There's a short part in this chapter where you may for a second think I posted the wrong story... never fear! I got a little carried away while writing an original character to set up a bit of the plot, that's all. I was going to edit it down, but it'd been so long since I did any original writing, and I kinda ended up liking how it turned out that I left it alone.

Disclaimer: Nothing but the original characters belong to me. All songs quoted through-out the story are owned by their respective artists.

Rating: M-ish, overall (for violence, mild language, maybe some sexual innuendo in later chapters, but there will be absolutely NO smut!)

Thank you to all who have reviewed so far!


Chapter 49: Bitemarks and Bloodstains

Buffy had never in her life welcomed the sound of her alarm, but she did this morning. Her run-in with The First late last night seemed to have only made the nightmares worse, and she slid out of bed feeling even more tired than she had the night before if it were at all possible. She crossed the hall and entered the bathroom, hoping a nice hot shower would wake her up slightly. Stepping into the stream of water, she lazily began to wash her hair, as her thoughts drifted back to the events of the prior evening. Seeing Faith so emotionally shaken had been difficult, she was used to relying on Faith to be a pillar of strength while the rest of them fell apart; it was her strong suit to be tough, no pun intended. The fact that The First had managed to toy with her so easily meant it was only a matter of time before it started wearing the rest of them down, and it wouldn't be a pretty sight when it eventually occurred.

What they needed to do was find Travers. She was sure given enough persuasion, he would talk. As she finished up her routine, and shut off the water, she made a mental note to ask Willow to use her computer whiz skills to see if he'd left any sort of paper trail.

Putting on fresh clothes, she exited the bathroom and padded down the hall towards the kitchen. She paused once she reached her father's room, hearing him speaking inside.

"No, please stop asking me, I can't..."

There was a long pause.

"But what about Madeline? I couldn't-"

Another pause.

"Of course I miss you..."

Something in the tone of his voice set off Buffy's Slayer-sense, and she knocked lightly on the door before opening it a crack, "Dad?" she asked quietly.

Daniel's head whipped around towards the door, his eyes were wide and bewildered, "Good morning honey, what is it?"

The uneasy feeling in her stomach grew, as she took in her father's gaunt complexion, and the dark circles under his eyes. "I... um... are you sure you're alright?" she asked.

His eyes wandered away from her, as though he were looking to someone else for an answer, "Of course sweetie, of course..."

Frowning, Buffy looked around the room uneasily, he was alone as far as she could see, if there was something there with him, there was no way she could figure it out without alarming him. "Okay. Do you want me to make you some coffee?" she asked.

"Sure, that would be nice, thank you." he answered with a forced smile.

Buffy nodded, and shut the door. As she headed towards the kitchen, she hoped her father would be safe at work while Buffy addressed the situation with Giles.

~o~

Buffy wove her way through the people making their way to work as she hurried down the main street towards the bookstore. She didn't have much time before class, but if something was haunting her father, she wanted to deal with it, and fast. She was about a block away from reaching her destination, when a series of shocked shouts erupted behind her.

"Thief! Stop him! He just stole from my store!" Someone cried.

Buffy span around to see a teenage boy running at full speed, pushing his way through the people, "Out of my way lady!" he grunted, pushing aside a middle-aged woman who tried to step in his path. As he rushed by Buffy, she threw her arm out, clothes-lining the kid and causing him to fall backwards onto the hard pavement of the sidewalk. Crouching down she pinned him to the ground with one hand, while holding the other out, palm-side up in front of his face.

"Give it here." she scolded.

The boy, still trying to catch his breath, and bewildered that a girl smaller than him and slammed him to the ground, fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a sizeable stack of bills. "He told me to do it... he... he... he..." the boy stammered, shoving the money into Buffy's open hand.

"Well, I think you need to find yourself a better role model." she scolded, pulling him to his feet as a short, stout, older man came puffing down the street, and pushed his way through the crowd of people who had gathered around the incident.

"Oh thank you!" he huffed, when he saw Buffy had the young thief in one hand, and his money in the other. She handed the cash back to the old man with a bashful smile.

"You hear that!" the boy shouted over her shoulder, "I never should have listened to you! Now, now I'm gonna end up in jail!" he nearly sobbed.

Buffy turned to look behind her, but there was no one there, aside from men and women in business suits who were circling around the gathered crowd in an attempt to get to work on time.

"Who are you talking to?" she asked.

"Him! Over there! Don't you see him?" he cried, pointing towards the entrance to a small alley just behind her.

Buffy turned around once more, but there was no one there.

