To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers
Part 49: Burning
In the Trap:
Warren-bot abandoned all pretense of trained hand-to-hand combat, just lunged at Joyce Harris with his arms outstretched to grab and trap her, his intent being to crush her like a bug in his arms.
Joyce laughed aloud, bounced lightly into the ginga of Capoeira, and cartwheeled sideways out of the way. Warren, his balance shot, staggered forward— then fell on his face as Alex Harris, as real and solid as he'd ever been, stuck out a foot and tripped the robotic villain.
"You little shit!" Warren howled as he pushed himself to his feet. "I'm gonna enjoy killing you again, you stupid little—"
Joyce's foot slammed across Warren-bot's head, sent him staggering sideways into the wall next to the door that Joyce had entered the room from. He pushed off of the wall— and something red and leathery wrapped around his head, blinding him.
As Chief blinded the robot with his now-solid wings, Alex moved to the desk that sat against the wall and started looking through it, trusting his best friend and his twin sister to keep Warren busy for a moment— and trusting Warren to have a backup weapon available.
Chief saw Joyce coming in again, moving in the bouncing, side-to-side basic motion of Capoeira, and he flapped up and away from Warren as Joyce threw herself into a cartwheel and kicked the robot with first one foot, then the other. Warren staggered sideways with an inarticulate sound of fury, slammed into the wall the door opened against, and bounced off. Deliberately, he pushed off of the wall, looking for some room to maneuver.
It said a lot about his lack of fighting skills that it didn't bother him at all that Joyce Harris let him do so completely unopposed.
Warren-bot started for Joyce again— and staggered backwards as something made a loud BANG— and something else hit him in the face, hard, put out his right visual receptor.
He looked around wildly to find Alex Harris standing next to his desk and holding— correctly, in the Weaver stance— the 9mm pistol that had been in the top right hand drawer.
"SURPRISE!" Alex shouted— and fired a second shot that narrowly missed the Warren-bot's left eye, hit just above it, splitting the eyebrow and ricocheting away, though it did knock Warren's head back. "Joyce, tell Graham thanks for the shooting lessons when you see him again, would you?"
"Will do, Alex," Joyce said. "Hold your fire a second, please."
The Warren-bot looked back and forth between Buffy's daughter and the… revenant of her son, and tried to back away, realizing at last that they had him badly outclassed.
He didn't get far at all, in part because he'd forgotten the other "solid ghost" in the room.
Chief again flew close, gripped the Warren-bot's head with his front claws and wrapped his wings completely around his murderer's head, blinding him very effectively.
"You shouldn't have killed my brother you overdone food processor," Joyce said softly. "In fact… you really should've stopped before you ever started messing with my mom!"
Joyce bounced through two Ginga-steps, went into a cartwheel with only one hand supporting her— but at the top of her cartwheel, she relaxed her shoulder, and her legs came slicing down in an attack that looked a good bit like a pommel horse move called a "Thomas Flair." Her legs hit Warren-bot's, left first, then right, and the sheer momentum imparted by gravity gave her the power to knock the robot completely off of its feet and flip it to land on its side even as Chief launched himself back towards Alex.
Joyce spun to her feet, leapt high into the air, and drew her sword as she went up. Warren sat up, moving at speeds that only a Slayer could match— and Alex shot him twice in the chest as Joyce went up and started back down. The two bullets were enough to knock the robot back down—
—and Joyce's light longsword skewered the robot just below the navel, where the thing's master power source would be, if it were built along the lines of all the others.
With a little shriek of fury, Joyce pulled her blade free— and stabbed again, lower, then started dragging her sword back and forth, up and down, through the machine's torso. She remembered the Warren-bot who'd killed Royal, nearly killed Jocelyn, and she wasn't about to take any chances that this one would come back to life.
Alex came over and stomp-kicked the nearly-inert machine repeatedly, alternating between kicking its groin and head, and making little noises of satisfaction mixed with sadness as he did so.
