A Dale Less Sunny – prologue

“I remember how it started. I don’t remember yesterday. I just remember doing what they told me.”

Buffy told me about the end, ‘cause, y’know, she was there. The Master had his hypno-mojo on heavy bake and she couldn’t resist. He was behind her, holding her hair back, whispering in her ear when he told her the big news, that the prophecy skipped the kinda important bit, that it was her blood that was going to set him free.

Then he bit her, obviously. She remembers seeing him clench his fist in front of her face, so hard that his freaky claws dug into his own palms, and as he lowered her to the ground, raising his dripping fist over her face. She says she doesn’t remember the rest.

Giles says that it was Buffy, a sired Slayer, who had the strength of blood necessary to tear down the barrier, and free the Master. He said that even with her strength, the barrier nearly burned her to death, or undeath, or whatever.

So I come running in, too fucking late, as always. Some cavalry. She’s just lying there, in her white dress, with her pale skin, like a discarded angel. The real kind, not the dickless asshole behind me, whose coat she’s wearing. I rush to her and her skin is warm, and I think it isn’t too late, thinking that she’s still warm, not knowing it is from the barrier nearly burning her to ash and not body heat. Angel’s all like, “I have no breath.” Like I said, dickless. I’m trying chest compressions and CPR and about to try the Heimlich or maybe a rousing bout of praying to God, when her eyes fly open. I remember being so surprised, since I had no idea if I was doing any of it right, even the praying to God sounded suspect. I helped her up and she just looked at me, as if really seeing me for the very first time. It’s the kind of look I’d prayed all year to see on her face, where her face just lights up.

I had to look over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t looking at him.

So I missed the big change, and as I’m turning back, she’s saying, “Xander and Angel, come to save me, my white knights to the rescue.” and her mocking tone goes right past me, just like the look of alarm on Angels face, ‘cause I’m not my momma’s brightest boy, y’know, even though I’m an only child. Her fangs in my throat came as quite the shock, I gotta tellya…

It was so fast, so painful. It felt like something was choking me, and I felt like if I could just say something, just catch my breath, everything would be fine, we’d get this sorted out. I almost died thinking, “Wait! There’s some sort of mix-up!” But our hero Angel knocked her off of me, and lying on the ground, feeling very much like an empty beer can about to be stepped on, and kinda light-headed, I see a stake, just sitting there on the ground. Not consciously able to deal with what I am thinking, I began to crawl for that stake. I know I couldn’t have been planning to stake Buffy with it. I think I just wanted it, a security blanket sort of thing.

And then it was gone. I didn’t even know I had lost consciousness, until I am flipped over and Buffy is now straddling me, holding the stake. I didn’t even see her move. “Am I boring you? No sleeping, Xander, you’ve been waiting so long for this moment…” She begins to writhe on top of me, still holding the stake in one hand, but both thin arms now pinning her hair above head as she grinds into my lap, her body pinning my legs. Strangely, not erotic. Must have been the blood loss. She seemed to remember the stake at that point, which I can only assume she had just used on Angel, and looks at me with a very Buffy-like pout, as if I had just shown Cordelia that picture from her old Hemery yearbook, the one with that other hair-color, that she insists is someone else. “Why were you crawling for this stake, Xander? You wouldn’t,” she shuddered dramatically, “stake little old me? I’m your best friend. I thought you loved me…” she sticks her lip out, going for the uber-pout, and then her face is ugly, vampire-ugly, with teeth and bumps and yellow eyes, but I am distracted by the stake, which suddenly goes from up there near her hair to deep in my chest.

It’s hard to remember the exact words, but I think I said something like, “Aaaarrrrggghhhh!!!”

“Oops, missed the heart.” she says primly, looking all apologetic. I repeat my previous argument. Get it? ‘Argh’-ument? Whatever. She then rips the stake out, which makes me gray out again I think, because I don’t see it, so much as hear it, clatter to the ground, and I go from seeing blood pulsing slowly out of my chest to seeing Buffy’s blonde hair, practically in my face, as her tongue is worming around in my chest.

Gosh that hurt. She leans up, my blood soaking her face, “So what was the plan, anyway? Did Angel plan on sacrificing himself to hold off the Master, and dragged you along to pull me to safety?” She looks vaguely put out. “That’s so like him.” I’d really like to have corrected her at that point, about who dragged who, and who was willing to sacrifice himself, but, hey, I wasn’t actually able to make words. See ‘Argh.’

In fact, blood was leaking into my lungs. I’m pretty sure of this, because it was coming up my throat, and I thought, what a lousy time to throw up, but it was only blood. I coughed, ‘cause it wouldn’t do to have an obstructed airway, and little drops of blood flew out onto her not-so-white-any-more dress. Nice dress I might add, although the coat had to go. She looks down at me, like I have deliberately sullied her pretty dress by choking to death on my own blood, but gets distracted, I guess, by the sight of blood on my lips.

The last thing I see is her face leaning towards mine, lips parted, and I realize that my dreams just came true. Buffy was about to kiss me. I tried to say, “Not like this.” since it seemed to make sense at the time, but I have no idea if I did before I lost consciousness for the last time.

Some odd amount of time later, I’m waking up stiff, and not the good kind of stiff, and caked in sticky gunk, and shut up. Did I mention the ‘not the brightest tool in the picnic’ thing? ‘Cause anyway, I get up, all gross and cold and in the dark, literally, because the 50 bajillion candles that were lighting the place when I got there had all gone out. I was a little woozy, and not terribly sure where I was, actually. I did know that at some point someone had pissed himself, but I’m gonna say it was Angel, and nothing is going to make me say otherwise.

