To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers
Part 16: Release, Return and Revenge
Colin wept for a long time, and Mi Kyong and I wept with him— partly in sympathy, partly in horror at what he'd seen and partly in relief that he could get better now.
He stopped weeping, sat back with his head turned up to the sky and stared up at the stars for a long moment… then blew his nose, wiped his eyes (the ever-helpful Willow had floated a box of tissues over to us at some point while he wept)— and took his sweet time about kissing me and hugging Mi Kyong, watched with a small smile as we hugged each other afterwards.
"Giles?" Colin called, standing up, still holding our hands. "All of you?"
Everyone turned back to face us, and Giles said, "Yes, Colin?"
"Thank you," Colin said, his voice firm and completely steady. "All of you. You've given me— there aren't any words for what you've given me, I guess. But… thank you, all of you."
"You're very welcome, Colin," Giles said. "I'm very glad that it worked."
"Oh, of course it worked," Mom said. "Hell, Giles, the boy ain't dumb— he was dumb, it wouldn't have worked. But you can tell he ain't dumb— look who he's sittin' an' holdin' hands with."
Just like that, everyone came forward and hugged him, one at a time, in groups— and Daddy went last.
"Colin," Daddy said, "I'm glad you listened, and I'm glad that our resident comic fans were right about how your friends reacted. But mostly… I'm glad you're on the road to okay, son."
"Thank you, Whitey," Colin said, and gave Dad a fiercely tight hug. When they parted, he said, "Diane… I think I still need help. What happened… not my fault, okay, but I still feel… it still hurts. I need… I don't know how to get past it the rest of the way. Can you help?"
"I can," Diane said firmly, grinning at him. "And let me endorse Chantelle's claim that you're smart, Colin— knowing you still need help? You're very much on the ball, young man."
"Thanks," Colin said. "I… I wish I'd been able to stop that. And next time something big like that happens… I'll do better."
"You'll certainly try, I know," Giles said. "But Colin… no one is infallible."
"I know," Colin said. He dry-scrubbed his face, then said, "But I'll do better if better can be done. I'll start by asking you and Whitey and the others— all of you— for advice, then I'll do better."
"I shall certainly endeavor to help when you ask for advice," Giles said, looking very pleased. "Now… ladies and gentlemen, I believe that we have seen enough dark and hurtful things for one night. Let us table the painful, and move on to the mundane."
"One more thing," Colin said. "Willow… my friends, my family… they deserve to know that I'm alive, I'm okay and… and that I'm not alone." He squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. "I don't want to go back there, I don't think I could go back to that world… but could you… send something back for me?"
"Work out what you want to send, Colin," Willow said, "and I'll find a way. With Dawn and Sh'rin on my side, it shouldn't even be too difficult."
"Okay," Colin said. "Thank you, Willow."
"You're welcome," Willow said. "Okay— Giles, the kids know we've been casting magic, I can hear them thinking about coming back out— and Helena's about to pop for wanting to know that Colin's okay. Can I tell them they can come out now?"
"Yes, of course," Giles said. "Tell them they may join us for a while before we all go off to our beds."
"Colin," Mi Kyong said, as kids started trickling outside, "Armsman… he knew your real identity?"
"Yes, he did," Colin said. "You haven't read the comics about me, have you?"
"No, I saw no need," Mi Kyong said.
"Well… in the late nineties, a hero called Hardline, super-strong, super tough, always seemed… well, like a really great guy… he got caught raping a seven year-old girl," Colin said. "This led to it being discovered that he'd spent the five years of his career molesting kids he attracted by his fame, and it was the end of heroes on my world for over twenty years. People stopped trusting them at all, even though every other hero on the planet, pretty much, went after Hardline. In the wake of what he'd done… that just wasn't enough.
"Armsman had only been active for a couple of months when it happened— he was a sixteen year-old kid, back then— and he went underground with the others, even though he, Neural and Roughneck are the ones who found and caught Hardline, and Armsman got hurt trying to take the bastard down.
"Armsman… he went underground, but he never really stopped fighting, saving lives. He was just more subtle about it. Didn't use his force-weapons, just his enhanced strength and toughness, when that was enough. Never stuck around or anything, always did what needed doing and left.
