by Nancy Holder
“Well.” She worked to regroup, and Giles gave her the moment. He was grateful to Angel for coming to his aid. Buffy must be convinced that Helen was a terrible menace. But a part of Giles reflected bitterly that at the moment of that young Slayer’s wretched death, the demon-filled Angelus had probably danced on her grave.
“There were no more sightings of her,” Giles continued. ”She no longer . . . challenged Slayers. And so, the Council assumed that she had died.”
“Well,” Buffy said, more heartily. ”I’m sorry, only not, because if that was the big bad Helen, you guys don’t need to worry about her anymore. She’s slowed with the years.”
Angel held out his palms. ”You didn’t defeat her, Buffy. She quit the field.”
“Ran.” Buffy fluttered her lashes at the vampire. ”Skeedaddled. What’s that stuffy stuff about discretion and valor? Or was it more like, ’run away and live to fight another day’? Anyway, she definitely booked.”
The teakettle shrieked. Giles jerked, hard. Willow called, ”Sorry,” from the kitchen and started banging around.
“We must research this,” Giles said to Angel, who nodded. ”Buffy’s mother said something about a stolen Roman artifact. Perhaps Helen’s found a way to cast spells on people, or instill violence in them in some way.”
“Ethan Rayne prayed to Janus,” Angel pointed out. ”The two-faced god.”
“Yes,” Giles mused. ”I’ll try to track that down.” He clapped his hands to his knees. ”We’ve not a moment to lose.”
“Wait. I’m not following,” Buffy protested. ”Neither one of you has impressed me with why we’re panicking over the arrival of a vampire who wears bras made out of stainless steel. I could use a little more backstory here.”
Giles looked at her. At Buffy Summers, his Slayer. At a young woman who was his friend. He did not want to tell her what she needed to know. And as he often did, he found it incredibly ironic that the Watchers Council had admonished him in his capacity as Watcher several times for ”transference.” In other words, for feeling his fate was tied up with hers. He found their objections to his caring about her as much as he did entirely bizarre. The Slayer was required to put her life on the line until such time as she had no life left. How could one not care?
“Giles,” Buffy prodded. ”Please hit return so we can wrap around to the next line.”
He took a breath. ”It’s as simple as this, Buffy. Helen is at least nineteen hundred and seventy years old. From A.D. 41 until 1801, when she disappeared from our annals, she killed every single Slayer she came up against.
“Dozens and dozens, Buffy,” Giles concluded.
“Hundreds,” Angel darkly corrected him.
Buffy’s smile faded. She looked at the two of them, searching their faces. Then she licked her lips, swallowed, and squared her shoulders.
“Maybe so,” she said, ”but none of them was me.”
Bravo, Giles thought, moved. He managed a nod.
“My thinking, exactly, Buffy. Which is why we must get to work.” He rose and turned away to hide his expression. What he had not told her was that every Slayer who had died at Helen’s hands had suffered a gruesome, brutal death. The vampire queen was as evil and sadistic as the times which had spawned her — the hideous reign of the mad Roman emperor Caligula. The man’s name was synonymous with cruelty, torture, and madness. Helen had learned well from him.
Far too well.
Giles cleared his throat and said, as calmly as he could, ”Willow, do you need help with the tea things?”
“Oh, no, not really,” she said brightly. Then she saw his face and stammered, ”That is, yes. Lots of help. I totally need lots and lots of help.”
Giles pushed up his glasses and went into the kitchen. His hands were shaking.
I must not let her down, he thought. I must arm her with everything I can.
This is one battle she may actually lose, and I cannot let that happen.
In the underground caves, Helen sat at her dressing table. A skull was placed on a pedestal before the mirror, candles flickering in a circle around it. It had been adorned with makeup — the white bones shaded a healthy brown, the cheeks crimson, the rictus grin a slash of scarlet. The eye sockets were circled with black and blue.
