Buffy Meets the Vampire Lestat

Xander just shrugged, nudging Oz and asking, "How's the vampire roomie thing working out?"

"Louis? He's quiet," Oz answered Xander, looking up from his notebook.

"Well, you two should have a lot to talk about then." Xander smirked at Willow's notoriously taciturn boyfriend as he slipped his arm around Anya. Oz just shrugged and went back to his scribbling. "Is anyone else weirded out that he exists in the first place?"

"Wouldn't it be fun if all the fictional vampires were real?" Dawn asked, her eyes brightening.

"They are, love," Spike replied, tipping his chair back and putting his feet up on the table. "For the most part. Except that Vlad the Impaler bloke—the one everyone thought was 'the real Dracula?' He was just off his head."

"I've got it!" Willow cried, looking up from her computer. "Giles!" she called toward the back room. They all heard a thud, and an "Oof!" Willow cringed. "Whoops."

Buffy and Faith came out together, both with towels draped around their necks. Giles limped in behind them, wincing with every step.

"There're the Slayer twins," Spike said, dropping his chair to the floor as Buffy came in, his eyes sweeping up her lithe form to meet her eyes. "Didn't find anything, I'm afraid, love. Except for Clem knicking kittens."

"Thanks for trying." Buffy smiled at him. Spike's eyes brightened for a moment until he saw her face harden and her jaw tighten. When she moved away from him, he sighed, his eyes falling to the surface of the table as if there were something interesting there.

"Did I hear you call me, Willow?" the Watcher asked, sliding into a chair with a wince.

"Oh, never mind," Willow sighed. "It wasn't what I thought it was."

"Well, I've been researching this vampire Lestat," Giles said, sliding some books out of the pile. "Apparently, this woman who fictionalized him also wrote under a pen name. Those books, though... they, erm, don't seem to have a vampire theme."

"You read them?" Xander asked, raising his eyebrows. "Aren't those like gay porn?"

Giles flushed and looked down at the book in his hand. "Well, I thought it best to thoroughly explore all the volumes of text." He cleared his throat, going on. "There are several books that do detail his exploits, however, and according to Louis, they are all fairly accurate accounts, told to this Anne Rice by Lestat himself. This is no prosaic vampire, Buffy. He may be more powerful than Dracula, and worse—I believe he's simply insane."

"I can vouch for that," Spike agreed, tipping his chair back again. "I met the guy in Paris and he made my Dru look level-headed."

"So he's a great big baddie," Buffy said with a shrug, glancing at Spike when he mentioned Drusilla, his former vampire lover. "It's not like I haven't fought powerful vampires before... and I have Faith." She smiled over at the other Slayer, who had wiggled up on top of the glass counter and opened a bag of Cheetos.

"I just don't understand why I can't find anything on the Bane of Gaia," Willow said with a sigh.

"Have you tried their demon name?" Anya asked, looking up from where she was busily recording invoices.

"They have a demon name?" Buffy asked, glaring at the ex-vengeance demon. "You could have mentioned it!"

Anya scoffed. "Everyone knows that they are Ha'Rakian demons."

"Not everyone who didn't used to hang out with fiends from hell, doll." Faith winked as she balled her Cheetos bag up and tossed it into the trash, brushing her hands together.

"That's it!" Willow said, pointing to her screen. "According to this, the hearts of the Bane of Gaia—also known as Ha'Rakian —are always used for a summoning spell!"

"But what do they summon?" Dawn asked, leaning forward.

"Well... it doesn't say," Willow frowned. "But I think that book you've got there will help us, Dawnie. It's full of summoning spells. Let's look for The Bane of Gaia."

"I was." Dawn opened the book to the back and sighed. "Why don't ancient tomes ever have an index?"

"Here, let me," Giles said, reaching for the text. Dawn handed it over and crossed her arms over her chest, giving him a moody teenage glower. "Now that we know their demon name..." Giles rifled through the pages, stopping at one and exclaiming, "Oh, dear."

"That's never a good phrase," Xander sighed.

"This is very bad, I'm afraid," Giles went on. "According to this, the heart of the Ha'Rakian demons are used to summon an elemental demon called Chur N'Byl. Elemental demons are very powerful and they require a great deal of energy to summon."

"Energy?" Buffy looked at Giles, frowning. "The magical kind? Do they need a powerful witch?" She glanced protectively at Willow, who smiled gratefully at her.

"Atomic energy," Giles said flatly, looking up at the group with worried eyes.

The room grew quiet. Even Willow stopped typing.

