Xander was blissfully happy.
If he were Angel then he would have reached past Angelus by now and into something much darker.
He and Willow had been holding each other tightly for what felt like forever. They had shared the most intense, lingering kiss he had ever experienced, and her head was now nestling comfortably in his arms.
He had been a vampire for less than a day and failed to realise the full range of equipment and strength that it offered, plus the extent to which his body had changed. Vampires were primal creatures and when they hunted, fed or made love, the demon came through. Willow and Xander were now wearing their vampire faces, although they had yet to realise it.
Willow rubbed her head up and down Xander's arm lazily, mouth open and sharp teeth digging deeper and deeper into his skin, blissfully unaware of her demonic state. She sleepily opened her eyes to look at his face, mouth upturned in a smile of contentment that soon turned into a look of horror at his deformed features.
"Aargh!" she screamed, leaping back and out of his arms. "Oh, oh my god! You're a vampire!"
"Yeah, don't remind me," he muttered. "And, hey, not a snack bar, by the way," he told her, rubbing his hand over the deep scratch on his arm. "Well, so are you…aren't you…? I mean, I thought…"
"Umm…yeah, of course…pissshah," she replied nervously. "I'm, like, the biggest bad of them all…" Her hands crept over her clothes and recognised the leather cat suit of her vampire self. If she had now leapt into that dimension then this must be the vampire Xander that she had told herself about.
"Yeah…yeah, of course you are, I'm sorry," he said downheartedly. He was so sure that his Willow had arrived though some miracle, but he figured that must've just been a pipe dream. And the fact that she had started feeding on him couldn't be a good sign. Maybe it was part of some vampire mating ritual or perhaps she suspected that he wasn't who he claimed to be and that he had a soul now. Could she sense something like that? Vamps always seemed to know who Angel was by his scent; it wouldn't be a great leap for the same to happen to him here, in this alternate universe.
"And so are you, aren't you?" she asked, her tone a little uncertain. "I think… we're both the most evil servants of the underworld. Grrr!"
"Oh, yeah," he agreed. "Mad, bad and totally dangerous to know. Anyone who crosses us well they better watch out or they'll…have their…bodies split open and used for…" he trailed off, not really sure where this was going.
"…Cups," she said quickly, finishing his sentence. "Yes, cups. And we'll grind their bones to make our bread, yeah," feeling certain she was getting somewhere. Perhaps she was better at acting than she thought.
A loud bang resounded around the room, diverting their attention and making them both look over to a small grate in the roof over on the left-hand side of the dark little room, leaving their words in mid air, something that they were both grateful for.
Even with the enhanced abilities being a vampire had, Xander hadn't quite figured out how to use the advanced night vision he'd been so jealous of before. In fact, it was actually quite difficult for them to make out what the commotion was all about as so many different types of boot, shoe and sneaker covered their view in quick succession.
"Well, for a window, it's like a 'Payless' in here," noted Xander quietly, pulling Willow into the shadows of the room as what looked like a small army entered the room, using it as a thorough-way to reach the club proper. One face he did recognise was Rupert Giles, leading the charge with a large cross in one hand and a crossbow in the other.
"Giles!" Xander exclaimed in a whisper, surprised to see the middle-aged librarian leading a charge into the Bronze armed to the back teeth with weapons.
"He's slaughtering all our beloved brethren, damn him," Willow said, a note of hope in her voice.
"Yes, he's truly a bad, bad man," replied Xander woodenly with a smile and the same tone of happiness.
He looked down at his arm, a small look of awe in his eyes when he realised the wound was now partially closed, tissue and muscle repairing itself with little pain at all. Kinda cool, he thought and wished he had that ability available to him in his normal life. Soberly, he realised that with no way back, this could be his normal life from now on.
The one thing that was confusing him, though, was Willow. She seemed a little unusual since their kiss. It looked like she was breathing in and out at a faster pace, which was strange for a vampire. Then again, any breathing at all was strange for a vampire. He was certain he had felt something when they kissed, some kind of mystical force at least, unless all those rumours about the earth moving were true.
