Chapter 26:  The Eyes Have It

Skaya's car growled to a stop at the checkpoint.  The guard peered at her warily, clutching his rifle like a security blanket.  She flashed the badge at him dismissively, not waiting for a wave before she rolled right on through.

She parked down in the Institute’s concrete belly then stormed the elevator bay.   Rocketing up toward the 31st floor, she closed her eyes, and that old tape of The Way We Were began to play inside her brain.  She conjured her friends again: the Xan Man and the Willow Tree, battling side-by-side with her against the Forces of Evil™.   Of course, those days seemed like a big fat joke now, of the unfunny kind.

And, through them all, they’d never understood the thing that slithered inside her.   The wise men knew, all those years ago.  Fight fire with fire.  The Shadow Demon wasn’t pretty, but the stuff that works rarely is.  And now, bleeding and hunted, it commanded Skaya to visit to the wisest man of all.

The doors slid open onto his lair. The room was the same old spartan square she remembered.  Squalid furnishings and stacks of book rallied towards the distant desk where he sat, scrutinizing whichever puzzle was presently occupying his humongous English brain.

“They found us,” she said.

Rupert Giles regarded her owlishly.  “They,” he said, “were always going to find us.   Frankly, my dear, I’m shocked they haven’t done so sooner, considering your lifestyle.”

This was an ongoing thing between them.  All the years she spent denying his withering critiques, only to discover they were all so infuriatingly right.  It wasn’t just sloppiness, either.   Ever since the Harris situation, she'd gotten so brazen that she was practically taunting them.  Although she'd changed her name to please her new employers in the Resistance, she’d stubbornly refused to keep a low profile.  Skaya offered herself up as an emblem instead; the last sentry on the wall between the worlds of Man and Magic.  It was only a matter of time before her old ‘buddies’ figured out a way to kill her.  And it looks like they finally did.

“She’s alive,” she said, failing to disguise the fear in her voice.  She saw the old man’s cool façade crack, ever so slightly.  “They brought her back, somehow."

“Are you positive?” he asked.

“Pretty much, yeah.  Considering she positively tried to deep fry my butt the other night.”

“But… how?”

“Oh, so you’re askin’ me?  There’s a new one…”

“Of course,” he grumbled.  “Quite right.” He rose and began prowling around the room then, all Deep Thinky.  Or trying to look that way, at least, for her sake.  And, to be fair, it did make her feel just a little better.

“Well, we’ll start by consulting the literature,” he finally said.  “Or rather, I will start by consulting the literature.  See if I can’t patch in Rayne on a secure line, too.  He’s has a fairly extensive background in the Necromancy.  Could prove useful.”

“Sounds like a party,” she said.  “So, what am I supposed to do?”

Rupert glared at her intently.  “Nothing.  Good lord!  You’re bloody lucky to be in one piece.”  He seemed to be trembling a little when he said it.  She’d never seen the Watcher this shook up before, and it was downright unnerving.   “We’ll get you to a safehouse, as soon as we can arrange one.   Lock it down tight, until this is all sorted.”

  “Sorted?” she asked.  “You don’t honestly think that Ethan can fight her, do you?”

“No,” he agreed.  “No, she’s too damn strong.  A direct confrontation would be suicide, obviously.”  He turned his gaze onto the large picture window that overlooked the city, as if canvassing all of Downtown Boston for the answer.  Delicately, he removed his eyeglasses.  Gave them a good polishing.  “We’ll need to move cautiously.  Find some sort of back door…”

***

"Ow!" yelped Harmony.  “Watch where you stick that thing, buddy!”

"Sorry," said the demon, sheepishly.  “It’s my first time.”

Harmony peered down at the red blot on her sweater, where the sword had been a second earlier.  Her favorite, cashmere sweater, mind you.

Amateurs!  Guh!  

“Okay, did everybody catch what just happened there,” she hollered, addressing Tara’s Tuesday Night Nerd Herd.  The monsters all stared back at her, with a seriously durrr look in their eyes.  Finally, one of them waved its paw.  “Yes!  You!”

