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Beauty and the Beasts

Prologue

One night after supper, the lead dog turned up a snowshoe rabbit. The dog lay down low to the race, his body flashing forward, leap by leap. He was sounding the deeps of his nature and the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the wombs of time. The rabbit could not—

Willow stops reading from The Call of the Wild when the Ozwolf throws himself against the door of the library cage. He finds the bits about the rabbits to be a little too stimulating.

Xander shows up to relieve Willow for the late night watch, so she can go home and get some sleep before a test tomorrow. Xander has come prepared for a long night with a thermos of coffee, and a stack of magazines.

Willow has some last minute instructions for him. “He’s had his two o’clock feeding, and, after sunrise, if he forgets where his clothes are, they’re on top of the file cabinet in his cage.” She points to some towels that are hung on the library cage doors. “I put those towels up for privacy.”

“No worries,” says Xander. “I can handle the Oz, Full Monty. I mean, not ‘handle’ handle, like ‘hands to flesh’ handle.”

“Okay,” says Willow, “Well, it’s not for you. It’s for me, ’cause I’m still getting used to half a Monty.”

“Oh. Good,” says Xander, then he registers what she said. “Half? You and Oz? Which half?”

Willow smiles coyly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Willow shows Xander the tranquilizer gun, just in case Oz gets out of hand, and goes.

Xander lies down on a library table for a nap, using The Call of the Wild as a pillow.

Buffy and Faith are checking out the cemetery, talking about guys in general, and Scott Hope in particular. Faith thinks he’s quite a muffin.

“Blueberry,” says Buffy. “With that crunchy, munchy stuff on top. But my most favourite thing so far is that he doesn’t seem to be any kind of Hell Beast.”

“All men are beasts, Buffy,” says Faith.

“Okay,” says Buffy. “I was hoping to not get that cynical till I was at least forty.”

“It’s not cynical. I mean, it’s realistic. Every guy from Manimal down to Mr. I-Love-The-English-Patient has beast in him. And I don’t care how sensitive they act. They’re all still just in it for the chase.”

Something is chasing a guy through the woods. It catches him, knocks him to the ground, and drags him away.

Act I

Buffy talks with Willow and Oz next morning. She has told them about Faith’s “All men are beasts” theory, but Willow doesn’t buy it. They meet up with Scott and his friends Debbie and Pete. Oz and Debbie know each other because Oz had been in the school’s marching jazz band with her last year. He isn’t doing it this year. He finds the pressure of marching to be too much.

“We have a marching jazz band?” asks Buffy.

“Yeah,” says Oz, “but, you know, since the best jazz is improvisational, we’d be going off in all directions, banging into floats. Scary.”

Buffy has to go, she has an appointment with the school councilor—Mr. Platt—for the beginning of her psychological evaluation. Debbie has been seeing Platt too, on the recommendation of her biology teacher, who thinks she has “success issues.” Debbie finds Platt kind of creepy.

Giles is panicking. He tells Xander that they have to recheck every possible exit avenue from the library cage. Xander thinks it’s a waste of time.

Giles sees Oz and Willow come into the library. “It’s good to see you. Um, no need to panic.”

“Just a thought,” says Oz. “Poker: not your game.”

Giles explains the reason for his current state: a student—Jeff Orkin—was killed in the woods last night, and it looks like it might have been done by…

“Me,” says Oz.

“Wolf-you, not you-you,” says Willow.

“But it’s not,” says Xander. “Not wolf-you, not you-you. The room was secured, the gate was locked.” He goes into the cage. “And the window unbreakable, and…” He looks at the window high on the wall inside the cage. “Open!”

“Oh, god,” says Willow.

Xander still isn’t worried. “I rested my eyes now and then. That’s all.”

“How long exactly did you rest your eyes for?” asks Giles.

“A little now, a little then,” says Xander. “But I never heard Oz leave, and he was here in the morning when I, um…”

“Woke up!” shouts Giles.

Buffy arrives in Mr. Platt’s office for the start of her Snyder mandated evaluation. “Buffy Summers, reporting for sanity,” she announces to the back of his chair.

Platt is sitting looking out the window, smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t turn around right away.

“Look,” says Buffy. “I know that I have to do this, and I’ll cooperate, and I’ll look at your ink blots and everything, but I don’t want to talk about my life or my childhood, or anything for that matter, actually. And I don’t want to be friends here.”

