Knossos, on the isle of Crete, 1470 B.C. A wiry, muscular Nubian with a strong jaw and a steely gaze keeps watch over the surrounding countryside from atop the guard tower next to the main city gate. An enemy soldier approaches. When he's a hundred yards from the gate, the guard shoots his bow, knocking off the enemy's conical helmet but missing his head. In response to this warning shot, he tosses down his circular shield, takes off his sword belt and puts his hands up. "Maleqer, it's only me!," he calls out to the guard. "I was just making sure you were on duty tonight." The other guards wouldn't have fired until he was fifty yards away, and none could shoot as accurately as the Nubian. Maleqer climbs down from the roof and meets the enemy commander ten yards in front of the guard tower.
"How much are you willing to offer me now, Agnon?," Maleqer asks the Mycanean adventurer.
"Five talents silver. One talent gold. More than you could earn in ten lifetimes."
"And why would I want so much treasure? What could I buy with it that I want?"
"Power. You could purchase a small army."
"I already have one." Agnon laughs.
"It's not your army. You only lead them. The King tells you what to do. Don't you want to be more than a servant?"
"That is all I will be to you."
"Once I am King of Knossos, you can use my money to buy some of my soldiers and capture Mallia. Just as I moved on after helping Necho take Khania."
"You came with Necho from Naupactus. You are one of his people. I am a foreigner. Your soldiers won't honor and respect me."
"They'll respect your talent. Better to serve a foreigner who wins than a native who does not. But let's cut to the chase. You're outnumbered ten to one. Your soldiers are demoralized and underpaid. They've watched as one-by-one their master's towns have fallen to the enemy. You gain nothing by sticking it out."
"You're wrong, Agnon. The more of your men I kill, the more you'll be willing to pay me to stop."
"How much are you holding out for?"
"Twice your latest offer." Agnon can't believe what he's hearing.
"For one-twentieth of what I'm offering you, I could pay one of your soldiers to kill you in your sleep. Or, I could offer the same sum to the man in my army who kills you in battle. That should take care of whatever fear you strike in their hearts. You're not invincible."
"Not yet," Maleqer jokes. Hiding behind a bush one hundred yards away is a woman who laughs heartily at the commander's idle boast. Agnon picks up his weapons and walks away. When Agnon is out of Maleqer's sight, she attacks him. Maleqer thinks her heard someone yelling. There had been a number of mysterious killings recently that didn't appear to be the work of the Mycanean invaders. But the only civilians Maleqer was responsible for were the ones inside the city walls. And there had been no murders in Knossos, causing hundreds of shepherds and farmers to stream into town seeking protection. From his guard post, Maleqer sees a black woman walking towards the gate. That was a very unusual sight round these parts. She is tall, and slender, with short hair and a long face. She wears a flowing white gown, like some sort of angel. The gate is to Maleqer's left. But she's approaching on his right. "What is she planning to do? Climb the wall?," he thinks to himself in jest. No. She jumps it, landing on the parapet. Astonished but determined, Maleqer pulls back his bow and puts an arrow in her neck. She doesn't go down. So he puts one in her chest. Doesn't seem to do any good. She catches the third arrow, which was aimed for her heart. Maleqer rushes down from the tower onto the parapet, his spear in his right hand.
"Why not call for help?," she asks in his native tongue, which he has not heard for many years.
"Wouldn't do any good."
"Because you think you can kill me on your own, or because you know that I'll kill any man you send after me."
"You're the blood monster." She laughs at this naive attempt to name her.
"I've been called by many names. But yours is especially quaint. You really have no idea what I am."
"You're a killer. But not a person. You kill to feed. Like an animal. Your eyes, they are hungry, like a lion's. I've looked into the eyes of hundreds of men in the heat of battle. Not one pair ever looked like yours do now." He may be naive, but he is observant. She hasn't even gone over to her vampire eyes yet. The woman slowly and seductively walks up to him. She's nearly his height, though right now she looks to him like she's about ten feet tall. He levels his spear. "Halt." She smiles and stops two feet in front of the point.
