nike_ravus | Jill the Vampire Slayer (Reply)

Title: Jill the Vampire Slayer

Author: Alsike

Fandom: Women’s Murder Club Supernatural Fusion (plus tons of other randomness)

Rating: Rish

Pairing: maybe a touch of Jill/Cindy, maybe not.

Disclaimer: It’s none of mine here. (Even some of the backstory was lifted from Medie’s Nora-verse). Except for Jenn, and, uh, if you want to know more about her, go here.

Word-Count: ~4000

Summary: Just check the fandom. Long long ago I posted some of those iTunes mix prompts about WMC and a bit of Nightwish music made me end up with a few scenes from this. It sort of exploded in my head. I do have more storylines in mind for this universe, but as the first one is decent as a stand-alone, I thought I’d share.

Jill Bernhardt was left on the steps of a fire station as a baby. The authorities traced the young woman who dropped her off back to a nearby roadhouse. But the woman, Ellen Harvelle, just glared at the two young, nervous, police officers, and said “Found the kid in my trash a couple of days ago. Figured it was your job to deal with that sort of thing. Don’t worry, she’s human enough.”

When Jill, age eight, stole her file as she was being transferred to a third foster home, she read the words over and over again. What on earth did human enough mean?

Age thirteen: Jill was moved to a foster family in Sunnydale CA. She killed her first vampire on accident, decided that the town was full of shit, and caught the first bus out of there. Later, when she heard that a nuclear experiment gone wrong had left Sunnydale a smoking crater, she figured that she had gotten out just in time.

It wasn’t that Jill had had a bad time in foster care. Actually, she had been pretty lucky with all her families. They were all pretty nice, and had enough food and stuff, but a year or two after they got there, tragedy always seemed to strike.

Her first family had been struck down by a weird disease that made strange patterns come out on their skin. It had left Jill untouched. Her second family had been mauled by bears on a camping trip. Jill had been up a tree and had clung there until the rangers came. She had told the rangers that she had seen the bears talking to each other, but they didn’t believe her, and she ended up in therapy. Her third family’s house had fallen down. That time she hadn’t told the social worker that there had been banging in the walls and disembodied laughter, the electronics turning on and off, because she knew what they would say. But the dark-haired woman was there that time, standing in the corner, looking at her kindly, and when the social worker was called out to the phone, she had tipped her head towards the abandoned file, and then disappeared.

The woman had always been around, Jill remembered. Dark hair, dark eyes, a wide sad smile. She would watch from the fringes of things, letting her mouth quirk up if Jill looked happy, eyes only a little, lost in an adult world that Jill didn’t want to know. No one else seemed to see her. The social workers and police, who corralled and interviewed everyone else, walked right past her. They didn’t notice the blue box either, and even though it said Police on it, no policeman ever tried to use it.

After leaving Sunnydale, Jill stuck with the groups of kids heading up to Seattle in the summers and down to LA in the winters. Being thirteen and a gutter-punk was kind of rough, but Jill wasn’t an idiot. She knew people could be shit, but people weren’t the worst thing out there. After figuring out what was up with the vampire thing, all the other shit that happened to her made more sense. She asked around for people who didn’t laugh at the word curse or poltergeist and eventually hooked up with Jenn.

Jenn, an ex foster kid/child prostitute, was generally knowledgeable about the weird shit that haunted city streets at night, and took it upon herself to teach Jill everything she needed to know. Jill learned to aim a shotgun, pack it full of rock salt, hustle pool, run a credit card scam, and how to kiss. Jenn liked to lick her way into her mouth and slide her fingers down the front of her jeans, and fuck her to pieces on the back seat of her Impala.

Then Jenn left her for a redhead in trouble, and Jill headed out on her own.

She was almost sixteen when she ran into Laney Baker. Redheads were never a good idea. Laney had been delicious and kinky and hot, with an awesome rack, great fashion sense, and an unnervingly broad knowledge of the occult.

She had also, apparently, wanted to become a vampire since the day she was born, and Jill ended up tied naked to the bed with the whole bloody hive looking forward to feeding on her.

She still had the scars.

It was only after that that the dark-haired woman spoke to her. “Are you really sure about this?”

Jill looked up, the woman had slid in across from her in the diner booth, and asked for coffee. Jill frowned. “Who are you?”

“I mean, I understand about the hunting. It’s good work, worthwhile work, and you can’t really avoid it, even if it’s a little more dangerous than we would have wanted for you, but you’ve been a little raw lately.”

