No Rest for the Wicked—Part 2: Unchosen

4: The Mirror.

Faith was heading back from an unpleasant conversation and a fairly pleasant kill when the shape reared up at the end of the alley. Medium-sized, lightfooted, scarcely panting.

She dug in her jacket for the stake and just as quickly let it go. "You again."

The light from someone’s backyard deck splashed his dark hair and shoulders, leaving his face in shadow. "You remembered this time."

Faith felt odd. Maybe she was still buzzed from the fight. But it seemed to her that the place she had known this boy was a dream, and that in the dream he had been easier to ignore. She remembered him little or faraway, mouthing chipmunk words she couldn’t hear, his arms flailing. Now she saw him up close, he wasn’t so little. Not big either, but wiry and rangy, with an ominously centered sort of stillness to him.

"It’s not that hard. You’re one weird kid." She fiddled with the stake, only half-conscious of her body sliding into wary, defensive posture. "So anyway, what’s the deal? You following me?"

"Just a couple blocks. I got your scent," he explained almost apologetically. "And I’m kinda… well, lost. I don’t know what part of town I’m in."

Faith snorted. The boy twitched a little, and she saw that he held one hand under his coat, against his body.

She closed the distance between them in three cat-steps and backstepped in order to kick his arm clear of his side.

But before she could get there, the boy yanked the concealed arm from his coat and raised it along with the other, elbows bent and palms toward her. One of them was smeared with something that looked black in the light— probably blood. Frozen in offensive posture, Faith flinched, though it was against her instincts and training.

"I won’t touch you." He tucked his wounded hand in to his side again. "I just want to wrap it up before it starts bleeding. Is the motel near here?"

Faith nodded without meaning to and turned it into a shrug. She had switched motels, finding herself a bed in a shadier neighborhood after she decided that one visitor was too many.

"Can I go with you?"

She rolled her eyes.

The boy hunched his shoulders a little and stuck his good hand in the pocket of his Army coat. "I know, you know. I know why you don’t want me trailing you around."

His voice dropped very low on the last syllable. Now Faith thought he might be older than he looked. There was a knowing air about him; a wary slant to the heavy-lidded eyes.

He took his hand out of his pocket again and propped himself heavily on the wall of the alley— as if he were trying to downplay his strength. To catch her off guard. But he said only, "I’ve known you before."

"Sure. Back in the mountains."

"No. Before that." He tilted his head, shuffling his hair out of his eyes. "See, I had an Avoidance spell on me. Still sorta do. And I think the only people it camouflages me from are people who’ve known me in the past. Like you. Or Justine, or that Warlock Wesley, or Angel."

"You’ve seen Wes?" For an instant Faith forgot her mistrust. "You’ve seen Angel? And talked to him?"

The boy shook his head. "Not for a long time. It’s hard to remember. But your Wes—he works for Angel. And he knows where to find those Slayers you’re looking for."

Faith felt an involuntary thrill of excitement run from her soles to her scalp. It was almost as good as another kill. "Look, kid. If I find out now you’re stringing me along…"

"I know. You’ll kill me." He turned in the direction he’d come from, right hand still tucked under his arm like a bird’s broken wing. He was so deadpan that sometimes he seemed a little smug. "Now can we go back to the motel? It’s starting again."

The motel was only three blocks away. She jogged ahead of him, occasionally skipping, fizzy and restless with post-kill energy. "Hey, you really know how to sweet-talk your way into a girl’s room. The blood. Nice touch."

She wasn’t entirely kidding. Faith never stopped marveling at how it happened: somehow being all trembly and scared led straight to being turned on. There must be a wire somewhere. Or maybe it was part of being a Slayer. She’d never really gotten Buffy’s thing for vamps—they were wicked cold, and there was the whole necrophilia angle—but she knew the achy-sweetness of danger. It was when you were coming off the high of a kill that you needed somebody warm to rub up against, to make you forget that the buzz would fade. One minute you were holding life and death in the palm of your hand, and the next minute you were navigating a traffic jam or filling out a bank slip. Normal life snuck up on you, and the older you got the more stubbornly it came. You needed something to make you forget all the useless bullshit. Something to make you focus to a hard point.

