( RIPOSTE ][ A Watchergirls Archive )

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By Exfilia

Giles started toward Buffy, but Wesley set a hand in the center of his chest. Giles stopped and crooked an eyebrow at him.

"You saved my life."

That garnered him an ironic smile.

"Several times, actually. What of it?"

"Thank you."

The smile darkened, and the eyes narrowed.

"You're quite welcome, but if you don't mind, I've work to do."

"Yes, well... indeed." He had every right, of course. Wesley had come to this country to take Giles's job. He stopped himself, then snorted. Yes, it was Giles's job, and it always would be, no matter how the Council chose to deal with the matter. Wesley was superfluous. He watched Giles speak to the Slayer, and to the man with her. No, none of them needed Wesley. He took one tentative step, then another. He needn't have bothered with stealth. No one noticed as he slid out the door.

* * * * *

He wound up in an all-night diner, drinking black coffee and picking at a waffle. The juke box blared country music, all heartache and betrayal, but Wesley hadn't been betrayed. He was the one who had failed his Slayers. He hacked off a bit of waffle with his fork and sopped it in syrup as a young girl walked in.

"Is Deena here?" she asked.

"She didn't show up," said the cook.

"She sick?"

"No telling. She didn't call in."

"So when's she working again?"

"Here? Never, not after a no-show. You want some coffee, or something?"

"When she comes back for her check, would you tell her I need to see her? I mean, I was depending on her."

"Yeah, right."

"Okay." The girl slouched out of the diner. Wesley gulped the last of his coffee and followed her without knowing precisely why he did it.

"I say," he said in the parking lot. "Are you quite all right?"

"Leave me alone."

"I mean you no harm...."

"Just go away, please."

"It's not safe out, at night."

"If you don't go away, I'll scream and scream."

She didn't sound as if she could manage anything beyond a whisper, but if she'd spent any time in Sunnydale, she certainly knew the risks and could take care of herself. Wesley withdrew to the diner and ordered another cup of coffee.

"That young lady," he said to the cook, "is she in here often?"

"Don't expect she'll be back. She come to talk to Deena, and Deena's fired."

"Deena? Her sister, perhaps?"

"Naw," sneered the cook. "I think they was real good friends, for a while there. Then Deena got all convetional on her, and left Little Miss Muppet high and dry, and her folks won't take her back."

"Muffin."

"Say what?"

"Little Miss Muffin. You said Muppet. It's Little Miss Muffin."

"Well, la dee dah."

* * * * *

He saw the girl again, later that night, lying on a park bench. It was silly of him to try again, but plainly she couldn't spend the night in the open in Sunnydale.

"I say," he began. She didn't move, so he spoke more loudly: "I say!" Still no response. Well, there was nothing else for it. Wesley grasped the girl's shoulder to shake it, and realized that she'd been dead long enough for her body to start to cool.

* * * * *

It hadn't been a vampire, he thought as he paged through his books. There'd been no wounds of any kind. He'd made sure of that before he left. She'd just been dead, as if she'd been carved from wax.

Wesley was startled from his reverie by the sound of a key in the lock.

"Rupert?"

"What are you doing here at this time of night?"

"Looking something up. Is Buffy all right?"

"Nice of you not to stick around and make sure."

"I'm sorry. Look, I just wanted to say it again: thank you."

"Why? Why do you feel compelled to say that?"

"Perhaps so you'll either accept me a bit, or else tell me to sod off completely."

"I'm too tired for this, Wesley. Read for as long as you like; I'm going to bed."

"Good night, then."

* * * * *

Wesley made breakfast for Giles the next morning: eggs and toast and a couple of tiny sausage links, and a steaming pot of tea.

"What's all this in aid of, then?"

"Nothing. We have to eat."

"You've been here all night?"

Well, this was as good a time as any.

"Last night after I left you I met a young girl."

"Oh, God, Wesley, what have you done?"

"It was at a coffee shop where I'd stopped. Later, as I was walking home, I found her dead on a park bench."

"Regrettable, but this is Sunnydale."

"There wasn't a mark on her; no bites, no bruises, nothing."

"You stopped to examine the body, there in the open? You are stupider than I would have believed even of you!"

