The panther was still out cold when Valeriana led the small group into the room where the animal had been taken; the beast laid on her side in a cage, the massive chest rising and falling slowly as she slumbered deeply, the paws twitching every now and then.

"Silver", Valeriana explained as she noticed Willow eying the cage, "it will stop her from breaking the bars and escaping."

"You have that in common with werewolves then", the redhead remarked as she moved closer to the cage and studied the sleeping panther, "they don't like silver either."

"Indeed", the brunette agreed, watching how she approached the cage, "silver is quite harmful to us. This cage has been built decades ago, and I'm glad about it, no one of us would have been happy if we'd been forced to do it."

"Why do you have a decade-old silver cage if none of you has gone wild for centuries?" Buffy wanted to know, frowning slightly; moving her attention to her, Valeriana smiled pleasantly again, then explained that, even though no shapeshifters had gone wild, there still were some which had committed other crimes, and that locking them up in such cages was the appropriate punishment.

"Makes sense", the Slayer had to admit, then a low growl came from the cage and distracted them all, making them glance over, Pat feeling slightly nervous as she watched her partner so close to the cage, studying the panther which had gone from deeply asleep to fully awake within seconds and held her gaze, baring sharp teeth at her and growling lowly.

"Sweetie, be careful", the demon mumbled, fidgeting as she didn't like this at all, "don't get too close…"

"No worries", Willow reassured her, briefly glancing at her and giving her a smile; then, she took another step closer to the cage and lowered herself into a crouch in front of it, holding the panther's gaze as she focused, giving her best to channel her magic, hoping that some of the techniques she had learned during her last stay in England would help her to figure out what was wrong with the shapeshifter.

"Please stay calm", she mumbled under her breath, still looking the panther in the eye, "I don't want to harm you…" Slowly, carefully, she reached out with her magic, directing it towards the animal; and seconds later, just as contact was made, the beast let out a roar and threw herself against the cage bars, the fur sizzling and smoking where it had made contact with the silver.

Obviously, this didn't stop the panther though, as she roared again and threw herself against the bars once more; they trembled dangerously, but still Willow didn't move back, keeping the magic up, fine pearls of sweat forming on her brow and trickling down her cheeks as she tried to not let the contact break, knowing she had to figure out what was wrong with the woman first.

Behind her, Pat fidgeted again, fighting the urge to rush over, grab her and pull her away; and then, the door at the other end of the room flew open, hitting the wall with a bang, the unexpected noise startling Willow enough to cause her concentration to break, sharp pain racing through her head when the magical connection was severed so abruptly. With a small pained noise, she ended up slumping backwards on her behinds, her hands coming up to clutch at her head; she heard Pat call out her name, but before she could react in any way, a loud growl came from the stairway, followed by a gasp from Valeriana.

"Alexia!" the brunette then snapped, prompting the redhead to force her eyes open and to look into the direction the noise had come from, "what is the meaning of this?"

In response, the shockingly large, grey wolf just growled again, saliva dripping from the sharp and pointy teeth and to the stone floor, the fur at the wolf's neck bristling as she stared at the group, Valeriana taking a step back when her gaze met the one of the other shapeshifter.

"Not her, too", she whispered, sounding so stunned that it made both Buffy and Pat look at her in surprise; and then, the wolf roared again and shot forward, teeth bared and claws glistening, and chaos broke loose in the small room.


As if a wild wolf wasn't enough of a challenge, several more came bounding down the stairs, along with a panther even bigger than the one in the cage, Willow still thinking clear enough despite all the chaos to figure out that this had to be Simone's mate, then the panther slammed into the wolf which had been Alexia before the change, the two animals rolling over the floor in a mess of teeth, growls and claws.

"Don't hurt her!" Valeriana called out, sounding panicked, "it's not her fault!" The panther involved in the fight didn't react, but the others did, forming a lose circle around the fighting animals; Buffy and Pat exchanged a worried glance, then the demon transformed as well, joining the fight a few moments later, without the intention to hurt anyone, but just eager to break it up.

"Be careful!", Willow called out, then flinched as the panther in the cage behind her threw herself against the bars yet again; she roared, either in anger or pain, when her fur kept sizzling and smoking, but still didn't let this stop her, slamming her body against the bars once more, the other wolves in the room perking up when one of the bars fell to the stone floor with a loud clang moments later.

Still busy with finding a way to break up the fight before anyone got hurt, Pat didn't notice any of this; she just registered with the back of her mind that a bunch of wolves bounded past her, then the enraged Alexia snapped at her and she had to focused on her again, growling lowly when the wolf's teeth closed around her lower leg, blood soon dripping from the limb and to the concrete ground.

With another snarl, Pat jerked her leg back, not caring that thus, a chunk of flesh got torn out by the sharp teeth, knowing it would heal again within seconds anyway; and it did, the demon growling again as she threw her whole weight down on the raging animal, the panther still smart enough to help by doing the same, both of them managing to pin the wolf beneath them, even though she kept roaring and snapping, her teeth sinking into the taller woman's flesh again and again, not even caring where she bit her.

