Here you go kittens... you may get the impression that being away has done nothing to stop me posting replies and now posting a part... You'd be right.
Part 17 is below and sets a few things in motion. Part 18 will follow tomorrow as it is a shorter part. Ideally It would have been part of this one but I like where 17 ends... it seems like an episode ending point.
Have fun Kittens...
Katharyn
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Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Determining Factors (Part 17)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.comSpoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe though reference is made to events that occur in both realities.
Summary: A direct follow-on to what happened to Oz and the actions it forces.
Disclaimer: I still don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories.
Rating: 15
Couples: Veruca/Oz ? In memoriam perhaps.
Notes: Lets just be clear here… there was a reason for Oz’s death as shown in the last parts end note. This part reveals part of that. Motivation for an
important story point. It had to be either Oz, Larry or one other character and it worked much better and more logically this way.
Thanks To: Jo, Kerry, Louise. As ever.
The Sidestep Chronicle
Determining Factors
By
Katharyn Rosser
The beacon had drawn her quickly. Tara had made a beeline for Crawford Street when she had figured out just where the flickering glow was coming from. The explosion had been sort of a give-away too.
Burning van.
She could see that from a good ways off, but she wasn't about to go wading in there and risk being ambushed from the trees. Instead she made a slow circle of the entire site, straining her senses. She was alert to every shift of the trees… every natural and unnatural sound, supporting herself a touch off the ground on a cushion of air. There were things with senses far more attuned to the woods than hers could ever be.
She trusted in the pendant though. She couldn’t rely on it – not alone. But she could trust in it to let her know if there were any vampires in the vicinity. Nothing. Not a thing. Not an itch, not a scratch. She stopped straining herself with the magic and her feet touched the ground once more. But it was a good thing she had – the dead leaves concealed twigs that snapped with every step she took. To a vampire it would be like a herd of elephants trying to sneak up on them.
But the same was true for them. She would hear them coming even over the crackling of the burning van, over metal popping and groaning as it bent out of shape.
There was a body there… but something… It wasn't human at all. Big and hairy – sort of. Eventually she stood alongside it.
Werewolf…
She’d seen them before, avoided them mostly. There were certain combinations of charms and spell ingredients that, wrapped together, would repel their keen scent and confuse them. Unfortunately right now she didn’t have any of those on her.
She looked around her, wondering if the trees held anything… another of these things? The pendant would give her no warnings of werewolves – or anything besides vampires. And she doubted that she could even detect them if they were attempting to stalk her – out there in the trees. She wouldn’t stand much of a chance.
Examine everything and move on. Get away. The police and fire department would probably be here soon anyway – though they were inevitably reluctant to go out at night without mustering a major contingent. That would take a little time, still…
Move along Tara. Yes sir.
The last thing she wanted was to be forced into fighting a werewolf. She wasn't even sure if she
could kill a werewolf, although a wooden stake in the chest would slow down pretty much anything. But would she kill a werewolf if she could? It was a person most of the time, after all? She wondered if their hearts were in the same place, then decided that the inevitable wondering about if the internal organs moved around during the change was definitely too… ick.
What was strange though… she looked at the sky which confirmed her suspicions. The moon was nowhere near full. It was the neither the night of, the night before, nor the night after the full moon… why was there a werewolf lying here dead? Surely it should have just been a person. Which was no better, they would still be dead.
Far more relevant was to ask what had done this to… it…? She looked down along the intermittently shaven body. Ah, him.
The tire iron was just the last indignity that had been inflicted out on this poor creature… person. Someone… something had trimmed and cut its hair into some terrible parody over an over-groomed pet. Something with a sadistic and terrible mind. Something cunning enough to have restrained a werewolf in the first place. Something willing to kill for fun, rather than just for blood. Someone had been playing around here.
Something.
But that didn’t mean it was a vampire kill… so should she even be concerned? She was always concerned at death. Maybe vampires didn’t like werewolf blood. Perhaps it gave them indigestion or something? It might have been a vampire that did this but it wasn’t for the blood. Territorial fight perhaps… this place bordered on a side of town not much frequented by the vampires. The homes further up Crawford were pretty fortress-like and the population in this rich suburb was sparse. Not ideal vampire territory… but if a wolf had challenged one then it might have responded – they were both territorial creatures.
What other reason could there be for such wanton cruelty? Certainly no other wolf had done this. This took a calculating, if not entirely rational, mind. A demon or a human.
It might just be a question of not having a soul that would care. She stood looking at the body for a while longer, heedless of the dangers that existed out here and eventually the fire started to die down a little, the petrol already consumed. The beacon that had drawn her had already summoned others. When she heard the twigs snapping, coming down the vehicle track from the direction of the road, she melted into the darkness in the other direction and went back to her patrols further into town. Where she could do some good.
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Rupert Giles knelt down beside the dead werewolf. He knew who it was quite apart from the ownership of the burnt out van. He’d offered the boy a place in the library book cage often enough in the past – which had been gratefully received. And the boy had become a man. A good man with a good heart – and a familiar pattern in his fur.
