Author's Note: This fanfic is a sequel to the Daria/Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover fic "The Chosen One". While familiarity with the former work isn't strictly necessary to understand this one, it is recommended, both in order to provide background and on general principles.
Introduction and Backstory:
For thousands of years at least, quite possibly for as long as there have been humans, another race has existed alongside our own. Predatory, nocturnal, potentially immortal, sustaining themselves in a state neither dead nor truly living by feeding on the lifeblood of mortal humans. These creatures have been known by many names down through the centuries; here and now they are most commonly referred to as vampires.
Humanity has not, however, been simply helpless prey to these creatures. For as long, or nearly long, as there have been vampires there has also existed one mortal human -- always female -- in each generation whose destiny it is to hunt down and destroy these creatures of darkness, a protector of Humanity known as The Slayer. In this generation, the mantle of the Slayer happens to have passed to a resident of a rather bland American suburb known as Lawndale, a certain Brittany Taylor...
ONE
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"Who knew it'd be, like, this dark in a graveyard?" squeaked Brittany in dismayed annoyance as she tripped and nearly fell.
No sooner had she said this than first one shaft of brilliant white light, then another pierced the darkness. Daria Morgendorffer shone the beam of the high-powered flashlight she'd brought along with her on their nocturnal expedition to the Old Lawndale Cemetery towards where the voice she'd heard had come from.
"Are you all right, Brittany?" she asked.
"Uhm, yeah, I'm okay," came the reply. "I wish I'd remembered to bring a flashlight, though."
"Here, you can use this one," said the owner of the other flashlight that had come on at the sound of Brittany's failure to navigate the uneven ground of the unlit graveyard. Tom Sloane pulled a smaller light out of the bag that was slung over his shoulder and offered it to Brittany.
"Thanks, Tom," said Brittany, accepting the flashlight and trying to figure out where the switch on it was located.
Another light came on at about this point as Jane Lane moved closer to the trio, a little hesitantly. This was the first hunt she'd been along on since this whole thing had started -- since she'd started it, she reminded herself for the thousandth or so time -- by allowing herself to be made into a vampire and nearly killing Tom in a fit of twisted jealousy regarding what she'd seen, or thought she'd seen, happening between he and Daria. Tom had survived, through the sheer luck of Brittany's timely arrival, and Jane had later been returned to mortal human status through the combined efforts of Brittany, Trent, Tom's younger sister Elsie, and -- most crucially -- Daria. Jane still wasn't sure the others trusted her, and still occasionally tortured herself by wondering whether they should, after what she'd done. Still, they'd asked for her help this time, and there was no way she was going to let them down, not if she could help--
"What's that?" asked Brittany sharply.
Jane almost immediately heard the sound that had caught Brittany's attention: someone else was there with them in the graveyard. She suddenly found herself wondering if bringing the flashlights had been a good idea, or if they'd've been better off stumbling around in the dark, or...
"Yo, Britt," came a young woman's malice-filled voice from the darkness. "Fancy meeting you in a place like this."
Four flashlight beams swung in unison towards the source of the voice, picking out a teenage girl in a cheerleader's uniform. Not the blue-and-yellow of Lawndale -- this girl was dressed in the predominantly red, yellow-trimmed livery of the Oakwood Taproots.
"Celia?" squeaked Brittany. "Not you, too!"
"Oh, it's not so bad," said the other girl, starting forward with feigned casualness. With one hand she brushed long curly flame-red hair away from her neck, revealing livid bite marks as she twirled a captured frond of hair absently around one finger.
"I mean, it hurt at first, of course, but then it felt, like, really good," Celia continued as she took another step towards Brittany...then another... "And of course everybody knows about the perks..." She giggled a little bit at this last comment of hers as she sauntered closer to Brittany, ignoring the others there in the graveyard. "You know, you really ought to try it sometime!"
As she spoke the last few words, Celia's face abruptly changed expression, from brittle nonchalance to a contorted mask of rage. Her lips drew back from long, needle-sharp canine incisors as her eyes lit up -- literally, glowing red -- as she coiled into a crouch and sprang at the star of Lawndale High's cheering squad.
Brittany ducked around Celia's charge, catching hold of her uniform as she did and using the energy of the lunge to fling the Oakwood cheerleader against one of the headstones, hard enough that it cracked.
"Oog," said Celia from the ground then, as she propped herself up into a sitting position against the tombstone, "dammit."
Just as Brittany started towards Celia, the vampire suddenly tucked her legs under herself and sprang again -- this time the collision was solid and the two of them were a blur of traded and parried blows, moving too fast for the eye to really follow, until Brittany managed to pin Celia beneath her on the ground. Brittany raised the stake she had with her to drive it home --
Only to be tackled by a second red-and-gold clad figure that came barreling out of the darkness. Brittany was knocked to the ground, momentarily stunned, and as the uniformed football player loomed triumphantly over her, elongated canines revealed by a sneer, whatever spell had held the other vampire hunters rooted in place watching was broken as, with a scream of "Die, damn you!" Jane ran at the second vampire, jabbing at his chest with the wooden stake she carried. It sank in, but not deep enough as he swatted the interfering mortal aside.
