Of Those Chosen: The Twins - Chapter Fourteen
This one came pretty quickly. I had the estimated publication date at October 9th -- I just left that the same for chapter fifteen. I have the rest of this story plotted out and scenes already blocked in the directing sense of it, dialogue outlined (there's a great confrontation between Faith and Donner I'm just dying to write, but it's in chapter seventeen), and combined with the fact that I have no life, I think the result will be a lot of writing getting done soon.
Thanks so much to littlefeltfangs, who helped me out with emotional responses in this chapter. Rock!
Previous chapters can be found trying to figure out why no theatre near HJ is playing Shaun of the Dead and how travesties like this always seem to happen in freaking Florida.
Chapter Fourteen
Departures
Weight restrictions on airplane luggage were grossly unfair, Dawn felt.
She left for college back in California the next morning on an eight a.m. flight. Her clothes and shoes all lay strewn out all over her bedroom, and two large suitcases sat open on the bed. Buffy refused to box up and ship clothes out to her, but the airlines had an eighty pound limit for flights and that barely covered her shoes. Now, she had to choose what to bring out to San Francisco and what to leave in Cleveland. She probably would only be able to take a few weeks' worth of clothes, if that.
She looked up to see Katharine standing in the doorway, which was weird. They had barely spoken in the weeks the girl had been there.
Katharine looked around at the clothes and raised an eyebrow. "College?"
Dawn nodded. "Yeah. Stanford, out in San Francisco."
"My second cousin twice removed went there," Katharine said. Dawn looked at her strangely, and she shrugged. "So you're getting out of the gig, huh? Cool."
"You know, you could leave any time you wanted," Dawn said. "No one is forcing you to stay."
"Oh, I know." At Dawn's skeptical look, she smirked. "No, really, I do. I'm cool with this. I was just making conversation, you know? You're leaving. We've never talked."
Dawn nodded. She bent down to pick up a shirt, but then a thought struck her and she snapped her eyes back to Katharine, who sighed. "I don't have a crush on you, either," Katharine snapped.
"What? No, I--"
"You totally did. It's okay. I've been told my social awkwardness comes off that way sometimes."
"Uh, okay," Dawn said. Now she understood why the other girls -- even Helen and Chao-Ahn, who were her friends -- thought Katharine was weird. It was simply because she was weird. Yet, she was supposed to be the more normal twin. Scary.
Dawn packed for a few minutes while Katharine stood in the doorway and watched her. Finally, Katharine asked, "So what are you gonna study?"
"Well, at first I just wanted to get as far away from demons and vampires as possible, so naturally I looked into accounting -- but that's far more evil than any apocalypse," Dawn said. Katharine laughed. "Then I really thought about it. When I was happiest about being Buffy's sister was when they let me help with research or patrolling or food runs or whatever. And I realized it wasn't getting to be a Scooby or finally being seen as a big girl that I liked, it was that what I was doing was helping people."
"So you're going to study to become a Watcher?"
"No. I'm going to study psychology and counseling and work with battered and abused women."
Katharine smiled. "That's really cool," she said, and Dawn felt that, for the first time, Katharine really meant it when she said something was cool. "I'm actually almost jealous."
"Almost jealous, huh? Gee, thanks." Dawn threw a shirt at Katharine, which she easily caught. "You ever go to college?"
"I'm your year, Dawn. But, no, I never even finished high school, so no college."
"Oh. Sorry. Was it because you were called?"
"As a Slayer? Nah. I stopped going a couple months before that, a little after Audrey got hurt. But don't tell her that."
Dawn nodded. They stood there for a moment, awkwardness between them.
"Come on. I'll help you pack," Katharine said, and the awkwardness went away.
:#:
While Katharine helped Dawn pack, Giles ate lunch in his office with Xander and Robin.
Over the past four weeks, since the meeting after Xander's group was ambushed, they pressed the vampire and demon communities for information on leaders of the local vampires. Pressed hard.
And came up blank.
No one knew anything. It wasn't that the vampires or demons were afraid to tell. They were all afraid of whomever it was, but a good deal of that fear stemmed from the complete lack of knowledge that surrounded him. Or her -- no one even knew a gender.
This vampire was smart, though. Everyone they questioned agreed on that.
