Every night I burn.
Every night I call your name.
Burn, The Cure
Every night I call your name.
Burn, The Cure
Rated PG-13 for language and graphic scenes.
Burn
Faith thought the smoke was some kind of incense burned in a funeral offering. Which she didn’t get. Burning stuff
for dead people was weird. They were dead already.
Robin was dead. She didn’t burn a thing for him. And since he left nothing but a pile of dust upon departure, Faith
didn’t so much as bother to sweep up what was left. Didn’t seem to make much sense. Without much effort, Faith
turned her thoughts to things that did.
A six pack of Kuei-shin shot through shadows below her perch on the wall. One thing she could say for the guys –
they had some serious non-verbal. They moved like a troupe of choreographed dancers, their green and black
uniforms heightening the association. They were well-armed – a pair of sai each and a belt of what looked like
shuriken (and wouldn’t that be just the cliché? she thought with a wry smile). Only one – apparently the leader –
wore a katana slung across his back.
Faith knew she could take ’em. Wasn’t gonna. But she knew with the comfortable confidence she wore as her
Slayer’s badge, these guys would be shrimp toast in about 30 seconds if she got the drop.
Dropping was not what she had in mind. She had learned in the last few days that she could sense and track Kuei-
shin just like she could the standard variety. This was handy considering that Connor had gone all Last Man Standing
on the kindred of the East. Tracking the Kuei-shin led her to her true prey. Sometimes it was one of Thellian’s new
get forcibly conscripted to vamp-hood.
And sometimes, it was Connor.
So far when she showed up, Connor pulled his David Blaine disappearing trick. That bugged her. She was an
inconvenience to him. An annoying glitch in his demon-icidal scheming. He needed a solid smack down, and Auntie
Faith was the one for the job.
Faith moved along the stone wall above them, her shadow trailing like a monstrous beast across the rooftop behind
her. The smoke twisted in the air overhead, drawn to tatters by the wind. Faith crouched, savoring the steady flow
of adrenaline that pumped through her. The Kuei-shin slipped like water into a pool of shadow.
Then, each twitched up like a line of rabbits, completely wrecking their cover.
“What the…?” Faith whispered.
A heartbeat later, Faith pitched skyward. A sulfuric flash ripped the air, a gout of flame on its heels.
Faith slammed into the stone wall, scrabbled for purchase, missed, slipped, fell. Some twenty odd feet of freefall
later, Faith ate pavement. Breath exploded from her lungs. Bones popped like rubber bands. Faith rolled, put her
back to the wall and waited, combat ready.
All for naught. The explosion was blocks away, but big enough to flush her from her perch and scare her guys away.
Damn it.
Faith wiped blood from her mouth with the heel of her hand. Lucky thing she was Superbitch, or she’d be spending
the next few months in traction at Tokyo General. Besides the dislocated shoulder and the odd scrape, she was
good to go.
Faith caught the peppery scent of gunpowder on the wind. Instantly and unwanted, Robin sprung to mind. Robin and
a pair of sparklers on the Fourth of July. The rooftop of his apartment building in New York. Watching the best
damn display of fireworks the US of A had to offer (his words, not hers). Lady Liberty bathed in smoke and colored
flashes of light.
Robin writing his name in the air with the burning arc of spitting flame. The fire reflected in his China doll’s eyes.
Body tackling him in the stairwell. Fucking him senseless while the NYPD marching band played a rousing rendition of
God Bless America. Again on the fire escape when they’d gone down for ice cream. Later, after patrol, his strong,
dark hands splayed over her belly as he entered her from behind. Knowing for the first time in her life the meaning
of fullness.
Fuck.
Faith raised her head. She uncoiled her fists. With much effort, she forced her body to work.
Finding fire was easy. All you had to do was chase after smoke. Faith was good at that. Ignoring tender flesh left
raw from the fall, Faith pushed down twisted passageways between Japanese buildings that towered over her like
Jenga blocks.
Faith rounded the final corner, struck first by a dense wall of baking heat and second by a sense of dizzying
familiarity.
Flames had engulfed the building and the gardens surrounding. Faith was flat out running toward it before sense
could catch her. She vaulted the fence, fingers barely touching the blistering iron bars as she went over. She landed
with less than her usual grace. Stumbling, blind, Faith ran across the ash-strewn lawn toward the fire and what
remained of the Slayer school.
