Darkness closed in faster that evening. Giles and Tara barely had time to get through the front the door after work before full night settled over the city and street lights burned away the shadows in orange while humming loudly with electricity. Buffy was pacing the living room agitatedly where the others waited. Someone had made sandwiches and left them on a plate on the coffee table amongst all the books and notes and Cat and Xander were sat on the sofa happily munching through PB&J.
"Sorry we're late." Giles called through the doorway from the hall as he shrugged off his jacket. "We hit some traffic."
Buffy waved off the apology. She had been anxious to get home all day. They had all by now heard of her run in during the early hours of the morning with the wendigo, how it had eluded her. How frustrated it was.
"We're going to try and get straight on it." Dawn said, offering the plate of sandwiches to Giles and Tara as they made their way into the room. Xander and Cat shuffled up on the sofa to make some room for Giles and he gratefully perched on the edge and accepted a sandwich.
"So." Buffy clapped her hands together, swung them back down at her sides and turned on her heel to pace towards the TV. She turned again and stopped, frowning at the floor as she gathered her thoughts. The group looked at her expectantly, waiting for the rest of the sentence. Instead she began picking at the edge of her thumbnail.
Giles cleared his throat and shifted forwards on the sofa, brushing crumbs from his fingers onto the now empty plate of sandwiches.
"Yes, well, anyway." He said. "I'm assuming we're here to quickly throw a plan together and spring into action?"
"Hopefully." Buffy nodded and looked up at him. "We still need to find it and figure out how to kill it."
"Why don't some of us head out and search while the rest look into killing methods?" Cat suggested. "Kill two birds with one stone."
"That's such a horrible saying…" Dawn muttered. Kennedy patted her shoulder in mock comfort.
"It's a good plan though." Xander said.
"It's not really plan, is it." Kennedy raised a sceptical eyebrow. Cat rolled her eyes.
"It's an outline." She replied.
"I like it." Buffy said. "We'll split into three groups. Two go out searching for the wendigo's hiding place, split up to cover more ground. The rest stay here and find us a way to kill it, call us when you figure it out."
"Okay, but the legends are pretty hazy on details." Dawn said slowly. "What if we don't find anything? Or it's some spell that takes like three months to finish?"
"Then we'll find the wendigo and neutralize him until we figure it out." Kennedy said, already climbing to her feet.
"And if you don't find him?" Dawn continued.
"Well, we won't with that attitude!" Cat cried.
"Anyway!" Buffy interrupted loudly to halt the discussion before it could start. "Adding to the plan-"
"Outline." Kennedy broke in.
"-I'm thinking Kennedy and Tara take one half, me and Cat take the other, everyone else stays back and goes through every shred of information we can find on this thing." Buffy ignored Kennedy.
"Woah, what? Why Tara?" Willow immediately cried.
"Also, I can fight too." Xander said, raising a hand.
"And me!" Dawn insisted. Buffy sighed and pointed to Kennedy.
"Slayer." She pointed to Tara. "Magic expert." Tara gave a sloped smile in response. Buffy pointed to herself. "Slayer." She pointed to Cat and paused. "Extra slayer thing."
"I can do some magic." Cat sulked.
"I'm a magic expert too!" Willow whined.
"Which, I'm assuming, is why you're staying behind." Giles said, turning his gaze to Buffy who nodded. "In case we find a spell we need to use."
"I'm stronger." She continued, and was met with a raised eyebrow from Tara. "Backtracking now…"
"Also, don't bring Hulk when you only need Bruce." Cat supplied helpfully.
"Those are technically the same people." Xander replied. Cat sighed.
"Fine, don't bring Hulk when you only need Iron Man?"
"I'm not a man." Tara protested.
"Black Widow?" Cat asked.
"And Thor's way stronger than Hulk." Dawn joined the conversation. "He's a god!"
"The point is, it's just a scout. We don't need an army." Buffy said. "There will be no fighting."
"Three's a crowd." Xander said fairly, looking innocently at Willow who narrowed her eyes in response to the suspected taunt.
