Watchers' Firsts Fic-a-thon
Oct. 30th, 2005 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
themis1This computer definitely has a mind of its own. I was all set to post this 10 minutes ago and it refused to open Word so I could cut-and-paste. Fingers crossed I still have a signal on the broadband when I press the 'post' button!!
Title: PARADISE LOST?
Author: Themis1
Pairing: none
Universe: Long Sea Crossing, and if you haven’t read that, spoiler alert!
Key words: My First Apocalypse, Nightclub, Desperation
Rating: No sex, references to violence – pretty harmless, I would say
Notes/Summary: Mythichistorian and I have discussed many times the possibility that there may be only one vampire slayer, but there might be other sorts ... I’d be very surprised if anyone other than Mythichistorian gets the punchline!
Thanks: Mythichistorian, and Jeff Meek, for inspiring me
Feedback: 40 years of fanfic writing, the first thing I’ve posted on the internet. Call me oldfashioned. Or just old.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon created it, but some of the copyright here has to belong to Mythichistorian too, since some of her characters make a fleeting appearance. Written for fun, no profit made. Approx 2,800 words.
Apocalypse: vision of the future, revelation or disclosure; a Middle English word, from the Greek ‘to uncover’ – full of symbolism and imagery, visions of a great new era that will suddenly supersede the present age of suffering
She undulated into the nightclub towards the end of my act, the part where I levitate two members of the audience and then make them vanish, and I paused for a moment, not surprised by the fact that she was there but by the timing of it. Still, that was often the way with the information I worked with – it was picture-perfect, but adrift in time. Of course, that didn’t mean I knew what would happen next – just what might, all things being equal.
“Is something wrong?”
Merraine, my so-called beautiful assistant, was going through a Goth retro, all tats and piercings and coal black hair and eyes. I think she’d expected me to protest, the first time she turned up for work looking like something that needed staking ... but actually it suited the act, and I just smiled.
“Everything’s wrong,” I assured her as we took our bows, watching through the fall of my overlong black fringe as the woman made her way across the floor and settled into a seat at a ringside table, “but it’s not yours to worry over.”
“Why not?” she pouted. “Me slayer, you watcher ...?”
“You vampire slayer,” I pointed out. “This not vampire.” I contemplated the newcomer. Her appearance was well hidden within a long black cloak and evening mask, but from the way she moved I guessed she wasn’t going to be old or ugly. I sighed. She could probably be anything she wanted to be. “This very definitely not vampire,” I repeated, “and I want you to promise to do exactly as I say.”
The pout grew – Merraine was spoiled-brat assertive, rebel against due cause, which I knew I had. I released a flurry of pearl-winged doves to hide her inappropriate expression, and under the cover of an extra bow gave her my best frown. “Exactly as I say, Rain. Go call for help. The big guns will want to be in on this.” Largely because, of course, if they weren’t, they’d be minus one watcher.
“So what’re you going to do?” she wanted to know.
“Delay,” I assured her. “Like you said, me watcher. I don’t do world saving – that’s not my job.”
“World ...?” The kohl-rimmed eyes widened until they resembled two poached eggs in frying pans. “Really? World?”
“Don’t get any ideas,” I said firmly. I knew she would anyway, and so reinforced the order with a look I knew I’d get into trouble for later. “Go. Now. And do not come back!”
* * * * *
I gave Rain a puff of sparkling purple smoke to disappear into, and then stepped from the low stage into the audience area, acknowledging the applause and accepting a couple of roses handed to me by dewy-eyed, giggling fans. “Thank you, thank you, so kind ...”
They rapidly grew irritating, but I knew a minor cantrip to distract them, and used it now, causing the masked woman to look up at me. Her eyes, I saw, were very green, and the lipstick on her full mouth iridescent. After a moment of eye contact, she waved a negligent hand at the chair opposite her, and as my thwarted fans wandered back to their seats I settled into it, folding my long legs and leaning back comfortably against the plush backrest.
