Chapter 2

Buffy and Spike were seated in the living room. They'd turned on the TV and watched the News on CNN.

"We're having dinner with Wolf Blitzer again?" Buffy said, "We've got to get ourselves an unlife."

Dawn came out of her room, and went back down to the dining room. She sat down at the table, and picked up the copy of "Undead Life", that lay there where she'd thrown it.

At the lower right hand corner, of the "Necrophilic" picture on the cover, a caption declared:

"FROM BENEATH THEM IT DEVOURED:

Dead Potential Slayers: page 37."

The distressed High School girl opened the periodical, flipping through disturbingly named and illustrated articles, until she came to the one about Potential Slayers.

The Article declared that a New England "Devouring Team", had ended the potential threat of two potential Slayers, named Rory Gilmore and Sabrina Spellman.

A photograph showed the teenage blonde Miss Spellman, hanging naked from a bridge over the Charles River in Boston. Her neck was crushed by a noose of spider silk spun tight around her neck, and spun in a mass of webs all over her body. A few large, hairy spiders hung against her body on threads of silk.

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The Article explained that while Rory Gilmore's mother Lorelei had not been a Potential Slayer, she'd known too much; so the woman had been silenced.

On the next page, a heading declared: "From Beneath Them it Devoured".

Beneath the heading, a full page photo showed an open convertible, stopped by the side of a road, above a Southern California beach. Under the light of a full moon, a naked blonde woman in her early twenties sat dead behind the wheel, tightly wrapped from head to toe in a tight mass of spider webs. Her name was given as Kelly Taylor. Another naked, dead young blonde woman named Donna Martin was stretched out in the backseat, also wrapped in a tight mass of spider webs.

On the opposite page, a different heading declared: "From Beneath Her It Devoured".

Under that heading a photo showed the inside of a Beverly Hills nightclub, named the Peachpit AfterDark. Its dark haired owner, Miss Valerie Malone, also lay dead across a tabletop, where her naked corpse was tightly wrapped in spider webs.

This was followed by a different article with the heading: "From Beneath Them It Will Devour".

This article featured photos of Potential Slayers who were still alive.

The first living Potentials were identified as Paige, Phoebe and Piper Halliwell, of San Francisco.

Dawn thought, the "Charmed Ones"? The witches with the Power of Three, who possess "The Book of Shadows"? One or all of them might be coming here to kill Buffy?

Another yet to be devoured Potential was named Veronica Mars of Neptune California. She was another blonde, described as a "Teenage Nancy Drew". Miss Mars was an amateur detective, who had actually solved some very important murders.

Would she be coming here to kill Buffy?

Then there was one undevoured Potential, who actually lived in Sunnydale itself. Dawn recognized her picture immediately.

She's Amanda! Dawn thought, I go to Sunnydale High with her! She's a friendly girl, who's also tall, thin, and kind of awkward. She attends a few of the same classes with me.

She's gonna try to kill Buffy?

Are the "Charmed Ones": Paige, Piper and Pheobe Halliwell, Veronica Mars and Amanda all gonna try to kill Buffy; unless they get devoured first?

No! Dawn thought. Amanda's not gonna kill Buffy, and neither are the others; and nobody's devouring Amanda!

Then Dawn turned the page, to the photo of the next undevoured Potential Slayer, and she was looking at a picture of herself.