By night the parking lot took on an eerie look. Islands of washed out neon brightness were interspersed by shadows and darkness. Half the lights were burned out or broken, leaving the few cars in the lot as hulking silhouettes.
Lois took a deep breath. Clark had assured her that although he was nearly a mile away he would have no trouble hearing everything that went on. He’d be with her in the space of a moment if anything went wrong.
The nervousness she felt wasn’t just about being alone at night. Lois had never lacked physical courage, and even in Metropolis, she’d gone out in the middle of the night alone to meet sources.
Of course, if she’d known the truth about the things that went bump in the night she might have been more careful.
Although things were different now, Lois still had the sense that there were things out in the dark that would be more than a match for her.
Buffy Summers might be one of them. The sight of that red fingernail stuck in an eye socket still haunted Lois.
What she knew of the girl was a mass of contractions. Was she a hero or a terrorist? Was she the monster that Lois had nightmares about being?
Was she responsible for what was happening to Lois, and to other girls all over the globe?
The answers to all of those questions might be waiting…or this could be another ambush. Either way, Lois felt that her senses were on high alert.
It was a surprise, then to walk by a spot of darkness and hear the sound of a match. Squinting, Lois could barely make out a figure leaning against the side of a car.
Taking a step forward, Lois realized it was Faith.
A moment later she became aware of other figures moving around the periphery of her vision. They darted from car to car, moving so quickly that Lois was barely able to follow them.
It took her a moment to pinpoint their locations, but finally she thought she had them all.
That was why the tiny blonde standing within arms reach was such a surprise.
With her bleached hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing a black denim skirt and jacket, the girl almost faded into the darkness.
“Ms. Summers?” Lois asked. “My name is…”
“I know who you are.” The girl simple stood there and stared at Lois. “You’re the person who decided that calling all my old high school teachers would be a fun way to spend a Friday night.”
“I’m a reporter. It’s my job.” For some reason, the girl was making Lois feel tense. She had the same sense of being a predator that Faith had, but it was much more intense.
“You work for the Inquirer?” Before Lois could respond, the girl said, “Because looking into the monster of the week- usually not a good career move.”
“Everybody keeps telling me that,” Lois said. “And I wonder if they are trying to convince their selves. Do you really think that people are better off not knowing?”
“If you’d seen what I’d seen, you wouldn’t ask.”
Remembering the news story about the attempted witch burnings in Sunnydale, Lois could understand how the girl might feel that way. People tended to lash out at things they didn’t understand.
“The funny thing is…the longer I’ve been looking into all this, the more everything starts to point in your direction.” Lois said.
The girl stiffened. “I don’t know what…”
“First you blew up your old high school gym. Then you were involved in blowing up your entire high school. There are You-tube pictures of you firing off some kind of missile in the Sunnydale mall.”
Gasping a little, Buffy took an involuntary step back.
“An organization in England with ties to you had its headquarters blow up, and now your entire home town has been destroyed. There are trails of dead bodies associated with you for the past seven years.”
Buffy stared at her for a moment. There was a stricken look in her eyes. “You don’t have proof of any of that, except the thing with the gym. And I totally had a good excuse for…”
“Vampires and monsters?” Lois said. “You tried telling people, and look where it got you.”
Buffy stiffened. “Those records were supposed to be sealed!”
“Why did you kill those cultists up near the gas station on Daughtree road?”
Buffy paled. “I had…I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
The girl was lying. The shock on her face, the recognition in her eyes…Lois found herself leaning forward in anticipation.
“They were killed by someone with superhuman strength. Someone female…” Lois took a cautious step back. “Someone who broke off a fingernail in someone’s skull.”
She glanced down at Buffy’s hands. They were finely manicured and painted bubblegum pink, but the nails were short.
For some reason, Buffy seemed to relax, regaining her equilibrium.
“I don’t do that sort of thing” Buffy said. “And if you had any proof you’d already have given it to the police.”
“I just wanted to hear your side of things,” Lois said slyly. “There had to be a reason for it.”
“The Knights of Byzantium were fanatics. They were killed by someone who wasn’t me,” Buffy said. “I tried to stop her.”
“You tried to stop them from taking the Key.”
At the look in Buffy’s eye, Lois took an involuntary step back. The sense of being a predator was back, stronger than ever before.
“Where in the hell are you getting all your information?” Buffy’s voice was angry, although she kept her features carefully frozen.
“I’m a prize winning investigative reporter.” Lois said. “If you are good enough, you can find out almost anything.”
“So what is the Key?” Lois asked. “Why was it so important to those cultists?”
“It never existed, except in their twisted imaginations.” Buffy’s eyes darted out behind Lois, and Lois could hear the sounds of movement out in the darkness.
She was lying, but Lois knew when to back away from a question. If she kept pushing at this point, Buffy Summers was going to clam up and stop talking.
“You see yourself as a hero,” she said. “Somebody out to save the world.”
The class protector award, the conflicting stories…they all suggested the same thing. Buffy Summers was insane.
She thought she could save the world.
“So what did you want me to do?” Buffy asked. “Just let the world end?”
“I never said anything about the world ending.” Lois said. “I just said you wanted to save it.”
