Rachel and Quinn: Witch Hunters!
chapter seven
Friday nights in Lima are generally boring, lazy affairs as far as the young people in town are concerned. It's the kind of place where there's very little to do, and seemingly way too much time in which to do it. For some, the preferred activity falls under the category of 'getting in trouble' – and there's nobody more dedicated to (or better at) that activity than Noah "Puck" Puckerman, the New Directions' very own self-proclaimed "bad boy."
Puck's the kind of young man who's smart enough to know that the things he's doing are probably wrong and won't lead to any good, but dumb enough not too think about those facts for too long. He's all fast-twitching muscle and slow-firing synapses, looking for the next good time and not the least bit concerned about where he might end up afterwards. Like some of his bros on the McKinley High School football team, he's on the cusp of manhood, but he's not getting there without kicking and screaming all the way.
On this particularly dreary (very) late Friday night, there's a light rain falling as Puck and his on-again, off-again friend Azimio Adams find themselves aimlessly wandering around the streets of Lima, bored and in search of something, anything, exciting to liven things up. Azimio had been Puck's last hope, after all the Glee Club guys had said no. He had failed to convince, in succession, Finn, Sam, Matt and Mike to hang out, and even Artie had wimped out on him. They'd all cited stupid reasons not to go out - homework, siblings, family time and other bullshit stuff. Since when was a freaking history project cooler than hanging with the Puckster? The worst, though, was when Lauren frickin' Zizes had just laughed, long, hard and loudly, before hanging up on him. That humiliating little episode had put him off calling any other girls – not even one of the usually reliable Cheerios - and in a really bad mood.
And when the Puckzilla is in a really bad mood, trouble is pretty much inevitable.
"This sucks, man," Azimio grumbles, looking up at the rain falling through the street lights. "Why'd I let you drag me out in the rain like this? I ain't tryin' to catch a cold. Coach Bieste will kill my ass if I get sick with the Carmel game comin' up."
"Relax, dude. You're not gonna catch a cold. You're gonna be fine. Jeez, it's just a little rain. Don't be such a wuss," Puck answers back, rolling his eyes. For all his bulk, Azimio is really kind of delicate. It would be funny if it weren't so lame.
Azimio growls menacingly at him, then voices an idea. "Let's get something to eat. Ain't there a pizza place somewhere around here that's open late? I could use me a slice or four."
Pizza does sound pretty good, but he's not quite ready to give up on his goal of doing something spectacularly stupid tonight. "I think so – hey, wait a minute. Check this out," Puck says, stopping short in front of a jewelry store window. "See that necklace? My mom would love something like that."
"So would mine," Azimo shrugs. "But you know that the both of us put together don't have half of what that thing costs. See that price tag, fool? Shit, we probably don't even have a quarter of that."
There's a devilish gleam in Puck's eye as he runs one hand through his Mohawk haircut and a smile Azimio's seen way too many times spreads across his face.
"Who the hell said anything about buying it?"
Azimio backs away, his hands raised in the traditional gesture of surrender. "Oh hell no, man. I ain't doin' nothing like that. You wanna try, go ahead – it's your sorry ass life – but I got me a scholarship I'm tryin' to earn, and I am not gonna mess that up. My mom and dad have been workin' too damn hard to end up blowin' their money bailin' my fool ass out of jail. I'm out."
"Aw, come on, Az, don't be like that. You know the cops in this town are morons, and they're all old and out of shape besides. They'd never catch us."
"I only see one moron around here, and that's you, Puckerman. D'you seriously want to go back to juvie? I sure as hell don't. Once was plenty enough for me." He pauses, seeing that his words aren't registering at all. A different thought occurs to him, and he starts again. "What would Berry think if you fucked up like that again? You wanna disappoint your Jewish princess? Huh?"
Puck's face falls, and his eyes drop. It's rare to see the self-proclaimed badass look ashamed; Azimio is one of the few who's ever seen it. He knows it's a low blow to use a guy's feelings for a girl against him, but despite the fact that they haven't always seen eye to eye, he considers Puck to be a friend, and he really doesn't want to see him mess his life up.
"That's cold, dude," Puck says quietly. The silence stretches between them, and Azimio knows he's finally gotten through. "You're right, though. I can't let my Jewish princess down. Besides, she'd never let me hear the end of it anyway."
