Don't Feed the Plants.

Part One

On the twenty-third day of the month of September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. And this terrifying enemy surfaced, as such enemies often do, in the seemingly least innocent and most likely of places … 

Da do!

It was getting late.  The corridors of Sunnydale High were practically deserted.  Only a few students lingered on the premises: there was a small group making their way out of the detention hall, intent on getting home as soon as they could, and one or two more helping the gym coach pack up after a late practice.  There was almost no-one to see the slightly-built blonde girl as she slipped warily in through one of the outer doors; she glanced round a little furtively, then reached back though the doorway and dragged in a handsome-looking young man in a dark coat.  He also took a furtive look around, then pulled the girl into a shadowed corner and bent his head to meet hers.  They kissed, a hungry coming together of lips and desire, each seeming to inhale the other as they sought to get close – and then even closer still.

A little further down the hallway, three uniformed cheerleaders were busy stuffing pom-poms into a locker, joking and chatting about their classmates and blithely unaware of the ardent encounter taking place only a few short steps away.  They were discussing the way a well-known school bully had failed to appear in class that week.  His girlfriend, a timid and shy type, had been seen sporting a broken arm, and their gossip savoured the possibilities that suggested, the ideas flying between them, thick and fast.

“I heard that Orin was the one that broke it,” the plumpest of the three declared with relish.  The girl in the middle looked suitably shocked.

“No,” she said.  “Really?”

“Really,” the plump one affirmed.  “Maybe Snyder’s expelled him.”

“Just for that?” the tall one at the end drawled.  “I doubt it.  I mean, he didn’t expel Buffy after she and her gang trashed the library at the end of last term.  So why would he expel Orin for slapping Aubrie?  It’s not like he could prove it.”

“Snyder doesn’t need proof to push folk around,” the middle cheerleader pointed out.  “He does it because it makes him feel big.  And the way I heard it, the only reason he didn’t kick Buffy and her sidekicks out of school is because the librarian threatened to quit if he did.”

“Mr Giles threatened to quit?” the plump girl squeaked with distress.  “He can’t do that!  He’s the best librarian … well, ever.”

“He reads poetry.”

“He quotes Shakespeare – and Dillon, and Thomas Hardy and he’s actually read Jayne Eyre.”

“He’s got that accent …”

“He’s got that smile …”

“And the most amazing green eyes …”

“Oh yeah,” the three of them sighed, in a moment of utter synchronicity. 

“You know,” the tall girl said, shaking herself out of her brief reverie.  “I think there’s some pretty weird things going on around here.  Aubrie getting beat up.”

“People disappearing.”

“Like Orin.”

“And Simon.”

“I heard that Frank, the assistant janitor, hasn’t seen for a couple of days.”

“Really?  Makes you wonder who’s going to be next.”

Shing-a-ling what a creepy thing to be happening!
Shang-a-lang, feel the sturm and drang in the air…

“I don’t like the look of this,” Giles murmured, studying the door to the biology laboratory– and the trail that led up to it, a dark ominous staining where something had been dragged across the floor.  He reached out and cautiously tried the handle. 

Locked. 

Of course it was.

“Willow?” he requested softly, conscious of the way the young woman was practically  pressed up against him – and had been ever since they’d found the start of the blood trail.

“Yes?” she squeaked nervously, then swallowed.  Hard.  “Sorry …”

“It’s all right.  I want you to go back the way we came in, get to the library and find Buffy.  You understand?  Find Buffy.  Send her here.  As quickly as you can.”

“Find Buffy.”  The redhead nodded.  “I can do that.  W-what if – Angel’s with her?”

He pushed her away from the questionable safety of his side, firmly but gently turning her back towards the entrance to the science wing.  “Then send him, too.  Willow – we have a missing janitor, two missing students, and a trail of blood leading to a classroom no one’s been in for months.  Now, Snyder might be right about the earthquake damage, and have had a perfectly legitimate reason for locking up this part of the school, but … something is living here, and I don’t think it’s friendly.  Find Buffy – and hurry.”

“Okay,” she nodded, taking a few steps in the right direction, then turned back.  “What are you going to do?”

He sighed, shooing her away.  “Take a closer look.  Now go.”

