The ride back to Buffy’s house was quiet. Giles and Buffy were lost in thought, with Alec behind them on his bike in much the same state. They’d decided that they’d had enough for one night. Calling from her cell phone, Buffy told Willow to let everyone know she’d decided to head home. Willow didn’t ask what had happened, but had let Buffy know that indeed there was a minor incantation protecting the tome from the Mayor’s office. She’d been able to take care of it fairly easily. Buffy also told Willow to make sure Spike and Angel do not go into the sewers for any reason whatsoever.
“Is it bad?” Willow asked her when Buffy was finished.
“It's beyond bad,” Buffy replied. “I’ll fill you in tomorrow.”
Willow wished Buffy a good night and hung up.
Giles and Buffy pulled into her driveway with Alec right behind them. After exchanging a few supportive words with Buffy and Alec, Giles backed out of the driveway and headed back to the shop to begin work translating the journal.
Alec shut off his bike, and walked over to Buffy. “Hell of a night, eh?” he said.
Buffy snorted slightly before responding.
“Yeah, you could say that. You sticking around?”
Alec nodded. “I’m going to go check on Dawn. Figure I’d say hello,” he told her.
“You really got a soft spot for the kid, don’t you?” she asked, amused.
Alec shrugged uncomfortably.
“I suppose. Guess I just don’t think it’s fair for a child to be saddled with such a burden,” he replied as he turned to regard the Slayer. “I’m assuming you can relate.”
Buffy froze; she’d never considered that,
“Yeah. Yeah, I can,” she admitted, exhaling hard. “Guess I should cut her some slack, huh?”
Alec nodded. “It’d be a good idea. Unlike you, she has absolutely no idea what’s going on. It’s going to be quite a shock,” he said as he shook his head. “It’s not easy to go from ‘Backstreet Boys’ to H.P. Lovecraft.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Backstreet boys are WAY scarier, ” Buffy joked.
Alec laughed as he opened the door, and he and his sister stepped inside the warm house.
Joyce came out to greet them with a plate of cookies. The whole house had been done up in lights and a large kerosene heater glowed in the corner brightly, staving off the unusually cold weather for California.
“Buffy! You’re home!” the older woman exclaimed as she hugged her daughter. Buffy looked at her mother, a tad confused.
“Mom, it’s like 1 A.M. What are you doing up…and baking?” she asked.
“I know, honey, but I couldn’t sleep, I’m just so excited. The holiday season coming up and all,” Joyce explained.
Buffy nodded solemnly. “Yeah, way to pre-empt Christmas,” she commented sardonically as she took a cookie from the plate.
Joyce lifted her head to regard Alec. “Oh, Dusk, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for you watching Dawn the other night, let me get my purse so I can pay you,” she told the other man.
Alec shook his head. “Forget it, Ms. Summers. Consider it a Christmas present,” he told her.
Joyce and Buffy stopped and stared at him, dumbfounded, and with Buffy in mid-chew. Neither of them had ever heard of someone watching Dawn who didn’t want to be paid handsomely.
“You sure, Bro?” Buffy asked incredulously. “I mean, you stayed with her for hours, you’re at least entitled to hazard pay.”
Alec grinned, taking a Christmas cookie from the plate. “Just keep me in ready supply of these cookies, Ms. Summers, and we’ll call it even. Fair enough?” he asked.
Joyce blushed. “Fair enough, Dusk,” she replied, smiling at the compliment.
Buffy smirked as she patted Alec’s arm.
“Smooth talker,” she commented.
Alec cleared his throat and looked upstairs. “Dawn still awake?” he asked gently.
Joyce nodded. “I decided to let her have one of her presents early. She’s upstairs with it right now.”
Alec nodded, turning back to face them. “I’m just gonna go upstairs. Wish her a goodnight. Will that be all right?” he asked, gauging their reactions. He was relieved that neither showed any indication that they believed his motivations ran deeper than what he had presented.
Because they do not! Alec thought to himself forcibly.
Buffy gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. “Go tell the little monstrosity I said hi, would you?” she asked her brother.
Alec nodded ands assured her, “Not a problem.” Munching contently on his Christmas cookie, he headed up the stairs. Reaching Dawn’s room, he quietly knocked.
“Go away!” came the response from the other side of the door.
There was a pause, then a familiar voice emitted from the other side of the door.
“Okay. Sorry.”
Dawn’s eyes widened and, nearly dropping her new video camera, she dove for the door, fumbled with the lock, and yanked it open hurriedly to reveal the young man.
“Alec!” Dawn cried, grinning widely at him. “Hi. Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” she explained, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
Alec smiled slightly. “I guess so. Can I come in?” he asked.
Dawn bobbed her head. “Uh-huh, sure,” she answered, stepping aside for him to enter.
“Cute pajamas, flannel is you,” Alec told her, gesturing at them and flashing her his unique smile.
Dawn blushed furiously. “They were a gift,” she offered as an explanation as she tried desperately not to go weak in the knees at that smile, as she almost always did.
“Ah, I see,” was his only reply.
Alec stepped through the doorway and as his back was turned; Dawn stuck her head around the door, hurriedly scanning the hallway back and forth to make sure they were, in fact, alone. Upon seeing no one else in the corridor, she nearly hopped with glee before closing it.
I’ve got this guy, in my bedroom, at night. This is SO going in my diary she thought excitedly. Quickly regaining her composure, she raced past him, jumped back onto her bed, and pulled the blankets over herself. Then, as if she’d forgotten he was there (which was not very likely at all), she reached over and patted a place on the bed next to her, indicating for him to sit as she shifted her feet out of the way.
Alec, still smiling, sat down next to the young girl. “What’s this?” he asked as he picked up Dawn’s new video camera.
“Isn’t it cool? Mom gave it to me,” she replied, with an excited grin. Taking the camera from him, she turned it on and started filming him. “Alec, you’ve just won the World Series, what are you going to do next?” she asked in her best impression of a serious TV reporter.
Alec laughed as he addressed the camera, “Why, I’m going to Disneyland.”
She giggled and continued to film him, every now and then zooming in on his eyes or his lips. She suddenly noticed her heart was pounding and quickly asked more questions in a rush to fill the silence.
“So what did you do today? Fight vampires? Save the world?”
“Still working on it,” he replied, shaking his head.
Dawn grinned and bit her lower lip in pleasure at the warmth in his tone. “Oh, come on, you can tell me. How does it feel to be a real-life action hero?” she asked him.
The question struck a chord with Alec and he considered it for a while before answering, looking intently into the camera.
