THE XANDER YEARS, Vol. 1

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Buffy asked, “Do you know when he’s coming back?”

  Who cares? Xander thought.

  “No, I don’t, um—” she consulted her seating chart, “Buffy. They just call and tell me where they want me.”

  Blayne muttered, “I’ll tell you where I want you.”

  “Excuse me, Blayne?”

  Oh sure, Xander thought, you don’t need to check the chart for him. Just ’cause he walked you to the stupid class . . .

  “I was just wondering if you were gonna pick up where Dr. Gregory left off,” Blayne said quickly.

  “Yes,” Ms. French said with a smile that lit up the entire room. “His notes tell me you were right in the middle of insect life.” She went over to the display table and picked up one of the glass cases that had a plastic replica of some kind of bug in it. “The praying mantis is a fascinating creature, forced to live alone. Who can tell me why—Buffy?”

  Buffy stared at the case for a moment, then said, “Well, the words bug ugly kinda spring to mind.”

  The smile disappeared, and Ms. French’s face darkened. Xander found himself momentarily afraid of her. “There’s nothing ugly about these unique creatures.” Then her face returned to its normal, magnificent self. “The reason they live alone is because they’re cannibals.”

  Several students made eeeww noises. Xander was not among them. He was too busy staring.

  “It’s hardly their fault,” Ms. French went on. “It’s the way nature designed them: noble, solitary, and prolific. Over eighteen hundred species worldwide, and in nearly all of them, the female is the larger and more aggressive than the male.”

  Blayne, having apparently forgotten the shoulder incident, leaned over to Buffy. “Nothing wrong with an aggressive female.” Buffy shot him a look and he straightened up. Xander couldn’t help but smile at that, then went back to staring at Ms. French, who had now picked up a textbook and began reading from it and walking up the aisle.

  “The California mantis lays her eggs and then finds a mate to fertilize them. Once he’s played his part, she covers the eggs in a protective sac and attaches it to a leaf or a twig out of danger.” She held up the textbook and showed it to the class. Xander had no idea what the picture portrayed, as he found himself transfixed by her eyes.

  She continued: “Now, if she’s done her job correctly, in a few months, she’ll have several hundred offspring.” She put the textbook down, and looked around the room. Her eye caught something on the bulletin board. “You know, we should make some model egg sacs for the Science Fair. Who would like to help me do that after school?”

  Xander’s hand shot up. So, he noticed, did Blayne’s—and pretty much every other guy in the class.

  “Good,” she said with another one of her smiles. “I warn you, it’s a delicate art. I’d have to work with you very closely—one on one.”

  Oh my dear God, I’m in heaven, Xander thought.

  CHAPTER 3

  Before Xander knew what was happening, bio class was over. He drifted through the rest of the morning, then found himself at lunch. It was quite likely that things had happened in his other morning classes, but he was hard-pressed to recall any of them. All he could think about was Ms. French—that, and the fact that he got the following night’s slot for the one-on-one session with her to make the model egg sacs. Blayne, of course, got tonight’s slot, but Xander chalked that up to her being nice because he showed her the way to the classroom.

  He met up with Buffy and Willow at the entrance to the cafeteria, and together they went to greet the midday meal with the usual sense of anticipation and dread.

  A sign proclaimed the latest culinary disaster from the graduates of the Sunnydale School of Medieval Torture. Buffy read it aloud. “ ‘Hot dog surprise.’ Be still my heart.”

  “Call me old fashioned,” Willow said, “but I don’t want any more surprises in my hot dogs.”

  Xander smiled, picked up a tray, then looked at his reflection in the stainless steel finish of a napkin holder. “I wonder what she sees in me. Probably just the quiet good looks coupled with a certain smoky magnetism.” The girls looked at him questioningly. No, he thought, this is the part where you agree with me. He hated it when they didn’t follow the script. “Ms. French,” he explained. “You two are probably a little too young to understand what an older woman would see in a younger man.”

  “Oh, I understand,” Buffy said.

  “Good,” Xander said. Maybe there’s hope for her yet.

