See Part One for Disclaimer and details. Not much to say except a huge thank-you to everyone who's been reading and reviewing the story, and I hope you'll all continue to do so!
Part Eight: New Order
Abandoned warehouse, Sunnydale
November 19th, 1997
The warehouse lair of the Anointed One looked like a war zone, littered with vampire dust.
That was because a showdown had just now taken place against the vampires known as Kakistos and Mr. Trick, along with their minions, who had all relocated here from the East Coast. Kakistos, an ancient Greek vampire – someone who Cordelia could actually remember from the sixth century BC, thanks to memories inherited from the Oracle of Delphi – had heard that the Master was now dead, and so had decided to personally assume control of the Hellmouth.
Kakistos had seemed unimpressed by the Master's successor, dismissing Collin as an inexperienced child despite the power he could feel emanating from the Anointed One. After they'd arrived in the warehouse, the cloven-hoofed vampire had gestured to Mr. Trick to make the pronouncement that his sire would be taking over as the master vampire of Sunnydale.
No sooner had Trick uttered those words, though, there had been an undead all-in free-for-all. Vampire had fought vampire in a wild, uninhibited, lethal battle. The cannon fodder from both sides had quickly been annihilated – then Collin's minion, Lucius, had managed to stake Trick, before a bellowing Kakistos had ripped his head off in retaliation.
That had been a mistake, however. While Kakistos had been distracted with Lucius, Collin had casually reached for a weapon he'd inherited from the Master – a souvenir from the one of the few times that old Fruit-Punch Mouth had headed south of the equator.
Namely, an Australian boomerang with razor-sharp edges.
A simple flick of Collin's wrist, and Kakistos – just like the late Richard Wilkins before him – was nothing more than a memory, his decapitated head hitting the floor before his body had exploded into ash.
No doubt about it, the Anointed One's reputation as no one to be messed with was growing nicely.
"I'm sorry about the mess, sir. Uh, I'll get started on organizing the clean-up detail," Dalton said nervously. The bookish vampire had never been much of a brawler, and so he had more or less just defended his collection of scrolls and ancient tomes during the recent battle; which explained his current anxiety.
"Not yet, Dalton," Collin stated, before looking toward his newest minion and saying, in a deceptively mild tone, "Ford."
"Yes, master?" the fledgling came up to his sire at once.
"I noticed you didn't take part in the fighting," the Anointed One said, his voice full of silky venom.
"That's because I was the last-ditch line of defence, sir. If anything lethal looked like it was heading your way, the plan was for me to throw myself in front of you as a human – err, vampire – shield," Ford hastily corrected his minor slip-up. "Lucius gave me the duty."
"I see," Collin said with narrowed eyes. He couldn't be sure if the younger undead was a liar or not, given that Lucius was now conveniently dust; but no matter. If Ford was a useless coward, the Anointed One knew he'd discover it for himself soon enough.
"You don't see much of anything, I'm afraid."
The vampires whirled around to see a man in a suit coming towards them. He was wearing a ski mask over his head, so his face wasn't visible. Dalton demanded, "Who are you?"
"Oh, well, let's just say I'm the man who led Kakistos straight to your door. I see he's thinned the ranks a bit – you used to have, what, about forty to fifty vampires in here? I'd say there's less than half that remaining now," the mysterious stranger said, looking around. "Good job of work, if I do say so myself."
"You smell human to me," Ford spoke up, a look of hunger on his vampiric face. "So what's to stop us from feasting on your ass?"
The disguised Mayor Finch gestured with his head. "Look up."
The vampires did so, and saw Sunnydale's chief of police holding an FN-Browning rifle to his shoulder – Bob was standing there on the upper level of the warehouse. Ford's eyes went wide as he recognized the dark-green and cone-like item, with four extended wings, that was attached to the mouth of the rifle. As fast as he could, Ford jumped on top of the Anointed One and buried Collin beneath his body just as the human gunman opened fire.
The grenade, for that was what the cone-like item was, exploded and a blinding white light appeared – the result of the white phosphorous within the grenade making contact with the oxygen in the air.
The white light instantly ignited into a huge wall of flames, burning everything within a twenty-foot range and sending out a terrible shock wave that shattered glass and threw every bloodsucker that had managed to survive the raging inferno to the ground.
In one second, more than a dozen vampires had turned to ashes and the rest were dazed and confused, trying to regain their feet. So dazed and confused were they that the majority of the vamps never noticed Allan standing there in the midst of the devastation, unharmed by the detonation of the white phosphorus grenade.
