To Save A Vampire

Chapter Nine

That night …

At the Summers’ house, Buffy was crying in her sleep, Dawn was awake wondering what all the commotion was about, and Giles’ hugged Joyce tighter against his bare chest as her body once again was wracked with silent sobbing.

Over at the Crawford Mansion, Vic stood guard and did random patrols around the estate, making sure nothing that tried to get in succeeded. While, upstairs, Willow slept fitfully, tossing and turning, trying to ease the pain in her mind and body from the overdose of magic.

In one of the spare bedrooms, Angel laid in bed watching Xander as he slept snuggled next to him, marveling at the rapid change 24 to 36 hours had brought. Xander had gone from disliking him, to trusting him with his life and protection. Why else come here after his father was done with him? Angel thought. He smiled down at the mortal he was supposed to marry and pulled the covers up a little more.


Vic did another sweep around the estate, when he felt the presence of other vampires just as he was approaching the back of the mansion. There were five of them that cleared the wall with the ease that only unnatural creatures exhibited, landing on their feet and surrounding Vic as they landed.

“So, dere you are Veek-tor. You know, da Master has been so vorried about you when you didn’t come home da ozzer night. Gustin iz going to be so dees-appointed to find you playing guard dog to da slayer’s pet vamp,” Mona, the lead vampiress, said.

How Vic hated that accent. It grated on his nerves like nothing else did. “Listen, you can go back and tell the ‘Master’ that I choose who I ally myself with, and I choose Angel over Gustin any day of the week. Now leave, before I yell for Angel to help me take care of you mutts.”

Hearing the conversation behind the estate, Angel gently got out of bed, gathered his clothes, and headed to the back of the building. He stood by the back sliding glass doors, waiting to see if he was going to be needed by Vic. With so many other vampires around, his power signature should be masked enough that they wouldn’t notice him until it was too late.

“Mutts! Why j’you call us mutts, man?” Ta asked, his frame seeming to get bigger in his anger.

“Because that is what you are. You will go back and fawn at Gustin’s boots, licking them clean, just like mutts do,” Vic answered sarcastically, sadly shaking his head at the image in his mind.

That was the last insult the vampires could take, and two of them charged Vic. Preternatural speed kicked in instinctively as they moved, their long coats flaring out behind them. The vampires split up, flanking Vic as they moved in. He crouched slightly, balancing his weight evenly on the balls of his feet, readying his body for the battle to come.

He watched the pair as they moved in, keeping both vampires in sight as they tried to encircle him. He was also aware that he was hopelessly outnumbered and didn’t stand much of a chance by himself. That fact alone didn’t really matter to him, however, since he had pledged to keep Xander safe - - and Xander was currently in the mansion at his back.

Suddenly, he felt that there was someone else at his back too, and he wasn’t quite so sure of his defeat. As the two vampires circled him, he was peripherally aware of the three other vampires forming a ring around their position, effectively making sure he stayed engaged in the fight and didn’t try to make an escape.

“Come on, Veek-tor. You pro-meese to come back to da Master with us - - and we dispense vith all this unpleasantness.”

Vic didn’t take his eyes off the vamps that were closing in on him. “Mona - - give Gustin a message for me.”

“Vhat is dat, Veek-tor?”

“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

Mona hissed angrily. “Keel dis vampire!”

The remaining vampires moved in. Angel took advantage of the distraction to sneak closer to the action. Just then, the two vampires circling Vic attacked, coming at him ferociously. A vicious roundhouse kick from Ta narrowly missed his head as he quickly ducked, only to be caught in the midsection by a kick from the second vampire. He was knocked off his feet, but quickly jumped back up, not letting the attacking vampires get the upper hand.

As he was being thoroughly distracted and trying to stay in one piece, a third vampire jumped up onto the side of the mansion. He looked down on the action, timing his attack to when Victor moved within his range. Then he would leap down on him and end this battle once and for all. His claws held tightly to the mortar between the stones of the mansion and his senses were entirely focused on the brawl below him. And then suddenly he was no longer alone.

