Okay Kittens... Here is the answer to the whole "non-vampire with vampire henchmen thing."
Enjoy!
Katharyn
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Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Trials (Part 46)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome.
katharynrosser@hotmail.comSpoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe though reference is made to events that occur in both realities.
Summary: Faith and Tara test out their arrangement.
Disclaimer: I still don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories.
Rating: 15
Couples: None
Notes: The identity of the demon who the Mayor was referring to, and had vampire minions seems to have stumped a few people. Well here you are… the answers.
Thanks To: Xita for Pens… long may it continue. Xita again… for her thing… Kerry, sweets you know that you did so much. Jo, who keeps doing more than she bargained for. One day it will end I promise. Mariacomet – I love Keila! Louise… without whom… And all of the above again for keeping me going in recent days.
The Sidestep Chronicle
Trials
By
Katharyn Rosser
“So who’s the blimp?” Faith asked as they peered in through the dirty window. It wasn’t a bad description of what they saw. Some huge demon in a giant tub of… well neither of them actually thought it was water – at least not
just water. There might have been water involved. Once. It was… being tended by vampires. Cared for even.
“D-demon. It’s called Balthazar.” Tara kept looking around nervously. Usually she wouldn’t even be bothered by the situation. Cautious yes, nervous no. She knew that the servants of the demon were vampires. She knew that both she and Faith could deal with them individually. What was making her nervous was doing this
with Faith.
Well, not that exactly. It was
not working alone. It was not being totally self-reliant. It was trusting someone else to do something for both of them without having to worry about covering every aspect herself. It wasn't that she didn’t trust Faith… They had gone hunting in Sunnydale together several times now, and co-ordinated their sweeps for longer than that. But this was different. This was like a mission or something – it was more important and it was more dangerous.
The problem really was that Tara didn’t trust herself to remember that she could rely on Faith. That she could just let her get on with her part in this. When the chips were down, could she just stop and let Faith do what was needed without second-guessing her? That was one reason why she never wanted Willow with her on the hunt.
Not that the vampire had ever offered to go out with her. And Tara had never asked why either. As with so many other questions, knowing that Willow would tell the truth made her sort of fear the answer.
Faith met her gaze, looking quizzical. Tara shook her head and dismissed the worries, gesturing back at the window and the matter they had come to attend to.
At the Mayor’s behest. Though Faith did not know that.
Couldn’t.
“No. What?” Faith asked her, clearly worried. By Tara’s obvious concerns? Perhaps for the same reasons Tara. Slayers too were solitary hunters. Usually.
“Nothing,” Tara told her. Just silly feelings. She might as well enjoy them whilst she had them.
“Duh… there’s something. I may not be ‘sensitive chick’ but there is definitely something spooking you – and when it spooks you
I have to worry. Do you think there is something out here? We took out its guards already.” Faith was looking around too. Searching for something else to inflict pain on before she killed it… after her little performance with one of Balthazar’s exterior security vampires.
In that, the inflicting of pain, Faith and Willow were very much alike, Tara thought. There was a rage in both of them. It came from different places and different causes – but just as Willow would play with her food, Faith would often beat the heck out of a vampire before she would even consider staking it. She got off on it. That was the thing.
Almost literally, from what Faith was often determined to tell her after the event. That was something else that made her similar to Willow… they both delighted in revealing their sexual feelings or histories to anyone who would listen. If opposites really attracted then Faith and Willow truly hate each other.
Quite apart from the whole vampire and Slayer dynamic that would be going on there.
They both got bored easily too… impatient. Tara would have thought that super-human patience should have been part of the whole Slayer package. Willow had, like, eternity or something to exist and she couldn’t wait ten minutes for Tara to finish washing? Faith… Faith had proved often enough that she couldn’t stand to be constrained within a plan. The Slayer’s planning pretty much began and ended with fighting until everyone else was dead.
Of course Faith was right, there was
something out there. Someone even, and neither Faith nor Tara was very happy about that. It was Mr Giles, Faith’s Watcher and, it seemed, a determined duellist. His enthusiasm at hearing that Tara had located the base of El Eliminati in Sunnydale was nothing short of overwhelming – he’d even briefly overcome his lingering distrust of her to ask her for details and a chance to come along with them. Evidently he fancied himself as a swordsman of sorts. ‘A noble art where strength does not always win the day,’ he had said as he had disarmed the Slayer in training and left Jenny’s blouse, hung over the back of the couch with a interesting and daring new design feature which the Computer Sciences teacher would probably not appreciate.
