CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Here There Be Monsters

"I'm sorry, she promised she'll catch up with us later?" Giles asked Angel, with narrowed eyes and a suspicious expression. "Buffy … Buffy … said this?"

Giles once again glanced at Angel's car, as if expecting Buffy to exit at any moment.

"That doesn't sound like Buffy," Xander agreed.

The three of them stood on the sidewalk in front of Dawn's home. The stucco, white-framed window, and tiled roof along with the tree shading the driveway were benign, normal … suburban. Yet, they all would have agreed that, somehow, a sinister pall had descended over the bucolic setting.

Something foul lived inside, and it would be best if Dawn and her children were gone before it returned.

"Buffy will catch up," Angel repeated, without meeting any of their eyes. "Spike and his Buffy are planting the bomb, Faith says she's on her way with Colleen, and Connor is only about fifteen minutes out." He gestured towards the door. "Let's get on with it."

Angel eyes were guarded, and he seemed to huddle beneath his long black coat.

Giles reached out, grabbed Angel by the shoulder, and rotated him so that they faced each other.

"Angel," he said in a firm, even tone, "where is Buffy?" He stepped closer, so that they were nearly eye to eye. "Don't make me ask this again."

Angel opened his mouth, perhaps to answer, when the front door of the house swung open. The there of them immediately pivoted towards it.

"What are you guys doing?" Dawn asked. "I've been watching you through the window for the last few minutes, and you've just been standing out here arguing with each other."

Giles reluctantly released Angel's shoulder. "We are not done talking about this," he whispered.

Angel headed towards Dawn. "Dawn, we need to talk." His coat flowed behind like a shadow as he neared, and something in his eyes must have given away the seriousness of the situation, for her face grew still and she waved them inside without protest or question.

The interior of the house was much as they remembered, cubbyholes beneath the stairs lined with neatly ordered children's toys and clothes, family photos hung upon the walls or set within framed photographs on tables, tiled flooring downstairs and carpet upstairs.

The three of them found that they could not wait to leave the place.

Dawn turned to Xander. "What is going on?"

Xander, his eyes grave, took a deep breath, then plowed ahead, "Dawn, we think you and your kids are in danger."

"Serious danger," Angel added.

Xander nodded and continued, "Remember I told you about that memory spell that was affecting me a few months ago?"

Giles's head whipped towards Xander. "Did you happen to tell everyone in Moonridge about this spell except the people who actually needed to know?"

Xander ignored Giles and carried on, Dawn, this is serious. I need you to go upstairs, get the kids, and come with us."

Dawn's eyes widened as she stared at each of them in turn. "I have no idea what this is about, but I'm fairly certain it has nothing to do with me."

"It absolutely does," Giles disagreed. "Grab Logan and Alex, and we'll explain it all when we are safely away from here."

"Safely away from here?" Dawn scoffed. "This is my home, this is where I'm safe."

Xander sniffed at the air, and Angel and Giles glanced at him curiously.

"Have you been drinking?" Xander asked as he looked Dawn over. Her light blue eyes were bloodshot, her hair had been tied into a haphazard-looking ponytail and despite the late hour of the morning, she was still wearing her pajamas.

Dawn scowled and looked away. "What, you never drink?" Her eyes examined Xander from head to toe. "As a matter of fact, you look hung over."

Xander found himself with no ready reply to the accusation as, in fact, he had spent the morning nursing the wicked hangover he'd awakened with.

"We don't have time for this," Angel muttered. "Get your kids, Dawn. We need to leave."

He moved for the stairs, and Dawn side-stepped to cut him off. "I don't know what you guys think you're doing, but we're getting pretty close to my-asking-you-to-leave territory."

"Your husband works for Wolfram Hart," Xander informed her matter-of-factly.

Dawn stared at him, then narrowed her eyes. "No, he doesn't."

Angel pulled out his phone, found the photograph Connor had sent, then silently spun the screen around so she could see it.

Dawn craned her head forward, then frowned. "That doesn't mean anything. It's a business card … he's done work for, and with, lots of law firms."

"With Wolfram Hart?" Xander said disbelievingly. "How much have you had to drink today?"

