Vices of My Blood
Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Jenny entered her dark classroom in a rush. She had to solve her dilemma with the curse. She had thought she had it down to the wording but something must have been overlooked. She sat down at her computer and turned the screen on. She tapped a few keys, and then looked up at the screen. A percent status window appeared over the Romanian text, and the bar zipped across it.
“Come on, come on . . .” Jenny said as she tapped her fingers against the desktop, waiting for the progress to complete.
She watched impatiently as the bar disappeared and an English translation of the curse scrolled up beside the original text.
"That’s it!” Jenny exhaled and smiled when she saw her mistake. “It’s gonna work!” She saved the result and muttered, “This . . . will work.”
She popped out an unlabeled floppy disk and set it aside by a stack of books near the edge of her desk. In the mean time a hardcopy started to print out. She wheeled her chair over to the printer and looked it over. A movement caught her eye then and she looked up to see Angelus sitting in a desk at the back of the room. She gasped and jumped out of her seat.
“Angel . . .” Jenny whispered in shock and slowly moved back toward the door. She was so startled at seeing the dark vampire in her classroom that she momentarily forgot where she was. “How did you get in here?”
Angelus raised an eyebrow in surprise. This woman should have known that public buildings were open to everyone including vampires. He smirked before he answered, “I was invited.” He stood up and walked toward the front of the room in a deliberately slow stroll. “The sign in front of the school . . . ‘Formatia trans sicere educatorum.’”
"‘Enter all ye who seek knowledge,’” Jenny translated as she moved closer to the door with her back against the chalkboard.
The movement wasn’t lost on Angelus and he moved close to her, his footsteps eating up more space between them than she would have preferred. “What can I say? I’m a knowledge seeker,” he chuckled softly.
The closer Angelus moved toward her, the more frightened Jenny became. “Angel, I-I-I’ve got good news,” she said as a way to placate his advances.
Angelus nodded. Drusilla had told him everything the shopkeeper had told her before his untimely death. “I heard. You went shopping at the local magic store.” He noticed the Orb on Jenny’s desk and picked it up and turned it in his hands to examine it more closely. “The Orb of Thesulah. If memory serves, this is supposed to summon a person’s soul from the ether . . . store it until it can be transferred.”
The Orb began to glow in his palm as he looked into it. He glanced up at Jenny for an instant and she edged away from him. Angelus smiled evilly. “You know what I hate most about these things?”
Jenny screamed and covered her face to protect it from the shards when Angelus heaved the sphere into the chalkboard behind her. It shattered into a million pieces and sifting dust.
Angelus smiled at finally seeing someone afraid of him. The Slayer wasn’t afraid of him as far as being the most dangerous vampire in recorded history, but this gypsy girl who was playing at being a responsible adult and he loved the smell of her fear. “They are so goddamn fragile.” Angelus lost the smile as his history with the gypsy curse caught up with him. “Must be that shoddy gypsy craftsmanship, huh?”
Jenny backed away from Angelus and trapped herself in the corner of the room, trembling in fear. She started to inch her hand toward the doorknob when Angelus reached over to the PC and turned the monitor so he can see what the gypsy was doing with the curse to restore his soul.
“Huh,” Angelus said when he saw the English translation beside the Romanian version. “I never cease to be amazed at how much the world has changed in just two and a half centuries.”
Jenny tried to open the door. She closed her eyes to fight back the tears that threatened to escape. Angelus turned the monitor back around to its previous position.
“It’s a miracle to me,” Angelus said in a deadly calm voice. “You, you put the secrets to restoring my soul in here . . .” he said patting the top of the monitor.
Angelus shoved the computer off Jenny’s desk and onto the floor. The monitor broke and sparks started to burn the circuits inside. Angelus tore the printout from the printer. “It comes out here.” He looked at the paper. “‘The Ritual of Restoration.’ Wow. This . . . this brings back memories.” He tore the printout in half and added it to the growing fire emitting from the shattered monitor.
