Title: At Any Cost
Author: Paul aka Darth Pacula
Distribution: Knock yourself out, just ask first. ( That means yes if you're not sure )
Feedback: Go nuts. The more the merrier. Unless you're all wanting to roast me at the stake that is. Then, less is more. My email address is
darthpacula@hotmail.com if you prefer.
Disclaimers: Needless to say, I do not own the Buffyverse, nor those who inhabit it. I only wish I did. Oh, the fun I would have ...
Summary: A powerful, ruthless and unstable figure begins to meddle in Willow and Tara's lives, with unforeseen consequences.
Rating: PG-13, maybe R at times for a touch of violence.
Timeline: Well now, it starts off just before the end of Seeing Red, but will contain elements of an altered Season 7.
Spoilers: Err ... pretty much the entire show. If you haven't seen any of it yet, and actually want to, you just aren't trying hard enough.
Thoughts are in
italics.
Part 34.“I think it might be time to think about moving,” announced Buffy when she returned with Tara and Willow from their unsuccessful reconnoiter across the street. Her abrupt statement caught Willow so off balance that the door hit the redhead in the butt as it closed.
“Move?” Willow yelped. “Move where? Why are we moving all of a sudden? It's not termites, is it?”
Buffy blinked as she was confronted with the first stirrings of Hurricane Rosenberg. “What? Termites? No, Will ...”
“It's not demon termites is it?” blurted the redhead again, not even letting Buffy finish speaking. “Cuz that would be bad. They probably wouldn't even stop at eating the house, they'd move on to us!” Willow openly shuddered. “All those creepy little bugs, with their creepy little legs, crawling all over me ...”
“Will!” Buffy had to shout to break the babbling redhead's concentration. “Enough with the termites already! There are no termites!” She looked to Tara for help, but Tara was simply standing back and watching it all unfold with an indulgent smile.
Giles ambled into the foyer from the direction of kitchen, blowing on the steaming cup of tea clasped between his hands. “What's this about termites?” he absently inquired.
Buffy let out an sharp-edged groan of exasperation, while at the same time Tara's broad grin dissolved into quiet laughter that the other blonde hid behind her hand. “There are no damn termites,” Buffy finally snapped, flouncing into the lounge room in a fit of exaggerated pique.
“What's her problem?” Willow asked, just as completely confused as Giles, but this just set Tara off even harder.
Storming back into the foyer, Buffy glared at all three of them. “Hey! When I storm out of the room you're supposed to follow me! How am I supposed to bitch if you can't even hear me?” But despite the harshness of her words, the twitching of Buffy's lips told Tara that the Slayer was more amused than annoyed.
Inclining her head to indicate for Buffy to lead the way, Tara managed to get her giggles under control and started chivying Willow ahead of her, Giles trudging wearily in their wake. As Tara, Willow and Giles settled themselves on the sofa and a lounge chair respectively, Buffy let loose a bellow to call the others to her impromptu conference.
Once the last of scoobies had drifted in, and Katie had claimed pride of place squeezed in between Willow and Tara, Buffy got right to the point. “I think we have to move.”
The resulting hubbub came from a variety of voices, Dawn's the most prominent. “You want us to sell our home?” she demanded indignantly. “Now, with everything that's going on?”
“I'm not talking about selling the house,” Buffy replied with a sigh. “I'm talking about moving on a temporary basis, until we don't have to worry about it raining teleporting demons and warlocks sneaking inside in the middle of the night!”
Dawn's expression of self-righteous indignation wilted like a month old flower, and she subsided with her cheeks flushing in embarrassment. Needless to say, that gave Buffy a certain sense of satisfaction, a feeling that every sibling is familiar with.
“So we're back to hiding again?” Xander complained from his perch on the arm of the lounge chair Anya was slumped in. “We're not even up against a hellgod this time! Why are we running?”
“Because I can't guarantee that any of you will be safe if we stay here!” Buffy shot back, pacing backwards and forwards. “Nameless has been sneaking in here for who knows how long, and there's already been two attempts on our lives. It's not going to stop either! Not until we put an end to all of this!”
“How is this any different to normal, Buffy?” Dawn questioned, regrouping from her earlier faux par. “Demons have been trying to kill you for years now, and you haven't run away before.”
