Buffy dialed the library again.  "Well?" she asked.

"Still no change in the hellmouth," Wesley said.  To his credit, he didn't ask her why she wasn't at school.  He'd informed her in one of her earlier calls that Cordelia hadn't shown either.

"Your friends are getting suspicious," Wesley added, causing Buffy a stab of worry.  She detested keeping anything from Willow and had started to dial her a dozen times today already.

She closed the phone and said, "I can't wait any longer, Angel."  She looked across the sewer tunnel to him.

"Tell me Giles' old name," he said.

Buffy frowned at him.  "No."

"I've been there before.  I can go again."

"And I saw how you were when you came back," Buffy said.  "No, Angel."

"Buffy--"

"NO!"  She said firmly.  "Besides, if Giles is down there in torment right now and hears *you* calling for him, do you honestly think he'll reply?"  She didn't mean it to come out so sharply.  "I'm sorry."

"If you take too long, I'm following you."

"Please, I need you to watch over Willow and Xander.  Keep them safe."  She put a hand on the ladder that led out of the sewer.

He frowned.  "And Cordelia?"

"Yeah, her too," Buffy mumbled.

They kissed and she went up the ladder.

The sunken church didn't look any better in the sunlight.  It was still a despicable place, in the dark and in the light.

Buffy stood at the place where Giles had been taken and said, "Giles…..Elszakitanim."

Dizziness jolted her.  She swallowed.  "Whoa!"

But she hadn't gone anywhere.

"Damnit," she swore.  To the ground she added, "Here I am!"

It ignored her.

That really ticked her off.

She kicked hard at the dirt, sending a boulder-sized clump over the angled steeple.  "Elszakitanim…..and I *mean* it this time!"

She fell so hard that the earth rushing past her ears stung them like whips.  She twisted as she dropped, trying to protect her face, but she couldn't get her hands up to her head and the continual rushing past her ears made her think an ocean had closed over her.

"Is this Rapture?" she wondered, but it was just dirt and a tunnel that squeezed her miserably.  Just when she thought she couldn't take another second of this blind agonizing fall, she landed in a sticky mess.

She got to her knees slowly and looked around.  It was dark, like the inside of a cave which was rather how she thought a bowel of the earth should look.  It also stank.

She raised an arm under her nose and corrected herself.  No, *she* stank.

Something covered her, pieces and chunks that felt like raw liver and smelled like dead cow.  She brushed off what she could and disentangled what was in her hair, and stood.

She'd plunged into what looked like a pocket of nothing.  It was hard to see in the dim but the rocky curving walls appeared seamless.  She glanced up but no opening was there either.

Buffy swore, using a word she'd once heard at the docks, as she paced around the walls.  She couldn't find a cranny anywhere and it all seemed annoyingly solid.  Finally she returned to the middle.

"Elszakitanim!"

"Of all times for him to be wrong, it has to be now," she grumbled when the word went nowhere.

Then she stopped and blinked.

"Or not," she amended.

Part of the rock didn't look so much like a rock anymore.  She touched it, her hand sunk in, but she quickly withdrew.

"Ouch!" she said, looking at her hand.  Though it was hard to tell in the light and under the slimy mess she hadn't been able to completely get rid of, she thought she might be bleeding.

She wiped her hand as best as she could on the inside of her shirt and looked again.

It was scraped badly, so badly that blood welled in a hundred pinpricks before sliding to the ground.

She checked the walls again but there wasn't any other way.  She considered the spot once more, thought of Giles, and walked in swiftly.

"Now where am I?"

Another empty room, but this one was bigger and looked like a church.  Buffy checked herself quickly but she'd come in unscathed this time.  No more scrapes and even her hand had stopped bleeding.

"Don't think much of the doors," she thought.  She looked around again and it suddenly came to her.

She was in Michael's church.

That made sense, she decided.  She'd gone down beside the church.  It felt like she'd dropped for miles but apparently it had only been several feet.  When she looked up towards the steeple, however, she wondered if it had been miles after all.

The steeple was very far away, rising up into a dim blue point almost beyond the edge of her vision.  Light shifted up there and it gave the appearance of a way out had she possessed several thousand foot ladders.

She glanced around again.  The floor tilted to one side and wooden pews lay in rubble and splintered piles.  The altar still stood and a large cross on the back wall had survived the descent.

Perhaps the cross had partly saved it.

Buffy looked at the altar and it seemed she could see Michael standing at it.  She had stood in this spot once before, Willow beside her, sun shining on the new drywall while Michael and Xander laid a map on the altar and drew a sketch of the hellmouth.  Michael of the clear teal eyes, smiling at her over the top of the chart.  She'd been so angry that day.

Buffy's heart skipped.  There *was* something at the altar.

She took a step forward.  Was someone slumped on the altar?  She thought she could see the top of a head.

"Michael?"

But it was just a massive rat.  She jumped as two small eyes met hers.  The rat scrambled to the floor with a squeak.

She let out the breath she'd been holding and turned around.

And startled.

There was someone in the church.  They were right behind her.

