Chapter 19: Phases
Buffy
Ms. Calendar tried to buy forgiveness for not telling them that she was a member of the clan that had cursed Angel with a soul who had been sent to keep tabs on him and make sure he suffered with a vampire uninviting spell. Buffy was still mad at her, but the uninvite spell did make everyone feel safer, especially after Willow's fish were killed.
Giles was worried about dead fish being the only sign they had seen of Angelus for more than two days. Two days. It was like he expected half the town to wake up dead.
Somehow Buffy had managed to avoid the super awkward sex talk with Mom. That may have been because they were all busy running around doing research and damage control for Angelus being back, but Buffy was happy to have that conversation put off for as long as possible. It was too embarrassing to even think about.
Buffy twirled the stake in her hand and looked down at the fresh grave she was waiting for a shiny new vampire to rise from. See, that was the bad thing about gravesitting, it gave her too much time to think. If she had to wait much longer she'd be listing reasons for why Angelus being on the loose was her fault again, and Lucy had promised that if she kept doing that she'd...well, she hadn't made a specific threat but she had said that Buffy would regret it.
The soil of the grave shifted. Buffy got into a fighting stance as a hand broke through. The hand clawed at the ground and the vampire it belonged to pulled itself halfway out of its grave. The vampire growled when it saw Buffy.
"You Buffy?" it asked.
"Last time I checked," Buffy replied. She didn't have a clear shot at the vampire's heart yet. How much longer was it going to take to dig itself out?
The vampire pulled its other arm free of the grave. "Angelus has a message for you."
Buffy froze. Faster than she would have expected for a baby vampire, the vampire hauled itself fully out of its grave and lunged at her. The vampire had been a short-haired woman who had been buried in a white dress that was now nearly black with dirt. Buffy dodged her first clumsy attack. The vampire growled.
"You know what they say about not killing the messenger?" Buffy said. She dodged a punch, stepped inside the vampire's guard and drove her stake into the vampire's heart. "Does it still apply if you're already dead?"
The vampire burst into a cloud of ashes with a shriek. Buffy dusted flakes of the vampireized corpse of Mary Brandon out of her hair. She hoped that the girl's family didn't change their mind and want to have her cremated.
Angelus had killed that girl. He'd given her a message and sired her, knowing that Buffy and her friends were the only people in town hunting vampires. For a second Buffy wished that she'd let the vampire keep talking. That message could have been important. Giles would definitely be mad at her for missing it.
After a moment, Buffy shrugged and walked away from the pile of ashes that was slowly being blown away by the wind. Angelus probably just wanted to taunt her. According to Giles that was a big part of his MO along with killing puppies.
She reported the messenger to Giles the next morning. As expected, Giles wasn't happy. He had his glasses in his hand before she even finished talking.
"You couldn't have waited to get what may have been important information before slaying her?" Giles grumbled and put his thoroughly cleaned glasses back on.
"Key words: may have," Buffy said. "It was probably 'I'm going to kill you, grr, argh' or something like that."
Giles sighed. "Unfortunately, we will never know."
The library doors swung open. Ms. Calendar and a long-faced man wearing a suit that looked like it belonged to a sheriff in an old Western walked in. The man was scowling, which made his face look even longer.
"Ms. Calendar," Giles said, even more stiffly than with his usual Britishness.
"Mr. Giles." Ms. Calendar nodded towards the sheriff suit man. "This is my uncle Enyos. He can help us with defeating Angelus. He knows a lot more about Angel's curse than I do."
"Moment of perfect happiness, soul goes poof." Buffy crossed her arms. "How much more is there?"
Enyos sputtered. "That curse was a very powerful, very complicated piece of magic, young lady!"
Buffy shrugged and turned to Giles. "Do we need them?"
Giles looked like he'd bitten into a lemon. "More sources would be...helpful."
Oh phooey. Buffy was hoping that he'd say they'd be fine on their own.
Enyos looked even more annoyed than Giles. He turned to Ms. Calendar and said something harsh in a language that Buffy didn't know. Ms. Calendar responded in the same language. Giles took off his glasses and began cleaning them.
