bGlory the Vampire Slayer/b
iDisclaimer and Author's Notes - Buffy is the sole property of Joss Whedon Enterprises, I claim no credit for the franchise's creation. I am merely taking it out of the box temporarily, and I promise to return these characters and settings in pristine order once I'm done. No profit is derived from this work other than the enjoyment of putting metaphorical pen to paper.
Beta'd by deiticlast, give him a shout out. Mistakes are mine./i
Chapter One - Coming Around
She awoke in an alley. There was something familiar about it, like a long-forgotten memory, and her mind struggled with the remembrance of it, a shadow of knowledge having once seen light, but ill-remembered and faded. The bricks of the buildings seemed vaguely known and yet utterly foreign, their glass-filled holes and the eagerness with which they invited perusal like those of an alien culture. Everything around her was cold and wet with...was it water?
Had it rained? Her skin should have felt chafed after being laid out on the cold, slick pavement for so long, but it was strangely unhurt, with no evidence that she had even been knocked out. Her hair might have seemed a shimmering gold, a web to capture sunlight. It was now bedraggled, plastered to her head with a darkened tawny blonde hue. The red dress she was wearing might once have been beautiful, fitting very closely to her shape, and even being drenched from shoulder straps to hem did not detract from the quality of her body, though now it left nothing to the imagination. There were even some tears along the seams that suggested someone larger than herself might have worn it, taken it off when she realised it didn't fit, then found her and dressed her in it. She kept trying to adjust one shoulder strap, but she soon gave up as soon as she realised it would do nothing for the perfectly proportioned breast that kept slipping out. Her cursory inspection concluded, she deduced that it must have rained quite a bit while she was out. Everything else, though, looked strange, with that quality of strangeness that plants doubt into one's mind as to a thing's familiarity.
"Where am I?" she asked the darkness. It replied only with silence. Mocking her. Something about it, she felt, seemed to want to make sure she remained uninformed. Whatever answers she sought would clearly lie elsewhere. She got up, looking around for anything that might give her a clue, and paying no heed to her torn dress or her disheveled appearance. That was not a priority at present. She walked around, noticing that she didn't have any problems with clomping around in five-inch heels, nor did she have any problems walking at all. As for the shoes, she wondered how anyone could walk in footwear that seemed designed to make people look like they were walking on their toes. It was as if she had never been rendered unconscious, save for her unfamiliarity with her surroundings.
As she walked down the alley, she focussed on little details, hoping for a smidgen of recognition, a tiny key that would unlock the mystery of her current condition. Nothing - it was as though the world had shut its mouth to her again. What had she done before being knocked out, that the world should judge her and decide she didn't deserve to remember it? She hated that smugness. That arrogance. The ridicule. The mockery of her ignorance would not long stand, if she had her way. She felt then the need to blame someone or something, to lash out, to punish someone or something. Almost in reflex she struck out with a balled fist and punched a hole in the nearest building's facing wall.
She gasped in shock. She should have had broken bones, or at least some bloody knuckles. Not only were there none, the large hole she punched in the wall - no, through the wall - suggested a strength beyond imagination. Slowly, she turned her gaze to her own fingers. A small part of her whispered that she should have felt joy in inflicting such destruction, but instead she felt only horror. One punch from her small fist removed nearly half of the wall, revealing the contents within. Some sort of retail store, or a clothing outlet for outdoors people. She couldn't be sure which, but what she was sure of was that she needed to teach herself how to control her feelings if she wanted to avoid future accidents like this.
The woman looked down the alley to its end, where it joined with another, larger passage. A faint mound was visible in the distance, seemingly illuminated by moonlight, and there was something on top of it. Something solemn about it drew her there, a thing that whispered faintly of recognition, and she decided her best chance to find out something was there. Cautiously, she approached the shrine. As she did so, details became apparent to her. The rubble strewn all about it gave the impression of worshippers giving praise to a deity of some kind. But what god?
What god?
She walked closer, noticing for the first time the signs that the mound of rubble had once been either a structure or part of one, and the closer she got, the more she saw that told her the damage had been recent, perhaps as recent as earlier that night. Perhaps there had been a ritual in progress here, either completed or interrupted by what appeared to have been a battle. Either way, it had ended.
What most aroused her curiosity about the mound was the remnant of ironworks and carpentry. The structure had either been very poorly constructed, or it had been made to be expendable. But how would she have known that? By the look of her hands she hadn't built it herself, but how would she have known it wasn't meant to last, like everything else around her was?
There was something else on the shrine as well, something that wasn't supposed to be there. Large splashes of something that had since dried were all over the top of the mound. She reached out with a hand and touched it, and as she drew her hand quickly back to examine her fingers two things became clear. There was an unmistakable scent of something sharp and metallic, and the splash patterns showed that something that had once been alive had fallen here with force, not landed, and had since been removed from the mound.
