Access All Areas, chapter 10.
31 Mar 2007 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatI have a cold. I have a nose like Peter Schmeichel - or for my non-European friends I look like Rudolph. I feel rather bleugh. But I have been out for a very nice lunch with my Mum and my daughter, and S2C and I have both finished our respective sections of Access All Areas, so not as bad a day as it could have been!
Under the cut is
Access All Areas, Chapter 10.
4,300 words.
This chapter is not NC17, but the story as a whole is.
Previous chapters are here in Memories
Chapter Ten.
Giles had insisted that Dawn must get in touch with Milan before she did anything else. Giles would call Willow and they would travel as soon as possible. He did not say that he was bringing any of the Slayers with him and Dawn knew that, if the ‘opposition’ was entirely human, he would prefer not to have to involve any of the girls.
Spike and Dawn cleaned themselves up before Milan arrived at their hotel. As Dawn stood in the shower she felt, no matter how much warm water poured down her body, as if she would never feel truly clean ever again. She wanted to scrub and scrub at herself but somehow didn’t have the energy.
After she had stood like that for at least ten minutes Spike must have realised that she was motionless, because he opened the door to the shower cubicle and, still wearing his jeans, stepped in. He took the sponge from her unresisting hand, poured shower gel onto it and gently washed her, and then shampooed her hair.
It reminded her of her mother washing her hair for her when she was a little girl. Only her mother had never washed her hair when she was a little girl – because she had never been a little girl – she was The Key, and once again people were after her blood, even if they didn’t know that that was what they wanted. She was going to live forever, or until someone finally killed her, and memories of being a little girl would fade; there would be nothing real about her life except that forever people were going to be chasing her.
She threw her arms around Spike’s neck and howled. Great sobs shook her whole body, and she began to choke on the shower water, as she took enormous shuddering breaths.
Spike gathered her up and then set her down on the bathroom floor. Holding her close with one hand he stripped off his wet jeans with the other. At the back of Dawn’s mind a small observant spark wondered whether he thought sex was the answer to everything – after all, vampire here – but he just stepped out of the jeans as he reached out for the clean bath towel, which he wrapped Dawn in, and then wrapped a hand towel around his own hips – just about. Next he went back into the bedroom, and sat in the armchair with Dawn on his knees.
Dawn wanted to stop sobbing but she couldn’t. She wanted to be sensible, and check that Spike’s chest wound was healing, but she couldn’t. Spike simply held her with her head buried in his shoulder until the sobs subsided and became hiccups and whimpers.
She realised that Spike was murmuring into her hair. “’M sorry, ’m sorry, pet, ’m sorry. Shouldn’t have let them take you. Shouldn’t have left you alone. ’S all my fault, ’m sorry pet.”
That brought Dawn up short. “No! No. That’s not even really why I’m crying, I don’t think. You can’t spend every minute with me...”
“Should. Promised I’d look after you.”
“No! Absolutely no. Silly vampire. I want you to be my lover, and my friend, not my shadow and my bodyguard. I want you to have a life, and me to have a life – not for you to only be there in mine all the time!” She had pulled back slightly, so that she could look Spike in the face, and she saw that he had his stubborn look on. “You came for me. I knew you would come for me. And together we got away. I couldn’t have gotten away without you. Maybe it wasn’t exactly how you meant to rescue me, but it worked.”
It took her a few minutes, but slowly she tried to explain to him some of the thoughts that had made her cry; feeling unclean; the way his tenderness had made her think of her mother, and the hollow feeling that that brought for more than one reason; the awful feeling that she might spend eternity being tracked and hunted by a succession of gangs all after her blood, literally.
“Isn’t going to happen, love. Even if I have to personally track everyone who might have any idea at all and kill them all, I’ll make sure no-one’s gonna be after you. Your Mum was your Mum, and no matter how long away she gets in time, you an’ me will both always remember what a class lady she was.”
He brushed her wet hair back from her face, studied her for a moment or two, and then added sombrely “And if I didn’t think for sure that the bastards who did this to you were already dead I would make them die a lot more unpleasantly than they probably did.”
……….
“A vampire?” The Ferret’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, absolutely sure, old boy,” Ethan confirmed. “Fangs and all. It wasn’t a terribly pleasant experience. If I hadn’t had a suitable spell up my sleeve I’m pretty sure I would have been an involuntary blood donor. Probably terminally so.”
“And Dawn Summers was there?”
“I didn’t get a look at her face,” Ethan admitted. “I was a little busy at that moment. It’s hardly likely to have been anyone else, though.”
“So the Key is in the hands of a vampire?” The Ferret’s lips drew back from his teeth and he let out a low hiss. “I’m not going to let a vampire steal my prize out from under my nose. We have to get it back. What use is a vampire going to make of the Key? Where will he take it?”
“He took it back to the hotel,” said Ethan.
The Ferret raised his eyes towards the ceiling. “Yes, but what will he do with it next? A raid on the Watchers’ Council? Something along the same lines as my own plans?”
“He’ll do whatever Dawn Summers wants him to do,” Ethan said. “Haven’t you twigged yet, dear boy? The vampire is Dawn’s boyfriend. The one who is always at her side in the evenings but never goes out with her during the day. At least not out in the open.” He raised a hand to his head and tugged at an earlobe. “I should have realised earlier. William Aurelius. It was right there in the hotel register.”
