All Upstream from Here

"And so, Wesley, you've submitted your name to the Active list, have you?" asked Lady LeFaye, my Handler, as I lay beside her, panting, on the riverbank.

"Ah, well--yes, actually. Yes, I have."

Her Ladyship leaned back against the kayak, one knee drawn up to her chest, everything about her--though she must surely have been past forty in age--smooth, sleek and powerful. Back in the seventies, it was rumoured, she'd gone to the Olympics, though in which event I could not recall. "What does Travers have to say about it?"

"Uncle Quentin's already agreed to sponsor me. He believes I show great promise." The expression on my face may have been less than properly humble. I'm often told it appears so: just that morning, over breakfast, my fellow third-year Candidate Maria Del Ciello had called me insufferable, but I'm not insufferable, or not entirely. Del Ciello would not share my boat, she went with Quartermass, and Her Ladyship had to take me.

"Has he?" Lady LeFaye replied. "Does he?" I believe I detected irony in her voice, but even after three years in her company, I could not be precisely sure. "Take off your wetsuit, Wesley."

"I beg your pardon! Lady LeFaye!" She had surprised me--though one heard insinuations. A blush rose from my collar to the tips of my ears.

"Have it off, silly boy. Your virtue's safe with me." Her ladyship rose to her feet in one motion, a true Amazon. The two of us looked nearly eye to eye. She was quite beautiful, in a predatory way, as an eagle or a falcon can be beautiful. Her grin flashed bright in the forest shadows. "You didn't forget to wear your cozzie underneath, did you, Wesley?" She laughed.

"No. Ah. Ah. Good Lord, no," I stammered, thankful that I had indeed remember to don my swimming costume before this day's excursion, and feeling no end the fool.

"Have it off then." Lady LeFaye folded her arms across her chest. The tight sleeves of Her Ladyship's own suit molded to well-defined muscles. She was stronger than one ever expected, merciless in her training, both in the realms of the physical and of the intellectual. I could never tell if she liked or hated me.

She's quite old enough to be your...aunt, I reminded myself, nervous with those cool, dark-green eyes upon me.

"I've been your Handler for three years, Wesley. Relax. This is merely another lesson. No more need to be nervous now, with me, than you would have been reading an essay to your old college tutor ten years ago."

Considering that my Balliol tutor, Mr. Hemmings, had been sixty if a day, and possessed of spectacles with lenses thicker than storm-windows, I failed to accept the comparison. Reluctantly, not understanding Her Ladyship's intent--or fearing I understood it only too well--I tugged down the zip, pulling the second skin of Neoprene away from my body until the upper part of the suit hung about my waist.

"Far enough," Her Ladyship told me, smiling. "My, you are pretty, aren't you? Quite the lovely young man. What's this?" Her fingers found the small white scar along my lower ribs, the touch strong and icy, much like the touch of the vampire we'd faced together out in the wilds of Hampstead Heath. I'd hated that part, one of the "New Disciplines," brought about by people like Lady LeFaye, and that odd man, Giles, in California, as if our old ways weren't good enough. Pure bosh, my Uncle Quentin said. Watchers watch, Slayers slay.

But your uncle's Slayer lasted no more that six months, my inner voice told me. I bade it be still. That voice can often be disloyal, and it helps me not at all.

Though I knew only recent contact with the chilly river made Her Ladyship's skin so cold, I could not contain a shudder. I'd grown accustomed to Lady LeFaye in dark wool suits and French perfume, or dressed for fencing. Up close, here in the forest--garbed in her shark-gray second skin--she reminded me of one of them. The Enemy.

"H-horse. Kicked me. Age twelve."

"And this?" The chilly touch moved, running up my chest to the triangular scar just beneath my collarbone.

"Ah, er, at the seaside. I was five. I'd been tormenting my sisters, and the youngest, Caterina, threw a stone at me."

Her ladyship laughed softly. "Fair aim."

I cleared my throat. "I believe she intended to strike my head."

A second laugh, dangerous and dark. "Wesley, you've made it past thirty nearly unscathed. Is that all there is to see?"

"Yes, Your Ladyship." I straightened, attempting to hold fast to my dignity. "I suppose that it is."

