"What's Within Us"

"What's Within Us"

Prologue:

Xander stood in a heap. His limbs trembled beneath him. The blood drained from his thin face and his eyes glazed over with sorrow. His first foot toward the table took an age, it dragged, plodded. The second clung onto the momentum and swung out in front of the other. His face contorted at the sight in front of him. It was part bitter heartache, part revulsion. Buffy lay out on Giles' table with an arm falling limply down the side. She looked more beautiful than Xander had ever seen her. Peaceful and silent. The kind of serenity that accompanies death like the calm following the raging storms. Xander reached out for her and touched her face, still warm. "She's dead." he exhaled. "I killed her."

Part 1:

Rock music boomed almost to the point of distortion throughout the club. The dance floor vibrated with each wave of sound and with the dancing of dozens of teens. The coloured lights bobbed and weaved amongst the crowd like a boxer, casting each person with a new face. The Bronze was particularly packed this evening. It the end of the term and the last school night for almost two weeks. To the naked eye the crowd looked like a mass of bodies intermingling, free from the bias of the highschool social class structure. But on the ground armed with a knowledge of who's who one could clearly distinguish the usual groups and divisions.

One such group sat at a suitably small round table to the left of the stage. Willow's gazed uncompromisingly at the Dingo's onstage. In particular at Oz, the lead guitarist and her boyfriend. She attended all of his gigs religiously which never failed to fill her with awe despite the sameness of the music. She was caught in the web of wonder that was Oz. "Oz is amazing tonight, don't you think?" she asked without turning away. "Sounds pretty much like any other night Will." Xander replied. Buffy piped up for the first time that night.

"Don't mind him. I think he's actually getting better every time he plays".

"It speaks. What's the matter with you tonight Buffy. You're about as talkative as Vampires are pensive". Buffy looked at Xander in understanding. "I know." she said. Willow broke her fix on Oz and turned to Buffy in sudden concern. "Thinking about Angel again?". Buffy looked halfway between surprise and puzzlement. "Actually no, well not until you brought it up". Willow dipped her head. "Oh no, I didn't mean it like that. It's just that I've been getting a weird feeling today. Like I'm sensing something". Xander snapped back to the conversation. "Are you sure it isn't gas!".

But it wasn't gas. Buffy had this kind of feeling before. It was the feeling she got when a vamp was near or some other kind of demonic presence loomed over her. The same but altered somehow. Not quite as malevolent, but at the same time more subversive. She felt in her head, her heart. In her back and at the ends of her fingers. It hung in the air like an odour and osmosised into every pore of her skin.

"I'm gonna' go." Buffy stood and pulled her light blue silk jacket from the back of her chair. Willow looked panicked.

"Already, but Oz isn't even finished yet."

"That's alright you can stay. I'm only going to be patrolling tonight anyway." Xander now gathered himself. "Yeah maybe I'll turn in for the night too. Just not the same without Cordelia to chastise me for everything I do. Don't worry Willow I'll keep her safe 'til I get home." They looked at Xander with raised eyebrows. "Eh okay. So she'll keep me safe until we get home." Buffy turned back to Willow.

"Will you be okay."

"Oh sure Oz will give me a ride home. You go. Slay. Have fun."

Outside the Bronze the night air was cool against their skin. The darkness brought with it a crisp freshness. Patrolling at night Buffy often thought to her-self how alive it made her feel to breathe in the cleanest of air. Ironically those who were taking in this air most of the time were those who also were least alive. The vampires.

"So how long is Cordelia going to be in Aspen." Buffy was first to break the silence. They sometimes felt awkward when they were alone together knowing how each felt about the other. "About a week." Xander replied.

"At least it'll give us some time together on the holidays. So eh, how you holding up with this whole Angel thing."

"I'm dealing. I'd just prefer not to talk about it."

"Okay. You know don't think you can't talk to me about it just because…"

From out of the shadows a vampire came screaming at them. Buffy instinctually pushed Xander aside and he crashed into some bins. She took the full force of the vampires attack as he pushed her against a wall. He was what Buffy would categorise as a 'biker vamp'. All longhaired, jeans, leathers and bad breath. He was also exceptionally strong, even for a vampire.

She drove up into his solar plexus with her knee and pushed him back. He came at her again but this time she spun him into the side window of a parked car. His demonic face scarred with blood spun back and grabbed her. He punched her hard in the face. She head-butted him square on. It didn't seem to affect him and she quickly felt the glancing blow of his bony fist again. The vampire grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her onto the bonnet of the car. She struggled against him as he tried to push his face down toward her throat. His breath seemed to choke her and saliva dripped from his pointed fangs onto her supple neck. She tried to move but couldn't. She was pinned down and helpless. She looked to her side. "Xander help…" He wasn't moving in the heap in which he landed. 'He must have hit his head on the way down' she thought. She turned back to her attacker and their eyes locked. The look was now not one of hate and intent but of curious shock. The skin on his face began to rapidly dry up and tighten. He aged about a hundred years in about a second and then exploded into a cloud of dust.

The grip on her wrists has dissolved, literally, and she wiped away the freeze-dried vampire from her eyes. She quickly found the cause of the vampire's demise. A man stood in front of her, standing about six-foot tall and wearing a long draping trench coat and a Trillby hat. His arm stretched out toward her with a wooden stake clasped in his hand. Buffy took a quick deep breath in light of this new presence and at the position it stood in. The weird feeling she had been having all day was now amplified and tingling every part of her body. It froze her, holding her almost as strongly as the vampire had.

The figure whose face was obscured by the rampant shadows backed away slowly into a dark corner of the alley. Buffy pulled herself off of the bonnet. "Who are you?" she questioned the shadow. A few renegade shards of light cut out some of the man's form from the darkness. She waited and then spoke again in a more aggressive tone. "Enough with the Boo Radley! Who are you?"

The light in the alley seemed to become drowned by the darkness. What little form there was of the stranger began to fade as he backed away. Buffy walked slowly forward toward the stranger. He promptly turned on his heels and ran off with amazing speed. Still confused Buffy started to pursue but was yanked back by a groaning from behind. Xander was waking up. He struggled to his feet and Buffy raced to help him up.

"Ouch my head. What happened? Oh right yeah vampire. Are you alright."

"Oh, I'm fine how about you?"

"My head feels like how a bust watermelon looks."

Xander brushed some dust off of Buffy's shoulders. "I guess you took out the midnight intruder then. Looks like you'll be needing new and improved biological Biz for whiter whites and more coloured… colours. He paused looking at Buffy.

"You okay."

"We have to go see Giles, right now."