Willow was very nervous and she had noticed her breathing was becoming more frequent, not good at all for a vampire. She tried holding it in at regular intervals, but it was no use. Even when she was swimming and had to dive underwater the most she could hold for was a minute. Her cheeks also tended to puff out whenever she did, and Xander had once commented that it made her look like a cute little chipmunk, also not a good thing for such a fearsome creature of the night. Every moment since she had arrived here her heart seemed to pound faster and louder against her chest, providing yet another give-away to her true identity.
Perhaps this wasn't the dimension her Xander was in, after all. There must be hundreds out there, and she figured she must have just latched onto the nearest Xander in the cosmos. She internally reprimanded herself for being so stupid. She couldn't pick Xander the police officer, Xander the 18th century gold prospector or even Xander the vampire slayer… Oh, no, she had to pick big bad vampire Xander. Good move, Willow, she told herself.
"Guess The Master will be in a pretty sucky mood, if he's not a big old dust bunny by now," Xander said, listening to the sounds of the battle that was raging in the building, bringing Willow back from her mental debate. "Class must be over, too. Boy, I wish this could've happened in school. Y'know, big gang storms into class and dusts the teachers. 'Just leave your homework on the side, Xander. I'll look at it when the wind blows me over there'…" he joked.
"Phew," Willow replied, allowing herself to relax a little. "Yeah, if he were back then we would be in serious doo-dah."
"If he were back?" Xander asked, looking into her eyes.
"Yeah," she said, not thinking. "If he were back we'd all be in…uh oh, he's back, isn't he?" she asked nervously, full of dread. "Or is he? Is it 'doo-dah'? Not an evil enough word for we creatures of…" She trailed off when she caught him looking intensely at her, and suddenly firing out answers and hoping that something would stick didn't seem like such a great idea. Looks like she finally found a way to stop her heart from beating.
"You think the Master's dead, don't you?" Xander said excitedly, his heart took its turn to race out of control, as did his mind as it arrived at a conclusion. "That means you're…"
"No…I'm…I…" she stuttered, preparing to run and looking around for an exit. The last thing she was expecting at that moment was for him to wrap his strong arms around her tighter than ever.
"It's you! It's really you!" he sniffed. "Willow?" he asked, his tone begging, hoping and pleading that she would give a positive answer to all his questions. "From my dimension? The one where Buffy's the slayer, the Master's worm food and all is sweetness and light?"
"Yes, it's me," she replied through the tears that had started to well up in her eyes. "Xander, I've been so worried about you…" she told him, enjoying the feel of his arms around her, both the emotion and his thick leather jacket muffling her voice.
She pulled back, wanting to look at him, look at her Xander because all of a sudden it seemed like she couldn't remember what he looked like. Not likely, she thought to herself, not when the one thing she'll remember until the day she dies is him, his face and how he could make her feel. His arms were still around her, holding her tightly to him, moving down slowly to rest on her hips, something that caused her to smile a little at. His eyes were looking down at her, and she understood that everything she had feared when she'd found him gone…he felt it, too. All of the worry and the tension and fear that had filled her, she saw it in him.
Her arms that had been holding onto his shoulders moved slightly, unwittingly trailing over his chest. In front of her stood the boy she'd known all of her life, so why was it that all of a sudden he seemed to be grown up and different? His eyes were lowered now, almost closed, and she could feel his relief through the tight grip he had on her body. She lifted one of her arms, her hand shaking at the end of it, touching his brown hair, lifting up the few locks from his forehead so she could see him, checking that he was still the same person.
When he brought his eyes to hers, open and understanding, he grinned at her. It was something that was hardly new to her, but this Xander grin was definitely the patented version that she had been seeing since she was four years old, and she suddenly felt an overwhelming surge of affection for him. She tried to fight it, because, hey, wasn't that what she was supposed to be doing? But in this world, she didn't belong to Oz, wasn't some band groupie that Devon found annoying when she corrected his grammar or criticised his taste in women.
When she felt one of his hands move slowly over the small of her back, she knew it was pointless battling herself. Her hand came down to rest on his chest, her fingers lightly tracing tiny circles on the material of his tank top nervously as he lifted one of his hands to her face. He touched her hair briefly, just enough to make her feel like she was going to melt, before he moved it to her cheek. Resting it there, soft and gentle against her skin, she leaned into his palm, closing her eyes and indulging herself in the moment. Soon, he would pull away and it would be awkward, and she'd feel like he was taking a piece of her with him, so she wanted to make the most of his attention while she had it.
