Frankenstein Part Two
A/N: Disclaimer's in the first chapter.
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September 16
As had become the norm, everyone was in the basement warming up prior to heading out on patrol when Jon's head snapped up, and he leveled a lethal glare at the door leading to the side yard.
"Angel's coming." Jon half-growled. "And he's got someone with him who is very, very not happy to be there. Their heartrate's through the roof and I can hear muffled attempts at yelling."
It really didn't help Angel's case that it sounded like he was kicking the door when he got close enough to it to knock. Giles, who happened to be closest, opened the door.
"Angel. Might I inquire as to why you have a blood-smeared Cordelia Chase pinned in your grasp?" Giles asked.
Xander exchanged a look with Jon, because there had been an edge to Giles' voice that Xander had never heard before. Something hard and ... dangerous. Which really didn't fit with the Giles Xander knew.
"Just let me in. It's not what it looks like." Angel groused. "She's flipping out for a damn good reason that has nothing to do with me."
Giles quit blocking his way, and then Xander could see what both Jon and Giles had meant. Cordelia's clothes were smeared with blood from the knees down, and she was wild-eyed and visibly shaking in Angel's grasp. Amusingly, it looked like she'd tried to bite Angel at least once, if the red teeth marks on his hand were any indication. She was also still trying to yell.
Joyce, who'd joined them during their warmup, was the first to get moving. "Buffy, be a dear and run upstairs, grab some of my clothes. They'll come the closest to fitting. I dare say Cordelia wants no part of what she's got on at the moment." She said.
"Right!" Buffy said, and hurried up the stairs.
In the meantime, Joyce pulled Cordelia from Angel. Cordelia took the opportunity to take a swing at Angel, but between his reflexes and the fact she was shaking so hard she could barely keep her feet, she missed by a mile. At that point, Joyce gently steered her towards the shower that had been installed for messy slay events.
"I think you might feel a bit better getting out of those." Joyce told Cordelia. It was a measure of how freaked out Cordelia was that she didn't even attempt to argue.
"So what the hell happened?" Xander wanted to know, once the two of them were out of sight in the shower area.
"I was patrolling solo." Angel said. "And picked up on the smell of rotting human bodies. So I started tracking it. Followed it to a dumpster near the school. She was in it. Why, I have no idea. She also had no idea what she was standing in, because she didn't start screaming and flailing until she looked down while getting out."
"And what was she standing in?" Giles asked, sounding like he dreaded the answer. Not that Xander blamed him.
"Human body parts. The dumpster was half full of them."
"Oh, that's great." Jon said, voice heavy with sarcasm.
"Anyway, I couldn't get her to calm down, so I brought her here." Angel said.
"Yeah, I don't think being manhandled by a vampire would have been very comforting to her." Xander muttered.
For a moment, Xander wondered if Angel was going to hit him, he was leveling such a lethal glare. "I'll head back to the dumpster. See what I can find out." Angel said at length, then swept out, closing the door behind him.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Xander."
Xander grimaced. "Sorry. I actually didn't mean it quite the way he took it." He said. And while, yes, he took pleasure in kicking Angel's shins, he'd not really been meaning to, that time. He'd just meant that after realizing she'd been standing in a bin of body parts, having to deal with something that ... well, wasn't quite alive, at least not in the traditional sense, couldn't have helped matters. Joyce came back into the main part of the basement about then. "How's she doing?" Xander asked.
Joyce sighed. "She's very shaken." She said. "Not that I blame her. I'd be freaking out more than a little bit too."
"No kidding." Jon said, wrinkling his nose in disgust.
Cordelia came out of the shower area about fifteen minutes later, dressed in some of Joyce's clothes. She was still shaking and looking very nervous, but she had calmed down a little bit.
"What happened, Queen C?" Xander asked, hoping that getting her focused on him, with her tendency to snark at him, might help.
Sure enough, Cordelia gave him a glare. "I was heading for my car after practice, which, those girls are stupid and incompetent. I mean, really. Half of them can't manage a proper cartwheel, nevermind something as complex as doing them together." She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I was heading for my car, when I got to feeling like I was being watched, or followed or something. There wasn't exactly a lot of cover in the parking lot, so I figured whoever it was was near my car and took off in another direction."
Not a bad line of thinking, Xander admitted.
"Whoever it was ... well, the feeling refused to go away. So I ended up ... " She swallowed hard and gave a convulsive shudder. "Well, I ended up where I ended up. When the feeling finally went away, I started to climb out, except he." Cordy waved a hand, indicating the door and the departed Angel. "Was there. I ended up hitting him a few times before he told me to get out." Another convulsive shudder, and this time Cordelia didn't continue. Not that it mattered, really, since they'd gotten what had happened at that point from Angel.
