Author's Note: Thanks again for your feedback! Once again, read and review! Sorry about the gaps between the parts, but I got periods where I just can’t bring myself to write. But thanks to some fellow fanficcers at the Chosen Con, I’ve come to set a goal of at least a thousand words per day—even if I have to scrap ’em all. Many thanks to my beta reader, Jane Davitt!
Father
Part IV
by MegaSilver
“Ethan Rayne, please report to the surveillance office,” called a voice from the P.A.
Hearing this, Ethan prepared to leave the lab. “Keep up the good work, gentlemen,” he bade his workers. He strolled down the short hallway and entered the surveillance office. “What’s the matter?”
“We were monitoring the speaker connected to Rupert Giles’ home,” explained a female sound engineer. “It seems he’s on to us.”
Ethan regarded the speaker with a straight face as panicked voices sounded through it. “I figured they would be.” He unlocked a drawer on the nearby file cabinet, took out what looked like a GPS, and tossed it to the engineer. “No doubt they’ve removed it by now. No matter. Triangulate the chip’s location and eliminate its holders.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Ethan made his way back to the lab. He picked up a portable microscope, pointed it at the green tubes, and observed the tiny embryo inside. “Only a matter of time, Miss Summers,” he snickered to the baby.
***
“Oh, no,” moaned Giles.
“We have to destroy it right now! Hand me that block!” cried Willow. Xander tossed her a hard metallic cube from a nearby table.
Just as Willow was poised to crush the chip, Buffy grabbed her arm. “Willow, don’t!”
“Buffy, we have to! What if they can track us? They’ve been listening, and they know we know—”
“But we need this chip to track Ethan down! Besides, we don’t know that they can track us!”
“But we don’t know that they can’t, either.” Willow reminded her.
“Willow’s right,” said Giles. “Buffy, we have to destroy it. If Ethan employed whatever it was that attacked your home, he could very well track us down and send more of those things after us. There are other ways of tracking him down.”
Buffy released her grip on Willow’s arm. “All right.” She sighed as her friend slammed the cube down on the chip. “Where do we start?”
“Perhaps we ought to inspect the old candy factory,” suggested Giles. “Maybe they left something there that could help track them down.” As Buffy opened her mouth to suggest they get on it, Giles held up his hand. “But first, we really ought to find a place to stay for tonight. Now that they know we’re on to them, I think we’d be in danger if we slept in our own homes.”
The aggravated Slayer rested her head in her hands. “Giles, you’re always the one telling me to keep going. Why—”
“And now I’m telling you to take a rest. We’ll all fall down in our tracks if we keep up this pace, especially you, and what good would that do your mother?”
“Fine,” conceded Buffy. “I know just the place.”
***
As they walked through a forest to the location Buffy had selected, the gang huddled together, darting their heads around at the slightest of noises. An evening promenade through the woods of Sunnydale always struck fear into the hearts of anyone who’d lived there for any amount of time; the rate at which people entered those woods and never came out alive was far too high for comfort. This, coupled with the ghastly feeling that they were being followed, terrified all of the Scoobies. Even Buffy—enough that she screamed when a rather bulky vampire jumped into their path.
Her friends were alarmed by this reaction, nearly fleeing in terror at the thought of a threat great enough to traumatize a Slayer. Fortunately, Buffy regained her sanity and instincts after the demon backhanded her. She swung a powerful kick at his face, grabbed hold of a small tree branch, and broke off a nice stake.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you never to hit a lady?” she hissed as she drove the wood through his heart.
Willow emerged from behind a bush, her heart pounding. “Oh, my gosh, Buffy, when you screamed, I nearly… oh.” She lost her balance and almost fell over before her best friend caught her.
“Yes, Buffy,” commented Giles as he wiped the sweat off his forehead, “we’re all a bit anxious with Ethan on our trail, but would you mind not losing your morale just yet? We’ll need you at full strength if we are to get to the bottom of this.”
“Sorry,” apologized Buffy, still panting a little. It killed her sometimes, having to be the “strong” one, not able to express her emotions. Even now, she felt that she hadn’t had time to properly react to her mother’s condition. It seemed to her sometimes that her friends thought her to be fearless and unbreakable. The truth was, she had been ceaselessly frightened from the day she slew her first vampire; she’d just learned to calm down a bit. Though she readily accepted that supernatural figures did exist, it was unlikely that she would ever go undaunted by their presence.
Giles was right, though, and she reluctantly accepted it. Now was not the time to break down or to vent. First things first: she had to get her friends to safety. And that meant getting out of these woods and getting them to Angel’s house.
