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Chapter 7

Buffy just barely managed to squash her squeal of surprise. Had Spike really said there were five other Warriors? Oh, this was—well—good? It had to be good, but why hadn´t she known anything about this? Did the Council, and even her own Watcher, want to keep her in the dark so much?

Spike could clearly see what she was thinking; it was all written on her face. That girl really couldn't keep her feelings hidden. "Yeah, you heard me right. There are five others. Five immortal beings that basically do what you do, each in their own way."

He seemed to be very sure of what he was telling her. Buffy just found it odd, that a vampire would have knowledge of that kind of thing. "How do you know all this? For an evil creature of the night, you sound a lot like... Giles. He always knows everything about everything."

"Oy! I'm nothing like that tweed-wearing nancy- boy!" Spike's eyes briefly flashed yellow. He had no time to start a big argument, so he forced himself to calm down. "Look, there's a lot you don't know about me. I was never like Angelus. He reveled in the art of death, going for the emotional pain and new ways of killing. I wanted the brawl, the challenge. You know: fists and fangs."

That did sound very much like Spike. He was a straight forward kind of guy, and definitely not big with the planning. Spike was also right about Angel. He didn't come and fight her face to face; instead he wanted to break her mentally first. "Yeah, that sounds about right. What that has to do with you knowing about the Warriors, I don't know."

Spike smiled again, like at a fond memory. "It has everything to do with it. Humans aren't much of a challenge to a strong vampire, unless there's a huge mob of them. I got bored pretty soon. Then Angelus told me about Slayers, and I was hooked. I wanted to know all there was about the ultimate enemy of my kin and face them, kill them."

Something flashed in Buffy's eyes too, though their color never changed. She hated the look of joy on Spike's face. "You know, talking about how much you love to face and kill Slayers, to a Slayer: not such a great idea."

The poison in her voice didn’t bother him one bit. It was expected, so Spike just shrugged. "I've never tried to hide what I am, Slayer. I sure as hell am not going to start that now. Main thing is that I was obsessed. I found out everything there was to know about your kind, and then, about sixty years ago, I ran into one of the other Warriors." Spike knew that all that wasn't going to be the shortest of tales, so he leaned against a wall and lit a cigarette, not caring about the disapproving look Buffy gave him. "His name is Wesley, and he's a demon hunter. He has these special weapons that must be enchanted; they are nothing like I've ever seen."

Buffy let out a small laugh. "Wesley? That name doesn't sound like it's striking fear among demons. He sounds more like a stuffy Brit."

He had to admit she was right, but that wasn't the point. "Well, he really isn't stuffy. English, maybe. He wasn't born immortal; that was something he gained after dedicating his life to fighting evil, sometime in the fourteen hundreds."

Her eyes widened in surprise. Hundreds of years of fighting demons? Had she really been complaining about her mere couple of years? "How did you meet him? Or, more like, how did you survive meeting him?"

"I didn´t fight him; I just happened to see him take out a herd of Beruan demons. That was some serious arse-kicking he did." There was genuine appreciation in his voice. Spike had always admired a good fighter when he met one, even if it was his enemy. "I know that he now works mostly in North America and sometimes in Europe. Never saw him since that time in Canada, but I´ve heard of things that can only be his doing."

Buffy did believe him, had believed him all along, but she still couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that nobody had been planning on telling her about that. They would have just let her fight alone and die, when there were other, very experienced fighters, who could have helped her. More than the one Spike had told her about. "Then what? What happened after you saw him?"

"Well, after I stumbled into this Wesley bloke, I started to do more digging to find out if there were more like him, more threats to my kind. During these decades, I´ve found that there are, who they are, and more or less what they do. The books I had stolen confirmed what I knew. I don´t think there are too many of us out there who know about them, other than the Wankers." He dropped the cigarette butt on the floor and ground it with the heel of his boot, watching Buffy closely. He knew understanding all this was very difficult for her.

There was anger bubbling up inside her. She could feel it in her stomach, almost like lava, slowly rising up, up, up... Still, she had to know more—had to know about the others. First, however, she needed to know why she’d been kept in the dark by the Council, by Giles. "I simply can´t believe they don´t tell Slayers about this. It would be so great to know that we aren´t alone, can call for help if we need to."

Spike shook his head, a dry laugh coming out of his mouth. She was so trusting, too trusting, thinking that the so-called good guys couldn't do wrong. "Well, you wouldn´t feel lonely and unhappy if you knew, right? That way your death-wish wouldn´t be there, and they couldn´t have a new compliant Slayer every few years."

Her eyes flashed with fury again, more clearly now. "I don't have a death wish! The Council... they don't want us dead. Why would they want a new Slayer? That's crazy!"

He had been expecting the outburst and didn't stop to try and calm her down. "They need that in order to choose which demons to destroy and which to keep around for their own purposes. The older a Slayer gets, the more she knows and the more she realizes by herself. They don't want that. What they want is a scared young girl who'll trust them implicitly."

That took Buffy right back to the first time she had seen a vampire, while patrolling with Merrick. She remembered how terrified she had been, how much she had hoped that the whole Chosen One thing was a mistake. Was that really what the Council wanted? A scared little girl who would die soon enough? Was she just a tool to them?

