CHAPTER TWO
When Buffy glanced at the entity known as the First, it was doing something that the Slayer would have never expected. Its mouth dropped open at the sight of newcomers joining in the attack against its vampire army.
"Well, this is truly something unexpected," the Buffy-clothed First entity huffed.
From what Buffy could see of the apparition, who glared at the new group with obvious distain, was less than amused by their arrival. The fact, that it had stopped trying to distract her while the vampires were trying to eat her gave an indication of just how serious this new threat was being taken. There was real anger in the First's voice when it addressed the newcomers.
Faith had thrown the scythe to Kennedy who, after dispatching three Turok-Han had thrown it back to Buffy. The latest undead creature trying to kill her had thrown her into a wall before she could use her sword to destroy it. The ancient vampire was bigger than the others and with a start, she realized that it had been a smaller, faster demons that attacked earlier. That meant that the larger, more powerful ones like the one she fought before, were coming, or that that particular Turok-Han was one of their greatest warriors. That made sense because these vampires, although extremely vicious, weren't as powerful as the first one Buffy fought. Maybe they were weak from hunger. Who knew?
Buffy could feel herself healing and her 'self' becoming stronger to meet the challenge. Faith was probably experiencing the same although she had her doubts about the minis feeling the same. They were just–young.
"Why are you here?" the First had growled at the tall woman, who for the life of Buffy, showed all of the signs of being a kind of humanoid succubus.
In fact. Buffy's slayer sense was shifting, almost as it seemed confused by what it was sensing. Part of it was screaming 'vampire', the other part 'human'. Another part of her was unsure of what the woman really was. In short, she had no idea what how to categorize the woman the First was growling at. Whatever else she was, the mature woman was beautiful, in a dark and deadly sort in a way that Faith could be if she tried. The woman pulled out two long black blades from seemingly nowhere and allowed each to touch the ground. As they did so, the scythe in Buffy's hand vibrated. It seemed to want to pull her towards the woman as if sensing a threat that demanded to be destroyed. Was this woman some type of vampire or demon hybrid?
'Just great,' she thought. 'More enemies to slay'.
But the First seemed pissed, very pissed at the newcomer, especially when the woman had said, "we disagree with your plans. Granted, you're amusing in a dark, twisted, evil sort of way, but you don't know when to stop. That's why we're here."
The evil entity, now completely ignoring Buffy and her group for the first time since the battle started, was furious. "If you think you can stop me, then you're fools." it roared.
"No," the woman had countered. "We're Addams."
Buffy Summers saw Mortica Addams raised the twin blades and stare for a moment at two younger people accompanying her–her children, perhaps? The young man carried a huge double-bladed axe and glared murderously at the incoming vampires with a look that would make Hannibal Lector proud. The other young woman, twenty-something year's old, held twin swords very much like her mother's, but the weapons were curved shaped more like katanas. Like the others, these blades were pure black with silver inlay, and were very likely mystically enhanced.
The woman lifted her head and said to the two younger members, "remember your training. No dallying, there's too many opponents. Miscellaneous accidents with the young slayers or their friends are not permitted under any circumstance," she ordered in a manner that tolerated absolutely no disobedience. Not that they would do anything like that under these circumstances. Besides they were grown now, and she really didn't need to remind them, but old habits died hard. What was a mother to do?
There was a gleam in the woman's eyes that reminded Buffy of herself when she was in the midst of her bloodlust, killing vampires. "Consider it an alliance for now," the elder woman ordered in that oh-so quietly dangerous sexy voice.
Without hesitation, both of the young man and woman jumped into the midst of the undead and started butchering everything within reach.
The matron turned to an old woman who reminded Buffy of some sort of crazed witch and said, "grandmama, go help in the school. Lurch go with her. Protect the family. Protect the alliance."
The huge almost zombie looking giant in a butler's uniform no less, nodded and said, "yes," with a voice that was unbelievably deep and lifted his huge oversized mace into a defensive position. Buffy didn't want that thing swinging in her direction
"This is better than I hoped for!" The old woman began cackling as she headed towards the school hallway where Willow and company had established the second and last line of defense. Lurch followed quickly for one of his size.
"Thing, you're with me," the woman said and to Buffy's shock a disembodied hand ran (or rather scampered) up onto her shoulder and latched on to her dress. For the life of Buffy, the hand looked as if it was surveying the battle and the woman. The zombie-hand thing sported a partial glove with small dagger like needles.
"First, you won't win," the woman answered in an almost musical yet very sinister tone. "We won't allow it."
With those final words, she moved to support her young ones, the blades dispatching Turok-Han left and right with ruthless efficiency.
