Where 2002, the year of her death and resurrection had been painful, the following year had been troubled in its own way. Starting tense and under siege from the First Evil, the year had progressed through a hollow victory into a summer too long and hot, grief stricken and difficult. With everyone unsettled and displaced, refugees from a Hellmouth now firmly shut, there had been hard decisions to make and many partings, until the autumn started like a new beginning, locking the frantic battle of the Spring away into the amber of memory.

For the survivors of Sunnydale, life had tilted on its axis, and some were sent spinning away in different directions like the seeds from a dandelion. They’d seen an era end, a whole town that had slipped away into the past and like the last day at school, they made their goodbyes and moved on into new stages of their lives.

Before all that, back in that tragic Spring, three days after the destruction of Sunnydale and when they’d all had a little time to settle down, treat their wounded and adjust to being homeless and dispossessed, they'd held a candlelit vigil at the craters edge for those they'd left behind. Lost lovers and friends, their deaths were marked only by a candle in the darkness and the shadow they cast across the lives of their survivors. There would be no headstones for their graves, no marker to show where they fell or to commemorate their heroism, all they would ever have would be a silent crater in the desert that would only whisper its secrets to the dust picked up and whisked round by the wind.

Buffy had had a candle of her own to light that night, for a vampire whose big heart had saved the world, but as she watched the flame lick hungrily at the night air, she kept her emotions deep down inside where no one could see them or guess at their significance. Even as Xander wept openly for Anya, her grief was private, like her relationship with Spike had been, and it was not something she wanted to discuss with anyone else, or think about or remember, much. They hadn't cared to see how he had changed or seen the good man inside that he allowed only a few he was close to, to see. He'd defied his own nature to love her, got himself a soul for her protection and happiness, and in the end she'd believed in him. In sacrifice, he'd presented her with a wonderful gift – a normal life – the very thing that she'd wanted for so long. But she was left with more questions than answers. What was she going to do with this new life? She had no idea how to deal with normality. The world felt wrong, topsy-turvy with uncertainties. She'd lost her anchor and was adrift. She knew she had to make good the opportunities his death had given her, she owed him that at least, but how could she do that when nothing felt right? They’d won again, hadn’t they? They'd scored their biggest victory; they'd bloodied the nose of evil itself and changed it all, altered the balance of good and evil, created a new, less-dangerous world. So why then did it feel like their biggest defeat? Why were Spike, Anya and some of the young slayers dead under the remains of Sunnydale, sacrificed so the rest of them could live free from the daily fight against the darkness? Buffy was at a loss for answers.

After their last goodbyes to their dead were done, and the danger was finally over, it was time to move on from Sunnydale. The larger part of the group had drifted away by midsummer. Their old lives were buried at the bottom of that hole and could never be recovered; there was nothing left for them, except the silent echo of memories. For some, like Willow, Xander and Dawn, their childhood lay buried at the bottom of the sandy pit, remnants of lifetimes measured in handfuls of grit. For others, reminders of their darker pasts were finally erased, except for what they still carried in their hearts. Faith had finally taken on the full responsibilities of the Slayer, all the duty, all the burdens; all keen to continue her redemption in service to Good. She had departed quite quickly, taking Robin Wood in tow, to start her fresh new life and keep the Cleveland Hellmouth covered. A city, bereft of a Slayer so long, at last would receive the protection it required. Her partnership with the former Principal appeared to be working well. Although he was not an official Watcher, he had proved to be more than adequate at the task. Having been raised by a Watcher came as a great advantage. It also appeared that their personal relationship was going from strength to strength. Buffy felt good about that, if a little jealous; at least someone was keeping a relationship formed on the bad ground of Sunnyhell good, even if she couldn’t. Some things didn’t change though; Buffy and Faith would forever be rivals, even if most of the old animosity had faded. Faith was welcome to Cleveland. Buffy had served her time on a Hellmouth that had stripped her and her friends of everything they’d held dear, and it was more than time to pass that task onto another.

The new slayers had had their lives changed just as much as the others. The temptation for them to cling to each other like the survivors of a storm had to be resisted. They would always share the trauma of the last battle Sunnydale saw, but it was time to return home. For many, that was back to the fold of their families. They'd left as young girls, normal teenagers scared to death by the brutal intrusion of the supernatural into their lives. They returned as warriors, forged in the fire of the Slayer, tested in battle, veterans amongst the newly empowered. They were the lucky ones. Others had lost their whole families to the First Evil. Bringers had cut remorselessly cut through their relations, attempting to execute the entire Slayer line, often while they could only watch, terrified and powerless. They were very different people now, motivated and super-strong, but they were still so young. These girls had nothing or no one left to return to; no people, no homes. They had little choice but to become wards of the Watcher's Council.

Rupert Giles had had to return to England pretty swiftly after the battle and the memorial. The Watchers Council was still in disarray, reeling from the First's campaign and the blast that had destroyed their Holborn Headquarters. With a good proportion of their previous staff dead in the explosion, they now desperately needed people like him to rebuild. Former Watchers, experienced researchers, serious occultists and academics, anyone they could get that had the rare, genuine skills they could use, skills the Scooby Gang could supply. There were positions for everyone if they wanted to take them.

For Willow, the decision to move to England and join the Council was an easy one. She'd loved her life as a Scooby, regardless of the tragedy and heartache it brought with it, and she felt that she still had much to atone for. Deep in her heart, she had yet to forgive herself for the madness after Tara's untimely death and there was blood on her hands that would never wash off. She wanted to count for something, use her magic to do enough good to matter to the world, to remove the taint of dark magic from her forever, however long it might take. She wanted to be nearer to the centre of the fight, so when the offer of a Research position with the Watchers Council came through, she seized the chance. She could use all her skills; it wouldn't mean she would moulder away in some dusty library, not while she had magic strong enough to avert the end of days.

She had someone else to think of too. Where Willow went, so did Kennedy. The bossy young Slayer was enthused by her new powers, delighted by the massive additional strength, and she was prepared to take up the fight wherever it took her. Buffy had fervently hoped for Willow's sake, if not Kennedy's own, that the headstrong girl wouldn't prove too enthusiastic in her rush to prove herself and get killed in the same way many others of the calling down the centuries had been, downed by a lucky demon having its one good day. It was best she was kept close and carefully watched near the hub of the Council, in case her own confidence proved to be her downfall.

Xander was less ready to move on from his old life. While being a Scooby had often been a painful millstone around his neck, it was all he'd had in his life for a long time. Even if he couldn't look back on a childhood where he was happy at home, the fight had, despite its perils, given purpose to his existence for the first time. It had cost him dearly, a price almost too much to pay, an empty eye-socket and a dead former fiancé, but he had mattered. That toll had become his burden, he was weary of it all, but it was hard to finally let go. Still mourning Anya, he had followed his friends, reluctant to leave their fold just yet, and had taken a job on the re-fit of the Watchers Council's new offices, making himself a tidy sum in the process. Sadly though, Buffy had known that he wouldn't stay long, and sure enough, by mid-autumn he'd left, taking Andrew with him on the oft-delayed road trip he'd always wanted to take. She didn't expect him to come back.

Buffy herself hadn't really wanted to go to England either, even though Dawn had been keen to go. It didn't matter that Quentin Travers and the rest were dead; she was still suspicious of the Council and its suspect methods and motives. The last thing she wanted was to turn into the stuffy type the Council seemed to employ. But as her friends prepared to leave and the thought of no job, no duty, and no home hit her, she reluctantly agreed to Giles' request for her to come to train Slayers; there was nothing left for them in California and two of the most important men in her life had been born in England, it was about time she saw the land that made them. While she still had Giles, she had nothing at all left of Spike, not even the places that held her memories of him. She’d thought, perhaps being in England could bring him closer, a little piece of him still in her heart. But despite these ambitions and romantic notions, the reality had proved rather different.

At first living in London had been kind of fun. It felt like the old times when she'd first arrived in Sunnydale. A new town to find her way around, new people to get to know - they just talked a little differently. The gang shared a fine rented house in an ordinary North London street; typical in all it’s faded Victorian finery, even if Buffy found the house cramped. After the open house of the spring, she wanted her own space back, she was sick of sharing her home with countless others who came and went. But, as rental cost a small fortune she didn't have, she had little choice but to stay there, which at least was paid for on the Council’s tab. Dawn had found the experience of moving aboard wonderfully exotic, a whole new adventure in a wonderful new place. They’d taken a few trips together, they couldn't get over how old England felt, as if the whole of human history surrounded them; a country with an old soul. To them it was a wonder to realise that the very earth they stood on had run red with the blood of a thousand battles. All that history scattered about and no one seemed to take any notice of it as if there was too much to take in and the people were as much a part of it as it was a part of them. Buffy had even been stunned when she'd seen the new Watchers Council's offices. It was far from being the central London Men's Club she'd thought it would be, Stoke Park was a mansion straight out of her Pride and Prejudice daydreams. Elegant and Georgian, set in acres of lush parkland so green, she could just imagine Mr Darcy striding from the stable block to meet them. Then term began and Dawn started classes in a local college with some of the new Slayers, back to the rigors of education and Buffy had to other ways to occupy her spare time.

Most of the time, Giles would stay with them, returning only occasionally to his house in Westbury, and, to Buffy, it almost felt like having a father again, despite the strain their relationship had been under. She would always love him as the father figure he’d been to her, but she doubted they would ever regain their former closeness. She still trusted him when it came to saving the world; his motives were right, even if she no longer had such an implicit trust in his methods. However, in more personal matters, she put her faith firmly in her own judgement. She would never forget that Giles hadn't opposed her friends when they'd thrown her out of Revello Drive and that he’d tried to dispose of Spike, a valued ally, in spite of her assurances that the soul kept him from harming anyone. That was the worst thing of all - he hadn't trusted her judgement; even after all they'd been through over the years, all the lives they'd saved, all the apocalypses they'd averted. Spike though, had lived up to her belief in him; he’d come through for her and saved the world. He'd shown her that there was more to the world than the black and white judgements she'd made as the Slayer, everyone had a shade of grey if she looked. If only the Council could realise that.

Tragic though the circumstances had been, the Holborn disaster might well have been the best thing that had happened to the Council for centuries, clearing out some of the stuffy dead wood and thinning the ranks of the old boys. As they hadn't planned for a disaster, they weren’t ready for this kind of tragedy and discussion behind the scenes in endless meetings, according to Giles, was heated. The newer, younger Watchers were demanding change and more modern practises, and they were up against what remained of the old guard, who stressed tradition above all else, resisting change. The explosion had cleared out a whole generation of Watchers and those who remained had been off sick, on holiday or on assignment. They had quickly found themselves deep in the midst of the turmoil of re-organisation, raising the phoenix from the ashes, and jostling for better positions within the Council, a seething pit of power mongers ripe for a coup.

One of the first to rise to the top had been Roger Wyndham-Price. He'd quickly seized control after the death of Travers, and he saw the management of the Council in much the same way. The Council had survived in the current arrangement for hundreds of years, a heritage that had refined their methods from the Shadow Men that had first created the Slayer to the current Council. He saw no reason to change the way they did things, despite the setback and the wave of new Slayers. For reformers like Giles, he was a dangerous obstacle, bull-headed and stuck in the past, but he was extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, he had a wealth of experience to draw on and as such was canny opposition, not to be under-estimated. He was a major player in the Council politics, and even if he was approaching retirement fast, his influence could sway the selection of the new Board to traditionalists. The pro-reform Watchers wanted to see a Council that reflected the times; slaying was now a global concern with all the new Slayers. The Council needed to be more flexible and responsive, more caring to the girls in its care. There was no point in remaining based in one place, limiting their global reach. They needed to set up district offices in centres of high population at least. Buffy had liked that idea and thought that maybe one day she could return home and set up a Californian office. But that was a dream for the future; such things were a long way off. First the reformers needed to control the Board and that would take awhile.

After a different type of Christmas, where hopes of a white Christmas morning were dashed early by cold lifeless skies, and a New Year that said goodbye to 2003 once and for all, life soon returned to the mundane and Buffy began to feel isolated. Dawn was back at college, Willow was busy, Xander was gone and Giles, now a large cog in the Watchers Council engine, was all but lost to her. The work that needed to be done was highly specialised and sometimes Buffy felt useless in all the upheaval. Willow was doing rather better. She had been given an office and had started work appraising and sorting through what was left of the Council's material resources. Buffy didn't envy her that job one bit, and it wasn't just because she'd never been bookish. Buffy had taken one look at the boxes of records, charred books and personnel files that were stacked neatly around the room, waiting their turn to be looked over and stored away, and she felt Willow was welcome to it all. The task was monumental and the approach required was methodical, taking each box in turn, deciding what was salvageable and worth keeping, putting to one side anything that needed further work to conserve its secrets. Willow had to catalogue everything and she had big plans to expand the online resource she'd started, a tool help those new Slayers that didn't have access to training or a fully stocked occult library, by providing them with an online Watcher replacement. It was slow going and even Buffy realised that it was all too much for one person. Although so much had been destroyed, Willow needed a whole department of people to complete the project. However, it was still early days in the Council's restructuring and there was still so much to arrange. No one could be spared to assist her.

With Slayers and Watchers reporting in from all over the world, Buffy took her turn on the phones. She just wanted to get into her part of the deal, training the girls, but as it was no-ones priority to find them somewhere to train, she helped out where she could. It made her feel useful at least, if only for a while. By Christmas she hated the job and she tried to spend as little time as possible in the office. She knew that the Watchers talked about her behind her back. To her face she was the heroic Slayer who had brought down the First Evil and closed the Sunnydale Hellmouth, but in the veiled whispers that started as she passed people in corridors, she was the girl that had debased herself with vampires, cavorting with those she was committed to destroy. It didn't matter that Angel and Spike were creatures with souls, that they had both fought for the side of light; they were vampires and as such were abominations. If anyone ever spoke of Spike at all, his selflessness in the Hellmouth was never recognised. The good man she'd known at the end would be forever tarnished by the sins of the soulless creature he had once been. So she scurried from room to room, head down, trying not to be noticed, trying not to show how upset their comments made her, trying not to hear their cruel words. It was these times when she missed Spike most, when all she wanted to do was slip away and take sanctuary in his company, be quiet with him, just taking pleasure in talking to him the way she used to, away from trying to please everyone else. But with him gone, there was nothing she could do and the days stretched on forever; bustling, unrelenting and lonely.

So she found what solace she could by doing her duty and what she did best, hunting for demons. The Sunnydale Hellmouth might be shut tight, but Buffy never forgot that the monsters remained. The Slayers were now enabled as an army against the bumps in the night, but she rarely went with them, preferring to patrol alone. The short brisk nights of summer patrolling became a slow trudge through the lengthening darkness, turning with the wheel of the year, and little action from the more elusive locals. Patrol was reduced to not much more than a quiet walk in the dark, often the most she met were groups of teenagers drinking cheap wine in darkened corners, the scent of cannabis, aloft in the moonlight. The youth of Sunnydale could have never have been so relaxed and bold, or they would have been dead before the sun rose, the new risers for the following nights. It was during these wanderings, that Buffy discovered how very different in character England’s demon population was to that of the Hellmouth. They were usually older; stronger demons, more interested in bloodlines, tradition and infighting than the next apocalypse. Hierarchy and power mattered more to them than mayhem. There was little risk of an apocalypse here. These demons had too much to lose to end the world for the sake of evil. When she’d asked him, Giles had told her that he suspected that a few sat in the House of Lords, speculating that one of them had been a Prime Minister, although no one had managed to get close enough to her to confirm it. Other, less intelligent demons were just less common without the siren call of the Hellmouth.

She also discovered there was rarely any of the freshly dead in the pretty churchyards, where the tombstones of cracked granite and rough stone had weathered with age to the point where the names were indistinct and forgotten behind the lichen. If she wanted to scratch her itch to fight and kill, these places proved a waste of time to patrol. There was better hunting to be found in the larger municipal cemeteries, where the smooth, cool marble markers were squeezed in tightly, like the shields of a Roman Army on the march, wave after wave of them, as space was in short supply. The dense rows meant fighting was close-quartered with little room for fancy moves. Chases were rare and awkward, risky in the narrow space between the graves. Fledgling vampires were therefore more vicious as they were forced to face and fight the Slayer rather than flee. Their first night undead was a fight for survival.

But on most nights, when a quiet walk was all she really wanted, Buffy preferred the old places; the thin bits of hallowed ground of false safety and faded glory under the Yews, where she could be comfortable with the dead. She could get lost in flights of fancy, relax her guard just a little and wonder if he'd risen one night from the ground in a place like this. She would have enjoyed his companionable presence on these walks. Good company was something he'd always been, especially when she’d been miserable. Maybe he could have told her more about England, flirted a bit in his crude way, then tell her some saucy tale from his past that she really didn't want to know, before kissing her sweetly in a long moment that could have been minutes or hours, in the doorway of some pretty old church.

These were memories they would never make together.

Monday morning at Wolfram and Hart was always a particular kind of hectic, but productive, chaos; divorces filed after wild weekends, lawsuits from drunken brawls on Saturday night or diabolical plans gone awry, kept the phones in a constant buzz. At this early hour, Lawyers, assistants and other staff hurried to their desks to start the week, or mingled in the vast lobby, brokering last minute plea-bargains before another day in court. Angel, new CEO of the LA branch of Wolfram and Hart, couldn’t feel more out of place here amongst these legal barracudas. They might have had a cheery greeting for him as he strode in through the bustle, but he knew that underneath the façade of acquiescence to the new regime, each and every one of them was plotting his downfall. They had no interest in helping the helpless in return for a ticket to his destiny. None of them were committed to the side of Good, even if it was the new company policy, and there would be people here who would fight the new management all the way. These people were employed here because they had done deals with evil for an easy ride to power, position and wealth, and they weren’t going to ditch their most lucrative clients that easily. Evil paid well for the privilege of the best legal representation.

Uneasy as he felt here, the constant rounds of betrayals were the only things that felt familiar to Angel in this cutthroat corporate world of chic offices and sharp cut business suits. There were days when he still felt like the eighteenth century man Darla had bitten and turned, who had been dumped, bemused and clueless, into the middle of a twenty-first century legal culture of which he could barely conceive. He was responsible now for hundreds of employees, not the handful at Angel Investigations who he counted as his friends. He’d never really been a collector of minions during the bad old days of Angelus, but he knew how to manage them, and controlling these two-faced back stabbers wasn’t so different. Treachery amongst the lower ranks of vampires was endemic, as they crawled over each other like rats to get to the top of the heap, but Angelus had never bothered with that game at all. He had found other means by which to measure his worth as a vampire. Despicable acts, each more depraved than the last; in kills, messy and brutal, where dying took days even after the begging and screaming had stopped; in torture, horrors limited only by the black, Marianas Trench of his own imagination. It was skill set that fitted well with the firm's seamier underbelly and it might not be too long before Angel would need to tap into some of Angelus’ expertise.

Angel would never have accepted the deal to take control of Wolfram and Hart if he hadn’t been caught between a rock and the hard place of his son’s future. But although he had been the one to agree to the main body of the contract, he hadn’t been the only one to agree to its terms. Whatever the circumstances of Angel Investigations’ move had been, Wesley, Fred, Lorne and Gunn had all reached a unanimous decision amongst themselves, even before Angel had told them that he had made the choice for them. They had all agreed that the offer on the table was a fantastic opportunity to use the resources available to maximise the good they could do for people, while removing their major opposition. If they were going to be corrupted, then it had already happened, the moment that they’d agreed to take the tour that Lilah had offered during her brief visit from Below. They would all have to learn to live with whatever the consequences there would prove to be. Personally, Angel knew he would never be happy here; the Law Firm would need to change radically before he could ever feel comfortable as its Head, but that was the price he’d accepted for saving his son. Connor was alive and had a new life; one where he might actually find the happiness that Angel was otherwise powerless to give him. It had broken his heart to say goodbye, to sever the ties to the only life he had created, to pretend that Connor had never existed. It was just another of his many burdens, but it was his duty now to honour the contract and carry on. He had a new set of challenges. Adjusting the outlook of a bastion of evil was never going to be easy task, but he was committed to try and he stood by his decision to do that every day, even when he doubted himself. Angel Investigations could only help so many; here they could help so many more.

Today was going to be a busy day. Angel had a Demonic Law conference coming up in a few days and he had an important spot as a Guest Speaker. Consequently, he needed all the time he could find in his schedule to perfect his speech. The thought of his public-speaking debut made him anxious and irritable; this was not what he thought a Champion should be doing with his time. He preferred the directness of protecting the street, battling at the front of the fight. Now he could help people from the point of his pen, it didn’t feel like fighting for them anymore. But all that was in the past now, his signature saved thousands and he would have to be satisfied with the odd bit of groundwork he had time for. Right now, he had to go to work.

He stepped out of the private lift from his penthouse apartment and as he strode into the lobby he was subjected to an aural assault of what sounded like sheer white noise. A Lawyer rushed past him with his hands clamped over his ears to block out the uncomfortable sound.

“What the hell is that?" Angel growled at Harmony, who was handing a package to Fred at the Front Desk.

"… … …" Harmony mouthed back at him with a carefree shrug, her words were lost forever in the din.

Angel may not have heard what she’d said, but he managed to catch her meaning well enough. After a few moments, when his ears adjusted themselves to the noise, it organised itself in his mind until it became recognisable as music - but just barely, a rough guitar riff played through powerful, but damaged speakers. What was more disturbing to him, though, was that the cacophony of punk music disrupting his lobby appeared to be coming from inside his own office. Resigned to the inevitable morning confrontation with Wolfram and Hart's resident annoying ghost, Angel took a deep, unnecessary breath to steel his nerves. He’d been hoping that one day Spike would at least give him time to settle into his daily routine before he started to bother him, but it seemed that today wasn’t going to be that day.

Spike was sprawled out on Angel's chair, ethereal booted feet propped upon his expensive desk, although no one quite knew why they didn’t sink through the wood. When Spike had first appeared, Fred had attempted to come up with a theory to explain how some objects seemed to support him and how he still seemed subject to gravity, but didn’t just sink through the floors. Though it had been Wesley who’d come up with the most plausible answer – that although ghosts weren’t subject to the same physical laws, they still unconsciously expected them to apply. So while they expected an object to bear their non-weight, they couldn’t pick it up. However, the theory didn’t always seem to work and the real reason remained arcane. Spike thought the whole idea was bollocks, but he didn’t have a better explanation. Angel just wished he would go and haunt somewhere else, like the moon.

Angel couldn't stand the sight of Spike. Hated, detested, loathed – all these words weren't strong enough for the dislike he felt for the former vampire. He had spent the last few years happy in the knowledge that Spike was somewhere else and the last thing he wanted was the irritating idiot haunting him now. Their personalities clashed; Spike had to be one of the most infuriating beings that Angel had ever met. Spike was reckless, juvenile, impulsive and thoughtless. He was a master in the art of being annoying. He'd always taken a malicious pleasure in making Angel’s existence hell, undermining him at every opportunity that arose, like a younger brother jealous of his older sibling. Spike’s appearance, popping out of an amulet, like a sarcastic gothic genie that granted no wishes, couldn’t have come at a worse time for Angel, so soon after Angel Investigations had taken control of the evil Law firm, and just when he was questioning his own worth as a Champion of the People. Adjusting to corporate life had been difficult enough, without a petty voice sniggering in his ear every time something went wrong. It was as if the Spike-shaped devil on his shoulder had switched sides on some whim and was now sporting slightly tarnished heavenly wings.

If pushed, Angel would admit that Spike’s presence made him uncomfortable. The reasons were numerous; some were shallow, some cut more deeply into a past that was difficult to put behind them. The two vampires shared a long and chequered history and at no point had they ever been tolerant of each other for more than a few minutes. They'd been rivals within their own twisted family, brothers in bloodshed; and after a century they were still in competition. It hadn’t taken long for William to start to push against Angelus’ dominance; he’d been testing the boundaries almost from the night he’d risen. He’d been weaker, fresh from the six-feet of earth under which Drusilla had buried him, and eager to experience everything that his new unlife offered, but he’d been no serious challenge to his grand-sire back then. Still, his wilful rebelliousness defied Angelus’ authority at every turn and before long it began to cause their family group serious problems, despite Angelus’ attempts to keep him firmly in check.

Nevertheless, Angelus had set out to teach the fledgling William all he knew about the horrors his kind could perpetrate, and the younger vampire had certainly been a quick pupil. But he’d soon had his own ideas about the way he wanted to conduct his unlife. ‘Spike’ was created, as William forged his own identity through the point of a railway spike, risking everything in all out fights with angry mobs and rejecting the methods of his grand-sire. Angelus would orchestrate understated campaigns of horror that would pick entire families apart, one by one, over weeks of torment. Angelus would take the terror to a delicious pitch that brought his victims to their knees, and he’d savour their fear like the finest wine, as he drained them dry in one final night of hell. He was cold, calculating, ruthless and thorough. Spike didn’t have the patience to be that elaborate. He’d take an outrageous target like a boarding school or a convent, whatever his lady Drusilla desired, and they would tear the inhabitants to bits for the fun of it, revelling in every bloody moment. He didn’t care that he was part of a rich heritage of wickedness, he just wanted a little fun; to live his unlife with a passion he’d been afraid of expressing in life. Spike embraced his afterlife wholeheartedly. Evil was an amusement, depravity a lark, not a revered art. Spike had never taken evil seriously enough for Angelus.

It was this very history, of murder and mayhem that they shared, that made Spike a walking reminder of all the bad things Angel had done, of all the things he didn’t want to remember. When he looked at his grand-childe, he saw a killer like him, a monster he was responsible for creating. The century worth of blood that Spike had spilt was on Angel’s hands too. To Angel, Spike was a gestalt of all of his own insecurities and fears, and that made him look more closely at what he really was. Angel was still a demon, one that carried the weight of the soul as a curse, but he would never be free of the darkness or the lust for blood and his black demon heart still didn’t beat. As the only other souled vampire the world had ever known, only Spike could ever know just how close Angelus still seethed beneath the surface, and how difficult it was to keep the demon down. The demon trashed and strained against the shackles of the soul, locked away from the world it longed to destroy. As much as possible, Angel kept his demon out of sight from the people around him, but there was little use trying to hide from Spike the fact that Angel was not so different from Angelus underneath. How did Spike manage to handle his demon so easily and so quickly, when it was a constant struggle for Angel even after a century? Spike had somehow transcended his vampiric nature and had chosen to have his soul returned. How was it fair that Spike had taken a meta-physical short cut to his Champion-hood, somehow sidestepping all the years of suffering that Angel had been through, with a few weeks of madness? Angel had been unique, groomed for years to be this Champion of the People, fighting to keep the darkness from lives of the ordinary. If Spike were to be solid again, would he usurp Angel’s destiny? Would Angel no longer be rewarded for his hard work fighting as that Champion or for the suffering and the hopelessness of his crawl through the last century? In the end, would he prove to be just a vampire with a curse? He hadn’t chosen his soul or fought for it like Spike had done. Would Spike then prove to be better than him, when Angel’s own struggle towards redemption was found lacking? Angel worried that perhaps he wasn’t special at all. Maybe Spike was right all along, and that being a part of Wolfram and Hart would destroy him. What if the Powers had got it wrong and Spike was the People’s Champion, after all?

It was hard for Angel to believe Spike was a hero. The last time they’d met Spike had been poking holes in him by proxy – mostly. He hadn’t trusted the younger vampire then, and he was having trouble now. It was inconceivable to Angel that the Spike he’d known could have really chosen to become good, even for superficial reasons. But he’d made his sacrifice to close the Hellmouth, laid down his unlife to save the world – and Buffy - and that counted where it mattered. Buffy believed in him.

Angel guessed it was pretty obvious that he was jealous of Spike’s affair with Buffy. He had no idea what had gone on between them in Sunnydale, but when asked Buffy had been less than forthcoming on the nature of the relationship, leaving Angel to fill in the blanks himself. That had lead to all sorts of fanciful scenarios mapped out in his head; things he’d rather not contemplate but dwelt on anyway. Spike had been able to be there for her, intimate with her in ways that Angel no longer could. He had loved her and he’d walked away so she could have a normal life, with a normal lover, have babies and jobs and vacations and pretty houses full of sunlight, away from all the angst he’d brought her. He hadn’t left her, at great pain to himself, so she could hook up with Spike.

For all her words of possibilities in the future, the same problems still stood in their way. Angel knew she’d moved on, had known it since that last night in Sunnydale when she’d basked in him; a last-gasp flare of their doomed love that seemed to mean very little now. Buffy hadn’t turned to him for comfort, before or after the battle. In fact, her contact with him in the aftermath of the destruction of Sunnydale had been minimal; just a postcard from Europe and a brief call asking him to stand down now the Hellmouth was closed for good. When he’d asked after Spike - were they together now? She’d cut him off briskly.

“He’s dead,” she’d said, her tone as dead as her heart must have been, and had hung up. Since then, all he’d heard was silence and he’d been left with the Spike problem.

Spike’s eyes were closed and he was singing along to the CD rather tunelessly. Angel wondered what melody had ever done to offend anyone. He switched the stereo off with a snap and turned his wrath on the younger vampire.

"What the hell is going on? – No, don't tell me. Just get out, Spike." Angel loomed, glowering darkly, filling the room with his presence.

"Ooh, tetchy this morning, aren't we?” Spike stretched and placed his hands behind his head, as if he was getting comfortable. He was willing to risk the ultimate indignity of Angel sitting through him if it got his grand-sire nice and wound up.

"Someone made me that way. Out!"

"What's going on?" Fred asked as she came into the office. "What was that terrible noise..?"

Angel gestured to her to halt. "It's okay, Fred. I can handle this." He turned back to Spike, who had made absolutely no effort to move. "I thought I said 'out'!"

Reluctantly, Spike picked his feet off the desk, but he made no further indication that he was going to get up from the chair - there was mileage still to be had from this small annoyance.

Angel picked up some of the CD's that littered his desk; Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedy's, Black Flag – these sure as hell weren't from his own collection. Where on earth did a ghost get them? He looked at Fred, who looked somewhat uncomfortable under his glare.

"I thought it would give him something to do at night,” she said.

"You bought him CD's?"

Fred nodded still squirming.

Spike snorted. "I've looked through your collection. Barry Manilow? You are still scary."

"He's a genius," was all Angel would say, wistfully.

Spike sniggered. “If you say so, mate.”

Exasperated, Angel turned to Fred. “Please, Fred, take him with you and get him out of here.”

Spike bounced to his feet. “Yeah, your Fix-It Girl here can get back to finding a way to make yours truly a solid boy again. Get me back from the spectral back-of-beyond. She said she had a few ideas…”

“No,” Angel told him, forcefully. “Fred, you have enough to do. You’ve spent too much time on him already.”

“I’m sure I could fit it in…” She began.

“No, Spike isn’t Wolfram and Hart business. I’ve told you that before.”

“What?” Spike protested. “You wanker! If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be like this, wouldn’t have been chargrilled over the bloody Hellmouth.”

“Because you’re such a hero. Get out of my sight. And don’t disturb my staff.”

“Make me.” Spike folded his arms and stood his ground. There was nothing Angel could do to move an incorporeal being. “If that Pavayne git couldn’t shift me, you bloody well can’t.”

“Do I need to call an exorcist? I have a Dr Venkman’s number right here.”

"I think I preferred you when you were an evil bastard. No, wait, you still are." Spike was pissed off now. He took a glance at the weapons displayed neatly on the wall behind Angel’s desk. He just wished he could get hold of one properly. “You don’t understand what this is like, not being able to touch or feel. Well, up yours.”

Angel watched Spike turn and leave in a swirl of spectral black leather, ignoring the two fingers he gave him over his shoulder. He sighed with relief. He really didn’t have time for Spike’s histrionics today.

Fred frowned at him. “Don’t you think it would be better just to help him? He’ll be stuck here until you do. I know I can find another way to make him corporeal. I still have some ideas. I got something here,” she indicated the box in her arms, “that should work as a…”

Her words trailed off as Angel sat down and turned his attention to the paperwork that was piled on his desk. He wasn’t listening, or she wasn’t saying anything he wanted to hear. Sometimes his bull-headedness over Spike really irritated her.

Angel pushed aside the small pile of CD’s. The were letters to sign, files to go through, cases to approve, as well his big speech to practice; it was at times like these that he wished he was back fighting evil on the streets. “I’m not responsible for Spike.”

“Well, I think you’re being very unreasonable,” Fred said as a parting shot. Then she left, heading back to her lab. She had a vampire to make whole again. At least someone here should try to do what was right.

Spike tore down the corridor leading from Angel’s office, seething with indignant anger. Leaving a long wake of shocked lawyers behind him, he walked through people as he went, too angry to bother even trying to avoid them. It didn’t matter where he was going, that wasn’t the point; he just needed to put some distance between himself and the enormous git. But trapped as a ghost, he could never get far enough away.

So he was stuck as a ghost for perpetuity because Angel couldn’t spare his science girl for few hours, was he? Well, might as well shove his head under his arm and have done with it, he thought. Frustrated, he kicked out at a potted plant by some elevator doors, probably placed there to carefully promote Sick Building Syndrome or the most diabolic Feng Shui. Spike figured that a building couldn’t get any sicker than this place.

His foot went straight through the pot.

That was the last straw. He could no longer take his frustrations out in even the smallest piece of violence. He wanted to tear the world apart, rip reality into shreds, bash a few heads until someone made him solid again. He was sick of this state, he wanted his life or unlife back - right now it didn't matter which, anything had to be better than existing as the ghost of a good vampire. He might have been long dead, but he'd still had something resembling a life, that he’d lived to its fullest. He needed to be solid again, if only to give Angel a good kicking.

Spike knew there were many things worse than being a spectre; he wouldn’t want to be Angel for instance, cut off from anything fun as a deserved punishment for years of misdeeds, unable to get close to anyone in case he got happy. But this ghostliness wasn't living, denied all feeling; not hot, not cold; a body that felt no fucking sensation at all. He had no taste or smell or touch; his favourite senses, the ones he had delighted in for so long, were all cut off from him. He couldn’t do anything he used to enjoy; couldn’t have sex, couldn’t fight, or drink, or smoke the odd ciggie. He’d had enough of this particular flavour of hell. Right now he would give the world to just feel something – anything - even pain would do, if it meant that he was real again, but his body stayed uncomfortably numb.

For good or for evil, he’d had things, even her, which gave some meaning to his existence. A car, a bike, a comfy crypt he could call his own, and other trivia a vampire didn't really need that he’d either carried around for years as fond reminders or had thought might make his girl comfortable enough so she’d stay. These possessions were nothing really, but they’d tied him to the world, made him a place in it that brought him closer to where Buffy existed. They’d made him feel real, like the man he longed to be for her, but now he was nothing to the world and he had nothing left in it. There was bugger all left. Not even his body remained; like everything else, gone, lost under a vanished town, his unlife sunk under rubble and dust.

One of the only ways Spike had left to influence the world, even in a small, annoying way, was his ability to watch and listen and talk. It was something he’d always done, but as his sole amusement it lacked satisfaction after a while, even if he could still irritate Angel as if poking him with a verbal stick. He had a kind of plan; maybe if he annoyed Angel enough, he might actually try and do something about Spike’s predicament, other than leave him to haunt these offices forever. Sometimes negative attention was better than no attention, after all. Until then,
Spike would have to create his own amusement.

When he’d been first resurrected, all he’d been able to do was observe and take the piss out of the mortals enslaving themselves to Hell’s corporate machine, while they sank deeper into the moral quagmire of infernal politics. He’d explored the endless offices from top to bottom until he knew the building better than anyone. Each room was characterless and sterile, lacking personality or quirkiness in their décor, just bland corporate colours that never diverged from the beige, despite the fancy names of the paint. Then he’d started playing games with people to amuse himself. Walking through walls was fun at first, scaring people as he randomly popped out or disappeared at the bottom of a dead-end corridor. His silent footfall, disturbing no air as he passed, made creeping up on the unsuspecting so easy. Even Angel, with his super sensitive hearing, couldn’t hear or feel him coming. The recent incident with Pavayne had taught Spike a few new tricks too, and being an apparition was just that bit better now he could move things again. It was not quite touch, in any real way that was tangible – he couldn't feel it after all - but he could hold things if he really wanted to, and he really did. At night he tried to practise focusing his willpower, bending reality around him, so he could connect with the physical plane. It was difficult; Spike had the will, but not the patience to discipline himself to focus hard enough to get results, but although he was a long way from the proficiency that Pavayne had showed over the reality around him, he was making steady progress. He could just about work the telly remote, and that would keep him entertained for an evening, though even that had begun to lose its appeal when all the decent shows were cancelled. He had enough control for a little joke or two at the expense of the Wolfram and Hart employees, and it brightened up this non-existence for a moment or two. He would draw moustaches on the family pictures that littered the desks of the evil lawyers, move small objects to impossible places or hide all the pens - like a disobedient poltergeist with a puckish sense of humour. It filled time, but in the end it was the kind of fun in which Spike could find no amusement. So bored beyond the telling of it, and awake every moment, with no solace to be found in the dreamy oblivion of sleep or fuzzy blur of drink, Spike had hours upon hours to fill. The long nights were the worst, insufferable with no one to talk to or torment until the Poof roused himself in the morning, keeping up his unnatural diurnal unlife. Spike knew he could always leave, explore the city a bit. He didn’t have to hang around these offices, haunting someone he hated, but he couldn't face being seen this way by the demon population of the City of Angels, many of whom were also Sunnydale evacuees. He didn’t want his already tattered reputation to sink still further into mockery.

Spike really needed a purpose again, to give himself something to do, but there wasn’t much call for the spectrally damned. It was the important battles, fighting for the things that mattered, that he missed the most. He’d liked saving the world, minus the flaming bits. He’d enjoyed watching the Slayer’s back as she fought, and it was frustrating to think that there was nothing he could do to help anymore – not even Angel. He couldn’t change anything. He couldn’t get out there and beat the solution to his problem out of someone himself. He had to wait for a girl he hardly knew to work a minor scientific miracle, but only if Angel would stop being a bastard and let her bust him out of this prison of incorporeality. As much as he hated the idea, Wolfram and Hart offered security and the only possible ticket out of this nothingness. He just needed Angel to agree. But however much he wanted to be with Buffy in Europe, there was no way he was ever going to let Angel know just how much or how scared he was that he would never be solid again. He’d let no chink in the Spike armour show so far, except in front of Fred, to encourage her to keep working on his problem, and he had no intention of showing his grandsire that vulnerability.

There were too many questions regarding Spike’s appearance out of the amulet left unanswered. Why was he the one doomed to haunt this Babylon? He wasn’t like Angel, named Champion of the People; he was just a guy trying to do the right thing. Compared to this, he’d been happy to rest. Angel was the one with the mission, supposedly the vampire on the grand journey to redemption. But he looked hardly penitent; living in all the luxury that a stinking rich and evil Law firm could provide. When did Spike, vampire briquette to a world that couldn't stand the sight of him, selfless and sacrificed, get his reward? If sluggishly meandering towards redemption with more than a little reluctance and a curse that took all the pleasure out of the journey, was worth more than the nobility of sacrifice for love, then Spike thought he’d gone wrong somewhere along the damn line. Why did Angel get a prophecy with a reward for doing bugger all, while Spike had fought so damn hard to have his love returned, only to gain a good death?

With these thoughts still in his mind, his angry exit from Angel’s office had eventually led Spike to Fred’s Lab in Wolfram and Hart’s Science Department. That was no surprise, nowadays it seemed that all roads lead back to there at some point. It felt like sanctuary. Here at least he felt welcome, and Fred always had a smile for him. If anyone was going to solve the riddle of the ghostly vampire, Spike had every faith that it was going to be this pretty science girl.

Fred’s team was hard at work when he sauntered inside. A few of her people were hunched over microscopes or cultures of unknown bacterium, while others seemed to be fussing over a demon corpse that was spread out on a gurney. Another group was in deep discussion over a hypothetical theory of the demon’s physiology that Spike had no ability to follow. Absorbed as they were in their conversations or scientific discoveries, no one looked up as he passed, they were all too used to his presence in the lab now to pay him any attention.

At that lack of reaction, and therefore lack of anyone to wind up, Spike sauntered up the short stairs to Fred’s office and leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe, watching as Fred plonked her package onto her desktop.

"How are you doing?" She asked, as she noticed him. She had only just arrived back here herself. She started to hunt around for something sharp to open her box with.

"Okay, I reckon," he shrugged, taking her question as an invitation to come in. He joined her by her desk and leant back against the table.

Fred would be the first to admit that she didn't know Spike very well, but even she could see that all was not well in Spikeland. His pose was meant to look casual, a little cool, but Fred could see the stiff defensiveness in the rigidity of his posture and the hands that were shoved deep into the pockets of his long coat. That was an improvement on his arms being clutched tightly around his chest as they had been when he’d first popped up out of the amulet, she supposed, but he hadn’t relaxed yet and she really couldn’t blame him.

Fred had seen the cocky vampire annoy Angel just for the hell of it, never contradicting Angel's view of Spike as an irritating upstart; but the scared man inside that visited her lab looking for answers or maybe just company, was quite different. She’d thought at first that the pressure of his resurrection and incorporeal state had left the vampire feeling vulnerable. Then she’d surmised that maybe it was because he was missing Buffy, who by all accounts had been the love of his unlife. Both these appeared to be true; she knew he wanted to get to Europe to find his girl again and that he hated being a ghost, but somehow she thought that his sadness ran deeper than that.

Fred was in awe of Spike's achievements. A vampire who had sought out his soul, who had laid down his existence to save the world and for the love of the Slayer, someone who had gone far beyond what was expected of him as a creature of evil. There was something terribly romantic about that. He was a miracle like Angel and yet he wouldn't acknowledge how special this made him. He thought he was just a guy. She didn’t care what Angel said about Spike’s past, he was different now, he had a soul, and she liked him.

“Have you told Buffy yet you’re here?” Fred asked, ripping the box open with a pair of scissors she’d found in a drawer.

“And how am I supposed to do that, pet?” Spike waved an incorporeal hand through the phone on her desk.

“You know, someone here could hook you up with a microphone or something to speak into…”

“Nah. I don’t want her to know I’m like this. Plenty of time for that after you fix me, eh?” Spike gave her a sexy wink, which made her blush, but it was covering a lot of unhappiness.

Spike had been wondering in the days since his resurrection; did he really have a future? When he’d let the flames consume him to save the world and the girl he loved, he’d already made his peace with it. Someone had had to make that sacrifice and in the end he’d wanted to make that gesture, to die like a Champion, to leave the world with a spectacular exit. He hadn’t been prepared for a life after Sunnydale. Nineteen days gone and the world had changed. Now he’d been months as a ghost and Buffy was a lifetime away, still thinking he was dead. He hoped she thought of him fondly and didn’t remember him as the hateful creature he’d once been. But he didn't suppose that anyone had actually grieved for him. He’d died twice now and it was unlikely that anyone ever had mourned his passing. His mother hadn't even known he was dead until he'd risen from the pauper's grave he'd been buried in and had taken her life too. There had been precious few other people left in his life he’d been close to by that point and he doubted any of the Scooby gang had cared enough to spare him a thought or a tear. He'd had his death and he'd had his glory, now what else was there to live for? Angel had his Shanshu to aspire to, but Spike was just hopelessly in love with Buffy Summers, and that turned out to be truly hopeless.

In his last moments, Buffy had said that she loved him, but Spike knew it wasn’t really true. He’d had more than enough time to dwell on that one over the seemingly endless nights, alone with only his dark past for company; an endless replay of everything that had brought him to this place. Love had made him shoot for the stars and each time he'd never believed that he could miss; because he hadn't realised that the arrows he was shooting would never be the right ones. He'd loved and lost, over and over, and he was still alone. He missed Buffy with all the passion with which he had ever loved her. How could he not love her still, when she shone like a beacon in the blackness of his history? She'd set him free from himself, pulling him from the pit, making him a better creature than he’d ever deserved to become. He longed to connect with her again, in even in the smallest way. There’d been a postcard on Angel's desk, a bright glossy photo of Tower Bridge bathed in rare sunshine that Spike had found on his early explorations of Wolfram and Hart. He’d known it was from Buffy, but he couldn’t flip it over to read her words and he doubted that Angel would be inclined to do it for him. Spike had longed to feel the stiff card between his fingers, to maybe catch a lingering trace of her scent in the invisible traces of her fingerprints. She still meant everything to him, and to walk away from that would be unthinkable, even if he was more realistic about his chances with her now. They’d never had much, but every moment he spent apart from her made it all just that little bit worse. It didn’t matter if he never had her; he would rush to her side the minute he made it back to reality, because in the end, he was still her slave. What else could he do? He was drawn to her as if magnetised; her positive to his negative, opposing poles inexorably pulled together against their natures. There was no way though that he wanted Buffy to see him like this, and he’d made quite sure that she wouldn’t. He knew Angel sure as hell wouldn't tell her, and Spike had made it clear to the rest of them that she was not to know until he was ready. They seemed to respect that, although he knew that Fred wanted him to make the call, but as much as he was tempted by her offer to set it up for him, he wasn’t ready for that step just yet.

Not that he would expect Buffy to rush back from her new life in Europe just for him. She would make an effort. He knew she’d soon have Willow researching some witchy way to conjure up a magical solution to his problem, and he had faith in the Red witch's ability to do that, if not her motivation, but he didn't want Buffy’s pity again. No, it was for the best that he didn't drag her back here to save his hide. He’d let Fred work her wonders, and then he’d cut those ties that bound him to Angel and Wolfram and Hart and leave L.A. for good. He knew Europe like the back of his hand after a hundred plus years of carnage. He’d find Buffy easily enough.

There were more important matters in the here and now to attend to. Fred had been going to fix him and had made one good attempt already. It wasn’t her fault that Pavayne had hijacked the party. He could always try a little bit of the old Spike charm to get her motivated again. Two fingers to Angel.

Judging by her blush, Fred wasn’t entirely immune to the charm he was trying to use on her, but she ignored it regardless. “I’m sorry we couldn’t recreate our last attempt, but I’ve still got plenty of ideas,” she pulled an object wrapped in tissue paper out of the box. “This should help.”

“I thought Tall, Dark and Boring wasn’t going to let you help me?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, he’s just grumpy,” Fred smiled. “This morning didn’t help though.”

“The volume control slipped in my hand,” Spike protested. “I couldn’t get a grip on it again, could I?”

Fred gave him a look over the top of her glasses that said she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Well, maybe if you keep out of his way for a bit. He’s got this conference coming up and he’s finding it a bit stressful.”

“Stressful? He should try closing a Hellmouth.”

She ignored that last comment and unfolded the issue paper, pulling it away from the object it protected. The disc inside was made of a rough metal, possibly bronze, was about the size of a hubcap and slightly convex. It was inlaid with fine strips of gold in a pattern that looked vaguely like a stylised sun and moon against a star field, but it didn’t resemble any night sky that Spike knew.

“This is the Disc of Dangar,” she told him as she held it up for them both to see clearly. “It’s a demonic artefact that’s supposed to be Millennia old. I had to order it from our office in Berlin. There’s a small chance that this is what I need to make you corporeal again, if what they say about it is true.”

“And what would that be?”

“It’s supposed to have matter transmogrifying properties.”

“Transmogri-what?” Spike frowned. “Does it work?”

Fred sat down on the desk and placed the disc between them, tracing a slim finger over the patterns on it. “I’m not sure yet. If it does what it’s supposed to do, then I should somehow be able to channel your energy matrix through the field this will create,” she looked up at him. “I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, in case I can’t do this. I’m right at the edge of experimental science here. This combination of science and magic has never been attempted before. I don’t even know if it can be done. No one in Berlin was ever able to activate the disc; I’m just hoping I can get it to work for us, but I’ll do everything I can for you, I promise.”

“I know you can do it, pet.” Spike told her firmly. He gave her a wide smile, filling her with confidence. “I’m sure your big brain will figure it out.” It wouldn’t be long now, he was sure.

Then Buffy would definitely know he was back.

After a few weeks, some intrusion by Spike during Angel’s morning meeting with his department heads had become such a normal feature of the everyday office routine at Wolfram and Hart, that it was almost expected. Spike’s incessant presence throughout the day may have grated on Angel’s nerves, but no one else was very surprised when Spike appeared through the wall and into the meeting room like he was actually welcome.

“Is this a private meeting or can anyone stroll in?” Spike quipped, a little disappointed that he was barely spared a glance beyond Angel’s almost imperceptible scowl.

Despite the casual entrances he’d affected, the timing of Spike’s interruptions was part of a quite deliberate plan. The daily Department Head meeting was Angel’s main opportunity to gather his friends together to go over their progress converting Wolfram and Hart into a paragon of virtue, without the pressure of an impending crisis or – hopefully - the presence of Eve, their liaison to the Senior Partners. The slow progress of the transition was making Angel twitchy and Spike saw the meeting as a prime opportunity to bother him some more, taking full advantage of Angel’s discomfort to make the old sod do something about his spectral predicament. So far though it wasn’t working, Angel hadn’t changed his mind and despite Fred’s efforts to solve his problems in her spare time – what there was of it - Spike remained distinctly ghostly.

As the weeks had passed, Spike had had plenty of opportunity to watch as Angel’s people tried to apply their noble principles to their new vision of what Wolfram and Hart should be. They’d had mixed results; angering old clients and staff who were deeply set in their ways, but they had managed to attract new business and retain most of their client list. A stony silence from the Senior Partners was only to be seen as a good thing, as they seemingly stayed on the right side of their enigmatic bosses. Spike though; saw more of the underhand dealings that their new colleagues got up to when they thought the new management wasn’t looking. It seemed that it didn’t matter who ran the place, the bedrock philosophy of the firm would forever remain the same. The rag-tag bunch from Angel Investigations might be all togged up in Executive clothing, but they were fooling themselves if they thought they could fight for the Greater Good from behind a desk, waiting for the supposedly helpless to come to them with a lawsuit, instead of getting out there and finding the people who needed them most.

Spike looked at them all. What a bunch of Losers. Angel sat grimly at the head of the large wood and glass table, his stony expression chiselled in annoyance by shadows cast by the sunlight that warmed him through the necro-tinted glass. Playing human. To the vampire’s right, Charles Gunn lent forward on the polished hardwood, keen and eager to continue with the day’s agenda. The new set up suited him. What he’d gained when he’d had his brain upgraded to Lawyer Plus had been more than just an encyclopaedic knowledge of demon and human Law - with some Gilbert and Sullivan thrown in for some evil whimsy – he’d found a purpose. He felt like he could achieve more with a single signature than with a hundred fights with his fists. He loved it and it showed in his renewed enthusiasm. Wesley next to him looked more relaxed, if more troubled; his face contained mix of contradictory thoughts and emotions. He was scruffier than the others, who all looked like they’d all visited the best tailor recently, but Wesley’s comfortable jumper and three-day stubble - a small academic rebellion against the smart business suits – make him look like a librarian going through a mid-life crisis, rather than a man who’d been through a harrowing time in the past couple of years. Wesley might have come to the point where he was prepared to take all that Wolfram and Hart had to offer, but he wasn’t going to change for them.

On the other side of the table, Fred was scribbling maniacally on a notepad, sketching out mathematical theorems and calculations like Stephen Hawking on crack. Lorne lounged beside her, happy but hungover from one Seabreeze too many the night before, like her green protector. Then lastly, beyond Lorne, Harmony sat primly in pink, taking the meeting’s minutes, jotting notes on her pad in large loopy handwriting.

“How’s the Good fight going then? Pencils all sharpened? Paperwork all sorted?” Spike asked, hastily turning his back on Harmony’s small, flirty wave to him.

Angel put his head in his hands; he couldn’t take much more of this. “Get out, Spike.”

Delighted to see his Grand-Sire was cracking, Spike settled in a spare chair, causally sprawling himself across it and playing up to the assembled group. “Don’t mind me, I’m just here for a good laugh.”

Angel recognised defeat when he saw it. He gritted his teeth and carried on. “Wes, anything to report?”

Wesley leaned forward. “Yes, I had a meeting yesterday with a client of ours, a Mr. Morrow. He runs a small shipping company out near the docks. He’s been having some problems with his neighbours who occupy the basement of his building,” Wesley paused for dramatic effect. “He thinks they’re eating his employees.”

“Right,” Angel nodded. “What does that have to do with us?”
“Mr. Morrow is a Dark Arts practitioner of some repute. His company is one of the largest importers of magical supplies and paraphernalia on the West Coast.”

“Okay, I’ll speak to him. Harmony, check my diary…”

Spike sniggered.

Angel glared at him. “What is it now?”

“‘Check my diary’? You’re right losing the plot, aren’t you? These things are eating people, Angel! I thought you protected them? ‘Champion of the People’ and all that…”

Gunn smiled at him, “Spike, we’re doing a lot of good work here…”

Spike snorted, “Yeah. So you people keep telling me. Do any of you actually leave this building anymore?”

“Right, that’s it,” Angel snapped. “I’ve had it up to here. Fred, I want Spike solid again now. I need to kill him.”

Fred looked up from where she’d been doodling her equations, “But we haven’t…”

“Now. What have you got?”

“Okay. Wesley has been looking into the spell we need. I’ve been working on how to obtain the matter the Disc will require and how to contain it once it’s been activated. You see, I have this theory…”

“Will it work?” Angel stopped her; desperate to get this matter decided before she launched into a heady mix of technical babble, advanced maths and girly enthusiasm.

Wesley nodded. “I believe I have found a spell that will suffice. Fred?”

Fred gulped.

Spike went to protest, but caught Fred’s glance at him. “I hope you know what you’re doing, sweets.”

She looked pained and turned back to Angel, “If I had a couple of days, I could…”

Angel stood up, the decision was made, “Okay, we’ll try it. You have a day. Go set up. Wes, get what you need for this spell. We’ll do this tomorrow.”

***

Spike had to admit he was impressed. With the proper motivation – the wrath of their vampire boss – Wolfram and Hart’s science department were able to mobilize themselves into action on turbocharge. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Fred’s orders had been given, all other pending work had been put aside and everything was place. A large space in the lab had been cleared while the equipment Fred required was being obtained, assembled and calibrated to her plans by a chaotic scurry of staff. Amid the bustle tough, Fred looked exhausted. The tired shadows under her eyes and a slight droop to her fatigued shoulders were evident as she perfected the last of her calculations and made minute adjustments to the equipment. Spike knew that she hadn’t been home since yesterday, working all night to figure out a solution that didn’t require a massive power source or a large lump of the Conduit. But she’d done it. By all accounts, including the fawning opinion of her assistant Knox, Fred was about to pull off yet another minor feat of physics, combining cutting edge science with dark, primal demonic magic. Bloody miracle worker she was.

Intelligent, but also sweet and dotty, Fred charmed him. If it wasn’t for Buffy, he thought he could have easily lost his heart to this girl instead. She was no fighter like the Slayer, but there was a thread of steel under the kooky sexiness and the daffy way she’d bamboozle him with technical details all the same. And she liked him. That was a novelty. She didn’t care that he had some nebulous dark past or anything like that – that was hardly unusual around here – it was his recent actions were the ones that mattered to her. She’d seen the person he was now and had recognised something of value there, that he really was someone worth saving. She believed in him and he couldn’t help but like her for that. At least she still had a determined faith in doing what she thought was right.

“All finished, luv?” he asked, hovering a short distance away from where she was connecting some of the last cable connections.

She looked at him and gave him a thin smile. “I think it won’t be long now.”

“Is it going to work? Don’t much fancy coming out all mushy, you know.”

“It’ll be fine, don’t you worry,” Fred reassured him.
He nodded, he trusted her. He didn’t want to come out the other end in some tangle of body parts like a Star Trek transporter accident, but there was no point being apprehensive when the best alternative was remaining a spook.

“So what are you going to do once you’re whole again?” she asked a little more brightly.

He shrugged. “Dunno, get out of this dump for a start. Get myself over to Europe, see the old green and pleasant again…”

“See Buffy?”

He caught her sly smile and grinned, not minding her blatant fishing. “Yeah. If she’ll have me.”

“I’m sure she will.”

Spike wasn’t so sure about that, their relationship to date hadn’t left him sure of anything. All he knew was that he missed Buffy with all the passion he’d ever put into loving her, but that wasn’t the same as expecting her to welcome him in after all that had happened. He knew better than to rely on an admission of love only declared as he’d died. Still, that had never stopped him before. He’d have to just take the risk.

By the time Wesley and Angel arrived with the ingredients for the spell, all the preparations for powering and containing the Disc of Dangar during the invocation were complete. The lab was cleared of unnecessary personnel and the Disc was fitted gently into the cradle Fred had constructed to contain it. Both Spike and Angel had little to do but watch, as Wesley set to work organising the magical part of the procedure, laying out the protective circle in white chalk and marking the cardinal points with thick black candles. In a small crucible, he burnt a complicated combination of aromatic herbs whose pungent scent soon dominated the room, causing sensitive noses to crinkle and eyes to water.
Fred coughed, “I think we’re ready. I’ll just attach the power source to the Disc...”

“What does this Disc do?” Angel asked.

“No one is really sure,” Wesley replied. “It’s widely believed to have originally belonged to a clan of trans-dimensional demons, which used the Disc to focus the matter around them into bodies adapted to the local environment. That way they could anchor their ethereal bodies to the physical plane.”

“Sounds ideal,” Spike muttered. “Not much liking this all doubt though.”

“I believe we should be able to funnel matter from the universe through this machine here,” she patted the equipment beside her, “ and into the Disc. We don’t want the Disc to suck us in. It should then knit your new body tightly to your incorporeal substance, but it might have some strange effects…” Fred told him.

“Strange effects how?”

As much as Spike liked the girl, he didn’t fancy being experimented on. He’d had enough of that with the Initiative. He'd never told Buffy or anyone, but he still dreamt of the Initiative sometimes. She’d thought he'd been caught, chipped up and escaped, end of story apart from that annoying chip in his head. And that was all he was sure he remembered, but he knew he'd been there weeks upon weeks, with waking dreams of unknown faces, his body strapped down or his head held still and forward for hours, his eyes looking at his feet as they rested on his cheeks. He'd been drained of blood then moments later felt bursting full. His head open, he’d felt the sawing, the prodding and limbs that had involuntary reactions. Probes rammed in his brain, chest, heart and arse. He didn't find alien abduction stories as funny the way he’d used to.

“You won’t be parted from this body easily,” Fred replied.

“Your essence will be bound to this plane and the new body you’ll inhabit,” Wesley agreed. “The Disc may well be the only way the process can be undone again.”

