Shadow and Substance

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part IV

A passing car honked at the two women, male whoops and whistles drifting out of the open windows as the taillights receded down the street. Leila laughed and called softly, “Come and get it, boys, I could use a drink about now.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Nika reproved.

“Hey, all work and no play,” Leila said, flashing the sassy grin Sandy had first noted at the dance club. Now that they were back out on well-lit city streets, the girl had wiped away most of the camouflage face paint; the faux-bandolier had been reversed again and cinched around her waist, and though she had declined either to discard the Uzi or to tuck it into Nika’s equipment bag, she had covered it with a black plastic trash sack from one of the zippered side pockets. “We’ve had a pretty lively night, you oughtta loosen up some.”

“Once we’re finished,” Nika told her, striding along the sidewalk.

“Stress kills,” Leila commented lightly, and shook her head in mock disapproval. “You delivered on what you said, I’ll give you that, but you’re no damn fun to have around … Y’know, I just realized, I don’t know your name. You asked for mine, but you never gave me yours.”

“I asked you as a test,” Nika replied, still without a backward glance. “I wanted to see if you would tell the truth.”

Leila gave her a black look. “Well, excuse the hell outta me. You hogtie me and hold me at gunpoint, and I’m supposed to trust you? I kept up my end once we had an agreement, so you got no call to act snotty. Now what’s your damn name?”

After long seconds without reply, the older woman said, “Nika.” The single word, no more.

“Mmh.” Leila mulled on that. “Sounds Jap, but you don’t look Asian.”

Sandy didn’t expect Nika to respond, but half a block later she said, “My grandfather used to call me Yannika. One of my cousins shortened it, and that stuck as a nickname. In college I even went by Nikki for awhile, but that never felt right. Too … Americanized.”

“So you got Old Country ties,” Leila began, then broke off as Nika left the sidewalk and started across a brightly lit parking lot. “Oh, great,” the vampire girl said, seeing their destination. “Now it’s a hospital, huh? Where do we go next, Disneyland?”

“This is our last stop,” Nika answered. “And it continues the same balancing process I’ve spoken of already: yin and yang, life and death, light and shadow, strife and healing.” She came to a staff entrance at the side, and punched in a code at the keypad. “Whether or not you understand, this is the place where the ritual must be performed.”

“Oh, sure,” Leila said in a tone thick with sarcasm. “Nice and secluded, nobody’ll notice us putting on black robes and gutting a coupla goats.”

Nika led them down a short hall and used a key to unlock a door stenciled STORAGE C. This was an equipment room, Sandy saw, boxes of supplies against one wall and much of the remaining area occupied by folding wheelchairs, cylinders of compressed gas, IV poles, portable blood pressure monitors, and various other items. In the center of the room was one of the narrow wheeled beds used to transport patients to and from the operating rooms, and space for two more. Nika moved into the small open area, telling Leila, “Come on in and close the door,” and began to look through her bag.

Leila pulled the door shut behind her and stood watching Nika … and something in her stance, casual as it was, caught Sandy’s attention. Nika was drawing on the floor with the colored chalks, a variation of the standard pentagram this time, and Sandy floated in front of the vampire girl, studying her face for some clue as to the cause of her unease. Leila’s eyes were alert and speculative; Sandy could see no visible sign of malice, slyness or hostility, but still …

Nika had finished the design on the floor, and started another a few feet away. “When I’m done with this I’ll summon Yrisande,” she told Leila. “We’ll collect her breath in a spirit web, and that will be the last of the elements.” She completed the second pentagram with quick, sure strokes, and straightened. “All set,” she announced, moving to stand inside the first pentagram. “You step into that one, and we can begin.”

Leila looked from Nika to the second pentagram, and said flatly, “I’ll pass.”

Nika’s lips thinned, but her voice was even. “When I called Yrisande before, that was only a fifth-level summoning. For me to extract her breath, she’ll have to manifest at the second level, only one away from being fully freed in this reality. Trust me, you want to be inside the protective circle when she appears.”

“See, that’s the problem,” Leila told her. “I don’t trust you. I’ve played along, trying to figure out your game, but I never kidded myself I could trust you. I only know two things for sure: one is, you’ve been lying to me from the get-go; and the other is, if you want me inside that thing, then that’s where I don’t wanta be.”

