Ireland-1741 Having left her beloved clan, Amara walked the streets alone. It was late and most of the people left roaming the back alleys of Galway were drunken louts or homeless bums. She walked down a particularly dark alley and as she reached the end, she turned and listened.
A young child was crying. She followed the sobs until she came across the body of a thirteen year old lad, who looked as though he had just been in a fight and come off a bit the worse for wear.
He was crouched on top of a crate in the far corner of the dark, dank alley way. She sat next to him, letting her long white gown drag in the soot and grime that lay on the ground. He looked up at her with big brown eyes and for the first time in her immortal existence, she felt as though her heart were bleeding
The young boy reminded her, for a second, of her younger brother. Of course he was long dead now, as was the rest of her family but still she couldn't bare to think of them.
The boy's eyes seemed to tell her a tale of an unhappy childhood and the long welt that ran down his cheek suggested that fights were a common occurrence in his life.
"What happened, my sweet?" Amara asked with real concern. Although she couldn't quite understand why. She felt a need to help the boy, protect him in all the ways she had failed to protect her own brother. To become his friend, not just take him away and kill him.
"My father slapped me..." He whispered, trying hard to hold back the salty tears that threatened to pour down his cheeks.
"That's all right, my dear. You just come along now. I'll take you to my house and clean you up. Then, you can take me to see this father of yours. Perhaps I'll have to talk to him..." The young boy gave her a quizzical look and for a moment wasn't sure if he could trust her. She didn't look like other girls around his age and she was much too well spoken to be hanging around a side alley at this hour. After all, even he knew that horrible creatures lurked in the shadows of the side alleys after dark. But all the same, he felt a closeness to her...a bond, even though he had only met her moments ago.
She held out her hand and the boy stared at her long fingers for a moment, before he let them enclose his. When his skin first touched hers, he felt the need to draw away. Her flesh was as icy as snow and the coldness of her hands seemed to run up his arm and fill his entire body, chilling him to the bone.
When they reached her home, the boy was surprised to find no one else there; surely she had parents...brothers...sisters.
"Dead." The girl replied, as if reading his mind, "It's just me now." She cleaned his face and wounds and put him to bed in one of the many rooms of her seemingly endless home
He took comfort in the fact that he wouldn't need to see his father again...at least not until the morning.
When Buffy entered her house just after eleven p.m., her mother was on the phone to a friend and nodded when she saw her daughter enter the kitchen. Buffy had a mouthful of milk, which she drank straight from the carton and a piece of cake before she interrupted her mother to tell her that she was going upstairs to have a shower and turn in for the night. Joyce just smiled and nodded. Deep down she felt relieved that her daughter had returned home safe, at least for one more night.
Giles seemed somewhat confused.
"Doesn't travel alone?" He asked, really quite intrigued.
"Well," Angel began, "Amara was a friend...lover of mine before I became a vampire." He went on to tell Giles that she had taught him how to fight. How she had taught him the many legends and magicks of her adopted people. Unfortunately, his father had threatened to kill her before his very eyes and forced Angel to send her away
Of course Angel well knew that his father wouldn't kill Amara.
However his father was a popular man and he suspected an angry town mob led by his father, may be a different story. So as much as it had killed him to do it at the time, he had sent her to England to live for a couple of years
That had been in 1747. By the time Amara returned, Angel had become Angelus and when she came to him to tell him of her return, he had been incredibly heartless.
For the first time, Angel actually admitted that what he had done to Drusilla, he had practised on his first love, Amara. After he had broken her heart, she had gone temporarily insane and wanted revenge.
Her revenge was carried out when she made another particularly vicious demon named Anastasia.
"Who and what is Anastasia?" Giles asked, utterly confused. The name did sound familiar, however he just couldn't place it.
Angel went on to explain that Anastasia had been killed by Amara when she finally came to her senses. However, Anastasia cursed herself beforehand and when Amara killed her, she found out that every twenty-five years there after Anastasia would become reanimated and would be free to reek havoc on the rest of the world once again. Unless Amara killed her. Well, at least killed her as much as immortally possible
The disturbing part of Angel's story came when he looked up at Giles and told him that this twenty-five year time bracket...was up.
Giles was shocked. He told Angel that he would need to meet up with Buffy and the rest of her friends at the library the next night so as to alert them, as soon as possible, to the danger that was at hand.
As she lay in bed that night, Buffy's mind was an ocean of nightmares
As the sun crept up, almost in slow motion, a young girl rose from her bed. It was dawn and the huts the Gypsy clan still lay in shadow, as she walked out of her own and through the camp where she was staying.
As she reached a clearing in the forest, everything became bathed in the early morning sunlight. The girl was searching for something as she walked around the edge of the clearing. Under a tree the body of another young girl lay; also dressed in the dark red cloths of a Gypsy
Her throat was bloody; two puncture wounds in her neck. The girl ran and knelt beside her friend. The dead girl looked almost identical to the one that knelt over her. Tears spilled down her face, and as she turned towards where Buffy watched from, everything went black.
Buffy's eyes flew open and she sat up in bed...gasping for breath.
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