A/N: I know, I know. I'm a very bad author... And despite this, people are still reading and reviewing, something for which I am extremely grateful for. :) *dodges flames and holds up pic as shield*
Big thanks to my betas, deiticlast, murg, and satsuma, and to AwesomeGeek and kerrykhat for putting up with me when I obsessively tweak a chapter. :P And thanks to amelockhart, brigand, fairywm, Krysis, Lisette, mags, punzl, Rosetta, and ShoePixie for the recs! Now onto the story!
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Buffy stared at Oz, not quite believing her eyes. Then, moving faster than Xander and Oz thought possible – even for her – she half-tackled/half-hugged the werewolf. Oz, for his part, was completely unfazed and returned the heartfelt embrace – once he regained his footing.
"Surprise," Xander announced, a huge grin on his face as he came to stand next to them.
Buffy pulled back to look at Oz in mock consternation. "Please don't tell me that you're the surprise that could potentially bring on the apocalypse," she warned.
Oz shrugged, though a slight smile tugged around his mouth. "I can be unpredictable that way."
Suppressing a snort of laughter, Buffy turned and looked expectantly at Xander, who immediately held his hands up in surrender.
"Ah, after Sunnydale, I went to find Oz. I figured he deserved to be told in person what had happened," he explained. There was a moment of silence as both he and Oz looked down at the ground. Then he looked up at Buffy with a wry grin. "As for the apocalypse part, well, I was just joking- ouch!"
"Xander, there are two things you never joke about: potential apocalypses and- and something else equally unfunny, like syphilis," Buffy said pointedly.
"So noted," he acknowledged, wincing slightly as he rubbed his now sore arm. "Geez, Buffy. Someone needs to lay off the Wheaties."
Buffy just rolled her eyes, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the grin on her face. It was good to see them.
Eric, Bill, and Sookie stood on the porch, silently watching this entire exchange – or more accurately, Bill and Eric were watching. Sookie was concentrating on what was inside the strangers' heads, and, well, it was a good thing she didn't have to work tonight, because it was about to get very interesting – as if it wasn't already.
First, there was the redhead – Oz, Buffy had called him. There was more to him than met the eye, that much was for sure. Trouble was, that was all Sookie could tell; when she tried to listen to his thoughts, she just heard a faint buzzing noise – the same thing that happened whenever she tried to listen in to Sam's mind. Was he a shifter, too? Maybe that was why Bill and Eric were staring at him like he was a bug under a microscope…
Then there was the guy with the eye patch, Xander. Now he was 100% human and a broadcaster at that. Andhe was currently sizing them up with surprising accuracy.
She listened as he took in her tan, the way she stood close to Bill, and the curiosity that was apparently written all over her face. He also took a moment to appreciate her… vigorous appearance. Before she could even manage a modest blush, however, he had already turned his attention to the vampires, immediately noting their extremely pale countenances and the unnatural way they stood still. What's more, he noticed the way they were focused on Oz – and the way Eric would occasionally glance at Buffy.
Sookie watched as Xander turned to give Buffy a look of horrified disbelief. Before he could verbalize his thoughts on the matter – some of which Sookie took offense to because she was currently dating a vampire – Oz spoke up.
"Huh, vampires," he noted, looking at Eric and Bill thoughtfully. "That's interesting."
Xander shook himself out of his stupor and glared at his friend. "Hey, that's my line," he protested. "Of course, I would've phrased it as, 'Dear God, Buffy, another vampire? Seriously?!'"
Buffy scowled. It deepened even further when she felt Eric's delight at both her and Xander's reactions. "No, Xander," she said hotly. "It's not like that."
"Uh huh," Xander replied, obviously unconvinced as he gave Eric another look over. "Does the phrase 'mortal enemies' mean nothing to you?"
Eric merely gave him a mild grin, though he purposefully showed a little fang. He found it amusing, especially the embarrassment and guilt currently radiating from the Slayer.
"Whatever," Buffy muttered, thoroughly annoyed with them both. It was so time for a subject change. "Sookie, Bill, Eric, meet Oz and Xander, my friends from Sunnydale. Guys, these three have been helping me figure out what the heck Collins and the Council are up to."
She paused, watching as the two groups acknowledged each other warily. Clearly mistrust was abounding, so she figured that she might as well get everything out in the open, even if it was just stating the – mostly – obvious.