What had happened here? What was her involvement in all this? Had she been at the center of it all, or had she been some poor, unsuspecting by-stander, with no more power or ability to affect the events that had apparently transpired here than the next person? Too many questions. She decided at that moment that she didn't like questions, especially ones she couldn't answer. There was something about this, though, something that nagged at her and refused to go away, that told her she needed those answers, if she was to ever figure out what had happened to her and why.
After a moment's consideration she decided she wasn't going to get her answers here. She looked around, wondering just how large and spread-out this city was. She picked a direction at random and started walking, hoping she'd run across something that would give her another clue to her circumstances, but with as much information as she lacked one direction was as good as any. Either she would find something or she wouldn't, but she knew she'd want to know something.
There was also a distinct feeling she had begun to pick up about the town, something disturbing and yet soothing at the same time. It whispered to her its comfort and its support, given only to the greatest of powers, those strong enough to seize and guard it against all rivals. The sensation felt like a living electric presence, dark and terrible in its majesty. It told her in whispers of feeling and sensation that she, too, once possessed such power and that she had reveled in it. It told her that like it, she had been a predator in the dark waiting to pounce upon the unwary and the unfortunate, to slake her hunger with their innocent flesh.
There was something else about that sense, that living presence, that she found utterly repugnant. She didn't understand why she felt so repelled by the power, no matter its communications to her that she had not always recoiled from it, but there was a certainty she felt now, after having taken the time while walking to attune her senses to her surroundings. Somehow she wanted nothing to do with that darkness, and she would find a way to get as far away from it as she could. She learned something in that moment, something that served as a guide towards her ultimate goal. She searched with her mind for the places where the darkness held the least influence and started walking again.
She didn't know how long she had been walking, letting the light guide her way, but she found her way eventually to an edifice that seemingly served as a centre of religious worship. It was different than the mound of rubble in the alley. Where the mound had been placed there by happenstance, a random occurrence related to whatever had occurred earlier tonight, this edifice had been erected with purpose and with love. She was drawn here, she had felt, by both beckoning forces, the light and love that pulled and the darkness, the predatory essence that repelled. She let herself be carried towards the building, allowing her feet to move of their own accord.
Evening Mass had been better tonight than most, as the people who'd come had been unusually anxious, dreading some unnamed thing that had made itself felt across the town. Whatever it had been, people had come believing the presence of the Lord would help and succor them. Tonight, the Lord's courage had given them strength to stand together in His house to weather the evil tempest outside, and when it had abated, and the church stood firm, they had lifted their voices in song, giving Him His just and due praise, and they had gone feeling better, stronger, more whole than they had arrived.
He had seen the last of his parishioners exit the church when he had seen her. An attractive white blonde approaching thirty, tonight her appearance suggested she had seen better days. The driving rain had drenched her only garment, causing the shimmering red dress to cling to her skin and reveal every curve she had. Moreover, the dress was torn, as if someone larger than her had tried to wear it, and now one strap and practically the whole left side dangled off her, revealing a rather smallish breast supported by well-defined pectoral muscles and the collarbone above.
"Are you alright, my child?" he asked. He slowly approached her, careful to remain out of arm's reach lest she show signs that she was not herself.
"Where am I? What is this place?" the woman asked. The confusion in her eyes suggested some mild amnesia, which told him he was going to have to take it slow with her.
"You're in the House of God," he answered, smiling slowly. "I'm Father Jennings. Can you tell me your name?" His grey eyebrows raised slightly in patient anticipation.
She looked away for a moment. "My name...now you mention it, I don't actually remember. In fact, I don't remember much of anything before tonight," she recalled, as anxiety slowly crept into her voice.
"What's the last thing you do remember?" asked the priest.
"Just...waking up in an alley a few blocks down, maybe an hour ago?" The look on this young woman's face told Father Jennings that she was as confused as she was amnesiac.
"I'd say you were probably knocked out by someone during the storm earlier tonight, miss. Judging by how your dress has been ruined, I would further assume they figured it would be easier to have their way with you while you were unconscious. Some men just have no respect for women. They forget that God made Eve to be a help meet for Adam, not a servant, and most definitely not his property."
"God?" she asked Father Jennings, her expression evincing more confusion than he had previously assumed.
"What ails you, however, young lady," he concluded, getting back on track, "is not a matter of faith, but of the mind. What you need is a hospital, but first might I recommend a change of clothes?"
No one spoke at the police station. The Scoobies could do little more than look at each other in a state of shock, their energy too far gone from the fighting earlier tonight. Anya was silently weeping in Xander's arms even as Tara was doing the same in Willow's.
