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This is a story I originally wrote in May of last year. I've been trying to find a FanFic community or forum to post it in, but since it's fairly tame (no hint of Angel subduing Spike and... well, you know) it doesn't fit into some of the categories that have whole groups dedicated to them. So if you're a Buffy fan and/or want to read a story I've written, here it is.
Title: Good Enough
Author: AiYume
Fandom: Buffy
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Buffy comes across an unconventional slayer. This occurs just before the start of Season 3.
Disclaimer: Characters, settings, and situations from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are trademarked and copyright by their respective owners.
Biff surveyed his work. The waning afternoon light barely hit parts of the basement through the broken floor. The surrounding hills made the day shorter than other places. He'd run the idea for this trap past the geeky kid who helped him at the computer lab. At least after this he'd be able to go back to studying for his classes this semester. He had just started his second year at Corona Junior College and these personal extra-curricular activities were already starting to affect his grades.
He shouldered his pack and turned to the wall. Climbing up the uneven handholds in the bricks was actually slightly safer than trusting the rotted stairs. Three traps ago, or maybe it was four back, his foot had gone through a rotten board on some stairs. After 20 minutes, he'd gotten enough guts to just keep pulling on his foot against the pain. He’d picked up some scars and the desire to sign up for a first aid class.
He got a toehold and handhold halfway up the wall and carefully poked his head up above ground level. The last thing he needed was for some kid to see him coming out of a "haunted house" and decide to go exploring. Some aspects of this trap could be lethal to humans as well.
His heart froze at the sight of a pair of pumps standing on the dead grass directly in front of his eyes. He looked up a pair of (nice!) legs. Crap! He was looking up some girl's miniskirt. He flinched and lost his tenuous hold on the wall.
God, I hope I don't break the trap, was his first thought. The sound of air going by him seemed loud. Air was brushing his face and his wrist hurt like hell. His feet landed on dead grass and dirt instead of broken brick.
He opened his eyes. He hadn't even realized he'd shut them, nor that he was holding his breath. He inhaled and time started flowing normally.
The girl let go of his wrist and stepped back. He was a fair sized guy, if a bit overweight. He was intimidating at times, so he understood her moving away, but the sour look on her face told him that wasn't a factor.
"You okay?" Her tone was brisk as if she was late for a class and he'd stopped and babbled on while trying to ask her out.
"Um..." Sour turned to impatient. "Yeah." He stretched. Some muscles ached from tensing before the fall. He flexed his hands. "Ow! Fuck." His left wrist wasn't broken, but it hurt like hell.
She looked around quickly, then focused back on Biff. "Sorry about that. I thought it was better than having your skull caved in. What were you doing down there anyway?"
He hesitated. He didn't need word to get around about his traps. People would think he was crazy, and vampires would start targeting him. And... had she just lifted him out one handed? Damn it. The sunlight shining through her hair just about guaranteed she wasn't a vampire.
Her face went sour again at his hesitation. "Oh, never mind. I'm... meeting someone else here anyway." She was studying his face. He was sure it was slightly paler.
"You haven't been burying bodies down there have you?"
"God, no." Great. Now they were playing 20 questions. He knew down that road lay the truth. She could follow him pretty easily. And if she was that strong she wasn't a normal person. So he either had an ally or he was pretty much already dead.
"I was setting a trap."
"Oh..." She pursed her lips. "Bad animal infestation?"
"You could say that."
"Aren't you afraid they'll see you around?"
"It didn't come home last night. Probably won't be home until just before daylight."
She nodded. "Well, I guess we should keep watch then."
"Watch? Oh, no, no, no. I just check them the next day. Much too... Like you said, it might see me around."
"Oh, I imagine if we camped out just over there, those bushes would conceal us. And it's not that smart an animal, is it?"
"Well... Like most traps it depends on surprise."
"I'd imagine so." She paused and looked him over. "I suppose we could go get some burgers first. My name is Anne."