“Very well,” Nika said without inflection. She made no move that Sandy could see, but abruptly the small red pouch on the cord around Leila’s neck — the talisman Nika had given her in the corridors of Torgash’s lair — burst with a snapping sound and a puff of smoke that wreathed the vampire girl’s head and shoulders. Leila lurched backward, choking and striking out blindly, bounced off one of the gas cylinders, and fell into the corner of the room, digging frantically at her eyes with knuckled fists. Nika was in motion at the same instant the pouch exploded, chanting rapidly under her breath; in a dozen quick chalk strokes she had drawn an arc from one wall to another in the corner where Leila thrashed and coughed, and reinforced it with symbols unfamiliar to Sandy. She stepped back as Leila pulled herself to her feet, eyes puffy and streaming tears, but showed no sign of retreating further.

Leila started for her with a silent snarl, and rebounded as if she had run into a crash net. “What the hell —?” She reached out, palms flat against an unseen barrier, following its boundaries and finding no gap. “Well, you just never run outta little gimmicks, do you?” she sneered.

“As I’ve said before, I make an effort to cover all eventualities.” Nika moved back to the equipment bag and pulled open the zipper on an inner section. “For you to renege on the agreement was by no means the unlikeliest possibility I planned for.”

“You’re one to talk,” Leila spat. “This whole business was one big scam to rope me in, you never planned to keep your part of the bargain.”

“No, I didn’t,” Nika agreed. “It’s a weakness of mine, breaking promises to demons from hell. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve made a resolution to stop doing that. After tonight.”

“Yeah, right, that makes everything okay.” Leila probed at the point where the invisible barrier met the concrete wall, again found no weakness. “So what’s it gonna be? Torture?”

“No, that won’t be necessary.” Nika turned back to her captive, holding a propane torch and a bicyclist’s squirt bottle. “I’ll make it as quick as possible.”

“Damn,” Leila sighed. “Looks like you’ve got me cold, and me trying to be so careful and all.” She shook her head with slow regret … and then said suddenly, “Do you ever listen to disco?”

“Not when I can avoid it,” Nika replied. She set down the squirt bottle and pulled the BIC lighter from the pocket of her vest.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I can’t stand the stuff myself, but I dance to it a lot, so I learn the songs whether I want to or not. There’s this one been running through my head all night; total Seventies, I’ve got the tune down but I can’t pull up the lyrics to save my life, and I just know it’d be perfect for this situation …”

In what Sandy could only assume was some kind of reflexive courtesy, Nika had paused to let Leila finish what she was saying. Now the girl’s face cleared, and she laughed. “Got it!” she said, and through that characteristic mocking grin she sang gaily, “I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it! I’m about to lose control and I think I like it —!”

Then she tore the trash sack free from the slung Uzi, and ripped out a chattering burst of fire.

*                *               *

Sandy wrenched the weapon upward with hands that fought her, the gunshots slamming at her ears like hammers. Something was wrong, this wasn’t like the time before, she used her last thread of control to hurl the Uzi out of the enclosed corner and then was expelled from Leila’s body with a force that dizzied her. She struggled for mental stability, and rotated her perspective to seek Nika. There, the woman was pulling herself back to her feet, from inside the vampire girl Sandy had caught a glimpse of her friend diving for cover. Nika had lost the sunglasses, Sandy saw … and no, her eyes weren’t pink after all, but dark and angry.

“Well,” she said, studying the girl as if she were something from a sewer. “I wasn’t the only one saving some aces, I see. Did you scavenge another magazine, or was the first one never actually empty?”

“Bite me, lady.” Leila glared about her, face ugly with a fury she hadn’t shown since the attack at the dance club. “Yeah, I snuck one by you. So? You been doing it to me all night long. Were you telling the truth about anything?”

“It’s true that I need you for the ritual.” Nika bent to retrieve the propane torch. “It just doesn’t involve your continuing to exist.”

“Yeah, big surprise, I — damn!” It had taken Sandy several seconds to regain her equilibrium, and now Leila broke off to stare at the apparition that shimmered into visibility between the two women.