"This guy's like a ghost," Xander said. "How does someone build this kind of rep and still not show up on anyone's radar?"
"He's on our radar," Robin said.
"No, he's not. That's the thing -- he should be on our radar. We know this guy's around here. But he's not showing at all."
"Perhaps we're looking in the wrong places," Robin said. "We could--"
"Actually, I hate to be the one to suggest this," Giles said, "but perhaps we should just wait for him or her to make another move. Reactive might be the proper philosophy here."
Robin and Xander stayed quiet, so Giles continued. "We've let this take up all of our efforts for the past four weeks. By concentrating on just the one thing, who knows how much else might have slipped through the proverbial cracks."
"Like what?" Xander said.
"Has anyone made contact with our potential Watcher candidate, for instance?"
Xander and Robin both groaned.
"Yes." Giles removed his glasses. "I will make a call out to our Mr. Reilly, and let's return to our normal Slaying schedule, shall we?"
:#:
Cole flipped off the recorder and smiled. "That's what I was waiting for," he said.
"Tonight?" Donner asked.
"We'll wait a few nights. Let them get back into a groove first."
:#:
In Los Angeles, Connor Reilly and John Pollack, Connor's best friend since childhood, loaded furniture into a trailer. They rented an apartment near campus together, and while the lease technically didn't start until August first -- tomorrow -- the landlord said they could pick up the keys and move in a day early.
Which was good -- Connor was ready to get out of Los Angeles. That summer was difficult. Two sets of memories fought inside his head. He thought of them Connor and Stephen. Connor, the name Angel gave him, had the life Angel gave him: friends, family, a normal suburban upbringing with the Reillys. Stephen, the name given him by Holtz, had the life Holtz gave to him: a hell dimension, the hunt, and the kill. No one else still alive knew about Stephen's memories. Los Angeles held both sets of memories, but San Francisco only had the past year, only had one set of memories. There was less confusion there.
His phone rang around ten in the morning. He didn't recognize the number on the caller ID -- some area code that looked familiar, but he couldn't place.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Yes, I'm looking for a Mr. Connor Reilly," the caller said. He spoke carefully, hesitantly, and with an English accent.
Connor's stomach dropped.
"That's me," he said.
"Yes, my name is Rupert Giles. I am the current head of the Watcher's Council, located in Cleveland, Ohio -- the organization which Faith Covington works for --"
"No," he said.
"I'm sorry, but you don't even know what I was going to say," Giles said.
"I'm not interested." Connor's easy California accent was gone; the harsh, clipped phrasing and economy of speech Stephen learned on Quar'toth took over. "I don't want anything from you. Do you understand me? Leave me alone."
Connor flipped his cell closed and stuffed it back in his pocket.
"Dude, you okay?" John asked from behind him.
Connor turned around and grinned. "Yeah, I'm cool. Telemarketer -- I gave 'em my Tyler Durden impression."
John chuckled, but wasn't entirely satisfied. "You sure you're okay, man? You've been pretty short-tempered all summer. That van didn't scramble your brain, did it?"
Connor pushed John -- lightly, not enough to cause suspicion. "Whatever, man. Just ready to get out of L.A." That should satisfy him; Connor always hated Los Angeles, much preferred to be in San Francisco at college.
Together, Connor and John grabbed a couch and carried it to the trailer. Connor could've lifted it on his own, but that would certainly have raised suspicion.
He thought about Rupert Giles and the Watcher's Council. He knew a little about that, from when Faith came to help with Angelus and the Beast two years ago. He had no idea what they wanted with him -- probably questions about Angel, although why they didn't ask over a month ago when he first called he had no idea -- and both Connor and Stephen wanted to call them up and see what he could do to help.
But he remembered his promise to his father, as the building fell around them: he would be safe. But how safe could he really stay?
He was almost out of Los Angeles; only a few more hours. Maybe San Francisco, and school, would lessen the temptation to rejoin the fight.
:#:
Six days later, on Friday, Buffy got Andrew's Lord of the Rings box set in the mail. Andrew was off in Borneo or Baghdad or Belfast -- someplace with a B, she couldn't remember -- and Buffy came up with a devious plan.
"Let's watch them all tonight!" she said to her Slayers. They all sat together in Buffy's living room after dinner. The other Slayers were all getting ready for that night's patrol. "Come on, tomorrow's Saturday and we can sleep in."