Even as she ran, she felt her torn muscles mending. Heat from the fire baked her skin and poached her lungs, but it
felt to Faith like a revelation. She was screaming when she hit the door and plunged into the broiling pit of a
dragon’s maw.
Inside was quiet. Though the flames coiled and licked and blackened the walls and rafters overhead, Faith heard only
a desolate calm of something already damned. She stood in the foyer, awed by the raw magnificence of that power.
It was greater than; she was less than. And it gutted her to know there was nothing – not one damn thing – she
could do. But let it burn.
The kaleidoscopic wailing of sirens shook her from her daze. Faith scanned the ruined, crumbling husk, searching
for survivors. She saw bodies all over the place. Or, not so much bodies as bits of bodies. None that she could see
were human, unless they had Kentucky Fried to extra scaly. Which, she doubted.
Faith realized then that she had violated every fire safety commandment known to mankind. Just as reason was
settling its teeth into her ass, Faith caught movement in the middle of the training floor. Someone was there, and
still alive.
“Fuck!” Faith shouted. She dived through a standing wave of flames. The lacquer on the hardwood floor blistered
and bubbled like molten syrup. Faith slid the last remaining feet, scooped the struggling figure into her arms and
leapt like a crazy Ninja warrior through the nearest window.
As they rolled across the charred grass, the full fury of the fire caught up to her. It was a deafening, terrifying howl
– like a tortured living thing screaming for release. And they were too close. Too damn close. Faith hefted the body
over her shoulder and ran as though worse things than devils pursued them.
Faith collapsed behind a moldering tenement building that smelled of steamed cabbage. She cradled the limp body
close to hers while her arms and legs jerked and writhed convulsively from an adrenaline OD. She could hear fire
engines and police cars approaching from all directions, and she wondered, dimly, if Japanese procedure for taking
down towering infernos was the same as the rest of the world.
The body in her arms stirred.
“Christ!” Faith cried out, jumped to her feet and, in the process, dumped the body to the cobbles.
And for the first time, she got a good look at it.
Faith cupped her hands over her mouth at the sight of the crisped flesh on the back of its skull. Of cotton seemingly
fused to skin. All the hair seared away, exposing the raw pink meat beneath.
“Oh God,” she said. She knelt beside the body, hesitant to turn it, but sure she already knew.
As if in response to her unspoken questions, the weak ghost of a voice called her name.
Faith crouched, knees drawn up to her ears like a child. She lay a trembling hand on his chest and rolled him to his
side.
“Wayara,” she said. The strength in her legs bled away. She collapsed, her hands fisted into her hair. “What did
this?”
Wayara tried to fix his ruined eyes upon hers before speaking. The left side of his face ran like melted wax, but the
right side looked wholly unharmed. But that was worse, that half-mask of pain smack against his normal eyes and
nose. She felt a tug like a meat hook in her gut.
“The Dragon’s Eye…” Wayara began, but his breath gurgled wetly in his chest.
“Stop. Wait. EMS guys’re comin’,” Faith said. She reached to touch his face, but hovered, fingers inches from his
head, afraid to touch him, afraid that it might hurt.
“Too late Faith,” he said.
“Shut up… ’kay? You’re out. I saved you. You’re…”
“Faith,” Wayara wheezed. “The Slayers.”
Faith sat up, keenly alert. “Jesus, were they in there?”
“Only one. The others… must know.”
“What?”
Wayara’s eyes slipped closed. Faith waited, resisting the urge to shake him.
“What?” she asked. “What must they know? Wayara!”
“Kuchikukan,” he whispered. Prayerlike.
Faith got to her knees. “What did you say?”
“The Dragon’s Eye,” Wayara said. “Faith, it has him…”
“Him? Who?”
“Kuchikukan.”
“Connor,” she said.
Faith got to her feet, sure that Connor would be there. Sure that she would find him watching from the shadows.
But the only sound was the continued cacophony of sirens, combined now with the fevered shouts of firefighters
struggling to douse the blaze.
She looked back down at Wayara for confirmation, but the slack look of peace on his mangled face read her the
whole story. Another dead Watcher. Another school in flames.
Faith bent to close Wayara’s eyes. She cringed slightly at the heat still trapped in his skin. At the sickeningly sweet
scent of scorched flesh and hair.
It was Connor who’d answer for it. Faith got that now. He’d crossed a line; he was on her turf. He was a monster.
A destroyer. Those, she got to kill. Born to do it. She was a Slayer.
