Shadow and Substance

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part V

It was impossible. It couldn’t be true; and yet, one glance at Nika’s stricken expression crushed all hope. “You’re … a vampire?” Sandy asked her in a small, stunned voice. “You’re one of them?”

“No.” Nika shook her head violently. “No, you have to believe me. I’m nothing like them.”

“ ’Course not,” Leila said cheerfully. “You’re just a typical Nineties woman who needs a really high-protein diet, plus there’s that little sun allergy thing.” Her tone hardened. “You’re not kidding anybody but yourself. Time to come out of the coffin, lady!”

Nika swiveled to face the girl in the corner, her eyes burning with a light that should have ignited the gas permeating the room’s atmosphere. “I’m not like you. I live near a riding stable, I … feed from the horses, different ones each night, never enough to hurt them. I don’t take human blood, I never take human blood. I’m not like you.”

“Horses, huh?” Leila shrugged. “I did a Pekingese once, just to shut him up; can’t say I cared for the taste. But you really think that makes you any different? Blood is blood, where we get it doesn’t really matter.”

“You’re a vampire,” Sandy repeated numbly, oblivious to the byplay between the other two. “Oh, my God. All this time … why didn’t you tell me?”

Nika turned back to her, eyes imploring. “It would only have confused things,” she insisted. “This is something that happened to me; it’s not who I am, I won’t let it be who I am.” She gestured at Leila. “You say her soul stayed with her body somehow, cohabiting with the demon. Well, I don’t have a demon at all. I’m nothing like her, but I am like you: you’re the same person you were before you were killed, and so am I.”

“You really are a piece of work,” Leila scoffed. “No demon, huh? That’s even better than ‘I didn’t inhale’ — easy to say, and impossible to settle either way. I can’t wait to hear what makes you so special.”

“It … really is a little hard to understand,” Sandy admitted, unwilling even now to show open doubt; and at the tiny flicker of hurt that flitted across Nika’s face, she suddenly realized what Leila had clearly seen minutes ago, that in some way the power in the room had shifted to her. She struggled for calm, choosing her words. “How could something like that happen?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Nika told her. “There are several possible explanations, but I think the most likely one involves my past. While I was still … living, I was briefly possessed by a demon who then left me for a different host. I think that may have somehow immunized me against subsequent infestation. Also, though I was killed by a vampire, I didn’t die by draining; because of that, I had a longer incubation period before rising to … this … and that may have contributed to the cumulative effect.”

“Watch it,” Leila said. “When she starts using four-syllable words, it means she’s thinking on her feet, and you’re about to be taken for a ride.”

“It’s more than just words,” Nika said; her face was a mask of hate for the vampire girl, but she spoke with rigid composure. “Soul or no, her flesh is profane, unholy, tainted by the creature that inhabits it. Mine isn’t.” Her fingers closed on the crucifix that hung around her neck, and she raised it to touch her lips, her forehead. “It doesn’t burn me. There’s no demon in me, so I can handle holy objects without harm. Let her try that.”

“Give me a break.” Leila’s mouth twisted with scorn. “You got all kinds of reasons why you’re different, you’re special, you’re not like the rest of us. Well, it don’t wash. You got no pulse; you can’t take a tan; air is just something you use for flapping your lips; and you need blood to live. That’s the biggie, you have to drink blood to live. Whether or not you like it, we are the same. You may hate my guts — and it’s mutual, believe me — but we’re still sisters under the skin.”

“I’m not your sister!” Nika screamed. Sandy stared, shocked, and even Leila seemed startled by this uncharacteristic show of passion. It took visible effort for Nika to regain control; she looked to Leila with savage intensity and added bitterly, “I’m your daughter.”

Leila’s, “Huh?” came out as a comical squeak. Sandy followed an instant later with a rather vacant, “What?”

“It was my own ancestry I was tracing when I cast the bones,” Nika went on. “You were right, the ritual required that I have the ashes of the vampire who made me. It took me months to find you, but I’ve confirmed it with three other kinds of scrying. You’re my sire.”

Leila’s face was the mirror of Sandy’s own astonishment, supplanted a moment later by sickening despair as the implications sank in. “No fricken way,” Leila was saying. “I never saw you before a coupla weeks ago. Hell, you heard me at the cemetery, I didn’t even know how to make another vampire. You got the wrong girl.”