Nobody wanted to see the expression on Dawn's face, knowing it had to reflect the ever-greater intensity of her loss. She had no one now, no blood kin, no one who could even remotely understand what she had just endured, or why. Giles had offered her his embrace to comfort her, but she had chosen Spike to hold onto. Of all the people in this world, the only one she thought could comfort her was the vampire that had stood beside her and her family. Of all the people in this world, Spike, the enemy of all her kind, was the only one who could understand what she was going through.
First her mother, and now her sister. The father didn't even count, having never made a conscious effort to come visit or to even respond to her. He wasn't even in the country, as far as she knew. She was alone, alone beside her friends and adoptive family, and soon she would have to go down into the morgue and identify her sister's body. That would never serve to do anything but tear the open hole in her chest so much wider. Spike reflected on the time he'd spent in Kensington while still alive. He'd helplessly watched his own mother deteriorate from consumption to the point where, soon, she'd either die or progress to such a state that she'd never be able to speak again before she died. They called it tuberculosis nowadays, but that was just a rose by another name, without the rosey sweetness.
Then he'd been turned, he'd become an immortal vampire, and seeing as how he felt he hadn't changed except in his body, he'd hoped from then that he could save his mother from her terrible ordeal. He could reverse what was happening to her, and all for the price of a little blood each night. What utter foolishness, he'd realised later, after having to stake his own mother when he'd understood with finality that the demon that occupied his mother's body was not his mother in the least bit. She had said the most terrible things to him, things she never would have said while she had still lived, even as the lung disease had taken its toll on her. And the worst part was the eyes. They had done it for him. He had seen not a trace of his mother in those cold, yellow eyes, and he swore he'd never sire another vampire for as long as he existed. He'd lost his mother forever, and he'd grieved for over a century. And now he saw the same look of grief in Dawn's eyes, missing only that finality of understanding. Spike was only glad she hadn't had to endure his fate.
Once she saw the face of the body under that white sheet, that finality would etch itself onto her own face, and that scar would never part from her as long as she lived. He didn't want that for her, uncharacteristic as it was of him. It was uncharacteristic of any vampire's nature to feel any compassion for their prey, but he did. Oh, he did. Whether it was the chip in his head or the power the Monks of Dagon had poured into her to make everyone feel protective of her was another matter. The Big Bad was not supposed to be a shoulder to cry on, but here he was, and he couldn't deny it. He had grown a soft spot for the Summers women, and he wasn't sure that it was a bad thing.
The fast, yet unhurried clip of shoe heels on tile interrupted everyone's brooding, and all eyes turned up to see the familiar face of Detective Lieutenant Paul Stein. He was all business tonight, with the brown jacket, the badge on the leather wallet hanging from a chain around his neck, and the big black Sig-Sauer holstered on his hip. He looked for the most authoritative figure in the group, and his eyes locked onto the spectacles of the British librarian who had once worked at Sunnydale High before its destruction. He stepped forward purposefully, yet respectfully, having acknowledged the sorrowful gazes on everyone else, and he lowered himself so that he was eye to eye with the Briton.
"Mr Giles," he began, "I can't begin to imagine how terrible this has been, for all of you, but as Dawn is the closest living relative to the deceased, we can't ask anyone else to come down the hall and identify the body."
"Detective, you're absolutely correct," replied Giles in a soft, yet icy tone of voice, "you have no idea how terrible this has been, nor how much worse it could have been for us all. I suspect you're fully versed in what transpires in this town, so it follows that you would be used to these words. But Dawn can not at all go down there alone - she's just watched her own sister sacrifice her life for something none of us are fully capable of comprehending, so the emotional strain would be greater than she could bear. But if someone were to go down with her?" He cast his gaze around the group as he spread his hands in a solicitous gesture, hoping at least one of them would volunteer and yet worrying which one actually would.
Stein looked at everyone for a moment, meeting their faces, and he nodded slightly after a moment. "Well, it's not usually departmental procedure, but I think I can allow one other person down there with Miss Summers for emotional support. Would you be willing to stand with her?"
"I'll do it," volunteered Spike.
At once Xander sprung out of his seat, ready to deal death. "Like hell you will!" he snarled.
Spike stood quickly, ready to take on the hot-blooded twenty-year-old despite the pain it would cause him, while Dawn and Anya each attempted to persuade their defender to let cooler heads prevail. Willow, meanwhile, stood with light bending around her hands to form the makings of a barrier she prepared to place between the two combatants.
