TITLE: The Watcher: Absolution pt.1 - `Til You Loved Me 5/7
AUTHOR: vatwoman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN etc own Giles and anyone else in the Buffyverse, Anna and everyone I invent are mine.
FEEDBACK: Will be gratefully received on list, or at: vatwoman@yahoo.co.uk

"Yes, Marianne …Ok … Yes, I'll look at that … And you've e-mailed the autopsy reports to me? … Yes … Alright … Good … Yes, I understand … I'll talk to you later … Ok … Speak to you soon. Bye for now."

Giles hung up the phone, jammed his hands in his pockets, looked down at the floor, sighed deeply and turned his head to face Anna.

"What?" she asked.

"Three dead. Here. In Bath. Two women and one man. One each night for the past three nights."

"There hasn't been anything in the press."

"No. The Council thinks they're connected. As do the police, of course. They tend not to publicise the details of the victims of serial killers."

Anna nodded. "And the Council thinks that the connection is some demonic creature?"

"They think it *may* be."

"But they're certain enough to warrant calling you."

Giles nodded. "They're emailing the autopsy results." He grimaced. "Time to fire up the `dread machine.' "

Anna rolled her eyes. "It's a tool. Nothing more. It's like one of your books." They were on the stairs, heading for the downstairs office, and Giles stopped. Anna, caught by surprise, bumped into him. He gave her a look. "Or then again …"

They went into the office at the back of the house, and he switched on the computer, waiting for it to get through its start-up routine, before navigating confidently into his e-mail system.

The messages and their attachments took an age to come through, speaking volumes about the mass of information the Council was throwing at him. Giles sighed and rolled his shoulders, getting himself into `research mode.' He tensed, an involuntary reaction to anything and everything that reminded him of Buffy, and frowned, realising something.

"Are you alright?"

He felt Anna's hand run down the length of his spine, rest in the small of his back, before she encircled him with her arms. He shifted around to face her. To hold her. They stood quietly for a few moments wrapped up in their embrace.

"I just realised that I hadn't thought at all about Buffy today. Then I did. Research," he explained. "Me, Willow, Xander, Anya, Tara, Buffy and Dawn, on occasion."

Anna thought about what he'd said, then remarked, "The Magnificent Seven?"

"Not quite how I would have put it, but I suppose we did well enough."

"Well, we'll just have to try and live up to it. The Dynamic Duo?"

He frowned at the teasing tone in her voice, not certain that it was appropriate, and then he understood. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

He kissed her, smiled at her, and stepped out of her arms. "Let's get this stuff printed out."

Ten minutes later they had in their hands everything the Council had sent to him: three autopsy reports and the Council's speculation on the information contained in them.

Giles looked at the individual piles of paper, each representing a life. He reached out and laid the tips of his fingers on the three names, slowly, gently moving over each of them. He picked up the first report, and flicked through it quickly. Moved to the other two. The photographs were horrific. He tried not to flinch, but Anna, sitting across the desk from him, caught the subtle change in the lines of his face.

"May I?" She held out her hand.

"They're quite graphic," he cautioned, but handed them over.

Anna nodded, knowing exactly what they'd be like. She'd requested copies of both the autopsy and coroner's reports on her husband and family. She'd read them through, just once, and had then burned them to ashes. Ashes she'd let float gently onto their graves.

The pictures that moved through her hands now were no better and no worse than the others had been. They detailed lives taken by pitiless violence, and so long before their time.

"These are really deep wounds."

"Yes," Giles agreed, having moved on to the reports themselves, "they all bled out."

Anna spread the photos across the desk so they could both see them. "Weapon?"

They looked through the reports, seeking the relevant sections in the text.

"Here." Giles pointed. " `Long, smooth rounded object with a four centimetre diameter.' "

"Same here." She looked at the last report, turning pages as she went. "And here."

"Inserted vaginally into the women and anally into the man." Giles's voice dropped away. "Penetrating all three into mid-torso, bursting bowel, womb, stomach … whatever was in its path."

Anna closed her eyes and turned her head away for a few seconds. When she turned back he saw her eyes were full of despair. "I hope to hell this is a demon … I don't think I want to find out that a human being did this to another human being."

Giles sought one of her hands and clasped it tightly with his own. "I know. Are you alright to go on?" She nodded and he let go of her. "There doesn't seem to be anything to help identify what they were penetrated with. No evidence of wood, metal, or plastic."

Anna nodded again, eyes intent on the message from the Council that had accompanied the reports. "There's something here …" She went from the message to the reports and pulled out a page from Michael Grove's. "… a foreign body of some sort?"

