Before
Merrick could say anything in response, they had arrived at Buffy’s home. It was a typical Los Angeles house, built in
an eye-watering mixture of architectural styles that combined to say both
tasteless and affluent. As soon as
Merrick stopped the car on the street, Buffy jumped out and ran to the house
after telling him to pop the trunk. It
was only five minutes later that Buffy came back, carrying four large
bags. She was not, however, alone.
Merrick
watched with shock as the Slayer dropped the bags into the trunk and got back
into her seat by his side. A few moments
later, the back seat opened and a girl got in.
She was perhaps ten years old, with straight auburn hair that fell to her
shoulder blades, dressed in t-shirt, jeans and a denim jacket. Shaking off a sudden wave of dizziness,
Merrick turned to Buffy.
“Why is
your sister here?” he demanded.
“Because
I need Dawn with me,” said Buffy. “Our
parents aren’t home, and I’m not leaving her alone.”
“Besides,”
said Dawn, in a bright voice, “you’ll need someone to watch your back. What if a vampire zooms in behind and grabs
hold of you, forcing you to commit suicide before he can torture you for
information about Buffy?”
“Dawn!”
barked Buffy.
“She
knows?” said Merrick, horrified.
“Yep,”
said Dawn. “Vampires and demons and
magic and keys and all kinds of stuff.”
“Please
stop doing that, Dawn,” begged Buffy.
Dawn
laughed in response.
Merrick,
meanwhile, was thinking furiously. This
was obviously a fait accompli; there was no chance that the Chosen One would
obey an order to leave her sister behind.
He could try to convince her that it was the right thing to do, that it
would be too dangerous to have her follow where they would be walking, but he
had a nagging suspicion that this would be futile. And so Merrick tried manfully to ignore Dawn
and get back to the business at hand. He
succeeded for the most part.
“What
now? I want you to start training
immediately, but you obviously have other plans.”
“My
school. I have a vampire king to slay,”
said Buffy grimly. “Oh, but first a trip
to the hardware store. There’s one on
the way.”
“You
know about Lothos,” said Merrick. Buffy
nodded in response. “And you know that
Lothos is at your school?”
“Underneath
it,” said Buffy.
From
the corner of his eyes, Merrick considered Buffy. “You have dreamed the deaths of the Slayers
that Lothos had killed?”
“Yeah. The medieval barmaid, the Hong Kong
prostitute,” said Buffy. “The others.”
“Yes,
dozens of Slayers. No other vampire has
ever killed so many,” said Merrick. “And
you would face him now, freshly called and untrained?”
“I have
things to do,” said Buffy firmly.
“Such
as?” Buffy would not answer, only looked
out the window in silence. Dawn too
remained silent.
As they
walked through the Home Depot, a large hardware chain store, Merrick considered
his Slayer. As a Watcher, he had helped
to train most of the Slayers of the past thirty years. Of those, five had been killed by
Lothos. The horror, the rage, he had
felt had nearly crippled him. So to send
this girl out to fight him so soon terrified him.
Yet the
others had been trained, had been prepared as well as anyone could make
them. Still they had died by Lothos’ hands
and teeth. Buffy—he would have to get
used to her ridiculous name—walked with the same determination that had been so
clear on her face. Further, beyond the
natural grace that came with being a Slayer, there was a power and coordination
that came with training. Whether it was
her cheerleading, or her childhood gymnastics training, Buffy knew how to use
her body as an instrument.
But
would she know how to slay? In the heat
of the moment, when the terror and blinding speed and unnatural horror of the situation
confronted her, would she panic and die?
Or would she overcome the animal instinct to hide from fear and attack?
Merrick
would have liked to have eased her into the life of the Slayer. He would have first demonstrated how a
vampire rises, and how a vampire kills.
He would have staked one in front of her, to show a vampire truly
dies. Then he would have begun training
her in the killing arts that a Slayer had to know. Only then would he have even considered
sending her to slay Lothos, and that only because Lothos was obviously hunting
her.
Yet
Buffy was determined to kill Lothos now.
