Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all characters and situations from the series are the intellectual and legal property of Joss Whedon, Warner Bros. and Mutant Enemy, etc.
Author’s note: the following story is the conclusion to the trilogy that began with "Dominion Day" and continued with "The Dark Angels". For those who came in late (to quote the Phantom), you can probably get by with the summaries included with this prologue.
Once again, a tremendous thank-you to everyone who took the time to write me with your kind words of support for this project. And a *very* special thank-you to Jomei, my beta reader on this installment, for her limitless patience, keen eye for detail, and almost suicidal willingness to risk running afoul of a writer’s creative ego.
---
Previously in the Dark Slayer saga...
Part I: Dominion Day
Ten years ago, Buffy Summers and her friends closed the Hell Mouth forever. But the cost was high. Devastated by the death of her mother in the climactic battle for Sunnydale, Buffy left her home and her friends and spent eight long years searching for herself in a long, personal journey across the country and back again. In the end, though, terrifying visions and her own personal demons drove her behind the walls of Vanderdecken Sanitarium, where two years of psychoactive drugs and therapy only managed to rob her of what little remained of her spirit and fire.
For awhile, the terrifying visions that had brought her there were brought under control. But eventually, the visions of the Apocalypse returned, and with them someone from her past: Whistler.
He brings her news of an impending Armageddon, and warns her that if she doesn’t return to Sunnydale to fight it, her old friends will die, and with them the world itself.
Reluctantly, Buffy returns to Sunnydale to discover that a cult called the Cabal has brought forth an entity of vast power known as an Elder Power. This Elder Power, calling itself Lillith Prophet and looking exactly like the Slayer, is bonded to Buffy’s soul. To defeat Prophet, avert the Apocalypse, and reclaim her soul, Buffy enters Hell itself, but finds more than she bargained for there.
Angel is not dead. He is in Hell. And Whistler has provided her with the means to destroy his demon and make him human again. In a deadly battle with Angel’s demon, Buffy triumphs, and for the first time the two long-separated lovers face each other as full-fledged human beings.
Journeying to Prophet’s domain, Buffy confronts the Elder Power. They fight, and in so doing Buffy discovers that she has become something more than just a Slayer. As the oldest living Slayer on record, and as a "Millennial Slayer", she had developed an inner strength that she never knew before. Harnessing it, she does what should have been impossible: she defeats her demonic double and averts the Elder Power’s Apocalyptic agenda.
But her victory carries with it a bitter cost. Only one person can return through the portal that brought her to Hell, and she knows she could never leave Angel behind. Taking him by surprise, she pushes him through the portal, stranding herself in Hell, perhaps forever...
Part II: The Dark Angels
Seven months later, the Elder Powers are ready to try their hand at Armageddon once more. Giles recruits an old and dangerous ally in the Eternal War between light and darkness: a mysterious entity known as the Dark Hunter. The current host of the Dark Hunter is a woman named Elisa McKenna (now Elisa Hunter), and Giles knows that to bring her into the fight might be to unleash a war. But he has no choice.
Meanwhile, Buffy has spent her endless days in Hell journeying to its capital city of Pandemonium, where there is rumored to be a portal that could send her home: a magical artifact known as the Mephisto Threshold. In Pandemonium, she recruits the help an old friend who is also trapped in Hell: Jenny Calendar. Together, the two women plan Buffy’s escape from Hell.
Elisa learns that the Elder Powers are planning to use the Mephisto Threshold to initiate a demon invasion of Earth, and she, a commando squad, Giles, and Angel enter the demon realm to destroy the Threshold before the demons can use it -- and to rescue the Slayer.
Buffy also learns of the Elder Powers’ plans, and realizes that she must prevent those plans from coming to pass, even if it means she will be trapped in Hell for ever. With Jenny’s help, she destroys the Threshold. In the ensuing chaos, they rendezvous with Elisa and her team, and they make their escape from Pandemonium.
Jenny has redeemed herself for her Earthly sins and departs from her friends forever, but escape proves to be more difficult for the living. The heroes find themselves cornered by a force of seven hundred demons as they await the gateway that will bring them home. In the battle that follows, Elisa sacrifices her life to buy Buffy, Giles, and Angel the time to make it through the gateway.
Buffy is home, but Lillith informs Giles that the Elder Powers have one, last test for mankind. If mankind passes, it will survive. If it fails, the world will pay the ultimate price: the Elder Powers will simply remove the entire world from existence with something called the Gehenna Matrix. But ultimately, even the Elder powers can’t predict the strange twists of fate that will pull events out of their control, for the Board of the Watchers has its own dark agenda, and Buffy herself has made a decision that no one could have anticipated.
Knowing she can’t defeat the Elder Powers alone, and seeing no other option, Buffy summons the Dark Hunter entity and becomes the world’s first Dark Slayer...
And now, Part III.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prologue
Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake; A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream; I know not what life is, nor death. Year in year out -- all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind; I stand in the moonlit dawn, Free from clouds of attachment.
