A/N Thanks for the reviews. And to Joan, yeah I thought that chapter 16 was my best chapter as well. To elizabeth thanks for the complements, I hope to hear more from you. I also decided to make Tara a year older then everyone else, so she graduates this year instead of season 3 with everyone else.

Chapter 17

Summer's Interlude

When Tara made it home, she told Giles all of what happened. He called Buffy's and her mother Joyce answered the phone. After doing a quick check, she found out that Buffy had just made it home. After calling the rest of the Scoobies, Giles left for the morgue just as Buffy arrived at his apartment.

"What's going on, Tara?" Buffy asked as she came into Giles place. "I heard that Miss Calendar was murdered."

"Yeah she was." Tara said on the verge of tears. Then there was a knock on the door. With a sigh she answered it and it was the rest of the Scooby gang. After letting them in Tara sat down and started to explain herself.

"I had a bad feeling that something was going on." Tara said as Kendra came out of their room and sat down. "So I went to school to check up on Miss Calendar and I found her dead."

"Did you find out who did it?" Amy asked.

"Yeah." Tara said looking from Amy to Buffy. "It was Angel."

"What!" Buffy yelled in outrage. "Angel has a soul and he would never do that. I thought you two were close, how could you accuse him of something like that?"

"Buffy please. I...I told you about his curse. If he has one moment of true happiness, he looses his soul and he turns back into the monster he was before."

"How do you know that?" Buffy asked.

"Just trust me, I know." she said solemnly. "And when I got to Miss Calendar's body, I felt Angel's presense so I followed it and..."

"What did you do?" Buffy yelled the question out, as she saw Tara's look.

"I...I killed him." she said quietly. Buffy looked at her with hard eyes for a second and then she broke into tears.

"I can't be here right now." Buffy said as she ran for the door. Tara came up behind her and grabbed her by the shoulder.

"I'm sorry I had to do it Buffy...I..."

"Don't touch me!" Buffy yelled as she pushed Tara back. "I can't believe that you did that to him. I loved him so much."

"And you think I don't care?" Tara asked. "Buffy I came from a place where my father abused me and murdered my mother. When I got here, Angel was like a brother to me... he was my family. Don't you know how much it hurt me to do what I had to do."

"Tara I'm..." Buffy stopped herself. "I just have to go." she said as she ran from Giles place.

Tara watched her retreating form and then turned back, to see the Scoobies staring at her.

"Tara we have to talk." Xander said as she walked back into the room. "Now I wasn't a big fan of deadboy, but why would you try to save Spike and not him?"

"Because it's different. In my...visions Spike doesn't even have a soul and he still became a good guy, as far as Angel he could never do that." she explained.

"While we're talking about Spike, why did he keep calling you the Seraphim?" he asked. Tara let out another sigh as she sat down beside him.

"Listen, I can't tell you guys everything only this. I was just a normal kid in New Mexico, then just one day something... something came to me and now I have all of these powers."

"So you don't have those powers because you're a witch?" Willow asked.

"The strength, heightened senses, physical dexterity, and speed are from what happened to me, but everything else is because of witchcraft."

"But you still haven't explained why they call you the Seraphim." Amy told her. Tara let out a sigh as she thought about her life, before Sunnydale. Looking at them all in turn she began her story.

"Before I came here to live with Giles, I lived in New Mexico with my Aunt. I came home from karate practice one day and I found her in the bathroom, dead. When I was about to call the police, some demons attacked me and I killed them. Later that night I went on my first patrol. When I walked down this alley, to save two girls, the vamps looked at me like they were going to piss their pants. Seeing that they sensed something powerful about me, I told them that I was a Seraphim. I let one of them go and he spread the word that their was an Angel walking the earth."

"So you're not an Angel then?" Johnathon asked.

"I am." Tara told him. "More or less."

"So what about de visions?" Kendra asked joining the conversation. "Are dey because of what happened to you?"

"That's enough questions." Xander said as he stood to his feet. "I think Tara had a reason for being secretive all of this time. Tara I'm sorry I had to ask you those questions in the first place. But I had to make sure that you didn't have your own agenda and do something to hurt my friends." he said as he looked about the room at the people that he considered family

Tara just looked up at him and nodded her head. Ever since Halloween, Xander acted like a different person. He was improving in school, made some of his own weapons, and his fighting techniques vastly improved. It was as if he were becoming the dark knight himself. Shaking that thought out of her head, she listened as her friends started to talk about Miss Calendar.

After all of them agreed to hold a special memorial for her, Johnathon stood to his feet.

"Guy's I'm bushed." he said as he walked to the door. "I'm real sorry about Miss Calendar, Willow." he said with a sad expression on his face. He knew how close they were. "I'll see you guys later." he said as he walked out of the house, followed by the rest of them as they said their goodbyes to Kendra and Tara.