Buffy's shoulders slumped, her face conflicted.
She doesn't want to do this, Tara realized with a rush,
and it's tearing her up inside.
“They haven't been expressly targeting my friends and family before!” The statement was all but spat out, each word clipped off by an angry snap of Buffy's lips. But underneath the anger, Tara detected a deep-seated vein of fear, not for her own safety, but for theirs. If anything happened to any of them, Tara knew that Buffy would never forgive herself.
Buffy's entire calling called for her to seek
out danger, to put her life on the line on a near daily basis. Tara believed that while Buffy might not like that fact, she'd long since accepted the grim reality of what being the Slayer entailed. What Buffy would never accept however, was any member of her extended 'family' sharing in that same fate.
Tara knew how hard running away from this must be for Buffy; it must go against her every instinct. But Buffy would do it, for them, and Tara was determined to support her in whatever capacity she could. The idea that it would be safer for all of them didn't hurt either.
“I think it's a good idea,” Tara interjected softly, and Buffy shot her a grateful glance for her support.
“You're on board with the running away plan?” Willow asked, sounding startled. Turning her head, Tara found her girlfriend regarding her with wide, childlike eyes. For a moment, Tara thought Willow was going to side with Xander, though she had no idea why Willow would do so; her lover wasn't really the type of person to seek out conflict.
Instead, Willow simply shrugged and nodded, squeezing Tara's in a silent show of support. “Running and hiding sounds good to me!” Willow announced, her voice simultaneously nervous and cheerful.
“You're down with this, Will?” gaped Xander incredulously. “What gives?”
Giles cleared his throat meaningfully. “I rather think we're all ... 'down with it', as you some colorfully put it.”
“Yes, Xander,” added Anya helpfully. “Now is not the time for penis thinking.”
As was becoming increasingly common, Anya's statement led Giles to bury his head in his hand, while the rest of the scoobies regarded Anya with well-practiced expressions of disbelief. All except Xander, who groaned and copied Giles.
“What's penis th...” Katie began curiously, looking back and forth as she picked up on the adults' consternation, and in the nature of children everywhere, found it fascinating. Willow panicked, and clapped a hand over over Katie's mouth before she could finish, which earned the redhead a dirty look.
Unfortunately, no-one performed a similar service for Anya, who was quite content to answer Katie's disrupted question. “Oh, penis thinking is ...”
“For the love of small furry animals, Ahn!” Xander desperately begged, “Don't answer that!”
Folding her arms tight across her chest, Anya slumped back into her chair, grumbling to herself petulantly under her breath.
“Where do we go? A motel?” Tara asked, trying to bring the conversation back on track after the inappropriate tangent Anya had taken them on.
“I dunno,” Dawn stated dubiously, a distasteful expression on her face. “Isn't that kind of tacky? Motels always seem a bit seedy to me unless you're on the road.”
“Not to mention, none of us is exactly rolling in money here,” Buffy pointed out. “Since we don't know how long we're going have to lay low, I think we have to find somewhere that isn't quite so draining on our bank balance.”
Sighing, Xander surrendered to the inevitable. “My place?” he offered.
“Not unless we've turned into sardines,” Anya pointed out, swatting Xander on the knee. “Don't you remember what it was like trying to put up each of our families before our wedding-that-wasn't?” Despite the somewhat snide nature of Anya's words, Tara didn't notice any of the venom that had frequently characterized Anya's earlier interactions with her former fiancé.
“Good point,” Xander allowed, shrugging. “So what does that leave us, if we can't afford a motel? We're not going to steal a motor home again, are we?”
“We don't know that Spike stole the last one,” Willow interjected, surprising Tara. Willow wasn't normally the one she would expect to leap to Spike's defense.
Well, maybe not exactly leap, thought Tara with a wry smile as her lover continued. “Not for certain.”
“No, I'm sure that Spike paid for it out of his own pocket,” Xander replied, each word positively dripping with sarcasm.
“If you've finished talking about Spike, I've got a place in mind,” interrupted Buffy, her face strangely stiff. Tara realized that this wasn't the first time that Buffy's reactions regarding Spike had seemed off, and she wondered what lay behind it. Judging by the look Buffy shared with Xander, he knew something that the others didn't.
