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“I didn’t know demons could hot wire cars!” Dean shouted as he punched the gas.
Their most recent desperate attempt to fight Lucifer had resulted in Cas bleeding in the backseat of the Impala while Meg in a souped up Mustang lead a host of demons in pursuit.
One vehicle in the fleet held Lucifer. He knew where the Winchesters were. He could easily pop into their car as they drove, but he didn’t. He wanted to play with them first.
“Drive faster!” Sam yelled. Dean pressed the old car as fast as she could go, but Sam couldn’t shake the blistered face of Lucifer burned into his brain.
Dean jerked the wheel, and they skidded off the rain-soaked highway onto a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it country road. The sudden turn threw off a couple of the demon drivers, Meg included. Not all of the stolen cars matched Baby, and a little distance formed. Maybe twenty more feet. It wasn’t enough and they knew it. The narrow road they were on couldn’t be too long.
“Little help here, Cas!” Dean shouted.
“He’s fading,” said Sam. Cas, pale and sweaty, had used all of his energy keeping them alive leaving none to heal himself.
Suddenly, a pale blue light consumed everything. Dean shielded his eyes. The light grew so bright, Sam couldn’t see his brother sitting next to him. He would have been sure this light was them dying, but Sam doubted approaching Hell would be so beautiful.
“Is this outfit okay?” Dawn popped into her sister’s room holding up a pair of flared jeans and a pink striped sweater.
“You know, vampires aren’t really known for their sense of style, and we’re not going to let them live long enough to go all Fashion Police either,” Buffy replied.
Tonight was the night: Dawn’s first patrol. Buffy had a knot in her stomach, but she refused to let on. Since their mother’s death nearly three years prior, Buffy had amped up over-protecting her little sister. Ironically, this almost got Dawn killed. With Dawn starting high school next month right over Sunnydale’s very own Hellmouth, it was time to teach her how to protect herself.
Dawn cocked her head to one side and twisted her lips into a disapproving pout. “You’re the one who is always saying that you don’t have to let the blood and death compromise your cute.”
“Whatever, get dressed!” Buffy sighed, pushing Dawn into the hall. She gripped the door handle for a moment longer than she needed to. Deep breath. She can do this. You can do this.
Buffy couldn’t protect her sister twenty-four seven, and there wasn’t anyone else. A year ago she had a team of strong, smart people backing her up. They were a large part of why she’d lived to the ripe old age of twenty-one. Now Giles was in England with a broken Willow. Tara was dead. Anya was teetering on the edge of enemy once more. And Spike…
Ten minutes later, they were outside. Anyone looking on would have thought they were just two girls taking a stroll a little too late at night, but their purses were full of stakes, crosses and holy water. The Summers girls were graveyard bound.
“How many tonight? Do you think we could take a whole nest? I can be all BAM and POW!” Dawn threw weak punches in the air.
The residents of Sunnydale had been living with vampires long before the Slayer came to town six years ago. Everyone seemed to have a collective denial about the town’s high body count, preferring to believe that Sunnydale citizens were just strangely susceptible to neck ruptures. The paper’s obituary section made it easy to find where the newest vampires would be rising.
“Just one. Mr. Edwin McDuffy. Died yesterday at fifty-five of the usual spontaneous neck rupture. Only partially drained. His funeral was this morning. His whole bowling league was probably there. The paper said Mr. McDuffy was quite the bowler.” Buffy smirked at Dawn’s crestfallen face. Baby steps.
Dean slammed on the breaks. It had been midday. Now it was night. It felt like only a minute has passed. He leaned forward, his eyes wide and mouth hanging slightly open. Looking past the raindrops on the windshield, he saw the suburban streets around them were dry. Clearly something unnatural had happened, but the good news was that unlike other brushes with the unknown, the Winchesters (and Baby) were unharmed.
“Where’s Cas?” he asked the empty backseat.
Sam glanced around nervously like a labrador at the vet, uncertain of where to even begin with this new weird. “Where’s day?”
“Soooo, we keep driving?” Dean asked.
