Watcher’s Tales

(Written by Voirrey)

Chapter 1. (In which we meet our Heroines.)

Whitby in North Yorkshire is a small quiet seaside town. It is also a place much favoured by ghosties and beasties, and things that go vamp in the night. Bram Stoker, many years ago, had thought that it would make a good place for his version of Dracula to ‘Enter Stage Left’, and his myth begat reality, as more Goths, and Vampire Wannabes turned up, until the real things found it the ideal place to hang out, as no-one noticed them.

This meant that Miss Jocasta McStay found that running a small shop dealing in crystals, ‘magic books’, ‘spell components’ ‘healing music’ and similar was easier in Whitby than it would have been almost anywhere else on the East coast of England. This was a good thing, as Whitby was where she had to be, and the shop both made money, and made meeting people easier. Especially interesting people, people who realised that some of her wares were indeed magic books and spell components!

Why did Miss Jocasta McStay need to be in Whitby? Because Whitby was where Roxanne Quinn lived, and Miss McStay was her Watcher. There had been Watchers for as long as there had been a Slayer, and for most of the last Millennium the Watchers’ Council had been based in Britain. Although there are, and had been for as far back as records exist, non-British Watchers, the mainstays of the Watching business were a number of families from various parts of the British Isles, and the McStays had numbered among these for at least the last three hundred years. Miss McStay’s grandfather had been a Council member, and, now that female Watchers were accepted, it had been obvious to the family that Jocasta was a natural.

So it was that at eighteen she had gone from her home in Warwickshire to the city of her forefathers (well Edinburgh, where her grandparents still lived!), and to the great seat of Watcher learning there – or Edinburgh University, for the less romantically minded. The less-romantically minded definitely included Jocasta McStay. Intelligent, sensible and level-headed were the phrases that cropped up most often in her school reports, and were the attributes that convinced the Watchers’ Council that she was a suitable candidate for all the ‘special subjects’ that were on offer to the chosen few, alongside their main degrees.

Graduating with an upper second class degree, (and Honours in her ‘special subjects’) meant that she went on to complete her M.A. – officially concentrating on ancient myths, actually completing her Watcher training. A couple of years more doing research at Head Office, and here she was, running a shop in Whitby. And being the Watcher to the most recently ‘called’ Slayer.

Roxanne Quinn, known to her friends as Roxy, had woken up one morning to find that she had superhuman strength, speed, reactions – just the sort of thing that happens to sixteen going on seventeen year-olds all the time – not, as Roxy herself would say. Friends? Roxy had discovered like other Slayers before her that friends could be a difficult subject, especially as she hadn’t lived here for long, and was still trying to make new friends when she found she had become a sort of super-woman.

Fortunately Roxy and Jocasta got on pretty well, and Roxy’s lessons in Slaying, demonology etcetera were easily organised as she had an ‘after-school job’ at Jocasta’s shop. By late 2002, a few months after Roxy’s ‘Call’ they had settled down fairly well to lessons, evening patrols, and all the other things that were routine to a Slayer and her Watcher. The only problem Roxy had was difficulty finding time for all her school work, and time to socialise, especially as girls at school were not exactly queuing up to become her best friend.

(Roxy’s Bit)

Then life suddenly became a lot more exciting. One of the boys from Roxy’s school turned up dead, his head severed from his body. Then within days Roxy and Jocasta noticed three young women motorcyclists in the shop, apparently doing their Christmas shopping. But there was something odd about them – they cast no reflections in the decorative mirrors in the shop!

Research via the Watchers’ Council showed that the three girls were well-recorded vampires. The oldest, Rosa, became a vampire in 1274, the others more recently, and that they were all Slayers at the time of their ‘Turning’, they were in fact vampire Slayers, rather than Vampire Slayers! Records also showed that they had never killed humans in Britain, and seemed on the whole to live fairly exemplary lives, and so, although all had large rewards on their heads, and Roxy as a Slayer should have attempted to slay them, Jocasta McStay made the decision to make no attempt to slay them, as they could all, individually, have taken Roxy apart. Instead, as they had a good alibi for the second death of a sixth form boy by decapitation, and obviously knew who Roxy and Jocasta were, the Watcher and Slayer decided they may even come in helpful.

(What Jocasta found in her research)

At the local night club ‘Death Warmed Up’, Roxy kept an eye on both the vampire Slayers, and the friends of the two decapitation victims. This particular bunch was not necessarily Roxy’s favourite classmates. The group of lads, and their girlfriends, regarded themselves as the trend-setters, they were usually a bit full of themselves, inclined to make fun of the less sporty members of school, and their teasing could sometimes be nasty enough to be construed as bullying. Roxy couldn’t see that any of their ‘targets’ would be capable of decapitating people though, and so it seemed to definitely be Slayer business.

The vampire Slayers, Rosa, Teresa and Gabriella, agreed, along with Roxy, to go to what should have been a ‘Hurrah- my -parents -are -away -and -we -can -all -get -drunk’ party at Brian’s house, but was more of a ‘Help –my -parents -are -away -and -we –might -all –get –decapitated’ event. All four having been invited more because they were tough cookies than anything else! Although it must be pointed out that all four, and Teresa and Gabriella especially, were very smart young women, and Gabriella kept giving one of the lads, Ross, the come-on! Luckily Ross was unattached!

Jocasta waited in her car, a Seat Leon, outside Brian’s house, in case anything did happen, but what happened first happened to her! Leon, as in the film, climbed into her car, and rendered her unconscious! She just had time to press ‘call’ on her mobile phone, set up ready with Roxy’s number.

Inside the house, just as Roxy’s phone rang, all hell broke out as a variety of film and television characters appeared out of the TV screen; The Highlander, Xena Warrior Princess, and the Dolph Lundgren character from ‘Universal Soldier’, all set on destroying everyone in the room! After some tough fighting, Roxy and the vampire Slayers, with a little help from Ross and Brian, were triumphant – except that Rosa, more totally vampiric than her friends, was decapitated by The Highlander as she tried to drain him, and turned to dust.