It worried Tara; keeping secrets always did, especially with all the secret-related bad stuff that had been happening over the last year. Still, Tara knew that if Buffy wanted to share what was troubling her, she would, and Tara didn't feel that it was her place to push her friend to confide in her before she was ready.
“Where?” Willow asked, both her voice and eyes bright with the redhead's trademark curiosity.
“Angel's mansion. It's big enough to fit us all in, and pretty defensible too. I check in on it now and then, and nothing else has made it their lair, and you'd have to dig pretty deep to find to find a connection between it and us. Any objections?”
Giles cleared his throat. “Buffy, when was the last ...”
“I was going to double check the mansion now, just in case anything has changed since the last time I checked,” Buffy interrupted with a roll of her eyes, and Giles nodded with a self contained little smile. “Dawn and Katie still need to go to school ...” Dawn started to grumble under her breath but Buffy refused to let that throw her off. “Xander, can you and Anya handle the school run?”
Dawn openly scoffed and crossed her arms tight across her chest in a confrontational pose. “I think I can handle getting myself to school and back, Buffy! I'm not an idiot!”
“I don't want anybody out on their own, Dawn,” Buffy ordered, “So you'll be escorted to school and back, even if I have to strap you onto the hood of the car myself.”
“It'll be fun, Dawn Patrol!” Xander suddenly insisted, attempting to keep the peace. “Just think, you can boost your rep by claiming that I'm your handsome older boyfriend!”
“Boost?” Dawn asked dubiously, a playful twinkle in her eyes, and Xander's cheerful grin slipped a few notches.
“Will? Can you and Tara gather up the necessities from here? Clothes and so-on? As soon as I've checked out the mansion, we'll be on the move.”
Willow nodded enthusiastically. “Can we handle the highly dangerous task of packing? You betcha!”
**********
Rack was a magic user, I knew that better than most. Sure, I didn't know what he was; human, demon, or anything in between. He looked human, but that didn't rule his being a demon out of the mix. More than one demonic species could be your own flesh and blood, right up until the point that they bite your face off.
But Rack could just as easily be human as demon; demons hardly held a monopoly on monstrous behavior. Even with all of my knowledge, all of my research, I knew next to nothing about Rack beyond what he'd done to Willow. I didn't know anything about his past, and my knowledge of what he was capable of was criminally lacking.
Despite all of this, I was confident that I could handle him without any great difficulty. Too confident as it turned out, when the lightning bolt I hurled at Rack rebounded right back at me.
As was frequently the case when I was heading into a combat situation, I was wreathed with any number of protective spells. But all of my shields were configured to allow the passage of my own offensive spells. Against my own magic, rebounded against me? Against that, all of my protective measures were about as useful as a bullet proof vest made of wet paper bags.
The next thing I knew, I was lying flat on my back in a pile of rubble, blinking up at an annoyingly cheerful sky. With an effort, I raised my head a few inches and peered down the length of my body. I was still smoking from the lightning's impact, which had apparently been enough to fling me backwards and through the outer wall of Rack's lair.
“Oww?” The word issued from my ruined throat in a hoarse croak. Then I caught sight of Rack again, picking his way across the rubble towards me, a kind of minimalistic smirk on his face.
“Did you think it would be that easy,” Rack asked lazily, slowly rolling his hands together, multi colored sparks crackling in between them. “I really don't see what those vampires were so worried about ...”
Rack's smirk died, stillborn as I rose to my feet as smoothly as if my heels were hinged to the ground. Blood trickled slowly from the charred wound on my chest, but no trace of the pain I felt showed on the icy mask I wore.
“Did
you think it would be that easy?” I asked him back, my tone almost polite. “Lets just try that again, shall we?”
Rack's eyes narrowed, and he shifted his weight in preparation for dodging in any direction. A snap of my fingers brought a fireball to life in my palm, and the faintest traces of Rack's earlier cocky smile re-emerged. Not doubt he expected a further frontal attack.
But I'm nothing if not a quick learner. Which is why I telekinetically hurled a loose brick at the back of his head. Rack staggered and fell to one knee, stunned and bleeding.
That is when I threw the fireball at him.
**********
“Tara?” Willow called out as she burrowed into the depths of Buffy wardrobe. “Does a swimsuit fall under the heading of necessities?”
