Home.

That’s we’re I’m heading. On the plane, loaned to us by Kennedy, Slayer Millionaire, Anaheed and I are on our way, heading home to Santa Rosita. The zompires are getting stronger. Nobody knows why.

But they’re charging into people’s homes – without an invite. It’s bad. Horrific. People are dying, being slaughtered, and no one can do much about it. But, as the jet lands, the feeling in my stomach lurches.

Just to be clear: despite all this chaos and violence, my stomach has not lurched due to worry. It’s excitement. Anaheed is still undoing her safety belt and I’m already halfway up the aisle! The hatch opens and I race down the steps. I see Katie. I see Sky.

Why isn’t he here? He isn’t here? Why isn’t he here?

Where’s Devon?

My grandmother throws a hug around me, ruffles my head.

“I was afraid they’d make you cut your hair.”

“It looks good.” Katie likes the cut. I thank them, absent-mindedly. Katie can see from my eyes darting around what I’m looking for. Best friend, psychic link, still intact.

“Thanks”

And then Katie points to our spot, the car parked by the fence, where we’ve sat for hours, for years. “He’s over there, where we used to watch the planes.”

As soon as she says it, I’m running. He looks amazing. I run up to the fence and he links our fingers through them from the other side of the wire mesh.

“How does home look?” I check, look him up and down.

“Amazing,” I tell him. I want this fence gone, like, now.

Katie’s out of breath by the time she catches up. “They… really don’t like maniacs running loose on the tarmac.”

A few minutes later, I’m throwing my bags into the back of the van. It has a blue sky painted on it, and Gran is busy telling Anaheed why.

“Hot ride!”

“It’s a sky because my name is Sky.”

“Subtle!” Devon turns to her, trying to get her measure. After all, Anaheed is an ACTUAL Slayer and she didn’t have to come. She could have stayed in San Francisco and helped Buffy out with that missing thing, or whatever.

“Thanks for coming to Santa Rosita, Anaheed. We can use the help.” As they shake hands, I look him in the eyes, knowing he would never lie to me.

“Devon, how bad is it?”

When the van is moving, he explains what’s been happening. I barely hear a word of it. His blonde hair, his blue eyes, the way his shirt is clinging to him.

Perfect. He’s perfect. I like perfect.

“I don’t know why it’s worse here than anywhere else, but it is. And the no-invitation thing is sucking in a majorly pandemic way.”

Katie smiles, with a big grin. I suddenly realise I need to not shut her out just because I have something… someone… new. “We’ve been making stakes and stuff for you. Figured you’d need them for the big eviction.”

Anaheed, who’s listening from the passenger seat, has a different opinion. As she’s checking her bag, she tells us all, rather bluntly, in her usual style, that it’s too late for that! “No, sorry. But you don’t need an eviction. You need an immunisation. You need to keep them out of everywhere they aren’t yet.”

“But what about the houses they already took?” I ask her. Could we even try to get them out? Her next words hit me like a freight train, mainly because it’s something similar to something else I was told recently. It still chills me though.

“Sometimes a Slayer has to write off what they can’t save.”

I let her words sink in. I notice, from the window, where we’re heading for as the van stops outside. I’m suddenly even more nervous. “We’re at Devon’s house?”

My grandmother turns to me from the driver’s seat. “This street’s gonna fall tonight or tomorrow. Last chance to get stuff out.” As we get out of the van, she smiles at me. Was that a wink?

“You two go in.”

Katie does the same thing. “Take your time.”

When we’re inside, I realise I’m following Devon. I’m halfway up the stairs before I even realise. “I can’t believe we’re letting them, like, stagger in and take your house.”

“You and my Dad. Took forever for me to convince him not to make a last stand. We were using my room to store stuff until we realised this location wouldn’t hold.”

I know I should be staring at the supplies. There’s stakes and cloves of garlic and crucifixes. He points to the stakes and grins. “Sky and Katie made those for you.”

But I’m in his bedroom. Key word: bed. My palms are sweaty. Is it warm in here? I try to make myself comfortable. “Katie hates to practice violin.”

“Oh, and there’s this…”

“What the…?” He hands me a shirt, but it’s been adapted. It has loops sewn into it, to keep weapons in place. He takes it off me, holds it against me and demonstrates.

“You put the stakes through the loops. Grab and stab.”

“Sky made it?”

He gets slightly flustered, turns slightly redder. “Um… I made it. I want you as safe as you can be. Put it on.”

