Summary: The Potent three make their first appearance, the Scoobies receive a warning from a strange source and Spike returns to Sunnyhell.
Rating: PG (Maybe leaning toward PG-13 due to language. And Riley niceties...he he, Leni *Grin*)
Reviews: Love them to itty bitty confetti sized pieces.
Author Note: Ughh...Is anyone else getting really confused by the new Update date system of sorting fics? I appreciate it, but it's...hard. *Pout* Okay, that was lame. Moving on...Thanks everyone for the reviews!
***
"Camera one closes in, the soundtrack starts, the scene begins..they're playing you now..." Camera One/Josh Joplin Group
***
The building looked as though it should have been destroyed by the city years ago. The cracked plaster siding just barely hid a skeleton of long since created, crumbling brown bricks which further betrayed some wood support beams. Then again, that whole section of structures on the outskirts of Sunnydale appeared to just be one collective, festering malignancy, full of decayed souls and people who wanted to be forgotten. The beautiful, shallow population of the city simple tended to turn away from it, powdered noses in the air. Those on the important boards created with the purpose of dealing with such places kept their limousine windows tightly rolled up as they toured it, pretending to be thinking up solutions to problems they had replaced in their minds with golf games and caviar.
But those that inhabited the crumbling gray buildings didn't seem to mind. They were never the ones complaining about the conditions. Had the shadowed people from the slums wanted to move, they well could have. Of course, that could require moving around during the daytime, something they often deterred from due to various reasons. The streets often seemed vacant during that dreaded daytime, the blasted sun beating down upon the pavement below. There were, of course, those slightly more...warm blooded residents that would walk about during the earlier hours, but they walked quickly. And they never came out at night when the others did. Though no one mentioned it aloud, there was always a manner of shared secrecy hanging in the dusty air and they left it there to wan. Of course, it never did.
The initial subject, the simple two story brick building, worthy or not, did in fact hold within it's walls a family. They would've seemed suspicious in any other part of town. Any place with decency. After all, with three attractive seemingly jobless young women who were always well clothed in class and style....well, one had to wonder where they got the money. In that particular place, no one did. Those that paid it any attention assumed...no, rather, they knew. A certain wisdom comes from living in a place lacking any moral or social structure and these people carried it. But they would've been wrong in judging those three girls. Quite wrong.
Ardis Potentae gazed down from the bedroom window toward the empty street below. Night was falling upon Sunnydale. She savored the hours during dusk...the way they slipped through her fingers, the sensation it sent through her, witnessing the world slip from daytime, with it's false face of cheer and daisies into nighttime, when the mask was stripped and shattered on the blackened pavement. She cast a quick glance into the small room she stood in. It was sparklingly neat compared to the building that contained it.
A dark wood dresser stood in the corner, covered with odd bottles filled with stranger ingredients. The bottles and various other containers continued off the dresser down onto the top of a small bookshelf standing next to it. In the center stood a small black pot filled with old charms and talismans. A large collection of cracked, leather bound books were jammed into the bookcase. Finally, lining the far wall stood three small but beautifully laden beds draped in strange, richly colored quilts and silks. The first two beds were empty and cold, but in the last, the slight form of a young girl...perhaps young lady, lay staring up at the ceiling. Her wide black eyes seemed to open into oblivion, blank and empty, but her tiny red mouth was open, mumbling rapidly but without words. Thin, pale hands lay clasped over her fragile chest, heaving with effort. Dark, rich chestnut locks sprawled around her exquisite face covering the pillow beneath.
Ardis gave a heavy inward sigh as she turned completely toward her youngest sister. She loved the girl, but this cryptic power sensing mumbo jumbo of hers could get tiring...
"What is it, Selena?" Ardis' voice was deep, rich and full. There was a trace of a long since forgotten accent, but every syllable that flowed from her mouth was perfectly enunciated. Something behind it made the listener feel luxurious, satisfied yet in a way, overpowered.
The girl didn't reply, only continued her endless stream of silent babble. Soft breathing came from the dark doorway at the other end of the room and Ardis looked up to acknowledge it. Slow, shuffling footsteps entered, their owner burdened with carrying a tiny silver tea tray. Jade Potentae looked up to meet her older sister's eyes and nodded in greeting.
"I brought her some tea," her voice never rose above a whisper, gentle and delicate. Jade set the tea stray down on a stool by Selena's bed and carefully poured something that rather resembled hot chocolate from the pot into a cup, stopping now and then to brush a strand of long, flaxen hair from her face.
"Just like lace, she is..." The soft proclamation came from Serena as the girl sat up weakly in bed. She smiled with a girlish demeanor at her two sisters. Ardis stepped down from the step by the window and walked over to join the others.
