Sam's Art Project

Thursday,March 24th, 1994, 1 P.M. Time for Metal Sculpture class.

Sam Kessler drove her Jeep slowly through the small parking lot behind Merneau Hall and parked as far away from the building as she could get. Although she'd like nothing better than to turn around and cut class, it really couldn't be avoided any longer. Ever since the China Gate closed and Sam and Drew had their "little talk," Sam had been working on her sculpture pieces at home. At the garage. At the monastery. Anywhere else but here, except for the few days when she and her friends had gone to Jamaica for Spring Break.

Jamaica. Another trip that seemed like a great idea at the time, but turned out... wrong. Their last night in Kingston, Sam and Drew had a monumental fight. She'd started it, declaring that she couldn't be sleeping with a rum-sugar magnate. Drew pointed out that it wasn't his fault he'd inherited a sugar plantation. It was true. But neither could he deny the inheritance, nor sell it. Not with Wolfram and Hart poised to sweep in and buy it. Drew had to keep the manor house with the bottomless pit in the basement, even though the sugar cane was iron-clad contracted to Captain Morgan Rum for the next two years. Sam shot back that she didn't ask for her 'inheritance' either, but she was the Slayer, and her dad was a recovering alcoholic. Whining wouldn't change the facts, nor how she felt about them.

On returning to Solomon, Sam and Drew froze each other out. Which didn't stop their friends joking about Drew being her 'sugar daddy'. It was just too much, on top of the embarrassing fact that shortly after the China Gate, Sam decided, in the interest of "honesty," to tell Drew about her feelings, specifically the crush she had on Professor Malion. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What was she thinking? Sam hit her head, lightly, against the steering wheel. Ow!

When Drew had that crush on Stephie Newberry, they'd had a fight. This crush of Sam's led to a fight. His inheritence, fight. Lately, it seemed all they did was fight each other, rather than the bad guys. So, she avoided Drew and Professor Malion both as best she could, for a while. But now that all the pieces of her art project were complete, she had to assemble them on-site, which meant going to the art department, and possibly seeing him. John Patrick Malion, JP to most, Professor of Art, and quite possibly the most attractive man Sam had ever seen. He had the most compassionate brown eyes, and he smiled like he was sharing a wonderful secret with you, and his hands, so strong and clever with the metal and clay that they worked with.

Not so scary, really, when you thought about it. Sam laughed at herself as she pulled the box of metal pieces out of the back of her truck. Early in the semester, she'd checked and double-checked. There were information spells that identified demons. Professor Malion wasn't one. Nor was he a vampire, or an evil mage out to steal their souls. As far as she could tell, he was just a man who loved art, and loved teaching his students. It wasn't his fault, either, that Sam remembered his face from another spell – the Actaeon curse, when everyone saw Drew as their secret heart's desire. But Sam had never seen Drew the same way twice, and never as anyone she recognized, until Ada had shown her a security tape of Professor Malion admiring the dragon sculpture at the Sacred Grounds. But that was a fact, too, as well as her feelings. It was awkward, but she'd deal. She'd definitely dealt with worse.

As she walked towards Merneau Hall, Sam passed a motorcycle parked in the first spot, nearest the door. An antique Indian, painted blue-green like tropical waters. Beautiful machine; clean lines, impeccably maintained.

"Here, let me help with that." A deep voice came from her other side.

Sam's head whipped around to find the professor whom she'd been trying to avoid, holding the door for her.

"Thank you." She blushed and ducked inside.

"That looks heavy. Are you sure you don't need a hand?"

"No, thanks. I've got it." Sam shifted her grip on the carton. It was heavy, but nothing she couldn't handle. However, she wasn't about to let the professor help, or risk him straining something.

"You like it?" Professor Malion nodded toward the bike.

Sam followed his gaze back outside to the motorcycle. "It's yours?"

"Yeah. A good investment, I think." He smiled, "And darn sexy, too." He stopped when he glimpsed Sam's expression. "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate."