Buffy bolted from the library when the bell rang, leaving the three adults standing in an awkward circle. She almost expected to see them still standing there when she and Willow went back at lunch. Instead, Giles and Enyos were sitting at the table with several piles of books and Ms. Calendar was nowhere to be seen, probably because she was in her classroom.
"Anything new, Giles?" Willow asked.
Giles looked up from the multiple books open in front of him. He blinked at Buffy and Willow. He seemed surprised to see them. "Ah, not very much I'm afraid. How long have you two been standing there?"
"Just got here." Buffy walked over to the table and looked over Giles's shoulder. "That's not Latin."
"No it is not." Giles added something about cherries to the notes he was taking. "Detailed sources on Angelus and the Kalderash tend to be written in Vlax Romani. Enyos is of course much better at translating them then I am."
Enyos didn't respond to Giles's inclusion of him in the conversation. His eyes were fixed on the one book, scroll actually, on the table in front of him.
Willow walked over to the other side of the table and picked up one of the unopened books. "Are all of these about Angel's curse?"
Giles shook his head. "Most are about Angelus or the Scourge of Europe in general. I've been looking to see if I can find any other patterns Angelus may have had."
"I can do that," Willow said. "That way you can focus on the Romani stuff that the rest of us can't read."
"That would be very helpful, Willow. Thank you." Giles looked back down at his books. "Don't stay here too late; you need to get home before sunset."
"It's lunchtime, Giles, not after school," Buffy said.
Giles blinked and turned to the clock. "So it is. Perhaps we might break for lunch?"
The question was for Enyos, who grumbled in response. Talkative guy, wasn't he?
Willow was already working on the non-curse related books. Buffy thought about trying to get her to stop but decided that it would be easier to just make sure that Willow and Giles ate. Enyos was taking bites of a granola bar that he'd taken out of his jacket, so Buffy didn't have to worry about him.
That was pretty much how the rest of the week went. Patrol, then school, then research (usually done by Giles, Willow and Enyos). Sometimes Lucy would help Willow, who was making a timeline of all Angelus's recorded actions, but once they started finding stuff from the 1860s onward Lucy gave up on that research. Buffy thought that her reason was probably the same as why Buffy had refused to do any Angelus research in the first place.
Of course, Xander was glad to help Willow with her timeline.
Mom stole Buffy and Lucy from the semi-permanent research party on Saturday. She said that they needed a break and took them to the mall for a Mom-sponsored shopping trip. They didn't actually end up buying anything, just spent the whole morning modelling outfits, admiring jewellery and trying out perfumes. It was a lot of fun. And if Buffy found herself judging necklaces by if they could be used as garrotes and outfits by how well someone could fight in them, well, that was her business.
Willow called Buffy on Saturday afternoon. She'd been babbling for more than a minute before Buffy had any idea what she was talking about.
"Xander and Cordelia were kissing a janitor?"
"What? No! They were kissing each other! Lips were touching and hands were...stuff!" There was a crash that sounded like Willow dropping the phone. She spoke again after a few seconds, sounding as frantic as she was before the crash. "I wanted to hide because Giles and Ms. Calendar were talking and I didn't want to interrupt so I went into a janitor's closet and Xander and Cordelia were there, kissing! With lips and hands and noises that were really uncomfortable to be in close quarters with!"
Buffy covered the mouthpiece of the phone with her hand. "Lucy?"
Lucy stuck her head into Buffy's room. She was holding one hand behind her back. "Yeah?"
"Did you know that Xander and Cordelia were making with the smoochies?"
"Well, yeah." Lucy wrinkled her nose. "Wasn't it obvious?"
Buffy raised her eyebrows. "Not really, no." At least, not to people who couldn't read minds.
Lucy shrugged and turned around to go back to her own room, giving Buffy a good view of the one-handed battle axe she was carrying. She was gone before Buffy could ask what that was about.
Willow was still babbling. Buffy knew better than to wait for her to pause to breathe, so she spoke over her in the microscopic pause between Willow's words. "Willow! You're over Xander, right?"
