Lora stayed in the corner away from the door, hugging herself and chewing her bottom lip with anxiety. Kara still looked pale, and frowned as she looked down at her wounded leg. Erica picked up the ruler again and started pacing restlessly up and down the classroom. Cordelia was sitting on the wide windowsill, still looking at Erica.
"You've got good instincts for this kind of thing," Cordelia pointed out to Erica.
"Well, I'm trying to write a horror novel in my spare time this year , so I've been thinking about emergencies and abnormal situations at lot," Erica explained, while staring at the floor. "Who knew I'd get to live one?"
"You'll get plenty of material for your story, then," Cordelia said.
"I will? You're saying there's more to come?" Erica asked in a weary tone, while no longer pacing.
Cordelia nodded. "Maybe I should explain why we're here. You are not a normal girl, Erica. For that matter, neither am I."
"What, we get the privilege of hanging out with sun-resistant vampires and zombies?" Erica said sarcastically.
"Well, yeah, that too. I'm a Seer. I get excruciating visions about people in trouble, and then we go help them."
"What's this got to do with Erica?" Lora spoke up again. She'd been very quiet lately; a stark contrast to her normal excitable personality, but that wasn't surprising considering what they'd just seen.
"Well," Cordelia said, "the vision I saw before I got sent here told me that those three guys were sent here to protect you, and you specifically, Erica."
"Why me?"
"Apparently, you were going to be a potential slayer anyway, but instead you got picked to be 'a vessel of power'. Either way, you weren't going to be normal."
"What does any of that mean?"
"I'm not really sure about the vessel thing yet, but I knew a slayer back in Sunnydale." Cordelia explained. "Two actually, even though there was only supposed to be one at a time. The term for them is vampire slayer, but technically they hunt all kinds of demons. When a slayer dies, one of the potential slayers is called to replace her. Well, the first slayer drowned and got revived, and since she was technically dead the next one was called. Slayers are very strong, and they're pretty agile and fast too, so that they can hunt demons. About a year ago, a powerful witch used an ancient weapon of the slayers to change the rules so that every potential slayer would become a slayer.
"You're not going to be slayer-strong for a while yet," she continued, "but in time, and with practice, you can bring it out. The Powers that Be, the ones that chose you for this, wanted someone who could eventually protect themselves, and someone who could physically handle having being the vessel. A slayer is the only human who really fits that description. They had to suppress your slayer aspect for a while though, because otherwise your body would reject being a vessel of power, possibly killing you, but if you were a completely normal human you wouldn't survive it either."
"What about me?" Kara asked in a subdued voice.
"Huh?"
"In the movies, if you get bit or scratched by a zombie, you turn into one," she said, worry evident in her voice and expression.
"Don't get me wrong, I love Hollywood," Cordelia said, "but they're not always accurate. You'll be fine. 'Probably get a scar, but your dead body has to be raised from the grave to become a zombie. If it's done properly, the zombie can be just like the person it was when they were still alive, but the ones outside are just --" she broke off suddenly, clutching her head. "Oh, ow, I hate this part," she said between gasps.
The other girls didn't know what to do, but after a few moments Cordelia sat up straighter. She was still holding her head, but she seemed to be all right.
"Okay," Cordelia said slowly, "now I can tell you a little more about who you're going to be."
"That was a vision?" Kara asked.
"Yeah," Cordelia said. "Have any of you got some aspirin?"
The girls shook their heads. "I got some downstairs, though." Lora said.
Cordelia sighed. "Anyway, this is going to help Kara out as well as Erica." She had already learned the other girls' names while they'd been in the room together before Angel's arrival.
"How?" Erica asked.
"Well, seeing as you're a 'vessel of power', you've already got something called the blood of the ancients running through you. It's potent stuff."
"I don't feel very powerful." Erica said sceptically.
"You haven't learned how to use it yet." Cordelia pointed out. "One of the things that you can learn how to do is heal people, which is where Kara comes in. It won't be easy at first, you've got to learn how to release it, and you have to have some idea of how it works."
"All right then, teach me," Erica said, leaning against the windowsill. "It's not like we've got anything else to do until Sam gets back, and if can help us, then good."
