"Wes, we have no idea what kind of experience with vampires you have." Xander said. "Or how you'll react around them. That's not intended as a slight against you, it's a frank assessment of the situation. Which means, please stay out of the way when we do encounter any vampires. Cordelia prefers not to engage unless she has to, so she will keep an eye on you and Willow and Giles will help scan for vampires. Buffy and I will deal with any we do encounter. Unless we run into trouble, please don't interfere."
"I can understand your caution, but Watchers are expected to train Slayers, not fight vampires unless necessary. And since I need to evaluate your group anyway, I can best do so by observing. As such, I will stay out of your way."
"Good to know and I appreciate it." Xander responded as the group began their patrol.
"Why are you going to a nightclub?" Wesley asked as he spotted the neon sign that advertised the Bronze.
"Because vampires hang out here too." Buffy told him. "They lure people out and use the alley to feed on them. At some point every night we make a point of doing a circuit around it. Then we'll head for the cemetaries and deal with any fledges trying to crawl out of their graves. From there we go through the warehouses, vamps like to set up shop in them. That was Xander's suggestions and it makes sense. They go where people are to find prey, but want their own space."
Wesley just nodded. He was rather impressed with what he'd seen so far. 'They put together a list of ways to investigate the suspected corruption quite quickly and asked intelligent questions along the way. It remains to be seen if the various lines of inquiry bear fruit, but hopefully we'll find some information. Something is going on here, an entire city hidden and vampires left unchecked for who knows how long. Someone needs to pay for that.'
Xander stood outside the Bronze and using his heat vision scanned the building. "Buffy, I'm seeing two temperature differences."
"Two vamps than, one for each us."
"How they do they appear to you?" Wesley asked, curious about the young man's vision.
"Vampires are cooler than humans. Vampires, even after they've fed, don't come up to human body temperature. On the other hand, they are slightly warmer than the air around them. We haven't run into any demons since this happened, so I don't yet know how they'll look to me. I see, well the best example I could give is a coloring book. I see the outline made by the crayon and the area inside that outline filled in. When I'm using the heat vision part of my eyes anyway. When I look at you, I see a human, exactly as I would have seen you before. You're wearing an expensive suit that is really not a good thing to hunt in and glasses. You're young, late twenties by the look of it. Cordy has her glamour on right now, but I can see her cat ears on top of her head and cat eyes and her tail waving around behind her. I think the heat vision thing only comes into play when I need to see past a wall. I'm not actually seeing people in that instance, I'm seeing the temperature differences and because they come from human shaped objects, I see the shapes in various colors."
"Which is how actual heat vision goggles work if I understand their function correctly."
Xander nodded.
"Fascinating. And your own eyes function like a cat's?" He asked Cordelia.
"From what I understand, yes. I see better in the dark than I did before, but colors are muted. My peripheral vision is better, but I can't see as far as I use to. And I can sense vampires, which is how know that the ones inside the Bronze are getting closer to us."
"You four, go to end of the alley." Xander ordered after confirming Cordelia's observation. "Position, Buffy."
Giles led the others to the exit point of the alleyway, while Buffy positioned herself to one side of the main door of the Bronze and Xander positioned himself behind the door. When the door opened and a vampire emerged with a teenage girl tucked under his arm and second followed behind with another girl, Xander and Buffy waited until the door closed behind the second vampire before moving. Buffy grabbed the second vampire and pulled him away from the girl and flung him against the outside wall of the Bronze and quickly drove home her stake. Xander didn't bother with all of that, he just shoved his hand into the other vampire's back and yanked out its heart. Both vampires were dust before either of the girls realized what was happening.
'My word.' Wesley astonished. 'This is the first time I've seen a Slayer in action and that was amazing. And her associate was quite impressive himself. That entire encounter took seconds to complete. Amazing.'
"No more vampires." Xander said, after a second scan of the Bronze. "So next we head to the first cemetery."
"First cemetery?" Wesley asked.
"Sunnydale has twelve cemeteries." Xander answered. "Each with hundreds of dead in them. And they never fill up. Which, given how many die in this town, makes me wonder, are they not burying all of the dead? We know the morgue has an incinerator. And while there are a lot of vamps, only a fraction become vampires. So something must be happening to the other dead."
"For all we know someone may be letting some demons eat some of them." Buffy stated with a grossed out face.
Eww.