Although this meant the end of a very powerful vampire, Roxy and Jocasta (when she recovered) couldn’t help but feel sorry for the remaining two, who were very distressed, and helped them bury Rosa’s dust in the grounds of the Abbey. However, Teresa and Gabriella were now staunch allies, as this was no longer something to amuse themselves with, but personal. They presented Roxy with Rosa’s sword and matching dagger – which Teresa explained was actually called a main-gauche - and Teresa promised extra lessons to help her make best use of it. The sword had originally been made for Benvenuto Cellini, a very famous goldsmith in the sixteenth century, by Jorge Martinez, the greatest swordsmith of his day. Cellini had engraved and gilded it himself, and had given it to Rosa, his sometime model and girlfriend, when he had become too old to fight with it. If magical swords really existed, they would be look and feel like this. Roxy was ‘well impressed’, and happy to have as many lessons as Teresa was willing to give.

Some degree of explanation was also due to Ross, Brian, and Donna (Brian’s girlfriend), who had no trouble being convinced of the existence of Demons, Vampires, etc., as, after all, they had just been attacked by fictional characters, and seen one of their guests turned to dust in Brian’s front room!

Within days, Ross and Brian disappeared – ‘beamed-up’ by Captain James T. Kirk! The group of Slayer, Watcher, and two vampire Slayers followed clues which eventually led them to one of the ‘nerds’ who had been picked on by the decapitation victims. In a back room at his father’s TV shop he had Ross and Brian captive. He had a magic remote control, which enabled him to wish for, and control, TV and video characters. A fierce battle ensued, between his summoned fighters, most of who were the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and Roxy’s group. Ross fought hard despite having been tied up, but the battle was only won by the ‘Goodies’ because the nerd’s summoned characters really did act in character – hence Leon would not kill women and children, and Ogami Itto from the BabyCart series would not fight because he had not been paid in advance. The nerd disappeared into his own TV, summoned there by a likeness of Ann Robinson – scary! The only character not destroyed, or sucked back into the television, was The Bacardi Cat – of whom more later!

Chapter 2. (In which some vampires engage in fisticuffs.)

Gabriella and Teresa freed up Roxy’s time, as they soon had any locally resident vampires toeing the line, and there were no attacks on humans at all. Ross and Gabriella definitely became ‘an item’ after ‘The Battle of the TV Remote’, and so Ross was now an integral part of Roxy’s group. Just before school broke up for Christmas, Ross received a strange text message from Gabriella, and enlisted Roxy, and Jocasta (because she had a car) to go with him to the holiday chalet Gabriella and Teresa were renting.

There had obviously been some sort of a struggle, and there was no sign of either vampire – but a message scrawled on the mirror told them to contact a local dentist! Not any local dentist, but Miss S. Phantom. Jocasta’s research on the Watchers’ Website showed that there had been a Slayer in the early 1980s called Sally Phantom, but she was dead.

Or so they had thought. Miss S. Phantom was indeed the former slayer, and she didn’t really want anything to do with Roxy, Jocasta or Ross. The only reason she was not physically violent in suggesting that they go away was because of Gabriella’s message. Miss Phantom was obviously not a vampire – she’d been seen out at mid-day in the summer, and she showed up in mirrors, but she was also known to Gabriella, and by all accounts had been riddled with bullets in her late teens, and fallen dead off a high cliff! Curiouser and curiouser.

There was no time to ponder, Jocasta, Roxy and Ross felt, for one reason or another, that they needed to find the two vampire Slayers, who were obviously in danger. Eventually they discovered Gabriella and Teresa down by the harbour engaged in battle against each other, each as part of a gang of minion vampires, commanded by a monstrous eight-foot tall vampire and a smaller one clad in Dracula garb respectively.

Gabriella appeared to be trying to avoid coming into conflict with Teresa, and neither was obviously hurt, so Roxy went to the rescue – the only trouble was that one Slayer could not tackle both vampire commanders at the same time, and Ross and Jocasta could only really cope with one vampire each. Although Gabriella tried to help them, Teresa, on the side commanded by the Dracula-like vampire, was trying to attack them – things were looking serious. Suddenly Sally Phantom appeared, and morphed into a large lynx! She tackled the other vampire commander, quickly overcoming him by biting his head off! As soon as Roxy had staked her own vampire commander, Teresa became aware of her surroundings again, and both she and Gabriella sent all the other vamps packing.

Teresa had been held in thrall by the Dracula look alike, whilst Gabriella had been forced to fight by the big guy, who had said that otherwise he would kill Ross. But both vampire Slayers recognised the vampire commanders as two vampires who only two or three days before they had been bossing around themselves – what was going on in Whitby? They searched their lair, but there was nothing unusual there – the remains of a couple of small animals, and a couple of junk food wrappers.

Sally was very annoyed that she had had to reveal herself as a were-lynx, and told Jocasta and Roxy they were never to mention it again, and neither were they to ever expect that she would help them again.

And then it was Christmas.

Chapter 3. (In which some things are lost and found.)

By January it became clear that someone or something around Whitby was granting wishes, in the most disruptive fashion it could. Louise, whose boyfriend Sean had been the first to be decapitated, came back to school about three stone heavier than before – a good bit more than comfort eating would account for - whereas another girl, Michelle Nicholson, suddenly had a figure about three stone lighter. She had previously bought from Jocasta’s shop the sort of things that New Age books tell you to use for weight reducing spells, but they don’t usually work that well!

Roxy gave the Bacardi Breezer cat to Louise, partly to try and make her feel better, and partly in case she could find out anything from her to help discover how Michelle had done what was to all intents and purposes a body swap. Louise could cast no light on things, but Jocasta’s research suggested that a likely culprit for the wish granting was an imprisoned Middle Eastern demon called the Djinn. Louise was glad of the cat!

Next Michelle suddenly started to get straight ‘A’s in maths, whereas Julius, the class maths genius, began to have trouble with even fairly simple concepts. When Michelle became suddenly strong and agile and amazingly good at games, and Roxy suddenly had trouble picking up her school bag, things were getting worse, and when Michelle was heard to mutter, in ‘Death Warmed Up’, that she wished that she had whatever it was that made Gabriella so ‘damned mysterious and sexy,’ things got a lot worse!

Gabriella had been turned by Teresa, at her own choice, only because she was bleeding to death; and when the vampiric demon left Gabriella for Michelle (The Djinn having cunningly inserted a comma between damned and mysterious, for best effect) Gabriella was left dying from internal bleeding on the dance floor, now human. Teresa felt that she could not turn her again, without Gabriella’s permission, but Gabriella was losing consciousness, and only rapid intervention by Ross and Roxy in getting her to hospital saved her – modern surgery being much advanced over what had been available in rural Mexico in 1865.

