Blind and Dangerous - Act 2
Niki walked from the cemetery with a vicious headache. Some of the flashes, though, were beginning to resolve themselves in her memory. They were indeed like things she remembered. Memories of doing things.. Things she could swear she had never done. But they were her memories... She shook her head, unable to reconcile the flashes with any kind of logic. All she knew for sure was that if the Council was summoning demons like that to kill her... she might be in trouble.
She stepped off the curb and began to cross the dark street when another wave of nausea overcame her. Unable to help it, she collapsed onto her knees in the middle of the street, clutching her stomach.
The image was clearer this time. She remembered being in a house. It was sunset. There were screams. She remembered battling a great, dark demon. It skin was black and leathery, it had two tall horns on its head like a gazelle.
Niki blinked, knowing she had to get up off the street but she was still seeing the memory, the flashes punctuated by the sound of the demon shaking its stick. She closed her eyes and willed the vision to leave her. When she opened them she was still fighting the horned demon, punching it, kicking it. She grabbed it by the throat and brought it to the ground—
With an urgent honking, the taxi driver saw her at the last minute and swerved out of the way. The screeching of tires pulled her from the vision and she lifted herself to her feet, staggering to the far side of the street, only to collapse back to her knees as the vision took hold again.
Now she was losing against the horned creature – it had her arm pinned behind her back and was snarling fiercely. She struggled against it, but its leathery hands slid up her shoulder to her neck. With an iron grip, it took hold of her by the throat, closing its fist with a wet crunch.
Niki knelt on the sidewalk, clutching her throat, gasping for breath as if the demon was there with her now, choking the life out of her. She fell back onto the concrete, staring up as if the demon were staring down at her.
It leered as it reached down to take its prize from its victim. Niki, with her last dying gasps, could feel its fingers spreading across her chest. It leaned down close to her and opened its mouth to inhale of her.
Niki sat bolt upright on the dark sidewalk, her eyes wide, her vision clear. It was a memory. Her last memory. She shook her head to rid herself of the feeling of the hand on her chest. She gently massaged her ribs where she had felt the force of the creature’s blows.
“Are you okay, Miss?” A hand was placed on her shoulder and a young man squatted down next to her in concern. “Do you need to go to a hospital?”
Niki blinked rapidly, quickly standing up and dusting herself off. “Uh... no. Thanks, I just– I’ll be fine.” Without even a glance at the man she turned and bolted down the dark street, running as fast as her legs would carry her.
The man who had stopped to help her watched her go, his face impassive as she outran the city traffic to the next intersection, disappearing around the corner. He stared after her for several seconds, slowly wiping the dust from his hands and reaching for his belt.
He lifted the small radio from its clip and brought it to his lips. “I’ve made contact: She’s heading North.”
Logan stood, very skeptically, with his arms crossed in the glow of the streetlight. “This may be a stupid question, so bear with me, but why would a demon... the Timekeeper?... yeah, why would it chase you all over the history book just to kill you? Couldn’t it just pop back to before you – before we were born and, say, sell dad a condom?”
Loki rolled his eyes. “It can’t disrupt the timeline. In fact, it’s job is to protect the timeline from disruption.”
Logan slowly nodded, beginning to understand. “Oooh... I get it now. It’s trying to kill you because you’re here.”
Loki nodded. “Now you’re getting it. Though, technically, it doesn’t really need to kill us – just Wilson.”
Logan shook his head — “Who’s Wilson?”
Loki opened his mouth to answer when Oz grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back into the shadows of the hedge. A heartbeat later, Rachel pushed the front door open and stepped out onto the lawn.
“Logan, who are you talking to?” She called, her arms crossed and her expression grim.
Logan scowled. “No one, honey, go inside.”
She scoffed and dismissed him with a disdainful wave of her hand, trudging back into the house. “Fine, but I’m locking the door.”
Logan’s jaw tightened and he swallowed a retort. Looking back to the shadows, Loki and Oz were gone.
The next morning found Niki wandering the streets of Manhattan, desperately searching for something — anything which could make the visions stop. She remembered the Nail Biter was reopening and made her way to 37th Avenue East.
She almost ran down the refinished steps and burst through the door into her old bar of choice. It was practically deserted. The place was finished, mostly, but there were very few patrons compared to what Niki remembered. This fact didn’t hold her attention very long, however, as the feeling which preceded every wave of nausea began in her gut.
She rushed to the bar and slammed her fist down on the glass surface. “Gimme some Stuff,” she commanded, glaring into the unfamiliar demon face of the bartender. He answered her glare with an uncertain frown, then slowly drew the vial of white powder from the counter behind him, setting it before the Slayer. He reached for a bottle of whiskey and a glass, but she waved him off, uncapping the vial and dumping a good triple dose of the narcotic-toxin into her mouth. She grimaced as she swallowed the chalky substance, then in under a minute was passed out on the floor.
