Disclaimer: This story is fiction. There are two celebrities who will appear from time-to-time. The other characters are fictitious. Any similarities to persons living or dead are completely coincidental.
In this story, I have continued the adventures of Batman, my Batman, which his story first began in "Tales of a Real Dark Knight" in the Boy Band section of this archive. It spanned 250 chapters. You will find many universes merging, as the above copyrights reveal. I hope you all enjoy this.
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel and all related characters created by Joss Whedon. Copyright 20th Century Fox.
Batman, and all related characters created by Bob Kane. Copyright DC Comics and Warner Bros.
X-MEN, and all related characters created by Stan Lee. Copyright Marvel Comics and 20th Century Fox.
The Vampire Chronicles and all related characters created by Anne Rice. Copyright Anne O'Brien Rice.
I don't know for sure if I will use all the above elements, but just in case, I have myself covered.
I appreciate any feedback that you may want to give. I do hope that you enjoy it!!!
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authorjames2002@yahoo.com
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Chapter 4 Discoveries
The next morning I awoke to find Lance already up. I showered and dressed and went downstairs. Lance was preparing something and Preston was already up sitting at the kitchen table reading a book.
"What do you have there?" I asked him.
" 'Blackwood Farm' by Anne Rice," he replied. "The vampires in here are fascinating."
I looked over at Lance and smiled. Lance smiled back.
"What's that all about?" Preston asked noticing the looks we gave each other.
"Oh, nothing," I said. "Do you have any plans for today?"
"None," he replied. "Just sit back and relax."
"Don't do too much relaxing. While it is good to rest and recuperate, you still need to be active."
"Yes, father," Preston said with a sigh.
I chuckled and went over to the stools and sat down. "What's for breakfast?" I asked.
"Nothing," Lance replied. "I'm getting the chicken marinated for tonight. Remember? We are having the pool party for the contributors to the Center?"
"Oh, that's right!" I said remembering. "I forgot all about that!"
"I can see how," Preston replied. "You have a lot on your mind. Do you want us here?"
"Of course," I said. "I can't see why not!"
Sarah came down the stairs and entered the kitchen. "Do you all have to be so loud?"
"Sorry," I said. "How did you sleep?"
Sarah looked at me and looked at Preston. I recognized the look well. She was annoyed that I said something to her in front of her brother. That surprised me somewhat because she and Preston used to share everything, despite Lance and my attempts to help them develop their own identities.
'He doesn't know,' I mouthed to her.
Sarah just shook her head and went to the cabinet to get some cereal.
"What are you doing today?" Preston asked Sarah.
"I was going into town with Tiffany and Hope. We are going to do some shopping."
"Make sure you are back before five," Lance replied. "We are having the sponsors of the Teen Center over for a pool party and we would like you and Preston to be here."
Sarah nodded and ate her cereal.
I went upstairs to see if Randy was up yet and see if he was hungry for breakfast. When I knocked, there was a quick rustling and finally he said, "Come in."
I opened the door and stepped in. "Good morning."
"Uh, good morning," he replied wiping his eyes acting as if he had just woke up.
From the look of the tent in the comforter, he had been up for quite a while.
"I was just checking to see if you were up yet. Did you sleep okay?"
"Yeah," Randy said enthusiastically. "I slept great!"
"Good. See you downstairs in a few minutes."
"Yeah," he replied.
I left the room closing the door behind me. I couldn't help but laugh. 'Was that kid always that horny?' I asked myself.
I went into my room to get my wallet and watch. I heard the spare bedroom door open and looked in the mirror. Randy walked past the bedroom and into the bathroom. To my surprise, he forgot to close the door. He pulled down his pants and adjusted the water for the shower. He turned and I saw he was still rather "up." He turned and closed the door to the bathroom not noticing that I saw him.
"Exactly like his father," I said and closed my dresser drawer.
The rest of the morning went by uneventful and everyone went off in their own directions. Preston and Randy took Sarah to Tiffany's and then came back. Later the two would go pick up Sarah when she called.
"Hey, dad," Preston said as he came into the den where I was working on notes from clients at the Center.
