CHAPTER 7
Hank Summers stood in the doorway of the suite. "Hi, Honey!" he smiled at Buffy, and took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheek, then turned to Dawn and did the same. The embraces that both his daughters returned were stiff and obligatory, with a "Hi, Dad," that each tried vainly to make sound more enthusiastic than they felt. Hank was used to this by now.
He glanced around the room and saw Joan and an elderly, red-haired man in a seersucker suit get up from the couch. Joan and Pauline had never forgiven Hank for the pain he had caused Joyce, and he knew it, but Joan always managed to be civil if not cordial.
"Hello, Joan."
"Hank, there's somebody we'd all like you to meet," Joan gestured toward Carl as he extended his hand toward Hank. "Hank, this is Carl..."
"Carl," Hank smiled as they shook hands.
"Glad to meet you, Hank," Carl nodded back.
"... my husband," Joan finished.
Hank's arm stiffened in mid-handshake and he raised his eyebrows. "Oh!" He turned to Joan. "Congratulations, Joan. The girls never mentioned that you'd remarried."
"I didn't, exactly. Carl is the only husband I've ever had. He's Joyce's father. Buffy and Dawn's grandfather."
Hank stood there with a blank, open-mouthed stare for a few seconds before blinking. "I'm sorry. I don't understand. I thought Joyce's father died back in the early '60s. And that his name was Kirk."
"Well, Hank," Joan sighed, "since Carl is back in my life and has become a very important part of the girls' life, there's no getting around this. I took Joyce and Polly away from Carl, even changed our last name, because there was a lot of danger in Carl's life."
"Wait! You're saying Joyce's last name wasn't really Wilson?"
"Wilson's the only name she ever really knew," Joan said with a touch of sadness. "A plain, common name I picked to help us hide our identities. She and Polly were too young to remember their real name."
"Which is...?"
"Kolchak," Carl spoke up.
"Carl Kolchak," Hank nodded thoughtfully. "Investigative reporter from Las Vegas. That rings a vague bell."
Buffy and Dawn glanced at each other apprehensively, but their father didn't see them.
"Joyce and I used to talk about it with Polly and Matt back when we were younger," Hank continued. "We assumed you'd run afoul of the local Vegas Mafia and were the victim of a mob hit."
Carl smiled but said nothing.
"I guess you were on the run from them all these years," Hank added. Behind him his daughters smiled and let out inaudible sighs to each other.
"The reasons for my staying away from my family no longer exist," Carl nodded. "I'll never get back my little girl or the thirty-nine years she grew up and lived without me there to be a good father. But she left me two beautiful and wonderful granddaughters, and that makes up some of the loss."
"Yeah," Hank nodded. "Wow!... You're Joyce's dad and you're still alive... I'm sorry. It just takes a little getting used to!"
"It did for all of us," Buffy said.
"We even had a DNA test to be sure," Dawn added.
"It was my decision to take Joyce and Polly away," Joan said meaningfully. "Carl didn't want me to, but the dangers in his life were very real."
"I can imagine," Hank said. "Is it safe now? I mean, mob vendettas and contracts aren't things that go away by themselves over time."
"I wouldn't have let him back in our lives if it wasn't safe, Hank," Joan said.
"I understand," Hank said, still overwhelmed.
"Dad, you remember Xander and Willow, of course," Buffy gestured toward the other couch where they were sitting; they'd come over for moral support, although Giles had deliberately absented himself to avoid an awkward clash of father figures for the two sisters.
"Hi, Xander, Willow! How've you b-" Hank stopped short and blanched as he noticed the eyepatch. "Oh, jeez, Xander! Sorry about your eye! How'd it happen?"
"Construction accident," Xander shrugged. "Caught the corner of a steel beam that was being hoisted and swung the wrong way."
"Sorry to hear that!"
"It's okay, Mr. Summers. I'm coping."
"Glad to hear that," Hank nodded, then turned to his daughters. "Ladies, shall we go?"
As the three of them stepped into the hallway toward the elevators, Hank shook his head in bewilderment. "Buffy, Dawnie, I can't believe I've let things go as long as I have..."
I can! his daughters both thought, shooting a glance at each other to confirm that they shared the same thought.