So Faith had stopped arguing about his accompanying them and he had hidden the damaged garment away at the back of Jenny’s wardrobe. Then they headed straight out. It seemed safer for all concerned… just in case the teacher tracked it down. Mr Giles had said it was his fiancées favourite. So now he was out there blundering about in the dark. He might be good with a sword… but moving silently? No, joking aside, he was not safer at all.
Not out here. Not in Sunnydale.
If, Tara realised, she had trouble giving herself over to trust in Faith – who was, after all, a Slayer with all that implied – why should she trust Mr Giles’s abilities? They hardly knew each other – and he clearly couldn’t find the evidence to trust her. Neither of them had any reason to. Maybe that would change after this.
It was only the fact that she had brought him the information about Balthazar that had really forged this alliance. Perhaps the news about the government agents had also helped. The Mayor had provided the information about this demon on the basis that she should involve the new Slayer – ‘You should not underestimate him Tara… took me a lot of years to put him where he is now,’ he’d warned her – referring to Balthazar. It was only that which had forced Mr Giles to make this a ‘combined operation.’ If he had found it out by himself, or even if Faith had, she doubted that she would have been invited along with them. Faith could patrol with her, in Mr Giles’s guarded opinion… but missions like this, he had kept her excluded from those since she and Faith had started to co-operate. Not that there had been many… the Master himself prevented most activity that was not under his command. Mr Giles still felt he couldn’t trust her.
Probably with very good reason though – given the identity of her employer. She hadn’t told him that the Mayor had given her the information. And she hadn’t told him that it was her employer who had turned the great demon Balthazar, as described in the Watcher’s books, into the bloated wreck that it was now. But the demon still obviously had power… El Eliminati would not serve him otherwise. Vampires, as a rule, didn’t respect anything but strength and mutual advantage.
Where did that leave her and Willow?
“N-Nothing,” she told Faith. “It’s nothing. Mr Giles maybe.”
“And here he comes, the Man in Tweed himself,” Faith cracked the joke but neither Tara nor the new arrival laughed. The Slayer sighed as if wondering why she was the only one with a sense of humour on the hunt. “Found anything G?”
“I do wish you would stop calling me that. And no I haven’t found much at all. There are two ways into this building. This side door and the main loading doors. The lock on those looks corroded though, I’d suggest that we cannot rely on them opening.”
“R-Rats-” Tara started.
“-in a trap.” Faith finished. They smiled at each other - connecting on the same wavelength. It was happening more and more. Instincts and experience were bringing them into synch. When it came down to it, if you hunted vampires there were certain things that you had to share. And some things that you should keep private.
“Now I think you may find that this is a trap for the attacker rather than the defender. Nowhere to retreat to, excellent visibility for those defending forces. No way to get inside without being spotted.” Giles pointed out the obvious – but it did stop them for a moment. “I would suggest-”
This time Faith interrupted her Watcher. “I go in first, kicking some vampire butt back to the beach… Tara will go in next and back me up, while we figure out what we are going to do about Jabba. Giles, you’ll hang back and watch that no one comes in after us and blindsides us.”
“Now wait just a minute! Why can’t Tara watch
our backs?” Giles asked, sounding miffed at the apparent lack of faith in his abilities. “I brought my sword and everything. The chance to duel El Eliminati… reading about them was what led me to take up fencing in the first place… and if you think that I am-”
“I-I don’t mind” Tara said, trying to broker a peace. “H-hanging back.” She knew that she could trust herself, she thought… but she couldn’t find a way to let herself totally rely on them to protect her. At the rear she could just protect them. That was her role… to protect. She could do that.
“See!” Giles said in triumph, perhaps glad for the first time that Tara was actually along as he would certainly have been watching the rear had he and Faith been alone. And like it or not, she supposed that had to admit that she should prove useful in a pitched battle.
“G… these aren’t your typical vamps, and they don’t play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.” Faith told him.
“Th-that’s boxing” Tara said quietly. Faith appeared not to hear but Giles nodded.
