A Small Creature Who Can Barely Walk
by zingrrrl
1. people freaking out on me left and right
[reviews]
1
people freaking out on me left and right
She is me. I am her. She is me. I am her Siamese twin connected at the cunt. Heart Brain Heart Brain Heart Brain Lung Gut. I want to kill her. But it might kill me. Feminist, Dyke, Whore. I'm so pretty. Alien. She wants me, she wants me to go to the mall. She wants me to put the pretty, the pretty pretty pretty red lipstick on. She wants me to be like her. She wants me to be like her. I want to kill her. But I'm afraid it might kill me. Feminist, Dyke, Whore. Pretty, pretty. Alien. And all I really wanted to know. Who was me and who is she. I guess I'll never know. -Alien She- Bikini Kill
I woke with a start, my eyes getting very large and round as I realized I was not breathing and didn't need to breath. Fuck! I expected my heart to slam in my chest as panic seized me, but I didn't even feel the muscle so much as twitch. And then the memories came flooding back, of last night, my death at Kralik's hands, of Giles betrayal. Guess I musta drank the blood. I sat up and took in my surroundings.
I was on the floor in the middle of a basement, a single clear incandescent bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling barely lighting the dim room. Mom, tied to a chair with thick nylon rope, gagged with an old oily rag, sat directly under the lone light, giving her blonde hair an eerie shine. Kralik stood behind mom, smirking at me, his newly risen vampire.
"Now you understand your place in things, Buffy," he said, taking a handful of mom's hair and yanking her head back, presenting her neck to me,
No, not really. I pushed myself up to my feet, my face morphing from my normally delicate and soft features into the bony, swollen ridged forehead and cheeks of the vampire I now was. Walking slowly over to the chair holding mom, looking the terrified woman in the eyes, my mouth curled into a comma shape, a half smile half frown.
I looked up at Kralik, my head bent back so I could see the tall man's demonic face clearly. He was using some kind of mental thingy on me. But I was not what he thought, not his to command. I belonged to someone else, now. Just who, I couldn't remember, except for the penetrating pink eyes. The eyes of a Goddess. "If you think I'm going to bite my mom," I said, rolling my yellow cat slit eyes. " Well that's ... just eww. Icky incest subtext aside, she's old and gross."
"I am your sire, you will do as I say, and you will bite her!" Kralic commanded, his deep and booming voice echoing in the small room.
I snorted as my sire's will bombarded me, commanding, intolerant of disobedience. He was going to make me his sex toy, his killing partner; not in my fucking un-life time, no way. Angelus was tempting, but this freak was so fucking of the not. "Spare me the sire crap, 'cause I'm not really interested in your mother issues," I said, backhanding my fist across his cheek, staggering him, as shock sprang across his ridged face. He telegraphed a punch, his fist nearly half the size of my head, aimed at my face. I knew that blow would hurt bad if it connected, so there was no damn way I'd let it. I ducked and darted my head to the side, avoiding the swing, and snap toe kicked him in his testicles with my full demonic strength. He fell to his knees with a loud, jarring thud, his face turning all puffy as the muscles in his neck and jaw spasmed. I'd had amped up reflexes and strength as the Slayer, but this was unreal, like the world moved at half speed, my movements a choreographed dance of destruction and death. I rained round house punches on the sides of his head, bashing his temples with the hard knuckles of each hand. Till he tumbled over, beaten unconscious.
I turned and looked down at mom, noticed the fear was leaving her face. I smiled at her, cold and full of fury, lots of fangs. Nodded as the fear swept back over mom's gaunt face. Her eyes, widening and very round, flooded with quickly forming tears.
No! I didn't want this! Why this! I couldn't remember where I'd found the power to resist my sire enough to beat him down, but that well of strength was drained, just no longer available. I had to obey my sire's command, just had no choice in the matter. The only avenue of resistance open to me was my refusal to bite my mother. Kralik's will wasn't absolute, but it was dominant to a newbie childe such as myself. And I was going to kill him for it, and have fun doing it. But first I had to obey.
"Don't think you're getting off easy here, Mom," I spat. "Just 'cause I'm not going to bite you doesn't mean I don't have my own mom issues. 'Cause kicking me out of the house just because I had to stop my psycho boyfriend from murdering the world, well don't you think that deserves some kinda payback?" Oh, God no! Why?
-BtVS-
Afterimages of mom's blood flashed across my vision as I flicked on the lights to the dinning room back on. Kralik's still unconscious body lay face up on the dark oaken dinning room table, each limb tied securely to a table leg with multiple strands of a strong, thicker than usual nylon climbing rope courtesy of my slayer kit. I'd just staked Blare because the bastard had refused to acknowledge my obvious superiority, defending our looser of a sire, and had attacked me as I'd finished tying Kralik down. No real lose to the demon community.
