|
|
Chapter 31
Life Takers and Heart Breakers
“Cade,” she said to the black-robed man in a voice so cold it could have frozen Hell’s Taganiska Wasteland.“Oh, much more than that. So very much more,” he said, running one hand over Elisa’s hair while keeping her arm firmly locked behind her back with the other.
Even without the old Dark Hunter senses, Buffy still had the heightened perceptions of a one-hundred-seven year old Millennial Slayer. She could still sense what lay beneath the surface of things in this twilight world, and beneath Marcus Cade she felt a vast gulf of fractured nothingness that she’d experienced only once before. It was quite unlike anything else, a shattered glasswork of rage and insanity and infinite cold and darkness. She’d never forgotten it.
She’d felt it once in the psychotic depths of a man named Anton Kurtz almost eighty years before. And she felt it in Cade now.
Marcus Cade had become the Avatar of the Elemental Abstract.
* * *
Xander ducked as the iron bar swung toward his head. It continued on to chip a large fragment of stone out of one wall of the labyrinth.
He stumbled backwards as Angel recovered for another swing, and gashed his hand badly on a sharp, twisted piece of metal protruding from a piece of rubble. The pain shot through him like an electric shock, into his brain, and for just a second it was as if a murky veil had been raised from his vision. The Abstract stood in stark relief in the center of the labyrinth, and he saw its tendrils coil through the desolate passageways, writhe around stonework and rubble, entwine around him and Angel.
Xander’s epiphany almost killed him as Angel brought the bar around again. Then he found his opening and took it, driving Angel backwards into some debris and tripping him up. They fell together, Xander pressing his forearm into his old enemy’s throat. The urge to crush the former vampire’s windpipe was overwhelming, a palpable and almost physical need. He felt hate flash through him, hazing his vision red, and he saw the same emotion reflected in the dark eyes of Angel.
But Xander understood now.
“Listen to me Angel!” he snapped. “This isn’t us. This is the Abstract. It knows our pasts. It knows it can get us to try to kill each other. Don’t let it win!”
“Liar!” snarled Angel, pushing him off.
Gaining his balance, Xander put some distance and rubble between himself and the former vampire. His mind raced. How to get through to him? How had Elisa Summers gotten through his own anger and hate that day at the Bronze? Of course …
Xander fumbled a photograph free of his pocket and held it up even as Angel raised the bar for a killing blow.
“Think of her! Think of Buffy, Angel. Would she want you to do this? Think, damn you!”
Angel hesitated, his eyes flicking toward the picture, taking in the scene of Buffy and little Elisa at Disney World so very long ago, a better time, a time of hope and optimism.
“Think,” said Xander again, trying to drive that point home. Only intellect was going to get them out of this, not rage and hate.
Angel blinked, then looked around him as if seeing his surroundings for the first time.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, lowering the bar and breathing heavily.
Xander thought the expletive was directed at him, but then he saw Angel turn toward the Abstract in the distance. “You son of a bitch! To hell with you! Find some other chump.”
He turned back to Xander. “Thanks. You okay?”
“Nothing a few weeks in the Bahamas wouldn’t cure. Besides, way I see it, you were owed a few licks. I haven’t exactly made your life any easier over the years. I mean, with the trying to kill you thing and all.”
“So what stopped you this time?”
Xander shrugged. “I don’t know.” He glanced at the photo. “Yeah, maybe I do. She stopped me. Just like she stopped you.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Xander,” said Angel. “Stop living your life in her shadow. You’re a genuine good guy, and more of a hero than you think you are.”
As they started walking away, Xander said, “A hero? This doesn’t mean I have to start wearing Spandex and a cape or anything, does it?”
“If you do, I really will kill you,” joked Angel. “Now, let’s find the others and get out of this dump.”
* * *
Cordelia and Willow stopped short as they came up against a dead end of rubble and twisted metal. Nobody knew quite what had happened to the M-7 aliens who once occupied the facility, but from the looks of this section and from the debris here and there that Cade’s people hadn’t tidied up, it was something major and unpleasant.
They turned to see the two Phase Parasites closing on them at fantastic speed, their forms indeterminate and ever-changing.
“Oh, this is really bad, isn’t it?” asked Cordelia.
Willow looked at her and nodded, her eyes wide.
The lead Parasite leaped …
…and was cut down in mid-air by a scything blade that severed the polymorphing monstrosity in two before it hit the ground.
The second Parasite turned fluidly to meet the new and unexpected threat only to be ripped apart by two blasts from a shotgun. The harsh reports echoed through the complex.
Willow looked up toward their rescuers to see two people who looked for all the world like another Cordelia Chase and a sword-wielding Buffy Summers. And behind them, just coming around the corner of a side-corridor, were Faith and Elisa Hunter/McKenna.