"After I… after I made it so people trusted us a little again, Armsman was the first out of retirement. He came and he found me, and he thanked me for what I'd done… and we got to be friends. He… well, I'm going to miss Jason a lot. He was… well, like Whitey in some ways. Like Xander in others.
"He was the big brother I never had before I met him."
"I'm sure that Willow will work out a way for you to tell him good-bye," Mi Kyong said. "And that he will be happy, knowing you are happy."
"Yeah," Colin said, smiling as little Helena Kilpatrick yelled his name and charged across the yard towards us. "That's what really matters."
He caught Helena, hugged her, held her, assured her that he felt much better now, and we all sat outside and talked for a while.
We got everything at Buffy and Xander's packed up by Monday morning, and early Monday afternoon, we all took off for home again— after the plane had been gone over stem to stern, and Colin had decided to fly alongside the plane, because he didn't want to be inside in case Warren repeated his rocket launcher trick.
We got home without incident, and that night, Daddy pronounced me healed, took off my splint and reminded me that I was going back into training the next morning.
The next day, Tuesday, a demon showed up to taunt Buffy and Willow in Wal-Mart— and we finally got an idea of who the witch that was hassling us was.
Three Months Before: The Sunnydale Pit
The mid-March sun beating down on the vast pit that had once been Sunnydale, California, was a welcome relief from the near constant drizzle of the week before, and Steve Kelvin didn't mind it at all. Some of his fellow students bitched about the humidity, but with the seventy-five degree weather, it didn't feel that bad. The pools of water along the bottom of the pit were a pain, sure— they never looked deep, but you could step in one and suddenly be in water up to your waist, if you weren't careful.
The professor for the Beginning Archaeology class, Doctor Edwards, had brought the class here because, as he put it, "If you can't recover items that have only been buried for fifteen years without damaging them, you'd better re-think your major before you try to go after things that have been buried for fifteen centuries." Steve liked that— good idea, and kind of fun.
The government had gone ballistic over the Sunnydale Pit for a couple of years, made a huge to-do over it, talked of filling it in with concrete, until someone worked out the cost. Then they had talked of guarding it, of keeping people out, sealing it off for all time— and been talked down by some people from START and the senate committee that oversaw START. They'd finally just thrown up a lot of chain-link fence and razor wire, put a few guards on it… and ignored it.
Then Rose Killian's book Chosen to Stand had come out, and interest in Sunnydale went up sharply— after all, to the public's interpretation, everything that had led up to the Battle of Bloomington (and the resultant revelation of the reality of the supernatural) had started with the Battle of the First, here in Sunnydale.
People had come in droves, and the government had increased the guards. Eventually, they had started allowing tour groups, run by the State of California, and the state had built a way down. Now they ran tours through the Pit twice daily, and people showed no sign of slowing their constant migration to see a giant hole in the ground.
Then this. Last year in the fall semester, Doctor Edwards had gotten permission to do this for the first time— and again this year, this semester. Fun. Sure, different from "real" archaeology, but the man had a point; if you couldn't be careful enough to dig up things only buried for fifteen years without destroying them, you probably couldn't expect to have much of a future in field archaeology.
"Hey, Steve," Jennifer Howard called. "Come look at this— we've found some lockers, intact school lockers."
He wandered over, helped Jennifer dig up some intact school lockers, then heard a guy's voice say, "Son of a bitch!" from somewhere behind him.
Steve glanced around to see several of his fellow students gathered around a partially dug-out wooden cabinet, one of them standing and sucking on his fingers and glaring down.
"What's up?" he asked, trotting over to stand with the group of five students, all of whom stood staring down into a partially unearthed trophy cabinet.
"Thing burned me!" the guy said after pulling his fingers out of his mouth. "Look, blisters already!"
Steve looked at the blisters rising on the other student's fingers like he'd touched red-hot metal, and winced in sympathy. "Ouch— what was it?"
"I don't know," the student said. I didn't get a good look at it— some trophy in the case, there— they're all covered in mud and stuff. I dropped it when it did this, and I don't know which one it was."