Tears streamed down Helen’s face as she mixed her potion, muttering to herself, ”I’ll torture her for a century. I’ll torture her until her arms and legs fall off. My one love. My one true love.” She stopped and stared down at it. ”Angelus. My Angelus. That bitch. That Slayer bitch.”
Then she heard footsteps, recognizing them as Julian’s. Panicking a little, she looked in the mirror. Of course, there was no reflection of him. Just as there was none of her.
“What are you doing, my love?”
“Preparing the potion for the arena,” she replied steadily. Though of course, it is for him. After I kill the Slayer, Angelus will realize that he loves me. Julian must be gotten rid of.
“Why the tears?”
She shook her head. ”I didn’t get the Slayer. If we fail . . .”
“We won’t. Don’t be so impatient.”
Closing her eyes, she thought of the centuries he had kept her walled up. The agony. The loneliness.
To make the world forget her, he had claimed. To stop the Slayers from coming after her.
“Just for a little while, love,” he had told her. But he’d loved having her all to himself. It had been just like the old days, before the change, when he would come visit her in her cell.
“Yes, I’m impatient,” she said now.
He kissed her again. Then he leaned around her and kissed the decorated skull.
“Night, Diana, dear,” he said, patting it on the head. He touched Helen’s shoulder. ”Come to bed, my love.”
“In a minute, Julian, my darling.” She patted his cheek.
Once he had left the chamber, she turned the skull upside down and extracted a bottle from it. Being very careful not to let any of it splash on her, she opened it and poured it into the potion.
There.
It’s done.
Whatever happened next was in the hands of the Dark Mother.
Chapter 9
The Roman Empire, A.D. 39
FAR FROM THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME, HELEN, A DARK-haired girl of fifteen, huddled behind the shed where her father kept the wine barrels, and bit into her hand to keep from screaming.
Standing among the vines, the grapes glistening in the moonlight like fat, black blood drops, Diana, Helen’s best friend in all the world, stood in a fighter’s stance. Rushing toward her was a fiend from a nightmare. It wore the appearance of a man contorted into an evil mask of long, sharp teeth and glowing, golden eyes.
“At last, Slayer, I’ve found you,” it said. ”My master will be delighted when I bring him your head.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, tossing back her shining blond hair as she ran backward. ”And if you come back empty-handed, will he take your head?”
“An unnecessary question,” the fiend snarled.
“Diana,” Helen whispered, too terrified to move. She had never seen a thing such as this; never dreamed such creatures actually existed — although, of course, she had heard the rumors about the emperor’s demonic court in distant Rome.
“Prepare yourself, Slayer,” the monster continued. ”This night, you die.”
Helen could only watch as the monster lunged at Diana, only catch her breath when Diana slammed both fists square into its face. It howled and grabbed at her. She squatted and curled into a ball, flipping backward like a Minoan bull dancer, then grabbed an overhanging branch of the olive tree and shoved both her feet into the monster’s chest.
Still it came for her, reaching for her ankles. She pulled her legs up and scrambled onto the branch. The creature wrapped its hands around the branch and yanked with all its might.
The limb cracked. Helen finally found her voice and cried, ”Diana!”
To her amazement, both Di
ana and her unworldly foe stared in her direction with an identical expression of surprise and dismay. They looked like lovers caught in guilty pleasure.
And then the fiend yanked on the branch again.
“Come down, or I’ll rip her heart out,” it said to Diana.
“You’ll never reach her,” Diana countered.
Then the branch broke off, and Diana tumbled to the ground. She leaped to her feet, then stumbled, obviously hurt.
“Helen, run!” she screamed. She took a step forward, then lurched sideways, flailing for support on a vine-covered trellis.
The monster wavered for a moment, then raced toward the shed.
Helen jumped to her feet, realizing as she did so that the creature had not actually seen her until that moment. She had given herself away.
She couldn’t look away from the creature, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. In mere seconds, she would be dead.
“Oh, Minerva, merciful goddess,” she whispered, wobbling as the world shrank into a pinprick of light, and in that light the monster raged. ”Take me to heaven with you now. Or turn me into a tree, or a rock.”