“Dawn, we’re all heroes. We get up in the morning, go to work so we can provide for our families, or go to school and try to learn something about the world we live in, we all do what we have to do. That’s all a hero is, luv: someone who simply does what they have to do,” he finished.
“Ommmmmm,” Dawn hummed mantra-like, giggling. They both laughed at that.
“All right, Grasshopper, what do you think qualifies as a hero?” Alec asked her.
It was now Dawn’s turn to consider a while. “Someone who isn’t afraid of anything. Who’ll never quit and never die and will always win in the end,” she said, never taking the camera off him.
Alec smiled and shook his head ruefully. “You think I’ll never die, eh, luv?” he asked, bemused. He tilted his head and looked up at her through the bangs of his hair.
“The good guys never die, and you definitely qualify,” she assured him, nodding her head vigorously.
Alec smiled; this time it was a little sad-looking. “How I wish that were true,” he said quietly, for a moment lost in an unidentifiable but wholly unpleasant feeling. He gave himself a good mental shake to snap out of it, and turned his attentions back to the girl next to him. “You’re wrong about the other part though, Dawn,” he continued.
Dawn frowned a little. “What do you mean?” she asked, confused.
“Being a hero doesn’t mean you’re never afraid,” he explained. “It means doing the right thing, despite being afraid. It means willing to give everything you’ve got and more, to do the right thing, the thing that needs doing, you know? ‘Fighting the good fight’.” Alec paused a moment in his explanation, to make sure he wasn’t boring the young girl. Dawn eagerly nodded to indicate that, no, she wasn’t bored, and gestured for him to continue speaking.
“A hero also is someone who, after they're gone, people will still remember. The ones they left behind try to live as their hero had lived. Heroes inspire others to do the right thing, because they themselves do all they can to do the same. They don’t always succeed, but the point is that they try and try and try again, doing whatever it takes and giving it their all,” Alec told her with a smile. “I imagine, in a way, heroes never really die. They live on forever in the hearts and the actions of the people they inspire.”
Dawn’s smile, which had yet to leave her face since Alec had first entered her room, now turned impish.
“Wow. That was deep,” she joked.
He laughed, “Oh, you’re tough,” he said.
“On that note, this is Dawn Summers, live with Alec “Dusk” Giles, signing off,” she informed all her imaginary viewers in her TV reporter voice.
Pressing a button on the camera, she zoomed out to get as much of the young man as possible in the frame before speaking, “Say goodbye, Alec.”
Alec gave her his infamous ‘Warm-Fuzzies-Causing’ crooked-smile (as she liked to think of it) and he looked intently into the camera again before speaking quietly.
“Goodbye, Dawn.”
Smiling, Dawn shut off the camera and put it down.
“You think I’d make a good reporter?” she asked Alec, still grinning.
He nodded. “I know I wouldn’t be able to refuse you an interview,” he assured her as he tousled her hair affectionately.
She smiled and gently nuzzled her head into his palm like an affectionate cat. For a time, he sat there, gently stroking her hair and Dawn’s expression went from blissful to serene. Her eyes closed and her grin became a small smile: a fragile thing, innocent and gentle, a perfect expression of utter peace, warmth, and contentment.
“Dusk? Dawn?” Joyce called from downstairs.
Abruptly, Alec snatched his hand from Dawn’s head, causing her eyes to snap open and she gasped in displeasure, as if she had been rudely awakened from a nice dream. Alec didn’t seem to have noticed as he reached over to open the door.
“Yes, Mrs. Summers?” he called out.
“Why don’t you and Dawn come down for some more cookies and hot chocolate? I’ve even got those little marshmallows everyone seems to like.”
Alec snorted with amusement; Spike’s love of those little marshmallows was legendary, apparently it was also well known.
Contemplating killer vampire berserkers and their love of little marshmallows, Alec laughed quietly as he got up from the bed and turned to Dawn. “You feel like som –,” he stopped short and nearly gasped himself at what he saw then.
Like a sudden and violent car wreck, Dawn’s delicate face had crumpled into an utter wreckage of an expression: it was pure agony - a soul-hurt: a visage of pain and of loss total and complete in its desolation. The kind of suffering that didn’t die, but lingered cancerously in someone until it consumed them utterly.
It was horrific for Alec to see such a look on features as innocent as hers. No one should ever look as the young girl did right now and especially, not Dawn.
“Hey,” Alec whispered, sitting back down next to her and trying not to let on how disturbed he was by what he was seeing, “Are you okay?”
Without replying, Dawn burst into frantic action; she clawed at her blankets in desperation, they tangled and writhed at her frenzied assault and, with a cry like a wounded animal, she hurled the tangled massed of fabric from her.
Alec didn’t have time to finish gaping at the sheer ferocious intensity of what he was seeing as Dawn threw herself against him hard, wrapping her thin arms around his body and squeezing as tightly as she could. Stunned, Alec put his arms around her and held her, not really knowing what else to do.
“You’ll always be my hero, Alec,” Dawn whispered in voice that was the tonal equivalent of her earlier, tortured expression.
It was not the tone of a lost little girl, as Alec had expected, but that of a grown woman, shed of all childish naiveté and immaturity, a woman that had her innocence forcibly replaced with a hard-won wisdom and strength.
A woman that had lost all she held dear in this world.
“Alec…” she whispered again, still holding him.
Alec frowned: she had rarely called him by his human moniker in the past and hearing her say it as she sounded now only added more fuel to his already-disturbed thoughts.
He rocked her soothingly. “Hey, come on, luv,” he coaxed gently as he pulled away from her gently, touching her face. Alarmed to see tears welling in her eyes, he tried to smile comfortingly. “Why the water works?” he joked.
His efforts were rewarded and the quip had the intended effect as, with an embarrassed little laugh, Dawn pulled away, sniffling slightly. The moment and all the painful seconds that composed it, had been broken.
“I don’t know, I guess I’m just tired,” she told him as she sniffled again. “It’s nothing. Really, I’m fine,” she put on a brave smile to reassure him and perhaps, to reassure them both.
“A disturbance in the Force then?” he replied in a dead-pan Obi-Wan Kenobi impression.
Dawn scoffed and rolled her eyes in an attempt to sound exasperated by his bad crack. “You are such a sci-fi dork,” she replied in a mock-scolding tone.
Alec smirked indulgently as he spoke, “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.” He leaned over and placed a lingering kiss against her forehead. Dawn closed her eyes and smiled, the last of the misery seemed to drain from her features to be replaced by contentment.