"You think I'm your enemy, Mal. You could not be more wrong. At this moment, you are the one creature on earth whose enemy I am not." No one's ever referred to him by this, or any other, nickname. She pronounces "al" the way it would be pronounced in Spanish or Arabic, and lingers on the "L" to make the name sound more menacing.
"You're a seductress." Once again, he makes her sound petty in a way she finds absolutely adorable.
"The best. Though it's the least of my talents." When she takes another step forward, he plunges the spear into her heart. She grabs hold of the shaft before the wood enters her chest, rips the spear away from Maleqer and tosses to her right onto the ground outside the walls. He looks at the gaping wound. This was not good. He'd heard stories about mythical monsters. Unlike this woman, they tended to be hideously ugly. But beheading always seemed to do the trick. As he unsheathes his sword, she leaps at him. When he swings, she grabs his right wrist with her left hand and stops him. He looks at her face, which has turned quite monstrous. Those glowing yellow eyes. Those two inch-long fangs. It was horrifying. He shoots out his left hand, trying to gouge her eyes with his index and middle fingers. She growls and grabs his left wrist with her right hand, pulling it out to the side. She was impossibly strong. He opens his mouth to yell for backup. But before he can say a word, she drives her fangs deep into the left side of his neck. He grimaces at the pain and drops his sword, but he doesn't scream or cry out. She respects that. Maybe her hunch was right. After a few seconds, she pulls back and lets go. Maleqer falls to his knees. On the verge of passing out, he catches sight of the open wound he made when he stabbed her heart with his iron spearhead. Without know why, he leaps at her chest and puts his mouth to the wound. Though nearly dead, he lunges with enough force to put her on her back. He drinks lustily. At first, she smiles, delighted by his eagerness. But soon enough, she finds him a little too eager. "That's enough. That's enough!," she commands. She tries to pull his head away, but cannot. Within a few seconds, he rolls off of her and looks up at the stars. They seem to glow like hundreds of campfires. He smiles, closes his eyes, and is dead.
His sire lies to his left. She'd never before been exhausted by a siring. She didn't even know that was possible. Especially to a vampire of her immense strength. She was certain her latest creation had a bright future ahead of him.
After dinner, everyone settles down in the living room, where the four couches are arranged in a square, with four easy chairs at the corners. On the couch at the front of the room are, from right to left (clockwise, with the front of the room as six o'clock), Angel, Gunn, Fred and Wesley. In the chair to Wesley's left is Andrew. On the couch to Andrew's left are Fadila, Ariella, Madari and Rona. Giles sits in the chair to Rona's left. To his left, and opposite Angel and friends, are Kennedy, Willow, Xander and Buffy. To Buffy's left, and diagonally across from Andrew, sits Spike. To his left, on the couch opposite the Potentials, are Anya, Amanda, Connor and Dawn. In between Dawn and Angel, in the chair diagonally across from Giles, is Faith.
"You guys always eat so well?," Gunn asks.
"The Mayor made sure this place was well-stocked," Xander explains.
"And there's no reason to ration supplies," Buffy adds. "After all, it was our last supper." She senses a chill settling over the room. "Our last one here. Since tomorrow night we'll be able to live above-ground." This reminds Connor of his dream of Dawn moving in with him at the Hyperion. He finishes scarfing down the last of the brownies, turns his head to the left, looks at Dawn and smiles. She notices a big glob of fudge just to the left of his mouth. She reaches out and swipes it off his face with her right index finger. He grabs her right hand, pulls it towards his mouth, sucks the chocolate off her finger and smiles. Those who notice quickly try to forget.
"I really liked the blood pudding," Angel says to Andrew, who greatly appreciates the compliment because they are so few and far between for him.
"You never made me blood pudding," Spike grouses.
"I made it for both of you," Andrew assures him. Wesley's been busy looking over Faith's stake.
"Four thousand years old, and it looks as if it was carved only yesterday. How did they preserve the wood?"
"By magically placing it inside a living tree, or so it would appear," Giles responds.
"The very stake used by Amen-irdis herself," Wesley adds before tossing it back over to Faith.
"Who?," she asks.
"The original Slayer it was made for," Giles explains.
"You mean the girl who got eaten by a croc?," she follows up.