Jenny couldn’t voice an objection past the lump of fear that formed in her throat. She swallowed hard and squeaked, “Wait! That was your . . .”
“My cure?” Angelus offered with a raised eyebrow. He remembered the pain of a soul. It hurt going in and was torture to carry it. “No, thanks. Been there, done that and déjà vu just isn’t what it used to be.” He looked down and noticed the fire burning brighter with the fuel of the ripped printout. “My, my, my . . . . Isn’t this my lucky day? The computer . . .” he said, holding his hands over the flames. “. . . and the pages. Looks like I just killed two birds with one stone.”
Angelus crouched over the fire to further warm himself. Jenny started moving quickly toward the back door. He gave a few seconds head start before he looked up at her in game face. “And teacher makes three,” he ground out with an evil smile bearing his fangs.
Jenny tried to make a run for it, but Angelus roared, quickly jumped in front of her and grabbed her. “No!” Jenny shrieked. Every fear she ever had of since she was a child raced through her mind; Angelus in full game face being at the top of the list at the moment.
Angelus threw Jenny back into the locked door, and the force of the impact broke the door open. She looked up at him before she scrambled to her feet and ran for her life.
“Oh, good. I need to work up an appetite first,” Angelus said as he flicked his tongue over his fangs. This was going to fun. He could hear Drusilla’s voice in his head: ‘The kitty has to chase the mouse before he gets to play with his dinner.’ Okay, Dru. I’ll play with the prey but I have no stomach for gypsy blood anymore.
Jenny ran down the length of the hall and slammed open the door to the lounge area. She ran to another set of doors that led outside only to find them locked. She turned and ran back into the lounge only to catch sight of Angelus walking quickly toward her and she raced further down the hall. Angelus pulled the double doors open and followed her at a brisk pace.
Jenny burst through another hall exit, and ran along the colonnade. Angelus was not far behind, and continued after her at a quick pace. Soon he started to run as well. Jenny kept running, whipping her head around every few seconds to check behind her. She reached the next building and struggled with the door. She looked back and saw Angelus running toward her with an evil grin on his face. She yanked hard at the door several more times before it opened, and ran through it.
Jenny pulled the door closed behind her and Angelus slammed into it. She started to run down the hall. Angelus had to yank at the door a couple of times before it would open for him, too, and he chased after her. Jenny grabbed a cleaning cart left in the hall by the stairs, and pushed it into Angelus. He crashed into it, flying over it and onto the floor while she dashed up the steps.
Angelus watched her and smirked as he picked himself up off the floor. He knew where she was headed and he also knew a shortcut to get there. He walked down the hall to another exit. This chase was fun when it started but now he was getting bored with it. He had killed two gypsies so far, what would one more cost him?
Jenny saw a landing by a large arched window. Jenny sprinted up the stairs and collided into a waiting Angelus. She screamed when he gripped her arms. He chuckled and looked down into her face. He put one hand behind her head and touched her lips with the fingers of his other, running his fingers almost lovingly across them. The view out of the window showed the park beyond with the palm trees lit up. Giles’ gray Citron drove by.
“Sorry, Jenny, this is where you get off,” Angelus said in mock regret.
He moved his fingers from her lips and placed his hand under her chin. In one swift movement he twisted her head and snapped her neck, her body collapsing to the floor. He looked up and around, as if noticing where he was for the first time. He breathed heavily from the running and the excitement.
“Ah . . . I never get tired of doing that,” he said as he picked the gypsy’s body up off the floor, flung it over his shoulders and walked out of the school to meet Drusilla.
Xander stumbled out of the mansion, his mind overloaded with all the things he had witnessed. First seeing Buffy in the throes of passion with Spike, and then being captured by Angelus, seeing first hand the craziness that was Drusilla and finally Buffy's demon. He staggered along the streets, ever vigilant for Angelus, as he tried to decide where to go first.
