Four Horsemen For Seven Slayers
I. London, England
Quentin had expected it to have taken some time to recognise the former Slayer among all the women in the pub. It had been more than fifteen years, after all. But the moment he stepped into the pub, the vapid discussion from one of the tables told him exactly where to look.
"I think our relationship is entering a more serious phase," the tall brunette said.
The redhead snorted, and the blonde said, very patiently, "Jane, it's not a relationship. You're watching him through binoculars."
"Yes, and I do it every day now! That's serious, isn't it?"
Quentin groaned. People were supposed to grow over time, weren't they? Mature, find new meanings in life. Jane Christie had, if possible, gone backwards.
"So which one is it?" Philip asked.
Quentin nodded towards the abhorring young woman. "That one."
He could see the unsuspecting young Watcher raise an eyebrow. "Pretty."
"Yes," he agreed morosely. "That she is."
Well, there was no use in postponing the inevitable. Quentin walked over to the table where the three young women were sitting. "Hello, Jane."
All three girls looked up, and Jane stared at him for a second before brightening. "Mr. Travers! Who's a vampire this time?"
The blonde and the redhead both looked a bit stunned at this question, if not quite as stunned as they might have, had anyone else come with such a comment. Philip, the poor sod, wasn't used to Jane, and Quentin could very clearly hear him draw his breath.
"No vampire this time. We're trying to stop the apocalypse." He didn't see any reason to try and be discreet -- there was no such thing as Jane was concerned. Judging from the looks he got from the two other women, they just assumed he was mad anyway. Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are... of course, by that reasoning they should be mad too.
"Oh, an apocalypse?" the redhead asked. She could have been very pretty, if there hadn't been fret lines around her mouth and eyes. "Jane? Won't you introduce us to your interesting friends?"
"Oh, of course!" Jane said. "Sally, Susan, this is Mr. Travers. He hunts vampires and stops apocalypses. I don't know who the other bloke is."
"Philip Tremayne," said Philip, who amazingly enough could talk and ogle Jane's breasts at the same time.
"Actually," Quentin said, trying to ignore his pathetic younger colleague, "I was hoping you could help me out with stopping the apocalypse."
"Oh!" Jane wrinkled her pretty brow. "But I thought I wasn't allowed to do that anymore after I died. That it would mess up the karma of the universe."
Had he really said such things? He probably had. They had been given a chance to trade in their Slayer for a better one, and the truth had seemed like a minor thing to sacrifice. "Well, yes. My mistake."
Fortunately, Jane wasn't the kind to question the bizarre. "Okay," she said, grabbing her bag.
The blonde -- Susan -- was the one who tried to stop them. "Hang on there! Jane, be reasonable." She seemed to realise the futility of such a request and turned to Sally. "We can't let Jane wander off with some vampire killer."
"Oh, he doesn't kill the vampires," Jane said cheerily. "I do."
"Quite right," Quentin said.
There were several reasons for what he said after that. One was that he was in quite a hurry, and if they didn't get Jane along such minor disturbances as a public bar brawl might not matter ever again. Another was that Jane was so very like herself that he wanted to make sure this also went for the Slayer part of her. And, he had to admit, a third was that Philip's lovesick puppy look was starting to get on his nerves.
What he said was, "Jane, why don't you kick Philip's arse?"
Jane promptly put her bag down again and bowed at Philip, who bowed back, looking a bit taken aback, but also rather interested by the idea.
Quentin gave the first Japanese command, and thank God, Jane still remembered them. She delivered a fast series of kicks and blows, ending with her sitting across Philip's stomach, giving him a quick pound in the chest with her fist. "You're dead."
"Wow," Sally said, and Quentin quite agreed that it was an impressive feat. It would have been even more impressive if he hadn't remembered the first time they'd sent Jane out against an actual vampire, and she had tried to kill him by the same method, since they had forgotten to mention what the stake was for.
"Hey, hey!" That was the bartender, running over. "What do you think you're doing? Take it outside!"
"Of course," Quentin agreed, getting his colleague off the ground. "Come on, Jane. Ladies, if you excuse us..."
He felt a little more cheerful as the three of them stepped out into the unusually heavy smog. If even this disastrous renunciate still kept a trace or two of Slayer in her, there might be hope for the future.
II. Sunnydale, California
The knocking was getting very persistent, and Giles was rather annoyed as he opened the door, but surprise caused him to forget all his sharp remarks as he saw the face of the middle-aged black woman standing outside.
"Lydia?" he asked, hardly able to believe it.
"Hello, Rupert," she said, giving him a warm smile. "Long time, no see. Have you met Christine Nelson?"
Only then did Giles notice the young woman accompanying Lydia. There was something about her that seemed vaguely familiar, and he frowned, trying to place her. "I'm not sure..."
"I was the Slayer about ten years ago," Christine explained. Her Canadian accent finally caused the penny to drop.
"Of course," Giles said, reflecting on how different a girl looked when her hair was short, tidy and dark compared to when it was standing up in long blonde spikes. "You were the one called Spike." Rather ironic, considering that he'd learned to connect that nickname with a vampire.
"Gave that up with the hairstyle," she said, smiling.
"I see," he said. "Well, it was a... memorable... hair style, but you do look lovely now too." His gaze wandered from Christine to Lydia, searching for an explanation to this extraordinary event. "So, two Slayers at once."
"Four, I hope," Lydia said, stepping inside. "There are still two in this town, aren't there?"
"Yes." He motioned for Christine to step inside too -- common courtesy, after all. "Buffy and Faith."
"Good. Where are they?"
"Uh... at home?"
Lydia frowned. "They haven't been briefed yet?"
What would be very nice right about then would be a glass of brandy, Giles thought, though he suspected he had none in the house. "Briefed?"
"You haven't been briefed yet?" Her eyebrows flew up. "Isn't that just like Quentin. Well, long story short, the apocalypse is coming. Christine, do you have the prophecy?"
Christine automatically reached into her pocket and then hesitated. "Are you sure? Maybe we should wait until the other Slayers are present..."
"Christine, the prophecy."
Christine dug out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and read out loud: "When Seven Slayers walk the earth, the walls will thin and the way will open, and in the end the Horsemen will ride." She put it back down and shrugged. "That's all. They Council found it last week."
It sounded very disturbing, even for a prophecy. Horsemen meant apocalypse, and apocalypse meant very bad news indeed. "Seven?" Giles asked. "Are there really that many?"
"The two over here," Lydia said, "Christine, me, Roseanne and Abbey, and some woman Travers is bringing over from England. That's seven."
Giles remembered Roseanne Harris -- a fat, loud-mouthed teenager with an attitude. They had gotten along rather well back in the day, but then, things had changed a lot since then. He remembered Abbey too. How could he not? She had gone from being a dedicated Slayer to being the most influential woman in the country. No one could say that she had traded down.
But he couldn't remember her maiden name. And that brought a problem clearly into the light. When he thought of Abbey Bartlet, it was as the First Lady, a smart, distinguished and definitely middle-aged lady.
He looked at Lydia, thoughtfully. She was still slim and beautiful, her body was a dancer's body, but there was no denying the streaks in her hair or the lines around her eyes. She had to be well over forty. So was he. So was Roseanne Harris, as hard as it was to believe. And Abbey Bartlet was over fifty.