Platt turns around. “We’re not going to be friends. You have friends already, I hope. Friends are a good thing. They like you, agree with you, tell you what you want to hear. That’s not what you need right now. What you need is a trained, not too crazy professional who will always give you his honest opinion.” He puts out his cigarette, pops the lid off a can of air freshener, and gives a couple of sprays around the room. “Which I offer. Have a seat.”

Buffy sits in the offered chair. “‘Not too crazy?’ Those are your credentials?”

Platt gets up and walks around his desk. He sits on it in front of Buffy. “Look, Buffy, any person—grownup, shrink, Pope—any person who claims to be totally sane is either lying or not very bright. I mean, everyone has problems. Everybody has demons, right?”

“Got to say I’m with you on that,” says Buffy.

“Excellent,” says Platt. “So the hope I bring you is: demons can be fought. People can change. You can change. Now, your turn. Let’s start with why you ran away.”

Buffy is reluctant at first to tell him anything, but Platt seems like a nice guy, and Buffy begins to open up to him a bit. She tells him some of the stuff about Angel, and her life, leaving out things like Angel being a vampire, and how she killed him. Platt is a sympathetic listener, and he understands that Buffy is leaving a lot unsaid about her relationship with Angel. He wants to hear more about him.

“He was my first—” says Buffy. “I loved him, and then he…”

“Changed.”

“Yeah,” says Buffy.

“He got mean.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t stop loving him,” says Platt. “Look, lots of people lose themselves in love. It’s no shame. They write songs about it. The hitch is, you can’t stay lost. Sooner or later, you have to get back to yourself.”

“And if you can’t?” asks Buffy.

“If you can’t…well, love becomes your master, and you’re just its dog.”

Buffy meets with the others in the library. She notices that everyone is looking very depressed. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“Oz ate someone last night,” says Cordelia.

“He did not!” says Willow.

“Oz does not eat people!” says Xander. “It’s more werewolf play. You know, I bat you around a little bit, like a cat toy. I have harmless, wolf fun. Is it Oz’s fault that, you know, side effect, people get cut to ribbons, and maybe then he’ll take a little nibble and…I’m not helping, am I?”

Giles tells Buffy about Jeff’s body being found, and that Oz may have gotten loose last night. They don’t know if he did it. There might be another werewolf in town, or it could be something else entirely.

“It’s okay,” says Buffy. “We’ll work together, and we’ll figure this out.”

They decide that Buffy will patrol the woods that night and look for anything else that may have killed Jeff. Willow, Xander and Cordy will visit the morgue to examine the body to see if it was a werewolf kill. Giles needs to consult some books at home, so Faith gets tonight’s Oz watch.

“What, you’re having a Slayer watch me?” asks Oz. “Oh, good, we’re not overreacting.” He gets up, and starts to go. Willow stops him.

“Okay. You know that thing where you bail in the middle of an upsetting conversation?” asks Oz. “I have to do that. It’s kind of dramatic, I know, but sometimes, it’s a necessary guy thing.”

“And I want you to…do the guy thing, but…” Willow points toward the clock on the wall.

Oz looks and sees the time. It’s 5:35. He goes and locks himself in the cage. Willow follows him to the door.

“Get away from the cage,” says Oz.

Willow’s confused. “What?”

“It’s going to happen soon,” says Oz. “Get away from me.”

Buffy searches the woods. She sees something moving through the bushes, and chases after it. Whatever it is moves quickly. It reverses directions, and comes back past her. It knocks her to the ground.

Buffy looks up, and recognises what knocked her down. It’s Angel. He’s dressed only in pants, and he has blood on his lips when he snarls at her. He doesn’t seem to recognise her.

Act II

Angel snarls and attacks Buffy as she’s getting back to her feet. He knocks her down, and they continue to wrestle on the ground. Buffy gets to her feet. She kicks Angel in the head as he tries to get up too. She follows that up with a punch that knocks him out.

Buffy stands over the unconscious Angel, not knowing what to do next.

Willow examines Jeff’s body in the morgue. It’s in pretty bad shape. He had been badly mauled by whatever attacked him. Willow is wearing a pair of rubber gloves, and she pulls her forensic kit out of a Scooby Doo lunch box. She asks Xander to hold her flashlight steady on the corpse while she examines it. Xander struggles to keep from losing his lunch while Willow starts to take scrapings from under Jeff’s finger nails.

Xander hears something behind him, and whirls around, startling himself, and Cordelia, who has just come up behind him. “We’re doing crime here!” says Xander. “You don’t sneak up during crime!”

