Disclaimer: Any character that you've seen on the show is owned by Joss, not me.
|
Colleen |
The new slayer |
|
Jordan |
Psychic who receives The Visions |
|
Dawn |
The Key |
|
Aaron |
Currently exploring magicks |
*****
The night was being spent as it was usually spent lately. The calendar on the wall was counting down the days until the Vernal Equinox. There was only three days left. Aaron's notes on the Omicron provided very little information on what would happen on that day. He hoped it was that way because there wasn't any information given. He didn't want to think about the possibility that maybe he missed it. He had tried so hard not to be worthless. He didn't want his quest to result in the destruction of the entire world.
Dawn searched through yet another book. When she was younger she wanted nothing more than to be a Scooby. She wanted to do the research and fight the demons and be just like her sister. She would have never admitted that though. Sometimes she regrets that she never told Buffy how much she admired her. She hoped that she knew now. She hoped that both Buffy and Mom were watching her right now and being proud of her.
Jordan wondered how Colleen and Holly were doing on patrol. He hoped that everything was going well. He thought that maybe the more that Holly fought with them that she would want to join the group. He hoped that she would see that they want to be her friend and they weren't just trying to treat her as an ally. He knew that's the way that she felt. He knew that she thought that she was willing to fight be their side but that she didn't want to be their friend. Jordan knew that for some reason that she was afraid of becoming their friend but he didn't know why.
"Can you hand me that book on your left Jordan?" Aaron asked as he shut the book he was looking through. Jordan reached over and handed him the book.
"Has anyone had any luck?" Dawn questioned. Aaron and Jordan shook their heads.
"Want to try flipping out?" Aaron asked Jordan. "It worked last time." Jordan smiled. Once when they were trying to do research to discover the location of the Omicron Jordan had lost his temper and that somehow allowed him to telekinetically open a book to the exact page that they needed.
"I think that was a one time only deal," Jordan said. "Besides, with the Omicron I at least had some kind of insight on. With Phoenix I'm completely in the dark."
"Maybe if I could find any kind of documentation of him I could try to find a spell that would reverse his creation or something," Aaron said.
"Do you really think you could do that?" Jordan asked.
Aaron shrugged. "I could try at least."
"Oh wait!" Dawn said getting really excited. "I think I might have found something. It's in Latin but I think that says Phoenix. Doesn't that say Phoenix?"
Dawn handed the book over to Aaron. Aaron had been studying Latin since he became an Alter Boy in fifth grade. "No," Aaron said after a quick glance. "That's firebird. Believe it or not there's a difference."
Dawn looked frustrated. "We're going to run out of time," she said. "We've been researching this guy for months and we have nothing. We have gone through every single book in the Magic Box."
"Did that guy ever email you back?" Jordan asked Dawn.
"Yeah," Dawn said talking about the email she got back from Giles. "He doesn't know anything about this guy but he said that he's going to do some research and get back to me."
The three friends went back to their research. They had been sitting in Aaron's bedroom reading books for the last four hours. Colleen had been helping but then she had to go meet up with Holly to patrol. At midnight the grandfather clock in the living room began to go off. Right at the last sound Jordan suddenly got a vision.
*****
Holly got kicked in the stomach hard by a vampire. She was in her gold form so she could take it. That didn't mean that there wasn't pain though. Holly recovered on her hands and knees as the vampire ran towards. She held her hands together as one fist and right as the vampire was in range she swung and hit him in the jaw. It was only a matter of moments before she could get a stake and dust him.
"Nice move," Colleen said as she offered Holly a hand while she was on the ground. "The fist thing."
Holly looked at Colleen's hand and then up to Colleen. She smiled at her and returned to her normal form.
"Thanks," she said as she took her hand. Make her feel vulnerable. Maker her feel like an outcast. Make her feel dependant. Holly pulled back her hand and stood up.
Colleen looked at her as if she might have done something to offend her. "I'm sorry," Colleen said. "Are you OK?"
