Fifty Five
Dawn felt the electric thrill race through her body as the cool water drenched her hand past the wrist. Her vision was filled with such a beautiful green light that it took her breath away and made her forget the pain. But the climactic feeling only lasted an instant.
“No!” Dawn was snapped back to real time as Buffy shouted and leapt across the table, knocking her and it to the floor. The urn shattered on the stone floor, the water inside washing out over the floor, across the sisters.
The feeling of the surging of the entity that Dawn had become accustomed to was suddenly and unforgivingly replaced with a different kind of pain. The unpleasant kind. Buffy held her sister from the floor as they both knelt in the puddle, as Dawn’s eyes began to glow, her voice a quivering moan of pain and exhaustion.
As the slayer gripped her sister tightly by the shoulders, staring hard into her face, trying to overcome by sheer act of will the force that she knew would make these her last moments with Dawn, she felt something herself. The puddle she knelt in soaked through her pants and touched her skin. With a confused and pained expression, she was forced to close her eyes as the pain took her too. Through her own eyelids, the glow began.
As he saw both girls writhing in each other’s arms, Angel rushed forward, giving the monks on either side of him a harsh blow to the stomach. The vampire was intercepted, however, by the gentlest touch from the conjurer at the extreme edge of the puddle of water. Angel found he was unable to resist the hand on his elbow, he simply stood and watched.
“You know it’s right,” Loki said sincerely. But the conjurer’s interest was far from the pain of the two girls. His focus shimmered iridescently in the shallow puddle of water on the floor. The Key was free.
“Angel,” Buffy looked up, confused and betrayed as, in their pain, he merely watched and waited. “Help Dawn,” Buffy pleaded, even as the glow began to subside. But as Angel only stood there, wearing an expression of near torment, wanting to say something comforting but knowing nothing would do, the slayer turned to her sister, whose eyes were also beginning to dim. “Dawnie,” she whispered, gripping Dawn’s shoulders with both hands, “I will never forget you.”
Then the glow was gone and the agony with it and both girls were left kneeling in the puddle on the stone floor. The puddle had been glittering an odd green, but was now clear and dark. Finally, after an exhaustive moment of clinging tightly to each other, Dawn and Buffy slowly stood. Buffy was angry at everyone in general, but relieved that her sister was still part of remembered history. “It was true?” the slayer asked, still harboring mistrust. “All of it?”
Loki made a small smile. “Truth is in the eye of the beholder.”
Angel let out a breath he had been holding since Buffy had made her lunge. Buffy’s head snapped in his direction. Her look conveyed everything she wanted to say. His look was one of helpless resignation.
Finally the slayer turned back to her sister. Dawn was breathing deeply with a frown on her face, holding a hand, fingers splayed, against her chest. Her eyes searched the distance as her mind searched itself, looking for what she supposed she might find. “Dawn?” Buffy’s voice penetrated her mind. “Are you alright? Dawn?” Buffy shook her sister, bringing her attention back to her face.
Instead of answering her sister, Dawn’s eyes slowly moved sideways until she had locked her gaze with Loki. “Why her?” Dawn asked, her voice tired and unreadable.
Angel nodded and turned on Loki as well. “Why did Buffy feel it? We know Buffy’s not a Specter. What happened?”
The conjurer raised his hands in a calming fashion as all heads turned to him. Somewhere, the chanting of the monks had tapered off. There was no sound now except the panting breaths and the drip, drip of water from the girl’s clothes. “There were never any books written about you, Dawn,” the man in the white silk shirt said at last. “Not even I knew what to expect. You were created from the blood of your sister: you are one blood, one kin. It seems appropriate that you share one soul.” Buffy and Dawn exchanged a look that spoke volumes. Loki continued, stepping away from Angel, releasing the vampire’s arm. “I know what it is you’ve read concerning the fate of the host of the Key, Buffy Summers,” Loki walked carefully around the overturned table and the puddle with its shards of the broken pot. “I know because I have read the same books. I knew the man who wrote them. But what you couldn’t figure out is why the monks of Dagon didn’t do that same thing this time: why they didn’t create a member of their order, or even Dawn, by themselves.”
Buffy never let her sister go, some part of her still trapped by the thought that she might, at any moment, vanish from history and memory. “They needed me to protect it. I wouldn’t have done what I did for any monk.”
Loki smiled. “Yes, that’s true. But the monks called me to make something very special for one, very simple reason.” He let that hang in the room as the monks in the background remained still, all shrouded in shadow and burlap, all quiet.