“Biff.” He extended his hand automatically, then hoped it wouldn’t get ripped off. This is a weird fucking date, he thought. Burgers and a camp out under the stars. But it didn't look like he was going anywhere without her.
* * *
Anne ordered and motioned that they were together while opening her oversized purse. She had quit her waitress job, but it was recent and she still had some of the money she had being putting away. The tops of three stakes were hidden under a flap, and being sheathed separately against the back of her purse, they didn't make any noise. She paid and they went to fill up their drinks.
She wasn’t even sure what she was doing here. Even this far away the draw of Sunnyvale and the pain of its memories were too close. So she’d turned east, abandoning her last check from the job. She had enough to travel a little ways yet. At least enough to get out of state.
At the table, she looked Biff over. He didn't look like a Biff. Someone named Biff should look like a quarterback. This guy was so... not. Thinking back, she was amazed he was able to climb up that basement wall. She supposed some of the fat could be hiding muscle.
He caught her looking at him across the table. "You're wondering about 'Biff', aren't you?"
She squirmed. "Yeah, a little."
"It was my dad's idea. And he wanted the kind of Biff that would look like a Biff. Needless to say, I was a bit of a disappointment." He paused to take a bite of his burger. "Once in awhile I would try to start a school year going by 'Bill'. But between people who knew me from the year before and student aides in the office, that never lasted.
"So between getting the shit beat out of me by the more popular kids..." He paused and seemed to contain his embarrassment at the statement. Anne pretended not to notice, raised her eyebrows and cocked her head. Biff continued. "I'd hide in my room, study weird stuff. I got into a D&D club, but in spite of liking to play, I never really connected with any of them. I learned more on my own than I did in school."
He stopped, stared at his burger like he was considering saying more. Anne was caught with her mouth full, trying to decide whether he would respond better with prompting or silence. Choking on her food would not be cool, though, so silence won out.
"Have you ever seen anything... w..." his mouth started to shape around a word. She thought it was "weird", but she gave him an encouraging look. It didn’t work.
"Never mind." He went back to focusing on his burger.
This would work a lot better if she knew exactly what he was up to. She didn’t know what kind of preparations he’d made in that basement nor exactly who for. Was he welcoming the people she was tracking? Or trying to kill them? Well, maybe this would get a reaction.
"Did you want anything else? I mean, I don’t want you to suck me dry, but I can afford a shake." There it was. His head jerked up sharply.
"No. I... God." He looked like he was about to break down crying. He certainly didn’t look like he was going to order a shake.
"Let’s go," she said. "You can tell me back by the house."
* * *
Anne had heard the first part of the story before, but with different people in it. The best friend disappears one night. Shows up a day or two later after dark, acting strange, but excited. Invites Biff to meet some cool new people.
Then the story changes. Biff refuses, and the friend doesn’t push it. Maybe the newborn vampire thought he had plenty of time. Biff ends up following, sees a victim get killed, manages not to go running in or go running to someone who betrays him.
He studies up, observes patterns, there are only two others besides his friend. Anne discerns they were trying to start something new here. Then one night Biff singles one out and sets a trap for them. Not the ambush that Buffy was used to, but a whole, "set it down, walk away and check it later" kind of trap.
Part of her was longing to come forward and say, "That’s not right. You have to be a popular girl, picked and trained to kick vampire ass," but she held her tongue. It had worked for him, and apparently it had worked well.
So he kills his friend next with a holy water grenade. Then takes out the head one with a spring-loaded spike in the vamp’s own coffin. Pretty good work, even if it wouldn’t work near a hellmouth. But he’d gotten more and more advanced. One that had escaped taught him to do more advanced problem solving and build in redundancy.
His tears fell in the dark, and she let him talk himself out. It was probably the first time he was able to tell anyone about it. She didn’t feel close enough to actually hold him, but just telling his story ought to do some good. He ended up falling asleep propped up against a tree. Hopefully he wasn’t a loud snorer.
