Chapter Three

The test went well at first, all things considered. The girls managed to find and stake two fledglings in the first cemetery, and were high-fiving each other and celebrating when Buffy’s vamp radar went off.

“Knock it off, ladies. Am I the only one who can tell there’s still a vamp in the area?”

The suitably chastised girls quieted down and stretched their less well-honed senses until Rose finally shouted, “Got him! This way!” The girls ran in the direction she’d pointed, whooping and daring each other to be first. Buffy followed at a more leisurely pace, confident that there was nothing lurking in the cemetery that could threaten a whole squad of slayers.

By the time Buffy reached them, the anticipatory whoops and giggles had turned to started exclamations and curses.  Rose was on the ground, cradling her injured right hand with her left.  As Buffy watched, Gill came flying through the air to land next to Rose, shaking her head and blinking away stars. With an annoyed frown, Buffy ran toward the bushes she could see shaking. The air was filled with the sounds of growls and snarls and muttered British curses as two more girls rolled out, wrestling each other until they noticed who they were fighting and stopped to join their friends in regrouping.  Just as Buffy plunged into the shrubbery, searching for the source of the noise and violence, it went quiet. The only sounds were the outraged yells from the defeated slayers.

Buffy’s radar told her that the vampire was long gone. Even if it had not just trashed a full squad of trained slayers, the speed with which it had disappeared told her this was no ordinary fledgling vampire.  There was no argument from the girls when she counted noses and began to lead them out of the cemetery. Except for Rose, whose hand was broken, no one had suffered anything more than bruises and momentary unconsciousness, in spite of having done their best to plunge their stakes into some part of the vampire’s anatomy.

“I think I got him once,” Gill said. “Look, there’s blood on my stake.”

“Blood, not dust?”

Gill shrugged with embarrassment. “I was just trying to hurt him enough to get a good shot in. I don’t know where I stabbed him, but it wasn’t the heart.”

“Okay. Well, let’s get you guys back and patched up. We’ll go looking for him tomorrow.”  She paused. “It was a ‘him’ wasn’t it?”

“Oh yeah. It was a guy-vamp. I could tell that, even in the dark.” There were giggles from the other girls, and Buffy rolled her eyes.

“I don’t even want to know…” she said, memories of fighting against Spike and other male vampires making her more than aware of how they probably knew he was male.

When she returned home well after midnight, she stood in the kitchen frowning in the direction of the shed, now invisible in the gloom. She debated with herself, then gave in and, taking a flashlight and a stake, she went into the garden. She sent out her senses, but there was no trace of a vampire anywhere in the large garden, including the shed, which stood alone, its door hanging open as if to verify that the vampire had left as he’d promised. Telling herself it was a job well-done, she went back inside and directly to bed. She had a full day of work at the school scheduled for the next day and wasted no more time worrying about one random, possibly harmless vampire.

~~~~~~~

The vampire studied the dark house for several minutes, searching for any sign that Buffy was still awake or lying in wait for him.  When he was satisfied that the garden was empty of deadly women holding weapons, he limped to the shed on trembling legs, pausing frequently to gather what little strength he had left. Pulling the door shut behind him, he settled himself back onto the bed he’d made under the plywood shelter. Although he suspected Buffy would be angry at him for not staying away, the house and garden continued to feel like sanctuary to his weakened body and he’d obeyed the urge to return there to wait out the rapidly approaching day.  Telling himself he should have eaten the rat when he had a chance, he curled his thin frame up into a surprisingly small ball and closed his eyes.

~~~~~~~~~

Buffy overslept in the morning and had no time to check her backyard before rushing off to work, but she was confident the mysterious vampire would have had enough sense to stay away, now that he knew what lived in the house he claimed to have been drawn to.

“Drawn to, my ass,” she grumbled as she dressed. “Somebody must have told him it was empty and he thought he’d use it for a lair. How stupid does he think I am?”  In her mind, she could hear that voice responding, I’m guessin’ probably not as stupid as you look, Slayer. But you never know… She almost snapped an answer at him before remembering that it was an imaginary voice in her head, not an actual vampire speaking to her.