I picked my slayer kit up from the floor and pulled a chair out from under the table, placing the dusty old bag on it. Slapping him on the face, he groaned as my palm left a bloody partial print, a bit of mom's blood that hadn't been wiped away. Using a blue bandana, I pulled a garlic bunch from the kit as he opened his mouth and I stuffed it in there. His head rolled back and forth, trying to dislodge the offending bulb my hand clamped in place. I grabbed the duct tape from the bag and wrapped a length of it around Kralik's head, covering his mouth, fixing his agony in place.
"Does that hurt, Daddy?" I asked, smiling down at him, licking my upper fangs with the tip of my tongue. "Or does it hurt just right? Oh yeah!" I ripped his shirt open, exposing his disgustingly hairy chest. Eww, it looked like a mangy dog's belly. Pulling out a bottle of holy water, I grinned sadistically as I waved it in front of his watering eyes. "Don't worry. I'm not going to pour it on you. I'm sure it would make pretty colors, but I want to see what this would do." I held up a syringe I'd found in a small black snap top box that had been sitting on a kitchen counter, next to an empty bottle that'd probably held the compound Giles' had used to poison me. Uncorking the holy water, I filled the syringe and then injected small amounts just under his skin, kinda like an allergy test, watching his pale skin bubble like it had been dipped in acid. "So fucking pretty, Daddy." He banged the back of his head against the table repeatedly as I kept injecting the corrosive liquid into his chest and belly, skin that had bubbled and burnt so badly it was cracked open and oozing viscous fluids.
I filled the syringe with the last of the holy water and held his head steady with one hand, the other placing the needle against his neck, lined up with a jugular, my face losing its swollen, boney ridges as I morphed back into my now human mask. "My real dad flaked on me last night. All I really wanted for my birthday was to go to the ice show with my dad, you know? But no, he has to further my abandonment issues and pull another no show. So what do I get instead? Murdered by someone I trusted implicitly, like a second, non flakey dad." I pushed the needle through the skin and into the jugular. "And then I end up with you as a sire, and not Angel. How fucked is that? But you know what pisses me off the most? You made me kill my mom! Granted, she deserved it," I said, injecting the poison into his body, wondering just how long it would take to spread without circulation. "But the choice was mine, and you took that away from me."
Wow. Smoke immediately rose up from his neck as his body spasmed uncontrollably, his screaming a shrill wailing keen that managed to make it past the garlic and tape, muffled as it passed through his nostrils. "Does it hurt good, now Daddy?" It was neat, watching him twitch like that, until his body exploded into a cloud of ash, spoiling my fun.
-BtVS-
The night sky over Sunnydale held a sense of the dramatic; swirling clouds, iron gray and full of moisture, illuminated by a blood red full moon that peaked its way through the occasional clear patch. Overflowing with portent and pollution blown up from LA.
"I don't enjoy the kill," I heard something say as I stepped through the threshold of Willie's bar, elbowing my way through a couple of vamps that didn't recognize me for a change, and headed over to the bar. "It's just that humans, are just so damn fragile. No damn constitution.!" A demon's voice, pitched too low and full of reverb, and a newbie's boast. Any demon that was local would've known better than to spout out such nonsense with the Slayer in the room.
Willie tended bar, pouring cheap booze and fresh blood from packets into mugs and glasses, filling his customer's orders as quickly as he could. His hand, holding a bottle of cheap bourbon, jerked as he recognized me, spilling the pungent smelling alcohol over the black formica bar top.
"Slayer!" he greeted loudly enough to give his customer base a heads up on the situation. "What brings you here to my fine establishment?" He gave me a nervous smile, revealing a mouth filled with yellow stained and rotten teeth, handed out the served drinks. I took a seat at the bar, a plastic covered wooden stool that was a little too high for me, leaving my feet dangling in mid air, just not quite reaching the well stained white linoleum floor. The two vampire's on either side of me got up and headed for the door quickly.
I smiled at him, a feral expression meant to increase his nervousness. Just how much longer to string him along passed through my thoughts for a moment, but I wasn't here to fuck with the head of my best snitch. Well I was actually, but not in a subtle way, I needed information.
"O-neg," I said.
"Angel with you? I didn't see him come in," he said, pulling a blood packet from a small fridge under the bar and reaching to the counter behind him for a clean mug.
"No, Angel's not with me," I said, my face taking on my demonic visage. "It's for me." I shrugged, smirked at him.
A vampire, a girl that couldn't have been more than sixteen when she'd been turned, impossible now to tell how old she really was, sitting four stools over from me, giggled in a too high octave. Dropping the mug he'd just grabbed, Willie shrieked as the glass shattered on impact with the hard floor. A wet spot grew on the crotch of his jeans.
"God, you are a looser, Willie," I said, snatching the bag of blood from his loosening grasp before he dropped it as well. Tried not to gag at the smell of urine. Piercing the plastic bag with a fang, I sucked out the crimson fluid for a few moments and then tossed the now empty packet onto the bar, sighing.