A few moments later, his lips left her brow and he gave her hair a gentle stroke. “Come now, little one,” he said, trying to keep his tone casual. But the pet name now seemed to leave a cheap taste his mouth, like a greasy coin between his teeth. Alec smiled just a little harder in an attempt to sell his demeanor of confidence, and inwardly, he was grateful that she had her eyes closed as she was unable to see how miserably he was failing at his kind lie.
“I bet I can eat more Christmas cookies than you can,” Alec added, managing a fair approximation of a playful and challenging tone in an attempt to cheer her.
Once again, his efforts were rewarded, much to his relief.
Dawn’s eyes opened; the tears from them gone and now replaced by her usual child-like mischief. “Not if I get there first!” Dawn yelled. She gave him a hard shove and he tumbled off the bed, onto the plush carpet below.
As she raced past him, he made a futile grab at her leg. “Well, she takes after her sister,” he observed dryly from the floor.
Dawn stopped as she reached the doorway and turned to look down at him. “Well, are you coming?” she demanded querulously.
With a small laugh, Alec got to his feet. “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, crossing the threshold and exiting her room.
Dawn followed a few steps when she suddenly sighed in exasperation. “Ugh!” she cried.
“Dawn?” Alec asked her, turning with a frown.
“Yeah, no, I’m okay, I just forgot to plug in my camera,” she explained. “I’ll be right down. You better save me a cookie!” she warned him direly, waving a small finger under his nose.
Alec nodded solemnly and bowed deep at the waist. “It shall be as you command, your highness,” he replied.
“And don’t you forget it. Off with you then, lowly peasant,” she commanded as she made a regal gesture of dismissal.
Alec laughed, this time it was the boisterous, exuberant laugh that Dawn always associated with him. “Definitely takes after her sister,” he said to himself as he bowed again to Queen Dawn and walked away.
Dawn made sure he was out of sight before stepping back into her room and closing the door. At the click of the closed door, all the strength fled from the young girl, and she sagged heavily against it, her hands covering her face.
She was relieved that her efforts at humor just now had been rewarded: Alec and the others had enough to worry about without her adding to it by saying she had a “bad feeling”. She took a deep breath and brought her hands away from her face. “I’m fine,” she whispered to herself, her eyes squeezed shut. “I’m fine and everything is going to be okay. There’s nothing wrong. I’m fine.” She said this to herself a few times, gaining confidence with every repetition. Carefully, she opened her eyes.
Her reflection, and its pale, haunted expression, called her a liar and she saw that her hands were shaking.
She didn’t understand what was happening, it made no sense at all to her, but she was past the point of caring as she brought her hands back up to her face. Against all reason, logic and knowledge, she cried, until there was nothing left in her but a hollow feeling in her stomach, cold and clammy.
Dread.
Alec descended the stairs and walked into the kitchen. Buffy was seated at her “breakfast nook” as she called it, casually eating Christmas cookies while Joyce was cutting up more cookie dough with an unusually large knife. Joyce smiled when she saw his look of confusion at the knife.
Alec gestured. “Nice knife,” he said casually. “What’s the occasion?”
“The dishwasher doesn’t seem to be working,” she offered as an explanation, “So I make do,” she held up the knife and gestured with it to an ornate cutlery block on the table, filled with other large knives, “Carbon steel knives, carving set of twenty.”
“Full tang I’d wager. Are they as sharp as they look?”
Joyce smiled, enjoying the other man’s interest and attention to detail.
“I picked them up in China while I was on a purchasing trip for the gallery. You can’t get them here: the full tang and the steel quality make them too strong and sharp to be classified as ‘kitchen utensils’ so they’re considered ‘dangerous weapons’ by customs,” Joyce’s smile turned wicked and expectant as she told the tale.
Alec took the bait. “So how did you manage it?” he asked.
“I said ‘difficult’ not ‘impossible. You’d be amazed what you can import if you list it as part of the exhibit,” she confessed with a grin.
Buffy scoffed at her mother. “I’m pretty sure one of you is corrupting the other, but I’m not sure which,” she commented, rolling her eyes, as she turned to face Alec. “But, yeah, Mom was psyched about those knives. We actually started eating a lot of bagels and lox just so she could use them a lot.” Buffy suddenly had a wicked smile of her own as she turned her attention back to her mother. “And then came the day she learned that they had to be sharpened. Often.”
“Oh, don’t remind me!” Joyce lamented. “Fortunately, though, for me, I have a daughter who, besides using her magical gifts for fighting monsters, can occasionally put them to use helping her poor, overworked mother.”
Buffy nearly choked on her cookie and Alec laughed out loud.
“Okay, I know I’m going to regret asking this: but why not just use a regular knife?” he asked Joyce.
Joyce smiled patiently while favoring him with a look that was usually reserved for well-loved idiots. “Because then I wouldn’t be able to use my cool, smuggled, Chinese knives,” the older woman told Alec.
Dawn entered just then, in mid-explanation, and Joyce’s expression became parental. “Besides, someone keeps forgetting to wash the dishes,” the older woman added in a near-casual (though nowhere near enough) tone as she fixated a “mom” look on Dawn.
Dawn for her part ignored her mother and smiled innocently at Alec. “Hi, Alec, you did save me a cookie, right?” she demanded in that imperious tone again.
With exaggerated care, Alec slowly picked up a warm cookie from the plate and, putting it down on one of the smaller plates on the table slowly, handed the whole thing to Dawn as if it were a Faberge` egg. “Your cookie, milady. Please, milady, don’t shove me to the floor again,” Alec pleaded in his most Dickensian voice.
Dawn giggled and covered her mouth with her hands as Buffy sent her sister a wry look before turning to regard Alec.
“I told you, you needed hazard pay to take care of this little nightmare,” The Slayer admonished him affectionately as she reached out and tousled Dawn’s hair. Dawn responded by sticking her tongue out at her, which was covered in half-digested cookie goo.
Buffy made a face. “Oh yeah, the honeys will be banging at your door ASAP with that little display,” she said with a snort. Dawn shrugged and went back to her cookie.
Alec snickered at their antics and walked over to the stove to get some cocoa for himself when he noticed an odd smell. He inhaled once, twice, the scent was very faint. Methane? he thought, frowning. Shaking his head, he poured some cocoa for himself. Adding a couple of marshmallows, he joined the others at the table.
“So, what are your plans for Christmas dinner, Ms. Summers?” he inquired.
“Oh, I don’t know, Dusk. I can’t seem to make my mind between turkey and ham. Plus, I need to work on a guest list,” Joyce replied forlornly.
Alec chuckled in sympathy. “If Buffy’s planning on bringing everyone, you’re going to wind up feeding half of the living population of Sunnydale,” he commented, and paused a moment, before adding in his trademark sardonic tone, “And possibly one or two of the walking dead.”