Willow stopped in the middle of a sentence. "Well, yeah. I'm not jealous. But Xander has hated Cordelia since forever. It's majorly weird."
Buffy thought that it was weird too. Total wigfest. One of them had to be the rational one though, and it wasn't going to be Willow.
It took almost an hour for her to get Willow to calm down. As she hung up the phone the thought that this was stuff normal teenagers talked about crossed her mind. That was really weird. Buffy couldn't remember the last time she'd talked with Willow without mentioning anything Hellmouthy. Well, they had mentioned that Cordelia wasn't evil but that was something a normal teenager would say and there hadn't been one word about demons.
It was Sunday night when Enyos was killed. He'd been staying in a real hotel, not one of the sleazy motels that were basically vampire buffets. Giles found him. He'd gone to the hotel when Enyos didn't show up at the library on Monday morning. Buffy's mom called the school to get her out of class so that she could inspect the scene with Giles before they called the police. Mom probably wasn't happy about excusing Buffy to go see a body, but she'd still done it. She was definitely getting used to the Slayer thing.
Enyos body was seated on the chair at the desk in his room. He had been posed with a pen in his hand and a blood soaked piece of paper in front of him. Aside from the paper, the desk was empty. There was more blood on the wall above the desk. It had been used to write a message:
WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
"Angelus did this." Buffy was absolutely certain of that.
"Enyos's books have been taken." Giles kept reaching up to his glasses like he wanted to take them off and start cleaning them. "His notes are also gone."
Angelus and anyone else he might have brought with him had to have taken them. Buffy asked Giles if that was all of their research.
"Not all of it, no. I kept most of it in my home and Willow has her own notes as well. However, Enyos had the majority of our research on the ensoulment curse." Giles rubbed his forehead and got up from looking under the bed. "Look for anything that may have been left behind."
Buffy looked. She found nothing. The thieves had been thorough. Every scrap of paper was gone except for the one purposefully left on the desk.
"Blast." Giles gave in and took off his glasses. He wiped each lens once before putting them back on. "We had best inform the authorities. Perhaps they will find something we missed."
Buffy snorted. That was possible but very, very unlikely. Sunnydale cops weren't the brightest bunch when it came to murder investigations.
They got back to school at the start of lunch. Willow, Xander, Oz, Cordelia and Lucy were waiting in the library. Giles greeted them before leaving to look for Ms. Calendar.
"What happened?" Willow asked. She was very carefully not looking at Cordelia even though Cordelia was sitting across the table from her.
Buffy sat down next to Willow. "Enyos is dead. We think Angelus did it."
"Isn't that the guy who was doing pretty much all your research?" Cordelia asked.
Xander crossed his arms. "Not all our research. Just the most important research."
Cordelia collapsed against the back of her chair. "Fantastic."
"All of Enyos's notes are gone too." Buffy looked over at Lucy. "Is Drusilla happy or something?"
Lucy scowled down at the table. "Drusilla is asleep. I'd like her to stay like that because, you know, it's nice to be alone in my own head."
"What are you talking about?" Cordelia asked. "Wait. Are you like a seer or something? I totally missed that memo."
Xander and Willow, mostly Willow, explained the whole Drusilla psychic link thing to Cordelia. While they were doing that, Buffy tried to think of ways they could get Enyos's books and notes back. All of her plans seemed to boil down to storming the factory and taking them back by force, which she knew wouldn't work. She was the only one who could fight Angelus head on and she...didn't want to. The thought made her feel all oogy inside. Going into a fight like that would get her dead, and she really liked not being dead.
"Are we going to actually do something?" Lucy asked. "How much did we lose?"
Buffy repeated what Giles had said about Enyos's research. Lucy swore under her breath.
"So you guys can't get Angel's soul back," Cordelia said. "What's plan B?"
Xander shrugged. "Dead Boy dies. Again."
Buffy and Willow immediately rejected that plan. Loudly. With emphases.
Xander shrank back with his hands held up in surrender. "Okay, okay. Is there any good news we can work with?"
