21 Watcher Street

The force of the primal slayer was too strong for anything that was Becky to come to the surface. All she knew was there were vampires out there, hotspots of pain in her perception, and she had a job to do. Ignoring the protests of her friends, the Slayer took off, and ran to kill what vampires she could find. She tore through the graveyards, and at last was sated enough to rest a minute.

I can't describe what it was like to have the force of the slayer inside me all at once. It was too much, too powerful, and there was too little of me there. I can only remember what happened, and how it seemed at the time. I thought a little bit about my friends, and that I was hungry, so I went to Lenny's. Luckily, Byron and Adrian were there already. There was meat with them. Alive-meat, that the Slayer normally wouldn't have thought twice about, but there was enough of me there to get that it was odd. Odder still is that it was talking. It was a talking, foulmouthed, Roma rabbit. Adrian seemed comfortable with it, and Byron seemed... well, a little confused. But I wasn't concerned with that. I was hungry. So I made them get me food, and got angry with the rabbit when he was mean to my friends, and threatened him, and ate, and had a pretty good time. They were talking about magic and debts and something, but I really couldn't concentrate on it. Once I was done eating, there was really only one immediate need left, and it wasn't sleep. I dragged Byron out to his car and into the backseat. That's where we were when Adrian joined us again, and I was just about ready to punch him for interrupting when he showed me an image of Carnifex. That vampire bastard made me angry, so angry that I barely thought to get clothes back on before I charged off to find him at his mansion.

I fought with him there, and he was surprised. That was nice, to see him not so smug. If I had been thinking clearly, I probably would have noticed that he didn't seem quite as worried as he should be. He hadn't even vamped out yet, he still looked human. Then he put his game face on and suddenly the fight was a lot harder. I heard someone shouting my name and I sort of noticed Byron around, but I could only pay attention to the fight, and to whether I could win it. And then something happened that I had never seen happen, not as Becky, and not in lifetimes of slayer power. Carnifex reared back and his skin split, and the demon inside came out fully, black and rubbery-looking. And as I hit it again, I realized that I couldn't win this fight. I could only see how much damage I could do before he killed me.

Luckily, my friends dragged me away, and Adrian had some kind of magic, a bowl full of sunshine that at least made the demon hurt. I pushed down the primal part of me enough to realize that living to find a way to actually kill him would be the better idea, but not before I nearly lost an arm to the thing.

When we got back to my house, where the others decided it was best to go, Arri was astonishingly... back from hell. She had a contract with her, a big leather-bound affair. Signed in blood. A contract that only someone who was part demon and part human could have hoped to get. Her deal with the devil stipulated a world without vampires. Her soul was the bargaining chip she had used against the contract, and she said she was prepared for that. What's worse is that Byron found the clause that Arri had missed. The specification was that upon fulfillment of the contract, a delivery of three letters, our world would be purged of all vampires. Arri had not exempted herself. It was incredibly hard to think, and I could only manage to be upset that it had worked this way, upset at how unfair it was that she was supposed to gain a soul only to give it up.

I needed rest, though, and the contract was something I couldn't even begin to fathom. So I rested against Byron, and tried to gather myself. Things were going to get much worse, I was certain, before they got better.

((Sorry it's a little anemic, but I am overworked and exhausted at the moment!))

The boys were still weak and we were all tired. We'd gotten rid of a demon, but it didn't seem like many of our problems were gone. There was still Carnifex, and the watchers, and a big pile of hell. We went to rest at Adrian's, and I curled up next to Byron and dozed. Then my phone rang, and it was my "new" watcher, trying to yell at me some more and tell me how I'd been misguided. I told him not to talk to me like I was a preschooler and hung up on him. He called back, and I did not win the Miss Congeniality contest in that conversation either. Maybe I should have handled it differently. Maybe pretending to break with all my friends and go to them would have given me some other options than the ones I ended up facing. But I was too tired and too angry to try to play games.

Not long after the call, there was a noise on the ceiling, and Carnifex's voice coming out of nowhere, telling us that the Council was coming. Arri stared at me a bit, and started talking about how, if they couldn't control me, the watchers probably wanted new slayer. If Carnifex was telling the truth, and they knew where we were, they were probably coming to kill me. Then big black vans pulled into the parking lot, and there wasn't any time left to debate. We knocked a hole in the thin wall at the back of Adrians apartment and into the next. Okay, not subtle, but we couldn't go out the door. We ran out to the strip mall behind his building and through the laundromat there. Then we pretty much just ran until we could hide and lose them. We ended up in the school chem lab, where Carnifex found us, and came to talk to us. He tried to play nice again, and to go on about how we wanted the same things. He said he wanted me alive, because he wasn't afraid of me. I was ready to fight him right there, try and wipe that arrogant look off of his face, but I wasn't the only one pissed off and tired of him, and Adrian lit the lab on fire. We got out, and so did Carnifex.

We kept going around in circles over what to do. In the end, it seemed like it all came back to Arri and the prophecy. The only way to know what it all meant was to make it happen. Byron and Adrian started talking about how she was special, and trying to think what a vampire with a soul could do that a human could not. The answer... is that she could go through the Hellmouth and into Hell. I didn't want her to do it, but Arri made up her mind. We checked out the Hellmouth first, and the monsters from the tunnel were there, tearing it open. It would be opened, and we would have to be ready. But first, we were going to complete the other part of the plan, which was to call on the power of the slayers before me to buff me up. It did not seem simple, or safe, but neither did us waiting around topside while Arri tried to fulfill her destiny in Hell. We went to the magic shop to get supplies, and that's when everything went wrong.

It was partly my fault, I know. Something had been building, and I just hadn't seen how much. My mother drove up in her car and tried to get me to come with her. I told her no, that this was too important. She demanded that the others get away from me and when they wouldn't, she pulled a gun. Adrian tried to get it away from her with telekinesis, and she panicked and pulled the trigger. I saw Byron fell, and it was like the noise of the world turned off and all I could see was the blood pouring from his chest. I tried to get pressure on it, but it seemed like too much, and it had gone all the way through, and I was panicking worse than I ever have before, calling his name. I almost didn't notice what happened next. My mother tried to run Arri over when she got in her way, but Arri moved, and Mom's car went out of control, hitting a phone pole so that it fell over onto the car. Adrian promised they would see to her, so I picked Byron up and ran with him back to the school, where I knew paramedics would be because of the fire. We went to the hospital and they took him away, and questioned me. I said he'd been shot out of nowhere, that I didn't see what happened. They made me wait, and then came to tell me that my mom had been in a car accident and was not yet conscious, and that I would have to be taken into custody since there was no adult to claim me. Thankfully, Arri and Adrian showed up at that point, and Arri posed as my adult half-sister, and said she could take responsibility for me. Adrian and I dozed with her in the waiting room, waiting for word on Byron. I was so relieved when they brought him out in a wheelchair. He was a little out of it on drugs, but he seemed okay. I guess watchers heal a little quicker than your average mortal, too. But just as I was feeling relieved, a doctor came to talk to me and Arri. He said our mother didn't make it, and that they'd done everything they could. I broke down. I could barely process what was going on as the others talked to me and got us out of the hospital. I finally pulled it together at the school, but only barely.

Once again, they needed the help of Byron's friend from the magic shop, to act as a fifth point on a pentacle. He helped them set up the spell, with materials to call and bind, and the last part, a mummified cat and a nightshade drought which would be used to gather and channel the power. I did my best to focus on the spell, and go along with the motions until the part where I was most important. And then I had to go to a place beyond the pain and worry I felt. I had to go beyond this newfound terror and helplessness to when I first learned I was the slayer, and when I thought I was invincible. Incredibly hard doesn't even begin to describe it. I was tired, grieving, and no longer certain about anything at all. But I closed my eyes, and thought of being the slayer. The force of the slayers gathered into the mummified cat, and it sort of reanimated. Adrian's job was to drown it in the nightshade drought, to collect that force so that I could drink it down. I lifted the cup to my lips and tilted it up, drinking down blood and poison and energy. I tasted power and



The Slayer opened her eyes, and the world was suddenly in greater clarity than it had been. She had not felt all her potential power held in one vessel, not since the first slayer, and the result was a predatory strength that was just barely human. She noticed the people around her, but they didn't seem to matter any more. They were weak things that she would protect, but their chatter meant nothing.

