Authors note: Got someone to read Shockwave Vampires, pre-release. First review!

"I liked it a lot. It moved very fast and was very gripping. I especially liked the part about the lollipop and all the timey whimey stuff you did. Also, a really interesting and neat idea of the time-space continuum and how people travel through it and use it…" [I'm rephrasing the reviewer a little to eliminate spoilers.] "…but the best part was that character — Seo. She's a wonderful character. You should write more about her."

Hurray!

I have a few scenes to rewrite… and I need a cover image. Boo hoo, I'm a bad artist. But after that, I think I'm basically done.

Anyways, enjoy this next scene from this story! Afterwards, we get a little denouement, and then we'll be on to the next story.

Enjoy!


In the real world…

Sineya sat up, inside the circle.

Awake.

Saw Seo, still holding that mirror, her eyes now wide and scared. The light from the gourd dying and finally fading out completely.

Around them, just outside the circle, blackness swirled through the air. Twisting with malice and evil, hunting for both Seo and Sineya, its tendrils reaching out like fingers to undo the magical protection that surrounded them.

Sineya felt the evil inside herself rejoicing.

This close to itself.

The Slayer inside her reached for it. Wanted it. Power. Knowledge! The ability to gain revenge for a world lost. A world that had betrayed her.

The Slayer wanted the Wyorin to live in her. So all could be exterminated.

Sineya felt herself rushing to embrace the Wyorin that flooded back through time, almost before she realized what she was doing. Barely had time to stop herself.

"No, you don't want the Wyorin!" Sineya said, to the Slayer within her. "The Wyorin isn't power! It isn't a part of you! It's what destroyed you! You could have been a normal part of the Doctor's clan, if the Wyorin had never existed."

The Slayer within Sineya hesitated.

And Sineya began to regain control of herself.

"You scream all the time about the darkness and death that came to your world!" Sineya continued. "This is the power that destroyed your clan! It should not be a part of me — and it should not be a part of you." She bunched her hands into fists. "If I am the First Slayer of many, I will not let the Slayer be a force for evil and murder and death! And neither should you!"

Sineya had said this to the Slayer many times before.

But now, as the Slayer within Sineya saw that black smoke of the Wyorin… as it felt the hatred and malevolence inside it…

For the first time, the Slayer seemed to understand.

"Enjoin with me," Sineya said to the Slayer. "Become one with me. Help me become… the Slayer."

Suddenly, in a flare, Sineya felt a bright, powerful force surging through her.

A force to rival the Wyorin.

A force to attract it.

The trap.

Sineya stood up, suddenly calm and full of confidence. She stepped in front of the scared Seo, protectively — as the yellow light of this Slayer force surged through her, illuminating her skin, her face, and even her eyes.

"We are mind," Sineya said. "We are spirit." She stepped forwards, addressing the black spirit surrounding them. "She gives power. I give heart."

The black spirit pulled back, just a little.

Intrigued.

"Together, we are the storm — the power of the First Slayer," said Sineya. "Entwined. We are the form you wear in dreams." She raised up her hand. "I restore that form to you."

The black spirit tried to pull away.

But the bright light from Sineya encompassed it, solidified it, as the blackness rushed together into a perfect replica of Sineya herself. The one from dreams, with the hateful eyes and the desire only to kill and destroy.

"You are inside me," Sineya said. Stepping towards her replica. "And outside me. You are the Wyorin." She lunged forwards, in a burst of movement too fast for her replica to catch. "And so am I!"

The moment she touched her replica, a scream rose through the air.

A scream from herself, as something burned deep down inside.

A scream from the Wyorin.

A scream from the distant future, where so many had fallen, enslaved to the Wyorin's touch.

The Wyorin twisted and writhed, within Sineya's form. Trying, in vain, to change itself back into smoke and shadows and nothing. But Sineya and the Slayer stepped forwards, letting the light of their power shine through and burn away the Wyorin who'd come back in time.

