Title: Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter Seven Author: Katharyn Rosser Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story. Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS. Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here. Summary: An alternative version of the events surrounding the Gem of Amara incident. Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers. Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show. Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about. Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence. Notes: This is a longer one, to make up for the shorter parts that we had earlier. I think it’s also one you might have a lot of fun with. Things worked out a little differently here and readers of my earlier work may recognise a pattern to how this turns out. A little rule – that will become important – to how I tell this story is about what happens. The changes made in the continuity are largely limited to Sunnydale and the Scoobies (though the ripples will expand) and so some things will change, some things won’t happen but if it’s something that comes from outside town then the chances are it will still happen – or at least start – as it did in the canon. Hence, in this chapter, we find vampires from outside Sunnydale back there at about the same time as in the canon. Faolan’s dead pool might seem ready to claim its first victim… Thanks to: A different Louise… (Yes, I have two Louise’s in my life.) This one is my personal trainer and this morning I have to thank her for very nearly making me puke. She said she might come read this so… yeah, thanks for almost making me puke. Better than actually making me puke, of course. I had to be clear, because saying my partner ‘almost made me puke’ would be unfortunate…
“There’s… there’s just something that’s skankier about this than I ever felt before,” Willow said, even though she’d been in some pretty skanky places, been covered in demon goop, done a Carrie impression and almost been burnt at the stake.
This though…?
“Really?” Giles asked, but she could tell that he was only paying scant attention to her. He liked babysitting about as much as the rest of them did, but Oz had asked a favour of him and he’d accepted.
Someone – apparently - had to stay with her while everyone else ran off being useful. Just in case.
That wasn’t even the skanky part.
She’d been bitten.
Even then… occupational hazard.
But she’d been bitten by Harmony.
Okay, on the one hand there was the whole being bitten thing. This wasn’t a hickey, bitch had drawn blood – which was kind of the point and meant she wasn’t as complete a failure as a vampire as she had been as a human being. Snyder would be so proud.
On the other… it was Harmony.
Despite the protestations of friendship and how great it was to see her when they’d met up, Harmony had been a terror in her life as long as Cordelia had and just because the Queen bitch had come around, didn’t mean that she had to actually like either of them.
Especially when she’d turned out to be one of the – blood-sucking – living dead.
With Cordelia, well there was a guilt thing there and the girl really had come around to the light side of the force. Right now she was sat in LA working for Angel while trying to be an actress. Harmony didn’t even have those (very well) hidden depths that Cordy had revealed after leaving Sunnydale.
So for someone to turn her into a vampire? It’d hardly been deliberate of course, but… It was Harmony. As in ‘God damn.’
Now, with Oz and the gang on the chase and trying to figure out what – if anything – was going on in her vacuous little head, Giles was left here, watching her. Despite the fact that they all knew it wasn’t like she was going all Night of the Living Dead and turning into a vampire just because she’d been bitten. If it had worked that way the place would be overrun with vampires – more vampires than people by now.
So the big, bad librarian was really here for her protection. However, the weapons box wasn’t even unlocked. In fact it was covered with so many heavy books that maybe she could beat Harmony to death with more easily than get at any of the contents. Not that Harm had known what a book was back in the old days… You know, the ‘old days’, a few months ago, just on the other side of town…
Before they’d blown up the school.
A world away and a lifetime ago. That was how it felt like anyway.
“Are you even listening to me?” she asked, rubbing her neck where Harmony had bitten her.
“Skankier,” Giles said, proving that he’d heard her.
“Definitely.”
“Perhaps,” he said, shifting into theorising mode, “it’s something to do with the connection you must feel. She was hardly a friend, but there must’ve been rather more than that the last time you had a close encounter of that nature, with your own Doppelganger, your shadow from another universe just a sidestep away.”
“Don’t think so,” Willow said. She really hadn’t connected the two things, though she couldn’t rule it out now he’d mentioned it.
“Then perhaps it’s the undercurrent of sexuality that many people feel - ”
And just when she’d thought it couldn’t get any skankier, he had to go and prove her wrong.
“Now, you just hold on Mister. You can just stop right there. Sexuality? That was Harmony. You wouldn’t have known her well, she didn’t do libraries – even if she did everything and everyone else – but it’s… Harmony. You don’t link me to Harmony via the term ‘sexuality’. Not in the same sentence. Uh, uh. No way.”
