A series of art thefts and a new group of vampires in town means trouble for the Scooby Gang. When Willow gets caught in the middle, it means disaster. Can anybody save our favorite redhead?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Buffy the Vampire Slayer story takes place after the episode School Hard in Season 2, and is the first fanfic I wrote. It is rated PG-13 for some violence, implied violence and kissing. It was written in the fall of 1998 and was a finalist in the Willfic Awards that year.
I would like to say thank you to all of the people who took the time to respond as I wrote this piece, your kind words mean a lot to me.
I'd also like to take the time to give a special *THANK YOU* to Avarice, Blackheart, KrazyKat, Melinda S. Dawney and VaBuffyFan for their wonderful editing help.
Laurence
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They were created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. No copyright infringement is intended. This story was written for personal entertainment only and I am not profiting from it. Characters and other items (for example-Severian, Stephen Allinson, Kveltain and Claudia) within the following story that are not the creation of Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy are my own and I claim full rights on them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prologue
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Severian strolled through the warm Texas night. A faint hint of a breeze stirred the trees lining the campus sidewalks. In the dim, hidden recesses of the courtyard, there was little chance for such a weak wind to bring any real relief. A smattering of people were passing through the area, singly or in pairs. With few classes held in the evening, the university was slowly shutting down for the night.
A little more than six feet tall, he had short black hair and dark friendly eyes. His skin was touched with a light olive complexion and the hint of a smile seemed to hover constantly at his lips. He wore a fashionable pair of khaki slacks and a dark shirt. Not trendy, but stylish in a tastefully expensive manner.
Tossing a candy bar wrapper into a trash container, Severian ducked under a low mesquite tree branch and looked for a place to sit down. He spotted a bench and ambled towards it. A cloud of gnats blocked his path and Severian waved a well-manicured hand at them as he twisted to one side and hurried past.
Reaching the bench, Severian lightly brushed the dirt and leaves from one end. Rubbing his hands together to clean them off, he sat down and leaned back. He put his hands on the bench behind him, kicked his feet out onto the sidewalk in front of him and then stretched painfully. Relaxing, he checked his watch and grimaced at the noise above him. Twisting his head around, he scowled at the clouds of ugly black birds-grackles, they were called-infesting the trees. Swarming in at sunset to roost in the trees, they screeched and cawed at each other incessantly. The noise was slowly driving him crazy.
A pair of university workmen was lazily cleaning the debris from an earlier sidewalk repair. Glancing at them, he checked his watch again. Time to go. He got up and moved across the courtyard toward the building in front of him.
It was an ugly, square thing with bland concrete pillars holding up an overhang that ran all the way around. The University of Texas had undergone a great deal of construction in the 1970's. Buildings such as this, the Harry Ransom Center, were scattered among the more traditional, older buildings across campus.
Yet another reason to hate the seventies, he thought. The newer buildings were ugly. Opening the glass doors brought a rush of cool air. Severian sighed as he stepped inside.
"I bet you needed that." A police officer sitting at a desk leaned back and smiled at him. His white uniform shirt bore the emblems of the university police department.
Severian nodded and said, "I sure did. Does it ever get cool around here?"
"Cool? No. Cold, yes. In February or March we'll have an ice storm for a couple of days, then we jump right back into too damn hot." He chuckled at his own joke. He stopped, then added, "Ah, we're closing in twenty minutes."
"Well, I was supposed to meet somebody outside. I thought maybe I'd walk about in here real quick and see if they came in to get out of that." He waved his hand back towards the outside.
The officer, 'Kieschner' his badge read, nodded and waved him forward. Smiling thanks, Severian stepped through the next set of doors and into an enormous room.
He stood on a tiny balcony. Stairs led down to a large expanse of carpet that stretched from one side of the building to the other. Large rectangles mounted on stands broke up the space into a series of "rooms". Art of all types hung from the rectangles, and various modern sculptures were scattered about according to some plan that escaped Severian's understanding or concern.
Ugly modern crap, he thought while descending the staircase.
Humming to himself, Severian walked deliberately forward, through the "rooms" of art.
Forward one, then left at the big bible, he thought to himself. He paused at a large display case. It appeared to not only be sealed, but armored as well. He looked closer.
