"He's confused." Jasper told them. The family was gathered in the living room, except for Carlisle who was at work. "His whole world has been turned upside down. He wants to believe us, but he is hesitant."
"He has never seen anything quite like us before." Edward added. "The monsters that he is use to, they really are soulless."
"Those Sunnydale vampires are vicious, that's for sure. And all of the lesser variety." Alice added.
"Sunnydale," Jasper said thoughtfully. "The coven there is a remnant of the southern territory wars, I think. They probably still keep a newborn army."
"Four or Five newborns at a time, from what Xander gave me." Edward nodded. "They never get more than that because the Slayer keeps their numbers down."
"Four or Five newborns in one little town?" Rosalie wondered. "That place must be like the Mouth of Hell." Everyone agreed.
The Scooby gang arrived in town that morning. They checked into the hotel and immediately left to visit Xander in the hospital. They didn't find him there.
"I'm sorry," The receptionist told them. "But there is no one here by that name."
"Has anyone arrived recently, anyone that couldn't be identified?" Giles asked. "It would have been three or four days ago."
She shook her head regretfully. "We have no records of anyone like that, nor of anyone matching your description. I'm sorry. Maybe your friend is in the Port Angeles hospital?"
"Angeles?" Willow muttered, "That would be ironic." They were about to take the receptionist's advice when Oz spotted him.
"Buffy, look!" He tugged violently on her sleeve. Buffy turned and saw a doctor. He was tall, and blond. A pale young man with unusual yellow eyes.
"He's a Vampire." Oz hissed. "I can smell it on him." Buffy smiled grimly and pulled out her stake. Luckily no one noticed. For some reason, few people ever did.
"Good." Willow said. "We have some questions for him, don't we?"
"Wait." Giles whispered. "We can't do this here and now. There are too many witnesses, and too many potential hostages. We need to wait until we can corner him."
"But Giles!" Buffy protested.
"Buffy, he's stuck here until dark anyway. You know that." Giles pleaded. "He won't kill anyone. He won't dare blow his cover." The doctor looked up from his clip board, and. met Buffy's eyes briefly. Their rising voices had drawn his attention.
"Fine," Buffy agreed. "But we come back as soon as it is dark."
Carlisle walked into his office and knew that something was wrong. The lights were off. He could hear someone breathing in the dark. He flipped the light switch, and immediately felt a sharp, pointy stake at his back. He looked at the blond teenager and raised an eyebrow.
There were three other people in the room. A werewolf stood by the sink. As a rule, Carlisle didn't like werewolves, but if this one was with the slayer he must have some measure of self-control. An emo girl was by examination table. She menacingly tossed a fireball up and caught it again in her hands. A witch then. An older man with greying hair and glasses stood by his desk chair.
"Don't move," The blond growled.
"Well that's not very nice." Carlisle said.
They all tensed, as if expecting him to ignore her order and attack. The witch raised her hand high, ready to throw the fireball.
"Put your hand down, girl." Carlisle snapped at her, "If you throw that it will hit the cupboard and nothing will be left standing within a mile radius."
"Why?" She asked suspiciously, "What is in there?"
"Very flammable medical supplies." He told her. She blinked and put out the fire.
"Now perhaps we can go about this a little more civilly." Carlisle suggested, "Please, take a seat." Nobody moved. Carlisle sighed.
"Alright then, would you mind if I took a seat?" He reached for the nearest chair, one of the cushioned patient's chairs. They all flinched as he moved.
"I'll take that as a 'no'."
"Who are you?" The older man demanded, "What are you doing here?"
"I work here," he replied, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow, "My name is Dr. Carlisle Cullen." The Scoobys exchanged skeptic looks. "Take a look around if you like," He continued, "There is no hidden message in the pictures, nothing lurking under the sink. There is one skeleton in the closet but he is made of plaster, I assure you."
"I assume," Cullen said, looking pointedly at the stake, "That you are the slayer and friends. Are there any names in the offering?"
"Why should we tell you?" the werewolf snarled.
"It will make this conversation pleasanter." They shot him dark looks. "What did Edward say?" He rubbed his temple, "Buffy, Oz, Willow, and Giles, yes? What can I help you with?"
"A few days ago," Willow began, "A friend of ours went missing. We decided to scry for him."
"We saw him being carried off by Vampires, and we saw him in a hospital," the werewolf interjected.
"Naturally we were worried, so we came to look for him." The blond finished. "If you know anything…If you know where he is…."
"You must mean Xander," Dr. Cullen said. "He is at my home."
"What?" the witch asked.
"He's where?" Oz demanded at the same time.
"You will explain yourself, sir." Giles said sharply, "Why exactly is he in your 'home'."
"My daughter, Alice, received a vision," the doctor said, picking his words carefully, "Of a rouge vampire attacking a young man in Port Angelus. In the vision he then died of his wounds. The police would have found him. There would have been awkward questions. You can imagine the chaos, if the world found out about Vampires, well there are reasons that the watcher's guild doesn't publicize."
Buffy could imagine the panic, the mobs, the purges. Hundreds of vampires might be caught, yes, but thousands of innocent people would be falsely accused and killed.
"So my children went out to look for him. By the time they found him, the attack was already over. Xander was alive, but badly wounded. He needed medical attention, and we needed to keep the situation quiet. So they brought him to me. I am a doctor after all, and I maintain perfectly adequate medical equipment at my home."
"Right," Buffy said skeptically, "The 'kind' and 'gentle' Vampires rescued the 'poor helpless' human. How do we know that you weren't behind the attack in the first place?"