“What was that, sweetie?” The blonde's voice was barely audible as it wafted in the door, so Willow pulled her head back out of Buffy's wardrobe and stuck it through the doorway instead.
“Swimsuits. Do we need to pack swimsuits?” Willow patiently repeated.
Tara's head popped into view from their own bedroom, her eyebrows drawn close together. “Swimsuits?” she asked, the faintest hint of laughter in her voice. “Why would we need swimsuits, Willow? We're going on the lam, not on vacation.”
With a grin, Willow moved out into the corridor proper and stood with her hands on her hips. “Look at you, baby! All big with the criminal terminology. That's my Tara, the criminal mastermind!”
Tara mirrored Willow's movement by moving fully into the doorway, wearing on her lips the crooked half smile that, to Willow, was so characteristic of her lady love. “Criminal mastermind, Will?” she asked, gently teasing. “Just because I said 'On the lam'?”
“Well ... that's not the only reason,” Willow confided in a conspiratorial tone, sauntering down the corridor towards Tara with an exaggerated sway of her hips. “I know for a fact you pulled off at least one big robbery.”
“I have?” Tara asked breathlessly, batting her eyelids in coquettish, wide-eyed innocence.
Nodding, Willow languorously draped an arm over each of Tara's shoulders, fingertips tickling at the back of Tara's neck. “You stole my heart, Tara Maclay,” Willow whispered, gazing deep into her partner's eyes.
“You can't steal what's freely given, Willow,” Tara whispered back, leaning forward to meet Willow half way, both women's eyes drifting closed as their lips drew ever nearer. “And I gave you my heart in return.”
Their lips were a hairsbreadth apart when the abrasive sound of the front door being flung open disrupted the moment. Willow opened her eyes grumpily, and was mildly amused to find that Tara was pouting slightly. Her lover usually seemed so calm and composed on the outside that Willow actually treasured those moments when Tara displayed even the faintest hint of mirroring Willow's own erratic emotions.
“Buffy's timing sucks,” Willow pointed out petulantly, and Tara nodded her wry agreement. “I wonder why she's back so early? Buffy said that she and Giles were going to take a roundabout route to the mansion, in case they were being followed.”
Tara had no answer for her girlfriend's questions as the sound of uneven footsteps preceded the new arrival's entrance up the stairs. Willow tossed a greeting over her shoulder without bothering to turn away from the captivating curves of Tara's face.
“Hi Buffy. That didn't take long.”
Willow grew puzzled when there was no response; then her puzzlement turned into apprehension as Tara stiffened suspiciously in her arms. Though she hated to do so, Willow surrendered her hold on her lover and spun around.
A man stood unsteadily at the end of the stairs, battered and bloody. One arm hung loose and useless by his side, blood trickling down the length of the limb from a series of deep gashes to patter against the carpet. His shoulder length hair was lank and unkempt, and on one side it had been burnt away, as had a considerable amount of skin on that side of his face. But it was his eyes that were worst of all; wide open, panicked, and almost animalistic.
“Rack ...” Willow breathed, her stomach twisting distastefully. Tara's head turned sharply at the name; while she'd never met Rack herself, Willow had long since confided his part in her addiction.
Rack coughed; a wet, tearing sound that speckled his fist with fleck of crimson. “I bet you never expected to see me again, strawberry.”
Willow's voice, when she found it after a moment's stunned disbelief, was uncharacteristically flat and cold. “I never
wanted to see you again.”
Despite Willow's open antagonism, Rack continued as if she hadn't spoken. “I have to admit, I did wonder if you might have sent him after me.” Staggering like a drunk, Rack slumped against the nearest wall, leaving a red smear on the wallpaper as he levered himself back onto his feet. “Those few of my clients who ... 'clean up their acts' ... they tend to hold a grudge.”
“What are you talking about?” Tara asked curtly. “Willow hasn't done anything to you.”
“Not personally, no, pumpkin,” Rack admitted. “But he stank of the strawberry, so I guess I just figured ...” Pausing, Rack studied Tara intently. “You'd be the other one then, would you? Strawberry's girl?”
“And proud of it,” Tara shot back confrontationally. Something about Rack set her teeth on edge, something other than what she knew about his interactions with Willow, which was more than enough on its own.
