The Xander Years, Vol.2

by Jeff Mariotte

  But Xander had already caught another scent on the air. His head snapped around, and he started away from Adam and his lunch companions like they weren’t even there. The others followed, Kyle stepping up and over the picnic table and scattering lunch trays as he went.

  Xander led them into the school building, following his nose. The scent grew stronger as they stalked the halls, headed directly toward their prey. Something weak, something that could be brought down by the pack.

  Or rather, the Pack, Xander thought, suddenly realizing that it should be capitalized.

  The scent drew them to a classroom. Xander opened the door, and they walked in. There was no one inside, just a cage. And in the cage, a small pink piglet. Succulent, juicy, tempting. Xander knelt beside the cage, looked at the little pig.

  “Let’s do lunch,” he said.

  CHAPTER 3

  He could feel everything, every sensation. The sun on his cheek. The slightest breeze flicking his hair. The sidewalk beneath the balls of his feet. He could smell perfume on a girl all the way across the quad. He could hear whispered conversations a block away.

  But there was no reason to. None of those people meant anything to him. None of them mattered. Only the Pack mattered.

  They roamed the campus like it was their birthright. Xander reveled in the sidelong glances, the looks of outright fear from those they passed. He was an object of terror, he thought, and it tasted sweet. At one point, they converged on Lance, who cringed and ducked out of their way. They let him go. .. he was beneath real notice.

  Finally, something interesting caught his attention. They sat on a low wall on the second floor. Their backs were to him, but that didn’t matter. If he hadn’t recognized them, he still would have known their voices, their smells. Buffy and Willow. He listened.

  “I’ve known him my whole life, Buffy. We haven’t always been close, but . . . he’s never . . .” Willow’s voice caught. She turned to face Buffy, tears rimming her eyes.

  “I think something’s wrong with him,” Buffy said.

  “Or maybe there’s something wrong with me,” Willow countered.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on,” Willow said. “He’s not picking on you. He’s just sniffing you a lot. I don’t know, so maybe three isn’t company anymore.”

  “You think this has something to do with me?” Buffy asked. Knowing there was only one thing that could mean. She’d known Xander had had a crush on her practically since her first day in Sunnydale. But that didn’t make sense — he’d have to know that being mean to Willow wouldn’t get him anywhere with her.

  “Of course.”

  Buffy shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “That still doesn’t explain why he’s hanging out with the dode patrol.” She slid down from the wall. “Something’s going on. Something weird.” She started past Willow.

  Her friend turned to watch her go. “What are you going to do?”

  Buffy turned to face Willow once more. “Gonna talk to the expert on weird.”

  That expert could only be Giles, who she found in his usual haunt, the school library.

  He’d been cataloguing, she figured, because he was carrying a clipboard and one of those little cards from the card catalogue with him as he moved from place to place.

  While he was cataloguing — she didn’t know if that was the right verb, but guessed it would do — she was talking and following him around. And finding him somewhat less than sympathetic.

  “Xander’s taken to teasing the less fortunate?”

  “Uh-huh,” Buffy said.

  “There’s been a noticeable change in both clothing and demeanor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And spends all his spare time lounging about with imbeciles?” Giles opened a card catalogue drawer, looked into it as if he’d lost something there.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s devastating,” Giles agreed. “He’s turned into a sixteen-year-old boy.” Giles shut the drawer again. “Of course, you’ll have to kill him.”

  “Giles, I’m serious,” Buffy said.

  Giles crossed the room to another cabinet. “So am I, except for the part about killing him.” He looked at Buffy and stopped, as if realizing that he owed her a more detailed explanation. “Testosterone is the great equalizer; it turns all men into morons,” he said. “He will, however, get over it.”

  “I can’t believe that you, of all people, are trying to Scully me,” Buffy argued. “There’s something supernatural at work.” She grabbed some books from on top of the cabinet, shoved them toward Giles. “Get your books! Look stuff up!”

  Giles took the books from her hand, replaced them in their proper spot. “Look under what?”

  “I don’t know,” Buffy moaned. “That’s your department.”