Buffy socked him in the arm for this transgression.
“If Spike is planning on attending,” Joyce replied with an uncomfortable shrug, turning her attention to Buffy. “Is Spike planning on attending?” she asked, clearly tentative.
Buffy smiled in consideration and shook her head. “Spike isn’t big on turkey, mom. It’s okay. I promise that only the living will be eating Christmas dinner this year,” she assured her mother.
Joyce smiled, perhaps a little relieved. She clearly was uncomfortable with her daughter dating a vampire that she’d once hit with an axe. But, if Buffy wanted to do that and was comfortable and well treated, what right did she have to complain?
At least she’s never dated a psychotic robot, Joyce thought to herself with a touch of grim humor.
“Chances are, he will stop by, Mom, but he won’t linger,” Buffy added hurriedly as soon as she saw her mother’s expression begin to tense again, “He tells me he makes a mean pecan pie,” Buffy added, chuckling at the thought of Spike cooking. “He also tells me you have to be over twenty-one in order to eat it.” Joyce smiled a little at that.
Alec chortled. “Likes to ‘spike’ his pastries, does he? No pun intended, of course,” he commented.
Buffy shot him an amused look. “No pun intended at all, of course. And yes, something like that, dear, sweet brother,” she replied, her sarcasm getting lost over the sound of the pipes which had picked that moment to start groaning and rumbling loudly. She frowned and sniffed the air. “You smell something?”
He nodded. “Yes, smells vaguely like methane,” he replied as he turned to Joyce, who was headed to the sink to wash her hands, “Ms. Summers, do you have a septic system or anything like that?” Alec asked her.
Joyce shook her head as she twisted the knob on the sink, frowning as no water came out. “No, we use public water. Which doesn’t seem to be – UGH!” she cried out as black ooze splattered over her hands. The stench of methane and rot was now overpowering.
Dawn made a face. “Mom, what IS that?” she asked.
Buffy and Alec were both on their feet and slipped instantly into “combat mode” as their friends had called it. It had become habit for the pair, cultivated by a shared and intense dislike of being caught by surprise on the Hellmouth. Heightening their awareness of the immediate surroundings and each other whilst, simultaneously, tuning out the rest of the outside world, had allowed the siblings to gain a Zen-like focus and bond in battle which was used to devastating effect upon their enemies.
Now walking almost in unison: Buffy’s nimble gait lightly contrasting with Alec’s, heavy, powerful stride, they flanked Joyce protectively as she wiped the foul smelling goo off with a dishtowel.
Joyce turned to look at her daughter. “I don’t know, honey, it just came ou –,” she began.
And with a groan of tortured metal, the whole faucet tore itself free from its base and shot up like a bullet sending plaster and metal shrapnel flying as a geyser of black ooze spewed volcanic ferocity into the air.
Joyce shrieked and fell back, Dawn knocked her chair back as she moved to tend to her mother. The sink began filling with the vile substance that was bubbling up through the drain, thick and black, the stench was overwhelming.
Suddenly, something writhed in the pool of muck and some sort of pseudo-pod lashed out and wrapped itself around Joyce’s neck hoisting her high into the air.
“Mom!” Buffy cried out as she dashed to her mother’s rescue wrapping both of her hands around the tendril that held her mother and trying to pull it free with all her might.
Alec however raced to the table, and with a single movement, snatched up the knife Joyce had been using. It was surprisingly heavy, but perfectly balanced and strong, he could tell that instantly, and he also knew that the heft would add momentum to his throw.
All this he knew from decades of experience and was processed in a single second even as he reared back and launched the blade from his hand in a smooth, over the shoulder throw, sending the knife hurtling towards the dripping tentacle that was crushing the life out of the poor woman.
The knife scythed through the air and carved neatly through the viscous appendage just missing the Slayer’s hands and spraying muck against the wall.
Joyce dropped to the floor hard as the tentacle and its hold on her was severed. She choked and coughed, and a high-pitched wail of pain reverberated through the room as the creature retracted the now-stump of the tentacle back into its body. Buffy dropped to the floor and sheltered her mother’s body with her own.
“Mom, are you all right?” she asked, nearly hysterical. Joyce, still coughing, nodded weakly.
“Buffy? We have company!” Alec yelled.
Buffy frowned, Alec sounded worried. She’d never heard him sound worried
What could possibly-? she thought as she began to turn her head back around.
And then she saw it.
A shapeless, dripping form was rising up from the ooze: the slime congealed and flowed until it took the form of an androgynous human torso, entirely without any kind of detail and missing a head. Like an abscess, the form continued to grow and swell, with a sound and smell akin to the contents of a septic tank brought to a thick boil.
Buffy choked back the rising tide of vomit in her throat as she tried to turn her eyes from the gruesome spectacle: it seemed to last hours yet she knew it was only heartbeats.
Alec tore his eyes from the thing with an effort, and turned his head to take in Dawn’s state: the girl was afraid but still lucid, still in control. “Dawn! Take cover!” he yelled.
Without missing a beat, Dawn flipped the table onto its side, spilling cutlery heedlessly all over the floor as she ducked down behind it, rising only enough to peek over it at Alec. He smiled at her encouragingly and took a moment to admire the young girl’s composure.
Abruptly, a new sound began. Alec whipped his head around to confront the thing that had now completely consumed the entire counter with its girth.
Something writhed and squealed beneath the “skin” of the abomination. Portions of the creature continued to bulge and pop even more loudly and with a wet, tearing sound, as if diseased flesh was being pulled from an incredibly large bone: a head, horned and monstrous, the head of a demon, birthed from the creature’s body with a high-pitched squealing sound. The sound deepened to a loud roar that shifted its pitch even higher, until the intensity was akin to a legion of claws down a huge blackboard. The thing brushed the ceiling now with its new head. It appeared almost like a huge, slimy gargoyle as it hunched over to fit in the increasingly cramped kitchen.
For a moment there was silence as the creature took a moment to acclimate itself to its new body. Buffy and Alec had time to exchange a grim look.
“This is going to suck,” Buffy commented.
“Yes. Yes it is,” her brother-in-arms replied.
And then the creature opened eyes of glowing green and dove at them, reaching for them all with dripping, grasping hands as it flowed out of the sink to land with a splattering thump and a loud cracking sound as the tiles beneath it were crushed into powder underneath its weight. It had no legs, its lower portion was nothing more than a thickly corded tendril of slime that terminated somewhere in the ruin that had been the kitchen sink.
The thing reared up like a great snake before them. Suddenly, clefts burst from its body, oozing and raw. They flexed and puckered and from them came an burbling alien chorus of voices.