"I got her name and address from her wallet."

"Presumably the police will have done the same thing by now. Don't be a prat. We have enough problems in Sunnydale without you attracting official attention and having to explain what you're doing here!"

* * * * *

Wesley went back to the park after Giles's summary rejection of his activities. He walked past the bench where the girl had died, expecting police lines and squads of detectives like on American television. There was nothing. The body was still lying there.

He found a pay phone and made an anonymous call, then headed for the address he'd found in the girl's effects.

* * * * *

It was one of an array of caravans, what the Americans called house trailers, set side by side in long rows between a railway line and a highway. Wesley climbed the iron steps and knocked at the metal door.

"Miss Deena ain't coming out," said a child playing on the bare ground between trailers. "Her boyfriend took off yesterday with all his stuff, and now she won't talk to nobody. Mama tried to call her, tried to get her to the door. She wouldn't come out. Mama just said the hell with her."

"Indeed," said Wesley. "Do you know a girl called Alexandra Cross? Blonde, about fifteen or sixteen?"

"Sandy. She used to live there. She made me brownies."

"Indeed. Well, then...." Wesley rattled the door. The knob turned in his hands, and it swung outward, almost crowding him off the stoop.

"She ain't locked it?" said the child.

"Apparently not." Wesley stepped inside, then quickly came back out. "Is your mother home right now?" he asked. "Would you ask her please to call the police?"

* * * * *

"Cops are looking for you," Faith chirped as Wesley entered the library.

"For me?" He looked up and met Giles's truly frightening glare. "Why?"

"Because they found your fingerprints all over a body in the park this morning," Rupert spat.

"Oh, dear. Well, there's another one."

"With fingerprints?" asked Buffy.

"No."

"Well," said Rupert, relaxing, "perhaps we can still salvage the situation."

"I was seen there."

"Bloody hell."

* * * * *

"Totally unmarked," said Willow, reading from her laptop's monitor, "but totally dead, just like the one in the park."

"Are there records of this sort of thing in the Council's archives?" asked Giles. No one answered, and after a moment Wesley realized that they were looking at him. "Wesley? Are there records...?"

"You're asking me?"

"I thought you had the Council library fairly well memorized."

"Indeed. I mean, I've read.... dear me. I did do some reading last night. There are notations from Native American sources regarding persons found dead with no markings reputed to have been taken by demons."

"Around here?" asked Buffy.

"Usually these were old people turned out to die in the cold who, er... did."

"Yes, well, any unexplained deaths?"

"Svedulf Ericsson of Stykkisholmur recorded the deaths of seven maidens in the winter of 1161."

"Stick it where?" asked Faith.

"Styk-kis-hol-mur," said Giles, "on Breidafjordur Bay in Iceland... Bride-a-fjord-er. It was an early Council center, before we moved to Britain."

"So this is more people who froze to death?"

"Possibly," Wesley said, "although in the twelfth century young women didn't wander alone at night."

"Were they Slayers?" asked Giles. "Or Potentials?"

"One of each, plus a few council servants, scullery maids and such. Svedulf records suspicions of demonic activity, but when spring came, the deaths ceased."

"So it moved somewhere else?" asked Buffy.

"There were rumors... it may have escaped through the Hebridean Hellmouth under Stornoway, which was closed by the renegade Slayer Annis McNicol in 1185."

"It went through a Hellmouth?" said Willow. "So it could have come back through a Hellmouth?"

"This is all highly speculative," said Giles, "and probably not something we should discuss with the police."

"Cops?" said Faith. "What cops?"

"The ones in the car that's just pulled up outside," Giles replied. "I expect they'll want to speak to Wesley."

* * * * *

The uniformed police "spoke" to Wesley for nearly an hour at a plastic table in an empty room, and then two detectives in cheap suits took their places and repeated the same questions. Wes admitted to meeting the girl at the diner, and implied that she might have acquired his fingerprints in a nearby alley shortly thereafter. The child from the trailer park was sure the man he'd met looked nothing like Wesley, and so eventually he was released.

"Bloody wankers," he groused to Rupert, who'd come to collect him.