Willow grabs Xander’s hand and pulls it around so he is again shining the flashlight on Jeff’s hand so she can finish getting her scrapings. Cordelia gets her first good look at the body too, and joins Xander in trying to keep from throwing up. “Scarred for life! Oh, god!”

Cordelia wonders how Willow can stand to look at the corpse, and stay so calm, but Willow just continues with her work. Xander wants to know if she has found anything which will clear Oz. She hasn’t. Whatever killed Jeff mauled him pretty badly, but there is nothing to show that it wasn’t Oz who did it. Willow finishes up by collecting a few stray hairs and things from the body using a pair of tweezers.

“Great. So we got everything we need?” asks Xander.

“Yep. That’s it.” Willow faints.

Xander catches Willow as she collapses. “Okay. A little too much excitement for the Wilster here.” He lowers Willow to the floor, and looks up at the body on the table. “Doesn’t look good for Oz, does it?”

“It really doesn’t,” says Cordy. “This guy was ripped apart by a big wild animal.”

Buffy clears Miss Edith, and some of Drusilla’s other dolls off the lid of a trunk. She opens it up, and dumps its contents onto the floor. She searches through them and finds what she’s looking for: a chain with shackles. She uses it to chain Angel to a bracket on the wall of the mansion he had shared with Spike and Dru. He’s starting to wake up.

Buffy backs away from Angel as he lunges at her, and snarls. He doesn’t seem to be able to speak. All he can do is snarl and growl.

Buffy looks at the spot where she left her ring. A silhouette of Angel’s body has been burned into the floor there.

Buffy returns to the library where Faith is watching over Oz. Faith is wearing headphones, and dancing around in the library with her back to the door, and she doesn’t hear Buffy enter.

Buffy comes up behind Faith and taps her on the shoulder. Faith whirls around and punches Buffy in the jaw before she realizes who it is. She quickly apologises, and asks Buffy what she is doing there. Buffy tells her she couldn’t sleep, and so she decided to come in to the library to do some studying for a French test. She tells Faith she can go. Faith thinks this is good news. She still has time to go out and stake a few vampires.

Buffy hits the card catalogue as soon as Faith leaves.

Giles arrives the next morning to find Oz human and asleep in the cage. He unlocks the door walks over to the chair where Buffy is dozing, surrounded by books on Acathla and demon dimensions. He knows that something’s up, and asks Buffy what’s troubling her. Buffy tells him that she had a dream about Angel, and it brought up some questions.

“Must have been some dream,” says Giles. “I didn’t think you knew what a card index was for.”

“I dreamt that he came back,” says Buffy.

Giles understands that sort of dream. After Jenny died, he had dreamed that she was still alive, that he had saved her.

Buffy tells Giles that this dream was really vivid, and he asks if she thinks it might have been one of her prophetic dreams. Buffy quickly tells him she doesn’t think so. It just made her wonder. She asks if Giles thinks there is even a chance it could happen.

Giles has no recollection of anything like that ever happening, and even if it did, time moves differently in demon dimensions, something Buffy has personal experience with. Angel may have spent centuries there, undergoing brutal torment. “It would take someone of extraordinary will and character to survive that and retain any semblance of self. Most likely, he’d be a monster.”

“A lost cause,” says Buffy.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” says Giles. “In my experience, there are two types of monster. The first, can be redeemed, or more importantly, wants to be redeemed.”

“And the second type?” asks Buffy.

“The second is void of humanity, cannot respond to reason, or love.”

Willow arrives carrying a box of doughnuts. She couldn’t sleep either, and spent the night at the all night doughnut shop. She’s surprised to see Buffy there. “How come you’re the wakey girl? I mean, this time, it’s not your boyfriend who’s the cold-blooded—” She breaks off when she sees Buffy looking behind her, and turns to see Oz coming out of the cage. “Jelly doughnut?” She holds the box out to him.

Buffy asks for the report on Jeff’s body. Willow ducks the question by offering doughnuts around again, but Buffy doesn’t want to be ducked. She asks if it was a werewolf or a vampire. Willow tells her that her examination wasn’t conclusive.

This isn’t what Buffy wants to hear, and starts trying to grill Willow for the answers until Giles stops her. Buffy looks around at them, realises what she was doing, and apologises.

Buffy meets with Scott, Debbie and Pete in the cafeteria for lunch. Scott doesn’t think much of Buffy’s choice of meals today: jello. Buffy tells him that she just doesn’t feel like hard food today. “But there’s fruit in it.” She points at the chunks in the jello.