"Okay," Cordelia said, now standing up straight again, but still looking a little pale from the pain, "That blood of the ancients stuff hasn't fully integrated into your system, just like your slayer abilities haven't emerged yet. Eventually you'll be able to just think about it and be able to use it, but that's probably years away from now. For the time being, you've got to learn how to trigger the healing, to sort of wake it up from within you and then communicate what you want from it. The healing part is drawn straight from the essence of Life, whatever that is. As I understand it, life for humans really got started with fire, so it is a part of the trigger."
"I have to light a fire?" Erica asked.
"Just a match is enough for this. If you can see the flame and understand it, visualising it as being a key to life, the life energy should 'wake up'."
"You said it was a part of the trigger, what else?" Erica asked.
"Your action will tell it who you want to heal."
"What, wave my hands or something and say the magic word?" Erica said half-jokingly.
"No, but what you will do is part of the key. The essence within you has to 'understand' that you want the person to be better. Basically what you're doing is saying, 'I care about this person enough to want them to recover', in a way that this stuff understands. The easiest way of expressing that affection is through a simple, sisterly kiss. Nothing more than that, don't worry. Then Life will go through your body and into Kara or whoever it is you want to get better."
"So… the origin of human life, and affection are the keys to transferring Life, and we represent it with fire and a kiss?" Erica tried to get it straight.
"Exactly." Cordelia said.
Lora, who was eager to see this work, went over to the items that had fallen from the prayer table, and picked up a candle and a box of matches. She lit the candle and set it down on the desk near Kara's leg, then stepped out of the way.
Erica sighed and hesitantly stepped up to the flame, staring right into the centre of it. She dropped the ruler on the floor and rested her hands on either side of the candle. "The fire represents life," she muttered, "Life began with fire, fire means life, life means healing, fire is the key to healing." In her mind she was wondering what it would feel like to have blood of the ancients 'wake up', and then she told her brain to shut up and concentrate. She continued muttering, and visualised the flame as being life, and that it would help Kara get better. "I can feel a tingling," she said after a moment.
"That's the Life energy," Cordelia said "you've got it, now keep thinking of the fire and life."
Erica gave a little nod, trying not to break her concentration. Kara looked a little nervous, but she stayed still as Erica quickly leaned forward and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. The tingling sensation rapidly travelled from around Erica's heart, up her throat and through her lips. Kara felt the same sensation start in her cheek and spread through her body, down to her leg. She felt the wound tighten, and shrink as the skin knitted back together, and the pain had lessened almost instantly, until her leg felt normal again.
Erica stepped back and leaned against the cupboard behind her. "Ooh, I feel queasy," she said, putting a hand to her stomach.
"It will pass." Cordelia assured her while watching Kara's reaction. Kara was un-knotting and unwinding the red-stained shirt. The skin beneath it was smooth, unmarked, and perfectly normal.
"You did it!" Lora exclaimed. Cordelia smiled, and Erica looked a little surprised that it had worked.
Kara held up the shirt to Erica, "Sorry about this, I guess you won't be able to use it again."
"That's okay," Erica said quietly, taking it and watching Kara hop down from the desk without any discomfort at all.
After a few moments Erica seemed to come out of her daze. She straightened up and looked toward the door. "Maybe Sam will come back with someone else who needs help soon," she commented.
"Just don't exhaust yourself," Cordelia warned. "For now, your body can only handle so much healing, until it's gotten used to doing it."
"We might need more room for more people," Kara pointed out, "I mean, there was a school-full of people here by lunch-time."
Erica nodded and walked across the room to the wall that was adjacent to the door.
"What is it?" Cordelia asked.
"That wall is only temporary," Lora explained as she rummaged through the desk drawer. Cordelia noticed that although the wall stretched from the ceiling to the floor, it was in sections, about two metres wide each. On the section closest to the door was a little circular handle at about chest height.
Erica waited by the handle while looking toward the desk, where Lora came up with a metal key. Lora tossed it to Erica so she could undo the lock. The parts of the wall could then be bunched up in the sections and pushed back against the side of the room that had the windows.
"If we open it up we'll have two classrooms to put people in," Kara said, and then she remembered the candle and blew it out before an accident could occur. Then she started cleaning up the mess made by the prayer table. Lora made herself busy by pushing the teacher's desk back against the wall, out of the way.
A click was heard as Erica succeeded in unlocking the partitions. She put the key in the back pocket of her jeans and started pushing against the wall. Cordelia got up off the windowsill to help Erica with the walls. She hadn't gotten two steps when Erica shrieked and was pulled through into the other room.