“A vampire boyfriend?” The Ferret shook his head. “Inconceivable.”
Ethan grinned. “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Forget it. This is the important part. The vampire is William the Bloody, alias Spike. The Initiative put a computer chip in his head that stopped him feeding on humans. The battery will have run out years ago, I suppose, but at the time he was completely, ah, neutralised. He escaped from the Yanks and went to Ripper for help.”
The Ferret’s forehead wrinkled up. “But Giles is a Watcher. Why would he help a vampire?”
“In return for information, I gather,” Ethan said. “I’m speculating a little here. Ripper was rather plastered when he told me the tale. Mainly he was moaning about Spike’s insistence on watching ghastly daytime soaps.”
……………………
Before Milan arrived Spike tore a dry strip off his t-shirt and re-bandaged Dawn’s wrist. It bled a little, when he took the pressure off, but was obviously not going to need stitching. Dawn put a long sleeved shirt on to disguise the wound and decided that, if the bruises on her face were not enough to distract Milan from it altogether, she would just tell him that her wrist was sprained.
Spike was just shrugging into dry jeans, as Milan knocked at their door, and so the healing chest wound was still clearly visible as Spike let him in. It was obvious that Milan couldn’t quite decide whether to be more shocked by Dawn’s appearance or fascinated by this clear evidence of vampire healing. It definitely distracted him from wondering about Dawn’s wrist.
Milan had detoured on his way to the hotel to look for the house where Spike said that Dawn had been held captive. He reported that the street was cordoned off; there were police all over the place and, when he had asked a by-stander what was going on, he had been told that there had been some sort of gang battle with many deaths.
Dawn was quite upset, although not surprised, to hear about all the police. She wanted to get her notes and her phone back. She explained to Milan that she seemed to have been kidnapped because of the research she was doing for The Council. Her note books held much of the information that she had already found, whilst her phone had all the Council phone numbers, and the private numbers of many of the Council members and employees.
If it was indeed an attack by another gang then the chances were that they now had all that information. For it to just be an inter-gang thing, which had happened coincidentally whilst they had Dawn captive, could be more or less ruled out if Spike was right that the attackers included a Slayer.
“No bloody ‘if’ about it,” Spike snapped, “and I think the Slayer was on her own. She was the bloody attack. Might not have been fully functioning but I didn’t hear loads of other people tramping around up there.”
“Do you mind if I ask how you did escape?” Milan said.
Dawn and Spike had thought about this question before Milan arrived. Dawn explained briefly but truthfully up to the point where Spike had released her hands and feet, then continued “Willow had given me a small single spell magic item for just such an emergency. It was on a chain round my neck and hidden by a minor glamour so the men didn’t notice it. When Spike freed my hands I was able to activate it and teleport us back here.”
Milan seemed satisfied with this, and Spike went on quickly “And we found that bloody warlock here going through our stuff.”
This was the first they had mentioned Ethan to Milan and this new information distracted him from any more thoughts about their escape.
Ethan had taken a couple of the note books that had been left in the hotel room but he had not taken Dawn’s small computer.
“Trouble with some people – never willing to catch up on technology,” Spike said.
“Good thing too!” Dawn said. “Or he’d have had everyone’s Skype numbers and e-mails, as well as everything else that’s on it.”
…………………..
“It was a like circle in the air, a shimmering hole,” Anna reported. “It was closing even as I entered the room. There was nothing that I could do.”
Her father put his hand to his chin and stroked his beard. “Hmm. So, she knows how to use the powers of the Key. That is not good. Reckless opening of portals threatens the very survival of the world.”
“Using a portal to escape her captivity does not strike me as reckless,” Anna pointed out. “I would have done the same thing in her place. I can not condemn her for that action.”
“True,” the General conceded. “Yet her motivations matter not. Whether she chooses to use the powers of the Key to avoid paying for air tickets, or is forced to use them to flee from vicious gangsters, is irrelevant. Such uses place the world in peril. That is all that is important. The link must be severed and the Key must be destroyed.”
Anna’s shoulders slumped. “I know, but I do not wish to kill an innocent girl. Yes, I am aware that she is not really a girl, and I will do my duty, but it would have been so much easier had the Key been someone like those gangsters that I slew today. I shall shed no tears for them.”
“Nor I,” said her father. “It could never have been so, Anna. The monks were deluded, in that they regarded the Key as holy rather than accursed, but their actions made sense by their lights. Setting loose the Key in the form of one who would use the power for selfish ends would be a guarantee that the destruction of the world would come sooner rather than later. It had to be made into someone who is good by nature.”
“If we just…” Anna began. “If we made her see…”
“There is some merit in your suggestion,” her father conceded.
“I detect a ‘but’ coming,” Anna said.
“Exactly. Dawn Summers might agree to refrain from making use of the Key. Yet what would her promise be worth if she was once more imprisoned by gangsters? Or, worse, by demons? The Beast wished only to make use of the Key to return to her own plane, caring nothing for the havoc that she would have wreaked here in the process, but there are others who actively seek the destruction of this world. As long as the Key exists the peril exists also.” The General frowned. “From what you have told me I would have assumed that the Key is already in the hands of a vampire. You seem to have dismissed that possibility.”
