Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

For the last bloody time, he was going to mow down the useless sign that welcomed people to the pits of Hell. Spike snarled as tin bounced off the hood of the Desoto and he planted his foot harder on the accelerator, crushing it under squealing tires. This was the absolute last time he’d ever enter this hellhole and he was going to make a lasting impression if it dusted him. He had a mission and he was going to make sure there were a whole lot of interfering do-gooders lying dead at his scuffed Docs by the time he left. And if the squinty-eyed, fake-blonde tart of a slayer wasn’t at the top of the pile, he’d howl himself insane.

Spinning the Desoto around a street corner, Spike spied the street sign that he’d travelled twenty-eight hours to reach and felt his fury rise to almost boiling point. He slammed the brakes on and roared as the car swerved to avoid a clapped-out Citroën parked two feet out from the curb, cursing the idiot who’d be stupid enough to even own a piece of junk like that. Surely it didn’t even have the oomph to get to the end of the street anymore.

Spike parked in the middle of the road, slamming his door shut as he made his way through the courtyard and to the entrance, relying on the dormant scent memory of the tweedy bastard he’d helped save the previous year rather than the flat number written on the slip of paper in his pocket. Finding the door, he thumped on it repeatedly until a tired voice offered up resistance to being woken at such an hour and the door was finally tugged open.

“You,” Spike growled at the unsuspecting watcher that stood open-mouthed behind the safety of his threshold. “I’ve got a bleeding bone to pick with you.” Spike stabbed at him with a vicious finger, snarling and flashing fangs when he poked hard into the barrier and nearly broke the tip of his digit.

“I-I’m quite certain I have no idea what you are talking about,” Giles spluttered, taking a tiny step back to ensure his safety. “And how did you get my address? I’m not listed.”

Spike struggled to return his human countenance but the twist to his lips was enough to enlighten the watcher to the danger he was one barrier away from.

“Got it from the last watcher I ate. You bastards should lay off the tweed. Sodding well taints the blood.” He smirked wickedly as the watcher favoured him with wide, shocked eyes. Truth be told, he’d not taken as much pleasure out of the meal as he might have once. Still, he’d had precious few options and there was only so much a bloke could take before he snapped.

“Y-you went all the way to London to find out where I live? Are you insane?”

Spike growled and nearly lost his temper so badly that he took a flying leap head first into the barrier that kept this wanker out of his grasp. There was nothing Spike wanted to do more right now than squeeze his neck until his head popped off, and then hunt down the bitch who’d destroyed his unlife.

“You take me for a nutter, Watcher? That’s ballsy of you,” he smirked with a small measure of admiration. His eyes turned flinty in a blink, however, and his explosion was abrupt. “No, you bleeding ponce, I went to the Mother Country to squeeze a prophecy out of some tight-lipped pricks. That led me to you. Aren’t you just the luckiest?” His smile was cold and lethal and Giles visibly shuddered.

“I-I’m quite sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the librarian bluffed. He had an inkling, it was true, but the idea of it was so preposterous that he was having trouble not bursting into hysterical laughter.

Spike’s eyes narrowed, sensing the exact second the waft of fear dissipated into humour. He cursed whatever superstitious rot had made it possible for vamps not to attack the living within their homes and thought hard on how to get the wanker to become so self-confident that he took just one tiny fatal step beyond the invisible protection across his open door.

“Oh you know all right. Even if you don’t believe it,” Spike surmised aloud, swaggering dangerously closer, stopping only when his nose was pressed against the barrier.

“But it’s absurd!” Giles blustered, thinking fast on his feet for a middle-aged man constantly pushed to the very edge by his charge and who’d been shockingly jolted from an all-consuming sleep. Life had been slow of late, the perfect harbinger for some apocalyptic type event and Giles was quickly beginning to wonder if the return of Spike could herald the beginning of it. He wouldn’t give the vampire sole credit for an attempt to end the world—not after the surprising lengths he’d gone to at Buffy’s side to save it. Then again, such actions were extremely atypical of the most evil of demons and Giles pursed his lips and wondered.

The day he’d become watcher to Buffy Summers, a startling array of prophetic information had mysteriously found its way to his new librarian’s desk. Much of it had been nothing but waffle and he scoffed at Quentin Travers allowing it enough significance to even cross the ocean. But one prediction had stood out. It had described the beginning of the end for a notorious vampire with one seemingly small event—in the grand scheme of things. A vampire who’d apparently changed his world for the love of a slayer. It was a cliché, true enough. He was sure he’d heard the plotline in some trashy supernatural romance novel, but it wasn’t the first time that a prophecy had applied to Buffy and she’d circumvented the words in her favour—despite his own lack of belief that it was possible. But even so, if this one had been about Buffy at all, he’d never had a problem slotting Angel into the vacant vampire position. That it could be about any other specimen of the dark quite frankly had him reeling.

“Too bloody right, it’s absurd,” Spike agreed, his voice tipping into embarrassingly high territory. They both ignored the crack as the vampire stood back, his temper getting the better of him for a moment.

“You aren’t here to discuss the situation calmly, are you?” Giles asked, suddenly seeing exactly how such a vampire would see this development.

“Not on your life. Not about to do anything calmly, Watcher. Planning on a whole lot of bloodshed though.” His eyes held the glint of a vampire on the edge and Giles could think of nothing more to do but slam his door. Danger was most definitely on his doorstep and Buffy needed to be warned—as did all her friends.

And now.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Well, that had gone nothing like to plan. His plans had always been deliciously successful until he’d set foot in this sorry excuse of a town. Until he’d set eyes on the slayer and made her his extra special target. There was something so excruciatingly irritating about the uptight bint that had put him completely off his game the very moment he’d clapped eyes on her. He’d been in too much of a rush to take her out right from the start. The others, he’d sat back and mapped out their routine, watched them fight, taunted them bit by bit by snacking on their nearest and dearest. He’d had time and was very conscious of the risks and he’d met each challenge head on, knowing that if he were not the victor that he at least went out in a worthy manner.

Until he encountered Buffy.

Just the thought of her—just saying her stupendously ridiculous name made his stomach roil and Spike wondered, not for the first time, if it was possible for vamps to get ulcers. She gave him one. More than one. She was the bloody thorn in his bloody side and he wished he could just once do something to knock her off her high perch—like hurl on her most expensive rip-off fancy shoes. He grinned, incredibly pleased with that childish visual, just knowing it would be perfect to push her blood pressure to new heights. The snark would flow from that ugly pinched mouth and Spike could finally get down to business.

The business that suddenly flashed through his mind was of her being mauled until her clothes were torn fragments of the fake designer pieces she pretended she wore and his cock was buried so deep in her quim that her eyes were crossed and her body flushed from enthusiastic writhing. He was bloody certifiable. The constant dreams of shagging her rotten were enough to underline that point over and again, just in case he was too ignorant to get it.

He’d woken from one of those dreams with a horrified start to find Dru sitting on their bed and staring at him speculatively. There had been a terrifying absence of both anger and jealousy in her eyes and Spike had been inconsolably furious. He’d strode from the bed and dressed, rushing out into the barely new night to snare him some vacuous little blonde and recreate his most ardent wish of sucking the slayer bitch dry.

That was the first day he’d been prevented sleep by his belly rumbling and telling him in no uncertain terms that it was objecting to his choice of a petite, blonde diet. It was like having indigestion on a regular basis, because he flat out refused to stop punishing himself for dreaming about her in any way other than living red colour.

Dru’s countenance had never changed. Sometimes she did look solemn, as if she’d failed him in some way. But most of the time she accommodated his strange fixation with clever repartee and the usual confused vision-talk.

Her words—when he could make sense of them—made his borrowed blood run colder than usual. He didn’t understand enough of it to be righteous, but what he heard terrified him beyond anything he’d ever faced before. Prophecy, the Slayer and him, all shacked up together and making merry with the continual saving of the world. It was daft, but it was beautiful too, and it appealed to the wankerish, yet romantic William side of him that he wished he could beat around the proverbial head with the elder Summers’ axe until he could gleefully announce he’d smashed it into non-existence.

It humiliated him when his nightly excursions to dreamy Sunnydale and watching the slayer dust a multitude of his kind took over his life so much that he missed the initial signs that Dru was spreading her legs for any demon in town but him. Not that his cock missed her, but his heart was shattered. He felt like popping her head off when she threw at him his obsession. As if he didn’t already know the Slayer was laughing at him, that she was in his head and that no matter how hard he tried, she wouldn’t get out of it. Too bloody right she was always around him. And in his dreams he was adequately ‘in’ her too. Didn’t make a difference when he had to watch his sire waltz off with a slime-oozing fucker and he was left with nothing but a century of memories and the slayer’s voice a siren song stuck on repeat in his head.

He was past trusting himself. He was filled with rage every time he jerked awake and found his bed empty. Filled with such an anger that couldn’t be dulled without several bottles of cheap booze. Well, when he had to pay for it, and as he spent the majority of his time travelling around pissed out of his head, it was the best course of action. Only an idiot would try to flash their fangs and pinch the good liquor when they were too plastered to fight properly. As drunk as Spike was getting—and staying—a determined toddler could have wiped him out in a blink.

He sobered up the instant he found himself inside a British pub. With no memory of how he’d crossed the pond, and no money in his pockets, it was either get wise or get prematurely dusty. He was in watcher central and he wasn’t as much of a berk as he’d resembled these past…well, he had no clue of the actual calendar time, being in a place that would make blotto look giggly but functional.

So, before anyone was the wiser, he’d spun on his heel and barrelled into the night, outrunning the cry of the barman for the money Spike owed. For one second he felt guilty, and then the being evil part of his lifestyle kicked back in and Spike growled furiously at himself. If you’re going to act like a prize wanker, home turf is the perfect place for you, Spike thought churlishly to himself as he tried to force his brain to work quickly enough to offer up suggestions of what exactly he should be doing.

It all seemed to hit him at once: a head-splitting ache that he was aimless and quite possibly suicidal, the reminder of a petite little blonde that was the cause of it all, and Dru’s manic waffling about prophecies and being in the land of wankers. It was time to put up or shut up. He either found out what the go was with his abnormal hang up about the girl, or he walked out into the sun. Fortunately, watchers were very snackable, though picking the tweed out from between his teeth was an utter bitch.

And that’s how he now found himself back in the land of demons plenty, idling in his car and trying to make a rational decision. Impulse was pushing him to plough his car nose first through the librarian’s prissy little flat, though the certain damage to his precious beauty that negotiating stairs and narrow gateways would result hardly made it worth it.

First things first, the sky was beginning to surrender its tenuous hold on the dark and Spike needed somewhere quiet to think.

And plan.

Jesus, he needed to plan, and then enact the bloodiest vengeance of his career.

Right after he got a bit of shut eye.

Chapter Two


The One was given power and it began. Rumbling beneath the earth, the gilded cage broke open and death escaped on a breath. Extinguished and revived, The One took her first step on the journey toward hope.

One heart-weary demon will stumble on his evil path and will join the fractured light through battle. Together they will banish Sorrow, forging together a new house of power as the first and last wall of Aurelius crumbles to dust. Together they will stand against the evils of the earth, bound in protection and love and no man or vampire will be able to sever the bond. The King and Queen shall reign until all their daughters and sons lose breath and fade from the earth, and then all will be ever peaceful.


Giles slammed the heavy, aged book closed and muttered an improper British curse under his breath. Standing quickly, he paced in agitation, whipping off his glasses and consigning them to the peculiar habit that, more than anything else, helped him think. His feet were cold, not having been in the right frame of mind to retrieve his slippers after his impromptu visitor had put the fear of God into him. Ferocious banging on his door in the middle of the night often heralded an injured Buffy, and Giles had never quite reached the point where he’d been able to cut off his feelings and tend to her with a sense that one day, she wouldn’t even make it to his door to knock. Depending on the particulars of what he was sending her off to fight, he wasn’t even able to court ignorance and oblivion through sleep in case she would need him.

This night…had been a surprise.

He’d slept peacefully for the first time this week; having allowed Buffy the night off from patrol, it enabled him to breathe deeply and accept the lure of unconsciousness. It was more than pleasing to fall into that state from regular exhaustion rather than the usual effort of having his head in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He’d seriously never expected to see Spike again. Once the vampire had up and left Sunnydale the previous year, Giles would never have believed he’d return, though it was stupid of him to think that. Not when the Hellmouth still held the Slayer. Not when Spike hadn’t bested her, as was his reputation to do so. Buffy would have represented a challenge to the master vampire and he’d obviously come back to see to it. This rubbish about his supposed involvement with a prophecy was just his melodramatic way of announcing his presence. While seeing Spike had done nothing for his blood pressure, Giles exhaled a breath of relief.

But it still didn’t relieve his sense of responsibility in case Buffy was the victim of yet another prophecy. And if what he’d just read was true…

Despite extensive training at the academy to become a watcher, Giles had always thought the rigorous teaching on prophecies to be more than a little unhinged. Until he’d read the one foretelling Buffy’s end, he’d not believed a word of them. Until that moment, he’d not expected something so obscure and obviously unpredictable to matter. Until that moment when he was terrified of losing his daughter.

The beginning of this second prophecy was frighteningly clear to him now, but even so, he didn’t have the foresight or the power to know for certain what exactly it implicated. His original perusal had had him tucking it out of sight with a firm belief that it did not apply to Buffy. On the very rare chance it had crossed his mind since, he’d assumed Angel was the second factor. But now…he was uncertain. Yet intrigued. He still very much doubted it had the remotest to do with the hideously blond vampire, but to be sure, he should speak with Angel.

A yawn escaped him and Giles accepted that he couldn’t manage to make sense of the nonsensical while he was three parts sleep deprived. Standing and rubbing his aching eyes, he left the book on the table and wandered back upstairs and fell face first into his pillow. He’d tell Buffy in the morning about Spike’s strange arrival and he’d do more research then too.

As soon as he was awake.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

His body swung fluidly into the final pose and Angel grimaced in relief as he wound up the hour long session of Tai Chi. Once, he could use the session to blind out everything that caused him mental or emotional torment: Buffy. Tonight, every attempt to clear his mind had been jarred by the vividness of his imagination. She was everywhere he looked and everywhere he didn’t. He could smell her, feel her and his mouth salivated for the desire to taste her.

Every second of his movements seemed fraught with danger and Angel felt more exhausted than relaxed from his nightly routine. It was a true reflection of his current existence. Being back from the hellish beyond had been less reassuring and positive than he would have hoped. Being able to walk beside Buffy, patrol with her, look at her was teetering along the edges of the fiery place he’d only just escaped from. Just remaining in Sunnydale felt so difficult—too difficult—and, not for the first time, Angel wondered why he stayed. Why he tortured himself with the one thing he wanted more than the world itself—and the one thing he was cursed never to have.

The night felt odd. Angel looked around suspiciously and wished that his senses were back to being one hundred percent. It was a slow process for him to return to how he was—before love had destroyed his soul and renewed Angelus’s hold in the world. He couldn’t blame the wounded part of him from trying to reject being a vampire. It had been so difficult even for him to feed, and only reluctance to be visibly struggling and thus receiving the vicious end of Buffy’s tongue kept him drinking down the cold animal blood. His demon—and yes, he could feel it, wiggling furiously against the chains of the reinstated soul—rejected violently to the return of such a diet, but Angel had no choice. He’d tasted too many people whom Buffy had known—and more often than not, had drained them dry.

As dull as his abilities might be, he could still tell that there was something out there. Something beyond his mansion walls that seemed sinister and dark. And yet, he didn’t feel like it was menacing—rather, just observant—and not being in the mood to fight, Angel relied on that judgment and went to his fridge. It wasn’t like his predicament was a secret in this town. Even the lowliest of low creatures around knew what he was—and what he wasn’t. Knew the sorry history of his life for the past year and how he’d returned from the depths of a hell that the majority of them could never imagine. If there was something out there stalking him, let them. Nothing they could throw at him could be any worse that what he’d already been through. Than what he was currently going through.

Unless they were after Buffy.

The thought stopped him cold, making his stomach roil in fear. Not that Buffy probably couldn’t handle it. She’d handled him and he’d been pretty awful. Well okay, so that was down playing it just a bit. He’d been paired up with Drusilla, and together—as half of the Scourge of Europe—they’d broken enough bodies and tore enough lives apart to be much more than awful. Buffy could handle it, whatever it was. Buffy could handle anything; of this Angel was certain.