But Rack was clearly not interested in Tara's opinion of him, if he even noticed it. “He's still coming, strawberry. I couldn't stop him, couldn't lose him. No matter what I tried ... he just won't stop until he kills me.”
With every word, Rack took a single shaky step forward, and both Willow and Tara took a matching step backwards. Soon, their backs were against the far wall of their bedroom, and it was Rack's turn to stand in the doorway.
“Who are you talking about?” Willow demanded, a sinking feeling in her stomach telling her that she already knew who it was likely to be.
“I believe he means me, little witch.”
Rack's eyes went wider still at that rasping voice and he spun around in a panic, Willow and Tara both leaning to opposite sides to look past him. Nameless stood at the other end of the corridor, hunched over at the head of the stairs. Taloned fingers twitched as burning, mismatched eyes locked onto Rack's face.
“He's a tricky fellow, our Rack,” rasped Nameless as he took a single step forward. “Not so much with the stand-up and fight ... but tricky. You wouldn't believe some of the things he did to try and throw me off his scent.”
“What are you doing here again?” Willow demanded, wincing slightly when her voice came out more squeaky than confidently defiant. “How'd you even get in here without setting off the alarm again? Either of you!”
Nameless' bark of laughter was almost a sneer. “Ask Rack here. I just used the door he left open.”
Backing away a few steps, Rack half turned to Willow and Tara, trying to keep both of them in view at the same time. “You have to stop him, strawberry. He's trying to kill me.”
“Yes ... eventually,” Nameless interjected, taking another step. His mutilated face tightened with brutal intensity. “You've got a nerve coming here, asking them for protection. Given that you're the one helping Hawkins try to kill them.”
“What?” exclaimed Tara and Willow in perfect concert with each other. Rack just shrugged as their eyes fell accusingly on him.
“Did you think I was planning to murder him on nothing more than a passing whim?” Nameless asked, snorting contemptuously. After a moment's though, Willow nodded emphatically, and Nameless scowled as he took a third step forward.
Idly reaching out, Nameless traced his talons along both walls as he slowly limped forward. Tara's eyes were irresistibly drawn to the meeting point of claw tip and wallpaper, seized with a dread fascination with how easily one sliced through the other. Taking a deep breath, Tara mustered her courage.
“It doesn't matter what he did,” Tara stated, vaguely proud that her voice didn't crack like that of an adolescent boy. “We can't let you kill him.”
The effect that Tara's statement had on Nameless wasn't quite what she was hoping for. He laughed full in their faces, a sharp savage bark of bitter humor. “What makes you think you can stop me?”
In complete concert, the two lovers joined hands and stepped forward. Both women felt the familiar tingle that physical contact always brought them, and reveled in it for a fraction of a second before they called forth the magic.
Voices blending together in a chorus of unearthly beauty, they chanted their spell. “Enemies, fly and fall. Circling arms, raise a wall.”
A shimmering wall of energy burst outwards, hurling Nameless backwards as if he were nothing more than a rag doll, forming a protective bubble around the witches bedroom. Rack took advantage of their momentary distraction to slip behind them, eying both women with considerable interest.
Nameless hit the ground tumbling, somehow using his own momentum to roll himself back into a predatory crouch. But rather than showing anger at such treatment, the warlock just laughed in delight. “Someone's been practicing,” he taunted in a mocking, sing-song tone.
“Just go,” Tara advised hopefully. “We don't want to fight.”
“Well I do!” Nameless replied jovially, by all appearances having the time of his life. “So no, I won't leave.”
Some unseen forced slammed into the witches barrier, and both Willow and Tara staggered, astounded and appalled at the strength of the blow. Tara was especially worried; she was accustomed to Willow possessing more raw power than her, but the barrier spell had taken a lot out of her.
As both women straightened, Willow sensed Tara's concerns through the connection that still buzzed between them, and silently offered some of her own strength. Just as silently, Tara gratefully accepted what was offered, and let the soothing warmth of Willow's power spill inside her, bolstering her own weakened reserves.
It came not a moment too soon, for another hammer blow rang their barrier like a bell. A third blow followed swiftly in its wake, nearly driving both women to their knees. And they didn't stop there. Impact followed after impact unceasingly, never in the same place two times in a row, until they were like the thunder of rain against a tin roof. Throughout it all, Nameless stood still as stone, eyes narrowed as he glared at them.