"For real," Azimio laughs, feeling relieved when Puck laughs along with him, shaking his head. "Damn, but that girl can talk. I don't know how y'all put up with that."
"Yeah, she does talk a lot. But you know what? She's usually right." The rain has turned to mist, but the late night chill has grown decidedly colder. They pull their McKinley Football jackets more tightly around themselves. "Let's get the hell out of here and find some pizza."
"Yeah, man. Sounds good."
They laugh and bump fists, and with that, the two young men stride down the street, quickening their pace as a stiff breeze suddenly kicks up, blowing mist into their faces. The moon stares down, silent and impassive in the increasing haze.
The wind grows stronger and colder, knifing through their jackets. The mist thickens.
"Damn, it's cold," Puck mutters into the chill. "Was it supposed to be this cold tonight?"
"I don't know, man. All I know is, I'm freezing all of a sudden. Maybe - maybe we should just get back to your truck and call it a night?"
Puck frowns. He doesn't want the night to be over without at least using his fake ID again to score some more beer. The ones they'd already downed earlier in the evening, sitting in the truck, hadn't been nearly enough for him.
Then he hears it: a strange, keening, moaning sound, like the plaintive howl of a dog baying at the moon, and yet not like that at all. It's lower, throatier, like the creak and rasp of an old door opening. There's something wrong in it, a note of mocking laughter, and it's got the hair on the back of his neck standing up. The air is suddenly electric, and the wind continues to swirl and moan around them, making the leaves and branches in the trees lining the sidewalk tremble.
"Dude! You hear that?" he shouts, not at all sure that Azimio can hear him. He can barely hear himself. He's a tough guy. He hasn't been afraid of anything or anyone since he was ten years old, when his dad left and he became the man of the house. But now he's shaking, as the moan becomes a shriek, and the mist becomes a fog so thick he can barely make out the lumbering, stumbling form of Azimio in front of him, trying and failing to move forward in the face of this wind that's come out of nowhere, battering them with invisible fists, to get through this rain that's become a swarm of tiny, icy needles jabbing at their skin.
A shadow stands before them. A shadow that looks vaguely human, but not; the head is the wrong shape, the limbs too long, too thin. The hands have too many fingers – no, they're not even fingers, really, they're more like claws, like talons, made to rend and tear and shred soft, pitiful human flesh -
Puck's paralyzed, frozen in place. He wills his feet to move, to leap, to run, anything to get himself between the shadow-thing and his friend, but they remain exactly where they are, no matter how loudly his brain screams at them to just please fucking GO -
And then they do, and he's moving, he's moving faster than he's ever moved before, faster than he ever was on the football field, cutting through the wind and the rain and that goddamned fucking horrible sound -
Azimio screams in terror as the shadow thing smiles a gruesome red-fanged smile. No, don't, PLEASE – Hang on, man, I'm almost there!
The shadow-thing's single gray eye opens, fixes him with a terrifying stare. "You're...next," it says, in a hollow voice that sounds like bone being ground to dust, "Child."
Color returns to the world in an explosion of red, blinding Puck in jagged streaks. Azimio sinks to his knees, then slumps to the ground, his large body impacting against the sidewalk without a sound. The creature's smile widens. Bright crimson stains the concrete, pools outward to collect at the shadow-thing's feet as it raises an impossibly slender arm to show Puck the flopping, beating thing it holds in its clawed hand.
Bile rises in Puck's throat. He stares without seeing through tears mixed with rain at the blurred shadow-form grinning obscenely at him. The beating thing in its hand falls, landing with a soft plop next to Azimio's head. Rage floods through Puck's body, fills him with the desire to punch, to kick, to pound and strangle the creature as it laughs at his helpless anguish. And just as he lifts a foot to step forward, to confront the demon and bludgeon it into submission with his bare hands, something yanks him back, an invisible force coming from a direction his muddled senses can't identify.
Stay back, Puck, the voice of Rachel Berry commands, loud and urgent, reverberating in his skull. Trust me – you can't fight that thing.
And somehow she's there, standing next to him with Quinn Fabray standing on his other side, both wearing grim, determined expressions. He has no idea how they got there, how they knew what was happening. In his shock, he has very little idea of anything. He's delirious with grief, overdosed on adrenaline, and still longing desperately to punch something.
