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Chapter 2

2319

The sky had darkened to a deep, orange-red. It had been changing for years, slowly losing the friendly blue quality and turning to a shade of blood red. Some said it was the blood of the dead, filling the air. Elizabeth didn’t like to think about it like that, though. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to breathe.

“Elizabeth…” Her father’s eyes never left the dark-haired vampire that he was currently facing as he called out her name. The vampire let out a low growl as her eyes flashed a startling violet and continued to circle around him. “Elizabeth… run…”

She stood there at the edge of the forest, glued to the ground as she watched the catlike vampire lunge at her father with lightning-like speed. Her scream died in her throat and drowned with his mangled one as he fell over.

Crack…

One sharp twist of the neck. One deafening, sickly crunch of bones and he was gone. Elizabeth couldn’t move… she couldn’t bring herself to run, hide, she couldn’t even bring herself to fight.

The vampire – her name was Carmen – turned around. She didn’t bother to drink from him, being satisfied already with the neat, concise sound of a life draining in her hands.

“Leave now,” she told Elizabeth in a smooth, calm voice, not bothering to face her and walked away.

That brought her back to life. With an inhumane scream, her feet lifted themselves off the ground and ran to her father’s lifeless body.

“You killed him!” she hissed at the retreating back. Not looking again at the body lying on the dirt, she gathered all her strength and sprinted at the vampire who thought she could just kill Elizabeth’s father and get away with it. “You murderer… you killed him!” she screeched.

Before Elizabeth could even touch her, Carmen had whirled around and kicked her to the ground. She took two steps towards the blonde girl who was trembling with fear and rage, bent over on the ground.

“Yeah, I killed your father, little girl,” she said, icily, looking into the blonde’s green eyes with her violet ones. “And he killed my sire. We’re even.”

Before she could turn, Elizabeth gritted out a shaky, “No.”

Carmen laughed and shook her head. “You don’t understand at all, do you?” She let out an exaggerated sigh and dramatically waved her hands in the air.

“I understand that you’re a complete monster,” Elizabeth ground out, pushing herself up slowly and painfully. The vampiress merely raised an arch eyebrow.

“If I’m a monster, what does that make you? Tell me, please,” Carmen crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back on one leg. “I’m very interested.”

“I have a living soul,” came the unwavering response. “And you are evil. You are the dead.”

Carmen stared at the girl standing bravely up to her. She understood Elizabeth’s pain, she understood the sorrow. What she didn’t understand was the strange fixation humans had on good and evil.

“What is evil but the lack of good?” Carmen asked her, then continued without waiting for a reply. “It can go both ways, no? Your father killed my sire. Your father is evil. But if I’m evil and your father is evil… who is good? Tell me. Who was right? In my eyes, I was avenging my sire. In your father’s eyes… I don’t even know what your father thinks he was doing. My sire did nothing to him! When you have an answer, little girl, you come and find me. I’ll be very interested in learning.”

With that, she disappeared into the night, leaving Elizabeth staring after her, weary and exhausted.

…………

2322

“You can do better than that,” Elizabeth panted, narrowly dodging the flying fist coming towards her face. Her tied up blond hair whipped around, hitting the side of her face and falling into her eyes.

Her opponent, Xander, pitched forward in the momentum of his punch and hit the ground with a thud.

“I’m worn out,” he gasped, rolling onto his back and laying still, sprawled out on the ground. Elizabeth sighed, exasperated.

“How can I get better if you keep wimping out on me!?” she complained, falling to the ground beside him and staring up at the ceiling of the sparring room.

“Ah, Buffy, there’s no need to get better,” Xander told her, also staring up. “You’ve already surpassed all the men on the field.”

“Don’t call me that,” she twisted her neck to glare at his nickname for her. “And I don’t care for surpassing man. I need to surpass a vampire.”

“No,” he said, firmly, pressing his lips into a thin line.

“But, Xander,” she turned to prop her self up on her elbows. “I just turned twenty-one, and you said yourself that I was better than those arrogant men who enter the drawing!”

“Exactly,” he said, looking over at her. “You’re better than them, which means you will instantly be called upon to join that stupid army. Which will mean that you will – “

“Fight for humanity and against evil!” she interrupted him. “I’ve been working for that ever since – “

“No, Buffy, it’s too dangerous,” he ignored the glare he got from her at the use of ‘Buffy’. “And you’ll never know who they put in that ring with you! What if it’s a master vampire… a great one!”

“One vampire is the same as any other,” she insisted, indignantly. “Evil, evil, evil, see? All the same.”

He didn’t reply and they lay silently beside each other for a good while, before she suddenly closed her eyes and asked him a question that had been in the back of her mind for years.

“Xander,” she started, then paused.

“Hmm?”

“Do you… do you remember the sky about ten years ago?” she rested her cheek on her arms and opened her eyes to study his face as he scrunched him ups eyebrows, trying to remember.

“I think it was a different color,” he shrugged.

“Blue.”

Her voice was so soft, he almost didn’t hear her.

“It was blue,” she repeated. Xander heard the wistful tone in her voice and wondered where this question had come from. She sighed. “Blue is the color of tranquility and peace. I remember when I was a little girl… I would lay out in the yard and stare at the light blue sky and the white clouds. It was so beautiful.”

“Well, red’s got it’s good qualities,” he offered, but she shook her head.

“No, red is the color for blood. War. Death.”

“And passion, heat, love,” he continued and she shot him a scathing look.

“I hate this sky,” she said, plainly. “There are two things I hate most in the world. Vampires. And the color of this sky.”

“What about war?” Xander asked her, quietly. “War is what kills, Buff. Whether it’s humans, vampires… Buffy, vampires have been around fore centuries. It wasn’t until ten years when we started waging war. That’s what turned the sky red – “

“No!” she interrupted him and scrambled to her feet. Without a second glance, she turned to leave the room.

“Buffy – “ he sat up, but she was halfway to the door. When she reached it, she paused for a moment.

“Xander, my father died because of a vampire. And I will avenge his death.”

With that, she left him alone, wondering what had happened to the girl that once knew how to smile.





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Spike'll come in later... about 1 or 2 more chapters. They might take a while in the writing though.





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