All disclaimers apply ... but you already knew that, right?
Part 9.
“Hang on a darn minute!” protested Xander. “How come Oz gets to go? I think I'm a better fighter! Er ... no offense, Oz.”
Oz shrugged. “I'm secure in my masculinity. Carry on.”
“Yeah, what's so great about Oz?!” The rest of the Scoobies turned to stare at Dawn, who at least had the decency to look abashed. “I mean he's a great guy and all,” she muttered, ducking her head but proceeding nonetheless. “But what's he gonna do? Play guitar at the demons?”
“Have you buffoons been smoking crack while I've been gone?” Timothy demanded. “Do any of you lot turn into a seven-foot tall killing machine?”
“What!” blurted Willow, appalled.
“Good lord!” added Giles. “Do you mean to say your only reason for recruiting Oz is because of his status as a werewolf?”
“No ...” Timothy sneered, “I just have a deep and abiding appreciation for his sense of sartorial splendor! Of course it's because he's a damn werewolf!”
Oz shook his head, the movement clipped and tense. “I don't do that any more.”
Rolling his eyes, Timothy pointedly glared at Willow. “God help me, it's deja fucking vu! You were saying the same damn thing a couple of years ago!”
“And with good reason!” Willow argued. “Just like Oz has! Though I never tried to eat anyone ... but the point is that even if Oz does get wolfy, it won't be any help to us! Oz doesn't have any control when he's furry.”
“And trust us, it's not like he'll just try to hump your leg or something!” added Xander, gesticulating furiously.
“That, I could deal with,” Oz announced, deadpan. “It would be embarrassing, but dealable.”
“Do you people think I've never dealt with a werewolf before?” Timothy snapped. Rummaging around inside his coat, he withdrew a slender vial worked from some sort of slick-surfaced gray stone, and tossed it to the werewolf in question.
Oz looked at it doubtfully, then looked up, his gaze sweeping from Timothy's impatient form to Willow, a silent question in his eyes.
Once again displaying his total lack of social graces, Timothy groaned aloud, theatrically so. “For Pete's sake, it's not poison! If I wanted to kill you, I'd be a lot less subtle about it, trust me.”
Shrugging apologetically, Willow confirmed her son's statement. “That's probably true.”
Studying the vial once more, Oz shrugged, removed the stopper and swallowed its contents. The Scoobies all watched him with a mixture of expectation and apprehension. None of them expected what actually happened.
Nothing.
After several minutes of absolutely nothing happening, the pressure on Xander became too much for him to bear. “Wow ... this is ... really boring.”
“I think you're losing your touch, Timothy,” taunted Buffy.
Rolling his eyes, Timothy sighed. “They always expect flash and dazzle ...” he drawled as he limped over to Oz. Raising his hands in an apologetic gesture, Timothy punched Oz square in the face.
“What the hell!” bellowed Buffy as Oz reeled backwards, lunging forwards to snag Timothy by the collar and hurled him backwards. She stood over him, fists clenched, face flushed with anger. “I knew it was a mistake to trust you!” she spat.
Timothy lay on his back, looking up at the assembled Scoobies as they fixed him with disapproving glares, looking like a file of forbidding monoliths, standing watch over a human sacrifice. Given his typical reaction to violence, the warlock looked casual, almost nonchalant as he reclined on the floor, though it was hard to tell given the mask that shielded his decayed features.
“You might want to look behind you ...” he quietly suggested.
“Oh yeah, like we're gonna fall for that ...” Buffy's taunt trailed off into silence as an agonized groan and the ripping of cloth sounded behind her. “Damn it,” she muttered, dragging one hand down her face before turning to discover what this new threat might be.
Where Oz had been standing was now a kneeling figure of swelling muscle, fur, teeth and claw. Buffy swore beneath her breath, and Once-Was-Oz rose. And rose. And rose. Twitching canine ears atop a muzzled skull that was a tortured blend of human and wolf brushed against the ceiling. Lips peeled back from a slavering maw, ringed with fangs meant to rip, and tear, and savage tender flesh. Scraps of the t-shirt and shorts he'd been wearing dangled from the werewolf's massive frame, which trembled with barely caged violence. In proof that at least one of the Powers That Be had a twisted sense of humor, the fur atop the werewolf's head remained an electric shade of blue.
“Is it just me?” squeaked Xander in a broken voice. “Or is he kinda ... bigger than usual?”
“Lycanthrope Majora Mars,” Timothy declared as if lecturing within a classroom, rising to his feet. “The werewolf war-form, the very pinnacle of its destructive capability. You see, just as the involuntary change is inherently bound to the lunar cycle, the werewolf's power is likewise lined. With each different celestial alignment ...”
“You freakin' psycho!” hissed Buffy from the corner of her mouth like an angry serpent, not daring to take her eyes away from the threat Once-Was-Oz posed. “Giles! I need the tranq...”
She never got to finish her request, as with a feral howl of primal blood lust, the werewolf charged. Without thinking, Willow hurled herself between Tara and seven feet of pouncing death, even as Buffy leapt forward. Once-Was-Oz swept the airborne Slayer out of the way with a single bat of his clawed paw-hand, and barreled through the Scoobies, scattering them like ten pins as he snatched up the target of his fury, and slammed them against the wall.
