“Uh-huh,” Dawn urged.
“And by the time I was done, the place was empty. It was sort of all echoy and lonely, and there was this guy . . . or thing. And it . . . it scratched me, and I kinda of dodged it, and it kind of hit is head.”
Dawn was even more concerned. And more excited. “What kind of thing?”
Amanda anxiously shook her head. “I don’t know. It was . . . messed up. In the face. ’Round here abouts.” “She ran her fingers up and down her nose and between her eyebrows.
“And when it scratched you, did it . . .” She took a breath. “Was it scratching with its teeth?”
Amanda gaped at her. “Is it really? Was it really a vampire?” She let out a nervous, slightly loony giggle. “I bet you think I’m crazy.”
“I believe you,” Dawn said.
“Yeah, well . . . cool.” She went on. “The thing is, after it hits its head, I kind of freaked out. I trapped it in a room, and it’s still there, and now I don’t know what to do.”
I do. I am a Potential.
“It’s okay,” Dawn said aloud. “This is totally dealable. Don’t worry.”
Amanda hesitated. “Well, I was thinking of getting your sister. I’ve heard people talking. A lot of ’em think she’s some kind of high-functioning schizophrenic.”
That made Dawn grin.
“But I also heard that maybe she could help with this kind of thing. Do you think we should go get her?”
“She’s out,” Dawn informed her. Then, “I’ll take this one.”
* * *
They climbed into school through a window. Dawn pulled a muscle but Amanda was okay.
“Come on,” Amanda said. “The vampire’s upstairs. Are you spooked out?”
“No,” Dawn said. “I—I can do this. It’s mostly instinct. I think.”
They kept walking. “So, I was thinking, we don’t have to kill the vampire, do we? Just suppose he got out and maybe like encouraged toward the gym while the marching band was playing because they look down on the Swing Choir. It might be, you know, funny.”
Dawn stared in disbelief, and Amanda chuckled, “I’m just saying.”
* * *
They finally walked up to the classroom door where Amanda had trapped the vamp.
“Had” being the operate word.
The door swung open, and there was no vamp to be seen.
“Where’d it go?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t know,” Dawn replied, but we have to get out of here.”
Just like a big exclamation point at the end of her sentence, the vampire fell from the ceiling, where he had been hiding, and loomed up a them, fangs at the ready.
Dawn and Amanda ran off screaming; trying a different route. But he was there, in front of them, heading them off. Then Dawn spotted a fire extinguisher, broke the glass . . . and couldn’t remember how to make it to a . . .
She threw it at the vamp; knocking him down, but he was up again and so she hit him again, and threw the extinguisher at him.
Then she and Amanda headed back upstairs, Dawn pretty much in a panic.
* * *
Next stop on the Potentials’ field trip, one of Sunny-dale’s twelve fine cemeteries.
“Who can tell us where we are?” Buffy prodded her students.
“It’s a nice cemetery,” Rona replied.
“How can you tell?” Buffy queried, handing the flashlight to Spike.
Kennedy made a face. “Only a vamp could live like this.”
Spike was mildly offended. “Some, yeah. As a group, we’re not known for our tasteful décor, but in all fairness to the race . . .” He looked around. “. . . this place is seriously lacking in style.”
“He has a point,” Buffy said. “Vampires can live anywhere. Anyway they want.”
Molly asked Spike, “Where’d you live?”
“What, you mean . . . before?” Off her nod, he said. “A crypt, actually, but nicer. A bit more . . . I don’t know if posh is the right word, but it was more like—”
“Comfy,” Buffy supplied.
Then she sent them to look around, see what they could find—clues that vamps had been there. After a few moments, they found . . .
“It’s a body,” Molly said, gaping at the corpse.
Buffy took a look, let go of it. “It’s not a body. It’s leftovers,” she told them.
The body—correction, the vampire—jerked, growled, and glared at Buffy.
Stake in hand, she allowed it to get into battle posture while the Potentials grouped behind her, watching.
“No one’s safe. Not here, not ever,” she said. “See this guy?”
