Samantha had quickly wearied of the school routine. It was a miracle in itself that she possessed even a fraction of the discipline it took to get her to school nine days out of ten. The people in this town were so fake to her, she knew every person she met had no idea of reality as she saw it. She knew they were luckier for it and she despised and envied every one of them. She was sure ignorance was a sweet refuge she'd never been allowed.

So it was no surprise that she found herself straying from her Geology homework to prowl the darkness, stake tucked in the back of a snug pair of jeans. She loved the dark, the way most people loved meadows and beaches. She could slip in between shadows, and lately she'd found she could see where others couldn't, she liked that, she could see them but they couldn't see her.

She hunted the same way she always had, light on her feet and yet grounded in every step, sliding between trees and inching along crypts, using the graveyard's natural and man made terrain to her advantage. The first few vampires were guiltless, unsuspecting creatures in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the fourth she came across wasn't alone, and her companion definitely had a pulse.

She followed them quietly, cocking her head and watching the exchange with a certain amount of interest, listening to the vampiress draw him out. She recognized the game, and almost chuckled at the scene. Men could be so-

Samantha was startled into action as the vampire went in for the kill early, and was on top of the couple inside a moment. She elbowed her target to the ground and spit on the ground as the bony, taller blonde circled the slayer, twitching a shoulder as a silent come on. The vampire sneered. "What, the girlfriend?"

She made a face. "Seriously? I am so out of his league." She ducked a punch and followed up with one of her own, merciless and efficient. The fight only lasted a few minutes before dust exploded around Sam's stake and she turned to look reproachfully at the twitching, skinny young virgin who was huddled against a headstone, but ultimately, unharmed.

http://community.livejournal.com/love_of_fate/2425.html

Samantha wasn't made to walk alone. She could, and she would, but she found herself drawn toward crowds, seeking out vicarious conversations about nothing and missing her hundreds of false friends. She missed thin smiles spread over bad intentions and some days she even missed the guys with their rude roving hands and uninvited fingers, mouths, tenting jeans. It was on those days that she sought out some night time company, it didn't matter who, it really didn't matter at all, she didn't have anything left for them to take. But she didn't sleep. She was nobody's bed warmer and nobody's fool and if she had to crack a few faces to get that point across she sure as hell would.

That had been the case tonight, the hard chiseled man had been a real sweet talker until she had had enough, and that was when he learned the hard way that no meant no. He'd be half as pretty now, anyway. She dropped him on the tile floor of the hotel room, blood filling up the cracks in the tile as she straightened her skirt and ripped on her jacket, picking up her bag and shouldering it before slipping out the door. Nobody saw her come, nobody saw her go. She checked her face in a puddle, it had been unmarked by the scuffle, not that a tipsy bruiser with molasses barrels for arms posed much of a challenge these days. She half zipped her jacket and turned down the street, nudging her hair back into place.

http://community.livejournal.com/tenebrae_nostro/105477.html

Los Angeles felt like home. More than any other place, anyway. And it must have been because no one there was really home. In the night time the forlorn and helpless vagabonds of the street wandered the avenues and alleyways, and in the day, everyone did their best to pretend that wasn’t true. Celebrities outsourced charities, because only people in Africa went hungry. No where in the land of milk and honey did the mentally deranged wander without house or hope. LA was Samantha. It was beautiful, it was dangerous, it was anger boiling under the surface. It was full of orphans and runaways and crack babies screaming late into the night in a neglected two story, or the unvisited wing of the hospital. And as she walked down the sunny welcoming landscape of La Cienega Boulevard, the sun was disappearing behind the tops of the shorter buildings. The city was in transition. Shadows leapt from angles as the light was slowly drawn away and shop keeps pulled monstrous gates like prison bars over the windows of their stores.

With soft flowing tresses that ended in slight curls at her shoulders and a light skirt that brushed her thighs, she was neither of the size or description of someone who ought to find themselves near the edge of town in the growing dark. But she wasn’t phased, she’d played along in less ordinary roles and if there was one thing Samantha hated to indulge in is was fear. Fear was the great inhibitor, the time waster of all time wasters. It didn’t keep anyone you knew from dying, it didn’t protect your innocence, it just kept you locked up in a beautiful designer cage until daddy let you out to play. No, she wouldn’t indulge fear, not now.

She could practically feel the soft throb of the club that was two blocks away, imagining that the sidewalk was shaking with the vibrations of a booming baseline. She closed her eyes and listened for a moment, shrewdly aware of her surroundings and yet believing she could disappear between the notes as she moved closer to the intoxicating sound of people and chaos and life going on as usual. She came around the corner and ignored the heads she turned. Not that she didn’t appreciate the glances, but attention came to those who didn’t want it, and pretending she didn’t was just as good as far as the upper class hierarchy was concerned. She bared her pearly teeth at the very large bearded man who’d been paid to block her way. Her smiled back, raising an eyebrow of interest and she took a posture that said, you could be so lucky. “It’s twenty one plus, doll, how old are you?”

