Buffy rushed into the Magic Box, pulling Dawn behind her. "Demons, two of them, jumped us outside of the ice cream shop. They looked human, Giles." Buffy said as she got a gasping Dawn into a chair. Elizabeth held Dawn's hand while Buffy went looking for the first aid kit.
"They must be members of the Jekfoontar clan." Giles said grimly. "Sam has just had the prophecy translated. He and the others are on their way here. What can you tell me about the demons that attacked you?"
"What does the damn thing say?" Buffy demanded. She hated prophecies. They always brought death and destruction, and it was usually hers. Having a prophecy about her child was enough to send her into orbit. She had known that there was a possibility that Dawn was mentioned in this one, but she still hoped it was about Sam or Dean rather than Dawn. The last one had been bad enough.
"I don't know. Sam didn't want to tell me over the phone. It is a reasonable precaution. The Jekfoontar clan has been known to use technology as well as magic, and John has said that they've monitored his phone calls before."
Buffy was digging through the first aid kit for the bruise ointment that Tara made. They always kept plenty on hand. She didn't need any of course with her slayer healing, but she was sure that Dawn had a few bruises from being grabbed. "They were very strong, like vampires. Dawn threw both of her knives and hit them; one in the throat and another in the eye. Giles, it didn't even faze them. Holy water held them off, but didn't do much more than that. We ended up locking them in a couple of dumpsters. How do I kill them?" She started applying the ointment to Dawn's arm.
Giles sighed. He really didn't want to have to answer that question. He looked up as the shop bell rang. Wesley and Faith walked in, followed by Joyce, Willow and Tara. "We need to wait for Sam, John and Dean and I'd really rather not repeat myself." Buffy nodded. She didn't like it, but it made sense. It didn't take long for John and Dean to show up with Sam. They had gone to the college to pick him up.
Everyone gathered around the research table, either sitting in the chairs or leaning against the wall. "I accidentally found a professor over at the college who is fluent in the language the prophecy is written in. She traded me a translation for my copy of the prophecy. I have it copied in my notes, and she wasn't a demon, so I went ahead with the trade." Sam pulled out his notes. Dean and John pulled out their journals; this was something that had to be recorded. "The warrior shall sire a line, and the line shall produce a hunter. To this hunter's line will be born three children of power. The hunter will be a seer and the seer will be a hunter. The warrior and the witch will follow. When the family is united, and all take arms against the darkness, then comes the time of danger for the Jekfoontar clan. The warrior will destroy the clan link. Unless all are destroyed, the clan will fall." Sam paused, "This is the best translation I could get."
"The hunter must be Dad. But I don't get this whole, seer/hunter, hunter/seer thing." Dean said, rereading what he written down.
"It's not referring to one person," Willow exclaimed after looking at it for a minute. "It means both John and Sam. John is a hunter who is also a seer and Sam is a seer who is also a hunter. Dean, you must be the warrior and Dawn must be the witch."
"That means that Dean is the focus of the prophecy." Giles said thoughtfully. "But how is he going to destroy the clan's link? What link is the prophecy referring too?"
"Anya said that the prophecy talked about a child of power that was going to destroy a statue that held the clan together. That statue is probably the clan link." John said, referring back to his own notes.
"The warrior and the witch follow must mean that Dean and I do what the two of you say. That makes sense because Dad is Dad and we all do what he says and Sam is research and vision guy so we do what he says too." Dawn said. She looked over the rest of the prophecy. "We are united because all of us are here and we're sticking together. I don't get all taking arms against the darkness though."
"I do." Buffy said. "Dawn you killed your first ghost and most of the jobs the guys do is against ghosts of one sort or another rather than demons and vampires like I do. That means that you have taken up fighting the darkness just like the rest of us. That explains why we got attacked. The prophecy is taking place right now. Stupid thing," she muttered. Giles patted her on the shoulder. He understood her revulsion for prophecies considering how her first experience with one had killed her.
"You were attacked!" John jumped on the information.
"Yeah, a couple of a these demons jumped me and Dawn after we left the ice cream shop. Giles, you said you were going to tell me how to kill them when they got here." She pointed at John who was currently running his hands over Dawn in an effort to find any injuries.
"You mean they aren't dead? What happened to them?" John growled.