"A Gutenberg Bible," he said aloud. "Cool." The plaque mentioned that only five Gutenbergs, the first mechanically printed Bibles, remained in the world. Looking around he muttered, "They put it in here with this trash? What a bunch of morons."
Turning, he moved on. Forward two, left, and forward one more brought him to an open space. An enormous staircase rose in front of him. It turned ninety degrees halfway up and continued to the second floor, far above. Another police officer was there, in the corner under the overhanging staircase. She was leaning against the wall, writing on a clipboard.
Severian glanced at her as he started up the staircase. He put his hands together and cracked his fingers as he crossed the landing half way up.
A pretty young student passed him on her way down. She smiled at him and he paused to look back at her. She glanced up and gave an embarrassed smile when she saw him looking down at her. Shyly she turned away and hurried on down the stairs, adjusting her backpack as she went.
Severian stood watching her cross the floor below and disappear from sight. "Dammit," he said aloud. Sighing, he turned and moved up the final steps to the second floor of the gallery.
Passing through a long hall filled with Greek and Roman artifacts, he soon reached another maze of walls holding paintings.
Forward one room, he thought, now right, forward two and on the left.
A pair of tiny paintings hung on the wall. They portrayed a man and a woman, dressed in 1600s era clothing. Both were about the size of a paperback book, but their dark wooden frames at least doubled their size.
"Portrait of a Man...Portrait of a Woman," Severian read aloud. "How very original."
Looking about to see that nobody was near, he leaned his head forward against the wall and looked behind the paintings. Other than the frame hooks, only a simple alarm wire held them in place.
Severian stepped back, shrugged, and jerked them both off the wall.
Alarms began ringing madly, the noise echoing through the maze of walls. Tucking both frames under his right arm, Severian ran back the way he had come, back to the staircase.
As he breezed through the line of statues, he headed not toward the stairs, but instead the balcony ledge next to them.
He leapt over the rail like a hurdles jumper, but as he passed the rail he dropped his left arm back behind him. His arm slapped into the rail, hard, but his hand gripped it tight.
He jerked to stop in midair, let go...and dropped twenty-five feet straight down.
The female cop below was just starting up the staircase when Severian landed behind her. She turned in a daze, reaching for her pistol.
"Wha..." she gasped.
Severian punched her in the face with his left fist and she flew back ten feet and thudded hard into a large portrait. She collapsed unconscious, and the painting slipped from its hooks and fell over on her. Its tripwire broke and another set of alarms went off.
Darting back through the lower gallery, he turned hard at the Gutenberg display. The desk guard in the foyer was frantically locking the doors. Behind him a heavy grilled gate was shutting over the outside doors.
Severian snarled and raced toward the doors.
Outside, the two workmen dropped their pretense of cleaning the sidewalk debris and grabbed a pair of ladders. Running to the entrance, they hurriedly jammed the ladders in front of the shutting gate. The gate shuddered to a stop and its motors began to whine.
Severian flew up the stairs and lowered his shoulder. He ducked his head and slammed full speed into the glass doors. The officer fell backwards in a panic as the doors burst in a huge shower of flying glass.
Stumbling through the debris, Severian slammed into the outer set of doors. He jerked the doors open and stepped through, over the ladders. Bits of glass tinkled as they fell to the ground as he shook himself off.
The two maintenance men released the ladders and jumped back. They sprung up under the pressure of the gate and clattered to the ground. Its path free, the gate slammed shut and the locks clicked into place.
The three ran through the now dark courtyard and down a flight of stairs to the street below. A battered white van waited, its engine running. Severian barreled into the passenger seat while the other two opened the rear door and dove in. They crawled over the bodies of the real workmen on the floor.
"Now!" Severian shouted to the waiting driver. The van lurched into gear and roared away.
As the van darted through traffic, Severian turned to face the other three. "The plan is still on. We dump the van and take the cars. Stick to the planned routes. You need to be in California by no later than Wednesday."
The others nodded silently.
"Remember, no screwing around, just get out there as soon as you safely can." He looked down at the dead men on the floor of the van. "When was it that I told you to kill them?" he said to the driver. Casting a fearful glance over, the driver gripped the steering wheel tightly and said nothing. Severian glared at him for a long moment. "The next time you do anything without my permission I will become very upset. Do you understand?"