Except for one. One was the center of the Slayer's attention, because it was a bloodsucker, not a human. The one in a girl's body was a monster that needed to be destroyed. It seemed curious that one would stand here so brazenly, and the Slayer allowed herself a moment's pause to tilt her head and regard the creature. One of the humans was talking, but she paid no attention. Then her moment of observation was over, and her prey was running fast. The Slayer knew that in the end she would be faster, and she followed until they reached a room with an opening to Hell itself. The demon fled into the pit, back to where it belonged. There were other monsters in the room, and the Slayer tore them apart with her bare hands.

The humans had followed, and they stepped in, wide-eyed like frightened animals. "It's gone now," she told them.

It's always a matter of things going from bad to worse.  It's always a matter of scraping by and hoping that you come out on the other side without more casualties.  I don't know how to lead any other life any more.  There's no time to wait, barely ever time to plan.  Whatever.  Our day of craziness led us to take cover at the hotel where Adrian lives.  We thought we would have some time there.  But nothing is ever that simple.  It started with a crazy huge flock of birds going overhead outside, and then suddenly the ground was boiling with every crawling thing imaginable.  They were fighting as they went, and one badly torn-up rat came and scratched with a bloodied stump at our window.  Then another, a big white rat, came and bit its head off.  If that weren't awful enough, when we thought the flood had passed, we opened the door to find the big rat waiting for us and speaking in Carnifex's voice.  He said he wanted to meet with us, cajoled us to at least hear him out.  After all, he said, none of us had any love for the Watchers right now, and none of us had anywhere, really, to turn to.  It almost sounded good.

The rat directed us to a mansion, where Carnifex sat in the back, lounging in a porch chair, while the swimming pool behind him seethed with vermin and bugs and who knows what else.  He said he wanted Arri to come back to him, and kept up the sweet talk for what I think was a surprisingly short time before he started in on the threats.  He said he could devastate the town, and would, if she would not come back.  He tried to make us see her as a monster and her see us as cattle.  But in the end, it came down to the threats, an Arri was nearly ready to go back just to save us from whatever he was going to raise against the town.  But she waited just a moment too long, and he decided to let loose his demon.  The thing that climbed out of the pool was a giant man made out of crawly, hairy, ugly things.  It tore a chunk out of the house, and we ran.  Sometimes, it's just better to get the hell out.

----- The computer ate the rest of my entry after this.  Thanks, computer.  I'm so so glad that you, like everything else in the world, are working against me right now.  It's a long story, but here's the short version:

Adrian charmed the watchers so he could research our beast, which he found out didn't like mercury or arsenic.  Meanwhile, the rest of us used a shotgun to shoot some holes in it, uselessly.  When we hooked back up with Adrian, we were going to go find the mercury man who'd come from the Hellmouth entrance, but we were waylaid by the sudden onset of legendary plague at sundown.  So first we scrambled for antibiotics for the boys, and some for me, even though I was really fine, and then we went to find the mercury guy.

We decided to use a spell, and while we cast it in the graveyard, Carnifex came and mocked us, and was a big scary threatening vampire at us.  But we protected ourselves, which bored him, so he left while we worked our magic.  We found the mercury guy, who was not fun to chat with, and threw him at the vermin guy, and they pretty much exploded in a big pile of ick.  Dawn came, and the plague lifted, and we went to Adrian's, exhausted.

Good and evil, what a cosmic joke. The only problem is that I'm not sure who the joke is being played on. I don't usually sit down and think things through, but I think it's time to. It's pretty easy to see where not thinking has gotten me, and maybe it's time for a change. If my life were a television show, I guess this is the episode where we'd recap the season with flashbacks. I need to think back and try and figure out how it all came to this. The world is on some kind of precipice right now, and the four of us are somewhere at the center. I've got to say, I'm struggling.

I don't know what to do with a loss of faith. I didn't have that much to begin with. See, when Byron first came to me and gave me and gave me the Chosen One speech, I thought, "Cool, what a nice way to to protect the people I see getting killed here all the time." Fast forward past me being strong and killing all the little baddies that I sort of thought were the only game in town. God, I was naive. My scorecard was really simple. Us, humans, good. Them, monsters, evil. Then came new friends-- Arri, Adrian-- and bigger monsters, some of them human. Suddenly, I wasn't so sure any more that there were two sides. If I keep the television thing going, now we have a montage-- Principal Eisler, our big mistake, a nuclear reactor and Hell. A body count I didn't have the courage to look at the estimates of. Nights with Byron. Arri's soul. The Hellmouth.

I feel like I lost my innocence somewhere along the way, and I can't figure out where it happened. Maybe it didn't go all at once, maybe it was just taken in little chunks so I wouldn't miss it right away. Maybe that's why right now, I almost want to listen to the monster that's toying with me and everything I care about more than I want to listen to the gang of murderous humans that's supposedly on the same side as me. Maybe that's why dropping the good and evil line is so... damned... tempting.

It started at about three in the morning, when I got a call from Byron, saying that Arri had been arrested for some reason, and that he was going to take care of it. He'd call me. I waited until I couldn't stand it any more, then sent him a text asking what was going on. He said they were transporting her to juvie, and that's where he was headed. I went too, about ready to bust her out before sunrise turned her crispy, but it seems they actually got a lawyer to get her released. She was just coming out when I got there, and it was just starting to go gray at the edges of the sky. We decided to go have some pancakes at Lenny's while we figured out just what was up. We thought someone was following us there, but when we turned, they kept going, and we figured it was a fluke. Arri said that Carnifex had set her up. He had come to her with a tied-up nine-year-old girl, and asked her to drink the girl and come back to him. She had refused, and he had left the girl there. He had already called the police, and they came and arrested her for kidnapping. The confused girl had implicated Arri, so even though Arri had pretended to be a captive as well, they figured she was the culprit. And she wasn't the only one with news. Byron said that an old mentor from the Council had shown up at his doorstep, wanting to ensure that the vampire Arabella had been taken care of, and asking about the ring. Byron had sidestepped him for the time being. Problem is, he called while we were eating, and told Byron he'd been spotted with Arri, was dismissed from the council, and that I would be assigned a new watcher. I grabbed the phone, and told him just what I thought of that, and hung up on him.

We had just gotten up to leave when Arri was shot. We couldn't tell what direction it was from, and we all scrambled out of the crowded diner, where she was shot again. A British voice told us to get away from the vampire, and when we looked, it was some guy with a very big gun. We didn't have much choice, and it looked like Watcher special ops had arrived. The man shot her again, and that about did it for Adrian, who managed to telekinesis the guy's gun so it smacked him in the face. I tackled him down and got the gun, but whoever had sniped Arri before was still out there, and we were told again to get away. I went and stood in front of her, and I know it wasn't smart, but when your best friend is getting shot over and over again, I dare you to think clearly no matter how immortal she is. I tried reasoning with them, tried talking to them, and they threatened to shoot me. I couldn't see the sniper, but he told me to look at my hand. I didn't. I knew I'd see a laser sight there, maybe more than one. I just moved my hand when they fired their shot. I wasn't sure even I was that fast, but occasionally my gambles pay off. I was about to try talking to them again before they shot more, but the others were saying that Carnifex had joined the party. I could hear him, but I couldn't see him. Adrian could, using his magical sight, and he said he was crouching by Arri. I announced to the snipers that I was going for my stake, and whipped around quick to stab the area I thought he was. I connected, but I don't think it was a very good hit. It was enough, though, to get him to leave. At that point, we heard sirens, and our snipers ran off. They came by in their vehicle to grab the man we'd taken down, and I jumped on the hood to try and get them to stop, but they were driving with or without me, and so I jumped off and helped get everyone else packed into Byron's car.