"Damn it, get up! Move it!" Ford hissed at the nearby Dalton, as he grabbed his sire and carried Collin away to the emergency escape exit. Unsurprisingly, the scholarly vampire did not argue with the fledgling and just ran for it as fast as he could.
Those three were the only survivors as Allan exterminated every vampire left in the warehouse – they prevented the new Mayor from going after Collin until it was too late, and the Anointed One had had too much of a head start. The undead were all either too loyal or too stupid to take into account that they faced a human opponent who was invulnerable to physical harm. And it was all thanks to the Orbs of Nezzla'khan, which Finch had surgically implanted in his chest to prevent them from being taken from him.
Drusilla's last prophetic warning came to pass – or so one might have thought.
No. 4 Parkview Crescent, Sunnydale
December 7th, 1997
The Anointed One and his vastly depleted forces had been in hiding for a number of weeks now, even though a hate-filled Collin had been working on a plan to gain revenge on the masked human who had humiliated him. But at the moment, Cordelia Chase knew nothing about that – she was sitting in front of her vanity mirror and slowly brushing her hair, getting ready for bed and thinking about the recent past.
Last week, Buffy had been caught up in something awful. Her mother Joyce had gotten involved with a guy calling himself Ted Buchanan; a computer salesman and amateur cook. Even though, it turned out, he'd also been a serial killer and a psychotic robot. One night Ted had gone snooping in Buffy's bedroom and confronted her about the whole Vampire Slayer thing, after reading her diary – the homicidal machine had already decided to abduct Joyce to its underground bunker of love, and didn't want the troublemaker daughter interfering with its plans.
A fight had broken out, Buffy had gone into Slay mode and kicked Ted down the stairs in the heat of battle. The horrified Slayer had then believed she was guilty of killing a human, until the robot had come back to the house the next night and tried to both murder her and kidnap Joyce.
Needless to say, Ted had wound up on the scrap heap (of life) after the Chosen One was done hitting him with that skillet, and the Scooby Gang had gotten rid of the remains.
( Why the heck did I ever let myself get involved with that mess, anyway? ) the puzzled Cordelia asked herself. Even though, deep down, she already knew the answer.
The cold harsh truth was, she had done so because Xander Harris had chosen to do so.
( Why can't I get that guy off my mind? ) Cordelia continued to cogitate. ( Xander's sheer poison on my social position, if nothing else. My friends have already started to give me strange looks at cheerleader practice, and whenever we're at the Bronze. But if I start avoiding him and the Library Loser Legion, then the odds are I won't know when the latest monster of the week's about to strike. Urrgghhh! )
Of course, that wasn't strictly true as a vision appeared in Cordelia's mind.
Even after the past five weeks, Miss Chase still hadn't managed to gain any sort of control over her 'gift'. The visions came wherever and whenever they pleased, much to her chagrin. Still, Cordy had profited greatly from her mystical early warning system in the past – the visions had even saved her life during Halloween – and so she just sat there, experiencing the latest prophetic glimpse of the future.
In her mind's eye, Cordelia saw a female hand put a plain-looking egg into a very familiar-looking backpack. Later, the egg cracked open, and some sort of purplish-grey demon-y creature with tentacles appeared. The tentacles extended out of the backpack, popping out the eyes of an equally familiar teddy bear.
The last thing Cordy saw, though, was her own blank, expressionless face as she smashed Buffy Summers over the head with a metal bar of some sort.
Sunnydale High Library, Sunnydale
December 8th, 1997
Buffy stopped flipping through the Watcher diary in front of her when her two best friends came into the room. "Hey, guys."
Willow sat next to her gal pal while placing an egg on the table. "Buffy. How come you weren't in class?"
The Slayer sighed. "Vampire issues. Did Mr. Whitmore notice that I was tardy?"
"I think the word you mean is 'absent'," Jesse informed her.
Willow nodded. "Tardy people eventually show up. And yes, he noticed. So he told me to give you this."
Buffy took the offered egg with surprise. "As punishments go, this is fairly abstract."
"No, it's your baby," Willow told her with a smile.
"Okay, now I get it even less," Buffy said to that, her confusion growing.
Jesse leaned on the edge of the counter while playing with his egg. "Well, y'know, it's all about that whole 'sex leads to responsibility' issue. So you and your partner gotta take turns taking care of the egg; it's a baby, you gotta keep it safe for the next week or so in order to get a passing grade in Biology."