“Those are marshmallows,” says Scott.

Buffy tells Scott her lack of appetite is because she didn’t sleep well last night.

“Just don’t tell Mr. Platt you have insomnia,” says Debbie. “He’ll make you start a dream journal.

“Oh, what’s that, like, a Barbie thing?” asks Pete, “‘Dear Dream Journal, how come Ken hasn’t come around since he got that earring?’”

Debbie giggles. “I never did it. He’s a quack.”

“I kind of liked him,” says Buffy.

“Really?” says Debbie, “I guess, I guess he’s kind of funny and stuff. It’s just, sometimes I just don’t like the things he says.”

“Oh, he definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer,” says Buffy, “Actually, I think he makes his own drums.”

The conversation drifts on to other topics, but Buffy’s heart really isn’t in it. She tells Scott that she just remembered that she has something she has to do, and gets up to go, leaving her lunch untouched.

Pete watches Buffy walk toward the exit. “Check out Scotty liking the manic-depressive chick.”

Buffy goes back to the mansion to check on Angel. She tries to talk to him, but he still doesn’t speak. She cautiously approaches him, and touches him on the shoulder. Angel snarls, and lunges at her. Buffy backs off again, and leaves.

Debbie and Pete duck into a storeroom for some between class smooching. Pete notices a nearly empty bottle with some glowing green stuff at the bottom. “What is that?” he asks.

Debbie tries to deflect his question. She grabs his face and kisses him. “Nothing. Kiss me.”

Pete doesn’t want to be distracted. “No. Debbie, you did not drink that, did you?”

Debbie is surprised by the question. “Drink it? You know I didn’t!”

“Debbie, what’s going on?”

Buffy enters Mr. Platt’s office. “Two o’clock. Buffy Summers, right?” she announces.

Platt is once again seated with his back to the door, which is fine with Buffy for the moment. “Wait.” Buffy starts to pace back and forth in his office. “Don’t turn around, okay, and don’t say anything. Just listen. I mean, that’s, that’s your thing, right?” Platt doesn’t move, so Buffy continues on with what she wants to say. She stops pacing. “There’s something going on. I mean, this whole entire story is probably going to convince you that I’m loony-bin material, but, there’s nobody else that I can talk to. Not Willow and not Giles. Nobody. If they, if they found out, they’d freak on me or they’d do something, and…I need help. I just, I need to talk to someone. I’m so scared. It’s this guy. He…”

Buffy notices the cigarette in Platt’s hand. It has burned all the way down the filter which has a couple of inches of ash hanging from it.

“He’s come back.”

Platt is dead. His face has been shredded by whatever killed him.

Act III

Debbie tells Pete that she dumped the contents of the bottle because she doesn’t like how he gets when he drinks it. Pete tells her that he doesn’t need the stuff anymore. He gets angrier and angrier, and smashes the bottle on the floor.

Pete starts pulling other bottles off the shelves, and smashing them too. “You could pour out everything I made, and it wouldn’t help, and you want to know why?” He grabs Debbie by the arms. “You want to know why? Because all it takes now is you, Debbie. You and your stupid, grating voice!”

Pete suddenly starts to spasm. He shakes his head violently. As he shakes he transforms, becoming a monster. “You’re the reason I started the formulas in the first place. To be the man you wanted! And you pay me back how? By whoring around with other guys and taunting me!”

Debbie cowers away from Pete. “No! I don’t! I don’t even look!”

Pete knocks Debbie to the floor. “Is that something your shrink taught you, Debbie?” She slowly climbs back to her feet. “To share? To communicate? To piss me off?” Pete knocks her back down onto the floor. “Well, guess what? Even he’s not going to listen to your pathetic ramblings anymore. I’m all you’ve got now, Debbie! Do you hear me? I am all you’ve got!”

Pete looks down at Debbie, cowering on the floor, bleeding from her lip, and sobbing. He starts to calm down. “Oh my god.” He reverts back to human. He kneels down beside her. “Hey, Debbie. Listen. You know you shouldn’t make me mad. You know what happens. Debbie, please. Are you all right?” He kisses Debbie on the forehead, and they hug.

“It’s okay,” says Debbie. “It’s okay.”

Giles tells Buffy, Willow and Faith that the coroner confirmed that Platt was killed shortly before Buffy found him.

“Which means that he was killed during the day,” says Faith.

Willow punches the air with her fist. “Yes!” They all give her looks. “Sorry. I got…I’ve just been…it’s horrible, horrible.”