Shuffling forward slowly, Angel felt like he was fighting against something too thick to get to his blood. Something he couldn’t see and couldn’t feel; it reminded him of the sensation of a glucose field and it made him sleepy. He clenched his jaw and defied anyone to try and knock him out. Blood would give him added energy and he pushed on, grabbing the jar off the top shelf of his fridge and drank it down fast. Sensing the danger more clearly, his eyes flashed amber before he pivoted to the window, snarling at the shadow that slunk quickly out of sight. He took an urgent step toward it and fell, stumbling over his lazy feet as the energy drained fast out of him and his chin cracked against the hard floor. Pain burst behind his eyes and he moaned against the tide of sleepiness that argued with his need to stay awake. The last thing he caught sight of before his eyes drooped closed was long brunette curls, and he thought they looked beautiful.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He heard words, whispered words that rhymed, cast with cackled humour and called about a promise of visions he didn’t want to see.

He walked. It was a world harsh and superior, judgmental of the being he was and couldn’t change. He was one of a diminishing few, the plague of Sorrow—his fellow beings that had walked aplenty upon the earth—having been dusted and eradicated almost into non-existence.

He felt fear. This was not the kind of world Angelus could walk around in with his cocky swagger, with his taste for fresh blood taken at any impulse. This was a world where the likes of him hid, and fed in quiet. Fed upon those who weren’t missed so he had time to move on and hide his tracks.

He was thrown deeper into the picture until his eyes fell upon a girl. She glowed, all golden and righteous as she quipped with her stake, doing good for the world while her lover fought by her side. Their moves were not orchestrated, rather came naturally to them, and they complimented each other in a way that Angel could never have hoped to. He’d not fought at her side nearly enough and had not truly studied her like he perhaps should have.

The enemy gone, he was left with watching the fire in her eyes and the intent that burned brightly between the two warriors as they launched themselves at each other. Clothing was frantically torn as they rushed to become naked and join in brutal, passionate force and Angel winced as Buffy lowered herself onto a standing, strong Spike, his cock jutting up tall and proud for her to force into her body with a strangled cry of pleasure. She bounced and rocked and Spike’s eyes rolled back. Hands gripped her hips and then teeth grazed her nipples—first one and then the other. The action slowed and Angel could see every torturing roll of her hips as she squeezed Spike’s cock tight, vaguely felt himself when his childe gasped and tried to jerk back up inside her, howling when the pulse of her muscles wouldn’t allow it. It was a beautiful sight, raw, animalistic yet driven with the power of both of them. He heard their screams, saw the second Spike came and jetted his come inside her, and Angel was inconsolably jealous.

They faded from his sight and he found himself standing in front of a mirror beside Drusilla and Spike. It bothered him that they had a reflection, but it didn’t stop him from looking his fill. Seeing how his family could look different in the glaze of glass. They smiled at each other, but then the pinch of heat at his hands switched his focus and Angel looked in the mirror to find himself and Dru aflame. The fire spread and scorched their flesh, making them scream in agony as Spike continued peering into the mirror untouched, his skin perfect and blemish free.

When the pain had reached its pinnacle, Angel could take no more and watched in fascinated horror as his existence crumbled before him. He watched himself disappear until his eyes were the last, and with one final betrayed glare at Spike, he was gone.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He awoke with his face in a puddle of blood. The blood that he’d consumed earlier, that had touched his throat as he’d swallowed it down. His body was still fighting against a fake blaze and despite the absence of any blistering, he hurt like a son of a bitch.

Angel pushed himself to his knees, and then lurched unsteadily to his feet. His head was pounding and his body felt limp, like he couldn’t stand straight and couldn’t acclimatise to the shifted surroundings.

Slowly it came to him what he’d seen and he shuddered, the memory of Buffy impaling herself on Spike just a little too clear. And then the end of his existence, burning to dust reflected in the mirror while Spike stood unscathed—not only unjust, but entirely too reprehensible to give credit. And yet his body still suffered from sharp tingles that reminded him of the pain of being gone from this world.

He was confused, wounded—mentally, if not apparently physically—and he was exhausted. While he was positive that he’d just suffered at the hands of someone’s seriously twisted humour and misguided magic, Angel refused to dwell on it tonight. That Buffy would ever fuck Spike—of all evil soulless vampires—was just so funny he needed time to go and laugh it up before he wept.

Turning in for the night—even if it was still relatively early for the sun-challenged—seemed like the safest option. Angel headed slowly to his room and fell upon his bed, trying his best to hold in the screams of pain that pressure of the fall wanted him to howl loudly to the world. Desperately ignoring it, he called upon Morpheus to put him out of his misery.

As his lids closed voluntarily, the shadow on the exterior of his home stepped out into the moonlight and away from the window. Drusilla giggled as she licked her bloodied fingers, looking up into the sky with an unhinged stare of promise as the spots of crimson speckled her thin lips.

“Soon, my Angel. Soon.”

Chapter Three

Giles needed lessons in how to chill. And in how to not phone on a Saturday morning at six in the a.m. unless he was being attacked by a demon. Or the end of the world was nigh. And even then he really needed to think twice about dumping Spike-shaped news on a slayer who was desperately trying to catch up on a week’s worth of sleep and could so do without that kind of morning newsflash.

Buffy groaned and buried her head under her pillow. What had she done to deserve this? And according to Giles, the bleached menace wasn’t exactly sane either. Obviously that last few months with his psycho sire had been all that was needed to finally tip him over the edge. If it wasn’t so funny, it’d be sad. If she could be bothered to waste her tears on Spike!

Still, she couldn’t be complacent about Spike’s return. He was dangerous enough when he was sane. If he was losing it, then she’d have to be extra careful while out patrolling. But seriously, there were hours of sunlight safety left. What was Giles thinking phoning her right now? That she was gonna get up and go look for the vamp before he had the chance to chase her down and rip her throat out?

Buffy rolled over on her back and glared at the ceiling. That’s exactly what Giles was expecting. Hadn’t she been fighting all week for one night off so she could Bronze-it and then get some sleep of the kind she didn’t regularly experience?

Well phooey. He’d still be sleeping like the dead in a few hours—after she’d snoozed some more, had breakfast and brushed her teeth. A girl had to have things completely covered before she went looking for evil, and facing Spike when she was still all with the drowsy was really kind of stupid. He could wait.

And so could Giles.

But that didn’t mean she could easily go back to sleep without images of an irritatingly persistent demon, all decked out in sexy black with stark, bleached white hair doing his best to dominate her dreams.

It was just fantasy, right? Just because he’d popped up a time or two in her dreams since he’d made that rather unusual and dramatic entrance into her private life, it didn’t mean anything. Once he’d sought her out and offered her a truce…which was kind of wild and unpredictable. Besides, he was the bad boy and all girls had to have a period in their life when they lusted after the bad boy. Didn’t mean that she’d stopped loving Angel. But when she could look but not touch, it did her the world of good to imagine someone else even more unattainable to keep her mind off what she wasn’t getting. Not that she needed it. No way! But…just in case…

She’d look for Spike later—but definitely before it was time for him to be all active-in-the-night again. And hopefully, he’d be naked.

Buffy grinned into her pillow and gave in to her imagination.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Guilt had powered her heels out of the house later that morning. Guilt and an unexplainable sense of excitement. There was something invigorating about hunting for Spike—something illicit and yet violent too.

She’d searched every crypt in every cemetery the town claimed to have and when she finally found it, she kicked herself for her stupidity. She felt his presence even before she pushed open the door, belatedly realising all those other vamps she’d barged in on had felt completely different to that of ‘feeling’ Spike. She recognised him, and that had her totally wigged.

There was a sense of reverence in the way she gently nudged the door open and stepped inside—into the dark. It was likely that Spike heard her approach—she knew vampires had good sensory skills even if the creaking of the heavy door hadn’t been enough of a giveaway. Still, nothing stirred and Buffy released a relieved breath.

She didn’t feel in the mood for dusting right now, despite the fact that she’d been doing exactly that for the last two hours. Searching for Spike all over town had been extremely opportune in locating some vamps smart enough to hide from her nightly sweeps. She should put the investigation of tombs and crypts into some kind of regular schedule. That would absolutely thrill Giles, she just knew it.

She saw him as soon as her eyes adjusted to the dark. Body frozen, Buffy just looked her fill at the vampire laid out on a cold hard slab, leather coat draped over the sides around him, arms crossed over his chest, and a sardonic half smile resting on his lips. His chest didn’t rise and fall and Buffy realised he could be awake and she just wouldn’t know it. He could be playing cat and mouse with her and she’d be walking straight into it.

Eyes glued to the surreal spectacle of Spike laid out and vulnerable, Buffy assessed the situation and came up confused. She didn’t want to take advantage of possibly finding him asleep; she didn’t want to fight him to the death. It wouldn’t be fair to sneak up and wipe out such a creature when he was least prepared to fight for his continued existence. And strangely, for an evil vampire hungering for slayer blood, he’d always been remarkably fair with her.

She belatedly realised that she wouldn’t be fighting him while he was in the nude and she quashed that little niggling dissatisfaction. That had nothing to do with her decision to back off. She so did not care if she was granting further possible opportunities for him to show her his body. She wasn’t like that—not this time anyway—and not outside her fantasies. As intriguing as the prospect of nude Spike might be, she couldn’t postpone killing him because of that.

Facing her reluctance head on, Buffy decided to retreat, but not before letting her eyes rest on that mouth and the evil turn it held even in rest. She couldn’t afford to forget what Spike was—who he was. Just because she’d walked beside him for a devastating night and spoke to him like they were on the same side, didn’t mean she could afford to get too careless. To get forgetful.

Shaking her head in an attempt to return some of her commonsense, Buffy back-stepped quickly. Lusting after Spike was worlds of wrong and she had to do something to snap out of that train of thought now before it really took hold.

Angel.

She needed to find Angel and be in love with Angel. So in love that she could forget about the imagined shape of Spike’s body under that leather coat he habitually wore. That was the answer…time with Angel. They should go on a date or something. Do normal in-love stuff like other people her age.

Buffy slapped the stake she’d been holding into the palm of her other hand and nodded in approval. She had a course of action and a sleeping vampire at her back. With a smile of satisfaction, Buffy was off.

Inside the crypt, Spike opened his eyes and uncrossed his arms, an evil smirk on his lips.

Someday soon, that bitch was going down.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~


He was being followed. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and Angel felt the prickle of humiliation. He was a vampire, for Christ’s sake. He was meant to scare things, not the other way around. But whatever it was, it knew what it was doing. As he kept pace beside a chirpy and yet completely oblivious Buffy, he threw subtle glances around them to try and catch a glimpse of the pursuer and throw this feeling of being hunted from his back.

A newly risen vamp launched itself from the dirt imprisonment at their feet and immediately dived at Buffy, looking down shocked at the stake that penetrated his chest and the body that crumbled away around it. In a burst, he was gone and Buffy was dusting herself off, looking at Angel expectantly. He had no idea what she wanted, and was finding it impossible to concentrate when this encroaching evil was crowding him in, making him feel paranoid and desperate to locate his stalker.

“What was that?” he asked distractedly while darting another frantic look over his shoulder. There was something out there—behind the bushes, ducking about the larger headstones—he couldn’t see it but he knew it was there, and he was not a little disappointed in Buffy for failing to sense it too.

“Geez, right here! I said, we should go on a date. You know, do something totally inane, like a movie or something. I’d say dinner, but you have to eat for that to work.”

Angel couldn’t shake the creeping sensation up his neck that made him want to twist and cringe and go feral on the surroundings. “I eat,” he mentioned off-handedly, peering deeply into the darkness that was beginning to feel very much like it was closing in.

“Shyeah,” Buffy pacified with a roll of her eyes. “But they don’t have blood on the menu. I think a movie’s a great idea.” She stopped and looked up at him hopefully, quickly losing her patience when he didn’t pay one second’s worth of attention to her.

Everything he had was being given to the silent, invisible foe that was stalking him in the darkness. As if she hadn’t sensed their shadow all night. Wasn’t like she hadn’t expected Spike to show up some time, but Angel was taking this spooked routine just a little too seriously, in her opinion. God, he so needed to chill out. Why couldn’t he just say yes to the freaking movie and they could move onto the next stage of patrolling and start the kissage?

Buffy’s skin began to prickle and she suddenly felt desperate for said kissage. If there was one thing she didn’t need right now, it was the appearance of Spike and his vampy animal magnetism. She was totally avoiding, she knew it, but there was no way she could dismiss the fantasies that fuelled her dreams at night unless Angel got over his trippy paranoia soon and reminded her why she’d been in love with him in the first place.


She obviously was getting nowhere so there was no choice but to find some kind of distraction. Buffy snagged Angel’s coat arm and dragged him out of the cemetery and down the street. It was only half a block and she had the next boneyard to explore and conquer. Good of the town’s planning big shots to position all the dead so close together. That way no one got lonely.

Buffy giggled and determinedly ignored Angel’s grimace of obvious disapproval. What was with him tonight? He was acting like more of a wet rag than usual. Like he had somewhere more interesting to be.

Feeling grumpy, Buffy stomped away from her supposed boyfriend and went to find something to kill. Something she could be sure of and that wouldn’t ignore her when she was doing her quippy thing. One final glance back saw Angel still in the same spot, staring intently up and down the street waiting for who knew what to jump out and bite him. God, it was only Spike. Was he really that frightening?

Buffy shrugged. She didn’t think so, but maybe Angel wasn’t on that page yet. Maybe Angel was being tormented by ghosts and they could totally kick his ass.

Swallowing a snicker, Buffy moved on. Evil demons waited for no slayer.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

If ever there was a time he wanted to shag the vapid bitch to death, it was now. While Angelus pansied about like a superstitious git. It was quite hysterical how he kept looking over his shoulder for the presence he should have picked up automatically. The terrified kitten didn’t recognise his own childer’s presence and that was both shocking and, well, sad. That wankerish soul of his really had turned him into nothing better than a souped up human. No more vamp senses, apparently. Made the git fair game as far as Spike was concerned. And made his girl vamp chow.

He could sense Dru a mile away and it pleased him so little to have her in the mix, though the very faint hope that she’d see him topple the Slayer and then help him forget this obsession between her familiar…overused…okay, so the thought of fucking his own sire was vaguely revolting when he had nubile, warm slayer flesh prancing about in front of him. With a new determination that he didn’t have the vaguest hope of understanding, Spike banished Dru from his mind and focused on his prey. He’d think more on that complication when he’d achieved what he’d come here for.

Buffy was perky, and wearing clothing designed to give him a hard on without even trying. Her breasts were gently rounded and so near, yet so far as her thin blue mesh top held her in. The matching sapphire lace bra had him salivating like an adolescent and Spike couldn’t summon up the first effort to care. She was on the snugly side of lean, not-so-mean, and the kind of fighting machine that got him revving to have a go. He was swelling nicely in his jeans and as the violent images of her inevitable death flickered through his mind, he couldn’t help but rest a hand there and think about how she’d express herself before the final breath.

He wondered if she’d be tight. Angelus had said she was tighter than any virgin he’d defiled, and wetter than any river. Spike’s cock ached to feel some of that. To slide into her body while he branded her with a true vampire’s mark. While his fingers spread around her ample breasts and squeezed hard enough to leave bruises. And as his climax erupted into her tiny body, he’d strike; his fangs would lodge deeply in her throat and he’d drink her down. He’d tighten his hold and glory at the flow of her blood as it quickly became his.

Or he could crack her neck. Wait for the horror of realisation as he got her off, let her body shudder in orgasm and smirk as he embraced her cheeks, winked confidently and broke her chicken-like neck.

Or maybe he should tie her up—really play with her for a bit before he took the ultimate satisfaction and reclaimed his balls with a slayer notch on his ever-growing belt. He could make her wear his come, smear it all over her so that she was a deviant picture of raw sex when her fucked up little friends finally found her.

That image made him grin, and in resolution to his senses, he phased in and watched the current show playing before him.

“Hey, Buffy, wait,” he heard and watched as Angel finally pulled his head out of his ass and chased down the girl who’d given him her body when, if she’d had any bloody sense, she’d’ve given him the finger instead.