"How do you feel, Selena? Did you see something?" Her intense brown eyes stared hard at her sister as she spoke, "anything at all?"
As usual, Selena didn't reply, only took the tea cup full of hot cocoa from where Jade had offered it to her and sipped slowly. Ardis frowned, honestly, Selena so often resembled a little girl stuck in the body of someone 18. Then again, as long as they got what they needed, age was irrelevant to them...
Meanwhile, Selena's eyes, now bright with thought had cast over to Ardis. She pouted at the seemingly older woman.
"You're not like lace. You're more like...like..." she gazed into the cup in her hands, "chocolate...forbidding yet delicious."
She nodded to herself, pleased with the prognosis. Then, without further warning, she pulled her blankets to her chin, rolled over in bed and fell fast asleep. Jade frowned slightly, then stood from her place next to the bed.
"Has she been like that all day?" Ardis inquired. Her sister nodded, still looking thoughtfully at Selena.
"She couldn't find anything. Did you? While you were doing The Reading?"
Ardis shook her beautiful head and pursed crimson lips, "no, and with the nonsense Selena's been coming up lately, it appears we're falling into a drought of souls."
Suddenly, the bedridden girl sat up and glared defiantly.
"I did find something!"
Jade raised an eyebrow, not wanting to get her hopes up with the flaky girl, "oh? And why didn't you tell me?"
"You never asked."
Jade opened her mouth in protest but Ardis intervened, "of course, that's logical.." She took the younger girls impossibly cold hands in her own, "now, what did you see?"
"The hot chocolate truly was lovely. Thank you Jade," Selena's wild, wide-set eyes looked everywhere at once, sucking in the entire universe.
Ardis began to lose her patience. The news, if relevant, could be just what they needed. Her voice took a pitch of urgency and she clutched the icy hands in her own harder.
"Tell me what you saw, Selena."
"Oh that...a silly girl really, but a lovely creature. She attends that horrid SU school we used to visit..." a fit of high pitched giggles broke her speech, "silly thing, we don't even need to fetch her. She's coming here! Oh, and she has much inner power, and she practices a bit...but she's quite sad, she's in a one sided love."
The three girls traded looks, they knew what heights of desperation that drove people to.
"Her name," the girl seemed to be losing concentration, and her eyes, like little pools of oil, traveled the length of the room, "...is Tara."
***
"So," Xander commented as the group was gathered at the Bronze, later that night, "how's with the slayage, Buff? Haven't been updating with your faithful bud Xander of late."
Buffy looked up, obviously startled at the sound of his voice. She spun around to gaze at the Bronze-ish activites surrounding her and looked further stooped. Taking a quick glance at the funny looks her friends were giving her, she broke into a nervous grin.
"Oh! Umm..sorry, I was distracted. A little," she managed.
"Yeah...just a bit," commented Xander. Willow elbowed him.
"What's wrong, Buff?" The Witch inquired, concerned look on her face.
Riley put a protective arm around her and raised an eyebrow, "yeah, you've been acting a little off today."
"It's...it's nothing you guys," she said, forcing another smile, "really, I guess I'm just tired." She looked at the frowns around her and suddenly felt the need for fresh air. Gently escaping Riley's half embrace, she got up from her seat.
"I just need to go outside for a bit...I'll be right back."
She hurried toward the door, leaving them rather speechless. She knew she was blowing them off and that they were bound to worry, but she just couldn't get the dream out of her head. She couldn't remember the exact events of it, but the feeling that remained was enough to tie a knot in her stomach. And that book, the odd book that was burned into her mind haunted her...She would go see Giles and if she described the symbol of it he could-
Suddenly, the door to the Bronze banged open and a girl rushed in, a blur of dark hair and red dress. The bouncer hurried in after her in apparent pursuit. As quickly as she had run in, she fell to the floor, screaming and howling. Buffy backed up a step, stunned, then rushed forward to the fallen girl. She subconsciously felt her friends close in with the rest of the Bronze's visitors.
"Back up everyone! She needs a...doctor!" She yelled, trying to move the rest of the concerned patrons back. Most of them complied.
"I'll go call an ambulance!" Someone cried.
Riley moved forward and Buffy backed up, allowing him full attention of the girl. His face shifted into a stunned expression as he felt her pulse.
"My God, Buffy, her pulse rate is insane...she's never going to make it." His voice was hushed as though to sheild the girl from this knowledge, but her eyes were glazed over in such a way that Buffy was certain she wouldn't hear anyway.
