Gamefic: Making Arrangements, Part VII.
Title: Making Arrangements.
Rating: R.
Fandom: Covenant of the Slayer/Healy Compound.
Synopsis: Jerry and Sam try to connect over the phone, while things get a little unpredictable both at home and abroad. Originally written for ceolyn, for the first Valentine's Day round of Iron Author, but it fetched up a bit on the 'longer than intended' side of things. As so often happens. You can find part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, part five here, and part six over here. I'd like to say that this is going to be less than ten parts long. I would be lying.
***
Basingstoke, England, the Harrington Flat.
*
Leaf woke up with a head that was pounding like an amateur drum corps, a crick in her neck, and a distinct lack of anything resembling a tied-up Indian Slayer. She pushed herself unsteadily into a sitting position, staring at the empty chair. There it was, entirely unoccupied, and there was all the rope they'd used to tie Salila to it, laying in discarded loops all over the living room floor. Leaf rubbed her eyes. Still no Salila.
"Oh," she said, still somewhat dazed from her unplanned and impromptu nap. "Dear."
Standing proved to be rather more difficult than it generally was; her legs didn't particularly want to listen to her commands, and her arms, while they were willing to be used to prop her in a stationary position, objected strongly when she asked them to do anything more complex, such as moving. Gritting her teeth, Leaf dragged herself over to the chair, which she used to hoist herself to her feet. The room spun in a lazy circle around her, and she groaned. "I hate concussions," she said, addressing the unfairness of the universe as much as the still-spinning room. Dropping down into the chair, she closed her eyes, trying to collect herself.
When she opened her eyes again, the room was no longer spinning, and the quality of the light slanting through the windows had changed, going from streetlights and neon to the hazy gray of just-before-dawn. Leaf blinked, then sat bolt upright, ignoring the lingering ache at the back of her skull. Being koshed by a Slayer would have killed anyone short of another Slayer. For another Slayer, it was just a temporary inconvenience...one which had, unfortunately, taken her out of commission long enough for Salila to have potentially found Jerry and done rather more damage than she really liked to think about. Moving entirely on auto-pilot, she raced over to the phone, snatched it out of the cradle, and dialed the number for Jerry's cellular.
The phone rang twice before it was answered, and she began, hurriedly, "Geraldine, it's Leaf. Salila tricked me, she's--"
"--loose and on the other end of the telephone, maybe?" asked a dry, familiar voice. "You really are an example of the American educational system, aren't you? Tell you what, sweetheart, my quarrel's not with you. You stay home, and you won't get hurt."
"Now see here, you snotty little--" Leaf snapped, stopping as the line went dead and the phone began beeping stridently in her ear. Expression disgusted, she dropped the receiver back into the cradle. "She's got Jerry's phone. She's loose, and she's got Jerry's phone." The room didn't respond to her statement of the obvious, and so she added, even more sourly, "She's loose, she's got Jerry's phone, and I don't know where Jerry is." She stalked across the room, still trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her head, and snatched her jacket off the closet door before heading out into the hall. Salila was out there, somewhere, gunning for Jerry. She had to be warned.
Hopefully before it was too late.
*
Basingstoke, England, The Council Estates.
*
It was remarkable how freeing a truly towering rage could be. Jerry slammed the front door of the Council house open hard enough to send it rattling on its hinges, and stalked down the hallway without paying any heed to the Council Slayers that scattered like quail in front of what they rightly recognized as a bigger, more experienced, and most importantly, much, much angrier predator. Only a few bothered to hesitate long enough to size her up, and they quickly followed their companions to safer parts of the building. Vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness, they could handle. Furious Harringtons were a bit outside of their league.
The facility at Basingstoke was remote enough from the main Council offices that it had been largely overlooked by the swarming Bringers; had, in fact, been largely neglected for the better part of a century, in favour of locales that had better plumbing and electrical systems that didn't short out every time there was a stiff breeze or somebody sneezed. After the main Council offices got shut down by heavy explosives, it was only natural that the survivors would look to reopen some of the older holdings, and Basingstoke had been relatively high up on the list. Renovations had begun just as soon as it was determined that there were enough surviving Watchers to make it worthwhole. Of course, the rather hurried nature of those same renovations had resulted in a building that was less logical and more a twisting maze of tiny passages, all of them alike.
After the eighth wrong turn on what Jerry had been sure was the way to the Chairman's office, she stopped, all but quivering with rage. "If Iggy were here right now," she muttered, "she'd be saying something ever-so-clever about being eaten by a grue, and then I'd be forced to punch her through the nearest wall."
She paused. "Oh," she said, after a moment's thoughtful contemplation. "What a splendid idea."
No expense had been spared in the renovation of the Basingstoke facility. The wiring, plumbing, insulation, and other related domestic -ings had been redone with the greatest of care, and with, of course, a great deal of attention to rendering a relatively prosaic country estate into something that could be used as a fortress in time of emergency. The exterior walls had been reinforced until they could stand up to a fairly major siege and survive direct hits from large missile weapons without actually being breeched.
And it perhaps said something about the short-sightedness of both the Council and the architects they had hired for the renovation that no one had ever considered Slayer-proofing the interior walls as well as the walls outside.
Punching through the first wall took roughly eight seconds, and was infinitely more satisfying than merely walking down another endless, poorly-decorated hallway. The room on the other side was empty and bordered on featureless, with its plainly papered walls and patently uncomfortable furniture. Jerry looked around, snorted, and exited to the hall, where she repeated the process, punching through the wall and into a small sitting room packed with startled, guilty-looking Council Slayers.
"No need to get up, just passing through," Jerry said genially, as she made her way towards the door. The nearest of the Council Slayers shrank back, as if she were somehow contagious. "Oh, come on, now, have they been putting something into your food? You're jumpier than Evelyn after she's been at my clothes without asking, and that's saying something. Not," she added, seeing their perplexed expressions, "a good something. They didn't have your tongues removed, did they? Father'd have favoured that, I'm sure."
"We don't want to fight you," said one of the Council Slayers, querilously.
Jerry looked at her, and stifled a sigh. The girl was no more than thirteen, and a young-looking thirteen at that, the sort that still added 'and a half' onto every statement she made, as if six more months of not getting herself slaughtered by the forces of darkness or public school would make all the difference. "And I don't want to fight you. So why don't we skip this whole silly step, and go straight to the part where you tell me how to find Mister Davies? He and I need to have a little chat."
"Afraid you'll lose?" jeered another of the Slayers.
"No, actually," Jerry replied. "Afraid I'll win."
Silence greeted this statement, accompanied by a certain increase in worried looks from around the room. They had her outnumbered nearly a dozen to one; several of them were substantially larger than she was; and judging by the way they were looking at her, not a one of them had yet seen any real combat, and she'd mop the floor with them in a matter of seconds. Oh, if they rushed her, she'd lose...but they wouldn't rush her. Most of the Council Slayers she'd seen were being trained in the 'traditional' method, which meant one-on-one fights, standing as the lone hero on a battleground of bodies. Bollucks to that. As far as Jerry was concerned, fighting one-on-one was a cheery way of announcing that you didn't feel like living long enough to see your next birthday. In this brave new world of Slayers that had the option of traveling in packs, there was more to learn by watching a football mob than from reading the Council handbooks -- and not a one of the girls she was facing now had quite caught onto that idea. They'd come at her one after the other, fighting as if 'honour' had any meaning on the field, and that was how they'd fail.
Finally, hesitantly, a tall, ginger-haired girl asked, "Are you going to hurt him?"
"America's full of barbarians, but that hasn't made me entirely insane," Jerry said, dusting a bit of plaster dust off her hip. "I need to talk to him about a little arranged marriage he's decided I ought to carry through with, and the rather rightfully angry fiancee of the gentleman in question, who presently happens to be tied to a chair back at my flat. I don't want her there. I also don't particularly want to get married to someone that I've barely met. Call me egotistical, but I'd like to think my boyfriend might object."
"You don't want to marry Leo?" asked one of the Slayers, wide-eyed. "But he's so cute!"