  “A younger man is too dumb to wonder why an older woman can’t find someone her own age and too desperate to care about the surgical improvements.”

  “What surgical improvements?” He chose to ignore the rest of Buffy’s diatribe, fobbing it off as a jealous tiff.

  “Well,” Willow said to Buffy, “he is young.”

  “And so terribly innocent,” Buffy added.

  With that, the two girls went off to fetch drinks. Xander called after them. “Hey, those that can, do. Those that can’t—laugh at those who can do.” Well, that wallowed in lameness. If I keep this up, I’ll lose my membership in the Witty Rejoinder Club.

  Before he could come up with anything better, Blayne went by, his tray piled high with inedible delights. “Gotta carb up for my one on one with Ms. French today. When’s yours? Oh right, tomorrow. You came in second, I came in first. I guess that’s what they call natural selection.”

  Xander was really starting to hate Blayne’s habit of answering his own questions. “I guess that’s what they call rehearsal.”

  Blayne wandered off, unable to muster up a comeback. Much better, Xander thought. Rejoinder Boy strikes.

  “Excuse you,” said an obnoxious voice. Xander looked up to see Cordelia shoving her way past Buffy with her usual absence of decorum. She plowed forward into the kitchen, stood in front of one of the huge fridges, and held up a slip of paper like a cop holding a badge. “Medically prescribed lunch. My doctor ships it daily. I’ll only be here as long as I can hold my breath.”

  Xander shook his head. This was Cordy’s latest diet, which included specific food from the latest in a series of dieticians—at least, according to two of her friends, who had discussed it at great length during the previous day’s English class. Cordelia had many flaws, but the need to diet had never struck Xander as one of them.

  Before he could turn away and go back to thinking about Ms. French, he heard an ear-piercing wail from the kitchen.

  It was Cordelia, who stood in abject terror before the now-open fridge. Buffy exchanged a glance with Willow, then they both ran into the kitchen. Xander followed about three steps behind them.

  The minute he arrived behind Buffy and Willow, Xander was sorry he did so.

  Hanging in the fridge like it was a massive side of beef was a human body.

  The body wore a lab coat with the words Dr. Gregory sewn on the chest.

  The head was missing.

  “His head! His head!” Cordy cried. “Ohmigod, where’s his head?”

  Much later—after the police had been called, the body taken away, and statements given—Xander joined Willow and Buffy in the library. The girls looked stunned, and Xander felt much the same way. Even Giles, who usually radiated calmness in the worst of situations, seemed a little off.

  “Here,” Giles said to Buffy, handing her a glass of water. “Drink this.”

  “No, thank you,” Buffy said as she took the glass and drank from it.

  “I’ve never seen—” Xander started, stopped, then tried again. “I mean, I’ve never seen anything like—” Again, his mouth wouldn’t work properly. Finally, he said, “That was new.”

  “Who would want to hurt Dr. Gregory?” Willow asked.

  Giles shook his head. “He didn’t have any enemies on the staff that I’m aware of. He was a civilized man. I liked him.”

  “So did I,” Buffy said in an unusually small voice.

  Sure, make me feel worse, Xander thought. All he could think about was tha
t he had wished Dr. Gregory would stay missing forever. This wasn’t what he had in mind.

  “Well, we’re gonna find out who did this,” Willow said with determination. “We’ll find them, then we’ll stop them.”

  “Count on it,” Buffy said with a good deal more determination.

  “What do we know?” Giles asked.

  “Not a lot,” Buffy said. She stood up and started pacing. “He was killed on campus. I’m guessing, the last day we saw him.”

  Giles frowned. “How did you work that out?”

  “He didn’t change his clothing.”

  Xander spoke up. “This is a question that no one particularly wants to hear, but—where did they put his head?”

  “Good point,” said Willow. “I didn’t want to hear that.”

  “Angel,” Buffy said suddenly.

  What does he have to do with this? Xander thought angrily.

  “He warned me that something was coming,” she continued.

  Oh, okay. Mystery-guy stuff. That’s okay, then.

