Dawn stood in the back yard of the coffee shop with Ryan and Lisa waiting for Casey to finish changing out of her work clothes in the staff bathroom. Ryan kept anxiously casting his gaze to the heavens, and the angry black clouds gathering overhead that further darkened the sky. It looked as though the storm would break at any moment.
"Sheesh, how long does it take to change your clothes?" He asked, glancing back at the rear doors that stubbornly remained Casey-less. "I mean, it's a pre-picked outfit! …Right?"
"No, Ryan, she packed her entire wardrobe and brought it to work." Dawn commented dryly, while picking coffee grounds out from beneath her fingernails. She had ducked into the bathroom quickly before Casey to swap her work shirt for a clean T-shirt and hoody ready to head on over to Lisa's for their movie marathon that night. They had to be back at the coffee shop the following morning for their Sunday shifts, but would be starting late enough that should they get a late night (as they inevitably would), it wouldn't matter. Sunday was slow, didn't require as much multitasking and concentration as a Saturday.
"Unlike you, we can't just strip off and change in the middle of the staff room." Lisa told Ryan, arching one eyebrow pointedly.
"Yeah, thanks for that…" Dawn muttered. As soon as they entered the staff room together, Ryan had whipped off his work shirt and swapped it for the clean sweater he now wore.
"You loved it." He grinned shamelessly at them.
"Oh, yeah, those skinny ribs really do it for me." Lisa elbowed him. Casey bounded out through the fire doors then, changed and ready to go in clean jeans, a band T and a hoody.
"Finally!" Ryan cried in mock exasperation. "Can't you see it's going to rain?" Casey looked up at the sky and shrugged.
"Sorry, wanted to wash the coffee off myself first." She said. Dawn wished she had thought of that. Her palms were gritty with it. "Is Buffy walking us home?" She asked her friend playfully, nudging her with one elbow. Dawn glowered in response.
"No." She said. "She's entrusting our lives to Ryan." Casey and Lisa snorted. Ryan puffed out his chest proudly.
"This way, ladies! You're safe with me!" He said, bounding off ahead. The girls exchanged looks of amusement and followed him out onto the street.
They were arguing over pizza toppings around the dining table in Lisa's home when the rain started. It began with the sky growing noticeably darker still, then light a pattering of raindrops against the windows. Seconds later the water was falling in torrents and the wind began to gust, driving the rain into the side of the house.
Ryan let out a low whistle.
"We got in just in time, then." He commented, as they had barely been in the house ten minutes.
"Does this mean we have to tip the pizza guy for delivering?" Casey asked. "Because I only bought enough cash for my share of food."
"I'm sure he'll understand." Dawn told her.
"Yeah, well, for him to deliver the pizza we actually have to order it." Lisa said pointedly, glaring at Ryan who was insisting on adding anchovies. He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in surrender.
"Omigod, okay, fine! No fishies!"
Lisa let out a victory whoop, punching the air above her head, and dashed off to ring through their order while Dawn counted out their money ready to hand over as soon as their dinner arrived. She had to admit looking over the menu had made her realize just how hungry she was. She could feel the first rumbles beginning in her gut, and coughed to hide the sound from her friends, casting about a furtive glance to make sure she hadn't been figured out. She needn't have bothered as Casey and Ryan were now bickering over which horror movie they would be watching first. Casey was firmly against watching Saw while trying to have dinner.
"Pizza's gunna be half hour." Lisa said, coming back into the dining room from the kitchen. "Shall we get the movies started?"
"They're working on it." Dawn told her.
"I'm sorry if I want to enjoy my food rather than feel like puking. Can we not start with a movie about torture?" Casey asked. Ryan patted her shoulder comfortingly.
"Maybe Hocus Pocus is more to your tastes." He said playfully, and she swatted his arm. Dawn brightened at that.
"Do you have that? I love that movie!" She announced. Ryan arched one eyebrow at her.
"I brought horror movies, Dawn." He said. "Horror. We are to be horrified."
"Oh, yay." Casey remarked drily.
By the time the pizza arrived they had only just decided on a film and put the DVD into the family Xbox. Lisa and Ryan got up to answer the door and bring the food in, leaving the door open so that the scent of melting cheese and hot peperoni filtered through from the hallway, along with the sound of the pounding rain.
"I hope it's not raining when we go to work in the morning…" Casey said, shuddering at the thought of walking through the downpour.
"Well, that's like…" Dawn quickly did the maths. "Fifteen hours from now, so unlikely…" Casey stuck out her tongue at her.