Her eyes locked on his, cocking her head and placing two fingers at the neckline of her blouse, smirking coyly. I will have my way. “How old do I look?” This was an invite, and the man took it, his bulging eyes slithering down her form like to many men before him. He took his sweet time, he’d been a bouncer long enough to know a girl’s promise at the door was worthless once she got inside. When he chuckled it was almost a smoker’s cough. He lifted the rope and she slipped under it as he took his mandatory brush up against her yielding form. She shot him a smile that was all pretense and he winked in her direction. “Stay out of trouble.”

She slipped in the door into the din of crushing music and gyrating bodies, supposing it was payment enough that she didn’t crush the man’s throat in.

A tight bodied, hard angled Samantha jumps off a dumpster onto rain slicked cement. Water drops from the tips of her eyelashes and the folds of her coat as she brushes her damp tank top down with her thumbs toward her defined midriff. "Thought it was vampire bat, not vampire rat?" Her prey is crouched near the the ground over the hunched figure of an old woman in rags, blood diluting in the puddles around the pair. The creature's hair is matted to his head in the rain and it's all she sees as he lunges at her, a snarl cutting the air. She whirls, sending a cascade of moisture sideways through the torrent. The two, vampire and slayer, lock in battle, each striking more viciously than the next.

The fight doesn't even seem to draw to a close before the tiny feminine figure has her opponent pinned, back first, against the dusky brick surface of the next building, staking-arm cocked back to strike. Suddenly- she meets the vampires eyes; the soft brown eyes of Hannibal King. She falters, and he sneers. "What're you waitin for princess? That's some wasted foreplay if you're not even gonna gimme the payoff." He's goading her, but she doesn't move. She lowers the stake. His eyes- his soft, warm, tauntingly human eyes, flicker with doubt as he frowns. "What're you-?"

She shoves him, but away. She's seen something that won't let her go through with it. The shove only moves him a step, but he also seems to realize what passed between them not a minute ago. He blinks at her with a frown and his fingers glide less than roughly over her cheek. She frowns back and their eyes lock. Just then, a loud noise comes from the end of the alleyway, echoing against the walls. When she looks back, he's gone.

If she could see more clearly, if it weren't for the oppressing dark and the rain, she might have spied the seething features of Danica Talos, cold blue eyes watching the two with already pounding jealousy and righteous anger.

Maybe I should have known better. But how could I have known? How could I have known it would be this big, that things would get that bad? It seemed so simple to me. Why should anyone have to be what they don't want to? I guess no one else thought it was that simple.

We found the orb of...thesulah? It wasn't easy, and I so did not have the funds to cover that. As if I've ever had a problem with stealing though, right? I don't have a problem with torture, why should I have a problem with stealing? Halloran didn't ask where I got it, which was probably more about him not wanting to know than anything.

I'd never seen magic before.

Not real magic, I'd seen lots of unexplainable things, but this was...there were translucent ghosty things and glowing lights and latin phrases...before the light show started I totally thought he was just making fun of us. An exorcism I get, but channeling souls with spices and magic words? cmon.

Until he sort of...popped. Not as gross as it sounds, really. He was just yelling and his whole body was shaking, like he was lifting something too heavy. He was doing that all in one second, and then next he just...stopped. And after that, he didn't move anymore.

I know how cold it was to leave him there. I know it was wrong. But King looked like he'd been hit by a train, and then I heard sirens, and I just- panicked. Believe me, it takes a lot for someone like me to panic. Was chained to the floor by an angry vampire a day ago, remember?

( Memento Mori )

( Denial is my greatest defense against the truth )

The big score of the month. I'd been tracking these assholes for weeks, it's not hard, none of them are especially paranoid, especially not about humans. We're like cute little meals that follow them around and as long as I'm not wearing anything especially skanky I don't get noticed much. I might as well be one of the bricks in the walls. And I made them regret it. There's a group of hunters living in a building downtown that I occasionally call on to work with me when I've got a big juicy catch like this one. We weren't especially planned, most of us are spontaneous types anyway, angry pleasure seekers with a score to settle. We're the motherless bastard children of the street, and most times, it's only defenders.