"Yeah," Holly said quickly looking away and starting down the path in front of her. "I'm fine. Come on, let's keep going."
Colleen seemed very trouble as she stood up. "Yeah," she said as she jogged to catch up. "Let's get moving."
*****
"A book?" Aaron asked. "OK, but we're getting Colleen this time."
"What's this book?" Dawn asked Jordan. He had just got done explaining a book that he saw in someone's private collection. "Is Phoenix coming after it?"
Jordan shook his head. "No I don't think so. I think this vision was trying to answer our question. I think The Powers That Be are trying to give us the information that we need."
"Do you have any idea where this book is at?" Aaron asked. "Or should we not get out of research mode so fast?"
"Yeah I know where this one is at," Jordan said. "It's on the edge of town. It's a house on the edge of a graveyard."
"A graveyard?" Aaron questioned. "Yeah, this sounds like it's going to be a grand old time."
"Come on," Dawn said as she tossed Aaron his jacket. "If we hurry we might be able to catch up with Colleen and Holly before they call it a night."
Aaron sighed as he zipped up his jacket. "Why do I have the feeling this evening just took a turn for the worse?"
"Think positive," Jordan said as they walked out of Aaron's bedroom making their way out of the apartment.
"Fine," Aaron said as they reached the front door. "I'm happy that my parents are out of town and won't be able to ground me for a month again."
"That's the spirit," Dawn said while Aaron locked the door on their way out.
*****
"Clandestine rendezvous," Aaron said as him, Dawn, and Jordan got to the meeting spot that they phoned in to Colleen and Holly.
"The street light in front of the Double Meat Palace," Colleen said. "Very clandestine." She turned to Jordan. "So where are we going?"
"You remember the cemetery with the old white house on the east side of it?" Jordan asked Colleen.
"Yeah," Colleen said. "I have the cemeteries memorized at this point." She paused and thought about that for a moment. "I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing."
"How far is it?" Aaron asked.
"It's a couple blocks over," Colleen said.
"I knew it was around here but I wasn't sure where exactly," Jordan admitted.
The five freshmen walked through the dark streets of Sunnydale towards St. Joseph's cemetery. They made the small talk that they usually made when they were out doing stuff like this. Jordan noticed how quiet Holly was being. He tried to talk to her and to get her to join in on the conversation but it wasn't really going anywhere.
"That's the place?" Dawn asked as the approached the while house on the edge of the cemetery. It looked old and deserted.
"Yeah," Jordan confirmed.
"Why would there be a private collection in there?" Aaron asked. "It doesn't look like anyone lives there."
"Maybe no one 'lives' there at all," Holly spoke up for the first time in a while.
"I knew this wasn't going to be a good night," Aaron said.
"Are you getting any vampire vibes?" Dawn asked Colleen.
Colleen looked at the house for a little bit trying to hone in on it. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "Maybe."
"What's the plan?" Aaron asked. "How are we going to do this?"
"Two teams," Colleen said. "That way we have a better chance of finding the book. Jordan's the only person who's seen the book and Aaron would probably be the only other person who would have a chance of realizing if a text was important or not. Jordan and I will start at the top and work our way down and you guys start in the basement and work your way up."
"What do we do if we run into trouble?" Dawn asked.
"It's a house," Aaron said. "If we scream there's a good chance that someone will hear us."
*****
"The door's locked," Holly said as her, Aaron, and Dawn tried entering in through the back door.
Aaron cracked his knuckles. "Looks like once again I-"
Holly shifted into her gold form and kicked the door in before Aaron got a chance to even pull out his lock picks. Dawn passed him on her way into the house.
"Looks like new girl just stole your thunder," Dawn said.
"Looks like the basement is this way," Holly said as she opened a door in the kitchen. Everything in the house made it look like no one had lived there for a very long time.
Aaron unzipped his backpack. "I only have two flashlights," Aaron said. Holly and Dawn looked back at him. He handed them both over. "Fine."
