Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle - Confrontation (Part 146)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.com Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Nothing is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: Read the title, it’s going to be a confrontation. What more can I say? Damn, did I give something away then?
Disclaimer: I 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. You know the drill.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: Thanks To: All My Brilliant Beta Readers (AMBBR) Kerry (Forrister) who for some reason signed right back up for this fic after seeing the size of the last one. No accounting for madness is there. And Celia (TiredSoul) who should have known better but signed up anyway. *HUGS* and Big Thanks to all of you. This would be another of Celia’s and ain’t she just wonderful? Go see
http://www.gotlicky.com it’s a hoot and about to get better if Celia does her thang fast enough.
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle
Confrontation
By
Katharyn Rosser
“Why is it that we started out trudging through water?” Willow asked rhetorically, “and here we are still trudging through water?”
Tara smiled to herself. Now that the most immediate danger seemed to be past – or at least most of it – they could afford to make little jokes again, even if they’d never really stopped. Actually they probably needed to make jokes. It was a nervous reaction in part. A way of letting the tension out whilst they couldn’t actually relax. There were still things to do down here. Battles to be fought – just not on the same scale.
She hoped. She really did hope… surely there couldn’t be an equal number of vampires still left? Or even more?
No… they could never have fed them all. This was, at the very least, most of them.
“I, for one, am not trudging,” Rupert indicated. “In fact, I find that I feel rather sprightly.”
“That’ll be the victory,” Willow concluded. “I do feel a lot less trudgy myself, now that we made it this far and avoided dying and all.”
Tara nodded they came to the edge of a large chamber. This appeared to be an important place they’d reached – linked to by a number of the tunnels. It was certainly big enough for the vampires to have gathered together before coming at them. A nerve centre of some kind perhaps? Well it had been blasted by Willow’s flash fire at one side, opposite their tunnel, and then flooded by her wall of water.
Whatever it had been, it wasn't any more.
She spotted the arm, it looked like the same arm that had been with them in the tunnels, floating in the water. Some things were just going to stick with them for a while she guessed. That arm being just one of them. The other was that they were just going to have to carry on now. This chamber might have been the heart of something, but now it was empty. Neither human nor vampire inhabited it. They had to keep going. But which way?
They
must surely have killed the vast majority of the vampires by now… but they couldn’t relax because it would only take
one vampire to massacre the people that were, hopefully, still locked up down here.
Hopefully, because if they weren’t then… they were obviously in serious trouble, should a remaining vampire target them.
“How are
you feeling, baby?” Willow asked her.
Tara thought about that. Aside from her worries about rescuing the people they were here for…? They really weren’t done yet – but she had to admit that she felt… better than she ever thought that she would at this point. This wasn't a time for feeling good, but… it was all different now. Her head wasn’t throbbing with the pain of using the magic so much. No one had been beaten up or injured.
Or worse. Even the last fight of this scale, in the Bronze, had left her reeling at the price of victory. Faith had really been beaten up, and Tara herself had been sure her head was about to explode.
She’d looked back on these sort of events in her past and now she saw them in a much dimmer light. They weren’t the highlights they had been at the time. They weren’t the big successes they had been when she’d managed them. They’d been the bright points in her existence back then just because that was what her existence had been solely dedicated to. Killing vampires. The more she’d killed in any one night, the better she’d felt about herself and what she had been doing. Not exactly living life, but merely existing for the fight.
She had much more to exist for now.
The only thing, back then, that had ever substituted for that feeling had been being able to help people – save them from those same vampires. Not in the abstract sense of ‘there would have been people in the future who were safe now,’ but instead actually seeing and helping those people in real terms. It wasn't like she’d wanted gratitude – usually they’d run away as scared of her as they had been of the vampires – she’d just wanted to know that she’d helped them. It had made her feel better.
It was a lot but it was also strangely not much. Not much for a life indeed.
Now… Now there was so much more in her life. She didn’t need the temporary ‘thrill’ of having killed vampires to light up her life. Now, she had a real light in her everyday life. Sometimes, killing vampires even seemed to get in the way. Helping people was still a part of what they did – but it wasn’t the only good thing in her life. She didn’t want to go back to those days – so she kept a tight rein on her emotions. She’d been all too emotional back then. She’d liked to think of herself as simply having a purpose – without emotion – but the truth was she’d been filled with a desire for revenge.
She knew it, she could admit it. What was justice but institutionalised revenge mixed with a little protection?
Tara regarded herself as more practical now – and yet more emotional too. She allowed herself free range to love, care and value so many other things. She felt good about what they’d achieved so far strictly because they were all unhurt – and also because Willow and Rupert felt good it. She felt as good about them feeling good as she did what she had to feel good about.
She suspected it was a circular good feeling, and Willow would be able to babble at greater length than she could.
But she was having trouble feeling good for the same reasons that they did… the reasons that had once been pretty much everything. It just felt… different now. Not how she’d expected. She’d thought she’d have to keep a hold of herself, to prevent herself feeling as she’d used to.
She’d worried that maybe there was a link to her past that she didn’t want out there and obvious.
But the realisation had dawned that she was a different person now. She was a person that was complete with the presence of her love. Willow had made her into the person she was, needed to be and wanted to continue to be. So did her friends, and the life that they all led together. There wasn’t any danger in being open to her past. It was behind her. She didn’t have to be afraid of it.
Vampires… killing them. That was just something that she owed to the world – not something that she celebrated in any way for its own sake. So, she was pleased they’d come through this – by killing the vampires – but she wasn’t feeling any joy at their destruction in its own right. Not any more. She was so far past that – but her companions hadn’t lived her life. They’d never had to feel like that. She hoped they’d never had to. Let them feel good about toasting a hundred vampires. They should feel that way, it was a great success. But, to Tara, the bigger success was in just being able to help people and go home to Willow.
Different lives – and deaths. Different experiences.
Over time they’d both faced different problems. Willow had died… and her red-haired goddess remembered what coming back from that, as one of those twisted creatures, was like. Willow remembered the pain that she’d caused to other people. Tara couldn’t imagine anything like it, and she was so proud of her love for the way that she’d been able to come back from something so terrible and function as a stable, rational and utterly wonderful human being.
Rupert had fought alone for as long as she had, though perhaps he’d known more in advance. He’d lost friends of the kind she’d never really had until they’d both lost Faith, the Slayer, and friend to both of them.