"We have another problem," Giles told him, and drove them to his own flat. The children were waiting at the dining table, but Rupert led Wesley to a closet near the back door and pointed to a large suitcase.

"What's in there?" Wes asked. Rupert waited, and so Wesley knelt and opened the case. He closed it again, stood up, then bolted for the bathroom and vomited up the waffle and several quarts of police coffee. Giles and the children were still sitting around the table when he emerged.

"Do we have any idea who it might have been?" asked Wesley.

"I'm not sticking my hands in there and looking for a face," said Xander.

"We were wondering if you might tell us," said Giles.

"I beg your pardon? What, because I've happened upon two bodies by accident, you think I know the provenance of every corpse in Sunnydale?"

"You found two bodies, and somebody dumped the next one in Giles's condo," said Buffy. "You dragged my Watcher into this, and you're going to help us get him out, or so help me I'll send you back to the Council in a box smaller than that!"

"Oh, it's bloody different if it's *your* Watcher, is it?"

"Wesley!" Giles's eyes were almost shooting sparks. He turned to the children. "Buffy, Faith, it's time you were on patrol."

"But...."

"No. None of this exempts us from our responsibility to protect Sunnydale from vampires. Go. Go now." The girls stood up and edged out of the room. "Willow," said Giles, "you and Xander should get some rest. We'll need to research this tomorrow."

"We could start tonight...." Willow began.

"Tomorrow," Giles said firmly, and waited for them to leave. "I'm sorry," he said when they were alone. "Buffy had no right to say that."

"She's what, seventeen or eighteen? She has every right to act like a child, but I don't. I am truly sorry for what I said."

"Indeed." Giles polished his glasses.

"So what do we do now?" he asked.

"Dump the body, of course."

"Rupert! The police might be watching!"

"They almost certainly are," said Giles. "But they can't see through a closed door."

"This isn't going to involve the waste disposal, is it?"

"They call them garbage disposals here, and no, this won't involve one. This will involve magic."

Wesley felt his head spin. There had been rumors, of course, that Rupert was involved with all sorts of occult nonsense, as opposed to the extremely limited magical practices endorsed by the Council under certain very specific circumstances. Vaporizing the dismembered parts of a dead body, though, sounded a bit much, even for Giles.

"What," said Rupert, "aren't you up for it?"

"Of course," said Wesley. "What do you need me to do?"

* * * * *

They took everything out of Giles's loft, bed, night table, everything, and rolled up the rug to expose the bare wooden floor. In the dark, filled with incense and candle smoke, with the carefully chalked circle almost glowing on the floor, it was the eeriest place Wesley had ever seen. Rupert set down the suitcase and looked at Wesley.

"Are you ready, then?"

"I suppose."

"You sound like a teakettle squealing."

"Rupert, I was most certainly not squealing!"

"Of course, I didn't mean... this is overwhelmingly uncomfortable, isn't it?"

"Quite."

Giles had his schoolteacher look again.

"I can see that you're making a genuine effort," he said.

"Bollocks. I'm making every mistake someone in my position can possibly make."

"It's an impossible situation."

"You manage."

"The man I replaced was dead."

This was no good at all.

"You shouldn't be replaced," said Wesley. "But where does that leave me? If I say that to Quentin Travers, I'll be turned off faster than a burning cooker."

"You're going to stay here, Wesley. You're going to stay right where you are and be her Watcher. Their Watcher."

"They have a Watcher."

"And I had a Slayer. Now I... we have two."

Wesley shook his head.

"Do you think anyone on the face of the earth will accept that situation?"

"I think you and I have to do, or we can't be of any help at all."

"Well, right then. What... what do you need from me? How are we going to banish the body?"

"Banish?" Rupert laughed, a deep and joyous sound that washed the vaporous room in... something, something that magically teased the beginnings of a smile to Wesley's lips. He supressed it, forcing himself back to cold gray business.

"I thought the whole point...."

"Not banishment, Wesley. Conjuration is much better for our purposes."

* * * * *

"I don't understand how you can eat nothing all day," said Rupert, "and vomit like something out of The Exorcist all night."

"Did you get a close look at that thing?"

"You weren't actually meant to look at it."

"Did you see what it did to the...."

"Part of its magic is fascination. You really weren't meant to watch."

