Inspired by my mom’s obsession with Ghost Whisperer and way too much Anita Blake. Oh well, tell me what you think. Reviews feed my Muse.
They looked at her.
“What?” Angel asked.
Sarah shook her head.
“I don’t know. My sleep schedule’s all messed up, maybe I’m just tired.”
“It has been a long couple of days,” Connor told her.
“Yeah,” Spike agreed, gently running a hand over her back. “Why don’t you go back to the room and rest for a few hours? We’ll wake you up before we leave.”
“You’d better,” she teased and he grinned back.
“Go. We can go without supervision for a little while.”
She sighed then nodded.
“Okay. Be good.”
“Aren’t I always?”
“That’s up for debate,” Angel said and Spike gave him a mock wounded look.
“I’m leaving now,” Sarah said before she could get dragged into the incoming argument, benign as it was.
They waved as she left. Slowly making her way across the street Sarah kept her eyes on the spot where she’d seen…him. /first ice, then fire, now ghosts…this is just great/
“Stop talking to yourself Sarah,” she muttered. She’d been doing far too much of that the past few days. /of course, talking’s not the problem, it’s when you start answering yourself that you know you’re in trouble…grr…stop talking to self…ah, bed/
Kicking off her boots the Slayer cocooned herself in the comforter and closed her eyes. /okay, turn off brain, sleep time now/ She really didn’t expect that to work, considering that that’s what she’d been telling herself the night Whistler had shown up, but surprisingly she was asleep a few minutes later. Sometime after that Sarah was awakened by two voices arguing. The voices were male and rose steadily, until they were shouting words she couldn’t make out. She popped an eye open and looked at her watch. It was just past noon which meant that she’d slept for a good five hours and was intent on getting in a few more.
“Guys, knock it off,” she commanded grumpily, still half asleep.
The voices stopped and she grinned in triumph before drifting back into a dreamless sleep.
“Ear mmm eee…”
Sarah frowned and snuggled further into the pillows, struggling to hang onto sleep, but the sounds persisted.
“Aaa nn ooo hhh rrr mmmeee…”
Soon she started to make out words.
“Caaann ou heer mmeee?”
/can you hear me? It’s not the Verizon Wireless guy is it? /
“What?” she muttered.
“Help usss, pleassse?”
That definitely wasn’t one of her guys. She opened her eyes and came face-to-face with a pair of green ones. She scrambled backwards then let out a surprised shriek as she left the bed, meeting the floor with an ‘oohf’. The man (ghost?) came around the side and looked down at her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice sounding far off and kind of echo-y.
She nodded slowly.
“Except for the fact that I’m seeing a ghost, yeah, I’m great.”
The man smiled softly.
“We won’t hurt you,” he said, indicating another ghost standing by the door. They looked like brothers. “I’m Caleb, this is Terry. We need your help.”
“I am the go-to girl,” she told them. “I guess.”
Attempting to look professional as she struggled out of the comforter Sarah continued addressing the two dead men.
“Okay, I’m a little…all right, a lot new to this, but I’ll do my best.”
Freeing herself from the blanket she sat down on the bed.
“What can I help you with?”
“The man who runs this place is the human minion of a soul eating demon. He killed us and did a spell so we couldn’t move on. He keeps our bodies in the basement so we can’t go anywhere else.”
As he spoke his voice became more grounded and easier to make out.
“There were ten of us originally, now it’s just me and my brother. The demon’s coming back tonight…We’re running out of time. You’re the first one to see or hear us in twenty years, you’re our last hope.”
“Well, that was to the point.” Sarah observed, then thought a moment. “Can you leave the motel?”
Caleb nodded.
“Not very far though,” his brother, Terry, said.
“How about the restaurant across the street?”
“Hey Ang…er, Richard,” she drawled in her best Dad-I-need-something voice.
“I thought you were asleep?”
“Woke up,” she said, sitting down at the empty booth. “Where’s Spike and Connor?”
Angel gave her a cautionary look.
“Will and David,” she corrected, then added, “This is really weird you know?”
He shrugged.
“That’s very helpful, thank you.”
“Uh…sorry?”
She gave him her own look.
“They went to get ‘road trip’ food,” he said, making air quotes around ‘road trip’.
“Does that include the ‘red stuff’?” she asked making air quotes of her own. “Cause I gotta admit, you’re lookin’ a little pale.”
“Did you wanna ask me something?” he asked, completely ignoring the ‘pale’ comment.
“What do you know about soul eating demons?”
He frowned at her.
“Why do you wanna know?”
Sarah shrugged.