Buffy knew that she wouldn't have to worry about this Addams family safety.
"Your presence here is a mistake, Mortica," the First screeched. "You won't make a difference. I will see you all rot in this cave just like her," it said, pointing at Buffy. "I am forever," the First-Buffy turned to glare at the First Slayer, "and no one will stop me."
Kennedy was thankful for the quick relief. Some unknowns had entered the fray and she was fighting alongside of a young man close to her age, maybe a few years older. She couldn't tell. He was obviously human, and somewhat plump but he moved with a deadly, if somewhat crude grace. It was immediately obvious that his plumpness was due to muscle and not merely fat. The new slayer had initially assumed that he was a liability in this kind of fight. He was foolish to come here and now he would have to fend for himself because she didn't have time to protect fools who didn't know better than to get into a war they couldn't possibly survive in, except as cannon fodder.
But looks were deceiving as she quickly discovered. His movements, although crude and graceless to her eyes as any male she'd ever seen, were nevertheless extremely effective. What she originally dismissed as fat was in fact muscle. Every stroke of his custom-made axe produced mayhem and destruction and he wasted no effort in his attacks. In fact he was as good as Xander, probably better despite being a mere human, one which hadn't worked with Slayers for years. The largest vampire she'd seen yet had rushed him only to be sliced into bits before crumbling into dust with the young man using a style that belied his seemingly crude technique. The axe itself was a thing of beauty. A vicious looking thing, it was made of iron with a silver coating. There were markings etched into it, runes of some type she guessed, and Kennedy's jealousy flared as she glanced lustfully at a weapon, one she could easily use at the moment instead of him.
But a quick glance from him told her everything she needed to know about the huge, hulking young man. He considered her inferior and how dare he imply with a mere shifting of his eyes that she was less a warrior than he was!
Her inner slayer sense flared and screamed a warning a second before she was frozen in shock and felt an unimagined wave of pain. Instantly she understood that her anger against the oversized man had made her forget to mind her surroundings. One of the vampires slipped through her guard and had grabbed her weapon just as she had pulled back to strike at another. As a result she was slightly off balanced when the attack came.
Kennedy's momentary distraction was all it took for the second vampire she never even noticed, to ram his claw talon through her back pushing her right kidney through her stomach before it pulled back and clamped on to her vertebrae, snapping the backbone in two but still held onto the broken bones in a death grip. It was ensuring that none of its brethren would snatch it meal from it.
"Oh," she whispered before everything faded to darkness.
Eyes glazed, she slumped down. She was unconscious with the vampire still firmly holding on to her mangled spine, pulled her back. Its fangs clamped onto her paling throat and the creature fed greedily and as quickly as possible before the others could get to the body and try to steal its meal.
Smelling fresh blood, several other Turok-Han rushed towards the impeding meal trying to rip the meal from the vampire that had made the kill, only to be engaged by the two Addams siblings and an enraged Buffy.
The Slayer started swinging the scythe at a speed so fast that any normal person would only see the weapon as a blur. In her peripheral vison and to her surprise, the strange dark-haired younger woman had matched her ferocity with her own blades that sung with the wind. The unknown was strong, had excellent technique, and was obviously very experienced in the use of her weapons. In Buffy's opinion, the stranger was as good as Faith on her best day but that had to be impossible. She wasn't one of the potentials that Buffy knew of and the unknown's style was ample evidence that she had far too much experience killing things. She moved and felt like a Slayer, a very experienced one at that; but that was impossible.
"What are you?" demanded Buffy as both of them found themselves back to back against a group of encroaching enemies.
"Isn't it obvious?" the young woman retorted. Her voice was as calm as the sea and as cold as the wind.
It was clear that the stranger wasn't going to answer her question. Buffy's first impressions concerning this newcomer weren't favorable, not in the least.
Two hours earlier
This was the first time in Wednesday Addams' living memory that she seen the family being led to war by her parents and it was as exhilarating as it was disturbing. People who didn't know her family always assumed that the Addams and Frump clans were war-mongers. This was far from the truth. They had a live and let live mentality. Ask any vampire, or demon, or deranged human that crossed their path. If they were cool and sensible, the Addams family didn't have a problem with them. If they threatened the family, well…
Sure there had been 'disputes' from time to time, but nothing like this had ever occurred in the family historical records. Wednesday and her older brother Pugsley followed their parents Gomez and Mortica. Everyone had their weapons at the ready. Uncle Fester and his crazed but loving and surprisingly (sometimes) gentle wife Dementia, were close behind while Grandmama and Lurch, the family butler and close family friend were bringing up the rear.