The vison which consumed her consciousness, as her body lay limp on the floor, was different than the one from which she had tried to escape with the white powder. There was no horned demon at sunset. No screams and death. Just a dark warehouse. Just two backlit figures. Just a feeling.
Her blood slowing in her veins as the chemical coursed through her, Niki was unable to fight off the vision this time. It was as real to her as any of her inherent Slayer dreams. She stood now before the two silhouettes, a different kind of nausea churning in her unconscious gut; this feeling born of fear.
For once there was some actual creature — creatures now, which actually inspired fear in the Slayer. Not fear of death or pain as she expected to feel if she ever again encountered the stick-waving Council summoned demon... No, this fear was something she couldn’t identify. She was terrified by their very existence. By their identity.
In her unconscious mind she could remember that she knew who they were and that who they were was terrifying... but exactly who that was, was not part of the memory. But they did speak... more or less. They laughed at her. They laughed because they had deceived her.
Niki stirred in her delirium, slowly opening her eyes to find herself laying undignifiedly on the pavement outside the bar, her pockets all turned inside out as the bartender had likely searched her person for the money she owed for the Stuff.
Niki swallowed, she had been deceived again. Or, at least, she would be... she remembered that much. Standing and brushing herself off, she marched down the street with the pulse-pounding power she remembered from the highs induced by Stuff in her earlier years. She would find these deceivers: she already remembered finding them... and for this past year of hell, they would finally have to answer to the Slayer.
Rachel stood before the desk of Marcus Hamilton yet again. Yet again she offered her and he yet again he refused to shake it. Sitting down as if not insulted, she folded her hands in her lap and waited for him to start.
“Mrs. Kilpatrick,” he began with a cavalier demeanor which she could not imitate no matter how hard she tried, “your private investigator has been observing your husband for months now and I’ve called you here because he has compiled a preliminary report which you are entitled to read.”
Rachel slowly inclined her head. “You’ve read it?”
A brief frown flickered through Hamilton’s eyes. “Of course not. I assured you that all information between the investigator and yourself would remain confidential and it has. I only convey to you the degree of importance of the information from what the investigator tells me, and he tells me that his preliminary report is complete.”
Hamilton slid a thick, sealed manila envelope across his desk toward the woman sitting with her hands tightly clenched. There was a moment when she just stared at it — unopened, inoffensive, as of yet proving nothing. Finally she swallowed and reached out, lifting it and bringing it to her lap.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “When can I expect the final report?”
Hamilton took a deep breath and shrugged. “That depends on whether or not you feel the information collected to date to be conclusive. If you want, we can continue the investigation for another few months. If not, the final report can be in your hands by the end of the week.”
Rachel nodded, glancing down at the thick envelope. “I’ll have to get back to you.”
Hamilton nodded. “Of course, of course. You can call my office any time... day or night.”
Rachel felt the thickness of the document within the envelope. At least two hundred pages, all about her husband and his activities... maybe his indiscretions... maybe not. With a breath of composure she stood and turned to go, knowing by now that Hamilton was not the hand shaking type.
“Thank you,” she said distantly over her shoulder. She continued to remind herself she was justified in doing this... this was the reason private investigators existed in the first place, but as she carried the weight of the envelope through the receiving office towards the elevator, she couldn’t help but feel that it somehow made her dirty.
Logan reclined in his small cubicle, missing his large office at Wolfram and Hart. It probably didn’t miss him, though. If he had stayed any longer, he probably would have been fired and given a less than savory severance package.
Glancing left, then right, Logan hunched down over his desk again and refocused his attention on the tiny cactus which was the sole decoration his small desk merited. The cactus was small and unobtrusive, but Logan had been spending a lot of time on it lately. He had recently become very aware of his one sided magical abilities. Hurt but not heal. Kill but not resurrect. His emotions and stress level being the only way to call on those violent abilities.
The lawyer smirked: except for his car. The little brown fixer upper was held together by most of the Olympians and a few of the Egyptian deities and the only reason Logan could come up with as to why this worked was that he often became so angry at his car for dying, as parts of it did, that keeping it alive a piece at a time was a very cruel and violent thing to do. Love had no part in it. Love was a weakness as far as Logan’s power was concerned. Peace and tranquility and contentment were the times when he felt least powerful. Fear and anger were his motivators. Fear of someone hurting what he loved; anger at someone already having done so.
So now he concentrated on the cactus. The happy, inconspicuous little cactus which had been content to sit in the corner between the paperclips and the inbox now found itself the center of attention of a conjurer with a history of violent emotional instability and magical rampages. If cacti could sweat, this one would be.