The driver nodded frantically.
Severian turned in his seat to face the front. He flipped the radio on and began tapping his fingers on the armrest to the beat of the music. The others in the van sat quietly, wary of catching his attention.
After winding through the city streets for ten minutes the van finally pulled into a secluded Park-n-Pay lot. The group got out of the van and scattered to different cars. Severian took the paintings from the van and placed them in the trunk of a silver Taurus, covering them with a blanket.
Minutes later, Severian was driving west, out of Austin and into the Texas Hillcountry. As the city lights disappeared in the rearview mirror, he pulled a cellphone from the glove compartment and dialed.
"This is Sev...Went fine, got them both...there was no trouble at all...of course I didn't just rip them off the wall. How dumb do you think I am...Okay, I'll see you there."
He hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and scowled at it. Sheesh, Severian thought. He was worse than some old grandmother.
He checked the mirror. No pursuit at all.
Well, the route planning for the peons was a waste of time, he thought. No matter, better safe than sorry.
An hour later, the car pulled off the highway and through the gates of a large ranch. It passed a line of limestone ridges and pulled to a stop at the end of a concrete runway. A Lear-jet sat, engines idling.
Parking to the side of the runway, Severian went to the back of the car and took both paintings from the trunk. Refusing the pilot's offer of help, he hurried up the ladder and stepped aboard. The pilot came aboard after him and sealed the door.
Settling into a seat, he nodded to the pilot's questioning face. Minutes later the plane was sweeping down the runway and into the air. Drumming his fingers on the armrest, Severian looked at the paintings across the aisle.
They disturbed him, but he couldn't figure out why. Something about this whole plan disturbed him, but it wasn't his place to question the old bastard. Well, not too often. He grinned at the thought. Looking over at the paintings once more his grin faded.
"I just work here," he murmured. He looked away and leaned back in his seat. Outside his window West Texas slid slowly by in the darkness, but his thoughts were focused further to the west.
Sunnydale, the Hellmouth, and by all accounts one very dangerous Slayer lay ahead. Severian was unable to relax, and the hours passed slowly as the plane sped west into the night.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Buffy the Vampire Slayer story takes place after the episode School Hard in Season 2, and is the first fanfic I wrote. It is rated PG-13 for some violence, implied violence and kissing. It was written in the fall of 1998 and was a finalist in the Willfic Awards that year.
I would like to say thank you to all of the people who took the time to respond as I wrote this piece, your kind words mean a lot to me.
I'd also like to take the time to give a special *THANK YOU* to Avarice, Blackheart, KrazyKat, Melinda S. Dawney and VaBuffyFan for their wonderful editing help.
Laurence
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They were created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. No copyright infringement is intended. This story was written for personal entertainment only and I am not profiting from it. Characters and other items (for example-Severian, Stephen Allinson, Kveltain and Claudia) within the following story that are not the creation of Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy are my own and I claim full rights on them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prologue
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Severian strolled through the warm Texas night. A faint hint of a breeze stirred the trees lining the campus sidewalks. In the dim, hidden recesses of the courtyard, there was little chance for such a weak wind to bring any real relief. A smattering of people were passing through the area, singly or in pairs. With few classes held in the evening, the university was slowly shutting down for the night.
A little more than six feet tall, he had short black hair and dark friendly eyes. His skin was touched with a light olive complexion and the hint of a smile seemed to hover constantly at his lips. He wore a fashionable pair of khaki slacks and a dark shirt. Not trendy, but stylish in a tastefully expensive manner.
Tossing a candy bar wrapper into a trash container, Severian ducked under a low mesquite tree branch and looked for a place to sit down. He spotted a bench and ambled towards it. A cloud of gnats blocked his path and Severian waved a well-manicured hand at them as he twisted to one side and hurried past.
Reaching the bench, Severian lightly brushed the dirt and leaves from one end. Rubbing his hands together to clean them off, he sat down and leaned back. He put his hands on the bench behind him, kicked his feet out onto the sidewalk in front of him and then stretched painfully. Relaxing, he checked his watch and grimaced at the noise above him. Twisting his head around, he scowled at the clouds of ugly black birds-grackles, they were called-infesting the trees. Swarming in at sunset to roost in the trees, they screeched and cawed at each other incessantly. The noise was slowly driving him crazy.
