Buffy’s narrative effort had exhausted her, and settled somewhat by Spike’s assertion that it was common for pregnant women to project their deepest fears into their dreamscape, she began to relax. Spike gathered the weary Slayer back into his arms, stroking her gently as her breathing smoothed out and her heartbeat slowed down, held her until her muscles softened and she slumped bonelessly against him, finally succumbing to sleep.
He sighed quietly and tried to settle down to sleep himself. But he was much more worried than he’d let on to Buffy, the vivid quality of the nightmare, combined with his own recent dreams telling a story to clear to ignore. He tossed and turned for ages, too wired to settle. He also had to fight the instinct that told his body it needed to be up, stealing through the night, seeking out those creatures that the predator in him recognized as prey, as sustenance, as his.
Back in Sunnydale, his sleep patterns had been fairly erratic. Often, over the last three years he’d had to be up and about during sunlight hours, using the tunnels to get around and carry out whatever little task was needed to make Buffy or the Bit’s lives easier. But, at other times, accompanying the Slayer out on patrol and then guarding her homestead, or even earlier in the year taking the little slayer wannabes out into the night for work experience, Spike had readily reclaimed his right to sleep the day away.
But since they had moved to England, what with a dearth of local slayage opportunities and her pregnancy, Buffy had reverted back to the ‘regular folk’ timetable of night sleeping. And Spike, trying so hard to never be far from her side, had also been obliged to keep to human hours.
It wasn’t the most difficult thing in the world to do. After all, humans managed to force their bodies into following unnatural sleep rhythms, shift workers up and about as the rest of the world rested. And he was nothing if not adaptable, adjusting to life in a white hat almost before he’d realised that was what he was doing.
Mostly that was just Darwin’s survival of the fittest – adapt or die, simple as that. Vampires needed to be able to pass as human in order to slip in amongst their victims and lull them into a sense of false security. And only the ponciest of vamps, like that tosser Dracula, needed to surround themselves with all the self-serving pomp and ritualistic bullshit of vampire mythology.
Then, to some extent it was the rebel in him, that part of his psyche that screamed out ‘Fuck you World, don’ try and tell me what to do and how to do it. Vamp or not, I’ll do it my way.” He took a certain twisted pride in doing what so many of his brethren would see as selling out, living with the Slayer, as her consort.
But partly it was also Spike’s deep-seated need to belong and be accepted. He’d always sought out love and acceptance, striving to be what he thought his beloved would want him to be, whether that be a love-sick milk sop, a vicious, murderous fiend, or a self-sacrificing champion. The sense of family and belonging he got from Buffy and Dawn and to a lesser extent, the other Scoobies, fed his soul and his freshly beating heart. And he’d do anything to fit in and maintain that acceptance.
Yeah, what the fuck, he was a mass of contradictions. And these deeply introspective bloody thoughts were in no way helping him to get to sleep. His restless demon stirred, as he and Buffy lay wrapped in night’s silence, frustrated by this nocturnal inertia, rebelling against such self-imposed restraints.
His mind was restless too, involuntarily recreating the scenes of desperate solitude and horror that Buffy words had painted earlier. His verbal responses at the time had been soothing, comforting, but Spike was deeply worried. Apart from the all too real correlation with events in his past, the dream itself was too vivid, too stark to be anything other than one of the portentous visions gifted her by virtue of her Slayer calling. And the message was clear – someone was out to destroy his girl and steal away their child.
Warm sunlight streamed through the narrow gap between the drapes, reaching out across the carpeted floor and up the side of the mattress and box base to caress the pale skin of Spike’s exposed thigh. He awoke with a jerk, the heat on his leg firing the primitive vampire response to sunlight. Yelling loudly (vampires do not scream!), he rolled quickly out of the way, one roll too many it turned out as he hit the ground, sheets and blankets tangled around his body.
Cursing, he belatedly remembered that sunlight was no longer a threat to him. It had been two months since the amulet spat him out into Buffy’s hotel room, two months of coming to terms with the added abilities and enhancements he’d picked up during his time in the Nirvana and although he’d adjusted pretty well to the changes in his vampire anatomy, there were still times that the habits and reactions of an unlifetime overrode his new settings.