"Your grandfather coming back into your lives," he continued, "Xander losing his eye. Dawn, you've grown at least three inches since the last time I saw you. You're taller than Buffy now!"
I passed her a year and a half ago! Dawn thought. You just didn't notice the last time you saw us!
"You're not my little punkinbelly anymore!" Hank added.
That was the threshold for Dawn. "I was never your little punkinbelly, Dad! You never called me that! That was Mom's nickname for me!"
"But I still thought of you that way," he smiled defensively.
Good God, Dad! Buffy thought, Are you really this dense, or are you just trying to pretend nothing's happened the last three or four years?
There was a strained silence on the short drive over to the Mexican restaurant in Burbank. After they were seated and placed their order, Hank tried to pick up the conversation. "So, I just want you to know that with your mom's house gone, you two are welcome to move in with me here in Burbank."
"Oh!" Dawn replied, dripping with sarcasm. "Does that mean Lucinda's moved out?"
"Dawn!" Buffy chided, although she felt the same herself. It was ironic that when Hank and his secretary had returned to the LA area a year and a half ago from their excursion in Spain, they'd moved into the next town over from Aunt Polly and Uncle Matt, and yet there was no contact between Hank and his ex-sister-in-law until the day Sunnydale collapsed. On the other hand, Buffy thought, from Aunt Polly's point of view, if someone ever did to Dawnie what Dad had done to Mom, I wouldn't want any contact with him either! I'd probably kill the sonofabitch!
"Look," Hank sighed, "I know both of you blame Lucinda for what happened, but you've got to understand that things were cooling off between me and Mom long before Lucinda-"
"Sure, blame Mom now that she's not around to defend herself!" Dawn snapped.
"I'm not, Dawnie! It's just... since you two need a place to stay, our house is open to you."
"Thanks, Dad," Buffy said, "but we're fine. Grandpa's got a lot of money, we can stay in that hotel for a while. In fact, he's given me and Dawn enough money for both of us to go to college without having to work. The least he could do to make up for not being there for Mom." She hadn't intended that last sentence as a cheap shot, but then didn't care that it sounded that way. "He also has a house up in Lake Keogh where he and Grandma are probably going to settle in, and they've invited us to move in with them."
Hank paused thoughtfully before responding. "Honey, is your Grandpa's money... clean? I mean, if he's been hiding for over forty years, he must've..."
"His money's clean," Buffy said firmly. She and Dawn had planned in advance the explanation they would give for their grandfather's turning up filthy rich after four decades of being believed dead: do nothing to discourage the assumption that the disappearance itself was Mob related, be as honest about the money as practical without giving away that it had to do with vampires and demons. "He may have kept a low profile, but he continued to be an investigative reporter and writer. He published a lot of stuff under different pen names."
"Are you sure, Honey?" Hank asked, his skepticism dripping as heavily as Dawn's sarcasm had.
"Oh, believe us, Dad," Dawn said, "both of us were very familiar with his work long before we had any idea we were related to him."
Buffy and Giles returned to Ventura and picked up Tracie the next day; she told them that the quick-healing Slayer power had kicked in and she was feeling fine when they'd picked up the other two, but the doctors wouldn't believe their own eyes and refused to discharge her for the additional two days. That left Chao Ahn and Robin Wood as the only two left hospitalized, with Faith continuing to stay at the hotel.
The morning after Tracie had joined them in Glendale, Giles joined the rest of the New Council in the Kolchaks' suite for another room service breakfast. It wasn't a formal meeting but just a friendly social breakfast gathering, although everyone made silent note of the fact that Willow was again there without Kennedy.
It was still well short of the week of doing nothing that he had promised the others, but Giles felt he could get away with again breaking that rule with some good news. "I just got off the phone with Robson, and the tides seem to be turning in our favor for a change. First, one of the Council's Swiss bank accounts has been unfrozen and turned over to us. So, Carl, Buffy and Dawn, you can stop bankrolling our operation and we'll be reimbursing you for what you've spent so far."
"No hurry," Buffy replied. "Like I said, that's not even on our radar."
"Nevertheless, it's money due the three of you. The second piece of good news is that Robson has found and contacted a psychiatrist with whom the Council has worked. He'll be contacting some colleagues here in America and making a call to the psychiatric staff at St. Francis about Chao Ahn for us."