Sam swallowed her embarrassment. "No, I mean... It's a very nice bike. Could you get the other door for me?"

"Sure thing." Malion held the door open to let her pass, then followed. "Actually, I'm glad to see you back in studio, Samantha. All the other projects are quite a bit farther along than yours. I hope nothing's wrong?"

"No. Nothing's wrong, Professor. It was just easier to do this part at home." Sam put her box down on the table and picked out one of the metal neurons. "Lots of little pieces, but they're all done now."

Professor Malion took the piece from her and examined it. "Copper wire and stainless. That dendrite used to be a salad fork, if I'm not mistaken." He glanced at her shrewdly. "Before it was rolled flat, under a steam roller, it looks like."

Sam wished, not for the first time, that she could turn off the instinct to blush. "Um, not a steamroller. Hydraulic press. My dad has one at the shop."

"Ingenious." He returned it to her. "How many of those do you have in there?"

Sam closed the box quickly. "Enough, I think. And several big spools of fishing line. And some other things." The last piece had taken the longest for her to cast, cut and weld. And for a final touch, she'd taken it to Father Leoni for a blessing. He'd said that any blessing of his would be redundant, but gave it to her anyway.

"Well, I'll leave you to it, then. If you need anything, I'll be upstairs in my office."

"Thank you." Sam sighed with relief as Professor Malion wandered through the room, checking her classmates as they assembled their own sculptures with acetylene torches and power tools. Sam opened her box of neurons and began tying them to the support structure with fishing line. Each neuron would be suspended just within touching distance of its neighbor, and the ones around the edges just brushing the copper-tube supports. She had nearly a hundred of them, but it was work she could get lost in and forget the confusing feelings for a while.

Professor J.P. Malion climbed the stairs and stopped by the window outside his office, which looked down on the workroom. All his students were down there, busy making art, expressing their teenage longings for love, stability, chaos, death, or whatever struck their fancy this semester. One by one, he watched them work, confident that the smoked glass would not betray his presence. When his gaze returned to Samantha Kessler, he had to shake his head. Hydraulic press, she said. Not likely. There were hammer-marks on the metal, but no discoloration from heat. She'd smashed that stainless steel fork absolutely flat with nothing more than main strength, and yet she'd gone out of her way to keep him from seeing just how much metal she'd carried from her car to the studio, apparently without effort.

He'd heard rumors in the teacher's lounge, of course. Obscure references to Atlantis coming to St. Germain's and the Plagues of Egypt threatening the town. It seemed that when magic went evil, Sam and her friends often showed up to investigate and set things right. Malion had met do-gooders like that before. They often came to unfortunate ends when their zeal ran up against something bigger than they were. However, there were also murmurs about the late Professors Leung and Holloway, and of Malion's own predecessor, Ellen Rosalini. Some thought it was terrible, what happened to them. Others thought it was only what they deserved for perpetrating heinous crimes on their students. Malion knew that Rosalini, for one, had not lived much in the light. He could see it in the sculptures she left behind. They were disturbing, to be polite. Desperately in need of a sledgehammer, to be more exact. No one on campus knew that Malion had done just that – taken a sledgehammer to Rosalini's works – at dawn on the first day he was to teach. He would not have those abominations sullying his work-space, affecting his students. Especially Jennifer Alverez, who'd been one of Rosalini's newest proteges before she died, or "went on sabbatical," as the official line went. But no one was under any illusions that Ellen Rosalini would ever return. The college had spared no expense in cleaning and fumigating the studio. The blood and gore was gone, but nothing except time could erase the resonance of hatred and vengeance, like a high-pitched whine just at the edge of hearing. Ellen Rosalini had met a very bad end down there on the floor of the sculpture studio. As he watched Samantha Kessler string her metal neurons on near-invisible fishing line, Professor Malion knew that she knew it too.

