It's times like these that I hate my parents.

What am I talking about? Well, since I'm currently chained to an altar with my magic bound until it's time for me to be a magic sacrifice to raise a demon god there should be time to give you my whole sordid backstory. It'll have to be the short version though. I wouldn't want to be late to my own sacrifice.

Try to guess what you get when a witch and a wizard make a baby who's born in Sunnydale. Are you done? Have you made a bunch of lists and pie charts and Venn diagrams and power point presentations to explain your logic? Good. You must understand what I'm asking then.

The answer in this case is a girl with a witch's magic, a wizard's Sight and a death curse that would probably cause a Hellmouth to open up underneath her. In other words, me, little ol' Lauren Madison.

My childhood was Sunnydale normal. Mom was a witch and Stepdad was near totally oblivious, though not oblivious enough to forget that I wasn't his. That tends to happen when your wife leaves you to take care of your two-year-old daughter for seven months and comes back three months pregnant. He wasn't a bad parent though, which is more than I can say for dear old Mom.

Mom wanted me and my sister to be exactly like her, but I was her favourite. She put both of us in ballet lessons (which were taught by a child-eating demon witch called Baba Yana, not to be confused with Baba Yaga, who I may or may not have killed during my junior year of high school) and gymnastics but only taught me how to use the magic stuff that she kept in the attic. It wasn't a good time. I learned how to pronounce the names of the twelve dark gods before I started kindergarten and big sister Amy had breakdowns over ballet and gymnastics every other night. But we could deal, until Stepdad walked out on us when I was ten and Amy was twelve and everything got about a hundred times worse.

Then Mom disappeared after taking over Amy's body to try to relive her high school experience. I couldn't do anything to stop her and Amy wouldn't talk to me for days after it happened, but once we'd been moved in with Stepdad and Step-stepmom the first thing she said to me was that she wanted to learn magic. So I started teaching her. We weren't all that smart about it and we got together with some pretty bad people along the way (Rack comes to mind) but we didn't care. Mom was gone and we finally had power. For us, life was good.

Then Amy got stuck as a rat and Sunnydale High blew up.

Yeah, really.

Amy's friend Willow tried to help me turn her human again but nothing we did even came close to working. I still don't know how she even learned to turn people into rats.

The summer after the school was blown up (not by a gas explosion, no matter what the police said), I got Willow to rat-sit. I'd found my dad's name in mom's magic stuff, tracked him down, and managed to convince Stepdad to let me visit him after Stepdad found out that my dad was in the same city as his little sister.

Dad was in Chicago, listed in the phone book under "Wizard."

There were a lot of firsts for me on that trip. First time on an airplane, first time traveling as an unaccompanied minor, first vampire dusting outside of Sunnydale—but for sure the most memorable first was my first Soulgaze. Soulgazes are...wow. And Soulgazing my dad was just...WOW. It's really hard to explain but suffice it to say there's a reason I try not to look anyone in the eye. At least it proved to my dad that I really was his daughter, especially since he couldn't remember having sex with Mom, or ever even meeting her. Of course she'd screwed with his head. Because when had my mom ever cared about anyone but herself?

Turned out that dad was under something called the Doom of Damocles, which basically meant that a wizard in a grey cloak would chop off his head if he so much as sneezed. He thought that it would be a VERY BAD IDEA for anyone to know that I was his daughter, so we pretended that I was looking for his help to find my sister, he gave me a few tips to un-rat her (didn't work), and we kept in touch with the occasional letter since Dad can blow up a phone just by looking at it.

Things got better for me after that—Dad wasn't happy about the dark magic Mom had raised me on (even though the White Council didn't hold power over witches) and getting that out of my system meant I got rid of a whole lot of bad influences too—but of course the good times didn't last. Willow figured out how to un-rat Amy in my first year at UC Sunnydale and with big sis back in my life I backslid hard. Like slumming with vampires, visits with Rack, tried to murder a whole bunch of people a year after Sunnydale became a crater backslid. That got the attention of the brand new (sort of) Slayers, Guardians and Watchers Council. Fast forward one "the world is older than you know" talk, two years and a hell of a lot of magical rehab, and we're back at the present. Altar, sacrifice, demon god. And me hating my parents because if they weren't so magical than I wouldn't be in this mess.

I don't know how long I've been here. The part of the altar that I'm chained to is at an angle that's probably so my blood will drip right in the centre of the seven pointed star carved into the stone floor but isn't so good at helping me think clearly since right now most of my blood is going to my head. The magic-suppressing handcuffs I've got on aren't helping matters.

I am probably going to die here. That sucks.

I hear a gargling sound and look up just in time to see a wave of flipper-footed, bull-horned demons burst through the door. The gargling is one of the demons shouting at the others, probably yelling orders judging by how quickly his (and he's definitely male, trust me) friends are pulling on robes and tripping over their flippers trying to get into place.

The lead demon, the only one not putting on robes even though I'm wishing to all the gods he was, walks behind the altar where I can't see him and comes out with a wicked looking knife that's serrated along both edges like a bunch of barbed arrowheads forged together. It looks like it's going to hurt a hell of a lot to get stabbed by the thing and I am looking forward to being sacrificed far less than I already was, which is impressive since I was already into the negative thousands.

The lead demon growls and gargles some more as he raises the knife. He bows to the door and then turns to bow to the altar. I don't understand a word of this demon language, but I'm sure I heard these demons speaking English at one point when I was being chained up. Granted I was just coming to after being knocked out, but I am literally about to be sacrificed. I'm going to try anything that might delay them.