They all had different experiences even when they’d shared them together. It was just that, in this case, neither Willow nor Rupert had ever had cause to feel that they shouldn’t feel good about killing vampires for its own sake – and this was quite a feat they’d managed. So many vampires… Different experiences, different feelings. She was happy they were all okay. She was happy that they’d made it this far and that they were going to be able to help people. That was more than enough for her – she didn’t need to feel the victory. But she couldn’t begrudge it to them either because she knew that she didn’t have to worry about them feeling like that.
Not anymore.
“I feel good, baby,” Tara promised Willow. And she did. She felt dirty, she knew that she was a bit smelly – or would be when she could smell anything but sewage – and she was looking forward to them being able to take a long shower for more than one reason, but she
felt okay. A few years ago, if she’d been able to manage that level of magic, then she’d have been more than drained by it. Her head… she’d never suffered a headache like one a magic induced one. After all this she might even have passed out right here.
Even using the magic to simply fling the stakes had drained her back then, though she’d been used to that more than anything else. The source of that magic had been pulling on her for using it – and now the source was pulling
for her. For them. That was the difference and it was an important one. Another reason she could feel good about her reactions was because she knew that she wasn’t taking a huge risk, not just with herself, by possibly falling into the darkness every time she accessed that sort of power.
It was all in the past. The past was behind her… them – including killing those vampires in the tunnel. And how she felt
now, really felt, wasn’t something she was worried about either.
Apart from the fact she couldn’t stop psychoanalysing herself.
Willow came up to her, obviously intending to head off down another tunnel, and as she passed by, she whispered to Tara, “I’ll make you feel even better… afterwards.”
There was, despite the dirt, a glow to Willow. Tara could see it now, under the better lighting conditions in this new chamber. She could see that her love was… She was enjoying herself. Not in a ‘gung ho – must kill, kill, kill vampires all the night long’ way. She was just… Willow was feeling the achievement. Doing well, being top of the class always made her happy and it also made her… Well, ‘happy’ was a good word for it.
So was ‘frisky.’
Tara had to smile at her lover. It seemed that there was no real difference, for Willow, between getting a high grade on a paper and being able to kill a whole load of vampires that had been trying to hurt them – and other people besides them. Willow just loved to be the best at what she did. Tara could understand it because it was probably true that everyone did to some extent. Whether they tried as hard as Willow was less certain. It was a trait that she appreciated and treasured as much as any other within her lover.
“Promises, promises,” she just had to breathe in reply. She couldn’t help herself. Frisky Willow… it was something worth encouraging.
I’ll give you your gold star baby, Tara promised herself.
Willow flashed her a grin that suggested that it was a challenge, which she’d gladly take up. Tara was happy to let her try to be the best… If she wasn’t already. Better perhaps than the best. Now where was she going to plant that gold star?
Focus she told herself. Things were still serious.
The part of her which was forever her friend the Slayer wasn't quite so focused.
What they were going to do now, as Rupert brought up the rear, was going to require more magic. He had his axe, but they only had a stake each left to them. Tara had even thought about collecting some of the shattered parts of what had obviously been a large wooden chair, but it was a little unwieldy and chairs never splintered how you wanted them to – except in the movies and computer games. And if she’d have tried to break it again with a kick or something, then she was sure she would have hurt her toes.
It had clearly the kind of chair that said it had been sat in by someone important. The word ‘throne’ came to mind. There must have been some sort of focus for the vampires. Someone important – like the Master had been.
In vampire society – if they could be said to have a society – important meant more than one thing. It always meant strong. It usually meant old and it definitely meant hard to kill. They didn’t get to be old vampires unless they were strong and hard to kill – it didn’t even need Slayers to weed them out. Other vampires, other kinds of demons, even humans would deal with the stupid, the weak and the foolish without too much trouble within a couple of decades. Rupert had said so, and from all she’d seen Tara had agreed.
Except here in Sunnydale. Somehow it hadn’t applied here.
Sometimes the vampires even got so bored that they deliberately put themselves in danger of being staked. Sometimes for the danger. Sometimes because they were actually tired of living. If you could call it living.
Willow had long ago told her about hearing that sort of thing – when she’d been a vampire herself. And of course Tara had remembered. Vampires who weren’t ambitious enough or didn’t have the vision to find a cause like ending the world… she supposed they could get bored. It seemed like they were asking ‘is eating all there is?’ It was easy, Tara could imagine, to be thrilled by the existence at first. The strength, the power, being able to do anything without regard for the laws or morality they remembered from their human lives…
Then, when that novelty wore off, it must become just the way world was. And went on being… forever. Whilst they were frozen in time, products of the world which had created them but was now in the past. Not all of them could adapt.
Those that did… they became the leaders.
Anyone who led a group of vampires so large… well, he or she wouldn’t have been bored and they must have had a purpose. Everyone needed a purpose – it was just that for vampires, time, all other things being equal, wouldn’t catch up with them. When they were newly dead then that purpose was pretty much just ‘feed, kill, hurt people.’ Later they’d find new and more efficient ways of doing that and new terrors. Immortality made them more wary of death too.
They didn’t change – they just learned or died. They learned how to become worse than they already were.
She’d changed, Willow had changed. Rupert had changed. People did that. Vampires didn’t. They stayed just what they were – they could only become worse. There would never be a ‘good’ vampire. And if she hadn’t known it before, then she certainly knew it when she looked into the holding areas that they’d identified before. They’d finally reached them after taking Willow’s suggested direction.
The holding chambers… Whilst other areas, even other dry tunnels, were pretty clean, the holding area, with its cages, definitely weren’t. They probably didn’t have to be. It was like this place was the most unimportant part of the whole nest. The part that really didn’t matter to the vampires. The lighting was good enough to allow a human to see, but Tara was willing to bet that those lights were never, ever, turned off because it would have taken effort – small as the effort was they wouldn’t have bothered with it. The cages were the newest feature in the chamber. They wouldn’t have been here before. The rest of it looked like it had been flooded with mud a dozen times over. Dirt coated the walls, loose stone rested in the corners. Pipes protruded from the high, vaulted roof and some of them were leaking.