Angel turned his attention from Buffy to Loki, his voice hard on her behalf. “And what would that be?”
Loki glanced at him, then his eyes began to dart around the room, as if looking for something cleverly hidden. “To bring us here, now.” The conjurer’s heart was pounding. This was the crescendo of fourteen years of work. He had expected fanfare and brilliant light-shows, but there was only quietness and the pounding of his anxious heart and the quiet drip, drip of the water from Buffy’s soaked sleeve.
“Why?” Demanded the slayer, throwing the question like a parry, dodging his explanation. There was no way in hell he was going to explain all of this away with logic. He was going to get the ass-kicking of a lifetime.
Loki smiled. He could hear the thought that pounded between her temples. He had a feeling it would come true, too, but not yet. His eyes continued to dart around the room, his voice answering with a kind of sardonic chuckle. “I don’t know.”
With a shiver of light, four figures appeared near the door. A vampire, a demon and two humans. Every head in the room turned to them.
“Buffy,” Xander held a short sword and kept it trained on Loki as he made his way to the two girls. “Dawn; thank God. You’re alright?”
Buffy blinked and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the confusion. “Yeah- yeah we’re fine. Don’t let him go anywhere,” she said concerning the conjurer. Xander took his place between the girls and the monks while Anya and Giles stood on either side of the man in white.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Loki said with a little smile. Without turning his head back to the doorway, the conjurer raised his voice and addressed the only member of the rescue party who hung back. “Hello William,” he said. His tone was the culmination of decades of seething hatred churned together over these last months with the exaltation of knowing his revenge was at hand.
“Do I know you?” Spike asked, his voice slightly less unconcerned than he had intended.
Loki, still looking past the girls as he spoke to the vampire behind him, made a half hearted chuckle. There was some sadness and some regret, but resentment, covered badly with good humor, was the prevailing emotion. “No,” the conjurer answered. “But I know you.” He slowly turned around. “I know you very well.” He stepped forward, carefully, heel to toe, as if walking a tight rope. “I’ve waited a long... long time for this—”
“Stop right there,” Giles commanded, raising his crossbow. Anya raiser her scythe, stepping to one side to prevent Loki from going for the corridor to escape. “We’ve been doing some reading up on you, Logan,” the Watcher said harshly. “We know about your daughter...” The conjurer continued to stare at the vampire, his gaze hungry, his eyes crazed. “But why don’t you tell us about your wife?”
Loki’s head whipped to one side before he could stop it. “My wife?”
“Rachel,” Giles said a little more gently. “We know what happened. We found the documents in the government records.”
“My wife?” Loki repeated, his brow furrowing. “Rachel?”
9 August, 1988, Freeport, New York
“Rachel!” Logan shouted, slamming the front door closed behind him. He marched into the kitchen to find her setting down the telephone. She was dressed to go out. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, slamming the document down on the counter.
“Your notice,” she said simply. “I’ve filed for divorce.”
Logan’s mouth hung open for a moment, his mind racing. “Wha— why?”
“Why don’t you ask Niki?” Rachel shrugged, obviously hiding the supreme anger on her own part. “And once you’ve asked her, why don’t you roll over and fuck her a few more times?” She turned to the small telephone table and slid her hand into a manilla envelope, pulling out a sheaf of enlarged photos. She tossed them onto the counter towards her husband where they slid apart to reveal several intimate encounters between the blond haired man and the blond haired woman.
Logan was speechless. He slowly reached down and lifted one of the pictures to look at it. In the corner was stamped a small W&H logo. “Where did you get these?” he asked, almost more offended than angry.
“I hired someone,” she said casually. Rachel stared at him with a mixture of anger and regret as he stared at the photo in disbelief. “I told you never to see her again. I gave us another chance because Hanna deserves parents who love each other.” There was a brief pause but he didn’t look up. “With my job at the hospital, my lawyers say I’ll have no problem... getting full custody.”
It took a moment for the words to register. Logan slowly raised his gaze from the picture. “You are not taking Hanna away from me.” When Rachel said nothing, Logan’s anger and most of all his fear mounted. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you take my daughter!”
“Our daughter,” Rachel said poisonously, “whose mother alone loves her enough not to jeopardize the family by screwing around.”
Logan’s mind was racing a mile a minute now. His thoughts were a jumble of chaos and anger. Just this morning he had kissed Hanna like he always did—
“With your criminal record, I’m also getting a restraining order against you,” there was retribution now in Rachel’s eyes, a cold fury that had finally found an outlet. A way to hurt him as deeply as he had hurt her. “You’ll never see her again.”