“Uh,” croaked the creep. “He won?”

“No,” she pouted, squinting at the freak’s lumpy blue face.  “I mean, well, yeah.  But that’s not what was supposed to happen!”  They blinked back at her, totally not in the Land of Getting It.

Ugghhh, she thought.  Stupid war.   She wished it would just end already, so she could get back to her regular old life.  Death.  Whatever.

So, that’s what she was thinking when they suddenly barged in, looking all freaked out and super cheesed off.  There was stupid Tara and stupid Oz and stupid Willow, all carrying stupid Anya through the warehouse’s secret magic door.

Waitaminute.  "Stupid Willow?"

“Harmony!” Tara yelled.  “Get these people out of here.”

“Okay, people,” Harmony squeaked, delivering that last chestnut with pair of curly finger-quotes.  “You heard the lady!  Major, magicky things going on here.  We’ll pick this up later, and YOU-” she snarled at the trainee still clutching the sword.  “You are gonna pick up a dry cleaning bill, mister!”

As the mob bustled back into the tunnels, Harmony turned her attention back to the dead witch.  “Hey Wills.  Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you bite the big one?”

Willow glanced up at her.  “Yeah.  I get that a lot lately."

They laid Anya down on the snack table, swooshing all the cute little cheese and cracker setups onto the floor.  She looked dinged-up pretty bad.  It was kinda hard to tell for sure though, what with the whole Freddy Kruger Face thing she had going on.  Apparently that part was normal.

“Oz,” said Tara.  “Find Ursula.  Tell her to bring a Root of Oreshi, some Gobo leaves and a Shol Pon Magrah healing stone.”

“Ooh,” said Harmony, “and a Diet Coke.”  Oz shot her a tired look, then shuffled off into the tunnels to go do Oz Stuff.

Anya was moaning and wiggling around on the table, in and out of contestants (Consanants?  Consensus?) while the witches started in with their witch mumbo jumbo, and rubbed their hands all over her.  Which, you know: squick!   Not that Harmony was trying to judge anybody.   She knew they were ‘lebanons’ or whatever, and she was basically cool with that.  In theory.  But she thought that was a pretty lame excuse to cop a feel when some chick was lying un-contestants or dying or etcetera.  That was just.   Eww.

  Anyway, Anya seemed to be pretty mad about something, and it wasn't the tragically retro blouse she was wearing.  She kept blabbing away in a made-up sounding language -- ‘Ish Lish Osh Kabosh’ or something to that effect -- when all of the sudden Harmony heard heard the demon say a word that made sense.  It sent a chill up her spine.

“Slayer,” she cried.  “Did she say Slayer?  As in, like, the Slayer-Slayer?”

Tara nodded.  She had a look on her face like someone just crapped in her soup.  “She’s here.”

“In Boston?”

“That would qualify as here, yes.”

“Well,” Harmony stammered, suddenly and totally freaked.  “Well!  Well, I mean what are we gonna do?!”  Tara glared at Willow for some unknown reason, so she did too.  The redhead kept on chanting her abracadabra stuff, blissfully unaware.  The way she looked at Anya was seriously weirding Harmony out, too  It didn’t  seem like a lebanon thing.  It was more like she was looking at a basket of puppies.  In this case, bloody, gross demonfaced puppies, but puppies nonetheless.   It also looked like she was about to cry.  “Hel-lo!”  Harmony chirped.  “Earth to Not-Dead Willow.  What are we gonna do, oh fearless and apparently funeral-proof leader?”

The Witch finally stopped witching long enough to pay attention.  She looked a little different than Harmony remembered.   She heard a rumor once that Rosenberg would use some spell to make her boobs bigger (which was, like, totally unfair or whatever, but she could respect it.)  But it wasn’t just the de-boobage factor, though.  The way she looked at everything, it was almost like there was a completely different chick running around inside Willow’s bod.  Harmony surprised herself a little bit, that she was able to figure this out.  She guessed it must be those super keen vampire instincts she was always hearing about, finally kicking in.

