FIC: To Cross the River Styx (4c/?)

["Chazzman " <charles.parise@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

TITLE: To Cross the River Styx (4c/?)
AUTHOR: Chazzman
E-MAIL: charles.parise@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters in this story. They 
all belong to Joss and the WB network. Please don't sue. 
SPOILERS: Open season on Season 4. 
SUMMERY: I'm re-inventing season 4.
RATED: PG
DISTRIBUTION: Just ask me, please...
FEEDBACK: Is very welcome.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you again to all the wonderful people who have 
sent me feedback saying they are interested in seeing more. 


To Cross the River Styx
Chap 4c


Willow spent the remainder of the night observing as much as she 
could, trying to figure out her new ability. Although she had a few 
ideas about what they were, the lines of energy that she could now 
see when she concentrated still confused her. She had returned to the 
group last night while still looking at the strange colorful lines 
that seemed to suddenly fill the world about her, she had discovered 
a very large strand that extended between her and Buffy. She figured 
that this was the binding that kept her beside Buffy. 

Then there were the aura's. Although she had not done much studying 
on them she was sure that she was seeing a lot more from people's 
auras than she would have if she were still alive. Willow found the 
sight of auras running the gamut from the dazzling and beautiful to 
dark and lifeless. And that was just looking at Buffy and Spike's. 
Angel's was a truly strange one. The closest thing to which she 
could compare it was heavy dark thundercloud behind which, the sun 
was shining with streaks of light streaming out from behind the 
cloud. Not understanding what the various colors meant she could 
only guess at why Giles' was a predominate azure blue tint where as 
Xander's and Olivia's looked quite orange. Watching Anya's yellow 
aura, Willow was surprised to see many small strands from her aura 
seemed to merge out into Xander's and a few strands from his extended 
back into hers. Tara had an interesting bluish/purple tinge to her 
aura. 

Buffy's aura, however, was overwhelming in its intensity and Willow 
found it to be truly beautiful. It sparkled and pulsed with a 
variety of colors. Willow looked to see if there were any of the 
small strands between her and Angel the way there were between Xander 
and Anya. There were, but to her surprise while there were several 
dozens of strands passing from Angel to Buffy, only a few fine 
strands extending from Buffy back to Angel. The more Willow 
concentrated, the more she noticed the finer strands that extended 
out from Buffy to practically everyone in the room. A few strands 
even extended to Spike, although these pulsed with a darker reddish-
black color. Willow looked at the strand connecting her to Buffy and 
began to perceive that it was not just one large strand, but hundreds 
of strands binding them together the way a rope is made up of 
hundreds of fibers.

It was not until morning that the rest of the Scooby's discovered the 
whole town had been affected by whatever had stolen their voices. 
Tara was actually slightly relieved that the entire town having been 
affected. Despite assurances from Buffy and Giles, she had spent the 
remainder of the night worrying that they might think she was somehow 
responsible for their voice loss. 

Giles, Angel, Buffy and Xander spent much of the day searching 
through Giles' books for any information from Buffy's dream 
regarding 'The Gentlemen', while Anya and Tara searched through 
Tara's spell books for anything to help regaining their voices. All 
to no avail. 

Since the town had been quarantined, Angel was unable to return to LA 
that evening. Instead, he patrolled with Buffy through the town. 
The mysterious silence that had befallen the town was actually a good 
distraction from his grief over Doyle's death. For Buffy, however, 
the sudden theft of everyone's voices seemed like a slap in her face 
by some higher power that enjoyed toying with her. To have been so 
close to possibly finding Willow and then stopped, frustrated her to 
no end. Her sullen disposition was exacerbated by the memories of the 
dream of Willow's funeral. She had said anything to Giles, but she 
was now terrified about that portion of her dream coming true.

Running into Riley breaking up an argument between two men on the 
street did not improve her mood. Riley had turned around to shoo off 
one man when the other decided to pick up a handy piece of pipe. 
Buffy snapped his wrist as she walked by. Angel arched an eyebrow at 
her and she just shrugged. When Riley turned and found her and 
Angel, he raised his own eyebrow in query. Buffy quickly wrote on her 
dry erase board *Angel / Riley* and flashed it to both of them. They 
nodded and shook hands while Buffy wrote further. *He's a P.I. 
friend from LA / He's a TA friend from my Psych class.* Riley smiled 
at Angel and nodded, however, when a crash came from up the street he 
quickly moved towards it and away from Buffy and her P.I. friend. He 
was suddenly feeling quite happy about the loss of his voice. Had he 
been able to speak he was certain he would have been too nervous and 
blown it.

As Buffy and Angel continued to walk through the town, Willow was 
finally able to get close to the clock tower. She stood outside for 
several minutes and looked at the tower. Shifting her vision to 
observe the lines of power about the place, she found that she could 
see a large line of blue-white light emerging from the ground and 
springing up into the tower. A second emerald green line streamed in 
from the North to pass through wall below the clock face. What 
emerged from the side of the tower however was dark and sickly 
looking. Willow wasn't certain how she knew, but something in the 
tower was polluting the line, and it was wrong. Evil. She could 
feel it.