Daria was right behind her best friend, yelling Jane's name as she ran, only to be knocked over backwards with a startled cry of "My glasses!"
Tom started forward just as Celia sat up -- and looked directly at him. He froze in place, his mind suddenly back in a laundry room at a party a few months ago...those eyes...those teeth...the pain of the bite, the certainty he was about to die....
Just then Brittany started to stir, and Celia looked over to where she was and, seeing her chance, pounced. She landed atop Brittany, but the Slayer managed to flip her off of herself with one of her legs then, following the motion with her own body, ended-up on top of the vampire, the weight of her body driving home the stake...
The football player had picked Daria up by the front of her jacket and was taking a moment to gloat before biting as Daria tried ineffectually to push herself away. He looked up, startled at the sound of Celia's dying scream.
"Oh, no!" said Brittany, taking stock of Daria's plight. "Hye-yah!" she cried, drawing-up one leg and kicking from where she still lay on her side. Her heel connected perfectly with the butt of the stake already protruding from the vampire's ribcage -- and then the vampire-hunting Lawndalians were alone in the graveyard.
Moments later Brittany, Daria and Jane stood over the two ex-vampires, examining them. Tom stood a few steps back.
"I don't recognize either of them," said Jane.
"I don't recognize much of anything," complained Daria. "Has anybody seen my glasses?"
"Uhhm..." said Tom. The three girls turned to look at him and he held out Daria's glasses, not making eye contact with any of them.
"Uh, thanks," said Daria, taking the glasses and putting them back on. Tom didn't say anything.
"Well, the cheerleader was named Celia Donneley," said Brittany. "She made up some pretty good cheers..." Brittany's voice became wistful and she trailed off for a moment, then continued.
"I don't know the other one," she said, gesturing towards the staked football player, who Daria thought resembled a dark-haired version of her sister's admirer Jamie. "He must've made the team just re..uhm...reese...ah, a little while ago, since the last time we played Oakwood. Now, I know Celia used to date Skyler Feldman sometimes..."
"So he probably made her," said Daria.
"And since cheerleaders usually date football players," Jane continued the thought.
Brittany emitted a disappointed-sounding squeak in agreement with Daria's next statement:
"Damn. I guess that means we still don't have any leads on what happened to--"
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Sandi Griffin curled back her upper lip in a snarl, exposing one of her elongated canine incisors. The target of the angry gesture was the spot of sunlight that crept slowly across the floor. She had been so careful to do a thorough job when she'd put the aluminum foil over the window, and yet the hateful little thing had insisted on breaking through anyway! There was no way to fix it now without risking burning herself, and she'd had that happen quite enough already, thank you very much.
She'd seen the newspapers accumulating on the front steps of the house and, figuring that meant the owners wouldn't be around to become a problem for awhile had proceeded to make herself at home -- or at any rate more at-home than she'd been able to make herself by burying herself, or hiding in drain culverts, or the various other undignified means she'd been using to evade the daylight since being forced to flee Lawndale on, like, absolutely no notice.
Her clothes had of course been a total loss by that point, so it was fortunate that one of the occupants here was acceptably close to her size -- even if said occupant's fashion sense were somewhat less acceptable. That was something Sandi realized she was going to have to remedy soon. That and finding a better way to stay away from that hateful sunlight...perhaps a coffin, like in the book she was reading.
Sandi cringed at the thought of anyone knowing she was doing anything as geeky as reading, but the television here didn't work, and when she'd spotted the title of this book while looking over the shelves in the living room she'd immediately recognized it and begun thinking in terms of checking it for technical suggestions. A lot of it was ridiculous, she had to admit -- for one thing, if she were able to change her form into a bat or a mist, she had absolutely no idea how. And sleeping in her "native" (whatever that meant) soil? Puh-leeze! Not only did she not need to sleep in dirt, the only times she had out of desperation had served merely to ruin her outfit!
Still, the book wasn't completely without it's good points, one of which was helping her get to sleep. By this far into the morning, she realized she should long since have become dormant, but for whatever reason she usually had at least some difficulty there. An insomniac vampire? Who had ever heard of such a thing? And how embarrassing!
Holding her place with one finger, Sandi briefly flipped the book closed, checking her progress by the relative thickness of paper on either side of where she was. Less than a quarter of the way through. She heaved a small sigh, then a deeper one as her eyes fell across the book's title. Well, Quinn had been right about one thing: it was definitely Bram Stoker's Dracula.
"Oh, Quinn," Sandi wondered aloud. "What are you doing right now?"
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To be continued...
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Disclaimers: Daria and all other characters from that series are the property of MTV/Viacom, and Buffy (though she doesn't actually appear here, I do of course borrow from the idea...) is the property of Twentieth Century Fox and Mutant Enemy and the intellectual property of Joss Whedon. I merely borrow them every once in a while for strictly non-profit purposes.