The Slayer stopped, obviously ticked off when she turned around and tapped her foot on the ground and then the stake against her thigh. “What?” she pouted and Spike stood stunned. Jesus! What an adorable set of lips she had. Fuck, he didn’t need any more complications. He already had Dru in the background just waiting to throw some more of this prophecy bollocks at his head.

“Look, about that date idea you had? I think…I think we should go. I mean, if you still want—” His attempt to make it up to her resulted in a warm armful of Buffy; Angel chuckled happily. “I take it that’s a yes, then?”

Buffy beamed up at him, relief and excitement warring for dominance. “That’s an emphatic affirmative,” she nodded, already thinking of something else she desperately needed to make her refocus on rather than the warning tinglies that told her Spike was really close by. While Angel was distracted with a little of the self-congratulatory slap on the back for being sensitive and thoughtful, Buffy attacked his lips with a forthrightness borne of impatience and tried hard to be involved in the moment.

Angel didn’t reject her, but he didn’t give in as easily as he usually did. He was still distracted and Buffy was just contemplating kicking him in the shin when a loud, familiar clapping broke through her cloud of disappointment.

She wiped her mouth as Angel pulled away abruptly, staring down his recalcitrant childe before allowing his bulk to slump in dejection. “You!” he spat, but his heart really wasn’t in it.

Spike raised a perfectly scarred brow. “You were expecting someone other than yours truly?”

Confusion caused Angel’s forehead to wrinkle, something about the appearance of Spike was more perplexing than he could quite grasp. Particularly as he’d stepped out of the surroundings from a completely different place than where he still sensed his stalker to be.

“Anyway,” Spike continued, thrown more than a little by the brooding wanker’s preoccupation. “Had to jump in right there. You two with the sloppy snogging was making me sick to my stomach.”

The words finally filtrated through Buffy’s dazed world and she objected strongly to Spike’s inference that she was revolting. “Hey!” she started, and then turned tomato red as he swept her body up and down with a lascivious look, his eyes smouldering with burning lust. She shivered, and almost totally forgot any reason for speech. “Yeah…well…too bad.” And she rolled her eyes with how meaningful that exchange wasn’t.

“Yeah. Too bad,” he repeated, lingering again at places Buffy realised with a start were new sensitive spots. She didn’t think you could tell about stuff like that without being touched there at least. But all Spike had to do was peer lazily at her and she was burning up. He appeared a little jealous, like he could happily stake Angel and keep on walking through his scattering dust as he made a bee-line for a taste of her mouth.

The image wasn’t altogether unpleasant—thought shocking on a scale of infinity—and Buffy shot startled eyes at Spike, already retreating as Angel swung another look over his shoulder in an effort to solve the one remaining mystery for the night.

“Spike!” Buffy called urgently, her fingers testing the stake clutched in her fist even as she decided she wasn’t going to use it yet. He had another free pass—for tonight anyway.

“See you soon, cutie.” He swiped a dramatic, yet self-explanatory finger across his unmarred, perfect-looking throat and was gone. Buffy hadn’t even blinked and he’d apparently faded before her eyes.

“Okay. So not loving the death threats, even if they are rather quieter than usual.”

Angel jerked back to attention, swinging his head round and back, looking for the vampire he’d forgotten about while he was searching for a different threat.

“What?”

“Forget it,” Buffy huffed, heading home. What was the point in smoochy patrol sessions when your boyfriend was too busy looking over his shoulder?

Angel didn’t even notice she was gone until the presence in the dark started to fade and he turned and loped after her.

Yellow eyes glowed in the darkened thatch of trees and Drusilla smiled seductively. Spike would come and claim the little slayer and daddy would be all hers again. Sometimes things were so easy that all she could do was laugh. A little twist of maniacal sound filtered into the night around her and Dru let herself fall into the soft grass cushioning her fall. Laying back, she cared nothing for the tree trunks that her hands banged against as she swept them in an arc around herself, ignoring the sting of torn flesh and the smack of her knuckles against the rough bark in favour of the image of the happy family of two she could see in her mind.

She’d make him see. Soon enough, her Angel would recognise she only told him the truth and he would choose her once and for all. The strong blonde girl was really no competition and Dru giggled softly to herself. Besides, Buffy would have her hands full and then Dru could really dance.

And Angel would dance with her till they burned.

Chapter Four

This was a mistake. A mistake of major, major badness.

Buffy sat ramrod straight in her chair and tried really hard not to look at the screen. Or at least, the naked body parts on the screen. The food was good—when it wasn’t draped over the naked bits she was avidly avoiding. And look, snacks. In the shape of popcorn and soda. Buffy grabbed her jumbo cup and took the longest swallow of cola she thought she’d ever had and then stuffed her mouth to bursting with popcorn. Feeling renewed with bravery, she looked up and nearly choked, spraying her popcorn a few rows in front of her as she caught the scene of some Harmony-stacked blonde sucking down Mr. Fruity’s purple, engorged cock.

“Oh. God,” she gasped, taking another desperate drink of her soda and fought against passing out from shock—and overwhelming lust. By mutual consent, Angel switched seats and strained as far from Buffy as he could get, but not once did his gaze flicker from the screen. A fist came up to brush against his mouth, the strain obvious in the bulging muscle in his forearm.

It was…disgusting. Degrading. And Buffy’s skin was tightening in reaction before she could acknowledge it. She slammed her back against her seat and gripped the armrests like they were the only thing stopping her from doing something embarrassing or dangerous. But her eyes…her eyes were fixed and sucking up all the latent education going on and filtering it into her already out-of-control fantasies. And since when did she have those with her eyes one hundred percent open?

Almost as if she’d summoned one up, she felt the soft brush of fingers on her flesh, tantalising her skin under her clothes, making her want to wriggle and twist. There was enough left of her commonsense to realise that doing that, and adding in a moan or two, would be so of the bad right now.

A sweeping touch caressed her arms, sliding lower until Buffy could feel the tips of her fingers buzz with the need to touch…something. Someone. There were cool lips at her throat, and a tongue sliding across her pulse making her shiver until her breasts ached.

“Are your nipples a rosy blush like that tart on the screen, Slayer? Or are they a deep red that’ll make me think you’ll taste as sweet as blood?” The husky, suggestive query came seemingly from nowhere, but the questions seeped into Buffy’s soul. Spike—he was imagining her naked and touching her without even a body to do it with. He either had super-superpowers, or she was cracking up by sitting at her susceptible boyfriend’s side watching erotica on a larger-than-life scale.

Buffy tipped her head back, not able to resist the seductive touch of lips on her throat. She closed her eyes and imagined it happening, imagined a blindingly blond vampire nuzzling her throat and his fingers skimming up her sides until he fanned them out beneath the swell of her breasts. There was no thought as to why she felt thoroughly naked in a cinema smattered with a handful of patrons. Only that her breathing became laboured as a roughened thumb slid over the swell of her flesh and rubbed erotically over a diamond hard nub. Just barely, she kept an exclamation of encouragement from slipping past her lips, but she couldn’t help the further relaxation of her body, or the area between her legs from clenching hopefully.

“Hmmmmmm,” she murmured, eyes clamped tightly shut against the barrage of sensual feelings that were running her sensitivities to the limit. Marvelling at how vivid this fantasy of Spike was, Buffy completely forgot about Angel sitting beside her but with a chair in between them—not that she was overly worried about jumping his bones when she was so turned on with thoughts of another.

Fingers pinched both nipples and with a gasp, Buffy felt the wet trail of Spike’s mouth as he kissed a path down her body, lavishing attention around her belly button before she felt a soft kiss between her legs.

Slamming her legs together with a jolt, Buffy startled upright and looked desperately down at her lap. She so did not imagine that Spike was about to get busy—but with the added advantage of actually feeling it for real, rather than just guessing how it would feel. No blond head was mysteriously positioned there, with agile fingers and tongue teasing her panties. Heart thumping, Buffy decided a quick exit was the order of the day and began grabbing up her things to get out of there.

A voice full of seduction invaded her head and for the first time Buffy realised that she was either about to go completely mad or Spike had found some way to get into her mind. And then she realised she could sense him—and he was close.

“That’s right, Princess. Comforting to know how easy it is to get you revved within feet of the big poof.” He chuckled in her head as she swallowed hard, swivelling in her seat to see him just three rows behind, his hands suggestively framing his crotch while he reclined in his chair.

“Spike!” She couldn’t help the outburst of his name and felt her face redden immediately at the answering commands around the theatre to ‘hush.’

Angel reacted even more, jumping to his feet and spinning before ducking fast to avoid receiving a handful of angry popcorn in his face.

“Sit down, Peaches. You’re obstructing the screen with your big broody forehead.” Spike tilted his head as if to look at the screen around Angel’s substantial bulk and then flicked a look at an embarrassed Buffy. “This how you ensure you don’t make the mistake of opening your legs to the wrong bloke again, Slayer?”

“No!” she denied hotly. With pink cheeks, Buffy stuttered, “It was an accident. How was I supposed to know it was going to be all with the…I thought it was about food!” she excused stubbornly and then dropped her head in shame. She should have known better. Looked into the rating or an actual description of the movie before she’d dragged Angel in to watch the thing they could never do together again. All she’d wanted to do was be normal for a change, take her boyfriend to a movie so they could laugh and have some good old-fashioned fun. She should have known that that wouldn’t work for her. That any attempt to wow Angel with her newly acquired art-house interest in movies was bound to blow up in her face. It had been a little easier for her. She’d been so eager to rechannel the wrong lusty thoughts of Spike into something far more innocent and acceptable that she hadn’t paid attention to what she’d pushed Angel into.

The movie’s subject matter was…interesting. And challenging, to each for different reasons. She’d moved on a teeny little bit with the sexy thoughts about someone else, but Angel still thought about her—and being a guy, he probably thought of her often in that way. And here she was, blatantly being provocative with the naughty movies and the imaginary simulated sex.

“It is about food, luv. Right imaginative it is, too.” Spike smirked, delighted with Buffy’s discomfort and wondered how far he could push. How far did he want to push? “What they did with that giant zucchini has me thinking of all kinds of…sexy experiments.” He leered at her and Buffy flushed hard, right to the roots of her fake blonde hair.

“You are going to be so dusty when I get out of here,” she warned through clenched teeth.

“Why wait?” hinted Angel with misleading calm. If the movie itself hadn’t tied him up in knots, then the lecherous glances Spike shot at Buffy and didn’t bother to hide would have more than adequately done the job.

“Ooh, someone’s all feisty.” Yet, he was totally unconcerned. There was no possibility Angel would draw attention to himself in front of a few measly humans. His precious reputation was too hard to be reclaimed to cause a stir in the middle of a porn movie.

Ignoring Angel, Spike wondered if his imagination had done her justice or if the eventual revelation of her glorious body would blow his imagination out of the park. He’d had no idea he could project his thoughts onto her—onto anybody really. He wasn’t about to deny that it was a neat trick, but it might have been nice to be in the know about it before now. Then again, maybe he couldn’t. He was sure it was something Dru would have pointed out to him—that he had a latent power he could use to great effect.

That made his blood ice up. If it was new, then that couldn’t be good. He hated the implication of a new ability at this stage in his life. At a time when he’d finally clashed courses again with the Slayer. It caused a shiver of apprehension to slam its way down his spine and Spike decided his best course of action was to ignore it. He’d used it, explored the Slayer’s body with his mind, and now it was time to tuck it back into a file for sorting much later. Preferably when she was dead.

But that wouldn’t happen before he’d had himself some fun.

A glaze of curiosity crossed his face as he ignored Angel and turned his eyes onto the delectable slayer. “I wonder, pet. Does your skin taste of honey or heat?” He leaned forward, dismissing Angel’s stunned gaping expression and turned his full attention to the one girl in all the world chosen to carry on a war against his kind.

“Will your quim shiver for my touch?” he asked, his voice low with a pull Buffy seemed unable to resist as she leaned a little forward into his words. “Will I hear you scream my name when I make you come, or will you be so overwhelmed with my cock filling you all the way up that you’ll only be able to gasp and whimper in mindless pleasure?”

Buffy opened her mouth, appearing like she was actually going to attempt to answer those extremely personal questions with powerful sincerity, but then Angel surged to his feet, fury and death in every move of his body.

“Outside. Now,” he ordered between clenched teeth, his fists flexing in preparation for a fight.

Spike smirked and was gone in a glance, his body effortlessly gliding to the exit while he waited for the inevitable showdown. If there was one thing he was certain of, if he was going to fuck the Slayer, he had to put the little angelic misery-guts out of commission.

He stood in the middle of the street when Buffy and Angel made it out of the cinema. His arms were outstretched and Buffy marvelled at the sinister, yet sexy pose he struck even as her mind wrapped around the idea that the two vamps were about to fight like school boys—over her.

And a huge smile blossomed on her shiny rose gloss lips.

Spike allowed his elder the first punch, and Buffy’s eyes widened as he licked at the blood from his split lip and then mouthed off some new, rather suggestive insult about where he planned to be buried and Angel couldn’t follow. He laughed and ducked as Angel’s fist raced out to connect again, knocking the bigger vampire off balance and enabling Spike to plant his bulky army boot right in the middle of Angel’s leather clad back.

In the middle of the scuffle, Faith showed up, her eyes wide as she steadied the stake in her hand. “Whoa, B. Give you the night off and you just can’t keep your boy in line. Want me to help him dust Blondie?”

Buffy’s eyes widened and she shook her head frantically. Spike was her painful reminder of failure and she wasn’t letting anyone deal with him but her.

“I’m good,” she told Faith, feeling reasonably confident with Angel here to help her. “You finished patrol?” She raised a perfectly waxed brow in disbelief and Faith grinned.

“Nah. Was just checkin’ the nightlife out. Looks like it’s bitchin’,” she admitted admirably as she eyed Spike’s sexy coat and even sexier butt. “Don’t worry, B. I’ll leave you to it.” She winked and gave the more seasoned slayer a nudge with her elbow as she passed, then gave chase to a suspicious looking deformed person who was conducting its own pursuit of food.

Buffy returned her attention to the fight—the one that was getting bloodier by the second.

It was confusing, though flattering. Buffy found herself mystified over who she truly wanted to win; though her head forced her to cheer for the real boyfriend—the one she only vaguely worried about being still too weak for such a confrontation—her heart was rooting for the one who was new at getting her blood to heat at a longing glance.

Spike hunched over and gave every appearance of preparing to ram Angel through the middle, Angel snarling in satisfaction because he was prepared and confident. Spike started his run up, but at the last minute, instead of connecting with Angel’s gut, he threw himself left and slammed both heels into Angel’s face. The brunette stumbled backwards, clutching his nose and moaning sharply as his hands filled with blood.

Spike didn’t mind much that his opponent was preoccupied with his own pain—truth was Angel spent the majority of his day in such a state. With an even stronger swing of his arm, he caught Angel on the side of the head and knocked him out cold.

Dusting off his bruised hands, Spike stepped away from the mess and turned to leer at a shocked Buffy. She had moments to process that an evil vampire—primed and motivated purely to drain her of her last drop of blood—had just cleaned the floor with Angel, and that she was very much alone and unprotected, having sent a reluctant Faith off to finish patrol.

One electrifying second and she saw it all again before clashing with Spike’s heated demonic eyes, sprinkled with lust and passionate violence.

And gulped hard, spun on her heel and ran like the wind.

The wind felt good in her hair as Buffy ran as far from civilization as she could in Sunnydale. She was exhilarated, grinning at the chase and her status in it. For a moment she was sure she was lost in one of her secret fantasies, leading him away to ravish her hungrily in the dark and alone.

The smile immediately turned into a frown as Buffy wondered what the hell she was thinking. This was Spike and ever since she could remember, he’d been after her for only one reason. Just because he’d managed to lull her senses into a sensual blaze where truth came very second to feeling, didn’t mean she had to go all stupid. It wasn’t too late to start using her brain and get scared about the situation.

Spike was chasing her…which had to mean he wanted her for some reason. Experience guided her to the conclusion that he wanted to fight her—win against his third slayer in a fair battle to the death—with her as the corpse.

Spike had altered his level of play, ascending onto rooftops as he sped through the night, almost too fast for the human eye to track. Gaining in every leap but spurring Buffy on to move quicker, lighter, harder.

If he caught her, the night would end. She felt it in her bones and that was enough for now. Enough to make her pulse race faster than her feet. Enough to pant heavily and push further.

Enough to not accept this night as the one in which she died.

