Red laughed at the looks on their faces, the Slayer looked like she was going to throw up, McNally looked sad and Harris was struggling with anger and she could smell their pain. This really was fun, even if it hadn't lasted nearly as long as she'd thought it would. "You should see the looks on your faces! You want me to be Willow so bad, but you know I'm not her! Guess the Slayer really did teach you how to recognize a vampire. But than her fun would be spoiled if you accidentally led a vampire right to her, wouldn't it?" She stood up.
"Actually I figured out how to tell something was a vampire when it was trying to take a chunk out of my throat, before I met Faith." Xander said tonelessly. "Unfortunately, it looks like Willow failed to learn that lesson fast enough herself."
"Yes, it didn't occur to her that the thing draining her blood was actually something she believed was fictional." Red nodded. "Too busy being afraid. Well, as much fun as this is, I need to get going. Don't want to get Slayed, now do I?"
"If you don't want to get Slayed," Faith struggled not to throw up from the stench of decay wafting from the vampire. "why walk up to a Vampire Slayer anyway?"
"Well, all I really needed to do was get into sensing range of you, just to confirm you really are a Slayer. The rest was just for shits and giggles."
Xander and Jesse both winched at the very unWillow like expression, more proof, as if they needed any, that this creature wasn't Willow.
"Is it true you're pregnant?" The vampire asked curiously and watched the three teens tense even more. "You are, aren't you? Ooh, more fun and games."
The bleachers groaned again as they shook and this time all four of them noticed. "What's with the bleachers?" Faith asked. "I've never heard them make a sound before, except the mechanical whir they make when opening and closing."
"Not important." Red decided. "What's important is figuring out how to take out your body guards so I can kill you and drain you dry. I wonder if any vampire has ever tasted pregnant Slayer blood? I'll be a legend!"
The bleachers began to shake violently, not just groan and Xander mentally went, fuck it! and reached for the seed of Magic inside himself and deliberately tapped into the power of the animal spirit. This thing was threatening not only Faith, but the baby. It had to be destroyed, now! He felt the strength he'd had that night, the strength of the Hyena King and as his mind shut down and the animal took over he howled and leaped forward. Bouncing on his toes, he flipped over the head of the vampire threatening his pack in a move Autolycus could have made in his sleep and landed behind it, reaching for it's head and twisting. The satisfying sound of the vertebra in the neck snapping gave him a rush of primal glee as he wrenched it free from the body. The explosion of dust from both the head and the body wasn't quite so satisfying and snapped him out of the animal mind as the shaking and groaning of the bleachers finally subsided.
"Oh boy, Xan, what did you just do?!" Jesse demanded.
"Destroyed a vampire that was threatening Faith and the baby." Xander said calmly, brushing dust from his hands.
"Not the part I'm asking about, because newsflash! I figured out it was a vampire too and I no more want something walking around wearing Willow's face than you do! No, what I want to know is how you just pole vaulted over the vampire's head and tore said head off!"
"Somersaulted actually, if the memories from Autolycus are right and I've torn the heads of vampires off before."
"Yeah," Faith drawled. "when you were the Hyena King! You tapped into the seed, didn't you? Called on the power of the animal spirit, on purpose! Xander, there could be more of those whatsamacallits, after images Diana warned you about!"
"And I'll deal with it if there is. It threatened to kill you and Gabrielle, that's not ever going to happen. I won't let it!"
The bleachers groaned.
"Okay, what the Hell is going on with the bleachers?!" Jesse demanded.
Xander was thinking about something else though. "Willow's dead." He muttered. "I know we thought a vampire probably got her and we thought her body had just been left somewhere. Instead a vampire took over, where has the vampire been since then? Why wait until now to confront us? It could have spent the last several months playing mind games with us or trying to. And if it knew Faith, as in the Slayer, is pregnant, do other vampires?"
"Willow's dead." Jesse answered, emotional agony in the sound. "We're never going to get her back. As long as we never saw a body or worse a vampire wearing her face, we had a tiny bit of hope that she really did just run away and we might see her again after she got her head screwed back on straight. But now we know, she's been dead all this time! Our Willow is dead!"
"She's dead!" Tears began to run down Xander's face as he did something he hadn't done since Willow disappeared in January, he began to mourn. "Willow's dead!" His knees gave out and he dropped down and knelt in the dust of the vampire that had worn her face and let the tears unlock the floodgates of the grief he'd buried deep to keep from ever having to acknowledge the fact that -. "Willow is dead!"
Jesse joined his brother as they mourned for the sister they'd never see again as Faith felt helpless to help them.
The bleachers groaned.