Shortly after he’d arrived at Ashdown, Giles had got Rowan to put Spike through a series of tests to determine what the extent of these abilities was and just what the upgrade might mean. He had retained, along with his demon, the superhuman strength, stamina, speed, agility, heightened senses, and rapid healing that was gifted vampires at their turning. But now he was seemingly unaffected by sunlight, crosses, holy water or garlic; not that garlic had ever been a problem for him before.
In addition, his body was ‘alive’, well at least enough to register a temperature, with a reluctant heartbeat that sluggishly pumped fluids around his body. Neither his pulse nor temperature quite hit normal human range, but they seemed to do the job of keeping the body of one William Pratt fully functional.
And those functions included digestion. Although he still needed a minimum amount of blood each day to satisfy his demon’s requirements, Spike now needed normal food as well to ensure his body maintained peak health and efficient performance. That was pretty much a bonus as he’d enjoyed a range of foods anyway. They just tasted way better since his taste buds had kicked back in – just another little change that had got the Head Watcher all excited.
Spike wasn’t too interested in all the changes his body had undergone, or what it might mean in terms of what he was now. His only concern lay in if or how the outcome would affect him and Buffy, but the Watcher’s missus on the other hand was absolutely fixated. From the very first time they’d met, Cat had been fascinated by his vampire physiology, both past and present.
Now that she was living at Ashdown fulltime and the wedding was out of the way, she took every opportunity she could get to poke or prod Spike. She spent hours drawing up graphs and charts, recording the vampire’s various results like heart rate and blood pressure, as well as reaction and recovery times. She’d taken blood samples to measure oxygen levels and blood types and compared these with samples taken from slayers, regular humans and even other vampires. And she’d come up with a handy little theory to describe what had happened in the Fire Realm.
Her theory was based on the generally accepted understanding that infestation of the dying body by the vampiric virus (her words, not Spike’s, he was opposed to words like infest and virus being used to describe such a central part of himself!) reanimated certain base functions of the dead body it invaded.
Most of her findings had been shared, not only with Spike and Buffy, but also with the Watcher. He took a cursory interest, but was mostly too busy with Amazon business to get overly involved. His interest was more mystical than medical anyway, and was more likely to promote various musings about what the ‘vampire’ now was, and if there might be prophecies other than The Song that he featured in. It didn’t seem to involve anything more than speculation, the researchers all being preoccupied with more important study, and if Rupes came to any conclusions, well he certainly hadn’t shared them with Spike.
The issue of classification didn’t really bother Spike at all. He was more concerned with the fact that he could more fully be part of Buffy’s life. Instead of pulling her into the darkness, he was able to follow her into the light. And it felt bloody amazing.
In fact, only yesterday afternoon he and Buffy had taken a stroll through the gentle sunlight of summer’s end. They’d meandered down to a stand of ancient trees straddling the boundary line, an outcrop of Ashdown Forest. The woodland paths had been cool and shady, dappled with the light that stole in between outspread limbs and clusters of leaves, and they’d wandered in simple contentment, happy just to be in one another’s company as they’d trodden the paths that Christopher Robin had explored long ago.
Being able to hold one another’s hands and walk through the light of day had lent the couple a semblance of normality, but that illusion was only skin deep. No matter Cat’s detailed scientific analysis, Spike was still a vampire, mystically resurrected, Buffy was still the Slayer, mystically pregnant and her sister was still a teenager, and a mystical portal opening key – a real mystical-a-palooza.
Buffy had begun to accept her status, happier than ever before to leave that long lamented label of normal for the ordinary folk to wear. She knew that her standing and abilities put her so far to the right of the normal spectrum that not only was she not on the same page, she wasn’t even in the same chapter, and she was getting to be okay with that.
Part of her acceptance had come from Spike’s constant assertion that normal equaled ordinary and she should never settle for being ordinary and when she was so patently extraordinary. His words made her stutter and blush, especially as he always went on to drop in a few more superlatives, like brilliant, exceptional and remarkable.
The other had to do with her joy at being pregnant, a pregnancy she felt she never would have achieved without all the mystical alignment, and while her joy was mostly for herself as a woman in love with the father of her child, it was also partly for the world that child would play a hand in saving.
So yes, Buffy had let normal go, but it didn’t mean that she didn’t have the same hopes and fears as normal folk, didn’t want to experience the same highs or avoid the same lows, and if a walk in the countryside, with her man, on a sunny afternoon could allow her to hit one or two of those highs, well Spike was chuffed he could provide that.
