Buffy Meets the Vampire Lestat

"Just enough to make him sleepy, Master," the deformed man said, taking a long wooden pointer and poking at the wolf. It didn't move.

"Good," Lestat said, smiling. "Now you can go Bob Barker on him."

"Master?" the man asked, his twisted face more warped with his confusion.

"Spay and neuter your pets." The vampire grinned, slapping the man on the back and turning, taking Dru with him.

*****

"I'm not letting that thing out," Spike insisted, closing his eyes and crossing his arms, turning his face from Willow.

She sighed, looking over her shoulder at Buffy. "Help?"

"Spike, listen to me," Buffy said, putting her hand on his arm. "This L'Orax is the only thing that can stop the Chur N'Byl. It's using your body, and you have to let it. Please? For me?"

"I'm gonna hurl." Xander glanced over his shoulder as he drove, frowning at the engagement between Buffy and Spike.

"Button it, Captain Woody!" She shot her friend a dirty look and turned back to Spike. She saw Giles in the passenger's seat, covering his smile up with his hand. "Please, you have to do this. For me. Please."

Spike's eyes softened as he looked at her. "Buffy, you know I would do anything for you."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know you would go to the ends of the earth for your Buffy," Xander sighed, mumbling, "I just wish you'd stay there."

"Sod off!" Spike spat. "You just want to make an idiot out of me!"

"No, no." Xander denied it. "I don't want to take all the credit."

"Come on, Spike," Buffy said. "Open up like a good boy, and drink this, ok?"

Willow held the cup out again and Spike pursed his lips, turning his head from side to side, refusing it.

"Will, try the rhyming again," Buffy said. "I don't think he can resist if the L'Orax guy's in charge."

"No!" yelled Spike, putting his hands over his ears and chanting, "La la la la la la la!"

Willow rolled her eyes and yelled, "Here me L'Oraxy guy, we all don't want to die! You have to come forth..." Willow paused, searching for a rhyme. "By South or by North."

In the front seat, Xander snorted as he turned a sharp corner.

"Oh bloody Christ on a crutch!" Spike swore, rolling his eyes as the demon began to come forward. His eyes were beginning to gleam with that yellow light.

They could see Spike trying to resist, and when he did, his face grew pained and he clutched his head, crying, "Ow! Ow! Damned chip!"

Buffy's eyes brightened. "The chip won't let him fight it!"

"I am the L'Orax, I speak for the trees.
What is it you wish from me here, if you please?"

"Oh, thank god," Willow murmured. "Um... Great mighty L'Orax, and all of your ilk..."

"Ilk?" Xander sputtered from the front seat. "Did you say 'ilk'?"

"You find something else that rhymes with milk," Willow hissed. "Quit back seat rhyming."

"We have brought you this nice warm Gaia breast milk," she finished, holding out the cup.

Spike opened his mouth as Willow held the cup to his lips, drinking greedily. She hoped there was enough. They peered at him, waiting.

"The L'Orax accepts your fine, gracious gift
Please show me the demon Chur N'Byl, and be swift!"

"Does that mean he's going to fight it?" Buffy asked, nudging Willow. The witch shrugged. "Ask it!"

"Ok," Willow sighed.

"We humbly ask if you are going to kill..." She tapped her finger against her temple and finished with, "The demon whose power is greater than skill?"

"That was pretty good." Buffy patted Willow on the back.

"I cannot promise for sure, my form is quite strange,
I will do all that I can to complete our exchange."

Spike's eyes grew dim again, and the vampire shook his head, groaning.

"It's the best I can do," Willow said with a sigh.

"Let's hope it's enough," Buffy replied.

*****

"Master?" The man limped toward the vampire, who stood with his woman, looking over the railing and watching the line of hooded figures passing barrels of radioactive waste down the line and dropping them into the glowing yellow blister in the earth.

"Do you have them?" Lestat didn't look at the man as he approached.

"Master, one of the Faithful Order has discovered that the translation was incorrect," he said.

"What?" Lestat's hand was at the man's throat, his eyes blazing. "That's not possible."

"The language is archaic," he choked, his eyes watering.

"What is the mistake?" Lestat growled, his hand tightening.

The deformed man gasped. "Toenails," he wheezed. "Not testicles."

Lestat grinned, letting the man go. He fell to the floor, rubbing his neck.

"Well, let's take them all," Lestat said. "Better safe than sorry, isn't it?"