And there it is. Now the nerves are screaming into my brain!

Taking off a shirt sounds easy. Done it since I was a kid. But suddenly it’s all complicated and the room is too warm.

Thankfully, to spare my turn to blush, a thud on the roof gets my attention. A heavy thud. We both forget about shirtless boys and look up.

“Raccoons?” Another thump. And another. “Big raccoons.”

“It’s only just turned dusk. I don’t think they’d…” Thankfully, another noise spoils the moment and a hand, clawed and thick, comes grasping through the ceiling above us. I automatically, without thinking, grab it for dear life!

“What are you doing?”

“Pulling.” I forget about everything else, and tug down on the creature’s limb. I use what I was taught and use his weight and power against him, pulling him through the plaster and yelling at Devon to get the Hell out of here!

“Get out Devon! I’ve got some dusting to do!” I get the stake, and it’s in the vamp’s chest in minutes, luck on my side, more than skill.

And then Devon turns, the stubborn, gorgeous idiot. “I’m not going. We can fight together. Watcher and Slayer.”

And then suddenly there is this memory. My own words bring it back to me. Me and Buffy. We were on patrol in Golden Gate Park.

“A Slayer and a Watcher?”

Who better to talk to about Slayer-dating advice than the actual big kahuna?

“Right. Together. Power couple-ish, I mean. Can it work?”

She looks at me and frowns, not sure what to say about it. “I… Sorry. My mind keeps going to Giles places and it’s… oh man. It’s bad and sad.”

“But me and Devon could make it work. Planning and fighting and boyfriending.”

“I dunno, Billy. I think you need to watch out.”

“But why?”

But I realise in that moment that talk of Devon has lowered my defences. She’s not telling me to watch out for relationship snags. This time, she pushes me, so I’m behind her, and is armed before I can blink! “Watch out!”

I see the vampires now. At least five of them. I gulp. She moves.

How does she do that so fast? I pull my own stake, eager to help. “I’ll get this one.”

“You’ll get away from that one! Back, back, back!”

I watch her as she leaps from her spot and almost glides through the air. As soon as she makes contact with one vampire, it explodes into dust – I don’t even see her weapon hit it!

I watch her, don’t take my eyes off her, but it’s her words that are going in. The voice of Slayer experience.

“Sometimes it’s easier to do it alone,” she says, kicking another vamp in the head.

“Because if you fight alongside someone you love, you end up trying to protect each other.”

“Love makes you take chances.” Another vamp done.

“And when you’re the Slayer, if you risk yourself, you’re risking the protection of the world.” And the final two. When she gets up, she dusts herself down and looks at me, straight into my eyes.

“You don’t have the right to risk that.”

In the now, I yell at Devon not to strike. “Wait!” I dust another one, as two more come from the hole in the roof. This time, I attempt to shove him, the same as Buffy did me. “Out of the way.”

“But I have him!” No. You’re not listening! He swerves, and I see one vamp rush back to his feet and scurry for the hole they came from. By the time I’ve turned around, Devon has staked the vampire. He’s grinning, raising his hands up, Hardy Boys, back at it, ready for a high five. “I got him! I told you!”

I grab him by the hand, really not caring about my lack of shirt right now. I make for downstairs, dragging him with me. “We need to get out of here. And we need to break up.”

He stops in his tracks and I know what he’s going to say and why he looks so hurt. “What did you say? Because it sounded like…”

But now is not the time. I feed him the line.

“Sometimes a Slayer has to write off what they can’t save.”

Another noise, from the living area, gets my attention. I know that sound. That was gun fire. “What’s that?”

Running into the area, I see Devon’s Dad. I’m embarrassed to say, he’s a slight cliché, sports hoodie, overweight, probably watching the sports channels constantly with a beer, but then I realise how judgy I sound and feel bad. Not all dads are bad dads.

Devon races to his father and lowers the gun in his arms. “You know shooting doesn’t do any good! Why are you even here?”

“They’re swarming out there! I did what you said, but then… I couldn’t let them take my home!”

As I follow into the room, I realise what it looks like, me coming into the room, from upstairs, with no shirt on, sweat clinging to me. I automatically, without thinking, place my stakes in the loops. His father turns to me. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Billy. I can help. There’s more coming from upstairs. We should get out.”

Devon’s dad looks straight at him, curious, but completely calm. “This your boyfriend?”