"And even if you weren't," Oz continued, "Why help Xander at all? Why not let him die, or even finish him off yourselves? Don't give me that crap about the police. It's not that hard to hide a body. So what do you want with him?"
"Why do I need to want anything with him?" Dr. Cullen asked. "Why can't I just wish to help my fellow creature? Look, if you don't believe me, Xander can tell you. My shift ends in three hours. You could come visit."
"And walk right into a trap," the watcher replied. "No thank you."
"It's not a trap," Cullen said wearily. "There is no reason to be suspicious. Not everyone has ulterior motives. I may be a Vampire, but that doesn't make me a monster."
"So you admit to being a Vampire then?" Buffy asked, Carlisle could feel the stake digging more sharply into the back of his ribcage, "You're an undead, blood sucking, burn up in the sunlight, Vampire?"
"Well, you have to understand that not all of the myths are true."
"But you do kill people," the werewolf insisted. Funny really, how his fellow 'monster' seemed more worked up by this point than the 'humans' were.
"Yes," he said softly, "I have killed when it became necessary. But you have done the same, have you not?"
BEEP! The loud noise made them all jump.
"That is my pager," Cullen told them, "May I answer it?"
The blond took it and tossed it to the watcher. "Code Black, four in the ER." Giles read aloud, "What does that mean?"
Before they could blink, Dr. Cullen had sidestepped Buffy and was out the door. They raced after him, determined to not let him escape. Not only was Cullen a vampire, he was their only lead on finding Xander.
They caught up to him in the Emergency Operation Room and stopped, eyes wide with horror. There were no less than four bloody patients, victims of a car crash. Two nurses, a plump woman and a young man, ran back and forth. They stopped the bleeding, stabilized and braced necks, and hooked patients up to IVs and monitors. Meanwhile, Cullen was doing emergency surgery on a man's abdomen. A little girl's heart stopped beating.
"Doctor," the plump nurse cried.
"Use the defibrillator," he snapped, "sixty joules."
The young man set it up in a matter of seconds. "Clear?"
"Clear." He pressed the pads to her chest, giving her a shock. The Scoobys watched with bated breath.
"Clear?"
"Clear." For a second time, the pads came down. The little girl's back arched, but she did not start breathing. "Nothing." The young man almost shouted.
"One more, and then start CPR." Cullen growled. All the while, his hands moved nimbly, checking for internal bleeding, and sewing stitches.
"Clear?"
"Clear." For the third time, the pads came down and the little girl gasped. Her heart started again.
A young man started convulsing, and Dr. Cullen was at his side in an instant. He plunged the syringe into the man's chest and ordered the nurse to bring a bag of O negative, stat.
Half an hour in, a grim faced doctor, and three more nurses rushed into the room, pulling on lab coats and surgical masks as they came. Even with the extra help, the battle for the patients' lives went well past the three hours that should have ended his shift.
When the victims were finally stable, Cullen stripped off his gloves and mask. He turned and noticed the Scoobys for the first time. They were watching him with wide eyes.
"What are you doing here?" the plump nurse asked. She had also just noticed them, "This is the ER. You aren't even wearing scrubs for goodness sake. You've contaminated the operation room!" She looked pointedly at their shoes, which were tracking mud.
"Well, you see mam," Giles started, "We were just…" Suddenly the nurse looked cautious. Her hand reached for the pager at her belt.
"You don't even work here." That was the anxious young nurse that had used the defibrillator. "How did you get in?"
"It's alright, Marcy." Dr. Cullen was suddenly there, laying a hand on the plump woman's shoulder. "They are waiting for me." He gave her a charming smile.
"But they shouldn't be waiting in here." The young nurse argued.
"Oh, well," she was flustered. "I guess it's alright then, Doctor."
"Alright!" the young nurse exclaimed, "They're in street clothes. God knows what they've tracked in."
"Isn't John waiting for you?" Cullen asked Marcy, completely ignoring the young nurse's outburst.
"Right, of course. Come along, Rory. We have work to do." She hustled off. Rory looked bemused for a moment. He shook his head, and followed. As he walked away, Buffy heard him mutter something about hoping that Doctor Ann Amy would get back soon.
"I can be very persuasive sometimes," Carlisle said, by way of explanation, "Doesn't ever work on Rory for some reason. Oh well."
"You were saving lives," Buffy said wonderingly, "You just saved four human lives."
"I am a doctor," Carlisle pointed out.
"Isn't it difficult?" Oz asked, "Being around all the," he gulped, "all the blood?"
"It was at first," Cullen admitted, "It was a struggle that took every bit of my self-control. But over time I became use to it. I learned to ignore the temptation."
"Why would you do it?" Willow asked.
"Because I can help," He replied, "God gives us talents. It is up to us to use them for the benefit of all."
"You weren't cursed with a soul, by any chance, were you?" Giles asked.
"Cursed with a soul?" Dr. Cullen looked confused, "I certainly like to think that my immortal soul remains intact, though I can't imagine why that would be a curse."
"Definitely still has his soul then," Buffy said, and they all relaxed.
"Look," Dr. Cullen said, sounding slightly annoyed, "I don't know what a soul looks like, so I couldn't tell you whether someone has one or not, but Vampires don't drink human blood because they are 'soul less.' It's a craving. Like drugs, it pulls you in, making you want more and more. Vampires are like NAS babies, born needy. That doesn't make us 'soul less,' it just makes us addicted."
"I can see that we have much to discuss,"