Angel saw the vampire spring up to cling to the side of the mansion and knew this was the time to make his move. Vic seemed to be holding his own on the ground, but an aerial attack would take him out for sure. Without actually making a conscious decision on the matter, he sprang into action. A running leap brought him to rest high up on the wall of the mansion, within an arm’s reach of the vampire staring down at Vic. The vampire hadn’t noticed Angel’s presence yet and so the quick swipe of Angel’s claws startled him.

Golden eyes turned toward Angel a second before he lashed out to strike back. Angel hissed, sinking his claws into the arm of the vampire in front of him. Lightening fast strikes accompanied their descent to the ground, each vampire determined to do as much damage as possible to their foe.

They landed hard on the ground below, and Angel oomphed as unneeded air was pushed from his lungs. This didn’t hinder the older vampire at all, as he jumped up and charged the vampire he was fighting with. He quickly dispatched him by using his claws to decapitate him and, before he could turn to dust, Angel had turned around and charged at the other four that were ganging up on Vic.

Grabbing Mona by her long black hair, and using his preternatural strength, Angel threw her across the back of the estate. Both Vic and Angel could hear her screams of outrage as she flew uncontrollably backwards.

Angel then grabbed the two vampires nearest to him, banged their heads together, and then quickly stabbed them through their un-dead hearts. He turned just in time to catch Mona as she came charging at the remaining group.

“Oh, no you don’t! You are going to stand back with me and see how Vic can handle himself in a fight. If he is to stay around here, I need to know what his abilities are and which areas I need to train him in to protect Xander,” Angel said to the struggling vampiress.

Holding her captive in his arms, he turned to watch the fight going on between Ta and Vic. Ta was a giant of a man before he was turned, and he hadn’t gotten any smaller as a vampire. In fact, it seemed that since he was turned he might actually have grown somehow. However you looked at it, Vic had his hands full with Ta, and they both knew it.

“Looks ‘ike you’s saiv’r wants you to fight me alone,” smirked Ta.

Vic stood in a crouch, watching the larger vampire. He was bleeding from several claw marks, but he didn’t let that distract him from his mission to save Xander. That was foremost in his mind as he stood his ground.

He was also aware of Angel standing off to the side, watching. At least he was keeping Mona busy. He was smart enough to realize that any help was an advantage - - especially with him facing Ta. How does a mere man, vamp or no, defeat a mountain?

His reverie was interrupted when Ta rounded on him, sending a crescent kick his way. It caught him on the shoulder, staggering him and making his shoulder go numb. His arm dangled at his side, and he clenched his fist, trying to force it to work. Pain shot through him at that slight movement, but he gritted his teeth and growled as he stood to his full height and faced his enemy.

Ta smiled, showing as much fang as possible, just before launching himself at the smaller vampire. This time Vic stood his ground and caught the larger vampire in his arms. As the greater bulk crashed into him, Vic rolled, wrapping his arms around the other vamp and bringing him to the ground beneath him. His fist flew, catching Ta on the jaw.

The larger vampire growled and tried to throw Victor off him, but the smaller vampire had him trapped. With a hiss, Ta reached into his coat and pulled out a stake. Before Vic could even react Ta had pulled his arm back, aiming for the other vamp’s chest.

Vic rolled to the side just as Ta thrust with the stake and it embedded itself in his shoulder instead of his chest, causing Vic to scream his pain into the air. Instinctively, he reached out and crashed his fist into Ta’s chest, going through the chest wall, crushing his sternum and shattering any ribs in his way. His fist closed around the un-dead heart and squeezed as he ripped the offending organ from Ta’s chest.

Ta had one chance and he took it, throwing Vic off his body just as the smaller vampire pulled the heart from Ta’s chest. The heart in Vic’s hand burst into flame as the body on the ground turned to dust.

And it was over - - for Victor, at least. Angel nodded his way just once before turning to the struggling vampire he held in his grasp. He hissed at her, spittle flying into her face as he spat his words. “I want you to give your Master a message for me, Mona.”

She stared at him, shock written plainly on her face. “You - - you vill let me go den?”

Angel smiled then. “Yes, Mona. We will let you go. And if you actually make it back to your Master you give him a message for me.” He paused then, letting his last words sink into her head. As her eyes opened wider and she began to struggle against him again, he spoke. “Tell him that Angelus is back in town - - and he’d better get out while he still can.”