"Good to know."

"At least we know what we're up against, now, even if that's rather disturbing in itself."

"You conjure up a demon, feed it fragments of human flesh and expect there to be any truth to what it told you?"

"Wesley, it had to agree to the bond before I gave it any of the good bits!"

Wesley bolted for the toilet again. When he returned, Rupert offered him a glass of something fizzy.

"Thank you," Wesley said. "May I ask you one more thing about this monstrosity, and then shut up about it?"

"You may ask me anything you like."

"You said our actual adversary was disturbing. Worse than what we just... did?"

"Oh, dear me, yes! Come on, help me put the bedroom back together. You look like you need to lie down."

* * * * *

They were awakened the next morning by an insistent pounding on the door. Wesley watched from the landing as Giles staggered downstairs and admitted what looked like the entire Sunnydale police force.

"Rupert Giles? I have a warrant for your arrest."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're under arrest, sir, for the murder of Michaela Wallach. You have the right to remain silent...."

* * * * *

"Where's Giles?" asked Buffy when Wesley let her in.

"Under arrest."

"For what?"

"The first murder. Little Miss Muppet," he said. Buffy glared at him. "The girl I found in the park."

"How did you get Giles involved in this?"

"She had his picture on her dresser."

"Excuse me?"

"On her dresser, in a silver frame. Her living expenses for the last eight weeks are on his credit card. Add that to her having been seen with me last night, and it looks like a jealous rage, especially since this isn't the first girlfriend of his to be murdered."

"He did not do it. No matter how much you want it to have been him, it wasn't."

"I know... what on earth makes you think I want Rupert to be guilty? He's the only person I know here!"

"You want his job."

"Enough to kill someone and frame him for it?"

"You think if he's gone, I'll let you be my Watcher."

"You truly do believe the world revolves around you, don't you?"

"One girl in all the world," quoted Buffy.

"Hi, guys!" called Faith from the door. "What's up?"

"I'm afraid," said Wesley, "that someone is fitting up Mr. Giles for murder."

"Fitting him up? Cement overshoes come in sizes?"

"Framing him," said Buffy.

"Framing who?" said Xander as he and Willow arrived.

"Giles," said Buffy.

"How?" asked Willow.

"I believe it involves credit card fraud," Wesley told her.

"Does he have an online account?" asked Buffy.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Yeah," said Willow. "I helped him set it up so he could get those demon eyes off Ebay."

"Demon eyes?"

"Petrified demon eyes. He said they shouldn't fall into the wrong hands."

"And where are these eyes now?"

"In the kitchen in the yellow canister between the flour and the sugar. Let me to the computer."

"What are you going to do?"

"Do I ask you about Watchery stuff?"

"If you were to ask, I would tell you."

"Giles doesn't."

"I'm not Giles."

"We know. Go away and let me work."

"Will this cause any further involvement of law enforcement?"

"Wesley? Go."

* * * * *

Wesley took the other children into the kitchen and fed them a hot meal, carefully inspecting each ingredient he used.

"Why would anybody sic the law on Giles," asked Faith, munching a carrot stick. "I mean, if it was demons, they'd just kill him, right?"

"Not necessarily. There is a great tradition of demonic involvement in legal matters, all the way back to your Daniel Webster and beyond. There's actually meant to be a law firm somewhere on the west coast run straight from the depths of Hell."

"What would demon lawyers want with the G-man?" asked Xander, eyeing Faith's plate. "You gonna eat your, um..."

"Bubble and squeak," said Wesley, sliding another portion on the boy's plate. If he couldn't be a Watcher here, he might find a place as a nanny, since it seemed that at least three of the children were practically abandoned. He found half a cellophane-wrapped loaf of something labelled "pound cake" in the refrigerator, sliced it and added some canned oranges. The dessert disappeared as soon as he set it on the table. "I suspect," he said, "that Mr. Giles isn't actually the final target of this operation. There's a great deal going on in Sunnydale besides 'Watchery.'"

"It could be me," said Buffy.

"Indeed. A Slayer without a Watcher is like a knife without a handle: as dangerous to friend as to foe. There's also the Hellmouth itself, and quite likely circumstances we know nothing about as yet."