“Give us the Key,” it said.
Buffy couldn’t believe what she was hearing: it’s voice wasn’t just once voice, she heard the voices of men, women, and children in that voice; both young and old. A thousand different people’s voices, different accents, and tones and pitches, now speaking as one voice - its voice. As the Slayer’s mind was forced to comprehend the Cthulhonic nightmare that towered above her, she realized that those clefts were mouths and her mind reflexively grasped the truth before it could shy away from the horror it would bring - these were the voices of the consumed, those that were made “part of a larger whole”. Buffy nearly went stark white with the evil of it all.
“Bite me,” was Alec’s only response to it.
Both the Slayer and the rotting monstrosity turned their respective heads and in perfect unison, they both stared at Alec in sheer shock at the audacity and the black fury he had put in those two words. Taken aback by Alec’s eyes, which now writhed and brimmed with darkness, and the tone of his voice even darker than his eyes, both Buffy and the monster actually hesitated a moment., as if unsure that violence involving this man would be a wise thing.
Then, the creature attacked. It let loose with another inhumanly high-pitched shriek, deafening in its volume, causing windows to shatter.
The Summers’ women clamped hands over their ears at the awfulness of it. It set their teeth grinding and caused their eyes to clamp so tight that tears, stinging like liquid acid, were squeezed out from under their eyelids. It was all in vain as the pitch and pain of the creature’s awful shriek chewed through their bones and made their blood boil.
A tendril of darkness lashed out and severed the creature’s head from its body, silencing it abruptly.
Alec stood in the center of the room, calm but wary, as he observed the creature writhe in its death throes. Tiny threads of darkness that had insulated him from the creature’s sonic bombardment withdrew wiggling from his ears and slithered up into his hair to vanish completely.
He had only taken his attention from the beast once during the attack; a quick glance to verify that everyone was still okay, that they couldn’t see the strands of darkness that had flowed both into and out of his body. He now turned to scrutinize them closely: Buffy was getting to her feet and Joyce had apparently taken shelter with Dawn behind the upturned table.
“Well, it appears-,” he started.
He never got a chance to finish the sentence; a ropy tendril of slime slammed him hard against his back and sent him flying across the room to smash into the kerosene heater with enough force that it broke. Fuel gushed onto the floor as man and heater lay crumpled in a kerosene-soaked heap, very still.
“ALEC!” Buffy cried out.
The thing hissed from a newly reformed head and snapped at her with wide, fanged jaws, like a snake’s. Buffy dodged the bite and, pulling back, launched a punch with all her slayer-granted might, right down the things throat. It blasted past the creatures open, dripping mouth, down its slick throat and burst out the back of its head.
The creature wailed in pain and Buffy smiled grimly while trying not to gag at the smell.
“Yeah, choke on it, buddy,” she said with a snarl, flexing the muscle in her arm, determined to do as much damage pulling her way out as she did punching her way in, and with a stab of pure fear, she realized she couldn’t retract her arm; it was stuck in the tar-like viscosity of this thing’s body.
A new head formed as the old one melted back into its body, trapping Buffy’s arm in what was now its torso. It peered down at her struggles to get free with something approaching amusement.
And then it brought its head down and swallowed her whole.
“Buffy!” Dawn cried out as she saw her sister disappear down its throat, having brought her head up over the cover to see what was happening. There was a slight bulge to mark her passage, then nothing at all.
“No!”
The creature jerked suddenly to focus its glowing green eyes on Dawn and they narrowed, hungry and hunting. It raced towards her, emitting another horrible shriek. Dawn had no time to react, the pain hit her like a freight train and she was completely paralyzed as it closed on her. It reached her, jaws open.
And with a roar of maternal fury, Joyce, coming up from behind the table, slammed a meat cleaver half the size of a machete up into the creatures jaw. The carbon steel carved up through the creatures jaw and continued, utterly unimpeded, up past the jaw and all the way up and out of the beast’s slimy head. The creature looked…confused, staring at her uncomprehendingly through its now-bisected face.
Joyce hefted the weighty meat cleaver up, taking a moment to hold the blade before its glowing green eyes, before bringing it up over her head and squeezing it tightly with both hands.
“You get the hell away from my daughter,” she snarled and she brought the blade down with all the might of a mother defending her child.
The head came away entirely and landed on the floor with a rotten splat! Overextended by the force of her blow, Joyce lost her grip on the knife, it tumbled down the now-exposed trachea of the decapitated beast which had collapsed in a heap, now thumping and twitching, making wet, painful sounds. Without taking her eyes from the beast, Joyce reached behind her, feeling for her daughter.
Dawn took her hand and wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist, staring coldly at the thing that had killed her sister. “It’s not dead,” she warned her mother.
Joyce nodded and, still focused on the creature, carefully knelt down and clutched several of the other razor sharp knives that had spilt onto the floor when Dawn had tipped the table.
“It will be,” Joyce answered in a quiet voice that promised a long and torturous death for the thing that she had seen killed Buffy, her little girl; the thing that had taken her baby away from her.
“Good,” Dawn responded in just a quiet a voice as her mother raised the first knife up.
And then the thing spat at Joyce through one of its tiny, cleft mouths.
The slime struck the woman with the force of a cannonball knocking her off her feet and sending her flying backwards past Dawn to slam into the wall behind her. The slime hardened over her face and she couldn’t breathe or see as she beat it with her hands, blind and suffocating in the dark.
“Mom!” Dawn screamed. Dawn tried to rush to her mother’s aid when another glob of slime splattered before her feet. Dawn gasped and jumped back, just in time to dodge a third stream of slime, this one coating the doorway leading out of the kitchen, forming a sticky, rock hard web that effectively sealed her in.
Dawn spared the blocked doorway a passing glance, she wasn’t planning on leaving anyway: not with the pain this thing had caused her and her family. Dawn picked up a pair of the knives and regarded the slimy beast with a calm that has defined warriors since time immemorial.
A calm that only comes when a warrior embraced their own death in order to purchase the death of their enemy.
Dawn tightened the grip on her knives.
“So you can grow heads? “ She asked the beast’s newly-emerging head. “Grow as many as you want ‘cause I’m going to cut off each and everyone one of them until there’s nothing left of you but a stain,” she promised the thing softly. She raised her knives as the creature descended, like creeping death, to face her.
She met its eyes with hers, defiant and strong and murderous. “You killed my family, you son-of-a-bitch…” Dawn spat and, quick as a flash, her delicate hands plunged the blades into first one and then both of the creatures glowing eyes. Fast as a butterfly beats it wings, she twisted the knives, flexed and bent them before tearing them free of the creature’s slimy face.
