Buffy stared out the window of the taxi as the cab driver made his way down the highway from downtown toward Santa Monica. To think that she'd been there barely the previous evening, it felt like a lifetime ago. Hell, it, in many ways, was a lifetime ago.
"Think like that too much, Slayer, and you'll out-brood the poof. You're a vampire now; you might as well enjoy it." Spike's voice echoed through the cab, but like always, only she seemed to hear him.
Buffy ignored her hallucination, preferring to at least attempt to focus on what was real as the cabbie pulled off the Interstate and onto a side one. She hadn't been to this area of Santa Monica when she'd been alive, as she'd been too upper class to even bother. This area of the city was heavily run down, dirty, and she swore she could smell the grime and piss through the glass of the rolled-up window. The benefits of a vampiric sensory suite, everyone. Dirty kine taste worse than clean ones. Meat must be prepared before consumption.
Less creepy than before, but it was telling when the voices themselves became the new normal. She wasn't entirely certain that she wanted to deal with them, but every indication she had now said that she was stuck with them. Just like she was going to be stuck with whatever scraps the jester prince had decided to give her in order to aid her on what he deemed was her mission. Jerk.
"Your haven's inside," the cab driver said, driving Buffy from her reverie and sending any number of voices skittering and chittering in her head. The cab had stopped in front of a small apartment block above a pawn shop. He talks. The Dark Father speaks and all must listen. "Lacroix provided."
Buffy nodded and opened the door to the cab. Once she stepped outside and shut the door behind her, the driver drove off, without even asking for payment or a tip. Looking at the exterior of the building, she idly debated whether or not she should go inside, but ultimately decided to do so. She needed to see what she had to work with.
It really wasn't much, the single room flat that Lacroix had set her up with. There was a barren bed, a desk in the corner with a laptop, a TV with rabbit-ear antennae on top. A minifridge sat plugged in in the corner, and she idly opened it, wondering just what the jester prince would stuff inside. Buffy curled up her lip as she saw the blood packs hanging in the fridge. Space food and meatballs, hold the meat.
She nabbed one. Not even a microwave and a mug so she could pretend that she was making herself some hot cocoa. As she pierced the pack with her fangs, she grimaced. Cold blood wasn't quite right, not quite as filling as blood fresh from the tap.
"Getting picky, are you, Slayer?" Spike asked. "Had one little taste of the real thing and can't wait to do it again?"
"No!" Buffy forcefully said. "I'm just… I'm adjusting. Microwave would help. A mug would help."
"Going to pretend to be the poof? Going to start drinking pig's blood too?" Spike asked, and a wave of disgust came over Buffy at the idea of pig's blood. The only worse thing would be rats. Still, just because she had to feed off people didn't mean she had to kill them. Bleed them and let them come back for more.
"I've got a plan," Buffy said, mostly to herself as she made her way across the room. She needed someone, a contact. Lacroix had mentioned a man who shared his name with the Roman version of the Greek god with winged sandals. Somehow she couldn't get the idea of a blue man in a toga with Elton John sunglasses out of her head when thinking of him, the Fleet-Footed God. As she made it to the desk, she almost found herself humming. Which would be of the bad. No singing, humming or making any sort of musical noise. Zero to Hero, Buff is a hero!
Buffy pushed the voices out and focused on the desk. A few notes lay there near the laptop. She went over the one on the notepad first. It seemed to be from Mercurio, telling her what the password to the laptop was (surprise), along with letting her know that he'd sent her an e-mail with his address. Great. Apparently Kindred had moved on to the twenty-f—oh, it was still the nineties, wasn't it? Twentieth century then. She wondered what her e-mail address was, but she supposed she'd find out when she got onto the laptop. It had to be better than the one Willow had helped her set up in High School. Except… Had that been real? It's all so fuzzy and mixed up. Why pick one? Nothing is true. Everything is real.
Another note caught her eye, from a Maxamillian Strauss, the Tremere Regent. She supposed that Tremere was like how she was a Malkavian, which meant that he was another kind of vampire. So many different kinds, how was she supposed to keep track? The Dark Father begat three childer, who in turn begat more, and more and thirteen is the unlucky number to live through it all. Thirteen clans. My childe, I wish for you to know more.