"And Giles could just be in trouble on his own. That's happened before."

"Indeed."

"They don't know about you, do they?" asked Faith.

"If we're very lucky, they don't know about either of us, or about Willow and Alexander. Normally it's one Watcher and one Slayer, very much isolated from the rest of the world."

"Not since the Internet!" said Willow. "Those charges to Giles's credit card? They came from an IP address in Cleveland."

"Can you prove this?" asked Wesley. "And can you tell the police how you know without being arrested yourself?"

"Natch," said Willow. "Is there any of that cabbagey hash brown stuff left?"

Wesley harrumphed, and fixed her a plate.

"Who did it?" said Buffy. "Who set Giles up?"

"Do we know?" he asked Willow.

"Who gave the orders, you mean? I'm working on it."

"Good. In the meantime, Buffy, Faith, Sunnydale night life has most certainly not taken a holiday."

"Patrol time?" said Faith.

"Be careful," Wesley told them.

"Oh, yeah," said Buffy. "Being very sure and certain of each move we make."

"Too true," said Faith. The children filed out, but Buffy stopped in the door.

"Wesley?" she called.

"Yes?"

"You cook good."

"Thank you."

* * * * *

Willow had dropped an anonymous note into the mailbox of Giles's court-appointed attorney, but the next day was Saturday, and apparently no one was working.

"Found a nest of vamps," Faith told them, "down by the beach."

"Are you sure?" asked Wesley. "That's not prime vampire habitat."

"It's near where the storm sewers come out," she told him. "Vampire highway."

"How many? How old?"

"Six or eight fledgelings. Just a good workout."

"Can we do something about the storm sewer?" asked Willow. "I mean, last week something reached up out of a drain and grabbed Sara Fellows by the ankle. It's getting where you don't know which side of the street to walk on."

"We need to do something about Giles," said Buffy.

"We have done," Wesley told her. "We only have to wait for the wheels of justice to grind."

"Except that in Sunnydale the wheels are usually on something with somebody driving that you don't want to know."

"Give it until Monday, Buffy. If nothing happens, we'll try something else."

"My Watcher is not staying in jail until Monday! No, Wesley! We won't get used to you just because you have a little time alone with us!"

"That's not... Buffy, how to you propose to get him out? How do you plan to keep him out? It's not as if the police don't know where to look for him! Are you planning to leave Sunnydale? Well? Are you?"

"You'd love that, wouldn't you?"

Wesley wanted to shake her. He wanted to bury her in pillows and hold one over her face until.... He took a deep breath. This was a Slayer. Her person was sacred.

"Buffy, you're dealing with a great deal of emotion right now. I think it might be better if you took all this adrenaline out on Faith's nest of vampires."

"Right," said Buffy, "'cause vampires are really my problem right now." She stalked out, unarmed. Faith collected an armful of stakes and followed her.

* * * * *

"Thanks," said Xander, and applied himself to a bowl of vegetable soup. "I was going to stop at the Doublemeat, but they were saying a kid slipped down the drain there and it's closed."

"When?" asked Wesley.

"At the beginning of the lunch rush."

"This drain, it connects to the storm sewer?"

"I guess. Here's Willow; ask her."

"For what? What do I smell?"

"A map of the sewers, vegetable soup and what happened to your jersey?"

"Let me hook my laptop to the printer, can I have some soup please and what jersey?"

"Thank you," Wesley continued, fighting a smile, "'may I have some,' and the green jersey you're wearing with a snag of yarn dangling, just there. Hand it over before it unravels completely."

"It's a sweater," Willow told him, slipping out of the offending garment and exchanging it for a bowl of soup. Wesley mended it while she ate and gave it back to her when she presented him with a map of Sunnydale's municipal drainage system.

"The green ones are sewage," she said. "The orange are gas lines, and the blue ones are drinking water. These gray ones are the storm sewers."

"What are the red dots?"

"Disappearances in the last six weeks," she said. "They all cluster along this line."

"Do Buffy and Faith have cell phones?"

"Not that I know of. We're not allowed to take phones or pagers to school."

"Well, then, let's do a bit of above-ground scouting, shall we?"