Kennedy faltered, “B-But he was dead a minute ago.”
“That was a minute ago,” Buffy said reasonably. “Now . . .” She slammed her fist into his face.
“Hey!” the vampire protested.
“He’s the enemy,” she continued. He got up and came after her like a shot.
“You can’t think too much,” Buffy told them. “Reacting’s better. Could be the difference between staying alive and that other thing.”
She punched the vampire; her stake clattered to the floor and Buffy took him on hand-to-hand. Kennedy moved to help her, but Spike held the Potential back.
“The question’s never, ‘What do you think?’ It’s always ‘What do you know?’ You have to know it. If you don’t, if you make one mistake . . .” She trailed off as she hit the vampire hard, and he whammed onto his back on top of the lid of the sarcophagus. When he tried to kick her, she grabbed his foot and slammed her fist into his face. Then, using his leg against him, she flipped him over and threw him off the lid.
The Potentials watched, agape.
“It takes just one vampire to kill you. So you’ve got to know you can take him. Know your environment. Know what’s around you, and how to use it. In the hands of a Slayer, everything is a Potential weapon, if you know how to see it. When you’re fighting, you have to know yourself, your brain, your body. Know how to stay calm, centered. Every move is important. Every blow’s got to be part of your plan, ’cause you make that one mistake, and it’s over. You’re not the Slayer. You’re not a Potential. You’re dead.
“What do you know?” she asked again. “Right now, the only thing you know for sure is you’ve got me.”
She picked up her stake; the vampire leaped at her, kicking her in the face. She ducked, then gave him as good as she got—no, better. Finally grabbing him by his shoulders and throwing him across the crypt.
The she deliberately dropped the stake again and strolled through the crypt doors. Spike closed the doors after her . . . shutting the Potentials inside.
Let the lesson begin.
The vampire lurched toward them.
* * *
Dawn and Amada flew down another hallway, found an empty classroom, and raced inside.
“Help! We need to barricade this!” she cried, shutting the door. Amanda grabbed a chair, but Dawn said, “Too small.”
Dawn tried to drag a filing cabinet toward the door, and Amanda went to help push.
“Too big,” Amanda grunted, but together they succeeded in getting the cabinet pushed up to the door; then, drained, they sank to the floor.
“Stay down,” Dawn cautioned.
“Think we’re safe?” Amanda asked her.
As if taking that as his cue, the vampire growled on the other side of the door, pushing the door against the filing cabinet. Dawn and Amanda pushed with their feet, straining to keep him out.
“Amanda?” Dawn said. “We’re going to get out of this. Both of us. Alive!” She screamed as the vampire kept trying to force open the door. “Alive! You believe me?”
“I believe you,” Amanda managed.
“Good.” Dawn’s heart raced. Her mind raced. She forced herself to stay calm and think. “ ’Cause I got a plan.” She took a breath. “I’m not guaranteeing it’ll work.”
“Better than mine about him eating the Marching Band,”
Amanda said drolly. “Besides, your plan’ll work.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Dawn confessed, “I don’t’ know what I’m doing here.”
“You’re getting it done,” Amanda said loyally.
* * *
The adults finished processing the changes in Dawn’s new life and decided it was time to help Dawn do the same.
But as they knocked on her door, they’re was no answer.
“Want me to kick down the door?” Anya offered. “It’d be funny. Besides, she’s been sulking in there forever.”
Xander turned the knob, discovering that the door was not locked, and pushed it open.
Then they saw the open window and Anya said, “Crap. Double crap.”
“Gone,” Xander said. “We’ve got to find her before the Bringers do.”
Willow mentally raced ahead, saying, “I can do a locator spell, but we’ve got to hurry. And find Buffy.”
* * *
Too late for the plan, too late for anything. The vampire shattered the glass on the classroom door. Through the shower of sparks, Dawn and Amanda got up and bounded away as the vampire knocked over the file cabinet and plunged into the room.