Logan reeled. He staggered back from the kitchen and tore out the front door to his little brown car. “This isn’t over,” he said quietly as the door closed behind him. This isn’t over, this isn’t over, this isn’t—
“She threatened to take the one thing you most cared about away from you,” Giles said, looking down the stock of his crossbow. “And so you put a hit out on her.”
Loki slowly closed his eyes. He could feel the gaze of each person pressing in on him. He concentrated instead on his kaya. They were motionless. The haze of the sunyata was impenetrable.
“You offered up a big reward to anyone in the demon underworld who would take her out of the picture,” the Watcher continued. “And a Werlech demon took the job.”
Buffy slowly strode away from Dawn, releasing her for the first time. The absolute anger she felt was seething just under her skin. She, herself, was a child of a broken home. Hank and Joyce had divorced, partly because of her, she knew, and partly because her dad had been screwing around with his secretary. The slayer moved forward until she was face to face with the conjurer, his eyes still closed, but she knew he could see her. After a moment, on behalf of herself, her late mother, her sister, and everyone she could think of, she struck him hard across the face. The water from her sleeve arced across the room in tiny glittering droplets as he collapsed to the floor with the force from her slayer strength.
He came to rest on his hands and knees as she stood over him, using no words, but saying everything that needed saying. He began to weep.
“But how could you know that the demon would kill them all?” Giles said quietly, relaxing his grip on the crossbow, just a little. “And how could you know what it would expect as payment?”
“There’s nothing more valuable in demon commerce,” Anya said on cue, “than a human soul.”
Tears streaked down the conjurer’s face. His tears were quiet, salty and bitter, like his life.
“What the bloody hell have I got to do with it?” Spike said angrily, glaring down at the man on the floor.
Loki clenched his jaw and found the surge of inner strength that was his undying hatred. “You,” he hissed, looking up from the floor, “you killed the last thing in the world I ever cared about.”
“Which was what?” the vamp demanded, stepping closer as Loki straightened up to kneel now on the hard stones.
“You took Niki from me,” Loki slowly got to his feet, wiping the tear stains from his face. “You killed her for no reason. Just to have yourself a good day.” His eyes were viciously hard and if he had wanted them to, could have pierced stone. “And for that, I’m going to send you where you should have gone every minute of every day since you were sired.” He shot his hands out to the sides and a sphere of rage-filled red energy expanded away from him to encompass the vampire and himself.
The quarrel bounced harmlessly off of it from Giles’ crossbow, indicating beyond a doubt its solidity. Loki and Spike began moving around each other — circling each other like big carnivores. Spike’s face vamped out and he snarled, charging the crazed conjurer. But a bolt of red-orange energy threw him back against the inside of the sphere, putting a smoking black mark on his duster’s collar.
The vampire threw off the jacket, shifting quickly from foot to foot, as if boxing, or dancing, in defense against the superior foe. Loki smiled and shot his hand forward, catching a punch thrown by the shifting vampire. Though his grip made the vamp wince in pain, the conjurer didn’t see the second blow coming and caught the knuckles in the chin. He staggered back and thrust his fist outward, an invisible force tossing Spike across the fight circle.
Before Loki could even look at the hand he had touched to his injured chin, the vampire was back up again, delivering a spinning kick which Loki ducked and answered with a stab of nausea. Spike stumbled backwards, moaning, gripping his stomach.
From outside the bubble, Buffy and the others watched the fight. The slayer looked around helplessly as the vampire continued to get pummeled by the conjurer’s superior power. There had to be something that a slayer could do.
Willow and Tara joined hands in the circle, the red glowing sphere at the center. “Cronus, father of time,” they chanted, “as you were there at time’s beginning, so you are there at its final count. Give us now the strength required to complete this task laid before us. Allow us to put right what has been wrongly done.” The witches’ voices were speaking as one, their eyes closed as the sphere grew more intensely red. “Set correct the path, the design, the story. Reshape what has been changed, give back the life that was taken, this we ask and to you we pray. Cronus, father of time...” There was a brilliant flash of light.
*
”Your shirt,” Tara said quietly as Willow looked down at the blood splatter there. Then the witch collapsed to the floor.
*
“Says the spider to the fly,” Willow laughed and rose off the ground to look down contemptuously at the conjurer in the silly shirt. He would do for a boost.