“I’m the Slayer I do the fighting. Tara can take care of herself, you…” she pointed at Giles, “it’s
my job to take care of you.”
“Now look
I am
your Watcher” Giles told her in a harsh whisper, “and what I say-”
“Is overridden by what Jenny says. Every. Single. Time. And she says I have to keep you safe.” Faith smiled as he relented. “Watchers are supposed to watch G… and much as I like your support, Jenny’ll kick my ass if you get hurt. And that worries me far more than you being my Watcher and having some sort of sacred muckety-much authority. ‘Kay?”
Giles finally nodded accepting the logic as it was presented.
“Besides,” Tara told him hoping to help, “I’m sure we’ll miss one and you’ll be able to fight him.”
“Speak for yourself girlfriend,” Faith said, grasping her stake and preparing to burst in through the door. “I don’t intend to miss a thing.”
“Faith-” was all Tara had time to say before the Slayer kicked the door off its hinges and charged whatever it was that was challenging her inside. The look on the Slayer’s face was one of excitement. “It’s not locked,” Tara finished.
Mr Giles raised his eyebrows, drew the sword with a whisper from the confines of its scabbard and gestured politely to Tara, taking her own stakes out, to go first. “Ladies,” he told her, “before gentlemen.”
“Th-thankyou.” They actually shared a little moment together there… then the battle was joined.
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Faith, pretty typically, had waded straight into the fight and attracted the attention of no less than three of the vampires within the warehouse, all of them armed with swords. Against a young girl armed only with a sharpened piece of wood that might have seemed an unfair match. Given how Faith was spinning and applying parts of her body to the fight it might have been – in her favour. Here a punch to the foot. There a knee in the face of a vampire bent double by an earlier strike. Now a standing spinning kick that sent teeth flying across the room, tinkling at Tara’s feet. Meanwhile the thing in the tub – the reason for Tara being here at all – thrashed and raged, shouting obscenities at the intruders.
Seeing Tara enter and pause in the entrance, taking in the scene, another vampire smiled and drew its own sword, running over towards her. Stupid. It thought, no doubt, that she was just another little girl blundering in like a take-away on legs. Wrong. She sent a stake at it and the surprise on its face was a picture. The surprise killed it too. It stopped, arms spread in a astonished gesture and the stake hit true in the heart. It crumbled in that pose, eaten by the ashes from the inside out.
Turning in place Tara spotted one of the three vampires attacking Faith about to make a mighty swing she didn’t think the Slayer had anticipated. Less than a second later one of her stakes was sticking out of its back and from the way it was flopping in the floor probably severing its spine. She’d missed the heart and it was clawing at its back trying to get the stake out - ignoring its useless legs. Just then Faith rolled out of the way of another blow and as she tumbled stretched an arm out, striking the hand of the vampire and driving stake deeper. It vanished beside Faith and the Slayer gave Tara a thumbs up before turning back to the remaining vampires.
More were coming though. At least five more that Tara could see, two of those though were hanging back and protecting Balthazar in his tub, where the foul liquid that Tara still doubted was water was slopping all over the floor as he thrashed about in his rage. She made a mental note to watch her footing near there and drew out another stake.
Behind her Mr Giles was now also inside and she twisted to check on him. With a theatrical gesture he flung the scabbard of his sword aside and cried “Aha!” It was like something out of the old Zorro serial that had still been repeating on TV when she was young. He made for the nearest vampire, one that she had been preparing to do something about, but with still another heading towards her – far more careful than the last – she left him to it. She knew the promise that Faith had made to Jenny and Tara intended to help Faith keep that promise… she knew that she would find time to watch out for him.
The second vampire to approach her was being much more deliberate and precise than its predecessor. She spared a glance to the Slayer. Faith was once again engaged with three but somehow had one of their short swords in her hand. Tara silently raised the incantation that would deliver the stake into her attacker’s heart and was surprised when it simply swung the sword and sliced the fast moving wood in half, both parts falling uselessly to the floor. Trouble.