"Good news!" Giles said as he walked into the library. "Ms. Calendar says that Enyos most likely destroyed his notes before they could be taken."
Willow sat straight up. "Oh! So, at best, they only have his books, which they're not going to be able to read."
They had a moment to process that before Lucy burst their bubble. "Dalton will be able to read them. He's good at that stuff. I don't think he knows the language, so it'll take maybe a month."
That meant that they had a month to come up with a plan. They could do that, Buffy knew they could. They'd done more with less.
They kept researching. Buffy kept training. She imagined what it would be like to kill Angelus, to drive a stake through his heart and watch him turn to dust. She dreamed about killing him and woke up crying. She couldn't go back to sleep after that.
Xander and Cordelia came into the library while Buffy was training on Tuesday morning in a panic. They were talking over each other, but Buffy was able to piece together something about being attacked by a demon that looked like Bigfoot. That was weird because, from what she'd heard Lucy talking about with Mom, Bigfoot was the definition of a gentle giant. Also, Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) lived a lot further north.
"It sounds as if you may have encountered a werewolf," Giles said in a very musing way once Xander and Cordelia had finished talking.
Xander gestured with both hands, pointing at Giles. "This was not an encounter. This was a very frightening attack."
Cordelia frowned. "Why would a guy who turns into a dog once a month want to attack us? I mean, me I understand, guys always go for me, but Xander's so nonthreatening."
"Like I didn't get told that enough," Xander muttered.
Giles took off the pads and helmet he'd been wearing to help Buffy train and went to his books. "Where exactly did this attack occur?"
Xander coughed.
"What was that?" Giles asked.
"Lovers' Lane," Cordelia said. "You know, in the woods up on that cliff. You can see the whole town from there."
Giles picked out a book and leafed through it. The three of them stood and watched.
"That would be congruent with a werewolf," Giles said slowly. "There were an unusual number of animals killed last night."
"But no one was hurt?" That wasn't really a question. Buffy knew that if there had been any odd human deaths or dismemberments then Giles would have already told her.
"So we've got a wolf boy running around." Xander clapped his hands together. "We can't kill him, can we? I mean, he's human twenty-nine days out of thirty."
"Twenty-seven days out of thirty," Giles corrected. "A werewolf changes form the nights before and after the full moon as well as during the full moon. We will have to identify him and contain him for the next two nights."
"Or her." Buffy shrugged when the others looked at her. "Could be a wolf girl."
"Yes. Quite." Giles frowned. "They could conceivably be any person in Sunnydale."
Well, they could rule out all the vampires and other demons. Cordelia and Xander were out too. Buffy was pretty sure she hadn't been running around all furry. When they asked, Giles said that he had been at home all night and nothing in his house was destroyed, so it couldn't be him. That left about thirty thousand possible werewolves.
The bell for first period rang. Giles told them to come back at lunch with all the others, including the Dingoes. Buffy and Xander ran to their first class. Cordelia didn't run because she could get away with being fashionably late. Buffy wanted to hate her for that, she really did, but Cordila was dating Xander now and hating her for being the queen bee seemed petty. It sucked.
They crowded into the library at lunch. After filling Willow and the Dingoes in on the werewolf situation, Giles asked for ideas.
"Set a trap," Sam, not the drummer, the other guy who wasn't Oz or Devon, suggested.
"With what?" Devon asked. Sam shrugged.
Buffy thought that a trap wasn't a bad idea, but Devon was right. Even Giles didn't know what they'd bait it with. Meat? Live goats? Virgins? That stuff was all over Sunnydale, no way they'd get one werewolf to come to them when it had the whole town to eat.
Lucy began to pace next to the checkout counter. She was silent but when she turned around Buffy could see that she was frowning, deep in thought.
"We could stake out Lovers' Lane," Buffy said. "And the Bronze and any other places where the werewolf might show up."
"But we don't have any weapons that won't, you know, kill," Willow said. "How are we going to capture a werewolf without any of us getting bitten or scratched and turned into werewolves?"
"Oh!" Xander held up his hand. "I'm having an idea. Tranq guns. We knock the wolf person out from a distance."
