The Genocide of Castle Rock

"What do you want to call this new reality of yours?" Anya asked Lorne.
"Oh I dont know,... Lorne's World? Lorne Town? Lorne City?" said Lorne.
"Your world. Your Choice," said I.
"I am not so big on naming things... Maybe... Xanadu?" said Lorne.
"Kind of nice. But..." said I.

Lorne put up his hand and began to hum a showtune.... He continued humming for a while and looked as if he was listening for the name of the city to come to him.... Anya began to hum along after a tick or two and the two of them moved closer together...

"The people who used to live here called it Home..." said Lorne.
"Used to live..." said Tara thoughtfully.
"The city was named... Castle Rock once... then all the people died from a plague... no... vaccinations tainted with diseases.... The entire population died of deadly diseases in their vaccines... The leaders wanted to depopulate the planet... They killed some with vaccines and created new viruses to kill others... millions died... some via wars... some via violent crimes... a huge number of the people died via diseases... the few that survived the govenments genocide died from the viruses that had been created by the governors.... there was no cure for the viruses they had perfected to kill the population.... the elite wanted to kill ninety five percent of the world... they killed them all..." Lorne looked sad as he saw the innocent people dying in his vision... "Betrayed by those they trusted to protect them..." said Lorne.
"I dont like that name," said Anya.
"Me either," said Lorne....
"Me either," said Tara...
Harmony put her head on my shoulder as tears rolled down her cheeks.
"So sad..." said Harmony.

"I think I would call it Bayside," said Lorne looking out at the bay on the edge of the city. "That sounds peaceful and serene...."
"Thats nice," said Tara...
"Bayside it is," said I.

The Legend of Witch Hazel

Thing about magic. There's always consequences. Always... I know i sound like a dungeon master, but it's true... When we told Tara about this pocket universe that Lorne had won in a poker game, she looked worried. When Anya asked her what was wrong, she stood up and looked out the window... Then she said that every pocket universe had a hell dimension on the other side with a veil between them. If the door between the two worlds opens, the hell dimension takes over.

"So we dont let anyone open the door, right?" asks Anya.   

"No, we have to make sure no one ever opens the portal," said Tara.   

"So every universe has a hell mouth?" asked Harmony.    

"Yes. They all start out that way... until the hell mouth opens." said Tara. 

"Well, Spike wont let that happen," said Harmony.   

"We wont let that happen," said Lorne. "All my employees have a room here. It helps them out that they dont have to live in the Hell dimension the club is in... Hey, maybe I can open it here instead.... No wait, no customers."    

"You just keep your employees out of the loop about this hell mouth. We'll locate it. keep it closed," said I.     

And with that said, Team Tara began to search the city outside for its hell mouth. Tara, Anya, Harmony and I looked all around the town for any signs of a portal to hell. When we got to a chapel in the center of town Anya, Harmony, and I felt the need to go inside... Down the stairs... in the basement... was a floor that seemed to radiate dark magicks.  

"There it is...." Tara said. 

"Now what do we do?" asked Anya.  

"We need to keep it hidden from the rest of the city," said Tara.   

"Can you do that?" asked Harmony   

"I think so," said Tara, "I can make the door to the basement go away, but what do we do about the hell mouth calling to the demons?"    

"We will have to keep other demons out of here some how," said I.  

"What did the smurfs do to keep Gargamel away from the village?" asked Anya.  

I tried not to laugh, but it was difficult... 

"Yeah, I can try that next. Will take a while..." said Tara. 

"Take all the time you need. We have your back," said I.   

Tara used a glamour spell to hide the doorway and the team went to work... researching spells to keep the location of the hell mouth a secret... Magical guardians were created to keep people away and designed to look like monks. To the average joe it was just another church with a graveyard, but we knew what it really was. And a congregation was formed when witches began meeting there every week to strengthen the spells that keep the hell mouth hidden. The coven got the nick name of Tara's Angels. 

After much study and spell casting, one of the coven passed out, and the group checked on her. Suddenly, she woke up. Her eyes were blacked out and they could tell she was possessed...