Jocasta, Roxy and Ross decided that Michelle must have some sort of talisman, from the Djinn, like the ‘TV remote’, and Roxy thought that she knew where it was. Ross and Roxy, still without much of her Slayer powers, and both seriously pissed off with the now vampiric Michelle, finally confronted her in the bus station, and removed her newly acquired navel jewel which Roxy stamped on, as hard as she could without her full strength. Suddenly Michelle was three stone heavier, and Roxy was back to herself. Cue Ann Robinson appearing on the Timetable screens, but this time the Djinn settled for the Vampire Demon instead of Michelle, as that had not automatically gone back to Gabriella. So, unexpected good effect from this episode – a now human Gabriella – Vampire Slayer!

Whilst Gabriella was still in Intensive Care, a very ordinary guy, who looked about thirty, appeared in Jocasta’s shop, asking for Gabriella and Teresa. Again, no reflection in any of Jocasta’s carefully placed decorative mirrors, and the vampire, as he obviously was, watched Jocasta notice this with a big grin! Not wanting to give anything away about Gabriella’s change of circumstance, or current extreme weakness, she rang Teresa, and learnt that this was Jack of the Shadows, vampire for almost four hundred years, and for many of them, until the last fifty or so, Rosa’s boyfriend – Gabriella had e-mailed him about Rosa’s death, and he’d turned up to pay his respects.

Teresa was glad to see him, and the Watchers’ Council records showed little about him, except his existence, and that he ‘seemed to have an affinity with shadows’ (‘Don’t MOST vampires?’ Jocasta McStay had asked herself when she read that!). He did not seem to have any record for serious human carnage, and so again Jocasta’s advice to Roxy was to leave well enough alone – this was a friend of Teresa, and especially of Gabriella, who was after all now returning to life as a fully fledged Slayer.

As an added complication, Jack took a definite shine to Miss McStay, asking her out on a daily basis, until curiosity, and some definite degree of attraction, led her to agreeing. They got on much better than any Watcher and Vampire should, although the fact that his brothers’ descendants, with whom he was still in touch, included a number of Watchers over the years might have had some bearing on this. Or so Jocasta McStay told herself – anyway, it was research! And no, she wasn’t going to mention it in reports to the Council!

Teresa had spent much of her time since Gabriella’s collapse at her bedside in North Teesside General Hospital, but seemed not well herself, and Jocasta concluded that she must be very stressed at losing Rosa, and now almost losing Gabriella. Why else would she say that Rosa had been talking to her at the hospital?

Chapter 4. (In which we meet a new hero.)

Gabriella’s return to full Slayer had, of course, been notified to the Watchers’ Council, and by the time she was due to be discharged from hospital Jocasta was approached by another young man in his late twenties asking where he could find her. This turned out to be James Marwood, Gabriella’s new Watcher.

Gabriella had been without a Watcher for a very long time, and it took them a little while to define this new relationship. Teresa was becoming more and more withdrawn and depressed, but not so much so that she didn’t express an interest in James! He wasn’t sure how to handle having a depressed vampiric ex-Slayer with a crush on him, at the same time as trying to form a ‘suitable’ relationship with Gabriella! After a couple of attempts, he gave up trying to dictate to Gabriella, and they began to get along quite well. He solved his problem of having nowhere to live in Whitby by accepting Gabriella and Teresa’s offer of the third bedroom in their holiday chalet – an offer made in Gabriella’s case to tease him, and in Teresa’s case – well just because she wanted to see more of him.

Meanwhile back at school, Ross had a new French teacher, the usual one being hospitalised after a road accident. The new one was a quite stunning young French woman, who the school had been able to employ at less than a week’s notice. She was very interested indeed in anything ‘odd’ that might be going on in Whitby, and was very good at manipulating her pupils, especially the male ones, into telling her a lot more that they realised. However, Ross, although not one of the brightest scholars in the class, realised that the questions she was asking were unusual at the least, and not really relevant to the AS exam syllabus. He got the impression that she was very interested in vampires – especially three dark haired vampire females who travelled together, usually on motorbikes.

A little research, via the Watchers’ Council’s ‘members only’ web site again, showed that Dominique Reynard had been a Potential Slayer in her teens, that her step-father was in the French Army in a rank that Teresa said meant he was probably Military Intelligence, and that her father was a policeman who was killed at a bank robbery in October 1985. A robbery carried out by Teresa, Gabriella, and Rosa, who all had reasons in their past to hate the French, and throughout their lives as vampires had had no qualms about killing as many French people as possible whenever they got the chance. On that occasion they had ‘earned’ enough money to keep them very nicely for some time, and their vampire demons had excused themselves to their ‘Slayer’ selves by saying it was only just revenge for the sinking of the ‘Rainbow Warrior’. No wonder Mme. Reynard wanted to know about three vampire girls!

It seemed that all her teaching experience was difficult to authenticate, as it had all been for the French Overseas Departments. The chances were that she was part of some sort of French Secret Service. Just after they found out this information about the new French teacher, it was announced that a French warship would be paying an official visit to Whitby, and a Slayer dream shared by Roxy and Gabriella revealed that it would be carrying a Special Forces unit trained in vampire slaying who were out to get Teresa and Gabriella.

Chapter 5. (In which Whitby gets onto The News.)

Whilst the group pondered what to do about the upcoming French visit, they continued as usual, Gabriella regaining strength, and patrolling occasionally with Roxy, the Watchers continuing their Djinn research, Ross learning combat moves (and possibly other things) from Gabriella, Jack leaving Whitby to go to football matches (evening kick-offs, or gloomy days only) and returning to continue to ask Jocasta out at regular intervals, and Teresa keeping a low profile, and trying not to be too depressed.

One Friday evening, Jocasta and Jack had been out for a meal, the other group members had been, with Ross’s friends Brian and Donna, and the late Sean’s girlfriend Louise, to ‘Death Warmed Up’. Everyone had kept his or her ears open for anyone ‘wishing’ for anything. Roxy had held her breath when she had heard someone bemoaning the fact that there hadn’t been a band at the pub for a while by ‘wishing there was more live music around here’, but nothing had happened.

Then, as Jack saw Jocasta home, he suddenly burst into song – Sting’s ‘Fields of Gold’. It would have been slightly out of character anyway, but the look of astonishment on his face, and the invisible orchestra, convinced Jocasta that something was up! They rang Roxy, and Gabriella, and soon the two Slayers, two Watchers and two Vampires were gathered in the living room of Teresa and Gabriella’s chalet. On the way Jocasta and Jack passed people flourishing umbrellas, which simply appeared in their hands, and singing ‘Singing in the Rain’ – rain is being provided!