“Let’s go on,” said Buffy. She picked up the stake she’d cut, just in case, and continued to lead the path through the woods.
“So, where exactly are we going?” inquired Giles. Before Buffy could answer, they exited the woods and saw a big, ornate mansion not too far away.
“There,” answered Buffy.
“Oh, no. Not Angel,” muttered Xander.
“You have a better idea?”
“Hell?”
Buffy squinted her eyes. Her patience was running thin. “Oh, stop it.” Why couldn’t Xander just grow up about Angel? “We’ll be safe here.”
“Will we now? And what if he’s happy to see us? Are we safe then?”
Giles cleared his throat. “Well, as long as you’re present, Xander; I doubt that’ll be a problem.” He turned to Buffy. “Not my favorite choice, either, though I imagine this is as good a place as any.”
“Works for me,” said Oz. “Will?”
“Oh, I can deal. I’m cool with it,” his girlfriend replied, though a closer analysis would have revealed a tiny hint of apprehension in her voice.
“Well, then, let’s g—” Buffy was cut off by the sound of an electric buzz behind her. Her eyes fluttered shut and she collapsed onto the ground, immobile.
“Buffy!” gasped Giles. When he, Willow, Oz, and Xander moved in to their friend’s aid, four tazers struck them from behind, as well. As they, too, lost consciousness, five black demons stepped out of the foliage, tossed their tazers aside, and each dragged one person into the van they had parked on the nearest street.
***
Am I being overprotective? Angel wondered as he combed the graveyard. Buffy could take care of herself, he knew… he shouldn’t be out looking for her like a worried parent. Still, he was aware of the mortality rate of Slayers, and couldn’t help but feel concerned when she hadn’t shown up as planned that night.
Probably just a problem with the gang, he told himself as he walked around a large sculpture. On the other side, a young brunette grabbed his collar and held up a stake, halting when she recognized him.
“Faith,” Angel breathed.
“Angel.” Faith released her grip and lowered her stake.
“Everything okay?”
“Five by five,” answered Faith, leaning against the statue.
“Have… you seen Buffy tonight?” Angel didn’t think Faith would stake him, but he was uncomfortable around her all the same.
Faith shrugged. “Funny you should mention that. I was kind of wondering where she was—haven’t really seen her since Christmas. Thought a little duo-Slayage might be fun tonight.” She licked her lips.
Angel nodded. He was never quite sure how to deal with this girl; she seemed to take this business a bit less seriously than Buffy. At times, it looked like she was playing rather than fighting. Nevertheless, when push came to shove, she was a Slayer, and thus, on the right side. “Yeah… Buffy was supposed to come over a few hours ago. I just started to get kind of worried, that’s all.”
“Well, I can see why,” Faith muttered, beginning to walk away. “Always playin’ it by the book, that B. If she’s not on schedule, you can bet there’s a problem.”
“Will you help me find her?”
Faith turned around to face Angel again and smiled. “Well, I suppose a Slayer who’d boink the very thing she’s sworn to kill can’t be all complacent. I guess there’s hope for her yet.” She patted Angel on the back.
“Is… that a yes?” Angel asked, struggling not to let his eyes show his apprehensiveness.
Faith curled her upper lip. “Why would I say no?” Grinning, she swung a playful punch at Angel. “C’mon, lighten up. You’ve got a whole unlife in front of you.”
Angel sighed. Either Faith was plotting to steal his soul, or she’d forgotten what would happen if he ever did lighten up. But before he could remind her, a tazer shot electricity into his back and he dropped to the ground.
“Huh?” Fortunately, Faith had been facing her fallen ally and now saw the black demon that had immobilized him. She made a quick guesstimate of the situation, whirled around, and kicked the tazer out of the hands of the demon behind her.
“Nice try,” Faith grinned. She turned her attention to the other demon, who was charging at her. Before it could fry her, she swung down, grabbed its tazer at the base, pried it from his hands, and turned the weapon on its owner. The demon quickly melted into a puddle of black ooze. But when Faith turned around to obliterate its companion, she saw that the demon was already making a getaway. No problem. I can keep up.
A moaning sound kept her from taking off. Angel’s vampire resilience made him far less vulnerable to electric shock, and he was already coming to after less than a minute on the ground.
“Angel?” Faith pulled the vampire up to his knees.
“What was it? Do you think it knows where Buffy is?” Angel asked, still wincing in pain.
“I don’t know; maybe. C’mon; let’s get going before we lose it!” proposed Faith, helping the bedraggled vampire to his feet.
