Part Three
"Alright," Blake exclaimed. "Finally got a clean shot on the boy. Game's up kid. Say good night." Blake lined up the cross hairs on the prone and unmoving body of the young man. The Slayer had just finished the last of the vampires off and the boy was untended and defenseless. A perfect unmoving target.
"Wait," a familiar voice suddenly sounded in his mind.
"What?" Blake asked incredulously.
"I said wait," the voice of Mortain spoke again in his head. Bob looked over at his partner oddly.
"It's our new boss," Blake explained. "He want's me to wait. Whoa! Wait a second! Look there! That's our knight friend beaming in over there. Looks like the boss was right about the kid. The knight can only appear when he's unconscious. More vampires coming out of the sewers. Look at those two go. Damn they're good!" Blake sighted in once more on the boy's body while the Slayer and the knight battled the vampires. "Alright, Mortain. Why don't you want me to kill him, now? I thougth you wanted this guy dead ASAP."
The deep menacing voice of Mortain sounded again in his mind. "I wish to be certain that it is him. Friedrich is cunning and I do not wish to tip my hand to him until I am sure. Look, the vampires are dead, and the boy is regaining consciousness. It's almost too perfect. He could be playing me for a fool, hoping I will kill this decoy while his real body is safe. No I must be sure. Also, I might have some use for the Slayer. Oh yes, a plan is forming quite nicely now. After the knight has disappeared, you are to capture the boy and the Slayer. Make sure the boy is unharmed and remains conscious. Incapacitate the Slayer and bring them both to the Bank of Sunnydale building. A man will be waiting for you at the back entrance. He is my minion and you should do everything that he commands you. I must be certain that this is Friedrich, the Dragon. There can be no mistakes this close to the end. There, the knight has vanished and the boy has awakened. Go, capture them and bring them to where I have bidden you. Go now!"
Blake set aside his rifle and reached for his pistol. He calmly unloaded the automatic weapon and replaced it with a fresh clip.
"Change of plans, Bob. We gotta go down there and capture them."
"Grrr!"
"No. The boy has to be unharmed. You can knock out the Slayer though. In fact it's probably best that you do. Don't want her taking another of your arms off."
"Grrr?"
"I'm loading my gun with Demon rounds. For supernatural threats.
I'm worried we might run into that dog again. If we do, he's gonna be in for a hurting from these babies. Let's go, Bob. We'll cut them off up the street."
* * *
Buffy and Eric walked arm in arm down the sidewalk. They were a block over from the movie theater and the crowds surrounding it. It looked to Buffy that she and Eric might still be able to salvage their evening in spite of the attack from the vampires. It had been great them coming to her like that. She had felt a little guilty leaving off from her patrols tonight, but she had done the work of four or five nights slaying in just a few minutes, with a little bit of help that is.
'What was it they said they wanted with me, again? Something about somebody's aura or something? Oh well, sixteen staked vamps is still sixteen staked vamps,' Buffy thought to herself cheerfully.
From out of the shadows ahead, a shape stepped out on to the sidewalk, a gun held loosely in his hand. She recoginzed him immediately: the gunman who had tried to kill her in the park last week.
"Hey, Slayer. Remember me?" Blake challenged her.
"What's going on tonight?" Eric exclaimed.
Buffy stared at the gunman and prepared to push Eric out of the way while she charged him. But even as she made her plans she realized she had been set up.
'But that's impossible! I saw that thing get shattered into a million pieces!' Still, she trusted her instincts and started to turn around behind her, but it was too late. The giant stone gargoyle brought his fist down hard on the back of her neck knocking her out.
'At least this will be the last time they pull that trick on me,' Buffy thought resignedly as she crumpled to the ground and the blackness overtook her.
* * *
Eric looked around fearfully as the gunman prodded him in the ribs once more. He looked again at the hulking monstosity beside him, Buffy's slumped and unconscious form held tightly in one arm. He still couldn't believe that such a thing existed. It had to be some kind of suit or something, didn't it? But no, that thing beside him that had clouted Buffy and knocked her to the ground senseless was real and there could be no doubting that. Certainly not when you heard it growl or watched it's wings moves or saw the demonic visage of it's face. He and his girlfriend had been captured by a gargoyle and his gun toting assistant.