"That is good news," Carl nodded.
"In the meantime, I hope you don't think it's too early to start thinking about what to do next with all our girls, plus all those around the world that we've yet to locate and contact."
"It is too early," Xander sighed, "but you're going to talk about it anyway!"
"We're going to have to have them in some kind of school at some central facility," Giles continued, ignoring Xander's quip. "We simply do not have the resources to have a one-to-one Slayer to Watcher ratio. Perhaps eventually we shall recruit more Watchers and be able to have that, but for the time being, we should have some kind of central school facility. Perhaps a joint school for Slayers and Watchers. Perhaps under the guise of a private boarding school."
"Where?" Carl asked.
"Well, the majority of the Council's financial assets and resources are in the UK, of course," Giles said, "but since the plurality of Slayers are right here with us, I see no reason not to set up right here in California someplace."
Carl smiled over to Joan and then said, "I know just the place!"
"Really! Where?"
"My lodge up on Lake Keogh. Up in the mountains near the Sequoia National Forest, two and a half to three hour drive northeast of here, east of Bakersfield. I bought it a long time ago, figuring it'd make a great place to retire. I figured some day I'd leave it to Joan, Polly, Joyce and the grandkids, but I don't spend as much time there as I thought I would. Up until recently, being an old man living alone, I was feeling lost, that it was too big for me. Turning it into a school for Slayers and Watchers, I can't think of a better use for it. Especially since two of my granddaughters will be there."
"Thank you, Carl," Giles smiled back. "The Council would pay rent, of course. The least I could do for all the times the Old Council short-changed you for your services."
Buffy glanced over thoughtfully to Dawn. "I guess we could have a regular high school and middle school program of sorts, in addition to the Slayery and Watchery stuff, based on the age of most of the Slayers."
"If we can find teachers whom we can trust to work amongst us and maintain the secrecy of our organization," Giles nodded. "Of course, we have Robin Wood to act as an administrator..."
Joan cleared her throat loudly. "Excuse me! Retired educator here! Thirty one years as a classroom teacher, four years as a vice-principal! And not to take away anything from your Mr. Wood, but I made my way up through the ranks of the San Diego public school system with proper credentials. Not through some diploma mill and applying for a job that nobody else wanted, with the two immediate predecessors having been eaten by demons!"
Giles blushed. "Of course, Joan! It's just that I wasn't sure you'd want to come out of retirement."
"For a chance to work with Carl and Buffy and Dawnie?" Joan smiled. "How many students total do you think you'll have? I might know a couple of other teachers you can trust and who might be persuaded to come out of retirement or leave their current jobs."
"That's a little hard to predict right now," Giles replied. "Any of the twelve we have now may choose to go home to their families, and as we've learned from your other two granddaughters, the ones we have yet to establish contact with may choose not to come to our Slayer Academy. Plus we may end up recruiting Watcher candidates who are also of school age."
"I can think of one young possible Watcher candidate I know," Carl said.
"So how many of these new Slayers are out there?" Joan asked.
"We don't have an exact number," Willow said. "I tried doing a locator spell once the other night, using a world map, and came up with twenty-seven. The Westbury Coven has tried several times and their number keeps fluctuating, anywhere between twenty-five and forty-three."
"Only three of these were previously known to us as Potentials who had managed to elude the Bringers but not to make their way to Sunnydale," Giles added. "The rest are completely unknown to us."
"I'm still not quite sure I understand why there are so many of these girls," Joan said, "and why the number keeps fluctuating."
"That actually might be a good thing, Joanie," Carl told her.
"It's obvious that certain Potentials had some kind of masking capability built into them," Willow said. "So the mojo the old Council was using to identify them, and send Watchers to them to train them before they were called, didn't work."
"Yes," Giles nodded. "It appears that this was some sort of protection against exactly the kind of thing that just occurred with the First and the Bringers."
"You mean an effort by the Big Bad to identify all the Potentials and make them extinct," Buffy said.
"Exactly," Giles nodded again. "Buffy, you were obviously one of them since we never found you until you were called. And since Dawn was never identified as a Potential, and it's apparent that your young cousins are also among of these, it's probably a genetic trait."