It was my last night of excuses not to be home, and I was with Byron, of course. It was a nice morning. I was sort of getting used to waking up with him, and I was trying to ignore that it couldn't last. Then he got a letter. He'd written the Watchers' Council, asking about the prophecies connected to a vampire with a soul. The same prophecy had been passed through Adrian's family, one he'd talked about before, where Arri is supposed to save the world. It never seemed very clear, and now the Council was saying that the prophecy really says she's going to remake the world as she sees fit after it's destroyed. That put it on their list of "bad vampire apocalypse" events and their advice was to kill the vampire immediately.

I was ready to laugh it off, but then Byron started acting like we should think about it. Like maybe the Council was right. I told him there was no way I was killing Arri, and no way I was suddenly going to be suspicious of her. Then he started saying this stuff about how since he was the watcher, ultimately what I did was his decision. At that point, I'd had it, and I stormed off. I went and sulked in the graveyard for a while, then I thought to text Arri and see if Byron had gone to her. She said he was there talking with Adrian, and I told her to kick him out and come see me. She did, without question, which totally makes her about the best friend I've ever had.

She asked if Byron and I had fought, and I said we had, and told her a bit, but I didn't tell her about the letter from the council. I didn't want to get them mad at each other too if I didn't have to. At that point, we found a piece of newspaper that had an ad for a museum exhibit on it. They were advertising an intact and authentic gypsy caravan at the local museum, and it was already on display. We figured it might be something Adrian would want to see, so she gave him a call and we agreed to meet at the museum. Byron was still with Adrian when we got there, and I made it pretty clear I wasn't speaking to Byron. Adrian was confused, but there was no helping it. Arri, in a show of solidarity, also wasn't speaking to Byron. We girl-snubbed him, and went through the museum that way. Adrian was all excited because he'd gotten a letter that had been lost in the mail for years, from one elder of his family to his grandmother. It was a letter that talked about Arri and the prophecy. I was still pretty upset over the Council thing, so I steered clear of that conversation, and looked at the display. A few minutes in, Adrian looked a little pale, and he said that he recognized things written on the caravan, and that it had belonged to his family. There was a book that was labeled as a Bible in one of the display cases, and he said he was pretty sure it was something else and was determined to get it.

That started phase two of our day, which was the part where we go off all half-cocked and then everything goes to shit somewhere partway through. Hey, maybe we're comfortable with the routine. It started off mildly enough, with Byron and Adrian seeing if they could edge in with some research story for a look at the book. While they were busy with that, I saw this older guy looking real intently at the exhibit, and then felt all crampy. Holy shit, middle of the day, and there's another vampire. Arri was looking very worried, and she told me quietly that I couldn't take him. We'd caught his attention, though, and he smiled, greeted Arabella, and then made some comments about how he'd expected a more impressive slayer. I mocked his out-of-date language, gave him a "your mama," and maybe, just maybe, overcompensated a little because his presence threw me. Arri said his name was Carnifex, and that he was quite old.

Byron and Adrian were unsuccessful, and we told them about the vampire, but he was long gone by then, so we went back to Byron's to formulate a heist plan. It might have been easier if I was talking to Byron, but... well, I wasn't. Our plan involved some unguent from a recipe in Adrian's family book, some distraction, and outright brute force theft. The unguent made us unrecognizable, so our faces wouldn't stick in anyone's mind or be seen well on the cameras. Byron was in charge of getaway driving, Arri and Adrian were doing the theft, and I was providing distraction. I got a can of spray paint, and started defacing one of the Spanish settlement exhibits and yelling about how it was a lie that the Indians killed their children. Hey, I was right. I got security's attention, and gave the others time to do their thing. Adrian and I met right afterwards, and the unguent had worn off. Oops. Let's just hope it did the trick while we needed it. We headed off to meet the others, in the now-empty gym at school. Sure enough, tucked into boring parts of the Bible, Adrian was finding gypsy prophecy. I was sort of sulking on the bleachers while he read, and Byron came and sat by me. He was starting to talk when Arri jumped up and told me we had to go. She had remembered something Carnifex had said, and that I had missed in my taunting. When I said "yo mama" to him, he responded with "what a wonderful idea."

Arri and I raced to my house to check on my mom. He was already there, sipping tea with her, and my heart about stopped. She introduced him as Mr. Carter, and said that he was helping the city, and especially helping people find those like my father who were missing. Arri and I were calm and polite and I just tried to get mom to get Carnifex out as quickly as possible. He left, and then Mom started talking about how she was going to take over parenting me again, and how I needed to be home more, and how she thought my new friends, outside of Arri, were probably a poor influence. I don't really remember what I said, I just tried to placate her, then went with Arri to call the boys so we could cast a spell to uninvite the vampire. We tried to get it done while Mom was napping, but she came down partway through and messed up the circle and we got into a big fight. Just not my day for calm problem resolution, I guess. I tried to get her to see that something bigger was going on, and I thought I got through to her when she finally said she did notice that the week of darkness couldn't have been an eclipse, but then when I tried to agree with her, she asked me if I admitted that what the boys were doing was magic. I said yes, and she flipped out even more, and started shooing them out with a broom. And then Carnifex showed up again, and apologized for coming at a bad time. I was struggling with Mom and the broom, and he was getting awfully close to her. It was a challenge. So I grabbed the broom back from her, broke it in half, and growled that he really ought to leave. He agreed, and I could tell he was amused. The bastard was LAUGHING at me. Then he turned his back on an armed slayer, and walked out.

The boys left, and Arri took my mom aside and helped calm her down, talking about how stressful it was for me to see another adult man in the house. Then she got my mom to agree to a bath while she made tea, and I got the boys back in. Whatever it was they'd been talking about all day seemed to have led Byron around to firmly believing in the gypsy interpretation of the myth about Arri. He was being super nice to her, and I kinda started talking to him again. Besides, we needed to get things done. Arri brought my mom tea, reassured her, and confided that she'd drugged the tea a bit. Then she went to stand outside, since the spell would uninvite all vampires. I went to check on Mom, and then I saw one of the reasons she'd been so weird lately. A bottle of vodka, tucked away where she thought I wouldn't see. My mother has been drinking. I made an excuse to get her new tea, since Arri's sedative plus booze would probably be a really bad idea, and with that completed, we managed the spell. It was so strong that I had to go out past the mailbox and walk Arri back. We had a little bit of time to talk, and Arri confessed what I already suspected from the way Carnifex talked. He was her sire. And, she told us, something of a sorcerer in vampire terms, and power-hungry to boot. His MO is making deals with demons or other evil to devastate a town or city and then coming in, helping to clean up the wreckage, and installing himself in a place of power. Which means we've got a struggle ahead of us. Oh goody.

I kissed Byron goodnight, promised them all we'd talk tomorrow, and checked on Mom. Then I curled up with my teddy bear, and wondered how we would manage.

Growing up, I always had a love/hate relationship with camping. I think I can safely say now that it's fallen firmly into a hate/hate relationship. Being in the city with running water seems pretty ideal. At least we're all still alive, which is yet again sort of a miracle. But that comes later. It started the morning after I stayed with Byron. I woke up next to him and watched him sleep a bit. I wasn't in any hurry to get out of bed and face the world. So I settled down with him for a bit longer, and dozed until he woke up. He was going to say something, but then we heard voices. Turns out Adrian and Arri had let themselves in to do some early morning research on vampires with souls. What's worse is that they figured something was wrong when Byron didn't come out as soon as they threatened to mess with his books, and they came into the bedroom to find the two of us there. Awkward. Really, really awkward.