Nika shook her head firmly. “I’m not wrong. I don’t understand it myself; like you, I have no memory of our ever meeting before tonight, we didn’t deal with one another even when you were a student. But the methods I used are more reliable than genetic testing, and they leave no room for doubt. My existence derives directly from yours.”

Leila regarded her with a frown. “What do you mean, ‘even when I was a student’? This has nothing to do …” She broke off, her eyes widening. “Wait a minute, I do know you! Damn, I did my own makeover when I went AWOL from Spike’s little army, and I still let yours throw me! You had dark hair then, and it was short, and you were always wearing earth tones — you’re that computer teacher all the guys were drooling for!”

“I used to be,” Nika confirmed. “And you’re the little sociopath who stabbed a horticulture teacher with pruning shears. You weren’t in any of my classes, but I heard the story. So, does knowing my pre-mortem identity jog your memory?”

Leila was barely listening. “I still don’t get it, though,” she said, frowning to herself. “I only saw you the one time after I came across, and that was a big bust, anyway …” She stopped. “Oh. Oh, hell.”

“What is it?” Sandy asked.

“It was a week or so after Spike’s raid on the school,” Leila said. “I was still working out my routine; at first I just did drunks, and then I discovered I could lay a trance on them, to keep them from fighting me and to wipe their memory after I was finished. So, I tried it on people who were sober, and it worked fine, and I was able to branch out to a wider audience. I caught her in the school parking lot one night, hit her with the ol’ whammy, and moved in for refreshments. She went under easy enough, but just as I broke the skin on her neck she came out of it and started to scream, and I slap a hand over her mouth and I’m thinking how did this happen and what am I gonna do about it?” Leila quirked an eyebrow in Nika’s direction. “And while I was trying to decide on my next move … she bit me.”

“Of course,” Nika said in sudden realization.

“Bit you?” Sandy repeated.

“Sunk her teeth into my hand and tried to tear off a chunk,” Leila elaborated. “Startled the hell out of me, she’s lucky I didn’t wrap her around a light pole. I squeezed her neck until she passed out, and then I spent a minute or so adding layers to the trance until I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to remember me. I didn’t take another drink, though, I was still too shook up. I just booked.”

“You took my blood,” Nika said. “And I took yours. Tiny amounts, but it was enough. And because I didn’t die, it just lay inside me like a cancer, and then when Angel killed me five months later … So. So now I know.”

“Yes,” Sandy said. “Now we know.” The bleakness of her tone brought Nika’s eyes back to her, and she went on, “You lied to me. When you said we needed a particular vampire for the ritual, it made sense; I was killed by a vampire, and we couldn’t find the one who did it, so I could understand how releasing my spirit would require finding a proper substitute. But it was your sire you wanted, you were hunting her before we ever met. This didn’t have anything to do with me, did it? You just said that to get my help. I was another … margin for you, an extra ace for you to play when you needed it.” She longed to weep, but her eyes would produce no tears. “I believed in you, and you betrayed me.”

Nika had gone paler than ever. “It was my only hope,” she whispered. “This wasn’t about revenge, or power. Don’t you see, my situation is the same as yours: these monsters killed me but I’m still here, caught in a form I can’t escape. Every attempt at a restoration spell for vampires has failed, because the demon’s presence contaminates the body; but I had no demon, so if I could just acquire the vital elements …”

“You used me,” Sandy broke in. “You lied to me, played me for advantage. You convinced me it was okay to deceive Leila — she wasn’t human, she had no soul, promises don’t count when they’re made to a nonperson — but in the end the monster here was you. I thought you were my friend, I trusted you. How could you do this to me?”

Nika had flinched at the words as if they were nails being driven into her. The icy calm, the imperious bearing were gone, and she wavered where she stood. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t say that. I didn’t want to hurt you, I never wanted to hurt you. But there was no other way, don’t you see? I had a life, I had people who mattered to me and work that made a difference in the world and a man who loved me … I wanted my life back.” The tears that were denied to Sandy spilled from her eyes and down her cheeks. “I just wanted my life back!”

It was the wrong thing to say. A cry of anguish, resonating with Sandy’s own need … and it only intensified the betrayal, for Nika had used that yearning as a tool to manipulate her. “Don’t speak to me,” Sandy said to her. “Don’t look at me. I never knew you. You don’t exist.”

