CHAPTER 8
The two Mercedes coupes wound their way through the woods along the mountain highway. The reason that there were now two of them was that Buffy and Dawn decided they needed some new wheels of their own to replace their mother's old Jeep Cherokee, and Dawn had resumed her plans to buy a Mercedes like Carl's; ever quick to seize any opportunity to spoil any of his newfound grandchildren rotten, Carl then sold them the year-old coupe at a fraction of Blue Book value and bought a new current-year model to replace it. Now Carl led the two-car convoy with Joan at his side and Giles in the back seat, while Dawn followed with Buffy, Xander and Willow, as they drove by a waist-high stone fence in the woods, and then turned into an opening in the fence and down a private asphalt driveway. Fifty yards into the woods, they drove into an open area with the driveway skirting around a nearly football field-sized lawn before going back around through the woods and out another gate. Across the lawn was a huge house built of redwood with a tall, mostly glass-enclosed A-shaped center section and a two-story wing extending from either side. Behind the mansion, there was a break in the skyline of relatively young but still towering Sequoias and other evergreens.
Carl pulled up to the front step of the center section where the driveway had widened. As the two cars emptied, he smiled with satisfaction at the jaw-dropping awe of everyone else, except for Joan whom he had shown the place a few weeks before, and including Giles.
"Most impressive, Carl!" Giles tried his best to maintain his British reserve.
"Wow, Grandpa!" Buffy said breathlessly. "I knew you were loaded, but..."
"Like I said, Honey," Carl grinned, "my ego cried all the way to the bank when they bought the movie rights to The Kolchak Papers, as fiction!"
"Giles," Dawn said, "I don't care where you decide to set up the Slayer Academy, I'm living here!"
Carl put his arm around her. "It's never a home without family to share it with, Dawnie." He led them up the front steps, took his key ring and unlocked the door.
After they entered the foyer, the ceiling of which went to the top of the high-peaked roof, he began the tour with the rest of the mostly glass-enclosed center section. The staircase immediately in front of them indicated one lower level, while also leading upward to four more loft-like levels overlooking the foyer. Straight ahead on the entry level, they could see a large and modern kitchen, and beyond that an even larger glassed-in dining area that overlooked the waters of Lake Keogh.
Carl led them up the steps to the second floor, where there was a wide hallway with four doors on each side. An elevator door was at the far end, with ceiling-to-floor windows on either side again overlooking the lake. "Like I said, this place was originally built as a resort lodge, plenty of living space. I didn't want to go into the resort business, it wasn't doing that well as a resort anyway which is why I got it for a good price. I tried renting it out as apartments for UCKC students for a few years but it didn't work out. Too many parties. Started losing money on repairs and liability insurance. Anyway, there's eight bedrooms on this floor, a shared bath for every two rooms." He opened the door to one of the rooms nearest the stairwell. It was spacious for a single occupant, with a dormer window providing plenty of sunlight and more space despite the tapering roof-wall.
Okay, Buffy smiled as she started ticking off names mentally. One each for me, Dawn, Xander and Willow-- and Kennedy in case their relationship doesn't keep heading where it looks like it's heading and if Grandma and Grandpa don't mind-- and Faith and Robin, again if Grandma and Grandpa don't mind and if THAT relationship holds up-- and that still leaves room for Andrew, and maybe even for Cyndi and Colette if Aunt Polly ever changes her mind. I'm guessing Giles will want to live off the grounds.
"Next level up," Carl continued as he led them up the stairs, "is what I think of as the office floor." Due to the tapering of the roof, it was smaller in area than the lower floor, and divided into four larger rooms, with skylights rather than dormers although they were low enough to give a nice view of the surrounding Sequoia woods- but not nearly as spectacular as the full glass-wall view of the two rooms on the lake side of the house. It still wasn't officially Summer, but there were already a number of sailboats, jet-skis, motorboats and waterskiers out, and the waterfront of Keogh City, on the far side of the lake, wasn't quite bustling, but it was definitely alive.
"The old Council Headquarters in London didn't have a view like this," Giles grinned, giving up on maintaining his reserve.
Carl pressed the "Down" button on the elevator. "The top two levels are my private space-" He smiled at Joan. "Soon to be our private space. A large apartment, and my writer's loft at the very top. No need to go up there today."
Dawn smiled. "A long way from the seedy motel at the end of the first Night Stalker movie, huh, Grandpa?"