Merrick knew enough about Slayers to know that, once they committed
themselves fully to a course of action, nothing could sway them from it. It seemed that with the strength and
prophetic abilities, the Slayer also had superhuman stubbornness. Watchers over the years had tried various
methods of dealing with this mulishness.
Some Watchers crushed it out of the Slayers with brutal, Prussian-style
training. Others manipulated the Slayer
to redirect that stubbornness towards the eternal war.
Thankfully,
most of that determination was directed outward, against the world, and not
towards their Watcher. This was
particularly true of those Potentials who had been trained since birth by their
Watcher. Merrick had planned, when the
issue came up, to work around Buffy’s stubbornness through mockery. Yet that tact required a certain, even if
brief, familiarity towards each other borne from the training he would give.
Yet now
the situation was reversed. Instead of
him guiding her, the Slayer was guiding her Watcher. Right now she was guiding him through an
aisle filled with farming equipment. She
placed four small wood axes in the shopping cart, and replacement wooden
handles for rakes.
It was
after they left the hardware store, loaded with the makings of weapons, that
Merrick came to his decision. It was
looking at his Slayer, at the way in which she had carefully weighed each wood
axe for their balance, which did it.
When he came to California, Merrick had expected that it would be Buffy
who would have to trust him. She would
have had to have trusted him that vampires were real, that she was the Chosen
One, and above all else that she could kill Lothos. That would have been their relationship—she
would be trusting him with her life.
Now,
though—now things were very much the opposite.
He would have to trust that her sense of mission was such that it could
not wait for any training. He would have
to trust that she would survive where so many others had died. He would have to trust that she knew what she
was doing.
He
would have to trust Buffy.
It was
a struggle, if a silent one made on the drive towards Hemery High School. But in the end, he came to his decision. Buffy was his Slayer, and he was her
Watcher. That was a sacred bond, one
which he would not betray by second-guessing her. Even if it meant his death, and more
importantly even if it meant her death, he would follow. She was the Chosen One, and that meant
everything.
“Done,”
announced Dawn. This had been all that
she’d said since they had left the hardware store. In the back seat, she had spent the drive
using one of the wood axes to sharpen the wooden poles into spears. It had made a mess, leaving wood shavings and
chips everywhere, yet even in the short drive the girl had managed to make four
spears, five feet in length. They were
light enough for the child to use them in combat—a prospect that Merrick
dreaded—yet strong enough to pierce through the chest of a vampire and reach
his heart. Instead of being a sharp
cone, the points at the center of the mass and thus making for truer aim when
thrown, the spears had been carved so that its point was at an edge. This made the spear stronger than it would
have had the spear point had been in its center. That Dawn knew this without having to be
told, and further that she expected to use to spears in close combat rather
than as missiles, told Merrick something.
He was not sure what, other than that Dawn too expected and was prepared
for combat. And even that much was
disturbing.
Who
were these girls? It was a question to
be answered another time.
“Good,”
said Merrick. “And just in time.” He pulled the car into the parking lot of
Hemery High School. It was a sprawling
campus, dominated by a three-story high main building. The large gymnasium, to the rear of the
campus, was where Buffy said that Lothos had his lair. Apparently the gym’s basement doubled as a
water and power substation for the campus and was rarely visited, even by
teenagers looking for out of the way places to do whatever depraved things
teenagers did these days.
It was
a spring Saturday, and so no one was on campus except for a security guard or
two. Yet they were nowhere to be
seen. Buffy made to open her door, but
Merrick stopped her. It was time to show
her how crazy a Watcher could be.
“Everybody
have their seatbelt on? Good.” Merrick revved his engine and jumped the
curb. He drove through the large arch
that led to the rear of the school, driving through the chain link fence’s
locked doors with a high-pitched cracking squeal. Dodging past benches and potted plants that
lined the exterior hallways, he drove across a grass field and then stopped in
front of the gym’s locked doors.
As they
got out of the car, Merrick took the time to appreciate the tire tracks and
churned grass that was behind them.
There had always been a childish side to him, one which still delighted
in petty vandalism—especially of institutions.