Leaking into buckets that had been placed underneath the flow. This was the source of their drinking and washing water? What about sanitation? The smell suggested that there was no provision for that in here, perhaps beyond another bucket – which also sat in the cages as they walked through there.
Two buckets per cage, at different ends – widely separated in most of the barred prisons. Some cages were empty. But they hadn’t been cleaned anyway. The signs of human ‘habitation’ were clear. Buckets, still full by the flies that buzzed around them, at least they were unafraid of the vampires and finding an existence, which suited them. There were also scraps of clothing. Dark stains that probably revealed where a death had occurred – or at least a beating that had gotten overly bloody.
So many people could be held here that the vampires wouldn’t even care about wasting the blood. It was an even greater contempt for human life.
As they made their way out into the chamber proper, into the space around the edges of the cages, it was easy to imagine that once this should have served some grand purpose in the correct sewage process for this town, but knowing the former Mayor of Sunnydale as she did – the man who had personally overseen every single one of the original buildings as well as the subterranean routes around the town, she didn’t doubt the reasons that the engineers had been given for this place had never been truly necessary.
The town was much bigger now than it had been back then and it did just fine with miles of sewers and electrical access tunnels, which were never, ever used. At least not for public works. The Mayor had built a nest pure and simple, a lair for some creatures or another to use. Perhaps it was just irony that the occupants he’d made it for had later become his enemies. Still, the Mayor had once employed vampires as his guards until she’d come to town and refused to work with them. He’d obviously had no fundamental disagreement with vampires as a species – just the ones that had threatened his aims.
Some cages had more people in them than others did. Toni had made it seem like there was some orderly method in place for assigning cages when she’d spoken of how she’d been moved around. The girl had suggested that the people could be taken from them, each in their turn, and taken to the ‘fattening’ cages to be fed up before they were hunted. Tara wasn’t going to ask Willow if human diet made a difference as to how people tasted. She wasn’t that curious and also hated to ask Willow that sort of thing anyway.
But in contrast to what Toni had said, it didn’t look like there was anything but chaos and cruelty in how these people were being treated. Maybe there was some concept of order behind it – from a vampire point of view – but it wasn’t apparent to her on just a few seconds inspection.
At first, none of the captives in the cages paid any attention to the three people who were cautiously moving through the chamber, between their cages, taking in every grisly, horrible detail. Tara could easily imagine how the vampires looked as they moved through here. They would be much more interested in the people than in the conditions. Food for the future. Hunger. Blood lust. Not paying much attention to how people huddled together for warmth and comfort except to mock it.
They’d be predators amongst captives rather than shepherds tending a flock.
The vampires wouldn’t be interested in how, in a few places, people who were probably now long dead had attempted to create some form of privacy for themselves. The vampires wouldn’t even notice how those people had managed to get a blanket to hang up – or stitched together some surplus clothing to make makeshift curtains. No, it wouldn’t have interested a vampire at all. Just so long as they were fit for the hunt and tasted good when they got eaten. That was all that would matter to those creatures.
She knew that there had probably been a lot of random cruelty – just for the fun of it. Toni hadn’t said so, explicitly, but Tara was sure of it. When vampires found a weakness, or something that was valued by others, they’d exploit it for their own sick pleasures. They were human enough in that regard – but with the instincts of a demon to back up their interest in the suffering of others and to make existence as excruciating as they possibly could.
The fact that she knew just what would have been happening here, for years probably, under her very feet as she hunted, lived and loved, made her feel sick. Especially when she considered how quiet Sunnydale had apparently become. It made her physically sick. She had to fight to hold down the guilt, along with the bile in her throat that resulted from the sickening conditions she stood in. The fear that she could have done something about this long ago if she hadn’t been so willing to accept that maybe, just maybe, they’d made enough of a difference that things really had gotten better.
Conceited enough to think that they could actually have won something in how quiet the town had been. To think they’d even won a small victory.
“None of us knew,” Rupert told her as she bent over and swallowed hard, sucking in air in huge gulps after the immediate fear of vomiting had passed. He rested his hand on her back as Willow looked on, concerned, but keeping an eye on the rest of the chamber. Tara had to be proud of her – even feeling so terrible. Willow was keeping them safe when all she wanted was to come over here and hug her. She knew Willow, she could feel Willow. She knew just what Willow because it was all a part of her wanted Willow to do.
She gave her love a weak smile, using it to say that she was okay, then straightened up. “We should have known,” she told them both. She wasn't just saying it to them or herself even. She was saying it to the occupants of the nearby cages who’d seen her doing something that was very, very human. They could have seen her almost vomiting. They could see that none of them were vampires…
And the nudges started. Silence was golden it seemed.
Maybe they didn’t think that they were going to be rescued, but they were certainly curious about them. Curious without moving forward for a better look. Watching without actually ‘looking’ overtly. Asking without saying a word. This was what Toni had meant by ‘not attracting attention.’ Down here it seemed as if when you attracted attention and you were in one of these cages, then you were going to be picked out. If the vampires just chose to humiliate you or give you a light kick, Tara guessed, that might be the best thing… Beatings. Torture. Watching those things happen to people you valued and loved…
Or being taken away to another place – nearer to being hunted.
Killed on the spot like Toni’s Dad.
That must be what happened to you if you attracted attention down here. And if you didn’t attract attention… you’d get it eventually anyway. When you matched whatever the vampires wanted that particular night,
The quiet was better because if there were any vampires left here then they definitely didn’t want them being warned – and they couldn’t let these people, all of these people, out until there was a safe way out of the nest for them. They were in no shape to run, even if they knew which way to go to get out rather than heading deeper into the underworld and whatever might be down there.
One woman in a cage they passed whistled gently for attention though. It was more of a high pitched rasp, deliberate but explainable by a slowly released breath through clenched teeth.
The soft sound in the near silence was enough to make Tara jump – and that seemed to apply to Rupert too. They looked over at the woman, but she held up her hand, waving them back from coming towards her. She was willing attract their attention it seemed, but didn’t want to attract anyone else’s by doing it. She was already getting jabbed by her cellmates. They didn’t like what she was doing. The risk she was taking with all of their lives. “You should go,” the woman hissed.
The man huddled next the woman, who looked like she’d been there less time than some, but more than many, hit her arm and not gently either. She didn't react to the pain and just shook his disapproval off as she had all the others. “Go.”