Spike could tell when she started to doubt. He could almost see the seed of what he had told her start to grow in her mind. “You will realize this at some point; it might as well be now, when you have time to change things. You can reach out and get the assistance you need.”

That brought Buffy back to the here and now. Spike was right; she could get help, and she would do just that. “Tell me about the others.”

Spike sat down again, since the worst risk of an outburst was over, in his opinion. "There is this witch in South America; I´ve seen a picture once. A beautiful, blond, gentle-looking woman, called Tara. I’m not sure how much you know about witches, but she’s said to be as powerful as they come and to have telepathic skills. She was made immortal because of her power and her will to use it for good.”

Magic wasn’t something she gave a lot of thought to, ever. “I don’t know much. About magic that is. One of our friends’ mom was an evil witch. Oh, and Giles used to dabble with magic, in his wild youth. He and his friends used it to summon this demon and a while back it got loose and almost killed them all—me too, but that was thanks to Ethan Rayne, one of Giles’ old buddies who now worships chaos.”

Now it was Spike’s turn to look like he couldn’t believe his own ears. “Your Watcher summoning a demon? For the fun of it? I have to hand it to old Rupert: he has after all done something interesting in his life.”

She should have guessed Spike would hold on to that little detail. “Yes, he was a rebel. Let’s move on, shall we?”

There was still an amused smile slightly quirking Spike’s lips. “I just never would’ve expected that from your Watcher. He looks like he was born wearing tweed and glasses.”

“You know, I thought so, too.” Buffy couldn’t help but laugh. “We were both wrong. You should move on, however. I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time.”

Spike pushed all thoughts about Rupert Giles away and moved on, just like Buffy wanted. “The third one is yet another person who was human first. She’s about eleven hundred years old now. Her name was Aud, and after performing some very nice hexes and spells, one of which turned her man into a troll, she was presented with a chance to become a vengeance demon and she accepted. Now she’s called Anyanka.”

A demon being a good guy? Girl, actually. That couldn’t be right. “Spike, I think you’ve got this one wrong. If she’s a demon, how can she be a warrior for the side of good?”

“I forgot you think all demons are bad to the bone… if they have bones.” He smirked when she rolled her eyes at his joke. “Some are totally peaceful. Vengeance demons are a bit of a border case. They can do bad things, but they are to make people suffer for the wrong they have done at some point. She plays for the good guys; just believe it, okay?”

Buffy wasn’t going to drop it completely, but she would for the time being. She was really in a hurry. “I want more details later, but I’ll let it go for now. Go on.”

“There’s this chick called Kaylen in Australia. She’s half Lummén demon.” He saw the look in Buffy’s eyes and rushed to continue. “Don’t you start with the demons-are-evil crap again! Do you want to know or not?”

Raising her hands, Buffy sighed. “I won’t start anything… And what kind of a demon is that, anyway?”

Spike gestured for her to lower her hands; there was no need for excess drama, there was quite enough of the regular kind. “They can stand extremely high temperatures and are ridiculously fast. Strong too, very hard to kill. They don’t usually reproduce with other species, but I believe her mum or dad was either human or very much human like, ‘cause you can only tell she’s a demon by her pointy ears and the tattoo like markings on her face.”

Buffy wasn’t even sure she wanted to hear more. This was proving to be nothing like she had expected. The line between good and evil was becoming blurrier by the minute, and she didn’t know how to handle it. Spike seemed to sense her troubled thoughts and gave her a moment to think. It was the thought of all humanity enslaved to vampires that made her decide to go on. She needed the help, and if these Warriors really were the good guys, she would just have to deal with it. “It’s a lot to take in. I will, however, try my best to do it. Please, the last one?”

He was pleased with her attitude. He had expected her to be more unwilling to accept demons as anything good. “The last one is the most powerful one of them. His name is Sangee and he’s a son of a god from another dimension. He usually stays in China, but goes wherever he’s needed.”

The hugeness of it all made Buffy laugh; she just couldn’t fathom it all. “A god from another dimension? Well of course!” She laughed harder. “If he’s so powerful, why doesn’t he just wave his hand and stop all the badness here?”

Her reaction now was beginning to worry Spike a bit. Maybe telling her all this at once wasn’t such a great idea after all. “Pull it together! I have no use of you if you’re having a mental episode. Think you can get yourself under control for a moment longer?”

“No, I really think not.” She just giggled more. “Demons, and witches, and gods… I don’t have anything to do with that merry bunch.”

This was going south, fast. Spike didn’t know what to do, but he knew it would be pointless to try explaining things to her right now. “Okay, I think it’s time for you to head home and think about it. We can meet here tomorrow night.” He looked at Buffy’s still laughing form. “Make that the day after tomorrow. Think you can get home by yourself?”

“Sure I can. I’m a Warrior!” The giggling went on and she sagged against the back of the chair, her hands clutching her stomach. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll just sit here for a moment.”

She didn’t look like she could fight off a kitten at that point, but Spike wasn’t going to babysit her. “Fine. Two days and we’ll meet here. See you.” He jumped out of the window and started to walk back to the mansion.

He’d made it maybe half a mile from the cottage when he stopped, cursed loudly, and turned back. He would just wait outside, follow her, and make sure she got back safely.

It was just because he needed her help. Yeah. He didn’t care what happened to her. No. “I’m such a pillock!”

tbc





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