Swinging the door, she turned to give Deadpan Boy an eyeful. His eyes widened into her rude gaze— surprisingly blue eyes in this light—and his cheeks flushed. But he didn’t look antsy or unhappy. Not unhappy at all.

"So what’s your name anyway, kid?"

He told her, his gaze sweeping over the pit that was the room. From a Good Home, Faith thought, feeling a split second of shame that made her want to hit him. She said, "Oh yeah. I thought it was one of those Irish thingamajiggies."

She saw that he was gazing at her sword and crossbow, which she’d left propped in the corner by the bed because this shithole didn’t have maid service.

"What did they name you for?"

"Dunno." She shrugged out of her "new" vintage jacket and hurled it on the coverlet. "My grandma liked to go to Mass all the time, so I figure it was her idea. Maybe she thought I’d look all nice and pure in my Communion dress, and she could tell her friends she’d raised at least one good girl."

"And were you?"

Faith sniggered. "I didn’t make it to First Communion."

"I was religious for a while. But then I stopped."

"Yeah?" She was fidgeting her fingers in her belt-loops, not knowing exactly what she wanted to do but knowing she didn’t want to talk. Talking led bad places. "Hey, so what about that wound? Not gonna bleed all over my five-star room, are you?"

She didn’t have real bandages, but she did have a shopping-bag full of washed rags—formerly clothes belonging to various Slayerettes—that she used for just this purpose. Connor wrapped a piece of someone’s ‘N Sync t-shirt round his hand and secured it with two pieces of masking tape. "This’ll be fine. I think it’s stopped anyway."

"Yeah." Faith bounced nervously on the edge of the bed. Interrogations were no fun unless you were a mindfuck-artist like Willow. She had a tendency to jump right to the hurting stage, and that was off limits these days. Probably. She asked, "You’re human, right?"

"My folks say so."

Figured. "So, um… what’s the deal with Wes and these Slayers? You gonna show me where they are?"

Connor sat down on the opposite edge of the bed. "Wes knows. If he’s your friend, maybe he’ll tell you. But I don’t think I should."

"Why the fuck not?"

She glared across the mounded sheets. The room was lit only by two crappy torchière wall-fixtures, and she couldn’t really see anything but the shadow of his lashes creeping over his cheek.

"Because somebody told me not to trust you, and I don’t know you well enough to say they were wrong."

"Who the hell was that? Wes?" Now that stung a bit, but not much. Last spring aside, Wes had every right not to trust her. But she couldn’t stop a deeper fear from coming to her lips. "Was it Angel?"

"No." He sounded exasperated. "I told you, I haven’t talked to him. He doesn’t count anyway—he’s a… not a person. But the thing is… well, look. I want you to tell me how and why you did it."

"Did what?" What had Wes told him, exactly?

"When you killed them. The innocent ones. How did it happen?"

The boy’s big hooded eyes had come up, fixing her, wary but interested. Like some kid at a slumber party asking you how it felt to go all the way.

Faith shook her head and bounced to her feet in one motion.

Then it occurred to her that she didn’t have to escape. Not from him. She raised her chin. "So like, who are you to ask me that? You really wanna know how bad I am, or are you just stupid?"

"Well."

He had drooped his head. His voice came gravelly at first, the words lost in his throat, but then it flatlined again. "I’ve killed too, I’m guessing. I mean, I think I have. I just wondered how it happens. And how you deal."

"How I fuckin’ deal?"

She stalked around the end of the bed and let him see how it felt to sit in her shadow. A murderer’s shadow.

As she did she had a fleeting memory of the little blonde mouse from the mountains, Violet or Amanda. The one she’d risked her own freedom to visit in a private psych ward with barbed wire fences. "Look, it freaks people out sometimes, to be Chosen," she’d said. "But you aren’t crazy and you ain’t killed anybody yet, so let me tell you, you could be worse off."

The girl had shaken her head and answered, "You don’t know what it’s like. I could kill you now. And I wasn’t ‘chosen.’"

The girl had only gazed at her with unfazed druggie eyes. "I’m this way because I finally figured out nobody will ever love me."