"Stupid goddamned machine!" Alex said as Joyce, panting with a mixture of effort and emotional release, finally stopped ripping her blade through the thing's body. He bent and shouted right in the Warren-bot's face, "YOU DO NOT MESS WITH TEAM SLAYER WITHOUT GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED FOR IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
After that, Alex stood up straight, panted heavily for a minute, then looked over at his twin sister and said, "Wow, that felt really, really, REALLY good. Thanks, sis."
"Felt good over here, too," Joyce assured him. She took a deep breath and said, "So… time for that hug?"
"Well… you could tell me how the heck you turned into a Mom-level fighter, first…."
"Jocelyn." Joyce grinned hugely. "I just spent… I don't know, it felt like years inside the Scythe with her— after she'd spent years inside it with Chantelle, Aunt Rose, Aunt Elaine, Faith and Mom, learning everything they could teach her about… everything."
Alex let loose a low whistle, and said in a respectful voice, "Okay, that's… kind of awesome."
"Really awesome on my end," Joyce said, and smiled some. "Pretty sure that would've been a bad, ugly fight, even with your help, if not for the lessons."
"Probably," Alex agreed. Then he grinned his best cheesy grinned and said, "As it is, I hope his drives or memory or whatever survived long enough to let the others know that he didn't just get beat by a girl again, he got curb-stomped by a thirteen year-old girl who might weigh ninety-five pounds with all that armor on!"
Joyce laughed, then let out a little sound halfway between laugh and sigh. "Alex… thank you. For coming back to help, for being my brother, for keeping me alive… for making me Complete.
"I love you, Alex."
Alex Harris stepped across the robotic body of Warren Mears that he'd aided his sister in destroying and hugged her hard, harder than he had in a very long time. They held on for a long moment, both crying silently, with Chief's wings wrapped around their heads.
"Love you, too," Alex said against his sister's ear. "Tell Mom and Dad I love them, and that… hey, I'm okay. I got to help you out, and the place me and Chief are hanging out? It's absolutely branding awesome.
"Now, sis, before I let go, let me ask… you want to go help Mom out, or Jocelyn?"
"Jocelyn," Joyce said with only a little hesitation. "It's what Mom would do, and I know I can help, now."
"Damned straight," Alex said. Without letting go of Joyce, he looked up and said, "You heard the lady. Pop the doors between here and Jocelyn's big brawl.
"My sister's a Slayer, and she's got work to do."
Joyce heard doors opening, a lot of them, and she felt her brother squeeze her tightly one last time—
—then felt something like a warm breeze pass through her entire being as Alex and Chief vanished, went back to whatever place they lived in now that they'd passed beyond the mortal world.
Joyce Harris drew herself up, swiped tears off of her face, and started trotting out through Warren's little dungeon the way she'd come in, following the trail of dead monsters that she'd left on the way in back to her best friend— and the battle of a lifetime.
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Eastland Mall, Aboveground:
Buffy Harris staked the vampire that had been coming for her, looked for the next target— and found nothing but friendlies surrounding her.
"Intermission, I guess," Xander said from behind her. He sheathed his longsword as he spoke. "Buff— you said Jocelyn's name and went… kind of blank for a second there right before things got crazy again. What was that?"
"That," Buffy said, smiling, "was Jocelyn vindicating every good thing I ever said about that girl."
She told Xander about training Jocelyn, and about Jocelyn's intent to pass all that training on to Joyce before starting her run at the gauntlet that Catherine Madison had tossed down before her.
"Hot damn," Xander said, a look of relief crossing his face. "So Joyce—"
"By now, she's got as much actual skill as I do, maybe more— and I've got more skill than I did before, too," Buffy said. "Joyce doesn't have a lot of experience— but tons and tons of skill. She'll make pudding out of the Warren she's dealing with."
"What I wouldn't give to see that," Xander said, his voice slightly edgy. He shook himself and said, "I'm gonna do a check on the troops, lady. Want to come with me?"
"I wouldn't miss—" Buffy started.
*Urgent relay!* came a familiar dragonish voice in Buffy's head— one she'd thought she'd never hear again. Apparently, Xander heard it, too, because he said, in synch with her and in a wondering voice, "Chief?"
Then they heard Joyce's voice, relayed from their dead son's dead best friend, and both slowly began to smile.
