Chapter Two
Disclaimer: All the characters and whatnot belong to Mr. Joss Whedon.
"Alright," Kennedy began as she saw the approaching vampires. "Dawn, take Cordelia. Giles, you have Kendra. Willow gets Drusilla and I'll handle Spike. Alright?" she asked as she heard the various Scoobies mumbling their agreements.
Dawn swallowed hard, clutching her stake tightly as she advanced over to Cordelia. "Alright Popular Vampire," she began nervously. "This is going to be simple"
"Less talking," Cordelia commanded as she moved closer to Dawn.
Dawn nodded fearfully. "Well, we could skip that and get to the staking," she offered with a small smile as she tried to hit Cordelia's heart, but missed and ended up tearing the bottom part of the vampire's shirt.
"You're going to pay for that," Cordelia said angrily. "That was the newest Ava Gregory design!" she pouted.
"Aw, too bad," Dawn began with false sympathy as she once again gave an honest attempt at staking the vampire in front of her, but once again missed, this time hitting the girl's left shoulder hard.
"Bitch," Cordelia declared angrily as she launched herself into her vampire face and gazed longingly at Dawn's long and slender neck.
Willow caught sight of them as she was busy concentrating on anything but Drusilla's long red fingernails. "Giles, get Dawn!" she screeched as she gave a sudden and unexpected hit to Drusilla, knocking the insane vampire down to the hard pavement on the street.
"Got it," Kennedy called as she ran over to the teenager pulling her away from Cordelia and shoving her into the van. "We're out of here."
"Leaving so soon?" Kendra asked with a wicked smile, her accent still remaining very Jamaican.
"The music hasn't even started yet," Drusilla added as she stuck her lower lip out sadly.
"What's this all about leaving?" Spike asked curiously as he saw Willow and Kennedy retreating back to the already started van.
As she closed the door, Kennedy rolled her eyes. "Dawn!" she groaned as she sat down next to the teenager.
"Sorry," Dawn began truthfully as she buckled the seatbelt across her thin body. "I didn't mean to piss her off, but it's Cordelia. It's hard not to piss her off."
"They're following us," Willow stated as she turned her head toward the back of the van in effort to stop the rising argument between Dawn and Kennedy.
Kennedy rolled her brown eyes once more as she leaned over and pulled out a small black duffel bag filled with emergency weapons. She gave a short smile as she crackled the back window open just wide enough to throw a small bottle of holy water at the vampires. "Not anymore," she stated angrily as she returned the window to its more appropriate closed state. "Now let's just get to the campus and pick Tara up without any trouble."
"Agreed," Giles stated as he pressed harder on the accelerator.
"Well...that was fun," Spike grumbled sarcastically as the four of them began walking back towards the mall, fortunately not too far from their current position. His arm was wrapped possessively around Drusilla as the couple moved further from the other two female vampires with them. Mostly for his sanity's sake, since although he loved Drusilla, he had her and only needed her. Cordelia and Kendra only got on his nerves. And in his mind, he had put up with enough things going wrong for one night.
"Not particularly," Kendra pointed out angrily as she turned to Cordelia.
Cordelia nodded and rolled her eyes in disgust. "Tell me about it. We didn't even kill anyone."
"That bites," Kendra agreed as she rushed ahead in hurry to get to the mall, hoping the less important vampires had brought back someone fresh to kill.
Cordelia sighed, following the other three vampires as they entered and quickly went over to the middle of the mall where the Master was seated, one wine glass filled with fresh human blood held in his right hand.
"Back so soon?" he asked. From the tone of his voice, one could tell he was clearly displeased with them. "Was the Slayer really that easy to kill? Something tells me she wasn't."
"She had friends and weapons and holy water and stuff," Cordelia pointed out as she walked over to the current male vampire she was using. "And one of them tore my shirt," she whined for the millionth time with a frown.
"We're in a mall, dumb ass," Spike said crossly. "A mall that still gets the latest clothes sent to it every so often."
"So the Slayer still lives?" the Master demanded angrily as he slammed his wrist against the table, causing the glasses of blood on it to go splattering everywhere.
"That would be correct, sir," Kendra dutifully told him. "They got away in that huge van."
"Find them!" The Master hollered loudly, standing up and tossing his empty glass to the floor as he did such. "And kill them slowly and painfully," he added as he reached for a second glass.
Drusilla's eyes widened eagerly. "I like that game," she perked up happily as she began heading out, Spike and Kendra right behind her.
"Just those three?" the Master asked as he glanced over at Cordelia and her toy. The former cheerleader rolled her eyes as she began following, her male vampire right behind her. "That's better," he stated as he returned back to his throne, so to speak.
The trip to the university went more or less smoothly and the Scoobies soon found themselves back in the main part of Sunnydale, Main Street to be specific heading towards Giles's shop. Shortly after Dawn had become into being, Giles had stumbled upon the magick store and found that the owner had been killed. He then decided to take over and run the shop, which he did with the help of Willow's high school friend and fellow witch, Amy Madison.