Warily, Spike asked, “Will I still dust?”

Angel snorted. “God, I hope so.”

Wesley ignored him. “I don’t know, Spike. It’s in your hands. Do you want to go ahead with this?”

Spike paused before he answered, possible indestructible body or eternity as the ghost of Wolfram and Hart? It wasn’t difficult to choose.

***

The lights were dimmed. Sitting crossed legged on the floor, Wesley started the ritual, muttering the words to the complicated spell as he lit the candles in the proper order and called on the powers of darkness. His face, lit by the fuzzy candlelight diffused in the smoke from the stinky herbs, furrowed deeply in concentration. A glance at the Disc showed that it remained inert and Wesley’s voice wavered slightly with his confidence, but as he incanted the invocation for the second time, chanting louder and this time with more force, something started to happen.

The Disc started to rotate in the cradle until it spun like a spinning top, emitting a low, teeth-grating hum that could be felt deep in the bones of all those in the room, making fingers tingle and twitch. The images on the disc blurred and merged before bursting into a flare of magnesium-white light that re-lit the room too brightly; then faded, narrowing into a beam, which fanned out and flattened into a wall of energy an arm-span wide. It hissed and spat with living plasma, its surface roiling with angry energy and carnelian sparks.

Fred stepped forward and started to take measurements, adjusting dials on a generator until she was satisfied with the settings, “Everything seems to be holding. Sorry, Spike, but we have no way of testing it.”

“That mean we’re ready then?” Spike circled the wall of light, inspecting it dubiously.

Fred nodded to Wesley.

“Spike, you’re supposed to walk through it,” Wesley urged him.

Spike hesitated, watching as the plasma flared like a solar tempest. They hadn’t done any tests, how did they know this was going to succeed? Fred smiled at him in encouragement. She was asking him to trust her, put the faith in her like she had in him. What the hell, he had nothing to lose. Spike took an unnecessary breath for courage and stepped into the plasma.

Time hung for a moment.

Then it slowed to the consistency of treacle. Each and very step he took in this impossible world out of time was an effort, almost too much, as if dragging the weight of hundreds of himself behind him. Everywhere stretched to an infinity that crowded in on him, pressing on him tightly as if cramming himself into a singularity. Past, future, present, they were all the same. He was the universe or just a part of it - it didn’t matter.

He could feel his body re-molding; knitting the flesh back together from the matter of the cosmos itself, atom by atom by atom. Weaving him anew from a new cloth of starshine. Then, after a moment that felt like forever, he was complete – whole again - and time balanced on the cusp of the physical, until with a sudden snap, it was all over and he was dumped roughly onto the floor of the lab.

He was solid again!

His fingers, splayed out on the hard tile where they’d broken his fall, met resistance, not the spongy nothingness of before. Ecstatic with the way that the coldness of the ceramic under his palm felt reassuringly normal, he pushed himself to his feet and patted himself down.

His new body felt much like the old one. Satin moonshiny skin molded itself over hard, tight muscle, tendon and bone. He ran a hand over his head; all was as it should be. Hair just so, a little mussed, but not a problem; his face was still fined boned and sculpted, the scar as prominent as ever on his brow. He stretched out an arm, opening and closing his palm, stretching the muscle and delighting in the response of the new synapses. The rest seemed fine too. Chest, tight stomach, the priceless family jewels – he made doubly sure they were still in the right place - everything was still where it belonged and all properly solid.

Much to his relief, his clothes had survived the process too, even down to the dust from where the Hellmouth had fallen in on him and he shook it loose. The coat felt a bit odd though; it didn’t seem to have come through the resurrection as well as the rest of him. Its personality missing, it felt thicker, heavier. Gone were the familiar set of stains, holes and rips, erasing twenty-five years of his history that had become part of them both. Where the soft, supple leather had once been worn in to his shape and flowed with his movements as a part of him, it now just felt awkward and stiff.

When he noticed that everyone was watching him, Spike grinned at them. “Just checking the old bod out. See if everything’s back as it was.”

Fred walked up to him, touching his shoulder lightly to test his substance. Happy with what she felt, she started to check him over with a scanner. He wanted to hug her, but held himself back, “How does it feel?”

How did it feel? What a question. He was himself again. He felt fucking fantastic. Wonderful. “Smashing, Pet. Owe you one.”

Fred finished the scan and looked at the result. “Everything appears to be normal - for a vampire anyway…”

“Great then. I’m off down the pub,” overwhelmed with the joy of being back in the world again, he wanted to get out and do as many of the things he’d missed as he could. Beer, cigarettes and blood were first on the list.

Angel rolled his eyes, he’d known that as soon as Spike’s feet had hit the ground, he’d be off and running, but it was Fred that caught Spike’s arm to stop him leaving. “Wait!” she reached into her pocket, pulling out a small green Post-It! Note and offered it to him. “Here.”

He took it gratefully. It was Buffy’s number.

Fred smiled. “You have good luck with that now, you hear?”

The telephone sat patiently expectant.

Spike stared at it as if it was the root of all evil or something close. It was only an object, a thing, but its silence maintained a mute testimony on his deficient courage. Defeated, he gulped down yet another shot, while the forgotten Post It! stuck loosely to the bar by his arm, soaked slowly into a lagoon of spilled beer. The ink that marked out the phone number bled slowly into the paper. A girly heart doodled beside his girl’s name melted into nothing but a tie-dyed smudge as he failed to pick up the handset and dial. This wasn’t the wild night of debauchery he’d been planning at all. Despite all his intentions and months of working out exactly what he’d do once corporeal again, they were wasted almost as soon as his booted feet had touched the solid floor.

After leaving the Lab, the first task on his hedonistic To Do List had been the cigarette he’d found - still slightly crumpled from the Hellmouth - in his pocket. That had been smoked before he’d even reached the lobby, its smoky bitterness a tonic to his nicotine addiction. The butt now smouldered a dark ring into very expensive corporate carpeting. One item duly ticked off, he’d lingered at Harmony’s desk for a bit, letting her warm him a mug of blood.

“There you go.” She’d handed him the steaming mug with a small flourish and a hopeful smile.

He’d taken it and made a show of savouring the rich ferrous aroma of the fresh blood. It smelt wonderful. It might have only been pig, and swill compared to the taste of blood from the neck of a human kill, but after months of deprivation it was delicious.

Harmony had watched him knock it back with a kind of fascinated horror, not understanding how it felt to be deprived for so long that pigs’ blood was that appetizing. She had to drink it as that was the rule Angel had set at Wolfram and Hart, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. “You were really hungry, I guess.”

He’d sighed in happy satisfaction; closing his eyes and throwing his head back in pleasure as the hot metallic liquid had refreshed his parched mouth and flushed warmth through his dead circulation. “You have no idea. That tasted wonderful, Harm.”

“Eew. I can get you two a room if you like?” she’d said with disgust.

“Nah.” He’d taken another, smaller swig. “Once I finish this, I got some fun to have. Going to have one wild night.”

With that Harmony had perked up, looking at him hopefully. “I finish in an hour. I could come with.”

He’d looked at her pretty face, eager smile and the cleavage straining her pink dress into submission. She’d been tempting, and the tension that had been building in his jeans was all for it, but it probably wasn’t worth the trouble for a tumble on a hastily cleared desk or a quickie against the photocopier just to scratch the itch. Half an hour of talk about shoes and he’d have been tempted to do something else altogether. He didn’t need empty sex anyway when he had Buffy to go to. He’d shot Harmony a contemptuous look and gone looking for a bar instead. He had a call to make.

Calling Buffy was something he needed to do on his own, away from Angel and the rest of the crowd at Wolfram and Hart, but not without having a few drinks inside him first. Los Angeles had any number of places he could’ve picked to get drunk in, from the rowdy clubs he’d once frequented with Drusilla, to sleazy neon strip joints he’d frequented on his own, but as he searched, he found he wasn’t up for the flashier places he’d first intended. The solid world had proved, so far, to be a mild disappointment, even if he was still giddy from the effects of the spell. The first flush of sensation returning to his body had been a glorious rush, and the remnants of the magic caused an ecstatic buzz to still zip along his nerves like a live wire; until the come down had hit him anyway. Then his rediscovered senses – familiar, yet oddly alien – began to feel flat and dead. His body might still have wanted to do all those things he’d always taken pleasure in, but as he moved from bar to bar and the inevitability of that call to Buffy grew closer, his enthusiasm drained away. The place he eventually chose wasn’t much. It was rough and business was slow, but it was good enough to celebrate the special occasion of his resurrection. No one questioned the appearance of a dishevelled and slightly dusty vampire at the bar, and more importantly, they left him to his maudlin drinking.

Despite having months to figure it out, he wasn’t prepared for making this call. No one could’ve guessed how terrified he’d be of hearing Buffy’s voice again, even as he longed to hear it so much. The ache inside, from not seeing her, not hearing her or feeling her close by, hurt so deeply and so purely that not even the swill of cheap beer and Jack Daniels mixing nicely in his belly was going to make any difference to the fear. Despite, or even because of, the drink, his hands were shaking as they raised the glass again. It wasn’t as simple as just calling her. He had no clue as to what he could say to her now. He didn't have the words or the perfect poetry to express what had happened to him since the day she’d seen him go down in flames. How could he explain to her what it was that made it so difficult to tell her that he was back, when he didn’t understand why he’d been given another chance himself?

The telephone remained untouched.

He lit his fifth cigarette of the night instead, wriggling uncomfortably on his seat and squirming under the telephone’s accusing gaze and his self-doubt. He picked at the Post It! note. Her blurry phone number seemed to burn in his hand, pulsing with promise, but of what? All he’d ever wanted? Unlikely. Just another rejection he knew was all too probable. He’d heard her say ‘I love you’, and those words had meant the world to him as he’d kept them close to his heart in the days after his return, held as a talisman of hope he didn’t dare feel. But all his existence he’d waited to hear someone utter those words. Now Buffy had said them, and he couldn’t bear the possible discovery that all they had ever been was an empty expression of an emotion she did not feel, uttered when she knew she would never have to take the risk of acting upon them. Now facing the moment where only the fact mattered, he didn’t dare believe in their truth - she’d burnt him too many times before with hopes that had come to nothing. If she’d said them those nights he’d held her close, he might have believed in her conviction. Instead, given in the last moments they’d spent together, they sounded like a brittle token she’d offered to a falling comrade, their sentiment hollow. If calling her would destroy the illusion of their truth, he couldn’t face that. It was one thing to not to believe her, but something else to hear the certainty in her voice as she pushed him away. He didn’t think he could survive that again.

With the emotional detachment provided by the physical distance between them and wisdom by bottom of the bottle, he could see what a sodding idiot he'd been. Again. No wonder her victory over him had been so emphatic, when she'd crushed what little self-respect he’d had under her impractical heels. A stupid, love-blind fool, the more he'd tried to clasp her affection, the more it had escaped his fingers. And he still bloody loved her so much. The world would continue to turn, nights would follow days and years would pass, and Spike would still love Buffy. Still love her with every molecule of his being. But right now he needed to face reality. She didn't love him and he had to grow up, accept that, and find himself a new place in the world. Short of this mysterious Shanshu business, he’d taken it as far as he could go with the soul, and if she couldn't love him for that, then she would never love him at all. The picture was becoming clearer now. There would always be a burning hole in his heart, a puzzle to which she held the last piece, but it would never be complete.

Should he call then? The world had changed; Sunnydale was a memory and new Slayers were carving a swathe through the demon population - girls who were victims no longer. Buffy could be a normal girl in this brave new world she’d created and wasn't that what she’d always wanted? Whatever suffering he'd been through with Buffy, it'd had been worth it, worth every bruise, every broken bone, every disappointment and humiliation. He'd touched something special, something unique in this world that he'd never come close to again. He'd never felt anything like it, but he could never offer her that normality, the picket fence of legend, even if the love was no less real or intense. The best thing he could do now for her was to grant her the freedom from him.

The doubt of all these "what ifs?" stopped him picking up the handset. She was an ocean and a call away and it might have been light years for all that it mattered, because he couldn’t bloody do it.

And that was that.

He wasn’t going to call.

He had other places he could be and he had friends of his own now - even if they were the losers at Wolfram and Hart. At least Angel’s people didn't despise him, however much the old git still might. He still owed Fred that favour, and it would be rude to not to be around to pay that debt, wouldn’t it? There was a niche waiting to be carved here, new opportunities, and he could help out. Maybe that tumble with Harmony wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all, if he could find a way to shut her up. He’d forget Buffy and the turbulence of her affections, such as they were, and stay to annoy Angel instead. At least the response there would be predictable. His heart was too fragile, like a sculpture of fine glass, to risk shattering again. Did he really want to swap all he had here for another round of thrust and parry with Buffy?

Ignoring the panicked yes from the small voice inside him, he stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray with a degree of finality that reflected his decision. It smouldered to a dying ember of grey ash next to the crumpled neon PostIt! The thought of Buffy had filled him for so long, he no longer knew that he’d ever been empty. She’d shaped him, moulding him into a Champion, and he’d tried to become a person that she’d be proud of. How could he not love her, when she'd set him free from himself? His soul was hers and always would be, bound to the love he felt for her, but it was time to break free from the yoke that his love for her had bound him to for so long. She was thousands of miles away and an sea of water had flowed under the bridge in the months he’d been ghostly. Only now, when he finally had something else to live for, did he have the strength to let her go and walk away. Hopefully, somewhere in the back of her mind, he’d be a fond memory for her and he was happy with that. He would move on and find another girl to crush his heart, even if at that moment it felt like there was no one for him if he couldn't have her. It didn't matter that his heart was dead to everyone else and no other woman would ever come close to her mark, he’d survived this long. He'd be okay. It was time at last to pick through the pieces of himself and see which ones still fit the man he’d become.

“You finished with that, buddy?” the bar tender asked, pointing at the telephone.

Spike sighed. Had he? “Yeah, suppose so. Thanks, mate.”

That was it. Decision made and he felt strangely numb. He picked himself off the barstool. It was no use drinking himself into a stupor now, he had some other needs that required his attention. Sunrise was only a few hours off, but there was time enough to get some fighting in. He could sort the rest of his life out tomorrow night.

Now suitability buoyed by the alcohol he had drunk, Spike went back out onto the city to look for a little aggro. There was still plenty of people on the L.A. streets and the twenty-four seven trade of the port made the dock area a hub of activity. People here had places to be at all hours, whether it was the grubby business of street trade or shift workers making their way to and from the ships tied up at the wharves. It was quite unlike sleepy Sunnydale, where only the foolhardy and demons drawn in by the siren call of the Hellmouth would wander out after sunset. Even this late, when the first signs of dawn began to herald the change from night to true morning, a lone vampire on his way through the dark alleys behind commercial units and run down offices was hardly an unusual sight. Times were changing though. These. alleys would once have thronged with demons, attracted to the easy pickings from the port, but after years of Angel and the recent rise of the new Slayers, the numbers had been reduced to a handful and he was hard pressed to find a decent fight.

So, for the most part, barring minor scuffles with fledglings looking for an easy mark to boost their reputations and a more challenging tussle with a group of carousing demons, Spike was left to his thoughts. Once he would have swept down these streets, head high, Drusilla at his side, a couple of night terrors picking off whomever they chose for fun and quick snack. Most vampires would have thought twice about challenging a pair with such a reputation. Back then Drusilla had been his goddess, his savour. She’d awoken dreary William from sleepwalking through a dull life with a deadly kiss to his neck. Dark and strong for all her madness, he’d been Prince Consort at her side, dutiful, if subservient, guided by her dark star. William had always been a dreamer, always longing for the passion he thought life should really have, but never daring to get out of his ordered Victorian world to embrace it, how ironic then he should find that passion in death instead, finding his place amongst the night. He’d been William the Bloody, as impulsive as he was wicked, with his damnation as sure as the blood on his tongue. But those days felt like a long time ago now.

It was his own fault it was over, he supposed, his wicked princess had sensed that she was no longer the centre of his universe and that he revolved round Buffy’s sun. Although he’d denied it, in hindsight he saw that he had spent most of his time thinking of the Slayer in one way or another. He would spend hours coming up with endless ways of taking her life, wringing her neck, ripping her open, pulling her apart. In his dreams, his obsession would take dark and erotic turns; his hands would tear her to pieces as he fucked her, caught between pleasure, pain and grief. He’d beat his frustration out on her corpse as his black boiling hate blazed in its passion, long before it would ignite in other ways. He’d always felt something, but love couldn’t have been further from his thoughts. He hadn’t known it, but he’d been doomed from the start. The sight of his young nemesis dancing in the Bronze all those years ago - a fateful moment on which his unlife had pivoted unsteadily - had pierced his heart irrevocably and he’d been spiralling downward ever since. Until he’d ended up sprawled at her feet, defeated by his own heart and a girl with a shiny blonde ponytail. Still, he was a different man now, on the cusp of a whole new future. He had a soul and even if he couldn’t be with Buffy, then she’d set his purpose. The nasties of the world wouldn’t know what hit them.

A tingle as his skin started to singe warned him it was getting dangerously close to sunrise. He had wandered the streets for a good proportion of the night, and it was time to return to Wolfram and Hart and find shelter from the cruelty of the harsh Los Angeles sun. Instead, he found himself drawn to a run down, semi-commercial neighbourhood, where old, crumbling buildings with cheap office space survived amongst the tatty tenements, and a small office block that looked like it had survived a few earthquakes in its time. It was occupied by a few small businesses, but it looked like the kind of place that would have a cosy basement he could hole up in for a kip. He’d pester Angel later; let him know his plans to stay in L.A. after all. He couldn’t wait to see his Grand-Sire’s face when he heard that one.

The basement of the building turned out to be dark and windowless; the only light a soft luminescence from the ugly, stumpy candles on the altar and on the large candleholders in the corners of the room. Their flames cast twisted funereal shadows against walls bare to the cold stone. Hot and oppressive, the air carried the stink of rancid incense and dread. Circular, and not unlike a gigantic satanic birdbath, the heavy stone altar that dominated the room was consecrated to some monstrous god with a triskele of yellowed bones and dried blood. Spike had no idea what they were trying to conjure here, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be Christmas and puppies.

He stepped forward; somehow compelled to approach the altar against his better judgement, a huge invisible hand pulling him towards the centre. His head felt heavy and it throbbed. He saw them then, about twenty or so, approaching out of the gloom from every direction, cutting off any route of escape. The hum of the oppressive air became a soft chant of supplication in a language that predated everything. Their faces still in shadow, he could just about see under the cowls of their rough, brown robes. Hard, waxy skin stretched over obscenely disfigured and mutilated human features. Their eyes were sewn shut. Bringers, High Priests of the First Evil and, too late, Spike realised he was the one they had summoned.

He tensed, ready for battle. God, his head hurt. “Come on then, let’s have a go! I’m right ready for a rumble.”

In reply, the Bringers closed in, calmly circling around him, but just keeping their distance from the furthest reach of his kicks. They kept up the chant even as he stuck out at one, only to be repelled by some kind of magical barrier. He punched again in another direction – with the same result. Then again and again and again.

“That’s cheating!” he shouted, pacing, caged, frantic.

The Bringers stopped and turned inward.

“That’s a bit more like it, you bastards!”

One of them stepped forward and raised his staff. Magic crackled through the air; a bolt of blue lightening channelled into the crack from a powerful spell. Spike felt nothing after it hit him square in the chest.

Two days later

The head office of Morrow Enterprises Inc rose before them like a cliff suffering from coastal erosion after the fury of a wintry tempest. The building looked fit only for demolition. An earthquake or two, and years of general neglect, had left the old structure crumbling and careworn, cracks spider webbing across the stonework under the dirt of decades. Creeping hands of bare vines, and hairy tufts of sickly grasses, drooping as they browned, picked away at the shabby rendering; the life clinging to the holes in the surface fading in slow death as each day passed.

Angel looked at the uninspiring façade before him. Maybe it wasn’t a surprise that a mysterious death cult had taken up residence here. The block was anonymous, and had blended into the landscape over time, fading into the fabric of the city. If you weren’t looking for it, it barely attracted a passing glance.

“Wes, Are you sure this is it?” he asked.

Sharing Angel’s doubt, Wesley checked the address again. He’d scrawled it in biro on an expensive sheet of Wolfram and Hart’s handmade headed-paper. “This is the address I was given.”

“Sure looks creepy enough,” added Gunn, tightening his grip on his axe in anticipation.

Angel wasn’t going to disagree with that assessment. He nodded and led the two men up the overgrown steps to the thick wooden door. The grimy brass plate mounted beside it confirmed that this was indeed the building that contained Mr Morrow’s shipping company - amongst a variety of other enterprises. He gave the door a shove. Its timbers were rotten and sun-bleached beneath the flaking white paint, but it resisted his push.

“Ah, Angel.” Wesley produced a key from the pocket of his jeans.

Chagrined, Angel took it without comment.

The door opened into a dim, unlit lobby; which, once Wesley had found the light switch and the strip lights overhead had sputtered to life, matched the exterior of the block with its tatty, faded décor. The three men fanned out, searching the room for any clues to what was going on here. There were several, firmly locked, doors that appeared to open into ordinary, cheap office space for rent. From what they could determine through the thin walls of frosted glass and wooden boards, the space was occupied by several small businesses, and none of them looked like they harboured a religious group of any sort. Otherwise, apart from an abandoned reception desk and some planters of dead shrubbery, their dry trailing foliage like skeletal fingers brushing the surface of an underworld river of dirty tile, the lobby was bare.

“The client said these people were downstairs, right?” Gunn opened a service door that led through into a darkened stairwell.

“Yes. Mr Morrow was quite adamant that these people were in the basement.” Wesley said as he joined him. He flicked on his flashlight and gave the stairs a cursory scan.

Gunn did the same, their joint beams illuminating a flight of bare wooden stairs that spiralled upwards to the two floors above and descended into a mouth of ominous darkness, where the only light came from the murky glow of the green neon Exit sign above the fire escape. Nearby, a stained metal door could just be seen, its dead iron sheen black with age. This seemed to be what they were looking for.

Angel had finished his search of the reception area and he descended the stairs first. He cranked open the stiff door, forcing a squeal of complaint from its old hinges as it scraped heavily across the floor.

As he entered the basement, his eyes, enhanced by his demon, swept over the bare, grubby walls. The extremities of the room were lost, even to him, in the shadows, but it appeared to be vacant. What couldn’t escape his notice was the overpowering stink, the air heavy and rotten with evil.

But the smell was all there was. After a careful search, even of the darkest corners, there was no indication that anyone had been down here for years. It was dusty and cobwebby, and dirt, full of unknown horrors, crunched under their boots. Satisfied that the room was empty, they passed through another door and into another barren space, where the rank stench was even stronger and intense, laden with menace. At the foot of set of steps on the furthest wall, a body lay sagged and forgotten, face down in the filth.

“I think we have some of their handiwork.” Wesley said, gravely.

Angel knelt beside the corpse. It was too hard to see, just a jumbled shape in the dark. He reached out, and with great concern and reverence, rolled the body over so they could see its face.

He grimaced when he realised who it was. “Great. It’s Spike.”

“I thought he was off to England?” said Gunn, as he ran his flashlight across the rest of the room.

“Not quick enough.” Angel started to pace angrily. He frowned as Wesley crouched in his place beside the unconscious vampire. “He’s probably just drunk, Wes. Drunk and stumbling into my basement.”

Ignoring Angel, Wesley checked him for injuries. “I agree there is a distinct odour of alcohol, but I’m not sure…” He leaned in closer, focusing the flashlight onto Spike’s chest. It was difficult to see in the gloom, but there were some unusual scorch marks on his T-Shirt. “Angel, come and look at this.”

Angel returned; reluctantly looking at the burns Wesley was gently prodding. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” Wesley inspected the residue on his fingers and gave them a sniff. There was blood and plenty of it, yet something else, stringent and nasty. Sulphur. “It appears to be magical in nature.”

“So he’s pissed someone else off again, there’s a surprise. What’s he doing here?”

“I suggest we take him back and ask him.” Wesley suggested. “There’s nothing else here.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Gunn. “Look at these. Someone’s been up to some spooky mojo in here.”

He panned the flashlight across the walls. Sigils drawn in blood, dried dark and flaky, stained the brick on all four walls. Even to Wesley’s trained eye, they appeared arcane and unusual. Contorted and scratchy, the primordial hieroglyphs seemed to recoil from the light as they watched. Wesley rose and started to examine each one, flicking out a small notebook from his pocket so he could sketch his observations.

With little to contribute now, Angel sniffed one of the symbols. It was pig’s blood, tainted with the foul reek of powerful dark magic and the dry malt of beer. “It’s Spike’s, I recognise the alcohol content.”

“That would explain his blood loss, certainly. I think we can demonstrate from all this,” Wesley gestured to prove his point, sweeping one hand in a wide arc, “the existence of this cult. The question is who are they?”

“And where have they gone to?” Gunn added. “I don’t like the idea of these people loose in L.A. Y’ know what I’m saying?”

***

An hour later, Spike was still unconscious in Wolfram and Hart’s extensive medical unit, a cadaver laid out for inspection. There had been no change in his condition at all, but he’d been cleaned up and his wounds treated and dressed. Several medics with specialities in demonic medicine were fussing over a tangle of monitors and drips, trying to ascertain what was wrong with the stricken vampire. He’d lost a lot of blood, but not enough to keep him comatose. Under the scorch marks and some superficial burns, whose cause was yet to be determined, there were some deep, nasty cuts, made by the blade of a long, sharp knife.

Fred was hovering around the medics, helping to theorize the problem and suggesting possible metaphysical causes, but Angel wasn’t sure that Spike warranted all the effort. He’d never been that easy to get rid of before, and he probably wouldn’t be now - unfortunately.

Fred reluctantly pulled herself away as Angel beckoned her over. “How is he, Fred?”

She looked down at her clipboard, absently pushing her glasses up her nose. “We’re just finishing up the tests. Apart from the burns and some blood loss, there’s nothing we can find that would cause coma in a vampire. Once we’re done we’ll move him into a private room - maybe he’ll wake up after some rest.”

“Do you know who might have done this to him?”

“Not yet. Wesley is looking into any demons that he might have run into.”

Before Angel could ask another question, an intern handed Fred a report. She glanced at it, skimming its contents quickly. “There are very high traces of magic around those burns. Look at these.”

Angel took the proffered sheet. A series of incomprehensible figures swam before his eyes. He nodded and handed them back to Fred. “Just get him awake.”

***

When Spike opened his eyes again, it wasn’t to the bare beams of the basement ceiling, nor was it to Hell or, if he was wishfully thinking, Valhalla - just the sterile tile of Wolfram and Hart’s medical bay. Unfortunately, the busty valkyries with Buffy’s smiling face would have to wait their turn again. This time he’d awoken to an Angel, but not one of the right sort.

At the sight of the disapproval on his grandsire’s face, Spike pulled himself upright on the bed with an effort. He’d underestimated the strength of his hangover. His head pounded. It felt like his brain was expanding, too big for his skull.

“How the bloody hell did I get here?” He groaned.

Angel straightened from where he leaned against the wall. “We found you. Do you mind telling me what you were doing in our client’s basement?”

Why did his chest hurt? Holding a hand to his aching head, Spike absently rubbed the sore spots on his bare chest with the other. “No,” He snapped back. “Leave me alone.”

“Spike…”

“I don’t remember, okay?” Spike interrupted him. The last thing he could recall was leaving the bar. After that there were impressions, dreams, hallucinations... Nothing he was sure of. Not really. “I went for a drink.”

Angel frowned - at least Spike thought so, it was often hard to tell. “I thought you were going back to Buffy?”

“Changed my mind, dint I?”

“Why? I thought that was what you wanted.”

“She doesn’t bloody love me, is all,” Spike sighed, resigned. “Happy now? Piss off.”

Angel looked surprised, but chose not to comment on that confession. “Spike. Basement. How?”

“Gimme a sec.” Spike lay back, sinking into the pillows. He closed his eyes and tried to remember.

Down in the school basement, during his summer of madness and hell, running through the inventory of his guilt, the First Evil had fed him numerous lies and deceits, all interwoven and contradictory. He’d no longer known what was the truth or what was false; and, when he couldn't trust his own mind, he’d lived out of it. This jumble of feelings, twisted memories, felt like that. Not memory loss exactly, but an inability to distinguish the reality from the whisper of lies.

When he shut his eyes and followed his thoughts back, there were faces; normal human ones, vampires, demons, twisted Bringers with features of wax and rough stitches; streets, bars and basements… Grasping the memory, he tried to focus on that one basement; the one Angel was so interested in. There were so many, what made this one different? Drawn there. Didn’t even know they’d hooked him. Thought he was right clever avoiding Wolfram and Hart. Dark depths, then candlelight, air smoky with incense… Incense - that was the key that smashed all the locks. Incense that reeked of evil plans and defilement, incense designed to summon the First. They’d been expecting him.

New memories now, that pungent smell being the hotline to memory. Magic, sulphur, a pain in his chest, Bringers faces crowding in too close, their hands grabbing at him all at once, pawing him with scabby hands with broken yellow nails, the dystrophy of his limbs submitting him to their horrors. It’d felt like being ripped apart. Not the burning, boiling, exploding pain of crumbling to dust in the Hellmouth; this felt less physical, deeper, more akin to the sensation of being rebuilt in Fred’s wonderful machine, but with blinding white agony added for good measure.

Then nothing.

“Spike!” Hands on him again, shaking him. He woke with a judder of fear so primal he roared into game face.

Fred squeaked with surprise and rougher hands – Angel’s - pinned him down until he was quiet. Fred injected Spike with something he couldn’t see before he could object. Soon he felt calmer, saner, himself again.

“Spike?” Fred ventured. “Are you okay?”

More composed, Spike replied with a moan. “Yeah. Feeling right peachy. What happened?”

Fred gave Angel a concerned glance and he nodded his agreement. “Spike. You’ve not been well. You’ve been hallucinating for three days.”

“Three days?”

“On and off.” She reached out and held his hand. “Has this happened to you before? You said some things. Something about The First.”

He gripped her hand tightly, drawing strength from her support for a moment before snatching it away. “They ripped it out of me.”

Angel straightened. “What?”

“The First. It was in me. Became a part of me in the Hellmouth. We were trapped together in that bloody amulet. They took it out of me.” Forgetting the fuzziness of his head, Spike started to disengage himself from the monitors hooked up to his body. What they were meant to monitor, he had no idea. He was still dead after all. “I’ve got to find them before it all starts again.”

“Spike,” Fred looked concerned. “You should rest.”

He got up and grabbed his jeans from a pile of clean clothes by the bed. “Been resting for too long, Luv.”

Angel snorted. “You have no idea where they are.”

The look Spike gave him as he buckled his belt defiantly was one of pure determination and made it clear to Angel that he wasn’t going to back down. “Then I’ll find them.”

“Spike, think about this.”

He slipped a T-Shirt over his head and stuffed his feet into his boots. “Can’t. Got to get out there, track them down before they start on the Slayers.” He picked up his coat and swung it on dramatically. “If I don’t, those girls will die.”

“They aren’t potentials anymore. There’s a whole army of Slayers out there. They don’t need you.”

Spike glared at Angel, still angry, and not willing to accept that his grandsire had a point. “You just going to leave them to it? That right?”

“We can help,” Fred interjected diplomatically. “There has to be something Wolfram and Hart can do.”

“Like what?”

“Fred…” Angel started, but she ignored him.

“Research! We have no idea what The First wants now the Hellmouth has closed.”

“Oh yeah, stand around yapping while The First kills the lot of ‘em.” Spike snapped at her, but looked back at Angel. “Is that what you do now?”

“You can’t take them on alone, you know that.” Angel warned him.

“At least I be out there…”

“Wandering around in circles!”

“Spike, Angel.” Fred’s soft voice undercut the anger in the vampire’s voices. Angel stopped fuming and Spike looked at her; the temperature of his glare cooling by about 100 degrees as it pooled in her eyes. “Research. It’s the only way we can know what to do. Then maybe you boys can go and aim your testosterone straight at it.”

Spike thought for a moment. Now he was calmer he was more rational. “Research? Right, get the watcher reject onto it.”

Fred frowned at that description of Wesley, but put it aside. “I’ll ask him to…”

“Wes has better things to do,” Angel growled.

Spike scowled at him, annoyed with Angel’s attitude. “Then I’ll do it myself.”

In handing out their West Coast operations, Wolfram and Hart had created an opportunity for Angel Investigations that was truly unprecedented; the chance to use the clout of the law firm to their own advantage; removing its evil influence and harnessing its resources to serve Good - and resources were the key. It had been the bibliophile and the pragmatist in Wesley Wyndham-Pryce that had been lured into accepting the deal. There would be no more need for informed guesswork based on his limited personal library. Now he had access to all the records held in their vaults and a vast database of the world’s knowledge, the kind of resources that not been available to him since his days in the Watcher’s Council.

Once, in the not so distant past, before experience had jaded him and made him cynical, his old self would have been giddy at the thought of access to so much material. But now he understood, like Lilah had, that such things came at a cost you had to be willing to pay. He’d agreed to the deal with his eyes wide open. For all their good intentions, the Senior Partner’s hadn’t gone away, and they retained their own agenda, whatever that might prove to be.

Coming here had required some adjustment, even to someone like himself who had been brought up under the auspices of an organisation such as the Watcher’s Council; and corporate life had brought out the rebel in Wesley. The Council was traditional, slow and old-fashioned in contrast to the crisp professionalism on display at Wolfram and Hart, but Wesley had seen and been through too much to don a suit and vie for power again. Wolfram and Hart was to be used, but not trusted. The world here was no longer drawn in absolutes of black and white, where Good and Evil played Olympian board games with the lives of mortals, but had been smeared by the dirty grey of big business, politics and profit. Corporations, budgets and profit margins set the rules and every action was answerable to the shadowy influence of important clients or anonymous stockholders. It was a tool he would exploit. There were too many things he wanted to achieve here for the greater good. If he could also figure out a way to bring Lilah back from hell, then that would be a bonus. But he didn’t plan to do that at the expense of himself.

The downside of those extensive resources was the overwhelming amount of information to get through. Since they had rescued Spike from the basement of their client’s building, Wesley had looked at countless books, manuscripts and codices, trying to discover the meaning of the symbols they’d found. He’d searched the lexicons of all the standard languages of human and demonkind, deciphered a number of scrolls of opaque prophecy and spent hours carefully comparing the remarks of ancient observers with more recent accounts from Watcher’s Diaries. But the sinister sigils they’d found eluded his expertise, refusing to reveal their secrets and he was running out of theories.

They seemed familiar though, and that made them all the more frustrating. When he looked at them closely, there were aspects of alphabets he knew, but twisted into crude, corrupt versions; a curlicue here would look like ancient Grrnesh, and then another would make no sense at all but would appear to be heavy with meaning.

He flipped over the page of his book. For Wesley, the answer to almost any question could be found within the pages of some scholarly tome or dusty journal. Buried deep with the written word, the wisdom of a thousand cultures waited to be discovered if you knew where to look. Time, dimension, and language, none of these were a barrier to the knowledge that could be unearthed with the application of some trained reasoning and painstaking research.

But not today.

Beside him, he could tell Gunn was even more confused. He’d volunteered to assist with the research after finding he had a few hours to spare; helping to uncover promising leads so that Wesley could inspect them more carefully. But Wesley had to admit they were getting nowhere.

“Here, what about this one?” Gunn offered him an ancient volume, its delicate vellum threatening to crumble as he cradled it in his hands.

Wesley took the book carefully and studied it for a second before he dismissed it. “No, the symbols are more curved. The meaning is more…” He never finished the sentence.

Spike careened into the office, a dervish of vampiric agitation. “Right, what have you got?”

Ignoring Wesley and Gunn completely, he headed straight for the shelves where Wesley kept his personal library.

Wesley’s office, when he was in full research mode, became a museum in microcosm. Shelves bulged with rare books, groaning under the gravity of the knowledge within. Priceless, obscure scrolls were stuffed casually between rare volumes or shoved onto boxes stacked on the floor. Photos and lists of strange letters hung haphazardly on the walls, pinned there for easy reference; smart décor, decorated with an intellectual randomness. Not knowing where to start, Spike started to rummage, pulling out a book at random. When he saw it wasn’t what he wanted, he slung it to the floor and pulled out another.

“Hey!” Gunn leapt up. “Hey there, calm down.”

“Spike?” Wesley asked, wincing as a valuable codex whumped onto the carpet. “Spike, can we help you?”

Spike quickly leafed through a book on the Black Arts before discarding it. “I’m looking for a book.”

“I can see that,” said Gunn. “Maybe you should try the Public Library if you’re short of reading.”

“Need something…” Spike mused, “…on The First.”

“Is he here?” said Fred from the doorway, out of breath from chasing Spike up from the medical bay. Angel loomed behind her like a furious shadow.

“If you mean turbo Spike here, yeah I think we’ve seen him.” Gunn gestured to where Spike was searching through a wodge of scrolls.

“Would you like to tell us what this is all about?” Wesley asked Fred. He felt he was more likely to get sense out of her, than the agitated vampire currently destroying his own rare book archive.

“Spike has been kind enough to tell us about his basement adventure,” Angel sighed. He grabbed Spike’s arm and hauled him away from the books.

“Hey!” Spike protested, “I was reading those!”

“And now you’re not.”

Fred ignored the vampiric posturing and turned to Wesley and Gunn. “Spike says he was attacked in the basement and someone ripped the First out of him. Does that make sense to you?”

“Not really,” Wesley replied. “Spike, do you know who attacked you?”

“Bringers. Lot’s of ‘em. Zapped me with some spell. Don’t remember much after that.”

“Bringers,” Wesley started to muse and look through the pile of books on the desk. “Harbingers of the First Evil…”

“They ripped The First outta me,” Spike jabbed his sore chest with a finger. “It was inside me, stuck with me in that poxy amulet.”

“What do we know about that amulet, Wes?” Angel asked.

“Not much, and nothing that we didn’t investigate before, when Spike arrived.” Wesley sat down. “I believe the amulet to be a new construction, specially made for the purpose for which it was used - closing the Sunnydale Hellmouth.”

“And trapping the First?” Fred asked.

“So it would seem. Trapping Spike with it would appear to be an unfortunate side-effect.”

“Side-effect! Is that all?” Spike said, incredulously.

Wesley ignored him. “That would certainly explain why The First appears to have been lying low since the Hellmouth was cleared.”

“It certainly does,” said a voice behind the group. They turned to see Eve framed in the doorway, standing as prim as an oriental schoolgirl in Chinese silk. “And now we have a problem.”

“And what would that be?” Angel asked, not disguising his dislike for the Senior Partner’s liaison.

Eve stepped into the office, pacing until she had the attention of everyone and wringing her hands dramatically like a distressed phantom. “That problem would be The First Evil.”

“What would The First have to do with Wolfram and Hart?” asked Gunn.

“Everything, Hot Shot,” Eve told him. “The Senior Partners want The First out of the picture. The First is powerful, but it has its own agenda. One that directly threatens the Senior Partner’s plan for this dimension.”

Angel frowned. “And that would be?”

Eve smiled at him indulgently. “Nice try, but I only know what I told. I’m not party to the Senior Partners plans any more than you are.”

“So what can you tell us?” Angel asked.

“Wolfram and Hart made a deal with The First to prevent the Shanshu. Sorry boys. They couldn’t let that happen,” Eve looked at Angel and Spike, ignoring the identical scowls she received back. “The First took the matter into its own hands when trying to destroy the Slayer line and open the Hellmouth, thus destroying an equilibrium Wolfram and Hart have been maintaining for millennia. The balance had to be maintained.”

“Wouldn’t that like, end all Evil? Why would the Senior Partners want that?” Gunn asked.

Eve gave Gunn a look that implied she was explaining this very simply for his benefit. “Evil comes in many shapes, Counselor. You should know that.”

Gunn frowned back at her, unhappy with her condescending tone.

“The entity known as The First Evil is exactly that; a manifestation of the absolute evil that first appeared on earth. But guys, it’s only one of many. Wolfram and Hart has no place for such a maverick as The First…”

“…So they created the amulet to trap it.” Wesley finished for her.

“Exactly,” Eve agreed. “You can’t remove something like The First Evil from existence, but you can remove its influence.”

Wesley thought for a moment. “So where does Spike come in - and Angel?”

“Yeah,” Spike asked. “What about me? I got barbecued for nothing?”

Eve looked at him. “You had a purpose, just not the one you expected.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” Spike snapped.

“Once The First was trapped, the amulet was returned to Wolfram and Hart.” Eve continued.

“And Spike became all ghosty,” Fred mused. “Their essences combined within the amulet…”

Eve nodded. “And this is where you get to be all proud, Miss Burkle. Once back on Wolfram and Hart property, Spike was released from the amulet, only incorporeal, The First contained within him. He became its prison…”

“I was what?” Spike growled furiously, surging into his game face. One of Angel’s large hands clamped down on his shoulder, tight as a vice, preventing him from going after Eve. “All this time wandering this bloody place, The First was inside me, and you knew?”

Eve flinched a little, but held her ground as it became clear that Angel was not going to allow Spike to go anywhere. “Not me, I never had that information. Yes, it was inside you, but then Fred made you solid again – well done you, by the way!” she said aside to the other woman. “And you immediately became vulnerable to The First’s followers. Now The First is free, kids, and all bets are off.”

“Why am I still around?” Spike asked. “Why aren’t I dust?”

“They weren’t interested in you. They obviously don’t consider you a threat anymore, so they left you. Whatever The First had been trying to prevent by attacking you and Angel in the past is over, it has new plans.”

“That’s just great,” Spike muttered, shrugging off Angel’s arm and starting to pace.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Angel asked Eve.

Eve tried an innocent by-stander look that no one in the room found the least bit convincing. “I had nothing to do with any of this. I’m just the messenger for whatever the Senior Partner’s wish you to know.”

“How convenient.” Fred muttered.

“So what now?” asked Angel.

Eve shrugged. “I am not privy to The First’s plans.”

“But these might give us some insight.” Wesley pointed at his sketches of the Sigils they’d found in the basement. He grabbed one of the template volumes from the shelf, selecting it quickly with incisive familiarity. “Gunn and I have been trying to translate them without success. Now we know that they relate to The First Evil, it might make it easier to track a language down.” Cracking the book open, he whispered the name of the text he wanted and started to compare the contents with his sketches.

“I want to know what its plans are, Wes.” Angel told him before turning to Eve. “And you can get out of my sight.”

Eve nodded. She looked at everyone in the room, finally settling on Spike. “It wasn’t so bad, you know,” she told him. ”You got to come back. That’s more than most get.”

Spike scowled. “You try it sometime.”

“That won’t be necessary.” And with that she left the room.

***

Angel tapped his fingers against the armrest of the chair. Wesley was making quick progress with the translation now, promising an answer within minutes rather than hours, but it was still taking too long. Angel was tetchy; he’d admit that. After spending most of the last hour trying to deal with Spike’s angry ranting, where he’d threatened to kill just about anything he could think of in a number of colourful ways, Angel felt that his disquiet was justified.

“So what do we have, Wes?” Angel asked. He glared across the room at the other vampire, who was calmer and was back in his human face now that Fred had got him to sit down next to her, but his anger was still simmering, and he glared back as if Angel alone was responsible for his predicament.

“The language these symbols represent predates the written word by perhaps millennia.” Wesley told the group. “As such it is impossible to translate them directly into what we would recognise as a coherent language. What they do represent are ideas and concepts.”

“Get to the point,” Angel snapped.

“Yeah, it’s not you this place is playing silly buggers with.” Spike added.

Wesley ignored them both and continued. “The sigils form part of a ritual, one meant to pull The First Evil out of Spike and back into its full power.”

“I could’ve sodding told you that,” Spike mumbled.

“There’s more here than just a ritual, Spike,” Wesley said seriously. “The most prominent symbol in the room was one for ‘Warrior’. With the combination of qualifying sigils around it, I have honed the meaning down to ‘Slayer’ - singular.”

Angel looked up sharply. “What does that mean?”

“It’s still a little early to say, but I believe The First wants its revenge on…”

“Buffy,” Spike whispered.

“We need to warn her, don’t we?” asked Gunn.

“Agreed,” Angel stood up and pulled out his cell phone. “We need to speak to her right away.”

Spike jumped up to face his grandsire. “Oh, no you don’t. I’ll call her.”

Angel frowned at him. “I thought you decided she didn’t love you?”

“This is different.”

“We don’t have time for all that.” Angel turned his back on him and pressed a number on speed dial.

Fred put a hand on Spike’s shoulder. “Maybe there’ll be a better time.”

There were a few nervous moments while Angel waited for his call to be answered. It rang for a short time before clicking onto the answerphone.

“Hi, this is Willow,” the chirpy message began. “We’ve gone to Brighton for a few days. Yay, fun! If it’s important leave a message after the beepy thing.”

“Shit.” Angel hung up.

“What?” Spike demanded.

“They’re not there.”

“Why don’t you try her cell?” Fred suggested.

Angel sorted through his phone’s address book and dialled again. This time a stern woman’s voice told him that the number was unavailable. “Shit.”

Gunn caught the worried expression on Angel’s face. “Maybe someone should go and find them?”

“There’s still some more numbers I could try. Rupert Giles…”

“What? That git? Pffft,” Spike snorted. “Like he’ll be any help. Look, I suppose I’ll have to go sometime…”

“No! I’ll go,” Angel snapped, before shouting for Harmony.

After a moment she trotted into the office, a dainty vision in baby pink, spoilt by the vacuous expression in her eyes. “Yes, Boss?”

Angel gestured to her. “Cancel my appointments for the next couple of days and get my jet ready.”

“Sure, Bossy,” she glanced at Spike, the hopeful look dimmed as he turned his back on her and she fled with a sniff.

Spike watched over his shoulder as she flounced away, and then turned on Angel. “What? You can’t…!”

Angel cut him off. “Oh yes, I can. Get out of my way, Spike.”

Spike planted himself firmly in Angel’s path, blocking his route to the door. “No. I’m going. Where were you when…?”

“Spike, you’re staying here.” Angel grabbed Spike angrily by the collar of his T-shirt and hauled him aside, dumping him in an empty chair.

“You can’t stop me, you know!” Spike bounced up again and yelled after Angel as the other vampire headed towards the door.
Angel stopped and turned back to Spike. “Just try it, Spike. I’ll get there before you.”

Gunn cleared his throat. “Actually, you can’t go at all, Angel. Your conference is tomorrow, and you have to show. The Senior Partners were quite clear on that. You won’t be free until the end of the week.”

Angel scowled darkly at Gunn, defeated.

Spike broke into a wide grin. One up on the poof was always a pleasure. He slapped Angel on the chest. “I’ll just start packing then.”

Through gritted teeth, Angel growled. “Fine.”

As they watched Spike leave, Gunn turned to Angel again. “Are you afraid of what will happen when he gets there?”

“No. I’m afraid that he’ll stay.”

As Giles paced the bounds of his small office, a dark den of books and polished wood, he was well aware that Roger Wyndham-Pryce was watching him carefully over the top of his crystal sherry glass, surreptitiously trying to gauge his reaction.

“I trust this facility will be suitable to the needs of the Slayers?” He said, gruffly, dissatisfied with the neutrality he saw in Giles’ expression.

Giles leafed through the file that Wyndham-Pryce had brought with him. He didn’t trust the motives of the older man, but was grateful anyway. “Why yes, that looks more than adequate. I…”

“Of course,” Wyndham-Pryce interrupted, “all will depend on the outcome of the Board election.”

Giles nodded. “So I understand.”

Roger finished his drink and rose to his feet, disrespectfully putting his empty glass down on a pile of Giles’ notes. “Then I shall say Good Day to you. I trust I can leave the arrangements in your care?”

Giles held open the heavy oak door politely for him. This little meeting couldn’t be over quick enough. “I’m sure Buffy will be very pleased to hear it.”

“Very well. I shall arrange for the keys to be sent up to you.”

Giles returned to his desk after closing the door on the other watcher’s retreating back. He’d spent the last hour listening to Pryce’s sales pitch and he knew full well what the Acting Head of the Council’s sudden interest in him meant. He’d known for a long time that Wyndham-Pryce had been the main obstacle to the formation of a central training facility for the new Slayers. For Wyndham-Pryce to have capitulated at such an opportune moment for his own ambitions was deeply suspicious. An important stage of development for the new Council had been delayed, then offered as a sweetener, a bribe, and Giles was well aware what the expected cost would be. But he was damned if he was going to allow the old goat to manoeuvre him into his withdrawal from the upcoming Board election so easily.

He stared out of his window for a moment, out over the elegantly landscaped parkland of Stoke Park and the lengthening shadows of a late wintry afternoon. Spring was on its way and the first trees were starting to burst with bud in the mist. It didn’t feel like London somehow, here at the arse end of the Piccadilly Line, more like an encroachment of suburbia into the leafy estates of the Home Counties and it was a world away from the invigorating rush of central London.

He let the serenity of the scene calm and centre him again, using techniques he’d mastered on his many travels. The internal politics of the Council could probably rival Hell’s for intrigue. With the elections due in less than a month, the atmosphere amongst the Watchers had become tense, as candidates marked out their territories and garnered their support. The schism between the factions, traditional and progressive, had grown wider in recent days, as it remained unclear whether the old guard would still have the upper hand on the day. Giles had put himself forward as a candidate only due to a firm nudge from his fellow reformers, mostly younger watchers and those who’d spent more time in the field than politicking at HQ. Personally, he had little desire for a seat amongst the stuffy upper echelon; when he’d been quite happy with his position locating new Slayers. But new voices were badly needed on the board, to push through Council reform and to stop it slipping back into its blinkered old ways of inflexibility and self-interest. Influential backing had already begun to swell behind his nomination and it seemed that was enough to worry people like Wyndham-Pryce into the defensive. They weren’t going to give up their coveted positions easily.

His short break over, he put the file on top of the rest of his papers and resumed his seat behind his desk, returning to the research for his next trip overseas. He hadn’t stopped travelling since the Hellmouth was closed; the Slayers kept on coming. It had been Salzburg last week, and it looked like it would be Istanbul again next week. Another girl, another country; might as well have been another planet.

Giles had been staggered by the amount of damage that the First Evil and its minions had managed to inflict on the Watcher’s Council in its short campaign, damage that could take up to a generation to repair. The Council, although relatively small, was an organisation of immense power, and could influence governments if that was its will, yet it had been brought to its knees through its own complacency, thinking it was untouchable. Now it was a quarter of it’s former size and was struggling to keep all its interests afloat. How could it cope with over a thousand Slayers, all called at once, all needing training, supporting, guiding? Buffy’s training facility was going to be overstretched before it had even started. If it ever did. The Council had been set up to maintain one Slayer, one girl in all the world, and it now had but a fraction of those resources. Wyndham-Pryce was deluding himself if he thought that the Council would cope with all the changes in its traditional manner. Not taking this opportunity to reform could be a huge mistake.


The shadows had engulfed the world in darkness by the time Giles was disturbed again. The rap on the door was strong, but tentative, unwittingly acknowledging his authority in his domain, but as Buffy swung the door open without invitation as usual, Giles was relieved to see that some things never changed.

He greeted her warmly, much more grateful for this interruption than Wyndham-Pryce’s. With all the travelling, gathering the new Slayers from across the globe, he hadn’t had much time to spend with his own Slayer. She looked well, but he still sensed the underlying sadness that he’d noticed the last time he’d seen her despite her bright smile.

“Hi,” she said, seating herself in the same leather chair Wyndham-Pryce had vacated earlier. She got straight to her point. “I’m dreaming again, Giles.”

“Slayer dreams?” he asked, settling back into his own chair ready to listen.

“Yup, with all the gut wrenching terror in full Widescreen Technicolor,” Buffy picked up a pen from the desk and twirled it in her finger nervously. “It’s the same dream, over and over for the past week. And every time it adds some new spookactular detail.”

Giles nodded. “What do you see?”

“Faces, between the trees. Then they come out and there are hundreds of them, Giles. They’re all vampires.”

“I see,” Giles pondered this. That description wasn’t much to go on, vampires were hardly unusual for the Slayer to be dreaming about, yet the numbers appeared to be significant. “Did you see the location of the dream? Some landmark that might help us identify what’s going on?”

“There’s a pub. Does that help?” Buffy volunteered. “It’s like, really old, and it’s all white and viney.”

Giles sighed, despairingly. “Buffy, we’re in England now, can you be a little more specific? Is there any way of identifying it? A sign, perhaps.”

“I don’t think so,” Buffy thought for a moment, retracing her steps through the landscape of the dream. “There’s a church and a small lake of some kind and a road… Wait… yes! It does. Ugh. It’s called The Gallows. That’s way creepy. You guys are so morbid.”

Giles sat up with a start. The name of the pub sounded familiar. Thinking carefully, he asked, “It’s not a common name. Anything else?”

“That’s all I remember,” Buffy replaced the pen angrily onto the desk. “I thought this was over, Giles. There’s hundreds of Slayers now, why do I have to have these dreams still?”

Giles removed his glasses, as he always did when imparting advice. “You’re still a Slayer, Buffy. Maybe you’re the best one to handle whatever this is. You do still patrol…”

“Yes, but there’s never very much here,” she replied. “And I like that. I’m retired, Giles! No more apocalypses for Buffy!”

“I wish things were that simple,” he picked up the file Wyndham-Pryce had left with him, flicking through it until he reached an appropriate page. He handed her a small glossy brochure. “Do you recognise this place?”

Buffy took it and looked at the picture Giles had indicated, in a corner was a view of a pretty country village, complete with green and swans by a pond. Buffy’s eyes grew wide as she saw it. “That’s it. That’s the place in my dream. Pretty.”

“Yes, it is rather pretty, isn’t it? It’s a village called Little Darrow. There used to be a Watcher’s Council Retreat there, but no one has been up there since the Holborn bomb and it was mothballed. There has been talk of it being reopened as your new Training Centre.”

“Where is it?” she asked, looking at the picture more closely. “Is it close?”

“It’s in Gloucestershire, I believe.”

“Where-shire?”

“Gloucestershire. It’s near Wales.”

Buffy’s expression told him clearly that she didn’t have a clue where that was. She put the leaflet back in front of him. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going. Send someone else.”

“I thought you wanted to make a go of training the Slayers?” Giles asked.

“Yes, yes I do. But this… This is… This.”

Giles understood, but didn’t seem that Buffy had much choice but to follow her calling. “Buffy, you cannot deny your Slayer dreams, as much as you would like to.”

Buffy went to rebuff Giles’ words, but thought better of it. “I thought all this was over. Slaying as a hobby is kinda fun, but… But I can't take the angst anymore.”

Angst. There certainly had been a lot of that last year, and Giles was well aware that he had caused a lot of it for her. Events during the last days of Sunnydale had put an uncomfortable distance between them that he wasn’t sure they would ever be able to close. One issue especially still remained an unspoken barrier between them. Spike.

He had done what he thought was best; doing what he knew Buffy wouldn’t have the stomach for. Spike, for all they’d known, had been a dangerous liability, and still controlled by The First, there was no end to what harm he could have done to a house full of young potentials. He couldn’t have seen the importance Spike was to have in the final battle, and he wouldn’t regret the decision he’d made with Wood to attempt to terminate the vampire, even if the manner in which their plans were attempted proved to have been less than ideal. On the other hand, the events that had led to Buffy’s exclusion from Revello Drive were regrettable. She’d been deposed and exiled from her own house and it was a mark of her strength of character that she had returned from that so triumphantly. But, he suspected, not without Spike’s help.

He’d known all along that Buffy and the vampire were steadily growing closer, but as long as there appeared to be no resumption of the their previous sexual relationship, he had decided to keep his opinions mostly to himself, except when the safety of the group had been considered. She was an adult now, and she would have to learn from her own mistakes. He had never asked for details of their affair and Buffy had never volunteered them, remaining characteristically silent on that and the circumstances of Spike’s soul. The others had told him quite enough. Later, he’d heard whispers amongst the potentials, as Buffy would slip into the basement. By then he couldn’t deny her what comfort she could find on the eve of a hopeless battle, but he would always wish that she had made a wiser choice. Spike, soul or not, had been a wildcard, too volatile to really trust. Not just as a vampire, but he’d been as dangerous as any man in love could be. His sanity frayed to breaking point, a desperate longing for a girl he couldn’t have and a murderous past that that spanned a century of mayhem and corpses could hardly be qualities to be desired in a paramour. But since his death, Giles had never heard her say his name, not even once, and that silence was more telling than a thousand of her words could have been.

Giles looked at Buffy seriously. “Buffy, are you alright?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’ve just had it with waiting for the Council to make up its mind.”

“They are rather slow, I agree. But, we’ll get there, Buffy,” Giles paused. “You might find things go better for now you're away from the Hellmouth, and certain temptations."

Buffy gave him a sly look. "No more vampire boyfriends you mean."

"My point exactly,” he smiled.

She smiled back. "So should I find myself a nice Watcher boy and settle down?"

"You could do worse than that, Buffy."

“You have no more to worry about on that one. That chapter of Buffy’s life is totally over,” she assured him.

"I can't say how pleased I am to hear that. They were bad for you, Buffy. You deserve better."

A shadow crossed Buffy’s face. “Maybe. There must be something about Buffy that drove vampires to do crazy things…”

“Buffy,” Giles stopped her. Perhaps this was a subject he shouldn’t have broached. “Don’t you ever think that it might be one of your better qualities? They saw something in you that was worth striving for.”

Buffy thought about that then stood up. “I suppose you’re right. They had faith in me. I guess I’ll be off to Gloucestershire tomorrow after all.”

***

The early hours and Buffy was asleep in her small, boxy room. Her limbs curled up and tense, she slept fitfully, her eyes skittering under her lids as she drifted into a surreal REM sleep.

It’s that dream again, calling her like a siren into its depths. She can’t resist or wake up, the scene plays out regardless.

She sees the faces first. Ordinary ones, pretty ones, men, women, old and young, just people; they swim in front of her eyes before melting into the background of trees. She is in woods, soft loamy soil under her feet, thorns and dry roots grabbing at her legs as she runs. It’s dark, and a pale moon penetrates the canopy of empty branches, spackling the long shadows where it shines with freckles of light.

She can hear them laughing.