Holly didn't take the flashlight. "I don't need it."
Aaron and Dawn turned on the flashlights and started looking around. The basement was a series of small rooms. Each time they got to a door Holly would open it and be the first person in the new room. They got through the entire library without seeing a single vampire.
"Or a single book," Dawn pointed while they walked up the stairs to the main level.
"Hopefully we'll have better luck up here," Holly said once they were in the kitchen.
*****
"I hate attics," Colleen said. "They're always so old, you know. It's like where everything in the house goes to die."
"I used to love my attic," Jordan said. "In my old house that is. I used to spend all my time up there playing with G.I. Joes. It was my own personal war."
"You don't seem like the G.I. Joe kind of kid," Colleen said.
"Every kid boy is a G.I. Joe kind of kid," Jordan said. "This is a waste of time. It's definitely not up here."
"Down we go," Colleen said as they left the attic.
*****
"So this was good for a whole lot of nothing," Aaron said.
"I haven't seen a single book in this place," Holly pointed out.
"You know," Dawn said as they finished looking going through the last room on the main level. "When Jordan got that vision I was excited. I thought that it would be a nice change of pace from the last couple nights of nonstop research."
That's when the seven vampires entered through the front door in the room right next to the room they were in. From the sounds of it, an equally large number of vampires was entering through the back door.
"I guess this is the part where we scream," Aaron said.
"You know you don't always have to make a sarcastic comment," Dawn told him.
*****
"Here it is," Jordan said as him and Dawn entered a bedroom on the second floor. "This is the room." Jordan walked over to a bookshelf and grabbed the specific book that they needed.
"You sure that's it?" Colleen asked him.
Jordan flipped through the book. "Yeah I'm positive. This is it."
"Maybe we should get Aaron up here," Colleen wondered. "Maybe there are some magick books that could be useful to him."
"Worth a shot," Jordan said as he shut the book and started to walk out of the room.
Colleen followed him out of the room. "This was easy enough."
*****
Holly did her best to block the doorway into the room they were in by fighting any vampire that tried to get through but that plan was definitely not going to work.
"Where are Colleen and Jordan?" Dawn asked in a panicked voice.
Dawn and Aaron looked up when they heard a loud noise above them only to see a large hole opening in the ceiling. Colleen jumped down while Jordan lowered himself first and then dropped. Colleen tried to help Holly keep the vampires at bay but with 15 on 2 it wasn't looking that promising.
Aaron and Dawn turned to the wall on the other side of the room when they heard banging against it.
"Do you think that wall will hold?" Dawn said as first one fist and then another came through the wall.
"It would be stupid to say yes now," Aaron answered her question.
"We need to get out of here," Dawn said.
"Good plan," Jordan told her. He pointed at a window and soon it was blown out. "Colleen! Holly! Let's go!" Jordan, Aaron, and Dawn were running and then jumping out the window. They were quickly followed by Colleen and Holly. Surprisingly, the vampires didn't give them much of a chase.
"OK," Dawn said between taking deep breaths. "How do a dozen vampires just come out of nowhere?"
"Those were some of the same vampires that were at Phoenix's mansion," Holly said.
"Do you think that he sent them after us?" Jordan wondered.
Aaron shook his head. "No. I think they live there. They must have just saw our lights and tried to ambush us."
"How do you know they live there?" Colleen asked.
"I'm not positive," Aaron began, "But the way the basement was set up it looked like it might have been living quarters."
"The windows," Dawn said as she just realized it. "I thought they looked weird but now I realize why. They were blacked out."
"I did notice that," Colleen said thinking back.
"Hey guys," Jordan said, "I think this answers our question." He showed them a page that he opened to in the book that they took from the house. On the page was the same drawing that was on the wall of Phoenix's mansion. On the bottom of the page was written "I am the Martyr."
*****
Author's Note: Coming up next is the conclusion to Sunnydale: A New Beginning. Tell me what you think.