“We know where she is,” Tara answered.  “We had her followed, after she did this.  She’s holed up at the Institute.  With Rupert Giles, I assume.”

“Oh crap,” Harmony muttered.  “So, lemme guess.  We’re supposed to break in there and bust out the whole Kill the Heck out of Everything That Moves routine, right?”

“Not everything,” whispered Willow.  “Not her.  You leave her to me.”

***

“That's enough,” said Violet, not really thinking it was even close to “enough”, but too troubled by a million other thoughts to care. The girls obeyed; they stopped their sparring match mid-punch, gave their teacher a practiced bow, then scampered off in the direction of the cafeteria.  As late as it was, it made sense.  Once upon a time, a good fight used to make her pretty hungry too.

She lingered a while to sneak in a workout of her own. She started off with basic katas – Open Mountain and Eagle's Claw – then moved on to weapons. Her Dragon Spring Sword technique was still too loosey-goosey; she could almost hear Kennedy's voice screaming the corrections into her ear. She eventually tossed the sword in frustration, and moved on to Jin Gang Big Knife. There she found her rhythm nicely, carving big, birthday cake slices out of her invisible foes.  She capped it all off with a Yang Family Spear routine (also tight-ish, to her relief).  After the final thrust, she bowed to an audience of invisible mentors and left.

Back at the dorm room, Vi took a quickie shower then gave her teeth a long, hard scrubbing, like she was trying to strip the paint off a car door. As she did so, she carried on a quiet conversation with the girl in the mirror too, asking herself if it was all worth it.  Dawn's plan went off without a hitch, sure.  Rupert Giles was gone, sure, and with him two long years or suspicions and frustrations and recriminations and doubts. It was what she wanted.  Or, at least, that's what she always told herself. She wanted things to be different, and it was. Everything was different now. Except, somehow, for her sucky Dragon Spring Sword technique.

She spit out a glob of green paste.

Everything is different except you, she thought.

Vi decided to skip dinner. It would be cold pizza-ish anyway, and she found she wasn't hungry enough to perform the simple tasks required to warm it up. So, she hopped online, instead, feeling that small but welcome jolt of anonymity and escape the moment her fingers touched the keys. In Internetland she was neither Shy Vi Singer nor Violet the Violent Vampire Slayer. She could be "Viral Vi" or "Vlogger Vi" or "Viably Viviparous Vi, Queen of Awkward Fertility Clinic Quesitons."  She had more aliases than James Bond, wrote under weird screen names like redletterdaytripper and lonelygal85.  Surfing the web, she could be anything to anyone, or nothing to nobody, and – when you cut right down to the heart and guts of it – wasn't that what it really meant to be free?  It sure felt that way to her sometimes.

Despite this sentiment, Vi had her routines in computerland as well. She checked her email first, which was basically all spammy crap, then she moved on to Skype. There was a invite for a video-conference in her notifications list, and a little icon beside it that told her the sender was online.

She stared hard at the name:

Harvey Lee

As in Lee Harvey. As in Oswald, of course.

She never changes either, Vi thought. Even her dumb, sick jokes never change.

After a moment of quiet deliberation, she donned her headphones and clicked the link. Kennedy's dark, somewhat pixelated features instantly filled the screen.  “Hey, old timer," the brunette said.  "Long time no see.”

“Yeah. Long time.” Kennedy was smiling, with more warmth than Violet thought she was capable of. It surprised her, but for some reason she couldn't help but think of swamps and crocodiles. “What do you want?”

“World peace.”

Violet chuckled at that one.  “Riiight.”

“I'm serious, Vi. We shouldn't be fighting each other. There's gotta be a part of you that knows that.” Violet just shook her head sadly, but at the same time she was quietly trying to scrub the word “yes” from her brain. “We're your sisters. Your kind. Can you really picture yourself taking orders from General Incompetence and Buffy's Bouncing Baby Biopsy for the rest of your life?”

“It's not like that, Ken.”