"Bill and Eric are vamps of the non-demony variety, and Sookie's a telepath," she explained to Xander and Oz. She felt Eric's flash of annoyance and rolled her eyes as she turned toward him and the others. Did he really expect her not to tell her friends about Sookie? "And Oz is a werewolf."
Sookie bit back a gasp of surprise, though it wasn't at the revelation that Oz was an honest to God werewolf – or because Buffy had spilled the beans about her 'ability'. No, she was startled by the sudden barrage of images in her head.
Xander was panicking, his mind moving a mile a minute as the truth about her sunk in. She could hear him worrying that she had read his mind not two minutes ago when he was admiring the way she filled out her shirt, and she could practically see the light bulb go off over his head when he realized that she was probably reading his mind at that very moment.
Bearing an uncanny resemblance to a deer in the headlights, he immediately began to recite 'Mary had a little lamb' in his head over and over again – which only meant that all the lurid thoughts and images that came to his mind were interspersed with a children's nursery rhyme.
This is wrong on so many levels.
The thought came through so forcefully, it nearly knocked Sookie over.
The guy was so obviously miserable that she almost forgave him for his not so nice thoughts earlier about girls who dated vampires. Well, she could at least hide her smile, right? It was the polite thing to do, after all.
She must've been as transparent as plastic wrap, though, because he took one look at her and flushed bright red, mentally berating himself about a knee jerk reaction to mindreading even after years of fighting 'baddies' on the Hellmouth.
Thankfully for both of them, Buffy started talking again. "Not that I'm complaining, but how did you find me?" she was asking.
With a palpable sound of relief, Xander cleared his throat. "We, uh, were already on our way down here when we got Vi's e-mail. Then we just looked up Sookie's address in the phone book and came here," he shrugged nonchalantly, though a blush still stained his cheeks. "We tried to get Vi to come with us, too, but she's on lockdown or something."
This caught Eric's attention, and he stared at Xander as he digested what the boy had just said. Violet was so willful, to give that information – especially his whereabouts – so freely. He would have to have a conversation with both her and Chow. While he was reluctant to take any action against Violet because of the slayer, he could not afford to give her free reign, especially as it would send a message to others that he had no control whatsoever – which he clearly didn't.
Xander gave a nervous laugh. The fact that Leif Erikson over there was currently fixing him with this inscrutable look was not lost on him. "I never thought I'd say this, but I'm missing Angel right about now," he muttered under his breath to Oz. "I definitely prefer my vampire irritable and obvious."
Buffy gave him a sharp glance, which was punctuated by the glee she felt from Eric at this tidbit of information. She'd have to tell Xander in private later to watch what he said, for both their sakes. Then it dawned on her.
"Wait!" she exclaimed. "You were already coming down here? Why?"
Xander gave her a perplexed look. "Because of Kennedy," he said slowly, as if that were obvious. Then he looked up toward the house. "Where is she, anyway? Has she gotten here yet? I can't imagine we beat her here with the head start she got."
Buffy felt as if she had been punched in the solar plexus. "Kennedy… is alive?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
How did Sookie describe the new slayer? A thin brunette who hated her? Kennedy certainly fit that bill, didn't she?
Xander, seeing the shock on her face, looked at Oz and started cursing. "Damn it! She could be in trouble, and we lost her!" he exclaimed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "We're really sorry, Buffy. All the signs said she had headed south. We just figured that you finally got in touch with her, so we were heading down here ourselves when we got Vi's message. I'll never forgive myself if something happened to her."
"Sorry, Buff," Oz murmured, also looking chagrined. Well, chagrined for him.
Buffy was at a loss for words. She could see that they had misunderstood her. Not that she blamed didn't know the details of Sookie's romp in Collins' mind yet. But she did. And it was starting to make sense – terrible, nightmare-inducing sense.
Buffy sighed. Well, this was the kind of fun that wasn't.
After Xander's bomb, they all had moved back inside to Sookie's living room where they could talk more privately. There was a slight issue of who sat where, so after playing some serious musical chairs, Sookie and Bill were finally settled back on the love seat, Oz in the armchair, and Eric and Xander on the couch, with her in the middle. And of course Eric was shamelessly using this as an opportunity to sit uncomfortably close to her.
That was okay, though. Mostly. It allowed her to pull herself out of her earlier shock anyway. But now she was firmly in slayer mode, and she was getting antsy. It didn't help that things were going nowhere fast; she had just gotten her friends up to speed, and not too surprisingly, they didn't know what to say so they weren't saying anything at all.