He'd have to hope that Quentin's English Slayer wouldn't turn out to be some old woman of ninety.
"All right," he said, moving towards the telephone. "I'll call Buffy."
It took over ten rings before Buffy answered the phone, and when she did, she sounded distressed. "Summers house."
"Oh, hello, Buffy, this is Giles."
"Oh, good!" she said. "Do you think you could come over? There seems to be an apocalypse on its way -- that jerk Travers is here with his henchmen and some bimbo."
Some bimbo? Not good. And not good that the Council were trying to undermine his influence by not telling him these things, either. "I'll be right over. I've got Lydia Grant and Christine Nelson here as well, you can tell him that."
It gave him a grim satisfaction to know that Lydia at least had come to him instead of going straight to Buffy. Quentin and he had been having some differences in opinion when it came to the best way to train a Slayer, but that was no reason to be rude.
"What happened to there only being one Slayer at a time?" Buffy asked, pacing to and fro in her living room. Giles was founding her behaviour rather dizzying, though he could thoroughly understand it. It had just never occurred to him to tell her about the others. Nine out of ten Slayers did stay dead, after all.
"I don't know what they told you," Lydia said, "but that's never been the rule. The rule is that a new Slayer is called when the previous dies. Maybe the powers like to play it safe, or they didn't count on the wonders of modern medicine. Either way, a resuscitated Slayer doesn't count anymore. We still have our powers, but we're not technically Slayers. We're... what's that word you like to use, Quentin?"
She raised her eyebrows at Quentin Travers.
"Renunciates," he said tightly.
"That's the one."
"So why should I stay around?" Buffy asked. "If there are six others ready to take over, why should I?"
"Well," Giles said, knowing that this was a question she should have asked herself a long time ago, "You seemed rather reluctant to leave."
"Well, I didn't know there were this many ex-Slayers around! I thought I was the only one!"
"Fine," Lydia suddenly interrupted. "You want to leave? Leave."
"She can't," Christine pointed out. "Apocalypse."
Lydia threw her an annoyed look. "Apocalypse or not, slaying takes dedication. I stuck around for fifteen years because it was the right thing to do, and I wanted to do it. So did Abbey. Rosie left - that was her choice."
Giles noticed that Christine was looking down into her lap. So she had been one of those who left. He wondered why. She didn't seem the kind to shy away from responsibility. In fact, hadn't she been the one with the baby? Of course, that might be a reason in itself, taking care of the baby.
"I was told," said the English ex-Slayer called Jane, "that I wasn't allowed to be a Slayer anymore, because I had died and been reincarnated, but been reincarnated into my own body, which was really lucky, because I can't think of anyone else I'd rather be. Can you?"
The question was aimed at Buffy, who seemed to forget being angry when faced with this strange tale. "Uh... no, I guess if I were to be reincarnated I'd want my own body too."
"Really?" Jane said, scrunching up her face. "That's funny. I would have thought it'd be much more fun to be me. But I guess it's all about what you're used to."
Giles threw a quick glance at Quentin, and he had to smile a little, even though he was still angry with his old boss. He couldn't blame the manipulative old bastard for wanting to get rid of that particular Slayer as soon as possible.
"So, now there are five Slayers here, with Faith," Quentin said, attempting to take charge of the situation again. He had to raise his voice quite a bit to be heard over the others in the room, and sounded rather peevish about it. "Anyway, where is Faith?"
"Where is she ever?" Buffy said, shrugging. "I called her place. Either she wasn't there or she was... busy."
The way she said "busy" left no doubt whatsoever about what she was referring to. Giles rubbed his forehead, hoping that their attempt to avert the apocalypse wouldn't be destroyed by Faith's libido.
"Well, she's in town," Lydia said, interrupting the awkward silence. "Has anyone tried to contact Abbey and Roseanne?"
"Tried and failed," Quentin said. "The White House keeps giving me the roundabout, and Roseanne apparently got married to that bloke Dave."
"Dan," Lydia and Giles said at once. They smiled at each other, remembering a night out nearly thirty years ago, and the joints they had smoked under the stars.
"Do you have their address?" Quentin asked.
Giles shook his head immediately, and Lydia started rummaging about her handbag.
"White House?" Buffy said. "As in White House White House? Not just some random white house lying about, and when you say Abbey, who you actually mean is..."
"The First Lady," Giles said. It was sometimes hard for him to believe, and he'd been able to follow Jed Bartlet's career from the start.
"Is a Slayer."
"Renunciate. Yes."
Lydia had fished out her address book from the handbag, and was searching it through, but she shook her head. "Nope, no address. But his name was Conner, and as far as I know, they never moved away from Illinois. So they'd still be living in Langville."
"Lanford," Giles corrected her.
"Lanford?" she said, trying out the syllables. "Are you sure?"
He shook his head.
"Maybe..." Christine started. Giles heard it the first time and turned to look at her, but she had to say it two more times before she had everyone's attention. "Maybe we shouldn't find the others. I mean, by the sound of that prophecy... maybe that will set it off."
"It's already set off," one of the young Watchers blurted out.
There was a simultaneous outburst of shock from all in the room, and Giles could see Quentin scowling at his younger colleague. If the old fox was trying to withhold important information, Giles would personally punch him in the face. And then ask a Slayer or two to do the same.
"We don't know that," Quentin reproached the young man. "It's only a guess, based on statistics."
"Statistics?" Buffy asked. "What, did someone go around asking people, 'do you plan on starting an apocalypse this year'?"
Quentin pursed his lips together in displeasure, looking remarkably like an old woman. "No, the ordinary kind. Famine, war, AIDS, natural disasters, pollution... even things like eating disorders. They've all spiked to an all-time high during the past months."
"That's it?" Buffy asked.
He raised his eyebrows. "War, death, pestilence and famine. What else did you expect?"
What else indeed, Giles thought. He remembered an analogy he'd heard the environmentalists use somewhere. If you had to boil a frog, you should put it in the water while it was still cold, because if you put it in boiling water it would jump out, but if you heated it along with the water, it wouldn't notice that it was in trouble until it was already dead. He shuddered. "But how do we fight such things?"
"By causing them to manifest in physical form."
Quentin's voice was as calm as if he had suggested that they should throw a bucket of water at the wicked witch of the West. Giles's mouth went dry. "Good Lord..."
"Kinda dangerous, don't you think?" Buffy said sarcastically.
Lydia put her bag down and stood up. "Kinda dangerous is what we do, girl. Want me to try and call Abbey?"
III. Washington D.C.
Abbey straightened her hair as she stepped out of the car. She had been sleeping on the plane, and logically no one should be able to blame her for looking a bit messy, but she knew that wasn't the way the world worked. The First Lady must be perfectly groomed at all times, amen. Her assigned bodyguard for the journey -- a new guy named Eric -- followed close behind, even though they were back now and her situation no longer deemed as risky.
Going into the White House, she nearly bumped into a young woman running from another corridor towards the press room, followed by a man in glasses. Damn, it was that Lane woman -- one of the most persistent reporters known to man. Abbey hoped there wasn't a major crisis going on that she was unaware of. You could never go "no comment" with people like Lane.