A pair of university workmen was lazily cleaning the debris from an earlier sidewalk repair. Glancing at them, he checked his watch again. Time to go. He got up and moved across the courtyard toward the building in front of him.
It was an ugly, square thing with bland concrete pillars holding up an overhang that ran all the way around. The University of Texas had undergone a great deal of construction in the 1970's. Buildings such as this, the Harry Ransom Center, were scattered among the more traditional, older buildings across campus.
Yet another reason to hate the seventies, he thought. The newer buildings were ugly. Opening the glass doors brought a rush of cool air. Severian sighed as he stepped inside.
"I bet you needed that." A police officer sitting at a desk leaned back and smiled at him. His white uniform shirt bore the emblems of the university police department.
Severian nodded and said, "I sure did. Does it ever get cool around here?"
"Cool? No. Cold, yes. In February or March we'll have an ice storm for a couple of days, then we jump right back into too damn hot." He chuckled at his own joke. He stopped, then added, "Ah, we're closing in twenty minutes."
"Well, I was supposed to meet somebody outside. I thought maybe I'd walk about in here real quick and see if they came in to get out of that." He waved his hand back towards the outside.
The officer, 'Kieschner' his badge read, nodded and waved him forward. Smiling thanks, Severian stepped through the next set of doors and into an enormous room.
He stood on a tiny balcony. Stairs led down to a large expanse of carpet that stretched from one side of the building to the other. Large rectangles mounted on stands broke up the space into a series of "rooms". Art of all types hung from the rectangles, and various modern sculptures were scattered about according to some plan that escaped Severian's understanding or concern.
Ugly modern crap, he thought while descending the staircase.
Humming to himself, Severian walked deliberately forward, through the "rooms" of art.
Forward one, then left at the big bible, he thought to himself. He paused at a large display case. It appeared to not only be sealed, but armored as well. He looked closer.
"A Gutenberg Bible," he said aloud. "Cool." The plaque mentioned that only five Gutenbergs, the first mechanically printed Bibles, remained in the world. Looking around he muttered, "They put it in here with this trash? What a bunch of morons."
Turning, he moved on. Forward two, left, and forward one more brought him to an open space. An enormous staircase rose in front of him. It turned ninety degrees halfway up and continued to the second floor, far above. Another police officer was there, in the corner under the overhanging staircase. She was leaning against the wall, writing on a clipboard.
Severian glanced at her as he started up the staircase. He put his hands together and cracked his fingers as he crossed the landing half way up.
A pretty young student passed him on her way down. She smiled at him and he paused to look back at her. She glanced up and gave an embarrassed smile when she saw him looking down at her. Shyly she turned away and hurried on down the stairs, adjusting her backpack as she went.
Severian stood watching her cross the floor below and disappear from sight. "Dammit," he said aloud. Sighing, he turned and moved up the final steps to the second floor of the gallery.
Passing through a long hall filled with Greek and Roman artifacts, he soon reached another maze of walls holding paintings.
Forward one room, he thought, now right, forward two and on the left.
A pair of tiny paintings hung on the wall. They portrayed a man and a woman, dressed in 1600s era clothing. Both were about the size of a paperback book, but their dark wooden frames at least doubled their size.
"Portrait of a Man...Portrait of a Woman," Severian read aloud. "How very original."
Looking about to see that nobody was near, he leaned his head forward against the wall and looked behind the paintings. Other than the frame hooks, only a simple alarm wire held them in place.
Severian stepped back, shrugged, and jerked them both off the wall.
Alarms began ringing madly, the noise echoing through the maze of walls. Tucking both frames under his right arm, Severian ran back the way he had come, back to the staircase.
As he breezed through the line of statues, he headed not toward the stairs, but instead the balcony ledge next to them.
He leapt over the rail like a hurdles jumper, but as he passed the rail he dropped his left arm back behind him. His arm slapped into the rail, hard, but his hand gripped it tight.
He jerked to stop in midair, let go...and dropped twenty-five feet straight down.
The female cop below was just starting up the staircase when Severian landed behind her. She turned in a daze, reaching for her pistol.