“Dunno, had a dream, wanted to know if it was a memory kicking in like Whistler said.”
“I thought you were unconscious when he said that?”
She gave Angel a ‘duh’ look and said, “Spi…Will told me after I woke up.”
/and did a few other things…ooh, pleasant memory/
“Okay, what did this thing look like?”
Her eyes flicked to the side and she was silent for a moment, like she was listening to someone, then said, “Human looking with kind of a beak-y nose and a red horn that shoots out of his forehead when he’s ready to feed.”
Angel thought a moment.
“It could be a Sohjin’oh or an Aran’k.”
Sarah arched an eyebrow at the interesting names.
“Oookaaay…”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“Um, it has er, had a human minion to kill people and do spells.”
“Now that sounds like an Aran’k. The Sohjin’oh sucks the souls directly from the living body. The horn acts like a straw.”
She nodded taking in the information.
“So this Aran’k thing…how do you kill it?”
“Why..?”
“I’m a Slayer Ritchie, it’s what I do.”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Ritchie?”
“Are you gonna tell me or not Angel?” She was irritated.
“Fire and dismemberment, that’ll free any souls it’s consumed. To free any others you’ve got to destroy the minion’s spell. You’ll know it when you see it.”
“Cool, thanks Ritchie,” she called over her shoulder as she left.
“Ritchie? Definitely Spike’s Mate.”
Ritchie he could handle, at least it wasn’t as bad as…
“Oh, no.”
“Okay,” Sarah said to the two spirits behind her. “You said the Aran’k demon guy doesn’t show up ‘til after nightfall, so I want you guys to make sure no one else is here.”
“What are you gonna do?” Caleb asked her.
“Pack up our stuff and move the cars.”
“Why?”
“A…Richard said that only fire and dismemberment can kill this guy.”
“So?”
“So…” she entered the room and shut the door then held up a hand and concentrated. The two ghosts stepped back as flames sprang from her flesh.
“Fire just happens to be my specialty. I just don’t wanna get fingered for arson after we leave.”
She put out the flames and checked her watch.
”It’s 3:00 now, sun sets at six. We don’t have much time.”
The ghosts nodded and left and she looked at her arm again. The deep claw marks were no more than scratches now. She wouldn’t even scar.
“Gotta love Slayer healing.”
Angel watched silently as Sarah made several trips from their room to the cars then moved her Corsica in front of the restaurant and entered.
“Can I have the keys to the Viper?” she asked.
“If I can have your driver’s license.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“The guy needs your picture for the new one.”
“Oh.” A grin lit up her features, excited at the prospect of getting to drive her car farther than across a street, and pulled the small wallet out of her purse.
“Here you go.” She tossed the piece of plastic at him.
“Did you bring any weapons?”
Angel grinned slightly. He knew what she was doing. And he was going to let her do it. The way Spike talked her parents were Watchers so they probably trained her how to fight. He wanted to see how much her body remembered. Quite a bit if her performance in the alley was any indication. It would give them a good starting point for when they started training her after they got settled.
“There’s a sword in the back of the Viper,” he said handing her the key ring.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the ring. “By the way Richard. You might wanna switch sides, you’re gettin’ kind of red. There’s nothing worse than an uneven tan.”
After parking the Viper next to her car Sarah grabbed the sword and a pair of jeans before returning to the room. After changing she gave the weapon a few practice swings, confused by the familiarity of it, like the fight in the alley. She’d preformed moves that would’ve normally put her on her ass or flat on her face but had pulled them off without a hitch.
(A man in full fencing gear stood in front of her, telling her the proper form)
She frowned at the memory. It was her father’s voice, but he’d never taught her how to fence, no one had…unless it was one of her true memories coming back, like the dream. Sarah shook her head.
“Weird,” she muttered but continued to practice.
About an hour later Sarah concluded that she remembered enough to not die when she faced this thing and wondered where the ghost boys were. As if called by her thoughts they wandered through the left wall.
“Hey guys,” she greeted. “Find anyone?”
“Just bodies in the basement,” Caleb told her.
“Is ‘Bob the Minion’ still here?”
“Yeah,” Terry said. “He’s in his office muttering over his candles.”
“Candles,” she repeated. /the spell? /
“Okay, I’ll get him out of the way first.”
