Disclaimer: I don't own "Jeepers Creepers" or anything in it so don't sue me.

Saved

Darry screamed and struggled as the Creeper half dragged, half carried him down the pipe-lined hallway under some abandoned factory miles away from civilization. He was going to his death and he knew it. Jezelle, that psychic bitch – she lied! She said, or at least indicated, that Trish was the one she had seen "screaming in the dark". Somehow, though, Darry felt he knew all along he was the one who was going to die. He had never really thought much about his own death, but he knew he didn't want it to be this. He wondered briefly what the Creeper wanted from him, what it "liked" in him. He got his answer soon enough.

All of a sudden the Creeper hoisted him up by the front of his shirt and slammed him down on a table, pinning him down and grinning down at him. Darry struggled uselessly, making the Creeper laugh at him. Darry choked, barely able to breathe, as he stared up in undisguised terror at the monster above him.

"Listen," he wheezed. "Please don't kill me!" It sounded pathetic, but what else was there to say? The Creeper didn't respond. It just hissed and raised its claws over Darry's face, lowering them slowly, tauntingly, towards his left eye. Both Darry's eyes widened in horror when he realized exactly what the Creeper wanted from him. "For the love of God, no! Please!" he cried. With a last despairing cry, he squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the pain. But it didn't come.

"No!"

Darry's eyes snapped open and he looked around, wondering who had cried out. He was shocked to see a girl, a living, breathing girl, standing just a few feet from the table, staring at the Creeper with huge emerald eyes, her long-fingered hands clasped at her chest. There was fear and desperation in her eyes, as well as the beginnings of tears. For a moment Darry couldn't quite understand what he was seeing. Then something clicked in his brain – this girl, whoever she was, was alive and had all her body parts! Not only that, but she spoke to the Creeper as though she knew him personally, and she seemed to be more afraid for Darry's sake than of the Creeper himself…itself? Whatever. Darry found himself just staring at her, but she didn't seem to notice. She just stared at the Creeper unblinking, hands shaking.

"Please," she whispered. "Let him go. Don't kill him. Please." The Creeper hissed at her and swiped at her with his free hand. The girl shrieked and jumped back, immediately dropping to the ground and curling up small, her hands at her temples, her face turned down but her eyes still looking up, fixed on the demonic visage. Then, to Darry's abject horror, the Creeper himself spoke:

"Why should I?" he rasped in a voice like a serrated knife blade being dragged across sandpaper. He probably needed a new voice box, but Darry didn't want to think about Creeper anatomy at the moment.

"You can talk!" he gasped without thinking. The Creeper's grip on his throat tightened and Darry gagged, struggling to breathe.

"Stop it!" cried the girl wretchedly, rising slowly to her feet but clearly ready to drop back to the ground at any moment. What horrors had she lived through, Darry wondered, to make her so jumpy? Slowly, very slowly, the girl approached the Creeper. "Please," she said again softly. "Not him. Let him go. Find yourself another victim if you must, but let him go." Silence descended, save for the Creeper's growling breaths and Darry's ragged breathing. A crystalline tear made its way down the girl's cheek. "Please. It's not fair."

With an agitated snarl, the Creeper lifted Darry by his throat and veritably threw him at the girl, who caught and steadied him. "He can never leave," growled the Creeper. The girl only nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The Creeper approached her menacingly. "You will regret this," he hissed in her face. She looked away and nodded again. With a strange sort of almost-roar, he vanished, or at least seemed to vanish. Darry just stared, shaking uncontrollably, at the spot where the Creeper had stood an instant before. By and by he remembered the girl who had saved him and looked to her. Her skin was ice-white, as was her shoulder-length hair which was tied back. In fact, only her lips and eyes had any colour to them. She looked like a living ghost or something, though she was oddly attractive.

