Sighing, Xander sat down behind the large trunk and waited for the sounds of his parents’ drunken rampage below him to end. It was their wedding anniversary and they were going at it like they were going to kill the other one before they got too drunk to talk. It was like this every year and Xander had discovered early on that it was safer to hide in the attic than it was his room because of the steep and narrow stairs that lead to the attic. Both parent may be drunks, but neither one was suicidal and there was no way they could walk up the stairs in their condition.

Something caught Xander’s eye and he turned to frown at the trunk. It was large enough to hide a body in, probably dating from the early part of the century, and now that he was actually looking at it instead of hiding behind it, he noticed some strange symbols carved into the wood. The one that caught his attention looked like a cross with a snake draped around it and a winged crown balanced on the top of the cross. Reaching out, he traced the strange design only to yelp and scramble backwards slightly when the lid suddenly popped open. Cautiously, he peered into the trunk, wary of anything jumping out at him only to find some books, a few pictures, and a small cloth-wrapped bundle.

He gently pulled out the cloth bundle and gasped when he uncovered the necklace. It was a thick, silver chain with an unusual pendant of a red stone about an inch long, half an inch wide and nearly that thick in an oval shape with a silver winged crown and serpent draped cross on the front of it, and there were just enough silver bands holding the stone to the cross to keep it in place but not cover it completely.

“Cool. I needed a new cross anyway,” he muttered, slipping it over his head and shivering slightly as the silver chain caressed his neck. The silver would help if any were tried for him and the cross would keep the vampires away a bit, but he wasn’t sure what the stone was. He didn’t have a descent enough light in the attic to identify it and in the shadows, it looked like it was shifting shades of red, from a bright blood ruby to a deep almost black garnet and every shade in between.

Reaching into the chest again, he pulled out one of the books and flipped it open, frowning at the strange symbols drawn on the pages. There were some notations written in English, but they looked more like reminders about stuff than anything else while the symbols appeared to be arranged like mathematical formulas. Shaking his head, Xander replaced the book and closed the lid of the trunk before slipping the necklace under his shirt and sneaking back to his room since it sounded like the argument was over for this year.

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Trying hard not to roll his eyes as Giles went over yet another thing that he wanted them to research for, Xander continued doodling on a piece of paper. He wasn’t really conscious of what he was drawing, just letting the pencil scrape over the paper with the soothing scratch of graphite. There were two circles, one inside the other and different symbols inside the ring they made before a six-pointed star developed inside the smaller circle.

“Xander, are you listening to anything I have said?” demanded Giles, and Xander jumped, his pencil skittering from his hand as bare fingers brushed the doodle.

Instantly there was a warm feeling from Xander’s chest and he stared at the green light that had enveloped the strange doodle, making all the lines and symbols glow brighter. Finally there was a flash of brilliant green that threw everyone back, and Xander’s last thought before he hit his head on the wooden floor was “What the *hell* happened?”