|
|
|
(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...) |
|
"Fie! Shame!!" Cordelia hissed out, orienting again on Buffy. With a wave of her hand, a bolt of sharp steel materialized, flying towards Buffy's chest. The Slayer quickly rolled out of the way, and the deadly weapon drove itself several feet into the floor before dissolving away into vapor again.
But Cordelia had ignored Xander. He grabbed at her hand. Cordelia turned her magic on him instantly, sending him flying into the window. Xander groaned as the glass splintered and fell away.
Cordelia made another attacking gesture, then shook her head. "No. Neither of you deserve to be dispatched so easily after how you betrayed me. I leave you instead, to suffer the torture of anticipation. Buffy Summers, Xander Harris - You will both meet your dooms at my hands within twenty-four hours. Know this - and know despair!"
While Buffy and Xander stood where they were, stunned, Cordelia floated into the air and out the open window, into the technicolored Limbo sky. "Remember!" Cordy called out as she left. "My vengeance will not be stayed!"
Buffy and Xander looked at each other blankly for a second. "War council?" Xander asked.
"War council," Buffy agreed, sighing.
* * * *
This war council was one of their biggest yet, since Giles and Willow had invited Amy's coven to share their opinions, and just about everyone from the Scooby gang camp was either participating or within earshot.
"It is the worst possible timing," Vanessa was saying. "No offense to you or Xander, Buffy - you couldn't have known that Cordelia would catch the two of you, when you were so close to being home free. But I have options that could have helped Cordelia - if she were in her passive, non-witchly mode."
"But you didn't try them before you let her head off to talk to Xander?" Buffy asked.
"No. I thought it would be better to discuss our next course of action with Mister Giles."
"And now, we can't just wait for her to calm down so we can treat her," Willow observed. "'Cause she's probably not going to calm down; not at least until she's killed at least one out of Buffy and Xander."
Buffy nodded soberly. "I'm not so easy to kill, but she could make mincemeat out of you if she tried, Xander." She turned around to face Vanessa again. "Is there anything you can do for me? Any kind of protection or weapon I can use against the witch?"
"That wouldn't kill Cordelia," Giles stipulated. At Buffy's unimpressed look, he said "I know that you don't like Cordelia, but she is essentially an innocent in all this. You can't kill her."
"If it's down to her or me, or 'her or Xander,' you bet I can!" Buffy replied hotly.
"I hope that it won't get to that point, Buffy," Vanessa said, "especially because I don't know of any easy way to kill a witch that powerful. What I can give you are these."
"What?"
"Firstly, this." Vanessa handed Buffy a stick of handsome white wood. "If you can touch this to Cordelia's skin, and utter the phrase 'peace of the innocent," Cordelia should revert to her passive state. We'll be able to handle things from there."
"Check," Buffy confirmed. "'Peace of the innocent.' Next?"
Next was a small bag of reddish powder. "Trick dust," Vanessa said. "If you can blow it in her face - get her to breathe it, her witchly powers, and presumably her witchly temper, will be lost for fifty years. By that time, we should be able to have another option ready. The third plan, the final defense, will take a little bit more work."
"What is it?" Xander asked.
"This." Vanessa opened a book, showing them a watercolor picture of a flying man, pointing towards a woman standing behind some kind of spike, several feet high, set into the ground. A strange radiance surrounded them all, man, woman, and spike.
"If a current of magic energy passes by or through a grounded iron spike, it short-circuits the spell. The resulting feedback often costs the spellcaster their magical gifts, and can have other unpredicatble effects upon them and anyone within a few feet of the spike. It is an extremely desperate measure, but seems promising for this cause."
"We should have an iron post like that out in the garage," Willow said. "Between Angel, Buffy, Oz, and Xander, we should be able to drive it far enough into the front yard to ground it."
"Sounds like a plan," Buffy said. "And then I wait for Cordelia to show up..."
* * * *
Giles looked in on Queen Kaliya. "How goes it?"
"Fairly well, Mister Giles," she replied. "I have identified two of the other vampire spirits and begun to create bodies for them. Absalom, right- hand vamp to the Annointed one after Master Nest died, and Dalton, researcher and scholar for William the bloody. I do believe that there remains only one more to be identified."
Giles grimaced. "I had meant whether you were getting your rest as I had advised, but I suppose I should know better."
Kaliya smiled cunningly. "Indeed you should. Perhaps you can help me though - I imagine you would know of most of the vampires to meet their doom in Sunnydale over the past few years. There is one of significance that I am missing."
"Hmm," Giles pondered. "There were 'The Three,' Tector Gorch, Jasper St. Clair..."
"Jasper?" Kaliya breathed. "That's it, but - Jasper... when did he come to Sunnydale?"
"Um," Giles considered. "It would have been April of this past year. He came to avenge Buffy's murder of his vampiric ancestors, and very nearly succeeded. How do you know him?"
"I was his mentor," Kaliya muttered. "I taught him everything I knew."
"I - I'm sorry, my lady," Giles said, realizing that Kaliya was truly grieved by this news. "Had I but known..."
"It was 1878," Kaliya said, not seeming to even hear him. "I had just established myself in Carnac, when I recieved a missive from Heinrich Nest, then a vampire overlord in Germany, requesting a meeting for a project to mutual advantage. We met in a small village in Wales, I alone, Nest with his trusted lieutenant Darla and bodyguard Luke. He presented a most interesting proposal about attempting to open a dimensional portal at the Standing stones. Dimensional magic was his obsession. However, we could come to no agreement about how to divide the fruits of this project, and Nest and his people left early.
"I decided to remain in that village for a time. There were no other vampires there, and the humans were almost criminally careless. I enjoyed vacation there for a few days, knowing that Carnac could proceed without me.
"But, the night I was to leave, I made a startling discovery. There was another vampire in that small town, though there hadn't been when we first arrived.
"I took this vamp to a private place and interrogated him. He did not remember all the details of his death, as many do not, but remembered a fight in a pub with a very brawny man - except that I knew that it was no man, but the vampire Luke. I could estimate the progress of events from that single clue - someone had stopped the brawl before Luke could kill the impudent native, so he had taken his revenge later on the lad's way home. Rather than drain his blood, Luke had arrogantly chosen a subtler doom - changing him and leaving him to whatever doom might come to him, alone and not even knowing what he had become.
"But I saw something deeper in this young man-vamp. He had been a student and athlete, and had great potential of both mind and body. I brought him back to Carnac, taught him all I knew of physical combat, magic, the mentalic arts (though he never reached great proficiency in either,) and strategy. In time he left my service to become a mercenary, but I still remember him well. I suppose my decision to mentor Michelle was in a way due to Jasper."
"I am so sorry, madame, to be the bearer of such bad news," Giles tried again.
"Sorry? Oh, for bringing the news that he is dead? Well, I thank you, but this is good tidings, for him too can I restore - and have the pleasure of his service once again!" Kaliya smiled brilliantly at Giles, and his stomach sank.
|
|
|
|