"Can't wait for my first kill," I said as Willie tripped over his own two feet in an attempt to back away from me, banging into the counter behind him, sending a couple fifths of booze crashing to the floor.
"Relax Willie, it's not going to be you," I said, grinning a toothy grin. I relaxed my features, putting back on my human mask. "I imagine you'd taste grosser than this bagged shit."
"What happened?" Willie asked, his voice shaky, his body trembling lightly.
"Turned eighteen. And can I say, worst birthday party ever!"
"What do you want?"
"Damn Willie, how come your so fucking scared? You run a fucking demon bar!" I laughed heartily, amused at all the cursing I was doing, my language now as impure as I was. I smelt his fear, found it intoxicating. "I know your not this terrified of the other demons ... why am I so special?"
"Uh, uh ... Slayer? Vampire?"
My thin lips turned up into a big smile. "A Vampire Slayer?" I laughed loudly as Willie nodded vigorously. "But what I need from you is a location of some people. The kind demons would want to avoid."
"Okay," he said. "I can help you. Who?"
"English guys, lots a tweed. Twelve foot sticks shoved up their asses. Oh yeah, and tons of books. Watchers in other words. Need to pay them a visit, give them their due. Before the others find out what I got for my birthday."
"Others?"
"Yeah, you know, used to be my friends," I said, shrugged with a quick grin.
"What are they now?"
"Come on, Willie. You own a demon bar. You should know how these things go ..." I looked him in the eyes and he stared back blankly. Rolling my eyes and sighing, I added, "Soon to be my victims. Now tweed guys?"
"Frank's seen 'em," he said, nodding toward the far corner at a small vampire seated in the booth.
"Thanks," I said, getting up from the bar. "And I'll need a gun. And some lessons."
-BtVS-
The old wooden stairs creaked as I descended into Willie's bar's basement for my shooting lesson, Willie trailing close behind me, babbling nervously. I tuned him out. Willow's babbling was endearing and cute, but he grated on my nerves, beyond annoying. I wanted to kill him for it, but couldn't afford to, especially not now. He was too good an informant, adept at playing both sides. I may have no longer been the Slayer and played the other side now, but I still needed to keep tabs on the other demons. We were a jealous lot, protective of our domains. And he feared me like no other demon. Useful.
He crossed the basement and rummaged through a large wooden crate, pulling out a green metal lock box after a few quick moments that seemed to take forever. Carrying the box over to a cheap plastic folding card table, he placed the box down on it carefully and dialed in the combination, flipped it open. He waved his hand at me, gesturing me over. I went to him.
"Willie," I said. "Why don't you change you clothes. You smell like pee." I smiled as my face morphed into the bony, swollen ridges of my true nature, revealing my jagged fangs. I wanted him on edge, plus I just felt more comfortable with my human mask off. How the hell did Angel stand it? Wearing the human face most of the time? It itched.
He looked at my face, his darting eyes and putrid smell betraying his fear. The fear wasn't quite so intoxicating an aroma now that I was getting real sick of smelling his urine. "You enjoyed hurting me when you were human," he said, his voice high pitched and shaky. "Now that you're dead, I figure it's got to be like a passion. If I gross you out, maybe you won't, you know, bite me."
Laughing loud and hard, I rolled my eyes then turned to the box and looked inside, found three guns and several clips. I picked up the smallest one and held it in my palm, testing it weight. The thing was very light and small enough to conceal easily.
"Are you sure about that one, Slayer?" he asked. "Not much stopping power."
"Don't call me that," I told him. "Will it kill?"
"Okay, Buffy?" he shrugged, questioning me if using my name was okay. "Yeah it'll kill, you just have to aim real careful. Maybe give it a double tap. It's a Beretta .25 bobcat, a girl's gun." He gave me a nervous grin and let out an equally nervous giggle.
"First off, Willie, what the fuck do I look like? A monster?" I bared my fangs, licked my lips.
"Will you kill me if I answer that?"
I set my face back into it's human mask and gave him a sweet, innocent smile. "Maybe."
His mouth sprang open and he started hyperventilating. If he hadn't already wet himself, I'm sure he would have at that moment. "Look how small I am, the way I'm dressed," I told him. "Do you think I want something that's going to stick out like a sore thumb and clash with my appearance, or do you think I want something that says, hey she accessorizes, even with her weapon choice."
"Huh?" His forehead scrunched up with confusion. "What."
"I'm kidding Willie," I said. "Do I look like Cordy?"
"Who?"
"Not important. How do I use it?"