“Uh, yeah, but maybe not at 120mph.” Dean shifted back into gear, and they slowly cruised past the neat little houses. Sam, head still swiveling, asked no one, “Where are the farms? Is this even still Ohio?” They passed a palm tree. “Not Ohio. Do you think this was Cas?”
“He’s moved us around before. You know anything else with that kinda mojo and ass-saving intentions?”
For twenty minutes, they twisted and turned through the unknown neighborhood. Dean pulled next to the curb and parked. “Sammy, we’ve been on the run since last night. I’m exhausted. We don’t know where we are. The coast is clear for now, so I’m gonna try to catch some z’s.”
“Dean, we should at least try to pinpoint our location before calling it a night. I’ve been trying to use my GPS, but I’m not getting a signal.”
Dean reached into the back seat and tossed his little brother a couple of atlases. “If that’s what gets you off. I’m sleepin’.”
Sam glared at his big brother already slumped against the driver’s side door. Of course, he couldn’t find their location in an atlas in the dark with zero reference points. “You could at least pray to Cas. Find out where he went.” No response.
He wanted to be annoyed, but his brother hadn’t been sleeping. A good night was maybe half an hour of Dean – still fully dressed in case they had to bolt in the night – lying corpse-still until he would suddenly start screaming and flailing as if trying to keep himself from falling. Dean never shared details, but from his cries, Sam knew the nightmares varied from Alistair to Michael, Zachariah to Sam himself. After several tries and the occasional good slap, Sam could rouse him enough to stop the screaming. Angry and ashamed, Dean would run to the nearest liquor store and knock himself out for the night with a bottle of whiskey. An hour couldn’t hurt. Sam kept an eye out while he listened to his brother’s breathing deepen.
In the Impala’s side mirror, Sam saw two girls, maybe fourteen and seventeen, by a long brick wall. The shorter blonde one looked around before jumping straight up and pulling herself up using one of the iron spires sticking out the top. She crouched on the wall and looked around again. Then she grabbed a spire with one hand and leaned over to grasp the bobbing hand of the other girl with her other. She dead lifted the teen over the wall, and after nimbly stepping over the wall spikes, they both dropped out of sight. “Huh. That’s not normal.”
Dean squeezed his eyes tighter, burrowed himself deeper in the seat and muttered, “Not-normal-gonna-get-us-killed-not-normal or not-normal-Lady-Gaga-not-normal?”
“Uh, neither. Just a couple of weirdly strong girls climbing over that wall over there.”
Dean sat up, turned around, and sleepily rubbed one eye. “Were they hot?”
“They were underage, Dean. You wanted to sleep, remember?”
“You know that’s not happening,” he grumbled. He tilted his head and squinted at Sam. “How underage? The light is crap over there. You don’t know. The Case of the Possibly-Legal Hot Chicks sounds a hell of a lot better than anything else that’s happened in the past few shitty weeks. Let’s go.”
They walked a few feet to the corner, crossed the street, and turned to walk beside the brick wall toward a gate further down. “So what do you think they’re doing?” Dean wondered with one of his long-absent boyish smiles. “Sorority streaking initiation? Were they wearing black catsuits? Do we have a hot twin Catwoman situation?”
The sign above the locked gate read Sunnydale Cemetery. “Huh?”
After a quick just-in-case trip to the trunk for the demon knife and a couple machetes to back up their guns, the Winchesters were back at the cemetery wall. Sam and Dean easily pulled themselves up by the iron spires, but Sam, not as nimble as the girls, caught his pant leg on the way down. He landed on his side, air knocked from his lungs, jeans torn to the knee.
Dean fell to the ground too, laughing.
“Shut up, jerk!” Sam wheezed.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Dean asked, “Did you forget how long your legs are, Tinkerbell? Thanks, man. I haven’t laughed like that in months!”
Sam gingerly sat up and brushed himself off. Nothing was broken at least, but he’d have some nice bruises on his left side in the morning. He stopped prodding his ribs and studied the spiked security wall. “Dean, of all the graveyards we’ve been in through the years, do you recall one ever being enclosed with a seven foot brick wall?”