She had a quick lunch with Dawn, who said she was planning to come home that night as her roommate had “plans”. It took Buffy several minutes to realize what Dawn meant, and several more minutes to calm herself down and remember that Dawn was over eighteen now and old enough to have a roommate who might need privacy sometimes.

“Okay, just…” Buffy paused, not sure what she wanted to say or how she wanted to say it.

“Just what? Don’t tell me you have ‘plans’ too?” Dawn broke into a happy grin at the thought.

“No. No, of course not. It’s just… there was this vampire yesterday. In the garden shed. And he… I… I’m sure he won’t be back, but….”

“You didn’t stake him?”

“Well, not as such, no…”

“ ‘Not as such’? What the hell does that mean?”

“He sounded… harmless, okay? So I let him stay there, and he left after it got dark and I’m sure he won’t be back, and… Just don’t go out there without me, okay?”

“You let a vamp stay in your shed for the day? And then you let him walk? Who are you, and what have you done with Buffy?”

“Very funny. I like to think that I’ve matured and learned that the world isn’t all black and white anymore. He didn’t sound dangerous, and I felt sorry for him.”

“Sorry. For a vampire. A vampire that isn’t Spike or Angel.” Dawn made a show of looking around in a panic.  “The world is ending, isn’t it? And you’re just afraid to tell me.”

“Very funny. Ha, ha.”

Dawn smiled, very pleased with her own humor. “If you’re so sure you scared him off, why do you want me to be careful?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly make him promise to stay away… I mean, Slayer here, telling you to get lost, it should be a given, right? But, I dunno. He said something drew him to my house, and he didn’t sound like somebody who follows orders very well, so… just in case.”

 

Buffy hurried outside as soon as she got home, noticing immediately that the shed door was closed. Cursing herself for not having checked it in the morning, she decided to assume the vampire had returned to close it after leaving the previous night.  She was able to hold that assumption until she opened the door and felt the telltale tingles on her neck.

“I thought I told you to get lost!” she said, slamming the door shut behind her.

“Didn’t tell me to stay lost,” came the hoarse rasp from the corner.

“I thought that was understood. Leave and don’t come back. What was hard to understand about that?”

“Had no place else to go.”  His voice was so soft, Buffy could barely hear him. His words were distorted, not in the way they would have been by fangs, but he was clearly having trouble speaking.

Not my problem. Not my problem. Not my problem…

“No place else to go. In a city the size of London, you couldn’t find another shed to hide in?”

“Bloody cemeteries are full of ill-tempered little girls,” he growled, anger making his voice somewhat stronger for a few seconds. “Had to fight my way out of a herd of ‘em last night just to make it back here. Wasn’t really in any shape to go house-hunting after that.” In spite of the irritation she could hear in his voice, there was also an undercurrent of pain and exhaustion that stayed her instinctive urge to retaliate.

She froze. Coincidence! Coincidence! Aloud, she said, “You mean you’ve met some other slayers?”

“I guess that’s what the bloodthirsty little bitches were.” He stopped to gasp for air, and Buffy had to fight an urge to ask him what was wrong. “Tried to stab me with pieces of wood.  Was hard work getting out of there without hurting any of ‘em too bad.”  There was a long pause, then, “I don’t think I hurt anyone. I tried to be careful. Thought you wouldn’t like it if I hurt anybody.”

Buffy sank down on an upturned crate. “That was you?” There was silence for a few seconds while the vampire grasped the implications of her question.

“Maybe? Are you angry with me?”

Buffy laughed sourly and waved her hand in the air. “Why would I be mad at you? You move into my backyard, beat up a squad of slayers who were supposed to be ready to graduate, and then come back to live in my shed again. What about that could possibly make me mad?” Her voice had risen as she talked, and when she realized she was yelling, she stopped and glared in his direction.

“In my defense, they were trying to kill me,” he said in a small, weak voice. “Came damn close to it, now that I think on it…”

“They were supposed to kill you. I can’t graduate a bunch of girls who can’t take care of one vampire when the odds are six to one! That shouldn’t even be possible.”

“Really?” For a moment he sounded more like the defiant vampire she’d first talked to. “Most vampires couldn’t have done that?”

