Author's Chapter Notes:
I’ve always kicked around the idea of doing a “Beauty and the Beast” tale, but one involving a crossover with a TV series, “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer”. This is an alternate universe tale, so some characters might be OOC.

Disclaimer: wish I owned them, but any recognizeable characters belong to Joss and Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox.
CHAPTER ONE

(Sometime in the Modern Day)

The young girl ran as fast as her legs could take her, away from the thing that stalked her. She could feel the air in her lungs running out, but she knew that if she stopped to catch her breath even for a moment, she would know instant death.

She could hear its feral roar growing more distant, but she didn’t dare look back. Sweat gathered on her forehead as she ran inside the Bronze. It wouldn’t follow her inside, she hoped.

The girl saw all of those her age, totally oblivious to the fact that there was a new fiend in town. She made her way through the crowds to the center of the dance floor. An attractive, brown haired boy stood there as if he were waiting for someone.

“Dance with me,” she told him, trying to keep desperation out of her voice.

The thin, sepia haired guy looked at her with big, brown eyes. Any other time, she thought she could go for him in a big way.

“I can’t,” the boy told her, then watched as her face, slightly paler than his, fell. “I mean, you’re candy and all, but if my girl ever saw me with another woman, it would be fist fights all around.”

“Just one dance,” the girl entreated, moving to the rhythm of the fast paced rock tune.

The boy dutifully danced with her, not wanting to hurt her feelings, telling himself he would explain to his girlfriend if she should see them somehow.

“So, you’re name is…?” she asked. She didn’t look at him, but was in fact looking over his shoulder to see that no one entered the club.

“Xander,” he responded.

The music ended, and he saw his girlfriend come in with some of her friends. He parted, gently pushing the girl away. He went over to his girlfriend, an attractive brunette whose hair fell in soft waves down her back. She was with a blonde girl who had a pretty, if somewhat vacuous, look about her.

“Cordy!” he greeted. “I missed you!” He went in for a hug, but Cordelia brushed him away.

“What gives?” he wanted to know.

“Xander,” Cordelia began. “I came here to break up with you.”

Xander could hardly believe his ears. Sure, she was the most popular girl on the campus they shared, and sure, she ran around with the it crowd even though they both came from the same, poor section of town, but he’d come to expect after their four weeks together that they had something. His face, which was never capable of holding back emotions, showed shock.

“What?” he finally said. Behind Cordelia, Harmony, the blonde friend, grinned triumphantly.

“If I continue to see you, my stock of friends will plummet,” Cordy was saying. “It’ll be badness all around.”

Xander just stared at her. “Okay, fine,” he said, crossing his arms. “You wanna break up, it’s totally cool with me. I’m with the outage.” He left Cordelia, who reached to answer her cell phone.

She went to the back of the Bronze, where fewer people gathered. “Hello?” she said into the phone.

“Hi, sis,” a younger voice--belonging to one Buffy Summers-- greeted.

“Oh, hi,” Cordy said in a flat voice. “Checking up on me?”

“Someone’s got to,” the voice said. “Someone’s gotta be responsible in this family.”

Cordelia stiffened, snapping, “I resent that! I just had to get out before Mom got back from the hospital,” she said. “It’s not like I was gonna stay here overnight. I was sick of waiting at home. Those hospital releases take hours!”

“Yeah, well, when Mom gets back, I’ll just tell her you were too bored to give her a proper homecoming,” her sister Buffy said with disgust.

“You are so evil!” Cordy pronounced.

She stopped when she saw a very attractive man enter the club. He was tall and had other heads looking appreciatively in his direction. She noted that he seemed to be searching for someone.

“Gotta go,” Cordy said, hanging up and making her way to Drop Dead Gorgeous Guy.

Before she could find out more about him, he spied the girl looking right at him and walked in her direction. She slipped out the back door, into the alley beyond.

As the man left, Cordy muttered to her friends, “Just my luck. Handsome’s got a girlfriend.”

XXXXXXXXXX

The girl ran again, hoping that maybe another building was open. She probably should have stayed inside the Bronze, but she knew that her hunter was more than capable of picking off people to get to her. She ran toward the police station.
Just three more blocks, she told herself.

She had almost reached her destination when she felt herself being violently jerked back and shoved against a brick wall. The girl looked into the eyes of death. They were glowing, golden orbs, and as frightened as she was, she couldn’t look away.

“Hi, darling,” the beast purred. “Did you miss me?”
She continued to fix his yellow eyes with her pretty blue ones. “Nothing to say?” he mocked. “Can’t have that, especially since I owe those flatfoots next door another body.”

The girl kept her eyes riveted to the one who held her in his monstrous grip. “Come on, baby,” he jeered, lowering his mouth to her neck. “I wanna hear your scream reach the heavens.”

The girl let loose an ear piercing scream as he buried himself in the velvety smoothness of her skin, drinking to his demon’s delight. When he heard the sounds of the police coming out, he withdrew into the shadows, perfectly blending undetectably with them.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Minutes later, an officer muttered, “He’s getting bolder, dropping one right on our threshold.” He scanned the ground for any clues with his plastic gloved hand.

“She died within minutes,” another officer pronounced, adding, “although we need the Coroner here to verify that, Chief.”

The Police Chief, a blonde in her forties with short hair and a face that had seen more deaths than any of the people who surrounded her, knew that no Coroner could tell her what she didn’t already know.

"The Vampire Beast," as the press were nicknaming the perpetrator of these deaths, had stuck again, and minutes before. She felt a headache coming on.

“All right,” she commanded. “When the Coroner’s wagon gets here, be sure there are no other vans around. The press will have a field day with this when it breaks. No sense in letting this story erupt any sooner than it probably will.”

“That’s a wise idea,” a voice said, crossing over to join them. One of the officers jerked his head up from his dusting for prints, glaring at the owner of that voice, a sandy haired man dressed in Army fatigues.

“Hey, pal, move it,” the officer ordered. “This is official police business. No others allowed.”

The Chief’s eyes fixed her officer with a cold stare. “He’s with me,” she rebuked coldly. Not waiting for the officer to reply, she steered the Army guy over to the outside of the alley.

“Did your boys find anything?” she asked, desperate for information, but showing no signs of it. The Army man shook his head.

“Five bodies, five weeks, and not so much as a single fang to attach to it,” he mumbled bitterly.

“Keep digging,” she told him. “And keep this under wraps. We don’t want everyone knowing the secrets of this town, Riley.”

“Sure thing, Chief Walsh,” he said. “Now, I gotta go. Have to check something.”

Riley walked away from Chief Maggie Walsh to his jeep without waiting for her dismissal. The Chief went back to the business at hand as the Coroner’s van pulled up. She hoped that she would see this Beast face to face before another body was found so that she could personally bury him





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