But Xander didn't move away. Instead, his face seemed to get larger, like it was being blown up by some imaginary balloon pump, before she realised that…oh, my god…he was going to kiss her.
It was soft, tentative, as his lips brushed hers, like he was afraid she'd slap him and tell him to stop being such a pervert. When he was sure that wasn't what was going through her mind – not that there was much room for anything to go through her mind – he put his lips to hers again. It was firmer this time as his mouth moved slightly, opening just a hint and capturing her top lip in his gently. When he felt her sigh into his mouth, he took it as a positive sign, and the way she opened her mouth to him completely was unmistakable.
This was different, he felt it in her warmth, in the way her hands were still fidgeting on his chest nervously, and if he hadn't realised it before, this would definitely have been the moment when he knew this was his Willow. She was warm, and soft, and smelled like cinnamon, and he couldn't stop his tongue from entering her mouth because he couldn't remember if she tasted like it, too. He knew it was a poor excuse, but it was one he'd stick to, even if they hauled him into court and made him swear in front of a judge and jury.
Her tongue met his, and he felt like they were melding into one another, a feeling he knew he could easily get used to, and it was something that scared him more than anything else in this little Bizarre-o World. She was responding to him, using tantalisingly slow movements with her tongue as he felt her arms move up to rest on his shoulders first, then around his neck.
He pulled away then because he had to. He didn't really need to breath in a vampires body, but he worried that if he didn't cut it off soon, something would happen that they'd both…he didn't want to use the word 'regret', but he didn't want to take advantage of her in this situation. They stayed in each other's arms for a minute or two, neither of them saying a word.
Xander took her hand as she released him, moving to the wall at the side of the room and sliding down it, his probably expensive leather jacket scraping across the bricks noisily. He didn't much care too much about that, though, because, realistically, his vampire self probably didn't pay for it.
Willow, seeing his movement, joined him on the cold, concrete floor of the cell, the both of them sitting in the shadows against the wall, as Giles and the other continued their assault on the club above them.
"Shouldn't we be out there helping them?" asked Willow, huddling into Xander for comfort and unneeded warmth.
"Which side?" Xander asked wearily, his sudden new life more tiring than he would have expected. "We're vampires, remember? I don't know about you, but I'm not in the bitey mood at the moment, especially for an Oz-burger."
"I meant helping Giles!" Willow stressed.
"The only way we'll be helping Giles is if we stake ourselves before we go out there," Xander told her logically. "He's the enemy, remember? Or at least he'll think we are, and I'm not prepared to do a Butch and Sundance when I've just found the only good thing to happen to me in hours. I doubt our fellow creatures of the night will see it in the noblest of light's either. Y'know, I never understood until now how brave Angel must've been, helping us and all. He must've received a heap of bad vibes from the rest of the Lost Boys out there," he said thoughtfully.
"I guess," she allowed. "Ah, well, I suppooose we could just stay here and smush together," Willow said with a shy smile, raising an eyebrow.
"Sounds like an effective plan, Butch."
"I'd rather be Sundance, much cooler name," she replied. "So, the Master's really alive, then?" she said, almost to herself. "Well, dead…but undead. I mean, back from the dead. I mean…"
"I guess Buffy never arrived here so the Harvest uncorked his bottle four years ago."
"So she never crushed his bones?"
"Nope," Xander said. "He's currently very much the walking ad for 'Night of the Living Dead' and not a nutritious loaf of wholewheatly goodness as would be preferable. Take it from me, I've seen him in the flesh, rotting and maggot filled as it may be."
"Maybe Giles succeeded after all," she said optimistically. "Maybe he's dead…again."
"I don't think so, Will. Giles isn't even our Giles. Who knows how much combat he's actually seen in this dimension? I think it's more likely he'll be the dead one. Who knows? He might even have been…" he felt a chill just uttering the words.
"Giles as a vampire," she said thoughtfully. "That'd be weird."
"I wouldn't have thought it would mean much change to his daily routine," Xander joked. "Just a cup of blood with his biscuit at three o' clock instead of tea."
"How can you joke about it, Xander? This is Giles we're talking about!" she said sitting up and looking him straight in the eye.