She reaches the edge of the wood and stops. She’s on a muddy track next to an old church, its spire pointing sharply to the sky. Beyond the churchyard, a wide green stretches out its perfect lawns, past a mirrored pool of silvered ripples, to a row of cottages topped with a dark thatch. At the end of the row, a low roofed pub puffs smoke from a real fire out into the night through chimneys of weathered terracotta, signalling safety to travellers on the road. On the sign outside, creaking in the breeze, ’The Gallows’ is stencilled in cracked gold paint below a faded picture where a rope awaits the damned.

It’s a gruesome image, but the real terror lies behind her. She doesn’t want to turn. She doesn’t want to see them. But she can’t stop her dream self.

The faces emerge from the trees, disembodied, hundreds of them, floating towards her. They’re still laughing as they bend and warp into vampire shapes. At this point she normally wakes, but not this time. The faces don’t stop coming, so she turns to run, but someone is blocking her way.

Spike.

Her heart feels like it’s stopping again, dying in her chest like it did before. Like his did so long ago now.

His head is turned towards the moonlight; and angular shadows cast his face in monochrome. Eyes like shards of lapis, moon-kissed skin as pale as milk, mouth soft, but she knows too well it’s cruel with a whiplash wit. In this light he’s unearthly, too beautiful to be real, until his sharp, delicate bone structure, picked out in silvery highlights, hardens and condenses as his forehead starts to thicken and contort his features into hideous caricature. Teeth lengthen into fangs, shark-lethal and deadly, as he turns his gaze back to her and she sees the hunger there.

She knows now that she’s in trouble.

An unfamiliar paralysis of mortal dread greeted Buffy on the other side of waking. Frozen, she remained still, her hands balled into the pillow, gripping tightly to reality, as her sleep-weary mind tried to sort through the muddled images of nightmare and reconcile them with the sight of the murky sun through the gap in the curtain.

She’d had that dream again, the one that had been keeping her off balance for weeks. Too vivid for a normal night terror, but not tangible enough to be a memory, it nagged at her conscience through her waking hours, desperate for attention. A Slayer dream.

But this time it had a whole new twist.

Spike.

Why did he have to grab the starring role in this dream? Why couldn’t he have made his big comeback in the kind of erotic masquerades he’d appeared in after her resurrection? Back then she’d enjoyed the guilty pleasure of those. He’d been a fantasy, a subconscious manifestation of her most wicked desires that she could indulge without the messy details of his reality or his big rude mouth. Those were the kind of dreams she wanted now, recapturing the fun parts of what they’d had without the messy details of the rest. Slayer dreams were supposed to be firmly in her past, and she didn’t to remember him vicious and evil. He was gone. Dust. He could go and haunt the dreams of the other slayers, the countless other girls carrying the burden, whose subconscious didn’t taunt them cruelly with what was lost.

Fully awake and back to her normal self, Buffy got up and trudged to the bathroom. It was later than she’d thought and she needed to get to the station soon. Blearily, she looked into the mirror, wiping away the condensation to get a better, if fractured view of her face. She inspected her skin; it felt dry and papery, stretched too thinly over the bones of her face by fatigue. For a moment, she worried that she might have a pimple or a wart or something on her nose. Then she rubbed at the mirror again with the sleeve of her pyjama top. It was just a spot of grime.

But the black shape behind her wasn’t. In the milky glass it loomed dark and featureless by the door. Dread crashed to the pit of her stomach. She whipped around, snapping into a fighting stance, ready to kick the ass of anything it might be, only to face the giveaway ripples of red stitching that patterned the back of the Andrew’s Darth Maul towel.

Buffy relaxed her position with relief. Dawn must have left his forgotten bath sheet on the hook behind the door, and she’d seen it everyday for months. How could she mistake it for something supernatural now? The stupid dream had put her on edge, that and her talk with Giles the day before. He’d jogged her memory with his oblique references, stirring up emotions buried so deep inside her she’d rather ignore them than acknowledge or face them.

She finished washing and pushed Spike out of her mind, padlocking him firmly away in her heart so that she could carry on with life, using the mundane routine of daily tasks to ease her disquiet. She still felt unsettled, but by the time she started to change into a heavy sweater and jeans, the feeling had started to fade.

She went downstairs and padded to the kitchen. Between meals, the room had become a makeshift office for whoever needed the space. Today, Willow had risen early and had upended yet another crate of Archives onto the table, covering it in a stack of papers now piled up to Himalayan proportions, a small remnant of thousands of years of Watching. There was everything, a K2 of photos and sketches, some distinctly unpleasant, sent a scree of scorched Personnel records and Watcher’s journals sliding down its mountainous side. There were peaks of parchment scrawled with demonic languages Buffy hadn’t cared to learn, and a high plateau of reports, hundreds of them, in manila folders crammed to bursting. Some were recent and had been printed out on white copy paper, now dusky with smoke damage. Others had been scribed in tidy, precise gothic on vellum shards, recounting gory tales of slaying past.

Behind it all, Willow sat at her iBook, in a small, clear Tibetan space of tranquillity, her brow furrowed in concentration.

She looked up with a bright smile as Buffy came in. “Hi Buffy, T minus one day to Brighton party goodness!”

“I’m not going, Will.” Buffy told her dully. “I have to go somewhere or other. Slayer business.”

Willow’s smile deflated, sinking into a small disappointed frown. “I thought that was all over? I mean, you still have all the Slayerness and all, but there are lots of other Slayers now, right?”

“I know, but the Slayer dreams apparently chose me.” Buffy started to pick idly at a small ridge of files that had subsided into a valley of expense slips. “Can you tell Dawn I’m sorry I couldn’t come?”

“Sure.”

Before Willow could press for details, she changed the subject. “So, how goes the exciting world of Archiving?”

Willow shrugged with the world-weariness of someone in the midst of a Herculean task and returned to her cataloguing. “Okay, I guess. Still a lot to do.”

Buffy looked at the documents in her hand, mostly random scraps, some charred and fragile. She wasn’t really interested in them, but there was nothing else to fiddle with. She’d been doing that a lot lately, playing with things within her grasp as she avoided the pitied gaze of those she spoke to. She didn’t want to be scrutinised like something that needed to be fixed. Life had been unpredictable, dangerous and eventful in Sunnydale; it was time her life became a little more normal.

And that’s just what it was now. Routine. Dull. Unremittingly normal. And she was bored. She had to admit it, if only to herself. Get up. Wash. Go to work. A quiet patrol just to get out of a house that didn’t feel like home. Apocalypses were things that happened to other people now and she felt somehow empty without the edge honed by the constant need to fight for her life. New challenges of a more mundane sort had been promised. There were Slayers that needed training to save their lives. But she couldn’t get at them, dispersed as they were throughout the organisation. The news that the Watcher’s Council had finally found a building to house a Slayer Academy was great, but their glacial pace had been frustrating and it had dulled her enthusiasm. She didn’t care how new or undermanned it might be; the Council was still too slow.

As she picked carelessly at the pile again, something caught her eye, a modern photograph trapped underneath rolling foothills of minutes from a meeting held in 1925. Carefully, she slipped the glossy print out, her unsteady and her stomach doing a sudden nervous flip. There was no mistaking Spike in the photo - as if such a thing was possible - she knew the jut of that jaw and the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the Goth-punk hair and the lapels of that coat that she’d used to grab him, to make him kiss her, to make him shut that beautiful mouth, to stop him saying I love you and meaning it. She’d seen that face with a thousand and one expressions, murderous glee and utter despair, alive with ecstasy and broken with pain. She could shut her eyes and sculpt it now, the shape of him felt as if burned into her they very molecules of her finertips like a muscle memory, every flaw, scar or mark she’d known and kissed. Seeing his face again like this, in stark photographic reality was much worse than the unsettling dream. It wasn’t even a good picture, just a fuzzy monochrome still from a Sunnydale Security camera, but seeing it amongst the scraps of Watcher’s records, it was almost too much to bear. He was out of context here - out of her life - and that hurt.

Buffy’s sharp intake of breath made Willow look up from her task. Buffy could almost see Willow’s heart sink when the young witch saw what Buffy was holding. She stared at the picture solemnly, before her face set to a hard mask to cover her pain. “Are there any more of him?”

"Some, not many. We were going to…"

“Hide them from me.” Not a question, a statement of fact.

Willow snapped her iBook shut. "Buffy? Do you wanna talk about it? You've never talked about him. Maybe some best friend one-on-one time would help?"

Buffy surprised herself by pulling out a dining chair and sitting down.

They hadn't talked about him since that night and no one had even mentioned him by name. He always been an outsider, never really part of their group, and in turn they had ignored this thing on the side of their group as if he’d go away if they waited long enough. Now it was as if a wall of silence existed where he should be, as if he hadn't saved the world and it seemed to be all her fault. But, to her surprise, she found she wanted to talk about him now, to give him the place he’d earned in their lives, to make sure someone else understood that he was a hero, and her Champion, the one she had chosen for herself. She wanted to be able to speak of him like Xander would talk of Anya, as someone they'd lost and missed, to let them know that there was a touch of someone she thought of as William under the demon. The real him. It would never have occurred to anyone but Dawn that he’d ever even had a softer side. He never let them see under the arrogant swagger, the crude humour or the hint of evil in his eye.

She focused her attention firmly on the photograph, trying somehow to absorb more from it than his image. It took a few moments to find the words. They came from deep inside her, and she got them out before she choked on them. "Would you think I'm a bad person if I said I miss him, Will? I mean, really miss him?"

Willow shook her head. "Oh no, no, no, Buffy. Don't think that. You have every right to miss Spike. I mean, we all knew how you felt about him."

Buffy looked up sharply. "You did?"

Willow nodded. "Sure. We all saw you, Buffy. Saw you together. There were lots of feelings there."

“How could you know that? How could you, when I didn't know myself?” Buffy wondered. Maybe she was so unused to the feeling of love, she no longer recognised what it felt like.

Willow gave her friend a comforting smile. “Hellooo, gay here! I know what it’s like to be caught up in a love you shouldn't be feeling.”

“Thanks. At least Tara wasn’t big with those dark vibes.” Buffy answered Willow with a small smile of her own, but the admission of all those feeling was still too much and she panicked. “But I never said it was love.”

Willow’s expression was all she needed to show that she wasn’t convinced. “You couldn’t miss it, Buffy. All that UST buzzing around.”

Buffy opened her mouth to reply, but she found she had nothing to say to that. After a moment she managed to say, “It wasn’t like that.”

“So dish!”

“Okay, maybe a little,” Buffy sighed in defeat, the game was up, “but it wasn’t Angel kind of love. Spike was… different. It was complicated.”

Buffy paused, maybe she shouldn’t be comparing them, but nothing could ever measure up to the intensity of her affairs with the two vampires. Both doomed, both filled with pain and longing that was never fulfilled. Angel's dark, chaste, pragmatic denial of their deep, romantic love; both intense and tragic, that had hurt so much, was so different to Spike's fizzy sexual energy and unflinching fall through obsession and selfless passion to his sacrifice for her and the world. One she knew would have lain at her feet until the universe ended, the other would try to set her free as he walked away, tearing her young heart apart until it was a puzzle no one else could ever reassemble. They would both die for her, she knew that, but only one had proved it.

Her eyes started to tear as she remembered gripping Spike’s hand in hers, palm to palm. What no one knew, was how close she had come to turning back, to return and die with him. Turning and running had been almost impossible, but returning would have achieved nothing except a futile gesture to a love that had never had an opportunity to fully blossom. They couldn’t be together in life or death and it’d been his last wish that she should live. That's what she would have to do in his honour, while locking him away into a special place in her heart.

“In the Hellmouth,” she started, “when I touched his hand, I could feel it, feel his soul and it was beautiful. I knew who he was and he was a good man. In that moment I fell in love with him… And I had to let him go.” Buffy sniffed and Willow let her gather herself. “You know, after all that time trying to get rid of him, I was starting to get used to him being there… I thought he’d always be there.”

“I know how I felt when I lost Tara,” Willow said eventually. “And I did some stupid stuff. If you feel half of what I felt then…” Willow shook her head, as if trying to clear away the bad memories. “There’ll always be a great gaping hole in my heart where she was - okay, it’s more of a yawning chasm – but I hope you can find happiness again, like I did with Kennedy.”

“Thanks, Will. That means a lot.”

“So no more mopey Buffy?” Willow said hopefully.

“I hope so,” Buffy nodded, yet the dream still nagged at the edge of her consciousness. “But there was something else. These Slayer dreams I’ve been having, last night they were big with the Spikeness.”

Willow grinned. “You mean Spike has been making with the nocturnal visitations again?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking.”

“But that’s impossible, right? Slayer dreams are meant to be prophetic and he’s all dusty. Are you sure it was him?”

Buffy remembered the hunger that burned in his cold dream eyes too well. “I’m sure. But we’re talking evil flavour Spike.”

“That can’t be good. You don’t think...?”

“That he’s all undusty and up to no good? I don’t think so.” Buffy looked at the picture again. She had thought of him since his death, of course she had. Sometimes she’d hear songs that remind her of him on the radio. Love songs with lyrics that cut too close to the bone or trashy punk tracks she knew he’d have loved.

She turned them off.

She didn’t want to remember him like that, just nostalgia tied to a few passing bars of a song. She wanted to recall how fierce he was, how cruel he could be - because if she remembered all his dimensions, the man he’d become for her, how sweet and loving he could be, she’d fall to pieces never to be rebuilt, emptied inside of all the feelings he’d filled her with.

She had few happy memories of the time they were together, and she was glad for that. She could convince herself that she hadn’t lost anything, that she could be loved again. One day.

Once or twice, she’d even dared to hope that he might come back. After all, Angel had been returned to her against all odds. But she couldn't be that lucky twice in her lifetime. Could she? What did a remarkable, but insignificant, vampire matter in the scheme of things to warrant resurrection from dust? She wouldn’t risk that sort of hope anymore. “I spoke to Giles yesterday and he was on my mind. Maybe it’s just a imagination thing.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“I should get packing. Will?” Buffy stood, picking up the photo. She wanted to keep it. “Do you know how to get to Little Darrow?”

Buffy’s first view of Little Darrow was a brief one as her taxi ferried her from the station. It zipped through the tiny village without stopping to take in the scenery, but it was enough for Buffy to spot the landmarks of her dreamscape, stark and real in daylight. There at the end of the row of dainty cottages, the pub waited expectantly for trade. On the other side of the road, was the smooth expanse of the small lake, reflecting the sharp spire of the little church beside it. Its watery doppelganger was broken only by the wake from a young pair of swans as they danced together, necks entwined. Behind the church, the bare trees at the edge of the woods waited silently for the unwary to stray from the footpath.

From the village, it was a short, but scary drive to The Retreat. The taxi driver drove at an insane speed along the winding country lanes, seemingly without regard for the narrowness of the road or oncoming traffic, in a way that reminded her of the few times she’d experienced Spike’s kamikaze driving style. She was greatly relieved when they finally pulled up beside a large set of black iron gates.

“This is the place,” the driver told her, pointing to the gates.

Buffy looked out of the taxi window. From the road there wasn’t much to see. The gates were set in a high wall that sat firmly on the boundary of the road. Through the tall iron bars, at this angle at least, all she could see were some trees and a long gravel driveway.

“Thanks, how much?” she asked as she looked for her bag.

“Ten pound fifty, Miss.”

She handed over a twenty-pound note. She received back a waxy fiver and a handful of change, still uncomfortably warm from the driver’s pocket.

As she put it away, the driver added. “Good luck in there, Miss. And be careful at night.”

Buffy paused. “Why’s that?”

“I’ve heard things about this place; weird goings on and all that. And what with the disappearances lately…”

“Disappearances?”

The driver nodded. “It’s been on the news. A few people in the area have vanished without trace. Just like that. There’s even a whole family missing in the next village; husband, wife and two young boys.”

“And no one’s found anything?”

“No, the police haven’t found a trace of them. It’s as if they upped and disappeared into the night. Took nothing with them. I reckon there’s a serial killer hereabouts.”

“I’ll watch out.” Buffy opened the car door and stepped out into the lane.

“I’d do that,” the driver leaned out of his window. “I’d say it had something to do with this place,” he waved a hand towards The Retreat, “but I haven’t heard of anyone coming up here for months. Not since that bomb in London. Killed a lot of them, didn’t it?”

Buffy avoided the man’s eye; the less she told him the better. She grabbed her bags off the back seat. “So I was told.”

He didn’t seem bothered by her lack of explanation. “Still, a lot of people round here thought they were into the occult. I hope you haven’t got involved with anything like that.”

Buffy smiled and shook her head. “Not really.”

“That’s good to hear.”

As the taxi pulled away, the driver waved in thanks and she was left alone in the quiet lane. She picked up her bags and walked over to the gates. On the post of local creamy stone, there was a small and neat brass plaque, now grimy and weather-stained with neglect, which read:

W.C.G.B
THE RETREAT
LITTLE DARROW

This was the right place.

She tried the gates, testing them with a shake that rattled them against their hinges. When they didn’t open, she searched for the padlock that had slipped through the bars and the matching key on the fob she’d been given. The gates clanged as they moved easily to her push, swinging wide as they opened onto a broad drive. It curved gently round a spacious lawn to the porch of an impressively large house.

The Retreat was, as Giles had told her, a small Elizabethan manor that had seen many alterations over the years, but that description hadn’t prepared her for the pretty reality of the old Hall. Built in strata of red brick and thick wooden beams, the house brooded silently in shabby Tudor splendour under the creeping ivy strands; all sharp gables, leaded glass and columns of twisty chimneys, rising skywards in a Mexican wave across the dark tiled roof.

As she trudged up the drive, Buffy noticed signs that the house had been abandoned for some time; the long grass of the unkempt lawns slowly returning to meadow; the gravel crunching under her feet, sludgy with autumn leaves unswept from the year before and turning to mulch between the stones.

The dark rooms she glimpsed through grimy windows as she passed were empty of life. Still furnished in the type of old fashioned finery the Council favoured, as antique as some of the Watchers she’d met recently, it looked like a dolls house, but life-sized and forgotten.

Buffy reached the grand porch that framed the large wooden door. It opened on elaborately cast hinges into a spacious hall, dominated by an enormous staircase constructed from dark polished wood. The only significant light shone in through an upper storey window, filtered through intricate leadwork windows that cast interesting patterns across the rooms heavy wooden panelling. The darkness of the walls and the thick heraldic tapestries seemed to close in, making the space feel gloomy and oppressive. She dumped her bags and felt around for the light switch, which she eventually found beside a looming coat rack. She turned it on, but nothing happened. Flicking it again to no avail indicated that the electricity was no longer connected. That wasn’t a great surprise to her, Giles had said that it might take a day or so. She’d just have to make a few calls to get the services running again. There was a phone on the reception desk to her right. She picked up the receiver and listened for the dial tone. Nothing. She added the telephone connection to the list of jobs she’d have to do; her cell phone would cover for now.

Moving through the Great Hall, she made her way towards where she thought the kitchens might be in search of candles. It would be dark soon and she didn’t want to get caught without light. A high, beamed ceiling formed a lofty arc over two long banqueting tables that spanned the Hall’s length waiting patiently for the feasts to return. From the tall walls, Council luminaries kept a vigilant watch, their portraits a millennium of testimony to their calling. Buffy took a moment to look at them. They were all Watchers; the vast majority men and there was not a Slayer amongst them. At one end, Quentin Travers, smug and sure in his fine leather chair, presided, as if he was the epitome of his profession. Buffy unhooked the picture and, once she’d found the kitchens, dumped it into one of the bins.

The kitchens were modern and the surfaces were of professional stainless steel under the fine layer of dust that covered everything. The place would need a thorough clean if they were going to use it. She tried the tap over a large Belfast sink to check the water supply. A gush of cool, clear water almost soaked her. There was no problem there. Further inspection revealed a number of utility and storerooms. In the laundry she found enough clean linen to make up her bed. The larder appeared empty of food supplies beyond a few cans of soup, but she found what she needed; candles, matches, a flashlight, and fresh packets of batteries in a utility cupboard.

From the stores, she explored the rest of the house. In the other wing from the Great Hall and the kitchens, she found a comfortable lounge complete with a well stocked bar that was still operable. The pumps promised a variety of beers and ciders, but what they poured looked stale and flat with age. Beyond that room, there were lecture halls and a vast library, which, judging by the disarray and shelves that appeared to be missing books, had been raided for its knowledge after the bombing. Back in the reception hall, she climbed the staircase to the second floor. Upstairs were dormitories, bathrooms and some more comfortable bedrooms, with facilities en suite. She picked one of these for herself and made up the bed. After her busy day travelling it looked inviting, and she lay back on the covers and sank into the fine pillows, staring up at the beamed ceiling. Keeping herself busy had stopped her dwelling on the conversation she’d had that morning with Willow. On the train she’d gone over what she’d said and had started the process of working through the raging tempest of emotions inside her, which were long overdue for sorting out.

It was easier to admit she loved him now that he was dead. In the past, she’d believed that if she could somehow categorise her feelings for Spike, keeping them separate from each other and away from conscious thought, she might be able to cope with them. Confused, conflicted, complicated, they’d taken a long time for her to acknowledge, but she could no longer deny that they had been there. Now that his evil past no longer cast its pall over the present, the mess of their turbulent history was irrelevant. It was effortless to love him when there was no moral ground to recover, no relationship to justify or plan out, no risk to her heart from the minutiae of his vampirism or the darkness of his past. But all that meant nothing now. She’d dumped him. He’d finally died. Death shouldn’t be enough to stop a survivor like him.

One day, if she allowed herself to be fanciful, she’d think she’d turn around and he’d be there as if nothing had happened. There were times when she thought she could still feel him; a movement in the moonlight, the feel of a soft arm around her as she slept, a ghost, a shadow at her shoulder, watching her back like he used to, a voice on the wind whispering, “Slayer”. She’d known they weren’t real, but she’d pull her coat tighter and feel warmer inside all the same, going over all the images of him that would stay in her mind forever. The night he’d first told her he would kill her. The first time they’d fought. The first time they’d fucked. His face the day she left him and again the night he'd tried to take her back by force. The night he had draped his flesh over a cross to cauterise his tormented soul. The way his sexuality, once so vibrant, had fizzled away, like a light put out, hidden away from her and the world, leaving her guessing if it was the soul or the shame that had caused it to retreat. The way she knew he wanted to look at her, release all that longing in his eyes, but wouldn't, if as he was too ashamed of what he'd done to give himself that much. The sweet smile as he relaxed with her on the final day, edged with a little pain, shyness or the loneliness he would never admit to, and that she hadn't really noticed while he was around, but missed so deeply now. They weren’t happy memories, but there were too few of those.

She pulled out her cell phone. It didn’t matter what she did or didn’t feel, life continued and he wasn’t coming back, whatever the stupid dream had said. Moping over the past wasn’t going to get the services back online. She flipped the lid of the phone open, but there were no bars on the display. No signal. Typical. She was going to have to find a phone in the village.

Day was closing into darkness, the sky fading from the cool aquamarine of daylight into a rich sapphire dusk. A light dusting of stars was beginning to appear, as the Milky Way arched her back over the world. Buffy strolled towards the village, the footpath before her in silvery illumination from the full moon that shone bright and high above the horizon. It was cold and clear, the crisp clarity broken only by cumulus clouds occasionally blown along on high altitude winds. They’d pass across the moon, dramatically inky against its pale face, reducing it to a chalky smudge for a moment, sending the world into mysterious shadow.

The night was typical of the slow transition into spring, the last gasp of winter before the equinox, and it promised to sprinkle the ground with crystals of frost before morning. Tonight Buffy felt it was good to be alone. It felt familiar, stalking the night, but it wasn’t like patrolling the urban streets of Sunnydale. The air here was cool, fresh, lacking the salty tang of the ocean, and it rasped in her lungs as she walked. The sounds of the English countryside were different too, softer, quieter. The constant roar of the distant freeway was blissfully absent and the silence was broken only by the occasional sound of a car passing through the nearby lane.

The path she was following led over farmland, tracing the edge of the fields of winter wheat before taking a turn over a stile into the woods. Here she started to feel uneasy, as the path led her though coppices of rough shrubs and dense spinneys of old trees, features that she knew from her dreams, before thinning out near the church track. The trees here, still bare of leaves at the onset of spring, threw a charcoal shadowplay against the darkening sky. Black against the twilight heavens, their shapes revealed the spirits within, fingers of twigs twisting into the night, reaching up to chase the hare from the moon. All the time she felt watched, as if the wood itself was on its guard, and she walked quickly on, not wanting to spend a moment longer in this place than she needed to.

By the time she’d reached the track by the church and had rounded the churchyard, her internal red alert had settled back to amber. Her adrenalin rush still buzzed despite the lack of incident, but it seemed this wasn’t to be the night after all. Disappointed, she crossed the green; the swans settling down together for the night at the side of the lake paying her no regard as she passed. From there, she scooted quickly across the road, darting between parked cars to reach her destination - the pub.

Buffy was getting used to English pubs now, even if they still made her uncomfortable. She’d been in a few bars in the time she’d spent in London and even there she’d felt oddly out of place, but it was the country pub that she found the most intimidating; the Slaughtered Lambs full of locals that didn’t seem to have seen an American before. The Gallows appeared to be pretty typical. Partly hidden behind a garden of roses and evergreens, it was old and settled with age. It sat low in its wooden frame, despite its two stories, and the tiled roof sagged ominously in several places. Here and there the pebbledash had been inexpertly patched and it bulged under the whitewash. Beside a small sash window in the misshapen wall, hanging basket guardians, bursting with trailing lobelia and mournful fuchsias, their heads drooping in sorrow after being clipped by the frost, flanked a door glossy with fresh black paint.

Buffy ignored the signs declaring ‘Good Food’ and ‘Real Ale’, and made her way through into a low-ceilinged room, moodily lit by shabby faux-gaslamps stained with the ochre of old nicotine. Candles were set out and lit on polished tables marked with prehistoric moisture rings, like wide mouths that looked forever thirsty beneath the brewery ashtrays and Guinness beer mats. The soft light glinted off bugles and horse brasses, carefully displayed on dark wooden ceiling beams, and the walls were crammed with faded hunting prints, cheap County maps, and shelves stuffed with Toby jugs and copper pots. The room stank. Cigarette smoke and stale beer from countless drinks spilled and absorbed into the tastelessly patterned carpet, competed with the bitter aroma of a real open fire, upon which fresh logs cracked and spat as the wood was consumed by hungry flames.

Buffy approached the bar, where several regulars stooped blearily over their pints. At the feet of one of the men, a huge black dog stretched out indolently. As she approached, it lifted its head lazily, as if the effort was a great burden. When it saw she carried no food, it returned to its lazy sleep.

The landlady, a tall woman in her fifties with tight curly brown hair and glasses, gave her a broad smile in welcome. “What can I get you dear?”

“A Coke, diet please.” While the woman set about serving her drink, Buffy picked up the brief menu that had been left at the bar. She might as well have dinner here if there was nothing to eat back at The Retreat besides the old soup.

“What brings you to Little Darrow?” the woman asked after Buffy had ordered her food.

“I’m caretaking a place up the road.”

"You've taken over the Watchers' place, have you?" the landlady asked, raising her voice over the sound of the fruit machine disgorging a meagre jackpot.

Buffy sipped her coke. "You know it?"

Mrs. Mills crossed her arms and lent on the bar, getting comfy enough for a prolonged chat. “Trade’s been dead since they closed that place, especially this early in the year without the tourists. And what with this business with the missing people, no one’s coming anymore. It’s hardly worth opening. I’m Mrs. Mills, by the way.”

“Buffy Summers,” Buffy replied, ignoring the smothered sniggers from the locals. “Missing people. I heard about that.”

Mrs. Mills nodded. “There’s been a spate of it; people disappearing into the night never to be seen again.”

“I heard there might be a serial killer,” Buffy prompted, fishing for more information.

“Or a cult,” said the man with the dog, eagerly waving a fiver at Mrs. Mills for another pint. He was youngish, with black hair and a cheery expression.

“You’re letting your imagination run wild again, Mick,” Mrs. Mills smiled indulgently as she drew the bitter into the glass for him. “You’ll be saying its aliens next.”

“Stranger things have happened.” Mick replied. He’d obviously been offering his theories about the disappearances before.

Mrs. Mills placed his pint before him and took his money. She nodded to Buffy as she turned to the cash register. “It was vampires the other night.”

“Vampires?” Buffy asked.

“Alright, take the piss, but I know what I saw.” Mick chuckled to himself. He looked hopefully at Buffy, but she didn’t like the glint in his eye. “I was out on the green, taking Rosie here for a walk, and I saw one.”

“And how do you know that?” Mrs. Mills asked as she put his change in front of him. She knew his answer already.

“It was human one minute. The next, it had these huge teeth. It came after me,” Mick’s face shifted, human merging with demon as he laughed. “I never made it home.”

The pub fell silent. Buffy looked around. Three of the other locals had got up off their stools and had moved to flank her, their faces moulded into hellish contours, the fourth turned away from the fruit machine, ignoring his two cherries and a nudge. Seven sets of amber eyes shone in the candlelight. Buffy looked down at the dog, Rosie, who snarled rabidly, her canine features flattening into their own distorted shape.

“I pity the demon that got the doggy deal,” Buffy quipped automatically, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Mick rushed her first. He was clumsy, inept, untrained, but aware of his new strength. He pushed her back like a battering ram, forcing her against the bar, but not one of his undisciplined punches went unblocked.

While Buffy was deflecting Mick’s blows, Mrs. Mills took her opportunity and grabbed her around the neck, pulling her backwards onto the bar. Buffy struggled, looking for leverage and air, but just managing to clip Mick’s chin hard enough with the tip of her boot. His head snapped back and he reeled backwards. Off balance, he tripped over the dog, and they both crashed into a table, tossing it over onto its side.

Two of the other villagers closed in, each catching one of Buffy’s thrashing legs. She twisted to kick one and the movement managed to snap her out of the publican’s grip. Before Mrs. Mills could snatch her up again, Buffy used the bar to propel herself upright; punching one man square in the face and giving the other a swift, but powerful kick to the groin, which sent him sprawling with an agonised moan. The man she’d punched went for another swing of his meaty fist. Buffy ducked under the right hook and bounced back up with the stool she’d snatched up while low.

She was having fun! The fight was easy, but it had been a long time since she’d had to fight so many at once. She reckoned that a large proportion of the vampires she fought were fledglings like these, and she didn’t expect any of the villagers would last long against her. Despite the innate abilities that their demons brought with them, new vampires often fought badly; still confused by their rise from the grave and their new status, they were often unaware of the potential their bodies now offered. In Sunnydale, few would ever survive beyond their first night, picked off during her regular patrols before they had a chance to kill. The canny ones, the ones that avoided her and the pointy end of her stake, were the ones that survived to grow stronger, the ones that had kept her in a job. None of this bunch displayed that kind of self-preservation.

Buffy smashed the stool against the bar, quickly selecting a broken leg as a suitable stake. During the commotion, Rosie had scrambled over her master and had attacked her leg, tearing at the boot-cut denim of her jeans as she tried to reach flesh. Buffy hauled her off, and plunged the stake through the animal’s ribcage, hoping that she’d found the heart. The dog exploded into dust.

One down, six to go.

The pair of villagers that had attacked her before closed in again, lunging awkwardly at her; they were dodged and dispatched to the underworld with a swift one-two, as stake met unbeating hearts.

Mick picked up a table and slung it at her. “This one’s for Rosie!”

It struck Buffy’s shoulder and its momentum knocked her to the ground. When she put her weight on her arm to stand, it hurt, but the injury appeared to be minor, nothing serious. She struggled into a crouch, but Mrs. Mills had appeared behind her, pulling her up by the neck of her shirt. The former landlady growled, hoping for menace, but Buffy had heard it all before. She drove her elbow into Mrs. Mills’ stomach and wriggled free, pushing the vampire onto the remnants of the stool. One of the remaining legs impaled her chest; she looked down at it in surprise, before disappearing from the earth forever.

There were only two villagers left now, Mick and another vampire, a small man who’d so far kept to the back of the fight. Buffy went on the offensive, vaulting a table to reach him. He tried to smash his pint over her, missing completely, and with a punch in his gut and a stake rammed between his shoulder blades for good measure, he crumpled, quickly joining the others in dusty death.

Buffy whirled round, looking for her last opponent and was caught in Mick’s strong grip by her ponytail. He yanked her head back, going for her exposed neck as she staggered into his grasp. Before his teeth could break the skin, she ducked, rolling him over her back in a judo throw. He landed heavily, with one arm in the open fire. The flames took hold quickly, igniting him with a roar like a blowtorch as it tore up his arm. The vampire screamed as he went up like the Wicker Man and his body disappeared in a puff of ash.

“Bet you always wanted to go down in a blaze of glory,” Buffy made her customary pun to the empty pub, brushing off the vampire dust and letting it settle into the nasty carpet with the other stains.

She tested her sore arm. It was bruised and it could do with an ice pack, but it would have to wait. Something was making these vampires and she needed to find it before the whole village was lost to them. Her uneasiness returned. She had a pretty good idea where to look.

She left the pub quickly and tried the churchyard first, somehow unwilling to enter the trees. It was unlike any cemetery she'd ever seen. There were no tidy lines of neat headstones here, no disturbed earth on fresh graves. Instead, the tombstones were jumbled, neglected. Some were broken, listing in soft earth, while others were overgrown with grasses and thickets of tough brambles laden with burgeoning buds. There were few that were less than fifty years old, and there was nothing recent at all.

Reluctantly, she left the churchyard and crossed the track into the woods, her dream guiding her way through the shadowy trees along rough local tracks. She searched for an hour, finding little evidence of evil. The woods weren’t big, but there was no way she was going to cover all of it before dawn. The night was now hushed around her, a silence that smothered like a blanket, muted and oppressive. She felt watched again, by mute observers all around her, the foreboding tangling her guts in her empty stomach.

She trudged on, following a new path into a clearing deep in the centre of the trees. At least it appeared no different to anywhere else in the wood. Her flashlight picked out dark earth and thick bracken dying back against bare oaks. She nearly missed what she was looking for. Amongst all the dead wood and armfuls of dry autumn leaves, she found a number of graves. They gaped, shallow and empty to the sky, like terrible wounds in the earth. She brushed through the undergrowth, snapping through the dry twigs, and found more, but still none with any occupant.

With little other evidence to be found in the clearing, Buffy moved on, satisfied that her fears were justified and dreading what else she might uncover. But her search turned up nothing else, and as the church bell tolled two, she turned and headed back towards the footpath, looking forward to returning to The Retreat and the large four-poster bed waiting for her there.

But then she felt it, a primal sense warning her of evil. She couldn’t see anything, but she quickened her pace and took a firmer grip on the stake in her pocket. The presence felt as if it was closing in, almost a breath away from her shoulder, and her alarm intensified, tongues of dread licking up her spine. Blinking, she thought she saw faces in the shadows, but she wasn’t sure and despite herself, despite the Slayer, she broke into a run, keeping off the path, ignoring the nettles and grasping thorny bushes, until she reached the church track again.

There she stopped, looking about for any danger before she turned for home the long way. She walked a few yards. A laugh broke the night’s silent spell. A laugh she thought she’d never hear again. A laugh she never expected to hear here. A laugh she still dreamt of.

She turned back towards the woods, staring stunned as he stepped out of the shadows. Hair as white as bone, slicked back. Features fine, even in game face, his expression gleefully vicious.

Her heart tripped with shock.

"Remember me, luv?"

After a moment, in which Buffy’s heart felt like it had popped the Champagne before the rest of her could catch up with the celebration, she was able to croak out his name. “Spike?”

His answering smile had about as much warmth as the depths of deep space. “You could say that.”

Buffy’s heart chilled too, something was amiss. The mild euphoria that had fluttered in her chest as he’d walked out of the woods, all dark leather and pale skin - a punk Lazarus resurrected from the embrace of heaven - settled as all her instincts warned her to be wary of the game face he wore. Her Slayer senses were feelings that weren’t easily dismissed; even if she wanted more than anything to believe that he’d survived the Hellmouth, they shouted vampire along the highways and back roads of her nervous system, making her ready for fight or flight.

She took a step towards him, still suspicious of those heavy, distorted brows, yet drawn to him, magnetised, reeled in despite her uncanny sense that all was not right. Amber eyes caught her gaze, their unnatural opacity walling him off from her, giving nothing away. She wanted to search for all those stormy emotions that used to rage within the blue eyes he was hiding; the bright love, the adoring devotion, even that familiar little spark of hate they’d both retained, which had never quite gone out and was uniquely theirs, fuelling something which she could now bear to call passion. But he blinked back at her with a dead vampire stare and he just felt wrong, wrong, wrong to her, as if someone was trying to play with her head again by taking a poke at her most tender spots. For all her sad nostalgia wanting him to return, it was impossible and whatever this cruel joke turned out to be, she would not believe it. She should have trusted what she’d already known, that vivid memory of feeling him start to burn, crumble to dust, as she held his hand, his flesh losing its cohesion in her grasp. He’d died a hero, and she wasn’t going to let this creature before her, whatever it was, take that away.

Disappointed and embarrassed that she’d almost fallen for the deception, Buffy shook her head, as if doing so might dispel the illusion or break the spell. “Oh no, you can’t do this to me…”

Not-Spike moved into her personal space, too close for her comfort.

She instinctively took a step back, recoiling from the evil she could sense in this being; black menace, the kind that she’d not felt from Spike in years, if ever, radiating in waves from it’s essence. No way was this thing going to touch her.

“You’re not him,” she hissed, angry as a rattlesnake in the hot sun.

“No, I’m not. Borrowed the body off an old friend,” he grinned, flashing her one of Spike’s rare smiles. Flamboyantly, he patted down the toned chest that strained against the tight T-Shirt, then stretched out his hands, inspecting the long fingers she remembered gliding gently across her skin. “It’s a bit singed, but it’ll do.”

“Then who are...?” she asked, confused and feeling sicker by the minute.

Not-Spike’s face melted back from the heavy ridges of the vampire into Spike’s human face. Seeing the delicate bone structure emerge from under the thick brows caused the pang of loss that was already knifing through her to make an even deeper cut. It leaned in closer, close enough for her to feel its breath, drawn irregularly to speak but not to breathe, gently brushing across the skin of her face. “We have a little unfinished business you and me. Think closing the Hellmouth would be enough? Did you think it would defeat me? I have power beyond your ability to imagine.”

“The First,” she said harshly through clenched teeth, holding her ground despite its proximity.

“Yeah,” The First sneered. It moved back, looking bored, then struck her. Hard. A good solid thump to the face that sent her tumbling to the ground in surprise. “And it seems I’ve got myself a nice upgrade.”

For a moment, Buffy sat there on the rough path, dazed, ignoring the sharp stones as they dug into her thigh, trying to determine what this new development could mean. She rubbed her cheek where The First had hit her; it stung but not as much as the wound to her heart. “You’re corporeal?”

“I can touch, feel… punch,” The First chuckled, gloating. “I think I like it.”

"So what? You're solid now, that just means I can kick your ass!" Buffy bounced lightly to her feet with the anticipation of the fight. She ducked inside The First’s guard and kicked with a move that would have been vicious if it hadn’t been half-hearted. They’d been a time when it had been so easy to hit Spike, when he wouldn’t shut hit his big mouth or she’d wanted to smash away her attraction to him. If she destroyed his face, then she might destroy the temptation. She'd hammered her hate into his face with her fists. Pounding and pounding, punching and punching, trying to obliterate his pretty features, trying to obliterate her misery by removing any reminder of why she was wrong. But now she had lost her taste for it. They’d both changed and the man he’d become deserved more than that, and if she couldn’t show him his worth to her then, her reluctance now would have to do.

Her move was easily blocked with a smooth manoeuvre that Buffy recognised from Spike’s broad repertoire; underhand brawling tricks picked up from a hundred plus years of soulless scraping she’d rather not think about. The First grabbed her leg and yanked it sideways. She felt something tear inside, tendons, ligaments, things that weren’t meant to twist and she howled as the pain flared like a supernova. Then it let her go, shoving her away with a spurning push. She stumbled as she tried to regain her balance, struggling to favour her injured ankle, but her anger was now focused and strong.

“Not so easy, is it?” The First said as it dodged under Buffy’s next attack, a feeble punch that could harness little power or reach in the circumstances.

She turned back to him, squaring off ready for another attempt. “You’ve got Spike’s moves, Spike’s body, so what? I fought him often enough and I could take him down. You shouldn’t be a problem.”

The First straightened and circled her, jeering. “You never did though, did you? Why was that?”

Buffy gaped, her stance wavering as she struggled for an answer. “I don’t… I suppose the chip…”

The First frowned as it thought that over. “Really? The chip is gone. Why is your pulse is racing right now?”

“We’re fighting.”

“Are we now?” The First raised an eyebrow with a scar from a wound it had never received. “Spike was your lover. You…”

“That’s none of your business,” Buffy interrupted. “And you are not him.”

“No, I’m really not,” The First stopped walking. “Yet you still desire this body. I can smell it.”

“Ugh, that vampire smelling thing again! Is nothing private? Okay. I want Spike, and he’s gone. I don’t know why you’re in his body, but I won’t let you play with me anymore.”

“Are you sure?” The First rubbed its stomach, his hand slipping lower to his groin, cupping the bulge. “I think I like the sound of that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Is that the best you can do? Idle threats and innuendo? Believe me, I’ve heard it.”

“No more games,” The First growled in a low, dangerous voice as it stepped closer again. “I will have my revenge.”

Buffy put her hands on her hips, trying for defiant despite the awful nagging pain in her foot and the desperate urge to cry. She’d have laughed if this whole scenario weren’t so heartbreaking. “And what? You’ll ‘kill me on Saturday’?”

“It’s not time yet,” The First cupped her cheek with a delicately soft touch, a caress she found she ached for even as she cringed from the touch of this imposter.

She pulled away sharply with a gasp. “I’m here to do something about that.”

“You’re here because I want you to be, Slayer.”

“Is that right?” Buffy punched again, this time lashing out with her all her anger and her pain, but even though her hook hit as hard as a hammer against the wall of its shoulder, her next one was easily foiled as the First caught her by her wrists, holding her tightly as she fought to free herself. It was improbably strong and its grip was a iron shackle she couldn’t break. She looked up, speechless, into eyes that had once been windows to a soul regained just for her and. Eyes that had once brimmed with emotion, burning intense as a furnace, blue as flame, but now held only contempt.

“You can’t win, you know,” the First whispered.

“It’s two outta two for Buffy so far,” she snapped back.

The First didn’t seem alarmed by her threat. “Not for long.”

Buffy stopping wriggling in his grip and glared. “There’s no Hellmouth here. No uber-vamp army to bail you out.”

“And you’re hurt. You’ve got no witch, no watcher, no other Slayers but you - nice plan by the way - but it won’t work. I am everywhere. I am as old as dust. I am in the hearts of the living and the dead.”

“And you’re boring me. If you could win so easily, you would have done it already.”

“Then it looks like a stalemate, doesn’t it?” The First grinned, dropping her hands and releasing her. “Except… Lookee here. Been having myself a bit of fun!”

And then out of the darkness, out of the woods, they came; a village of the damned; everywhere she looked, vampires, dozens of them, an improbable posse filling the track behind her with the undead; a kaleidoscopic cross-section of modern cosmopolitan Britain; fair English faces, sallow and ghastly post-mortem, and darker, more exotic complexions drawn from across an empire. The First didn’t need a Hellmouth full of Turok Han; it was building itself a new army.

The First walked over to a group of vamps that lined the fence before the trees. He looked over them proudly, like a general inspecting his crack troops before a decisive battle; it was delighted with its own creations. It turned back to her. “I think you’d better leave.”

All her years of Slaying had taught Buffy when to pick her battles. She nodded and turned her back on the village, walking away, dragging her sore foot in defeat.

***

Sleep became a stranger that night. Buffy lay awake, wrapped deep into thick, snuggly blankets to ward off the creeping cold, her small body lost in the expanse of the huge four poster bed. She stared into darkness, a thick absolute of nothing, listening. At this time of night the house felt alive, sentient and patiently watchful, anticipating. Its antique timbers creaked and groaned as it respired, contracting with the pre-dawn chill, freezing the moisture on her tear-streaked cheeks with its icy breath.

Her ankle ached with a dull, constant throb; her Slayer healing knitting the damaged attachments back together as she lay. Earlier, with The First’s mocking laughter still in ricochet inside her head and the shock of the meeting still jangling on her nerves, she had reached the haven of The Retreat, unopposed by any of its newly made vamps. As she put ice on her injury, the adrenalin seeped from her system and her confidence ebbed. She’d been lucky tonight and she knew it. Their entire meeting in the village that evening had been a posturing pre-show, the weigh-in for the big fight to come, a chance to twist the knife into her with a few well-timed taunts. The First had let her go, a sadistic enemy playing with its prey, holding his army back, choosing to set her free in order to squeeze the maximum anguish from her before moving to checkmate. The vamps had watched her return to the house, dozens of them, no part of the track left unobserved; a cautious pack of jackals, circling, keeping their distance, never touching her, allowing her to pass, but making no secret that only their master kept them in check. The First stayed behind, letting its plans unfold, the order of their execution as important as its goal. There was no need to chase her yet; it had her cornered and unsettled, no transport, no communications and no chance of rescue, just her own ability to survive. She was its mercy, or so it thought.

This time she had to finish the spiral of The First’s return and retreat, win the war and beat it back until it couldn’t return to ruin her life or that of her friends again. She needed to find a permanent solution, as she knew from bitter experience that it would not leave until it was done. As the Hellmouth had fallen into itself, they had considered it defeated, the Watcher’s Council finally declaring it dealt with, the legion of new Slayers a deterrent to its reappearance. Yet it had returned, singling her out for personal vengeance, walking in Spike’s skin to bait her, but she hadn’t been fooled that easily. She might miss Spike, and until this evening she hadn’t realised just how much or how strong the bonds between them had been, but she’d seen nothing of Spike in his expression or felt any of the heady tension that had always buzzed between them. What she had recognised in those eyes was the kind of malice and demonic loathing projected from a black heart. Even soulless, Spike had always had shades of grey, facets to his big personality; scraps of vulnerability that gave away the traces of humanity left in the monster, but in The First that precious spark was missing; the twinkle of mischief replaced by something darker, a glow more feral and utterly evil. That thing, it wore Spike’s face, it looked like him, spoke with his voice; walked with Spike’s swaggering walk as it sidled up to join her, but in that moment she had understood completely that it wasn’t the Spike she knew.

As she sought sleep, she curled up, foetal, trying not to think, pushing away her thoughts in a desperate attempt to stop them from overwhelming her; but as soon as she drove them out, they would return regardless. The First was walking the earth in the body of her dead lover, mocking all he’d died for, parading his body before her with glee. It wasn’t fair and it was going to stop, but for now, even though she knew it was what The First wanted, she allowed herself her private tears.

Sleep finally came to Buffy after a few tearful hours, her sore eyes drifting closed after she’d seen Friday dawn clear and crisp. She slept until the early afternoon, woken by a burst of weak winter sun that lit the room through a gap between the heavy curtains, which gaped open where she’d carelessly drawn them before going to bed. The bright rays dispelled the shadows and threw a narrow stream of pallid light across the ancient bed, dissecting it with a warm line, cosy but dazzling to her tired eyes.

Where the skin of her face was exposed, debouched from the soft cocoon of linen sheets, the gentle heat warmed her cheek like a lover’s hand. The frigid air had cooled through the morning, as the fire in the old hearth had burned low to glowing embers and gone out. It had kept her from freezing in the night, but it had never threatened to rid the room of its unwelcoming chill. She snuggled deep into the bedclothes to end her shivers and wished she’d never left the warmth of California.

Eventually, ignoring the radiator that remained cold without the electricity, she rose, braving the icy embrace of the day to relight the fire. Getting up meant testing her weight on her ankle and she discovered that it was still painful to walk on; the nifty swiftness of her slayer healing was, unfortunately, not instantaneous. Checking out the injury, she found that the damaged flesh was still puffy and tender in the sorest spots, and it would be another day or so before she would be able to use it fully again. The pain was a sharp reminder of the previous night’s events, which in the clarity of day seemed unreal; like some surreal dreamscape made from her wishful thinking and her darkest fears, all tangled together in the dark dimensions of her subconscious. But The First was real enough, and so were the villagers who still walked the earth after their deaths. Something awful had happened to Little Darrow.

Under the high vaulted beams of the Great Hall, she ate a frugal meal sitting alone at one end of the grand antique table. It stretched out before her; a long thin bridge of polished, but dusty, walnut, spanning the silent room to a distant horizon pinnacled with neat stacks of silver condiment sets. This was the first food she’d eaten since her lunch the day before, and the hot soup she'd heated, on a little gas stove she'd found in a store of camping equipment, filled her inside with a wholesome flush that lifted her spirits and renewed her sense of purpose. It didn't matter if it counted as breakfast or lunch, the tinned soup was still the only edible food in the building, but at that moment she was grateful for its reassuring warmth, as the stern faces of the Watchers on the walls looked down on her with disapproving stares, silently accusing her of inaction as she took each mouthful. They could go hang. She was hungry and injured, but she knew her duty all too well and she didn’t need them to remind her. So, after she’d cleared her bowl away, she limped back into the unlucky village, spurred on by her own determination to drive the scourge of The First from the benighted place, and certainly not due to any compulsion to obey the Council’s painted lineage.

The day was cold, with a fresh north wind whose bitter teeth bit into her skin as she walked. She kept a brisk pace, as much as her ankle would allow, hoping there was nothing evil waiting for her in the low tangled hedgerows. Now and again, the sun would peep through gaps in the overcast sky, only to be smothered moments later by low scudding clouds that pressed in morosely above her. They made the world seem small, close and claustrophobic, like the confines of her grave, and she wished fervently for blue skies and summer sun to take that feeling away. Instead, the changing chaos above her cast dramatic shadows that swept across the fields and shallow valleys, chasing away the sunlight before the cycle could start again.

Despite the dismal light, a sharp edge of adrenalin kept her alert and watchful. She knew she was probably safe from direct attack as Evil loved the darkness, distaining the day, and the vampires certainly had reason to fear their neighbourhood star. Not that it had ever bothered Spike too much, she thought with a wry sadness. Anyhow, it was risky weather for a vampire to chance a game of Russian roulette with the leaden skies - the cloud was cover too thin and the sun waited deadly in the chamber for any small break in the billowing blanket. However, despite the temperature, the capricious changeability of the sky and the small risk of imminent assault, it would have been a pleasant day to be in the countryside.

She made a point of avoiding the woods this time, even though she knew that the dense thickets of bare shrubs masked the truth of the evil that pervaded this place. She wasn’t ready for that yet, it could wait until her ankle was stronger and she knew just what The First had done. Instead, she took the longer route, skirting the edge of the trees and following a fork of the path around the back of a house that was screened from the rest of the village and the road by the branches of the churchyard’s brooding yew. Although it wasn’t a small building, it hunkered low in a lush hollow of horticultural perfection; a neat expense of crisp green lawn bordered by verdant herbaceous borders and finely pruned rose bushes waiting for the year to turn to the easy days of summer to bloom. She followed the path until it joined the track that cut through the woods and crossed onto a gravel driveway that led to the house, whose sign, a black iron plaque decorated with cheerful squirrels gathering nuts, proclaimed it as ‘The Vicarage’.

It turned out not to be the romantic country cottage of her childhood dreams, but a pretty neo-Gothic house built in the same light local sandstone to be sympathetic to the style of its ecclesiastical neighbour. It looked shabby and lived in; the façade pitted and weather-stained, and twists of ivy curled into the cracks between the blocks. The edges of the fine carving had blurred with a hundred plus winters, distorting the faces of the figures into hideous mutilations that grinned at her mockingly.

Ignoring the gargoyles, she knocked on the front door, even though she knew she wouldn’t get a reply. She wasn’t surprised when she didn’t receive an answer. The silence hung expectantly for a time, leaden with an ominous stillness, daring her to break it, but she started to search for another way inside instead. The windows at the front were firmly shut to keep the heat inside, and they were glazed with the same leaded glass as those at The Retreat, small thick diamond panes that would take an effort to smash if she was going to make a hole wide enough for her to fit through. She didn’t want to break them unless she had to, so she gave up and tried the back of the building, awkwardly climbing a high fence to get into a small courtyard of outhouses. Here, there were wooden sheds dark with creosote and old greenhouses full of seedlings and terracotta pots, a creaky lean-to housed a collection of well-used garden tools and a small brick summerhouse looked out over the tidy garden. She searched through them all, but there were no signs of life in any of them.

On an annexe that branched from the main house, she found a door hanging loosely from a single broken hinge - as if it had been wrenched from its frame with great force. Through the doorway, Buffy found a workshop stuffed with tools and drawers overfilling with nuts, bolts, screws and other objects Buffy thought Xander might recognise but were a mystery to her. It was messy, disorganised and it smelled of old metal and rust like dried blood, but apart from the damage to the door, there was no other sign of struggle.

Another door lead from the workshop through to the inside of the house, and it proved to be as empty as the grounds. Possessions were left untouched as if the residents had just popped out, and Buffy felt like an intruder prowling in their personal space. Yet she knew that these people weren’t coming back. Here and there, she’d find evidence that all was not well. There was a full load of laundry in the washing machine, still damp and musty from neglect; the preparation of a meal had been abandoned midway and the ingredients had begun to moulder on the worktop, the meat dried and dark; the television still blared a news channel to missing ears and the telephone line was cut. Only ghosts lived here now.

Buffy wasted no more time there, and she left the house to its emptiness. She walked back down the driveway and along the track into the village proper, all the while keeping one eye on those menacing woods, but nothing stirred there to concern her.

Little Darrow in daylight looked vastly different, but no less eerie, than it had the night before and the stark silhouettes that had dominated the dark had become pretty little buildings devoid of life; yet they felt ever watchful, like sinister sentinels, ensuring that she didn’t escape. She ignored the church for now and headed towards the cottages and the pub on the opposite side of the green. The Gallows was just as she’d left it; disarranged with the broken tables and chairs still lying where they’d fallen in the fight. She clambered over them to the bar and tried the telephone, but it too was cut off; she now doubted there was a working one in the whole village. She tried her cell phone again as she got outside, but although the display showed a signal strength that flickered from one bar to nothing and back again, she couldn’t keep connected to her network for long enough to make a call or send a text for help. Resigned to waiting for her ankle to heal before she could reach the next village and decent reception, she gave up, shoving the phone into the pocket of her coat in frustration, she would have to do without electricity for now. She was on her own again.

Moving on with her investigations, she knocked on the doors of the cottages still with the hope that there might be someone alive to answer her urgent hammering. But there was nothing; the whole village was dead and empty, a chocolate box ghost town seemingly forgotten by the outside world. The village was small enough that it didn’t take her long to conclude that the inhabitants were either already dead or taken, cursed to walk the night as revenants; vampires or Bringers made to serve under the command of their dark master.

She was too late.

There was one more chance. She crossed the green again and returned to the church, seeing it as the only possible sanctuary for the living in this forsaken place. From the frame of the dark wooden lychgate, the church loomed authoritatively before her; a solid, eternal place that seemed to reassure something deep inside her soul, ‘no evil can touch you here’. She knew better than that.

The churchyard had been well kept and it was trimmed and neat, but the quiet serenity was deceiving. The more she looked, the more she found evidence of struggle; a cracked headstone that had seen a great impact and which crumbled at her touch; areas of the path where the rough gravel had been raked up into shallow furrows of pebbles and loose sand by desperate fingers scrabbling for freedom; a dark sinister trail that lead towards the wide stone porch. Blood had been spilt there, and a significant amount too, judging by the thick splatter that stained the mighty church doors and the flecks that marked the nearby headstones. A hand, the palm wide and open, had smeared blood onto the glass that framed the order of services, leaving a fuzzy primeval print as its owner’s epitaph. Dried to a dark umber where it was heaviest, large patches of orangey-red smudges washed the flagstones of the porch with violence. No one living had sought sanctuary here and survived.

The church keys still hung in the heavy iron lock and it made a satisfying clunk as Buffy turned the big key to release the door, pushing it forward into the nave. At first the church looked untouched; the atmosphere inside hushed and tranquil, the emptiness of the space making it feel somehow forgotten and abandoned, sinking under a sorrowful melancholia. Even the floral arrangements, the delicate lilies and white roses that decked the church for a wedding that would never happen, had withered and died, and they drooped solemnly with quiet regret. As decadence became decay, their petals dropped slowly onto cold flagstones engraved with names of the dead. But then the sun came out, and the mood shifted as it shined through the stained medieval glass like a ladder to heaven. The panels shone as radiant as the day they’d been made, each a celebration of jewelled blues and lush reds, and they drenched everything below with a vivid watercolour wash that made Buffy’s heart sing.

The gently serene beauty drew her inside and she approached the front along a small aisle, formed on each side of the church by four rotund columns. They stood as solid as the ages, their reaching heights spreading into wide gothic arches that spanned the high ceiling like the ribs of a giant beast. Beneath them, there were neat lines of uncomfortable looking pews, worn with centuries of use. They were ornate, made from sturdy oak and carved with intricate carvings, and she ran her fingers over scenes from Bible stories, mowing devils and the perils of hell. Other figures seemed older, more pagan, and incongruous in a house of God; male faces that spewed mouthfuls of leaves, horned gods and women posed in brazenly sexual positions that made her blush and withdraw her hand. She turned her back on them quickly.

A heavenly veil of soft light screened her from the altar. A stream of bright sunshine, filtered through the knowing head of a haloed saint, threw a spotlight onto the grim sight below. The altar had been desecrated; the cheery spring colours of green and yellow stained dark with blood where it ran down the front to pool leisurely on the step. Between two sets of red candles, carefully arranged for her to find with its arms spread wide in a gruesome welcome she really didn’t want to reciprocate, the headless corpse of the priest lay slumped on its back across the altar. Creating a golden exclamation point to the macabre message, a Bringer’s knife clove the dead mans’ heart.

Outside, the clouds swallowed the sun and the church fell into shade. The altar candles flickered and lit the scene with golden shifting highlights. From above her, came a low chuckle. Buffy looked up; a set of symbols, grotesque and profane, had been daubed on the walls in greasy blood and they dribbled down like banners proclaiming the victory of evil. Framed between them, like a great dictator waiting to bask in the exultation of the masses, The First leant dramatically on the edge of the pulpit, its – Spike’s – eyes glittering with amusement.

“I’ve re-decorated,” it said.

“I’ve noticed,” Buffy replied icily, instinctively placing a hand on her concealed stake. “It has your usual flair.”

