Here We Come To Save The DayBy Karen
Chapter Five"Oh god, Spike is gonna kill me."
Dawn groaned as the anguished voice registered and fought to open her heavy eyelids
"Are you dead? You're not dead are you? Or paralysed? He'll kill me if you're broken."
Dawn groaned again and managed to force her eyes open and then gave a yelp of shock when a large, wrinkly face peered back at her worriedly. The face split into a relieved grin
"Dawn? Are you ok? Please say you're ok. Spike's gonna kill me."
Dawn blinked and refocused
"Clem?"
The demon nodded enthusiastically causing his ears to flap like two fleshy curtains in the breeze
"Uh-huh. How do you feel? Is everything working? Can you move?"
Dawn raised her head slightly and gave another moan and then allowed Clem to help her unsteadily to her feet. She took several panting breaths as the world span around her and her stomach threatened to hurl it's day's consumption over the sidewalk and then slowly her body adjusted to it's new upright position
"What happened?"
Clem eyed her worriedly as she swayed against him and said slowly
"You crashed remember?"
She blinked and then jumped as Connor raced past with three screaming vampires after him
"What's going on?"
She blinked again and focused on Druscilla snarling and spitting as she fought another four vampires in the middle of the street, regardless of cars speeding past them. Clem tightened his hold on her as she pushed away from him and scrabbled at the inside of Spike's duster for a weapon
"Hey, do you think you should be doing that?"
Dawn finally got a grip on a stake and drew it out to clutch it between shaking fingers
"Clem, what the hell is going on?"
Clem sighed as he recognised the tone of her voice. The same tone of voice she used when she was positively not going to sit through another viewing of 'Old Yeller' with him and was going to put on 'Blair Witch' instead.
"Do you want the long or the….
"CLEM!"The much bigger demon flinched and mumbled
"Ok, ok. The bad guys know your guys are MIA and are going to town in a BIG way. You crashed the truck you were driving and got a knock on the head. A vamp recognised you and attacked and your boyfriend and the hottie attacked him. I was coming home from a munchie run and saw the battling hordes and then you, got past the fighting and woke you up. Cheese puff?"
Dawn screwed up her face as a giant bag of Clem's favourite snack got waved under her nose
"No. Wait, how do you know Spike's missing?"
Clem eased back against the wall when he realised the girl's colour was gradually coming back and popped a couple of the orange snacks into his mouth. He chewed enthusiastically for a moment and then hurriedly swallowed as Dawn's _expression darkened
"Jeez, you're just like your sister."
Dawn glared harder
"Ok, ok! The demons are everywhere. They've set fire to city hall and the hospital's under attack. It's all anyone's talking about. Oh, and your boy yelled it to me when we introduced ourselves."
Dawn pressed a hand to her aching head
"You introduced yourselves?"
"Well, yeah, I don't think he'd let just any old demon take care of you, do you?"His _expression fell as he looked over her shoulder and he flattened himself against the wall
"Oh god."
Dawn turned and glared at the two vampires that had appeared behind her
"What?"
They looked momentarily startled at her pissy tone and then grinned evilly
"Slayer's sister."
"Yeah, what of it?"The taller of the two vamps flashed his fangs and said with satisfaction
"We're gonna kill you."
Dawn rolled her eyes and instantly regretted it as her head threatened to fall off. She swayed briefly and then raised the hand holding her stake and said irritably
"No, you're going to try. Now can we please speed this up? I've got this really bad headache and I'm feeling kinda sick…"
She flinched as they roared and sprang towards her, cursing the pounding in her skull and slammed her stake firmly into the chest of the lead vamp
"Hello, headache? Can we keep the noise to a minimum please?"
She grunted as the other vampire crashed into her and she slammed back into the wall beside Clem. She turned her face to the side as the vamp stuck out his tongue and licked the side of her face and then brought her knee sharply up between his legs. As the demon screamed and clutched himself she pushed him away and brought her stake down again
"Will you shut up? God, my head's killing me."
She took a couple of breaths and then pushed away from the wall as Clem stuttered
"How did you do that?"
