Camp KillalotBy Karen
"I don't want to go down there! It's dark and cold."Marcie shook her blonde hair which, irritatingly, had stayed shiny and tangle free the entire time the group had been crashing around the woods and now the girl was standing next to a sewer access point with her arms folded and pouting and obviously trying to work her dubious feminine charms on Connor. GRRR
"Marcie, you cannot trail round after us all night. Places to go, lives to save."
Dawn gritted her teeth as the other girl ignored her and pressed her body up against Connor's, coincidently pushing her breasts up and practically over the top of the now dangerously undone jammie top
"Marcie!"
Dawn's tone was now two steps away from out and out bloodshed and her temper wasn't helped by the fact that Connor and Ken were staring helplessly at the girl's chest like rabbits at a snake
"Dawn, I'm talking to your cousin."
The hair flipped back over the shoulder once again and Dawn snapped. One hand reached out to snag Marcie's arm the other to shove her axe at Connor
"Get down the damn sewer!"
She dragged the protesting girl to the hatch and shoved her over the hole so she had no choice but to climb onto the ladder or fall ten feet and break her leg
Or neck. Whatever, I'm not picky.
"You can't treat me like this. My father paid a lot of money for this trip..."
Dawn pushed her face close to Marcie and hissed
"Yeah? Well, think how much I'm saving him on your damn funeral. Get down the ladder and shut the hell up!"
She punctuated her sentence by placing her hand on the top of the shiny blonde head and shoving down, watching with great satisfaction as the other girl slipped and then finally began to climb down into the smelly hole complaining all the while. Dawn straightened and turned back to the boys
"Ken, your turn."
Connor shook his head
"He's coming with us." "What? Connor, I don't think that's a good idea."
Ken stepped forward and cleared his throat nervously
"I know I can't help with the fighting but I smuggled a laptop in with me and if I can just get to a phone point I can contact the police and get some help."
Dawn scowled at them both
"Ken, it's really sweet of you to want to help, but the police aren't kinda what we need right now. If we call them it's just gonna get a lot of other innocent people killed."
Connor tilted his head
"But we could contact people who wouldn't get killed. People who would know how to help."
Dawn met his eyes and they silently weighed up their options. Back up would be good. The chances of finding the time to locate a pc and then e- mail whilst their demonic enemy stood back and let the Slayer be called in were slim to non-existent. Dawn rolled her eyes and snatched her axe from Connor saying testily
"Fine, but if you get yourself killed don't come back and get all haunty on my butt. I tried to put you in the sewers remember? As soon as we get our message out you find somewhere to hide and stay down, we've got enough to do without protecting you as well."
Ken nodded furiously and Dawn stepped back to the sewer hatch
"Ok, we're going now. Stay quiet and don't come out until we come back for you, this shouldn't take long."
She started to close the hatch and then paused
"And if you get bothered by rats, just feed 'em Marcie. Better than Raid!"
She closed the hatch as the girl's outraged voice echoed up from below the ground and grinned as she threw the bolt. That ought to keep them safe for a while with the added bonus of seriously ticking Marcie off, there were silver linings everywhere if you knew where to look!
Ken scuffed his foot in the woodland floor and said nervously
"So, what do we do now? Who we gonna call?"
Connor and Dawn exchanged glum looks and said resignedly
"Our families."
Twenty minutes later and they'd arrived back at the boy's cabin with no major incidents. They'd had to dodge a couple of foot patrols but in the main had managed to steer well clear of their adversaries.
"What's the plan?"
Dawn peered through the trees to her left where she was reasonably sure Connor was hiding. Damn, that boy was good at the GI Joe stuff!
Connor glanced round at her pressed against the tree, still dressed in her shorty pyjama set and sneakers, and felt an unexpected tug in his chest at the picture she made. Completely focused on the cabin before and the threat of discovery at any moment she was unaware of how pretty she looked with her long legs gleaming in the moonlight and her eyes reflecting the starlight every time she moved. He blinked and re-focused himself on the problem in hand. His father had told him all about girls, actually both his father's had; it was the one area they both seemed in full agreement on.
