Endings Ch 7
Wordcount: 1,969
Disclaimer: Only things that I own are the second-hand windows XP, and windows ME that I’m working on. Oh yeah, and the history of my alternate realm.
7
She didn’t really give it a thought, past the fact that she’d been itching for something that she could actually do to make herself feel better since she’d been forced here, and here, possibly, was that something.
She rounded the corner at full tilt, and only then did she pause to see what she was coming up against. It looked like some… something that had a woman in its grasp, her back turned towards the mouth of the alleyway that they were down. At least until she took another step towards and then the image moved, and shifted and tore apart, and she found herself remembering biology class, and the butterflies that had eyes on their wings to make themselves look bigger, and the fish which had anglers on their heads. This thing was no butterfly.
It turned its head to face her and then the rest of its body followed the movement, and it spread a massive pair of wings flexing them almost as though it was testing the air. Its body was preying-mantis style thin, the head ridiculously proportioned to the rest of it. And as she stood, quickly working out the best plan of attach, it made a strange hacking sound and spat a fireball in her direction, forcing her to duck around the corner of the building.
She hadn’t been expecting the fireball to follow her around the corner.
A voice yelled out something that she didn’t catch, and she looked up in time to see Ethan finishing a gesture which made the fireball dissipate.
Seconds after that, a shadow fell over them as the creature cleared the building, and made and eerie sound, a cross between the scream the scream that she’d just heard and the cry of something innocent discovering that the world wasn’t a pure, perfect thing. It was the sort of sound the sent a shiver down her spine.
And although she hadn’t seen it properly, it looked as though it’d been holding something… maybe even a someone. And just before the thing passed out of sight, she watched it swerve to avoid a blast of something purplish, which she supposed was either magic or something even worse than the butterfly out hunting. Then there was a tiny flash, and it was gone.
She looked at the two men, and frowned, not necessarily at them, but at the entire situation.
“Anyone want to tell me what the hell that was? That can spit fireballs and obviously doesn’t care about being seen? And did either of you want to tell me what the hell is going on here?”
“Here is neither the time nor place,” Rupert was the one who spoke and Ethan recognized that tone of voice well enough. That one which was completely voided of both emotion and nuisance, and meant that he was more pissed of or tense than he usually got, “now get over here.”
And it was almost amusing to see that that tone seemed to work just as well with others as it did with him, as Buffy came over to them without a further hesitation. He watched the slight wince cross her face as she stepped inside their wards, graciously resisting the urge to chuckle, as it wouldn’t be particularly good for his health on either side of him at the moment, and crossed his arms over his chest when she glared at him. The gods only knew why the Slayer was still holding a grudge again him, when, technically speaking, it wasn’t even him that had committed the grievances that she’d sited against him.
And all that Rupert did, now that finally had her back at arms length again, was sigh and frown, “Once we're safely back home I’ll answer any question which you may chose to ask, and I’ll tell you a few things of my own. Fair?”
“I guess so.”
ARR! ARR! ARR! ARR
It had been that winning combination of luck and skill which had made the return journey just as uneventful as the one out to the populated business area had been. And if the way the two men had been scanning the streets was anything to go by, then Buffy had definitely had a lot of the former working on her side before.
And, in spite of herself, she was glad that Giles had the door key in his pocket so that they could enter through the front door, rather than having to use the window again.
“Go and sit down in the study,” Giles spoke in that totally flat ‘don’t argue, just do as I say’ tone of voice, as he stood to the side to hold the door open for Ethan.
She took a wild guess, and finally decided that it was safe enough to conclude that the study was the room that held the majority of the books. As she settled into a seat in the designated room, she could hear the soft hush of Giles and Ethan holding a hurried conversation with one another. It didn’t take another wild guess to figure that she was the topic of conversation.
Some ten minutes later both men came in. Ethan crossed over to the bookshelf and after thumbing across the spines of several books, grasped one and pulled it out, as Giles took the seat beside her.
Ethan put the atlas down on the coffee table, flicking it open to the first page that had a bookmark, as Giles pulled out some folded piece of paper from his jeans pocket, and put the down beside it.
Leaning forward, she could see that it was a map of California with heavy red lines drawn across it at several points, one side of the most predominant line shaded with black, to the back of the map. Reaching under it, Giles pulled out a photocopy without the red, but with several points highlighted on what would have been the black side.