"He isn't Giles," Xander said. "At least, not our Giles anyway. This is an alternative reality, remember? One of thousands, millions, out in the big black yonder. It's like a bag of cookies; one plain, another chocolate, another chocolate chip, another sprinkled with M&Ms and so on. Giles is still safe at home," he replied indignantly.
"How can you say that?" she asked worriedly. "He's still Giles. A version of Giles. A man in trouble, so shouldn't we do something?" she looked at him, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "Have you been like this all the time?" she asked him. "So cold and…soulless? Are you losing your soul, Xander?"
Xander looked back into her eyes, his own carrying a few subtle tears nestling in the corners of them with worry and realisation. "I am, Will," he told her in a quiet, scared voice. "I really think I am. I've been thinking dark things recently…evil things that I never knew my mind could conjure up, let alone consider carrying out." He shuffled around on the floor, the leather of his pants sticking to his legs uncomfortably. "I think I'm even wearing one."
"Now you're scaring me," she said, concerned. "Have you done anything yet?" she asked, feeling an overwhelming worry for his welfare. "Like eaten anybody?" The thought also struck her that the same thing might happen to her if she stayed any longer in the dimension.
"No, I haven't," he said, deciding it wasn't quite a lie on the killing people front. He hadn't killed Angel, but he decided it would be better not to tell her that the other vampire was chained up in a cell not far from where they were sitting and that he had taken great pleasure in causing him some serious pain. He figured that it was Angel, though, and he was just settling old scores anyway, not that that was a great reason. It wouldn't be the same if it were a human being on the receiving end of his fangs…would it? Xander was afraid that it would be and even more so when he thought that he would actually enjoy the process.
"I wonder what human flesh would taste like anyway?" Xander said curiously, opening his mouth before realising.
"Eeew, Xander!" Willow cried in disgust.
"Now some say it tastes like chicken," he said to himself thoughtfully. "Which I could put up with. Cannibals call it 'longpig'. 'Dishin' up a big ole platter of longpig on the table'. So does that mean it tastes like pork?" he asked. "Or even some bizarre combination of the two, like some kind of pig chicken? I suppose drinking blood must get less icky as time goes on, or perhaps its like a gravy to…" he trailed off, seeing her looking at him with a look he couldn't quite figure out on her face. "Will, what's wrong?" he asked. "You're doing that starry thing with your eyes again."
"I think we should just get out of here with mucho quickness," she told him seriously, for the first time in her life feeling afraid of him as she tried to move away. "I don't like what's happening to you!"
"No," he said forcefully, grabbing her and pulling her back to him. "We're staying right here!"
"Oww!" she cried, feeling his fingers digging into her hips tightly. "Hurting now!"
"Will, think about it," he said gently. "Would it be so bad if we were to stay here permanently?" he asked with heavy sincerity, looking straight into her eyes. "We have the whole dimension to ourselves and we can start anew. Immortality, no more fighting demons – unless they get in our way, of course – no more having to put our lives on the line saving the world every two minutes. We don't even have to worry about finding jobs or what kind of future we're gonna have. We can be together forever!" he smiled a devilish grin.
"I see," she said, raising her eyebrows with a smirk. "'Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire', huh, Xander?" she asked.
"Are you mocking me?" he replied, slightly hurt.
"Xander, I don't want to stay here," Willow said truthfully. "I want to get back home and see all our friends again, get back to normal. This dimension, this life…its all darkness and evil. I want to live in the sunlight again. It's the balance between light and dark that keeps me fighting this fight. If I lost the light then…I'm really scared to think what might happen."
Xander still clung to her, his head hung in guilt and shame. "I'm sorry, Will…" he said honestly. "I-I don't know what's happening to me. I just feel so cold inside, y'know? It's so different, and I'm not sure what to think anymore. Kinda like one drinking of my dad's special 'orange juices' but without the crushing headache the morning after. I'm so confused but if I try to follow my heart, my gut, it leads me to a weirder place than normal," he tried to explain.
With his heartfelt words and forlorn expression, Willow felt the fear disappear from her, at least the fear she'd had of him. She carefully wrapped her arms around him, hugging him to her, glad that even if she was in some weird vampire dimension, at least he was there with her. Willow was just glad to find him alive…well, as alive as he could be, despite the fact that she had now put herself in the same situation. At least they could now find an escape together.
