The Elder Slayers Chapter 3
AN: Like I said last chapter, this is going to be Willow's episode
To those of you who think I am going to make this a cakewalk for our intrepid heroes…. What prince and what demon would go together really well?
AN2: I am following the story for the second season only, what happens at the end of the second season? And I'm not even going to be including some of the episodes; maybe a few bare mentioning's at best.
Sunnydale High, after hours
A rather large man around the middle runs through the front lawn of the high school. He pants and wheezes and looks about himself in fear, trying to spot his pursuer. He has no luck and checks a school map he had acquired some time ago.
Finding the building he had been searching for he rushes to the door and slams into it. He begins banging on the metal and shouting in fear, begging to be heard. He had no luck though, and the thing following him knew the time to strike had come.
Hearing its approach the man turned around and whispered, "Deidre!" Before his life is snuffed out.
Across town a young red head feels yet another dark signature enter her city, and she hoped that it would not cause too many problems for her friends.
Sunnydale High, after morning classes
"Alright, I'm on a flat plain and there are hundreds of bucks waiting to be taken, and cooked, and eaten. Oh! And there's a really sexy wolf with me, and he offers me a nice juicy steak!" Buffy smiles at her daydream as she and her friends walk down the hall.
Willow shares a look with her girlfriend and as one they begin to giggle. Their mirth is not interrupted when Alexander approaches, joining and completing the Scooby gang. Alexander looks from the giggling girls to the bemused werewolf and asks, "I take it that you were sharing your inner most fantasies? Filled with blood, death, and of course some romance?"
Buffy looks up at her friend and says, "We're playing a game of 'Anywhere but here' and they laugh at me!"
Tara gets a hold of her breathing and says, "Its not that, Buffy…heh… It's just the look on your face when you described it…Hyu… it was like you were in heaven!"
She laughs once more, succumbing to the lightheartedness of the moment. She was therefore unprepared for the firm smack to her backside. Whirling around she barely caught a glimpse of dispersing magic. She could do no more than answer the challenge.
As the girls began to get into a tickle fight, much to the joy of many of the males, Willow managed to extracate herself for a moment and, seeing Giles standing in the hallway talking to Ms Calendar, asked with mild curiosity, "You think Giles ever played 'Anywhere?'"
The other three looked from the red head to the elder man and gave a collective shrug. Buffy said, "Come on, I bet he was born in tweed! He couldn't think of anything else to be!"
Alexander looked down at the blonde, smirking as he said, "I highly doubt that Giles would want to be anywhere but right where he is."
The girls giggled for a minute as they watched their teachers' converse. The idea of the stuffy librarian doing anything with the computer teacher was simply to ridiculous to comprehend. They were still giggling as they passed the pair, before Giles called out to Buffy, "Remember to be at the hospital tonight! There is going to be a delivery of blood and we need to make sure it gets to the people who need it and not the various dwellers of the night."
Buffy nodded to her Watcher and turned back to her friends. Giles smiled slightly, bid adieu to Jenny and headed back to the Library. Entering his personal sanctuary he went into his office to start up a cup of tea before going to the returned books rack to place them back in their necessary stacks.
"Rupert Giles?" A question made him turn back around to see two men in police uniforms, "We're going to need to ask you a few questions and possibly identify a body."
Sunnydale High, After Giles fails to turn up
"He was drunk?" The very confused Willow asked her friend. The idea of the British librarian doing anything to mess with his brain was disturbing and worrying.
"Yeah! And mean! I do not know what's wrong with him, but we need to help with whatever it…" Buffy paused in the middle of her rant and sniffed the air. There was a familiar scent in the back of the room, one that she had only smelled in one place and after one particular event.
Snarling she leapt clear over a rack and in front of a very surprised Ethan Rayne. The chaos mage gave a yelp of surprise and fell back, dropping a book in the process. The angered blonde grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and flung him back the way she came… all the way over the stacks to land on the table with a painful thump.
Willow's eyebrow raised a few notches as she saw the rumpled man lying dazed on the centerpiece of the room. The eyebrow raised a couple more notches when the mage began looking for something instead of trying to escape. With a silent telekinesis spell she summoned whatever it was that he wanted.
The result of that was a book flying around the shelves towards the young sorceress with a confused Buffy holding onto the end. When the book reached Willow it remained levitating, and Buffy finally let go when she saw that it was Willow who wanted the book. The Red Witch looked at the cover and read aloud, "Sowing Chaos for Dummies, by Prince Mehrunes Dagon. Ethan, why is it that no matter where we find you, you cannot escape the Prince of Chaos' attention?"
The now recovered chaos mage looked at the young teen scolding him like a five year old. Shrugging seemed the best response to her enquiry and so that was how he responded. Rolling her eyes, Willow waved her had and in no time at all Ethan was sitting in a rather uncomfortable chair with some very thick ropes wound around him.
"Now then, Ethan would you care to explain why you were hiding behind the stacks… and why Mehrunes Dagon has graced you with personal attention?" Ethan gulped at the tone that the Red Head used and watched in fascinated horror as her eyes lit with suppressed power, "Or I can make you explain?"
