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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part IV

Planning and playing with the new Scoobies would have been really frustrating if it hadn’t been so funny. The Slayer wasn’t long on group dynamics — one-on-one was her specialty, be it physical combat or social — but the clash of personalities here was as entertaining as anything she’d ever seen among the Harmettes. Doc hated Andy, and regarded Dustin with ill-hid contempt. Andy patronized Doc (power position, he had the woman Doc wanted), and treated Dustin with exaggerated disdain, but was actually most uneasy with Katie, though he covered it well. Katie adored her father while chafing under his protectiveness, didn’t bother to conceal her scorn for Andy, and was simultaneously embarrassed by Dustin’s behavior and frantic for his approval. Dustin disregarded both the adults (anyone outside his immediate age-group didn’t have real-person status to him), and exercised over Katie a pride of ownership that had no visible component of affection or respect. It was a laugh a minute.

All of them, of course, looked down their noses at her — okay, not Katie, though the Midget clearly had growing doubts about her new idol — but their attitudes toward each other made them a cinch to manage. Well, that and the fact that this whole business was about the Slayer. She was the top fighter, she was the authority on the supernatural, she was sitting in the queen’s seat where she had always belonged. Things were in the proper order, and about time.

Gratifying though it might be, however, it wasn’t really accomplishing anything at the moment. “I don’t get it,” she said for the fourth time.

Doc put his hands flat on the tabletop, closing his eyes for a few seconds before trusting himself to speak. “I don’t know how to explain it any better than I already have,” he said at last. “This is a basic epidemiological model, I’ve charted the various disease incidences and tried to find a meaningful correlation among those afflicted: work, food supply, place of residence, patterns of daily movement, anything that might give us an idea —”

“No, I understand that part,” she said. “I mean, I don’t understand it, but I can see what you’re trying to do. Only it’s not telling us anything, so why are we still looking at it?”

“Because we don’t have anything else,” Doc told her. “We have no idea where to begin, so our only option is to keep analyzing the data we have. Unless you have a better suggestion.”

“Me?” Buffy shrugged. “Not so big on the planning. Back in SunnyD, I generally just go out on patrol. Any big meanies in the works, they’ll jump out and try to kill me, and I’ll kill them instead, and there you are. No more problems.”

Andy shifted in his chair, leaned an elbow on the table. “Well, you did that last night and it didn’t really get us anywhere. Any other bright ideas?”

“That’s not fair,” Katie objected. “The things that we fought, I’ve got them narrowed down to maybe half a dozen possible species. It’s just, they’re sorta generic, no horns or third eyes or major identifying marks, and there aren’t as many online demon research sites as you might wish for.” She looked to the Slayer. “Are you sure there’s nobody we could call?”

“Sorry,” Buffy said. “My Watcher went back to England for vacation, and I don’t have his number. Nobody in Sunnydale even knows as much as I do, and as for L.A. …” She shook her head. “Nope. Definitely nobody I can call there.”

“And I guess it’s too much to ask if you know any way demons and diseases might be tied together.” This was Dustin; he had been very quiet following his humiliation, but some of his brashness seemed to be seeping back. “You being the expert and everything.”

“Can’t help you there,” Buffy said with a bright smile. Then she looked suddenly thoughtful. “Except, you wouldn’t have any old Indian spooky-places around, would you? Because I know this guy who fell into one of those, once, and he came down with all kinds of symptoms even though he didn’t actually have anything, and it all went away once they killed the Indian ghosts.” She laughed. “My boyfriend — well, not anymore, he’s a total loser and good riddance — he used to love making jokes about the ‘syphilitic butt-monkey’.”

“Symptoms without any actual disease markers?” Doc contrived to look both excited and annoyed. “That’s exactly what I’ve been talking about. Why didn’t you mention this before?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Xan– I mean, the butt-monkey. So, Indian ruins?”

“None I know of,” Doc said. “And with the number of disease cases here, you’d expect someone would have mentioned such a place if there were a connection. I’ll check tomorrow when city hall is open —”

“Better yet, ask Wayne McMillan,” Andy said. Doc frowned at him, and Andy went on. “C’mon, Doc, think about it. Wayne knows most of the people you listed on your incidence chart, and in his business he covers more territory than anybody else you could name. And he talks to people; if anybody would know something like that, or have heard about it, it’d be him.”