"Dinner is served!" Ryan announced, sweeping in with the pizza box balanced on the palm of one hand. On top of the box he had stacked the foil containers of garlic bread and hot wings, while Lisa followed with two large bottles of Coke. Condensation beaded on the plastic and dripped onto the floor as she made her way over to the coffee table. Ryan set down the food while Lisa opened one of the bottles, leaving the other on the floor. They sat on the floor at either end of the coffee table, while Casey and Dawn stayed on the sofa to watch the film while eating.
"I'm so hungry…" Dawn moaned, grabbing a slice of pizza the instant Ryan had lifted the lid on the box. Melting mozzarella stretched between the box and the slice in her hand, causing Lisa to send her a nervous look.
"Please don't drop anything…" She said. "I'm dead if my parents figure out I've had you all round."
"Sorry…" Dawn replied, looking suitably apologetic. She broke the string of cheese and wound it around her slice before stuffing it in her mouth. "Isho goo'…" She moaned around her mouthful, one hand cupped beneath her slice to catch any food that might fall and stain the couch or carpet.
"Ya know," Ryan commented while selecting a hot wing for himself. "This is perfect weather for a horror movie marathon."
"What? Extreme rain?" Casey asked without taking her eyes from the TV screen.
"Very spooky." Dawn smirked at him. Ryan rolled his eyes.
"It's all gloomy and noisy. Don't tell me crazy weather doesn't even slightly give you the wiggins?"
Lisa grunted in the negative while licking pizza grease from her fingers.
"It's mainly just annoying. Especially when it's just a rain storm. Bring on the thunder! I want to witness the destructive power of nature!" She said. Casey shot her a bewildered look.
"For real?" She squeaked. "Thunder means lightning and that means boom! Roof gone. Potentially."
"The odds of that happening are very slim." Dawn said, piling stretched cheese on top of her latest slice of pizza. "Here you're more likely to be bitten by a vampire than hit by lightning." The others paused their eating to stare at her, and she realized suddenly what she had said. She swallowed her food and offered a weak grin. "Kidding…?"
"Oh, sorry, you just sounded so serious." Ryan chuckled. "Good one, though!" He bit happily into his chicken wing. Dawn just smiled and shrugged and hid her embarrassment by reaching for another slice of pizza.
It was confusing sometimes. Switching between the Scooby gang and regular people. Going between conversations on how to avert the latest apocalypse or the best method of killing a ghoul, and what shoes go with what dress or what the latest movies are. No wonder Buffy had such a small circle of friends. Kept to those who were in on the world's bizarre and badly kept secret. Average Joe, blissfully ignorant of the monsters and magics, would just consider her weird. Or maybe quirky.
It was kind of sad that she had this part of herself, a huge part of her life that she couldn't share with her friends. They wouldn't understand, wouldn't believe. It made them feel distant, somehow.
She heaved a sigh as she finished her pizza, tore off a strip of paper kitchen towel brought through by Lisa and wiped her hands on it as she sat back on the sofa, eyes on the TV, well and truly stuffed. These movies didn't scare her any more now that she knew the ways to deal with ghosts and demons. The human horrors, things like Saw or Scream, spooked her a little. How to defend against a sadistic man hell bent on torturing relatively innocent people?
"I swear if this ever happened to me I'd lock myself in my closet until it ended." Casey announced, shuddering as she watched Ghostface stalking his prey.
"Barricading yourself into a tiny room with no escape is the worst plan of action ever." Ryan told her.
"Grab a weapon and bale." Dawn said. "It's just a guy with a knife."
"We know that because we're watching it." Casey said. "How does she know that?" Dawn looked sideways at her and grinned playfully, as she thought of all the possible things he could be if he wasn't just a guy with a knife.
"I don't think locking herself away in a closet will fix that." She said.
"Besides." Lisa said in a teasing tone. "Monsters live in closets." Casey rolled her eyes.
"Well, actually…" Dawn started, about to explain the closet monster was just an urban legend and had very little evidence to back it up. She immediately faltered as her friends looked expectantly at her. "That's a very good point."
As the credits for the final movie rolled Ryan suggested they tell each other ghost stories. The rain still came down in torrents outside, lashing the house as the wind howled, causing the long spindly branches of the trees lining the street to reach like fingers for the windows of Lisa's home and scrape the glass. Perfect.
Lisa turned off the lights and they gathered in a circle on the floor, storyteller holding onto a torch and aiming the beam upwards to eerily light up their face as they spoke, telling each other spooky campfire tales and urban legends.
"…Turned out she hadn't seen a man outside, she'd seen the reflection of a man standing behind her…inside…" Ryan finished dramatically.
"That's so stupid." Casey said, and Ryan instantly deflated. "How could you not realize someone's inside with you?"