Giles continued. "It says that this demon has never actually been summoned to an Earthly plane, because... well, because the power it would take to summon him would destroy the planet itself."

"So, it's your basic apocalypse?" Faith asked, sliding off the counter. "Cool! Let's get the weapons, Bee!"

"It's not so simple," Giles sighed, shaking his head at Faith's impetuousness. "If Lestat has put the summoning process into motion—and if he has four hearts of the Ha'Rakian, I'm afraid he has—we cannot fight this by conventional means."

"So how do we fight it?" Buffy asked.

"I'm not sure, Buffy," Giles replied, turning the page. "There are no pictures of this demon—I don't believe anyone on this plane has ever seen it—but it is also called 'He of the Thousand Mouths and the Hundred Arms.'"

"Definitely sounds like Mr. Radiation Poisoning to me." Xander snorted.

Willow took one of the books off the table and started sifting quickly through it.

"His place of slumber is clearly no accident," Giles remarked. "I believe he has been calling forth the energy to summon him for a long time."

"Hence the largest nuclear waste repository in North America?" Willow asked.

"Yes, I'm afraid so." Giles nodded.

"Well, there has to be a way to fight it," Buffy insisted. "Willow, isn't there a spell we can do?"

"I'm looking," the redheaded Wiccan said, running her finger down the text. "I don't have much experience with elemental demons..."

Buffy and Faith exchanged glances. Buffy cleared her throat. "Well, I suggest we find something fast. Faith and I went out to the repository last night."

Giles half-stood, his eyes flashing. "You did what?"

"Just to take a look around, right, Bee?" Faith said, stepping closer to Buffy. Giles sat back down, his jaw tight as he watched the two Slayers standing together. "We didn't let anyone know we were there."

"Anyway, we saw this vampire Lestat," Buffy went on. "He was talking to that Phantom of the Opera guy—the one you used to know, Giles?"

Giles nodded, his face hard as stone.

"Yeah, he's a regular ray of sunshine," Faith said with an eye roll. "Mr. Grovelpants seemed to be totally taking orders from the bloodsucker."

Buffy avoided the Watcher's eyes as she continued, "The vampire said they were going to do it tonight at midnight—whatever 'it' is."

"Now we know what 'it' is," Willow said. "They're going to summon the Chur N'Byl."

"When were you going to tell us this?" Giles asked quietly, taking his glasses off and polishing them with his shirt tails.

Buffy shrugged. "I didn't see the point unless we knew how to defeat it."

"You did a very stupid and dangerous thing, Buffy." Giles didn't look up from his task. "And I have no doubt you were led along by Faith." His eyes slid over to the dark-haired Slayer who rolled her eyes at him. "You could both have been killed."

"There's something else," Buffy said, her eyes skipping over to Spike before she looked quickly away. "Drusilla was with him. "

Spike stood, his chair falling to the floor. "Dru? You saw Dru?" His face was a mask of shock and pain. Buffy swallowed hard, fighting a feeling she refused to acknowledge as jealousy and crossing her arms, turning pointedly from him.

"Oh, I found something!" Willow cried. "Really this time." She looked around, sensing the tension in the room and barreling ahead anyway. "It says that the only thing that can stop an elemental demon... is another elemental demon."

"We're doomed," Anya said, putting her head in her hands. "Two crazy vampires are going to nuke the planet and Xander never even asked me to marry him—again."

"Let's not go there, Ahn." Xander winced.

"Oh!" Willow cried excitedly. "The demon that can stop it can also be summoned!"

"I thought demons were bad guys?" Dawn said, looking baffled.

"Elemental demons represent the forces of nature," Giles explained. "The Chur N'Byl is the elemental demon of destruction. In nature, for every force, there is a counter force. Is it a difficult spell, Willow?" Giles asked, turning toward the witch.

Willow ran her finger down the long list of ingredients. "It's not that bad. Containing him seems to be the issue. We'll need a large circle. As for the components, we have all of this here in the magic shop... oh, except for that."

"What?" Giles peered over her shoulder at the text.

"Well, it says we need..." Willow flushed, her cheeks glowing to match the color of her hair. "A... a cup of warm milk from the breast of Gaia."

"You know, sometimes the quips are too easy, even for me," Xander said after an amazed silence.

"I know this one," Oz said. Everyone turned to the quiet man in the corner and he gave them a noncommittal shrug. "When I was in Constantinople, I drank the milk of Gaia."

"This I gotta hear," Xander said, turning his chair around and leaning forward, eager.

