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by Chris Kenworthy (scoobyhq@fcmail.com)
Disclaimer: I have no rights to the characters of Buffy, Faith, Willow, Xander, Oz, Cordelia, or Giles.
"Harry wants to turn her into his vampire princess," Jim told him, sparing a patronizing glance at his comerade. "We've got ahold of a little stuff - mix it in with your blood when you're making a vamp, and the new vampire's in love with you. We've only got one dose for each of us, but it's gonna be well worth it, you know,"
Trick smiled. "Yeah, I can believe it. Well, you can take the pretty redhead with you when you go, and the staff of course - once the hostages have been freed." He nodded out towards the door of the office they were still sitting in.
"Great," Jim said. "Well, we'll attend to that right now, and you can watch and see for yourself." Standing up, he walked towards the door, waiting for his team and Mister Trick to follow.
Jim opened the door and let the others walk through first, bringing up the rear. But what they saw in the main room was a surprise to all.
Three dynamic warriors, two young women and a man in his mid-twenties, were fighting with the three vampire guards who had been watching the sacrifice 'victims' in the main room. For a second it seemed unbelievable that the battle had been in progress without their noticing it from inside the office, but there could well be soundproofing around the room.
There was another intruder in the room, a gawky young man freeing one of the sacrifice victims, and then scrambling over to the next altar. As the newcomers watched in total shock, a blonde girl, the Slayer Buffy, ran her bladed staff through the heart of a guardvamp and disintegrated him.
Jim recovered from the shock first. "As you can see, the hostages are already being set free," he quipped, and wrenched the staff out of Trick's hands. Outraged, Trick leapt at Jim to get it back, but Harry stepped smoothly between them as Jim stood aside, finding a spot to stand with some open space all around him, holding the Staff of Shadows solemnly.
Taking a deep breath, the vampire leader brought the staff up so that he was holding it flat in the air before him, a few inches below shoulder level. "Shadow mine," Jim intoned, then swung the staff so that it ran up and down. "Shadow line." Handing the staff behind his head and back around in what was obviously a ritualized sequence of movements, "Shadows work to my design." Grabbing the staff with two hands closely together on one end, moving it through a number of attack stances. "Darkness flock to me this hour," then shifting grips on it so that it was held once again widely spaced between both hands, now held triumphantly over his head. "That I may know the shadow's power!" And the staff seemed to glow, faintly, or perhaps more to suck the light from just around it, for the weapon seemed to be bathed in its own shadow.
The four intruders were not by any means ignoring Jim's ritual, in fact Buffy, the only one who had been free at the time, had been sprinting towards the vampire and was charging into his vicinity just at this point. Which was a very good thing for her, as it turns out, for if Jim had had the chance to complete any more stanzas of the Staff's activation invocation, the chances for our heroes would have been next to none. But Buffy was right there, swinging her shikomi-zu towards Jim's legs in an attempt to sweep him off his feet, forcing Jim to block with the Staff of Shadows. He counterattacked viciously, driving Buffy back towards the center of the main room.
Harry was staring at this duel between the Slayer and his leader, apparently pondering whether to let Jim try it alone or step in. His hand drifted towards the automatic pistol at his wrist. Faith, noticing this, staked her opposite number, running her wooden sword through the poor vampire's heart, and dashed towards Harry. Meanwhile Buffy swung the bladed edge of her weapon in the vicinity of Jim's throat, bouncing it off of his staff. It was a futile assault on Buffy's part, in more than one respect, but it had the desired effect. Instead of hanging back, waiting for Buffy to press the attack to him, where his friends were nearby to help, Jim roared and pursued the blonde Slayer into the center of the room, she skillfully leading him away from the rest of the brotherhood.
Meanwhile, Harry drew his pistol and trained it on Buffy, trying to get at least one clear shot at her. He didn't, though - Faith was on him just in time, knocking the gun out of his hand with her bokken. With an incredible punch, Harry sent the slayer flying ten feet into a table, and drew his other weapon - a deadly-looking longsword. With his own battle cry, Harry charged to the attack.
Xander finished untying another possible sacrificial victim, who ran off towards the corridor as Xander indicated as Xander moved on to Cole. Jim looked thoughtfully at the young man who had just been saved - a brawny guy dressed up as Fezzik from the Princess Bride. Beating Buffy away for a moment with a furious exchange of blows, he muttered 'shadowfire' and jerked the Staff of Shadows in a small but precise movement.
A small ball of what looked like dark fire shot into Fezzik's back. It didn't seem to hurt the guy, but he fell down and lay there, motionless.
Buffy spared one glance to see his fate and then pressed her attack harder. The effect of the shadowfire wasn't certain, whether it killed, stunned or caused sleep, but it was obvious that locked in battle with such a deadly opponent, Buffy could hardly risk any of those effects.
Jim knew that too. He saw the fear in the eyes of his Slayer opponent, and laughed at it.
Faith was still fencing with Harry, the difference in their weapons seeming to put both warriors off balance. Hers was curved, one-edged, solid and heavy, but still made of wood, and every so often Harry's blade would bite into her bokken as they met with a great amount of force, cutting a little gouge into it and allowing both opponents to attempt to pull each other off balance. Harry's longsword, on the other hand, was straight, double-edged, but lighter and thinner. Neither had any good idea which way the contest would go at this point.
Jonny, meanwhile, had staked the last guardsvamp with his own shikomi-zu, and was trying to corner Tom, Bob, and Mister Trick, keeping them out of mischief. But as Hardcastle menaced the engineer and the mayor's emissary with a dramatic sweep of his blade, Tom slipped by, feinting a swing to Jonny's shoulder with his heavy mace, but hurrying on by as the vampire hunter dodged and proceeding on towards the duel between Buffy and Jim.
Jonny cast a glance over his shoulder at the escaping vampire, but realized that running to catch him would only be worse. Bob had pulled out a narrow, short sword and was hefting it menacingly, and Trick, though unarmed, had his whole body primed to pounce. Best to bottle up these two as best he could. "Look out, Buffy," he called as an afterthought.
His warning was both fortunate and unfortunate. On the positive side, it allowed Buffy to duck under Tom's bone-crushing mace swing that had been aimed right for her her head. With a precise swing of her staff behind her, the Slayer knocked Tom prone on the ground. And Buffy in turn stiffened as the Jim's magic staff, blazing with dark shadowfire, touched her lightly on the side. After a few seconds, she collapsed onto the floor, unconscious.
Jim laughed maniacally as he readied the staff to bash the slayer's skull in, knowing that she realized it was coming and could do nothing to stop his attack, knowing that none of her friends - the girl, the hunter, even the gawky boy, could reach him in time to help her. He raised the staff and began to swing down...
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