Point of Focus

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

Part II

– September 1997 –

Buffy lay stunned in the darkened hallway, the lean blond man in the black duster standing over her. Joyce had long forgotten what he said, if she ever knew the words, but the arrogant, gutter-tough East End voice was still fresh in her memory. He drew back to club at Buffy again with the torn chunk of wood he had somehow wrenched from the wall, and in that moment Joyce, standing behind him, swung the fire axe with all the muscles in her arms and back and shoulders. She had meant to strike with the flat of the blade, rather than the edge (and if he died of a crushed skull she would shed no tears, but she was aiming to stop him rather than specifically to kill), but some sound or vagrant moving shadow or demonic prescience warned him at the last instant, and the blade ripped across the side of his head as he attempted to twist himself out of the way. Then he had wheeled to tear the axe from her fingers, lurching drunkenly, the gash in his scalp spattering her face with his blood, and Buffy had regained her feet with an impossibly nimble shoulder spring and was starting for the man — what was the matter with his face —?

There was nothing deliberate about it, of that much Joyce was positive, for he had been facing her with his back to her daughter; but as the flailing arm reached the end of the arc which had torn the away the axe, the curved point on the side opposite the blade punched into Buffy’s neck, and she staggered and began to fall, shock in her eyes, bright arterial blood jetting from the enormous puncture.

The scream ripped Joyce’s throat, and she was on her knees next to her daughter, the blond man forgotten, struggling to stem the flow from that frightful wound. Buffy clutched blindly at her mother, and then her hands fell away, and Joyce tried hopelessly to force air into her daughter’s lungs, realizing with sick horror that she could taste Buffy’s blood mingled with that of the blond man. Then she felt, unmistakably felt, the life leave her daughter’s body and pass through her and vanish, and she shook with sobs from a pain that could not be endured and yet would not kill her.

The funeral, one of seven from that same night, was a nightmare of unassuageable grief and numb incomprehension; her ex-husband, Hank, stood beside her at the service with tormented eyes, and his obvious wrenching anguish simply had no reality for her. Her home, when she returned to it, was empty, a bitter colorless tomb, and yet she could not force herself to leave it, to go out and reopen the gallery, or even to answer the door for the few callers who came to offer no-doubt-sincere but meaningless condolences.

She had no need to bring out photo albums or home videos; her daughter’s face, voice, gestures, laugh, all played through her memory in an endless loop. She discovered that it was possible to wake up weeping, crushed by grief even before her conscious mind could recollect the source of the pain. Perversely she began to have trouble sleeping, and as each day spread out into twenty or more waking hours she finally could no longer bear to remain in the house.

She could have driven but felt like walking, and a cruel new energy carried her easily through the night streets. At this hour there were few places for her to go, so she went to the one where her heart was buried, and stood looking at the marking stone with her daughter’s name, the dates of a life too brief, and the inscription BELOVED CHILD. Just stood, the aching sorrow inside her reaching out to embrace a vanished presence, the dew thick on the grass around her feet.

There was no thought within her, only a timeless beingness, so she could not later have said how long she had been there when a low, mocking laugh sounded behind her. She whirled, feeling something urgent and potent rise up inside her, and that smug, loathsome voice was saying with lazy amusement, “Now, this is a bit of a kick, isn’t it? Mother and daughter, soon to be reunited.”

It was full night and there was no moon, but somehow she had no trouble seeing him or the two others who flanked him; and as he strolled forward it was clear that the twisted faces, only dimly glimpsed at the school, were not those of human beings. “Any last words, love?” he inquired in a sadistic parody of politeness. “I do like to observe the small courtesies.”

It was the most curious sensation to know she was about to die, and not care. She flew at the blond man with a shriek of hate, and he caught her wrists, laughing again, with negligent ease …

The gnarled face froze in shock as she broke free of his grip, raking at his eyes with clawed fingers. Her nails cut bloody furrows in both cheeks, then she was hurled backward by a crushing outward sweep of his arm. She had once been knocked down by a runaway horse on a riding trail, and this blow was harder, but the force seemed oddly muted, and in the moment of landing she was back on her feet and going for him again. One of the blond man’s companions leapt to intercept her, and she clubbed him to his knees with an overhand blow of her clenched fist; but as he went down he wrapped both arms around her legs and the second henchman was on her, knotting his fingers into her hair. She tried to swing at him but was jerked off balance by the same yank that pulled her head back to expose her throat, and he bared jagged canine fangs with a guttural snarl and leaned in hungrily, yellow eyes blazing.

A pencil-thin feathered wand sprouted in his chest, and he goggled down at it for a fraction of a second before bursting into a shower of dust. The creature clutching at her legs seemed frozen with surprise; she yanked him upright, heaved him above her head by shoulder and crotch, and dashed him to the ground with all her strength. “Here, use this,” she heard, and twisted to see something spinning toward her, she plucked it out of the air and it was an eighteen-inch length of wood with a sharpened point, and without hesitation she struck downward to slam it through the heart of the thing on the ground.

She coughed at the second explosion of dust, swung around with the stake held ready. The blond man in the duster was nowhere to be seen, but there was another figure beneath the cemetery trees, striding toward her without haste. His face was haggard and haunted but she recognized him all the same, and my God he was carrying a crossbow. “Mr. Giles,” she blurted, her earlier savagery blotted out by sudden total bewilderment. “In heaven’s name, what are you doing here? And those … those …” She gestured helplessly at the empty space where two snarling not-men had stood moments before. “Those were vampires,” she said at last.