He spotted Dawn, came for her between the lab desks. She backed up, trying to put obstacles between herself and the vamp: lab desk, a chair; she threw empty flasks at him. Nothing slowed him down. Then a beaker with something in it, and as it made contact with his chest, chemical sizzled; smoke rose.
As he winced and looked down, she ran to a classroom flagpole with a California state flag suspended from it. She tried to snap the length of wood across her knee, but it didn’t break, just hurt like hell.
She rapped it down on the edge of a lab desk, losing the flag end as she held up her nice, jabbed piece of wood. She slashed blindly at her opponent, then lost her balance at fell on the floor.
Amanda was cowering, terrified, as the vampire pounced on Dawn. Dawn struggled, giving it everything she had, screaming, “Help! Amanda! Help me!”
But the other girl was frozen with terror. “I can’t!”
“Amanda!” Dawn shrieked, the vampire’s fangs brushing her neck.
Then the windows shattered. Something was coming and Dawn thought excitedly, Buffy! Taking advantage of the vampire’s distraction, Dawn pushed him away from her with her feet.
Bringers! Now I’m really dead!
The evil-eyed figures brushed past her and went straight for Amanda, who pushed herself against the wall as if to shrink inside it, wild to get away.
“No! You don’t want her!” Dawn cried courageously, trying to draw their attention to their true quarry—Dawn, the Potential.
One of the Bringers pulled his curved dagger from his waist as the others came for Amanda, throwing desks out of their way. They were singleminded in their purpose, completely ignoring Dawn. They hoisted Amanda up by the arms.
“You want . . . me,” she said in a deflated voice; because it hit her: She was not the quarry.
Amanda was.
Because Amanda was the Potential.
And I have to save her, Dawn thought.
As the Bringers prepared to slice Amanda open, Dawn lit a gas jet on one of the chem tables. A brief explosion knocked the Bringers off their feet, and she picked up her broken flagpole, calling, “Amanda!”
They raced down the hallway, Dawn carrying the jagged spear. Up the stairs they fled, and at the top, Amanda gasped, “What were those?”
Speaking rapidly but clearly, Dawn said, “Amanda, listen to me.” She gazed at her. “You know how you said I was special? Well, I’m not.”
Amanda wasn’t with her. She was still focused on the danger and the terror and her own white fear.
“You’re . . .” Amanda finally managed.
“But the thing is, you are,” Dawn finished. As Amanda stared at her, Dawn continued, “This is your battle, Amanda.”
Amanda shook her head. “No. No! I can’t . . .”
“You can,” Dawn ordered her. “You’ve got to.”
And then the Bringers were on their way again, seconds away from them.
“I got your back,” Dawn said, “but this is something you can do. It’s something you were born to do.”
* * *
From halfway up the stairs, Xander, who was arriving with the rest of cavalry, watched Dawn present a tall girl with brown hair a jagged wooden dowel, and he got in an instant what had gone done. No time for that now. He shouted, “Buffy!”
Buffy and Spike followed him up, but the Bringers were already on Amanda.
And after a couple of uncertain swipes, the power rose up in her veins, the Potential brimming inside her guided her moves, spoke to her of strength. And she began to knock the hell out of her assailants.
Buffy and Spike began stabbing bad guys; then a vampire showed up and went after the Potential. Without thinking, acting on pure instinct, the girl wheeled, pinned the vamp, and stabbed the vampire straight through the heart as if . . .
. . . as if she’d been born to do it.
Buffy dispatched the last Bringer, breaking his neck, as Amanda turned to Buffy and said in a rush, “One minute I’m in Swing choir, and the next . . . what the hell’s going on? You tell me to come to you with problems. Turns out, a vampire attacked me. Problem. So I go to your house, and when I get there, this orange cloud hits me.”
Xander was standing next to Dawn; he could see the disappointment etched on her features as she said to him, “She was at the doorway.”
“And I don’t know if you’re into the drugs,” Amanda continued, “but that’s not my deal, all right? That cloud hit me, and I got a little dizzy and discombobulated.”