“So what is the guy?” Buffy asked. “Mailman? Forest ranger?”

“Real estate agent,” Doc answered. “It’s actually a good idea, I’m just a little surprised that Andy suggested him.” To Andy he added, “You seldom have anything good to say about the man. I wouldn’t have expected him to be your first choice.”

“He knows the area, like I said.” Andy smiled thinly. “And I’m not exactly sending business his way. In fact, if I’m lucky you’ll make him late for a showing, and he’ll have one less juicy commission to brag about.”

“That’s fine for tomorrow,” Dustin broke in, “but what are we going to do right now? You’ve got a Slayer who’ll only operate at night, only we can’t find anything for her to operate on.”

Buffy waved it away. “Don’t worry about me, I can always go on patrol, like I said. There’s those demons I can be watching out for, and I can look to see if any other weird stuff pops up.”

“Plus the vampire out there somewhere,” Doc reminded her.

“Oh, sure, that. I don’t figure that’ll be a problem, though; you said the watchman had a lot of blood taken, so our vampire won’t really be getting hungry till tomorrow night.”

“Unless there’s more than one,” Dustin offered.

Buffy smiled at him. “Could happen, I guess. Anything’s possible. But I’d be really surprised.”

“We can’t wait till tomorrow to figure something out.” Katie’s expression was distressed, her voice urgent. “Judith’s been missing for two days now. We have to come up with something while it might still do some good.” She looked to Buffy. “You were able to tell a lot from the smells at the stable last night. Is there any way you could, you know, follow a scent trail —?”

“Please,” Buffy said. “Do I look like a droopy-faced tracking dog here? Plus you’re talking about two days ago. Even if it was a blood trail, I couldn’t do much after two days.”

“So that’s it,” Andy observed. “All the education and supernatural experience in this room, and we’re still stumped until tomorrow.”

“Unless you have any better ideas,” Doc said sharply, “the Slayer going on patrol sounds like our best course of action until we know more. She actually might run into something, and we don’t have many options to choose from right now.”

“Fine by me.” Buffy stood. “I’ll shake the bushes, see what pokes its head up. It couldn’t be too hard; I mean, whatever it was, your Judy managed to stumble across it, right? And you know a Slayer can do better than a secretary —”

“Wait,” Doc said. “You … you think Judith was abducted selectively? That this wasn’t just a matter of her being the easiest available target?”

She gave him a blank look. “I don’t know. Maybe. You didn’t mention anybody else being grabbed, it was all animal mutilations and Bombay herpes. If they changed the rules with her, it must have been for a reason. Right?”

“I …” Doc shook his head. “I never thought of it that way. That is to say, all I could think of was what her disappearance meant to us. But, if she was seized because she was investigating — which is plausible, considering you and Katie were attacked while following another lead — then we should try and reconstruct what she was checking, where she was looking.”

“You do that.” Buffy started for the door. “Me, I’m ready for some righteous violence.”

Katie bounced to her feet. “I’m coming with you.”

“No,” Doc said; and then, as the others looked to him: “We need you here, sweetheart. You know my office routine, and you had different conversations with Judith those last few days. You can help us piece together her activities right before she dropped out of sight.”

Katie looked from her father to Buffy, clearly torn. “Well …”

“The same is true of Andy,” Doc went on. “We’ll do a better job, more quickly, if the three of us work together.”

“How about me?” Dustin asked. “I don’t know anything about your secretary. I can go out with the Slayer while you guys are comparing notes.”

“Really?” Buffy considered it, then nodded. “Sure, bring your swords. But I hope you’ve kept up your aerobics, because I’ll be doing my sweep on foot, and don’t expect me to wait up for you.”

“I’ll manage,” Dustin said. “In fact, I think I can even suggest an improvement.”

*                *               *

The improvement was a motorcycle, Dustin’s preferred mode of transport, and the Slayer approved the suggestion with a laugh. They cruised the darkened streets at a low speed, the dual mufflers keeping the noise down to an unobtrusive level, and periodically parked to cover selected areas in greater detail and stealth. Dustin was thoughtful and silent for the first half-hour, but as they left the motorcycle for the third time he said abruptly, “I was the one who told Katie about the DarkSun Index site on the Web.”

Buffy frowned at him. “Huh?”

