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Divine Interventions (11/16)
Title: Divine Interventions (11/16)
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Characters: Dawn, Amy, Cordelia, Ethan, Willow, Kennedy, and others.
Rating: The overall fic will include material up to and including NC-17; most scenes are considerably milder, though.
Warnings: Het, femslash, BDSM, noncon—but none of these as the main focus of the fic.
Warnings for this chapter: Het, violence, alcohol, BDSM, language. Another busy chapter. With more sex.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place after “Why We Fight.” Spoilers up to “You’re Welcome.”
Summary: Dawn, Ethan, Amy, and Cordelia must team up to protect Willow from a resurrected enemy and the worshippers of Osiris.
Notes: Special thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikendru for a great beta.
Previous chapter can be found here.
All chapters can be found in my memories.
Chapter Eleven
Alexia paced through the towering colonnade of the Brazilian Temple of Osiris. This was their moment of victory. The undead had converged on the South American country from all over the world. Even now they waged a war against the Slayer line, as the Chosen too came to Brazil to fight the vampires and to protect Willow Rosenberg. Rosenberg herself had been divided in two by the Staff of Toth—into her harmless benevolent side and her powerfully destructive “dark” side. By all accounts, they were winning the war.
Still, she was restless. She was never one able to hurry up and wait. She wanted to be in the thick of battle, channeling black magic and creating death and carnage in her wake. She wanted to kill Willow Rosenberg in the service of her god.
Instead, she was pacing back and forth in the temple. “Relax,” said Rack, slipping through the colonnade. “You’re too tense. You need to . . . unwind.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she could feel power flowing into and out of her, her potent magic mixing with his. She felt it crackling through her body, and Rack’s presence traveling it with it, gently feeling out her body from within, learning the contours of her mind, body, and soul. The energy flowed through her arms and legs, and she could feel her muscles relax under Rack’s gentle ethereal touch. It passed through her chest and she could feel her breathing slow as she took deeper, peaceful breaths. She felt it center between her legs, then slowly—but powerfully—built to a climax as she came along with it. “Oh, that was good,” she said as Rack removed his hand from her shoulder, even though she could still feel the relaxing effect his touch had produced.
“Well, I hope you’re not all spent now,” a mocking voice interjected. “I do hate getting sloppy seconds.”
Alexia smiled as she watched a dark-haired woman clad in black leather swagger—yes, swagger was definitely the word—towards them through the colonnade. Rosenberg. Alexia didn’t even bother asking her how she got in—any even moderately skilled witch would have been able to penetrate the protective wards in the outer sanctum. It was here that things would get interesting.
“I suppose I should thank you for setting me free,” Rosenberg said. “Having to worry about things like control, restraint—it was disgusting. Loathsome.”
“They’re going to try and trap you in that prison again,” Alexia pointed out. “Your only help is to destroy the other Rosenberg before they can reintegrate you.”
Rosenberg only laughed. “You truly believe I am a fool, don’t you? I know perfectly well that if my counterpart is killed then I die with her. No, I need her in this world, as frustrating as her continued presence may be. We all have our burdens that we must bear, I suppose.”
Alexia shrugged, nonchalant. No, she hadn’t supposed the ploy would work, but it had been worth a try: it would have been so clean, so easy. Oh well. Perhaps she could get one of Rosenberg’s former allies to kill the witch now that her evil dark side was loose and dangerous.
“But now, while my better half is off running skyclad through the night-sky somewhere,” Rosenberg continued, “I can focus on what is rightfully mine: the world.”
“Osiris will never let that happen,” Alexia said. “Nor, I suppose, will your former friends. Do you really think you, a mere mortal, have the power to stand against a god?”
“I am powerful—you have no idea how powerful,” Rosenberg said. “But you’re right. It’s not enough, not yet. I need more. I want more.”
“You’re running on pure fury,” Rack observed with a smile. “Lust, greed, thirst for power—these are the things that make you what you are now. As you are, you will never be satisfied. You lack balance. It’s beautiful.”
“I’m glad you approve,” Rosenberg said, thrusting her hand forward—and just as quickly getting it knocked back. Shield around us, never broken, shield surround us, keep us from harm, Alexia invoked, praying to Osiris that the wards in the Inner Sanctum would hold. If not, after all, if she managed to drain Rack or Alexis, Rosenberg would almost instantly become incomprehensibly powerful, and all of their service to Osiris would be for naught.
“I will find the power I seek,” Rosenberg vowed, stepping back. “When I do, both you and Osiris will truly have cause to fear me.”
