"I taste the fear,
I'm so afraid,
I still feel the flames.
In the night, come to me,
in your arms, a touch of evil."
[Willow
POV
Amy’s
place is just wrong for California. It
looks like one of those century-old converted farmhouses you’d see in a little
town in New England, or maybe Pennsylvania.
Yes, definite Dutch influence going on there.
Lucky
she invited me in quickly, ‘cause I had completely forgotten the invitation
business. Hey, it’s my first day as
a vampire. Give me a break. I’ll work it out. I always do.
Not
like Xander. I’ve been reading about
vampires over the last year. They’ve
got masters and minions, and well, the
Master, whom even other masters obey, but Xander just doesn’t have it. I could see, even before, when he came to me,
that he wasn’t gonna make it, that he didn’t have the strength to do it, to
be anything other than a minion.
And I couldn’t, can’t, won’t allow that.
He’s
Buffy
probably thinks that we are going to be her
minions now. Good. Let her.
Amy
has no idea what is going on, only that we are upstairs rifling through her
moms stuff, which her and her dad boxed up (and were supposedly gonna get rid
of, but, apparently she didn’t, which is good news for me). She’s babbling nervously, and I think she’s
just not quite stupid enough to believe me, and just desperate enough to not be
willing to accept the truth that she’s already figured out.
“I
need the book, Amy.” I repeat, for what feels like the billionth time, quite
aware that the box she is now suggesting it ‘might be in’ is too small to hold
it. Patience over. Game-face I think they call it, and I shake
her like a leaf. It’s intoxicating, I
can smell her fear. Yuck, I think she
almost lost bladder control…
I
shoot her my best, ‘Oh, look what baby did,’ and wrinkle my nose. At least I think I wrinkle my nose. Can vampires wrinkle their noses when they’re
all bumpy? I’ll have to check. God!
I can’t, no reflection! So much
to get used to, so little time.
“It’s
in my room, please don’t kill me…” she sobs and I vaguely remember Amy. Oh yeah.
Distracting this sudden involuntary alternate lifestyle change
thing. So I half-drag her to her room,
which is kinda neat, since she weighs more than me, and find the book, under
her bed. I flip through it and find
lots of spells, most of them with absolutely no notation as to what they
actually do, just lists of
ingredients and words to recite and powers to supplicate and yadda, yadda,
yadda.
Why
the hell can’t there be an index? Giles
would have had this cross-referenced and annotated. Evil witches take note.
“This
is fucking useless, Amy!” I snarl as
I turn on her and advance in a fury.
She is against a wall, petrified, pressing against it as if balling up
against it like that is going to protect her from me. I love the snarling and the stalking and the swearing. It’s like a drug, being evil, being free.
”There is a place. My mom took me there
once. It was hard to find, she had to
summon a spirit or something, and it led us there,” she’s babbling. I look bored, even ‘though I am on fire with
a need to do something, to kill something.
I give her a ‘get on with it’ look, hopefully with an strong implication
of ‘or else.’ “There was this guy, and
he did something, I waited for a long time, and when my mom came out, she had
power, lots of power. She could do
stuff that she’d never been able to do before.” Amy then shudders, and for a
second, I almost believe she’s forgotten about me, “Like take over my body...”
Now
we’re talking. “Do it. Take me there.” I say. She looks
appalled, as if the twit didn’t think I would ask that next. “I can’t, you have to summon a demon or
something just to find this
place.” “You’ve been there, right? Don’t you remember the way?” She has the grace to look apologetic, “It,
uh, it moves. I heard. I’ve already looked for it…”
Interesting. And also, not relevant right now. “So, find me the demon summony spell and
let’s get cracking. If we don’t get
some major mojo working for us,” and I smile sweetly, “there is no way we can
save Sunnydale.”
She
looks flummoxed. Heh, I think I broke
her tiny brain. I help her up and
we gather some components, as I explain to her how I'm working on the inside,
to defeat the evil, naughty vampires, and I have, and I try not to laugh,
a soul, which makes me special. (she
apparently misses the dripping sarcasm as I say, 'speshul') I want
to stop the bad-guys, and will she help me?
Pretty please? I pout. I apologize for being so mean to her, but being
turned into a vampire has made me cranky and I have trouble controlling it
and I’m hungry…
She
falls for it, since the alternative is admitting that I am going to kill her
when I get what I want, which she still won’t consciously accept.
Upstairs
again, she hands me an old survival knife.
“Um, shouldn’t this be all wavy and traced with runes, an athame, or
something?” “No, not for demon
summoning. This is my grandpa’s, he
brought back from Korea.” I try not to look uncomprehending, since it subtracts
major cool points, “More importantly, he killed someone with it. Mom said that makes it ‘attuned to death.’”
Ah. Good to know. Weird how different it feels now that I know that. It was just a tool, kinda old and neglected,
utterly insignificant. Now suddenly it
is a weapon, one that has tasted blood, ended a life and suddenly it feels
heavier, as if the blood remains on the blade, weighs it down. Bad train of thought to have on an empty
stomach, I remind myself, and we get to work on the spell.