She sat back and stared into the dark. She had to decide what to do. She’d been pushed into the role of protector, kicking all the way. Then she was pushing back the darkness, kicking ass all the way. And when she’d finally accepted her role as town savior, fate or God or cruel irony made her love one piece of that darkness before she had to utterly destroy it.
So she ran. She started using her middle name, found a slice of a normal life. As a waitress she probably lost as many tips with her smart mouth as she gained looking pretty. It didn’t matter. Just dues for her popular days.
Then two nights ago, she’d served a table of vampires. Falling back on playing a dull and unobtrusive, but efficient waitress got her quite an earful. A small suburb they could take control of within in a month, maybe less.
The decision to follow hadn’t taken long by most people’s standards. Inside her head the balance kept tipping back and forth. Trying to tell herself that just because she was able to help this one time didn’t mean she was going back to her job as savior of Sunnyvale. That part was still undecided. It seemed like this would have worked out okay even without her help.
She stared into the darkness and waited to see how effective his trap would be against the group that would be returning in the morning.
* * *
Biff blinked his eyes open coming awake slowly. His back hurt like hell. He tried to stretch it as he looked around and yawned. The darkness was starting to be tinged with light and realization of his surroundings brought him fully awake.
"Anne?" he whispered.
"Shh. I’m here." He’d have really liked to hear words like that under better circumstances. The low voice came from his left near a break in the bushes that was their vantage point to the broken entrance to the basement. He tried to be as quiet as possible crawling across the ground. He peeked out next to her.
"They’re coming back now." Anne jutted her chin to an area just past the house. Biff’s heart caught in his throat.
"What do you mean 'they'?" His voice came out a bit louder than he wanted it to. Anne turned and clamped a hand over his mouth. He tried to communicate with his eyes that there was something important about this, but apparently she took it for panic, and her hand stayed where it was.
"Calm down. We’ll see how many your trap takes out."
That he could answer without his voice. He held up his forefinger emphatically. She frowned and leaned closer to whisper in his ear. Again, out of left field came the thought that he missed that in better circumstances.
"Your trap will only take out one of them?" He nodded under her hand, trying not to make it a panicked bobbing up and down. He firmly reached up and pushed against her forearm, trying to not to react to the fear and adrenaline shooting through his body. She relented and let him speak.
"How many are there?"
"I was tracking six that were going to meet up with the one that had moved in here. I thought that’s why you were setting a trap, for this meeting."
"We’ve got to get out of here. They’ll look around once the first one dies."
She looked unhappy for a moment, then her face cleared. "That won’t be a problem. You’ll need to stay here, though. Keep out of sight." She went back to the break in the bushes and pulled something out of her oversized bag, then slipped out into the grey.
Oh, shit. She’s dead. I should have just gone home. He thought about doing it now, but… he had to at least watch. If he tried to run with them so close, he was probably dead anyway.
He didn’t see her at all. A larger vampire was headed for the entrance ahead of the smaller resident that Biff had planned the trap for. Fuck. It might not even kill one of them then. It disappeared inside, and Biff tried to visualize what would happen.
The rock slab would compress the rubber cubes beneath the corners and push the blade down into the twine. The cup holding the holy water would empty onto that duster he was wearing instead landing squarely on the shorter one’s head. He wouldn’t panic and jump back just as the spike swung across to impale the heart.
There was a muffled cry. That’ll be the cup of holy water. A thud as the beam holding the spike snapped past its intended position. There were two screams cut off. The three vampires who hadn’t gone in yet stopped, suddenly attentive.
A voice came from Biff’s left by the corner of the house. "Hey, boys." If she kept them fighting outside for 10 minutes or so the sunlight would take care of them, but he doubted vampires took that long to kill people.
The three charged Anne. They were blocking his view of her and it was dark, but it looked like she ducked just as the first one reached for her. Then it was turning to dust, and she was left silhouetted in some kind of karate crouch, a spike extended in her left hand. The image burned into his mind. Then she was turning on one heel to kick another one in the chest.