It grinned knowing, in it’s own mind at least, that it had her. Tara had other ideas. Unfortunately none of them were really presenting themselves right now… other than… she scrabbled in her shoulder-slung bag and pulled out three stakes, her entire emergency supply, and placed them all in her hand together… before lifting them separately and arraying them in a triangle around herself… one beside either shoulder, one above her head – all pointing directly at it. The vampires grin faded and it raised its sword willing to meet her challenge. It gave her a curt nod and she sent the stakes, one after the other towards it. The first it managed to divert but the swing sent its shoulder into the path of the following stake, the thud sounding as if the wood had hit bone. It screamed in pain and only then realised that the third stake had paused.
It focused on the stake, looked back at her and nodded again. Tara raised her eyebrows and gestured with her finger impaling it and seeing it turn to dust. She turned back to check on Mr Giles and was finally convinced that if not skill, then raw enthusiasm might just get him through this. He had clearly wounded the vampire he was attacking – though there was also a red stained hole in the tweed at his own arm. Tara had never really been around swords too much before tonight – but he looked pretty good. Or if not good then at least theatrically impressive. He was forcing the vampire backwards and keeping their exit clear, if they needed it. Not that Tara thought that Faith would ever-
She was grabbed from behind. It was like two iron bars closing across her chest and squeezing. Faith’s lessons flooded back into her mind. She might have been good at kicks and her punches looked a bit like a swimming lesson for toddlers but she had also had picked up a few things from Faith that she had never yet tried. As the pain began to take hold and bring spots to her eyes she slammed her foot down on the vampire’s own before it could use its superior height to lift her from the ground. It grunted but did not let her go so she swung her elbow back into its chest as hard as she could. As Faith had suggested it had the desired affect. The grip loosened and she was able, with a command to the air to thicken, to force its arms apart and slip out of the grasp. But she had no stake. That would have been okay given it had no sword… apart from the minor point that she had no illusions about being able to beat it in a barehanded fight.
It came for her again, its eyes flicking towards a sword that one of its comrades had dropped when dusted. She sent the sword spinning away from it with a flick of her mind. Great, now it would just kill her barehanded. Instead it followed the sword… it wanted the sword. It wanted that security. Tara knew that eventually it would just come for her anyway; she couldn’t keep it chasing the weapon… but one more touch took the pursuing vampire in one specific direction. It caught up with the sword, picked it up with a triumphant shout, holding the sword aloft as it knelt and glared at her. A moment later it was glaring at its stump of an arm as Faith hacked the limb off whilst battling her final remaining vampire.
It didn’t have long enough to scream though as Faith completed the movement by coming round again and taking its head off. This time Tara gave the Slayer a hesitant thumbs up before Faith turned back and ran her last opponent through with the sword, grasping the hilt to control it’s movements as she thrust her stake in a rabbit punch into its chest. Gone.
That just left Balthazar… his attendant and the vampire that Mr Giles was fighting. She looked back at the Watcher’s duel and they were still going. She sighed… eventually Mr Giles would tire or make a mistake. Should she do something now? Give him an opening? Mr Giles saw her looking, saw her lips start to move and shouted at her “Don’t you dare! I have this one chap where I want him.”
Tara sighed again, Faith grinned and grabbed the oversized ladle from the vampire that swung it at her, snapped it over her knee and staked the vampire with the pointy end, before protesting the liquid that ran onto her hands. “God… that is sooo rank,” shaking her hands to get the slimy stuff off as Tara moved beside her.
“Do you think we should help Mr Giles?” she asked the Slayer.
Faith looked at him, as if noticing for the first time that he was actually getting involved in the fighting. And that it was dragging on a bit. “G? Nah, he’s having the time of his life. Let him be.” It was, of course, that precise moment that he was disarmed and left sprawling on the floor. “Of course I could be wrong,” Faith admitted and charged towards him, swinging her own sword like some mythical berserker.
Tara placed a barrier of thickened air between Mr Giles and his opponent and the vampire struggled against it for only a second or two before giving up and turning to face Faith instead. It didn’t take long to realise the difference between Faith and both Giles and his opponent. The latter were trained. Faith was a, very, enthusiastic amateur. She had strength to match the vampire, who winced as her overhead blow reverberated up his blade and through his arm, and she had the speed to get out of the situations her lack of actual skill put her in, blocking thrusts that should have impaled her, just in the in the nick of time.