"Calm down, John. We aren't hurt and we locked them up in a couple of dumpsters. They should still be there. We'll deal with them when Giles tells us how." Buffy turned to Giles expectantly. John turned to face him as well. Dean and Sam were waiting like hounds about to be unleashed for a hunt.
"Unfortunately, I've yet to come up with a way to kill them. They have no weakness other than the clan link that I can find. Destroy the link and destroy the clan, as the prophecy says. Nothing seems to be able to kill them on an individual basis."
"Is this another deal like the Judge? No weapon forged by man, or something? Cause we got around that one." Willow said.
"It is somewhat similar, but they seem to be immune to any sort of weapon other than a few holy items, and even those only give them minor difficulties." Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them in agitation.
"Oh, shit." Sam and Dean said in unison. "That means that Meg is still out there." Dean continued.
"Meg?" Faith asked. She liked Dean. He was always nice to her and not in a get in her pants kind of way, which is what she had been expecting from the way he flirted with her. She wondered what the demon girl had done to him.
"Meg Masters, we dropped her out a seven story window onto the street. No wonder the damned daevas still went after us." Dean shook his head. "I thought for sure we got her."
Sam shook his head. "She probably had a necklace like Roy's wife had to control the Reaper."
John looked a little guilty to Buffy's eyes. She wondered what the story there was. "What kind of holy objects?" John asked, getting his mind off the memory of his oldest son's face as he was dying of a weakened heart. The boys didn't know that he was the one who sent them the information on Roy through Joshua, and he didn't want them to know. He would take the memory of that boy's undeserved death to his grave, but God help him he'd do it again in a heartbeat if it meant that his boy would live.
"Holy water of course, as Buffy and Dawn discovered. Dawn, by the way, I'm very proud to see that you were carrying the water pistol Xander gave you."
Dawn looked up and showed Giles it was empty. "It burned them, but more like acid than actual burning like it does for a vampire. My cross didn't do anything."
"That's because it isn't blessed. It wouldn't have done any better than the holy water though. It's damned frustrating. I just can't find any other weakness at all." Giles slammed his hand down on the table in frustration.
Dean and Sam looked at each other, each seeing Dawn's words echo through the other's minds. A swift nod and they both turned to John. John smiled at his boys. He knew what they were thinking. The same thing had gone through his mind as well. Even as sensitive as Sam was towards humans, he'd never had that problem with demons, and Dean would really enjoy some payback. "They tried to hurt your sister, boys. Let's go show them what we think of that. Buffy, would you care to join us?" John asked offering her his hand to help her out of her chair.
"HEY!" Dawn exclaimed. "What about me? I want my knives back."
A resounding "NO!" came from around the room. "You'll get your knives back, Dawn." John tried to console her. "And if you struck in good places, I'll even start you on another weapon. Dean says you're getting good with maintenance for the shotguns." Dawn pouted unappeased.
"There is something else to consider Dawn." Elizabeth said firmly. "With the prophecy being one that we want to have come true, we need to have you learn all the spells that you can master. I don't think it will be more than two or at most three, but we need to arm you as much as we can. I think that the prophecy says you will have to be there when Dean does his part. If that's true, you may be the only witch there. You have an enormous power base to work with. In your hands even the simplest spells can be extremely effective. But you won't be able to do anything at all if you don't start working on it right now." Elizabeth gestured to the workout room in the back. Dawn looked around trying to find someone who would let her in on whatever it was they were going to do to the demons. No one relented in the slightest. She nodded her head reluctantly at Elizabeth and followed her into the back room. It wasn't that she didn't want to learn to use her magic; it was more that she wanted a piece of the demons that had jumped them.
Buffy led John and the boys back to where she had left the demons. The others went back to what they had been doing before, except for Faith. Wesley sent her to inform Xander of the meetings revelations as he had been unable to leave work. The demons were still in the dumpsters, although the dumpsters had taken quite a beating from the inside. Sam picked the lock on one of the dumpsters and Buffy hauled the demon out by the back of his jacket. As she did, Dean and John grabbed its arms and held on for dear life as she got it the rest of the way out. She threw it to the ground and then broke its back, hoping that would keep it from being able to move its legs. That didn't work very well. The demon was still able to move although not as well as if it had not taken any damage. Then she broke its neck, while Sam, Dean, and John all sat, or rather sprawled over its body; trying to control it the way that the stupid idiot who played with crocodiles piled his team on the crocodiles to move them. That worked a little bit better. The demon was cursing them out, calling John, 'Hunter' and saying how the clan was going to burn them all alive. Dean, being the closest to the demons face, smirked at it while helping Buffy to force its arm up above its head. Then, while they were holding it down, Buffy cut the hand off with a machete from the Impala's trunk. Watching it, they realized their guess was correct as it still continued to grasp at the ground. The rest of the demon's body soon followed, separated into the major parts. Then each part was placed in garbage bags to wait for the rest of its disposal.