"One and the same. By the way Wesley, how do you happen to know her name?" After all, Giles didn't know it until a few days ago, and Wesley had no reason to ever research her.
"When the Council fired me, they said I had allowed Faith to become the most dangerous Slayer since Amen-irdis."
"Score one for irony," Faith quips as she grips the handle of the stake as if it were a sword. At twelve inches long, sixteen if you count the handle, it's nearly as long.
"While we're playing show-and-tell, I have something I would like to show you, Rupert." Wesley reaches behind the couch, grabs a bag, opens it, and tosses a skull to Giles, who sits fifteen feet away. The jawbone has been bolted onto the head. All the Sunnydale people gasp. A shocked Giles catches it in his lap and takes a look.
"It's a vampire skull," he says with trepidation.
"Not just any vampire skull," Angel responds.
"It's Mal's skull," Wesley explains.
"These teeth. My goodness," Giles marvels. "They're like a tiger's." When Mal went bumpy, his thirty two human teeth became sixteen vampire teeth, eight on top and eight on the bottom. The two fangs are three inches long, and the other fourteen teeth are one inch-long, every one of them tapering to a sharp point. These pearly whites were bigger and more elegant than any vampire's are supposed to be. No awkward, ungainly overbite for Mal.
"You preserved his head?," an alarmed Buffy wonders.
"No. We couldn't destroy it," Angel replies. "Or any of his other bones."
"God knows we tried," Gunn adds.
"Maybe you needed a bigger hammer," Xander quips. "Or someone strong to wield it."
"See for yourself," Wesley dares. "Go ahead. Give him your best shot." Buffy stands up and walks over to the weapons closet. The idea of a vampire's bones being intact gives her a severe case of the wiggins.
"It never occurred to you that, oh, say, some Titan who misses him would come by, steal the bones and try to bring him back?," Dawn asks.
"Of course it did," Angel assures them. He notices Buffy taking out Olaf's very big hammer and looks over at Wesley. "Are you sure this is a good idea?," he whispers.
"Trust me," Wes responds. "She won't even dent it."
"Nina would need all his bones to bring Mal back," Fred explains. "At least all the major ones. I suppose he could be dangerous without a metacarpal or two. Wesley mailed the pelvic bones and the femurs to the guy from France who gave us all those books."
"So even if the vamp was resurrected, he'd have a really hard time walking," Gunn jokes. In addition, Cordy took his patellas and tibias with her to New York. So Mal would have no legs at all.
"Claude has them?," Giles asks.
"On display. In a glass class in the lobby of the new Council building. Annette sent me an email about it. Buffy lies the skull on the floor in the middle of the twelve-by-twelve foot open space between the couches and chairs. She brings the hammer down with enough force to crush most rocks. But the skull only momentarily contracts, as if it we being squeezed, then bounces back. Buffy's bewildered. She takes another hack. Same result. Mildly embarrassed for having failed in front of everyone, she picks the skull up and puts the hammer away.
"It's pretty heavy," she notes.
"Twice as dense as a human skull," Wesley proudly declares. "All his bones are. I suspect his muscles were also twice the normal density."
"One of the reasons he was so hard to knock down," Gunn comments.
"And the main reason it hurt so much to hit him," Angel adds. "Punching his bones felt like hitting concrete. Hitting his muscles felt like pounding your knuckles into an adobe wall. Hurt you more than him."
Xander likes the construction metaphors. "Normal concrete, or reinforced?," he asks in jest.
"Interesting that you'd mention that," Fred responds. "I took some scrapings off one of the bones for chemical analysis, and I found a high quantity of iron. You see those little brown specs all over his skull?"
"How the hell do you reinforce your own bones?," Spike wonders.
"As you know, vampires ingest large amounts of iron," Wesley condescendingly explains. "Mal's physiology knew what to do with it. He also claimed never to have sired another vampire and had an obsessive fear of blood loss."
"Conserving precious bodily fluids," Andrew concludes.