“You want to know what’s going on, Buffy? I’d have told you before you left on your bloody walk, but you took the window.”
On hearing some of the emotion creep back into Rupert’s voice, Ethan felt himself relax again a little, because it meant that he was getting control of himself again. And then, in spite of himself, he began to giggle at the words, allowing a little of the tension from the last few days to bleed off. Up to the point where he caught a restrained version of the glare that Rupert was nursing, anyway.
As Rupert pointed to a spot on the uncoloured side of the first map, Buffy sat up to get a proper look.
“This is where we are. Thirty kilometres off this,” here he indicated the thick red line, “we have a front-line. Behind it is territory that we’ve lost, first to the forces of the First, and then several months ago control passed to the creatures that began to work their way through a weakened veil. The points here, here and here,” he indicated several of the areas on the uncoloured map, “are the weakest of the weak points.”
“It was a good fifteen, sixteen years ago now, that the First destroyed the Slayer line, and wiped out our Watcher’s Council,” Ethan kept his voice low, as he reached up, and covered the hand which was still resting on Rupert’s lap with his own, and squeezed lightly, “only students out on field training, a few retired agents, and the dissenters survived. Those that could, the more powerful of mages, and several different military teams drew the initial battle line,” Ethan frowned, thinking it over and placing dates, “it was fourteen years ago that the first Chaotic bleed happened,” he nodded towards a spot on the map that was marked in blue, “and that was one that neither of us could figure out. Over a dozen new demon species slipped through, most the sort that would tackle anything that moved. They made enough of a dent in the First’s forces that we could do some real damage. Chaos at it’s finest,” here, a tiny smile played over the corners of his mouth, and he took a deep breath.
“Anyway, the second bleed, which was more a prolonged flood really, started with the activation of your Potentials, twelve years ago. It tipped the fight in the favour of the new ones coming through, and while the advance is slow, it is happening. They’re what are beating back the First’s forces, and it’s poor, little old us caught in the ah… crossfire, if you will. We’re in what the army boys have affectionately taken to calling the ‘Dead Zone’ at the moment. No actual civilians here, only those that feel they can make a difference to an un-winnable war.
“The second bleed is also the one that began to mingle certain aspects of the closer realms together. Those who were slightly more sensitive could fell that someth8ing was going on. The most powerful, as far as here goes at least, were granted an insight into certain aspects of their other selves. It…” Ethan finally hesitated for a few moments, and then swallowed, “It’s been enough to drive a few good people mad. I… in all honesty, I’m not sure that you’d have even noticed a few monsters more or less in your world, what with the mass of Slayers.”
She watched, as Giles tilted his head, to meet his Ethan’s gaze, and a brief, but intense silent conversation took place between the two of them, a silence which it was Giles who finally broke, “Are you…?”
“I will be,” a few more moments dragged past, as Ethan took the time to force his thoughts back into order, “Right. As well as splitting the active Potentials order to put a bandage on the bleed, summoning you was double edged, I’m afraid,” finally he let go of Giles hand in order to dig out the folded square of paper which was still tucked into Giles’ pocket.
This time it was a far more tense silence that fell across the three of them, as Giles watched the Slayer unfold the prophecy and straighten it out, glancing at the Latin briefly, before tucking the original under the English translation.
“A Prophecy? My god, if you had any idea how much of my life has been screwed up by damned prophecies… ever since some old guy found me and said that I was the one destined to slay the vampires…”
Then she took a deep breath, and as she really looked at the two men sitting beside her, what they’d said really had it’s chance to sink in. Good people gone mad… living on-top of a battle zone, fighting a war that they didn’t actually think that they were going to win, the Watcher’s Council wiped out… well, that one had happened in her world, too, but she couldn’t even begin to imagine what that blow would be like, coupled with the loss of the Slayer line.
And… again, her gaze drifted to the prophecy… they thought that she was this catalyst, or whatever, the one that could make a difference to the fate of their world?
Well, it wasn’t as though she had an elsewhere to be. And if she really could make a difference, then wasn’t that what she had been born to do, anyway? She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d stopped an apocalypse back home, not without the might of at least twenty others working her. And hadn’t feeling a bit superfluous been a big part of what her problem had been back there? That she hadn’t been the only one breaking the mould, but one of a few dozen doing that exact same thing, instead?
Well, no chance of that here.
“I’m in.”