Everyone thought that sounded like a good idea. The only problem would be getting tranquilizer guns.
"I can get some for us," Xander said. "But don't ask where I got them."
They were probably going to be stolen. Hopefully Xander wouldn't get caught. Buffy wasn't sure about their abilities to break him out of jail.
Buffy caught up with Lucy after the meeting broke up. "Hey, what were you thinking about so hard back there?"
Lucy looked around and leaned closer to Buffy. "I thought that I might be able to figure out who the werewolf is from their thoughts, but I can't figure out how to do that without...losing myself."
"Oh," Buffy said. "Well, it's good that you thought about it, right? I mean, if you could have helped then that would have been good."
"I guess so." Lucy got a distant look in her eyes. "But I don't feel much like jumping off of a building."
Lucy walked away before Buffy could ask her what the hell she was talking about. Buffy watched her disappear into the crowd before shaking her head and going off to her next class. Werewolf first, then heart-to-hearts about people dying. At least, Buffy hoped it was other people that Lucy was talking about. It had to be other people with such an oddly specific example.
Buffy knew that she was still off balance when she totally missed Willow's warning and slammed Larry to the floor during self-defence in gym class. She flipped him over her shoulder and Larry got the wind knocked out of him. If there hadn't been mats on the floor she'd have given him a concussion.
"Oops," Buffy said.
"You okay, Larry?" their teacher, who was also the football coach, asked.
Larry struggled to breathe, but he gave Coach Hass a thumbs-up. Then, once he was able to get to his feet, he practically roared at Buffy before stomping to the other side of the gym.
Xander walked over to Buffy. "So, I heard Larry talking earlier," he said in a low voice. "Guess who got bitten by a 'dog' last week? I'm liking Larry for our wolf boy."
Buffy looked over at Larry, who was flirting aggressively with another girl in the class. "Talk to him. See what you can find out."
"Aye, aye captain." Xander grinned.
They gathered in the library a few hours before sunset. Xander had gotten three dart guns and fifty tranquilizer darts. As promised, none of them asked where he'd gotten them.
"So, who gets the guns?" Devon asked. "We're not all going out looking for a werewolf, right?"
"I'm not going." Cordelia crossed her arms. "No way am I going to risk getting turned into a werewolf. That can't be good for your job prospects."
Soul raised his hand hesitantly. "If we're opting out, I'm not much of a fighter."
"Buffy and I can shoot," Xander said. "How about you, G-man?"
Giles grimaced. "I must admit I'm not overly confident about my abilities, but I should be able to muddle through."
"I can shoot," Lucy said. The rest of them looked at her and she shrugged. "Halloween."
Buffy thought for a moment. "Let's do teams of two. Giles, you're with me. Xander and Willow can work together and Lucy..."
"Lucy and I can team up," Sam said. "I've done some martial arts so I won't be too much of a weak link."
"Okay." Buffy looked at the people who wouldn't be patrolling. "Soul, Devon, Oz, you guys okay to stay here?"
Giles cleared his throat. "Buffy, with Angelus at large..."
"We'll hole up at home," Devon said. "Call us if you need backup."
Cordelia sighed. "And I guess I can be backup too. When did I become one of your Slayerettes?"
Buffy and Willow divided up the town for the three teams. Buffy and Giles got the woods and the rest of the area around Lovers' Lane, where they already knew the werewolf had been. Lucy and Sam took downtown, near the Bronze and some other clubs that would attract the werewolf because of all the raging hormones. According to Giles there was a pretty good chance that the werewolf wouldn't end up there because of all the demons that frequented the area, but they had to cover their bases. Lucy and Sam would probably spend most of the night staking vampires. Xander and Willow got the last chunk of town around the UC Sunnydale campus. Same deal with the hormones, plus a wooded area and fewer demons.
"We'll meet back here after sunrise," Giles said. "If anyone catches the werewolf, the book cage will be strong enough to hold them. I'll leave the keys under the counter."