~o~

Buffy burst into the bookstore a short while later. She'd been forced to hang around on the street until the police had arrived to arrest the teenage boy, who had sputtered nonsense about his invisible accomplice until they shoved him into the backseat of their patrol car. After giving her statement, she discovered she was already a half an hour late for class, and decided against going. Speaking to Giles seemed of the utmost importance now.

"Buffy? You're here early today." Giles greeted her, taking his nose out of the large book he was pouring over at the table.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." she replied.

Giles simply stared at her, blinking.

"Hamlet?" she elaborated.

"Yes, I'm well aware... I'm sorry, I got caught up thinking how strange it is to hear you make literary references." he explained finally.

She narrowed her eyes at him before crossing towards the table, "Now's not the time for making funnies Giles, there's something weird going on in town, it's got my Slayer-sense going haywire."

"Oh?" Giles urged, and Buffy began to re-tell of her father's bizarre behaviour, and the frantic ramblings of the teenaged robber mere moments ago.

"Hmmm, yes, that is a rather strange coincidence," he agreed, "However, there's no indication that it's anything paranormal, really, the boy could have merely been on drugs, or perhaps mentally unstable..."

"And my Dad?" Buffy asked, an eyebrow raised.

Giles paused, "Yes... um... that is somewhat bizarre. Are you certain he wasn't on the phone?"

"Positive. Plus he kept glancing to the corner, as if someone were standing there... Giles, what if The First is, I don't know, expanding its targets?"

"What purpose would that serve?" Giles inquired, rising to scan the books on the shelves behind him.

"To make life difficult for me?" she wondered, "I don't know! It's pure evil! Maybe It's just trying to have some fun on the side while It torments Faith and me."

Giles turned back around to study her. He was sure were her Father not involved, she would be less concerned about the reasons behind the adolescent boy's crime-spree. "I'll look into it Buffy," he agreed, she had a lot on her plate at the moment, he figured he could at least humour her for the day and look into this. It wouldn't do anyone any good to have her distracted and worried about her family at a time like this, "You have class today, no?"

With a sigh, Buffy adjusted her book bag on her shoulder, "Yeah... thanks Giles, I'll stop in before patrol, like usual." she answered, before turning turning to leave.

Removing the large handkerchief from his pocket, Giles paused to clean his glasses before turning back to the shelves and shelves of books behind him. He would have to admit, he was somewhat thankful for the sudden change in research topics, information on the Cruoris was scarce, and what he had found was proving to be rather discouraging. There didn't seem to be any written accounts of one ever being defeated, something that worried Giles greatly. If they were to rely on solely Buffy, Faith and Spike to battle them all, they would need a weakness. Something that could put them at an advantage against these merciless monsters. He pushed his worries out of his mind as he placed his glasses back onto his nose, and began once more to browse the titles. Stumbling upon a weathered volume titled Spectres and Other Apparitions, he pulled it off the shelf, and settled down to begin reading.

~o~

Patricia Barnes careened down the street at full speed, her bleach-blond hair flying wildly in the wind, mascara streaming down her cheeks. Normally, she wouldn't be caught dead in public in such an unkempt state, but today she didn't care. She was sure her husband, the esteemed lawyer Kenneth Barnes, would scold her for pushing the flashy red Porscha to such limits, but to hell with him, she wasn't about to let him make a fool of her anymore. An ironic laugh erupted from her lips, and the gaudy diamond tennis bracelet wrapped around her wrist glinted in the sunlight as she brought her hand up to wipe the tears from one of her eyes, smearing more mascara across her already blackened cheeks. The tall, slender figure reclining sensually in the passenger seat frowned at her sympathetically, "Don't be upset, Patricia, he'll know what kind of a mistake he's made soon enough." she soothed, her voice was hypnotic, just as sensual as the rest of her.

Patricia cast a glance at the woman; half her age, and at least twice as beautiful as she was, and she felt her skin crawl. All she had wanted to do today was spend another mindless afternoon at the Spa. That was, of course, one of the many luxuries of marrying rich; spa trips, shopping sprees, never having to lift a finger around the house. All she had to do in return was keep herself looking like the trophy wife she had been when Kenneth had asked her to marry him twenty years ago, and she had. Her blood boiled as she thought of all the time she had wasted being tortured by personal trainers at the gym, and the painful plastic surgeries she'd undergone to keep her youthful appearance, the spray-tans, the bi-monthly trips to the salon to get her roots touched up, and the scabs that would consequently peel off her scalp in the shower from the peroxide eating away at her flesh. All these things she'd done for him, to please him, and yet it wasn't enough. He still felt the need to stray.