Quinn spares a glance down at the mangled form of what was once Azimio Adams, then looks over at Rachel, who nods affirmatively at her unspoken question. She takes a deep breath, holds it, then exhales as she sends out a thought.
Santana! Please tell me you're still down in Rachel's basement, like we told you to be. I'm opening a door and sending Puck and Azimio that way.
The dark-haired Cheerio jumps in fright when Quinn's urgent communication crashes into her mind, so loud it's like the girl had just shouted at the top of her lungs directly in her ear.
Ow! Jeez, Quinn – I'm still new to this telepathic shit. Wait, what? Puck...and Azimio? What the fuck?
There's no time to explain, San. Door's opening now. Pull them through, then the house is on lockdown. Full protection spell. Got it?
An oval-shaped blue glow suddenly appears right in front of her, and Santana's so startled – despite the warning - that she nearly falls off her chair. The portal grows taller and wider, and a clearly disoriented Puck steps through, pulling the prone, ruined form of Azimio by the arm after him. Smears of crimson paint the floor as Puck drags the body along, before collapsing into Santana's arms. His grip on Azimio's wrist loosens, and the arm drops weightlessly, hitting the floor with a loud smack.
The presence of Quinn's mind in hers is gone, and Santana immediately feels helpless and overwhelmed. She doesn't have the first clue as to what she should do, struggling to hold an unconscious Puck upright. Somehow, she manages to maneuver Puck into a large, soft chair, then gasps in horror at the sight of what's been done to Azimio.
"Oh – oh my God, Azimio!" she cries. She wants to pass out too, like Puck, just lose consciousness, hoping somehow that when she wakes, none of this will have happened, that it will all turn out to be just a horrible, horrible dream. Yet she knows she can't escape the terrifying fact of what's been done - or the fact that Rachel and Quinn are out there somewhere, facing down whoever or whatever it was that's responsible for it.
She remembers what Rachel had told her just a little while ago, the words echoing now in her mind:
You're in this now, for better or worse. That means you're going to see a lot of terrible, awful things. Stuff that's worse than any nightmare you've ever had. Being a Witch means seeing evil as it really is, looking straight on at the darkest, sickest, most vile things in existence. Confronting living incarnations of malice, of hate in its purest form, and staring it right in the eye without flinching or turning away, saying, 'No more. This is where it stops.' It might happen today, next week, or next month – but it will happen. And that's what we need to prepare you to do, as fast as we possibly can, because that's the only way you'll stay alive.
She sinks to her knees, crying, the tears freely flowing down her cheeks, off her face, landing on the floor to mix with Azimio's blood. Malevolent magic pulses in the appallingly open wound, filling her nostrils with its awful scent. It's making her sick, nauseous. Fever blooms in her skin. And as she always does when she feels like this, she thinks of the one person who can calm and soothe her. The only person in this world who completely understands her, who knows her inside and out.
Brittany! I need you!
And halfway across town, Brittany wakes from her dream, screaming Santana's name and shocking Tina, who'd been sleeping deeply beside her, from her own.
"Baby?" she asks, groggy but concerned, rubbing the sleep from her tired eyes. "What - what's wrong?"
"It's Santana," Brittany groans, searching the floor of her darkened bedroom for her jeans and T-shirt, scattered hours earlier, before they'd made love for the first time since the incident in the park (which Britt remembers, subconsciously, and Tina does not). "She's in trouble. She needs us."
"Not us, Britt. You. She always needs you," comes the reply, sharper than intended.
"No - us," Brittany corrects firmly. "It's gonna take both of us to help her with this. Come on, get dressed. And yes, I know it's four in the morning. I don't care. Get up."
Tina lets out a groan while Brittany pulls on her T-shirt. Normally, she likes it when Britt's wearing just a T-shirt and no pants, but not now.
"All right, all right. I'm getting up. Where...where is she, anyway?"
"She's at Rachel's house. We need to get there right away." Tina's own jeans and T-shirt land on the bed, where Brittany has tossed them. "Something bad has happened. Something really, really bad."
Gathering up her clothes before stepping into Brittany's private bathroom, Tina pauses when a thought enters her mind. "Wait – how do you know...are we doing this just because you had a bad dream?"
Brittany shakes her head no in reply. "I only wish it was a dream. Now come on. Go to the bathroom and whatever, get your clothes on and let's go."