Buffy flew back, fists raised.  The man standing there regarded her, mouth opening and closing like a silent fish.  He was an old man, white-haired and frail, and his clothes hung slackly on his thin body.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

He didn't answer though the mouth worked steadily like a rippling gill.  He edged towards her.  She moved the same distance away.

"I'm quite serious about wanting an answer," she told him.

He neared her again.  The mouth opened wide and stayed open.  She thought she might get an answer after all.

He gurgled once and vomited on the floor.

Buffy scowled as she stepped away.  Due to the tilt of the floor, she had to look down to keep her balance.

And she saw it.  He'd vomited a mixture of eyeballs.

Buffy turned away, noticed the rat a few feet away eyeing the mess interestedly.

"God, no," she swallowed a rise from her own stomach as she stumbled to the front of the church.  She heard the rat's claws on the floor and the step of the old man as he neared her again, and she looked up to the top of the steeple and whispered, "Giles, where are you?"

The blue dancing light continued heedlessly.  " Giles?" she asked.

Her heart gave a tug and she knew.  She dropped her gaze to the back of the church, to the doors there that used to admit the faithful to Sunday worship.  The old man was gone, as was the rat and the hodgepodge on the floor.

Buffy checked behind her, just to be sure, before running down the aisle and through the doors.

She burst out into a forest.

She halted, looking around in amazement and some concern that she'd ended up back on the surface somehow.  As she strode into the brush, she realized she was in the midst of trees she'd never before seen.  These were exquisite and tall, lichen growing on trunks whose width she couldn't have gotten her arms around.  The underbrush smelled fresh and wet and surrounded her in an overwhelming symphony of green.

As she walked forward, damp leaves gently slapping her legs, a chipmunk darted by her followed by another.  She watched them scoot down a tiny path in wonderment.

A noise over her head broke her reverie.  She glanced up, blinked, and reacted much too slowly to the jaguar that lounged overhead.  It was almost a minute before she jumped back for she'd never seen one before and had started admiring it before she caught herself.

Its spotted flaxen coat rippled in the interspersed sun beams.  "I'm not very good at hiding, am I?" it asked.

"Not in a green forest," Buffy replied.

It yawned, the end of its tail flicking up at the conclusion.  "You shouldn't have come from upwind.  I could smell you quite distinctly."

"Well, I got covered in goop when I…..first came here."  She peered more closely at it.

"What is it, child?" it asked.

"Do all jaguars have blue eyes?"

"I don't know.  I'm the only one I've ever seen."  It bounded down in front of her in a single graceful movement.  "You're a Slayer, aren't you?"

"I'm *the* Slayer," she replied, not liking the sight of it so much at this closeness.  The paws each ended in five shining claws and the head, which was at least twice the size of hers, sported some rather severe fangs.

"They don't like Slayers much around here," it said amicably.

"What's your view on the subject?"

"I don't have an opinion either way."  It started washing its face, pausing once to run an eye over her.  "You're a rather pretty girl.  Do you have a boyfriend?"

"Yes.  He's a seven foot brawny game hunter with a large rifle."

The jaguar chuckled.  "I thought not.  As soon as I saw you on the path, I thought, there's a girl who avoids orgasms like the plague."

Buffy didn't know what to say in return.  She had an idea that starting a debate with a jaguar over sex, or any subject, wasn't a good idea, so she opted for silence.

The jaguar finally finished its bath.  It flashed her a toothy grin and asked, "So, any special reason why you're in the forest today?"

"I'm looking for my Watcher."

"He wasn't that guy with the weird accent, was he?  Half-demon, half-tweed?"

"Why?"

"He's long gone."

Buffy felt a prickle of fear.  "Do you mean he left?"

"No, I mean he died.  He wasn't here two seconds before they killed him."

Despair flooded her.   She sat abruptly and the jaguar eyed her.

"You're not going to cry, are you, child?"

"No."  But she did.

"Here, wipe your nose."  It offered her the end of its tail.  "There's a good girl."

She took the tail obediently.

"I can escort you out.  It's not safe for you to be here.  If any of them should find you….."

The jaguar's words brought fear to mix with the grief.  Buffy thought her chest was going to break.

"But I don't want to leave," she said, sounding very much like a little girl.  Her voice surprised her.  "Besides, I don't know if I can trust you."

"You do look tasty and I would eat you if I thought you'd get any enjoyment out of the matter.  Generally, though, eating little girls isn't all that satisfying."

"But I'm not a little girl," Buffy said as she got to her feet.  "I'm….."  She stopped and looked at the jaguar skeptically.  "I'm the Slayer and you're trying to get me to leave."

Some of the gloom lifted as she spoke.

"I'm just concerned for your welfare," it said.

"But are you also a liar?"  Buffy stepped away as the jaguar snarled.  "I wouldn't," she said in a dangerous tone.  "I have a stake and if you have a heart anywhere in you, I'll find it."

The jaguar lowered on its haunches, preparing to spring, when the sky darkened.  It looked up apprehensively and whined.

Buffy glanced up quickly too.  If something could scare this massive beast, she wasn't sure she wanted to meet up with it.

"They're coming!" it hissed.

"Who are coming?" she asked.

"HIDE!"  The jaguar sprung away as the forest trembled.