"Okay, you should probably go see Doctor Edwards, he's got a first aid kit," Steve said. "You can tell him—"
A great peal of thunder interrupted Steve then, and he glanced up in surprise as the sky, clear only a moment before, darkened with thunderclouds that rolled in from the direction of the sea.
"Okay, everyone," Doctor Edwards called. "I think that's going to have to be it for the day— the bottom of the Pit can flood pretty badly when it rains, and we don't want to drown. Well, I don't— some of you might, it might be easier than seeing your grades…."
They all piled onto the tour buses and left— the buses were built for the trip down the spiral road into the Pit, half bus and half all-terrain vehicle— and never saw the thick, heavy mud wash off of the base of trophy that had burned the fingers of a student, the statue on top of the trophy lying down on the bottom of the case, having broken free of its base.
The plaque on the broken-off base of the trophy became visible as the rain hammered down.
Sunnydale High: Tri-County Cheerleading Champions, 1981
Team Cap—
The rest of the plaque had corroded beyond mere rainwater washing it clean.
The statue that had stood on top of the trophy, now broken free of its base, rocked in the mud… and began to grow.
Jocelyn:
Daddy worked me hard in the morning, making allowances for my recently healed leg, and no allowances past that. He ran me through every martial form, kata and dance that I know, then sparred me himself— and refused to let me wear pads, saying I'd have to avoid hurting him by controlling my techniques and my strength. Twice he caught me letting my center float when I wasn't doing Capoeira, but both times I caught myself, too, and between us, we got me to stop.
Then Daddy got creative. He had me sit down and read carefully edited versions of the Watcher's Journals, old ones from long before Buffy, stuff I hadn't read. He'd give me the basics of a situation, go over them with me, then say, "Tactics?"
I'd say the first thing I thought of, and he'd feed me more, based on my answer, then say, "Any change in tactics?" This would go on for as long as it took for Daddy to say either, "You win," "you're dead," or— and worst of all— "you're down, and the beast is still out there, killing people."
I didn't like my score, not even a little bit. I won cleanly three times out of ten, died four times— and failed to stop the monster and let it go on killing three more— seven losses, since you'd have to say it went on killing after it killed me.
I needed to be alone after that disaster, and Daddy didn't push me to talk about it, just said, "We'll pick it up again tomorrow. I'll make sure everyone knows you need some alone-time."
I went to the far edge of Giles's property, the back edge, past the little stream that ran through the back yard and into the small patch of woods back there. I sat down on the ground, put my head on my knees… and cried.
Royal followed me, and he did what he and his kind do— he crawled into my arms and loved me, totally without reserve, and that helped.
But it was still a long time before I went back to the house.
Of course, while I was busy with the self-pity, Daddy was looking for answers.
It totally fails to shock me that it was Xander who saw them.
Interlude: Scooby Mansion, the library
"I don't understand it, Giles, not at all," Whitey said, shaking his head and pacing. "She's better than this, she's always been better than this— and now she's… she's stopped thinking, gone to just reacting, and her first reaction is always 'hit something.' She knows better, she proved that when she was ten, has proved it a lot of times since— hell, the night Colin arrived, Jocelyn did everything exactly right. You said so yourself, after hearing the tapes and the stories. Then she thought her way through rescuing Mi Kyong, and… then the debacle at the funeral home. And the exercises today— worse than I expected, much worse. I'd have thought— after the things her mother and I said to her, and especially after the way Xander nailed the problem when he talked to her, I expected her to improve, steady down. Instead, I think she's gotten worse.
"I don't understand this, Giles, and it's starting to worry me, really worry me."
"I understand your concern," Giles said, looking around at Chantelle, Buffy, Xander, Willow, Lydia, Ballard, Rose and Kelly. "I share your concern, even, Whitey. But I fear I don't have any idea what could have caused this."
"I'd have said that it was worry over Colin, before last week," Buffy said. "And maybe— well, she could still be worrying over the possibility of him snapping back to his universe?"
"I'm sure that's an aggravating circumstance," Giles said, nodding. "But I don't think it's the main issue, not after Colin's promise to be careful. I've already stopped worrying about that myself."