And with those words, he bent his head and sank his fangs deep into her neck. She screamed as he drew the blood from her body. And then she could scream no more and she hung loosely in his embrace, her eyes rolling up into her head. Just as she was sure she was not going to survive this ill-fated encounter, Angel stopped feeding and let her drop to the ground at his feet.

Angel stepped over Mona’s nearly drained body and pulled Vic to his feet. “Are you okay, Vic?”

The younger vampire nodded, even as he hissed from the pain in his shoulder. “Yeah, man. I’m okay.”

“A couple of inches to the left and you’d be dust, my man,” Angel mocked.

Vic nodded, unable to find the words to express his anger at what had happened.

“I can’t believe a vamp would pull a stake on another vamp.” Angel shook his head. “Just when I thought I’d seen it all, someone pulls shit like this. I mean, I do it because I hunt them at night, but to see another vampire to pull a stake on one of his “family”, that’s was just not done in my day.” He braced one hand against Vic’s chest and took hold of the stake with the other. Looking into the younger vamp’s eyes he nodded once and asked, “You ready for this, kid?”

Vic nodded and braced himself for what was to come. But nothing could really prepare him for the fire that followed when Angel pulled the stake from his shoulder and he found himself screaming as it ripped from his skin.

Angel noticed that the young vampire had lost a considerable amount of blood so, slicing open his wrist, he pushed it against Vic’s mouth. “Drink, and become one with my clan.” Greedily Victor drank, and he could feel the connection with Gustin and the others fade, and new links form with Angel and others that he did not know the names of.

As Angel helped the injured vampire inside, they were met with a frowning Xander at the bottom of the stairs. Seeing that Vic was injured, he too quickly turned, grabbed the rail to steady himself from the turn, walked as fast as he could into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator, which was clearly marked vampires. Upon opening it, he understood why; the thing was packed from bottom to top with packets of blood, and the other side was the same, except it was all frozen.

Xander stuck three packs in the microwave, started the warming process and got down a bowl big enough to hold the blood. Looking over at Vic, he could tell that Angel had given him some of his blood because the wounds were healing faster than normal, even for a vampire. He was no longer on the edge of being dusted, but now he needed volume more than anything else. The amount of blood in him had to be pretty low, and so Xander was going to see that it was raised and raised quickly.

“Here you go Vic. Now I want you to drink all of this down. There is a lot more where this came from so don’t worry about us running short. You need it more anyway.”

Turning to Angel, Xander asked for an explanation of what the fight was all about.

“It seems the local Master wants Vic to come back into the fold and Vic refused; something I haven’t seen before in a vampire so young before this. The others attacked, hoping to take him back by force. Vic counter attacked, but there were five to one odds so I joined in. We won, but he got hurt, as you see.”

“Vic, what is this Master’s name?”

“Gustin.”

“I haven’t heard of him before. Have you, Angel?” asked Xander

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. Since I got my soul, a lot of my contacts in the vampire community have dried up. We may have to talk to Giles in the morning. Speaking of which; Vic you head on up to bed. I’ll stand watch the rest of the night, and Xander, you try to get more sleep before we head over to Giles’, okay?” replied Angel

Xander was about to argue when a yawn almost split his head into two separate parts. Smiling sheepishly, he just shrugged, turned and both he and Vic staggered up the stairs to their own rooms and fell into a deep sleep.

Angel shook his head and went out to do a patrol around the perimeter of the estate, noticing areas that might need to be warded, and making notes to talk with Willow, Giles, and now Xander about magically sealing these areas, now that he had reason to protect his home.

As he patrolled, he noticed that remains of the fight were almost gone. There was no sign of Mona, however, not even a dusty outline, which meant that she had enough strength to at least leave the estate. After that, it really wasn’t his concern any more.


Mona had a horrific night. First, she was so weak she couldn’t jump over the wall surrounding the estate and had to stumble along until she found the front gate. When she was out in the front, she fell against a lamppost, landing in the exact same position that Xander had a few days before. Spying the next one up the street, she stagger-walked there. For the next three hours she struggled along, barely making it from lamppost to lamppost.