“It didn’t have that kind of vibe,” Anna said. “I’m pretty sure it was a rescue and not another kidnap.” She shrugged. “Don’t ask me how a vampire could be working for the Watchers’ Council, but that’s what it felt like to me. Or, maybe, the Mafia guys captured the vampire, locked him in with Dawn, but he helped her get away. Untied her, or whatever, and she took him along with her as a thank you. But I think that the Council employs a vampire as her actual bodyguard. That would make sense, and it would be pretty good at the job, assuming that they could find a vamp who would work with humans.”
“You may well be correct,” her father agreed. “Your uncle’s final report from Sunnydale did include a mention of a vampire possibly being amongst those who were guarding the Key. Perhaps the creature is bound to the service of the Watchers. Or possibly the monks of Dagon themselves enslaved the vampire and set it to the task of protecting the Key.”
“There might be something in these notes that might explain it,” Anna suggested. She passed to her father the notebooks that she had recovered from the gangsters’ hideout.
The General flipped through the pages. “I think these are historical records,” he said. “Probably of little relevance. I’ll pass them to Minta. She may well find them interesting, and if there is anything useful in them she can report to me.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Anna agreed. “I’ll check out these phones.”
“Ah, yes, excellent idea,” the General agreed. “The numbers stored in them could be very informative.”
“Not just phone numbers,” Anna pointed out. “Web addresses, photos, video clips, e-mails – it could be a gold mine.” She thumbed the controls. “Cool. She can’t have had time to lock it. No need to crack the code numbers. Everything is wide open. Oooh. Wow. This is really great.”
The General leaned towards his daughter. “You have found something important?”
“Uh, not exactly, Dad. I’ve found her MP3 playlist. She’s got the new album by The Cribs.”
…………………………..
Dawn insisted that she did not need medical help and Milan and Spike both agreed with her. She was badly bruised but had no signs of anything more serious. In the end the three of them sat in the hotel room for much of the day. Milan was still fascinated by the way that Spike was healing in front of his eyes – you might be told about this ability but, until you see it, it is just theoretical.
They tried to piece together what they knew. It seemed likely that Ethan Rayne was ‘Das Englander’, of whom Dawn’s captors had spoken, and that he had been the instigator of the capture. Dawn and Spike filled Milan in on what they knew about Ethan. This was basically that he was about Giles’ age, because they had been to university together, and that he was like a human version of a chaos demon – without, of course, the slime-dripping antlers.
In fact both of the incidents that they associated with him were at least as much a means of creating chaos as of anything else. Spike was pretty sure, from what he had picked up during his time as Giles’ ‘guest’, that there had been a degree of revenge against Giles for something back in their youth; but mostly Ethan was just creating chaos.
Milan laughed at Spike’s description of Giles as a Fyarl demon, and at Dawn’s of being turned from a small child going out for ‘Trick or Treat’ into a hag (“The real flying broomstick was scary to control, but cool. The warts and the big hooky nose? So not a good look!”). The mention of ‘Trick or Treat’ reminded Dawn that all she had eaten since her kidnap was some chocolate that Spike had bought the previous night, on which she had nibbled whilst waiting for Milan, and that her stomach would appreciate some proper food. It was now lunchtime and they sent out for Room Service.
Spike sat and watched as they ate. His mouth twitched and his forehead wrinkled as he thought back on the events and on their discussion. “Can’t just be bloody Rayne!” he exclaimed. “Too much plan and not enough chaos! Just not his M.O.!”
Dawn considered this. “You could be right,” she said, in a slightly doubtful tone, “there’s no sense of the ridiculous in it. But he could create a lot of chaos if he had The Key.” She didn’t worry about mentioning The Key in front of Milan, as he was clearly trustworthy, and anyway he’d probably forget.
“Still – I reckon we shouldn’t jump into it being just him,” Spike insisted, and Dawn was inclined to agree with him.
The thought of another Slayer scared Dawn more, truth be told, than the thought of Ethan Rayne, and she would be glad when Giles and Willow arrived. She was too much a Watcher, as was Milan, to actually want to call in Jarmila, as Giles had instructed, if there was a possibility that she would have to fight another Slayer. They would just sit tight.
…………………….
“Your William Aurelius is a formidable opponent,” The Ferret said. “Nine dead. No survivors. I presume that they shot him, thought that he was dead, and then he rose and slaughtered them all.”
“No heartbeat, no breathing, it’s not really surprising if they made that assumption,” said Ethan. “To say that he would have had the advantage of surprise is very much an understatement. It didn’t occur to us to warn them about vampires.”
“How did he get in?” The Ferret wondered. “Vampires aren’t really my area of expertise, although I have had vampire clients in the past, but I thought that they couldn’t enter a home without an invitation.”
“True,” Ethan said, “but it wasn’t really a home, was it? The invite rule didn’t apply.” He frowned. “We’d better do something about warding this place in case he tracks us down. I don’t fancy waking up with fangs in my throat.”
“Agreed.” The Ferret scratched his chin. “The Summers girl must have had the Key all along. The cloaking spell hid it from the Turks. She might even have tried to give it to them, when they were interrogating her, and they couldn’t see it. We’ll have to take a more active role next time.”
“Next time?” Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Not soon, I hope. We’re a little low on man-power to go up against a ferocious vampire. Can your Turkish friend get us any more men?”
“There is little point in bringing in more of the Gastarbeiter from Germany,” The Ferret said. “The police would be watching them from the moment they arrived. I am sending Hakim back to Istanbul before they can link him to the crime scene. We don’t want any trail that could lead to us.”
