The Male Slayer - A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fanfiction

IV. Xander's Bodyguard (Chapter 7)

James just looked on in shock, there was no way that Xander was going to live through that. As he watched Xander's body begin to drain of life, he looked around at everyone, their faces frozen out of fear. "Why's nobody saying anything? Buffy?"

Upon closer inspection, James noticed that Anya was literally frozen, in fact so was everyone. A familiar voice spoke into James' ear from behind him. "Well, it looks like you failed."

James turned around, "Doyle! What the hell happened, how was I meant to stop that?!"

"It turns out that the magic Willow is controlling has far exceeded the expectations we thought, we underestimated her hugely." Doyle began, walking out into the shop, observing the frozen Willow carefully. "It's time for us to use the best magic we can back at her."

"It's a bit late for that, Xander's dead." James told him, still devastated by his failure.

"Not necessarily. We can send you back two minutes before this incident happened, this time we have the translated spell for you to use." Doyle said, walking back over to James, handing him a slip of paper with the spell scribbled on it in English. "This will delay Willow long enough for you to escape and for our third-party to step in."

James looked up at him, intrigued. "Third-party? There's someone else like me?"

"It needs to be repeated in order to work correctly." Doyle explained, ignoring James' question. He then leaned forward and whispered in James' ear, "Don't let them open the crypt."

A white flash happened, disorienting James for a second. He looked around and found Anya and Xander standing next to each other, clearly pissed-off after their argument. James felt the slip of paper in his hand. He looked up hopefully. "I've done it!"

"Done what?" Anya asked, dismissively, not even looking up from the book she was looking at.

"Translated the spell." he clarified, holding out the slip of paper, causing Anya and Xander to look up in hopefulness, shocked at James' work.

"How?" Xander questioned.

"Doesn't matter, I have a knack for these sorts of things. Point is, it needs to be repeated to work." James explained. "Quick, we haven't got much time, start now!"

"O-okay." Anya replied, taking the piece of paper, reading it over carefully. She placed it inside the book she was holding and started to repeat it.

A familiar wind began to fade-in to the shop, as did the dark cloud of smoke. "Here they come!" James shouted to the two of them.

"Here comes who?!" Xander yelled back over the wind.

"Willow!" James replied, "Anya, you need to hide while you repeat the spell so she doesn't find you!" 

"On it!" Anya exclaimed, running behind a curtain, hidden in a little nook she continued chanting the spell lightly. 

The figures of Dawn, Buffy and Willow suddenly appeared in the midst of the smoke as it evaporated. "Oh, sorry, the trip can be kind of rush if you're, you know, not me." 

"Impossible, but it's real." James mumbled to himself. He didn't understand what time travel really felt like until he had lived it first-hand, it was a truly unsettling experience. 

Dawn collapsed just like before and Buffy knelt down beside her. Willow then spotted Jonathan and Andrew and smiled identically to before, "Jonathan. Andrew. You boys like magic, don't you?" 

"Come on, come on, work." James muttered quietly as the magic started to flow around Willow again. 

"Abracadabra." Willow said, lifting her hands to shoot the magic at them. A flash of what felt like lightning occurred and the magic ceased before it reached the duo. "Okay, didn't see that coming."