Rachel and Quinn: Witch Hunters!
chapter two
The park in the center of Lima is Brittany S. Pierce's favorite place in the world. She loves nothing more than feeding the cute, soft, downy ducks that swim around the pond at the heart of the park, cooing and singing to them while she tosses pieces of bread into the water. The signs around the park that warn against feeding the ducks confuse her: how can it be bad to feed the ducks? Do they want the poor things to starve? After all, there isn't any other food around that she can see. It's not like they even have a phone to order take-out.
She wishes her girlfriend was here with her today. It's a cool morning, and she adores the way Tina always wraps her in her arms to keep her nice and toasty. I'll always keep you warm, Britt-Britt, she'll say, her voice muffled by the curtain of Brittany's cornsilk blonde hair as she buries her face in the crook of her neck, planting little kisses there that never fail to make her shiver with warmth. Unfortunately, she's stuck helping two of their friends from Glee Club make costumes for their upcoming Sectionals competition right now. Brittany had offered to help as well, but Tina had waved her off, promising that she would meet up with her at the park later.
Isn't it later now? Brittany asks herself with a frown, idly tossing chunks of bread toward the ducks swimming around the pond like feathered ships on a naval mission. If it's not, when is it? Time is a mystery. That's why I don't wear a watch.
Her mind wanders off, as it frequently tends to do, into territories unexplored by anyone but Brittany. All her life, people have called her stupid, but she's always believed that's just a word people use to describe why they can't understand her. She's not stupid at all. Her brain just works differently than everybody else's. And she can see things that no one else does. It's not her fault if others don't get it.
(A mother duck with a brood of ducklings in tow quirks its head and glares balefully at the blonde girl, wishing she'd just stop thinking and throw more bread already.)
As her mind continues to wander, Brittany begins to think about the weird dreams she's been having lately. At first, she'd thought maybe Lord Tubbington had been projecting them into her brain so that he wouldn't be the only one suffering from insomnia, but when a particularly strange dream had awakened her one night, she'd found the large feline deeply asleep in his comfy bed, so that had blown her theory right there.
The dreams are like nothing else she's ever experienced – like looking through a window into a world that's completely alien. In this world, colors are dim and muted, like watercolors, but smells are sharp and intense. The air is thick and heavy. Her lungs feel as though they've had to expand to several times their normal size just to breathe, and her skin prickles as though someone's just run an ice cube all along the length and breadth of her body.
In the dreams, she's a passive observer, like a disembodied spirit, drifting through this strange world, taking silent notice of the shadowy doings of robed and hooded beings as they pore over enormous books and draw strange, elaborate symbols on long sheets of tan parchment. She knows that it all means something, but she can't imagine what that meaning could be, or why she's seeing all these strange things. Still, there's a tingling sensation at the back of her mind that tells her to tuck everything she's experiencing away in a secure corner of her memory, that it's vitally important for her to do so. It's a feeling she's had often in the waking world, too, and one she's learned not to dismiss.
Suddenly she becomes aware of a presence, strange and silent and carrying a faint scent of something wrong. Her eyes snap open, and her body bristles with tension, every nerve alert and aware. There's something here that shouldn't be. In her town. In her park.
Her eyes scan the scenery, searching for something, anything, to clue her in to what the source of this feeling might be. When her gaze alights on a certain tree, her vision is drawn up to a particularly long and wizened branch, and meets with pair of yellow eyes staring back at her. The eyes belong to a large, black-feathered bird perched there. Its beak is long and sharp, and its jet plumage ruffles ever so slightly as it seems to take Brittany's measure. They continue to stare at each other for several long minutes, and then the bird takes flight, a rough caw issuing from its beak as it ascends. Brittany tries to follow its path through the air, but it disappears quickly, leaving her to shake her head at the strangeness of it all.
"Hey baby. What are you staring at?" Tina's voice sounds as though it's underwater, or coming from somewhere far away.
Brittany shakes her head, forces a smile as the Asian girl sits beside her on the bench they've come to think of as exclusively theirs.
"Um, nothing. Just a bird," she says. Tina pulls her into a firm, yet gentle embrace, but it doesn't really help her to feel settled. "It was really big and black and it had these spooky yellow eyes. I don't think I've ever seen a bird like that before."
Tina releases her, looks hard at Brittany's face for the tell-tale signs of stress and worry that she hates to see. "It...it scared you, didn't it?" she asks, and there's so much tender concern in her voice that Brittany can't bring herself to lie and say it was nothing.
"Yeah. Yeah, it kind of did. I don't know why."
Tina sees her girlfriend's eyes widen in the next moment and feels, rather than hears, the warning to "DUCK!" Somehow, she manages to lower her head as Brittany swats at the dark missile that's flown straight at them. The bird croaks its strange call once more as it soars back up into the air, and both girls know it's gearing up to attack them again. Brittany hates the bird for putting the look of fear that she sees on Tina's face. She glares at the creature, silently warning it to rethink its current course of action.
The bird zooms down from the sky, talons like little razors extended to slash at its intended targets, to cut their flesh or perhaps take out their eyes. Tina's scream melds with the bird's to create a strange, otherworldly tone, low and high all at once. Brittany vaguely recalls hearing something like it in a dream. Time seems to slow down around them. All that seems to exist at this moment is the sky and the black bolt of shadow descending upon them at a speed no ordinary bird should be able to attain.
Just when it seems the creature is about to be upon them, another voice, strong and commanding, shatters the stillness of the moment, and a bright, blinding light flashes out of nowhere.
"STOP!" the voice shouts. Both girls think it sounds kind of familiar, but the thought is fleeting, replaced by the overwhelming sense of relief that floods through them when they see the huge bird blasted out of the air to land heavily on the ground maybe a foot away, as though it's been shot by some impossibly high-powered weapon.