As I was getting dressed, I got a call from a friend saying that since something had happened at school, they were doing the week-long survival trip early. It was mandatory, and anyone who ditched it could make nothing better than a D for the rest of the year. We were all torn, with the Hellmouth right there and all, but in the end, we went. Eisler would be going, and there was no reason to trust that man any farther than you could spit. We piled onto the bus and drove for hours. At last we got to Corazones de Piedra, which was pretty much a bunch of red rock desert. Yippee. We had to take all food out of our backpacks, which was a problem since we had thermoses full of blood for Arri. Everyone but Byron managed to hide a thermos, so we were okay for that. Then we piled off the bus and got handed big black plastic garbage sacks with a bottle of water and either pemmican or a granola bar. Eisler told us that we should be able to do everything we needed, and we would only be able to leave when the week was over or in case of a medical emergency. They hiked us to this big ravine with the teachers, and said we'd be camping there.

The four of us started immediately on pits for water collection and shelter that didn't suck. We did a pretty good job, and Arri rigged up some rabbit traps. Then she and I went out hunting. We didn't find much, but the traps got us a rabbit for dinner. It wasn't until the next day that things got weird. Don't they always?

They missed three people on headcount, and we offered to go look for them. We found footsteps leading way away from camp, so we followed them. They ended at this bizarre rock formation that looked like a priest and two nuns. They didn't go around, and there wasn't any sign that anything had happened there. Stumped, we went back to camp, and found the three missing students laughing their asses off because we no longer had water and our shelter had been broken. Later, they went missing again, and Arri and Adrian stayed behind to work on recovering our things, and I went with Byron to see if we could spot him this time. When we got back to the rock formation, it was gone. Just flat out gone. There was a big hole where it had been, and I thought I could jump it, but Byron convinced me to go back for the others.

We packed up our things in backpacks and trooped back to the pit. Arri and I jumped down first and caught the boys as they jumped down. There was a tunnel there, and it looked carved rather than natural. We followed it, and came to a larger room, where shadowy images of a burning village flickered on the walls. We saw the other students, and two more. The three from earlier each had a ghost image over them-- two nuns and a priest. The other two were laying in beds made of shadow. They had the ghostly images of children over them. The nuns and priest approached, and began to smother the children as they slept. We figured we didn't have time to speculate, and that all we could do was to try and disrupt the scenario. Arri and I went in fighting and kicking. It was harder than we were expecting, since once deprived of people to settle over, the ghosts gathered sand into themselves and got rock-solid. We had the boys drag two of the other kids to safety, and that was about all I knew until they blew a hole through the wall with a spell that was pretty much made of other angry ghosts, because our doorway had closed up. Mostly, we picked people up and ran.

Being native to the area, I knew the story plenty well. There was a Spanish colony out here, trying to convert the Indians. Then the Indians killed some Spanish kids, and there was the expected massacre on the Indians. Only now we'd seen the truth of the matter. And it occurred to me that every year, hikers were lost out here, and no bodies ever found. And we were no closer to making it stop. We were tired, so we brought the other students back, fabricated some story I don't even remember, and settled down.

We napped, and were getting ready to sleep that night when we heard the ghosts that had smashed through the wall earlier. They got closer, and it was when one of the nice history teachers came up to us that they hit. They just shredded her right in front of us, and went for Adrian. Arri barely had time to knock him out of the way, and he drew a quick pentacle and got us all in a safe circle. Clearly, though, it wouldn't last. We had to get rid of the ghosts, and Byron helped Adrian come up with a quick-fix solution-- turning the protective circle into a holy circle that would banish them. They argued some because their ideas of holy were somewhat in conflict, but the only way Byron could help was using Watcher's Council Approved™ Christian symbolism. This meant using crosses. This mean freaking Arri the hell out. I had to hold her back, and she was already wiggy from getting hurt by the ghosts earlier. She wasn't doing well, but the spell worked, and when it was done, Adrian rushed to her side and recited this poem:

A demon that lurks deep within
Masked by beauty and cloaked by skin.
The beast shall rise, the maiden shall fall,
Awakened by a primal call.
Bloodlust must be quelled with haste
No mortal will the vampire taste.
I bind thee with my cunning art,
Held captive by my gypsy heart.

Arri calmed down, and then we started screaming about a cougar attack. Even Eisler couldn't force us through with a teacher dead on the ground in front of us, so the buses were called back. I think he was actually kind of wigged out, which was a pleasing first. We trooped back to the side of the road, but we realized this was our chance to do away with the priest and nuns, and we might not get another one. We figured what we had to do was laid out for us in the name of the area-- hearts of stone. Get their hearts.

We were ragged and tired and hurting, and I definitely needed a shower and it was SO not my best hair ever, but we dragged ourselves back to find the stones once again in place. We picked up rocks, and bashed them to pieces. They weren't like statues, they were literally like people made out of rock, with ribcages and organs and everything. We smashed their hearts, and then the wind came up and started the fill the entire gorge they were in with sand. We got out quick. We got back minutes before the buses came, and took a long and mostly silent ride home.

Going to school and being investigative induced such a shitstorm that I think maybe we need to rethink our strategical abilities. And now, well... I have a lot to think about. A lot to wonder. I'm not sure where everything is headed, but I guess I'll just have to see.

Step one: Investigation. That meant poking around school and trying to get closer to the center of school, which happened to be the middle of the admin building. Just great. During lunch, Arri and I pulled the fire alarm and snuck in, and what we found was a big metal door. When I touched the handle it sort of tingled and went cold, and Arri, not exactly Ms. Subtlety, rammed a chair into the wall next to it and found that instead of the thin walls elsewhere, the wall the door was in was reinforced metal. We couldn't afford to stick around, so we waited to regroup after school and tell the boys what we'd found.

Step two: Jumping right in. We figured we had to act fast, since it wasn't like we'd been clever about making a big dent in the wall. We went and got some spell materials from Byron's, and I called my mom to feed her a story about staying the night with Arri to finish a project. It was weak, and she only barely bought it, but it's as good as I could do at the time. Then we all trooped back to school to take down the barrier. Byron and Adrian figured we could do it, and I let them sort out the magicky bits. What it boiled down to was needing to break the barrier in a way that was both symbolically physical and purely magical, which needed a lot of power. They decided on making basically a giant bonfire in the admin building, and channeling that energy to a sword. I'd hold the sword, and stab it in between the door and the wall, and then we'd go in. It mostly went off without a hitch, though I burned my hand pretty badly because the sword got hotter and hotter as I held it. Then it crumbled as the spell broke, but at least we were in. There was a giant vault door beyond that, which was locked. Arri spent some time with it, listening, and eventually got the combination right. Beyond the vault door was a big dirt-floored room. It had a big pentacle in the middle, but it had been damaged, whatever spell it was a part of apparently coming undone. And then we saw the elementals in armor. Big knights made out of lava, stone, ice, and mercury. Then they noticed us, and we slammed the vault door shut again.

Step three: Jump into the fray because why the hell not? To get past the scary elemental guys with big weapons, we figured we needed some specialized equipment, so we went to the science lab. We got some things we thought might help, including a tank of liquid nitrogen, and set out to go fight the elemental guys in the room. They had other plans. There was a small earthquake as we left the science lab and the door was melted through when we got back, and nobody was in the room. There was a pile of pebbled that may have been the rock guy, and the pentacle didn't look so good. But we had rampaging guys to take care of, and a path to follow. The lava guy had left burned footprints, and we followed him to the cafeteria, which was on fire. We froze him with the liquid nitrogen and hit parts off of him until there was nothing left. Then we went to find the water guy, who was in the library. We froze and shattered him, and then figured we'd go back and look for the last one.