"Very well." Abruptly, her fingers left my body. She worked the zip of her own suit, shedding the gray casing as a serpent sheds its skin. "My Slayer's name was Helena," she said. "Helena Penglis. She was fifteen when Called, and for twelve years we kept one another alive. Twelve years, first in New Orleans, then Prague, then Pottersville, a small town in Maine. Have you read my journals, Wesley?"

I shook my head, caught up, horrified, by what I saw. "Wasn't allowed, Your Ladyship."

"Weren't you? Here--" Free from her suit, she touched a long scar on her thigh. "I fell thirty feet, onto broken glass. Unconscious for four days. They put a pin in the bone. Here--" Her fingers traveled over a semi-circle of deep triangular pits in her forearm. "Bitten through. Here--" She turned her back to me, lifting the long mahogany plait of her hair. Two broad white stripes angled over her shoulderblades, as if she'd once had angelic wings, but they'd been cut away. "It had claws. I never saw it coming. Here--"

Turning to face me, she caught hold of my hands and brought them to her hip, fore and aft. Through her swimming costume, I felt the puckered, circular scars. "The vampire who did this was once called William the Bloody, though now, I believe, he goes by the name of Spike. As in the great nails that are used to secure railroad ties. We didn't get him. He's still alive--or, at least, undead--out there."

"And here." Lady LeFaye raised her chin, laying my hand against the corrugated skin at the base of her throat. I'd never seen that dreadful mark before: all her blouses had high collars, all her jumpers polo necks. Her gaze trapped mine. "That one was the last. I ought to have died." She looked down, and realized that she wept, the sudden wetness on my wrist was the brine of her tears.

"I ought to have died when my Helena died. I ought not to be here." Her Ladyship turned away roughly, skinning back into her suit.

"To become involved with one's Slayer in that way," I told her, "Lies in direct opposition to our directives."

Her Ladyship treated me to another round of bitter laughter. "Tell yourself that, Wesley. Sit amongst your books, plan your strategies, let your Slayer be a willing little soldier, march her forth every night to war. After all, our cause is just, our cause is true."

"Our cause is just." I began to struggle into my own suit.

"Oh, yes. Quite. And if one dies, another is Called."

"That's certainly true." I could not understand her tone. This was war, and in war, it's the sad truth, soldiers die. If we felt otherwise, we could not do the work we were called to do. Yes, we would do our best to protect our Slayers, but we were Watchers, not warriors, and our skills, gained through time and diligence, should not be lightly thrown away. Our laws, our traditions, too, had been shaped by time. Lady LeFaye sat on the Council's Ruling Body, was, in fact, the only woman of the Twelve. How could she not understand?

Her Ladyship watched me as the shadows lengthened, until we stood in near dark. "They can smell us, you know," she said at last. "The vampires. They come for us in the night. If your Slayer does not love you, she may not care. One more stuffy prat issuing orders--why should she care? The Council can make others, they can send more."

She bent, righting the kayak, gathering paddles.

"You are a marvelous researcher, Wesley. You know languages and folklore, and can lay a name to most any bloody thing I throw your way. You can quote Watcher theory and tradition at me until your face turns blue. But this game takes more than brains: it takes cunning, it takes heart, and it takes balls. You know the lifespan of the average Slayer, I imagine--do you know how long the average Watcher lasts after activation? And you may glare at me all you like." A slight smile. "I've faced worse."

I lowered my gaze; I had indeed been glaring.

Her Ladyship's voice dropped. "Have you been to the place in the country where the old Watchers live? The ones who weren't lucky?"

"Good God, no." I twisted my paddle out of her hands, and refloated our craft in the river. "Excuse me, Your Ladyship, but this attitude--" I slid into my place, in the fore, and buckled on my helmet.

"Yes, to you it must seem poor." She slipped in behind me.

"Lady LeFaye, I feel that I must convey your opinions to my uncle." Confusion made me stiff, formal, as if I were some stock character in a Victorian novel.

"Yes, Wesley. Do so." One powerful stroke drove us into midstream. "By all means."

We paddled hard, much more difficult in this direction, fighting the current., going back over the ground we'd covered easily enough just a short time before. The others would be waiting. Back at the manor we would restore our masks, be formal and polite, tutor and student, mentor and protégée. I decided that I hated the Cotswolds.

"Don't wear yourself out," Lady LeFaye told me, her voice carrying over the voice of the river. "Remember, Wesley, it's all upstream from here."