"You have Salila tied to a chair?" said another. "An actual chair? How did you get her tied to a chair?"
"I'm sure he's very charming, as Watchers go, but we barely know each other, whereas the gent that actually asked me to marry him, rather than being assigned to marrying me, has some idea of what I'm like. I assure you, I may seem to be all sweetness, fairy tales, and sun shining out of my arse, but once you get to know me, you'll find that I can trend a trifle to the cynical side," Jerry said, blandly. "And yes, an actual chair, to which she is secured with actual rope, that being how I tend to deal with people who come to my home uninvited and attack me without warning. Makes me testy. Where can I find Mister Davies, please?"
The news that she'd been able to defeat Salila seemed to surprise the gathered Slayers, who murmured amongst themselves in a manner that Jerry recognized handily from her days at the Summers household, to say nothing of the way the younger Healys tended to communicate. Finally, hesitantly, one of them said, "Will you show us how you did that?"
"Will you show me where to find Mister Davies?"
"You promise you're not going to hurt him?"
"Honestly, you people...you have what, sixty Slayers here? At the least? And however many Watchers, and some of them are bound to be witches or warlocks or whatnot, and that doesn't even begin to go into what sort of little bits of nasty you might have tucked up in the armoury -- I promise you, I am not by any stretch of the imagination either stupid or suicidal enough to physically accost the standing Chairman of the local Council." Jerry planted her hands on her hips. "I'm just going to shout at him until I turn purple. That won't hurt him unless he's got a weak heart."
There was a pause as the gathered Council Slayers murmured over this latest bit of information. Finally, the ginger-haired one put her hand hesitantly up in the air. "One last question," she said.
Jerry sighed. "Yes? What is it?"
Lowering the hand, the ginger-haired Slayer earnestly asked, "Can we watch?"
*
Harrington House, Crouch End, London.
*
Shoving her wet hair away from her forehead, Anna glared at the room in general, and at Carmen in particular. The Canadian Slayer did her best to keep from squirming under Anna's glare, gaze flicking nervously to the half-full glass of ice water that was sitting on the end table next to her. Somehow, she didn't think declaring that it had been Eddie's idea was exactly going to buy her much sympathy, no matter how much Anna was glaring.
Kim was settled in one of the room's multiple over-stuffed chairs, with Evelyn sitting at her feet, hugging her knees against her chest. Running her fingers through the smaller Slayer's hair, Kim drawled, "You promised exposition, Eddie, an' you're not putting out. Are you always this much of a tease?"
"Is there anything you can't make sound entirely inappropriate?" Edward asked, by way of reply.
Kim gave this a brief moment's thought before saying, cheerfully, "Nope. It's a gift."
"Did you save the receipt?" asked Carmen.
"Now, Carmen, there's no need to be nasty," said Kim, sounding faintly amused. We're all friends here. Good friends, with a common goal."
Warily, Carmen asked, "What's that?"
Kim offered her a beautific smile. "Punching as many Watchers as humanly possible. Sometimes even doin' it twice."
"Will we get score cards?" asked Evie.
"Only if you promise to hit them very, very hard," said Kim.
Edward cleared his throat. "As fascinating a look into the deranged psyches of the pathologically violent as this has proven to be, I was wondering if we might move along to something that isn't focused entirely on punching my former fellows in the faces."
"See, I just love it when he talks that way," said Kim, cheerfully. "All that alliteration. It's like listening to my eighth grade English teacher."
"What happened to your eighth grade English teacher?" asked Carmen, despite the gnawing feeling that she probably didn't really want to know.
"Eaten by grathnar beasts," Kim replied.
"Oh," said Carmen.
"I did not get water poured on my head to hear about Kim's dead English teacher," muttered Anna. "Not unless I get to make him dead."
"Sounds like the grathnar got there first," said Evie, helpfully. Anna made an incoherent snarling noise.
"If we can stay focused for more than thirty seconds at a time, perhaps there's a chance that we'll be able to rescue Jerry--"
"And punch Watchers!"
"--and punch Watchers, yes, Kimberley, before we find ourselves offered slices of wedding cake?" Edward crossed his arms. "Are folks ready to listen, or shall I just nip off down the hall for a cup of hemlock tea while you fight amongst yourselves?" General fidgeting and guilty expressions greeted this question.
After a suitably long pause, Edward nodded, satisfied. "Very good. Now, Jerry's at the Council hall in Basingstoke. I haven't been there for years, but if it's anything like the other Council halls, their security is going to be excellent. Add this to the fact that it's likely to be teeming with Council Slayers, and a frontal assault becomes a rather bad idea."
"We can take their stupid Council Slayers!" said Evie, indignantly.
"Yes, sweetie, but we'd like to get inside without anybody catching a nasty case of the deads," Kim said, stroking Evie's hair. She turned a level look towards Edward. "I'm guessin' you've got a way for us to manage that?"
"Oddly enough, I do. And it doesn't even require you to leave your weapons behind, which is good, as I know that the strain of doing so would almost certainly kill you." Edward paused. "It may, however, be stressful in...other ways. I'm not entirely sure you're up to it."
This statement was greeted with sour looks and general grumbling by the gathered Slayers. It was Anna who took the bait first, however, saying indignantly, "We took on Wolfram and Hart! We can handle anything we have to do to get in smacking range of the stupid Council."
"Anything?" asked Edward.
Sensing trouble, Kim eyed him. Edward merely smiled. Finally, folding her arms, she said, "You want to bring it, Watcher-man? Then bring it."
"As you like," Edward replied.
Carmen closed her eyes.
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke.
*
"You're Singari?" demanded Leonard, looking horrified and beginning to back away. "You can't be on this train! This is the express!"
Sam blinked at him. He'd encountered a great many reactions to the fact that he was a monkey demon in his spare time, ranging from immediate attack to 'been there, killed that' disdain, with a brief stop, in Jerry's case, at 'well, I suppose that means I can finally experience Mary Jane Parker's sex life and see what all the fuss is about'. He had never, however, encountered the notion that being a demon meant he couldn't ride the express train to, well, anywhere. Much less Basingstoke, a city whose only distinguishing feature, from his perspective, was 'contains my fiancee'.
"Uh," he said. "They didn't say that at the ticket counter..." It was, at the time, the most intelligent thing he could come up with.
Belatedly, he thought that perhaps 'I'm not a demon, your pet crazy girl is wrong' might have been a better response, but by that point, it was a little bit too late for anything so reasonable.
"He's got Slayer on his skin," commented the crazy girl in question, almost lightly. "It's like cheap perfume, all over him. He must have doused himself in her."
Sam, who was fairly sure Jerry wouldn't appreciate being compared to perfume of any sort, much less the cheap kind, raised his hands to shoulder-height and protested, "There's no reason to get personal here, okay? I'm just passing through."
"Had to flee the country, did you?" Leonard asked. The other two girls were standing now, moving towards their little cluster of impending badness. Sam began really wishing he hadn't felt the need for that sandwich. "What did you do, kill her? That's why you're on the way to Basingstoke? Looking for a Slayer?"
"Well, yes. I mean, no! I mean, it's not what you think it is, it's--"
The crazy girl punched him in the face.
Or, rather, the crazy girl punched the air where his face had been only a moment before. Her expression, as she registered her lack of connection with yielding demon flesh and facial bones, was less one of annoyance and more one of sheer and utter bewilderment. "I missed," she said, bemused, and eyed Sam in a distinctly baleful manner. "I can't have missed. You're cheating."
Now that was a sentiment Sam had encountered before, most frequently from Evie, who took it very personally when their sparring sessions turned into games of keep-away. "I am not," he protested. "I just don't like being punched by people I've just met."
"How about being kicked repeatedly in the ribs?" asked the larger of the two approaching girls, a strapping specimen who would have looked entirely at home back at the Healy Compound. Possibly carrying a cow on her shoulders.
Looking to Leonard, Sam said plaintively, "They're all Slayers, aren't they? Out of all the trains in the entire country, I had to go and pick the one with three cranky Slayers in the dining car. I didn't know the express was a no-Singari zone. So if you guys would just back off, I'll go find myself another t--"
All three of the girls lunged, almost in unison.
