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Divine Providence
by Exfilia
Spike had taught her to do it, more than a score of years ago when they'd first seen the film.
"I need to see your invitation," the young man said.
"You don't need to see my invitation," Drusilla smiled.
"I don't need to see your invitation."
"You hope I'll enjoy the party," she prompted.
"Enjoy the party, ma'am."
She walked into the ballroom. Well, there was half the bet won right there, that a vampire couldn't crash the White House Christmas party. For just a bit Drusilla would let it be at that. There were dozens of pretty girls chattering with lovely tasty blokes among the greenery, and the delicate little old fellow at the far end would hardly make a good bite for a fledge if you threw in his tiny lady with the ruby cross on her nearly bare bosom. You'd think someone her age would have better sense. Cross, indeed! Drusilla looked away, and found herself standing very still in the middle of the crowd, standing and watching something magical.
Once soon after Drusilla was turned, Angelus had convinced Darla that they should spy on the Seelie Court. They'd found a quiet place near a hill he'd said was hollow and sat themselves down to wait. Before the laziest of the stars had come out to say hello, Darla had drawn Angelus down behind a hedge for one of their sessions of gasping and grunting. Drusilla called to them when the faeries rode by, but they teased her and said they didn't seen a thing. They had to have seen, of course. You couldn't miss the Sidhe, their great sleek horses with the tinkling harness bearing red-blond riders dressed in silk. They were taller and thinner than human people, and they cast a glamour just by being there that would make you agree to anything. Drusilla wanted to bite one, to taste the magic of their charm, but Angelus had laughed and dragged her away.
Well, perhaps her chance had come again. A faery woman was standing at the other end of the ballroom, one of the Sidhe, perhaps, or just a changeling's daughter, but close enough. She was speaking to a white-haired man who, sure as anything, nodded in agreement. Drusilla smiled, and listened to the snowflakes swirling outside to hear the song of the elf-queen.
There wasn't any song to be heard. The snow was flying away, flying to Sunnydale, flying to *her.*
And it was flying to him, to Angelus, to Drusilla's Daddy who was burning in hell, except that he wasn't. Somehow he had come back to Sunnydale to the silly girl who'd killed him, the girl who'd corrupted Daddy and Spike as well until they'd left Drusilla all alone. Even the snowflakes were all gone away. Drusilla sucked at her bottom lip, then giggled a bit. The snow had fled, but the elf-queen was still here, alone now, scanning the room, choosing her next victim as casually as if she were the vampire. Drusilla walked up to her.
"I'm sorry," the woman said. "Do I know you?"
"Would you like to?" asked Drusilla. The elf-queen looked into Dru's eyes, and you could see the fog of confusion settle on her. It obscured her doubts and her questions and even her good sense until Drusilla had her firmly enspelled. "Come along, dearie," she said, taking the woman's hand, "unless you want to do this in the middle of the floor with all these people watching."
"Where's C.J. going?" Danny asked. Josh snorted.
"The most important people in Washington D.C. are gathered in the East Room of the White House, and the senior correspondant for the Washington Post has nothing better to do than keep track of the Press Secretary's bathroom visits?"
"What about it?" asked Danny, his face full of perfect innocence, or perhaps supernal inebriation. With Danny it was hard to tell.
"You are hopeless, my friend." he grinned. "You know that, right?"
Toby Ziegler materialized at Josh's elbow.
"Who's that?" he asked.
"C.J." said Josh. "How you can tell is, she's the one Danny's been staring at all night."
"No, the brunette."
There was in fact a woman with C.J., tall and sleek in a white gown with a dusting of gold. A curl of dark hair lay on each of her shoulders. Josh might have been tempted to whistle if he hadn't been in the White House, if for no other reason than pulling Danny's chain.
"I don't know her," he grinned, "but I wish I did."
"There's something wrong about this," Toby told him.
"They're holding hands," said Danny.
"What about it?" asked Josh.
"They're leaving. She's not... I mean, C.J. doesn't like girls, does she?"
"If I tell you she does will you quit kissing her in her office in the middle of the workday?"