"Hey!" I shout. "You guys heard about death curses?"

The demons look at me, probably wondering why the sacrifice was talking.

"Death curse," I say. "Big, powerful magic. If you kill me, I'm using mine to take your god down with me."

I don't know if I can do that, but it sounds good.

The demons actually look worried. They probably understand English. One of them gargles something. The lead demon growls back loudly and the gargler recoils.

The lead demon raises the knife. I yank uselessly at my chains, because hell if I'm going to die without even trying to fight.

There's a resounding growl from the circle of demons. The lead demon steps forward until he's right below me.

I spit in his face.

The demon's eyes widen. He raises his empty hand. I don't know what he would have done because in the next second he is on the ground with a crossbow bolt sprouting out of his back. The other demons are silent before they make sounds that are clearly utter panic.

I count ten seconds before every demon in the room is dead. Then the two Slayers are complaining about not getting a real fight while their one-eyed Watcher is examining the chains holding me in place.

"Just get these cuffs off and I can take care of the rest," I say. "And hurry up would you? We don't have all day."

"Nice to see you too, Twinkle-toes," Xander Harris says with his usual grin.

"If course you're part of the rescue team," I grumble. "Try lock picks first."

Xander has the handcuffs unlocked in seconds. My magic floods back into my body and I sigh. Having no magic was awful.

"Duck and cover girls and boy. Lacero." With my last word the chains holding me break and I fall to the ground, managing to roll into a ball before I hit the floor. It still hurts, but I don't break any bones. At least, not any important ones.

Xander helps me to my feet. "You know I could have caught you."

"And risk losing an eye to flying metal? I hate to break it to you, but you've only got one left." I stretch, trying to get some of the stiffness out of my limbs. "So, where's the battle? And where are we?"

"Battle's upstairs," Xander says. "Sort of everywhere. We're in this crazy maze of tunnels. It's worse than the sewers back in Sunnyhell."

"Great," I grumble. I hate fighting in tunnels. They make it too hard to maneuver and too easy to hit your friends instead of the bad guy.

"Yeah," Xander says. "But at least we don't have to worry about a hellgod rising anymore."

We both look at the altar.

"So, girls, what do we do now?" Xander asks.

The shorter Slayer, a girl from Peru named Lucia, raises her hand. "Destroy everything in this room and then go help with cleanup?"

"Good answer, but not this time," Xander says. "Emily?"

"Put a guard on this room and have someone else spread the word that the apocalypse isn't going to happen?" the other Slayer suggests.

"Bingo. Lucia, stay here with Twinkle-toes—"

"And have my blood right here for any demon that wants it?" I say. "Bad idea, professor. Even though Lucia could guard me and the altar at the same time, best not to risk it."

Xander opens his mouth to disagree with me, but apparently can't. He nods and tells Emily and Lucia to stand guard while we go find everyone.

"Weapon?" I ask before we leave the room. All I've got on me are a knife and a stake. Not exactly the most battle-ready armaments.

Xander passes me a sword from his coat of endless weaponry (which isn't enchanted, it just holds a lot of weapons).

"There's something you should probably know," he says as he leads the way through the tunnels. "When we figured out you were missing Andrew got a hold of a phone."

"That never ends well," I mutter. "What happened?"

"He called your dad."

I freeze. "He what? And none of you stopped him?"

Xander shrugs. "We had other things to worry about. And it's not that big a deal, I just thought you should know your dad's here."

I glare at him. "Sure. And next time you get kidnapped how about I call your dad and let him know? And I'm not talking about the guy who married your mom when they found out she was pregnant and then got cold feet after you were born, Malvora."

Xander flinches at the reminder of the demon that would have been living inside him if it weren't for getting possessed by a hyena spirit in high school. Turns out that demonic hyenas don't like vampires much and tend to destroy them with extreme prejudice.

"You are an evil, evil woman."

"You let Andrew call my dad."

We're about to turn a corner at the intersection of two tunnels when a stampede of demons runs past. They're tripping over each other in a panic and don't seem to notice that we're standing a foot away.

"That's probably Buffy," Xander says. He picks off a few of the demons with his crossbow.

I swing my sword and a demon runs straight into it, not even noticing the blade until it's halfway through its neck.

"Probably Buffy," I agree. "Or Faith."

I hear the shout of "Fuego!" a spit second before a wall of fire comes barrelling towards the intersection. Xander and I dive away from the demons and I manage to throw up a shield to deflect the heat, though just barely.

"Ow," Xander groans. "A little warning would be nice."

"You're telling me."

I look over Xander's shoulder (he's thrown himself in front of me like a human shield, because he's that kind of self-sacrificing idiot) and see that a good dozen demons are burnt to a crisp. There are footsteps coming down the tunnel toward us from the direction that spawned the wall of fire. We scramble to stand up and reclaim our weapons just in case the fire user isn't on our side. It's a miniscule chance, but it has happened before. Recognizing someone's voice means nothing when there are monsters out there that can mimic voices.

The footsteps are right around the corner. Xander levels his crossbow. I raise my sword.

A tall man in leather duster turns the corner and comes face to edge with our weapons. The look of pure fury on his face is broken by widening eyes.

"Hell's bells," Harry multiple-too-long-middle-names Dresden grumbles. "Watch where you're pointing those."

I lower my sword and sigh. "Hi, Dad."

A/n: So, this happened. The timelines do not line up at all and Harry is way too young to have a 22-year-old daughter, but whatever. I do kind of want a story where Xander is a White Court vampire now though.

-Cynder2013