What followed might very well have gone down in the record books as 'most purely silly all-out brawl ever staged in a train dining car between three supernaturally-enhanced teenage girls and a monkey demon', had such record books actually been maintained. What the three Slayers lacked in training and the capacity to work together, they made up for in sheer, cranky determination. Every time Sam managed to knock one of them down -- occasionally using one of the others as his weapon of choice -- she sprang right back to her feet again, and charged. He, meanwhile, was rather remarkably hindered by the train car's low ceiling and lack of convenient lighting fixtures to dangle from, which meant that he spent most of his time bobbing, weaving, and throwing things in an effort to buy himself some breathing space.
Leonard, showing surprising sense for a Watcher, especially one who'd had as little sleep as he'd recently been able to get, only observed the chaos for a moment before ducking behind the dining car counter, peeking over the top of it and ducking whenever anything came flying in his direction. The staff had fled about the time Linda threw the first punch, he was pleased to note; they might be reporting a gang fight in the dining car, but it was unlikely that any of them had seen the tall Chinese bloke suddenly sprout a tail. That was for the best. "Bloody orientation squad never said what I was supposed to do if I ran into a damned Singari," he muttered.
"Well, the Singari always favoured 'don't tell your pet crazy girl to punch him in the face'," said Sam, behind him. Leonard whirled, pressing his back flat against the counter. Sam rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. Stop looking at me like that. I don't eat kittens." A chair came flying over the counter, ruffling the fur atop his head. Sam didn't even flinch. "Jerry'd kill me if I even suggested it."
"Good lord, there's another Singari on this train?"
"Uh, no. 'Scuse me a second." Sam shot an arm up over his head, catching a beer bottle in midair, and hurled it back the way it had come. Unconcerned, he lowered his arm, and said, "Jerry's not Singari, she's my fiancee." He paused. "I mean, I guess she'd make a cute monkey. But she's not one. Pretty sure monkey demon girls can't be Called as Slayers. And she'd probably bitch about the tail messing up the line of her pants. When Jerry's not happy about something, she's pretty good at making everyone else unhappy, too."
Jerry. Slayer. American fiancee. Leonard stared at him, a slow, horrified conclusion assembling itself in his mind. "You mean to tell me that--"
A hand reached over the counter, grabbing the monkey demon by the tail and hauling him back out into the fray. Sam went where the movement compelled him, swearing all the way. Leonard remained where he was for a moment, staring into space.
"She said she was engaged..." he said carefully, feeling out the words. Could she possibly have suffered that much of a lapse of common sense, judgement, and, well, simple good taste while she was a captive in the States? He'd heard horror stories about what happened to them in Cleveland, and still more about the Healys in general, but a girl like Geraldine, who'd grown up Council...there was no possible way the demon was talking about the same Jerry. There had to be loads of Slayers named 'Jerry', and some of them were bound to have the incredibly poor taste necessary to be attracted to a man that wasn't even human.
Unless, of course, becoming engaged to a monkey demon was just another part of the sort of ongoing rebellion which could, say, lead to the only daughter of a previously well-regarded Watcher lineage deciding that she'd rather quit the Council and swan about the middle of nowhere with a bunch of inbred hillbilly madmen. Slowly, Leonard pushed himself to his feet, and peeped over the counter. The Singari had his tail around Linda's neck, and was whacking her head against the wall like it was a volleyball, while Anne and Sophie did their damnedest to punch him in the kidneys.
Leonard cleared his throat. "Er, excuse me. Mister...Singari?"
"Busy now!" Sam called, dodging another punch. Linda looked like she was breaking free. "Being attacked by crazy girls with super powers! Try again later!"
"Your fiancee. You mentioned she was a Slayer? Could you, perhaps, offer a physical description?"
"Again, being attacked by crazy girls with super powers!" Losing his grip on Linda, Sam vaulted out of the way. Anne's fist impacted with Sophie's collarbone with a loud 'crunch'. Leonard winced. "She's, y'know, your standard issue hot Hollywood librarian chick. Tall, kinda red, kinda brown hair, blue eyes, British accent, likes tweed...hey! No pulling the tail! The tail is off-limits to you, crazy hitting girl!"
"Has she got a name, or is she just 'Jerry'?" asked Leonard. There were bound to be loads of Slayers -- well, several Slayers -- all right, hopefully more than one Slayer -- who went by 'Jerry', but how many of them would fit that particular description? He was terribly sure the answer would be 'not many'.
"Can't talk! Tail being pulled by crazy hitting girl!" The Singari aimed a kick at Sophie's head, which she dodged, whooping.
Leonard winced again. Then, sighing, he clapped his hands. "All right, you three, stop hitting the monkey. We're taking a time-out."
The trio stopped hitting and turned to stare at him, briefly united by their disbelief. Sam took advantage of their distraction and yanked his tail free before jumping away, stopping by the door to look, warily, back towards the group.
"What is this, football?" Anne demanded. "There's no time-outs in beating up demons."
"Actually, I kinda like the time-out idea," said Sam.
"Shut it or I go back to hitting you," snapped Sophie.
Sam shut it.
"I'm the Watcher, and if I say there are time-outs in beating up demons, there are time-outs in beating up demons," said Leonard, trying to sound as confident and authoritarian as possible. It was difficult, given that he was being faced with the notion that his ex-fiancee and -- if the Council had its way -- future wife had, in fact, decided that her rebellion against the teachings of her youth ought to include dating outside her species. "Can you please tell us your fiancee's name now that you're no longer being hit?"
Rubbing his tail, Sam eyed him, and replied warily, "Jerry, like I said."
"Is it short for anything?"
"Geraldine. Geraldine Harrington. She has a middle name, too, but if I tell you that, she'll know. Her magical girl powers will kick in, and she'll know, and then your crazy girls won't need to hit me anymore, because she'll appear out of nowhere and kill me dead with the power of her angry stare." Sam continued rubbing his tail, expression turning thoughtful. "Actually, that might be worth it. I mean, at least then, I'd know where she was. Before she killed me."
Leonard put a hand over his face. "It's Wilhemina, isn't it? Like the character from that dreadful vampire book."
"Uh." Sam stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"Our new Watcher's psychic," said Linda, conspiratorially.
"Ever feel like you've just fallen into the middle of a serial drama no one's bothered to write the recaps on?" asked Sophie.
"I think she's double-timing them," said Anne, folding her arms.
"That's my fiancee you're talking about," said Sam.
"Actually," said Leonard, "it's mine."
There didn't seem to be much to say to that. Sam just stared.
*
Basingstoke, England, Westbourne Avenue.
*
Salila needed a plan.
She needed a good plan; a solid plan; the sort of plan that was absolutely iron-clad and couldn't be mussed by the actions of a traitorous skank and her twitty little Yank sidekick. Anger management issues? She didn't have any damn anger management issues. Her anger said 'oy, you should punch that smug little cow in the face about twenty times for coming back here', and as she felt her anger had pretty much the right idea, she didn't really feel the need to manage it more than she already was. Her anger was managing itself just fine without her.
Sadly, she wasn't having much luck coming up with plans that weren't some variation on her original plan, which had seemed foolproof: go to the apartment, beat the living snot out of the skank, and send her packing off home to her crazy American friends, far away from the Council, decent Slayers who still respected their Calling, and most importantly, Leonard.
She hadn't banked on the stupid little cow having backup. Or on the pair of them somehow winning. They must have cheated. She simply wasn't certain exactly how they'd gone and done it, and until she had that sussed out, she couldn't go up on them again. She needed to find another way.
The traitorous twit's cell was vibrating. Sal pulled it out and flipped it open. 'You have one new text message' said the display. "Do I, now?" she muttered, and pressed the menu button.
'J --' said the message. 'I know I shouldn't say anything but I also know you don't like surprises & the waiting = making me THE CRAZY. Sam on way. Should be in Basingstoke soon; traveling by train. REALLY WORRIED ABOUT YOU. Calm him down. Love, Ig.'
Salila read the message. Read it again. Clicked the phone shut, and turned in the direction of the train station.