"I never kissed her! She kissed me!"
"Could you at least close the door?"
"Guys," said Toby, "I've got a really bad feeling about this."
"What? She's a single girl. This is a Democratic administration. If C.J. wants to get kinky with a strange woman at the Christmas party... okay, I'm just going to purge that visual image from my mind, now."
"Please do," said Danny.
"People," said Toby, "can we focus, here, please? Who is this woman? I mean, I've got a bad feeling."
"Wait a minute," said Josh. "Is this just a feeling feeling, or one of *those* feelings?"
"Excuse me?" said Danny.
Josh winced.
"Look," he said, "you never heard it from me, okay? But Toby is really good at... seeing patterns in things. Sometimes he can't tell you how he gets from A to B, but he's at B, or even Q, and you can take his word for it."
"And we would appreciate your discretion on that," growled Toby.
"Right," said Danny. "My lead tomorrow was going to be 'White House Communications Director Reveals Psychic Powers at Christmas Party.'"
Toby set down his glass.
"I'm going after them," he said.
"You dog!" said Josh.
"That woman is evil."
"I believe it," said Danny. "I'll come with you."
"Better not," Josh told him. "Technically, C.J. works for us, and you wouldn't want to see us seeing anything we would later have to admit that we saw."
"As bedazzled as I am" said Toby, "by the total lack of grammatical structure in that verbal pearl, I can still see... I can smell evil."
"And just what does 'evil' smell like?" grinned Josh.
"Blood," whispered Toby.
Suddenly Josh didn't feel like grinning any more.
"Okay," he told Danny, "Toby and I are going to go embarrass C.J. and you are going to find something else to write about, right?"
"Can I have your notes on the secret plan to fight inflation?"
"Bite me, Danny."
Danny snapped his teeth at Josh's back. Okay, he had probably had way more to drink than he should have. Of course, Toby seemed to be pretty far gone, himself. Evil. Sheesh. You'd think they were gathered around a peat fire in a drafty cottage listening to folk tales.
He felt a grin plaster itself all over his face. He knew just how to get back at Mr. Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman and his comments about people's love lives, for which Josh himself bore some responsibility because of the goldfish thing, although it would have been nice if he'd been a little more specific about that. After all....
Danny hiccupped, and his mind jumped back on track. Yeah, he knew someone who would find this amusing, someone with a crackerjack scientific intellect coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of folklore to go with her collection of antique ouija boards, someone whose husband claimed Danny had "written the book" on her. He might not know her quite that well, but Danny was fairly certain that Abigail Bartlet would rag Josh about this incident until the poor guy registered as a Republican. He tossed back the rest of his drink, looked across the room and caught the First Lady's eye.
"Where'd they go?" Josh asked.
"Her office," said Toby.
"How do you know?"
"I can feel it."
"You okay, Toby? You look kind of green."
"We need to hurry."
"Yeah, well, we don't want them to know we're here."
"She knows."
"Toby, we're still on the stairs. No way they could have heard us."
"She knows. If we go in there, she's going to kill us."
"This wouldn't be any fun if C.J. didn't get mad about it."
"Not C.J."
"Toby, you're starting to freak me. Was that the elevator?"
It was difficult for Danny to get in the mood for mischief when his partner in crime was followed into the elevator by a couple of men in black suits. It was even more difficult not to get sober, and with sobriety had come the idea that C.J. might not appreciate what he was doing. What if she really were up to something with the pale girl in the white dress? What if it was something she didn't particularly want the First Lady to see? Danny wondered if he could get custody of the goldfish. He wondered if goldfish day care was expensive.
He felt a hand creep into his and squeeze it.
"Hey," said Abbey.
"Yeah."
"You okay?"
"C.J.'s going to be mad at me."
"C.J. stays mad at you. That's because she loves you."
"You think?"
"I know. I've been doing this for a while, remember?"
"And you stay mad...?"
"..until I get him alone."
Danny felt himself blush.
"Careful you don't frighten your horses." He nodded at her impassive Secret Service escort.
"They're specially trained."
"Oh."
