"Dawn in L.A." – chapter 7

If there's anyone still reading this, I don't deserve you. I know there's nothing more irritating than a fic that fizzles. I've read a few myself. But now that my OC obsession has cooled a little, I thought I'd try to finish up some abandoned works.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When they returned to the Hyperion in early evening, Angel was still not there. Buffy called him and, after she hung up, informed Connor and Dawn that they were in full crisis mode at Wolfram and Hart and that she was going over to help out.

"Angel is really sorry not to be able to be here," she explained to Connor. "He knows what a big ... adjustment all this has to be for you but there's really no way he can leave right now and ... you know what? I think I'll let Angel make his own damn excuses." Buffy frowned. "Why don't you hang out here with Dawn, try to relax and get some rest, Dawn will get one of the rooms ready for you, and I'll make sure that Angel talks to you in the morning."

"Do you want me to...? I mean, I could help," Connor offered, looking doubtfully at his bandaged hands.

Buffy waved him off. "No. You've done more than enough today. Take it easy. Watch a movie or something."

She left, and Dawn and Connor were alone again.

"Well," Connor said, sinking down one of the lobby benches, "they didn't talk about this in Career Pathways in middle school."

Dawn laughed and plunked down next to him. "I know. It's a little like the Mafia, once you get sucked in it's hard to get out. When you know there's evil with a capital E to fight, it makes it kind of hard to get excited about going to college for a business degree or becoming a teacher or whatever." She gestured toward a locked cupboard along one wall of the room. "And, hey, why study medieval weapons when you can use them? Come see this, you'll appreciate it."

She got up and tugged weary Connor to his feet and over to the cabinet. She opened the doors to reveal row after row of battle axes, broadswords, maces, knives, pikes and other less recognizable sharp metal implements."

"A mace! He actually uses a mace?" Connor marveled as he reached to remove the weapon from the wall and reverently touch its spikes, stained a rusty red.

"Go ahead. Give it a swing," Dawn said, watching his enthusiasm with amusement.

Connor got a firm grip on the shaft with his bandaged hand, stepped away from Dawn into the center of the room, and gave the mace a whirl or two around his head. "It's heavy," he commented. "Bet it packs a helluva wallop."

"Too messy," Dawn said. "Why mash your opponent to a pulp and get blood and guts all over when you can..." she took one of the knives from the wall, "cut clean and deep and go straight for the heart?"

"Oh, so you're a weapons expert too?" he teased, lowering the mace and returning it to its place.

"No. Just an opinion from watching a battle or two, usually bound and gagged and waiting to be rescued unfortunately."

"You've led an interesting life." Connor turned from the weaponry to regard her. "It must have been hard to go to school and try and live an ordinary life when you knew what really goes on under the surface."

"Harder for Buffy. I used to be so jealous of her with all those mad fighting skills and everybody always looking up to her but I know better now. She's lost a lot and given up a lot and now I'm happy to just be Research Gal." She closed the cupboard doors.

"I'll show you to one of the rooms," she said, turning to lead him upstairs.

The phone rang. Dawn let it. She and Conner were halfway up the stairs when the answering machine kicked in with Fred's voice saying "Angel Investigations. No one is able to answer your call right now but your business is important to us. Please leave a message."

A man's voice spoke. "Is anyone there? Please! God! Somebody pick up. It's back! It's here and I don't know how much longer the doors will hold." The sound of splintering wood and a woman's screams were in the background.

Dawn raced back downstairs and across the lobby to grab the phone.

"Can I help you?" she said breathlessly.

Both her voice and the caller's were broadcast from the answering machine.

"It came back. It's here for the baby. Please. You have to help us!"

"Where are you at? Can you give me your name and address, sir?" Dawn attempted a calm tone to soothe the man's panic.

"Gary Messner, 405 Wembling Way. You remember. You helped us before, but it came back and now it's...." There were more splintering sounds. "Oh my god, please, hurry!"

"We're on our way," Dawn assured him before hanging up.

Connor had followed her downstairs and was standing across the front desk from her. "What do we do?"

"We have to help. There's no time to get Buffy or Angel or any of the others." Dawn took a deep breath.