Tina sees the fear in the blonde Cheerio's eyes, and the depth of it shakes her to the core. She nods and steps into the bathroom, shivering at what she saw reflected in those eyes, those beautiful blue orbs that she loves so much. Whatever's going on has made Brittany more afraid than she's ever been in her life, clearly, and Tina wonders just what they're about to walk into. She also wonders, yet again, what this strange connection between Brittany and Santana is, and why it seems to have become so much stronger lately.
She shrugs. Now is not the time for wondering. She has to believe that no matter how strong this – whatever it is – between those two is, it's not stronger than the relationship that she and Brittany share.
It can't be.
"Who are you?" Quinn shouts over the wind at the grinning shadow. "Why are you here? What do you want?"
The shadow-thing says nothing. Its only answer comes in the form of a single long, deadly talon raised to its obscenely smiling mouth, rows of razor-sharp, needle-like teeth glinting in the cold moonlight, drops of red falling, falling. The sidewalk is awash with blood, littered with crushed bone and pulped flesh.
"Name yourself, demon," she commands again. "I call you to account for the evil you have done here. You, and whichever master or masters you serve, whose bidding you have carried out this night."
The appalling grin spreads wider still, and a long, thin tongue the color of ash snakes out between those long, thin teeth, gleaming shards of violence in the mouth of a black abyss, to taste the blood and ruin, gorge itself on pain.
Quinn's about to try once more when the creature's voice slices through the wind like a blade through paper. She barely suppresses a shudder at the terrible, rasping sound of its mirthless laughter, like stone scraping against stone.
"I...? I...am...the avatar...of...murder. The first..and final...author...of the book...of pain. Inscriber...of names...on...black pages. Poet...of...your doom. Your screams...will be...my most exquisite...verses...yet...child."
Rachel blinks disbelieving eyes at the thing standing before them. She recognizes the creature; she's seen its picture in an ancient text. This is Samargauth, oldest of all the Old Ones. A power unseen on Earth since the very first time that Witches had set themselves against Demons with the fate of the world in the balance. A being so ancient, so powerful, that human minds could scarcely comprehend its existence. An entity that has not stood upon mortal soil in at least a thousand years. Her mind reels in shock. Never has she even imagined coming face to face with something like this.
These creatures were known by many names among those of the Witchblood. Whispered names, spoken only when there was light, never in the dark. Names that evoked dread and terror among young and old alike.
The Fear that Walks. Mind-Tearers. Soul-Renders. Shadeborn. Dusk Lords.
Outcast.
Banned and banished forever, imprisoned behind a thousand times a thousand walls, both physical and mystical. Locked away with a key forged by the power of a hundred Witches of legend - the Sisterhood of the Centenary.
And yet one is standing right here in front of us. How is this even happening?
"My...Queen...sends me...with...a message...for you," the thing grates. "The...fall...of...the Houses...of Witchkind...is upon...you. Pledge...to...serve her...and you will...live. Oppose...her...and...you will...die. Most...painfully. She...will extend...this...offer...only...once."
Rachel reaches, finds and squeezes Quinn's hand. The Old One is immensely powerful, but together, they're a match for it...they hope. The dagger she clutches in her free hand glows with eldritch light.
"You know our answer, Outcast," she says. Her voice is strong, clear and defiant, ringing with the power of more than a thousand years of Witchkind history. The sorcerous power in her blood kindles like a flame within her, singing to be released. "It is the only answer, the same one the Great Houses gave you when you horrors first found your way to this world by the paths of Shadow. Now away, thrice-damned! Away, before we destroy you as completely as we destroyed your King in those last days of war, an age ago. Surely you have not forgotten? Or do you seek to be reminded?"
Samargauth hisses with loathing, but flinches almost imperceptibly. The girls' Witchborn senses, however, perceive its fear quite clearly. They see, too, how much it hates that awareness of its fear. Yet it has its own brand of pride, and they know it will not depart quietly.
"I...seek...nothing...except your...destruction...foolish child! Now...DIE!"
It raises a clawed hand, and a burst of shadow-spawned force explodes out towards them, bursting apart when it impacts against the shield they've raised against it. The sheer force of it drives Rachel to one knee, gasping. Quinn stumbles backward. Doors splinter, shop windows and streetlights shatter. The ground quakes as the dark magic is repelled, scorching every surface it touches – grass, wood, metal, asphalt, concrete. Nothing around them is left unscathed by the devastating attack. Fortunately, the protection charm they've cast over the area means no one can see or hear anything that's happening. They'll return everything to its previous state once they've defeated Samargauth – if they can.
