DISCLAIMER: Angel, Buffy and their respective crews belong to Joss and co. Hopie and Anni are mine. If you'd like to use them, please email me at zcheer1054@aol.com
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Done with research! Now to just write the paper and the other research paper I have to do. This is just a quick break, I promise. Anyway, to the person confused about how Angel can be happy… in Only Hope (the first in this series), he got his Shanshu, which turned out to be basically a non-conditional soul, so you're right, he IS happy. Sorry, the C/A and S/B pairings are here to stay. I don't know about Willow and Wesley because they didn't bother to tell me they were getting together in the first place… it surprised me too! To Aristotle Freud, you did a good job with Hopie in your fic (so far at least) keep up the good work and thanks for the mention!
Le Bella: Chapter Ten
Anni and Dawn were both giggling uncontrollably, trying desperately to keep quiet about it so as not to draw the attention of the teenage boys looking across the aisle at the Sci-Fi novels.
Dawn's face was bright red with laughter. A tear slipped out of Anni's eye.
"Reginald…" Anni started to say, but lost it.
"And… the…way…he," Dawn couldn't finish the sentence and dissolved into laughter. Trashy romance novels were such fun. It occurred to her that maybe she shouldn't be reading parts out loud with a twelve year old, but they weren't really reading the explicit parts, just the cheesy ones.
Neither of them realized that they had been hanging out in the bookstore for the better part of three hours. Somehow, with the likes of Reginald, Duke of Hawthorne and his cheesy peers in the other books they had looked at, the time seemed to just fly by.
Wesley was very aware of the fact that his sister and Dawn had been missing for quite some time, and he was worried. With the Dark Council out there, Anni shouldn't be out after dark, he thought. The worst part was that she knew that, understood, at least on some level, the danger.
He hoped she was all right. He was, quite simply, going to kill her himself.
"You have on grrr face," Hopie informed Wes seriously. "I don't like it when you get all grrr on people, especially Bella. She's special and good." Hopie gave Wes a very pointed look that let him know that she was reserving the right to form the opposite opinion of him.
Spike gulped down the glass of blood, and parts of it smeared on the corner of his mouth.
"Mr. Spike has a blood mustache!" Hopie cried joyfully. Wesley couldn't help but notice the fact that Hopie seemed to like Spike much more than she liked him, and somehow that just seemed wrong.
"Could I get a napkin?" Spike asked no one in particular.
Hopie made a note. If you give a vamp a cracker, he's going to ask for some blood. If you give him so blood, he's going to need a napkin.
Connor's smiled at Buffy when she walked into the room. "Where's Dawn?" he asked.
"Back at the house," Buffy replied.
Willow made an awkward throat clearing sound. "Um, Buff… I was just at the house and Dawnie and Anni weren't there." Buffy screwed her forehead up in concern. Where could the two girls possibly have been?
Lindsey's expression went from joyful at Hopie's announcement of his engagement to Faith to a pensive expression that creased his brow when he heard Giles's question. The Myth of Turot had of course been of long interest to Wolfram & Hart. That kind of power…
"The myth is, as far as I know, nothing more than a myth. No one, not even our best power senses, were ever able to sense the location of the Turot's kasya. If her power was true, the power died with her." Lindsey knew even as he spoke the word that something wasn't right.
Giles finally caught Wesley's drift. "Kasya. Kcyna. You think they're the same thing?"
"Sure," Buffy said sarcastically. "Sounds like it to me. How bout you brainy types make with the information giving about this Turot."
Giles cleared his throat. "Turot was, according the oral history of a tribe in, well nevermind where… Turot was a young girl of the elite cast. She was younger than Dawn according to the myth."
"Okay, young girl, check," Cordelia said, wondering where this story was headed.
Giles continued the story. "Turot's people were said to have made a marriage contract for her, but on the day of the wedding, the groom was dead. Within hours, the entire town was dead."
"Unknown cause?" Willow guessed.
Spike shook his head. "Vamp marks on their necks," he said. Giles looked at him, and Spike shrugged. "I've heard that much of the story before. Kind of liked it myself." Hopie giggled. Mr. Spike was so silly.
"So, girl turns vamp and kills the villiage?" Buffy asked.
Wesley picked up the story. "Not exactly," he said. "Turot was, for centuries according to legend, unstoppable. Many river peoples began worshipping her, sacrificing a child to her each year in exchange for her giving their villiages a wide breadth. The area was no stranger to vampires, but Turot was different. Greater strength, greater speed. She was little more than a child herself, but stronger than any other being on earth."
"This is getting freaky," Willow commented. "I'm guessing it's about time to hear about the big brooding evil inside of her?"
Wes looked down, not wanting to voice the rest of the story. He continued anyway.
"It was said Turot could do magic, sense other vampires, have prophetic dreams. She was, in many senses their queen and in many other senses their servant. She wore an amethyst around her neck, her kasya, that was said to contain her magic, her dark essence, her power, but she didn't rely on the gem as vengeance demons do. Turot was her own source of power."
