The Prophet
by Rainne
The Prophet
[reviews]
Title: The Prophet
Genre: Drama
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: lesbian relationship, violence, hot monkey love
Disclaimers: All the characters except Dakota and Mercedes belong to Joss.
Historian's Note: I played fast and loose with timelines here; the easiest way to explain it is that it's kind of AU... where they might be, say mid-sixth season, if Tara hasn't come into their lives and things had gone differently as regards Buffy's return from Heaven. These things will all be addressed at a later time. Forgive me, and go with it. *smile*
--*--
The funny thing about prophecy is that, while it always comes true, it doesn't always come true in the way you'd expect. Take the Slayer Codex. "When the Slayer faces the Master, she will die" or some such nonsense. And she did die. And then got CPR and lived.
And the funny thing about prophets is how reviled they tend to be by those they prophesy to.
I've got this talent. I've always had it. All I have to do is make eye contact with someone and I know everything about them — past, present and future. It can be a bit disconcerting. By the time I was five, I'd learned to look at people's noses when speaking to them — they think you're making eye contact, but you're not catching up on what they had for lunch on August 14, 1983.
I always thought it was a harmless little talent, no big deal. Until the year I was in sixth grade. That was the year I met Kimmie Martin. I accidentally made eye contact with Kimmie one day over the science lab table, and got the full force of my little gift right in the teeth. Kimmie's uncle lived with her family, had done so for some years, and was doing things in secret and against her will that no man should ever do with a little girl.
I told. Kimmie begged me not to, repeating all the threats he'd made to her, but I told. And when asked how I knew, I told them I saw it. I tried to explain, but the next thing I knew I was being checked out by doctors for evidence of abuse myself.
By the time it was all over, my dad put in a transfer request with his software company and got himself switched to their Sunnydale location. We sold the Silicon Valley house I'd grown up in and moved.
Sunnydale was a nice town. Not much to do in the eyes of a kid who'd grown up with a Starbucks on every corner, but still pretty nice. Mom and Dad felt safe letting me walk around by myself.
That was their mistake.
I learned quickly not to make eye contact with anyone in Sunnydale. More often than not, their futures ended with a horrible monster draining their blood. My parents were no help — they didn't even believe in my gift, how could they believe in vampires? So I learned to keep my head down, not to make eye contact, and to be home before dark. In this way I survived for three years. I even made friends with a girl in my class named Willow Rosenberg, who was just as shy and just as into computers as I was.
In the summer between ninth and tenth grades, I wasn't careful enough. I was on my way home from Willow's one evening and a vampire named Darla nabbed me when I crossed through the shade of a house. She dragged me through the cemetery and into the tunnels. There, she and another vampire Turned me, thinking to make me serve the Master along with them. There was no way I would have done so. I escaped them and, thinking to kill myself, ran out into the sunlight. Nothing happened. I turned and looked back into the cave entrance I'd escaped, looking at the vampires who'd tried to catch me. They couldn't follow me out. They couldn't walk in the day. I was free.
I left Sunnydale before dark, knowing that if they caught me, they'd kill me. I went east, to Las Vegas. Vegas is a great town to be a vampire in because you can always drain and rob a rich high roller or drain and steal the wardrobe of a well-dressed tourist. I never messed with the locals, though. They're the reason idiots come to town. I learned quickly that somehow, in the Turning process, my soul never left my body. I postulate that my soul is the reason I can walk in the day, but I'm not sure: I've met one other souled vampire and he couldn't. Whatever the reason for that, my soul was definitely the reason I went all Anne Rice and fed only on the evildoer, as Lestat would say. I couldn't deal with killing innocents. Fortunately, in Sin City, there is no dearth of evildoers. I was happy in Vegas and, more importantly, safe from the growing power of the Master. I never thought to return to Sunnydale.
But word travels fast in the demonic underworld, and the Kinfolk buzzed from San Francisco to Omaha when the new Slayer was Called, came to power in Sunnydale and —gasp- killed the Master. Then, two years later, when she successfully prevented an Ascension, the demonic community buzzed again. By that time, any time one heard the name of the Slayer, one also heard of her compadres, referred to either as Scoobies or as Slayerettes. If someone spoke of Buffy Summers, they also did not fail to mention Xander Harris or Willow Rosenberg.
I don't know if it was my gift which permitted me to retain my soul, or if, as I said earlier, my soul is what permits me to walk in the daylight with no smoke, fire or other unpleasantries; but I do know that one thing the presence of my soul retained, besides my conscience, was my affection for friends and family back home. I missed my parents bitterly. And I missed my friend Willow. After I heard about the Ascension and realized that it had happened at Willow's high school graduation, I noticed just how much time had truly passed since my Turning and I wondered how Willow was doing with her new friend, the Slayer. After a couple of years of careful consideration, I decided to go and find out.
Nothing is simpler for me to find in Las Vegas than an appropriate victim is. Generally they hang about the poker and blackjack tables, often with a lame' clad sylph at his side. I wait for one of these to send his hooker up to the hotel room to wait for him. Then I sidle up to him with a grin and a promise of a free suck off just because I'm underage and looking for a good time. Often as not, he takes it. It's not the kind of suck he expects.
When I decided to go back to Sunnydale, I knew I was going to need to stock up. After all, there's no casino in Sunnydale and one can't be forever commuting to Vegas just for a quick fifty bucks. I spent a few weeks cruising the casinos, hitting three or four a night, doing my usual dance of death. I was careful, not wanting to start a panic. I picked men who I was sure wouldn't be missed by anyone at home for some time. For a week I did this every night, collecting cash and chips from each victim, hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. Enough to ensure that I needn't worry about money for a long, long time. I cashed the chips slowly over that week, never more than a thousand dollars per booth, hitting each booth in each casino probably three times a day. I used a lot of this money to prepare for my move.
