked brazenly under the sun.
"Love is sacrifice, but Evil doesn't understand that." Spike told them, pointing at Sirk contemptuously. "Evil will make a sacrifice to get something of value only if he, she or it has no other option, and even then, will only give up the bare minimum it can get away with. The monster will only sacrifice something it cares nothing about – I should know, I am one, after all. Trust me, Sirk would never have succeeded because Evil cannot bear the purity of real love – it burns us, sears us like fire." His lips quirked upwards, "Here endeth the lesson: Blood is life, and love is sacrifice. Remember that, children."
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand…" whispered Buffy to the First Slayer.
The First Slayer did not speak but the spirit of Kendra, her voice lilting and musical, said, "There is no fault with the Slayer-Queen. The Shadow Men trapped themselves in the place of the sacrifice, waiting to be superseded. They did not expect their vigil to be that of millennia, and the legacy was not used."
For a moment there was silence, then Angel felt as if a veil had been swept away. "This wasn't intended!" Instinctively he shifted his body and found that he could move forward with total freedom.
"What?" Wesley demanded sharply
Angel looked around at the throng of Slayers, the living and the dead. "The Shadow Men were sorcerers, but they were just men. They did their best with what they had, and sealed themselves in that time bubble or whatever it was because they thought that the Slayer would be a relatively short-term measure. They expected someone to come along and improve on their plan, but it never happened because first the Watchers became corrupted and the origins of the Slayer were lost to history, and then the legacy of the shadow puppets wasn't passed on. When Nikki Wood fell in battle, her Watcher couldn't bear to take away from her son the last remnants of her Slayer heritage, and what was so important about a bag of dusty old trinkets anyway? Buffy was in the middle of the biggest battle of her life against the First, she didn't have the time to understand what was really going on."
"Is that it?" Giles looked at the First Slayer. "Is that what you meant when you said that you had chosen? The Slayers that came before do not object to what the Slayer-Qu- to what Buffy did with the Scythe?"
The First Slayer spoke sibilantly in that strange echoing tone, "We have considered in the light of eternity, we have seen forever. We who were the Slayer existed, but now the Slayers live. Our Eternal Daughter has Sisters, is no longer alone, and we are pleased. We have chosen."
Rupert Giles looked at Rutherford Sirk as Illyria's hand finally penetrated the magician's defensive shields, causing him to shrink from her reaching hand as it sought to lay hand on him.
Giles allowed Ripper to infuse his being as the force shield crackled with warning of imminent failure, "I think it's time your contract with Wolfram & Hart, indeed this mortal coil, is terminated, Rutherford."
Sirk twisted his body first in one direction then another with desperate malice as he looked into each face and saw Death looking back at him, but he was used up – he had insufficient power left to teleport and his defensive wards were failing under the relentless pressure of the demon Illyria as it tried constantly to breach their barriers.
Manic cunning contorted his face grotesquely as he tried to scoop up the quiescent black vapour around his lower legs, spitting out "Never, damn you! I'll not be taken down by vermin like you! I may not be able to destroy the Slayers, but I've damaged you," he sneered gloatingly at where Faith lay in an ominously large pool of blood, her face ashen, "stupid Slayer whore!"
Buffy surged upright, her eyes murderous, but the vapour in Sirk's hands poured through his fingers back down again, the smoke-like stuff suddenly coming alive and pulsing up to the ceiling where it spun and boiled.
Buffy uttered a sharp cry, her body arching as vapour poured out of her mouth as if she were vomiting crude oil. Giles sprang, catching her to him in an embrace as she slumped; Sirk howled in triumph as out of the mouths, noses and ears of every living Slayer and every dead one poured the vapour yet again, streaming up to the ceiling in a growing, ever more faster spinning black cloud.
"Illyria!" yelled Angel frantically, "Get his protective wards down!"
"I am attempting this!" snarled the ancient demon, slapping it's other hand against the invisible barrier one arm had already penetrated up to the elbow, it's eyes glowing hot cobalt as it tried to breach Sirk's defences.
The cloud suddenly stopped spinning, increasing in density until it was less than two-thirds of its original size. They looked up at it –
And it looked back.
Angel felt a chill run through him. The cloud had no face, no form, yet it nevertheless was looking at them. It was sapient, an intelligence.
Sirk hissed and made a sharp gesture, at which absolutely nothing happened.
Xander Harris cackled, "No go, Sirk! I don't think you're the one in charge of our little atmospheric anomaly."
"The demon," breathed Wesley, never taking his eyes of the cloud.
"Wesley? What do you mean?" stage-whispered his father, Roger Wyndham-Pryce also keeping his eyes glued to the cloud.