There was another pair of reporters right outside the press room, and the woman harassing the guard sounded equally persistent.
"I'm a foreign correspondent!" she said in a posh English accent. "It is my job to write about American news, and whether or not I'm an American certainly does not concern you. Besides, Spike is an American, you could let him in."
"The Daily Chronicle isn't allowed entry in the press room," the guard said as if he had been saying it five or six times already, which was probably the case.
"Spike, do something!" the English woman complained.
The man scratched his nose. "This isn't a Norbridge Council meeting, Lynda. It's the White House press room. Not a place you want to gate crash."
"K.D. plus!" the woman huffed, whatever that meant.
Abbey hurried by the reporters, knowing that people who didn't make it into the press room tended to latch onto whatever prominent person they could find lingering about. She was rather surprised when she rounded a corner and found Mandy coming at her, and although she'd never been very close to the girl she gave her a big smile.
"Mandy?" she said. "What a surprise! What are you doing here?"
"Oh, you know," Mandy said, smiling back. "I have a message for you."
"A message?" Abbey kept walking through the corridor, and threw Mandy a puzzled glance as they went along. "From whom?"
"From us," Mandy said, and then her face changed. "Stay out of the apocalypse."
Abbey hadn't seen a vampire in decades, but she knew those ridges, fangs and yellow eyes so well her body reacted without consulting her brain. She kicked out, sending Mandy across the corridor and into a wall. People around stopped and stared, and she wished they'd have the sense to get the hell inside their offices. Fighting a vampire and protecting the innocent bystanders, all in a nbolt corridor, was a little bit more than she'd bargained for on a Saturday night.
Mandy bounced back from the wall and attacked. Abbey kicked back again, and flinched when a bullet flew past her, embedding itself in Mandy's chest. The bodyguard. Of course. He knew his job well, had hit bull's eye at first attempt, but it wouldn't do him any good this time.
"Don't shoot!" she shouted across her shoulder as she punched Mandy three times in quick succession. "Bullets can't kill her! Give me a stake!"
No one made any move to help her, though some of the office people had finally started retreating into the offices.
"A stake!" she repeated. "A god-damned stake, broomstick, broken table leg -- wooden and pointy, that's all I..."
Something wooshed by her, and she felt a wooden shape being pressed into her hand. For a split second, she didn't understand what it was, and then Mandy attacked again, and she plunged it in. It was the right shape and wooden, who cared what else it was?
Mandy disappeared in a cloud of smoke, and Abbey looked down on the item in her hand. It was a table leg, but it hadn't been broken. The pointy end was round and slightly blackened, as if it had been burned into shape.
"Dr. Bartlet." Eric stepped up to her. "We'll have to take you to safety."
He sounded very upset, and she could hardly blame him. It was his job to stand in harm's way for her, and she'd just proven to be better equipped to protect herself than he was. "Yeah, okay, I'm coming," she said, holding a tight grip on the impromptu stake in case there were more vampires around.
Before leaving, she threw another glance down the corridor, and noticed to her chagrin that all four of the reporters she'd seen in the other corridor was now standing in this one. The English-American guy looked stunned, and Lane's partner was adjusting his glasses, a pensive frown on his face, but both women had the expression of cats who had just found a bowl of cream. Fantastic. Whatever the Daily Planet and the Daily Whatever English paper would make of this, it couldn't be good for the administration.
She let Eric take her to the Presidential bedroom, even though she'd much rather go to her office and call the Watchers' Council -- she had no idea who was in charge of it nowadays, but the old London number should be working still.
It didn't take ten minutes for Jed to come rushing in with Ron and Charlie in tow, ranting about the state of a White House where the First Lady could be attacked walking down a corridor.
"I'm fine," Abbey said, rather annoyed by the brouhaha. "Has anyone dealt with those reporters?"
"Josh is talking to them," Charlie said.
"Well, what is he saying? Does he..."
"Forget the reporters!" Jed was sounding like he'd pop an artery any second. "What happened out there? Are there more of them?"
"I don't think so." Of course, it was always hard to tell with vampires. Oh, God. Mandy was a vampire. Had been a vampire. What a tragedy. It must have happened recently, or else Abbey would have noticed something when the girl was working in the administration -- she might be rusty, but she wasn't quite that rusty yet.
"Our people are securing the corridors," Ron said. "Dr. Bartlet, I understand that the attacker was Madeline Hampton?"
"Mandy?" Jed looked understandably shook up. "Mandy attacked you?"
"Yeah," Abbey said with a sigh. "Well, no." It hadn't been the Mandy they had known, after all. Still... "Yes."
"Was it or wasn't it?" Jed asked, clearly irritated by her evasive answer.
She sighed. Perhaps it had been foolish of her to expect her half-truths to last indefinitely, but she had liked living a more normal life, even if her idea of "normal" had been stretched quite a bit ever since Jed first entered the Oval Office. "Can we talk in private?"
"Dr. Bartlet," Ron protested, "in a situation like this, if you have any information it's vital that we hear it."
He had a point. They were professionals like her, and no professional liked being kept in the dark about aspects of their work. "It was a vampire."
Saying the word after all these years felt funny, and all four other people in the room looked stricken.
"Dr. Bartlet, are you feeling..." Ron started.
"I'm fine," she said again, annoyed at the implication that she was losing her marbles. "Eric, tell him what happened to Mandy."
Eric swallowed and shifted on his feet. "Uh... well, you stabbed her with the... table leg..." His gaze moved to her right hand, and she realised she was still holding the stake. "And then she disappeared."
"Evaporated," Abbey corrected him. "Into a cloud of smoke. Isn't that right?"
He looked very uncomfortable. "Yes, ma'am."
The others still had disbelief written all over their faces, and Abbey lost patience. "Listen, if you have a better explanation, I'd love to hear it. Meanwhile, I need to call London. Mandy -- the vampire -- spoke of an apocalypse. I have to know what she was talking about."
Silence. Oh, for crying out loud... "Jed?"
"All right," he said quietly.
"Thank you. Charlie, would you please go to my office and pick up my phone book?"
Charlie snapped out of his stunned state and nodded slowly. "Sure. Just... when I get back... I..."
"I'll brief you in full," she promised. It was the least she could do. But she wondered how many people in the administration would need to know, if it would be possible to bullshit C.J. and the others. They'd probably have to tell Leo. Leo was reliable, you'd need him on your side in a crisis. Of course, none of that would matter if they just decided that all this talk about vampires was ramblings of a crazy woman.
Charlie nodded an headed out, bless his soul. She sat back, hands between her knees, and tried to figure out how to start. There were so many things you needed to say, and for the first time she understood what her Watcher had gone through with her. She'd been a doubting Thomas to say the least. At least that experience had taught her that whatever the best way was to start her explanation, it wasn't with "in every generation there is a chosen one".
That damned old English bastard was probably laughing at her from his heaven.
IV. Lanford, Illinois
Both Roseanne and Jackie ignored the phone to begin with, but after the seventh ring or so, Jackie threw a glance at it.
"Leave it," Roseanne said, scooping up some fries for the guy at table three. "They'll tire soon."
By the tenth ring, Leon came out of the back room and picked up the phone, his face a textbook example of indignation. He picked up the phone and said, "Lunch box, Leon, so sorry to have kept you waiting."