Sunnydale Library, some time later
Ethan had told the pair quite a story. One of Demon summoning and getting really high, they were disappointed in their father figure by the end of it but happy that he was a bit closer to human. About halfway through his explanation; Alexander, Ms. Calendar, Cordelia, and Tara entered the library to discuss various things and they all began listening to the fascinating tale of teenage rebellion.
"Then Randall was taken over. We panicked and killed him trying to get the demon out. When we failed we all just sort of drifted apart. I think a few weeks ago one of the old crowd wanted to feel young again and decided to tried to summon Eyghon. My mark's been burning something fierce so I hightailed it back to this lovely burg in the hopes that I could convince old Ripper to help me."
The Scoobies looked at the tied man in befuddlement, not knowing who 'Ripper' was, but they collectively decided to figure it out later. It was with a grand turning of heads that everybody looked towards Willow for some sort of direction. Ever since Halloween, the former Psijic monk had been the default consultant for the supernatural.
With a sigh, the red head held out a hand and a book flew from Giles' office into her waiting hand then began to flip through its own pages, once it stopped she looked at the page and read aloud, "Eyghon is the bastard son of an unknown lord of the hell dimension most commonly associated with dreams and nightmares. The creature is not powerful enough to physically manifest itself on the mortal plane and so must inhabit either unconscious or deceased bodies. The Mark of Eyghon is a method for which the demon may know its future victims. Simple ways to ward off the advances of the demon are to place wards against the undead on your person and to check for possessions around you."
Tara smiled and grabbed the book from her love's hands, and with a flick sent it over to Alexander for further study. Before the red head could object she found herself in the embrace of her wife and lost to the world for a few minutes.
Ethan was by this point confused and asked the lad he sold the ring to, "What the bloody hell happened to them, and you, and the four armed demon that gave me that book?"
Alexander, who had been reading more on Eyghon, looked up at the chaos mage. His eyes held a great deal of mirth at the elder man's misfortune, "Well, in order… You turned me into a Vampire Lord; essentially as close to a true demon a human can get without losing his soul. You turned the Slayer into a Chosen of Hircine; Hircine is the Daedric Prince of the Hunt so it was a fitting change. You turned my best friend into the strongest wielder of magic ever seen on this plain of existence, and made her realize she was gay. Her wife, you turned her into a Nightingale, an agent of Nocturnal and master thief. And the Daedric Prince of Change, Destruction, revolution, and a slew of other things for giving the Princes of Oblivion purchase on this reality personally thanked you."
Ethan stared in blank eyed shock at the boy in front of him wondering how it was possible, and he would have asked more if not for the arrival of his old friend Ripper. The rumpled librarian, reeking of alcohol and poorly applied aftershave, stumbled into the library to see his surrogate children doing various things- Willow and Tara making out in a corner was quite the spectacle, he was male no matter how amoral and wrong it was- before his eyes landed on the man tied up on a chair in the middle of the room.
Rupert Giles could take a lot of things, but the stress of the past few days finally got to him and he collapsed into the chair next to his old friend. He held his head between his hands and asked in a weak voice, "I take it you are here because you feel the mark as well?"
Ethan nodded and answered, "Yup, Ripper old chum. You sure know how to surround yourself with some strange characters."
Giles snorted and would have responded if not for a sudden move made by Buffy. The blonde had breathed in through her nose and caught a stench that she just hated. Scenting the air once more to confirm its approach she jumped to her feet and ran to the weapon cabinet while informing the others, "Corpse on the way, and I'd say its probably the Eye-gore thing."
"Eyghon, Buffy," seven voices said simultaneously.
The blonde stopped her trek to the cabinet to turn back and stare at the group, who had said that with odd synchronization, even Ethan. She shrugged and turned back to the cabinet and grabbed a sword that Willow had enchanted a few days ago. With a few practice swings she stood before the door and waited for the undead demon thing to show up.
It was another few minutes before the zombie shuffled through the door, as the majority of the fat was still clinging to the corpse of the fat man from the beginning of the chapter… his name was Philip. The glazed eyes of the dead body formerly known as Philip were focused on the two men seated incredibly close to each other, and it sped up its shuffle to a slow walk in an attempt to reach its targets.
It would have gotten there if it were not for the enchanted sword that banished undead wielded by a super strong teenage girl. With one swing, Buffy decapitated the corpse before kicking the body away. The head went sailing in the direction of the only dead member of the group, giving Alexander very little time to react as the head grew a smile as it saw it new target.
Before the flying head could reach and then take over her friend, Willow stopped it mid-flight and banished it back towards the rest of the remains of the fat man once known to his friends as Philip. The corpse soon dissolved into a pile of greenish goo that began to ooze its way towards the elder men. The Psijic witch gave an exasperated sigh and contained the ooze with a few wards then burned it inot oblivion.
Turning to her Vampiric best friend she said, "We are all going to your club, where we are going to get very, very drunk… is that understood?"
Alexander smiled nervously at her tone and said, "Okay, drinks are on me. I'll tell Lilly to break out the good stuff."