Nika faced her for another moment, her expression frozen, and then it was as if something went out of the woman. Her legs gave out beneath her, and she sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands, sobbing. It was a pitiful sight; and Sandy, gazing down at her, felt nothing. Nothing at all.

She became conscious of Leila’s eyes on her, and turned back to the vampire girl. “I’m ready for this all to be over,” she said. “If I set you free now, will you just leave?”

Leila delivered another of those offhand shrugs. “Any beef I got with you comes from you helping to put me in here. Turn me loose, and it cancels out. As for her —” She inclined her head toward Nika. “— I’d hate to walk out without giving her a good kick in the slats as I go by, just as a forget-me-not, but it isn’t worth getting you pissed at me. Only … can I keep the Uzi?”

Sandy found the discarded weapon and, after a moment’s inspection, determined how to remove the magazine. She moved to the corner and used the toe of her ‘shoe’ to scrub through one of the chalk lines; Leila waved a hand through where the barrier had been and then, satisfied, stepped out. “Here,” Sandy said, and tossed the Uzi to her; then, holding up the extracted magazine, “This stays.”

“Ah, c’mon, be a sport,” Leila said. “High-capacity mags are almost as hard to come by as full auto. If you wanta be careful, just thumb the bullets outta the top, I can always get more bullets.”

Sandy complied with a sigh she didn’t bother to voice, and Leila stepped back into the corner to retrieve the trash sack while Sandy expelled cartridges into her free hand. “Thanks, chief,” Leila said as the magazine was passed over to her, and stuffed the completed weapon into the sack, which she rolled around its contents and tucked under her arm. At the door she looked back to Sandy and warned, “She comes after me again, I’ll flush her ashes down the jane at Prism. You make sure she understands that.” Sandy nodded acknowledgement, and the girl was gone.

Nika had ceased to weep, but still sat with eyes downcast. Sandy regarded her with a remote, uncomfortable distaste, and finally said, “I’ll be leaving, too. There’s nothing to keep me here.”

“Wait,” Nika said. Her voice sounded rusty, and it took her two attempts to regain her feet. “Don’t go. Please.”

Sandy went to the corner of the room and closed the valve on the gas cylinder. “We should let the door stand open for awhile so the gas can dissipate,” she observed clinically; then, to Nika, “Why shouldn’t I leave? This went too far. You can’t make it right again.”

“Just come with me,” Nika said. “I can’t … ask you to trust me again, but there’s something I need to show you.”

Sandy was too weary in her soul to argue. Empty inside, she followed the older woman out of the room and down the hall to a bank of elevators. “I chose this place for a reason,” Nika said as they rose to the next floor. She seemed to be having trouble forming the words. “It wasn’t necessary for the ritual, I just wanted us to be nearby when it was done.”

“What does it matter?” Sandy asked without heat. “It was all a sham, a confidence game.”

“I used you,” Nika agreed. “I lied to you as much as I did to her, but I kept telling myself this was here at the end.” The elevator doors ding!ed and opened, and Nika stepped out and started down another hall, Sandy drifting behind her almost as listlessly as if she had returned to formlessness.

They stopped at a set of double doors with a plate that read 2 SOUTH, and Nika looked expectantly to her former friend. Sandy started to ask why they were here, and then she felt it: a tug, even more faint than the sensation of the sentry spell, but real all the same. She blinked, something inside her beginning to shift in response to the unseen force. “What is this?” she demanded.

“I used you,” Nika said again. She seemed to have aged years, gaunt and haunted. “I knew about this almost from the beginning, I could have brought you here weeks ago, but I … needed you.” She looked away and said softly, “I know you can never forgive me, but maybe someday you won’t hate me.”

Sandy was unable to answer; the thing that held her had intensified monstrously within seconds, pulling at every particle of her existence. She tried to strengthen the link to Nika, or to let herself be drawn back to the Bronze, but those were bonds of steel and this was a hurricane, a black hole, massive and inexorable and overwhelming. “I’m sorry,” she heard from an immense distance, and then she was snatched up by the current, form and voice and thought stripped away as she hurtled helplessly, not toward the light she had so long sought but into the shadows of the terrifying unknown.


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