And then, quite slowly, she began to smile. "All right, then," she said. "Looks as if I've got myself a train to catch."
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke, Dining Car.
*
"Wait-wait-wait," said Sophie, holding up her hands and looking maliciously delighted. The Australian Slayer turned from Leonard to Sam and back again, a slow grin spreading across her face. "You're telling me you two blokes are both engaged to the same sheila? And she's a Slayer? Right, I take back almost half the things I've said about the Council. Anything gives me a monkey-man from America facing off against the junior professor here is something I can support."
"That's quite enough, Sophie," snapped Leonard, removing his hand from his face. "Look, Mister...Singari demon. I don't know precisely what you're trying to pull off here, but Geraldine Harrington is a fine, upstanding young woman from a respected Watcher lineage, and this sort of...of...of insult to her honour is something I positively refuse to tolerate. I'll thank you to retract that vile slander this instant."
"Open arse, insert stick," said Sophie, cheerfully.
Anne looked dubious. "Do all Watchers have script-writers feeding them their lines from somewhere we can't see? Who comes up with 'retract that vile slander' off the top of their heads? People don't talk like that."
"Watchers aren't people," said Linda.
"Can't argue that," Sophie cheerfully agreed.
"I'm right here and I can hear you," said Leonard, glaring at the trio before turning his attention back towards Sam, who was still staring at him. "I don't know what sort of foul demon's trap this is meant to be, but it's not going to work, all right? I know Jerry Harrington, and there's absolutely no way she'd fall into a compact with some foul scion of a demon dimension." He paused, then added, "No offense."
"Uh, offense taken," Sam said, still staring. Irritation was beginning to filter through his surprise. A lot of it. "Dude, where the hell do you get off calling me a 'foul scion'? I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure I don't like it. And if you know Jerry so well, how come she thought you got blown up with the rest of the Council? Maybe I'm not some fancy-pants Watcher with a bunch of crazy girls to go around siccing on people who're just trying to get to their girlfriends, but even I, y'know, believe it's appropriate to call my fiancee when there's a chance she thinks I've been exploded."
"He's right, you know," said Anne. "Girls generally like to know their boyfriends aren't dead. It makes us feel cared after."
"I'm sorry, I haven't heard anything after 'foul scion'," said Sophie. "Who talks like that?"
"Oh, and also? I'm with the bleached-out crazy girl. Not even Jerry talks like that, and when she gets pissed enough, she doesn't just have a stick up her ass, she has an entire redwood forest." Sam narrowed his eyes, tail beginning to lash. "I think maybe you should just back off."
"No, I think you should back off!" said Leonard. With a dramatic flare, he pulled a water pistol from inside his coat and leveled it at Sam. "I'm warning you. I didn't want it to come to this."
There was a moment of silence as one Singari demon and three Slayers blinked, blankly, at the Watcher with the water gun.
Finally, voice quite serious, Linda said, "None of you gets to call me crazy anymore."
"Fair," Anne agreed.
"Sorry," said Sophie.
"It's all right," said Linda.
"Uh, dude?" said Sam. "I'm not the Wicked Witch of the what-now. I don't melt if you get me wet. I mean, I have a really high muscle density, so I'll sink if you throw me into a swimming pool, but mostly, I'm just gonna smell like wet monkey."
Looking faint, Linda said, "That's unhygenic."
The other two Slayers took a step away from her. "Oy, don't get the monkey wet, Linds might chunder," said Sophie. "None of us need that."
"Yeah, don't get the monkey wet," Sam agreed. "Er...what does 'chunder' mean?"
"Vomit," said Anne.
Linda moaned.
"Please don't get the monkey wet," said Sam.
"You've besmirched the honour of my betrothed!" snapped Leonard.
"Dude, she thought you were dead when we hooked up. I haven't besmirched anything. And there were extenuating circumstances! Like a werewolf and the end of the world. So back off, okay?" Sam held his hands up, palms outwards, trying to force himself to stay calm despite the pressing urge to toss the whiny little Englishman out the window of the train and see whether Watchers actually bounced. Jerry would probably get pissed if he did it, and she was going to be pissed enough when she found out he'd come to England. "Let's talk about this like rational people."
"I don't parlay with demons!" said Leonard. "Too late, fiend!" Pulling the trigger on his squirt gun, he shot Sam repeatedly in the middle of the chest.
Linda fainted.
Looking down at the growing wet spot on his jacket, Sam blinked. "Dude, what the hell?" He looked back up at Leonard. "Water? You actually shot me with a water gun loaded with actual water?"
"Holy water!" said Leonard.
"I'm Episcopalian!" Sam crossed his arms, scowling. "Dude, first you attack me with your pet crazy girls, then you say I'm a foul scion -- which better not mean anything nasty about my mother -- and now you're squirting me with holy water? You should be glad Jerry's not planning to marry you. She'd kill you for getting on her nerves."
"Well, she certainly isn't going to marry you!" Leonard retorted. "It's...it's miscegenation! Hell, it borders on beastiality!"
There was a moment of silence as everyone in the dining car contemplated that statement. Sam looked stunned.
Turning to Sophie, Anne commented, "I think it's awfully likely that the monkey's about to start hitting."
"I'd be," Sophie agreed, glancing, sidelong, at Leonard. "Bit over the line, there, wasn't that?"
That seemed to be the cue Sam had been waiting for. Holding himself completely still, he said, slowly, "What. Did you. Just. Say?"
"That no decent daughter of a Watcher line is going to marry a monkey," Leonard snapped.
Sam cracked his knuckles. This was a quite complex operation, and seemed to go on for some time. "Say that again," he said.
"Monkey," Leonard said. He had a sinking feeling that he was in over his head, but really couldn't see the way out of the pit he was rapidly digging for himself. What had those heathens done to her? Either the Singari was lying, or she'd actually agreed to marry a demon. Of course, there was a third option..."Does she even know? You haven't ever bothered to inform that poor, innocent girl that she's on the borderline of pledging herself to a--"
"Linda pegged him in thirty seconds. You really think this Jerry girl's managed to sleep with him and not notice?" asked Sophie. Both Sam and Leonard turned to look at her, Leonard making the sort of face more commonly associated with trout. Sophie shrugged. "I'm just saying, there's not a way he'd have come all the way to England looking for her if she didn't put out."
"She's right," said Anne. "My mother always said that no boy would buy the cow if he could get the milk for free, but most boys won't buy the cow if they don't at least get some sign of proof that the creamery it comes with knows how to churn butter."
"Please stop talking," said Leonard.
"Jerry's known what I am from the moment she met me," said Sam, flatly. "Now I really understand why she was so willing to quit the Council. Are you all small-minded racist bastards, or did she just get lucky in the engagement lottery?"
"Monkey has a point," said Sophie.
Still back on the dairy metaphor, Anne commented, "My boyfriend wouldn't follow me to England for anything less than six gallons of top-grade whipping cream."
Sam hesitated, distracted from his desire to play whack-a-mole with Leonard's head by the attempt to decode that imagery. It wasn't working, and so he abandoned the attempt, going back to glaring at the Watcher. "Well?"
"I'm not racist!" Leonard protested. "My girlfriend's Indian!"
"Wait, you have a girlfriend and you're getting pissy because I'm planning to marry the woman you thought was dead?" Sam demanded. "And you're using the B-word? What the hell, man?"
"That is a bit selfish of you," Anne said.
"Look, the peanut gallery isn't needed, all right?" said Leonard. "You can't marry Geraldine! She's a Slayer! You're a bloody Singari! It's just not proper!"
"Right," said Sam, darkly. "Crazy girls, it's been fun having you try to kick my ass, but if I stay here, I'm gonna kill your Watcher, and then we'll actually have to fight. You're an asshole, dude. Just so you're aware."
Moving almost too fast for the eye to follow, Sam lunged for the dining car window. Anne and Sophie realized what he was doing and lunged after him a moment later, but by then, it was too late; he had wrenched the window open, and was out it and gone into the night.
"That didn't go well," said Anne, staring wide-eyed at the tracks rattling by below.