The fight spun further to the left. He stuck his neck out from the bushes to follow the action and was hauled up and out by his collar. "Hello, little boy," came a sensuous whisper in his ear. He flashed back to the earlier whisper. That one had felt warm. This one sent chills down his spine. He felt muscles inside him loosen up and clamped down. He was not going to pee himself. Well, not while he was still alive anyway.
He was thrown toward the entrance to the basement. He reached out an arm and caught the outside wall. He pulled forward as hard as he could before his feet even landed, grunting at the pain in his arms. He felt a hand grab at his ankle as he tumbled back out and onto the lawn.
The vampire who had thrown him, a woman?, was walking steadily toward him. Biff glanced to the corner of the building. Anne was nowhere to be seen. He supposed if she were dead that the other vampires (and are they... had they been... men or women) would have come back to get inside. He went to push himself up and screamed. His left wrist was sprained. He fell on his left side, and rolled onto his back. It was a bad position to scramble from.
A metal lawn chair he remembered from the front porch landed two yards in front of Biff and just in front of the vampire.
"Have a seat. We can watch the sunrise," came Anne’s voice from the front of the house. The vampire snarled and kicked the chair away. Biff watched it bounce off the wall and clatter down next to him.
He looked back. Anne and the vampire had closed already. He watched arms and legs fly at each other. He didn’t know that vampires knew karate. Or whatever this was. Given enough time, they could learn anything, he guessed.
Anne finally delivered a flying kick that knocked the vampire through a missing section of the outside wall. She landed on a jutting piece of floorboard, and turned to dust as she carried part of the floor down with her.
The sun came up over a short hill and hit the tall vampire in his face. His face registered surprise for a brief instant. Without enough space or time to duck into darkness, he burst into… dust.
Biff had seen the piles of dust in his triggered traps and figured they were vampire remains. It was his final confirmation about his victims where a human body with a spike in it would have been harder to explain. But he’d never seen one actually die before. And although it made sense, he’d never seen a female vampire before. He’d never put a face to them.
He found he was repeating the word "shit" over and over. Anne was shaking him. He stopped before she decided to slap him. That would not help.
"There should be two more," she said quietly. "Will you wait here this time?"
He swallowed thickly and nodded.
"Good." She carefully approached the hole in the side of the house. There was no movement. She jumped through and down into the basement. Biff did not have long to wait. Anne’s calm voice drifted up. "It’s safe. Come have a look."
Biff approached the hole slowly. Anne was standing on the trigger stone. The arm of the trap was extended behind her. The cup that had contained the holy water was just visible in the leading edge of sunlight. Drawing closer to the drop into the basement, Biff saw two piles of dust. Just past the second one was the spike that had been on arm of the trap.
"It was supposed to go into the first one when it jumped back from the water," he said.
"Looks like the tall one moved out of the way and the spike didn’t stay attached. Two for the price of one."
Biff stared down at her, incredulous. "Killing one has always been so hard for me. It takes me some time to follow and learn habits, figure out how the trap should be put into the space."
"And you do a great job with it. You just had a bit of a monkey wrench thrown in this time." Sha started climbing out of the basement.
"But you killed five of them in about 3 minutes without breaking a sweat. I could never do that."
"You could, with the right training." Biff didn't think to offer a hand until she was standing on the grass, but she didn't seem to notice. "I never thought I’d be doing this."
Biff snorted. "I could never get through martial arts training. Look at me."
Anne gave a wan smile and shrugged. "I’m not saying it would be easy."
"And if you’re telling me your training wasn’t built on top of natural ability, I’ll walk into my next trap myself."
Anne’s face turned sad. "I wasn’t trying to show off. Just help. You’ve been doing a good job here."
"Not enough. How many have you killed? Tens? Hundreds?" He watched her face. "It doesn’t matter. I’m not good enough at this."
"Good enough at what? You are good at what you do. And if you don’t feel like you’ve done enough, then the answer is to do more, not give it up. How many lives have you saved?"
Biff looked at her for a moment, then turned away. He had a lot to think about.