"Okay, it's officially time for you to go," Dawn said as she pointed towards the front door. "If you leave now before Logan or Alex come downstairs, and before Eric gets home, we'll chalk this up to some sort of bizarre group delusion, and I'll forget the whole thing happened."

Giles stepped closer and looked Dawn over carefully.

"What?" she asked.

He turned to Xander and Angel. "I don't think she can believe what we are telling her … not that she doesn't want to, she can't."

"What do you mean?" Angel asked.

"Guys," Dawn said, her voice rising in anger, "I'm standing right here."

"The memory spell, or some other enchantment, is my guess," Giles said. "I think we could sit here for hours, and she'll never be able to accept what we are telling her."

"Get out, now," Dawn hissed as she pointed at the door. "I mean it."

"Xander stared at Dawn. "My eye doesn't see any magic or enchantments."

Giles shook his head, "I think the same spell that's affecting her has been affecting you the entire time, concealing what it's doing. Or, it might be that it's too subtle to detect … or cloaked somehow."

"GET OUT!" Dawn screamed.

"Do we really want to carry Dawn and her kids out of here?" Angel asked.

"We may not have a choice," Giles replied.

The front door swung open, and Connor stepped in. He closed the door behind him, then looked around in confusion at his surroundings.

"How was Illyria?" Angel asked.

"Weird," Connor replied.

"You can leave, too," Dawn informed Connor. "All of you, get out now."

Connor stepped into the middle of the room and glanced around, then he stared at Angel. "I got your text with this address, and I came right over, but I have a question … where are we?"

"What do you mean?" Angel asked absent-mindedly as he gauged whether Dawn was about to begin panicking.

"Ouch!" Connor exclaimed as he rubbed at his left ear. The earring dangling from it seemed to shine oddly in the light, as if illuminated from the interior of the metal.

"We're at Dawn's place," Xander said. "Guess you haven't been to Moonridge in a while."

"Dawn's?" Connor asked as he looked around. He walked over to the stairs and examined a photograph of Dawn's twin sons that hanging upon the wall. "Who are the kids?"

Angel, Giles, and Xander swiveled with irritated, befuddled expressions to stare at Connor. "What are you talking about?" Angel asked. "That's Logan and Alex, Dawn's sons. You know that."

Connor moved closer to the stairs and found a framed photograph of Dawn with her family. "Hey!" he announced. "That's the attorney I saw, Eric Aurum, I think that was his name. What's he doing in this photo with Dawn and these kids?"

"This is the memory spell, right?" Xander asked. "It's making Connor forget about Dawn's family?"

Giles rubbed his forehead. "If the memory spell was erasing the knowledge of Dawn's husband and children, it wouldn't just be Connor, it would be all of us forgetting who they are."

Connor spun away from the stairs to fix them with a puzzled look.

Then Angel, Giles, and Xander realized the truth.

"Oh, no," Xander said softly.

"I MEAN IT!" Dawn shrieked. "All of you leave, right now!"

Angel stared at Dawn with an anguished, horrified look. "Dawn, I'm so sorry."

Giles shook his head slowly. "We need to leave, now, and we need to bring Dawn with us."

"You're sorry about what?" Dawn asked.

Connor stepped forward and put a hand on Dawn's shoulder. "Dawn, you're not married, at least, I've never heard of you being married … and you definitely don't have children."

Dawn opened her mouth to scream, and then the front door swung open again.

Eric stepped into the house.

. . . . . . . . .

"Just hit the button, right?" Buffy asked Spike as she crouched near a small metal disk embedded in the ground. The two of them were standing in a neatly manicured, wide lawn outside of an office building.

"You're sure this is the right spot?" Spike asked as he squinted at the writing on the disk. "I can't make heads nor tails of that gobbledygook."

Buffy tapped the metal. "This is what Xander told us to look out for, so this has to be it."

"Tell me again why I don't get to hit the button?" Spike asked as Buffy sunk a large metal stake into the soil. Attached to the stake were a number of white tubes, a small digital clock, and an assortment of wires.

"You've blown something up before," Buffy said off-handedly, "this will be my first. Don't be all greedy with the whole blowing-things-up life experience."