"And I'm not letting you go instead just because you think I need protecting." Tara told Willow who immediately spluttered.
"That's not what I-"
"Totally is." Cat flashed her a cheeky grin and Willow scowled at her.
"Can we please stop getting distracted?" Buffy asked wearily.
"This brings back memories." Giles sighed, pulling off his glasses to clean the lenses on the edge of his shirt.
"In a happy nostalgia way?" Dawn asked hopefully. Giles simply looked at her. "I'll take that as a no."
"You all have the same attention span you did in high school." He informed them, putting his glasses back on and looking up at Buffy expectantly. "You were saying?"
"To save time me and Cat, and Kennedy and Tara will split the search area in two while everyone else figures out a way to kill the wendigo. Once we find the wendigo or where ever it's holed up we'll regroup. If you guys still haven't found a definitive way to kill it then we'll come back. If you have, then let us know and we'll meet up and finish it off." Buffy said. "Is that plan enough?" She asked Kennedy, who grinned and gave her a thumbs up.
"And if the wendigo finds you first?" Willow asked worriedly.
"Cut off his head." Dawn suggested helpfully. "If it doesn't kill him it'll at least slow him down."
"Hopefully it doesn't have hydra syndrome and grows extra heads." Cat said.
"I'm sure it won't." Giles replied.
"Well, then, set phones to ninja and get out there!" Xander said enthusiastically, rubbing his palms together. He balked under the stares he received. "I mean silent…Set phones to silent and be sneaky ninjas like…never mind. Just go. Please."
"So I'm just gunna go get my coat and shoes…" Cat said, awkwardly patting Xander's knee as she stood up. "Dork." She whispered with a smirk as she passed him and darted out of the room. Xander scowled at her as she left.
"What happens if we find a way to kill him and you haven't found him?" Dawn asked Buffy.
"Then we'll all meet up and hunt until we find him." Kennedy replied grimly.
Heavy grey clouds hung low in the sky, blocking out the stars and threatening rain. The air was damp and cold and a strong wind gusted through the streets, icy cold knifing through layers of clothes to chill the bones. Though Kennedy simply wore a black leather biker jacket open over a plain white T as though she hadn't noticed Winter was coming. Cat was fairly certain the slayer was some kind of human radiator and envied her. Though maybe it was the high of being on the hunt that warmed her…
"Would it kill the beasties to hunt during the day?" She grumbled, pulling at her scarf until it covered her lower face to provide a little extra warmth against the night. "Where it's brighter and warmer and less horrible." She hunched her shoulders and stuffed her hands into her trouser pockets.
"Some of them." Kennedy said.
"But also it's easier to hunt at night." Tara pointed out. "Less witnesses, more shadows to hide in."
"I know." Cat sighed.
"Do you want to swap with Willow?" Buffy teased the reaper, who rolled her eyes.
"No." She said, coming to a halt at the end of the street. The others paused with her.
"So, we'll go this way." Kennedy nodded her head to the left. "You go that way?"
"Approach from different directions and meet in the middle?" Buffy continued as though reading Kennedy's mind.
"Yup. Let's go." Kennedy said, and headed off at a brisk pace, Tara hurrying after her.
"Shall we split again when we get there?" Cat suggested as she followed Buffy in the opposite direction. "Cover even more ground."
"We'll figure it out when we get there." Buffy replied.
"So, when you Google 'how to kill a wendigo' all that comes up is pages and pages of useless information." Dawn told the group sat around the coffee table sifting through books. "Apparently wendigos are notoriously hard to kill. Great. Thanks. You want to elaborate?" She sighed and closed Willow's laptop, left it on the sofa beside her.
"The fact that they're notoriously hard to kill at least suggests they can be killed." Giles replied, looking up from the pages he had been reading. "Just that it's difficult to do so."
"We just need to read all the legends then pool the knowledge." Willow said.
"That could take a while." Xander added another book to the useless pile.
"Not really." Dawn said, sliding off the sofa onto the floor and reaching for a book. "We have about three books with a couple of paragraphs on wendigos."
