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(This is original creative material copyright Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...) |
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Ethan Rayne! More specifically, a golden sphere in Ethan's hands.
Ethan had noticed Buffy's attention at least as easily as she had spotted him, and he dashed back to a black Ferarri, drawing Kendra through the air behind him quickly as the white arm retracted. Buffy charged over, trying to reach the car before Ethan could drive off, but he got into the drivers seat and in seconds the car was charging directly towards her! Buffy dove off to the side in a frantic attempt to dodge, and she felt the cold metal brush past her ankle. Twisting about as she landed, she saw the Ferarri drive off.
"What the heck?" Cordelia asked out loud - apparently she had come out to watch the commotion.
"Why would anyone want to ghostnap a dead Slayer?" Willow put in.
"Well, we're not gonna find out staying here," Buffy shot back. "Uh, Tojo, Willow, Xander, Cordelia, come on. We'll take the van. Oz, you stay here with Angel and the ghosts, okay?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess," Oz replied gloomily.
* * * *
As Buffy had somewhat expected, the black Ferarri was parked outside Kaliya's hideout when they got there.
"Okay, Buffy, what do we do now?" Willow asked obviously. The hideout was a fortress, as Buffy had found out the last time she had tried to rescue someone from inside - that time it had been Giles, not realizing he had already been turned into a vampire. The main entrance was a high-tech security door that could not be opened except from inside - and it surely would not be opened for them, unless Kaliya's vamps were quite certain that they had the situation well in hand. Last time, Buffy had gone in through a vent access, but as she wandered over to examine them, she realized that Kaliya had blocked off that ploy - additional grates had been built into the vents, solid steel and built right into the frame. It would take far too much effort to remove them, if they even could.
"Hmm..." Tojo said out loud, coming up from behind them. "I wonder if there would be a back door of any kind?"
Buffy thought back to that ill-fated rescue mission again. Just as she had left Michelle's room, down at the other end of that corridor, there had been... "Yes. Blocked off from top to bottom with heavy wooden bars, nailed right into the walls."
"Possible to go in through the sewer access?" Tojo suggested.
"Possible. But I don't know exactly where it comes in, and there's sure to be guards there."
"Hmm..." Willow checked to make sure where the other two were and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Use Cordelia? Let Xander get taken inside and have her bust through to get him?"
"Maybe," Buffy waffled. "That's pretty risky, don't you think?"
"All we've got at this point is risky, Buffy!" Willow hissed back, frustration and anger creeping into her voice.
"Hey," Buffy said, putting her hands on Willow's shoulders. "Calmly, okay Will? We'll find a way to do it - we always do, right?"
Suddenly, the desperate discussion became moot, as Kendra herself suddenly burst through the hideout's wall forty feet away from them. Well, not exactly burst - she simply emerged through the wall as if it were a mere bank of fog.
"Kendra!" Buffy called out. "Thank goodness you're safe!"
"De magician, he let his spell go of me for moment," Kendra explained. "Dat was all dat it took for me to escape, now dat I can walk trew de walls!"
Suddenly the security door burst open, and six vampires burst out, followed by Ethan with his golden sphere and Vamp-Giles. "We're not safe yet, Kendra!" Buffy called out. They made a break for the van, but they had started further away from it than the vamps, and soon found themselves cut off from it. The vampires menaced Xander and Cordelia just enough just enough to discourage them from getting out, then turned their attention to Buffy and her friends.
Buffy looked them over disparagingly. "You gotta be kidding me," she muttered, and stepped towards the nearest vamp. He grabbed for Buffy, but before he could complete the grab Buffy gave him a staggering punch in the head, sending him off to the side, staggering.
As Buffy turned her attention to 'discourage' the next nearest vampire, Willow noticed that Ethan's golden sphere was active again, the ghostly white arm and hand beginning to stretch from it. She tugged on Tojo's sleeve, pointing at the new threat. "Efflit!" Tojo muttered. A breeze blew towards Ethan, and the arm stopped as if balked by the wind, though it was hardly more than a puff of air. The breeze picked up slightly, and the arm puffed into cloudlike vapor.
Buffy threw a vamp over her shoulder, the fourth she had now dealt with. "Come on!" she called out, drawing the van's sliding door open. Tojo and Kendra followed her. "Can you ride in the car, Kendra?" Buffy asked, suddenly realizing what might happen if she could not.