"We're going back to the store?" Kennedy asked as she raised an eyebrow. She loved the store and was fond of using it as a meeting place--in the daylight. Come nightfall, she hated it as it was a public place, meaning vampires could enter without invitation.
Giles nodded. "Don't worry, I've put plenty of locks on the doors. We should be safe," he said as he stopped the van and the Scoobies quickly departed and rushed to the door.
"Giles, you locked it?" Dawn asked in shock as she turned to face the Watcher, her mouth dropped open in horror. She rattled at the handle a few times before giving up.
"Just to be safe," the Watcher said in his defense as he reached into his pocket for the keys.
"But that can never happen in this town," Kendra said as she snuck up behind the five Scoobies, her fingers tracing along Willow's arm just to poke fun at the lesbian witch. "There are bad things here," she stated as she moved over towards Tara.
"Giles, open that door," Kennedy commanded as she moved closer to the Watcher, increasing the distance between her and the growing group of vampires, five of them it looked like but there could be more on the way.
Giles nodded as he fiddled around with his keys, searching for which one opened the bottom lock to the shop.
"Giles, hurry and open the door!" Kennedy amended her earlier statement as she reached for a few stakes, tossing one to Tara who held it up in Kendra's face.
"Bad kitten," Drusilla began softly as she came up from behind Tara, knocking the small wooden stake from the witch's hand. "You don't play by the rules," she scolded.
"There are rules on how to kill vampires?" Kennedy asked as she tried to hold back her fear as she saw the other three vampires coming in closer towards the shop.
Drusilla licked her lips as she began advancing towards Kennedy, completely forgetting about Tara.
"Easy now, pet," Spike began. "You know what the master said."
"What'd he say?" Kennedy asked. "Kill me? I have to say, you vampires aren't all that original. It's always about killing the Slayer," she continued as she held a cross up in front of her and Giles, shielding them from possible danger while the Watcher still struggled to open the shop door.
"'Kill them' were his exact words," Cordelia's lackey spoke up as he looked at which Scooby was closest to him and would be easiest to kill. Definitely not the redhead or the Slayer, but the other two. The secondary witch and the teenager. They would be pretty easy, and probably pretty good to suck the blood from.
Willow's eyes widened. "Giles!" she begged as she quickly moved protectively in front of Tara to ensure that no one would dare mess with her girlfriend.
"Got it!" Giles yelled as he shoved the key into the lock and began trying to open it, something that was annoyingly hard this night.
"Got her," Spike pointed out as he reached for Dawn and bit the youngest Scooby's neck and began drinking her blood. "Woah, there's bits of Slayer blood in this!" he said happily as he tossed Dawn over to Drusilla, who eagerly caught the body and began drinking.
"Dawnie," Willow whispered under her breath as she instantly began wondering if trying to help her now would do any good. Two vampires have already taken huge amounts of her blood.
"Oh goddess," Tara whispered as she quickly turned away, not wanting to watch the gruesome murder of her friend.
"Inside quickly," Kennedy commanded as she waved at Willow and Tara. "There's nothing we can do now except for save ourselves."
Willow prodded Tara to go inside as she picked up her girlfriend's fallen stake. "Go, I'll be right there," she whispered before Tara slipped inside the door.
"Willow, what are you doing?" Kennedy asked in fear as she stood in the doorway and watched as Willow advanced over to the five vampires eagerly drinking Dawn's blood from various parts of her body.
Willow said nothing, only walked over to the vampires, quickly debating which one of them she should use as payback. She would only have time to get rid of one of them for the instant she tried to kill a second one, someone would kill her. She sighed, plunging her stake directly into the heart of Cordelia Chase. "That's for killing Dawn," she muttered angrily as she looked at the four remaining vampires. "And for picking on me ever since preschool," she added softly as she quickly rushed into the Magic Box and closed the large door behind her.
The second she was in and the door was closed, Giles and Kennedy locked all ten locks to ensure that no vampire could enter the shop. The Slayer let out a huge sigh as she slumped to the ground of the store.
"Sorry about Dawn," Tara said sympathetically to Giles. A moment of silence overcame them all as they remembered the young girl. Giles took his glasses off as he began walking further into the shop and over to where he kept his journals, under the cash register. "Wait a minute," he said as he placed his glasses back on his face and looked at the woman standing there.
She appeared to be young, somewhere in early to mid twenties with straight blond hair coming to about her shoulders. She was seated on the stool behind the cash register and was looking straight at the Watcher with wide brown eyes. "Giles, I just made the stupidest mistake," she began.
"I beg your pardon," Giles began as he studied her. She was definitely not Amy as his co-worker would know much better than to walk around Sunnydale in the outfit that this woman was dressed in. While the red skirt may look good with the matching red tank top and red cardigan sweater, but in Sunnydale things were not about looks. Things were about being safe and walking around dressed like the woman was definitely perilous. "Who are you?" he asked a moment later.