The matt black evening mask was a startlingly non-reflective surface amidst the glitter that was the current fashion for everyone who wasn’t a retro-goth.
“Did you enjoy the show?” I enquired, as much for something to say as anything else.
The black mask tilted slowly as if she thought about her reply carefully; the words, when the came, were equally slow and carefully pronounced. English was not, of course, her native tongue. “I saw only the last few moments.”
“But what you did see?” I busied myself inserting my gift roses into the vase on the table.
“You are persistent, sir.”
“If I’m bothering you ...?”
“No; quite the contrary - there are questions I would ask of you.”
I glanced toward the door, but the last piece of my vision was still missing. “Questions?” I wondered.
“Yes. Questions about your origins.”
“I have never made any statement as to my origins,” I said.
“Precisely. And yet, the Oracle thinks you can help me. You may consider the question curiosity.”
“As I am curious about your appearance?”
“Will you not allow a lady her privacy?”
“If a lady’s entitled to her privacy, then so’s a magician.” I hesitated, and then went on, “For what it’s worth, I am an illusionist. The best I can provide is a card from the air or a dove from your pocket.”
“Really.”
I got the distinct impression she didn’t believe me, and when her head tilted downward I knew that she sensed what I wore around my neck – not that that was going to help much, the way things were likely to go.
The next act was taking the stage – Fred and Ginger lookalikes, their dance steps not quite as polished as the act they copied, but still, not bad. The audience – the club wasn’t full, but was busy enough to bother me – applauded nonetheless. She leant towards me, her green eyes urgent. “He’s on his way,” she said. “But you know that, don’t you? He wasn’t far behind me. He can kill me - kill me and take my power. And that power will make him strong enough to achieve his ends. I’m not what you probably think I am – I’m much more than that!”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Of course you do,” she said. “I think you understand perfectly ...”
She broke off, her gaze turning toward the entrance. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “The missing piece,” I said involuntarily.
She put out a hand and touched my arm. “Protect me,” she said. “Please.”
I swallowed, and then rose to my feet and walked up through the audience towards the entranceway.
* * * * *
The man was as tall as me, but broader. His hair was cut roughly, as if he’d done it himself with blunt scissors, and below his ragged fringe eyes like sparking coals considered and dismissed me, before fixing over my shoulder on – I assumed - my still seated companion.
“Good evening, sir,” I greeted him, stopping literally in his path.
“Get thee out of my way,” he rasped.
Something went ‘riddip!’, and then I ducked involuntarily as frogs started to rain down on the audience. I wasn’t the only one ducking – a woman screamed, and chairs scraped back from tables, and the dancers hesitated and then fled the now revolving stage, ‘Ginger’ with her hands over her head. She slipped, and ‘Fred’ gallantly caught her arm and dragged her into the cover of the stage exit. I hoped Merraine had made contact. There was a lot of milling around and screaming, and a short, sandy-haired man grabbed my arm.
“Are you doing this?” he demanded.
“I don’t do frogs,” I assured him. He hesitated, and then a woman – his wife, I guessed – grabbed his arm and tugged him away. The club emptied with surprising speed, the punters scuttling by either side of the tall, black-clad man who stood like a dark island in their stream. Eventually there was just me, and the man, and when I risked a glance, the woman, still seated at the table on the other side of the club.
The man seemed surprised when I didn’t get out of his way. I looked down briefly, nudging away the frog that seemed to have decided to huddle up against my shoe. They were, of course, Californian tree frogs – nothing else made that distinctive sound. But then, we were in California. I wondered absently whether, elsewhere in the world, the frogs that it rained would be a different breed. Then, somewhat reluctantly, I looked back at the man.
“Why art thou protecting her?” the man demanded of me, his dark eyebrows raised in obvious incredulity. “Thou art not of her kind – I would know it if’n thou wert. I sense them. I sense their filth, and I track them down, and I cleanse the world of them. They must be destroyed, or they will make everything putrid, like unto themselves.” He considered me. “Is it that thou knowest not what she is?”