Buffy shook her head. Maybe Julia was still around somehow, but Lacroix'd had her killed. Of course, there was always the alternative explanation, something that held true from life into death: she was crazy. Maybe it was time to accept that, and deal with it. The Tremere Regent wanted to meet, but judging from the time, she would need to hide herself away for the day. She could feel herself getting tired, and she decided she'd check her e-mail first thing when she woke up. Buffy made her way to the bed, pulling to make sure she'd be out of the way of any direct sunlight, and she laid underneath the mattress, making sure that the little bit of covers could keep her from any indirect sunlight as well. Something told her that'd be bad.
The night left her and she closed her eyes, feeling herself lose consciousness as the sunlight filtered in over her room, not quite reaching where she laid.
She opened her eyes a few seconds later, feeling the sun beating down upon her skin. The wind kicked sand from the dunes up into flurries, and Buffy saw the flare of movement among them. Swift movement, a predator's movement. It was a woman among the dunes, stalking her as she approached Buffy's location. Buffy knew this woman; she'd spoken to her before… in the Sunnydale hallucination, assuming it was a hallucination. The Slayer. First of the Slayers. Sineya. Her hair hung in thick natural dreadlocks, and her dark skin was painted with white that Buffy assumed came from bone dust of some sort. The woman wore a tunic that had been torn into rags.
Buffy tensed her muscles, and when Sineya came flying at her, she was ready. She blocked a punch headed for her jaw, slammed her own foot into the Slayer's solar plexus and pushed the other woman back several feet. Not letting up the attack, Buffy pounced on Sineya, using a combination she'd learned from Giles on the primitive Slayer, two punches to her face, and an elbow to the chin.
Sineya took those punches like a champ and threw Buffy from her, into a sand dune. She kicked Buffy once, and spoke, her voice echoing. "Vampire."
"Not… by choice…" Buffy got to her feet, the sun above no longer oppressively bright, instead dimming into twilight. "You want to tell me something? Or do you just want to kill me?"
"Still Slayer. But Vampire." Sineya spat on the ground. "Alone."
Buffy laughed. "I told you before. I am not alone. Maybe less so than even before."
A host of shadowed people appeared behind Buffy, each of them clasping a hand to the nearby shoulder. Only the glint of light off their fangs indicated their nature, as a shadowed woman placed her hand upon Buffy's shoulder behind her. The sun's rays seemed to disappear from the desert, pitching it into the night, and Buffy's skin paled.
"We are never alone now, and we will never be." Buffy held out a hand to Sineya. "You don't have to be either. Trees have grown in the desert since you were around. Water flows, and I refuse to sleep on a bed of bones."
"We… are… alone…" Sineya said in English, no longer in the primitive language she'd used before. And in an instant, she crossed the ground separating her from Buffy, driving a wooden stake into Buffy's chest, missing the heart by a fraction of an inch.
Buffy laughed a madwoman's laugh, and she brought her hands toward Sineya. "You don't have to be, not anymore." She pulled the woman closer, pulling her into a hug. "Join us, please…"
"You think you know, what you are now… what you've become…" A smile played on the First Slayer's lips as she spoke once more. "You haven't even begun."
Sineya pulled the stake out and drove it toward her own chest.
Buffy sat up under the bed with a start. The dream… She hadn't expected to dream at all during the day. The dream had reminded her of a Slayer dream, but not entirely. She was more confident in the dream, less… unsure about what she was. It just made too much sense in there, but she couldn't… Something wasn't right about it. Malkavian or not, she'd barely begun as a vampire. This was only night two, and she really didn't know anything. Maybe she'd figure some out on her own; she'd have to without Julia, but the idea of being a Vampire Slayer was funny enough to her.
Train of thought lost, she glanced out the window, and she could tell it was barely after sunset. She rolled out from under the bed and climbed to her feet. She figured it was time to look at those e-mails so that she could figure out just what it was the Jester Prince wanted her to do for him. Opening the drawer of the desk, she pulled out the limited amount of cash that Mercurio had left for her, and she logged onto the computer.