His murderous glance at Roseanne and Jackie was soon replaced by a shocked one. "Oh, dear, when? Right. There is? A potential, you mean. Oh, one of those. All right. What's her name?" He paled considerably, and Roseanne gave him an interested look. If they were really lucky, he might die of shock right then and there.
"Hang on," Leon said after a long pause, and then he let the receiver sink, staring at Roseanne like she was a year-old cheese in the fridge. "Roseanne... I'm on the phone with Quentin Travers... You wouldn't happen to be a Slayer, would you?"
Roseanne froze, and then ripped the phone out of Leon's hand. "Give me that! Quentin, you ass, get off my case!" She could hear the man sputtering some crap on the other end of the line, but that only aggravated her more. "I'm not going anywhere near you unless you give me a fucking life insurance! And while you're at it, you could throw in a six-figure salary and some decent working hours. You may be able to guilt teenagers into playing your game, but I'm a grown woman with four kids, and it's not going to work with me!"
She slammed down the phone and gave Jackie and the stunned Leon a radiant smile. "Now I feel much better."
"But Roseanne," Leon protested, "there seems to be an apocalypse going on."
"Oh, don't you start. I should have known that you were a Watcher." She was quite pissed at herself for not realising it sooner. He was stuck-up, conservative, insensitive and had "tweedy" written all over himself, for crying out loud. If he'd been living in England or California or some other more vampire-y place, she would have figured it out a long time ago. But Lanford was her sanctuary. He had no right to be a Watcher in Lanford! Couldn't he stick to just being your average everyday ass?
She chopped up more lettuce for the burgers and tried to ignore Leon's whining in her ear, right up until the point where Jackie started whining in her other ear:
"Roseanne, if the end of the world is coming, perhaps you should..."
"Oh, shut up!" Roseanne said, tossing the lettuce into the colander. As if Jackie hadn't been assuring her all those years ago that no one had to put up with the stuff the Slayer did, and that leaving town as soon as the torch had been passed was the only right thing to do. This was so typical of her, this wishy-washy changing of sides.
She waved the vegetable knife in front of Leon's face. "Turning my own sister against me, are you? So what if I still have Slayer powers? D'you know what I want to do with those Slayer powers?"
Leon paled. "Uh... maybe you should consider that unarmed."
"Screw them all to hell, that's what!" She'd raised her voice to harpy level, and the customers sitting around the counter were throwing her the on-your-signal-let's-duck kind of glances she'd so often seen in her kids. That pissed her off even more. Discussing Slayer duties was clearly bad for business, and she tried giving them a calming smile as she headed over to take their orders. It didn't work very well.
The phone rung again, and she spun around, glaring at Leon, but he picked it up anyway. Damned that man!
"Who? Oh my. Yes, sir. Of course, sir."
He let the receiver sink, but didn't put it down, just held it against his sweater as if it were the baby Jesus coming down for a stroll.
"If that's Travers again..." Roseanne warned him.
Leon swallowed. "No... it's the President."
"What president?" she asked with a frown. The Council of Watchers didn't have a president, unless they'd changed the way things were organised since her days.
"The President of the United States."
She snorted. "Yeah, right." But Leon looked so shook up she started to wonder just what kind of elaborate prank this was, and she took the phone from him just out of curiosity. "Who is this?"
"Mrs. Conner? This is President Bartlet speaking."
Well, he sure sounded like the President, but that didn't prove a thing. "Yeah?"
"My wife has informed me that you are needed to aid our nation's security."
His wife. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
"Holy shit," she said. "Okay, sir, I'm listening."
She was going to murder that Abbey.
V. On the road
"Get off it, Clark," Lois snapped, looking eagerly into the rear view mirror. "You know as well as I do what happened."
"No, I don't." He only let his eyes touch her for a second before bringing them back to the road. "That woman just... turned into dust."
"After the First Lady stabbed her in the heart with a stake ."
"A table leg," Clark pointed out mildly.
"A stake. You made it yourself, I don't see why you have to be so cautious about it. It was a vampire and you know it."
He sighed. There didn't seem to be much point in denying it. If there was any other kind of people that turned into dust when you staked them through the heart, he wasn't aware of them. "All right. So what? We can't write about vampires."
"Of course we can! We write about Superman, don't we?"
She gave him a wicked grin, and he couldn't resist grinning back. Hearing her speak of Superman as an entity independent from Clark Kent always delighted him, as if she'd said something naughty.
"It's different," he said. "Superman's high profile. If we try to convince people the First Lady is killing vampires we're going to end up sounding like the Enquirer. We hardly had any witnesses."
"So we'll get more witnesses," Lois said, turning in her seat until she was nearly kneeling. "I do wish you'd stop worry."
"What are you doing?"
She sat back down with a thud. "Is that car following us?"
He pulled down his glasses in order to see better and looked over his shoulder.. "It's the reporters."
"The English ones?" Her face contorted into an annoyed grimaced. "What a nuisance. Step on it, maybe we'll lose them."
"If I go any faster the Secret Service will spot us."
"We could --" She made an upwards motion with her hand and gave him a meaningful look.
"Too visible."
"Not if we fly really high."
"Then I won't hear what they're saying."
"What are they saying?"
He shrugged. Even through their conversation, bits and pieces from the First Lady's car came through to him, but so far there was nothing to suggest the destination for their journey. There had been talk about something called Slayers that sounded very disturbing, but apart from that most of what he'd heard had been calls to make sure everything was calm at the White House. Keeping the cat in the bag. Which meant that whatever was going on, it was very bad.
"Well, I can tell you one thing." Lois put one leg over the other. "I'm not letting some English rookies steal this story."
Clark chuckled. It was such a very Lois point of view. But the discussions were starting again in the First Lady's car, and he silenced and listened.
...get to Sunnydale before....
"Sunnydale?" he said, trying to sharpen his hearing further.
...here's the diner now.
"What are they saying?"
"They're pulling over."
"Oh, thank God," Lois said, grabbing her purse. "I've needed to take a pee for miles. Dr. Bartlet must have a bladder like a race horse."
They didn't dare stop at the same diner as the First Lady's company, but there was one across the street that would do just fine. Although grease seemed to be the main ingredient of the menu, the bathroom was clean enough, and Lois disappeared into it while Clark sat down and ordered some coffee. As it turned out, the coffee was excellent.
"Lane and Kent, isn't it?" a cheerful voice told them as soon as Lois had taken her seat next to Clark. "Lynda has told me all about you. If you were any more famous, I would have heard of you!"
They looked up into the smiling face and shiny sunglasses of one of the English reporters -- although judging by his accent, that epithet didn't fit him. His female colleague was standing a few steps behind, arms crossed and expression sour.
"Back off, kid," Lois said. "This is our story. I'm not giving it up to some college punks who don't even have access to the Press Room."
"Well, since you do have access to the Press Room," the woman said, "why don't you run along back and listen to C.J. Cregg's little fairy tales?"
That clearly raised Lois's shackles. "Listen, kiddo, if you want a few pointers..."