She wouldn’t allow it.


~ * ~ * ~ * ~

It had happened so fast. A steady, but not-so-comforting hand was helping him to his feet and Angel blinked as his world went a little fuzzy and tipped alarmingly to the side. His nose was swelling and he swore viciously, promising all kinds of retribution to the one who should know better than anyone the demoralisation he felt about having his nose broken…again! Spike was going to know about this humiliation—in the most brutal and bloody of ways.

Spike.

What the hell happened here anyway? Angel swayed, ignoring the impatient snort at his side as he tried to remember exactly how he’d allowed Spike to wallop him into the big land of snooze. Buffy. That’s right. The monster had been overly crude to Buffy and in an attempt to show him his place, Angel had left himself open to an engineered attack. Since when was he so impulsive as to not think things through before he jumped head first into an obvious trap?

Cursing his own stupidity as much as he cursed Spike, Angel finally turned around to thank his Good Samaritan and cursed yet again when his weary eyes encountered Giles.

“And the fun just keeps on coming,” he hissed churlishly under his breath.

And again, Giles. That meant Buffy was gone. Spike. Dammit, he had no clue what was going on but it felt very, very wrong.

Standing still, Angel cracked his neck and then took a deep, deliberate sniff—and began howling at the top of his lungs at the abuse it caused his poor martyred nose. He was going to strip all of Spike’s skin off layer by layer, the sadistic little prick. There was no doubt in his mind that Spike had planned this, right down to each and every broken bone and bruise. He’d always fancied himself as an effective tactician and Angel grunted at how well he’d pulled off this stunt.

Right, so there was nothing to do but acknowledge the obvious. With his nose out of commission, there was pretty much no possibility he could locate her scent and hunt her down—not that he’d been able to isolate much with his previously excellent senses since his slightly-singed return from Hell. Something had been off every time he’d tried to re-hone them. Something preventing him from returning back to the fully souled-up vamp Buffy expected him to be.

He couldn’t help Buffy if he couldn’t find her; he had no clue what Spike had planned to do with her, but the assumptions weren’t good. Not with the blond’s track record with slayers. He’d been known to jump feet first into life threatening danger more than a time or two, but Spike had never worried. This time he might finally have bitten off more than he could chew. Angel really hoped he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

The alternative—the Spike that was cold, and calculating, and a success—was too terrifying to consider.

Having completely forgotten Giles in his preoccupation, Angel strode off, gently swiping at the blood that flowed down his face from his damaged nose.

“Angel!” Giles called irritably. “I have something I wish to discuss with you.”

Angel rolled his eyes and kept on walking. He had more important things to do right now than to listen to Giles waffle on about waffly Giles stuff. Important things, for which he had no idea where to start.

Giles grabbed a hold of Angel’s coat sleeve and yanked it hard, spinning the vampire around and risking an uncontrolled burst of temper. He gritted his teeth against the show of fangs and waited for the unstable Angel to get his act together and calm down. “I have important things to discuss with you. Th-there’s a prophecy and Spike believes it is about himself and Buffy.”

Blinking in confusion, Angel slowly processed that statement and wondered what exactly was up for discussion. As far as he was concerned, Spike was just fodder for his stake—when he could work out how to find wherever he’d herded Buffy. Like a caged lamb.

“Crap.” Prophecies. That’d explain the renewed fixation on Buffy and also the tacky, sleazy things he’d said to her in the theatre. Well, not explain exactly. That was Spike all over—no explanations necessary. Just tacky, sleazy, Buffy-fixated Spike. “Double crap. What kind of damned prophecy is it? Is she gonna die again? Because I’m telling you right now, Spike won’t get the chance.”

Giles puffed out a bubble of useless air and sighed inelegantly. “If the prophecy is indeed about him, I don’t think you have anything to fear. However, I’m not certain that I believe it is. Yet he apparently does and I’m rather more concerned about why he might think that.”

His mind raced. Would his conscience allow him to take Giles back to the mansion to discuss something completely out of their control while Buffy was being hunted by Spike and God only knew where? Angel felt helpless, and furious with his ineffectuality. He was meant to protect her and he couldn’t even squeeze out a sniffle from his shattered nose.

Grumbling under his breath, Angel turned and started walking again, Giles following along behind.

He just hoped he wasn’t making a monumental mistake.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~


He’d melted into the black, leaving Buffy clueless as to where he’d gone. Suddenly there would be a bolt of electricity sending a mini-jolt into the base of her skull and she knew he was close, but as soon as she got a fix on where he might be, he was gone again, leaving her floundering in the dark like a slayer novice.

Her breath burned as she sucked in each new lungful and pushed it out forcefully, fear mingling with excitement. Her exhilaration grew with every thud of her feet on the ground. She was a long way from town now, stumbling in an older grave yard that she rarely visited, the dark eerie and silent and reminiscent of a really pathetic horror movie. Buffy laughed at the cliché—girl running from danger when it was inevitable she’d end up his first fresh bite for the night.

And as expected, the burgeoning humour was knocked right out of her as she was struck hard from behind, careening forwards and ending up with a mouthful of turf. It hurt, badly, and Buffy came up kicking—wild, furious and feral. Spike’s snarl would have stopped any other being cold and still their attack with quaking terror, but Buffy launched herself at him, her nails aiming for his face and her knee for his balls. Neither connected as he spun and kicked her between the shoulder blades, sending her to the dirt again.

She waited for his approach, rolled onto her back, threw her legs up into the air and executed a perfect leap to her feet and a spin kick to his jaw. Perfect, that is, until he caught her ankle, lifted and tossed her so that she was whizzing past trees at a rapid pace, finding with a thud the one to impact and stop her flight the fastest and hardest way possible.

Feeling battered and bruised, Buffy cringed at Spike’s inappropriately good-humoured chuckle and used the tree to help haul herself back to her feet. The side of her head felt wet and with a shaking hand, she touched blood. With a swiftness apparently only gifted to vampires, Spike was in her face and strangely mesmerised by the sight of her blood, and, fully expecting his fixation to make her nauseous, sagged against the tree trunk when she felt weak and dizzy with an unexpected burst of desire.

The next second, death and life intermingled as Spike plundered her lips in a vicious, angry kiss. Buffy clung to the lapels of his coat so she didn’t lose her footing and Spike pushed her more solidly against the tree with his body, ravaging her mouth with brave insanity. Time slowed as Buffy scrambled to understand this new line of attack, but just as she made the decision to just give in and wait for Spike to provide a weak spot, he jerked away, disgust running across his face.

And then he punched her. While she was still dizzy from the whirlwind assault on her lips, the bastard punched her in the jaw. Buffy powered up on pure fury and with a warbling cry, launched herself at Spike, fists pumping fast into his face and chest. She used her hands and feet to punish and hurt until she felt the haze slowly recede, and then he returned her ferocity, knocking the wind out of her as he began his own offensive.

She could already feel the ache of bruises and grazes and when a bone strained toward breaking, panic set in and Buffy used her teeth, biting hard on his jaw until his cool skin gave way under the pressure. Spike pulled back in shock and his eyes glazed over, lust just dripping from him as his fangs descended and the bones cracked with the transformation of his face.

“Baby wants to play rough?” he asked with a sneer, and he shoved her backwards with such force that she fell over. Before she was up again, he had her in his arms and threw her, again and again and again until she hit the implacable wall of a crypt. Her head cracked against it and a muffled cry barely escaped her lips before Spike placed a brief kiss on her mouth and threw her inside the dusty home of the not-so-recently dead.

Fear barely had a chance to take hold before Spike was upon her again, dragging Buffy off the floor. She whimpered softly at the new graze on her elbows and commanded her head to stop seeing non-descript swirly shapes instead of things she could make sense of. And in a twist so far in bizarro land, she felt the cool night suddenly on her chest, her pretty white blouse now resembling nothing but rags on the floor.

Anger took over and Buffy started enacting her payback, taking delight in yanking Spike’s duster from his back and then the t-shirt over his head. She saw skin and then reason deserted her completely; she was lost in an overwhelming cloud of sensation, her body knowing only that it must fight for justice the only way it knew how. It must battle to claim what it knew could not be believed unless conscious thought had been dulled.

Naked and aching, the pair came together brutally. Harsh kisses around even harsher breathing, touches hard and desperate. Hands full of hair, Buffy pulled jerkily until Spike’s lips lifted from hers and he snarled in her face. His rough hands grasped her hips and he lifted her, Buffy squealing in objection before she was aligned over his cock and the tip rested against dark, dampened curls. Buffy shuddered, her legs clamped around his waist even as she screamed objections and shook his head between her handfuls of hair. She bounced, her body crashing against his with every violent jerk, every squeeze of her legs, every irrational wild cry that tore from her throat.

There was a little lift and then he was stretching her open, his cock penetrating deep and fast just as his fangs struck at her exposed throat. An indignant cry at the searing pain combined with pleasure, and then she lost the ability to do anything but ride the waves of sensation. Sound disappeared except for rapid, shallow breaths; time stopped except for the two of them, Buffy sliding up and down his length while her body moulded around him, feeling her juices slick against him as he probed her deeper than she ever knew was possible.

He pulled back and the blood on his lips was vivid; red and wet and hers—now his. Eyes wide, Buffy watched as his eyes faded into calmer, stunned blue. Muscles contracting, icy pinpricks on her skin and Buffy realised how aware every tiny part of her was of him. Her nipples stood out for contact, and with a straining unwillingness, she leaned in so that they felt the surface of Spike’s chest, making her body shudder with overload.

Acceptance came in a wash of unadulterated need.

Buffy curled her body around his and used her arms to haul him in closer, to fight with his mouth in a kiss that batted dominance down until they equally shared the pleasure. Until they created softness instead of pain. Spike stumbled closer to a wall and held her against it, allowing himself more control to plunge into her depths and receding to her shallows. The bulge of his head rubbed harder along inner flesh and Buffy could feel the meltage of her body’s capabilities. She didn’t have the capacity to move when he was doing this to her, didn’t have the will to let go or to push him away. This possession felt so right in a way she doubted it ever would again with Angel, and in that second Buffy allowed a merge between her fantasy and reality.

Spike sucked on her tongue, gasping against her lips when her pussy squeezed him tight. Up, down and up again she milked him, letting him slide in with no resistance to bump against a very pleasurable spot before she tensed again for his retreat. Several repetitions and Buffy’s body flashed with building heat, finally exploding as Spike gave a harsh shout and pulsed inside of her. She felt the first spurt, reluctant to stop moving when everything felt almost too good. She didn’t want to stop, didn’t want this to end, and so she bit him. Blunt, human teeth took hold of his shoulder, the screams in her head replicated in her throat. The vampire howled, and then hissed as a hand grasped a clump of her hair.

He jerked her head backwards, his cock still sunk as deep as his balls while his fangs marked her breast. Buffy yelped, then retaliated, seizing his neck and biting down fiercely, her hands and nails rough on his back as the space between them disappeared and they began round two of violence and sex with barely a break in between.

The second crescendo was swift and effective, depleting them both of energy. Spike brought them to the floor, Buffy still sitting on his cock and then gently rocking back and forth as she tried to reclaim her reason.

“What the hell was this?” she asked shakily, hiding her face against one of the most recent bite marks on his chest.

“Sweetheart, Angelus didn’t give it to you right if you don’t know,” he snarked.

She flinched in his arms and Spike cursed whatever it was that made him feel guilty, that made him feel like a heel for bringing up the one topic designed to wound her most.

“Look, didn’t mean anything, right? We can look at this as…an aberration. Get back to the fight and the kill tomorrow, yeah?” There was a wistful hint in his voice that gave Buffy pause. Did he still plan on killing her? How could he kill her after sharing whatever it was that they just shared? Could she kill him, if it came down to that?

Unexplainable tears pricked at her eyes and Buffy felt her gut clench. Of course she could. She’d loved Angel and done the unthinkable. Spike was nothing to her but a really serious pain in the neck and enemy number one. There should be no problem doing what needed to be done.

So why did that make her heart feel broken?


~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Giles looked at him expectantly and Angel just didn’t know what to say. His focus was of course on Buffy, but even then Angel thought—a little resentfully, perhaps—that Giles might have noticed a little of the impact that hearing about the decline of his familial line had had on him. It was as if that part of the prophecy hadn’t even impacted, but the weirdness that had surrounded him lately was making things look a little too clear. Spike showing up, believing he was the subject of a prophecy he shouldn’t have known anything about, the strange attack several nights previously when he’d dreamed such vivid death and destruction for himself and the joining of Buffy and his grandchilde.

With a sickening lurch, Angel had an insight he wished he could give away. Giles didn’t believe the prophecy indicated Spike at all, but Angel could see it. He knew it was the truth and he knew where Spike had heard it. Too much sense whistled in the air around him and he wondered what the solution could be. How did he stop himself from being destroyed when the prophecy reached fulfilment?

So while Giles made plans to bring about Spike’s death, Angel worried for himself, and surprisingly, for Dru. He remembered from the dream that Spike was fine—that Spike was at the head of this whole thing.

God, he hated prophecies and crusty, sightless old seers that thought writing this crap down would do anyone any good.

He barely noticed as Giles stood and left the mansion. All he cared for was how little time there was to think. But he agreed on one thing; Spike had to be stopped.

Soon.

He’d been remarkably unsurprised when all roads led to Buffy and Spike, the cemetery where they’d eventually collided reeking with the heavy and devastating scent of sex. After he’d reset his nose and could sniff the air without fear of excruciating pain, he’d tried again to track Buffy with varying degrees of success, finally giving up when he smelled the tart evidence of their joining behind a thankfully closed crypt door.

One shocked minute had deprived him of the desire to fight and Angel had drifted off to the nearest bar to get good and drunk so he could brood about his loss in alcoholic peace.

For a reason he’d never been able to explain, the other demons in town held him in some kind of regard, and as such, awarded him the space he needed away from interruption. He wasn’t on anyone’s hit list, but he also wasn’t anyone’s friend. The closest friend he had was Willy—his most reliable snitch about all things supernatural—and he’d ditch him in a blink.

All of his recent experiences compounded to give Angel the worst headache he’d ever had, and his desire to drown it out with very strong alcohol was building exponentially every second he remembered how Buffy smelled with her scent corrupted by Spike’s.

He offered up a relieved prayer of thanks when the first of many shots hit the back of his throat, building up to a burn that was reassuring in its predictability. He knew he wasn’t acting rationally; that the Angel that had loved Buffy last year would be howling and vengeful and that Spike would be lucky to be anything but dust particles on the filthy crypt floor. Not that it meant he loved her less now. It wouldn’t hurt so deeply if he didn’t. But something held him back and it was strong enough to make his priority something other than his cheating girlfriend.

And really, even if he had run in there and tore her off his grandchilde’s cock, it wasn’t going to eradicate the truth of what had happened. And the crux of it all was that Spike was part of prophecy. He had a role to play in the world, and play it with Buffy—and Angel…didn’t. If he was honest, that hurt more than finding them together and knowing exactly what they’d done behind the closed crypt door. He’d been so sure that he belonged by Buffy’s side, and despite all the signs to the contrary, Angel hadn’t surrendered that romantic ideal. He could see the poetic justice of it being Spike, and even though it might infuriate both the blonde’s, Angel could already believe it resembled a strange sense of right.

An hour passed and Angel sank from miserable to darker despair. He knew it was time to give up and leave Sunnydale, though the nightmare vision that had been thrust upon him had him pretty much terrified. And now that he’d read the prophecy, he could see his days were numbered. He felt like he should fight that. If Buffy being with Spike was the thing to make him finally disintegrate from this world barely even leaving an impression, he should be fighting her and killing Spike. Should be…would be…if he wasn’t so drunk.

Nothing but a frown and the cool edge of a glass had touched his lips all night. Angel peered around the gloomy but popular bar and wondered at the swirling designs. It looked so abstract and completely unlike it had when he’d first entered tonight. And then there was a drag on the atmosphere and his head was cloudy and heavy, his body losing muscle strength rapidly until he lost his balance and slithered to the floor. He stood again on unsteady feet, his eyes drawn to the entrance of a wildflower amongst the demon weeds of the establishment.

Dumbfounded, all he could do was stare.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

She wasn’t happy to follow Daddy into such a place. A lady shouldn’t have to suffer such levels of depravity, not unless it lay bleeding at her feet. Dru stood just inside the door, the air around her thrumming and buzzing to the music in her head while she watched her Angel bent double in his misery.