"Wha..." she gasped.
Severian punched her in the face with his left fist and she flew back ten feet and thudded hard into a large portrait. She collapsed unconscious, and the painting slipped from its hooks and fell over on her. Its tripwire broke and another set of alarms went off.
Darting back through the lower gallery, he turned hard at the Gutenberg display. The desk guard in the foyer was frantically locking the doors. Behind him a heavy grilled gate was shutting over the outside doors.
Severian snarled and raced toward the doors.
Outside, the two workmen dropped their pretense of cleaning the sidewalk debris and grabbed a pair of ladders. Running to the entrance, they hurriedly jammed the ladders in front of the shutting gate. The gate shuddered to a stop and its motors began to whine.
Severian flew up the stairs and lowered his shoulder. He ducked his head and slammed full speed into the glass doors. The officer fell backwards in a panic as the doors burst in a huge shower of flying glass.
Stumbling through the debris, Severian slammed into the outer set of doors. He jerked the doors open and stepped through, over the ladders. Bits of glass tinkled as they fell to the ground as he shook himself off.
The two maintenance men released the ladders and jumped back. They sprung up under the pressure of the gate and clattered to the ground. Its path free, the gate slammed shut and the locks clicked into place.
The three ran through the now dark courtyard and down a flight of stairs to the street below. A battered white van waited, its engine running. Severian barreled into the passenger seat while the other two opened the rear door and dove in. They crawled over the bodies of the real workmen on the floor.
"Now!" Severian shouted to the waiting driver. The van lurched into gear and roared away.
As the van darted through traffic, Severian turned to face the other three. "The plan is still on. We dump the van and take the cars. Stick to the planned routes. You need to be in California by no later than Wednesday."
The others nodded silently.
"Remember, no screwing around, just get out there as soon as you safely can." He looked down at the dead men on the floor of the van. "When was it that I told you to kill them?" he said to the driver. Casting a fearful glance over, the driver gripped the steering wheel tightly and said nothing. Severian glared at him for a long moment. "The next time you do anything without my permission I will become very upset. Do you understand?"
The driver nodded frantically.
Severian turned in his seat to face the front. He flipped the radio on and began tapping his fingers on the armrest to the beat of the music. The others in the van sat quietly, wary of catching his attention.
After winding through the city streets for ten minutes the van finally pulled into a secluded Park-n-Pay lot. The group got out of the van and scattered to different cars. Severian took the paintings from the van and placed them in the trunk of a silver Taurus, covering them with a blanket.
Minutes later, Severian was driving west, out of Austin and into the Texas Hillcountry. As the city lights disappeared in the rearview mirror, he pulled a cellphone from the glove compartment and dialed.
"This is Sev...Went fine, got them both...there was no trouble at all...of course I didn't just rip them off the wall. How dumb do you think I am...Okay, I'll see you there."
He hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and scowled at it. Sheesh, Severian thought. He was worse than some old grandmother.
He checked the mirror. No pursuit at all.
Well, the route planning for the peons was a waste of time, he thought. No matter, better safe than sorry.
An hour later, the car pulled off the highway and through the gates of a large ranch. It passed a line of limestone ridges and pulled to a stop at the end of a concrete runway. A Lear-jet sat, engines idling.
Parking to the side of the runway, Severian went to the back of the car and took both paintings from the trunk. Refusing the pilot's offer of help, he hurried up the ladder and stepped aboard. The pilot came aboard after him and sealed the door.
Settling into a seat, he nodded to the pilot's questioning face. Minutes later the plane was sweeping down the runway and into the air. Drumming his fingers on the armrest, Severian looked at the paintings across the aisle.
They disturbed him, but he couldn't figure out why. Something about this whole plan disturbed him, but it wasn't his place to question the old bastard. Well, not too often. He grinned at the thought. Looking over at the paintings once more his grin faded.
"I just work here," he murmured. He looked away and leaned back in his seat. Outside his window West Texas slid slowly by in the darkness, but his thoughts were focused further to the west.
Sunnydale, the Hellmouth, and by all accounts one very dangerous Slayer lay ahead. Severian was unable to relax, and the hours passed slowly as the plane sped west into the night.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------