Jill scowled, not wanting to be reminded of that red-headed bitch, and looked away. Then she looked back. “Who would have wanted for me?”

The woman just smiled. “Us.”

Jill rolled her eyes. “What the fuck do you want with me?”

“Go find Ellen Harvelle again. She can get you a decent placement. You’ll be able to hunt, but have a home for a little while. You should at least graduate high school. You have good genes, and good brains, you could use them.”

“Good genes? You know my parents?”

The woman bit her lip. “If you want, you can think of me as a godparent, sort of.”

“My fairy godmother?”

She smiled, laughing widely and openly, and Jill couldn’t distrust her, no matter how stupid it was. “Something like that.”

But when Jill turned back from charming the waitress out of making her pay her bill, remembering that she still didn’t know the woman’s name, she was already gone, a teaspoon balancing on the edge of the coffee cup, hovering, vibrating slightly, in mid air, for a moment too long. Jill couldn’t breathe, and then someone slammed the door and the spoon tumbled to the table with a reverberating clang.

These days Ellen Harvelle had a snotty ten year old running around. And she took one look at Jill’s ride and the cross hanging from the rearview mirror, and blinked. “Hunter?”

Jill blinked. When she explained who she was, Ellen eyed her askance, “Maybe it does run in the family.”

Jill had never wanted to know who her parents were, anyone who left her in the trash wasn’t worth her time, but then again… maybe she was curious. (“Human enough,” still echoed in her head. What the fuck did that mean?)

Sixteen and a little humbler, Jill went to live with a new foster family. They seemed like pretty nice people, like the other ones all had, and her new foster sister, Cindy, clearly had a crush on her. But she was fourteen (and looked twelve), and a redhead. Jill had learned her lesson about redheads.

* * *

Pt 2

High School was pretty weird after living as a gutter-punk and a hunter for three years. Everyone was super uptight and so worried about the most unimportant things. For the first couple months things were quiet and Jill didn’t see any signs of the supernatural around, but still, worrying about who’s going to be prom queen and whether you’re going to get a B or a B+ in English just seemed like bullshit.

Lindsey Boxer, sitting in the back of her Math class with her feet up on her desk, agreed with her, generally. She wanted to be a cop like her dad and deal with all the shitty people around. She didn’t know about all the other things that helped make the world a fucking miserable place, but Jill wasn’t going to try to tell her until she had to. Immediately visible evidence was useful when you were trying to convince someone about vampires and ghosts. But they hung out anyway. The Thomases were totally supportive of her having a friend and let her join Lindsay’s dojo. On weekends they would go out into the woods with beer and drink and shoot cans off a stone wall with Jill’s shotgun.

Cindy would hang out in the doorway when Lindsay came by in her truck to pick her up and look jealous. It was kind of cute.

“Where’d you get the shotgun?”

It had been Jenn’s first and best present. Jill glanced down at the beat up gun and frowned. “It was my dad’s,” she lied.

“And they let you take it with you?”

Jill shrugged and grinned. “I’m not telling frigging social workers everything about me.”

It was a temporary lie. It wouldn’t hold up all that long, but that was fine. It wasn’t like she was going to be here forever. All she needed was a temporary lie.

Lindsey was pretty enough, too skinny and maybe a little more butch than Jill liked, but it wasn’t like she was picky for people to make out with. She leaned over and kissed her, and Lindsey stiffened and then jerked wildly back, falling off the log and spilling her beer.

“What the hell?”

Jill stared at her. “What?”

“You kissed me!”

“You’re saying you’ve never kissed anyone before?”

Lindsey looked confused. “Not a girl.”

Jill blinked.

“I don’t… I don’t like girls.”

“I didn’t ask you to like me. I just wanted to make out. I’m bored.” Most of the hunters she had hung out with before, even those who weren’t interested in girls, were totally cool with just making out.

“Oh,” said Lindsay. “I’m not really into that.”

“Your loss.”

Lindsay was uncomfortable for a while, until she really got that Jill didn’t care. “Are you gay?”

Jill stared at her again, and Lindsay twitched. “Never thought about it.” She wasn’t planning on it either. She was saving her brainpower for important things.

The quiet couldn’t last. It never did.

A kid in Cindy’s class was found dead by the highway. His body was all carved up with runes and shit. Lindsey had seen the pictures and told Jill about it. She wished she could see the pictures herself, but Lindsay drew the line at stealing them for her. But of course she didn’t know why Jill wanted to see them, she just thought she was being morbid.

“Hey.”