"Xander!" Giles shouted. The volume in that one word caused him to stop advancing toward Spike, and he sat back down with a gimlet glare to the vampire. "Despite my own misgivings, Spike is the closest person, I suspect, that Dawn has ever felt freely able to open up to. Whatever your antipathies toward Spike and to vampires in general, Dawn needs this. You need to back down and let Spike take her in hand. Say what you will about Spike, but he has been respectful to Buffy, even as an adversary, and he's never shown any hostile intentions toward Joyce, may they both rest in peace." His shoulders shrugged slightly, as though Rupert had been relieved of a very great burden.
"Thank you, Rupert, that means a lot to me that you acknowledged that," Spike replied, surprisingly with none of his usual bravado or swagger. He found himself feeling a new and different sort of respect for the Watcher, that he would praise the kindness of Joyce and Buffy's sacrifice. Spike himself found himself learning respect for a Slayer's mother, especially Joyce, when she had hit him over the head with the blunt back of a fire axe. He stole a moment to look at each of the Scoobies. Willow and Tara were ambivalent, presumably thinking that while he was a vampire and wouldn't be missed if he met his demise one night, the fact that he had spoken of their best and closest friends in such warm terms made them relax a bit around him, almost as though he had a soul himself.
Squelch that thought right now, Spike. Soul of not, he needed to eat rats and pigs and to act like the Great Poofter like he needed a stake in the heart.
He saw the look in Anya's face. Sheer indifference, and nothing else, that's what returned his gaze. It was the indifference born of a thousand plus years of doling out revenge in the name of justice for brokenhearted women. Mere months of renewed existence as a human female changed nothing for her, and she, like any demon before her, saw vampires as filth to be eradicated, to cleanse the planet for the return of demonkind. It was odd that such ancient indifference could find itself sharing space in the heart with the quiet sorrow that was equally uncharacteristic for one such as the former Matron Saint of Scorned Women. And yet, there it was. She wouldn't support him, but she wouldn't condemn him, either.
Xander's countenance was a battleground, red-hot rage warring with cold hatred for the right to possess his soul, but both knew that if a vampire, any vampire stepped forward, that both would immediately turn on the hapless haemovore. He'd seen that look before, in many of his victims' relatives, and he knew that in most any other case that look in someone's eyes usually preceded a lynch mob being organised and torches being lit, and all chance for an understanding would be reduced effectively to zero.
No amount of persuasion would soften the hardened heart of Xander Harris.
The same war was being waged in Rupert Giles's eyes, but to a much lesser extent. There was practically an armistice in Giles's heart, making room for more honest emotions such as respect and admiration for the man who had just spoken what amounted to words of gratitude for Giles's impromptu eulogy. Say what one would about vampires in general, but at least Spike appreciated his prey, and Giles knew that.
Dawn was a flashing neon sign of mournful agony. A target for abduction virtually every Tuesday, practically helpless and in constant need of protection, she'd just seen that protection torn, ripped away like a layer of burnt skin to expose the fragile flesh beneath. Nobody understood that her whole world had just been destroyed. Buffy had practically been her shield and her shelter against the storm of darkness. Now, Buffy was her Alderaan, and there would be no Rebel pilot to destroy the Death Star that had been Glorificus. Without her mother and her sister, her life now held very little value or meaning, and when she saw her sister's face under that white sheet, it would be another stake in her heart, that is, if she were undead. Which she most certainly was not, and Spike aimed to keep it that way.
Still, it could not be avoided, and even after that there would still be the funeral to endure. She stood up, finally, after a moment that she had taken to collect herself as best she could. Dawn looked at Spike, then back at the others as if seeking their encouragement. A few nods went her way, while one glared in protest, and she turned back to Spike, nodding her readiness to attend this most sorrowful of tasks.
"I'm ready," she said. Spike nodded in response and wrapped his leather duster around her shoulders, eliciting one more hate-filled stare from Xander, maybe even a slightly audible growl before they walked down to the morgue…
Hank had taken off for Sunnydale as
soon as he'd heard the news of Joyce's death, despite his beautiful secretary's protestations, and he'd driven the entire two hours on I-5 at a speed that most resembled that of a NASCAR enthusiast while still avoiding the attention of local law enforcers. And when he'd arrived, he'd not bothered with calling Buffy or Dawn, instead going straight to Sunnydale Regional Health System.
The news that Joyce had died from a brain aneurysm had left him dumbstruck, numb, hot and cold at the same time. It hurt. It hurt bad, and maybe that meant he'd actually loved her. Who knew, but what he did know was that he'd hung up on his secretary, who was practically begging him to go back to her home and do that thing that she loved so much. He'd hung up on her and drove like a madman all the way to Sunnydale so he could see her and the girls. He knew they'd both loved their mom more than anything on God's green earth and would move Heaven and Hell to keep her safe.
To his everlasting regret, Hank had learned only too late, after the divorce had been finalised and the custody arrangements set, that he would have done the same for her. So yes, he had loved her. And now he couldn't tell her.