And with that, she turned and exited the temple. Alexia just smiled. Yes, this was the type of action she had been missing.
* * * * *
Kira Austin was a Jersey girl, born and true. She had never so much as left the Eastern Time Zone, although she had traveled with her family as far as Florida in one direction and Massachusetts in the other. Even once she had become Chosen she rarely found the need to leave the borders of her home state. The likes of Camden, Newark, and Jersey City provided more than enough vamp activity to keep her busy without ever having to venture too far from home. Not to mention Atlantic City, which proved to be a demon haven of an altogether different sort.
Now she was only a single time zone over, but she was in a completely different country. Hell, she was in a whole new hemisphere. She was in Brazil to fight vampires because . . . well, because of a whole slew of reasons each more fantastic-sounding than the last. Her life had certainly changed in the last year.
Instead of the icy chill of a Jersey winter, she suddenly found herself in the heat of a Brazilian summer. During the day the temperature had hit near 100 degrees. Now that it was night it was somewhat cooler, but still incredibly warm. She had gone from wearing long pants, a sweater, and a winter coat to a pair of elastic shorts and a Philadelphia Flyers jersey.
The jersey was more because of its bright orange color than any particular need to show off Philly pride to the natives of Brazil or the vampires they now hunted. Her job tonight was to be the bait. It had developed into a fairly standard Slayer tactic in the last year: one Slayer draws out a gang of unsuspecting vamps looking for an easy meal, and then her accomplices arrive to help save the night by wiping out the entire gang.
The technique was particularly effective tonight, in part because there were just so many vamps in Brazil due to the mystical convergence or whatever it was that was going on. But Kira suspected it was more that the vampires were looking for battles. They didn’t care they were falling into traps, because they weren’t looking for easy prey. Instead, they were merely out to cause as much damage as possible. If that entailed killing a Slayer, all the better, and it didn’t matter how many vamps got dusted in the process.
There was simply no way the Slayers could hope to win a war of attrition. There were simply too many vamps and not enough Slayers. Kira had already seen as many vampires that night in Brazil as she had seen in the entire past year in New Jersey.
At this moment, she thought she saw a movement in the shadows. Possibly a vamp, but it could have been just an animal. (Did they have squirrels in Brazil? Maybe a monkey?) She continued down the street as nonchalantly as she could feign, fully believing the entire act wasn’t even necessary. If it was a vamp, he or she would attack.
And so she did. A wild-looking creature, with hair that clearly hadn’t seen the inside of a conditioner bottle for several decades, emerged from the shadows and lunged at her. Kira instantly jumped into the air, flipping backwards as the vamp tried to stall her momentum as she ran under Kira. The Slayer landed right behind the vamp, and staked her in a single, clean motion. Dust.
In the process, however, three more vamps had emerged from the shadows. Kira parried a few blows, trying to find an opening for her stake, then quickly ducked
Where were Akemi and Ilyana? Spinning so she could beat back all three vamps simultaneously, she quickly scanned the street around her. There they were, down at the corner—surrounded by another half-dozen vampires. She could feel her heart sink into her stomach.
She could also feel a vampire fist landing in her abdomen. Ouch.
She watched with horror—using only her peripheral vision, her main attention being on her own fight with the vamps the entire time—as one of the vamps in the distance grabbed Ilyana and quickly snapped the young girl’s neck.
Kira kicked away one of her attacking vampires, determined to make sure she didn’t share Ilyana’s fate. That vampire was now vulnerable to attack, if Kira could just get away from the other two vampires which continued their assualy. More important, there was now an opening in the wall of vampires surrounding her. She lunged forward, out of the center of the circle, and drove a stake into the heart of the isolated vamp.
As she turned to reengage the remaining vampires, a looming figure swept down from behind her and bit her on the neck.
* * * * *
Dawn Summers hung up the phone. “Another one dead,” she said to the empty room.
At least, she believed it was an empty room. Ethan stood outside the kitchen, just outside of her sight line, listening as she paced the room in agitation.
Casualty reports had been coming in all night. As expected, the Slayers had taken heavy losses. That had, of course, been more or less inevitable ever since the Summers girl had ordered that the Slayers hunt in patrols of three. It wasn’t nearly enough to protect their own, but they needed the added groups to adequately protect the Brazilian civilians.
It was one of those problems that had no satisfactory solution, Ethan mused. He listened as Dawn opened one of the cupboards. The brandy, presumably.