"Actually," the man interrupted, "it's not anybody's story right now. We all know what we saw, but let's face it, the credibility factor of a story like this is pretty low. And it'll be lower still if our two newspapers are trying to discredit each other. On the other hand, if we work together, we just might come up with something people might believe. So how about starting over?" He extended his hand and offered another of those wide grins. "Spike Thomson. And this lovely lady is Lynda Day."
Clark shook Spike's hand, relieved to have someone around who didn't seem ready to go ballistic over a news story. Lois took the outreached hand too, though with a lot more hesitation.
"Spike?" she said. "How quaint. And you're clearly American. So what's a guy like you doing on an English paper?"
"Chicks, mostly," he replied. "That chick, when she lets me."
"Spike!" Lynda protested. She had extended her hand, but now looked ready to pull it back in sheer irritation. Clark hurried to grab it and shake it, just to get them back on the right track.
"It's so nice to meet you," he said.
The hand stayed tense in his grip for a moment, and then relaxed and returned the shake. "Likewise," Lynda said, even giving a very small smile. "So, what have you got?"
"What have you got?" Lois asked, raising her chin. "Can't be much. You've been following us all the way."
"They're talking to some people over there," Lynda said, nodding across the street. "A fat woman and a guy with a moustache. The fat woman doesn't look like she likes them much, but she does look like she plans on going along.."
Clark looked in the direction Lynda had nodded, and sharpened his hearing. You set your husband on me, that's hardly fair. He winced at the grating voice, but it sounded only reproaching, not intimidated.
"Voluntarily?" he asked.
"As far as we can tell, yeah. They're taking the plane to Los Angeles in two hours -- so our guess is that they only drove this far to pick up those people, whoever they are."
"Not only," Lois said, looking out the window. From where he was sitting, Clark couldn't see what she was seeing, but he knew what it was -- a five-seat grey Mercedes. "You've noticed the car, haven't you? And the only people coming with her are a couple of bodyguards."
"Hardly going in style," Spike agreed. "Wherever she's going, she wants to get there without being noticed."
"Does 'Sunnydale' mean anything to you?" Clark asked.
Spike looked interested. "California?"
"Probably."
"Never been there. I've heard rumours, though. Weird things going on in that town."
The four of them looked at each other in perfect understanding. Lois had been wrong, Clark thought. These two weren't college punks, they were experienced journalists with news in their blood, and they could be really useful for this story. He'd just have to hope that their reporter instincts wouldn't lead them to any other story. Like, for example, the secret identity of Superman.
VI. Sunnydale, California
The room was filling up with people: Slayers, Watchers, friends, bodyguards. Giles sat next to Lydia, studying Roseanne Conner, née Harris, who had come along with her Watcher and the First Lady's company. She hadn't noticed him yet, but then, he hadn't expected her to. There were half a dozen Watchers in the room, and he looked no different from any other.
She looked nothing like a Slayer, certainly nothing like the long-limbed, aging beauty next to him. She never had. She'd been a fat, loud-mouthed, arrogant teenager, and now she was a fat, loud-mouthed, arrogant, middle-aged woman.
Perhaps that was why her presence made him so nervous. Lydia had changed through the years, and he had been there to see most of it. In a way, they had grown up together, and it had seemed only natural that they should do so.
With Roseanne present, he suddenly felt that he had betrayed the boy he used to be.
Quentin Travers started speaking, and Giles was grateful for the opportunity to forget some of his self-consciousness in light of more serious things.
"I have been in touch with the London office. They informed me that they have found a spell to embody the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, although they're still working on the translation from ancient Sumerian. Meanwhile, there's the issue of what we should do with the Horsemen once they are embodied. Dr. Bartlet, as I understand it you have some information here?"
"Please, it's Abbey," the First Lady said with an impatient gesture. "When did any of you ever call a Slayer by title? Anyway, as it happens, it was my husband who discovered this, not I. It's in one of his old books." She took a small, battered volume from her jacket pocket and opened it, removing a child's bookmark from it. "It says here about the apocalypse, 'Christ can end the ride at will, and Anti-Christ, and they alone. Yet all can end it who wield with power what the riders are not.' That's all," she concluded, closing the book again. "Sounds promising, though, if you ask me."
Jane suddenly giggled. "I just realised," she said, "that you're an Abbey Bartlet. Like the President's wife."
"Yeah, that's me," Abbey said mildly.
Jane frowned. "What is?"
"I'm the President's wife."
"Oh, brilliant!" the younger Slayer said, shining up. "You know, I've always wondered something. When you go to England, are you still Mrs. Bartlet or are you Mrs. Blair?"
Buffy snorted with laughter, and Willow turned a beet red clearly trying to avoid to do the same. Giles couldn't look at Lydia, seeing her body shake from the corner of his eye.
"Wow," Roseanne said, her shrill voice loud enough to drown any sign of the others' amusement. "I never thought it possible, but you actually make my son-in-law look intelligent."
"Really?" Jane said with cheerful innocence. "How?"
Now Giles could actually feel Lydia's amusement next to him, and the meeting threatened to collapse into disorder. Evidently Quentin could feel it too, because he raised his voice louder than necessary as he said, "All right. All right! What we need to do, then, is find out what the Horsemen are not. I trust you to wield whatever it is with power -- whoever could, if not seven Slayers?"
"Okay," Buffy said, "so that would be like, life, and peace..."
"What, you're supposed to hit him on the head with a peace sign?" Xander quipped.
Quentin clenched his jaw and breathed out through his nose. "Must these civilians be present?"
Buffy crossed her arms. "They leave, I leave."
"Rosie," Giles said, interrupting what could only end up as a Slayer-Watcher quarrel, and those were always so tedious. "Would you take on Famine?"
She cocked her head, and he knew that it was only a matter of seconds before she recognised him. "Any particular reason why you want me to do it?"
"Just that you always fervently refused to give him any power over you," he replied, and plunged into the moment of truth by adding in a Cockney accent, "Did you ever force feed Twiggy like you promised?"
Her chin fell down, and her eyes widened in positive horror. "Ripper? My God, did the tweed brigade get to you?"
"Something like that," he said with a grimace, feeling about ten times tweedier than he ever had. "Will you take him on?"
"Ripper, honey," she said, "You're confusing me with Lydia. I'm not taking anything on alone."
"Nor should she," Quentin said sharply. "Giles, you are completely out of order. It's not up to you to designate missions here, and..."
Giles ignored him. "Faith?" He had seen Faith eat, and she had the most obscene relationship with food -- as with everything else, for that matter. "And Xander, I suppose."
"A civilian!?" That protest came from Nigel, always such a dreary young man.
"Uh - Giles?" Xander asked, looking nervous. "What do you want me to do, stake him with a candy bar?"
"If you must."
"I think I see what you're getting at," Lydia said thoughtfully. "Give 'em the strongest in each category, yeah? I'll volunteer for Pestilence, in that case. I'm healthy as they come. And maybe Abbey and Christine for Death."
Abbey raised her eyebrows. "Am I somehow more alive than the rest of you?"
"No, but you've given life," Lydia said. "Seven Slayers in this room, only three are mothers. And Rosie's needed for Famine."
"So..." Buffy said, "that leaves War to me and... Jane?"