Although she knew that nothing could harm her, she was still hesitant 
to enter the building. The presence of something evil was making her 
feel strange. Gearing herself up however, she boldly stepped forward 
through the wall to find a strange group of about eight fiends in 
what looked like unfastened straight jackets sprawled about the 
floor, sleeping. 'Obviously the Brute Squad,' Willow thought to 
herself. Looking up, Willow saw there was another floor above her 
through which the light stream penetrated. She floated upwards and 
poked her head through the floor. Five emaciated ghouls dressed in 
old fashion attire floated about a foot off the floor. Willow 
noticed with her altered vision that they had some kind of black cord 
extending from their heads upwards, and then she saw the 'Thing'. 
Hanging near the top of the ceiling where the two power lines met, it 
hovered there, a large bulbous, greyish-brown sac-like mass with 
thick black cords extending from it to the floating 
cadavers. 'Puppet strings,' Willow thought in disgust. She also 
realized that the thing would not be visible to normal sight. It was 
only her enhanced vision that was allowing her to see the creature. 

Everything looked asleep so she moved further in to the room and saw 
a table with 7 jars sitting neatly on it along with some beakers of 
fluid and a box. She kept watching the hovering blob as she moved 
forward the get a closure look at the box. The creature seemed 
quiescent. Willow moved closer to the table and stared at the box. 
She could see the magically energies built into it. Tentatively she 
extended a finger towards the box.

"Aaaahh!" she suddenly screamed out. For the first time since dying, 
she felt a searing pain cut through her back, as if a red-hot sword 
had been thrust into her. Panic set in as she spun about to find the 
ghouls were now awake and moving as if to surround her, with ghastly 
grins plastered across their bone white faces. Willow dropped 
herself through the floor and flew out the side of the tower. The 
pain in her back dimmed but it felt as if something was tugging at 
her. Confused and somewhat frightened by what had just happened, 
Willow looked over her shoulder as she moved away from the tower. To 
her dismay she could see a thin black strand following behind her. 
The creature had attached itself to her! Aghast, she grabbed at the 
strand to try and yank it out. With mounting dread Willow found that 
the thread simply stretched itself out while she pulled at it.

Willow was verging on hysterics when she reached Buffy, only to find 
a new crisis. Angel was running to the hospital carrying an 
unconscious Buffy in his arms. Upon arriving at the emergency room, 
he wrote out that they had been walking and that she had suddenly 
collapsed. A preliminary vitals check showed normal temperature, 
pulse and blood pressure. As the hospital staff began to decide what 
tests they would need to do, Angel left to get Giles since he could 
not phone him.

Six hours later, everyone had come and gone. The blood tests had 
shown nothing wrong and a x-ray showed no visible traumatic head 
injury. Since she appeared stable, it was decided to let her to rest 
and in the morning they would arrange for a CAT scan. 

Willow sat alone next to Buffy's side, sick with worry and guilt. It 
was too much of a coincidence. The black strand that the creature 
had attached to her was somehow related to Buffy's condition. But no 
one would know because no one could see it. And no matter how hard 
she pulled on it, Willow could not rip the damn thing out of her 
back. What really scared Willow was that Buffy's aura appeared to be 
very slowly dimming, as if the link was draining her energy.

Suddenly, Buffy sat straight up in her bed and yanked the monitoring 
wires from her body. Turning away from where Willow sat she quickly 
moved out of the bed and towards the door.

"Buffy?" Willow called out despite knowing that she couldn't hear 
her. Willow started to follow after her but as she reached the 
hallway she frozen in shock. 

"No!" Willow gasped out in horror.

Buffy wasn't walking down the darkened hallway. She was floating. 
The way those ghouls had floated back at the clock tower. That thing 
from the tower was controlling Buffy the same way it controlled those 
other ghouls. Willow snapped out of her shock as she saw Buffy's had 
dart out and snatch up something as she passed a medical supply 
cart. Running to catch up, Willow saw that Buffy now held a scalpel 
and was swinging her head back and forth as she glided along as if 
looking for something. Willow was sickened to see Buffy's face was 
plastered with that same horrid grin she had seen on the other 
ghouls' faces back at the tower. The scalpel in her hand really 
frightened Willow. Buffy was going to be forced to do something 
terrible.

"Buffy! Wake up!" Willow screamed out as she tried frantically to 
pull out the black strand from her own back. "Come on fight it! 
Please God! Buffy!"

They moved though another pair of doors into a dimly lit hallway. 
Buffy paused for a second as if to contemplate something before she 
moved into one of the rooms. She floated over to the side of the 
patient and reached out to rip open the patient's hospital gown. 
Willow tensed up as Buffy carefully placed the scalpel against the 
girl's left breast, just above the heart. She had to stop Buffy, but 
there was nothing she could think of that would stop her. Why didn't 
the girl wake up?

Then she saw the face of the girl who Buffy was about to kill.

It was Faith, and she was still in a coma.

~~~~~~~~~~

TBC...