It seemed that the wish Roxy overheard was being granted - whenever any of the group started to say anything where a song would fit, they found themselves singing. Deciding to see whether the reverse is true, and a song would make things happen, Roxy tried ‘I’m in the money’, and James sang ‘I’ve got a Brand New Combine Harvester’ (!). Unfortunately for Roxy, and perhaps fortunately for anyone whose car was near James’s one, neither money nor agricultural vehicle were forthcoming. They decided to go home, sleep, and meet the next morning.

Roxy woke up and found herself duetting with her father on ‘Girls just want to Have Fun’, and burst into the Sesame Street classic ‘Cereal Girl’ whilst eating breakfast. Donna and Louise arrived, singing ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’, at Roxy’s, as they reckoned that if anything odd was going on, from what they’d learnt in the past few months, Roxy was the person most likely to know what it is!

Meanwhile, at the holiday chalet, James got up and found Teresa and Gabriella at breakfast. Teresa was quietly sobbing, and Gabriella was telling her that as a human she could no longer bear to live with an evil soulless vampire and Teresa should either stake herself or go far away.

Shocked, James interrupted them and remonstrated with Gabriella, who told him that Teresa is evil - she had even murdered her Watcher before she became a vampire. Gabriella dodged past James into her bedroom, but seconds later she re-entered the room, in different clothes, from the direction of the bathroom – the opposite direction to her bedroom. She was apparently upset to see Teresa crying, rushed to her and sang the Abba number Chiquitita, which is all about someone being sad and lonely, and the singer wanting to make them feel better – not at all the sentiments of a few moments before!

Gabriella totally denied having said anything hurtful to Teresa, and said nothing could change the fact that Teresa is her best friend. She burst into song again, this time Savage Garden’s ‘Crash and Burn’. At the chorus:

Let me be the one you call
If you jump I'll break your fall
Lift you up and fly away with you into the night
If you need to fall apart
I can mend a broken heart
If you need to crash then crash and burn
You're not alone

Not only was there an invisible orchestra, but both girls were floating in the air at ceiling level.

So by the time everyone, including Donna and Louise, were together there were two puzzles, who or what was impersonating Gabriella, to upset Teresa, and why did everyone find themselves bursting into song whether they wanted to or not?

Serious discussion took some time, as incautious phrases could lead to long winded consequences – a chance remark from Roxy led to everyone doing the Hokey Cokey! As they tried to decide what to do, people also found themselves singing asides and solos, depending on what they were thinking. Teresa, still distressed from her conversation with ‘not Gabriella’ found herself singing

Now I'm the Queen of bloodsuckers

Oh, the undead VIP

I've reached the top and had to stop

And that's what botherin' me

I wanna be a real woman,

And stroll right into town

And be just like the other girls

I'm tired of vampin' around!

Oh, oobee doo

I wanna be like you

I wanna walk like you

Talk like you, too

You'll see it's true

A vamp like me

Can learn to be human too

Can learn to be hu-u-uman too,

One more time,

Can learn to be hu-u-uman too.

On the last chord, a Mohra Demon materialised in the middle of the room. It lashed out at the nearest person, Teresa, and slashed her face and body. Gabriella shot its head to pieces, and it dematerialised, having splashed Teresa with a mixture of blood and gore. The Mohra gunge got mixed into the blood in Teresa’s injuries, and suddenly she felt very strange – she could hear a drumming in her ears – it was her heartbeat! Mohra blood is one of the few things that can return a vampire to human!

Emotions were very mixed – everyone crowded around and made a fuss of Teresa, singing choruses of ‘Congratulations’, but the Watchers in particular worried in case this was the result of a Djinn wish. However they got Teresa to sing her song again, and there was no mention of ‘Wish’, and so they concluded there was different magic afoot. Teresa herself was a little quieter than one might expect, although no one seemed to notice – she had suddenly realised that she had been less in control of her vampire demon than she had thought, and she was riven by guilt for the many thousands of deaths at her hands.

Trying hard not to give any cue for a song, the gang tried to explain a little more about Vampires (and assorted other demons), Slayers and Watchers to Donna and Louise, who seemed more than happy to join what Roxy had by now christened The Roxettes. The Watchers felt that any sort of sorcery affinity would be really useful, and Louise thought that she would like to try spell-casting – if magic really existed, she wanted to give it a try, and after all she already had a pretty cool cat! Donna didn’t see any point in trying – she reckoned if she tried hard enough she could become a Slayer – she’s a strong and athletic young lady.

Jocasta and James talked Louise through a simple divination spell – and found themselves singing ‘Blockbuster’ by Sweet. Research showed that the Sunnydale Slayer, Buffy Summers, and her friends have encountered a demon called ‘Sweet’, and he is listed as a ‘powerful song and dance demon’, so Louise really did have potential as a spell-caster.

The choice of Sweet song led them to head into central Whitby, and the local branch of Blockbusters, although hiring a video, particularly of ‘The Sound of Music’, was not high on their agenda. They passed through crowds of singing people, and almost as many T.V. and radio reporters who were covering the sudden outburst of music in Whitby. As well as their usual weapons, the Roxettes took Teresa’s guitar – it seemed a reasonable choice of weapon under the circumstances.

When they arrived at the video shop, the guy behind the counter didn’t look like the usual person – this one was made of wood, rather like Pinnochio in his ‘I’ve got no strings’ phase. He showed the Roxettes into the back room, which was much bigger than it should be, and in which Sweet sat on a throne. He challenged them “Play the best song in the world, or I’ll eat your souls.”

Singing ‘Tribute’ by Tenacious D had no effect. Then Gabriella announced “I may not know which is the best song in the world, but I know a song that will kill you.” James added ‘And I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves’, but Sweet looked interested rather than frightened. After a couple of Buddy Holly songs, and a couple of other 1950s ones which had no relevance as far as any of the Roxettes could tell, he did begin to look a little less comfortable – then Gabriella began

A long long time ago, I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe, they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With ev'ry paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died,

so,

The rest of the Roxettes joined in at this point:

Bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevvy to the levy
But the levy was dry
Then good old boys
Were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die ….

The relevance was still lost on most of them. Sweet however shouted at Gabriella to stop, that she’d won, he’d leave Whitby – he’d only come at the invitation of ‘someone else’ and he’d even return if any of them ever needed him – just Don’t sing about the day the music died!

