Unexpected Aka Necromancer's Beginnings

DeBrant

Ambrose Harris, who was in truth Ambrose LaVelle, was drunk. In fact, he was very drunk. It wasn't unusual for him to be drunk. It was pretty common, actually. If it was any more common, he could probably mark it off on the calendar. He knew Drunkenness, and it's less pleasant friend The Hangover, like the back of his hand. Then again that was looking a little blurry at the moment to Ambrose, so that might not be the best of comparisons.

As far as he knew, he was alone. His wife, Marie, who was more of an irritation than anything else, was at her 2nd job, and his no-good son was also at his ever-so illustrious job as pizza delivery guy. Not that Ambrose had a finer job. He pretty much wrote dull copy at a local ad agency.

Of course, Xander wasn't actually at work. He was downstairs reading up on how to raise the dead and other things that were part of his newly discovered powers. Though Ambrose had no idea, Xander was already up to the 4th chapter in the 9th volume. All of the experiments had worked perfectly, and while Xander was proud of himself, the repercussions had made a bit of noise during the last three ones. Not that Ambrose noticed. He would have barely noticed a train running through his living room.

But for some reason, he noticed the phone, which was ringing. Ambrose, damning the phone and the caller, nonetheless went over and answered it. The voice that spoke to him as he did sobered him like nothing else could.

"Hello, little brother..." said Gerard, "We have to talk. Now..."

Ambrose's sunken eyes seemed to bulge, and the tremors in his hands got worse. "What do you want? I thought I told all of you to leave me alone!"

"Leave you alone?" his older brother yelled over the phone line, his voice strained with anger and disbelief, "Leave you alone! You expect me to leave you alone when you are doing irreversible and unnecessary damage to my flesh and blood because you wanted some damned privacy? When the boy's struggling with his powers like a duckling in water"

"What the hell are you talking about!?" Xander's father roared, "It's my damned business what goes on in my family, and if the Family found out about you meeting with Alexander when I strictly forbid it, you'd b-"

"I'd be nothing" Gerard said in a firm, calm voice, "The boy came to my store and asked for my help. He got the marks and didn't know where to go, and I helped him. And the Family fully supports me."

"What do you mean, the Family supports you?" Ambrose yelled angrily.

"I received permission from all of the Family. We've seen what you have let your life become, how you have tarnished your name and irrevocably damaged the family which you proclaim you only want to protect. We gave you time, Ambrose. We gave you 15 years. You haven't fixed it, and now I will. Unless you clean up within the week, Xander will be moved to my house to stay with me."

"Hell no!"
 
The voice grew colder then it had been before, and carried an edge, which Ambrose found vaguely frightening. "And if you dare harm on hair on that child, brother, I will personally make sure that you never, ever do it again. In the most painful way possible..."

"You can't do that!" Ambrose cried, angry and alarmed.

"Yes I can. I could come get him right now, but I wanted to see if you could fix things with the boy. He still loves you, Ambrose..." Gerard's voice grew softer, "He loves you so much, despite all you've done to make him hate you. You have and can hurt him like no one else, brother, because of who you are to him. But understand that if you screw it up again, I will see him get revenge instead of his father."

"Fine" Ambrose answered gruffly, knowing that no matter what, he had to do what was told to him.

"This isn't playing, Ambrose..." his brother said, the softness turning to urgency, "There's a Brondstaff coming to town."

"A Brondstaff?" Ambrose asked, surprised, " A Brondstaff necromancer is coming to Sunnydale?"

"Yes, Ambrose. He wants to test himself against the Slayer and the LaVelle animator..."

"Dear God..." Ambrose said with horror.

"Yes." Gerard said coldly, "And he has no training whatsoever, the poor boy..."

Finally, something else computed into Ambrose's still slightly off brain. "Slayer?"

"Dear Goddess, you really have been lost for the last decade and a half, haven't you?"

Ambrose didn't answer. To think, he'd been so damned ignorant that he didn't know that the Slayer was in Sunnydale.

"Who?" Ambrose asked, rubbing his brow with his other hand.

"Buffy Summers, though goodness knows that you don't deserve the information..."

"Buffy? That blonde little friend of Alexander's? That's the Slayer?" The younger asked with skepticism.

"Yes, you damned ass! Don't you realize anything!? Xander has been fighting for the last 3 or 4 years besides the Slayer, doing all those things you claimed you never wanted him to get involved with... without his powers, without training, without a safety net..." Gerard's voice had grown heated as he spoke from discovering just how clueless his brother was to the world.

"God..." Ambrose didn't even have any other words to say.

"Yes. You had better pray! That boy has nearly died more times than I can count because you wouldn't tell him what he was, who he was, that he had a whole family who was ready to help!" The heat had risen till Gerard was shouting into the phone, but Ambrose didn't move the receiver.

"I will do what you asked..." Ambrose said with something near shock.

"Good." After Gerard's last word, the phone clicked to tell Ambrose that his brother had hung up.

"Dear Lord," Ambrose said to himself after putting down the phone, his voice and body shaking with the truth of what he had become and what he had done to his son, "Dear Lord..."

Part 9