Putting a hand over his face again, Leonard just groaned.
Rating: R.
Fandom: Covenant of the Slayer/Healy Compound.
Synopsis: Jerry and Sam try to connect over the phone, while things get a little unpredictable both at home and abroad. Originally written for ceolyn, for the first Valentine's Day round of Iron Author, but it fetched up a bit on the 'longer than intended' side of things. As so often happens. You can find part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, part five here, and part six over here. I'd like to say that this is going to be less than ten parts long. I would be lying.
***
Basingstoke, England, the Harrington Flat.
*
Leaf woke up with a head that was pounding like an amateur drum corps, a crick in her neck, and a distinct lack of anything resembling a tied-up Indian Slayer. She pushed herself unsteadily into a sitting position, staring at the empty chair. There it was, entirely unoccupied, and there was all the rope they'd used to tie Salila to it, laying in discarded loops all over the living room floor. Leaf rubbed her eyes. Still no Salila.
"Oh," she said, still somewhat dazed from her unplanned and impromptu nap. "Dear."
Standing proved to be rather more difficult than it generally was; her legs didn't particularly want to listen to her commands, and her arms, while they were willing to be used to prop her in a stationary position, objected strongly when she asked them to do anything more complex, such as moving. Gritting her teeth, Leaf dragged herself over to the chair, which she used to hoist herself to her feet. The room spun in a lazy circle around her, and she groaned. "I hate concussions," she said, addressing the unfairness of the universe as much as the still-spinning room. Dropping down into the chair, she closed her eyes, trying to collect herself.
When she opened her eyes again, the room was no longer spinning, and the quality of the light slanting through the windows had changed, going from streetlights and neon to the hazy gray of just-before-dawn. Leaf blinked, then sat bolt upright, ignoring the lingering ache at the back of her skull. Being koshed by a Slayer would have killed anyone short of another Slayer. For another Slayer, it was just a temporary inconvenience...one which had, unfortunately, taken her out of commission long enough for Salila to have potentially found Jerry and done rather more damage than she really liked to think about. Moving entirely on auto-pilot, she raced over to the phone, snatched it out of the cradle, and dialed the number for Jerry's cellular.
The phone rang twice before it was answered, and she began, hurriedly, "Geraldine, it's Leaf. Salila tricked me, she's--"
"--loose and on the other end of the telephone, maybe?" asked a dry, familiar voice. "You really are an example of the American educational system, aren't you? Tell you what, sweetheart, my quarrel's not with you. You stay home, and you won't get hurt."
"Now see here, you snotty little--" Leaf snapped, stopping as the line went dead and the phone began beeping stridently in her ear. Expression disgusted, she dropped the receiver back into the cradle. "She's got Jerry's phone. She's loose, and she's got Jerry's phone." The room didn't respond to her statement of the obvious, and so she added, even more sourly, "She's loose, she's got Jerry's phone, and I don't know where Jerry is." She stalked across the room, still trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her head, and snatched her jacket off the closet door before heading out into the hall. Salila was out there, somewhere, gunning for Jerry. She had to be warned.
Hopefully before it was too late.
*
Basingstoke, England, The Council Estates.
*
It was remarkable how freeing a truly towering rage could be. Jerry slammed the front door of the Council house open hard enough to send it rattling on its hinges, and stalked down the hallway without paying any heed to the Council Slayers that scattered like quail in front of what they rightly recognized as a bigger, more experienced, and most importantly, much, much angrier predator. Only a few bothered to hesitate long enough to size her up, and they quickly followed their companions to safer parts of the building. Vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness, they could handle. Furious Harringtons were a bit outside of their league.
The facility at Basingstoke was remote enough from the main Council offices that it had been largely overlooked by the swarming Bringers; had, in fact, been largely neglected for the better part of a century, in favour of locales that had better plumbing and electrical systems that didn't short out every time there was a stiff breeze or somebody sneezed. After the main Council offices got shut down by heavy explosives, it was only natural that the survivors would look to reopen some of the older holdings, and Basingstoke had been relatively high up on the list. Renovations had begun just as soon as it was determined that there were enough surviving Watchers to make it worthwhole. Of course, the rather hurried nature of those same renovations had resulted in a building that was less logical and more a twisting maze of tiny passages, all of them alike.
After the eighth wrong turn on what Jerry had been sure was the way to the Chairman's office, she stopped, all but quivering with rage. "If Iggy were here right now," she muttered, "she'd be saying something ever-so-clever about being eaten by a grue, and then I'd be forced to punch her through the nearest wall."
She paused. "Oh," she said, after a moment's thoughtful contemplation. "What a splendid idea."
No expense had been spared in the renovation of the Basingstoke facility. The wiring, plumbing, insulation, and other related domestic -ings had been redone with the greatest of care, and with, of course, a great deal of attention to rendering a relatively prosaic country estate into something that could be used as a fortress in time of emergency. The exterior walls had been reinforced until they could stand up to a fairly major siege and survive direct hits from large missile weapons without actually being breeched.
And it perhaps said something about the short-sightedness of both the Council and the architects they had hired for the renovation that no one had ever considered Slayer-proofing the interior walls as well as the walls outside.
Punching through the first wall took roughly eight seconds, and was infinitely more satisfying than merely walking down another endless, poorly-decorated hallway. The room on the other side was empty and bordered on featureless, with its plainly papered walls and patently uncomfortable furniture. Jerry looked around, snorted, and exited to the hall, where she repeated the process, punching through the wall and into a small sitting room packed with startled, guilty-looking Council Slayers.
"No need to get up, just passing through," Jerry said genially, as she made her way towards the door. The nearest of the Council Slayers shrank back, as if she were somehow contagious. "Oh, come on, now, have they been putting something into your food? You're jumpier than Evelyn after she's been at my clothes without asking, and that's saying something. Not," she added, seeing their perplexed expressions, "a good something. They didn't have your tongues removed, did they? Father'd have favoured that, I'm sure."
"We don't want to fight you," said one of the Council Slayers, querilously.
Jerry looked at her, and stifled a sigh. The girl was no more than thirteen, and a young-looking thirteen at that, the sort that still added 'and a half' onto every statement she made, as if six more months of not getting herself slaughtered by the forces of darkness or public school would make all the difference. "And I don't want to fight you. So why don't we skip this whole silly step, and go straight to the part where you tell me how to find Mister Davies? He and I need to have a little chat."
"Afraid you'll lose?" jeered another of the Slayers.
"No, actually," Jerry replied. "Afraid I'll win."
Silence greeted this statement, accompanied by a certain increase in worried looks from around the room. They had her outnumbered nearly a dozen to one; several of them were substantially larger than she was; and judging by the way they were looking at her, not a one of them had yet seen any real combat, and she'd mop the floor with them in a matter of seconds. Oh, if they rushed her, she'd lose...but they wouldn't rush her. Most of the Council Slayers she'd seen were being trained in the 'traditional' method, which meant one-on-one fights, standing as the lone hero on a battleground of bodies. Bollucks to that. As far as Jerry was concerned, fighting one-on-one was a cheery way of announcing that you didn't feel like living long enough to see your next birthday. In this brave new world of Slayers that had the option of traveling in packs, there was more to learn by watching a football mob than from reading the Council handbooks -- and not a one of the girls she was facing now had quite caught onto that idea. They'd come at her one after the other, fighting as if 'honour' had any meaning on the field, and that was how they'd fail.
Finally, hesitantly, a tall, ginger-haired girl asked, "Are you going to hurt him?"
"America's full of barbarians, but that hasn't made me entirely insane," Jerry said, dusting a bit of plaster dust off her hip. "I need to talk to him about a little arranged marriage he's decided I ought to carry through with, and the rather rightfully angry fiancee of the gentleman in question, who presently happens to be tied to a chair back at my flat. I don't want her there. I also don't particularly want to get married to someone that I've barely met. Call me egotistical, but I'd like to think my boyfriend might object."
"You don't want to marry Leo?" asked one of the Slayers, wide-eyed. "But he's so cute!"
"You have Salila tied to a chair?" said another. "An actual chair? How did you get her tied to a chair?"
