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A/N A special thanks to Peta whose suggestions gave me the idea for this chapter.

He was running as fast as he could. He leapt over the turnstile, dashed up the stairs, and out of the subway. Behind him he could hear the soft whisper of the man's footfall and the clip-clop of the woman's boots.

He emerged from the subway into the cold brisk air of the Brooklyn night. Down the street he ran, knocking over the people who got in his way. Still they came, clip-clop behind him.

How could they still be there? He turned to look to see if they were gaining on him and he tripped, falling hard to the pavement.

"Now now, William, me boy. Is that any way to greet the newest member of our family?" came the deep Irish brogue. People walked by, but no one seemed to think the 19th century Irish gentleman was out of place.

They stood over him, and the woman pressed her heel into his chest, slowly, seductively. Golden eyes smiled at him from the dark, distorted face he had known so well. "Give us a kiss, lover?" came her beautiful alto.

"Nikki!" Spike cried as he sat straight up in bed. He was shaking. No matter how many times he dreamed it, the nightmare's effect never lessened. This time it had been worse. For just a moment, he had thought there was a third figure. A small blond girl with golden eyes.

*************************

Just when she thought she was getting the hang of life on the Hellmouth, everything went to, well, hell. The last few weeks had been weird to say the least. A demon got onto the internet, the computer science teacher was a techno-pagan, living puppets, talent shows, and Principle Snyder. None of that had prepared her for what was now happening.

All around her, people's worst nightmares were coming true. Her worst nightmares were coming true. And all because of a boy, Billy, in a coma whose nightmare monster, the Ugly Man, was now chasing her. Buffy had tried fighting the thing, but it was too strong for her. She hoped that if she found Giles and the others they would be able to find a way to stop the nightmares and defeat the Ugly Man.

The Ugly Man had forced them to run across the school lawn. Buffy pushed Billy ahead of her through some bushes. As soon as she followed the world went dark. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she realized she was in a cemetery.

"Is this where your friends are?" asked Billy.

"No, it's not," she said looking around, "I don't see the Ugly Man. I also don't know where the sun and the rest of the world went."

"Look out!" Billy cried. She had been so busy looking around for attackers that she didn't see the open grave until it was too late.

Just as she was about to tumble into it, a strong hand caught her about the waist. She steadied herself and looked up.

"Spike?" She hugged him; she was so relieved to see him.

They had continued to train together since she had learned he was a vampire, but it was no longer a secret - or private. Giles was now part of their training sessions, and very enthusiastic about the whole thing. Somehow Giles' presence had defused the intensity of their training. At times Buffy thought that was a good thing.

Things had been a little strained between them the last couple of weeks. They would be training or patrolling and everything would be fine. She'd feel really comfortable and then suddenly she would remember that Spike had killed a Slayer. It was somehow different than knowing he'd killed some other abstract people. It made it all the more real, almost personal. Not to mention he'd had a soul at the time.

Still, right now all she cared about was that she had an ally against the nightmares that were pulling at her from every direction. For just a moment she didn't have to be the strongest person around. It was nice. That one moment of weakness. The one moment when she just pressed her face into his chest, and knew that it would be all right.

It was only a moment though. She pulled away from him ready to face the evil again and noticed for the first time that he was in his game face. Do vampires have nightmares, she wondered? It was not a very comforting thought.

"We have to find Giles and the others, Spike. People's nightmares are coming true. It has to do with this boy, Billy. Hey, where'd he go?" she said looking around and noticing for the first time that Billy had disappeared.

"Something must have scared him off," Spike said as if he didn't care. His hands were still on her waist, and all of a sudden, his mouth was on her neck.

"Spike. . ." she giggled as his tongue began to trace an invisible line on her neck, "Hey, now's not the time for-Ahhh," she screamed as she suddenly she felt his fangs plunge into her throat. For a moment there was nothing but pain, then he pulled out his fangs and began to suck on the wound. With each suck a shiver of pleasure ran through her body from her neck down to between her legs.

She knew she should fight this. That what he was doing was wrong, but she had no will to fight him.

Somehow he had backed her up against the side of a crypt, and she felt something hard pressing against her stomach. Oh my god, thought Buffy, is that his. . . is he. . ? She was aware of a growing dampness between her legs as they seemed to move of their own accord and wrapped themselves around his waist. Now every time he sucked at her neck he also pushed himself against her, driving his hardness against her and rubbing her in the most unexpected ways.

