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Chapter 7
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Something was wrong with Xander. Really, really wrong. Ever since the previous day’s trip to the zoo, he had been…off. He started hanging out with the bullies and mean kids that he had taken on earlier just that same day! He had been outright hurtful towards Willow and Buffy really didn’t like the way he sniffed at her and how his eyes followed her in a way that made her skin crawl. The only thing Buffy could think to do was to run the changes by Giles.

The Watcher had made droll quips about Xander just being a typical sixteen-year-old boy and how Buffy would have to kill him now. Of course, all humor left the situation as soon as the team mascot disappeared and evidence pointed to a pig-out of the literal variety.

Research not only proved the changes in the teens more than alarming, it took it all to the level of majorly bad life-or-death mojo. Buffy headed off to see just how far into the primal Xander might have descended. She didn’t have to look too hard to get her answer.

~~~

Spike spotted the four teens giving lip to the principal and noticed the demony vibes they were giving off. It was the same vibe Spike had noticed in the whelp the night before. In fact, that was what brought Spike to Sunnydale High School: there was something unsettling with Harris. Spike had the feeling he needed to figure out the problem before it bollocksed up his plans right proper.

Keeping a low profile, Spike watched as the kids followed their authority figure to his office a trifle too eagerly. He debated bursting in on the situation but decided it might raise too many questions he really didn’t want to have to answer. He still looked young for his age but doubted anyone would take him for a high school student by any stretch of the imagination. He didn’t fancy being questioned by the police as a possible pedophile trolling the schoolyard for easy prey. Spike toyed with the idea of paying a visit to Giles, but he had yet to meet the Watcher in this timeline and thus decided against it. No, his best choice was to seek out the Slayer and put her on the scent.

Spike looked into the library, expecting to find the Slayer with her group there. Red was talking with Giles, but there was no sign of Buffy. He listened to the conversation briefly at first but then with increasing interest.

"Are those people eating each other?" Willow felt nauseous as she looked at the illustration that had sent Buffy racing out to find Xander. "Is this what Xander’s going to start doing? ‘Cause, aside from the major ewwww factor, I just can’t see Xander choosing uncooked people over donuts." Willow desperately hoped her oldest friend wasn’t turning into something depicted in the book Giles had found.

"Well, Willow, it isn’t as though Xander is doing any choosing at all. The transpossession has put the animal spirit in charge. Xander has no more control over his desires than one of the hyenas in that film you were watching." Giles took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"Well, that’s true of most teenage boys, but that doesn’t mean they go off and eat people," Willow noted. "Why would anyone want to turn into an animal anyway? Animals don’t have such an easy life—always getting hunted and having to hide from everything, sleeping outdoors, always having to struggle just to survive unless they’re in a zoo or something and then they don’t have any freedom. I don’t understand why anyone would want that."

"It’s the power they want, Willow. The strength, cunning and utter lack of conscience--soul, if you will--that appeals to these Primals. Just think for a moment of all a person might do if they had no moral qualms, no drive but to satisfy their urges and needs. Add to that pure power that comes from the instincts of a successful predator and it is easy to see the draw for certain types of individuals." Giles sighed in weariness, thinking of the capacity for evil in his fellow man.

"I guess I get that. Sorta. Sounds really selfish! You want something, so you just take it no matter who gets hurt. I’d hate to ever be like that." Willow shook her head vehemently.

"Yes, such desires lead to chaos. I can’t begin to tell you the dangers that can come from that base behavior." Giles shivered inwardly at memories of near seduction to a similar path in his Ripper days. "The end result is rather like what one gets in a vampire: pure animal with no thought for anyone or anything, merely an instinct to gratify the desires of the moment."

‘Pffft,’ thought Spike, ‘lots of humans like that too. ‘Sides, I think about the ones I care about. Load of rot, that.’ Something about what the Watcher said made him uncomfortable though. The part of Spike that still had vestiges of humanity recognized the part that was much like Giles had described. It didn’t feel very good. Spike refused, however, to believe himself to be nothing more than a mindless animal as the Watcher had described. An animal would never have stayed and cared for Dru as he had for a century!

"So," Spike whispered, "the Whelp really IS a whelp! Hyena seems appropriate for Harris, not too far a stretch. Best find the Slayer and let her know about the rest of the pack that were a mite too anxious to get called to the principal’s office."

