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A/N Cheers as always to the fantastic April proof reader extrondinaire

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"Spike." He stiffens at the sound of his name. He just wants to be alone. He's pretty sure he hurt Buffy's feelings earlier when he'd snapped at her to "leave me sodding be, woman!" He hadn't meant to, really; he knew she was trying to help, but at that moment her fussing had been just too much.

"Spike." That voice again. Absolutely the last person on the whole bloody planet he wants to speak to right now. Right at the moment that the last embers of hope are dying in his too oft broken heart, he can think of nothing he'd rather do less than make nice with the son of a bitch responsible for most of the fuck ups in his pathetic excuse for an afterlife.

"What the hell do you want, peaches?" He doesn't turn around as he addresses his grandsire, just keeps staring out of the darkened picture window and nursing his last Marlboro.

Another pack lands in his lap and he can't help but look up at the man standing at his shoulder. "Was in town," Angel explains dismissively. "Figured you'd be nearly out."

It's as close to an apology as he's likely to get, and somehow this awkward olive branch is far more touching than any eloquent display of repentance. "Cheers, mate." He curses the swell of emotion in his chest at the consideration. It seems that with Angel it will always be this way. He can hate the wanker with every fibre of his being, but even that can't stop him craving his affection and approval. Ain't family fantastic?

"Buffy told me what happened." Straight to the point. Humanity hasn't changed the old bastard as much as he'd probably like to think.

"Yeah?" He leans back against the sofa's leather back as Angel sits next to him and regards him with practiced disinterest.

"What will you do?" The sixty four million dollar question. What the hell can he do? Lotta isn't a horse with a broken leg; she can't just be put down. But when she had looked into his eyes and begged for death he'd known that –sane as she was- she had meant it, had wanted it.

"Buggered if I know." No way is he going to talk about this with Angel of all people. "She's not Lotta anymore, I know. But she is as well. You know?" Sod it. He's started now, may as well go the whole hog. Angel might be the right bloke to talk to after all. He is the only person here with even the slightest inkling of what it means to be turned.

"I know." He looks pensive for a moment then shakes his head, his face reflecting deep regret, and he knows what is coming. "Perhaps you should do it. She shouldn't have to live as one of those things."

"Charming." He lets out an offended snort. "Might wanna consider your audience before you start preaching that one, Angelus." He uses the name deliberately to wind Angel up, and takes petty pleasure in the human's almost imperceptible flinch.

"You know I can't," he continues. It's reminiscent of his year in LA, uncomfortable camaraderie interspersed with bitching and quiet moments of complete understanding. "While any part of her is still Lotta, you know I won't."

"I know." He finds himself looking up again as Angel stands. "You'll do the right thing." And he shouldn't be so happy about that tiny sliver of respect, but despite himself, he is.

………………………

"Is that the last of them?" Her voice startles him from his thoughts. He'd been thinking about the slayers, the ex-slayers. He'd been thinking about Carlotta still chained in the basement until they can be certain her reclaimed sanity is permanent. He'd been thinking about Buffy most of all. About her decision to return to active duty, about her self-destructive love for Spike. Even now the temptation to interfere is undeniable. She doesn't think straight where the vampire is concerned. She never has.

He could so easily destroy her. Could so easily turn her love against her. He doesn't worry for the world: if there is one thing he has learned about Buffy, it is that she is steadfast in doing her duty. But he worries for her. She isn't as strong as she appears.

"Earth to Giles." She waves a hand in front of his eyes and grins at his comical start. "Have they all gone?"

"Er, yes." The last of the slayers had left with Faith less than an hour ago, heading north towards the hellmouth.

"And the potential—um, ex-slayers. Whatever." Her expression of annoyance at her own confusion fills him with a familiar feeling of fatherly affection. He loves her so very much, wants so much more for her than Spike could ever give her. But he knows better than to say anything. She's a woman now and her choices are her own. "What's the take-up rate? Anyone sign up for a post slayer life of do-gooding?"