He was in no way whatsoever prepared for the news of his eldest daughter's death, though. A bitch of a storm had come out of nowhere last night, a freak occurrence, and Buffy had done what she did best in that town, helping people and saving lives. She'd apparently fallen to her death from some ramshackle structure, trying to get people down, little Dawn among them, and now she was laying on a metal slab in the SPD morgue.
Hank had gotten the directions to the SPD Precinct 1 headquarters and barrelled over there as fast as he could safely manage. If someone needed to identify Buffy's body, it would be him. How could it not? He was the only family Dawn had left, so it was naturally a foregone conclusion.
It was cold in the SPD Precinct 1 morgue, where the medical examiner was finishing up some final batches of paperwork on the first casualties of tonight's storm. There were times when he would have gleefully traded jobs with the police janitor - at least he never had to ask a grieving family member if they knew the dead person under the white sheet. Not that he ever had to draw away the sheet to reveal the deceased - there was a sitting room next to the morgue for that, and the deceased was never transported in there. Identification was always done by photograph, and always with respect and reverence, and there was always a grief counselor with the family members who were there. It was best this way.
Eleven years in forensics took its toll on a person, especially in Sunnydale, and he had seen some weird things in his tenure as Sunnydale County's ME. Things like that case with the former high school principal, James Flutie, who'd been eaten in his office by wild animals, or so the report suggested. Thing was, the autopsy report also said the bite marks were made by human teeth, not hyenas or dogs as local witness statements had detailed. That was weird. It was also quite common.
The rare breaks he got from the routine weirdness were a welcome sight. Just a couple of weeks ago a local art dealer, one Joyce Summers, had died suddenly from a brain aneurysm, apparently a complication from surgery to remove a tumour in her cerebrum. Case open, case closed. That was it, no foul play suspected, no weirdness. The only sad part was that she was quite the looker. He had suddenly remembered a line from an old war movie by Stanley Kubrick.
'No more boom-boom for this mama-san…" Privately, he had declared a National Day of Mourning for single men worldwide. Joyce had two daughters that she had raised by herself after a disastrous divorce, the eldest, Elizabeth, or Buffy as she was commonly known, having a reputation for arson that was probably ill-deserved, and a violent protective streak a light-year wide, which, given her rather frequent run-ins with school authority and at least one murder charge that got reversed, made a sort of sense. Since Buffy's arrival in the 'Dale, the mortality rate found itself cut in half once and then again over the past five years. And now the elder daughter was occupying the same cold slab as her mother, the result of doing what she did best...protecting people.
If there was any justice in the world, the funerals for both Joyce and Buffy would be one single service, since they had each met their end so close together. It wasn't a matter of economy, but of closure for the younger daughter, Dawn.
Dawn Summers, who now was being escorted to the sitting room by Chief Stein. Technically, Detective Stein, but everyone knew that since Bob Munroe had been a Wilkins hack on the take for most of his term as Chief, and with more than half of the force having answered to Wilkins directly, Stein was the one that held the department together and kept it as competent as he could manage. And that still wasn't saying much given the nature (or lack thereof) of the town's nighttime denizens. No-one wanted the town to be the target of an FBI probe. Even Mayor Douglass had his hands tied when it came to the darker side of Sunnydale.
A knock on the door signalled the end of Jenkins' ruminations.
"Yes?" he reeponded.
"Jenkins?" came the voice of Chief Stein. "You got a minute or two for a formal proceeding?"
That meant only one thing. Dawn was in the sitting room along with whichever family had decided to accompany her, waiting to go through the whole painful process.
"Yes, Chief, as it turns out, I can spare a moment. Just let me take some quick photos and we'll be there for her."
Jenkins took a second to put away most of the equipment that littered the morgue and straightened out his lab coat and badge. He unpacked his digital camera that was department standard issue for taking official photographs and snapped about three standard shots, viewing them in the screen for any discrepancies before saving them, then he printed each photo and placed them in a manila folder before he walked out to meet them.
She couldn't have been more than thirteen years old by the look of her, but she was almost as tall as Stein. Dark brown hair hung straight down to her hips, framing a face with chocolate brown eyes, a straight, aquiline nose, delicate cheeks and full lips. This all topped a slender frame that had yet to develop into adulthood. Give her ten, maybe fifteen more years and she'd be quite attractive.
There was something else, something that made him want to hide her away from the world for her sake. It was just a feeling, but it was persistent, nagging. He had to put that aside, though. He had a job to do, and a rather thankless one at that.
Another person strode in, a tall blond male full of confidence and fire, wearing as much leather as he could get, walking straight over to Dawn and wrapping his arms protectively around her without so much as a by-your-leave from the Chief or anyone. His gaze challenged anyone to try and stake their claim to her and promised dire consequences for the doing.