"Yeah, the boy's seriously in love with her an' he's decided Mi Kyong's his sister," Chantelle said. "He'll bust his ass to stay here, an' he'll be as careful as the day is long.
"Could it maybe just be Alex dyin'? I mean— look, Buffy, you shone, and you too, Xander, when Mrs. Parris came in there. You didn't let your hurt mess up what you knew to do— but Jocelyn is only fourteen. Don't know if she has that kind of control yet, an' god knows she loved Alex and Chief."
"Again, I'm sure that's a contributing factor," Giles said. "But… I do not think it's the root of the problem. I can't say why, but it feels as though we're missing something, perhaps something… basic.
"Perhaps we should include Diane in this discussion, after she finishes her session with Colin."
"Maybe we should," Xander said, looking thoughtful. "But… maybe we don't have to. I have an idea about what it could be. It's nuts… but Jossie's fourteen, and at fourteen, even the best of us had moments of serious stupidity."
"Tell us, please, Xander," Giles said.
"Well… look, here's the deal…." Xander spoke for a couple of minutes, summarizing his thoughts neatly, finished with, "I realize the timing's not perfect— but the Mi Kyong rescue may have come up before things really sunk in for her, especially since it happened so fast."
"That… certainly is a possibility," Giles admitted, looked a mixture of thoughtful and frustrated. "I'd even go so far as to say a very strong possibility."
"I'm her father and her Watcher," Whitey said, dry-scrubbing his face and taking Chantelle's hand. "I don't think it's a possibility— I think it's damn near a certainty. Now what the hell do we do about it?"
"Xander, you hit it smack on the head, I think," Chantelle said, sighing and shaking her head. "I'm with Whitey, you skewered it— she's my little girl, our little girl— and you're right.
"Judas goat, batter-dipped and deep fried— what the hell do we do about this?"
"Wil?" Buffy said. "You and me see what we can find out?"
"Betcha," Willow said. "In the meantime— well, bringing Diane in, probably a good idea."
"Whitey, Jocelyn is your charge," Giles said, "and your daughter, yours and Chantelle's, so if either of you think this a bad idea, I'll allow you to veto it, no questions asked— but perhaps we should… separate her from the problem a bit, until we have a better idea of what to do?"
"No veto here," Whitey said. He looked at Chantelle with a raised eyebrow, and she shook her head. "And none from Chantelle— let's do that, until we've talked to Diane, at least."
"Very well," Giles said. "Suggestions?"
"I've got shopping to do, later," Buffy said. "Willow, Lydia and I were going to go to Wal-Mart, get some groceries, some stuff for the new house, and so on. We'll drag Jocelyn along, if she wants to go. If not, I'm sure one of you can find a way to get her away from the problem for a bit."
"Worse comes to worst, I'll offer to take her to Barnes and Noble's," Whitey said, smiling a little. "Our bookaholic child will not refuse a shot at that."
"Neither will your bookaholic wife," Chantelle said. "Hell, I almost hope she refuses to go with Buffy, Lydia and Wil."
"All right," Giles said. "Buffy, Willow, see if you can't find a solution— and the rest of us shall simply pretend this meeting never happened. I'll speak to Diane as soon as she's through speaking with Colin."
They went their separate ways, each worrying a little bit about Jocelyn— but each determined to help as best they could.
Jocelyn:
Eventually, I cried my frustration out, and went back to watch the newbies training. I barely got there when Buffy and Willow came out to grab Lydia and go to Wal-Mart, and Buffy asked if I wanted to go with.
"Looking for a surprise for Joyce," Buffy explained. "You always get her good presents on birthday and Christmas— I could use your advice."
I agreed, since she was willing to give me a couple of minutes to shower and get out of sweaty workout clothes, and met the three of them at the garage of Scooby Mansion fifteen minutes later. We all piled into the smallest of the hybrid SUVs out there, a Honda Hikiuma (which means "draft horse," I looked it up when Giles bought it), and started for the Wal-Mart on the far side of Bloomington, instead of the much closer one in Normal, because there was a smoke shop near the Bloomington one that had cigarettes for Dad (he doesn't smoke much, so Mom doesn't beat the habit out of him) and some incense that Willow needed for her magic supplies. Our pseudo dragon friends stayed home, since Wal-Mart is all anal about small, scaly people with wings.
