39. Played
*That’s it…good boy…good little
Watcher…*
In some part of his clouded mind, Giles recognized the
inappropriateness of Willow’s words, the mockery behind the soft,
soothing thoughts that filled his head…but he couldn’t begin to fathom
what it all meant, or what he should do about it. All he knew for
certain was the undeniable push, the compulsion he felt to do as the
young vampiress said.
*Quietly.*
He paid heed to her silent caution as the chains fell away from her
wrists, and he caught them carefully in his hands, not allowing them to
clatter to the floor and alert the sleeping pair of supernatural guards.
*His, too.*
Giles did not quite understand the sense of angry, sullen defiance that
filled him at the silent command to loose Angel’s chains as well. All
he knew was that a wave of hatred toward the still unconscious male
vampire beside Willow filled him at the thought, and he hesitated for
just a moment before moving reluctantly toward Angel and unfastening
his chains as well.
Willow smiled with pleasure as she watched Giles place the chains
gently on the floor beside them -- but her smile vanished into a hard
line as, before he could turn around, she waved a hand in the air
behind him, and he collapsed silently to the floor in an unconscious
heap.
A flicker of awareness in the back of her mind, the part of her new
identity that recognized her sire, drew her attention back to Angel,
who was now sitting up on the floor where he had been chained, blinking
sleepily as he looked up at her with a blank expression of confusion.
*Quiet,* she told him sharply, allowing the words to be heard only in
his mind. *Don’t do anything to wake them up.*
Angel’s eyes widened as he took in the pathetic sight of the two
would-be heroes, sleeping soundly on the floor and in the chair. Then,
a slow smile spread across his face as he rose cautiously to his feet,
bouncing slightly with glee before turning toward Willow, who appeared
to be gently rearranging the unconscious Watcher’s still form on the
floor.
“This is so great!” Angel hissed in a whisper that was a bit louder
than Willow would have liked.
She grimaced slightly in displeasure as she ran her hands lightly down
the inside edge of the older man’s coat.
*Can you please be quiet?*
“Well, I can’t just talk with my thoughts like you can, Willow,” Angel
hissed back at her a bit petulantly. “What do you expect?”
*Not much,* Willow replied, rising to her feet while still staring down
at the unconscious Watcher. *Just a little peace and quiet and…shit…*
Her eyes went wide as she looked up and over Angel’s shoulder, just in
time to see his new sire aiming a powerful fist toward the back of his
head. Angel stumbled forward and nearly fell to his knees, but managed
to regain his balance, just as Willow stepped forward, between him and
Spike, aiming a jolt of electric magic toward the blond vampire.
Angel staggered to a stop, safely behind Willow, as he gasped out a
challenge at Spike. “You think you can stop us? I’m her *sire*, Spike,
in case you’ve forgotten what that means! She’ll lay her *life* down
for mine, and she’s a hell of a lot stronger than you’ll ever be!”
Spike barely managed to dodge the blast Willow had aimed his way,
immediately moving toward her again with a grim smile on his face,
while completely ignoring Angel‘s taunting words.
“You’re not gonna get away with it, Red,” Spike informed the furious
witch. “All I’ve got to do is say two or three bloody words, and your
sire there will be at my beck and call again…which means that you’ll be
at *his*…”
His words broke off abruptly in surprise as the little redhead’s right
hand shot up and backwards and she plunged the stake in her hand --
stolen from Giles’ coat pocket no doubt -- through the heart of the
vampire who had sworn that she would die for him if necessary. She
never took her eyes off Spike, a triumphant smile on her face as she
raised one eyebrow at him, watching him as he watched her sire crumble
to dust behind her.
“And I really should have just *said* the two or three bloody words,”
Spike concluded flatly with a sigh of irritation. “Always gotta indulge
in the soddin’ gloating! Always been one to…”
“…talk too much?”
The words preceded a flash of blonde hair and golden skin as the Slayer
darted past him, landing a solid kick to the stomach of the young
vampiress whose attention had been wholly focused on Spike. Willow
staggered to her feet a few yards away, clutching her stomach as she
moved toward the fallen Watcher.
Buffy saw what she was doing, but Willow was too close already for the
Slayer to reach her before she had jerked Giles’ limp, lifeless form to
his feet in front of her, her game face coming to the fore as she held
him in front of her like a shield.
