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Unbidden the Day
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part II
Even with the proof in front of them, laughing and vibrant, it still was almost impossible to believe. “I never knew I had a brother,” Alissandra Sofia diBianchi explained to them. “My adoptive parents are wonderful people, loving and supportive and perhaps too indulgent of their headstrong daughter. They did not wish me to feel any lack, any absence in my life, and so they kept this one small secret from me. On my twentieth birthday, however, they told me the full truth, so that I might follow out this part of my past if I wished. And so I am here.”
Xander looked as pole-axed as the rest of them, but he at least was spared the tennis-match effect of looking back and forth, unbelieving, from him to the dazzling new arrival. “I knew,” he admitted, his eyes fixed on her. “Knew I had a twin sister, anyway, I ran across her birth certificate when I was still in grade school. But my folks told me she had died a few days after she was born …” His laugh was the melancholy reflex of one long schooled in hiding pain. “I guess they figured one of me was all they could handle.”
“And you were the one they wished to keep!” she assured him, with all the impetuous passion of her Italian upbringing. “This is not a time for sadness, fratello mio. We are together now, and there is no past for us, only such future as we create.”
This must be the year for new siblings to pop up, Buffy thought, still staring at the newcomer but also watching the others’ reaction to her. She had told them the truth about Dawn only yesterday, but didn’t want her sister’s true nature to become more widely known, so she was hampered in any doubts she might have wished to express about the unlikelihood of such an improbable coincidence …
… but then, did she actually have any doubts? Just looking at them, the kinship between Xander and Alissandra was unmistakable. They had the same face, the same wavy dark hair and hazel eyes, the same mobile, expressive mouth, but in every instance the feminine modification turned ‘appealing’ into ‘stunning’. Alissandra’s lips were fuller, her eyes fringed with dark lashes thicker than Xander’s, the lankiness of his frame smoothed into graceful elegance by her curvier contours. The Neapolitan sun had tanned her complexion to a warm, mellow apricot hue, and she wore the latest Milanese fashion with an easy assurance that would have reduced Cordelia Chase to seething envy. Every familiar feature, altered but instantly recognizable, and the totality imbued with an eager, happy vitality. Who ever would have suspected that Xander could be so hot as a woman —?
Her mind snapped back to the immediate moment: Xander was saying something about how he really wanted to get to know his new sister better but this was kind of a tricky time, he had pressing obligations and for that matter Sunnydale was maybe not the best tourist spot right now … Alissandra waited until he paused for breath, then inquired coolly, “Has this to do with your town being situated on la bocca dell’inferno? the Mouth of Hell?” Then there were explanations and other questions and surprise revelations, and it ended with Alissandra insisting, “But I can help! I learned many things from my mother and the other wise women of Hecate’s Sisterhood, and due to my father’s influence I was allowed since I was a child to study secret documents in the Vatican archives, knowledge too dangerous for common use but of vital importance in time of peril. The rites used to bind and imprison Moloch the Corruptor … I found a flaw in them, the priests should not have attempted to work the ritual at a distance, but if we can track this Glorificus to her home ground and do the binding there, strengthened by the power of this amulet from my mother —!”
She was able to help with the tracking spell, too, suggesting refinements that had Willow nodding eagerly and babbling delight, while Giles exclaimed, “Of course!”, and Tara simply sat dumfounded. They confirmed Glory’s presence in one of the new high-rise condominiums, and at Alissandra’s suggestion they set up a pentacle in the courtyard to concentrate the power of the binding ritual, one of them — Giles, Tara, Willow, Anya, Xander — anchoring each point of the diagram, leaving Buffy free to call Glory out and keep her busy while Alissandra herself carried out the binding. And everything went as planned, Alissandra timing the focus of the ritual to hit Glory within seconds of the hell-demon’s appearance. Glory shrieked, seemingly more from outrage and vexation than from any sign of pain, as the binding force seized her and began to pull her toward the vessel they had prepared. It was as if she was being drawn out of herself, tugged inexorably to imprisonment and banishment …
… but there was something else, something that seemed to hold her, a shadowy outline (larger than Glory, and of a less obviously feminine form) that held its place as she was being pulled away. Filmy bands stretched between them, firmed and resisted, and then snapped Glory back to where she had been. Alissandra cried out as the mystical backlash from the failed ritual rebounded into her, and she went up like a torch while the echoes of her voice still hung in the air. Then Glory was among the others, vindictive and irresistible and terrible, and the world dissolved in a welter of chaos and carnage, blood and screams and agony.
* * *
FUCK.