Ethan had seen many girls like her in his lifetime. Not primordial energy fashioned into a human teenager, of course. In that way, she was unique. But the darkness he saw in her soul was very familiar to him. The confusion, the turmoil, the need to break rules and to lash out angrily at a world which refused to understand her, all that he knew well—had seen in all sorts of girls ranging from fellow Chaos worshippers to two-pound shags.
Never before in his experience, however, had the fate of the world rested on such a girl. It was simply another irony on top of a world of others. She had spent the entire day planning out the night’s hunt, coordinating the efforts of each three-Slayer team with the others so that the total effect would be one of a single devastating army. Janus, Master of Chaos, he silently prayed. This night is Yours. This entire scenario has Your fingerprints all over it. Now look over Your children, this poor girl included. And with a final silent deep inhalation, he did what was needed, and stepped into the kitchen.
“If you continue like this, Miss Summers,” he said, “you’ll soon be an alcoholic.”
“If the world ends, I won’t have time to become an alcoholic,” she pointed out, as she put the brandy bottle and a glass on the counter. She removed another glass and looked to Ethan questioningly.
“That’s my type of logic,” Ethan agreed with a nod.
Dawn poured them each a glass of brandy, and then set the two glasses down on the kitchen table.
Ethan sat across from her and raised his glass in the air. “To living life to the fullest—and telling the consequences to sod off.”
This elicited the frown he had hoped it would have.
“The consequences are at least two dozen teenage girls who aren’t going home to their parents, all because of an order I made,” Dawn said. “Why anyone trusted me to run this war I don’t know. We all know I was created as a force for destruction. Not to mention I steal things and am not exactly emotionally stable.”
“You were trusted because there wasn’t anyone else who could be. Our fates are thrust upon us, as little fondness as we may hold for the fact.” Ethan hated the thought that his life belonged to anything other than his own caprice. He worshipped Chaos in large part because he was attracted to the idea of a will that was radically free in a world that was largely random. Still, he knew that sometimes from within that Chaos a pattern emerged that could not be resisted, as much as he might try.
“I’m with my sister on that one,” said Dawn, looking at the full brandy glass, not yet drinking it. “Fuck destiny.”
“Oh believe me, Miss Summers, if I could only find it, I most certainly would.”
This seemed to force a rather dark-sounding laugh from her. Still, her features returned to an unhealthy brood almost immediately. “I’m still a force for destruction. Evil.”
“Oh, come on,” Ethan said. “If I’m not evil, surely you cannot be.”
Dawn seemed to consider this. “I guess that’s true,” she admitted at last.
“It is a far too black-and-white world where your only options are good and evil. Perhaps your sister has the luxury of moving in such a world, but you and I cannot afford it.”
“’You and I’?” Dawn asked quizzically.
“Not just you and I,” Ethan amended. “Rupert’s in the same boat, you know. You’re marked as much as we are, even if you don’t have Eyghon’s tattoo on your arm. That ring on your finger does it just as well.” Dawn’s eyes glanced quickly to the Ring of Ouroboros she wore on her right hand. Ethan continued. “One day, Miss Summers, you will kill somebody. Not just send him off to die, but actually take his life in your own hands and end it, because you and no one else decided that he could not be allowed to live.”
“I couldn’t.” He noticed she didn’t quite look him in the eye when she said it.
“Bosh,” he answered. “Not only can you, you will. Because when it happens, you won’t have any other choice. Just as you didn’t have any choice but to send those girls to their deaths tonight.”
This time she looked him straight in his eyes, and he recognized the gaze he saw there. The longing, the need to deny what was true. The inability to run from oneself, and the intense desire to try. “I don’t want to.”
“Then walk away,” Ethan answered easily. “Go back to Italy. No one made you go behind Ripper and your sister’s backs. You didn’t have to bust Beth and me out of prison. You can turn back at any time.”
Dawn’s eyes dropped to the still-full brandy glass. “No, I can’t,” she muttered at last. “And you know it.”
Thank Janus, Ethan thought to himself. “We are each of us who we are,” he told her. “Myself, the disciple of chaos. Your sister, the champion for good. Even Osiris Himself has His place in the Chaos of the universe.”
“Place in chaos? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Didn’t it? He wasn’t sure himself if it made sense or not, as he was winging most of the conversation almost entirely by ear, just as he liked it. But if he was going to pull this off, he had to make her believe he had access to wisdom he didn’t actually possess. “It makes perfect sense and you know it. Don’t play coy with me, little girl.”