Oz had first come to his attention as a werewolf when he and Larry had trapped him and kept him secured until the change had passed him by. It seemed fitting somehow that this was how he was last to be seen… but even in Sunnydale there was no way that they could leave the body for the police. It would raise too many questions about what else there might be out there in the night… and sometimes what was out there had included them – the White Hats. Fearful townspeople might take it upon themselves to go out hunting for more of these creatures and run across other hunters. People hunting vampires. He smoothed the fur on Oz’s brow. Or out of town hunters might arrive. He knew that the pelts would sell for more than just a pretty penny in some parts of the world. They had run a hunter called Kane off several times. At least until Veruca had caught up with him the last time he arrived.
The shattered, but still living, body they had found was confined to a wheelchair now – but there were other wolf hunters than Kane. Always more people willing to forget what a werewolf was most of the month in exchange for a bounty.
If the hunters came then not only would that risk more werewolves, including Veruca who Giles had never much liked but was like the rest a person most days – but the increase in the numbers of people outside would provoke a feeding frenzy amongst Sunnydale’s vampires. And for every few kills they made one was turned. More vampires was not something that he could allow in his position as Watcher.
And then there was common decency.
He turned to Larry. “We, we have to bury him.”
Larry couldn’t take his eyes off the body though. “Look what they did to him Giles, look at it.”
Giles shifted his gaze to the tire iron protruding from Oz’s chest, the wound must go straight though and Oz must still have been alive, if only just, when he was dragged out of the van. Blood soaked the earth and darkened it in their torchlight. “Larry,” he said sternly trying to bring Oz’s friend back to the matter at hand, “we have to move him now. Before the police arrive. We were bloody fortunate to finds him first.”
“They played with him!” Larry ignored what he was saying and gestured at the shaven patches of fur. “What does that remind you of?” Larry didn’t wait for an answer. “They tried to turn him into some sort of stupid dog.”
“A poodle,” Giles murmured.
“Vampires!” Larry spat the word.
“Now… we have no evidence that it was a vampire. Oz might have… changed and well been attacked by something else,” Giles tried to reason with him. “Besides there is no evidence of biting.”
“It was a vampire. I
know it was. You do too. Oz didn’t change anymore… he’d sorted that with his stinky herbs and chanting. It isn’t a full moon either,” Larry pointed at the slim crescent of the moon and Giles followed his gesture. That hadn’t struck him before.
“So something…”
“Something came after Oz and it caught up to him – scaring him enough to change him into the wolf,” Larry finished for him. “And in this town that almost always means-”
“Vampires.”
“Give the Watcher a gold star,” Larry said, voice raised against Giles’s resistance to the notion. He shook his head as Giles fixed him with the sort of look he gave unruly adolescents in the library. “Sorry Giles, but he was my friend – you know.”
“I know Larry. He was my friend too, but we have to move him – and quickly. We can think about what to do with the thing that did this to him later.”
“What else?” Larry asked. “We kill them all… but whoever did this… we kill them slower.” There were tears in his eyes and he wasn't the only one so afflicted. “He was my friend,” Larry repeated sadly. “Everything we faced… for this?” He angrily wiped his sleeve across his face, brushing away the tears. “Something is going to pay. A lot”
As a responsible Watcher, Rupert Giles knew that he should try to temper that sort of thinking and stop any and all quests for vengeance, if only because it might get them all killed. But that was just it ‘All’ had suddenly become ‘we two.’ Poor Nancy was over a year dead, now Oz. Who was next? Larry or himself? They needed help out here. There was no way that this could continue.
They needed a Slayer. They needed a Slayer to make them all pay. And to help the people of Sunnydale have a chance to live without this sort of thing.
“Who,” Larry asked, “Is going to tell Veruca?”
Perhaps a Slayer might be in order for that task too… there was a young lady that Giles didn’t much like. But Oz did.… had. Someone was going to have to tell her – preferably from a long distance.
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Willow had been pleased to find that the librarian hadn’t moved from when she had last known his address. It was always useful to remember where your enemies were… and to learn about more of them.
She had followed him from his home out to the place where she had left the White Hat. He had stopped off first to pick up someone else. The other White Hat. She considered killing them both there… leaving all three of them together at the van. The librarian, the wolf and the… other. But where was the fun in that? Better to let them feel the pain of grief. Better to let them anticipate their own fates for a little while before she actually did anything to them.
More delicious that way… the fear in them would make their blood a delicacy. She might even choose to stoke it up over the next few months… and that was why she had followed them afterwards.
She had let them do their thing… and they had taken the body. She supposed that they had to didn’t they? It was a werewolf… it wasn’t going to get the respect that they thought it deserved. She knew that it deserved none but humans were sentimental as a rule.
Something had aroused her interest though… Two things – first a scent back at the van that she had not detected before. Someone else had been there. A woman. She had no idea who though.
Someone else had been there at the burial too. They had told someone to be there and being close enough to see Willow had been close enough to smell. She could smell the dead White Hat on the new one. The new one hadn’t been at the van though. Different smell. And rage… she could smell rage.