But no matter how hard Nameless assailed the shield, no matter how it buckled beneath his remorseless onslaught, Willow was reasonably sure that their shield wouldn't give way.
But he has to know that too ...Too late, Willow realized Nameless' plan. His unceasing attacks were a distraction; as the old saying said, sound and fury signifying nothing. The warlock had never planned to break through their shield using sheer brute force, but rather with subtle cunning.
While both her and Tara's attentions were focused on Nameless' more obvious assault, the warlock had been covertly probing their defenses, searching for the inevitable weak spot, the knot in the web of their spell, that if pulled, would make it fall apart. And he found it. Just as Willow realized what Nameless was up to, he struck with a small whip crack of power.
The shield collapsed like a pricked balloon, and the backwash of its collapse actually did drive both Willow and Tara to their knees.
Nameless lurched into motion, striding awkwardly down the length of the corridor and into the bedroom before either woman could recover. Face blanching, Rack turned to flee, though his options were limited to not much other than jumping out the window. Nameless made a slashing motion in the air, and a gaping wound tore across the back of one of Rack's knees. Hamstrung, the wounded man pitched to the ground with an agonized howl.
“No,” Tara yelled, scrambling to her feet and blocking the warlock's path to his prey. She reached blindly to one side, and found Willow's hand ready and waiting. As their connection re-established itself, snapping back into place like a rubber band, Tara instinctively shoved their power at Nameless.
But the warlock wasn't caught unprepared a second time. As he raised his hand, an equally invisible force parried the witches' strike, the opposing forces straining against each other like grappling wrestlers.
Bolstered by the connection that positively thrummed with the eternal love that passed between them, Tara and Willow brought their full strength to bear, trying to drive Nameless backwards. Even though invisible to the naked eye, the striving energy crackling between the combatants was as different as Nameless himself was from Willow and Tara.
The forces that Tara and Willow wielded brought to mind images that were warm like a beam of summer sunshine, and gentle like a lover's kiss. It echoed their love of life and more so the love that they felt for each other. It pulsed with the childlike joy Willow felt during the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. It quickened with Tara's compassion and determination to do the right thing.
Anyone would have been hard pressed to find a more different force than that which spilled from Nameless in a raging torrent. As much a contradiction as the man it flowed from, Nameless' energy was fire and ice, two equally conflicting elements that threatened to tear themselves asunder. The fire was passion and fury, destructive and all consuming. It's icy counterpart was all cold, calculating intellect, with no more compassion than a Great White shark.
The stress of maintaining such a struggle between two such diametric forces quickly put a strain on both lovers' stamina, sweat beading on their brows, breath ragged in their heaving chests. But Willow was relieved to see that it seemed to be taking an even greater toll on Nameless.
Though he stood stock still and his breathing was shallow, sweat was noticeably trickling down the warlock's face and his extended arm trembled. Even as Willow watched, blood spontaneously trickled from out of Nameless' nose.
“Give it up!” Willow panted. “You're on your last legs, Nathaniel!”
“Please,” Tara added imploringly, “We don't want to hurt you.”
Nameless apparently didn't share their sense of certainty, because he laughed again, strain evident his voice. “You think I'm almost tapped out, do you little witches? Shall I let you in on a secret?” With his free hand, the warlock wiped the trickle of blood from his nose and regarded it contemptuously. “This ... this isn't because I'm at my limits. It's because I'm holding back!”
As the warlock reared to his full height, renewed energy swept out from him in a tidal wave, twisting and weaving around the witches own like a snake. Again, rather than overwhelming them with brute force, Nameless simultaneously attacked from both sides while still holding at bay Willow and Tara's own attempt to push him back.
A wedge of solid air was driven sharply in between Willow and Tara's hands, forcing them apart, and abruptly severing their connection. Willow's stomach lurched disturbingly at the sudden jolt of that loss, and from the uncomfortable expression on her face, Tara felt likewise. Taking advantage of their momentary distraction, Nameless telekinetically spun them around 180 degrees and hurled each woman at the wall.
Breath catching in her throat, Willow only had time to squeeze her eyes shut as the bedroom wall hurtled towards her. After a few seconds in which the expected collision didn't occur, Willow tentatively cracked open one eye to find the wall hovering in front of her. At the very last moment, Nameless had apparently had a change of heart, and arrested Willow's momentum before she crashed into the wall.