Dru smiled sadly. Daddy didn’t cope well with change, and what she had to do would forever alter the thing he thought himself to be. He’d no longer be known as the Aurelian Angelus, now leashed with a soul. He’d be different, separate, but joined in a family of two. They would forge their own place in the world, look out for one another and ensure their survival, preserve their magnificence, where staying as they were now would just end them completely.

Dru could hear them crying, screaming into the vacancies becoming numerous, so very loud echoes of all who’d be lost. The Plague of Sorrow would be the biggest ever, taking with it a mass group of vampires with the very first strike, destroying more with each yawning of the sun on a new day. The shining slayer would take Dru’s entire family from her, but there was only one of the familial line that the vampiress cared about saving. The one that was beyond her grasp—even if he rejected it still—she could do nothing for. Destiny had claimed him long ago and Dru had only been battling time since. She’d wept over Spike. It had been obvious he’d misinterpreted her expressions of regret, but how could she go on with him, knowing already that his imagination and heart had already been caught?

How could she abandon her Angel when he needed her most?

When’d he be left all alone, his heart torn and broken before he was forced to be nothing but dust on the ground?

A very long time ago, he’d found her and had been determined to make her his—give her new life and teach her all the ways in which to be deliciously evil. To be seductive and depraved and dependant. Well, she’d learned much since he’d discarded her for his battered and tired soul. She wasn’t some wallflower any longer. She was her own woman now, and no matter how hard the slayer tried, she wouldn’t corrupt the moment when Dru enacted a new beginning for her beloved sire, bonding them together for eternity.

He’d not recognised her presence in the night, following and watching as he twisted and turned to see her. He’d felt her, but he hadn’t known her. And that had hurt. It had made her insides weep for the connection they’d always had but which had been lost. Even that first meeting the previous year, he’d known it was her in the shadows. He’d sensed her darkened heart the second she was near and he’d faced her. But now he was overcome with the mysteries in his head and he’d forgotten her. That nasty slayer was to blame for it, though she didn’t have time to take revenge.

For once, she was putting her Spike ahead of her own desires. He didn’t know it yet, but if anything happened to his precious slayer, he’d be crippled with agonising loss. And as much as Dru wanted to take a bite out of the slayer’s tasty throat, she wouldn’t. She knew Spike deserved to be happy. He’d been too good to her over the last century and didn’t deserve to have his future and all he was made for turn to nothing because of her own need for revenge. Vengeance was short-lived, whereas eternity would stretch loneliness out forever. One glance at her sire and Dru knew she would never condemn Spike to forever walk alone. It would destroy him more than a stake to the heart.

She’d wanted to call to Angel and chastise him for not knowing she was near, but ultimately it fit in with her plans. She couldn’t share; not yet. To share was to be mocked and she didn’t have time—they didn’t have time for uncertainty or second guesses. What little time she did have was almost out and Dru knew it was now or never. And never tasted burning hot and the fires of Hell hurt her eyes.

Prophetic words were in progress and Dru had nothing left to do but prepare the way.

Slinking inside, swaying to an imaginary sensual beat far from being the juke-box moment this crowd might have been more used to, Dru waved a hand and changed the view of the room. The viscosity held demons in place, still, as glasses barely reached mouths with the precious beverage inside.

She’d stopped the world and made her move.


~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He saw her and knew he was dreaming. Longing struck him hard in the gut and Angel found himself glad to see his Dru, even if all the strangeness around him lately made her entrance more than suspicious. Now that he saw her with his own eyes, his senses connected the dots and he realised it had been her following him around at night, and while he should be angry and doling out punishment for her audacity, he couldn’t summon up even one bad word.

Understanding struck him the second she turned off life in the small barroom. While Spike might have been the one to protect her and love her when all else had left her behind—discarded like a dirty dishtowel in the kitchen—he’d been Dru’s child and she’d lost him as surely as Buffy was gone to Angel. He could see the pain reflected in her eyes, but then there was something else and it scared him. She radiated confidence as she glided to a stop, seemingly not suffering the difficulty to move that tied Angel’s own limbs to his body and filled his head with cottonwool.

She’d look innocent were it not for the hidden depths of evil that made her blue eyes glisten. She had the wisdom of ages and Angel felt the first tug of fear at what was going on—at how the world was changing too suddenly around him.

The amount of alcohol he’d unthinkingly tossed down his throat was making him dizzy, and the discharge of energy from Dru held the room in a motionless thrall. Her lips parted and words spilled out, but not one syllable of them could be understood. His head felt fuzzy and nothing made sense all the sudden, everything around him seemed distorted and slow—too slow for it to make any kind of sense.

Were they really here? The scene in front of him seemed far too surreal to exist anywhere but make-believe; only as a demon of the mysterious secret world, he knew how much of make believe made up the truth. But maybe this time it was all in his head. He must have been reading, leading him to dream of travelling through worlds and merging his violent urges with the softer tendencies of his souled self.

When the fuzziness waned, Angel realised they were circling each other. Slow, intent circles with eyes caught and darkened with some kind of acknowledgment that his world as he was comfortable in it was irrevocably changing. It was terrifying—an existence he’d spent over two hundred and fifty years getting to know was about to be eradicated in a child’s wink. He didn’t know how he knew that the danger was why Dru had been pulled here—the dreams of death and ending hadn’t come upon him in a restful, innocent sleep. He’d been forced into unconsciousness like the sledgehammer that dark magic was, and given the images to filter through for a reason—he just never thought Dru would be so vindictive as to make him the recipient of something so painful.

Movement flickered around him too fast—her smile too wide and bright even as her eyes wept bitter tears. She had something planned—something hidden up her sleeve—but the time was closing in and she’d make her final move soon. The realisation was violent and he jerked against the discovery with an angry jolt, his body swallowed up by the dense field of misery that held everyone around him still.

Fury welled up out of nowhere and the decision to lash out was sudden and painful. Before he could move a muscle, though, Drusilla looked at him sadly once more, turned and then shot out of sight like the demon she was. It was shocking, the disappointment of seeing her gone, but with her departure returned the hustle and bustle of a busy bar and the moment seemed like it hadn’t really happened. And with his usual reaction to things he’d rather not have known about, Angel buried his face in another beer and tried to pretend his night hadn’t been weirder than usual.

That the clang of his doom had just upped its pace.

It was a pity that even pretend couldn’t mask the tang of fear.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

On the inside, she bled. On the outside she felt the scabbed blood on various wounds littering her body and she ached for the reason they were there. She’d had sex. Wild, hungry, essential sex that had fed her soul with something so elemental it couldn’t be explained.

She was totally blocking out the fact that it was Spike lying naked at her side. Spike, who’d had his thing so deep inside her that she was positive she’d be screaming for days just in reverence of its occurrence. Spike, who’d bitten her and brought her to so many pinnacle moments of bliss that she felt like her skin would melt off if she even moved. Even now she was clenching and spasming down there for more.

God, child much? She’d had sex of the rawest nature with a demon who wouldn’t stall or stutter at reminding her that they’d ‘shagged themselves brainless,’ so she really should get a handle on using the right terminology to fit the crime.

She wanted him again—wanted him to sink his hard cock deep in her pussy and show her again how to make her body lose all control, and she wanted it so bad that she ached and clenched involuntarily for the gift he’d savagely given her.

It was a craving that banished all commonsense and Buffy struggled against the impulse to keep her eyes tightly squeezed shut. Barely moving her head to the side, Buffy saw his hand resting across his crotch and swallowed a sigh of disappointment. She couldn’t look higher, finding the devastating appendage much easier to face than the cold, expected hatred she was sure would be reflected in his gaze.

“Go on, touch it,” he demanded, his voice husky as he verbalised the implied dare.

Buffy shook, but didn’t even consider disobeying. Spike was giving her something important—even if he planned on tearing it away with her next breath. This was the experience she’d lost with Angel, and now that she was getting it with another vampire, caring about it didn’t even seem to matter.

Without thinking, Buffy reached out her hand as Spike lifted his away, revealing his paleness to her. It was a strange experience, like seeing the penis of your enemy in the schoolyard in grade school. Except seeing this one gave her shivers and her body grew hot and wet with anticipation.

Hardly expecting it, she trembled when her fingers encountered the smooth, cool rigidity of his hardening member, falling instantly in lust with the silky promise of it inside her body. Oblivious to her own nudity, Buffy shuffled closer, mesmerised by the new experience and taken over by an impulse new to her. Suddenly it didn’t matter who this penis was attached to, as long as she got to explore every part of it.

Her hand curled around him and Buffy marvelled at the gasp of pleasure from Spike and the way his body tensed at her touch. It made her feel powerful, feminine and the resurgence of their mutual lust began to boil and bubble in her belly.

It made her aware of her own body.

The morning that Angel had trashed her heart, she’d stood naked in front of her mirror, desperately trying to find that one part of her that must have been so revolting to him that he’d changed his mind and hated her for tricking him. She’d stood shaking and staring at her reflection, barely making herself out through the flood of tears. Every part of her appeared abhorrent, ugly, and in the end she couldn’t blame him for turning on her. Why would he have wanted to see her when she couldn’t even bear to look at herself? She was short, pudgy in the wrong places, flat in the even more wrong places, and her body hadn’t reacted as enthusiastically as it could have. Yes, she’d been already grieving for losing him for all those indeterminable months, and many of her responses had been switched off to him. It was hardly any wonder he’d woken up feeling deprived and cruel.

Finding out later that she’d made him so happy he’d rejected his soul hadn’t gone far in reversing her opinion. Mentally maybe, but her heart had clung to her broken-hearted summations.

All that was pushed to the side as a primal urge overtook her and Buffy lowered her lips to kiss the tip of Spike’s penis.

“That’s it, sweetheart. Lick my cock. Come on, Slayer. You can do it.”

She could do it. Spike’s throaty approval filled her with more confidence than Angel’s non-responsive kisses had been able to since his return from Hell. And it gave her the courage to think of the term in her head. And thinking it was just one step away from saying it—and embracing what it was and wanting it even more desperately.

Cock. Oh God, it throbbed in her hand, siphoning heat from her palm and making her burn in places that should ache.

She startled when she felt his hand sift through her hair, and the moment happened too fast that she looked up and was caught in Spike’s needy gaze. The blue depths were licking her with fire and Buffy felt more boldness for this new activity as she lowered her lips and sucked in the bulging head of his cock, letting her tongue rub back and forth as she sucked softly and held his stare, her hand stroking his inner thigh in a slow journey to his balls.

He tilted his head to the side, captivated with her actions as well as with her courage to look him in the eye while she sucked him into her mouth. Sensation focused on the head was enough to make his eyes cross, but Spike gripped hard onto reality and the seductive view before him and gently moved his hips, nudging her lips further down his swollen length.

“That’s it, baby. Open up and let me in.”

The sexy timbre of his voice worked them both over and Buffy and Spike thought intently on the spell that was obviously hard at work. Surrendering, Buffy switched her attention fully to her mouth and the sensation of having it filled, and tested herself on taking him in deeper.

His garbled shout filled her with pleasure and Buffy swallowed him down as far as she could, vaguely surprised when he reached her throat and she began the fight against her gag reflex. She wanted no limitations, wanted to go on inducing the hoarse shouts of encouragement from a vampire she would never have expected this kind of pleasure from. Pure stubborn pride pushed her to succeed at this and with an enthusiasm she had no idea of its origins, her lips reached the base of his
cock. And then her attack began in earnest.

Lifting her eyes again, Buffy watched Spike surrender to the pleasure she was giving him, and felt powerful. Her mouth rose and fell as her tongue tickled and slurped around him; it was an exercise in multi-tasking, breathing through her nose while she titillated his flesh and sucked him raw.

Spike fisted her hair, slowly setting a pace for her by lifting and dragging her head down around his cock, fucking her face much slower and with a sensuality that had been missing from their many joinings earlier.

She didn’t know how she knew—whether his cock swelled in her mouth or if his balls tightened in her hand, if the temperature rose against her lips or if his rambling dirty words became incomprehensible—but she knew when he was about to come and it filled her with a disappointment she couldn’t explain.

On the edge of a cry of impending fulfilment, Buffy pulled back and let him drop from her mouth, the sudden action seemingly violent and cruel. His eyes widened in what appeared to be pain and Buffy felt guilty and selfish, but as he reared up to attack, she slapped her palms against his chest and pushed him back, quickly straddling his straining cock and dropping down to take him hard and fast inside her.

The connection nearly blew her senses right out of her body.

Buffy felt like she was vibrating with new life and that her past had been spent only half existing. There was something huge in the room with them, and for the amount of fear it instilled in her, she wished it was a demon she could slay. But there was nothing she could fight, and even the terror of handing herself and her fragile heart over to Spike wasn’t enough to halt her body’s progress around his cock.

Buffy lifted her body against the braced hands on Spike and felt the gentle drag of his cock against her pussy walls as they clenched and tensed around him. Nothing had ever felt this good before and she wanted to remember every second of it. Everything seemed to slow as she concentrated on hearing her own pants and raspy breath, the pin prickle of her skin as it tightened in preparation for the ultimate explosion. She concentrated on the hardness of her nipples and the need to have them touched or stroked or sucked and to that end, she leaned forward, watching in rapt attention as Spike lifted eager lips and took one in, his tongue circling the nub before biting down playfully. No matter what he did to her, she seemed to catapult into a place writhing with decadent promises.

She wanted to remember how his fingers dug into her hips as he thrust up into her; how his eyes lanced her soul and seared her heart. She wanted to remember that he was thoroughly into round two and that he had no leg to stand on if he threw it in her face later that she’d never been worth it. There was admiration and pleasure radiating off him and Buffy was left in no doubt how much he was feeling with every confident stroke to his ego. He made love to her body with his lips and fingers and his eyes burned with an intensity of feeling he wasn’t supposed to have.

It bolstered her spirits enormously to have this much effect on a bed partner—but also one that was her natural enemy. For this one moment all the hate and fear were banished as Buffy took her pleasure from the one creature who had freely offered it.

And as she wanted to remember everything, she leaned forward and tasted his lips.

His taste was unique as far as she knew boy’s kisses. He was warmer than Angel; softer if it were possible. And she enjoyed it infinitely more than she ever had with her boyfriend, and that observation rocked her from every firm belief she’d ever held.

Buffy slid into the kiss as if her romantic heart was forever made for this moment. They shared her warmth as they clung to each other, her hips slowing to a gentle rock that drove her equally as crazy as his tongue and lips. It was a slow and leisurely caress that made her skin sing, flashing hot and then nose-diving into freezing depths. Spike sat up and crushed her to his chest, making it more difficult for Buffy to move anything but her hands, so she substituted the rotation of her hips with the rhythmic tightening of her vaginal muscles, slowly working up a sex sweat she could be proud of.

“You’re bleeding well incredible, Slayer,” Spike gasped, jaw clenched and head reared back as he rode each new sensory wave that Buffy created. The temperature of her body was escalating and her hormones building up for an explosive release—and she felt happy. Buffy felt wild and carefree and like she wanted to do this all day.

With Spike.

She’d obviously lost her mind.

A euphoric burst of laughter whistled through her lips and Buffy flung her head back, her arms hooked around Spike’s neck. Rocking back, she faced him again, her eyes twinkling and her body flushed down past her ribs. He smiled a little uncertainly, and then his gaze slipped down her face, passed by her neck and focused on the little cherub pink buds on her breasts. He licked his lips and then stuck out his tongue to run the point of it over the tip, lapping back for a second time to consume the whole areola.

Buffy moaned as a bolt of desire zapped her to her core, and her hips were on the move again, quickly regaining speed and power until the gentle sucking on her nipple became a bite, elevating in pain as the tempo of thrusting increased. She cried out in mingled pain and pleasure as the cock inside her hit places she’d only ever read about and the teeth in her breast went from blunt to sharp, and then the drawn blood that overflowed in his mouth and coated the milky plain in bright, thin rivulets.

Rapid pulsing started Buffy on that quick train toward release and she gave in to the sensations swarming her higher senses. Faster and faster she sought it, her nails digging in to Spike’s shoulders as she reached for that elusive end, tipping a little closer to it when Spike threw back his head and burned her with the amber heat of his demon eyes. It held out for a little longer, making her work hard to find the spot, the moment that would say she’d won—that she’d earned her place in a blissful come down. Her pussy gave in to a small fluttering and then it was over, Buffy launching herself at Spike’s mouth to claim every last drop of love he could give her before his evil nature kicked in and he started the round of hurt.