“The place that posts all the stuff about goings-on in Sunnydale. I thought it was one of those urban legends things, and we got a kick out of tracking the different stories and trying to match them to horror movies … What I’m saying is, I heard about you before any of the others, and I’m still jazzing over finding out that parts of it were actually based on fact.”

“Okay.” She thought about it. “Cool.” Then, after further thought: “What stories?”

“Oh. Well, there was one about you killing the principal and feeding the body to wild pigs, but I never believed —”

“Oh, that was true.” She flashed him a smile. “Flutie was a total porkster himself, it seemed like a pretty good joke. Now, if I’d known who his replacement would be …”

“Uh, was he some kind of monster?”

Buffy shrugged. “I guess. I mean, he acted squirrelly, and you can’t be too careful when you live on a Hellmouth. What else?”

“Well, it said the swim team turned into fish people. I used to think that was a take on the Creature From the Black Lagoon, but …”

“Fish people? For real?”

Dustin looked uncertain. “That’s what the site said.”

“Fish people.” Buffy laughed. “So that’s what those little jokes of Cordelia’s were about.”

“Uh, right. And you were supposed to have saved your prom from werewolves —”

“Hell-hounds,” she corrected him. “There’s no such thing as werewolves, really.”

“Oh.” He blinked several times. “So you never fought a werewolf-hunter, either?”

“Huh? Right, right. He was actually just a bounty hunter, but he liked to brag that he’d shot a werewolf once. You can’t believe everything people say, because they’ll totally lie.”

“And … you were supposed to have had sex with two different vampires.”

“Only two?” She smiled brightly. “Yeah, I can see why they’d say that. The two vampires they would have been talking about were, like, major hot.”

Dustin was regarding her with caution and interest. “And they told the stories because you’re part of the same night-life? And because you’re probably the only human who could have sex with a vampire and survive it?”

“I’m not scared of them, if that’s what you mean.” She gave him a hard glance. “And, yeah, vampires are über-obsessed with the Slayer, and some of them just completely fantasize about sliding her the old chilled salami. But don’t worry, boytoy, I never put out for the undead. Even if it wasn’t, like, my supernatural destiny to kill them, they’re total creeps.”

“Cool. I mean, that’s good to know.” He looked around. “So, there doesn’t seem to be anything here, either. Move on to the next spot?”

“Might as well,” she said. Then, “How much longer are you gonna wait for the Midget to give it up?”

Dustin didn’t answer immediately; at last he said, “I truly don’t have any idea what you just asked me.”

“You know, your girlfriend,” she explained. “Katie. I can tell by how she looks at you that she’s still playing sweet sixteen. I just can’t figure out why a guy like you would bother with such a vanilla muffin.”

Annoyed, Dustin said, “I don’t expect you to understand what’s between me and Katie.”

“You’d be surprised how much I under–” She stopped, put out an arm to halt him. “Hold up.”

He didn’t ask questions, but waited silently. After a moment she said, “You hear that?”

“No,” he said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. Sort of like … oinking, only different.” She started off, presumably in the direction of what she’d heard.

Dustin followed. She eschewed use of the motorcycle, cutting across properties and through backyards, pausing now and then to listen for cues too faint for Dustin’s hearing to register. It must have been distant as well as faint, because it was nearly ten minutes before she stopped and breathed into his ear, “Just on the other side of that house. I can hear maybe three of the oinkers moving around, but there’s something else, too. A couple of times, something big has put its foot down. Maybe more than one.”

Whispering, Dustin asked, “Should we call the others?”

The Slayer sneered at that. “For what? If there’s too many, we back off. If not, we fight, unless you’re too big a chicken. Wait here a minute.”

She lowered herself to all fours, and moved silently along the side of the house: not going on hands and knees, but flat to the ground like … like SpiderMan, only crawling on a horizontal surface. There was an ease and fluidity to it that sent an odd chill through Dustin; in a way that their brief fight hadn’t done, he suddenly understood that the Slayer truly was other-than-human.

She crept the last few inches to the corner of the house, moving just far enough to angle one eye around at ground-level; then she reversed, easing backward in a motion even more alien. When she was almost back to her starting point, she stood smoothly and motioned him to join her. At her side, he tilted his head to put his ear next to her mouth, and she spoke almost inaudibly. “It’s all good. Four of the oinkers, two uglies like the pair me and the Midget jumped last night. Gimme the big sword, it’s Slaytime.”