*****

Sam worked steadily through the afternoon, occasionally stretching or getting a drink of water. Bit by bit, her sculpture took shape. She walked all around, making sure the neurons swung freely, glancing across each other as she touched them. The sweet chime of metal on metal echoed through the studio, answered by silence. Sam looked up to realize that she was alone. All her classmates had left and she hadn't noticed. The short winter afternoon had faded toward evening.

A moment later, Professor Malion appeared on the stairs, but he wasn't alone. A girl dressed all in black with long, black hair and raccoon-mascara pushed him from behind, so he tumbled down the stairs and landed in a heap. Her look and actions couldn't have screamed 'I'm a vampire' any louder.

"Hello, Slayer." The girl mocked Sam. "Birkenstock's on the other foot, now, isn't it?"

"Professor?" Sam didn't take her eyes off the girl. "Don't move. Just stay perfectly still."

"Oh, is that what you told her, too? 'Don't move, this won't hurt a bit,' as you cut her lovely head off?" The girl caressed Professor Malion's throat with the sharp edge of a chisel. He made a soft noise of distress.

Sam's focus didn't waver as she took half a step to the left, closer to the table's edge and her nearly-empty cardboard box. "Why don't you let him go. Your fight's with me."

The vampire shook her head, grinning. "This isn't a fight. This is revenge."

"Revenge?" Sam finally placed the girl, although she'd never actually seen her. "You're Aimee, aren't you? Is this about when we broke up your little gang?"

The girl sneered. "Aimee? Hah! Not even. Those punks were a bunch of losers. Rifraff. Posers. My name is Sondra Estelle, and I am an artiste."

Sam laughed. She couldn't help it. "Sondra Estelle? That's a stupid name. What, Tenessee Williams meets Valley Girl?" She took another step closer.

"No stupider than Samantha Jane. What? Your parents wanted a wallflower-boy? No, wait! That's what they got." Sondra flicked her chisel against Malion's chin. "A couple weeks ago, you killed my art professor, my mentor. And now, I'm going to kill yours!" She drew back the chisel to stab. "For Ellen Rosalini!"

"Ellen Rosalini?" Sam repeated, bewildered.

"Ellen Rosalini." Professor Malion whispered. "Of course."

Sam's sculpture moved as if on a gust of wind, but there was no wind in the studio. Chiming neurons clashed and tangled. Sondra's chisel wavered. Sam groaned. Just what they needed now. Three times named would summon a spirit, if they happened to be nearby and listening. Misty tendrils bloomed like a flower in the air, followed by the ghostly form of a woman covered in blood. She pointed from Sondra, to Professor Malion, to Sam. "Betrayer! Destroyer! Slayer! I will kill all three of you!"

"Betrayer?" The girl, if possible, went even paler. "I never betrayed you. I was going to avenge you!"

While no one was looking her way. Sam slowly reached into her cardboard box for the last piece of her sculpture – a life-size human heart cast in bronze, surrounded with copper flames. This was the piece she'd had Father Leoni bless for her, although he said that a Sacred Heart didn't need any other blessings.

While the vampire and the ghost had their moment, Sam carefully lined up her shot. She'd only get one.

"Sweet, foolish girl. My killer is beyond your reach." The ghost extended an ectoplasmic arm as if to caress the vampire's face. "Once, you left my side, but you can make it up to me now. Kill the man, destroyer of art! My masterpieces dust to his hammer! And I will kill her!" The ghost streamed toward Sam.

Sam wound up and threw the Sacred Heart – a 100 MPH fast-ball – right through the ghost and into Sondra's chest. The blessed metal lodged deep where a real heart would have been if she had one.

The vampire looked down at the copper pieces sticking out of her chest. "Oh, damn!" She splintered to dust. The heart thudded to the floor. The ghost shrieked and unravelled from the center outwards.

When all was silent again, Sam took a deep breath with a prayer of thanks. The heart was a bit dented and covered in vampire ash, but Sam perched it on the spike at the top of her sculpture. The last piece in place. It was finished.

"It's okay, Professor. You can open your eyes now."