Within moments, the video shop was back to normal, and Whitby no longer appeared to be the set of a large scale musical.

Chapter 6. (In which there is a theft.)

This time, Roxy had of course actually seen the person making the wish – and when she could talk about it without bursting into song, her description of the scene struck a chord – the boy was eating a kebab – and there were remains of kebabs in Keith Dick’s room, Michelle was a junk food addict, and the vampires had wrappers from the local Kebab shop in their lair! Weren’t kebabs sort of Middle Eastern, and wasn’t the Djinn also sort of Middle Eastern? Perhaps the kebab shop needed a bit of investigation.

Over the next week or so, the Roxettes kept an eye on the kebab shop, and realised that they never seemed to get any meat delivered, only salad, pittas, etcetera, and the level of meat on the big rotating kebab didn’t seem to change, despite the shop having plenty of customers. Something was definitely not quite right. The eldest son of the kebab shop owner was in a lower year at school, and a couple of chats from Roxy and friends extracted the information that the family were legal refugees from Iraq, who seemed to have done well enough from the shop, but nothing to suggest anything more powerful or mystical than the never ending kebab. Not that the lad mentioned that to the Roxettes!

The decision was therefore that the kebab shop owner himself posed no real threat, indeed he may have already forfeited his soul, but that kebab had to be destroyed, as it seemed to be the channel the Djinn was using to his victims. Finally a plot was hatched. Jack was asked to help, and agreed (because [a] Jocasta had asked him, and [b] it sounded fun!).

In the evening, not long before the shop was due to close, the whole bunch of Roxettes, including Teresa and Gabriella, both Watchers, and Jack, went to the shop together, laughing joking and generally being noisy and distracting. Jack simply peeled off the group, wandered into a shaded part of the ‘back shop’ whilst the shopkeeper was distracted, and totally disappeared! (‘No wonder’, thought Jocasta, ‘that the records said that he had an affinity with shadows!’)

Later, after the shop was shut, and the street was quiet, the Roxettes returned, and Jack opened the shop door for them, having already switched off the alarms. Ross had acquired a supermarket trolley, and it was quite easy to pick up the kebab and put it into the trolley. Roxy noticed that the giant skewer bore the sigils that they knew to be the mark of the Djinn, and so between the three Slayers and the vampire, they bent and twisted it beyond any further use.

At the quayside, they tipped both magical kebab meat and magical kebab skewer into the harbour mouth, and an outgoing tide. As it fell, Jack was inspired to sing

‘Fish shall have a wishy on a little dishy,

Fish shall have a wishy, when the kebab comes in!

This was nothing to do with Sweet, Jack just has a slightly odd sense of humour sometimes!

As they walked back up the street, a TV in a shop window flickered to life, and The Djinn appeared on screen. He conceded temporary defeat, but warned them a la Arnie that “I’ll be back”. However its link to Whitby appears to have been severed, as the town has been safe from the unpredictable effects of wishes so far. Strangely enough, or maybe not, the theft was never reported to the police either!

However, very late that night, back at the holiday chalet shared by Teresa, Gabriella and James, Napoleon Bonaparte suddenly appeared in their living room. He stood there as large as life, hand in coat, and made a speech: --

“That does it. I have had it up to here with you lot. How does it go again? ‘In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer’.

SHE. Singular. The Chosen ONE, not the fucking Magnificent Seven! There can be only ONE.

Sally, Buffy, Faith, Kat, Roxanne, Gabriella, and now Teresa. Count them, SEVEN. Well that just fucking does it. If the powers of Good aren’t going to play fair, neither am I.

Fact is, the whole good-versus-evil, balancing the scales thing—I'm over it. I'm done with the mortal coil. But believe me; I'm going for a big finish.

You should have stayed as vampires. I told you to change Gabriella back, but would you listen? No, you did the opposite. Well you are so going to wish you’d done as I suggested.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. Believe me, I’m not a fan of easy deaths.”

Napoleon then disappeared in a bright point of light.

The following night Roxy, Gabriella, and Teresa all dreamt of a girl in Istanbul being chased and murdered by hooded figures with knives.

Chapter 7. (In which our heroes go to The Abbey.)

None of the Slayers knew who the girl in Istanbul was, or what they could do about her, they could only wait and see. In Whitby all was fairly quiet, and as half term and the visit by the French destroyer approached, Gabriella and Teresa made themselves scarce to avoid a confrontation. Jack also left town for a while to watch some Newcastle matches.

On the first night of half term, Roxy had a Slayer dream, but it was all blurred and distorted like the signal was being jammed! All she could make out was the tune of ‘Scarborough Fair’. Jocasta rang Gabriella and Teresa to see if they’d had the same dream, and found that they had, but no clearer. With some trepidation, she rang Sally, who wasn’t exactly glad to hear from her, but admitted that she had also had it, and that she had been able to penetrate the distortion and make sense of the message.

Although the tune was ‘Scarborough Fair’ the lyrics referred to the visit of the French destroyer and also to the bombardment of Scarborough and Whitby by German battlecruisers in December 1914, and to some sort of spell to merge the two events! Whitby, or Scarborough about to be bombarded by a French Destroyer - with modern weaponry that would be horrific, and the diplomatic repercussions would be almost as bad, especially as Britain and France were not seeing eye to eye over the Iraq war.

(Lyrics of the song as heard by Sally)

The Roxettes still in Whitby researched, discussed, and cast divination spells, going through a number of theories. Jocasta suggested that someone might have made some sort of wish, with the thought that “It could be the Djinn – in which case the boat would become a floating Djinn palace.” They decided that it was probably not the Djinn, and Louise’s divination spell coupled with some research suggested that the spell was to be performed at the Abbey at midnight.

Still searching for as much information/help as possible, Jocasta rang Jack to see if he could tell them anything more about what sort of a spell might be used, as his disappearing trick in the kebab shop showed that he must be some sort of a magic user. His answer rather puzzled her – Jack said he couldn’t really help, as he didn’t know how to DO magic, he just WAS magic! He didn’t actually do anything to disappear in shadows, he just did it. He added that he also had a ‘thing’ with eclipses – no matter what injury he was carrying, it would heal totally during an eclipse, which had come in useful in the past, even vampires had some injuries that took a very long time to heal. Jocasta wasn’t sure what to do with this information – it was a bit more than ‘has an affinity with shadows’, she probably ought to have reported it immediately to the Watchers’ Council records department, but decided that it would do sometime, she wasn’t going to rush!