The smile faded from Dean’s face, he shook his head in the dim light as he grabbed Sam’s hand and helped him to his feet. “We gotta find those girls.”
After walking for about ten minutes, Dean heard faint voices. He motioned to Sam to join him. They peeked around a mausoleum where a tiny brunette and an even tinier blonde waited. The brunette in a pink sweater clutched a wooden stake with both of her hands. She stared nervously at the headstone while chewing on her bottom lip.
“Dawn,” said the tiny blonde in khakis and a leather jacket standing on a nearby tombstone, “remember that you are basically a value meal.”
Dawn let out a little groan. “Did Mr. McDuffy have a family or was bowling his entire life?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said the blonde, crossing her arms. “Mr. McDuffy’s dead. This vampire is just wearing his body, and he’s going to be hungry when he gets out.”
Sam and Dean exchanged quizzical glances. Vampires they were familiar with, but wooden stakes and rising from the grave? That was movie stuff. Just in case, Dean pulled out his machete.
The one named Dawn was a kid, but the blonde was definitely an adult. On another day, Dean would have enjoyed Sam’s wrongness a little more, but she reminded him of another small, blonde amateur – Jo Harvelle. It had only been a few months since her death, and he didn’t want to see the remake.
“Ah! Ah! Buffy!” the ground bulged at Dawn’s feet as a hand burst from the ground.
“Dawn! Who is in control of this situation?”
“Um, him?”
“Yes, use its strength against it. Now kill it.” The vampire – or whatever it was – had both arms out now, trying to create some space around its torso.
“Uh, do I wait for him to get all the way out?”
Dean chuckled, and Sam shot him a disapproving glare.
Buffy – really, Buffy? – sighed and walked toward the struggling monster. It grabbed her ankle and knocked her over as it made one final push to escape. She flipped up and tossed the potbellied figure fifteen feet into a headstone.
Dean’s eyes went wide as he smacked Sam’s arm. He raised his eyebrows in surprised approval. “Kinda hot, huh?” Sam sighed.
“That was rude!” the blonde said to the monster. “Now get back over here and try to eat my sister.”
Eat my sister? Dean didn’t know what to do with this. He looked to Sam for support, but his brother was gone.
Something grabbed Dean, but he spun around and broke free. A man pinned Sam’s arms, and a woman yanked his head back by his thick hair. They both bore yellow eyes and fangs. Another creature lunged at Dean from the right. He pivoted away. “Hey, bitch!” he yelled at the woman-thing, machete raised.
Lesson over. Buffy dispatched Mr. McDuffy and ran toward the yelling coming from the other side of the mausoleum. She rounded the corner where two vampires restrained a tall man and another man slung a machete, chopping off one of the vampire’s heads. A third vampire came out of nowhere knocking him over, sending his blade sailing from his hand.
She ran to the vampire standing over the unarmed man and quickly punched a stake through its heart. The tall man bent over, throwing the vampire holding him off balance. It tumbled, rolled, and popped back up as the man drew a knife. A knife? “Hey, tall, dark and ugly!,” she yelled at the vampire before whipping her stake through the air and to the bulls-eye.
Situation managed, Buffy found her sister half crouched in a bush at the corner of the mausoleum before turning back to the men. They were both tall and handsome sporting plaid shirts, jeans, and weapons.
The taller man with the knife helped up his friend, who was brushing the vampire remains out of his short hair. “I think I got some of the poofy dust in my mouth, Sam. What’s with the poofing?” His voice was deep and rough, but his face soft and wide-eyed like a confused child.
Buffy crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side evaluating their threat level. “Well, you did kill one of the three. Not bad. I see you came armed for trouble, but pro-tip: stakes are more effective than knives. Armed like that, what sort of trouble were you looking for?”
The shorter one – and Buffy thought winner of the neck-and-neck hotness contest – met her gaze and turned his broad shoulders towards her. He shamelessly panned her body before his lips curled in a smirk. “Not sure, sweetheart. You got somethin’ in mind?”
“So those things,” began the taller one gesturing at the dust in the grass, “are vampires?”
