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(This is original creative material copyright
Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has
no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...)
Author's note: Giles is a vampire, and working with Queen Kaliya, a sorceress vampire who's lived for a long time in both India and France. Buffy is back in Sunnydale, and her father is too, and everybody's in summer school. A new watcher has just arrived, Mister Tojo, who's from Okinawa, near Japan. |
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All heads turned when Willow walked Buffy into her remedial Sociology classroom. Of course, 'All heads' in this case were only three: Mister Tojo, Xander, and Cordelia. Xander's jaw dropped. And Akira Tojo looked at first quizically at his third student before doing a double-take.
"Buffy? That is you?"
Buffy smiled. "Yah. This is me. Watcha think?" Buffy spun around in place, showing off her new 'do. Her hair, which had been getting too long for the severe slick-back with which she had been wearing it, was now dyed to a slightly frosty chocolate brown, and permed so that it spread out in voluminous kinks across her shoulders.
"I think WHOA!!" Xander blurted out appreciatively, earning himself a slap across the shoulder from Cordelia.
"If I may ask," Mister Tojo inquired politely, "was there some reason you so radically changed your appearance?"
"Yeah," Buffy sighed, sinking into her chair. "Ever since we found out about Giles, I've been seeing that dream, and HER, every time I look into a mirror. I thought if I could change the way I look, I could stop getting haunted by my own face." She smiled a little smile. "So I dragged Willow off to the hair salon for new 'do's. C'mon, Willow, do the turn."
Willow dutifully turned around, showing the cut that had reduced her hair to neck-length. It curled in towards her softly as it fell, and seemed a slightly brighter red than usual. "Can I hang with the class, Mister Tojo? I don't have anything better to do."
"Certainly. If you can help my students to understand basic Group Dynamic theory, perhaps we can spend tomorrow's class in the library on, shall we say, other business?"
Buffy, Willow, and Xander smiled, but Cordy just groaned a little and muttered. "More preparation to save the world. Just what I need."
* * * *
As the sun approached its setting, Queen Kaliya met with her newest lieutenant, a vampire who had once been Mister Giles.
"Much better," Kaliya said as he entered the room. At first glance, Rupert Giles would have been almost unrecognizable in this figure. His ash-brown hair had started to grow out slightly, and his spectacles were nowhere to be seen. More remarkable, he was wearing a black t-shirt, jeans, and black leather boots. "You look the part now, my son."
Giles acknowledged this compliment from his mistress with a grave nod of the head. "Merely a matter of rediscovering the fashion of my youth, madam."
"I see!"
"How was your trip, my lady?"
"Succesful. And I apologize for having to leave you so soon after you had agreed to come under my employment, but events in Carnac could not be ignored."
"There is no need..."
"And now," Kaliya continued, smoothly cutting him off, "to business. Mercury, the Earth, and Mars will come into alignment this night. It will be a propitious time for casting a summoning ritual. You are competent with such magic, you told me? You shall be my second in the casting."
"It will be an honor, my lady."
"Of course. While in Carnac, I obtained the spell I wish to work." Kaliya indicated a book lying nearby. "And also I learned of an appropriate locale. In a field just past the cemetary, marking a hotspot of psychic energy from the Hellmouth, there is a buried table of living rock. We shall undertake the ritual there, at midnight. Dismissed!" She rose her voice slightly and turned away, and Giles had little choice but to leave the room.
* * * *
That evening, they gathered in a field just past the Sunnydale graveyard. Kalia organized the careful clearing off of a layer of grass and turf to expose the platform of living rock, which she herself carefully cleaned and drew a pattern on; a circled star with various sanskrit letters marking it.
The group then stood around the circle, one of the five of them at each point of the star. Kaliya began the ritual, with Giles at her right and the others making responses at the approprate points. In due time, Kaliya was done with the preparatory chanting, throwing about of burning powders, and intricate sequences of gestures, and she began with the final incantation:
"In the name of Aries, god of war, I call, for a warrior to advance my standard in battle. In his name do I summon a demon of this world. INCUBUS! D'AROTAM!! ADISTI!!!"
At the center of the mystic star, something began to happen. A foul red light began to glow, leaking trace amounts of very impressive red smoke. Slowly the apparition grew and grew, until suddenly it was gone, to be replaced by a beast of horrible aspect. It was covered in green scales, with a reptilian head and claws, but it stood up on its hind legs. Though it hunched over noticeably, it still stood almost seven feet high. From the way it moved, Giles was sure that it weighed about three-hundred pounds, but that it could move, and fight, as quickly as anything in the more mortal world.