“Hey, dogboy,” Timothy greeted the incensed werewolf with a slight nod, seemingly untroubled by the taloned fist crushing his chest. “What's the prob?”
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME!!!” the werewolf bellowed. The voice, though distorted, guttural and deeper by several octaves, was recognizably Oz's.
Willow looked up from where she lay, knocked down by her former boyfriend's charge. “Oz?” she gasped.
That muzzled head half turned to face Willow, then tilted down, as though ashamed to been seen in such a fashion. “It's me,” he acknowledged, his monstrous voice a mixture of shame and amazement that moistened Willow's eyes. Oz's attention turned back to Timothy, and his jaws snapped shut inches away from the warlock's masked face.
“What did you do to me?”
“I changed the rules of the game,” replied Timothy. “I put you in the driving seat. All that power, all that delightful potential for carnage, all of it ... is now at your fingertips.”
“I don't want it!” Oz insisted, his pleading tone incongruous with his current monstrous form.
“Too bad,” snapped Timothy in a voice devoid of understanding or empathy. “You've got it.”
“UNDO IT!”
“Undo it yourself!” the warlock snarled back, his head lunging forward even as Oz's claw still pinned him to the wall. “Go on, Danny boy!” he taunted. “Change back. Do it. Because, if you can't, if you can't control yourself ... you're useless to me. And I might as well burn all the flesh from your body.”
The unearthly glow of Timothy's artificial eyes brightened, as if a pair of azure spotlights were burning inside his skull. Sparks of electricity leapt from his fingertips, and the air grew heavy and charged with the smell of burnt ozone, the fur of Oz's werewolf form rising to stand on end.
They stared at each other, eye to eye, the undead warlock and ensorcelled werewolf, neither blinking or backing down. In the background, the Scoobies watched breathlessly, bewitched somehow by the battle of wills they were witnessing.
In the end, it was Oz who lowered his gaze first, dropping Timothy and backing off a couple of steps. Dropping into a crouch, Oz's eyes screwed shut and his wolfish face contorted in concentration. Several moments passed in which nothing happened, then, with a muffled gasp of pain, Oz began to change.
Bones shifted beneath skin and flesh turned liquid, fur growing inwards to be replaced in places by hair. It was a grotesque, and intensely person sight, and all but two of those who bore witness to Oz's transformation looked away.
Timothy of course was one of those two; he had seen, and committed much more terrible things in his blood soaked past. The other, unsurprisingly, was Anya, who watched the entire process with an expression of great interest, despite Xander's attempts to make her look away.
Finally, Oz lay huddled where he had fallen, exhausted and naked but for the tattered rags of his destroyed clothes.
“Wow,” remarked Anya, sounding impressed. “Everything really did get bigger when you were a werewolf.”
Which was when they found out that a werewolf, in human form at least, can blush.
**********
Things had only gotten worse from there. With frayed tempers and bad blood on all sides, the meeting had pretty much dissolved into a free-for-all argument between the Scoobies and Timothy that had only ended when Tara lost her temper and forcibly separated them. With Timothy banished to his basement lair to plan their next move, or, as Xander put it, to sulk, the relative lack of sleep from the previous night had begun to take it's toll.
So, once Tara was satisfied that none of the other Scoobies was going to break out the pitchforks and flaming torches, and that Oz wasn't going to wolf out again and accidentally eat someone, she convinced Willow to retire to their bedroom.
Though convince might be too strong a term, given that Willow had agreed before Tara had even finished her suggestion. But for a change, it wasn't physical desire that was fueling Willow's decision to join Tara in their bed.
This time, it was a need for reassurance that drove Willow into Tara's arms.
“Are we doing the right thing, baby?” Willow asked, her body molded against Tara's, her head reclining upon the blonde's chest, seeking solace from the steady rhythm of her beloved's heartbeat. “Trusting Timothy, I mean, not trying to rescue Chloe. That's a given, of course we're going to rescue her, she's our daughter, and she's lost andwe'vegottofindherbecausewe'reherparentsandthat'swhat parentsaresupposedtodo,notthatIhavemuchexperiencewithwhatparentsaresupposedtodobut ...”
“Breathe, sweetie,” Tara ordered, stroking Willow's hair with one hand. “I know what you mean.”
“It's just ....” Willow struggled for the words to express her doubts, her misgivings. “He's so angry, all the time, at everything!”
“I know,” acknowledged Tara, chewing worriedly at her lower lip.
“You remember what he said his reason was, don't you?” Willow continued, lifting herself up so that she could see Tara's face. “For tricking Buffy into killing him?”
Tara nodded. “He didn't think he could be trusted.”
“I know! Worrying much!” Exasperated, Willow returned her head back to its resting place on Tara's chest.
“Do we have any other choice, Willow?” Tara pointed out. “We need him. We are so beyond our field of experience that it's not funny! This is a demon dimension. This is time travel!”