The new one, the strange, gangly, blonde girl had been angry at them. Angry at the dead White Hat too from the sound of it. Willow knew rage… she knew what it could do and she would never leave someone that angry around to come after her. Besides she had a feeling that the woman was also one of those beasts. Not that Willow was going to let herself be bored by that particular attraction again. This time she was going to be there strictly for business. This time she wouldn’t give it a chance to change. This time she was going to eat and run. By now she was pretty hungry.
Conscious that the sun was soon going to rise she hastened her pace behind the werewolf’s bitch wanting to make sure that she caught up to her before she got within the safety of “home.” Willow was quite sure that she wasn’t going to get an invitation from that one.
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Giles arrived home much later, the lights were already out. Veruca had made her own way – disgusted with the pair of them, him and Larry, for letting Oz get killed. Her grief had been expressed through that rage. Tears when they had first told her but as soon as they buried Oz that had turned to carefully directed rage. He couldn’t say that she was wrong and he intended to do something about that now.
He had dropped Larry off at his dorm, fairly certain that the student-come-vampire killer would not set off on some sort of mission of vengeance. At least not tonight. Emotional exhaustion had overtaken poor Larry. And Oz? Oz was buried by a lake… out in the middle of nowhere – in Sunnydale the funeral parlours were open twenty four hours a day and they had been able to pick up a coffin quickly and quietly. The headstone they would arrange later – Larry had insisted on doing the wording himself. He was quite the poet now… very different to the jock Giles had first known. He wondered how the young man would do justice to Oz’s achievements in a few short words.
What was it the vampires called them? White Hats? It wasn't a bad name really. They were the ‘good guys’ as the Americans would have it. But he realised, as he sat down at his dinner table with a paper and pen, that they were not all that they thought they were. They were not invulnerable. In the year since poor Nancy… it seemed they had led a charmed existence. No one had even been scratched. Until now.
Perhaps they needed the cavalry to ride over the hill to help them destroy the bandit threat. That was the way of the films wasn't it? They tried their level best, had some success which makes them seem heroic but slowly and inexorably their numbers were being depleted until they just had to… ah yes hunker down… and await the cavalry. There had been a time, between wanting to be a fighter pilot and a grocer that he had quite fancied being in the cavalry. Unfortunately it no longer existed in that form – nor was he particularly good with horses. A slow canter was all he had ever been comfortable with – comfortable being the operative word in the sense it was totally lacking.
It was time for them to hear the bugle though. He started out by making a few notes of what he wanted to say in his letter. Right at the top of the list was ‘I lost another friend today, a young man who had been trying to help stem the tide.’ It was a suitable opening – though whatever he said would inevitably cheapen Oz’s memory, unless he was successful in his appeal. The Council, right now, was still seeking the next Slayer. They had no idea who in the world she was. Where she was. There were signs and portents of course, but those were largely used to confirm the identity. They had been looking for months and still nothing… There had to be one though. That was the way it worked. The last Slayer, Kendra, had been her name, had died in New York and another Slayer would have been called immediately.
Until the Slayer was located though there would be no Watcher assigned and that was a good thing for him and Sunnydale. It meant that he could appeal for the Watcher to be instructed to bring her here, once found. Even if just visiting for a few weeks – that might just be enough. Something had to be done. He and Larry couldn’t continue to do this alone. It was too big a job. They would try, of course, and he knew they might very well die doing that trying.
He had another responsibility to consider now and that was not something there had been before. Jenny… they had been seeing each other since before the Master even rose. But now they were engaged. Was his love for her making him more cautious? He hadn’t approached the Council about a Slayer for Sunnydale in a long time. Not the Council itself. Or was it Oz’s death that was making him more careful?
He didn’t want to leave Jenny alone.
Unhappy with what he had written thus far he scribbled it out, about to start again then looked at the clock, realised what time it was, not concerned that he had to work the next day – only that people, in London, should be in their offices right now. Though quite why the Watcher’s Council, which dealt with vampires after all, worked nine-till-five he would never know. He picked up the telephone and dialled a number he had long ago committed to memory but had not actually dialled since his arrival in America nearly four years ago.
It would be just like them to change the number – and not even bother to tell him. He hardly ever got memos anymore, they insisted on sending him e-letter things. Fortunately Jenny could assist him with those – he still hadn’t quite got the knack. He waited as the call connected over satellites and cables, imagining the ring snaking along until it reached a rather old fashioned telephone on a marble table in a oak panelled room.
It was picked up quickly and answered without giving away any sort of clue who he had reached. “I would like to speak to Mr Travers please. Quentin Travers. Yes you may, tell him it is Rupert Giles calling from the Mouth of Hell so he might want to take my call.”
It had been a while since he had been so openly sarcastic to someone just doing their job, but he was in no mood to play games. And he had his own job to do. He had to make Oz’s death count for something – he had to have an argument that he should have forced a long, long time ago and perhaps avoided all this unpleasantness and outright horror.
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You hear that baby?
) for us kittens. Hell, I love this story already and check for updates whenever I can. Guess I was just too eager to see Willow and Tara together and happy.