The thing turned its reptilian head towards Kaliya and hissed, in a voice that was only slightly recognizable, "WHO CALLTH ME?"
(Background music rises like a shriek, leading into the credits.)
"I, Queen Kaliya, vampire and sorceress, call you," Kaliya informed the demon.
"What want you of me, then, Kaliya?" the demon hissed back, in a slightly better version of English this time.
"I have summoned you to take human form against my foe, a witch-hunter named Summers, to espy her weaknesses, seduce her, and then destroy her."
"So, in essence, 'same old -- same old,'" the beast shot back in a futile attempt at mortal humour. "And how do you intend to enlist my co-operation?"
"With payment fairly given," Kaliya answered. "Giles, the ruby?" Giles took a deep red gemstone from his pocket and handed it to her. "May I have permission to enter your circle and hand it to you, that you may examine it?"
A gutteral laugh escaped from the fiend. "If you wish, certainly, sorceress."
Kaliya picked up a copper rod, passed it over an arc of the confining circle, and then walked across it. "Will this pay for your services?" she said, placing the gem into the demon's hand. He laughed, and brought his hand around it. He reached his other hand towards Kaliya's throat, and froze in mid-motion. Kaliya's hand was spread about one side of the beast's reptilian head, trying as best as possible to span from its forehead to ear to jaw.
"My mind to your mind," Kaliya whispered. "My thoughts to your thoughts. My will to your actions. My wishes to your will." She dropped her hand away and took the ruby from the demon's hand, which had now opened up again.
"Assume a human form, teenaged." The demon did so, in a whisper of effort. He was unassumingly attractive, with mid-dark brown hair.
"Your mission proper will begin tomorrow morning. Mister Giles will brief you." Kaliya scratched away a crack in the pentacle, allowing the demon to follow her and the vampires in the direction of the hideout.
As they moved on, Giles approached Kaliya for a few quiet words. "I've never seen a technique like that for establishing a psychic bond. When did you learn it?"
"I wouldn't say I learned it, I just kind of imitated it. From that television show back in the sixties."
"The science-fiction one with the telepathic alien?" Giles asked, and Kaliya nodded. "Does it actually help with making the psychic connection?"
"Not really," Kaliya laughed. "But it's fun! I LOVE that show... so naive, so filled with hopeful vision for the human race. Funniest thing I've seen in all my centuries!" Kaliya strode ahead, grinning.
"One other thing," Giles said. "You don't really want this thing to kill Buffy, do you? You want the glory for yourself."
"Well," Kaliya made a show of considering, "I'd be satisfied if this demon did kill her, even though that would put Sunnydale in contention, with half a dozen vampire princes challenging me for my right to hold it, since I hadn't killed the infamous Slayer myself. But I don't really expect the poor thing to pull it off, and I don't mind one bit. It'll provide me with a good look at how my enemy operates... that's the real point."
* * * *
The next morning, the gang was in full research mode in the library. Buffy was familiarizing herself with Mister Tojo's references, Cordelia and Xander were checking some of Giles' old books for relevant details according to Willow and Mister Tojo's instructions, and Tojo, Willow, and Oz were surfing around on the net.
"This afternoon, I want you down in the gym with Buffy for martial arts practice, Willow," Mister Tojo told her. "Remember, becoming a watcher isn't all books and magic spells and monster lore. You'll need to be competent in combat, both for your own protection, and to train a Slayer." Willow nodded silently.
"Whoa! Check it!" Buffy called out to no-one in particular. Willow and Xander were at her sides within moments.
"What is it Buffy?" Willow asked.
"This one's got a whole section on Kaliya. What is it anyways?" Buffy flipped the big notebook closed on a finger, looking at the cover, but it offered no clue to the identity or the origins of the book.
Mister Tojo chuckled. "It's one of my own compilation references, my 'Biographies'. All the facts to be had on the careers of several dozen of the most infamous vampires and supernatural villains extant. Go on," he urged Buffy, waving at the book.