"I am the gatekeeper. Bring me the key," she said.
"No, we won't," said Tara.
"You cannot stop us. We are legion..." said the girl. Her name was Hazel. She had long black hair that was slowly turning grey.  
"You cannot open the gate without the key." Tara was not going to budge.
Hazel began to have trouble breathing and her hair was greying fast. "This one will die by morning, if we are not set free." She said....
"Who are you?" asked Tara.
"The devil," said Hazel. "Free me or die."
"Never," said Tara as the coven surrounded the girl.
"Your magicks are no match for us," said Hazel. "Release us before its too late."
Tara began to chant a spell of protection and the others joined her. Hazel screamed...
Her head appeared to turn all the way around and she began to foam at the mouth.... She rose into the air as the coven chanted faster....
"Release us or die," shouted the girl...
"If you kill her, you lose any chance of ever getting out," said Tara.
Hazel screamed and flung her arms in the air as blood began to flow from her nose and mouth....
Tara chanted a spell to release the demon and bind its power, as Hazel begged her for help....
"Tara please. Help me.... Please dont let them kill me...." said Hazel.

Anya went to the storage room and came back with a small stone... She began to chant a spell to Hazel too, and Hazel screamed as the demon was slowly ripped from her body and trapped in the stone. Hazel fell to the floor and the others rushed to her to help her, but it was too late. Hazel was gone...
She was a freed spirit now, and the demon in her was trapped in a rune stone...

Tara and the others began to weep for her, but her spirit came unto them and told them not to cry for her. She was free now.

Tara told her that they would find a spell to get her back in her body, but Hazel just laughed and told them to keep it. She flew away through the wall and disappeared and the coven could not find her.... They cast a spell to preserve her body until they could re unite them. Hazel never came back for the spell and never asked to be put back... Some criminals turned themselves in to police for years after that claiming that they were being haunted by a witch until they confessed....

Spells were cast by the coven to turn away any demonic spirits that might happen by and the coven continued to meet there to keep the locks in place...

The demon remained trapped in the stone for years and kept locked away in the secret basement of the church in a vault we put there just to keep supernatural dangers in. The demon was not heard from again until... well, that is another story....

Team Kendra and ParaCorp #FanficFriday

Another sub of Pratt Corp. is our paranormal investigating company, ParaCorp, which funds the monster hunting teams around the world and investigates paranormal activities for a fee. My operatives there make a nice salary for their work and the world gets a little brighter with each poltergeist or demon they deal with. ParaCorp is funded by clients and grants from organizations which need our services from time to time... The operatives mostly just call themselves slayers, hunters, agents or ops.

       

When a portal opened up in Denver and a slayer walked through and began slaying demons left and right, ParaCorp was called to deal with her as she had "superhuman strength." The Denver team tracked her down and offered her a job with the company and Kendra the Vampire Slayer became part of the Denver Team for a while....  

Led by Maggie and Natasha, former government ops, the Denver team had mostly just been dealing with spies and threats from shadow governments and hackers, but Natasha admired Kendra's fighting style and began training with her to learn from her, and she felt that the Denver team needed to be well trained for supernatural threats as well. So when Kendra awoke talking of a very dark power about to rise, Natasha and Maggie decided it was time for a new task force in Denver and Natasha was to lead it. She and Kendra began training new recruits hand picked for the team. 

While Team Natasha was forming on one front, Neo and his team of hackers began working on a line of robots designed to fight monsters but made to look like ordinary girls... The designs were based on Buffybot and the team called them Fembots in honor of those Austin Powers flicks. The battle bots were built for heavy duty battles but soft to the touch and functional as spies. All the best tech went into the program and all the known fighting styles too.     

After the techs had done all they could for the bots, they began training with Kendra and Tasha and only the bots that Natasha felt were ready were sent out on missions with the team.... The battle bots learned from the team and the team learned from them...   

When another portal opened up in Denver one day and a bunch of vamps attacked Denver Airport, Team Kendra was sent in to deal with them...   

While people were screaming and running for their lives, Kendra and the bot squad let loose on them, slaying them all in prompt fashion. Then, it happened, while Natasha was rounding up the team to head back to base, a little girl walked up to her and pulled on her coat... 

"Hello," said Natasha. 

"You cannot win, We are eternal," said the little girl who then fainted and fell into Nat's arms... 

"Possessed by a dark entity," said Kendra. "It is gone, now...." Kendra looked about the airport, but could not sense the entity any more. The battle bots surrounded them to head for home, but some how Tasha knew this was just the beginning....

  

DARKCHILDE RADIO #FanficFriday

ONE morning I got a call from Regina, my assistant at Pratt Corp., to meet Bailey at my Santa Monica office. Which was at the Asylum, a dance club I had bought interest in. Bailey was one of the leaders of my Cincinnati Team led by the enchanting witch Jennifer.

        The two of them were loyal as any Childer could be, and they often do me favours like when they got controlling interest in a local radio station there which they now run and split the profits with me.

While their day job is quite profitable, the Cincinnati team does rather well as highly paid assassins of demons and monsters who attack innocents... You might call them the Cincinnati ghost busters without Slimer....   I call them Team Bailey....