Still, normal and happy. He didn’t like to tempt fate or attract the attention of the bloody PTB, cos this ordinary life had its advantages all right. But lying here on the bedroom floor entwined in bloody bed linen, well that was a bit too down to earth and sodding normal for Spike’s tastes. He sighed and hauled himself up, extricating himself from the sheets before wandering over to snatch up his jeans and pull them on. T-shirt and boots quickly followed and he headed over to the door, keen to find his girl and check if she was all right.
But leaving the room was harder than he’d anticipated, the bloody righteous voice of his demon kicking in as he spied the shambolic bed. He groaned and turned around, quickly and efficiently making the bed and picking up Buffy’s discarded nightwear. Who would ever guess that his vamp side would turn out to be so whipped?
Buffy wasn’t out in the lounge or kitchen so Spike figured she was either in Dawn’s room, the Lodge lounge or up at the main house. He quickly poured and nuked himself a mug of blood and downed it. Picking up the still warm croissant Buffy had left out for him, he munched on it appreciatively as he checked through the Lodge before wandering over to the Manor House.
He headed straight for the library, confident that Buffy would have already shared her dream and got the Watcher and the Scoobies researching. Sure enough, Red, Niblet, Harris, Rowan, Doc and Rupert had books scattered across the large oak table and were deep in conversation when he strolled into the room.
“Morning pet.” Spike murmured as he kissed the top of Buffy’s head and squeezed her shoulder. He sat down beside her, holding her hand as the others greeted him and asked for his interpretation of Buffy’s dream. It still blew his mind a little, the Scoobies, even the Watcher, asking his opinion and advice, treating him like he belonged. It was weird; nice, but weird, and he still had to pinch himself each time it happened.
Spike agreed with Rupert that the nightmare had all the qualities of a Slayer dream, warning that someone or something was out to either destroy or steal their child, more specifically than just trying to harm Buffy herself. Whether or not it was an attempt to stop the Sagaria Prophecy from being fulfilled or whether there was some other reason for wanting to take the child, it was unclear.
“Actually, have a little reveal of my own. Nothing much, but might be important,” Spike muttered. It was against his nature to share the details of his dream, even with Buffy who he wanted to protect from any unnecessary concern. But this seemed like too much of a coincidence, and he had to put the safety of Buffy and the bit ahead of his own pride and stubbornness. Still it wasn’t easy opening up to the Scoobies.
The group listened apprehensively as Spike outlined his own dream sequence, the setting, so similar to Buffy’s, the running and searching a match for her own panic and disorientation. The warnings seemed clear.
They went over and over every little detail of the dreams, the setting, the sounds and temperature, the order of events, and of course the double loss, bond and baby. Talking so dispassionately about the possible death or abduction of their child was emotionally exhausting for the parents to be but particularly for Buffy, who had been in share mode for half an hour longer than Spike and could still feel and sense her dream when she closed her eyes.
It wasn’t long before she was worn out, leaning against Spike and getting that blank glaze in her eyes. Spike looked over at an equally wilting Dawn, catching her eye before lifting his eyebrow and glancing sideways at the drawn looking girl propped up against him.
Dawn nodded and leapt up. “Gosh I’m starving. And thirsty. Time for a snack break. Wanna come with Buffy?”
Buffy, grateful for a break of any kind, stood up and headed for the door with her sister. The other three women decided to join them, muttering something about a bathroom break. That just left the three men on their own.
Rupert started the ball rolling. “Tell me a bit more about this bond you and Buffy share. If I am to understand it, you have not subjected her to a full claim, yet you obviously share some sort of link that is strong enough, that its absence was apparent and somewhat distressing to her dream self.”
Spike scowled, pissed off at the Watcher’s terminology. “Bloody hell you git! What makes you think I have or would ever subject Buffy to anything?” He ignored Harris’ mutterings, knowing full well what he was on about and more or less past the whole guilt trip since he and the Slayer had laid that matter to rest. “What we shared was both mutual and fully consensual, and if we get around to making a full claim in the future, it will be because its something we both want.”
Giles removed his glasses, giving them a perfunctory polish before sliding them back on firmly, as if resigned to viewing this new version of the world through a glass darkly. “I’m sorry if I offended you Spike. Believe it or not, it wasn’t intentional. And it wasn’t even to do with you being a vampire. Well not entirely anyway. To a certain extent, I imagine, my subconscious reactions are much the same as those of any father figure forced to acknowledge that his sweet little girl is involved in an adult relationship. I’m bound to put my foot in it from time to time; just remember it’s not personal.”