"Queen Kaliya," she began reading. "Although she has been known to claim over sixteen hundred years as a vampire, there is sufficient evidence to suppose that 'Queen Kaliya' is one and the same as Catherina Van Der Werf, originally from Deurne, Netherlands, born approximately 1460 A.D. Trained by her parents in sorcery from early childhood, Catherina bewitched a nobleman into marrying her. She then poured the wealth of his family into her magical studies and killed the man when he had no further riches that she could take from or through him. Terrified of losing her beauty to age, Catherina mesmerized a marauding vampire to convert her to an undead, driving a stake through her unfortunate sire's heart before she herself succumbed to the poison of the vampire blood."
"Upon her re-awakening as a vampire, she proceeded to convert several trusted henchmen to vampires and began to expand a reign of dark terror over much of the Netherlands, until 1512. That year, Diana of Sussex, the extant vampire slayer at that time, and Matthew Johnson her watcher, traveled to The Hague in an attempt to rid the land of the plague of evil. They succeeded, not by slaying Catherina, but by driving her to escape the town by ship. No more was ever heard of her, at least, not under that name." Buffy sighed and passed the notebook over to Willow to continue reading.
"Queen Kaliya rose to prominence in the vampiric societies of India in the 1520's by defeating Bronoscos, the terror of Delhi, in an duel to the death. It would seem that she travelled to India by Dutch trader ship, possibly even the ship she fled The Hague in, and that she took a new name after the Indian goddess of violence, Kali. She apparently spent her time over the next three and a half centuries partly in maintaining her position as the 'queen of the night' in Delhi and, to greater extents, pursuing her own interests, including magic, mysticism, chess and go strategy.
"In the 1870's, conflict between natives and Europeans (especially the British,) spilled over dramatically into the vampire population. Kaliya soon found that her distinctly non-native appearance, fair-skinned, golden-haired, grey-eyed, no longer worked in her favor as it had before, (it had often intimidated opponents to face such a distinctly foreign opponent,) but was now costing her loyalty. In 1878, the vamps of Delhi revolted against her in favor of a native vampire strongman, but Kaliya again escaped by ship, travelling to northern France, where she rebuilt her organization and took over a small patch of territory from Napolean IV, the local vampire King, including the standing stones of Carnac, an ancient megalith believed to mark a mystic nexus. No more recent activities of this subject can be factually determined." Willow began to page through the notebook. "Impressive, Mister Tojo. Alphabetically sorted, WOW!" She grinned and moved the book so that Buffy could see it again. "There's entries on the Master, Spike, Darla... a lot of the people you've been up against!"
"Color me stunned," Buffy said with sarcastic boredom as she leaned over to examine the book.
And an unassumingly attractive teenaged boy with mid-brown hair, dressed in a brightly printed short-sleeve shirt and ripped and faded blue jeans, walked down the hall of Sunnydale High toward the library...
"Hmm... Luke the Loyal." Xander read from Tojo's 'Biographies.' "Born Lucas Emerson 1760's in Midwest united states. A champion wrestler in his teens and early twenties, he was made into a vampire by Darla the Cruel at the request of her sire and Master, Lord Nest, who admired Lucas' great strength..."
All vampire-related discussion in the library froze abruptly at the sound of someone lightly knocking on the swinging doors.
"Come in?" Mister Tojo called out after a split second, walking towards the door.
"Um, hi," the teenaged boy said as he entered the room. "I'm looking for the remedial sosh class; the office secretary said they might be in here?"
"Yes, I'm Akira Tojo, the sociology teacher. And you are?"
"Jon King. I'm transferring in for next year as a senior, but we didn't have sosh at my old school, so they said I'd better sit in on your class so I knew what was what for the senior- year sociology class. Here's my papers," he finished, passing a salmon form copy into Mister Tojo's hands.
"Okay Jon. Well, we were doing some research here, but now we'd probably better go back to the classroom to get your feet wet. Miss Chase, Mister Harris, Miss Summers?" They followed Mister Tojo and the new boy out of the room.
"Mmmm. Not bad at all!" Cordelia observed.
"What, him?" Xander answered, offended. "HE's attractive? Please. The 'slightly spooky boy next door' look is five or ten minutes ago, at least. Right, Buffy?"
"Sorry, Xand," Buffy reluctantly drawled. "I'm actually gonna have to come down on Cordy's side this time. He's a hottie."
* * * *
When Buffy, Xander, and Cordelia came into the computer class for remedial computer studies with Willow, Jon was with them; he seemed to need some catching up with computers as well - his old school couldn't afford a lab or something. After Willow finished her lecture on spreadsheet survival skills, Jon got up from the terminal he had been following along her example with, and came up to Buffy.