Buffy bit her lip. “I can only think of one… maybe two… probably just one.” She shook herself. “So beside the point!”  She groaned and put her head in her hands, oblivious to the fact that the sun was sinking and her safe space was shrinking as the gloom increased in the small building. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Prob’ly not the issue you think it is,” he said, sounding tired again. “Didn’t get a chance to catch anything to eat last night, lost a lot of blood from where one of those girls nailed me, and today I’m so weak, I couldn’t even catch Roscoe when he paid a visit.”

“Roscoe?”

“The rat?”

“Oh. Yeah. Roscoe. Wait, what? You were going to eat a rat?”

“It’s not like I’m strong enough to go hunting lions, is it? What little energy I had left, those girls took right out of me.”

“You kicked their asses. How do you figure you’re too weak to hunt… something?”

“That was fear – sheer terror – and being smarter and faster than they were. I got lucky. Probably couldn’t do it again if I had to. I was on my way to try to find some other place to sleep when they jumped me. By the time I got away from them, it was all I could do to drag myself back here before the sun came up. I may not know all there is to know about being a vampire, but I can feel m’ body shutting down. Another couple of nights without food, and…”

“You expect me to just leave you here to starve to death? It’d be kinder to stake you.”

“Well, bloody well can’t expect you to feed me, can I?” he growled, then coughed and moaned softly. “Just go away, Slayer. Let me die in peace, yeah?”

“Buffy.”

“What?”

“Buffy. My name is Buffy.” She paused, then took a deep breath. “What’s yours?”

“Got no bloody idea. Pick one you like.” He sounded exhausted and uninterested. There was another rustling sound as he shifted positions, reminding her that he was injured as well as hungry.

“You don’t know your name? Not even from before you were turned?”

“Don’t know much of anything before a few days ago. Woke up outside your garden gate—hungry, hurt, and with a bad sun allergy. Didn’t know for sure what I was till you told me. Suspected, but didn’t know.”

Buffy stood up. “Stay here,” she ordered, turning and walking out before he could respond.

“Did you just buy blood?”  Dawn stared at Buffy’s defiant face and rolled her eyes. “Ohmygod. You’re adopting this vamp, aren’t you?”

“He’s starving. And he doesn’t eat people for some reason, so I just… I just got him some blood. So he can get better. And leave. That’s all.”

Dawn cocked her head at Buffy. “Does he remind you of Spike or Angel or something? Is that why you’re feeding him instead of killing him? Because he looks like one of them?”

“I don’t know what he looks like,” Buffy admitted. “He’s always behind the wood if it’s daytime, and I didn’t get to see him last night.”

“Last night?  You’re feeding the vamp that beat up your squad?” Dawn rolled her eyes dramatically. “I’m living in bizarro world, aren’t I?”  As Buffy started out of the kitchen, Dawn fell into step behind her. “What?” she said to Buffy’s startled look. “I want to meet your new vampire.”

“He’s not my ‘new vampire’, Buffy snapped. “I’m just helping him get strong enough to go live somewhere else.”

The shed door was still open, as Buffy had left it, but without the sun shining into the building, the interior was all shadows and darkness.

“Damn! I should have remembered the flashlight.”

“Torch”

“What?” Buffy answered Dawn in a distracted fashion, as she moved slowly into the shed, watching the shadows for one that might be animate.

“It’s a torch. That’s what they call them here. You need to learn the lingo.”

“I was born and raised in California. It’s a damn flashlight, and that’s what I’m going to call it.”

“Whatever. Do you want me to go get it?”

“Yes, please. It’s sitting on the kitchen table with the… you know. The stuff.”

Muttering to herself about people who were willing to buy blood for vampires, but not to use the word in front of them, Dawn followed the stone path back toward the kitchen door.  She glanced up when the back gate creaked open and several shadows slid into the garden.

“Buffy?” Dawn’s voice had a tone that she only used on rare occasions – usually when she was in need of rescue. “Are you sure he doesn’t have friends?”  She looked around frantically for some kind of a weapon, backing up toward the shed where Buffy was just peering out the door to see what was going on. With one leap, Buffy was out the door and in front of Dawn, pushing her back and ordering, “Hand me the broomstick and grab the rake.”

The shadows moved closer, revealing themselves to be a small group of newly turned vampires, grave dirt still clinging to their clothes. In the faint illumination coming from the kitchen windows, Buffy could just make out their fangs.

