#
"Are you really sure you want to risk that?" Willow asked, looking at her boyfriend.
"It's worth the risk, Willow," he simply said, giving her an encouraging smile.
For weeks now Willow and Oz had worked on this spell they were about to perform. The idea had come to Oz after Amy's spell that had caused every single supernatural being in Sunnydale to lose its ability to appear human. It had transformed Oz into his wolf form, but he had somehow retained his human intelligence instead of becoming the wild and mindless beast he usually turned into.
Ever since then Willow and Oz had tried to duplicate the effect of that spell without plunging all of Sunnydale into chaos all over again. Their research had been hindered time and again by the various crises they had to deal with, but now they finally seemed to have made some headway.
Or maybe not. The only way to find out was to test it.
"It'll be perfectly safe," Oz told Willow from behind the metal grid of the book cage. School was over and no one except the two of them was in the building. "If something goes wrong I'll be in here, unable to hurt anyone."
Willow wasn't half as certain as her boyfriend appeared to be, but they had triple-checked everything. It should work. Oz, while unable to perform magic himself, was great when it came to research and putting spells together. With all the materials given to Willow by Amy before her death they had figured it out and it should work. It should.
She bit her lip, finally nodding. He was right, of course. It was worth the risk.
"Okay, here goes!" Willow took a moment to make sure that the book cage was really closed and the tranquilliser rifle close at hand. They had considered asking Buffy or someone else with superpowers to do this with them, but Willow didn't want to get into endless discussions on the risks this entailed. She had had them with Oz and now they were done. The last thing she needed was for one of her friends to disrupt her concentration at a crucial moment.
Sighing, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the spell they had worked out.
"King of the wild, goddess of the moon, we call upon thee! Grant this, thy creature, the boon he desires. Let the moonlight change his flesh, but not his thoughts. Let the call of the wild fill his blood, but spare his mind. This we beg of you. Hear our plea! So mote it be!"
Willow kept her eyes closed for another moment, feeling the energy pulsing along her fingers. She was still not one hundred percent comfortable with wielding such powerful magics. Levitating a pencil was one thing, but calling upon the king of the wild and the goddess of the moon? That was a different league.
Nothing seemed to happen, though. The feeling of power faded and she could hear nothing. Carefully she opened first one eye, peeking out at the book cage. Oz stood in there, flexing his hands as if he expected something to happen. He seemed unchanged.
"It didn't work," Willow pouted, sighing.
"I ... I'm not sure," Oz finally said, blinking. "I feel strange somehow. Almost as if ..."
The rest of the sentence was cut off as he doubled over, grunting in pain. Willow was on her feet in an instant, taking a step toward the book cage. Then she stopped, back-pedalling quickly. The skin on Oz' back split, fur welling forth from inside and spreading across his body like water. His scream became an animal growl and he fell to all fours, his hands and feet morphing into paws.
A moment later Willow was staring at a pony-sized werewolf inside the cage, the creature growling at her.
"Oz?" she asked hesitantly.
#
The Seventh Circle of the Inferno:
Buffy and Angel reached the bottom of the mile-high cliff after nearly two days of climbing. That was their estimate, at least. This region of Hell, just like all the others, didn't have a passage of night and day. They both feared that their internal clocks had long forgotten how to measure time.
From Dante's writings they knew that the Seventh Circle was threefold, the Violent categorized into three different groups. This first group, the one that populated the outer regions of the circle, was guilty of violence against their fellow men. Murderers, war makers, all those who relished in violence for its own sake.
"I don't get it," Buffy said, the two of them hiding behind several large outcroppings of rock at the edge of the massive ongoing battle that filled every square meter of available surface before them. "If these folks liked violence so much, how is it punishment for them to keep fighting for all eternity?"
Angel had spent some thought on that as well and, after observing the battle in front of them for several minutes, believed he had the answer.
"Look at them, Buffy," he just said. So she looked, watched as people were cut down over and over again, be it by steel, bullet, or bare hands. None of them stayed down. They rose and kept fighting. Over and over again.
"They don't stay dead, none of them."
"They're already dead. These people all inflicted violence to see their fellow men suffer. To see them bleed. To see them die."
Buffy nodded, understanding. "But here no one bleeds. No one dies. It's all just one giant exercise in futility."
"Exactly."
Buffy looked at the faces of the fighting men and women before her. There was no joy in any of them, none of the joy she had sometimes seen on those who gave themselves over to the pleasure of violence. She knew she was guilty of that particular crime, too. Her memories of Earth were dim and distant, but she remembered times when she had given herself completely to the joy of hunting down and killing the monsters, just so she could forget about all her personal problems for a time.
She imagined it wouldn't have been quite so thrilling if the monsters had gotten up over and over again to fight anew.