This adventure started when Grandmama almost suffered catatonia when the vision had first hit her. "The family is in danger!" she kept screaming. "Evil is making its move!"
At first, Wednesday wasn't overly impressed, and it took strength to keep her from rolling her eyes. Evil was always raising its head in Sunnydale. That wasn't anything unusual. Hey, that's what evil did.
Big deal. It was easy to understand what was consistent.
The family had almost interfered when the dumb blond god Glory threatened to destroy everything, but Grandmama had forbid any interference. Things turned out okay and Grandmama made a wonderful dragon wing soup after uncle Fester and her father caught the thing that had come through the dimensional rift. Darkness and evil were always testing itself in that little town. It made for a wonderful vacation spot if the family had moved there. It would have been anything but dull!
But the forces of darkness had really overdone it this time. This time, the magnitude of this threat had forced her parents to immediately investigate. What they saw coming had disgusted them. This in and of itself was a warning sign both children couldn't possibly ignore. The family usually kept an eye on such activities, however, they hadn't gotten a hint of what was happening until it was almost too late. Some powerful force had kept them in the dark and that alone was a cause for worry. Of course, it was purposely kept from them on the off chance that the family might disagree with the enormous scale of evil's intentions.
That was evil's problem. It didn't know when to stop.
Sunnydale was about to become ground zero for a major apocalypse–again. And it wasn't like the other near-Earth ending scenarios that occurred about once every year for the last few years in that town. In its own way, it was as bad as Sleepy Hollow although that town, evil was in rest mode at the moment
In many ways, Sunnydale was so appealing to the Addams' somewhat dark nature that that the Addams family thought of moving there, but the lingering effect of Mayor Wilkins had soured the overall 'flavor' of Sunnydale.
Personally, Wednesday thought the reason that apocalypses happened so consistently had something to do with sun spots. She's always believed this since she was young, and no one would convince her otherwise until she became an adult. She knew she was being stubborn, but in her defense, in her earlier years, her older brother had been irritating her, while young Pubert was entering his murderous stage, so everyone had to be on their toes. Therefore, he received far too much attention. Her response was for her to become more contrary than normal which was her own way of aggravating the family to gain attention, to let them know she still existed, and to avoid resorting to some real family bloodletting.
Her parents and uncle found it so amusing and that aggravated her even more.
However, that was years ago, and Wednesday had to admit (forced really) that she was a mature woman of twenty-two now and very much like her mother in looks and attitude. Murderous rage had matured into cold calculation with a twinge of (dare she believe it?) mercy. She still enjoyed her feelings of contempt for Sarah Miller. Her dreams of tormenting her still made her smile after so many years.
Wednesday Addams had a long memory.
The Addams woman began to tolerate irritating things much more. She hated that and tried to resist, but maturity was crippling her. Pretty soon, she'd fall in love and marry (she would pity the man–unless he was like her father) and have children of her own, raising a new generation of Addams' to experience the world.
Watching her little brother's murderous antics reminded her of herself at that young age. His killer instinct was well honed, and she remembered the early days when she felt it in her best interests to remove him from the family. Those were fun times even if her little Pubert managed to survive most of her and Pugsley's 'attention'.
Both Wednesday and her older brother felt the touch of fear and anger emanating from both parents which was so unlike them. The full magnitude of the danger facing the family was made crystal clear when her mother hastily pulled out the black-light swords from the forbidden chest. In a house that was a museum, the swords were one of their greatest treasures. There were two pair, each hand-crafted by Aunt Toni-The-Truly-Mad Addams. That woman had spent seven whole nights enchanting the swords before placing them in the chest that was never to be opened unless it was an apocalyptic emergency–like now. Family rumors hinted (it was never proven in a court of law) that she had poured her own essence and that of her children into the weapons, which made sense since they had all acted like zombies for the rest of their lives after the ritual. Like they said, she really was mad and sloppy, too. She should have used someone else's life force in Wednesday's opinion.
Her mother had given Wednesday the curved pair to use as she saw fit on this special occasion. Dutifully, she made a slight slash across her palm drawing blood which she allowed to drip onto the swords. Both of the weapons laughed with joy, she noted as the blood was absorbed into the enchanted silver-impregnated steel.
Typical.
It was always about the blood. Her mother did the same things with her own and those two swords screamed, "mommy! Apparently, the blades were happy to get out and do something. Again, it was typical. Toni-The-Truly-Mad Addams' children were crazy, too.
Wednesday was just glad her mother hadn't given her those particular swords instead. She would have been irritated. Better insane laughter than "mommy!" being whispered every few seconds.