Inca Mummy Girl, Part 1
A/N: Disclaimer's in the first chapter. I am not trying to present Kendra as a bad person. She has been fed the Watcher Party Line all her life, and is thus very uncomplimentary towards the Scooby Gang.
(_)(_)(_)(_)(_)(_)
October 10
Friday afternoon saw the Scoobies, as well as the rest of their class, in the Sunnydale museum. The Scoobies lagged behind the rest of their class, talking quietly among themselves about their plans for that night and the next day.
They planned to stop patrolling earlier than usual that night, then get up earlier than usual and patrol near the bus stop in preparation for the first arrivals. The first of the foreign exchange students were scheduled to arrive via bus just after dawn. While the hour ought to protect the visitors by keeping most of the demon population at bay, none of the Scoobies was willing to take the chance.
After that, they planned to split up. Buffy and Giles would patrol the airport just outside of town, where some of the other students would be arriving. Willow would take her exchange student (one of the ones coming in on the dawn bus) home accompanied by Cordelia, and Xander and Jon would remain at the bus stop to make sure that the other students arriving via that means managed to survive long enough to be picked up by their hosts - and that said hosts weren't actually vampires or demons.
They'd all be pretty darn tired by the end of what would be a long day, but if they managed to keep the new arrivals alive, it would be worth it.
(_)(_)(_)
Unbeknownst to the Scoobies, while they were distracted in the museum, Sam Zabuto and Kendra were arriving in Sunnydale. Sam had arranged to rent an apartment, one of many that had changed hands numerous times over the years as renters fell prey to the nightlife.
Sam immediately sent Kendra out to familiarize herself with the town while he unpacked. He knew he would have to keep a fairly low profile until they were ready to confront Giles and his errant Slayer, as there was a chance that Giles would recognize him as a fellow Watcher. Kendra would be safer, as Giles was extremely unlikely to be on the lookout for another Slayer in town. Insofar as the Council had been able to tell, Giles remained unaware that another Slayer had been called. They presumed that Giles was assuming that Buffy hadn't been dead long enough to call another Slayer. So long as Kendra did not display her fighting prowess where Giles or his Slayer could see her, she would be able to remain incognito.
Kendra immediately began to walk Sunnydale's streets, familiarizing herself with the town's layout. She paid close attention to the location of the many cemeteries and prowled the docks extensively, aware that such a place was ideal for demon habitation. She also marked any abandoned buildings in her memory for further investigation come nightfall It was not prudent to check them out now, when the locals were out and about and would notice someone breaking and entering.
Towards the end of her familiarization tour, she ended up near the small Sunnydale Museum. She was just in time to observe a large number of teenagers exit the facility - among them a blonde girl that conformed to the description given to her of the previous Slayer.
Kendra made a moue of distaste. Going to a museum? Really? Why was the girl wasting valuable training time on frivolities? She was laughing and joking about with several other teenagers as if she hadn't a care in the world. It was disgusting. A Slayer's duty was a solemn one. They sacrificed so that others might live their lives normally, unaware of the dark, evil underbelly of the world. They did not traipse about like that!
Kendra could only assume that some or all of the teenagers Buffy was talking to were the ones she permitted to tag along behind her. Yet another thing Kendra disapproved of quite strongly. Only a Slayer had the tools with which to combat the demons that wandered their world. To permit anyone else to put their nose into the situation was tantamount to committing premeditated murder in her eyes. Mere normal humans could not hope to contend with vampires, let alone the other demons that stalked the night and hunted humans as prey.
Kendra followed the large group of teenagers at a distance, careful to keep Buffy in her general line of sight without actively looking like she was following or watching her and her followers. Observation of the failed Slayer was, after all, one of her mandates for this assignment, so that the Council could figure out the appropriate course of action to follow in order to deal with Buffy.
When the group of teens Buffy was palling around with were met by Giles, Kendra veered off, keeping out of Giles' sight, just in case. Her Watcher had told her that Giles was unlikely to perceive her as a Slayer unless she performed Slayer feats in his presence, but Kendra was taking no chances. After all, her Watcher did not know what, if any, allies Giles had among the Watchers that might have informed him of the goings-on that august body presided over.
(_)(_)(_)
"We're being watched. Again." Jon murmured to the group when Giles met them to dive them back to Buffy's house.
"Oh? Any idea who, or where?" Buffy wanted to know, trying to peer around them without appearing to do so.
"Human, I think. At least, I'm not picking up on any obvious demons in our immediate vicinity." Jon said. "Whoever it is is being careful to either stay out of sight or not garner our attention. Makes it harder to figure out who it is."
In this particular case, picking up on the fact that they were being watched had more to do with Jon's gut instincts than it did his senses. He'd been feeling eyes on his back for a while, since they'd left the museum. He'd learned to trust that sense a long time ago. Or, well, Jack had, which was really the same damn difference. Jon wasn't about to ignore that sort of thing, especially not here.
"Maybe Spike's got someone who can stand daylight keeping an eye on us?" Buffy offered. "Wouldn't be the first time something like that was done, I bet."
"You'd be right." Giles agreed. "Court Masters frequently use other demons, and occasionally favored, trusted humans, to do their dirty work during the daylight hours. Spike certainly seems flexible and adaptable enough to use humans if the opportunity presented itself."
