Chapter Seven: Revelations
Edward stared at me, still in shock, I assumed.
Oh man. Why did I say that out loud? It's not exactly the way that I had intended to bring up the subject. Stupid nerves.
I quickly searched for a cover up, something, anything. Nothing was coming to mind. Oh boy. Good job, Buffy. Great. I couldn't think of anything to say.
He finally spoke up a few moments later. His disposition had changed drastically in a matter of moments, which definitely put points into the vamp category.
His words were more…vicious. And oddly…protective. Yes, definitely protective.
"Who are you, what are you doing here and what do you want with my family?"
"Whoa…How did you…? How did you know I was looking for your family?"
"I asked you first."
He was seething. Even seething, vicious & protective, he still didn't seem dangerous…to be perfectly honest, he kind of seemed…sexy, in a way.
Whoa, stay on track, Buff.
I sat down on the bed. "It's a long---" "Story. Yeah, I know and I'm not interested in the details. Just answer my questions."
I took a deep breath.
"Fair enough. As I said, my name is Buffy Summers, I'm the Slayer, I'm on vacation and I'm trying to determine if you and your family are dangerous to the existence of people or not."
"Why is my family any of your concern?"
"Again, I say, I'm the Slayer. All vampires are my concern."
"How did you know?"
"Ok, are you deaf or something? I'm the SLAYER. S-L-A-Y-E-R. Slayer."
He stared at me blankly. A sudden realization came over me.
"You have no idea what a Slayer is, do you?"
He thought for a moment and then shook his head. "No and I don't care. I won't let a little girl like you touch my family. We've done nothing wrong."
"And that's cool. I believe you. I saw you at the campus—any normal vamp would have had a super free-for-all with his buddies in that courtyard."
He seemed to calm down some.
Another few moments passed in silence.
"Explain what a 'Slayer' is."
"I'll give you the short & sweet version, for now. A Slayer kills vamps, demons, minions, whatever, you get the picture. The tradition is thousands of years old. We're drawn to Hellmouths specifically. There's generally only one Slayer at a time…however…My team & I kind of blew that tradition out of the water recently."
"Let me guess, it's a long story?"
I had to laugh at that. "Yes, it is."
"So a 'Slayer' kills vampires. You're one. How come you're not trying to kill me?"
"Because I don't think you're bad."
"You don't know me or the things I've done in my past." He was back to brooding. It was an improvement over the seething, I had to admit.
"And quite honestly, I don't care what you did eighty or one-hundred or two-hundred years ago. My job is to focus on the present. And presently, it looks like you're just chewing down on some animals, which is cool by me."
"Wait—How, how do you know what my family & I eat?" I smiled. "I'm a little more well-informed than you think."
"How?"
"I've got my sources. Well, source. As in just one. And he was kind of crazy to think of it. So it's not a very good source, but it's a source."
Out of nowhere, he just started randomly laughing. Enter the confused look upon my face yet again.
"You must be talking about Sheriff Blaisdell back in Delisle, CA."
I started laughing, too. "How did you know? Crazy Sheriff, check. He seriously gave me the third degree just because I stopped in his pitiful little town for some dinner."
We were still laughing. I decided that this was my time for info. "So, what happened? I mean to make him so insane?" Edward's laughter had stopped, but he was still smiling, like he was remembering a joke between him & someone else.
"Generally when we move into a town somewhere, we don't go after farm animals. It's too suspicious when the herds start disappearing. It causes too much of a scene, you know?" I nodded.
"We usually stick to the forests and the wooded areas. Wild animals. Bears, mountain lions, that kind of a thing. The only problem is that, those animals aren't always around. Sometimes we have to go for the smaller animals that stay closer to town. Deer, elk. Smaller animals like that. We had only been in town for about a week or so when he had come to the house to 'welcome' us to his town. Naturally, being…what we are, we chose an old abandoned house that sat up high in the forest, under the shade of trees, so that if we had to go outside, he, or anybody else, wouldn't know that we are…different."
I had to interrupt here. "Wait wait wait. Outside? In the daytime? Are you asking for like an instant suicide mission or something?"
Now it was his turn to wear the confused face.
"What…I'm afraid I don't understand."
