not-so-secret

[holli]

Part 3. Dawn and her new friend have a run-in with some teeth.



After the party, Dawn helped Connor round up his friends-- by now in the advanced stages of drunkenness-- and herd them towards their various dorms. By the time they had turned Carlos over to his roommate ("Bye, dude! Take good care of the Dawnster, 'kay? 'Kay?"), it was heading towards two in the morning. Connor insisted on walking Dawn back, too, despite her protests.

"I'm not drunk or anything, okay? Nothing's gonna happen, so quit being all chivalrous and old-fashioned."

"You don't know the campus yet," Connor said. "Besides, it's not safe to walk by yourself, this late. People have gotten hurt."

Dawn could think of a number of things that that made her an unlikely candidate for late-night violence, but none this guy was going to believe. And she didn't really want him thinking she was a total nutbar, after all-- he was kind of cute, or would be with a good haircut, and chivalrousness wasn't exactly on Dawn's Top Ten List of Least Desired Boy Traits. There wasn't room for it, what with smoking, playing football, and vampirism taking up key slots.

Speaking of vampirism... "Oh, crap," Dawn muttered. She grabbed Connor's arm. "Did you hear that?"

He had stopped walking, and looked to be listening very hard. "Yeah. Yeah. I think it was coming from over the--"

The vampire launching itself out of the bushes at him cut off the rest of his sentence. Dawn swore, and dug in her purse for a stake. "Hey, ugly! Get off him! Either you run now-- and you should, my sister's a Slayer-- or you get this in the ribs. You hear me?"

Apparently not. But that was okay, because Connor was... kicking its ass. "Huh?" Dawn said, and grimaced. "Did I just say 'huh?' like that? Oh, god, how dorky--" She ducked and rolled with a squeak, barely avoiding the vampire as it tumbled through the air and into a nearby tree. It didn't move-- just lay on the ground, stunned or maybe even unconscious-- so Dawn ran over and staked it before it could get its head on straight. "There."

And then she remembered Connor. "Hey, how'd you manage that? I wish you'd mentioned it before, my sister's the Slayer and we probably know some of the same people, you know how it is, everyone knows everyone in this business, well, it's not really a business but-- hey. Are you all right?"

Connor was white as a sheet. Or, to be less figurative, as a vampire. Either way, he looked seriously freaked out. "You-- you know... what was that?"

"You don't know? Then how'd you fight like that? You definitely had the moves, don't tell me you've never seen a vampire before..." He was shaking his head. And he wasn't looking any less freaked. "Are you okay?"

"No. I don't think so. I-- I need to go. It was... it was nice meeting you, Dawn..."

And with that, he took off running. Well, so much for chivalrous. Dawn was only another few minutes from her dorm, but still. She was gonna have to do some digging, find out what the deal was with this Connor guy.

Comments

[sociofemme.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, and the plot thickens...
I'm really liking this start :-) v. intriguing

W00t for scary, scary muscle memory!