“Just like that?” Dustin murmured back. “Charge in and kill them? Is that how they do tactics in Sunnydale?”

“Don’t need tactics when you’re me,” she told him confidently. Then he felt her lips move against his ear in what had to be a smile. “ ’Course, I do most of my fighting on my own, seeing how nobody else can keep up with me. But if you want to get into it … I know, why don’t you go around to the other side of the house, and jump out where they can see you? Give ’em a big HAH! to get their attention — all breath, not a yell, ’cause we don’t want the people in the house running out and getting in the way — and when I hear you do that, I’ll run in and catch them from behind.”

He stood incredulous. “You want me to be a diversion? You take the katana, and then set it up so they come after ME?”

She drew back far enough that he could see the sunny, unconcerned smile. “Sure. Trolling with bait. Look at it this way, boytoy: if I’m too slow, and you get hurt a little, Katie’ll cry all over you for a hero. Really rev up your chances. But if I tell her we had a shot at some action and you pussed out on me …?”

He drew himself up, passed over the katana. “You’d better be as good as you think you are.”

She hefted the sword, grinning satisfaction. “Same odds the Midget faced with me last night, and then I only had a shovel. You talk tough; time to deliver. Go be bait.”

How could a ghost-whisper carry so much amusement, scorn, and challenge? Dustin went around the house, stepping as softly as he could. He still had the wakizashi; with its 19-inch blade, it was a formidable weapon in its own right, he wouldn’t be helpless. Still, there was no way he’d be doing this if he could have withdrawn without it being known. He felt no particular loyalty to the Slayer — she was psychotic, a killer who enjoyed it — but he simply couldn’t have anybody looking at him, laughing at him for backing away from a fight his girlfriend had been willing to tackle. No way. Even the thought was unbearable.

He was at the corner of the house. No point in hesitation, waiting would have been greater torture than getting it over with. He took a two-hand grip on the hilt of the short sword, and leaped out into the open, landing with the breathy shout the Slayer had specified.

She delivered exactly as promised. The two menacing figures had barely begun to turn toward him when she was among them, slashing with the katana.

“Razor-sharp” is an overused term. Most blades aren’t, because they’re constructed for more rugged use than that to which a razor is normally subjected. Dustin was proud of his swords, however, and Japanese blades (and some Arabian) truly were designed for cutting rather than chopping; some people paid less for a sword set than Dustin had paid for the traditional sharpening materials, and he had meticulously honed both katana and wakizashi until a silk scarf dropped on an upturned edge would be split by its own weight. (That was a classical test long before Kevin Costner showed it off in the Bodyguard.)

Couple that ferocious keenness with a Slayer’s speed, power, and aggression, and the demons never had a chance. None. It was over in seconds, though she had used four cuts where two would have sufficed. The smaller “oinkers” — goat-sized, though they ran on muscled hind legs, their forepaws clutched to their chests like kangaroos — stampeded past Dustin, squealing alarm; he swiped at one, the short sword slicing through its haunch, then they were gone, leaving the Slayer and the human and the two dead demons.

Buffy was frowning at the katana. Dustin found his breath (there’d been no time for him to tire, but his heart was racing) and asked, “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, it worked great, but … it just didn’t feel right. It was too easy, you know what I mean? Not, not satisfying. Killing is supposed to have some oomph! to it.” She glanced at the sword again, sighed. “I’ve got to get an axe. Those always feel good.”

Dustin shook his head. “You’re talking like combat is some kind of … personal, artistic expression.”

“I don’t know art,” Buffy said, “but I know what I like, and that didn’t manage to even start being satisfying.” She gave him a look replete with arch meaning. “Maybe you could help me with that. Think you’re up to it?”

Though he had some idea already, Dustin asked cautiously, “What do you mean?”

“Well, when a Slayer gets her blood up, there’s gotta be a payoff, right? That bit right now wasn’t anywhere near enough. So, either I find something else to kill … or I scratch the itch some other way.” She smiled at him. “That’s probably why your Website had me getting it on with vampires: ’cause a Slayer has needs, and stories get around, and, yeah, a lot of the guys I did it with wound up as vampires, and then they’d tell stories … Anyway, right now it’s you and me, itch and scratch, yes or no.”