She said nothing, seeming to accept his bluff.
He paused, then stood up and walked towards Dawn. He knew what she needed now, what he had to do. Janus, he thought, she is truly one of Your children.
“Such a young, innocent creature,” he said, running his fingers along the side of her face. The deliberately gentle touch of his hand on her face turned harsh as he dug his fingers into her cheek. “How does that feel?” he asked.
“It hurts,” she answered, pulling away. “Ouch.”
“And?” he asked, prompting, as he looked at the four red welts that had already begun to form.
“I kind of liked it,” she admitted after a moment, her voice low. “Is this how Buffy felt when she went to Spike?” she asked, presumably more to herself than to Ethan. “So . . . so desperate for feeling that even pain feels good?” She would still be able to feel the sensation, he knew, stinging on the side of her face.
“Pain is part of Chaos,” Ethan said. He knew what she needed, of course. She needed the darkness, the bleakness, the pain. What he would do now is what he would need to do, for the good of Chaos. Not that he wouldn't enjoy doing it, of course.
Quickly, before she could register his movement and block it, he grabbed her by the neck and twisted pulling her out of her chair in a single quick and fluid motion. He could feel her try to resist, but he was stronger and bigger and his experience with martial arts exceeded her own not-inconsiderable fighting experience. He sat down in the chair that she had vacated, then pulled her down so that she lay across his lap. She continued to struggle, but he he held her down in that position until she finally stopped, realizing she would not be able to break free.
"That girl, the one they just called about. What was her name?"
"There were three," Dawn admitted, trying to twist to be able to look up at him. He held her still, an iron grip on the back of her neck holding her head facing the floor. "Kira Austin, Ilyana Saumu, and Akemi Si-Ti.”
Continuing to hold Dawn down with his left hand, Ethan raised his right hand in the air and brought his palm down, hard, on the girl's backside, smiling in satisfaction as she involuntarily let out a quick gasp of pain. Then he did it two more times. "And the girl before that?"
"Serafina Walters."
He spanked her again. “Isadora Bianchi," she told him, this time without prompting. He hit her again, then spread his legs so he could reach underneath and find the fly of her jeans. When she realized what he was trying to do, she began to squirm again, violently thrashing on his lap, but he applied pressure to a point behind her neck and she stopped. Continuing to hold her down with one hand, he used his free hand to unbutton her jeans and unzip her zipper, then pulled down first her jeans and then the pink thong which had been underneath. He looked at the naked buttocks which now stared back at him, already a little pink from the spanks he had given her through her clothing. "Who else?"
“Vanessa Reifsnyder."
He spanked her, feeling his palm slap this time against the naked flesh. Yes, that was so much more satisfying, he thought.
"And?”
“Cynthia Novacek.”
She recited over a dozen more names without any further encouragement from Ethan. She had no difficulty remembering each of the deceased Slayers' names, as he knew she would not. After each name, he'd spank her again, and her buttocks grew a little redder. The idea, after all, was to hurt her, because that was what he knew she needed. A true child of Janus, she needed to feel the intense pain he could cause her. He smiled as he spanked her again. Just as true a child of Janus, he derived intense enjoyment from causing that pain. It was the yin and yang, the night and the day—the two faces of Janus.
Eventually the litany of names stopped. Ethan spanked her a few more times just for the hell of it, than let her get up. "I absolve you of your guilt, Miss Summers," he told her, with all the seriousness he could manage. "Go forth and sin some more."
She turned to him, her jeans and pants still at her ankles so that he now had an unobstructed view of her from the waist down. He offered her her glass of brandy; she took it and downed the glass in a single gulp.
"I rather suppose that Beth will be sleeping in the living room with the Wiccans tonight," Ethan told her, conversationally, as if gossip was the thing one did with a teenaged girl with her pants around her ankles. (If that were true, perhaps gossip would have held more of an appeal for Ethan. As it was, he preferred to act.) He knew that, having given Dawn what she needed, he should now bow out into the night, wisdom imparted. He had done the job the universe required of him, and to do anything else would be to take advantage of a troubled young girl. As usual, of course, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that.
"With all of them?” Dawn asked, sounding surprised.
"They will all be in sleeping in the living room,” Ethan explained, “as they did last night. If Beth sleeps with them, it will be with all of them. As for activities other than sleeping, I suppose Beth will be with as many as are willing. Most of them, I'd think. On a night like this, when one is surrounded by so much death, one likes to take part in life."
Dawn nodded, thoughtfully. "I'd like to take part in life."