“No?” The woman handed her one of her sly, trademark grins. “You really think you're anything more than a pawn to these people? To Buffy?  Did she even remember your name?"

Violet winced at this one, and felt her cheeks begin to burn. Somehow, after all this time, Kennedy still knew how to press all the buttons.  “She didn't start this fight, Ken.  And neither did we.”

The brunette gave her shoulders an innocent shrug. “Hey, it's like I've been telling ya.  I only want peace. That's all I've ever wanted.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.  And yet, the mounting body count?  Sorta screams otherwise.”

The smile disintegrated from Kennedy's lips.  “You're right about that.  And I hate it, more than you can ever know.  I'm not like Buffy, Vi.  I let myself feel every death, and I've mourned them all. But it doesn't have to be like this.  We can put an end to all this killing, if we work together...”

“No.”

“Vi, please.”

“You're asking me to betray my friends.”

“I'm your friend too,” Kennedy said, almost begging her to believe it.

Violet gave her old comrade-at-arms a long, careful look. With her soft yet determined gaze, she was almost selling it, as if she was channeling Buffy Summers herself.  Some other day, if the stars were lined up just right, Violet might have even taken the bait. But there was something off about Miriam Kennedy Corliss, and she suddenly realized that there always had been.  Off.  Wrong.  The words were a little too simple; she looked into Kenny's beautiful face and knew it was a mask for something horrific. Even across the muddy pixel soup of the laptop screen, the woman's dark, starving eyes gave her up.

Some things never changed.

“I gotta go now,” Violet said.  “I got something in the oven."  Then:  "I guess I'll be seeing you, huh?”

“Sooner than you think.”

Violet clicked the hang-up button and closed the window.

She opened a browser.

Browsed.

***

“My beautiful William,” she said.  “Ee’s  bin a bad dog, he ‘as.   Gotten into the medicine cabinet.”   Drusilla streamed forth like an empress, weaving her delicate old spell.  “Oh, it’s so horrid!  Ms. Edith would not approve…” 

Her mood was as capricious as ever.  The sly innocence which begat orgasmic terror, which then blackened to merry melancholy, all in ten seconds.  It was a familiar trajectory; one, Spike knew, that eventually prompted all manner of party invitations and dripping entrails and corpses compiling on the riverbanks.  The Doc sat watching with a slightly daffy look upon his face, enraptured by this tragic little sport of hers. 

“Lo, Dru,” Spike said, attempting nonchalance.  “See you’ve been to the alienist, love.  Whatever you’re payin‘im, it’s too bloody much.”

“Your big brother’s still playing the old game, Nicholas.”  She glided to where he was bound.  Her scent was tantalizing. In a moment, she was at his ear, tickling his skin with a tooth.  There was something odd about her, after all.  She seemed thicker.  More solid.  “Spike,” she breathed.  “My darling, deadly boy.  I brought something for you.”

Now, it was a rarified occasion these days to see something truly jarring.  Spike supposed this happened to everyone eventually, blood-drinking monster or not.   Experiences accumulated like snowflakes.  They piled up over the scenery, slowly bricking away all color and form.   Surprise was not a feeling that registered often.  Bloody puppet ranked up there.  A handful of kisses, as well.  But the moment he looked up into her eyes – those hypnotic and treacherous vessels – he was immediately and thunderously cannoned out to the edge of sanity.  Down beneath the waves of Drusilla’s pickled old depths, something was…

Burning.

What did you do?

“Oh, It looks so lovely on me, don’t it?” whispered his monstrous queen.

It did not.  Not hardly.  Ludicrous and unclean and impossible is what it looked.  Well Past Wrong.

In the stormy, slightly disorienting wake of this vivication, a memory squeezed its way into his brains.  They were driving out across a hot strip of Nevada desert, racing the rising sun to Las Vegas.  He was working the gear stick when he felt a hand enmesh his, the tiny cool fingers weaving expertly for purchase.  When he looked down at Drusilla she was wide awake, the softest smile playing upon her lips.  He feared she was going to ask for 'Daddy', who – by merit of their continued existence – had surely just been skewered on the end of the Slayer’s rapier.  “Can’t we stay out for the picnic, darling,” was all she said. “Mr. Yellow wants our breakfast prayers.”