He took the gun from my hand and demonstrated opening up and then closing what he called a top-tip barrel and showed me how to insert and eject the clip. "This gun has no slide, so to chamber the first round, you just pull the trigger once. It's a hair trigger, so it doesn't take much. Pull it again and you'll fire a bullet each time till the clip's empty. Double-tap the trigger and it'll fire two bullets close together with a similar trajectory. Double-tap's two quick pulls, do it as fast as the gun will let you. That's the easiest way to make sure of a kill with this gun. The first bullet opens up the flesh, second does the damage to whatever's inside. Practice on that," he said, handing me the gun and pointing at a male torso half mannequin. "There's nothing but dirt behind that wall." He handed me a full clip.
I snapped the clip into the weapon, flipped the safety off with my thumb, and gave the trigger a quick pull, chambering a round like he'd said. "Don't point that thing at me when you do that!" he screamed, startling me.
"Huh?" I said, looking up at him, my finger twitching, firing a round straight into his torso, just below his right lung. Liver maybe? Fuck! Blood gushed from the wound, soaking his shirt, black colored. And I'd thought his now stale pee soaked clothes stank. Eww. My eyes got very round as he collapsed to his knees, his mouth twitching like a fish's when it feeds.
"Hard. It's a load of bleeding," I said, surprised at the amount of blood. He'd said the gun had no power and I'd not felt any real kick when it discharged.
"You see, that's bad ..." he said, stuttering, gasping.
"Blood is almost black, that means the bullet is in your liver." I said. Someone on the net had once told me liver wound blood was black because the organ had contaminated it. "You have got about twenty minutes to live ..." I shrugged and grabbed his hand, pressed it against the bullet hole hard.
He screamed.
"Paining is too much, you can take your hand away," I said his line for him as his eyes begged me to quit pressing.
"And you'll be ... dead in twenty minutes," I said, pulling my hand away. I didn't care anyway, other than being a bit ticked at myself for wasting such an useful tool.
"You killed me Slayer," he said, mumbling through a fit of wet coughs. I watched the black blood pool on the floor, around his knees.
"Huh? Saw it in a movie," I said as he slumped down into a sitting position, leaning his back against a large crate. "And I always wondered whether it was true. I'll be damned."
His jaw clenched and his eyes held pure malice for me, but he couldn't get a word out past his trembling lips. "Thanks Willie. That was educational and fun." I meant it too, I'd always wondered if organ contamination could actually change the color of blood. Not something you could find out slaying, though. Demon blood was icky colored anyway, and vampire's had no circulation. Our bodies were dead, our hearts didn't beat. I had the strangest thought go through my head at that moment, if we had no circulation, how did Angel get hard when we made love? Didn't it need blood flow? I'd have to ask him next time I saw him. "Almost like PBS without the major yawn factor."
-BtVS-
"Are you an employee?" a guard asked as I stepped off the elevator on the top floor of the luxury hotel. Popping my gum, I grinned at him and raised my eyebrows, shook my head. I hit him with a rapid left jab that looked nothing more than a blur to the naked human eye, slamming the knuckles of my index and middle fingers into his throat. Crushed his windpipe, making it impossible for him to shout out an alarm or even breathe. He fell to his knees, gurgling, clawing at his throat. Placing a hand to either side of his head, I twisted hard till I heard a loud and satisfying snap. I dropped the lifeless body to the floor.
I went straight to the door of the penthouse suite and pulled a gun from the pocket of my black denim jeans. It was a small semi-automatic pistol, a .25 beretta bobcat, gunmetal black and easy to hide even in my tiny, delicate appearing hands. I released the safety and gave the trigger a quick pull to chamber the first round of the top-tip pistol, kicked in the door. Jumped through the threshold into intense and total agony as the head of a large sledge hammer smashed into my left fibula, shattering the bone. I screamed as I rolled to the right, out from under the hammer's range. Carefully sighted my gun at the throat of a giant of a man, a man standing at least six and a half feet tall and at least three hundred pounds of steroidal muscle. No wonder that hammer fucking hurt, I thought as I gave the trigger a double-tap, firing two bullets in rapid succession, the slugs slamming into the man's neck. One of the bullets severed a jugular, blood spurting with each slowing beat of his heart as he collapsed.
I stood, scanning the room with my eyes, clenching my jaw against the pain. A man and a woman, obviously Watchers by their drab and stuffy gray suits and tweed jackets, moved rapidly across the room, armed and ready for battle. He gripped an almost comically oversized sword with both hands, held high overhead, prepared to strike with a downward stroke.
"Betcha didn't see that coming," I said, smirking. "Learned that trick from my ex's ex. Didn't work as well for her though." I shrugged and shot the man in the heart about a second before he arrived near enough to use the blade. Blood drizzled out the hole for a few seconds, making a small round stain on his neatly pressed and well-starched shirt. I engaged the safety and put the gun back in my pocket as he collapsed in a dead heap on the floor.
The woman swung for my chest, aiming her tightly gripped stake for my dead heart, as I stepped back to avoid the blow. Not quite fast enough in my reactions - I'd underestimated her, she was good, well trained — I took the wooden weapon in the ribs just under where she'd intended the blow to land, piercing the lung. Fuck, she almost got me, good thing I didn't need to breathe or I'd be in some serious shit. Not good at all.