Ethan nodded. “Good idea. So it’s just us two? I think we’d better lie low for a while. Dawn will either flee back to England or else she’ll call Ripper. He’ll bring a Slayer, I would think, or else link up with the local Slayer. Far too much for us to deal with.”
“We are so close,” The Ferret grumbled. “I don’t want to let this opportunity slip. If she returns to England she might pass the Key on to someone else. If we could just get rid of the vampire then we could deal with Dawn Summers ourselves.”
“I don’t think that getting rid of William the Bloody will be easy,” Ethan said. “He’s been around for a long time. It would be different if we had our own Slayer.”
“Fire,” mused the Ferret. “Holy Water. Wooden stakes.”
“I’d rather not be up at the sharp end,” Ethan said. “Far too dangerous, dear boy. It’s much better to get someone else to do the dirty work.” He screwed up one eye. “Ah. Wait a minute.” His eye opened again. “I might have an idea. Yes. It should work. Even if it doesn’t there’s virtually no risk to us whatsoever. And, if it does,” a grin spread over his face, “William the Bloody will be out of our way for good. Dust in the wind.”
………………………..
Minta frowned as she read through the notebook. The American girl seemed to have been researching the early history of the Key. Passage after passage related a vile distortion of the truth, presenting the Key as if it was a gift from God rather than being the work of the Devil, and Minta could barely restrain herself from throwing the book across the room. One particular passage, describing the humiliation of an expeditionary force of the Knights of Byzantium at the hands of the monks and the Hussites, incensed her almost beyond bearing.
Further on she discovered a folded sheet of copy paper. She opened it up and began to read. A photo-copy of a passage from an ancient tome, in Latin, but Minta was fluent in that language and read it with ease. Her eyes widened as she read and her lips set into a tight line. “Lies!” she hissed. “Filthy blasphemous lies!” She tore the sheet in half, tore it again, and then systematically ripped it into shreds. “Ioanna must never see this… obscenity, this perversion.” She deposited the fragments in a waste bin and rubbed her hands as if to cleanse them of the taint. “The work of the Devil seeking to deceive us.”
“I shall tell the General that there is nothing in here of any interest,” she declared. “He would find this… blasphemy… as vile as do I.” She closed the notebook and read no further. She did not see the page, a little further on from the point at which she had found the photo-copy, on which Dawn had transcribed an alternative version of the offending passage. It was taken from another source but differed only in minor details.
Then didst Basil, brother of the Saint, who held high rank as a commander of cataphractoi under Marcian the Emperor of the East, come hither from the city of Constantinople. He entreated the Saint to return there with him, and to make the city his home, for Attila the Scourge of God was dead and Constantinople was secure once more. Greatly didst Basil fear for the life of his brother in the wilderness amongst the pagan Slavs.
The Saint heeded him not but spoke as one who had been vouchsafed a vision, saying; I have been guided to this place and here I shall do the work of the Lord. The Key to all Worlds can not be protected through force of arms, for Kings and Emperors wouldst seek to make use of it for their own glory and profit, and even wouldst they go to war in that cause. Rather shall it be made safe by being hidden in the wilderness where none shall seek it out.
Yet thou, my brother, must stay in Constantinople and play thine own part in the Divine Plan. A time shall come when thy skill at arms shall be called upon to serve the Lord and to protect this most precious of all His works. Return thou to Constantinople, and gather to thy service men of virtue, and bind them to pass on this task to their children and to their children’s children that the duty shall not be forgotten.
It shall come to pass that Constantinople shall fall, a thousand years from now, and yet that shall not be the end of their duty. Many lives of men after the fall of the city evil-doers will lay covetous and impious hands upon the Key. In that time shall the Sword of God, flesh of thy flesh, descend from on high and smite the evil-doers, and she shall slay them without mercy. For those who wouldst make profane use of The Key must be destroyed. Such is the will of God. Thus spake the blessed St. John Constantius.
His brother was saddened and asked; Are we, then, to meet no more? Are we not brothers?
The Saint said unto him; We shall meet no more in this world but only in the Kingdom of Heaven. The link between us shall be severed, for such is the will of God
And Basil the brother of the Saint departed in accordance with the commands of the Lord and returned to the Eastern Empire.
The ’BtVS’ characters in this story do not belong to me, but are being used for amusement only and all rights remain with Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the writers of the original episodes, and the TV and production companies responsible for the original television shows. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER ©2002 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer trademark is used without express permission from Fox.
Under the cut is
Access All Areas, Chapter 10.
4,300 words.
This chapter is not NC17, but the story as a whole is.
Previous chapters are here in Memories
Chapter Ten.
Giles had insisted that Dawn must get in touch with Milan before she did anything else. Giles would call Willow and they would travel as soon as possible. He did not say that he was bringing any of the Slayers with him and Dawn knew that, if the ‘opposition’ was entirely human, he would prefer not to have to involve any of the girls.
Spike and Dawn cleaned themselves up before Milan arrived at their hotel. As Dawn stood in the shower she felt, no matter how much warm water poured down her body, as if she would never feel truly clean ever again. She wanted to scrub and scrub at herself but somehow didn’t have the energy.
After she had stood like that for at least ten minutes Spike must have realised that she was motionless, because he opened the door to the shower cubicle and, still wearing his jeans, stepped in. He took the sponge from her unresisting hand, poured shower gel onto it and gently washed her, and then shampooed her hair.