  “The evidence you’ve presented me with is sketchy at best,” Giles said. Buffy could feel the argument being lost.

  “He scared the pig!” she insisted, with a sudden flailing gesture.

  Giles gave her a get-real look.

  “Well, he did.”

  “Buffy, boys can be cruel.” Lecturing, now. “They tease, they prey on the weak. It’s a natural teen behavior pattern.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “Uh, what?” Giles stammered. “Um, they tease —”

  Buffy interrupted him. “They prey on the weak. I heard that somewhere.” Then she remembered where. That zookeeper. “Xander has been acting totally wiggy since we went to the zoo. Him and Kyle and all those guys went into the hyena cage . . . Oh God, that laugh —”

  “Are you saying Xander’s becoming a hyena?” Giles asked. He didn’t seem to give her theory much credence, considering some of the things they had been through together.

  “I don’t know,” Buffy said. “Or been possessed by one. Not just Xander, all of them.”

  Giles shook his head, tugging on his ear. He still isn’t buying it, Buffy knew. “Well, I’ve certainly never heard of — ”

  Then Willow charged into the library, clearly upset. Now what’s Xander done? Buffy found herself wondering.

  “Herbert,” Willow exclaimed. “They found him!”

  “The pig?” Buffy asked.

  “Dead,” Willow replied. “And also, eaten! Principal Flutie’s freaking out.”

  Buffy looked at Giles. “Testosterone, huh?”

  He avoided her glance and headed for the stacks.

  “What are you gonna do?” Willow asked him.

  “Get my books,” he answered. “Look stuff up.”

  Mr. Flutie found them lounging on a picnic table. Du-Fours, Kelley, Hauer, and Barrie. He knew each of them well, on a personal basis. He was very familiar with their permanent records. These were the kind of kids every principal had nightmares about, the ones who only came to school because they had to and lived to make trouble for the administration. They weren’t stupid, but they were aggressively unteachable. You couldn’t motivate them because they only understood power and money, and a high school principal didn’t have enough of either.

  “You four!” he shouted.

  Kyle DuFours looked up lazily. “What?”

  He was too angry to beat around the bush. “Oh, don’t think I don’t know,” he said. “Three kids saw you out-side Herbert’s room. You’re busted. Yeah. You’re going down.”

  “How is Herbert?” Rhonda Kelley asked.

  “Crunchy,” Heidi Barrie responded. The others broke into cackling laughter.

  No respect at all. He couldn’t take any more. “That’s it. My office, right now.”

  They just sat there, looking at him. The laughter had faded, but he could feel the chilliness of their stares. “Now!” he demanded.

  Kyle got up first, and the others followed his lead. Mr. Flutie marched them ahead of himself, toward the building. “You’re gonna have so much detention,” he threatened, “your grandchildren’ll be staying after school.”

  * * *

&n
bsp; Hanging out in the library has had one positive effect on Buffy, Willow thought. It had taught her how to do re-search, when it needed to be done. Like now. Willow loved research, but getting Buffy together with a book was sometimes a challenge, and other times was not even in the realm of possibility.

  Buffy sat on the steps leading up to the stacks, a huge folio across her lap. Willow sat at a table, reading one of her own. She looked up when Buffy spoke. “Wow,” Buffy said. “Apparently Noah rejected hyenas from the Ark because he thought they were an evil, impure mixture of dogs and cats.”

  “Hyenas aren’t well-liked,” Willow agreed.

  “They do seem to be the shmoes of the animal kingdom,” Buffy said, bringing the book down to show Willow a picture.

  “Why couldn’t Xander be possessed by a puppy?” Willow asked. “Or some ducks?”

  “That’s assuming ‘possession’ is the right word,” Buffy said.

  “Oh, I’d say it is,” Giles offered. He emerged from another part of the library, yet another book in his hands. “The Masai of the Serengeti have spoken of animal possession for generations. I should have remembered that.”

  “So how does it work?” Buffy asked.