They, on the other hand, were organized. They had a hierarchy, a plan for attacks before they even happened. The more powerful of them were more than willing to sacrifice the weak to us, and we fell on them with zest. I cut through the crowd, killing toward the bitch I'd picked out beforehand. Why? because she was the biggest score. Old and powerful, she led the pecking order effortlessly, and taking her out was bout power, and reputation. I wanted a few weaker vampires to live to tell the story of this massacre, and I wanted my name to come up. I streaked after her till I hit a door, hard. The wood splintered under my shoulder but didn't break the first time. When I finally wrenched the door open, the only thing in the room was a very large unconcious vampire. I looked toward the door she'd no doubt escaped out of and heard the room behind me start to quiet before I realized she was a lost cause.

Now I was in one of my personal rooms, still wearing my fighting clothes, a snug black wifebeater over an equally snug sports bra and green cargo pants with heavy black boots on my feet. I wore my hair up, and my arms folded over my waist. I'd left the room mostly darkened, with one shade open in the space behind him to remind him what was outside the window. He wouldn't stand up easily and was more or less a bitch to move while unconcious, so I'd chained him to the floor like an animal, making it impossible for him to stand. I walk in a circle around him, wondering and waiting, and growing impatient.

http://community.livejournal.com/alittle_crazy/388.html

I'm not the sortof person to make plans, so saying I never planned to be here now is more or less pointless. I didn't plan to be anywhere, but I didn't think It'd be LA. I have nothing against LA, per se. If I have to be anywhere in this country it might as well be where the best shopping is and the prettiest people are. But everything here has a general feeling that I might stand a chance of belonging. That I don't want. I hadn't had a home since Massachusets, and that's the way I prefer it. My way of life since had been stopping somewhere just long enough to make or swipe the money to go somewhere else. That's how I found myself stranded in the town of Lhasa, near Tibet. A tourist had let me hitch a ride up the mountain, but getting out seemed to be more expensive than getting in. I didn't mind much at the time, there were plenty of demons to kill in those mountains, and more than a few daytime things to see, too.

That was the last place I was before I met Angel. Well, met isn't such a good term, assualted, would be more accurate. Either way, he startled me one night and proceeded to beat me to the wall. That's about when I discovered he can be a smug bastard when he wants to. Imagine my surprise when the same smug bastard wanted to make friendly conversation.

I'd read a book or two on the subject of slayers, you live for awhile with the power to bend metal with your bare hands and you get curious and you seek out some information. So when he gave me a big old speech about one girl in every generation...I knew the gist. And when I'd been traveling around, I'd been doing a pretty good job, nothing gives a girl purpose like immortal destiny.

By the time he showed up I'd had just about enough of that town, a little too peaceful and much too quiet. I'd liked the chaos of big city Japan much better. So I was happy to trail him for awhile, (He's really not that bad once you get to know him) and he seemed to be more than happy to have a willing student on hand to boss around. I don't know why in the world I came home with him though. Maybe because I didn't mind him and he didn't mind me. It doesn't sound like much, but when it comes down to two such interesting personalities...companionship can be worth more than you'd think.

But I did, Anyway. And now I'm standing in a hotel lobby in the city of angels, leaning on a desk and watching Angel move around the building, his brow getting more and more heavy and his expression getting more and more frantic. I take it he expected his people to be around when he got back. More or less unaffected by his silent turmoil, I glance to my right and pick up a piece of paper covered in neat, but tiny handwriting. I turn it over once and hold it up.

"I think they left a note."

http://community.livejournal.com/itsnot_home/1592.html

Despite my repeated insistance that I am all grown up and don't need a big man-type escort back to my place after dark, that's what I got. I'd really have rather made sure he got home safe, overly interested vampires lurking around and all, but I'd raised enough suspicion acting wierd all night about that Caleb guy. In truth I should have just let him get bitten, I mean by the time I'd put all that effort into trying to stop it, he surely deserved the discomfort. But no, sap that I am, I finally drag him from the club for his own good.

I love the night. I love the dark and the danger and how the air gets just a little bit cooler. But, it was a miracle that we got as far as my block without some vampire taking a jump at me and letting Ryan in on my nighttime activities. We might have to have that conversation sooner or later, but I vote later, much much later. My apartment is ground level, and the door opens to the outside, which is a hazard, but I take what I can afford, and what I can afford is ground level. It's a good oppurtunity for sickos like that Aidan guy to go peering in the windows while I sleep or change or- ya know, whatever.

The two of us gradually draw closer, Ryan's going on about- something, I lost him a few minutes back, and I know right away something's amiss. That's easy to tell because that's what I'm pretty sure is a body on my front step...and it's small. I frown a little and run up ahead to my front door, and what I see makes my stomach turn. It's a little girl, about six or seven, mostly drained, and gutted. Her rib cage is crushed in and what I think is her large intenstine is tied around her in- oh god, is that a bow?