Roxy, Ross, Louise, Donna, Jocasta and James set off to the Abbey ruins and ambushed the black magician as he arrived to carry out his spell. However he summoned a number of demons to protect him, and quite a battle ensued. Louise was about to be attacked by a flying demon, when she cast an impromptu spell to freeze it, and it plummeted to the ground, where it was soon killed. Jocasta was attacked by a similar one and got quite badly cut up. She noted Louise’s impromptu spell’s efficiency though – definitely a sign of good natural ability.

Roxy cut the head off a Fyarl demon, but it didn’t kill it; Ross decided to get rid of the head and drop-kicked it into the harbour! Eventually the demons were overcome and the magician subdued. The next problem was what to do with him? Obviously the first thing was to find out who he was, and why he wanted a French warship to destroy Whitby or Scarborough, but he didn’t seem all that willing to chat.

Eventually they decided to interrogate him painfully if necessary, as James pointed out to him “In a chalet in Whitby, no-one can hear you scream. At least in the winter.” The magician turned out to be Ethan Rayne, working for the US State Department to cause an incident to destroy the international credibility of the French. The spirits of the crews of the German battlecruisers were to have controlled the French sailors and forced them to re-enact the bombardment, unleashing the destroyer’s full complement of missiles against Whitby.

As they couldn’t keep a powerful magician prisoner for ever, Roxy suggested that she should get in touch with M’selle Reynard, and point out that they knew she was more than an ordinary teacher, but if she agreed to stop hunting Gabriella and Teresa, who were obviously not vampires anyway (out in sunshine, reflections, and so on), Roxy could give her some very useful information. Intrigued, M’selle came with Roxy to the holiday chalet (which showed no sign of female occupation – only James’ things were about!). She was able to extricate the same information from Ethan Rayne even faster than Roxy et al had – she was after all a professional!

The last any of the Whitby group saw of Ethan Rayne, he was being taken aboard the French ship. Incidentally, all the Roxettes enjoyed a visit to the ship, along with most of their schoolmates.

Chapter 8. (In which Donna is beaten at Cross Country.)

After half term the gang found a new girl in their year at school, called Jenny Barton. Whenever any of them encountered her in lessons, they found her a bit odd – socially rather gauche, and not very good at conversation. However she did come from an unusual background, as she had come from Tristan da Cunha to live with her aunt and uncle, who worked at Fylingdales, a government military radar site, and a pretty top secret sort of place. Her parents were marine biologists, who had been doing research on Tristan da Cunha since Jennifer was little, and she said that she had been sent to Britain to do AS and A levels, and she could not remember ever leaving the island before.

The story seemed reasonable, but Roxy, and particularly Donna, began to seriously doubt it the first time they had a games lesson with her, and did cross country running. Roxy’s Slayer abilities meant that she could easily beat anyone else in her year, usually without getting out of breath, but she didn’t usually bother as winning meant a lot more to Donna, who strived to be the best all round athlete in their year. However Jennifer was running on Donna’s shoulder with no apparent discomfort, no matter how hard she tried to shake her off, and so Roxy decided to really see how well she could run, and passed Donna herself, pulling well away. But Jennifer was now running freely at her shoulder, and checking with Roxy that the idea was to get back first. When Roxy confirmed that that was the object of the exercise, then no matter how hard she tried, even getting out of puff, Jennifer stayed just two paces ahead, eventually setting a very impressive new school record!

A little computerised research showed that the Doctors Barton had indeed had a daughter born almost seventeen years ago, but that she had died at the age of three. The Roxettes decided that Jennifer was not anything to do with the Djinn, but that she might well be a robot! Attempts to get very close in a science lesson with strong magnets met with slightly odd behaviour and then very firm efforts by Jennifer to keep well away from the magnet. This confirmed it, as far as the gang was concerned. Donna was extremely pissed off by this discovery – her main aim was to work out how to permanently decommission ‘the bloody robot’, but the others just decided that she was probably no threat, and quite interesting, if a little spooky!

A couple of weeks after term began, Jocasta and James were summoned to a crisis meeting of the Council of Watchers in London. Their train was delayed even longer than they had allowed for, by engineering works outside Peterborough, and they emerged from the nearest Underground station nearly an hour late, worrying about the reception they would get, as they would interrupt the meeting. They never found out, because as they turned the corner they found a tank parked outside the station and the street cordoned off by police.

A bomb had destroyed the Watchers’ Council building, and almost everyone inside had been killed in the explosion or by the subsequent collapse of the building.

Jocasta and James explained to one of the policemen that they had been going to a meeting in that very building, and were members of the historical Society who owned it. They then spent a dreadful day in London identifying bodies and being questioned by the police. Eventually they were able to leave, and they headed to King’s Cross Station, to get a train back to the North. However, in the station they met Quentin Travers who was the head of the Council. He tried to give them orders, but they decided that it couldn’t really be him, as surely he would have been inside the Council building, and James decided to test a theory by striking him. His fist passed harmlessly through an insubstantial Travers! They were right, the real Travers is dead, and this is something that can impersonate him.

Chapter 9. (In which Miss McStay becomes a Very Important Person.)

Jocasta and James began to investigate the destruction of the Watchers’ Council themselves, as they felt that the police might find some of their leads a bit weird! They also tried to salvage what they could of its records by saving everything that was left accessible on its confidential web-site, and started to search for surviving Watchers.

The only Watchers apart from themselves in England were Nigel Kumar, who had been pulled from the rubble severely injured, and had needed a leg amputated, and John Robson, who had been stabbed in his flat the night before the meeting, but had survived, albeit in a coma following major blood loss. Robson had been the Watcher of a Potential Slayer, Nora, who had been less fortunate - she had been stabbed to death in the flat.

It began to dawn on Jocasta and James that they really were the only two Watchers left in the country outside Intensive Care Units, and as Jocasta was senior, she was by default, the new Head of Council! Because the police suspected some sort of terrorist attack, probably incorrectly targeted, on the council meeting, Nigel Kumar had a police guard, and in a separate hospital, for similar reasons, so did John Robson. Jocasta and James felt that they could do no better.

Jack told Jocasta that Robson was his relative, a nephew many generations removed, and that, being a close sort of family, he knew him well! Jack had even been involved in Nora’s training and as far as he is concerned, like Teresa and Gabriella before him, this is now personal. He will do whatever he can to avenge the attacks. The Watchers conclude that the insubstantial being which impersonated Travers must be behind them, and that it was probably the same as the insubstantial being which appeared to Teresa as both Rosa and Gabriella, and appeared to several of them as Napoleon.