In Willow's embrace, Xander felt that old familiarity and safe warmth surround him, but he was still confused. Xander was confused about his feelings, both for her and their predicament, but he was more relieved than he could ever express that she came looking for him before he truly lost his soul for good.
"Will?" Xander asked after a minute, pulling away from her, but finding her still all-too-close.
"Yes?" she asked him, looking into his eyes.
"We could be together here," he said softly, dark intensity in his eyes that made her more than aware that he was serious. "No ties…no one else…no Buffy, Oz or Anya…just us. It's worth the darkness, isn't it? I mean after some time had passed we wouldn't feel it anyway."
Willow felt a familiar flip of her stomach with his proximity, and there was the temptation to agree because she wanted it so much, but there was a large part of her that thought giving in to this dimension would be too cowardly. She leaned in to him, her eyes wide with sincerity. "There's no one else I'd rather spend the rest of eternity with, but…" she trailed off, looking up. "Hey, the booms have stopped."
"Must be safe to leave," he said quietly. "Shall we go?" he asked. "I could do with an unneeded breath of fresh, musty air."
"Yeah, let's go," she replied in a similar tone. "Really quickly."
"Hey, Will?" Xander asked as they left the cell. "Since now you're a vamp too, do you…?"
"Is it the bloodlust?" she asked, eyes wide and a smile with relief as she felt like she could barely control the words coming out of her mouth, the weird feeling that had been bothering her since she'd arrived finally solved. "The feeling that you wanna rip your teeth into a fresh neck every minute?"
"No…" he said slowly, "…and might I add, please walk five paces in front of me at all times… No, I mean this weird rash right above my…"
"Again with the eeeww!" she said, cringing as she turned and walked out.
"What?" he asked, following her out with a look of confusion on his face.
Willow could scarcely believe her eyes as she walked through the battered halls of The Bronze. The club was exactly like the one back home, even down to the hole she knocked out of a table once with a microscope she had brought in to continue some extra credit work while keeping the promise she had made to her mom about having an hour's relaxation time per night.
This Bronze was creepier, though. More vampire-fied, with cages and victims and bloodstains and other stuff she really didn't want to think about. Giles' onslaught hadn't done as well as they had been led to believe by all the bangs and shouting, the human bodies outnumbered the tiny piles of dust lying on the floor like little anthills that reminded her of when she and Xander had worked in her neighbours yard when they were younger.
"So what do you think of the redecoration job?" Xander asked, looking around. "Looks like the Crypt Keeper really went nuts with the home furnishings."
She followed his eyeline, taking in the new destruction and the old. "It's so dark and…hey!" she said suddenly, hearing something she likened to that of an engine, and seeing a large vampire about to cut into a victim that was tied up on a pool table with a small chainsaw.
"Willow, no!" hissed Xander as he watched her run over, fearing that she would give her humanity away. The more they convinced the vampires in this world that they really were on their side, the more chance they would have of escape. He quickly ran over to where they were standing across the club as Willow seemed to be discussing something with the vampire that he couldn't quite make out yet.
"…So you see, Harley," Willow explained to the pale, dark-haired vampire who seemed to think that denim was a serious lifestyle choice, "…if you use the smaller Brinks 2500 chainsaw, you can cut just as efficiently but the blood won't spurt everywhere so much."
"But I likes blood," he replied in a monotonous voice with a slight Kentucky accent. He looked like a trucker, or someone that had undertaken a lot of manual work, as well as a lot of alcohol, in his previous life.
"Yeah," Willow said, sounding understanding and patient. "So why not keep it all in your victim instead of spaying the walls?"
"Oh, I git ya now," the redneck said, nodding thoughtfully. "Very clever."
"Willow, whatcha doing?" Xander asked, slightly out of breath and trying to not to sound as freaked out as he felt.
"She givin' me advice on cuttin' up this sonofabitch that killed ma Lullabelle," Harley told him, jutting out his chest and referring to the young man currently quaking with fear as several pool balls surrounded his head. The balls knocked against the wincing young man's head lightly, making the victim tense his body, no matter how hard the touch seemed to be. Xander recognised him as one of the faces from the White-hats attack.