Buffy set the egg down, looking afraid for it. "Oh God, I can't do this...I can't take care of stuff! I killed my Giga Pet. Literally! I sat on it and it broke!"
"You'll do fine," Willow encouraged her.
"Hear, hear?" Jesse added uncertainly, before firming up his grin. "Buff, you'll make a great mom! Trust me, it's all gonna be okay."
Buffy smiled at her friend's attempt to cheer her up. "Hey, you mentioned something before about a partner...so who'd I get?"
Willow exchanged a glance with Jesse, before she looked back at Buffy with an apologetic expression. "Well. There were an uneven number of students – and you didn't show, so..."
"I'm a single mother?" Buffy demanded, eyes wide.
"I'm afraid so," Jesse nodded.
Willow shrugged. "You still did better than Xander Harris, though."
"What? Well, who'd he pick?" Buffy asked, while trying to suppress the constant fear that she was doomed to live her mother's life – namely, with no man of her own.
"Cordelia," Jesse replied at once. Even though he wasn't chasing after her anymore, he didn't just ignore what that girl did these days, either.
"Huh? I don't get it. Why the heck would Xander pick HER for something like this?" Buffy demanded. If there was anyone she'd thought Harris would avoid here at Sunnydale High, it was the stuck-up cheerleader who was practically a dark-haired clone of who she'd been back at Hemery.
"I don't know, Buff, but it was kinda weird. Cordy had this freaked-out expression on her face before Xander asked her to partner with him," Willow said musingly. "Ya think he could have been trying to help her out, maybe?"
At that moment, the library doors swung open and Xander came in holding his own egg. "Hey. What's up?" he said to the Scooby Gang.
"Nothing much," Buffy said awkwardly. Even after all these weeks, she and Xander had yet to resolve all their problems and she wasn't especially comfortable in his presence. That was the main reason why Harris was a definite outsider here at Slayer Central, even more so than Cordelia.
Xander shrugged. "Right, well, I just thought you'd like to know that I got another visit from Ford last night-"
"He's still around? 'Cause I, I was kinda hoping he'd left town," Willow said quickly, spying the look of pain and betrayal on Buffy's face.
"No such luck. Ford said he might pay your mom a visit, Summers – so for God's sake, make sure ya tell her not to invite him in already! Y'know, I still think it's stupid how Mrs. S doesn't know the truth-"
"I told you, Xander, I want some normality in my life! If Mom knew the truth, then I'd never be able to escape the Slayer thing, not even in my own home. And besides, what exactly would telling her accomplish? Well, apart from making my mother worry herself to death that one night, I won't be coming home alive?" Buffy demanded.
"Fine, have it your way," Xander shrugged again before Giles came over with an old book.
When Rupert set it down, it showed an old black and white photograph of two men in cowboy garb. Harris looked at the photo and frowned, "Who are these guys?"
"The two vampires Buffy encountered last night at the mall – this one's Lyle Gorch, the other one is his brother Tector. They're from Abilene; apparently, they made their reputation by massacring a Mexican village in 1886," Giles said academically.
Buffy wrinkled her nose at that, recalling – just like Jesse and Willow – her Halloween adventure a few weeks ago. "Friendly little demons..."
"That was before they became vampires, actually," Giles informed her. Off everyone's looks, he added, "The good news is they're not among the greatest thinkers of our time. I doubt they're up to much; the Gorches were probably just drawn here by the Hellmouth's energy. It should be easy to..."
Giles trailed off, as he noticed something. "Excuse me, but why do you all have eggs?"
Any explanation that would have come from the teenage quartet concerning that was cut off when Cordelia barged into the library. She marched right up to Xander and said, "The egg, give it to me!"
Xander shrugged – the guy made a mental note how he was doing that a lot today – and gave it to her. Cordelia set the egg down on the floor and grabbed one of Giles' books. "This had better not get on my shoes," she remarked acidly, before the brunette slammed the book down hard on the egg.
"Hey!" Xander grabbed her arm, completely pissed over what she'd done. "What did you do that for? Now we're BOTH gonna flunk Biology!"
Cordelia yanked her arm away and gestured to Buffy's Watcher. "Giles, get over here!"
"Cordelia," Giles came over to her. "Do you have any idea how old that book is..." he trailed off when Miss Chase flipped the book over. "Oh, good Lord!"
"What the hell is that thing?" Jesse demanded, as he came around and got a look at the dead demon.