"Yeah, bud?"
"Is it okay if I watched one of your old DVDs?"
"Sure. Go ahead and get whichever one you want."
"Thanks," he replied.
Preston walked past me and went over to my DVD collection from when I was in my twenties. He grabbed several of the seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and went to the door. "Thanks," he said and he left.
"You're welcome," I said even though he couldn't hear me. "Why is he getting interested in vampires all of a sudden?"
Evening came and Justin and Jessica arrived in formal evening wear to help out with the party. JC, Joey and Chris couldn't make it. They had their own lives to live and had much on their plates. Preston, Sarah and Randy also dressed rather nice and helped the caterers with setup, letting them know what was to go where and so forth.
I was up in the bedroom adjusting the collar of my shirt. Lance came over and helped me.
"You always look good in a tux," he said to me, giving me a peck on the lips.
"And you always look good," I replied after the kiss.
Lance smiled at me. "Do you think the sponsors will help out?"
"I'm sure they will. We've got a few celebrities backing us. Nick and Aaron Carter, David Gallagher, Leo DiCaprio. These local sponsors should flock to be part of the same list as those guys, not to mention all the other celebrities backing us."
"Its great to have so many help us. But we need the local support to continue to make an impact."
"I'm sure tonight will help with that," I replied. "The guests will be arriving soon. Let's go greet."
Lance hooked his arm around mine and we headed off downstairs.
"There you two are," Sarah said as we came down the stairs. "I hope you two weren't making out upstairs. That is so gross for people your age to do."
"Our age?" Lance said. "We aren't THAT old!"
Sarah just chuckled and turned and left heading for the patio.
We entered the kitchen to see Preston and Randy getting some soda pop from the fridge.
"How did you like the DVDs?" I asked my son.
"They were interesting," he said.
I smiled and nodded.
"What DVDs?" Lance asked in a whisper.
"Earlier today, Preston asked to watch a few DVDs. He grabbed the Buffy ones and watched."
"Hmmm. I wonder why?"
I shook my head wondering the same question myself.
A half hour later, everyone had arrived and were mixing and mingling with one anther. Several major business owners spoke with local politicians and having Lance and Justin at the party gave it a nice flavor of importance.
"You see," Lance was saying to one of the Councilmen, "the Hunter Center is doing a great service by finding children who are lost in the night, who are wondering who they are and what their purpose is."
"Isn't that the job of the parents?"
"Of course it is. But we still have parents who do not care what happens to their children. We still have selfish people in this world and they are having children. The harm they cause is detrimental to what happens to the youth. The Center can help the children get back on track developmentally by giving them a solid foundation of love, support and guidance to bettering their selves."
"This all sounds very intriguing," the Councilman said. "I would be willing to endorse your Center."
"That's great," Lance said. "I'm glad you see things in the same way."
The Councilman smiled.
As I stood listening to one of the Department of Health and Human Welfare workers speak to a small group of business owners of the good work the Center did, I heard a rustling in the leaves. The night had been amazingly calm and I didn't feel a wind blowing at that moment. Casually I looked up and saw some movement in the branches. Something was up there but I couldn't tell what.
Jessica had heard the noise as well. She looked over at me and gave a slight nodded, letting me know she was ready in case it was something unnatural, or should I saw preternatural.
Without warning, the thing fell out of the tree and landed near Sarah. She, and those around her, screamed. However, she reacted physically and backhanded it and it stumbled away from her.
Jessica and I got a good look at its face. It wasn't human, or completely human.
"Damn," it said as it leapt over the wall and into the night.
Lance and I did the only appropriate thing we could do as hosts, call the police and fill out a report about someone who was trespassing on our property, climbing our trees.
A short while later, the party ended, earlier than expected, but necessary due to the events that had transpired earlier. Lance and I thanked the guests for coming and told them we would be in touch with them concerning any donations and other support they could make for the Center. We thanked them again and saw them off.
Once the last car drove away, Lance and I turned and entered the house closing the door.
"That was so scary!" Randy said, pacing the living room. "I wonder why Batman didn't show up."