*You know that you're the reason there are over two thousand Slayers now, don't you?* Joyce's voice said in their heads.
*What?* came the voice of Warren Mears, who sounded confused and worried.
*Follow my reasoning— if you can.* Chief, like most pseudo dragons, had developed a great ability to imitate the nuances of human speech through his telepathy over the years, and everyone listening heard the scorn and contempt in Joyce Harris's voice as she continued. *On May the seventh of 2002, you came to my mom's house in Sunnydale with a gun. You were going to kill her because she beat you, beat you and took away your stolen power, all while committing the unpardonable sin of being female….*
No one spoke while Chief relayed Joyce's humiliating speech to Warren, they just listened and sometimes nodded or chuckled.
"That's my girl," Xander said proudly when the information relay stopped. He looked skywards and said, very quietly, "If Chief's with Joyce… so is Alex.
"Thank you, all of you, for that."
For a couple of minutes, Xander and Buffy just stood, hand in hand, wishing their daughter well— but not really worrying about her more than a little, after the things she'd learned, and the dressing-down that she'd just given Warren Mears's robotic self.
"Xander!" Dawn yelled from back down the hall a little way. "Fresh incursion! They're popping up down by Kohl's— getting down there to shut it down will be almost impossible!"
"Understood," Xander said. He looked around, sighed, and said, "Form up, folks— it's back to battle we go!"
Just before the first wave arrived, Xander and Buffy, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a trio of START soldiers and an Amberite prince named Bleys, felt a sudden warm breeze. It wafted around them both, ruffled their hair and warmed exposed skin, and each felt their son's regard for a moment, felt him say, more than heard the words, *Love you, Dad, love you, Mom.
*Kick some butt for me….*
"You bet, son," Xander said, his voice surprisingly steady.
"Yes, Alex," Buffy said.
The first demons came around the corner— and Buffy, wielding (one-handed) a two-handed sword she'd taken from a fallen demon in the last wave, laid into them with a will.
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Jocelyn:
I opened my eyes to see that Piper hadn't quite finished that group of gorilla-crickets she'd been attacking when I closed my eyes, and Ian and Harry were still pointing and laughing at the vampires below as they tried to work out a way around Harry's wall of lava, which just kept jetting into the air, going from a wall of orange molten rock about eight feet high to almost double that as the lava Harry had woken up kept right on waxing and waning.
I'd barely had time to start a seriously needed stretch when I heard Chief's voice in my head, telling people to listen for an urgent information relay. I looked at Ian, saw his face lose some tension and fear (which had been there even under his open amusement at the stupidity of some monsters) when Chief relayed Joyce's voice as she metaphorically ripped Warren Mears a new asshole.
"Boo-ya!" Harry said when the relay faded. "Kiddo, your mom would be proud!"
"Her boyfriend damn sure is," Ian said, a grin on his face.
"She'll be fine, Ian," I said as I continued my stretch, priming my muscles as best I could for what I was about to attempt. "She knows everything I do, and I know everything that the other active Slayers could teach me."
"It worked!" Ian said, grinning. "And you taught— Jocelyn, thank you!"
"I love her, too, you know," I said, smiling.
"Good point."
"Hey, Harry," I called as I walked that way. "How much longer is that lava wall likely to last?"
"A good five minutes more," the wizard replied easily. "Maybe a bit more, I did put some Soulfire into the mix— that will extend the magic, and Earth magic has… inertia anyway. It keeps on going for a while, once it's started, or at least this kind of thing does."
"Don't know if there's a lot of time left," I said. "Can you damp it if I need you to?"
"Sure," Harry replied, nodding. "You say when, I'll cool things down."
"Lets give it a couple," I said, nodding. "Piper, honey? You about done teasing the insectoid gorillas?"
"About," she called. I heard the whickering noise of an axe being swung with Slayer strength, the thump of blade on flesh, and the falling coconut sound of a head hitting the ground. "Done now, what's up?"
"I'm going to start my run, here in a minute," I told her as she leapt over to my side in one astonishing bound. "Think you could get me up high enough to see over Harry's lava wall for a couple?"