Xander had missed school that day, so he knew that Willow would have alerted the others that he was missing. He wasn't stupid, no matter how he acted. He knew they would think he was turned.
As Xander neared the high school, his resolved hardened; Giles needed to know what was going on with Buffy. When he started to cross the street, out of nowhere appeared a pair of headlights.
The car, which he now recognized as Giles's old piece of junk, screeched to a halt just a few inches from his body. Giles and Willow jumped out, crossbows trained at the young man. He held his hands up in surrender.
"Hold! I am not a vampire. Give me a cross," he stammered. The last thing he needed was to be mistakenly shot and end up in the hospital or dead after all he had been through in the past day or so.
Giles quickly threw Xander a small cross, which the usually clumsy boy caught quite deftly. When there was no reaction Willow gave a small cry of joy and rushed to embrace her life-long friend.
"I was so worried, Xander," she cried between sobs.
"Quite right, but we need to get off the street," replied Giles, as his eyes darted around, searching the shadows for danger.
Willow dragged Xander to the car, shoving him in the backseat before climbing in herself. Giles got behind the wheel, shifted into drive and they continued on to Buffy's house where Joyce, Oz and Cordelia were waiting for them. Willow informed Xander that they were doing a disinvite spell at the house to keep Angelus out.
When Buffy had disappeared, Giles had taken it upon himself to inform Joyce of whom and what her daughter really was. Giles was amazed at how well the elder Summers woman had taken the news. It occurred to him that maybe what made Buffy such a good Slayer wasn't just from her being able to slay demons, but how her mother had raised her to be independent and self-reliant. Joyce had been relieved and proud to hear that her daughter wasn't a juvenile delinquent.
Once the disinvite spell had been performed, the group gathered in the living room to find out what had happened to Xander. Xander took great relish in being the center of attention for a change.
"I think Buffy's a vampire now," Xander blurted out.
Willow gasped; her hand covered her mouth to stifle her voice as she turned her face into Oz's shoulder. Cordelia and Joyce had twin looks of shock on their faces. They all had known it was a possibility but hope still lingered in their hearts.
"Good God, are you sure?" questioned Giles even as his heart sunk.
Xander nodded as he remembered how Buffy had looked after she cut him down. Then a thought occurred to him: why would Buffy cut him down if she was a vampire? Wouldn't she have wanted to torture him, not let him go?
"But she didn't look like a regular vampire. She didn’t have the prerequisite lumpies and her eyes were turquoise colored," Xander informed the group as he went over the memories in his head.
"Are you absolutely sure, Xander?" asked Giles, who suddenly stood up to pace back and forth as he polished his glasses on a handkerchief from his back pocket.
"Pretty sure, G-man. She cut me down from where Deadboy had me tied to the ceiling and as soon as she vamped she told me to run," Xander answered.
The group as a whole watched as Giles continued to pace, his eyes unfocused as if he was trying to access some hidden memory from the recesses of his mind.
Giles stopped in mid-step when he finally found the fact that he was searching his mind for. He looked at the faces of the people around him. Joyce was quietly sobbing, mourning the apparent loss of her daughter. Oz was his ever stoic self as Willow and Cordelia looked at Giles expectantly, hoping he would be able to tell them good news. Cordelia had changed considerably in the past few weeks that Buffy had been missing, as she came to realize how much she actually enjoyed the company of the people in the room with her now. Xander just looked exhausted, the past 24 hours having taken a toll on him.
"I need to check my facts, but I am not entirely sure that Buffy is a vampire. Her eye color and the fact that she let you go, Xander, points towards this," Giles informed the group, "The Slayer is actually the spiritual embodiment of a vampire melded with the heart and soul of a human. It appears that some event has pushed Buffy’s Slayer demon to the forefront."
Giles waited for the gasps and excited murmurs to die down before continuing, "Quite possibly the same event that caused Angel to lose his soul."
It suddenly dawned on Giles that someone from their grouping was missing, "Where's Kendra?"