It reminded her of her mother washing her hair for her when she was a little girl. Only her mother had never washed her hair when she was a little girl – because she had never been a little girl – she was The Key, and once again people were after her blood, even if they didn’t know that that was what they wanted. She was going to live forever, or until someone finally killed her, and memories of being a little girl would fade; there would be nothing real about her life except that forever people were going to be chasing her.
She threw her arms around Spike’s neck and howled. Great sobs shook her whole body, and she began to choke on the shower water, as she took enormous shuddering breaths.
Spike gathered her up and then set her down on the bathroom floor. Holding her close with one hand he stripped off his wet jeans with the other. At the back of Dawn’s mind a small observant spark wondered whether he thought sex was the answer to everything – after all, vampire here – but he just stepped out of the jeans as he reached out for the clean bath towel, which he wrapped Dawn in, and then wrapped a hand towel around his own hips – just about. Next he went back into the bedroom, and sat in the armchair with Dawn on his knees.
Dawn wanted to stop sobbing but she couldn’t. She wanted to be sensible, and check that Spike’s chest wound was healing, but she couldn’t. Spike simply held her with her head buried in his shoulder until the sobs subsided and became hiccups and whimpers.
She realised that Spike was murmuring into her hair. “’M sorry, ’m sorry, pet, ’m sorry. Shouldn’t have let them take you. Shouldn’t have left you alone. ’S all my fault, ’m sorry pet.”
That brought Dawn up short. “No! No. That’s not even really why I’m crying, I don’t think. You can’t spend every minute with me...”
“Should. Promised I’d look after you.”
“No! Absolutely no. Silly vampire. I want you to be my lover, and my friend, not my shadow and my bodyguard. I want you to have a life, and me to have a life – not for you to only be there in mine all the time!” She had pulled back slightly, so that she could look Spike in the face, and she saw that he had his stubborn look on. “You came for me. I knew you would come for me. And together we got away. I couldn’t have gotten away without you. Maybe it wasn’t exactly how you meant to rescue me, but it worked.”
It took her a few minutes, but slowly she tried to explain to him some of the thoughts that had made her cry; feeling unclean; the way his tenderness had made her think of her mother, and the hollow feeling that that brought for more than one reason; the awful feeling that she might spend eternity being tracked and hunted by a succession of gangs all after her blood, literally.
“Isn’t going to happen, love. Even if I have to personally track everyone who might have any idea at all and kill them all, I’ll make sure no-one’s gonna be after you. Your Mum was your Mum, and no matter how long away she gets in time, you an’ me will both always remember what a class lady she was.”
He brushed her wet hair back from her face, studied her for a moment or two, and then added sombrely “And if I didn’t think for sure that the bastards who did this to you were already dead I would make them die a lot more unpleasantly than they probably did.”
……….
“A vampire?” The Ferret’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, absolutely sure, old boy,” Ethan confirmed. “Fangs and all. It wasn’t a terribly pleasant experience. If I hadn’t had a suitable spell up my sleeve I’m pretty sure I would have been an involuntary blood donor. Probably terminally so.”
“And Dawn Summers was there?”
“I didn’t get a look at her face,” Ethan admitted. “I was a little busy at that moment. It’s hardly likely to have been anyone else, though.”
“So the Key is in the hands of a vampire?” The Ferret’s lips drew back from his teeth and he let out a low hiss. “I’m not going to let a vampire steal my prize out from under my nose. We have to get it back. What use is a vampire going to make of the Key? Where will he take it?”
“He took it back to the hotel,” said Ethan.
The Ferret raised his eyes towards the ceiling. “Yes, but what will he do with it next? A raid on the Watchers’ Council? Something along the same lines as my own plans?”
“He’ll do whatever Dawn Summers wants him to do,” Ethan said. “Haven’t you twigged yet, dear boy? The vampire is Dawn’s boyfriend. The one who is always at her side in the evenings but never goes out with her during the day. At least not out in the open.” He raised a hand to his head and tugged at an earlobe. “I should have realised earlier. William Aurelius. It was right there in the hotel register.”
“A vampire boyfriend?” The Ferret shook his head. “Inconceivable.”
Ethan grinned. “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Forget it. This is the important part. The vampire is William the Bloody, alias Spike. The Initiative put a computer chip in his head that stopped him feeding on humans. The battery will have run out years ago, I suppose, but at the time he was completely, ah, neutralised. He escaped from the Yanks and went to Ripper for help.”
The Ferret’s forehead wrinkled up. “But Giles is a Watcher. Why would he help a vampire?”
“In return for information, I gather,” Ethan said. “I’m speculating a little here. Ripper was rather plastered when he told me the tale. Mainly he was moaning about Spike’s insistence on watching ghastly daytime soaps.”
……………………
Before Milan arrived Spike tore a dry strip off his t-shirt and re-bandaged Dawn’s wrist. It bled a little, when he took the pressure off, but was obviously not going to need stitching. Dawn put a long sleeved shirt on to disguise the wound and decided that, if the bruises on her face were not enough to distract Milan from it altogether, she would just tell him that her wrist was sprained.
Spike was just shrugging into dry jeans, as Milan knocked at their door, and so the healing chest wound was still clearly visible as Spike let him in. It was obvious that Milan couldn’t quite decide whether to be more shocked by Dawn’s appearance or fascinated by this clear evidence of vampire healing. It definitely distracted him from wondering about Dawn’s wrist.