"Hi, Buffy."
"Hi, Jon," she answered blandly.
"Umm, well." Jon shook his head. "Okay, well, I have a thing for you, and you I think maybe have a thing for me, so I was wondering if we should maybe have a thing together." He blurted the sentence out quickly.
"Uhh... okay," Buffy agreed after a few seconds, suprised.
"You like Mexican? I walked past a taco place on the way here. And then we could go to that nightclub, whatzit... The Brass?"
A stray giggle escaped from Buffy. "The Bronze."
"Yeah, that. Sound copacetic?"
Buffy considered a moment before answering. "Yeah, it sounds great."
"Good. We'll meet at the Taco tower then, 'round 6:30."
Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia watched as Buffy and Jon left the classroom and turned their seperate ways.
"Jealous?" Cordelia asked Xander.
"What?" he turned around to see Cordelia staring firmly at him. "No, not at all... just kind of wishing..."
"Wishing what?" Coredlia inquired ominously. "That it could have been you and Buffy?" Xander shook his head.
With sudden insight, Willow answered for Xander. "Wishing that it had ever been that easy to ask."
* * * *
"Okay, Buffy, could you lead Willow through that sequence of katas again? I shall be back shortly." Mister Tojo said, bowing stiffly to them and leaving the gymnasium. Mister Tojo had elected to start Willow's training with the basic forms of Jujitsu, and though she had picked up basic throws well, she was doing less well on the katas, the attack patterns. With the help of both Buffy and Tojo, she was improving, though, she could tell that much.
"So, date with the new guy tonight, huh?" Willow said as she went through the sequenced movements.
"Yeah. It's not a big deal."
"Big deal? No, it's only the first date you've had in about seven months. It's great Buffy."
"Well, I guess I realized I could only hang around and brood so long. I could have done another month or two if I really needed to, but I opted for fun!" Buffy abruptly decided to counter Willow's kata and threw her carefully to the mat. "Sorry. You're doing well."
"Speaking of dating, there's something I kinda wanted to ask for your advice on," Willow said.
"Advice on a dating-related matter from me? Boy, are you a glutton for heartbreak or what?"
"No, it's... you're the only one I can talk to about this. And you've gotta tell me that it doesn't leave this... this gym," Willow finished lamely.
"Sure, of course. What is it?"
"Back when I was in the hospital... after those vamps dropped the bookcase on me... just when I was waking up, I heard Xander's voice."
"Yeah," Buffy agreed, not yet understanding. "He was there with you. I knew that."
"No, you don't understand. Before I could even open my eyes, before it even occured to me to open my eyes, Xander was talking to me, not realizing I could hear. I couldn't follow all of it, I was kinda out of it, but he was saying something about not realizing how much I meant to him until then and not knowing what he'd do if I didn't get better. And then, just when I was getting myself together, he said that he loved me. I'm sure of that."
"Whoa. You're serious?"
"Yep."
"What did you do?"
"Well, I was still so out of it that I said the first thing that came into my head, which was 'what about Oz?' And then... or at least it seemed like right then... Oz was there, and I couldn't really ask Xander about it then, could I?"
"And you've been sitting on this now for what, two months now?"
"Uh, yeah."
"If I were you, I'd call him tonight and talk to him about it. Think about it, will you?"
* * * *
"Don't get me wrong, I mean, there's ways to have a good time in Sunnydale, for the first year or so," Buffy said. "But it gets to you... the same town, the same few streets, the same few places." She took a bite of her tamale. "The same few people." She grinned at Jon. "I'm sorry, I've been talking all evening about... nothing at all relevant."
"I like listening to you talk," Jon said.
Buffy giggled. "Oh, thanks." She finished off her tamale, and looked over at Jon's taco, which was almost entire, still. "I thought it was supposed to be girls who pick at their food and don't eat much," she joked.
"It didn't do wonders for my appetite," Jon said.
"Okay, well then, you can clean up while I powder my nose, and then we'll walk over to The Bronze." Buffy decided, rising from the table and walking off.
Jon stuffed the wrappings from Buffy's dinner in her plastic drink tumbler, and lobbed it strongly into the garbage receptacle. He did the same with his own drink, still three-quarters full, and sniffed at his taco again. "Revolting," he hissed in an inhuman voice. He threw the taco into the garbage so forcefully that it almost seemed it would topple over. Suddenly he looked up to see Buffy returning from the bathroom. For just a few seconds, his gaze lingered on her svelte torso. "Now that'll be good eating," he hissed.