The shadow-demon's power is appalling in its sheer brutality, its pummeling, pounding strength, and for a moment the Witches' resolve nearly falters – but only for a moment. They are the daughters of House Berry and House Fabray. They are Witch Hunters, and now they know the enemy they face.
The Shadow Queen has risen – she who had been struck down from the Witch Throne for practicing unspeakable sorceries and allying herself with demons (along with her late, unlamented husband, the Warlock Sire), now returned to exact her promised revenge against all Witchkind for his death, and her banishment to the Dusklands. Such was her power that it could only be weakened, diminished, but not fully taken from her. The last words she spoke before being sent into exile had been a vow that she would one day return to wreak havoc and destruction upon the world that had scorned her.
Beginning right here in Lima.
Not if we have anything to say about it!
Samargauth's assault continues unabated, even as Rachel's mind scrolls back through every lesson she ever learned about the Shadow Queen and her demonic minions. Scores of Witches and their eldritch allies had been lost in the terrible war that had nearly doomed the entire earth. The Old Ones had dealt out out much of that death, and Samargauth more than most. Entire branches of both Berry and Fabray ancestors had been wiped out back then, slaughtered like sheep at the creatures' cruel and vicious hands.
With a thought, Quinn and Rachel's shield grows ten strong arms wielding ten great swords, slashing and stabbing through the Dusk Lord's defenses, slicing through the creature's form in a hundred places or more. Purple ichor oozes from those cuts, eating like acid through the concrete, creating black holes wherever it lands. Its talons grow longer and sharper, trying to jab holes in the girls' shield, break through their swords. Its face changes shape, grows a long, pointed beak that's shattered by the flat of two blades striking it at the same time.
"Fools! I was...ancient...before...time!" it rasps, even as its attacks weaken under the onslaught of the Witches' sustained offensive. "You...cannot hope...to stand...against...me!" It gestures with a clawed hand, and the ground beneath them flows, softens, so that Quinn and Rachel suddenly find themselves sinking into it. The distraction causes their attack to slow for a split-second, and the shadow-demon takes advantage, striking a savage blow.
They scream in agony when Samargauth's power touches them, ravaging their bodies and souls, leaving them heaving and breathless. It's like being struck by the lightning of a hundred storms at once, shocking all their nerves and organs simultaneously, turning their minds inside out.
Quinn recovers first, sees the beast readying another strike. Rachel! It's going to -
The blow lands, and the pain is even worse this time. Only one of the truest Witchblood could possibly withstand being blasted by the power of one such as Samargauth, and the blood of their Houses is truest of all, but still – they can't take much more of this. The creature feeds on their agony, draws strength from it, hammers them with yet another blow. Their shield cracks, and pieces of it fall away.
"Yes! YES!" the shadow-demon cries in exultation, drinking in their pain. "Let the music...of...your...fall...echo..down the hallways...to...the very...throne room...of...the Twilight Palace! Great...shall be...my reward...when my Queen...revels in...your demise!"
Battered, bruised and bleeding, eyes swollen nearly shut, bones fractured everywhere, barely able to move or think, somehow, the daughters of House Berry and House Fabray stumble somehow to their feet, feed power to their shield just barely in time to deflect yet another murderous blow. Goddess - this hurts! Rachel's thought is weak, barely audible in Quinn's mind. We've got to end this fast, or we're done...and so is the world. Lima's just the start of it.
Not gonna happen, Quinn replies. You know what we need to do.
They concentrate, and their very beings merge, become one, joining on an aetherial level far beyond anything any other pair of Witches could ever hope to do. Slowly but surely, their shield grows larger and stronger as they will themselves to overcome their fatigue and pain, and soon it becomes all but impenetrable. Their combined power gathers in the center of it, building and building, even as the Old One throws one mighty bolt after another at them, only to see them shred, fall apart against the shield.
"No...NOOO! I...was...promised...my Queen...she PROMISED!," the demon shrieks, its voice now a high, thin wail. "She...said...I would...flay the flesh...from your...bones...make rings...of your spines! It...was...PROMISED! I...was...to be...your...DEATH!"
