by Cynamin

Part Five

“Mama C? Are you alright?”

A tug on her skirt drew Corliss out of her reverie. She’d been distracted easily of late. Something she couldn’t identify had been bothering her for weeks. It stirred in the back of her mind, making her restless and irritable. Something was happening, something soon.

“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Corliss assured the small child. “Why are you here? What happened?”

The girl sniffled. “Mama sent me. I ran all the way . . ..”

“And you tripped, I see. Didn’t she tell you not to run?”

Sarah sniffled again and nodded.

“Well, why don’t you let me have a look at your knee, and you can tell me why your mother needs me.” Gently, Corliss lifted the small girl and set her on the table. She reached onto the shelves behind her and pulled out some cloths and bandages. “Now,” she said softly, “why does your mother need me?”

“Something with a cow,” the child said softly, swinging her legs.

Corliss smiled. “Something with a cow? Did she tell you anything else?”

Sarah shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

“Well, that’s alright. I’ll go to your house and your mother can show me. Is that good?”

Sarah nodded eagerly, and Corliss smiled again. She liked this town, and its people seemed to like her. Gathering her things, the immortal Slayer reflected on her place in this community. She was a respected, if mysterious figure; a reclusive young woman with no parents and knowledge of the healing arts. She’d lived here for years now. Mostly she saw no one, but occasionally people came to see her when they or their livestock were ill or injured.

The first basket Corliss grabbed was the wrong one, and reminded her of why else she lived here. It was her weapons basket, filled with stakes and crosses. There were plenty of monsters on this continent that preyed on the new settlers. Vampires had arrived on this shore as well, seeking better hunting with less of their kind around. Entire towns had disappeared to their combined threats.

Not this town. Corliss took some pride in the fact that she was partially responsible for the fact that the people here had thrived. Neither monsters nor plague had destroyed them yet. Grasping her medical basket, Corliss allowed the small child to lead her to her family’s home.

It was a farm, and one of the larger ones in town at that. Sarah’s mother stood in the doorway, and when she saw them she scowled a gestured impatiently for the child to get inside. Sarah scurried to do her bidding and her mother closed the door behind her. Approaching Corliss, her scowl deepened.

Corliss smiled as pleasantly as she could. “Hell, Mrs. Thomson. Sarah said you needed me, ‘something with a cow’?”

She expected the woman to smile slightly at her light tone of voice. Instead, her scowl deepened even more, and she gestured for the Slayer to follow without a word. Corliss did so, still smiling slightly as she followed Mrs. Thomson into the field. She noticed young Sarah peeking fearfully around the door at her. Corliss waved, but instead of waving back the girl looked stricken and dodged back inside the house. How odd.

Mrs. Thomson led Corliss beyond the farmhouse and into the fields. Corliss was confused. She knew that the field where the Thomsons kept their livestock was on the other side of the house - she could smell it. There was nothing in this direction except corn.

As they walked together over the hill, that sense of something about to happen became stronger. Corliss looked curiously at Mrs. Thomson, but she avoided the Slayer’s glance. There was something very odd going on, and this on top of her already present antsy feeling made her certain something bad was about to happen.

Corliss hated when her suspicions were correct. There, in the field just beyond sight of the house, stood a number of the villagers, scowls matching the one Mrs. Thomson wore on their faces. The Slayer knew it was bad news when she noticed some of the more respected members of the town. They were not unarmed, either.

Corliss looked at them all in surprise. “What is this?” she asked softly. Her fear made her sound her apparent age.

“You, Corliss Aethylwyn, are to stand trial,” one of them said.

“For what?”

The man looked at her in surprise that she didn’t know. “Why, for witchcraft.”

Several of the men circled around her swiftly, and two of them dragged her by the arms and dragged her forward. Playing the helpless young woman, Corliss did not resist. “I don’t understand,” she protested weakly.

They pulled her before one of the older men, a hunter by the looks of him, who regarded her for a moment. “I know you,” he said softly.

“You do?”

“You were on the same ship as me. Young girl, kept to yourself until several of the sailors were injured in a storm. You stirred only to help them.”

“When was this?” the first man asked.

“15 years ago.”

The older man nodded, then turned to a couple of the men who had stood back until now. Bearing torches, they moved off down the hill. Corliss was filled with dread.

“No! Not my home!” she pleaded.

The man in charge grinned slightly.

Corliss knew she could not play at being a helpless young child any longer. They already knew some of her secret; she could no longer protect that. She could only protect her life now, a life that at any moment might literary go up in flames. If the vampire died, so would she.

So Corliss fought. She broke the hold of the men holding her quickly and knocked them away from her. She did now stay to tangle with the townsfolk intent on trying her for witchcraft. Instead, she broke immediately from their circle to the woods, trying to run for her home. She would have made it, too, but the hunter lifted his rifle and shot. She felt the pain briefly in her back as she fell, before unconsciousness took her.

She awoke well into the night, her wound healed. She had been left for dead; after all, what was one dead witch to them? Still, she was alive, so she had a chance to save the vampire once again. She almost turned away for a moment, gave brief thought to giving up on the life she was leading. But she couldn’t do that. Even though they had tried to kill her, she could not leave these people to die at the hands of monsters. So instead, Corliss got to her feet and ran for home.