"I doan know," Kendra admitted. "But I tink so. I walk upon de ground, do I not? Dis seems little different." Sure enough, she was able to step up into the passenger compartment and sit insubstantially on a seat.
As Willow stepped up into the compartment, however, Giles grabbed her from behind. "Ahh!" Willow called out in surprise. But she reacted with the precision Buffy had trained her in, driving her left elbow into Giles' ribcage. It didn't hurt Giles, but he bent back in reaction just perfectly. Buffy swung the door between them, knocking Giles back to the asphalt. Xander put the van into gear and drove off, leaving Ethan and the vampires behind.
* * * *
Buffy, Xander, and Willow piled out of the van as soon as they had gotten it to Willow's house, and chatted as they climbed up the stairs to the porch, flushed with the adrenaline from their close escape. Oz, Jesse, and Giles came out onto the porch from inside.
"Whassup," Jesse said to them.
"How'd you do?" Oz asked Willow.
Giles put it more simply. "Success?"
"Yeah, we got Kendra back," Buffy reported. "It was so not a problem."
As Cordelia, Kendra, and Tojo slowly wandered individually over to the porch, a voice rang out again over the Limbo street: "Akira Tojo! I come for you!!"
"What the heck?" Jesse said aloud.
"We've been through this before," Willow reassured him. "Attack of the horrors. Go get em', Tojo!"
Tojo had already reversed course and was heading back down the stairs. As he reached ground level, the Horror became visible - a huge, gray, vaguely humanoid shape, its body dripping mucous-like slime. From its head rose an impossibly complex network of antlers. Its face was a simplified human profile, but the eyes were dark enough that they seemed almost to glow black - even Buffy found it a chilling effect.
"A chaos demon!" Giles said aloud.
"Yess!" the thing hissed. "I am Mentrog, of the Koarg clan. We meet again, Akira Tojo. But this time, there is no precipice for you to so treacherously throw me off of."
Tojo froze in silent horror for a moment, then resumed his guard against the thing.
"You cannot defeat me that way again, Akira," Mentrog spat. "In point of fact, you cannot defeat me at all."
"Except by the path of horror," Tojo amended desperately.
"Which you will not be able to complete," the demon shot back. "Try it. Tell me what I fear."
* * * *
A knock sounded at Kaliya's door. "Come!" she replied imperiously.
Giles and Ethan Rayne entered. "You wished to see us?" Ethan inquired formally.
"Yes. Thank you for your good work, Ethan, in capturing the ghost and arranging her escape, and Giles, in assisting with the false chase."
"Thank you," Ethan murmured.
"Perhaps, my lady, in lieu of appreciation, you could give your humble servant information as to what all this was about," Giles said pointedly. "It seems so far to have been a pointless exercise."
"Really Giles?" Kaliya pouted at him just slightly. "I would have thought my intentions were slightly clearer than that. Quite simply, I have been arranging to bring several notorious vampires back to life."
Giles reacted with surprise. "You have my attention, my lady."
"I have been aware of a subtle vampiric presence in this Limbo ever since I first recovered consciousness after the accident. It was only after Ethan made his report about the discovery of human ghosts that I realized that they could be vampiric ghosts - vampire spirits drawn into Limbo from the Ether when Limbo formed."
"Is such a thing even possible?" Giles asked suspiciously.
"Of course - to an extent. The demonic vampire spirit, like the human soul," here she made as if to spit, "is immortal in its essence. However, a vampire spirit is in many ways less flexible than the human, and is hard-pressed to manifest after separation from the vampire body. Thus, you have none of the same paranormal effects associated with a vampire ghost as a human ghost. However, a vampire spirit is much more suited to restoration to the bodily state. After a short examination of the human ghost, I was able to learn enough to begin the process. Behold." She waved a hand towards the far corner of her room, where two strange boxes had been set up.
Giles and Ethan went over to look at them, and Kaliya followed them. In each box, a strange sculpture of a humanoid child lay, expanding and contracting ever so slightly.
"From these homonculi will grow the bodies for three of my newest vampire warriors," Kaliya breathed. "Luke the Loyal and Darla the Defiant. Several of the other vampire spirits that have been drawn into Limbo I have not yet identified, and so cannot restore yet. At least one I dare not call upon - the Master Heinrich Nest. But these two will be a grand addition to my forces!" She smiled demonically and began to laugh.
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