"Is... is this the one with Orlando Boom?" Audrey asked.
"Bloom!" Helen, Buffy, and Chao-Ahn emphatically corrected her.
"Yeah," Audrey said. "He's cute. I like Boromir the best, though. He's all manly and conflicted."
"I like Legolas," Helen said.
Willow came in from the kitchen with a big cup of tea in her hands. "I'm more of an Eowyn fan, myself," she said.
The girls all laughed. Helen ran into the kitchen to grab ice cream -- which Willow refused to taste. "I don't have a Slayer's metabolism!" she said. "That'll go straight to my hips, and I have enough trouble keeping up with Kennedy as it is."
"Oh my God!" Audrey exclaimed. "I never thought of that! I can eat all the candy I want."
"One of the perks of fighting evil," Buffy commented.
"Hey! I fight evil, and I never got that perk," Willow complained.
Giles emerged from the basement with Robin in time to catch the end of the conversation. "I’m afraid that perk passed me by as well," he said.
"Watchers!" Buffy said. "You two wanna watch movies with us? We're doing a Lord of the Rings marathon tonight. Andrew's DVDs just got in, so we're gonna make sure they work for him."
Giles grinned, but shook his head. "Thank you, but I have some work I need to finish, and I prefer not to witness classic literature turned into a cute-boy festival."
"Classic literature?" Helen asked, confused.
Giles glared at the youngest Slayer. "You just had several more books added to your required reading list, my dear," he said.
As Helen flopped back against the couch dramatically, Buffy said, "What about you, Robin?"
"Well, actually--" Robin looked around and lowered his voice. "Faith's seemed kinda down and distant lately, so I rented us a room at this really nice bed and breakfast out by the lake," he said. "I'm going to pick her up from work and surprise her out there."
Giles grinned as the girls cooed and generally made noise to embarrass Robin.
"I don't know, Mr. Wood," Willow said. "Maybe you need to teach some of this romantic stuff to certain Slayers under your watch."
Robin looked down and coughed. "I'll, um, see what I can do there, Willow."
:#:
Willow, who got up for work that morning at seven, called it a night after the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, but the Slayers continued on with the next film.
Halfway through The Two Towers, at around one in the morning, the doorbell rang.
Buffy paused the movie on a nice shot of Aragorn and Legolas together. The girls paused for a moment, too, until the doorbell rang again.
Buffy laughed. "I'll give you two-to-one odds it's Xander, and he forgot his keys."
Helen jumped up from the sofa. "I'll get it," she said.
Audrey stood up, too. "I'm going to get drink from kitchen," she said. "Want anything?"
"Yeah, I'll take a diet Coke," Buffy said.
Audrey took the back hallway to the kitchen, while Helen skipped through the big recreation room -- previously the formal living room, now just a big room with lots of comfy chairs for Slayers to lounge on and books to read (along with subscriptions to Jane, Cosmopolitan, and Entertainment Weekly) -- to the foyer. The base of Buffy's house, not counting the garage addition Xander estimated was done twenty years after the original construction, was essentially a big box. The foyer, stairwell, and back hallway bisected the first floor, with the kitchen and dining room on the north side and the T.V. room and rec room adjacent to the garage on the south side.
"Who is it?" Helen called out as she put her eye to the front door's peephole.
A group of five stood on the front porch, two guys and three girls. Their clothes were torn and dirty and bloody. The one closest to the door had a hand over his neck, and Helen could tell he'd been bitten.
"Is-- is this the right house?" the one with the bite said. He was about average height, probably in his early twenties, with shaggy black hair. Helen thought he was probably very cute when he wasn't pale and bloody from a vampire attack. "God, we were attacked, some girls stopped them and this guy, Sander, told us to come here."
Helen quickly flipped the deadbolt and opened the door -- and found a huge handgun only a few feet from her face, pointed right at her.
Helen stared at the gun, dumfounded and unable to react. Her training prepared her for monsters and demons and swords and axes, and as a Slayer she was capable of meeting those -- capably, at least, if not without fear. The gun, though, was from another world. A world where Helen was just a fourteen-year-old girl, not a chick with superpowers; a world where girls her age didn't go out long after dark, and were never supposed to be alone with scary men with guns.
Helen froze.