TBC. . . . here
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Characters: Dawn, Amy, Cordelia, Ethan, Willow, Kennedy, and others.
Rating: The overall fic will include material up to and including NC-17; most scenes are considerably milder, though.
Warnings: Het, femslash, BDSM, noncon—but none of these as the main focus of the fic.
Warnings for this chapter: Het, violence, alcohol, BDSM, language. Another busy chapter. With more sex.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place after “Why We Fight.” Spoilers up to “You’re Welcome.”
Summary: Dawn, Ethan, Amy, and Cordelia must team up to protect Willow from a resurrected enemy and the worshippers of Osiris.
Notes: Special thanks to
spikendru for a great beta.Previous chapter can be found here.
All chapters can be found in my memories.
Chapter Eleven
Alexia paced through the towering colonnade of the Brazilian Temple of Osiris. This was their moment of victory. The undead had converged on the South American country from all over the world. Even now they waged a war against the Slayer line, as the Chosen too came to Brazil to fight the vampires and to protect Willow Rosenberg. Rosenberg herself had been divided in two by the Staff of Toth—into her harmless benevolent side and her powerfully destructive “dark” side. By all accounts, they were winning the war.
Still, she was restless. She was never one able to hurry up and wait. She wanted to be in the thick of battle, channeling black magic and creating death and carnage in her wake. She wanted to kill Willow Rosenberg in the service of her god.
Instead, she was pacing back and forth in the temple. “Relax,” said Rack, slipping through the colonnade. “You’re too tense. You need to . . . unwind.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she could feel power flowing into and out of her, her potent magic mixing with his. She felt it crackling through her body, and Rack’s presence traveling it with it, gently feeling out her body from within, learning the contours of her mind, body, and soul. The energy flowed through her arms and legs, and she could feel her muscles relax under Rack’s gentle ethereal touch. It passed through her chest and she could feel her breathing slow as she took deeper, peaceful breaths. She felt it center between her legs, then slowly—but powerfully—built to a climax as she came along with it. “Oh, that was good,” she said as Rack removed his hand from her shoulder, even though she could still feel the relaxing effect his touch had produced.
“Well, I hope you’re not all spent now,” a mocking voice interjected. “I do hate getting sloppy seconds.”
Alexia smiled as she watched a dark-haired woman clad in black leather swagger—yes, swagger was definitely the word—towards them through the colonnade. Rosenberg. Alexia didn’t even bother asking her how she got in—any even moderately skilled witch would have been able to penetrate the protective wards in the outer sanctum. It was here that things would get interesting.
“I suppose I should thank you for setting me free,” Rosenberg said. “Having to worry about things like control, restraint—it was disgusting. Loathsome.”
“They’re going to try and trap you in that prison again,” Alexia pointed out. “Your only help is to destroy the other Rosenberg before they can reintegrate you.”
Rosenberg only laughed. “You truly believe I am a fool, don’t you? I know perfectly well that if my counterpart is killed then I die with her. No, I need her in this world, as frustrating as her continued presence may be. We all have our burdens that we must bear, I suppose.”
Alexia shrugged, nonchalant. No, she hadn’t supposed the ploy would work, but it had been worth a try: it would have been so clean, so easy. Oh well. Perhaps she could get one of Rosenberg’s former allies to kill the witch now that her evil dark side was loose and dangerous.
“But now, while my better half is off running skyclad through the night-sky somewhere,” Rosenberg continued, “I can focus on what is rightfully mine: the world.”
“Osiris will never let that happen,” Alexia said. “Nor, I suppose, will your former friends. Do you really think you, a mere mortal, have the power to stand against a god?”
“I am powerful—you have no idea how powerful,” Rosenberg said. “But you’re right. It’s not enough, not yet. I need more. I want more.”
“You’re running on pure fury,” Rack observed with a smile. “Lust, greed, thirst for power—these are the things that make you what you are now. As you are, you will never be satisfied. You lack balance. It’s beautiful.”
“I’m glad you approve,” Rosenberg said, thrusting her hand forward—and just as quickly getting it knocked back. Shield around us, never broken, shield surround us, keep us from harm, Alexia invoked, praying to Osiris that the wards in the Inner Sanctum would hold. If not, after all, if she managed to drain Rack or Alexis, Rosenberg would almost instantly become incomprehensibly powerful, and all of their service to Osiris would be for naught.
“I will find the power I seek,” Rosenberg vowed, stepping back. “When I do, both you and Osiris will truly have cause to fear me.”