* * *
Buffy looked down into the hole one last time then walked around the front of the house. The sun felt warm on her back. She had to get back and pick up her last check, then head home.
Title: Good Enough
Author: AiYume
Fandom: Buffy
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Buffy comes across an unconventional slayer. This occurs just before the start of Season 3.
Disclaimer: Characters, settings, and situations from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are trademarked and copyright by their respective owners.
Biff surveyed his work. The waning afternoon light barely hit parts of the basement through the broken floor. The surrounding hills made the day shorter than other places. He'd run the idea for this trap past the geeky kid who helped him at the computer lab. At least after this he'd be able to go back to studying for his classes this semester. He had just started his second year at Corona Junior College and these personal extra-curricular activities were already starting to affect his grades.
He shouldered his pack and turned to the wall. Climbing up the uneven handholds in the bricks was actually slightly safer than trusting the rotted stairs. Three traps ago, or maybe it was four back, his foot had gone through a rotten board on some stairs. After 20 minutes, he'd gotten enough guts to just keep pulling on his foot against the pain. He’d picked up some scars and the desire to sign up for a first aid class.
He got a toehold and handhold halfway up the wall and carefully poked his head up above ground level. The last thing he needed was for some kid to see him coming out of a "haunted house" and decide to go exploring. Some aspects of this trap could be lethal to humans as well.
His heart froze at the sight of a pair of pumps standing on the dead grass directly in front of his eyes. He looked up a pair of (nice!) legs. Crap! He was looking up some girl's miniskirt. He flinched and lost his tenuous hold on the wall.
God, I hope I don't break the trap, was his first thought. The sound of air going by him seemed loud. Air was brushing his face and his wrist hurt like hell. His feet landed on dead grass and dirt instead of broken brick.
He opened his eyes. He hadn't even realized he'd shut them, nor that he was holding his breath. He inhaled and time started flowing normally.
The girl let go of his wrist and stepped back. He was a fair sized guy, if a bit overweight. He was intimidating at times, so he understood her moving away, but the sour look on her face told him that wasn't a factor.
"You okay?" Her tone was brisk as if she was late for a class and he'd stopped and babbled on while trying to ask her out.
"Um..." Sour turned to impatient. "Yeah." He stretched. Some muscles ached from tensing before the fall. He flexed his hands. "Ow! Fuck." His left wrist wasn't broken, but it hurt like hell.
She looked around quickly, then focused back on Biff. "Sorry about that. I thought it was better than having your skull caved in. What were you doing down there anyway?"
He hesitated. He didn't need word to get around about his traps. People would think he was crazy, and vampires would start targeting him. And... had she just lifted him out one handed? Damn it. The sunlight shining through her hair just about guaranteed she wasn't a vampire.
Her face went sour again at his hesitation. "Oh, never mind. I'm... meeting someone else here anyway." She was studying his face. He was sure it was slightly paler.
"You haven't been burying bodies down there have you?"
"God, no." Great. Now they were playing 20 questions. He knew down that road lay the truth. She could follow him pretty easily. And if she was that strong she wasn't a normal person. So he either had an ally or he was pretty much already dead.
"I was setting a trap."
"Oh..." She pursed her lips. "Bad animal infestation?"
"You could say that."
"Aren't you afraid they'll see you around?"
"It didn't come home last night. Probably won't be home until just before daylight."
She nodded. "Well, I guess we should keep watch then."
"Watch? Oh, no, no, no. I just check them the next day. Much too... Like you said, it might see me around."
"Oh, I imagine if we camped out just over there, those bushes would conceal us. And it's not that smart an animal, is it?"
"Well... Like most traps it depends on surprise."
"I'd imagine so." She paused and looked him over. "I suppose we could go get some burgers first. My name is Anne."
“Biff.” He extended his hand automatically, then hoped it wouldn’t get ripped off. This is a weird fucking date, he thought. Burgers and a camp out under the stars. But it didn't look like he was going anywhere without her.