Brittany leans forward to look at the thing's smoking, charred husk when another familiar voice, this one gentler but no less firm, speaks in her ear. "Don't look at it," the voice says. "Its eyes...they still have power." She only half-registers the feeling of soft, dark hair against her cheek, the hands on her shoulders pulling her back against the bench, tears wetting the fabric of her shirt.
"Familiar," says Quinn Fabray, stepping out of the nowhere from which her voice had first issued, disgust and sadness mingled in her tone. An orb of white light shines, rotating in the palm of one pale, long-fingered hand, illuminating her flawless face, alabaster skin and short pink hair. "Nasty one, too. Held to the bond for a long time."
The stench of burnt feathers hangs in the air. It makes Brittany's head hurt. Tina clutches her arm in a grip of horror, still crying silent tears, shuddering with them, wracked with pain and slowly dissolving panic.
"Belongs to an Old One, most likely. None of them have put so much as a finger out into the world for an age," Rachel Berry says, moving out from her position behind the bench on which Brittany and Tina sit frozen, immobile with shock. She crouches, smoothing her short skirt down beneath her legs, appraising the still-spasming creature with a studied eye and a grim expression. "This is something no one alive has ever seen before. At least, not outside the pages of a Grimoire."
Something wakens inside Brittany at Rachel's words. Yes. Now is the time.
"Um. Rachel? Quinn?" Her voice feels rusty, like it's been unused for months, sounding strange to her own ears. Her throat works against the dryness that's settled within it. She wants to thank them for saving her and Tina, but there's something tickling at the back of her mind that says it's even more important than that.
"Yes, Brittany?" Quinn responds, tearing her gaze away from the charred familiar. The pink-haired girl's usually intense hazel eyes are soft and kind now in a way Brittany can't recall ever seeing them before. She allows the surprise she feels at the look Quinn's giving her to register before remembering that it's her turn to speak.
She shakes her head, acknowledging the impossibility of what she's about to say and accepting its truth in the same moment. "I've...I've seen...that -" She points at the twitching carcass. " - in a dream. Lots of dreams, actually. I think...I think it saw me too. Could I...I mean, is it possible that maybe invited it here, somehow?"
A wordless conversation ensues between Rachel and Quinn during several seconds of long silence.
"Dreams and doorways," Quinn finally says. "It could have used you as a portal. I'm not saying it did, mind you. I'm just saying...it's possible."
Rachel looks at Quinn, then at Brittany, then back at Quinn. Her mouth is a tightly drawn line of grave concern. Quinn nods in understanding.
"We need to get you out of here," Rachel says, rising from her crouch. "You and Tina both. Don't come back here until we've got a better idea of what's going on – or at least, not without me or Quinn. Promise me you'll do as I'm telling you. Please. Okay?"
"I had hoped no one else would get involved in this," Quinn murmurs. The light in her hand spins. "Especially not any of our friends."
"I don't understand," Brittany says in a small voice. "What – what's happening?"
"We don't know exactly. Not just yet. But I promise you, whatever it is, Quinn and I will keep you safe. Tina, too. This whole town is under our protection. It's kind of what we do."
Brittany's eyes go wide with shock and confusion. "What do you mean, it's what you do? Like, no one does this, whatever this is. You...you sing and dance and Quinn hangs out under the bleachers and still gets straight As."
"What she means, Britt, is this: Rachel and I? We're not your average, ordinary small town high school students. Well, we are - sort of," she amends, " - but we're a lot more than that. Let's just leave it at that for now. Like Rachel said, we need to get the two of you out of here."
Brittany glances down meaningfully at the bird, which has now finally, mercifully, gone still.
"And what...what about that? You're not going to – I mean, you can't – just leave it here, right?"
Rachel reaches into the small purse – more of a pouch, really - slung over her left shoulder, retrieving a long, slender piece of white wood that's been sharpened to a wicked point. Brittany notices, but can't quite make out, the little carvings all up and down the thin shaft. She watches as Rachel clenches her fingers around it, and after a moment, it begins to glow with a greenish light. Then, with a grim look of satisfaction on her face, Rachel resumes her crouched position beside the dead familiar.
"Go to your rest, little one. You're finally free."
Brittany can't look away, even as Rachel's hand rises. Even as it falls. Even as the glowing wood pierces the massive bird's chest. Once, twice, three times, with Rachel chanting something low, slow and ominous, like that Black Sabbath song she heard on her father's stereo the other day.
The glow around the wood suddenly turns into a flare, and then both it and the familiar are ash. A breeze picks up, carries the ash away. Brittany could swear she'd seen Rachel make some sort of quick, almost imperceptible gesture with one of her hands, a strange configuration of her fingers, before the wind had come and gone.
Rachel rises again, and Quinn steps over to join her. The hand not holding the glowing ball of light slips into one of Rachel's. Quinn clears her throat, then speaks in a tone of complete and absolute authority.
"It goes without saying that you should tell no one – I mean no one – about what you've seen here. There are things alive in the world that you only thought existed in nightmares and scary movies. I assure you, they are very real and not to be fucked with. I trust you understand what I'm saying to you here."
Tina (who had come out of her shock around the time Rachel had done her glowing stick thing) and Brittany both nod mutely, weary with stress and fatigue.
"Then let's go." The ball of light grows, expands, as Rachel takes the other girls' hands and pulls them into it. It quickly becomes large enough to encompass all four of them, and then, without a sound, blinks out of existence, as though none of them had ever been there at all, leaving no trace of their presence.
No trace, that is, but for a scattering of ashes on the wind.