*
“I don’t know much about dreams,” Willow said timidly as Dawn looked anxiously from her desk chair. The witch sat on the bed, then glanced down. “Tara was the expert on that sort of thing.” Dawn also looked down.
*
Willow grabbed the sphere from Loki’s desk as the conjurer shot another bolt from his unseen position. She just barely managed to teleport away before he fired again.
*
Willow sat alone in the circle with the red sphere. It was glowing dully. “I guess it didn’t work,” she said sullenly. “I knew I couldn’t do it alone.”
Loki screamed in agony as the burns resurfaced all over his chest and stomach. He could feel the unseen scars on his hands and face. What the hell just happened? He stumbled back as Spike punched and kicked him hard. He shot his hand out to crush the vampire like a bug, but the vamp merely tottered off balance for a moment.
“That the best you can do?” The vampire slugged the specter in the face, sending him sprawling backwards. “Who was this Niki anyway?” Spike jabbed his heel into Loki’s stomach. The specter grunted. “Some relation?”
The vampire cried out in pain as his boot caught fire, Loki’s body having become exceedingly hot. After stamping out the flames, the vampire circled back around to see Loki on his feet again. “She was a slayer,” Loki said, gasping at the effort of using so much magic. He had never really gained it all back since his battle with the witch... he frowned. But that battle had never happened. He looked down at his hands. The scars were faded – difficult to see if he weren’t looking for them, but they were there. What the hell just happened?
He looked up and caught the still smoking boot to the face, sending him to the floor again.
Buffy looked around the crowd of monks and her friends who tried to keep them all at arms length, still holding weapons. The slayer found Dawn with Xander who was holding her with his arm around her shoulder as they watched the battle inside the red bubble.
She turned around and saw Angel near Anya and Giles. Angel was looking uncomfortable. He was obviously not sure for whom he was cheering in the fight which was occurring.
The slayer then began to scan the faces of the monks. They were mostly obscured by the hoods they wore, but some were visible. Including one which was not human at all. She moved slowly towards him through the crowd. The monks had gathered around the perimeter of the bubble and were talking amongst themselves while watching their spiritual leader duke it out with a vampire.
Buffy found Charlie from behind as he leered a vampire leer at the pulse-pounding action before him. His tutor was going to prove his great strength, his great worth. In many ways, in the short time Charlie had known him, Loki had been like a father to him. More like a father than Charlie’s sire had been. Loki had been proud of him.
Charlie beamed as Loki delivered a vicious uppercut to the pathetic, blond haired North-Londoner. The conjurer turned to glance at Charlie, his project, his insurance against prophecy, and did a double take. As the conjurer’s eyes grew wide and he took a hard blow to his ribs, Charlie felt a pang of fear. He turned around and screamed.
The stake found its target straight and true. Buffy stood behind the puff of ashes as Loki reached out on his knees a futile hand shouting Charlie’s name. Spike drop kicked him. Buffy winced. It was hard to see someone take a beating like that from a vampire. Even a murdering bastard like Logan Kilpatrick. Her slayer instinct would have her between them, defending Loki, dusting Spike. But it wasn’t meant to be.
As Loki collapsed under the vampire’s drop kick, he exhaled and his consciousness flickered. The red bubble promptly collapsed and there was a surge of brown robes ready to tear the vampire apart. The monks hauled Spike from Loki’s fallen form, but before the many hands could damage him, Loki was back on his feet restraining them.
Now, inside only a ring of monks, the two enemies circled each other again. Loki had lost any hope of cheating Destiny now. The bitch had both eyes locked on the conjurer and his fate here in this high mountain. But it hadn’t been hope that had been driving the specter. It had never been hope. Give it a name and call it friend. It was William the Bloody. It was fury.
Loki lashed out with an exhaustive salvo of energy bolts, sending the vampire twisting and shouting into the wall of brown that encircled them. But soon the vamp was at him again, charging and snarling. Loki knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer. Energy bolts wouldn’t kill a vampire. “Weapon,” the conjurer called to the monks, holding out a hand to one side, but keeping his eyes trained on the charging foe.
A long slender stake was placed in his palm and in a flash, as Spike drew near, the conjurer embraced him in a bear hug and drove the stake definitively through the vampire’s heart.
Spike looked down in surprise as he drew a little away from the conjurer’s deadly embrace. The pain was immense, as he always imagined being dusted would be. As his strength gave way, he heard someone call his name. It was Buffy. A small smile crossed his lips.
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