* * *
Anne ordered and motioned that they were together while opening her oversized purse. She had quit her waitress job, but it was recent and she still had some of the money she had being putting away. The tops of three stakes were hidden under a flap, and being sheathed separately against the back of her purse, they didn't make any noise. She paid and they went to fill up their drinks.
She wasn’t even sure what she was doing here. Even this far away the draw of Sunnyvale and the pain of its memories were too close. So she’d turned east, abandoning her last check from the job. She had enough to travel a little ways yet. At least enough to get out of state.
At the table, she looked Biff over. He didn't look like a Biff. Someone named Biff should look like a quarterback. This guy was so... not. Thinking back, she was amazed he was able to climb up that basement wall. She supposed some of the fat could be hiding muscle.
He caught her looking at him across the table. "You're wondering about 'Biff', aren't you?"
She squirmed. "Yeah, a little."
"It was my dad's idea. And he wanted the kind of Biff that would look like a Biff. Needless to say, I was a bit of a disappointment." He paused to take a bite of his burger. "Once in awhile I would try to start a school year going by 'Bill'. But between people who knew me from the year before and student aides in the office, that never lasted.
"So between getting the shit beat out of me by the more popular kids..." He paused and seemed to contain his embarrassment at the statement. Anne pretended not to notice, raised her eyebrows and cocked her head. Biff continued. "I'd hide in my room, study weird stuff. I got into a D&D club, but in spite of liking to play, I never really connected with any of them. I learned more on my own than I did in school."
He stopped, stared at his burger like he was considering saying more. Anne was caught with her mouth full, trying to decide whether he would respond better with prompting or silence. Choking on her food would not be cool, though, so silence won out.
"Have you ever seen anything... w..." his mouth started to shape around a word. She thought it was "weird", but she gave him an encouraging look. It didn’t work.
"Never mind." He went back to focusing on his burger.
This would work a lot better if she knew exactly what he was up to. She didn’t know what kind of preparations he’d made in that basement nor exactly who for. Was he welcoming the people she was tracking? Or trying to kill them? Well, maybe this would get a reaction.
"Did you want anything else? I mean, I don’t want you to suck me dry, but I can afford a shake." There it was. His head jerked up sharply.
"No. I... God." He looked like he was about to break down crying. He certainly didn’t look like he was going to order a shake.
"Let’s go," she said. "You can tell me back by the house."
* * *
Anne had heard the first part of the story before, but with different people in it. The best friend disappears one night. Shows up a day or two later after dark, acting strange, but excited. Invites Biff to meet some cool new people.
Then the story changes. Biff refuses, and the friend doesn’t push it. Maybe the newborn vampire thought he had plenty of time. Biff ends up following, sees a victim get killed, manages not to go running in or go running to someone who betrays him.
He studies up, observes patterns, there are only two others besides his friend. Anne discerns they were trying to start something new here. Then one night Biff singles one out and sets a trap for them. Not the ambush that Buffy was used to, but a whole, "set it down, walk away and check it later" kind of trap.
Part of her was longing to come forward and say, "That’s not right. You have to be a popular girl, picked and trained to kick vampire ass," but she held her tongue. It had worked for him, and apparently it had worked well.
So he kills his friend next with a holy water grenade. Then takes out the head one with a spring-loaded spike in the vamp’s own coffin. Pretty good work, even if it wouldn’t work near a hellmouth. But he’d gotten more and more advanced. One that had escaped taught him to do more advanced problem solving and build in redundancy.
His tears fell in the dark, and she let him talk himself out. It was probably the first time he was able to tell anyone about it. She didn’t feel close enough to actually hold him, but just telling his story ought to do some good. He ended up falling asleep propped up against a tree. Hopefully he wasn’t a loud snorer.
She sat back and stared into the dark. She had to decide what to do. She’d been pushed into the role of protector, kicking all the way. Then she was pushing back the darkness, kicking ass all the way. And when she’d finally accepted her role as town savior, fate or God or cruel irony made her love one piece of that darkness before she had to utterly destroy it.