Logan slowly moved his hands over the little spiky thing, chanting very, very quietly. He commanded the cactus to grow, to fill and expand, to reach its full potential as an office plant. When he pulled his hands back, the cactus was a little black lump of quivering jelly.
“Nice trick,” the young man from last night stepped into the cubicle, his hands in his pockets. “What happens if you do that to something that’s already Jello?”
Logan leaned back and crossed his arms. “Oz, right?” The young man nodded but Logan shook his head. “When did people start naming their kids Oz?”
The young man smiled. “The name's Daniel Osborne, but everyone calls me Oz.”
“Where’s... uh... where’s Loki?” Logan gave up trying to refer to them both as the same person. Language just hadn’t been invented with time travel in mind.
Oz replied without missing a beat. “He has some other business to take care of.”
Niki hurried down the street, her destination clear. It was this way. Not a direction, just a feeling, guided by her memory of the future. She had been walking for hours, too consumed by getting where she was going to stop and think. She had not a dollar to her name and hadn’t eaten in two days, but nothing was on her mind at the moment but the warehouse she had seen in her vision.
If fighting the demon with the horns was her death —her destiny— then the confrontation in the warehouse must happen before that. Logically, she should be avoiding the warehouse: As long as she avoided it, she would be putting off her death... But something urged her on; demanded she meet it, fight it and for once win. Maybe there was nothing at all urging her on but destiny: The prophet under the bridge had told her the Deceivers would end... she thought... sometime around now. Then again, he hadn’t predicted her death so soon either. Between Whistler and an insane man who had blown himself up, as much as she loathed to, she had to trust Whistler.
So she hurried along the street to meet her destiny, her stomach an empty pit and her muscles on fire from running for hours. The surge from the Stuff was dying off now and—
The nightstick connected hard with her forehead and she landed hard on her back, seeing stars. Before she could even blink, a hand took her ankle and dragged her into the nearest alley. In seconds, she had shaken off the initial shock and jumped to her feet.
Three men and two women faced her now, forming a semicircle which hemmed her in against the back wall of the alley. Niki looked from face to face. They didn’t feel... no, they weren’t vampires. Or demons. One of them reached for something on his belt. Niki tensed, raising her fists for a fight.
“We’ve got her,” the man barked into the walkie. “Tell all units to meet at this position.” He clipped the small device back to his belt, then all five of them took a step back.
“Niki Valtaine,” one of the other men said authoritatively, reaching into his back pocket for something the Slayer couldn’t see, “by authority of the Council of Watchers, we hereby take you into custody for reckless—”
“Are you fucking kidding me” Niki laughed out loud, her eyes lighting up with joy. “Five humans? You guys just won’t take a hint, will you?”
The man who had been talking scowled. “For reckless disregard for the orders of the Council and for the murders of Richard Addison, Kenneth Wright—”
“Look, guys, I’m sure you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find me...” she glanced down at the walkie talkies they all carried, “playing secret agent and everything, but I’m in a hurry, so I can just beat the living shit out of you now?”
The man who she had again interrupted pulled the shackles from behind his back and stepped towards her. “You’re not going to be hurting anyone ever again.”
Niki’s fists tightened and she tensed for a spinning kick. Just as she was about to make this little prick wish he’d become a sailor, one of the two women of the group raised her hand and Niki found she couldn’t move.
“Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that historians and bounty hunters are the only thing the Council has going for it,” the woman cocked her head, almost insulted that Niki had been ignoring them up until then. “You’ve given the coven an interesting run, Niki. Your life has been anything but boring.”
Niki twisted inside the binding spell, but couldn’t stop the man from slapping the shackles around her wrists. As Niki watched, he bolted them tight and tugged to make sure they would hold. They were no doubt designed to hold a Slayer. “If you want me dead,” she said between clenched teeth, “then you’ll have to let me go: I’ve seen how this plays out. A demon kills me, not a bunch of witches and their pet secret agents.”
“What would you know about your destiny?” the second woman asked, stepped closer to the Slayer than any of the others dared.
“I’m not answering any of your questions, bitch,” Niki spat, glaring at the smaller, lighter yet more powerful woman standing before her.
The woman shrugged. “You choice. But I guarantee you it doesn’t matter how you die. The coven has seen that the line of Slayers has to continue according to schedule if the balance is to be maintained. Your time is officially over and the new Chosen One is due any day now.”
“Well, as much as I hate throwing the Council’s schedules off balance... I’ve got my own plans and they happen to include dying when and how I choose.”
“Well,” said the man who has shackled her, “you’ll have to forgive us if we don’t have buckets of faith in you. I don’t know what the Powers were smoking when you were called, but I think it’s fair to say you were the biggest mistake in the history of vampire slaying.”
“Really?” Niki said sarcastically, “the whole history? Wow. Do I get a plaque or a sidewalk star or something?”