“Are you all right?” Sandy said anxiously to Nika. “I knew she was about to try something, I think I was going for her before she even had her hands on the gun, but she’s so quick —”

“I’m fine,” Nika assured her. “The containment field slowed the bullets … and muffled the sound, too, fortunately. It, and your intervention, were enough.” She regarded Sandy with a slight frown. “How did you do it, though? You’ve never been able to apply physical force without the visual semblance of physical form.”

“That’s not important just now.” Sandy gestured toward Leila. “Look, there’s something wrong here. I’m not sure we can go through with this.”

“I’m with Jeannie,” Leila said promptly. “All in favor of not toasting me, raise their hands.” She raised her hand.

Nika ignored her. “This is only a minor interruption,” she told Sandy. “All the necessary forces are in place, we can be done with it in just a few minutes.”

“I know we can,” Sandy acknowledged. “But maybe we shouldn’t. It’s …” She shook her head. “Look, back in the tunnels when that vampire attacked you, I tried to drag him off even though I was still unformed, and I wound up, well, possessing him somehow. It surprised me, I froze long enough for her to stake him … but the thing is, I had him. When I did the same thing with her just now, it was completely different, I could barely hang on long enough to throw away the Uzi. She’s not like the others.”

Nika looked toward Leila with stony eyes. “I’ll admit she’s shown more resourcefulness and determination than I would have expected, but that doesn’t alter her essential nature. She’s a vampire, for God’s sake! She lives by draining the blood of the innocent; she destroys her own kind for a moment’s advantage; she attacked me without even knowing who I was, and began gathering tools for a double-cross before our agreement was an hour old …”

Leila snorted loudly from her corner prison. “Climb down off your high horse, sister! Sure, I have to feed to live, who doesn’t? But I don’t kill anybody to do it. As for setting up a switchback on you, well, you gave me reasons.”

Sandy turned to face her. “What were your reasons? This may be important.”

“Sure, why not?” Leila shrugged. “I mean, okay, she talks a good game, but sometimes her mouth was moving a little too quick for her brain to keep up, y’know? First off, I wasn’t brought across on the Night of St. Vigius, it was two nights before that, so right off I knew she was feeding me a tall story. Couldn’t think why, but there was something she didn’t want me to know, right?

“Then there was you. No offense, sweetface, you gave it your best, but it just didn’t ring true. I spend every night watching for likely targets, people I can charm and drink from and leave without a memory of it. I get to where I know the look … and doll, you had that look. Whatever you were, it wasn’t what she was trying to sell you for.

“Most of all, though, there’s this ritual she’s working on. One time she calls the things she needs ‘ingredients’, but the rest of the time it’s ‘elements’. Well, I may’ve ditched school when I came over to the night life, but when somebody keeps talking about four elements, I just have to think of the old classics: fire, water, earth, and air. So she wants the tears of a demon, fine, I can match that with water. Breath of a spirit, we got air. Earth from the grave, yadda-yadda, that’s a gimme. But the blood of the consecrated unliving — and that’s supposed to be me, she says — how can you get fire from that?”

Leila looked to Nika with grim insolence. “Maybe my blood’s gonna be burnt on an altar, or maybe I’m just reading the whole deal wrong. But in my head I got a picture of me going up like a Roman candle, and something about that just don’t appeal, if you get my drift. So yeah, I go along for the ride to see if I can get a better notion of what’s coming down … and yeah, I start working on a little surprise for if things get nasty.”

It was too bewildering. Sandy had hoped for lies, excuses, a makeshift rationale for treachery, but this was … convincing. Her expression must have shown the confusion she felt, for Nika stepped close to lock eyes with her, her voice hard and urgent. “What’s bothering you? She’s smarter than we expected, I already admitted as much, but it makes no difference. You’re feeling pity for a creature that would sneer at the concept if she understood it. It was one of her kind that killed you and left you in this limbo, and she’s another from the same mold, a murderous soulless parasite …”

That was it. Sandy straightened with sudden realization. “No,” she said. “No, she isn’t. When I was inside the first vampire, I could feel the demon there; and he could feel me, but he couldn’t break my hold. Leila has a demon, too, but that’s not all, I couldn’t stay inside because it was too crowded.” She looked to Nika with perplexity and wonder. “She’s in there, right alongside the demon. She has a soul, Nika. Don’t ask me how, but she still has her own soul.”