Milan had detoured on his way to the hotel to look for the house where Spike said that Dawn had been held captive. He reported that the street was cordoned off; there were police all over the place and, when he had asked a by-stander what was going on, he had been told that there had been some sort of gang battle with many deaths.
Dawn was quite upset, although not surprised, to hear about all the police. She wanted to get her notes and her phone back. She explained to Milan that she seemed to have been kidnapped because of the research she was doing for The Council. Her note books held much of the information that she had already found, whilst her phone had all the Council phone numbers, and the private numbers of many of the Council members and employees.
If it was indeed an attack by another gang then the chances were that they now had all that information. For it to just be an inter-gang thing, which had happened coincidentally whilst they had Dawn captive, could be more or less ruled out if Spike was right that the attackers included a Slayer.
“No bloody ‘if’ about it,” Spike snapped, “and I think the Slayer was on her own. She was the bloody attack. Might not have been fully functioning but I didn’t hear loads of other people tramping around up there.”
“Do you mind if I ask how you did escape?” Milan said.
Dawn and Spike had thought about this question before Milan arrived. Dawn explained briefly but truthfully up to the point where Spike had released her hands and feet, then continued “Willow had given me a small single spell magic item for just such an emergency. It was on a chain round my neck and hidden by a minor glamour so the men didn’t notice it. When Spike freed my hands I was able to activate it and teleport us back here.”
Milan seemed satisfied with this, and Spike went on quickly “And we found that bloody warlock here going through our stuff.”
This was the first they had mentioned Ethan to Milan and this new information distracted him from any more thoughts about their escape.
Ethan had taken a couple of the note books that had been left in the hotel room but he had not taken Dawn’s small computer.
“Trouble with some people – never willing to catch up on technology,” Spike said.
“Good thing too!” Dawn said. “Or he’d have had everyone’s Skype numbers and e-mails, as well as everything else that’s on it.”
…………………..
“It was a like circle in the air, a shimmering hole,” Anna reported. “It was closing even as I entered the room. There was nothing that I could do.”
Her father put his hand to his chin and stroked his beard. “Hmm. So, she knows how to use the powers of the Key. That is not good. Reckless opening of portals threatens the very survival of the world.”
“Using a portal to escape her captivity does not strike me as reckless,” Anna pointed out. “I would have done the same thing in her place. I can not condemn her for that action.”
“True,” the General conceded. “Yet her motivations matter not. Whether she chooses to use the powers of the Key to avoid paying for air tickets, or is forced to use them to flee from vicious gangsters, is irrelevant. Such uses place the world in peril. That is all that is important. The link must be severed and the Key must be destroyed.”
Anna’s shoulders slumped. “I know, but I do not wish to kill an innocent girl. Yes, I am aware that she is not really a girl, and I will do my duty, but it would have been so much easier had the Key been someone like those gangsters that I slew today. I shall shed no tears for them.”
“Nor I,” said her father. “It could never have been so, Anna. The monks were deluded, in that they regarded the Key as holy rather than accursed, but their actions made sense by their lights. Setting loose the Key in the form of one who would use the power for selfish ends would be a guarantee that the destruction of the world would come sooner rather than later. It had to be made into someone who is good by nature.”
“If we just…” Anna began. “If we made her see…”
“There is some merit in your suggestion,” her father conceded.
“I detect a ‘but’ coming,” Anna said.
“Exactly. Dawn Summers might agree to refrain from making use of the Key. Yet what would her promise be worth if she was once more imprisoned by gangsters? Or, worse, by demons? The Beast wished only to make use of the Key to return to her own plane, caring nothing for the havoc that she would have wreaked here in the process, but there are others who actively seek the destruction of this world. As long as the Key exists the peril exists also.” The General frowned. “From what you have told me I would have assumed that the Key is already in the hands of a vampire. You seem to have dismissed that possibility.”
“It didn’t have that kind of vibe,” Anna said. “I’m pretty sure it was a rescue and not another kidnap.” She shrugged. “Don’t ask me how a vampire could be working for the Watchers’ Council, but that’s what it felt like to me. Or, maybe, the Mafia guys captured the vampire, locked him in with Dawn, but he helped her get away. Untied her, or whatever, and she took him along with her as a thank you. But I think that the Council employs a vampire as her actual bodyguard. That would make sense, and it would be pretty good at the job, assuming that they could find a vamp who would work with humans.”
“You may well be correct,” her father agreed. “Your uncle’s final report from Sunnydale did include a mention of a vampire possibly being amongst those who were guarding the Key. Perhaps the creature is bound to the service of the Watchers. Or possibly the monks of Dagon themselves enslaved the vampire and set it to the task of protecting the Key.”
“There might be something in these notes that might explain it,” Anna suggested. She passed to her father the notebooks that she had recovered from the gangsters’ hideout.
The General flipped through the pages. “I think these are historical records,” he said. “Probably of little relevance. I’ll pass them to Minta. She may well find them interesting, and if there is anything useful in them she can report to me.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Anna agreed. “I’ll check out these phones.”
“Ah, yes, excellent idea,” the General agreed. “The numbers stored in them could be very informative.”
“Not just phone numbers,” Anna pointed out. “Web addresses, photos, video clips, e-mails – it could be a gold mine.” She thumbed the controls. “Cool. She can’t have had time to lock it. No need to crack the code numbers. Everything is wide open. Oooh. Wow. This is really great.”
