After a quick lunch, it was time for more research. Wesley headed back to the library to try to research the Schwannstein family a bit more, and possibly the Thackerys while he was there. Pyro called his friends, and could be heard teasing someone named Bobby about a girl named Marie, who apparently had a big brother or maybe uncle named Logan who Pyro said 'would not approve the moves' and warned Bobby to 'beware of sharp claws, man. No, I will not call you ice man. And if he catches you flirting, I may have to call you my late best friend.'
Faith trudged up to the library to flip through old books that smelled like stiff leather and dust. Maybe there would be something about the Door, or the crazy vampire woman. She'd even settle for things about the giant turtle. Looking around the library, Faith sighed, and moved towards the area that held journals. Maybe Tanya's uncle Eli Miller's stuff would be easier to read… and probably in modern English, and it would have the best chance to talk about the giant turtle. Unless there were journals from Lorrie's former Watcher, that could mention the turtle too…
"Do you think we could talk them into agreeing that more target practice is a better way to spend our time than searching old books for some clue that might or might not be there?" Lorrie asked.
"Unless Wesley's changed a lot, not today. Maybe tomorrow, if nobody finds anything and we fidget and ask annoying questions," Faith paused, considering the Potential. "You happen to know if the guy who taught you before had anything wrote in his books about the giant turtle?"
"It's worth looking. I know back before, when I was in elementary, some of the kids had stories. I thought they were the hooked hitchhiker killer type, only with a giant turtle eating people who went swimming alone in the river. My mom told me that turtles didn't get that big, and it was probably just the currents getting people. She also said to stop watching Hammer horror films, there was no such thing as vampires, magic wasn't real, and that being a Girl Scout would help me make friends." With those words, Lorrie moved towards the new additions, the books taken from the apartment where she'd lived before.
Opening another of the Eli Miller books, Faith asked, "Lorrie? The Girl Scout thing… did it help?"
"Not really. But the cookies were awesome."
Faith looked up when the floorboards creaked, and she gave a little wave at Pyro. "Hey Lorrie, you have company."
Pyro sauntered over, and looked at the table, "Newer books, written in English? Much better."
"How'd your call back to your friends go?" Lorrie asked, leaning over to give Pyro a hug and a kiss on his cheek even as she blushed a dark pink.
"Apparently, the Professor thinks there's either a good sized group of mutants all flocking together near the river or one really big mutant lurking outside of town," Pyro gave a small shudder. "I'm all for a bit of togetherness, but…"
Lorrie blinked, "How big is big?"
Faith swore, showing off the few words that she'd picked up in some demon languages, Sumerian, Arabic, French and German. She couldn't ask for directions or order a sandwich, but she could curse someone's entrails to rot and seven generations of their descendants to be malformed, with bones filled with worms while also accusing them of enjoying buggering donkeys and crocodiles.
"Just as a guess, but that probably wasn't anything nice or polite. Apart from corrupting our sheltered ears, what prompted that?" Pyro was staring at her.
"A really big mutant that tends to be near the river, but is always outside of town? Isn't it obvious?" Faith looked at them, unable to quite smother her growl at their baffled expressions. "It's that over-sized vampire eating snapping turtle! The one that's about the size of a Volkswagen Bug? Eats sheep and vampires? Any of this sounding familiar?"
"I thought you were calling it a demon turtle?" Lorrie asked.
"Tanya told us about Binky the mutant deer, so we already know that there can be mutants that didn't come from human parents. If there's human mutants, and a mutant deer, why would a mutant turtle be so hard to accept?"
"Sounds like a rock band or something. Mutant Turtles, on tour now…" Pyro shook his head.
Lorrie giggled.
"The good news is that if it's a mutant turtle, then it's probably the only one like it. And if it eats vampires, it's probably willing to eat humans too. If it were a demon, then there'd probably be more of them out somewhere, possibly a lot more," Faith explained.
"Being a turtle, it probably wouldn't work to try to convince it to live in harmony with humans, or to use its mutation for good," Pyro mused, clearly thinking about something that he'd heard before. Likely from his old school, where he'd felt that the idea was to keep your head down, smile, and play nice with the humans.
"Of course, it's just as dangerous as a mutant turtle as it would be as a demon turtle," Faith sighed, and looked back at the book, where the letters all blurred for a few moments. She wondered if Mellie had been warning her about the turtle, or if there would be something else in her future.
End part 57.
After lunch the next day, Tanya managed to persuade Wesley that the teens should go outside and do something to burn off their energy instead of fidgeting in the library. Faith wasn't certain, but whatever Tanya had whispered had taken a while and had left Wesley looking all sorts of flustered…. Maybe it was better not to know.
"So, mutated wildlife…" Pyro shook his head, "Unbelievable… except that they're out there. You said there's a blue deer, and there's the giant turtle…"
"It makes me wonder what else might be out there," Lorrie offered. "What about telekinetic squirrels, or teleporting cats? Purple cows, or flying monkeys?"
Mort frowned, and after a few moments murmured, "Sabertooth? He's awfully quiet most of the time, and he doesn't react the same way as most people. Is he a human that mutated towards cat, or is he the most human looking cat in the world?"
"Cats can be pretty nasty. Have you run into the feral barn cats some places have? Or watched them with a cornered mouse?" Lorrie gave an exaggerated shiver. "They're cute and furry to lull us into complacency. Once they get thumbs, they'll try to take over the world… unless they get distracted by a shiny toy, catnip, or a nice sunbeam."
"Good thing then that they don't have thumbs," Pyro snickered. "Aren't there already enough people trying to take over the world?"
