As she tossed and turned in her bed, the messy sheets wrapped themselves around her legs and in the end she tossed them off in exasperation.
Sleep… just sleep, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut.
A cool, slim hand touched her shoulder.
Buffy sat up brutally and for a moment she couldn’t see anything around her, only darkness.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
“It’s me, love.”
Spike.
Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him emerge from the shadows. “Spike… You came back.”
He sat on the bed and smiled at her. “Of course I did. You know I would never leave you alone – never.”
He let his fingers glide idly over her ankle, and the memory of all the nights they had spent in each other’s arms came back to her, surfacing easily and spreading out in a delicious warmth all over her. The merest touch from him reminded her of how well he knew her body – had known it from the very first time.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.
He moved his hand up her leg, not answering, and didn’t stop until it was on her waist, kneading her soft skin.
“Don’t talk about that,” he murmured. “I’m alive now that I’m with you.”
“Spike… I couldn’t bear it if you left again,” she said, leaning forward so their foreheads touched.
He pulled her close to him, both arms encircling her wait tightly. She had forgotten how good it was to be pressed against him, and feeling like she didn’t want to escape.
No. She hadn’t forgotten, she had only tried to. It was so easy to let his presence engulf her like it had before.
“I’m have no intention of going anywhere, love,” he said. “Not until you tell me - ”
He paused, his lips lingering over hers, and she arched into him, desperate to feel them, and to finally weld back together what had been broken in two.
“- when you told me you loved me, did you mean it?”
Buffy awoke with a start.
Her room was silent and empty. Outside, the sun was just starting to rise.
Buffy dressed quietly. Dawn wasn’t up yet, it was only six o’clock – she’d leave a note for her, telling her that she’d be back for breakfast.
As she slipped out of her apartment and into the waking streets of Rome, she tried to shake away the remnants of her dream, but they lingered in her mind. Even worse, a part of her mind didn’t want them to go away – it had been so good to feel Spike next to her…
No, not good, she told herself sternly. Only hurtful and unproductive.
He was gone forever now. He had died a noble death and saved them all. He was part of the past, a hero to be celebrated and admired, a glossy, ghostly figure that they raised their glasses to. It had been almost two years.
But somehow, Buffy realized uncomfortably, this just didn’t click in her mind, though the cold, hard fact were in front of her. Spike had always come back – always. He’d died once and outlived himself by decades. Surely those moody lips, that chiselled face, all that wit and anger and seduction couldn’t simply disappear from the face of the earth…
You’re only making this harder on yourself, she thought as she passed next to the Coliseum, its crest gilded with the crisp sunlight of morning. When will you finally move on?
But then there were these dreams… It wasn’t the first time she had woken up, her skin still tingling from Spike’s imaginary touch, her senses on edge, her body longing for him. She knew it was only a trick of her mind, but they felt so very real…
Listen to yourself, you’re raving, she tried to reason, shaking her head. Dreams are just that – dreams.
Buffy was determined to forget all about it. Surely, it would come over time. Besides, she had important things to do, responsibilities to hold. As head trainer of the Slayers, her days were always a blur of activity.
However, that was about to change. She dreaded to going back to California, yet a part of her was also thrilled. Rome was a fine city, and training the Slayers was exciting and terrific, but that wasn’t where she belonged.
Buffy had often thought being alone was the Slayer’s greatest curse. The new Slayers would never know that – they trained together, fought together, squabbled over trifles and cried on each other’s shoulders at night. But she didn’t belong to that generation – sometimes, she preferred acting on her own, and even missed the nights where she would walk alone, spying the shadows, ready for anything that came her way.
It’ll be better for Dawn,she thought, though her little sister seemed anything but pleased that they were leaving. She needs to make friends her age, hang around normal people.
Ten minutes later, Buffy arrived at the Watchers’ Institute. All the future Watchers and their professors lived there, including Giles – it was a veritable temple of intellectual testosterone.
She smiled at the porter and stopped in front of the elegant iron-wrought entrance for a retinal scan. The door clicked open.
Giles’s office was on the ground floor, and she found him sipping his tea at his desk, reading the morning paper, as he usually was when she came to see him before his classes. The rest of the building was entirely quiet – the students weren’t up yet.
“Oh, hello, Buffy,” he said with a smile when he saw her. “I wasn’t expecting your visit so early this morning.”
“I woke up before the alarm, and couldn’t get back to sleep,” she explained, closing the door behind her. “So I decided to pop in – sorry I didn’t bring any doughnuts or other goodies.”