She'd known for years that he was unfaithful, and instead of confronting him about it, she just tried harder; lost more weight, got larger breasts, anything, but it never stopped. Finally, about five years ago she'd had enough, and threatening to divorce him and ruin him both publicly and financially, something that would be devastating in such a small, tight-knit town like Braebrook, he promised he would stop. She had thought it was the end of it, until just a half an hour earlier, when the woman now sitting at her side had mysteriously appeared at the end of their driveway.

Patricia had just exited the house, dressed to the nines, hair done, dripping with expensive jewelry, and her designer handbag slung carelessly off her arm. Crossing to her Porscha, a recent gift from her husband, as though she were walking the catwalk at a fashion show, she was interrupted by a voice calling her name. Turning to the end of the driveway, she discovered a young woman in her twenties who looked like she had just stepped off a runway. She was tall and slender, her facial features perfectly proportioned and her skin smooth and flawless. Her long, thick hair shone like spun gold in the sun it was so healthy.

"Yes?" Patricia replied, removing her oversized sunglasses to look the young woman up and down with slight disdain.

"I'm really sorry to bother you, but we need to talk." she'd answered, stepping a bit closer.

The young woman had gone on confess of how she'd been having an affair for months with Kenneth, that he'd claimed she was the love of his life, that he would leave his wife for her – and yet, he never did. She said she'd been patient, thinking it was just hard for him to end such a long marriage, that he must be very fond of Patricia, but she'd just walked by a small cafe on main street and spotted him inside with another woman, and they looked "rather close" as she'd put it, as tears welled up in her sparkling, long-eyelashed, eyes. "He's really just a dog! I wonder now how many other women he told the same story to!" she wept.

Patricia fumed. Kenneth had left early that morning claiming to be meeting with someone from a large Firm in L.A., they had been begging him to join their Firm for the last year, and he was finally thinking of accepting their offer. Patricia had been over the moon, it would have been wonderful to move to the big city, to rub elbows with everyone who was anyone... but that didn't matter now. The woman had told her if they hurried, they could make it to the cafe before he left, that they could confront him, and let everyone know what kind of a man Kenneth Barnes really was. However, once Patricia had climbed behind the wheel of her car, another idea had passed through her mind, one that she had yet to inform her passenger of as she blew through the light facing the small cafe. She would destroy Kenneth Barnes – literally – and she would take all of his damned mistresses down with him. As she sped closer and closer to the small terrace of the cafe, she spotted her husband sitting near the railing, deep in conversation and sipping an espresso. It was then that Patricia's heart stopped in her chest. Sitting across from her husband, was not another young woman, but an older man in an expensive business suit. She turned to look at the young mistress sitting next to her in the car, but found the seat completely empty. Screaming, Patricia slammed on the breaks, but it was too late, and the fiery red sportscar leaped the sidewalk and hurdled towards the cafe.

The last thing Kenneth Barnes saw was his wife's horrified face before the deafening sound of crunching metal and cracking wood echoed through the street.

~o~

Giles lifted his head from the book spread out on the table in front of him, as the sound of screeching tires filled the shop. The sound of a loud crash immediately followed, then a moment of complete silence, before horrified shrieks filled the air. Rising from his seat, he exited his shop, and looked around. Just a few blocks away, he saw a crowd begin to form around a small terrace, where a bright red convertible had crashed, demolishing the entire patio. He took a few tentative steps forward, as more people rushed by him to the scene of the accident.

"The driver is still alive! Someone call 9-1-1!" Giles heard someone shout, and he turned around and ran back into the bookstore to do just that.

~o~

Just after sundown, once she'd finished her long day of classes, Buffy trudged into the bookstore. Cramming the majority of her classes into one day, in order to give herself more time to train and help with research, and really been a terrible idea. All she really wanted to do was take a nap, but now she had to wait for Faith and Spike, and spend hours patrolling.

"What happened at the cafe?" she asked. She was tired, but not too tired to notice the yellow police tape surrounding the now-demolished cafe patio not too far down the street.

"You didn't hear?" Olly asked, a scandalous smile spread across his face.

"Olly, someone died, you're being terrible!" Lily scolded.

Buffy frowned, "Someone died?" she asked.

"You know Kenneth Barnes?" Olly asked.

"Yeah, he's the Divorce Lawyer that your Mom hired, wasn't he?"

Olly nodded, "Best lawyer in town, took my Dad to the cleaners..." he agreed ruefully.

"He's dead?" Buffy asked.

"Yeah... his wife ran him over with her car..." Lily explained, her tone of voice a little more sorrowful than Olly's.