The police accepted that Jocasta and James were the only available people to take control of the records and assets of the Watchers’ Council, and Jocasta and James got Kumar in hospital, as the only other available Watcher, to complete the necessary documentation for Jocasta to be given signing authority on the Council bank accounts. The police handed over to her papers, books, and computer disks recovered from the ruins of the Council building. All the Roxettes became involved in trying to piece things together.

Continuing in their efforts to find any other remaining Watchers, Jocasta was able to contact Rupert Giles, officially ex-watcher, and therefore not invited to the meeting, even though in practice he was still Watcher to Buffy Summers in Sunnydale. They were able to meet briefly at Heathrow when he passed through on his way to the USA accompanied by a couple of Potential Slayers.

They discussed the situation, and Giles told them that he believed the enemy to be the First Evil. It can take the form of anyone who has died. It has a particular hatred of champions of the forces of Good, and had previously attempted to manipulate the souled vampire Angel into killing himself. Giles believed that it was trying to wipe out the Watchers’ Council and the Potential Slayers, probably intending to bring a final end to the Slayer line. Watchers and Potentials across the world were being assassinated by the First’s blind priests, the Harbingers or Bringers, which explained the distressing Slayer dream Roxy, Teresa and Gabriella had had about the young girl in Istanbul – she must have been a Potential Slayer. Giles was trying to gather up Potentials and take them to Sunnydale, California, where they could be protected by each other and Buffy.

Jocasta mentioned Jennifer Barton to Giles, in case he knew of anything similar linked to this First Evil. Instead, he was fascinated to hear of her existence, as her ‘uncle and aunt’ were friends of his from University, and he had passed on to them plans and parts from a robot Slayer that a psychopathic genius had built in Sunnydale. Jennifer is an improved version of the ‘Buffybot’. On hearing this later, the junior members of the Roxettes nicknamed Jennifer ‘The Jennybot’, although they didn’t call her that to her face – however they did start to shorten her name to Jenny from then on, and she didn’t object.

Jocasta had found it very difficult to locate living Watchers outside the UK, particularly as all the records were so damaged. There was also very little to tell them of the whereabouts of any Potential Slayers known to the Council. Then just as the end of term arrived, the Slayers had a dream of a Watcher in Peru being killed by Harbingers; and his Potential Slayer escaping them by fleeing through a flock of llamas, vaulting over some of them in the process. The Roxettes nicknamed the Potential ‘Llama Croft’.

Jocasta was able to determine from what records they had pieced together, that the Watcher must be a Nigel Bentley. She tried to contact him, but it was too late; he was already dead. She phoned Sunnydale, but Giles was away in the People’s Republic of China, where he had heard there was a Potential Slayer. As Jocasta and James could think of no other way to rescue ‘Llama Croft’, they decided to set out for Peru themselves, taking Roxy, Teresa, and Gabriella with them. Gabriella wanted Ross to come too, but his parents wouldn’t allow it!

Before they left, Jocasta asked Jack to keep an eye on Ross, Louise, and Donna while she was away.

Chapter 10. (In which Roxy gets to travel, and learns something to her advantage.)

A long, long time ago, as the song goes, Gabriella, despite being a vampire, became a heroine of the Mexican war against the French in the 1860s. Her vampirism, and consequent longevity, was a secret divulged only to one or two very senior government officials, as she would have been entitled to a government pension. Instead, her secret was passed down from one official to his successor and so on through the years, and she was given Mexican diplomatic status (and incidentally a succession of passports to account for her continued youthful appearance, but making her old enough to hold a driving licence!). After becoming fully human she did contact the Embassy in London, but it made no difference to her status. Of course this meant that she was able to take her guns with her to Peru in sealed diplomatic baggage, avoiding the airport security!

In Peru the party of Slayers and Watchers searched for the missing Potential, real name Manuelita, and found that she had left the city of Cuzco where she had lived with her Watcher, to return to her home village. They also learnt that they were not the only ones searching for her - members of the weakened but still active Shining Path guerrillas had also been asking questions about her.

It seemed likely that Manuelita would travel across country, and taking a map the group found places where the road would come close to her path. After apprehending, and mostly shooting, a couple of parties of Shining Path guerrillas making the same guess, and finding out that they had been asked to kill Manuelita by one of their leaders who they had supposed to be dead (our heroes were surprised – not!) they found their potential slayer, and convinced her that they were there to rescue her. They accompanied her to her parents’ house, and Manuelita showed them a small bundle of papers which she had brought with her from Nigel Bentley’s house, as she knew them to be very important.

The papers turned out to be a prophecy which he had translated, with his own notes about it. It was fascinating – it seemed to predict the existence of Roxy, Gabriella, Teresa, Jack and even the Jennybot, not to mention Buffy Summers and Angel in the States, and promised that all would be strengthened in their battle against The Djinn, and The First Evil (And some other, as yet unmet, bad guy) by a Fellowship of Rings. Very Tolkien – as Nigel Bentley had also noted – perhaps Tolkien had seen a copy of The Prophecy?

(Plain Text version of the Prophecy)

The group sat up late into the night trying to make sense of it, but eventually slept – until awoken by Teresa trying to maim or kill them all! That she didn’t was a compound of good luck and some skill on the behalf of the rest of the party! Her primary target appeared to be Manuelita –and Teresa seemed to be in some sort of trance, humming to herself. Eventually, the sound of the gun going off, that Jocasta had managed to grab and try to shoot Teresa in the foot with, awoke her, and she was then distraught at what she had tried to do.

It became clear that The First had some sort of hold over Teresa, because she was carrying such a lot of guilt over many deaths, but especially that of her Watcher – the jibe that the non-Gabriella had made back in Whitby was a version of the truth – Teresa had been instrumental in the death of her Watcher, who she had thought, wrongly, had betrayed her to the French. Once she had faced this, and been ‘forgiven’ by Jocasta and James, as Watchers, the song that she had been humming (associated with the fight in which her Watcher had died) had no power over her. Although to be on the safe side she was tied up every time she went to sleep for the next couple of days!