To make matters worse, in her effort to catch them up, she had mentioned what Sookie had told her about Collins and the new slayer, something Eric had specifically told the telepath not to do until he got there; so now Eric's eyes were trained on the poor girl, with Bill glaring right back at him. And what was it with Eric and smelling hair?
All she needed now was for Bubba to appear out of thin air again for the party to really start.
Just as she was about to elbow Eric to stop antagonizing Bill, Xander broke the silence.
"So let me get this straight. The Council is trying to kill Potentials, and our good friend Collins showed up to kill Vi, who incidentally is a vampire. You caught Collins, though, and brought him here, questioning him until another vampire, one who's conveniently not here, killed him. And there's a slayer who hates you and wants to kill you," he summed up. He gave Buffy a ghost of a smile. "You can take the girl out of the Hellmouth…"
Buffy shot him a withering look. "And don't forget that Kennedy is probably the slayer in question," she added.
"She can't be," Xander immediately protested. "Sure, she's got her hate on for you, but she's friends with the other Potentials, and she loved Willow."
"But Willow's dead," Oz quietly cut in. "And speaking from personal experience, I know what losing her can do to a person."
Xander paused as he thought about this. Then he brightened as something occurred to him. "But that still doesn't make sense. If she's really a slayer, it would mean that she was against us before the battle with the First," he reasoned. "Otherwise she would've told us she got Called when the other girls' powers disappeared and she still had hers."
"I know," Buffy replied steadily. The same thought had occurred to her as well, which meant that this went a lot deeper than they knew.
Xander shook his head in denial. "I don't believe it," he said stubbornly. "She's our friend."
"It has to be her, Xander," she said with grim finality. "And now she's headed here."
"But why?" Eric cut in. "It seems as though not many know you're here."
Buffy frowned. She hadn't thought about that. There was no way Kennedy would know she was here, which meant that she must be coming to meet Collins. But he had already checked out of his hotel the day before, so why? Come to think of it, why did Collins stick around for so long if he thought Vi was killed by those vamps in the alley? Maybe—
"Excuse me, but how does this all concern you, except for the fact that one of your minions turned Vi?" Xander asked irritably, disrupting Buffy's train of thought as he glared at the vampire.
Eric showed no reaction to this obvious baiting – and he felt some satisfaction at the look of astonishment on the boy's face. He had a feeling this one was going to be a thorn in his side, one that he couldn't pluck – or crush – not if he wanted the Slayer.
"And there's still his connection to the Fellowship," he added thoughtfully, as if the boy hadn't spoken at all.
"The Fellowship is involved?" Bill questioned, eyes narrowing with worry as he looked at Sookie. "If the Fellowship attacks our credibility while the Council kills our kind, I can assure you that we will have a war on our hands."
The room suddenly became very tense. It didn't help that a faint gleam had entered Eric's eye at the mention of war with the Fellowship and Council, one that he didn't bother masking.
"I wonder where the weres would stand," Oz mused aloud, effectively diffusing the situation with his question. He raised an eyebrow in amusement at the surprised looks he got. "They have a stake in all this, too."
Eric studied Oz with renewed interest. It was an interesting point, one worth exploring. Before he could comment, however, his cell phone began to ring.
"Yes."
Buffy rolled her eyes at the way he answered the phone but said nothing, putting all her energy into eavesdropping instead. It didn't work, though. The volume of the cell phone was so low, all she could make out was that it was Pam on the other end. That, and she was speaking in a low and urgent voice, her usual dry amusement completely gone. That couldn't be good.
She watched as Eric listened for another minute, acknowledging what Pam said with no more than an occasional 'yes', and then hung up. She knew it was bad news, though. Big yay for the blood bond.
Eric hung up the phone. Fully aware that Buffy knew his state of mind, he didn't waste any time playing games. "Violet is gone," he stated bluntly. As expected, he felt a surge of emotion from the Slayer. She said nothing, however, and her face looked as though it were set in stone. Unfortunately, her friend wasn't as self-contained.
"Again?!" Xander blurted out. "We need to put some sort of tracking device on that girl!"
Sookie stared at Xander with wide eyes. Just because she was thinking the same thing, that didn't mean she would say it out loud as she was pretty sure it could be taken as a criticism of Eric and his management of his territory. And even from her limited experience, she knew that vampires didn't take too kindly to comments from the human peanut gallery.
To her surprise, however, Eric didn't even acknowledge this slight. Boy, he must've really wanted to stay on Buffy's good side. Murderous people who wanted to start a war aside, the Slayer's presence was definitely a good thing.