The General leaned towards his daughter. “You have found something important?”
“Uh, not exactly, Dad. I’ve found her MP3 playlist. She’s got the new album by The Cribs.”
…………………………..
Dawn insisted that she did not need medical help and Milan and Spike both agreed with her. She was badly bruised but had no signs of anything more serious. In the end the three of them sat in the hotel room for much of the day. Milan was still fascinated by the way that Spike was healing in front of his eyes – you might be told about this ability but, until you see it, it is just theoretical.
They tried to piece together what they knew. It seemed likely that Ethan Rayne was ‘Das Englander’, of whom Dawn’s captors had spoken, and that he had been the instigator of the capture. Dawn and Spike filled Milan in on what they knew about Ethan. This was basically that he was about Giles’ age, because they had been to university together, and that he was like a human version of a chaos demon – without, of course, the slime-dripping antlers.
In fact both of the incidents that they associated with him were at least as much a means of creating chaos as of anything else. Spike was pretty sure, from what he had picked up during his time as Giles’ ‘guest’, that there had been a degree of revenge against Giles for something back in their youth; but mostly Ethan was just creating chaos.
Milan laughed at Spike’s description of Giles as a Fyarl demon, and at Dawn’s of being turned from a small child going out for ‘Trick or Treat’ into a hag (“The real flying broomstick was scary to control, but cool. The warts and the big hooky nose? So not a good look!”). The mention of ‘Trick or Treat’ reminded Dawn that all she had eaten since her kidnap was some chocolate that Spike had bought the previous night, on which she had nibbled whilst waiting for Milan, and that her stomach would appreciate some proper food. It was now lunchtime and they sent out for Room Service.
Spike sat and watched as they ate. His mouth twitched and his forehead wrinkled as he thought back on the events and on their discussion. “Can’t just be bloody Rayne!” he exclaimed. “Too much plan and not enough chaos! Just not his M.O.!”
Dawn considered this. “You could be right,” she said, in a slightly doubtful tone, “there’s no sense of the ridiculous in it. But he could create a lot of chaos if he had The Key.” She didn’t worry about mentioning The Key in front of Milan, as he was clearly trustworthy, and anyway he’d probably forget.
“Still – I reckon we shouldn’t jump into it being just him,” Spike insisted, and Dawn was inclined to agree with him.
The thought of another Slayer scared Dawn more, truth be told, than the thought of Ethan Rayne, and she would be glad when Giles and Willow arrived. She was too much a Watcher, as was Milan, to actually want to call in Jarmila, as Giles had instructed, if there was a possibility that she would have to fight another Slayer. They would just sit tight.
…………………….
“Your William Aurelius is a formidable opponent,” The Ferret said. “Nine dead. No survivors. I presume that they shot him, thought that he was dead, and then he rose and slaughtered them all.”
“No heartbeat, no breathing, it’s not really surprising if they made that assumption,” said Ethan. “To say that he would have had the advantage of surprise is very much an understatement. It didn’t occur to us to warn them about vampires.”
“How did he get in?” The Ferret wondered. “Vampires aren’t really my area of expertise, although I have had vampire clients in the past, but I thought that they couldn’t enter a home without an invitation.”
“True,” Ethan said, “but it wasn’t really a home, was it? The invite rule didn’t apply.” He frowned. “We’d better do something about warding this place in case he tracks us down. I don’t fancy waking up with fangs in my throat.”
“Agreed.” The Ferret scratched his chin. “The Summers girl must have had the Key all along. The cloaking spell hid it from the Turks. She might even have tried to give it to them, when they were interrogating her, and they couldn’t see it. We’ll have to take a more active role next time.”
“Next time?” Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Not soon, I hope. We’re a little low on man-power to go up against a ferocious vampire. Can your Turkish friend get us any more men?”
“There is little point in bringing in more of the Gastarbeiter from Germany,” The Ferret said. “The police would be watching them from the moment they arrived. I am sending Hakim back to Istanbul before they can link him to the crime scene. We don’t want any trail that could lead to us.”
Ethan nodded. “Good idea. So it’s just us two? I think we’d better lie low for a while. Dawn will either flee back to England or else she’ll call Ripper. He’ll bring a Slayer, I would think, or else link up with the local Slayer. Far too much for us to deal with.”
“We are so close,” The Ferret grumbled. “I don’t want to let this opportunity slip. If she returns to England she might pass the Key on to someone else. If we could just get rid of the vampire then we could deal with Dawn Summers ourselves.”
“I don’t think that getting rid of William the Bloody will be easy,” Ethan said. “He’s been around for a long time. It would be different if we had our own Slayer.”
“Fire,” mused the Ferret. “Holy Water. Wooden stakes.”
“I’d rather not be up at the sharp end,” Ethan said. “Far too dangerous, dear boy. It’s much better to get someone else to do the dirty work.” He screwed up one eye. “Ah. Wait a minute.” His eye opened again. “I might have an idea. Yes. It should work. Even if it doesn’t there’s virtually no risk to us whatsoever. And, if it does,” a grin spread over his face, “William the Bloody will be out of our way for good. Dust in the wind.”
………………………..