Giles leaned down and examined the squished Bezoar infant. "I, I'm honestly not sure. Some sort of demon, though, obviously."
Buffy looked at Cordelia and Xander. "That thing was in your egg?" She and Willow shared a look before they jumped back from the table, and their own eggs. "Ewww!"
Giles ran to the book cage and grabbed a clear plastic case. "Quickly, put the other eggs in here."
Buffy complied, just before one egg started to crack open. A tentacle quickly burst forth, and so the Slayer reacted on instinct. Grabbing Giles' book, she yanked the plastic cover off and bashed both eggs with it, killing the demon infants instantly.
"Whew! Way to go, Buffy," Willow exhaled in relief.
"Hang on a second – guys, we gotta do something about the rest of those eggs, right? I mean, Mr. Whitmore handed them out to everyone in class today – and it's not just us! I heard the egg parenting thing is also happening for the senior Biology class, and the sophomore one as well..." Jesse trailed off, a look of dread on his face.
"You're right," Buffy nodded. "Will, fire up the computer – we have to make a list of everybody who mighta gotten one of those, those – THINGS!"
While Willow, Jesse and Buffy rushed towards the computer terminal, Giles stared at the Chase girl for a moment before joining the rest of the core four. Xander dragged Cordelia up into the stacks and said, "Okay, I have a question. How'd you know what was the what, with those demon eggs? And don't say it was just a lucky guess or something – 'cause you obviously knew, right from the start!"
Cordy looked at him before she said, "If I tell you, then you have to promise me that you'll keep it a secret. Okay? No one else knows, especially not the loser squad downstairs!"
"Why don't you want them to know?"
"I have my reasons," Cordy said stiffly, before seeing that Xander was unconvinced. "Fine, then how about this? Quid pro quo, if I tell you one of my secrets, then you gotta tell me one of yours. That's fair enough, right?"
Xander shrugged yet again. "Yeah, I guess."
"You go first," Cordelia insisted; she figured that if nothing else, this would make the new boy in town open up to her a little.
"All right. I have no idea what I'm doing here in Sunnydale."
"Huh?" Cordy didn't get that.
"Don't you remember? My mom's ghost said that the PTBs need me here to help prevent the end of the world, or whatever. But I have no idea what that involves, or even when it's gonna happen! I kinda feel like an actor who's about to go out on stage and make a complete fool of myself, because nobody bothered to give me a copy of the script and I never even got to rehearse my lines. Is that satisfactory enough for you?" Xander demanded roughly.
"Geez, you don't have to be such a big grouch about it!" the dark-haired girl replied angrily, before she calmed down. "And a deal's a deal, I guess, so to answer your original question – I had a...I saw one of them, Harris. I saw it hatch, and I – I saw myself maybe kill Buffy after it happened. I had a...well, I had a vision about it," Cordelia confessed.
"You had a what?" Xander exclaimed.
"A VISION! What are you, deaf or deficient?" Cordelia spat out. "Ugh! You're not the only one on a Halloween-induced acid trip, okay? I've been having these flashes ever since that night, but they're like totally useless. I can't control them or anything," she huffed in frustration, clearly annoyed by that fact. "I mean, is it too much to ask that if I gotta be a freak – well, why shouldn't I be able to know what the upcoming spring fashions will be like, or the numbers for the lotto jackpot?" She then glared at Xander like it was entirely his fault, asking, "Really, is that too much to ask?"
Shaking her head, Cordelia quickly continued, "Anyway, last night I was combing my hair after getting ready for bed – and people just don't get how important proper brushing is for hair like mine to look this good, decent hair care products only go so far, ya know! – and then I went all Margo Lane and saw THAT thing," she gestured downstairs in the direction of the dead infant demon, "using my body like some kinda hand-puppet. Then today, we get those eggs in class? Yeah, I don't think so. So I took care of the problem!
"NOW do you understand why I want this kept QUIET?" Cordy hissed at him, glancing around to make sure they hadn't been overheard.
"I guess," Xander nodded, he knew Cordelia well enough to understand how important appearances were to her. "All right, fine – if that's the situation, then I'll keep your secret for now. But I'm pretty sure that the Watcher guy is suspicious, and he might grill you the same way I did-"
"Giles? Oh please, the day I can't deal with his passive-aggressive Earl Grey attitude is the day I start wearing clothes from Wal-Mart!" Cordelia said scornfully. "Come on, let's get this over with. I wanna get out of Loserville as soon as possible. And remember – not one peep to anybody!"