And with that, she turned and exited the temple. Alexia just smiled. Yes, this was the type of action she had been missing.
Kira Austin was a Jersey girl, born and true. She had never so much as left the Eastern Time Zone, although she had traveled with her family as far as Florida in one direction and Massachusetts in the other. Even once she had become Chosen she rarely found the need to leave the borders of her home state. The likes of Camden, Newark, and Jersey City provided more than enough vamp activity to keep her busy without ever having to venture too far from home. Not to mention Atlantic City, which proved to be a demon haven of an altogether different sort.
Now she was only a single time zone over, but she was in a completely different country. Hell, she was in a whole new hemisphere. She was in Brazil to fight vampires because . . . well, because of a whole slew of reasons each more fantastic-sounding than the last. Her life had certainly changed in the last year.
Instead of the icy chill of a Jersey winter, she suddenly found herself in the heat of a Brazilian summer. During the day the temperature had hit near 100 degrees. Now that it was night it was somewhat cooler, but still incredibly warm. She had gone from wearing long pants, a sweater, and a winter coat to a pair of elastic shorts and a Philadelphia Flyers jersey.
The jersey was more because of its bright orange color than any particular need to show off Philly pride to the natives of Brazil or the vampires they now hunted. Her job tonight was to be the bait. It had developed into a fairly standard Slayer tactic in the last year: one Slayer draws out a gang of unsuspecting vamps looking for an easy meal, and then her accomplices arrive to help save the night by wiping out the entire gang.
The technique was particularly effective tonight, in part because there were just so many vamps in Brazil due to the mystical convergence or whatever it was that was going on. But Kira suspected it was more that the vampires were looking for battles. They didn’t care they were falling into traps, because they weren’t looking for easy prey. Instead, they were merely out to cause as much damage as possible. If that entailed killing a Slayer, all the better, and it didn’t matter how many vamps got dusted in the process.
There was simply no way the Slayers could hope to win a war of attrition. There were simply too many vamps and not enough Slayers. Kira had already seen as many vampires that night in Brazil as she had seen in the entire past year in New Jersey.
At this moment, she thought she saw a movement in the shadows. Possibly a vamp, but it could have been just an animal. (Did they have squirrels in Brazil? Maybe a monkey?) She continued down the street as nonchalantly as she could feign, fully believing the entire act wasn’t even necessary. If it was a vamp, he or she would attack.
And so she did. A wild-looking creature, with hair that clearly hadn’t seen the inside of a conditioner bottle for several decades, emerged from the shadows and lunged at her. Kira instantly jumped into the air, flipping backwards as the vamp tried to stall her momentum as she ran under Kira. The Slayer landed right behind the vamp, and staked her in a single, clean motion. Dust.
In the process, however, three more vamps had emerged from the shadows. Kira parried a few blows, trying to find an opening for her stake, then quickly ducked
Where were Akemi and Ilyana? Spinning so she could beat back all three vamps simultaneously, she quickly scanned the street around her. There they were, down at the corner—surrounded by another half-dozen vampires. She could feel her heart sink into her stomach.
She could also feel a vampire fist landing in her abdomen. Ouch.
She watched with horror—using only her peripheral vision, her main attention being on her own fight with the vamps the entire time—as one of the vamps in the distance grabbed Ilyana and quickly snapped the young girl’s neck.
Kira kicked away one of her attacking vampires, determined to make sure she didn’t share Ilyana’s fate. That vampire was now vulnerable to attack, if Kira could just get away from the other two vampires which continued their assualy. More important, there was now an opening in the wall of vampires surrounding her. She lunged forward, out of the center of the circle, and drove a stake into the heart of the isolated vamp.
As she turned to reengage the remaining vampires, a looming figure swept down from behind her and bit her on the neck.
Dawn Summers hung up the phone. “Another one dead,” she said to the empty room.
At least, she believed it was an empty room. Ethan stood outside the kitchen, just outside of her sight line, listening as she paced the room in agitation.
Casualty reports had been coming in all night. As expected, the Slayers had taken heavy losses. That had, of course, been more or less inevitable ever since the Summers girl had ordered that the Slayers hunt in patrols of three. It wasn’t nearly enough to protect their own, but they needed the added groups to adequately protect the Brazilian civilians.
It was one of those problems that had no satisfactory solution, Ethan mused. He listened as Dawn opened one of the cupboards. The brandy, presumably.