He consumed her lips, roughly sucked the bottom into his mouth and then teased her with his tongue. Buffy wanted to be so far inside him that she’d lose her way out, but then he was pulling back and biting her again, making her look like a human chew toy and it was something that didn’t embarrass her in the slightest.

His fangs pierced her throat, slashing into the Master’s marks and infusing her with even more mystical power than the old one had by causing her death. Buffy grasped his head and willingly gave in to the influx of feeling and strength that flooded her senses, working his cock and continuing her climax as long as he would let her. She was beginning to calm, her body slowing its frantic sway as Spike announced his moment with a growl, blood coating his lips as he jerked several times, releasing his come deep inside her.

The minutes ticked by too fast and Buffy realised in panic that this was when it would all go wrong. She’d just experienced the most amazing moment in her life and as all things Sunnydale, right about now he’d stand and throw her off him, call her some choice names and tell her she was worthless. Not that she’d believe it this time. Not with all the memorising she’d done with painstaking attention to detail. Like how he’d looked at her in complete wonder when she’d stopped moving and milked him with her muscles instead. How he lavished her breasts with loving attention when he could have been using his fingers to bruise her instead.

Not when she’d received a sweet kiss on sensitive lips after they’d both stopped breathing hard.

He looked shocked when he pulled away, like he’d surprised himself by doing it that one last time, and not when they were on the brink from a lust burnout.

The confidence she’d felt earlier in her nakedness waned and Buffy quickly stood, groaning as Spike’s cock slid out of her and she felt the cool trails of come coat her inner thigh. She ignored it, dressing fast and without looking at Spike while a blush burned her cheeks flaming red.

He stood with a lithe grace she’d expect from a predator, a man used to slinking in shadows and snaring his most resistant prey. His eyes never left her, wondering all the while why the anger he’d used to bring him to this town had fizzled out the second he’d found himself buried nine inches deep into her welcoming body.

“There’s a prophecy,” he confided, watching her carefully for any telltale flinch or signs of disgust. Her valley girl eye roll did little to fill him in, and Spike was disappointed and still confused.

“Figures,” she said with a sad, little smile. “When isn’t there?”

The moment was over and it was kind of disappointing. She’d hoped it would end without the attack on her heart, but finding out everything she’d just shared was because of a prophecy made Buffy feel like she had no control over her own life.

Spike dressed without taking his eyes off her, wondering at the droop of her shoulders and his sudden desire to comfort her. His brains had obviously leaked out of his ears for the time being and he didn’t know what he was thinking about, let alone doing. All he knew for sure was that he needed to leave, get out of there with his dignity and Big Bad intact.

Buffy looked down at the floor once he was dressed—without his torn tee, which pissed him off in an extremely irrational way.

“Go ask your watcher, pet. I’m almost completely in the dark, but I know enough.” Concentrating on tightening his belt and congratulating his ability to thread it through all the appropriate loops, Spike wondered how she’d take that—and how she’d take all that they’d done this night some time in the future.

Hesitating for another second, Spike found that he was waiting for her to speak—just the parting of her lips even to say his name. Making a decision, Spike strode close to her and banished some of her fears with a sweet, yet demanding kiss. It felt like a promise and Buffy clung to that, even if her brain was telling her that was wrong.

Before she could register the deprivation of his lips, he was gone, his coat barely a slap on the doorway as he practically flew past. Buffy sunk to the floor, drawing her knees up as she stared at the place he’d last been. When had her life become such a farce? Such a Soap Opera? She sure didn’t know, and in between the belated shaking of her body and the hysterics building up to attack her, she made a decision.

It was high time she find out.

Many thanks to Holly, Schez and Slackerace for the wonderful beta job and a special thank you to BSB for the advice to update my summary!

Chapter Seven

Angel jolted awake, shivering.

Alcohol had never affected him harshly before—not even when he was human. He’d woken with a splitting headache more times than he cared to remember, but not with his body shuddering with chills and reverberating with the shock.

He slept with the nightmare of his death chasing him into every corner, laughing as he disintegrated again and again. And every time that consciousness slammed into him, the grave realisation that his hours were numbered sunk even deeper into his psyche. He didn’t want to give that vision credence—didn’t want to believe it held any truth, though the part where Buffy allowed Spike to bury himself deep between her legs was more than enough to show his world had shot way past Hell on its way to oblivion.

Morning was still several hours off and Angel clung to the shroud of darkness that reassured him and kept him calm, even against the cracking thunder of a building storm outside. It was funny, in a really foreboding way. Until he focused on the shimmering white ghost of a dress worn by Dru as she stood in the corner of his room, illuminated in stark, terrifying flashes as lightening threw bursts of light through his window.

Angel gasped.

Dru being strange wasn’t anything new and he shouldn’t really be surprised to see her here after her confusing entrance at Willy’s earlier, but the shock of her appearance seemed more sinister and more evil than anything he’d had to witness since regaining his soul—the first time. The second hadn’t given him time to acclimate before he was facing down the terrors of a place he would eventually end up, just for being the kind of creature he was.

She looked ethereal, beautiful in a haunting way, and yet the look on her face was enough to terrorise him into fits of hysteria. She took one step toward him and Angel shrank back in his bed, recognising for the first time—as a supernatural being—the horror of having a monster in your cupboard.

The storm raged outside and another opportune streak of lightening illuminated his room, as well as the pale, vamped face of his insane childe.

“Dru?” His insides were gripped with a tripling of unknown terror as she took another slow step forward.

“It’s time,” she said, drifting toward him as if on nothing but a current of air. The sway of her body mesmerised him almost instantly and Angel felt himself relax and tune out the elements around him in favour of concentrating on Dru. The words piqued a swelling curiosity and Angel found the question tumbling from his lips without being aware that his brain had even processed it.

“Time for what?” There was no wary hesitation in his voice, just a cool wish to be informed about something he apparently was clueless about. All the fear at seeing a ghost-like figure in his presence was artificially gone as Dru continued her hypnotic dance, channelling the soothing effects of the rain beating down on the roof.

“Time to be new,” she confided, her voice calm and more authoritative than it had ever been before. And layered behind the vocalisation were meanings that Angel didn’t have to have voiced out loud to understand. Hidden explanations bombarded him in an attempt to allay his fears. He just knew if Dru stopped moving and he was back to the shocked vampire who’d woken amidst an angry storm to find his sanity-challenged childe in his bedroom, he wasn’t going to take it well. In fact, he could quite easily commence screaming like one of the little girls he’d often scared to death before he’d ripped their tiny throats out.

“I don’t want to be new. I want to stay exactly as I am.” The part of Angel that was locked inside himself was horrified as Dru stepped closer, her sombre expression belying the excitement twinkling in the depths of her eyes.

“It’s time to let go of who you are. Don’t you want to be free, my Angel?” She was so close now, close enough that he could see her clearly without the aid of an impromptu lighting strike, even though he was rather wishing for one to shoot through his window and fry him on the spot. Being scorched by the elements was starting to look a whole lot more preferable to standing here and taking Dru’s crazy talk seriously.

Her meaning hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes and Angel blinked at the imagined impact. His demon sprung to attention and leaned toward her, eager to hear what offer she could lay on the table that would gain for him respite from the ravages of guilt.

She smiled sadly before a word could even fall from his lips.

“Daddy sees freedom in monochrome, but Princess sees it in all the colours of the rainbow. You’ll see. Just trust in me and you’ll see all the streamers and balloons you could ever wish to.”

Those words were not the ones that convinced him. Dru asking him to trust her brought back too many memories of near capture and ridiculous close calls that Angel shuddered just to think of. It was also enough of a warning for him to wrench the last part of himself that she’d held with a death grip away from her influence and take a much desired step back.

Shaking his head violently to totally dispel the magic Dru had subdued him with, Angel grit his teeth and waited. Since when did Dru know more than parlour tricks and the lightest, most useless hocus pocus ever invented?

“Dru, you know what? I’m pretty okay with having a soul. I’d kind of prefer it if you didn’t try and muck around with things you don’t really understand, and don’t presume to know what this kind of life means to me. I’m happy having a soul—not perfectly happy mind you, because that would be…bad.” His brow crinkled at how unfair that was. After a hundred years of offering penance, couldn’t he be a little bit happy now? Just for like, half an hour each day?

“I will make you what you were born to be. There is no other choice.” There was no more commiseration with his confusion left, just pure determination as she stepped closer again and gently bestowed a goodbye kiss on the corner of his mouth.

Her smile seemed nostalgic, in that ‘it-was-good-to-know-you’ way, and Angel felt panic explode inside his body. Too late he realised she’d backed him against his own wall, and too late did he remember he was a vampire and could easily toss her away or glide to safety over the bed and out the door.

Too late as she withdrew a wicked and gleaming sacrificial dagger and stabbed it deep in his gut.

“Oh fu—” Angel screamed at the pain, only having seconds to wonder if he should be happy it wasn’t a freaking sword again, and he could feel his own body dusting as he still managed thought. He imagined it like in the mirror, each part of him flaking away until finally only his face remained, and then even it became…

Dru stared at the little hill of her dusted sire in shock.

Right up to this moment her confidence had never wavered; she’d never questioned the voice in her head that had planned and plotted and then waited for the moment to begin the change. She’d implanted the image of his annihilation in Angel’s head and yet she’d never watched it herself—had never prepared herself for seeing the destruction of the one who’d shared his blood with her, nor expected the screaming pain the severing of their connection was to create.

Dru whimpered as she fell to her knees, dropping the knife in his remains as the wailing tore through her reed thin body in a rapid fight for release. Shaking her head in denial, she desperately tried to block out the voice that was begging her to be strong—to go through with the plan so they could be with each other again.

Grief rocked her and Dru collapsed, coating herself in the dirty remnants of her sire. The voice grew louder, harsher and angry as she lost her focus and was crippled with loss. As her mind grew weak, the demon surpassed its usual level of strength and forced her to pick up the dagger, and while eyes shot wide in terror, the blade slashed down her arm, slicing her open violently enough to make the blood flow fast and strong.

Dru screamed, her head aching and her body weakening as she struggled to stand, finally dropping the dagger again as it lost its seductive lure. The squeal of wind entered through a window that slammed open and Dru began wailing anew, ashes and dust rising around her so thick she began to choke.

The pain that whipped through her was enormous, making her stolen blood hot and rushing rapidly through her body. Her muscles stretched and contracted excruciatingly as Dru clawed and bit at each new spot the pain visited. At once she was surrounded by the destroyed leftovers of her sire and she wailed at her mistake, wanting him back with every remaining coherent thought in her head.

There was no time to wonder what she’d done, and whether she’d been manipulated by something darker than herself. Instinctively she knew there was nothing that could stop this from continuing and so she allowed the tears to rain down on her cheeks, allowed the cries to erupt from her throat. She allowed herself the hatred that bubbled and boiled under the surface, never suspecting it was part of the process. That the emotion was the final ingredient to remake them both into what they were always destined to be.

Dru fell to her side, whimpering miserably against the tearing pain she could no longer bear. It ripped her apart and then sewed her shut again, mending fragments of her brain that often skipped several beats before it had anything constructive to say. The colours twirled around her head and she watched them drunkenly, then projected a blood-curdling scream into the violent, stormy night as they formed into a blinding white light and forced its way through her chest.

The tormented vampire’s mouth hung open, the gaping hole in her chest charred and splintering as tiny particles of her body disintegrated and merged with her Angel. Piece by piece of her fell away until all that was left was thought, and then Drusilla, childe of Angelus, sire of William the Bloody, of the long and prosperous line of Aurelius, was gone.

Time ticked slowly into a full minute as silence and awe raged in the bedroom, the wind knocking tree branches against the window evidence that not all had fallen in the world. The mystery was barely beginning to be counted when a sudden whir of life collected the dust and tossed it viciously into the air.

There was fury in the reconstruction, busy Powers forcing together what should never have been taken apart. But still, the hand was loving in its attention to detail, and a smile was bestowed as creation came to life. The dusted vampire tornado lost its anger as particles disappeared from the swirl, and eventually it left behind two half-humans, naked and breathing deeply on a cold stone floor.

Although their hearts beat slower than was normal, and despite the cold blood flowing through their veins, they lived. And were dead. Vampires made anew, ensouled, yet still deadly and powerful.

And so it began—as one race was reaching an end, as evolution was always want to do, another began.

The natural order was scrambled once more.

“There’s a prophecy.”

Those words had run on repeat in her head until Buffy had finally forced herself to go to Giles. At first she’d been afraid of what the prophecy might reveal, but if she didn’t find out what Spike was talking about, her head might explode.

Covering her neck with an attractive turtleneck and making sure every other part of her was concealed with several layers of clothing, she made her way to the school library, confident that all bases were taken care of just in case anyone she knew had x-ray vision and could see the bite marks that littered her flesh.

Other than making sure no one else got the visual of what she and Spike had been up to, Buffy was stubbornly banishing the majority of the event from her mind. She was focused on the prophecy revelation, rather than on how blue his eyes were when he was up super close, or how nimble his tongue was when he was even closer. Thinking of her weakness could only lead to more badness, and badness was something Buffy was more than happy to cut back on for the moment. It wouldn’t do to be distracted by physical pleasures when there was a Hellmouth to protect. And a boyfriend she had to make sure kept his soul.

Not that that would be a problem. As avoidy as she was being regarding her decadent night in another vampire’s arms, Buffy was finding it difficult to quell the butterflies that began whipping up a gale in her belly with their fragile-thin wings whenever a bite mark was touched, or when the traitorous part of herself reminded her of the sensory pleasures he was capable of giving her. She’d done things, many, many things that made it impossible to think of Angel without experiencing some kind of strong guilt, paralleling with an equally strong yearning to do it all over again with Spike.

She should be disgusted with herself.

She should be horrified that she’d allowed herself to get so carried away with an evil vampire—and one who was obviously furious with her and wanted to feel her blood run like a river down his throat—but she wasn’t. She wasn’t feeling anything she should, and that worried Buffy to no end. That was a whole load of worry that she needed to unload on her watcher at the earliest opportunity, and yet having to give him the background was more than enough to make her wait.

She’d run out of time.

Last night had been weird. After Spike had left, Buffy spent the entire day contemplating the best way to break the news to Giles and how to ask him to look up some freaky prophecy that could possibly be twisted enough to explain to her how she’d ended up having the most amazing sex with a vampire that wasn’t Angel. And not just that it wasn’t Angel, but a vampire-not-Angel that didn’t even have a soul.

Was that the kind of Slayer she was now? Did sleeping with Spike open up a future that she’d been unaware of? Was he the start of the era of Buffy the super vampire slut? Flash a fang and she’d so be your girl for the night? Not only was that possibility scary, but it was dangerous.

Maybe sleeping with Spike was some really bad portent to a cosmic joke. What if the sky was about to fall in because she’d allowed Spike to fall into her? Or worse yet, what if it meant nothing at all? What if it had just been her—Buffy—and her lusty feelings guiding her into the most obscene and tacky union since Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee?

Shuddering in shock, Buffy almost ran the rest of the way to the school. She was so postponing the major freak-out session that was bubbling furiously inside her.

The slayer was panting by the time she slammed open the library doors and immediately located Giles.

“Giles, I’ve got a research project for you.” Buffy stopped abruptly at his raised brow and the heavy, leather-bound book he indicated was already in his hands.

“Would it be for a prophecy that Spike would seem ridiculously certain is about him?” he asked dryly.

Buffy blanched at the reminder that her number one enemy was in town and that she had details about him that she’d rather die than reveal.

“He didn’t get that far with the explanation,” she partially confirmed, suffering an unwanted blush at the all-too-ready re-run of how she’d come by the little amount of information she had.

“Oh?” Giles asked hopefully. “Do tell me you managed to finally dust him and I can be the one to inform the Council?”

The idea of Spike being dust stopped her cold in her tracks and Buffy suffered an aching chill jetting through her body and squeezing painfully her heart. She had to fight hard against the urge to hurt Giles for making light of the possibility and for suggesting that she’d been responsible for it had it happened. It was against every rational instinct she’d ever had, but the thought of Spike suffering was a torment she’d never expected to feel.