Against the advice of all the voices in her head, Willow picked up the phone and dialed Xander's number that evening.
"Hey?"
"Hi Xander, it's Willow. There's something I've been wanting to talk to you about."
"Um, yeah, what is it?"
"Back... when I was in the coma, I heard you say something to me while I was waking up..." she began.
"The, uh, 'I love you' thing?"
"Yeah. I just thought I should figure out if you meant..."
"Well, I'm not quite sure what I meant just then. I think the thought passed through my mind that my asking you out as a girlfriend was the best thing in the world to reach you, and it would have been well worth it. But that's not how I feel about you Willow."
"No?" The word escaped Willow's throat in a squeak.
"It's not less, Willow," Xander said to her earnestly. "You're my best friend, you're my sister, you're my rock, and I don't know what I'd ever do if anything happened to you. Maybe that's why I don't want to date you... I'd be too scared that we'd get into a fight and it'd ruin our friendship."
Willow considered this for a second. "I guess you're right. Besides, there's Oz to think about, and Cordelia for that matter." She snorted derisively at how much consideration Cordelia's feelings deserved... if she had any.
"So, you comin' down to the Bronze? I'm just heading out the door."
"You just want to pester Buffy and her date," Willow accused him.
"Well, yeah. First off, it's important to establish that they don't get any privacy from us, that whatever social life Buffy acquires, we're still gonna be right there with her. And secondly, there's something I don't trust about that guy."
"You don't trust anyone that likes Buffy... or that Buffy likes."
"No, it's not like that. There was something eerie about the way he asked her out, you know? Like deja vu."
* * * *
Willow did come down to the Bronze, and was even able to keep Xander away from Buffy and Jon for significant periods of time. Towards the end of the evening, she got a chance to talk to Buffy by sending Xander and Jon off for drinks.
"So, Buffy, do you like him?"
Buffy shrugged. "He's okay. Not much of a conversationalist, but he's a nice guy to be around."
The guys were starting to go back. "Well, I'll go and head Xander off at the pass," Willow said, rising. "He's in full jealous protection mode; even said something about the way Jon asked you out being spooky."
"Thanks, Will," Buffy said.
Xander seemed determined to sit down with Buffy and Jon, but Willow got directly in his way. "If you do," she whispered quietly, "I'll tell Cordy that ya love me." And she giggled. So Xander reluctantly led her over to another table, from which he could watch Buffy and Jon sitting close together, talking quietly with each other... and Jon drawing Buffy close for a eager kiss. Even from the other table, Willow and Xander could overhear Buffy's excited "Wow!" when the two finally broke.
* * * *
Deep in the hideout, Kaliya sat, deep in telepathic trance, one hand spread across her own face in another version of the gesture she had acquired from Mister Spock. Up until now, the demon had been following her instructions adequately. But she began to sense an urge developing in the fiend's simple mind, an impulse to attack.
"No," she murmured, sending the thought as strongly as she could back through the psychic link. "It is too early. Summers is not yet off her guard sufficiently, and I have not yet learned what I wish to know. DO NOT ATTACK HER."
A powerful impression came back to her through the link. HUNGRY!
"Then leave Summers and find another to feed on, taking care not to be discovered," Kaliya ordered, and felt the demon acquiesce.
* * * *
"So, been harrassing Buffy and her date much?" Cordelia said from behind Xander.
"Huh? Oh, uh..." Xander flustered as Cordy sat down.
"No, Cordy," Willow lied. "We were just hangin' out together. In fact, I was the one who got us started watching Buffy's date. Sorry." As if to prove her point, Willow gazed firmly at their table, but Buffy was sitting alone there. A quick scan showed Jon halfway to the restrooms.
"Hmmph," Cordelia hmmphed. They sat that way, in uncomfortable silence, for two or three minutes. "I'm going to freshen up," Cordelia said finally.
"I'll go too," Willow agreed, realizing that nature had been calling for a little bit without her really noticing it. They went over to the door that led to the washrooms and through into the ladies facilities. And screamed in utter horror.
The body of a teenaged girl was lying on the floor, drenched in blood, and a green-scaled reptilian monster was standing over it. The thing turned, swatting Willow with an backhand that knocked her into the wall; she groaned and slumped over. Cordelia, for her part, backed away, and screamed "HELP!" in an even louder voice. The music had just come to an end, and footsteps were already moving toward them. Perhaps deciding that discretion was the better part of, well, of something, the monster turned away from Cordy, crashed through the smoked-glass windows of the women's restroom, and disappeared from her view.
