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by Chris Kenworthy (scoobyhq@fcmail.com)
Disclaimer: No owna nobady!
"No, don't worry about me, I'll be okay," Buffy said. "Get Xander fixed up first."
"Come on, you need to get checked out right away," Phoebe pressed. "The Knights were after you..."
"It's okay, Buffy," Xander said. "Piper can nurse me while Phoebe has a look at you. Can't you, Piper?"
Piper shot an unimpressed look at Xander, who was unsubtly staring over at her. "Okay, that works," Phoebe agreed obliviously.
"So, what exactly is a vampire slayer?" Phoebe asked once she'd brought the first aid kit in and started. "We didn't even know that there were vampires. Demons, warlocks and witches yes, but not vampires."
"That's a bit weird," Buffy said. "I thought there were vampires all over the world. Mostly in Sunnydale, though. As for slayers, well, we're just girls who got stuck with the job of fighting the vampires, and the demons, the monsters and the powers of darkness."
"Hey, us too!" Phoebe exclaimed. "Or kind of. We inherited witchly powers from our ancestors, but because we're the Charmed ones, we've got to use them to protect the innocent and stop warlocks from killing us, never for personal gain."
Buffy's face spread wide in pleased understanding. "Yeah! Sometimes being chosen to keep everybody else safe really sucks, doesn't it?" Phoebe nodded.
"So, uh," Xander broke in, "do you have a guardian or guide that tells you what you have to do, you know, what innocents you have to protect next?"
"Uh, not really," Prue answered. "Most of the time it's just a case of weird things crossing our paths. Or Phoebe's visions leading her to whoever we have to help next."
"Hmm..." Buffy said. "That sounds like it could be rough. I've got a watcher, Giles, who helps me along the way. He's annoying a lot of the time; well, he's old so he can't help it. But I couldn't even tell you where I'd be without him."
(Later, in the dining room.)
"So, there they were," Phoebe was saying. "The two of them, just standing as calm as you please right over there in the front hallway. One of them our long-lost father, the other a shapeshifting demon ready to kill us all in an instant for the Book of Shadows. And we don't know which is which!" Prue was shooting daggers at her youngest sister at this point, but Phoebe and everyone else were too involved in the story to notice or care.
"And the one of them, he's saying things from when we were little girls and trying to convince us that he's our father, and the other one starts arguing with him, and we don't know for sure who's who. And then one of them, he tells me to cast the spell that will nuke anyone but the three of us inside the house!" She paused dramatically at this point. "At first we don't know what's going on, but his ring, this protective charm, was on the table just a foot out of his reach. Only our real father would know its power. So Prue slides it over to him, and Wham! I hit the spell. Poof - no more shapeshifters."
"Oh, no!" Piper called out from the kitchen. "Could someone keep this stirring? I need to go out to the garden and grab some mint for it."
"Sure!" Xander called out and dashed into the kitchen.
"Quickly quickly," the pretty cook told him as she handed over the spoon, and headed for the front door.
"Okay, so let's hear one of your stories Buffy," Phoebe directed.
"Me?"
"Yeah... come one, vampire slaying has to have led to some knee-slappers."
"Uh," Buffy thought for a moment. "Well, there was the, uh, hmm, perhaps not. Maybe... uh, no. And not... Oh!" Finally she brightened up. "Halloween, last year. We'd been sold these costumes by a magician who cast a spell with them... everyone would become what they were dressed as. So Xander, who bought a cheap toy gun to set off his army fatigues, thought he was really a soldier. I bought this gorgeous old-fashioned gown, and I thought I really was some delicate noblewoman. Neither of us remembered our real lives. And Willow, who..." Buffy broke off as she noticed a strange sound. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Prue asked.
"I..." Buffy got up and ran through a few rooms of the house, and then towards the front door. What she saw when she opened the door stunned her.
Piper Halliwell was lying motionless on the lawn near the garden. A dark-skinned man had a knife to her throat. As Buffy ran down the stairs to try to get to them, he moved the knife across to her shoulder, cut into it, and flicked blood into a strange medallion. He looked up at Buffy just as she was about to reach them, and Buffy recognized him... it was Mister Trick, the strange vampire she had met twice before in Sunnydale. She was so surprised at his identity that she tripped over Piper as Trick dodged away, and she watched helplessly as he climbed into a black sports car and drove away.
"Piper?" Prue called from the porch.
Buffy tore a wide strip off the bottom of her t-shirt and used it to bandage the wound on Piper's arm. By the time she was done with that, everybody was outside, Piper was coming round, and the car was halfway out of sight.
"Phoebe," Prue said, getting an antique compass out of her pocket. "I think we can use a variant of the finding spell to trace that guy. Repeat the first half of the spell as we did it before and then let me finish it, okay?"
"Okay," Phoebe nodded. Buffy noticed idly that there was the small mark of an electrical burn on Piper's back... Mister Trick might have used a taser or something similar on her.
"Compass needle straight and true," Prue and Phoebe chanted, "New labor do we have for you / Leave your quest towards the north / and guide us on our journey forth."
"Harm he did to me and mine," Prue continued alone. "Harm will end when he I find / Give direction to our flight / And we shall find him come this night!" She dramatically pointed at the car, now almost out of sight, as Phoebe flicked at the compass. The needle swivelled to point in the direction of the car.
"Good enough," Buffy said. "Let's head it out. I'll bet that Trick's gonna be going quite a ways... possibly back to Sunnydale."
"Huh? Uh, okay," Prue said, climbing back behind the wheel of the van. The rest of both groups piled in and she pulled out, watching the compass as she headed to the interstate.
"Say," Phoebe said. "Shouldn't we pick up the Book of Shadows?" But Prue was shaking her head.
"We can't risk bringing the Book out of the house and into danger, Phoebe," she said. "That could be what this is about... a trap for the Book - or us."
"Well, I know the next best thing," Buffy said. Flipping open Cordelia's cell phone, she dialed a long-distance number. "Hey Giles... I was betting you'd still be at the library."
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