“No.” It felt like a punch to the gut to say it out loud, that she was compromising his continued safety by admitting he was still walking and snarking around the Hellmouth. Buffy crossed her arms around herself as if she was chilled and tried hard to shake off the weirdness that wouldn’t let go. The weirdness that was continued with her conflicting feelings for Angel and the images that had been shown her in her dream.

“Um, last night…I kind of had one of those crazy, not-with-the-sense-making slayer dreams. It was about Angel and Drusilla, and they were surrounded by this huge crowd of vamps. They were all screaming and clutching their heads, some shouting ‘traitor’ while Angel crumbled into dust, and then Dru...” She fluttered her hands in an imitation of dust sprinkling the breeze and then shot a filthy glare at Giles’s sudden jolt to his feet and the happy smile that sprung to his lips. “They rose again. I’m not sure what they were, but all the vamps were suddenly not there anymore escept for Dru and Angel…and they kind of felt different. I’m not sure how, but I know something unexplainable seemed to happen to them.”

Giles stood confused before slowly sinking back into his seat, quickly re-reading a passage in his book and peering up at Buffy with a look of shock. “The first and last wall of Aurelius crumbles to dust. Extraordinary. And they rose again, you say? My lord, how fascinating. There’s nothing here to explain that or to even indicate what is to come. Nothing to serve as a warning as to whether Angel might become dangerous once again or rather, retain his soul.”

Buffy’s face reflected her complete lack of comprehension about what he was talking about. Instead of attempting to follow his rambling illogic, she chose to look bemused at the number of expressions that flitted rapidly across his face, seemingly ending with a tidal wave of despair. His clenched fist came crashing down on the tabletop with a muted thud, but it was hard enough that it made a tea cup bounce.

“I’ve been so incredibly stupid,” he scolded himself. “The first wall of Aurelius must indeed be Angel. With The Master and Darla both gone, Angel would have stepped up in the hierarchy, and is in all likelihood the current head of the line. Who knows how many of the Order are scattered around the globe? But then again, if the prophecy speaks of the first wall crumbling due to your union with another, then, of course, it can’t be Angel. Oh Lord, I do hope I haven’t allowed the contents of the prophecy to fall into the hands of evil by seeking Angel’s advice.” The possibility of having handed valuable information over to someone that could have easily become the enemy was both alarming and devastating for the watcher.

“Okay, once more for those of us who don’t know a thing about what you’re talking about. A union with the who now?” Buffy flinched at Giles’s miserable look of attrition and stepped back before he decided to get too hands on with the apology.

“I-I’m dreadfully sorry, Buffy. I’ve been terribly remiss. Sit down, you must read the prophecy for yourself. The first section I am sure you will find to be rather straightforward.”

Buffy did as asked and glanced through the surprisingly English passage. “Whoa, did these guys finally get with a clue and write something about the slayer that she might actually have a chance at reading and understanding?” Brows crossed in determination, Buffy concentrated on the words and tried to decipher what the ‘straightforward’ bit at least should be telling her.

“Huh,” she said after several minutes of silence. “First time I ever thought of dying as a fast track to hope.”

Giles smiled at her encouragingly but Buffy just shrugged her shoulders. No way was she going to leave herself open on this one. She wanted the skinny from Giles himself before she decided on how to feel about this—because having feelings on any of it—one way or the other—was scaring her silly.

“Y-yes, that is perhaps rather an unfortunate turn of phrase, though I would hope in the long term you might see it that way.” At her blank, unreceptive stare, Giles cleared his throat awkwardly and chose to continue. “The second part is what I think, on further reflection, might be where Spike believes himself to come into play.”

Eyes widening in panic, Buffy darted another glance over the passage and released a long held breath. Play? Spike had come here all along to play with her? And his definition of playing needed one hell of a lot of work. “Okay, correct me if I’m wrong, but why do I always attract the freaky, scary prophecies? Why can’t I have one that says, ‘Today the chosen one will eat toast?’ I mean, what’s with all the ‘she will die,’ and ‘she will hook up and get nasty with a vampire that would rather see her dead but who is destined to give up his evil ways to help her kill sorrow?’ And what the hell is sorrow anyway?”

Giles preened at the question, garnering up his official watcher persona so that he could dispense the information with a side dish of nauseating high brow tweediness.

“There was one about your eating habits actually, but I thought it beneath our notice and didn’t bother you with it. Should I have?” He struggled with hiding a grin as Buffy threw a wadded-up napkin at him, then forced himself back to business.

“Sorrow is actually the official term given to the vampire curse as an evolutionary race. At the dawn of time when the first vampire begot the next, and the Council was born, it was considered that the spread of demons was a plague, and being rather more creative than I would have given them credit, they called it Sorrow.”

Buffy considered it and smiled sadly. “It’s kind of pretty, in a really morbid way.”

“Yes,” agreed Giles. “I’ve always believed so. Still, it isn’t spoken of these days and the term has fallen into relative obscurity, so I’m not surprised you hadn’t heard of it. As for why you? I’ve no idea, other than that you are undoubtedly particularly special.”

Buffy blushed, flattered by the unusual compliment, even if it was basically an excuse to explain why she drew the short straw in attracting the paranormal life-changing events. “So, if I’m interpreting this right, me and some other lucky personality-crisis vamp are going to wipe out vampires for good? Which, while really big with the ewwww—” And she was still actively ignoring the iggly bits in her belly telling her that Spike was quite far from revolting, “—has to be a good, right?”

“Yes, Buffy. That’s how I’ve read it also.” He waited as more of the passage became clear to her.

“Hold on a second, I have kids? And then someone wipes them out? No way!”

Giles rushed on, afraid that Buffy would be too easily distracted with the impulse to do damage to someone or something over words she’d misinterpreted. “No. I’m quite certain it is implying that alongside this other creature, you will be eternal. That your offspring and their descendents will populate the earth—along with yourselves—for a rather long time to come.”

Shock bolted through her. Descendents meant babies, meant sex, meant Spike was somehow going to knock her up and start up their very own family line. Buffy felt weak at the thought, overwhelmed by how incredibly out of synch her world was with the big one that she lived in. Her mouth felt dry, her heart was thudding and jumping painfully in her chest and Buffy felt like she was going to faint. No, she was totally blocking out the babies-with-Spike concept. It had no access to her mind right now—not if she was going to retain her sanity until this weirdness abated.

Giles had never seen eyes quite so wide as Buffy’s as she stared at him in shock. “By eternal, you mean immortal, right? Like, I’m not going to go up against the Mayor or the next big bad and bite the big one at the defining moment?” There was wary celebration already going on inside, but Giles could see that Buffy hadn’t yet given herself permission to really grasp the reality. Or to relish what it would mean for her future.

The slayer shuddered visibly before abruptly pushing herself from the table and commenced pacing. “You know, they really should give a slayer some warning about all these freaky prophecies that fool around with an already too-eventful existence.” Blinking rapidly, Buffy refused to give in to the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her, knowing that maybe she’d reached that point where things became too much.

It was difficult, but Buffy pushed back the urge to panic and instead concentrated on her slayer-head—the one that was cool and focused. Breathing deeply, she drew in all her power and concentrated. Something, some latent, sleepy piece of the puzzle niggled in her brain and Buffy slowly moved back to the table and re-read the words that were supposed to shape her life. And there it was. The one word that had miraculously remained invisible in terms of the other, supposedly more startling revelations of the prophecy.

“Ahh, Giles? This says that Spike and I—that’s if Spike’s the vamp that lost his way and I am so not discussing the possible babies thing with you—it says that Spike and I will join in battle. Excuse me if I’m way off base here, but shouldn’t there be some tiny, incy wincy little bit of concern about what the hell I’m supposed to be fighting? The last time Spike and I fought together—and that was a totally lop-sided arrangement if ever there was one—it was pretty much with the world-changing. Acathla was going to bring Hell on earth. Wouldn’t the fight that is supposed to wipe out a plague of demons and join a slayer to a vampire be kind of…well…big?”

Giles gaped at her, floored that he’d read this passage umpteen times and missed the relevance of what Buffy was pointing out. It was his job to prepare her for battle, and with even the blatant use of the word, he’d been blind. But then he hung his head miserably, afraid to admit that there were no clues to help him discover who—or what, exactly—they would have to fight.

“I-I apologise, Buffy. I should have been…” He tapered off, completely at a loss as to why he’d not explored this part of the prophecy. There was sadness at his obvious failure, but also fear of the unknown. Everything was already so uncertain, with slayer-dreams and Spike into the mix that he had to draw on every skill he had at organisation to properly focus on each issue. Well, the ones he hadn’t missed.

“We can’t always be perfect, Giles,” Buffy admitted, though the slow smile on her lips showed how much she thought he had been. “Don’t sweat it. I’m sure the mystery will unfold right before we’re scheduled to die.” She was grinning now, giving him permission to relax and acknowledge how they always scraped through.

Giles nodded gratefully, even though he was no closer to resolving the issue of Spike. “Buffy, I still think the situation with Spike is volatile. Perhaps it would be wise if you try and avoid him as best you can.”

The slayer rolled her eyes. “Oh absolutely,” she deadpanned. “Because the last two times I totally sought him out.”

Reading the prophetic passage still hadn’t helped her sort any of this out. Why Spike? What on earth inspired the Powers to play matchmaker and hook her up with Spike? She couldn’t deny there was sparkage—pretty spectacular sparkage if she was honest. But that didn’t even begin to go far enough in explaining to her why her life had been hit completely out of the ball park on a vamp like Spike.

That short burst of thinking about him made a warm, aching burn spread from her belly out and Buffy couldn’t deny how easily he’d made her body want to connect again with his flesh. This longing was much more powerful than she would have expected without the complication of love. They didn’t know each other—didn’t even like each other—and Buffy couldn’t see how it was possible for that emotion to develop between them. Not when she’d given her heart to Angel. Not when she believed there would be no one else but the souled vampire to make her heart beat loudly for another.

She didn’t want to admit that that rhythm had already faltered.

“I’ll try not to run into Spike,” Buffy promised, already knowing she’d have no success with that. There was something inherent in her understanding of him now that made her know the kind of vampire he was. Either he was confused by what had happened between them and was allowing the intrigue of the prophecy to guide his hand, or he was so furious he’d want her dead on the spot.

Buffy shivered before nodding and leaving the quiet library to begin her nightly patrol. If she was lucky the Powers would be looking out for her for once and keep Spike away from her, at least for tonight.

Not that she was ever lucky.

Spike was waiting for her outside the school, and while she was risking everything by turning her back on him, Buffy walked toward the first patrol ground of the night and tried to ignore how hard she trembled. Spike kept pace behind her and Buffy could almost hear the flaring of his nostrils as his anger grew.

“What did the watcher say?” he demanded at last, having dogged her heels for a full five minutes while he puffed furiously around his cigarette. “What’s the bleeding verdict about yours truly?”

She stopped at that. Anyone would think from his tone that she had all the answers. That he had a bigger right to be pissed at the world than she did, because it was everyday a slayer got the neato chance to hook up with evil incarnate. The desire to tear someone’s head off for playing Chinese Checkers with her life once again was almost overwhelming and Buffy whirled on Spike with her fists raised, her chest heaving with building fury.

“You wanna verdict so bad, Spike? Just come right on over here and I’ll give you one. It’s kinda final, though.” She shrugged noncommittally, even though she was screaming inside. “Just thought I’d warn ya.” She stared him down, a complete picture of cool, calm determination, but she flinched when he threw his butt into the grass and ground it out with his boot.

“You listen to me, you self-righteous bint. I came here to kill you, but I’m going to lay off till this prophecy bollocks is sorted, yeah? Then it’s gloves off and we’ll finally get to resolve this bizarre relationship we have. Now, nobody is handing me anything about this supposed destiny and as it affects you as well, I had thought you’d be reasonable and share. So shove the threats and get on with it, or I’ll shag you till you have a reason for not talking.” His smirk was pure sin and Buffy felt herself falling into a gaping hole of nothingness, her eyes wide and shocked at the startling effect he had on her.

No words came to help her out and feeling her gut clench against turning her back on a dangerous and furious vampire, she did it anyway. She hurried off hoping that Spike would get the message, even if it was a pipe dream.

“Are you completely bloody whacked?” Spike grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him, his lip twisting in barely repressed rage. “I was talking to you. Don’t these wankers teach you any manners at this school of yours?”

She shook him off with a defensive shrug and then gasped at the vision she caught in the distance behind Spike.

“Okay, crash course? There’s a huge, monumental battle. And I could be mistaken,” she rushed, her voice squeaky as she grabbed his arm and began to pull him along with her, “but I have a feeling the crowd of obviously pissed vamps bearing down on us right now could possibly be it.” That was it. Buffy started running. No way did she want to be caught out in the open with nothing at her back but open ground. Getting surrounded by a frighteningly large group of vamps was really low on her plans for the night.

Spike allowed the slayer to tug him along with her, more or less. When she stopped and looked wildly around her for somewhere that didn’t leave her with her back uncovered, he swung his head to get a look at their pursuers. He whistled at the size of the army advancing with amazing speed, fangs descended and ridges prominent as they snarled their demonic threats. The ground thundered under their feet and he even felt the vicious, collective snarling vibrate through his body as well as ring in his ears.

The familiarity of family didn’t hit him until the first row had rushed the slayer. Brow creased with curiosity, Spike watched as his long-believed enemy was faced with certain death.

“I’m not happy ‘bout being in good ole Sunnyhell again, Slayer,” he called out causally.

Her face was already bruised and there was blood dripping down her cheek. “’Kay,” she gasped out, trying to dodge too many fists and using as many of her limbs to do as much damage as she could.

“And I’m rightly pissed off about the shagging, too.”

The action stalled for a second, more than a few of his kin staring at him in open-mouthed horror. It allowed Buffy a precious advantage and she seized it, dusting three vamps before they were crushing her with their power once again.

She spat out a mouthful of blood as she copped another fist in the jaw, bouncing against a vampire that had wiggled in behind her. “Gotcha,” she replied with a wet, reddened smile of sadness.

Her arms were clamped behind her back and Spike almost lost sight of her as the swarm of vamps he now recognised as Aurelian surrounded her and pushed him out of the way.

Spike staggered unsteadily before he raised his head, amber eyes glowing feral in the dark. No one pushed him out of the way. With a bloodcurdling roar, he jumped into the fray, tearing heads off bodies as he went. The noise was deafening, at least fifty vampires furious over the interruption of their plan to tear the slayer apart, bit by bit.

While he’d been slow to act, now the urgency to save Buffy ripped his insides until he was howling in desperation. He threw the last off her and dragged her to her feet and together they stood back-to-back. Buffy was weak on her feet, but she somehow had managed to retain a grip on her stake. Bloodied fingers reached into her jacket and she retrieved another, passing it lightning fast to Spike as the offensive wall of Aurelians descended on them once again.

Together they jabbed and swung, punched and staked anything that came near them…until sweat slid down her back in a parallel trail with the blood and her heartbeat skipped occasionally with strain.

After fighting desperately for five minutes, Buffy noticed that she didn’t have to stab with her stake quite so hard. She watched stunned expressions of accusation when a touch was all it took to turn the enemy to dust. And another five minutes saw the two blondes just standing silent, eyes wide with amazement, arms in an unthreatening position at their sides as clouds of destroyed vampires spun in the gentle breeze before settling on the ground.

The quiet stretched, Buffy turning to Spike with a questioning look in her eyes. He shrugged, his own expression one of surprise and confusion.

“And the Order of Aurelius is no more.” Dru whispered sadly as she and Angel materialised from beyond the dust, hands joined while they looked on the devastation with something resembling sadness and regret.

“Bollocks,” Spike spat, glaring at them while they flaunted their closeness in his face once again. “I see three of us right here.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared the pair down defiantly.

A coughing and wheezing Giles barged through the pair then, gasping for air as he leaned forward and choked on the high piles of vampire ash.

“Bu-Buffy, are you quite alright?”

Buffy stepped forward, ignoring the pain she felt at closeness of her boyfriend with another, and gave her watcher an indignant look. Her clothing barely made her decent to be in public and she had many wounds draining her of energy.

“I’ll live,” she compromised. There was no point stating the obvious, that a stiff breeze was all that was holding her up—as well as Spike’s body against her side.