Leaving the sword in the room Sarah slowly made her way to the manager’s office. Hefting a large paperweight she found on the desk she crept over to the half-open door on the back wall and peeked inside. His back was to the door and he intoned words she didn’t understand over a rune chalked onto the floor, surrounded by candles. He was so caught up in the spell that he never noticed when his sanctuary was breached, or when Sarah raised the paperweight. He slumped to the side, unconscious. After checking to make sure he was still alive Sarah knocked over the candles and drug her feet through the rune, hoping it was enough to destroy the spell, then dusted her hands off, turned around and let out a surprised shriek.
“Darn,” the man said. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find guys with his kind of talent?”
He shrugged.
“Oh well, I guess if you want something done right…” he raised solid black eyes to her face. “You gotta do it yourself.”
He muttered something and everything went black.
“Sarah, you must wake up.”
She became aware of a horrible stench and allowed her eyes to flutter open. She was surrounded by the dead, one of which was speaking to her.
“Wesley?” she whispered.
“I’ve given all the help I’m allowed, the rest you must do on your own. I’m doing my best to keep Spike from sensing that you’re in danger, but…”
“Thanks Wes.”
He smiled and disappeared, revealing the Aran’k chanting over a knife. She tugged experimentally on the chains binding her wrists and ankles but they didn’t budge.
/well, crap! How the hell am I gonna get outta this mess? /
Closing her eyes she tried to think but was distracted by the weird new feeling growing in the pit of her stomach.
/okay, my new power has something to do with ghosts…maybe not just ghosts? /
She concentrated on a body several feet away and jumped slightly when it twitched.
/okay, not just ghosts/
Taking a deep breath she focused her attention on the feeling (power?) coiling tighter and tighter in her belly until it whip lashed out…and into every corpse in the room. The dead men, women, and /oh God / even children picked themselves up, in some cases pulled themselves together, and as one, turned to look at her. Shriveled eyeballs and empty sockets stared at Sarah, like troops awaiting orders, and she realized, they were. A Necromancer’s army. Soldiers of rotted flesh and yellow bone that would do anything she commanded of them.
Her gaze fell to the Aran’k, who, like his minion, was too caught up in his spell to notice the army of victims that surrounded him.
“Kill him,” the Slayer commanded.
Their heads turned in perfect unison to zero in on their killer, the thing that had fed on their souls for years. At least, that’s what Sarah tried to tell herself. Even though he was a demon, one that had killed the people these bodies had belonged to, one that planned on killing her… she still couldn’t shake the feeling that this was murder.
A small skeletal hand clamped onto the demon’ shoulder and he finally realized that something wasn’t right. He turned to face the small skeleton, clad in the tattered remains of a Mickey Mouse patterned dress, the black melting from his eyes to reveal a crystalline blue before the tiny skull blocked his face from Sarah’s view. The Slayer closed her eyes and concentrated on freeing herself while trying to block out the sounds; the wet crunches and ripping, the cracks and pops…the horrible screams that suddenly ended as the dead tore the demon apart. Something thick and wet landed on her cheek and she swiped at it frantically, smearing whatever it was over a larger area.
/damn it Sarah, pull yourself together /
Forcing herself to be calm she took several deep breaths, willing her racing heart to slow.
/okay, chains…chains are metal, you’re a pyrokenetic and metal melts/
Without focusing too hard she watched as the steel turned from cold grey to warm orange to hot red to white and dripped from her wrists and ankles. Sarah didn’t know why her clothes didn’t catch fire but figured that if she thought on it too hard they would before realizing that the melted metal had caught the floor on fire.
“Oh crap! That is so not what I wanted to happen!”
Dodging flames she ran to the stairs. Nearly the whole room was ablaze, as were some of the bodies (zombies?) who were once again staring at her, awaiting new orders now that the others had been carried out.
“Um,” she paused on the stairs. “Go back…be dead again…rest in peace.”
Sarah wasn’t sure which of the phrases affected them the most but the zombies lay back, exactly as they had been, and (for lack of a better word) died. She bounded up the rest of the stairs and found herself in the managers’ office. After dragging the unconscious man outside she raced across the street to where Spike and Connor were putting two coolers into the cars as Angel changed her license plate. He grinned when he spotted her.
“I got the papers…”
She pulled the Viper keys out of her pocket and chucked them at him.
“We gotta go. Now.”
Angel frowned at her.
“Why do I smell smoke?” Connor asked as he shut the door.
“That’s the reason we gotta go,” Sarah said, sliding behind the wheel of her car.
Once on the road Spike looked at her sharply.
“What did you do?”
“Slayed a demon,” she said matter-of-factly, eyes firmly on the road.
“And that required burning down a building?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Author’s Note: I know the ending kinda, sorta, really sucks, but I didn’t wanna make this chapter any longer. Read and review, it’s the blood my muse craves
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