I was dumb-founded. That's a pretty good word to describe it. "Look, I've been in the vampire world for a long time now. It's more or less been my whole life. I know what happens when vampires go outside in the day. It's all fiery and *poof* and then dust."
He was giving me a skeptical look. "Are you serious? That's not what happens."
"Yeah, yeah it is. I've been the slayer since I was fifteen years old. I have 'The Most Effective & Efficient Ways of Vampire Killing' logged into my head."
He was back to staring at me in skepticism.
"If I had a vampire here right now, I'd prove it!" I was getting kind of riled. I don't like when I know something is right and someone else tries to tell me it's wrong.
He laughed. "Technically, you have a vampire here. And it's the middle of the night. There's no sun."
I laughed at my stupid mistake. "Well…you know what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
"I meant an evil vampire. With the big scary fangs and bumpy face."
He laughed again. "You need to stop watching so many late night movies"
I gave him a funny look. "What are you talking about?"
"The fangs? Come on. That's Hollywood stuff."
Who was this guy? Seriously.
"No, it's not."
"Yes, it is."
"No, it's not."
"Don't tell me you can prove that too?" He wasn't taking this as serious as I was.
I decided to go on and show him up.
I pulled my hair away from my neck and pointed to the scar from Angel.
"See this? This is from my ex, Angel. Long story short, he was shot with a poisoned arrow and the only thing that would save him was my blood."
I pulled my hair around so he could see the other mark on my neck from my encounter with Dracula.
"See this one? This was from…well, you'll probably never guess, but it's from Dracula, himself."
He started laughing like I've never heard before.
"Dracula? Are you serious?"
"Stop laughing. It's true and I can prove it. He's real. My watcher was trapped in a room with Dracula's three whores that travel around with him. He turned my best friend, Xander, into his lackey. My other best friend, Willow, saw him. My ex-boyfriend, Riley, saw him too. He's the real deal."
He looked a little more serious now. "You're serious? He's real?"
I nodded. He looked out the window for a moment and then back at me.
"I should get back. It was nice to meet you, Buffy. I'll see you soon."
"Oh, okay. Sure. See you soon."
He smiled and got up to leave. I remembered something. "Oh! Edward! Wait!"
"What is it?"
"One more question for now."
"Sure."
"Can you read minds?"
He did kind of a double take and then "How did you know?"
I laughed. "Being a Slayer, I'm entailed to some… 'extra senses' that other people don't have. It's a really weird sensation, but earlier, tonight, at the University, I could tell you were trying to read my mind."
He was wearing the dumb-founded face.
"Could you? Read me that is?"
He shook off the dumbfounded face and smiled a polite smile that seemed to be hiding a hint of frustration.
"No. No I could not read you."
I smiled. "Excellent."
He rolled his eyes. "Goodnight, Buffy."
"Goodnight."
"That had to be the weirdest conversation I've ever had." I said out loud to myself.
One thing was bothering me though.
It had been three or four hours since I had called Giles and he hadn't called me back.
He was a stickler for being precise.
Maybe he just hadn't found anything.
No, if he hadn't found anything, he would have called to say that. I was super worried.
I picked up the phone and dialed his number. It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang. I called four more times and got the same thing. Constant ringing, no answering.
I hung up and dialed Willow. It really sucked having them all be away from me. Even if something was wrong, by the time I got there...it would just be worse.
She picked up on the third ring. "Buffy, what's up? I miss you!"
"Hey Will, miss you too, is Giles okay?"
"I think so? I'm not with them at the moment…Kennedy & I are kind of…out."
"Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to ruin your time together."
Willow laughed. "It's okay, Buff. What's going on?"
"I called Giles' earlier and he said he would look something up for me and call me back and that was like four hours ago and he hasn't called back and I tried calling him several times and all I get is ringing, no answering. From him or Dawn."
"We'll head back right now and check out the situation and call you back as soon as we find out. It's okay, Buffy. He probably just fell deep into his land of books. You know him."
"Thanks, Will."
"I'll talk to you in a few."
We hung up. I was so worried.
I set my phone down on the desk and happened to glance at the calendar sitting next to it.
It was a Tuesday.
Of course it was.
I shook my head and laid down on the bed and waited for Willow to call back.
This was going to be one hell of a long night.