So she ran. She started using her middle name, found a slice of a normal life. As a waitress she probably lost as many tips with her smart mouth as she gained looking pretty. It didn’t matter. Just dues for her popular days.
Then two nights ago, she’d served a table of vampires. Falling back on playing a dull and unobtrusive, but efficient waitress got her quite an earful. A small suburb they could take control of within in a month, maybe less.
The decision to follow hadn’t taken long by most people’s standards. Inside her head the balance kept tipping back and forth. Trying to tell herself that just because she was able to help this one time didn’t mean she was going back to her job as savior of Sunnyvale. That part was still undecided. It seemed like this would have worked out okay even without her help.
She stared into the darkness and waited to see how effective his trap would be against the group that would be returning in the morning.
* * *
Biff blinked his eyes open coming awake slowly. His back hurt like hell. He tried to stretch it as he looked around and yawned. The darkness was starting to be tinged with light and realization of his surroundings brought him fully awake.
"Anne?" he whispered.
"Shh. I’m here." He’d have really liked to hear words like that under better circumstances. The low voice came from his left near a break in the bushes that was their vantage point to the broken entrance to the basement. He tried to be as quiet as possible crawling across the ground. He peeked out next to her.
"They’re coming back now." Anne jutted her chin to an area just past the house. Biff’s heart caught in his throat.
"What do you mean 'they'?" His voice came out a bit louder than he wanted it to. Anne turned and clamped a hand over his mouth. He tried to communicate with his eyes that there was something important about this, but apparently she took it for panic, and her hand stayed where it was.
"Calm down. We’ll see how many your trap takes out."
That he could answer without his voice. He held up his forefinger emphatically. She frowned and leaned closer to whisper in his ear. Again, out of left field came the thought that he missed that in better circumstances.
"Your trap will only take out one of them?" He nodded under her hand, trying not to make it a panicked bobbing up and down. He firmly reached up and pushed against her forearm, trying to not to react to the fear and adrenaline shooting through his body. She relented and let him speak.
"How many are there?"
"I was tracking six that were going to meet up with the one that had moved in here. I thought that’s why you were setting a trap, for this meeting."
"We’ve got to get out of here. They’ll look around once the first one dies."
She looked unhappy for a moment, then her face cleared. "That won’t be a problem. You’ll need to stay here, though. Keep out of sight." She went back to the break in the bushes and pulled something out of her oversized bag, then slipped out into the grey.
Oh, shit. She’s dead. I should have just gone home. He thought about doing it now, but… he had to at least watch. If he tried to run with them so close, he was probably dead anyway.
He didn’t see her at all. A larger vampire was headed for the entrance ahead of the smaller resident that Biff had planned the trap for. Fuck. It might not even kill one of them then. It disappeared inside, and Biff tried to visualize what would happen.
The rock slab would compress the rubber cubes beneath the corners and push the blade down into the twine. The cup holding the holy water would empty onto that duster he was wearing instead landing squarely on the shorter one’s head. He wouldn’t panic and jump back just as the spike swung across to impale the heart.
There was a muffled cry. That’ll be the cup of holy water. A thud as the beam holding the spike snapped past its intended position. There were two screams cut off. The three vampires who hadn’t gone in yet stopped, suddenly attentive.
A voice came from Biff’s left by the corner of the house. "Hey, boys." If she kept them fighting outside for 10 minutes or so the sunlight would take care of them, but he doubted vampires took that long to kill people.
The three charged Anne. They were blocking his view of her and it was dark, but it looked like she ducked just as the first one reached for her. Then it was turning to dust, and she was left silhouetted in some kind of karate crouch, a spike extended in her left hand. The image burned into his mind. Then she was turning on one heel to kick another one in the chest.
The fight spun further to the left. He stuck his neck out from the bushes to follow the action and was hauled up and out by his collar. "Hello, little boy," came a sensuous whisper in his ear. He flashed back to the earlier whisper. That one had felt warm. This one sent chills down his spine. He felt muscles inside him loosen up and clamped down. He was not going to pee himself. Well, not while he was still alive anyway.