He rarely indulged it, but for the sake of surprising and delighting his
Slayer, he would do so. Shock and terror
would forever be a part of the Slayer’s life, but that made happy surprises all
the more necessary. They counteracted
the numbing effect that the horrors of the world could inflict upon the Slayer.
“We
could do doughnuts in the football field, if you want,” said Dawn.
“We
could,” said Buffy wistfully. Then she
looked at the sun and shook her head.
“No time. The sun’s almost down.”
“You
mean it’s almost . . . twilight?” said Dawn, grinning madly. Buffy grimaced but said nothing.
It was
surprisingly easy to get into the basement levels of the gym. Buffy had suggested that they chop a hole
through the gym floor using one of the axes, but Merrick had, just in time,
spotted a locked utility door before Buffy had kicked in the gym’s main
doors. Deciding to use flashlights
instead of turning on the main lights, Buffy led the way down to the basement and
then from there to the tunnel that Lothos had dug for himself. It had been hidden behind a huge metal
cabinet, which would have taken vampire, or Slayer, strength to move. Buffy had gone to it almost immediately,
after a moment of staring at the ceiling and presumably orientating herself. Buffy walked in front, an axe in one hand and
a flashlight in the other. Behind her
was Dawn holding one of the long spears.
Bringing up the rear was Merrick.
He was carrying a crossbow, fully cocked and ready to be loosed. It was a modern crossbow, making it easier to
cock than its medieval counterparts. Yet
still he doubted he’d have time for more than one shot. Then he’d be down to fighting with a stake in
his left hand, and a pistol in his right.
He’d found that, though a gunshot did not kill a vampire, it did shock
and even weaken them enough to be staked far more easily than would
otherwise. He was an old man, after all,
and not a super-powered teenager.
The
tunnels had been, at first, illuminated by battery-operated electric lamps—the
kind that you would get for camping. The
warm yellow glow, however, had soon been replaced by wooden torches set into
the earthen walls of the tunnels by brackets.
Buffy and Dawn took the time to stare at the wooden torches, utterly
befuddled by them. Merrick nudged Buffy,
who shook herself out of her cognitive stutter to walk on.
It was
not long before they came to a large chamber.
It was about two stories high, shored up by thick wooden beams. At the center of the chamber was a throne,
upon which sat Lothos. He was of average
height, with long reddish-blonde hair that hung both loosely and in woven
braids down to his chest. He wore a
white silk shirt, ruffled at the collar, and a long red wool coat. Around his neck hung a gold necklace with
uncut emeralds set in it. In all, he
looked like a handsome man of middling years.
Yet he
was also one of the most powerful vampires in the world. There were perhaps older vampires, though
none were completely sure how old Lothos was.
And those old vampires were no longer able to hide their demonic nature
behind their human faces, always monstrously bestial in their visage. Yet Lothos was able to do so. However when he showed his true face, his
demonic face, instead of turning into a snarling, twisted wreck that still
retained some of its human nature, Lothos’ demon face was like that of a wolf,
or a dog, a hairless long snout stretching outward to tear and maul rather than
the normal vampire’s simple bite.
His
eyes were closed, and he looked to be sleeping sitting upright. Yet as soon as Buffy fully entered the
chamber, his gaze locked upon her. They
all stopped as Lothos languidly stood up.
“It has
been a long time since one of you has sought me out,” said Lothos. He spoke with a trace of a Continental accent,
though it was difficult to pinpoint precisely.
“I admire your bravery, Slayer.”
“Yeah,
hi,” said Buffy. She then threw an axe
at Lothos. With a laugh, he plucked it
out of the air. Yet even as his hand
grasped the handle, Buffy was at his side, chopping at him with another
axe. Lothos barely managed to dodge the
blade as it sliced through where his neck had been. With a snarl, the vampire pushed the Slayer
from him. Buffy tumbled to the ground a
few feet from Lothos, but quickly sprang back up to attack. She met Lothos in midair, as he had been
lunging after Buffy, looking to pin her down and kill her. They grappled briefly, she trying to
decapitate him even as she landed kick after kick in his ribs, while he tried
to stab her with his monstrous claws.
Each failed and both separated from each other with a jump.