The wail of pain the horrid thing emitted was nearly drowned out by Dawn.
“…you’re going to pay for that!” she finished in a scream of raw, animal hatred. She gathered up another pair of knives and stalked towards the creature. It was already trying to grow a new face, she noticed. She also didn’t care at this point.
“I’m not done with you yet, you over-grown sack of slime,” she snarled, squeezing her knives in white-knuckled hands.
The slimy demon-headed thing only hissed at her, a low contemptuous sound as its face began to repair. It continued to hiss as Dawn brought her knives up and it began to steadily increase in pitch and volume. Dawn then realized that it was going to emit that screeching cry that it used earlier: that it would paralyze her with agony; cause her bones to go rigid and her blood to howl and boil and while she was incapacitated by the excruciating pain, this thing would come to her and it would kill her, as it killed Alec, Buffy, and her mother.
Dawn knew all these things in an instant, but her weapons did not waver. As the hiss began to reach its peak, she spoke quietly,
“Give me your best shot.”
“Me first!” a voice called out and the creature’s hiss abruptly died in its throat. It gurgled and flowed as fast as it could to see what was happening to it, even as it felt its power start to wane.
Dawn’s eyes widened in shock and her heart clutched at an impossible hope. But she couldn’t see anything past the creature’s bulk. With a jolt, she instead raced to help her mother, who was flailing weakly at the substance on her face.
Alec stood where the kitchen sink had been. The sink and the rest of the kitchen countertop were now completely submerged in the pool of black ooze made up of the bottom part of the creature. Unhurriedly, he retracted a tendril of darkness, invisible against the dark color of the slime, and held up a metal object: the twisted, badly mutilated form of a kitchen sink faucet.
“Clog in the loo can ruin anyone’s day, mate,” he said with a vicious grin. Tossing the broken fixture away, he began to steadily advance on the creature. “Throw in a clogged drain and cinched up pipes, well there’s just nothing getting in…” he continued to inform the oozing, reeking monster casually. It began to back away from the man; it began to shrink and its putrid skin began to lose its fluidity, the slimy hide becoming dry and brittle-looking.
Alec stopped before the now-recoiling beast, and smiled up at it, a smile nearly as vicious as Dawn’s had been earlier,
“…Or out.” He finished.
“Alec?” Dawn called out in desperate hope. She and her mother, who was shaken but breathing thanks to her daughter’s careful work with the knife, still could not see past the creature’s bulk in order to learn who was speaking, “Alec is that you?”
The answer was all she could have hoped for.
“Right here, luv,” Alec called out to her past the beast between them, “just letting Beastie here know that it’s closing time.” He raised his voice as he addressed the ooze monster. “Closing early due a busted tap and broken pipes,” he continued to taunt the slimy thing. “Don’t have to go home then, but you can’t sleep here.”
The creature, now only a fraction of what it had been in size, hissed at him as it tried to somehow make it past him, back down the drain, back to its home.
“Nuh-uh, mate,” Alec said, “there’s no going home for you tonight.”
And then, Alec attacked.
The creature reared back as he leaped upon the monster and, conjuring darkness from his hands, wrapped bands of shadow around the creature again and again and again, drawing them tight.
Dawn cried out in joy, followed quickly by fear at the sight of him grappling the rotting nightmare.
“Alec!”
Alec couldn’t spare any attention to answer her at the moment, instead he continued to wrap thick ropy tendrils of darkness around the thing, weaving a cocoon that was invisible against its murky black body but was as strong as steel - steel that was rapidly constricting.
“Get you good and snug there, eh, Chief?” Alec quipped with a cruel laugh, “‘Snug as a bug in a rug’ as they say!”
Suddenly the creature shifted tactics, no longer trying to escape; it reformed around Alec, forming coils of its own. Alec gasped as he felt the folds of reeking slime begin to constrict, squeezing the air out of him and making it impossible for him to draw breath.
“Alec!” Dawn called out again, seeing what was being done to him.
The creature slithered and brought its head down to eye level with the man trapped tight in its coils. The man’s breath came in shallow pants, his eyes were beginning to flood red, and the sounds of bones creaking, as they were pushed closer and closer to their breaking point, became audible. The oozing fiend at that moment may have felt a moment of satisfaction deep in its cancerous heart.
That feeling fled the instant Alec looked at him…and grinned.
“Snug enough then, pillock?” he asked in short, pained breaths. The creature hissed again and opened its mouth to bite…
…and its torso came apart as Buffy burst from the dried-out skin of the beast; now stretched too taunt and tight in the act of constricting Alec. Like poking a hole through a thin sheet of paper, Buffy’s slayer-strong fist had blasted clean through it.
“That was disgusting!” Buffy cried as she hacked at the shreds of flesh that still clung to her, using none other than her mother’s Chinese meat cleaver that had been last seen tumbling down the trachea of this very creature. “I’m going to need to bathe for a month!”
“Buffy!” Dawn and Joyce cried out. Rushing to her, they hugged Buffy desperately, completely unmindful of the layers upon layers of decomposed slime and rotted muck that caked the Slayer.
“I missed you guys, too,” Buffy said quietly, holding them tight.
“Sis! Your assistance would not go unappreciated!” Alec called to her, still trapped deep within the beast’s coils. The creature apparently still had some fight left in it, it seemed, even after being eviscerated by Buffy’s emergence.
“Work, work, work,” Buffy quipped, trying to regain a bit more of her confidence after being swallowed.
Alec smiled slightly; he could feel the coils loosening already. He’d be free in a moment.
And in that moment, the fangs of the creature struck deep into Alec’s shoulder. He screamed, loud and long as he felt fire lancing through his body.
“No!” Buffy cried out at the sight of the demon’s fangs plunged deep into her brother’s body. With a cry she charged the beast, cleaver in hand and started hacking furiously at it.
“Why! Won’t! You! Die?!” she howled in frustration as blow after blow carved out chunks of decayed plant matter, putrescent fluids and heaps of rotting muck, apparently to no effect.
“Buffy!” Alec screamed.
Buffy looked up. Even from here she could see Alec was in bad shape; he look flushed and feverish and his body wracked with spasms.
“The…the light!” he rasped.
Buffy looked up and saw the light. And knew what she needed to do.
Taking the cleaver she threw it at the kitchen light which had somehow managed to survive the last few minutes. The pale yellow light the only source of illumination in the otherwise dim room.
Buffy’s aim was on the mark and the light exploded in a shower of glass and sparks.
“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?!” She cried out in defiance to the monster as blackness, thick and complete, blanked the room. In that one moment where the last of the light had faded, she heard her brother’s quiet reply.