Spike scowled but decided not to argue.

Buffy tapped a button on the digital display, and the numbers began to change..

She stood up and brushed off the knees of her jeans. "Run?" she asked Spike in a conversational tone.

"Run," he agreed.

They sprinted across the grass, Spike's black leather coat comedically flapping behind him, until they reached the parking lot of the office building. Other than Spike's black Challenger, the lot was empty, and the two of them quickly ducked into the car and waited expectantly for the explosion to come.

After a few minutes, Spike began tapping the wheel impatiently. "Was it supposed to take this long?"

Buffy frowned and leaned forward. "I actually can't remember what Xander said."

Spike reached for the door handle. "I'm going to go check it out."

Buffy's eyes flared wide, and she grabbed his forearm and yanked him back. "Are you crazy? We just put a bomb out there."

"Buffy," Spike complained, "if it was going to go off, it already …"

They saw the first explosion before the sound wave jostled the car on its wheels. Dirt and grass were flung up into the air, and a plume of smoke and dust erupted from the lawn in front of them.

Spike leaned forward eagerly.

A few moments later, the pressurized gas line ripped apart and exploded in a conflagration of smoke, debris, and fire. A fiery, black-smoked line stretching at least a hundred yards in either direction formed as an inferno erupted from the dirt, and the car rocked on its wheels from the force of the blast wave. Buffy could hear a few of the office building's windows shatter, and in the distance, car alarms began to sound.

"That's more like it," Spike said with satisfaction.

"I don't feel any different," Buffy said as she looked around. "Do you? Shouldn't our memories get zapped back to normal, or something?"

Spike concentrated for a moment, then shook his head. "Nope, whatever memories I lost, they couldn't have been important, cause nothing seems different."

Buffy, with a trembling finger, pointed out the windshield. "Look …"

A hazy, purplish wave was expanding in a concentric circle from the explosion. Drifting slowly at first, it picked up speed as it moved.

"Buffy …" Spike said nervously, "what is that?"

"I think that's our cue to leave," Buffy suggested.

"Good idea."

Spike triggered the ignition, and with a squeal of tires backed out of the space and whipped the car around. Buffy glanced out the rear window and watched as the mystical ripple undulated in their direction.

"Spike, it's moving really fast now!" she screamed.

The wave reached them before Spike could floor the car.

The purple mist passed through the vehicle, not slowing at all, and Buffy and Spike gasped as the magic ripped through their bodies and tore away some … veneer … deep within their memories. The sensation was akin to ripping off a scab and letting the new skin beneath feel the cool air, except there was no pain, only a strange feeling of wholeness.

When it was done, they looked at each other.

"Poor Dawn …" was all Spike said.

"Let's get to Dawn's place," Buffy said. "Or at least the place she thinks is her place."

Spike jammed the accelerator to the floor.

. . . . . . . . .

Eric closed the door behind him. He wore khaki pants, a black polo, and black loafers, and his dark hair was neatly parted. He smiled, his even white teeth shone in the sunlight streaming through the open shutters, and he glanced over the assembled group through a pair silver rimmed glasses.

"I didn't know we were expecting company, sweetheart," he said evenly to Dawn.

Dawn moved towards him while the other four of the room's occupants instinctively moved away. Angel thought about reaching out to grab Dawn, but then the moment was lost, and he preferred not to begin a physical confrontation unless he had to.

"They were just leaving," Dawn explained hurriedly. She stared frantically at Xander. "You were, right?"

"Is everything okay?" Eric asked as he wrapped his arm around Dawn.

Xander raised a hand and pointed at Eric. "Get your arm off her."

Eric frowned, and for a moment the veneer of genial normalcy lifted, just for a moment, then it slid back over his features. "I beg your pardon?"

"Who are you?" Giles asked.

Eric's frown intensified. "Rupert, you were at Dawn and my wedding, and we've known each other for years." He glanced about. "Is this some sort of joke that I'm not in on?"

"I remember the wedding," Giles replied, "but I very much doubt that the memories are authentic."

Connor yelped and reached up to rub his left ear again. This time there was no doubt, the earring was glowing.