--Uyesugi Kenshin
The river began high above, born in the Cascade peaks and fed by small runnels and rivulets until it became a strong, swift, ice-defying torrent. The cold, clear water flowed along boulders and gravel beds, through stream cuts striated with the record of geological eons long past, over sandy shallows and down swift, deep channels. It meandered in its path past abandoned mines and long dead mills, certain only of its ultimate destination, ever downward to the ocean far away. It ran its course with primeval purpose, indifferent to the lonely body, wrapped in plastic and duct tape, that bobbed in its chill waters with an almost tranquil laziness.
The body had snagged on a limb of a toppled pine. Rhythmically, the current would carry it forward until the tension in the branch overcame the force of the water, then the tree would reclaim its dead charge to begin the morbid contest anew.
Two miles north of the small town of Pine Crest, Oregon, Buffy Summers stood on the summit of the steep river bank, watching the grim cycle and contemplating destiny. Why had the universe set her, thirty-two years ago, upon the dark and winding path that led here to this distant, lonely place? And why had it, sixteen years later, taken another woman and charted her a course that ended below in the cold embrace of a fallen tree?
Where was the sense in any of it? Buffy Summers, who had cheated Death so often that it had become a normal part of her existence, still walked and laughed and loved. And yet this lost and unfortunate girl, who had no part in the fortunes of Buffy’s war, had ended her brief time in the world as the object of a Dark Slayer’s sad and bitter meditations.
It wasn’t fair. None of it had ever been fair.
But the universe was what it was, and Buffy had resigned herself to fighting it on its own, soulless terms. Funny. She’d seen things in her life that most people never even dreamed existed, glimpsed truths hidden from all but a very select few. She’d experienced horror and beauty, love and hate, despair and redemption on a cosmic scale. Yet for all that, for all the wonders and miracles, she had less faith now than when it had all begun those many years ago in a high school in California.
She drew a slim cellular phone from her coat pocket and extended the antenna with her teeth. She stripped off one glove and dialed a number.
"It’s me, Willow. I found her. I’ll call the Sheriff and head back to town. Do me a favor and see if you can get in touch with Agent Hancock, let him know where I am. And put the Dark Angels on twenty-four hour standby. I’d like you and Giles out here too. Yes, I think this is where it’s going to happen. I don’t know. Call it a hunch. Bye."
Buffy turned away from the river and started back the way she’d come.
Nope. "Fair" never even entered into the picture.
* * *
The man hidden in the shadows of the dark parking garage took a long drag on his cigarette. The tobacco flared crimson, momentarily illuminating a weathered, singularly sad face in its ruddy glow.
"Glad you could make it," said the man. His voice sounded dead, despite an oddly familiar, lilting accent. Not monotonous, not droning -- just dead, as if the speaker’s last joy in life was a thing long past and gone from memory.
Angel squinted into the shadows. No more seeing in the dark, not since becoming human again. But it was a small price to pay.
"All right. I’m here. Who are you and what’s this about?" asked the former vampire.
The man laughed softly, but there was no humor in it. "Who am I? That’s funny. You help take away the most important thing in my life, and you don’t even know who the hell I am."
Angel hesitated, then said, "I’ve taken a lot of things from a lot of people. The really sad part of it is, most of them I don’t even remember. I don’t know you. I’m sorry. Maybe I should."
"You remember Kendra, though. Even you couldn’t be so casual about death that you’d forget setting up a Slayer to be killed by that bitch Drusilla."
Angel let several moments pass, unable to say anything. He felt a sudden bleakness inside.
"Maybe it’s expecting too much of you, to remember a single death among so many," said the man.
"I remember," said Angel. "This is about revenge then?"
"No, not revenge. It’s not my job to kill people, just demons."
Angel’s eyes widened. "You were her Watcher. You’re Zabuto."
The cigarette glowed again, then the man said, "That’s me."
"I’m sorry."
The Watcher made a dismissive gesture. "I don’t want to hear it from you. This isn’t about you and me. Summers killed the only part of you I despised."
"So, if it’s not about revenge, what is it?"
"It’s about an old and lonely Watcher who lost the only thing that gave his life meaning. And it’s about how I can’t let Giles go through the hell I’ve been through. I’m here to help you save Buffy Summers’ life."
|
|
|
|
Rave
Barbie Girl (Becca)
biscuit07
Filmtheory (Jim)
Malice (Jess)
MebbtheScribe (MichaelB)
Reset (Allie)
Shay (Marrisa)
somnambulist29 (Shea)
Stephanie Loss
Wendyness (Wendy)
Questions?Contact Us
|
|
All stories on this site have been archived with the authors' consent. Do not copy these stories for your own uses without the express consent of the author themselves. Buffy the Vampire Slayer TM and Angel TM are © UPN, WB, Fox and its related entities. All photos on the site are © UPN, Fox, Warner Bros, and/or their respective owners. No profits are being made by use of these images.
Powered with the assitance of eFiction.
|
|
|