With a shrug, Faith commented, "Most of the ones that I've ran into with evil plans have been all for destroying the world, not taking it over. Except for Dick… Richard Wilkins. He was going to take over a nice section with good weather and destroy a lot of the rest. Before you ask, I've got no idea why destroying the world seems so popular. Or if the right plural is apocali or apocalypses. Or something else."
"School has clearly failed us on that point," Lorrie murmured.
"What's the official Slayer stance on mutants? Do either of you know?" Pyro asked in what had to be an effort to stop thinking about the plural of apocalypse and what sort of experiences would even make someone consider the questions.
"My Watcher, the one that just died, thought that mutants were some big, scary united evil danger, though he never really explained why. 'I'm the Watcher and I'm telling you that they're dangerous' doesn't really explain a lot," Lorrie offered.
Faith swallowed down her comments on Lorrie's recently killed Watcher. Just because he'd died a horrible death when he wouldn't tell the vampire what she wanted to know didn't clear him of everything else he'd done, and she'd though he sounded like a prejudiced, arrogant jerk. Instead, she focused on Mellie. "My first Watcher said that I should remember that mutants are people, so each one's going to react differently, don't let the demons and vampires eat them, and to always remember that the news is biased. More recently, I learned that some Watchers had found out that animals and demons could have mutants too, so I should be really careful. Just because most mutants aren't a danger to me doesn't mean that a particular one might not be a problem, and then there's the whole issue of demon mutants… demons are already problems most of the time. Goes along with the eating people thing that so many of them tend to do. And apparently, a mutant turned into a vampire keeps all their mutant abilities."
"Anything else different about a mutant vampire?" Pyro asked.
"The ones that I've run into felt stronger than they should have for their age, but… some mutants are stronger than ordinary humans. Maybe they were stronger mutants. A stronger mutant would make a stronger vampire, if they could catch and turn them."
Pyro considered that, and shuddered, "If I'm dead, cremate me. Before anything can eat me or walk around with my body."
Faith nodded, remembering having a similar, if more tearful, discussion with Mellie. "Just as long as you don't expect me to go the whole medieval route on you. You know, decapitation, incineration, scatter the ashes. Kills almost anything dead."
Mort pulled her into a hug, and whispered, "I wouldn't ask that of you. Having someone cremate us after making damn sure that we're really dead and not just injured will do."
"Yeah, that does sound pretty fatal to just about everything," Pyro whispered, his eyes wide. "If they weren't already dead, the beheading would probably do it. If that didn't – and is there anything besides a cockroach that can live without its head? If it survived beheading, fire's good at making things dead."
"The McCoren's for you tomorrow," Faith declared. "It's a big demon compendium, with more demons than you ever want to meet. What they look like, where they live, what they eat, and how to kill them. Beheading doesn't always work."
Pyro made a strange noise. By mutual consent, they dropped the subject of demons and beheading and turned to speculation about what other sort of mutant wildlife could be out there beyond a blue deer and a giant vampire eating turtle. Pyro was in favor of a pink elephant out there somewhere, possibly with a travelling circus… or maybe a flying elephant. Lorrie was hoping for flying monkeys, or maybe a purple one. Mort mentioned running into some scary large bats down near Mexico, and Faith had run into some very large alligators that were held by some vampires along Louisiana.
By the time they went inside for dinner, they had reached the levels of absurdity that meant they were tossing out ideas that had been made into bad movies and cartoons. Giant insects. Killer tomatoes. Oversize rubber piranha. Skinny talking moose and flying squirrels. Funky carnivorous plants. Tap-dancing mice. Spiders that put words into their webs. Talking furry animals with caption-changing shirts. A singing octopus. Purple cats with two tails each. A talking cowardly green tiger. Sparkly horses in rainbow colors with little symbols on their rumps. Blue birds that could make you happy or possibly sad – they did call depression 'the blues', after all.
The good mood fell apart when they resumed looking through books of demons, magical artifacts, and vampires. Pyro was making noises as he read the McCoren's Compendium. Faith and Lorrie were looking for the hat vamp and the scary June Cleaver-like vampire woman, though Faith had a suspicion about who hat-vamp might be.
"So, how often do Watchers manage to die from natural causes instead of demons?" Pyro whispered to Faith, trying to keep his voice too low for Tanya to hear.
Her mind flashed to Mellie, and to Lorrie's jerk of a Watcher, and Faith shuddered, "Not often enough. But some of them manage, which is better than Slayers. Slayers don't get to old age. Most Slayers don't live long enough to take a legal drink… not that that stops us. Most Watchers figure that if we're old enough to risk being horribly killed, we can have a beer or some vodka now and then. Or some other booze."
"Just when I start to think my life sucks, you go and remind me that it could be much worse," he sighed.
Flipping the page, Pyro blinked, "Is it horribly wrong that I think this one's almost hot looking?"
Mort leaned over and his jaw dropped. "What's Mystique doing in a book of demons?"
"Maybe she's a demon instead of a mutant?"
"Or maybe mutants have been around for longer than people thought."
"That's kind of creepy," Mort shook his head. "Back to looking for information on the magic door to tell us how to keep the vampire woman's evil plan from succeeding. And having seen her, it has to be an evil plan. Probably neatly pressed and well dressed, but evil."
Faith found herself thinking that their vampire June Cleaver would have probably got along pretty well with Dick. She'd even gone about fussing with her minions' wardrobes to make them fit her standards better, kind of like the way he'd kept buying her pretty sundresses and nice sandals. They'd have probably got along pretty good, unless her plan had clashed with his plans. Then again, that would have been just too much.
End part 58.