"Well, I did go through that phase in my life, Dawnie," he smiled back. "Makes me appreciate what I have now even more."
The elevator opened and the seven of them stepped into it. Like everything else at that end of the center section, it was glass-enclosed and offered a remarkable lake view. "I'm not quite old enough to really need this elevator yet," Carl continued, "but when the time comes, I may as well have something I enjoy!"
The elevator descended and then opened at the bottom level. Outdoors outside the elevator shaft was a huge railed deck, made from local redwood like most of the rest of the building. It ran the width of the entire house including the wings, and the railing opened onto a pier that ran nearly a hundred feet into the small lakeshore cove that the house sat on.
"What?" Xander called out facetiously, "No yacht, Carl?"
"The little one's in drydock in town being repainted," Carl replied coolly. In the short time he'd known Xander, he'd learned quickly how to anticipate and fire back at his wisecracks.
Indoors on the bottom level was a huge recreational area with a second kitchen, bar, baby grand piano, pool and ping-pong tables, and wide-screen TV. Carl then revealed that there were a total of eighteen more bedrooms in the two wings, each wing also having an inside skylighted atrium. One wing also had a four-vehicle garage at the driveway level with a gym below it and a small heated pool and Jacuzzi in its atrium. The other wing was all bedrooms except for two large rooms, one of which was unused and the other which Carl had turned into his personal library, which Giles noted rivaled his own back in England, and the atrium was neatly landscaped with an artificial waterfall and some small trees.
"Seems like we have everything we'll need here," Giles smiled, obviously as enamored of the place as the rest of the Scooby Gang. "Depending on how many Slayers and Watcher trainees we end up with."
"And if we run out of space," Carl added, "we can clear back some of the trees and build an annex or bring in some trailers."
They heard the front door open and shut, and a man's voice called out from the foyer, "Carl! We're here!"
"Okay," Carl smiled, "time for you all to meet my two young friends!"
They all came back to the front foyer, where they found two dark-haired, medium-tall men. One was a husky man in his thirties in the traditional black suit and Roman collar of a Catholic priest; the other was a leaner, younger man of about 19 or 20 with a short haircut, in jeans and a T-shirt with the University of California Keogh City logo. He had a mischievous smile as he watched the members of the Scooby Gang come up the stairs, and then his eyes met Dawn's. His smile brightened even more, as did that of its recipient. Being the ever vigilant legal guardian and overprotective big sister, Buffy caught the subtle interaction. He's here with a priest, for God's sake! One who apparently knows Grandpa! Relax! she smiled to herself.
"Ah! Phil! Tony!" Carl grinned. "Glad you could both come!" He gestured to the gang as he made the introductions. "Joan you already met the last time. These are our granddaughters, Buffy and Dawn Summers, their friends Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris, and this is Rupert Giles, the new head of the Council of Watchers. Who, as I told you, is much more Yank-friendly than his predecessors! Everyone, these are some old friends of mine, Father Phil Vincenzo, and his nephew Tony."
"Tony Vincenzo?" Dawn said with a little giggle. "As in--"
"Tony Vincenzo the Third," the younger man smiled, "as in my grandpa was your grandpa's editor for decades."
"Cool!" Dawn smiled back.
"Tony Senior and I weren't at each others' throats nearly as much as Hollywood played it up," Carl added.
"Yes," Father Phil nodded in agreement. "Dad actually edited The Kolchak Papers and got a good healthy slice of The Night Stalker royalties himself. He was able to retire early from the syndication job in Chicago, and most of the family relocated to this area in the late Seventies. He and Mom spent their last years in leisure and comfort right here on Lake Keogh, thanks in large part to Carl."
"Thanks," Carl smiled back. "So, Giles, young Tony is the prospective Watcher I was telling you about. He grew up knowing The Kolchak Papers were real and wanting to become a freelance vampire hunter."
"Good, then!" Giles nodded to Tony. "We can use all the help we can get."
The mischief returned to Tony's smile as his gaze scanned the faces of the others. "When Carl told me the Council of Watchers had been wiped out and that I was going to meet the New Council, I knew I'd be seeing you all again!"
That raised everyone else's eyebrows. "Have we met before?" Buffy asked.
"I didn't expect you to recognize me," Tony continued to grin. "The last time we met, I was wearing a green flight suit and helmet with the sun visor down, and I was helping to carry your friend Rhonda-"
"Rona," Buffy corrected him.
"Rona," he continued, "feet first from the bus to the Blackhawk."