"Like what they used to say about masturbation making men sickly," Anya adds with her usual glib offensiveness. "Except he's afraid of wasting blood and not – "
"There are also some interesting minerals mixed in there," Fred interrupts, to the relief of many. "One of them is from a volcanic rock used in Roman concrete. His digestive system must have been able to filter out trace amounts of chemicals and deposit them where they'd do him the most good."
"As best as we can figure, he ate and exercised his way to a better body," Wesley declares. "To fuel that body, he drank at least twenty gallons of blood a day – half his weight every twenty four hours.
"Like a vampire bat," Dawn notes.
"How do you know how much he drank?," Spike asks Wesley. "Did you measure it out for him?"
"During his five nights in Los Angeles, he killed and drained at least forty people a night. It seems he was always a prodigious eater, though certainly not initially on this scale."
"Well that goes without bloody saying," Spike responds, a little intimidated because Mal's exploits make William the Bloody seem like William the Bloodless by comparison.
"How old was this guy?," Buffy asks.
"Thirty five hundred years," Angel responds.
"How hideous did the old guy look?," Faith wonders.
"He looked human," Connor reports.
"Like Wesley Snipes," Gunn adds.
"Really?," Andrew follows up.
"Actually, I thought he looked like Djimon Honsou," Angel dissents.
"No, I definitely Wesley Snipes," Wesley concurs.
"How come I never heard of this guy?," Buffy demands to know.
"Because he didn't officially exist," Giles responds. "His exploits were too legendary to be taken seriously."
"Too bad to be true," Spike comments before it hits him. "Are you talking about THE Mal!? The killer of twenty Slayers! He's real?" Spike goes from excited to disappointed. "And Angel killed him?"
"No. I did," Connor brags.
"I'm the one who knocked his head off," Angel reminds his son.
"But I'm the one who cut his spine."
"Half of his spinal cord."
"Whatever. That was the only reason you took his head off."
"I know. WE killed him, son. Together." It's their closest father-son moment. Unfortunately, Angel never had the opportunity to bond with Connor in a way that didn't involve excruciating pain and nearly fatal injuries.
"Right. You'd be dead without me," Connor responds cagily.
"I could say the same about you," Angel points out. Dawn's alarmed. But Buffy's more alarmed. Though not about Connor.
"Twenty Slayers? Is that true?"
"Each and every kill documented," Wesley answers.
"Shouldn't we have known about this guy?," Faith asks.
"A little heads-up would have been nice," Buffy adds. "Oh, by the way, some super Slayer-killer is in the neighborhood."
"I told Rupert," Wesley responds. Faith and Buffy are outraged at Giles.
"You already had enough on your mind," Giles says in his own defense.
"You have to understand, he hadn't tried to kill a Slayer in nearly eighteen centuries," Wesley adds to bolster Rupert's case.
"He said they were too fragile," Angel explains. "That they died before he was even warmed up."
"And you're tougher?," Buffy asks pointedly. "No offense, but, well, come on!"
"Like she said," Faith concurs. "We're stronger than you. Or Connor."
"I didn't say we were stronger," Angel replies. "I said we were more durable." Buffy had to concede that Connor compensated for his rashness with his almost disturbing ability to absorb punishment.
"Mal prefers to kill his opponents by beating them to death," Wesley tells them.
Spike laughs. "Well no wonder he couldn't kill you! You can't dust a vampire without . . . dusting him."
"What if I ran you over with a steam roller?," Wesley asks, almost making it sound like a threat. "You wouldn't be dust. But I imagine you'd be dead. If you beat a vampire bad enough, his body loses the ability to hold itself together."
"I hear about him doing the same thing to demons!," Anya exclaims.
"You knew this vampire?," Wesley worries.
"Heard of him. From some of the older girls. They said he beat demons to death in front of large crowds in order to scare some demons and impress the rest. Put on quite a how while doing it. They said he had real flair. And a killer body that just wouldn't quit. Let me put it this way: if he was half as good in bed as these Vengeance Demons claimed he was, Nina won't just be the strongest woman on the planet. She'll be the angriest."
"A fighter and a lover," Spike notes.
"THE lover. And THE fighter. Apparently he was quite the perfectionist. Redefined the orgasm, from what I've heard. Made all previous ones feel like a mere tingle."