She smelled it before it touched her. Its fetid odor was of the grave. Its eyes glowed. Its fangs flashed like knives.
Its nails raked her shoulder. It grabbed her and threw her onto her back, straddling her. Then it loomed over her and opened its mouth.
Its fangs touched her neck, pierced the skin.
A strange, haunting shriek volleyed in her ears. The creature’s weight abruptly lessened, then it was gone. As she stared, a cloud of dust rained down on her.
Behind the dust stood Diana, a portion of the olive branch in her fist like a spear.
“Are you all right?” she asked, bending down with her hand outstretched.
Terrified, Helen pulled away from her. Then she buried her face in her hands and said, ”Divine One, I am not worthy to look upon you.”
There was silence. She finally looked up, to see Diana staring at her.
“You saw more than you should have,” Diana said finally. ”I’m very sorry for that.”
Helen swallowed hard. ”And now, you must . . . you must kill me?”
Diana shook her head. ”No, of course not. But I must beg you never to speak of it.”
“Of course.” Now she took Diana’s hand and got up from the ground, anticipating at any moment to be struck by Jove’s lightning for touching an Immortal.
“Let’s walk in the vineyard,” Diana suggested.
To Helen’s surprise, Diana was still limping. She used the branch as a walking stick, helping herself along, until finally she grunted in frustration and rested beside the large boulder they had often played on as children.
After a time, Diana said, ”It’s actually a relief, your knowing.”
Helen replied unhappily, ”But won’t the gods strike me dead?”
Diana blinked. ”Why would they?”
“Because I know that one of them walks among us.”
“Oh.” Diana closed her eyes and smiled faintly, even sadly. ”Of course. That’s how it would seem to you.” She opened her eyes. ”I’m not a goddess.”
“You are the goddess of the hunt, herself. The one true Diana,” Helen insisted.
Diana shook her head. ”That I share her name is an honor I don’t deserve. I’m something different, Helen, but I am human, the same as you.” She took a breath. ”I’m called a Slayer.”
“A slayer of demons,” Helen said.
“Exactly.” She tapped the base of the boulder with the end of the branch, then moved her foot slowly, in a little circle. She grimaced, and Helen was assured that she was not completely divine after all.
“I was born to this,” Diana continued. ”I was chosen by the Fates. I don’t know how, or why, really. I only know that I have a sacred obligation to fight evil.” She looked very grave, and in that moment, very young. She was a year older than Helen — sixteen — which was not that young at all. They had friends long married, and Diana herself was betrothed to Demetrius, son of the vineyard owner to the west.
“How do you know?” Helen asked. ”Did the Oracle speak to you?”
“No.” She tapped the boulder. ”I don’t know if I should tell you anything more.”
Helen was abashed. She thought best friends shared everything.
As if she could read her mind, Diana put her hand on Helen’s shoulder and said, ”I only recently learned of this. Truly. And my first question to my Watcher — after I’d recovered from the shock — was if I could tell you.”
Helen burst into tears. ”And that demon? Where did it come from? What did it want?” When Diana pulled away slightly, Helen cried harder. ”It almost took my life. You have to tell me what it was.”
Diana dangled the stick and looked down at the earth, as if it were a pool and she could see herself. ”It was a creature called a vampire. It was a demon inhabiting the body of a dead man.”
“It stank like a dead man.”
Diana chuckled. ”Yes. They generally do.” She regarded her friend. ”The vampires and other evil creatures know when a Slayer is nearby, and they seek me out. I don’t know how they know. I only know we are mortal enemies, they and I, and I must fight them until there are no more of them, or until I die.”
Helen was stunned. ”How many of them are there?”
“They’re legion,” Diana replied, sounding tired and sad. ”They’ve been on this earth since the Giants walked, and they can make more of their kind. The truth is, dear friend, that they will outlast me.”
As Helen began to protest, Diana raised her hand. ”Perhaps the gods can change my destiny. I don’t know. My Watcher says it’s never happened, though.”