The First grinned at that, stepping down from its eyrie, slowly taking the winding steps one by one with a louche and suggestive roll of its narrow hips. “Thought you’d like it. Worth risking Mr. Sunshine to see you happy.”

Fed up with this pointless bluster, Buffy crossed her arms. Her eyes tracked the entity’s every move. “Where are they?”

The First moved towards the altar and the sickening tableau it had created. It yanked the knife free from the body and inspected the bloodied curve of the blade with a kind of amused satisfaction, as if still delighted with its ability to touch. “Where are who? Gonna have to be a little clearer than that.”

“The villagers. The ones that didn’t die.”

Unconcerned by her question, The First roamed leisurely to the other side of the church, passing a tomb in a small alcove where a knight and his lady remained in their private chapel. On their stone bier, they slept in quiet repose, the blank marble eyes of their effigies, carved to stare into eternity, remained pale and sightless, silent witnesses to the re-dedication of their resting place. “I don’t recall any of those, Pet.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped automatically, it was all too easy to forget for a moment and fall into old habits. “Your army has to feed on something, and I’m willing to bet they haven’t gone veggie. Where are they?”

“Now that would be telling,” The First flicked its eyes towards her, locking its gaze with her own and practically licking out its next word. She ignored the way the light cast deep shadows on those cheekbones, reminding her of intimate moments with a lost vampire, in a crypt and a city far away in distance and memory. “…Pet.”

“Shut up!” Buffy seethed, squeezing her fingers into fists.

“Think I’ll burn?” The First asked, pointing towards the font. The intricately moulded stone chalice brimmed with clear water, but a dark object she couldn’t see broke the shimmering reflections.

She didn’t have time for these petty games. “I can only hope.”

It was then she noticed what the object in the pool of holy water was. The vicar’s missing head, eyes open in terror, its mouth open in a scream cut short. The First picked it up by a scruff of curling red hair. Dead flesh hissed and smoked, spitting like quicklime.

The First held tight, enduring the pain as it burned. “Catch.”

The next thing she knew the head was lobbed in a low underhand trajectory towards her. She dodged and it hit the floor behind her, landing with a heavy squelching bounce before rolling under the front pew. She looked at it for a moment, horrified, as the vacant eyes stared back.

The First laughed again, but humourlessly. “I thought you were going for a header.”

“Where are they?” She demanded, her voice ragged with anger, looking up at The First in utter disgust.

“Haven’t you worked it out yet? They’re dead. Every single one of them,” it replied. “Like you will be.”

“As if.”

It moved towards her with a vicious grin. “I’m sure I’ll get a tasty bite out of you, right enough. But I won’t be feeding you to that rabble. They can carry on eating the next village and the next…”

“Then they’ll meet slayers. They won’t get far,” Buffy said defiantly.

“There won’t be enough,” the entity breathed. “There will never be enough.”

“There’s always enough.” She went for the door, there was no point staying to listen to this anymore, but The First blocked her way, stopping her leaving.

“Are you scared yet?” It asked.

Buffy snorted. “Hardly.”

Buffy was fast and her skills had become instinctual over her years as the Slayer, but still she hesitated. As she gripped the stake, Spike’s face looked back at her and, for a moment, she didn’t think she could stake the entity. In another place and time Angel had stood before her like this, his fate delivered into her hands for her judgement. She done it then and delivered the sentence, sending him out of the world with the thrust of her sword, but the scars left on her heart were still raw even now and she didn’t think she could do it again. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t Spike, despite the hair and those clear blue eyes, and she steeled herself to lose the only connection she had left to him on this earth; even if it was wicked and evil, and bent on spreading it’s darkness across the world. With a steely sense of purpose that detached her emotions from the act, she plunged her stake into The First’s borrowed heart.

And it remained there, protruding from the strong muscled chest, but no dusty death followed. She stared at it for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out what was wrong. The First looked down at it and poked it a bit. When it looked up those eyes were shining with purpose.

“Wha…?” she started, too shocked for speech.

“Do what you like. You can’t destroy me.”

“But the Holy water, it hurt you!”

“Yeah, funny that. Stings like a bitch, but it seems it won’t kill me.” The First leaned in close to deliver its threat. “If you aren’t scared yet, you should be.”

Buffy’s sleep came that night with disquieting dreams. Not Slayer ones rising up from the depths of her psyche; these contained no prophesies or warnings of horrors to come, but were instead, a collection of jumbled pictures - faces, voices, places - that shattered into a rush of images that made no sense at all.

For hours she tumbled in her troubled sleep as she surfed the waves of this subconscious tide, swept along like flotsam on the chaos. Turning restlessly, over and over again, this tempest tossed her across a turbulent ocean of fears and doubts before washing her up on a shore of calm, where the dreams cleared and sharpened into a smooth digital clarity…

Spike’s hand shone like a winter moon across the dingy shallows of her basement, his white skin pale and luminous in the darkness. The amulet swung from his long fingers in a loose, lazy, trajectory; back and forth, back and forth, like a metronome keeping the steady beat of her heart. As the crystal swirled on its chain, the facets caught the light streaming in through the open door above and scattered it, like a brilliant glitter ball of tiny diamonds. They circled the walls when it turned, this way and that, chasing away the gloom that drowned the room in its inky shadows.

This was no ordinary dream of nonsense and shifting Dali-esque landscapes, Buffy realised. She was lucid and in control; awake while she slept on. The setting felt real and solid, almost as it had on that night before the battle with The First, but the details were different, or sharper somehow, as if only now she could notice them. The basement was cold; as frozen as her heart had been for a very long time. This was her dark place, the room where she kept her secrets from the world, safe amongst the boxes of junk. Here were the things she’d left behind but couldn’t bear to part with; like her childhood toys, once cherished and full of memories, now stacked up and forgotten; and her mother’s possessions, stored here, useless but too precious to throw away. These tarnished treasures bulged from boxes of saggy, mildewed cardboard crammed between rusting tools, old tatty books and Christmas lights that would never see another holiday tree - all human things, mundane and trivial. It was an incongruous place for a vampire to dwell.

As she approached, Spike looked up. He regarded her steadily, the sparkles from the amulet glimmering as they flashed across the dark depths of his eyes; those same clear pools she’d once refused to drown in. In this dream he was open to her, in a way he’d never been since the new soul had smothered him in shame. She could see the smaller, subtler clues to his mood in how his posture lay heavy with regret and a quiet resignation. There was a gentle world-weariness in his eyes that hung solemnly over his longing for her that still burned in his gaze, despite all his guilt and belief in his own unworthiness. She’d thought they had reached a chaste understanding, no longer weighted with the bricks of past mistakes, the future had began to blossom with possibilities, but he didn’t seem so sure. But this was the real Spike, she was positive. Underneath their comfortable familiarity, she could feel the tension that she’d always denied and suppressed, continue to crackle between them; tight, almost tangible and a little exciting, highly charged like everything they’d done together. Here was the one that had tried grasp her heart as it slipped through his fingers, that had brought her his soul as a gift, not some obscene copy that used his face to menace her.

Yet Spike had known. He’d known all along that the amulet would destroy him, and she realised now that he’d been ready to die. Not suicidal, just prepared, accepting that this was what he had to do. Caught in the enchantment of fond memory, she found herself breathless, not wanting this moment to end. She wanted to tell him that a spark had kindled in her heart for him, that a love had ignited into flame too late. She wanted him to believe her. But the words would not come, fading to silent ashes upon her tongue without breath to form them.

She waited. The spell of the moment remained unbroken; their eyes locked in a gentle regard, communicating volumes without speaking, until her breathlessness became more than an anxious desire not to spoil this, but a real struggle to inhale.

“It’s almost time,” Spike said softly. His voice was sepulchral, rich, low and foreboding. Was he warning her or was he telling her to let him go?

She wheezed as her chest constricted. “Spike…”

“Breathe, Buffy.”

She tried to take a deep breath, but there was nothing to fill her lungs. She gasped anxiously, “I don’t want to die.”

“Then you need to wake up.”

Buffy opened her eyes; it was few hours before dawn, when the night was at its darkest and its most potent. Still dreamy and half-awake, she saw she was back in her cold, lonely room at The Retreat. Spike and the basement were gone, returned to her memories of leaking pipes and empty chains.

A dread, terrible and leaden, jolted her into sharp awareness. She couldn’t breathe. Around her neck something held her tightly, a hand she could not see, while another smothered her mouth like a hard seal. She could feel each of those strong fingers, squeezing her throat, pressing into her face, digging in with fingernails like claws, but above her, where her assailant should have been, there was only empty air.

She lifted her arms to fight back. At least she tried to. She couldn’t move or feel anything. Her limbs were frozen and numb, held immobile in paralysis. Struggling made little difference, her body didn’t respond, all movement lost to an overwhelming lethargy. Her chest felt crushed and airless, as if a heavy weight, like a body or a stone, was pushing her against the softness of the bed. She could already feel the black arms of death reaching out to receive her, insidious and seductive, a cold menace that flowed like ice along sluggish arteries that remembered the grave too fondly. She resisted them as they beckoned her towards their embrace; it was a long time now since she’d wanted to die.

Seconds felt like hours as the ghost took form; its ethereal body as thin as smoke but making its weight up in dread. First, the spectral eyes appeared, glittering wildly in the darkness as they gained substance. A hollow, ghastly skull framed them in a grotesque mask of fury, its flesh indistinct in shadow for a moment before brightening into a rough sketch of some haggard thing that could once have been a man. The hand on her throat squeezed harder. The pain was terrible, in her neck, in her head, in her bursting lungs. Paralysed and in pain, she looked up into the hostile stare as its eyes bored into hers, the set of its jaw angry and intent. They blazed with a cool hate, icy and piercing, floating so close to her face that the malice was intensified by their proximity. Even in the darkness, she could see them clearly, and she shrank from the appalling measure of their loathing.

The hard, empty pain of asphyxiation gripped her chest as Buffy held the last of her breath tightly in her lungs. She tried to scream, for whom she did not know, but her voice was hoarse and weak, squeezed through her constricted throat. The spirit, ghost, or whatever it was, smiled, a grim mockery of mirth. Then it released her, breaking its silence with a savage laugh - a terrible, gurgling, death rattle that seemed to freeze her inside. She sat up abruptly, gasping like a drowning soul breaking the surface of the water. She grabbed at the malevolent spirit, but her grasping hands passed through its ethereal body as it began to fade. Flesh melted in front of her, peeling from bone that crumbled away into dust as it vanished.

Pulling herself from the tangle of sheets, Buffy tried to stand. Her legs bore her weight for a few seconds as she staggered towards the bathroom, but after a couple of steps they crumpled beneath her. She collapsed heavily onto her hands and knees, not noticing how her knees grazed along the worn Oriental rug, as she fought against a rising nausea that doubled her over. Her head was pounding, and each ragged breath she drew in through her bruised windpipe was dry and sore. She retched violently, unable to resist the tight clenching pull on her aching stomach any longer, and puked into the delicately patterned weave.

Trembling and hunched on all fours, her head hung low between her quivering arms as she tried to regain control of her body. Her loose hair trailed over her face and where it touched her perspiring skin it stuck in limp, damp clumps. The bathroom had never seemed so far away, and she waited until her head cleared a little and the nausea eased to a nagging discomfort before stumbling to the shower. She didn’t care that the water wasn’t heated or even that she was still clothed; she needed to wash, right now . She stood beneath the freezing spray for as long as she could endure the icy water; the shock brought her back to herself as the dirt sloughed away. The water spiralled down the plughole in a cleansing whirlpool, clear and pure, and her horror washed away.

Back in the cold bedroom, she began to shiver; great quaking tremors that spasmed through her cold muscles. She was exhausted, drained of energy; the ghost had sucked it out her, as it had what little heat there’d been in the room. The mute apparition had used her life force, stealing it from her living flesh to fuel its own manifestation. Despite its cosy temptations, she avoided the bed, too alert and too shaken to sleep. Peeling off her wet pyjamas, the skin beneath them was damp and clammy, icy to the touch and she was glad of warm, dry clothes. Seeking more warmth, she checked the grate; the ashy embers glowed dully, almost out. Stoking them into life again, she added more logs and huddled in close, shoulders hunched and closed, getting as near to the fire as she dared. The flames caught the fresh wood and they leapt high, driving away the darkness with a light wholesome smoke. The glowing heat prickled her skin, but it failed to soothe away the chill that gnawed inside. She longed for a hot bath, but the best she could do was pull the arms of her sweater over her frozen fingers.

She wanted to go home, back to the warm places where the sun actually shone and where evil pursued its plans on nights that never saw rain or snow. She wanted someone to talk to. She wanted Spike’s dark, dry humour and his strong, comforting arms. She wept. This time not just for herself, but for everything, for Spike, for Anya and her mom whose graves were the ruins of a city that could never be rebuilt, for all of those who’d lost their lives in her battle. She wished she’d gone to Brighton with Willow, Kennedy and Dawn, and forgotten for a while the malice that lingered in the evil things of the world. She even wished, for the first time in a long time, that she were still in the soft comfort of heaven.

Unwilling to place her trust in sleep again that night, she sat and waited for the dawn, listening to the fire crackle and spit. A weighty silence had enveloped the house. Not a total absence of noise, but one that seemed to press in like the darkness; brooding, suggestive, secretive. Buffy had never feared the dark or the creatures that stalked it, but the dead of night was the playground of the imagination; where solitude turned to loneliness, concern became paranoia and shadows concealed hidden threats. The night took the worries of the day and made them into mortal fears; every sound was amplified in the dim light and reverberated through the walls in distorted and strange shapes. Creaks became ghostly knockings from souls seeking release from the earthly plane, as the sighs of the breeze outside formed pitiful whispers that begged for forgiveness for their living sins.

The window rattling shook her from her wild imaginings; the latch had come open and the pane swung and crashed against its frame. The tasteless porcelain vase on the windowsill tottered for a moment, before it toppled from its high perch and smashed on the floor in a blizzard of potpourri. The fire’s warmth was pierced by a sharp chill brought from outside by the strong breeze, yet the atmosphere had become heavy and oppressive, as if a storm were brewing. She got up and pulled it closed again, almost glad of having something to do to break the monotony.

It was as she turned away, that she first heard the hunting horn in the distance, bugling an urgent call into the night. Accompanied by the sound of many hooves, drumming along at a furious gallop, it seemed a strange, incongruous sound this late; somehow out of place in the darkness. She knew little about hunting, but she’d seen a hunt once, clattering down the lane outside Giles’ house early one morning. If they hunted at night, she didn’t know, but she was convinced she’d seen a few twisted demonic faces amongst the huntsmen.

She returned to her place by the fire and ignored the clamour outside. The horn sounded again, and this time she heard voices, keening and shouting words she could not make out, but knew instinctively were sounds anything living should never hear. The voices echoed through the empty rooms of The Retreat, twisted and discordant, weaving a spell of fear within her, primal and unrestrained, filling her up with a rising terror that felt like the clench of dark hands around her heart. This was no ordinary hunt.

She stood up, looking for some kind of defence, as they made their relentless approach, not knowing how they would attack. Close now, the hooves of the horses made a cacophony of a thousand beats, thundering across the heavens, nearer and nearer until they finally clattered along the parquet of the Long Gallery; the infernal voices whooping over the racket, harsh and terrible, yelling profanities in languages straight from hell.

The Wild Hunt burst through the walls of the room; spectral hounds, giant ravening beasts of the pit baying for the blood of the living, and an unholy host of skeletal horses, ragged nags with red demon eyes and limp dead manes, whinnying with fear as they were cruelly whipped by their riders - horrid corpses, still in their funereal finery though they hung in strips of faded fabric, stained and torn, from hollows were flesh should be. The empty sockets in their cracked skulls stared sightlessly forward and their jawbones lolled as if still in their graves.

The field flew past her, inches away, disappearing through the outside wall into the night. A stray hoof caught her, clipping her with a powerful kick that threw her aside. She crouched low for safety where she fell, her hands over her head to try to shut herself away. She could feel the air, disturbed by their passing, rushing against her skin. A wind of turmoil, reeking of death; of bones lain in stone tombs, sealed against forever, of the putridity of decaying flesh, of the familiar dry mustiness of the coffin. She struggled to keep them out of her head, whispering a mantra of ‘they aren’t here, they aren’t here ’ as her face and hands caught the sharp lashes of the rider’s whips. Slavering hounds snapped at her, biting her with stinking, drooling fangs. And still they kept coming, hundreds of them, the rush, the clamour, the terror so deafening it drowned out all thought.

When the field started to thin out to the stragglers, she could think again. Hers was not the blood they were after, though she pitied those souls they hunted each night. She opened her eyes and sprang up in time to see the bony tails of the last few horses vanish through the curtain. The grip of fear lessened and dissipated. She ran to the window, fumbling with the stiff old-fashioned latch again before throwing it out wide so that she could look out across the grounds. The trees ahead of her, masking the house from the lane with great boughs of oak and sycamore, rustled with the brisk wind. The horn blew from somewhere over the hill, but there was nothing left to be seen except the turbulent clouds were forming on the horizon. Dark against the bright blaze of the Milky Way, they gathered like crows during a battle, hanging there, looming, threatening, waiting for their cue.

For a second, Buffy could have been in Sunnydale, looking out from her bedroom window over Revello Drive at the lonely, lovesick vampire in the front yard leaning casually against their tree. But the curtains she’d pushed aside were of heavy brocade and the vampire staring up at her smugly from the disordered lawns wasn’t a vampire at all.

“Is that the best you can do?” she shouted defiantly into the night.

The First smiled. Even though it was too dark to see its features clearly, she knew the borrowed smirk it wore as well she knew The First’s sneering, insidious tongue. She slammed the window shut and hauled the curtains closed. The ghost and the Wild Hunt had been The First all along, using the entities over which it held dominion, drawing them forth from some dark dimension to toy with her, to break her will.

She didn’t sleep again until sunrise.

Through the frame of the tall windows, Los Angeles sprawled vast and wide. From the towering glass and chrome of the downtown skyscrapers to the silent shadows of the Hollywood Hills beyond, the cityscape, from the high vantage point of the Wolfram and Hart building, was nothing less than breathtaking. As night fell and the light faded through soft golds to dark, rich blues, it became a dazzling vista of a million tiny lights shining like a bright galaxy of multi-coloured neon against the dark universe beyond.

It drew the eye as surely as a masterpiece by any Grand Master, yet Wesley spared the sight not even a glance. He sat with his back to the spectacular view, the large book in front of him absorbing all his attention and he was lost to the world, deep in the labyrinth of study. As he’d read, the afternoon had slipped into the evening unnoticed, the ambient lighting of the office taking up the slack as the sun sank through the filmy ozone haze and dipped beneath the horizon to end another day. The rest of the world had gone about its usual Saturday business, filling the malls and the coffee shops with idle chat and the mundane duties of small lives, before returning home to families and loved ones, or the cold company of the TV. Now, after the sun had gone to shine on other climes, the city belonged to the night people, the clubbers, the lovers and the pimps; those on whom the darkness preyed.

The passing of days meant little to Wesley anymore and every day was like any other. The evil that lurked in the shadows or wove webs of influence through business and politics, never took a day off and neither did he. He was happy enough. He didn’t need anything more than he already had at Wolfram and Hart; his friends, his books and his gun, for even though most of his staff had gone for the weekend to enjoy the sunshine - or not as the case may be – there were still mysteries to solve, prophesies to decipher and demons to kill.

Turning a heavy vellum page, he ran his hand gently over the cracked, aged skin, which creaked dryly as it was pressed flat against the previous sheet. In many areas the ink had faded to barely a smudge or the pages had crumbled close to the sides, creating ragged edges that flaked at the touch, archaic knowledge eroding away into nothing like a chalky shoreline. Morumdi, the author of the work, had been a madman, or so it had been believed for centuries, frantically scrawling pages and pages of this seemingly obscure, rambling, nonsense for days on end without rest or sustenance, until he’d died just as the last line was complete. More likely, Wesley guessed, was that he’d been a priestly savant, controlled and driven to exhaustion by a force unseen as it compelled him to write. His script was tiny, dotted and rough, like a hellish prehistoric Braille; and it wound in tight, protean paragraphs with no margins, or became incorporated into random illustrations of unhinged whimsy; stylised sketches of tormented beasts or twisted satanic flora.

As far as Wesley could make out from the volume and the bizarre, illogical language it was written in, the sigils they’d found in the room where they had discovered Spike’s unconscious body meant much more than he’d understood from his less-informed translation prior to the acquisition of this book. While it was true that the sigils had indicated the First’s plans to take revenge on the Slayer, there were also symbols that hadn’t made sense in that context and were only now divulging their meanings. It was clear from translating the older symbols from the walls, that Mr Morrow’s basement had been a factory producing Harbingers to serve the First Evil. The importer’s employees had not been eaten, as had been previously suspected, but had been killed and reanimated, corrupted into tortured versions of themselves; skin flayed, eyes ripped out and sewn shut, branded like cattle herded to serve the entity’s will. They had seized upon the opportunity to free their unholy master, but once they had achieved that objective they’d vacated the basement within hours.

Wesley was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be back. He pushed the book aside, satisfied with his conclusions, and started to gather his notes together in readiness to send down to the typing pool. He would finish the report later, after some rest. He stood up and flipped the file into his Out Tray. Normally he would encourage Fred to leave her lab long enough get something to eat, but she was out with Angel and Gunn, assisting them at the important Demonic Law conference. He would be dining alone tonight.

“Hey.”

He glanced up to see Eve lingering in the doorway. “Can I help you?”

“Am I interrupting?” she asked, striding purposefully into the office.

He looked down at his stack of work and considered making an excuse. “Would it make a difference?”

She smiled humourlessly and got straight to business, giving the thin file in her hand a little wave. “I just brought these invoices for you to sign off. More books, I see.”

“The Codex Tempus Mormundi is a valuable asset to my work here,” he told her, gesturing towards the book in front of him. “The nuances of the work cannot be fully represented without the texture and feel of the original text to shed light on its meaning. The templates are wonderful things, but they cannot replicate everything.”

Eve nodded as she approached his desk and took a seat opposite him, but as she crossed her legs primly it was clear that she was really not interested. “I hope it sheds plenty of light on our First Evil problem, because our seers have reported back with some serious concerns for this dimension.”

Wesley looked up at her, curious. “So you’re not here to discuss the Departmental Budget. I thought the invoices could wait until Monday. Do The Senior Partner’s have you working overtime?”

Eve pursed her lips unhappily, ignoring the question. “They think you’ve sent the First right where it wants to be.”

“How so?”

“You sent Spike to England.” She leaned forward and placed a file before him. “This contains the reports on what the seers have foreseen. They saw Spike try to open re-open the Deeper Well.”

Wesley thought for a moment. The name was familiar, but he couldn’t recall its significance. “The Deeper Well?”

“It’s a burial ground for the oldest demons, the ones that roamed the earth before people. The Old Ones.”

“The Old Ones?” He eased back into his chair. “But they were driven out…”

“Only the ones that survived their wars, and they warred all the time. They lived for it. When those that remained left this dimension, the sarcophagi of the dead were cast into the Deeper Well to be forgotten. There, they have been watched over – guarded – ever since, but this is where we have a problem. These demons don’t die as we do and they can be awoken.”

Wesley mulled that over. “And the First wants to set these demons free again? To send us back to its Demon Age?”

“The First pre-dates them, but it would welcome a second Demon Age. If it opened the Well, what it could unleash…” Eve gave a dramatic little shiver.

“I see, but what does this have to do with Spike? He went to warn Buffy,” he said sceptically.

“The seers we quite adamant it was Spike they saw. You made great efforts to make him solid again, but what if you were wrong, and the First was never split from Spike at all?”

That did surprise him. He brushed a hand idly over his stubble. “You mean Spike is the First?”

Eve nodded her agreement. “You got it, Jack. One body. Two beings. And here’s the rub. A Slayer is the sacrifice required to open the Well. A Slayer sacrificed on one of the quarter days.”

“And the equinox is next week…” Wesley trailed off as he thought through all the possibilities and consequences. He looked at Eve again, at her confident and open posture. She believed what she was suggesting was true, even if it contradicted what they had already thought had happened to Spike. “Oh, dear. Do the Senior Partner’s have anything else to say?”

“They want to see an end to this problem. And quickly.” Eve stood up and smoothed down her expensive skirt. “I suggest you find a way to stop the First as soon as possible.”

Wesley frowned, trying to think of what they would be able to do. “That sounds like a very good idea.”

“Good.” She turned to leave, but as she reached the door, she turned back to him. “Have you finished translating those sigils yet?” she asked. “We need to invoice Mr Morrow by month end.”

“In the context of the information you’ve just given me, I think his building will be safe for awhile, yes.”

***

Angel had a headache; a demon-induced, thumping migraine that just wouldn’t stop.

Over the last few hours, he’d confirmed something that he’d suspected all along, that no human being could be as frustrating, maddening, stubborn, petty or greedy as the average demon. Mediation was often futile; disputes lasted for centuries and bitter vendettas spanned dimensions and time, all tied up together in a Gordian knot of complicated litigation. And always Wolfram and Hart were there at the worst end of all the squabbling. No wonder their profit margin was so high.

As he shook yet another scaly hand and uttered the appropriate responses, he wondered how he’d managed to end up here, manning the Wolfram and Hart stand at a prestigious – and crowded - Demon Law conference; it didn’t feel much like helping the helpless anymore. The day had gone well, all things considered; deaths had been kept to a minimum and no one had triggered an apocalypse yet – despite the best efforts of a few of the delegates. His speech earlier in the auditorium had been received with a wary, arctic reception, but there had been much less heckling than he’d been expecting.

“Keep smiling,” Fred whispered through a fixed perky smile as she nudged him sharply in the side, simultaneously shoving a leaflet into the obsidian claw of a small Paxi demon.

Angel grimaced in response, but before he could say anything, she was pulled away by the tide of the crowd, out of earshot, as the swell of bodies moved past, clearing a little island of space around him for the first time in hours. He took the opportunity and shrank further into the depths of the stand to escape.

From the shadows he could watch as Gunn worked the crowd as if born to it. He was currently trying to cool the tempers of a mated trio of albino humanoids, who looked like they were heading for divorce, judging by the hateful looks they’d been exchanging. He placated them with a few words and offered them his business card. They started to twitter something incomprehensible amongst themselves. At a nod they agreed to whatever Gunn had offered and snatched the card from his hand, their eyes darting between their partners anxiously before a greenish blush came to their skins. They moved away looking satisfied and amorous, and Gunn turned his broad smile onto the next in line. He seemed in his element; the new slick lawyer-upgrade helping him schmooze even the most obdurate client down from threats of bodily harm to plain uneasy suspicion. Yet for all Gunn’s efforts, Angel didn’t believe they were ever going to win over many of the more obstinate doubters.

“Mr Angel,”

He turned to see who had addressed him. A tall demon ducked its head, trying to get under the covered area of the stand without entangling its short horns in the coarse canvas, yet they still scraped along the fabric as it walked. When it reached Angel’s side, it stood, looming, looking down at him from about a foot or two above the crown of his head. Angel looked up at it, nervously. Its greyish, hairless skin was stretched tautly over a thin, bony skull that appeared oddly triangular, as it tapered from his wide brow to a narrow pointed jaw, which held a dour, displeased expression. Its large, dark, fathomless eyes fixed Angel with a hard penetrating stare.

“I… was… hoping… to… catch… you,” the demon said very slowly in a deep, funereal voice that Christopher Lee would have killed for. The demon wasn’t shouting, but nonetheless its speech cut cleanly through the loud chatter in the conference hall. It shook Angel’s hand, his long elegant fingers winding round Angel’s in a crushing, enveloping grip of which they seemed too delicate to be capable.

“Huh. Excuse me. I er… didn’t get your name...” Angel said, looking for a way to escape that withering gaze.

“Mr… Morrow. You… were… investigating… the… basement… of… my… building. I… am… very… concerned… as… you… have… told… me… nothing… of… your… progress.”

“I have my best team working on that right now…”

“I… cannot… afford… to… lose… any… more… of… my… people, Mr… Angel,” Mr Morrow warned. “I… am… paying… you… good… money… to… stop… what… is… happening… to… them.”

Angel nodded, distinctly uncomfortable. He rubbed his head; the headache was getting worse. “I assure you…”

“Angel, I need a word,” said a soft English voice from behind him. Wesley had slipped onto the stand unseen, and now stood at Angel’s shoulder.

Angel spared him a brief glance and whispered aside, “This isn’t the best time, Wes.”

Mr Morrow’s hand tightened slowly and Angel tried to tug his own loose, yet the demon held on. “You… will… tell… me… these… vermin… have… been… cleared… from… my… basement… by… Monday… or…”

Wesley stepped forward and raised a calming hand. “If I may interrupt, Mr Morrow. We have good evidence that the Harbinger’s are gone for good.”

“You… are… sure?” Mr Morrow eased the pressure on Angel’s hand, but still did not let go.

“From the sigils remaining after their rituals were completed, we have deduced that they will not be returning. You will be invoiced on Monday.”

With his ire suitably curtailed, Mr Morrow released Angel’s hand. “Very… good. I… shall… not… expect… to… see… them… again. Good… evening.”

Angel sighed, watching as Mr Morrow left and was absorbed back into the rabble, gliding through them glacially with his with his eyes scanning the hall far above the tallest heads. “Thanks, Wes.”

“Don’t mention it. Angel, I have some urgent news that won’t wait. It’s about Spike… and Buffy.”

A knot twisted unexpectedly in Angel’s gut. He was sure that whatever Wesley was about to say, he didn’t want to hear it. “Damn it! I knew the scheming little…”

“Angel?”

“I can’t let him out of my sight for a second without him moving in on her…”

“Angel! It’s not that.” Wesley moved aside as another demon, a vampire in a sharp suit, muscled past him and shook Angel’s hand.

Angel muttered a few pleasantries and the vampire left satisfied. “Sorry, Wes. You were saying?”

“I think we had better go somewhere a little more private,” Wesley agreed. “Perhaps Fred should come too.”

***

The small room they found, away from the bustle of the main hall, was starkly bare. The walls were painted neutrally in a regulation and uninspiring magnolia, which emphasised the scruffy marks of dirt that were forming in a dark smudgy band near the floor. On one wall an impressionist art print of some colourful, but blurry flowers hung at an awkward angle. The furniture was spartan, just a small rectangular table, laminated to barely a memory of its days in the forest, and a couple of scuffed black plastic chairs.

“We have received a report from our seers,” Wesley began. “It seems we might have a problem.”

“What has Spike done now?” Angel settled uncomfortably into one of the chairs as Wesley politely offered the other to Fred.

“Nothing as yet,” Wesley replied. “I had a visit from Eve earlier. She suggested that the Spike we rescued might not be the real Spike at all.”

“What?” Fred was stunned; she glanced at Angel for an explanation, but his expression was unreadable. “I don’t believe that. He saved my life!”

“Wes, I know Spike.” Angel shook his head. “No one else could be that annoying.”

Wesley smiled a little. "Angel, the Spike you knew is dead. He died closing the Hellmouth. What we have now is purely a facsimile that thinks and feels like the original, but it's not. This copy was somehow combined with the First Evil when it was defeated. Their essences, for want of a better term, have been fused together until they are one and the same being."

Fred looked uneasy. "And now he's corporeal."

"And even more dangerous." Wesley added.

Angel stood up and started to pace. "He's gone for Buffy."

"She would seem to be his objective, yes." Wesley agreed. "Her sacrifice will open the Deeper Well."

“What’s that?” Angel asked.

“It’s a burial ground. A final resting place for the Old Ones.”

“The Old Ones? Who are they?” Fred asked.

“The original demons,” Angel told her tightly. “But they were driven out, Wes.”

“Yes, they were. However, many were killed in their endless warring. They were placed into the Deeper Well and guarded. Yet the sacrifice of a Slayer, accompanied by the correct rituals on the correct date, could be enough to re-awaken them and bring forth a new Demon Age. I’ve done some research. The Deeper Well is in England. The Cotswolds to be precise, and the equinox is next week. Angel, we don’t have long.”

“So it’s apocalypse time, huh?” said Fred. She looked thoughtful.

“I knew I couldn’t trust this to Spike,” Angel grumbled.

"Angel," Wesley said, levelly. "You have to understand. This isn't Spike we’re dealing with; this is the original evil itself."

“And you believe Eve?” Fred asked.

“I don’t believe she has any reason to lie – this time,” Wesley conceded. “I have read the seer’s report. The visions are very convincing. Apparently, the Senior Partners want us to deal with the First Evil once and for all.”

“Like that will work out well,” Angel humphed. “What so you think, Wes? It’s your call.”

Wesley considered his next words carefully. “I think our purpose here is the same, the First Evil threatens the balance and not even the Senior partners want that. I don’t see that we have much choice in the matter.”

"Okay, I’m done here. We have to get to England.” Angel took charge. “But first we have to warn Giles. Maybe he knows where Buffy is. Wes. Look into ways we can stop this. Fred. See if you can trace Giles.” He paused for effect then added dramatically, “The First Evil has just been upgraded with a body."

As she sleeps, his cold hand strokes her face with the lightest of touches, fingertip feathers floating over the slope of her cheek. Long fingers, bound in silver goth-punk rings, run through a twirling lock of her hair as they gently tuck it behind her ear, out of the way of his seeking lips. His kiss is adoring, yet hesitant, afraid to wake her, stealing this moment of calm as he thinks she dozes.

She sighs, smiling into the downy pillow. She remembers this. His light touch, his sweetness; the way his large hands could make her feel so cherished in the rare moments she’d let them. They make her feel safe now. They’re here to protect her.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispers to this dream.

She turns and opens her eyes. She looks up eagerly to meet his. She wants to see him again.

But he’s not there.

Buffy drifted awake, opening her eyes to a very different reality.

“Spike?” she asked tentatively, sleepily. Hoping against hope.

There was no answer. As expected, she was alone. She took a deep breath, choking back the hollow ache of sorrow, there was no Spike anymore, no comforting arms of vampire coolness, no miracle this time. He had left the earth forever - she had to remember that, even if a world without him annoying someone, somewhere, was impossible to imagine.

He’d been on her mind a lot, what with The First taunting her from within his body, it figured that he’d turned up in another dream. Yet there was something else. His ghostly caress had felt so real and she could still feel it as it faded upon her skin. Something had touched her. Only a brief, fleeting brush of fingers across her cheek, but it had been there, just like the spectre that had tried to strangle her in the night.

The more she thought about it, the more she was sure. She sat up in the big bed, checking around for more evidence of evil influences or the ghosts of the house playing their wicked pranks, hoping that maybe she was wrong and it had been Spike reaching out to her from the beyond. The room was quiet. Nothing appeared to be lurking amongst the elegant old furniture and antique bric-a-brac that seemed to occupy every available shelf, and there wasn’t anything near her that she could have mistaken for the touch of a soft, loving hand. With disappointment, she concluded that it could only have been another of The First’s ghosts invading the sanctuary of her dreams. Less with the horrific this time, more with the tease - a nasty phantasmal trick.

She slipped out of bed and pulled open the curtains. All looked serenely normal outside, as if she hadn’t just had the night from hell. It was getting towards mid-afternoon; the sun had reached its zenith and had begun its slow meander down towards the horizon, but she turned her back on the sinking sun and padded to the gloomy bathroom, relieved that her sleep had held no more horrors, just more cruel reminders of a love she’d lost.

Her face in the mirror was a crazy Picasso patchwork of light and shade. Dark marks clouded the skin beneath her sleep-puffy eyes like sable shadows. An elaborate choker of death, fingerprint petals circled her throat with a roseate necklace of fading snapdragon bruises where she’d been attacked. She looked pale and drawn, as fragmented as her reflection, broken up into bits by stress and fatigue. The marks on her neck were proof that the events of the previous night had been more than the savage nightmares she’d hoped they’d been. The ghostly disturbances seemed distant now, but still they cast a long shadow over the waking world, as if they’d appeared in a fragile, dreamlike reality where such terrors faded away in the daylight like smoke. Yet Buffy knew the world of the night too well and she knew she couldn’t fight this alone.

Enough was enough. She needed to leave. In a few short days, the Retreat had ceased to be her refuge from the evil rattling at its gates and had become her prison, cold and confining in its isolation. She was no longer felt comfortable in the old house. But whatever she did, she couldn’t abandon the village.

The First needed to be put down for good this time. She’d bring back her own army.

***

Buffy took to the footpath again, but this time she avoided the damned village, heading instead out across the farmland in the opposite direction. She hoped to reach the next town before the night drew in again. She didn’t believe it was going to be far, she’d spotted groups of lights across the fields from the windows of The Retreat, and everywhere she’d been in England had been dotted with settlements. There had to be someone still living nearby, The First’s macabre influence couldn’t have reached far - not yet.

The sky above her was a low blanket of heavy grey clouds, their dark bellies quickening with rain. They cut out the sun, stifling the world with an oppressive twilight, as if the day had never broken into dawn. Under their looming shadow, she followed the path along the boundaries of the fields and over quiet, overgrown farm tracks until, after she’d walked a few miles, the rain finally started. Not the thin, miserable drizzle she had become used to, but thick, solid curtains of water that swept across the landscape in great waves and soaked through her coat to her skin.

Sullenly, she pouted at the sky and got a face full of water. She screwed her eyes shut and made a face, “Ugh. I hate this sucky British weather.”

She turned up the collar of her coat, wishing, for the first and only time, that Giles had persuaded her to buy a warm practical raincoat rather than the slinky red one she’d found on Oxford Street. She walked on, following the line of the hedgerow until it broke at a battered metal gate, which had sunk into a patch of mud made sticky and smelly by dairy cows passing through on the way to milking. There was no herd to be seen through the rungs today, but she could see the silent beacon of a church steeple, which pricked the sky as it rose up over a dense band of thick woodland, and where there was a church there had to be people. Real live living ones and not their walking undead corpses.

Buffy avoided the cloying mud as much as she could, daintily picking her way through the worst looking bits to save her boots, all the time wishing for concrete and roads and other nice city things. She clambered over the gate and rejoined the footpath while she planned what she was going to do when she reached the new village. The pub would be open now; if the village had been turned, she would soon find out there. Maybe they would have a roaring fire and a nice Mocha waiting for her. And coverage for her phone - she could call Giles in comfort and have a good dinner while she waited for reinforcements. It sounded like a great plan.

The prospect of warmth and food made her spirits rise and she quickened her pace. The field climbed uphill for a while, and then dipped down onto a steep but shallow slope on the leeside, where the path skirted the edge of the wood. She was almost running by the time she reached the lane at the bottom; keen to reach the cottages she could now see beyond where the deep ruts from the tractor tyres became twin trails of black mud across the tarmac. The lane wound past the farmhouse, a pretty chocolate boxy building with a wide gate and a collection of barns beside it, to a crossroads lined with a group of houses built so close to the road that their front doors opened right onto the street.

But before her stood a sign on the verge and it read: ‘Little Darrow’.

Her heart sank. “Oh crap.”

Cold, wet and defeated, she trudged unhappily into the village, which was ominously quiet in the lashing rain, which beat down on the darkened houses as if a personal grudge. Bitter and relentless, the water came at her with all its seething fury, the raindrops stinging as they hit her face. She suspected more than a whiff of magic about this. It had to be a spell. She knew, one hundred percent, that she had been walking away from this village when she’d left. The footpath had not curved or deviated, and she was certain that it had not turned back on itself. She had followed it straight for a mile or two, there was no way she could have ended up back in Little Darrow without some magical intervention. She knew exactly who was to blame.

She couldn’t figure The First out. Its plans baffled her. Something wasn’t right. It had always been such an up close and personal villain, a nuisance, invading her space and her home, an unwelcome and uninvited guest - much like the owner of the flesh and bone it was now inhabiting had been, she supposed sadly – but there had been a change since the events in the Hellmouth. It had never once tried to enter the Retreat, preferring instead to taunt her within it’s own domain. It kept its distance now, using those over whom it held dominion to terrorise her. With this new body and an army of vampires at its command, she couldn’t imagine the limits of what it could achieve. But despite all its bluster, it hadn’t even tried to kill her. She’d escaped their every meeting with only its laughter to wound her. Even in the Church it had let her go. She realised with a rising dread that it was waiting for something. It was obvious. It was trying to keep her here, manipulating the landscape and the weather so she couldn’t leave until the appointed time, whatever that was.

The rain was now like acid to her already unhappy mood. She wanted to kill something to vent her frustration, preferably on something impersonating the dead and bloodsucking. But although the sky was almost dark enough for vampire complexions, it was daylight and evil still slept.

Nonetheless, she was determined to look. Small as it was, there were still parts of the village she hadn’t seen. From this approach, she discovered that it held other treasures. Nestled between a defiled War Memorial and the burnt out remains of the Church Hall, she found the village store. The people inside had tried to barricade themselves from the horrors outside but the door had been broken open with some force and there were bloody, watery footprints on the step. They hadn’t been successful.

An old bell tinkled jauntily as had entered, alerting the two vampires guarding their hoard inside. The shop had been trashed. Some of the shelves had been ransacked; some had just been destroyed for the fun of it. They sat in the middle of a floor strewn with porn magazines and the kind of lewd tabloid newspapers that Xander had found particularly interesting during his short stay in England. They were young, male, barely teenagers, thirteen or so she guessed, and dead before they’d even had a chance for their voices to break.

One looked up guiltily from the pile of chocolate they were both systematically stuffing into their mouths. Though a clumsy mouthful of Cadbury’s Crème Egg, he managed to splutter, “Shit, it’s the Slayer!”

“That’s me.” She pulled out her stake, daring them to rush her. These two would be hardly be difficult. She would have to find more. “Sorry to interrupt your little slumber party, I need to stake you now.”

“Bugger that.”

They tried to run, each heading in opposite directions. A good strategy, she thought, but within the confines of the small shop they couldn’t make a quick getaway. Buffy dusted the first vampire before he’d barely got to his feet, planting the stake through the shiny polyester of his jacket and firmly into his heart. The other vamp made a break for it, using the time it took for his friend to vanish to scramble over the counter and out into the back of the shop.

Buffy smiled, if this one was going to make this a chase of it, maybe she’d get a decent slay after all. She gracefully vaulted the counter and followed the vamp through into the dark depths of the storeroom. It was cramped, stacked high with stock, and he used the tight space to his advantage, ducking down the narrow alley between the boxes. When he reached the far wall though, he was stuck, left with nowhere to go but outside. He wavered for a moment, stalling for time, and then pushed over a tower of tinned vegetables to slow her down while he darted out of the Fire Exit. As they fell, the tins broke free from the thick plastic film that bound them together and spilled under her feet.

“Ow!” A heavy tin of peas rolled under her foot and turned her newly healed ankle. She stumbled and was sent sprawling amongst the dented cans.

While she was picking herself up, she heard a frantic yelp of pain and surprise. The double doors framed the vamp as he searched desperately for shelter from the sun he was too new to remember he was supposed to hate. He’d already started to smoke even in the weak light that penetrated the storm clouds, but the rain made no safe shadows. He was trapped, caught between the fires of immolation and the pointed end of the Slayer’s stake.

The choice was made for him as soon as he begun to sizzle and sprout with tiny flames. He screamed. Buffy saw the wild panic in his eyes as he turned back and dashed inside again to seek shady safety, only to receive a swift kick in the gut from her muddy boot. He crumpled from the blow and she flipped him neatly onto the floor, her staked raised and ready.

“Don’t kill me!” he begged, shielding himself with his hands.

She snatched him up by the collar. “And why should I do that?”

“I know stuff! Put me out!”

“You hardly smoking anymore.” She grabbed a three pack of tea towels from a box and patted out the last flame on his face. He had a few nasty looking burns, but his jacket had prevented his upper body from even smouldering. She pinched a bit of the fabric between her fingers. It was coarse, shiny but felt cheap. “Ugh. What is this made of?”

“Dunno, but my mum said it was flame retardant.”

“You know, you should really start dressing yourself,” Buffy took hold of him again. Back to business. “Okay. What do you know?”

The vampire wriggled in her grip, its amber eyes darting about, looking for escape.

She raised the stake again. “Oh no you don’t.”

“There’s ghosts in your house!” it snivelled, its eyes on the stake not on her.

She rolled her eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“There’s a thing in the attic,” he gibbered. “A magic circle or something. A sigil. It attracts all the ghosts from around here. They’re supposed to drive you mad.”

“Yup, it’s working. I’m getting really mad now.” She gave him a shake for emphasis. “What else?”

The vamp shook its head. “Nothing! We’re not told us much, only to make sure you don’t try to leave. Please don’t kill me!”

“Sorry, it’s my job.” She plunged the stake in. A moment later a bitter cloud of smoky dust that had puffed up in his place and made her cough. “Ew. Flame grilled vamp.”

She wiped the dust from her hands with the tea towels and stood up. She needed to get back to the Retreat as soon as possible; she had a sigil to destroy. But as she turned for the door, her empty stomach growled, reminding her that she was surrounded by food.

Suddenly, she was ravenous, the missed meals of the last few of days catching up with her all at once. She ripped open a few boxes to see what she could find, sampling the goodies she found. There was everything she needed; bread, vegetables, fresh meat - though that smelled a bit iffy, - and cheese, loads of it!

She bit into a thick wedge of Mature Cheddar and smiled. Maybe tonight wasn’t going to be a big pub dinner, but it was still going to feel like a feast.

In the soft light of a solitary candle, a can of spaghetti simmered on a small camping stove, bubbling like a witch’s brew of lurid tangerine gloop. Beside them, cut into jagged doorstops, indulgently thick wedges of bread waited on a plate for the tangy potion to cook. But Buffy’s thoughts were elsewhere.

The search for the sigil had proved to be trickier than she’d expected. She’d looked for hours, searching every corner of the first storey of the old house, long after the light had faded and the night had rolled in early. However, she’d found found nothing during her explorations, except bricked in fireplaces, small rooms tucked into the spaces between walls and a wall at the end of the Long Gallery that seemed to shorten the length of the corridor, but she’d found no way into the attic that she could see.

Eventually she’d given up looking. It was getting very late and she’d become hungry again. Sleep was tempting, but there was little chance of that. The wind had changed direction and was now a noisy, blustery westerly. It had blown away the low rain clouds which had smothered the daylight hours and replaced them with waves of dark, grumbling thunderheads, roiling and billowing in the ether.

As she listened to the thunder breaking in the distance and rumbling through the house, gave the contents of her little pan an impatient stir. She was still thinking about how to get into the attic, working out ways to break through ceilings or climb through windows, but knew there had to be a better way.

She started to slice some cheese and jumped, startled as something hit her arm. It bounced onto the steel worktop with a sharp metallic clunk before dropping onto the floor. Puzzled, she picked it up. It was a brass Chubb key, perfectly normal except that it was strangely warm to the touch. She figured it must have fallen from the cupboard above her, so she put it down and thought nothing more of it.

“Ow!” Another object struck the soft pad of her cheek, a coin this time. Its trajectory suggested it had been thrown from somewhere close to the pantry door, but Buffy couldn’t see anything unusual.

“Hello?” She picked up the candle, illuminating each corner of the kitchen in turn. Everything was as it should be and there was no one lurking in the deep shadows. Yet she felt she wasn’t alone. “Okay, this is getting way creepy now.”

Sighing, she returned the candle to the counter and went back to slicing her cheese. As she picked up the knife, the candle blew out and a cascade of metallic junk pelted her upper body, forcing her to duck down and cover her head with her hands. She drew herself in as much she could, curling herself into a tight protective ball as the objects continued to fall in a hard, sharp, bruising rain.

The metallic shower stopped as suddenly as it started. With relief, Buffy slowly lowered her arms and scrabbled around in the dark for the matches and the fallen candle. When there was light again, she found she was kneeling at the centre of a small collection of old coins that had scattered around her like a small sea.

“Buffy!”

Buffy looked up, holding the candle higher to penetrate the gloom. In the flickering shadows, a tall, thin girl stood with her hands held across her belly as she tried to hold together her mortal wounds. Runnels of blood flowed through her fingers and dripped from her hands in dark pearls, only to vanish as they hit the floor.

Buffy gasped as she got back to her feet. “A… Amanda?”

The ghost of the dead Slayer spoke in a weak voice, as if forming words was difficult. “You... You have to follow me.”

“What? Why? What’s going on?” Buffy asked. “And what’s with the coins? Because I know we all dream of being showered in money, but the reality? It’s not so funny.”

Amanda looked down at the coins with little recognition. “Not us. Them. You have to stop them.”

“Huh? Stop who?”

“We’re all stuck here. Us. Them,” Amanda checked the room before adding, “they’re mean.”

“I think we’ve met,” Buffy rubbed her neck. “Amanda, there’s some Sigil thingy. I couldn’t find it.”

“I know it,” Amanda nodded. “You have to destroy it.”

Buffy looked ruefully at the ruined spaghetti and switched off the camping stove. “Okay. Show me.”

Amanda drifted out of the door, leading Buffy through the quiet house to the upper storey. Occasionally, the ghost would lose cohesion and disappear, only to re-manifest at the other side of the room. Eventually, she guided Buffy to the wall at end of the Long Gallery that Buffy had discovered before, where the corridor seemed to suddenly stop. Amanda paused before a small table where a small Chinese vase was poised upon a lacy white doily.

“In here,” she urged, floating through the table, the wall and a rather drab still life painting of bored looking fruit.

“Hey! Wait! I can’t…” Buffy protested, but Amanda was gone.

Buffy waited for her to realise that she couldn’t follow and return for her. When she didn’t come back, Buffy banged on the wall to get the ghost’s attention; only to find that her hand passed right through, disappearing up to her wrist.

She drew her hand back with a start. The wall remained exactly the same, no gaps or holes where her fist had gone through; it wasn’t real, only some clever glamour. Cautiously, she reached out again, waving her hand through the vase. It toppled over as her hand stuck the solid ceramic of its delicate neck and rolled to the edge of the table, where Buffy caught it before it crashed to the floor.

Embarrassed, she righted it again. “Okay, just the wall then…”

After pulling the table out of the way, Buffy tried passing her hand through the wall. It fought against her push with a mild resistance, sucking like a rubbery membrane, which rippled tightly over her skin as she slipped her whole body through. It released her with a gentle pop at the foot of a set of stairs that wound upwards into the eaves of the house. They were only a short climb and they opened out into a bare attic room. The flicker of her lone candle, its light a small glimmer of hope in the darkness, cast soft, warm shadows across the bare rafters and the large occult symbol laid out across the bare boards.

Amanda was standing as far from the sigil as she could get in the room. “It brings in the ghosts. Ties us here. There are so many.”

Buffy bent down. The sigil was drawn out in a wide protective circle containing twisted, ugly shapes and spells snaking between them in a twisted, hideous knotwork. It had been cast in blood and another substance she didn’t want to think too much about. It had soaked deep into the floorboards and there was charring where the magic of the spell had seared the wood. It wasn’t going to be easy to remove. She picked at the blood; it was dry and dark. It flaked and crumbled to the touch, but there was no way it was going to come off even if she scrubbed. She wished now that Willow was with her; she didn’t know enough about magic to know whether it was better to leave well alone or try to get rid of it. She had no idea if she would make it stronger.

Amanda looked at her bloodied hands, horrified. “Buffy, I want to go.”

“I’ll get to it. I promise,” Buffy nodded and made her decision. “Stay here and watch this.”

Buffy returned to the ground floor. As she walked, the house was lost to the velvet cloak of shadow. The gloomy shades of night spread out from the dark corners into every room, as if drawing forth from the very fabric of the walls. The house felt tense inside, still and quiet, but pensive. There were no sounds apart from the inexorable ticking of the Grandfather clock and its chime as it reached the top of the hour, but the violence of the storm outside crashed through the silence. The wind howled madly in strong gusts around the eaves of the house, carrying ghostly voices through the ether, calling for lost lovers never to be found again. The roof tiles rattled, the slates protesting against the icy onslaught that whistled between the chimney pots. The gusts made bare trees in the gardens shake and shimmy to their ethereal tune and next to the house, the branches of the ornamental conifers drummed against the windows as if demanding her attention. A heavy torrent of rain lashed like whips against the windows as the sky cried, leaving tracks down the diamond panes like the saddest tears of heaven.

She found what she was looking for in the bar, a bottle of clear Russian Vodka, which she thought would burn nicely. She grabbed it and headed back to the attic. By the time she returned the entrance hall, the storm had strengthened, the wind furiously shaking the house’s ancient timbers. The thunder punched the sky, a booming explosion of sound that tore though the ether as elemental forces, positive and negative, duelled in the thunderhead above. Lightning lit the room for a moment with a flash of pale white light and she thought she caught faces, all around her, watching her, only to vanish again into the dark.

Buffy climbed the staircase cautiously, the sense of forbidding building within her with every step. The air felt thick, oily, suspicious, crawling against her skin, and the house felt like it was holding its breath. When she reached the top, it was with relief.

Then something hit her in the chest.

It shoved her backwards. Hard. She grabbed the banister and dropped the candle. Whatever it was, it was strong, stronger than her, and it pushed again, harder this time and she lost her grip and her footing. She fell, backwards, tumbling down across the hard steps, each one digging into her back as she slid over them, too fast to stop herself. She landed heavily at the bottom, banging her head and scraping her arms on the hard floor. The vodka bottle smashed on the parquet, shattering into a shower of glass in her hand.

Buffy scrambled to her feet, shaky and sore from her fall. Looking up at the staircase, it disappeared into an inky gloom, twisting upwards into the heavens, wide, empty and lost. She snatched up the candle. Fortunately, it was still alight and had been missed by the splashes of vodka that now filled the air with the stench of alcohol.

“Buffy, over here!”

Still a little dazed, Buffy turned in the direction of the new voice. A girl with her hair braided into long, thick pigtails stood by the door. She clutched a stake nervously, turning it over in her hands - another of the potentials Buffy had trained. Sally? Emily? Molly.

Molly was pointing to a decorative axe fixed to the wall above the Reception counter. Buffy lifted it from its fixing and tested the engraved blade with her thumb, sliding it along the honed edge; it was still good and sharp at least. The heft and the balance of the weapon were excellent too. Despite its highly polished shine it was a proper weapon made to kill; Watchers didn’t take chances.

Just as well. It was time to end this.

The house shook again. The front door blew open, sending a spray of rain and hail through the insubstantial ghost and across the hall, before banging shut again as the wind outside sucked the air from the room.

Molly didn’t react, but shouted, “Quickly! You have to destroy the sigil!”

This time when Buffy tried to climb the Grand Staircase, she found that her legs felt heavier with every step she took. By the time she had reached halfway she was staggering, pushing against some malevolent force that didn't want her to reach the upper storey. She held tightly onto the rail, juggling the precious candle and the axe, pulling herself along when her legs couldn’t support her. She ducked her head; more coins were lobbed at her from above, but she kept going. Her progress was slow and each step was a struggle; the stairs seemed endless and the axe weighed so much she could barely hold it.

Buffy was on her knees, gasping, by the time she reached the top. The force had released her, but still the heavy air felt as if it was about to snap. As she staggered to her feet, the walls loomed in and shuddered as another boom of thunder broke the sky.

She dragged the axe into the Long Gallery; the wide corridor was colder than the rest of the house, as though someone had left a window open in midwinter. Strangely, all the doors to bedrooms were open wide, each inviting her in. Curious, she looked inside the nearest room, casting her candle around all the quirky nooks. Nothing unusual caught her eye, but when she returned to the gallery, she was still suspicious.

The door swung shut behind her.

Buffy tried the handle, but it was locked and wasn’t going to budge. With a shrug, she walked to the next door. It slammed as she approached.

"Okay,” she told the house, “this is not funny."

Buffy gave up. There were more important places she needed to go. She turned away and found herself walking through the apparitions of several young women that had manifested beside her. A cold, shocking chill slivered along her nerves. Looking from face to face, she wished now she had made more effort to remember the potential’s names. There was one she thought she recognised; dark hair and dark eyes; her neck held with a strange kink where it was broken. Chloe? The others, both gutted by a large knife, she had no idea what were they called.

Chloe looked at Buffy and shook her head, movement strangely awkward and bone-crunchingly loose. "Keep going! Help us. Let us go! We’ll hold them."

Buffy nodded. The weight of the axe felt suddenly lighter in her hand and she ran, sprinting down the corridor with a renewed strength. The candle flame flickered madly as she passed the bedrooms. She tried not to look at the tormented faces that stared at her from within them, each slamming the doors in turn as she passed. They couldn’t hurt her. They wouldn’t intimidate her.

She skidded to a stop as she reached the far wall, and looked behind her. The Long Gallery seemed to stretch forever into a black void, the floor falling away into a black, empty pit. The dead potentials were gone. The floor began to feel soft under her feet, as if it was beginning to melt away. There was no time to stop; she took a cautious breath and stepped through the wall.

Her candle went out. The Retreat was gone, replaced with darkness, stark and absolute. She could see nothing, hear nothing, as if a cold universe had swallowed her whole. Reaching out, her hands sought the solid, real world she’d left, but her fingers couldn’t hold the emptiness. She stepped forward, uncertain. With relief, her fingertips met solid walls. She couldn't see their extent, but she followed them round until she’d determined the boundaries of her trap. She was in a tight space, little wider than the reach of her arms and it rose upwards, higher than she could reach.

Sensing that this could not be good, she turned and tried to walk back through the wall, but it was now just smooth wood under her fingers. Her fear started to rise; a claustrophobic testament to waking in her coffin, and her first attempts to escape were panicked, frantic, as she tried to force her way out, pushing against the walls, the ceiling, anything she could touch.

Even using all of her enhanced strength, nothing would give.

She didn’t hear it start; the first drop was inconsequential, just a sickening drip in the dark, but soon another fell, and another, and another still. Then a faster flow, hissing like piss onto concrete.

Blood.

Oozing through the wall itself by some spectral osmosis, its source nowhere, it ran down the walls, over her fingers and it stank, reeking like an abattoir on a sunny day. She covered her nose and mouth, trying not to be ill, as it started to pool at her feet, soaking into her boots and rising slowly over her ankles, uncomfortably warm against her legs. She kept telling herself that it wasn’t real, that it was only the spooks playing with her, trying to scare her, but it was hard to remember when it was pouring in past her knees with no sign of stopping. She needed to get out.

Now.