“Back off,” she snarled. “Or he dies, Buffy! Don’t think I don’t mean
it!”
Buffy stared at her in horrified dismay, frozen in her tracks at the
impending threat to her Watcher’s life. “I don’t,” she said softly.
“Just…calm down, Will…”
Willow gave her a mocking sneer as she retorted, “I’m perfectly calm,
Buffy. And I’d be just as perfectly calm if I was ripping his throat
out with my fangs. That’d take all of, what? Two seconds? Less than
it’d take you to get over here and stop me, that’s for sure…”
“You don’t stand a chance, Red,” Spike put in, taking a cautious step
closer to her. “Against the two of us? What the bloody hell are you
thinking, anyway?”
Willow let out a warning hiss as he took another step toward her,
dragging her hostage backward with her, her fangs extended and her
golden eyes blazing with menace.
“Spike,” Buffy said sharply.
He ignored her completely, shrugging casually as he addressed his words
to Willow. “‘S not like you can take both of us at once, love. So you
kill him…then what?”
“Gee, I hadn’t thought,” Willow mused, an exaggeratedly thoughtful
expression on her face. “I have unbelievable magical power, no sire
bond over me anymore to stop me, and a hostage that for some strange
reason you two seem to find pretty valuable. I think I…do whatever I
want to do with all of you, actually,” she nodded as if coming to the
decision, a wide, cheerful smile on her face.
“Willow, you don’t want to do this,” Buffy insisted, tears welling in
her eyes as she headed toward her former friend again, slowly, almost
without realizing she was doing it. “Not like this…please, Willow…”
“No, you’re right, Buffy,” Willow conceded, her eyes narrowing coldly.
“Not like this.” She paused, her body tensing for flight, as she
finished, “I’ve got a *much* cooler plan!”
With those words, she abruptly thrust Giles’ unresisting form toward
Buffy, who moved quickly to catch him before he fell to the ground, and
darted toward the kitchen. Spike did not hesitate to rush after her,
finding her in the back doorway, staring out into the shadows of the
back alley behind Giles’ apartment building.
A slow smile rose to his lips as he realized that she could go no
farther than the alley; the sun would trap her there.
But she ran out the door anyway.
His smile faded into a frown of confusion as he followed her, reaching
the doorway just in time to see her yanking the cover off a manhole
that happened to be rather inconveniently located in the alleyway. His
jaw set with determination as he started after her, but she suddenly
turned toward him, holding the manhole cover like a shield as she
raised one hand skyward, spoke a few words in Latin, then aimed the
same hand at Spike, letting loose a powerful burst of bright sunlight,
somehow harnessed in her hand and reflected off the metal of the disc
she held.
Spike cursed as he lunged for the back door, just in time to narrowly
avoid the deadly light she had hurled at him, slamming the door hard
lest her magic should allow the strange weapon to somehow follow him
inside.
It did not.
After a moment, cursing his own fearful reaction, Spike swung the door
open again, rushing back out into the alley.
Willow was gone.
*******************************
“Bloody magic,” Giles moaned, his head resting in both of his hands as
he waited for Jenny to bring him another pair of painkillers. “How
foolish…how utterly foolish of me…”
“It wasn’t your fault. Spike and I were the ones who were stupid enough
to fall asleep. You didn’t know what would happen,” Buffy reassured him
as she sat down on the couch beside him with a heavy sigh. “None of us
did.”
“You were both *exhausted* enough to fall asleep, and we all should
have thought of that,“ Giles countered. “And as for knowing what could
happen…I should have.“ His voice held a note of grim self-disgust as he
raised apologetic eyes to hers,. “I’ve seen the effects of magic,
Buffy, first hand. I for one should have known to think of the…the
dangers and limitations of magical power such as is apparently inherent
in Willow…”
“Limitations?” Spike echoed, a hopeful expression on his face. “As in?”
“As in there are none,” Giles flatly replied, his head lowered into his
hands once more. “An accomplished user of magic can easily get around
almost any natural law, with enough practice and study. That is not to
say that any mortal *should*, because magic is always accompanied by
consequences, and the stronger the magic used, the greater the
consequences.”
“Any mortal?” Buffy repeated dubiously. “So you’re saying…because she’s
immortal…?”