Willow tried to turn around, with no success. In fact, she couldn't move at all; Willow found herself wrapped in a cocoon of hardened air that conformed to every contour of her slender form. Worried about Tara's wellbeing, Willow tried to call out.
Again, she met with no success; even when Willow opened her mouth, her tongue refused to move. It was only then that she realized that she couldn't hear anything, not even Rack's muffled exclamations of pain, which had become near constant background noise. Even by rolling her eyes desperately, Willow couldn't see much beyond the wall that hovered directly in front of her face.
Unable to move, unable to even speak or hear, Willow was helpless to resist the panic and paranoia that soon began to assail her. In all of the scenarios that overwhelmed her overactive imagination, no matter how improbable, Tara's wellbeing was always her primary concern.
He could be doing anything to her, and I wouldn't know! Tara could be crying, she could be calling out for me, wondering why I don't come to her! She might think I've abandoned her! With a concentrated effort, Willow tamed the worst and most unlikely of her fears, one of which involved Nameless employing the unusual torture of force feeding Tara prawns.
Tara knows I'll never leave her, never, no matter what.Her sense of hearing, when it returned, was a shock, even though the house was relatively silent. But this silence was deafening, especially in the continued absence of any sign of life from Rack.
That doesn't necessarily mean what I think it means though ... does it? He could just be in the same boat as me and ... Tara!If she'd been able to move, Willow might have slapped herself in the forehead. Here she was, desperately worrying about Tara, for who knows how long unable to ascertain the status of her beloveds wellbeing, and as soon as she could hear again,
what do I do? I wonder about the fate of my former dealer!“Tara?” Willow called out anxiously, and the leaden weight on her heart lightened at her lover's swift, and equally anxious reply.
“Willow! Are you okay, sweetie?”
“No, she isn't,” interjected a snide, rasping voice. “She's split up the middle with her innards smeared all over the wall like strawberry jam. Honestly, after all the work I've done to keep you two alive, do you think I'm about to let anything happen to either one of you? That I don't want to happen, that is.”
“What gives you the right to meddle in our lives anyway!” Willow spat heatedly, ignoring the awkward feeling of having a conversation with someone she couldn't see.
“The right?” Nameless replied contemptuously from his hidden position behind Willow's back. “What does right and wrong matter? I'm strong enough to enforce my will on the both of you. My dear Willow, if you think there's any inherent sense of right and wrong in the universe, you're deluded.”
There was a pregnant pause, and when the warlock continued, his voice was tinged with heartfelt self loathing. “If there was, I would never have
been born.”
“Where's Rack?” Tara asked. “You don't have to do something you'll regret, Nathaniel.”
There was another pause, but this time when Nameless spoke Willow could all but see his cruel smirk in her mind's eye. “Far too late for that, I'm afraid. I've made rather quite a mess of our Mr Rack. Here, have a look for yourself.”
With that, Willow found herself spun around 180 degrees until she could once again see her bedroom in it's entirety. To one side, splayed out on carpet that was sodden with blood, lay a wet, red ruin of a body. Willow quickly forced her eyes away before the gristly image could imprint itself on her memory. Instead, she turned her eyes to Tara, in a similar position against the far wall.
She found Tara staring right back at her, and effortlessly fell into those gorgeous blue orbs that she loved so much. Needless to say, Nameless spoiled it all by stepping directly into their field of vision. Willow shuddered with disgust on a visceral level at the gruesome picture Nameless presented.
Splattered from head to toe with gore, the warlock looked like he should have been an extra on an especially schlocky horror movie. But despite the fact that Willow's mind shied away from the thought, she knew that the difference was that what was coating Nameless was real, and had, until recently, been inside a living human being.
“Nathaniel, what have you done?” Tara whispered, pain, sorrow and outrage warring for primacy in her voice.
“Nothing any worse than what I've done plenty of times before,” grunted Nameless as though murder was nothing to get upset about. “This is the truth of me, little witches. I am not a good or righteous man. I'm a bloody-handed murderer, rather literally at the moment ... and the sooner you realize that, we'll all be better off.”
Shrugging, Nameless rolled his shoulders one by one, followed by his head, neck cracking loudly as he did so. “I do apologize for the mess though. It would appear that, once again, I was ... overwhelmed by my own enthusiasm.”