Jill glanced up from her hunting journal where she was trying to cross-reference all the human sacrifice bits to see Cindy hovering in her doorway, in the shortest sleep-shorts and t-shirt ever, holding a pillow to her chest and looking nervous. Her legs were fine for such a tiny person, totally built right, and her nervous face was cute as hell.

“Hey?” She grinned, maybe in a little more shark-like way than she had intended, but redhead or not, it didn’t mean she couldn’t look.

“Do you think I can stay here tonight?” She ducked her head. “I mean, Teddy…”

The dead kid was Theodore something. She had probably known him pretty well. Of course she’d be freaked out. “Sure, no problem.”

Cindy climbed into her bed, arranging her pillow about ten different ways, and looking at her as if she was hugely more frightening than whoever had murdered her classmate. Jill tried not to laugh. Even Lindsay had frowned, noticing Cindy watching them leave for like the twentieth time. “She’s totally got a crush on you.”

“I don’t do redheads.”

Lindsey looked befuddled for a moment and then laughed. She grinned at Jill, like she knew her, even though she didn’t. It was better than the confusion at least.

“What are you doing?” Cindy asked.

Jill snapped the book shut. “Working on my journal.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you kept a journal.” Cindy looked skittish, but then intrigued. “You don’t really seem the type. What’s it about? I mean, if you have a theme. Most people don’t. But most people write about crushes and how depressed they are even if they don’t think they have a theme. I tried once, but the theme ended up being how boring my life was which was really boring to write about and I couldn’t keep it up. I… sorry, I’m babbling.”

Jill grinned at her, laughing on the inside. “Yeah, kind of.”

Cindy hunched, twisting her fingers awkwardly. “Sorry. You just don’t… talk much. I’m surprised you keep a journal.”

“Well, I’ve got to talk to someone, I guess.”

Cindy looked up, surprise and hope in her eyes, as if she thought this was some sort of confession of loneliness on Jill’s part. She spotted the irony on Jill’s face and deflated. “You’re joking.”

“It’s not that kind of journal.”

“What kind is it?”

“I… keep track of things in it.”

“Like, where you are, how much money you have? That sort of thing?”

“Sure.” Well, more like where the monsters were and what ammo she had, but it was close enough.

“My mom said you ran away from your last foster home, and then you turned yourself in. Why’d you do that?”

“Why’d I run away, or why’d I come back?” The kid’s curiosity was intriguing. Everyone she met tended towards the strong silent type. It was a little refreshing to have the opposite.

“Either?” Cindy cocked her head to one side like a puppy.

“I left because the town was infested with vampires, and I came back because I figured out that the whole world was infested with vampires, and if I stayed in one place for a while maybe I could have a break from them.”

Cindy blinked. “Was that a joke?”

The corner of Jill’s mouth quirked up. Most people wouldn’t have asked, they would have just laughed, even if they weren’t sure. “What do you think?”

“Maybe a metaphor?”

Jill laughed. “You’re cute.”

Cindy’s eyes widened into a deer in the headlights expression. Her cheeks reddened. A hot twist of interest flared in Jill’s gut. Jill shook her head. Innocents were more trouble than they were worth. They were usually good for information though, if not much more.

“That guy, Teddy, was he a friend of yours?”

Cindy went instantly pale. Jill set down her journal and moved over to the bed, sitting on the edge, just close enough to keep Cindy off balance.

“He… not really. We had a bunch of classes together, and he was nice enough, kind of shy actually, but he was more of a computer geek than a journalism…” She trailed off, her eyes flicking nervously to Jill.

“A journalism geek? Like you?”

“I do other things! I do track and drama.”

“Yeah?” Jill raised an eyebrow. “Been in plays?”

“Of course! Last year I was in Oklahoma!, and I’m totally trying out again this year.”

“Cool.”

Cindy scanned her with a furrowed brow, clearly examining her for any signs of deception. “Okay.”

“Teddy stuck with the computers?”

“He wasn’t really a people person.” She looked down, embarrassed. “I mean, he had friends of course, but not the kind of friends that would, well, would get him anywhere near the highway after dark.”

Jill nodded. “No drinking? No dares?”

“Exactly.” Cindy turned and looked at her, looked fierce and engaged. “It’s just so strange. I mean it’s strange enough that he got killed like that. It wasn’t an accident, or anger, or anythingnormal, if killing someone is ever normal. But they mutilated him! Was it a serial killer? What else could it be?”

“There are other possibilities.”

Cindy fixed her with a sharp glance. “Like what?”