Ethan had seen many girls like her in his lifetime. Not primordial energy fashioned into a human teenager, of course. In that way, she was unique. But the darkness he saw in her soul was very familiar to him. The confusion, the turmoil, the need to break rules and to lash out angrily at a world which refused to understand her, all that he knew well—had seen in all sorts of girls ranging from fellow Chaos worshippers to two-pound shags.
Never before in his experience, however, had the fate of the world rested on such a girl. It was simply another irony on top of a world of others. She had spent the entire day planning out the night’s hunt, coordinating the efforts of each three-Slayer team with the others so that the total effect would be one of a single devastating army. Janus, Master of Chaos, he silently prayed. This night is Yours. This entire scenario has Your fingerprints all over it. Now look over Your children, this poor girl included. And with a final silent deep inhalation, he did what was needed, and stepped into the kitchen.
“If you continue like this, Miss Summers,” he said, “you’ll soon be an alcoholic.”
“If the world ends, I won’t have time to become an alcoholic,” she pointed out, as she put the brandy bottle and a glass on the counter. She removed another glass and looked to Ethan questioningly.
“That’s my type of logic,” Ethan agreed with a nod.
Dawn poured them each a glass of brandy, and then set the two glasses down on the kitchen table.
Ethan sat across from her and raised his glass in the air. “To living life to the fullest—and telling the consequences to sod off.”
This elicited the frown he had hoped it would have.
“The consequences are at least two dozen teenage girls who aren’t going home to their parents, all because of an order I made,” Dawn said. “Why anyone trusted me to run this war I don’t know. We all know I was created as a force for destruction. Not to mention I steal things and am not exactly emotionally stable.”
“You were trusted because there wasn’t anyone else who could be. Our fates are thrust upon us, as little fondness as we may hold for the fact.” Ethan hated the thought that his life belonged to anything other than his own caprice. He worshipped Chaos in large part because he was attracted to the idea of a will that was radically free in a world that was largely random. Still, he knew that sometimes from within that Chaos a pattern emerged that could not be resisted, as much as he might try.
“I’m with my sister on that one,” said Dawn, looking at the full brandy glass, not yet drinking it. “Fuck destiny.”
“Oh believe me, Miss Summers, if I could only find it, I most certainly would.”
This seemed to force a rather dark-sounding laugh from her. Still, her features returned to an unhealthy brood almost immediately. “I’m still a force for destruction. Evil.”
“Oh, come on,” Ethan said. “If I’m not evil, surely you cannot be.”
Dawn seemed to consider this. “I guess that’s true,” she admitted at last.
“It is a far too black-and-white world where your only options are good and evil. Perhaps your sister has the luxury of moving in such a world, but you and I cannot afford it.”
“’You and I’?” Dawn asked quizzically.
“Not just you and I,” Ethan amended. “Rupert’s in the same boat, you know. You’re marked as much as we are, even if you don’t have Eyghon’s tattoo on your arm. That ring on your finger does it just as well.” Dawn’s eyes glanced quickly to the Ring of Ouroboros she wore on her right hand. Ethan continued. “One day, Miss Summers, you will kill somebody. Not just send him off to die, but actually take his life in your own hands and end it, because you and no one else decided that he could not be allowed to live.”
“I couldn’t.” He noticed she didn’t quite look him in the eye when she said it.
“Bosh,” he answered. “Not only can you, you will. Because when it happens, you won’t have any other choice. Just as you didn’t have any choice but to send those girls to their deaths tonight.”
This time she looked him straight in his eyes, and he recognized the gaze he saw there. The longing, the need to deny what was true. The inability to run from oneself, and the intense desire to try. “I don’t want to.”
“Then walk away,” Ethan answered easily. “Go back to Italy. No one made you go behind Ripper and your sister’s backs. You didn’t have to bust Beth and me out of prison. You can turn back at any time.”
Dawn’s eyes dropped to the still-full brandy glass. “No, I can’t,” she muttered at last. “And you know it.”
Thank Janus, Ethan thought to himself. “We are each of us who we are,” he told her. “Myself, the disciple of chaos. Your sister, the champion for good. Even Osiris Himself has His place in the Chaos of the universe.”
“Place in chaos? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Didn’t it? He wasn’t sure himself if it made sense or not, as he was winging most of the conversation almost entirely by ear, just as he liked it. But if he was going to pull this off, he had to make her believe he had access to wisdom he didn’t actually possess. “It makes perfect sense and you know it. Don’t play coy with me, little girl.”
She said nothing, seeming to accept his bluff.
