Camp KillalotBy Karen
'This cannot be good."Connor nodded in agreement to Dawn's low observation and then they were moving forward seamlessly to meet the attack. The first three demons went down easily, helped as much by their colleagues pushing from behind as the two teenagers before them. Dawn shouted in annoyance as one of the demons got a good grip in her long hair and yanked it back baring her throat to his drooling buddy in front of her. She brought her sharp knee up and rammed it into his groin and then twisted, ignoring the pain from her abused scalp, and slammed her axe into the face of the demon behind her. The other being let go with a scream and dropped like a stone giving Dawn an unhindered view of three more of the enemy closing in on the hysterical teens at the bag of the hut. She moved forward, after throwing a quick glance at Connor to make sure he was still alive, and flung herself with arms spread wide to take them down at knee height. She winced as her nose bounced off a hard shoulder blade and then pushed up to sever a head from a body before springing to her feet. The two surviving demons also stood, growling angrily and pushing the hysterical pack of girls before them to new heights of hysteria.
"Jeez, don't you people ever stop with the screaming?"
Dawn ducked one wild swing from a savage set of claws and slammed her shoulder into the thing's mid-section taking it to the floor in an impressive tackle. Unfortunately she brought it down a little too close to Marcie and the girl shrieked and kicked out in a panicked frenzy catching Dawn just under her chin.
"Ooof!"
Dawn saw stars as her head rocked back and then she was roughly thrown to the floor as the two demons took advantage of her disorientation and bundled her.
"Do something! They're gonna kill us!"
Dawn glared under a scaly arm as Marcie screamed at her and yelled back furiously
"Good! If they don't I will!"
Her eyes widened as the creature above her reared back and started to bring his flexed claws down to rip out her throat and then a bare foot came out of nowhere and kicked the demon's surprised face into the wall. Dawn gripped the hand held out to her and bounced to her feet
"Thanks."
Connor grinned and shrugged
"No problem."
They stood shoulder to shoulder as the remaining six demons re-grouped and advanced on them snarling and then a voice behind them yelled tremulously
"Get down!"
Connor grabbed Dawn and dropped just as an almighty whoooosh sounded behind them and then they both flung their arms protectively over their heads as a white-hot flame erupted from behind them. Screams rose all about them once again, demons this time instead of just Marcie and her friends, and Dawn raised her head enough to see six burning forms spinning madly in the middle of the cabin. Connor turned his head and they stared at each other wide eyed for a moment and then rolled onto their backs to stare up at their saviour. Dawn blinked as she met the eyes of the blonde boy they'd saved earlier and then her gaze drifted down to the pump action water gun he held in one hand and the lighter in the other.
"Nice moves."
She scrambled to her feet and glanced behind her as the crackling of the flames intensified. One of the demons had fallen onto a bed setting the whole thing alight and the flames were spreading fast.
"Time to go!"
Connor nodded in agreement and carefully reached out and took the water gun from the other boy's grasp
"Ken, isn't it?"
The blonde haired boy nodded, wide eyes still fixed on the screaming carnage he had wrought
"What's in the gun?" "Ju.just stuff I found on there."
He gestured behind him and Dawn saw the top of a dresser now covered in empty hair and cosmetic product bottles. She raised her eyebrows
"I am so not putting that stuff on me again. Ever!"
She pushed Ken ahead of her and gestured to the now whimpering girls on the floor
"Ok, let's go. All those who want to live and not die a horrible, burning death follow me."
She ran quickly to the window at the back of the cabin and after a brief glance outside picked up a vanity chair and briskly set about smashing the glass right out of the window.
"Let's go!"
Connor shepherded the teenagers before him casting anxious glances back over his shoulder at the now furious fire and then turned to meet Dawn's eyes as she unceremoniously shoved crying, shaking girls out the window
"Go now! They need someone to stand guard outside."
The dark haired girl nodded and then vaulted through the opening and Connor pushed and shoved the girls in front of him until it was only he and Ken remaining. Ken turned at the window and stared back into the flames and smoke even though his eyes watered and he was finding it difficult to breathe
"I never killed anyone before."
Connor paused for a moment unsure what to say and then he grabbed the back of the other boy's t-shirt and shoved him through the window muttering quietly
"You got off to a hell of a start."
He glanced back once more, shrugged and jumped through after the others.
Dawn peered around the tree she was hiding behind and wished, not for the first time, that she had a little of Spike's supernatural hearing going on. When they'd left their cabin the natural thing to do had seemed to be to make their way through the trees until they got to the camp offices and then put in a couple of calls to the Scoobs and the Batpack and get some heavy duty back up in motion. That plan had gone for scrap the minute Connor had signalled her to join him at the front of the group they were leading through the woods and she'd seen the vampires milling around the low, wooden structure. The two had exchanged resigned looks and slipped back to the others and then led them as silently as possible in the other direction. Not five minutes into the woods they'd run into five vamps having a furious whispered argument and Connor had held her back from clearing their path until he'd heard what was going on.
She took her eyes off the vamps for a moment and glanced back at the now silent civilians they were dragging around with them and was relieved to find them all still staring aimlessly into space rather than kicking off over their situation. Her head came round again as she sensed a movement and then she realised that apparently Connor had heard enough and had attacked without her. She gripped her quickly improvised stake and ran to his side easily staking one vamp as he very helpfully turned towards her leaving his chest unprotected.
One short minute later they stood in a settling pool of dust and Dawn pushed her hair behind her ears
"Well? What's the what?"
Connor threw a quick glance back at their freshly horrified charges and said in a low voice
"It's not good." "Well, duh!"
Dawn placed her hands on her hips and looked at him as though he was a candidate for a bib and a blunt eating instrument
"When are our lives ever good? Quit being all Cryptic Guy Jr and spill already!"
Connor blinked in confusion and then shook his head
"There's a force of fifty or more demons here. They're planning on raising some kind of demon lord tonight and sacrificing the people here to him when they bring him through to this dimension. It's a whole big ritual thing."
Dawn closed her eyes for a moment and sighed deeply, her shoulders slumped for a moment and then she straightened and opened her eyes to say resignedly
"Let me guess, we have about, oh an hour, two tops, and then the mouth to hell opens and the big uber demon comes out and it's the end of the world as we know it. Meanwhile we have to find all the would be sacrifices and get them somewhere safe while we fight off all the bad guys and stop the ritual. That about cover it?"
Connor nodded
"Yeah, I think so. Apart from the freeing of the people they've already caught and locked up in the boating hut on the other side of the lake."
Dawn rolled her eyes
"Oh this just gets better. What night's complete without the hostages to be rescued? My life totally sucks."
She flashed a quick grin and continued
"On the upside it's not me that's been captured for once. That gets so old after a while."
They both turned and regarded the silent group in the shadows of the trees. Connor idly scratched his chin
"The question is what do we do with them."
Dawn grinned evilly
"Oh, I think I have an idea."