Which
involves the spellcaster, who must be alive, so I’m out, cutting herself and
dropping some blood onto the blade. The
blade she then balances on her palm, and it spins, orienting itself towards
the, um, west I think. Cool. “Get your coat.”
She
has no idea how lucky she is that I couldn’t cast that spell.
We
walk through the streets of Sunnydale, taking back alleys as much as possible,
since I don’t want to run into any roving ‘gang warfare.’ I still need her alive.
We
end up in front of a hardware store, staring at the glass. “In here?” I ask, incredulously, and she responds
by placing her hand to the glass and pushing through. The glass ripples and her hand just slides
out of sight. “Huh.” I say, and push
her into it. She’s gone. And the window remains. I can see now that there is something wrong with the window. Like there is something inside of it, other
than a reflection of the street behind me.
I wonder if a human reflection obscures whatever it is that I’m seeing
now, makes it so that only demons, or vampires, can find this place. Whatever. I
think I now know why vampires can't cast the spell to find this place. They
don't need to. I walk in behind her, and am in a dingy room, like
the reception area for a tattoo parlor, or something seedy like that. The kind of place I’ve only seen on television, I might add.
The
room is packed, at least a half-dozen people are crammed onto the moldy couch
or the rickety chairs. All taking
refuge from the craziness outside, I’d gather.
A door in the far wall opens, and a, um, a man, I think, looks out over
the room. His face is odd, not vampire
bumpy, but not entirely normal either.
“Amy Madison,” he says, with a leer.
My ‘pervo’ radar is pinging like Xanders’ Uncle Rory is staring at my ass. The man crosses the room in a bizarre floaty
glide. Kinda looks more gay than
supernatural, but I don’t feel a pressing need to point that out. His hand is on her cheek now, and he is
studiously ignoring the half-dozen other people in the room, several of which
have gotten up and seem to be angling for his attention, but are not willing to
go so far as to actually speak aloud.
“All grown up, and so marvelously ripe and ready for my attentions.”
Ping,
ping, ping. I shut down the pervo-radar,
since I am about to overload it.
I
step forwards and grab his wrist.
“She’s with me, I’m the one who needs your ‘attentions.’” I run my hand up his arm and melt into him,
sniffing at his neck, as if I am deciding whether to kiss him, or just
nibble. He responds as I expect, leaning
into my caress, despite the fact that I’m not really experienced at this ‘seductress’
routine. I walk forwards, exerting
enough force with my chest on his to ensure that he has to backpedal to stay
standing, and my arms are around his shoulders, our faces almost touching, as I
have backed him to the door to wherever.
“Well, I see you aren’t going to wait in line,” he says with a smile, as
I use one hand to push him backwards into his room and close the door, leaving
Amy, and a half-dozen other ‘customers’ waiting.
His
name is Rack. He offers me power. I take all he has to give. I then take some more. His customers are going to be pissed when they
find out he won’t be taking any more appointments, ever. Magic isn’t so hard. I guess I won’t have to learn Latin after all.
It’s
hours before I can walk again, dreaming hot violent bloody naked dreams of
pleasure and pain, flying over the night-bound earth as some enormous winged
thing. Rack is long cold when I come
out of that room (and why wasn’t there anyone in there when I arrived? Did he eat them? Did they teleport out?
Things I wonder about when the sun is high and nothing good is on TV.),
but his clientele are still huddled there, clutching papers or outdated
magazines they have scavenged off of the piles of such heaped in the
corners. Amy is still there, too, which
is strange. If she had a brain in her
head she would have run home, or somewhere I couldn’t go, ideally.
Everyone
looks up at me, desperation in their faces, hoping it is him. “He’s tuckered out, he’ll be out for the
next person in a few minutes.” I say reassuringly. I then walk to the doorway out and open it. I see the street in front of the hardware
store. Still night. Good.
I grab Amy by the arm and drag her out, to take her back to her place,
which I think is far enough in the suburbs to make a nice base of operations
for now.
On
the way back, a lone vampire decides to challenge me for possession of
Amy. He burns.
Forever
and to the ends of time, I am fire, I am night. I’m not sure if my feet touched the ground the whole way back, I
think I was floating. I am no longer
one with the earth, I am above it. They
are below me, all of them.
I
get Amy home and her will is broken.
She is pathetic, hollow inside and aching for something to fill her, to
give her purpose. I spend the rest of
the night learning what I can do to her, what I can do with her. She’s like a puppy, and just the touch of
the fire inside of me has her on her back writhing, on her knees begging. Am I a bad girl for giving her what she so
desperately needs, what she so desperately pleads for? Do I care?
Not
really.
At
the end, she doesn’t even resist when I bite her. But I don’t kill her. I
just take a little, enough to let her know her place. I’m not really hungry. With
her body draped heavily over mine in her mothers’ bed, I fall asleep wondering
if I even need blood anymore.