"No, Giles. No big bad to fight, thank god." Buffy sank onto the couch both in relief and in exhaustion. "Have you heard from the others yet?"
Cordelia, from her position in the kitchen next to the phone, leaned across the counter. "No one's called, but the airwaves have been relatively quiet for a Sunnydale night, so I'd say nothing major's gone wrong." She patted the police scanner that was plugged in next to the half-empty coffee pot.
The door to the apartment swung open, slamming against the wall before swinging back to be caught by the person who had opened it. Xander strode in, dragging a reluctant Gaby behind him. "Something is really wrong."
Buffy's leisurely posture immediately snapped into attention. Even Willow, curled childlike in the airchair, turned an extra ounce of effort into listening to her friend.
"What's wrong?" Buffy asked sharply.
"Her," Xander answered, pointing back to the young woman who stood by the door, her arms crossed protectively across her stomach.
Gaby's eyes shifted from the wall to the floor, and Buffy relaxed a little. "What do you mean, Xander?"
Xander, still worked up with his agitation, took a few more long steps into the living room. "We hit every cemetary in Sunnydale, even that little new one over by the marina."
"Did you encounter anyone?" Giles asked, a cup of luke-warm tea clutched in his hands.
"Yeah, plenty of someones," Xander said with a smirk. "But there's no telling if they were brought back or if they were just your typical nightly slaying partners. I mean, they were pretty much just dead."
"I'm not quite seeing the big bad here." Buffy was beginning to relax a bit more. "Lots of vamps in the graveyards. Big yahoo."
Shaking his head, Xander reached over and pulled Gaby more into the center of the room. "Not the vamps: miss 'there can be only one' over here. Do you know how many vamps I killed? Fifteen. The slayer. Zero. Now is it just me, or does that score seem a bit inappropriate despite my manly prowess?"
Willow raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"OK, OK," Xander conceded, waving his arms. "She beat some of them up pretty good and I just finished them off. The point is, she wouldn't stake them. Not didn't. Wouldn't."
Buffy, a confused wrinkle spreading across her forehead, was about to speak when Cordelia came in from the kitchen.
"And who can blame her," the girl said. "Look at this outfit. Not exactly built for the slay." She indicated Gaby's early-twentieth century garb.
Giles frowned but nodded all the same. "You do look a bit conspicuous in those clothes. Perhaps it would be best if we provided an alternative?" He turned to look at Buffy.
"Oh, yeah. Sure," she said, looking up at Gaby. "I always keep a change of clothes here, just in case the slaying is a little more messy than usual. They'd probably fit you." She glanced at the stairs but was reluctant to move her protesting muscles.
"I'll get it," Cordelia said, lightly grabbing Gaby's arm. She leaned toward the girl conspiratorily. "You're going to need some help if we're depending on Buffy's fashion sense. Don't worry, I can work miracles." She only hesitated for a second, looking back into the kitchen.
"There is a phone in my bedroom," Giles said. "I do not live entirely in the dark ages."
Once the two girls had disappeared, Buffy shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder how in the world Angel lives with that girl."
"Hello!" Xander exclaimed, stepping in front of the couch and waving his arms in front of Buffy's face. "Did everyone forget my big entrance here? Something. Is. Really. Wrong."
"I know what it is, Xander," Giles said with a small, satisfied smile.
"You do?"
"You do?" echoed Buffy.
Giles nodded. "While you were all gone, I did a little research on Gabriella. Her appearance here seems even more coincidental than any of the others. Another slayer was drawn here--died here--even before you."
"Obviously," Buffy said, not seeing why it was all that important.
"I went through the Watcher diaries, but I found nothing about a slayer named Gabriella, or about one who had been sent to this area."
Willow's mouth twisted in thought. "So she's not who she says she is?"
Giles shook his head. "No, I believe she is. After extensive reading, I came across a loose page stuck inside one of my books, a book on mystical energy. It was handwritten and rough on the edge, like it had been ripped from one of the diaries. There were no names, but the writer spoke of a rogue slayer, one who refused to kill vampires."
"A slayer who didn't kill vampires?" Xander said. "Yeah, the description fits so far."
Giles continued. "Apparently she had a family member who had been turned. She spent her entire life searching for a cure for vampirism."
"Didn't she know the rules?" Willow asked. "There is no cure, all vampires need to die, yadda yadda yadda."
"Sounds like she didn't read the slayer handbook either," said Buffy with a faint smile at her watcher.
Giles didn't reply to the comment, but his eyes twinkled. "This family member, the vampire, who the writer calls 'the death of us all,' came to Sunnydale for a festival of some sort in the early 1900s, a ritual or ceremony or something of the like. Gaby, or whoever this girl was, followed him, apparently prepared to try a new cure she had discovered. The council, however, had other plans for her."
"What happened?" Xander was sitting on the couch now, but he had slid out to the edge in interest and anticipation.
"Well, it's only the accusation of the writer," Giles said, leaning down to look at the paper lying in front of him. "But it says here that the council 'unleashed the earth upon her and the vampires, dragging all involved into the depths'."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Buffy asked.
"I wasn't sure until I got to the last line," said Giles, turning the paper over. "This was the end of his diary, since his slayer was dead, and they are always ended with the dates of service. He was her watcher from 1930 to 1937."
"So she died here in Sunnydale in 1937," said Xander. "Wow. There's been vamp activity here for a quite a while."
Willow's face had become even more pale than normal. Buffy didn't like Giles's tone or her friend's pallor. "What is it?"
"I believe Willow has come to the same conclusion as I."
"Will?"
The girl, her eyes wide with disbelief and amazement, looked up at Buffy.
"The year -- 1937. Unleashing the earth upon a vampiric ceremony and killing
both the vampire and the slayer." Her eyes shifted to the loft for a second.
"That's the year that the earthquake swallowed up the Master."