Stumbling away from the chaos emanating from the Bronze, Buffy ran toward the nearby Restfield Cemetery, a place that, oddly enough, felt safe for her. There she had broken into a crypt, the lock on the door fairly crumbling in her hand when she yanked on it, her whole body shaking as she fell into the dusty darkness of the tomb. Slamming the door shut behind her, she sank to her knees on the cold stone floor, the silence humming in her ears.
She thought that perhaps she was in shock. She felt dizzy, like someone had put her brain in a blender and was whipping it into a Buffy smoothie, everything that had happened that night flashing by in disjointed images that didn't make much sense. She thought that maybe she was dreaming, or maybe she'd been hit over the head, or maybe she was just watching tv, a movie with a girl who looked remarkably like her. The truth, reality, seemed to have slowed, to be moving thick and sluggish through her veins even though her heart pounded…
Wait a minute.
Buffy straightened, settling back onto her heels and stilling as she cocked her head, listening in the quiet. Something was different. She looked down at her hands, resting on her knees, and turned them over and over. They were hers, but they were… different? Something not quite… It was strange. And it was wrong, and it was… right. What was this?
Buffy ran her hands up her body, over her shoulders and her neck, looking for… something. Probing fingers crept over her face and she gasped when they hit a hard, ridged brow. Dropping immediately to her mouth, they explored a row of sharp teeth, her tongue sneaking forward to tap along jagged fangs. She held her breath, waiting for the familiar burn in her chest that signaled a need to breath. It never came. She didn't need to breathe! Indeed her torso felt strangely hollow, lungs useless and heart still. Her hand dropped to her chest. Her heart wasn't beating. So this was… real. This was really real. She was a vampire.
She expected a tremendous wave of emotion to overtake her, to feel disappointment, failure, fear, terror, sadness. Her greatest fear, the thing she dreaded more than anything else was to be turned, and yet she felt none of the crippling anxiety previously associated with the thought. Indeed she felt very little at all.
And at the same time, to her great surprise, she felt very much the same.
Confused, and oddly more lonely than anything else, she climbed up onto the wide stone lid of a coffin and curled up into a tight ball, drifting off to sleep as sunrise prickled at her senses.
It was after one when the Scoobies were called together again. Exhausted by the night's events, they were roused when a concerned Joyce phoned Willow, looking for her daughter who hadn't returned home the night before. This promptly set-off a round-robin of phone calls, until Willow and Xander had both converged in front of Giles' apartment where they were met by the harried Watcher.
"This is bad," Xander said, bouncing nervously from foot to foot. "Giles this is bad."
"M, maybe she just… got caught up with Angel?" Willow offered with a frightened look, a suggestion that did not broker the intended results.
Xander's eyes went wide, his mouth curling with something close to disgust, while Giles went a bit pale and began to clean his glasses.
"Giles this is bad!" Xander repeated, even more emphatically this time. "We have to find her!"
"Yes, it would be wise to ascertain her whereabouts," he said, his words low and quick, as they were when he was worried. "After last night, I expect Buffy is a bit, er, fragile. She may be feeling ashamed, or worried that our reactions to her behavior."
"What do we tell Ms. Summers?" Willow asked, looking between her two companions. "She doesn't know. I mean, about anything. She had no idea that Buffy is the Slayer."
"Let's leave her to me," Giles replied, replacing his glasses. "Should it become necessary to divulge Buffy's calling to her mother, it would be best if I were the one. Until then, let's split up and look for her. Xander, you check the hospital. Willow, you check around the Bronze, see if you can scare up Angel. I'll search the costume shop; it's possible that Buffy figured out what happened last night and went back for a... discussion with Ethan. If we haven't heard from one another, meet at Buffy's house at six this evening. Hopefully we'll have something to show."
"Hey who's Ethan?" Xander called after him as the older man hurried away, but Giles didn't turn back, leaving the teenagers alone on the sidewalk.
"Ethan's the guy who worked the costume mojo," Willow answered for him. "I guess Giles knows him from when they were kids. Come on," she rallied, grabbing Xander's wrist and hauling him towards the street. "We have to find Buffy."
Hours later, they reconvened on the sidewalk outside of Buffy's house, each frightened, worried, and with a story to tell.
"Cordelia's in the hospital!" Xander cried anxiously as the others approached. "She's in a coma. I tried to figure out what happened but no one would tell me. They aren't sure she'll wake up!"
"Oh God," Willow gasped, a shaking hand flying to her mouth. "It was Cordelia?"
"Willow?" Giles queried.
"The Bronze," the pale red-head quavered, trying to control her voice. "I went to the Bronze. There was caution tape everywhere, and police. I got close enough to listen. Harmony's dead!"
"What?" Xander yelped. "What happened? I heard fire alarms last night…"
"I'm not sure. They said that there was some kind of attack; the fire alarm was pulled and when they got there they found a girl unconscious against the wall and another was dead in the middle of the dance floor. Giles," Willow whispered, turning to the man who placed an arm on her shoulder in a failed attempt at comfort, "They said she bled out. Severe neck trauma. You don't think another vampire could've gotten Buffy do you? I mean, I thought maybe I saw…"
"What?" Giles asked, suddenly alert as he gripped Willow's arm. "What did you see?"
"I thought maybe I saw Spike," she squeaked.
It was as though a death thrall fell over the three. Silence weighed heavily on horror struck faces, each contemplating the possible loss of the girl they had come to care for so deeply in such a short time. The possible ramifications of the Halloween spell seemed to fade entirely away, inconsequential in the face of what might have really happened.
"Dear lord," Giles whispered, pulling off his glasses.
"No!" Xander exclaimed. "No way. Buffy's kicked Spike's butt before. And we'd know. We'd know if she…" He trailed off, a shiver visibly shaking his frame.
"I think perhaps it's time I spoke with Ms. Summers," Giles said quietly, turning to face the door of 1630 Revello. "Wherever Buffy is, her mother should know the truth." Willow and Xander stepped up to his side, and he looked at them with surprise.
"We're with you G-man," Xander said, clapping a hand to the Watcher's shoulder. "She can't think we're all three of us crazy, right?"
"I surely hope not," Giles whispered. Moving together, they climbed the porch steps and, with a feeling like preparing for battle, knocked on the door.
Buffy woke just before dusk, as the sun began its slow descent from the sky. She felt strange, her body cold and seeking as though it expected to find another beside it, to wake curled in someone's arms. Shaking the feeling, she sat up on her sarcopha-bed and stretched, her fangs sliding smoothly in and out of her gums as she yawned widely. Night was falling, she could feel it, and it spread out before her like a dark quilt of endless possibilities, but she didn't know where she was meant to go. What she was meant to do. She felt lost, and still far too alone.
The tremblings of an idea began to quiver at the back of her mind, hazy at first, and a bit unfocused, but the more she thought about it the more sense it made. After all, where did she always go running back to when the day was done, when she wanted clean clothes and a nice, hot meal? Home of course. A smile on her face, Buffy slipped out of the crypt and across the cemetery, towards Revello Drive.