Step four: Oh, hell. There was an another earthquake on our way back towards the administration building, which can't have been good. The pentacle that had previously been a little messed up was now totally ruined, and a gaping pit was in the center of the room. It felt wrong, and Byron, who took off his glasses and cleaned them, which is never a good sign, identified it as a hellmouth. Suddenly, the mercury guy didn't seem to be so much of a problem. Hell was right in the middle of our school. It would have been funny if I wasn't right there.

Step five: Research, panic, and crime. We went to Byron's and looked up how to close a hellmouth. You don't close it, really, but you can kind of... put a bandaid on it. You need a pentacle made out of blood and earth, and five experience magic-users. What we had was four people, a wing and a prayer. That's cool. I love playing it by ear. Byron called his friend Gerard, the seedy guy who owns the local magic shop, who told us we'd need an ox for the blood and he'd meet us at the school. What followed was me and Arri breaking into the zoo and stealing a musk ox.



One of those. No shit.

Step six: Magic, or something sort of resembling it. Gerard was at the school, as promised, and right away he and Adrian didn't get along. Gerard was kind of an ass, and I think Adrian was annoyed that Gerard was taking point on the ritual. But he was the most experienced, and I gathered that we were pretty close to screwing this up anyway. We took cubicle walls and put them over the pit of the hellmouth to create a surface, and then Gerard made us put on these scratchy black robes, which I'm really not sure was necessary. He put this blood-funneling collar on the ox, and I held it up while we bled it out. I'm no bleeding heart, but it was still not a fun job. Gerard made the pentacle with blood, and noticed Arri looking a little... strained. It dawned on him that she was a vampire, and he nearly stormed off, saying that it wouldn't work without a soul there. It nearly became a big fight right there in the middle of the pentacle over the hellmouth, but we all sort of managed to rein it in and just try anyway.

And... it worked. We chanted, magic swirled around us... and the spell snapped into place. It was clearly much much crappier than the one that had been there before it, but it was there, and we were all in one piece.

Step seven: Decompression. Arri didn't want to talk about why the spell worked. She seemed pretty freaked. Adrian wasn't in a great mood either, and I probably should have tried to talk to him more. But I wasn't at my best either. We all went our separate ways, but I had told Mom I'd be gone and I didn't really want to go home anyway. So I went to stay at Byron's. I've done it before. It wasn't like we were planning anything. He wasn't, anyway.

It was thinking about the hellmouth, and how unlikely it is for any slayer to live for very long. I was thinking that since starting the slayer stuff, I haven't had time for most of my old friends. How I'd never have time to be a normal girl. And how, after all this time with Byron, pretending he was my age he didn't seem so much older. It didn't seem weird to want to be with him. And so alone at his apartment, I let him know it. I kissed him, and I thought for a minute he was going to tell me no and pull away... but he didn't.

In the morning at school, Eisler was back on the homeroom TV for morning announcements, pretty much saying that if anyone felt bad about recent events they were a bunch of sissies. Arri and Adrian were there and a little tired after their previous day of... pretty much just drinking, I guess.

At lunch, some guys were passing out flyers for a beach party. They said it would be huge, since everyone just wanted to celebrate living. I wasn't going to pay attention to it, but Arri and Adrian convinced me we should go. I started thinking, and it didn't seem like a bad idea. Maybe a night of pretending to be normal would help me get distance from it all. I even encouraged Arri to come get ready with me, like regular girls. It was kind of fun.

Then we got to the beach party, and there was a huge bonfire, and drinks, and a ton of people. I normally don't drink at all, let alone go to parties. But Arri passed me something, and I thought how likely I was to just die any day now trying to kill something too big for me, and figured what the hell. After a bit, I ended up a little fuzzy. Arri assured me it was only a couple of drinks in, so maybe my tolerance isn't so good. She also started pestering me about Byron, because it came as a shock to her that we weren't doing each other. I told her that he was eight years older than me, and it wouldn't be right... but the more she talked, the more it seemed like maybe I was being silly. Adrian had already gone off with some girls, and Arri rescued me and Byron from a drunken creep and shooed me on, so I walked with Byron down the beach. I was sort of clinging to him, and he had to notice how pretty I'd dressed, and there was a moment where I thought maybe I would kiss him... and then I heard a scream.

So I ran to see what it was. It had come from one of the houses by the beach, and I smashed the window and vaulted in to see the parents of a girl I know from school. They were in her room, and it looked like something had just bitten out the middle of the bed. I made some lame excuse and booked it out of there, and went to go find the others. Adrian insisted there was nothing he could do, because he was giving up magic for a while after the whole "vanish the sun" incident. But we sort of begged, and he agreed to take a look to see if he could sense magic there. We snuck back, and he said he saw what looked sort of like a trapdoor from another place. We all trooped back to try and do some research in Byron's library, but we heard another scream along the way and just barely caught a monster in a girl's bedroom before it devoured her. It was headless, and it's arms were jaws. Ew.

That's how the rest of the night went. All these people being attacked in their bedrooms by nightmare creatures. We couldn't save everybody. When the sun was up, it stopped. We went to Byron's, exhausted, and looked at a map. All the incidents had happened within a circle that covered most of Shadyvale. The high school was right at the center. While we were trying to research, Adrian fell asleep. That was a really bad idea, because suddenly the air was buzzing with this black swarm of things that descended on Byron's bookcase full of classics and devoured it, leaving nothing but the screws. Adrian woke up and had time to watch them devour the all the nonmetal bits of the television before narrowly missing getting eaten himself. Then he was doing magic, setting up a circle with salt and soda cans at the points. He trapped the buzzing things inside, and tried to think how to get rid of them. The magical door they had come through was still there, but in a different place then his circle. He finally decided on sympathetic magic, and drew a child's picture of the nightmare things in crayon. He threw it into the magical hole, and weakened the circle so that the swarm could follow.

So what do you do when the mystical center of everyone's nightmares coming to life is right in the middle of campus? We went to school.

I had very little time to hide away from the world. I thought this was too big, that surely everyone who'd lived through a week of vampire apocolypse and a trip to hell would be unable to push it from their minds. My first indication that this wasn't the case was my mother telling me cheerfully that school would be in session the next day. How do you deal with horror? Oh, yeah. You sublimate the hell out of it.

I didn't want to come out of hiding even so, but then Byron came by, and Mom made me talk to him. She was drinking tomato juice like there was no tomorrow, and while it was a little more overzealous than usual, she's always been a tomato juice fan. I was too, until recently, for obvious reasons. Byron came up to my room to talk to me, and told me how I could have some time, but that I was still needed. I had to explain to him that Mom had convinced herself that Dad, like so many other people, was just missing. Apparently the media circulated a story about this being some freak eclipse, so that's what people were clinging to. I understand the desire to do that, really I do, but now it just seems cheap and pathetic.

Byron promised to check on the others, and I felt just a little better after talking to him. The good mood didn't last, though, since Mom and I spent the rest of the day waiting in the huge line to report missing people. Mom kept talking about Dad, and I kept seeing him whenever I closed my eyes, a vampire turning to dust.

School tomorrow. If Byron wasn't there for me, I probably couldn't even bring myself to go, no matter what Mom insisted. But he's there, and he believes in me, and I guess I still have a job to do. Tonight I just want to curl up with my teddy bear Mr. Fuzz and sleep.

We saved the world. That's the first, most important thing. It's what I keep telling myself when I close my eyes, when I try to sleep at night. It's what I repeat so I can try to live with my own thoughts. We saved the world... from ourselves. We saved what's left of it.

I don't want to write this.

But I'm alive, and I promised myself I'd face what we did. And I'm not the only one suffering, or the only one with nightmares. I was even one of two lucky humans who didn't travel into hell. On the seventh day of darkness we caught a vampire, tied him up like the sacrifice he was and traveled to the nuclear power facility outside of town. Byron and Adrian had researched how to send it into meltdown, and how to channel all that energy into a spell. To tie everything together, we had to separate. Byron and Arri had to stand outside our circle, blood-bound to us, so that we could use each other to pull everyone back. I watched Adrian cut his hand, let Arri taste his blood. Then she took her ring, bloodied it, and pressed it into his palm. Byron and I cut our hands, and held on tightly for a moment to one another. He told me he'd see me soon, and then they stepped out so that Adrian and I could seal the circle.