"I'm sure he's very charming, as Watchers go, but we barely know each other, whereas the gent that actually asked me to marry him, rather than being assigned to marrying me, has some idea of what I'm like. I assure you, I may seem to be all sweetness, fairy tales, and sun shining out of my arse, but once you get to know me, you'll find that I can trend a trifle to the cynical side," Jerry said, blandly. "And yes, an actual chair, to which she is secured with actual rope, that being how I tend to deal with people who come to my home uninvited and attack me without warning. Makes me testy. Where can I find Mister Davies, please?"
The news that she'd been able to defeat Salila seemed to surprise the gathered Slayers, who murmured amongst themselves in a manner that Jerry recognized handily from her days at the Summers household, to say nothing of the way the younger Healys tended to communicate. Finally, hesitantly, one of them said, "Will you show us how you did that?"
"Will you show me where to find Mister Davies?"
"You promise you're not going to hurt him?"
"Honestly, you people...you have what, sixty Slayers here? At the least? And however many Watchers, and some of them are bound to be witches or warlocks or whatnot, and that doesn't even begin to go into what sort of little bits of nasty you might have tucked up in the armoury -- I promise you, I am not by any stretch of the imagination either stupid or suicidal enough to physically accost the standing Chairman of the local Council." Jerry planted her hands on her hips. "I'm just going to shout at him until I turn purple. That won't hurt him unless he's got a weak heart."
There was a pause as the gathered Council Slayers murmured over this latest bit of information. Finally, the ginger-haired one put her hand hesitantly up in the air. "One last question," she said.
Jerry sighed. "Yes? What is it?"
Lowering the hand, the ginger-haired Slayer earnestly asked, "Can we watch?"
*
Harrington House, Crouch End, London.
*
Shoving her wet hair away from her forehead, Anna glared at the room in general, and at Carmen in particular. The Canadian Slayer did her best to keep from squirming under Anna's glare, gaze flicking nervously to the half-full glass of ice water that was sitting on the end table next to her. Somehow, she didn't think declaring that it had been Eddie's idea was exactly going to buy her much sympathy, no matter how much Anna was glaring.
Kim was settled in one of the room's multiple over-stuffed chairs, with Evelyn sitting at her feet, hugging her knees against her chest. Running her fingers through the smaller Slayer's hair, Kim drawled, "You promised exposition, Eddie, an' you're not putting out. Are you always this much of a tease?"
"Is there anything you can't make sound entirely inappropriate?" Edward asked, by way of reply.
Kim gave this a brief moment's thought before saying, cheerfully, "Nope. It's a gift."
"Did you save the receipt?" asked Carmen.
"Now, Carmen, there's no need to be nasty," said Kim, sounding faintly amused. We're all friends here. Good friends, with a common goal."
Warily, Carmen asked, "What's that?"
Kim offered her a beautific smile. "Punching as many Watchers as humanly possible. Sometimes even doin' it twice."
"Will we get score cards?" asked Evie.
"Only if you promise to hit them very, very hard," said Kim.
Edward cleared his throat. "As fascinating a look into the deranged psyches of the pathologically violent as this has proven to be, I was wondering if we might move along to something that isn't focused entirely on punching my former fellows in the faces."
"See, I just love it when he talks that way," said Kim, cheerfully. "All that alliteration. It's like listening to my eighth grade English teacher."
"What happened to your eighth grade English teacher?" asked Carmen, despite the gnawing feeling that she probably didn't really want to know.
"Eaten by grathnar beasts," Kim replied.
"Oh," said Carmen.
"I did not get water poured on my head to hear about Kim's dead English teacher," muttered Anna. "Not unless I get to make him dead."
"Sounds like the grathnar got there first," said Evie, helpfully. Anna made an incoherent snarling noise.
"If we can stay focused for more than thirty seconds at a time, perhaps there's a chance that we'll be able to rescue Jerry--"
"And punch Watchers!"
"--and punch Watchers, yes, Kimberley, before we find ourselves offered slices of wedding cake?" Edward crossed his arms. "Are folks ready to listen, or shall I just nip off down the hall for a cup of hemlock tea while you fight amongst yourselves?" General fidgeting and guilty expressions greeted this question.
After a suitably long pause, Edward nodded, satisfied. "Very good. Now, Jerry's at the Council hall in Basingstoke. I haven't been there for years, but if it's anything like the other Council halls, their security is going to be excellent. Add this to the fact that it's likely to be teeming with Council Slayers, and a frontal assault becomes a rather bad idea."
"We can take their stupid Council Slayers!" said Evie, indignantly.
"Yes, sweetie, but we'd like to get inside without anybody catching a nasty case of the deads," Kim said, stroking Evie's hair. She turned a level look towards Edward. "I'm guessin' you've got a way for us to manage that?"
"Oddly enough, I do. And it doesn't even require you to leave your weapons behind, which is good, as I know that the strain of doing so would almost certainly kill you." Edward paused. "It may, however, be stressful in...other ways. I'm not entirely sure you're up to it."
This statement was greeted with sour looks and general grumbling by the gathered Slayers. It was Anna who took the bait first, however, saying indignantly, "We took on Wolfram and Hart! We can handle anything we have to do to get in smacking range of the stupid Council."
"Anything?" asked Edward.
Sensing trouble, Kim eyed him. Edward merely smiled. Finally, folding her arms, she said, "You want to bring it, Watcher-man? Then bring it."
"As you like," Edward replied.
Carmen closed her eyes.
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke.
*
"You're Singari?" demanded Leonard, looking horrified and beginning to back away. "You can't be on this train! This is the express!"
Sam blinked at him. He'd encountered a great many reactions to the fact that he was a monkey demon in his spare time, ranging from immediate attack to 'been there, killed that' disdain, with a brief stop, in Jerry's case, at 'well, I suppose that means I can finally experience Mary Jane Parker's sex life and see what all the fuss is about'. He had never, however, encountered the notion that being a demon meant he couldn't ride the express train to, well, anywhere. Much less Basingstoke, a city whose only distinguishing feature, from his perspective, was 'contains my fiancee'.
"Uh," he said. "They didn't say that at the ticket counter..." It was, at the time, the most intelligent thing he could come up with.
Belatedly, he thought that perhaps 'I'm not a demon, your pet crazy girl is wrong' might have been a better response, but by that point, it was a little bit too late for anything so reasonable.
"He's got Slayer on his skin," commented the crazy girl in question, almost lightly. "It's like cheap perfume, all over him. He must have doused himself in her."
Sam, who was fairly sure Jerry wouldn't appreciate being compared to perfume of any sort, much less the cheap kind, raised his hands to shoulder-height and protested, "There's no reason to get personal here, okay? I'm just passing through."
"Had to flee the country, did you?" Leonard asked. The other two girls were standing now, moving towards their little cluster of impending badness. Sam began really wishing he hadn't felt the need for that sandwich. "What did you do, kill her? That's why you're on the way to Basingstoke? Looking for a Slayer?"
"Well, yes. I mean, no! I mean, it's not what you think it is, it's--"
The crazy girl punched him in the face.
Or, rather, the crazy girl punched the air where his face had been only a moment before. Her expression, as she registered her lack of connection with yielding demon flesh and facial bones, was less one of annoyance and more one of sheer and utter bewilderment. "I missed," she said, bemused, and eyed Sam in a distinctly baleful manner. "I can't have missed. You're cheating."
Now that was a sentiment Sam had encountered before, most frequently from Evie, who took it very personally when their sparring sessions turned into games of keep-away. "I am not," he protested. "I just don't like being punched by people I've just met."
"How about being kicked repeatedly in the ribs?" asked the larger of the two approaching girls, a strapping specimen who would have looked entirely at home back at the Healy Compound. Possibly carrying a cow on her shoulders.
Looking to Leonard, Sam said plaintively, "They're all Slayers, aren't they? Out of all the trains in the entire country, I had to go and pick the one with three cranky Slayers in the dining car. I didn't know the express was a no-Singari zone. So if you guys would just back off, I'll go find myself another t--"
All three of the girls lunged, almost in unison.