"That's it!" said Seo, now suddenly behind Sineya. "You've disentangled it!"

"The Wyorin is dead," said Sineya.

She found herself suddenly swung around, to look right at Seo. "Not quite," said Seo, with a grin.

And shoved the mirror in Sineya's face.

A mirror that was a pool of water, sucking her into another world.

Sineya screamed, as she felt herself yanked and torn apart, so she could almost no longer stand.

As the Wyorin within herself, finally disentangled from Sineya and the Slayer, was pulled from the very depths of herself, and shoved deep down inside that mirror.

"The Wyorin!" came a stranger's voice, echoing through the background. "Seo, you did it!"

Sineya didn't have the energy to look at the newcomers.

Just fell, as blackness overtook her.

The last thing she heard — Seo's voice. Saying, "No. She did."


Angela knelt down by the wall, picking up the shadow puppets from the ground.

"At which point, I remembered that when Mom defeated Adam," Seo continued to explain to her sister and Jack, "the enjoining spell created a version of the Slayer who infected her dreams and tried to hunt her. So I did the same spell…"

"To give the Wyorin form, so it could touch!" said Jenny. "Oh, of course! And the limitation effect would have severely weakened the Wyorin inside of Sineya, as well."

"Which allowed me to use my Draconian mirror," Seo agreed, showing it off, "to send the Wyorin into a sort of… mirror dimension." She looked back into the mirror, thoughtfully. Watching the Wyorin and the images of the Shadow Men that had come from Sineya's own nightmares, behind its surface. "Just need some place to put it."

Angela raised up the shadow puppets. "And put these."

"Oh, those are probably just side effects of the psychic forces in Sineya's mind," Seo dismissed, waving them away. "Completely harmless. No, it's the mirror I'm more concerned about. After all, mirrors are delicate things… and if this one gets smashed up, there's always a possibility that the Wyorin could escape, and—"

"A mirror dimension," Jenny cut in, looking over at the shadow puppets, "is also sometimes called a 'shadow dimension'. Isn't it?" She glanced back at Seo. "And shadows can't be broken like mirrors."

Seo looked up at Jenny.

A smile slowly spreading, wider and wider, across her face.

"Ha! That's brilliant!" said Seo, hugging Jenny tightly. "Transfer the mirror interface into one that's inside the shadows generated by those figurines! That way, if the figurines get smashed up, it'll just close the gateway, and not let the Wyorin back out!"

Jack clapped his hands, slowly.

"So, looks like all we need, now, to make history work out like it should," Jack announced, "is a metal box, and someone who can write ancient Sumerian." He turned to Fexia and Vylena. "Either of you fine ladies know ancient Sumerian?"

Seo pulled out of the hug.

Spun back around to Jack.

"Wait," Seo said. "Why Sumerian?"


Seo turned the box Jenny had shown her over in her hands. It was cracked and worn with age, but Seo recognized it clearly.

Meanwhile, Fexia had assembled the brand-new shadow puppets together into a sack, tying it into a knot at one end.

Angela and Vylena were both caring for Sineya, still unconscious from her ordeal.

"That's impossible," Seo said, still looking at the box Jenny had given her. "Aunt Dawn and I destroyed this in the 22nd century. And when I say destroyed, I mean we threw it into the sun. It couldn't have survived." She glanced back at Jenny. "How'd it wind up in the 57th century?"

"Some stranger showed up with it," said Jenny, with a shrug. "That's all I was told."

Seo put the box back down.

Scooted a little farther away from it.

"I think it's pretty clear what happened," said Jenny. She gestured at Fexia's sack of shadow puppets. "We're going to drop these off with Sineya's clan, and they'll be passed down, through the generations, along with the oral story — a cautionary tale of what happens when men muck about with forces they don't quite understand."

Jenny paused.

Her face bent into a frown.

