This is a rework of a story I wrote a few years ago under a different name. I have kept the bones of it, and altered the rest so that it almost fits into the new series. There are elements that don't fit with the new series, but it can't be helped. The ending of this version will be different from the ending of the story I originally wrote.
This story takes place between series 2 and 3.
1. There is Someone Following me
It's about eight in the evening on a school night, hints of winter in the air. No one knows I'm out. So when a shadowy stranger who's all cape and cheekbones glides across the road towards me, I become very aware of how many streets I am from home.
"Relax, child. Do not move, do not fidget, merely listen. I don't have much time." He has a silky English-gentry voice that rolls off his tongue, smooth like chocolate truffles.
I shuffle backwards, feeling small. He steps forwards, right into my space, right up close. I smell dankness and loft-bound leather suitcases harbouring false widow spiders. There's smoke in the air, hanging still like a curtain, like a grey web spun by those widow spiders.
I take another backwards step that melts into another and another until I pull around into a run, back the way I came. My feet slap against the pavement and echo off the buildings.
"Come now, peasant." I have run full pelt into the same man, six foot two and none of it soft. I glance over my shoulder at the empty pavement, lit orange with a single street light. Drops of sweat prickle on my forehead and then slowly slink down my nose towards my lips, I lick them and taste salt.
I look up at him, the colour from my face draining into the colour of his. His hair is white, brushed long and slickly straight. His skin is smooth as mine. He could be thirty five, or he could be sixty five. He's ageless. His eyes are canyon-deep, deep and dark, dark flecked with coils of gold. They are expressionless, soulless, eyes that could watch a wild wolf ravage a child and never change.
"Please do not fidget," he says, glancing vaguely at my fingers. "It breaks the waves, disturbs my concentration." Then he raises his depthless eyes again and locks them onto mine like a fighter pilot with the enemy on his radar.
I think about striking out at him, giving him a swift knee in the nether-regions. But my muscles feel like lead, and I'm a long way from friends, and I don't think there's much point. I try to yell, but nothing comes, and I realise that I can't move, not even my voice box. His eyes are golden and I cannot move. There's nothing I can do, other than drink in his features, read his expressions. They are so familiar, yet so alien. There is something in my head that is making a connection, but I can't find it. It feels like I'm swimming through blood, trying to figure it out, this connection, this flash of a lost memory.
The man's features bend and flicker and his throat makes a creaky-smooth "ah," sound before he speaks some more. "I forgot. I am not meant to call you a peasant. Now…what was it?" his eyes dart off as the cogs in his brain mesh together and whirr. "Robin!" he says, very glad that he's remembered. He's remembered right. That is my name. But I don't know his. The cogs in my own brain are whirring, searching for his name. I know it. I knew it. It's too cloudy, and I'm too freaked out.
"I see that you have changed, grown older these past few years. Something that you mortals do much faster than I. Or at least that's how it would be if that dratted girl hadn't had her way." It's like he's going to say more. But the air quivers and thunders and screams. His eyes dart and his face becomes panicked. I still can't move.
"She's found me out. The Slayer boy clearly was not a long enough distraction for her." The air screams again, distantly. The man's eyes sharpen and he leans in closer to me. "Robin, this is deadly important: Vlad is in danger. She's been playing with the stakes; putting garlic in his coffin. Nearly three years and no change; still he sleeps. I do all she says just to keep him from harm. But she grows bored. We thought when he turns 16 he would wake, yet his birthday came and went, uneventful. He ages as you do, but that is all. She wants change and she will change him. She stole my strength from the blood mirror, I am powerless. If I make a move then she will make no qualms in slaying him." This is said all very fast, the words bleed together. I lose some of them, the connecting words. It comes out like a code.
His eyes move from mine and jolt around our scene, like he hears something in the shadows. "My son helped you. Now you help him."
And then I am alone. I can move. I take a look around and see a lot of nothing. I didn't even see him take a step away and he was gone, like smoke. I shove my hands deep into my coat pockets and watch my breath make vapour. The wind whispers through the trees and my heart raps bass in my chest. It's time to go home.
All through dinner my head is hidden under clouds. I can't get those words out of my head; the cold man with golden eyes and his coded words. I want to understand them, break them down and sort them out into the right order. My family try to engage me in conversation, but it flies right over me and they give it up.
I don't sleep well. My dreams are infested with echoes of the past. There are things in my head that are hidden under sheets; memories that are blurred. When I was fourteen I suffered from a sudden, unexplained lacunar amnesia. My family suffered from the same thing. But out of all of us, I lost the most time. A year of my life blipped out of my reach. I don't know where I was, what I did, who I was with. Neither does anyone else.
There is a void within me that nothing and no one can fill. Whatever happened in that lost year stole part of me away. I didn't just lose memories, I lost something else. I just can't remember what. All I know is that something is missing, something other than my sense of humour.