A voice said, "Don't move, Slayer," but she barely heard. And certainly was incapable of movement.
:#:
Cole held the gun, a remnant of the dearly departed investigator Stockton, down at his side and out of the line of sight of whichever Slayer would answer the door. He held his free hand over the bite wound Donner made in his neck a few minutes earlier.
The plan was simple: appear at the door beat-up and bloody, and trick the Slayers into thinking they were human. Once she opened the door, everyone was to follow his lead.
The door opened and Helen, the youngest of the Slayers, looked out. Alone.
Cole brought the gun up into the doorway, as close to her face as he could get it; the silencer at the end of the barrel extended several inches into the house. "Don't move, Slayer," he said. The look on her face -- wide eyed and expressionless, completely terrified -- told him that, at least for now, that warning was unnecessary.
"Move an inch, and I will shoot you right in the face," he said. Helen made a high-pitched noise, almost a wince, but stayed still. "You might think that, with Slayer speed and reflexes, you can move out of the way in time, get out before I pull the trigger. You can't. I'm just as fast as you, Slayer, and from this range, I won't miss."
Donner stepped up behind him. He towered over Cole, almost tall enough to have to duck through doorways, and his size always added an extra touch of intimidation. Cole knew, though, that his approach was just as much a warning to Cole as it was a tactic to intimidate the Slayer; for the plan to work, they had to get inside before the other Slayers came.
"Your family religious?" Cole asked. "Maybe your friends? Can't have much of an open-casket funeral with your head blown clear off, now can you? But you have a choice. You can invite us in."
Helen's eyes jerked up to his from the gun barrel.
She opened her mouth, but Cole cut her off before she could speak. "We don't just want you dead. If that was the case, you'd be dead. So, obviously, we want something else, something inside. When someone needs something from you -- like an invitation -- there's power there. Maybe you can turn that to your advantage; if you give us what we want, maybe you can take something in return. But if not? I blow your face off." Helen shrank back from the venom in his voice; he raised the gun a bit more to put it more prominently in her vision, and she froze. "Choose."
"Hey, Helen, was I right?" Buffy yelled from the other room. "Xander forgot his keys?"
"You have three more seconds," Cole said. "Invite us in, and keep your face."
In the lost and alone voice of a terrified fourteen-year-old girl with no real hope, Helen whispered, "Come in."
Cole pulled the trigger and shot her in the base of her neck.
-:-
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Thanks so much to littlefeltfangs, who helped me out with emotional responses in this chapter. Rock!
Previous chapters can be found trying to figure out why no theatre near HJ is playing Shaun of the Dead and how travesties like this always seem to happen in freaking Florida.
Chapter Fourteen
Departures
Weight restrictions on airplane luggage were grossly unfair, Dawn felt.
She left for college back in California the next morning on an eight a.m. flight. Her clothes and shoes all lay strewn out all over her bedroom, and two large suitcases sat open on the bed. Buffy refused to box up and ship clothes out to her, but the airlines had an eighty pound limit for flights and that barely covered her shoes. Now, she had to choose what to bring out to San Francisco and what to leave in Cleveland. She probably would only be able to take a few weeks' worth of clothes, if that.
She looked up to see Katharine standing in the doorway, which was weird. They had barely spoken in the weeks the girl had been there.
Katharine looked around at the clothes and raised an eyebrow. "College?"
Dawn nodded. "Yeah. Stanford, out in San Francisco."
"My second cousin twice removed went there," Katharine said. Dawn looked at her strangely, and she shrugged. "So you're getting out of the gig, huh? Cool."
"You know, you could leave any time you wanted," Dawn said. "No one is forcing you to stay."
"Oh, I know." At Dawn's skeptical look, she smirked. "No, really, I do. I'm cool with this. I was just making conversation, you know? You're leaving. We've never talked."
Dawn nodded. She bent down to pick up a shirt, but then a thought struck her and she snapped her eyes back to Katharine, who sighed. "I don't have a crush on you, either," Katharine snapped.
"What? No, I--"
"You totally did. It's okay. I've been told my social awkwardness comes off that way sometimes."
"Uh, okay," Dawn said. Now she understood why the other girls -- even Helen and Chao-Ahn, who were her friends -- thought Katharine was weird. It was simply because she was weird. Yet, she was supposed to be the more normal twin. Scary.