“I hardly meant you were attracted to her,” he explained, as if she was dim for even considering it. “But to be bitten is an undeniably sexual thing, at least if it doesn’t go too far and inflict real damage. In part it’s the saliva of the vampires, but also the conditioning we’ve long since been raised with.”
“You’ve been having perverted vampire dreams haven’t you?” she guessed.
“Haven’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t think that’s an appropriate question,” Willow said. After all, you couldn’t call it perverted if you were just thinking about yourself, or your doppelganger and what she seemed to have been interested in.
She? More like it.’
And instead of dream, try nightmare… Long, detailed, nightmares.
At least until there’d turned out to be a fluffy kitten in her dream. And that hadn’t been a sexual reference either. Or was it?
“And so I apologise,” he said. “But in all seriousness, the edge of sex – let’s just say ‘sensuality’ - that the vampires elicit in us can often make the violation of the bite seem all the more…”
He was searching for a word and – fearing where that might go – she supplied a get out. It was Harmony who’d bitten her after all. “Let’s just go with ‘disturbing’ and leave it at that. Okay?”
“Quite, but it’s the vulnerability and the helplessness as well as the terrible intimacy of it that cuts to the very core of us.”
“You’ve been bitten?”
“There are few Watchers who haven’t, or at least end up that way. Once we come to the attention of local Master vampires, they’ll take a perverse pleasure in our denigration if not our immediate deaths. It’s something they can take their time over, whereas when they choose to engage with a Slayer – if there is one - ”
“It’s over fast,” Willow said, realising that vampires just wanted the Slayer dead. At least the sensible ones. “Unless they’re Buffy.”
“She’s proven very tenacious,” Giles agreed. “So you see, I do know what you mean.”
“But were you ever bitten by the empty-bubble-headed, popular girl from your High school who’d made your life a misery for more years than you want to admit?” she challenged.
“Actually, I’d have to say no.”
“Then you have no idea about my pain,” Willow told him, willing to be understood as being just a little tongue in cheek.
Actually, what she really felt was a little ashamed. Harmony, of all people, had managed to bite her. That was just… What had she been doing these last few years that she let a vampire get that close? Hadn’t she learned anything doing the Scooby thing with Buffy?
No. She’d been yucking it up, pretending they’d been best buddies on the basis of Harmony actually joining the same fight that everyone else had at graduation? A fight where she’d ultimately died.
She should’ve known better. And that made her feel kind of skanky about herself too. In a battle of wits with Harmony, she’d been beaten. And that was something that she’d never, ever thought she’d be able to say.
Or think, because she wasn’t about to admit that to anyone out loud even if was true. They might not have realised. Even if the vampire hadn’t bitten her, if it had just been that she’d gotten tricked… I’d still have wanted a shower.
“Look at it this way,” he said. “Why would anyone want her as a vampire? She was an accident, randomly – and tragically – falling victim to the Mayor’s vampire lackeys.”
“Someone’s kept her alive though,” Willow pointed out. “I mean, dead. Undead. In existence even, someone must’ve helped her with that?”
“Perhaps she’s been feeding off people who once knew her, perhaps this is just the way that she operates now. Eventually those sorts of people will get too weak or stop cooperating and she’ll stand or fall on her own merits, but do remember that being a vampire doesn’t require an incredible amount of intelligence.”
Willow grinned. “You’re right, most of them are dumb as… things that are dumb.” Hmm.
“And the ones who aren’t? Those are the ones we end up worrying about more.”
------------------------------
“Tara.”
Her own name was like the crack of a whip, calling her to action and she turned, flustered, and faced Diana.
She’d been told to meet the woman here, at the gates to the campus and… there hadn’t been much chance that she’d say ‘no.’ It hadn’t really been an invitation. Diana had known that and here she was. After the demonstration at Wicca Group, and the certainty that Diana possessed much more power than she’d demonstrated so far… Well, curiosity was all mixed with wariness. And there was a healthy bit of ‘someone needed to know what was going on’ in the pot too.
Even if that someone had to be her.
“H-hi,” she said, waving.