Angel, the brooding ponce, never said what it’d been like for him.  And vice versa, of course.  The topic was mutually forbidden, though perhaps for separate reasons.   He suspected his grandsire wasn’t wordsmith enough to express it properly.  Not that he was an utter twit in all matters; beneath that ridiculous shrub of a hairdo lay a head possessed of a certain admirable facility to organize matters.  “A” before “B” and “B” before “C” and all that rot.  This made him quite compellingly evil, in the old days.   And when that old hag’s curse reunited Angelus with his shade, the sickness probably arrived in a likewise orderly fashion.  A tidy column of dark deeds and feeble contritions.   Spike would wager that coming to terms with this was a long and excruciating exercise for Angel, but not an utterly confounding one.  

For his own part, Spike found madness a wholly unavoidable side effect.  The trip back to the states had been long and strange.   He’d spent that first sleepless leg of it in the bowels of a cargo ship.   He still remembered what it was like when he caught and slew his first meal, the bizarre pity he felt when he heard the thing’s little toy heart pitter its last.   That’s how the vampire spent his second night of ensoulment: kneeling down in the filthy hold of a Mexico-bound freighter, apologizing to a rat. 

Then later, in the cellar of that miserable school, things had gotten rather fuzzy.  The ghost stabbed relentlessly at the walls of his rotten old head, a hostage rebelling against its demented captor.   Demon and man fought for every inch of real estate, and the racket kept his brain horribly awake and aware.  As the nights wore on he found himself whiplashed back and forth between worlds of fantasy and despair.  One moment, he’d be conjuring a sort of fairy tale scenario that would make a schoolgirl blush.  The next, he’d find himself screaming into a shining pane of glass that held no reflection, aching to liberate his eyes from his skull. Grand delusions and agonies washed over him like fevers, macerating the world into a stew of half wrought phantoms and savage poetry.  In plain English, the soul drove him bonkers.

Drusilla, however, was already bonkers.

So, where did it drive her?

“How did,” he started, momentarily witless.   “That is.  I mean…”

“Shhh…” she cooed.  “We mustn’t talk about her, Spike.   She’ll wake up.  Daddy gets very angry when she awakes.”

Spike felt his innards stiffen at the D-word.  “Daddy?   What, you mean he’s here?  In London?!”

Drusilla grinned impishly.  “No, not that Daddy.  The poor pony!  My other Daddy.  The one who 'angs over the Moon.”  She snaked around him now, smothering him with her scent.   “‘’Ee pokes the holes in the night, my Daddy does.  Lets the sunshine trickle in.  Oh, but he does get so displeased.”  

Off to one side, Dru’s shrinky-dink was practically panting at them.   It seemed the little tosser had earned his wage after all.  Monkeyed with her pickle jar just enough to get her over and on with it.  Now, Doctor Nicky was in her thrall.   Which - Spike recognized - was a bloody easy place to find oneself.   Drusilla was always a lethal beast; drenched in a power as mysterious and magnetic as the Sea.  And with her soul now intact, she was even more than that.   She was a fiery Perdition; a bright red nova illuminating the infinite night for all her spawn.  The little hobgoblin would probably stake himself if she’d asked him to.  Spike bloody well wished that she would.

“Make him stop looking at me like that, Mummy,” Nicholas whined.  “I don’t like it.  He’s been very, very rude to me an-” 

“Hush child!” Drusilla scolded, her mind so suddenly and disturbingly in attendance that it cut the wanker dead.  “Don’t be cross with my Nicholas, darling.  We’ve all been naughty boys and girls, once or twice.  Gone to bed without our suppers.”

“Yeh.  An’ it seems like there’s a great buggering lot of those runnin’ round these days,” Spike retorted.   “What’s the matter, pet?  Got lonely?  Empty nest syndrome?”