"She was abducted from Fangtasia," Eric continued, a trace of anger in his voice, though his expression remained neutral. "They left a note. 'We know you have him.'"
Buffy leapt to her feet and began to pace, well aware that she was just barely controlling the despair and rage welling up inside her. Add to that Eric's own anger, which was coming through loud and clear from the bond, and well, things didn't look too good for the local tree population.
"It's no coincidence they took Vi. And she would only let her guard down if it was someone she trusted," she bit out angrily, aiming her comment specifically at Xander before looking at Eric. "If they want to trade, they're going to move fast on this. Let's go."
Both Xander and Oz immediately got to their feet, ready to leave. A split second later, Sookie and a slightly more reluctant Bill also stood up.
Buffy raised a questioning eyebrow at the telepath.
"What?" Sookie said, just a little bit offended. "You said I couldn't stay here, right?"
Buffy had forgotten she had said that, and now her words were obviously coming back for some major ass biting.
Chagrined, she glared at Sookie, inadvertently venting some of her anger over the situation at the poor girl. "Yeah, but I meant you should take a vacation. Remember, me? The harbinger of doom?"
"Are you always this cheery?" Sookie retorted, the frustration plain in her voice even in the face of Buffy's displeasure. She didn't stick her tongue out like she wanted to, though, so points for her. Of course, it helped knowing that she might not get it back if she did. "Don't get me wrong. I don't want to come within a football field of this other slayer, but I'd rather not wait here for some nice guy to knock on my door and take me out while you all are in Shreveport, either."
"Sookie…" Bill said in a low voice, putting a placating hand on her arm.
She immediately pulled her arm away and rounded on him. "Don't you dare, Bill Compton," she warned.
Eric studied the pair. "Her telepathy could be useful. And she hasn't had the opportunity to tell us the rest of the dead man's thoughts," he blandly pointed out.
Bill gave Eric a venomous look. "And what? You'll protect her just as you did Violet?"
"It's more than you can offer her. What will you do during the day, Bill? Remember, the Council is human," Eric coldly reminded him. Then he gave a small, arrogant smirk. "Besides, with both the Slayer and myself there, I hardly think Sookie will be the focus."
The room vibrated with tension as the two vampires glared at each other. Buffy could feel all the non-vampiric eyes on her, waiting to see what she would do. She did nothing, however, stuck in a moment of indecision. As much as she hated to admit it, both Sookie and Eric had a point. Then again, so did Bill.
Seeing her hesitation, Xander made a sound of disbelief. "Buff, you're not seriously considering this," he protested. "Angel Junior is bringing up some very valid arguments here."
Angel Junior? If Buffy were in a different frame of mind, she would be smirking at Xander's observation. But now, when he was looking at her like that? So not happening. And so much for a happy reunion, huh? She felt herself getting angrier.
"I'm not 'considering' anything, Xander. Did you ever stop to think that Sookie's her own person?" she snapped.
She knew she was conveniently 'forgetting' that she had just been about to put the kibosh on Sookie's plans to go with them, but there were just too many similarities to the Potentials and her decisions that led them to their deaths.
This wasn't lost on Xander, either. He scowled at her for a long moment before he took a deep breath. "We've still got issues between us. I got that. You're too close to this – we both are," he ruefully admitted. "But there's a bigger picture here."
As Xander backed down, Buffy allowed herself to do the same, finally acknowledging that he had a point. "I know, but as much as it pains me to admit, Eric's right," she said quietly. "Kennedy would have to be stupid to try something with him, his vamps, and us around."
"Which she's not," Xander pointed out. "Which means there's probably more to this than we know."
"This does sound like a trap," Oz admitted.
"Doesn't it always?" she muttered under her breath. She abruptly swung her gaze toward Sookie and fixed her with an unyielding gaze. "So you know the deal. It's up to you. Though I would like to stress that I still think a nice long vacation somewhere sunny is your best bet."
Startled by the sudden attention, Sookie didn't know what to say at first. Up until that moment, she had been watching the entire exchange in complete fascination. Somehow, in the course of things, Buffy had gone from practically forbidding her from coming to becoming the champion of self-determination (and yes, she could thank her word of the day calendar for that one).
"I'm in," she said quickly, before Bill could interject – and before she could change her mind.
Like she had said before, she was involved whether she liked it or not. And she'd be damned if she was just going to lie down and wait.
Besides, fortune favored the brave, right? Well, now, no one said it couldn't take pity on the stupid every now and then.
