punch_kicker15

Tuesday

Dawn was re-reading the Pergamum Codex section on Slayer prophecies, just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Right now Kendra and Willow had their hands full fighting a god, and The Council and the covens weren’t offering much in the way of help. They needed all the power they could get. There was something about how a god could help fight--

Her thought process was interrupted when Gwen burst through the door of their lair. (It might be furnished like a luxury apartment, but anything inside an abandoned warehouse counted as a lair.) Gwen was wearing that black leather outfit she wore for heists. Dawn couldn’t understand how that helped with stealth, since Gwen looked traffic-stoppingly sexy in it. Seemed like it would attract attention, not deflect it.

“Picked up a little something for you,” Gwen said with an air of utter nonchalance. She handed Dawn a velvet jewelry box.

Dawn opened it. Inside was a string of black pearls, with an enormous fire opal pendant dangling from the center. She gaped at it for a few seconds until her brain could form words again. “Isn’t this the necklace that David Nabbit bought for that sitcom actress--Cordy whatshername?”

“Yeah. Now it’s yours.” Gwen grinned, and with good cause.

As she pulled Gwen in for a kiss, Dawn breathed in the scent of leather, and faintly underneath, Gwen’s scent. It was something like the way the air smelled after a long rainstorm, clean and bracing and pure.

Later that night, as she lay curled around Gwen, one hand resting on the LISA device, Dawn started plotting her next move. Sometimes a talent for research and planning could make up for being depressingly normal in other areas. Somewhere out there was the perfect gift for Gwen. Her fingers twitched in anticipation of stealing it.

Friday

Gwen put the final touches on fish tacos (salsa for Gwen, peanut butter for Dawn), and then yelled, “Dinner’s ready!”

Dawn emerged from the bedroom with something tucked under her sweater.

“What are you smirking about?” Gwen asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just a little something I found when I was cleaning the apartment.” Dawn pulled a polished green sphere from her sweater and placed it on the counter.  

Gwen reached for the sphere, and then hesitated. When she lived alone, she’d just grab things first and dealt with the consequences later. Now there was Dawn to think of.

“Go ahead,” Dawn said. “It’s safe.”

Gwen picked it up. A spark of lightning lit up the sphere. “You sure this is okay for me to touch?”

“Yep. It’s the Orb of Dianmu, formed by the goddess of lightning. It’ll extend the range of your power. You won’t have to touch something to give it an electric jolt.”

Holy shit. Suddenly the necklace she’d stolen seemed like an insignificant bauble. She’d have to do something spectacular to repay Dawn for this.

Pride in her work prompted her to ask, “How did you get your hands on this?”

Dawn grabbed her plate and sat down at the table. “A rogue Slayer in LA tried to steal it in 1981. It’s been sitting in the Council’s evidence room, which is basically this old British Watcher’s basement in LA. His house isn’t exactly Fort Knox.”

Gwen let out a low whistle of admiration. “Think the Evil Overlord Society would be pissed if they knew you were fighting for the other team. That is some world-class deviousity there. But your sister’s gonna freak if she finds out, so if anyone asks, we found it at a warlock’s garage sale.”

Dawn snorted. “Oh, like she’s one to talk. When is she going to pay the Army back for those tanks she stole to fight The Mayor?”

Sunday

Dawn leaned against one of the pillars in the parking garage and glanced at her phone. No new text message from Gwen, and she’d been gone all night.

Maybe I should call Kendra and Mr. Zabuto. But her relationship with her sister was already fraught. Why risk further alienation over the way she and Gwen made a living? But if Gwen were hurt, or in trouble, a little sisterly friction would be the least of Dawn’s worries.

Just when she was about to give in and call for help, Gwen pulled up behind the wheel of an ambulance. She hopped out and opened the back doors. “Look what I found just laying around The Initiative. That orb you got works like a dream, especially when the entire security system is electrical.”

Dawn looked at the girl inside, and struggled to find words. “That’s not--you can’t--” she sputtered.

“You stole from The Council two days ago, and now you’re on the ‘thou shalt not steal’ bandwagon?”

“I didn’t steal a body!” Dawn blurted out.

“Geez, pipe down. We don’t need everyone from here to Peoria hearing this conversation.” Gwen shut the ambulance doors, and turned towards Dawn, her arms folded over her chest. “You’ve been talking about needing a body for that god-king to live in. And Riley says the doctors know Faith is never gonna wake up.”

Dawn looked through the ambulance windows at Faith. She turned back to Gwen. “I was talking about some random anonymous body. It’s different when it’s a body I know.”

Weirdly enough, seeing Faith again didn’t dredge up the sting of the knife at her throat, or the terror she’d felt when her parents were taken hostage. What she remembered were things like Faith teaching her how to pick a lock, or the time she killed that vampire Dawn had accidentally invited inside. Was that a glitch in the monks’ spell, or something else? If her memories could be trusted, Faith hadn’t always been terrible.

Gwen said, “If it were me, I’d rather have a god-king take over than have Walsh experiment on me all day long. Maybe that’s just the freak in me. When you’ve got ten thousand volts running through your body, it’s hard to get sentimental about it.”

If Gwen was a freak, then Dawn was the High Queen of Freaks. She was either thousands of years old, or three years old, depending on how she defined her existence, but she had the body of an eighteen year old girl. If she became brain-dead tomorrow, she’d have no problem with her body being used to save the world. It had already been changed by supernatural forces; what difference would it make to add one more change? There was no way to tell, but Dawn suspected that Faith might feel the same way.

“Might” was probably the most certainty she could expect right now. Depending on whether this plan worked or not, this could be either the best gift Gwen had ever given her or the worst. And there was only one way to find out.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s call Knox.”

.