“You don’t have any idea.” Buffy scowled irritably. “If people really knew just how thin a thread the world has been hanging on all these years…they’d be going postal in the streets.”
“So you make yourself some sort of vigilante.”
“Someone had to.” Buffy said quietly. “When I was younger I spent a lot of time wondering why I had to be the Chosen one. It’s a little like getting to be prom queen at Carrie’s prom…buckets of blood and not much glamour.”
“So quit.”
“And in a week, I find out the world has gone all ’28 days later.’ No…I like the world as it is.”
“You have a pretty high opinion of yourself. You don’t think that the army would be better qualified to deal with this sort of thing?”
“They tried it. It didn’t work.” Buffy said flatly.
Lois could hear figures moving around in the darkness. They were closer now. An ordinary reporter would have heard them too, and would have been spooked.
Forcing herself to stand confidently, Lois refused to show fear. Se knew exactly where all the others were, and she was hopelessly outnumbered.
As long as they didn’t have a witch, she would be all right. Even if they did have one, they didn’t seem to know much about his capabilities
“Trying to intimidate me won’t work either,” Lois said. “I’m not going to stop until I find out the truth about what happened to Sunnydale.”
Lois stepped back reflexively as Faith stepped out of the darkness. She leaned towards Buffy and whispered in her ear, all without taking her eyes off of Lois.
She faded into the darkness again as Buffy stepped forward. “You’re a hypocrite. You talk about wanting to find out about the supernatural, and you’ve been terrorizing the underworld for days with some sort of Hellgod.”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Lois said.
Clark had spent so much time and effort trying to keep people from finding out what he was. One week with Lois, and he was already the subject of city wide gossip.
“We’ve been following the news…firebombing a local ranch….attacking a library right around the corner from this hospital, dragging people off the streets. You were involved every time.”
“I’ve been having a little vampire trouble,” Lois said weakly. “Girl had a crush on my partner before she was turned.”
“The girl has chutzpah. A slayer convention in town, and she decides to go all Demolition man.”
“About that…I was under the impression that there was only supposed to be one Slayer at a time.” Lois kept her voice level. This was the question she really wanted to ask.
Why her?
Why had they chosen to give this…thing to her instead of to one of the other girls in the complex? Hadn’t the other girls been more needful, hadn’t they been violated in a more profound way?
The power of a Slayer in a war zone. A girl like that would have been able to protect her family, maybe even others in her village. She might have been able to take the power to deal death and turned it into something constructive.
If she’d turned it into a mockery, a twisted bloodbath like Lois had, she wouldn’t be saddled with this overwhelming sense of guilt. People struggling to survive didn’t have time for guilt.
“Things change.” Buffy said. “It’s better this way.”
“Better for who?” Lois asked. “For the little girl who bear her stepfather to death in his trailer in Little Rock? How about the insane girl here in L.A. who killed three orderlies in the asylum? This thing isn’t a gift…it’s a curse.”
“I’m not talking about this.” Buffy shook her head. “People think they know what it’s like to be a Slayer, but unless you are one, you need to just keep your mouth shut.”
“You had something to do with changing the rules, didn’t you?” Lois stared at Buffy for a moment. “It’s your fault that this is happening to people all over the world!”
“You don’t get to ask that!” Buffy said. “What gives you the right to pry into people’s lives, dig up things that ought to stay buried?”
“I’m a journalist,” Lois said. “People have the right to know the truth.”
It all rang a little hollow. It was what she’d always believed, but she was already having reservations. Would creatures like Clem be considered to have basic human rights? Would Clark? Or would those rights be reserved for humans only, allowing entire species to be shut away into camps?
“What do you think the government would do if they knew there was more than one of us?”
“They’d want to study you,” Lois said. “Try to recruit you into the military.”
“They tried it.” Buffy said softly. “It didn’t work.”
“So because a few adults failed, that means the entire adult world is clueless? “ Lois shook her head. “That’s a juvenile way of thinking.”
“The world has been in the hands of a fifteen year old girl for the past six thousand years,” Buffy said. “And it’s still here.”
“So you had a lucky streak,” Lois said. She smiled slightly.
“That’s what worries me,” Buffy said. She straightened suddenly. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
Lois lunged forward. “Don’t leave!” She felt a moment of panic. She’d been so close to finding the answers she’d been seeking for so long.
Buffy looked down and it took Lois a moment to realize that she had grabbed the sleeve of Lois’s jacket.
There was an odd smile on Buffy’s face, and it was then that Lois realized that Buffy actually enjoyed the violence.
“I’d let go if I were you.” Buffy said in a quiet voice.
In the background, Lois could hear the sound of several weapons being cocked. None sounded like guns, but Lois thought she could hear the sound of a bow being pulled.
She tensed, and forced her grip on the smaller woman’s sleeve to relax.
Buffy pulled her arm away and said, “It’s not a good idea to grab a Slayer.”
As Buffy turned away, Lois stepped forward again. “I just wanted to know why you did this to me!”
The words echoed across the parking lot. Thy almost covered the sound that had both women turning in slow motion, their eyes widening in horror.
Apparently some of the younger girls were on a hair trigger. Whether it was her reputation as traveling with something that scared demons, or simple fanatical loyalty, it wasn’t until Lois heard the sound of the crossbow firing that she knew she’d made a mistake.