"Your wish is my command," Piper replied. "One sec."
Piper turned and ran up the wall, out across the ceiling and stopped above me. "Okay, Jocelyn— alley oop!"
I leapt up, my hands reaching for Piper's. She caught my wrists, tugged once— and I went up further. She caught me with both hands on my waist, and held me easily, my head just a couple of inches from the ceiling, and said, after a moment, "Hey, Jocelyn, did anyone ever tell you that you have really pretty ankles?"
"No, but thanks," I said absently. I looked out over the field, knowing that Piper had both the strength and endurance to hold me up here without serious effort for a good long time, and started working on a route in my head. Then I stopped and called, "Hey, Harry? That globular laceration thing you did while I was getting all blaze-y, what was that? Piper said it might help me make my run for Catherine when you did it?"
"Force ball about the size of a big marble," Harry called, a slight laugh in his voice, presumably from the picture that Piper and I presented, her holding me upside down to her by my waist. "I fire it into a crowd— then expand to around twenty feet through the middle pretty much instantaneously. Bowls over monsters like… uh, like the Scythe goes through pencil-necked vampires."
"I like!" I said. "Can you do that when I'm ready to make my run?"
"Betcha," Harry said. "In fact, there's a precedent."
I laughed and said, "I'll bet.
"Piper, when I'm ready to start, how many of the nearby nasties can you web down enough that I'll be able to bypass them without more than some fancy dodging?"
"Well, let's see… I'm thinking that I can get the twenty on the left side, there, just on the other side of the lava wall— maybe even two dozen. You start over there, hug the wall— only half as many monsters to fight."
"You have been paying attention in class," I said, smiling. "Left side's better, yeah— mostly vamps for the first twenty-five, thirty yards that I'll actually have to fight through, with you and Harry clearing me a path. The right… I don't know what some of those things are, but I don't think I want to, either. Whose idea was it to cross a spider and an elephant, anyway?"
"Actually, I can maybe answer that," Harry volunteered.
"Please, don't," I said, and Harry snorted laughter.
"Okay— Ian, how's your Hope-juice?"
"I'm not up to a pulse like I did before we came down here," Ian said evenly, "but I'm not low, either. I can to the touch-monster-burn-monster-two-step for an hour or more, at least."
"Okay, then you're ground-space guardian," I said. "Piper, I want you to pace me on the ceiling to the halfway point, web anything that looks like it might be getting too close to me, then turn back here— odds are the fighting's going to be thick back here, and I don't want any of you hurt. Don't argue, just pace me to the halfway point, then get back here."
"Yes, Jocelyn," Piper said. "But you're insane, for the record."
"At the halfway point, I'll have momentum," I said. "Not to mention everything I've learned in the last lifetime or so, and the reaction of everything that thought I'd never make it that far.
"Harry, I want you to snipe anything you can that's in my way and looks too nasty. Don't bother with vampires, they're… between what I've just learned, the time I spent teaching it, and the Scythe? Not stressing vampires. But from here, I can see some sort of… ugh. It looks like somebody crossed a rhino and a sea anemone, and I really don't want to know what the heck all those tentacles are for, you know? And there are other very large things out there, feel free to zap all of them that you want."
"No argument," Harry said. "I'll play Bob Lee Swagger for you, no problem."
"Shooter was an excellent movie," I said, laughing. "Ian, you're Harry's bodyguard, with Piper's help once she gets back here."
"Where do you want me?" called a voice, and Piper spun around while still holding me up.
"Joyce!" I said, and found myself grinning hugely. "You got out of there, excellent!"
Piper dropped me partway, caught my hands, then dropped me the rest of the way and flipped to the floor herself as I waited my turn to hug Joyce— Ian was kissing her, of course.
I got to hug Joyce, who squeezed me long and hard and said, "Thanks, Jocelyn. For teaching me, I mean. With all of that and Alex and Chief… blender-boy was pretty much a pushover. Without what you taught me… ugh. Pretty sure it would have been a lot nastier for me."