She kept looking for help, but the denizens of the night were staying away from her and the human population ran at the sight of her. She didn’t know what she looked like in this state, but she was too weak to even run after a homeless person to get some blood.

Her appearance was a fright unto itself. Her long black hair was falling out in strands. The skin that could be seen was pulled tightly over the bones as if dried, and it held no moisture at all. Her eyes bugged out because of the pressure cause by the pulling of the skin around them, her lips were pulled so far back she could no longer hide her fangs and her ridges had broken through the skin itself. She did not have the ability to pull the demon back in at this point.

Almost at the rising of the sun, she made it back to Gustin’s hidey-hole, and stumbled in. The guards on duty almost didn’t recognize her. One quickly ran to Gustin and the other helped her walk into the main hall.

Those there gasped out loud at what they saw. Even Gustin was taken aback by this sight.

“For all that rule hell, get her some blood, and make sure it’s in a cup or bowl. She is too weak to drink from the cattle. I need to know what happened tonight. I felt the death of four of my minions and another changing blood clans,” he roared.

After three bowls of blood, Mona was fleshed out and could speak. Except for the missing hair and some split skin, she looked almost normal.

“Ve deed as you asked, Master. Ve found Veek-tor. He refused to come vith us so we decided to persuade him. Then da vampire Angelus joined da fight, and he made queeck work of three of us. He then held onto me as ve vatched Veek-tor kill Ta vith his bare hands by pulling his heart out of his chest.”

There were more gasps and talking among the assembled vampires. For a so-called weak minion to do this was unheard of. They were cannon fodder, nothing more. They should not have abilities to disobey like Victor did, nor fight to change clans like that either.

“Silence! I will here the rest of the story, NOW,” Gustin yelled.

“Dere is not much more, Sire. He turned toward me, and said, ‘Tell your master… Tell heem dat Angelus is back in town - - and he’d better get out vhile he still can’. He den drained me almost to final death and let me go to make my way here. You saw vhat condition I was in, Sire,” Mona said quietly. When the message was completed, the messenger collapsed and went into a vampire coma to finish healing herself.

Almost immediately, the talking began again and some of the vampires of Gustin’s court were making noises about leaving Sunnydale. Gustin couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Silence! Angelus will not be a problem. I will make sure of that. When he was last here he made two powerful enemies; the Librarian and the Slayer. We will get information to them and they will hunt down Angelus for us, and maybe they will be hurt in the process. In the mean time, we will be free of the slayer’s attention for a while.

“Either way, we are in a win/win situation,” he said smiling, with his fangs showing, causing some of those in his court to laugh while others just worried this might backfire in their faces.


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By the time morning had rolled around and Xander and Willow were up, though Willow looked she just did a weekend of frat parties, Angel had a notebook full of drawings of the outside of the house and inner walls that could be easily breached by humans and demons alike. To say that he was unhappy was to say that dolphins like to play. He had never realized just how bad it was.

“Good morning, Deadboy, Willow,” Xander said as he came downstairs. He was still a bit sore and a little bruised here and there, but other than that he was feeling fine. In fact, he was feeling so fine he was hungry. Actually, to put it in better terms, he was starving.

He started raiding the cabinets, refrigerator, food pantry, and everyplace else in the kitchen to see what was in stock. By the time he was done, both Angel and Willow were looking at the amazing array of food he had laid out for himself; two different brands of cereal, bacon and eggs, toast, three different jams, four or five different kinds of fresh fruit, and a huge stack of pancakes, plus a gallon of milk sitting next to the tall glass he had found somewhere.

The way he was going at it you would have sworn either a) he had never eaten before or, b) food was about to become illegal in 24 hours. The two of them just sat back and watched in amazement as he ate and drank. Within thirty minutes he had finished everything; the boxes of cereal were gone, the pound of bacon was history, the dozen eggs were sopped up by the toast, the three jams were all half gone, all that was left of the huge stack of pancakes was the syrup leavings, and there was no sign of the fresh fruit. In fact, the only sign that he had even eaten anything of the large amount was when Xander leaned back, belched, and said, “Well, now I’m ready to face the day.”

“Xander, do you normally eat that much for breakfast?” Willow asked.