Willow, Xander, Oz and Anya were shooing the remaining crowd back as Buffy and Riley gently moved the girl so that they could see her face easier. Sweat poured down a pretty, but terrified face. Glassy, blue eyes rolled around crazily in her head.
Riley gently took one of her trembling hands, "Miss, can you hear me? Can you respond?" The girl's wild gaze went everyone at once and her mouth was slack. He sighed, "it's no use, she's just gone."
Willow bent down next to her, knowing the situation was completely hopeless, but compassion getting the best of her, she took her scarf and used it to gently wipe the girl's forehead. Suddenly, she girl reached up nabbed Willow's hand. The witch cried out and backed up in surprised. Oz went to pull her wrist free, but the other girl's grip was like an iron vise. Suddenly, her eyes seemed to blaze with a feared look as she turned straight toward Willow, seemingly gazing through her. Willow winced without meaning to.
"They're starting again..." she whispered, "they're starting to drain us...no one can run from it...they're taking all the old and attacking the new..."
With that, she promptly fell back onto the floor and expired, just as the ambulance crew barged in through the door.
***
"Giles! It was horrible!" Willow cried, clinging to Oz's hand as she shivered, "there was something so...so afraid in her, and her hands...they were like ice..."
"Did the paramedics say anything to you?" Buffy asked Riley who shook his head negative in response. She sighed, frustrated.
The ex-watcher/librarian took off his glasses and pinched his the bridge of his nose, strained from the late time and the amount of information being dumped on him.
"Was...was there anything else? Anything you can possibly remember?"
The group began to shake their heads when Willow suddenly brightened.
"Yes! There was something." They all glanced up at her, startled. She eagerly reached for a pad of paper and began to sketch something.
"It was below her collarbone, just below where her dress started. When she fell, she left it exposed. At first, I thought it was just some decorative tattoo..but the ink was funny, not..pretty, more like the numbers Nazis printed on Jewish people during the Holocaust," her voice softened, "my grandmother had ink like that on her," she shook herself, "and I think I've seen part of the design in a spell book...maybe a history book before."
They all closed in to see her finished work and Buffy cried out in surprise.
"That's the symbol from my dream!"
***
"Damn lines..." Spike squinted hard, trying to focus on the road lying before him, "won't hold still."
Stupid things, they were. Those little yellow dashed lines in the center of the road? Who needed them, after all? What good were they?
"Bloody hell!"
Had driving always been this hard? Perhaps all he needed was a rest...yes, but he was nearly in Sunnydale. Sunnydale! Ha! Why was he returning to that nasty little nook of the world? Out of every other place open to him, and everything was. Because of a bloody piece of plastic and metal jammed into his brain somewhere. Because he, how pathetic was it? Couldn't suffice without help that he probably wouldn't find anywhere else except above a Hellmouth.
And because of a certain red haired witch...
He quickly brushed that last involuntary comment away and scolded himself for thinking thoughts like that...
He gaze a deep sigh of relief as his car rattled and roared past the cheery pastel colored "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign. Annoying thing, it was, so falsely warm. He'd have to remember to roll it over on his way out. He was going to leave, wasn't he? Of course he was.
***
Tara shivered involuntarily as she climbed the stairs of the brick building. It took as though it could've been a charming boarding house a long time ago. She glanced again at the chipped plaster and boarded windows and sighed, a very long time ago, she amended. Almost longingly, she gazed back toward her car. It wasn't terribly far away, she could easily leave and never return to this place, never look back. But no, she'd come this far. And though she'd used most of her courage simple entering this sector of town, she still had some to spare, especially on the grounds of love. All the same, she thought to herself, she was very glad to have come during the day and not at night.
From beneath the folds of her soft, hooded poncho, she drew the spell book that had slept in her arms for the past few nights, so afraid she was to lose it or have it discovered. Tracing the dark carvings on the cover one last time, she tucked it back where it had appeared from and raised a tentative fist, placing a soft knock at the door. For a time, there was no answer, but she was too choked up with an unexplainable fear to knock again. Momentarily, she thought she had seen a movement from a curtained, dark second story window that wasn't boarded up, but no, it must've been her imagination.
Part of her urged her to pick up her things and flee, it simply didn't feel right. Yet she stood adamantly, if awkwardly at the door, waiting in the warmth of a Southern California winter. She had never been in love before Willow, but had spent long thinking about it and how she would go about it when it approached her. Of course, now that it had discovered her, and she it, she'd forgotten all her neat logic and level headed concerns on the topic. Some emotions were simply too strong for common sense.