“She’s a demon,” I said, wishing I felt half as calm as I sounded. “But she’s not hurting anyone.”
“She exists!” The man made a half-step, as if to go around me, but I moved slightly to keep my body between his and hers. “I will destroy her, and I will raise an army to march at my back. Together, we will destroy all her kind, yeah unto the very last, and any who shelter them.”
Uh-oh.
“There is an Order in the world,” I said, drawing myself up to my full height and masking my terror with hard, cold words. “By what right do you upset the balance?”
“Upset ...?” he whispered, his eyes narrowing and his hands twitching as if he imagined them around my throat. I didn’t dare turn to look at the woman, but in my mind’s eye I saw her standing, her disguise discarded, and almost I could feel the flame licking at my back. “Upset?” He threw back his head and laughed. “I am doing his work, boy! I am the one sent to cleanse the world. Only by cutting out the damaged flesh can the race be purified. I am the surgeon, gowned in the light – my scalpel is the baton that will bid the orchestra play. The chase has been long, but this is where it will end. She will cease, and I will bathe in her power, and then I will send all of her stinking brood after her. He spared them once, cast them down, but this time ... this time there will be no possibility of return. And once they are despatched ... then, then the pure will build a better world, a world without famine, or war, or greed, or pestilence ...”
There went the Horsemen, summoned and dismissed in a single sentence. This self-styled ‘Surgeon’ had a perverse power – a mesmeric quality. But the ‘war’ he wanted to start was likely to wipe out the good with the bad, Angel and Spike and Lorne and their like along with the rest of the demons, and then anyone else who wasn’t normal – the shrunken human gene pool left after that kind of ethnic cleansing would be the poorer, not the richer.
My first apocalypse, I realised. Mine to face – and mine to prevent ... or at least delay. How long would it take? That would depend on where everyone was, what they were doing ... and whether they trusted me enough to know that when I cried wolf, I didn’t mean some tame little puppy dog but a gut-quaking, steel-taloned, giant, double-headed werewolf! I cleared my throat nervously. “No,” I said.
He blinked, taken aback. “You dare say no to me, boy? Get out of my way!”
He raised his arm to strike me, and I tumbled back – not fell, you understand, but tucked and rolled the way I’d been taught, and came to my feet still between the two of them. A rueful grin tugged at one corner of my mouth as I imagined Xander’s delight when I told him what I said next.
“You shall not pass!”
“And who art thou to stop me?” he demanded, pacing forward to stand eye to eye with me, so close our breath mingled. He put one hand in his pocket, and I knew he had a weapon there.
“I?” I said. “I am ... I am a Watcher.”
“And has it occurred to thee, Watcher,” he sneered, “that thou shouldst be watching, not interfering? That this is the time?”
“Don’t listen to him, Watcher,” she said, from behind me. “He is one lost from the path, abandoned in the wilderness, forging his own road. There is no ineffability about his actions. He has killed, and killed again, and he will not rest until his hands drip blood and his heart is stone. He sucks the power from my kind and cloaks himself in it ...” Well, that explained the rain of frogs.
“And thou, demon?” he snarled back at her. “Art thy hands clean? How many virgins sacrificed themselves upon thy unclean altars? How many hast thou lured to thy insidious shame, harlot?”
“Wait,” I said, and he blinked at me, evidently surprised that I still stood in his path. “I know who you are,” I told him. “You’re Gordon Racina, and thirty years ago you vanished, and your watcher was found dead ...”
“He killed him,” she said, and I winced; I’d hoped to draw that truth from him, delay him with the telling of it ...
“Sayest thou,” he snarled, and his hand came out of the pocket with ... it didn’t matter with what. I had left it too late to shield myself, and in desperation I called a vision of beauty to take my place, and stepped back behind its allure. Cowering behind a woman’s skirts, I thought, my heart pounding drum-like in my chest, counting down my last few seconds on earth. If it could just hold him for a few minutes ...
