Simone of the Zordiak
Chapter Two
The beast was parching back and forth behind the barrier that divided them from each other. She was the only one, the other inhabitants of the hyena house were dozing, but she, she was angry, furious. Her spirit wanted to break free, wanted to take him over.
A small hidden part of him could feel her anger, her need for freedom, for the hunt. But while this part of him could feel and understand her, he could not allow her to take his body. This was HIS body and he was the only one allowed in here. He stood there, refusing her entrance to his body and mind. Finally she lowered her head and backed away. He blinked and then shook his head, not really knowing what just had happened here...
The so-called Hyena-incident ended with several dead, six attempted and two finished rapes. It was a disaster of the highest magnitude. And for the possessed ones it was a nightmare that would never end. The four possessed teens could not be separated from the hyena-spirits. They would stay, heavily sedated and watched, in different mental hospitals for the rest of their lives. Human in form, but hyena in mind. Giles had theorised that, had the possession been discovered sooner, the teens might have been saved. But unfortunately the bullying behaviour of the four and the hyena-pack mentality had been so close to each other that no one had noticed something. He also mentioned that it seemed rather odd that the entire pack had possessed the students, except for the alpha-beast. None of the students had been possessed by the pack-matriarch, which went against the writings of the tribal shamans and other witnesses of such possessing ceremonies. Normally the alpha would choose a victim first and have her pack follow her, but this time she stayed behind. Giles theorised that the zookeeper might have bound her to her body before he left the prepared circle, to prevent the matriarch from choosing any host beside himself, but that he had been rejected by her. Xander smiled thinly. He should have been the pack-leader, but he was stronger than any animal spirit, he had defeated her in a battle of wills.
And yet he never said a word of it to Giles. There was a part of him that didn't trust the Watcher, or better, Giles' higher ups, with that information. He wanted to live a normal life and he knew that that would be next to impossible if the Watchers were after him, to find out how he stopped an alpha-hyena from taking him as her host.
Xander sighed as he thought about the changes this incident had wrought: Principal Flutie, dead, partly eaten, Vice-Principal Snyder, badly mauled, had lost his right arm in an attack. Harmony, one of Cordelia's little sheep, brutally raped. The list went on. If not for him and, quite surprisingly, Marcie Ross, it would have been even worse. Marcie had been attacked by one of the pack, but she had been able to beat her would-be rapist over the head with a baseball bat. He had found her, at the verge of freaking out, as she stood over the unconscious body of her attacker and had managed to calm her down enough to make her tell him what had happened. She had cried into his shirt when the adrenaline wore off and she realised how close she had come to share the fate of Harmony. He had soothed her, called the police for her and helped her through the hours of panic that had followed. Together they had started to patrol the school, searching for the rest of the little gang. She, armed with her baseball bat and he, with a wooden kendo sword he had found in a pawn shop some time before. They had found two more of the quartet, once more attacking and eating a human and they had managed to bring them down before they had the chance to kill Snyder, who had lost his arm, would have some interesting scars for the rest of his life and who was insanely grateful towards the duo. The last of the four was brought down by Buffy. Kyle had tired to put the moves on her, but she had put him down in her unique way, with a desk to his head.
The entire school knew about the incidents and practically over night their life's changed. Marcie was no longer the overlooked wallflower. Girls of all ages flocked to her, wanting to be like her, looked up to her as their personal hero.
And he? Well, his image had started to change a little while before, when he had given up his hideous shirts for something more suitable and had stopped to make jokes about everything. This 'incident' had only hastened the process. They no longer looked at him and saw the class clown, but someone darker and more mature. Someone who had no qualms to fight for his believes and someone who had rapidly developing leader qualities.
Xander laid on his bed, looking at the ceiling, thinking. The incident had proved that neither he, nor his friends or even Buffy could be everywhere at the same time. As long as the vampires and other assorted demons of the hellmouth had the superiority of numbers, his friends and he would never win, only be able to fight them to a standstill. That was unacceptable. They needed... needed... an army.
A cold smile spread over Xanders face. They needed an army.
And he had a good idea where he could get one.