Trouble, handle with extreme caution, should come with a manual. Mind you, the last resentful mutter had come from Angel the last time Cordelia bawled him out over some trivial thing about trekking blood all over the lobby floor after slaying a particularly vicious demon that had been preying on a local church. Don't worry about the torn and bleeding vampire, oh no, just worry about the few drops of blood on the washable marble floor.
Connor still laughed when he thought of his Dad's face when Cordelia had handed him band-aid with one hand and the mop with the other. And he still got an unexpected lump on his throat when he had come across his father and Cordelia later on as the Seer had tenderly bathed his father's wounds with unshed tears in her eyes and his father had caught her to him in a hard hug uncaring of the blood he smeared over her new top.
The teenager shook his head; there were other things to focus on at the moment, the main one being the problem of liberating the laptop without alarming either the, hopefully, sleeping occupants of the cabin or any enemy patrols that happened to be lurking around. He slipped to the floor and shimmied across to the tree where Dawn hid and popped to his feet causing the girl to start and glare at him
"Give me some warning wouldja?" "Sorry."
Dawn snorted and looked unimpressed at the careless apology and then sucked in a breath as Connor snaked an arm around her waist pulling her tightly against him to whisper in her ear
"I think I should go in and get the machine, the fewer people in there the better our chances. Stay here with Ken and keep watch."
He released her and she stumbled slightly before turning round to confront him. She blinked as she glared into thin air and then whipped around in time to see Connor slipping through the cabin door. Dawn threw up her hands in exasperation
"Fine, you go do the James Bond thing. I'll stay here and file my nails shall I? Get my hair done."
She shook her head impatiently and then tensed as she heard a muffled yell from the dormitory. She raced around the tree hissing over her shoulder
"Stay down, Ken!"
And then she flew through the door with her axe raised to confront ten teenaged boys piled on top of a violently thrashing blanket on the floor. Everybody froze as the scantily clad girl burst into the room and then a tall good-looking boy stood and sauntered over to her
"Hey, gorgeous. Come to play?"
Dawn spared him a brief glance before stamping on his foot and dodging the hand that shot out to pull her to him
"Save it, slick boy, I'm not interested. Connor, quit fooling around and get up."
The mound of boys heaved upwards and then Connor stood, wild eyed and red faced with his hair standing in all directions. Dawn laughed
"Nice look."
He sent her an evil glance and then bent to retrieve his sword from the floor and stared around him coldly
"Fools."
Dawn stepped hurriedly to his side and pulled him away from the other boys
"I'm sure it was just a joke. You know major funny, ha ha?"
Connor continued to look furious
"Jeez, you really are your Dad's kid, huh?"
Connor looked torn between offence and outrage and in the end plumped for sheer anger. Dawn tugged impatiently on his arm
"Suck it up, miracle boy. We got a world to save remember?"
Connor gave one final glance at the now silent boys and nodded shortly, he turned to Ken's bed and had took two steps towards it when Dawn said with quiet disgust
"Oh for god's sake! I thought I told you to stay down?"
He turned and craned his neck over the bodies blocking his view of the door to see a terrified Ken in the clutches of a big, black vampire. The teenaged boys between him and the door panicked and fell back as the vamp entered the cabin followed by another five vampires, creating a large gap between the demons and Dawn and Connor. The two teenagers quickly fell into defensive positions and Connor smirked as Dawn muttered
"Well, this vacation just sucks!"
The vampire holding Ken shook the frozen boy and snarled
"Drop your weapons or we kill him."
Connor and Dawn exchanged sidelong glances and then, after a long pause, both let their weapons fall to the floor with a thump. Dawn shook her hair out of her eyes and eyed the vamps warily feeling Connor tense beside her. She leaned in until their arms brushed and hissed
"Any ideas?"
Connor stared into the vampires eyes and shrugged
"No."