Leila was the first to break the blank silence that followed. “Get outta town. I mean, you’re yanking my chain, right? No way am I like that wuss, Angel.”

Nika’s face spasmed at the words, and Sandy felt a jolt of astonishment. This wasn’t the woman who had been her sole companion for weeks of support and planning. What was happening here, what was the matter? “Oh, you’re exactly like him,” Nika flung at Leila, her voice quivering with hate and loathing. “You’re all the same, hiding underground like rats in the day, coming out at night to prey on the living. Passing for human, wearing human faces, ripping through people’s lives like sharks mad with blood. I’ll take no pleasure from killing you, just the sight of you makes me sick, but I won’t shrink from it, either.”

She looked back to Sandy, the scarlet lips hard with resolve. “It has to be done. She’s the fourth element, the one for which there is no substitute. Even if you’re right about her having a soul, that soul is locked here long after her earthly life ended, just as yours is. We complete the ritual, and you’re both free. We have to carry this through.”

Sandy stood mute, shaken and directionless without the anchor to which she had so long clung. They couldn’t, this was all wrong now; but how to say it, how to make her see …?

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Leila said.

Both women looked to her; there was a new note in her voice that commanded that kind of attention. She returned their gaze with a kind of relaxed amusement that held a disquieting assurance. “So that’s how it is,” she said genially. “I knew there had to be another kicker in there somewhere, but I sure as hell wasn’t watching for this one.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sandy said.

“No, you don’t, do you? Makes sense; I mean, she ran a number on me from the first word she spoke to me, why shouldn’t she be snowing you, too?”

“She’s trying to confuse you,” Nika told Sandy. “To come between us, set us against each other. She knows it’s her only hope for survival.”

“Absolutely,” Leila agreed. “But this is the great part: I can do it by telling the truth. That’s something your girlfriend —” She hooked a thumb at Nika. “— hasn’t got around to trying yet.”

“Just say what you have to say,” Sandy ordered her. “I’ll decide for myself if it’s true.”

“Okay. So, look at this situation from my viewpoint. I’m stuck in a corner, I’ve thrown out my hole card and seen it trumped, and now my so-called partner is hauling out cooking equipment. I don’t have a lot to work with, do I? But I used to watch a lot of slasher flicks, and I remember at the end of Halloween II where the psycho has the girl and the doc trapped in a storage room in the hospital — gee golly, just like where we are now! — and they start opening the valves on anesthesia tanks, just like this one.” She patted the gas cylinder against which she had been casually leaning while her captors argued.

Nika stiffened, and Leila laughed. “That’s right. In the movie they wind up blowing the psycho clear to hell. Odds don’t look good for me living through something like that, but what do I have to lose? So I crack the valve without being too obvious about it, and wait for you to strike a light. The worst that can happen is I take you with me; not my first choice, but I’ll settle for it.

“Then you two start to argue, and I figure my chances are getting better. This here —” She rapped the cylinder with her knuckles. “— is nitrous oxide. I didn’t know anybody used the stuff anymore, they may have stuck it back here years ago and just forgot about it, but it’s what they call laughing gas. So while you two jaw at each other this stuff is building up in the room, and I start to hope Gadget Girl will suck down enough to pass out, or maybe just get goofy and make a mistake. And then I start to wonder how long it’s gonna take, and then I start to tune in on her vitals so I can get some idea when would be a good time to try something …”

Nika was frozen, white and staring, and Leila’s laugh echoed harsh and ugly in the closed room. “You played it cool,” she said to Nika. “By God, you’re a cool one! You kept me off balance all night with one thing and another: that crucifix around your neck, the weapons and tricks, the story you spun, the way the delicate little tech-witch needed to recruit some undead muscle for backup … Right under my nose all the time and I never saw it, you’re that good. But then you start to mix it up with your girlfriend, and rag at me, and you lose your cool, and it’s just you and what matters to you instead of the act, and you know something?”

Leila leaned forward until her face was almost against the barrier, and hissed, “You got so worked up, you forgot to keep breathing, bitch!”


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