“They’re not Elvis impersonators.”
“You get that a lot around here? It’s just that you seemed to know that other one was about to, um, rise.”
Buffy shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Were you spying on us?”
The tall one grinned sheepishly, his boyish dimples flashing, and ran his hand through his thick, shaggy hair. “Well, uh, no, it’s just that, um, we were driving, and –”
“Yes,” replied the other. “My brother Sam here saw you scalin’ the fence like it was nothin’.” Down to the plaid shirt, he looked too much like the farm-hand fantasy from her mom’s old stack of now familiar romance novels. “Thought we’d see what was goin’ on. I’m Dean, by the way.”
“Buffy,” she said slowly, still unsure if she should trust them.
“Bu-ffy?” he repeated with one eyebrow cocked.
“Yes. Buffy. This is my sister Dawn.”
Dawn’s mouth hung slightly agape, but a swift elbow to the ribs spawned a sheepish wave and squeaky hello.
“Where are you from? I know you’re not from Sunnydale.”
The brothers exchanged glances, raised their eyebrows, and tilted their heads in sync. “Originally, Kansas, but we’re sort of from all over. Ohio most recently,” said Sam.
“And you came to California for the vampires or the beaches?”
Dean licked his lips and smiled. Warmth spread through Buffy’s body. “We just sort of came. Why do you think they’re vampires?”
“Let’s see, they drink blood, incinerate in the sun, and they die with a stake to the heart. Sounds vampy to me.”
“Very fangy,” added Dawn.
“What’s your game?” Buffy asked. “You thought me hopping the cemetery fence was curious, but a couple of armed drifters is curiouser.”
“Just hunting, like you.”
“Hunting?” The brothers exchanged glances again. “Oh my God!” Buffy exclaimed. “Stop doing that! It’s like you’re using telepathy!”
“What do you call it? Killing monsters, I mean,” said Sam with a disarmingly adorable smile.
“I call it patrolling. Hunting sounds, I don’t know…sporty?” Hunting sounded like what she did on her restless nights, nights she wanted to leave behind her. “Do you do this a lot? ‘Hunting’ for monsters?”
“Yeah,” they said in unison.
Buffy uncrossed her arms and relaxed a bit. “Well, you shouldn’t. You’re going to get yourselves killed. Stay home and watch sport…things. Leave this to the experts. Come on, Dawn.” She grabbed her little sister’s hand, and they walked back to get their bags by Mr. McDuffy’s empty grave. She heard the boys following them.
“Look here, lady!” She could tell from the drawl it was Dean. “Thanks for the help back there, but I’ve been doin’ this nearly my whole damn life. I don’t need you lookin’ out for me. Especially since you don’t even know what a goddamn vampire looks like.”
Buffy spun around, too shocked to be mad. Instead she laughed, a large-mouthed, hands-over-your-face sort of laugh. “Wow. Just wow. You know, I had a nice night planned. Dawn was going to kill her first vampire. I was going to have a proud sister moment. Then popcorn and Meg Ryan and staying up too late. But you two showed up. You’re not inept, but you’re in over your heads here. You’re like chihuahuas that bark their heads off at rottweilers. You have teeth, but that’s not enough. Sunnydale is not Ohio.” She stepped toe-to-toe with Dean. He was a head taller than her, but she could cut him down with her eyes alone. “How many vampires have you killed? Huh? Because I’m well into the thousands. This is my job and my town. I have enough life to juggle without worrying about your lives too, so please, go home.”
She turned away from Dean’s surprised face and began picking up stakes. Whoever they were, she didn’t need more complications.
“Thousands? How?”
Did she really want them to leave? They were in over their heads, but everyday life had her swimming against the current. Between classes starting up and her ever-shrinking pool of allies, she should use a few more pairs of (mildly) competent hands.
Buffy took a deep breath and faced them. “You ruined my night,” she said. “You owe me. There’s a diner a few blocks away. I think you telling me what on earth you think a vampire is will sound much better over food.”
Dean licked his lips and smiled. “Well, there’s something we agree on.”
