Adversaries: Part 4

Spirit-Killer.

The word rattled around in the back of Buffy’s head as she sat in class that afternoon.

She had slept until noon, and was still tired, but knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep any longer. Also, she really needed to go to her afternoon classes.

Part of her – the Slayer part – thought she should be out hunting Spike. However, Buffy had calmed down somewhat from the driving panic of the night before and realized that she couldn’t spend her days going through every enclosed room in Sunnydale looking for the vampire. No, she would patrol as she normally did. He would find her.

Then they would see what happened.

Buffy was still unhappy over what Spike had done. It felt almost like a betrayal, which was ridiculous. Since when did he owe her anything? Thinking about the Spirit-Killer was a good distraction. It wasn’t like she was going to participate in her history class anymore. Her professor had made it quite clear that her comments were unwelcome.

She thankfully escaped when the bell rang and headed for the college library. She didn’t spend much time there, research being more in Willow’s line and Giles having a much bigger collection of Slayer-oriented material. Still, she’d never heard him use the term Spirit-Killer before.

Buffy battled with one of the catalog terminals for a few minutes and finally located the ‘search by key-word’ category. Almost holding her breath, she typed ‘spirit-killer’ and pressed Enter.

One entry came back: Flashing-eyed Athene: The Warrior-Heroine Archetype of North America

Great. I’m getting sleepy just reading the title. Dutifully, Buffy wrote down the card number and headed for the stacks.

Flashing-eyed Athene turned out to have distressingly small print, but at least it had an index. How does Giles get off on this kind of thing, Buffy wondered despairingly. He’d probably want to read the whole book. And take notes. And highlight stuff.

She flipped to the page on the Spirit-killer:

An obscure, yet interesting figure in the ranks of North American Warrior Heroines is found in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
In 1932, Mathilda Sawyer was known as the ‘Spirit-Killer’. Oral tradition (c.f. ‘Folktales of the Blue Ridge. J47. p.103’) claims that the area was populated by various occult beings, including demons, ghosts and vampires. Mathilda functioned as nemesis of these beings and protector of the human inhabitants of the area. Those who claim to have known her say that she possessed super-human strength, speed, and endurance which she began to exhibit around age 16.

Before that time, she was repeatedly beaten by her father as were her five brothers and sisters. However, according to contemporary accounts, on her sixteenth birthday, Mathilda defended herself by bodily throwing her father out of the house and across the yard, a distance of some fifty feet.

“You go, girl,” Buffy muttered, interested despite herself.

For this action, her mother banished her from the house and she was shunned by the community.
Typical.

At about this time, a strange (‘foreign’) woman appeared stating she was Mathilda’s teacher. See the ‘Fairy Godmother Archetype, p. 70’. They moved into a cabin in the area, and Mathilda began to battle denizens of the occult.
Buffy turned the page and gasped. The black-and-white picture was old and grainy, but the personality of the girl who scowled at the camera came through loud and clear. She gently traced the ragged clothes, the badly cut hair. The caption at the bottom read ‘thought to be Mathilda (Mattie) Sawyer, Spirit-Killer’, but Buffy didn’t have to think, she knew. The girl was a Slayer. Her arms were crossed as she leaned against a large tree, and Buffy thought there was a stake in one of her hands.

I hope your Watcher was good to you, like Giles is to me, Buffy thought. I hope you had some friends.

Reluctantly, she tore her eyes from the picture to read the last of the story.

An interesting footnote of this story lies in the fact that one of Mathilda’s foes, generally thought to be a vampire, although accounts disagree on this matter, fell in love with her.
The winter after she gained her powers was quite severe, and Mathilda and her teacher both fell ill with fever, the teacher subsequently dying. The townspeople refused to assist her, so the vampire bought her food and firewood. Some say he forced a doctor to tend her at her cabin. Mathilda, however, would not accept him, and both she and the vampire killed each other in a battle that same year.

She died within a year of her Call. Deeply disturbed, Buffy took the book to the copying machine, knowing Giles would want to see it.

So, why am I dreaming about this? I’m nothing like Mathilda. Nobody’s shunned or beaten me. Well, not my family anyway. I’m not sick, and neither is Giles.

There was one obvious possible similarity, but Buffy rejected it. Spike is not in love with me. He wouldn’t move so much as a scarred eyebrow to push me out of the way of a bus.

A small voice nagged that, actually, he had helped her in the past, but that was just a trick. He showed what he was by attacking Xander and Willow the first chance he got. Mathilda was probably right not to accept that other vampire. The dream was a warning about believing vampires could turn good.

She checked her watch. Just time to get the papers to The Magic Box and get out on patrol.

As Buffy cut through the park, she saw the yellow crime scene surrounding a small area of torn and bloodied grass and churned-up earth.