"Let me see?" Anna handed over the sheet of paper and waited while he scanned his eyes down it. "Is there a picture?" There was. They both looked at it.

"And the Council doesn't know what this is." Anna stated absently, her mind focussed on the image before her.

Giles picked up the e-mail. "No. They've had a look at what the autopsy said about both its chemical and structural details and they've concluded that there's nothing in the biological databases of earth species that matches it."

"So it's something demonic," Anna concluded.

Giles, still reading the e-mail, nodded. "That's their advice. They seem to think that the tissue is likely to have chameleon-like properties. The cell structure also implies an extraordinary elasticity." He looked up. "Shape-shifting?"

"So we're going along with the `it's not human' theory?"

"Lesser of two evils." His comment unconsciously echoed her earlier one: he, too, had no wish to find out that this was the work of a human being. His gaze drifted back to the photograph of the tiny foreign body found inside Michael Grove. Semi-translucent, and with a dark centre, it was no bigger than a pea. "What does it look like to you?"

Anna picked up the photograph and narrowed her eyes as she considered the image shown on it. "Fish egg?" she eventually offered, but hesitantly. "Frog spawn?" She stopped and looked up at him, horrified. "It's breeding? It's laying eggs in these people?" The colour drained out of her face, and she swallowed heavily. "Oh God, it's laying eggs in these people."

Giles rubbed a hand across his mouth, aware that a light sweat had broken out on his skin. He felt his own gorge rise in an automatic response to such a terrible notion. He nodded, not trusting his voice, swallowed, like Anna had done, and tasted bile. "It should make it easier to identify the demon."

Their eyes met. Hers suddenly stormy, reacting, he knew, to the cool tones he'd used. He held her gaze and watched as the warmth he always associated with it returned as quickly as it had disappeared, making him wonder what she'd seen when *she'd* looked at *him.*

"The Council doesn't know what the demon is?" There was a coolness to her voice now, too; as studied as his had been. He looked into her troubled eyes and was reminded of the words they'd exchanged this morning, about lessons being learned, and wondered when `fighting to hold on to one's humanity' had appeared on the curriculum.

"No, but they're researching."

Anna took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. Her whole body straightened, bringing her bolt upright in her chair. "Then we'd best get started helping them." She stood up. "What do we look in first?"

>>>>>>

It was Anna who found it. Eleven hours of searching through the computer's database of demons and tracking obscures references into Giles's books and she'd found it. A diary. The text was written in Latin, which she couldn't read, but it had a series of graphic drawings that left little to the imagination.

"Giles …" She gasped out his name, drawing him to her in a rush. He discarded the book he'd been studying and dropped to the floor beside her. "Is that what I think it is?"

He took the flimsy document from her, grimacing as the paper crackled in his hands. He put it on the coffee table and gently smoothed it down so he could read it. They knelt side-by-side, silent, looking at the drawings. "Let me translate it." He sensed her nod. "It seems to be the fragment of a chronicle written by an Irish priest. These entries cover late 1334 and early 1335. It speaks of a beast walking among the populace, ravaging his parish, taking men and women. Killing them. The priest gave it a name. He called it an Apostle demon." They looked at each other <It has a name now. It has a name and so it's known. If it's known, it can be fought> "It took the shape of a man. Killed its victims by driving its body into theirs. Left young behind in the bodies. The young appeared three weeks after they'd been deposited. The villagers destroyed them by fire. The demon took twelve victims."

"Hence the name?"

"Presumably." Giles carried on reading. "The demon disappeared. Six months later it returned and took twelve more. Six months after that, twelve more. Oh …"

"What?"

"Here …" Giles pointed to a line towards the bottom of the document. "… the priest says that the beast came to them night after night; `a twelve-night of agony was endured by the people, the screams of the dying ringing in their ears as loud as the death-knell of the church bells on each new morn.' "

A profound silence followed his words, and when Anna spoke it was in hushed tones.

"Does it say what happened to the demon? It can't still be around, surely?"

"No …" Giles turned the paper over, but there was nothing on the reverse side. "… it doesn't."

"It was breeding in the villagers." Anna hesitated then pointed at the drawings. "Is that a penis?"

"No, I don't think so. I *think* it's more likely to be an ovipositor." At Anna's quizzical look, he added, "A device to deposit a fertilised egg." Giles went back to the detail of the letter. "The young actually appeared from the bodies of the dead. The creature must be able to produce both eggs and sperm. The ovipositor is there to place the fertilised egg into the chosen incubator."

"The people."

"Yes."

"But why people?"

Giles leaned his elbows on the table and propped his chin on his steepled fingers. "The priest said that it walked among them. In its dimension, it's obviously an upright creature. So are we."