“You will be.”
The creature began to scream at that point, not hiss or screech but scream through all its mouths, a high, horrible scream, a sound of ultimate suffering and mutilation inflicted on another life form. It was liked hearing a year’s worth of torture crammed into a span on seconds all in the pitch-black darkness of the room.
Buffy closed her eyes at the wailing sounds and at the ones following afterwards; wet, ripping noises, tearing and angry; killing noises. They filled the room and the smell of methane grew so strong she could barely breathe.
Buffy scrambled blindly on her hands and knees to the ruins of her breakfast nook and, finding her family, huddled there in the pitch-black and darkness of her kitchen, filled only by the bloody sounds of death. Sweaty hands, warm and familiar, found hers; hands of her mother, her sister. These hands found each other and squeezed tightly.
“What’s happening?” Dawn asked, sounding afraid. “Where’s Alec?”
“Alec is fighting it, he’s okay,” Buffy assured her then quietly to herself she added. “I hope.”
“Buffy, the knives, they’re not here anymore. All of them are gone,” her mother whispered to her in the darkness urgently. Buffy gingerly felt around on the floor, not wanting to cut herself. Her mother was right; every single blade that had been in the cutlery block on the table and had spilt onto the floor when the table was tipped over was missing.
“Where did they go?” Buffy asked, a little foolishly.
“I took a few, like, four?” Dawn replied.
“And the cleaver, that’s five, so there should be fifteen or so razor sharp blades somewhere in our immediate vicinity,” Buffy countered, getting frustrated.
“Hang on, I have a light,” Dawn whispered.
“Dawn! Not a lighter!” Joyce whispered. There was an edge of stark terror in her voice, “Not with all the gas and kerosene fumes!”
“No mom, a flashlight. Geez, give me a little credit.”
Dawn clicked the little light on; it was a small flashlight, not particularly powerful but after the overwhelming gloom of the last few minutes, it seemed as bright and cheering as the sun.
“Gimme that!” Buffy demanded, snatching it away from her sister. Ignoring Dawn’s look of outrage, Buffy broke cover and hurriedly began scanning the room for some sign of her brother or the rotting fiend that had been grappling him,
“You know the kitchen seems a lot bigger than I remember,” she commented to herself as she moved through the wreckage.
“It’s the dark, playing tricks on you,” a voice rasped back to her. Alec.
Swinging the light around, she scanned a patch of darkness that was slowly receding from the flashlight’s little beam, like ants scurrying away from water. It revealed what she was looking for: there was Alec, propped up in a sitting position against a wall, wounded but still alive. There was the creature; Alec had it by the throat it looked. And there was…
“Oh,” Buffy commented, “I guess I know where the knives went.”
Fifteen individual tendrils of darkness clung to fifteen knives plunged deep into the creatures body. From the raw number of stab wounds that Buffy could see, it looked each knife had been used more than once on it.
Alec looked to be in great pain, the tendrils of darkness were all anchored to his body; arms, hands, legs, shoulders and they quivered with tension and strain. Strain showed on his face as well, he had gone very pale and his eyes held no humanity in them, still being nothing more than twin pools of inky blackness. When he spoke, little trickles of darkness, like tears, leaked out from his eyes, jostled by the movements of his mouth. Buffy could see that his teeth and tongue were both stained black as well.
“I feel pretty,” Alec commented dryly.
“You look it,” Buffy replied with a small laugh.
“You need….to burn it, sis,” he told her weakly.
“What are you talkin-?”
“You. Need. To. Burn. It. Buffy,” he repeated, enunciating every word with painful intensity as he shifted so that Buffy could see him more clearly.
Buffy’s eyes went wide: The beast was still wrapped around him and it was still alive.
Alec gripped it by the jaws and was holding it steady; she could see it straining to get at him though. Through the wreckage of what was left of its face, she could still see teeth trying to edge closer and closer to the young man.
“I can’t…let it go, Buffy. You need to burn it. Before it regenerates,” he whispered and Buffy could, in fact, see it beginning to knit itself back together, as if being exposed to the night air helped heal it.
No, not the night air. Sunnydale air. Hellmouth air. she thought, Wait a minute, what night air? Buffy looked around the kitchen and gaped: the entire back wall of the kitchen, where the sink had been, was gone, completely decayed by the ooze. She panned the light around: all the adjacent walls had been destroyed and even large portions of the floor were missing.
“What the-?” she started.
“When it emerged,” Alec explained in short, pained pants, “it used the house as a fixture, an anchoring point. The walls, the floors, the ceiling, it glued itself to it all to help stabilize it. I’m sure it also was rotting away and consuming whatever organic material it could find: food in the kitchen, basement,” he smiled weakly, “If you had a roach or mice problem before, I’d say it’s been pretty well resolved.”
Buffy laughed again, it sounded hysterical. “You know, I thought this place seemed bigger during the fight. Talk about a ‘binge eater’.” She looked around at the destruction in shock. “I guess we’re just lucky he didn’t have the time to eat the whole floor or the ceiling or something,” she added.
At that point the entire house seemed to groan, like a wounded beast - a wounded beast that would collapse and kill them all at any minute.
Alec glared up at the house ceiling balefully, trying to ignore the teeth inches from his face and hungry. “Yeah. Lucky,” he commented bitterly.
“Buffy? Did you find Alec? Is everything all right?” Dawn’s voice came from behind them. Buffy spun the light around and then frowned in confusion; the light didn’t penetrate more than a foot or so.
She turned to her brother, questioningly, “Alec-?“ she began.
Alec held up a hand. “It’s a little shadow-play. I didn’t want them to see this,” he answered bleakly. A tendril of darkness slithered out form the shadows around him and carefully picked up a shattered piece of something smooth and brightly colored, holding it up to the light. They both recognized it easily: a piece from the cookie plate they had all eaten from earlier this evening, when this was still a kitchen and they were all still happy and safe in their home.
Alec sighed angrily and the shadow hurled the broken shard away. Ignoring it he looked up at Buffy intently. “It’s regenerating Buffy; I can feel it getting stronger. Right now, it is feeding on all the microscopic life in the air, whatever it can get: skin particles, pollen, air-borne organisms, all of it. It is feeding from them and they are making it strong again,” Alec’s voice took an even darker tone as it dropped down to a whisper, “and something else, in the air and in the earth, is feeding it too.”
The beast lunged suddenly with a gurgling growl. In a flash, Buffy wrapped an arm around it and pulled it back away from Alec. Alec’s entire body was shaking with strain.
“Do you see?” he asked her.