  Giles nodded. “Yes. Yes, he did, didn’t he? And I wish I knew what he meant.” He wandered over to the table to pick up one of his seemingly infinite supply of musty reference tomes. “I’ve been trying to gather more information about the Master, our local vampire king. There was one oblique reference to a vampire who displeased the Master and cut his hand off in penance.”

  “Cut off his hand and replaced it with a fork?” Buffy asked.

  Giles shrugged. “I don’t know what he replaced it with.”

  Xander didn’t get it. “So why would he come after a teacher?”

  “I’m not certain he did,” Giles said. “There was an incident two nights ago involving a homeless person in Weatherly Park. He was practically shredded. But nothing like Dr. Gregory.”

  Buffy said, succinctly, “Fork guy doesn’t do heads.”

  “Not historically.”

  “And,” she added, “Dr. Gregory’s blood wasn’t drained.”

  Thanks for the reminder, Buff, Xander thought, remembering the significant amount of blood in the fridge. At first, he’d tried to convince himself that it came from the meat that was usually stored there, but even Xander’s tremendous capacity for self-delusion didn’t go that far.

  Aloud, he said, “So there’s something else out there? Besides Silverware Man? Oh, this is fun. We’re on Monster Island.”

  “We’re on a Hellmouth,” Buffy reminded him. “The center of mystical convergence.” Giles shot her a look, and she added, contritely, “I guess it’s the same thing.”

  “Yes,” Giles said, “unpleasant things do gravitate here, it’s true, but we don’t know there’s anything besides this chap. He’s still our likely suspect.”

  “Where was that guy killed,” Buffy asked, “Weatherly Park?”

  “Buffy,” Giles said, “I know you’re upset, but this is no time to go hunting. Not until we know more. Please, promise me you won’t do anything rash.”

  “Cross my heart,” Buffy said sincerely.

  Despite the situation, Xander almost laughed. He knew Buffy would be making a beeline for Weatherly Park the minute it got dark.

  The minute it got dark, Buffy put on the jacket Angel had given her (and why did he have to do something so nice and adorable and sweet?) and made a beeline for Weatherly Park. The park wasn’t terrifically large as parks went. Willow had told her a bit about it when she and Xander brought her here one recent weekend. It was originally the site of Weatherly Mansion, home of the then-richest family in Sunnydale. In 1969, Augustus “Gussie” Weatherly went completely nuts and was put away. Buffy had always meant to ask Giles if Gussie’s going cuckoo was Hellmouth-related.

  After he died in a loony bin six years later, Gussie’s heirs—who all lived in New York—sold the land to the City of Sunnydale to make into a park. Originally, it had been isolated on the outskirts of town, but now it was surrounded by houses.

  More recently, a fence had been erected around the park’s perimeter. Willow had said it was to keep the homeless out when the park was closed at night. Not doing a very good job, if they’re still getting mauled in here, Buffy thought as she hopped over that fence.

  It was a quiet night with no breeze. Quiet like a tomb, she thought, then put that image out of her head. I think about tombs way too much for a sixteen year old. Still, the quiet meant that she was guaranteed to hear anything unusual—like fork guy.

  “Shouldn’t be out here at night, li’l lady,” said a slurred voice so suddenly that Buffy nearly jumped out of her skin. She whirled to see a homeless man shambling along. He wore a coat that was way too warm for SoCal and carried a bottle in a bag.

  Nice work, Slayer, she thought, annoyed at herself. Should’ve heard him coming. A whiff of something like rotted peaches wafted to her nostrils. Should’ve smelled him coming, too.

  “S’dangerous,” the guy continued, then wandered off in whatever direction the bottle told him to take.

  Turning a corner, Buffy found what looked like a body on the ground—another homeless guy, as inappropriately dressed as the last. He looked dead.

  But after a second, he started snoring.

  As a breeze rustled a nearby bush, she wondered what her next move should be.

  She moved toward the bush before she even had the conscious thought: there’s no breeze to rustle that bush. Something was moving in there.

  Moving to push the branches out of the way, she realized that the plant wasn’t rooted. It had been placed there to cover a storm drain.