Even though I was the one who started this problem, his words hurt like Hell. “No. He’s a Slayer.”

“He dumped you?” His father’s tone changes. Angry that someone would break up with their child. I’m suddenly very aware of his temper, his bad few days and the gun in his hand.

I don’t stammer at him. At least I hope I don’t. “Not dumped. No dumping. No shooting or dumping. It’s mutual.”

“Kill that.” For a minute, it sounds like Devon’s asking his father, but he hands me a stake. I plunge it into the vampire who tries to get into the window behind me. I barely look at it. And Devon hasn’t taken his eyes off me.

“It’s not mutual. You can’t make something mutual by calling it mutual.”

His father gets trigger happy, so I turn, beg him to put the gun down. “Stop that, sir!”

“You don’t get to pick my feelings about this, Billy.”

Now, I just wish we were anywhere but here. I yell, way louder than I should, frightening myself, Devon and his Dad. “Fine! Whatever! But right now we are in terrible danger, so you both have to listen!”

They stare at me in silence for three seconds and then relax. I can hear the shaking in my voice, adrenaline causing my hands and legs to bounce involuntary, but I also know what to do. “Devon, text Katie. Tell them what’s going on. Um…Devon’s Dad, can you please check the back door? Without using the gun.”

I hope the gang with the van remember the plan.

“So we know what we’re doing, right?” Anaheed would say, commanding as ever, although not in a hugely scary-way.

“Classic Han Solo. Get in there and pluck them out.” Katie would use the pop culture. Bring it, my girl.

“I’m ready.” Granny Sky, the mistress of succinct blurbs. Short and very sweet.

So right about now, they should be moving. If they got the text.

“Okay, Sky. Go when I say…”

“WAIT!” The delivery report beeps on Devon’s phone.

“It’s a text from Devon. Zompires are swarming the house.”

“Thanks ever so much Devon,” Sky would say, moaning now about wasted time. She hates wasting time. Says we must live in the moment. And then, per the plan, Anaheed should start the truck, right about now.

“Let’s go. Step on it Sky!”

“GO, GO, GO!” I think I hear the van’s screeching tires, but I’m not sure. They seem like they’re over the street. Crashing into something else?

“You don’t get a nice breakup just because your intentions are good. You get an ugly, guilty breakup, because your reasons are stupid.”

I worry after that. I don’t hear anything back from Katie, although it’s only been thirty seconds. But what was that sound? As I barricade Devon’s front door, he’s still behind me, still telling me the relationship/breakup rules. I try to get him to stop by explaining myself.

“I don’t want to. You know I don’t.”

“So don’t.”

He helps me with a couch, prepares my weapons as we work.

“I chose to be a Slayer and I want to be with you. But I can’t do both.”

“Who says? Buffy?” The tone he uses suggests annoyance.

But this has nothing to do with Buffy. She only told me what I already knew deep down. “Devon, I could lose the world, trying to save you. You mean everything to me.”

He stops what he’s doing, reaches for my hand. “I mean more than the world?”

I look him in the eyes. See the smile. Look at the hair. Feel him, under my skin, my heart beating faster, my cheeks burning. “Yeah. You do. I would let the world go up in flames to save you. So… I can’t… I can’t be both. I’m sorry.”

He tells me he’s sorry too and I see his lip quiver. Oh dear.

I feel his breath on my face. We’re inches apart. His hand drifts to my hip and I stare into those eyes. I move closer, return the intimacy…

His father, of all the moments to interrupt, chooses this one. “Hey guys? I didn’t see any at the back door, so I looked outside. Cellar door’s all smashed in.”

He tells us everything quickly, but we don’t hear him.

We’re both staring, both… breathing hard, both breathless. I move towards him, he moves towards me. Now I’m cursing putting the shirt back on. Can he take it off? “So, you mean…”

And then, again, in seconds, his father’s words hit me. Cellar door? “They’re in the basement.”

The floorboards beneath my feet start shaking, being battered from the other side. Devon’s Dad aims his gun at the floor in horror. “They’re right under us!”

Where are the others?

Although, I can’t see them, later they told me what took them so long. They’d crashed into someone’s garden shed, full of wood. Clever? Well, yeah, because they turned Granny Sky’s van into a vampire-slaying tank, complete with stake shielding in the fender department.

But they’re not quick enough, as Devon’s Dad, with a cry from his son, falls through the floor and into the nest of demons below us.