“What happened?” she asked one of the onlookers who always seemed to turn up at such places.

“Some high-school girl got attacked on her way home.”

“Is she ok?”

An old lady standing nearby spoke up. “They didn’t hurt her physically, but her mind was damaged, poor child.”

Buffy turned cold. Glory? Was Glory back? “What do you mean?”

The old lady pursed her lips. “She said two men tried to, you know, interfere with her, and a pair of monsters came out of the bushes and ate them.”

“Oh.” She walked away slowly, puzzled. There were good demons around. She’d met them. But eating people sounded like vampires. The only good vampire she knew of was Angel, but why would he be working with somebody? Besides, she would know if Angel was in the area.

Buffy shrugged. If they had rescued her, it must have been by accident.

-----
Spike stood at the doorway of his crypt surveying the remnants of his furniture.
“Had a bit of a tantrum, did we, Slayer?” he muttered.

He crossed to what was left of the television and pulled the chair free, noting the large, stake-shaped holes in the back and seat. He had sent her a message, and it appeared that she had sent him one in return. A look of sadness flitted across his face and then vanished as he dropped the chair.

There’s nothing here for me anymore, he realized. Nothing in this crypt and nothing in this town. Remaining in the area had seemed like his bet of getting that chip removed, and now that had been accomplished, although he still wasn’t sure how or why.

As for making Buffy love him, he’d never had much of a chance at that to begin with and he’d bollixed up what chance there was when he attacked her friends. Oh, he could still fight her and maybe even win if he was having that one good day, but what would that gain him really beyond a seriously kick-ass reputation? He didn’t want her dead. He didn’t want her to kill him either, and if he remained in Sunnydale, one of those two outcomes seemed fairly inevitable.

I could go look up Dru, Spike thought with a slight lift of his heart, but that probably wouldn’t work out either. He had changed too much.

It had taken some time, until this evening in fact, but Spike finally admitted to himself that he had deliberately let the girl escape the night before. In fact, if Harmony had tried to feed from her, he would have stopped her.

The realization horrified him. He had scorned Angel for his angst-ridden ways and was now going him one better. He had changed without the excuse of the forced restoration of his soul. While living with the constraint of the chip, he had become too close to humans. In most cases, they were now more than food.

Although he was overjoyed that he could fight again and at least defend himself, Spike had a horrible feeling that his free-hunting days were over. Dru wouldn’t understand that.

Of course, I could always join up with Angel and his bunch, he thought, and his mouth twisted in a grin. Be pals with Wes and Cordelia. Nah. I’m not quite that sad. Not yet, anyway.

There was something to be said for going off on your own for awhile. He travels fastest who travels alone and all that bilge. Spike exited the crypt and caught up the pack that contained his weapons and extra jeans and t-shirts.

“So long, Sunnyhell,” he said jauntily as he headed into the night. Then, in a softer voice, “Goodbye, Buffy.”

-----
Giles sat behind the counter of the Magic Box, looking over the papers Buffy had brought him.
He was still slightly stunned from the fact that she had voluntarily done research, although that really wasn’t fair. Buffy was intelligent, a fact that people tended to overlook when faced with her slang and her taste in attire. And despite her frequent and loud protests, he had learned that she was a conscientious Slayer.

He had also learned to pay attention to her dreams. If this Spirit-Killer was showing up in Buffy’s unconscious, then she was important.

Giles read carefully through the story and spent a long moment looking at the copy of the picture. So young, he thought with a pang. Just a child. He remembered Buffy at that age and shuddered. Mathilda had died the same year the picture was taken.

He smiled a little, looking at her expression in the picture. She had apparently been a bad-tempered, fierce child. I imagine her Watcher didn’t have an easy time of it, he thought. Still, he doubted there had ever been such a thing as a docile, mild-mannered Slayer. A young woman with the ability to stand against the forces of evil would, of necessity, be rather strong-willed.

He had studied the history of the other Slayers during his Watcher training, but when Giles attempted to recall what he knew of this one, he came up with a distressing blank. Her name, the location where she’d lived and done her Slaying, and her age at her death. She had been glossed over, of no importance. Certainly, he’d never known of the rumor that she had been loved and then killed by a vampire.

Curious, he checked his watch and calculated time differences. They should still be up.

“Travers.”

“Yes, hello. Rupert Giles here.”

“Giles.” The head of the Watcher’s Council didn’t sound overjoyed to hear from him. “Is there a problem?”

“Not really. In the course of some research, I ran across an unfamiliar term that I believe referred to one of the earlier Slayers. Does the phrase ‘Spirit-Killer’ mean anything to you.”

There was a pause that set Giles’ internal alarms.