"Actually," Willow smiled sheepishly, "we did kinda sorta identify Dawn as a Potential, but the spell went all kerflooey because it turned out Amanda was standing right outside the door."
"Yes," Giles smiled, "well, I think 'kerflooey' is the operative word here."
"Well," Carl spoke up, "since Dawnie isn't exactly a Slayer and wasn't exactly a Potential, any Potential-detecting spell would be bound to go kerflooey around her. Especially since she was never 'called' in the traditional sense and her Slayer-type powers were supposed to emerge slowly." He looked at Dawn. "And the magic that the monks did to make you human probably has some additional masking properties, too."
Dawn raised her eyebrows and gulped uncomfortably but said nothing.
"Yeah," Xander said. "It's like ECM on a warplane."
Everyone gave him a blank stare except Giles, who nodded in agreement.
"Electronic Countermeasures," Xander elaborated. "If a fighter plane or a bomber has an enemy Surface to Air Missile site or an enemy fighter that locks onto it with their radar, the targeted plane can emit its own radar wave signals and release a package of Christmas tree tinsel. Throws the radar lock right off and makes the enemy missile go kerflooey. Same with these Potential locator spells."
Dawn's eyes began to mist. "Including the spells the First and the Bringers used to track down and kill the Potentials," she said quietly. "Oh, my God!"
"Dawnie, what's wrong?" Buffy asked.
"What if Amanda was never a Potential to begin with?" Dawn's voice trembled. "What if the reason Willow's orange cloud hit me and then hit her, and the reason the Bringers went after her, was because these spells bounced off me and hit her because she was the nearest other girl? What if she had no business going into the Hellmouth with you and the other Slayers?"
Buffy put an arm across her sister's shoulders. "Dawnie, don't beat yourself up over this! This is something you had absolutely no control over! There's no way you could have even known about it at the time!" She paused, then added, "I saw Amanda dust at least three Ubervamps before she died. She was a Slayer!"
"Well, she could have just been juiced up on adrenaline!" Andrew interjected. He instantly drew a Not making it better! glare from everyone else in the room except Dawn, and Xander slapped the back of his skull. "Ow! I'm just saying... All of us ordinary people were pretty juiced up with adrenaline at the time."
"Andrew's right," Dawn sniffed.
"Maybe so," Buffy nodded, "but we'll never know for sure. And we can't go back and change the past. And Amanda died believing she was a Slayer. She died fighting Evil."
That afternoon, Buffy decided to join most of the other Slayers, Willow, Xander and Andrew at the hotel's outdoor swimming pool. Dawn had decided to stay upstairs and tweak both her and Willow's newly purchased iBook laptops and to review the various files that Robson had EMailed to them, promising to join the others at the pool later. Buffy found herself floating on an air mattress, actually half-asleep, oblivious to the ambient sounds of her friends and fellow Slayers laughing, conversing and splashing in the water.
"Buffyyyyyyyy!"
Dawn's shriek was impossible to tune out. It was the shriek that was almost always accompanied by at least the threat of imminent death for someone, if not a total apocalypse. Reflexively, Buffy rolled over into the water and kicked herself back to the surface, then looked up to the eighth floor to see her sister sticking her head out the window of their grandparents' bedroom. "Dawn!" she shouted back after sputtering out a mouthful of water.
"Buffy! Come up here! Quick!"
She got out of the pool and sprinted up the eight flights of steps without grabbing her towel or flip-flops, or waiting for an elevator. She entered the suite living room, still dripping wet, to see Dawn, Joan, Carl and Giles all staring with shocked expressions at the TV.
"Dawnie, what's wrong?" she gasped.
"Look!" Dawn replied breathlessly, pointing to the TV screen which showed a view looking down into the distance at the rubbled center of the Sunnydale crater, at a California Highway Patrol medevac helicopter as it lifted off.
"Once again, our top story this hour," the TV news anchorwoman intoned. "In what can only be described as a miracle, rescue workers with trained search dogs found a young woman still alive but unconscious, buried in the rubble at the epicenter of the Sunnydale crater. The as yet unidentified young woman, who is in critical condition at St. Francis Hospital in Ventura, was found in a chamber under several feet of debris from what is believed to have been Sunnydale High School, four days after the earthquake caused the entire city to collapse into a giant sinkhole. The young woman is described as appearing to be between fifteen and eighteen years old, five feet nine inches tall with long dark brown hair, and was wearing pink slacks, white tennis shoes, a red golf shirt and a maroon hooded sweatshirt. Anyone with information on the possible identity of this young woman should contact the California Highway Patrol Sunnydale Task Force at the toll-free number at the bottom of your screen..."