"Well now," he said to Dawn with an obvious Cockney accent, "you ready to do this, Little Bit?"
Jenkins, for his part, didn't quite understand the relationship between them. "And you are?"
"Spike."
"Real name?"
Spike stepped toward Jenkins and laid a hand firmly on his shoulder, leaning in to speak directly into his ear. "Not your business...and let's keep it that way, yeah?" It was strange, but that hand had been awfully cold. There had been very little breath on his cheek when he spoke. And Jenkins didn't know if his eyes were fooling him, but for the very briefest of moments, so brief as to be almost imaginative, but Spike's face seemed to flow and distort, with ridges in the forehead, lambent yellow eyes, and elongated cuspids.
A vampire? Nah, couldn't be. But Jenkins had been left rattled by the experience enough, he didn't bother pressing Spike on the issue.
"It's cold in here, Spike," said Dawn, who threw herself almost needfully into Spike's chest.
"Can't help with that, Nibblet, I'm as cold as the driven snow," he replied to her, almost reflexively wrapping his arms around her small shoulders.
"I need that kind of cold."
"Then remind me to drop you off in the middle of a snowstorm one night. Right now we need to get this done," he pointed out, indicating Jenkins and his manila folder.
All eyes, including Chief Stein's, were on him now, promising a world of hurt if he screwed the poodle on this one.
"Why don't we sit dow - down?" Jenkins indicated the low table and a quartet of semi-comfortable chairs surrounding it. As he extended his arm, Dawn seized the folder in a flash and sat, then opened the folder without any hesitation.
"Uh, take your time," he added unnecessarily. He then sat down next to her and watched for her reaction. The task of identifying the dead body of a loved one was arduous and patient, to say the least, and people who got called in to ID a loved one ran the usual gamut of reactions from quiet acceptance, to hysterical laughter or weeping, to rage-filled denial.
Dawn reached into the folder and, quickly and unhurriedly, turned over the first photo. She took in a deep breath, reflexively as it seemed to forestall the tide of emotion that threatened to drown her, and let it out when she was sure she wouldn't break down.
"It's Buffy," she said very simply. "I saw her fall from a tower, and I was there when emergency services removed her body from on top of a pile of rubble." She was still waging war against her emotions for control of her self, and for the most part it seemed like she was winning.
Jenkins and Stein had each seen that look in the eyes of young children before. It was a look that suggested that they were just barely handling it, that the best thing for them would be to go in a room and cry and scream it out until their emotions were spent. Most kids that age were not meant to handle that kind of violent death, and getting a grip on their feelings again most of the time meant they needed a little help. This thirteen-year-old girl, who had just lost both her mother and her sister in the space of a few weeks, was one of a kind.
"You sure you're ok?" He had to ask, as it was only right to be sure.
Dawn nodded contemplatively, "I know at some point I'll need to go somewhere and cry my frickin eyes out, but that does me no good right now, not here. I'm looking at you too, and while I want to say thank you for helping me get through this, there's another part of me that wants to fall in love with you and have your babies, but that would just be the grief talking. Sound about right so far?"
Both Jenkins and Stein found their eyes had widened to saucers by this point - for a thirteen-year-old, this girl, this Dawn Marie Summers had an uncommon maturity. It felt wrong. She should have been nearly overwhelmed by what she should have been actually feeling instead of describing with words. Speaking of words, there was that part about jumping his bones that frankly disturbed the ME. Even though that was a normal grief response in most women, that was not a normal grief response in little girls of Dawn's age.
Dawn flipped the other two photos over, and a sigh escaped her lips as a gentle smile formed. "You know, we all came this close to dying? All of us, the whole world, and it was this woman, this one woman here was responsible for saving us. She's a hero, she deserves a hero's funeral. Full honours."
Stein stepped over to her and took the seat across from her. "If there's any justice in the world, she'll get them. Your mother too. I'll see to it your sister gets an honourary rank in the Sunnydale PD, posthumously. I think she'd have made a great Captain."
Dawn smiled. "Thank you, Chief Stein. That means a hell of a lot. I think we're done here then."
"Yes, Miss Summers, thank you for coming in."
Hank had just gotten out of his car at SPD Precinct 1, hoping he wasn't too late, as it had gotten fully dark when he saw Dawn exiting the station house with her friends and two older guys, Brits from their voices. He couldn't take another step when he saw the brown-haired boy throw his arm around her shoulders.
"Thank God you guys are here. I was worried that I might have to take Dawn in there with me to ID Buffy -"
His face exploded in pain as Dawn's arm flashed out and her fist struck him across the jaw.