* * *
Xander had picked the site of the showdown-to-be. Sunnydale High School had been the scene of any number of apocalyptic battles (almost literally, in several cases), so the recently-laid foundations of the new school being built in its place had a symbolic meaning even apart from its advantages in terms of seclusion, obstacles and hiding places that could be strategically utilized, building materials ditto … Xander also had some ideas about bringing power machinery into the mix, but their new general had brushed away that thought. This battle was not for civilians, however desirous to be of aid, but of those born to be warriors.
Miyake Sayomi was both warrior and thief, and the planning for this day’s confrontation called for the fullest application of all her abilities. Only a master thief could have penetrated the caverns of the Nezzla demon guardians and emerged with the fabled Orbs of Nezzla’khan within a matter of hours, and only a consummate warrior could have designed the strategy they were now setting into motion. It was to their fortune, then, that fate had brought her to them in this time of direst need.
As ninja were to mundane conflict and deception, so were the Mahou no Kage-shi, the shadow clans of sorcery, to the darker world of demonic entities and magical forces. As a female, Miyake Sayomi would have been forbidden to learn the more robust arts and play the more forceful role relegated to men, permitted only the theoretically complementary (but in practical terms less respected) arts of seduction and espionage, misdirection and intelligence-gathering and manipulation. Sayomi (“night-born”, in the old tongue) had rebelled against her clan’s strictures, demanding that she be allowed to follow out her own talents rather than submissively walk the road laid out for her by others. They had subjected her to the same harsh initiation as prospective boy students, thinking to break her spirit and turn her to a more submissive course of behavior by first-hand experience of the excruciating demands one must meet in order to stand in the ranks of the Shadow Masters. To their consternation, she had not only withstood the ordeal, which culled seven of every ten even of those who had been prepared since earliest childhood, but had surpassed all the other candidates. Which amazement she continued to perpetrate throughout every subsequent phase of her instruction, training, and testing.
A novice requires a dozen years of preparation before being deemed ready to serve without disgrace in the rigors of the shadow company. In only four years, there was no more they could teach Sayomi, for she had already mastered every art. She could have been the next clan leader, for the stupendous extent of her talents had long since replaced resentment with awe and respect … but again she had chosen a different path, going out into the world alone to carve out a new place for herself. Only those of her clan, and the few she allowed to be close, now knew the name of Miyake Sayomi; to the rest of the world, she was Kaminari, named for the goddess of thunder, the Heavenly Noise.
And she had come to Sunnydale, because this was where the greatest challenge was to be found.
Glory had been lured to the construction site from the hospital where Sayomi had correctly predicted she would appear. In the maze of partially completed rooms, it had been simple to surround the demon-creature without her being aware of the forces being arrayed against her. Now, they sprang the trap.
Spike, weakest of the three, swung at Glory with the Dagon Sphere, secured in the folds of a net so he could strike with it as with a morningstar. Buffy, next most formidable, drove the demon female to her knees with a blow from the troll hammer that no lesser strength could wield. And Sayomi, at the third point of the triangle, unleashed a flurry of kicks, chops, punches, weaponless techniques but powered by the Orbs that magnified her strength to past Slayer levels, so that each blow hit almost as hard as the troll hammer itself, but many more such blows in much less time.
Glory reeled from the assaults blasting her from three directions … but she was strong, and she was resilient, and pain angered her more than it weakened her. She caught the net the fourth time Spike struck her with the sphere weighting it, and before he could let go (if, in fact, he could have been prevailed upon to do so), she swung him into the nearest half-finished wall with such force that he went completely through the concrete structure. Sayomi nailed her five times while she was doing that, blows that could have shattered steel girders, but gods! the bitch was tough! Glory kept going, a swinging arm catching Buffy in the torso and hurling her outside the building — through an empty window, fortunately — and then it was down to just the two of them.
Face to face, one on one, it was more nearly even. Glory could not begin to match Sayomi for skill, and the supernatural speed she could call on seemed to require a moment’s concentration that Sayomi would not allow her. Glory’s hardiness was almost as incredible as her strength, however — which even now was still greater than Sayomi’s — and full-power strikes to throat, jawline, clavicle, breastbone, knees, lower ribs, any vulnerable area, hurt and staggered but did not fell her.
They fought in the center of the unfinished structure, by now as much half-destroyed as half-completed. Sayomi drove into Glory with blow after blow, trying to chisel away at her adversary, wear her down by sheer accumulation of punishment, each strike carrying not only physical impact but also the supernatural equivalent of dim mak, the Penetrating Force. Glory swung back, clumsy but undaunted, and Sayomi turned some attacks with easy skill and let the power of the Orbs of Nezzla’khan soak up others, she wasn’t being hurt but neither was Glory, not really, she could have demolished a main battle tank with the damage she was pouring out and it still wasn’t enough —
She had secreted the Orbs in a pouch between her breasts, so that her own enchanted flesh would protect them from any harm. Now a diffuse but growing pain broke through Sayomi’s battle-focus: the Orbs were hot, and becoming hotter. She had demanded too much, even their vast power wasn’t limitless, and something told her they would disintegrate under the stress of thirty more seconds of such intense combat.
