"Oh Brave New World That Has Such People In It"

[singindemonhq]

Sunnydale seemed to be having some kind of firework festival, over the last few days. I'd been taking Erynne out to enjoy it, show off her ring and celebrate getting my talisman back, even though we can't use it yet.

We were part of a group who'd been living in a Sunnydale that had exploded, or imploded, or something and we'd been brought to a duplicate Sunnydale because of a Vengeance-demon wish.

I hadn't been too happy when I found out how we'd got here. I know the D'Hoffryn. The Lord of Arashmaharr can be charming and obliging enough when it suits him, of course - can't we all? He's a major pain in the thursal and he even double-crosses his own staff. I know enough about young Hoffie to have been looking for the snakes in this hell-dimensional Eden since day one.

I suspected from the first that there might be duplicates of those brought here by Astraeia's wish. There was no evidence for it until yesterday, but I had such a strong feeling about it that I wouldn't let Erynne use my talisman in what might be another operative's territory.

Then we went for an Indian meal yesterday, thought we saw
Percy West and, when Erynne hailed him, we found out that he was the leader of a gang of vampires!

Percy-Vamp taunted Erynne that he'd had no heartbeat for a year. That meant he wasn't the Percy we'd brought to this dimension, and that meant there are duplicates. I'd been anxious right through my time in the first Sunnydale, picking up from that crazy school, and the Harbingers under the town.

Here, the jitters were different, and I wondered if there was a duplicate of me somewhere, setting off my own mental warnings. Every time I thought of that I wanted Erynne and me out of here.

I'd prepared CDRs with chants to open the safest local dimensional portals before we'd first started to move between the worlds. Back then, I'd made two CDRs, the one I used, and a safety back-up.

I'd made another for Grant a few days ago, and Erynne took it to him when she returned his car. That meant he could come to our wedding if we held it in Erynne's dimension, and he could travel around all he wanted.

This time I packaged the spare and took it round to Percy.We met in the street while I was on my way to see him. The girl he came here with, Samantha, has disappeared. She always wore a big jewelled cross while I knew her, that might have protected her a bit, but when I thought of Vamp-Percy I was pretty sure that I knew what'd happened to her.