Fic: Moving on (3/6)
Fic: Moving on (3/6)
Authors: muses-circle and Pen37
Series: Slayer!Chloe
Beta: muses-circle
Fandoms: Supernatural, Smallville, Buffy/Angel Verse
Pairing: Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13
Wordcount: 1,891 words
Summary: With new friends and a new outlook on life, Chloe is settling into her role as a slayer post-Winchesters. But the Winchesters aren't completely done with her.
A/N: This one is written. Not sure how many chapters it'll be. But probably shorter than Getting Up was.
Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6
Chloe was startled out of her drive-home thoughts when her phone rang. She clicked it on and held it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Chloe?” Ava's voice sounded anxious.
“Did you have a vision?” Chloe asked.
“Big thing attacking people.”
“Define thing.”
“How should I know?” Ava snapped. “It had teeth and wings and a tail. I'm out of my depth here.”
She held back a sigh. Ava was new at the freaky. She couldn't exactly be as blasé about it as most of Chloe's associates had been. “Did you see where?”
“There was a fountain?” Ava sounded unsure.
“This is Kansas City,” Chloe said wryly. “There are fountains on every corner - practically.” She broke off as the police band radio in the passenger seat crackled to life. “Hold that thought. I think that may be it they're talking about on the police scanner.”
“Why do you have a police scanner?” Ava sounded intrigued.
“It's standard issue for a cop reporter.”
“You got the job!” the brunette cheered. “That's great!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chloe said. “We'll celebrate when I get home. Right now I have to go kill something.” She hung up the phone and stepped on the gas. The tiny engine on the antique VW spluttered as the car gained a little speed. Chloe sighed, and wished she'd chosen to drive the slaypire's sporty little foreign car with the aftermarket engine instead.
* * *
Chloe parked haphazardly in a weedy lot when she arrived at her destination. She opened the door and stood slowly as she surveyed the carnage in front of her.
Just as Ava described, the monster had teeth and wings and a tail. It reminded her of the Blake paintings of the red dragon. Even as she watched it, the monster careened into a cop car, sending it smashing into a light pole.
“Someone's going to get fired for drinking on the job,” she muttered as she rounded the hood of the car. She doubted very seriously that Sam and Dean had ever been in this situation. This seemed to be where hunting and slaying differed. Hunting was about figuring out which monster you had to kill, and how to kill it. But more often than she was comfortable with, Chloe was simply trying to find the monster and grind it up like hamburger without really knowing what said monster was.
Days like this, she missed being Clark's Google girl back in Smallville. Life was much easier when she was figuring out that Greg Arkin was looking to make little bug mutants with Lana, or Jody Mellville wanted to eat the extra poundage off of Pete's posterior. Or Sean Kelvin - Okay, maybe that one wasn't easier.
She popped the trunk open and pulled out the weapons that she had loaded there before laving for the job interview. Then she looked back at the monster as it landed on a light pole and screeched an ear-splitting cry.
“Better stop that, first.” she decided. Then she grabbed a set of long knives and a crossbow. Once she was in firing range, she took careful aim and loosed a bolt at the monster. The projectile sailed true and pierced the beast's wing. It howled in pain, turned and bared row after row of serrated teeth at her.
She calmly re-loaded a second bolt as the monster leaped from its perch at her. She tried to fire a second bolt at it, but the creature battered it away.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” she threw the weapon at it. While it stopped to bat the crossbow away, she pulled out the knives. Then the beast closed with her.
It was fast. Faster than the Springheel Jack, but not as fast as the Turok Han that had nearly cost her life weeks earlier.
So fast that her enhanced reflexes could barely keep up. She divided her attention between parrying razor-sharp talons and blocking serrated teeth. When a hole opened in its defenses, she pressed the advantage by slipping beneath it's claws and swiping at it's belly.
The monster jumped back, and her blade barely nicked it.
“Should have gone with the sword,” Chloe observed. The monster howled in rage and knocked her to the ground.
She expected an attack from above - instead the sound of gunshots overhead had her ducking and covering. She looked up through her arms to see the monster reel back as blood flowed from it's shoulder.
It whirled and ran away.
Chloe glanced back - just as a plain clothed officer emerged from the shelter of the wrecked vehicle. Judging by his smoking gun, he'd been the one to fire on the dragon thing.
“Thanks.” she said to him.
He looked at her incredulously.
She stood with a groan and turned to chance the creature.
“Stay right there!” he raised his weapon at her.
“Love to,” she said. “But that thing's getting away.” She quirked an eyebrow, and smirked at him. “Please don't shoot me.”
“I should take you in,” he said in an unsure voice. He sounded to Chloe like he was trying to convince himself.
“For what? Assaulting a dragon?”
He sighed and holstered his weapon. Do you need backup?”
She shrugged. “Hope not.” Then she turned, and charged after the monster.