Seconds; he shouldered his way through it carelessly, the vibraknife in his hand buzzing with anticipatory pleasure. “Get thee out of my way, Watcher,” he said, and this time I knew he meant it.
The woman was right behind me now; I could smell her perfume – jasmine rather than brimstone, I found myself thinking, and I never found out what she looked like. I braced myself for the pain of failure as the demon slayer lunged toward me ...
* * * * *
The crack of lightning got his attention, spun him on his heel, and he looked back up at the entrance.
“You’re right,” I said honestly, astonished I could still speak. “I’m just a Watcher. I couldn’t stop you. But I could delay you long enough for the cavalry to get here!”
They were standing just inside the entrance, blocking his exit – my father, and Rupert Giles, and the twins. Not Will, of course – she probably cast the spell that sent them.
“THOU canst not destroy me, either!” he flung at them.
“No,” Giles said, stepping forward, “but I can request politely that you hand yourself in to us.”
“No,” he said. “Thou’rt too late. I’ll kill her, and take her power, and then – then thou wilt be next, and then all the others ...”
“Psychopath!” I named him.
“Demon slayer!” he contradicted me.
“But I’m not just a demon, Slayer,” Giles told him, casually flicking up a set of blades to underline his words. “I’m a Prince of Hell.”
As the cavalry (the twins, mostly) dealt with the man, my mother and Sky appeared from backstage. Giles’s wife had one arm around a wet-faced, quivering Merraine. “You really didn’t have to reinforce the order,” she told me.
“Perhaps not,” I said, “but better safe than sorry.” I braced myself and turned to face the woman – the demon queen – whose foul life I had just defended, only to find that, contrary to my expectations, she still wore her disguise. Green eyes flashed at me, and full lips smiled.
“Well done, boy,” she murmured. “I owe you one.
“Now there’s a scary thought,” my mother observed, as the woman gave us a small bow and then faded quietly out – as she could have much earlier, had she so chosen. I was just surprised she’d trusted me to defend her enough to stay; but then, there’s a time to stop running for everyone.
My mother slipped her arm around me and gave me a cheerful grin. “I hope it’s a long time before you get to claim that favour,” she said. “In the meantime ... I’m very proud of you ... Gabriel.”
Title: PARADISE LOST?
Author: Themis1
Pairing: none
Universe: Long Sea Crossing, and if you haven’t read that, spoiler alert!
Key words: My First Apocalypse, Nightclub, Desperation
Rating: No sex, references to violence – pretty harmless, I would say
Notes/Summary: Mythichistorian and I have discussed many times the possibility that there may be only one vampire slayer, but there might be other sorts ... I’d be very surprised if anyone other than Mythichistorian gets the punchline!
Thanks: Mythichistorian, and Jeff Meek, for inspiring me
Feedback: 40 years of fanfic writing, the first thing I’ve posted on the internet. Call me oldfashioned. Or just old.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon created it, but some of the copyright here has to belong to Mythichistorian too, since some of her characters make a fleeting appearance. Written for fun, no profit made. Approx 2,800 words.
Apocalypse: vision of the future, revelation or disclosure; a Middle English word, from the Greek ‘to uncover’ – full of symbolism and imagery, visions of a great new era that will suddenly supersede the present age of suffering
She undulated into the nightclub towards the end of my act, the part where I levitate two members of the audience and then make them vanish, and I paused for a moment, not surprised by the fact that she was there but by the timing of it. Still, that was often the way with the information I worked with – it was picture-perfect, but adrift in time. Of course, that didn’t mean I knew what would happen next – just what might, all things being equal.
“Is something wrong?”
Merraine, my so-called beautiful assistant, was going through a Goth retro, all tats and piercings and coal black hair and eyes. I think she’d expected me to protest, the first time she turned up for work looking like something that needed staking ... but actually it suited the act, and I just smiled.
“Everything’s wrong,” I assured her as we took our bows, watching through the fall of my overlong black fringe as the woman made her way across the floor and settled into a seat at a ringside table, “but it’s not yours to worry over.”
“Why not?” she pouted. “Me slayer, you watcher ...?”