"So you're a medic in the National Guard?" Dawn asked, with a hint of more than just casual interest.
"Not a medic. Normally, I'm a machine gunner and assistant crew chief on standard troop carrier Blackhawks. The Medevac unit happened to be short-handed the day Sunnydale collapsed, so they snagged me to help them out."
"So Carl tells me you just got back from Afghanistan," Giles said.
"Two months ago. I was there for six months."
"You've been in combat, then," Giles nodded.
"Yeah," Tony nodded back matter-of-factly. "Not hand-to-hand stuff like staking a vampire. Like I said, I'm a helicopter machine gunner. I stay on board when the grunts get off. I've never actually gotten close enough to see the face of anybody I shot." Tony smiled at Dawn and continued. "I keep getting a lot of how young I am for someone who's seen the elephant, but from what Carl's told me about Slayers and how young they are when they're called, compared to them, I'm an old geezer!"
"They use elephants in Afghanistan?" Buffy asked.
"An old soldier's phrase," Giles explained with a smile. "'Seeing the elephant' means being in combat. I believe it's a reference to ancient man and going on a hunt for mastodons or wooly mammoths as a rite of passage into adulthood." He turned back to Tony. "Buffy is the longest lived Slayer in the records of the Council, and one of the oldest."
"So I've heard," Tony nodded.
"But hopefully that's going to change," Willow said, "now that she's not the one and only, with the weight of the world on her back."
"Well, I'm definitely interested in being a part of this," Tony nodded, "from what Carl's told me."
"So you're a student at UC Keogh City," Giles said to Tony.
"I'll be re-starting my Sophomore year in September. Would've been a Junior if my unit hadn't been mobilized."
"I had to drop out of college my Sophomore year too," Buffy nodded. "At UC Sunnydale, when Mom died. I'm going to apply to UC Keogh City if we end up setting up Slayer Central here. Probably not this year, but eventually."
"Me too," Dawn added with a smile, "if I ever I get my high school transcripts straightened out and graduate."
"Neat," Tony nodded back.
"Well, as I said, the Council can use all the help it can get," Giles said. "Although I presume that since you're tied to the campus and to your National Guard unit, you're pretty much tied to this area."
"For the next few years, anyway."
"Well," Giles smiled, "since it's looking more and more like this is going to be our base of operations, that shouldn't be a problem."
Everyone smiled.
"And Father Phil here," Carl said, "is going to be our supplier of Holy Water and crosses that are blessed."
"And an unofficial chaplain, if you need one," the priest added. "I do understand that Slayers come in all sizes, shapes, colors and religions."
Carl led everyone back out to the back deck, where they sat under the awning and the Scooby Gang acquainted themselves with Tony and Father Phil, and familiarized themselves with the Vincenzo family history, particularly the differences between the late real-life patriarch Tony Sr. and the TV image that had been created of him. After an hour, a delivery van from a local deli dropped off a luncheon platter, and the conversation continued over lunch.
Father Phil told of how he, Tony Junior and their sister Francine had grown up there in Keogh City after Tony Senior's retirement from the Chicago-based news syndication and later on taking an adjunct professorship in journalism at UCKC. Phil had spent most of his career as a priest in various parishes in Southern or Central California before landing the pastorship in his old home town. Tony III then told of how he grew up in Fresno, after Tony Jr. had followed in his father's footsteps as a journalist and ended up as an editor at one of the papers there; he enlisted in the Guard during his Senior year in high school, then decided to go to UCKC; his grandparents' own lakefront house a couple of miles down the lake still belonged to the family and was being rented out as off-campus apartments to UCKC students, so he had appropriated the entire top floor for himself.
To the amusement of Buffy, Giles, Willow and Xander, Dawn took the lead in sharing the history of the Scooby Gang from the time the Summers family moved to Sunnydale, directing nearly all of her eye contact with the younger of the two Vincenzo men.
Buffy and Willow noted happily that Xander was completely relaxed and his usual humorous self with Father Phil, a complete relief considering his last encounter with someone wearing clerical garb. After several more minutes of conversation, Dawn opened the railing gate to the dock, kicked off her shoes, stuck a foot in the water and announced, "I think I'm ready to take a dip."
"Sounds good to me," Tony said.
At Carl's suggestion before they left Glendale, Dawn, Buffy, Xander and Willow were all wearing swimsuits under their street clothes, so Dawn had her T-shirt and jeans off and jumped into the water which was just over knee deep at that point. Tony, as it turned out, was also wearing swim trunks under his jeans and T-shirt, and joined her in a matter of seconds as she waded out alongside the pier into deeper water.