“You know I’m not a fan of anything with so much grease oozing out of it. So, how are things going with the Slayers?”
“Oh, they’re fine,” she said. “Kennedy is a great trainer, and she works really well with Xander – she’s more than ready to take my place. We decided on the new team leaders last night.”
Giles nodded and looked at her affectionately. “I’m sure it’ll be a success. But I will miss you, Buffy – we all will.”
Buffy grinned. “Aw, Giles – you know I’ll miss you all too. But you’ll come visit – you know, if you get a few hours of vacation in a couple of years.”
Her former Watcher laughed. “Yes, and that’s being optimistic. I have good reasons to hope, however, that this is only temporary – we’ll find a way to destroy this artefact soon.”
“Giles, you told me it was dangerous,” Buffy said, frowning slightly. “And I was very flattered when you said only the best of the Slayers could guard it… but what is it, exactly?”
Giles took a sip of tea, then set his cup down and reached for a book in his drawer. “As you know, it’s called the Staff of Ammit, and it’s kept in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum of San Jose. The archaeologists who found it thought it was some sort of ritual object meant to invoke Ammit, the demon of the underworld.” He open the book and handed it to Buffy.
She looked at the photography on the right page – it was a rough wooden stick, carved with hieroglyphs, set with circles of gold on both ends.
“Perhaps they invoked Ammit with a baton-twirling routine.”
“Oh, this has no peculiar invocation power, as Willow could tell you,” Giles said.
“Then why is it dangerous?”
“Well, you see, that crude stick they later carved and decorated with gold to honor their god – our studies revealed that it’s made of a peculiar kind of wood one only finds in Nigeria. Travelers brought it from the heart of Africa to the court of the pharaoh, claiming it had magical powers.”
“Oh God. Not angry-Willow-going-on-a-rampage type of magical powers, I hope?”
“Not exactly. We recently finished translating a papyrus, written by one of pharaoh’s scribes, who claimed he saw what the Staff could do. It only affected women, apparently, and particularly young women – direct contact with the Staff made them go into a trance, speak in unknown languages, and gave them the inhuman strength of, well – a demon.”
“Giles,” Buffy said slowly. “Are you saying that this dried-up piece of wood was actually -”
“One of the Shadow Men’s staff, yes. Full of the essence of the Old Ones they had forced into the First Slayer.”
“So why didn’t the archaeologists destroy it when they found out what it did?”
Giles was thoughtful for a moment. “Several reasons for that. First, it wasn’t very common for women to be on archaeological teams in the nineteen-twenties, or in any circle that could’ve brought one to be in direct contact with the staff. Second, it can only be destroyed by magical means. Willow is working on it, but she hasn’t found the way to do it yet – the power of the Old Ones won’t be easily undone.”
Buffy twisted her mouth, trying to process all this information. “Well, I can understand why you want it destroyed, but… you’re not asking me to guard just because it makes women act like demons, are you?”
“No, indeed,” Giles said gravely. “The scribe wrote that women broke out of the trance and eventually recovered when they were no longer in contact with the Staff. But there’s a far greater danger at stake here – so great it could destroy all that we’ve started to put in place.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“We believe that if it falls in the wrong hands, the Staff would have the power to fill the Slayer with demonic essence completely – and permanently.”
Buffy suppressed a shudder of dread, fully realizing the magnitude of the problem. “But there is no Slayer anymore – there are hundreds of them.”
“I see you understand why this has to be avoided at all costs.”
She stood up and paced the room, unable to stay in place. “Then why don’t you send a squadron of girls over there right now to guard it?”
“We have a small advantage in this situation,” Giles said. “The translation of the papyrus I told you about, as well as the results of our research, have only been revealed to a few people, including you and Willow. We’re pretty certain no demon or vampire knows about the Staff’s powers.”
Buffy nodded. “And having dozens of Slayers guard the San Jose archaeological museum would be like putting up a blinking sign that says, hey, really powerful and dangerous weapon for baddies here!”
“Exactly.” Giles tried to smile at her reassuringly. “That’s why I asked you to take this mission – I know the Staff will be under the best surveillance possible.”
Buffy smiled despite herself. Having him trust her so completely had always been an incredible boost to her confidence. “You’re damn right it will. It’ll be just like the old times – just me and my pointy stick.”
“Actually,” Giles said, a bit embarrassed, "there’s someone else who has a hand in this.”
“If you tell me I have to drag Andrew along, the answer is no.”
“It’s not Andrew, Buffy. It’s Angel.”