"All of your Queen's promises are lies. Sad you still haven't learned that, monster." Quinn grits out through clenched teeth against the searing, lancing pain in her side, where she has at least two, maybe three broken ribs. It's agony to breathe, much less to speak, yet somehow, she finds it within herself to scream out in defiance: "Now – go – back – to – HELL!"
"What she said," Rachel gasps, almost too weak to stand, but still determined to put everything she has into what they hope will be the final blow. She releases the dagger from her hand, and it flies up into the shield's center, pulsing with power. Then, with the flick of a finger, the blade launches itself at Samargauth, First of its Kind, into its open, screaming maw – and the demon's form tears itself apart, a conflagration of blue fire consuming it from the inside. The single eye melts down its ruined face, its claws wither into gnarled, impotent stumps, and the charred, shriveled thing that Quinn can only guess might once have been its heart floats in the air by itself for a few moments before finally crumbling to a pile of ash no larger than an ant-hill, the ensorcelled dagger lying exposed in the middle of it.
At a weary, crooned note from Rachel, the blade floats serenely back to her hand, and with a gesture, she incinerates the small mound of ash in a blaze of blue fire that lasts barely a second. The dagger hums sleepily in contentment, its hunger for demon blood finally sated. This was one of the two remaining Tempest Blades, instruments of the greatest working of Witch-magic ever done. The others were all presumed to be lost or destroyed in the War, and with the fashioning of the Thousand-Walled Prison, it had been thought they would never be needed again. Rachel had called them from the Witch Hold itself, where the Queen herself sits upon the Throne of the Goddess' Palm, when she'd realized the true nature of the evil they faced.
The weapon had been crafted in another time solely for this purpose: to kill and utterly destroy demons, even ones of the oldest blood, like Samargauth. Indeed, both girls, in later years, will recall with grim satisfaction the way the Dusk Lord's single eye had widened in disbelief upon recognizing what was being wielded against it. The one who had created it had done so with extraordinary care and skill, and at such terrible risk to herself that many had urged her, warned her – even begged her - not even to attempt it, so perilous was the magic involved. And as they had all feared, the crafting did in fact change her, warped her into someone far different than who she had been before, and what had been her House's greatest pride became its greatest shame.
Quinn had refused even to touch the one that was meant for her. She would not say why, furiously shaking her head no, leaving Rachel puzzled before they'd left the house, after they'd made Santana promise to stay behind.
She remembers the words she was told as a little girl, when her mother had related the tale to her one night in the darkness of her bedroom, at just that moment before sleep had claimed her:
To destroy dark magic, one must first touch dark magic – for only in knowing the truth of it can it be vanquished entirely. That is the danger of being a Witch: in opposing evil, in looking at it so closely, you place yourself at great risk of becoming the very thing you oppose, to be destroyed in the end by that which you had sought to destroy.
"The only good thing you ever did, great-grandmother," Quinn whispers hoarsely as the wind dies down. She knows that Rachel won't hear, distracted as she is by the necessary wrapping and careful securing of the dagger in the pouch slung over her shoulder – otherwise she would never voice the Fabray House's darkest, most closely-kept secret. It's the only thing she's never shared with Rachel – the only thing she's ever felt the need to keep from her. Even the Annals, the massive tomes within which the whole of Witchkind's history are recorded, do not contain the truth, having been altered by the most powerful memory spell ever cast. To this day, no one outside of House Fabray knows the real story of the forging of the greatest weapons ever held by a Witch's hand – and though it pains Quinn to withhold anything from the girl she loves more than life, she's determined to keep this secret to the end.
For who could love someone whose great-grandmother had killed a Queen with a weapon meant to slay demons, all in a foiled attempt to put her own daughter on the throne?
"Quinn?" comes the gentle voice as the familiar pair of strong, yet gentle arms gingerly wrap themselves around her waist. She loves the feeling of comfort she always gets when Rachel holds her like this, the other girl's head leaning against her back as she speaks softly. "Are you all right? We need to go. The reversal spell's already done its work, but...there's another problem."