“You vampire slayer,” I pointed out. “This not vampire.” I contemplated the newcomer. Her appearance was well hidden within a long black cloak and evening mask, but from the way she moved I guessed she wasn’t going to be old or ugly. I sighed. She could probably be anything she wanted to be. “This very definitely not vampire,” I repeated, “and I want you to promise to do exactly as I say.”
The pout grew – Merraine was spoiled-brat assertive, rebel against due cause, which I knew I had. I released a flurry of pearl-winged doves to hide her inappropriate expression, and under the cover of an extra bow gave her my best frown. “Exactly as I say, Rain. Go call for help. The big guns will want to be in on this.” Largely because, of course, if they weren’t, they’d be minus one watcher.
“So what’re you going to do?” she wanted to know.
“Delay,” I assured her. “Like you said, me watcher. I don’t do world saving – that’s not my job.”
“World ...?” The kohl-rimmed eyes widened until they resembled two poached eggs in frying pans. “Really? World?”
“Don’t get any ideas,” I said firmly. I knew she would anyway, and so reinforced the order with a look I knew I’d get into trouble for later. “Go. Now. And do not come back!”
* * * * *
I gave Rain a puff of sparkling purple smoke to disappear into, and then stepped from the low stage into the audience area, acknowledging the applause and accepting a couple of roses handed to me by dewy-eyed, giggling fans. “Thank you, thank you, so kind ...”
They rapidly grew irritating, but I knew a minor cantrip to distract them, and used it now, causing the masked woman to look up at me. Her eyes, I saw, were very green, and the lipstick on her full mouth iridescent. After a moment of eye contact, she waved a negligent hand at the chair opposite her, and as my thwarted fans wandered back to their seats I settled into it, folding my long legs and leaning back comfortably against the plush backrest.
The matt black evening mask was a startlingly non-reflective surface amidst the glitter that was the current fashion for everyone who wasn’t a retro-goth.
“Did you enjoy the show?” I enquired, as much for something to say as anything else.
The black mask tilted slowly as if she thought about her reply carefully; the words, when the came, were equally slow and carefully pronounced. English was not, of course, her native tongue. “I saw only the last few moments.”
“But what you did see?” I busied myself inserting my gift roses into the vase on the table.
“You are persistent, sir.”
“If I’m bothering you ...?”
“No; quite the contrary - there are questions I would ask of you.”
I glanced toward the door, but the last piece of my vision was still missing. “Questions?” I wondered.
“Yes. Questions about your origins.”
“I have never made any statement as to my origins,” I said.
“Precisely. And yet, the Oracle thinks you can help me. You may consider the question curiosity.”
“As I am curious about your appearance?”
“Will you not allow a lady her privacy?”
“If a lady’s entitled to her privacy, then so’s a magician.” I hesitated, and then went on, “For what it’s worth, I am an illusionist. The best I can provide is a card from the air or a dove from your pocket.”
“Really.”
I got the distinct impression she didn’t believe me, and when her head tilted downward I knew that she sensed what I wore around my neck – not that that was going to help much, the way things were likely to go.
The next act was taking the stage – Fred and Ginger lookalikes, their dance steps not quite as polished as the act they copied, but still, not bad. The audience – the club wasn’t full, but was busy enough to bother me – applauded nonetheless. She leant towards me, her green eyes urgent. “He’s on his way,” she said. “But you know that, don’t you? He wasn’t far behind me. He can kill me - kill me and take my power. And that power will make him strong enough to achieve his ends. I’m not what you probably think I am – I’m much more than that!”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Of course you do,” she said. “I think you understand perfectly ...”
She broke off, her gaze turning toward the entrance. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “The missing piece,” I said involuntarily.
She put out a hand and touched my arm. “Protect me,” she said. “Please.”
I swallowed, and then rose to my feet and walked up through the audience towards the entranceway.