Xander looked on in mild amusement, entertained by the vamp/watcher testosterone display, and quite happy for once to remain in the spectator seat. He’d promised Rowan that he would try to at least look at things from Spike’s perspective, and although he still instinctively reached out for the well worn mental catalogue of Spike’s past transgressions, he’d found it surprising how different everything seemed when he chose to actually look and listen before jumping to conclusions.
“Right, well, fair enough. S’pose I’d be the same.” Spike looked down at the table, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. Part of him felt like ranting and raving, vamping out and roaring his anger at the old man. But a growing part felt stunned and secretly chuffed by the Watcher’s apology and explanation, wholly unused to such consideration and more than a little mortified by the delight it caused.
“Anyway, about the bond. Buffy and I have always been able to sense one another – read each other’s signature I guess you’d say. She says she’s always been able to tell me apart from other vamps, even before she’s spotted me. Didn’t realize it was the same way for me. After all Slayers have always given off a distinctive aura, stronger than other humans, more vibrant, and strangely enough, more in tune to that of vamps. But I didn’t realize until the Dark Slayer turned up that there was a significant difference between Buffy’s little riff and Rogue’s.”
“Fascinating,” Rupert muttered as he reached for his beloved notebook, bypassing the dreaded laptop that Red had been taking notes in. “Can you describe the difference at all?”
Spike frowned and closed his eyes in focus, straining to recall the signatures in question, their differences, and hardest of all, how to describe them. He opened his eyes and shrugged.
“That’s a tall order Rupes. Its like being asked to describe the sound of sunset or the color of the wind – nothing I’ve ever put into words before anyway. To even describe the feeling I get when I sense any slayer, and I’ve come across a fair few of them in my time even before Red’s spell went all Sorcerer’s Apprentice on us.”
He glanced up, only too aware of Rupert’s increased heartbeat and agitation. The Watcher was staring at him in rapt deliberation. “You do realize the council has no record of any further encounters between you and their Slayers. Although I’d always wondered myself.”
“Yeah, yeah mate, I’ll give you the details at some other time so just relax right now. ‘ve always been intrigued and fascinated by slayers and after Xin Rong I was hooked. Didn’t fight all of ‘em. Some I just watched then moved on. Fought three others apart from the two chits I bested. Came away a little worse for wear against one of ‘em but it was pretty even with the other two.
As for their signatures, well its like a low vibration thrumming through your body, a feeling that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck or like when someone drags their nails down a blackboard. It’s a predator instinct I guess; the way vamps can sense the presence of a slayer and vice versa. You can be out and about, minding your own business and wham, it’s like a sharp sting of awareness kicks in. But that’s just the beginning, like the alarm goin’ off in the morning, or someone walking over your grave. You know there’s one out there but it takes a certain scent, a particular caress, a specific vibration to let you know who the little chit is.”
“Hmmm. I wish now you’d been around during Faith’s little body-napping stunt. It would have been interesting to see if you could have uncovered the switch more promptly than the rest of us could.”
“Yeah, Buffy told me about that later. Actually did come across the bint in the pub, all dolled up in my girl’s body and nowhere to go. Knew something was off about her, came onto me like a right tease. Not that Buffy hasn’t been known to do the same, but we weren’t really on the best of terms at the time. Still reckon I’d ‘ave worked it out if I’d met Rogue before hand. The person I met that night looked like Buffy, smelt like her, but didn’t give off the same signature. Mind you, what with the come on she was giving me, that wasn’t really my focus at the time.”
“Wow, that Faith huh? What a dirty, dirty girl,” Xander said, his voice filled equal parts with disgust and admiration, “And I should know. Did I ever tell you about the time …”
“Xander,” Giles admonished, “this is neither the time nor place to start pulling out the back catalogue of your dubious sexual connections. I’m sure you can brag to Spike another time. I’d like to return to the topic at hand.”
“Okay, G-man, don’t go getting your tweed knickers in a twist. Thought you’d eased off a bit these days. Still, Faith really had it in for Buffy, didn’t she? You know she ended up sleeping with Riley. Okay, so it was Buffy’s body, but Faith was in the driver’s seat. Imagine how Buffy would have reacted if Faith had ended up sleeping with you Spike? In her pre-Spike loving days of course. That would’ve really set Buffy off.”