"Never a problem," I said. I looked over at Harry, who was looking at Joyce with a mixture of fascination and something that might have been relief. (I figured the relief to mean that she didn't look too much like his Joyce.) "Joyce, meet our otherwordly ally, Harry Dresden. Harry, Xander and Buffy's daughter, Joyce."
"Harry Dresden!?" Joyce exclaimed, her face lighting up. "Ohmigod, Dad will be so jealous that I met you! We've both read all the books about you, he got me started on them, and they're finally doing a movie, they got a real director, and they got Zachary L—"
"Joyce," I said, trying not to laugh at Harry's slightly stunned expression. "We need to get moving, okay?"
"Oh." She took a deep breath, looked up at Harry, and said, "Sorry, gushing. But seriously— this is kind of extra-amazing."
"Trust me," Harry said, quirking a smile at her, "that works both ways. But the lady's right— it's showtime."
"Right." Joyce shook her head once and said, "Jocelyn? Am I with you, or here?"
"Here," I said immediately. "You've got the training I have, Joyce—"
"But not the experience," she finished for me. "I guess this isn't exactly the time to go looking to level up, huh?"
Harry barked a laugh, and I smiled a little as I nodded. "No, Joyce, it's not. You stay here and help Ian. Harry's the only one here who can shoot from range, I'm going to need you to keep his back clear—"
"So he can keep yours clear," Joyce said, nodding. "Okay. Kiss Piper and let's do this, Jocelyn."
I took her at her word— after hugging her again, hugging Ian, then, to his seeming surprise, hugging Harry Dresden. Surprised or not, he hugged back hard, held on 'til I let go, and grinned when I stepped back. I then turned to Piper and kissed the heck out of her.
"Listen…" Harry said when Piper and I broke. He smiled as he continued. "Jocelyn knows this, but I want you guys to know, because… because you need to know that I know what the hell I'm talking about.
"I know Buffy, a Buffy— she, Xander and Dawn got pulled out of their version of reality and into mine via the Nevernever. Their world went differently after the end of Sunnydale than yours did, and… they're my family, all of them.
"I accidentally managed to jump-start the Scythe when things got bad and Buffy needed her power back, and… well, I work with Buffy really often, other Slayers quite a bit, so I know what I'm talking about when I tell you that you're doing it right. You'd better believe that I'm going to tell my Buffy that things here? They're in the best of hands.
"So… Jocelyn, good luck. If I fade out before you get back… it's been a blast, lady."
"Thanks, Harry," I said, and I took a deep breath. "Okay. Piper, get up to where you can pin down… can you get four deep along the left wall immobilized, out as far as you can?"
"I can." She squeezed my hand once, then leapt up to the ceiling, looked down at us and said, "Good luck, everybody," before she ran off to the left a ways and waited for me.
"Harry, on my signal, you shut down the lava wall, then once Piper's webbed down however many she can, clear me a space past that as big as you can— I want momentum on my side. Then… don't kill anything until I get pretty close— in this mess, you shoot too far ahead of me and other things will have time to replace whatever you get rid of."
"Got it," he said, and grinned at me. "Just so you know… you even sound like Buffy."
"There is no higher praise," I said, smiling my thanks at him. "Joyce, Ian, kill what comes close enough. Stick together, stay alert.
"Okay… I'm as ready as I'm going to get.
"This one's for the money."
I moved to the left edge of the vault door, peered in and up, saw Piper crouching on the ceiling, ready to go, and said, "Three, two, one, GO!"
Harry Dresden thumped his wizard's staff on the ground and bellowed "TERRA TRANQUILLUS!," then leveled his staff at the orange-red glow of the lava lying quietly in the three-to-four-foot wide crack in the floor and said, still loudly, but not actually shouting, "Frigidum firmus!"
Suddenly, the lava cooled to ordinary (if rather uneven) concrete for about twenty feet out from the left wall— and Piper fired webbing from all ten digits on her hands, coating more than thirty monsters over near the left side of the big pit that I'd be making me way through. Even as I ran along the top of the ramp to the left wall, she fired more webbing out past that bunch, got a big group of demons some thirty feet past the first group and further to the right held down, and it wasn't until I heard Harry Dresden roar "GLOBUS LACERTORUM!" that I understood why she'd done that.