Seeing how late it was, Kendra and Tara decided to get some sleep. Since Kendra was still staying at Giles' place, they got her a cot to go in their room. As Tara layed down, after only a few minutes she started to have a wierd dream.

Angel tackles a beautiful girl with raven hair and they both burst through the window of an apartment, falling two stories to land on a trash-container lid. They roll off of it and the girl again throws Angel around.

"You're gonna die!" she yells to him, as she starts to attack. The girl keeps hitting and kicking Angel. Halfway through this it starts to first rain then pour.

"You hear me? - You don't know what evil is! - I'm bad! - Fight back!"

The girl keeps whaling on Angel, sometimes he ducks, sometimes the hits connect.

"Nice try, Faith." Angel says as he grabs a hold of her. He then tosses her away from him. Then walks after her.

"I know what you want." he tells her.

She hits him and he hits back dropping her. She comes back up hitting and screaming, but not making much of a dent.

"I'm not gonna make it easy for you." Angel says as he dodges another hit.

"I'm evil! I'm bad! I'm evil!" Faith yells as she throws herself against him.

"Do you hear me? I'm bad! Angel, I'm bad!" She begins to sob, grabbing a hold of Angel's shirt and shaking him." I'm ba-ad. Do you hear me? I'm bad! I'm bad! I'm bad. Please. Angel, please, just do it."

Suddenly a dark haired man comes running out of the apartment building, with a huge knife.

"Angel please," Faith said sobbing. "just do it. Just do it. Just kill me. Just kill me." Angel wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her against him. She over balances them and they sink to their knees, Angel still holds her as she cries.

"Shh. It's all right." Angel says as he rocks Faith back and forth. "It's okay. I'm here. I'm right here. Shh."

The knife drops from the dark haired man's hand as he stands in the pouring rain, staring at them, while Faith cries and thunder rumbles overhead.

(Who the hell was that?) Tara asked as she woke up from her dream.

(What. What's wrong?) Angel asked. Then Tara told him what she saw in her dream.

(That was a very close friend of mine.) Angel informed her. (Her name is Faith.)

(Why is she so important to you?) Tara asked.

(Because she thought that she could just touch the darkness and walk away. She couldn't do it.) Angel tells her. (So she lost it and I helped her to get on the path to redemption.)

(You must have really cared about her alot.) Tara figured. (You let her beat you up pretty badly.)

(Well she is a Slayer. In fact she became the Slayer after Kendra's death.)

(Damnit!) Tara yelled in her mind as she started to gain some of Angel's memories about Faith.

(Since Kendra didn't die, Faith never gets her powers.)

(Yeah, where are you going with this?) Angel asked.

(If she never get's her powers then she's going to try to fight vampires anyway.)

(That's nonsense Tara. Faith would never...) he cut himself off as he thought about how wild his dark haired friend was when they met. (Okay good point, but what are you going to do about it?) he asked. Tara thought about that question for a minute before she replied.

(I have to go and get her.)

The rest of the school year went by very quickly. Seeing that Tara was a senior and never missed a day, the school board let her have her diploma a week early. Before she decided all of what she was going to do, she decided to settle things with Buffy. It wasn't easy.

They only managed to reconcile after Buffy caught the flu. After being admitted into the hospital, they both killed a demon called Der Kindestod, who killed Buffy's little cousin Celia, when Buffy was younger. After that their friendship started to mend a little. Their friendship got a little awkward again, when Buffy found out Tara took Angel's car. Only after explaining to her what she had to do, did she just let it slide.

After saying her goodbyes to Giles, Tara went to her car and was surprised to see Kendra with a duffle, standing by the passenger side of her convertible.

"What are you doing here?" Tara asked her friend.

"Me Watcher said dat I might need more training. So I told him about you. He told me to come to you and ask, if you would help to train me, but now you're leaving. So I decided to pack a few tings and go with you dat is..." Kendra said as she looked down. "if you'll let me?"

"Yeah." Tara replied with a smile as she took her bag. "I'd love to have you, hop in."

With that said, Kendra got in the passenger side of the car while Tara threw her bag in the trunk. As the two started to drive out of the parking lot, Tara looks up and see's Johnathon, Amy, and Xander standing there with duffle's of their own, slung on their shoulder's.

"What are you guys doin' ?" Tara asked as she drove up to where they were standing.

"Giles told us that you were leaving town for the summer, so we were hoping that we could come with you?" Amy told her.

"But what about school? You guys still have like a week left."

"Tara please." Xander said with a grin. "With these two brainiacs do you really think the school would care if they ditched a week early? As for me..." he said with a shrug. "I don't think a week off of school will kill me."

