Summary: Certain books have found their way to Sunnydale, pre-Buffy.

Disclaimer: I dun' own nuttin'!

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Pre-Fic Comments:

I'm gonna do some plot-stuff first off. You'll have to wait a bit for your Xanderfix.

* * *

*(After Jesse's announcement in the Bronze)*

>

The student pulled his friends and some of the biker vampires into a corner when Xander and his group left the Bronze. Carl decided to leave the music playing for now and joined them. In total, they were about fourteen. The student didn't bother grabbing the other newly made vampires -- they all looked like bad Bram Stoker knock-offs.

"Whaddaya want, kid?," a biker growled.

"I don't know about you, but I'm not waiting around to see if that guy and his friends change their minds," the student began. "That short chick was pretty insistant on killing us all."

"Continue," a thin man in a leather jacket said. "You've got our attention."

"The new werewolves are already starting to look at us sideways," the student's girlfriend continued for him. "We have to organise in some manner. I assume you're all Whitewolf breed?"

Looking around, all of the new vampire nodded except for one sad-looking individual, who was tolerated for the moment.

"I'm Lasombra," the student said, "and you will address me as such"

The first biker nodded. "Right. I'm Brujah. Well, that's my Clan."

"Kick-ass," the second biker grinned. "Bill, so'm I. I'm the Euro, by the way."

The newly dubbed Lasombra's girlfriend spoke up. "I'm Ventrue in Clan, and my name is Elizabeth."

"Tremere," a thin student said. "Timothy Smith."

"A-Adam," the non-Whitewolf vampire said hesitantly. "Rice breed."

Lasombra thought about it for half a second. The Rice vamp looked like a natural born follower.

"Adam, you can stay under my Clan for the time being. There is no one to challenge my leadership of the Lasombra?"

No one spoke up. The Rice vamp looked like someone had given him a million dollars. Lasombra loved it when something clicked like he wanted.

A muffled noise came from Carl. Everyone looked at him before they realised the psychotic DJ was laughing behind the duct tape gag.

"Malkav," everyone except for Carl said at the same time.

"And the sad part is there's no real change," the Ventrue said, shaking her head.

In the end, there were two Brujah, both bikers, two Gangrel, a biker and a student, no Nosferatu, two female Toreador, students, one Tremere, one female Ventrue, one Lasombra, one female Tzimisce (a female student), a male Assamite student, and the Rice vampire. They did not have any werewolves in their group. Most of the werewolves were bikers.

Carl left for a moment, to change the record as the song finished.

>

>

"We have to agree to the Masquerade," Ventrue said. "And I'm not saying this out of RPG'ing. The public isn't ready for vampires."

"I hear that," the Gangrel biker muttered. He was an african-american. "They ain't ready for black people either in some parts, and it's been hundreds of years."

"I say we fuck the rest of the Traditions laid out in the game," a Brujah biker said. He was slightly drunk. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

The student smiled. He could feel the Rite still doing it's work in him.

* * *

*(Day after the day after the Final Rite)*

"No vamps, eh?," Buffy said. "I didn't think any would come to the hospital like you suggested."

Xander and Giles gave her apologetic smiles. "Well, we could only hope."

Willow got a determined look on her face -- close to Resolve, but not quite.

"Xander?"

"Sorry, Will, but we have to hide our passionate love affair for a bit longer."

Willow rolled up her English notebook and thwapped Xander on the head with it.

"Explain the hat? You normally hate them."

Xander grinned sheepishly. "Promise not to get mad?"

"I promise to understand," Willow said.

He took off his hat. Most of his hair had been shaved off, and Xander now had a design of inlaid black metal on his scalp, a tendril curling down around his neck to join with the Tarbaby Rune on his right shoulderblade.

"Ewww!," Willow said.

"Major ewww," Buffy agreed.

"Cool!," Jesse said. "Is your hair going to grow back? Who did it?"

Giles tried to quieten the teenagers. "It was necessary for Xander to control the... Tarbaby rune. He asked me to inscribe the pattern, as it was more complex than he believed you could achieve, Jesse."

The Watcher's distaste at a joke of a name like 'Tarbaby Rune' was almost visible. But not quite.

By now, Buffy was into the morbid curiousity stage. She touched one of the lines, jumping as a little arc of purple energy leapt from the line to her fingertip. "Owch!"

"Pretty cool, huh?," Xander said. "Just the thing to pull chicks at the Bronze."

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. "Now, as fascinating as this is, we must deal with the more immediate problem. Doctor Gregory."

Jesse immediately went pale. "I... I can't... I never saw anything like..."

Xander patted his friend on the back. "Think of that Shoggoth Carl tried to summon. That was worse."

This did not improve Jesse's state of mind.

"Who would wanna hurt Doctor Gregory?," Willow asked. She had rather liked the scientist, who was a geniunely good person.

"Uh, he didn't have any enemies on the staff that I'm aware of," Giles said. "He was a civilized man. I liked him."

Xander rolled his eyes mentally. You'd like anyone who also drank tea, he thought.

"So did I," Buffy said.

"Well, we're gonna find out who did this," Willow said, semi-resolve face brought out. "We'll find them and we'll stop them."

"Count on it," the Slayer said.

"What do we know?," Giles asked.

"Oh, not a lot...," Buffy trailed off. "He was killed on campus the last day we saw him."

"How do you work that one out?," the Watcher inquired.

"He didn't change his clothes," Xander said. "This is a question that no one particularly wants to hear, but... where did they put his head?"

"Think shoggoths, think shoggoths," Jesse muttered. He jumped in his seat about a foot. "Don't think of shoggoths!"

Buffy suddenly recalled something Angel had told her. "There's a vamp with a big fork for a hand in Sunnydale at the moment."

Giles blinked. "I read about that! He displeased the Master, and cut off his hand in penance."

"So, why kill our Bio teacher?," Xander asked. "It isn't as if Doctor Gregory was Doctor Frankenstein, human flesh stitcher."

Jesse thought about that a minute. "Okay, that was worse than seeing the Doctor, yet not as bad as the shoggoths. I'll think about that for a moment."

The others ignored him for the moment until he came out of the terror stage. Xander gave him a donut.

"There was a homeless man shredded in Weatherly Park," Giles said, holding up a newspaper. "Perhaps you could check that out, Buffy."

"Oh yeah," Buffy said, recalling another thing. "I came across a really weird vampire last night. It had a wolf's tail when it looked human. Well, mostly human."

"Was it a student?," Xander asked, a sinking feeling coming over him.

"Yeah," Buffy said. "How'd you guess?"

"Gangrel," Jesse said, coming back into the conversation. "They can shapeshift. He probably forgot to shift back completely."

The Slayer gave the Watcher's spiritual sucessor a triumphant look. "I /told/ you we should have Slayed them."

"That's slain, Buffy," Giles corrected her.

"What-ev-er!"

* * *

Post-Fic Comments:

I might do the extra slayer-ettes thing. There're more vamps from the Rite I haven't accounted for, after all.