"That simple?"

"Possibly. Probably."

"This is it, isn't it?"

"I think so. The way the demon took the shape of a man fits with what we know about the cell structure of the `egg' found in Michael Grove's body. The ovipositor looks from these drawings to be the right size and shape to be the object thrust into our three victims …"

"Twelve victims …" Anna's voice was barely audible. "… and we've only got three."

"So far. I think …" He stopped as Anna's face went suddenly white. "What's the time?" Anna looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost half past ten. She'd completely lost track of the time. Shocked, she turned around and saw that it was quite dark outside. It was raining again. Rivulets of water ran down the window making the light from the streetlamps outside appear to dance. "One death a day. For a twelve-night." She turned back to Giles. "When did these three die? What was the time of death?"

He didn't even have to go across the room to retrieve the autopsy reports. "The times varied, but they were all been between ten and eleven o'clock."

Anna got up and went to the window. She looked down the street. In house after house the curtains had been drawn tight against the elements. Against the world. "We're too late, aren't we?"

"Yes."

She wrapped her arms around herself, but still shivered as a cold settled on her deep enough to chill bone. "I'll go and make some tea."

He didn't reply, and made no move to stop her as she strode stony- faced out of the room. After a few moments he turned back to his research.

The telephone rang.

>>>>>>

A long night gave way first to a fragile dawn and then a day kept dark by unrelenting storms of rain.

Four dead now: another young woman taken through the night. The Council had been monitoring the police radio bands and had heard the initial call come in. The autopsy report had joined the others on his desk eight hours later.

Anna had read it through before putting it aside and returning to the research, research that had yet to yield anything beyond the fragment of chronicle that they'd found the day before. Giles had phoned Jules, Marianne Forster in Monitoring, Ade Olewe in Records; anyone he could think of who could get a search of the Council's records organised. As yet they'd found nothing. This creature had apparently made its appearance, and disappeared once more, without causing so much as a minor ripple in the vast pool of demon incursions into the human dimension.

They could find no further mention of the demon. They could find no clue as to where it came from. No clue as to what happened to it during its 14th century manifestation. No clue as to whether or not it was sent back to where it came from. No clue as to whether or not it was killed, and if it was killed, how it was killed.

Their knowledge was limited to just three things: its name; the way it killed; and the fact that it was back.

They were close to exhausting every text that he had. Anna was reading everything that was written in English, French and German. He was working his way through everything else, checking and re-checking references in books and documents written in the five languages he knew fluently and the further dozen he could get by in.

He'd guided the work and they'd worked without pause. Eaten and drunk when they'd remembered to, and with books in their hands, asking questions of each other around mouthfuls of food.

And they'd found nothing. There was a question in Anna's eyes now, asking him how he could live like this. She'd got on with the work, not asking that question out loud, and he had no idea if he was benefiting from her silence. And he was starting to fray.

"We have nothing!" He pushed himself away from the desk, ripped his glasses off his face and shoved his hands through his hair. "There's bloody nothing here!"

"Is there anything we haven't looked at?" If there was, Anna couldn't imagine what or where it was. She looked around them and couldn't see floor for books. "Is there anything we haven't done?"

Giles hugged the back of his head and screwed up his eyes, trying to ease the pain that was arcing across his face and head. "I don't know. I can't think."

"Adam!" Anna spoke suddenly and shook her head, wondering why this hadn't occurred to her before.

Giles pushed his glasses back on and stared at her. "Yes. God, how could I be so bloody stupid!"

"How could *we* be so stupid."

"No, *me*. Research? Find answers? This is what I do." His voice rasped, harsh in self-recrimination.

"Would he get some sense of it?"

"Assuming the Council's right, and that's why he's in police custody," Giles cautioned. "He might have done."

"Will he still be there? There's been another killing and if he was in custody he couldn't possibly have done it. They may have released him."

"There's only one way to find out." Spurred into action, Giles swept out of the office and down the hallway to the front door. He snatched up his coat off the coat-stand and shrugged into it.

"Do you want me to come too?"

Giles shook his head. "Can you e-mail the Council, ask them if they have or can get access to any information the investigation team's put on computer. And get it copied over to us."

Anna nodded. "And?"

"See what you can make of it. Go back to the texts."

She gave him a quick, desperately tired smile. "And go back to the texts regardless?"

"Yes, we've nothing else." He reached out and curled his hand around her cheek. "I …" He stopped, and when he started again it was with a hesitancy that spoke of him having changed his mind about what he'd been about to say. "… I'm not sure how long I'll be."

"I'll keep working."

She kissed him and watched him go.

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