Several people, including Buffy and Xander, came quickly after that. Buffy and Xander took Willow and Cordelia back into the nightclub's main lounge to relax while the assistant manager called the police about the dead body. Jon ran over to their table about a minute later.
"I just heard," he said. "Are all of you okay? Do you know what happened?"
"Yeah, we're fine," Buffy said. "And no, we don't know what happened," she finished firmly. Jon looked askance at the others, but nobody said anything.
* * * *
Later that evening, from her room in the apartment she shared with her father, Buffy called Mister Tojo. "Hey. It's me. I would have come over with the others, but I didn't want to break the date with Jon for no reason I could tell him about. He walked me home; it was kinda nice... So, do you have any idea what kinda beastie it was? Oh, well... The morgue's report on the body? That bad huh? Okay, I'll have a look at it in the morning." She hung up the phone and lay down on her bed, but she didn't sleep for quite a while.
As Mister Tojo finished his Sociology class, Jon turned to Buffy and asked, "May I have the pleasure of your company for lunch in the cafeteria?"
Buffy thought quickly. She knew that Mister Tojo and the others were planning to research last night's attack in the library until Willow's computer class. She had been asked to be there, earlier that morning, after seeing the gross results of Willow's latest electronic siege of the Sunnydale morgue, (One Kyris Monroe, each right rib snapped where it met the breastbone, ribcage forcibly pried open and the heart clawed out... Buffy shivered at the thought,) but it was obvious that no work would get done if Jon decided to tag along. By accepting his offer of a lunch date, she would get him out of the way, and have a good time too! "I'd love to."
Mister Tojo led Cordelia and Xander to the library without discussing Buffy's choice, and they found Willow surfing mythology websites on the library computer and Oz paging through one of Giles' old bestiaries.
"Some of Giles' books are missing," Willow said as they settled down. "He might have come in to the school one evening and taken his best references away, either to use or so that we wouldn't have them."
"I've been over these a few times, and both you and Willow went through them once last night," Oz pointed out to Cordelia. "I don't think that he's in any of these."
"And I don't have much bestiary with me... Rupert's collection was always so complete for that, I didn't see any need to," Tojo lamented. "I did not forsee that he would take any of his books away."
"The weird thing is," Cordelia commented absently, "that it seemed almost familiar!"
"So we... wait a second," Xander double-taked at Cordelia. "What did you just say?"
"That thing... that killed Kyris. It seemed familiar somehow."
Xander focused on this immediately. "Familiar how? Have you seen one of them before?" but Cordelia shook her head.
"Did you see a picture of one of them ever?" Willow guessed. "Like when we were looking through Giles' books for other monsters?"
"Uh, yeah!" Cordelia breathed. "When we were trying to ID that fever-death thing, back when Buffy was in the hospital. I'd started asking Giles about some of the demons we had pictures of, and he'd answer with short schticks for each of them."
"Shtik?" Mister Tojo muttered.
"Schtick," Cordy corrected him, irked. "A little bit of what nasty stuff each critter did, what made it unique. But I can't REMEMBER the schtick for this one!"
"Yes you can," Xander told her. "Close your eyes." Cordelia just looked at him irately. "Close your eyes!" he ordered more firmly, and she did. "Think back. You see a picture of the monster in one of Giles' musty old books. You can smell the book, you're there. You point a figure and ask 'What about this one?' Then you hear Giles' voice answering, in an aggrieved tone, and he says..."
"Changes into the form of an attractive human woman to attack unsuspecting men," Cordelia continued, and then blinked her eyes open in surprise. "That's it!" she said, shocked.
"That would be the Dar'ota succubus," Tojo said.
"But could it be one of those?" Oz said. "Since they attack men, and Kyris was more of a young woman? Plus, I don't remember seeing any new attractive women at the Bronze last night." Oz had been in the band, too busy playing to get involved in the hijinks of his girlfriend and her friends until Willow had been attacked.
Tojo was shaking his head, but smiling grimly. "Not a succubus, no. But hunting in the Dar'ota is linked to sex. The female Dar'ota, or succubus, becomes a lovely woman and feeds on men. The male Dar'ota, or incubus, becomes a handsome man and feeds on women."