"It's not what you think," Oz replied, shaking his head with a hasty smile. "There are hidden wells and springs under the ground. They're considered sacred because the water turns white from the deposits in the earth."

"And the breast allusion?" Xander pushed. "Just a tease?"

"Yes, Xander likes the breasts," Anya said. "The bigger, the better. Men seem to prefer the big ones, don't they?"

Oz continued, "They're called the breasts of Gaia because the gasses make the earth kind of swell into a shape that resembles... well, you get the idea. Then the water spills out, like... well, like milk. They were sacred springs in Constantinople, and people traveled for hundreds of miles to drink from them."

"That's kind of cool," Willow said, and she and Oz shared a little smile.

"Well, I can't teleport anymore," Anya said. "So don't ask me."

"Oh, we don't need to go to Constantinople," Oz said. "We actually have one right here in Sunnydale."

"That seems impossibly convenient." Giles frowned at Oz. "Are you sure? I've never heard of such a thing."

"Gaia springs are found where there's a large concentration of evil," Oz remarked. "It's supposed to kind of balance out the bad stuff."

"You're so smart," Willow whispered to him, leaning in to kiss his cheek. "That's so sexy." Oz blushed, but his smile widened.

"Well, we do live on a hellmouth," Buffy said. "I'd say that qualifies as bad. So you know where this spring is?"

"The Turks were one of the bloodiest races in history," Giles remarked, his seeming non sequitur making Buffy stop to look at him, blinking fast. Giles gave her an apologetic smile. "That explains the one in Constantinople."

"I'm only concerned with the one here in Sunnydale," Buffy said. "That's the one that just might help us divert the Apocalypse Du Jour."

"I'm not a hundred percent sure where it is," Oz admitted. "I've never actually seen it, but I can sniff it out for you."

"Just be careful," Willow said, sliding her chair closer and putting her hand on his knee.

Oz smiled. "I will."

"Willow, what is the name of this other elemental demon?" Giles asked.

The Wiccan consulted the book in her lap. "The L'Orax," she said.

"We need to look up all we can about him," the Watcher said. "It's dangerous calling elemental forces, especially when summoning one demon to stop another."

"I think a nuclear holocaust kind of trumps that," Buffy said.

"Excuse me," Xander interrupted. "Willow, did you say... Lorax? As in Dr. Seuss? 'I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees?'"

"It's 'L' apostrophe 'O-r-a-x'." Willow spelled it for him, rolling her eyes.

Buffy turned to Giles. "There was one more thing this vampire said last night. Something about needing more spell components that they were going to gather today."

"We should continue researching this summoning spell for the Chur N'Byl," Giles agreed. "Perhaps we can keep them from obtaining the ingredients to complete the process. That would be safer than conjuring the L'Orax, I imagine."

"I'll do it, I've been working on my translations," Dawn volunteered. Buffy frowned at her younger sister. "It's spring break and I don't have any homework, ok?"

"The one thing I don't get," Xander said. "Why would this vampire be trying to blow up the planet? Didn't Louis say Lestat wanted to keep everyone alive so the vamps could keep feasting?"

"Lestat has decided to destroy the world because he is clearly too much of a coward to destroy himself," the voice from behind them said, making them all whirl in surprise.

Louis was standing by the training room door. No one had heard him come in. He bowed low as he entered their circle, leaning on his cane. "I gather from what you've said that you have found that Lestat is, indeed, up to more than we thought?"

"Yes," Giles confirmed. "How long have you been there?"

Louis inclined his head toward him. "Long enough to know that my old friend and mortal enemy has decided to end the world."

"Alright," Faith said, clapping her hands together. "Let's get this party started."

"Will, gather everything you need for the spell and bring it to my place," Buffy said. "Oz, you go find this sacred moo-juice. Hurry."

"It shouldn't take me long," he said, standing and leaning to kiss the top of Willow's head. She smiled up at him, grabbing his hand and squeezing it.

"I'll need everyone to help me," Willow said. "We'll need a large circle to contain an elemental demon."

"I will do whatever I can to help," Louis said, bowing toward Buffy.

She looked at him for a moment like she wanted to say something but shook her head instead. "Ok, so let's go. Spike, can you and Louis share that blanket?"

"That won't be necessary," Louis replied with a nod, and they all watched in amazement as he turned to a fine mist and then disappeared.

"Sodding hell!" Spike did a double-take. "He can pull a trick like that, and I have to travel under a wool barbeque?!"