He paused, then stood up and walked towards Dawn. He knew what she needed now, what he had to do. Janus, he thought, she is truly one of Your children.
“Such a young, innocent creature,” he said, running his fingers along the side of her face. The deliberately gentle touch of his hand on her face turned harsh as he dug his fingers into her cheek. “How does that feel?” he asked.
“It hurts,” she answered, pulling away. “Ouch.”
“And?” he asked, prompting, as he looked at the four red welts that had already begun to form.
“I kind of liked it,” she admitted after a moment, her voice low. “Is this how Buffy felt when she went to Spike?” she asked, presumably more to herself than to Ethan. “So . . . so desperate for feeling that even pain feels good?” She would still be able to feel the sensation, he knew, stinging on the side of her face.
“Pain is part of Chaos,” Ethan said. He knew what she needed, of course. She needed the darkness, the bleakness, the pain. What he would do now is what he would need to do, for the good of Chaos. Not that he wouldn't enjoy doing it, of course.
Quickly, before she could register his movement and block it, he grabbed her by the neck and twisted pulling her out of her chair in a single quick and fluid motion. He could feel her try to resist, but he was stronger and bigger and his experience with martial arts exceeded her own not-inconsiderable fighting experience. He sat down in the chair that she had vacated, then pulled her down so that she lay across his lap. She continued to struggle, but he he held her down in that position until she finally stopped, realizing she would not be able to break free.
"That girl, the one they just called about. What was her name?"
"There were three," Dawn admitted, trying to twist to be able to look up at him. He held her still, an iron grip on the back of her neck holding her head facing the floor. "Kira Austin, Ilyana Saumu, and Akemi Si-Ti.”
Continuing to hold Dawn down with his left hand, Ethan raised his right hand in the air and brought his palm down, hard, on the girl's backside, smiling in satisfaction as she involuntarily let out a quick gasp of pain. Then he did it two more times. "And the girl before that?"
"Serafina Walters."
He spanked her again. “Isadora Bianchi," she told him, this time without prompting. He hit her again, then spread his legs so he could reach underneath and find the fly of her jeans. When she realized what he was trying to do, she began to squirm again, violently thrashing on his lap, but he applied pressure to a point behind her neck and she stopped. Continuing to hold her down with one hand, he used his free hand to unbutton her jeans and unzip her zipper, then pulled down first her jeans and then the pink thong which had been underneath. He looked at the naked buttocks which now stared back at him, already a little pink from the spanks he had given her through her clothing. "Who else?"
“Vanessa Reifsnyder."
He spanked her, feeling his palm slap this time against the naked flesh. Yes, that was so much more satisfying, he thought.
"And?”
“Cynthia Novacek.”
She recited over a dozen more names without any further encouragement from Ethan. She had no difficulty remembering each of the deceased Slayers' names, as he knew she would not. After each name, he'd spank her again, and her buttocks grew a little redder. The idea, after all, was to hurt her, because that was what he knew she needed. A true child of Janus, she needed to feel the intense pain he could cause her. He smiled as he spanked her again. Just as true a child of Janus, he derived intense enjoyment from causing that pain. It was the yin and yang, the night and the day—the two faces of Janus.
Eventually the litany of names stopped. Ethan spanked her a few more times just for the hell of it, than let her get up. "I absolve you of your guilt, Miss Summers," he told her, with all the seriousness he could manage. "Go forth and sin some more."
She turned to him, her jeans and pants still at her ankles so that he now had an unobstructed view of her from the waist down. He offered her her glass of brandy; she took it and downed the glass in a single gulp.
"I rather suppose that Beth will be sleeping in the living room with the Wiccans tonight," Ethan told her, conversationally, as if gossip was the thing one did with a teenaged girl with her pants around her ankles. (If that were true, perhaps gossip would have held more of an appeal for Ethan. As it was, he preferred to act.) He knew that, having given Dawn what she needed, he should now bow out into the night, wisdom imparted. He had done the job the universe required of him, and to do anything else would be to take advantage of a troubled young girl. As usual, of course, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that.
"With all of them?” Dawn asked, sounding surprised.
"They will all be in sleeping in the living room,” Ethan explained, “as they did last night. If Beth sleeps with them, it will be with all of them. As for activities other than sleeping, I suppose Beth will be with as many as are willing. Most of them, I'd think. On a night like this, when one is surrounded by so much death, one likes to take part in life."
Dawn nodded, thoughtfully. "I'd like to take part in life."
TBC. . . . here
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