"Well, that's the missus," Xander said quickly and nervously. "She'll help anyone…with their torture techniques. Carry on, and please don't hesitate to call if you need our advice again. We're on 555-MAIM. Bye!" He grabbed Willow's hand, ushering her away from Harley and the victim he recognised as one of the faces from the White Hat attack earlier.
Once out of earshot, Xander pulled Willow around quickly, looking at her seriously and expectantly. "Okay, what's with the Torture 101?" he asked sternly.
"I don't know," she told him, her eyes wide with fear. "I don't know what I was thinking. It's like I was back in school again and I saw someone calculating a math problem wrong in their homework, or-or-or had a comma out of place. I just had to correct it," she stuttered.
He smiled, despite the situation. "That's one of the things I love most about you. God knows, I would still be in 9th grade without it," he told her. "But what's with the in-depth knowledge of chainsaws? "
"Just came from nowhere," she said, distressed. "Does being a nerd carry on into the afterlife?"
"Who knows?" he said with a shrug and a smile that he hoped was reassuring. "I know I've never seen any creatures of the night hitting the calculus books before they go on a hunt."
"I think I know what you meant now about the darkness, the evil," she told him seriously. "I mean, I saw that poor man lying on that table and all I could think was 'y'know, those ropes just aren't tight enough and that saw isn't as sharp as it could be'," she shook her head dismally. "I'm scared, Xander."
"Me too, sweetie," he replied, pulling her closer and drawing his coat around her shoulders. He held her there, eventually leaning down and placing a soft, brief kiss on her cheek. She looked up at him and smiled warmly at him, before placing her head back in the crook of his neck. He rubbed her back where his arms held her, trying to offer comfort, but it was an action that didn't seem to do anything for their collective spirits.
"Okay, so where now?" Xander asked, a strong blast of cold night air hitting them in the face as they ventured onto the streets of Sunnydale to see if they could find a solution their problem. "I don't see any giant swirling vortex thing for us to step back into, or a wooden sign labelled 'Home' in big black letters."
"All we have to do is find some more of that slime and wish ourselves back home," Willow replied logically as they walked.
"So what you're saying is, we have to find Slimer again?" he asked.
"Not necessarily," she told him. "All we need is some of the residue. There should be enough juice in it to send us back."
"How did we end up here, though?" he asked, wondering. "I mean, what exactly does this stuff do?"
"Before we fought Sassprokasa I did a little reading," she explained. "Its bodily fluids have empathic properties that react to the thoughts and feelings of any organic life form it touches. The demon can also slide between dimensions at will at certain times of year, allowing itself to be renewed where any depleted powers will be returned, and be stronger, in another dimension," she said, her response almost verbatim from the textbook she had been reading.
"All of which adds up to much scariness," he said, almost to himself. "So what did we do to set it off?" he asked immediately.
"I just followed you, tried to get a trace on your specific soul," she told him with that 'don't-look-at-me-I-was-just-copying-what-you-did' look she'd had since they were six years old. "What were you thinking of?"
"Usual stuff," he said with a shrug. "Wishing I was Spiderman and not Peter Parker."
"So why aren't we swinging through the streets of New York trying to dodge the Green Goblin instead of walking the undead walk in Vampydale?" Willow asked, even though she figured she more or less knew the answer. Xander had always been jealous of Angel, of his powers and his attraction to Buffy.
"I might have sorta wished I were a vampire," he admitted slowly. "You know, all that power and stuff…"
"Just like Angel?" she asked.
"He doesn't come into this, he's nothing to do with us anymore," Xander snapped bitterly. "I just wish I was something more than Xander the Vampire Slayer Cheerleader."
"Oh, Xander, you could never be…" she started.
"I am," he interrupted. "Everyone else has a special power. I'm nothing. Hand me the pom-poms, mini skirt and revealing top that says 'Go Team Buffy!' I'm ready for them!" he grumbled.
"Well, if that's your decision, sign me up for one of those uniforms and we'll stand side by side together and sing rousing songs," she smiled, looking up at him.
"You can't," he told her, even though a part of him was secretly pleased that she'd still do that for him, still stand up for him when it came down to it. "What about your magic?"
"Nah, I'll just fire off a couple blasts while your back is turned," she said with a grin. "You'll never know."
Xander threw his arm around her shoulders, grinning back and knowing that he was beaten. "So," he said. "We just have to figure out where the demon would head in this dimension?" he asked.