***
Buffy’s eyes fluttered open, her vision cloudy for a few moments before she saw what looked like an operating laboratory around her. I have to get the others to Angel’s, was her first thought until she realized that she was chained to a large metal pole. “Where am I?”
“Good question,” came a sharp British voice from off to her side.
Buffy spun her head around and, meeting Ethan’s eyes, shot him a perturbing glare. Yet he remained undaunted.
“You’re on my turf now,” he told her. “Fact is… you were there a long time ago. You should’ve stopped while you were ahead.”
“Go to hell,” Buffy spat. She yanked on the chains to see just how secure they were. Well, I’m not getting out of these anytime soon. She darted her eyes around the room and saw her unconscious friends chained to other poles throughout the room.
“Perhaps someday I will,” acknowledged Ethan. “If, of course, it exists. On the other hand, who’s to say that it’s all bad?”
Buffy nearly winced at her increasingly distant but ever-painful memories of hell—of sending Angel there, of escaping from there, of seeing what a century or two in hell had done to Angel—and it had all been anything but good. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she retorted. “You’re completely screwed.”
Ethan smirked. “Not completely. I did, after all, have the heart to let you see your mother one last time before I killed you.” With that, he held out his hand to the back entrance, where a team of four black demons wheeled in a conscious but bound, gagged, and bedridden Joyce Summers.
“MOM!” cried Buffy, attempting to lunge forward but still held in place by the chains. “What the hell did you do to her?”
“Oh, she’ll be quite all right,” Ethan promised. “She’ll have to be, if she’s to deliver your sister as planned.”
Buffy was in shock. “My sis—she—but—”
“It’s quite simple,” explained Ethan. “When I heard that our beloved Ripper had knocked your mother up, I realized that I had the perfect candidate for our new superhuman prototype. Summers DNA is, after all, quite remarkable.” He stroked Buffy’s neck, making her want to wring his all the more. “The timing must be just right; the mutations for this particular set of developments must be induced within a window of one week surrounding the sixth week of pregnancy. Of course, it’s a very delicate process—it cannot be done inside the womb, which is why we had to carefully extract the embryo using only the most sophisticated Homikleptos demons. Stealing the embryo was the easy part, but we had to make it look like a random attack to put your mother in just the place we knew we could find her.”
“So you risked my mother’s life for some lame-ass science project?” By now, Buffy was losing the last scraps of her temper very rapidly.
“Nothing comes without a price,” Ethan smiled.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Not to worry, though. I used a healing spell to ensure that she’d be in perfect health to carry the baby to term.” He took a few steps away from Buffy and leered at the green tube housing the embryonic form of Giles’ and Joyce’s daughter on the transference table. “In just a matter of an hour, the first batch of mutagen will be complete and your sister will be on her way back into your mother’s womb.” Ethan set his eyes back on Buffy and drew out a knife. “And you will be reborn into the spirit world.”
At that moment, Faith pushed through the cooling vent straight above Ethan’s head, but he moved out of the way just as she fell from the ceiling and she hit the floor. “Dammit,” she growled as she pulled herself back up. “I missed.” Ethan turned around to see who’d tried to drop on him, and was instantly met with a hard kick to the face. “No biggie, though,” Faith smiled as the lunatic toppled over to the floor.
“Faith, get me out of these!” exclaimed Buffy.
Faith looked at Buffy. “Hey, B! Guess we got the right place after all.” Behind her, Angel sailed gracefully to the floor from the vent.
“Buffy!” exclaimed Angel. “You okay?”
“I’m fine; go untie the others!” instructed Buffy, nodding towards a corner of the room. Angel obeyed.
Faith grabbed Ethan’s knife from nearby and sliced away Buffy’s chains with one swift stroke. As Buffy threw the last of them off, Ethan rose and began to charge the girls. “Let’s put him away!” said Faith.
Buffy hit Ethan in the nose, forced his hands behind his back, and shoved him up against the pole he’d held her captive on.
“Buffy! Faith!” cried Angel. In rescuing their friends, he’d come under the attack of the Homikleptos demons.
“Faith, help him! And seal off this room before anyone gets here. I’ll deal with Ethan.”
“Gotcha!” Faith, still clutching the knife, ran over and sliced the demons open, causing them to melt and then evaporate.
“Really nice, elaborate scheme you had here,” Buffy remarked sarcastically to Ethan.
“Yeah,” he grunted, “well, it would’ve been perfect if your friend’s timing weren’t so damned good.”
“Yeah, whatever. You ought to be locked up.” Buffy shoved him even harder against the pole. “I probably shouldn’t do this, but I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. You put my sister—unadulterated—back into my mother, and I won’t have to call the cops. Got it?”