"I need a drink." Willow muttered, rising and heading into the kitchen. She grabbed a glass from the drying rack by the sink and filled it with water. She stood sipping at it staring out the window into the dark garden, listening to the others talking in the living room, worrying about Tara and Kennedy bumping into the monster in some darkened and abandoned corner of the city.
"So, the wendigo heart is allegedly made of ice." Xander read from his book. "Is that useful?"
"How could a heart of ice be useful?" Dawn asked sceptically. "How would that even work?"
"Not what I meant, but good point."
"I'm not an expert on the technicalities of demonic physiology." Giles replied without looking up from his own book.
"I don't get how if it's heart is made of ice, how can it pump blood?" Dawn continued.
"Magic ice, now keep looking."
"Maybe it's not 'ice ice'." Xander said fairly. "It could be ice different to what we're used to."
It wasn't hard to slip out of the house unnoticed. They didn't even hear the door. Willow took off down the street praying she wasn't too far behind the others.
There was a block of warehouses sitting empty and forgotten, closed down years before when the businesses moved or failed. Trees had been planted to screen the ugly buildings from the houses that surrounded the area, though some of the houses looked as forgotten as the warehouses. The trees did a good job of blocking out the sight of the buildings beyond, and through trunks scarred with carved graffiti could be seen high chain link fencing, rubbish and old leaves piling up against it on both sides. At intervals were hung rusting metal signs warning trespassers to 'Keep Out!'
"No cameras." Cat commented from where she and Buffy stood surveying the area from the other side of the street. A ring road ran between them, tarmac cracked and broken, weeds and grass forcing their way up through concrete to claim it.
"Doubt anyone would notice anything happening in there." Buffy added, crossing the road and approaching the fence. It was topped with an unbroken line of coiled barbed wire. The buildings on the other side were run down and boarded up, the paving and roads between the warehouses irreparably damaged.
"I don't think anyone's been inside in a while." Cat said, joining her at the fence. "Not even kids messing around."
"What about a wendigo?" Buffy asked, looking sideways at her. Cat shrugged, then bowed with a flourish.
"After you."
Buffy scrambled up the trunk of the closest tree to grab one of the lower hanging branches and swing herself over the barbed wire. She landed on the other side of the fence in a crouch and a shower of dry dead leaves. Cat dropped beside her seconds later and they started off towards the first building.
Not much had been said since parting ways with Buffy and Cat, and Tara worried the silence was awkward. She and Kennedy hadn't spent much time getting to know each other the few times they had crossed paths, and had never been alone together before. Glancing sideways at the slayer for the third time since leaving the house she saw Kennedy's posture was relaxed, though her gaze was focussed.
"It's not far now." Kennedy told her, turning her head to meet her eyes. "Just round the corner." She pointed to the end of the street. Tara looked in the direction Kennedy had pointed as though expecting to see the cluster of warehouses, but the cars and two-storey houses here blocked the view.
"And you cleared out a vampire nest?" She asked. Kennedy nodded in affirmation. "What if more moved in?"
"It's possible, but I doubt it." Kennedy replied. "They'd have to be pretty stupid to… Wait, I see your point." She grinned sideways at Tara, a cocky smirk that had Tara smiling faintly in amusement.
They turned the corner and Tara's smile faltered as she saw the vast ground they were expected to search. Chain link fencing wrapped around an area that easily spanned a couple of blocks with several hulking building of corrugated metal, dark and presumably empty. The road lead to two wide gates chained shut, continued through the buildings and branched off to give access to each one. There were no lights within the fence boundaries and Tara's eyes couldn't see far enough through the darkness to find the other side. She was glad they had brought torches with them.
"We're searching all that…?" She asked, hurrying to catch up with Kennedy who had marched on ahead while she hesitated to take in the sight. "Just us two and Buffy and Cat?"
"Three." Kennedy replied, stopping at the fence and turning to face Tara.
"Three?" Tara repeated, sure she had either misheard or misunderstood. Kennedy hooked her thumbs into her belt loops and grinned at her obvious confusion, looking a little smug.