"I'll get weapons," he said.

"And I'll get directions from MapQuest and pull the file on the case."

"How will we get there?" Connor asked, already throwing open the doors of the weapons cabinet.

"Gunn's car is parked just down the block. His keys have to be here somewhere." Dawn was simultaneously trying to type in the address on the computer and search for the car keys on the desk. "Here!" she said triumphantly, grabbing them up.

Within minutes they were on the road, trying to navigate the metropolis and read up on the case at the same time.

"Looks like Mr. Messner is not a good guy," Dawn said. "He sold his firstborn to a demon named Lucistopheles in exchange for financial success but when the baby was born he wanted to back out of the contract. He moved his family to the suburbs trying to escape the demon but of course it came after them. Unfortunately there is no way to kill this demon – at least not in this world – so Wes found an incantation to open a portal to another dimension and they drove it through. The portal closed behind it and the family was saved ... until now."

"What does that mean, 'Can't kill it'?" Connor asked, turning sharply to the left at the intersection. "As in ... can't?"

"Oh there's usually some way, but it obviously takes more than a sword or a stake. I think our best bet is to use this spell to open the portal again. See, Wes made a copy of the page and put it in the file." She held up a paper.

"You can make that work?" he asked.

"I think so. It's a pretty basic incantation, doesn't call for any extra props – herbs or incense, painted kabals or blood of a virgin. I think I can do it."

"And you want me to fight a non-killable demon and try to herd it through the portal you may or may not be able to conjure up?"

"That's the plan."

"Cool." Connor pulled into the drive of a beautiful mansion hidden behind brick walls on a street of equally fabulous houses nestled in their carefully groomed landscaping.

As they drew closer to the house they could see the wide double doors in front were gaping open like a black mouth ready to swallow whatever entered. One of the doors hung drunkenly off its hinges.

"Oh boy," Dawn breathed. "This doesn't look good."

They jumped out of the car, Connor armed with a sword, Dawn with her paperwork and a short knife, and they headed inside.

They discovered the reason for the blackness in the front hall was a broken light, as they crunched across shards of glass. A piteous screaming and more sounds of splintering wood came from upstairs. They followed the noise.

Halfway up the steps lay sprawled the body of, presumably, Mr. Messner. Without a head it was hard to tell but the figure seemed more masculine than feminine and the screaming from upstairs definitely sounded female.

Dawn and Connor stepped over the body and continued creeping up the stairs.

They reached the upper floor and at the end of the hallway, illuminated by light cast from an open bathroom door, stood an eight foot tall monster. His attention was totally focused on battering his way through the door in front of him. His roars of rage were interspersed with blows to the door. The screaming was coming from the other side of the door and was mixed with an infant's angry wails.

Dawn didn't waste any time beginning her incantation. She hoped to have the portal in place before the demon even noticed they were there. She muttered the Latin words rapidly under her breath, aware of Connor at her side raising his sword in readiness for whatever happened next.

"Keep screaming, lady," Dawn thought as she read down the page and noticed a shimmering in the air off to the left of the demon – right in front of the bathroom door as a matter of fact. The haziness grew until the features of this world were masked by a pulsating ball of energy. Then the swirling mass tore like a piece of cheap fabric and there was an open door between two universes.

"Go. Now!" Dawn hissed at Connor, who seemed frozen by her side.

"I know this...." he whispered and at the same moment the single-minded beast at the end of the hall finally noticed the portal which had opened almost by its side.

If the situation hadn't been so terrifying, the expression of surprise on the horned demon's face would have been almost comical. It turned to look down the hall to see what had created the portal, saw Dawn and Connor and barreled down on them like a freight train ... a very angry freight train.

Connor shook off his momentary distraction and raised his blade to meet the onrushing Lucistopheles. The creature ran right onto the blade, sending a shock wave up the metal and into Connor's arm. He staggered backward then dropped the blade and ducked as the monster swiped it's huge, clawed hand across the space where Connor's head had been only seconds before.

Since he was already down low, Connor tackled the beast's knees trying to knock it off its feet, but it was like hitting a stone wall.