"You've got a lot of nerve, showing up here when you wouldn't so much as return a phone call or bother to spend time with any of us. My mother and my sister are both dead now, and you might as well be too."
"I can't blame you for what you must think of me, but can you at least come with me so I can ID your sister?"
"I already did that." Dawn stared at him unblinking, waiting for a word, a move, any reason to cold-cock him again. The older Brit then stepped over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Mr Summers, I don't know how much your daughters meant to you, and from what I'm told I have no reason to care. Suffice it to say that you are neither wanted nor welcome around here."
The boy, Xander as he remembered his name was, offered his two cents.
"He means get lost, asshole. This town ain't big enough for you. Giles?"
'Giles' then tightened his grip and pulled Hank in closer. "Get in your car and leave this town at once. And if you are seen in this town again after this night, we will find you and we will feed you to a vampire."
The blond Brit, the one in the duster, smiled slightly, and then his face distorted in a mockery of humanity, with ridges on the forehead, burning poisonous yellow eyes, and elongated canines. All the warmth left Hank's blood, and he found himself scrambling back to his car, speeding off as soon as he could start the engine.
"I hope he gets a ticket for speeding," said Xander as Hank's Audi faded into the distance.
"At least some justice will be served in this town," quipped Anya.
Her fellow Scoobies immediately tried to suppress their resultant laughter.
"What?" she asked, her shrug and innocent expression speaking volumes.
Xander wrapped his arm around his girlfriend's shoulders, and he planted a gentle kiss on her cheek as he replied. "I think justice has been served, you made Dawn laugh. Thank you."
Anya looked at Xander out of the corner of her eye and said, "You can thank me later tonight with an orgasm or two…"
"Get a room, you two," retorted Spike. "Go make puppies or something."
Anya's expression turned instantly to abject horror. "Bunnies?"
Xander chuckled. "No, ipuppies/i. He meant kids, as in we'll have a house full of them if we aren't careful."
Anya's face then softened, although the colour didn't quite return fully to her cheeks. "Oh...kids. Yeah, I'm not ready for that…"
"There's hope for America after all," Giles groused.
"Can we go home now, guys?" asked an impatient Willow.
Hank forgot how long he had been driving. He also hadn't bothered to think about where he wanted to go, as his thoughts continually returned to Dawn and her friends, and their cruel rejection of him and subsequent threat. What really drove it home for him was the blond Brit, and how his face seemed to shrivel and reform into the nightmare visage that had taken hold of his mind and refused to let go.
The horror in that face was cause enough for quite a number of near-misses during his motorised wanderings. He surely didn't need to be drunk on top of being freaked the eff out. That way led to vehicular injury, possibly manslaughter, and as competent as Sunnydale's finest reputedly weren't, they'd still arrest him, and he'd sit in the county lockup with no bond, waiting for his day in court.
Far better to find a place to stop and relax. Esmeralda could shout at him in that sexy accent all she wanted, but he needed to make sure he was fit to drive, and that meant being calm and sober. It was a stroke of good luck that he was near to a place just off Revello that served the best crafted coffee drinks this side of LA, and so ten minutes or so later he found himself sitting inside the Espresso Pump.
The gurney nearly blasted through the doors to the emergency room. The EMTs weren't waiting for such a trivial thing as an electronic eye to register their movement and open the door. Perhaps in future one or more of them might write a strongly worded letter to the research and development guys who produced each upgraded model of motion sensor to include an urgency protocol in the next upgrade. The faster the movement, the sooner and faster the doors could be triggered and opened. But for now the manual override sufficed, the gurney almost serving as a battering ram as they wheeled in their latest tragic victim, who lay there, strapped down and sedated, doped to the gills as others took his fate in their hands.
Hank Summers hadn't yet managed to process it. He'd met a stunning blonde in the Espresso Pump, bought her a drink while he admired her athletic attire, however ill-fitting, as it had hugged her body in all the right places. A cropped grey sweatshirt emphasised her bustline, giving it dimension and fullness, even if it was merely the illusion of size. The darker grey yoga pants clung to her legs and hips like a second skin, shaping them well, the lines and crosshatching improving the sexual appeal of their appearance. Hank Summers had certainly thought to give that outfit his seal of approval. White sneakers, or rather, running shoes as they called them now, clad her dainty feet. While Hank might have preferred five-inch stilettos, beggars couldn't be choosers, and he certainly could have done worse.
The girl was an amnesiac - she didn't know her own name, but at the time, talking to Hank seemed to put her at ease, and soon the subject turned to more mature topics. She began to smile more, and to lean in closer, and before either knew it Hank was driving her to his hotel room. Once they were inside she found herself wanting to press her lips to his, and to insert her tongue into his mouth, and then some other parts of her body began clamoring for attention, specifically that part between her legs, and she had a sudden need to remove her clothing. Her initial confusion soon gave way to realisation as Hank's subsequent gentle ministrations made that part of her body feel…ivery/i...good, and immediately she understood she wanted more.
