ACT TWO

EXT. CHURCH - NIGHT

We come in where we left off. BUFFY and GRILLANDUS are squaring off. XANDER has moved to the background, but has his stake in hand. Buffy, however, has yet to draw hers. The night is now completely quiet, and the words that follow seem to be breaking the serenity of the evening.

BUFFY
Nice outfit. You the role-playing
type?

GRILLANDUS
My concern is not with you,
daughter.
(re: Xander)
Neither of you.
Leave this place.

BUFFY
I don't think so.
Maybe you don't get it.
I'm Buffy. The Slayer.

GRILLANDUS
A Slayer. How intriguing.

BUFFY
Most vamps find it more
frightening than intriguing.

GRILLANDUS
I should think so.
Yet I have precious
little time to converse with you.
Leave this place, lest you interfere
with the Lord's work.

BUFFY
What, you really think you're
a priest? Hunting near a
church, wearing a priest's garb.
Wearing a... cross?

The sight of the cross finally registers, and she slips off her game just a little.

GRILLANDUS
I work in the name Christ our
Lord, to rid this land of all servants
of Satan. Women who chant and
charm. Those who make
a pact with the Devil shall
face death at the stake.

XANDER
Funny, that's what you're facing.
Just a different kind of stake.
This one being of the sharp, pointy
variety as opposed to the "get tied to
it and burn" type.

GRILLANDUS
Do not interfere, boy.
(re: Buffy)
Nor you, Slayer.
These women who have betrayed
their faith - these witches who
commune with the Devil - they
are my only concern.
Those who invoke demons
shall be made repentant.

XANDER
You do know you're a vampire, right?

GRILLANDUS
You try my patience.

BUFFY
And the poor saps who've been
turning up, oh, say, dead here
so that you can feed? Did
they try your patience?
Or were they just extra tasty?
(sarcastically)
Oh, wait! Maybe they were witches!

GRILLANDUS
The Lord's work demands sacrifice.

BUFFY
So does the Slayer's.
Looks like you just volunteered.

Buffy springs into action with these words. A simple routine - SPIN KICK, LAND, JAB, JAB, a JUMP KICK high to Grillandus' chest to knock him back. Only he doesn't make a sound, doesn't fall back, doesn't even register that the blows have hit him - but they did, each and every one.

GRILLANDUS
You fight the wrong battles,
Slayer.

BUFFY
Oh, I doubt that.

GRILLANDUS
I am God's soldier.
His hand in the world.

BUFFY
You're an abomination.

GRILLANDUS
I have wasted enough time with you,
daughter. See that you do
not interfere further. Those
who impede the work of the
Lord are little better than the
witches themselves.

And with this he backs off slowly, into the night. Buffy, wary from her lack of success in her first shot at him, decides to hold back. Instead she watches Grillandus fade into the shadows.

INT. MAGIC BOX - DAY

It's the next morning, and we're at the Magic Box. For the sake of argument, lets say it's a weekend - making our cast of characters much more accessible. BUFFY, TARA, DAWN, XANDER, and GILES are present. We open on Giles, who is apparently having breakfast - sipping COFFEE, chewing on a PASTRY of some sort. It's NOT a croissant.

GILES
This is most troubling.

Puts down his coffee.

BUFFY
Not enough sugar?

Buffy's decked out in black pants and a light, airy looking sweater deal. She makes herself look ever the more servile by asking this question, and it's difficult to tell whether she's acting like a doting parent or a devoted daughter to Giles at this point.

GILES
I meant your encounter last night.

BUFFY
Think I made that clear.
Troubling doesn't begin to
cover it.

GILES
You said he wore a cross? I don't
see how that's possible. It would be
painful even for a brief amount
of time.

TARA
What if it was... charmed somehow?
To reduce its effect on Vampires?

GILES
That would seem to contradict
his stance regarding magic.
If he is for some reason hunting
witches, he likely takes the
traditional - and when I say
traditional I mean ancient - view
that all magic stems from
Satan.

XANDER
Light bulb!

DAWN
Uhh...