"Willow thinks she's great at stealth." Her dark eyes fixed on a spot over Tara's shoulder. Tara frowned at her and turned and her eyes widened in surprise as they spied a head of red hair peering cautiously over the bonnet of a parked car.
"Willow!" She exclaimed, her tone scolding. Kennedy laughed.
"Busted."
Willow inched out of her hiding place sheepishly and made her way towards them, fiddling with her coat buttons, her scarf, looking anywhere but them. Kennedy folded her arms over her chest and arched one eyebrow as Tara frowned at her girlfriend.
"What are you doing following us?" She demanded.
"I was worried." Willow said, looking up at Tara and then Kennedy, eyes pleading. "The others were talking about how this thing is impossible to kill and you're all waltzing into its lair. If something happened…" She left then sentence hanging, gesturing lamely and letting her hands drop to her sides.
"If something happens it happens to you too now." Tara pointed out. Willow shrugged her shoulders in an almost imperceptible move.
"At least it happens to both of us." She replied. Kennedy cleared her throat loudly. "All of us." Willow amended, looking up at the slayer and smiling faintly. She wrung her hands as she noted Tara's still frosty stare. "Look, I'm not here because I think you need protecting. I'm here because I can't stand not knowing. You'd be the same!"
"Do the others know you're here?" Tara asked, and Willow took that as a small victory. Though it could easily have just been Tara accepting the matter as it couldn't be changed unless Willow wandered all the way back home alone again.
"Well, they haven't tried to call me." She admitted, taking her phone from her trouser pocket and eyeing up the display. In the darkness it lit up her face in an eerie blue light. "But that could just mean they figured out where I've gone and aren't worried."
"Why don't you let them know while I find us a way in?" Kennedy suggested, one corner of her mouth twitching upwards into a mischievous smile. "Pretty sure you don't want to climb over barbed wire." Without waiting for an answer she turned and left them both, striding beyond the line of trees and following the fence.
Willow sighed and looked down at her phone, using that as a distraction from Tara as she composed a text to send to Dawn.
"Are you mad at me?" She mumbled. Tara blinked at her in surprise, then frowned in confusion.
"What? No, why?" She asked. Willow glanced up at her briefly, then back down at her phone as her thumbs moved over the keys.
"You sounded mad." She accused, pouting ever so slightly.
"No. I'm not mad. I'm just… I don't know." She tipped her head, trying to catch Willow's gaze. "Does it matter?" Willow gave a playful smile, sending her text.
"You're Tara." She joked. Tara quirked an amused eyebrow, then looked down at the phone in Willow's hand as it vibrated before the redhead could even get it back into her pocket. "Oh, wow… Dawn replies fast." She muttered.
"I found a way in."
Willow and Tara looked up at Kennedy's voice, to see the slayer striding towards them while jerking a thumb back over one shoulder.
"That was also fast." Tara said, looking sideways at Willow, then back to Kennedy who frowned slightly at her, having missed the comment on Dawn.
"Yeah, well. Kids will be kids. Some of the fence's been bent up to get inside." She replied.
"You hope it's kids." Willow said grimly, putting her phone in her pocket. Bored teens causing mischief were the least of their worries.
"Well, going by what Buffy told us she saw, if the wendigo's in there he'd just jump the fence." Tara murmured, eyeing up the high chain links and twisted rings of barbed wire.
"You ready?" Kennedy asked them both. The wiccans exchanged a look, then turned back to the slayer and nodded.
The buildings were all identical outside and in. Abandoned, empty, forgotten. They had been chained up and left to rot without a second thought. No cameras, no alarms. But that was fine.
Soft rotten wood crunched and fell away from the locks as Kennedy gave the doors an experimental shove. What had once been solid and immovable now crumbled at touch and swung open inwards. She arched one eyebrow and stood staring into the gaping void within. Someone had already forced the locks.
"Already open." She needlessly informed the others.
"Third time lucky?" Willow asked, smiling without mirth. All three of them were covered in dirt and dust from their explorations and had yet to turn up anything useful. The first building had shown evidence of some kind of camp fire, the ground around it littered with old empty food packets and dusty glass bottles of beer. The old occupants were long gone, the doors locked and bolted once more after them. The second search threw up even less.
