As Xander comes to, he finds himself attached by means of an old rusty chain to the wall of a dungeon. Across from him there is an adolescent boy dressed in rags churning a large black cauldron in the middle of the room.
“Where am I?” asks Xander more than once, but the boy doesn’t respond. The back of the boy's head is all Xander sees as the boy slowly churns the cauldron.
An old woman in a long black robe enters the dungeon accompanied by two vampires, one taller and more hideous than the other. Both are discolored and toothy, saliva hanging from their chins. Xander makes a mental note that he has seen more presentable vampires on a bad night at Willie’s place in Sunnydale. The old woman gestures to the shorter vampire with one of her long bony fingers, swinging it toward the boy. The short vampire goes to stand by the boy while the big, uglier vampire remains at her side.
“Where am I?” demands Xander. “Who are you?”
But the woman silently approaches him, her face seeming to grow older and appear more hag-like the closer to him she comes. Xander feels frightened and instinctively tries to pull away, but his chain is too short and too strong. Escape is impossible.
Suddenly the old woman hits Xander on the back of his head so hard that his bionic eye falls out and lies on his cheek. “Thus you cannot see what you should not,” she says, speaking out loud at last. But silently, once again, she gestures. This time the big vampire steps toward Xander and unchains him. Though Xander struggles, the vampire’s strength overwhelms him, and he is yanked across the room only to be re-enchain to the cauldron. The vampire then picks up a large wooden paddle which Xander had not previously noticed laying on the floor by the cauldron. It is just like the paddle the boy uses to stir. The paddle is thrust into his hands and the business end is submerged for him into the bubbling contents of the cauldron. Xander is now side-by-side with the boy and, for the first time, sees that the teen's mouth is sown shut.
“Wh-what have you done to him?” Xander stammers.
The old woman lets out a long cackle. “Better to worry about what I’m going to do to you if you don’t start stirring.”
“Make me,” says Xander.
The woman nodded to the short vampire who took the boy by the shoulders and made to sink his teeth into his neck.
“Hold it! Hold it!” shouted Xander. “I’m stirring! See?”
“Yes, I see,” says the woman.
“How long has the boy been here?” asks Xander.
“For a year now,” replies the woman. “The churning must continue for exactly a year and a day. One churner, at least, but two is preferable. This young one is fatigued, so you should take up the slack. We need vigorous churning. Come on, quicker, quicker!” To her minions she adds, “We need another boy. We cannot fail just as the last day is upon us.”
Suddenly, Xander realizes that she did not say the last sentence out loud. He wonders whether he only imagined in his mind that she said it. He looks into the bubbling elixir.
“What is this crap for anyway?” he asks out loud.
“None of your business,” comes the reply, but again he realizes that the words are not spoken. He hears them only inside his head.
********
Between the two of them, Dawn and Willow describe the flood caused by the break in the shunt and how, when they were rescued and brought to shore, the safety pod supposed to contain Xander and Bob was nowhere to be found.
“Professor Grillo and the others are still searching up and down the river bank, looking for clues,” concludes Willow.
“You didn’t hear anything about this?” asks Dawn.
“No,” says Buffy, “I was working all afternoon on the P.R. campaign for my client. So I haven’t seen any news since this morning. Why didn’t you call me?”
“We waited until the engineers repaired the shunt so we could find out whether anyone was left behind in the excavation.”
“But there was nobody down there,” Willow beaks in. “No Xander, no Bob, and their pod isn’t there either.”
“Something else is missing, too,” says Dawn.
“What?” asks Willow with a start. “Why didn’t you mention it?”
“Well, it isn’t necessarily relevant to Xander’s disappearance, but the Cauldron symbol on the wall, along with the characters surrounding it, are gone. Now, maybe they washed away, but nothing else is missing, and it strikes me as odd that I was just starting to interpret them in my head before the break occurred.”
“What do you think they meant?” asks Buffy.
Dawn wrinkles her brow and tries to recall. “Wisdom, Inspiration, Rebirth and… something else.”
“Transformation?” asks Willow.
“Yes,” says Dawn, "that could very well be right.”
“What does it mean?” asks Buffy.
Concentration has made Willow less hysterical now. She speaks slowly as she says, “They’re ancient principles that apply to the magickal systems of most cultures even though this particular version is obviously Celtic.”
“Could this have anything to do with Xander being missing?” asks Dawn.
“I don’t know,” says Willow.
“How about a locator spell?” asks Buffy.
“We’re going to do that up in our room,” says Dawn. “We had to let you know first, though.”
“I appreciate that,” says Buffy. “And I’m going to go down by the river and join the search.”
Buffy heads for her room and changes into a more suitable outfit for crawling in mud or whatever the search might entail.
***
Buffy shakes her head and sighs as she comes out of the archeology site by the river. Her vision is blurry. She has been searching all afternoon and evening without a rest. In the morning she needs to get back to work.
“Hello, Buffy!” says a high voice. Buffy sees Rupert running and tugging along his father behind him. Roger looks exhausted but manages a wan smile to indicate his pleasure at seeing Buffy. Rupert is clearly running him ragged. It occurs to Buffy that Roger will need another vacation to recover from this one.
“Hello, Ms. Summers, how delightful to see you,” says Roger.
“Well, it’s good to see the two of you.”
“We’ve been seeing the sights,” says Rupert.
“Been an accident here, I understand,” says Roger.
“I’m afraid so,” Buffy says.
“Not anyone you know got hurt, I hope.”
“As a matter of fact, someone I know was here when it happened.”
“Good Lord, I sorry to hear that. I feel awful, Ms. Summers. You must think we’re here out of morbid curiosity.”
“It’s OK,” Buffy says. “Just learn to call me Buffy instead of Ms. Summers.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry.”