"Where's that fat fuck, Travers?" I asked, smashing my right fist into her stomach, robbing her of her wind. She folded over, unable to expand her diaphragm and draw breath as I snatched the stake from her grasp. "Blair told me all about him before I dusted him, how Travers is responsible. So I thought I'd pay my respects." I already felt the bone fusing itself back into shape and the wound in my chest closing. Wonderful thing, vamp healing factor on top of slayer healing factor.
I grabbed hold of the woman's upper left arm and yanked her closer so that her face was inches from mine. "So you defeated Kralik?" she struggled to ask. "Quentin said you'd lost. Failed the test." The woman trembled in my grasp, her fear coming off her in waves, overloading my senses, making me giddy and euphoric, and very fucking horny. Like a fucking drug laced with aphrodisiacs. Kinda like ecstasy. Or slaying.
"Guess it depends on what you mean by lost," I said, my face morphing into it's demonic visage. "Now, where the fuck is Quentin Travers?"
"He's with your Watcher," the woman said, her trembling having turned into full blown quaking as she began sobbing. "At his apartment. Discussing ..."
I ran my fingers through the woman's dark hair, twisting it hard as I formed a fist filled with hair, yanking the woman's head back and exposing her neck. "You know, you're my first," I said than ran my rough and sandy tongue slowly along her jugular. "Well not kill, 'cause, hello, three dead bodies in the last two minutes. Plus mom and Willie. But the first one I'll have bit, you know, with all the sexual metaphors and shit that tend to go with vamp bites. Kinda strange your a girl and all, but feels kinda fitting too." Too bad she wasn't Faith, 'cause that'd be a real kick. We hadn't gone all the way, but what a blast if I'd bit her during that special moment. I sank my fangs into the vein I'd just licked, sucking loudly as I heard sirens in the distance, growing louder as the police neared the hotel. Drawing out the crimson liquid, draining the Watcher of her life's fluid, my nerves caught fire, tingling in all the right ways. Climatic. Better than sex, or at least sex with Angel, 'cause that was all I had to compare it to ... Fucking damn good anyway. I swallowed her blood, feeling the heart slow, and then stop. You'd think a Watcher would wear a cross around her neck. I withdrew my fangs and dropped the lifeless body to the floor.
Leg was going to take too long to heal. Grabbing the fireplace's poker, I crossed the room to a sealed window overlooking the unimpressive and drab downtown Sunnydale. No way I was going to fight my way through the cops, that'd be fucking stupid no matter how much fun it sounded. I smashed the thick glass with the poker and crawled through to the outside.
-BtVS-
As I finished descending the side of the hotel building and stepped out onto the grounds I felt it, the total awareness in every cell of my dead body that a Slayer was nearby, hunting, possibly even looking for me. So that's how the vamps always figured out I was the Slayer; Slayers set off tinglies everywhere, a low level buzz that was impossible to miss, to ignore. I didn't think all vamps had this ability though, enough of them fell for the weak little innocent me act to pretty much verify that as fact.
Faith hunted me. My ... girlfriend? I wasn't sure just what she was to me, we'd only gone out a few times since that first date when we went to the homecoming dance together. But we'd messed around a lot after patrols, plenty of deep kisses with lots of tongue, reaching under shirts and bras and groping breasts. Never further than that though. My own sexuality scared the hell out of me, and caused me no end of confusion. Faith, I was certain, was still pretty much into guys. I was a convenient way for her to deal with the post slayage hornies.
In some very weird, very appropriate way, I knew me and Faith were heading for a final confrontation, that the world had not only not needed both of us at the same time, but didn't want us to exist at the same time. It was rather obvious to any one with one of the five senses that with all the changes brought about by my eighteenth birthday that our acrimony would only be strengthened. But not tonight, I had plans for the Slayer, the need to use her as a weapon against my enemies overwhelmed any desire I held to end her life and force the calling of a new Slayer.
I felt a stab of elation in my dead heart as I leaped over the wrought iron fence that surrounded the hotel and sprinted across the mildly busy street into Sunnydale's only mall, hoping I could loose her in the crowd. Play tag with the Slayer, with Faith. Tempt fate and engage in an arbitrary game with life and death stakes, throw myself into a desperate engagement, set apart from the throngs of humanity I forced my way through, scattering them like a handful of ball bearings dropped onto the hard ground.
A woman screamed at me as I bumped her and knocked a shopping bag from her loose grasp. I didn't stick around to find out what she had to say to me, even though I really wanted to show her my true face and shut her up. Faith was still coming up behind me, like I was the only vamp in the mall, a distinct possibility that would make it extra hard for me to loose her. Her Slayer senses weren't as developed as mine were, but I needed a patsy quickly to sick her on, throw her from my trail.