"Jon!" Xander concluded. "Buffy!" he cried out, in utter anguish. "How do you kill one of these things?"
Tojo looked down into the book he had picked up. "In human form, as you would kill a mortal. In demon shape, it is recommended you pierce the throat with a dagger. But, Xander, we don't even know that..." Tojo's objection was too late. Xander had grabbed a deadly blade from the secret weapons chest against the wall and dashed out the door.
* * * *
Buffy sat alone with Jon in the cafeteria, munching on a hot dog, the centerpiece of the lunch the secretary had sold her before locking up the kitchen and going back to the office. Jon was once again picking restlessly at his food, eating little. So he eats like an anorexic bird, Buffy thought, and there HAD been something creepy and deja vu about how he had asked her out. But he was really cute, and kinda sweet, and a great kisser. She could live with that, for a little while anyways.
At her hideout, Kaliya sent new commands to Jon. The time is right, she assured the beast. She's off her guard. No-one else is near. Seduce her into complacency, and then strike.
"Buffy?" Jon asked.
"Yeah?"
"I just wanted... to thank you. It's been kinda a hairy time, you know, new town, new school, and you've made it easier."
"Oh." Buffy considered this. "Hey, say no more. Happy to do it." Jon put his arms around her and kissed her. Buffy let herself be swept away in his arms, and when he broke, several minutes later, she breathed, "Wow."
Then she noticed that something was subtly wrong. Jon's arms were no longer around her, they were holding her arms at her sides. His hands were larger than she would have thought, and stronger, and his nails longer, and his skin scalier...
SCALIER????
She opened her eyes. In front of her was not Jon's face, but the half-human face of a green-scaled reptilian monster that she guessed was the same one that had made an appearance at the Bronze last night. She struggled against its grasp, but its hands were too strong. She kicked, at its legs, its crotch region, its abdomen, but all those areas seemed to be naturally armored.
The thing chuckled awfully and moved one hand from her shoulder up to press two huge fingers carefully into her throat. Buffy flailed more wildly, realizing it was carefully cutting off the bloodflow to her brain, that if she didn't get free in seconds she would be unconscious but she couldn't free her left arm from the thing's grasp or bend her neck backwards far enough to be out of its wide reach.
"Hey, Incubus buddy!" Xander's voice called out from the cafeteria doors.
The monster's head turned to see the young man standing, trembling slightly, at the entrance to the cafeteria, holding one of Giles' long-bladed daggers. It threw Buffy across the floor a little ways, turned its body, and dashed towards the new opponent. Startled, Xander threw the dagger in the vicinity of the fiend's throat, but it whizzed over the scaly shoulder and clattered on a cafeteria table.
The demon wasted none of the subtlety it had used with Buffy on the young man. With a single punch-like blow, he knocked Xander sprawling. The beast kicked Xander once, then walked around to stand near his head. After waiting a second to see if Xander could move any more, he chuckled a horrible raspy laugh, and then lifted a taloned foot, preparing to stamp it crushingly on Xander's head.
It never got a chance to complete the motion. Unnoticed from only eight feet away, Buffy hurled the dagger that Xander had brought with him at the demon's neck. This time, the blade plunged in truly; the beast teetered and collapsed away from Xander. No sooner had the massive body hit the floor than the greenish flesh began to bubble and boil away, giving off volumes of green smoke that filled the whole room. Buffy bent down over Xander in the noxious fog, shaking him to see if he could be roused. Xander groaned and sat up.
No-one knew quite how it happened, but their lips found each other under the cover of the choking smoke. Buffy kissed Xander with greater and greater passion, her hands roaming over his strong, lean body as her tongue licked off his teeth, and Xander replied approximately in kind. They only stopped, with considerable surprise, when the smoke began to clear and each truly realized who it was. Buffy broke off, stepping diffidently away from Xander.
"Sorry," she murmured. "Old Angel reflex... before, he would be the one rescuing me, and after it was over we'd..." She broke off, blushing. The Slayer turned away and walked towards the cafeteria doors, repeating, "That's all that it was."
"Was it?" Xander called after her, standing up. Buffy turned and looked at him, a pensive expression on her face. She opened her mouth to answer him, but was broken off by the sound of the cafeteria doors bursting open again as Willow, Cordelia, Oz, and Mister Tojo entered. Without saying a word, Buffy turned back towards the doors and walked to her friends, gesturing idly at Xander for him to follow her.
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