So I stumble out, barely able to see, and find tunnels, and wander around them for about, ever, before finding a ladder that leads to out. I can see out, because I see light streaming in from a manhole cover, and I am headed up those stairs like a ferret on crack, wanting to get warm, and fed, and clean, and reassured that whatever mad pipe-dream I had just woken up from didn’t come with a venereal disease or a marriage certificate to a Las Vegas showgirl. Yes, the stupid thing is going to come up again now, because I had the manhole cover off before I realized that I was a vampire.

Ouchie. Not the sunlight, ‘cause that barely had time to hurt, it was morning and not coming straight down yet, but ouchie because the 20 ft. fall onto concrete, along with the percussion session with my head and the iron rungs on the way down, wasn’t fun.

So instead, I spend the next six hours babbling to myself about being a vampire. Shut up. Like you handled it so well… Anywho, while wandering around, I found a thing, that led to a place. Whatever. Next thing I was in the basement of some bar. Cool beans, a storeroom chock full of liquor, but not at all the hunka-hunka I’m hankering for. Long story short, someone is down there. I killed him. I’m still kinda unsure on how that all worked, I think it’s post-vampiric ‘I don’t wanna remember, and you can’t make me’ stress disorder.

Night falls. Clunk. I walk outside and the sirens have already started. The streets have red marks on them and chalk outlines, but I guess they cleaned up during the day. Missed one hell of a coming-out party, it seems. But I could see more vampires, at least a half-dozen, in the time it took me to make it to Willows house. What? Yes, I was going to Willows. In the last ten years I haven’t once had to deal with something half this huge without Willow holding my hand and telling me what to do, and no matter how insane it sounded, I wasn’t at all ready to start now.

The scariest thing? I got to Willow’s road (which has a name, but has always been ‘Willow’s road’ to me), and I see the Master, and a half-dozen other vampires crowded around him. He is walking up the steps to a house at the head of her street, and knocks on the door. Someone comes to the door and invites him in as pretty as you please. He gestures and the other vamps swarm in around him. Cue scream-track. Hypmotism sucks ass. I have to get me some of that.

So I get to the Rosenberg residence, and no one answers when I knock. I shout a lot, and see Willow upstairs peeking down. Actually I heard her first, which is odd, cause she wasn’t making any noise, but I hear her coming down the stairs anyway, like a herd of elephants, ‘cause she’s so happy to see that I made it. Poor girl. She opens the door and starts to lean out to invite me in, when I grab her mouth with my hand and say, “Don’t.” before pushing her back inside. I then lean on the doorframe, or, more to the point, on whatever that invisible ‘No vampires allowed’ barrier thing is that keeps us out, just to highlight that I will never be able to legally vote now.

She’s ass over teakettle on the ground (gosh, I’m strong), all blubbery, looking like she is trying to eat both of her hands, she has them crammed into her face so hard. “No, no, oh god, no.” seems to be the extent of her oratory skills. We’ll skip this part, it took some time, but we get to the point where she has the living room window open and she is sitting on the couch inside the house and I am sitting on the wooden swingie-loveseat thingie out on the porch, so basically we are sitting within a foot of each other, and only about a world apart.

“I can’t believe this.” she repeats, uselessly. “We’ve covered that Will, move on. Where are your folks?” I ask, suddenly not wanting to hear that they may have already been killed. “Oh, they went to temple, there is supposed to be a big thing there, everyone is gathering, to be safe. I was supposed to go, but I hid, because I wanted to stay, in case…” she trails off, “In case you guys needed me.”

Down the street, I can hear a scream. Willow seems to miss it. The Master is making good time, I think he’ll clear the street tonight. I explain this, and Buffy being a vampire, and Angel being dead, to Willow, who takes it in good stride.

So when she wakes up, she tells me that she has been trying to reach Giles, but hasn’t been able to reach him, and no one remotely sane goes near the high school, not after last night. Then she’s Willow again, and she tells me what I have to do. I probably shouldn’t have told her about Buffy being a vampire and Angel being a dust-bunny and the Master being about four houses up the block now, since it kinda made it sound like her only choice, I guess. I’m still trying to explain to her what an amazingly bad plan it is when she invites me in. I can’t reach through the window to shut her up this time. She walks into the kitchen as I cross to the door, and just walk in. Weird. She says, “Come in,” and boom, shields are down.

She comes out of the kitchen with a bigass knife, and before I realize that she isn’t threatening me with it, I have a bloody stake in my hand. (Easy enough to find, even in the dark, I recognized the smell.) It is the first time I consciously note that I had even retrieved the stake Buffy used to kill me. But when I look up, Willow is dropping the knife in shock from the pain, and blood is arcing from her wrist. She sliced it all wrong, sideways, and probably deep enough that she isn’t even going to be able to pick up the knife to do the other wrist anyway. Silly, she really doesn’t know anything about stuff like this. But I am busy dropping the stake and shouting, “Willow, no! This is crazy!” and at the same time I am moving towards her, to help her, to stop the bleeding, and I don’t realize until I see her recoil as I approach that I am not doing any of these things, I am grabbing her arm and pulling her wrist to my mouth and sucking at the gushing wound…

Oh well, I meant well, but as usual she outsmarted me. I pull away and vainly try to say that this is wrong, but she pushes her arm back into my face and reassures me, pulling me down onto her and holding me, as if she had to comfort me like a baby while I kill her. God, I am pathetic, even as a mad killer vampire… “This is what has to happen, Xander. The Master will be here in less than an hour. Even if I ran, where would I go? What would I do, with everyone I love gone? There’s only one world I want to live in, and that’s the world you’re in.”

Hey, it sounded really nice at the time. And it’s not like I was going to be able to stop anyway.

So that’s how Willow became a vampire.