* * * * *

Buffy fired the crossbow, dusting two vampires with the same bolt.

"I thought you said six or eight!"

"I may have underestimated a little!"

"A little?"

"Okay, a lot. Watch on the left!"

* * * * *

"All right," said Wesley, "the line runs under Peyton Street, then joins this larger one with all the little side drains and runs down Blue Canyon to the beach."

"It runs around the mall," observed Xander, "and then down fast food alley."

"Prime habitat for teenage victims."

"Excuse me?" said Willow. "Not all teenagers? Some responsible grown people. Lawyer. Navy recruiter."

"A military officer disappeared and no one noticed? God, you yanks...."

"He turned up," Willow said. "He was down under the pier, dead. They said it was a heart attack. They found his car at the Dewey Dog."

"That would certainly explain a tendency to heart disease."

"See," Willow said, pointing to a red dot on her map beside a gray line, "he parked next to the drain and opened his trunk for something, and the next thing you know, he was gone."

"There was an autopsy?" asked Wesley.

"You want a copy?"

"You amaze me."

"Back to Giles's, then. I need his printer."

The printer, however, was unavailable. There were three police cars parked outside Giles's condo, blue lights flashing. The detectives from the day before grinned when he spotted Wesley.

"You again?"

"What of it?"

"Where's your buddy?"

"In your custody."

"Don't make me laugh."

"Your assumption that Mr. Giles might be guilty of something is certainly laughable." Actually, Wesley hoped he never had to take a polygraph on that. He wondered if they used polygraphs in America. He wondered if he was allowed to refuse one.

"He's guilty of one thing, for sure," said the detective.

"And that would be?"

"Breaking jail."

"You lost...."

"He's not in his cell. He's not anywhere in the compound. He's escaped, and where I come from that's not something a lot of innocent people would do."

* * * * *

Faith splintered her stake in the second-to-last vampire.

"Hey, B!" she called. "Catch!" She hefted the last of their victims by the arms and tossed it at Buffy, who caught it on her stake and watched it disintegrate. "Do we rock, or what?"

"Rock isn't the word I'd use. I wonder what all these vamps were doing in here? I mean, a few might have used it for a hideout, but it would have to be inconvenient for this many to traipse back and forth to town to hunt."

"Guard duty," said Faith.

"Okay, something that's hiding in the sewers is afraid of Invasion of the Surfer Dudes?"

"B, I am afraid of the Surfer Dudes."

"You are their natural prey. You want to see what's in the sewers?"

"I want to see what's in the sewers."

"Well, I guess it's better than going back to Wesley."

* * * * *

"Giles didn't break jail," said Xander.

"Do you believe that he wouldn't, or couldn't?" Wesley asked.

"What do you think?" asked Willow. "I mean, can Watchers do that kind of stuff?"

"Do you mean is it permitted...."

"Wesley, stop it! We're trying to figure out what's going on here, and you keep coming up with questions instead of answers!"

"I'm sorry; I just needed a clarification."

"Well, clarify this: Giles didn't break out of jail."

"Quite possibly he did. Certainly he would if sufficient motivation existed, and of course he could. His training and experience... he...."

"He knows things other Watchers don't know?"

"He could break out of jail. I probably couldn't. Mr. Giles could."

"Doesn't mean he did," said Xander.

"Means it's good he's the one they got," said Willow.

"They've got, or had, the one someone wanted them to have. We need to know who."

"Then I need someplace to plug in the modem," said Willow.

* * * * *

"Did you hear something?" asked Faith.

"Just you the last time you asked."

"How come it smells like this?"

"It's a sewer, Faith."

"It's a storm sewer. There shouldn't be anything in here but rain water."

"Hello? Southern California?"

"Even smog doesn't smell this bad, B."

"So what now?"

"Follow the stench."

* * * * *

"So there actually are demonic lawyers in Los Angeles?"

"I don't know if the lawyers are demons, but the clients are. These memos...."

"You accessed their internal communications?"

"Yeah, the guy that did their security was a twelfth-century mystic. Good on the wards, not so much on the firewall. Anyway, someone wanted Giles. They were paid to deliver him specifically."

"So the evil lawyers busted Giles out of jail?"