It’s not real… It’s not real… It’s not real…

The blood bubbled as it poured into the phantom coffin, the flow never stopping and its level steadily rising. Her body submerged, Buffy kept her head high and her eyes closed, holding her face above the surface to breathe, refusing to look as small waves lapped at the shoreline of her chin. The sides of the coffin were shifting. Even with her eyes closed, Buffy could feel them moving, pressing inwards, squeezing tight; she could barely move, barely breathe, caught in death’s wooden embrace. Perhaps the blood was hers, being wrung out of her like juice…

It’s not real… It’s not real… It’s not real…

She focused back on reciting her mantra, steering her mind away from grim thoughts that would unravel her mind. It wasn’t her blood; she was real and whole and she wouldn’t drown in this illusion. She clasped the axe tight, clinging to the only solid reality she was sure of. The blood, the coffin and the metallic tang on her tongue were figments of her own imagination. She had to remember that.

“Buffy!”

It’s not real… It’s not real… It’s not real…

“Buffy! You’re hallucinating!”

Buffy opened her eyes. The coffin had gone and Amanda was hovering at her side, unable to touch her, but anxious to get her attention. She took a deep breath, taking a second or two to adjust to reality. She was standing at the bottom of the attic stairs; as she should be, yet she found her hands, her clothes, her hair, were still streaked with scarlet, a reminder that not all of these tricks were imagined.

“I…” she stammered as she inspected her bloodstained axe. She’d tried to use it to hack her way out, but the blade had barely chipped the wooden walls. “I tried to…”

“It’s okay, Buffy.” Amanda pulled her arms tightly around her injured stomach, her long bony limbs keeping her innards together. “It’s okay, but we haven’t got much time.”

Buffy nodded, finally shaking off her shocked daze. The ghosts hadn’t finished with her so easily. She could feel them, just beyond the invisible veil between the living and the dead, waiting for her, ready to reach out and snatch her back if she was weak.

Gritting her teeth, she gripped the axe tighter. “Let’s get this done.”

Buffy took the lead, bounding up the stairs as she led the ghost upwards. The walls were bathed in a pale radiance, dim and softly diffuse, coming from the room above, and it grew stronger as they ascended until, as they turned into the attic, it became so intense that Buffy had to cover her eyes.

The sigil was throbbing with energy. Amanda, drenched in its deathly glare, shrank away from it, but something grabbed her as she’d backed away, gripping her throat in a choking hold and pushing her back towards the sigil. A ghastly face, chillingly memorable as Buffy’s own grim visitor from the night before, phased into view, it’s haggard death-mask pressing against Amanda’s cheek as it smothered her mouth with a skeletal hand, stifling her scream.

Amanda looked petrified, yet she struggled, bravely trying to break the other spectre’s hold even though her Slayer strength, new-found and not fully honed, was not enough to free her.

“Put her down!” Buffy warned as she lifted the axe into position above the sigil.

Its voice was dark and dreadful. “Destroy it and I will take her soul with me.”

“Like hell.”

Those hollow eyes brimmed with malice and it gave Buffy a grin full of dirty, broken teeth as sharp as razors. “Exactly what I had in mind.”

Amanda wriggled. She managed to get her hands free and peel the bony fingers from her mouth. “Buffy! Do… Do it! Please. He’s bluff…”

Amanda’s words were cut off in a strangled gurgle. Buffy brought the axe down onto the centre of the sigil where it wedged in tight. As the axe pierced the magical field, the circle hissed and steamed, causing Buffy to drop the handle with a yelp as it became too hot to hold. The air hummed, rumbling with a deep bass tone that she felt constrict the organs inside her chest. With a threatening creak, the house shuddered, a violent trembling that made her grab for a roof joist to steady herself as floor beneath her lurched. A bright flare erupted from the sigil, filling the room with a sparkling amber flash before the light ebbed and twisted into a narrow, skittish funnel like a waterspout. Buffy could feel it pulling at the very fabric of reality, rolling against her skin as it ripped the spectral entities from the timbers of the house, spinning them into a mist looped around the circumference of the circle. It spiralled slowly clockwise, creating a whirlpool vortex of angry energy around the funnel. Within it she could see all those faces she’d seen earlier reappear, the lost Slayers amongst them, each bursting from the wispy ectoplasm before winking out one by one as the suction drew them in.

When all the mist had gone, the funnel whirled around, focusing on the two ghosts locked together. The spectre resisted the pull, dragging Amanda away from the circle; but the tug of the funnel sucked at them, stretching them until they blurred. Amanda screamed again, but the other ghost kept its hold on her. As the two forces struggled, the light intensified, until it was almost too bright to see. The hum became deafening, shifting in pitch to a piercing whine.

The storm outside answered the clamour with its own thunderous clashes, sending lightning arching around the high attic window. Buffy held on tight, trying to shut out the noise and concentrate on survival. When the noise and the light were almost too much for her to bear, the centre of the vortex opened out and reality rippled. The funnel split into lashing, blood red cords that whipped wildly in every direction, passing through her body with a tickle of magic. They caught Amanda and her captor and tore them apart, tossing them into the maelstrom. Their essences dissipated as they faded, vanishing into soft, smoky clouds before being assimilated into the threads.

The vortex suddenly shut. Buffy fell to her knees as the energy retreated, blinking to adjust as the room returned to blackness. Outside the uncanny storm gave a last grumble and receded, the clouds parting for the stars to shine in through the window with a calm reassurance.

Buffy released her grip on the joist and got back to her feet. She reached out for the axe, which was now cool again as if nothing had happened. Wrenching it free, she pulled it from the circle. It had been scrubbed clean, polished to a bright shine. The sigil was hardly scorched, but the atmosphere of the house already felt lighter, as if no longer bearing the weight of the dead. Still, it had to go. She lifted the axe again and smashed it down, breaking the sigil into fragments of patterned wood.

When she’d finished, Buffy stood back and stared at yet more destruction she’d made. The broken floorboards gaped like a wide mouth swallowing the darkness. She wiped a layer of blood and sweat from her forehead, The First Evil had made her dig yet another hole and she’d paid a high enough price for the first. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

It was time for a real confrontation.

***

Sunday broke into a grey mournful day as a jaundiced sun rose pale and sickly through a lingering fog. Barely a beacon to guide lost travellers to safety, it’s disc hung low and limp, held above the horizon by wispy ribbons of startling vermilion cloud.

Red for Warning.

Watery vapours rising up from the damp ground smothered the landscape in thick scrolling mists. The distant hills had gone, lost to whiteness, as if all the world had shrivelled away and left the rest shadowless and blank. Through the rolling brume, breaking and crashing silently against the walls of the house, the Retreat towered like a dark island citadel, a forgotten Avalon in a shifting, formless sea, held at siege against the rising threat of evil on its borders, but Buffy turned her back on her sanctuary, venturing out into the mists for her revenge.

It was chilly outside; the ground was hard with frosty crystals of ice that sprinkled the path, fallen stars glittering in the weak morning sun as she walked. The frigid English air rasped in her chest and the freezing fingers of the wind clawed at her face with a bitter crackle of cold on her cheeks as it desperately sought out her warmth. Buffy paid the temperature no mind, even though her gloveless hands found it hard to grip the handle of her axe. Her purpose was clear.

The woods stretched out before her like an advancing army; an undisciplined regiment of scattered Entish soldiers arranged in tight formation across the gently rolling slopes. As Buffy approached, the trees reared up into tall sentries. They were waiting for her, watchful. Bare and skeletal, there were only hints of their summer boughs, with branches marked out in soft pencil against the ivory sky, but below them, the shadows loomed dark and ominous, as tense as the house had been before the exorcism. She wrapped her coat tightly around her body, more for comfort than for warmth.

The going was easy at first. The mist tarried low beneath the trees, clinging to the ground in lazy drifts that masked nasty traps of gnarled, curling roots. Buffy could avoid them if she was careful. The path cut a straight line through the woodland, taking her towards the village, yet skirting its leafless depths. But it was its dark heart that she needed to reach, and she left the safety of the path once the edge of the trees was lost to sight, taking a fork onto a narrow muddy track. It wound its way through a low, overgrown thicket of nettle bushes and seemed to peter out in a tight tangle of saplings and knotty briars. The young trees here were dark and twisted; evil was gnawing away at their roots, killing them from the inside, stunting their trunks into rotten husks and making them look hunched, bony and aged.

The dead trees confirmed that she was getting close and she pressed on, occasionally using the axe to cut through the withered branches. The thorny briars made grasping hands, closing in, grabbing at her coat with twiggy fingers, pleading for her to help them or lashing back into her face like whips. As she walked, she noticed how quiet the wood was, the only sounds she heard were her own footfalls and the dry snaps of the twigs under her boots. Nothing living stirred and no birds sang. The silence was deafening, as if the trees were screaming from mute throats.

By now the fog had condensed enough to obscure the ground and make it difficult for her to keep her bearings. All around her was white, like walking blind into a thick, milky, soup. No landmarks remained; everywhere was nowhere all at once; north, south, east and west were a muddled jumble on her internal compass. She reached out, probing the mist with her hand, feeling for shadows, guiding herself from tree to tree. She was lost and it was all getting a little too Blair Witch Project for her liking. The fog had started to close in around her. There was a tang to it, a hint of sulphury herbs and magic that made Buffy wrinkle her nose with distaste.

The wiry trees thinned and then stopped altogether. She could tell by the roughness of the ground that she was still in the woods, perhaps in a clearing or a break in the trees, but it was hard to be sure. She moved forward slowly, following the pungent reek of the magic and letting her instincts guide her careful steps. She could see something on the periphery of her vision now, not trees, but something else - shadows, a flicker of movement in the murk just beyond the screen of mist. When she stopped to listen, she could hear several footsteps, tracking her, stalking her, herding her onwards just out of sight.

Buffy tried not to worry about them; yet after a few shuffling and cautious steps, her hand hit something solid, not a tree but the soft give of cold, clammy flesh. The skin she touched was wrinkled, pocked and waxy. She looked up into a face, but one distorted and ruinous. A Bringer.

But not a normal one.

Up this close, she could see that the robes it wore were made from a coarse cloth, but where the others had been wearing a muddy brown; this one wore black like a blasphemous priest. Its arms were raised, forked in supplication and it chanted like a Shaman, but making silent words that its tongue-less mouth could not form. In a shamanic trance, it showed no signs of recognising that Buffy was there, appearing unaware and immobile, the thick fog billowing from its hands before curling in on itself like smoke.

Buffy had barely retracted her hand from the Shaman’s face, when she was grabbed from both sides. She sprang up, using the Shaman’s chest as a springboard to flip over the shoulder of her attackers and break their hold. As they all vanished back into the fog, she closed her eyes; it was easier to judge where they were when she shut off her deceiving sight and used her other senses to guide her. She could hear their movements now, not far away, three or four of them, circling her, hovering at the edges of her perception. Moving in…

A punch came out of nowhere - just a fist emerging from the gloom. It glanced off the side of her jaw as Buffy ducked and delivered a mighty kick of her own. Her target reeled, fading back into the mist and she sharpened her focus again. Behind her a Bringer started to run, charging her from behind. Warned, she dodged in time, cutting it in half with her axe before turning to meet another blow from the side. Easy.

Buffy pulled the blade from its gut. Everything had gone quiet again. She stopped and listened for movement. There were still a couple left. They were strong, but no match for a fully trained Slayer. To stand a chance of defeating her they needed to rush her together…

Instead, a loud sound, like ice cracking in warm water, split the air, was followed by a blast of magic from the Shaman that hit her in a sapping wave that left her feeling drained and weak. Her strength gone, she staggered and was snatched from behind, strong arms circling her waist, pulling her back as the axe slipped from her grip. A fist struck her face, one, two, and she felt herself sliding downwards as the Bringer let her fall. She flopped onto her knees, collapsing forward as her legs buckled beneath her and she struck the earth face first, a foot pressing down on the back of her head, grinding her face into the sodden leaves. Groaning woozily as unseen hands lifted her legs and dragged her across the clearing, she tried to resist, but all her freezing fingers could do was rake the soft dirt beneath them.

She was dumped down at the side of an open grave. There was no strength left in her to resist, even as she tried to stand her limbs could not support her. Instead, she tried to crawl, inch by inch, to a safety she could not reach. A pair of rough, gnarled hands checked her escape, seizing her by her coat. Then a hard shove sent her world tumbling into darkness.

***

Buffy woke in her second grave. This time she wasn’t buried six feet under rich, earthy soil, but lay exposed to a night sky painted with stars and dark, fast moving clouds edged with silver. Sitting up, still a little confused from the Shaman’s spell, she rubbed her head to clear it of the dizzy fug that lingered there. In the pallid light, she noticed how her fingers were coated in blood and mud. At least a day of grey mists had passed and faded into a bright, moonlit darkness, and the mixture had dried into dirty streaks. She was in dire need of an emergency manicure.

Her inspection was cut short by a blanketing shadow. She glanced up; a shape loomed above her, a man looking down on her with a scrutiny so intense she didn’t need to see his eyes. There was nothing to see of his expression, but she knew him better than herself. Compared to the real Spike, The First was only a cheap, poorly reproduced photocopy. The truth was impossible to mistake.

The moon emerged, shining like a pearl against thin oyster grey clouds and he shifted his posture, his face suddenly catching its light. Spike, standing against the moon, dark, shadowed and otherworldly, was brazenly beautiful; the lunar glow a halo around his pale head and his coat a cloak of darkness. From her viewpoint far below him, he looked tall and imposing, belying his stature - a creature of the night indeed.

This couldn’t be real. Spike was dead.

"Spike?"

He nodded. "Evenin', Love."

Roger Wyndham-Pryce’s preferred style of management was a tight fist of tyranny. It was a strategy that worked it seemed, for despite the emergency sitting of the Trans-Dimensional Transgression Committee clashing with the temptations of Sunday lunch, there had been an excellent turnout to the meeting.

So far, two hours into his briefing, Wyndham-Pryce had yet to become tired of his own voice. He chaired the meeting in the style of a minor potentate, officious, dictatorial, and absolute, with discussion or dissent discouraged amongst the assembled Watchers as they listened silently to his decrees.

Unsurprisingly, Giles found himself disagreeing with nearly everything that was being said. Wyndham-Pryce’s methods were well meaning but bureaucratic and ultimately heavy-handed, crippling the Council with inertia.

This current disaster was no exception. A portal had opened in the middle of Milton Keynes Shopping Centre on a busy Saturday afternoon, destroying shops and killing anyone that got too close. It was evident that something malicious was coming through, but until they knew just what, discussion was pointless. A day had passed now since the incident the Home Office was blaming on a bomb attack and a town was in crisis, yet no one had done anything but talk.

Giles hadn’t missed these meetings during his time in California. There was something about the upper reaches of English society in its ability to tolerate this special brand of pompous autocrat that really annoyed the part of Ripper still left in Giles. Arrogant people who considered their positions in their institutions their right rather than their duty, they were blinkered by their network of old boys, more interested in preserving their exclusive clubs for their powerful friends than serving their causes.

The Council with its rigid hierarchy based on heredity rather than ability, was little different. Giles had never wanted any part of that, and in his younger years, he’d actively rejected it, refusing to be moulded into the kind of person he despised. Back then, he’d thought he’d been the only one who’d felt that way, but the swell of contrary opinion since the Council’s decimation by The First had disproved that.

People were looking for change, fed up with the Council’s stagnation. They wanted the Council to be great again; it had counselled Emperors and had stood at the side of Kings, amassing great wealth as their influence spread through the emerging British Empire, but that Empire had dwindled to nothing and Governments now fought their own battles with demonkind and the Council’s authority was fading. Yet, in spite of this, with a world brimful of new Slayers, there was an opportunity for the more idealistic and dedicated to seize their chance to change the stuffy inflexibility of the organisation once and for all.

What Giles thought the Council needed now was a new professional attitude. With the hundreds of Slayers called, all needing guidance and support, it wasn’t enough anymore to sit in private clubs swigging sherry while the battle between good and evil was fought on some remote front line. With one audacious spell, the balance had tipped in their favour and it wasn’t going to be long before evil found a way to even the odds. They needed people fast, yet still the old guard resisted the recruitment of capable people without the right family tree. Thus, as support steadily gathered behind Giles’ nomination, Wyndham-Pryce had begun to regard him with deep suspicion, as if he was some kind of demagogue raising the rabble against him. The Board Elections couldn’t come soon enough.

“If I may summarise,” Wyndham-Pryce told them, “this incursion by these beings, whatever they may turn out to be, must be put down swiftly and efficiently. We cannot tolerate the presence of unknown demons in this dimension, particularly near a centre of population such as this. Do you not agree, Home Secretary?”

The Government Minister nodded, but even he didn’t dare interrupt Wyndham-Pryce’s monologue.

“Excellent,” Wyndham-Pryce went on, straightening his glasses so that he could read his notes. “As Mr Giles is due to be in Istanbul this week, I have decided to appoint Miss Tyler-Jones as head of the operational team. Of course, with her er… disability, she won’t be able to take on an active field role, but despite this, I believe she will be more than capable of assembling and co-ordinating the required personnel.”

A few of the older Watchers, those that supported Wyndham-Pryce’s leadership, nodded sagely in agreement, but beside him, Stephanie Tyler-Jones flinched. It was clear that Wyndham-Pryce’s condescension bothered her, even though Giles knew that she would never admit it. A superb Watcher, intelligent with a clear, sharp wit, she’d been mentoring a potential Slayer in Copenhagen when the First had attacked. She’d managed to escape with her Slayer, but not before she’d lost her right leg in the struggle. Despite this, she was still a confident, capable and ambitious woman and she was rising quickly through the ranks of the new Council, as her skills and experience were essential to the reconstruction, but as a vocal supporter of reform, Wyndham-Pryce regarded her as a threat. Such an assignment was a devious move, calculated to put her into a danger he thought she couldn’t handle, but Giles knew what he hadn’t accounted for was that even on her prosthetic leg, she was still a formidable martial artist as capable of defending herself as anyone else in the room.

As the tense silence stretched on, the Home Secretary pursed his lips and nervously patted his Guide Dog. A few of the other Watchers had also caught the discomfort in the room. Several fidgeted in their seats as Wyndham-Pryce continued to talk and some cast glances at Giles, their nominee, in desperation. The need for progressive change was palpable.

“Does anyone have anything else to add?” Wyndham-Pryce asked. He stared at each of the assembled Watchers in turn, daring them to speak. Most found the Gainsborough’s dominating the walls fascinating all of a sudden.

Giles, however, met his eye, challenging him. “Actually, if I could just…”

Wyndham-Pryce cut him off bluntly, “very well, that will be all.”

The meeting broke up with a civilised stampede for the door with only minimal shoving. Giles ignored them as he added the final touches to his notes; he was more interested in watching Wyndham-Pryce as he hovered around the Home Secretary, no doubt trying to garner some extra support from the Minister.

Stephanie leaned over and whispered, “Don’t worry, he can’t live forever.”

“I certainly hope not.” Giles replied. He picked up his files and got to his feet, joining the bustle of people leaving the room. “Don’t pay him any regard.”

She smiled a bright, open smile Giles couldn’t help but return. “I don’t, but thank god this will soon be over.”

“You think he’ll lose?” Giles wasn’t that optimistic.

She quickly glanced at Wyndham-Pryce who was now giving some orders to his assistant. Giles could see her seething. “Good god, I hope so.”

As they headed towards the door, they negotiated the slalom of abandoned chairs left scattered untidily around the vast table, but just as Giles gestured for Stephanie to pass through the doorway before him, Wyndham-Pryce summoned him with an impatient wave. “Rupert Giles, may I speak with you for a moment?”

Giles sighed inwardly and said to Stephanie. “Could you wait for me? I would like to ask you something.”

She agreed and left Giles to the mercy of Wyndham-Pryce, who didn’t offer Giles a smile as he joined him and the Home Secretary. “I was telling the Minister about our plans for the Slayer’s Training Centre. How is that coming along?”

Suspicious of the other man’s motives, Giles replied guardedly, “Buffy left on Thursday. I haven’t heard from her yet. I think…”

“Very good. Of course, whether the facility will open will depend on the forthcoming Board election.” Wyndham-Pryce’s beady eyes, laced with threat, bored into Giles’ own.

Giles held his rival’s stare without emotion. “So I understand.”

“Excellent. Keep me informed.” Wyndham-Pryce curtly turned his back on him, returning his attention to the Home Secretary.

Giles was taken slightly aback by this rude dismissal and he left the room fuming. If he hadn’t disliked Roger Wyndham-Pryce before, he certainly did now and he was more certain than ever that he needed to win this election, regardless of his misgivings.

Outside in the corridor, Stephanie was waiting for him at the water fountain, drawing herself a small cup. “What did the annoying old bugger want?”

“He wanted to know about Buffy.” Giles found her irreverence refreshing, and his mood lightened a little.

“Your Slayer? First time for everything,” she chuckled, offering him a drink as she finished hers off. “What did you tell him?”

Giles declined. “Very little. Actually, I haven’t heard from Buffy in a couple of days.”

Stephanie’s smile faded as she dumped her empty cup into the bin and followed him down the corridor. “I’d watch him, Rupert. He’s up to something. There’s no way he capitulated on the Training Centre without something being in it for him.”

“I’m quite sure of it.” Giles agreed. As they reached the top of the main staircase, he paused. “I am worried about Buffy. She’s not settling in as well as I’d hoped. I don’t really think she’s over all the trauma of Sunnydale and she’s been having Slayer dreams again. I fear there may be more to the Training Centre than we suspected.”

“Anything can I do?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know if you can.” He quickly checked that their conversation was private; it was all clear for the moment. “Stephanie, I have been meaning to ask you something.”

“Certainly, just ask.”

“I would like you to keep an eye on certain people while I’m away. Assuming all goes well in Milton Keynes, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoed. She glanced back at the boardroom before whispering, “Are you expecting trouble then?”

“Not as such, but there is a rather ruthless dimension to this election and if we want to see change here then I believe it would pay to be vigilant.”

“I understand.” Stephanie nodded, drumming her fingers against the notebook she clutched to her chest. “Don’t worry, we’ll all be watching him.”

“Thank you. That would be most helpful.”

“Does this mean you’ve accepted you’re ready for the Board then?” she teased.

“Good Lord, no.”

She laughed and started down the staircase. When Giles didn’t join her, she asked, “Are you not coming down?”

“No, I wanted to collect some things from my office first.”

“Okay, it sounds like I’ll be busy for the next few days, I will see you soon.”

“I wish you the very best of luck.”

She gave him a small wave of goodbye. “I’m envying your trip to Turkey already!”

Giles returned her wave and headed towards the back of the building and his office. After that meeting he needed tea, lots of it and he decided to take a little detour. Squeezed into a small alcove off the main first floor corridor, opposite the Artefacts Room and the offices of some of the junior Watchers, was a tiny, basic kitchenette designed for out of hours catering. It shared the tight space with a photocopier and a battered fax machine, which by the look of the charring on its casing, had been salvaged from the bombed out Holborn headquarters, but there was just enough room for a fridge, a sink and a small microwave.

He filled the kettle and dug out some teabags from a cupboard overhead; weekend working meant no tea lady and no fresh brew, so bags would have to do. He dropped the bag into the mug, wishing he had a teapot handy. As he did so he caught the sound of some furtive whispering. He paused and tried to work out what was being said. The bubbling of the kettle drowned out any of the words, but he could tell that there was only one voice speaking and its tone was nervous, acquiescent, grovelling.

Curious, and more than a little suspicious, Giles used the shadows of the alcove to see who it was. He was surprised to see Wyndham-Pryce talking conspiratorially to a tall hooded stranger in rough robes, but still too softly for Giles to hear what was being discussed. Wyndham-Pryce’s body language was tense and anxious, and his gestures seemed to be reassuring the stranger, who nodded slowly and disappeared from view before Giles could catch a glimpse of his face. With the stranger gone, Wyndham-Pryce looked about cautiously. Not noticing that he was being watched, he unlocked the door to the Artefact Room and slipped quietly inside, only to came out only a few moments later, smoothing down the pockets of his suit as if he’d concealed something inside. By the time the kettle had come to the boil, he had gone.

Giles added the water to his drink and considered the scene he’d just witnessed as the tea brewed. Wyndham-Pryce’s actions seemed suspicious, but there was no evidence to prove that anything he’d been doing was actually suspect beyond Wyndham-Pryce’s furtiveness. Yet the presence of the hooded stranger was more troubling. From Wyndham-Pryce’s acquiescence, Giles guessed the stranger could be an emissary from one of the powerful demon Lords that dominated the European sub-terrestrial elite, wealthy demonic nobility that had made their money trading in human Souls and other dubious practices. It was not unusual for the Council to make bargains with creatures such as these, particularly in times of crisis, but those deals were usually surreptitious, underhand, and if he was honest, often reneged on both sides. For a demon to pass through the doors of the Council itself was unheard of, even after hours when the building was largely empty. If the stranger had been such a being, Giles fervently hoped that whatever intrigue Wyndham-Pryce was up to, the truth was of a more mundane variety.

Giles was still pondering this as he reached the refuge of his office. He put his bag down beside his chair and took the opportunity to relax by taking in the parkland view. As he drank his tea, he heard the wheels of a car crunching the gravel of the long drive. A large black saloon, probably sent to return the Home Secretary to Westminster, appeared and halted beneath his window. The Jaguar’s engine hummed quietly with the purr of a finely tuned and expensive engine.

As Giles appreciated its sleek design, a tall, cloaked chauffeur got out and opened a rear door for a pair of figures leaving the building. But neither was the Home Secretary.

Wyndham-Pryce walked out beside the hooded stranger. When they arrived at the kerb, he reached into his pocket and handed something to the demon, receiving a grateful nod in reply. Wyndham-Pryce then turned to go, but the creature gestured towards the car. Wyndham-Pryce wavered, then straightened his jacket and got in. The chauffeur closed the door behind them both and got into the drivers seat, but as it turned its hooded head to do so, Giles caught the distinctive mutilated features of a Bringer.

Disturbed by what he’d seen, Giles watched the car pull away. He turned from the window, trying to decide what he was going to do about these events and barely had time to acknowledge the swing of the curved blade before it slashed across his vision.

Instinctively he dropped his mug and dodged the attack, but not before the cold steel had clipped his jacket and sliced cleanly through the fabric.

Now that the Bringer had lost the advantage of surprise, Giles was prepared for its next lunge and he positioned his desk between them. Caught on the other side of the barrier, the Bringer stabbed wildly and inexpertly, but its reach was too short. It missed Giles by inches, but never got seriously close. After a fruitless onslaught, it hesitated, as if wondering what to do next. The blade flashed menacingly in the weak sunlight from the window as it thought through its options. Then, seemingly exasperated by its lack of success, it dived around the side of the desk to reach its enemy.

Giles easily anticipated this move and kept the desk between them, shoving its heavy bulk into the Bringer’s side. Now pinned against a filing cabinet, it thrust the knife frantically into the air, stabbing the knife into the wood of the desk in its desperation.

As the Bringer yanked the knife free from the ink blotter, Giles looked around for any weapon that might be close to hand. He grabbed the nearest heavy book, a first edition of Carter’s Lost Lycanthropes, and thumped it down onto his assailant’s head. It flailed clumsily, giving Giles enough time to reach for a sword on top of a bookshelf. A deft swoop cut through the rough cowl and the Bringer’s head plopped neatly into the waste paper basket.

Giles collapsed back into his chair to catch his breath. As he rubbed his sword blade clean, he started to shake a little, as the adrenaline continued to surge through his bloodstream. He was getting a bit too old for this. The sword now returned to a bright sheen, he put it aside, but kept it within easy reach just in case. Finally, he checked the condition of his jacket. There was a neat slice that had gone through the tweed and the cotton of his shirt exposing the skin of his shoulder, but fortunately, no blood had been drawn this time - another narrow escape.

He was just reaching for his phone, to alert the caretaker to the headless corpse that was currently oozing dark ichors into his rug, when it started to ring.

It was Angel.

For one long, terrible moment, haunted with the memories of past failings and that long summer soured by grief, Spike feared he was too late.

Below him at the bottom of another grave, surrounded by her vanquished foes, Buffy rested in repose. Laid out with her hands carefully arranged across her breasts and clutching a large, ornate axe like a Viking shield maiden embarking on her final journey, she was as still as death, her eyes closed and unmoving, the starlight delicately caressing her golden hair like a shroud.

He’d almost missed her.

Tracking her through the thick, impenetrable fog, the pungent reek of the Bringers she’d slaughtered had almost masked her scent. Yet, over the heady stench of eau de mouldering corpse, a hint of her perfume had lingered like a sweet note in a dark, chaotic symphony, and it had drawn him to her as surely as it always had. But what he’d found in that white world wasn’t the woman that had snared his enraptured heart, but a brutal and nasty fight. The Bringers Buffy hadn’t already killed had put up an adequate resistance for a short while, but their clumsy, undisciplined attacks were easy for Spike to repel and soon their bodies had joined their dead brethren, their Shaman cast down and broken amongst its own.

As it died and the infernal spell ended, the veil of fog began to lift, rolling back and retreating into the dark trees, where it dissipated, leaving all but a gauzy trace of thin, listless mist. Spike was alone in the cold night, his lost love lay in state before him. But she had not returned to heaven’s loving embrace. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm and her strong thumping heartbeats reassured him that she lived.

As he watched, she woke, her eyes opening with a flutter of disorientated confusion. Still not quite ready for this meeting, he quickly stepped back, melting into the shadows, drawing them around him like a cloak. Seeing her again was a knife wound to his battered heart, threatening to crumble his resolve to move on. Like the frustration that snapped in his gut and set his nerves on a knife-edge every time he saw her, his ever-simmering feelings – full of fears and doubts and hopes stirred up by an ‘I love you’ he didn’t dare believe – were still an ache so deep in his heart, he was lost to them once more. This wasn’t the time for dwelling on three small words that might not mean anything. This trip was business, nothing more.

Unaware of his presence, Buffy pulled herself into a sitting position and rubbed her head. For all his uncertainty, Spike couldn’t help himself; concern that she might be injured made him step closer – bonds around his wrists he could break, but the bonds of love would forever keep him trapped. She was filthy, bedraggled and looked a bit like Carrie at the Prom, but she still took his unbreath away.

As the moon cast his shadow across her, she looked up at him, her huge eyes wide with surprise. "Spike?"

He nodded. "Evenin', Pet."

He reached down, offering her his hand to help her up, and she moved to take it, yet their hands did not connect. Buffy wavered, as if debating the wisdom of accepting the assistance, but in the end, to Spike’s relief, she took it. No flames or sparks or anything of that sort ignited as they touched this time, but her fingers entwined round his with an unspoken acceptance.

"How...?" was all she could say as he pulled her up and onto the grass, “Are you…? I mean, are you you or are you a copy of you?”

“I’m just me, Pet.” He smiled indulgently back. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” she said doubtfully. Her eyes narrowed, scrutinising him, searching for something in his face. He let her look, watching her as she circled him in disbelief. “You… You can’t be real. Are you another trick? The First…”

“Ah, about that…”

She raised the axe. “I’ve had enough of these games. I don’t care if this doesn’t hurt you, I’ll find something that will!”

“Hey! Not the First, not the First!” Spike took an anxious step back. “You know that. Don’t you?”

Her eyes never left him, still not quite believing, but by the hope shining in her eyes, she wanted to. She lowered the axe again. "You were dead."

The memory of her death still sharply in mind’s-eye focus, he replied, “So were you."

Buffy seemed to catch the choke of sadness in his voice and she let the heaviness of the grief between them hang there for a moment, then said, “The First. It looks like you. It’s corporeal.”

Spike tensed again. No bloody wonder she was suspicious if The First had been here already. “It was a part of me, but it’s gone now. Came straight to you by the sound of it. You know the difference though. Know you do.”

Buffy hesitated and then muttered, “I guess.”

“See?” he hoped his nonchalance was reassuring. “No trick.”

“How?” she asked again, awed. She stepped forward, stretching her arm out to touch him once more, but however much he willed her closer, her fingers hovered just short of his chest.

"How did I come back from the great beyond? Something brought me back." He watched her hand, hypnotised.

Without thinking she asked, "Why would anyone want to resurrect you?"

Pissed off now, His grin faded into a resentful scowl. "Oh. Right. So that's how it is then? Since you don’t need me, I'll be off…"

He could hear the cold fear in her voice as he turned away. "Spike! No!"

He looked back at her, tense, fearful, a little angry that he’d been such an idiot to let himself hope, that he’d forgotten why he’d come here and allowed his stupid heart to lead his head again. His love was caught in amber, after all.

As he waited for her reply, the trees surrounding them seemed to crane in to listen, a silent and rapt audience, impatient, expectant, enthralled by the drama played out on the open stage before them. They held their breath.

"I'm sorry. I didn’t mean it that way." Buffy said finally, She gave him a reassuring smile, but somehow, the tension didn’t break. "I'm pleased to see you're okay. What happened to you?"

"I died, Pet," he told her gruffly.

"Then?" she prodded.

"Then what?"

"How did you escape the Hellmouth?"

"Didn’t,” he said, sullen. “Burnt up and dusted proper. It was all over, Buffy. I was happy with that. Went out a sodding hero. Then the amulet had to spit me back out in the middle of Angel’s fancy new office."

"The Amulet?" she blinked in surprise.

"Yeah. Seems it sucked me up as the Hellmouth closed. All some plot by Wolfram and bloody Hart."

"Wolfram and Hart…” she mused. “I’ve heard of them. Aren’t they…?"

Spike wondered if the whole world knew about Angel’s elevated new position. "Angel’s new Lords and Masters? Yeah."

"I thought he was in charge?"

"Hardly." Spike snorted. "Thinks he is. Thinks he can turn a place like that around. He’s dafter than Andrew."

"This happened when?"

"While back. Just after you scampered over here, I reckon." He watched as she calculated all that had happened since Sunnydale was returned to the earth. There’d been such a lot of water under the bridge.

"And you’ve been back since then?" she asked after she’d come to her conclusion. The question was loaded; full of jumbled emotions he no longer trusted his ability to read.

He shrugged sadly. "Not really. Only been solid again a few days."

"Huh? Solid?” she asked, confused. “What are you talking about?"

"I was a ghost, Buffy. A sodding ghost destined to roam corporate hell for eternity with The First stuck inside me."

“The First!” she latched onto the name, putting the events from both sides of a wide ocean together. “It was here, waiting for me. I’ve only been in this place a couple of days, you think maybe it was triggered by you being all fleshy again?”

“I was its prison. All Wolfram and Hart’s idea to keep it line. Couldn’t care less about me.”

“Oh,” Buffy thought about that for a moment. Her face cycled through a number of emotions as all the implications sank in. “So you were like Casper or something?”

“Yeah. Walking through walls, terrifying the locals, the lot.”

She touched him now, hesitantly, then bolder as her tiny hand splayed wide across his chest, gentle, reverent. Though she’d held his hand before, it seemed she needed to prove once more that he was still there. “You’re not like that now."

"Yeah. Wonderful bird by the name of Fred used her big brain to put old Spike back together again. Owe her a bunch of favours." And he did.

“So do I,” Her hand reached for his, but he moved away, evasive. “What?” she said.

He stayed remote, both in distance and in emotion. If he let her under his guard he wouldn’t resist her. After all that had happened, the misunderstandings, the heartbreak, the pain they had put each other through, he feared to drink from that well again. Love was an all-in gamble, a calculated risk of sums he couldn’t seem to get to add up. “You know what.”

“But...” she struggled to find something to say. “But I meant it.”

He shook his head. She couldn’t say what he wanted to hear most, even now with an ‘I love you’ already out there, locked into their past; and now those words became empty and worthless as they rang hollow in his memory – just as he’d thought they might. His heart broke. “Nah, you want to. You might even believe you do, but you don’t.”

“What do you know about it?” Buffy snapped. “How do you know what I feel?”

Spike sighed. “You can’t even say it unless I’m being roasted and toasted over the infernal barbecue.”

“I…” she looked down at the axe, poking her boot with it.

“Thought so. Buffy, all the hopin’ that comes to nothing. I can’t take it anymore.” And with that he turned and walked away, putting a proud lope into his stride despite it all. There was nothing left to be said.

“I love you.” It was a firm, definite statement meant to leave no room for doubt. “Spike, I love you.”

He stopped. It was a little late to tell him this. After any of those times they were together, for sex if not in any real sense that counted, when he'd longed to hear those words from her lips instead of seeing her head turn away from the love in his eyes, it wouldn't have mattered even if she hadn't meant them, the words themselves would have been enough to keep him foolish. Now the words were out there, true or not, as fragile as the breath they were spoken on, but sharper than glass.

“You’re kind of late to this party.” He couldn’t look at her; he didn’t want his stupid soft heart to betray him. If he saw any sadness in her eyes, he’d change his mind. But his feet wouldn’t take him away from her.

“I know…”

“I wasn’t going to come back,” he said, quietly. Once upon a time he would have crawled on his knees back from Africa, soul in tow, begging for this chance with her – or so he’d thought before he’d actually tried it – but time was indeed a healer and although he still longed to be hers, he had more dignity now.

“That’s OK,” she said earnestly, coming to him. “You were dead, you didn’t know…”

“No. That’s not what I meant,” he stepped away, kept his distance. “I wasn’t going to come back here. Find you.”

That stopped her. He turned to her – her bottom lip was trembling. “Why? You... You always come back.”

“I didn’t want what happened to not mean anything,” he said, open and honest. There was no point hiding now.

She laughed bitterly, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “What? That’s such bullshit, Spike! You wanted to go out with a huge romantic gesture? Well, fine. You did. But I was here, thinking the man I fell in love with, who loved me so much, was dead. And I waited for you, and I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing! Then you…” She’d started to cry then, small tears pooling in the corner of her eyes, before slipping down her cheek in glistening trails, but she didn’t come closer and he didn’t close the gap. “You were alive and in L.A. with Angel. Why didn’t you even try to call me?”

“I couldn’t. I didn’t have a body. I was a bloody ghost!” he protested. More quietly, he added, “I thought you should start over.”

Seething, she replied, “You shouldn’t make that decision for me. Angel…”

Now he was angry. “Oh, no. That’s different; I’m not like that sodding git, walking away because it got too hard. I was dead, you stupid bint. You’ve started over, with this nice new life of yours. You deserve to move the bloody hell on.”

“I deserve the man I love!” she protested.

“Oh, don’t get cranky…”

“Cranky? I haven’t even started!” Her temper flared. “I know why you didn’t come here, it’s because you were scared. So scared that I didn’t love you that you’d rather stay away. Well, I told you I loved you and I do. I meant it.”

She wasn’t hearing him. He hadn’t come to discuss this. “Listen, Buffy. I’ve had a lot of time to think lately…”

“You don’t trust me, do you?” she said, softly.

“I trust you with the world,” he replied firmly. “Followed you to the end of it. It’s just…”

“You don’t trust me with your heart.”

His eyes flicked to her, but he couldn’t reply. Agitated and fidgety with turbulent push-pull emotions, he waved his hand at her dismissively. “Forget it. You…”

“Stop. Just… stop. It's complicated, I know that. Back when… You know. I had feelings for you, and they scared me, but I wasn't in love with you – not yet. But there were times when I thought that I could be, but I just… shouldn’t. I didn’t want to be… Look, in the Hellmouth, when we touched, I could see your soul, and it was beautiful beyond words.” She reached for him and gripped his arms to make him listen. “I knew you. I knew exactly who you are and who you were and who you could have been.” Her eyes implored him to believe her, even though they were tight, raw and still beady with tears. “It was the last piece I needed. It’s been inside me ever since."

He sucked her statement in. A smile from her would have made him happy enough, all he’d ever had were her frowns, but suddenly his arms were full of Slayer, grasping him tight, her eyes tearing again as Buffy buried her head in his embrace. His resolve crumbled as he held her close, hoping as ever to meld her soul to his. After what he'd done, after the events that night in her bathroom, he didn’t have the right to ask anything from her, he would never push his feelings on her again, but his girl had changed; she’d come to him, offering everything she had withheld before. To hold her, and best of all, to be held by her in love, felt so wonderful that he thrust all his fears to the back of his mind. Despite his noble intentions, dying hadn't made bit of difference – Buffy was still the centre of his universe. He held her tighter, buried his head into her shoulder and just held on.

"So, now what?" he whispered into her hair. She smelled of blood and that sweet scent that was Buffy alone, yet to his demon she smelt like a banquet to a starving man. It was awake and agitated, but his soul and years with the Initiative chip restrained his bloodlust. Pavlov would have been proud.

“Are we cool?” she asked, looking up at him with affection.

That was new.

“We’re cool.” For now.

She wiped her damp eyes clear. “Don’t die again.”

He brushed her warning off. He was only too happy to stick around. "Nah, not likely to want to dust again – hurts too much."

“We’ll get back to this later. I think we’d better get outta here.” She extracted herself from his arms and looked around at the bodies scattered around them. “What happened to the fog? This your handiwork? There’s more Bringers here than I killed.”

“Yeah.” Spike waved an arm towards a body at the edge of the clearing. The Shaman lay face down, its neck broken. Even now, as its cadaver cooled, contrails of ghostly mist wisped from its splayed fingers. “I finished them off, including your cloudbuster here, but there’s going to be more. What are you doing out here anyway?”

She gripped her axe tighter, readying herself, back on alert. “I was looking for the First.”

“Huh, looks like you found it.”

“No. It’s still out there somewhere.” She paused, scanning the dark tree line, squinting into the depths of the wood. “It’s waiting for something. It’s trying to scare me, but it won’t touch me, like it’s just playing with me…”

“Slayer wouldn’t be wrong at that,” a sneering voice said behind them.

The hairs on his neck prickling with cold dread, Spike turned to meet… himself.

“Well, well, well, now it seems I have both the lovebirds to play with. Good for me,” said The First, stepping over the remains of his Shaman, “but oh so bad for you.”

If the eyes were the windows to the soul, then in a short moment, Spike had a nasty and unwelcome reminder of just how dead he’d been.

The First approached; all ego, swagger and arrogant confidence as Spike looked into the dark mirror of his own gaze and found it wanting. For all the accuracy of this reflection, something was amiss. This wasn’t just a carbon copy, neither the vicious creature he’d been nor the person he’d become. There was a flat emptiness to The First’s eyes; a certain lack of occupancy that spoke of something fundamental missing inside. Where a demon should have smouldered or a soul should have blazed with life, there was nothing, no tiny spark of self in there to make up a person, even an undead one. As a personification of a concept, it was unalive, something that had never lived and never would.

Spike swallowed hard and tried not to look too closely at his dark twin, but he couldn’t turn away. The similarity was unnerving. Photographs and film could capture his image, but Spike hadn’t seen himself so clearly for more than a century. And a crushing disappointment it turned out to be; had he always looked so pathetic? Just a small man trying too hard to be everything he wasn’t – tough, cool, sexy, masking the weakness in his heart with leather, junk jewellery and a tough attitude. The face might be ageless, its apparent youth belying the true amount of years on the clock, but it was deathly pale and gaunter than it should have been, webbed as it was with lines sketched in guilt and grief.

"Quite the melodrama you two have going on,” The First chuckled, coming to a stop a few strides away. “I was enjoying the show.” Its eyes narrowed as its eyes flicked from Spike to Buffy and back again; its head tilting as its expression turned colder. “Oh, you think I haven't followed this little soap opera all along? Shame it won’t be a happy ending, I could have sold tickets.”

“Piss off.” Spike lifted his chin defiantly. He was sick of these tricks. The First was corporeal now and that meant it had something to lose. He didn’t know if it could be destroyed, but he was willing to give it a bloody good try.

Clearly, Buffy thought so too. Beside him, her body language was tense; she was primed, ready to fight.

Unfazed by their fighting stances, The First looped its fingers into its belt and puffed out its chest, taunting them with its counterfeit body. “That’s not a polite way to greet yourself.”

“Get out of here,” Spike snarled at such a mockery of his own mannerisms. “I’m done with you.”

“Are you now?” The First scoffed. “You think a few days of oblivion means you’ve changed? Just like you thought that a soul would be enough to make you a man?”

“You don’t know me.”

“Oh. Sorry. I don’t think you understand.” The dreadful doppelganger stepped into Spike’s space, up close and personal, ignoring Buffy completely. “You still have cause to fear the sun, you’ll feel the burn from the touch of anything Holy and a demon moves your dead flesh. You think you’re a Champion!” It laughed in amused contempt, but then its tone darkened and its voice hissed, “You thought you got rid of me, but you can never, ever. I’m inside you. I’m still a part of your cold dead heart and I know everything you are.” It tapped the side of its head. "It's all up here."

Buffy took Spike’s hand, and with that gesture, she reclaimed him as one of her own to be protected under her banner. “Spike, Don’t listen. It’s full of crap – as usual.”

The First noticed Spike return the supportive squeeze she gave him and scowled. “She used you,” it spat at him with scathing contempt, “took your body for her own pleasures. Yet still you cling to her.”

“That’s none of your business,” Buffy hissed through barred teeth.

The First looked back at her, its loathing obvious. “Isn’t it?”

Spike could hardly bear the disgust in The First’s glower, knowing that once he’d looked that way at Buffy too. He dropped Buffy’s hand as a chink of doubt began to appear in his defiance, small enough not to show, but enough to let The First’s words in.

“Shut your face,” he ground out. “This isn’t the Hellmouth.”

“No, it isn’t, but haven’t you worked it out yet?” The First’s stare bored into Spike’s. “I still control you.”

Buffy humphed, crossing her arms – which wasn’t easy with the hefty axe she was holding. “Huh. You wish. The trigger is long gone.”

Spike wasn’t so sure; the trigger was only a nasty memory now, but there was a certainty in The First’s tone that he didn’t like. He knew well enough that the entity had an arsenal of other means to manipulate him, to keep him under its control. Buffy’s staunch support was welcome, but he couldn’t help thinking that it could be unwarranted. He balled a fist; he was fed up with The First’s mind games. “Just try it.”

“Oh, I will,” The First said, turning back from Buffy. “Got a surprise for you. Seems my little upgrade comes with this nifty free gift: the dead are mine to control. And what funny a coincidence, that’s just what you are.”

Its long, penetrating stare locked Spike in place. It seemed to hollow him out until he was an empty vessel to be filled with dark desires. But that wasn’t the worst part; on the periphery of his hearing, he started to hear voices, whispering words formless and indistinct. No mouths spoke them; they came from some place inside that remembered their entreaties and their cries, and it spoke for them, the soul weeping as it relived every hurt that he had ever caused.

“Spike?” Buffy gripped his arm.

He could almost feel her heartbeat accelerate as her fear for him hiked up the adrenalin coursing through her blood, but it was getting harder to hear her over the rising volume of the internal chatter.

“Listen to them,” The First sneered, gloating. “Everyone you’ve ever hurt or killed. They know what you are. Tell them you’ve changed, that you’re a good man – a Champion.”

Spike flexed his jaw, trying not to let his panic show; but even as he tried to resist, he could feel himself crumble and submit. He shuddered, his mind closing in on itself as reality faded away and sucked him into the darker place inside him where his suppressed past lived in horrible detail.

“Spike!” As she began to realise what was happening, Buffy tried to reach out to him, but The First brushed her aside. The sledgehammer blow threw her back and she landed heavily on the grass, hitting the ground with an ‘oof!’ as the force of her fall knocked the wind out of her.

Spike tumbled to his knees as his legs crumpled beneath him. He bent forwards, clutching his head, and he curled over, almost foetal, trying to shut the voices out with his hands. He wanted to scream out the pain of his victims in one go, rip it out through his throat in one terrible shriek, yet their agonies would not come. They were his to keep, not to savour now, but to haunt, to remind him that the blood could never be washed off.

But the voices wanted to be heard, not purged, and every single one of them wanted to speak at once. Louder now and oh so much clearer, they drowned out everything else. Screams of terror and howling agony, each one recalling their final moments of suffering at his hand; disgusted assessments of his worth spat out on shattered, broken voices. The truth of all the pain he’d caused laid out bare before him. They told him he was nothing but a monster in a man’s guise; that he was miserable scum not fit to walk the earth; that he didn’t deserve any redemption. None of them told him anything he didn’t know already, but their anger sank deep into his soul, tearing at him from the inside as he recognised their every word as true, pushing him back to the brink of insanity’s abyss.

“No…” he muttered, hanging on like a lifeline to the knowledge that The First was engineering this. There was a germ of resistance that would never allow The First to drag him back to the darkness. No more crawling around basements with his sanity in tatters. He’d accepted his bloody past and he could live with it. Damn his victims’ sufferings and all the lives he’d taken, he could stop others from joining the body count. “That’s over,” he yelled. “I’m not in that place anymore!”

“You’re in any place I want you to be.” The First let him go, his demonstration over for now. The voices subsided into a blessed silence that made Spike gasp and shudder out his tears into the ground.

“You are so going to pay for that.” Buffy got to her feet, rubbing her bruised bottom. She grabbed her dropped axe and brandished it in The First’s direction. “This revenge thing you’re doing, it’s getting old. There’s two of us now, we’ll find a way to get you gone for good.”

The First loomed over her. “This isn’t about the Hellmouth, pet,” it said. “I’m over it. You’re damn good at forgetting. I am evil’s antecedent on this earth. I was the first nightfall and I shall be the scream from the last throat. Every evil thing that stalks the shadows has a tiny piece of me inside.” The First took a step closer to her, but it pointed at Spike. “And so does he.”

“I know what he is. I know what he was capable of without a soul, but he’s a good man now. I’ve seen it. All you’re doing is playing games – with the both of us.” She turned her back on The First and helped Spike to stand. He knew she was right. The First was all mouth, a posturing braggart full of lies, deceits and bullshit that bent the truth in order to get under their skin. All the entity’s line of bollocks was doing was keeping them from doing anything about it.

The First laughed smugly again. “You don’t get it, do you? This is the big one. We’re talking about the darkness that swallows the day, an endless night with no dawn…”

“I’ve heard all this crap,” Buffy interjected. “‘Beneath you it devours’, ‘I will over-run this earth’, yadda, yadda, yadda. You won’t attack us. If you wanted us dead, we’d be dead already. Whatever it is you’re planning, you need us for it.”

“Still working on the over-running; got a plan and everything. You have to admit the whole flesh part turned out well. But, you see, I’m in need of a sacrifice.” The First reached out and tilted her chin up with a finger. “And I only need you.”

“What are you on about?” Spike clenched his teeth; his knuckles turning white as he fought the urge to strike out.

Buffy’s eyes flicked to him as The First held her in place. “Spike, don’t…”

“I could snap her neck, but keep her alive, paralysed. You know how,” The First told him. “But it wouldn’t be as much fun.” It shoved Buffy away and she staggered back, allowing Spike to catch her as she knocked into him. “Because I have something so much better than that. The first demons, they wait inside the earth. Near here they rest, awaiting their resurrection. I will make them live again and the world will know the true evil the Deeper Well contains. You two and your world full of Slayers won’t mean a thing.” The First chuckled darkly, “I even have one or two helpers.”

It whistled sharply, a short, piecing call to arms, and a reply was no time in coming. Dead, rotting leaves, mulchy from the autumn fall, rustled as numerous feet crushed them underfoot. Between the ailing trees, shapes made of night itself condensed into nightmare figures, scores of them, stark and deathly, their oil slick shadows cast long by the sickly moon as they responded to their cue.

The First threw its arms wide to include the enclosing circle of its vampire army. “Think you can save your dead boyfriend, Slayer? Because it looks like you’re a bit buggered right now.”

Buffy didn’t snap back a witty retort as Spike expected and he waited for her next move. She took his hand again, threading her fingers through his as if she didn’t dare let go, cementing their alliance as the army moved in to close the noose around them. He squeezed back. He understood the unspoken message. They were in this together now, straight up, win or lose.

He knew what she wanted him to do. Breaking apart, they made a run for it, Spike following Buffy as she charged through the thinnest looking point in the vampire’s line. Newly risen and still adjusting to their new strengths, they were undisciplined and weak, most parted like the Red Sea before the sweep of her axe. Since its Turok Han army had been destroyed, The First had certainly downgraded.

The few that fought back were soon out-classed and she lopped off their heads one by one. Several were dust before they’d even had time to notice her coming. She fought like a goddess, fearless and powerful, but Spike could see she wasn’t as sharp as he remembered; there was a dangerous trace of stiffness in her limbs that slowed her dizzying reflexes and hinted at a lack of training. Hordes of new slayers meant easy fights it seemed.

Eventually, she burst past the stragglers and sprinted off into the dark trees, not looking back, trusting he would follow, but a couple of vamps waylaid him before he could break through and chase her out of the clearing. He finished them off, but not before the gloom had swallowed her whole.

He followed her scent, tracking her easily enough through the moonlight, until he finally caught up with her some way down the overgrown trail. Dodging the thickets of dying shrubs and the scratching, grasping vines that made lethal trip-wires in the night or tore at their legs with briary tendrils, she carefully changed paths here and there to confuse their undead pursers.

Her strategy appeared to be working; the sounds of the vampires behind them were becoming reassuringly distant, the woods returning to their pensive silence. Spike wondered if she knew where she was going, she never hesitated as she made her decisions to take forks in the paths, but she never left them, shunning the temptation to take short cuts where the trees were sparser. He didn’t know if this was part of her ruse or whether she just stuck with the paths she knew were safer, but she took them from the clearing in a wide arc that took them slowly to the top of the hill.

At a shallow gully, the path kinked suddenly as it rimmed a high earth bank. It looked like an old earthwork rampart with a ditch filled in with hundreds of years of woodland debris. Buffy, without the benefit of Spike’s keen night vision, almost skidded into it, but she made the turn and followed the curve of the feature until a break appeared where the bank had been cut away to make way for the path. Here the ground was rutted with bicycle tracks and scattered with loose stones. They had to scramble to get up to the top, but once there, Buffy finally risked to leaving the path and headed back towards the main track.

Thick with nettles, the mass of undergrowth was a challenge for the heavy axe; it was useless against stinging foliage and their progress slowed to a brisk walk. The high growth shielded them from prying eyes, but stung their hands, and Spike was relieved when they eventually stumbled onto another path that widened and merged with the main track. Again, Buffy didn’t hesitate. She turned away from the village and headed out towards the distant fields; but just as the stile came into sight, the pursuers broke out of the trees and cut off the path ahead. Not wanting to be drawn back into a fight, she turned and sprinted towards the village instead.

As the trees thinned, the village came finally into view. The mist still lingered in the hollows here, clinging low around the headstones in the churchyard, an unwholesome miasma of death’s breath. Rising above it all, signalling their sanctuary, the spire rose starkly upwards, the cross at the top an inky shadow against a dark sky scattered serenely with constellations.

But below the stars’ calm countenance, the village was in chaos.

As a ragged horde, the dead rose for judgement at The First’s command. Heavy lids slid from lichened tombs. Sacred ground broke and parted as grasping hands pushed through six feet of good English soil. Something that was once a woman stepped onto the shore of the pond and moaned, the chains that had weighed her down still tangled in the sodden rags she wore.

Centuries of the village lost, their souls long returned to Heaven’s embrace, left their graves, a decaying, shuffling mass of them. Mostly skeletons now, their bones stained dark with earth and years, only a few still bore flesh, their stares sightless and their rictus grins broad and toothy, locked in an eternal smile. They converged on the road, pressing forward on shambling, stumbling feet, their progress slow and sure.

Buffy and Spike stopped. They were trapped, their path blocked by the vengeful dead.

The First laughed from the entrance to the vicarage. “There’s no way out kids.”

tbc

It seemed that they’d slipped one noose only to put their heads into another.

On hearing The First’s words, Buffy’s hand twitched around the haft of her axe. She itched to use it. Now she had the real Spike beside her, trying to swipe The First’s grinning head from its shoulders would be a pleasure. But she resisted the urge to strike out so pointlessly. It would be a cold day in hell before she would respond to The First’s needling taunts again.

There was nowhere left to go. From all sides, the full extent of The First’s undead army revealed itself. Under the trees of the forbidding woods, a village of vampires, old and young, fanned out behind their master in a restless arc, cutting off the path back to the Retreat. Behind Spike’s back, their ancestors, newly risen from the peace of their eternal rest, emerged out of the low mist, shambling across the hallowed ground with awkward post-mortem first steps.

But the worst horror was what waited by the crossroads in front of the Gallows pub. A dark, glowering fog that billowed with dreadful spectres made from tainted souls. Buffy had never seen anything like it and hoped she never would again. The cloud itself had little form, yet within its choking mists faces and misshapen bodies could be seen twisted with eternal agonies, their eyes glowing with a sickly, unnatural light simmering on slow burn. These were the murdered and the missing, the executed and the slain; each craving an end to their damnation, each seeking life to drain away. Trees withered as they passed and the grass beneath their skeletal boughs turned brown then black as it rotted in fast-forward time-lapse.

Buffy could hear them beckon her. Calling her back to her grave, their vile voices speaking on lorelei tongues she could hear only inside her head. She closed her eyes and tried to break their hold, focusing on happier thoughts; of life and love and happiness; all the things she’d found were worth living for. She might never find the innocence in such things again, she’d fought death and darkness for too long, but they gave her a hope from which she could draw enough strength to resist their siren calls, if not for herself or those others marked with Slayerness, but for Dawn and her friends and all those others lives she’d worked to save.

As she gulped down the blackness and opened her eyes again, The First gave the command for its army to advance. At its word, the mindless dead in the churchyard lurched upright, jerking to attention onto unsteady, bony legs. They began a slow creep through the snaggle-toothed headstones echoed by the vampire battle group by the woods. Each inched slowly forwards to drive their quarry towards the ghostly wretches by the crossroads.

The noose was tightening.

“Get back.” Buffy took an instinctive step toward the steady strength of the crumbling stone wall that defined the bounds of the churchyard, pushing Spike behind her and the protective reach of the heavy axe.

He didn’t question her, but fell into a fighting stance, coiled and ready, backing her up like he always had, covering the areas that she couldn’t. “You bring a boy to all the best fights,” he said.

She ignored his quip, warily watching their opponents instead. The numbers encircling them were more than enough to overwhelm the both of them out here in the open. Two against a hoard of skeletons, a hundred or so fledgling vamps, a few scattered Bringers and an indestructible entity hell-bent on vengeance were long odds, but this rabble couldn’t really compare with the Turok Han legion that had swarmed out of the Hellmouth to assault her small army of Slayers. They’d won that fight, but Buffy swiftly shoved the memory out of her head anyway; some of them hadn’t survived that battle, and if Spike hadn’t given his unlife, then none of them would have. She’d received this incredible gift of another chance with him; she wasn’t going to waste it.

As Buffy hesitated to weigh up their limited options, the vampires made their charge, surging towards them in one undisciplined mass, snarling and snapping. She caught the first with a sharp kick that shattered its thigh, following through with a swipe of the axe that took off its head with a vicious slice beneath its chin. It burst into dust as it toppled and was trampled under its neighbour’s feet, never to be seen again.

