Double Destiny

Chapter One
A Slayer's Rebirth

by
Lisa Y. Drexel

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I haven't quite figured out why I still slay—really. After all these years you'd think I would walk away from it. I mean, who am I to be the judge, jury and executioner anymore? I'm a killer—just like those whom I was destined to kill.

But I can't help it.

It's in my blood. For years I was the one mortal girl who was chosen to slay demons, vampires and evil beings and send all them back to Hell where they belonged.

Okay, so I'm not a mortal anymore—I've accepted my Immortality.

Really.

Okay, at least most of the time.

But I still breathe—I still have to eat—I still bleed and from what I've heard from the few daring vamps who have actually tasted my blood and lived to tell about it since I've become Immortal, it's like the purest blood they've ever had...

Hell, I even beat the run on virgin blood. I don't think that's happened for centuries.

Go figure.

An Immortal's and a slayer's blood all mixed into one body—it's a wonder that Angel didn't lose his soul when I made him drink from me—apparently I'm that good.

And have been since the master killed me just a few months after my sixteenth birthday, during Spring Fling.

Isn't that a kick? Xander didn't need to do CPR—I was a pre-Immie walking into the Master's lair and all he did was hasten the process of my impending Immortality.

I wonder why no one ever noticed me not aging.

Especially Angel and Spike—Gods, they were idiots.

Which leads me back to why I'm even telling this story.

Ten years ago I died—again.

Every Immortal that I've talked to always remembers their First Death. Hell, it's actually capitalized in sentences. Air quotes surround it when we talk to each other. And why not? It's one of the defining moments of an Immortal's life. And it's the only time that an Immortal actually dies with the knowledge that *this is it*, only to wake up and find out it wasn't. Sure, when an Immortal loses his head, it's a true and real death. But in that case, the Immortal doesn't revive afterwards and think, 'Wow, what a mind blower.'

Nope, First Death is the only one where that happens.

Or in my case, my Second Death.

There's that breaking the rules part of my personality coming through again.

It was during my freshman year in college that I died again. Back then, even though I had accepted being the Slayer—the Chosen One—I was still a fool enough to believe I could live my life on my terms. If that meant going to school, falling in love and battling the forces of darkness all at the same time—I could deal.

And then came The Initiative with their fancy weapons, their brainwashing drugs, their implants, and their genetic meshing of things better left untouched. Maggie Walsh did what the Forces of Darkness and Light have both been battling against for eons—she made a human-demon cyborg that was unbeatable.

His name was Adam. As I said before, he was part human, part demon and part Terminator. Unfortunately, he had no soul, no demon directive nor the instinctive need to dominate or control that is a mainstay among traits with demons.

He just was.

He killed to understand and study life in all forms, be it demon or not. There was no remorse involved—nothing so human tainted his motives. He actually reminded me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He was like a poor, sociopathic but brilliant child who was obsessed with trying to understand the meaning of it all. Pathetic fool, no one bothered to tell him that there wasn't a meaning to anything.

I heard Angel actually took him out with a rocket launcher after the thing killed me. Gotta love those modern weapons of technology—they killed two bad guys when nothing else seemed to work. They sure know how to do the trick when all else fails.

It was a strange time, my freshman year. Giles was out of a job. No more Sunnydale High School librarian for him considering they never rebuilt the school after we blew it up at Graduation. Xander was wandering aimlessly from job to job in search for his niche. Willow at first soared—finally feeling at home among the intellectuals. And then Oz's wolfiness came into play and he left her—broken hearted and half a person. Oh, and Anya. I have to laugh when I think of her—a twelve-hundred-year-old demon stuck in an eighteen year-old girl's body. She didn't have a soul—still demon through and through. But she was human and stumbling through life with a strange combination of naivete and cynicism.

And there was Spike.

He was actually the reason we initially knew as much about The Initiative as we did. You see, he was one of their victims. They caught him and changed him—did something to him that made it impossible for him to feed off any living creature. Starving, he finally came to Giles' doorstep on that Thanksgiving and like the fools we were, we took him in.