"That's enough. We get the point," Angel suggests. Given the fact that Darla slept with Mal, he's not comfortable hearing about that vampire's prowess.
"So where's he been for my entire lifetime?," Anya asks, alarming Xander. "Oh, stop it. I didn't like sleeping with vampires. Unless I'm needy and desperate and can't do any better." Spike looks wounded. "He's been out of sight for more than a thousand years."
"One thousand four hundred," Wesley clarifies. "It appears that after two millennia he no longer found this dimension sufficiently challenging, and went off to fight in demon dimensions, several of which he conquered. However, he returned here every few decades to massacre humans and fight other immortals who had made a name for themselves."
"In the end, there can be only one," Andrew intones, imagining Mal as an ebony Highlander. "Except now, when there's two. That seemed somehow unfair to him. "Well, one and, well . . . " Connor, after all, was not an immortal.
"That's why he came," Angel explains. "When we met, Mal told me he liked the challenge of two opponents. Also, Connor was something he'd never seen before. And at his age, that was pretty rare."
"Said to same to me," Connor adds. "Like I should feel honored cause he wanted to kill me."
"And he could have," Buffy responds. "One-on-one, neither of you would stand a chance. Correct?" She still feels a little threatened by their exploits, especially because of that line about Slayers not being challenging enough for Mal.
"Of course," Angel replies, surprising Buffy with his quick assent. "He had plenty of chances."
"Same with the rest of us," Fred adds, Gunn and Wes grimly nodding in agreement. "It was like a game to him, with rules and stages."
"So what you're saying is, you didn't kill him. Chivalry did," Spike comments.
"The guy's probably been chivalrous for three thousand years," Angel surmises. "And it never got him killed. Until he met us." Angel reaches out his right hand. Connor reaches out his left and slaps it. This is about as warm a gesture of affection as Connor will give Angel in public. And after being through so much acrimony, Angel cherishes everything he can get. Faith, who's in between them, watches this, and joins Buffy in feeling slighted by the men hogging the glory.
"So he killed twenty Slayers over two thousand years – which is only one a century, and that's not a whole lot if you think about it – but did he never fight two at once?," Faith asks.
"I don't think he ever had the chance," Wesley replies. Buffy bursts out laughing.
"Didn't have the chance? We were right here!"
"Mal liked to go where the challenge was," Connor responds. It takes people a second or two to realize how stinging of a rebuke this is. Dawn worries he's about to get into a major row with Buffy.
"Is that so?," Buffy answers, sounding ready to put the boy in his place one and for all.
"Whadya say B? Should we just kick their asses right here and now? Remind them what Slayers are made of?"
"You're missing the point," Angel offers, trying to play peacemaker while still tooting his own (and Connor's) horn. "It's not what you can dish out. It's what you can take. He'd have you crippled and bleeding to death internally before you could even hurt him. Trust me, you've never faced a vampire even close to Mal."
"I killed the Master. "Have we forgotten about that?," Buffy asks condescendingly. " Angel chuckles.
"Mal used the Master as a punching bag. Compared him to Michael Jackson. Which I found deeply disturbing."
"Yeah. Me too," Buffy responds with a look of deep confusion. After all, she had been killed by him. "He's nuts. That makes no sense."
"Bollocks! It makes complete bloody sense. Explains the Anointed One."
"I meant that Mal said the Master became less talented and his moves became more predictable as time went by."
"He also had one trick the Master never mastered," Angel notes cryptically. "Or any other vampire I've met." Connor understands what his father's implying, and he pulls the golden cross he's wearing around his neck out on top of his shirt.
"You see this cross?," Connor asks. "It was Mal's. He wore it when we killed him." Buffy, Giles and the Scoobies look dumbfounded. "That's kinda how I looked when I first saw him wearing one," Connor jokes.
"It's really demoralizing when another vampire uses crosses and holy water against you," Angel comments.
"That's not possible," Giles declares.
"There's not a Vampires for Jesus cult we should be know about?," Amanda asks.
"Not unless the vampires are more than two thousand years old," Wesley responds. "Apparently, a vampire is immune to talismans that didn't exist when they became vampires."
