Aug. 12th, '15: Neighborhood Watch - Part IX
Title: Neighborhood Watch - Part IX
Author: SweetChi
Rating: PG-13
Crossover: Castle
Word Count: 1291
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural, I am making no money from this and am doing it purely for enjoyment.
Summary: A new team arrives in the city to investigate.
Part IX
“Peanut?” Dawn asked holding the bag out.
“No, I don’t want a-“
“Ooh, I do,” Xander said, eagerly reaching across the table. “Didn’t you eat yours on the plane?”
“I did, but the stewardess gave me an extra when I got you two to shut up and take a nap,” Dawn grinned.
“And here I thought she liked me,” Xander pouted.
“She did,” Dawn answered, eating a couple more nuts from the tiny bag. “Until you opened your mouth.”
Xander didn’t seem any less disappointed by that revelation, but hey, it was the truth. He and Kennedy had snarked at each other pretty much nonstop for hours. Dawn had been smart enough to bring earplugs but glancing up from her fashion mag she’d noticed the murderous glare of some of the surrounding passengers and crew and decided to step in before there was mutiny at twelve thousand feet. And they hadn’t wanted to bring her! She’d already saved their asses and that was just on the trip over! The threat of jetlag didn’t scare them but Dawn threatening to go out and do her own investigating while they were snoozing sure had. Not that she wasn’t planning on ditching them anyway…
They’d settled in a decent hotel after much complaining by Dawn that she wanted to stay at Buffy’s place. Xander and Kennedy said it was too soon and would invite questions from the cop downstairs. Dawn planned on going over anyway, she wanted to see Buffy’s new guy, or potential guy, or whatever he was for herself. She couldn’t believe Buffy was seeing-
“What’s with the face, Dawnie?” Xander asked, snatching the last of the nuts from the bag.
“I just can’t believe Buffy had a new guy and I didn’t know about it,” she said, crumpling the bag and tossing it in the vicinity of the trash can.
“Not much to tell,” Xander shrugged, then seeing Dawn’s outrage that even he apparently knew before her, he rushed to continue. “She just mentioned it to Will. Just that they’d had dinner once and he was ‘cute’ or something. Didn’t tell me anything either.”
Well, that sounded pretty mild… Just one dinner didn’t a boyfriend make, so she guessed she’d give her sister a pass on the lack of sharing. Thinking about him brought up the subject she’d been hesitant to broach, but now that Giles wasn’t around…
“So, uh, what do you guys think about this whole letting him think he was seeing things stuff? I mean, I get Willow was just trying to help and acted in the spur of the moment and all, but… seems a little harsh.”
Kennedy shrugged. “I think we have enough problems without having to babysit a newcomer to the supernatural world. If Buffy wants him in on this crap let her tell him about it when she wakes up. We have bigger fish to fry.”
Xander gave Dawn a sympathetic look when she turned imploring eyes on him. “I’m not big on it either, Dawn, but I think Kennedy’s right. For now anyway. Let’s just concentrate on trying to find out what’s going on around here first. We have a big bad that needs stopping - saving lives comes before saving sanity.”
“Yeah, so fill me in here,” Kennedy said, leaning forward in her seat. “I mean, I know the basics - Buffy comes to the city, girls start dying, Buffy’s ex calls and says ‘we got this’ and we let it go - but that’s about it. Any details?”
“That’s pretty much the gist of it. We’ll need to figure out who the Wolfram and Hart connection is in the department and try to get some information from them,” Xander said, shaking his head in disgust. “And who knows if that’ll be the truth. Should’ve never trusted them.”
“We didn’t have much choice,” Dawn said, feeling a little superior at the moment, because she actually knew more of what was going on than Kennedy. “The murders were already being investigated by the time we found out they were our kind of gig. I was checking the weather for New York online for a delivery and saw the headline about murdered blonde girls. Freaked out since Buffy was already here by then, and had Willow check into it. As soon as she tried to hack into the police files the phone rang and Wolfram and Hart said they were already on it. Pretty freaky actually…”
“And since when do we trust evil to get rid of evil?” Kennedy asked. “I get that Buffy boned the boss over there, but seriously?”
“We didn’t have anything to go on,” Xander said grudgingly. “And before it got any further than debate it seemed like they’d actually taken care of it - the murders stopped, the cops had a logical explanation.”
“But they hadn’t actually taken care of it.”
“No, and more girls got killed,” Xander sighed. “For all we know that could’ve been their end game - lull us into a false sense of security so they can up the body count. Or maybe they were peeved at some unauthorized evil shenanigans going down and really thought they stopped it. Who knows.”
“You think Buffy was the end game?” Kennedy asked. “I mean, all the other girls looked like her. Maybe it was looking for her the whole time?”
“That was Buffy’s guess too,” Dawn said. “She wanted to get out of the city, get it to follow her.”
“Then why the hell didn’t she?”
“Because it wasn’t tracking her,” Dawn bit out. “The girls it was killing looked like Buffy but weren’t people she’d met or been associated with in any way. She’d never even been to the parts of the city that they lived, worked or died in. We still don’t know if it just attacked her because she fit the profile it liked and just happened to bite off more than it could chew.”
Dawn cringed at the poor choice of words and swallowed hard. Buffy was fine. She’d be fine. She was just resting, that was all.
“She was more useful here, trying to track it down, than leaving. If it was after her it obviously couldn’t track her anyway,” Xander said, rubbing his eye.
“Yet it still managed to find her,” Kennedy shrugged.
“Yes, it did,” Xander answered.
They were quietly contemplating that when there was a knock at the door, making them all jump.
“You order room service?” Dawn asked curiously.
“No,” Xander said, pulling a stake from his bag - flying had its downsides with the limitation of pointy weapons.
He gestured to Kennedy who moved to the side of the door while he grabbed the handle, stake behind his back. Dawn moved toward the back of the room, not wanting to get in the way if there was going to be a fight.
The guy on the other side of the door was scary, but in a human kind of way. Really tall and kind of rough looking, he was wearing a green army jacket and Dawn could see the leather of a shoulder holster peeking through.
“Xander Harris?” He asked, looking bored.
“Depends who’s asking,” Xander said after a beat, straightening in a not subtle enough attempt to not look six inches shorter than the newcomer.
The guy shoved the door open wide, making Xander stumble and slid past him in a way that was eerily smooth for someone his size. He caught Kennedy’s fist, easily stopping it before it hit him and making her eyes widen.
Not good…
“I go by many names. Around here it’s Detective Ethan Slaughter. The only thing you really need to know about me is that Wolfram and Hart sent me.”
Yeah, not good at all…