“Yeah,” she said, once more sounding rather alarmingly rational.  “Somethin’ like ‘at.  Came to me in a dream one morning.  My Daddy told me how it could be.  All of us under his bright old shadow, dust blowing over old stone.  We’ll make our way to him.   Ride together in a big fat carriage all the way up the valley walls.”

“Only the pretty ones, Druzy,” Spike said.  “Remember?”

“But they’re all so pretty, now, my darling, darling William.”  Her eyes were shimmering.  She was using the Sight again.   “We were misers, we were.  Locked away our precious medicine.  Too many patients and not enough doctors.  The white one brings her summer locusts to till the fields, but we must plant a different seed.”

Spike sat there motionless for a moment, considering all this.  It seemed the alchemy of madness poured upon madness had brewed a frightening sort of sanity in her.  Past his maker’s reliably batty word scrambles, it was all so profoundly rational; The Witch made more of them, and so Drusilla would make more of us.  “Buildin’ a bloody army,” he figured aloud.

“Very bloody, my love” she said.  “An’ together we’ll butcher them.   Drink them all up dry.  Daddy wants the world back right.” 

An eternity seemed to pass.  “Well, sounds grand,” he agreed, finally.  “Good luck with that.  S’ben great playing ‘catchup with the kookoo ex’ an’ all.  But if you don’t mind, I’ll just be collecting the girl and we’ll be on our merry…”

“Oh no,” she clucked.  “I’m ‘fraid not.  Not until you’re all better, my poor sick lemon.”

“Yeah, well – no offense – but s’gonna take a bit more than a dose of Siggy Freud over there to make me ‘all better’, lamb.  Things have changed.”

“Oh yeah, don’t we know it!” she teased.  “Our little Spiky’s fresh out of candles.  Lost a bet with Sam Scratch, ‘e did.”  She was giggling at him, now.  It was like rats nibbling at a scar, picking open the seam.   “You ‘aven’t eaten in an age darling.  All skin and bones, you are.  One sweet taste of Slayer is all you need.   And then we’ll be together, again and forever.”

“No.”

“Nicholas.  Go an’ help your sister fetch our supper.”

As he watched the little houseboy toddle off to do her bidding, Spike tested his bonds again.  Haven’t eaten in an age.  It was maddeningly accurate, that bit.  He’d always felt so weak without the fresh blood of the kill; that hot human geyser firing into his lips, pouring authentic life from one cup to another.  Once upon a time, he could’ve crushed the bracelets like glass.  He thought of the Wells boy, again.  That drink had been far more dangerous than anyone would ever know.  He’d almost lost it, almost drained the little louse.  The thirst was a hand at his throat, forever squeezing. 

He’d tried so bloody hard.  There were all manner of schemes and methods he’d devised along the way; ways he learnt to cage the thing.  But it would be all for naught, soon.  The sight of the lot of them feasting on Faith would finally break him, awakening the monster.  He was on the sliver as it was, hanging by his fingernails.  A little push was all it would ever take, he knew, to send him hurtling back to Hell.  His dread princess would offer him the Slayer’s long, lithe throat…

And you’ll drink.  You’ll drink, damn you.

Doctor Nick opened the office door.  He sort of cocked his head, puzzled by something on the other side of it.   Screamed.

“Lectus servi!” a voice boomed, and Nick was sent careening twenty feet through the air.  He smashed into a bookshelf with a satisfying crunch.  His assailant swayed into the room, wielding a large white crucifix like a loaded gun. 

He looked different.  If Spike was ever forced to confess it, the bastard looked downright formidable; the black-on-black suit reminiscent of some thundering young Fire and Brimstone priest, hellbent on setting the whole crooked world right.  And the man's pale eyes confirmed it, twinkling as though their owner knew a secret that he was giddy to finally tell.   He didn’t look like that nob Van Helsing.  He looked like…

Looked like Winston Bloody Churchill.

“Drusilla, darling,” said Rupert Giles.  “You’ve been a very naughty girl…”