Dawn wiped a hand over her face with a disgusted frown and muttered
"Eew, vamp spit. What? Oh, I live with Spike and Buffy remember? You don't learn what to do with a stake in my house and you're pretty much demon bait."
Clem shook his head and tried again
"No. I meant the whole nearly-dying-one-minute to Xena-on-acid the next, actually."
Dawn grinned
"Reflex mostly and I'm a Summers girl. We heal pretty fast."
Her grin faded as she thought of her Mom and she added softly
"Mostly."
Clem opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by the arrival of Connor. The dark haired boy took his love in his arms and hugged her thankfully, closing his eyes in relief to see her upright and conscious
"Are you alright?"
Dawn held herself rigid for a moment and then leaned into his warm, hard body as she felt it tremble against her
"I'm fine.
Connor squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and took a long slow breath
"I thought I'd lost you. There was so much blood."
Dawn pulled back slightly and raised a hand to her face
"Really? Oh gross, that's why that vamp licked me? Ugh!"
Connor leaned back a little and looked into her disgusted face
"What vampire?"
His eyes narrowed and swivelled to lock onto Clem, his lips drew back from his teeth in a feral snarl as he growled
"You were meant to protect her!"
Clem looked horrified at the boy's _expression and waved his hands before him in the air
"Hey, calm down! I was gonna but it all happened so fast and, truth be told, I'm more of a lover than a fighter."
Dawn very determinedly put the image of Clem being a lover of anything but Cheese Puffs out of her mind and pinched Connor's waist to get his attention
"Excuse me? Pyscho-Boy? Can take care of myself remember, or have we totally forgotten the fun times the night we met?"
Connor dragged his eyes away from the terrified looking demon and stared into Dawn's outraged blue eyes
"No, I haven't forgotten how we met, but I think even the Slayer might have problems defending herself when she'd been knocked unconscious."
Dawn raised herself onto her toes and nipped his bottom lip between her teeth. She grinned as he gave a startled hiss of pleasure and whispered
"You think? You have no idea what Buffy's capable of when she's unconscious."
Her hand drifted down from his waist and gave him a firm pinch on the ass and grinned as he yelped, jumping into the air
"I'm a lot like my sister."
Connor looked at her as he felt his face suffuse with colour and shook himself mentally
<Say something clever, say something clever!>
"Cordelia drools in her sleep."
<Or just open your mouth and say the first moronic thing you can think of. Idiot.>
Dawn nodded slowly and gave an uncertain smile
"Oh. Does she?"
She stepped away from him and looked around as Druscilla walked up to join them, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth
"Please tell me you didn't eat anybody."
The other woman blinked and then giggled softly
"I made them weep and then I sucked them dry and picked my teeth with the bones."
"Uh-huh, but the sucking was all of the demons right? No human suckage allowed."A small silence followed Dawn's remark and then she shook her head slightly
"Can we all just pretend I didn't say that please?"
Druscilla suddenly clutched at her head and began to wail sharply
"Something wicked this way comes, something wicked and dark."
Dawn and Connor exchanged glances and then Dawn said impatiently
"Dru, that would be you, hun. Wicked pretty much sums you up."
She flinched as the vampire's cries got louder and then jumped as an incredulous voice said loudly
"Dawn is that you?"
She peered around Connor and then let her eyes travel up over a broad chest to rest on the good-looking, honest voice of her sister's ex-honey
<This night just gets weirder and weirder>
She gave a small smile
"Hey Riley. How's it goin'?"
Riley Finn let his disbelieving gaze sweep over the bloodstained young girl, the wailing vampire, the sulky looking teenage boy next to Dawn and finally the saggy skinned demon clutching the family size pack of Cheese Puffs leaning against the wall. He glared hard at the young woman he had thought of as his own sister and said grimly
"Dawn, what the hell is going on?"
He took another look at her and snapped in annoyance
"And why are you wearing Spike's coat? Where is everyone?"
Dawn sighed and leaned gratefully against Connor as he slipped a supporting arm around her waist
"Good question. You wanna grab a soda? This could take a while."