As Glory struck at her again, she caught the demon female’s arm and, with a lightning pivot of her body and all her augmented strength, flung Glory over the walls and out of sight.
She turned at a sound: Buffy was back, pushing through a doorway with the troll hammer raised. As Buffy stopped, seeing no target, Sayomi reached down the front of her tunic and withdrew the Orbs which, though briefly less taxed, still glowed with a sullen heat. “You must use these,” Sayomi told Buffy. “I have forced them to their limits, and can go no farther. They will not increase your strength by as much as they did mine, but you are stronger at the beginning, so perhaps it will be enough.” She shook her head. “The battle is yours now.”
Buffy took the Orbs, and was automatically stuffing them into the pocket of her jeans even as she protested, “But … what are you going to —?”
“She is here,” Sayomi said, and stepped back.
Buffy spun as Glory appeared in the ruined doorway, then she charged to the attack, hammer lifted. In that moment of total focus and commitment, she looked like a warrior goddess herself: Norse, perhaps, or Saxon. Sayomi turned and began to walk away, disregarding the sounds behind her.
The Slayer would fight; surrender was not part of who she was. With her will and her weapon and the power remaining in the Orbs, she might win. Or, she might fail, and fall, and die, as she had done every other time. Regardless of the outcome, she would face it alone, for Miyake Sayomi — Kaminari, the Thunder Queen, the Heavenly Noise — had done all she could, and it had proven inadequate to the task.
* * *
I hate this shit. I hate this shit.
* * *
There are all kinds of places I could go, even within the limits of a single day, and I’ve gone to most of them, many times, depending on my mood. Somehow, though, I keep winding up back at the Bronze.
I don’t know why. It wasn’t my kind of spot even when I belonged to the age group that had nowhere else to congregate. And of course, the way things are now, I’m always dealing with the same crowd and the same people, the same band, the same acts … Okay, that last I can affect easily enough, and as I’ve done dozens of times before — maybe hundreds, maybe thousands — I arranged in advance to have a playlist and an unsigned $1,000 check delivered to the band, advising that I’ll sign it gladly if they’ll stick to the songs on the list. That at least introduces some change into how the evening will proceed, and by now I need some change in my routine more than I need anything else on God’s green earth.
All the same, tonight it’s not entertainment I’m here for, or even diversion. I find him at the back, right where he usually perches; sometimes the different songs I arrange (or other divergences introduced during the day) will alter his placement in no pattern I’ve been able to establish yet, and I long ago got sick to death of trying to figure it out. I slide into the seat across from him in the booth, and address him briskly. “Jonathan.”
He goggles at me, doing the double-take I’ve seen so many times I just want to gouge out his eyes. “Nancy?” he stammers. “Nancy Doyle?”
Why does he always sound surprised? Granted, we didn’t have much to do with each other in high school, but why should it be such a surprise that I would speak to him? Maybe it’s something in my face, I’ve been through a continent-load of crap since high school and some of that may show in my expression … but no, he acted the same the first time I looked him up here, long before said crap began to pile up as high around me as it is now.
Keeping in mind, naturally, that for him it’s still the first time.
“Tell me about the paragon spell,” I demand of him. “That thing you did a little over a year ago.”
The goggling increases, which again is right on schedule. “You, you know about that?” he says. “You remember? because, most people, it just sort of faded right out of their memories after a few days.”
“I’m not most people,” I tell him flatly. “Lay it out for me. Ingredients, chants, timing, phase of the moon … hell, what kind of deodorant you wore that day, I want everything. Go on, start talking.”
“That’s, uh, that’s maybe not such a good idea.” He looks around nervously, probably to see if anyone else is listening. (As if anyone else would care.) “A lot of people got mad at me over that, and, and I think they weren’t wrong. It’s just not nice to manipulate folks like that —”
“Jonathan,” I say, and fix him with the freezing glare I’ve polished through several changes of identify, “tell me what I want, everything I want, right now and with no back-talk, or I will make you one sorry monkey. Trust me, I am the last person you want to screw with right now.”
So he spills it, the whole business, and I’ve been through this enough times that I know exactly where to prompt him for further details, for clarification, for any sign that he might have left out or forgotten anything. I get it all, every bit of it, and none of it is new. Not one single shred.
We both sit silent, me from anger and depression and total lack of any notion of what to do next, him probably from nervousness and uncertainty. Then he says, “You already tried it, didn’t you? Tried it and didn’t get what you wanted.”