“I’m guessing you guys are kinda new around here, huh?” Buffy put her hand behind her for the broken broom handle Dawn was just placing there.

The vamp in the front looked confused. “Shouldn’t she be screaming?” he asked, looking to his companions for confirmation.

“I’d think so,” one replied. “We’re bloody frightening, if you ask me.”

“You’re ugly,” Buffy agreed. “You got that right.” 

She moved away from the shed so that she would have more room to move, knowing Dawn would warn her if any of them tried to get behind her. At a silent signal, they all rushed the woman they’d planned to have for dinner, only to discover that she was no longer there. Having flipped over their heads, Buffy took advantage of the temporary distraction to drive the broomstick into two backs so quickly the first one was still dusting when she plunged it into his companion.

A sound from Dawn momentarily drew her gaze away, and two of the remaining vampires leapt at her, carrying her to the ground with their combined weight. A third was wrestling with Dawn as she flailed at him with the rake and tried to close the shed door.  Buffy landed with the piece of broom handle facing out, impaling and dusting one of the two opponents still in the fight. The sound of snarling and scuffling from the shed had her throwing the remaining vampire off and staking him before he’d even hit the ground.

She whirled to go to Dawn’s rescue to find nothing but the rake and a pile of dust in the doorway. Dawn was breathing hard and clutching her neck, but seemed to be fine. On the ground beside her was what appeared to be a bundle of dark clothing.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. One minute I was trying to get the door shut or stake him with the rake, and then something pushed past me and held him until I could get a good angle on his heart.”  She glanced down at the dark bundle at her feet.  “I’m guessing this is your vampire project?”

Buffy dropped to her knees beside the inert object. She ran her hands over it, confirming only that there was a vaguely human form under the tattered leather coat. She picked up one thin wrist to feel for a pulse, then shook her head at her own stupidity. 

She stood, picking up the limp body and placing it in the garden cart.

“Let’s get him to the house, so I can see what’s wrong,” she said, moving forward as she did so.  “And for God’s sake, remind me tomorrow to get a lock for that damn gate!”

“Maybe you could just post a sign, ‘Slayer lives here’,” Dawn said. “That should cut down on the demon visits, don’t you think?”

“Assuming idiots like that can read….”

While Dawn held the door, Buffy lifted the vampire’s unnaturally light body out of the cart and easily carried it into the kitchen, muttering a probably unnecessary “come in” as she did so. She stood inside the door, frowning uncertainly.

“Oh, just put him on the table. We can clean it off later.”

Depositing her burden carefully, Buffy turned him onto his back and gasped when she saw his face. In addition to the expected wrinkled brow and fangs, his face was a mass of angry scars and sores that could only have come from burns. His lips were barely visible, going a long way to explaining why he was sometimes hard to understand. His head was just as covered with scars and burns as his face.

“Oh my God!” Dawn’s voice was a combination of horror and disgust.

            Biting her lip, Buffy pulled the coat away from his body and couldn’t smother another gasp. The torso she exposed was barely covered in a shredded tee-shirt that couldn’t hid the emaciated corpse under it. Every bone was visible, his stomach so sunken in that Buffy wasn’t sure he actually had internal organs. Every inch of bare skin bore more of the horrific burns that made his face so hard to look at. Some of them were already ridged scar tissue, and others seemed to be new and raw. In some cases, the flesh was blackened, making Buffy afraid to touch it for fear it would crumble to ash. An open gash along his left side was proof that Gill’s stake had, indeed, almost found its mark. Glancing down his body, Buffy and Dawn could see that his jeans were almost as destroyed as his shirt. Through a gaping hole in one leg, they could see an oozing sore that went all the way to the bone. There was no blood visible in or around either wound, something Buffy took to be a very bad sign.

“Oh my God,” Dawn said again, in a whisper this time.  “What happened to him?”

“Those are burns,” Buffy said. “I don’t know where or how he got them, but I can understand why he might not want to remember it.” She stared at the motionless body on her kitchen table. “I should just put him out of his misery,” she whispered. “He’s got be half crazy from the pain.”

“He saved me, Buffy.”

“You think I don’t know that?”  Buffy turned away and struggled with her conscience. “I know he saved you. And look what it did to him.”