"How's the water, Dawnie?" Buffy called.
"A little chilly at first but fine once you're in," she replied. "Come on in!"
Buffy, Willow and Xander also shed their street clothes and jumped in, while Giles decided to stay on the deck with the Kolchaks and Father Phil. The three old friends waded out to about neck-deep water while Dawn and Tony started treading a few feet further out.
"So, Xander," Willow asked at barely above a whisper, "you're not creeped out by the priest or anything?"
"No! Why should I be, Will?"
"You know, the thing with Caleb and all."
"That's ridiculous! Why should I be afraid of a real priest just because some bastard who ran around in a phony priest's outfit poked my eye out?"
"If I remember from Psych class," Buffy nodded, "it's called a Conditioned Emotional Response."
"No. That'd be like if American troops in the Battle of the Bulge started shooting each other for wearing American uniforms," Xander replied, a little more loudly.
"Huh?" Buffy and Willow chorused.
"The Battle of the Bulge in World War II. A bunch of German spies and saboteurs infiltrated American lines wearing American uniforms, caused a bunch of panic and confusion for a while. But the Americans didn't start shooting each other because of it."
Tony caught that last bit of conversation. "You a vet, Xander?"
"Not exactly."
"What exactly does 'not exactly' mean?" Tony grinned.
"Should I tell him?" Xander asked the others.
"Sure, why not?" Willow smiled.
"Halloween- what was it, six years ago? A new costume shop opened up in Sunnydale. Then it turned out the proprietor was this old nemesis and former friend of Giles. Did a spell so that everyone whose costume came from the shop turned into whatever they were dressed as. I was dressed as a grunt, Willow was a ghost, and Buffy was an 18th Century noblewoman."
"A very un-Slayerlike, helpless damsel in distressy noblewoman," Buffy added.
"Plus we had all these kids who turned into all kinds of real monsters," Willow said.
"So there I was," Xander continued, "driving off these monsters by shooting up the streets of Sunnydale with a real M-16 and what at the time was an unlimited supply of 5.56 ammo. Anyway, even after Willow and Giles figured it out and broke the spell, I retained all this military information and knowledge."
"Okay," Tony nodded, "so at least we speak the same language." He turned to Dawn. "So what did you dress up as?"
Dawn blushed a second before replying with a giggle, "Hermione Granger... but I didn't turn into her because it was a homemade costume."
"Hermione Granger," Tony smiled, obviously trying to picture it and having trouble doing so.
"Hey! I'd just turned eleven, it was the year the first book came out and years before the first movie! I didn't have to look like Emma Watson!"
"Did anyone even know who the heck Hermione Granger was back then?" Buffy teased. "I believe Dawn was the first American to ever read a Harry Potter book," she elaborated to Tony.
"Way ahead of my time!" Dawn nodded proudly.
"And at least you made a very good generic but non-stereotypical witch," Willow added. "Except for the broomstick..."
There was the ringing of a cell phone in the direction of the deck. All of the Scoobies had the same model phone and had them set to the same plain ring, so they all turned to try to locate the source. After the third ring, Buffy figured it was coming from her pile of clothes on the deck near where her grandparents, Giles and Father Phil were still sitting.
"I guess that's me!" she said as she pulled herself back up on the pier and stepped over toward it.
Buffy's mild annoyance at the cell phone ringing turned to outright bafflement when she looked at the Caller ID display and read "Pay Phone" with a 760 Area Code. Showing it to Carl, she asked, "Grandpa, this is a local exchange, isn't it?"
"Yeah," he nodded.
"Who the heck would call me from here?" she asked rhetorically, then flipped open the phone. "Hello?"
"B, it's me!" Faith's voice said in an urgent whisper. "I'm here in Keogh City, at the bus station. I need you guys to come and get me!"
"Faith? What the heck are you doing here?"
"I had to get the hell out of Ventura! I called your hotel and Andrew told me you guys were up here for the day. I'll explain when I see you."
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I've never been to that part of California, but Keogh City/Lake Keogh are to Kernville/Lake Isabella what Sunnydale is to Santa Barbara: a highly fictionalized version of that community, customized for the needs of the story. From what info I can glean from the web about Lake Isabella, I picture Lake Keogh to be a bit more forested, perhaps more temperate and higher in elevation, than its real-life counterpart.