Everyone turned silent for a while, looking at Jane. Using common sense, Giles rather thought Jane should go with Lydia. With the odd way her mind worked -- it wasn't quite stupidity, nor quite madness, but rather something in between -- she might prove a liability, and though Buffy was a remarkable Slayer for her age, there was no doubt that Lydia was a lot more experienced. On the other hand, there was without a doubt something peaceful about Jane and her steady refusal to let anything perturb the way she saw the word. She certainly looked peaceful now, oblivious to the reason for the others' hesitation and perhaps even to its existence in the first place. Jane, in her own way, embodied "peace of mind". As for Buffy, she was one of the most brilliant Slayers in his lifetime, but also the most eager to keep the killing a remote part of her personality, and try to hold on to normal relationships. The others had managed to get out, they had managed to make friends -- but until now, she had been the only one to take her friends with her into the Slayer world.
Quentin Travers looked at him with a most annoying "see what you've done?" expression, and he was grateful that the choice was Lydia's, rather than his.
"Unless you think you'd be better suited somewhere else," Lydia said. "This is just preliminary arrangements, you know."
"Whatever the final arrangements turn out to be," one of Abbey's bodyguards said, "I insist on my colleague and me staying with the First Lady."
"Absolutely not," Abbey said, sounding very determined. "You're experienced professionals, do you think I'll let you go to waste trying to protect me? If we don't succeed at this, we're all going to die anyway. And unless there's a medical miracle going on somewhere, neither one of you have given birth. Go with Lydia -- she's alone on her guy."
"Can I be on Buffy´s team?" Willow asked.
"Team," Quentin said testily. "Good Lord. Are we fighting the Horsemen of the Apocalypse or playing rounders? There is only one team, and that's all of us. If you want to pay extra attention to one of the Horsemen, I can't stop you, but you have to be prepared to..."
The phone started ringing, and Quentin interrupted himself, nodding for Philip to take it. Philip did, and after a few short questions held up the receiver.
"They have the translation ready."
VII. The Californian desert
Buffy looked out the window at the people following the cars. "Are they all vampires?"
"I saw some other demons out there," Lydia said, loading a crossbow before handing it to Buffy. "Here."
"Thanks." Buffy was still looking out the window. The row of undead seemed endless: walking, driving, riding motorcycles. "What do they want?"
"They're drawn to the biggest bad out there. Usually, that's the Hellmouth. If we manage to call down the Horsemen, it will be them."
"Wow, that's incredibly not comforting," Buffy said. She forced herself to look away from the window. The vamps and demons made no move to get closer, and Buffy wondered if they wanted the Horsemen to be called, and in that case, if this was really such a good idea.
She looked down in Lydia's lap instead, where a colourful water gun lay resting. It wasn't a bad kind of weapon; she had used it more than once, although then it had been loaded with holy water. This time, it was antibiotics.
If this didn't work, they would look totally dorky -- or, they would until they were killed along with the rest of the world.
This so wasn't a good idea.
The cars slowed to a halt, standing after each other in a circle in a manner that reminded Buffy of old Western movies. Were they supposed to act as shields? If so, she doubted their efficiency.
Stepping out of the car, the first thing she heard was one of the Watchers saying to the fat slayer -- Roseanne -- "...appalling display of homophobia."
"It's got nothing to do with homophobia," Roseanne protested. "But I'll be damned if I let you infect Ripper with any more tweediness. I'd rather pack up a few demon worshippers and give them to him for Christmas."
Buffy grimaced. Preparation for an apocalypse should not include having to think about your Watcher's potential sex life. She took a firmer grip on her crossbow and positioned herself between Jane and Willow. There were nearly twenty of them and only four Horsemen, and she would feel a lot better about that if she knew how big the Horsemen would be, and how hard to kill.
Quentin raised his hands and gave the first word of the incantation, indicating that the spell should get started. One of his underlings stepped into the circle and poured a potion onto the ground. Flames burst up.
The mood was interrupted by a woman's voice crying "Spike!" followed by a man's "Help!" Buffy reacted immediately, jumping over the cars and running towards the sound. There had been genuine fear in that call, and she was willing to bet it hadn't come from a vampire. She could see in the corner of her eye that more people had broken the circle, but she didn't see who it was and had no time to look.
Her instincts had been right. There was a vampire feeding on a young woman, and just as she got there a dark-haired, well-built man plunged a tree branch into the vampire's chest. As it turned into dust, the woman fell to the ground, and two other people hurried up to catch her.
"Get them into the circle," Buffy ordered, finally turning around to see that the people who had come with her were Jane and Lydia. Both of them went up to the frightened humans, but Buffy spotted a familiar blond head further away and stopped short, raising her crossbow. "Spike."
"Hello, Slayer," the vampire said, not the least bit intimidated by the crossbow. Evidently he'd made peace with Drusilla, because she was standing a few steps off, watching the display with interest. "Someone called for me."
"I was calling for him," the woman snapped, nodding at the short young man supporting her left side. For someone who had just been snacked on, she seemed very alert, and more than a little aggressive.
"Oh. My mistake. Well, now that I'm here..." He took a few steps closer, and Buffy fired the crossbow. Unfortunately, her aim was a bit off, and it only hit his shoulder.
"Don't waste those!" Lydia warned her. "They're olive -- you're going to need them later."
"Okay, hold this," Buffy said, tossing her the crossbow before kicking Spike three times in quick succession. She could see dark shapes moving closer. The vampires and demons were spread around the area, but the commotion attracted them. She'd have to kill Spike soon if she was to bring the humans into the circle before it was too late.
So far, he was just grinning, despite the bolt sticking out from his shoulder. "I'd love to get my hat trick before the apocalypse," he said. "Third Slayer's a charm..." Another kick spun his head around, and he noticed Jane. "Oi! Didn't I almost eat you once?"
"You did!" she replied, her face scrunching up in distaste. "And you never even called me back!"
"Jane -- vampire!" Buffy pointed out.
"Oh, why didn't you say so?" Jane took Spike by the leather duster and threw him over the huddling humans towards a rock some distance off. He fell against it with a crunching sound, and Drusilla gave a wail of rage and sorrow and headed over. Whatever he had broken, it wouldn't be enough to finish him off, and Buffy prepared to follow, but Lydia held her back.
"You don't have time to kill all the vampires around here, even if you could. We have to get back to the circle."
Buffy didn't particularly care about killing all the vampires around there; she just cared about killing these two. But she knew that Abbey was right. If the demons had a chance to close in, they'd never manage to get the humans out of there unharmed. And so she sighed deeply and returned to the circle with the others, keeping an eye on the demons just in case one of them would try to attack the humans again. But none did.
"What was that all about?" Quentin asked very sharply when they returned.
"Interrupting snack time," Buffy said, nodding towards the four strangers.
"Ms Lane?" That was Abbey Bartlet, and her deep frown showed that they weren't strangers to her. "Mr. Kent. And you two -- what is this, a journalism congress?"
"We were following you," the man called Spike admitted.
"Well, let that be a lesson to you," she said, and added to Quentin. "They're all right. I doubt this will be a story suitable for a well-respected newspaper."
Quentin pursed his lips, but said nothing in return, just raised his hands again to prepare the spell. Flames flared up from the fire in the middle of the circle.