"Oh puh-freakin’-lease," Faith had said. But it didn’t do much good.

Now Faith said, "It happens when somebody warm and squishy just kinda ends up on the end of your stake. It happens when the bastard you’re working for tells you to whack somebody. And the answer to your second question is: You don’t."

The boy tipped his head back to gaze at her, his eyes almost as eerily calm as Violet’s had been. "Some people would say you’re superior, you Slayers. Special. That you don’t have to play by the rules."

"Yeah well, whatever. Like I ain’t heard that one before. Look, kid." She sat down impulsively and drew one knee up on the bed, bringing herself level with him. "All’s I can say is, I’ve played by my rules and I’ve played by theirs, and I don’t like it either way. But I know which I can live with and which makes me feel like slitting my fucking wrists. So I play on the team."

He said softly, thoughtfully, "It must be hard."

"Huh." Faith didn’t know what to do with pity, if that was what this was. To break his gaze, she reached out with her index finger and flipped his lank brown hair off his forehead. "So who’d you kill?"

He winced the least bit and looked down, the flush spreading over his cheeks. "I’m not sure there was anybody. Anybody human, I mean. I know I wanted to, and I know I watched."

"So you’re a Slayer now, ‘zat it? All demons, all the time? Or you just like to watch other people get their bad on?"

She inched closer on the bed, into his space, suddenly wanting very much to break his deadpan. "C’mon, Connor. At least tell me where Wesley is. Whatever he said about me, he’s got reasons to trust me now. Didn’t he tell you?"

Connor raised his head. His brows were drawn together, but under them his eyes gleamed and seemed to expand. "Wesley didn’t say anything about you."

Faith put her hand on his skinny, solid knee and gripped. "That’s Wes for ya. Maybe he wants all the credit for putting the monster back in the box."

"Monster?" He had gone very still.

"Monster, yeah. I got this friend who’s sometimes a monster. Kinda like you or me."

She reached for him with her other hand, this time running it all the way through his hair, over his scalp. Soft. He flinched, then went still again and drew in his breath hard.

She rested her first two fingers on his cheek. "Whatsamatter, kid? You got a girlfriend or something?"

He swallowed, and then his good hand flashed out and clasped the knob of her shoulder. "Used to."

"I used to have a boyfriend. He was a real cool guy, but he couldn’t deal with the whole Slaying and travellin’ thing. I mean, he hung on pretty long, considering."

His hand crept up her neck, clammy and a little awkward, and she had a brief vision of him tightening his grip and trying to strangle her. He was just so damn level. He asked, "Who’s the monster?"

"Monster? The monster is you, zombie-boy."

He looked miffed. "Not a zombie."

"Then stop sitting there like one."

This was taking too long. She yanked him close in her old too-easy way—the double whammy of strength and seduction—and went in for the kiss. His lips were as soft as they looked, and after a second they kissed back. Kissed incongruously hard, in fact.

The next instant he had her on her back, and she began to laugh because she had forgotten he could do that. It was faster and more fun than letting him.

The laughing must have confused Connor. He pulled away from her embrace and sat up, examining his bandaged hand, his brows furrowing.

"Hey, when did I say no?"

Now it was her turn to wrench his shoulder and press him down into the over-soft mattress and bend to him, her loose hair whisking his face. His whole body was tense, but not with resistance—no, it was a feeling of steel wire, of strength held in reserve. Faith liked that. Normally it was so easy to hurt them. A misplaced knee in the ribs could mean a trip to the Emergency Room, and all the uncomfortable silences that go with it. But this one bounced back. The times she’d fought him…

Times?

Her tongue was in his mouth now, and he gasped and pulled her closer with his good hand. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the other one rested some distance away, palm down on the bedspread, as if it were refusing any connection with the whole mess.

Well, let it. She pulled his jacket open so that she could run her hand up under his t-shirt, then down the front of his jeans. He gasped.

"This work for you?"

Well, duh. He was hard. She stroked him through the fabric, her other hand drawing patterns under his shirt. His chest was spare but solid, all smooth long planes. She let go with her hand and rubbed against him, keeping her legs closed at first by sheer willpower and then opening them to hold him, still through the cloth. But he grunted and pulled himself into a sitting position, tipping her backwards in his lap.