Buffy grimaced as she saw the state of the laptop. The interface was perilously simple, and it was more like something out of the eighties than the nineties. Buffy vaguely recalled using a text-based interface in Miss Calendar's class for all of a week before Snyder gave her the funding to get a license for an operating system. Willow'd loved it, but she hadn't. The Red Tree spreads its roots in the web of others.
Apparently the voices knew about Willow. Good to know. Maybe she'd told them, but that had been strange. Stranger still was the bottom e-mail subjected: "The game opens." It contained but a simple message: "A pawn is moved, the game begins." Whatever that meant, Buffy didn't know, but the e-mail from Mercurio was on the list with his housing address in the message. Lacroix sent her a message basically acting like the would-be Council prat that he pretended to be. Travers would have had the Jester shaking in his would-be princely boots. The Jester plays the game of power, pretending to be an Ace, but he's less than a Jack.
Another e-mail caught her eye, one that just came in from an unknown sender. The subject simply said: "Don't forget the business card." When she went to open it, the e-mail was nowhere to be found, but the radio flipped on at that moment, and it started playing "Old Macdonald had a farm" before a woman's voice came from it, mentioning something about it being early for her to start, but she was going to be with everyone all night long.
Buffy closed out of the laptop and shook her head. After grabbing one of the two remaining blood packs, draining it, and switching off the radio, she made her way outside. Mercurio's house couldn't be far from where she was staying, otherwise she doubted Lacroix would have put her there. His man had to be close enough that she could make it to him without the aid of any sort of transport like the cab driver. Or any cab driver that happened to be human.
Buffy locked the door to her apartment behind her, and she made her way out onto the street, passing a homeless person along the way. She wasn't hungry enough to feed off him, so she passed him a five and kept going. She needed to make it to Main Street, which is where Mercurio's address said he lived off of. It really felt strange to her that two days previous she'd been walking these streets in the sun, with Sammy, and now she'd never walk them like that again. Spite the sun, keep it away. The kine age much too quickly under its rays. I control the cheese. It does not control me.
God, Sammy… Her friend had to be so worried about her. Unless she never made it home last night, the same as Buffy. Except… Lindsey had seemed to be a reliable man. That Janus daughter bitch had better not have killed her, and if she went into the Asylum tonight, she'd demand answers. God, what would her parents say? How worried must they have been that she hadn't come out? Did she look different enough that if people were actively looking for her, they wouldn't find her? Captain Jack had mentioned something about a Masquerade. Would meeting with her parents break it? Would they try to lock her in the hospital again? She didn't want to get on the Jester's bad side unless she was going to slay him. She needed to be careful. Maybe an ally would be able to help her with her parents and Sammy. Maybe Lindsey, as he seemed to know Julia. Must tend to the Kine and water them. They grow up to be such wondrous food.
As she turned the corner onto Main, she noted a man sprawled out on the stairs leading up to what appeared to be a large house. Blood visibly pooled around his prone form, smelling too much like a waste, but the man wasn't dead. Buffy didn't get a good look at his outfit before he made a coughing sound and reached up to open the door and pushed his way inside. The door shut behind him, and Buffy frowned. The man looked like he needed help. The God of Messengers is a message himself.
… Well, that settled it. She needed to go into the house anyway, and, after double-checking the house number (she couldn't very well guarantee the voices were right), she stepped inside Mercurio's lush manor. How he managed to afford a house this nice a few blocks from the pier and beach was beyond her. The walls had a lovely rectangular pattern and the tile on the ground would probably have been lovely too if not for the blood trail that led through the halls.
Buffy didn't even need to follow her nose; the blood trail was too consistent. She followed the trail down the hall and through a door into a lovely living room that was only marred by the body lying face down on the couch. Oh, wait… the body was still breathing.
"Hello?" Buffy asked, a little nervously. She needed to see if the guy was okay. Maybe there was a way she could help him.