“We’re here to get you out, all of you,” Willow said equally as softly. It was less than a whisper, barely a breath.
But the words themselves attracted attention. Tara wouldn’t have chosen to say them. Not now. Reassurance was a good thing and she had as much feeling for these people as Willow had, but once they understood that they might be getting out… well, there would surely be no controlling their enthusiasm. They’d all be screaming to be released.
Or would they?
Instead, the man just laughed at Willow’s words.
Not a nice laugh. Or a nasty one. It was a laugh of almost hysterical disbelief from someone who hadn’t had cause to laugh in a long, long time. This time it was the woman who hit him instead. Whether it was because he was attracting attention, or she disagreed with his ridicule, Tara couldn’t tell. “Just go, get out of here before they catch you,” the woman said.
Willow was about to insist that they could do this – that they could get them out and that the vampires were all dead now. Tara could tell just from the look on her sweetie’s face, but it was Rupert who placed a hand on Willow’s arm to stop her. He understood. There really was no freedom for these people until they
believed that they were free and that they were safe. And that would probably require the sun. If they even understood the nature of what had taken them prisoner.
Tara met the woman’s eyes and, perhaps in support of Willow or perhaps because she needed to, she tried to convey the certainty of her imminent release from this hell. She wanted this person, who’d taken a chance to contact them, to warn them even, to have some hope. Whether the woman got it or not she couldn’t tell. “Where are they?” she asked. There was only one ‘they’ that she could have meant. Everyone understood that ‘they’ was the others and not ‘us.’
The woman thought about that, weighing something in her mind. The man spoke up though when he recovered from his fit of near hysteria. “They went the way you came from. They’ll be killing you soon enough. We’re not allowed to walk around outside the cages. They kill you for trying that. You should know it. Someone should have told you.”
Tara shook her head. He didn’t see that maybe they’d come from the outside. He thought that they were from in here – they must be because this seemed, to these people, to be the whole world.
And then, perhaps, the woman did get it – maybe she did start to understand. She pointed off towards another tunnel, one that
should have connected to still another holding area if their reconnaissance had been worth anything at all. There were so many people here, would be… if all the cages in this chamber had this many people in them, and in every other area too… Too many for them to be able to work through efficiently and free people easily. One section at a time maybe – but even then they had to be sure that there were no vampires between the released people and safety. That was tricky with just the three of them – somehow they’d manage. But not yet.
Tara thought for a moment about asking Willow for the pendant her love had taken from her. That would have sorted this out. It might not even have hurt if there weren’t any of those vampires left for them to face, certainly not the intense degree of scorching pain she’d felt before. But she didn’t want to face the argument Willow would inevitably offer. Not here. Not now. Willow saw the pendant as a bad thing – and it was in her pocket. Asking for it back would just slow things down even more.
Besides, there were other ways. Just being careful and trusting her instincts for one.
“Stay here,” she said to Rupert. He nodded and set about examining the locks on the cages. She knew a little of his past, what Jenny had wheedled out of him over the years and passed on to she and Willow. She knew he’d picked a few locks in his youth. In her years travelling between the cities of this country she’d been shown how to do the same thing to a padlock or factory gate. She’d get back to it later if she had to.
Tara started towards what was, or at least should have been, the way back to the steadily ascending tunnel they’d come through to get into the lair. They were certain there were no traps down there for weak, malnourished, scared people to blunder into. That was important. She didn’t want to take people out of here and then find that they got chewed up by the vampires’ traps because they chose an easier-to-reach exit tunnel. The problem was that there wouldn’t be much controlling these people once they caught the scent of freedom. They’d probably just run for it and that meant that the way had to be clear and obvious to all of them.
When she looked back, Willow had started to come with her though.
“Could you stay too, sweetie?” she asked carefully.
Willow paused, frowned. “
You said that we shouldn’t split up,” Willow pointed out, and quite rightly. Tara had said that. She had believed it and really still did. And that was why Willow was staying here with Rupert now. Her love hadn’t done a lot of the solo hunting since they’d come to Sunnydale. Certainly not where they could be almost certain that there was something to hunt. On the other hand, Willow had worked with Rupert a lot in the recent past – as well as with her of course – and they needed someone to protect him whilst he worked on the locks.
To protect these people.
Tara, on yet another hand, had spent years hunting alone. She knew she could do it – even against powerful vampires – and she knew Willow could more than watch out for Rupert whilst he fathomed the locks. That was too many hands.
“Someone has to go,” Tara pointed out. “And someone else has to stay here with Rupert and all these people.” There was no saying which of the choices might be most dangerous, so really it just came down to a question of faith in the power of the experience they both had. Marginally, she was sure she was the better choice to go and that Willow was the better choice to stay.
If they had to be parted at all.
Willow didn’t argue many points when Tara made them like that. She just kissed her, looked at her with as much trust as Tara could ever remember seeing and headed back to where Rupert was standing, already suggesting that there might be some sort of spell that would have some luck with the locks. Only if he couldn’t manage it of course.
If there was such a spell, and Tara had never heard of it, then Tara trusted Willow to be the one that found it because there were a lot of locks for them to deal with around here. She might have to brush up on her own rusty lock picking skills. It had been a long time since she’d used them – longer still since a kid on the streets had taught her just how. She couldn’t even remember that girl’s name.
Breaking the locks one at a time with an axe wouldn’t have been a good plan and it could easily be that they’d desiccated the vampire who’d had the keys. Most metal went up with the vampires when they combusted. She kept her eyes open though for a convenient spike in the wall with a bunch of keys hanging off it though.
No such luck – at least not at this end.
Picking the locks would take time too – maybe magic was the way to go, if it were possible. She dedicated a small part of her mind to the idea and carried on looking around. Perhaps manipulating the air in the lock barrels… pushing in certain ways?
When she reached the edge of that chamber, and could choose to go right into the next holding chamber – after a short tunnel – or straight ahead where they needed to be going with all these people. She chose…
To turn right into unknown territory.
It was all very well checking the way out but what if someone came from this tunnel and came up behind the released captives? There would be a slaughter on a grand scale.
And what if she was leaving someone else to get killed whilst she was checking on the safety of the exit? There would be more people in the rest of the nest than Willow and Rupert were protecting in that chamber now. Many, many more. Besides… Tara had a feeling – she was trusting her instincts and they said that there was a feeling she was having. Now that she could see into the next chamber she knew why that was.