"Are you all right?" she asked quietly. "I mean, aside from the obvious. Are you hurt?" Darry didn't – couldn't – respond. He just stared at the girl, incredulous. She gazed up at him, ineffable sadness in her fathomless green eyes. She sighed and glanced over him briefly, scanning for any injuries. Her eyes came to rest on the bleeding scratches on his shoulder. "Ouch," she commented, reaching out towards them. Instinctively Darry shied away. She looked up at him, mildly surprised. "I'm not going to hurt you. I want to help you. Those cuts don't look deep, but they should at least be cleaned out to prevent infection. Please, just let me help you." Her tone was so gentle but with a strong undercurrent of sadness, like a knell. He could see a lifetime of unshed tears hiding behind her eyes, threatening to break loose at any time. She was telling the truth; she meant him no harm. He relaxed a little and nodded. She gave a faint smile and guided him over to a stool near the table where just moments before he had been pinned down, begging for his life. He watched the girl as she fished a large cotton ball out of a bag and opened a fat, unlabeled brown bottle, putting the cotton ball over the top and upending it briefly before righting it and setting it back down. Darry could smell hydrogen peroxide; undoubtedly that was what was in the bottle and now on the cotton ball. The girl turned to him.

"Could you move your shirt, please?" she asked politely and somewhat formally. A little puzzled, Darry did as she requested. "This might sting, since the cuts are still open," she warned before gently swabbing the gashes with the peroxide-soaked cotton. Darry hissed slightly as the cuts began to foam, but didn't move away. "I'm sorry," said the girl, blowing lightly on the cuts to take the sting off and dry the peroxide. She finished quickly and tossed the cotton ball in a nearby trashcan. That done, she turned back to the table and recapped the peroxide bottle.

"Thanks," said Darry softly – the first thing he had said to her.

"You're welcome," she replied, not turning back to him. He looked at her thoughtfully, taking advantage of her position to examine her in a rather impolite way, though not inappropriate. She wore a black vest, zipped up far enough to cover everything, black pants with two buckles above both knees, and steel-toed black combat boots. Her ears both had two piercings. In the first ones she wore serpentine metal dragons with red jewel eyes and tiny daggers in the second holes. Around her neck was a grey sword stabbing a grey heart from which two drops of red blood flowed, hanging on a velvet cord. In sum, she didn't look like the kind of girl you'd expect to see cowering in fear.

"Uh, if you don't mind my asking," he said hesitantly, "who are you? How did you get down here with that…that thing?" The girl gave a mirthless laugh through her nose.

"I found this place," she said. "I led him here, really. He follows me; I follow him. No one's really sure just how it works anymore, including me."

"What's your name?" asked Darry.

"Uh…Antares Starr," the girl replied after a moment's hesitation, as though she couldn't remember her own name. " 'Starr' has two 'R's." She still made no move to face him. Darry wondered why.

"I'm Darry. Darry Jenner," he said. Antares laughed through closed lips, looking down at her hands as she fidgeted with something.

"Is that who you are, or your name?" she asked. Darry wondered if that was meant to be a challenge of some kind.

"Both?" he said uncertainly. "I don't know. I never thought about it like that."

"Few people have," Antares answered, "don't worry about it." She started whistling softly (thankfully not "Jeepers Creepers"!) as she continued turning whatever was in her hands over and over. Darry wondered why she wouldn't look at him.

"So, uh, what are you doing down here?" he asked. "And why are you still…y'know, alive?" Antares sighed and put both hands down on the table, closing her eyes and tilting her head back a little. With a small smile she looked at him.

"No one's ever asked me that before, I must say," she commented dryly. "But I guess I understand. After all, those who get this close to Creeper usually end up dead, right? Well, the girl Antares died some time ago within this cold and empty shell. I am nothing."

"Would you just answer the frickin' question?" snapped Darry, his voice rising unintentionally in his frustration and fear.

"Chill," said Antares coolly. She pulled another stool from under the table and sat on it opposite Darry. "I could tell you it's a long story, but that would be a lie. It's actually very simple. I, not unlike you and your sister, had a little run-in with the Creeper. And, as you can tell, it ended badly…"