What followed was a rather tedious procedure that included chanting, painting strange things on the ground, and dancing more stiff-legged than pubescent boys at a school dance. After that, they stood silently listening to the rioting sounds of demons outside the circle.
Then one of those sounds came closer, the sound of motorcycles running at high speed. One of those motorcycles flew over the cars and landed in the middle of the circle, quenching the fire, and three more followed. The dark-clad figures riding them stepped off.
Four motorcycles. Four bikers. The four Bikers of the apocalypse?
They took their helmets off, and she could tell right away that the one with the gleaming skull was Death. The dark, bearded one was probably Famine -- at least that was the conclusion Roseanne seemed to draw, since she uncapped her bottle of mayonnaise and hollered "Aim for the mouth!"
That meant War was either the oily-looking young man, or...
Yes.
It was funny, she never would have thought of War as being female. And yet she knew as soon as she saw the smiling redhead with the gleaming sword, that this was it. Her. The redhead was War, and her enemy for tonight.
Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick, what had they gotten themselves into?
She fired her crossbow automatically and hit War right between the collar bones. The Horseman -- Horsewoman -- Biker -- gasped and made a move to pull the bolt out, but Willow's clear voice called out a strange row of words, and the bolt started to grow sprigs and leaves. Buffy was so proud of her. It had to be the most difficult spell she had managed yet.
War gasped for air again, and then brought up her gleaming sword, stabbing herself in the throat. The bolt fell to the ground. Buffy looked down on it, and then up at a bleeding wound that closed in an instant.
"Just keep chanting!" she told Willow, firing another bolt. But this time, her aim was off, and the bolt just flew past War's leather jacket.
War moved closer, raising her sword for a blow, and Buffy was forced to catch it in the crossbow. She managed to wrench the sword out of War's hands, but the force of the blow made the crossbow drop to the ground along with it, leaving them both weaponless. There was no time to think of another way to finish this, and she kicked War repeatedly to stall a bit. Nigel and Cordelia had joined Willow in the chant, but she wasn't sure it would do any good now that her weapon was gone.
Jane got into the fight too, and Buffy was amazed by the force in the older woman's punches. It was so hard to think of this peculiar woman as a Slayer, but as long as she was fighting and not talking, she was every bit as Slayer-y as Buffy or the others. Buffy found herself moving in team with Jane like she would with Faith, pushing War in Jane's direction with each kick and punch so that they could both attack at full strength. Jane moved in for the final blow -- a blow that would have been perfect if they had been fighting a vampire and Jane had been holding a stake.
She seemed oblivious to the fact that she had none, and made a stabbing motion with her empty fist towards War's chest. To Buffy's amazement and horror, War's beautiful face rippled into something steely and hard, and then a flash of light made her disappear entirely, sending Jane tumbling off to the ground.
The sword was still there though, lying on the ground, and Buffy moved to pick it up.
"Don't touch it!" Nigel's voice said behind her.
He might be a snivelling little Watcher boy, but the tone of his voice indicated that this time it was best to just follow orders, no questions asked. Buffy stepped back and glanced around to see how the other fights were going. Famine was lying on his back, and just as Buffy looked over there, Roseanne tossed Faith something that looked like... no, was... a burrito, and Faith stuffed it into Famine's mouth.
Another flash, and Famine was gone.
Pestilence seemed to cause more trouble. Buffy caught one of Abbey's body guards, who was stumbling away, covered in something glistening.
"Antibiotics didn't work?" she asked, and he shook his head.
"He's... not... Pestilence."
"What is he, then?" she asked, touching the man's dripping jacket with distaste. "Ew, this smells like an industrial accident!"
The man's eyes widened. "Pollution?" He said the word again, crying it out loud with more conviction, and the Biker whipped his head around.
"Fabulous!" Lydia shouted, her kicks sliding off the slick surface of Pollution's clothes. "Now the hell do we fight it? Air fresheners?"
"Oh, please do," Pollution said, his voice oily and amused. "I love those."
The Watcher who had been quarreling with Roseanne dived into one of the cars, and as the fight went on he crawled out again with a bottle. He ran up to Pollution screaming, uncapped the bottle and tossed its contents into the Biker's face. The face oozed away, and this time the following flash was smoky and dark and smelled really icky.
The bottle rolled along the ground to Buffy's feet, and she picked it up, knowing by now that she shouldn't try to touch that glistening thing of a weapon that Pollution had left behind.
"Mineral water?" she said.
"Uncarbonated Desire," the Watcher said, wiping his glasses clean on his shirt. "The cleanest kind of water there is."
"Wow," Buffy said, "you couldn't be any more..."
"...Gay if my name was Gay Gayerson," the Watcher filled in. "So I've been told."
Three down, one to go, but the people fighting Death... weren't actually fighting.
Death turned his face in Buffy's direction, and she met his eyes, only to find that they weren't eyes. They were small sparkle's of blue in deep, dark eye sockets, and his face was a hollow, grinning skull.
"I know you," she said, her mouth feeling numb.
OF COURSE YOU DO, he replied. IF WE HADN'T MET, SHE WOULDN'T BE HERE.
Buffy looked at Faith, seeing the truth in that statement. Each one of the Slayers, except Faith, had died. How could they ever be expected to fight him?
Christine gave it a half-hearted try, but her kick was swiftly blocked by a skeletal arm.
LIFE IS NOT MY OPPOSITE, Death said. IT IS MY REASON. IT IS USELESS TO TRY AND FIGHT ME WITH IT.
"So what are you going to do?" Faith asked. "Start the Apocalypse all on your own? Kill us all?"
Death looked at her. His face could have no expression, but he seemed both puzzled and intrigued. I DO NOT KILL. I COLLECT ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE ALREADY DIED.
"So no apocalypse?" Willow piped up.
Death shook his skull. That should have been comforting, but Buffy felt a chill run down her spine.
IT CANNOT HAPPEN WITHOUT THEM. YOU HAVE RUINED THE APOCALYPSE. IT MIGHT INTEREST YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS THE SECOND TIME IN TEN YEARS. He sounded peevish. I CAN TAKE ONLY WHAT'S ALREADY MINE. FORTUNATELY, THAT IS MOST OF YOU.
Buffy licked her lips. It seemed wrong to die in this futile way, after stopping the apocalypse. "Uh... can we discuss that? Play chess, maybe? Of course, I don't play chess. Poker?"
FOR ONE LIFE, MAYBE, Death said with a shrug. A DOZEN? NOT EVEN I AM THAT FOND OF CHESS. AND I HATE POKER.
"What do you mean a dozen?" Buffy asked, confused. "Six resurrected Slayers make half a dozen."
Death made a jerky motion, and a long scroll rolled out from his hand. ABIGAIL BARTLET, ASPHYXIA. LYDIA GRANT, BLOOD LOSS. ROSEANNE CONNER, POISONING. JANE CHRISTIE, HYPOTHERMIA. CHRISTINE NELSON, BLOOD LOSS. BUFFY SUMMERS, DROWNING. LIAM O'HARE, BLOOD LOSS.
Oh, shit. She hadn't considered Angel. She glanced around, trying to figure out who else made up the dozen.
RUPERT GILES, PURE ESSENCE OF MAGIC. Death stopped his merciless listing of names for a second, his grinning skull for the first time seeming actually amused. YOU NAUGHTY BOY. JAMES THOMSON, FALLING DEBRIS.