“It was Willow’s spell,” Dawn continued. “She’s the Potential Slayer.”
* * *
And the new Potential was welcomed into the charmed circle at the Summers home, sharing her story with the other girls, who were chattering about their big night out with Spike and the Slayer.
Rona was grinning as she said, “I’m sure the vampire thought we were, like, what four helpless girls. And then Vi—Vi actually yells, ‘We’re just four helpless girls!’ ”
“That was part of my plan,” Vi giggled.
Kennedy rolled her eyes, and Rona went on, more soberly, “When it all started going down, it was like we knew what we were doing. For real.”
Molly grew more serious as well, as she turned to Rona and said, “Yeah, like when you dodged that first attack, and then cracked him across the jaw.”
“Aw, no, no, no,” Rona said modestly. “See, I wouldn’t have been able to do that if you hadn’t have pulled his legs out.”
“I hurt his arm,” Vi announced. She nodded, pleased with herself. “Yep. And an arm can be as lethal as a mouth.”
Molly said to Kennedy, “When you staked him, seriously, the rush was like . . .”
Kennedy deflected the praise by saying to Amanda, “So, you took one out solo?”
Molly looked at Amanda. “Yeah, what was that like?”
Shyly, Amanda moved her shoulders. “I don’t know. I mean, I saw the vampire . . . vamp,” she corrected, self-consciously.
“ ‘Vampire’ is good, too,” Kennedy assured her. The others nodded.
“Cool,” Amanda murmured. “Yeah, when that vampire attacked me, I found this kind of charge, you know?”
Kennedy did know. “Like, you realize in one instant that your whole life is different.”
“Exactly,” Amanda agreed. “It’s that rush you’re talking about.”
“Hey,” Buffy said behind Dawn. Dawn brightened and turned to her sister. Xander was there, too. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I . . . was thinking of hitting the books. Do some research on The First. It’s in retreat mode right now, but you’re still gonna need to know how to fight it,” she offered.
Buffy nodded back. “Great. Sounds good.” She looked past her sister to the Potentials. “Hey, you guys wanna head downstairs? Get
our newest arrival up to speed?”
The Potentials rose and followed their leader. Each passed Dawn and no one looked her way. Except Amanda, all shyness and eager smile, and then she went after the others.
Forlorn, Dawn sat down, opened a book, and began to read. After a moment, she realized someone was watching her. It was Xander.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Aw, I’m just thinking about the girls,” he said as he walked into the room. “It’s a harsh gig, being a Potential. Just being picked out of a crowd, danger, destiny.” He grinned. “Plus, if you act now, death.”
“They can handle it,” Dawn said, feeling loyal to the girls.
“Yeah.” He sat in a chair in front of her desk. “They’re special. No doubt. The thing is, not one of them will ever know,” he said. “Not even Buffy.”
She raised a brow. “Know what?”
His voice dropped its sass as he said, “How much harder it is for the rest of us.”
“No way,” she protested. “They’ve got—”
“Seven years, Dawn,” he cut in, deadly serious. “Working with the Slayer. Seeing my friends get more and more powerful. A witch. A demon. Hell, I could fit Oz in my shaving kit, but come a full moon, he had a wolfy mojo not to be messed with. Powerful. All of them.” He sighed. “And I’m the guy who fixes the windows.”
She looked to cheer him up by saying, “Well, you had that sexy army training for a while, and . . . and the windows really did need fixing.”
He didn’t lose his vibe. He said, “I saw what you did last night.”
“Yeah, I . . .” She shook her head, feeling stupid. “I guess I kind of lost my head when I thought I was the Slayer.”
“You thought you were all special,” Xander countered. “Miss Sunnydale 2003. And the minute you found out you weren’t, you handed the crown to Amanda without a moment’s pause. You gave her your power.”
There’s that word again. “The power wasn’t mine,” Dawn protested.
“They’ll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn’t Chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know.” And he did; she could see that. “I see more than anybody realizes because nobody’s watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You’re not special.” He paused, and his face glowed with pride in her.