Preston stood near the doorway to the kitchen. Justin sat on the couch with Jessica. Sarah sat in the middle.
"That was wicked awesome! How did you do that, Sarah?" Randy asked.
"I don't...I don't know."
"Jessica, could we speak to you in the den?"
Jessica nodded and stood up. As we walked past Preston, he put his arm on my shoulder and whispered, "That was a vampire, wasn't it?"
"We'll talk about this later, Preston," I said and continued into the den following Jessica and Lance.
Lance turned on a lamp as I closed the door.
"Can you believe what happened?" Jessica said. "That was some strength she had."
"Unnatural strength," Lance replied. "One would say supernatural."
"True," I agreed. "The question is, from where? She's not a mutant. Her powers would have manifested at puberty. This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this with her."
"Me, too," Lance replied.
"From what I saw," Jessica said, "it looks like our Sarah might be a Vampire Slayer."
"How did you know you were a Slayer?" I asked Jessica.
"I was out at night with some friends. A mugger tried to grab my purse and I grabbed his wrist. I was never afraid of confrontation growing up, so I didn't flinch when it happened. But when I grabbed his wrist, I ended up snapping it. I was just a teenager, just had my fifteenth birthday.
"It was then that I knew I was different. A few days later, Garrett showed up at my door and talked with my parents about me getting accepted into a boarding school in London. They were so proud they sent me off. When I arrived, I found out it wasn't a school to teach math and writing, but a school to teach Slayers about vampires. It was in England that I met Lance."
"NSYNC was just getting started and we toured Europe before coming to America. Jessica was at one of our concerts. We ended up meeting at a little café and became friends."
"Our friendship developed into something more and then Lance realized his sexuality."
I nodded. "What do we do about Sarah? I don't want to send her off to London to learn about this. I'm sure sending you to London was to also protect your family from your new calling. But I've been involved with this for fifteen years. So has Lance. We know the dangers and can help prevent them. Plus, we have you."
"It is possible to train her here," Jessica answered. "I can contact the Council and give Jayce the heads up on what is going on. He may give me permission to train her. With my experience in slaying already, I don't see why not. I would be acting as her Watcher."
"Then that's what we'll do," Lance stated. "But we have to be sure first that she's a Vampire Slayer. What happened could have been a fluke, an adrenaline rush."
"True," Jessica said. "So tomorrow night, Sarah and I are going to go for a stroll through some cemeteries."
Lance and I both nodded. "We can't tell anyone else, except Justin. I don't think Preston and Randy are ready for that much information."
All of us agreed on keeping it secret for now. When we left the den, I noticed Preston looking at the pictures on one of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs. He looked up at me and then looked down again, obviously disturbed by what he saw. I didn't blame him. It was scary what he saw. But I didn't want to alarm him and confirm his fear that it was, indeed, a vampire.
Jessica, Justin and Randy said their goodbyes and Sarah and Preston went to bed. Lance and I went upstairs and got ready for bed. As we sat in bed, with glasses of wine to either side of us, we held each other and talked.
"This is scary," he began, "finding out our daughter is different from the rest of the world. Just like when we found out we were different from the rest of the world. Everything changes if she is a Slayer. But it isn't like what changed when we came out. We had ridicule and hatred and discrimination. And there was a remote possibility that someone would beat us to death like Matthew Shepard's death. But with Sarah being a Vampire Slayer, the violence level goes way up. She will be out there every night fighting vampires. There will always be a chance that she could be killed."
"Lance," I said getting him to stop. "Don't think that way. It won't do her or us any good."
"But how can I? I've lived with you and that fear was real for me every night you went out. I..."
I stopped him by kissing him long, hard and passionate. I felt the muscles in his body relax. His mind definitely wasn't thinking about Sarah now.
I caressed his chest and moved my hand down his abs to the waistband of his underwear. His hand reached up and flicked off the lights, and the two of us made passionate love.
To Be Continued...
What do you think of Sarah being a Vampire Slayer? If any of you remember my request back while writing "Judgments of a Real Dark Knight" for a picture of a blonde Huntress, you now know who it was for! More to come!