That worked too. She wrapped her legs around him, her knees braced against his back, and reached for his fly.

But something stopped her—for now—and she snaked her arm around his back to seize hold of his bandaged hand.

He slid it out of range, but had to take his other hand off the small of her back in order to keep them both upright. "Don’t, OK?"

"Why? ‘s it hurt?" She pouted, but mockingly, doing her best impression of a high-maintenance girl. "I want you to really hold me when you do me, ‘kay? Put your big strong arms around me ‘n everything, and then I might let you get somewhere, kiddo."

"You were into something different last time," he said very softly. "What was that line about breaking off a switch?"

"Huh. Not likely. And if I’d done you before I’d remember."

Connor’s eyes widened in his pale face, and she could smell the sweat that darkened the roots of his hair. "So I’m special?"

"Yeah, I guess you better be." She gripped him a little harder with her knees, rocking them both back and forth to feel the exquisite frustration of contact through stiff seamed denim. "No offense, but a kid like you, I normally wouldn’t look twice."

He moved so fast it barely registered, and she found herself on her back looking up into his flushed face.

She started to laugh again, reaching up for him. "Well, gosh. Been taking your vitamins."

He seemed to have spent all his aggressiveness on his last move, and his eyes looked scared and feverish. When he spoke, his voice actually quavered. "Look. I don’t know if I even know you. And if I do…"

"Sure you do."

He stroked her cheek with his left index finger—a firm, fleeting touch. "You hurt me. You never even tried to talk."

She shook her head and answered thoughtlessly, her brain completely full of his weight and his erection against her tipping hips. "Who d’you think you are anyway? That dumb bastard, he would’ve died for you, and I had to stop you from—"

He stroked her jaw this time, his eyes going big, and she had a flashback to her first impression. Creepy little bastard.

"Shh. Do you remember? More than I do?"

Faith remembered this much: he had been a royal pain, and she hadn’t had any sympathy for him.

Right now wasn’t about sympathy. Right now was about those big eyes and that hardness against her and the taut limbs that almost—but not quite—had the power to keep her down.

She pulled him close and tore into his mouth, jabbing at his tongue, savoring the trembling weight of him but not getting too comfortable. There would be a few more throwdowns before they were done.

* * *

His hand was bleeding. He held it straight out in front of him, palm up, watching blood drown the tiny half-circles.

He asked, "Can you tell me what this does?"

The man in the cage shifted his stance. He looked quizzical and uncomfortable, though he tried to cover it with a sneer. "You’re generous, son."

"I’m curious." He held his arm out toward the bars, into the strange buzzing red-darkness this dream always had. "Go on."

"You’re not just a wee bit scared? Counting on blood thicker than water and all that?"

The man had hold of his wrist. He drew in his breath. It was a cold touch, the fingers thick and strong enough to crush the delicate, essential bones of his hand.

"I said go on."

"Scared after all."

The grip loosened a little. Instead of taking the whole hand, the man dipped a finger into the welling wound and brought it to his lips. "Not the first time I’ve drunk from you, if you want to know the truth."

Connor shook his head. It was torture not to rip his hand away. This was only a dream. "Well? What did She do to me?"

His hand was free; the thing in the cage had let it fall. He raised his head and saw the man-shape standing like someone waiting for a bus, one foot tapping, a look of nervy discontent on its face.

"Well?"

"The demon doesn’t like it," said the man. He turned his face into the light and rolled his eyes. "Doesn’t agree with him."

"What do you mean?"

"This is a dream," said the man.

His face was in shadow again, but for an instant Connor could have sworn it looked earnest and somehow remorseful, the sardonic light gone from the eyes. "I only know what you know. I think it wants the demon gone. Anything that’s double, see. Anything that gets on your back and gets in your head and causes you pain."

"But I’m not double." Suddenly the air was buzzing, swarming with flecks of light. He batted them away from his face, feeling tears of pain or remorse prick his own eyes. "I didn’t come into any powers. Nobody cursed me with a soul. Whatever I am, I just am."