Once again the young woman was barefoot and yet utterly unmussed. Even though she looked like she was wearing the same dress again, it was clean and neat and unstained too. No one stayed this perfect unless they were taking care of themselves. So not homeless… Unless it was a spell? An illusion? But she’d have been able to detect that.
Wouldn’t she?
“Gratitudes for your attendance,” Diana told her, slipping into place alongside her. “Come.”
And then she was striding away. Even though Diana was no taller than she was, Tara still had to hurry to both catch up and stay alongside her. The other woman just didn’t look to be hurrying at all.
But they were definitely heading off campus.
“Is-is anyone else coming?” she asked.
“Anyone else? Who is there?” Diana looked at her coolly and Tara understood that they were well aware of each other. The power was there in both of them, hers much less than Diana’s, plainly, but what she was really asking was whether there was another person in the group who had even a smidge of that?
So she shook her head. Moreover, not yet understanding what she was dealing with – and with no recourse to either help or advice from anyone else – it was knowledge about this woman that she needed.
Because she had no doubt that there was a hard edge to Diana, one that she didn’t want to be on the wrong side of. At least not until she was very sure of what she was dealing with, not until she had some idea of how to deal with it.
If there was even any need. Because… what had Diana actually done? Expelled one of the less tolerant – and vapid – people from the Wicca Group and convinced all the rest of them that they were dealing with something real when it came to magic. No bad thing, both things she’d have wanted if asked, though not in the way it had been done.
Tara had already known that magic existed, of course, but the others hadn’t and now that they did believe, they were energised and excited about it. At least those who were left, the ones who could deal. Why, in any way, should that have been a bad thing? Perhaps because any religion or belief that required demonstrable proof to justify itself wasn’t something you had faith in at all.
But that wasn’t Diana’s fault.
Though she was – and had been – a Wiccan her whole life, Tara was experienced enough to understand that the world wasn’t the thin veneer that most people saw, that magic didn’t just come from people like her.
And she understood, intimately, about demons….
So, for her, the belief and the ‘tricks’ were different. The people Diana had convinced the other night were confusing the two. And that did disturb her enough to stay wary. It felt like it could be manipulation. Or it might all be real.
But there was no denying she was excited too.
Not to mention curious.
“No,” Tara said. “There’s r-really no one else.”
“Then we are in agreement. Come.”
She was thankful that she’d worn her hard-wearing Doc Marten boots again as they hadn’t gone far before Diana was off the footpaths into the bushes around the entrance to the campus. Rather than the easy path, instead she was only deviating from her path where actual growth or a tree blocked their route.
It took Tara some time to ask the question that ought to have been asked at the very get-go, but she was afraid of giving offence and also wary of… well, speaking up without all the facts. But eventually she simply had to ask. “Where are we g-going?”
Unlike Diana’s easy passage across the land, she was struggling. The other woman’s should’ve been hopping up and down with sticks, stones and splinters in her feet. Scratched bloody. But Diana’s movement was unimpeded, fluid and unencumbered by dirt, branches, thorns or anything else really.
Tara could hardly say the same, but the pace that Diana set was a harsh one considering the landscape. She also had the feeling that perhaps there was a degree of impatience about her too, that they were moving so slowly. It was an air that she had felt in the Wiccan Group.
Diana was obviously not a patient woman.
And considering the way those brambles had just flicked back at her bare feet and legs, without leaving any kind of mark, she might not even be a woman at all. But… how impolite would it be to ask ‘what are you?’ Better to wait and see whether their destination would reveal everything she needed to know. Right?
Starting with whether Diana was someone worthy of her respect? Or was she someone she had to warn others about and somehow oppose? Right and wrong would – or should - be obvious and she wouldn’t take part in the latter. Finding someone that she could tell though, if she had to, that would be tricky. The police wouldn’t want to know so… What?
It really would’ve helped to have someone to bounce these ideas off too. Maybe someone who knew what they were doing? Did that sort of person exist?
“P-please wait,” Tara said, her skirt caught in more of the clinging brambles.
Unexpectedly Diana did just that, stopping and giving no sign of the frustration Tara had simply assumed would be there when she was delayed. But then she didn’t offer to help or express any regret over the route or the predicament Tara had found herself in either. Disinterest -
And then she noticed the eyes.