“Yeah. Yours truly probably would’ve ended up dust. Buffy and Faith seem to have sorted their shit out though, seem almost friendly these days. Not a bad girl that Rogue, just a little lost and misunderstood. Anyway, the signatures definitely different from Buffy’s, darker, a little sultrier. Not really an issue now anyway. Could’a told them apart blindfolded and earplugged in a dark room before, but since the bite, Buffy and I are connected at a deeper level, always there at the back of my subconscious, not matter how far apart.”
“What bite? There’s been a bite? Oh my God, I’m probably next right?” Xander screeched.
“Calm down, whelp, it’s a love thing, a sex thing, not feeding. So I can promise there’s no chance you’ll be next.” Spike smirked at the brunette. “Its also a private thing, so don’t think I’ll be going into details Watcher.”
Spike had accurately read the look on Giles’ face, but the intense fascination of the Watcher was quickly overridden by the desire for blissful ignorance of the father figure.
“All you need to know at this stage is that Buffy and I can sense each other’s … being, for want of a better word, no matter how near or far. Signal’s much like it’s always been between us, just on steroids these days, pretty much constant and unbreakable since L.A. Don’t wanna get too sappy around you two, but it’s a deeply emotional bond, an intimate connection, loving and sensual, yeah, but also spiritual and even just platonic. S’not psychic or telepathic, supposedly that kicks in with the mating bond, but it is constant, which is bloody reassuring. For Buffy to loose that connection in her dream, would be terrifying, disorientating, devastating.”
The three men paused, all deep in thought. Giles cleared his throat, addressing the vampire once more. “Spike, if you don’t mind me asking, why haven’t you carried out a mating claim on one another? You might think me crazy, but in light of this dream, maybe it would be for the best.”
“Fuck Watcher, didn’t see that one coming. Never thought I’d see the day.” Spike shook his head in wonder, his shocked expression a match for Xander’s. “Okay, so of course I’ve thought about it. To be honest, want it badly, to the depths of my soul. And if it would keep Buffy safe, and have no side effects on her or the wee one, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” He sighed, “But the problem is, there’s no way of telling what impact it might have on the baby, s’not like there’s any precedent. Don’t know if they’d be any physical harm, or whether it’d create an equal bond with the child, something he or she’d unlikely be too happy about once they were old enough to interpret the X-rated thoughts and visuals running through their parents heads.”
“Oh my Lord, I’d never even considered that. But, doesn’t permission have to be given and received in order to activate the bond?”
“Well yeah, but what happens when your being is part of the being giving consent? Who knows? Its just not worth the risks.”
“What about some sort of protection spell?” Xander asked, “You know, to keep the ooglie booglies at arm’s length. If you could work out a way to keep Buffy safe, that’d keep the baby safe too, right?”
“Hmm, I think that’s definitely worth looking into,” Giles nodded. “Let’s go find our womenfolk and have some lunch. We can get started on the research this afternoon. Seems like we’re in for a busy weekend.”
Dawn sighed in relief, as the first mouthful of her double shot latte slid down her throat, and the much needed caffeine boost began to flood her system. Ahh, thank God for Dave’s awesome espresso machine and kick ass barista skills. But there was probably nowhere near enough coffee in Dave’s whole kitchen, let alone in this one cup, to overcome her tiredness. She was exhausted, literally dead on her feet. She should be comatose in bed right now, but Buffy’s insistent knocking on her door this morning and her subsequent rundown on the dream sitch had forced her out of bed and over to the library to do the sisterly support thing. Not that she was much help in her current zombified state. Still, it was the thought that counted, right?
She wasn’t suffering from normal fatigue either, she was utterly done in, jet lagged, portal lagged and really, really scanned out. She’d just spent the last twelve days covering an insane number of miles, tracking and tracing over 160 girls, for the most part on her own.
Dawn had flown out with the New York squad, the day after Giles and Cat’s wedding. While Vi, Robin and Juanita were setting up bank accounts, and checking out real estate and vehicle sales, she’d commandeered Anna’s help to run the computer programme, and begun scanning the East Coast. She’d set up in their 8th storey hotel room, knowing she had a lot of ground to cover, a lot of girls to find and not a lot of time.