“Oh, yes,” Travers said with elaborate offhandedness. “Quite. Mathilda Sawyer from back in the ’30s. She grew up in some horrid little backwoods hovel, and that was the name the yokels had for her. Her Watcher, Margaret Crichton, was going to take her somewhere civilized, but unfortunately the poor woman died of a fever. And then before we could get anyone else in there, the Slayer was dead as well.”

“How did she die?” Giles asked.

“Fighting some demon or other,” Travers said irritably. “How else do the Slayers die? What is this about, Giles?”

“It just came up in some old material,” Giles said, suddenly wary of telling Travers of Buffy’s dream. “There was a story that one of the vampires she fought fell in love with her, and that he was ultimately the one to kill her.”

“Poppycock!” Travers expostulated. “I don’t know how these ridiculous stories get started. Or, yes I do. Silly people getting romantic notions in their heads.”

Travers wouldn’t know a romantic notion if it grew fangs and bit him in the ass, said a voice in Giles’ mind that sounded remarkably like Buffy. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

“Even if there were some truth to it,” Travers went on, “It doesn’t mean anything. Young girls can be very foolish. All this creature –of-the-night business. Swirling cloaks and so on. Vampires, all demon-kind, are vile, disgusting creatures. That’s what Watchers are for, to nip this sort of thing in the bud.”

Giles thought the job of a Watcher was to help the Slayer stay alive and sane, but he didn’t comment.

After he hung up, Giles sat frowning, lost in thought. Travers was lying about something, by omission if nothing else, but at the moment, he couldn’t see why, and he didn’t have enough information to call him on it.

More important was why Buffy was dreaming of the Spirit-Killer now. An old story, the dream had said. One that was perhaps being repeated?

There had been something in Spike’s manner recently when he was around Buffy, a hesitancy combined with an abrasiveness that brought to Giles’ mind the actions of adolescent boys when they were around girls they fancied. If you couldn’t fascinate her with your witty repartee, you could always show her your chewed up food. Getting a reaction out of her, even if that reaction was disgust, was the goal.

For her part, Buffy had treated the vampire with disdain until recently when his help with Dawn and Glory had led her to declare a reluctant truce. Giles had been keeping a stern eye on the situation and had planned, if it escalated, to have a discussion with Spike, involving a stake if necessary. Part of him had actually been relieved at the news of his attack on Xander and Willow because it had served to separate him from Buffy. Angel had been one thing. Spike was something else entirely.

But Travers’ reaction was making him nervous and wonder what he was missing. There was no way the Council was going to give up their records without a fight, and he didn’t have the time to spare them now with the current crisis.

No, he would wait, and he would Watch, and he would do what he could to keep Buffy and the others safe. And if something more was needed later, well, he would do that too.

-----
One week later.

The Senior Partner quivered in the presence of the Board Member. “How have we displeased you, lord?” he asked. “Please tell me, that I may rectify the matter.”

“We are displeased with your handling of the Slayer and her Adversary,” the voice said coldly.

“He was freed, my lord, as you demanded,” the Senior Partner said. He had followed up with Rayne on that matter, himself. Some things you didn’t leave to chance.

“More is required. The Adversary withdrew rather than battle the Slayer.”

The Senior Partner very carefully did not think that it was somewhat unfair to assume he would know what the vampire would do. Fairness was not a matter of interest to Members of the Board.

“If he has left the Slayer, dark lord, then how should they ally?” he said soothingly.

“A link remains between them. The Adversary could return to her, and there is a slight chance she would accept him. You must sever that link in such a way that it may never be reforged.”

The Senior Partner bowed low. “It shall be done.”

“Yes.”

-----
It’s been a really quiet couple of weeks, Buffy thought as she scooped up the last of her cereal. No weirdness on patrol. No prophetic dreams. No extreme nasties showing up with world-domination plans. No newly un-chipped blond vampires with a grudge.
I don’t like it. It’s too quiet. Cue the scary music.

Spike had been conspicuous by his absence. After that first night’s attack, he had apparently dropped off the face of the earth, or at least Sunnydale. None of the gang had reported problems or even sightings. She certainly hadn’t seen him. Maybe he’d gone off somewhere, reformed the Dynamic Duo of Spike and Drusilla.

Well, good. At least, he’s not my problem. The people he was undoubtedly killing worried her, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. There was no way she could comb the world hunting down Spike.

I don’t miss him or anything either, she told herself. That would be lame. And wrong. And stupid. ‘Cause he’s evil. And I’m the Slayer. Right. Good that’s cleared up.

“Gotta go.” Dawn slurped the last of her milk, dropped her dishes somewhere in the area of the sink, hugged Joyce and skidded out the front door.

And began to scream.

End Part 4

Part 5