Summon
By Shuvcat (C) 2000
This might be considered a sort-of prologue to Courting Disaster...except it doesn't quite flow with that story's setup. Oh well. Dedicated to Maribel, my fellow Mayor/Edna 'shipper. :)
This is a work of fiction based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer which was created by Joss Whedon. The characters belong to Joss, the almighty WB, Fox, Sanddollar and Mutant Enemy. The storyline is copyright me. No copyright infringement is intended.
"I married my Edna Mae in ought-three, and I was with her right up to the end." Mayor Richard Wilkins III stood in the center of the large darkened cafeteria, hands stuffed in his pockets, a thoughtful look on his face. His reverie gave way as a bitterness seized his voice. "Not a pretty picture." They were all listening. They didn't have much choice. Faith's brand new knife against the throat of that Willow girl assured it. The Mayor gazed into the defiant face of first the blonde Slayer, then her surly vampire boyfriend. Kids. Both of them kids, despite that crack Angel had just made about having a lot of years on him. The Mayor sneered inwardly -- they had no idea what a lot of years were. He knew. He'd been here longer than Angel, that was for sure. Longer than the town, longer than the nation it sat in. He'd been here for the forging of the continent, and before that..... It didn't matter. Memories from several lifetimes ago had long since been chucked out like so much garage sale furniture, the better not to interfere with the more recent, more important memories. Even the painful ones. He had not spoken her name aloud in years. He hadn't even formed the words in his head. He didn't need to. Her face -- that heart-rending, anguished face, caught in the throes of death -- haunted his dreams, when he did dream. "Wrinkled and senile...cursing me for my youth," he muttered, half to himself. He shrugged away the image, reverted his attentions again to his captive audience. "Wasn't our happiest time." In the corners of the room, the darkness stirred. Like catching snatches of a dream through a soup of ear noise, like having a hunch that one is dreaming, and then, in a burst of clarity, knowing that one is dreaming. The room came alive, every corner lit up like daylight, every person present seen clear and solid. Someone had spoken her name. The room, silent and nervous before, was suddenly in uproar. Unwanted visitors burst in. Panic ensued....something about a box, a box.... It was over as soon as it started. The first thing she felt was the coldness in the unheated room -- felt the swish of air as he moved past her. She might have reached out and snagged his coat. With eyes in the back of her head she saw him nimbly grab and lift a black ornate box off the floor. "Is that all of them?" came a young, nervous voice. He looked right at her -- right through her -- with a leer that stung like a lance. "Ah....not really," his voice came loud in her ears. She was closer than she thought, the floor was moving under her. "You see, there's about fifty. Billion. Of these happy little critters in here. Would you like to see?" He cracked open the box daringly. She did want to see, actually. She had no understanding of what was happening now, but she was reminded........a spring day, a gift box, a present. She leaned forward, trying to get a peek in. Something dark. Older, darker than death. Something rustling, that smelled unpleasantly of crushed insects, thick and metallic. Something evil was in that box. Had she had a face, she would have smiled. "Raise your hand if you're invulnerable," he said with a sardonic grin. When none of those behind took him up on it, he shut the box. "Faith, let's go." With a final glare at the children, he turned to leave. She followed. He stopped though -- and she kept following. She went right through him. "Faith?" The entity stopped dead -- tried to anyway, on the slippery floor. A cold even colder than that first icy draft rippled her space. She had gone right through him. She turned to see what was happening. The girl, Faith, was hesitating in the middle of the room. She seemed like she didn't want to go. But she did go in the end; following behind the Mayor, and the men -- vampires, the being realized with a jolt -- following behind her, all of them clomping purposefully down the hall. "A fine thing," Mayor Wilkins grumbled as they emerged from the school, heading for the limosine they'd come in. "Girl can slaughter a hundred of my best boys, but she can't debate her way out of a wet paper bag." He chuckled. "Remind me to school you in the finer points of public speaking, Faith. When all else fails, one can always talk an enemy to death. Sometimes literally." He allowed himself a laugh at that. The being that had come out with them had trouble keeping up. The icy wind tore through her, much like the aforementioned wet paper bag. She knew herself to be less substantial than that wind, as hard as she tried she felt like she was walking uphill against a gale. She wanted to be next to him, close to him -- and was falling far behind. The girl Faith stomped up to her and ran her down, moving right through her. Another shudder of cold went through the being, but this time it wasn't at the shock of being transparent. She focused on the back of the girl's dark head as it bobbed away. She knew her. She knew the child as well as she knew herself. They had left her far behind, with no hope of catching up. Her strength was exerted. She watched miserably as they got in the long black car, and as it pulled away from the curb, red taillights like evil eyes receding in the dark. He was evil. She was evil too. The being -- may as well call herself what she was, a ghost -- floated there in the darkness, like so much dead leaves caught up in a breeze. She had been trying to fight her way back here, to the material world, for years. Decades. She had been fighting and scratching and clawing ever since it had happened. Occasionally she was rewarded with small scraps, shreds of the time space contiuum come off on her fingers like torn out hair. She had caught bits and pieces of the bizarre world as it rotted away from the beautiful era she remembered and degenerated into something ugly, loud, and unrecognizable. And sometimes, just sometimes, she would see him. Though the years changed, and the other images changed, he never did. The one who had put her here. The air chilled even more. She would find him. Already she was recovering from her little rebirth. The air swirled around on the dark lawn, stirring a pile of leaves into a brief, angry tempest. She could feel his heartbeat, and would feel it no matter where he went. In time, even if he were on the other side of the earth, she would be able to find him. He would never escape her. The leaves dropped to the ground like dead flies.