Wiping a tear of frustration from her eye, Quinn grimaces in pain when she straightens up. Her ribs are still knitting themselves together, thanks to the healing magic in her blood; already her face no longer shows any sign of the titanic battle they've just won. She knows that Rachel's healing too, thank goodness. They'll wear the scars of this fight on their souls forever, though, along with all the others they've accumulated. It's just part of what it means to be a Witch Hunter.
"Yeah," she says. "I'm fine, love. What's the other – oh, wait. Let me guess. Santana."
"She called Brittany, mind to mind. Quinn, she's scared witless. She had no idea what to do when we sent Puck and – and Azimio – through to her, so she did the only thing she could think of, the thing she's always done since they were little. She called Brittany, and now -"
"Now Britt – and probably Tina, too – are outside the house wondering why they can't even step onto the driveway."
Quinn sighs. She had hoped Santana would be able to maintain the cool confidence she had exuded in those last moments before they'd left her, but no. Well, she supposes she can't be too hard on the girl – after all, she hadn't exactly been the epitome of calm herself the first time she'd seen the remains of a victim of dark magic, either. This is not the kind of life in which one can be shielded from harsh realities, and honestly, the sooner one is exposed to them, the better. It's a painful lesson, but one that will make Santana stronger, if she responds to it the way Quinn expects she will.
"And we still need to figure out what to tell the police, and...oh, goddess, Azimio's family," Rachel says, choking back a sob and flinging herself back into Quinn, who holds her with one arm while raising the other to gently stroke a hand through Rachel's hair.
"I know, sweetheart...I know," Quinn responds in the softest, most soothing voice she can muster. "Hey, hey, listen...one crisis at a time, right? Isn't that what you always say? Of course, you usually say it about Glee rehearsals and math quizzes, but still..."
Rachel laughs a broken little laugh, then breaks from Quinn's grasp to smack her pink-haired girlfriend's arm lightly. "Damn it, Quinn. Why do you always insist on making me laugh at the most inappropriate times?"
Quinn shrugs. "It's who I am. It's what I do." She grabs Rachel's hand, squeezes it. "Now come on. We need to get back to the house, let Brittany and Tina in and give them the short version of what's happened, make sure that Santana's all right, then get Puck and Azimio's body back here and call the police." The gears in Quinn's mind are spinning quickly now, and a thought comes to her. "We'll tell them that Azimio was hit by a car. Yes, that's it. A car that sped by so fast, Puck couldn't even get the license plate number or even see what kind it was."
"And then...Azimio's family?" Rachel asks, her voice sad and weary. She's so tired that she can't even try to hide her exhaustion from Quinn, as she usually does.
"I...I think we'll leave that to the police. And Puck can talk to them, too, once we've got the proper memories in place." Quinn pauses, waits for Rachel to nod in agreement with the plan. "I envy him, you know. He'll never remember what really happened tonight."
"He'll still need a lot of help, though," Rachel observes. "True, he won't recall the actual events, the real horror, but in the end he'll still remember seeing a friend die in a horrible, violent way."
Quinn's expression is sad as she considers Rachel's words; Puck had been something more than a friend to her once, a long time ago. She still cares for him, but her heart has always truly belonged to Rachel.
"Santana will be there for him," she says as the portal she's just opened floats silently in the air before them, waiting for them to step through. "We all will, as far as that goes. And we'll need to watch him carefully. When non-Witches come in contact with dark magic, the after-effects can be unpredictable. I think we got here in time to shield him from overexposure, but we can't be too sure."
"You're right," Rachel agrees, primly smoothing her skirt down across her tanned thighs. Then she steps into the portal that will take them across town and back home just as a new thought pops into her head, a question that's finally made its way to the front of her mind after being pushed the back before the battle.
Quinn sees the other girl's eyes widen when the thought hits home, and she knows that can't mean anything good. It never does. "Rachel? What's wrong?"
Rachel's voice is low and shaky, filled with the worry that neither of them has dared to voice until now. "Quinn – I know you've thought of this too, but...how did an Old One, let alone Samargauth itself, escape the Thousand-Walled Prison and come here to Lima? That...that's supposed to be impossible, and yet...and yet it happened."
"I don't know," admits Quinn. "That's been bothering me from the start. But we'll figure it out, right?"
"Of course," Rachel says, forcing a smile. She knows she's not fooling Quinn with it for a second, but it makes her feel a tiny bit better anyway. "Of course we will."
Then they step into the portal, and it winks out behind them. The wind is silent as they go.