"Huh?" said the young man his girlfriend called Spike.
CRESSLAW ROAD. YOU MIGHT REMEMBER IT.
James/Spike's eyes widened. "I thought I was dreaming you."
WE MADE A BARGAIN. YOU HAVE NOT KEPT YOUR END OF IT.
"Hey, it's not so easy with her," the young man defended himself.
Death's eyes moved over to the woman. AH, YES. LYNDA DAY, SMOKE INHALATION. AND FINALLY, LOIS LANE... He paused, scrutinising the list. YOU HAVE BEEN EXCEPTIONALLY BUSY DYING, I SEE.
With a flick of his wrist, the scroll rolled itself up like a window blind. He turned back to Buffy. MY MISTAKE. ELEVEN, NOT A FULL DOZEN. STILL TOO MUCH FOR A GAMBLE.
"What about some other kind of deal?" asked the fourth of the strange humans, the man who had killed the vampire. "You mentioned a bargain. Could we make a bargain? A trade, of some sort?"
Death watched him for a very long life, and then said, slowly, WITH YOU... I MIGHT. From his robe, he brought out an hourglass, red and blue light streaming through it like sand. It was nearly full. KAL-EL OF KRYPTON, he said. YOURS IS LONGER, STRONGER, STRANGER -- PERHAPS BETTER. WHAT IF IT IS NOT?
The man swallowed. "My life for theirs?"
I WOULD NOT OBJECT TO THAT DEAL.
"No!" said the woman called Lois, grabbing the man's arm. "Clark, you can't! Think of all the people you may save!"
"Think of all the people they just saved," he answered in a low voice, looking out at the people inside the circle. "Approximately five billion. If they can do that, the world needs them more than it needs me."
"That's not true!" she pleaded. "The world needs you! I need you!"
But he was no longer listening. His eyes were fixed on Death's hollow face. "I die, and they live."
ONLY UNTIL THEY DIE ONCE AGAIN.
Clark frowned, and then nodded. "I see what you mean. Yes. I'm not asking you to let them live forever. Just let them stay until the next time they die." His fingers intertwined with the Lois's, and he looked at her. "And you -- try to stay out of trouble."
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face. "I won't let you..."
READY? Death asked, and when Clark nodded, he raised what looked like a staff, and a green, shining, curved blade sprang out of it. He swung, and the blade went right through Clark, intangible but fatal as the man fell to the ground, colour draining from his face.
I DO BELIEVE I GOT THE BETTER END OF THIS BARGAIN, Death said, stepping up to the corpse. He bent down and planted something on the ground. WHITE AS SNOW, he said softly, RED AS BLOOD, BLACK AS EBONY.
And then he folded out two big, black wings, and with one flap, he was gone.
Lois fell to her knees next to Clark's body, almost toppling over the little thing on the ground. It was an hourglass, much smaller than the previous one and with ordinary sand in it instead of coloured lights. All the sand was in the top half, and none of it was pouring.
Buffy blinked, and then stared at it again. "White as snow..." she said slowly.
Giles caught on to her thought before she'd even finished thinking it. "Give him the breath of life," he ordered, kneeling down and starting to pound his palms on Clark's chest. "One -- two -- three -- now!"
But what kind of sacrifice was it, Buffy wondered, if he was to live? She stared at the hourglass, which was fading away already so it was hard to tell if the sand had started pouring or not, though she rather thought it had. It was very small, of course. A lot different from the red-and-blue one. She remembered what Death had said about a stronger life, and the weird name he had used on the man also known as Clark Kent, and she wondered what kind of hourglass that really had been.
"Uh, guys?" Xander said, sounding very nervous. "The demons are coming closer."
"Oh, shit," Roseanne said. "We cheated them of their apocalypse."
"And we're only safe as long as we don't die," Christine filled in.
Everyone looked at the lifeless figure on the ground and the two people doing CPR on him. And then Giles and Lois both paused for a second, and Clark drew a long, shaky breath.
Before he'd even had time for another, the drivers had gotten the engines started.
VIII. Washington D.C.
Lynda came into the hotel room and put down two small items on the bed. "Press cards!" she said, though the triumph in her voice was somewhat muted.
Spike lift them up and watched them silently for a long time. "It doesn't seem right," he said at long last. "Those people stopped the apocalypse. Clark..." He didn't have words for what Clark had done, but then, she knew it as well as he did. "And we get press cards?"
"We're the only ones who need them," she pointed out. "And straight from the horse's mouth, alias Dr. Bartlet, the others got medals of some sort. For great courage battling forces of nature, or something like that."
He snorted. "Forces of nature?"
"Well, they were." She sat quiet for a while and then said, "It really get's to me, you know. It's our greatest story ever, and we won't be able to write it. When they start asking what happened to Superman, we'll know, and we can't tell."
"Must be worse for him," Spike said morosely. It didn't seem worth it. Yeah, maybe six bad-ass Slayers might be worth the end of Superman, but where did he and Lynda fit into it all?
Lynda seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she asked, "What was your deal with Death, anyway?"
He cleared his throat. "Well, boss, I thought I was dreaming him."
"What happened?" She had that Lynda look that meant she wasn't about to back off if it killed her.
"He said I was dead, and I said, 'No dice! There's this girl I have to marry.' Kinda stupid."
"Marry!?"
"Hey," he defended himself, "you didn't deal too well with 'I love you'. I figured I'd wait until you were ready for commitment."
"Until I was ready for commitment? That's a laugh! It's not two weeks since you went on a date -- if that's even the word -- with that little tart Marlene."
She always twisted things around so it was his fault, didn't she? "What do you want from me? You can't just reject me and then expect me to hang around like a lovesick puppy. That's not the way things work."
"Why not? It has worked that way just fine for the past ten years."
He had to chuckle at that, even though he didn't feel very cheerful. Maybe if she hadn't been such a smartass, he would have been able to give her up years ago, when she first started calling him names and claiming she would never go out with him. But no, he had to be persistent and dig himself deeper down until there was no way back. "I don't want to end up like my parents."
"Funny, neither do I," she snapped. "But all things considered, I don't think that Death is someone you want to upset."
"Oh, so it's to be a charity marriage?" he asked, half teasing, half serious.
She raised an eyebrow. "Why else would I want to marry you? You have no ambition, no style, big lips, and you're short."
"Pot, meet kettle," he said. "Lack of height we both have aplenty. Furthermore, you're stuck-up, amoral, mean-spirited, wouldn't know fun if it hit you in the head, and your dress sense is, quite frankly, beyond appalling."
She scowled at him, and then her lips began to twist into a smile. "You really do want to marry me, huh?"
"I really do," he agreed, pulling her down on the bed so he could kiss her. "The sooner the better. You never know when that gloomy-voiced cue ball is going to show up next."
She kissed his nose. "Let's wait until we can invite Clark and Lois."
"And the Slayers," he filled in, kissing her ear lobe.
"Do you think the First Lady would come?"
"I think she might."
"Now, that would be a cool story."
He wanted to complain about her turning their future wedding into a news story, but then he paused to think about it, and he found that he could imagine about ten different headlines. "You know, it really would."