"Alright." Tara replied with a huge grin. "Throw your stuff in the trunk and let's hit the road."

"Where are we now Johnno?" Tara asked after hours of driving.

"We're in a place called Poho County." he said as he rechecked his map.

"Hey there's a diner up ahead." Amy said pointing in it's general direction.

"Good because I'm hungry and I so got to pee." Xander said as he started to fidget.

'So much for the Dark Knight.' Tara thought sarcasticly as she pulled up to the diner. As she did so, she immediately felt uncomfortable. Like something in the air was disturbed. A certain smell, maybe like it was demon or something. Pushing down the fear she felt, her and the others walked into the diner.

As they looked around the rundown restaurant, they were greeted with the sight of hillbilles. Pushing down the jokes Xander was about to make, he ran past his friends and walked up to the waitress behind the counter. After getting directions to where the bathroom's were he took off.

With an amused smile on her face, Tara and the others sat down in the nearest booth. As they sat down Tara noticed that everybody was staring at them. But when she looked up at them, they would shy away from their stares and just look away. Ignoring them she looked up and saw what looked to be an old church burning down on the TV.

"I'm Cindy and I'll be your waitress for tonight." a beautiful blonde said as she handed them all some menu's. "I'll give you folks a minute to pick out what you want to eat." she said as she started to walk off.

"Hey wait a minute." Tara called after her. "What is that all about?" she asked as she pointed at the TV screen. This also got everyone else's attention. Cindy turned towards the TV to see what she was talking about and let out a sigh.

"That happened about two day's ago." Cindy said as she took a nervous glance around the diner.

"Two teenagers reported seeing a guy dump a body down in that old church, but when the cops got to it, it was set on fire. When they put the fire out, they found like two hundred bodies under the church. Somehow the killer found out who told on him and he killed the boy. The two teenagers were brother and sister, and I heard that after her brother died that the girl went insane."

"So did de police ever catch de, killer?" Kendra spoke up for the first time.

"How could they, it was a monster." a new voice said from behind them. Turning they saw a tall, lanky, white male with dirty looking jeans, white t-shirt, and a baseball cap.

"What's up guys?" Xander asked as he emerged from the bathroom and sat in the booth with his friends.

"What did you mean that it was a monster?" Johnathon asked.

"Just forget him." Cindy said as she looked at the man in distaste. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"The hell I don't!" the man growled. "I was there when that monster took that boy. It was...it was one of the most horrible things I ever did see."

"How did this monster look?" Tara asked.

"It was about 6' 2" , it was a greenish, brownish color and it had big wings like a a bat or a dragon." he told them.

"So when was de last time anyone heard of dis monster?" Kendra asked.

"Well according to my police scanner." he said as he pulled it from his belt clip. "The last time anyone had heard from it, it was in Kissel County."

"Thank you sir." Tara said as he walked off. Then she turned to the waitress. "Could you just get us all, some burgers and fries to go?" she asked. Cindy nodded and walked back to the kitchen.

As Cindy came with their orders the gang was about to walk out the door, when the man from before stopped them.

"I see that you kids want to hunt this thing." the man said with a stern look on his face. "If you're going to do that then take this." he said as he passed Johnathon the police scanner.

"It might just come in handy." he said as he walked off into the night.

"How did he know what we were going to do?" Johnathon asked.

"It doesn't matter." Tara said as she dug into her back pocket and pulled out a cellphone. "Amy call Giles and discribe the monster to him. Hopefully he'll come up with something and tell us what we're going up against."

"So where are we going now?" Xander asked Tara as Amy started to call Giles.

"We're going to Kissel county." she replied as she got into her car.

"So how did everything go?" a woman asked the stranger as he walked down a dark alley.

"It was a piece of cake." he replied in a new york accent, as he transformed into Whistler.

"But why did you want me to help those kids out?" Whistler asked.

"Because..." the woman said as she stepped out of the darkness, revealing herself to be Cordelia. "they are going to need to be prepared for the things to come."

"How far are we from Kissel County?" Tara asked as they continued to drive down East 9.

"Well according to this map... it should be another ten miles." Johnathon informed her.

"Hey what is dat man doing on top of dat bus?" Kendra asked as she pointed further down the road. As everyone looked up they all saw a figure crouching down on top of a bus in the distance.

As Tara drove closer to the bus, she switched on her high beams. As the light illuminated the figure on top of the bus he stood up and all of their eyes widened in silent horror. Because what they saw was a figure in a dark trench coat with huge bat wings sticking out of it's back.

TBC...

Please review...

A/N I wanted the characters that people paid little attention to in the show to finally get some spot light. So be prepared to see their characters step up. Also guess what movie I'm about to cross over with.