"She ran him over?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. It was a rather gruesome scene." Giles confirmed, finally looking up from his book.

"But why? I mean, there were always pictures of them at fundraisers in the paper and they looked so happy..." Buffy wondered aloud.

"Well that's the freaky part, apparently when they were pulling her out of the totalled car, she was screaming that he'd been cheating on her." Olly said.

Buffy looked to Giles for confirmation.

"Yes, it's true." Giles said, "After I called for an ambulance I went back outside, as she was regaining consciousness she kept mentioning that his mistress was in the car with her... but there was no one there."

Buffy's expression fell, "She was talking about a woman that no one could see?"

Giles nodded solemnly, "I've been researching what you asked me for the rest of the day, I believe you may have been right to suspect something."

"We've been helping since we got out of class." Lily added.

The bell at the door chimed, and Buffy turned to see Willow strolling through the door, a bottle covered in a paper bag clutched in her hand, and a bewildered expression on her face.

"Willow... have a hard day?" Olly joked, gesturing towards the bottle.

Her face began to turn red, "I just took this from a thirteen year old... thirteen!" she cried in disbelief, "He was just walking down the street, drinking! And then he had the gall to say the store clerk just gave it to him! Can you believe it?" she slammed the bottle down on the table, and fell into a chair with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Okay... robbers, crazy wives running down their husbands, pre-teens drinking free booze in the streets... I think it's safe to say something strange is going on, Giles." Buffy said.

"Yes, I think I'm inclined to agree." Giles replied.

"Maybe everyone in Braebrook is just tired of acting so perfect all the time, they're finally letting their true colours show through!" Olly joked. No one laughed, "Tough crowd..."

"It has to be The First." Buffy stressed.

"But why?" Willow asked.

"I really couldn't say..." Giles mused, "Perhaps we should look for other accounts of towns beginning to act, erm, debaucherous? See if anything lines up?"

"Actually," Lily interrupted, "I might have a theory."

Giles turned to the young girl, a quizzical expression on his face, "Really?"

She nodded enthusiastically, "Well, The First is trying to get rid of Buffy, right...? Sorry Buffy..." she whispered.

"Don't be," Buffy answered.

"And we're sitting on top of a Hellmouth, right?" Lily continued.

Giles nodded thoughtfully as Lily continued, "Yes, go on..."

"Well, what if The First wanted to open the Hellmouth in order to get to Buffy and Faith?"

"But if that were the case, why would it be going after the general population?" Willow asked.

"My guess?" Buffy added, "To make Braebrook such a horrible place that Faith and I won't even want to try and save it. Then It has a home for all Its lovely new demon friends."

"I think you might very well have reason," Giles agreed, "We should continue working with this theory and begin monitoring the town for more incidents like the ones today. Willow, perhaps you could try to find a spell of some sort, something that could potentially block The Firsts influence?"

"I'll see what I can find." Willow replied.

"You'll be able to stop It, won't you?" Lily asked Buffy.

"I think It's hoping I'll be gone by the time It's finished."

Everyone in the room wore dark expressions, it was overwhelming enough knowing that they may fall prey to The First's mind games, but knowing that it was now planning on preying on all of Braebrook seemed like a daunting thing to overcome.

"I don't wish to worry you Buffy, but if you think your Father was seeing things this morning..." Giles said.

"You read my mind Giles," Buffy answered, "I'm gonna go home and check on him, tell Faith and Spike to patrol without me tonight!"

And she rushed out the door.

~o~

Buffy stepped into her house quietly, she was hoping that if The First was indeed toying with her Father, that maybe she would be able to catch it in the act. She stood silently in the hall a moment, listening. The house was deathly quiet.

"Dad?" she called, but received no answer. His car was in the driveway, so she knew he was home. She wondered if perhaps he was taking a nap, but walking by his bedroom, she found his bed to be empty. It was then that she realized the shower was running in the bathroom, and she breathed a sigh of relief, he simply couldn't hear her over the sound of the running water. She headed towards her bedroom, feeling elated. She'd talk to him after, see what it was exactly that had been bothering him last night and this morning. She froze when she reached her bedroom door, and noticed that the door to the bathroom was wide open. Turning to peer inside, her blood ran cold. Nothing, not even twenty years of Slaying, could have prepared her for the sight she was met with. She felt warm and cold at the same time, her heart felt like it was beating in her throat, and her body began to tremor slightly.

"Daddy?"

"But scarecrow, I'm still alive,
Who sewed me back together to watch the whole world writhe?"
- "Live at the Apocalypse Cabaret" by the Blood Brothers

~o~