~~~

"Xander," Buffy tried once more to push past him to leave the room. She had seen proof of the strength the possessed teens had when she saw the mangled cage that had been the short-term home of the hapless little pig, Herbert. Xander showed the same strength now, matching Buffy in a way that only a Master Vamp should be able to do.

Buffy lunged at the boy and knocked him to the ground, not without effort on her part. "I’ve been waiting for you to jump my bones," Xander leered at Buffy.

"Xan, you’re gonna hate yourself for this when you get back to normal. You need to come with me to the library and let Giles help you," Buffy pleaded.

Xander merely laughed inanely and rolled over so that he topped Buffy. He ground his pelvis against her suggestively and started to lower his head.

"Get off me!" Buffy ordered as she squirmed in the beginnings of panic.

"Is that what you really want? We both know what you really want," Xander pushed against her, making clear that he planned to give her what he assumed she wanted. His erection pressed painfully into her tender flesh as Buffy continued her struggle to free herself.

"You want danger, don’t you? You LIKE your men dangerous and mean, right? Just like that leather-wearing punk you were almost screwing on the dance floor last night. Want someone to master you? Well, meet your master, Buffy!" Xander grabbed both of Buffy’s wrists in one hand while he used his other to grope her breast painfully.

Buffy couldn’t get the leverage to push her demented friend off her, so she desperately tried to appeal to whatever part of him was still her Xander. "Xan! You’re in trouble. You’re infected with some hyena spirit, like a demonic possession. You don’t want to do this."

"Yeah? Baby, I’ve always wanted to do this. You look at every other guy but me, Buffy. Well, now I’ve got what you want and you ARE what I want, so we’re both about to get lucky." Xander started to tear at her clothes as Buffy bucked in an ever-increasing attempt to get into a position to throw him off.

"I said get off!" Buffy huffed.

"Think you might listen to the lady, pup," Spike’s baritone joined the discussion as his hands grasped Xander by the collar and yanked him from Buffy’s writhing body. "Part of growing up is learning how to accept ‘no’, Harris. You want to keep that equipment dangling in your drawers, you’d best learn quickly."

Spike had Xander’s arms tightly pulled behind him and lifted the boy slightly off the floor while Buffy found her feet. "Don’t hurt him, Spike. It’s not his fault!"

"Not lettin’ him maul you either, pet. He tries anything like this again and what I do WILL be my fault." He pulled on Xander’s arms, causing the boy to let out a cry of pain. "Can’t take the chance of his pullin’ loose and meetin’ up with the rest of that pack."

"What do you have in mind?" Buffy had her back to the pair as she rearranged her shirt to cover herself.

Spike applied pressure on Xander’s neck, shutting off the blood flow enough to knock the boy unconscious. When Buffy turned around, she found a limp Xander dangling from Spike’s arms. "God, Xander! Spike, what did you do?"

"Don’t worry, Buffy. Boy’ll be fine. Just put his lights out for a bit. Easier to move him if he’s not puttin’ up a fuss," Spike said defensively.

Now that the urgency had ended, Spike was struck with surprise at how hot the rage within him had burned when he had come into the room and seen Harris on top of the Slayer as she begged him to release her. He had never cared much for rape; that had been more Angelus’ modus operandi to sully the innocents. It had offended Spike on several levels to see Buffy in that position. She was the Slayer, a warrior!

Deep within Spike’s heart, however unbeating, he knew that a large part of his anger involved seeing Buffy being groped by anyone other than himself. Buffy was HIS Slayer to kill, to fuck, to touch, to love. He nearly gasped as he heard himself use the word ‘love’ connected with Buffy! Could Dru have been right after all?