Behind her back, Spike fought in tandem with her, his moves flowing with hers with the grace of long familiarity. Without a stake or weapon, he chopped and kicked and punched, dropping the vamps at Buffy’s feet with quick uppercuts. She dispatched them quickly, two or three at once, and returned to scything down the attacks of the others.

"Any ideas?" Spike drove his fist into the face of a woman in a Barbour jacket and green wellies. She fell into a heap at his feet.

Buffy brought the axe down onto the nape of the woman’s neck and she too puffed into a greasy dust. "If you're feeling suggesty, go right ahead."

He looked around, swiftly assessing the threat for himself, frowning at what he saw as he snapped the neck of a vamp that came too close. He casually shoved the groaning man her way and waved his arm towards the small bottleneck of skeletons that had gathered by the lychgate. Their dry, withered fingers flapped uselessly at the latch. “Charge of the shabby brigade over there shouldn’t give us much trouble."

"How many?" she asked him, buying him time to look by taking another wide swing with the axe. Vertebrae shattered as the heavy blade sliced cleanly through dead flesh.

Spike paused as he tied to make a rough count, but before he could answer, a fleshless hand of dry bones and soil reached over the wall and grabbed him by the collar of his coat. The inhumanly strong grip yanked him backwards and he lost his footing, his head striking the wall as the arm pulled him back.

“Spike!” Buffy ignored inept punches as the vamps swamped them, her axe flashing through the night as it severed the arm of his attacker and lopped off its head an instant later.

Spike slumped to the ground, but a moment later he was back up and fighting as if it had never happened. Blood seeped from a gash at his temple, but he was throwing punches with a renewed vigour. “Thanks, pet. Looks like there’s not many of them, but I don’t fancy fighting them all off at once.”

Buffy wasn’t going to disagree with that. "Then we won't.” She shoved a balding middle-aged man into a group of tarty teenage girls to make a space and then ran. “This way!"

She ran, leading Spike a short way along the churchyard wall towards the village green and its small pond. Here the wall skirted the edge of the water, protected by a narrow bank that rejoined the green near the cricket pitch. As she aimed for this thin unguarded strip, the vampires surged forward and the skeletons in the churchyard changed the direction of their shamble; in the distance the cacophonous horns of the Wild Hunt rent the air.

But if she had wagered that the width of the bank would be too narrow for many to follow, she hadn’t foreseen how the semi-substantial spectres would flow across the pond like a slow, heavy vapour. They left the surface as still as glass, a dark mirror collecting stars from the heavens in its cool waters until the cloud of darkness swallowed them whole. Halfway between spirit and corpse, solid and yet ethereally insubstantial, these were the bodies of those whom had never lain in the loving embrace of consecrated earth. They despised everything that lived with a consuming need to corrupt it, to take back the lives snatched so suddenly from them by turning its vibrant goodness to ruin. Water would not stop them.

However, Buffy had been half right; only one or two of the vampires were able to chase them this way. The others ploughed into the water in the wake of their spectral comrades, shattering its calm clarity, but the water caught their clothes and made them heavy, dragging them back and slowing them as the mass of weeds tangled around their legs.

By the time the bank tapered, as it arched towards a large willow tree that tested the water sorrowfully with bare twiggy fingers, Buffy could feel an unholy chill at the back of her neck. A dolorous dread fell like a stone into her stomach and she felt like falling to her knees in despair. It took the strongest effort of will she had to struggle over the wall to the sanctuary of the churchyard but her dark mood lifted as soon as her feet touched the other side.

Her relief was short-lived.

The ground was uneven here, marking the roughly dug area of a plague pit. The earth vibrated as the dead began to rise from below. She lunged forward, trying to reach the path before they broke the surface, but before she could clear the edge of the disturbed ground, she was caught; something that had once been a hand, with creaking joints bound together by little but magic and rotten sinew, clamped onto her leg, grabbing her by the ankle.

Buffy crashed to her knees, the axe flying out of her hands as her palms struck the spongy ground. It landed at the foot of a listing headstone, out of easy reach. The fall released her ankle, but as she went to push herself up, but the ground gave way beneath her and her hands sank deep into the loam.

“Buffy!” Spike yelled. He tried to clamber over the wall, but the vampire pulling at his heel delayed him.

Something brushed her fingers; more bodies reaching up from beneath the earth. Revolted, she snatched her own hands back, pulling them free with someone else’s hand still attached to her wrist.

A dozen arms broke the surface around her. Bursting through the top of their unmarked grave like some morbid crop of fetid flesh; a strange harvest death had already reaped of plague many seasons before. They were everywhere, bodies that should have lain underground until judgement, pulling themselves free of the pit, hauling themselves free from the dark earth of their grave in a macabre, abominable rebirth.

Spike twisted and smashed his fist into the vampire’s face. Stunned, it recoiled, lost its footing and tumbled back into the pond with a splash, but by the time he got to Buffy he was too late to stop the hands grabbing at her, yanking her down with brutal grips, grasping and tugging at her coat, her hair, her face, anything they could reach. Each time she shook one off another would break through the grass to take its place.

“Spike! Grab the axe!” she shouted as she struggled, brittle arm bones snapping near the wrists and elbows as she tried to jerk herself free. “Over there!”

He followed the direction of her frantic pointing and snatched up the lost axe, using it to fight off a couple of vampires before returning. He chopped at the arms where and when he could, but there was little he could do without hurting her as well.

“There’s too many,” he hissed, tossing the axe aside and circling Buffy’s waist with his arms. “We can’t stay here.”

Duh, she wanted to say, but he heaved her free with his brute strength, setting her back onto her feet away from the disturbed ground.

But he didn’t give her a moment to get over her revulsion; he looked at her for their next move. “Where now, luv?”

“Follow me!” Buffy picked up the discarded axe and darted for the cover of the church porch. He was right, they didn’t have time to indulge in the horror; the lichgate traffic jam had turned and was advancing back up the path, while more shattered bodies, driven forward with one mind and one purpose, heaved themselves clear of their coffins and the cloying soil. Behind them, the leading group of vampires were clambering over the boundary wall. They tripped over their rising comrades; disarticulating limbs already weak and rotten, scattering them in shards around their disturbed pit.

But they all stopped as the wraiths began to seep into the churchyard through the wall, parting to allow them through, as if they were too malevolent for even for the dead to tolerate.

Buffy pulled at the huge wooden church door, but it refused to open. She shoved the axe into Spike’s hands and tried to force the wrought iron lock to give. It rattled promisingly, but refused to yield. It was well made and built to last, but once she braced her shoulder against the wood, it couldn’t hold against her whole slayer strength and it swung open with a creak of reluctant welcome. She held it open just long enough for Spike to break away from the defensive position he’d taken at the front of the porch and slammed it shut behind him.

“Quick!” Buffy yelled to him. “Find something to brace it with.”

Spike disappeared into the gloom, returning a moment later dragging one of the heavy, ornate pews. Buffy grabbed it and helped him wedge it into position between the door and a sturdy stone column. Dead things started to batter on the wood, but the barricade held, the lock jangling as the door shook in its frame.

With the door braced firmly behind them, Buffy could finally catch her breath. As she turned, the moon re-emerged from behind the clouds, washing the church in sombre kaleidoscopic moonlight as it streamed in through the stained glass. But its grave beauty was marred by the stench of blood and death.

She covered her hand with her sleeve and covered her mouth to block the smell from the corpse still mouldering on the altar. What should have been a place of hushed and sacred sanctuary was little more now than a house of the dead; a silently eldritch tomb, cold and sepulchral, a place the living had forsaken – and for good reason. “Now what?” she asked Spike.

He shrugged and looked around. “I guess we take a pew.”

“So did you have a plan when you dived in here or did you just have an urgent need to repent?”

Buffy took a deep breath, noting the way Spike turned in her direction as he spoke but dropped his eyes to avoid meeting hers. The pallid moonlight caused harsh, jagged shadows to cut across his face with noir slashes of darkness, but he couldn’t fool her. If they had survived the night, she would sort this, but the time was so very not now to deal with his evasiveness or go over all the complexities of everything that had happened between them; souls and sex and sacrifice were heavy subjects she couldn’t tackle with a few glib words and he deserved more.

“I don’t know. I need time to think,” she told him. A tickle of that icy dread she’d felt outside still gnawed at her nerve endings, warning her that they still weren’t safe. As if to emphasise her fears, their makeshift barricade shuddered as the dead made a renewed sortie against the church door. “We can’t stay here.”

“Won’t have any argument from me.” Giving it a firm shove, Spike tested the strength of the pew one last time. Like the heavy door it was propped against, the pew was robust and sturdy. It would hold long enough for them to find a way to escape. He seemed satisfied by the way it remained firmly wedged against the fluted column of one of the ornate arches and straightened. He finally gave her a brief glance. “This is not exactly a place I’m comfortable, you know.”

A strained silence, leaden with the past and a hundred things still left unsaid, settled between them. Buffy bit her lip as she realised why. The church. Oh god. She should have thought of that. One of the most significant moments of their lives and it hadn’t even occurred to her. There was no way this wasn’t going to be awkward.

Despite the levity of his wisecracks, Spike’s discomfort was clearly visible even in the dim light. His jaw flexed with an anxious twitch and he shoved his hands into his pockets. When he slipped past her, he didn’t touch, pointedly skirting round her personal space, stalking along the aisle like a streak of absolute darkness in the covering moonshine.

“You okay?” she asked softly with a lightness she wasn’t feeling. She watched sadly as Spike used the pretence of giving their shelter a critical once over, searching for hidden dangers and weaknesses that could be exploited, to put a comfortable distance between them.

“Been better,” he confessed, dismissing her worries with a shrug, but he still refused to meet her eye. The barrier that had been thrown up between them was still very much in place and she didn’t know if she should try to penetrate his guard or give him time to relax. “Just came face to face with myself.” He paused in the centre of the aisle, spotlighted in the rainbow light beaming in through the large picture window, and reached out to gingerly touch an ornately decorated cross that was carved into the side of a pew. A small wisp of smoke rose from his sizzling finger and ghosted into the night. “Might need a minute.”

“Right.” She leant back against a table covered with leaflets advertising church services and toddler playgroups that would never be, keeping one cautious eye on the door and thinking over the implications of what he was saying, of what The First had done to him. This near distance he was keeping wasn’t about his soul or anything else that had happened in that Sunnydale church, but about the other things that still plagued his troubled mind. Perhaps he’d been too crazy back then to realise how much that moment had meant to her. “It’s not you, you know,” she offered. “It could never be a fraction of what you are.”

He turned his head to her then, raising an eyebrow over his shoulder in curious challenge, but the moment passed and he looked away again. “Maybe. But what it said, I don’t feel like that.”

“Huh?” A horrible sickly feeling started to sour her stomach; a dreadful burning flush that curdled in her gut. “Oh. That stuff about me using you? I—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he cut her off with a gentle swipe of his hand. “Everything that happened. It’s all forgiven. Water under the bridge and all that. I just wanted you to know.”

She sighed. He didn’t need to say any of this; she already knew he’d forgiven her, but she wondered how he could just sweep the issue away like that when it was obviously still troubling him. This wall he’d put up was the price she would pay for using him in more ways than one; venting all that anger and frustration which had built up inside her, giving him little in return but empty sex and fists to his face. His dismissive words weren’t going to erase the pain of being taken for granted. She might have offered him her faith in the end, but for all those times she’d beat him down for not having a soul, made him jump through impossible hoops, at the end he was the one she relied on and that wasn’t enough. She shook her head, she was such an idiot, she should have told him sooner that she loved him and not let words fail her after their first chaste night together. It sounded so pathetic in hindsight to have offered up those words only as he’d died; no wonder he was so distant now.

“Is that what’s really eating you?” Safe and cosy their feelings for each other were not, but passionate heights were dangerous by their nature. Maybe they shouldn't be in a relationship again if being with her hurt him so much. Flushed, she pushed off the table and approached him slowly, allowing him to keep some space but trying to shut the emotional chasm before it became too vast to close.

“That and the rest of it,” he replied quietly. “I’d ask you to kill me if I thought it would take.”

She blinked up at him in surprise. “What?”

“The First.” He whirled around and stabbed his chest with a finger. “It can control me. “I don’t know what—”

“Hey! Hey.” She grabbed his hand in and held it tight affirmation, looking up into his eyes as if she could will him into seeing the amazing person she saw before her reflected in her own. Back when things had been less complicated, before kissing him in an alley had destroyed it all, she'd gone to him talk through her problems, knowing that while he couldn't solve them for her he would always try. She needed to return a little bit of that commitment. “Not this again. I thought we were past all this trigger stuff. Spike, the trigger has gone. You saw to that.”

"Not the trigger!” He shook his head. “You saw it, the sodding First doesn’t need one now. It can control the dead, control me."

“I am not killing you. Not now,” she told him vehemently, realising what he was trying to ask her. She squeezed his hand even tighter. There was no way she was letting go.

“Buffy, I don’t think you can, but…” His eyes searched hers, blazing, pleading with her and she couldn’t help being drawn in. “but you’ll have to watch out. For me. I can’t—”

The agony she saw in his face made her gasp, but it also made her angry and she jerked her hand away. The moment was broken. “It’s bullshit, Spike! Don’t listen to it. It’s playing with both of us. Don’t you see? The First can manipulate you, so what? Nothing’s changed. We’ve been there before. And we know we can beat it. Think about it! If it could turn you against me so easily, then why didn’t it do that outside?”

“I don’t know!” He moved away and started to pace as if caged by his own powerlessness. “It could be waiting for something!” he suggested. “For the right moment. Anything!” With that, he lashed out, kicking the front pew over in frustration. It toppled over onto the stone floor in a scatter of prayer books and splinters.

“Spike! This isn’t helping.”

At the sound of her voice, the flare of his temper cooled as suddenly as it had ignited. When he looked back at her, the angry tension she’d seen was replaced with a cold fear. “Buffy, it said something. About keeping you here as a sacrifice. You know about that?”

She crossed her arms defensively, as lost for an answer as he was. “Only what you heard it say, that it would release the first demons from this Deep Well thingy. You know about that?”

“No.” He shrugged. “Never heard of it before. I mean we’ve all heard about the Old Ones, but they’re supposed to be dead. We need to find out about the well, and soon. I…” He strode back up the length of the aisle, drawing close again. He said lowly and tenderly: “I don’t know what The First could make me do. That’s why if you need to when the time comes you’ll have to stop me. Not losing you.”

“Spike. It’s not going to happen. I won’t let it. When this is over we’ll go back to the Retreat. They still have some books there. There might be something in one of them.”

“Okay. Research.” Spike nodded, but he didn’t seem to relish the idea.

That made two of them. “I know. I wish Giles was here.”

“Yeah, I’m sure old Rupert would know a thing or two,” he agreed, absently. His attention had drifted back to the walls of the church. “There another way out of this place?” he asked, turning and stalking back toward the chancel.

“I don’t know, I didn’t—” As he passed the ornate lattice of the rood screen and stepped up onto the dais, she went to follow him, but she stopped as she felt the floor beneath her shake. The movement was almost imperceptible, but she’d experienced earth tremors before and she knew what they felt like. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” Spike asked, unconcerned. Finding no exits in the area behind the altar, he gave up and his attention fell upon the headless corpse still sprawled on its back across the altar cloth.

“I don’t know. Maybe I imagined a quake or… Never mind.” Maybe it had been her imagination after all. England didn’t have earthquakes, or at least she didn’t think so. She pushed it out of her mind as she watched Spike brush a finger across the dry pool of dark blood under the vicar’s chest, wrinkling her nose at the sight. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything vampiric and gross because if he put that finger anywhere near his mouth she would have to rethink this whole relationship thing. Reality really lacked the soft focus of her memories sometimes.

“I didn’t feel—” Spike broke off as the whole church shuddered. As he looked around to find out why, a hand shot up from the headless body and clamped itself to his neck, its bloated partner joining it to capture him in a fierce stranglehold.

Buffy staggered, clutching onto the pews as she struggled to keep her balance. She couldn’t help him. In their private chapels at the edge of the nave, the local great and good had awoken where they had been interred; their skeletal fists punching through the sides of their knightly tombs, the heavy stone pulverised by undead strength. Still dead, still not living, they too answered the muster of their unholy master. Those that had been laid to rest in the fair earth outside were not the only ones The First had roused from their eternal sleep it seemed.

Realising the incipient danger, Buffy shoved the pews apart; searching desperately for the axe Spike had tossed aside while they were barricading the door. She could just see it poking out from under the pew in front, its handle lying just out of reach beside the vicar’s lost head.

Spike prised the decomposing fingers from his neck and shoved the vicar away. "Dead here,” he told the flailing body as it bounced off the altar and fell to the floor into a spray of fallen petals from a wilting wedding arrangement. “What's choking me supposed to do?"

Buffy scrabbled under the pew for the lost weapon, kicking away moldy hands that grabbed at her legs until her hand closed around the axe’s haft. When she sprung back up, Spike was already there, ripping the corpse’s head from the rest of its desiccated remains. But as she readied the axe to pitch in, the spectres emerged one by one through the walls of the hallowed sanctuary with piteous cries. Insubstantial and angry, the phantoms passed through old stone that was no barrier to those stuck in a state between the spirit and the flesh. Buffy froze as they closed in. Her limbs refused to obey her, suddenly paralysed and drained of all energy as their darkness tugged at her life force. Drenched with cold and a bitter acid dread, she longed again for the void of death and her afterlife of peace.

“Buffy!” She felt Spike grab her arm, pulling at her sleeve, trying to make her come with him, but she couldn’t go. She had to stay and wait for them to return her to the quiet of her grave. “C’mon!”

She opened her mouth to speak, but no words made it out.

Spike tugged at her coat again, more desperately this time. Tossing the skull aside, he stomped a heavy boot down through its cranium to stop it from snapping at his foot and grabbed her with both hands, giving her a vigorous shake. “There has to be another door near the tower, c’mon!”

She sank back into her own head, her eyes drooping sleepily as her mind started to drift away. She felt her legs sag and give way, reality swimming before her as her soul reached out for its immortal release.

“Buffy! Stay with me. It’s all a lie.” She could hear the panicked note in his voice and his strong arms supporting her, propping her up, not letting her crumble, but he sounded so remote and distant his words were almost lost. “Buffy, we have to g—”

As her eyes closed, the air seemed to expand and explode. The windows blew apart in a waterfall cascade of stained glass splinters and the church filled with a warm, brilliant light; divine and white but dappled with Technicolor. The brightness forced her eyes back open even as it dazzled her and she covered her eyes with her arm, squinting past their cover to see a clear blue daylight sky through the empty Gothic arches.

She was still aware of Spike, his hands gripping her arms tightly enough to bruise, but he was falling away, pulling her with him, tumbling backwards onto the hard floor between the pews.

And he was screaming.

Chapter 24 – Icarus

The whole church shone. Beams of light so brilliant it was like staring for too long at the California sun: too bright to watch, too intense, too painful.

Spike’s screams had become rasping snarls filled with agonies. A punk Icarus too close to a vicious sun, the strange sunshine flooding in through the shattered windows was too strong for him to bear. The light poured into the nave like a cleansing tsunami heaven-sent to purify the malevolent night. It took back to the divine what the profane had defiled with innocent blood and Buffy feared the thin strips of weak shade underneath the pews were not nearly enough to protect his undead flesh from its scouring. She stretched herself back over his chest in the desperate hope she was doing enough to shield him from crumbling to dust in her arms. Her small body was poor protection from the savage glare, but his skin had already begun to sizzle with a sickening hiss and there was no other shelter she could offer.

Too harsh to escape, the light washed away colours and drowned shadows as it intensified, whitewashing the walls, arches and dark sacred hollows to a stark monochrome. But she couldn’t afford to close her eyes, not yet, even though they stung and had begun to pool with tears which softened the edges of her vision and made the church look like a painting brushed in lipid watercolours. Through this watery lens the arches rose above her like a series of tall waterfalls, solemn cascades in a river of luminescence, the sagging wedding blooms hung from them brought back to life as bubbling spray crashing upon the rocky pews at the feet of the columns. Beyond them, the altar seemed vague, a boxy island in the torrent, but the vivid spring emerald of the altar cloth had become sallow and liquid, the intricate patterns embroidered onto the fabric and the gruesome trail of dry anaemic blood that stained the thin thread lost as the colours ran and bled into each other. Even the shimmering gold cross had faded into a formless, unrecognisable blob, bleached and pallid against the now drab cloth.

With no darkness left to sustain their tainted counterfeit of life, the revenant dead shrank away; crawling back into the silent refuge of their dark holes or, like the wraiths, curling away into charcoal smoke as they let cry one last shriek of hideous complaint. As the last of them fell mute, the banging on the church door ceased; the high tide of the risen ebbing as they returned to their desecrated graves.

Their racket was replaced by a sudden and reverent silence, the world falling still for a long moment out of time. As life and death reorganised themselves back into their proper order, Buffy felt something shift inside her, an odd movement of her being; as if the universe was clicking her soul back into position. The unbearable pressure of the wraith’s calls lifted from her like a heavy, suffocating veil to reveal how false their entreaties had been. A while ago she might have given anything to join them, to regain a longed for peace that had been ripped away, but that was then and for all the upheaval her life had seen since she didn’t seek death just yet. Finally, with a new lightness inside, she let her eyes fall shut.

The weird sunlight didn’t last. After a few minutes it slowly relented. Like a flare giving up all hope of rescue, it dropped in intensity, fading from dazzling to daylight to a brief, deepening dusk. As the church settled back into tranquil, moonlit shadows again, full dark returned and Buffy opened her eyes to a black world, deep and impenetrable.

She wiped a hand across her face, sweeping away the tears and trying to blink away the fuzzy constellation of polka dot stars burnt into her retinas. “The hell…?“

Spike didn’t reply. Instead he released a heavy, relieved sigh and let his head slump to the floor.

Gently, she prised his tense fingers from her arms and rolled off his chest onto her knees. She was worried about him, but he was solid and substantial and wasn’t on fire, and so was unlikely to dust if she left him for a minute to check for any more dangers. Even though her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, she peered out over the back of the pew. The church seemed to be smothered in a quiet calm. Nothing moved in the shadows or hollered a war cry from a undead throat. They appeared to be alone.

Relieved – nothing to worry about except a whole undead army blocking their way home – she sat back on her heels and looked down at Spike. “It’s okay, they’ve gone.”

He nodded, slowly heaving himself up to sit beside her. “About time.”

“What was that?” she wondered aloud, not really expecting him to have the answer.

“Not a buggering clue.” He hissed as he shrugged stiffly. “Ow. Bloody hurt though.”

“Are you okay?” she asked, not seeing anything wrong. He was nothing but a black shape tipped with silver where his hair caught the moonlight, but she couldn’t forget the terrible sounds he’d been making. She reached out to help him somehow, soothe him maybe, but as she touched his hand he snatched it away.

“Bit sore, pet,” he croaked apologetically, lifting his head out of the shadows. His exposed skin looked angry and red, just like he was a real boy who’d fallen asleep on a beach in the mid-day sun. In some places it was already beginning to blister and peel. “Nothing to worry about.”

She had her doubts; he looked so raw, but her concern could wait until they had figured out the cause of the mysterious light. If it happened again they needed to be ready for it. The sunlight – if that was what it really was – hadn’t felt evil though, like something The First would conjure, and it had driven the dead back to their rest, but she already knew that it wasn’t divine in any way – slayers didn’t get that kind of intervention. Instead it had felt more like being caught in a nuclear blast or standing too close to a star. Spike, pinned under her body where they’d fallen, had been protected from its full strength, but he was lucky not to have crumbled to powder a second time.

If she hadn’t fallen across him…

She didn’t think anymore, suppressing the cold fear scything through her, and just kissed him.

If she’d thought it through rationally, she wouldn’t have expected him to respond, maybe ducking out from under her searching lips as he tried to re-establish the distance between them, but instead he grabbed her, wincing a little with the pain, but kissing her back forcefully as if this was what he’d wanted all along.

A perfect moment became captured in one kiss. She shut her eyes, her hands gripping his arms, clenching the leather of his coat tighter and tighter after every second they were connected. She'd forgotten! Forgotten how great the soft swell of his lips felt against her mouth, how his touch made her feel so, so good. She never wanted to forget again, never, because this was what she had been missing all this time; that fission fusion, ying yang push-pull of their auras that drew them together, pitching light against dark in such wonderful ways; a struggle as old as the sun and the moon themselves.

And how different this was from the all the kisses they’d shared before, when she’d been so wrapped up in her own misery that she hadn’t noticed his. In her life she'd tasted young love, remorse, hopeless longing and, all too often, despair on another’s lips, but this kiss was in another class. This was one of those moments she’d tried to deny, when heat expanded like a supernova inside them, the same intense passion there had always been causing her to tingle all over with excited sparkles that exploded in her fingers and toes. A churning whirlpool of lust spun in her stomach as the kiss lingered; past passion into the barest of touches, a connection between them that neither wished to break.

They always came back to each other; to this now… though what this was exactly she couldn’t put a name to. A tangled knot of opposing feelings had warred within her. She knew they weren’t soul mates or anything fanciful like that, most of the time she’d known him she’d wished him a swift dusty death and meant it, but she had the fleeting thought that maybe they had become tied together somehow, tangled up on a tether that reached even through dimensions and death. How they’d got to this, she couldn’t say; but she couldn’t help wondering if this thing between them that kept drawing them to each other had all been part of some spell, perhaps even a residue effect of mistaken magic that had bound them together in a twisted arranged marriage. Maybe that spell of Willow’s had had much deeper consequences than a whole lot of red-faced embarrassment.

Whatever it was, whatever they’d felt, at some point it had deepened; Buffy couldn't quite pin down the exact instant when Spike had gone from murderous annoyance to sex-on-a-stick, but she guessed it had been something to do with her death. His weight, plummeting with guilt and grief, had somehow accentuated his best features and suddenly, tall, looming hunks were as out as last season’s hottest shoes and in came short, lean, muscular punks in mean leather and silver jewellery. If she’d realised just how deep a punk-rock, beached blond, irritating vampire could worm his way into her heart, she could have defended herself. Without a soul he would always be Mr. So Very Very Wrong, but that was no longer an issue. So here he was, Mr. Can't Live Without back from the dead again, cocky and coarse and with a soul just for her. She would not squander her second chance.

When they finally broke apart, his smile was warm, as happy as any she'd seen him wear, but when she looked up at him, trying to decipher his deeper mysteries in the soft moonlight, she saw a wariness there that lingered in his eyes as if he still couldn't believe this to be true. But he held her gaze and she saw there the same devotion she’d denied, buried under the doubt and the hope and the fear and the elation. She wanted so much to reassure him that this time she would get it right, but this wasn’t time for words. She said it all with another kiss.

When that was over she reluctantly pulled away. She licked her lips absently. “We had better go.”

“Yeah,” he replied, his rumbling voice scratchy and low, a promise for more to come.

She dropped her eyes and turned away, breaking the moment. She might even have blushed. If she kept her eyes locked with his, they might never leave and she seriously needed a shower. “Um. There’s—“

She never finished her sentence.

A whiplash crack of thunder rent the air and the church door imploded inwards, wrenched violently off its mangled hinges by the blast. The pew that had wedged it shut was propelled backwards, smashing against carved stone, the old wood pulverised into matchwood. As it fell to the floor, nothing more now than sharp, toothpick splinters, a dark figure stepped into the doorway, terrible in silhouette.

“Willow!” At the sight of the witch standing in the porch, hair bleached silver with raw magic billowing around her head at the centre of its own cyclone, angry ivory whips lashing at the air above her, Buffy brightened into a relieved grin.

Following Buffy’s voice, Hurricane Willow turned her head. For a second she still looked inhuman as she scanned the church for her friend, something capricious and elemental. Sparks still zipped and snapped from her fingers, her eyes fathoms deep with magic, but the impression was gone the instant she saw Buffy. Her power started to dissipate, colour flushing into her pupils and her hair bleeding back to red as the magic drained away.

A normal girl again, she gave Buffy a goofy smile in return.

Buffy pulled away from Spike and jumped to her feet, rushing down the nave to throw her arms around her friend. "Will! You're here! What happened? The First was outside. It had an army.”

“Yeah, we saw it.” Willow smile upped in wattage to become a broad grin. “Most of them are all dead or dusty now. The rest fled back into the woods.”

Of course, Buffy realised, a bright, uncanny light from out of nowhere – a spell. “That light. That was you?”

“Tara’s little sunshine spell. I tweaked it a bit,” Willow nodded proudly. “Okay, a lot.”

“Careful where you’re firing it next time, Red.”

As Spike spoke and emerged from the shadows, Willow’s sweet grin evaporated and she darkened; hair turning to russet, auburn, black. The glittering softness in her eyes hardened to flint. Her hand shot out and he froze mid-step, locked into freeze frame.

“Willow, no!” Buffy pleaded, moving herself between Spike and the witch. “It’s just Spike.”

Before Willow could answer, Giles appeared at her shoulder. He looked tired and worn, worry carving deep lines into his forehead, but he still looked dangerous and determined, a worthy adversary to anything evil foolish enough to cross his path.

“No, Buffy, it’s The First.” he told her, not greeting Buffy with any friendliness. There was work to be done and this wasn’t the time for happy reunions. “Please stand aside.”

“Giles! No!” Buffy protested, worried that this stand off was going to end up like a gunfight at the Not-Okay Corral. “Believe me, this is Spike. I know it. The First is out there somewhere.” She waved her arm in the vague direction of outside.

Willow’s glare seemed to waver. She gave Giles an anxious glance.

He stepped forward with an arm outstretched, trying to soothe and reassure her like she was an uneasy thoroughbred. “Buffy. I know these past few months have been difficult and you have lost a lot, including Spike. But this is not the Spike you knew. Something happened in Los Angeles, Buffy. The First has changed…”

“Giles, I know,” Buffy couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “I’m not jumping to conclusions because I want him back. The First is solid and it’s wearing Spike’s face. I’ve seen them both. Tonight. Together. In the both in the same place standing next to each other kind of together.” She gestured to Spike beside her, as still as a statue sculpted in ebony and alabaster. “And this one is Spike.”

Giles stopped and straightened. “Are you sure?”

“A million percent sure.” Buffy nodded. “I can tell the difference, Giles.”

“Hmmm.” he pondered as he gave Spike a critical inspection. Buffy bit down on her anger as she saw him weighing up the pros and cons of trusting her judgement. After all that had happened he still couldn’t quite accept that she was an adult capable of putting her feelings to one side.

Eventually he seemed to come to a conclusion and gestured for Willow to stand down. She lowered her arm sheepishly and she lightened again.

Spike, staggering slightly as he was released from his temporal trap, snapped. “Watch it, Red. This body’s brand new. Not likely to get another one!”

Willow's eyes grew huge as she realised he really was Spike. "Wow, then it's true! You're back."

Spike shrugged, using nonchalance to cover the awkwardness. "Just took a bit of a detour getting here."

“Two of them!” Giles sighed, rubbing his face with a hand. “As if one wasn’t enough already.”

Buffy chose to ignore that. “So how did you know we needed help?

"Giles got a call from Angel,” Willow said, picking her way through the debris she’d made to join Giles in the nave. Her nose wrinkled as she caught the stink of death that hung in the air. “He said you might need some Scooby assistance."

“Yes,” Giles added. “I believe Wesley found out something about the First's plan. Angel thought you should know. They're on their way."

Buffy ’s stomach dropped like a runaway elevator, hitting the bottom with a smash. "Angel's coming here?"

Spike snorted with disgust or contempt. Probably both. "Great, might have known the old bugger couldn't leave it alone. Still can't trust me, can he?"

"There’s a lot of that going round,” Buffy said acidly, but she put her irritation with Giles aside. “So how did you even get into the village?” she asked. “There's a spell..."

"Yeah, it's a really strong one too. We had to punch our way through it,” Willow gave the air a half-hearted right hook with her delicate fist.

“Indeed,” Giles agreed. “The village has been pulled into another reality…”

Buffy couldn’t resist. “Another dimension? Is there shrimp?”

“Yes, I believe so. Buffy. Please pay attention,” Unconsciously, Giles removed his glasses and started to polish them. This discussion was getting all too familiar; she might have been back at High School getting her daily Giles-lecture. “As I was saying, this village has been pulled into another reality, as it were, but we’re in nothing as complicated as a whole dimension. We’re within a spell. A powerful one that is holding us out of phase with the rest of the world, but the village remains real and physical. Unless they know it is here, people will subconsciously avoid the area, but once they find a way in they cannot escape. They get caught here.”

Buffy thought that over. Absently, she rubbed her biceps. Spike had held them so tightly she would have a bloom of bruises by morning. “A bit like a magical spider’s web?”

“That would be an excellent analogy. Yes, indeed it is.”

Spike nodded in that way he did when he was mulling things over. “It’s a trap. Lures you in, keeps you going round in circles til it drives you bonkers.”

“It’s like the whole village is contained in this big invisible bubble,” Willow threw her arms out wide to demonstrate her point and Buffy didn’t miss they way Spike dodged warily out of their range. “We had to ignore what our eyes were telling us and drive straight into it."

“We break the spell then.” Spike said firmly. “Get the hell away from here.”

Buffy perked up at that. "Great, that means we can leave."

"Not really,” Giles just had to pour cold water on an awesome plan. “We could break the spell, but for the moment I’m not sure that’s wise.” he explained, “As it is, The First has contained its armies within the village and the spell, but that only means they’re just as stuck as we are. They cannot harm anyone outside the boundaries. We may find it prudent to keep them here for as long as possible.”

Buffy slumped back down onto a vacant pew. “So what do we do?”

I’m getting too old for this.

Giles put down his heavy book and attempted to stifle a yawn, settling back into the comforting embrace of one of the Retreat’s wide leather chairs. The old, quality hide smelled of luxury and canny occultism: a heavy tang of expensive cigars and herby smoke from powerful spellwork. It was easy to feel invincible in these antique chairs, knowing that from such seats the Council had protected the world for generations, saving people from the dead that did not die and from other entities that wished to pierce the veils between dimensions to invade this one, but their enemy this time was wily, powerful and ancient, and it had already claimed dozens of their lives. They couldn’t allow their victories to make them complacent. The First would regroup and refresh its assault; of that they could be certain.

He hoped that time wouldn’t be right now. He was exhausted. He’d driven through the night, discussing with Willow what they might face and making plans to fight back; and on their return to the Retreat he’d thrown himself into yet more research. But he no longer had Willow’s youthful vigour or Buffy’s relentless stamina; he was well past forty and the adrenalin of the fight was slipping away, his body needed its rest. However, before he had any chance of turning in, he needed to discuss what he’d found with Buffy.

Only Buffy had disappeared. Almost as soon as they had arrived back at the Retreat she had vanished, claiming she needed a shower and a change of clothes. Willow’s magic made the lights work, the kitchens operate and the heating blast much needed warmth into the frigid rooms and the temptation offered by a torrent of hot water from the house’s antique showerheads was too much for Buffy to resist. Giles couldn’t disagree; she’d been covered from head to toe in blood and dirt and god knew what – heaven alone knew what she’d been facing to get that filthy – but he hoped she wouldn’t take long; the Retreat did have rather comfortable beds…

He jerked awake as the door snapped shut. He could only have dozed off for a few minutes as the murky dusk seeping in from between the curtains was still a leaden grey. The new day was not to begin with the golden light of a bright, hopeful dawn, but had started as it meant to go on; with grubby, iron-clad clouds that looked like they had come straight from a Turner painting without stopping for a wash first. A spatter of drizzly rain flecked the window with bitter spittle as the heavy clouds pushed the sky back down onto the earth, blending each to the other with a thin, listless mist. It was a day for planning, not war.

Giles shifted the big book from his lap and placed it on the table beside his half empty teacup, using the movement as an excuse to peer around the edge of the large chair to see the new arrival. He was hoping it might be Buffy, or perhaps Willow returning from the storerooms where the magic supplies were kept, but it was Spike that had breezed into the room from the reception hall. He was heading towards the small, well-stocked bar with a purpose.

Giles had fully expected Spike to have joined Buffy upstairs, but the vampire been prowling the house protectively, looking for any unwanted supernatural guests that remained. Whatever Buffy was doing in her room, the vampire was obviously not invited to share. Giles took that as the small comfort it most definitely was.

"Cosy little pile you got here," Spike said conversationally, but Giles couldn’t miss the unapologetic scowl that accompanied his words, just daring Giles to comment now Buffy was out of sight. There was no love lost in that withering glower and Giles couldn’t blame him; the hostility was entirely mutual. His feelings on the Spike issue were no longer just academic or based on a solid foundation of Council doctrine. His dislike had moved through all of that and had settled into personal.

“The Council has always looked after itself very well,” he reluctantly agreed. For all the Council’s faults, he’d rather not have creatures such as Spike point them out to him.

“Bet it has,” Spike poured himself a generous measure of their finest Scotch without offering to pour a glass for Giles. “Bunch of old gits sitting around with a nice brandy by the fire while the Slayer does all the dirty work for them.”

“Spike,” Giles sighed, retreating back into the chair and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I have no desire to have this argument with you. I agree that throughout much of the Council’s history, the Slayer has been considered an expendable commodity, as I am sure you know all too well. However, our present circumstances, with the hundreds of Slayers that have been called, will give the Council little choice but to change.”

“Yeah, right,” Spike snorted dismissively. “I bet the Council is still full of wankers looking to line their pockets from their old boys club. Can’t see any of the nice stuff filtering down to the rank and file.”

Spike’s all too accurate assessment made Giles grimace, and he was very glad the vampire couldn’t see his face, hidden as it was by the huge leather chair. It made him wonder just how much the undead populace knew about internal Council politics and the secrets that they had fought for centuries to protect. Certainly, Spike was an unusual case in the company he’d kept these past few years in Sunnydale, but it wouldn’t have surprised Giles if he’d known much more than that all along. There were plenty of higher demons that had sought to dabble in Council intrigue just for the fun of it and Spike had always appeared to be reasonably well connected.

He was spared having to reply, and telling Spike about the bursaries he had planned for the younger slayers, by Buffy returning, freshly bathed and clean. She took a seat on the elegant couch by the fire, still running a brush through her long golden hair. Giles didn’t fail to notice the way Spike drifted from the bar to hover nearby. He didn’t join her, Giles noted, as if he was still unsure of how close to her he was welcome to get, but to Giles’s great disappointment he returned the warm smile Buffy gave to him.

If they thought they were fooling him, they were very much mistaken. Whatever was going on between these two was fresh and renewed and so much more relaxed than before, bubbling to the surface in the easy smiles and longing looks they exchanged. If they hadn’t resumed their physical relationship just yet, Giles guessed that it wouldn’t take long. But for all the giddy lightness they were sharing, something was still keeping Spike at a hesitant distance. He could only guess at the cause, but it appeared that the issues between them, some now so painfully old, still remained relevant, preventing the relationship from achieving full bloom. Yet their continuing bond was no secret and hadn’t been for awhile. Everyone who had been living in the over-crowded house on Revello Drive with all the potential slayers had seen the way these two were still attracted each other. With everyone crammed into every last space during that tense time, the sexual tension between the slayer and the vampire had been tangible, sizzling in the air whenever they were in the same room – which was often, as they’d been rarely far from each other.

There had always been only two ways their relationship could go, Giles supposed, and he had been content as long as the seething hatred had been in the ascendant. But those days when he’d thought of the vampire as some sort of Morningstar, beautiful and terrible, charming and evil, with black wings clipped back to a long coat to walk amongst men were long gone. Since then Spike had changed beyond recognition and in Giles’ more whimsical moments even he’d had to confess that he’d considered whether perhaps he’d been wrong. The love between Spike and Buffy was evident in their every interaction, different and deeper than the teen-love she'd shared with Angel, but no less important or heartfelt. They knew each other so well, fighting beautifully as a team, instinctual and well matched. If he still didn't have his doubts over Spike, or if he could somehow stop being a vampire or erase his murderous past, then he would have to reluctantly give his blessing. He didn't have that luxury though; he had a duty to the slayers and to the world. Spike was a killer and whether he repented or not, that would never change. He had the blood of two slayers dripping from his hands, hands that had stripped so many others of their lives without remorse. Such atrocities, committed soulless or not, could never be forgotten.

This additional headache was one he could well do without, what with The First’s return and the Council elections, but this time he wouldn’t interfere, despite the inevitable pain the relationship would eventually bring. Their being together might be against everything he had ever been taught and his own instincts too, slayer and vampire, mortal and immortal, and there was no way any good could come out of this, but he knew his opinions would never sway Buffy once she had made up her mind; maybe this time the headstrong slayer would learn from her mistakes.

But there were more important matters to hand.

Foregoing the large whiskey he felt he needed but feared might send him right back to sleep again, he straightened in his chair and got down to business. On their way back to the Retreat, Buffy had told them more about the return of The First, but not the detail.

“Buffy,” he prompted. “Please start from the beginning. What happened here?”

Buffy put the brush down on the arm of her chair, gently running a finger over the bristles, back and forth, back and forth. “The First, its back and it looks like Spike. I tried but I couldn’t stake it. It has an army and it wants to sacrifice me, but not before it’s played with me first. Is that enough? I thought this was over, Giles! We beat it. We kicked its butt!”

“And you expected it to be pleased about that? The First Evil is a primal force of the universe, Buffy. You cannot defeat it any more than you can defeat death—”

Buffy coughed and Spike raised an ironically quizzical brow.

“…well mostly,” Giles continued. “Eventually death will conquer us all…”

“Even if it takes a couple of attempts, right?” Buffy smiled.

Giles returned her smile with a resigned nod. The less they thought of that, the better.

“So what do we do, Giles? Just accept it’ll win and we die? That’s not really my style.”

“I don’t know. Not yet. The First merely lost the battle in Sunnydale, but this war isn’t over. By calling all these girls as slayers, we may well have disturbed the delicate balance of good and evil. We should have expected The First to retaliate."

“Okay. So why this place?” Buffy gestured to the house and at the dreary landscape outside. “Why lure me out to the land of no shops?”

Lure. Lured. The word sent a chill through Giles as he realised what she was saying. He’d been manipulated into sending Buffy here for a purpose. Suddenly Wyndham-Pryce’s plans became clearer. This wasn’t just a way to bribe him into stepping down from an election; there were deeper conspiracies at work. In the rush to come to Buffy’s aid, Giles had forgotten he’d seen a Bringer bundling Wyndham-Pryce into a car. That was the last he’d seen of the man. Such an action could only mean one thing: The First’s spies had been within the Council all along.

The implications were startling and far-reaching. Had Wyndham-Pryce been conspiring against them? And if so, for how long? Such a betrayal answered questions Giles hadn’t dared ask. As a trusted, senior member of the Council, Wyndham-Pryce could have told The First’s envoys anything without challenge, he may even have planted the bomb that had destroyed their headquarters, slaughtering his own colleagues in return for the Council leadership. The First’s own agent installed as the head of its main opponents.

That thought renewed Giles commitment to ending this war here and now. They could not go on like this, fighting skirmish after skirmish until every one of them was dead. The First could fight a war forever, but they were just mortal people. Even the Council, with its long, long history that wound back to times unrecorded, was just an upstart to such an entity. Somehow their strategy needed to contain a decisive stroke.

“I do believe the reason you’re here is this.” Giles picked up the book he’d been reading and opened it at the page he’d marked. He stretched over and handed it to Buffy.

“The Deeper Well,” Buffy took the book, barely glancing at it before she looked up, preferring her answers to come from him rather than dry, printed words she couldn’t be bothered to read. “The First mentioned that. What is it?”

“It is a burial ground. Of a sort,” he explained, taking a fortifying sip of his lukewarm tea. “Supposedly, a hole in the world so deep it runs right through to the other side. It dates from an age when demons were ascendant on the earth. They would place their honoured dead inside the well to await their rebirth.”

Buffy leant forward earnestly. “These demons, Giles, The First wants to wake them up. This would be bad. Really bad.”

“Indeed it would. The Council is well aware of that. This house was not just built as a training centre, Buffy. It had a very specific secondary purpose: to guard the Well.”

Spike laughed bitterly at that. “Guarding it in comfort. Quite the sacrifice you lot made.”

“Spike, please listen.” Giles would have snapped, but he wasn’t going to give Spike the pleasure. He scratched his head wearily instead. “These demons are the Old Ones, pure demons of untainted blood. They only sleep and in the right circumstances they can be awoken. A being such as The First would gain much from rousing such creatures.”

“By sacrificing Buffy?” Spike interrupted again, edging nearer to her.

Giles nodded gravely; trust Spike to cut straight to the only point that concerned him. “I believe any slayer would be suitable, but as you both have a prior history with The First, it may well be looking for its revenge.”

“I’m sick of The First.” Buffy snapped the book shut and threw it onto the couch beside her. “Can’t we find a way to destroy it or banish it or something?”

"Buffy, The First Evil is a primordial being, part of the fabric of the universe. We cannot destroy it forever any more than we could alter gravity or turn back time. Something about you caught its interest, either your resurrection or the arrival of another souled vampire.” Giles glanced at Spike, who frowned in return. “These are things that are not meant to be. On the most basic metaphysical level, you're both out of your pre-ordained roles and this has disturbed the balance in Good's favour. The First is merely trying to redress that discrepancy."

Spike contemplated his Scotch as he swirled it the around his glass. "So something awful has to happen?"

"Good lord, I hope not.” The thought of that possibility was enough to cause Giles to pale. “Let's just say that the First will return and that we should be vigilant and prepared."

"So, you are saying we should just let it win?" Buffy chipped in.

"It will attempt to press any advantage it can until there is an excess of Evil. Don't doubt that."

“Giles.” She gave him a hard stare. “You’re being avoidy.”

“Buffy, I don’t know all the answers. But the Equinox is tomorrow; we should be as prepared as we can be. I think perhaps now is a good time for us to get some rest. Maybe when—” Giles broke off as he heard voices in the hall.

Before he could react, Buffy had shot to her feet, immediately slipping into a fighting stance, primed and ready for battle. Spike was suddenly at her side, covering her flank; but Giles noticed how much looser his posture was, still deadly but less focused than Buffy’s; seemingly less worried about the potential of a fight.

Curious, Giles stood up and tried to hear for himself what was going on outside the door. The heavy wood muffled the sound and he strained to make out the identities of the speakers. He didn’t doubt that with his sharper vampiric hearing, Spike could hear everything being said, but the only voice Giles could recognise at this distance was Willow’s and he couldn’t hear her well enough to make out what she was saying. At least two males replied, both speaking at the same time, but the frequency of both voices was too low to distinguish their words. By his tone and the way he talked over the other, Giles could tell at least of them was angry.

Then Willow shouted, “Wait!” and the door flew open, smashing back into the wall. For a moment, Angel filled the doorway like a towering thunderhead; his eyes scanning the room for his quarry.

His glare settled on Spike.

It was The First’s sheer gall that Angel couldn’t take.

As if it really was the vampire whose face it wore, it smirked at him and slipped an arm around Buffy’s waist. From Spike the possessiveness in that gesture would have been enough to stoke Angel’s fury, but the sight of The First holding Buffy to its side as if it belonged there caused the bubbling magma chamber of anger that had been rumbling inside him during the flight to England to swell and erupt to the surface, exploding in a thunderous roar as he vamped and launched himself at the usurper.

Helplessly swept up by Angel’s momentum, the entity was ripped from Buffy like a sapling uprooted by a pyroclastic flow stripping a mountain valley of forest. Its body slammed into the wall behind with such force that the wall shuddered, cracking the plaster and dislodging a priceless Gainsborough whose subject, until a moment before, had serenely overseen events with a noble silence

The painting swung ominously on its fixings before it clattered to the floor and flopped shamefully face first onto the carpet. But Angel couldn’t care less about the fate of the painting. He clamped his fingers around the fake Spike’s neck with a bruising grip, the same rough hold that had claimed so many innocent lives by his hand. Pressing his face in close to the entity’s, nose to nose, he snarled, “Don’t move.”

Buffy was at Angel’s side in an instant. He kept his eyes of the fake Spike, not risking looking away for an instant unless it pressed its advantage, even as Buffy grabbed his arm and tugged.

“What are you doing?” she yelled, her anger blazing as brightly as his own, its heat evident in the screech of her voice and the tremble in her fingers curled around his arm.

Angel shoved her aside with his free arm, redoubling his grip on the impostor’s throat. He pulled it up off its feet and held it at the end of his long reach. “Buffy, I’m sorry. Trust me on this. This isn’t the Spike you think you know.”

“I tried to explain!” Willow appeared at her friend’s side so quickly Angel suspected magical assistance. “They wouldn’t listen!”

“Perhaps I’d–” Giles offered, stepping forward to intervene, but Buffy cut him off with a swipe of her hand and a gesture for him to stay back.

By now The First was flailing helplessly, its feet scrabbling to find the floor as it struggled. “I’m not—“ it gurgled as it tried to speak through the compression of its windpipe.

“Shut up,” Angel hissed at it. “We know who you really are.”

“Angel,” Buffy pleaded. “Listen to me. Spike isn’t The First!”

A small piece of his heart broke to hear the desperation in her voice, the love; the love that had once shone so much for him but now burned for another; for Spike of all vampires. And the hurt was all the worse for the mockery The First was making of it; but whatever Buffy thought she felt, Angel wasn’t fooled by The First’s fakery. “Wesley, the binding spell. Now!”

At the summons, Wesley strode in from the hall. An intricate chant of precisely accented Latin flowed from his tongue as he recited a spell from the pages of a large, ancient book. The chant tied knots with words, tight half-hitches of arcane verse weaving into a golden shimmering rope that burst from his outstretched hand, binding The First in a tangled lasso of sentence and phrase. The entity struggled, but for all its efforts, it only bound itself more tightly until the only movement it could make was a furious twitch in its jaw.

Angel relaxed, just a little, loosening his hold but not relinquishing it. The spell, Wesley had assured him during their flight, was a strong one, and Angel wished wistfully that he’d known about it all those times past when he’d wanted the real Spike to shut up. However, Wesley had made it clear that while a spell of this kind might be effective enough to bind anything for a short time; it was too weak to hold such a powerful force as The First for more than a few seconds. Angel just hoped it would be long enough to apply their real plan.

The slow constriction of the golden rope brought Angel enough time as it bound to really see Spike’s carbon copy up close. It was amazing; every detail complete in reproduction; from the scimitar cheekbones, to the impertinent leer that curved on its upper lip. Even the scar slashing through its quirked brow was perfect and correct. It was hard to believe it wasn’t Spike staring back at him with that ever-present challenge in his eye.

Buffy had seemingly given up on breaching the wall of Angel’s determination and she turned desperately to Wesley instead. “If you don’t end this, I will stop you.”

Angel glared at her, willing her to see the danger she was facing. “Buffy, no!”

For a brief moment Wesley hesitated and he looked up from the book, but the set line of his mouth hardened. “I’m truly sorry, Buffy.”

As Wesley picked up the chant again from where he’d left off, Angel noticed Buffy’s brows knit as her eyes narrowed, her already dark expression blackening further.

“Just stop a second!” she snapped and, before Angel could warn her, she stepped into the path of the magic rope.

Cut sharply from its target, the incomplete spell fell apart and the golden cords frayed and split into a bucking tail of delicate filaments. The flailing ends snatched ineffectually at Buffy’s body for a long moment unable to attach or find purchase, before disintegrating into soft, fey motes of light that faded slowly like firework sparks.

“Keep going,” Angel growled at Wesley dangerously, ignoring the pretty lights.

Wesley tried to pick up the chant again, but now the flow of the spell was broken. Anxiously, he started flicking back through his book to the beginning of the incantation.

Angel turned back to The First. It was grinning at him.

“Piss off,” it spluttered. “Take your great hands off me.”

Angel released his grip and The First crumpled to the floor. He hadn’t meant to let go, but his hand didn’t seem to want to obey orders. Not his orders anyway. He headed for the door.

Wesley looked up from the book in surprise. “Angel?”

Angel stopped, realising what he was leaving the room for no reason of his own. The fury inside him started to boil again as he realised that The First could command him do anything, even to ‘piss off’ if it liked. Its power over the dead was annoyingly potent even now stuck in a body of undead flesh.

Channelling all his fury and frustration, he threw off The First’s command to leave and lunged forward to grab it again; reaching out to haul it up by his collar. But this time Buffy intervened, smashing her fist into his chin with the full sledgehammer power of her wicked right hook. She looked as surprised as everyone else as Angel’s body tumbled backwards into a small occasional table stacked with decorative china.

"Everyone just stop!” she shouted as he hit the floor in a heap; the crash of the antique crockery smashing beneath him almost drowning out her words.

Everyone went quiet and Buffy stared down at Angel with her angriest scowl.

“Buffy,” Wesley said softly in a calm and soothing voice. “I can only imagine was you’re feeling, but this Spike, it’s not him.”

“What?” she tore her glare from Angel and fired it at Wesley instead. She held it there for a long moment before turning it onto Giles and Willow in turn. “Did you guys all get the same memo?”

“Perhaps I can explain?” Giles offered again and Angel admired the man’s persistence – and his courage.

“Yeah, about time,” The First grumbled, wiping the spout of the teapot off its jeans.

Angel shifted, his face melting back into its human features as he tried not to crunch the remains of the fine porcelain as he moved. “Giles, I think—“

The fake Spike flipped to his feet and rubbed his sore neck. “Yeah, maybe next time you should just listen. I’m not The First, you stupid git. The First is out there in the woods, doing whatever it is The First does.”

Angel looked helplessly at Buffy. “But…”

She crossed her arms, pointedly not apologising. “We know about The First. I’ve been here, fighting it. For days! So here’s the Cliff Notes: there are two of them: Spike and The First. The First looks like Spike now, but this…” She gestured to the Spike standing beside her. “This is the real deal.”

Willow nodded her agreement as she offered a hand to help Angel up. “I know it sounds sorta strange, but it’s true. Giles and I saw them both.”

Angel took her hand and scrambled up. As he brushed himself down, he tried to regain some of his lost dignity. Damn The First and its control over him…



But this Spike wasn’t The First after all.

Angel stared down at his traitorous fingers. Astounded, his mouth tried to form words, but his mind failed to supply it with anything to say until he turned back to Spike; the real Spike. “What did you do?” he asked quietly.

“What? Nothing!” Spike glowered. “Don’t bloody blame me.”

Angel looked down at his hand again as if it would somehow reveal all the answers this time, but it wasn’t telling. “You did something,” he said, confused. “One second I was holding you the next I just… let go.”

Buffy eyes flicked between the two vampires. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

Angel ignored her and waved an accusing finger at Spike. ““Hold on. You told me to let go. And I did.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Spike’s sulk broke and his face brightened into a slow grin like a dawning sun breaking over the horizon. There was a wicked glint in his eyes that made Angel wonder if they had all been wrong and Spike was still evil after all. “Pinch yourself,” Spike said. “Do it hard.”

“What?” Angel immediately pinched his arm without thinking. “Ow! You… You made me do that!”

Spike opened his mouth to say more but Buffy stamped on his foot. “Don’t even,” she warned.

Wesley coughed. “I think I’ve figured out just what is happening here. Spike, when you were split from The First, it retained some of your essence, it’s only reasonable to assume that you retain some of The First’s power in return.”

Spike’s brows crinkled as he tried to work that out. “What?”

“Of course!” Giles exclaimed as he caught on. “The First can command the dead to its will. It appears that Spike may have er… inherited that particular skill.”

Buffy’s eyes flicked to Spike as she frowned. “That would have been very useful to know last night.”

“I didn’t know,” he protested, with an innocent shrug.

“How could this happen?” Willow asked, settling down to sit on the arm of one of the ample chairs. “I mean, Spike isn’t The First and he doesn’t seem to want to do any other Firsty things.”

“I believe it was the process we used at Wolfram and Hart to reconstruct Spike’s material body,” Wesley explained. “When we made him solid again, we rebuilt him from the essence that was caught as a ghost.”

“And that matters, how?” Buffy asked.

“At the time we didn’t know that what we had was Spike and The First. Somehow it seems that we remade them both as one being. However, because what we created cannot be destroyed, only unmade, when the servants of The First tried to free their master from Spike, they couldn’t quite remake it as it was before. Parts of each have remained with the other.”

“The First really got the crap end of that deal.” Angel grumbled, crossing his arms and brushing off Spike’s indignant hey! Angel sighed wearily. “Is anything else we should know?”

“Yeah, you’re a right—” Spike suggested.

“So,” Buffy interjected diplomatically, even though her expression was anything but. “What can we do about The First? I’m open to any suggestions, people.”

“Well,” Wesley started. “We might have some ideas. Angel and I, we formulated a plan with Giles…”

“Plan? You have a Plan?” She whipped round to Giles. “And you knew?”

Giles nodded solemnly as he sank back into his large, comfortable chair. “Yes, Buffy. I am aware that Angel and Wesley have figured out a solution to our problem with The First. But I’ve hardly had the time to discuss it with you.”

“Well?” she asked, impatiently. “What is it?”

Wesley patted the book in his hand. “This book contains the answers to many of our questions. Including rituals we can perform to detain and incapacitate The First Evil.”

Giles brightened when he saw the book. “Good Lord, Is that the Codex Tempus Mormundi? I thought that had been destroyed during the Reformation!”

“Patently not. I was able to acquire the volume from a dealer in Los Angeles. It appears that Wolfram and Hart can command a quite substantial discount.”

“Can we please save Book Club until later?” Buffy huffed.

“Yes, of course,” Wesley glanced at Giles, who nodded his approval for him to continue and he quickly turned his attention back to Buffy. “We cannot destroy The First Evil – in whatever form it takes – but we may be able to disable it; remove its influence as it were.”

“How?” she asked, joining the drift to settle.

She took Spike’s hand and led him to the couch, defiantly meeting Angel’s eyes for a brief moment, daring him to protest the arm that settled across her shoulders. Provocative and heartbreaking as that gesture was, Angel chose to say nothing. This wasn’t the right time to knock some sense into her head.

Oblivious or just ignoring the tension, Wesley replied, “We may be able to trap it.”

“Trap it how?” Spike asked doubtfully.

Angel fidgeted. This was probably unfair, but right now he didn’t give a shit. He drew the amulet out of his pocket; the huge jewel at its centre caught the firelight as it twisted on its chain, sending dapples of benign flame spiralling around the room.