"Fingers crossed." Tara said, switching on her torch and aiming the bright white beam inside. It was exactly the same as its predecessors.
Floor to ceiling steel racking dominated the centre of the building, metal stairs by the doors spiralling up to branch out into walk ways high above them in the shadows. Windows thick with grime slanted dim light from outside in diagonal shafts, pale moonlight knifing through shadow so thick it suffocated. A broken forklift with forks jammed at half mast loomed out of the shadows in one corner, yellow rusting paintwork showing bright against its gloomy surroundings. Presumably at the opposite end of the building was an office and a wide loading bay, steel shutter bolted closed.
A thick layer of dust and dirt carpeted the concrete floor, muffling their footsteps. Kennedy's torch beam swept the ground revealing foot prints and scuff marks spiralling outwards in all directions. Willow crouched to inspect some of the more intact prints.
"Definitley not human." She said softly. "Doesn't look like a dog print or anything else."
"Wendigo?" Tara asked, matching her tone. She wasn't sure if she wanted the answer to be negative or affirmative.
"Maybe. The books were a bit light on information about tracking them." Willow stood back up, green eyes straining to penetrate the darkness ahead of them.
"Then be very quiet." Kennedy said, voice dropped to a low whisper.
"The thought had occurred to me, thanks." Willow shot back. Kennedy rolled her eyes and stalked forwards, Willow and Tara following. The small amount of light permitted to enter through the open doorway behind them was soon swallowed by the smothering darkness inside the building as they penetrated the maze of shelfing. In some places mouldy cardboard boxes still crowded some shelves. Empty now, as proven by Willow curiously peering inside some.
"I can't believe anyone found anything in here." Tara whispered, staring up towards the ceiling where the shelves disappeared into darkness.
"It smells weird." Willow hissed. "Can you smell that?" Kennedy sniffed loudly and almost gagged, swiftly jamming her fist against her mouth to regain control.
"Buffy and Cat did mention the wendigo smelt kind of…"
"Fragrant?" Willow finished for her girlfriend. Tara nodded. That was one way to put it. The deeper they infiltrated the worse it became. Sickly, sweet, cloying, most definitely nothing good.
Tara danced her torch beam against the floor, checking once more for foot prints, then up at the shelves beside her and swiftly strangled a scream in her throat as she found something staring back at her. Willow choked on air and hastily stumbled backwards into the racking behind her with a bang that echoed loudly through the building.
"Shhh!" Kennedy hissed.
"I'm sorry, but there's a human skull over there!" Willow snapped sarcastically, barely managing to keep her voice down as she waved a hand manically at the wildly out of place body part. Tara was frozen to the spot, leaving the skull displayed in a cone of bright white light. Just the skull. Red and stained, scrags of flesh still clinging in places, scraped free in others, grinning menacingly at her from an uncomfortably close distance.
"Gross…" Kennedy wrinkled her nose and pushed Tara's torch down.
"Who do you think it is?" Tara mumbled, unable to pull her eyes away from the grisly sight. She felt like a small army of spiders were marching the length of her spine. Her skin crawled.
"I feel sick." Willow informed them. "And, uh….Where's the rest?"
Kennedy pointed, then swiftly jerked the torch beams away.
"I wouldn't look." She advised them.
"So…We definitely found where he's hiding." Tara said, swallowing hard in the hope it would keep her dinner where it was supposed to be.
"Quiet." Kennedy held up a finger, the sudden tension in her body halting any more discussion. "Did you hear that?"
The living room was silent save for the tapping of laptop keys and the dry rustle of paper. Desperation had set in an hour ago and now the trio sat frantically consuming every scrap of information available.
Xander had long ago learned how to skim pages of text in search of the key words and phrases he needed. He had been staring at his book as though in a trance, turning pages automatically, for what felt like hours when a two words shocked him back into consciousness. Wendigo. Killed. He sat up straighter and scanned the page again until he found the word. His eyes struggled to focus on the ink, so he blinked a few times to bring the type back into focus.