What followed might very well have gone down in the record books as 'most purely silly all-out brawl ever staged in a train dining car between three supernaturally-enhanced teenage girls and a monkey demon', had such record books actually been maintained. What the three Slayers lacked in training and the capacity to work together, they made up for in sheer, cranky determination. Every time Sam managed to knock one of them down -- occasionally using one of the others as his weapon of choice -- she sprang right back to her feet again, and charged. He, meanwhile, was rather remarkably hindered by the train car's low ceiling and lack of convenient lighting fixtures to dangle from, which meant that he spent most of his time bobbing, weaving, and throwing things in an effort to buy himself some breathing space.
Leonard, showing surprising sense for a Watcher, especially one who'd had as little sleep as he'd recently been able to get, only observed the chaos for a moment before ducking behind the dining car counter, peeking over the top of it and ducking whenever anything came flying in his direction. The staff had fled about the time Linda threw the first punch, he was pleased to note; they might be reporting a gang fight in the dining car, but it was unlikely that any of them had seen the tall Chinese bloke suddenly sprout a tail. That was for the best. "Bloody orientation squad never said what I was supposed to do if I ran into a damned Singari," he muttered.
"Well, the Singari always favoured 'don't tell your pet crazy girl to punch him in the face'," said Sam, behind him. Leonard whirled, pressing his back flat against the counter. Sam rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. Stop looking at me like that. I don't eat kittens." A chair came flying over the counter, ruffling the fur atop his head. Sam didn't even flinch. "Jerry'd kill me if I even suggested it."
"Good lord, there's another Singari on this train?"
"Uh, no. 'Scuse me a second." Sam shot an arm up over his head, catching a beer bottle in midair, and hurled it back the way it had come. Unconcerned, he lowered his arm, and said, "Jerry's not Singari, she's my fiancee." He paused. "I mean, I guess she'd make a cute monkey. But she's not one. Pretty sure monkey demon girls can't be Called as Slayers. And she'd probably bitch about the tail messing up the line of her pants. When Jerry's not happy about something, she's pretty good at making everyone else unhappy, too."
Jerry. Slayer. American fiancee. Leonard stared at him, a slow, horrified conclusion assembling itself in his mind. "You mean to tell me that--"
A hand reached over the counter, grabbing the monkey demon by the tail and hauling him back out into the fray. Sam went where the movement compelled him, swearing all the way. Leonard remained where he was for a moment, staring into space.
"She said she was engaged..." he said carefully, feeling out the words. Could she possibly have suffered that much of a lapse of common sense, judgement, and, well, simple good taste while she was a captive in the States? He'd heard horror stories about what happened to them in Cleveland, and still more about the Healys in general, but a girl like Geraldine, who'd grown up Council...there was no possible way the demon was talking about the same Jerry. There had to be loads of Slayers named 'Jerry', and some of them were bound to have the incredibly poor taste necessary to be attracted to a man that wasn't even human.
Unless, of course, becoming engaged to a monkey demon was just another part of the sort of ongoing rebellion which could, say, lead to the only daughter of a previously well-regarded Watcher lineage deciding that she'd rather quit the Council and swan about the middle of nowhere with a bunch of inbred hillbilly madmen. Slowly, Leonard pushed himself to his feet, and peeped over the counter. The Singari had his tail around Linda's neck, and was whacking her head against the wall like it was a volleyball, while Anne and Sophie did their damnedest to punch him in the kidneys.
Leonard cleared his throat. "Er, excuse me. Mister...Singari?"
"Busy now!" Sam called, dodging another punch. Linda looked like she was breaking free. "Being attacked by crazy girls with super powers! Try again later!"
"Your fiancee. You mentioned she was a Slayer? Could you, perhaps, offer a physical description?"
"Again, being attacked by crazy girls with super powers!" Losing his grip on Linda, Sam vaulted out of the way. Anne's fist impacted with Sophie's collarbone with a loud 'crunch'. Leonard winced. "She's, y'know, your standard issue hot Hollywood librarian chick. Tall, kinda red, kinda brown hair, blue eyes, British accent, likes tweed...hey! No pulling the tail! The tail is off-limits to you, crazy hitting girl!"
"Has she got a name, or is she just 'Jerry'?" asked Leonard. There were bound to be loads of Slayers -- well, several Slayers -- all right, hopefully more than one Slayer -- who went by 'Jerry', but how many of them would fit that particular description? He was terribly sure the answer would be 'not many'.
"Can't talk! Tail being pulled by crazy hitting girl!" The Singari aimed a kick at Sophie's head, which she dodged, whooping.
Leonard winced again. Then, sighing, he clapped his hands. "All right, you three, stop hitting the monkey. We're taking a time-out."
The trio stopped hitting and turned to stare at him, briefly united by their disbelief. Sam took advantage of their distraction and yanked his tail free before jumping away, stopping by the door to look, warily, back towards the group.
"What is this, football?" Anne demanded. "There's no time-outs in beating up demons."
"Actually, I kinda like the time-out idea," said Sam.
"Shut it or I go back to hitting you," snapped Sophie.
Sam shut it.
"I'm the Watcher, and if I say there are time-outs in beating up demons, there are time-outs in beating up demons," said Leonard, trying to sound as confident and authoritarian as possible. It was difficult, given that he was being faced with the notion that his ex-fiancee and -- if the Council had its way -- future wife had, in fact, decided that her rebellion against the teachings of her youth ought to include dating outside her species. "Can you please tell us your fiancee's name now that you're no longer being hit?"
Rubbing his tail, Sam eyed him, and replied warily, "Jerry, like I said."
"Is it short for anything?"
"Geraldine. Geraldine Harrington. She has a middle name, too, but if I tell you that, she'll know. Her magical girl powers will kick in, and she'll know, and then your crazy girls won't need to hit me anymore, because she'll appear out of nowhere and kill me dead with the power of her angry stare." Sam continued rubbing his tail, expression turning thoughtful. "Actually, that might be worth it. I mean, at least then, I'd know where she was. Before she killed me."
Leonard put a hand over his face. "It's Wilhemina, isn't it? Like the character from that dreadful vampire book."
"Uh." Sam stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"Our new Watcher's psychic," said Linda, conspiratorially.
"Ever feel like you've just fallen into the middle of a serial drama no one's bothered to write the recaps on?" asked Sophie.
"I think she's double-timing them," said Anne, folding her arms.
"That's my fiancee you're talking about," said Sam.
"Actually," said Leonard, "it's mine."
There didn't seem to be much to say to that. Sam just stared.
*
Basingstoke, England, Westbourne Avenue.
*
Salila needed a plan.
She needed a good plan; a solid plan; the sort of plan that was absolutely iron-clad and couldn't be mussed by the actions of a traitorous skank and her twitty little Yank sidekick. Anger management issues? She didn't have any damn anger management issues. Her anger said 'oy, you should punch that smug little cow in the face about twenty times for coming back here', and as she felt her anger had pretty much the right idea, she didn't really feel the need to manage it more than she already was. Her anger was managing itself just fine without her.
Sadly, she wasn't having much luck coming up with plans that weren't some variation on her original plan, which had seemed foolproof: go to the apartment, beat the living snot out of the skank, and send her packing off home to her crazy American friends, far away from the Council, decent Slayers who still respected their Calling, and most importantly, Leonard.
She hadn't banked on the stupid little cow having backup. Or on the pair of them somehow winning. They must have cheated. She simply wasn't certain exactly how they'd gone and done it, and until she had that sussed out, she couldn't go up on them again. She needed to find another way.
The traitorous twit's cell was vibrating. Sal pulled it out and flipped it open. 'You have one new text message' said the display. "Do I, now?" she muttered, and pressed the menu button.
'J --' said the message. 'I know I shouldn't say anything but I also know you don't like surprises & the waiting = making me THE CRAZY. Sam on way. Should be in Basingstoke soon; traveling by train. REALLY WORRIED ABOUT YOU. Calm him down. Love, Ig.'
Salila read the message. Read it again. Clicked the phone shut, and turned in the direction of the train station.