"This isn't funny anymore," Dawn said, her voice reaching a high, frantic pitch. "Somebody start explaining to me what is happening here."

"Why don't we sit and talk about this," Eric said. "I'm sure that there's a perfectly logical explanation as to whatever your concerns might be."

Angel cleared his throat. "If you're thinking that memory spell you've hexed this entire town with will wipe our minds again, you're wrong."

"What an odd thing to say," Eric replied. "Spell? Hex?"

"Any moment now your pentacle will be destroyed, and the spell along with it," Angel continued. "Whatever little game you've had going on in Moonridge, it's over. You can let Dawn leave with us, peacefully, or we'll take her with us, not so peacefully. Your choice."

Eric sighed deeply and pointed at Connor. "That earring … enchanted, right?"

Dawn gasped and pulled away to stare in horror at Eric. "What?"

Eric ignored her and waited for Connor to reply.

"Yes," Connor admitted.

Eric nodded. "I had a feeling, when you didn't recognize me in the parking lot, that you carried a protective enchantment on you. Pity … the memory spell was comprehensive, designed to elude nearly every protective ward imaginable … but not all, apparently."

He walked past Dawn, then removed his glasses, set them on the living room coffee table, and turned around.

"I didn't want to harm any of you, you should know that," he said calmly. "I won't pretend that I would have particularly cared if you ended up injured or dead, but for what it's worth, it was never one of my goals."

"Eric, what is going on?" Dawn asked. "What have they told you? What do you think is happening?"

He looked at her with an expression of fondness. "Over the last few years, I have come to appreciate your spirit, Dawn." Eric gestured towards everyone else. "All of your spirits, actually. You have accomplished great things … you simply are too stubborn. No matter how many opportunities you are given, you simply will not stay out of the way."

"Eric … ?" Dawn's chest was heaving, and Xander could tell that she was on the verge of breaking down entirely.

Out of instinct, Xander walked over, put an arm around Dawn's waist, and pulled her close.

"From the beginning," Angel said. "It was you."

"Ethan Rayne," Giles continued, "the monsters swarming into Moonridge … Wilkins, too?"

Eric shook his head. "Wilkins was all your doing, my firm is simply employed by that detestable man." He sighed deeply. "The Hellmouth reopening would have been easier, but you folks managed to start a war here are all on your own, and soon … very soon … my quarry will come to Moonridge." He smiled, and this time he did not bother to cloak the malevolence with normalcy. "And once she is no longer under the umbrella of protection afforded by the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart, she will be mine."

"Your quarry?" Giles asked. "If not us, then who? What is this about?"

"The Old One who murdered my child," Eric replied, his voice near a snarl. "He gestured towards Angel, "You are a father, surely you can understand that such a thing cries out for vengeance."

"Wolfram Hart? Enchanting an entire town? Reopening a Hellmouth?" Giles asked. "All of that for revenge?"

"My kind are not the forgiving sort," Eric explained. "And as I said, I meant none of you any harm, you were merely a means to an end." He smiled, and once again it was disturbingly human. "Most of you actually make for quite good company."

"If you don't mean us any harm," Angel said, "we're going to leave now."

Eric pursed his lips thoughtfully.

The front door was flung open, the doorknob gouging a thick hole in the drywall, and Buffy, red-faced and gasping, rushed inside. Hanging from a cuff locked around her right wrist was a chain leading to an identical manacle, and blood dripped from her hand to spatter on the floor.

Giles's eyes opened wide when he saw the cuff, he immediately deduced the likely reason, and he whirled towards Angel.

"You had no right," he snarled as he grabbed Angel by his black coat and pulled him close. "How dare you!"

Angel, dead-eyed, stared in mute silence at him.

Giles yanked on the coat, then shoved him away. Angel slumped against the wall, breathing heavily.

Dawn began to cry. It was a soft snuffle at first, then within moments, a torrent of tears.

Buffy shot Angel a venomous glare, then she walked towards her sister. Dawn flinched, but finally held still so that Buffy could hold her.

"Buffy, what is happening?" Dawn asked between sobs as she wiped at her face.