"The Shadow Men needed a Champion capable of fighting the demon kind, so they infused their daughter with the life-energy of a demon to make her their equal. When each Slayer died, the demon made the next Slayer its host. It's incredibly ancient…"
"What is it doing?" Roger glared at the cloud almost as if it were a recalcitrant child, "The demon's corporeal body turned to dust eons ago."
"I think it's choosing."
Everyone looked at Xander Harris, whose soft words fell like lead into the room.
"What?" Roger hissed irritably.
"Like you said, the demon's real, original body rotted to nothing millennia ago, it survives by living within the body of the Slayer." Xander cast his single eye appraisingly around the massed Slayers, alive and dead. "I'm going to take a guess at this point and say that nobody ever considered the notion that the demon which made each Slayer The Slayer did so because it chose to keep doing so," he waited a beat, "or ever paused to wonder what would happen if it decided to stop."
"Oh shit," breathed Spike in understanding.
"Yep." Angel swallowed in dread, "Exactly."
Almost as if it heard them, the cloud twitched; Sirk's eyes widened and he looked up. "Yes!" He threw up his hands to the cloud, "You're free! Free! Go! Go now!"
The cloud began to expand, and separate; within seconds it had become streaming ribbons of vapour…that headed straight back towards the Slayers. Buffy gasped in an involuntary reflex as the vapour surged up her nostrils and into her mouth. Ribbons wrapped themselves around the women, twisting up as the Slayers inhaled the vapour helplessly. On the floor, Faith drew in a sharp breath as the vapour poured into her, her grey-green sheen becoming a healthier pink white.
Sirk screamed in wordless, bestial rage as the cloud dissipated back into the bodies of the Slayers, but one thin stream of vapour, a slender thread, twisted over and over in the air, penetrating Sirk's defensive shield as if it weren't even there. Sirk batted at it but it was like trying to strike mist. The black vapour poured into his mouth and up his nostrils and into his ears – and blocked his airways.
Angel stared transfixed as Sirk clawed bloody furrows into his own cheeks and throat with his nails, his head thrashing manically from side to side so hard he was in danger of snapping his own neck as he tried futilely to wipe the vapour from his face, gagging and choking, hacking desperately as he tried to draw in oxygen, his eyes bulging out and his face going first tomato red, then aubergine, then…with a final gurgle, Sirk simply toppled over, his eyes sightlessly staring. Illyria almost fell over as Sirk's death negated his defensive shield. A thin tendril of vapour rose from Sirk's face.
"I think the demon chose." Xander Harris murmured.
The last ribbon of black smoke coiled over to Faith and spiralled down, but did not enter into the Slayer. Instead, it boiled into her body through the rapier wound Sirk had caused.
Angel's jaw dropped as he grasped what this meant. "Shit! She's alive! Faith's baby is still alive!"
"Don't move her!" barked Wesley to Robin, rushing forward to kneel beside Faith. "Let me see…"
There came the echo of distant drums. The First Slayer abruptly winked out of existence like she'd never been there. In a rippling wave, the massed ranks of dead Slayers vanished. One very familiar Slayer ghost, however, looked down upon the tableau of Faith, Robin, Wesley and Buffy.
Robin looked up at her, tears shimmering in his eyes. "Mom…"
Nikki Wood grinned down at her de facto daughter-in-law, before raising her head and turning to look directly at Spike. The blond vampire, who just a few seconds ago had been prepared to go mano-a-mano against an ogre, was now edging surreptitiously backwards like a frightened child.
Nikki's voice was a hollow echo with surprising volume, "You still have stupid hair."
"Me?" cried Spike indignantly. "This from the Disco Queen?"
Nikki Wood stared at him. "You repent." Her words reverberated.
Spike looked away. "I…Yeah…" raising his head slowly, he looked at the dead Slayer. "Look…if I'd known…you had a boy…I…"
"It would have made no difference." Nikki Wood stated implacably. "But…I know you seek to atone in this place, with the other souled one of your kind, Angel, which is why I say," she turned to look down at her son, "forgive and live. Vengeance consumes the vengeful, leaving nothing but a hollow shell. Such would be unworthy to be the father of my granddaughter."
"Yes, ma'am." Robin whispered.
Suddenly Nikki was joined by another ghostly Slayer – a Chinese girl with a long ponytail. Both stared at a grey-faced Spike as their forms began to fade. "Our lives and our deaths were the nature of things. For our murders we grant forgiveness, for atonement we lay this geis upon you – the protection of the Dark Slayer's daughter shall now be your sacred duty…" Nikki Wood's mouth curved upwards in a malicious grin, "...Uncle Spike…"
Spike's jaw dropped and he simply gaped, rendered speechless as the two ghosts faded into nothing.
To be concluded in Epilogue
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