Vampires. Two of them and they were feeding. Feeding and feeding and feeding. There were already four bodies littered around them.
Something about those creatures feeding had always set her teeth on edge. Whether it was the thrill that they so obviously felt or the ecstatic pain of the victim as their life was being sucked away… Tara didn’t know what it was exactly but she’d always been able to feel it. If she thought about it then she knew she’d been able to feel it right back to when she’d been on her way home to find her brother and her Dad. Dead. The distance had been greater and the connection had been stronger.
It wasn’t seeing it as much as knowing it.
Until then, and she was sure she’d probably been near a feeding vampire at some point in her early life, she’d never been aware of it. But once she knew what to look for in her discomfort…
Every time Willow, the vampire Willow, had gone out and left her in the apartment. She’d felt it then. She’d felt the vampire killing – she’d felt people dying. People she’d doomed by not having the courage to do what she should have done.
They’d made up for some of that now though.
Willow was back, she was real and wonderful and they’d done some good. More good tonight. It was too late for this victim though. Not to mention the four already on the ground covered with multiple bit marks.
The two vampires were sharing a kill, the woman with the long blonde hair and another female vampire with even longer dark hair. Feeding together was unusual when there was such a plentiful selection of food to be had. Somehow these two were close. Sharing one, or five, kills was more important to them right now than having as much blood as they could as fast as they could swallow – and that meant they were thinkers. They were calm, not panicked. Taking blood to sustain them – in case this all fell apart on them. They knew they were under attack – they knew they might have to leave. All the little signs added up.
These were probably the leaders of this nest.
Probably.
Unless they were just hungry and involved with each other.
Maybe it was all of those things.
And Tara knew what else that would mean. They were the really dangerous ones. Oh, for a couple more stakes. She could probably have killed them both from here, and would have done in a heartbeat. But she wasn't going to leave herself practically defenceless by giving up her last stake.
She wasn’t willing to gamble, even on what seemed like a certainty, that the magic would allow her to get out of any hole that she might have found herself in. They had free will – they could make her miss. Besides, without the stake, she didn’t have the easily accessible and fast acting offensive options that her lover did. Looking around there wasn’t anything convenient to deal with them.
She could create
something, but she required certain raw materials and those didn’t appear to be on hand right now either. It was the dark haired vampire that noticed her first and Tara wasn’t quite sure how she did that. She knew that she was being very quiet; she’d refined ways of moving in near silence over the years. Coming into here, since she’d started to get that feeling, she raised herself a little from the concrete floor. The flow of that same air was, at the moment, moving towards her so detecting her scent was out and the vampire had been facing the wrong way to see her.
But something had told her that Tara was there.
She wasn’t the only one who’d had feelings. Intuition…
Perhaps she set those vampire’s teeth on edge. She wouldn’t mind that. It would be pleasing to think that they felt as bad in her presence as she did in theirs.
The dark haired vampire released her hold on the now very dead woman that was in her grasp, releasing the entire weight on the other, blonde, vampire. Either one could have managed three times the weight alone without even noticing and thrown the body clear across the chamber, but the sudden shift caused the blonde one to drop the body to the floor with the rest.
And then both of them were facing her.
“Well, well, what do have we here?” the blonde one asked. Obviously she had a vampire’s typical arrogance and flair for over-dramatising a situation. “The little girl who grew up to be a really big pain.”
“She’s a
witch,” the taller vampire said.
“Thank you Dru but I already knew that and thought I covered it well enough with my description.”
They didn’t think she was a threat at all – yet they knew who she was. They were caught up in each other at this moment. And the blood. That implied power – but there would be power there. The name implied power. ‘Dru’ she’d said? Drusilla…? Was this…? This was the vampire that had killed Willow, the one who had made her what she had been when Tara had first known her – and first met her in that alley.
It was this creature’s fault, even though Tara knew Willow and her friend had been captured long before this vampire turned up. Willow had apparently been in that cage for days before Drusilla had even shown her face. If Drusilla hadn’t done it then someone else surely would have. They might even have just fed and killed her. Maybe, in some way, this vampire had even… made her knowing and loving Willow possible.
It was both a curse and a blessing of unimaginable proportions. What if Drusilla hadn’t turned Willow… Oh goddess, did she have to be grateful?
“Grandmamma, are you unhappy with me?” Drusilla pined, as if a wrong answer would see her burst into tears. From her reputation as Tara knew it… well, it just might have. Unstable was the best and shortest description Willow had been able to come up with. With the word ‘bitch’ added onto the end.
“No, not with you honey,” the other one said. “I’m upset with the nasty witch that must have killed all our brothers and sisters,” the blonde vampire said turning back to Tara with a smooth movement that was ultimately very threatening without being more than a turn in place.
It was the eyes that held the threat. This was a powerful, elder, vampire.
“She’s bad!” Drusilla barked. “She looks at me and she knows who I am.”
“She’s unable to do a thing,” the other woman noted to Willow’s killer. “She’s all alone and she can’t play any tricks on us now. Not in here. She might hurt someone. Someone who isn’t us.”
Drusilla gave a doggy like nip at the air.
Tara just stayed quiet. It was interesting that this vampire felt the need to grandstand and tell her what she thought she knew. It was as if she wanted to make sure Tara didn’t do anything to them rather than trusting her to know – and hold the same opinion as she had. She was kind of right, but not totally so. Maybe Willow could have done more direct damage to them, but there was nothing – without stakes – that she could do fast enough to make a difference and still not allow them to put a person, a real person that she was trying to help, in her way to protect themselves.
There was no earth exposed in here. No seeds. No water. The air was strictly a defensive measure when there were so many other people here and, even if she’d had the talent, no open flame for her to manipulate. At least not with the control and accuracy which would be needed of her. She could have created a flame, but she lacked Willow’s skill to do anything safe with it.
They were right – and yet they were also very wrong. She couldn’t do much to them – now – but she had one stake and she wasn’t about to let them walk away either. Or hurt anyone else.