Dawn packed for a few minutes while Katharine stood in the doorway and watched her. Finally, Katharine asked, "So what are you gonna study?"
"Well, at first I just wanted to get as far away from demons and vampires as possible, so naturally I looked into accounting -- but that's far more evil than any apocalypse," Dawn said. Katharine laughed. "Then I really thought about it. When I was happiest about being Buffy's sister was when they let me help with research or patrolling or food runs or whatever. And I realized it wasn't getting to be a Scooby or finally being seen as a big girl that I liked, it was that what I was doing was helping people."
"So you're going to study to become a Watcher?"
"No. I'm going to study psychology and counseling and work with battered and abused women."
Katharine smiled. "That's really cool," she said, and Dawn felt that, for the first time, Katharine really meant it when she said something was cool. "I'm actually almost jealous."
"Almost jealous, huh? Gee, thanks." Dawn threw a shirt at Katharine, which she easily caught. "You ever go to college?"
"I'm your year, Dawn. But, no, I never even finished high school, so no college."
"Oh. Sorry. Was it because you were called?"
"As a Slayer? Nah. I stopped going a couple months before that, a little after Audrey got hurt. But don't tell her that."
Dawn nodded. They stood there for a moment, awkwardness between them.
"Come on. I'll help you pack," Katharine said, and the awkwardness went away.
:#:
While Katharine helped Dawn pack, Giles ate lunch in his office with Xander and Robin.
Over the past four weeks, since the meeting after Xander's group was ambushed, they pressed the vampire and demon communities for information on leaders of the local vampires. Pressed hard.
And came up blank.
No one knew anything. It wasn't that the vampires or demons were afraid to tell. They were all afraid of whomever it was, but a good deal of that fear stemmed from the complete lack of knowledge that surrounded him. Or her -- no one even knew a gender.
This vampire was smart, though. Everyone they questioned agreed on that.
"This guy's like a ghost," Xander said. "How does someone build this kind of rep and still not show up on anyone's radar?"
"He's on our radar," Robin said.
"No, he's not. That's the thing -- he should be on our radar. We know this guy's around here. But he's not showing at all."
"Perhaps we're looking in the wrong places," Robin said. "We could--"
"Actually, I hate to be the one to suggest this," Giles said, "but perhaps we should just wait for him or her to make another move. Reactive might be the proper philosophy here."
Robin and Xander stayed quiet, so Giles continued. "We've let this take up all of our efforts for the past four weeks. By concentrating on just the one thing, who knows how much else might have slipped through the proverbial cracks."
"Like what?" Xander said.
"Has anyone made contact with our potential Watcher candidate, for instance?"
Xander and Robin both groaned.
"Yes." Giles removed his glasses. "I will make a call out to our Mr. Reilly, and let's return to our normal Slaying schedule, shall we?"
:#:
Cole flipped off the recorder and smiled. "That's what I was waiting for," he said.
"Tonight?" Donner asked.
"We'll wait a few nights. Let them get back into a groove first."
:#:
In Los Angeles, Connor Reilly and John Pollack, Connor's best friend since childhood, loaded furniture into a trailer. They rented an apartment near campus together, and while the lease technically didn't start until August first -- tomorrow -- the landlord said they could pick up the keys and move in a day early.
Which was good -- Connor was ready to get out of Los Angeles. That summer was difficult. Two sets of memories fought inside his head. He thought of them Connor and Stephen. Connor, the name Angel gave him, had the life Angel gave him: friends, family, a normal suburban upbringing with the Reillys. Stephen, the name given him by Holtz, had the life Holtz gave to him: a hell dimension, the hunt, and the kill. No one else still alive knew about Stephen's memories. Los Angeles held both sets of memories, but San Francisco only had the past year, only had one set of memories. There was less confusion there.
His phone rang around ten in the morning. He didn't recognize the number on the caller ID -- some area code that looked familiar, but he couldn't place.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Yes, I'm looking for a Mr. Connor Reilly," the caller said. He spoke carefully, hesitantly, and with an English accent.
Connor's stomach dropped.
"That's me," he said.
"Yes, my name is Rupert Giles. I am the current head of the Watcher's Council, located in Cleveland, Ohio -- the organization which Faith Covington works for --"
"No," he said.