I have to say—he didn't actually betray us. But I do know that he was there the night Adam finally killed me and did nothing to stop him.

Could he have?

I don't know. Like I said before, it took a rocket launcher to bring Adam down. He probably would've just gotten himself dusted if he had tried. And as it ended up, I didn't stay dead anyway. My head was still firmly attached to my body and all my limbs were still connected—thank God—I was just gutted and bled to death.

I woke up in the morgue—alone—and instinctively knowing somehow that my life once again had changed. Just as I was sitting up, patting my chest—crying in relief at the sound of my heartbeat—Whistler showed up.

Whistler.

He's annoying—he has that Bronx accent which makes me wonder just how old he is or if he just prefers to spend his free time in New York. Well anyways, he came to inform of my new destiny.

See, why me? That was my first question. Why would a slayer have two destinies? Isn't one enough? I asked him that while lifting him up by his collar and propping him up against the wall. Of course he didn't have an answer for me but apparently he wasn't shocked that I had kept my slayer strength.

I found out a lot of interesting things that day. One, I was adopted. All Immortals are foundlings. No one knows where we come from. Oh sure, there's some wild theories, but no one knows for sure. Well, let me rephrase that—no one knows for sure who's willing to share. I'm sure the Powers know—but they've never been too forthcoming.

All I know is we're not demons because we're human up until our First Deaths. But everything else after that...who knows?

But I also discovered that being a slayer is genetic. It's in my genes and once I was called—which apparently is similar to an Immortal's First Death—a whole gene sequence was triggered giving me accelerated healing, supernatural strength and the ability to sense demons and other not-right situations. It also can't be turned off—hence, I still have all my slaying abilities and benefits.

According to Whistler, there have only been three Immortal Slayers in existence since the beginning of time. It's like a million to one shot and guess who got hit?

And guess what else I learned that day? The Powers That Be are not infallible. They screwed up. Apparently, the usual procedure for an Immortal Slayer is that once she dies her First Death, another is called and she is whisked away by the council to be trained as a member of one of their elite fighting teams and the Powers are contacted. But with modern medical science and all—they actually believed that Xander's mouth-to-mouth brought me back to life—that I wasn't Immortal. It wasn't until another slayer had been called after my Second Death and the Powers noticed my soul was still very much earthbound, that special measures had to be taken.

Since I had quit the Council—and believe it or not, the Powers thought that was a good thing—they sent Whistler to me instead and let him take me to an Immortal who would mentor me and teach me the ins and outs of Immortality—so I could follow my next destiny.

At first I balked. I wanted to go back to my friends and family, but Whistler insisted that I couldn't. It was then I found out that he was definitely more powerful than he looked. My second lesson in humility that day.

"Why?" I asked him as I stared out the window of the plane.

"Why what?"

"Why everything?" I turned back to face him. "If I managed to survive nearly three years on the Hellmouth without ever running into another Immortal—why couldn't I stay there? Wasn't I safe there?" I started chuckling at the irony—me safe on the Hellmouth. Who would've figured?

He took off his hat and looked at me, sighing. It was then, as our eyes met that I realized that he was a lot older and wiser than I had ever believed him to be before. His dark eyes were sad, and so full of pain and knowledge that suddenly I wished I were the same girl I had thought I was only five hours before—the mortal one.

I didn't want to live long enough to know that much pain.

"Kid, as soon as they realized that you were Immortal—everyone knew instantly that they wanted you to throw away your stake and replace it with a sword. The Immortals need a true warrior for their side. There are so few left that are truly good."

So, that was my introduction into the world of Immortals.

It went downhill from there.

And now here I am, ten years older and still not looking a day over sixteen and still fucking slaying. I just can't help it. I sense demons all the time. Everywhere I go and with every year that passes, my slayer-sense just seems to get stronger. Sure, I have challenges of the Immortal kind. Every headhunter out there wants a piece of me. That short, little blond girl has got to be an easy Quickening, you know. At least that's what they think until they start fighting me.