The blonde vampire, the one who seemed to be in control of ‘Drusilla’ – or at least liked to think she was – sauntered a little way over towards her. Drusilla following by her side. Willow’s murderer – or the vampire who had made their love possible? And it was a saunter. It was as if she was totally unconcerned by Tara’s presence – an enemy she might well have tried to kill more than once in the past few days. The vampire should have been worried because there
were things Tara could do. She could force them back through control of the air – not as precisely or powerfully as Willow – but enough to keep them at bay forever. With a surge of air she could hurt – but not kill – them too.
But she didn’t do anything like that because what was she going to do then? Hold them against a wall for the next hour or so whilst Willow and Rupert freed everyone else that was here?
No.
She wasn't even certain there weren’t more vampires out there who could have come up and attacked her as she held off Darla and Drusilla.
Which was why she did nothing until she knew what they were going to do. What else was out there? Let them have their moment. Let them assume they were somehow the winners here. She’d never cared what any vampire thought. Well, perhaps one. Once. But not anymore.
“She’s waiting for us,” the leader said to the vampire that definitely appeared to be the Drusilla who had hurt Willow – but she was clearly saying it as much for Tara herself – “to ‘make our move.’”
Couldn’t they ever just shut up and die? Did they all have to like the sound of their own voice so much?
Tara thought for a moment that the blonde vampire would actually have come right over to her. She seemed like the kind that would want to gloat up close and personal. Even when there was nothing for her to gloat about. If it came to it, Tara had her one stake. It was just that one stake was one stake too few – she could never be certain it wouldn’t be burned up in the first strike, especially as this must be an older vampire. Their disintegration was often more violent.
Still there might be a way…
‘Grandmamma’? Maybe Drusilla was as mad as Willow had indicated, if this was
that Drusilla, but the familiar word suggested, maybe, that this other vampire was the one who had created the one who had created Willow’s killer. As responsible as Drusilla herself in her own way.
They were all responsible for what had happened. Tara searched in her memory. She knew that Willow had told her things about this – a line of powerful vampires from the Master down – which had led to the vampire she had been once before. But it was a dead line. The Master was gone now. Willow was no longer a vampire. What came in between shouldn’t have mattered – in human terms it wouldn’t. Even in vampire terms it wouldn’t… it shouldn’t…
Except that it did matter. Because they were right here.
With the ‘evidence’ that these vampires were descended from the Master, it seemed clear that nothing less than The Order of Aurelius had been resurrected. Or it had continued after the destruction of the Master – it had survived him? She’d thought, perhaps naively, that it had just faded away. They’d allowed the remaining vampires in the Bronze to escape simply because they hadn’t been in any shape – neither she nor the Slayer – to do anything about them. The Master had been gone. The vampire Willow had killed Luke a little later – for whatever reason. Willow herself had… well, Willow was better now. Here. Lovely. Better. There hadn’t been any more favourites in Sunnydale as far as anyone had known.
But somehow the Order had gone on. Persisted.
Like cockroaches.
And it must have been because someone had come in from outside Sunnydale. She’d never even thought of that possibility. Nor, she knew, had Willow.
Just as people had been brought here from outside towns for food, someone had come from the outside to recreate or revitalise the Order. But why bother? If they were elsewhere…? It couldn’t be just territorial surely. There had to be something much, much bigger than controlling the Hellmouth going on here. Or if not bigger, then definitely wider.
More… but what was it?
Toni had come from a place which was miles and miles away from Sunnydale. They’d had her brought here, with her Dad, and it wouldn’t just have been a question of driving out there and grabbing people. They were in other places too, in small towns. Maybe in cities and even somewhere as big as L.A.? If they’d been using Sunnydale as their base then surely they’d have been spotted entering and leaving the town to get food from elsewhere.
To sustain as many vampires as she, Willow and Rupert had killed tonight, they’d have to have been widespread. Whatever this was, it was much bigger than just Sunnydale.
“I’m not waiting,” Tara said eventually when it was clear that Darla was willing to stand here for hours rather than let her get away with saying nothing in response. She
wanted the feeble banter portion of the fight?
Incredible. She must like the sound her own voice, and it was so thin and… uggh.
“I’m just deciding how I’m going to kill you,” Tara continued. She thought, perhaps, of using her link with Willow to summon her girlfriend… but there wasn’t a need just yet. Every moment she and Rupert could be freeing people was better. There was no problem here so far.
The unnamed vampire slapped a hand over her heart theatrically and feigned a swoon at the prospect of being staked right there, then leaned forwards again. “If you were going to do that then you would have done so. You must be all out of pointy sticks.”
Drusilla had been looking at her intently, it was much more disquieting than any of the ‘tough’ words the blond was using. “She doesn’t need nasty pointy sticks,” she said. “Do you little doggie?”
Tara fell silent again. She wasn’t going to boast to them – there was no need to – and the magic was already wrapped around her. Ready and prepared. If she wasn’t going to call to Willow, then there was a good chance her sweet lady would sense the magic anyway. Tara was ready to expand the area of it and push the air out into them – push them away if she needed to. Away from the cages, too. They wanted to kill her – they were vampires after all and had probably been hunting her and Willow – and Toni. But more than that, they wanted to gloat at the idea she was powerless.
In turn, they thought it made them powerful – but who had been the ones hiding down here?
She wasn’t powerless – or even particularly worried. She was just being careful with people’s lives – and, yes, that included her own. She wanted that shower Willow had promised. Funny she should be thinking that right now.
“She just doesn’t want to hurt all the little people,” Drusilla continued. “She’s a good little doggie.”
How did this dark vampire know what she was thinking? Lucky guesses, or something else? Tara couldn’t feel any magic… it wasn't like this vampire was in her head – at least not as Willow would have been.
“We should go,” Drusilla said to the other vampire.
That one raised her thin eyebrows and turned to Drusilla. “Go? Why ever would we go? At least until
we’re ready.”
“Because she’s not going to be alone for very long. Someone is looking for her. Wanting to know where she is. That’s she’s safe,” Drusilla said closing her eyes. “An old friend and an old enemy. A naughty child who doesn’t know how to mind her manners.”
Willow. It had to be Willow. Drusilla had insight – Willow had told her about the rumours – the value the Master had placed on her. The fear even Luke had shown. And besides, Willow was the only person who could meet that description. If you were insane.
And Drusilla had now confirmed she was the one who had turned Willow. There had always been the chance there were two so named vampires – but this was evidence enough for Tara.