Spike flinched, recoiling instinctively. “You can get that bloody thing away from me!”

Angel slipped it back into his pocket without a thought.

Buffy squeezed Spike’s hand firmly. “I won’t let you wear it again,” she reassured him and Angel swallowed his groan.

“The First was incapacitated as a conscious force as long as it was held inside the amulet,” Wesley continued. “We cannot take the First out of the world; it is part of its very fabric, but we can remove it from directly exercising its will.”

“We can put in back into the amulet.” Angel told them, pausing to let the revelation sink in as he rubbed his sore chin. “I’ll take it back with me. Wolfram and Hart has the facilities to hold such things indefinitely and I have some of my own scores to settle.” With that he caught Buffy’s eye and she looked away regretfully.

“Would that mean that there was no evil in the world anymore?” Willow grinned. “Nothing left to fight? No more apocalypse fun?”

Giles shook his head and Willow’s smile faded. “The very fact that the First Evil is called ‘The First’ would intimate that there are other forms of evil out there. Removing The First from dominion over this plane won’t stop them.”
“And what about the Bringers?” Spike asked. “Can’t say I want to meet them again.”

“I imagine they will carry on as they always have,” Wesley said, unconsciously swiping a loving hand across the book he still held.. “If we imprison the First, it will always have agents in the world that will attempt to bring about its release. I feel though, that leaderless, they will be simple enough for the Slayers to handle. At the very least we can curb the First’s interest in Buffy.”

“The First used the power of the Hellmouth to manifest—” Giles tried to add, but Buffy overrode him.

“The Hellmouth is gone. Spike closed it for good, right?” The hope in Buffy’s voice was palpable.

“Yes, indeed. And that should have been the end of it, but what happened to Spike allowed The First to reappear in a different guise. One we may still be incapable of fully comprehending.”

“Okay.” Buffy was thinking. Angel could almost see her working through the plan tactically, searching for the flaws.

“We would only be trapping the conscious part,” Wesley urged her. “The aspect of evil that makes its plans. Even if we were to try, we couldn’t banish evil altogether.”

Buffy sighed, finally giving in. “This seems like a plan. But what about Spike if part of The First is still inside him?”

Spike sat up. “Yeah, how are you going to get that thing out of me?”

Giles looked at Angel who looked at Wesley, none of them willing to dare to breach the silence.

Eventually, Giles removed his glasses and began to polish them. Again it was down to the watcher to say the unsayable and again Angel silently thanked him for that. “Buffy—”

Despite his efforts, Buffy caught the weighty tone. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

Giles put his glasses back on. “No. I’m afraid you won’t.” He took a deep breath and glanced at Spike, obviously picking his words carefully, but Spike said nothing. Instead, he stood up slowly and turned his back on them, deep in his own thoughts.

“I’m afraid to entrap The First we would have to trap all of it,” Giles said solemnly, as if reading out a death sentence. “To do that it is entirely possible the process would also capture Spike.”

“Bugger that.” Spike started pacing the room. “If you think I’m going back in there, you’ve got another thing coming!”

“I knew there had to be a ‘but’ to this!” Buffy got up after Spike and tried to calm him with her touch, but she was just as furious. As Spike stilled, she turned her venom back onto Giles. “No. No! I can’t do this again. We’ll have to find another way.”

“I’m sorry, but what we have seen here today only underlines the importance of what we have to do. We don’t have any other viable options.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said no. N. O.”

“We have to find a solution, Buffy, one that will put an end to this war for good and this is the only option we have.” Giles met her stare defiantly, a battle of wills Angel remembered so well. Eventually, Giles removed his glasses and wearily rubbed at his eyes. “I would give anything, Buffy, to not put you through this again. But you are aware; as are we all, that the battle against evil is made of sacrifices. Each one of us has given more than we can afford over and over. I know that this is not easy—“

Spike snorted. “Says you. You’re weren’t the one fried extra crispy.”



“Frankly, Spike,” Giles snapped, his frustration with Buffy vented at the vampire instead. “I thought it was a fitting enough ending for you.”



Angel caught Spike’s arm before he could reply, yanking him back as a warning; but Buffy was doing enough shouting for the both of them.



Giles gave Angel a curt nod of thanks, then returned his attention to the angry slayer. "I know you will never listen to me, but I would urge you to allow us to put an end to this saga, once and for all. However much you might wish it to be different, a vampire is not a man, Buffy. Spike remains a demon - a demon re-animating a long dead body. He might have a soul, but that demon is essentially evil and will always remain so."



"You're right; I won't be listening to you!” she yelled. “I’ve lost everyone I have ever loved and I’ve already lost Spike once. I… I can’t do it again. I just can’t.”



"Buffy, think about the consequences. The world—“

"I've thought about them. And I don’t care.”

Spike shrugged off Angel’s hold. “Buffy–“

But Buffy was too preoccupied with her verbal gunfight with Giles to hear him. “If you won’t find another way, then I will. I've had enough of worrying about what everyone thinks. I. Have. Feelings. For him. I won’t—“

“Buffy!” Willow snapped her fingers. “Totus exsisto quietis! That’s enough. All of you.” Everyone fell silent once again, all subservient to the spell.

Angel was thankful the look Buffy shot back at Willow was not aimed at him. She didn’t need words to convey how vehemently she disliked their plan.



But Willow paid no attention to her. She looked at Spike sadly. “You wanted to say something?”



Spike nodded, swallowing hard and squaring his shoulders proudly. “I’ll do it.”



tbc

Buffy’s dismissal of the idea was vehement. “Spike, no.”



Spike shook his head; he'd known she wouldn't agree to him sacrificing himself to get rid of The First, but she had to understand that it was his choice. “Buffy, I want to.”



Buffy opened her mouth to reply, but she couldn’t seem to find anything to say. She looked desperately at each of her assembled friends instead, pleading with them again for another answer, but they could offer none. Giles hung his head sorrowfully, but only for Buffy, Spike was sure. Willow’s lip trembled as her eyes began to swell with tears. She was crying for her friend too, he knew that, but the glance she gave him told him a little was for him as well. Wesley looked to Angel, but he could only look away.



It was not as if Spike didn’t wish he could come up her a better plan either. He didn’t want to die again, he really didn’t, and he certainly didn’t want to go back into that bloody amulet; but for all the indignant bluster of his initial protests and the small knot of fear twisting in the depths of his gut, making his mind up hadn’t been so difficult after all.



Because finishing this fight was the right thing to do, he knew it, for Buffy and for the world that needed rid of the scourge of The First. It was right for him too; the existence he had now felt like an interlude before his unlife turned crap again, only a temporary reprieve too good to possibly be true. He couldn’t explain why, but ever since he’d re-materialised in Angel’s office, he’d felt wrong, with an uneasy feeling that he’d been cheated out of his grand finish. Walking into the Hellmouth for the last time, he’d expected the fight of his life, his final battle in which he’d go down swinging and drown in the glory. And he’d been happy with that fate; he hadn’t been looking for second chances with a new skin made of star shine and Fred’s genius. He certainly hadn’t been thinking about any future with Buffy.



And all this business with The First just made the crux of his problem all the more obvious. Giles, the bloody git, of all people had been right all along: no matter how hard he may try to pretend otherwise, Spike wasn’t a man, not really, and the addition of a soul didn’t automatically make him a card carrying, living, breathing member of the human race. He shouldn’t think anything different.



Before Buffy, Spike had never been concerned about his physical state but he'd always thought he could do anything if he wanted it enough, even remould the vampire and re-make himself. The soul was supposed to have fixed everything, finally make him what he needed to be for her, a panacea for the problem of Spike. But the soul didn't make enough of a difference, just made him feel twitchy and awkward. It was about time he faced reality; soul or no soul, vampirism was a static state, and he could fight for all the souls there ever were and win, but he would still be dead. All Spike would ever be was a corruption of a man's corpse brought to a blasphemous mimicry of life by a demon inside. He would always need second-hand blood to live and would always have a black demon heart silent in his chest.



He knew, even if Buffy was finally ready to offer all that he’d ever wanted, that the darkness that kept him walking the earth would ruin her eventually, destroying everything he’d ever loved about her with its acid touch. It didn't matter what she deserved, because he didn't deserve to give it to her. He would never be fixed. There was nothing left in his power that he could to do make him right. The soul, now stained indelibly with the taint of vampirism, didn't make him a perfect person, or even the naïve young man he’d been as a human, it didn’t make him William with the weight of a hundred years of brutality on his back. He was Spike and that was the trouble. Buffy needed more than to live in an eternal night with half a man who was bound to fuck it up eventually; she deserved fun and light and happiness, and all a vampire would ever give her was despair, death and ruin.



Yet there was no way he was going to risk The First getting its way either. He’d walk into the sun if he had to watch her sacrifice all over again. He’d happily die to stop that ever happening; they needed a permanent fix and no one was suggesting any other options.



He should have known that Buffy wouldn’t see it that way.



“Excuse me; I need a word with my vampire.” She yanked his arm and hauled Spike out into the hall for privacy, although the volume of her voice wouldn’t give them much of that. “Are you insane? How could you want this?”



“Buffy—”



“You can’t do it. I won’t let you,” she ground out, her eyes mean and serious, daring him to disagree with her.



“Buffy! Listen to me.” He lowered his voice, matching and challenging hers, trying to make her really see they didn’t have any other choices. “I need to do this.”



“Need?” His words only seemed to make her angrier. “What are you talking about? I need you.”



He snorted, and his attempt at gentle persuasion was over. “No, you don’t.”



“Get over yourself! Since when are you the martyr?”


“Since I died,” he snarled. He backed away and threw his arms wide in supplication. “This, this is unfinished. I saved the world, Buffy. And that was enough for me. I finally did the right thing and if that’s to be the last of Spike, at least I went out proper. But I want what I did to mean something! I need it to.”



“It does mean something!” she snapped back. “It means something to me!” So much for maintaining his distance, she followed him, taking him by the hands. Her tone when she spoke was calmer, belying the anger that still flashed in her eyes. “You mean everything to me.”



“Me too,” he whispered. “But you and me, I know it; we’re never going to have that white picket fence.”



She looked up at him, her eyes softening with the onset of tears, offering him everything he’d ever wanted if he stayed. La belle dame sans merci. “Does that even matter?”



But it was wrong, and he should have known that sooner and not started this whole mess. He shouldn’t have hurt her. “It’s what you want.”



“It used to be,” her lips quirked into a smile, rueful and bittersweet, “but I finally realised that ‘normal’ is only what you make it.”



That was true enough, but she’d chosen a hell of a time to realise it. He broke free of her hands and backed away a little to clear his head from her intoxicating proximity before she had him changing his mind all over again. “I had time to think about everything while I was Casparing around Wolfram and Hart, Buffy.” He scratched a little at his sunburnt face. “It can’t work. Not between you and guy like me. I have nothing to offer you—”



She silenced him with a hand over his still heart, pushing him back against the newel post at the foot of the grand staircase. “You offer me this.”



“I’m sorry. It’s not enough,” he breathed. “I can’t—“



She swallowed the rest of his words with a gentle and lingering kiss; a promise ghosting across his lips with each slow caress of her mouth. With that his resistance to keeping his distance crumbled to nothing. He could argue forever with her about the pros and cons of sacrificing himself or he could go and discuss The First with a bunch of people he didn’t give a crap about. Sod it, he thought. Giles, Angel and the others could wait; he had better things to do with his final hours. He would still have to do what needed to be done, and it would still hurt her, whatever he did, but he might as well accept the solace her arms offered for the dwindling time he had left.



He pulled her closer, turning the kiss from chaste to carnally savage, pouring all the love he had ever felt into it. He’d always been, from the moment he’d spied her dancing with her friends at The Bronze, half a step away from falling for her youth, vigour and conviction, her simple aliveness, and he found himself falling for them all over again, because for the first time since they started this dance, she was open to receive every bit, reflecting it back and adding her own until it grew bigger than the both of them. That she should finally lose him again made the decision weigh heavily on his heart and that nearly broke him; it had happened so often to her in her short life, as soon as she found love or what she thought was love, it was snatched away again, like a cat chasing an elusive string. Happiness, for both of them it seemed, would be forever beyond their grasp so maybe they should catch whatever happiness they could.



***



Unlike old times, this time they made it to the bed.



With the heavy curtains drawn to shield a vampire from the grizzled daylight, the fire brought its flickering warmth to light their bodies instead. Skin brushed against skin aglow with new flame, his sun-starved and milky, hers pale with an English winter.



Astride him in the sanguine light, Buffy feathered light kisses over his face, before meeting his searching mouth with hard, forceful ones that demanded his tongue. Spike opened his mouth to a kiss that turned slow, languid and deep. Mind-blowing. His tongue tangled with hers as their eyes fell shut, twining together in loose, delicious knots that melted them both into the kiss, she into his arms as he pulled her in, closer, tighter.



As their mouths played wicked sinful games, lip to lip and cool fingertips pressed to soft, warm skin, his hands roamed the curve of her spine. He was hopelessly lost now; the pure sensation of her smooth skin moving against his as he touched her was a taste of a heaven he would never see. He’d never dreamed he’d have this again. He'd accepted long ago that after what he'd done that night, in the bathroom, when he'd been drunk and at the ragged end of his emotional rope, that to be with her again was beyond what he deserved. To be back in her bed, even this one last time, was beyond even his wildest hopes. When she’d died, his whole world had ended with her. When she'd returned, for all his anger, it was like seeing the sun again. This reunion felt something like that.



She broke from his lips, moving downwards, nipping and mouthing a gentle line of inconsequential words along his jaw and down his neck. As she brushed her lips over his breastbone, she left a cooling path of soft caresses. Where her words still left doubts, the care she took persuaded him this wasn't going to be the same as their previous encounters, sweet not raw. When she paused over his dead heart a moment before planting a lingering kiss there, as if to acknowledge the love she now claimed to cherish, he finally let himself believe her. For the first time she was joining him in more than just really great fucking; this was about her finally choosing him as a partner, not just as flesh willing to do her bidding.



And it felt simply wonderful.



Slowly, taking her time as if they had forever to finish this, she moved lower, nuzzling the tight muscles of his stomach, paying attention to each and every hard line she found there. By the time she’d kissed her winding way down to his cock it was aching, ready, but she too knew they did not need to rush. Her need to couple as soon as possible, to divorce her thoughts from the world and him, appeared to be gone, along with all her fury and frustration. Back then he hadn't had any doubt that she loved him. He’d seen what he’d wanted to see in her vacant, dilated pupils, mistook the thundering of her heart and the heady musk of her arousal for higher feelings, not the complicated muddle of lust and despair they really were. He knew better now.



There was no less desire this time, from either of them, but the urgency to join and just fuck her problems away was diminished; replaced with a togetherness he’d never felt from her before. They could still do this for hours, but there was no need to hurry, better then to draw out their time together, to learn about each other again, this time with acceptance rather than regrets.



She bent to take him. As she drew her mouth along the shaft of his cock, each stroke was long, slow and exquisitely deep, drawing out the sweet agony until it shook him apart, breaking him to pieces in a short orgasmic moment.



She sat up and grinned lasciviously, licking her glossy lips before slipping him inside, so deep, so warm, gasping as he filled her. His girl liked it on top. Oh, how he’d missed this, missed the way she looked down at him, in ecstasy, like the sun he hadn't seen in a hundred years, and he knew that he, Spike, made her feel that way. He’d missed her in the way that he’d missed the blood and the violence after he’d been chipped, an obsessive craving for her that tormented those long, frustrating nights when he’d wanted to rend flesh under his fangs and the feel bones cracking under his fingers as hot, rich blood lashed against his tongue. All he’d ever wanted was to look in her eyes and see his love mirrored there with hers. And it was.



The bed creaked softly beneath them as she slowly started to move, the springs of the mattress vocalising the ancient rhythm. She threw her head back, pressing her pubic bone yet closer to his, driving him deeper as her muscles worked for him and thrusting her small breasts upwards for him to catch. With her back arched, they were taut and hard in the cups of his hands, the tight nipples aching to be pinched into hard peaks.



Spike could have fucked her his way forever and a day, with no rush to get where they wanted to go, but soon the languorous slide of his cock was not enough and she quickened the tempo to match the rising frequency of her gasps. He gripped her hips, helping her by driving her onto him with her every down stroke. Her skin, now glittering in a fine sweat, shone like gold in the gilded firelight. Her small hands clasped frantically at his muscular arms as she moved and came, pressing him back into the mattress as she shook with shuddering waves.



As they subsided, he deftly flipped her onto her back, thrusting deep, not wanting to ever withdraw, but he paused to take her in, to savour her. In a penumbra of hair, each strand a flare in the universe of dark sheets, she lay flushed with an aroused nebula of blushes. In that moment she had never been so beautiful to him.



All he’d ever really wanted was to live forever in the raw delirium flush that new love brought, to sustain that high. He’d wanted to be someone’s world, like they were his, and share his heart with one special woman who would give him the wild and passionate ride of the lovers he’d read about when he was alive: Heathcliff and Cathy, Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Iseult. Love was only worth the price if it soared to dangerous heights, passionate and consuming. There had still been enough of naïve little William inside him to cast himself in his own drama, those books shaping his romantic nature through his death and beyond. Poor William who’d died not for love, but for rejection, had waited for the wild love affair in his future; he never would have guessed that he’d have to die first. Now Spike looked into the eyes of a woman he had forever sought, but had for so long failed to capture and he knew that although love wasn’t always like that, he’d been given just a taste of something finer than most would ever experience.



Buffy smiled up at him, wide open and welcoming for the first time as she rode out the last of her orgasm with his quick thrusts. She was everything he’d ever wanted, and more besides, but now he was ready to let that dream go.



The huge grin that returned her smile broadcast his happiness as he released. She could have no doubts now as to how much she meant to him. He could think of no other way he'd rather be remembered.

Body and soul made all the difference.

It was true, Buffy realised. The sex, wow, it had been good before but now it was so much better. She and Spike connected, and in so many more ways than just two bodies grinding together seeking release. Maybe it was Spike and the way he had changed so fundamentally; when she looked into his eyes she saw a realness there, his soul smoothing out the harsh edges of the vampire until a person now looked back; or it could have been her and the way her own feelings had mellowed that made all the difference; perhaps it was a bit of both, but something new sparked between them, something so, so right that had been missing before.

Wound and wrapped around each other, skin against skin, arms sought and supported as they moved together in both love and lust. She had never felt this close, this intimate, with anyone else, sharing something between them that felt so much more naked than just a trivial lack of clothing. For once they were making love; there were no secrets or emotions held back; some inner barrier had fallen between them and now her soul spoke to his in total honesty. He was to have no more doubt. She told him everything her heart confessed with every touch, over and over. She could love him now and she wanted him to know she was his for all the time they had left, however short those hours would be.

She told him none of this in mere words. They spoke in a language primal and instinctive, a conversation in caresses, sighs and lingering looks. Like this, nothing could be misunderstood. When she clutched at him, reminding herself that he was real and firm and back and here, tracing his strong arms with her tiny hands, rounding his strong bicep possessively as she moved in his lap, he replied, pushing deeper as he pulled her closer still, showing her yet again how deep his own love went. She threw back her head and gasped as he hit spots so sweet, moving her hands to his shoulders, making him grunt with satisfaction as her fingertips dug into the hard, solid muscle and drew blood: a lot of things were different now, but some things never changed. He would always get off on the blood and the bruises.

Sex as good as this was easy to get lost in, but that was nothing new to Buffy; it had always been oh so very easy to lose herself this way with Spike. After she'd returned from the dead, they'd picked up their edgy new friendship where it'd left off and she'd started to see him as someone she could go to, to unburden herself of the pressures of just trying to live after losing Heaven, because he'd understood. Only he knew what it was like to die and live once more, to crawl from the earth of the grave into a harsh world of light and fear that would never feel the same again. As isolated from her friends as he was, she could trust him to never tell them the terrible truth that she was dying inside. With him she could be quiet and not have to lie every time she opened her mouth just to pretend she was happy.

He’d made it so easy for her, to escape the world and run from reality when all she’d wanted was to not think about how crappy her life was, and sex became just another way of denying it all. With added bonuses. Sensation was an easy, temporary fix that couldn’t last; but somehow Spike had made her feel when everything else in life had seemed so violent or raw. She’d needed it back then, to penetrate the numbness that had smothered her.

And that was it; good or bad, with him she had always felt something: anger, hate, desire denied and then vented, love, eventually. Always a potent mix of extreme emotions right from the beginning.

Little wonder then that after she’d given in to those lusty thoughts she had started to feel and kept going back to him, exploring for a handful of long, exhausting nights the full breadth of her sexuality for the first time, laying it out so open and bare that she could no longer deny the darkness of her desires.

Yet that was all their relationship had been or could ever be. She’d known ever since Angel had lost his soul one dark and stormy night the cost of soulless boyfriends, and with only one tarnished soul between them, she could never trust Spike, not really, not in a way that could ever make her overlook what he was. Oh she'd trusted him when she'd really needed his help in the fight against Glory and he'd always come through for her, more or less, but his vampirism would always rise like a wall between them, an insurmountable obstacle that could never be conquered; he could keep his word, for as long as it suited him, but long-term it wasn’t worth the risk. When her relationships fell apart there was a steep cost: people died.

Spike had learned not to question the way she’d used him, making do with the little she offered, but he knew not to dare risk what he could have for anything more. Some of the things they’d done together had appalled and terrified her, but they weren’t the worst of it, they weren’t the memories that made her flush with shame. She had used him as if he was nothing and she wished she could forget all those times when she’d lain beneath him, moaning gently with the glide of his cock, when she turned her face away from the look in his eyes because the love that shone there was too much to bear. Rejected again, in defeat he would bury his face in her hair while she imagined that she was somewhere else, anywhere, with someone else, anyone. It had been better that way, keeping her distance even as she let him fuck her, so sure that his very nature would make him fail. And he had, spectacularly; but for that and all the rest of their history she’d forgiven him long ago. He’d done the impossible and changed everything.

How ironic it was that Spike had been the one who was right all along. He had always asserted that he felt something between them, that connection of heat and desire. He'd been so convinced; enough to stake everything on that belief, his pride; his well-being, even his own existence; he would sacrifice his own happiness for hers over and over. Yet she'd always scoffed at the thought, slapping it back into his face with a stinging retort, but she’d been the one fooling herself. Maybe the tardy love that was churning inside her always had been there, bubbling under the surface, waiting for her to take that reluctant look inward to notice that he was all she wanted.

A gasp, a crushing kiss, a last thrilling tremor sluicing through her for a moment before he too released, and it was done. Pleasantly achy and gasping for air in a really, really good way, she stayed cradled in his lap, still connected and shaking, her head and breasts pressed close as she could get to the hard muscles of his chest.

She clung to him, unwilling to let him go, and he held her wordlessly as his hand wandered loving yet aimless through her mussed bed-head.

“I’m still doing it,” he said, reaching for a breath he always seemed to forget his body didn’t need.

“I know,” she replied in little more than a reluctant whisper. His voice had broken the still, satisfied silence, letting in unwelcome reality again. She’d thought for a moment of denying knowing what he meant, but denial could only delay facing the truth, not prevent it. “I hate it, but I know.”

“Buffy-“

“Don’t,” she cut him off, pulling back and looking up at him, hoping the complicated maelstrom of emotions she felt were easy to read in her eyes, because there was no way she could express so much in just words. This should have been a happy moment, a cosy and relaxed celebration of their reunion, but this was her love life after all, so of course something evil had to ruin it. “I know.”

He seemed to understand. He nodded and laid her gently back onto the bed and withdrew, settling beside her. But for all the intimacy they'd just shared and the bittersweet smile playing on his lips, he felt more distant now. The closeness she’d felt as they were entwined began to dissipate as he avoided her eyes, distancing himself as he prepared for his end.

Knowing this made the deliberate separation no less difficult and Buffy tried to bridge the divide by moving closer, letting her head sink back into the pillow beside her vampire. She tried to focus on the good things, on the way this vigorous workout had, as always, left her as breathless as a marathon runner. That was the one thing about this that hadn’t changed; whether it had been a quick fuck against a dumpster or an epic night of ecstasy among his Persian rugs, after sex with Spike it had always taken awhile to get to get her breath back.

She'd need a moment or two to recover; which suited her just fine. She wanted to bask in this fragile afterglow for as long as she could, for if this was to be all the afterglow they would ever get, then she wasn’t going to waste it.

Still slightly breathless, but recovering Slayer-fast, she rolled onto her side, hooking her leg round his thigh and propping herself up on an elbow to admire the view, taking the time to really study him for once. She’d always known that he was pretty in a male way, scimitar cheekbones were hard to miss after all, but the whole goth look was so not her thing. She had never taken the time to look beyond that.

Spike lounged brazenly in the firelight beside her in all his pale glory. Well, mostly pale, his face was still carried a hint of pink from his touch of sunburn, but it was fading fast. His chest though, as always, was now disconcertingly still. She thought that this just might be the way she would love him best, naked, tousled and all happy for once. Even his hair, the unnatural snowy blond usually gelled so precisely into gentle spikes so it didn't twist into sissy curls, was in debauched disarray. The hard angles of his face that were so striking in the moonlight seemed soft in the gentle firelight and she was struck, not for the first time, at how much the shadows loved him. He looked otherworldly in the flickering half light; eyes as clear as the sky at twilight, rich and blue, skin carved and sculpted and as pale as stone. He looked as if death had chosen him as its angel; too perfect and dangerous to touch.

She couldn’t keep her hands off.

Her most recent orgasm was still throbbing nicely between her legs, which were jellified and nicely tingly from her big O, but she already felt up for another go. How much she needed to satisfy her itch still shocked her sometimes, but she wasn’t going to be ashamed of it anymore. And if he was up for it, she wasn’t going to argue.

But when he finally looked at her, his eyes were hooded and sleepy. They flickered as he tried to stay awake, and although he met her coaxing kiss, she could tell by half-hearted way he groped her that he was exhausted.

She snuggled into his side again instead, tucking herself under his arm and letting her hand roam the muscle of his chest. It was smooth and hard under her palm as she tracked the line of his abs, and lightly sheened with an uncanny sweat. It twitched as she traced a line under a pectoral and across his quiet heart. She was fascinated that a dead heart could love with more fervour than her living one could ever generate. He might think he had nothing to offer her, but she didn’t need anything else.

She was sore and the room was cold. Where her skin was turned away from the fire, the air licked the sweat from her back with a frigid tongue, but despite the chill somehow she couldn’t imagine being anywhere better. There had to be some god or a lucky star that she had to thank for returning him to her, or more likely, some darker deity that thought it funny to mess with them, offering him up only to snatch him away again so soon; but for now she was just grateful that the body pressed against her this time was him, the one she thought she'd ruined and lost. For once, he really mattered, yet if she was honest, she couldn't imagine what a serious relationship with Spike might be like, and she doubted he’d had any idea either. Pampered definitely, she'd want for nothing if he could get it for her, and he probably would. But they would not get to find out.

Spike absently stroked her back in return, offering her a hollow comfort she would never feel and it made her angry that once again she had found something good only for it to be snatched away. The thought made her stiffen under his soothing hands, rejecting the salve his touch promised and he snatched his hand away.

“Don’t stop.” She caught his wrist and placed his hand back on her shoulder.

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, pet. That’s why you shag me,” he whispered, his voice, a vocal sundae of sweet riches; a sprinkle of sugar seduction. “Ruined you for anyone else.”

Grinning into his chest, she squeezed him firmly, just a little teary. She couldn’t believe he’d said that, but then this was the man she loved: brave and sexy and rude!

She bit her lip to keep the tears back. She’d move on, she knew she would somehow. But anything compared to this would somehow be only second best. Love would never again burn like a furnace or survive anything and everything that a cruel fate could throw at it. Relationships would have to stand up to the normal pressures of normal people, and she didn’t want normal anymore. Stupid normal.

But… but she couldn’t just accept this or swallow down her objections. They were all wrong; they had to be. There was always another way and they could find a different way to stop The First, they were good at stuff like that. If Spike would let them stop him playing the martyr.

Buffy kept her silence, saying nothing to Spike about her objections. Telling him would be pointless and would waste the good time they’d spent the day having. There was so little time left as it was and she didn’t want to waste it on restarting an argument they would never resolve.

But the argument wasn't settled, far from it. She would take The First on alone if she had to, but she wasn’t going to let The First take from her any more people she loved. Not Spike. Not anybody.

She would die first.


tbc

By early evening, the remains of the day were no less grey and depressing; flinty clouds brooded overhead as they spread a premature darkness before the nascent twilight, too lazy to move along or to break onto anything more than a feeble drizzle.

Willow listened to the soft drum of the rain spotting on the windows of the Retreat as she tried unsuccessfully to sleep. The unnatural micro-climate that was taunting them with its capricious moods wasn’t trying hard enough set the stage for the dramatic events ahead, she thought, even though by what the Watcher’s Council said, the British weather should have had plenty of practice. She didn’t know what she expected exactly, dramatic Hollywood thunderclaps and crashing bolts of Hammer Horror lightning perhaps, but this listless drizzle that flicked half-heartedly against the glass wasn’t it. Okay, thunderstorms hadn’t bothered to turn up for the numerous apocalypses they’d faced in California either, but at least the weather there had the common sense to stay out of it and just keep everything comfortably warm.

But it wasn’t the rain that kept Willow awake; even though she was exhausted from the long night she’d spent trying to get to the tormented village. Her mind was just too excited, wound tight, about the spellwork to come to switch itself off and rest, not while the plan was so incomplete.

The spell presented a bit of a puzzle. She’d worked with Wesley earlier in the day on the details and the spell itself would be simple enough, the words of the crazy monk Mormundi spoke through the twisted text of his book to tell them most of what they needed to know, but he’d left the most important part out: how to power a spell as large as he was proposing. And it was going to be a biggie.

Willow wasn’t worried about the size as such, most spells she could cast without much thought to where the magic came from and she was used to channelling colossal energies, but the amount of juice this spell would need wasn’t going to come from just anywhere. There was plenty of energy around, it seemed, but it was already taken. If Giles was correct, the ritual to raise the Old Ones would be a massive undertaking and although The First was a powerful being in its own right, it would still need an army of Bringers to draw on the vast magics of the Deeper Well to bring its plans to fruition. The sort of power The First could wield meant that if they were going to defeat it, they would need a comparable magic source of their own; and it would have to be something really big.

Suitable choices to energise the spell were as notably absent as the thunderbolts. She didn’t have many options. Stuck inside The First’s magical bubble with the rest of Little Darrow, she couldn’t just draw on the elements like she normally might and there wasn’t much in her bag that would help her either. There were some crystals, including a couple of hefty quartz shafts that were always reliable and a beautifully clear piece of uncut aquamarine that was good for keeping her thoughts nice and clear, but while they would certainly help, they wouldn’t be nearly enough. She had surpassed their meagre potential long ago; but sometimes half of magic was in the show, so she’d packed them anyway, along with enough candles to keep the Phantom of the Opera in romantic lighting. But none of these solved the real problem. This spell needed something special. The dilemma niggled at her as she tossed and turned in the enormous bed. She wished that Wesley hadn’t sent her to bed before they’d figured it out, but she’d been falling asleep in her chair. She gave up; she wasn’t going to sleep however hard she tried. If only her eyes could droop the way they had as she’d listened to Wesley interpret the insane ramblings of the mad Mormundi, but research called and the need to figure all this out could no longer be resisted.

She rose. With the internet out with the phone lines and the cell reception, research meant books and lots of them. The trouble was the Retreat didn’t have any. Not decent ones, at least. Not the kind that Giles would have roped off in the Magic Box to keep from the prying eyes and sticky fingers of the foolhardy Sunnydale public. But the Magic Box was buried at the bottom of a huge hole and the shelves in the Retreat’s library were sorrowfully empty, practically picked clean after The First had destroyed the Council’s HQ. The books that were left were stacked here and there in lonely piles of two or three. These were the generic books, the kind that were stocked in all good book stores: ‘Teenage Sun Signs’, ‘The Celtic Tree Magic Fact Pack’, ‘Buddhism for the Busy' and ‘101 Simple Candle Love Spells’. They were unhelpful to anyone seriously adept, and useless for the really powerful magic Willow wanted to do; mostly all they were good for was a quick laugh and to keep the wannablessedbes from thinking too far beyond their chakras and their dark moon ritual altars. Willow knew that the Council kept this stuff to make sure no one was publishing anything too dangerous, the last thing they wanted to clear up was a New Age population that were literally raising hell with demonic blood rites, but that was no good right now. It seemed likely that the books she needed were in the unpacked boxes that still cluttered the Council’s new offices at Stoke Park, being useless when they were sorely needed elsewhere.

Willow flicked through a few of the rejected titles, hoping against hope, but she found nothing helpful. She was even thinking about going back to bed when Giles and Wesley appeared, both holding identical steaming cups of tea. Watchers, they were such British guys, she thought affectionately.

Angel though was a looming, brooding presence behind them. He didn’t look happy and she couldn’t blame him. They had all guessed what Spike and Buffy had gone off to do and that had to hurt, but he would just have to get over it, there was little anyone could do while they were all stuck here waiting and Spike and Buffy both deserved this time together, however brief it would be.

“Ah Willow,” Giles said. “You are just who we were looking for. Wesley and I found something in here I think you might be interested in.”

“A really good Grimoire?” Willow tried. “Or an old witch’s Book of Shadows?”

“Alas, no.” Giles looked mournfully at the bare shelves as he sipped from his cup. Willow could sense the despairing wail of his inner librarian from the other side of the room. “Pitiful, isn’t it? This house used to have books everywhere.”

“And no Google either,” Willow sighed in a sort of sympathy. “I’m a witch which needs some witchy help.”

“What do you need?” Wesley asked as he settled on the arm of a chair as Angel dropped into another and stared into the fire. “I’m certain the three of us can come up with something.”

Grateful for the offer, Willow plopped ‘Native American Shamanism for the Urban Neopagan’ back onto the shelf. “I think I can draw energy from the crystals I brought and from the amulet itself,” she explained, “but we’ll need something else to power a spell this big, some kind of fixed loci to anchor the magic and give it a real boost. I used the scythe in the Hellmouth, but we don’t have anything like that here. If we had any really good magical objects or if I could cast the spell somewhere where the background magic is really, really intense, it might work, but we don’t have anything like that.”

“Ah. I think what we have to show you might do the trick,” Giles said as placed his cuppa on a table and knelt down beside the fireplace. He pulled back a corner of the large and exquisite oriental rug that covered the library floor. Underneath was a wide magic circle marked out in white paint, complete with pentagram and all the appropriate magickal symbols.

Willow knelt and brushed the circle with her fingers. It thrummed with the echoes of invocations and the remnants of sorcery, and she wasn’t sure, but when she touched it, it might even have rippled. “Wow,” she breathed. “Serious stuff.”

“Indeed,” said Giles as he got back to his feet. “This house has belonged to the Watcher’s Council for many years. It’s seen quite a lot of this sort of thing, you know.”

“And all that old magic would help power almost spell you wanted.” Willow grinned, but then her excitement turned to a frown. “But it may not be enough. The First will have Shamen drawing on the Well to top up its ritual. We might need more amplification. We need to be sure.”

“How about The Dancers?” Wesley suggested.

“The Dancers?” Willow looked up. “Like Morris Dancers?”

“Good god no, nothing as dreadful as that. It’s a stone circle hidden in the woods,” Giles explained as he reclaimed his tea. He looked down into his cup and put it back on the table when he realised it was nearly empty. “This area has many such places. I believe The Dancers are also on several ley lines.”

A stone circle. Willow thought as she stared down at the pentagram nudging her knees. Wesley could have mentioned that sooner! She hadn’t known there was anything like that nearby, although she perhaps should have guessed, England seemed to be full of them, particularly in the wilder West Country. She had seen plenty of small rings of standing stones in Devon during her time with the Coven, so many she even knew what to expect: The Dancers would be a small ring of stones that would barely meet her waist, as far removed from the grand scale of Stonehenge as they could be, but that didn’t matter, she also knew how powerful even these small circles could be. Most were so ancient they had been sucking in magic for thousands of years and the good ones could even distort the reality around them, bending time and space in small ways that the magically sensitive could often feel. If the local ley lines also intersected at the site, that warping would only be ramped up by the earthly forces zipping along the lines. Somewhere like that would be perfect for casting the spell, assuming they could get there.

“You’ve been there? Can we get to it?” Angel asked, speaking for the first time and echoing what Willow had been thinking. She’d thought he hadn’t been listening.

Giles and Wesley exchanged glances.

“I believe many from the Council have been there, to, um, experiment.” Wesley supplied, hastily covering his smirk with a swig of his tea.

“Experiment?” Willow asked doubtfully. “With what?”

Wesley shrugged. “Drugs. Sex. Magic mostly.”

Willow couldn’t help it, her jaw dropped in surprise. “Oh.” She looked from Wesley to Giles.

He looked sheepish. He coughed. “I was young and it was the Seventies. It was all good fun.”

Willow fought to dispel the images that put into her head. She’d known about the Watcher’s Ripper days, but they weren’t something she liked to think too much about. Thinking about Giles doing things like that was like thinking about her parents and she so didn’t want to go there. A stray thought wondered what Wesley wasn’t confessing to, but somehow imagining that was even worse.

Better then to veer the subject back to business. “Sounds…er, great. The First won’t keep us away?”

“I’m sure The First will post sentries,” Giles agreed, checking with Wesley who nodded.

“They won’t be a problem.” Angel added, shifting in his chair, suddenly less sullen and more alert at the prospect of a fight. Willow believed him. He looked like he might explode if he didn’t hit something soon.

“We know The First is supremely arrogant,” Giles continued, shoving his hands into his pockets. “We can hope it’ll be too occupied with its own ritual to perceive any threat from us.”

Willow agreed. With Angel in his foul mood, security wasn’t going to be a problem. “Okay. How do we know this is going to work? Is the amulet still active?"

"Active, inactive, I don't believe the amulet works that way. It just is." Wesley pulled them amulet from his pocket and threw it for her to catch.

Willow opened her hand as she caught it. The amulet looked the same as it always had: large, heavy and blingy in a really ugly way. She rubbed a finger over the chunky stone. "It still has power,” she said, a little surprised. It had discharged enough energy to vaporise a vast army of Turok Han, yet it still made her fingers tingle. “I can feel it. It's like a vessel now. Empty.” She looked up at Wesley. “It's waiting.”

“Indeed. My biggest concern, however, is can we trust Wolfram and Hart?” Giles looked pointedly at Angel.

“Not likely.” Spike snorted from the doorway before the other vampire could reply.

“You know, I just don’t care.” Angel surged to his feet, while the atmosphere in the room immediately became sub-zero. “Can we just get this over with?”

“Hi guys,” Buffy announced as she gave Spike a gentle shove and slipped into the room after him. The chirpiness of her voice cut through the chilly vibe but it was mismatched to the serious set to her mouth that challenged anyone to cross her.

Willow gave her a small wave, which Buffy returned with a small, brief smile.

Spike sauntered over to the fire, injecting something blatant yet casually sexual into his strut to rub Angel’s face in it. Angel glowered and Spike gave him a satisfied smirk, doubtlessly unable to let an opportunity like this go by one last time. The taunt was well aimed; if steam really could come from Angel’s ears, it would be gushing like Old Faithful. Willow thought Angel looked like he was about to erupt, but he stayed his hand and fumed silently. No one dared comment as the two vampires faced off; Wesley fidgeted uncomfortably, Giles looked as if he was trying to suppress a grin, Buffy looked livid at all the macho posturing. It was like watching two wild animals competing for females on the Discovery Channel, only not as mature.

“Will had a good question,” Buffy glared at both of them, pulling them back to reality and the sticky business of the amulet. She turned to Wesley and said sharply, “Can we trust Wolfram and Hart? They’re evil right? Would they just let The First go?”

Willow noticed Wesley wince at the part about evil, but he ignored it when he spoke. “Wolfram and Hart can be relied upon insomuch as the Senior Partners will always support their own ends, but the time will certainly come when we no longer run the LA branch. However, I think we can be satisfied for now that this plan has their support. The First is as much of a problem to them as it is for us. ”

Buffy frowned but her eyes sought Spike’s and for a fleeting moment she brightened into a sweet, melancholy smile that was just for him.

Willow watched them interact and smiled, she was a witness to an epic affair that had spanned everything between good and evil, death and resurrection, redemption and sacrifice. Despite the swagger, Spike looked tired, but Willow couldn’t miss how he quietly buzzed with an inner happiness she had never seen before. She was glad to see them some kind of happy even for a short time, there was so much love there for it to be wasted.

Her friend had never talked much about Spike, about those times. No one wanted to talk about that terrible year, herself included; she had been so wrapped up in her own problems that she hadn't noticed that Buffy wasn’t fixed. The pain had been pulling her friend apart and by clinging to Spike, she had dragged him down with her. And Spike, Willow remembered now, had been notable by his absence at that time. That should have tipped her off. The Scoobies were used to Spike just being around, hanging in the edges of the gang, a constant, if unwelcome presence at Buffy’s shoulder. Then suddenly he was gone, no longer dogging her for affection, or hanging around the Magic Box for a glimpse of her - because he hadn’t needed to, she came to him.

What little Willow knew of the rest she’d guessed or was pieced together from the crumbs Buffy had scattered through a handful of conversations and off guard moments when she let her secrets slip, but she knew enough not to believe most of Xander’s assumptions and that was a relief because she knew all too well that love like Buffy and Spike’s was hard to cherish, and even harder to keep, but in the end it just needed to survive. Willow envied them their strength and their passion, while at the same time not wishing any of it for herself; she was content now with a more cosy kind of love, which thrived in her heart on a slow burn. She was done with all the drama and the grief and the ending of the world. It was all too much.

Buffy seemed to be thinking and was not liking the conclusions she was coming to. "What if next time the amulet releases you, it's the future and everything has changed?” she asked Spike quietly.

Spike stared at the floor. "I'm not coming out again, pet. We'll see to it."

Buffy didn’t look reassured, but she gathered herself and addressed the group. “Okay. So how do we do this?”


tbc

Even from where she was kneeling by the pentagram, Willow didn’t fail to notice the defiant glint in her friend’s eye as Buffy made her declaration. Buffy didn’t fool her for a second. She had seen that look too many times before, when Buffy had made up her mind and was through with trying to argue her case against her friends. It was Angel back from Hell. It was Dawn’s life against the possibility of Glory ending the world. It was Spike all over again. And no matter what anyone else decided, Buffy had already skipped the tricky discussion part and had said to hell with anyone else’s opinion. The Slayer already knew what she fought for and it wasn’t what they were debating.

Willow hoped Buffy knew what she was doing. She trusted Buffy's instincts, and had done with her life, over and over, but she knew as well as anyone how much love could cloud a girl’s judgement and make her do crazy, crazy things. Buffy didn’t look as if she was about to do something irrational though, even if, as Willow suspected, it was unlikely she had any sort of plan in mind; but Buffy’s belief that there was another way might just be enough on its own.

Because more often than not by doing her own thing, Buffy stumbled over the right answer anyway. If anyone could find a way out of this without sacrificing Spike, Willow knew it was Buffy, she was a hero and she could find the solutions the rest of them couldn’t see – if she didn’t get herself killed in the process.

Distracted by Buffy’s question, and seemingly unaware that Buffy was going to ignore everything he said whatever he suggested, Giles glanced out of the tall, elegant windows at the sky, iron dark and blackening with evening above them. “The Dancers aren’t far from here,” he announced, turning back to the room. “The sun is close to setting now; we’ll set out in an hour.” He looked at Wesley, who nodded his agreement. “Wesley and I will help Willow start the ritual for the spell and Spike will wear the amulet.” Giles held out his hand and Willow dropped the amulet into his palm. “The spell should then pull The First and Spike back into the stone.” He rubbed his forehead, betraying a little of his concern. “For good this time.”

“And there’s really no other way?” Buffy asked, confirming that against whatever decision she’d made.

Still oblivious to Buffy’s subterfuge, Giles looked at Wesley for an answer.

“We could destroy The First’s altar,” Wesley offered with a shrug. “That would delay its plans beyond the equinox.”

Giles nodded. “But unfortunately we would only be winning the battle. Today we could actually win the war. The First will undoubtedly try again and many more lives will be lost. And still we would be left with the same answer. It would better for all of us if this were dealt with tonight, Buffy. We all have other duties to attend to elsewhere and I, for one, do not wish to remain here indefinitely. Besides we can’t risk you entering the Well. It is exactly where The First would want you to be.”

Buffy looked rebellious, her disobedience ever closer to the surface. She ignored Giles and focused her attention on Wesley instead. “Could I wear the amulet?”

“Buffy, no!” Both Spike and Angel said together before he could answer. They stared at each other as if they’d both just remembered that the other existed. Neither bothered to conceal their loathing of the other. Willow took the opportunity to scramble to her feet and move somewhere safer.

Spike started towards the other vampire, promising trouble if Angel wanted some, but Buffy grabbed his arm angrily. “No! Leave him!”

Angel, for his part, shrugged off the challenge as if Spike was no kind of threat and pushed him out of the way. “Buffy,” he pleaded, “don’t even think of doing this.”

That made Buffy even angrier, her eyes flashing she drew her brows together. “Why not? Maybe I want to. Maybe I want to decide for myself.”

“Don’t throw your life away over this, over him.” Angel waved at Spike dismissively. “He’s not worth it!”

“Hey!” Spike protested as he tried ineffectually to free his coat from the pinch of Buffy’s fingers.

Buffy didn’t let him go, but otherwise Spike might as well have not been in the room. “And who are you to judge?” she spat back at Angel. “Like you’ve been Mr Perfect.”

“Yeah,” Spike’s scowl was quickly replaced with a smirk as he sensed an opportunity to further infuriate the other vampire. “And you know, I’ve had the most bloody brilliant day of my existence and my soul hasn’t stepped in to ruin it.”

“You smug bastard.” Angel went for him, but Buffy was faster. She yanked Spike out of the way and placed herself between the two rivals. Her firm hand on Angel’s chest shoved him backwards none too gently.

“Hey! I am not going to let this pissing contest interfere with what we need to do,“ she snapped. “I’ve made my choice, Angel. Deal with it.” She glared at both vampires and they both backed down. Angel settled moodily back into his chair. Spike moved away and took a sulky position against a wall. Once they were quiet, she turned back to Wesley. “Well? Can I?”

“I doubt it would make a difference,” Wesley said softly. “The First is inside Spike, a part of it is woven into his very being. I doubt they could ever be separated now.”

Giles cleared his throat and placed a loving hand gently on her shoulder, offering the only comfort he could. “I suggest we reconvene in an hour. Buffy, I am truly sorry.”

That was that. The decision had been made. No one dared look at Buffy.

For her part, Buffy said nothing. Willow saw her hang her head and swallow before lifting her chin and looking at Spike for a long moment, eyes teary and longing. Then, without further comment, she turned and left the room.

“Buffy!” Spike launched himself off the wall, ready to follow.

Willow held out her hand and quickly reached out with her magic, slamming the door shut just as he reached it. He pulled on the doorknob with all his strength, but the door did not give.

Defeated, he rounded on Willow, jaw set. “Let me out,” he snarled, angry and prepared to vamp out if necessary.

“Spike,” Willow steadied him with a calming hand on his, “maybe this is a best friend moment.”

Spike didn’t seem pleased, but he cooled down. He stepped aside, giving Willow a look that told her that he was well aware of what Buffy was up to as well. “Go on,” he shrugged ruefully. “The slayer won’t listen to me. Never has.”

Willow thanked him with a small smile, casually flicking her wrist towards the door. It popped open and swung wide at her command.

“Neat trick.” Spike looked at the door and snorted. There was some humour in it at least, but the look he gave her as she left was deadly serious. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything daft, Red.”

Willow didn’t know if she could promise that, but she’d try.

Buffy was nowhere to be seen by the time Willow let the library door click shut behind her, but it wasn’t difficult to work out where she’d gone. She found Buffy at the bottom of the Grand Staircase, getting ready to leave. She glanced at Willow as she pulled on her coat. She didn’t seem in any way surprised she’d been followed.

“You won’t stop me,” she said, sliding her arm into the other sleeve and pulling out her ponytail. “And I can’t tell Spike I’m going. He’d stop me with that weird First power thing.”

Willow doubted that. She didn’t think after all that had happened he would force his will on Buffy again. “He wouldn’t do that unless he had to. But Buffy—”

“Will, I can’t let this happen,” Buffy interrupted as she started to gather up her weapons. She picked up her trusty axe and tested its weight. “I can’t. He fought so damn hard for… for, us. For there to even be an ‘us’, and I don’t feel as if I fought at all. It’s my turn to try.”

“I know what you’re going through” Willow sympathised, handing Buffy a torch. “You have to do this. I understand that, I would do it too, but what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Buffy took the torch. She smiled as she looked at it as if it was something she had forgotten, then slipped it into her pocket. “All I know is that the Well is the last place The First will expect me to be so that’s where I’ll go. I guess I’ll figure something out.”

Willow nodded and bit her lip, really, really hoping that Buffy knew what she was doing. “I won’t stop you. But I can give you this.” She rummaged through her pocket and offered Buffy the small piece of aquamarine crystal. “It will keep your head clear. It’s a longshot, but…”

Buffy nodded and took it. Then she threw her arms around Willow’s neck. “Thanks Will. You’re the best,” she whispered into Willow’s ear. “Do the ritual. If I fail, then we’ll need to finish that spell. I just need to buy a chance. For Spike. Tell him…tell him I’ll see him later.”

And with that Buffy disappeared through the door into the night.

***

If Spike knew one thing about Buffy, it was that whatever his plans were, however noble or justified he thought they were, or even just plain wicked as they might have been a long time ago, she would find some way to scupper them. It was a habit, he conceded, which in hindsight, had saved him from making some right royal mistakes and he had many reasons to be thankful for many of her interventions, but her tendency to leave a perfectly decent plan in ruins was no less annoying every time she did it.

So, when Willow finally returned alone from wherever it was she’d followed Buffy to, he was in no way surprised. He didn’t need to be told what Buffy was about to do; he took one look at Willow’s expression of evasive worry as she slipped back into the library and he knew.

He pushed off the wall, determined to go after the silly chit and put this all back the way it was meant to be. “Where is she?” he demanded, not sparing Willow any of his annoyance.

“She’s gone.” Willow looked up at him, all innocence and worry and powerlessness; a convincing performance if he hadn’t known she was a bloody powerful witch capable of destroying the world or stopping a bloody-minded slayer from doing something stupid if she felt like it. Spike didn’t have the time for this crap, Buffy could only have gone if Willow had let her go and he’d be buggered if he’d just let Buffy do that.

But it was Giles who asked the obvious question before he could. “Gone? Gone where?”

Willow looked back at the door, as if she could see through it to where Buffy was heading. The nervous glance was as telling as her words. “She’s gone to the Well.”

Damn her, Spike thought, his fears confirmed. He’d been trying to do the right thing for a change, taking one for team, saving the bloody world and she wouldn’t even let him do that right. “Brilliant. Soddin’ bloody fucking brilliant.”

Angel rose from his chair, joining Spike to crowd around the young witch. “So what do we do now?” he asked with an edge to his voice that indicated he was every bit as annoyed as Spike was, but containing it by forcing down by his worry.

“We go after her! Bring her back,” Spike waved an arm pointedly at the door. “Make the bint see some sodding sense.”

“No,” Willow said firmly as Angel looked like he was about to agree with Spike.

Spike gave her his best menacing stare, but she didn’t flinch. How times had changed. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

Willow gave him her patented resolve face; she was not going to be messed with. “I mean we leave her. She doesn’t want you to have do this.”

Spike snorted. As usual, this was all about what Buffy wanted. “So she thinks giving The First what it wants is a top idea, then?”

“She’ll find another way, she always does.”

“That’s very optimistic of you, Willow,” said Giles, critically. “Has she any idea of how to do that?”

Willow bit her lip, chagrined at least.

“I thought not.” Giles straightened. “But I’m afraid we really don’t have the time for a rescue mission. I suggest we carry on as planned. The best way we can help Buffy now is to do the spell.”

Spike was appalled. “You can’t just let her walk in there!”

“I think Buffy is misguided,” Giles conceded, “but she may have a point. I doubt The First will be expecting her to just show up at the Well and she may at least be able to take its attention from our purpose.”

Spike’s anger erupted. He glared at Giles, then at Willow, at Angel, at Wesley. “You’re all barmy.”

“Spike–“Angel started, not getting far as Spike shouted over him.

Spike jabbed a finger at each of them in turn. “If you think I’m going to let her do this, you can forget it.”

“The decision has been made.” Giles soothed.

“Not by me!”

“Oh, shut up.” Giles rubbed his temple. He nodded at Willow.

“I saw that!” Spike backed away, a victim of enough wayward spells to not want to get entangled with any more. “You are not doing that to me!”

“Fine with me,” Giles sighed.

Spike didn’t see the punch coming. One moment he was venting, pushing out his frustration with Buffy as anger at her friends and their funny ideas about what was right, the next, Giles’ fist was coming straight for his face. It connected with his chin with more force than he expected and he was falling…

Falling into blackness.

Out cold.

***

Buffy was so very glad Willow had remembered to give her the torch.

Night had not brought a break in the clouds, nor had the steady drizzle that pattered onto her raincoat showed any sign of stopping. With the moon blocked by the heavy blanket of nimbostratus and the village lights as dead as its residents, the night was like a fog of blackness that the torch could barely penetrate.

At first, she’d tried to preserve her night sight, keeping the torch off and navigating the footpaths by whatever light could break through the murk, but soon the soft, welcoming glow from the Retreat windows was far behind and the night closed in around her.

No one had specifically mentioned where the Deeper Well was, beyond the vague descriptions of ‘in the woods’ or ‘at the top of the hill’ but Buffy had known before she’d slipped out that she would find it easily enough. The First wanted her there; it would guide her.

Sure enough, something drew her back to the scrappy strip of woodland that clung to the rolling hills behind the village, an uncanny tug in her gut compelling her to follow the track that skirted the edge of the field next to the tree line. The track wasn’t a made up path like the footpath, more an access route for farm vehicles through the stubbly crop to the gazing land higher up, but although it was rough and uneven, it was wide and unploughed, if somewhat overgrown. During her explorations she’d never thought of going this way; it led away from the houses in the forsaken hamlet into the countryside and she’d dismissed the rolling tree-lined hills as too wild even for a vampire army to rest up. There was little out there that vampires would want; she knew from experience they were urban creatures that liked their comforts and an easy food source. Camping out in the rough was not top of a vampire’s to do list.

She picked her way up the soggy, rising ground, using her torch to find a safe route through the long wiry grass in the hope that she didn’t turn her ankle again. Following the line of the hedgerow and the shallow ditch that screened the woods from the field, she trudged on, seeking a gate or a stile, even a break in the hedge. Eventually, after finding nothing but banks upon banks of nettles, the beam of her torch found the remains of an old wooden pallet that had been wedged into a gap where the hawthorn had thinned.

Even without the call to the Well tying up her insides, it was clear this was the way she was meant to go. A closer look found that the barrier had been broken through; the rotting wood torn down; smashed and trampled into the ditch by many feet. The remains were easy to clamber over, forming a rickety bridge over the mud into the trees beyond.

The woods themselves were quiet, too still and silent to be quite right. The hush once again watchful; no birds sang, nothing living rustled the undergrowth, not even the wind or the rain rustled the thickets of trees, but still Buffy felt as if many eyes were on her, guiding her progress, a silent escort making sure she got to where they needed her to be. Let them, she thought. This wasn’t a secret assault after all; she wanted The First to know she was coming.

She had just stuck out along the path when a voice hollered out of the dark, “Who goes there!”

tbc

Buffy froze in mid-step.

Okay, she wasn’t trying to be stealthy and her million candle torch lit up the night like a beacon declaring ‘Hello, Slayer here, come and find me!’ but with the vampire army now little more than dust ruining her shoes she had not expected to encounter any trouble out here. The First was supposed to want her at the Well after all.

The challenge had been issued with complete seriousness though, the voice curt and demanding; the speaker obviously meaning to carry out his threat if he didn’t hear the right assurances.

But still… “‘Who goes there’?” she scoffed, unable to help herself. The words were such a cliché. “Who says stuff like that?”

“I do,” said the voice, not so loud this time, but it remained hard and uncompromising. It was a male voice; soft and English, but still forceful, steely and, in its own way, not to be messed with. “Do not ask me any question,” it snapped before she could ask who was speaking.

Huh, odd. Wasn’t the next line supposed to be ‘friend or foe’ or something like that? “Who are you?” she asked, disregarding the request as she looked for the owner of the voice.

Not that she could see very much in the gloom. The darkness pressed in all around her, straightjacket close and impenetrable. Her torch could make little impression; the deep, dense shadows between the trees hungrily swallowed its light. What the beam did show was little more than bramble thickets and twisted, tangled branches that reached down for her from the canopy like grasping fingers. Nothing out there looked capable of making such impolite demands.

“I am called Drogyn, and do I believe I asked you first.” There was a rustle as a man rose up out of the undergrowth and stepped forward like a Shakespearian actor taking the spotlight for his soliloquy. He was carrying a sword and he was pointing it at her in a competent, businesslike way; keeping his distance, but staying wary. This was a man who knew what he was doing: another warrior like her.

Despite the weapon though, Buffy was more caught by his dress-sense, or complete lack of it; here was a guy in serious need of a subscription to GQ. The torch picked out a worn leather surcoat and something that was possibly chainmail poking out from underneath. He looked like an unhorsed knight about eight hundred years out of his rightful historical place and she thought with a nostalgic horror that he might even be some lost Knight of Byzantium looking to bother her again. She’d hoped the nonsense with the Knights was over long ago, yet the sword waving and the demands sounded remarkably familiar.

But a good look at him changed her mind. The Knights, for all their hard living in camp, had never been as scruffy as this guy: like the rest of him, from his damp, unkempt hair to his patchy stubble, his clothes were tatty; well lived in and in desperate need of a good wash. Even better, he should just trash them and start over; maybe in a nice suit. She wondered how long he’d been out here. She hadn’t come across him during any of her other trips to the woods, yet he looked like he hadn’t slept in a proper bed for a month. Maybe he was just good at hiding.

“So Robin Hood,” she said, now certain he wasn’t one of the fanatical Order. “Did you lose the rest of the Fellowship?”

The point of the sword did not waver, even as his voice shook with anger and his eyes squinted at her through the blinding glare of those million candles. “I do not understand. And please stop asking questions! If you ask me anything again, I will cast you down you where you stand.”