'This is too weird,' Eric thought to himself.
The four of them moved down the hallway of a large office building after stepping off the elevator. They had walked through the dark streets toward the building after he and Buffy had been captured. When they arrived, a man in a dark business suit was waiting at the door of the quiet building to let them in. The only words the man in the suit had spoken had been, "Follow me," and follow him they did, a gun in Eric's ribs the whole time. Had Buffy been free, he might have tried to take the gunman, even though it would probably have cost him his life. But Buffy was unconscious and he could see no way to take on the giant gargoyle that carried her.
They came to a door at the end of the hallway and the man in the suit opened it ushering everyone in. The gargoyle had to duck to make it under the door frame. The man gestured for the gunman to sit Eric in a nearby chair. Blake moved him towards it and forcibly pushed him down into it.
"Sit still kid and don't make a move. If you try anything, my partner there will break your girlfriend's neck, got it?" Eric nodded mutely at his captor and turned to regard the man in the suit. He was opening a wall safe near his desk and from it he pulled an amythest looking orb which glowed with a faint inner light.
Behind Eric, Buffy began to stir in the gargoyles arm.
"Wha? Where am-?" She suddenly came to her senses and began to beat her hands against the creature. He quickly resituated his grip on her until he was holding both of her arms tightly so that she could not move.
"I wouldn't mess with him too much, princess," Blake warned her. "He still remembers being broken into a bunch of little pieces and I'm sure he wouldn't mind a little payback."
"Who are you guys?! Look your sorcerer's dead, alright? Deal with it!" Buffy defiantly faced him down.
"Sorry, girl. That's old business. This here is new business. Me and Bob here, we're just doing our job. So, suit guy: you ready or whatever?"
The silent man looked over the orb he held in his hands then closed his eyes as if in prayer.
"I am ready, Master," he intoned. "Send us your spirit that you may guide our actions and show us the true path."
In the center of the room, a robed and hooded man suddenly appeared. He looked about the room until his gaze settled on Eric.
"You may perform the test, my servant," the deep voice of the hooded man commanded. The servant walked towards the frightened Eric in his chair while Blake stood over him, his gun steadily trained on the young man. The servant held out the glowing orb to him, and as it came closer to him, it began to shine with an unbearable light. "It is he, Master," the servant informed him. "He is the one you have sought."
The hooded man laughed in triumph then, staring at the fright filled face of the young man before him.
"I finally have you, Friedrich. It looks like this might be the last time we face eachother. I intend your death to be a lasting one this time. I have forseen that this lifetime, in these incarnations, we shall meet for the last time, and it looks as if this might be it. Oh, Friedrich. You have led me though merry chase these last six hundred years and more. But tonight may very well be the end of our little game. After all this time, I have finally defeated the Dragon."
"You idiot!" Buffy yelled at him. "He isn't the Dragon! Your crystal ball must be busted. I just saw the two of them together, tonight! You've got the wrong guy! Just let him go!"
The hooded man walked over to her and reached his hand up to her face. As he tried to touch her, his hand passed though her.
"I'm afraid you are wrong, young Slayer. He is most definitely the Dragon. You see, when he dies, his soul is fractured. His new body cannot accept the powerful energies that permeate his spirit and so that part of him that remembers his old lives, the part of him that can stop me, must lie dormant. As he approaches the time when his body is ready, his other self begins to manifest itself while he sleeps, growing stonger with each passing day. I believe Friedrich here is sometime away from when he could fully integrate his consciousness, but he has been tricky before. Best not to take chances you know."
"And who are you?"
"Why I am Mortain, my dear. I am Friedrich's nemesis. His raison d'etre if you will. I'm the man that made him what he is today. I'm his reason for getting up in the morning. I'm also the man that killed his parents."
"What?!" Eric started from his chair. Blake punched him in the gut and knocked him back into his seat. Mortain turned back to him.