With the 1200 mile limit on reliable scanning, it was a shame they weren’t somewhere more central like Chicago. She and Anna could have flown there, but Dawn couldn’t have faced another two flights on top of the portalling she’d done over the twelve days she was away. They just had to make do with what they had.
They’d started bright and early Monday morning. By the time Vi and the others were back for lunch, they’d identified thirteen girls in New York and the other Mid Atlantic states, and another five in New England. That afternoon they’d searched the Great Lakes States and as much of the Midwest as was in range, another twenty girls. The following day, they covered the rest of the eastern seaboard, all the way down to Miami, as well as the rest of the southern states, another twenty-two girls. Finally, on Wednesday morning she’d scanned the populous cities in the southern part of Eastern Canada, a final seven girls to add to the tally.
Then she was off to Mexico City. Faith’s team, including Soledad, who was joining them for a fortnight, had driven the entire 1800 miles to the capital city. They’d left first thing Monday morning and took it in turns to drive, travelling through the night until they’d reached Mexico City on Tuesday evening. They’d gone straight to Gabriella Rivera’s home. Gabriella was one of the field Watchers who’d survived an attack from the Bringers. Sadly, her slayer had not. She’d arrived at Ashdown three weeks previous, still quite traumatized and anxious.
Dawn had latched onto Faith’s essence easily, opened up a portal in New York and popped out in Gabriella’s hacienda moments later. She’d spent the afternoon and evening just chilling with Faith and the others, her energy levels already pretty low, and in need of recharging. Thursday saw her right back into the scanning, a daunting task ahead of her.
Gabriella had brought an extra Watcher/ Slayer team with her from Ashdown, a Spanish speaking Filipino pair, Yzabel and Mia. So with eight people at her disposal, Faith had decided to split the team in two, making it easier and quicker to cover Mexico and Central America. Faith’s team headed straight to Western Mexico, planning to slowly make their way northeast, tracking down the identified girls along the way, before turning more westerly, recruiting the chosen ones along the journey home to California.
Gabriella took Ashton, Lisa and Leslie with her in her car, focusing on the central plateau to begin with, before heading south through Mexico and on to Guatemala and the other Central American countries. Each team would take two or three weeks to cover their territory. And with such a huge area to cover, and three days down already, the teams had to leave as soon as Dawn could come up with names and addresses. And they couldn’t afford to leave anyone behind with Dawn to operate the tracking software. Luckily, Dawn was allowed to hijack Anna for a few more days, and portalled her out from New York first thing Thursday morning.
They started immediately, scanning the central plateau and Western Mexico moving outwards in an ever-increasing circle, emailing the results to the two teams as soon as they had I.D.ed the girls in a state or region. And so they worked through Thursday and Friday, finding seventeen girls, clustered fairly densely across the central region, on the first day, and fifteen girls, scattered more sparsely across the northern and southern states, on the second.
On Saturday, Dawn really pushed her limits, I’D.ing the ten Central American slayers, only just picking up the faint signal from a lass in San Jose, Costa Rica, 1300 miles away as the crow flies. After emailing the final names and addresses to the two Mexican Teams, an exhausted Dawn opened up the portal for Anna, sending her back to New York to join her squad. Then she went and collapsed on the bed in Gabriella’s spare room, sleeping for twelve straight hours.
She’d recovered enough by Sunday morning to hone in on Kennedy’s vigorous signal, some 5000 miles to the southeast, and after locking up Gabriella’s house, opened up a portal to the feisty slayer and jumped.
The Brazilian squad had been twiddling their thumbs for a week, waiting for Dawn to arrive with her tracking skills. Through various contacts of Luisa’s, they’d managed to find two of the young girls in Sao Paulo itself. But that didn’t really lift the pressure off Dawn; she’d had to hit the ground running. She started with the heavily populated South Eastern States, and had picked up twenty-three girls by the end of the first day. Once again, she’d had to requisition a slayer to run the tracing Programme, and waste valuable time showing her how it worked. But this time her recruit, fifteen-year-old Sofia, was an absolute IT wiz, learning to use the software quickly and efficiently.
By Monday morning the rest of the squad had headed out, off to track down the remaining ten girls scattered around the state of Sao Paulo, leaving Dawn and Sofia to work in peace and quiet. They’d uncovered eight girls in Southern Brazil and four in the Central Region to the west, and even scanned the neighboring countries of Uruguay and Paraguay, picking up another three.