All that greeted her was the burned out shell of a house. Not just any house. This had been her home, the only place she’d really felt at home since she fled the Circle hundreds of years before. She cared for these people, this place, but it was all over now. Silently, the Slayer entered the ruins of her cottage. She dug through the wreckage with her bare hands, not knowing what she was going to find. All she knew is that she had to find the box where the vampire had slept through the last 100 years.

She was not prepared for what she did find. The vampire was gone. The box was gone, ashes. Part of her mind insisted that was all that would be left if the vampire had died, but she knew that if that had been the case that would have been all that was left of her as well. No, the vampire had to be alive, and here somewhere.

Out of the corner of her eye, nearly invisible in the dark, Corliss saw a human form on the floor in the corner. It was not the vampire, not what she expected at all. The fire had not killed this man; a vicious bite mark on his neck showed what had.

It was the vampire’s victim.

Silently, Corliss cursed herself. That feeling of something stirring, the one that had been bothering her, had not been a sign of the events to come at all. Well, maybe they were, actually, for what she had felt was not herself, but part of the vampire stirring.

The vampire was awake.

Fading back into the woods, no one saw the young-old Slayer go. She turned her back on her home and everyone she had come to know. She had a new purpose now, one that would last to her dying day. She had to find this vampire and destroy it.

She would never be at home again.

The night’s dreams preoccupied Buffy only briefly when she awoke. She would have been thinking of them over breakfast, but she quickly found something new to worry her. It was the newspaper, and a brief article hidden on the corner of the local section. She glanced at this section of the paper a lot, knowing that often recent monster attacks could be hidden within the articles. This article was an attack, but it wasn’t demons as far as she could tell. Someone had broken into the Sunnydale Hospital long-term care area, almost killed a coma patient before security, for once doing their job, apprehended the man. No permanent harm was done.

Buffy saw the article differently. She saw “long-term care” and “coma” and came to an easy conclusion. Faith.

Taking the article with her, Buffy once again stood at Giles’ door. She was surprised to meet Willow on the way there, having seen the same article, and now the two of them waited for the ex-Watcher to answer their knocks. When he did not do so immediately Buffy opened the door.

The reason for his delay was quickly explained, when Buffy heard Giles talking on the telephone. “Really? To me?” he was saying. “And I’d know what it meant?”

“Giles!” Buffy called, letting him know who was there.

Giles looked in her direction, nodding briefly to acknowledge her presence. “Listen, I must go,” he said into the telephone. He paused, listening to whoever was on the other end of the call. “Yes,” he said finally. Then, “Of course. I’ll see you tonight then.” He hung up the phone without a “goodbye.”

Buffy was looking at him oddly when he ended the conversation. “Got a date tonight?” she asked with a grin, unable to resist teasing the older man.

“Certainly not!” Giles said quickly, looking stricken at the thought.

“I was teasing,” Buffy explained.

“Um, yes, of course.” Giles rubbed his eyes for a moment, looking tired. “Why are you two here so early?” he asked finally.

Buffy handed Giles the article, while Willow explained. “I checked the police report this morning,” she said. “It was Faith that was attacked.”

Giles sighed. “I was afraid of this,” he said.

“You were?” Buffy demanded. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I only came across this last night, myself, Buffy,” Giles explained.

“Came across what?”

Giles sat down, and the two young women sat down as well, looking at him impatiently. “I was continuing my research on your dreams and the origin of the Slayers,” Giles explained. “As I told you before, the Slayers were magically created until Corliss’s near death and escape. The Circle had to come up with a new way to create the Slayers.”

“Create the Slayers?” Willow asked bewildered.

“Yes. The magic they had command of was given . . . a basic instruction, if you will. It now was an entity unto itself, giving its magic to girls of a certain age, meeting strict criteria, and then picking a new girl once she died. Thus, the Circle became the Watchers, finding those girls likely to be picked by their predecessors’ magic, and . . . well, you know the rest.”

Willow looked awed. “Wow,” she said softly. “That sort of magic . . . I don’t think anyone today could create that sort of . . . living spell. I mean, magic that lives forever, past when all of its casters have died, and not tied to a new person or an object? I didn’t think that was possible!”

Giles nodded. “It’s not.”

“Huh?” Buffy was beyond confused.

“The Circle got around certain magical restrictions by giving their spell a . . . lifespan, if you will. A time limit.”

“And time’s running out,” Buffy said in understanding.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“It will not last beyond the end of this year.”

Buffy looked at him in shock. “Giles! That’s only days away! You mean in . . . three days I won’t have my powers anymore and there will be no more Slayers?!”

Giles shook his head. “You will still have your powers. But should either you or Faith die after the new year, your powers will not pass on to a new Slayer. There will be no new Slayers.”

Oddly, Willow started chuckling. When Buffy and Giles looked at her oddly, she explained. “It’s like a Y2K bug for Slayers,” she said.

“Actually, that’s not that far off,” Giles agreed. “The Circle did not think their descendants would be incapable of creating new Slayers.”

“But the Watchers can’t do it,” Buffy said. “So they attacked Faith so there would be a new Slayer in their control until they figure something out.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be in danger as well,” Giles explained. “They may try to go after you, having failed to eliminate Faith.”

“No problem, Giles,” Buffy assured him. “I just have to live through New Years, and they’ll leave me alone. How hard can three days be?”

On to Part Six

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