"Oh my god, we're in trouble," Dawn thought. She tried to distract the monster, screaming right into its face and then racing down the hall toward the portal in an attempt to get it to follow her.

Simultaneously, Connor pulled his sword back out of its body with all his might and swung again. This time the blow cut across the demon's throat and while not lethal, seemed to give it some pain. It retreated down the hall a couple of steps and Connor followed, slicing viciously as he advanced.

"Hey! Over here!" Dawn shrieked. "We've got your baby here. Nice, hot, fresh baby flesh right behind this door!"

The creature seemed distracted by having an enemy at either end of the hall. In the time it took to look back and forth between Connor and Dawn, Connor was able to get in another onslaught of sword blows and drive it a few steps closer to their goal.

Meanwhile, the portal was already starting to close. The shimmering edges were drawing in like the puckered edges of a wound healing up and the hole was diminishing.

With a sudden lunge and all of his strength, Connor drove his shoulder into the monster, knocking it backward and through the dimensional doorway. Dawn heard an audible crack as something in Connor's shoulder snapped. He screamed out his pain at the same moment that the demon howled in anger at being banished once again to an alternate dimension.

"If you don't kill it, it'll just come back," Dawn called. "You have to finish it!"

Connor still gasping in pain lifted his sword in his uninjured left hand and charged after the demon. He leaped through the portal and Dawn watched him battle Lucistopheles on a sun-drenched field in another world. It was like looking through a telescope, the circumference of which was rapidly closing.

Connor thrust the sword into the demon's flesh, slashing and tearing. His bandaged hands slipped on the hilt as he pulled it out of the monster's body and he dropped the sword. The demon took the advantage, backhanding Connor and sending him sailing several yards through the air.

Connor lay for a second, the breath knocked out of him, then scrambled on all fours to get the sword again. He lifted it wearily in both hands and with a cry and a mighty swing, cleaved the demon's head from its body. He stood for a moment over his foe, gasping for air and resting his weight against the sword which now stood point down in the dirt.

"Hurry!" Dawn shrieked. "It's closing."

He looked up at her cry and began to run for the portal. He dove through at the last possible moment and landed in the hallway at her feet. Dawn grabbed his arm and jerked his body the rest of the way through the hole just before it closed. She dreaded to think what would happen if half of his body was in this world and the other half in a different dimension. Dawn sank down beside him on the floor and caught her breath.

The silence following the battle was broken only by the continued sobs of the baby and woman still barricaded inside the bedroom.

"You okay?" Dawn finally asked after several moments.

"I think I broke something, but yeah, I guess so." He rolled over onto his back with a groan and lay staring up at the ceiling.

Dawn rose to her feet and walked over to knock softly on the locked door. "Mrs. Messner? It's okay. It's all over now," she called.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Several hours later Dawn and Connor entered the hotel for the third time that day. They dragged themselves through the front door, Connor leaning on Dawn for support, his right arm held tight to his body. They had made a stop at a hospital emergency room long enough to find out his shoulder was only dislocated. After the doctor popped it back in, they snuck out before too many questions were asked or the phony personal information they gave questioned.

There was still no one at the Hyperion.

"Come on, let's get you to bed," Dawn said, leading the way. "It's been a hell of a day."

While she made up a bed in one of the rooms, Connor took a quick shower and changed into some clean sweats and a Tshirt. Dawn was fiddling with the thermostat in the room trying to get some heat established when he came out of the bathroom, still looking bedraggled but fresher.

He sank down on the bed with a contented sigh and fell back on the pillows, eyes closed. "Thanks."

"It's kind of chilly in here. Angel doesn't feel the cold so this place is never really comfortable." She turned and watched him before asking, "What happened back there? When the portal opened you said something...."

Connor opened his eyes. "I remembered seeing that happen before, the air changing then ripping open and seeing someplace different on the other side." He paused. "Only it was here. The place I saw through the portal. It was the lobby of this hotel."

He sat up and looked at Dawn. "For the first time it wasn't just a sense of déjà vu but a real memory. I remembered finding my way through to here."

To be continued....

Okay friends, I'm still not sure where this is going – well actually I know where it's going, just not necessarily the route it's going to take to get there. Anyway, I will try to be good and update more frequently.

8