Merrick could say anything in response, they had arrived at Buffy’s home. It was a typical Los Angeles house, built in
an eye-watering mixture of architectural styles that combined to say both
tasteless and affluent. As soon as
Merrick stopped the car on the street, Buffy jumped out and ran to the house
after telling him to pop the trunk. It
was only five minutes later that Buffy came back, carrying four large
bags. She was not, however, alone.
Merrick
watched with shock as the Slayer dropped the bags into the trunk and got back
into her seat by his side. A few moments
later, the back seat opened and a girl got in.
She was perhaps ten years old, with straight auburn hair that fell to her
shoulder blades, dressed in t-shirt, jeans and a denim jacket. Shaking off a sudden wave of dizziness,
Merrick turned to Buffy.
“Why is
your sister here?” he demanded.
“Because
I need Dawn with me,” said Buffy. “Our
parents aren’t home, and I’m not leaving her alone.”
“Besides,”
said Dawn, in a bright voice, “you’ll need someone to watch your back. What if a vampire zooms in behind and grabs
hold of you, forcing you to commit suicide before he can torture you for
information about Buffy?”
“Dawn!”
barked Buffy.
“She
knows?” said Merrick, horrified.
“Yep,”
said Dawn. “Vampires and demons and
magic and keys and all kinds of stuff.”
“Please
stop doing that, Dawn,” begged Buffy.
Dawn
laughed in response.
Merrick,
meanwhile, was thinking furiously. This
was obviously a fait accompli; there was no chance that the Chosen One would
obey an order to leave her sister behind.
He could try to convince her that it was the right thing to do, that it
would be too dangerous to have her follow where they would be walking, but he
had a nagging suspicion that this would be futile. And so Merrick tried manfully to ignore Dawn
and get back to the business at hand. He
succeeded for the most part.
“What
now? I want you to start training
immediately, but you obviously have other plans.”
“My
school. I have a vampire king to slay,”
said Buffy grimly. “Oh, but first a trip
to the hardware store. There’s one on
the way.”
“You
know about Lothos,” said Merrick. Buffy
nodded in response. “And you know that
Lothos is at your school?”
“Underneath
it,” said Buffy.
From
the corner of his eyes, Merrick considered Buffy. “You have dreamed the deaths of the Slayers
that Lothos had killed?”
“Yeah. The medieval barmaid, the Hong Kong
prostitute,” said Buffy. “The others.”
“Yes,
dozens of Slayers. No other vampire has
ever killed so many,” said Merrick. “And
you would face him now, freshly called and untrained?”
“I have
things to do,” said Buffy firmly.
“Such
as?” Buffy would not answer, only looked
out the window in silence. Dawn too
remained silent.
As they
walked through the Home Depot, a large hardware chain store, Merrick considered
his Slayer. As a Watcher, he had helped
to train most of the Slayers of the past thirty years. Of those, five had been killed by
Lothos. The horror, the rage, he had
felt had nearly crippled him. So to send
this girl out to fight him so soon terrified him.
Yet the
others had been trained, had been prepared as well as anyone could make
them. Still they had died by Lothos’ hands
and teeth. Buffy—he would have to get
used to her ridiculous name—walked with the same determination that had been so
clear on her face. Further, beyond the
natural grace that came with being a Slayer, there was a power and coordination
that came with training. Whether it was
her cheerleading, or her childhood gymnastics training, Buffy knew how to use
her body as an instrument.
But
would she know how to slay? In the heat
of the moment, when the terror and blinding speed and unnatural horror of the situation
confronted her, would she panic and die?
Or would she overcome the animal instinct to hide from fear and attack?
Merrick
would have liked to have eased her into the life of the Slayer. He would have first demonstrated how a
vampire rises, and how a vampire kills.
He would have staked one in front of her, to show a vampire truly
dies. Then he would have begun training
her in the killing arts that a Slayer had to know. Only then would he have even considered
sending her to slay Lothos, and that only because Lothos was obviously hunting
her.
Yet
Buffy was determined to kill Lothos now.