"That’s why it didn’t work on you, son," said the man’s voice into the dark. After a moment, when Connor didn’t answer, he added in an undertone, "Make tracks before she wakes up if I were you. Wouldn’t want to see a repeat of the last morning after."

* * *

Fuzzy streetlight leaked around the edges of the curtain and blued Faith’s shoulder. He sat upright beside her, holding his bleeding hand.

There was no urgent need to move. The dressing was only half soaked through. He rested it on his knee and leaned back against the wall, his gaze falling sideways to her.

She was breathing softly and steadily. Her back was to him, and her long hair had parted and bared her shoulder. That hair. He could still feel it on the sensitive skin between his fingers.

He reached over with his left hand, keeping the right on his knee, and stroked a dark strand that had spilled on the sheet. Beyond it, her shoulderblade was firm and warm, the skin smooth to his touch. Tracing the reef of bone, he could feel tiny irregularities: a mole here, maybe, a chicken-pox scar there. He wondered if it had hurt to get the thick bracelet of ink installed around her bicep. It was strange to think she could be vulnerable, even briefly. She shifted a little and made a humming sound under her breath, but didn’t wake.

He withdrew his hand and reached out a second time, with the other.

It stopped an inch from her shoulder and stayed in midair, catching the light. He could feel the warmth of the blood pumping, straining, taking its time to work through the dressing. The demon doesn’t like it.

Was there a demon in Faith?

He snatched his hand back and rolled off the bed in one motion, making as little noise as he could. He tugged on his jeans and pulled the t-shirt over his head, not before tearing a sizeable strip off the bottom. That would have to do.

In the bathroom, he washed his hand in the grey basin and redressed it, making sure to rinse all the traces away. He found that when he didn’t think about it, he knew exactly how to knot the bandage and tuck the ends under using his left hand.

"Missed your moment," said a voice. Not in front of him and not behind him.

He looked up at his image in the flyspecked mirror and saw her hovering there, close enough to touch him. She was wearing work clothes again, and he knew now what her work was. Evil law-firm business.

He whispered, "How do you track me?"

Lilah shrugged. She seemed tired, and the greenish light made her look as if she were decomposing. "We made you."

"You didn’t make me. You don’t even know how." He raised his hand into the light again. "I think I remember you now. You said you wanted to dissect me."

"Vivisect, actually." She sighed. "But it all comes out the same. Living, dead, you can still feel pain."

"You didn’t know about this." He waggled his fingers, turning to face her.

But there was nothing there. He swung back to the mirror and saw her gazing at him with that glassy, fatigued look in her eyes. Maybe she was caught behind the mirror. Maybe she existed only in his head.

She shook her head. "We didn’t. She buried it too deep even for us."

The bloody dressing lay balled on the edge of the sink. He picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket, then turned to go.

"Connor. It’s not too late. You can help her."

He said under his breath, "Not like that."

"It was a geology professor," said Lilah. She spoke in a sweet, over-precise way, like your mom when she’s caught you doing something that will embarrass the family. "He may have seemed like the tweedy bachelor-type, but the fact is, he had fifteen devoted great-nieces and -nephews. Not to mention his old mother, his siblings, and the graduate student with whom he enjoyed coffee and an extremely tame flirtation. Until Faith killed him."

He shook his head and made his good hand into a fist, his back to the mirror. "This wouldn’t make up for it."

"Nothing would. Nothing ever does," said Lilah, still too sweetly. He had a strange feeling that she had already given up on him— or maybe she just didn’t give a shit.

"What makes her so different from Violet, Connor? Nobody’s saying you have to kill her."

He rubbed the fist hard against his side. "She’s trying."

"What if she backslides? Or are you thinking if she loses the powers, that’s it for the horizontal gymnastics?"

He turned on his heel and walked stiffly into the bedroom, fighting the urge to double back and smash the mirror.

Faith rolled onto her back, half-awake, and gazed at him with her huge dark eyes. "Angel? Who you talkin’ to?"

"Not Angel. He’s not here."

She mumbled something inaudible, and then, "Well, I know that. You’re like, half his size."

He bent and kissed her on the forehead, keeping his bandaged hand close to his side. "’Bye, Faith."

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