Josh was going to throttle the life out of Danny Concannon with his own press credentials. He would have to wait a little while to do it, since committing murder in front of the security detail striding through the bullpen with Danny and the First Lady would probably be a bad thing. Also Abbey Bartlet was a competent physician who of course would save the big furry slimebag if Josh didn't get him all the way dead in the first seconds of the encounter.
What was Josh thinking? He wasn't going to have to kill anyone. C.J. was going to murder them all.
"Yes!" said Toby.
"Yes?" whispered Josh. "I thought if we went in that room C.J.'s love toy was going to dismember us? How does this merit a 'yes?' Having witnesses makes it a 'yes?'"
"It's okay," said Toby, "as long as she's here."
"Toby, how much did you have to drink before we came down here?"
The expression on Josh's face was almost worth it. Danny fell back a step. It wasn't that he wanted Abbey between him and Josh. He just wanted her to have a good view of Josh standing in front of C.J.'s office with his hands spread in imprecation and a furious flush climbing up from his collar, and Toby stepping behind him to open C.J.'s door.
They were in there, all right, wrapped around one another like particularly disgusting worms in a can of bait. The dark girl looked up, and Danny stopped breathing. Her eyes glowed yellow, and her mouth was smeared with... some unknown dark substance that absolutely wasn't... anything. C.J. swayed against her, as if her knees wouldn't hold her up, then slid down the front of the woman's body, leaving streaks of red on the white dress all the way down to the floor.
Danny didn't hear the first shots. The noise kicked in when he saw the girl stagger back, saw the unbleeding holes appear in her bodice, heard her eerie laugh.
Click. Click. The weapons were empty. C.J.'s attacker was still standing, still laughing at them.
There was the snick! of a chain breaking, an "oof!" and the sound of footsteps. Danny tore his eyes from C.J. and saw one of the agents clutching his solar plexus as Abbey flew across the bullpen and through the door. The other bodyguard ran after her, cursing. The girl brushed Abbey aside, picked up the man and threw him against the glass window beside C.J.'s door. He slid to the floor and lay unmoving. There was a sizzling sound, and the girl backed away, clutching her cheek. Danny felt his feet start to move, shuffling, then running until he fell to his knees and brushed C.J.'s hair away from her neck, where there was a gaping wound.
"Abbey?"
"I'm busy." Abbey had the girl backed up against C.J.'s desk, the monstrous face gone human again except for the print of the ruby cross burned into her skin.
"A little long in the tooth for the Slayer thing, aren't we, dovie?"
"Why do I think you don't have a great deal of room to talk on that issue?"
"Abbey, C.J.'s bleeding. It's... it's spurting everywhere."
"Put pressure on it. And you," she said to the girl, "get out of my house!"
"It's not a house," said the girl. "It's a public building, or I couldn't have got in in the first place, and you've got no call to tell me what to do or where to go! You're not the real Slayer!"
Toby knelt down beside Danny, his eyes on the wet red oozing from under the hands Danny held pressed to C.J.'s throat, and then he stood up again. The room outside was filling with men in dark suits, probably drawn by the gunfire. The one they'd started with was still speechless and gasping, but he pointed into the room where Toby was approaching the demon girl.
"Ooh," she said. "what are you?"
"My name," he said, taking the cross from Abbey and pushing her toward C.J., "is Toby Ziegler, and I'm the Director of Communications here. Who are you?"
"You're like me."
Abbey landed beside Danny and moved his hands aside, then pressed her thumb against C.J.'s neck. The spurting stopped. Curses came from outside as the Secret Service realized who was in the room with the hostile, and that they had no way to effectively intervene.
"You're one of us," the girl told Toby in a voice full of wonder.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The moon talks to you," the girl said to Toby. "You see visions and dream dreams, like mine."
"I don't think so."
"You do. I could turn you, you know. If there were two of us together, nothing could stop us, not Daddy, not his nasty Slayer...."
Abbey looked out the door at her detail and mouthed the word "ambulance." Right, like they needed to be told that. One of the agents muttered into his wristband. Another crooked a finger at Abbey. She shook her head, fished Danny's white handkerchief out of his inside pocket and pressed it against C.J.'s neck.