Merrick knew enough about Slayers to know that, once they committed
themselves fully to a course of action, nothing could sway them from it. It seemed that with the strength and
prophetic abilities, the Slayer also had superhuman stubbornness. Watchers over the years had tried various
methods of dealing with this mulishness.
Some Watchers crushed it out of the Slayers with brutal, Prussian-style
training. Others manipulated the Slayer
to redirect that stubbornness towards the eternal war.
Thankfully,
most of that determination was directed outward, against the world, and not
towards their Watcher. This was
particularly true of those Potentials who had been trained since birth by their
Watcher. Merrick had planned, when the
issue came up, to work around Buffy’s stubbornness through mockery. Yet that tact required a certain, even if
brief, familiarity towards each other borne from the training he would give.
Yet now
the situation was reversed. Instead of
him guiding her, the Slayer was guiding her Watcher. Right now she was guiding him through an
aisle filled with farming equipment. She
placed four small wood axes in the shopping cart, and replacement wooden
handles for rakes.
It was
after they left the hardware store, loaded with the makings of weapons, that
Merrick came to his decision. It was
looking at his Slayer, at the way in which she had carefully weighed each wood
axe for their balance, which did it.
When he came to California, Merrick had expected that it would be Buffy
who would have to trust him. She would
have had to have trusted him that vampires were real, that she was the Chosen
One, and above all else that she could kill Lothos. That would have been their relationship—she
would be trusting him with her life.
Now,
though—now things were very much the opposite.
He would have to trust that her sense of mission was such that it could
not wait for any training. He would have
to trust that she would survive where so many others had died. He would have to trust that she knew what she
was doing.
He
would have to trust Buffy.
It was
a struggle, if a silent one made on the drive towards Hemery High School. But in the end, he came to his decision. Buffy was his Slayer, and he was her
Watcher. That was a sacred bond, one
which he would not betray by second-guessing her. Even if it meant his death, and more
importantly even if it meant her death, he would follow. She was the Chosen One, and that meant
everything.
“Done,”
announced Dawn. This had been all that
she’d said since they had left the hardware store. In the back seat, she had spent the drive
using one of the wood axes to sharpen the wooden poles into spears. It had made a mess, leaving wood shavings and
chips everywhere, yet even in the short drive the girl had managed to make four
spears, five feet in length. They were
light enough for the child to use them in combat—a prospect that Merrick
dreaded—yet strong enough to pierce through the chest of a vampire and reach
his heart. Instead of being a sharp
cone, the points at the center of the mass and thus making for truer aim when
thrown, the spears had been carved so that its point was at an edge. This made the spear stronger than it would
have had the spear point had been in its center. That Dawn knew this without having to be
told, and further that she expected to use to spears in close combat rather
than as missiles, told Merrick something.
He was not sure what, other than that Dawn too expected and was prepared
for combat. And even that much was
disturbing.
Who
were these girls? It was a question to
be answered another time.
“Good,”
said Merrick. “And just in time.” He pulled the car into the parking lot of
Hemery High School. It was a sprawling
campus, dominated by a three-story high main building. The large gymnasium, to the rear of the
campus, was where Buffy said that Lothos had his lair. Apparently the gym’s basement doubled as a
water and power substation for the campus and was rarely visited, even by
teenagers looking for out of the way places to do whatever depraved things
teenagers did these days.
It was
a spring Saturday, and so no one was on campus except for a security guard or
two. Yet they were nowhere to be
seen. Buffy made to open her door, but
Merrick stopped her. It was time to show
her how crazy a Watcher could be.
“Everybody
have their seatbelt on? Good.” Merrick revved his engine and jumped the
curb. He drove through the large arch
that led to the rear of the school, driving through the chain link fence’s
locked doors with a high-pitched cracking squeal. Dodging past benches and potted plants that
lined the exterior hallways, he drove across a grass field and then stopped in
front of the gym’s locked doors.
As they
got out of the car, Merrick took the time to appreciate the tire tracks and
churned grass that was behind them.
There had always been a childish side to him, one which still delighted
in petty vandalism—especially of institutions.