"I'm sorry, but you don't even know what I was going to say," Giles said.
"I'm not interested." Connor's easy California accent was gone; the harsh, clipped phrasing and economy of speech Stephen learned on Quar'toth took over. "I don't want anything from you. Do you understand me? Leave me alone."
Connor flipped his cell closed and stuffed it back in his pocket.
"Dude, you okay?" John asked from behind him.
Connor turned around and grinned. "Yeah, I'm cool. Telemarketer -- I gave 'em my Tyler Durden impression."
John chuckled, but wasn't entirely satisfied. "You sure you're okay, man? You've been pretty short-tempered all summer. That van didn't scramble your brain, did it?"
Connor pushed John -- lightly, not enough to cause suspicion. "Whatever, man. Just ready to get out of L.A." That should satisfy him; Connor always hated Los Angeles, much preferred to be in San Francisco at college.
Together, Connor and John grabbed a couch and carried it to the trailer. Connor could've lifted it on his own, but that would certainly have raised suspicion.
He thought about Rupert Giles and the Watcher's Council. He knew a little about that, from when Faith came to help with Angelus and the Beast two years ago. He had no idea what they wanted with him -- probably questions about Angel, although why they didn't ask over a month ago when he first called he had no idea -- and both Connor and Stephen wanted to call them up and see what he could do to help.
But he remembered his promise to his father, as the building fell around them: he would be safe. But how safe could he really stay?
He was almost out of Los Angeles; only a few more hours. Maybe San Francisco, and school, would lessen the temptation to rejoin the fight.
:#:
Six days later, on Friday, Buffy got Andrew's Lord of the Rings box set in the mail. Andrew was off in Borneo or Baghdad or Belfast -- someplace with a B, she couldn't remember -- and Buffy came up with a devious plan.
"Let's watch them all tonight!" she said to her Slayers. They all sat together in Buffy's living room after dinner. The other Slayers were all getting ready for that night's patrol. "Come on, tomorrow's Saturday and we can sleep in."
"Is... is this the one with Orlando Boom?" Audrey asked.
"Bloom!" Helen, Buffy, and Chao-Ahn emphatically corrected her.
"Yeah," Audrey said. "He's cute. I like Boromir the best, though. He's all manly and conflicted."
"I like Legolas," Helen said.
Willow came in from the kitchen with a big cup of tea in her hands. "I'm more of an Eowyn fan, myself," she said.
The girls all laughed. Helen ran into the kitchen to grab ice cream -- which Willow refused to taste. "I don't have a Slayer's metabolism!" she said. "That'll go straight to my hips, and I have enough trouble keeping up with Kennedy as it is."
"Oh my God!" Audrey exclaimed. "I never thought of that! I can eat all the candy I want."
"One of the perks of fighting evil," Buffy commented.
"Hey! I fight evil, and I never got that perk," Willow complained.
Giles emerged from the basement with Robin in time to catch the end of the conversation. "I’m afraid that perk passed me by as well," he said.
"Watchers!" Buffy said. "You two wanna watch movies with us? We're doing a Lord of the Rings marathon tonight. Andrew's DVDs just got in, so we're gonna make sure they work for him."
Giles grinned, but shook his head. "Thank you, but I have some work I need to finish, and I prefer not to witness classic literature turned into a cute-boy festival."
"Classic literature?" Helen asked, confused.
Giles glared at the youngest Slayer. "You just had several more books added to your required reading list, my dear," he said.
As Helen flopped back against the couch dramatically, Buffy said, "What about you, Robin?"
"Well, actually--" Robin looked around and lowered his voice. "Faith's seemed kinda down and distant lately, so I rented us a room at this really nice bed and breakfast out by the lake," he said. "I'm going to pick her up from work and surprise her out there."
Giles grinned as the girls cooed and generally made noise to embarrass Robin.
"I don't know, Mr. Wood," Willow said. "Maybe you need to teach some of this romantic stuff to certain Slayers under your watch."
Robin looked down and coughed. "I'll, um, see what I can do there, Willow."
:#:
Willow, who got up for work that morning at seven, called it a night after the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, but the Slayers continued on with the next film.
Halfway through The Two Towers, at around one in the morning, the doorbell rang.
Buffy paused the movie on a nice shot of Aragorn and Legolas together. The girls paused for a moment, too, until the doorbell rang again.