Two pairs of them, caught in moonlight.
“Diana, there are - ” She broke off as the eyes became part of dark forms and were revealed as… dogs.
No, not dogs. Hounds. That was what you’d have to call them. Hunting hounds. Powerful, large. These weren’t retrieval dogs either, trained to bring back a bird or to chase down small animals into holes or the underbrush either.
These were animals that helped to bring bigger game down. Like mountain gorilla’s, perhaps. It would’ve been appropriate to the size.
And they were obviously Diana’s.
First of all creatures like these didn’t just wander the landscape, they never had. Wolves were one thing, but these were dogs, domesticated and bred for purpose.
Second, they fell into place alongside the Goddess and teased affection from her.
No matter what she is, the dogs like her. That had to be a good sign, right?
“They’re b-big,” Tara said. Little Miss State-the-Obvious.
“But you show no fear,” Diana replied. “This is good.”
She shook her head. They’d always had dogs, she and Donny had both had their own for a long time, the picks of a farm dog’s litter when she’d been five years old. And the bitch who’d birthed them had been all but wild, wouldn’t tolerate being in the house for all that she’d worked the farm on demand. So no, she wasn’t afraid either because of their size or the simple fact of being dogs.
If she was wary it was because you had to respect any animal, as well as demand that same respect from them. She was wary, yes. Afraid, no.
One of the dogs wandered over to her, tail high and slowly wagging. At ease and not at all excited. You couldn’t trust a wagging tail, not if there was excitement – good or bad. But since he was calm? Yeah…
His head well was above her waist and so when it demanded some affection from her too, it was butting into the underside of her breasts. She scratched under his chin, realising that if he jumped up she’d just be flattened.
“What’s his name?”
Diana seemed genuinely surprised and perhaps even a little pleased to be asked. “That is Jupiter. The bitch is Callisto.”
“Hi,” Tara said, receiving a lick against her palm in return. “I guess she can’t keep you in dorms, huh? Too big to be sneaky.” There wasn’t enough sneak in the whole world for these guys.
Diana laughed. “Your attempts at gathering information are transparent, Tara.”
“You don’t live in dorms, do you?”
“No.”
Nor, she supposed, did Diana attend UC Sunnydale, even though she wandered its halls with impunity and now attended the Wicca Group. That ought to make her wary too.
Warier…
“Please, where are we going?”
“Close now,” Diana replied, turning and starting forwards again, Jupiter gave Tara another quick lick and then bounded back to his Mistresses side.
And Tara followed in their wake.
Not out of fear, she’d been given no concrete cause to be afraid of this young woman. It was like the dog. Diana was an unknown quantity and plainly had the potential to be dangerous. But there was no real, proven, need to be afraid of her.
Yet.
And there was every reason to hope that, maybe, she could be a force for good. You had to be positive, didn’t you?
“There,” Diana said, stopping at the top of the hill, looking down towards Sunnydale proper. The lights stretched out ahead of them, the hazy glow that had marked the town’s position was fully explained. Electricity, lights, air conditioning, the fumes churned out by cars.
“Sunnydale? The town?”
“No,” Diana said, pointing when Tara reached her side. “There.”
They were looking down at what looked like nothing more than a crypt. Of course she’d already noticed that the town was full of graveyards, more than you’d ever think could be needed considering its size, but equally there was some strange history in this town. You just had to know where to look in order to find it.
“Wh-what’s in there?”
“A creature,” Diana said. “One that I’d have an end to.”
That was what the dogs were for? They really were hunting?
“I d-don’t - ”
About to say that she didn’t really agree with blood sports, hunting with hounds or anything else apart from the simple necessity of shooting a wild dog or something if it started taking livestock, she was silenced by Diana’s explanation. “A demon.”
So now she was afraid, fear clamped around her heart like a fist and it struggled against the constraint, beating like mad. Pushing up into her throat and making her feel like she wanted to barf. “Wh-what?”
“You call them vampires now.”
It obviously never occurred to Diana that she wouldn’t know what a demon was, or a vampire, nor that she wouldn’t believe in them anyway. Momma’s lessons couldn’t have been complete without an explanation of what else was out there in the world. And if Momma hadn’t told her than Daddy would’ve made it plain – and had.