The man lifted his head up off the couch to look at her. "Those mothers… they ripped me off…. I'm dyin' here!"
The man wore a green sport jacket over a purple frilled shirt… oh, wait, that was actually a white shirt normally, but today it had gotten coated in blood. Did make a pretty tye-dye pattern though. He looked like he'd been put through the meat grinder, but if he were healthier, he might not have looked all that bad. He didn't really have much on Julia, Sammy or Lindsey, but he probably would be more attractive if he didn't look like he lost a fight with a lawnmower.
"Are you the fleet-footed god?" She'd meant to ask if he was Mercurio, but her voice slipped. It was easier to call him that than to use his real name for some reason. The bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to keep me tame. Oh, now it was repeating itself.
"The fleet-foote—oh, like the Roman thing. Oh, I get it. Ah, shit. Did they have to send one of you?" If the man hadn't been hurt enough already, Buffy would consider doing something to him because of that. "Yeah, I'm Mercurio. Are you here for the Astrolite? I'm uh… Fucking hell, I can feel a draft on my insides! They shanked me! Bastards. The blood ain't workin' no more, my head, it feels cracked… think my eye's popped."
Buffy grimaced. "All right fleet-footed thingy, what's the what?" She wanted to offer him a hospital, but she could just see the man saying something about needing to avoid them. Something within her told her that offering to call an ambulance or something wouldn't be a good idea, and she didn't want to deal with doctors in a hospital anyway. He probably needed the hospital, but given his wounds, it wasn't likely that a doctor would be able to help him more than he was already helping himself. Mercurio obviously wasn't normal. A normal person would be dead.
"What? Oh, shit, is that my rib? Is my fucking rib poking out my side? I'm all numb. Look for me, will you?"
Buffy rolled her eyes, glancing down. "You're fine, God of Messengers. What happened?" High maintenance ghouls. Always whining.
"Goddamn chemist! Apparently I can't trust any operators in LA. I verified him, his organization sounded reliable. Guy mixes up speed normally, sells it, and occasionally he does explosives. I set up a drop for astrolite."
"Which makes things all explode-y, right?" Buffy asked. "What do you need that for?"
"Doesn't matter if we don't get it back. I went down for the deal today, with the money, right? Bunch of junkie pricks came out and hit me with a bat. These cocksuckers, they beat me rotten and left me for a stiff. I had to crawl to my car, crawl my ass up here— only thing that's holding me together is the vamp blood. Shit, though. They've got the money; they've got the Astrolite."
Buffy frowned. Vamp blood. It always came down to it, didn't it? "Blood?"
"Right, you're new, aren't you? Once a month I get fed vampire blood. Heals me, makes me stronger, faster, better than a normal human. I don't age. You might not think it by looking at me, but I'm pushing sixty." Mercurio gestured to himself with a wince.
"Okay. So bad guys have the money, have the explode-y things. Give the message, Fleet-footed God, where are they?"
"The bastards live out in a dump on the beach. There's about four or five of them. The one that's got the explosives is Dennis. He's got my money too, the prick! You've got to get it back from 'em. Maybe you can reason with 'em. Maybe you should break in… I want to kill 'em. You should do whatever you people do. It was my screw-up, I know."
Buffy grimaced. She wasn't entirely sure she could kill these guys, but she'd at least make them unlikely to hurt anyone ever again. Beating them within an inch of their life seemed plausible. Killing in revenge or self-defense is right. It's human.
"Need anything, Fleet-footed god?" Buffy asked before turning to head out.
"If you could… something for the pain. And uh… please don't tell anyone about the deal. About what went down. If people find out, I'm dead. If anyone found out, I'm dead. Do this for me, and I can get you things. I have a way of finding things people need."
"Can you find a stuffed pig?" Buffy asked.
"I can try, but please don't say anything. Say nothing, and I can help you out."
Buffy nodded. "Okay then. Later, God of Messengers…"
As Buffy left Mercurio's house, she wondered just how she would handle what was upcoming for certain. She didn't want to kill someone for certain, but something told her she might not have much a choice. Death was her gift, and it was hers to give.