This is new, or at least a little new; generally, he’s needed more explicit info before reaching that conclusion. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“But it sounds like you did everything right,” he says. “I mean, from the questions you asked, I’d say you know that spell better than I did. So what went wrong?”
“What went wrong?” I repeat. “What went wrong? What do you think all those questions were about? What do you think I’ve tried so hard for so long to figure out? I don’t know what went wrong! If I did, maybe I could change it!”
He went back in his seat a little when I started ranting, and he may have gone a little pale, it’s hard to tell in this light. He sits still when I finish, probably watching for danger of some further explosion; when it doesn’t come, he ventures hesitantly, “Well … what happened when it didn’t go right, then?”
My growl of disgust carries even above the music. “I never got to finish the damn thing, and every time I’ve tried it since, big fat nothing. It’s like … it’s like hitting PRINT on a document a dozen times, only it doesn’t do any good because your first try is still bottlenecked in the memory buffer. It’s driving me crazy … and believe me, these days that’s a trip you could make on a five-dollar skateboard.”
I can see him thinking about it. “Well,” he observes slowly, “maybe that’s a sign that you should, you know, give up on the idea and try something else with your life.”
“Oh, if only I could.” I sigh heavily. “Look, explaining it never does any good, but neither does anything else, so here goes. The spell didn’t work, at least not the way it was supposed to, but it sure as hell did something. I was about two-thirds of the way through it, bringing in the part about limiting the effects to the immediate environment, I guess ’cause it would overload it or spread it too thin to try to cast it over the whole world. I had just set the first limits around myself, and was beginning the part where I would expand the effect over the area I wanted to cover. I was going to start with just UC-Sunnydale, and if that felt solid I figured to extend it over the whole town, like you did —”
Jonathan nods understanding. “And?”
“And I bounced,” I tell him. “That’s the best way I know to describe it. Before I could go past the limits I set on myself, I hit something and I bounced backward.” I make a mouth. “Backward being seventeen hours earlier. And I’ve been reliving that same fucking seventeen hours, over and over, ever since.”
“Whoa,” Jonathan says. Then, “How long?”
“Christ only knows,” I answer. “Centuries, maybe.”
He nods again. “And you don’t know what’s causing it?”
“What else?” I reply. “An apocalypse.”
He gets that nervous look again. “You mean … another one?”
My laugh is real, but there’s no humor behind it. “Buddy boy, you wouldn’t believe how often they pop up. Best I can tell, once or twice a year, maybe more, since we were sophomores. That big ‘Class Protector’ thing you did for Buffy at Prom? Turns out you didn’t know the half of it. None of us did.”
Jonathan’s twirling his drink straw while he thinks. It’s something I’ve noticed about him: he has to keep his hands busy to let his mind run free. “So what is it? This … this year’s apocalypse?”
“Calls itself Glory,” I tell him. “Prophecies call it Glorificus, or the Beast. Seems to be about five-four, curly hair, sharp eyes, sharper mouth, fashion sense runs to high-end slutty … It looks female, but I’m thinking that’s not its true form, because this bitch is hellacious strong. Not to mention damn hard to kill. In fact, impossible to kill, at least so far.”
“Oh,” Jonathan says. “So … you’ve tried.” He gives me a sidelong look. “You mentioned centuries, so I’m guessing you tried more than once. And you’re still alive?”
“She’s killed me over and over,” I correct him. “And sometimes I die while I’m working at gathering power for my next go-round; I got scragged eight times before I figured out a way to get past the Nezzla demons’ barrier, and that was after I’d learned a lot of nasty tricks. Dying doesn’t stick to me, I just wake up again back on the wheel.”
There’s a lot more to it than that, but there’s no point in explaining it all to him, because he’ll be just as gape-mouthed clueless the next time I talk to him. Dying doesn’t stick to me, but knowledge doesn’t stick to anyone else, I start (restart) every day with people who haven’t learned anything. Gives me a lot of advantages in dealing with them, but it’s also damnably frustrating … because every day, every single day, I have to do a cold start with the same incurable ignoramuses, and bring them up to speed for a knock-down fight in less than seventeen hours. Which is why I got into creating so many super-woman aliases: in the end, it takes less time to sell Buffy and her crew on an awesome newcomer than to convince them that Nancy Doyle knows what she’s talking about, no matter how much juice she’s collected in the meantime.
Sometimes — lots of times — I get so sick of it that I just give it up. Like now.
Jonathan watches me as I stand up again. He must see the new purpose in me, and isn’t sure he likes what he sees. “So, so what are you going to do now?”
I laugh again, with just as little humor. “Do?” I say. “I’m going to blow off the whole business, and just enjoy myself for awhile.”
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