There was such a thing as demons. One was inside her, waiting for its chance to claim her for the first of many times. Did Diana know that? And what would she do when she found out?
Hunt her down too? Would these dogs turn on her?
“You hunt vampires?” Tara asked.
Diana didn’t answer, instead setting off down the hill with the dogs at her side. Seeing little alternative since she didn’t want to be caught out here alone with vampires on the prowl, Tara followed and closed the gap.
“Do you hunt them?”
“I hunt,” Diana said, whatever that was supposed to mean.
“Why this – why here?” Tara followed up.
“its presence offends me.”
They came down to doors of the crypt and Jupiter paused, sniffing the air but looking elsewhere from the doorway. When Tara checked his Mistress, she found Diana almost in the same pose, but rather than sniffing she was listening. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Others come,” Diana explained. If you could call that an explanation. Whether that was a good or a bad thing, Diana didn’t say, she simply pushed open the doors to the Crypt. They creaked and groaned, made of solid iron they had to have been heavy, but they’d plainly been used recently otherwise they’d have been rusted shut. Right?
All the same, when Tara tried to give it a shove on the way past it wasn’t moving hardly at all. Which made Diana physically stronger than her physique – which looked to be honed - suggested. Not pumped, but definitely fit and lean. Neither was she beautiful, nor even necessarily ‘pretty.’ The eyes were too strange, the features came together just a little to ‘harsh’ to be considered beautiful by most standards. Other times, other places, perhaps that judgment would be different. Not here and now though.
Anyone else might feel differently ,she supposed. But it was here, like this, that Diana was in her element and at her most impressive. Striding through the woodland, hounds at her side, moving with a purpose. Not sat in a room full of easily impressed would-be-Wiccans.
And that was counting herself amongst the easily impressed. It just wasn’t coloured by attraction. She’d perhaps never found herself less attracted to a woman as she was – or wasn’t – to Diana. Some quality, something about her that wasn’t quite physical, simply rubbed her up the wrong way.
Though that might’ve been an unfortunate way to think about it.
“Is that bad?” Tara asked. “Others coming?” Diana didn’t even seem disturbed that they were about to be joined by someone else – whoever it was. She was focused on the hunt for this vampire that had offended her.
The dogs were focused too. Their tails had stopped wagging and lowered, their ears had flattened and their eyes were fixed forward. A predator’s stare. They looked… dangerous rather than just ‘big’.
Diana didn’t answer her question, leading the way silently.
“Harm? Is that you?”
A man’s voice, foreign. Probably British and powerful too but that could be the echoes.
Other noises, the sounds of digging once he’d finished asking his question, then – when there was no answer – he repeated it.
“Harm?”
Neither of them answered, following the stone passageway… Tara was willing to bet that not many crypts were laid out like this. It was something that was done with a purpose greater than a resting place for the dead.
“Bloody hell, woman, I told you about that coded knock. I told you about answering me, no matter what you’re listening to on that bloody Walkman. There’s only a Slayer at large, you know, ‘death to the fanged ones’ and all that - ”
The blonde man – or vampire - stopped dead in his tracks when he saw them there, locking his eyes on her first for some reason.
“Who the hell are you? And what’s with the mutts?”
Jupiter and Callisto growled, in the confined space it was like twin rolls of thunder echoing across the landscape. Both the hounds were ready to spring, but seemed restrained by the will of their owner.
Diana stepped forwards, pushing past him and into the space beyond. The difference in height between the barefoot young woman and the blonde, short haired vampire wasn’t quite comical, but despite the physique, there was still quite a difference. It didn’t seem to matter though and she brushed him aside like he was nothing.
“Hey!”
“You seek the Gem of Amara.” Diana wasn’t asking a question.
“The what now?” the vampire asked. “Don’t know what you’re talking about love, now why don’t you be a good girl and bugger off before you make me angry?”
Tara might’ve felt vulnerable, but Jupiter and Callisto had - at no command she’d noticed - held back and let Diana go ahead without them. Somehow she knew that their outright hostility, flanking her, would keep the vampire in check. Diana would appear to be the easier target. Knowing the theory of the demonic undead, didn’t mean she’d ever met one, so having the dogs there was reassuring.