I knew a vamp in Reno at the time who did fake ID's for vamps like me who like a little legality in their everyday lives. Drivers' licenses, social security cards, birth certificates, that sort of thing. And he's a joy to work with because he doesn't like to be paid in money — all you have to do is hunt for him. For the measly price of three victims, culled from the casinos up there, I obtained a new driver's license showing me at twenty-one years old, a copy of my birth certificate and a new Social Security card, and removal from the National Registry of Missing Children. I also obtained, free of charge, the information that my parents had died in a car crash and their estates been liquidated. That money was waiting for me until my actual thirtieth birthday, at which point I was to be presumed dead and the money donated to several missing children's charities around the country.
I got in touch with the probate attorney and claimed recent recovery from amnesia. He sent a certified check to a human buddy of mine, who in turn delivered the check to me at Harrah's Casino on my last morning in town. And then my killing started in earnest.
I began at Harrah's. By the time I was done, six men were dead and six wives and six sets of children would be the better off for it. From there I moved across the street to Caesar's Palace and thence to the Luxor, the MGM Grand and the Mirage. By the time I was done, I wouldn't need to eat for two weeks, and some fifty men and four women lay dead in my wake. I cashed in all the chips at once at each casino. No need for secrecy now. I was leaving. Just before the Jeep dealership closed, I walked in the front door and grabbed the nearest salesman by the arm.
He looked down at me condescendingly. "Yes, dear? Here to pick out your first car?"
I glared at him for a moment, and then began pulling five-hundred-dollar bills out of my pocket. I counted several grand across the top of his desk and then stopped. "Why don't we call that my down payment on the test drive?"
He could see that I still had money in my hand, and probably more in my pocket. He wasn't an idiot. In half an hour, I finished counting bills out to the tune of twenty grand for a brand new, fully loaded Jeep Cherokee. Signed, sealed, delivered, no payments, no waiting. Boom. I drove away. The twenty grand hadn't even made a dent in what my parents left to me, much less my own "earnings."
I drove straight to Sunnydale without stopping for anything except gas and a little blonde hitchhiker who looked about ten and claimed to be seventeen. She gave her name as Tina Marie until I told her it had been done already, then she sighed and confessed that it was really thirteen-year-old Cassandra Blackwell from Daphne, Alabama and she was running away from home to be a movie star. A cell phone call to my buddy in Reno gave me a referral to another ID hacker in Bakersfield, this one human, who worked her up a set of documents with her real age and the name Mercedes Walsh.
Back in the car, I turned to her. "Now, I'm going to warn you, Little Bit. Those documents didn't come free." She got a look on her face that told me she knew that — nothing came without the price of a blowjob or a quickie in back of a liquor store. I shook my head. "Not that kind of price. You're going to come to Sunnydale with me. We're going to enroll you in Sunnydale Junior High as my little sister. You're going to stick with me until you're eighteen. Then, if you still want to be a movie star, we'll see what we can do. But you're going to get an education and you're going to grow up the right way first. Got me?" She nodded unconvincingly and I leaned closer to her. "Don't think you can run away from me, Little Bit. If you do, I'll find you, and I'll call your parents to come get you."
She flinched at that and shook her head. "I won't."
"Trust me," I said, settling into my seat and turning the car on. "You'll like Sunnydale. A lot."
We made Sunnydale that night and got a hotel room. The next day, I set a realtor to finding a house for us in a decent neighborhood and I enrolled Mercedes in school. Then I hit the tunnels.
Sunnydale has an entire network of sewer tunnels, electrical tunnels, and just plain caves running underneath it. You can get anywhere in town without ever seeing the light of day. I knew if I were going to find a local vamp, the tunnels would be the place to do it. And sure enough, I hadn't been down there twenty minutes before running across a tall, platinum-haired British fellow dressed all in black like the latest Big Bad. I gamefaced so he'd know I was Kin and introduced myself. "Dakota Walsh. How ya doin'?"
"Spike," he responded. "New in town, are you?"
I nodded. "Came up here, left, back again."
"What for?"
"Look up old friends. I winked.
"Better be careful about that," he warned. "We've a Slayer in town. A good one."
I nodded. "I heard. Sounds interesting. Might have to stake her out." I grinned at my own pun.
"Better be careful she doesn't stake you," he responded stuffily.
I shrugged. "So where can a girl get a good bagged snack supply around here?"
He eyed me carefully before answering. "Slaughterhouse sells it, or you can break into the small version of Fort Knox they call a blood bank here. Or hunt."
I shook my head. "Nah. Not in a little burg like this. Not enough bad guys, and I'm not into driving all the way to L.A. for a midnight snack." I looked to my left and then my right and spied what I needed — the ladder to the manhole cover above me. "Watch yourself," I warned.
As he backed away, he realized what I was doing. "Are you mad?" he called from a safe distance. "It's not even noon yet!"
I laughed. "I know. I've got someplace to go. Oh, say, you wouldn't know where I might find Willow Rosen— well, never mind. As famous as she is, I shouldn't have too much trouble finding her. Thanks for your help!" I climbed out into the daylight above me and closed the manhole cover. Then I gathered my bearings. Directly across the street from me was a little store called the Magic Box. And in the window, seated at a table and poring over a large tome, was Willow Rosenberg.
--- * ---
Spike sped through the sewers as fast as he could, to a place he knew of where he could get to a pay phone without being exposed to the sunlight. He dropped in his quarter and dialled a number from memory. When it was answered, he spoke quickly. "You've got a problem."
--- * ---
Buffy finished speaking to Spike, then closed her cell phone and turned to Giles and Xander. "A day walking vampire, looking for Willow. This is bad."