Chloe followed the trail of destruction to a half-renovated church. The job site was packed with trucks and tents. Ropes, extension chords and power tools lay in haphazard piles around the work area like so much litter.
She picked her way carefully across the ground, mindful not to misstep on nails or planking. She wasn't sure where the monster was, and she didn't want it to get the jump on her. As she ducked around a cement mixer, the wind caught the plastic tarp that covered it and blew it into her.
She jumped at the movement and lifted her right arm to slash at the covering. The plastic fell away in shreds. Chloe shook her head at her own hair-trigger. She dropped her arm to her side and stepped over the tarp.
Suddenly, the monster leaped at her with an ear splitting shriek.
Chloe ducked under it's slashing claws, twisted, brought her knives up in a scissoring motion and swiped off the monster's hand at the wrist.
It screamed again and fled back to the shadows of the church.
She huffed out a frustrated sigh and readjusted her grip on the knives. It looked like she was going to have to take him down piece-by-piece. Then she followed the monster into the building.
The trail of blood led into a winding staircase that climbed up to a bell tower. Chloe walked cautiously into the tower, looking to either side of the door, and then up as she did so. Since the monster was nowhere to be seen, she assumed that it was hiding underneath the landing.
She eased around the stairs, then dropped to her knees and probed under them. She realized that the recess there was empty the second a drop of blood fell onto the ground next to her from above.
Chloe jerked her head up and spotted the beast just as it jumped at her from above. She held her knives out and let the falling monster impale itself on them. Its leg took the brunt of the attack and as it twisted free, she ripped another hunk out of it's hide.
With an agonized scream, the best fled back up the tower, taking out the stairs with it.
“Smart monster,” she muttered. Then she tucked the knives close, took a running start and leaped onto the hand rails.
With cat-like balance, she ran up the rail toward the landing. When she reached the top and somersaulted onto the floor. As she slowly rose, Chloe scanned the tower for signs of the monster.
Moonlight slanted through open windows to illuminate row after row of bells in every shape and size. Their shadows created a shadowed obstacle course that the monster could easily hide inside.
She loosed her knives again and rolled them between her fingers as she carefully weaved between the bells. The floor beneath her feet creaked ominously.
Chloe stopped, her heart racing as she realized that the floor could give way at any minute. She eased back - when out of nowhere the monster rounded a large bell to rake her arm with razor-like claws.
She twisted away, rebounded off a bell and set it careening into another like dominoes. The heavy brass instruments raised a deafening cacophony of noise.
The creature clutched at its head, giving Chloe time to bounce off the bell and onto its back. The two of them fell in a tangle of limbs. Before she could further act, the creaking took a terminal dive into cracking. The floor seemed to open up, swallowing them whole.
As they fell four stories, Chloe twisted in mid-air, getting the beast under her. Then they slammed into the ground.
A splintering overhead alerted her to a second danger: that of the roof caving in.
Chloe looked up - her eyes widened as a giant bell dropped down the tower toward her.
Instinct is all that saved her at that point. She rolled off the stunned monster seconds before the bell slammed into the beast and pulped it into a bloody mess. When her ears finally stopped ringing, Chloe exhaled slowly and leaned against the side of the bell.
As the adrenaline finally left her, she considered passing out. Until sudden, deliberate clapping drew her attention. Chloe looked up to see the officer from earlier standing in the doorway to the stairwell. He ceased his applause, and looked at her appraisingly.
“Gotta' say: Your finesse needs work,” he said.
“Well,” she groaned as she grabbed onto the bell and hoisted herself up. “Next time, you can fight the big ugly and I'll be the Russian judge.” She tilted her head and shot him a who the hell are you expression.
“Brian Davis,” he offered. “KC PD.”
“Anne Gabriel, Kansas City Star.”
He eyed the pulpy was-monster under the bell. “The Star is branching out these days.”
“Well,” she shrugged.
“Look,” he said patiently, “let's not bullshit each other. That . . .”
“Dragon . . . demon . . . thingy,” she shrugged. “Chupacabra?”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Whatever it was isn't the weirdest thing to come out of the area.”
“No kidding?” she asked.
“You can stop playing stupid, Gabe. I know a slayer when I see one.”
“You do?” Chloe chuckled nervously.
“You know how many of you guys pass through here?”
“At least two others,” Chloe uttered.
“You can always spot a slayer,” Davis said. “Just look for the path of destruction they leave behind.”
“Hey!” Chloe protested.
Davis sighed. Then he reached into his pocket and retrieved a business card. He passed it to her. “Here. Come by my precinct tomorrow. If you're here to stay, you should know a little something about this city.”
“Thanks?” Chloe pocketed the card and looked up at the door. But Officer Davis was already walking away.
“By the way, nice car.”
Chloe shrugged. “It's . . . a friend's.”
With a chuckle, the policeman exited the old church.
Chloe followed. When the bell tower collapsed behind her, she forced herself to keep walking, get into the bug and drive away.