Faith squared her shoulders. A wicked sneer worked its way into the corners of her eyes. She would find him. Even if
she had to burn the whole city down to do it.
Burn
Faith thought the smoke was some kind of incense burned in a funeral offering. Which she didn’t get. Burning stuff
for dead people was weird. They were dead already.
Robin was dead. She didn’t burn a thing for him. And since he left nothing but a pile of dust upon departure, Faith
didn’t so much as bother to sweep up what was left. Didn’t seem to make much sense. Without much effort, Faith
turned her thoughts to things that did.
A six pack of Kuei-shin shot through shadows below her perch on the wall. One thing she could say for the guys –
they had some serious non-verbal. They moved like a troupe of choreographed dancers, their green and black
uniforms heightening the association. They were well-armed – a pair of sai each and a belt of what looked like
shuriken (and wouldn’t that be just the cliché? she thought with a wry smile). Only one – apparently the leader –
wore a katana slung across his back.
Faith knew she could take ’em. Wasn’t gonna. But she knew with the comfortable confidence she wore as her
Slayer’s badge, these guys would be shrimp toast in about 30 seconds if she got the drop.
Dropping was not what she had in mind. She had learned in the last few days that she could sense and track Kuei-
shin just like she could the standard variety. This was handy considering that Connor had gone all Last Man Standing
on the kindred of the East. Tracking the Kuei-shin led her to her true prey. Sometimes it was one of Thellian’s new
get forcibly conscripted to vamp-hood.
And sometimes, it was Connor.
So far when she showed up, Connor pulled his David Blaine disappearing trick. That bugged her. She was an
inconvenience to him. An annoying glitch in his demon-icidal scheming. He needed a solid smack down, and Auntie
Faith was the one for the job.
Faith moved along the stone wall above them, her shadow trailing like a monstrous beast across the rooftop behind
her. The smoke twisted in the air overhead, drawn to tatters by the wind. Faith crouched, savoring the steady flow
of adrenaline that pumped through her. The Kuei-shin slipped like water into a pool of shadow.
Then, each twitched up like a line of rabbits, completely wrecking their cover.
“What the…?” Faith whispered.
A heartbeat later, Faith pitched skyward. A sulfuric flash ripped the air, a gout of flame on its heels.
Faith slammed into the stone wall, scrabbled for purchase, missed, slipped, fell. Some twenty odd feet of freefall
later, Faith ate pavement. Breath exploded from her lungs. Bones popped like rubber bands. Faith rolled, put her
back to the wall and waited, combat ready.
All for naught. The explosion was blocks away, but big enough to flush her from her perch and scare her guys away.
Damn it.
Faith wiped blood from her mouth with the heel of her hand. Lucky thing she was Superbitch, or she’d be spending
the next few months in traction at Tokyo General. Besides the dislocated shoulder and the odd scrape, she was
good to go.
Faith caught the peppery scent of gunpowder on the wind. Instantly and unwanted, Robin sprung to mind. Robin and
a pair of sparklers on the Fourth of July. The rooftop of his apartment building in New York. Watching the best
damn display of fireworks the US of A had to offer (his words, not hers). Lady Liberty bathed in smoke and colored
flashes of light.
Robin writing his name in the air with the burning arc of spitting flame. The fire reflected in his China doll’s eyes.
Body tackling him in the stairwell. Fucking him senseless while the NYPD marching band played a rousing rendition of
God Bless America. Again on the fire escape when they’d gone down for ice cream. Later, after patrol, his strong,
dark hands splayed over her belly as he entered her from behind. Knowing for the first time in her life the meaning
of fullness.
Fuck.
Faith raised her head. She uncoiled her fists. With much effort, she forced her body to work.
Finding fire was easy. All you had to do was chase after smoke. Faith was good at that. Ignoring tender flesh left
raw from the fall, Faith pushed down twisted passageways between Japanese buildings that towered over her like
Jenga blocks.
Faith rounded the final corner, struck first by a dense wall of baking heat and second by a sense of dizzying
familiarity.
Flames had engulfed the building and the gardens surrounding. Faith was flat out running toward it before sense
could catch her. She vaulted the fence, fingers barely touching the blistering iron bars as she went over. She landed
with less than her usual grace. Stumbling, blind, Faith ran across the ash-strewn lawn toward the fire and what
remained of the Slayer school.
Even as she ran, she felt her torn muscles mending. Heat from the fire baked her skin and poached her lungs, but it
felt to Faith like a revelation. She was screaming when she hit the door and plunged into the broiling pit of a
dragon’s maw.
