"There are old Chippewa legends of men made monsters by committing the sin of cannibalism. They either turn into the monster or are possessed by the spirit of it. They're usually described as being encased in ice, the only way to kill the monster being piercing the ice to kill the human at its heart. There are other descriptions. It can be human-like but tall and gaunt, more like a walking corpse than a man. Glowing eyes, eats people… Either way it's called a wendigo."
As Dawn paused to scan her notes for further information the only other sound in the room was that of the assembled group eating from the assortment of take away cartons laid out on the coffee table.
"The latter." Cat said needlessly and Dawn nodded.
"Which isn't encased in ice and you already stabbed it and it didn't die so I have no idea what to do there. The legends can't even seem to agree on what it is. Giant, evil spirit…" She shrugged. "In times where there was a risk of starvation people would rather kill themselves than face turning into a wendigo if they…You know, became really hungry." She let that sink in, saw Tara shudder. "I also found something called wendigo psychosis where for no apparent reason people turn cannibal despite having access to regular food. There are some Cree accounts on that; Jack Fiddler, Swift Runner…" She reviewed her notes and sighed, turning up her palms in exasperation. "It's all so vague. But I think the legends all agree on one thing." She looked up at the group, uneasy.
"Cannibalism?" Xander asked weakly. Dawn nodded, looking disturbed herself.
"Well…That's grim…" Cat wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"I think whoever it was before is gone." Buffy said, leaning forwards on the sofa with her elbows resting on her knees. "It's this…wendigo monster thing now. So…How do we stop it?" Dawn shook her head and shrugged.
"I think it might be photosensitive but that won't kill it, not like a vampire."
"Do we know how it hunts?" Cat asked.
"Uh…" Dawn looked apologetic and shrugged her shoulders again. "I read a story where it can mimic the voices of humans?" She offered.
"It just snarled a lot at us." Buffy said, dismissing the idea.
"So it must just…lurk about and then attack." Xander surmised.
"Maybe?" Dawn replied. "From what I read it's supposed to hang about way North where it's colder and live in forests."
"Though if wendigo psychosis and the legends are linked a wendigo could turn up anywhere and probably hunt where it originated from." Tara said and Willow nodded in agreement.
"If I was a people-munching monster prowling a city I think I'd choose to hunt by night and hang around less populated areas." Xander said thoughtfully, eyes focussed on Dawn's notice board. The map of the city she had printed was pinned in the middle, markers showing the last known locations of potential victims and the areas bodies had been found. Buffy followed his gaze and slid from the sofa to crawl across the floor to the board.
"Clever Xander-monster." Cat quipped.
"Do try to be serious, Cat." Giles admonished. Cat sat up straight and looked up at Giles seriously.
"Okay, Cat-Monster agrees. Dark and enclosed spaces would be good for prowling." She said with a nod.
"Hey, you can't copy me!" Xander whined.
"I didn't." Cat replied smugly. "I said dark and enclosed, not night and less populated." Giles sighed and turned his gaze to Buffy who suddenly jabbed a finger at the map.
"Here." She circled an area on the edge of the scattered markings. "I know the area. I cleared out a vamp nest once. It's mainly empty warehouses."
"I remember that." Kennedy grinned at her blonde haired counterpart. "Good call."
"You think that's where it's hiding?" Willow asked.
"I have no idea, but it's in amongst the disappearances so it's as good a place as any to look." Buffy shrugged glancing over the board. Dawn had arranged it so the victims (both potentials and almost certains) and her accumulated facts encircled the map and as her gaze moved over the images her subconscious suddenly perked up, trying to grab her attention. She frowned as the rest of the group settled into a discussion on other areas to search just in case the latest idea fell through. Her eyes moved from page to page, trying to find whatever had caused a mental blip on the radar. The map? No. The wendigo? No. The people? Maybe. She inched closer to the board. As her eyes settled on a printout of a newspaper article her subconscious all but grabbed a megaphone. Three friends had disappeared at the same time after a night out, last seen leaving a club near the warehouses Buffy had pointed out. Dawn had stuck their 'missing' posters around the article. It wasn't so much the text as the photo the newspaper had included, showing all three young men together grinning at the camera. Mainly though it was the black ink tribal tattoo on the forearm of one of the men that had caught her eye and sent a ping of recognition into her mind. Buffy felt her shoulders slump, a sickening feeling in her gut.
Daniel Mercer. Missing with his friends nine months ago. Never found.
"Oh no…" She moaned.
That caught the attention of everyone instantly.