We did the smoke shop first, put Dad's monthly carton of cigarettes and Willow's incense in the console, and went to Wal-Mart. Once there, Lydia, Willow and Buffy each grabbed carts, and Lydia started for hardware and sporting goods to get supplies for training newbies, Willow headed for the grocery section to do the grocery shopping for her and Lydia and grab some things for Giles and Kelly, and Buffy and I headed for the electronics section.
We poked and we looked, and Buffy bought the newest Resident Evil game for Xander (that series of games is older than me by a lot— Mom says that the whole revelation of the supernatural reality really revived it in 2003), almost grabbed the wrong version until I pointed out that Xander has a Nintendo Tesseract, and that she had the version for the X-Box 1080. Then we poked around for a few minutes, and I saw Joyce's present, if Buffy would spend the money.
"Oh, honey," I said. "Come to mama!"
Buffy looked at me oddly, but followed as I went to the counter that had the newest SoundMaster MP3 player on it. Small, sleek, no moving parts, and a battery guaranteed to last through fifty hours of continuous play, with a space for a single triple-A battery backup, which would play for six more hours. That way, you didn't have to worry about your main battery going dead, so you didn't charge it before it ran dry, so it didn't degrade and hold less power, like they'd used to. Ten terabytes of storage, literally weeks of music or audio books. Add in wireless, sturdy and steady ear-clip headphones guaranteed not to suffer any static or distortion within twenty feet of the player, and it was just about made for the Slayer who liked to train to music. As much as Joyce loved music? Yeah, it would be perfect.
"There's her present, Buffy," I said firmly. "I know, she's got an MP3 player already— but this is the Lamborghini of MP3 players, and it's Slayer training friendly. Also, hers is what, five, six years old?"
"Hmm, good point," Buffy said. "You think she'd like this?"
"I think she'll love it… and if you buy her something that says, 'Hey, this is training-friendly' right now?" I nodded firmly. "Buffy, that'll say that you're really okay with her training, with her being a Slayer."
Buffy gave me a funny look, but nodded. "I see your point, Jocelyn. Okay, let's get someone over here to get one out for us…."
The salesman got one out for Buffy, and told her about the deal Wal-Mart had going with SoundMaster right then— SoundMaster gift cards were literally half-price, no limit on size. Buffy grinned at him, said, "Sold— give me a two hundred dollar gift card, too."
The salesman blinked, but nodded and set up the card, had Buffy pay for the things there (security, don't'cha know), told her she could carry it around the store it so long as she didn't lose her receipt, and we went to find Wil and Lydia.
"Thanks, Jocelyn," Buffy said as we wandered through the ladies clothing on our way to the grocery section. "Definitely a good choice— and hey, the big gift card ought to keep her going until at least Christmas!"
"You're welcome," I said. "You can pay me back for the hint, you know."
"Tell your folks you want one for your birthday?" Buffy asked, and I nodded eagerly. "Done deal. They are nice— wireless, that's perfect for us hyper-active women."
Buffy found a couple of T-shirts for Joyce to work out in, a pair of sweats for herself, and we finally got out into the wide aisle that separated the rest of the store from the grocery section.
We were walking along that aisle towards the back of the store, looking down grocery aisles for Willow, when Lydia caught up with us, her cart loaded with sports gloves, baseball bats in aluminum and wood, multi-tools (I have one, and love it— carrying them on missions is standard protocol nowadays, they're too useful not to), dart sets, inexpensive, fiberglass-bow archery sets, all sorts of stuff. We all kept going towards the back of the store and the frozen food department, walking and chatting idly— until we heard a woman scream, then a bunch of people of both sexes start screaming.
At that point, we started running.