XANDER
Something just came to me...

BUFFY
I think I got the same light.

XANDER
Father LeVack... at the Church.
He went into this
big spiel about witches
at work in Sunnydale.
About all witches being evil...
(Off Tara, who scoffs at this)
Which, of course, is ridiculous.

BUFFY
And something about
(botches it)
male-fish-ium

TARA
Maleficium.

GILES
Malevolent magic.
Yes. In medieval times
the Church - Catholic, Protestant,
they both hunted - felt that the
witch's magic - maleficium -
stemmed from the Devil as a result
of a pact made with him. They painted all
witches as evil, and, off and on over
several hundred years, hunted them
down, tried them - extracting confessions
through torture, or even just the threat of it.
They managed to put a good number
of innocent women, and more than
a few men, to death.

XANDER
Ok, we all took it in history.
People confessed for fear of torture,
things got out of hand, and it
eventually cleared up, right?

GILES
Yes, but your encounter with this vampire
leads one to wonder...

Giles retreats into his books, and now it's Tara's turn to take over the history lesson.

DAWN
So this Father LeVack... he's in league
with a vampire?

XANDER
Maybe...

BUFFY
We need to find that out.
And we need to know
more about this vamp.

TARA
I'm so glad Willow's not here to hear
this. It's kind of a delicate subject for her.
Witches, burning... us modern witches
have a problem with certain aspects
of history.

DAWN
Where is Willow?
Working on the super-strength spell?

TARA
Checking some stuff out at
the library. Term paper's are due next week.

XANDER
The library!
So that's the happening hangout
these days. Man, Giles was
so ahead of his time. And yet
I'm so behind.

DAWN
You'll catch up.

XANDER
Nah. Every time I think I'm
ahead of the times, it's
just them lapping me.

BUFFY
Getting back to the whacked
out Vampire Priest?

TARA
Well, if he's old... old ways die hard.
Thing is, the Church drove the witch hunts,
but it wasn't just them.

XANDER
Ignorant peasants?

TARA
Ignorant educated people.
Kings, lawyers, doctors - they all
lent credibility to the "evil witch making
a pact with the devil" stereotype.
Special courts were set up
for witch trials. It was usually
secular courts that ran the trials
and did the torturing...

BUFFY
But this guy's definitely a priest.

TARA
And a vampire. Who thinks he's on
a mission from God...

XANDER
What this guy is, is a wacko.

DAWN
I'll second that. He definitely sounds the
wacko type. A wacko priest.

GILES
(entering back into the conversation)
A wacko cleric.

BUFFY
You found him?

GILES
Grillandus, a cleric from the
fourteenth century...

Holds up a book.

XANDER
I knew there was something
about that century abound...

GILES
...who wrote extensively on the
subject of witches and the need
for their elimination. He took a very
hard-line stance - all witches were
evil, and practiced maleficium that would
destroy the fabric of society and the Church
itself.

BUFFY
Sounds like an open mind to me.

GILES
His ideas were fairly common
at the time, but he approached
them with an intensity unmatched before
or since. The writings of Grillandus are suspected
to have influenced later writers, including
King James of Scotland.

BUFFY
What I really want to know - not
that the background isn't spiffy and
interesting - is why he's a vamp,
and why he no fall down when
I give kick.

GILES
Well, he is over six hundred
years old... he was turned - or
I should say, turned himself -
just before the dawn of the fifteenth
century.

XANDER
Turned himself? Am I missing something?

GILES
He captured a vampire - there's no
specifics as to who or how - and in exchange
for his, err, shall we say, after-life, the vampire
turned Grillandus. Grillandus slew his sire upon
rising, and spent the last six hundred years
hunting witches throughout Europe...
Oh my.

TARA
What?

DAWN
That wasn't a happy "Oh my" was
it.

XANDER
They never are.