"Yeah, I'm not feeling the scare." Dawn admitted.
"Well, your stories were lame too!" Ryan pouted.
"I have an idea of something scary we could do." Lisa said. Ryan aimed the torch beam over at her, lighting up the smirk on her face.
"Yes…?" Casey asked her suspiciously. She didn't like the gleefully rebellious look on her friend's face.
"Wait here." Lisa climbed to her feet and dashed out of the living room and into the hallway. Seconds later they could hear her running up the stairs to her bedroom.
"I'm not going to like this, am I?" Casey asked as they waited.
"It's unlikely any of us will." Ryan said.
"Sounds ominous." Dawn agreed.
Lisa came rushing back down the stairs and into the living room, triumphantly grasping an A4 print out. She dropped onto the floor indian style and held out the paper.
"Found it online." She said excitedly. "I was thinking, what awesome stuff could we round off the horror movies with? At first I thought séance or Ouija board but everyone does that!"
Dawn felt a distinctly uncomfortable gnawing sensation in her gut. Apprehension.
"Go on…" Ryan said, looking curious. Lisa flashed a daredevil grin and slapped the paper down on the floor between them all.
"We're going to raise a spirit."
"Cool!" Ryan cried.
"No!" Casey and Dawn insisted as one. They looked at each other in surprise, then turned their gaze to Ryan and Lisa who weren't looking impressed.
"You can't do something like that." Dawn insisted.
"It's dangerous." Casey added. "You hear all the time about stuff going wrong."
"All the time?" Ryan repeated slowly, raising one eyebrow. Casey flushed.
"Okay, maybe not all the time but…This is how horror movies get plots!" She gestured wildly at the TV. "Blaire Witch Project, Long Time Dead, The Mummy!" She counted them off on her fingers. "They all messed with stuff they shouldn't. C'mon, guys, let's not do this."
"The Mummy is a comedy…" Ryan pointed out. "As is Scream, by the way."
"Chicken." Lisa sniggered.
"You have no idea what you're messing with!" Dawn said with more force than she meant to use. "It's a bad idea. Bad."
"Oh, come on, you can't seriously believe in this crap?" Ryan asked. Dawn hesitated a moment, then her resolve set.
"You know what? I do. And I know we shouldn't be doing it. Okay? And if you're going to do it then I'm leaving and you can deal with the fallout alone." She glared across the printout at Lisa. She wouldn't. She would never abandon her friends to deal with the unknown alone. Who knew what they would raise? If anything. It was probably just some bogus spell that would come to nothing. But when the magics were involved…anything could happen.
Casey sat eyeing her friends nervously, waiting for the conclusion.
Finally, Lisa rolled her eyes.
"Jeez, all right! We won't do it!" She grabbed the sheet of paper, bunched it up and chucked it over her shoulder. "Gone." She spread her hands and scowled at Dawn. "Happy?"
Dawn didn't answer.
"It's three a.m. We have work later, let's just go to bed." Casey said diplomatically, sensing a little hostility between the pair.
"Right." Dawn said. "I'll go wash up for bed then." She stood up and stalked out of the room. Casey stayed in the living room all of three seconds before the awkward silence became too much and she darted after Dawn, swiping her toothbrush from her bag on the way.
"Are you okay?" She asked quietly as they reached the top of the stairs together. Dawn sighed and nodded. "Is it because of the Wiccans?" Dawn looked sideways at her.
"Willow and Tara?" She clarified and Casey nodded.
"Teaching you about magic and…stuff."
"I guess." Dawn admitted. "I just…There is a whole load of stuff in this world we shouldn't mess with, and that's a big one."
"Agreed." Casey muttered, shoving open the bathroom door and stepping inside. She held the door for Dawn. "I read up a lot on paranormal stuff and seriously. This is like how every story starts. Kids messing around with things they know nothing about, treating it like a game, then bam!" She pounded a fist into her palm for emphasis. "Quadruple homicide!"
"I wish I had your positive outlook on life." Dawn told her, squeezing a line of toothpaste onto the bristles of her brush. She handed the tube over to Casey while jamming the brush in her mouth.
"Hey, you say that, but I would totally outlive all of you. I see danger lurking in every shadow." Casey grinned at her. Dawn shrugged and nodded, looking amused. There wasn't much she could say with a mouthful of Aquafresh.
Casey opened her mouth to start brushing her teeth when they heard a muffled boom outside that rattled the house.
"…What was that?" Casey asked. It had sounded like a canon blast, a sonic boom. Dawn spat out her mouthful of foam, heart hammering behind her ribs. She rinsed her mouth out and stood up, ears straining. It hadn't been thunder. In fact, she was dead certain it had been a skyquake. Something that usually proceeded the arrival of something otherworldy on this plane… That was when the shouting started downstairs. She threw down her toothbrush and ran, blasting out of the bathroom and sprinting down the stairs back into the living room.