"Put your finger where mine is," she told Danny.
"You're not wrapping a Christmas present, here!"
"What?"
"I was doing it wrong before. If I screw up, will she...?"
"I can't help her one-handed, Danny. Put your hand in there!"
He held his breath and pushed his thumb gently against the indicated spot. Blood pulsed again, and he jerked away. Abbey grabbed his hand and shoved it back.
"Put your weight on it!" she ordered. Danny closed his eyes and leaned in as hard as he could, concentrating on anything other than the stickiness all over his hands.
"What's a Slayer?" Toby asked the girl.
"A dirty little tart that stole my Daddy and stole my boy."
"That wasn't very nice of her, was it?"
Danny opened his eyes at that particular inanity, then realized that Toby was playing for time. The bullpen was full of men in dark suits brandishing wicked-looking handguns, and eventually they'd come up with something. It wasn't like bullets had much of an effect on the woman, but this was the United States Secret Service. They would figure something out, hopefully something besides raising a wall of their dead bodies between Abbey and the vampire.
"She's not a nice person, the Slayer," pouted the girl. "She's a selfish little bitch that took what's mine."
"You must be really angry with her."
"I'll have me own back," she said, yellow swirls forming in the depths of her eyes.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," said the girl. "The Slayer took what's mine," she laughed, looking past Toby at Abbey, "and I'm going to take what's that one's, and win my bet and all."
Danny's eyes met Abbey's for the briefest fragment of an instant, and when he looked back, the girl was gone. Suddenly the room was full of treasury agents, and Abbey was lifted away. Danny grabbed for the improvised bandage, now sodden with blood, and pressed it back against C.J.'s neck, more to hide the horrible damage than in any hope of helping her. There was a yelp of pain, and a dark-suited man gripped his personal bits, and Abbey darted out into the bullpen.
"Where's my husband?" she asked. "Right now, where is he?"
No one answered. Abbey ran toward the stairs. A phalanx of agents pelted after her, either as backup or pursuit or still making up their minds.
"She really doesn't get the whole protectee thing, does she?" said Toby.
The remaining agent, now sitting on the floor with his legs straight out and ninety degrees apart, shook his head vehemently.
"We're... going to have to work on that, sir. We screwed up."
"Is C.J. okay?" asked Josh from the doorway.
"Where the hell were you?" asked Toby.
"Outside with six guys sitting on me! These Treasury people do not play!"
Some sort of droplets were hitting C.J.'s waxen face. Danny blinked, causing a small shower, and realized that they were tears, his tears. Another one plopped down, and another, and then C.J.'s eyelids fluttered and opened.
"You'd do anything to get me in this position, wouldn't you, Daniel?"
He couldn't say anything, couldn't do anything but nod, and sob, and nod some more. Toby knelt down beside them.
"You're going to be okay," he told her. "Help's on the way."
"What is it this time?" the President asked his Chief of Staff.
"Intruder, sir," McGarry said.
"I wish they'd come up with another word for that. It sounds like a bad episode of Star Trek."
"What should we call them? Trespassers?"
"Gatecrashers? Kids on a lark?"
"Possible assassins?"
"You spoil all the fun, Leo."
"That's my job, sir."
"Do you think we could step outside for a moment?"
"It'll only be a few more minutes. There aren't that many places for a 'kid on a lark' to hide."
"If I smoke in here, it's going to set off the alarms, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay, then, let's not do that."
"Good plan, Mr. President."
"Leo, why aren't there guards outside?"
"There are."
"No, there are usually people on the balcony, just outside the door. Where are they?"
Leo moved toward the French doors, trying to see what was happening in the dark outside.
"You sure that's a good idea?" the President asked.
It wasn't. The door flew open and a slender white hand grabbed Leo by the throat and smashed his balding head against the top of the door frame, then dropped him like a discarded toy. A girl in a soiled white dress stepped over his body into the room.
"Are you him, then?" she asked.
"I suspect so," Bartlet answered, wondering where his highly intrusive bodyguards were when he needed them.
