The Vampire Slayer Diaries

Blood Ties

I sighed sitting in the magic shop with the gang Buffy was next to me. With Willow sitting on the other side and Tara beside Will. Xander and Anya were on the other side of me and Giles was across from me.

"Look, I know Mom wants to gather and make with the merry tomorrow night." I told them crossing my arms. "But with everything that's going on."

"This is exactly what you need." Buffy said. "I mean we know you don't age anymore and how your birthdays make you feel but it's your 20th birthday we let you skip the 19th year, this year we need a party with, with presents, and funny hats, and, and those candles that don't blow out...

"Those used to scare me." Willow whispered to Tara.

"Me too." Tara whispered back.

"I just don't think this is the best time to break out the party piñata." I told them sternly. "We need to stay focused if we're gonna find a way to stop Glory."

"We're going up against a god." Xander said. "An actual mightier-than-thou god."

"My grandfather could have been a god." I muttered to myself.

"Well, you know what they say, the bigger they are-"

"The faster they stomp you into nothing." Anya said

We turned looking at her.

"She's right." I said sighing running a hand through my hair. "I've thrown everything and I mean everything at her and she just shrugs it off."

"Then we have to find something heavier to throw." Buffy said.

"That might pose some difficulty. From what the Council's been able to discover from the book of Tarnis and, and, and other sources, Glory and two of her fellow hellgods ruled over ... one of the more seriously unpleasant demon dimensions." Giles said looking up from his paper and books.

"There's more than one?" Tara asked.

"Oh, there are thousands of demon dimensions." Anya told her. "All different."

"All pushing on the edges of our reality, trying to find a way in." Giles added.

"I guess Glory found one." Buffy said. "The question is, why?"

"There's nothing to indicate that here. Just ... vague references to ... chaos and destruction. " Giles told us, his tea kettle started whistling so he got up to get it.

"Okay so we know where Glory's from." I said taking a drink from my tru blood. "What do we know about her?"

"Well you know she's tough, stronger than us." Buffy said. "But no bolts of lightning, no blasts of fire, shouldn't a god be able to do that kind of stuff?"

" Uh, usually, yes, but um, being in human form must be severely limiting her powers. All we have to worry about right now is she's immortal, invulnerable, and insane." Giles told us pouring tea into his cup.

"A crazy hellgod? And the fun just keeps on leaving." Xander joked.

"From what I've been able to gather her living in this world is ... seriously affecting her mental state as well. She's only being able to keep her mind intact by, uh, extracting energy from us. Well, from, from the human brain."

"She, she, she's a brain-sucker? " Tara said exchanging a look with Willow.

"She um." Giles said leaning over to a book. "absorbs the energies that bind the human mind into a cohesive whole. Once drained, all that's left behind is, uh-"

"Crazy people." Buffy said in conclusion.

"Which is, I'm afraid, why there's been a marked increase in the ranks of the mentally unstable here in Sunnydale."