"What'd you do? What'd you do?!" She demanded of her friends, skidding to a halt beside them. Ryan pointed with a shaking finger. Dawn followed his gaze and took a step back in surprise. Casey dashed in behind her, palming the light switch as she entered.
"What's going o-oh sweet Jesus…" She stumbled into the back of Dawn and just about stopped her toothbrush depositing toothpaste into her friend's hair.
Opposite them all, at the other end of the living room, stood a six foot tall athletic man with pale blue skin and pitch black eyes wearing nothing but rawhide trousers. His hair was brilliant white, short, and swept back from his face in spikes. His ears were long and pointed like knife blades, and he was smiling wickedly at them all. On the floor before him lay the smoothed out sheet of A4 with whatever spell Lisa had discovered online printed on it.
Dawn knew what it was as well, the 'man' stood leering at them from across the room. She had seen pictures in Tara's books. She rounded on Ryan and Lisa.
"You summoned a fairy?!" She snapped. Ryan gaped at the blue man.
"That's a fairy?!" He squeaked. The fairy grinned broadly at him, revealing far too many needle sharp fangs. It hissed at them, and Dawn realized with a chill that it was laughing. She struggled to remember spells or facts or anything that would help get rid of this thing, send it back home. Came up empty. Then she saw it shift its weight, coil back into one leg.
"Move!" She cried, seconds before it sprang forward. The four friends scattered in a panic. Casey yelped and threw her toothbrush at it, turned to run, but he caught her by the ankle and dragged her back. The toothbrush had, unsurprisingly, bounced harmlessly from his head. Lisa bolted from the room.
Casey screamed as she went down and clawed desperately at the carpet for purchase. Dawn threw herself into the fairy's side, knocking him off balance down onto one knee. But it was like running into a glacier. His skin was icy cold and hard and she simply bounced off and landed on her butt on the floor. He seized Casey by the shoulder and made to bite her. Instead, Lisa charged back into the room wielding a wooden baseball bat and swung it in a prize-winning arc with a yell. Blue Man dropped Casey and caught the bat in one hand. Lisa gulped as he stood up, not letting go of the bat. Towering over her, he locked eyes and tightened his grip. The wood creaked under the strain until the bat splintered in his palm, shards of wood spraying in all directions. Lisa whimpered as he dropped the pieces, brushed off the splinters onto his trousers, all the while grinning wildly at her.
"I'm so grounded…"
The fairy backhanded her and she flew across the room with a pained shriek, slammed into the wall above the TV and fell to the floor where she lay groaning. The TV wobbled on its stand, threatening to fall.
Ryan raced from the kitchen with a vegetable knife in one hand and a frying pan in the other. He dropped both as Casey was thrown bodily across the room at him. They crashed into each other and were bowled over across the coffee table which gave an ominous crack but remained standing.
"I'm okay!" Ryan gasped, sitting up right away.
The fairy rounded on Dawn. She backed off slowly, moving around so that he had his back to Lisa. She dropped to her knees and held up her hands, glaring defiantly up at him.
"I'm the sister of the slayer!" She announced. He stopped and regarded her with amusement, head tipped to one side, teeth bared in a hideous grin. His hands twitched at his sides, fingernails thick black claws at the ends of long spindly fingers. She swallowed hard. "The chosen one. You know how it goes. Into every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. And she will kick your butt." She paused. The fairy gave his hissing laugh again. "Oh, you think that's funny do you?" Her voice had become shrill. Pannicked. "Well…Um…I'm the former key!" The fairy started forwards. "You better stop! Because…Um…Uh...I'm running out of things to say!"
"No problem!" Lisa finished ninja-ing across the room and leaped, whipping the Xbox plug-and-play cord over the fairy's head as she jumped onto his back and yanked back hard, driving one knee between his shoulder blades to brace herself. The cord tightened around his neck. The fairy choked, then reached back and pulled Lisa over his shoulders, hurling her onto the floor. Dawn dived out of the way, hearing from behind her Lisa give a loud 'oof!' as she landed on her back and the air was driven from her lungs. Then she choked as the fairy placed a foot on her chest and pressed down, slowly crushing her rib cage.
Dawn leaped to her feet, landing in a fighting stance. Buffy had taught her more than a few moves in the past, she knew what to do.