I bolted into a nickel arcade, barreling my way through a sea of teenaged boys and not a few girls, accosted by the throbbing and booming sounds and bright colored flashing lights of arcade game consoles. I felt Faith drawing nearer, my personal reaper bent on my death. Did she know it was me that she tailed? Doubtful, unless she'd been to Willy's, and what could a dead body tell her about my new condition?
I'd been here a few times with Xander, a place to kill time and veg with my friend. A boring, but cool 'cause I was with friends, kinda place. An Asian girl in a black tank top and blue jeans looked up at me, startled, as I accidentally banged into the machine she hunkered over, behind her a steel wired cage full of multi-colored small plastic balls. She glared at me, growled, "Slayer!"
Very quickly so no one else would see the new me, I flashed my true face at her, taking in her startled gasp and quick intake of unneeded breath. I smiled. "Not anymore, but she's right behind me, probably all ready in here, hunting."
She gave me a quick nod and a toothy smile. God, she was hot, my patsy, even as she shifted into her true face she was incredibly beautiful and sexy, more feline in appearance than demonic. Kinda like Drusilla. A very pretty demon, anyway. Motioning for her to follow, I sprinted down a grey concrete walled maintenance corridor, hoping that there would be more than just an utility closet and an employee's restroom. My lucky pick, the corridor a long one, an access tunnel for that whole strip of mall, a mishmash of offices and back entrances to the various shops and support services.
I kicked at an unpainted plywood door, slamming the bottom of my foot forward into it, splintering it into shards of debris. I shook my head, stupid move there Buffy. Extra stakes for Faith if one of these doors wasn't the exit. I motioned the other vamp into the room, and made a gesture with my hand indicating I'd be in another room to surprise the Slayer after she'd engaged the other vamp. The Asian girl nodded.
Moving further down the corridor, I stopped before a door marked Maintenance Access Food Court. Perfect. I opened the unlocked door and went through to find myself in darkness. Kinda. Eyesight enhanced both vampiricaly and by my slayer senses made everything crystal clear in even the pitchest black. The room was a fucking office! Not a passage to the food court. Great!. My senses buzzed, triggered by Faith's growing nearness. No longer moving though, she must've been fighting the other vamp, my useless decoy. Dim light shone in from a small window, barely large enough for me to squeeze through, way too small for Faith. I knew my anorexia would pay off someday. I quickly punched out the glass with a balled fist and shot through the narrow opening as the door flew off its hinges with a thunderous pop. Leave it to Faith to not check and see if the door was unlocked. "Buffy?" I heard her question through the window as I landed with a roll. I hopped up and ran, not waiting to see if she'd figured out I was dead, or just confused that I'd left the way I had.
-BtVS-
I spotted Cordelia Chase leaving April Fools carrying two large shopping bags that were back lit from the dress shop's bright fluorescent lighting shining through a glass front door swinging slowly shut. As I sprinted for the fashionably dressed brunette girl, my leg twinged a bit. Not enough to bother me, the bone having re-knit itself during my descent down the side of the hotel and subsequent running away from Faith.
"Hey Buffy," Cordelia greeted me.
"Hey, Cordy," I greeted back, breathing hard even though I had no real need for the breaths. Couldn't tip her off to my undead status by not breathing. "I really need a ride to Giles house. It's pretty important."
"The world isn't going to end is it?" Cordelia asked.
"Nah, not that bad." But you probably would be.
"You know what happened over there?" Cordelia asked, nodding her head toward the hotel I'd just left a short while ago. Red and blue lights flashed around the corner from in front of the hotel's entrance. Yeah, Cordy, I knew just what was going on over there, not that I was going to tell you. You had no need to know that the cops were investigating the deaths of the four people I'd just murdered about fifteen minutes previous.
"Vampire attack," I said, biting my upper lip. "That's why I need to talk to Giles. The people attacked were Watchers too, so you know, something's probably up."
"Yeah, sure I'll give you a ride. So, you're not mad at Giles anymore?"
"I'm still of the mad. But this has to be dealt with." Watchers had to die. It was a thing. A compulsion even.
-BtVS-
Holding Cordelia by the back of the neck, squeezing hard enough to keep the whimpering girl compliant, I pounded on the green front door of Giles' apartment. I heard unhurried footsteps approaching from inside. Concentrating on my sense of hearing as the doorknob slowly turned, counted the heartbeats on the other side, one in front of the door, another about five feet away, slow and resting. Must of been sitting on the sofa. The door swung open. I probably should have tried listening to their conversation before I knocked, but the new me was a rather impatient girl. I wondered if vamps got A.D.D.
"Dear Lord," Rupert Giles said, stepping back from the threshold.
"Invite me in, Giles," I said, my voice cold and harsh, venom filled. "Or I'll kill Cordelia."