"Then can I play with the puppy?" Dru asked, nudging up against Lestat.

"If there's time," he said, watching the line of minions toting barrels. They were nearing the end. Everything was nearing the end.

*****

Xander pulled up to the power plant, and they all climbed out of the van. Buffy started handing out weapons. Xander fought Faith for the crossbow while Giles and Willow took stakes. Louis refused with a wave of his hand.

Faith's eyes were scanning the building as she walked back and forth, tucking a stake into her belt. "Last time we were here, I noticed a way in up there." She pointed to a second story window.

"And for us non-Slayer types?" Xander sighed.

"I'll give you a boost." Faith grinned.

Xander turned to Buffy and whispered, "Sometimes I don't think that girl's belt goes through all the loops."

Giles frowned as they walked over to the building. It was very high, although the wall looked as if there were several places in the brick where they could grab hold and climb if they needed to.

Buffy linked her fingers together and gave Faith a leg up. The dark-haired Slayer's fingers gripped the brick and she searched for a foothold, finding one and raising herself upward. They watched as she deftly scaled the wall, reaching the window and shoving it all the way open. She swung her legs in and then leaned over to look down at them.

"C'mon!" she hissed. Giles helped Buffy on her start up the wall.

"This is taking much too long," Louis said, waving his hand in front of him. A shimmering hole appeared in the brick wall. He bowed and showed them the way in.

"Neat," Willow said, reaching her hand through as she pulled Spike along with her. "You'll have to teach me that one."

The vampire smiled and nodded his head at her. "Lestat and I have spent a great deal of time with witches."

Buffy, who was nearly to the top of the wall, frowned. "You could have done that earlier!" she called, watching her friends walking through the wall. "We'll meet you inside!"

"Bee," Faith said, helping her sister Slayer up through the open window. "Oz is in here. And he doesn't look so good."

They turned to see the bloody man lying naked in the corner.

*****

Giles was leading them down a long hallway of offices. The place was dark and quiet. Louis touched the Watcher on the shoulder.

"I can take you there," he said. "Can't you feel it? It is like a wound in the earth."

Giles shook his head, but he let the vampire step forward and he followed. Xander tugged on Willow's sleeve and pointed to a poster on the wall. It was a smiley face with three eyes.

"Radioactive humor," he grinned. She smiled and pushed Spike in front of her. "What do you use to catch fish on Three-Mile-Island?"

"Xander," Willow warned him as they turned a corner and started down a flight of long stairs.

"Glow worms," he said with a grin. She smiled in spite of herself, nearly running into Spike at the bottom of the stairs. They crowded into the open doorway, staring at the bright, glaring yellow light as it pulsed and throbbed.

"Who are they?" Willow whispered to Giles as they watched the hooded figures passing barrels down a line and tossing them into the radiant light in the floor.

"I don't know," Giles replied, shaking his head. One of the Faithful Order saw them standing in the doorway and pointed them out to his companion.

They pushed their hoods back and Willow gasped as their faces were revealed—melted flesh pitted with pustules and boils that festered under their skin. They were clearly human, or had perhaps once been so.

"Hoods are a definitely the right look for these guys," Xander remarked, loading the crossbow with a long, sharp piece of wood made for fighting vampires. He pointed the weapon at the pair.

"Xander, no!" Giles cried, but it was too late, the shot was away, hitting the first follower in the middle of the chest. He clutched at the makeshift arrow, falling to his knees.

"Uh, oh," Xander said as the entire line of hooded figures turned toward them when their compatriot fell.

"Yes," Giles replied with a scathing look in Xander's direction. "A rather colossal 'uh-oh.'"

*****

"Oz?" Buffy approached the figure on the floor in the dark, her heart in her throat. She didn't want to have to tell Willow that he was dead. Please don't let him be dead, she thought.

"Buffy?" The naked man lifted his head, his voice hoarse.

"Oh thank God," she breathed.

Faith knelt down to see that he was restrained with just his hands tied behind his back. She pulled a knife out of her pocket and flicked it open to cut the rope.

"Are you ok?" Buffy asked him, helping him stand.

"They beat me up pretty bad," Oz told her, wincing. "And they gave me a pedicure."

Buffy and Faith looked at each other at his cryptic words.

"I'm fine," Oz assured them, covering his crotch with his hands. He moved behind a desk. "But I could use some clothes."

"Here," Buffy said, pulling off a large red silk scarf tied around her neck. "Saved by fashion."