“Let’s eat,” says Rupert.
“Now, son, we were having a conversation with Ms., erm, Buffy. It isn’t polite to dash off abruptly.”
“You want to have supper with us, Buffy?” Rupert asks.
“Rupert, Buffy has more important things to do than to dine with us.”
“Actually,” says Buffy, “that is the nicest invitation I have heard in a long time. I need a break, and dinner would be great. I don’t want to impose, though.”
“Oh, not at all,” says Roger. “Actually, I suspect that the imposition will continue to be ours.”
“Visigoth’s!” cries Rupert and begins yanking his father in a new direction, away from the river.
“See what I mean?” asks Roger with a pained expression.
“What’s Visigoth’s,” asks Buffy. Now on her second wind, she keeps up more easily than Roger does.
“I’m afraid it is a European fast food franchise. Surely, Rupert, we can do better than taker our guest there.”
“Better than McDonald’s?” Buffy asks hopefully.
“Perhaps.”
“Better than Wendy’s?”
“Debatable.”
“Oh.”
“They have wiener schnitzels!” Rupert announces.
“Those are the greasy ones like they sell at train stations?”
“Slightly better,” says Roger.
“Then it’s off to Visigoth’s,” says Buffy.
“I recommend the hot apple pockets,” whispers Roger. “They go down well enough with a cup of black coffee.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
Walking behind Rupert and his father, Buffy can see, just on the other side of the bridge, the great plastic horned helmet above the brightly painted hut with the word “Visigoth” in tall neon tubes over its entrance.
Suddenly, a hulking figure in black steps in front of Buffy, not only cutting her off from her companions, but blotting out the light of the full moon. Buffy curses herself for being off guard, but she quickly summons all of her resources. Dodging the hulk’s attempt to lay his enormous paws on her shoulders, she crouches and sends three punches to his solar plexus in rapid succession. The hulk barely reacts. Buffy is angry with herself for not sensing the presence of two vampires before they were on top of them, but she considers that there is nothing to do now but recover her advantage.
Spinning on one foot, she turns around the hulk until she can see Roger and Rupert struggling futilely in each hand of a thin vampire. She sends a wave from her right arm into the hulking vampire, but this only seems to shove him a few feet away without either lifting or knocking him off balance; at least it puts some distance between herself and him. Roger and Rupert do not see this, but the vampire clutching Roger by the throat and Rupert by the collar does.
“Don’t you dare hurt them!” says Buffy. She steps forward but instantly senses that the hulk is closing in behind her. She turns, and sees him back off, but slowly. The hulk seems to look at something over Buffy’s shoulder. She turns her head in time to see Rupert sailing through the air. A pang of anxiety sweeps over her, something she has rarely experienced before except in connection with Dawn; she recognizes it as a maternal instinct; unfortunately, it interferes for a split second with her reactions. She does not try to reach and snatch Rupert out of the air; she even experiences a moment of worry that, if she tried, she might hurt him. But she knows that if the vampires get him, he could be far more than merely hurt.
The hulk catches Rupert with ease and evidently without damage as Rupert continues to struggle, albeit to no avail.
“Slayer!” Buffy turns toward the thin vampire, who still holds Roger by the throat but now extends his arm out over the railing of the bridge. Buffy fingers a stake she keeps up her left sleeve as she looks back and forth between the two vampires and their now separated victims. Roger’s body is limp, dangling over the river with nothing but the grip of the monster to prevent his plunge into the same water that washed Xander away.
“This one is unconscious,” says the thin vampire. “In a moment, he’ll drown like a sack of kittens.”
Without further thought, Buffy rushes toward Roger just as the vampire lets him go. She spears the vampire with the stake and simultaneously reaches out with her life force through her right arm to touch Roger. As the vampire bursts into ashes, Buffy puts her left arm over the side of the bridge and sends another burst of energy to the surface of the water. Drawing grounding energy with one arm, she uses the stream from her other arm to hold Roger up without pushing him away. Now, as she reels him in, Buffy senses that Rupert and the little hulk have moved far away. Alarmed, she nevertheless forces her overtaxed concentration back to and the task of bringing Roger to safety.
Roger, stuck to the energy stream suddenly opens his eyes and begins to struggle. “Oh, my God!” he cries. “Where am I? What are you doing.”
It takes all of Buffy’s power to remain focused, so she says nothing. Only when she has him on the walkway inside the rail does Buffy finally turn to visually confirm that there is no trace of Rupert or the hulk.
“My God! What happened? Where is Rupert?”
“Go back to the hotel,” Buffy advises. “I’ll go find Rupert.”
“I’ll get the police first,” says Roger.
“No,” says Buffy. “They won’t be able to help.”
“Why not? Who were those people? Who are you?” with a note of apprehension he added, “What are you?”
“Whichever question I answer first,” says Buffy, “you aren’t going to understand or like it, but you’re certainly owed an explanation.”
Buffy cringes as she simplifies what a Slayer is and the fact that vampires are not only real but that two of them just abducted Rupert.
“But why on earth did you save me, when you could’ve saved Rupert?” demands Roger.
“It was a tough choice, Roger. How could I choose?”
“Well, in future, you have my absolute permission to choose my son over me. What are you standing here for. If you’re the vampire police, then why aren’t you getting him back?”
“You had a lot of questions. I owed you some answers.”
“You owe me my son, is what. Why did you become involved with us anyways, knowing what danger you might put us in?”
“I’m sorry,” Buffy tells him. “I didn’t come to Geneva to fight vampires; I had no idea that there would be any danger at all.”
“But evidently, you and everyone you know is always potentially in danger.”
Buffy can’t defeat logic and stops trying. She begs Roger to go back to the hotel and wait for her to get in touch with him.
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