Three Months Before: Los Angeles, California
Clothes had been easy. She'd simply flown away from the pit, taken clothes from the first unoccupied house she found, made them fit magically. Money, also easy— she'd gone to LA, found a bank, and simply waited for a man with a largish deposit bag to approach. Intercepting the man, controlling his mind… very easy. She didn't even need diagrams and ingredients any more, not for simple spells like these. Her constant efforts at escaping her long imprisonment had drastically improved her skills and increased her power— so at least some good had come from that disaster.
But there had been a shock in the deposit bag. She'd known she'd been imprisoned for a long time, and the new looks of the cars and other vehicles, the way they ran almost silently more often than not, had driven home that thought— but the deposit slip in the bag had been dated the nineteenth of March… of twenty-eighteen!?
Twenty-one years…!
So she'd taken the cash in the bag— over seventy thousand dollars, this was a Monday, and the deposit bag held a whole weekend's worth of cash from a bar— made the man forget her, planted memories of being robbed by a pair of Hispanic teenagers, and gone to find out what she'd missed.
A hotel and a few thousand dollars worth of clothes later, she'd gone strolling into a bookstore, thinking that there would probably be books that could help her out in there. She'd found several books on the history of the last two decades, gone towards the front to pay for them— and frozen in shock at the display of books near the register, the current New York Times bestsellers.
The book at number twenty froze her in place, froze her in absolute shock.
Chosen to Stand: An Account of Life as a Slayer, by Rose Erin Killian.
But the Slayer operates in secret, she thought. I heard them talking about it, sometimes, back when… back then. So what's going on here…?
She added that to her purchases, paid, and went back to her hotel to read. She'd been going to start with the history books, but she did look at Chosen to Stand, first— and that changed everything, as soon as she read the teaser copy on the dust jacket's inside flaps.
Just before Christmas of 2003, the world was forced to admit the existence of the supernatural when the twin cities of Bloomington-Normal, Illinois suffered a sudden infestation of supernatural creatures. While the process had been building since October of that year (beginning with the incursion of a great many monsters straight out of the popular fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons into Bloomington High School), it peaked on the evening of December the 22nd of 2003 with mass incursions of vampires, demons and monsters— and the world saw the creatures that have lived in the night and shadows for millennia as these creatures answered the call of a psychotic young witch obsessed with revenge.
At the same time, we learned of the existence of the Slayers, the girls called to oppose these horrors, and given the power to do so.
This is the story of the events that led up to the Battle of Bloomington, told by a Slayer who had a key part in the war against the witch Amy Madison. It is a story of love, hate, tragedy, triumph, failure and success— and it is as entertaining as it is informative.
This is the story of those who fought, who held a line against evil, of those who are…
Chosen to Stand!
She stared in disbelief for a long moment— then dropped to a chair and started reading, forgetting all other concerns.
She fell asleep reading, woke ravenous, ordered food from room service, read while she ate, and finished the book at about four in the afternoon the next day.
She closed the book, set it aside, doubled over, and wept for almost an hour.
I'll make you pay! she thought as she rocked and wept. I'll make all of you pay! All of you!
But Willow Rosenberg and Buffy Summers… they will die so horribly that all the Slayers who hear about it will just… quit! Quit, for fear I'll do it to them!
She tidied herself, steadied down as best she could, and started in on the history books, the better to be able to kill those responsible for her pain.
Jocelyn:
We all three sprinted towards the back of the store, not worrying much about Willow— most powerful witch in the world, hello?— but worried about everyone else.
The screams came from the aisle with the cleaning supplies— and seemed to be because of a small, delicate-looking teen-aged girl who stood on one side of the aisle, pulling bottles and cans of various cleaning solutions off of the shelves and throwing them at people with an accuracy worthy of me or Mom.
"Hey!" Buffy yelled. "What the hell are you doing!?"
The girl smiled a sunny, happy smile, flung a bottle of Pine-sol at Buffy (who caught it neatly), and said, "I'm stating the intent of she who summoned me, Buffy Summers. Or at least, I'll be stating it as soon as Willow Rosenberg arrives."
"Oh, shit," Buffy muttered. She looked around at me and Lydia and said, "Okay— you two stay right here. No following, no trying to help— don't you move. That is an order. You follow it, or so help me, I'll kick both your asses."