The lead vampire hesitated for about a second, then nodded towards the cage nearest them, the one that was already open. Drusilla smiled and went inside it. She was pretty much a blur as she moved, urgency having being restored at last. Tara was torn – Drusilla was inside before she could have done anything. She was
so fast and so sudden. Tara knew could stake this one now, hold the other away from her and let Willow deal with Drusilla, except that the dark one was in the cage taking a hostage. Who was worried now then?
The vampires felt they needed protection?
Yes, they did. A hostage… had to be alive to be of value though. They wouldn’t kill that person. People. Oh goddess it was children. Two of them.
The other vampire sniffed, seemingly at Tara’s scent. “I have to say,” she proclaimed as Drusilla brought them each a child from the cage – “that you smell worse than these sweet little children do and they’ve been here for a while now.”
Children. Both younger than Toni. Both older than little Faith. They looked so alike that they could have been brother and sister. Might easily have been given how they’d been clinging together, a grasp broken with casual brutality by Drusilla even as she was now stroking the hair of the one she’d kept hold of. But they had both learned the value of silence too – even in pain. Tara threw a glance towards the cage – there wasn’t a parent in there for them. At least no one willing to draw attention to him or herself by protesting. No one even looking where the vampires were taking their children.
Everyone in the cage had seen this before. Even if there were differences – they didn’t dare to hope yet that her presence might mean something would be different this time.
Tara had seen something like this before.
She didn’t intend to see it again. Ever.
The lead vampire winked at her. “Now what are you going to do? Hmm?”
It didn’t take her more than a moment to think about it. It should have been complicated but somehow it seemed so very simple. “You’re going to let them go – and in exchange I’ll let you go – if you leave town right away,” Tara told them. She had no particular need to see them dead right now. Once… once she might even have tried something fancy to try and rescue these children. But to make sure that she killed the vampires above all other things.
Not now.
She didn’t risk children’s lives. All she had to offer these vampires was her word – they had no reason to trust it and she’d never trust theirs but it was all there was. And she wasn't lying to them. She and Willow would find them another time and then they
would die for all they’d done – but they could leave. For now. Not with the children though.
“I’m sure it’s traditional for you to put a worthless threat in there,” the leader said.
Tara had never really been one for threats, even if the vampire was right.
The threat came from elsewhere though and Tara was so glad to hear that voice after feeling the gradual approach in her very soul. The deal might well be off the table before it had even been made. “If you hurt those children – or Tara – I’ll fry you where you stand.” It was said cheerfully… but with so much conviction it was impossible to believe it was a joke.
And it wasn't.
It was tough not to believe the power behind those words and both the vampires spun around to face the other tunnel that Willow had found a way in through. How had she gotten right around there? Tara was just glad her girlfriend was here at all.
“It’s my little candle light!” Drusilla cooed happily – seeming genuinely pleased to see her. “I missed you so very much and you were a very, very bad girl. You should be spanked until the rooster starts to crow.”
Willow barely reacted to the insane greeting. “Let the child go, Drusilla.”
“Grandmamma, my little girl’s ignoring me,” Drusilla complained. “I think
you should be the one to spank her. She’ll listen to you.”
“Let them go,” Tara said. “And you can still go. Both of you.” She wasn't sure she was telling the truth now. Willow was here… it wasn't her decision anymore. Not her offer to make. But she didn’t feel bad for, maybe, telling a lie. Not to vampires.
The blonde vampire smiled and caressed the underside of the little girl’s neck so very suggestively. “So sweet, so innocent. Unlike you, dear Willow,” she said to Tara’s love. “You have lots of guilt within you. I can see it. I saw you do the things which made you as guilty as we will ever be.”
“I’m not who I was then, Darla,” Willow said without changing her even tone. The tone made what Willow was saying even more threatening.
So this was Darla then? The only remaining vampire known to have been created by the Master himself? Tara had heard the name. She knew the reputation. Darla wasn't a warrior, but she was definitely a survivor and a ruthless killer. A vampire. Any vampire would snap those children’s necks but Darla would probably do it creatively if half the stories Tara had heard were correct.
She liked… experiences.
She liked to enjoy herself.
That was what they said about her.
“Neither am I,” Darla explained. “Now… I rule here. I just wish you were still who you were when I last knew you. I would have enjoyed having you begging for blood at my feet. Maybe… perhaps you still will if I decide to keep you around.”
Tara saw Willow bristle. There were a few things that could ruffle her love and one of them was certainly the suggestion that she could again be that soulless killer she’d once been. Willow was so not going there again.
Tara needed to keep her focused on the deal that she was offering. It was the way to get those children back and out of here – that was the important thing. If Darla provoked Willow into saying or doing something to her… those kids were going to end up dead and being angry wasn't the best way to use the magic safely anyway. “You don’t need the children,” Tara said. “You can just walk away but you can’t stay here in town and if you hurt them then you aren’t going anywhere at all. Willow will burn you down before you get ten paces.”
“I heard you had a stammer witchy-woo,” Drusilla said. “Make it come back! Make it come back – I want to hear the stammer.”
Tara ignored her, her eyes boring into Darla’s and offering her the choice. Stay and die – but she didn’t have to lose her pride by backing down. Or they could get away. And lose this fight as well as her Order.
Losing for vampires had always meant dying as far as Tara was concerned. This was something a little different. New to both of them perhaps. This time there had to be a way out because they were right – she wasn't willing to sacrifice anyone else to them. She felt too guilty about too many things already to see these children lying dead on the floor. Drained, limp necked or burned just because she wanted two vampires dead. Even these two, after all they had done.
And yet Willow hadn’t promised anything – Willow hadn’t said that she wouldn’t do anything to the pair of vampires.
Tara wasn’t going to touch them – if they did what she wanted them to. She suspected that Willow wouldn’t touch them either. Willow… Willow had other reasons to want them dead though. Both of them it seemed – not just Drusilla. They were reasons that Tara didn’t much like – at least not here and now. She would have been happy for Willow to deal with them except that… It wouldn’t be the right thing – not right now. There was nothing that they could do – at least nothing that they’d done before – that wasn't going to put more than just the children at risk.
Fire… Willow sometimes didn’t have total control of that. In an empty sewer, targeted at a single vampire that wasn’t a problem. Here, in a room filled with caged people, it definitely was.