"We might not have to," she told him thoughtfully. "There could be a chance there's some residue left where we came in, like entry burns or something. I checked the cell and couldn't find any there, but we could try the place where you came in?"
"The Apollo Xander landing site?" he said, leading her down the side of the club and around the corner. "Sure, we could go take a looksee."
A scream rang out in the night air that stopped them both in their tracks.
"Somebody screamed," Willow said, looking up at him.
"I know, Will," he told her. "I've heard enough of them by now."
They both turned to see Nancy closing in on a trapped, scared young boy in an alley not too far away from the Bronze. He was backed into an alcove with no way of escape, moving slowly and bumping into some nearby trash cans that clattered loudly in the near-empty street. Nancy snarled at the boy, ready to move in for the kill.
"There's our damsel in distress," Xander said immediately.
"That's Nancy?" Willow asked.
"Yeah, I saw her in the club earlier," he said. "Same thing happened to her. One quick oozing and a wish later and she was here, met a local vamp and got turned," he diplomatically left out the part where his vampire self had been the one to turn her, but he figured that was a good sign. If he felt guilty, it meant that he was feeling emotions again, which also meant that perhaps he could keep his soul tied down a bit longer. Mentally he tried piling on more guilt to stave off its departure.
"Oh, wow," Willow said quietly. "Mega bad luck. So, what now?"
"What do you feel?" he asked sincerely.
"That we should help that guy?" she said uncertainly. "I think."
"Me, too," Xander told her. "Let's go," He said determinedly, marching towards the alley, intent on confronting the vampire. It was an action they had repeated many times before but never with this much trepidation.
"Nancy!" Xander called out, just as she was getting to lunge for her prey.
"Hey, my syphonator," Nancy said as she turned to look at him, smiling coyly in her game face. "Want some food?"
"Nancy?" Willow asked, trying to make out the face beneath the ridges and fangs. "Is that you?"
"Oh, hey, Willow," she replied, suddenly remembering the events that had taken place in the Bronze earlier and backing away slowly. "I was just offering your guy a snack. You want some too?"
"Yeah," Xander said. "Yeah, pass it over here." Willow fixed him with a worried stare, but he tried to reassure her with a glance that told her he had a plan.
Nancy grabbed the boy by his arm and flung him in Xander's direction and waited for some kind of approval from her peers as her face shifted into its human state. "Strange, y'know, what being a vampire does to you," she said. "When I was human I wouldn't even eat from a fast food restaurant-there's, like, so much fat its unbelievable. I mean, what are they doing, trying to make us all look like Elvis: the later years? Because I so think that's their plan. And I never ate anything past the use-by date – even if it was like a day before it would be, like, gross – bin, please. Yet here I am, about to eat next to several trash cans, surrounded by all these icky flies, and I don't give it a second thought and…hey, he's getting away!" Nancy yelled suddenly, her face shifting back into its true form as she saw Willow ushering the boy who was going to be her meal down the street, before she made a move to chase after him.
"Stay there!" Willow yelled, seeing the weapons that were still scattered on the ground from the White Hats failed attack on the club. She quickly grabbed a nearby stake from the floor, plunging through Nancy's heart without hesitation as the other vampire sprung forward in pursuit of her prey.
This was no ordinary dusting, though, they knew that straight away. The minute the stake hit Nancy's heart, green slime began to leak out of her body and engulf it. She screamed out in agony, as was the norm with vampires when they were dispatched, but when her unearthly body crumbled away into dust a green outline, a perfect silhouette of Nancy Esposito, remained hovering in the air. It wavered in the wind for a minute, bubbling gently, before Xander moved towards it with his hand held out.
"What do you think, Will? He asked tentatively, a note of hope in his voice. "Could this be our portal?"
"I'm-I'm not sure," she told him, watching as he got closer to the hovering liquid. "Xander, be careful!" she warned.
The silhouette bubbled more violently and grew more ferocious by the minute. Sudden bolts of pure light shot out from all directions and obliterated the outline. The force of the blast, not exactly fatal but not without power, propelled Willow and Xander backward into one of the garbage cans.
Xander turned to Willow, her hair blown in all directions from the blast and her eyes wide with surprise, a real smile on his face as they lay in the garbage together. "I think we just found our way home!"