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Title: Coffee, a Visit to a Satanic Ritual, and Then Bed
Rating: G
Setting: late B8 or early B9 in San Francisco
Summary/Prompt: Written for the 2013 Halloween Challenge over at SB Fag Ends. Lacrimosa's The Way of the Shadow: goat's blood
Note: I hope this is okay. The story is too long because 1) I haven't posted here in a while and forgot the length restrictions and 2) I had no idea it was going to be this long until it was written.
Note: It makes reference to the comics. I hope there are no discrepancies between them and what I've written but I'm making no promises.
Note: I hope I got this right. I'm a bit confused by the instructions.
The girl was drunk, as in staggering down the street levels of drunk. Buffy, watching from the roof, thought the girl was going to hurl more than once. Buffy should have been home but it'd been a slow night, no vamp activity, only a bunch of kids playing at evil, and if anybody screamed “Hi, I'm a victim, come bite me” it was this girl. Buffy could see her home safely before finding her own bed.
The vamp must have been new to the game. He didn't try to seduce the girl at all but just dragged her into an alley. Of course with the girl that gone the vamp didn't need seduction. Buffy jumped down from her perch and tore toward the alley.
When Buffy turned the corner, stake raised in her right hand, the vamp was crashing against the brick of the building as if he'd been thrown there and the girl, a stake in her own hand, turned toward Buffy as if to assess a threat. They stood there, stakes raised, mirroring each others astonishment. “I know you,” the girl said. “I used to be you.”
If Andrew is pulling any more of that body transfer crap, Buffy thought, I' am so going to kill him.
The girl gestured toward the vamp with her free hand. “You want to do the honors? You are THE Slayer after all.” There was a bitter sound to her voice.
“Slayer?” The vamp's gaze darted between the two of them.
“No, no,” Buffy replied. “You did all the work pretending to be drunk, drawing him out and all.”
The vamp raised his hands. He was just a kid really, or had been just a kid, still a little pimply faced, wearing the suit he'd been buried in. “If you ladies have things to work out, I'll just be on my way.” He made a dash for the far end of the alley. The girl threw her stake. It clattered against the ground.
“Not as sober as you seem to think I am,” she said.
Darting a quick glare at the girl, Buffy took two steps forward, threw her own stake, and watched as the vamp poofed into a cloud of dust. Buffy turned back to the girl. “You. Were me. How?”
“You don't remember?” Buffy took a closer look. The girl's hair was brown but her facial structure wasn't that far off from Buffy's own. The girl slumped against the building. “Of course you don't. Why would you? I was assigned to Rome. Out of mind, out of sight apparently.”
Oh. It wasn't Andrew at all. Thank God. This was older. Giles had suggested it. Misdirection he'd said. Three girls had pretended to be Buffy. This one, her name had been Octavia, but she hadn't liked it. She'd gone by, “Tav?”
The girl, Tav, nodded. Buffy pulled her off the wall and wrapped an arm around her. “Let's get you some coffee.” Buffy found them a darkish watering hole, mostly empty, and a back corner booth. When Tav tried to order a beer, Buffy overruled her. “Coffee. Black. Leave us the whole pot.”
“Hey! I'm not that drunk.” Buffy just stared at her. “Okay, maybe I am.”
Buffy waited until the waitress had left the coffee pot and the two cups. She hadn't been planning to drink but accepted the second cup after Tav had poured the coffee into it. There wasn't any cream. Buffy thought about calling the waitress back but it was time to get down to business. “You here to harass me?”
Tav gave her a look of complete confusion. “Huh?”
“Never mind.”
Buffy shut up and sipped at her coffee, waiting for Tav to speak. It didn't take long. “It was like a dream come true, being Called. I mean, not almost dying in that whole Twilight battle, but before that. We used to watch Wonder Woman together, my mom and I.”
“Huh?” Buffy could have almost kicked herself for interrupting, but watch Wonder Woman. Wasn't it an old comic book?
“It was on tv, in the late 70's that is. Mom had taped it. She had a job in the police department but it was all pretty sexist back then. I think she liked the whole woman's power aspect of the show. I used to dream of being her, Wonder Woman I mean but also my mom, or maybe a combination of the two of them. She was studying criminal psychology in night school and I used to read her textbooks. I thought maybe I could catch criminals someday but then I found myself with superpowers.”Tav didn't continue. Maybe it was time to get off the Criminal Minds kick..
“So, Rome huh? What was that like?”
“Rome was … sophisticated. I'm from New York, not the city but upstate. I've always been outgoing and when they told me I was going to Rome and needed to be highly visible, well, it was like party central. I even dated a guy, the Immortal. He was no Steve Trevor but I didn't know that then.”
Steve Trevor? Buffy decided not to ask. “What happened?”
“Twilight. End of the world. When I went back he'd moved on. He really was immortal. Can't die and all that. Used to relationships ending, but you must know what that's like, what with your … “
“With my what?” Buffy found herself leaning forward and could practically hear herself growling. Tav looked like she was about to bolt. Buffy forced herself to lean back against the seat of the booth.
“Your … vampires. I mean, everybody knows. I even saw them once, when they came to Rome, looking for you.”
“Spike came looking for me?”
“Yeah, him and Angel. I didn't know who they were at first but something the Immortal said tipped me off. I had to practically beat it out of Andrew. You didn't know?”
“No.” Maybe she would kill Andrew.
“Oh.”
The conversation died down. Buffy studied Tav over her coffee cup. It was better than thinking about Spike and why he'd gone looking for her. Tav looked dejected, lost. “So, what have you been doing with yourself other than almost getting killed by vamps.”
“Hey! I wasn't, uh, okay, I almost was.” Tav added sugar to her coffee before speaking again. “Not much an anything.”
“That criminal psychology stuff you used to read. What would it say about a bunch of high-school kids using goat's blood in sort of a hokey imitation of a satanic ritual?”
“A real ritual?” Tav put her coffee down. “I mean, an effective ritual? Did it raise a demon?”
“No.” Buffy waved that line of thought off. “They didn't know what they were doing.” At Tav's stare, Buffy added, “Really. I've seen enough demonic rituals to know what won't work.”
“You said goat's blood. Did they kill the goat themselves?”
Buffy thought back to the goat, its throat slit, lying there at one end of the open field. They hadn't tried to hide it at all, not even a token drag toward the bushes. “Yeah.”
Tav looked up. “One of them could be on his way to becoming a serial killer.”
“Oh. Great.”
“Sometimes they start with animals,” Tav added.
Buffy stared down at the dregs of her coffee. Serial killer. Human. So not her thing. It was Tav's thing though. “You wanna take a look?”
“What?”
“It's what you wanted to be, right? Some kind of profiler?”
“But, my powers, demons.”
Buffy shrugged. “You'd probably run across demons too, in your investigations. With all that supernatural world stuff out in the open, it might be a good idea to have a Slayer working with the police.”
Hope shone in Tav's eyes. “I'd have to finish high-school. Maybe take the GED? I could go to college, maybe night school if I joined the Force.”
“Great. Wanna check it out?”
“The satanic ritual?”
“Sure,” Buffy said.
“Um, well, yeah but … what about Spike?”
Buffy leaned back and crossed her arms. “What about Spike?”
“You kinda seemed like … I got the impression … “
Buffy tried to glare. She really did, but when she felt her lips curling up into a small smile, she gave in. “Spike'll still be there tomorrow night.”