She went, her cautious pace along the blood-stained floor quickly turning into an anxious run.  Giles watched until he was sure she’d turned the corner and was well on her way to safety before he returned his attention to the door.  The bunch of keys that he tugged from his pocket were one of his prized possessions: a set of master keys for the entire building complex which he’d obtained by judicious gifts of Jack Daniels and a willingness to provide a sympathetic ear to a man’s personal troubles.  He and the deputy janitor had moved from passing acquaintances to comrades in adversity fairly soon after his arrival at the school; they were often the only inhabitants of the place, one working late shifts and maintenance, the other spending hours researching, long into the night.

The gift of the keys had been obvious, once Bob had realised that they meant he didn’t have to hang around until the librarian went home – and Giles had repaid the favour many times over since, sharing the occasional cup of tea and a little banter, comforted by tales of the kind of family life he suspected he’d never have.

It was entirely possible that Frank – the assistant deputy janitor – was never going to have it either.  The man had been at work earlier in the week, and yet had failed to report for two evenings in a row.  He’d sent Bob to check on the man’s lodgings and recruited the Scoobies to search the school for clues.  Judging by the signs he and Willow had encountered once they’d realised the sealed-off annex’s outer door was open … well, Frank had certainly passed this way, and it looked suspiciously as if at least one of the students who’d also been reported missing that week had also been wandering around in the condemned building.

“Main door, second floor classrooms…ah.”  Giles sorted out the appropriate key, one with a tiny white label declaring it to be ‘labs-ab.’ The annex housed three biology labs, all of which shared a common greenhouse – one of the reasons for closing the whole place down until Snyder and the School Board could get it properly inspected.  The greenhouse glass had cracked during the Master’s attempt to open the Hellmouth, and Bob had told him that even a minor tremor – let alone a major disturbance of some kind – was likely to bring the whole thing crashing down.

The Watcher made a mental note to avoid making any kind of disturbance if he could.  He hadn’t told Willow, but the blood trail they’d been following was uncomfortably fresh – no more than twenty-four hours old.  It was likely that whatever had taken the janitor and the students was using the abandoned labs as a lair, something Giles was determined to do something about if he could.  Building the school over a Hellmouth was bad enough – but to have something with decidedly carnivorous tendencies lurking on the premises was totally unacceptable.  There were just too many vulnerable – and tender - students that it put at risk.

The key turned easily enough, and he managed to slip the door and open it without making any noise.  There was light – artificial light he assumed – shining on the far side of the cluttered room, and it threw stark shadows across his face as he cautiously peered in, looking for signs of life.

Or unlife, for that matter.

“Good Lord,” he exclaimed, taking in the unexpected sight that awaited him.  Last time he’d been in the room there’d been rows of benches, a number of crowded shelves, the obligatory fake skeleton and one or two tanks of fish parading along the side-bench under the windows.  The tanks were still there, albeit empty, as were the benches – but the whole place was draped with vines, long twisted things with dark, ugly-looking leaves, some of them the size of dinner plates – and bigger.

His presence in the doorway seemed to trigger something deeper into the room; the door to the greenhouse was wide open and curtained with more of the huge leaves.  It was through those that the light was shining – and they had begun to quiver, to rustle with a trembling movement as if something, or someone, were hiding behind them.

He walked cautiously in that direction, stepping over the sprawling vines and registering the way they’d anchored themselves to both floor and benches with a growing sense of anxious suspicion.  They were clearly not normal vegetation; the colours and textures were wrong in a way he couldn’t quite explain. 

Besides – nothing grows that fast in a few short months; the place looked as if it had been occupied by this weird jungle for years.

There was a noticeable rise in temperature as he got closer to the hothouse door.  The soft warmth of a California night was replaced with a much deeper, tropical heat; the air felt moister too, and a rich, cloying scent, like damp earth and decaying vegetation wafted out to greet him.  There was something else lingering in the air too – a warm metallic tint.

The taint of old blood.

Sha-la-la, stop right where you are. Don't you move a thing.
You better (tellin' you, you better)

Tell your mama somethin's gonna get her
She better (ev'rybody better)

Beware!

 “Well,” the middle cheer leader huffed as Willow Rosenburg raced past the three of them, heading for the library.  “Some people are just asking for a detention.  Don’t run in the hallways!” she yelled after the hurrying and harassed redhead.

“Maybe she’s got a pass,” the plump one suggested, using her locker mirror to touch up her lipstick.