“Really, that’s a wonderful offer, but—OW!” Ethan clenched his teeth as Buffy twisted his wrist just a little more forcefully.
“Or I could just make the rest of your life miserable for screwing with my family,” she suggested. “That’s always an option.” If there’s a God, some days, I just love you for these powers.
“Fine!” Ethan groaned. “Just ease up a bit, huh?”
Across the room, Angel and Faith began to lead the bedraggled Joyce, Giles, Xander, Willow, and Oz to the cooling vent.
“Guys, wait,” said Buffy. “We can fix this. Mom, I need you to stay here; I’ll get you out. The rest of you can go.”
“Buffy, I don’t—” began Joyce, but Buffy held up her hand.
“He missed his chance to create a superhuman out of my sister,” explained Buffy. “Not that he cares, but he’s going to fix what he damaged. You’re getting your baby back.”
“Oh,” said Joyce, a little too shocked and confused to really react. My baby’s out..? When did Buffy find out I was—
“Baby?” Angel and Faith stammered simultaneously.
“I’ll explain later.”
“Faith, you get them out of here,” said Angel. “I’ll stay here just in case.”
“Sure thing,” agreed Faith. “Come on, guys. I’ll lift you into the duct.” When the others were all safely in the ceiling, Faith handed Buffy Ethan’s knife. “Might want this.” She then leapt up herself.
“Now, what do we do?” Buffy asked Ethan.
“Have your mother lie down on the stretcher beside that lab table,” Ethan told her. “I’ll proceed from there.”
Buffy held up the knife. “Just remember, you do anything stupid, you’ll feel it for hours before you die.”
As Ethan proceeded to re-insert the embryo, Angel spoke to Buffy. “Don’t know if you care, but I looked in on those vampires we saw earlier.”
“Oh, no,” Buffy moaned. “I completely forgot.”
“It’s no big deal,” Angel promised her. “They’re just your regular kleptomaniac vampires. In this case, members of a sort of terrorist clan that have a particular fetish for mocking the solemnity of death.”
“Terrorists?”
“Not very cohesive or potent, though. They can be killed as we see them.”
Buffy sighed. “Well, as soon as I’ve had some sleep, I want to try to find their nest. No sense letting them get away with this.”
“Good point,” noted Angel. With that, the conversation came to a halt. Time for a new topic. “So, what exactly was wrong with your mom?”
***
When the operation was finished, Ethan replaced a test tube on its centerpiece and removed his latex gloves. “All done already,” he grinned. “Isn’t magic a beautiful thing?”
Buffy glared at him as she gathered up her mother. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll hunt you down,” she warned him.
“Oh, it won’t,” Ethan smiled as Buffy, Joyce, and Angel exited through the ceiling duct. He took the centerpiece to the nearby cool storage unit and placed it on the shelf marked OVULES. “Not for you, that is.”
***
A silent atmosphere characterized the Summers’ living room, where Buffy, Joyce, and Giles sat conversing. Everyone was too dumbfounded to speak. The last week had been a huge shock to everyone.
“So… that’s it?” asked Joyce, finally breaking the hush.
“That we know of,” said Giles.
“Wow. Go into a coma for a day or two and you really miss out,” Joyce commented, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, no kidding,” agreed Buffy. “Look, I’m gonna turn in, okay? I’m about to pass out right here.”
“Okay. Good night, Buffy.”
“’Night,” Buffy yawned, beginning the ascension up the stairs. She stopped halfway and descended again. “Mom?”
“What, Buffy?”
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
Joyce smiled. “Thanks.”
“But if I catch you eating any more band candy—”
“Right; got it. Good night, Buffy.” As her daughter continued back up the stairs, Joyce inhaled deeply and looked Giles in the eye. “So… I guess we have a lot to sort out.”
“Indeed.” Giles took a sip of his tea. “I think… I don’t want to be too forward—after all, neither of us has really had the time to think this through—but…”
“But what?” Joyce had a feeling she knew what he’d say next.
“Maybe, for our daughter’s sake, and for Buffy’s, with the two of us both needing so much of her time, it might be best to at least try to… work something out.”
“‘Something,’ as in..?”
“Well, as in, ah, you and I? That is, as you Americans say, an ‘us’?” Giles trembled nervously and nearly dropped his teacup. I can’t believe I just said that.
Joyce bit her lip, speechless for a moment. “Maybe.”
“You think?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, for the kids.”
“Oh, yes. For the kids.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Joyce sipped her own tea as Giles slipped his arm around her. “After all, it couldn’t be that bad, could it?”
“Oh, no. Not bad at all.”
THE END
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