Abbey erupted from the stairwell and almost fell over Charlie Young. The young man was concious enough to roll out of the way, although a number of Secret Service people seemed to have been less fortunate.
"My husband...?"
"...Oval...."
His head hurt, and his neck hurt, and he was lying on a cold hard floor. Okay, why did he think this wasn't how being President was supposed to work?
"Your blood is vile."
He opened his eyes and saw her, the dark girl, sitting by the door.
"Vile?" he said. "Well, that's good."
"You're sick, and you've got all kinds of nasty drugs in you for it. You're not fit to eat."
"And you have just restored my faith in the beneficence of the Almighty."
"There's no such thing."
"There is, you know. He exists."
"I know that. He just doesn't love us."
"He loves you. He doesn't love what you do, but He loves you."
"He hated me before. I didn't ask for the visions, and I didn't ask for Angelus, but I got them, and I'm damned for it. I tried to be good and I loved Him and obeyed Him and He let them make me a vampire!"
"...for a reason, just like He gave me a nasty disease so I'd turn your stomach and live until tomorrow."
"What earthly reason...?"
"No earthly reason, no reason at all that we can understand. We just have to believe."
"So it's all right with you, just because it's God's plan?"
"No, it is most certainly not all right, but...."
The door flew open and Secret Service agents poured into the room. The girl sprang to her feet and scooped up Leo's unconcious body.
"Come any further," she said, "and this scrawny prat's my Christmas dinner."
The agents stopped as if they'd reached a line on the floor. New arrivals filled in their ranks, but none moved toward the girl.
"It's all right," Bartlet told her. "You can put him down, now."
"I don't think so," the girl said, eyeing the wall of agents facing her.
"You don't have to do this," he said, climbing to his feet. "You don't have to stop trying to be good."
"...won't matter," she said.
He heard a rustle of silk, and then Abbey was standing with him, her arms around his waist, fingers at the scratch on his neck. How in...? Bartlet briefly considered trading his wife's security detail for Leo, or possibly just handing them over to the vampire for disposal, but then decided that he wanted to wring their collective neck himself. The girl was still standing in the door, still holding Leo in front of her, but she was waiting for him.
"Trying does matter," he told her. "It matters. Put him down. Go ahead, put him down, gently."
"She almost killed C.J.," Abbey said.
"That doesn't mean she has to kill Leo. She has a choice, every time. Put him down, now. Go ahead."
He didn't see it happen, but suddenly the girl was gone, and Leo was lying on the floor. The black-suited line surged forward and swept out on the balcony. Abbey knelt beside Leo.
"He's alive," she said. "Not bitten." She parted the thin hair and peered at his battered scalp. "Needs X-rays. If he doesn't have a concussion, he should. What happened?"
"She hit the door with him."
"You mean she hit him... or not. Why didn't she...?" Abbey's voice broke, and she bit her lip, then continued. "Why didn't she kill you? From what she said downstairs, that's what she came to do."
"I don't get the USDA stamp." he said.
"She could tell?"
He nodded. "It's not her favorite flavor, by any means."
"Well, so much for her taste." Abbey plucked a tissue from the box on the table and applied it to Leo's scalp. "Jed, are we going to have to do something about this? Do vampires have an agenda? Are people like her going to terrorize us until we change our policy on undead rights, or something?"
"Do we have a policy on undead rights?"
"When you see what that woman did to C.J., we will. The hallway outside isn't very pretty, either."
"Is everyone okay?"
"We got C.J.'s bleeding pretty much stopped, and she was breathing well and her pulse was... there. Unless Danny fretted her to death before the paramedics arrived, she'll be okay. The other victims aren't in danger."
"She's a victim, too, you know, that vampire. Someone did to her what she tried to do to us. Someone turned her into what she is, and someone did him before that, and before that...."
"So you think we should have vampire amnesty? And before you answer that, I want you to come look at what she did to the people who work for you. She's a mad dog, Jed. She needs to be put out of her misery. You can't let her rampage across America while you search for a solution that works for everyone."
"I know," he said, "but that doesn't mean I get to stop trying."
The End