“Hell, no. Only when it is available. You know what my home life is like; breakfast usually whatever I can grab as I am being chased out the door, and sometimes not even then,” snarled Xander. “So when I have a chance to eat a real breakfast I EAT a real breakfast.

“Besides, if I ate that much everyday, I’d be as big as a barn inside of a month and you know it, missy,” laughed Xander.

Snickering, Angel went back to his drawings and muttering, Willow went to get her own breakfast, and Xander went about cleaning up his mess.

After breakfast, when everything was neat and clean and shipshape, Willow and Xander went out to the courtyard to talk.

“Xander, Hecate told me last night that I accidentally opened your pathways for magic, and I know that to be true because I felt you do a spell last night.”

“She told me much the same thing, and ya I did a simple spell to take away Buffy’s stakes. That was before I knew that the spells would hurt you. I’m sorry. I won’t cast any more until you’re well. I promise.”

“Thank you, but you can’t make that promise. Hecate has told me I have to train you, and I think she means now. She knows something is coming up and you might need the power and the training. The first thing I want you to do is take my magical memories into yourself so that you know the do’s and the don’ts of what I learned about magic.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? I could wipe out your entire mind.”

“No, I put a protection spell in place so nothing can take away my mind - -just copy it, like you will be doing.”

“Okay, here goes nothing.”

My mind to your mind
With this the two shall bind
Your magic memories into mine
Let all those memories shine

Willow sat on the opposite end of the bench from Xander, cringing as she felt the spell work and grate across her still tender pathways. As he watched, little balls of light began to exit from her forehead. Then the balls of light came from the sides of her head and, finally, they encircled her entire head in a halo effect before forming a line and going into Xander’s mind. As they entered Xander’s head, it began to glow brighter and brighter, until the last one entered and the glow became so bright that Willow had to look away, and then there was a flash, and all was back to normal.

Willow, whose head was pounding with blinding pain from the magic, started to look towards Xander and gasped. His hair had gone silver; not grey, not white, but pure silver. Looking into his eyes, she saw that his irises had changed from chocolate brown to silver as well, and she could see power there. She tried to reach out magically, but cried out instead and grabbed her head. She was still too sensitive to venture beyond her shields yet.

“I can see what you mean about do’s and don’ts, Willow. Your memories are being played through my mind and are being sorted as we speak. It is sorta like watching a movie, right behind your eyes. I can see why that one spell failed; you forgot the mandrake root,” Xander said.

Willow nodded her head, “Ya, I noticed after it blew up.”

“Let’s go get Angel, head over to Giles place, and get started on researching for the air’s silver bowl.”

“Xander, you might want to brace yourself. Both your hair and parts of your eyes have turned silver. This is going to shock people, especially Joyce and the rest of the gang,” Willow commented shyly, not sure how to bring it up.

Grabbing part of his long hair, Xander pulled it into view, “Well damn, just what I don’t need right now. Okay, I could use a glamour to hide this, but I think I will leave it alone and answer questions as they arise.”

When they entered the house, there was a surprised squawk from Angel, and Xander just rolled his silver tinted eyes.

Over at the Summers’ residence Dawn had gotten up early and was downstairs watching TV quietly so as not to wake the others in the house. Where she was sitting in her favorite chair she could see the stairs perfectly and the TV as well.

Hearing someone coming down the stairs and thinking it was her mom, she got up and, smiling, went over to hug her, but much to her surprise it was Giles sneaking down, not fully attired. His shirt was unbuttoned, shoes off, jacket over one arm, and tie on the other. As soon as he saw Dawn, he got embarrassed and blushed hot enough to pop popcorn.

“Well, yes … you see … it’s not … bloody hell … good morning and good bye.” With that he walked out with what dignity he had left, went to his car, got in and drove off.

Dawn started giggling and slid down the wall to the floor with her hand over her mouth, trying to stop the sound from reaching up stairs, and to her mother, who might be awake.

She didn’t need to worry, for at that moment, the grandfather clock in the dining room struck eight o’clock and Buffy woke up screaming and begging. Dawn ran upstairs toward her sister’s room to help her, only to be tackled by her mother, and led back downstairs. They sat on the couch and she gave her the list of wounds that Xander had gotten, and quickly told her what was going on. As the tale came out, Dawn’s eyes just got colder and harder by the minute. By the time it was done, Joyce was afraid of her little girl. She had never seen that look before on Dawn; Buffy yes, but never on Dawn.