"Er, yes. Remarkable, actually." He can't help but smile proudly at the response from the girls. "Over eighty-five percent have volunteered for further service. Quite extraordinary dedication. I must admit to being quite surprised."

"They're good girls." It's not as trite a statement as it might sound. Her voice holds respect and he knows she feels the same glow of pride in these extraordinary young women.

"What about you, Buffy?" he asks, regretting that he must. "It seems Carlotta has been helped as best we can. There's really no need to maintain this facility any longer. What are your plans?"

"Hellmouth," she shrugs. "I just wanna be sure Spike's okay first. Spike and Carlotta, I mean." She shakes her head and her lips quirk, and he recognises instantly the moment she is about to make an honest statement. "I haven't told Angel yet," she confesses. "It's hard. I don't know how to start."

"The sooner the better I think, Buffy." It's clichéd advice but that doesn't make it less sound. "It'll be harder the longer you leave it. For both of you."

She nods. "Yeah, I know. That doesn't…." She stops mid-sentence and her whole body freezes. Motionless but humming with contained energy, it's amazing that he still finds himself surprised by the intensity of these moments of preternatural alertness.

"Buffy?" he whispers, but she just shakes her head, concentrating hard on some sound or sense that is beyond him.

She turns towards the lobby moments before a loud crash has him spinning around as well. Spike's body lands hard on the floor amidst the shattered glass of the window through which he's just flown.

Demons—Phlengrag, if his memory serves—pour through the shattered window. To the right, more demons—some Reckiv and a handful of Magic Eaters—burst through the open door, their leader dragging an unconscious Angel, whom he tosses at the Slayer's feet.

"The Age of Slayers is ended," it says through a mouth filled with flat, square teeth like crooked tomb stones. "Now let us take our bloody vengeance."

………………………………………

Through the tiny crack in the door, she can see that the fight is not going well. She can make out Buffy, obviously tiring, where she stands back to back with Spike in a circle of snarling demons. They're barely holding their own and the others, for all their bravery, have been of no help. Angel lies motionless against the far wall, blood pooling in his dark hair. She can't wonder now if he's dead or alive; her brain can't begin to process any question so massive with the fight still raging in the centre of the room.

Giles is out, too, slumped on the floor behind Buffy, barely conscious. Xander, gutsy as ever, is still fighting, but he won't last long now that a second demon has focused its attention on him. Kennedy had been fighting alongside him, but she's down now, too, thrown by a single careless backhand to her lover's side.

Willow, perhaps the only one with the power to help, them is no more use than the others. She had tried, had thrown back her head and unleashed the full force of her awesome sorcery on the enemy, but it had done no good. Demons, small and bony with bat wing skin, had stepped up and simply absorbed her power until their bodies crackled with energy and the witch lay motionless at their feet

Her eyes travel back to the melee in the room's centre in time to see her sister taken down by sheer weight of numbers. "Buffy!" Spike's cries, too, are lost as he disappears beneath a tide of demon claws.

There is no one left here with the power to take on this many invaders. No one except… But that's insane—she couldn't do it even if Dawn let her go. There'd still be too many. Spike's agonised cry and Buffy's desperate "No" are enough to make up her mind, and she is flying towards the back stairs.

Carlotta is already struggling against her chains when she arrives, her face a Halloween mask of ridges and fangs. "Release me." She growls the demand through jagged fangs, but then her struggles cease and her eyes turn brown and pleading. "They're hurting him."

There is no time to reconsider the decision. The fight is already lost above them and the key turns easily in the shackle on her right wrist. Before she can move to the left, Carlotta puts two hands on the chain and yanks it free with terrifying force. Then with a growl she is gone up the stairs in a burst of inhuman speed.

…………………….

He is going to die. He's going to die. Again. And she still hasn't told him she loves him. He burst free for a moment but there's so many of them that he is soon swallowed up again just as she is. She can hear his ferocious growling turn pained, even as blunt, jagged claws tear into the flesh of her back and she unleashes her own scream. They're all going to die and there's not a thing she can do about it.