Professor Malion looked around, noting the chisel lying beside his head and Sam standing over him, offering a hand to help him up. They were alone.

"What happened? Who were those – women? Where'd they go?"

"Back where they came from."

He looked at her shrewdly. "You saved my life, didn't you?"

Sam nodded. "'Fraid so, Professor. But I hope that won't weight my grade too heavily." She waved at the completed sculpture. "I was going to call it 'Synapse' but I think 'Spirit' works better, don't you?"

"Spirit." The professor nodded. "Indeed it does." He reached as if to touch the metal heart, but stopped, shuddered, and withdrew his hand. "I owe you an apology, Samantha. When I challenged your class, but especially you, to create a legacy in metal, I expected something... I don't know what I expected. But when I saw your sketch for what you planned, I thought, this wasn't it." He gazed at the Sacred Heart. "I thought this project was unworthy of you. I see now that I was wrong." He rested his hands against the table, and leaned on it.

"Are you okay, professor? Did she hurt you?"

"Not physically. I just need a moment. That's never happened so close to me before."

Sam looked at him sideways. "You've seen a vampire dusting before?"

"Oh, yes. I know who you are, Samantha. The Slayer." He smiled. "I knew another young lady once who held your post, when I was in college myself. 1973. Columbia. Her name was Nikki."

Sam stared. "You knew Nikki. In New York." Sam knew most of Nikki Wood's story; killed by a vampire on the New York subway. Neck snapped and her leather coat stolen. The police reported it as a felony murder, with theft the motive. They were wrong. And no one ever caught the vampire who did it, either.

"She used to come to our art shows; poetry readings. Never participated, although I suspected she had the soul of an artist. I went to her funeral." Professor Malion seemed to have caught his breath. "Sad, what happened to her son after her death. Foster homes."

"She had a little boy?" Now, Sam was shocked. "I didn't know one of us could have a baby. It'd be so dangerous, for both of them."

"Indeed. Nikki was a teenage mother before she was Called. But New York was an exceedingly dangerous city. We needed a Slayer, and she was the one the Powers chose, for whatever their own reasons. Maybe because she was a mother. They're fierce in protecting their children, you know. Robin would be nearly thirty."

"Wow." Sam made a guess. "Were you the father?"

Professor Malion laughed out loud. "No, I wasn't. But I introduced them. You could say I played the part of Cupid."

"I'm not Cupid, Samantha. You'll have to look to a different myth."

"No." Sam stared. Ada had guessed it, months ago. "You aren't really Pygmalion?"

Her professor nodded. "In the same manner that you are the Slayer. Not the original, nor the last, I hope. But yes. A sculptor dedicated to the ideal of Beauty, and She blesses me in certain ways that we don't need to go into. And yes, Malion is my real surname. My grandfather was also one of Aphrodite's devoted. He chose the name when he arrived at Ellis Island, which is enough to slake your curiosity about me, for a while, I hope."

Sam fought down the warmth that suffused her cheeks. "Did you really smash Professor R's sculptures?"

"I really did. Hideous things." Professor Malion made a face. "Did you really kill her?"

"I really didn't. An old enemy of Professor R's came to town, looking for payback. I was busy elsewhere, anyway."

"Ah. There's more to that story, obviously. But I believe you. Any chance that that 'old enemy' might return? To take more payback from Professor R's proteges, or successor on the faculty?"

"I doubt it. This seemed like a highly personal thing. You know – 'you killed my mentor, I'm going to kill you.' That old chestnut." They laughed together. "Are you sure you're going to be okay? I could take you to the infirmary, if you want."

"I'm all right." Malion smiled. "In a place like Martense, it's hard to keep secrets. I heard the rumors about you and your friends. Some of them sounded so bizarre, they couldn't possibly be real. But I'm glad that particular rumor was correct. Only a Slayer could turn a bronze heart into a vampire-killing weapon."

Sam blushed. "It's no big thing. Just what I do."

"And that is the heart of your legacy."