"What?" Dawn demanded.
"It's him." Buffy pointed at the owner of the tattoo, and glanced back at Cat. "Look. That tattoo. Familiar?"
Cat crawled over to Buffy to look at the image and immediately recoiled.
"Oh, Hell no." She said, looking appalled. "And they all-do you think…He didn't eat his friends?"
"He couldn't have just got a kebab like a normal person?" Kennedy asked, earning herself stares varying between surprise and disgust. "What?"
"Are we sure it's just one wendigo?" Xander asked suddenly. "What if all three of them turned?"
"Possible but unlikely." Giles said. "Buffy and Cat have identified who it…was. I suspect the two friends were his first victims-"
"Or they just happen to be the ones that turned him." Willow interrupted. "How many people do you have to eat anyway to turn into one?"
"Asking for a friend." Cat joked and Willow glowered at her.
"It's not funny." She said.
"I've not found any information about that." Dawn admitted. "It could be one, it could be more."
"What on Earth would possess someone to eat their friends?" Tara asked, staring across the room at the wendigo's picture.
"You think he was possessed?" Xander asked.
"I think it more likely to be this fabled wendigo psychosis." Giles replied grimly.
"It sounds irreversible." Cat said, shifting awkwardly beside Buffy. "So we'll, um…have to work out how to kill it."
"Easier said than done." Buffy sighed. Cat had shoved a sword in its chest and the monster had simply pulled the weapon out and gone on with its day.
"He had friends-"
"Who he ate." Kennedy interrupted Tara with one eyebrow raised.
"Family." Tara continued, looking sideways at the dark haired slayer.
"Probably ate them too."
"Can we really just…kill him?" Tara looked to Buffy and Cat, clearly troubled.
"That man is gone." Buffy gestured to the board, indicating the newspaper and the poster. "That's not him any more. It's like staking a vampire. The demon's taken over, the person they were before is dead."
"We hope." Kennedy helpfully added.
"No, I think she's right." Dawn said bitterly. "I haven't found anything about turning wendigos back into the people they were before."
"Would we really want to, anyway?" Cat asked. "He didn't just randomly turn into one. He made himself that way."
"Let's not make those judgements…" Willow said, looking uncomfortable.
"He's a monster now." Buffy said. "That falls into my jurisdiction."
"Our." Kennedy corrected.
"Honestly, Buffy, share the monster bashing." Cat said playfully and rolled her eyes. Buffy looked at her, eyebrow twitching ever so slightly. Cat's face was the picture of innocence.
"That's great." Xander said, looking around the group. "But how do we deal with that, exactly?" He spread his arms to emphasise what he felt was the futility of the situation. "We keep skimming past that."
They fell silent. The meeting had so far thrown up nothing new other than who the wendigo used to be and where they might find him, which was useful but…once they found him how could they dispatch him?
"Well," Kennedy said after a moment, "I doubt he'll be running around eating people without his head?"
Giles nodded slowly in agreement.
"A fair assumption." He replied.
"What if his head grows back?" Willow asked. "Or a blade won't go through him? Did you read anything about that?" She looked to Dawn.
"Uh…No." She admitted.
"So…It looks like it's going to be a trial and error kind of deal." Xander decided grimly. Dawn sighed and looked down at her notes. Useless notes. She picked up her notebook and dropped it unceremoniously onto the coffee table.
"It sounds invincible." She grumbled.
"No." Buffy answered. "Nothing's invincible. If it's alive it can die. And…if it's undead you can…re-dead it…" Her voice faded out.
"Wise words." Cat said, reaching out to pat her knee.
"It's getting late." Giles announced, leaning forwards on the sofa. "I suggest we go to bed now, reconvene tomorrow. We can look further into finding a definitive way of killing the beast while searching the area Buffy pinpointed. Until we know how to kill it that's all we'll be doing." He looked between Buffy and Kennedy. "Searching."
Buffy rolled her eyes. Though knew he was right. She did occasionally leap in guns blazing… And right now she was itching to do just that. She wanted to get out there and find the creature. It had plenty of time between now and tomorrow to strike again while they sat around wondering what to do. She hated it, this feeling of inactivity.
It was late, and they had work. They would just have to continue tomorrow.
"No attacking until we know how to kill it." She said, climbing to her feet and stretching her arms above her head. Her shoulders felt stiff from sitting hunched over on the floor. "Got it."
"I can do that. I'm off tomorrow." Cat said, crawling towards the table to begin gathering up the rubbish left over from dinner.