"That's not going to happen," the tweed jacket clad portly man seated on the sofa said, standing up and moving closer to the door. "If Rupert invited you in you'd merely kill us as well as the Chase girl."
"You must be Travers. You're right about one thing," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my gun, releasing the safety. "I am going to kill you." I pointed the gun at his chest and triple-tapped three rounds into his heart. He died before his lifeless body hit the floor. I flipped on the safety and put the gun back in my pocket.
I let go of the back of Cordelia's neck and entangled my fingers in the trembling girl's hair, pulling her head to the side, exposing a jugular.
"Buffy, you don't want to do this ..." Cordelia pleaded in a small, shaky voice.
"That's not Buffy," Giles said. "It's just the demon wearing her face." He started to inch towards his weapons chest as sirens sounded in the distance.
"Open that trunk and I'll snap her neck," I stated. Who kept calling the cops so damn quickly on me? No one ever called them to help me! Giles stopped moving. "And I am Buffy, just evil vampire Buffy is all." Cordelia's trembling quickly became agitated quaking. "'Cause if a vamp isn't the person, than why the hell is Angel so damn guilty over the shit Angelus pulled?"
"Angel has a soul," Giles said.
"Which wouldn't make him feel guilt over another being's actions, now would it? His guilt comes from the fact that he did it."
"You're arguing over feelings of guilt and matters of the soul after having just murdered Quentin Travers," Giles said, incredulously. "And who knows how many others?"
"Four," I said with a shrug. "Well, five if you count mom. Oh, I guess you'd have to count Willie too, even if it was an accident. Still fun. So six."
"Proving my point," Giles said. "The Buffy I knew would have never killed her mother. She is dead and you are just the demon wearing her face!" He grabbed a large oaken cross from atop the small table beside the doorway and leaped across the threshold, jamming the cross in my face, causing me to shriek as my skin burned and I shifted into the boney ridges and swollen flesh of my true face. I jumped back, letting go of Cordelia. Giles grabbed the terrified girl and pulled her back into the apartment with him.
"Your responsible for this!" I shouted at him, pointing at my face as the sirens stopped just outside the apartment complex. "I'm going to kill you for it, but I think I'll leave you for last, let you see what your betrayal has caused. You fucking bastard!" With that, I turned and ran away.
-BtVS-
I spotted Xander on the dance floor as I paid the doorman my cover and stepped into the Bronze. Not recognizing the blonde girl he danced with, I shrugged, giggling at his usual dance moves. Very jerky, like he was a chicken who'd been kicked one too many times and had a broken wing and leg. Almost as bad as his clothes, the loud blue, green, and red Hawaiian shirt and so baggy they barely stayed over his hips red trousers screaming skater looser in bright neons. Not that I'd seen him ride a board lately. I headed Xander's way.
"Hey, Xand," I said, tapping him on the back, interrupting his dance. Not that I cared. "You seen Will?"
"She's at home, I think," he said, turning from his dance partner with a shrug. "Why? Something happening?"
"Can't talk here, too many people," I turned my head in a wide circle, indicating the whole of the dance club. "Let's go outside a minute."
"Okay," he said, shrugging at his partner. When had Xander gotten enough nerve to ask a strange girl to dance? And have her say yes? Weird, he was usually too afraid of rejection. Or that she might be a demon of some kind. When he did get up the nerve to ask, his agitation usually rubbed a girl the wrong way. I took his hand and pulled him outside. "So, what was your birthday like?" he asked as I pulled him down an unlit side alley. I used to rail on and on about all the unlit alleys around the Bronze when I protected people. Now, I was grateful.
"Got older. Became an Adult," I said, shoving him up against a brick wall. Pressing myself against him, rubbing my jean clad thigh between his legs, hard against his crotch. Felt him stiffen against my leg as his eyes glazed over with lust. "Wanting to have adult fun."
"Buff ...?" he managed to get past his lips as I kissed along his jaw line.
"Shush," I said, licking his neck just under an earlobe. He shook with excitement. My tongue trailed under his jaw, leaving behind a wet streak of saliva, ending along his jugular. "You should feel privileged, Xand. You're getting something from me right now no other man will ever get."
"Oh, god," he groaned, his shaking becoming very pronounced. He moved his hands to my butt, cupping my cheeks, grinding his erection against my thigh. I think he thought I was going to go down on him. As if. I smiled into his neck.
"Get away from her, Xander," Angel said from behind me, making my jaw clench with anger and frustration. Just fucking great! Was he being jealous ex, or white knight?
"You're not going to play jealous vampire, are you?" Xander asked, his voice angry. "Cause, obviously she wants me."
I rolled my eyes, barely resisting the urge to giggle at the testosterone filling the air between the two.
"Your life depends on it, boy. Get away from her!"
"Are you threatening me?" Xander shouted.