"Buffy, don't beat yourself up over this!" Dawn told her.
"I left her for dead, Dawnie."
"You barely got out of there alive yourself! We all barely got out alive!"
Buffy was weeping openly now. "I left her to be buried alive! Me of all people! After the trauma I went through of being buried alive myself..."
"If she looked dead when you left her and they found her unconscious, chances are she was unconscious the whole time. She probably won't remember."
"How many of them were still alive when I left them?"
"Buffy, don't torture yourself like this! Just be happy that we got her back!"
"You're right," Buffy managed to force a smile.
Dawn sniffled as her eyes started brimming. "I feel like I've been blessed," she smiled as she stroked Buffy's hair. "Amanda's the second person I've cared about who's come back from the dead. That's way more than anyone could ask for!" Buffy smiled back and placed her hand on her sister's.
Amanda's parents stepped out into the hall, sniffling with watery eyes as well. "You can see her now," Mrs. Corrigan said. "We'll wait out here."
Buffy and Dawn entered the ICU room. Amanda's head was bandaged, and she had a black eye and bruises on her jawline and lower lip, her left leg was in a cast and in traction, and they could see more bandages showing under her hospital gown. She had a solution dripping from a bag through an IV tube in her left arm. She turned her head and eyes slowly toward the two sisters as they approached.
"Hi, Amanda," Dawn said at barely above a whisper, her voice tearful as she took Amanda's right hand.
"Hey, Dawn," she replied weakly, then looked at Buffy. "Hey, Miss Summers."
Buffy raised her eyebrows. "Miss Summers? Why so formal all of a sudden? Are you that mad at me?"
"Why would I be mad at you, Miss Summers? After all the help you've given me?" Amanda paused. "I know you're the youngest faculty member... and you're Dawn's sister... and Dawn's my friend... and most of the kids think you're cool... but you're still a counselor. I still have to call you Miss Summers, right?"
"You... don't remember," Buffy said.
"Remember what?"
"Staying over at our house," Dawn said. "Going through all the training..."
Amanda squinted at her in confusion.
"... the assertiveness training and the group therapy sessions with the other girls," Buffy interjected quickly.
"Huh?"
"Do you know how you got here?" Buffy asked.
"I know my parents said something about an earthquake, but when I woke up I just assumed I got knocked unconscious when I got mugged."
"Mugged?" Buffy asked.
"In the hallway outside the Home Sciences room. I went there to sew up a hole in my Swing Choir sweater. Somebody jumped me and I started struggling, and... that's all I remember."
"In January," Dawn nodded.
"Yeah. Mom says it's May now... but it feels like it was last night... Have I been in a coma for four months?"
"No," Dawn shook her head. "Just a few days... You don't remember coming to our house after you were attacked and talking to me?"
"I just remember getting jumped... and struggling... I never even got to see the guy's face."
The two sisters shot a glance at each other.
"Was I... raped?" Amanda asked hesitantly and anxiously.
"No!" Dawn said quickly, patting her forearm. "In fact, you fought off your attacker. You defended your own virtue quite successfully."
"I did?" Amanda smiled. "I don't remember anything."
"Sometimes it's normal for someone to not remember a traumatic experience," Buffy reassured her.
"But if I've only been in this coma for a few days, then why have I lost a whole four months of my life? What else happened?"
"Nothing you need to be ashamed of, Amanda," Buffy smiled with her eyes welling up. "It can wait. You just get some rest and get better."
"We'll be back real soon," Dawn added, squeezing Amanda's hand.
"Thanks, Dawn. Thanks, Miss Summers."
FEEDBACK/REVIEWS ARE INVITED. PLEASE KEEP 'EM COMING!
(I'm staring to go through feedback withdrawal!) ;-)
As I said in the last chapter, that one and this were originally a single chapter that I decided to split for length, so this update came pretty quickly as promised. Can't make any more promises as to how soon the next chapter will be written and posted.