I never saw the marble-sized globe of energy that Harry shot down past the bunch that Piper had webbed in place, but I did see it when it expanded in a split second to a globe a bit more than twenty feet in diameter, a faint, shimmering, pale, silver-blue. It knocked down a ridiculous number of demons, what with the ones it hit directly slamming into others, then those slamming into still more, etcetera. In a split second, I had a big clear spot about thirty-five or forty feet across starting just past the bunch that Piper had webbed.
I was already at the edge of that group, and only one of them had actually touched me, managed to get a hand out and barely brush it against my upper arm. No effect at all. I ran faster, charged across the open space and moved into the Ginga for the last few paces before reaching the pair of decently-built vampires that were my nearest targets. I leapt into the air, spinning, my trailing leg out to kick, then tucked my leg back under me at the last second and swung the blade of the Scythe through both of their necks. I held my breath as I passed through the resulting cloud of vampire-dust, hit the ground running, body-checked a Kreplin demon before it could sink its Freddy-Krueger-like claws into me, then did what had, back in the days before the Battle of Bloomington, been named a "Lamont Smash" for Sara Lamont, head of the Aussie branch of Team Slayer.
Back then, Sara had been all of four-eleven and maybe ninety-five pounds— and had made a habit, almost, out of leaping into the air and bringing down her weapon on the head of whatever monster she was facing. Given that the demon that I had to face next stood about eight feet tall on four long, thin, insect-like legs, but had a torso and head more like a puke-yellow polar bear? A "Lamont Smash" seemed called for.
I split the thing's melon, kicked off of one of its legs to get close to the wall again— and heard Harry Dresden bellow "PYROFUEGO!" at the top of his pretty-impressive lungs.
A line a fire no thicker than a knitting needle, burning blue-white, passed over my head, hit that rhino-anemone thing I'd been worried about— it was only about twenty feet away, now, and all that stood between it and me were a half a dozen vamps— and punched right through the thing's heavily armored forehead, burned through in less than a second, and punched out its back leg and into the stomach of a Fyarl demon that died, too.
"Wow," I muttered as I cartwheeled in amongst the vampires, kicked two as I finished the maneuver, and waded into the group with the Scythe. "Willow would probably approve of this guy, and that's saying something!"
I killed the last of that group, realized that I'd slowed down— and that the monsters had started to close in on me. Which is when Piper, following me on the ceiling, fired a bunch of webbing to hold the group behind me in place, then dropped to the floor beside me, said, "I'm cutting in, boys, sorry," and fired a heavy strand of web from the fingers of her left hand at the body of the Fyarl demon, said to me, "Duck, Jocelyn!"— and jerked the body of the three hundred pound demon off of the ground and swung him around herself like a freaking ball and chain!
"That's just awesome!" I laughed as Piper slammed everything close off of its feet. I stayed crouched and added, "Okay, from here, I go it alone, Piper— get back with the others."
"Understood, dammit," she groused. "Once I've smacked everything stupid enough to, you know, actually charge me while I'm swinging a dead demon around like Tom Sawyer with his dead rat on a string, anyway!"
I laughed aloud— c'mon, a classical reference in the middle of a battle like this, that's too amazing for words!— and watched as Piper cleared a great circle around us with her homemade Fyarl-mace, then threw the thing at a gargoyle-looking demon that had launched itself into the air and started our way. She hit it, knocked it out of the air, and I straightened up.
I barely reached standing when there came a HUGE flash of the dark blue light that seemed to be Catherine Madison's magical signature—
—and suddenly, Piper and I stood in the middle of a fully refreshed crowd of demons, the closest a mere six feet away, and the numbers so awful that I knew we'd not be able to fight clear in time.
"Well, crap," Piper said softly.
"Doubled!" I said, and swung the scythe at what seemed, for all the world, to be a literal animated set of monkey bars that had clanked right up and begun trying to hit me with some unfastened bars on the side facing me.
Piper got her back against mine, and we started trying to stay alive.
From somewhere behind us I heard a roar of "FULMINOS DIRUPTUM!" A second later, a crackling blue-white ball of energy soared over our heads and dropped into the middle of the densely packed demons there, exploded through them, and put most of them on the ground.