“Watch it. Whatever they are, they seem to be trying to re-form,” said the new Cordelia. She gestured with the barrel of her shotgun at the amorphous, silver-black puddles in the corridor that were already trying to flow back into one another.
“We’d better get moving then,” said Elisa McKenna.
The woman who looked like Buffy turned a one-eyed gaze on her and Willow felt herself shiver at the cold, pale gleam of the one ruined eye.
Buffy smiled a predatory smile and said, “Hi, Will. Someone here call for the cavalry?”
* * *
“Let my daughter go, you bastard. This one’s between you and me,” said Buffy, drawing the Masamune katana and holding it at the ready.
“It’s always been about us, child — all the battles, all the fights against evil, they’ve always, ultimately, been between you and me. You just never knew it. But this is the last time. No more miracles. No more last minute saves. This time Buffy Summers, the Slayer, dies,” said Cade.
“Yeah, that’s what Kurtz thought too,” said Buffy.
Cade sneered. “Kurtz was weak. You’re on the Abstract’s turf now, Slayer. It’s a whole different ball game here.”
“Really? Looks to me like the Abstract’s still scraping its Avatars from the bottom of the shallow end of the gene pool. I don’t think I have much to worry about.”
Lillith nudged her and said quietly, “Back off. He is a lot stronger here than Kurtz was on Earth, and you’re not the Dark Hunter anymore.”
“Listen to her, Slayer. I rule here. Not you,” said Cade, drawing a large combat knife from a sheath on his hip and pressing the blade to Elisa’s throat.
“No,” said Buffy, sudden desperation choking her voice. Buffy had felt fear before, many times. Fear for her own life time and time again. Fear for the lives of her friends and family. Fear for Angel. But never anything like what she now felt, nothing like the numbing terror of facing her own daughter’s death. She felt paralyzed, her heart pounding, her breathing uneven, her mind dizzy and unfocused with dread. The blade in her hands trembled.
“Not so brave now, are we Slayer?” said Cade.
“Don’t listen to him, Mom,” said Elisa. “You can take him.”
Cade smiled and applied additional pressure to the blade. A crimson bead of blood welled up and ran along the burnished steel.
“Drop the sword and she lives,” said Cade.
“Don’t, Mom. He’s lying. You know it,” said Elisa.
“She’s right,” Lillith agreed.
Buffy closed her eyes. “I know. God help me, I know. But I don’t have any choice.”
She lowered the sword and let it fall to ring against the rough stone.
“Fool,” said Cade, and Buffy saw in his eyes that he had no intention of letting Elisa live. He never had.
“You know it’s funny about us vampires, Cade —” Spike suddenly appeared from behind the Avatar, grabbing the wrist of Cade’s knife hand and driving his own combat knife deep into the Colonel’s back. “— we’re a bloody hard lot to kill if your aim’s a tad off,”
It was all the opening Buffy needed as she landed a side snap kick solidly against Cade’s jaw, jerking the head back on his neck and sending him off the wall to hit hard against the alley below. Spike pulled Elisa away from the fight.
“You get her out of here,” Buffy said to the vampire. Find Angel and Xander and get to the wormhole. Lillith and I will follow when we can.”
“I’m not leaving!” shouted Elisa.
“You are,” said Buffy firmly to her daughter.
“Your mum’s right,” said Spike. “That blighter ain’t out of fight yet, and you’ll just make things harder. Come on. These two can take care of themselves.”
Elisa grudgingly let herself be led down the stairs and away. Buffy watched them leave.
“Buffy, look out!” Lillith shouted.
Buffy whirled to see Cade in mid air — he’d leapt up to the top of the wall, a dark blur of motion. He arced down overtop of her with a summersault and landed behind her. She turned to meet the sudden threat, but never even had a chance to react.
Cade’s hand closed around her throat and she found herself lifted her off her feet.
Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Lillith with her arms spread wide as the Elder Power began the casting of a spell, but it was too late. The Slayer felt the knife plunge home between her ribs and deep into her chest.
“Unimpressive. Woefully unimpressive,” said Cade, withdrawing the knife with sadistic slowness.
Stunned, she had just enough time to comprehend what had happened before she found herself airborne, hurtling toward the opposite wall. She slammed hard into the stone, rebounded and plummeted helplessly to the alley fifteen feet below. It was odd, she thought briefly. It should have hurt when she hit. But she felt nothing, just general numbness spreading from the wound, numbness and encroaching cold.
Buffy felt consciousness start to fade, her vision failing and her surroundings seeming to recede into a great distance, and even as she began the long fall into the endless blackness of death she knew her luck had at long last run out.