Chapter One
Special Greetings
Paige stepped off the bus and into the darkened streets of Sunnydale. No more then two days ago did she get the word that she was to be the new slayer. Ever since then she had felt like she was walking around in some sort of dream like state. Everything had happened so fast. One moment she was sitting on her bed reading the Slayer's manual and the next, she was being sent off to the Hell mouth to replace one of the two dead slayers. It wasn't something that she ever expected to happen.
Heaving her duffle bag onto her shoulders she began to walk. She had been given specific orders to go to Sunnydale High Library as soon as possible. There she would meet her new watcher and the other slayer that had arrived here before her. The only problem was, she had no idea how to even get to the High School.
"Excuse me?" A young girl with flaming red hair bounced up to her. "Are you Paige Iverns?"
"Yes." Paige answered the girl.
"Oh good. I'm not late. I was told to come and pick you up at eight o'clock sharp, and well I got delayed and... anyways, I'm here now." The girl smiled. "OH! My name's Melony. Sorry, I have this habit of spacing out sometimes."
"That's okay." Paige looked the girl up and down, something about her wasn't right. "I thought no one was going to be able to pick me up?"
"No one was at first. We're all super busy. But I never really seem to be of that much help to them anyways so I thought I might as well put myself to good use. So here I am. Did you want me to take your bag?"
"I'm fine, thanks."
"Alrighty then. We better be off. Everyone's just dying to meet you." Melony said rather bubbly. Her red hair bobbed up and down as she walked down the pavement.
They passed house after house as Melony continued to ramble on and on about useless information. Paige was about ready to use her new found slaying powers on the girl if she didn't shut up soon. She just hoped that her sister slayer wasn't anything like the incisive rambling girl walking next to her.
"So the other slayer, Faith, how's she working out?" Paige asked, wanting to hear anything but the sound of Melony's voice at the moment, but knowing that if she was going to be a slayer, she'd have to play nice with the other people.
"She's not." Melony said rather darkly. Something passed over her features at the very thought of the girl.
"What do you mean?"
"Honestly? I don't even know how the girl became a slayer. She has no skill what so ever and her style's all wrong. She's goes off at the sound of a bell, doing whatever pleases her."
"What's so bad about that? A slayer's got to trust her instincts."
"This girl has no instincts. It's just punch, jab, and plunge with this one. No thought for anything else but the thrill of the kill." Melony had her hands stuck bitterly in her pockets. "I'd watch out for her if I were you. In this town, you never know who to trust."
"That's what makes it so fun." A voice came from the shadows. "It's all just a game of guess and check." Stepping into the streetlight, a girl with dark curly hair showed herself, a cocky grin plastered on her face, and a stake in her hand. "You must be Paige."
"And I'm guessing you're Faith." Paige looked over the girl before her. She definitely had the body type of a slayer, small but built with muscle. "I don't know Melony. She looks like a good slayer to me."
Melony let out a short bark of laughter. "Looks can be deceiving."
Paige nodded her head once, never taking her eyes off Faith. Without warning she pulled a sharp wooden stake from out of her pocket and slammed it home into Melony's heart, not moving until the dust settled around her.
"Nice." Faith commented. "So, when'd you know?"
Paige smiled slightly. "Pretty much the moment I got off the bus. Plus, she was heading me away from the school. I saw a sign about ten minutes back saying Sunnydale High next left. Seeing as this is a hell mouth, I figured I'd be stepping into trouble the moment I got off that bus."
Faith started walking down the pavement, back to the direction Paige and Melony had just recently come from. "You're smart. That's good. Means I don't have to worry about you."
Pounding footsteps came rushing up from behind them. "Did you find her?" A young redhead asked. This girl's hair was nothing like Melony's. It didn't hold the same fire; instead it was soft and sweet, giving off the air of innocence.
"Yeah I found her." Faith said off handedly, continuing to walk. "Paige this is Willow, and the boy who's about to pass out to her right is Xander."
Paige looked over towards the boy with his hands on his knees, breathing deeply, then to the girl, giving them a small smile. "Hey."
"Hi." The red head said with a small little wave of her hand. "It's nice to meet you."
"Xander would you get up all ready. I really don't feel like hanging around all night."
"I'm sorry, but some of us aren't as lucky as others and are born with super human strength." He grumbled. Clutching his side he began to walk along side Faith. "So, you two run into any trouble while I was gone?"
Faith rolled her eyes but answered him anyways. "Paige here got picked up by a vamp pretty much the second she stepped off the bus. She took care of it though."
Willow gave the girl a shocked look. "Already? You've only been here for a couple minutes."