“She may not see the same level of consequences that a mortal might.
And that’s not to say that would be true of *any* immortal who
attempted to use such powerful magics. Willow…well, it appears she may
be a special case,” Giles explained. “At the time when she
was…controlling my mind, I was aware that something was not right, but
my thoughts were…were muddled, preventing my reasoning out what it was
that was wrong. She managed to completely control my actions, my
thoughts, to the point of causing me to do something which very well
might have been deadly.”
He was quiet for a moment, allowing them all to take in those words,
before he added slowly, an awed note to his voice as he spoke, “And she
did it all without uttering a single incantation, or using a single
spell ingredient. Simply with…some inherent power that seems to be
natural to her, now, in her…altered state.”
“So you’re saying…Willow might not be affected by the magic as
much…because a part of her…*is* magic. Is that it?” Jenny guessed,
frowning thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Giles admitted after a moment’s hesitation, finding that there
were no better words to express what he was trying to say. “It appears
that even as a…a human, Willow had the latent ability within her to
become quite proficient in magic. As a vampire…well, there are possibly
no limits to what she might do.”
All four were quiet for a long moment, sobered by the Watcher’s dire
words.
Finally, Spike broke the silence with a quiet question.
“Then…why hasn’t she done it?”
Three pairs of eyes turned toward him, though his own gaze was drawn to
one particular curious emerald gaze. He met Buffy’s eyes as he
clarified, “She was here, with me and you dead asleep for awhile, and
two defenseless humans in the mix…boundless magical powers, and us with
no binding claim to prevent her from doing whatever the bloody hell she
liked…she said it herself…so…”
“…why are we all still alive?” Buffy finished for him slowly, her eyes
widening at the implications.
“Maybe…maybe there’s some part of her in there that’s still…Willow,”
Jenny suggested, a tentative hope in her voice. “Maybe if we can manage
to…restrain her somehow, long enough to…”
“That’s not a wise option to consider at this point, Jenny,” Giles cut
her off, his voice compassionate but certain. “She is far too
dangerous, too powerful, to waste any more time on attempts to restore
what may not exist anymore. We have to think about our own lives, and
the countless other lives she might take while we’d be wasting time
trying to…to save…”
“If not that,” Buffy cut him off abruptly, clearly as much because she
did not want to hear the rest of what he had to say, as because she
*did* want to hear the answer to her question, “then…then why? Why
didn’t she kill us just now while she had the chance? She could have…I
don’t know…frozen us in place and taken us out one at a time if she
wanted to. So…why didn’t she?”
“She said it herself,” Spike replied after a moment, his voice low and
ominous. “She has something more in mind.”
“So…she’s toying with us,” Jenny concluded, her dark eyes widening with
dismay. “She’s just…biding her time until she can do it the way she
planned? The way she really wants to?”
“Could be,” Spike affirmed with a grim nod. “Could be she just knows we
can’t really stop her, not the way things stand right now…and she’s
just waiting for precisely the right moment…”
“We *can* stop her,” Buffy argued. “We have to find a way. We can’t
just…just give up. I’ve beaten things that have used magic before…”
“This is different, Buffy…”
“But, Giles, there has to be a way!” the Slayer insisted. “Can’t we
just…do some research? See what we can find on these…these naturally
magical things that you say she’s become? Find out how we can *stop*
their natural magic?”
Giles nodded slowly. “At this point, that’s our only option,” he
admitted. “Besides just…sitting here and waiting for her to return.”
“Or…skipping town completely,” Jenny offered glumly.
“Not an option,” Buffy declared. “I’m not leaving the citizens of this
town…my friends, my neighbors…to be her own personal all-you-can-eat
buffet. I *have* to stop her.”
She paused, and Spike could see the struggle in her troubled eyes, knew
that she was wrestling with the belief that somehow, this was her
fault. If she had listened to Willow’s fears, done more to stop Angel
sooner…maybe her friend would still be alive. Spike knew that it was
not really her fault; she could not have known how it would all turn
out…but he knew better than to argue the point right then.
The Slayer’s glistening green eyes held a challenge as they locked with
his, reading his perception in his gaze and daring him defiantly to
voice it.
He did not. It was not the time.
“I have to stop her,” the Slayer repeated firmly, her mouth set in a
tight line of determination. “And I will.”