Belle pulls the harnessed metal staff from her back and swings- the man ducks and dodges, she thrusts the staff center mass but without much effort he blocks the blow and rips the staff from her hands. He tosses it aside.
"Still as sassy as ever." He says and swings with a left. She pulls back in time but he immediately blows an uppercut with his right and she goes rolling over the car, falling on the other side. She lands face first on the pavement and can feel a hairline fracture on her jaw. Before she can stand, the between them begins to shake and soon the two front wheels lift off the ground, the man on the other side pushes it up and the car fall on its back. Belle jumps up and grips two knifes from her belt.
"Seriously? You're still going to fight me?" he asks, perplexed.
"You think I'd just run away?"
"After I tossed a car to the side like that... that didn't impress you?"
She runs at him with the knifes, she's fast with her jabs but he has no problem blocking them. He grabs her by the collar, her right hand comes up with a knife, he swats it off- the blade goes flying, her left hand comes up and the same thing happens again, the metal knife tings and slides somewhere on the street. She is left unarmed. He pulls her close, his eyes change, they look human now.
"Little girls shouldn't play with such sharp things." He puts another hand on her collar and with a mighty shove he pushes her up into the air over the empty lot ahead, but instead of falling she disappears somewhere over it, about seven stories up.
"Ah, good show you imbecile." He says to himself. He tries to enter the hidden hotel but finds only an empty parking lot.
Belle coughs blood and glass for a few moments after crashing through the window. Confused, she shakes her and as she feels the carpet beneath her fingers but it's not long before she figures it out. She jumps to her feet and runs to room 707. She pushes the door open hitting Crash in the back. "He's here, he's outside." She says in half a panic.
Or stops the ritual, "I know where the books are, don't worry he can't get inside." Or moves to the coffee table in front of her, she lays a hand on the newspaper she was reading and the ink dissolves and moves like a hundred black snakes, the black lines spit into more pieces each thinner then the last eventually forming a map. Or closes her eyes and a tiny light appears in the center of the map. A small hole burns calmly and subsides. "There. Go, you'll find the books, maybe they can help you figure out what you need to do."
Jane takes the map with gratitude. "Can you tell me anything? I know you feel things, do you sense anything?"
Or goes quiet, her polite smile fades, "The burden of the Slayer is on you now, dark things are coming. I see violence. I see Death." The room is still, a sinking silence fills all their stomachs. Olson looks at the beaten Belle and back at Jane, "Wait, who's outside?"
*****
Running, it's always been running. Jane thinks as they exit the hotel in an entirely different part of the world. The map is of a desert somewhere in Morocco, Or found an exit for them there, she explained to a confused Olson about the different ways into the hotel and how it has exists and entrances somewhere between time and space and with a little concentration one could come out almost anywhere.
No more running. Jane looks into the unrelenting sun, a minute ago it was night in Japan now it's mid afternoon in Morocco. The sun boils and burns as they march through the rocky desert, Jane takes a quick look at her companions and knows they won't last long like this. They need transportation.
Olson goes along with it all, confused and frustrated but uncomplaining as he was raised. This is not what he had in mind when he vowed to sacrifice his own needs for the cause. The Watcher's council had been sacred to him since he was a child, now, he wasn't sure what it is he was supposed to be doing. This girl knew about her fate, she didn't seem to fight it, acceptance, he was told, would be the hardest part for any new Slayer. And yet here he was with this unknown girl, this Jane Doe, a mystery, completely aware of her duty and no sign that she wanted out. Some Slayers come and go, some become legends, but something told him this one would fall somewhere in between, somewhere through the cracks, her struggle completely unique in that it had begun long before she was a Slayer, long before she was grown.