Sunnydale High Library, Sunnydale
December 9th, 1997
Perhaps unsurprisingly, nobody had noticed that Xander and Cordelia had briefly talked alone in the stacks yesterday. After Willow had finished compiling her list of students, the Watcher had sent the five teens off to track those kids down, and, if possible, retrieve their eggs. Unfortunately, though, the gang had eventually come back and told Rupert that the other students had already left for the day, and that they couldn't find Mr. Whitmore, either.
With no other option, after sunset Giles had sent Buffy out on patrol to look for Lyle and Tector Gorch, whilst he had settled in for an all-night research session concerning the Bezoar eggs.
Twelve hours later, Buffy and Jesse came into the library, joining Willow and Giles. "Ah, Buffy. Uh, anything happen during your patrol last night? Did you perchance, um, encounter the Gorch brothers?" Giles asked at once.
"Nope. No sign of the Wonder Twins OR any other vamps – even Darla was a no-show. No demons, either; it was pretty much Deadsville everywhere," the blonde girl reported. "I had a freaky Slayer dream after I got home, though."
"Slayer dream?" Willow asked.
"Yeah, it was like the one I had last month – only the two guest-starring vampires this time were Ford, and this skinny, crazy-ass British chick calling herself Drusilla," Buffy shuddered at the memory.
"Hey, I've heard of her – Darla mentioned her once. She was part of that whole 'Scourge of Europe' group, right?" Jesse spoke up.
"Yes," Giles nodded, having read up on that vampire pack after Spike had been dusted. "Buffy, what happened, exactly, d-during your dream?"
The Slayer scowled. "The usual cryptic, non-helpful conversation – Crazy Girl said, and I quote, 'he'll separate the righteous from the wicked, pet, and burn the righteous down. And only my kitten can help you.' Then that thing with Xander coming out of the ocean looking like the Jolly Green Giant's tiny pyro cousin happened again. Maxi-gross, if you ask me."
"What could something like that mean?" Willow looked around at Buffy, Jesse and Rupert in turn. "Giles, is there any sort of, of mystical fire that's green in color?"
"Not as far as I know," Giles frowned. Even though at the back of his mind, a very faint bell was ringing somewhere.
"Yeah, I can't figure it out, either..." Buffy exhaled. "Anyway, anything happen around here last night?"
"Zip. Nada. Nothing," Willow said disappointedly, Giles having already filled her in on that. But the redhead suddenly perked up as she remembered something. "Oh! I should mention Mr. Whitmore has health class first period and his car's not in the lot because I checked and it wasn't there, I'm sure of it!" she babbled in a mix of worry and excitement.
"Morning, everyone," Jenny said as she came into the library. She and Giles had reconciled around the time Ted had almost abducted Joyce, and so the undercover spy for the Kalderash tribe had started frequenting the library again these days.
"G'morning, Ms. Calendar," Jesse said, his eyes lighting up immediately at the sight of the beautiful older woman.
( Dear God, I can't believe I've actually started competing with Jesse over one of his lust bunny crushes! ) Willow thought desperately, trying to ignore her own recently developed attraction to the female teacher. Then she said, "So, I guess we're still at square one with that whole 'demons in the class eggs' thing?"
"What?" Jenny asked in confusion. "Demons in the class eggs?"
Giles briefly explained the events of yesterday to her. "I've been researching all night, but I-I've yet to identify what kind of demon it is we're dealing with, unfortunately."
"Have you tried looking through Hume's Paranormal Encyclopedia?" Jenny asked.
Shaking his head for not thinking of that book himself, Giles flipped through it before he abruptly stopped and said excitedly, "Oh – yes, yes, I'd say this is it!" He pointed at a sketch of a disk-shaped, tentacled monster. "It says here, 'Bezoar demon: a pre-prehistoric parasite. The mother hibernates underground, laying eggs. The offspring then attach themselves to a host, taking control of their motor functions through neural clamping'."
"'Neural clamping'? Whatever the hell that is, it sounds skippable to me," Jesse grimaced.
"Indeed," Giles mused. "It also says here that the mother and the offspring are connected via that same neural mechanism. So kill the mother Bezoar, and all her offspring will also die."
"Okay, so how do we find momma demon? And kill it?" Buffy looked eager to do her duty as some sort of Slayer therapy for her bad dream the previous night.
"We should do a locator spell; that'd probably be the quickest way," Jenny suggested.
"Oooh, a locator spell?" Willow's eyes lit up at the thought of doing magic, much in the same way as they did when the Computer Science teacher had entered the room.