And so the fight varied, between skill and determination. Between speed and training. But there came a point when enough was enough. Mr Giles was safely on his feet and Faith was getting far, far too involved in the fight. Missing opportunities for a kill and choosing instead to enrage the vampire with a sweeping cut. But she was getting cut in return too… and the vampire would not bleed to death. If Faith took a serious wound she would. Slayer or not.
“Enough” Tara breathed and the vampire was lifted off its feet in front of Faith, not too far – just enough that it could not touch the floor in any way. It continued to parry her thrusts but no longer had the benefit of footwork to protect itself. More and more of Faith’s blows got through its defences whilst fewer and fewer of its ripostes threatened to touch her at all. Still it continued though, a measure of the skill of the vampire and seconds were turning into a minute - more. The prolonged effort caused Tara to break a sweat equal to that of Faith – she was breathing hard – and it was only Mr Giles noticing that and instructing Faith to make the kill that stopped the Slayer even then. Then the vampire was gone and the weight was lifted, literally, from Tara’s mind. She wanted to just lay down on the hard floor and sleep, but there was still one thing left to do.
Faith came over to her, “Are you alright?” she asked the witch. That was obviously the apology.
Tara just shrugged off the concern, giving Faith a tiny smile, only answering when Mr Giles suggested that she should rest and leave the demon that was the whole reason for this attack to the two of them. “No. There is Balthazar first. I have to… He can’t be…” The Mayor had been very specific in his warnings.
The three of them stood in front of the tub, the liquid sticky under their shoes where it had mixed with the dust and dirt on the floor to form a fine paste. “How do you suppose that you kill something like that?” Faith asked.
Balthazar was nearly incoherent with rage by now. Not only were his vampires destroyed but the human animals were threatening him too as if he wasn’t there. Besides his skin itched where the level of his bath had gone down. About the only thing that really made sense in any of the dozens of languages he seemed to be raging in was “Unacceptable!” Over and over.
“I have no idea,” Giles replied. “I never gave it much thought. I suppose that hacking it into pieces might work.” They all looked at the demon, wondering.
“It usually does,” Faith replied and started to move forward to do the deed.
Tara knew better though. She pulled a special gift from the Mayor out of her pocket. All at once Balthazar was still, looking directly at Tara as she held it up, dangling from an ornate chain. Faith stopped as he focused.
“My amulet! Give it to me and I might just let you live.”
“Why’s he want the amulet?” Faith asked Giles, ignoring the threat. He seemed absolutely helpless of course.
“I have no idea. Perhaps it was a gift from his mother?” the Watcher replied sarcastically.
Faith just looked at him, tilting her head. Balthazar though was focused on the amulet and Tara. “Give it to me.”
Tara said nothing and with surprising speed Balthazar turned himself and held out pudgy arms towards the other two. All at once Mr Giles was pulled from his feet towards the demon, head first – held fast in a roll of flesh, before Faith too was lifted from her feet – this time destined it seemed for Balthazar’s hands – which seemed less unpleasant than the position Giles struggled in but perhaps more immediately deadly.
Tara’s mind snapped out and grasped Faith – opposing whatever force Balthazar was using to pull her to him. The demon smiled cruelly and Faith started to twist, headfirst, from his end. With Tara holding her fast a shout of pain was forced from the Slayer’s lips as the tension pulled at muscles and bones. Readjusting she allowed Faith to roll and straighten out once more, but lost ground… only feet from Balthazar’s grasp now.
“Even better,” he hissed. “Cease this unacceptable behaviour and give me my amulet!” He shouted that last part. “Otherwise we can snap her entire body between us… that or you give her to my tender touch.” He wriggled his fingers anticipating digging them into Faith’s skull.
“You want it… here.” Tara threw the amulet in the air and kept her grasp on Faith as the immobile demon was forced to use his powers to grasp the amulet rather than the Slayer. Faith shouted at her not to hand it over as she was lowered to the floor. Tara could understand the reasoning. If the demon wanted it that badly then it could not be a good thing. But Tara had been reassured that everything would work out just fine - once Balthazar had the amulet.