Hoping that her healing abilities wouldn't go into overload again and stop working, as they tended to do whenever she received too many injuries in a too short span of time, Pat kept holding on to the wolf, hoping that one of the other shapeshifters would be smart enough to knock Alexia out with the powder they had used for Simone earlier; and seconds later, one of them, back to his human form, came rushing over and threw the powder into the wolf's face, an enraged howl coming from her before she let out a low snarl and then went limb, the powder taking effect as quickly as it had when it had been used on Simone.

Breathing heavily, Pat slowly dared to let go of the wolf, feeling blood trickle down her back from a bite in her shoulder, grimacing to herself when she realized it wouldn't heal anytime soon; she had a moment to ask herself how often exactly that wolf had managed to bite her before it had been knocked out, then she turned to look at the rest of the group, wanting to ask them if they were okay, the words dying on her lips though when she spotted the familiar figure lying flat on her back, close to the cage – from which several of the bars where missing – next to the knocked out panther.

"No", the demon brought out in a trembling voice, changing back to her human form without even fully noticing what she was doing, "no… Willow!"

And with those words, she rushed to where the witch had fallen down, taking in her pale face, her closed eyes and the blood pooling beneath her; she couldn't see how bad she had been hurt, the injuries in her back hidden from sight as she laid on them, but her facial colour and the amount of blood showed that it had to be bad.

Without caring about the blood, Pat slumped down on her knees next to her partner, already digging through her pockets for the small bag of powder she had to use for the spell which would let Willow borrow her healing – when suddenly, Buffy was there and grabbed her arm, shaking her head the moment the demon looked at her.

"You can't do that", she then explained, her gaze darting back and forth between her friend and the redhead, "you got hurt so bad yourself during that fight, I saw it all, if that opens up again…"

"I don't care!" Pat snapped at once, the response not really surprising the Slayer, "I can't just let her… just look at her!"

"You can't do this!" Buffy repeated in reply, grasping her arm harder to keep her from finding the powder, "do you think she'd want this?" Without giving the demon a chance to reply, she looked at Valeriana, her voice cold and sharp when she went on, showing how hard she was fighting to hold back her own anger.

"Help her!" she almost commanded, ignoring it when the other wolves and the panther changed back to people again now that the threat was over, for the moment, "can't you heal, as well? Help her!"

"We can't give our healing", Valeriana replied, in a trembling voice, "believe me, we've tried, through centuries… Let me look at how bad it is…"

With those words, she knelt down next to the unconscious redhead, taking careful hold of her shoulders and rolling her over; next to her, she heard how Pat let out a strangled sound at the sight of the deep gashes which ran all the way from her shoulder blades to the small of her back, making it obvious that the panther had jumped her from behind and had dug her claws into the redhead's back when she had gotten out of the cage.

"I'm sorry", a familiar voice now came from the demon's other side, prompting her to look over, her gaze meeting Derek's, the young man looking at her with a mixture of pity and shame, "I tried to be fast enough, I really did, but I wasn't…"

He kept holding her gaze, waiting for her to say something; after a few more moments, she looked back at her partner without a word, unable to keep her eye away from the torn flesh of the witch's back, blood still seeping from the gashes and trickling down her sides to the ground.

"We have to help her", said the man who clearly was Simone's mate, as his animal form had shown, "Valeriana, you know we have to, maybe we should try the tank…"

"The tank is made for our kind, Oliver", Valeriana replied, looking up at him, "we can't know what effect it will have on her."

"It can't get worse and you know that", Oliver argued back, "and if it helps to keep her alive, at least until this demon here can give her the healing powers she possesses, it's more than enough, right?"

"Do it", Buffy threw in before the Alpha woman could reply anything, "or we'll have to take her to the hospital, now, and I imagine you wouldn't want that, might be hard to explain how she got those wounds without giving you guys away." This wasn't the only reason why she wanted the shapeshifters to help Willow, instead of taking her to the hospital; if they did so, it'd be harder to have Pat perform the spell which would give her healing powers to the witch, even though they had done something similar in a hospital before, but judging from the amount of blood on the ground, Buffy wasn't even sure if the redhead would hold on until she'd be at the hospital, not even wanting to know if any organs had been injured by the panther's attack.

"…fine", Valeriana mumbled after holding the blonde's gaze for a while, "let's get her in the tank then…" And with those words, she carefully moved the witch on her back again, then tried to pick her up; before she could do so though, a low growl came from her right, and when she looked over, her gaze met Pat's, the demon merely giving her a hard look before she almost shouldered her aside, picking the injured redhead up on her arms moments later.

"Lead the way", she then told the brunette with another low growl; nodding, Valeriana came to her feet and led them back to the door, the taller woman following close behind with the unconscious Willow in her arms and Buffy by her side, both of them unable to take their gaze off the injured woman's face, hoping with all their heart that whatever exactly that tank they had been talking about was, it would at least keep her alive until the spell to borrow Pat's healing could be performed.