Oz wrapped the scarf around him like a sarong, frowning. "Does it pass as a Scottish kilt at all?"

"Only 'cuz you're freeballin' under there." Faith grinned.

"We need to get you out of here," Buffy said, opening the door and looking out. The room opened up into a large area that was railed off, and there was a lucent yellowish light coming from down below.

"I'll follow you," Oz said, stepping in line behind Faith as Buffy led them along the railing.

*****

The disfigured man slipped silently through the halls. He had been moving through these passages for years, although since Lestat's arrival a month ago, the offices had stood empty. He had fired his plant of workers and called the minions forth.

The long line of the Faithful Order stretched up from the basement repository and toward the gaping hole in the earth that Lestat had opened to feed the Chur N'Byl. He stopped and watched them, holding the pouch in his hands that contained the wolf's toenail clippings. The minions before him moved as one mind, and he knew that each of them was also possessed by one of the Ha'Rakian demons.

The demon inside of him had reigned for decades, wreaking a path of ecological destruction in its wake that the man found himself suddenly, deeply ashamed of. It had been the quiet words of the wolf that had touched the soul of the man buried inside of him, reminding him of his long ago friend Rupert in those days before he was overtaken by the demon.

He had trussed the beast, tying its hands behind its back before he knelt before it, knife in hand, ready to carry out his new Master's orders—but then he had remembered this werewolf/man's words.

Setting the knife down, he had found the wolf's talisman in the corner where Drusilla had tossed it, tying it around the beast's neck.

Oz had returned in stages, his wolf features slowly morphing into those of a man. The scarred man had shaken him awake, urgent. "Hurry, we don't have much time."

The first thing Oz had done was reach between his own legs, looking up at the man in wonder. "You didn't—?"

"No." He'd shaken his head. "Not yet," he'd added.

"Why?" Oz had looked at the man with narrowed eyes.

"You are certain the vampire intends to betray me?" he'd asked, helping Oz to sit.

"He needs five hearts of The Bane of Gaia," Oz had replied, wincing as his bloodied back touched the wall. "Yours is the fifth."

The man had known the words were true the minute Oz spoke them, and they had been working on what was left of his soul since. "I have been a fool. The Ha'Rakian has used this body as its slave for years, blackening this heart for the sacrifice. The demon inside of me has been in possession too long. I cannot fight it."

"You're fighting it now." Oz had searched the man's face, seeing the humanity there. "There is a human soul in you," he'd said. "It can win out. Believe me, I know." The man had touched his talisman. "What's your name?"

The deformed man had hesitated, searching his memory for the name he had once been called. "Peter."

"Are you going to kill me, Peter?" Oz asked.

"No." The man had offered Oz his hand, helping him stand. "But I am going to have to tie you up, I'm afraid. It's for your own safety."

"I'd rather just bail, if you don't mind," Oz had said, glancing at the door.

"I'm sorry," he'd apologized, turning the young man around and beginning to tie his wrists. "I wish I could do otherwise."

"That's ok, Peter, I think you're a good guy," Oz had said, looking over his shoulder at the man. "Plus, bonus points for not castrating me."

The disfigured man shook his head, clearing the memory. The demon inside of him was screaming, making his head ache and throb, but he found himself able to resist its pull for the first time ever. He stood watching the minions continue to feed the Chur N'Byl, its strength growing with every minute.

"You!" the scarred man called, pointing to a hooded figure. "I need your help!"

The minion came over, following Peter down the hall and into a small office. Peter opened his knife, turning around and plunging it into the man's heart. The figure collapsed to its knees, and the disfigured man winced. He had killed hundreds of people, and yet this murder pained him.

He lifted the man's robe and went to work, determined to redeem the soul that he felt burning in his chest.

*****

Giles pounded his fist into the face of the hooded figure, wincing as his hand made contact with runny flesh. The figure fell to the floor, and Giles ducked as another one lunged at him.

"Xander!" Willow cried, pointing behind him, and he whirled, shooting the crossbow into another one of the minions.

Louis waved his hand at a figure approaching him and it stopped, frozen. Spike hammered it in the face and it went down.

Willow was whispering, saying a fast spell, and the hooded figure in front of her clutched at his face, crying, "My eyes! My eyes!"

Giles frowned at her. "Willow?"

"It's just temporary," she apologized, watching as Spike took down the blinded figure.

"We can't fight them all," Giles gasped as one of the figures wrapped its hands around his throat. Willow jumped on its back, but it shrugged her off.