“You, uh … you wouldn’t kill me if I said no, would you?”

She pouted. “No, I guess not. I’d have to find somebody else, though, and fast. Slayer horny is like no other horny on earth. Until I work it off, I can’t really think of anything else, so if you’re gonna turn me down, do it quick.”

Dustin opened his mouth, but after several seconds he still hadn’t said anything. Buffy’s pout gave way to a thoroughly alarming grin. At last he drew a forceful breath and said, “We’d have to … I mean, we can’t, um, do anything right here, and, and I don’t have any, any supplies …”

“If ‘supplies’ means condoms, don’t worry,” she assured him. “I was on the pill by the time I was twelve, and Slayers don’t get diseases, which is good ’cause otherwise I’d be Patient Zero for an STD epidemic clear up and down the western seaboard. And the city park’s nearby, unless you think you can wait till we get back to the motel.”

Not the motel, no, Andy might see him arriving or leaving. “The park is good enough,” he told her.

“Then let’s go.” They started off together, and she added, “You held up your end, so I’ll try to take it easy on you … but you’d better know how to pace yourself, boytoy, this Slayer’s got a gi-normous appetite, and if you fall out too soon, well, somebody could get hurt.”

*                *               *

She was as good as her word, both to the extent of her desires and to her assurance that she wouldn’t overuse him. It had been a memorable experience, striving and gasping on the park grass in the shadows of the central gazebo, and though her grip tightened perilously a few times, it was never quite enough to cause injury. Dustin’s pride (as well as the Slayer’s warning) had moved him to focus conscientiously on seeing to her pleasure, and he fortunately had enough experience and self-control to carry it through.

If he had expected similar artistry from her, however, he would have been grossly disappointed. She had energy, passion, enthusiasm, supernatural flexibility, and a near-total absence of inhibition … but no imagination, no particular concern for her partner, and — worst of all — no appreciation for the fact that occasionally a man will want the woman to just shut the hell up at some point in the proceedings.

So, he had done the deed with a Slayer, and given her no cause for complaint. All the same, he knew he wouldn’t be looking to repeat the experience. When it came right down to it, she just wasn’t that good.

From her position behind him on the seat of the motorcycle, she gave his arm a squeeze, and he could hear the self-satisfied smirk in her voice. “You holding up okay, boytoy? I didn’t ride you too hard, did I?”

“I’ll live,” he told her tersely. There was no point in antagonizing her, but he couldn’t make himself want to pretend, either. Supernatural or not, she was still a woman, and you couldn’t really take them seriously. While this restored the balance that had been shaken when she effortlessly beat him silly in front of witnesses, it was nonetheless a triumph he would never be able to share … and one that didn’t seem to mean anything to her, for that matter. “I’ll admit, it’s a good thing I stayed in shape, but I’d say I was able to keep up with you.”

“Yeah, I was feeling pretty mellow.” Again, her tone conveyed how pleased she was with herself. “For me, anything without blood and broken bones is an easy session. Where are you going?”

Dustin had swung the motorcycle away from the central section of town selected for patrol. “Back to Katie’s,” he told her. “We’ve been out a couple of hours, and we have something to report.” Plus, now that he’d recovered his self-esteem by adding her as a conquest, her company held no real enjoyment for him. “We should let them know about those things we killed.”

“ ‘We’?” she repeated, and laughed. “Yeah, sure, let’s tell them all about it.”

They had barely pulled into the driveway when Doc was out the door and running toward them. “Where have you been?” he shouted. “Where have you been? I didn’t know where to look, I didn’t know who to call, for God’s sake where were you?”

The Slayer slid off the back of the motorcycle, and spoke with some of the same puzzlement Dustin felt, though she inevitably flavored it with annoyance. “Patrolling, like I said I’d do. Don’t get snarky with me, Watcher-not, you said it was a good idea. Why do you have your shorts bunched up about it now?”

Dustin felt a tremor of unease at Doc’s behavior and appearance. He had never seen the man lose control before, but now Doc barely seemed able to hold himself in check; his face worked, his hands opening and closing convulsively, eyes almost bulging in his agitation. Andy, too, had come out, moving more slowly, but his expression also was grim.

“It’s Katie,” Doc said, in a voice that blended horror, anguish, and murderous fury. “She’s gone. Whatever this is, whoever is doing this, they took her right out of her own home.”
 

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