“Maybe she’s got something up her ass,” the middle girl joked, snatching the lipstick from her friend’s hand and applying to her own lips.  The tallest of the three frowned, staring in the direction that Willow had been heading, then turning to glance back down the hallway with concern.

“Maybe there’s something’s chasing her … “

I was just about to, ya know, walk on by,

(Good for you,)

when suddenly,

(Da doo)

and without warning, there was this total eclipse of the sun …

There was more shuffling and another bout of rustling in the vines as Giles reached the archway.  There was definitely someone – or some thing moving about inside the greenhouse. “Frank?” he called softly, warily pushing forward through the curtain of vines.  This was Sunnydale, home to innumerable vampires and other creatures of the night, and it was entirely possible that the man he was looking for was long dead – but it never hurt to maintain a little optimism in the face of threatening darkness.  There was a chance the janitor had stumbled into this peculiar jungle and become trapped here in some way.  Was, even now, desperately waiting for rescue …

The interior of the greenhouse was even warmer.  The heat washed over him like a wave, damp and heavy with an unplaceable perfume.  The light was soft, but still bright after the dimness of the outer room.  Greenery hung everywhere, twists of vines and pendulous leaves painting every surface, clinging to every fitting and pillar.  Exotic buds, like tiny purple orchids, blossomed overhead – and somewhere in the middle of everything, there was some kind of vegetative mass, a green and purple mound pillowed in among leaves that stood as tall as he did.

“Good Lord,” Giles breathed a second time, staring in utter amazement.  He hadn’t seen anything as riotously exotic as this since his last visit to Kew Gardens.  His astonishment only pinned him in place for a second or two, but even that was a second or two too many.  The rustling had increased, reacting to his entrance and the sound of his voice – and in amidst its distractions, someone suddenly lunged out of the jungle, armed with what looked suspiciously like a shovel.

He had time to react, time to turn in alarm and duck back a little, reducing the force of the blow that might otherwise have cracked his skull wide open – but he wasn’t quick enough to avoid it altogether.  Pain flared across his temples, the world spun – and then every thing went totally dark for a while.

Don't ask questions tonight. Just touch and go.
No one ever got hurt, from what they don't know …

“You’re sure about this, Will?” Buffy asked, staring at Willow’s anxious expression.  She’d spent a fruitless hour searching the school grounds for signs of struggle or evidence of vampires, neither of which she’d managed to find.  Running into Angel had been her highlight of the night so far.  Xander had spent some of that time searching the school cafeteria and the rest hunting through the boy’s changing rooms.  There’d been no obvious sign of the missing students or the missing janitor; while Xander had found an abandoned broom lying in one of the showers, that didn’t mean the missing man had left it there.

“Perfectly sure.  There was blood and – everything.  Giles said I had to come find you, so I did.”

“Blood?”  Buffy had taken a half step towards the library doors, but she swung back with a wary look on her face.  Xander had gone pale. 

“You didn’t say anything about blood,” he accused, and Willow rolled her eyes. 

“I was getting there.  We did the science labs and the gym, and then I said I thought I saw a light in the annex and … there was open doorness and marks on the floor and Giles thought something had been dragged inside, so we went in and .. there was blood.  On the tiles.  All the way up to the biology lab.”

“The victim was bleeding,” Angel noted with a frown.  “Vampires don’t like to waste food as a rule.  Not unless they’re sated.”

“Didn’t want to know that, dead boy,” Xander said, glaring at him

“I did.”  Buffy glanced at the stake she was carrying, then headed for the library cage.  “A complete cornucopia he said …”  She vanished into the cage for a moment, then re-emerged to hand Angel a heavy sword with one hand and heft a nasty-looking axe with the other.  “I’m guessing not vampires.  I haven’t had a tingle on my Spidey senses all day – other than the one Angel gave me just now.”

“Didn’t want to know that, either,” Xander whispered to Willow, who started to smile – only for it to freeze on her face.

“Oh God, Buffy,” she realised.  “Giles is still in there!  He said he was going to take a closer look.  And all he has with him is a cross and a couple of stakes.  If it’s not vampires …”

“Then he’s probably in trouble,” Angel concluded grimly.

The Slayer shivered.  “I hope not,” she said.  “Come on.  Let’s get there before something decides to put Watcher on its supper menu …”

Part Two

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