"Kcyna," Giles said. "Of nothing, black… the dark force. The Dark Council had to have been formed years after Turot's time. The Watcher's Council wasn't even around in the mythic time of Turot."
"So," Spike said. "Anybody else see something a bit odd about this whole Dark Council thing?"
No one said anything. Hopie waved her hand wildly around in the air.
"Yes, Hopie?" Angel said, still finding it amusing that Hopie had started often raising her hand to speak just like the children did in class.
"They knew she was special!" Hopie said, wriggling with excitement.
"Who knew who was special?" Cordy asked, humoring the child, but not really paying much attention.
"The Dark guys knew that the purple lady was special. I think they stole her." Everyone stared at the child.
"Hopie, baby," Cordy said, "did you see something that Momma didn't see?" Usually Hopie only got Cordy's visions. Hopie shook her head.
"I didn't see anything that way. They feel dark and we saw the purple lady last night. She's bad, but she used to be special." Hopie gave Wes a pointed look.
"Special?" he asked. "Special like Anni?" The child had insisted for days that "Bella was special." Could she see something that the others couldn't? Part of Hopie's magic involved her connectedness with the world around her, her ability to sense a person's essence, their intentions. Wes wondered why no one had taken her special claim any more serious than they had.
"Hopie, what does Anni feel like?" Wes asked her seriously.
Hopie thought for a moment. "Like Aunt Faith only more purple," she replied finally. "And sometimes she feels like you." Then Hopie, for good measure, stuck her tongue out at Wes and went back to watching Spike with great interest. Spike looked around for a trashcan.
If you give him a napkin, he's going to need a trashcan…
"So this Turot, anything else we should know about her?" Buffy questioned.
"Her marriage was never supposed to be arranged," Giles replied. "She wasn't supposed to be married, ever. It is reported that she was one of her people's chosen, one child in every generation among the ancient world."
"One girl child?" Angel asked.
Wesley, Giles, and Lindsey all nodded.
"A slayer," Buffy said.
"But I thought you said she was a vamp," Cordy said, picking up Hopie who had wandered over to her, looking a little drowsy.
"She was a vampire. She was never called as a slayer," Wes replied.
"Well if she wasn't called…" Angel started to say.
"I didn't say she wasn't called. I said she wasn't called as a slayer." The words hung in the air. Turot had been called by something else.
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," Connor said, blushing when everyone looked at him. "Fred's been talking physics a lot lately," Connor explained.
"Connor's right. Whatever it is that calls you as a slayer cannot exist without its opposite also existing," Lindsey said, pulling Faith closer to him.
"And this purple smoke is the essence of this, this calling?" Buffy asked.
Giles and Wes had no reply for her question. Wes, in fact, knew only three things for sure. One: he had to get to Anni before the Dark Council did. Two: when he found her, he was going to throttle her for being a bloody idiot. And three: the next time Hopie spoke, he was going to listen.
"First thing's first, we need to find Anni and Dawn," Buffy said. Wes nodded.
"Let's go," he said. They all headed for the door, but Cordelia, sensing that Buffy might want to have some parent time with Dawn, decided to give Connor an excuse to not go. She handed him the sleeping Hopie.
"Take her back to Buffy's house," she instructed. Hopie clung to Connor, and Connor realized how much he had missed the little girl in the days that she had been in kindergarten. Without realizing it, he clung to her too, even as he gave Cordelia an exasperated look for excluding him from the action. The rest of the group split up to form search parties.
Dawn and Anni had just about had enough of the romance section. The two, on much better terms now, got up to leave the store, not realizing that they were both being watched very carefully.
The vessel was heavily guarded this time. They could not risk the essence escaping should this vessel be slayed. They would capture the girl, and she would become the next archslayer, the next Turot.
As the Scooby and Fang Gangs scoured Sunnydale looking for the two girls, Connor sat down on a rocking chair in the Summers' house with Hopie on his lap. She felt safe and secure and real, the first real and pure thing in his life. He couldn't help himself and sang to her in a sweet voice, a lilting Irish song that he almost remembered Angel singing to him as a baby.
Hopie opened her eyes a little. "My Connor," she said contently, taking her thumb out of her mouth and touching a soggy hand to his cheek. Then it occurred to her that everyone else was gone. "Where's everyone?" she asked sleepily.
"They went out to look for Anni and Dawn. There are some big baddies in town," Connor said, trying to rock the little girl back to sleep.
"They went without me?!" Hopie exclaimed. "But Crossbow and I could help!" Connor sat, not really sure what to do as Hopie teetered on the edge of a full blown Shanshu tantrum.
TBC… Sorry this chapter's so short…it's 3 AM… next chapter, Anni/Wes confrontation and the details of the Hopie tantrum, as the Dark Council prepares to make a move. Please Review if you'd like to see the next chapter soon