"More likely your constabularly has long since been infiltrated, and he was simply turned over. What could they want?"

"Orionis," said Willow. "In the contract it says that if the clients succesfully conjure Orionis, he... it... whatever... has to do two tasks for them. For the lawyers."

"Oh, God," said Wesley.

"Hey, you're getting really good," said Xander. "You sounded just like the G-man, there."

"So," said Willow, "this Orionis is maybe the demon we're looking for?"

"Orionis is not a demon. He's an archetype, an ideal that can be cast into human form to move in the world for a specific purpose."

Willow brightened.

"So he's not necessarily bad?" she said.

"Not of himself."

"But," said Xander, "these guys that want him here deal with the lawyers from hell?"

"And they feel free to promise Orionis's services after his incarnation."

"Incarnation?" said Willow.

"Orionis doesn't move directly in this plane of existence. He casts a sort of shadow of his power, and for that to work there has to be something here for the shadow to manifest upon."

"Say what?"

"Someone who already has the skills, skills that Orionis's influence will sharpen and amplify, someone to be...."

"Possessed?"

"Not exactly. The will remains."

"So who is this Orionis?"

"Orion the hunter, the one the constellation was named for. Orion, or Orionis, is the archetypal Swordsman."

"Oh, my God."

"Wow, Wills, you're good at it, too! Can I try? Oh, my God."

"Shut up, Xander."

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

"Xander, don't you see? Haven't you seen how good he is? They're going to turn Giles into this Orionis!"

"I agree," said Wesley, "and that is something that must be stopped at all costs. If they have a way to control him, things could be very bad for us."

"So how do you control Orionis?"

"You don't. Orionis is a potential. It's like pouring a higher voltage into a wire. It can do more work, provided the wire is strong enough, but it's still the same wire. Still the same mind and soul."

"Still Giles?"

"Indeed. That being the case, this party must have a way to control Mr. Giles."

* * * * *

It was dark and damp when Giles woke, and it reeked of death. He sat up and found himself in a concrete tube, likely a drain of some sort. It was quite dark. He felt around, and soon discovered the first of the bodies. It was dead, its throat ripped. He groped along it, and the next, and the next, until he came to one, just as cold as the others, that moved when he touched it.

"They said not to kill you," came a voice from the dark. "They didn't say I couldn't have some fun."

Giles crept back to his place and lay down.

* * * * *

"B? You feel it?"

"Vampire."

"Okay, you go right, I go left."

"We're in a tunnel."

"Yeah, well, you take the right side of the tunnel...."

Faith's idea was cut off as a net fell from the roof of the culvert and bore both girls to the ground. They fought it, but were quickly subdued by many hands.

"Which one do we want?" came a voice from the dark. "They only said one."

"Bring 'em both. They can have one, and maybe they'll let us keep the other."

* * * * *

"So why the dead people everywhere?" Willow asked. "Just a setup so they could grab Giles?"

"Life energy drain," said Wesley. "They need them to open the gate for Orionis."

"So they suck the energy out and throw away the husk?" said Xander. "Okay, not liking these guys."

"How can Orionis not be evil, then?" asked Willow.

"In the old days, the gate would be opened by huge congregations for some great purpose, like defending a city. Each participant needed to contribute only a fraction of his or her life force. This lot, however, are taking far too much from a very few, and I doubt their purposes are noble."

"We can stop them, though, right? We can save the G-man?"

"First we have to find him."

"No problem," said Willow.

"It's not?" Wesley was becoming more and more impressed with the girl.

"We know of three dead people, right? They've got to be storing that energy somewhere." She took her locket off and held it like a pendant over the map.

* * * * *

A round area began to brighten, and eventually revealed itself as a tunnel intersecting the one Giles was in. There were dead, drained bodies heaped about like books under the library's return slot, and a single vampire picking his fangs in the doorway. Giles should have made a run for it. He could have taken one vampire.

He almost heard Buffy's voice: "Not!"

Then six bald men in purple robes appeared, each one holding a torch. One looked into Giles's eyes and crooked a finger.

"Sod off."