"I'll do it," Giles brutally crushed Willow's hopes with a disapproving frown. "Right, let's set up..."
Just then, the first bell of the day rang. "Oh, blast," Giles cursed.
"I've got a meeting with the vice-principal soon," Jenny looked at her watch. "And unfortunately, I need to get ready for it right now."
"Plus we've got homeroom," Jesse looked around at his girls.
"Go, all of you. Buffy, meet me here again as soon as you can; hopefully, I-I-I'll have determined the location of the mother Bezoar by the time you get back," Giles said, before everyone else departed and the British man grabbed the crushed remains of one of the demon infants to use as the focus of the scrying spell.
Sunnydale High Basement, Sunnydale
A few hours later
Buffy, Willow, Jesse, Xander, Cordelia, Giles and Jenny were all trooping along, the Watcher and the Computer Science teacher using their flashlights as they all looked for any trace of the mother Bezoar. To everyone's great surprise, the locator spell had indicated that the demon was almost directly beneath their feet, underneath the school.
"I still can't believe I'm actually here doing this," Cordelia complained. "Ugh, my shoes are gonna be ruined from all the dust and grime – and Manolo Blahniks don't exactly grow on trees, you know-"
"Cordelia?" Willow interrupted. "Kinda needing to focus here. We've got a demon to find, remember?"
"Yeah. So, if it's all too much for you and you wanna go back upstairs – feel free," Buffy tossed out, as Cordelia glared at her for the perceived insult.
"Oooh, what's that?" Jesse pointed over to the side of the room. He thought he could see something in between a stack of boxes.
"Just a moment," Giles frowned, as she and Jenny gave their flashlights to the teenagers and started to move the boxes.
Unfortunately, though, that was a big mistake.
Because Mr. Whitmore, who had been neural-clamped by one of the Bezoar offspring the previous night, came out of the hole in the wall which the boxes had been hiding. As he did so, he started swinging a pickaxe; and it connected with Xander's head despite Buffy's efforts to stop it. Luckily it was just a glancing blow, but it was still enough to knock Harris out and put him down for the count.
"XANDER!" Cordelia screamed, as Giles and Jenny moved out of the way and Buffy charged forward, ducking the pickaxe and hitting the Biology teacher without pulling her punch at all. Mr. Whitmore flew back, the broken jaw a testament to the Chosen One's supernatural strength – and the possessed Biology teacher hit the basement wall out cold, collapsing into a heap.
"Oh God, Xander..." Cordelia said fearfully as she and Willow went over to examine the unconscious male teenager. Miss Chase then exhaled in relief, "He's still alive!"
"We need to get him to a hospital, right now," Willow declared as she started to examine Harris as well.
But then, there was a worst-timing-ever moment as the Gorch brothers showed up in the basement. "Hello, darlin'. Told you we'd be meeting again soon, didn't I?" Lyle sneered at Buffy.
"Yeah!" Tector said, looking at the female Slayer hungrily. "She's so cute. And little. Think we can keep her?"
Then both vampires recoiled from Giles stepping forward with a cross in his hand. "Get back!" the Englishman snarled at the two soulless demons. "NOW!"
Buffy didn't waste another second, she charged forward with a stake in her hand. A sweeping roundhouse kick sent Lyle staggering off to the side, but Tector wasn't so lucky. Buffy punched him in the face, before launching her stake directly towards his unprotected chest.
The undead cowboy exploded into dust, the skeleton appearing and disappearing in less than an instant.
"TECTOR! You bitch, that was my brother!" Lyle roared in his own special redneck way.
"You're gonna join him soon enough," Buffy promised the bloodsucker. After what had happened to Xander, she was in no mood to indulge in the usual quips, so Buffy just headed straight towards her enemy in order to kick undead ass.
Now, as Giles had said, Lyle wasn't the greatest thinker of his time – but he wasn't exactly stupid, either. The vampire knew that he was badly outnumbered, and facing the Slayer on his own under these circumstances didn't sit well with his sense of self-preservation. So Lyle turned around and hightailed it out of there, without another word.
The group swiftly broke up into two camps: Willow, Cordelia and Jenny took Xander to the hospital, while Giles, Jesse and Buffy went through the hole in the wall and discovered the lair of the mother Bezoar. Miss Summers then quickly terminated the demon with extreme prejudice.
Almost like Allan Finch had terminated Ethan Rayne, not all that long ago.
TBC...