* * * * *
The man was as tall as me, but broader. His hair was cut roughly, as if he’d done it himself with blunt scissors, and below his ragged fringe eyes like sparking coals considered and dismissed me, before fixing over my shoulder on – I assumed - my still seated companion.
“Good evening, sir,” I greeted him, stopping literally in his path.
“Get thee out of my way,” he rasped.
Something went ‘riddip!’, and then I ducked involuntarily as frogs started to rain down on the audience. I wasn’t the only one ducking – a woman screamed, and chairs scraped back from tables, and the dancers hesitated and then fled the now revolving stage, ‘Ginger’ with her hands over her head. She slipped, and ‘Fred’ gallantly caught her arm and dragged her into the cover of the stage exit. I hoped Merraine had made contact. There was a lot of milling around and screaming, and a short, sandy-haired man grabbed my arm.
“Are you doing this?” he demanded.
“I don’t do frogs,” I assured him. He hesitated, and then a woman – his wife, I guessed – grabbed his arm and tugged him away. The club emptied with surprising speed, the punters scuttling by either side of the tall, black-clad man who stood like a dark island in their stream. Eventually there was just me, and the man, and when I risked a glance, the woman, still seated at the table on the other side of the club.
The man seemed surprised when I didn’t get out of his way. I looked down briefly, nudging away the frog that seemed to have decided to huddle up against my shoe. They were, of course, Californian tree frogs – nothing else made that distinctive sound. But then, we were in California. I wondered absently whether, elsewhere in the world, the frogs that it rained would be a different breed. Then, somewhat reluctantly, I looked back at the man.
“Why art thou protecting her?” the man demanded of me, his dark eyebrows raised in obvious incredulity. “Thou art not of her kind – I would know it if’n thou wert. I sense them. I sense their filth, and I track them down, and I cleanse the world of them. They must be destroyed, or they will make everything putrid, like unto themselves.” He considered me. “Is it that thou knowest not what she is?”
“She’s a demon,” I said, wishing I felt half as calm as I sounded. “But she’s not hurting anyone.”
“She exists!” The man made a half-step, as if to go around me, but I moved slightly to keep my body between his and hers. “I will destroy her, and I will raise an army to march at my back. Together, we will destroy all her kind, yeah unto the very last, and any who shelter them.”
Uh-oh.
“There is an Order in the world,” I said, drawing myself up to my full height and masking my terror with hard, cold words. “By what right do you upset the balance?”
“Upset ...?” he whispered, his eyes narrowing and his hands twitching as if he imagined them around my throat. I didn’t dare turn to look at the woman, but in my mind’s eye I saw her standing, her disguise discarded, and almost I could feel the flame licking at my back. “Upset?” He threw back his head and laughed. “I am doing his work, boy! I am the one sent to cleanse the world. Only by cutting out the damaged flesh can the race be purified. I am the surgeon, gowned in the light – my scalpel is the baton that will bid the orchestra play. The chase has been long, but this is where it will end. She will cease, and I will bathe in her power, and then I will send all of her stinking brood after her. He spared them once, cast them down, but this time ... this time there will be no possibility of return. And once they are despatched ... then, then the pure will build a better world, a world without famine, or war, or greed, or pestilence ...”
There went the Horsemen, summoned and dismissed in a single sentence. This self-styled ‘Surgeon’ had a perverse power – a mesmeric quality. But the ‘war’ he wanted to start was likely to wipe out the good with the bad, Angel and Spike and Lorne and their like along with the rest of the demons, and then anyone else who wasn’t normal – the shrunken human gene pool left after that kind of ethnic cleansing would be the poorer, not the richer.
My first apocalypse, I realised. Mine to face – and mine to prevent ... or at least delay. How long would it take? That would depend on where everyone was, what they were doing ... and whether they trusted me enough to know that when I cried wolf, I didn’t mean some tame little puppy dog but a gut-quaking, steel-taloned, giant, double-headed werewolf! I cleared my throat nervously. “No,” I said.
He blinked, taken aback. “You dare say no to me, boy? Get out of my way!”
