Xander shut down the engine and stepped out of his car while George closed the barn door. He'd never been in a barn before and had only seen them on TV, so seeing one converted into a metal workshop with enough room to easily park both their vehicles was pretty amazing, but what really caught his eye was…
"Dude, you're an artist," Xander said, examining an old silver hubcap that was hanging on the wall, the metal hammered and polished into a replica of a turtle shell, next to a heavy duty spring from a truck that gleamed in the light as half way up its length it became a steel snake looking ready to strike. There were a number of pieces of art made from common items transforming into animals, but those two really drew the eye.
"Thanks," George said with a wide smile. "It's always nice when people appreciate my work."
"Making silver knives must be old hat to you," Xander said.
"Not really," George said, "I usually use less expensive metals. Never had any requests for silver."
"Well you do create art, and I mostly deal with practical weapons," Xander said.
George nodded. "And silver works best against undead I'm guessing."
"Not really," Xander said. "Zombies just need a sharp edge and vampires need wood or decapitation. Silver is best for demons of one type or another so I usually try to include it to cover all the bases."
"You've dealt with demons?" George asked, surprised.
"Well, as I mentioned, vampires are demons, but that's more of a possessing corpse type, but yeah I've had to put down a number of demons," Xander explained.
"I've got some pretty solid knives and an axe I can coat in silver in about an hour," George said, "they're practical tools, not fancy."
"And that's exactly what I need," Xander said.
"I'll have to see what silver I can dig up. Worse comes to worse I have some fancy silverware passed down to me I can sacrifice a few pieces of."
"No need, I have a couple of solid silver candelabras I picked up from a vampire ritual," Xander told him. "Vampires are really melodramatic and like to go old school with things."
"I only need a small amount of silver since we're just coating them," George said as Xander popped the trunk of his car and quickly located one. "You got the Necronomicon in there?" he asked as he saw the stacks of leather bound tomes.
Xander chuckled and passed him the silver candle holder. "Nah, but a lot of my job is research to figure out what to kill and I'm trying to get into magic, at least enough for the clean and repair spells anyway."
George nodded. "You really are a practical kinda guy."
"I try to be," Xander said. "A mage hit my car with a clean and repair spell and it went from clunker to like it just came off the lot. I really want to learn those spells."
"I hear ya," George said, retrieving his axe from the truck. "You were pretty comfortable with my axe and I can just pick up another one from the hardware store."
"Do you need to fire up the forge?" Xander asked, eyes lighting up.
"Nope," George said with a grin, "the fastest way to coat them with silver is by electroplating. It'd take a lot longer to melt this down and coat them with it than an hour or two."
"A bit disappointing, I wanted to see how you actually made all this, but a lot more sensible."
"Watching stuff being made isn't all that entertaining," George said, "it's just a lot of heating stuff up and hitting it with a hammer, then comes hours of etching and polishing. There are probably people out there who can make a show of it but I'm not one." He pulled a tarp off a wheeled cart with an empty tank on top of it.
"I don't know, I watched some specials on woodworking that should have been as entertaining as watching paint dry, but were actually pretty fun," Xander said, watching the older man retrieve a couple of bottles of chemicals and an extension cord.
"Projects using wood take a lot less time," George said as he filled the tank. "Of course waiting for wood stain to dry is exactly as entertaining as watching paint dry, but the rest can be interesting. You do any work in woodshop at school?"
"My woodworking experience is mostly carving stakes," Xander admitted.
"Carving steaks... Wooden stakes," George realized. "I was thinking of meat for a moment, but you mean wooden stakes to use on vampires."
"We staked other things as well," Xander said. "Turns out a foot of sharpened oak inserted into the chest or eye stops more than just vampires."
"And you probably carved crosses on em, so if a vampire or demon tried to grab it, it'd burn their hand, right?" George asked as he plugged the tank into the extension cord.
"Why didn't we do that?" Xander asked himself. "We generally went through stakes pretty quickly, as they dusted with the vampires we staked, but taking a couple of extra minutes to engrave crosses on them would have come in handy now that I think about it."