Ariella looks down at the Star of David she's wearing. "I knew this came with special advantages." Fadila feels a little slighted, since hers is the youngest of the monotheistic faiths.
"Ella, if you encountered a vampire who was old enough for that to matter, that wouldn't be enough to protect you."
Dawn puts her left hand on Connor's chest, picking up the crucifix and looking at it. "So how bad did this vampire hurt you?," Dawn asks Connor.
"Couldn't walk for two days. Same with Angel."
"But you're better now?"
"Still have a few bruises. Like right here." He points to a spot on his left rib cage. Dawn puts her hand there. Connor winces. She slowly rubs it for a few seconds. Connor smiles. "Thanks. That's better." Dawn rests her right arm on Connor's left leg and holds his left hand. Connor smiles slyly at her as the conversation drifts on to other topics.
"Wut about Mal and Candace? Are those stories true?," Spike asks with a smile. Wes and Angel know why he's smiling, and they look squeamish.
"Actually, it's pronounced Kandake. And yes, they were an item," Wesley concedes. "More than fifteen centuries ago."
"Kandake," Giles repeats. "That's a Nubian word denoting a female warrior who protects the people." It occurs to him what this means. "Oh dear."
"No," Willow says, quickly catching on.
"Why no?," Spike asks self-consciously. Turns out the "legend" of Mal and Kandake gave him hope that Buffy could go for him even when he was soulless. You might say their relationship was once an inspiration to Spike.
"So he had sex with a Slayer," Anya groans. "Big deal. Why is this news?"
"You mean he sired one of the Slayers he killed?," Willow asks, trying to find a way out.
"I thought you said Mal never sired anyone," Spike gleefully points out.
"So Buffy isn't the exception?," Rona asks. "She's the norm?"
"I think I get it," Amanda begins. "Slayers don't date regular guys, unless they're super molten hot like Lindsey." Rona, Fadila, Ariella and Madari all smile. Faith loves it. Buffy, Angel and Spike hate it.
"Dating's not the word," Gunn comments. "More like married."
"That's possible?," Buffy asks.
"Maybe in the Netherlands," Willow quips. "Or one of the Scandinavian countries."
"They were together for nine years," Wesley explains. "Traveled across the known world. Nearly wiped out the vampire population on three continents. Kandake is believed to have slayed more vampires than any other Slayer."
"That's just because she had so much time," Buffy offers defensively.
"So what happened?," Kennedy asks. "Did the vampire finally get bored and kill her?"
"The Council of Watchers had her assassinated," Wesley responds, causing a few gasps.
"Why the hell would they do that?," Rona asks.
"Because she chose to have nothing to do with them. And because she was sleeping with a vampire."
Buffy gasps, being guilty of both actions herself. "They can kill you for that?"
"A soulless vampire," Angel notes. She gasps again.
"A soulless vampire who's killin' twenty people a day," Gunn adds. That was a mild relief for Buffy. Though still unsettling.
"So tell us about your encounter with Nina," Giles suggests, desperately wanting to change the subject. Angel and Connor wince and close their legs. Though everything's now back where it should be, they don't want to recount the experience.
"Flame throwers don't do a damn thing to her," Gunn reports.
"You have a flame thrower?," a wide-eyed Amanda asks. "Co-ol."
"She licked me," Fred reports with a queasy look on her face.
"That little slut!," Anya exclaims. Everyone else, save Willow, looks at Anya as if she's more crazy than usual. "I guess Titan-Tramp will put her tongue on anything with a skirt."
"You mean she does this a lot?," Fred asks.
"To me, at least," Willow responds.
"She really seems to have the hots for Willow," Anya adds. "And Giles. When Nina was holding me hostage, she just when on-and-on about him."
This startles and amuses Wesley. "Rupert, I had no idea you were her type."
"Tell me about it," Willow adds. "The evil babes usually go for Xander."
Anya doesn't like the implication. "You think I'm evil?" A few seconds later, she smiles. "You think I'm a babe? Thank you for noticing." Willow declines to clarify the unintentional compliment, choosing rather to forget the whole thing.
"By the way, I was wondering, what's with the giant dome that's risen from the ashes?," Fred asks.
