Transitory Evils

2 days after Part 11





Rochelle looked at her superior, thinking before continuing her report. “Frankly, Peter, she’s better than any slayer I’ve ever seen or read about. She faced ten vamps, alone. Ten. She dusted five of them, scared off the rest, and didn’t even get touched. Talking of which, have you ever heard of a vampire called Tarquinius the Damned?”



“No, but I can get it checked for you.” Maugham pressed the intercom and spoke. “Mr Jeffries, could you see if we have any record of a vampire named ‘Tarquinius the Damned’? And let me know if you discover anything.



“So, Rochelle, what were we talking about?”



“Buffy. Have you ever seen her fight? I mean for real, not in training.”



“No, but I can imagine she’d be an awesome and frightening sight.”



“She is. But that’s not the really important thing. There’s something about her …” Rochelle paused, trying to order her thoughts. “She seems to have a peculiar ability to make friends, to enable people to care about her, somehow. I know that when I started talking to her it was part of the plan, but she’s really my friend now.”



“That’s not a problem, but I think I should examine this … ability of hers in our sessions. I wonder if it’s unique, or if it’s an as yet unknown capability of all slayers.”



Rochelle nodded. “Just don’t hurt her, Peter.”



“Au contraire, I want to make her as happy as I possibly can. She’s already rejected her former allies. Now is the time to build new alliances.”



Rochelle nodded. “Good. Now, what do we do with Dawn?”



“Ah, that’s an interesting point you raise. While you were in London with Ms Summers, the young Miss Summers received a telephone call. Unfortunately we were unable to intercept this one, however, Mr Harris received a verbal barrage that left him in tears. I’d say things are looking healthy on that front. After all, she had a year’s worth of pent-up hostility to release.”



Rochelle smiled. “Good. We really do need to bring the Slayers back under control. All else aside, without the Council, how can we guarantee that the current slayer will be sent where most needed?”



“Very true. Now, fill me in on everything else that happened.”



* * * *



“Dawn, are you okay?” Buffy asked, concerned.



“No. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”



Buffy rolled her eyes. “Fine, don’t then.”



Dawn stalked off, visibly fuming.



* * * *



“I think that’s brought us completely up to date, hasn’t it Rochelle?”



The brunette just nodded in response to Maugham’s question. Then, just as the head of the Council was about to dismiss her, the intercom activated.



“Dr Maugham?” Jeffries voice reverberated tinnily in the intercom’s speaker.



“Yes, Mr Jeffries?”



“I have the information you requested a little earlier, on Tarquinius the Damned.”



“Go ahead, please.”



“Very well, sir. Tarquinius the Damned is the name of a London-based vampire with a small coterie of followers. Before his death, he was Dr Edward McCubbin, Professor of Classics at Essex University. He was turned in 1987, making his vampiric existence some sixteen years in total.”



“Thank you Mr Jeffries.”



Maugham looked at Rochelle and chuckled. “He sounds very … ostentatious for a mere fifteen year old fledge.”



Rochelle smiled back. “He does, but he’s obviously got a following. He was one of ten when Buffy encountered them. I can’t see him being a particular danger to Buffy though.”



“Well, I wouldn’t make that an iron-clad rule, Rochelle. After all, William the Bloody, with whom we’re depressingly well acquainted, onlyonly nineteen or twenty when he killed his first slayer.”



“Very true. I’ll left Buffy know what we discovered though. After all, it’s obvious that she’s … errr,” Rochelle reached for the word she wanted, “rejecting the wishy-washy philosophy of Giles and the other … renegades.”



Maugham nodded. “Good, good. I think that we’re on track then to bring the slayers back into the fold, one way or another.”



* * * *



Buffy was cleaning the small apartment that she and Dawn shared, as she waited for her sister to return. For some reason that she had not as yet discovered, the British called apartments ‘flats’. She was, she admitted to herself, worried. The exchange with Dawn was far too reminiscent of what had happened before they defeated Glory, and after the improvements that Dawn had made in the past year, the last thing Buffy wanted was for her to revert to her previous behaviour.



She looked out occasionally, waiting to see Dawn coming along the street. As time passed, however, she began to worry. Where was she? Eventually, as night was falling, she saw Dawn trudging resignedly up the street.



As Dawn entered, Buffy almost leapt at the younger girl, a volley of questions pouring from her lips. Dawn stood and waited as the deluge washed over her. Dawn had deduced that the gist of Buffy’s questions related to one thing, ‘Where had Dawn been?’



“I needed to think. You wouldn’t listen earlier, so after school I went to Wimpy’s and pigged out and thought a lot.”



“Thought about what?” Buffy asked, taken aback by Dawn’s answer.



“Xander called yesterday.”



“Why? They haven’t called or written since we came here.”



“But that’s not what Xander said. He said they’ve tried to call and never got through, and they’ve all written a lot of letters.”



“Yeah, sure,” Buffy scoffed. “Willow and that monster she’s fucking won’t let them call or write. You know that as well as I do, Dawnie.”



“I thought I did, but Xander sounded so sad. It sounded like he was really upset when I told him to get lost.”



“They’re just messing with you, Dawn. They all hate us both. Why else haven’t we heard a word in almost a year?”