Paige smiled, liking the group that surrounded her already. "What can I say? I'm a natural."
"Yeah, well you better keep up that naturality because around here, it's vamps, vamps and more vamps." Xander singsonged.
"Xander, naturality isn't even a word." Willow scolded him slightly.
"It is in my vocabulary."
"That may be why you're flunking English."
Faith looked back at Paige. "Don't mind them. It's a daily ritual with these two."
The little group of four walked without interruption to the High School, where they immediately tromped inside without preamble. Willow and Xander seemed to be very comfortable around each other, giving Paige the idea that they had been friends for a long time. Then on the other hand, there was Faith. She was cocky and definitely not afraid to say what she was thinking, making Paige know that she was a good slayer.
"Hey G- Man! We got a live one!" Xander called, flinging open the doors to a small library.
A man wearing a brown tweed suit and glasses came out from behind one of the stacks, giving Paige a surprised look. Almost as if he didn't expect to have another slayer here so soon. Or maybe he just thought it wasn't right to have two new girls come in out of nowhere and replace the one slayer that he had grown to adore of the brief few years.
"Hi." Paige said nervously when he didn't say anything.
"Don't worry about him. He did the exact same thing when I first arrived." Faith hopped up on the checkout counter and started eating twizlers from a bag by the computer.
"Sorry," The man said as he approached Paige. "You just took me by a little bit of surprise. I'm Giles. Rupert Giles."
"Paige Iverns." She said shaking his hand. He gave her an uneasy look, as if he didn't want her to really be there.
"So Giles. Got any work for us to do yet?" Faith asked sarcastically from her perch on the counter.
Taking off his glasses and rubbing them wearily Giles sighed. "I'm afraid so." Motioning for Paige to take a seat he began to explain the situation at hand. "For the past few weeks vampire activity has risen at an alarming rate. There isn't a night that goes by without at least two deaths of a citizen by the hands of one of these demons."
"And in a town as small as Sunnydale, that's saying something." Xander piped in. He too had started to eat the Twizlers that were lying around.
"I've been researching the matter for quite some time now and I'm afraid I can't find any valid reason as to why they're doing this. It just suddenly happened. Faith has been out there almost every night but we don't seem to make any headway into our growing problem. But maybe with your strength added to the mix we'll be able to make some sort of dent in the vampire populace."
"Two heads are better then one." Faith hopped off the counter and started heading out the door. "Come on Paige; let's go see what you're made of."
Paige dropped her duffle to the ground. "Sounds good to me." With a small wave to the rest of the people in the library she ran out the door to catch up to Faith, hardly able to contain her excitement at the fact that she would be able to test out her new skills soon.
"So what do you think is really going on here? You know, why have the vamps suddenly decided that now's a good time to feast on the living."
Faith shrugged as she walked outside into the rapidly cooling night. "I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the other slayers death."
Paige nodded her head slowly. "How'd they die?"
"Vampire, just like any other slayer. One was cut in the throat by some chic and the other... her tale had a bit of a twist. Apparently she was actually screwing one of them. He turned on her, tried to suck the world into hell, and when he didn't succeed, he killed her."
"There's got to be more to it then that."
"I don't know the full story, and I don't really care. The important thing is, is that I'm here now and I have a job to do. I'm sticking to that plan."
Paige nodded, knowing the other girl was right. But still, she couldn't let the death of the other slayer go quite just yet. "What happened to the vampire? The one that killed her?"
"He's still alive supposedly. I hear he's not much of a threat now though. He's insane or something." Faith stopped suddenly scanning the area around her. "Do you feel that?"
Paige stopped too and opened up her senses, feeling her surroundings. Something was off. It was like hundreds of tiny little needles were pricking her in the back of the neck, causing her slayer senses to ring in alarm. "Something's wrong."
"Got that right."
Silently the girls began to walk forward into the swirling fog of the graveyard before them. Stone statues of angels loomed up before them, praying over the souls of the deceased. A soft cry could be heard from ahead, but the fog was too thick to see anything farther then two feet in front of you.
"Damn it." Faith muttered. She pulled her stake out from the back of her pocket and treaded lightly on the dewy grass, hoping Paige was not far behind her. It wasn't until they crouched behind one of the mausoleums that they saw it.
A young girl, no more then sixteen was pinned to one of the headstones by two vampires. Their fangs were bared, causing the girl to cry out in fear. Moving forward slightly the vampire went down to take the kill. It was at that very moment that Faith burst forward and jammed the stake through his undead heart.
Turning to Paige she grinned. "Welcome to Sunnydale."