Before anyone could answer, an odd, purple mist wafted through the house, passed through their bodies, and vanished. In unison, they all stiffened, mouths agape, as they remembered.

One set of memories didn't vanish to be replaced by another, it was more as if they overlapped, that both existed simultaneously, but one felt vivid … real … and the other had become a washed out patina, an echo of a false reality.

Dawn stopped crying and stared at the neat rows of children's toys and clothing stuffed within the cubbyholes beneath the stairs, at the photographs on the wall, then at the ring she wore on her left hand. She turned to the man she had believed to be her husband, and the tears began to dry, and instead a glare of stone-faced anger replaced it.

"You …" she said. "How could you."

"You wanted a life with children," Eric explained in a maddeningly placid tone. "So, I gave it to you … I saw no reason why you should not be happy with our arrangement."

"Happy!" Dawn screamed. "Arrangement! It was all a lie, you stole my life! You …" her face went white, and she recoiled in revulsion, "… you raped me. Over and over again, and the entire time I thought you were my husband. We didn't meet ten years ago, I don't even know when we met!"

"We've never been together physically in that way, Dawn, those were implanted memories," Eric explained patiently, as if he was reciting a shopping list. "But you're right, we didn't meet ten years ago, we met perhaps two years ago." His brow wrinkled in thought. "I can't recall the date, but I had to be sure that you'd be 'in pocket,' as it were, in order to reopen the Hellmouth." His voice took on a conspiratorial whisper. "As I said, a war in Moonridge was what I needed to draw out my target." His voice took on an oddly aggrieved tone, "You act as if I have stolen something from you, but you, of all people, should know that the line between reality and recollection is hazy at best … why is our marriage any less real than you are, when you popped into this world as a fourteen year old?"

"I don't even know your name," Dawn said as she held her hand over her mouth.

Eric hesitated, then shrugged. "I suppose I owe you that at least. I have been known by countless names, as my path darkened the lands beneath long before your kind ever climbed down from the trees, but I have always been partial to Arach."

"I'm thinking it's kill-the-bad-guy time," Xander announced.

Arach threw back his head and laughed, then fixed Xander with a piercing glare. "You see so much," he finally said, "why don't you take another look at me."

He shimmered for a moment, then reappeared seemingly unchanged.

Except, apparently, to Xander's left eye.

Xander flinched, moved away from Dawn, then slowly backed up and pressed himself against the wall.

"We need to leave," he whispered. "We need to leave right now."

"What is it?" Buffy asked. "What is he?"

Xander opened his mouth as if trying to get the words out, finally, he gasped, "He's huge … and he shines like the sun." Beads of sweat began glistening on his brow. "What are you?"

Faith and Colleen chose that moment to appear.

"The entire happy bunch appears to be arriving on my doorstep," Arach muttered as he drew himself up. "I'm sure we'll be crossing paths in the days to come, but as I would prefer not to have my employers receive a report that this entire street has erupted into carnage, I'll be leaving now." He stared at Faith and Colleen. "Get away from the door."

Faith shook her head. "I don't think so. Whatever that purple stuff that leaked into my brain was, it told me you're bad news."

Colleen and Faith spread out to flank Arach.

"Enough," Arach said. "This is growing tiresome.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Dawn said as she swayed on her feet.

Xander roared, and the left side of his face along with his left arm were instantly coated with red, flickering flames. Buffy yanked Dawn away as Xander leapt, reached for Arach, and grabbed his arms. The flames lapped from Xander onto Arach's skin, coating him in fire.

Arach glanced down, then at Xander. "You think to burn me? I am shadow and flame made flesh." He thrust his hand forward and Xander flew across the living room to crash into the slayers.

"What did we miss?" Spike asked as he and the younger Buffy rushed into the house.

Arach's eyes had become inky pools from which no light reflected, and beneath the furniture, the corners of the room, and anywhere else where darkness lay, shadows coalesced and flowed towards his outstretched hand. The room grew cold and still, and when a whirling ball of blackness lay upon his palm, he extended his arm towards them.

They all guessed what would happen next.

