This story is part of the Childe & Sire universe. It is set after the last chapter of Whose Destiny, between the epilogues of His Childe and Her Sire, before the ficlet The Question. It probably won't make much sense if you didn't read the original stories.


Vampires
 
The sign on the side of the road was announcing that Los Angeles was twenty miles ahead and Dawn was already plotting in her head which road she would take to the Hyperion to avoid traffic as much as she could when a question rose from the back seat.

“Mom? Are Aunt Buffy and Uncle Spike under house arrest?”

Steven, who had been drinking from his Styrofoam cup of bad coffee, was sent into a fit of coughing and Dawn threw him a concerned look before glancing in the rearview mirror at her six-year-old son.

“House arrest?” she repeated, baffled. “Why would you think that, honey?”

“My friend, Tommy, told me his daddy’s cousin is on house arrest. He can’t get out of his house at all or the police get angry. Is it the same for Aunt Buffy and Uncle Spike? Is that why they don’t get out of the house?”

Again, Dawn glanced at Steven. He had stopped dabbing at his coffee-stained jeans and returned her look, clearly asking ‘what do we say’. They had known this question would come eventually, and they had talked about how to answer, but had never made a decision. Steven was for telling their children the truth as soon as possible about demons and vampires; Dawn would have preferred to wait until they were older. They were momentarily saved from deciding right away when another voice rose.

“Of course, they get out of the house,” their daughter said with all the wisdom of being older than her sibling by three years. “They came to visit us last Christmas, didn’t they? And they work at Aunt Anya’s store so they have to go there sometimes.”

“But they never go out while we’re there,” their son insisted. “I asked Uncle Spike to play ball with me after lunch and he didn’t want to. He never wants to go outside with me.”

Dawn bit her bottom lip not to laugh. Sun or not, she had trouble imagining Spike playing ball, or any kind of kid game for that matter.

“Well, that’s different,” their daughter snorted. “Who would want to play with you?”

“Stop that,” Dawn chastised sternly. “Be nice to your brother.”

A pout and a quiet ‘sorry’ quickly followed, but it soon became clear that both children still expected an answer. Once more, a look passed between Dawn and her husband, and it was the latter who turned in his seat to look at the children.

“Well, the thing is,” he started, hesitating a little, “Uncle Spike and Aunt Buffy are kind of… sick. When they get in the sun, they get a really, really bad sunburn. Remember how grandpa Angel was all red when we went to the beach last year? Even worse that that. So they have to stay inside during the day, away from the sun. They get out of the house only at night.”

Silence fell on the car, and Dawn darted more worried glances in the rearview mirror, to the point that she almost missed her exit. They seemed to be accepting Steven’s explanation. And then…

“So, they’re like vampires?” their little boy asked with wide eyes.

Again, they were saved from answering by their daughter.

“Vampires don’t exist, silly!”

A pause, another shared look, and Dawn just had to change the subject; this was definitely too shaky ground.

“So, who’s up for ice-cream before we go home?”

Steven shook his head at her, but he was smiling indulgently. He knew her reasons, and even if he disagreed with her he respected her wishes; for that she was grateful to him. And with any luck, the topic of vampires wouldn’t arise again for a long, long time.



“I so knew it!”

Steven wanted to smile at his son’s triumphal exclamation, but a look at Dawn warned him that it was the last thing to do and he’d better keep his face blank. Her tightly pinched lips made it all too clear that, even though she had agreed to this, she still wasn’t happy about it, and he knew that showing any kind of enthusiasm now would earn him nothing but trouble later. This was about telling the kids about what was truly going on when he came back late or bruised; not about trying to recruit them to the cause. Even if something in him couldn’t help but hope that, one day…

“You’re joking, right?”

Judging by his little girl’s wide eyes – even though at fifteen she was hardly a little girl anymore – the truth wasn’t as easy for her to accept as it was to her brother.

“No honey, I’m not. Vampires exist. Buffy and Spike are vampires. They’re demons, but good ones. Except that not all demons are good. Just the opposite, in fact. And that’s what we deal with at Angel Investigations…”

Even as he continued with his carefully prepared speech under Dawn’s attentive eyes, he could see himself – so much younger than his children were now – receiving the same kind of speech. Until then, demons had only been things to be afraid of, because they were so big, and he was just a small child; and suddenly, with nothing more than a few words, they had become things to fight. Things to kill. How many years, already, spent doing what Holtz had trained him to do? Had the man ever guessed Steven would come to enjoy it so much – not because of the fight itself, but because of what it meant to rid the world of one demon or more each night?

He had run out of words, and now he was expecting questions; that would prove more difficult, certainly. Explaining what was had been, with all things considered, pretty straightforward. Explaining why it was that way might prove trickier. But despite her doubts, Dawn was with him on that, and their children were intelligent. Everything would be fine.

After all, after surviving so many near-apocalypses, they were not going to fear a few questions.


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The characters and names used in these stories do not belong to me. All copyrights remain with Fox and Mutant Enemy. No profit is made from this fanfiction.