“It’s okay, Will,” says Buffy. “We’re all glad Oz is off the hook.” She doesn’t tell them she’s happy because this means Angel’s off the hook too.

Giles is starting to wonder where Oz is though. It’s nearly sunset, and he hasn’t shown up.

Oz is waiting in the school quad for Debbie. He’s supposed to be loaning her his biology notes. Debbie shows up a little late, with her hair hanging over her face trying to cover her black eye.

It doesn’t work, and Oz asks Debbie how it happened. Debbie tells him she fell and hit it on a doorknob. Oz doesn’t believe her, but Debbie doesn’t want to talk about it.

Pete watches them from across the quad.

“We’re looking for a depraved, sadistic animal,” says Giles as Oz enters the library.

“Present,” says Oz. “Hey, I may be a cold-blooded jelly doughnut, but my timing is impeccable.”

“But you aren’t!” says Willow. “It’s a kill-in-the-day monster! A hundred percent for sure!”

“I wish we had time to celebrate properly,” says Giles. “However, we have two victims: Jeff Orkin and, uh, now Platt. Uh, maybe there’s something they had in common.”

“Missing internal organs?” asks Faith.

“Besides that,” says Giles.

“Debbie,” says Oz. Everyone looks at him. “Well, victim number one, Jeff. He was in jazz band with us. They used to horse around.”

“They were screwing?” asks Faith. Everyone gives her a look.

“I don’t think so,” says Oz, “but he hid her music comp book once.”

“And we know that Debbie knew Platt,” says Buffy. “I mean, she was seeing him and way vocal about not having love for the guy.”

“Add this and stir,” says Oz. “I just saw Debbie a minute ago sporting a nasty black eye.”

Willow starts to suspect that Debbie killed Platt, and she got the black eye when he fought back, but Buffy quashes that theory: Platt couldn’t have fought back. He was killed instantly. He didn’t even drop his cigarette. Pete suddenly springs to the top of the suspect list.

The gang splits up to search for Debbie and Pete. Faith teams with Giles, and Willow with Buffy.

“And I’ll…go lock myself in the cage,” says Oz.

Buffy and Willow find Debbie in the girl’s locker room. She is trying to cover up her black eye with makeup.

“It’s tricky, covering a fresh shiner like that,” says Buffy. “You know what works?”

“What?” asks Debbie.

“Don’t get hit. What’s going on, Debbie? I’ll bet the farm you know.”

Debbie tries telling them that she doesn’t know anything, but Buffy isn’t buying that. Then Debbie tells them that it isn’t Pete’s fault. He can’t help the way he gets, but Buffy isn’t buying that either. Debbie refuses to tell them any more.

“You have to talk to us,” says Buffy. “We can’t help you until you do.”

“I didn’t ask for your help!”

“Well, when are you going to?” asks Willow. “I mean, if Pete kills you, it’ll pretty much be too late.”

Angel struggles to free himself from his chains. He breaks loose the bracket that Buffy had secured them to.

Buffy tries to get Debbie to tell her where Pete is, but she says she doesn’t know. Buffy doesn’t believe her, but Debbie still refuses to tell her anything.

“So what?” asks Buffy. “You two live out your Grimm fairy tale? Two people are dead. Who’s going be next?”

Oz is waiting in the library cage for sunset when Pete comes in. Pete grabs the cage door. “Since when do you touch my girl?”

“Hey, Pete,” says Oz. “This is kind of a bad time.”

“Well, I guess you didn’t think about that when you put the moves on Debbie!” Pete rattles the door.

“We talked, yeah, but it was move-free,” says Oz.

Pete rattles the door again, harder.

“About this cage? When that sun sets—”

“You won’t be alive to see it!” says Pete.

“I’m serious,” says Oz. “Something’s going to happen that you…probably won’t believe.”

Pete’s anger reaches the critical point, and he transforms into the monster.

Oz steps back from the door. “Or you might.”

Act IV

Pete rips the door off the library cage. He grabs Oz and tosses him out onto the library floor.

Debbie has completely gone to pieces. She sits on a bench in the locker room rocking back and forth. “He does love me. He does love me,” she repeats, over and over.

Buffy decides that she isn’t going to get any more useful information out of Debbie, and she starts to leave.

Willow tries to get Debbie on her feet and moving. “I think we broke her.”

Buffy looks back at them. “I think she was broken before this.”

Debbie is still repeating “He does love me,” over and over.

