Chapter 8

"God I love food." Sarah said to Charlie as they loaded up trays. Rather than steal the cafeteria's food (and really, who would want to do that?) they had stashed food here earlier. Some of it was home made, some of it was take out. "I really do. I hope you don't mind if I get all big and dumpy."

Charlie grinned. He had no problem with that. In his mind and in his eyes she would always look just the way she did now. Hot, and slightly goth. "Not at all." he assured her. "I've always found obesity to be very sexy."

She looked at him wide eyed, not sure if he was pulling her leg or not. She decided she didn't care. "That is so Renaissance!"

As they snuck down the halls, being careful not to run in to Ronnie, they also made sure not to make too much noise when they passed the library. Buffy and her friends were in there. Not that they thought Xander, Willow or any of the rest would rat them out, but there was the librarian. By all accounts he was kind of cool, but he was still a member of the faculty. Duty bound to report them and all.

"All right," Buffy sighed, "What's the curse of Ahroun?"

As he often did when in spooky lecture mode, Giles pulled more books from the shelves as he spoke. "It's a druidic curse, dating from the height of the druids' power. Certain pagan sects performed sacrifices on the feast of Samhain-"

"Like the Wicker Man." Xander guessed.

Giles frowned at the interruption. "Slightly. On the surface of it, the curse was designed to provide for sacrifices. But most often, the curse was used by dark druids to punish traitors or eliminate enemies."

He found the book he was looking for, and laid it on the table. On the page he indicated was a picture of an engraving. It showed a group of men in robes and masks performing a ritual. "A member of the target's family, usually the first born son, would ehm, be compelled to wipe out his entire family line."

Willow winced.

"Druids didn't do anything halfway huh." Oz remarked.

"Okay," Faith shrugged, "So who in Sunnydale managed to piss off an ancient bunch of druids?"

There was silence for a moment as they all pondered that.

"Doesn't Miss Tate keep getting freaked out this time of year?" Cordelia asked.

When Keri told Will that she was not who she said she was, about her real name, he had not taken her seriously. Perhaps starting all this with making out wasn't the best plan. It had put him in the wrong frame of mind. She couldn't decide if it was making it easier or harder to talk about.

On the one hand, the light air was somewhat comforting. But she couldn't help but think about what would happen when he realized she wasn't kidding.

"What did you do?" he asked, between kisses. "Rat out the mob?"

"My brother killed my sister." she told him. "When she was seventeen."

"Well that's...sucky." he laughed. Ordinarily, Will would have been more serious right now. But the blood was not flowing to his brain at the moment and he couldn't really process that her dark back story could be this dark. He'd figured it had all to do with John's father.

"How did he do that?"

"With a really big, sharp, kitchen knife."

"That's terrible. Take off your blouse."

Okay now she wanted him to stop being light hearted. "You said you'd listen."

Will sighed, and lay back on the couch. He was starting to get that this was not a game. But surely she wasn't really saying...

"They locked him up for a long time, but he got out." This was turning out to be easier to say out loud than she'd thought. "And he came after me. I got away, but he killed a lot of my friends. It happened-"

"On Halloween." he finished. It was a rather famous story, if you were interested in true crime.

"You've heard this story." she said. It wasn't a surprise. It had been a pretty big media frenzy, which had not helped her peace of mind.

"Who hasn't? Michael Meyers. That was about 20 years ago."

"1978."

Will wasn't quite ready yet to connect Keri with Lauri, so he deflected slightly, talking about the Strode girl as if she were still a separate person. "And the girl, what happened to the sister, she died right?"

Keri shook her head, willing for now to play along. "No she faked her death. And now she's an English teacher at a high school in southern California." She swallowed. "Hoping, and praying every year, that her brother won't find her."

"Well that's interesting." Willow said. After everyone recovered from Cordelia having a useful insight, she had gone online to look for anything in Ms. Tate's past that could connect her to evil druids.

"What's that Will?" Buffy asked. She was still bummed that her night off was turning out be, well, on.

"I can't find anything on Ms. Tate past when she married John's dad."

The others crowded around her to look at the photo that accompanied the wedding announcement.

"Wait, wait wait." Xander muttered. "Willow look up the name Laurie Strode." When he was younger, Xander had gone through a True Crime phase. It had come in slightly useful last year when they'd been investigating a group of Immortal serial killers.

Again with the unexpected sources of clues.

"You know the whole serial killer fascination is creepy right?" Cordelia muttered to him.

Willow did the search, and it did not take long for her to find what they were looking for. A few old newspaper articles about a one-night killing spree that seemed to have been centered around a single target. Willow put a photo of Laurie up on the screen beside a photo of Ms. Tate.

"Curiouser and curiouser." Oz murmured.

"But that still doesn't explain why she's being targeted." Buffy mused. As she spoke, she headed for the weapons. "Well I guess that doesn't matter. That masked creeper is in for a heck of a beating for ruining my night off."

"Hold up B." Faith said, hurrying after her. "Remember this guy took out a pretty nasty demon."

"So?"

"So there's no way you're bogarting all the beatings."

Willow scanned the news stories as quickly as she could. "It says here that Ms. Tate was adopted when she was a baby. Something about, oh look another horrible murder. Goody."

"Perhaps her birth family had something to do..." Giles trailed off. He had spotted the name of the killer, and of Keri's birth parents. "Meyers. Her own brother. Definitely the curse of Ahroun." He turned to see the Slayers arming themselves. "Both of you be very careful. The curse makes those affected extremely formidable. Not just in strength and brutality, but durability. He will be very hard to stop."

"Cutting off the head usually works." Faith shrugged. "But thanks for the warning."

Willow bit her lip, still reading the articles. "But I still don't get why that family got cursed."

The watcher thought for a moment, then picked up the phone. "Perhaps the council will be able to shed some light on the subject. They have more records of Dark Druidic Sects than I."

"Explains a lot doesn't it." Keri said wryly, handing the vodka bottle to Will.

Will was still trying to come to grips with what he had just heard. "So, you have been living with this for 20 years?"

She nodded, perching on the arm of the couch. She found that the fear had not, in fact, lessened with the telling. Nor had the grief of that long ago night. But the pressure was not there anymore. She had let it out and she did feel less...restrained.

"But honey," Will tried to comfort her, "You don't think that after all this time he'd still be coming after you do you?"

"He sat in a sanitarium for 15 years waiting for me." she told him. That was partly why she couldn't let go of the thought of him showing up even after two decades. When they couldn't even explain that, how could she believe that a mere 20 years meant he was done with her? "And then, one night...he decides to go trick or treating."

"How old were you?" Will asked. He was trying to draw as much out of her as possible. He believed now, more than ever, that much of what had been tormenting Keri had been her silence.

Keri glanced up at him, then something caught her eye. Visible just above Will's head, sitting on the mantle, was the birthday card John's father had sent him. "Happy 17th birthday" it said.

Whether the timing suddenly made sense or whether the sight of the card coupled with reliving that fateful night merely brought her old anxieties back, she would figure out later. Either way, her fear for her son suddenly slammed into her with renewed force. "17." she whispered, horrified.

To be continued...