Jill looked back. She was way too interested. It seemed dangerous to tell her any more. But she couldn’t think of anything but the truth. “It could have been a ritual murder.”

“You… you don’t mean a ritualistic murder, do you? You mean,” Cindy swallowed. “Like sacrifice?”

Jill nodded.

“Why would you even think that?”

“Because one person going crazy is pretty creepy and awful, but a group does it so much easier. They don’t even have to be crazy. They just have to convince themselves that what they’re doing is normal.”

Cindy looked tense and pale, but she didn’t protest. “It’s true,” she said.

“And from what I heard it wasn’t basic mutilation. It seemed like very specific signs cut into his skin. I just wish I knew what they were.”

Cindy looked ill. Jill kicked off her sweatpants and opened up the covers. She moved Cindy’s hand off her side of the bed, and crawled in. She turned out the light and Cindy squeaked.

“Come on. Better sleep.”

“As if I’m going to get any sleep after talking about that.” Cindy scooched down under the covers, keeping carefully turned away from her. Jill sprawled herself against her back. The body heat was nice, she was always too cold. But the thread of desire throbbed. It would be easy, wouldn’t it, to slide in even closer, reach over and figure out what this girl had for breasts, ride up against her ass, suck on her neck. If she struggled, tried to get away, she just had to shift her weight slightly, moving over her, to keep her pinned and helpless with her bodyweight.

Pinned and helpless. Jill felt nauseated and pulled away, rolling over so they were back to back.

It had happened before, those kind of thoughts. Jenn had always told her she was normal, that everyone was probably some sort of sadist or masochist, and if she wasn’t thinking about grabbing and taking and forcing and dominating, then she’d be thinking about bending over and getting used, which would totally be worse. But she didn’t know that the voices were always there, muttering along the edges of her consciousness. And she didn’t know how they rose in a tsunami in the middle of a fight, and stole away all of Jill’s doubt and mercy. But they were there to kill the nasty shit. Mercy only got you killed. Raving, bloodthirsty berserkers were probably well-suited for this line of work.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering: what did it mean ‘human enough’?

Of course it was witches. “Yeah,” said her informant. “There’s a coven that meets up by the highway. But… didn’t Cindy tell you? She asked me the same thing today at lunch.”

Cindy wasn’t in class. She wasn’t at home. Jill rang her cell phone six times without getting any answer. Then she got her shotgun, stuck knives down her boots, and headed out to the highway.

She swung up on a slow moving truck and hung onto the back, watching the wooded roadside for any sign of motion or light. Then she spotted the lights. Jill dropped off the truck into the bushes and moved silently towards them.

It was a circle, flames lit at each point. An altar had been erected in the center, probably just plywood, but draped in a black cloth. Cindy, wide-eyed and gagged, was being tied to it. Was that a notebook on the ground? And was she seriously wearing a tape recorder? Did she think she was going to get a fucking interview?

“We are here to dedicate this offering of virgin blood to the goddess!”

Virgin? Jill cursed silently. She should have known about that. She would have kept a better eye on her, goddamnit. If the kid had just told her she was a virgin, she could have fixed that problem before they got into this mess!

She was planning on fixing that little problem as soon as she got her out.

It was always harder with humans. You couldn’t just kill and salt and burn without someone asking questions. Either you had to call the police and get out of dodge quick, or find a good place to hide the bodies.

“Come goddess, come!” And the air suddenly burnt with bitter cold. The center of the circle sank out and up rose a woman, gorgeous and hollow-eyed. A ghost?

“Oh, lovely,” she murmured. “Wet my lips with her blood.”

A ghost that wanted resurrection, resurrection for revenge.

“Get the hell out!” Jill yelled and charged forward. She hit the torches with a burst of spraying gas and they flared into fireballs. A round of rock salt from her gun, and the ghost took the hit, like a burst of shrapnel.

Her knife was out. She cut Cindy free.

“Stop them! Don’t let them get away!”

Jill swung the butt of her gun, braining one stupid witch. Cindy punched another in the face, and they ran.

Jill grabbed the back of a moving truck and reached back for Cindy’s hand. Cindy caught it, and jumped. Jill hauled her up and hoisted her into the bed. She clambered in after her, and they left the circle far behind.

Cindy huddled in the corner, shaking. “What was that? What happened?”

“Just a ghost.”

Cindy glared at her.