"Oh, goodie. So, anyone getting snoopy about us and what we're doing is to be eyed with great suspicion. Not that we'd be likely to do otherwise, but ... yeah." Buffy said with a sigh.
Patrol that night didn't produce much of anything in the way of demons to fight. The vampire population continued to either not be being expanded, or being expanded in a very cagey manner, which meant no vamps rising in the cemeteries. They only ran into one fairly minor demon that needed an ass-kicking that night, which made it all the easier to call it quits early in preparation for the next day.
(_)(_)(_)
Kendra, unaware of the Scoobies' plans, could only watch in utter horror as the group barely paid lip service to controlling the nightlife population in the town. They only chased down one demon! Kendra was painfully aware that there were a lot more demons than that in this town, thanks to the Hellmouth, and she couldn't begin to understand why Buffy wasn't raiding every demon stronghold in town from dusk to dawn every night. It was her duty! The only reason Kendra herself wasn't doing likewise that night was because she needed at least one night to familiarize herself with the night traffic in town before she went on the offensive.
At dawn, she reported to her Watcher, her dismay at Buffy's abrogation of her duty clear.
"It's horrifying. I don't understand it at all. She did practically nothing all night. She didn't even patrol the entire town like she ought - she only did one small section of it!" Kendra told her watcher. "And she was more interested in goofing off with those civilians that tag along behind her than doing anything she ought to be doing. It's horrifying. How could she *do* this?" she wanted to know.
Sam sighed. "This is what happen when a Potential is not found and trained, Kendra." He told her. "They do everything wrong. The biggest mystery is not that she's doing it wrong, but that she has survived this long. She ought to have died long since - long before the prophecy that temporarily caught her. I truly don't understand how she survived the Hemery situation, never mind anything since. Now, what did you observe of her followers?"
"They are nothing." Kendra declared. "Callow teenagers with no skills to save them. Only one of them seems at all remarkable, and then only because his senses seem to be unusually sharp - he seemed to pick up on the one demon they encountered as quickly as Buffy did."
Sam hmmm'd. "Very well. Patrol tonight, and observe them if you encounter them. We need as much data as we can get before we confront them."
"Yes sir." Kendra told him.
(_)(_)(_)
Unfortunately, that night had not been quite as uneventful as everyone thought it had been.
Kendra had spent time around the docks. This had garnered the attention of the vampire guards keeping watch over Spike's Court lair. They, as per his instructions, immediately informed him and then everyone vacated the premises, just in case.
Fortunately, Spike had had time to set up a secondary Court location in an immense old mansion in town. It was not quite as ideal as the warehouse, but it would work.
Spike sent Lucas out immediately after dark, with the assignment to find and watch the girl that had been spotted prowling around the docks.
"Find out who she is, and what she's up to." He commanded Lucas. "And don't get your sorry ass killed in the process."
Lucas had obeyed Spike's commands with the same sort of success he'd enjoyed tailing Buffy. Moreso, actually. Because this girl didn't have someone with disturbingly preternatural hearing (for a human, anyway) to forewarn her of someone's presence. It had made the girl ridiculously easy to tail. Unfortunately, he was forced to return to the mansion before dawn, so he did not manage to confirm Kendra's identity, at least that particular night. He was only able to tell Spike that she seemed to be inordinately interested in the Slayers' doings.
But by far more alarming was something that the Scoobies missed, thanks to calling it quits early that night. Shortly after they had gone home for the night, a couple of the biggest troublemakers in the high school broke into the museum, intent on stealing some of the valuables within. In the process of their raid, one of them disturbed one of the mummy exhibits, succeeding in breaking the seal on a jar that a mummy from the Incan Empire was holding.
He did not live to regret his mistake. Within moments of the jar's seal being broken, the mummy awoke. She pulled the boy into her coffin and sucked him dry in a move that was eerily similar to that displayed in the Mummy movie series by Imhotep, just without the sandstorm effects.
With the boy drained dry, the mummy climbed out of its coffin. It peeled off its outer wrappings, revealing a young-looking, beautiful, dark-haired girl. She quickly stripped the now-mummified boy's body of its clothing and put it on herself before slipping out of the museum.
A few minutes after she had woken and left, another Inca Empire mummy nearby came to life. This one was male. He blinked about the room for a moment before checking the coffin the girl had risen from. Finding the desiccated remains of the boy, he left to search for his charge.
The female mummy made short work of getting out of town, knowing that her guard would follow her in short order and attempt to force her back into her coffin. That, she wanted no part of. She wanted to live, and intended to do so. But first, she needed another supply of life-force, and then clothes fit for a female and her size, as she was currently swimming in her borrowed clothing.
She managed to make it well out of town in the depths of the night. By sheer happenstance, she managed to make it as far as the last gas station outside of town, a frequent stop for the busses that came in and out of town, as the drivers were uneasy spending any more time than absolutely necessary in Sunnydale, even if they didn't know why.
The bus that would arrive in Sunnydale just at dawn was currently at that gas station. The female mummy made her way to the bathroom, and waited for a female of the right size to be in there alone long enough for her to suck the female dry. That fortunately did not take all that long. The female mummy quickly disposed of the body in the dumpster at the back of the gas station, then boarded the bus, studying the documentation she'd taken off of her victim to learn her victim's name, where the girl had been going, and who might be expecting her there.
She was not well-pleased to find her victim had been heading for Sunnydale. Still, it was better than nothing, and she could always slip away if it looked like her guard was going to find her.