*****

"It's getting late, Willow," Buffy said, glancing out the window. The sun had set an hour ago. The whole house felt like it was one nervous pulse, everyone fluttering from task to task.

"He'll be here," Willow replied, setting the spell ingredients in neat rows on the dining room table.

"I know," Buffy said, coming to stand by her friend. "I'm just wondering if maybe we should start without him?"

Willow's eyes were bright as she looked at the Slayer, her heart in her eyes. "Oz said he would get it. He'll be here."

Anya was pacing between the kitchen and the dining room and she stopped, overhearing their conversation. "What if he doesn't? Will the spell work without this holy milk stuff?"

Willow glanced up and shook her head. "I don't know."

"Anya, why don't you come help me in the kitchen?" Xander said from the doorway, motioning to his girlfriend. She frowned and followed him with a sigh.

"I don't want the world to end," Anya said, watching Xander sit down at the counter and reach for a cruller.

"We're gonna be ok," Xander assured her through a mouth full of donut. "We're always ok. This is what we do. We get the bad guys and keep the world safe for democracy, capitalism and free enterprise—which I know you love." He flashed her a pasty smile and she sighed.

"Xander, do you remember the last apocalypse?" she asked, sidling up to him and running her hand through his hair. "Well, not the last one, but the one before last—when you proposed?"

Xander choked on the cruller, reaching for a bottled water to wash it down. "What about it?"

"I know you're allergic to the whole matrimony thing," Anya said with a sigh. "But we can still do the other thing, right? That would be good. Come on." She began kissing his ear, his neck, slipping her hand up his thigh.

"Uh, Ahn..." he shoved the rest of the donut in his mouth and talked through it. "We don't have to have end of the world sex every time we face Armageddon, do we?"

Anya pouted. "You eat when you get nervous. Me, I want the sex. What's wrong with that?"

Xander glanced out into the dining room, seeing Willow sitting quietly on the floor with her eyes closed, her palms up in her lap. "I just don't think it's right, Anya."

"Fine." She grabbed a bottle of cranberry juice and stormed into the dining room. Dawn was still looking through volumes of books at the table and Anya flopped into a chair.

"Anything?" Anya asked her, taking a long drink.

Dawn looked up. "The spell to summon the Chur N'Byl needs to be translated. I've got a lot of it, but some of the words are very archaic."

Anya nodded, her eyes sliding back toward the kitchen where Xander was sitting. She just wanted to be close to him. What was the harm in that? He was so handsome, sitting there obliviously with frosting on the tip of his nose from the cruller. It made her smile. Why shouldn't they have sex? The world was coming to an end—if Buffy didn't save the day, that is—and she selfishly wanted him all to herself for just a few minutes.

She sighed, glancing over the objects on the table, all of the components for the upcoming spell. Working at The Magic Box, she knew what most of them were, and what they were generally used for, but she didn't perform magic—not like Willow did. She had never really considered using any of the things she sold to create spells or potions.

Until now. She looked around. Dawn was buried in her book, and Willow had her eyes closed. Everyone else was in the living room. She picked up a vial of white powder labeled "Horny Goatweed" and smiled.

She went back to the kitchen where Xander was gloomily eyeing the box of donuts. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, taking his hand.

"I'm sorry, Anya," he apologized. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"I know," she murmured. "Xander, will you go get my juice? I left it in the dining room."

"Sure."

While he was gone, she put a powdered jelly donut on a napkin at Xander's place and uncapped the vial of horny goatweed. She only meant to sprinkle a small amount, but when she heard him coming back, she panicked. She capped the nearly empty vial and slid it back into her pocket, spreading the white powder over the donut with her finger and then licking it. At least it wasn't bitter tasting—she could only taste the sugary powder of the donut and a slight undertaste of something more yeasty.

"Awww," Xander said, smiling down at the donut as he handed her the juice. "And you said I shouldn't eat more than one."

"If it's the end of the world, you should get what you want," Anya smiled, uncapping her juice and drinking. She watched him take a bite, half the donut disappearing into his mouth. Would he notice? His eyes were closed in bliss as he chewed happily. She snuck back into the dining room, replacing the vial of horny goatweed on the table where Dawn was engrossed in reading and Willow was meditating.

"Ahn?" Xander called from the kitchen. She found him licking white powder off his fingers, his lips full of it.

"Sorry, I thought Dawn called me," she said, sliding onto the stool next to him and resting her chin in her palm. She smiled to herself, knowing that now it was just a matter of waiting.