When I took the elevator back to Santa Monica, it opened to the Asylum elevator. Not surprising since Lorne was rather fond of dancing and probably had some business dealings with Jeanette, the club owner... When I got the call from Bailey to meet up, I directed her to the club and ordered a bottle of Bourbon. I took the bottle and went up the stairs to a loft over the bar and watched all the vamps and goths and ghouls dancing on the dance floor below....
Some of you are asking what a ghoul is right about now.... You see, a ghoul is human that wants to be a vampire so they do favours for them and let them feed off them until the master decides to turn them... kind of like vampire groupies... 

Bailey and Jennifer were at a convention one night in Cincinnati when they were attacked by biters and left to die, I happened upon them just in time and gave them some vampire blood to heal them, but as we left the room to take them back to their own rooms, the vamps who had drained them saw us and shot them both killing them, and turning them, due to the vitae in their systems.... By the time they were reborn... I had ripped the three vamps who killed them to shreds and bled them dry... They turned to dust before the girls eyes and I had to teach the girls how to live the life of the undead... The Danse Macabre we call it.... 

As Jen was a powerful witch before she died, she was able to create daywalker rings for all of us and  still supplies all my operatives with magical items for a fee. Today, she was sending me a care package of magical gizmos and such, that included some magic flasks that fill with fresh blood every time you close them, A handy tool for the vamps I employ to protect the innocents. Bailey handed me a flask with my initials engraved on it with a smile.... 

"Why thank you, luv... It's lovely..." says I. 

"I was going to order you one custom made, but Jennifer wanted to make it herself. She says, it is bonded to you, so you can  find it any time you are separated from it... Some kind of tracking spell or something..." says Bailey... 

"I love it. Thank you very much, my dear. How are things in Ohio?" asks I. 

"Good, good, we just collected about ten thousand in bounties this month, and the radio ads are selling well too... I deposited your share in the usual account as always..." says she.   

"Marvelous, you girls are the best, keep up the good work." says I. 

"Also, Jennifer bought some other stations out and increased our revenue by about 300 percent. They started a company to over see all the stations and Jennifer is the CEO. She calls it DarkChilde Radio. You are the major stockholder and Chairman of the Board, of course. This is a copy of the documents and list and addresses of the Directors." says she. 

"Oh, luv. Just email me a copy and put the paperwork on my desk will you..." says I. 

"Very good, sir," says she. "I'll see to them personally."   

"Actually, you know what? Get with Gina and have DarkChilde brought in as a subsidiary of Pratt Corp,," says I. 

"Very well, I will coordinate a meeting with Gina and Jennifer and see to it that's done, sir." says she. 

"Oh, and Bailey,... call me William, please" says I.   

"Very well,... William," says she, and that's how DarkChilde Radio Corp. was born... 

NEW POETRY BOOK OUT NOW FOR A LIMITED RUN!

New book of poetry by a certain undead poet for a certain beautiful woman.... if you like that sort of thing... 

THE MAN IN BLACK 

https://gumroad.com/l/HOXwi    

Always looking for new finds for you luvs 

The Doctor

MISTER DARK AND THE ROOMS WITH A VIEW #FanficFriday

The next day, I got up and checked the fridge which was full of blood bags and bottles of bourbon...
"I love this room," I told the gods of hotel rooms if there were such things...
Anya woke up and stretched, "Did I fall asleep?" She asked...
"Obviously, you did, luv..." I answered.
"Yeah, my fridge was full of food too. And when you take something out and close it, it refills itself. Think I will like it here." She got up and looked out the window at the bright and sunny day outside... "Such a lovely day, outside. There's a pizza place and a bunch of stores and a cab and the Statue of Liberty... Spike i think we are in New York..." Anya pointed to the Statue in the window...
"Cant be; we were in Sunnydale, last night..." I looked out the window in amazement.
"Lets call room service, I want some ham and eggs. Oh, I wonder if they have green eggs and ham..." Anya went to the phone as I watched the hustle and bustle of early morning New York below us....

"Yeah, the windows are magic so you can see any view you like outside," said Lorne with a smile, so proud of his Hotel floor... "Just ask nicely and they will show you whatever you want."
"Bollocks." said I.
"No really; it works. Watch this..." Lorne smiles and asks the windows nicely to show him Hollywood and the windows changed the view to Hollywood.
"Wow," says Anya. "Can it show me, Leonardo's bedroom?" Anya chuckled...
"Da Vinci or Dicaprio?" Lorne asked.
"Never mind," said Anya...
"How did you get this Hotel," I asked Lorne.
"Actually, I just won the alternate universe in a poker game from a Mr. Nightshade, nice old man... terrible poker face...."