And then, quite slowly, she began to smile. "All right, then," she said. "Looks as if I've got myself a train to catch."
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke, Dining Car.
*
"Wait-wait-wait," said Sophie, holding up her hands and looking maliciously delighted. The Australian Slayer turned from Leonard to Sam and back again, a slow grin spreading across her face. "You're telling me you two blokes are both engaged to the same sheila? And she's a Slayer? Right, I take back almost half the things I've said about the Council. Anything gives me a monkey-man from America facing off against the junior professor here is something I can support."
"That's quite enough, Sophie," snapped Leonard, removing his hand from his face. "Look, Mister...Singari demon. I don't know precisely what you're trying to pull off here, but Geraldine Harrington is a fine, upstanding young woman from a respected Watcher lineage, and this sort of...of...of insult to her honour is something I positively refuse to tolerate. I'll thank you to retract that vile slander this instant."
"Open arse, insert stick," said Sophie, cheerfully.
Anne looked dubious. "Do all Watchers have script-writers feeding them their lines from somewhere we can't see? Who comes up with 'retract that vile slander' off the top of their heads? People don't talk like that."
"Watchers aren't people," said Linda.
"Can't argue that," Sophie cheerfully agreed.
"I'm right here and I can hear you," said Leonard, glaring at the trio before turning his attention back towards Sam, who was still staring at him. "I don't know what sort of foul demon's trap this is meant to be, but it's not going to work, all right? I know Jerry Harrington, and there's absolutely no way she'd fall into a compact with some foul scion of a demon dimension." He paused, then added, "No offense."
"Uh, offense taken," Sam said, still staring. Irritation was beginning to filter through his surprise. A lot of it. "Dude, where the hell do you get off calling me a 'foul scion'? I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure I don't like it. And if you know Jerry so well, how come she thought you got blown up with the rest of the Council? Maybe I'm not some fancy-pants Watcher with a bunch of crazy girls to go around siccing on people who're just trying to get to their girlfriends, but even I, y'know, believe it's appropriate to call my fiancee when there's a chance she thinks I've been exploded."
"He's right, you know," said Anne. "Girls generally like to know their boyfriends aren't dead. It makes us feel cared after."
"I'm sorry, I haven't heard anything after 'foul scion'," said Sophie. "Who talks like that?"
"Oh, and also? I'm with the bleached-out crazy girl. Not even Jerry talks like that, and when she gets pissed enough, she doesn't just have a stick up her ass, she has an entire redwood forest." Sam narrowed his eyes, tail beginning to lash. "I think maybe you should just back off."
"No, I think you should back off!" said Leonard. With a dramatic flare, he pulled a water pistol from inside his coat and leveled it at Sam. "I'm warning you. I didn't want it to come to this."
There was a moment of silence as one Singari demon and three Slayers blinked, blankly, at the Watcher with the water gun.
Finally, voice quite serious, Linda said, "None of you gets to call me crazy anymore."
"Fair," Anne agreed.
"Sorry," said Sophie.
"It's all right," said Linda.
"Uh, dude?" said Sam. "I'm not the Wicked Witch of the what-now. I don't melt if you get me wet. I mean, I have a really high muscle density, so I'll sink if you throw me into a swimming pool, but mostly, I'm just gonna smell like wet monkey."
Looking faint, Linda said, "That's unhygenic."
The other two Slayers took a step away from her. "Oy, don't get the monkey wet, Linds might chunder," said Sophie. "None of us need that."
"Yeah, don't get the monkey wet," Sam agreed. "Er...what does 'chunder' mean?"
"Vomit," said Anne.
Linda moaned.
"Please don't get the monkey wet," said Sam.
"You've besmirched the honour of my betrothed!" snapped Leonard.
"Dude, she thought you were dead when we hooked up. I haven't besmirched anything. And there were extenuating circumstances! Like a werewolf and the end of the world. So back off, okay?" Sam held his hands up, palms outwards, trying to force himself to stay calm despite the pressing urge to toss the whiny little Englishman out the window of the train and see whether Watchers actually bounced. Jerry would probably get pissed if he did it, and she was going to be pissed enough when she found out he'd come to England. "Let's talk about this like rational people."
"I don't parlay with demons!" said Leonard. "Too late, fiend!" Pulling the trigger on his squirt gun, he shot Sam repeatedly in the middle of the chest.
Linda fainted.
Looking down at the growing wet spot on his jacket, Sam blinked. "Dude, what the hell?" He looked back up at Leonard. "Water? You actually shot me with a water gun loaded with actual water?"
"Holy water!" said Leonard.
"I'm Episcopalian!" Sam crossed his arms, scowling. "Dude, first you attack me with your pet crazy girls, then you say I'm a foul scion -- which better not mean anything nasty about my mother -- and now you're squirting me with holy water? You should be glad Jerry's not planning to marry you. She'd kill you for getting on her nerves."
"Well, she certainly isn't going to marry you!" Leonard retorted. "It's...it's miscegenation! Hell, it borders on beastiality!"
There was a moment of silence as everyone in the dining car contemplated that statement. Sam looked stunned.
Turning to Sophie, Anne commented, "I think it's awfully likely that the monkey's about to start hitting."
"I'd be," Sophie agreed, glancing, sidelong, at Leonard. "Bit over the line, there, wasn't that?"
That seemed to be the cue Sam had been waiting for. Holding himself completely still, he said, slowly, "What. Did you. Just. Say?"
"That no decent daughter of a Watcher line is going to marry a monkey," Leonard snapped.
Sam cracked his knuckles. This was a quite complex operation, and seemed to go on for some time. "Say that again," he said.
"Monkey," Leonard said. He had a sinking feeling that he was in over his head, but really couldn't see the way out of the pit he was rapidly digging for himself. What had those heathens done to her? Either the Singari was lying, or she'd actually agreed to marry a demon. Of course, there was a third option..."Does she even know? You haven't ever bothered to inform that poor, innocent girl that she's on the borderline of pledging herself to a--"
"Linda pegged him in thirty seconds. You really think this Jerry girl's managed to sleep with him and not notice?" asked Sophie. Both Sam and Leonard turned to look at her, Leonard making the sort of face more commonly associated with trout. Sophie shrugged. "I'm just saying, there's not a way he'd have come all the way to England looking for her if she didn't put out."
"She's right," said Anne. "My mother always said that no boy would buy the cow if he could get the milk for free, but most boys won't buy the cow if they don't at least get some sign of proof that the creamery it comes with knows how to churn butter."
"Please stop talking," said Leonard.
"Jerry's known what I am from the moment she met me," said Sam, flatly. "Now I really understand why she was so willing to quit the Council. Are you all small-minded racist bastards, or did she just get lucky in the engagement lottery?"
"Monkey has a point," said Sophie.
Still back on the dairy metaphor, Anne commented, "My boyfriend wouldn't follow me to England for anything less than six gallons of top-grade whipping cream."
Sam hesitated, distracted from his desire to play whack-a-mole with Leonard's head by the attempt to decode that imagery. It wasn't working, and so he abandoned the attempt, going back to glaring at the Watcher. "Well?"
"I'm not racist!" Leonard protested. "My girlfriend's Indian!"
"Wait, you have a girlfriend and you're getting pissy because I'm planning to marry the woman you thought was dead?" Sam demanded. "And you're using the B-word? What the hell, man?"
"That is a bit selfish of you," Anne said.
"Look, the peanut gallery isn't needed, all right?" said Leonard. "You can't marry Geraldine! She's a Slayer! You're a bloody Singari! It's just not proper!"
"Right," said Sam, darkly. "Crazy girls, it's been fun having you try to kick my ass, but if I stay here, I'm gonna kill your Watcher, and then we'll actually have to fight. You're an asshole, dude. Just so you're aware."
Moving almost too fast for the eye to follow, Sam lunged for the dining car window. Anne and Sophie realized what he was doing and lunged after him a moment later, but by then, it was too late; he had wrenched the window open, and was out it and gone into the night.
"That didn't go well," said Anne, staring wide-eyed at the tracks rattling by below.
Putting a hand over his face again, Leonard just groaned.