"Dear Friedrich. I mean your original parents. I'm fairly certain I had nothing to do with your parents dying this time. Did they die again? It's odd how things tend to repeat themselves."
Buffy looked over at Eric doubled over in his seat and then she stared at the hooded figure. "So you're saying that Eric only turns into this Dragon guy when he's asleep?"
"Yes, essentially."
Without a moments hesitation Buffy kicked back into the leg of her captor, hearing the satisfying crunch of breaking stone. Bob howled in pain and Buffy shrugged out of his grasp.
Eric turned around to see her breaking free and coming towards him. She ran through the immaterial image of Mortain and body checked Blake, knocking the gunman down.
'Wow! She's going to save me,' Eric thought to himself admiring her courage, and exceptional strength. He obviously hadn't been seeing things when he had seen her fighting those ugly faced thugs.
He was needless to say surprised when she raised her fist to strike him. He raised his arms to ward off the blow and tried to duck back. As she connected, the suited man tackled her and knocked her swing awry.
"Dammi, Buffy! You hi me!" Eric exclaimed holding his jaw. Bob grabbed her from the floor and held her tightly while Blake got to his feet. Mortain was laughing.
"I was trying to knock you out!" Buffy exclaimed.
"Oh that was priceless," Mortain managed between bouts of laughter. "You can't pay for stuff like that! Oh my. I really have to control myself. It's rather unbecoming for me to carry on this way."
Buffy breathed heavily and tried to gather her composure.
"So what happens now, huh?" she asked him.
"Well, let's see. First of all, we're going to kill Friedrich here and this time he's going to stay dead. I will make certain of that. Then, you my dear will join me at the LA harbor at sunrise where I will make a gift of you to some of my friends."
"Look, my name isn't Friedrich! I'm Eric! This is a mistake!"
Buffy tried to free herself from the gargoyle's clutches but in vain. Bob's grip was unbreakable and she couldn't see anyway out.
"Eric!" she desperately called to him. There eyes met and Eric stared back at her as Blake raised his pistol.
"Buffy," came Eric's whisper.
"Kill him," Mortain ordered.
Blake pointed the gun at Eric's chest and fired six rounds into him. Buffy started in shock as each bullet tore into his chest. Eric yelled in pain for the first two bullets then fell silent. The last four bullets only finished the job that had obviously already been
done. She kept expecting something to happen. A glow, a movement, some kind of rescue. Perhaps her friends would arrive just in the nick of time to save her and Eric. But as she stared at his lifeless body slumped in the chair, bleeding, she realized belatedly that it was already too late.
'Eric's dead,' was all her numbed mind could think. 'He's dead. I didn't save him in time. Eric's dead. I never got to tell him. Eric's dead. Eric's dead!" She began to cry while the gargoyle still held her.
Blake checked the body for a pulse. After he failed to find one, he kicked the dead body over on to the floor where the blood began to stain the carpet where he fell.
"And so it is over," Mortain spoke reverently. He gazed down at the dead body then looked over at Bob and the Slayer. "Take the girl to the LA Harbor, Pier 72. I'll be waiting. Make sure you have her there by sunrise. Blake, my servant here will instruct you on how to dispose of the body. It must be prepared properly or else he might be born again. Though I doubt he would be much threat to me now, I still must be certain. Complete your tasks and our contract is fulfilled. You will both be free to chose you lives, however you wish to live them. Though I wouldn't recommend staying around the west coast for long. Things are about to get rather ugly around here, I'm afraid."
"Not a problem," Blake replied.
"Then I will leave you now. I have things I must attend to, plans to make. Do not fail me." With that Mortain turned one last time to look upon Eric's body. Satisfied, he disappeared as quickly as he had came.
In between sobs, Buffy suddenly found her anger rising. The more she looked at Eric's unmoving body, the angrier she became. At herself, at this man Mortain, at the cold blooded killer who would murder an innocent young man and then kick his body over. She suddenly felt an overwhelming need to hit something; something hard. She reeled her head forward and brought it back in a shattering head butt into the gargoyle's chest. She felt the blood on the back of head after the impact but the gargoyle was shaken for a moment. She wrenched her right shoulder free and swung her fist around impacting into the gargoyle and shattering more stone. But her victory was short lived when the creature raised one mighty and powerful arm and struck her solidly in the head. She collapsed and the gargoyle grabbed her up and stuffed her under his arm.