Buffy and Giles got nothing from their trek through the woods but a run in with a werewolf hunter (Buffy knocked him unconscious and left him up a tree) and a whole lot of gossip about who was cheating on their boyfriend/girlfriend with who. Getting into a fight with a group of vampires on the way back to school made Buffy feel a little bit better about coming up empty, even if the vampires did make it easy by being drunk enough to stay out so close to sunrise.
When they got back to the library, Xander and Willow were already there watching the unconscious furry creature they had locked in the book cage. Xander was cradling his dart gun with Soldier Booth's readiness.
"You got it?" Buffy exclaimed.
"Yup!" Willow grinned. "He was eating a deer in the woods near UCS."
"'He'?" Buffy asked. Willow blushed.
"Uh, yeah." Xander was as red as Willow. "Definitely a he, probably not Larry."
Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Why not Larry?"
More blood rushed to Xander's cheeks. "I talked to him. Trust me on this one."
Lucy and Sam came into the library. "Lots of vampires," Sam said. "No werewolf. Oh, that's the werewolf, isn't it?"
Buffy and Willow nodded. "Yup."
"He's waking up," Xander said. "I'm kind of impressed one dart lasted that long. Maybe I picked up the extra strength."
Giles looked at the clock. "He should be reverting to his human form any minute now."
Almost exactly a minute later, Buffy heard cracking sounds coming from the book cage. She winched. She knew exactly what those sounds came from. Their werewolf's bones were breaking and shifting around. She guessed that that was how the transformation was physically able to happen. She hoped that the werewolf was still mostly unconscious. She wouldn't want anyone to be awake through that.
The werewolf turned back into a human. A very naked human. Buffy quickly averted her eyes, but not before she caught a glimpse of short, purple hair.
"Oh," Oz said. "This could be an issue."
They got Oz clothes. Xander had some extras that he kept at the library for nights when the demon slaying got really messy. His shorts were a bit big on Oz, but Sam gave up one of the three belts he was wearing and Oz made it work.
"So," Sam said once they were settled around the table, "you're a werewolf, huh?"
Oz shrugged. "Seems so."
"Huh." Sam rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That could be good for branding."
"There's a werewolf hunter in town," Buffy said. "You need to keep your head down, Oz. He's horrible."
Giles explained what the werewolf hunter Cain had said about skinning werewolves alive. Everyone looked as sick as Buffy felt.
"Oz can come here tomorrow night," Giles said. "A few of us can keep an eye on him and give him protection from Cain."
Oz agreed and Willow and Xander volunteered to stay with him and Giles. Lucy asked what Cain looked like so the rest of them would know if they saw him. Buffy describe him, trying to picture him clearly in her head in case Lucy was doing her mind reading thing. Even if she wasn't, the necklace of werewolf teeth would be a pretty big clue to who the guy was.
"So are you guys going to focus on those books that got stolen now?" Sam asked. "Since Oz is going to be here and not killing people."
"We should." Giles frowned. "Though I'm afraid we've come up against something of a wall."
"We could look around the factory during the day," Lucy said slowly. "But there's no guarantee everyone will be asleep." She yawned. "Speaking of, we have school today."
"Yes, all of you should go home and sleep." Giles took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I will—"
Buffy interrupted him. "Also go home and get some sleep. We've talked about this Giles."
Giles cracked a sheepish smile. "We have, haven't we? Very well, we will reconvene at lunchtime. Go get some rest."
Oz walked home with Buffy and Lucy. He was pensive. Neither of the girls spoke. Buffy didn't want to interrupt him. They walked to Oz's house first, Buffy and Lucy closing ranks around him without a word. Oz said goodnight, though night was long over, and went inside.
Buffy didn't say anything until they were almost back at their house. "What you said earlier about jumping off a roof," she started.
Lucy flinched like Buffy had hit her. "Could we talk about that when we're not both about to pass out?"
Buffy knew deflection when she saw it, but she put an arm around Lucy and gave her a hug. "Sure."
"Thanks." Lucy smiled. "So, vampires, werewolves, mummies, witches. What's next?"
Buffy shrugged. "I try not to think about it." Sometimes that was the best way to survive the Hellmouth.