Jill shrugged. A ghost really wasn’t all that big a deal. “Well, a ghost and some crazy witch people who thought bringing her back to life so she could wreak havoc on her murderer and the rest of the town was a good plan.” Cindy was gaping and looking decidedly like it was a big deal. Jill shuffled close to her and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “It’s cool. You punched that guy in the head. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it? They were going to sacrifice me.”

“Yeah.” Jill looked at her. She could smell her from here, the scent of sweat and fear thickening the air, spurring moisture on her tongue. She cupped her cheek. “They won’t try again. I’ll make certain of that.”

She started undoing buttons. Why the hell did this girl wear a button down vest over a button down shirt?

“Um, Jill, what are you doing?” Cindy’s eyes were darting from side to side, looking nervous and decidedly unimpressed at the surroundings. There was a tarp though. You really didn’t need anything more than a tarp.

Jill grinned, tapping her on the nose. “Eradicating temptation,” she said, and kissed her.

Jill probably shouldn’t have fucked her foster sister in the back of a truck on the highway. But really, virgins weren’t safe these days. It was easy enough to get Cindy’s jeans down to her knees, her bra pulled down and crumpled under her (kind of sweet) breasts and her shirt shoved up, only half unbuttoned, her nipples hard and damp from Jill’s attention. Then she shoved the kid’s legs up, parting her knees, and moved between them. Cindy was whimpering into her mouth, clinging to her hair, hips jerking, and Jill slid a finger into her, wet enough, then two, three made Cindy gasp, paling slightly as it hurt, but there was no point in being nice about it. She needed to bleed. That made it count.

“Hurts.”

“Good.” Jill bit at her shoulder to distract her, and then she flipped her, making her stay on her hands and knees on the dirty tarp over the wooden bed of the truck, and fucked her. The truck lurched to a stop and they crashed into the wall.

“Ow,” said Cindy.

“This might have not been the best plan.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

It turned out the tape recorder actually did come in handy. Cindy played victim and played the tape for Lindsay’s dad. It was good enough evidence to pick up most of the coven and get them to squeal on each other. Not bad for the kid’s first hunt.

“Hey.” Cindy was standing in the door to her room, looking unsure. Jill glanced over at her, still lying on her bed. There were still flecks of blood caught in her fingernails, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to wash her hands after taking Cindy’s virginity in the back of the truck. She had sucked them clean, sucked them like the blood was the sweetest nectar, and the memory still made her feel strange. She felt out of control and powerful, and she wanted so much more. But she couldn’t have it.

“What do you want?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to do something. Watch a movie, or, um, just hang out.”

“With you?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.” Jill jumped up and found a pair of boots. “I got plans, with Linds.”

“But…”

Jill gave her a harsh look. “Look, those douchebags wouldn’t have come after you if you hadn’t been a virgin. And I’d really rather not go through that again. So consider yourself de-virginized, but it didn’t mean anything more than that.”

Jill didn’t talk to Cindy in school the next day. She snubbed her, and Cindy looked awful. Lindsey gave her a look. “Okay, spill.”

Jill curled her lip. “Nothing happened.”

“And that’s why Cindy looks like a kicked puppy? She’s your sister.”

Jill barked a laugh. “If she were my sister, this would be so much worse.”

“Her crush on you?”

“Oh, that should be gone soon.”

“Jill!”

“I might have taken her virginity in the back of a truck last night.”

“Jill!!!!!”

Jill stared after Cindy who was forcing a smile as she spoke to her friend. She was prettier when she was sad. Jill sighed. “I’m a shitty person.”

“You really, really are.”

* * *

Honestly, Jill could deal with being a shitty person. It didn’t matter in the long run anyway. Sex mainly mattered so you didn’t become witch bait. Relationships were for people who wanted to go off the deep end when their SO inevitably got chowed down on by demons or something.

Love meant the Crossroads, and Jill had always known better than to go there. If Cindy figured it out right now, all the better for her. It was a… teaching opportunity.

God knew you didn’t have a chance for too many of those, not the happy safe kind at least, where the teacher actually thinks he’s got your best interests in mind. Might as well appreciate them whenever they came along.

Speaking of teaching opportunities.

“Hey Cindy.”

The red-head looked up, sharp-eyed and suspicious. Jill thought she probably deserved it, but she leaned casually against the doorframe anyways. “I’m going to go salt and burn that ghost’s bones, you into coming along?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little hard, but determined. She scooped her trusty tape recorder off the desk and clipped it to her belt. “I’m coming.”

Jill handed her a shovel. “Awesome.” If she was any good at digging, maybe she’d teach her how to listen for EVPs next.