Xander flung himself in front of Dawn, and Angel, despite angry protests, yanked Buffy towards the kitchen hallway, interposed his body between hers and Arach, and wrapped his arms around her to pull her close. Faith and Connor ignored Giles's stare of disdain and pulled his body between them.

When Arach opened his hand, the collected shadows exploded outwards, and the entire lower floor of the house was torn to shreds. The windows shattered in unison, shutters tearing free to spin towards the street, studs appeared as the walls were ripped and shredded, any object made of porcelain or glass disintegrated in an instant, and the furniture was flung into the air to crash into the assembled group … which actually turned out to be a blessing, as the couch and chairs of the living room cushioned the force of the blast.

Spike and the younger Buffy found themselves on the front lawn, ears ringing, and disoriented. Connor, Faith, Colleen, and Giles, having been launched into the now destroyed stairs, began picking the shredded wood off themselves. When Giles found his shattered glasses, he let them drop to the ground.

"Are you alright?" Angel asked Buffy. They had ended up being thrown into the kitchen, and both of them were covered pulverized drywall and debris. Splintered glass from the cupboards and shattered porcelain coated the entire room, and the wooden cabinets hung, pulped and demolished, from bent hinges. Buffy lay on the floor beneath Angel, sheltered by both his body and his now-shredded, coat. Blood leaked steadily from Angel's left ear and from a long gash that led from the corner of his lip to just beneath his eye.

When Buffy didn't reply, he raised himself off her and reached to check for a pulse.

Angel was able to breathe again when she coughed a few times, blinked, then opened her eyes. When they focused on him, they narrowed in anger.

"Get. Off. Me," she snarled. She reached up and pushed him away. "I mean it, Angel, get away from me, right now."

He nodded and pushed himself upright. Ears ringing, he used what was left of the pulverized granite countertop to pull himself upright, fought through the waves of crippling pain washing over him, then turned to check on everyone else.

The right cross that Giles smashed into his jaw added just another layer of pain.

"What was that for?" Angel asked as he rubbed at his chin.

Giles, stone-faced, pointed at the cuff locked around Buffy's wrist, then he knelt down to help her to her feet.

Buffy's face was hard and cold as she stared at Angel, then she extended her hand, palm up, in his direction.

He knew what she wanted, and red-faced, he found the key that somehow, miraculously, was still in his coat pocket, and handed it to her.

She unlocked the cuff, which induced a fresh spattering of blood to trickle from her torn wrist, then she flung the shackles away and turned from him without a word.

Everyone slowly began to gather in the living room, and there they found Xander still holding Dawn. The explosion seemed to have not affected them at all, either intentionally on the part of Arach, which seemed likely, or through sheer dumb luck.

Dawn raised a hand and pressed it softly it to Xander's cheek. "I'm so sorry … I didn't remember."

Xander bowed his head, and a tear dropped from his eye. "It's not your fault."

"What is it?" Faith asked as she wiped blood from her nose.

"Either of you two hurt?" Colleen asked as she gazed at the odd tableau of Xander holding Dawn close within the shredded ruins of her former home.

Xander turned to gaze at Buffy. "Those clothes I gave you back in January, after yours got dirty when you fought Robin in that tunnel, those weren't Phoebe's …"

"I know," Buffy said sadly. "You never dated anyone named Phoebe."

"I don't get it," Faith asked.

Giles cleared his throat. "A few years ago … just before Arach arrived, Dawn and Xander … well …"

"Dawn was moving in with Xander," Angel explained as he walked in from the kitchen. "They'd been dating for years … and … and …" he found he couldn't continue.

"I thought they broke up?" Connor exclaimed. "Didn't you guys warn me to never bring up that they had ever even dated?"

"That must have been the memory spell," Buffy said.

Giles nodded in agreement. "Arach was covering his tracks, the spell induced us to lie to anyone outside its boundary who might uncover the truth."

Xander continued to stare sadly down at Dawn. "My house … I built it for you … for us."

Dawn raised her left hand, ripped off the engagement ring she was wearing, and flung it away. She leaned close and laid her head on Xander's chest. "I don't even know what that monster did with the ring you gave me."

"I'll buy you another one," Xander promised.

Colleen felt a wave of sadness as she glanced at Faith.