During Teresa’s telling of her tale, she had explained that because she had stopped Slaying Vampires to fight against the French, her Watcher had told her that her salary was being stopped. Roxy picked up on this very quickly – no-one had mentioned a salary to her! At first she was disappointed to hear that it was 7/- a day, until Teresa pointed out that this was the same wage that her then boyfriend, a lieutenant in the British army, received – and it was pretty good money. Not to mention a bonus worth about £10,000 in today’s money for passing the Cruciamentum – and Quentin Travers himself had declared that Roxy’s battle against the then vampire Michelle, whilst Roxy was without her Slayer powers, was sufficient to mean that she had already passed her Cruciamentum – where was her money? Jocasta agreed that she will check it out when they get back to Whitby, but if Slayers HAD been paid in the past, which only seemed fair, then all Slayers still alive should get a salary, and back-pay, if the finances were available – result – happy Slayer.

Eventually they were able to return to Whitby, bringing Manuelita with them, as Nigel Bentley had the forethought to obtain visas for both the UK and US. But when they got home they found that things had NOT gone as smoothly at home as they had expected.

Chapter 11. (In which we discover that Louise has hidden depths.)

The first day after Roxy et al had left Whitby was a normal day. Nothing exciting happened, the remaining Roxettes went to school, went home, and did homework. Jocasta’s shop had a sign on it declaring it closed for annual holidays, and all was quiet.

The second day was much like the first, but in the evening Ross, Louise, Donna, and Donna’s boyfriend Brian went to Death Warmed Up. Jenny Barton was there as well, and they had chatted to her for a while – noticing that she was becoming easier to hold a conversation with, more like one of themselves.

On the way home they were attacked by a group of robe wearing figures, who appeared to have been blinded by having odd sigils carved into their eye sockets. They would later learn that these were the Harbingers, a.k.a. Bringers, servants of The First Evil. These attackers were armed with vicious knives, and all seemed to be intent on killing Louise! The four teenagers were doing their best to fight the Bringers, but were being beaten – Brian had been badly stabbed. Their only hope, they thought, would be Jack coming to their rescue – but in fact rescue came in the shape of Jenny Barton, who suddenly appeared, and fought off Bringers as well as if she had been Roxy herself.

When the fight is over, and the Bringers bodies have luckily ‘melted away’ as they wondered how they were going to explain them to the police, they take Brian to hospital, making up a story about being jumped by a gang of lads, knowing that the hospital will not report it to the police unless they do so themselves. They examine a couple of the Bringers’ knives, and recognise the sigils of the Djinn on them, another sign that the two bad guys are working together.

Jack eventually caught up with them – he had indeed been keeping an eye on them, from a distance, as Jocasta had asked, but had suffered an attack himself by a group of Bringers at just the same time the kids had! He suggested that they rang Jocasta in Peru to let her know of this new problem, and she recognised that if Louise was their main target, then Louise must be a Potential Slayer! All she could advise was that Louise not go out alone, and as Jenny seems to have some of the Buffybot slaying programming left, that perhaps Louise could ask her to ‘sleep – over’, for protection.

Louise was unsure about this idea – a sleep-over with someone who would just plug themselves in somewhere would be a bit too creepy to cope with, although the idea that she might be a potential slayer was cool, but likely to make Donna jealous!

In the end she decided against asking Jenny for help, but asked Jack if he could keep a look out for her, which he did.

About 3 a.m. Louise’s family were awakened by a hammering on the door, and the Bringers had returned. Her parents, on looking out, thought someone was trying to break in, or there was some sort of gang trouble outside, either way they would ring the police. But the Bringers weren’t going to wait that long and Louise and her brother decided to try and drive them away by throwing things out the windows, and in Louise’s case trying to cast spells at them.

What of Jack? He arrived just after the Bringers, but was having difficulty operating, because Louise’s parents, and their neighbours, had motion sensitive security lights, which were now shining from three or four different angles, and despite the hour, there were no shadow areas. To make matters worse, one of the Bringers was carrying a light emitting globe, and as three or four Bringers with savage knives all attacked Jack, he could not evade them as he was always fully illuminated.

Louise realised what was happening, and managed to get her brother to switch off their own security lights, but the light globe and the neighbours’ lights were still preventing Jack hiding in the shadows. Louise tried to break the globe by throwing things, and did manage to knock it out of the Bringer’s hands, but it was still glowing, and the Bringer was going to pick it up again. Jack had taken a couple of serious knife wounds, and it looked as if the Bringers might succeed in decapitating him, when Louise dropped Bacardi, the cat, out of the window in the direction of this lovely twinkling ‘cat ball’. The cat took the hint, and the ball, and chased it madly around amongst the Bringers, creating just enough pools of shadow that Louise could see Jack seemingly twist away from the Bringer who was gripping him, and take a knife slash through the collar bone rather than the neck.

Suddenly two of the bringers were being attacked by large black cats, having their heads ripped off, and the tide of battle was turning. Flashing blue lights and sirens were approaching, and suddenly there were no more Bringers, they seemed to have faded away. Louise helped Jack into the house, but he said not to worry, he’d heal in next to no time – he’d be ready for the next night.

(Hard Promises)

(Mirror in the Bathroom)

About tea time next day Jack rang Louise – the wound to his collar bone was not healing, it was getting worse, and he could not use the arm properly – he could not guarantee to help defend her that night. He suggested again asking Jenny to come over, and Louise agreed. Jack said that he would not abandon her (he had given his word to Jocasta), but could not do a lot, however, he explained that he had control over shadow shapes – do ‘deformed rabbit’ and he could make the shadow become solid and do what he wanted, which is where the big cats had come from the night before – Bacardi had cast shadows, and Jack had animated them! If Louise could provide some shadow animals by sticking cut out shapes to the security lights on her own house, Jack would be able to use these against the Bringers.

That night nothing happened. The others were due back that day, all would be well. Then came a phone call from Jocasta – their plane was delayed, as the pilot had taken ill, and they had had to land in Venezuela – she was pretty sure this was the doing of The First, but at least the plane had landed safely. Jack was now in more pain, and felt really ill, although he tried to hide it from Louise and the others, and so Jenny stayed over again, Louise armed herself with one of Jocasta’s cross bows, and with cut out tigers, crocodiles and elephants still stuck to the lights they faced another night.

The attack, when it came, was small scale by comparison to the other two attacks, The First was running low on available Bringers – it didn’t even wake Louise’s parents, and by the time Jenny was in attack mode, and Louise had cocked her crossbow, the Bringers had been dispatched by a very solid looking menagerie! Jack had kept his word, and none of ‘The Kids’ had been hurt whilst the Watchers and Slayers were away but the vampire himself was getting weaker and weaker.

Continued in Watcher’s Tales Part Two

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