“Can we kill her yet?” one of the witches demanded, but she was waved off by the man who was apparently the leader of the group.
“You said the coven had foreseen the day and time of her death.” He stared at Niki with a look which said he enjoyed his job. “We have to wait until then if the line is going to proceed.”
“I don’t think it’s up to you,” a merry voice called from the mouth of the alley. All heads turned and most faces turned to frowns. The man with the white silk shirt strode casually towards them, brushing a strand of blond hair from his face.
Niki looked the most puzzled of all of them. “Logan?” she said with confusion. “You... look different.”
Loki grinned widely, showing perfect white teeth. “Niki,” he said with a hungry look in his eyes. “It’s good to see you again.” She frowned, a little taken aback.
“Uh.. Thanks. You too.”
The witches were slowly backing up, their eyes widening. “It’s him... he’s the—”
“Take a nap,” Loki ordered, waving a hand before him. The two women dropped to the ground, unconscious. “And you three,” the conjurer frowned with disapproval at the three men who had drawn their guns and were backing away. “Chill out.”
With a twist of light, they were gone and Niki found she could move again. Her shackles fell from her wrists with a clatter. The Slayer looked around the alley and stepped over the unconscious women and took the man’s proffered hand. “Where’d they go?” she asked hesitantly.
“I sent them on a vacation to— well... think ‘North of Santa Clause.’”
Niki was staring at the man’s shirt, frowning as if she knew something was seriously wrong. “Logan... what’s going on? Where’d you come from and how-”
“Is this better?” He snapped his fingers and instead of a white shirt he wore his usual tan jacket and his hair was short again. “Ah, that’s better. When in Rome...”
“Logan, I—” the Slayer was cut off as Loki took her roughly by the shoulders and kissed her more passionately than any man in her entire life. When he finally pulled away, his eyes alight with desire, she frogot to breathe. It might have been a spell or just the way he was looking at her, but at that moment she couldn’t have been farther away from wanting to find a warehouse or a horned demon...
Hanna lay upside down on the couch, her feet dangling over the back, her face red and her eyes darting over the pictures of her favorite celebrities in the upside down magazine. It was just after noon and there was nothing good on TV. If she’d been any other self respecting teenage girl, she would have wished she could be at the mall right now, but her social life still hadn’t recovered from the stories of vampires and the follow-up rumors of self-mutilation and she enjoyed the quiet of the house.
It didn’t really matter. When September rolled around, she’d be in highschool — bottom rung of the ladder, but at least it was a different school: a different ladder and another chance for a social life. Maybe a new boyfriend.
Despite the nasty ending to her and Matt’s relationship, she had enjoyed the feeling of sharing her life with someone else. Especially the feeling of sharing that terribly heavy secret of who her father really was. At first she had felt it made her special. It was, after all, cool to have secrets, but she had soon discovered that this secret was too dangerous to share and now it was driving her crazy. She already wished she didn’t know her dad was a conjurer. But wishing didn’t make the burden go away.
She tumbled off the couch onto the floor the instant the doorbell rang. Quickly standing up, she swayed precariously as the blood rushed from her head. Staggering to the door, she giggled a little at the dizziness. Her little grin melted from her face as Matt stared back at her from the other side of the doorway.
“Hey,” he said, his gaze as always seeing straight into her soul.
Hanna sighed in annoyance and went to close the door. “Go away.” But he reached in and put his hand on the door to keep it open.
“I just want to talk,” he said gently.
“Well I don’t,” she insisted, grabbing the edge of the door with both hands and trying to force it closed.
“What happened... I didn’t really want your dad to get hurt— I just—” he struggled to hold the door open, finally planting his foot at the base of the door.
“You lied to me,” Hanna said angrily, “I told you everything about me, and you told me your foster mom was a guidance counselor.”
Matt winced. “She was a guidance counselor. She... also was a demon.” He shrugged helplessly. “I was afraid you would overreact!”
Hannd kicked his foot from the doorway. “Well, this is me overreacting.” She slammed the door in his face but as soon as she had turned to leave it at that, Matt opened the door again and stepped inside.
“Ugh, get out!” she turned on him, pointing angrily back out the door. “Don’t you get it? We’re done! We’re finished!”
“We’re not finished,” Matt argued, crossing his arms. “Not until I get to say what I want to say – not until you’ve heard my side of it.”
“I’ve seen your side of it!” She shouted. “Your side of it is a smoking hole in the ground! It wouldn’t have been that way if you’d just told me—”
“You little brat,” Matt growled, his hands making fists. “You’ve had everything handed to you! I thought you understood me, but you’re just daddy’s little girl, aren’t you?”
Hanna was shaking her head in exasperation. “God! You’re such a jerk! I wish you would just—”
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