Blake looked down at the body on the floor and the spreading pool of blood on the white carpet. Then he glanced up at his partner.
"Well, you heard the man. Take her out of here. After I'm finished, I'll meet you at the docks."
Bob growled his assent to his partner. He hefted the Slayer's light body and left the room with her. Blake looked over at Mortain's servant where he was replacing the orb into the wall safe and pulling out more instruments.
"So what are we going to do with the body? Your boss said that we had to do something special to it."
The suited man pulled the last of his instruments from the safe and turned back to Blake.
"We must decapitate him with a sacred blade and burn the body. But we will not do it here. It will be hard enough to dispose of the blood stains without having to worry about the automatic sprinklers going off. Wrap up the body in that tarpulin over there and we will carry him to my car. It is waiting in the garage downstairs."
Blake put his gun up and looked over at the corner where the tarp was rolled up. Suddenly his ears perked up.
"Did you just hear something?" Blake asked the servant.
"No. What do you mean?"
"It sounds like there's someone running up the hall. Or some thing."
"Let me go check." The servant moved towards the closed door, setting aside the mystical instruments he had pulled from the safe. Just as he reached for the door knob, a large fur-covered shape passed ghost-like through the door knocking the business man down. Blake instantly went for his gun when he saw that it was the same dog he and Bob had run into earilier that evening. The dog from the picture.
'The kid's dog. And now it's here to avenge it's master.' Even as he drew his gun, he knew that the servant was already as good as dead. In the dog's initial attack it's teeth had gone right for the man's throat, ripping and tearing it out. His blood began spurting from the ripped artery even as the dog continued to maul him. As Blake trained his weapon on the german shepherd, the dog looked up and snarled. Blake fired off a shot, but the dog was already moving. He fired off two more shots, the first one missing as the dog dodged again, but the second struck home as the dog pounced at him. The dog barely stopped it's forward momentum, it's teeth questing for Blake's throat. He reflexively raised his arm to ward off the attack, but the dog just chomped down on his forearm, severing it completely. Blake screamed in pain and continued to pump more bullets into the ferocious beast, but the dog would not be diverted from it's vengenance. It made one more snarling try for his throat and connected. As Blake felt the powerful teeth and jaw muscles closing over his throat and tearing open his jugular he could only think that he had been so close to freedom.
'Just one more day and I could have left all this behind,' he thought regretfully, pushing his mind away from the pain of the dog
mauling and tearing at him. Slowly, unconsciousness overtook him and he died spilling his blood onto the same white carpet as the young man next to him.
Max slowly pulled his wounded, bleeding body off the dead man and dragged himself over to the body of his master.
He sniffed his unmoving hand and laid down beside him.
* * *
It's time.
No. I'm not ready. Let someone else do this. I'm tired.
There is no one else, and you know it.
I just want to go to sleep. I just want to leave all this behind me. It's too hard. It's too much to ask of one person. I'm so alone.
You must. You have a duty.
Duty? To what? To whom? I'm alone. No one cares whether I live or die.
You have your duty to yourself. The duty to your friend and companion who is even now dying after trying to save you. Your duty to all the people you love and care for. And let us not forget, your duty to the revenge you swore so long ago. Would you let such a thing pass? Do you no longer value the lives of those who died for you, so that you might live?
I never asked them to die! They should have given me up to them! I didn't want this!
Still, you have it. You made an oath long ago. You made a choice to take this path. If you fail now, many will die.
It hurts to go back there. It hurts.
I know. I know. But Max needs us now. And Buffy as well. We must be strong. We must try.
Buffy. Max. Yes, for them. And for all the others. I remember now. I remember. Reach out to me. Yes, it's time.
Time. Time to return.
Time to remember.
"Let's do it."
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