“Oh, don't talk to me about time travel! I mean, he changed the future that produced him, stopped it from happening! Shouldn't he have ceased to exist, or something? But if he ceased to exist, how could the change he caused have ever happened? Every time I think about it, it gives me a headache!”
“Here, sweetie. Let me help.” Tara lifted her lover's head, and pressed a gentle kiss against Willow's forehead, and each of her closed eyelids. Deep in her throat, Willow made a soft, happy noise.
“Mmmm ... Tara-kisses. Best medicine in the world.”
“Oh, I don't know,” Tara whispered. “I think Willow-kisses give them a run for their money.”
Opening her eyes, Willow shook her head. “Nuh-uh. You know I'm right. See? Resolve face.”
“Oh, but I'm sure I could change your mind,” countered Tara with a saucy grin. “And the things I would do to you to change your mind ...”
“Promises, promises ...” Willow mock grumbled, before she gave Tara a quick kiss and resumed her earlier pose.
“Willow, sweetie? The thing of it is ... I just feel we can trust him in this. I can't explain it, but something tells me that Timothy will move heaven and earth to get Chloe back to us.”
There was a long moment of silence, and if Tara hadn't know better, she might have though Willow had fallen asleep. Then, finally, Willow responded, oh so quietly, as if to vocalize her fears would make them reality.
“That's what I'm afraid of ...”
**********
The walls of the corridor they walked down were made of simple concrete, painted that particular shade of institutional gray that always seemed to Tara to inspire both depression and certain type of fatalism. Given the complete lack of windows, or any other way for natural sunlight to penetrate this kingdom of gloom, the only light source were the caged electric lights that sprouted from the ceiling every few yards, like growths of some phosphorescent fungus.
They were four in number; Tara, Willow, Buffy and Timothy. When Timothy had announced his intention to head out on a second 'recruitment drive', Willow had immediately insisted on accompanying him. When no amount of sarcastic insults or inventive, if ultimately empty, threats from Timothy proved sufficient to dissuade her, he'd also been forced to allow Tara as well, as she refused to let Willow out of her sight.
In turn, this had had led to Buffy's joining the party as well, on the grounds that she quite openly didn't trust Timothy as far as Dawn could throw him. By this point, Timothy's protests had seemed half hearted at best, but when the rest of the Scoobies had also begun clamoring that they too were going, the warlock had lost his temper and threated to transmogrify the lot of them into frogs.
The sun had retreated beneath the horizon once more when they had set out, the twilight air cooling rapidly under the influence of a strong ocean breeze. By way of a roundabout series of alleys and back streets, taken to avoid exposing Timothy to too many curious eyes, they had found themselves outside a familiar building.
The rebuilt Sunnydale High School.
No matter how many times Buffy demanded to know why they here, Timothy's only reply was a stubborn silence. They all knew that the warlock was garnering a perverse kind of pleasure from keeping Buffy in the dark, but given Buffy's position as a school councilor, she had felt compelled to try. Timothy had come here for a reason, and Buffy couldn't help but feel that anyone, or anything, that the warlock considered a suitable recruit for his mission to Hyriault wasn't the kind of person you would want at a school.
Willow hadn't visited the school much, beyond occasional visits to Buffy or drop off runs with Dawn, so she took the chance to engage in a bout of reminisce, sharing memories of her own sojourn here with Tara.
The quartet must have presented an interesting sight as they paraded down the deserted hallways, had anyone been there to see them; led by a limping masked figure all in black, followed by a young woman carrying an axe and a suspicious expression, who in turn was followed by a pair of lesbians, who, hand in hand, looked like they were on a guided tour.
Down into the bowels of the school Timothy led them, following a meandering path through the warren of passageways that lurked beneath this edifice of education. At first, the three women followed him without hesitation, no doubt satisfied with the confident way in which Timothy never hesitated when he came to a crossroads.
But after they passed the exact same bank of inexplicable machinery, Willow began to have her suspicions. “Er ... Timothy? You do know where you're going, right?” she asked as they came to the next intersection.
Pausing in the juncture between passageways, Timothy looked back at his mother inscrutably. “Not in the least,” he admitted matter of factly.
“What?!” exploded Buffy. “You mean we've been following you on a wild goose chase this whole time!”
“Not at all. I know he's here, but I don't know his precise location. The background ... noise, for lack of a better word, put out the Hellmouth confused my seekers, but they could track him well enough to tell me that he was here.”
“He? Who are you talking about, Timothy?” Tara asked, placing a calming hand on Buffy's shoulder when she looked fit to strangle their erstwhile guide. “Who could possibly be living down here?”
Timothy's head cocked to one side. “For starters, him.” He pointed over Willow's shoulder, down one of the intersecting corridors.
Whirling around, Willow, Tara and Buffy found a ragged figure staring at them from the boundary of a patch of shadow. Filthy clothes that were little more than rags hung from his pale, lean frame, and haunted eyes regarded them from beneath an unkempt mop of ragged hair. The platinum hair bleach he had once affected had long since worn off.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding ...” gasped Buffy in a tone of disbelief. “Spike?!”
To be continued ....
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