"Handy, because no where gives spontaneous days off for slaying." Xander grinned at her.
"I'd just pull a sicky if I was needed." Cat assured him.
"Rebel." Tara teased.
"Slaying totally needs to become a paid job." Buffy said wistfully.
"If only." Kennedy agreed.
The last light in the house had been switched off hours ago. The occupants were fast asleep, lost in dreams. Buffy, however, was far from it. She lay awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling above her. Orange light from the streetlights outside crept through a crack in her curtains and slashed through the darkness of her bedroom, edging her belongings with their strange glow. A car wooshed by in a nearby street. Further away, a train rattled along its tracks. The city held its breath, waiting for dawn, waiting for the people to wake. Buffy threw aside her sheets and sat upright, swung her legs out of bed and paused.
She was restless, needed to do something. The cool night air chilled her skin after the warmth of her bed. She rubbed her arms and stood, and hastily began to dress. She pulled on boots and a jacket, stuffed a wooden stake into her waistband, a knife in one boot, and silently made her way out of her room, down the stairs, and out through the front door. Then she was off, sprinting across town towards the empty warehouses she was sure harboured the wendigo.
She didn't make it.
Long before she reached those disused buildings her slayer since pinged a warning. She slowed to a jog and then a walk before finally standing still in the middle of the road she had been running down, ears straining in the deafening silence as her eyes flicked from shadow to shadow.
Houses lined one side of the street, windows dark portals in the gloom. On the other side high wooden fences and trees screened one side of a large park. Ahead the street became a crossroads, houses on both sides disappearing into the night. Street lights dulled the edges of her surroundings in muted orange and gleamed from the cars parked at either curb. Her body was warning her that danger lurked nearby, but she could hear nor see anything out of the ordinary. She started walking again, pausing when she reached the intersection. She glanced first left, then right, trying to figure out what the insistent warning was attempting to tell her. The hairs at the back of her neck prickled, a chill crawling the length of her spine. She turned right, following the border of the park as it swept away out of sight in a faint arc.
She heard the scrape of shoes against concrete and a shadowy someone came into view around the curve of the park border. They wore baggy jeans and a hoody, hood pulled up throwing their face into shadow. They looked up as they heard Buffy approaching and she saw it was a girl in her late teens. Nothing to worry about, definitely not the thing her slayer sense was making a fuss about. The teen crossed the street, posture tense. It was late out and she hadn't expected to find anyone here.
Buffy faltered in the shadow cast by a tree in the park, tall enough to block the light from the streetlights, as her senses threw out another warning, screaming for attention now. And then she saw it, up on the rooftops across the street. The flash of silver eyes, the ripple of shadow as it moved silently across the tiles, leaping from roof to roof as it stalked the teen. It hadn't noticed Buffy yet, she was sure of it, stood as she was in the deep shadows beneath the tree, and focused as it was on its prey.
The teen glanced across the road at Buffy, picked up her pace and hurried with her head down. The wendigo dropped soundlessly onto the pavement behind the teen, coiled itself to pounce. Buffy exploded across the street.
"Run!" She shouted at the girl, who stopped in surprise and whipped round to face the shout. The wendigo drew itself to its full height. The teen stumbled backwards, mouth open in a silent scream as her voice froze in her throat. The wendigo hissed its rage at Buffy and took off down the street as the girl stood rooted to the spot and stared.
"Get home now." Buffy ordered as she barrelled passed her in pursuit of the wendigo as it sprinted Hell for leather away from her. Buffy was supernaturally fast. The wendigo, however, was faster still, leaping parked cars as though stepping over tiny stones in its path. As they neared the end of the street the wendigo jumped onto the roof of one car and used it as a springboard to jump up onto the roof of a house and continue is run along the rooftops. Buffy sped passed the car as the alarm began wailing and turned the corner, eyes up above to follow the wendigo as it easily cleared the distances between each roof without breaking stride, gaining distance with each jump. It wasn't long before she had lost sight of it. She halted in the middle of the road and bent double, hands on knees to catch her breath. The cold air burned her throat and lungs raw as her breath came in ragged gasps. Her heart pounded painfully against her ribs. Sweat dried uncomfortably on her face in the icy wind, leaving her skin feeling sticky and tight. She straightened with her hands on her hips, forcing herself to breathe slow and deep as reached out with her senses, desperate for even the tiniest blip on her radar. Nothing. The night was still and empty.
She turned on her heel and headed back the way she had come, back home, with the sky lightening behind her.