Buffy laughed. "I'll give you two-to-one odds it's Xander, and he forgot his keys."
Helen jumped up from the sofa. "I'll get it," she said.
Audrey stood up, too. "I'm going to get drink from kitchen," she said. "Want anything?"
"Yeah, I'll take a diet Coke," Buffy said.
Audrey took the back hallway to the kitchen, while Helen skipped through the big recreation room -- previously the formal living room, now just a big room with lots of comfy chairs for Slayers to lounge on and books to read (along with subscriptions to Jane, Cosmopolitan, and Entertainment Weekly) -- to the foyer. The base of Buffy's house, not counting the garage addition Xander estimated was done twenty years after the original construction, was essentially a big box. The foyer, stairwell, and back hallway bisected the first floor, with the kitchen and dining room on the north side and the T.V. room and rec room adjacent to the garage on the south side.
"Who is it?" Helen called out as she put her eye to the front door's peephole.
A group of five stood on the front porch, two guys and three girls. Their clothes were torn and dirty and bloody. The one closest to the door had a hand over his neck, and Helen could tell he'd been bitten.
"Is-- is this the right house?" the one with the bite said. He was about average height, probably in his early twenties, with shaggy black hair. Helen thought he was probably very cute when he wasn't pale and bloody from a vampire attack. "God, we were attacked, some girls stopped them and this guy, Sander, told us to come here."
Helen quickly flipped the deadbolt and opened the door -- and found a huge handgun only a few feet from her face, pointed right at her.
Helen stared at the gun, dumfounded and unable to react. Her training prepared her for monsters and demons and swords and axes, and as a Slayer she was capable of meeting those -- capably, at least, if not without fear. The gun, though, was from another world. A world where Helen was just a fourteen-year-old girl, not a chick with superpowers; a world where girls her age didn't go out long after dark, and were never supposed to be alone with scary men with guns.
Helen froze.
A voice said, "Don't move, Slayer," but she barely heard. And certainly was incapable of movement.
:#:
Cole held the gun, a remnant of the dearly departed investigator Stockton, down at his side and out of the line of sight of whichever Slayer would answer the door. He held his free hand over the bite wound Donner made in his neck a few minutes earlier.
The plan was simple: appear at the door beat-up and bloody, and trick the Slayers into thinking they were human. Once she opened the door, everyone was to follow his lead.
The door opened and Helen, the youngest of the Slayers, looked out. Alone.
Cole brought the gun up into the doorway, as close to her face as he could get it; the silencer at the end of the barrel extended several inches into the house. "Don't move, Slayer," he said. The look on her face -- wide eyed and expressionless, completely terrified -- told him that, at least for now, that warning was unnecessary.
"Move an inch, and I will shoot you right in the face," he said. Helen made a high-pitched noise, almost a wince, but stayed still. "You might think that, with Slayer speed and reflexes, you can move out of the way in time, get out before I pull the trigger. You can't. I'm just as fast as you, Slayer, and from this range, I won't miss."
Donner stepped up behind him. He towered over Cole, almost tall enough to have to duck through doorways, and his size always added an extra touch of intimidation. Cole knew, though, that his approach was just as much a warning to Cole as it was a tactic to intimidate the Slayer; for the plan to work, they had to get inside before the other Slayers came.
"Your family religious?" Cole asked. "Maybe your friends? Can't have much of an open-casket funeral with your head blown clear off, now can you? But you have a choice. You can invite us in."
Helen's eyes jerked up to his from the gun barrel.
She opened her mouth, but Cole cut her off before she could speak. "We don't just want you dead. If that was the case, you'd be dead. So, obviously, we want something else, something inside. When someone needs something from you -- like an invitation -- there's power there. Maybe you can turn that to your advantage; if you give us what we want, maybe you can take something in return. But if not? I blow your face off." Helen shrank back from the venom in his voice; he raised the gun a bit more to put it more prominently in her vision, and she froze. "Choose."
"Hey, Helen, was I right?" Buffy yelled from the other room. "Xander forgot his keys?"
"You have three more seconds," Cole said. "Invite us in, and keep your face."
In the lost and alone voice of a terrified fourteen-year-old girl with no real hope, Helen whispered, "Come in."
Cole pulled the trigger and shot her in the base of her neck.
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