"Who was the previous owner," asks I...
"Mr. Dark, they call him... strange gentleman, lots of tattoos. Runs a carnival in the fall, I hear... Say who wants breakfast?" Lorne walked toward the phone when a knock came at the door.
Anya opened the door to find a cart of breakfast foods waiting but no one in sight to tip... She rolled the cart inside and smiled. "Breakfast is served, " she said....    

The Madhouse, The Order of Ren, and The Unholy Three

After the club closed, Lorne offered us rooms in his new home down the street. We went there with him and looked around at what was left of Sunny d. The Bronze was surrounded by vamps and none of the other demons would go near the place, and the Magic Box was closed and locked up and advertising a GRAND RE-OPENING coming soon... I wondered for a moment what had happened to the uber demons that killed Anya in the high school but there was no sign of them now...

Lorne had found a nice house over on Elm Street and had claimed it for his own, apparently some demons had tried to throw him and his crew out and been thrashed viciously by them so no one tries to question them anymore....    

Under the stairs was a secret elevator that led to a secret hotel in a private dimension where rooms were available for everyone... how did Lorne set this up, i wondered?

"Well, its a long story,... basically, I won it in a poker game. The elevator here goes to any destination you desire. Won the elevator in one hand from a Mister Nightshade and the alternate universe in another from a Mister Dark. See the button for Madhouse. Goes straight to work. Then there's a button for Home, and one for Chicago, and Cleveland, Los Angeles, Denver, and some other Hell dimensions i do business in, and a button for your floor... 13... See this hotel has all the 13th floors that were not added to skyscrapers... Kind of confusing, but the room service is great." Lorne smiled and everyone tried to comprehend what he was saying....   

"BUT we went down not up," said Anya, always the first to point out what everyone was thinking... 

"Yes... its a magic elevator... you should see my magic carpet." said Lorne with a smile... 

"How do you set the buttons?" I asked out of curiousity. 

"I just think of where I need to go and the panel adds a button. Told you it was confusing." Lorne showed us to our rooms and advised us that the room service is excellent and we should try it." Then he went to his room. number one.   

"You dont sleep in the house?" I asked him. 

"Oh Hell no, its haunted.." Lorne went inside and closed the door and the rest of us found our rooms and turned in.... 

Later that night, Anya came to my door and asked to come in.... 

"Sure thing, luv," I told her and invited her in... She came in looking somewhat shaken and sat down at the dinner table by the fridge.... 

"You know, the fridge has fresh blood packs inside... I love this room... Whats wrong, An?" I asked her. 

"I just had this dream where i remembered... well, the Elysian Fields,... you remember that, Spike?" 

"Wasnt my dream luv.... " I remarked thoughtfully... 

"But you were there, William,... after Sunnydale... you dont recall???..." 

I shook my head having no memories of the place... 

"You and me and some others were abducted by demons from the Elysian Fields and taken to their Hell dimension,... they were going to sacrifice us to the Unholy Trinity... you tried to fight them off but they beat you down..." Anya looked at me to see if i recalled any of that... but i didnt...  "Then this other faction rescued us... the Order of Ren... they killed our abducters and asked us if we would help them overthrow the Three... They gave you some demon power through a spell to make you stronger and then they gave me demon powers sensing that I had once been a vengeance demon..." Anya created a fireball with the flick of her wrist and then flicked it away again... "We attacked the three with the Order and our leader Ren Tsa, but the Three were too strong for us and they banished us from their realm... they sent you away first..." 

"To L.A., yes, its coming back to me now... I was a ghost in L.A... i tell you from one Hell to another with me..." I recalled the attack and the banishment and the abduction now. "Yes, the three wiped my memory before they banished me to Hell,...er, Los Angeles. I remember it clearly now."   

"Yes, then they banished the rest of the Order too. And they sent Ren Tsa to another Hell dimension without his powers so he could not escape... Spike, he called out to me for help, in this dream. We have to find him. He is the one who gave me my powers back and the Order can stop the Three from destroying the world... Some thing big is coming Spike,... I can feel it..." Anya was visibly shaken by her dream and even i could sense something dark and eerie in the air... 

"We'll find him, luv.... We'll find them all..." I hugged Anya and comforted her... being a psy-sensitive i can feel other peoples feelings sometimes and her compassion and fear for her colleagues was strong... 

I knew that I had to find the Order some how, but i was not sure why.