Hank knew the signs, and he was ready to serve. He had always been able, ready and willing to serve the needs of most wanton women, provided they informed him plainly of those needs and their urgency. It was what had endeared him to Esmeralda so much, aside from her intoxicating beauty of course. She didn't bother with beating around the bush - if she needed to fuck, she said so, and the two of them would quietly duck into the broom closet for a quick one. It made the longer lovemaking sessions at his or her home more worthwhile, the notion that a five-minute quickie only made them want more, and the same applied here, in this rathole of a hotel in a rathole of a town, between Hank and this strange beautiful amnesiac woman. He applied the lessons he learned from Esmeralda, and this wonderful, surprisingly durable blonde proved quite responsive, so at least she wasn't a complete amnesiac. In the office and elsewhere, he was in charge - the bedroom was a different matter altogether. She took the reins, she guided him.
At first, the strange blonde was beneath him, but then he urged her to flip them over, so that she was on top. She realised that this new position felt better, much better, and she could allow her hips to do what they wanted. She arched her back, again and again, the glorious heat and wetness building up inside her, her body begging for more. Her breath hitched as he sat up, bracing behind himself with one arm as he wrapped his other arm around her waist, and she figured if she was to match his thrusts with her own, that she should do the same. One arm behind her, she draped her other arm over his shoulder and around his neck to support her, their combined efforts rewarded with renewed thrusting.
Suddenly the heat and wetness inside her gave way to what began as a mild tension, but gradually increased to a tightening of her canal as Hank began to thrust more strenuously. The more he thrusted, the more she met him, and the tighter her inside became until her inside seemed to explode within her, in an unbelievable rush of ecstasy - her eyes clenched shut and she screamed with delight as every muscle in her body spasmed in waves of heat and pleasure.
Her joy proved to be extremely short-lived, as she heard his screams. They were not joyful, but expressive of the most severe agony he had ever felt. Her eyes snapped open in fright to his spasms, as he struggled to free himself from her vagina. She panicked then, frightened that she had hurt him so grievously, and in so doing she proved his struggles futile. Her backwards scrambling in terror did for him what his most energetic flailing could not, and she tore away from him. A fountain of bright red gushed from between them as they both felt something tear, and Hank's screams became more terrified than agonised as he felt his penis tear quickly away from his body, still seized by the strongest, most enduring contraction a vagina had any right to experience.
She screamed in terror, then, as she saw the results of her orgasm. The blood, turned pink and frothy from his emissions, coated his legs, and he had curled about himself reflexively as he attempted to protect the remains of his genitalia from further destruction. A thought then occurred to her, a thing which should not have been possible, that urged her to redirect her gaze from his body to hers. Like Hank, her own legs were drenched in blood, as were the sheets. As if on reflex, she reached between her legs to feel the extent of the bleeding. Her hand came away stained completely red, but what completed the horrific picture was not the blood, nor the pitiful image of Hank Summers, now whimpering and clutching at a stump of ruined flesh. She reached back down…
It was still inside her.
With just the tip of her finger and thumb, she probed between the folds of her sex, feeling within for the amputated member, her mind reeling as they sought purchase. She fought to balance firmness and delicacy in her grip, as she dared not tear the member further and risk it being forever lodged within her canal. The remnant of the penis proved surprisingly accommodating as she gave it only the slightest of tugs outward, away from her cervix and past the labia. She fought the urge to gag as it slid slowly, in fits and starts, out of her vagina, and she tossed it away from her as she completed the extraction, like some infectious thing, a dying lump of tissue that to her might have already turned necrotic. Some sense of an old predator must have awakened her perceptions, as adrenaline, or whatever ancient impulse there was, compelled her to flip over on the bed and remove herself from the premises as swiftly as she would. She managed to retain some presence of mind, having secured her clothing in her mad dash out of the hotel room.
No-one bothered to complain as she thrust through every wall in her singular flight from the horrific scene she had created - their concern was for the whinging, traumatised man in the room from which she had fled. They knew that too many unexplained disappearances occurred in this town, especially in the hotels and warehouses, and that the police were entirely ill-equipped to deal with the problem. Hence, their resolve to keep at least one man or woman from becoming another statistic. To them, the word 'statistic' was synonymous with 'victim', and, honest hard-working people that they were, who cared for each other as much as for anyone who made an honest living and looked out for their fellow human beings, the act of summoning emergency medical technicians to a hotel or an alley was as routine as brushing their teeth.
(End Chapter One)