“The mess?” Willow weakly echoed. “We haven't even completely washed all the demon out of the carpet from your last visit!”
Nameless turned to blankly stare at Willow, his face an inscrutable mask. Abruptly, he sketched an old fashioned courtly bow, complete with an overly elaborate flourish. “Then by all means, allow me to redeem myself by cleaning up my own mess.”
Without waiting for a reply, Nameless casually gestured and the room was swept by an expanding ring of glittering sparkles. In their wake, the room was left spotless, cleaned and polished within in an inch of it's life, inasmuch as a room could be said to have a life. It brought a rush of memories crowding forward from the depths of Willow's mind, memories of having performed similar acts herself for Anya and Xander's engagement party.
“Nathaniel ...” Tara began in a gently chiding tone, but Nameless cut her off with a guttural bark of laughter.
“Please, Tara! Don't you think it's a little late to lecture me on the evils of magic overuse?” Spinning around to face Tara now, he gestured at the inky veins lining his face. “I didn't get these by drawing on my face with a pen like a mischievous child.”
Though Willow could no longer see it for herself, the incensed tone of Nameless' voice left her in no doubt that his face would have substituted it's icy mask for an expression of boundless anger. “But then, that's you all over, isn't it!” he snapped. “Tara Maclay, the great moral authority! The scoobies moral compass, Tara-who-can-do-no-wrong! Tara the fucking saint!”
“I'm not ...” Tara tried to protest, but the heat of Nameless' fury beat down her defense as if it wasn't even there.
“You don't know the first thing about me, witch!” he snarled, lurching close up into Tara's face. “You don't know what I've suffered, what I've done, what's been done to me! And you presume to judge me? How
dare you! You're nothing but a child, a fucking infant, bumbling around in the dark with no comprehension what the real world is like. I know what's coming, you ignorant little witch! I've seen the shadow to come, I've lived in the darkness. And it
will eat you alive!”
Nameless was breathing deeply by this point, almost panting from the passion with which he spoke. His eyes were dilated and fixated on Tara's own, and Tara found herself equally trapped by a dread fascination with what she found there. So fascinated that she was only vaguely aware of Willow shouting impotently for Nameless to leave her alone.
Because in the warlock's eyes, she saw fear. A gnawing, all-consuming fear lurking in Nameless' heart; beneath the rage, beneath the bitterness, beneath the savage, biting wit was a sense of pain and loss so monumental that Tara's mind recoiled from from its immensity.
“What happened to you?” Tara breathed, the words slipping from her mouth like the final words of a dying man.
The reply was two simple words, but they cut Tara like a knife. “You did.”
Nameless spun away without warning, his coat tails almost slapping Tara in the face, and stalked towards the exit. “If you ladies will excuse me, I've got a vampire to kill.” His exit unexpectedly stalled in mid stride. “Once I find him, that is. I really should have made Rack tell me where Hawkins was hiding
before I killed him. After the fact, the impolite bastard was downright closemouthed.”
“You know we'll stop you!” Willow cried out defiantly, a posture that might have been more believable if she hadn't been immobilized and pinned to her own bedroom wall.
“I know you'll try,” Nameless countered without bothering to turn around, his voice strangely melancholy. “But as I've told you before, to stop me ... you'll have to kill me. And I don't think you have that in you, either of you.”
“Hah!” Willow scoffed, bluffing desperately. “That's where you're wrong, mister! I'm a bona fide killing machine!”
“Then kill me already,” replied Nameless wearily, as if the idea was of little consequence to him. “Put me out of my misery.”
Willow had no reply to that, and could only hang there open mouthed and flummoxed. Sighing as if disappointed, Nameless hunched his shoulders and continued on his way.
“I thought not.”
To be continued ...
That’s right: In order to make this event LESS popular, the female activists take off their tops and jog in front of onlookers. - Scott Adams, regarding the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.
), but the new update has just been finished. I probably won't get time to post it tonight, but it should be up tomorrow.
Things took longer than I expected, I'm afraid.
How , What, Why, Who, I am so confused help me please 
moments in this story. Nice!
Oh, that's just too perfect!
Disappearing posts, huh? Who ya gonna call? Wait ... that ain't right ... 
