Burdens
Kevin Parkinson suppressed a sigh as he pulled away from his ex-wife's house, where his seventeen-year-old daughter was home fresh from a three-day stay in the hospital, after getting beaten half to death by a vampire of all things. It was bad enough that Denise had sole custody of Jennie, but letting a child go off and try and kill all sorts of evil and brutish creatures in the night for years was grossly negligent, as far as he was concerned.

If Denise's bloodsucking lawyer weren't so damn good, he might have been able to do something about that. Paying Child Support and Alimony on a construction worker's wages in San Francisco meant he barely had enough money left over for living expenses, let alone another court fight that would have cost thousands he didn't have. No, despite how angry he'd been when he'd first found out about Jennie's 'calling', Kevin had little choice but to simmer in silence and try not to show how worried he was for his daughter's safety.

The past two days had been his worst fears confirmed. He hadn't even been sure Jennie would survive at first when the doctors had told them the extent of her injuries. Fortunately she healed fast, and the damage didn't seem to be as bad as they'd first feared, so they'd been able to bring her home today.

If he'd stayed at the house, he would have just gotten into a screaming match with Denise over how she was parenting their daughter, which would have led into all sorts of other baggage the two parents still carried with them. That wasn't what Jennie needed to see or hear, so instead of letting himself vent at his ex, he'd just made sure Jennie was resting comfortably before kissing her on the forehead and telling her he'd see her tomorrow.

There was one person he could unload on with some justification, though, and Kevin intended to do just that. Once he'd arrived back at his apartment the distraught father punched in the number he'd retrieved from Jennie's cellphone for this 'Rhiannon' character and hit 'send'. This Rhiannon was going to get a piece of his mind and then some.

The cell phone jumped and skidded across the kitchen counter. Rhiannon was elbow-deep in flour. A computer print-out of a recipe rested alongside the stove, crinkled and splattered with grease. No culinary genius, the Slayer was stumbling through a misguided attempt at homemade tortillas, punctuating the air with exclamations of 'fuck!' and 'goddamnit!' every so often. The smoke alarm rested, disconnected, on top of the fridge. Why the hell had cooking seemed like a good idea?

She plucked open the phone and cradled it between ear and shoulder, getting flour on her shirt. She didn't recognize the number, but the area code was California. She thought it might be Jennie calling from a new cell. "Hello?" A droplet of boiling grease struck her arm. Rhiannon jerked and waved it around, as if that helped. She reached for the dial and turned off the stove eye. Thank god Purity wasn't home to witness this. Thank god she hadn't attempted to serve the tortillas to anybody else.

The sound of a young woman's voice carried over the phone, a bit distracted as if she were in the middle of something. "Is this Rhiannon?" He was mad, true, but he wasn't going to launch into a tirade at someone with no connection to all this craziness. "I'm Kevin Parkinson, Jennie's father."

Her expression clouded. "Yes, this is Rhiannon." The oil continued to pop and splatter. She put on an oven mitt and moved the pot onto a cold burner. Her cat, Mary Sue, jumped onto the counter to sniff around and potentially burn herself to kingdom come. She batted her onto the floor and tried to concentrate on the phone call.

"Is everything okay?" In the three years since Jennie became a Slayer, the two kept in close contact. Rhiannon lived too far away to help train her (besides, she had a decent Watcher), so she acted as more of a mentor or older sister, dispensing warnings and advice, whether Jennie asked for them or not. They wrote or spoke every few weeks. She knew Jennie's father didn't approve of her Calling, but really, what parent broke out the pom-poms and celebrated it?

"No, everything's not ok," Kevin began heatedly, ready to tear into the woman who had set his baby on such a dangerous path. "Jennie just spent the last few days in the hospital after getting beaten to within an inch of her life by a vampire. She's barely seventeen and she almost died!" The accusation was clear in his voice. Denise hadn't exercised her authority to put a stop to this Slayer business when it had first gotten started and look where it had gotten them? He couldn't yell at her, but he could yell at the woman who had set his daughter down this path.

Rhiannon plugged her ear, as if the ambient noise of her kitchen kept her from hearing properly. She went into the empty hall, where she couldn't hear the exhaust fan. "What do you mean, she almost died?" she asked. Panic crept into her, making her sound demanding. "Is she there? Can I speak to her?" Stupid question. This man wasn't going to let her talk to his daughter. She could already tell he was more interested in ripping her head off.

