After the first chapter, i felt as if I was swimming in deep water, having absolutely no idea where I was or where the heck I was going. Now, thanks to the feedback on chapter one, I feel as if I have been caught by a strong current, and I can imagine the shore it is taking me to. I have never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Buffy's designation, the Vampire Slayer, is certainly enough to give me a few ideas.
Lois the Vampire Slayer?
If that is what she is, then she may have her work cut out for her:
Lois frowned. “Somebody stabbed them with something blunt?”
“I found this in the back of one man's eye socket.” Angelica turned to a nearby drawer and pulled out a clearly labeled evidence bag.
Inside was a single, broken red fingernail.
“Someone dropped that in while they were burying the bodies?” Clark asked.
Angelica shook her head. “It was buried in the back of the eye socket.”
Gaaaah. I didn't know vampires did
that. Then again, I'm not much into horror and the occult.
This was something Lois was capable of doing. As she hadn't, it meant that she wasn't the only person to have changed.
Double-gaaaahh!!! Lois the Vampire Slayer to the rescue? By killing vampires? Ehhh... all I know about vampires is that they don't like garlic, or silver, or crucifixes, or sunlight, or wooden stakes through their hearts. Hmmm, Lois, you need to add a few items to your shopping list....
![[Linked Image]](http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/amc0789l.jpg)
No, not
those items... (And in case you can't see the image, which is a distinct possibility, it's a cartoon showing a Granny shopping with her grandchild and reading from her shopping list: "We need nappies for you and nappies for me.")
She didn't wonder why Clark had the same look of sick realization on his face as she did.
Clark looks as stricken as Lois is feeling. Does he know anything about the vampires, or is he just generally horrified at all the gruesome deaths?
Let me return to the beginning of this chapter:
It felt good to be angry. Anger was a familiar emotion, one she'd had a great deal of experience channeling into positive outcomes.
It had only failed her once. Lois suppressed a shudder, and then stopped as she came to the rental.
Gaaaah. Did Lois once kill? Did she tear apart the men who were going to kill her, just before she found her, well, slayer strength?
Someone had parked barely a foot away from the front bumper, and someone else had parked almost as close from the back. There was no way she was ever going to be able to squeeze out of the parking space as it was. Worse, Perry had already read her the riot act about damaging rentals, after a few unfortunate incidents involving car chases.
People were so rude. It had always irritated her, but the longer she stood and stared at it, the angrier it made her.
I, too, can feel how totally annoying this is. But I can also sense that Lois seems to be a little bit angrier than she usually would have been.
She glanced over at the business the car was parked in front of. The beat of loud music played from inside, and there was some sort of cheesy gothic design on the front sign.
When i first read this, I didn't really pay much attention to the music from the store and the gothic design of the sign outside. Now I'm wondering, though... Loud music? Gothic design? Is this supposed to signal that something evil is going on inside that store, whose evil influence may be connected to that annoyingly rudely parked car?
Slipping her keys into a front pocket, Lois reached down and grabbed the rear bumper of the car in front of her. Although she'd seen some of what her strength could do, she had never really tested it.
The rear of the car came up, and a moment later, the tires came up as well. It was a strain, but Lois didn't feel as though she was hurting anything important.
![[Linked Image]](http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/226/lifting_car.gif)
Now
Lois is doing this, pretty much!
Lois smirked as she stared in the rear view mirror. She'd called to report a car parked out in the middle of the street, and the tow truck had already arrived. It was petty of her, but somehow she felt a little better.
Hmmm. I wonder. Was the owner of the car guilty of nothing more than rudeness and boorishness? Or was he or she actually connected to the deeper evil going on here, and to the vampires? And if so, will Lois have challenged the vampires by making sure that one of their cars was towed away? Or was Lois really just pettier than usual because her patience is worn thin by her vampire slayer status?
Lois smirked as she stared in the rear view mirror. She'd called to report a car parked out in the middle of the street, and the tow truck had already arrived. It was petty of her, but somehow she felt a little better.
*shudders* (But I can't believe that Lois has
really become evil. And since I have begun to suspect that the Cortez family may not only be leading the fight against the vampires, but that they may be "mystically" connected to the forces of goodness and life, I choose to believe that Senor Cortez would have "sensed" that Lois was evil, if that had really been the case.)
She hesitated, and then asked, “How does your family know Mr. Kent?”
“He saved the life of my granddaughter,” the older man said. “In my culture, we do not forget such things.”