When the screams stopped, Dawn got up and marched up to her sister’s room with Joyce behind her. In case it got ugly she could stop it, at least she hope she could.

Without even knocking, Dawn kicked the door open with a move copied from Buffy, and marched right on in.

“Dawn, just go away. I’m in no condition to deal with you right now,” Buffy said, shakily.

“Well, that is just tough because you are going to listen to this. I’m glad I’m going to England, and I hope they do give you death, and I will get on my knees to beg them to let me pull the switch, press the button, or what ever the means they use.” She walked up to a stunned Buffy and slapped her as hard as she could, causing her nose to bleed. “As far as I am concerned, I have no sister.” Dawn turned and walked out.

Joyce left the room for a minute before returning with a wet washcloth for Buffy’s nose.

“Mom, why is everyone against me on this? I did it to keep Angel and me together, that’s all. I never expected his father to go to such extremes.”

Joyce looked down at her daughter as if seeing her for the first time. She looked into her beautiful eyes, searching for a hint, a hint of what she wasn’t sure, but whatever it is, it wasn’t there.

“Oh My God, you really don’t see it or get it, do you? It’s like this concept is totally beyond your ability to understand. I don’t know if it is a Slayer thing or a Buffy thing, but you truly don’t see what you did as wrong. You saw an enemy blocking your goal and you removed that enemy the easiest way you knew, even if it killed the one blocking your goal.”

With that Joyce got up, walked into her bedroom, closed the door, and just cried. She knew without a doubt that her daughter would never understand that what she had done was wrong, and that there would never be a way to correct her, except through death.


Willow knocked again on Giles’ door and got no answer. She looked down at her key and decided that since they had Angel with them, and since he was starting to smoke a little, they should go on in.

Opening the door, Angel rushed in and started putting out the little fires that had started in his hair. Xander snickered weakly at him making Angel glare, but it had no effect on the boy.

As they sat down to make themselves comfortable, Giles came in, still partially undressed; no shoes, clothes in disarray and, as soon as he saw them, he stopped, dropped everything, looked up and said, “Why today?” before sitting down on the first step of the stairs leading up to his bedroom.

With his head in his hands, he said, “Okay, let’s get the smart remarks and questions out of the way so we can have a productive day researching.”

Xander smiled. “Giles, if we were going to make smart remarks we would have the first time you spent time with Joyce. Now it’s a little late, don’t you think?”

Surprise showed on his face when he looked up at his kids. “How did you know? When did you know?”

“I’ve known since the first night. After dropping the others off at their homes, I would do a solo patrol by Mrs. S’s house to make sure nothing was going on. Figured she would be an easy target without Buffy being there. I was going to walk up and knock when I noticed the light was still on, and that was when I saw your car. I looked up, I saw the light go out, and I left, knowing Dawn and Joyce were protected that night until Buffy came home.

“Since you’re coming home looking like this, it probably means Joyce needed comfort after you told her about Buffy and the what might happen with the Council. Notice I said comfort. I didn’t imply sex; that part is up to you two, and we will leave that alone.

“We also never told Dawn or Buffy what we knew, nor are we going to. That is between you and Joyce to tell them,” Willow said.

“Thank you, you two. You have shown a level of maturity I didn’t think you had yet reached. I see I am going to have to rethink more than a few things about my kids or, should I say, adults,” Giles said, with pride in his eyes.

“Giles, we will always be your kids even if we hit forty,” Willow whispered, but everyone heard, causing Giles to smile and a lone tear to fall from his eye, knowing that his family was still there.

“Well you guys might have known, but this is a complete shock to me,” Angel said, breaking the spell before Giles really broke down and blew his gruff British exterior.

Giles, knowing what he had done and why, flashed him a smile to thank him.

“Well, Deadboy, you weren’t around to tell, and then you came back and were the lapdog of the slayer, so how could we?” Xander said with a smile.

“Hmmmph,” Angel said, sitting at the table with his arms crossed, pouting.

“Now that is out of the way, may I ask what the bloody hell happened to your eyes and hair, Xander?”