The second demon wasn't so lucky. Although its legs and arms were cut off at the elbows and knees, the rest of its body was kept intact. Then it was tortured with holy water by John while Buffy joined Dean and Sam in holding it down. Not one of them felt the slightest bit of remorse. This demon had tried to kill Dawn. If it had only gone after Buffy, that would have been different as far as she was concerned. She was a vampire slayer after all, and being attacked by demons was just a normal part of her day. Dawn, however, was an entirely different matter. John and the boys didn't make any distinctions at all. This demon came from the same clan as the one who had killed both Mary and Jess and therefore would get nothing but their hatred. It took some time and some creative uses of holy water for the demon to finally break. There was a price on Dawn's head. The first demon to capture her and bring her back to the head of the clan would get to keep her for themselves as a pet as long as they killed her within a few days. The hunter and his boys had already been chosen by the head of the clan and his two heirs. The clan house was located in Cleveland, close to the hellmouth there. That was where the clan's treasures were kept. Most of the clan was either here or on their way in an attempt to kill them and stop the prophecy. With that information, they stopped torturing it and dismembered it as they had the other demon.
A beat cop had started to walk down the alley when they were in the process of cutting the demon's head off, but when he saw what was going on, he merely tipped his uniform hat to Buffy and turned and walked away. It looked like she and her friends had things under control. Besides, if she was disposing of something that looked like a human, but obviously wasn't since the parts were still moving, he wasn't going to interfere. It was just one more evil thing that he didn't have to deal with, which was just fine with him. He had a hard enough time with the drunks and other human criminals. He didn't want to have to deal with anything that looked human enough that he couldn't tell the difference.
Faith passed the cop on her way back to the Magic Box and peeked into the alley out of curiosity. She wished she hadn't done so when she saw what Buffy was doing. Watching the others wasn't as upsetting, but Buffy was a slayer, and these demons looked way to human for her stomach and nerves. The only thing that kept her from throwing up was the fact that she knew they were demons because the severed body parts were still moving. Her inner slayer was urging her to get in there and chop them up with Buffy, and the knowledge of what these creeps had tried to do to Dawn, who was just an innocent little kid, was backing her up. But the fact that they looked so human scared her. Dean looked up and saw her backing away from the alley. He went after her, trying to calm her down. This didn't go over well with Faith.
"I know they're demons, dipshit! I ain't stupid!" She shoved him away from her, trying hard not to hurt him, only to find that he didn't move at all.
"I'm not saying you are." Dean said, gesturing with his hands only to find Faith turning around and punching the wall behind her. At least if she broke her hand, it should heal fast, he thought to himself. "Let me see that."
"What is wrong with you!" Faith finally broke at this example of the kindness Dean was showing her. He fed her, he flirted with her, he helped Wes with her training, and he walked her to her appointments with her shrink, what did he want from her?
"I don't like to see you hurt." Dean said, hoping she would leave it at that.
"You stupid jerk!" This time she put some force behind her push, although she still couldn't bring herself to hit him. "What the hell does it matter if I get hurt?" She stormed off as soon as his butt hit the ground.
Buffy was there to help him up. "She's going back to the Magic Box. Let her talk to Wes first. He'll calm her down. I think you scared her a little."
Dean looked a little lost. "How did I scare her? I can understand her getting freaked out over those bastards, but how could I have scared her?"
"You were nice and you were worried about her. She hasn't had the best luck with guys before." Buffy left it at that. If Faith wanted to share her dating history with Dean later it would be her call. She patted Dean on the shoulder. "The demons are bagged up and your dad has an idea to deal with the parts. Why don't you go help him with that and I'll go and see what I can do at the Magic Box?" He walked back to the alley looking so much like a kicked puppy that Buffy's heart went out to him. It looked like he had fallen hard for the dark slayer. She smiled, when they got through Faith's fear of good men, they were going to make the perfect couple.