The demon caught his amulet, everything else forgotten as he secured all that he had wanted for a hundred tortured years. As soon as it touched his hand it started to glow. Balthazar screamed as skin that had been kept damp for a century started to dry out – very quickly. As they watched a series of cracks ran across the demon’s body, pus oozing from the gaps that opened up before that too dried. Balthazar swung an arm to throw the amulet away from him, opening up a deep gash as he moved, but the amulet would not detach from his palm, swing as he might, even when he started to thrash in pain the liquid in his bath sloshing over the tub and onto the floor.
Faith grabbed Mr Giles’s heels and pulled him free of the constricting roll of flesh, and he sucked in a huge breath, as the skin he had been touching turned dry and stiff. Tara didn’t know if it would have affected him… she had touched the amulet after all, but she was glad Faith had thought of it so quickly.
Better safe than sorry Tara. Yes sir. The two of them, Slayer and Watcher sat on the floor watching Balthazar shout until his face was consumed by the effect and his lips, cracked and bleeding, locked in place. Leaving him just able to hiss at Tara who stepped up to him. “Compliments of Richard Wilkins” she whispered… as she had been instructed. “The Mayor.”
“You…” Balthazar forced himself to speak. “What did you do?”
“Our own little enchantment. It was the Mayor’s idea… give you what you always wanted and let it kill you. Bathed in liquid for so long… he thought you might like to dry out,” Tara told him, glad that he was being destroyed but more than a little disgusted by the method of that destruction. Folds of dry skin were being pulled back by the tension between skin and flesh, between wet and dry. Balthazar was literally being peeled. This was too much though… for anything. He grimaced, he wanted to scream but if he opened his mouth… both of them knew his jaw might fall off. What had she done? What was she doing?
“He’ll consume you too,” Balthazar warned her at the last. “He consumes everything he touches.”
“I know,” Tara whispered back and picked up a sword, slamming it through his peeling skull before his pain could hurt either of them anymore.
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“What,” Mr Giles asked, as they drove back towards his apartment, “exactly did you do to him?”
“That wasn’t his amulet… it was a magic concentration of salt. Like salt cubed. Salt, salt and more salt. Shaped and painted. No one knows where the real amulet is. It sucked the water from him and that was it,” Tara explained.
“But how did you know that would affect him? You didn’t see him till we did T?” Faith asked her. “Not that I’m concerned. It was kinda neat actually. Like a giant slug.”
“I was wondering that same thing myself actually,” Giles added, obviously a good deal more concerned as he wiped in a futile gesture at the slime that still coated his face. “And why you didn’t pull
me back from Balthazar’s grasp?” That rankled… he had that stuff all over him. And the smell…
“You looked like you were having fun there G,” Faith answered for Tara. “I don’t think that
how has anything to do with it. We won!”
“Yes I suppose we did,” Mr Giles did not sound quite convinced though. He still had his questions and he still had his doubts. About Tara. She could see it.
They sat in silence for a few minutes until they got back and Faith leapt out, feigning a swordfight with her own shadow. Then a blow struck Giles’s car and she stopped, smiling bashfully.
“Careful!” He ran to examine the dint, but couldn’t actually find anything. “So here we are… I guess you will be…” he started to say to Tara, but found that both the witch and his Slayer had headed inside. “…going.” Wonderful. Tara had proved very useful… and she had managed to kill a particularly powerful demon – incidentally saving both his life and Faith’s.
It was the ‘how’ Tara had killed Balthazar that really bothered him. If she had not seen him until the same time as he and Faith… what was she hiding? What words had she spoken to that demon at the end? Questions for another day though… he scanned the street and the headed inside himself to his fiancée’s welcome – that strangely lacked a kiss until he had showered for a long, long time.
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Two hours later Tara wasn’t in bed like her comrades in tonight’s attack. She was seated in the Mayor’s office stifling a yawn. The man never seemed to sleep. Whenever there was something he had asked her to do he remained in his office until she returned – and each and every night after she had swept the vampires from the streets of Sunnydale he expected a phone call to confirm that she was safe. It was kind of sweet really… if he hadn’t been such a monster himself.
And he was still at his desk every morning by eight am. A mere five hours time away now. Perhaps he had made a deal with some demon regarding sleep. Too tired to worry about that she just hoped he didn’t need her until later… much later. She was shattered.
“So it’s done and you are absolutely fine I see… aside from an urgent need for beddy byes,” he teased.