Once again, because of the slayers’ base location, distance determined the accuracy of her readings in North and North East Brazil, and although she found another 15 girls, she was certain there were others out there, beyond the range of her ‘scanner’. So with the northern parts of Brazil, and the rest of South America to scan, Dawn had resigned herself to having to make a return trip or two in a few weeks time.
In the meantime it had been time to get out of there, before her energy levels were too low to even open any more portals. It had been touch and go for a while there, difficult enough to unlock a doorway between the Sao Paulo headquarters and Kennedy so that Sofia could rejoin her squad, let alone lock onto Faith’s essence, so far to the north, and create a portal between them. Her tank almost on empty, too exhausted to maintain solid contact at both ends, the tunnel had rapidly unraveled behind her as she jumped. She’d ended up stumbling out of the portal, shaking and distraught, into a shabby hotel room and Faith’s safe, steadying arms.
The older girl had immediately put her to bed, and Dawn had sunk into a deep slumber. The experience had frightened her badly, and she’d been quiet and withdrawn the following morning, as all five girls squeezed into the van for the eight-hour journey northeast to Mexicali, home of the final girl on their recruitment list. She’d dozed most of the way, still too drained to join in the quiet chatter and gentle camaraderie of the team.
The girl had been easy to find and, as with all the Mexican girls they’d tracked down, even easier to enlist, the travel and educational advantages provided by Amazon’s contract an opportunity too great to miss. Dawn, feeling more rested and together by this stage had joined them, watching the sales job in action.
Faith stamped her authority and assurance on the presentation, while Yzabel provided a reassuringly mature, almost motherly archetype that the girl’s parents seemed to respond to. But it was the two younger girls, Soledad and Mia, who the Mexican slayer seemed to connect with the strongest. Dawn could see a wondrous look of identity and belonging light up the girl’s face as she realized that the were others like her, that the overwhelming sense of difference and not-normalness that had set her apart from her friends and family over the last three months had dissolved in the presence of these two. It was a done deal!
Finally, they’d jumped back in the van and headed home, the four-hour journey north to L.A. flying by in the warm evening air. It was 10 p.m. by the time they’d pulled up to the dojo. Dawn immediately tumbled into bed for another round of much needed sleep.
Sipping on her coffee, she sighed as she thought about how much she’d learnt about herself and her abilities on that trip, the huge reserves of power and ability she had at her fingertips, the danger she placed herself and others in when she let those tanks run too low. She needed to review the whole process if she was going to survive the coming weeks and the huge areas of the world that still needed to be scanned for slayers.
As she wandered back over to the Lodge to meet the others, she recalled the other weird little thing that had happened in L.A., the morning before she flew out. She’d been down town shopping and had organized to meet Faith outside Wolfram and Hart so that the slayer could run her to the airport. Faith had had an appointment with Angel, and although Dawn could have just waited for her at reception, she was always wary about entering that pit of evil.
So she was just hanging around outside WH, creamy cup of Starbucks in hand, when some floppy haired guy came barreling out the main doors, straight into her. He was obviously surprised and embarrassed and had grabbed hold of her arm to steady her teetering self. His touch had hit her like a jolt of electricity, a shudder of connection, and she’d sprung away from him as he’d started apologizing profusely for his clumsiness. She’d mumbled a few phrases of meaningless mollification, then frowned at him as he’d stood there staring at her with his dumb blue eyes. It had taken an even fiercer scowl from Dawn to set his stupid feet to motion, his first half dozen steps away taken in reverse as he continued to gaze at her.
Finally, reluctantly, he’d turned and headed off, only looking back three times before he rounded the corner at the end of the block. Totally weird, and irritating. And annoying, given that she’d spent part of her first night home, snuggled down in her own lovely bed, dreaming of that idiotic floppy-haired boy. What was with that? He was probably some dodgy client of Angel’s, undoubtedly evil. Luckily, she’d never have to lay eyes on him again.
Quietly, Dawn wandered into the main lounge of the Lodge. The others were all there, putting together sandwiches and salad for lunch by the looks of things. It was time to let the love and laughter of this group of people, her family, wash over her and work its healing magic on her worn-out, thinly stretched self, body and psyche. It was time to rest up and recover. And then, she guessed, it was time to research and put paid to another apocalypse, probably all before dinner. Just another day in the life!