GILES
Grillandus was known to be
a powerful cleric - one capable
of performing miracles. Had he
not joined the ranks of the undead,
he would have had a chance at
sainthood. His miracles - healing,
levitation, visions - were well documented
by the Watcher's Council. They also
kept close tabs on him over his first four
hundred years - though no slayer managed
to defeat him - in fact none even managed
to face him in combat. The council claims that
he became a driving force behind some
of the most intensive witch hunts, and
sought out and defeated the
most powerful witches - true witches,
not just wrongly accused innocent girls.

TARA
True witches. Will!

At this Tara BOLTS out the door in full flight. The others don't even make it out of their seats before she's gone.

XANDER
Tara!

DAWN
Tara wait!

BUFFY
(calm)
She needs to go.
(re: Giles)
Is that it? Is he here
for Willow?

GILES
I don't see who else it could be.
She's become extremely powerful.
More powerful than anyone
I've ever known. And she...
She has dabbled in darker
magic. That she's channeled
in the maleficium could have
attracted Grillandus an ocean
away if he's as powerful as
the council claims.

BUFFY
So how do I kill him?

GILES
He's still just a vampire.
The usual stake should do nicely.
But Buffy... his age will have
afforded him incredible strength.

DAWN
He's over twice as old
as Angel...

GILES
Your only advantage is that
Grillandus has little experience
with Slayers. Since none managed to
even face him in combat,
he has little experience with them outside
of your encounter last night.

XANDER
Buffy, Willow...

BUFFY
I won't let anything happen
to her.

DAWN
If he hits the library...
Spike showed me a tunnel
once... nearly everything in
Sunnydale is connected.
He could be there now.

BUFFY
I know. Know the sewers like
the back of my hand.
Oh god that's sad.
(pause)
I'll be there, Dawn.
With luck, cleric boy
is napping...
maybe I did wear
him down last night.
A little.

She doesn't sound convinced.

BUFFY
Otherwise... Willow is one
witch Grillandus won't
be placing under his belt.

GILES
In the meantime I'll deal with this
Father LeVack character.

BUFFY
No. You're with me.
Dawn, Xan - there's something
I need you to do.

INT. U.C. SUNNYDALE LIBRARY - DAY

It's extremely dark in the U.C. Sunnydale Library. Might as well be night. This is probably because we're in the BASEMENT. A lone fixture emits just barely enough light to read under.

Judging from the extensive collection of books, this would be the University's rare books archive. We find WILLOW surrounded by stack upon stack of dusty old books lining wooden shelves. A book cart - overflowing - rests to one side of the study table Willow is stationed at. The cart looks as though it's been in place a few good years.

CLOSE on WILLOW, to see what she is examining. It's a magic text - "Incantations of the Ancients: Recent Discoveries" - and she actually needs to create her own little ball of light just to help her see. We WIDEN as she does this to see the ORB OF LIGHT floating over her shoulder.

What happens next puts her into a state of shock.

CUT TO a BOOKCASE resting against the wall to the front of the room - which Willow is facing in her seat - as it FLIES FORWARD and is SMASHED TO PIECES AS IT LANDS, sending its contents scattering across the room. Behind it is revealed a PASSAGEWAY, in which stands the figure of GRILLANDUS. He says nothing, but walks calmly into the midst of the room, where Willow has jumped to her feet.

ON Willow who moves to the side of the room, keeping a good amount of space between herself and the vampire.

WILLOW
(flat)
Who are you?

Instead of answering, Grillandus continues walking, from the middle of the room, to the back, facing the wall, his back to Willow. As he reaches the wall, he keeps walking - UP THE WALL. He clothes hang at his side perfectly - they do NOT hang down, nor does his hair. He continues to DEFY GRAVITY, reaches the ceiling, and begins WALKING ACROSS THE CEILING as if it were the floor. Again, there's no clue to his being upside down, other than Willow staring at him, and, well, the fact that he's very clearly upside down.

A WIDE ANGLE shot reveals the both of them, Willow obviously nervous, Grillandus emotionless, and he comes to a stop when he is face to face with the witch - although being upside down.

GRILLANDUS
I am your salvation.

ANGLE ON WILLOW AND GRILLANDUS, the latter hanging from the ceiling, with their eyes locked.

BLACK OUT

END OF ACT TWO