At least she thought he teased. It could have been a criticism. So hard to tell with him. Best to apologise. “I-I’m sorry. It’s just, you know…”
“You had a long night and you need to get to bed. You need your sleep… here.” He pushed a glass of warm milk across the table towards her, as was his custom. Where he was warming the milk she never figured out. Whatever time she arrived it was there… and he never left the room.
Magic milk?
Right now she didn’t really care and took it gratefully with a small smile. The magic always sapped her of her energy and despite being tired it also often kept her from being able to find sleep. It didn’t even matter how much magic there was… though the bigger it was the quicker it caught up with her. She hadn’t known herself, until he showed her, how effective the milk was at relieving that – and it definitely helped her to sleep.
“There you go! I’ll drive you home myself… but first tell me exactly how my old friend Balthazar died.” He was painfully cheerful for this hour of the night… heck morning.
“Horribly and painfully,” she told him, taking some more milk to avoid looking at him. It wasn’t something she liked to think about, what she had done. She didn’t like that. Even more because of what the demon had said – through its pain – at the very end.
But Balthazar had just told her what she already knew.
“You disapprove?” he asked her, curious.
She shook her head. How could she disapprove? Balthazar was a demon who used vampires to achieve his aims. That made him her enemy as surely as he was her employer’s enemy. But… “We had swords. You knew we would if we won… You knew that we would have had their swords. We could have…”
“Chopped him up like sushi?” the Mayor asked being a big sushi fan. Tara was less sure…
She pulled a face at that idea but he was off in his own contemplations. More and more. The more success she had the more he seemed to allow himself to relax and plan for the future. Just this morning, actually yesterday now, he’d instructed an assistant to prepare for a flower festival next summer. There was a time, a few months ago, that he didn’t look beyond the following week unless he was required to by civic business. They were winning and what did that mean for Sunnydale and its people?
“Chopping sushi? Do you chop sushi? Or do you carve it? Like meat?” He looked over at her questioning. She shook her head, never having eaten raw fish, let alone prepared it.
He pantomimed cutting and then chopping. “I guess that you can chop anything.” He shook his own head and laughed, apologising. “Sorry, it’s too late for all that.” Though he did make a note to have someone find out exactly what sushi chefs did though. “So, horrible painful death?” he added in a matter of fact manner – but seeming a little eager too.
“Yes,” she confirmed again, discomforted by the very personal pleasure that he seemed to be taking from it. That wasn't like him… he was revelling in this. Balthazar must have meant more to him than any of the other demons in Sunnydale – except the Master of course – they must have had history.
“Qualities of dying slug I imagine?” he said. “Flesh peeling back, turning his outsides in and in his insides out?” His eyes were alive in a way that Tara had never quite seen before. Scary and bright.
“As-as, you know, you planned it,” she told him. What did that make her? An assassin? At best perhaps. Knowing what would happen, but doing it anyway? Was it the sight that she had minded? Or was it the whole manner of the execution? If was the manner then she should have refused… or done it some other way. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t even challenged him.
She had caused pain… cruel pain.
And if it was just the sight that bothered her that was almost as disturbing. That she hadn’t been opposed at some level to the manner of death until she saw it… That would make her… cruel.
Willing to be cruel. Wouldn’t it?
“No ‘friendly’ casualties?” he asked her, interrupting her contemplation.
She realised that he had asked it twice, seeming more concerned than angry that she had wandered off. He was, as ever, indulgent. She looked at him and couldn’t quite figure out whether he had been hoping for such casualties. Had he come to the point that he accepted that a Slayer in town would be a good thing? Or was he hoping that by feeding them information – through Tara – the Slayer and her Watcher would meet their deaths? She had staked, so to speak, her reputation on the Slayer being a good thing here at this time. “N-No. None.”
“Good, so everyone is happy then. Except dear old Balthazar of course…I imagine that right now he is celebrating a few millennia in a hell-dimension having his skin flayed. ? C’est la vie. I think that we’ll take a trip to the site sometime soon. It’ll be like a field trip!”
“Oui,” she replied recalling her little used French. “C’est la vie.”
**********
You hear that baby? I am going nowhere.
by Zahir al Daoud » Thu May 30, 2002 11:32 am 
at: 5/30/02 3:42:20 pm