  “Well,” he explained, “apparently there’s a sect of animal worshippers, known as Primals. They believe that humanity — consciousness, the soul — is a perversion, a dilution of spirit. To them, the animal state is holy. They’re able, through transpossession, to draw the spirit of certain animals into themselves.”

  “And then they start acting like hyenas.”

  “Only the most predatory animals were of interest to Primals,” Giles said. “So yes, that would fit.”

  “So what happens to the person once the spirit is in them?” Buffy asked.

  “If it goes unchecked?” Giles said. Instead of answering, he handed Buffy the massive volume he carried.

  She looked at the page he showed her, horror creeping over her face as she did. She slammed the book shut, put it down on the table next to Willow, and headed for the door. “I gotta find Xander,” she said.

  Willow reached for the book, tugged it to herself, flipped it open to the page Giles had shown Buffy. An old engraving on the page seemed to show a feast of some kind. But the main course didn’t look to Willow like hyena chow, or even raw piglet. It was humans — missing arms, legs, even heads, all depicted in graphic and gory detail. Ewww, she thought. I hope Cavalry Buffy’s not too late to save the day.

  Buffy found the classroom to which she’d delivered Herbert before. The door was open. Inside, the cage Mr. Flutie had bought for Herbert was bent and twisted apart; the heavy wire looked as if animals had been at it. In a way . . .

  They are strong, she said to herself, moving around the wreckage. The floor, she realized, was littered with straw from the cage — and something else. She bent over, picked one up. It was almost eight inches long, a little bigger around than her finger. Broken at the end, as if something had snapped it — or bit it, maybe in search of marrow.

  “Pig bones,” she said.

  She put it back in the mess on the floor and stood to leave. There was nothing more to learn here. She turned . . .

  And there he was, right behind her. His face held a malicious grin.

  “Xander.”

  He didn’t speak, just took a step closer to her. She sidestepped, to go around him, but he moved to block her. Obviously he wasn’t going to just let her pass, so she tried another approach.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “We need to talk — ” Only instead of talking, she leapt at him, hands at his shoulders, driving him backward. He went down, and she landed on his chest, driving him into the floor.

  He just laughed. “I’ve been waiting for you to jump my bones,” he said.

  The four perps stood in Mr. Flutie’s office, and he paced before them, in front of his desk. “I have seen some sick things in my life, believe me, but this is beyond the pale,” he sputtered. He was still enraged by the vicious attack on Herbert. “What is it with you people? Is it drugs? How could you — a poor defenseless pig . . .”

  Then he realized, with some trepidation, that they were getting closer, and he certainly wasn’t moving toward them. Students should be kept at arm’s length, he believed. And long arms, at that. But these four were approaching him — encircling him. And they had started to make strange, almost subvocal noises — meaningless, animal sounds.

  He fought to keep his nerves under control, his voice from betraying his fear. “What are you doing?” he demanded as they surrounded him.

  Xander growled an animalistic snarl and heaved, catching Buffy by surprise with a strength she didn’t know he had. He bucked her off of him and spun her over, so that she was on her back, looking up into his face. He pinned her wrists to the tiled floor.

  “Get off of me!”

  “Is that what you really want?” he asked. She tried to hurl him off, but he was strong — even for her, the Slayer. Pretty much confirms Giles’s theory, she thought. She gave an extra push, testing herself, really, to see if she was holding back because he was Xander, a friend. A hyena-possessed friend, maybe, but a friend just the same. “We both know what you really want,” he went on. “You want danger, don’t you? You like your men dangerous.”

  “You’re in trouble, Xander,” Buffy tried. “You are infected with some hyena thing. It’s like a demonic possession — ”

  Xander ignored her, cutting her off as if she hadn’t even spoken. “Dangerous and mean, right? Like Angel, your mystery guy. Well, guess who just got mean?”

  When they actually touched him, Mr. Flutie lost his cool. “Now, stop that!” he shouted. “You’re only gonna make things worse for yourselves.”