Pete tosses Oz around the library. He doesn’t want to kill Oz right away like he did with Platt. He wants to punish him first. “Did you kiss that whore? Huh?” He shakes Oz. “Did she like it?” He picks Oz up, and slams him down on the library stairs.

Oz manages to get a leg up and he pushes Pete away from him. He looks out the library window. The moment has come that he’s been waiting for. The sun has set.

“Time’s up. Rules change.” Oz transforms into the wolf and attacks Pete.

The Ozwolf does much better against Pete as they fight. He catches Pete’s arm in his jaws, and bites down hard. Pete screams.

Everyone hears Pete’s scream, and they all run back to the library. Buffy reaches over the counter for the tranquilizer gun and takes aim at the struggling creatures. Debbie pushes Buffy just as she shoots, and she hits Giles instead.

“Sorry!” says Buffy.

“Oh, right. Bloody priceless!” Giles passes out, and knocks over the dictionary stand as he falls to the floor.

Oz escapes out of the library. Buffy tosses the tranquilizer gun to Faith and sends her after him, while she stays to deal with Pete. Willow follows Faith.

Buffy and Pete fight briefly in the library, until he knocks over a bookcase on top of her and runs away.

Pete runs out into the corridor, with Buffy chasing him. He manages to lose her by climbing up to and out a window.

Pete runs back to the storeroom where he had kept his formula.

Debbie is already there. She runs to him and hugs him. “Pete! You’re all right! God, you’re all right. She almost shot you. Did you see? I stopped her.” She lets go of Pete, and backs off a bit. “You have to leave, get out of Sunnydale. She knows.”

“How did she know, Debbie? Did you run your big mouth?” asks Pete.

“No!” says Debbie. “She just knew. It seemed like she just knew.”

Pete doesn’t believe her. He thinks Debbie told Buffy everything.

Buffy spots a smear of Pete’s blood under the window Pete escaped through, and climbs up through it. She follows the trail of blood to the storeroom. She finds Debbie lying dead on the floor inside. Pete attacks Buffy while she’s checking the body.

Faith and Willow catch up with the Ozwolf. He turns on them and attacks before Faith can get a shot off. Oz knocks the gun away from Faith, and knocks her to the floor. They wrestle on the floor, on top of the tranquilizer gun, keeping Willow from getting to it.

Willow grabs Oz’s tail and tugs on it, pulling him off Faith. Oz turns on Willow. She starts to run, and shouts for Faith to grab the gun.

The Ozwolf chases Willow. Faith grabs the gun and shoots him. Oz collapses to the floor.

Pete has Buffy down on the floor, hitting her. “You’re all the same! You’re all the same!” he yells as he punches her. Buffy kicks him across the room.

The door opens behind Buffy before she gets to her feet, and she hears a growl. She turns and sees Angel. He’s wearing his vampire face. He runs right past her and attacks Pete. Angel hits him with the heavy chains still manacled to his wrists.

Pete throws Angel away from him, and turns to attack Buffy again. Angel wraps the chains around Pete’s neck, and uses them to throw him to the floor. He snaps Pete’s neck with a twist. Pete reverts back to human as he dies.

Angel gets to his feet and looks at Buffy. He slowly walks toward her, and his face reverts to human too. He stops in front of her. “Buffy?” He drops to his knees on the floor in front of her. He hugs her around the waist. “Buffy!” he sobs.

Buffy doesn’t say a word. Tears run down her face.

Epilogue

Buffy and Willow walk through the courtyard with Xander, Cordy and Oz the next morning, and fill them in on the night’s events. Pete was doing a Jekyll and Hyde with a potion which he had brewed up to make himself more macho. The more popular theories floating around the school have that Pete overdosed on caffeine from drinking six iced café mochas or that he swallowed all of his mother’s birth control pills.

Buffy spots Scott sitting by himself. She leaves the others to go sit with him. “I don’t know what to say that’s not going to sound stupid or obvious.”

“I’ve been friends with them both since before we started school,” says Scott.

“Is there anything I can do?” asks Buffy.

Scott looks at Buffy for a moment. “Thanks. I’m going to be okay. It’s just that you never really know what’s going on inside somebody. Do you? I mean, you think, if you care about them, But you never really do.”

Buffy watches over a sleeping Angel in the mansion while she reads from The Call of the Wild.

Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees, lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And the strain of the primitive remained alive and active. Faithfulness and devotion—things born of fire and roof—were his, yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. And from the depths of the forest, a call still sounded.

Death Toll