Six:

"When you feel all alone

And a loyal friend is hard to find

You're caught in a one-way street

With the monsters in your head

When hopes and dreams are far away

And you feel like you can't face the day…"

Well the monsters I'm stuck with aren't in my head, mores the pity, Aliyah thought; she was having a hard time taking in what Dr Brody had tolled her. She sat alone in the Basement, Listening to Randy's bad play.

"What's up?" Merry asked walking over.

"Year you look like you want to kill someone!" John said.

"Oh, its nothing." She averted her eyes as she responded.

Merry was having none of it. "Common, were your best friends."

"You're my only friends."

"True, but you can still tell us what's bothering you." John said.

"Look, you wouldn't believe me even if I tolled you." Aliyah snapped

"Try us!" John said firmly, it sounded like an order to Aliyah,

What the hell, what do I have to loose. "You have to promise that you won't tell a sole what I'm about to tell, you, and hear me out." They both nodded. Aliyah waited for the next song to start before beginning. "Ok, well, you see, I really don't know where to begin. Ok, here goes. Dr Brody, wanted to speak to me after I had seen the principle." John was about to say something; Aliyah just held up her hand to silence him and carried on. "Well he tolled me that vampires are real, and that I'm something called the slayer, some sort of super girl that is meant to kill the vampires."

"What makes you believe him?" Merry asked.

"Well he showed me this picture of one, and it looked just like the creature that killed my mom." John was about to speak but she carried on anticipating his question. "About three years ago we were in a car accident, this man just stepped out in front of us, dad swerved to avoid him, and we hit a tree, the last thing I remember before passing out was this grotesque figure going toward my mom."

They were both speechless.

Markus Brody leaned back in his office chair sipping his tea, when there was a knock on his door; it was the Japanese man from the pervious day.

"Hello, Mr Brody, would it be possible to see the Odon again?"

"Certainly." Markus pulled his keas from the draw and escorted the other man into the display room. Markus noticed the man pull something from his jacket pocket, Markus wheeled as the man clamped a handkerchief over his mouth.

The man watched Brody collapse and then picked up the keas and unlocked the display case, he took the Odon statue reverently and held it up looking at it.

"Now we have it." He said.

The following day Aliyah, Merry and John walked toward the history room.

"I wonder what we are doing today?" Merry said excitedly.

"Do you really care, as long as you get look at Dr Brody?" John asked. Merry hit him lightly on the arm.

As they took their usual seats, a small stock woman of about fifty walked in. "Ok, class I'm afraid Mr Brody isn't here today so I'll be taking you for today's lesson on…" She checked the slip of paper in her hand. "The French revolution?"

She checked the desk making some despairing comments about academics never writing things down.

"Were is Dr Brody?" Merry asked.

"No one knows, he never came in this morning." She said flicking through a textbook.

The rest of the lesson was so unimaginably boring, most of the class started to fall asleep.

"…and that concedes the French revolution." She said slamming the book shut; the sound roused most of the class.

Outside the three friends were taking. "I wonder why, Dr Brody wasn't in?" Merry said. Aliyah just rolled here eyes.

"No, it is an interesting point, he doesn't usually miss lessons, and if he does he always calls in sick." John put in. "I think we should go over the museum after school."

"Museum?" Aliyah asked.

"Oh, didn't we tell you Dr Brody is the curator of the local museum." John said.

The rest of the day dragged on, and after school the three friends got the bus into town and went to the museum, it was a small converted terrace house.

The door was locked. "That's strange, it should be open." John said pulling a ring of keas from his pocket.

"How come, you have keas to the museum?" Aliyah asked.

"He helps Brody in here sometimes." Merry said as they walked in.

"Doc? Doc? Markus?" John called. There was a sound from the next room. They ran in to Dr Brody pulling leaning on a cabinet.

"What happened?" Aliyah asked

"It was these men, they took the Odon statue. I think they want to use it." He said. They helped him into his office and John pored him a cup of tea. "Thank you."

"Why would someone wand the Odon statue?" Aliyah asked.

"The answer to that is a long tail. So take a seat." The three of them sat in strait backed chairs. "Maybe your friends shouldn't be here."

Aliyah shook her head. "They already know." Markus eyes seemed to bulge. "I tolled them last night."

"Didn't I mention the secret identity part?" He said despairingly.

"Well year but…" Aliyah trailed off.

Markus sighed. "Ok. Well in the beginning when vampires, daemons and so on and so forth, there was one, she is coequally referred to by the others as the sleeping one, or great mother. Now, I've been researching into the origins of Vampirism, and as opposed to the common mythos that they were created at the end of the daemon era by human daemon crossbreeding, that as a speeches they are much older, and back into the daemon era. When one daemon, Mathria was dieing but she made a bargain with one of the Old Ones that she would give unto him the power to bring ruin on the Earth and smite his enemies, this power dose exist, but it is long lost, and he gave her another chance, but when she saw that he had made her in the likeness of the humans, she took back her word, for this he threw her into a deep state of sleep from which no power could wake her. But by this time she has already sown her seed, and brought forth three children, Agris, Damballa, and Odon. They all went off and fathered satanic cults in recoded history, most ended up in Voodoon, but that's beside the point, Odon, was the most powerful, of her kin, you see each generation loses some of the power, the first vampires were almost as powerful as the daemons but as they make more the bloodline gets polluted, watered down if you will, and they become less powerful, but at this point the difference is so small as be of no import, but back to the story, Odon tried to use his power to awaken his sire, but the Old One had put wards on around her, so that if any power were used its owner would join her in slumber. To get around this Odon put all his power into an idol, in an effort to use this to free his sire, but the Old One stopped him, and killed him, at this point the statue falls out of recorded history until 1955 when Pitt rivers discovers it here."

"Oh." Was all any of them could think to say.

"So you think the people who took it, are planning to use it to revive the sleeper?" Aliyah asked.

"Yes."

A.N. The song is Savage Garden 'Crash and Burn."