"Huh," George said, surprised. "I always thought stakes were something you used over and over. Of course my knowledge of the subject comes from vampire movies where they often had to specially prepare all their tools, sprinkle them with holy water, maybe carve a rune or two in them." He dropped the candelabra in the tank and hung a plastic tray above it.
"No, just a knife and some wooden dowels," Xander said. "Everything a vampire has on them or in them, dusts when they do. Of course we killed at least three or four vampires most nights... So maybe vampire hunters who only deal with one or two a week do that." Xander walked over to his car and dug into the trunk.
"Getting some stakes?" George asked as he balanced the axe on its head in the tank with the handle sticking up.
"No, I've got a book on runes in here and I want to see if they have anything on carving them on weapons," Xander said. "Want me to grab a couple of stakes for you to look at?"
"If you don't mind," George said, carefully lowering a couple of knives into the tank so they didn't splash or knock over the axe, before flipping a switch on the side of the tank.
"I always keep a couple handy, because you never know when you're going to run into a vampire, they're like cockroaches," Xander said, coming up with a leather tome and a couple of wooden stakes.
George accepted the wooden stakes and looked them over as Xander cracked open the tome. "Huh, the point is a lot thinner and knife-like than I expected, but I guess you can't just sharpen them like a pencil."
"Goes in easier that way and if you glance off a rib it still has enough of a point to pierce the heart," Xander replied absently as he tried to puzzle out what he was reading, relying heavily on context to decode the old English prose.
"You'd get a lot better grip if you carved some cross hatching on the shaft," George said, stabbing the air with the stake, trying to get a feel for it. "Mind if I work on it?"
"Feel free, I've got more in the trunk," Xander said. "We mainly used grip tape if we expected rain. It's surprisingly handy."
"You use stakes like they were arrows, one and done," George said, "still trying to wrap my head around that." He secured the stakes in a couple of vices on a workbench.
Xander nodded. "If they were reusable we would have done a lot more with them."
"This is probably more like decorating a water balloon than making anything lasting," George said with a chuckle as he fired up a blow torch and ran the flame lightly across the stake to bring out the grain, "but let's see how pretty I can get them anyway."
"Now that I think about it, Kendra actually had a stake she used over and over that she called Mr. Pointy. Of course she was fast enough to stake a vamp and then pull it out before it could dust," Xander said with a smile, recalling the Jamaican Slayer.
"Think she could teach you the trick?" George asked.
"No, a vamp named Drucilla killed her," Xander said.
George winced.
"I think Buffy has Mr. Pointy now, but she doesn't use it because she doesn't want to lose it," Xander said.
"Lose a lot of vampire hunters?"
"Our town was created as a feeding ground for demons by the mayor," Xander said, "and vampire... Hunters have short lifespans at the best of times."
"Then why not call in the Justice League?" George asked.
"There was a spell on the town keeping us from knowing superheroes existed," Xander replied, writing down some notes, "so we had to do it ourselves unless we wanted to be nothing more than cattle."
"Jesus," George said. "I guess that explains why you were so casual about taking out the zombie." He examined the stakes and repositioned them in the vices.
"Pretty sure you could have handled him," Xander said. "Hell, anyone with a car could have just ran him over. Never dismiss vehicular manslaughter as a means of dealing with demons and undead, while it may be murder on your insurance rates, it cuts down on murder of anything else."
"Now that sounds like a quote," George said with a grin.
"Yeah, but it's one of mine," Xander replied. "I'm working on a lecture for dealing with the undead for the police departments I run across."
"Sounds like you should be part of the Justice League," George said as he worked on the hilt of the two stakes, slimming them down a bit to provide a better grip.
"I don't see running around beating up people who like to dress up in public as a career goal," Xander said, "not to mention the things I face don't get arrested, they get buried."
"Yeah, the heroes are really about taking them in alive, even when they shouldn't," George admitted, stabbing the air with one of the stakes to get a feel for the new grip.