"Oh, hey, hey!" He clicked his fingers at Giles and Dawn who stared at him in surprise. "I think I found something." He looked up at them excitedly.
"Do go on." Giles remarked drily when Xander simply stared between them both.
"Right. Um… It says…huh…" His brown creased in confusion. "It says a wendigo can only be killed by piercing its heart with pure flame." He looked back up at Giles. "What the Hell does that mean?"
"I believe it's just fancy talk for 'kill it with fire'." Giles said, holding out his hand for the book so he could examine it himself.
"Which if its heart is made of ice like some of the other legends say then that totally makes sense!" Dawn cried excitedly. "Um…You know, from a legend's point of view."
"It's still so vague…" Giles murmured, turning the page to see if he could find any additional hints. "It will have to do. Can you call the others? Tell them what we've found?" This he directed to Dawn who immediately pounced on the coffee table and began shifting stacks of books around until she recovered her phone. She dialled Kennedy first and held the phone to her ear, anxiously biting at her thumb nail as she waited for the slayer to pick up.
Three rings.
"Come on…" Four rings...Fi- "Huh…" Dawn pulled her phone away and stared at the display. Disconnected. "She hung up." She tried again as Xander and Giles exchanged a look.
"The person you have called cannot be reached…"
"She turned it off…" Dawn stared down at her phone, a sick feeling building in the pit of her stomach.
"Call Buffy." Giles ordered, leaping to his feet and striding out of the room towards the weapons closet. Xander swiftly followed.
"I thought you put it on silent!" Willow shrieked in a whisper.
"I thought I put it on silent!" Kennedy snapped back.
"Stop arguing!" Tara whispered desperately. "Do you think it heard?"
"Of course it heard! How could it not hear?! Half of Cleveland heard!" Willow. Terror rising.
"I'm sorry okay? Let's just-" Kennedy abruptly stopped speaking as a loud and inhuman screech echoed through the warehouse, freezing the group into a stunned silence. The slayer reacted first. "Lights off." She hissed, switching off her torch. Tara followed suit a beat later, plunging them into total darkness, the only sounds now their panicked breathing. "Don't move."
There was a clang from somewhere nearby. Too near. Willow's hand automatically sought the comfort of Tara's, groping blindly in the black until her fingers grasped her lover's. Tara squeezed their palms together, the grip betraying her nerves while she somehow exuded an aura of calm. Though Willow could feel the frantic throbbing of her pulse as she held on tight.
Footsteps, scuffing through the dust, heading right for them. On the other side of the shelves maybe. Willow held her breath to silence herself, but even her pulse felt too loud, pounding erratically in her head.
It was moving ever closer, soft, measured footsteps. Stalking its prey. It could see perfectly. Willow felt Kennedy move beside her, one arm inching carefully behind. She heard the soft whisper of steel against leather as the slayer carefully withdrew a knife.
The footsteps stopped. Kennedy froze. Had it heard? She gripped the knife tight in a palm slick with sweat. She could sense the beast, in the next aisle over, forwards and right. He was… just standing there. Waiting. She breathed slowly and shallowly. Could he hear that?
He stood there for what felt like hours. In reality, she knew, it was minutes, until he finally whipped round and scampered off the way he had come as though attracted by some noise in the distance. Kennedy let out a breath as relief flooded through her. She waited a moment, then clicked on her torch, aiming it at their feet as she turned to the wiccans. Tara copied, eager to be out of the darkness.
"We have to go, now." She whispered hoarsely. "It could be back at any-ugh!" Kennedy jerked and stopped with an expression of confusion on her face. Willow blinked at her.
"Huh?"
Tara's eyes were drawn downwards. In the light cast by Kennedy's torch she saw, spreading wet and dark against the white fabric of the slayer's T-shirt, blood. It moved rapidly outwards from an exit wound hidden partially beneath the black leather jacket at her midriff.
"Oh my-"
The wendigo raised itself to its full height directly behind Kennedy, towering over them, and roared defiantly, ripping it's claws free of her back.