Buffy nodded slowly,“ Yeah, yeah I see. And I know what you’re talking about. But you can’t ask me to set my own brother on fire!” she yelled out.
“Buffy? Are you all right?” Joyce called out from beyond Alec’s veil of gloom.
“The darkness muffles sounds as well as light, sis,” Alec explained, “But not forever, we need to do this and do it now if we want to spare Dawn and your mother the sight of it.”
Buffy looked utterly lost, “But what do I tell them?” she asked.
Alec sighed. “Tell them the truth, sis; that the slime of this thing,” he offered, gesturing with his head towards the drooling, reeking jaws next to his head, “gave me a chemical burn from its corrosive slime.”
“It’s a lie!” she countered, sounding aghast.
“Then it’s a kind lie!” Alec snapped at her, his patience spent, “Buffy, this thing is going to be back up to fighting strength far sooner than any of us will be. That happens, and I will bloody well guarantee you that it will only pause in abducting Dawn long enough for it to rot the rest of us down to liquid and slurp us up for lunch!” For a moment Buffy looked hurt by his words, but then, that had been his idea all along: get her strong, get her cold, get her ready to do this.
“What do I need to do?” she asked simply.
“Tell your family to get down and stay down until you come and get them. I’ll thin out the dark a little bit to make that possible,” he began.
Suddenly, the creature began to thrash wildly, slinging rancid spittle everywhere, saturating both siblings in the process.
“Do it!” Alec growled through gritted teeth, his arms felt ready to snap like kindling.
“Guys? Hit the deck!” Buffy yelled out into the dark.
“Why?” came back Dawn’s voice, “what’s going on? Where’s Alec?”
“Just take cover and stay put!”
Silence answered her that time. Buffy strained her ears; she thought she could hear her mother gently coaxing a vehemently-protesting Dawn to take cover.
Alec laughed a little, it sounded like it hurt to do so. “You have a delicate touch, sis,” he joked. He tried to give her his crooked grin, but his lip split with the effort of it and black liquid spilled from it. It made him look ghastly instead and when he saw Buffy pale at the sight, he immediately stopped trying to smile. “Find a place for cover,” he told her quietly.
Buffy looked around and found something that would work: the fridge, now toppled over onto its side and having vomited forth its contents, all, of course, rotted into mush. Buffy put a hand down and casually flipped the heavy appliance over, trying to ignore the putrid food,
“Damn it and I had a frappacino in there,” she lamented.
Alec chuckled. “Yeah, me too,” he said.
“Really?”
“No.”
“Oh,” Buffy swallowed a lump in her throat, “Alec, how-?”
“I’ve been soaking in kerosene every since Swamp Thing here…,” he gestured again with his head towards the beast which definitely looked healthier than it had a few moments ago, “…tossed me into the heater. All I need is a light,” he explained.
“But what about-?” she began.
“Buffy! We. Do not. Have Time,” he said forcibly.
For a moment, he reminded her of Giles when he needed to be stern with her. Oh God: Giles. Willow! How do I tell them this? How do you tell Giles I had to kill his son? Or tell Willow I had to kill her honey?
And as if in answer to her unspoken thoughts, Alec looked up at her and began to whisper.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her weakly.
Buffy’s thoughts jolted to a halt as she regarded her brother in shock, “How did you-?”
“What else could you possibly be thinking of at a time like this, sis?” Alec joked. “You can be painfully predicable at times, you know.” The smile was softer this time and sad, but all were relieved to see that his lip, at least, did not split again.
Instead, Buffy thought he looked…like her brother and that made it much, much worse.
“Alec-“
“A light, Buffy. I need a light. Please, Buffy,” his expression and tone became imploring, “Please do not make me watch you all die. Don’t do that to me, Buffy, please. For whatever love you have ever held for me, spare me that much at least.” He closed his eyes, too drained to continue on talking.
Alec felt something small, smooth, and metallic placed gently on his leg. Not daring to take his eyes away from the beast for a second, he extended yet another shadow tendril towards it.
The tendril looked thin and pale and it flickered in and out of existence, like a TV screen with bad reception, but it held together and lifted the object up for Alec to see.
A Zippo lighter, with Sid Vicious giving the middle-finger, silk-screened onto it.
Alec laughed when he saw it. “I’ll make sure Spike gets this back,” he told Buffy.
Buffy smiled, tears flowing freely down her face. “Keep it. I don’t smoke anyways.”
“Yeah, that’ll kill you.”
Buffy laughed again, certain that if she did so once more, she would never stop laughing and would lose her mind. She cut the laugh short and wiped at her eyes.
Alec’s smiled faded though; he could feel the creature getting stronger. “You ready?” he asked his sister.
“Yeah. Are you ready?” she asked her brother in reply.
“Oh, you know me, I’m always ready,” he said casually and the siblings shared a tight smile at his lame attempt at humor, before the creature lurched again and nearly took off his fingers. “Doesn’t matter though, this bastard’s sure enough ready.”
“Well, then we shouldn’t make him wait anymore, right?” the Slayer asked.
“It would be unforgivably rude,” the young man agreed.
“Yeah. Hey, Alec?”
“Yes, Buffy?”
“I love you.”
“I know, sis.”
“Do you love me, too, bro?”
Alec smiled slightly and studied her face; it was study in sheer agony and Alec was struck by how much it resembled Dawn’s face, not an hour or so earlier, and he felt a strange sense of déjà vu. With great care, he used his arm to gag the beast and prevent it from snapping his head off. He then reached out to the young woman. With a broken, little sob, Buffy dove for his hand. She caught and clutched it desperately, squeezing it so tightly; he was worried she would break it.
“Of course I love you, dummy,” he told her.
Buffy almost laughed again but stopped herself. She felt as if she were ready to burst at any moment. “Okay. Good, I just needed to make sure you hadn’t forgotten,” she told him.
“No worries there. Better get behind cover now, sis.”
And the Slayer did the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life: she let her brother’s hand go, crawled over to the fridge and got behind it.
Alec flicked the lighter open and placed his thumb on the wheel. He noticed that the creature, still choking on his arm, had began to slowly but inexorably unhinge its jaws and was beginning to widen its jaws enough to swallow both, his arm and him.
Alec paid it no mind as he called out, “Hey, sis?”
Buffy’s voice came out from behind the fridge; she had no intentions of having to watch what happened in the next few seconds. “Yeah, bro?”
“One request?”
“Anything.”
“Take a bath, you look a frightful mess.”
Their shared laughter, high and loud and defiant, spared them both from having to hear the loud flick of the lighter. It could not, however, protect them from what was to be heard next.
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