"No, you may not talk to her," Kevin almost snarled into the phone, wishing the woman were in front of him so he could chew her out face-to-face, instead of being separated by nearly two thousand miles. "Both her legs were broken, along with two ribs, and she had bruises all over her body. She was knifed, bitten, and lost enough blood that she was lucky she was found in time! Your damn calling nearly got Jennie killed!"

The color drained from her face. Rhiannon backed her shoulderblades into a wall and let it take her weight. The idea of the pain the younger Slayer had gone through awakened old injuries of her own; she was suddenly conscious of those scars long-faded, how terrifying it was to come close and barely make it through.

His anger didn't matter. Rhiannon bit her tongue and stopped herself from saying the obvious things... That 'her calling' hadn't nearly killed Jennie. It was the vampire. Thousands more people would get killed, if their calling went ignored. Jennie might even be one of them. But if he needed a person to hurl insults at, she was as good as anybody.

Rhiannon closed her eyes and wrapped an arm around her ribcage. "I'm sorry she was hurt," she said. "Did she say when it happened? Was she on patrol?"

"On patrol? Is that what you people call it?" Kevin stared off into space through the glass of his patio door, not really seeing the hills that made up the city. The words made it sound so routine, almost official. "She was in a cemetery. She said she'd killed two vampires and then was attacked by a third out of nowhere. What kind of people send teenage girls out to hunt monsters?!"

Rhiannon swallowed. "I used to be that teenage girl," she said. "Believe me, I know exactly what kind of people." She was about to say too much. Kevin Parkinson was angry, afraid, and reason didn't matter to him. Logic never beat that kind of emotional, knee-jerk reaction, but she kept talking anyway.

"When I met Jennie, I told her she had a choice. She could ignore her calling and be a regular girl, or she could be a hero and help save the world. Jennie wanted to help. Have you got any idea how many vampires Jennie's killed? How many people are alive because your daughter's got guts of steel?" She paced in the direction of her living room. "Believe me, I didn't pat myself on the back for painting a target on her, but I didn't choose her. Things more powerful than God chose her. I just told her about it."

She stopped ranting and pulled her hair. The apartment smelled like burnt food. "Did she say who did it?" Rhiannon remembered all of Jennie's enemies, the vampires that gave her the most trouble and obnoxiously refused to die.

"Some redheaded bitch, called herself Deanna I think," Kevin said absently, readying himself for another tirade. He didn't really care how many people his daughter had saved right at the moment. All he could think about was the image of her lying in that hospital bed wrapped up like a mummy with a dozen tubes stuck in her.

"She was only fourteen years old, fourteen! Fourteen-year-olds don't get to make that kind of decision on their own, that's what parents are for. If I'd had custody of Jennie, there's no way in hell I'd have let her do this Slayer thing, not until she turned eighteen!" After eighteen, there was nothing more he could do, aside from threaten to cut off her college payments.

All the air went out of the room and a feeling like razor blades dragged down her spine. "Wait a minute, shut up!" Rhiannon shook her head. She raised her voice to drown him out. "Just... stop talking about permission, I don't fucking care. Did she say Deanna? Are you sure?" Her fist tightened, its fingers flexing into numbness, hurting the thin skin of her palm. Oh god. Please tell me she didn't do this. The arm of the couch supported the Slayer as she sat down.

"Of course I'm sure!" Kevin retorted indignantly. "You think I would forget the name of the creature that nearly killed my baby girl?" His eyes narrowed at the tone of the voice that carried over the phone. "You know something... you know this thing?"

Rhiannon put the phone in her lap. She could hear him yelling on the line, but everything past 'I'm sure' was just static in her head. Her eyes zoned out on the living room door. The last time she saw the vampire, she was on the other side of it, and Rhiannon had just... passed her a goddamn chair.

It was revenge over Victoria, maybe, or Celine. Or just because she could. No matter why, it never would've happened to Jennie if she wasn't connected to Rhiannon. It never would've happened if Rhiannon had taken care of the vampire instead of letting her walk. This was what came of distractions, of spending her free time drawing pictures and throwing parties and eating fucking ice cream cones, like she had no responsibility for Deanna, who still existed because Rhiannon failed to take her down. Every day a vampire existed was because of some Slayer's failure.

She picked up the phone. "She's sending me a message," she said. "Tell Jennie I'm going to send one back."


[NPC Kevin Parkinson was written by Tim]