A second later, Harry Dresden's voice again, shouting words that I understood— but that made no sense to me.
"PIPER!" Harry yelled. "COLOSSUS AND WOLVERINE!"
Apparently, Piper did understand, as she immediately said, "Jocelyn, get ready to be thrown!"
"What?" I said, not having a clue as to what she was talking about.
"I'm going to throw you at the door, then get clear myself!" Piper said. "Only chance we've got!"
No time to think, so I trusted my instincts, which were telling me to trust her and Harry. "Do it!"
Piper webbed a lot of monsters on her side, then turned to me grabbed the belt of my armor— and suddenly, I found myself flying through the air towards the big door at the other end of the monster pit, even as the guard there, whatever it was, started moving towards where I'd probably land.
Problem was, nothing to keep the monsters behind me from coming up and joining the fight.
Piper is stronger than a Slayer, and I actually flew the fifty yards or so she'd thrown me with no significant change in arc, and I had to rotate to hit the big wooden door that presumably had Catherine Madison on the other side about nine feet up its fifteen foot height feet-first. (Seriously— BIG DOOR! Fifteen feet high, maybe eight feet wide.)
I rolled up the door, took the impact on knees and forearms, and before I could so much as drop to the ground, Harry Dresden solved my big worry about being attacked from behind for me.
"FLAM-MAMURUS!" he shouted, and I swear, I actually felt the impact as his staff hit the ground at the other end of the room, even though I wasn't touching the ground myself.
Again, the ground tore open and lava sprung up, this time at the base of the ramp behind me, and I dropped to the ground and sighed my relief— only the one monster to deal with, then, or probably only the one, as most nasty things from the supernatural side are way, way not fond of fire.
"Holy crap, I have a chance!" I said.
"No," growled something to my left. "You don't!"
I felt the blow coming, but I couldn't block it— I wasn't fast enough, not when caught by surprise like that, at least. I moved with it as best I could, dove away from the impact as much as possible, and none of my ribs actually broke— though at least a couple cracked.
I managed to tumble and bleed off much of the speed imparted to me by the blow before I slammed into the far wall with my right shoulder and arm. Nothing broke there, either, though I felt fairly sure that I'd be bruised black for a while.
I got my feet under me and took a couple of steps from the wall, then shook my head and took a good look at my opponent.
Seven feet tall, maybe a couple inches over that, and built like a gymnast; maximum muscle bulk possible without loss of dexterity or agility. Skin the color of slate, dark gray, like a new chalkboard. Black hair, long and worn in a ponytail. Slightly shiny metallic armor, field plate mail (plates over most vital areas, the rest chain mail for greater ease of movement) that looked like finished steel. No gauntlets, though, and the stuff didn't look like it would slow him down much, if at all.
His face looked human enough if you discounted the gray skin— and the bumpy-forehead-brow-ridges-and fangs of a vampire. Except for size and skin color, he might have been an ordinary vampire. Well, those and his absolutely scary strength.
"I know that weapon, girl," he said, simply standing in front of the door. "I know its history; how it was used to kill the last pure demon on Earth, then hidden away against the coming of the one who would need it most.
"I don't fear the weapon… because I do not fear the wielder.
"Do you know who I am, girl?"
"No clue," I said with a shrug. I didn't have a lot of time, maybe, but a couple of minutes to get my breath back and bury the pain of that hit he'd laid on me seemed like a good idea. "Should I care?"
"You should." He smiled, and it was… kind of shiver-making. "You know the origin of vampires. How, before the Guardians killed it, the last pure demon fed on a human and mixed their blood, creating the first vampire."
"Sure," I said after a moment, when he didn't continue. "So what?"
"I… am that vampire," he said— and he actually sketched a little bow to me.
"Oh." I licked my lips and thought about that, about how the older a vampire gets, the stronger they get. About how the vampire Kakistos, who'd probably only been a couple of thousand years old, had nearly killed Faith and Buffy, back when they first met.
After a couple of seconds of thinking about those things, I added, "Shit."