“Who’s your friend, love? She’s a real sweetheart.”
Tara gave him an apologetic smile, even knowing what was coming. But Diana had said she was hunting the vampire – now she was after some sort of gem? Frankly, she didn’t know much more than he did.
“What are you, mute?” He didn’t wait for her to answer following Diana into a room where the vampire had evidently been digging. He was filthy and the source of all that dirt was right here. Looking for this gem obviously. Who Amara was and why his, her - or it’s - Gem was here, she had no idea.
“Do you have it?” Diana asked, looking at him.
“I already told you, no bloody clue what you’re talking about, now get your bony ass out of here before I have to hurt you – actually, no, on second thoughts, I’ll just hurt you.”
The vampire leapt, his face changing into some terrible visage at the same instant. A human, rage-filled cry turning into a demon’s hiss in that moment. Must be the teeth, she realised. And when he made it to Diana he… He was caught easily in one of her hands, held by the throat up with his feet dangling up off the ground.
By her side, the dogs had kept pace with her, their growls rumbled once again. But their mistress didn’t seem to need the help.
Tossed aside with a clatter, the vampire sprawled with his butt up above his head against one, rough-hewn wall.
“What are you, a bloody Slayer?” he asked, standing up and brushing himself down. “Did the other one kick the bucket? Good riddance, she was annoying little bint who overstayed her welcome – Hey! Get away from that.”
Diana ignored him, examined the spot where he’d been digging and then plunged her hand into the face of the dirt. It looked to be packed solid by time – he’d been using a pickaxe as well as a shovel – and with the moisture it should’ve thrown her hand off as surely as concrete.
Instead Diana’s arm sunk into it and she looked just like the vet had, when he’d come to examine one of the few cows they’d had and plunged his arm… well, she looked like that. And then she was pulling it out, still unmarked by the dirt and the soil – Tara noticed. Her fist closed around something.
“Oi! Hey! That’s mine!”
Diana didn’t look like she cared, briefly examining the ring in her hand and then it was gone with a close of her fist, like a magic trick. It wouldn’t have surprised Tara if she’d reached over and pulled it from behind his ear.
Needless to say that didn’t happen.
“Give that back, tell her to bring it back. I’ve been bloody digging for weeks to find that. And I was that bloody close.”
Tara shrugged, there wasn’t much she could say. Like Diana was going to do as she asked?
“It was not crafted for such as you, vampire.”
“Of course it was you dumb bint, give it back or I’m really going to have to take pleasure in your dismemberment. And it’ll be a messy one.”
“Perhaps you seek to goad me into answering challenge?” Diana asked.
“Nah, I’ll just take the bloody ring. Now.”
“Pookie?”
Tara, nearest the entrance to the chamber, found herself face to face with a young woman with long blonde hair and a puzzled expression.
“Who are you?” the newcomer asked her.
“I’m - ” No one, Tara had been about to say, but didn’t get the chance.
“You’re bringing another ho around now, Spike?”
Ho? That was new. No one had ever called her a ‘ho’ before.
“Harm, you really know how to pick your bloody moments, you know that?” the male - who was presumably called Spike - asked.
“Well, what am I supposed to think? You bring two girls down here… You might be a vampire, but you’re still a man. My man. Or you’re supposed to be.”
The way that Spike rolled his eyes suggested he was anything but. Or at least wished it were so.
“Get you game face on, Harm. This bitch has the ring.”
“Our ring?!”
“Yeah, our bloody ring.”
“You know, if there’s one thing I hate more than a ho, it’s a thief,” Harmony said, her face twisted into its demonic form. “Especially when they steal from my Spikey-wikey.”
Spike shook his head, probably not feeling quite as dangerous with Harmony as he had alone. They were an odd couple, that was for sure.
“Harm, focus. Kill ‘em and make sure we don’t lose the ring.”
Harmony turned on her then, correctly picking her out as the easier target but before she could get more than three steps, Jupiter’s jaws closed around her outstretched arm and Tara heard the snapping of bones even above the strangely girlish shriek of pain. You didn’t expect that of a vampire, even though she wasn’t sure what she did expect.
The weight of the springing dog also knocked Harmony off balance and so she was on the ground, struggling against bulk of snapping jaws and wailing for help from her paramour.