“Yes,” he agreed, his tone quiet and unemphatic, and regarded her with what seemed to be mingled perplexity and embarrassment.

“My daughter was killed by a vampire,” she said softly, trying the words for reality. It was insane. “What are you doing here?” she repeated finally, unable to think of anything else. “Why are you carrying that thing? My God, were you following me?”

“I should have been,” he replied. “It should have occurred to me that you might need protection. But no, I came here for the same reason you did.” He indicated the gravestone with a weary gesture, then lifted the crossbow. “As for this … well, in Sunnydale it is not prudent for one to venture out after dark without weapons.”

She was still trying to absorb it when he added soberly, “There is another matter we must address: the way you fought, a few moments ago.”

There had been no time to think of it before now, and she felt her besieged mind spin out of focus as she remembered what she had done, the inexplicable strength that had surged through her. “I don’t understand,” she stammered. “I … I don’t know what came over me.”

“Nor do I,” Giles replied. “I know only that it could not possibly have been what it appeared to be.”

*               *               *

He took her back to the library, and there for the first time she was told the full truth about the situation in Sunnydale. She was shaken to the depths of her soul by these revelations, less surprised by the fact of demon infestation than appalled by her inability to recognize the signs before now. For there had been so many signs, and not just in her daughter’s life and behavior: rumors, disappearances, rushed funerals, one bizarre episode after another. (Every school had problems, but how many had a dead former student stuffed into a locker, a principal eaten in his own office, a talent show contestant with his brain removed, and a cheerleader bursting into flame, all in one term?) There was no comfort in Giles’ assurance that the same mystical forces that made Sunnydale a magnet and conduit for sorcerous activity also clouded the perceptions of its residents; she had failed as a mother, failed in her first and most transcendent duty, through ignorance bringing Buffy into a killing zone and through obliviousness allowing the girl to remain.

Then he told her of Buffy’s place in it all, and a chill came over her, sinking inward by fractional layers until she was cold to the core, and something in her heart hardened and turned ugly. For every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer …

With eyes like slate she studied the rumpled librarian and said, “There’s only one Slayer at a time, do I understand right?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“And when the current Slayer dies, it passes to someone else.”

“The abilities manifest in the next candidate, yes.”

“And because I was with Buffy when she died, it came to me.”

“No. No, it absolutely could not have occurred in that fashion.” He removed his glasses, polishing them absently and automatically. “Our records go back for more than a thousand years, you see, and in all that time … Well, three things. First, the mantle of the Slayer has never fallen on a candidate before her fourteenth birthday or after her twenty-first. Second, there has never been an inheritance by bloodline; in fact, I don’t believe there is a single confirmed instance of two Slayers who were related to any degree that could be traced. And third, though several lived long enough to have offspring, I have never heard of a Slayer who attained that status after having borne a child.” His eyes rested on Joyce, baffled. “Even if it were possible, such an extraordinary event would surely have been foretold in the Pergamum Codex, if not in some less comprehensive text, but there is no such prediction. Your case is … is an aberration, an anomaly which cannot be explained.”

Joyce could have argued with that; he had said that the influence of the Hellmouth warped natural laws, so why not supernatural ones as well? And as a freshman in college she had read Dracula, the Bram Stoker original, and remembered the communion of blood by which vampiric power was transmitted, remembered also the sickening taste of Buffy’s blood overlaid by that of her killer; and finally, she had been there, had felt it happen, and was now standing here as the result.

But why bother? The thing was, and explaining it wouldn’t make it any more so. “Whatever you want to call it, I have a Slayer’s strength now, and a Slayer’s speed and resilience. I’m here in the Beirut of the living-and-undead, and I have a strong personal motivation for hunting vampires. So that’s what I intend to do, starting with the one who murdered my daughter.”

“We mustn’t be hasty,” Giles protested. “Your case is without precedent, and calls for thorough study. We have no way of knowing if you will retain these abilities, or for how long, or …”

Her eyes locked with his, and the words died in his throat. She held him with the force of her gaze for almost a full minute, and when she spoke it was with careful, almost passionless precision. “You sent my little girl into a war, and you hid it from me. Even if she had to fight, even if that was her destiny, you put a wall between us, you locked away from me a part of her life I can never share with her now. I could have helped her, supported her, told her I was proud of her, but you robbed me of the chance. I will never forgive you for that. I will never stop hating you for that. I will never stop looking for a way to make you pay for that. Now I’ve joined the war. You can work with me like you did with her, or you can watch and do nothing, or you can go back to England; but if you try to get in my way, I’ll kill you.

“Am I understood?”

He looked away, and swallowed several times before answering. “Yes. Yes, quite. You have made yourself … perfectly clear.”

She had sold the gallery at a loss, and given up the house for an apartment near the Sunnydale High campus. It had been ridiculously easy to be admitted as a teacher, the faculty turnover rate being almost as high as its mortality rate. Giles had reported the facts to the Council of Watchers and been approved as her observer and trainer, though he and they had continued to insist that she wasn’t an actual Slayer. And she had learned the name and history of the blond vampire, and begun the hunt for him.

He was gone from Sunnydale now, but he would return, of that there was no doubt. His beloved Drusilla was dust on the same football field where Kendra’s life had poured out, and he would never let that rest unanswered. She had no way of knowing how long it would take him to recover from the damage she had done before his few remaining followers had carried him away, shrieking vengeance, but she knew he would be back.

Meanwhile, the war went on.


|    Next Part    |     Previous Part    |     Chapter Index    |