He was thrown toward the entrance to the basement. He reached out an arm and caught the outside wall. He pulled forward as hard as he could before his feet even landed, grunting at the pain in his arms. He felt a hand grab at his ankle as he tumbled back out and onto the lawn.
The vampire who had thrown him, a woman?, was walking steadily toward him. Biff glanced to the corner of the building. Anne was nowhere to be seen. He supposed if she were dead that the other vampires (and are they... had they been... men or women) would have come back to get inside. He went to push himself up and screamed. His left wrist was sprained. He fell on his left side, and rolled onto his back. It was a bad position to scramble from.
A metal lawn chair he remembered from the front porch landed two yards in front of Biff and just in front of the vampire.
"Have a seat. We can watch the sunrise," came Anne’s voice from the front of the house. The vampire snarled and kicked the chair away. Biff watched it bounce off the wall and clatter down next to him.
He looked back. Anne and the vampire had closed already. He watched arms and legs fly at each other. He didn’t know that vampires knew karate. Or whatever this was. Given enough time, they could learn anything, he guessed.
Anne finally delivered a flying kick that knocked the vampire through a missing section of the outside wall. She landed on a jutting piece of floorboard, and turned to dust as she carried part of the floor down with her.
The sun came up over a short hill and hit the tall vampire in his face. His face registered surprise for a brief instant. Without enough space or time to duck into darkness, he burst into… dust.
Biff had seen the piles of dust in his triggered traps and figured they were vampire remains. It was his final confirmation about his victims where a human body with a spike in it would have been harder to explain. But he’d never seen one actually die before. And although it made sense, he’d never seen a female vampire before. He’d never put a face to them.
He found he was repeating the word "shit" over and over. Anne was shaking him. He stopped before she decided to slap him. That would not help.
"There should be two more," she said quietly. "Will you wait here this time?"
He swallowed thickly and nodded.
"Good." She carefully approached the hole in the side of the house. There was no movement. She jumped through and down into the basement. Biff did not have long to wait. Anne’s calm voice drifted up. "It’s safe. Come have a look."
Biff approached the hole slowly. Anne was standing on the trigger stone. The arm of the trap was extended behind her. The cup that had contained the holy water was just visible in the leading edge of sunlight. Drawing closer to the drop into the basement, Biff saw two piles of dust. Just past the second one was the spike that had been on arm of the trap.
"It was supposed to go into the first one when it jumped back from the water," he said.
"Looks like the tall one moved out of the way and the spike didn’t stay attached. Two for the price of one."
Biff stared down at her, incredulous. "Killing one has always been so hard for me. It takes me some time to follow and learn habits, figure out how the trap should be put into the space."
"And you do a great job with it. You just had a bit of a monkey wrench thrown in this time." Sha started climbing out of the basement.
"But you killed five of them in about 3 minutes without breaking a sweat. I could never do that."
"You could, with the right training." Biff didn't think to offer a hand until she was standing on the grass, but she didn't seem to notice. "I never thought I’d be doing this."
Biff snorted. "I could never get through martial arts training. Look at me."
Anne gave a wan smile and shrugged. "I’m not saying it would be easy."
"And if you’re telling me your training wasn’t built on top of natural ability, I’ll walk into my next trap myself."
Anne’s face turned sad. "I wasn’t trying to show off. Just help. You’ve been doing a good job here."
"Not enough. How many have you killed? Tens? Hundreds?" He watched her face. "It doesn’t matter. I’m not good enough at this."
"Good enough at what? You are good at what you do. And if you don’t feel like you’ve done enough, then the answer is to do more, not give it up. How many lives have you saved?"
Biff looked at her for a moment, then turned away. He had a lot to think about.
* * *
Buffy looked down into the hole one last time then walked around the front of the house. The sun felt warm on her back. She had to get back and pick up her last check, then head home.