But Spike had his own battles to fight. Tara, not knowing what else to do, backed up against the wall and watched as he ignored Harmony’s cries and went for Diana, his eyes yellow and alien. His hair was obviously dyed too. It kind of looked silly. What, was he trying to make himself look younger or something?
Even more obviously he was furious. If Diana was hurt or killed then… he was going to come for her next.
Somehow though, she doubted that would happen. Diana wouldn’t let things happen that way.
The male vampire wasn’t thrown off balance as easily as the first time around and actually proved tenacious, fast as well as dangerous. But his problem wasn’t his own capabilities – even if her judgement was built only on Donny’s hogging the TV and watching wrestling 24/7 – but more that he simply wasn’t getting anywhere close to Diana.
Every punch he threw was avoided. Every charge sidestepped, sending him off balance instead of her. The de-facto leader of the Wicca Group handled him a little like a matador would a bull but without the showmanship.
Vampires, it seemed, didn’t get tired as easily as humans and that went on for a little while, punctuated by the struggles and cries of Harmony who was getting mauled by Jupiter while Callisto looked on as dispassionately as any dog could. The bitch even yawned as her counterpart tore at the vampire.
This was nothing new to her, at least. Nothing that excited her as much as getting the back of her ear scratched.
With Harmony’s arm mostly hanging off - her skin broken in dozens of places – as well as Spike’s utter inability to make contact with the source of his frustration, it was looking bad for the vampires. Even if he had managed to hit or grab Diana – which he didn’t - she appeared so unconcerned about the possibility that Tara doubted that the barefoot woman could be hurt by him at all.
If anything it looked more like Diana was avoiding him out of sheer disgust, declining to be touched by the undead.
“Finished?” Diana asked when whatever tired vampires eventually kicked in and he looked back at the girl struggling on the floor with a dog and wailing his name.
He looked dejected. He looked defeated, even if he was still mad as hell.
Tara had thought they were on the clock, because of those ‘others’ that Diana had detected. But so far she’d taken her time, allowed him his attempts to kill her and then…
Diana picked up the shovel that Spike must’ve been using to dig for what she’d just taken and slashed it upwards – blade first – from his crotch to his collar bone, opening him up like a fish, flesh, sinews and even splitting the bones of his rib cage.
“Spikey!”
“Aww, Harm, shut up…” he groaned as he sank to his knees. Obviously they felt pain, these demons, even if it wasn’t an injury that would kill him. At least not according to her Momma’s warnings.
“Callisto loves heart,” Diana explained to her casually. Her, rather than him. Then she reached forwards, into his chest and plucked it out.
She had to remind herself that it was a dead thing and there was curiously little blood involved because of what he was. Of course, nothing pumped around his body. It just gathered, got stored and was ‘digested’ after a fashion. Tara did have to flinch though as a spatter came her way when Diana flung the heart to the patient Callisto who caught it neatly and started to chew, pausing only to issue a rumbling growl when Jupiter looked her way.
Tara realised that the vampire she’d taken it from was still ‘alive’ or at least aware of what was happening, fortunately it didn’t seem to be able to speak.
With Jupiter’s attention attracted to the fleshy meal that Callisto wasn’t willing to share, he was simply holding the other vampire down. Harmony was still able to wail her way through the slowly consumption of her lover’s dead organ.
And finally there came a point when it was proven that something other than a stake, sunlight or beheading could destroy a vampire as Spike was consumed by fire and turned to ashes, but even those were burned away to nothing with Callisto snapping at them as if they were getting away from her.
Turning to Tara, Diana didn’t even have anything to say about what had just happened. “Come.”
Whether she was talking to Tara or the dogs didn’t seem to matter, but Jupiter hesitated, reluctant to leave his prey.
Harmony was pleading now, but Diana was beyond deaf to those pleas. She was utterly disinterested in them. Her command for Jupiter to leave the vampire alone and fall in beside her was based around the fact he’d ‘eaten enough.’
And Tara had to agree, he was a little more portly than Callisto and the vampire was already a mess. Harmony wasn’t going anywhere with one of her legs mauled to the bone and an arm hanging, barely attached to the rest of her.
***********************
_________________ ------------------------- If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.
Chance in *Chance* -------------------------
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