She lashed out with one foot, connecting with the side and back of his knee. His leg buckled inwards, bringing him down. As he landed awkwardly on one knee she smashed an elbow into the side of his head, rammed a knee in between his shoulders and forced him down onto his front with her on his back. She scooped up Ryan's fallen knife and drove the point home between his shoulder blades, forcing it through bone and muscle, pulled out, rammed it in again and again until the fairy stopped moving. Blood oozed thick and black from the wound, seeping into the carpet beneath the body. It covered her hands and front strangely cold and sticky. Dawn rolled free of the body and leaned her back against the sofa, breathing hard.
"Damn girl, you got moves!" Ryan broke the silence, praising Dawn for taking out the killer fairy. Dawn glared at him.
"What did I say about meddling with forces you don't know anything about?" She snapped.
"You knew this would happen." Lisa said softly, sliding into a sitting position and wincing at the aches and bruises she could already feel.
"Yes." Dawn found a clean part of her T-shirt to wipe her hands on. Then, "No. It might have been a duff spell. But I knew it could happen."
"Good job you were here." Casey said. "You seemed to know what you were doing."
"Standard." Dawn said coolly, biting back the pride she felt at their being impressed. Taking part in Scooby gang escapades she wasn't often having her praises sung. For them, taking out the bad guy was all in a day's work. With these guys? She was practically a super hero. "Couldn't have done it without you guys." She added. Some superheroes were modest.
"So…All the stuff with monsters…vampires…" Lisa said nervously, recalling Dawn's earlier odd comments, "it's all real?"
"Pretty much." Dawn nodded grimly. "But don't worry. There's a whole bunch of slayers and people like me to take care of it."
"I had no idea." Ryan said, looking more than a little dazed as he regarded the body of the monster he and Lisa had summoned. The vegetable knife still stood upright, sunk up to the handle between its shoulders. The blood was congealing slowly. Lisa followed his gaze and wrinkled her nose.
"Ugh, I am so totally grounded. My family gets back in like…ten hours! How am I going to explain this?!"
"I know just who to call…" Dawn said, sliding a hand into her trouser pocket and pulling out her phone.
"What, at four in the morning?" Casey asked, massaging the stiffness from her neck. She ached everywhere right now. Being thrown about by a six foot tall fairy has that effect.
"She won't mind." Dawn said dismissively, scrolling through her phone and dialling.
Cat did mind. She minded a lot. It was the first night of undisturbed sleep she had had in a week. Undisturbed, that is, until the shrill beeping and buzzing of her phone rudely dragged her from the warm fuzziness of peaceful slumber in an instant.
Dawn had explained the situation, and genuinely sounded apologetic at Cat's groggy tone, but the reaper had agreed to come to the rescue. That was how she came to be dashing across town at five O'clock in the morning weighed down by a heavy rucksack stuffed with the bits and pieces needed to dispose of the evidence left behind by the fairy fight.
Rain hammered her the whole way there, cascading from the heavens in torrents. Cat had to squint to see. Even with the streetlights illuminating the roads, all she could see was a watery grey blur. Wind gusted, howling around telephone wires and driving rain harder into her as she rushed to Lisa's house. By the time she arrived she looked like she had taken a swim fully clothed. She stood shivering beneath the cover of the porch and pressed one numb finger to the doorbell. No sooner had she pulled her finger back, the door was being opened by Dawn, who ushered the reaper inside quickly, glancing around outside as though expecting the neighbours to be spying on them.
"Thanks for coming, Cat." She said, closing the door behind them and turning to face her friend. Cat stood on the doormat, water running from her soaked clothes in rivulets to pool at her feet.
"No problem." She said bitterly, unable to hide the scowl from her face. Dawn cleared her throat awkwardly.
"I'd have called Buffy but…" She smiled weakly and shrugged.
"She'd have gutted you, I know. Secret's safe with me." Cat dropped her heavy rucksack on the floor with a clank and pulled off her leather jacket, leaving it hanging on a free coat hook by the door. She shook off as much rain water as she could, kicked off her boots and picked up her rucksack to follow Dawn through to the living room.
She twitched an eyebrow at the sight that greeted her. Dawn's friends gathered awkwardly around the dead body.
Introductions were made.
Then Cat dumped her bag beside the body and rubbed her hands together.
"You got a bath tub?" She asked, glancing at Lisa, who looked baffled and nodded.
"Upstairs." She answered.
"Okay. Well, you guys might wanna grab your showers and stuff now, because you won't want to later." She pulled a rolled up sheet of plastic and a bone saw from her rucksack and the four friends scrambled to escape the living room and race up the stairs.
Cat heaved a sigh and crouched beside the body, eyeing it up. She reached for the knife and wrenched it free.
"Today's gunna be a long day…" She muttered and set to work.