"Thankfully no one really raises a fuss when you kill demons," Xander said, "or at least they haven't so far."
"Pretty sure you're safe on that front," George assured him, "even the pacifists don't complain about out right non-human monsters being put down. They're kinda iffy on aliens, but admit the need when there's an invasion."
"That's surprising," Xander said. "I'm used to most groups who cling to any one viewpoint to be kinda unreasonable about it."
"When you're looking at genocide most folks find at least a little reason to bend," George said, soaking a rag in something from an unmarked can.
"Seems like people might be a tad more sane not living in a town an immortal warlock set up to attract and feed demons," Xander said, "will wonders never cease?"
"I'm surprised you managed to reach puberty, much less survive considering where you grew up," George said. "Anything interesting in that book of yours?"
"Enochian runes," Xander replied. Seeing George's confused expression he explained, "It's an angelic language mainly used for protective enchantments and expelling demons."
"You've got a book written by angels?" George asked in disbelief.
"No. Well, probably not, I've got a lot of books. This book was written about using angelic runes by a scholar a couple of centuries ago," he replied. "It'd be better if it was written by a monk or a priest, the guy wanders off into flowery imagery a lot, like he's being paid by the word."
"Is he trying to explain something he doesn't have the words for or just wasting space?"
"No idea," Xander admitted. "It's probably going to take a couple dozen read throughs to figure it out because it could easily be both in different sections."
"Anything practical?" George asked, figuring a vampire hunter would be more in tune with that.
"Kind of," Xander said. "There is a very simple section on sanctuary runes which keeps malign influences and forces off a property, which I doubt would work on a car but might work on a motel room and a really confusing but interesting section on a simple rune that allows you to locate people you have an emotional investment in."
"So you just carve some symbols and boom?" George asked curiously.
"Not exactly," Xander said, "you have to carve them the right way with the right mindset and then boom."
"That sounds more believable," the older man said thoughtfully. "What kind of mindset are we talking here?"
"For the sanctuary runes you have to remember home, a place where you felt safe, which may or may not be the same place. Not sure about that or how it'd affect it," Xander admitted as he wrote out the rune in separate sections to show the order it had to be carved and showed George.
"A bit complex to do freehand, but like an eye in a pyramid," he noted as he rubbed wood stain into a stake with smooth strokes. "Easy to remember though."
"Yeah, eye top down, triangle top down around it, all clockwise from top," Xander agreed.
"Mind if I give it a try or is it going to do something funky if I screw it up?"
"It's pretty safe," Xander said. "Well, safe if you aren't trying to profane god by doing so, according to the author."
"Then I think we're good," George said. "Where should I put it?"
"Somewhere on the structure," Xander said. "I'd probably go with either in the center or next to the most used door, but that's just me."
"Let's go with one of the center posts," George decided, setting aside the second stake and grabbing a wood chisel.
Xander watched as George stepped up to one of the wooden support posts and closed his eyes, smiling at some distant memory before his hands moved, gently carving away smooth curls of wood without even looking and as the last line was etched, the quarter sized sigil glowed silver and something squealed loudly in the rafters, startling them both.
"What the fuck was that?!"
A small velvet bag fell from the rafters to crash onto the floor, smoke rising from it. The pair cautiously approached it and George poked it with his chisel, causing the bag to fall apart and revealing a dead rat and a number of herbs that slowly dissolved into ash.
"Shit, I guess she wasn't joking about cursing me," George said.
"Cursing you?" Xander asked, surprised that the rune had worked so well and on the first try at that.
"I dated a woman who was into the whole goth scene a number of years ago, but things didn't work out," George replied.
Xander winced. "I tend to avoid them, because the things they idolize are usually the things I hunt."
George nodded. "Yeah, and I would have avoided her too, but..."
Xander looked at him intently for a second. "Massive breasts?" he guessed.
"Nice sized, but the real draw was in the rear," George said wistfully.
"You were booty trapped," Xander said with a chuckle. "She probably would have caught me too."
Typing By: Abyssal Angel
Beta By: Abyssal Angel and Mist of Shadows