With the full power of an overloading plant, Adrian cast the spell, and there was... this sort of ripple in reality as everyone on earth was sent away. I killed the vampire we'd caught, but nothing happened. In a panic, I ran through the plant and found one lone vampire, crazed and starving, locked in a little room we'd overlooked. I staked him and ran back out to Adrian, and the sun was coming up. Then I knelt by him and tried to pull on everything in me that was connected to Byron. It seemed for a minute like we wouldn't make it, and then something gave, and the world came back.

We went back into the city, with vampires bursting into flames, dying everywhere. When we got to my house, I ran out to find one vampire cowering in the shade on our porch, scrabbling to get inside. It was my father. I could only stare. It was Arri who dusted him while I watched, my heart just seizing up. When I went inside, I had to stand out in the sun to show my mother that I wasn't one of them, and that the sun really was out again. I told her that Dad was gone, and I told my friends that I needed some time. I think we were all in shock, and I don't really remember what else we said to each other. I went back inside and held my mom and broke down.

I don't know what to do now. I want to feel something other than this bleakness, I want to feel like I used to. But I think how I used to feel was an illusion. I thought I was some sort of superhero, but I'm partly responsible for a climbing death toll, for a chaos in the world that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been rushing headlong into things. I'm no superhero. I may be the Slayer, but I'm not even sure I know what that means any more. I've had my phone off. I can't bear to watch the news. I know it's cowardly, but right now, I just can't think of going anywhere. I don't want to face the others, even knowing that they're hurting too. So for now, I'm staying right where I am.

I don't know why I'm writing this, really. I don't know why I'm still trying to make sense of things when everything might be gone tomorrow. We went from monsters under the city to the end of the world a lot quicker than I thought was possible. It would almost be funny, if I was somewhere very far off, watching. If it wasn't partially my fault. It's crazy how we got here, how everything causes ripple effects that soon move to engulf your world. It started at school.

It started because the first thing that happened in the morning was Arri getting in trouble with the new security, and Adrian actually getting tasered when he stood up for her. They both got sent to the principal's office. More than once, I learned. They were sent back to class, caused more trouble, lather, rinse, repeat. At lunchtime, I figured it was time to take Mr. Eisler up on the oh-so-kind offer he gave at the assembly to share ideas with him. I went in, saw Arri and Adrian looking sullen, and pretended to ignore them while being totally fascinated with the new direction the school was taking. Our new principal came from some military background, and was pretty creepy and cagey about it all. I established that he had all the power from the school board, and could pretty much do whatever he wanted under the guise of the Patriot Act, which was just peachy. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn't really get how much until school ended and we all realized Arri had vanished. It didn't take much imagination to have a good guess where she was.

We were puzzling out how to find her when Adrian got all still. I guess he sometimes has visions, and in this one, they were moving Arri in a box with a little window, and it was daylight. She didn't have her ring, and she was burning. He caught an image of a sign, and we were able to track down the military base in his vision. We also realized we wouldn't get there fast enough. Byron would have just let it go, I think, but I was torn and Adrian was begging us to help, to find something that would keep her safe. Byron agreed to look through some magic books with him, and that's when they found the spell that changed everything. We didn't know it at the time, just that it changed day into night, and that we were running out of time to keep our friend safe. So we cast the spell. Night settled in, and we felt successful. I "borrowed" the car from home so we could get there faster, and we settled in for something of a road trip.

A few hours later, we were at the military base. It looked disused, but when we got ourselves through the gate, it was clear that it was plenty occupied. We went to check out the low building that seemed most like a prison, and sure enough I could spot Arri through one of the windows. I sent the boys off to find explosives while I tried to get around to warn her we were going to try blowing a hole in her cell. Problem was, the boys got caught, and I heard a guy talking to them. Luckily, I managed to sneak up behind him and knock him out before he did anything. We stowed him under a truck, and found a missile launcher. Good enough.

We looked through the window again and saw men about to take her out of the cell. We just had to trust luck and blew a hole in the wall. I jumped in and got to Arri's side, and we fought our way to the front to get her things. We found her ring and her wallet and then we made a mad break for it. Turns out that she'd been taken in on suspicion of being the Slayer. Irony. Once we were home, though, it started to sink in that we had done something terrible. The sun was gone. Everywhere. The spell didn't just move time around, it turned day to night, everywhere. The vampires were coming out in droves, believing that this was the apocalypse they'd been waiting for, and when we took a good long look at the spell, it seemed they were right. This was a spell of prophecy. Once cast, the vampires would reign until all the humans died. Then the vampires would turn on each other, and when the last vampire died, the sun would come back. Byron helped me pull it together, because I was about to lose it. I visited my mom at home, made her promise me to stay inside, to not let anyone into the house except for me. She told me that my father had never come home from work, and while a part of me knew what that probably meant, I couldn't think about it. Not then. I still can't think about it, there's too much to be done.

The Watcher's Council, when we could still reach them, had no answers. They knew it meant the end. It's been a week of worldwide darkness and chaos... but we think we finally know what to do. Risky doesn't even begin to cover it, but it's our only shot. We found a spell that requires a huge amount of energy, that needs to be powered by nothing less than a nuclear power plant in meltdown. For fifteen minutes, we will shift everyone in the world into another dimension-- the closest dimension, hell-- and leave just three people behind. Myself, a spellcaster, and a vampire. I will kill the vampire, and for that brief time, it will be the last vampire on earth. Then we will boomerang everyone back to a world with sunlight. We hope.

We have a problem. That problem is a crapload of monsters, and not the kind I have an easy time with. Great. That, on top of a new scary regime at school... well, it all doesn't make for happy Becky.

This morning, we had a school assembly, where the new principal, Mr. Eisler, introduced himself and pretty much told us that he was going to make our life hell. He talked about how the Patriot Act gave them expanded powers, how now there was to be no privacy expected on campus, how we are now a closed campus, and how this place was in need of tidying up. People protested, but it wasn't like they could do anything. My mood didn't exactly improve, because Arri and I were getting along pretty well, and I was getting excited about having a new friend, but as soon as Byron saw me, he was practically telling me to stake her. I guess he did some reading, and the entry in his books on her was the usual. She was a vampire, a nasty demon, and nothing in the watcher annals said anything about her trying to get a soul. I promised him I'd be careful, and he reluctantly left it alone.

We were going to hang out at The Rune for a bit before I did my night's patrolling, and it was fun with Arri and Adrian there. Nice to be able to hang out with some people again. We watched nerds we'd noticed at school today ogling one of the jocks and a soccer chick, and watched the two hotties go off together, leaving the obsessed nerds unrequited. Pretty typical. Until the soccer chick came back through the front door bloodied up and screaming, which is also typical, but in kind of a different way. I went charging out to deal with whatever had attacked, but there wasn't anything outside The Rune. Back inside, she told us that something had gotten them in the tunnel. I helped her get to a couch, and she was covered in something really sticky. I had a sinking feeling this was another not-vampire thing that was really going to make my night unpleasant. I was right.

The tunnel is this underground area near The Rune that may have been constructed for a purpose way back, and now just dead-ends. Kids go there to make out, do drugs, whatever, and I'd only been there once before, on sort of an exploration run. I didn't really know where to go once we were down there, using the piddly lights on our cell phones to walk by, but Arri said she smelled blood, so we followed that. The first thing we saw was the jock, dangling from something above us with his insides ripped out and in a pile on the floor. I would have been a lot more horrified if I'd had time, but that was also when this thing attacked us. It was the upper torso of something grotesque but still humanoid, with a long chain where the spine should be. One lowered itself and came after us, and then we heard chains all over. I tried to get a good hit in, but the thing smacked me far down the tunnel into the darkness. I fell into a nasty pile of their sticky goo, and listened to a bunch of them descend around me.