He raised his arm to strike me, and I tumbled back – not fell, you understand, but tucked and rolled the way I’d been taught, and came to my feet still between the two of them. A rueful grin tugged at one corner of my mouth as I imagined Xander’s delight when I told him what I said next.
“You shall not pass!”
“And who art thou to stop me?” he demanded, pacing forward to stand eye to eye with me, so close our breath mingled. He put one hand in his pocket, and I knew he had a weapon there.
“I?” I said. “I am ... I am a Watcher.”
“And has it occurred to thee, Watcher,” he sneered, “that thou shouldst be watching, not interfering? That this is the time?”
“Don’t listen to him, Watcher,” she said, from behind me. “He is one lost from the path, abandoned in the wilderness, forging his own road. There is no ineffability about his actions. He has killed, and killed again, and he will not rest until his hands drip blood and his heart is stone. He sucks the power from my kind and cloaks himself in it ...” Well, that explained the rain of frogs.
“And thou, demon?” he snarled back at her. “Art thy hands clean? How many virgins sacrificed themselves upon thy unclean altars? How many hast thou lured to thy insidious shame, harlot?”
“Wait,” I said, and he blinked at me, evidently surprised that I still stood in his path. “I know who you are,” I told him. “You’re Gordon Racina, and thirty years ago you vanished, and your watcher was found dead ...”
“He killed him,” she said, and I winced; I’d hoped to draw that truth from him, delay him with the telling of it ...
“Sayest thou,” he snarled, and his hand came out of the pocket with ... it didn’t matter with what. I had left it too late to shield myself, and in desperation I called a vision of beauty to take my place, and stepped back behind its allure. Cowering behind a woman’s skirts, I thought, my heart pounding drum-like in my chest, counting down my last few seconds on earth. If it could just hold him for a few minutes ...
Seconds; he shouldered his way through it carelessly, the vibraknife in his hand buzzing with anticipatory pleasure. “Get thee out of my way, Watcher,” he said, and this time I knew he meant it.
The woman was right behind me now; I could smell her perfume – jasmine rather than brimstone, I found myself thinking, and I never found out what she looked like. I braced myself for the pain of failure as the demon slayer lunged toward me ...
* * * * *
The crack of lightning got his attention, spun him on his heel, and he looked back up at the entrance.
“You’re right,” I said honestly, astonished I could still speak. “I’m just a Watcher. I couldn’t stop you. But I could delay you long enough for the cavalry to get here!”
They were standing just inside the entrance, blocking his exit – my father, and Rupert Giles, and the twins. Not Will, of course – she probably cast the spell that sent them.
“THOU canst not destroy me, either!” he flung at them.
“No,” Giles said, stepping forward, “but I can request politely that you hand yourself in to us.”
“No,” he said. “Thou’rt too late. I’ll kill her, and take her power, and then – then thou wilt be next, and then all the others ...”
“Psychopath!” I named him.
“Demon slayer!” he contradicted me.
“But I’m not just a demon, Slayer,” Giles told him, casually flicking up a set of blades to underline his words. “I’m a Prince of Hell.”
As the cavalry (the twins, mostly) dealt with the man, my mother and Sky appeared from backstage. Giles’s wife had one arm around a wet-faced, quivering Merraine. “You really didn’t have to reinforce the order,” she told me.
“Perhaps not,” I said, “but better safe than sorry.” I braced myself and turned to face the woman – the demon queen – whose foul life I had just defended, only to find that, contrary to my expectations, she still wore her disguise. Green eyes flashed at me, and full lips smiled.
“Well done, boy,” she murmured. “I owe you one.
“Now there’s a scary thought,” my mother observed, as the woman gave us a small bow and then faded quietly out – as she could have much earlier, had she so chosen. I was just surprised she’d trusted me to defend her enough to stay; but then, there’s a time to stop running for everyone.
My mother slipped her arm around me and gave me a cheerful grin. “I hope it’s a long time before you get to claim that favour,” she said. “In the meantime ... I’m very proud of you ... Gabriel.”