“Short story, I don’t know. Long story, at Willow’s insistence I copied her magical memories and this is the side effect.”

“What do you mean ‘magical memories’?”

“Every spell she has done; both the ones you know about and the ones you don’t. You and I will get together later and make a list of them. It’s a doozy.”

“Xander, that is not why I gave you my memories so you could rat me out!!!” yelled Willow.

“I’m sorry Willow, but you knew better than to try the time warping spell so that you would have more time on that science paper. It only worked by sheer chance, and you paid for it the next day didn’t you, when your report crumbled when you handed it to your teacher. It seems that her paper aged too much in the time bubble she created, as did anything non-organic.”

“Willow, you could have died in there.”

“But I didn’t. So it misfired; I’ll have to try better next time,” Willow said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Next time?” both Xander and Giles roared.

“There had better not be a next time,” snarled Xander.

“Oh, like you can stop me,” smirked Willow.

“Remember your orders from Hecate. You are to train me, and I have all your knowledge as well, plus what I learn over the next few months while you heal. She also told us all that I will be your equal, if not greater than you.

“So remember that, missy. I will bind your powers if I have to, until you learn to control them.”

“I would like to see you try. I’m destined to be Hecate’s High priestess and I seriously doubt she will let you bind my powers,” smiled Willow, throwing her arms out in a gesture of go ahead, give it your best shot.

Eyes flashing silver and hair glowing, Xander stood up and fell to his knees:

Goddess Hecate, a sublimate prays to thee
Goddess Hecate, a subject seeks help from thee
With this prayer and power in me
Goddess Hecate, I summon Thee

There was a sudden flash as Xander put all his power into the prayer, sending it into the realm of the Gods and Goddess. The Goddess Hecate felt the prayer and the power behind it. She couldn’t ignore such a summons so, after making her excuses, she flashed down to the mortal realm to see why a human had wasted so much power to send her a prayer of help.

She appeared, but stayed invisible to see what was going on.

“Ha, I told you she wouldn’t come to you to help you bind my powers. As a future High Priestess, I am allowed to do magic as I see fit, even if it is dangerous to me or to others,” Willow stated angrily.

“You’re wrong, Willow. She is here, and she is watching even now. You do not have the right to use magic as you choose, how you choose, when you choose, and on whom you choose. Your powers must be bound until such time as you learn this lesson.

“Please Goddess Hecate, help me teach her that before the darkness takes the light away from her forever,” Xander said, turning to where Hecate was standing, shocking her that he felt her presence when no one else had.

Appearing before everyone else, she walked to the two teenagers. Placing her hands on both their heads and reading their minds as only the gods could do, she saw what they did, what they feared, and what they worried about. She now knew that naming Willow her High Priestess had been wrong, and that she would have to take it back as well as the power boost it gave her. Instead, for the first time in her history, she was going to have a High Priest, and he would teach and his words would become law.

Pulling back from the two teenagers, she walked away to think.

“Willow Rosenberg, I have made a mistake and seldom do the Gods admit to mistakes. You are no longer my High Priestess. You are too wild in your use of magic, and it is too dangerous. Your teachings could bring down the world on my followers and I could not have that. As for binding your powers, I agree. As of now you are at ¼ of your strength. It will be up to my new High Priest whether you will go higher or lower in strength.”

Willow, moaning, fell to the floor crying. She didn’t even know who this High Priest was to con him with her sweetness into letting her have her powers back.

Turning to Xander, Hecate added, “I have read your mind in regards to what magic should do and what it should not do, and what those who wield it should be responsible for. I agree. In this day and age, we could help in other ways instead of just hiding and making our lives better, if we do it gradually. You will be the first step, my new High Priest.” With that she vanished, with a smile on her face.

“No, not him. You did this on purpose so you could have my power,” growled Willow, as she picked up the fire poker from the hearth and charged Xander with it. Angel was faster and stopped her, throwing her on the couch, where she laid and cried.

“Willow, you have much to learn, and one thing is that not everyone is in it for the power or the glory,” Xander said. “When you are done with the pity party we will be at the library, doing research on the silver bowl. Join us when you can.”

With that, all three men left in Giles’ car with a smoky Angel in the back.