It took another half hour for Cordelia to calm down completely, and about the time she did, she collapsed into sleep, having obviously worn herself out. Shortly after that, Angel returned, looking very grim.
"All the body parts were female." He said. "And dead anywhere from a day to a week before they got in the dumpster."
"The grave the other night." Buffy said. "The girl that got dug up."
Angel nodded. "I have no way of knowing if she was in there, but ... someone is digging up freshly dead females and cutting them apart. Neatly. All the sections were almost surgically precise. Definitely not the work of a demon. They just bite, claw or yank."
"But why?" Buffy wanted to know. "That's what makes no sense. Why would they be digging up girls and cutting them into chunks?"
"And does it have anything to do with Cordelia getting stalked?" Xander wanted to know. "And if so, why?"
Suddenly, Willow sat straight up. "Wait. Wait a second. Remember when you guys dropped me off at the message board?" She asked. "I signed up, and Chris and his friend were there. I got to talking to Chris for a bit, and while I was doing that, Eric had a camera with him, and was taking pictures. But he's not on the yearbook committee, or the newspaper committee, and if I remember right, it was mostly girls he took pictures of. Even me."
Everyone exchanged looks. "Ok, so ... we at least have something to start with." Jon said. "Even if it proves to be nothing. I vote we go check the school. They might have left some sort of evidence to what they're up to there."
"That sounds like a wise decision." Giles agreed. "We had best get going."
It didn't take the group long to get to the school. Almost immediately, Jon, who'd dialed up his sense of smell, wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Dead bodies." He said. "They definitely left something hanging around."
It didn't take them long to track it down. There was a handful of body parts in Chris' friend's locker ... fingers and toes, part of a wrist and ankle. All, evidently, discards yet to be gotten rid of, as they showed considerable signs of decay. Chris' locker had medical-school level texts on the nervous system and various other body systems, as well as detailed diagrams and pictures of a body mid-surgery for various surgeries. They also found a neat folder of pictures of a number of girls, along with a number of obituaries, again all for girls.
"Ok, is this creeping anyone else right the hell out?" Buffy demanded, staring at their finds in horror.
Xander raised a hand, as did Willow. Giles and Jon didn't, but they both looked like they agreed with Buffy wholeheartedly despite that.
"It sort of looks like they're going all Frankenstein's Bride on us." Xander offered. "Building a girl from dead parts, I mean."
That got him more than one look that said 'you geek', but then Buffy got a thoughtful look on her face. "Wait ... what if that's what they're doing? I mean, c'mon, it's not like weird shit doesn't happen around here. Maybe they watched the movie and decided it could be done in real life."
Xander looked very unhappy after a minute. "If they are ... the brain is going to have to be ... fresh."
Willow got it. "Cordelia!" She yelped. "They want her for the brain."
Jon whipped out his cellphone and hit the speed dial. A few moments later, Joyce must have answered. "Joyce, lock the house down. Someone's after Cordelia. We'll be back as fast as we can." He shut his cellphone and looked at the others. "We need to shut this down, fast. Where would they be doing this, if we're right?"
"They'd need somewhere with access to high voltage electricity." Xander said. "Higher than normal. Which really doesn't help narrow it down too much. Factories, the military base ... they'd all have access to that sort of electricity output."
"That sort of electricity, but no reason for dead-body smell." Jon pointed out. "We'll check it out tomorrow. right now, we need to get back and keep an eye on Cordelia. They may try for her again yet tonight, depending on how desperate they are."
Xander wasn't about to disagree with that, and neither did anyone else, not even Angel. They all headed back home. At the edge of the property, Jon tensed up, eyes narrowing to slits.
"They've been here." He said. "Been and left. Watched for a bit, I think. Hard to tell. Might've been casing the house to try to break in later."
"Yeah. Not happening." Xander said, glaring into the darkness. "Let's get inside and make sure they're both all right."
"I'll patrol the block, make sure they don't sneak back." Angel said, veering off into the darkness.
Xander gave a purely mental snort. Like he was going to trust Angel to watch their backs? Hah. Evidently, Jon agreed with him wholeheartedly, as he started prowling the entire house as soon as he got inside, poking his nose into every crevice and cranny as if Chris and Eric could hide from him, despite his senses.
Once he'd done a prowl and reassured himself no one was in the house that shouldn't be, he opened all the downstairs doors (inside the house, of course) and grabbed a chair from the kitchen. He set the chair in the hallway next to the stairs, where he'd be able to reach any given room in any of the three floors within seconds. He'd also produced a gun from ... well, Xander wasn't entirely sure where, but Jon had it resting in his lap, with a crossbow and some bolts resting against the wall beside him in case something nonhuman came through.
He was clearly setting up to keep watch all night. Xander rolled his eyes and settled down on the floor next to Jon, which got him a look.
"What're you ... " Jon started.