"And how'd your Big Bad build it so fast," Gunn adds.
"She had help," Xander responds.
Giles explains. "Dozens of synthetic demons designed to perform construction, mining, metallurgy and other skilled manual labor the First Evil may desire."
"Why?," Gunn follows up. The Big Bads he knew were more interested in destroying than building.
"The device they intend to use to cleanse the world of Slayers requires sunlight. But the Turokh-hans they plan to deploy to overwhelm us require protection from the sunlight. A dome with a small hole at the top met both requirements," Giles surmises.
"No offense, but how would getting rid of Slayers destroy the world?," Fred asks. It's not as if humanity doesn't have other champions.
"The Power a Slayer possesses is renewable," Giles points out, trying as best he can not to callously make Slayers sound replaceable. "On the other hand, if one were to kill Angel, a new ensouled vampire would not materialize. The same principle applies to Connor, to Willow . . . and Spike," he grudgingly concedes.
"So Slayers are like the sun, and all other champions are like fossil fuels," Fred interprets.
"Something along those lines," Giles concedes. "Actually, that's not a bad analogy." Fred appreciates the compliment. Following the metaphor through, that would make Willow nuclear power: extraordinary amounts of concentrated latent energy, but liable to cause catastrophic meltdown when not properly cared for.
"What mystical device are they using?," Wesley asks Giles.
"The Pearl of Merv."
"The Merv Stone!," Fred responds. "I thought that was good?"
"Usually. It's designed to absorb and extinguish demonic power. For instance, if a Loesh demon was flying towards your town, proper employment of the Stone would turn the giant dragon into a creature no bigger than a dragonfly."
"You mean that Slayers got a demon inside them?," Gunn asks. Spike tries to keep from grinning.
"Demon power," Kennedy corrects him. "But not an actual demon." Speaking of demons, Connor's been getting increasingly frisky with Dawn as the conversation's gone on. He has his left arm around her shoulder, his right hand on her right leg, and now tries to nibble on her right ear. Dawn gently pushes him away and tells Connor to cut it out. He leans back in and kisses her neck. Dawn puts her right hand on his chest, pushes him back and tells Connor to stop it. He just notices that she put one of her hands on him, and continues with his playful antics. But when he leans in again to kiss her, Dawn turns her head to the right and bites his lower lip. This only succeeds in getting him exponentially more turned-on. He pulls his head back an inch or two, but she doesn't let go. Connor's eyes light up and he growls, ensuring that everyone notices them.
"Oh God," Xander blurts out in revulsion. Dawn immediately lets go, stops touching Connor and turns around to face everyone else, looking chagrined and blushing. Connor, on the other hand, doesn't know why he should feel ashamed.
"Someone get the fire hose," Fred mutters under her breath. It wasn't the cuddling or the kissing that got to her, but the animalistic behavior: Dawn playfully biting, Connor growling happily.
"Is this how you behave in front of company?," Buffy weakly tells Dawn, trying to hide her disgust behind formality. What she had seen only confirmed her belief that Connor was a very bad influence on Dawn. But the worst was yet to come.
"I'm don't know," Dawn petulantly responds. "Then again, I had to sit through all your public grope-a-thons with Riley." This is a triple score, since it not only embarrasses Buffy but makes Spike and Angel deeply uncomfortable. Connor smirks at Fred and Gunn.
"You didn't try very hard to keep it under wraps. Alpha male." Connor chuckles and whispers in Dawn's right ear. She laughs.
"That's not where the blood's going?" A triple score for Connor, by embarrassing Fred and Gunn while making Wesley uncomfortable. Angel's picking up a strong "Don't Mess With Me" scent from Connor and Dawn, similar to the one he's picked up from Connor, Elijah and Kit, but much stronger. Like that given off by an animal lashing out when it feels cornered. Dawn can sense the hostility they've engendered. "Connor, would you like to go for a walk outside?" Alone time. He smiles. She takes his left hand in her right hand, gets up and starts walking towards the door.
"Are you sure that's safe?," Angel asks Buffy and Giles.
"Dawn should be safe," Buffy responds casually. "Nina may want to take vengeance on Connor. You two have fun."