"But… thing is," Jenny went on, "history says Sineya's people will become a patriarchal society, by the end. A cautionary tale will turn into a tale of triumph. Man over demon! And the puppets will be thought of as a source of strength."

The look on Seo's face began to turn angry.

"By the time the puppets arrive in Sumeria, they'll be thought of as a power boost for the Slayer, that can be used whenever she gets into too much trouble," said Jenny.

"A sort of… Slayer emergency kit?" Fexia asked.

"If you like," Jenny agreed. She shrugged. "And for a while, it'll seem to work. After all — the shadow dimension can only infuse so much Wyorin into any one Slayer, at a time. And any single dose won't be enough to activate the true essence of the Wyorin."

"The first few times it was used, the Wyorin would just give the Slayer a little jolt of extra power," Fexia realized. "Thus helping people to forget the truth."

"But the Wyorin's going to build up inside the Slayer Line, isn't it?" said Seo, jumping to her feet and pacing, angrily. "More and more Wyorin in every single Slayer who opens the box, until the Slayer Line reaches the tipping point." She spun back to Jenny. "And I'll bet you anything that tipping point came in 2003."

Jenny shrugged.

Seo turned away, continuing to pace, her face enraged. "That's why the First let Mom open it! The First Evil wanted Mom to get possessed by the Wyorin." She kicked a stray rock against the wall of the cave — hard enough to make a little crack in the cave wall. "I hate people who mess with my family!"

"But… if the tipping point was in the 21st century," said Fexia, to Jenny, "and Seo says she only destroyed it in the 22nd century, then how did it manage to avoid any Slayers until…?"

"Because Sunnydale turned into a giant crater in the 21st century," said Seo, turning back around to Fexia. "That box got buried. The 22nd century is when some idiot decided to dig it back up. Which is how my aunt and I found it."

Fexia nodded, slowly.

"And… how did it get to the 57th century?" Fexia asked.

No one had a good answer to that.

"Maybe… someone rescued it before it could impact with the sun," Jenny offered, a little hesitantly. "But… how anyone would know or why anyone would care…"

Seo sprinted to Fexia and grabbed the sack out of her hands.

"In that case, I'm getting rid of it, right now," said Seo. "Moment I get back to Oliver, I'm throwing every one of these shadow puppets straight into the sun. And I'm sticking around, this time, to make sure they actually wind up burned like they should be!"

Jenny was on her feet in an instant.

Her hand on the sack, as well.

"Seo," Jenny said, quietly. "Think this through. Those shadow puppets, that box… it's history. It happened."

"It killed all but three Slayers by the 57th century!" Seo hissed. "Destroy it now—"

"Three Slayers are enough to carry on the Slayer Line," said Jenny. "So long as one Slayer survives, more will keep being born, and things will eventually return to normal." She tugged the sack out of Seo's hands. "But this, Seo, is your mum's history. And yours. Your sympathy towards Sineya is based on your mum learning Sineya's story, through these same shadow puppets." She gave a sad smile. "And you'd never know enough to destroy them, if you hadn't seen the effects for yourself."

Seo glared down at the bag.

But allowed Jenny to take it from her.

"I don't like it, Jenny," Seo muttered — quietly enough so that the others couldn't hear. "Someone's taking dangerous artifacts out of history, and placing them in the wrong time and place — like it's some sort of game." Her hands clenched into fists. "And it's always people I know who get hurt!"

Jenny put a hand on Seo's shoulder.

"I'll look into it," she promised. "Stop at all the libraries and do the boring research bits you hate. And if I find out anything…"

"You two figure out the mystery of the box, yet?" said Jack, as he entered the cave with a wide grin and a twinkle in his eyes.

The two sisters broke away from each other.

Tried to make it look like everything was fine.

"Just discussing the virtues of not causing massive, universe-shattering paradoxes," Jenny told him. She shot Seo a grin. "Then… I'm thinking, after Sineya wakes up and we've returned the three Slayers to the future… we make sure that box from the 57th century really is destroyed for good."