Giles nodded in understanding, and then he bravely stood tall, his face reddened from the burst of exercise and the news he’d intended to impart but which now seemed far too late. “Spike, I’m afraid you are quite mistaken. There are no longer any Aurelian vampires in existence. The line is now extinct.”

There was a hush of disbelief, and then Spike was laughing uproariously, a mean glint in his eye as he bore down on the delusional watcher. “I don’t know what you’ve been smokin’, mate, but you’re off your bleeding tree. I’ve got eyes and they aren’t deficient.”

“He’s telling the truth, Spike.” Angel witnessed the flared nostrils, the shining malice in the bright blue eyes of his grandchilde, and waited for Spike to use his other senses. He accurately guessed the second Spike noticed the heartbeat he now shared with Drusilla, the altered scent that their union gave off. He had hardly a clue what they were now, but he did fully believe his Aurelian days were behind him. And after seeing the mass eradication of his line in plain sight, he was rather grateful that Dru had come to save him when she did.

Spike gaped in awe at the pair, remaining silent even though he wanted to scream at whoever’s smart idea it was to completely change his world. Before he found the words to express his shock, they’d turned and left, taking the watcher with them. Still reeling, it took Buffy collapsing at his side for him to snap out of the daze and take in how many wounds she sported just in obvious sight.

“Best get you to the hospital, pet. Probably need a pint or ten of blood.”

Spike leant down and picked her up, marvelling at how light she was in his arms as he began the trip to the nearest doctor.

He wasn’t yet ready to consider why he wasn’t diving in to drain her remaining life force. Her body hummed to his as her eyes closed and her head bumped against his chest. There was something here that they didn’t understand. He could feel it thrumming under the surface and he’d be damned if he left without any answers.

There would be no more shutting Spike out. Whatever was going on—whatever had just happened—was way too big for them to expect him to toddle off with his tail between his legs and none the wiser at what he’d stumbled into.

Or what he’d been shoved into.

He deserved the truth, and the only way to get it was to make sure Buffy was all right.

He ignored the pang in his heart that betrayed his own worry for her health. He wasn’t supposed to have a heart. Wasn’t supposed to care about his enemy.

Wasn’t meant to shag her rotten either, and then want more.

It felt almost wrong when he reached the hospital. His arms seemed to have bonded to her frame and it took a major effort to let her slip from his hold. Her face was pale and her gaze glassy when she opened her eyes and saw him at her side. Weakly she reached for his hand, mouthed a ‘thank you’ before surrendering to unconsciousness.

No, he wasn’t meant to want her at all.

Chapter Nine

It was funny the kinds of things a girl would think about while she’s having blood pumped back into her battered body. Buffy lay weakly on the gurney and watched the thin tube convey fresh plasma into her veins and used all her energy to concentrate on the signature of Spike outside the room. She knew why he wouldn’t come in, and while she was glad in her head, her heart ached to see him.

This night had been monumentally strange, and while her tired brain strained for answers, Buffy was almost scared to receive them. The tantalising nature of Giles’s claim was more than enough to get her through the healing process without having a meltdown. Once she was back in tip top shape, though, she had to know the rest of it. Had to know why she was almost toast in the middle of a vampire scrum and why Spike’s decision to fight at her back was what turned the tide. Had to know if this scorching of the vamps into spontaneous dust was a thing that was going to continue or if her one trick pony had now cantered out of town.

Buffy sighed as she felt Spike distance himself. His presence faded and Buffy’s shoulders slumped against the portable bed, making her realise just how tense she’d been. How exactly was she supposed to deal with all of this? Her current existence was not something she would normally recognise, but nothing about it felt off. None of it was screaming ‘mistake’ and she had to take comfort in that, even if that kind of progress meant facing the fact that she’d shared something insanely personal with Spike.

Before she could blink, he was back, standing before her decked out fully in black with his outstretched hand holding a Styrofoam cup of orange juice. “Heard this is what they give you lot when they pinch your blood. Can’t hurt to boost your sugar intake even when it’s being forced back into you.” He looked all boyish and cute as he allowed her to take it from his hand. Sitting up was a struggle, but again he surprised her and reached forward to help, perching himself on the edge of the precarious gurney and holding her steady enough to drain the juice.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re swell?”

He chuckled, his hand heavy as he absently rubbed her back. “Only the once, pet. Annoying bint of a slayer that could barely keep her eyes straight.”

Her head lolled and she thought he’d called her a name, but Buffy was finally winding down from her eventful day and night and she slipped into a healing sleep against Spike’s chest.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

She was walking in a garden, fragrant and beautiful with a multitude of species and colours. Buffy breathed deeply as she slowly wandered further in. This place was a haven; she sensed that and it made her smile. So few places she went were safe and even then they didn’t do a thing about protecting her heart. About guiding her with wisdom toward a love that would complement her rather than drain her energy and power.

“Angelus has moved on, my child. He was never the one for you and we apologise for creating such a circumstance.”

The voice didn’t wig her out like it might have. This place fostered peace and acceptance like no other and in that moment she knew it was otherworldly. Knew that the words here were mired in the truth and that she could believe in them and rest her head from the trauma of trying to work it all out. She knew that whatever revelation she was given here could be trusted.

It was a relief to know. Angel had always been hard work, even though she’d loved him passionately with a teenager’s heart. She’d loved him since she was sixteen and as such, there was no shame in making a mistake. No reason either, to cling to a love that had been ruined the moment he’d welcomed back his soulless persona and killed people she knew.

“Thank you.” Buffy gracefully accepted their apology—whoever they were. Sometimes not everything could be seen in the long distance game of life.

“You have bonded with the true one. Together you will guide and protect the other and fight for the good, eradicating Sorrow until the world is safe again. Together you are immortal, child. Be wise with one another’s hearts.”

Buffy blinked. Okay, so the existence of solitude and safety wasn’t always enough to cancel out the wig factor. “You know,” she started, speaking into the air around her, “I’m really kinda young to be tied down for eternity. Can’t I keep looking for, say, a hundred years or so? Maybe then I can trust my judgement where men are concerned.”

There was no amusement in the voice that replied and Buffy pouted in disappointment.

“Destiny has begun its process. The vampire you have joined with is the only being who will ever understand you and love you for the warrior you are. Reject him and your life will end in two years. Your friends will pull you from your final rest, you will abuse the one who was meant all along for you, and then you will lose him forever as he burns to save your world.” There was an ominous pause and Buffy gulped in shock. “But it is your choice.”

“Oh, so now you get a sense of humour,” she accused, rolling her eyes. “And this alternative future includes Spike too?” Buffy bit her lip as the disembodied voice replied “Yes,” confused and a little relieved that she had some kind of alternative offered to her. Because being dead and then ripped from Heaven by her friends? Really sucked.

“Okay, so the deal is, I don’t love Spike. Sure, he makes my blood hot and he’s kinda sexy in that way he thinks he’s all evil, and he has a kiss that could make a girl forget her name, but I don’t love him.”

Their reply was confident and final.

“You will.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The slayer jerked awake in her bed and groaned. Last night was still kind of fuzzy, but she remembered vaguely waking and realising Spike had left her, but her mom and watcher waited at her bedside to take her home. She’d been tucked into bed with Giles forcing a promise from her that she would show up at the library for a ‘debriefing’ and she’d fallen back into the land of many nods.

And she remembered the dream. Or the message from the ‘Powers That Be.’ Whatever it was, she knew it was a done-deal and surprisingly it didn’t cause her any of the anxiety she’d expected.

Climbing groggily out of her bed, Buffy made her way to the shower and turned the water on full. She needed the sharp needles to pound her in the face just to try and shrug off this weakness that wanted her to deny the past couple of days. But opening her eyes and seeing the muted blue of various bruises and the bite marks on her body forced her back to reality and she slumped against the tile.

It was all true then.

Angel had never really been hers, just an accident that got out of hand while she was meant to be waiting for Spike. The thought of the bleached, semi-evil entity that made her heart pound equally with lust and anger made her chuckle. Her life was already so bizarre, so why would this mismatch surprise her?

Closing her eyes, Buffy allowed herself a guilt-free replay of their encounter the other night. Allowed her skin the freedom of flushing when she recalled how she took him into her mouth, how he felt stretching her body around his hardness, how he made her want to be able to think and talk dirty while he was in her arms.

Yup, there were totally worse things that could happen. Like losing for good the one guy she was promised would ever really understand her. Angel never had; she could see that so clearly now. When he was good he was so righteous—and dishonest. He claimed things about other demons because he didn’t want to believe he’d been incapable. He didn’t want to face his evil side, and while she could understand why, he wasn’t doing himself any favours by lying to himself.

Only now he was something different again. And again with Dru. My how the world turned strange when you didn’t keep a proper eye on it!

It was time, she decided, and so Buffy turned off the water, dried her body and shrugged on some clothes.

It was dark outside and she felt a little disappointed for not having noticed that when she awoke. She’d forgotten her stake, not that she lacked the skill to compromise. Still, it was a shock when she faced her first vampire of the night and as he ran at her, intent on claiming the slayer for his meal, her hand passed straight through his chest as he crumbled to dust.

So, guess that pony had galloped right back to her side. Shaking her head, Buffy looked down at the ground in front of her and quickly walked to the school.

It was a relief to pass through the library doors and see people she knew, people she trusted. A deep sigh shook her frame as she moved toward the research table, ignoring all the eyes that were trained steadfastly on her while she took the remaining seat. Only when she’d done that did she look up and challenge the stairs with a sense of ease—until she’d reached the unfathomable depths of Drusilla’s deep gaze.

“Spike wants to hear it from you alone,” she said and Buffy felt her stomach drop. For some reason she’d believed if Dru and Angel were here, he would be too. The loss of his potential support when she was on display to her watcher and friends was a much harder hit that she would have expected, but slayers passed beyond the discomfort.

“Okay.” She could do that, be alone with Spike. She’d best get used to it if he was her eternal immortal companion.

She kick-started the meeting with a report on her strange vampire encounter, feeling her stress-levels increase as everyone just stared at her.

“So, what you’re saying is, you don’t even have to hit them now? They come running at you and they turn to dust? Whoa, that’s intense.” Xander voiced her uncertainties exactly, and Buffy trembled at the implications. Could it really be that easy to eradicate vampires from the face of the earth? And how come her presence wasn’t making Angel and Dru twitch? And Spike, there was definitely no bursting into flamey dust there.

“I-if I may, I believe your connection with Spike is now, er, complete. I don’t believe you are the slayer anymore. I think you are…something more.” Incredulous silence followed his observation and Buffy wondered how exactly she felt about that. “The prophecy claims that together, you and Spike are a King and Queen.” Giles looked at her with a proud grin and Buffy felt like such a huge impostor. She was far from royalty.

“So I guess Faith gets to be the one and only again, huh?” she joked, not quite feeling it as the insecurity of the new situation hit her.

“Y-yes, and that, on reflection, might actually be good for her.” Giles wasn’t the only one that was hopeful on that front, though Buffy knew the other slayer, the now one and only slayer, was unpredictable. Faith had been jealous of sharing her calling. Now to be usurped? That boded all kinds of bad.

“So what’s Dead Boy and his fruitcake doing here?” Xander prodded, missing the flinch from the brunette pair as he aimed his question at Giles.

“Well, for a start, Angel and Drusilla aren’t actually dead.” Giles squirmed in embarrassment for Xander’s insults and braced himself for the discussion of such a complicated issue.

“Wait, that means they aren’t vampires anymore, right?” Cordelia looked at the couple and rolled her eyes. “Figures. We’re only just getting started with the freaky.”

At least Buffy now knew why they hadn’t been among the dust shadows of their kin last night. And now she understood why they weren’t considered Aurelian anymore. Well, okay, the real understanding would come much later with the in depth explanations, but for now, she’d cope with the knowledge she had.

The talk continued, doing little to clear up matters and much to create more confusion about the unexplainable. When the talk had dried up and the curious stares had become too much, Angel stood and, without a word, left Drusilla in the wary bosom in the library as he wandered away, head bent and a frown furrowing his brow.

Buffy followed him outside, glad for this chance without Drusilla at his side to talk to him, and with a pain in her chest for what had been between them not so long ago but which now seemed all but dead.

“Dru and I are leaving, Buffy.”

That stopped her cold, even though deep down she knew it was the only good option open to them. Her life with Angel was over, and while she hadn’t quite wrapped her head around her new path, she knew it was one to be followed. Yet it didn’t make the goodbyes or the surrendering of residual feelings any easier.

“You have a new destiny now, and we need to find out what we are. What our purpose is in the world. Giles is going to help and we already know we still have the strength of a vampire, but it’s tempered with a permanent soul. And Dru—she seems to have regained her sanity. I have a lot to make up to her.” Angel pinned her with a pleading look for understanding and the remaining part of her heart that had locked him away broke open and set him free.

Buffy nodded, the finality of it making her breath hitch and her heart ache. She was ready for him to be gone, she knew she was, but it didn’t lessen the sadness at seeing him go or the fear of being left alone with Spike. A tear slipped down her cheek and Buffy sniffled.

“I’m scared.” She hadn’t meant to let that escape her mouth, but once he hauled her into his arms she was glad. Angel’s hugs had always engulfed her; overwhelmed her, and right now, it was exactly what she needed to calm the panic about what her life would actually mean once he was gone. “I mean, I’m something different now, and there’s Spike. I don’t love him, Angel.”

He smiled sadly and kissed the top of her head, stepping away from her as Dru slowly descended the school steps toward them.

“You will, Buffy. You’re full of love and Spike? Well, it’s what he does best.”

The brunettes linked arms and walked away, leaving Buffy feeling shell-shocked and needy. He’d said the words spoken to her in her dream, in the garden of truth. Maybe getting to know Spike wouldn’t be so bad. A vision of his naked body flashed in her mind and Buffy smiled slowly.

Maybe it would even be kind of…exciting.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He’d slept the day away and dreamed of a life with Buffy. He’d touched her, talked to her, kissed her and made love to her and through it all, Spike was happy. Deliriously, shockingly, unnaturally happy. He’d woken and immediately shrugged aside his previous desire to introduce her to a plot in the ground and altered it with a house in the suburbs. There’d be children, a fireplace, family and lots and lots of love.

His demon should have been disgusted, but when Spike had tried to seek it out to renew his idea of damage control, he’d found it amazingly silent. He’d vamped with no trouble, so the first suspicion of losing his undead status was put immediately to rest. But he knew he’d changed. His demon had resolved to exist peacefully beside the killer of its kind and had been quiet ever since. Spike found the violence that always hummed in his veins to have lessened and the anger he’d arrived in Sunnydale with to have disappeared entirely.

When night had fallen, he’d sought out Peaches and Dru. His old feelings of antipathy for his sire seemed to have died overnight and he was able to observe them together without reproach and with a good healthy dose of encouragement. He wished them well, hearing their plans to leave both the Hellmouth and Buffy in his capable hands.

He tried to ignore how hard those hands shook. There was a sad detachment between the three of them now, each immersed in their own version of limbo as they clawed at the reasoning for such life-altering changes.

He’d refused to follow them into the school library, feeling like Buffy owed him her presence when explaining how his existence was thrown completely out of whack. The watcher would undoubtedly know more, and he had his doubts Buffy could relay the pertinent information without slicing it up into incomprehensible segments. But, it would mean having Buffy alone, and the overwhelming nature of everything right now made that look a whole lot more appealing that batting off the repulsed and less-than-friendly glares of her friends.

He hadn’t expected this, though. Hadn’t expected to eavesdrop on her cheerios with his brooding ponce of a grandsire. That wasn’t even right anymore. Despite how they’d come into being, they weren’t even related on a demon scale anymore. What he was now was new, fresh, and becoming more besotted with the mystery of Buffy every second he looked at her.

That she hurt over Angel’s proposed departure would once have unleashed a desire to punish her with it, to fling insults at her to weaken the fighter enough to lose against him. Now he just hoped he would be enough for her and that in the end, they’d be all right.

The smile she bestowed on the pair as they walked away from her wasn’t totally pitched in misery and Spike felt hopeful.

He stepped out behind her and felt curious about the nervous fluttering of her pulse as she spun around. Her breathy “Spike” was music to his ears and he let himself smile.

“Hello cutie,” he said, enjoying the blush that heated her cheeks and realising that hope was all they ever had.

And this time it was going to be fine.



The End