I heard shots, I guess Arri had a gun, and yells from where the rest of them were. I fought my way back towards them and we all got out, then spent the night doing research. Turns out that these monsters are created by strong unrequited love, and can only be hit when in light. We figured the nerds we saw were the source, and decided our best bet was to deal with the monsters first by bringing some light into the tunnel. Arri has promised to pick us up some lamps from the hardware store, and I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow night.

Usually, on the first day of school, I'm thinking about classes. Usually, I get my books, try and figure out if my teachers are nice, and it's generally an easy day. I was looking forward to such an easy day because I was tired after slaying and a lecture from my folks on sneaking out for half the night. First period was algebra, which was probably my cue that the day was going to suck. But I didn't pick up on that. I get crampy when it's that time of the month, but I also get crampy when vampires are close. It was daytime and wrong time of the month, but I still got all crampy, which I blame for not paying too much attention when we were partnered up to work on problems.

And then there were screams coming from another classroom. This new girl that had been working with me heard them too, and when I hurried out, saying some crap about the nurse's office, she came with me. We saw people pouring out of a classroom, screaming. After a few months of doing the slayer thing, screaming and running people just trigger my instinct to rush at whatever they're running from, and so that's what I did. I got into the classroom and saw the teacher being pulled through some void in the chalkboard, with crazy black tentacle things all around her. And black snake things were all over the place, slithering over the floor, coming after people. I started stomping them, and went to go pull the teacher back. Her upper half was a mass of wriggling black things, and I pushed her back, afraid what would happen if I let more of them out. Of course, the pushing her back part was the only bit of it that the girl who'd followed me saw. I tried to explain to her what was going on as we kept the black things from getting on us. Then the tentacles from the hole shot out at me, and I wasn't fast enough to get out of the way. The thought that I was about to be eaten by god knows what behind the chalkboard? Really unpleasant.

Then the new girl tore me out of it's grip and threw me across the room. I was too busy counting my limbs at first to think much about it, but then it hit me. I'm that strong, because I'm the slayer, but the new girl didn't exactly look like a body-builder. I was going to ask her why she was so strong, but it really wasn't a good time for a social hour, so we both just bolted out of the classroom. I told her I had a friend who might know something, so I ran towards Byron's first class. It was a good thing I did too, because he and another guy were in there, getting attacked by the snake-things. They were all over Byron, and I took one and squeezed it. It popped dead-smelling nastiness all over my hands, but it did the trick. Once we got the snakes off of them, we ran with everyone else out of school. The administrators were herding people around, and trying to calm us down. The new girl introduced herself as Arri, and the guy we'd found with Byron said he was Adrian. He was a lot more excited than he should have been that monsters were attacking his school on the first day. Then he started asking about vampires. That instantly put me on my guard, of course, and I shut down on him a bit. Byron went sneaking off to take a look at some of his books (over the summer, he managed to procure one of the little club rooms for Geeks Anonymous or something) and the rest of us listened to one of the teachers talking about how there had been a fire, and how they needed to get the firemen here to check how much fire damage there might be and make sure that the school was safe after the fire. The other two showed just how new they both were by finding this a little weird and trying to protest that there had been a fire. I tried to get them to calm down before they were both given detention, and they decided I must be as crazy as everyone else.

I guess I have to get used to it. I can't just go dancing around saying I'm the slayer. So I just left it alone, and escaped to the side with Byron when he came back. He told me that this thing was an interdimensional being that could push through weak spots. It sent out the snake-things, called fleshwends, to colonize the dimension and turn it into a place like it normally lives in. So yeah, that would be pretty bad. Byron told me that there were two ways to defeat it. The first would be to do a huge spell that would shift our dimension just slightly, and thousands of years would pass before the thing could try and push through again, or you could feed it poisoned bodies. I didn't really like either option. The spell, we couldn't do without possibly causing major bad for our dimension. And I really didn't like the idea of poisoning people and feeding them to the black tentacles. Then Byron suggested that we didn't have to poison human bodies, and that vampires might do the trick, and I loved him again.

We spent the rest of the day training, and he made the poison, and at night, it was off to the graveyard. Problem was, the first shadow I attacked in the dark turned out to be Arri, and Adrian was with her. I guess they'd heard us talking somehow earlier and wanted to know what was up. Adrian was still on about vampires, about needing to find a specific one, and I was trying to explain that we were sort of trying to save the world here, but then there were vampires all over the place. I staked some of them, and Byron helped me tie three up. Adrian kept trying to talk to them, but a lot of vampires aren't exactly social, especially when they're new.

One of the tied-up vampires told Arri what a traitor she was, and that's when it clicked why she was so strong and heard us whispering and all that. Holy daywalking vampire, Batman. I was about ready to stake her, but Adrian stopped me and told me he'd curse me or something if I did, because she was the one he was looking for and he had sworn to protect her. Apparently she has a ring that lets her walk in the sun, and it was given to her long ago by a family of gypsies-- his family-- to help her... be more human. They keep watch over her. They're trying to help her get her soul back. I don't think situations like this were covered in any of Byron's books. I agreed to give her a chance. I mean, she'd saved my life during the day, and she wasn't trying to suck my blood yet, so... I guess we'll see.

We had to do a ritual as the final step of the poison-making, and we were setting it up, with Byron's help. I guess being a gypsy of some sort, he's a natural magic whiz. He said it would work best with five people, so I called my friend Chaz, who's into the paranormal, and we stuck the vampires into the shadows. I thought it all went pretty well until Chaz just collapsed at the end. Byron checked him, and said he was dead, and suddenly I realized that maybe I was playing with people's lives where I shouldn't be, and that this is the first time I've caused a friend to die, and I was about to lose it right there... then Arri said that Byron was an idiot and that Chaz was plenty alive and he'd just fainted. So I hit Byron a little and felt a lot better.

Byron and I packed up the vampires and Arri and and Adrian took Chaz home. The holes from earlier in the day had vanished from the school, but when Adrian got there, he found us a spot that seemed thin, magically, and was able to rile the thing up enough for it to come out again. We fed the poisoned vampires to it, and then the whole place started rumbling, so we got the hell out. Big cracks opened up through the schoolyard, and the nasty goo that came out of the fleshwends when I'd squeezed them earlier just fountained out. And then it was all gone. You'd think that since my job description is fighting vampires, I'd get extra cookies or something.

I never kept a diary. I wasn't one of those girls who saw much reason to. Then I became the slayer, and would have been way too busy for keeping a diary anyway. But one of the huge books Byron gave me that I'm supposed to read said slayers live longer when they can develop at least some skill for introspection. I'd like to live longer, so I guess I'll write some things down and see how that works. Here goes.

I'm Becky. I'm the slayer, which means I'm the chosen one, the girl who's supposed to fight all the vampires. I think the "chosen" thing really just means arbitrary. I don't think anyone's doing any choosing. But there's always a girl who hits puberty and suddenly gets stronger, faster, and overall better. Always a girl who gets torn from whatever normal life she thought she had and gets told by the Watcher's Council that it's her job to stand between humanity and the forces of darkness. I'm not upset, but I think a lot of other girls who end up being the slayer must have been. I was a little more prepared for it than most. I've grown up in Shadyvale, which is California's answer to the twilight zone. Weird things happen here. I've always known there are monsters, but we never talk about it. We talk about gangs and meth addicts, fires and other disasters. I've grown up learning to keep things quiet. I've grown up watching my friends die. So when I got inducted into the Slayer Club, even knowing the short life span involved... I was pretty okay with it.