Thank God for Connor MacLeod—my mentor. That's who Whistler took me to. Apparently the two had met sometime in the last five hundred years and Whistler liked him.

I like Connor. Oh, let's be honest, I love him. Almost as much as I do Giles. He's a father, a teacher and a friend all wrapped up into one person. Like I said, just like Giles. He's got this kind of quietness about him. His eyes are sad. He's seen a lot in the past five hundred years and sometimes I can see every year in his eyes.

But he's good with the sword. He taught me tricks with my Katana that continually made me wish I had known them when I faced Angelus two years before. He rode me so hard and so long—constantly on me—never letting my mouth or my defiant nature get in the way of my lessons. And the best thing about him? He was unimpressed with my previous vocation. It was kinda neat knowing that someone out there didn't put me up there with Hercules or some sort of human protector of the good. With Connor, I was just Buffy—a newbie Immortal.

I liked it.

Until I started getting antsy.

I did manage to stay away from slaying for about six months. Too busy learning all the facets of my new life—mourning over my past one—dreaming of seeing Angel, but knowing that with the clause, it was best to stay away.

And it was. Except for my mother and Giles, I knew everyone was better off without me. Especially the way I had been acting that last year—with the Initiative and all. I still blush in embarrassment when I remember how much energy and time I put into Riley, when after I died, I didn't even think of him.

I thought of Angel first—then my mother and Giles and finally, Xander, Willow, Anya—Spike even. Riley didn't come to mind until we were flying over Iowa. Then I remembered him.

At least I had the decency to feel ashamed.

Unfortunately, I haven't quite managed to get rid of that embarrassment either. One of my major regrets of that last year was how I acted and my inability to make up for it.

Maybe that's why I still slay—it's my way of making amends to my friends and family still living in Sunnydale and LA. Maybe I can't save the world like I used to or be the friend that they deserved, but I can clean up some of the messes left in other parts of the world. Because one thing I learned in my years as the slayer—everything and everyone always ends up visiting the Hellmouth.

It's a fate sorta thing.

At first, I was determined to forget my former life—at least while I was with Connor and awake. I never could control my dreams. But slowly and surely, dueling with my mentor just wasn't enough to satisfy that 'slayerness' in me. It needed to fly—go out among the masses and protect. It needed the night—I needed the night. So, it shouldn't have really been a surprise to me when I finally just gave in and slayed once again. Connor and I had gone out to dinner and were on our way to the corner bar for a few drinks afterwards. He had finally relaxed my training a bit—leaving me with more free time to enjoy this Immortality that the Fates seemed determined to slough onto me. By then I had pretty much mastered the sword and all of its techniques. My slayer abilities had definitely come in handy. Apparently, what I did in six months usually took years for normal Immortals to learn. Connor expected it, knowing that I had been the slayer, but I know he was still surprised, to say the least. And once he heard of Faith and the possibility of an evil slayer, he was more than relieved to know that it had been me that was the pre-Immie and not her.

I couldn't help but agree.

So, armed with my new identity and sword (My new name was and still is, Elizabeth Joyce Winters, age 22) we were walking from Giavoni's, an Italian joint just a few blocks from Connor's to Harry's—a bar that resided on the same block as Connor's home, when I had felt them.

I had stopped as the rush of my slayerness filled me. Suddenly the streets of New York were no longer just byways, but a haven for the undead. My eyes instantly peered into the alley at the right of us, and immediately I sensed two vampires walking towards me. Before I even realized it, I had jumped into the alley, sword out and had decapitated the two demons just as Conner had run up to the entrance.

He sighed, shaking his head and held out his hand for me.

"Done yet, kid?"

I nodded as I slid my sword back into its scabbard in the back of my coat and jogged up to him. I took his hand and we went to Harry's.

By the end of the following week, I was going on nightly patrols.

Connor never said a word about it. Bless him for being so understanding.

Next chapter - A Vampire's Lament