Abruptly, the heavy wooden door swung open in front of her with a huge swoop, but not so much as a creak from the hinges. She sucked in a surprised gasp and instinctively backed up a few steps. When the woman who had opened the door stuck her head out though, she was drawn forward almost instantly by some unknown, incomprehensible force.
Long, dark auburn waves coiled and tumbled down the lithe, pale shoulders just barely disclosed by the wide necked yet ultimately modest dress she wore. A beautiful, oval face peered out from behind the curtain of hair at her with striking brown eyes that swallowed and drew her into a different world. Long lashes batted her high, rosy cheekbones as she blinked in surprise at seeing Tara and as her eyes adjusted to the light of the afternoon sun.
"May I help you?" Her voice was deep, rich, intoxicating...yet something dark lurked behind it. Tara backed up a few steps, shrinking into herself. Dammit, why did she have to be so timid? She regained her foot, standing stoically, meeting the woman's gaze.
"I have need of a spell beyond my powers...I was hoping you might be able to assist me?"
Good, clear sound. She was internally pleased with herself but was careful not to let it show. She kept her face somewhere between serious and neutral.
But the woman drew into the building slight and shook her head, eyes lowered. Tara bit her lip, this wasn't good...why was this woman suddenly so fearful?
"I'm sorry...but I...we, we don't do spells anymore," she shook her head again, "I can't help you. I'm sorry."
"W-why?" Tara stepped in closer, suddenly bold with desperation. she was stuttering, she knew, but didn't care, all that mattered was that she persuaded this woman to help her. "Please, please...I really need your help. I don't know who else I could go to...please, I've worked so hard, I've come so far..."
The woman looked up at her and sighed deeply, "I'm so sorry, but we don't do that sort of thing anymore, we're...we're going to become Christians now...you'll just have to find someone else-"
"There is no one else!" Tara cried suddenly, seizing the woman's outstretched hand, "please, I'll give anything....I need your help."
Something in her voice, perhaps the urgency, perhaps just the pyscho-desperation quality struck the woman and she stopped her look of protest. Finally, with one long, withering gaze complete with a pained sigh, she let her shoulders slump.
"Very well...I will see what I can do to help you..I cannot assure that my sisters will be so pleased, but..." she motioned for Tara to enter before her and the younger woman complied, feeling a sense of triumph.
Ardis watched her walk in and a trace of a smile touched her scarlet lips, then faded. Mind games worked almost too easily on impressionable girls, girls that had been socially subservient their whole lives, as she'd found before. She didn't even have time to plan victory, so eager they were to fall into her traps. She reached over and touched Tara's arm lightly.
"Please, follow me..." she lead the girl up the dimly lit staircase, "I am Ardis Potantae."
"I'm Tara," replied the younger witch.
"Tara? How charming...watch your step, right this way..."
***
Willow hurried up the sidewalk toward Oz's dorm building. She clutched her knit purse tightly to her as a source of comfort. She shouldn't have left so late without first calling him--if she had, he would've come picked her up, or been at least waiting calmly in front for her to show up. Cursing the what ifs and should haves that kept piping into her mind, she glanced warily behind her back. Though the night was silent, she felt a sense of urgency from within, a sense of danger.
Without warning, heavy, clumsy footsteps on her far right broke the quiet. Twigs snapped beneath shoed feet. She inhaled sharply and quickly pulled a stake from inside her bag, holding the sharp piece of wood at ready. The footsteps were drawing near her and she could hear low talking...how many were there? It seemed like only one but then who was-
She cried out involuntarily as a man stumbled through the bushes, closer to her than she had expected. They looked up, surprised by her presence. Without further ado, they rushed at her. Freezing cold hands began to close around her throat, then suddenly pulled away as though shocked by the touch, but not before a single thought raced through her mind as a shrill scream ripped through the night, Vampire. She raised the stake, but expert hands tossed it away. Wait! Her foot was free! Rearing it back, she let her boot make solid contact with her attacker's patella. With a grunt, he dropped her, but not before she smelled alcohol.
Her hands went immediately to her ankle which had twisted during her fall, but she managed to stand and hobble over into the splash of light beneath a street lamp. Her attacker, hunched over in a drunken stupor followed. Her hands jumped for her purse, but it was gone. She raised her fists up, preparing to give her surely soon to be murderer a good..puny fight before she died. A scream readied in her voice box. She could hear the vamp's own clothes ruffle as he prepared his second descent on her, but instead he blurted something out that she least expected.
"Red?!"
Though it was slurred, she'd recognize that voice, flavored with a British accent anywhere.
"Oh my....Spike, is that you?"
He collapsed heavily onto the pavement next to her, "yeah, s'me...nice to see you again." And with that, he promptly fell over.
TBC...