A man named Byron came to me and gave me the book that I guess is the intro to slaying packet, and told me about the Watcher's Council. They're the ones who keep an eye on the slayer and help her out. A little like a really tweedy and British support team. I'll take what I can get. Most of the Watcher's council is older, but it's gotten pretty weird for older people to hang out with teens, so they sent in Byron as sort of an experiment. He's in his twenties, but he'll pass for a high schooler that was held back a grade or two. So my watcher will be coming to school with me, and that way, it won't be so suspicious.

I spent my summer hanging out with him. I trained, I patrolled the graveyards and dusted vampires coming out of their graves, and learned what I could. Now it's time to try juggling school and slaying, and we'll see how that goes. Either way, I kinda think my sophomore year will kick ass.

Finally remembered to crosspost here! New chronicle up on Song of Steel!!!

New post is up!

Also, check out the other pages I've made when you have a chance. I haven't written too much yet, but there's a lot (hopefully!) coming!

New post is (somewhat belatedly) up! Yaaayyy, Chronicle III !!!!!

Second chronicle is up at the new blog! Check it out!

I am please to announce the new home of my game chronicling! Our Song of Steel chronicle can be found at http://songofsteel.wild-refuge.net!

My reasons for moving it is that livejournal doesn't feel quite right for it, and I wanted room to expand on the story, since narratively, this is a very different story than the Buffy one, with too much going on to just write first-person journal-style accounts. The new location will have pages for characters and setting information and fun stuff like that. Speaking of, if anyone wishes to write a character blurb for me to put on the page, send it to me. Otherwise, I will write one up for you. Jason, you have lots of work on your hands already, so unless you have a burning desire to write for our prominent NPCs, I'll be doing those myself as well.

I will link to the new page from here every time I update so that you will still only have to check this journal. I want this to be as painless as possible for all concerned. And that's that. Latest game post coming soon.

((This is going here for now. When I move the bulk of the text to a prettier site, I'll continue to post here with a link when I update it, so you can still keep checking this blog like normal.

Bear with me, this writing is not my best. I'm still feeling out the format, and I may try for something still third-person but less omniscient next time. We'll see, and I apologize for how rough a start this is.))

The Bold Knight in the Smithy – Selection Recorded as told by the performer Caitlin

The tale was as old as the hills the grubby little village was nestled in. The tale was of love, of coercion and jealousy and nobility. The tale plays out again and again through history, and it was playing out again here, in Old Mill. A man of the Black accused of rape and murder, nobly barring himself in the smithy so that he would not have to cut down defenseless villagers to return to his duty. An innocent and virtuous knight wronged by a fearful populace who could not see the corruption amidst their own. The bold knight might have been slain by the very people he was trying to keep from harm if not for the courage of the Lady Kenna Flint, her noble servants, and a certain dancing girl…

Chronicle I

Lady Kenna Flint of Widow’s Watch Castle had been out riding, but was summoned immediately to her father’s chambers upon her return. Good mood vanishing rapidly, she hastened to meet with him. Lord Flint had received a message sent urgently by a knight of the Watch. The message said only that he was trapped in Old Mill village and stood accused of heinous crimes he was innocent of. He begged Lord Flint’s aid. To Kenna’s surprise, he intended to send her to deal with the matter, and informed her she was to pick a couple of servants and to leave immediately with two of the guards as well. She chose her near-constant companion, the capable Zara Snow, and a newer young man, Nixe.

Kenna slept well when they camped that night, stomach full of roast baby boar, but the same could not be said for those on guard. Nixe, when he killed the boar, forgot one important thing- that baby boars have mama pigs. Said mama came barreling through the camp late that night, bowling over Nixe and the other man on watch, and ending up, thanks to quick reaction, on the end of Zara’s spear. Kenna slept quietly, and was undisturbed, but for the patch of blood she encountered outside her tent in the morning. They feasted on pork for breakfast, and headed speedily for Old Mill to find Ser Martyn Gull and see what this man of the Blacks had to say about this accusation.

They arrived to a mob composed of most of the village, all gathered outside the town smithy. Two men were closest to the smithy, both vying for control of the crowd, all of whom looked ready to torch whatever they could and burn anyone in the mill out. They quieted some as Kenna composed herself and strode through with her guard. If she was to accomplish her goals, it would mean exerting the control of her father’s name and showing she could act in his stead. As well as him. Better, even. The older man introduced himself as Old Kresk the miller, who said angrily that the knight had raped and killed his daughter Jilly. The other man, Big Edd, was the smith, and was ready to get the knight and the others with him out of the smithy and into the hands of the mob. After questioning some of the villagers, Kenna stepped inside to talk to Ser Martyn. He said he had been in the tavern all night when the girl was killed, that he did not know her and was blameless.

Kenna sent Nixe to find the serving girl and the dancer from the tavern the knight had been at before he went to ground at the smithy three days before. The dancer was conspicuous, a Dornish performer with a traveling troupe, who was already edging in to hear whatever she could, and with long red hair and clothing just barely on the proper side of decency, she was not exactly trying to blend in. Although she was eager, she said, to help the Lady Kenna however she could, Nixe had her show him to the tavern to find the hare-lipped girl who had been serving drinks as well. Kenna had her guards clear a space around to the side of the smithy where she could talk to people individually. The serving girl knew nothing, but Caitlin, the performer, said she had been watching the knight, since he was the only person who looked like he might have money, and that he did not stay all night, but left around midnight.

Had Kenna not been interested in real justice, the matter would have been simple. Declare Ser Martyn blameless, a true man of the Black, and order the villagers to let him go free. As it was, however, the matter required some investigation. Zara was sent to look at the body, which was in the keeping of the Silent Sisters. It had not been obviously damaged, and Zara did not spend long with it, instead trying to talk to the orphan Pug who had found the body. Nixe was sent to find Jilly’s friend, the weaver’s daughter, but she would not come with him and so he went to investigate Jilly’s room in the empty mill. What he found there was chest of fine things, dresses and jewelry, things that could not have come from the village. When they met up again, Kenna sent Zara and one of the guards to bring the weaver’s daughter, forcibly if necessary. The girl nervously confessed to Kenna that Ser Martyn had known Jilly for years, had brought her trinkets when he passed through town. She said Jilly planned to run away with him.

Kenna’s nerves wearing again, she confronted the knight angrily, demanded to know the truth. He admitted to romancing the girl, but not to killing her. Caitlin remembered then that one other man had left the tavern, shortly after the night. Big Edd, the smith had gotten up and gone after Ser Martyn did, and he had been very drunk. The memory came too late, however; time had run out. Ser Martyn had accomplished what he wished, and told Kenna he was going back to his post- now that she had come, no harm would come to the villagers from his breaking out. Yet this did not happen either, as Big Edd stood in the knight’s way as he tried to live the smithy and the knight ran him through easily, took the boys he had with him, and left. The mob was about to go after them, but Kenna had the others help her get to her horse so she could call for them to stop. Proper justice having been taken out of her hands, she called the girl’s death a terrible accidental drowning. This was close to swaying them, but the angry miller said it was a lie, that Jilly had been too good a swimmer to ever drown accidentally. Caitlin made a theatrical bid to appeal one last time to them, talking about a story of the doomed romance between the knight and the girl, and how the jealous smith killed her when he feared she would run away with the knight and be lost to him. The truth was lost forever, but the story was pretty enough. Kenna departed with promises to aid the villagers, as they had lost their smith, and a dark sense that what had been done was not even close to the justice and truth she wished.

She invited the traveling performers to Widow’s Watch, deciding that Caitlin had been of help, and such things rarely came as far out as Widow’s Watch anyway. Her father, at least, seemed pleased enough with the conclusion of the matter, and considered it done with.

(…)and the Lady Kenna was well pleased at my help, and I decided to become her firm friend. To aid a noble lady is always a privilege. The noble knight was vindicated and order restored, and I had made a new ally. How many can ask for such an ending to their own stories?