“How did he…?” Lois frowned. She hadn't pegged Clark Kent as the physically brave type.
“He was a drifter…he found work with us on the ranch. When Anna went missing, lost in the hills, he found her and brought her back after she'd been bitten by a snake.”
Hmmm. The child had been bitten by a snake. Snakes are strongly associated with forces of evil and darkness. Did the vampires have anything to do with Anna's disappearance? And did Clark have to fight vampires to save the girl?
So he had just been part of the rescue effort. It didn't help much in getting a better picture of who her partner was.
Yeah, right... Clark isn't very impressive, is he, Lois?
“Anna thought he was an angel come to take her.” The older man chuckled. “She was delirious at the time. It was a miracle that he even found her in the first place. She was miles away from where any of the rest of us thought to look.”
Eh. Maybe he
is impressive after all.
“Thank you, Mr. Cortez.” Lois hesitated. “Do you know anything about Sunnydale?”
The old man spat on the ground. “La Boca del Infierno. The Spanish always had sense enough to avoid that place. Only the gringos were stupid enough to move there.”
I don't know what La Boca means, but Infierno... that must mean Hell. Sunnydale was Hell? Or an outpost of Hell? And only white people were stupid enough to live there?
“There was something wrong with it?” Lois asked. She'd felt something the first time she'd seen the crater, a sense of slowly fading evil, but she'd dismissed it as jet lag.
Lois herself had felt something, a sense of evil, the first time she saw the crater. Does that mean that she herself can "sense" if people are vampires now?
The old man extinguished the cigar with a small brass device from his pocket. “I'm going to bed. If you know what's good for you, you will as well. Things escaped when the city collapsed, and the hills aren't as safe as they once were.”
*shudders*
California as a whole was racially diverse. Latinos, Asians, African Americans…it was an ethnic and cultural melting pot, more so than in most parts of the country. Only half the population was Caucasian.
Sunnydale had been almost ninety eight percent Caucasian. Lois frowned. Something definitely wasn't right here, especially as housing prices in Sunnydale were a third of the price anywhere else in the state. Those prices had kept dropping over a period of several years even as the rest of the state had skyrocketing property prices.
Everybody but some thirty thousand white people knew this place was cursed?
Cursed. It was how she had been feeling about herself since she'd begun changing.
Poor Lois.
“How did you get the aerial photo?” she asked, not looking at her partner. He'd certainly come through professionally, but she was still angry about being ditched.
Clark Kent coughed and said “I have a friend who is a helicopter pilot.”
He was lying. Lois wasn't sure why, but she filed it away for another time. There would be time enough o teach him the error of his ways.
I'm glad she knows that he is lying. And the rest of us knows how he got that aerial photo, of course!
![[Linked Image]](http://www.supermancinema.co.uk/superman2/real_s2/whatwasshot/images/s2_donner_neverbeforeseen_opening_clark_saves_lois_newspaper.jpg)
Hmmmm.
“I know the Assistant Coroner,” Clark said. He stared at the road and didn't look at her.
So there were reasons Perry had sent Clark on this assignment. He knew the area, he had connections. Lois was beginning to feel like the third wheel. She hoped she didn't have to get between the man and his ego.
“So we won't be using her name in the story.”
It was a shot in the dark, but his slight flinch told her she was correct. Lois pursed her lips. She should have known that a man who looked like her partner would have a checkered past.
There really have been a few Lois and Clark stories where Clark has been around the block a few times, or at least once. But I doubt this is one of them.
And the Cortez family again. I really think they are important in the fight against the vampires.
“You never wrote for any major paper?”
“The London Times, the New York Times…I've written a few things for the AP. Mostly I did freelance work for smaller papers. I did an article for the Borneo Gazette about the mating habits of…”
Right, there was this article for The Times of London, and this article for The New York Times, and the article about the mating habits of geckos for the Borneo Gazette.
And Lois and Clark meet the Assistant Coroner, Angela Cortez. I don't know if the names of the Cortez women are at all significant because they are so common, but so far we have met Maria, named after the mother of God, Anna, who was the mother of Mary according to the apocryphic gospel of Jacob, and Angela, the angel. Appropriate names for females who want to fight the evil of vampires.
Well, very interesting, Shayne! I want to see how Lois deals with her "change" and what it will mean to her to see more of Clark. Lois feels cursed now. Can Clark save her? And can they defeat the vampires together?
Ann