"Keeping watch with you. You really think you can keep your senses going all night without having a problem?" Xander challenged him. "And even if you could, I know you're really a big, bad soldier but staying awake all night's easier when you've got company."
Jon glared for a moment, then huffed, admitting defeat.
Xander was woken the next morning by a camera flash, and several female voices cooing rather ostentatiously. He jerked into a more upright position, blinking blearily at a camera-wielding Joyce, Willow, and an openly laughing Cordelia. "Wha?"
Jon was looking down at him with nearly as much amusement as Cordelia. "You fell asleep a couple hours ago." He said.
And had, given where he was sitting, evidently ended up with his head in Jon's lap, which would explain the cooing and laughing. He tried to summon a glower, but from their expressions, it really didn't work. "Fine, fine, whatever. School. Let's go." He clambered to his feet. "Sorry about that, Jon."
"Not the first time something like that's happened. Lost track of the number of times Sam ... " Jon started, then grimaced, glared at the wall, and defiantly completed the thought. " ... and Daniel ended up falling asleep on me."
Xander reached over and gripped his shoulder. He couldn't begin to figure out how the hell Jon dealt with it ... having the memories of a lifetime, but not having that life, and having absolutely no chance of ever having that life.
Jon shook it off after a moment. "Right. School. Then finding where those idiots are building their Bride, and shutting them down."
"Definitely a plan." Willow agreed.
The school day was, mercifully, trouble-free, though Xander noticed that Chris and Eric both seemed ... twitchy, as if they knew they'd been found out, despite the fact the Scoobies hadn't actually removed anything from either locker, for fear of them realizing the jig was up and either moving everything or jumping the first available girl, rather than the one they preferred for the brain.
There was some fun to be had, though, because Buffy reported after lunch that Ms. Calendar had made all Giles' hemming and hawing useless, inviting him out on a date that evening. Giles had, evidently, been a bit gobsmacked for a minute before he accepted. Xander resolved to give Giles a hard time later. It was too good an opportunity to miss. He also made a mental note to do what they could to not drag Giles out of his date.
Jon and Xander headed out immediately after school, trying to find where the boys were putting the body together at. It wasn't until two hours after dark ... and a chance run by the school ... that they finally caught a break. Because one of the two boys ... Jon didn't catch more than the briefest glimpse before they disappeared, so he wasn't sure which one it was ... headed into the old science building, and Jon caught a whiff of decayed body smell.
Jon immediately called Buffy, who was doing patrol with Angel, and Willow, who was at the house with Joyce and a still-shaken Cordelia, who had been entirely too willing to take refuge at the Summers House until the whole mess was dealt with.
Once everyone arrived, they snuck into the building and poked around until they found access to an evidently long-forgotten basement area under the building.
Despite suspecting the two boys of trying for a Frankenstein's Bride, they weren't quite prepared for what they found down there. The place looked like someone had deliberately tried to recreate as much of the lab from the movie as was humanly possible in real life. Complete with the cobbled-together generator and the table with the covered body.
Complete, in point of fact, they found out a few seconds later, with Frankenstein himself, as someone shuffled out of the darkest corner of the basement, revealing themself to be ... well ... stitched together quite a bit.
"My kingdom for a flamethrower." Xander snarked.
"Incendiary grenade good enough?" Jon asked.
Xander glanced at him. "I think I love you." He said.
"I think I had best leave before you set that off." Angel noted. Vampires and fire didn't mix well.
At that point Chris and Eric appeared from some corner or other, and the fight was on.
They were all somewhat hampered by the fairly close quarters and prevalence of very breakable ... stuff ... but eventually, Eric and Chris were both unconscious and shoved towards the stairs to the upper floor. Angel, who had retreated so as not to be in danger from the fire Jon planned to set off, as well as a lack of room for more fighters, pulled the two boys up the stairs and out of the way.
The Frankenstein ... was proving to be a bit more problematic. Buffy had concentrated on it, but it didn't seem to feel pain ... one of its arms was clearly broken but it was still trying to kick her ass as if it wasn't.
With the two boys clear, Jon herded Willow and Xander up the stairs. "Buffy! Pull back. Gonna blow the place!"
Buffy nodded, grabbed the nearest sturdy piece of furniture (a stool, as it happened) and swung for the fences, connecting hard with the Frankenstein, sending it, at least temporarily, ass over teakettle. Long enough for her to head for the generator and start yanking cords and pushing buttons until the thing started to spark and whine, at which point she raced for the stairs. Jon chucked an incendiary grenade into the room by the generator just to be sure, and then hurried after her, urging everyone out and away from the building.
The resultant explosion and fire was ... rather spectacular. When the dust finally settled and all was quiet again for a while, Jon grinned. "No sound of movement. We got it." Then he swung to look at the two boys. "You two." He half-growled. "Are in such deep shit."