I look in his eyes, see the worry. See the pain. I’m losing count of all the different ways I’m losing him. I grab his hand, link our fingers, stare into his eyes. I throw my arms around him and I don’t let go.

I let the floor take us down.

Landing in a cellar full of bloodthirsty creatures isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. Devon called and asked me to come back and help my hometown from being overrun. I didn’t know about this falling-into-a-basement-filled-with-death thing.

“No floor! No floor!” I hear Sky yelling, and then I hear the van.

Sometimes you think things can’t get worse, and then… microbus.

The lack of floor propels the van down towards us, and I move forward and push Devon aside, again. Anaheed gets out, picks up a stake, as Devon yells at me from somewhere in the smoke.

“Help my Dad!”

He’s away from us, the other side of the van, separated from me. He’s surrounded by vampires. I look at his dad, who nods at me. “I’m good. Go get him.”

As I move, Anaheed gets in my way and grabs me by my arm. “You’ll never get to him!”

“Try and stop me.”

“Like this?” And then she picks me up, like a freaking rag doll.

I thought I had to choose between saving Devon and being a Slayer. But I found a way to fail at both.

“I have to save him!” But Anaheed’s grip is somewhat firm.

And then the basement disappears.

And I am somewhere cold.

Old and cold.

An army of them, but they’re not vampires. They’re more savage, almost cave like. And in the centre of a snarling circle of the monsters, I see her.

She’s wrapped in bandages, hair in braids. White make-up etched on her face, like a symbol. A warning. A ghost, almost. She holds clubs, clubs with fire on the end and she waves it around with her arms, frightening the creatures, the… ubervamps… away.

And then I hear Anaheed again. She’s also let me go.

“I said, are you all right?”

I don’t answer her. I grab the stake from Devon’s home-made Slayer shirt and reach straight for a gas canister in our corner of the cellar. I strike a match and the stake burns in my hand. I start waving it around the vampires, who scatter from Devon’s side. I yell, rather loudly, scaring myself.

“Get away from my boyfriend!”

They run.

I fight. I stake. I dust. I roar. I burn. I scorch.

I reach him. “You okay? I think you’re okay.”

He’s alive, and he’s conscious. Thank you. He looks at me, his blue eyes a bit dopey in all the chaos. “What happened?”

I put my arms around him, help him to his feet. “I put you first. And the world came along for the ride. I guess sometimes we Slayers have to cut out losses and sometimes we have to trust our instincts.”

I get him to the van and look at Anaheed. She orders, in her own cheerful way, for the others to grab a stake and strike a match. We got this.

Afterwards, Katie checks Devon out as Sky stitches his head. It’s only superficial, but it’s still not a mark on the perfection that is the guy’s face. As I stare at my grandmother wiping a cloth against his head, his father, next to me, turns to speak.

“So, you guys are okay, right?”

“Yeah.”

Then Devon is between us, looking at me. “We are.”

I move in to kiss him. “We really are.”

Later that night, checking around the city block, Anaheed tells me that she’s checked her facts. “Fire. It makes perfect sense. Before invitations, Hell, before doors, that was how you kept outside things outside.”

We’re watching now as the neighbours light bonfires on their front lawns, to ward off the vamps. “And it looks kinda pretty!”

“We’re getting word from everywhere,” Devon confirms. The situation is contained.

“Everything just got a little easier,” I tell them. “Thanks to my man!” Devon yells in triumph, making me blush again.

“I was so scared for Devon, but I couldn’t get to him and that just sort of… I dunno. I just sort of saw this girl, a kind of Primitive Slayer, I guess? I could kind of see her, in a cave… and I knew how to stop them. It was like, instead of being punished for being in love, I was being rewarded.”

Anaheed stops me for a moment, stops walking in surprise. “Primitive? Billy, the first Slayer is called the Primitive. Did you have some… kind of… vision?”

“Did I?”

Devon has realised I said the ‘L’ word. “In ‘love’?” And then he catches the rest of it. “Wait… Vision? But how? He’s not a called Slayer. He’s not hooked into all that mythology.”

Anaheed smiles at me, curious and intrigued. “But maybe something out there hooked into him.”

I’m not sure how I feel about that. Some higher power or force taking command or influencing my life. But right now, we fought the fight. We beat them back. We didn’t save the whole world.

But we did save my world. As for the, what did Anaheed say, the Primitive, this Sineya? Well, that’s a puzzle, isn’t it? I guess someday, we might find out.

Ha!

Bring it, my girl!