The finger was crooked again, this time down the hall. Two vampires came into view, each carrying a trussed Slayer. The man moved his torch until it was a few inches from Faith's hair, then beckoned again to Giles. He climbed to his feet, bent a bit because of the low ceiling, and made his way through the charnal pile to the entrance. The finger pointed, and Giles moved down the hall at the head of a procession.

* * * * *

"Under the...."

"It makes sense, Xander!"

"It does not! Who puts the headquarters of their evil plot under a dratted police station?"

"Pipe down, both of you!" Wesley, clad in overalls and carrying a coil of yellow tubing over his shoulder, strode up to the desk. "Here about the poips," he said in an accent that almost made the children laugh aloud.

"On a Saturday?" growled the sergeant. Wesley shrugged.

"You can live with the smell until Monday for all of me," he said, and turned to leave.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute! What about them?"

"You ever try to find a babysitter on short notice? No, keen to learn the trade, they are. Gives their mum fits, 'specially our Poppy."

"Okay, I guess it's not as if there's anything down there. There's the stairs, but be quick?"

* * * * *

The silent procession ended in a chamber, probably some sort of overflow relief. Hanging from the ceiling was a giant blue glass Christmas ornament coruscating so brightly that they might have been in daylight. Giles stopped, staring at it.

"What are you going to do?" he asked the silent gaggle. "What are you going to do to these girls? Slayers are already archetypes! You can't invoke anything into one of them!"

No one spoke. They laid Buffy and Faith side by side, fastened a heavy cable to the cords around their ankles and hoisted them into the air. Giles had a horrid vision of a meat locker that he immediately suppressed as the bald man pointed him toward a flat stone set beneath the blue ball.

There was a bastard sword on the stone.

"Orionis." he said. "You're not going to conjure into them. It's me."

Silence. No one moved.

"Let the girls go, and I'll do whatever you want." Giles didn't know how he knew the silent men were laughing, but he did know. The torch circled their heads, getting closer and closer. All eyes were on Giles, and so none of them saw that Buffy was frantically working on the knots that bound Faith.

"Giles, wait!" Willow and Xander ran into the room, and the bald men shuffled toward them, all but one. His eyes met Giles's, and he lifted the torch and set it against Faith's jeans. Then he screamed and ran at Giles, and past him. Giles turned, and saw that Wesley Wyndham Pryce was holding the sword from the altar, was swinging it overhead, had broken the blue globe and flooded the entire room with mystic energy.

Wesley moved with unusual speed and grace, and spitted his opponent with a single move. Then he turned his eyes on Giles, and they were not their normal blue, but a burning azure like a desert sky so bright it's almost white. He lifted the blade and turned toward the other robed ones, then screamed, dropped the sword with a clang and gripped his head.

The room twisted as if riding a moebius strip. Giles found himself kneeling on the floor, watching the men in robes flee from the freed Slayers, watching Wesley coil himself into a fetal position and Xander and Willow run to him. Giles moved more slowly, setting the sword out of his reach and kneeling to press his fingers against Wesley's brow.

"You know what happened?" he asked.

"Not... a... fit... vessel."

"Rest for a moment, and we'll get you out of here."

"Why... didn't you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"They were going to kill your Slayers. Why didn't you take the sword?"

"Do you know the sort of threat I would have represented?"

"You could have fought them. You could all have got away, but you didn't. They would have been killed."

"Would not," said Faith as she and Buffy returned.

"They come first," Wesley said. "Should have taken it."

"Perhaps I should have," Giles said, stroking the young man's hair.

"Not fit."

"Well, you've not trained with the sword, particularly, have you?"

"You are not fit."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Council was right. Buffy?"

"Right here, Wes. That was really brave, what you did."

"From now on, you and Faith... if there's anything you need, you come to me."

Giles jerked his hand away and rocked back on his heels.

"I'm your Watcher now," Wesley continued. "I will do all I can for you, but Mr. Giles... he's a librarian. You understand? You can't trust your life to a librarian."

Buffy had risen and was standing beside Giles. Faith stood between them, towering over Wesley.

"You understand?" he said again.

"We'll talk when you're in your right mind," said Buffy. "Can you walk?"

Wesley ignored Giles's proferred hand and let Xander lift him to his feet. Buffy turned without a word and led them down the tunnel toward home.

* * *