Oh for some more stakes. She had one and Willow still had one. But even if she’d been able to coordinate them, she’d seen how fast Drusilla could move. She might be able to block a staking with the body of the children – no matter how tricky she tried to be in sticking the wood into her.
Air and water weren’t going to cut it and she wouldn’t want to try anything with the forces of the earth… nothing like what she’d tried in that tunnel, without getting the kids out of there first. Besides, no earth was exposed to her. It would have to be pretty radical to shatter the concrete that lined this entire place. Was nature likely to harm them? No. Was she one hundred percent certain nothing could happen to them?
No again.
Anything that they
could do
could hurt someone too. Tara had even seen a vampire, a powerful vampire, put a hostage into the line of fire of a stake she’d sent at him. That hadn’t been good. Faith, the Slayer, was someone who could take some pain and still function. She’d been that hostage and she’d been able to heal quickly. Tara wasn't going to do that to kids though – these vampires were old enough, fast enough, to do that too.
Not quite up to the Master’s level… but they must be pretty close. They were both old by the standards of most vampires – Darla especially. The Master had been the most dangerous vampire she’d ever seen. But with a Slayer, Faith, she’d managed to face and defeat him. Barely.
And with what Willow had said to her about Drusilla… Darla might have been a clearer thinker – but Tara didn’t dare take her eyes off Drusilla. In these close quarters – with those children there in their grasps– unpredictability was by far the most dangerous trait. Drusilla could have popped a head off on a whim… Even that brute Luke had been overcome by Drusilla, and this vampire had already proven herself faster than him too.
No, there would be no head popping today.
She couldn’t get distracted by the ‘what if.’ She, they, had to do what was right for the ‘now.’ And what was right was saving those children’s lives. Not the future. Not what
might happen later. Not what had happened in either of their pasts. She had to make sure that those children were okay and
had a future. They could be the next Einstein, Gandhi or Mandela. And even if they weren’t anything of the sort, they had their own unique value anyway. How could anything else be right but saving them?
Yeah, there was certainly a future in which, with Darla and Drusilla out there, other people – maybe even other children – were going to die… but did it make her a bad person if she looked to the futures of the children who were here now – innocent, afraid, already having been through so much?
She didn’t think so, though she might have done once.
She looked at Willow and she knew that her love couldn’t help her, or at least not take the lead. Right now Willow was the one thing that Darla and Drusilla might think they knew, that they would be able to judge… Because once Willow, a Willow, had been part of them and their Order. That was why Willow was looking just at them – staring them down. That was why Willow was shutting out the children – or wanted to look as if she was – and that was why Willow was very obviously calling the magic to her now.
Obviously, even to them.
Willow wanted them to believe that she didn’t care about the children as much as Tara did. She wanted them to feel that she might be as unpredictable now as she had been as a vampire. Unbalanced as Drusilla clearly was.
There were sparkly effects around Willow now; ones that Tara had never seen before but certainly looked the part. Willow wanted to be obviously threatening to the vampires too – with the edge of uncertainty and unpredictability what they thought they knew about her would bring. Tara could feel her lover and she could feel that Willow, magically, was already prepared to incinerate both of them – that wasn’t just for effect. The magic was there and ready to be used. It probably wanted to be used.
And she would have hurt the children if she had let it go.
But maybe Willow just wasn’t going to let them hurt anyone else… Tara had been there, in her past. She’d sacrificed a life to save thousands in the future. More than one life. It was why she couldn’t now.
She was sure that Willow wouldn’t hurt the children either though. She just had to look as if she would. That was why sparks were, literally, flying. The magic, the fire was ready to be unleashed… well, it might still be needed. And all that was why the vampires were pretty much focused on her and Tara was prepared to take any chance that came along to get those kids to safety – or what passed for safety down here.
If there had been anyone, on past experience, that would risk hurting those children it was she. Tara knew she would have made a decision like that – had done so many times before – but never in front of Willow. If they let Drusilla and Darla go they’d kill hundreds, thousands maybe, before this obvious chance to end their existence might come around again. Millions potentially – if they never did catch up with them again.
She’d never had to be that hardhearted person in front of Willow.
She wasn't even sure she
could be that person anymore. She was committed to the fight… she had to be. But she couldn’t let those children die – or worse actually risk either she or Willow killing them by accident – when once she’d have made that decision in a heartbeat and justified the losses just as well as she was justifying the consequences of not doing it now.
Now, she supposed, she was in love and it was better this way, for the person she was.
She was stronger with Willow, in love with her, than she was without her. This decision made no difference to that. Strength… maybe… was a different thing than it had been before. What seemed to be strong now… Strength might easily be the ability to save lives now no matter what might happen later. There were consequences to letting the vampires go… but these kids were here. Now.
Tomorrow was another day… Darla and Drusilla might get set on fire by a meteorite dropping to earth or something. These children… They had to have their chance. Maybe she’d feel guilty later – she knew she would have anyway no matter which choice she made now – but she knew what was
right. And it was no less right because it wouldn’t have been her choice a few years ago. Shed grown. She knew more now than she had done. More about the value of life.
"The sparks," Drusilla said, clearly enthralled, theyre so pretty.
Tara didnt doubt that as pretty as they were, Drusilla knew
what they were too. What they were supposed to signify to her. They were a direct threat, intended to make them leave through belief Willow would really do it. Willow would sacrifice the children if she had to to fry them both.
And then the sparks coalesced into the orb of fire between her lovers open hands.
Tara watched. This had to be Willows play now.
***********************
-------------------------
If I want a little pussy, I got my own to play with.
Chance in
Chance.
to think of some way, some thing to tell you about how truly deeply consistently marvelous your/this writing is 
. It's like trying to describe a breathtaking sunrise that you feel so blessed to be alive to see, or someone's perfect eyes or smile, without using the ol same old same old...you know something is special when you happen to bump into it, but how does one like myself 
, who absolutely appreciates a smooth turning of the phrase 
, but is not especially gifted with that pesky articulating part 
, convey the scope of heartfelt yadda yadda that is so apparent and inspiring with every word...but I digress. All I can really say is 
and then 
and I'd like to end it with a bit of the 
...just because. 
boomshakalaka.
*waking up from my nap… I like naps