"Some of the newcomers here probably enjoy it," Angel mused. "For a while. Then the bitter reality of their situation sets in and it's just another form of torture."
"You realize we might be facing a really big problem here, right?"
He nodded. "I imagine there is nothing these people would like better than finally getting their hands on someone who can actually bleed and die."
"Someone like us, right?"
"Someone like us."
#
Buffy moved right into the small group of vampires, her sword nothing more than a shimmer of steel that moved too quickly for the naked eye to follow. She cut in vicious arcs, separating undead flesh from undead flesh in the span of a heartbeat. The vampires didn't need long to realize that they had made a grave mistake in not running for the hills the moment they saw her, but it was already too late for them.
Angel watched from some feet away, the one vampire he had gotten his hands on before Buffy could decapitate him now so much dust at his feet. Something was bothering his mate, that much was certain. Trying to distract herself from personal problems by immersing herself into the hunt and the kill was one of the few habits of hers that had survived their journey through hell intact.
Finally the last demon crumbled into dust and Buffy stood alone, sword still in hand, looking around for more prey. When she didn't find any she looked almost disappointed.
"Is it just me or are there fewer vampires around these last few days?" she asked Angel.
"Activity seems to have lessened a bit. I assume we have Sebastian Khan to thank for that."
It hadn't been too long since they had learned of the presence of a new master vampire in town. If the rumours were true it was a young one, barely more than a century old, but with the added bonus of knowing his witchcraft. Giles and Angel had gone through scenarios of what this might mean for their town. Usually, when a master tried to take over a territory, step one was always to eliminate the former master.
Which, in this case, meant Angelus.
"You think he's planning something big?" Buffy tried not to let her worry for Angel show too much. It was a moot point; they knew each other too well for that.
"He's probably still in the process of consolidating his hold on the town. I suspect many of the vampires will be lying low, looking to see who comes out on top before they commit to anyone."
Even though he hated doing it, Angel had played the role of Angelus several times in recent weeks. Visiting vampire hangouts, approaching groups of fledglings, letting them know in no uncertain terms that Sunnydale was still his town and that anyone who sided with Khan had nothing but a premature death to look forward to. He wasn't sure how much it really achieved. Vampires were still scared of him, but sooner or later they would wonder why their master never seemed to be killing humans anymore. Sooner or later one of them would get away from an encounter with him and Buffy, spilling the beans to the rest. At best it was a delaying tactic, nothing more.
Unfortunately they had had little luck in locating Khan's daylight retreat so far. Whatever Khan was up to, he was careful and kept himself well hidden.
"Khan is not the reason you are so upset, is he?" Angel asked.
Buffy looked down, wishing for more vampires to attack. Slicing and dicing the undead was always easier than dealing with her own feelings.
"Remember how I told you I got my SAT scores yesterday?" she asked, causing Angel to nod. There was a glint of pride in his eyes that his mate had done so well.
"Well," Buffy continued, "mom was all excited and kept talking about great colleges and such. I reminded her that I didn't plan to go to college. Then we told Ms. Burg and she seemed pretty disappointed, too. I just ..."
"Are you having second thoughts about not going to college, Buffy?"
She thought on that for a minute and then shook her head. "No, not really. I mean, I know I'll be missing out on a few fun parts, like frat parties and such, but I have no desire to spend the next few years in class rooms listening to lectures. No thanks! It's just ... I don't know."
Angel gave her a smile. "You just feel bad about disappointing people who believe in you, Buffy."
She looked up at him. "Do you think I'm letting my mom down by not going to college?"
"Nothing of the sort. It's your life, not your mother's. Wanting to make your parents proud of you is a good thing, Buffy, but it can't be your sole motivation for doing something."
Buffy knew that Angel was talking from experience. When Angel had been human he had done everything he could to make his father proud of him, to become the sort of person his father would have wanted. When it became obvious that it would never be he had turned around and gone full-steam in the other direction, doing everything he could think of to cause embarrassment for his father. Either way he had allowed his father to control his life and it had led him to a premature death in a filthy alley.
She moved up to him, wrapping her arms around his body as they slowly made their way home again. No, she didn't want to go to college. It would be just another mask, another effort to fool others and herself into thinking she might have such a thing as a normal life. She never would have and trying to pretend would only serve to ruin the life she had.
"We should go by the school," Buffy said as they walked off. "Willow said something about conducting an experiment there."
"An experiment?" Angel asked, sounding a tad worried. He was immensely thankful to Willow for restoring his soul all these many years ago (or months, as their friends here reckoned it), but he also recognized the danger she was exposing herself to. Magic was not something to toy around with and he wasn't sure whether Willow, for all her innate intelligence and talent, was really aware of the risks.
"Don't worry," Buffy told him, guessing his thoughts. "She got Oz with her. I'm sure everything is fine."
TO BE CONTINUED