In the chaos and confusion of the battle, it is strange that she has time for so many regrets. Not just Spike and Angel, but everything. She could have been a better sister to Dawn. Perhaps even a better Slayer: all the people she didn't save, all the demons she didn't stop play through her mind in perfect detail. Perhaps she should have forgiven Willow, thanked Xander. Told Giles one more time that he was all the father she'd ever needed.

She feels herself begin to give in, feels the strength beginning to fade from her battered body, and grits her teeth as she calls on every ounce of strength that remains. At least she's going down fighting. Him, too. He always said he would. She hears him growl and a demon lets out a piercing cry of agony. "That's right, baby," she thinks as she manages to snap the neck of one of her attackers. "Let's take some of the bastards with us."

……………………………………

Blood runs into his eyes and he isn't strong enough to raise a hand to wipe it away. What point is there anyway? They're not going to win this one. He'd warned of a backlash once the demon world got wind that the slayer army was no more, but even he hadn't anticipated the sheer weight of numbers in which they have attacked.

He can just see Buffy in front of him, battling valiantly as always. His wonderful girl. He'd called her a miracle once and he still believes it. No watcher—no father—could be prouder. A table shatters under her small body when she is thrown, rag-doll like, against it. She's slow to rise, too slow. She's tiring fast and the vampire is doing no better.

All is lost. After every apocalypse they have faced, the gods and paragons of evil she has defeated, she is to finally be beaten by a vengeful mob. It isn't right, it isn't fitting, and he won't watch it. He closes his eyes, letting the nausea swim over him, and readies himself for the inevitable.

One sound penetrates his semi-conscious mind, clearer than all others. A growl, louder and more savage than the combined snarls of the demon mob. It is chilling in its ferocity and it holds a power that would cow the bravest spirit.

His eyes open with pained foreboding and he sees, through a red veil of blood, a scene that for all its gruesome horror brings with it a glimmer of hope that they may yet survive.

Even in their supernatural world of extraordinary power, she is freakish and terrifying, wielding in easy swings of her arms a savage strength that send her enemies flying, swatting flies. In all the years he has fought the forces of darkness, he has never witnessed a battle so graphic. There is gruesome glee to this mayhem. She is lost in the glory of killing, a fox in the hen house.

Buffy and Spike stand by, motionless, their faces set in twin expressions of fascinated horror as she fills the room with cries of fear and agony. Tearing limbs clean off with short hard jerks or squeezing heads till they break like eggs in her hands and gore oozes out between her slender fingers. Fingers that reach through leather-armoured chests and stomachs to pull the contents free and leave clawed hands clutching hopelessly at spilling guts.

Her hands are implements of gory death, but it is her fangs that she favours. She rips the leader's throat out and spits chunks of his flesh over his crumpled corpse before turning to her next victim, mouth opening wide, impossibly wide, a gaping trap of jagged, blood-stained fangs that in a single bite takes the unfortunate creature's face clean off, leaving it gurgling its agony as it clutches at the ruined mess of blood and cartilage that were once its features.

The rest run. They're not stupid and their leader is dead, their forces destroyed. They run—those that can, those that she has not left crippled and dying amongst the dismembered remains of their comrades.

She watches them go, then turns with menacing slowness to face the exhausted pair of blonds. He cannot see her face from his position on the floor, but he can see theirs. Buffy's eyes are wide with fear, Spike's horrified and disbelieving. He knows both of them well enough that he can guess what they have seen on the lost slayer's demon face. The delicate balancing power of the Rashmack crystal is broken, no match for the bloodlust thrill of the kill. It is the demon, now, that rules in her fractured mind.

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A/N Sorry the chapters have slowed a bit but they are still trickling out so hopefully ypou guy's can bear with me (Ooh look a little punny)

Thanks to the lovely people reviewed namely

Beth, Jen and Cordy kitten who I would thank more fully if I had time for their continued encouragement and a big HELLO to Charlene who got started with this story on Of Fangs and Fairytale who were generous enough to include my story on their fabulous site.





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