“I dunno. I just know Xander didn’t sound like he hated us.”



“Let me think about it a bit Dawn, and I’ll talk to Ro as well. She’s good.”



Dawn nodded, already distressed that Buffy was going to go to any member of the Council about this.



* * * *



Maugham smiled coldly as he listened to the conversation between Buffy and Dawn. At its conclusion, he turned to the Council Executive, seated around the boardroom table. The five compatriots who had gone to California with him were all there, the final, seventh, seat was held by Erherzog Karl-Heinz Gustav Schelling von Salzburg, the only non-British representative present on the Executive.



Maugham’s selection of the Arch Duke as a member of the Executive had been deliberate and political. Although very learned and pleasant, Karl-Heinz was in all other respects a non-entity. However, Maugham mused, his selection was a sop to the non-British members of the Council at large, his lack of ambition ensured that Maugham had the ability to rule a united executive where almost all votes were unanimous.



“It seems, then that Ms Summers has definitely turned against her former allies. Do any of you disagree?”



“Well, I assume you speak only of the slayer,” Marcus Adair sought confirmation from Maugham.



“Yes. In all honesty, Marcus, I don’t think that the younger Miss Summers is really an issue. Whether she supports Buffy or not doesn’t really signify.”



“She is the Key,” von Salzburg said, quietly articulating the question that had been on the minds of all the Executive members. “Is it possible that such an … entity could possibly be irrelevant?”



Maugham nodded in response to the question. “I understand your concerns, Karl, but all the research that has been done seems to indicate that the Key has but one function. And that’s to open a gateway between dimensions on behalf of one of three specific Hell-Gods. One of those three is dead, thanks to Ms Summers; while the other two are in their own dimension. I somehow doubt that young Dawn Summers will become an issue.”



The Executive members all nodded, pleased that from their point of view, Dawn was really no more than a ‘normal’ young girl, and not something they had to take a careful account of in their planning.



“The development of Ms Summer’s abilities under our tutelage has been exceptional,” Maugham continued, “We’ve never been able to assess and retrain such an experienced slayer before. Her abilities are no different, per se, to any other slayer, but the level of training and combat that she has experienced make her completely unlike anything we’ve had experience with. It seems to me that, if there is some way to do it, we need to be able to pre-prepare potential slayers. The skills that Ms Summers has make her an invaluable asset to the Council.”



Featherstone haughtily cleared his throat. “So, would Ms Summers be more or less amenable to our needs, goals and philosophy if her younger sister were to leave?”



“To be honest,” Maugham began, “I’m not entirely certain. The relationship that Ms Summers and her sister share is almost a maternal one but, as we all know, maternal links are often stressed during a child’s adolescence.”



Rochelle cleared her throat slightly, and began to speak. “If I may make an observation …”



“Of course,” Maugham said courteously. Even though he ran the Council like a personal fiefdom, he was well aware of the need for diplomacy and politics.



“Working under your instruction, Peter, I began to befriend Buffy; become her confidante.”



Maugham chuckled. “Oh, I know. The Council’s still paying off your shopping binges.”



Rochelle gave Maugham a definite look before continuing. “Over time, this false friendship became real. Buffy is my friend now, a real friend. For us to be speaking about her as if she were simply an experiment or object of study is profoundly wrong, Peter. She’s a human being. Living, breathing and with genuine emotions.” She drew breath before continuing.



“We shouldn’t be assessing her emotions based only on their benefit or drawbacks to us. Any planning we carry out has to include Buffy’s emotional well-being. In my personal opinion, to do anything else could be potentially catastrophic for both the Council and our long-term aims.” Rochelle ran her fingers through her short dark hair, rapidly mapping out what she would say next.



“I’m certain that Buffy now fully subscribes to the truth regarding demons of all forms—that they are either actively or passively inimical to the survival of humanity—and that she will work tirelessly with us to save the human race from either extinction or enslavement. However,” she paused, letting the sudden silence become pregnant with meaning, “we must never forget her upbringing. The United States has always made a cult of personal freedom. To in any way force or manipulate Buffy into working for us will be self-defeating. To that end, we cannot either force Dawn away or make her stay against her will. Any decision that Dawn makes must be her own, and Buffy has to be aware that it’s Dawn’s free choice. If anything else eventuates, Buffy will simply consign us to Trotsky’s dustbin of history. Again.”



Rochelle was in full flight now, and she continued before anyone could ask any questions. “I would also suggest that negative commentary and opinions of her former friends not be permitted. Buffy’s demeanour has improved markedly since she and I became frs, as, and I simply portrayed Giles and the so-called ‘Scooby Gang’ as being not wrong—or evil—but merely seeing things differently.



“Our objective has always been,” Rochelle concluded, “the protection of humanity from forces that most believe to be fictional. Let’s not lose sight of that amongst all the other issues. Buffy is a fundamental part of that objective, and we need her.”



Rochelle looked up and then added one more comment. “There’s one other issue we haven’t addressed yet either. Buffy is twenty-one now, and a legal adult both here and also in the United States. Additionally, because she was never identified as a potential slayer, she has strong views about her ‘right’ to a normal life. To deny her that ‘right’ would only result in her turning away from us again. Therefore, we should encourage her to develop a relationship with an … appropriate suitor.”