  He moved away from them, behind his desk. Rhonda followed him back there, but at least kept her distance. Kyle and Heidi filled in the space on the other side, so he was trapped behind the desk. Panic was building in him, but he was still in charge of the situation, he knew. He was still the authority figure. He held the trump card, and it was time to play it.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you how this is going to work,” he said, straightening out his dark sports coat, trying to look casual. “I’m going to call your parents and they are going to take you all home.”

  He reached for the phone, but Tor was there first, pressing the receiver down against the cradle. After a moment, though, he handed the receiver to Mr. Flutie.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Flutie said.

  Trump card. When all else fails, call the —

  Rhonda swatted the telephone from his hand and the unit crashed against the wall.

  “Sorry,” Rhonda said.

  “That is it!” Mr. Flutie yelled. He spun away from Rhonda to go around the desk and leave the office. Authority was one thing, but these kids were beyond anything he could do. He’d been uncomfortable from the start, but that had escalated quickly into fear and was now just a hair’s breadth from abject terror. A quick call to the Sunnydale P.D., though, and they’d be someone else’s problem.

  But Kyle and Heidi were still on that side of the desk. As he neared Kyle, the boy leaned forward and unleashed a hideous roar, sounding more like a wild beast than a high school student. Mr. Flutie, startled, fell back into his swiveling desk chair.

  “Do you know how long I’ve waited?” Xander asked. “Until you’d stop pretending that we aren’t attracted — ” As he spoke, he released one wrist, caressed her blond hair gently with his hand. The way a lover would.

  Buffy took full advantage of his distraction. With the help of her free hand, she was able to throw him off her and scramble to her feet. He stood, and came toward her again, barely even breaking stride in his sentence.

  “Until Willow stops kidding herself that I could settle with anyone but you —”

  “I don’t wanna hurt you, Xander,” Buffy said, backing away from his relentless advance.

  But it was bluff, and she knew it. She couldn’t bring herself to really hurt Xander. She j
ust hoped he wouldn’t realize that.

  He didn’t. He lunged, slamming her backward into a vending machine. Someone’s long-lost change clinked down into the coin return.

  “Now do you wanna hurt me?” Xander asked. “C’mon, Slayer — I like it when you’re scared.” She struggled against him but he held her tight, sniffing the air around her. “The more I scare you, the better you smell.”

  Then Xander stopped talking, forced his head in between Buffy’s jaw and shoulders, and began to savagely kiss her neck.

  Rhonda and Heidi were touching him, fingers running across his arms, his neck, his shoulders. Touching between principals and students was a major bad thing, in Mr. Flutie’s personal rule book. I’m not sure this exact situation is covered in the Education Department’s guidelines, he thought. But in concept. . .

  “You’re about this close to expulsion, people.” He rose, trying once more to force his way through the four grunting problem cases. “But I’m willing to talk to the school counselor, and we can discuss options —”

  Heidi shoved him back into his chair. And then Tor leapt up to the surface of his desk and squatted there, snarling, looking for all the world like a jungle creature ready to spring.

  “Get down from there this instant!” Mr. Flutie commanded, putting every reserve he had into not falling to the ground and begging for mercy. He’d taught school and had been a principal, for years, but he’d never been so scared.

  Rhonda closed in on the other side of him, fingers splayed far apart. She raked her nails across his cheek. He felt them cutting into his flesh.

  “Oh!” he called out. He touched the torn skin and drew his hand away, seeing his own blood on his palm. “Are you insane?”

  The students’ grunts and groans intensified as they closed in, as if drawn by the scent of freshly spilled blood, or the sight of Mr. Flutie finally giving in to his terror. These weren’t just troubled youth, they were something more than that. Something much, much worse, he thought.

  And then Tor attacked, springing from the desk like a cat, snarling and vicious. He drove Mr. Flutie back into his chair, and before he knew it, the others were on him as well, and they were laughing hysterically, laughing and clawing and tearing, and the last thing he knew before he lost consciousness was that he had been wrong. He had always contended that there were no bad kids, only troubled ones. But that’s what these kids were, just plain bad, and there would be no reasoning with them, no detention or expulsion that would straighten them out. It didn’t really matter to him anymore because, if they were ever going to become productive members of society, he wouldn’t be around to see it.