  Three guesses on who put it there, she thought. And your first hint is, he’s a big fan of A Farewell to Arms.

  Then the vampire leaped at her.

  At first glance, he looked like an ordinary vampire. He had the fangs, the sloped forehead, the lack of eyebrows, the hooded eyes. His hair was longer than the well-dressed vamp usually kept it these days, but Buffy wasn’t about to quibble.

  What made him really stand out from the crowd were the six-inch-long, razor-sharp claws where his right hand used to be.

  The six-inch-long, razor-sharp claws that were moving toward Buffy’s head . . .

  She ducked his swipe. He had lunged, so his back was now exposed. Buffy took advantage of this to land two kicks to his lower spinal region before he could take another shot. Again, she ducked; again, she got two kicks in, then added a punch to the jaw for good measure.

  He took a third swipe. Let’s not get too repetitive, Buffy thought. Claw guy was a one-trick vamp. This time she grabbed his arm, and used the momentum of his swipe to flip him in a classic aikido maneuver.

  As he landed with a thud on his back, Buffy took out a stake and prepared to finish him off.

  Unfortunately, he quickly rolled out of the way and started to get up. Buffy knocked him down with another kick, and then—

  “Hold it! Police!”

  Oh, great.

  Several cops were coming over a hill—led by, of all people, the first homeless guy. No wonder he warned me, Buffy realized. They were trying to nail their murderer and had someone undercover as Homeless Harry. Well, sorry, guys, but you’re way out of your depth on this one.

  Claw guy took advantage of Buffy’s momentary distraction to bolt into the underbrush.

  “I heard him—spread out!” yelled one of the cops.

  Muttering a curse, Buffy chased after him.

  She made it to the fence just as claw guy finished climbing it to the other side. He was going after a woman walking on the sidewalk, carrying a bag of groceries in each hand.

  Buffy was about to call out a warning and vault the fence when she saw something that stunned her.

  The woman turned around. It was Ms. French, the bio sub.

  She stared right at claw guy.

  Claw guy backed off.

  No, he’s not just backing off, Buffy realized. He’s terrified. In her time as the Slayer, Buffy had never seen a vampire so scared when direct sunlight wasn’t involved.

  Lo
oking for all the world like a cat with his tail between his legs, claw guy scampered to a drain cover, threw it aside, and escaped into the sewer system.

  Ms. French—whose facial expression hadn’t changed—turned and continued calmly walking down the street as if nothing had happened.

  CHAPTER 4

  Okay, Buffy thought as she walked into the library the next morning shortly before her bio class, the first thing Giles is going to do is berate me for going hunting last night—

  “You went hunting last night.”

  Two points for the Chosen One. “Yep,” she said.

  Giles wasn’t finished. “When you promised me you wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah. I lied. I’m a bad person. Let’s move on.”

  “Did you see someone with a fork?” Giles asked a bit tartly.

  “More like a jumbo claw.”

  Giles, who clearly hadn’t expected the answer to be yes, shot her a look. “Oh,” he said. “Well, at least you’re not hurt.”

  “And,” she continued, “I saw something else, something much more interesting than your average, run-of-the-mill killer vampire.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know Ms. French, the teacher who’s subbing for Dr. Gregory?”

  At the mention of the sub’s name, Giles did something Buffy had never seen her Watcher do before. It was a sight that was as scary as any she’d ever seen.

  He grinned.

  “Yes, yes, she’s lovely,” he said, goofily. Buffy hadn’t thought Giles was even capable of goofiness. Quickly, he added, “In a common, extremely well-proportioned way.”

  Nice save, she thought. “Well, I’m chasing claw guy last night, and Ms. Well-Proportioned is heading home. The claw guy takes one look at her and runs screaming for cover.”

  Giles blinked. “He what? Ran away?”

  “He was petrified.”

  “Of Ms. French?”

  “Uh-huh. So,” Buffy said, “I’m an undead monster that can shave with my hand. How many things am I afraid of?”

  “Not many,” Giles said, “and not substitute teachers, as a rule.”

  “So what’s her deal?”

  “I think perhaps it would be a good idea if we kept an eye on her.”