It excited her even more. She had never felt anything like this, never done anything like this. Her body had taken over from her brain, and she was pushing back against him. Rubbing herself against him, using her hips to urge him on to push against her harder. One of her hands grabbed him by the shoulder to steady herself against him, while the other one held his face against her neck.

Her eyes were closed. Everything was forgotten. Her whole world had collapsed until it contained nothing but the two of them. It centered on her neck - where he drew the life out of her - and her sex, where he thrust against her. Even so she could feel his hands as they moved across her body. One of them gripped her thigh, while the other was squeezing her breast through her clothing.

"Oh God! Spike!" she cried as the orgasm shook her body. But he didn't stop. He was still pulling at her neck, still rubbing his erection against her throbbing clit.

She was getting weaker. She could no longer hold her legs around his waist. She could feel pinpricks in her fingers.

"Spike stop," she said without any real urgency. Then her eyes fluttered open and she screamed in terror.

Standing only inches away from the two of them was the Master smiling gleefully.

"This isn't real," Buffy said.

Spike finally pulled his face away from her neck. His lips were red from her blood.

"You still don't understand do you?" said the Master, "I am free because you fear it. Because you fear it, the world is crumbling. Because he fears it, he is one of us again. Your nightmares are made flesh. You have little Billy to thank for that."

"This is a dream," Buffy insisted.

"A dream is a wish your heart makes. This is real life. Come on, Slayer! What are you afraid of?"

Suddenly Spike had his wrist pressed to her mouth. She hadn't noticed that while she was talking to the Master he had slit his wrist on his own fangs.

Blood ran into her mouth, it's coppery taste choking her. She didn't want it and yet she couldn't help but drink it. 'God, please not this,' Buffy thought as she slipped into the darkness.

****************************

Willow, Xander, and Giles came running out of the High School after escaping from Xander's nightmare clown.

"Things are getting worse. In a few hours reality will fold completely into the realm of nightmares," Giles said.

"Well, what do we do?" Willow asked.

"The only thing I can think is to try and wake Billy," Giles responded.

"Uh, no, we can't leave without Buffy," Xander said.

"Agreed, but who knows where she might have gone?" said Giles.

Willow looked across the street and noticed that there seemed to be a tear in reality through which a graveyard at night was visible.

"Excuse me, when did they put a cemetery in across the street?" she asked.

"And when did they make it night over there?" Xander added.

The three of them stepped through the tear and out of the sunlight into the night.

"Whose nightmare is this?" Xander asked.

Giles was looking at a gravestone over a fresh grave. The headstone read: Buffy Summers 1981 - 1997

"It's mine," Giles whispered. He knelt by the grave as the others gathered around the grave. "I've failed... in my duty to protect you. I should have been more c... cautious. Taken more time to train you. But you were so
gifted. And the evil was so great. I'm sorry..."

He was almost in tears as he laid his hand on the newly disturbed earth. As he started to get up a hand reached up through the soil and grabbed his.

Willow screamed, Giles tore himself away as Buffy emerged from the grave and brushed herself off.

"Buffy?" Giles asked hopefully.

"Please. Don't look at me!" she said turning her face away from them. He could hear in her voice that she was trying to keep from crying.

Giles reached out to her, placing a gentle hand on her cheek and turning her face toward them.

"You never told me you dreamt of becoming a vampire," he said softly.

"This isn't a dream," she said.

"No. No, it's not," Giles agreed. "But there's a chance that we can make it go away. This all comes from Billy. Now, if, if we can only wake him up, I believe that the nightmares will stop and reality will shift back into place, but we must do it now! I need you to hold together long enough to help us. Can you do that?"

Buffy nodded, "Yeah. I think I can."

"It's okay," said a voice from behind a crypt. Spike walked around the crypt into their view. "She's still got her soul, otherwise she would have attacked you lot first thing."

"I don't know, Spike. I . . . God, I want to. . ."

"Shh," he said taking her hand. "I know. The hunger, the blood lust, it's always there. But if you were a proper fledgling you would have attacked the first thing with a pulse that walked by. Now, let's see if we can wake this kid and put you back, right and proper."

*************************

Spike downed his third cup of blood. He couldn't seem to drink enough - or rather, pig's blood no longer seemed to satisfy him. He was considering heading to Willie's for a cup of O neg, but he knew even that would not satisfy him.