Buffy and Spike got Xander’s unconscious body into the library and locked him in the cage. "Wonder where Willow and Giles are?" Buffy remarked.

Willow burst into the library as if on cue and came to a halt at the sight of Xander in the cage. "Oh, thank GOD! At least Xander wasn’t part of it."

"Part of what, Will?" Buffy could tell that something really bad had to have happened to cause Willow to look as pale as she did in her relief.

"Principal Flutie. He’s…he’s… ," the girl tried to find words to explain. "He’s dead, Buffy, like…the pig kind of dead. You know…," she dropped her voice to a whisper, "Eaten."

"Crap!" Buffy looked at her caged friend in horror. "Guess it was a good thing Xander got distracted. I liked Principal Flutie too. He gave me a chance to prove myself."

"What happened with Xander?" Willow looked worriedly at the object of her affection.

"Lets just say his way of wooing a woman didn’t involve a bottle of Chianti and a Yanni CD. Spike came along in time to keep it from getting too bad." Buffy smiled at Spike in gratitude. "Thanks."

"Glad to help," Spike answered, realizing he really was glad he’d been able to be there to keep Buffy from being raped or at least having to hurt her friend to prevent it happening.

"Not that I mind or anything, but why are you here?" Buffy looked at Spike in curiosity, trying to understand why he might be at her school.

The entrance of Giles gave Spike the chance he needed to think of some excuse for his presence.

"Buffy! Oh, thank goodness!" Giles said in a near copy of Willow’s reaction. "There’s been an…incident. I fear the possessed children have taken a human life. We must find them immediately, keep them from doing any further…." He stopped at the sight of the man in black at Buffy’s side. There was something about the man that rang alarm bells in the Watcher, but the distraction of the day’s events kept him from honing in on the cause.

"Hello. And you are?" Giles looked suspiciously at Spike.

"This is my boy…, er m, my friend, Sp..um...William." Buffy stuttered an attempt at an introduction.

"You must be Buffy’s Watcher," Spike said to the shock of everyone in the room.

"How on earth would you know that?" Giles demanded at the same time Buffy gasped out, "You know!"

"Naturally, pet. Spotted you in action before you even saw me that first night. Knew you had to be the one, the Chosen One. Met a couple before in my travels. Bit of a demon hunter myself, remember?" Spike explained.

"Demon hunter?" Giles narrowed his eyes, still not buying it.

"Spike’s the guy who I told you about, the one who dusted Darla," Buffy explained.

"Indeed. I had hoped to meet you, although I scarcely expected it to be here or under these circumstances." Giles circled Spike, trying to put his finger on why the man gave him such a sense of unease. He spotted Xander in the cage at that point and was taken off the scent.

"Good Lord! Is Xander quite all right?" Giles stooped to look at the prone boy.

"He’ll be fine. Probably majorly embarrassed when we fix this, but fine. That’s more than you could’ve said about me if Spike hadn’t come by at the right time." Buffy had noticed the veiled hostility between her Watcher and new boyfriend and wanted to make sure Giles knew Spike was one of the good guys.

With that comment, a discussion commenced in which Buffy explained her encounter with the possessed Xander and Spike’s timely intervention. "I just asked Spike what he was doing here when Will came in and told us about Principal Flutie."

"I’d be interested in hearing the answer to that as well," Giles said, looking at Spike again in suspicion.

"Heard there was an opening for a tutor in the Literature department. Hadn’t planned on staying in town ‘til I met Buffy here. Thought a job would be a good idea," Spike smiled up to the Slayer. "Heard a scuffle, checked it out and stepped in like any right bloke would. Look, with these other kids on the loose, shouldn’t we be trackin’ the lot of ‘em before they get hungry again?"

Spike was going to have to find some way to get around the all too observant Watcher if he didn’t want a piece of wood in the chest and right now the best option was to take advantage of the distractions available. He headed for the library door and turned to ask Buffy, "See you tonight at the Bronze?" At her nod, he smiled and continued, "Good. Well, let’s see if this demon hunter can scare up some delinquents, eh?" With that he made a swift and undusty exit.