He rarely indulged it, but for the sake of surprising and delighting his
Slayer, he would do so. Shock and terror
would forever be a part of the Slayer’s life, but that made happy surprises all
the more necessary. They counteracted
the numbing effect that the horrors of the world could inflict upon the Slayer.
“We
could do doughnuts in the football field, if you want,” said Dawn.
“We
could,” said Buffy wistfully. Then she
looked at the sun and shook her head.
“No time. The sun’s almost down.”
“You
mean it’s almost . . . twilight?” said Dawn, grinning madly. Buffy grimaced but said nothing.
It was
surprisingly easy to get into the basement levels of the gym. Buffy had suggested that they chop a hole
through the gym floor using one of the axes, but Merrick had, just in time,
spotted a locked utility door before Buffy had kicked in the gym’s main
doors. Deciding to use flashlights
instead of turning on the main lights, Buffy led the way down to the basement and
then from there to the tunnel that Lothos had dug for himself. It had been hidden behind a huge metal
cabinet, which would have taken vampire, or Slayer, strength to move. Buffy had gone to it almost immediately,
after a moment of staring at the ceiling and presumably orientating herself. Buffy walked in front, an axe in one hand and
a flashlight in the other. Behind her
was Dawn holding one of the long spears.
Bringing up the rear was Merrick.
He was carrying a crossbow, fully cocked and ready to be loosed. It was a modern crossbow, making it easier to
cock than its medieval counterparts. Yet
still he doubted he’d have time for more than one shot. Then he’d be down to fighting with a stake in
his left hand, and a pistol in his right.
He’d found that, though a gunshot did not kill a vampire, it did shock
and even weaken them enough to be staked far more easily than would
otherwise. He was an old man, after all,
and not a super-powered teenager.
The
tunnels had been, at first, illuminated by battery-operated electric lamps—the
kind that you would get for camping. The
warm yellow glow, however, had soon been replaced by wooden torches set into
the earthen walls of the tunnels by brackets.
Buffy and Dawn took the time to stare at the wooden torches, utterly
befuddled by them. Merrick nudged Buffy,
who shook herself out of her cognitive stutter to walk on.
It was
not long before they came to a large chamber.
It was about two stories high, shored up by thick wooden beams. At the center of the chamber was a throne,
upon which sat Lothos. He was of average
height, with long reddish-blonde hair that hung both loosely and in woven
braids down to his chest. He wore a
white silk shirt, ruffled at the collar, and a long red wool coat. Around his neck hung a gold necklace with
uncut emeralds set in it. In all, he
looked like a handsome man of middling years.
Yet he
was also one of the most powerful vampires in the world. There were perhaps older vampires, though
none were completely sure how old Lothos was.
And those old vampires were no longer able to hide their demonic nature
behind their human faces, always monstrously bestial in their visage. Yet Lothos was able to do so. However when he showed his true face, his
demonic face, instead of turning into a snarling, twisted wreck that still
retained some of its human nature, Lothos’ demon face was like that of a wolf,
or a dog, a hairless long snout stretching outward to tear and maul rather than
the normal vampire’s simple bite.
His
eyes were closed, and he looked to be sleeping sitting upright. Yet as soon as Buffy fully entered the
chamber, his gaze locked upon her. They
all stopped as Lothos languidly stood up.
“It has
been a long time since one of you has sought me out,” said Lothos. He spoke with a trace of a Continental accent,
though it was difficult to pinpoint precisely.
“I admire your bravery, Slayer.”
“Yeah,
hi,” said Buffy. She then threw an axe
at Lothos. With a laugh, he plucked it
out of the air. Yet even as his hand
grasped the handle, Buffy was at his side, chopping at him with another
axe. Lothos barely managed to dodge the
blade as it sliced through where his neck had been. With a snarl, the vampire pushed the Slayer
from him. Buffy tumbled to the ground a
few feet from Lothos, but quickly sprang back up to attack. She met Lothos in midair, as he had been
lunging after Buffy, looking to pin her down and kill her. They grappled briefly, she trying to
decapitate him even as she landed kick after kick in his ribs, while he tried
to stab her with his monstrous claws.
Each failed and both separated from each other with a jump.