Helen tried to take it all in. It was too much. She didn’t understand any of it. No part of her wanted to believe it.
“What’s a Watcher?” Mark Dellasandro asked from the stairway of Giles’s apartment.
Angel, Buffy, and Giles looked sharply up. The boy was drowning in Giles’s gray sweatpants and an ancient, dark blue Oxford sweatshirt he’d forgotten he had.
Behind Mark, Xander made a moue of apology for the interruption.
“Nothing you need concern yourself with,” Giles said politely, standing. ”You must be starving. Willow’s made some tea, and I’m sure there are things for sandwiches.” He looked across the kitchen alcove at Willow, who had stood transfixed throughout Giles’s narrative about Helen.
Now she blinked and said, ”Oh, yes, things. Sandwiches. Things.” She bustled over to the refrigerator and opened the door.
Buffy muttered, ”Whistler said a Brit’s fridge is like a nun.”
“I beg your pardon?” Giles asked.
But just then the boy came all the way down the stairs into the room.
“What happened to those girls?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s just a play we’re working on for school,” Buffy tossed off. ”Diana and Helen. We’re big into Greek tragedies, huh, Xander? He and Willow and I did a scene from Oedipus Rex for the school talent show in sophomore year.” She shrugged. ”Well, we tried to. Instead, there was a guy with a guillotine.”
She looked at the others, who along with Giles, were silently urging her to cease and desist. ”It’s a long story.”
The boy frowned at her but said nothing. His eyelids flickered as though they must weigh twenty stone apiece.
“Sit down,” Giles said gently to him. ”I’ll get you a cup of tea.”
Giles went into the kitchen. Willow was hunched over, pawing through the leftover bits of some recent restaurant meals, and Giles thought he heard her sniffling.
“Willow?” he asked quietly.
She looked from the refrigerator. Her face was red and her eyes quite puffy. She wiped her face with the arm of her sweater and resumed her search for sandwich makings.
“I’m still mad at her,” she whispered miserably. ”I thought once I got unpossessed, I wouldn’t be. But she hasn’t found Oz.” She bit
her fingernail. ”I keep thinking she hasn’t tried hard enough. What does that say about me?”
“That you care for him very much,” Giles said compassionately. ”That people are much more complex than at first it would seem. Else, how can we love and hate someone at the same time?”
She considered that. ”But I know she’s been looking. I know she’s been trying.”
“The head knows,” he replied. ”The heart does not.” He felt for a moment the enormity of his own loss. Jenny, sweet Jenny. Yes, if he admitted it, there had been times when he had actually hated Buffy for giving Angel such happiness that he had become a demon, then hated her for not killing him. Missing someone so much . . . loving them, and never having them again . . . Sometimes it was too much to bear. He understood Willow’s heart, even if she did not.
“It’s hard to deal with lack of concrete results, when a loved one is in jeopardy. Believe me, I understand.”
He gave her a wry smile. ”How many times have you seen me lose my temper with her? Yet you know I never stop caring about her. And yet, upon occasion, my concern for her far outweighs my affection for her.”
That seemed to comfort Willow. Her mouth shifted as she put a hand on the refrigerator. ”Sandwich things,” she said bravely. ”The adventure continues.”
He flashed her a smile. ”Good show. I’ll give you a hand. I believe there’s some cucumber and butter.”
She blinked at him. ”And?”
He pursed his lips. ”That makes a nice sandwich.”
“In England, maybe. Here, well, I was thinking maybe some roast beef? Swiss cheese?”
“Quite. Neither of which you will find in the crisper.”
“Oh.” She blinked. ”Well, cucumbers. They’re . . . crunchy . . . and green,” she ventured.
Feeling a pang for the lost days of Britain, he left the kitchen, walked into the living room, and picked up the portable. Punched in a number he knew by heart. Put the phone to his ear.
”Sunnydale Pizza,” a voice said on the other end.
“Yes, hullo. I should like to order two large pizzas for delivery,” he began.
“Mr. Giles,” the voice said. ”Hey, man, how ya doing? The usual?”