"Yes, Buffy," I said meekly. "Better hand me Joyce's present— don't want it to get broken."
Buffy gave me a quirky little smile, handed me the bag with Joyce's SoundMaster and gift card, and turned to face the… girl?
"Okay, I'm here," Buffy said, taking several quick steps forward. "Talk to me. Start with a name, that'd be friendly."
"But the witch-bitch is not here yet," the girl-thing said, sounding regretful. "I may speak only to the two of you, not to either, but to both."
"Yeah, okay," Buffy sighed. She threw her head back and yelled, "Hey, Willow! Demon on aisle twelve!"
From behind us, Lydia and I heard, "I'm coming, Buffy!"
There came Willow, pushing a cart full of groceries and blushing a little.
"Sorry," she muttered as she went towards Buffy. "Potty break."
"Everybody takes those," Buffy said, smiling a little. She waited until Willow had left her cart with Lydia and I and floated over to hover beside her, then said, "Okay, we're here. So what's your message and who's it from?"
The girl shifted in place a little— and started to grow. Her skin seemed to stretch and darken at the same time, and horns punched through the skin of her forehead as her jaws distended. Very suddenly, all her clothes and her human skin just… ripped off, like a rubber suit stretched to its limits and beyond. Standing there after that was a seven and a half foot tall demon with dark red skin, bull-like horns sprouting from its forehead, big tits with dark nipples— and the twenty-foot-long body of a snake from the hips down.
"Better," it said, its voice still high and girlish. "Now I give my message.
"My mistress sends you both greetings— for you should always say hello before you say good-bye, and soon, you will say good-bye… to all the world. She will kill you both— but first she will finish what another has started, and she will take from you all that you love. The families and lovers of both of you will die one at a time— and you will not prevent her.
"This she swears, in the name of that which you took from her— her only child.
"To Buffy Summers, who broke the spell that might have protected her child, my mistress promises that she will, once you are gone, do as her child failed to do, and return the First Evil to the world.
"To Willow Rosenberg my mistress promises only that you will live for as long as she can arrange it… as a worm, or a cockroach, or some other loathsome creature. She will change your form and make you live— rather than changing your form and killing you, as you did to her child."
"Oh, shit," I muttered. "This is not something we needed to hear right now!"
"Okay, Medusa," Buffy said with a sigh. "Message delivered. Now what?"
"Now… the taking begins!"
The demon burst into motion, charged towards Buffy and Willow, aiming to go around them, to come at me and Lydia— and I did something right, that time. I grabbed Lydia, ignored her indignant squawk as I threw her over my shoulder and ran like a bat out of hell for the front doors, thinking to get to the SUV, where we'd have some protection, as well as weapons to choose from.
I'd only gone about halfway when I heard a sound like rice cereal crackling in milk, only way louder— and Lydia said, "It's dead— or at least contained. Can you put me down now?"
I didn't answer, but kept going— until Buffy called, "It's all right, Jocelyn— stand down."
I stopped, set Lydia down, and in response to her glare said, "Hey, Buffy's the boss. And by the way… nice butt!"
Lydia tried to keep glaring— but lost the glare when she laughed at that last bit.
We went back to where Willow and Buffy stood next to the frozen demon— literally frozen, covered in ice from horns to tail-tip. Willow was already muttering a spell, walking around the demon and muttering while she did so. Just before we got there, the thing vanished in a flash of fire, and a bunch of people started clapping.
"You know," Buffy said as we watched the store manager bustling towards us, "I'd give a lot to have an enemy stay dead about now."
"I hear you," Willow said with a sigh. "I think she's a lot more powerful than she was back in those days, now. That demon, no lightweight. The one that possessed Mrs. Parris, also fighting in the heavyweight division. And the one she tried to summon that got Colin instead? Balagor? That's the sort of thing I'd never have tried to summon back before… before I brought you back, Buffy."
"Yay," Buffy said. "So… Amy's mom."
"Yeah," Willow said. "Amy's mom."
"Catherine Madison," I said with a sigh. "More powerful and crazier than before.
"Buffy, can I transfer to Australia if somebody manages to bring back Mayor Wilkins?"