"Did you start a fight without me?" Faith dropped down beside them, slamming her fist into the pulpy face of the man on Giles' back. It fell to the ground.

"Thank you," Giles said, rubbing his neck.

Buffy dropped down beside her, taking out two hooded zealots as she landed, her feet crushing them into the ground. She turned and sent another one flying with a left hook and swung around to catch another in the throat with a kick.

Willow looked up to see where the Slayers had come from and saw Oz standing at the railing above them.

"Oz!" Willow cried, tears coming to her eyes, seeing him wave to her. One of the figures barreled toward her and knocked her to the ground. Faith grabbed it by the hood and pulled it off the redhead, sending it flying with a rounded kick to the chest.

Buffy bashed her fist into the face of another one running directly at her and Faith winced at the crunching wet sound of its flesh. "You should try Clearasil," Buffy remarked.

Suddenly the minions seemed uninterested in them. One by one they began to turn toward the glowing light in the floor, chanting something in unison and making a circle around the light.

*****

"Master." The hunched man handed Lestat a drawstring bag dripping with blood.

"Ahhhh," the vampire smiled, opening it to see the bloody mess inside. He lifted it up, putting his tongue underneath to catch the drops. The deformed man watched, hoping that Lestat couldn't taste the difference between the minion's blood and the wolf's.

"Now we have everything we need." Lestat smiled.

"Can I go play with the puppy, now?" Dru pleaded, brushing up against him.

"One more task, darling," Lestat said, jerking his head toward the deformed man. "Just remember, leave his heart beating."

Dru's eyes brightened, licking her lips as she stepped toward the man with the twisted face.

"No," he whispered, backing up toward the wall. "Please, no. I have been faithful."

"So hungry," she said, her face changing into her vampire visage, exposing her fangs.

*****

"That can't be good," Xander said, frowning, watching as the Faithful Order abandoned their fight and joined the large circle around the bubbling sore in the earth.

"Oh, hell," Spike said, grabbing his head. "Ow, ow, ow!"

"It's the L'Orax," Willow cried, seeing the bright light shining from the vampire's eyes.

"I am the L'Orax, I speak for the dell,
The demon is coming, it's the Chur N'Byl!"

"It's Lestat," Louis said, seeing the vampire floating in the air over the pulsing light.

"It's Peter," Giles whispered, looking high above their heads and seeing the scarred, weakened man pressed to the wall, his arms and legs wide, making a human X.

"Who?" Willow and Xander echoed one another. They followed Giles' gaze.

"Oh, Mr. No-Face," Xander remarked with a nod.

"It's showtime," said Buffy, her face determined, her eyes glittering. "Let's go."

The gang walked forward together, Buffy and Faith in the lead, Spike following a step behind. His eyes were growing impossibly bright.

The Faithful Order were chanting, casting the spell, and Lestat hovered above the blister that swelled larger and larger below him, looking into the eyes of the man who had served him faithfully for the past month.

"You've done well," he said, putting his hand over the man's heart. "One last sacrifice, friend."

"I am not your friend." Peter's eyes widened, his face twisting in pain. "And you will not succeed today. You do not have what you need to complete the spell."

"I will in a moment," Lestat retorted with a quick smile.

"No," Peter gasped as Lestat turned his palm quickly left, then right and the man's head slumped forward, his eyes glazed.

The vampire quickly plunged his fist into the man's chest, pulling out his bloody, still-beating heart. He held it in his hand, a triumph, raising it into the air, holding up the bloody pouch with the werewolf's sacrifice in the other. The Faithful Order below raised their voices to him, chanting louder and louder.

"So mote it be," Lestat said, dropping the pouch into the weeping canker below him, watching it be swallowed up. He then tossed the dead man's heart onto the floor where a pentagram had been drawn. The red mass touched the last, empty triangular tip, the other four pointing to hearts in various stages of decay. Lestat raised his bloody hands above his head and cried in a booming voice, "We have come to the end of it all!"

Behind him, Peter's body made a bloody streak down the wall as it fell to the floor.

"You always were one for high drama, Lestat," Louis said as he flew up to join his old friend and nemesis. They hovered together over the pulsing ulcer in the earth below them.

The blonde vampire's eyes widened, and Louis saw fear there. "Louis?"

"Did you think I would just let you do this?" The dark-haired vampire lunged at him, and they tumbled together in mid-air.