Minta frowned as she read through the notebook. The American girl seemed to have been researching the early history of the Key. Passage after passage related a vile distortion of the truth, presenting the Key as if it was a gift from God rather than being the work of the Devil, and Minta could barely restrain herself from throwing the book across the room. One particular passage, describing the humiliation of an expeditionary force of the Knights of Byzantium at the hands of the monks and the Hussites, incensed her almost beyond bearing.
Further on she discovered a folded sheet of copy paper. She opened it up and began to read. A photo-copy of a passage from an ancient tome, in Latin, but Minta was fluent in that language and read it with ease. Her eyes widened as she read and her lips set into a tight line. “Lies!” she hissed. “Filthy blasphemous lies!” She tore the sheet in half, tore it again, and then systematically ripped it into shreds. “Ioanna must never see this… obscenity, this perversion.” She deposited the fragments in a waste bin and rubbed her hands as if to cleanse them of the taint. “The work of the Devil seeking to deceive us.”
“I shall tell the General that there is nothing in here of any interest,” she declared. “He would find this… blasphemy… as vile as do I.” She closed the notebook and read no further. She did not see the page, a little further on from the point at which she had found the photo-copy, on which Dawn had transcribed an alternative version of the offending passage. It was taken from another source but differed only in minor details.
Then didst Basil, brother of the Saint, who held high rank as a commander of cataphractoi under Marcian the Emperor of the East, come hither from the city of Constantinople. He entreated the Saint to return there with him, and to make the city his home, for Attila the Scourge of God was dead and Constantinople was secure once more. Greatly didst Basil fear for the life of his brother in the wilderness amongst the pagan Slavs.
The Saint heeded him not but spoke as one who had been vouchsafed a vision, saying; I have been guided to this place and here I shall do the work of the Lord. The Key to all Worlds can not be protected through force of arms, for Kings and Emperors wouldst seek to make use of it for their own glory and profit, and even wouldst they go to war in that cause. Rather shall it be made safe by being hidden in the wilderness where none shall seek it out.
Yet thou, my brother, must stay in Constantinople and play thine own part in the Divine Plan. A time shall come when thy skill at arms shall be called upon to serve the Lord and to protect this most precious of all His works. Return thou to Constantinople, and gather to thy service men of virtue, and bind them to pass on this task to their children and to their children’s children that the duty shall not be forgotten.
It shall come to pass that Constantinople shall fall, a thousand years from now, and yet that shall not be the end of their duty. Many lives of men after the fall of the city evil-doers will lay covetous and impious hands upon the Key. In that time shall the Sword of God, flesh of thy flesh, descend from on high and smite the evil-doers, and she shall slay them without mercy. For those who wouldst make profane use of The Key must be destroyed. Such is the will of God. Thus spake the blessed St. John Constantius.
His brother was saddened and asked; Are we, then, to meet no more? Are we not brothers?
The Saint said unto him; We shall meet no more in this world but only in the Kingdom of Heaven. The link between us shall be severed, for such is the will of God
And Basil the brother of the Saint departed in accordance with the commands of the Lord and returned to the Eastern Empire.
The ’BtVS’ characters in this story do not belong to me, but are being used for amusement only and all rights remain with Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the writers of the original episodes, and the TV and production companies responsible for the original television shows. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER ©2002 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer trademark is used without express permission from Fox.
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no subject
Date: 31/03/2007 07:49 pm (UTC)Aww... poor Dawnie....although...At the back of Dawn’s mind a small observant spark wondered whether he thought sex was the answer to everything – after all, vampire here ... I think she's figured out Spike.
It appears as though The Ferret has spent too much time watching The Princess Bride...
And now Ethan's had a brainstorm - well, that's can't be good.
Sending along healing vibes.
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Date: 31/03/2007 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/03/2007 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/03/2007 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/03/2007 08:53 pm (UTC)This is true genius ! It explains much and is completely believable.
(We have a game here called "le téléphone arabe", where kids line up and the first one whispers something to the one next to him, who then whispers what he heard to the third, and so on until the last kid who says it aloud. Most of the time, the initial sentence has been distorted beyond recognition).
I love that Anna may be a Slayer, and somewhat a knight of Byzantium, but she's still a girl.
Ethan is totally believable too.
Great chapter!
no subject
Date: 31/03/2007 09:34 pm (UTC)We spent a while trying to guess which of the currently up-and-coming bands would be a big name in 2013 to make Anna a proper girl, who would have interests in common with Dawn, not just a two dimensional killer.
I know
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Date: 31/03/2007 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/03/2007 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 12:22 am (UTC)Really enjoying this story!
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Date: 01/04/2007 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 07:15 am (UTC)We're in pollen season in the U.S. I suppose allergy season hits the IoM, too?
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Date: 01/04/2007 09:18 am (UTC)It will soon be pollen season here, but this is a basic boring cold. I'm recovering though.
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Date: 01/04/2007 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 10:38 am (UTC)Oh and damn researchers who don't read all the data!
no subject
Date: 01/04/2007 12:37 pm (UTC)Oh and damn researchers who don't read all the data!
It is probably a good thing that Minta didn't read it all - she is so fixed in her beliefs that anything which is in any way contrary to them is automatically blasphemy and to be destoyed - at least this way there is still a copy of the original words around...
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Date: 05/04/2007 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 05/04/2007 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 28/04/2007 10:09 pm (UTC)Kathleen
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Date: 28/04/2007 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 29/04/2007 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 04/08/2007 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 04/08/2007 10:20 pm (UTC)