He could still taste her blood, Slayer blood. As horrific as the experience had been - his soul forced into the back seat while the demon controlled him - the memory of her blood still thrilled him.

If that was all it was, just simple blood lust, he could have handled that. He had denied himself human blood for almost a century, since he had killed that other Slayer. He could do it again.

But there was a deeper pain. A deeper need. The Sire-Childe bond between him and Buffy had been strong and he had been overcome by her love for him. Never had he felt anything like that. He had only ever sired one other vampire, his mother, and he had been so new himself, that his blood was too weak to create a bond between them.

He had never imagined anything like it, and yet his whole life he had been seeking that kind of love. Now it was gone. When Billy had awakened, the world had gone back to the way it was supposed to be, and Buffy was no longer a vampire, no longer his Childe.

It was bad enough to be denied that physical knowledge of her love, bad enough to know that Drusilla must have felt that from him and still she had rejected him. But the worst was knowing that he had lost any chance of ever receiving that sort of love from Buffy. He was sure her love was nothing more than a product of his siring her. But more than that, he had been the instrument of her nightmare. He had killed her. She had seen his true self and she would never trust him again.

Part of him was glad. It was better for her, safer for her, to forget any feelings she might have had for him. But most of him just wanted her back. Wanted to kill her all over again and make her his. If he hadn't known that it couldn't work, he might have done it, but if he were to sire her in fact, and not in some dream, she would lose her soul. Bond or no bond, the demon that would take her over would force her to kill. It would drive her away from him because he would not.

Yet he couldn't stop thinking of it, dreaming of it. To have her for all eternity. To not have to spend the rest of his immortality alone, to be loved forever.

There was a knock on his door. He got up and opened it to find Buffy standing there.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

"Sure," was all he could think of to say. She had avoided him for the whole weekend, and now she was here. Had she come to kill him? Had she needed that time to work up the courage to face him?

He stood to one side to let her enter, then shut the door behind her.

"If you're here to kill me, I understand. I won't stop you." He deserved to die, he knew that now. Nothing could ever redeem his soul, the soul that wanted to kill her and keep her. He was the worst sort of monster now. He was the monster that knew right from wrong, and didn't want to do right.

"What? No, why would I kill you?" Buffy asked, surprised and confused.

"Well, I killed you, seems fair. Besides, I know you can't trust me now."

Buffy laughed. "You're kidding right? I trust you more than ever. I know what it's like now. Hearing their hearts beating, smelling their fear. I. . . I wanted to kill my friends. I never even tasted blood and I wanted it more than I've ever wanted anything. And you deal with that everyday. And you don't kill people."

He looked at her unbelieving. Part of him wanted to shake some sense into her, the other part wanted to fall on his knees before her and thank her for her forgiveness.

"Then why did you come here?" he asked instead.

"I wanted to talk about. . . you know. . . I mean. . ."

Spike laughed. Buffy was turning a brighter and brighter red. Here he had been so worried about how she would react to her death that he had forgotten that she was not only the Slayer but also a very young girl. Death was not new to her, but that sort of sexual experience probably was.

Seeing that she was hurt by his laughter he quickly told her, "I'm sorry. I just forget how young you are. It's not the way I killed you that bothers you, is it, Slayer? It's the way I touched you."

"I wasn't bothered. . ." she said, but she wasn't willing to look at him straight on.

"But it was more than you were ready for." He took both her hands into one of his, then he turned her face so that she had to look him in the eye. "I don't expect anything from you. That wasn't anything I planned for, or intended. We can forget it ever happened."

"Oh? I thought. . . I mean. I thought you liked me."

He looked at her. She was almost like another person. No longer the strong confident Slayer, but just a young girl. She looked so fragile, like his words might shatter her. It was a feeling Spike knew well. And he began to hope. Hope that for the first time in his life, someone might love him. It was frightening. He wasn't worthy of her love. He was as far beneath her as was possible. If he were a better man he knew he would break her heart now. That he would leave before he destroyed her life.

"I don't like you," he said firmly. He could see the breaking of her heart in her eyes. She tried to look away from him to hide her tearing eyes, but he wouldn't let her. "I think maybe I love you. I shouldn't I know. It's wrong, but I can't seem to help it."

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she smiled. Then next thing he knew she was kissing him.





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