I felt my shoulder jerk back hard as Angel grabbed me and spun me around, yanking me off Xander and throwing me toward the center of the alleyway. Putting himself between me and Xander, protecting my clueless friend. I regained my balance before I went to the ground, staying upright, sending a snap toe kick with my left foot straight for Angel's chin. The blow sent him staggering backwards and I pounced, hitting him with a solid left jab to the jaw. Dodging my next blow, a right I'd swung too wide on, telegraphed the punch, he hit me in the ribs, just under my heart, right where the watcher had staked me earlier. I stepped back, shaking my head. "That hurt!" I keened. He'd been my near equal as a fighter before I'd died, and that blow was hard, painful. The wound had closed, but still needed time to finish healing. Supernatural healing factor was a great thing and all, but it wasn't instantaneous. Even with the vamp thrown in. I had to remember that and be careful.
"You better run, boy!" Angel yelled at Xander as he tried to sweep my legs out from under me.
I jumped high over Angel's arcing leg, coming down on top of the knee with my left foot, shattering the cap and shredding the tendons and ligaments as Xander shouted, "Oh God, Buffy, it's Angelus," and punched Angel in the back of the head.
Angel fell to one knee, his good one holding him up in a semi-kneeling position. Smashing my knee into his face, splitting his lips and nose, I pushed him over onto his back, straddled his chest. I noticed I was right about the blood flow, there just wasn't any more than when I'd gotten staked, but now wasn't the time to ask him. Maybe later, after I'd figured out what to do with him. Even in death, damned and monstrous, I didn't have it in me to kill him again. The first time had hurt too damn much.
I punched him in the face, over and over, each tightly balled fist taking its turn, let my anger and frustrations carry me into an emotional state I'd found repellent just the previous night, when I'd still been human. Now, it felt good to make someone pay, anyone. Even the man I loved. The man I couldn't have. The man I hated. Where the fuck was he? Why hadn't he come to save me? He'd given me a book of pretty poetry and then sent me on my way, left me to their damned clutches. "Where were you?" I screamed. "Where?" Bones crunched wetly under my hammering as I bruised my fists against his face. I felt a hand grab my arm and pull at me. I went up with it, not fighting, having spent my rage.
"That's enough Buffy," Xander said. "Just finish it."
I turned and grabbed him by the shoulders and spun us around so that I could look down at a barely conscious Angel. "Actually, I think he meant I'm the threat, Xand." My face morphed into it's vampire form. Xander tried to scream as I tilted his head to the side, but he was frozen with sudden fear. "You lied to me," I whispered into his ear. "You said Willow said to kick Angel's ass when she was really giving him his soul back. You don't think I'd forgotten or forgiven that?" I sank my fangs into his neck.
I looked straight into Angel's eyes as I drained Xander's life force away through the wound on his neck. Suddenly, I shoved his dying body to the ground, wiping the blood from my lips with the back of my hand, no longer interested in the crimson fluid. "Fucker just came in his pants," I said, spitting out the little amount of blood left in my mouth, feeling more than just nauseous. Maybe just a bit violated, even though I was the one with the evil intentions. Wondered if the smell of his ejaculate was going to make me puke. Vampiric sense of smell made the scent overwhelming. Bitter and disgusting.
"Vampire's bite is an extremely sensual experience," Angel said, his swollen face filled with sadness and grief. "Didn't you feel it?" He sat up.
"Not with Xander, no," I said, shaking my head. "Earlier, though. When I bit that girl. The Watcher."
"That girl?" Angel's voice was incredulous and exasperated. "You have to be kidding me!"
"What?" I asked, my face shifting back to it's human form. I thought Angel might have just figured out that I was having serious thoughts that I might be gay. Maybe. Not about Faith though. No way he could have known about Faith and me.
"Humans can hide things, even from themselves," he said. "As a vampire, the bite is everything! It's food, it's life, and death, it's sex, how we reproduce. It will always reveal your true nature."
"Oh," I said, nodding with understanding. Yep, he just figured it out all right. I knew he spoke the truth, had figured out that at the very least I was a very confused girl. I just didn't want to deal at the moment.
"So what now?" I asked.
"I love you Buffy, but I can't let you go on killing like this," Angel said in an exhaustion filled voice. He crawled over to Xander's fallen body, felt along his neck for a non existent pulse, never taking his eyes from mine.
"Fuck!" I yelled, realizing just what he meant. He was going to go to Will, make her give me my damned soul back! And if Angel didn't, Giles probably would. If Giles had contacted Willow it could all ready be too late. Time to move.
"I shouldn't have said that," Angel said as I barreled past him, my movements a blur even to demonically enhanced senses, heading in the direction of Willow's house. I was a Vampire and a Slayer, possibly the fastest and strongest creature on the earth. No way could he have caught up, not as badly damaged as I'd left him. I figured I'd have about ten to twenty minutes before he'd be healed enough to catch up with me at Willow's, clear on the other side of town.