Inside was quiet. Though the flames coiled and licked and blackened the walls and rafters overhead, Faith heard only
a desolate calm of something already damned. She stood in the foyer, awed by the raw magnificence of that power.
It was greater than; she was less than. And it gutted her to know there was nothing – not one damn thing – she
could do. But let it burn.
The kaleidoscopic wailing of sirens shook her from her daze. Faith scanned the ruined, crumbling husk, searching
for survivors. She saw bodies all over the place. Or, not so much bodies as bits of bodies. None that she could see
were human, unless they had Kentucky Fried to extra scaly. Which, she doubted.
Faith realized then that she had violated every fire safety commandment known to mankind. Just as reason was
settling its teeth into her ass, Faith caught movement in the middle of the training floor. Someone was there, and
still alive.
“Fuck!” Faith shouted. She dived through a standing wave of flames. The lacquer on the hardwood floor blistered
and bubbled like molten syrup. Faith slid the last remaining feet, scooped the struggling figure into her arms and
leapt like a crazy Ninja warrior through the nearest window.
As they rolled across the charred grass, the full fury of the fire caught up to her. It was a deafening, terrifying howl
– like a tortured living thing screaming for release. And they were too close. Too damn close. Faith hefted the body
over her shoulder and ran as though worse things than devils pursued them.
Faith collapsed behind a moldering tenement building that smelled of steamed cabbage. She cradled the limp body
close to hers while her arms and legs jerked and writhed convulsively from an adrenaline OD. She could hear fire
engines and police cars approaching from all directions, and she wondered, dimly, if Japanese procedure for taking
down towering infernos was the same as the rest of the world.
The body in her arms stirred.
“Christ!” Faith cried out, jumped to her feet and, in the process, dumped the body to the cobbles.
And for the first time, she got a good look at it.
Faith cupped her hands over her mouth at the sight of the crisped flesh on the back of its skull. Of cotton seemingly
fused to skin. All the hair seared away, exposing the raw pink meat beneath.
“Oh God,” she said. She knelt beside the body, hesitant to turn it, but sure she already knew.
As if in response to her unspoken questions, the weak ghost of a voice called her name.
Faith crouched, knees drawn up to her ears like a child. She lay a trembling hand on his chest and rolled him to his
side.
“Wayara,” she said. The strength in her legs bled away. She collapsed, her hands fisted into her hair. “What did
this?”
Wayara tried to fix his ruined eyes upon hers before speaking. The left side of his face ran like melted wax, but the
right side looked wholly unharmed. But that was worse, that half-mask of pain smack against his normal eyes and
nose. She felt a tug like a meat hook in her gut.
“The Dragon’s Eye…” Wayara began, but his breath gurgled wetly in his chest.
“Stop. Wait. EMS guys’re comin’,” Faith said. She reached to touch his face, but hovered, fingers inches from his
head, afraid to touch him, afraid that it might hurt.
“Too late Faith,” he said.
“Shut up… ’kay? You’re out. I saved you. You’re…”
“Faith,” Wayara wheezed. “The Slayers.”
Faith sat up, keenly alert. “Jesus, were they in there?”
“Only one. The others… must know.”
“What?”
Wayara’s eyes slipped closed. Faith waited, resisting the urge to shake him.
“What?” she asked. “What must they know? Wayara!”
“Kuchikukan,” he whispered. Prayerlike.
Faith got to her knees. “What did you say?”
“The Dragon’s Eye,” Wayara said. “Faith, it has him…”
“Him? Who?”
“Kuchikukan.”
“Connor,” she said.
Faith got to her feet, sure that Connor would be there. Sure that she would find him watching from the shadows.
But the only sound was the continued cacophony of sirens, combined now with the fevered shouts of firefighters
struggling to douse the blaze.
She looked back down at Wayara for confirmation, but the slack look of peace on his mangled face read her the
whole story. Another dead Watcher. Another school in flames.
Faith bent to close Wayara’s eyes. She cringed slightly at the heat still trapped in his skin. At the sickeningly sweet
scent of scorched flesh and hair.
It was Connor who’d answer for it. Faith got that now. He’d crossed a line; he was on her turf. He was a monster.
A destroyer. Those, she got to kill. Born to do it. She was a Slayer.
Faith squared her shoulders. A wicked sneer worked its way into the corners of her eyes. She would find him. Even if
she had to burn the whole city down to do it.
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
 |