Geez. This guy was tetchy. “Nice. I’m Buffy. The Slayer, or one of them anyway, and I’d like to see you try.” She waggled her axe for emphasis, just in case he didn’t believe her, even though it was unlikely that he could even see her behind the blinding torch beam.

Drogyn lowered his sword cautiously, yet she noticed that he did not attempt to sheathe it. “The Slayer?”

“In the flesh.” She shone the torch up into her face to let him see then directed it back at him. “Now why are you here?”

“Lady, please stop asking,” he pleaded, shielding his eyes this time. “I am compelled not to lie.”

“Even better,” she said, pleased that keeping the torch on his face kept him uncomfortable and less likely press his luck with his sword. “Then you can tell me what you know. Are you working for The First?”

“I am Drogyn,” he told her again in a tone that implied the name alone should be enough of an answer.

“Who?” The name meant nothing to Buffy. Giles might have mentioned him to her sometime, but Giles had told her a lot of things she didn’t remember, especially back when she was sixteen and more into dating hot boys then listening to dusty lore she’d assumed she would never use. “Am I supposed to know you?” she asked, “because I have no clue.”

“Some know me as the Battlebrand,” Drogyn said with a sigh. “I am not in the service of The First and nor I do serve any such evil. I answer to higher powers than those. I am the Guardian of the Deeper Well.”

“Guardian?” Puzzled, she continued, “I thought the Watcher’s Council were guarding it. That’s why they built the Retreat, right, to watch the Well?”

Drogyn nodded, trying – and failing – to shift back into the shadows as she tried to keep him pinned with light. “I believe that is so. But the Council only protects the Deeper Well; they are not tied to it, bound to it as I am. I am its Guardian. I have been so for many decades.”

“And a great job you seem to be doing. Aren’t you actually, you know, supposed to be guarding it?” If Drogyn was out here camping in the woods, he wasn’t guarding the Well and if the Well wasn’t guarded anymore… She could walk right in unchallenged, just as The First wanted her to do. That made a nasty kind of sense.

Seemingly coming to a decision, Drogyn cautiously took a pace forward, narrowing the distance between them. Up close she could see there was a hint of a handsome, if filthy, man under the scraggle of unbrushed hair and he was younger than she’d thought, in his thirties perhaps. And there was no way he could have been here for decades unless he was immortal or something. Either that or he had to be using the most fabulous anti-aging cream.

She was so getting the name of that.

“Indeed I should,” he said quietly, conspiratorially. “Yet I was overwhelmed. The First Evil’s forces took the Well and I had to make my retreat out here.”

“Forces?” Buffy asked with a sinking feeling. She hadn’t thought about it much since Willow’s super-charged Tinkerbell spell had turned the army of vampire villagers to dust, but of course The First had access to more than just a few vamps; the spell wouldn’t have killed off its Bringers or any of the other dark things it counted in its retinue. “How many were there?”

He thought for a moment before replying, “Two score, perhaps more.”

Not that his confusing answer helped her much. “Two what? How many is that?”

“Some forty or so maybe.” He looked at her as if she was the one talking like one of King Arthur’s Round Table with the ‘scores’ and the ‘verily’s. “I did not make count of those that fell as my sword was keen and I bested many, but maybe two-thirds still survive.”

“’Bested’?” Buffy smirked.

He ignored her amusement and answered her anyway, “Yes, but alas I was still but too few.”

“Riiight,” said Buffy doubtfully. “And what were they?”

“Some were those twisted beings that serve the darkness, but most were those that do not live. The vampire.”

“Great. Let’s go stop them.” Buffy didn’t know how The First was finding all these people to turn, but it was going to stop right now. And this Drogyn guy was going to help her. He was wild, scruffy and she suspected he’d probably smell really bad if she got too close, but the weary softness in his voice made her trust him. She’d being slaying too long not to recognise evil when she saw it and Drogyn just wasn’t giving her those ‘I want to eat you or destroy the world’ vibes.

“Lady, there are but too many,” he protested. “Even for my sword and your axe…”

“Hey, Slayer here! Vampires are kinda in the job description. Besides,” she added. “I don’t think they’ll stop me.”

Drogyn didn’t look convinced.

“You need help,” she reassured him. “I need to kick The First’s ass. Problem solved.”

“Very well,” Drogyn finally relaxed and sheathed his sword, “but please, no more questions.”

Buffy held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay. I promise. No more questions. Let’s go.”

Having extracted her promise, Drogyn seemed satisfied. With a nod he turned and led her back the way she’d just trudged. They walked for a short distance, following the path back towards the hedgerow. The tree cover was thinner here by the wood’s edge and the bare branches could catch less of the rain in their outstretched branches. Buffy wiped the water from her nose with a cold hand; the drizzle spritzed her face and her clothes with a fine, persistent mist and in response, she pulled her coat in tighter, not pleased to be back in the wet.

Her torch was giving up too; the batteries were starting to die and dim the beam from a million candles to just a bare few making their last stand against the night. Drogyn carried no torch of his own, but he didn’t seem to need one to find his way. He strode ahead of her with the confidence of someone who knew every tree and sapling, every rise and fall of the land, every unpredictable loop of the path. He knew when to duck each low hanging branch and when to avoid every knotted root lying hidden beneath the encroaching vines.

Buffy felt clumsy in comparison, as she used the ailing torch to pick out the driest ground so she didn’t slip on the patches of muddy earth he’d just strolled through. Dry twigs did not seem to snap under his boots nor did loose stones conspire to turn his ankles; she’d even bet the tendrils of creeping brambles hooking at her legs weren’t scratching at his calves with their tiny thorns.

She was brushing a low branch from her face when Drogyn stopped suddenly. For a moment Buffy thought he’d heard something and she strained to hear what it was that had made him stop, but although she held her breath, there was only a strange, flat silence. Then, before she could ask him why, he was off again, leaving their path without warning down a new track so overgrown she never would have spotted it was there.

“Whe—“ she started, longer having any idea where he was taking her.

“Do not ask!” he shut her down firmly. “You sought the Well. I am taking you to it. This is the quickest path.”

Affronted by his frustrated rudeness and unable to see much in the darkness through the misting rain, all Buffy could do was stumble after him, blindly, carefully, hoping he was right and knew where he going.

“Is the Well far?” she asked, not caring about Drogyn and his problem anymore. She was fed up with not being able to ask anything, it was so hard to get any information out of him otherwise. Add the mud, the endless woods that went on and on and the way even the sky above them seemed troubled, the clouds roiling and rumbling in their disquiet as if they anticipated the fight to come, and she just wanted this to be finished.

Drogyn stopped and glared at her, clamping his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Lady, I warn you now that my threats are not idle.”

“Sorry. I guess the Well isn’t close,” she rephrased gracelessly.

He loosened his posture and dropped his hand away from his weapon. He took a deep, grounding breath then gestured ahead into a clearing that opened up ahead of him. “The Well is here.”

Buffy had seen a lot in her short life, but this was a first, even for her. The ‘Well’ did not look promising. For a start it was a tree. A big tree, granted: a large, elderly oak that spread its boughs towards the turbulent heavens. It dominated the large clearing around it, but in no way could she call the tree a well of any description.

She stopped at the edge of the clearing out of the rain. “You have got to be kidding me. That’s the Well?”

“I assure you this is the right place,” Drogyn replied, walking over to the oak’s mighty trunk and stroking a hand across its bark with something like affection.

“But it’s a tree!” Buffy shook her dying torch, then guided its weak beam up and down the contorted trunk. There wasn’t much to see apart from gnarled, pitted bark. Nope, she wasn’t seeing the wellness here.

“It’s quite roomy once you get inside,” Drogyn told her without irony.

“Inside?” Buffy wondered for a moment if her judgement had been wrong. Maybe Drogyn wasn’t any of what he’d claimed to be and was really just some deranged, tree-hugging, mental patient with a D&D fixation that had somehow been lucky enough to escape becoming one of The First’s vamps. That wasn’t fair though. Drogyn didn’t look deranged, not if you discounted his bad temper and the roughness of his appearance anyway, because there was a fire in his eyes that was more earnest and focused than that.

She gave the tree another look. It was big, yeah, and there was a dark rent that opened like a mouth into the heartwood, but although the trunk’s girth was of chunky proportions and it certainly looked like it could be hollow, it was still going to be a bit too cosy to admit two. No way. She might have decided to trust him, but she had no desire to know Drogyn that well.

“The Old Oak is but a gateway,” he explained, now rubbing a hand almost lovingly around the opening. “The Well is vast. A hole in the earth that passes through realities, dimensions, through the entire world. The Old Ones neither dwelt fully in this realm nor any other, and so they rest in death.” Drogyn turned to her, but his hand never left the tree, as if it grounded him somehow or gave him strength. He certainly seemed a little less irritable. “They were demons that crossed dimensions,” he continued, “seeking dominion in each. They sleep in death between worlds, awaiting their resurrection, neither here nor there.”

“And The First wants to give them their wake up call,” Buffy added.

“So it would seem.”

She crossed the clearing and joined him by the entrance to the Well, reaching out and touching it herself. It hummed with life under her hand, but she could feel it weakening, dying a slow death beneath her fingers. The First.

“The First corrupts the Well,” Drogyn answered her unspoken question, his voice sad and mournful. “Poisons it with its presence here and drains the Old Oak of its life. The Oak is powerful, strong, and so it lingers, but it will soon succumb.”

She looked up at him, realising the deep affection he had for the place. “You guarded this?”

Drogyn nodded, seemingly too preoccupied to notice her questions anymore. “The duty was passed to me only a few decades past. I have been many things, seen many places, but I like it here. I have a cave in which to dwell that is warm and dry. It is my home now.”

Buffy let that slide, not sure whether Drogyn was pulling her leg or if a cave dwelling was what every Aragon wannabe aspired to.

Perhaps they should just get this over with. There was an entity that was way overdue its expiration date. She readied her axe. “Okay. Lead the way.”

***

Just because the Old Oak really was bigger on the inside didn’t mean that Buffy had abandoned all her doubts about what Drogyn had told her. Okay, the hole in the trunk had been less of a squeeze than expected and had opened into a dark, subterranean tunnel which she felt rather than saw was wide enough for the two of the to walk side by side, but a certain Wellness was still somewhat lacking.

By now, her torch had finally given up working and she slipped it into her pocket as Drogyn took a less twenty-first century torch from the wall and lit it with an incongruously modern Zippo. The torch roared into life with a whiff of burning oil that stung the back of her throat.

Buffy let Drogyn take point again. He strode on ahead, sword drawn and ready in one hand and the torch blazing in the other. The light licked softly at the walls of the tunnel, highlighting rough-hewn walls penetrated here and there by tree roots and large stones that bulged from the soft loam that held them in place. The tunnel seemed endless in the dark, its slight incline slowly taking them down into the earth, deeper and deeper by increments almost too small to perceive.

Soon the dark soil in the walls turned to a harder, sandy clay material, which crumbled under Buffy’s hand and covered her fingers in a soft, powdery dust. “Why can’t evil things make their lairs in clean places?” she mused, as she wiped her hands clean on her coat. “Like the mall! The mall would be great. Slayage and sales, what could be better than that?”

Drogyn stopped.

“That was a rhetorical question by the way,” she added before he could snap back at her.

He said nothing, but turned again and quickened his pace as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of his awkward charge.

Like the woods, the tunnel was also eerily quiet. Buffy could only hear their muffled footfalls and soft sounds of their breaths. With her other sense muted, she felt the tug in her stomach flutter more acutely as they descended. They were going the right way at least.

As she had suspected they met no challenge as the path was clear to receive her. With nothing to fight, her axe was starting to feel like a dead weight and she wished she’d brought something smaller, as there was no room in the tight tunnel to swing it anyway. Despite this, she kept it ready. A bulky weapon was better than no weapon.

After about half a mile, the tunnel ended abruptly and opened out, delivering them into a narrow cavern, the depths of which fell away beneath them into a vast abyss lit from below by a mysterious, ethereal light. A short wooden bridge connected the two sides of the cave with its functional, inelegant span and Drogyn strode across it confidently, seemingly unaware of the way the bridge creaked under their weight or the disconcerting gaps between some of the worn planks. Buffy tried not to think of the drop that awaited her if the bridge disintegrated under her feet. Instead she leant over the edge of a solid rail lashed together with thick coils of aging rope and looked down.

Suddenly, the state of the bridge was irrelevant. Down there, stacked on top of each other, coffins upon coffins upon coffins were piled up in haphazard towers of countless dead, waiting, waiting, to wake.

“Wow,” she breathed, awestruck. She felt like an idiot, but there was nothing else she could say that could encompass the scale or the impact of this place. She was staring down into forever, into unfathomable depths, and she was so high up that if she threw in a stone, it would never stop falling. There were no words to describe such a place, so she wouldn’t even try.

A hole in the earth, Drogyn had called the Well. That was some understatement.

“Behold,” Drogyn announced with an unnecessary sweep of his arm. “This is the Deeper Well.”

Buffy gulped, finding her throat to be suddenly dry.

The Deeper Well sure was no ordinary boneyard. To start, the sheer number of sarcophagi placed in the towering stacks was too many to calculate; she reached over a thousand before she gave up counting, the task too enormous to continue. The towers, piled higher than the tallest skyscrapers, plunged for mile after long mile as they raced downwards to a distant vanishing point. More still, she knew, were piled below that; each one occupied, each one sealed from eternity, each one a seed with a demon sealed within.

But it was not just the jaw-dropping scale of the place that gave her the serious wiggins. Nothing felt quite right, and it wasn’t even the shock of discovering there really was a massive shaft that cored the earth like a cosmic apple; the Well’s improbability alone couldn’t account for all of the weirdness. Something that she couldn’t quite pin down felt… off, out of synch; a sinister something, or somethings maybe, and they jarred uncomfortably against her slayer senses, ringing them like an alarm bell. Bitter experience told her that such warnings were not to be ignored.

If asked to guess what these somethings were, she would have to admit she already had a pretty good idea. When she looked down into the abyss, nothing moved, nothing spoke, nothing lived anymore, yet she knew with a growing certainty that the Old Ones continued to linger in those depths. Not alive, definitely nothing like that; life was noisy, a muted, unheard buzz made from the in and out of breaths, the drum beat rhythms of pumping hearts, the constant rush of blood coursing through arteries, veins and capillaries; but here in the Well, everything was still and cold with deaths long forgotten.

Yet all the same there was awareness down there, something that still clung to existence; a million fragmented consciousnesses that roamed as their bodies slept on; refusing to die, lost and wandering in oblivion but never finished. The Old Ones would never be entirely that.

Giles had called their existence sleeping, and maybe it was, but that description didn’t quite fit. When she listened, Buffy could hear the mass of them over the soft creaks made by the timber of the ancient bridge as Drogyn fidgeted. A warped chorus it was, of many voices carried up together on the gentle, clammy breeze funnelled up through the Well by the teetering towers of sarcophagi. The sound hummed on the periphery of her perception, strangely close but always distant, too many of them whispering at once for their words to make sense, a multitude of threats lost in the clamour of a thousand forgotten languages.

For they were threats, Buffy had no doubt about that; she didn’t need to hear their words to understand what curses they meant. To hear them was to know them. These were nasty, ancient malevolencies, whose hate grew in increments with every hour they waited to be free again. An eternity of unvented rage had twisted their demonic souls into new, more concentrated horrors terrifying to imagine. Formless and dilute, they sought their rebirth, reaching out from their graves for any life to cling on to and corrupt. Buffy’s skin crawled as they sought to start their new lives by consuming hers, a slow, osmotic invasion seeping in through her pores, looking to rip her body away from her soul if they could. Only the power of the Well held them in check, binding their tortured essences to their stone-clad tombs, keeping them tethered to their earthly prison, unable to escape.

This was an army. One Buffy had no desire to ever meet ever. Legions of pure, savage demons that made the Turok Han look witless and weak. They were ready, ready to make war again as soon as their bodies awoke to take back their souls and rebirth them. Even an army of slayers wouldn’t stand a chance against such an enemy.

Appalled at the thought, she pushed away from the rail and turned back to Drogyn. “So we’re here,” she said brightly, trying to keep the dread she felt from showing in her voice. “Great venue, but the party’s kinda lame.”

Drogyn looked at her as if she was speaking another language, but then, Buffy supposed, hermits probably didn’t get out to many keggers.

“You know, we’re here, but nothing’s happening,” she explained.

Drogyn brightened as he finally got her point. “There are more caverns beyond the bridge. In fact there are many. Some of them are even quite homely.”

Buffy wasn’t sure she believed that. How anyone could live in this place without becoming corrupted by the occupants of the Well, she had no idea. “I’m sure they are, but I’m looking for the cool kids.”

Drogyn hesitated again, his brow furrowing as he worked out what she meant.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Take me to, you know, The First.”

He nodded. “You speak very strangely, Lady, but very well we shall continue. Please follow me.”

At the far end of its span, the bridge found solid ground again, to Buffy’s relief, at the start of yet another tunnel, but she could not resist one last look back. For all the creepy vibes the Well emanated, this place, this impossible place, held her too.

Nothing had changed, the Well still waited, its yawning deep still patient and ready. Its occupants still longed for new life.

It was time to go.

The new tunnel was short, barely more than a brief passage a few yards long. At its end it became a large, but dimly lit chamber that branched out through monumental doorways into several more tunnels; some of these were bright with torchlight, while others were dark and appeared little used. None of these passages were anything like the rough-hewn tunnel that had led into the Well; these had been cut right into the soft bedrock. Straight sided and smooth, the stone was dressed and carved as delicately as the sides of the finest Egyptian temples, but the carvings were not in any way familiar or attractive, nor did they seem to be even vaguely human creations; a bizarre creeping pattern, coiled and sinuous, wove a twisting path around severe columns that rose up to a high ceiling spotted with a scatter of embossed and stylised stars. Elsewhere, vast murals depicted savage scenes, of war and violence, of sacrifice and running blood, which seemed as fresh as the day they were painted. Written between these imposing edifices, incongruously harsh, slashing strokes created a brutal, violent language that issued its proclamations in tall pictograms that, for all their strange unfamiliarity, left no doubt to their meaning: the Old Ones ruled here and they were absolute.

The pale light was not enough for Buffy to miss the grim evidence that showed this chamber was the site of a short, yet bloody battle. There was a smell, not strong now but very familiar, an odour that caught at the back of her throat: the bitter, rusty tang of dried blood. She looked more closely at the murals. Now, here and there, she could see what she thought was paint was really just flecks of real blood, flaky and dark, Pollock splattering the walls in arterial sprays. Under their feet, greasy, grey vampire dust clung to their shoes; some of it mixed with yet more blood. A gruesome trail smeared its way down a tunnel to their left, marking where the bodies of the fallen had been dragged across the rough floor to their disposal, or more likely, she thought, for reuse.

“Many tasted my blade here,” Drogyn told her, unnecessarily.

“And none of them followed you out.” Buffy picked at a spot on the wall where a dribble of blood had fallen in a lazy, sluggish drip from an undead vein. The fighting had been brutal enough here to maim as well as kill, yet Drogyn hadn’t been scratched. He was either exaggerating the numbers he’d killed or was seriously good fighter. She guessed she’d get to see his prowess soon enough.

“None that lived,” he agreed. He wasn’t boasting, just a professional stating the facts; Buffy liked that. “I know this place well enough,” he added. “Few could follow me through the tunnels.”

“Home, sweet, home,” she muttered absently.

He sighed. “I fear it will be no more, unless this ends.”

Buffy turned from her inspections. “Good point. Let’s get this done.” She pointed down to the long smear of blood that seemed to be their trail. “I guess we go that way.”

Drogyn smiled, beckoning her to follow. “Come. We should make our haste.”

The new passage took them downwards in a tight, square spiral that occasionally changed levels with short flights of steps, their precise perfection still unworn by millennia of use. Buffy felt like she was descending into the underworld or walking through some ancient palace found abandoned and forgotten in the deep jungle; the civilisation that built all this alien and forgotten, even as the they announced their might through the monumental scale of their domain.
They passed doorways blocked with tall, imposing doors and arches that opened into empty, austere rooms; their sides cut so square and so flat that they seemed to have been sliced out of the rock when it was still soft. Some of these rooms were decorated, reflecting the same arcane patterns they’d seen higher up, but others were bare to the stone; cold cells, featureless and bleak. What any of them had been used for, Buffy couldn’t ask and Drogyn certainly wasn’t giving her a tour, his stride was quick, determined. Battle ready.

Eventually, the passage narrowed and the faded splendour of the upper levels began to deteriorate as they reached places older still. Here the cravings were less stylised, organic and even more creepy, although much had crumbled or broken away from the wall to become rubble under their feet.

Drogyn stopped at a doorway that was little more than where the wall had been pushed in to create a rough, unlit tunnel.

“Through here,” he said quietly, before disappearing into the dark.

This short tunnel ended with a narrow opening, little more than a crack, which appeared just large enough for a man to squeeze through if he held his breath. A soft, hazy light came through its aperture, casting ragged shadows onto the crumbly walls around them.

Drogyn gestured for Buffy to stop and shushed her into silence as they approached the gap.

She could hear voices now, a low murmur undercutting a strange, metronomic chant. She put down the axe and crouched, creeping forward to see the long, narrow hall that opened out before them. Several times as tall as it was wide, the hall’s sheer sides rose like cliffs through the heavy shadows to a ceiling once as finely cut as the rest but now bristling with stalactites. These gleamed wetly as they greedily caught what little light reached them, a scatter of tiny eyes to watch the ceremony below.

A handful of bored looking vamps in gameface and some corpse-like things that should have been long at rest rather than going bump in the night, looked on as The First’s true servants, the Bringers, did their blasphemously funky stuff. Standing in a loose circle around a heavy stone altar, another primitive sarcophagus like those in the Well, they were chanting in unison, becoming one voice that carried their dark prayer in unholy echoes around the hall. The chant was hypnotic, but there was nothing soothing about the spiked, guttural syllables uttered by their torn, ragged tongues; the language was harsh, primitive and unfamiliar, devised to summon the worst of evils.

Plus, Buffy knew that chanting never meant anything good.

“This is the back way,” Drogyn whispered, tucking in behind her. “They will not know us until we choose.”

Buffy nodded, agreeing. She was thinking, planning, trying to work out the best way to tackle this. There were not as many as she had thought there would be, assuming that the whole of The First’s forces were here, but there was enough. They were easy opponents all of them, but too many for her to take on alone. She would need Drogyn for this.

But Drogyn, for all his claims about his skill, was an unknown. He looked competent; he knew how to hold his sword at least, but she didn’t really know how good in a fight he would be. Right then, with a longing pang, she wished it was Spike with her. To be able to go into this fight knowing exactly how her partner moved and how he fought, to know that her back would always be covered no matter what, was a luxury she could have done with right then. She missed that certainty almost as much as she missed Spike himself.

But Spike wasn’t here, and never would be again if she didn’t get this done. Drogyn, however good he was, would have to do; they didn’t have much time.

“Cover my back,” she told him as she picked up her axe again.

In response, he drew his sword. “What are you planning to do?”

Buffy shrugged. “We’ll figure that out.”

The battle didn’t last long. In fact it didn’t start at all.

Once inside the cavern, they crept forward slowly, stealthily, keeping to the deepest shadows by the high walls. Drogyn took one side, pressing himself tightly to the rock, almost invisible in his careworn armour, while Buffy crouched, inching forward over the once smooth and polished stone floor.

The Bringers continued with their droning chant, not seeming to notice the threat, but, before either of them could strike a blow and press their advantage, there was a shift in the air, the scrape and shuffle of many feet and the Bringers parted.

Buffy found she was surrounded. This was not an army that waited for her; it was an honour guard to welcome their sacrifice. A trap.

She straightened, knowing the game was up; but she swung the great axe anyway, not willing to give in without some sort of fight. The blade made a wide vicious arc that many dodged, though one Bringer was not so quick and she clipped the side of its head, the heavy blade tearing away the waxy, scarred flesh from its ruined cheek as the flat part disarticulated its jaw. But she couldn’t do more. At the apex of her swing many hands reached out and caught the axe. It was yanked from her grasp as the circle closed in and she was pushed forward towards the altar, where Drogyn waited, his fine sword missing as well.

Quickly, she assessed their situation. The exits from the cave were blocked; the ceremonial doors wedged shut, even the small opening that Drogyn had shown her was now covered by a guard of vampires. Neither of them had a weapon and The First’s army had overwhelmed them. The odds were pretty crappy.

But worse, at the centre of the circle, leaning casually against the great stone sarcophagus, lounged The First.

“Hello Slayer,” it purred, pleased with itself. “Glad you could make it.”

“Oh I wouldn’t want to miss this party,” Buffy ground out as she resisted the urge to hit the entity into the next week.

“I know. You even brought a date.” The First glanced at Drogyn dismissively before smirking at her in a parody of Spike’s trademark leer. “Does your boyfriend know?”

Buffy stepped forward, not prepared to give The First the pleasure of invading her space first. Win or lose, The First was going to lose this war and she wanted it to know that. “This is between me and you,” she told it. “Spike’s not a part of this.”

“I guess not. Though I have to say, I think your standards have slipped.” The entity pushed past her, dismissing her as little more than inconsequential, and strutted up to Drogyn. “How’re you doing, Dro?”

Drogyn’s posture stiffened. “You should leave this place, fiend!”

“Quite the threat!” The First laughed humourlessly. “You going to make me? Didn’t work last time, did it? A sodding useless Guardian you turned out to be.”

“They were many,” Drogyn went for his sword, seemingly forgetting that it wasn’t there anymore. His hands flexed nervously where the hilt should be instead, “but there are two of us now.”

The First snorted with derision. “I’d like to see you try, Battlebrand. A slayer won’t make a difference. Not when she’s dead anyway.”

“We finish this. Here. Now,” Buffy snapped.

“Fine with me.” The First shrugged, unconcerned. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“Then get ready to say sayonara.”

“Tough talk, but never gonna happen, pet.” The Fist laughed. It bounced back to her, shoving itself into her personal space like she knew it would, and leant in close into her face. “What are you going to do? Kiss me to death?”

Buffy felt sick at the thought. “Ugh. Hardly.”

She then made the mistake of looking up, catching The First undressing her with Spike’s eyes. With a recent intimate afternoon with the real thing behind her, the differences between Spike and this doppelganger were starker still. They looked the same, they moved in the same ways, but the eyes did not lie. Sure, she was looking into Spike’s hardest, iciest stare, the way it was when he’d wanted her to die with the same fervour with which he would later love her: lust filled, but scathing and full of hate; but somehow The First could only manage a poor imitation. Its eyes were flat and dead, lacking the vibrancy or the humour that had always danced in Spike’s shining blue gaze. That repelled her all the more.

The First seemed unconcerned; it still looked smugly pleased with itself and even lit a cigarette for nonchalantly dramatic effect. “I will endure because there is evil in everything,” it said, blowing a smoke ring with the exhale from its first drag. “You will die here. The Well will open. And so I will take the next village and then the next, and then the next town, the next city. You will not be able to stop me.”

Buffy feigned a yawn, fanning her face with her hand. She’d heard this all before, but nothing had happened yet. “Ego much?”

“Hardly,” The First drew away and patted the sarcophagus affectionately, circling it proudly. “I’ll have help. Lots of help. Your kind is done, Slayer. Fit only to be servants to your new lords.”

“Even if I fail, others will destroy you,” she warned.

“Others have tried.” The First grabbed a Bringer from the circle and pulled back its hood.

Buffy gasped. Although scarred, mutilated and sightless, the face was clearly recognisable: Roger Wyndham-Pryce. He stood there, unmoving, mind long gone or lost in some kind of thrall, Buffy didn’t know how the transformation worked, but what made him human had been erased, removed, replaced with this loyal servant.

“I believe you’ve met,” The First said.

Buffy was in no way surprised to find Wyndham-Pryce up to his neck in this. She had never liked he man but this… he hadn’t deserved this. “Why?” she asked, but suddenly she knew and she felt so sorry for Wesley, who should never know what his father had become.

“Someone tried to be a hero,” The First explained. “But too late for a double-cross, the deal was done. He did his part, you know. Got you here, brought me this wonderful knife.” It drew a primitive dagger from somewhere within its long coat, a long obsidian shard worked into a vicious, jagged blade.

A quick movement and The First pulled back Wyndham-Pryce’s head, putting the blade to the man’s shrivelled throat. Then it slowly drew the knife across Wyndham-Pryce’s neck like it might play a violin, short and sharp, but long. The wound gaped, raw and bloody, like the mouth of a great serpent and the man gargled wetly as he took a last slow, rasping breath. He didn’t register pain or panic; he didn’t fight for his life at all, just collapsed at Buffy’s feet and died.

The First nudged the body with its boot. “Stupid git. Thought he could bring me this gift then stab it into my back.” It looked up at Buffy as it wiped the knife idly on it sleeve. “Your friend’s plans? Your army of slayers? Piffle. We’re not talking half-breed vampires here, Buffy; the Old Ones are pure, primal. Proper demons. Untainted by the stink of mankind. Their power is beyond what you can imagine. Your ritual will fail and they will ride forth across a trail of your Slayer’s corpses.”

For a moment, Buffy wavered; so much for secret rituals, but she pushed the negative thoughts away, after all she was here because she wanted her friends to fail. The year before, with the Potentials to protect and train, she had become despondent, giving in to The First’s insidious efforts to undermine her confidence with its taunts, but she would never let that happen again. Spike’s faith in her had bolstered her and they’d won, knowing that all The First really had were lies and deceits to keep her from the truth of her own power. The Turok Han were strong and tough, but one vampire’s sacrifice and laid waste to an army of them.

This could be done and it would be. The First fought although it knew it was never going to win. Whatever its threats, its indestructibility, its resemblance to someone she loved dearly, it couldn’t scare her anymore.

All it really wanted was revenge, but she had a little of her own to find too.

tbc

A sudden bump jolted Spike abruptly to wakefulness. Unconscious to fully awake in half a second, he opened his eyes to find that Angel had dumped him none too gently at the centre of a stone circle, a large ring of tall, roughly weathered standing stones looming like a great range of mountain peaks behind the other vampire.

The Dancers as Giles had called them.

Spike grimaced, pushing himself up off the rain sodden ground; as ways to wake up went, a face full of wet grass might be a long way from a place in his Top Ten and was little better than the way Giles had sent him to sleep, but it was hardly the worst way he’d come to during his long and varied unlife.

It had still hurt a bit though.

“Ugh!” he griped as he spat out a sour mouthful of mud. “What the bugger was that for?”

Angel wasn’t the least bit sympathetic. “It’s about time you were awake. I’m tired of carrying your carcass.”

“You’d be awake if someone had just dropped you like a sack of bloody potatoes!”

Angel huffed, implying it was less than he deserved, but didn’t bother to reply. In the dark Spike couldn’t see much of Angel’s face, but it was not hard to picture the scowl that was undoubtedly painted there; even Angel’s broad shoulders, set against the blanketing cloud cover like a range of shadowy mountains, seemed to be frowning.

Ignoring him, Spike wiped the mud off his chin and checked himself over for damage. Not much seemed out of place, although the damp ground had offered little in the way of a soft landing. Mostly it was his dignity that bore the bruises and it had seen worse over the years, what with chips in his head, cuckolding Chaos demons and some right kickings from Buffy back in the old days; a few grass stains were nothing against that catalogue of disaster. His jaw ached though, the left side still stiff and tender from meeting Giles’ fist; it appeared the old Watcher’s punch really was more impressive than he’d remembered. Thankfully, the swelling would be all but gone in an hour or so, but then he wouldn’t be around anymore to care.

Pushing that dangerous thought aside, he got to his feet. “I’m a condemned man, you know!”

Angel sighed, grave and world weary, “Can we get this over with?”

A voice behind Angel, its owner lost in the shadows, replied, “Good god, yes.”

Giles.

Spike gave the both of them a well deserved two fingered salute, but whether they could see the gesture, he didn’t know or care. He couldn’t be bothered to get any more worked up about it; tempting though it was, arguing with Angel and Giles was not the way he wanted to spend the last night of his existence if that was what this was going to be.

So instead of rising to their bait, he tried to figure out where the sodding hell they’d brought him. They were outside, that was obvious enough, and it was dark and wet, the sky spitting out a steady, miserable drizzle at the earth. Most of it at least, seemed to be falling on Angel, who lingered like a black cloud with some personal grudge.

No change there.

But although the enormous grumpy vampire attracted the rain to him as if he was some kind of magnet for gloom, the stones themselves seemed to draw the darkness from the thin woodland that rimmed the circle, magnifying the night. With the moonlight blocked by the thick clouds, the upright stones rose up to the sky as a maw of jagged black teeth biting a chuck out of the sky, chewing it up and spewing it back out as deep, impenetrable shadows. Spike couldn’t help but think he would be next in their jaws.

Here at the extreme edge of the woods, the land fell away from the stones, a long, but gentle hill sloping down in soft undulations to the dead village; where, in the distance behind the silent houses, the lonely lights of the Retreat could just be seen as lonely beacons marking the world’s last stronghold against The First. Spike looked away from the safe walls of the last homely house. He wouldn’t be going back there.

They were doing this.

Someone had set a short, stubby church candle on top of each stone and while Wesley sat and took a cross-legged position atop the recumbent altar stone, Giles was busy unpacking more equipment for the ritual from a bulky backpack. At first Spike couldn’t see Willow, but a flash to his left gave her away as she lit the first candle, a spark of magic from her fingers making a little firefly light that fought valiantly against the steady rain; it fizzed and spat and fluttered in protest, but compelled to by her magic, it stayed defiantly alight.

The scene set, Spike turned his thoughts to more important matters. “Where’s Buffy?”

“Not here.” Angel fidgeted, shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to another. Clearly Spike wasn’t the only one unhappy about that.

“She left for the Well,” Willow explained, flicking a finger at the next candle. The wick crackled as it burst into a reluctant flame.

Spike wanted to kick something in frustration, one of the big stones would do, but he couldn’t quite work up the anger. It looked like Buffy had got her own way yet again. Even if he could get away, there was no chance he would ever catch up with her in time to prevent her doing anything stupid; hours had passed, it was midnight or thereabouts as far as he could tell, he must have been out for half the night.

Yeah, that punch had been a belter.

The only way left to stop her now was to go through with the ritual and maybe they might get it done before she ever reached The First. The sooner the better was fine with him; he’d already made his peace with the world.

“Are you okay?” Willow asked as she returned to Giles’ side. The candles were all lit now, pushing back the night and those fathomless shadows back into the trees. A warm, flickering glow bathed the ground inside the circle with the reassurance that that the night could be resisted.

“I’m still in one piece, thanks for asking.” Spike fired another glare at Angel for good measure, just in case he hadn’t got the point the first time.

“Oh, give it a rest.” Giles groaned.

Angel crossed his arms as leaned against the nearest stone. “That’s not what Willow asked.”

Spike turned his back on them, not wanting to answer Willow’s loaded question, he doubted he even could answer it; he wasn’t okay, not really. He couldn’t kid himself, this brief interlude outside the amulet had given him all he’d ever hoped for and now he just had to let it all go again. But he needed to, it was either him or Buffy and there was no way he would ever let Buffy to throw her life away for a second time; especially for him. He’d had more than a good innings all told, and Buffy deserved the same. It was better for all of them to stop drawing this out.

He straightened and faced them again. “Now you’ve finished sprucing up the place, let’s get started.”

Willow seemed to understand and let her question drop, not pressing him further. Instead she drew the amulet out of her pocket and offered it to him. Spike reached out and took it gingerly by its chain. As it swung and turned and spun from his fingers, the low wattage of the candles made the crystal burn, its facets capturing an inner fire that took Spike straight back to Sunnydale and his first turn on the barbecue.

When he looked up Willow was watching him anxiously, her unspoken question clear.

Spike gave rueful shrug, maybe this time he could give her some sort of answer. “My choice, sweet. Better me than the Slayer.”

“Phooey to that.” Willow still didn’t look happy. “We’ve all been so busy with the new Council and everything, and Buffy, she’s been so lonely and grievey. I think she needs you right now.”

Heartened a little, at least someone other than the slayer gave a toss about him; Spike gave the young witch a small smile in return. “Can’t always get what we want, can we Angelus?”

Angel glowered at the jibe, but then unexpectedly clapped Spike on the back in a way that was meant to be comradely, but was rather more awkward than that. “No, we can’t. But you’re not so bad, you don’t deserve this.”

Not knowing what to say to that unexpected declaration, Spike nodded. “Yeah, er, right then. Thanks.”

Angel clapped him on the shoulder once more, his hand lingering a little longer this time as if in regret, and then withdrew. It was a goodbye, a testament to a hundred plus years of shared history, maybe even a little gruff affection.

Touched, but unsure as to whether he should offer something in return or even if he should lest the fragile truce be broken, Spike swallowed and turned back to Willow. “So what do I do?”

“Okay…” She paused a moment then took the dish Giles offered her. Spike would bet any money that it had been liberated The Retreat’s silver cabinet. “Sit next to this and put the amulet on.” She bent and placed the dish at the centre of the circle.

Spike did as he was told, settling down again onto the damp grass and slipping the amulet’s chain over his head. The rain pattered into the dish, blurring fine Victorian scrollwork.

“Are you sure this is gonna work?” Angel looked up at the miserable sky. “What if the candles go out?”

“They won’t,” Willow told him as she placed several small bundles of dried herbs into the dish. She fussed nervously with them, positioning each of them around the dish more carefully than they really needed to be. “It’s the circle that’s important.”

When she was satisfied with her arrangement, she took a small bottle from her pocket and uncorked it, before pouring the scented oil over the desiccated plants. Spike’s sensitive nose winkled as the combined scents fragranced the night like an eye-wateringly strong pot pourri.

“Once I cast the spell to activate them,” she continued, “the stones will protect us so Wesley can recite the ritual. The local ley lines will focus power into the circle and give it all an extra kick in the pants,” she snapped her fingers. The herbs started to burn. “The rest is just… insurance.”

“Right, the way I see it I’m extra crispy either way.” He was being flippant, Spike knew that, and it wasn’t fair on Willow, but he was the one flinging himself into the bonfire to save the world again, he was allowed one last grumble.

Willow’s lip started to wibble. “Don’t say that.”

“You know it’s true, Red. Please can we just do this?”

Through the pungent, billowing smoke from the herbs, Spike watched her shift uncomfortably. “Let’s just do it our way, okay?”

Spike couldn’t argue with that.

Clearly unable to say more, she hurried away.

Everyone took their positions. Willow stood in the west, facing the rising sun while Angel took the East position in the protective lee of a crooked stone that leaned precariously over him. Giles gave Wesley an umbrella and the Codex Tempus Mormundi before taking his place near the most southerly stone. The cardinal points covered, the ritual began.

Wesley opened the precious book at a page he had already marked. “Are we ready?”

There was a soft murmur of agreement, although Spike didn’t add his own voice to the chorus. He would never be ready.

Willow stood up, a short bladed knife in her right hand. She pointed it to the North.

“Spirits of the North, I command you…”

Spike tuned her out as she finished casting the circle, trying to think of other things. The large pendant felt heavy and cold against his chest and he wanted nothing more than to rip it off and lob it away into the trees. Maybe he wasn’t as ready for this as he’d thought.

The protective circle cast, Willow had slipped back into her place and Wesley started to read; the words he spoke aloud forming broken, harsh syllables that seemed to catch in his throat. To accompany the reading Giles started to beat out a gentle rhythm on a small, African drum. Willow shut her eyes and started a descant chant of her own. Angel with nothing to do except watch, looked even glummer than usual.

The chants began to weave their deep, heady magic. Spike felt his eyes grow heavy and he let them flutter shut, wallowing in the mantras, the drum, the rhythm of the earth’s heartbeat. Life. The beat was the spell, a tapestry of intricate notes woven from the life-force of every living thing around them. Even the air started to vibrate; a quivering, uncertain breeze pushing at the candle flames.

As the spell worked, the amulet grew hotter and it started to glow; Spike could feel it burning through his breastbone. He was beginning to feel a little hot himself, something inside heating him up like a small nuclear reactor creating hot fusion in his chest. This was a familiar feeling, he’d felt this the first time and he braced himself for the moment it would consume him, but although the heat built its way towards its inevitable flashover, other elements came to the battle.

The drizzle intensified, turning into a vicious, stinging deluge that became heavier still as it railed against the earth. The wind picked up, whipping the rain around them with whiplash slashes of angry precipitation. The ground beneath them trembled, but not in the deep, rumbling way of the earthquakes back in California, this was shallower, a shimmy not a shake, but just as threatening.

Then just as the heat was getting too much to bear, the amulet opened, splitting the night apart with a burst of piercing white light. The circle lit up, unnaturally bright, banishing the darkness away. A wave of magic rippled across the surface of the earth.

Willow and Wesley kept chanting, Wesley faltering slightly as the umbrella turned itself inside out and was ripped from his hands. To protect the fluttering book from the rain, he curled in on himself, stumbling over a few words as he did so, but always he kept up the chant, the threads of the magic he wove unbroken.

Bracing herself against her stone, Willow looked to Giles for reassurance.

“Ignore it,” he yelled back at her. “Keep going. It’s The First. But it cannot harm—“ He ducked a flying branch that narrowly missed his head. “—us.”

Sound now joined the chaos. A hum that grew louder until it was all any of them could hear, then a whoosh of air and the wind blew and blew, sending a cascade of debris twirling around the circle.

“Keep inside!” Angel yelled, unnecessarily.

Then everything stopped.

The shaking ceased. The wind eased. The rain spat out the last of its venom. Only the intertwined voices of Willow and Wesley broke the silence. Wesley straightened and he proclaimed the garbled rantings of a madman into the night air. Until…

Until a boom louder than thunder tore through the ether.

“Look!” Giles pointed down at the Retreat.

The house had been ripped apart, the roof blown to pieces by the plume of psychic energy that was erupting from the attic.

Angel took a step forward to get a closer view. “What the hell?”

All the ghosts, all the spirits, all the energies; everything that had ever been trapped there, were released as one by the blast. The air around them roared, and they heard screaming, crying, shouting, laughing.

Spike looked up. The energy swirled and coalesced into a broad, imposing pillar of light that bridged the gap between the earth and the heavens in a great arc that gathered above their heads. Where it breached the sky, the suffocating blanket of cloud broke apart and coiled in on itself, spinning the vapour into an angry maelstrom of psychic fury and raging weather, a whirling, vindictive carousel cloud of loathing and spite. The rain returned; the surging clouds belting out a lashing, hateful rain. The wind bawled with some banshee howl, splitting the sir apart in hissing forks of serpentine lightning. The earth rocked and rolled.

But the circle held, strong and sure as the old, old rocks that formed it. The storm whisked the rain around the circle as the sky lit up, but not a drop of water fell this time between the ancient stones. A great bolt vaporised a nearby tree as it crashed to earth, but inside the circle the violence could not touch them.

Spike felt every cell in his body shiver. There was no going back, no time to back out. This was it. Then it came. He was on fire; his body engulfed by flames that roared and rippled around him. The heat, furnace hot, was unbearable and it hurt, oh yeah it hurt, and he screamed out when he was unable to hold in the pain any longer.

Willow and Wesley finished their chanting on the same beat and Wesley yelled out, “NOW!”

There had been times, back when Buffy used to regularly knock the creatures of the night right back into the darkness with a flick of her killer heels, when she’d thought evil things were just too much in love with their own voices. That was great for her, all that pompous speechifying just made her job that much easier, but really, every single one of those creatures that had told her in detail about how they were going to kill her and crush up her bones, had insisted that she ‘listen to my masterplan before I fail to kill you’, should have all just shut up and got on with the job. It was reassuring somehow, to hear nothing had changed.

The First, as ever, was no exception to the rule. In fact, despite of the strong competition she’d faced over her career as the slayer, the entity was still easily ahead of the field to take the Gold Medal in the smugness, self-satisfaction and 100m freestyle boasting events at the evil Olympics.

Whatever she said, whatever she did, The First would never just accept that she’d kicked its ass.

Twice.

Yet here they were again like a broken record stuck in the same worn out groove. She folded her arms and held her ground, ignoring as best she could the sickening pool of blood that was slowly expanding from beneath Wyndham-Pryce’s cooling corpse, a dark spreading stain that threatened to seep under her boots and ruin the leather. She tried not to think about what the man had done and what he had failed to achieve with his betrayal. It was too late for him, his double-cross had proved futile, but she was even more sure of it now; they would beat The First again. Nothing she’d heard in the cavern tonight had convinced her that she was wrong. The entity might like to talk and talk, then talk some more for good effect, but so far, she’d seen little more of its masterplan for world domination than a small village of vamps and some dusty prehistoric relic from before the Stone Age; nasty powerful stuff, maybe, but hardly an apocalypse in the making. She was not impressed.

She flicked her hair back over her shoulder and lifted her chin defiantly. “Have you finished yapping?” she asked, adding a faux yawn just for effect. “I’m getting kinda bored here.”

“Cute.” The First finished its cigarette, taking its time to suck in the last of the tobacco. As it causally tossed the butt aside with no thought to littering, a Bringer shuffled forward to grind it out. Its duty done, it bowed to its master and retreated back into the group, but The First paid no notice and slowly exhaled a long, hazy cloud of blue smoke through its perfect copy of Spike’s nose. “But you’re right. Time’s tick tocking!”

The First gestured to its assembled devotees and the press of Bringers responded together, reverently dropping their heads as one. Scarred, tortured faces disappeared into the shadows of their rough cowls as they leant forward and twisted, broken hands clasped together as if in ardent prayer to their foul god. All their suffering; the pain of their transition, the breaking of their bodies, the sublimation of any self, had all lead to this. This was the moment they had been made for.

At first it appeared little else was happening and Buffy began to think The First was delusional as well as conceited, that it was just working its way towards one big anti-climax after another; but she wasn’t naïve enough to relax her guard. Instead, she swallowed, tense and ready to move, to fight, listening carefully for whatever it was The First might summon up next, but all she could hear were inconsequential sounds: the gentle in-out of Drogyn’s breath, his mail shirt clinking lightly as his chest rose and fell, the irreverently furtive mutterings from the bored vampires guarding the exits and somewhere out in the long shadows, the plinking of water dripping as it fell in plump, swollen droplets. Then Buffy heard the sound she was searching for and dreading: soft and low; twisted tongues mouthing a muted chant.

And she thought that was all it would be; some black-hearted spell woven on words barely spoken, but soon the incantation began to build, whispers turning to shouts; louder, faster, stronger, until the air in the cavern began to throb in time with the rhythm the Bringers set; a thudding, pulsating beat, the voices a bound together as a pounding, hammering drum. Power, power, power they wrought, making it, shaping it, pushing it out and out until it became almost too hard to breathe…

Buffy clamped her hands over her ears, but the gesture did little good. The energy felt like it was growing inside her, swelling in her head, bursting her chest, her blood thumping through her as if boiling in her veins. The Bringers, unfeeling, uncaring, carried on unaffected, unaware of the miniature universe expanding in her skull. Only Drogyn was holding his head as she was; the agony all too obvious in the pain sketched across his face.

The pressure was too much, unbearable, and Buffy felt her voice joining Drogyn’s, screaming for the pain to stop.

But The First didn’t answer their pleas. It leaned back and threw its arms open wide, revelling in its moment, oh so very pleased with itself. “This is so much fun!” it cried.

By now, the whole cavern felt like it would fall in on them, the walls shaking with rippling tremors, earthquake strong. It was a shallow shake; the epicentre all around them, rather than deep in the earth below. The rock thundered as it was rattled, and Buffy fought for her balance as the cavern floor bucked and lurched beneath them like a bad-tempered bronco. The First, though, barely seemed to notice the cavern see-sawing under its boots. Keeping balance, it seemed, wasn’t an issue for personifications of primordial evil. It basked in the demolition of the cavern, its will and whim the agents of the destruction wrought as stones and dust cascaded down from the ceiling, the fragile stalactites shattering in response as the rumbling resonance shook them into pieces of cutting, crystalline hail. The needle sharp fragments sliced into the faces of the unflinching Bringers beneath them; and twisted and mindless that they were, they carried on oblivious to their danger; unlike the fledgling vampires, who were new and undisciplined, and were more concerned about their personal safety than remaining to be torn apart with The First’s loyal bodyguard. They scattered and ran, disappearing back into the corridors and caves. Buffy would deal with them later.

In the cavern there was nowhere to hide. All Buffy could do was to cover her head with her arms, hope that she remained on her feet and that her brain would not explode out through her ears. The shards tore at the sleeves of her raincoat, ripping into the tough fabric like a rake of claws. Through the pain in her skull, she felt rather than saw Drogyn beside her as he stumbled and almost went down, but he was nimble and managed to remain standing. Then before she could protest, he reached out for her and pulled her to him, covering her with the arch of his body to shield her from the worst of the lethal shower. He at least was well protected by his heavy mail shirt and the shards pinged all around them as the pieces bounced off the metal shrouding his back.

Then, just as Buffy thought that her head might pop, something gave. The Bringer’s chant did not falter and the cavern still shook, yet the pressure in Buffy’s head eased as a deep boom echoed around the chamber. It was followed by an ear-splitting crack that tore the air apart like a caged lightning bolt. Rock sheared and faulted on one side of the cavern, a giant fracture splitting the wall from floor to ceiling. A great panel of smooth, dressed stone groaned ominously then fell away, tumbling out into the Deeper Well beyond them.

Their work done, the Bringers completed their chant and the earth around them return to calm as the cavern stopped shaking at last. Drogyn released Buffy from his protection and she straightened to see what The First had done. The vast cavern was now little more than a narrow shelf perched above the Well’s abyss, the whole of its expanse laid out before them. The cavern was the altar, she knew now. The First had her where it wanted her.

Drogyn, a thick trail of blood streaming down the side of his face and neck from a wound just under his eye, stared at the Well in wonder. “Evil thing, what have you done here?”

The First turned to them both in triumph. “You see—“ it started, but just as it tried to speak, it doubled up, stumbling over its words. It reached out to the sarcophagus to steady itself, pulling itself up straight again. “Your friends,” it said. “Their little bauble pulls at my bits and bobs.” it drew a hand across its belly, pulling loosely at its threadbare tee-shirt. The movement casually revealed a slash of pale and perfect skin above the top of its jeans. Buffy looked away. While that peep of smooth muscled flesh might have been lickable on Spike, it was a nauseating sight The First. The entity pushed off the sarcophagus and prowled up to Buffy. It still looked pained, but it seemed to have shrugged off most of whatever it was that was bothering it. “They have no idea what they did to me in that city over the sea,” it told her, “with their science and their spells. Hardened me up. Made me stronger.” It leaned forward into her face. “They can’t trap me with a pretty trinket. No one can. Not this time. Not when I can just do this.”

The First clicked its fingers next to Buffy’s ear. As it leaned back out of her personal space, the cavern rumbled again, but there was no earthquake, the epicentre of this shake at a distance this time. There was a long pause while Buffy waited for something else to happen, but nothing did. She glanced quickly at Drogyn, but judging by his frown and his wrinkled forehead, he was just as confused as she was. The First though didn’t look bothered at all by the lack of a dramatic finish.

“Huh?” Buffy tried, still confused. She narrowed her eyes sternly at The First. “What was that?”

The First smiled; a wicked grin that slithered slowly across its features. This wasn’t one of Spike’s expressions, mimicked and twisted by this perverse doppelganger, but something altogether older and knowing. It looked strange and wrong on the sharp angles of its borrowed face, as if it was forcing the facial muscles into some unfamiliar contortion that did not belong there. “I shook things up a bit,” it said. “All the things that ever had an evil heart in this village, I released them again.” The First hooked its thumbs into the belt loops of its jeans and mimicked Spike’s best swaggering strut as it circled the sarcophagus once more, a much better imitation than the hideous smile. “The spirits. You think you bound them, and so you did, but I control this place. They answer to my will. All I’ve done is broken open their shackles. Let the genie back out of the bottle.” The First stumbled again, this time dropping to its knees. “They can deal with your pals,” it coughed, “while we get to it.”

Buffy knew this was her opportunity. Now or never.

With The First down and distracted by the spell and its own ego, she pushed Drogyn aside.

“Lady!” he shouted as he tried to stop her.

She paid no attention to his protest. Wrenching her axe out of a Bringer’s hands, she charged past the sinister honour guard, using her slayer speed to move before any of them could react. Then she leapt, vaulting gracefully over The First onto the sarcophagus, bringing the great axe down as hard as she could onto its sealed lid.

The axe stuck the heavy capstone in its centre, the blow straight and true, yet the ancient tomb proved impossibly hard and unyielding. It resisted her forceful blow, and the ornate, ornamental blade turned on the rough, worn surface, pinging back and twisting the haft suddenly, violently, in her hands. The unexpected force of the recoil was too much, even for a Slayer to correct and she pitched forward and fell, losing the axe as she thrust her arms out to protect herself. The weapon was launched from her hand to land in front of The First, the blade biting deep into the cavern floor.

The First didn’t flinch, as if unsurprised by any of this, and it laughed smugly. It stood and pulled the axe free, swinging it casually to test its balance. “Nice weapon,” it said as if impressed.

Ignoring the entity, Buffy pulled himself up onto her knees, searching the capstone for damage, scrubbing desperately at the surface with her hands, looking for anything, any sign that she’d made a difference; but the great axe had done nothing. The stone was intact.

“I’m sorry.” The First cocked its head with a sickeningly false attempt at sympathy. “It’s a good axe, but that tomb has been sealed for too long to be broken by something so… ordinary.” It took a last look at the axe, flicking the sharp cutting edge of the engraved blade with a pale thumb, then shrugged and tossed it away. Instead, it drew the obsidian knife out from its pocket again. “You need something like this.”

Before she could move, The First gripped the knife in both hands and rammed it into the capstone between her knees. The black blade cut through the aged stone like it was made from the softness of flesh and it split underneath her, fracturing the lid into a web of fine cracks. Where the knife pierced the sarcophagus, something foul smelling and gaseous issued from the fissure, an angry jet of hissing, spitting vapour. Buffy reeled back from the stench, but not before she had breathed in a good lungful.

“Gross,” she croaked, finding her voice, though it was cracked and brittle.

The gas tasted bitter, so bitter it stung her tongue and burned her throat as it forced its way inside her body, and as she breathed it in she knew it was evil. And alive. It choked her, blocking her lungs to rob her of her breath and she coughed desperately to be free of it, searching for clean air, but finding none. Her chest burned and tightened with each inhale-exhale that she missed, and she hung there trapped between one breath and the next she might never take, until with a gasp, she managed to clear her airway.

But she already knew it was too late.

She waited a moment just to be sure it was over, then slowly, stiffly, tried to stand, but she found even this basic human skill more difficult than it should have been.

Struggling, she put an arm out for support, suddenly finding Drogyn at her side, holding her still. “Lady, you are not well.”

She wanted to tell him that she was okay, that it was just some funky fumes that had caught her out; archaeologists had to experience such things all the time, right? But she couldn’t find the words. She… she didn’t feel right. Then as she fought the strange feeling, a wave of nausea broke and crashed in her stomach, and for a moment she battled down the urge to spew her frugal dinner.

Drogyn held her and although he was little more than a stranger to her, she was glad of the contact, the comfort he offered, even if she wished so much that it was Spike’s arms circling her. Pushing down the vomit and the sour bile with a sheer force of will, she waited until the feeling passed, letting her body settle and ease before she tried to move again. Soon, when she was certain that she wasn’t going to barf on Drogyn’s ragged tunic, she pulled away from him and got to her feet, straightening unsteadily to look down at The First.

Eagerly, it lent forward on the sarcophagus, smiling up at her. It was pleased with itself. “If you were just going to do it all for me, I wouldn’t have bothered to make all this effort,” it gloated.

Buffy’s stomach twisted again as she realised what The First meant. In hindsight, The First’s plan was obvious. She’d been allowed to get hold of the axe. It had wanted this.

She’d lost this war on an intake of breath.


tbc

Now.

Magic on magic on magic; everywhere there was action as Willow’s channelled power joined Wesley’s shout to cast Mormundi’s spell out like a net. Their combined voices, united in their intent to catch and draw The First into the amulet once and for all, brutally punched the spell across the hillside with such strength that the force of it, an invisible shockwave of pure energy drawn from the ether, the stone circle, the innate power of an adept witch, exploded the charged air outside The Dancers and pushed the spirits released by The First back into the shadows.

For one agonising moment, half a breath long, the tormented night was turned into a blinding, impossible day. Angel instinctively threw his arms over his sensitive eyes and dived into the dark lee of one of The Dancer’s looming stones. The light might not have burned into his photo-sensitive vampiric flesh like sunlight, but the small, if marginal, protection the stone promised was reassuring nonetheless because they still didn’t really know what to expect from such twisted, insane magic. Wesley had explained the intention of the mad monk’s ancient spell, but none of them could even venture a guess at its potential side-effects.

A safe place to stand seemed a good idea just then; Angel was well aware that in this battle he would be little more than an observer. This was not a fight that could be won by the power of his fists; the stones themselves would have more influence on the outcome of this night than he would. He’d accepted there was little else he could do now apart from pray to any deity that cared to listen that the circle would maintain the silent strength of the centuries-steady stones and keep the rumbling storm at bay.

Night returned as quickly as it had left them. Angel blinked into the new blackness, his night vision lost. The others were now fuzzy figures on the periphery. Giles, his hand still poised over his small drum, was ready to pick up the beat again if required. Willow, staring shell-shocked at the violence the spell had wrought, was grounding herself with one hand pressed against the dark sentinel of weathered rock behind her. Wesley was bent over Mormundi’s precious book as he sought to protect its fragile pages from the cataclysmic storm they’d unleashed to meet the roar of The First’s hurricane. Light flickered warmly on their faces like firelight, soft dancing devils swirling dervish reels across their skin: light reflected from the vampire being devoured by the forces of fire and magic in the centre of the circle.

Spike was already little more than a blackened figure against the bright flare of the searing flames. Hunched over, he’d drawn himself in as the spell clashed with the power of the amulet; the two potent, but very different powers sparking and crashing as their energies collided and mixed. Angel watched hopelessly as they whirled around each other as Spike convulsed and screamed; ice fighting fire, blood boiling on bone, the flames roaring, flaring to blue-white tips as they fought. Then, just as Angel thought he couldn’t stand to watch any longer, Spike suddenly threw his arms wide, collapsing back as the fireball whooshed upwards from his chest and rocketed towards the heavens.

As the last wisp of flame vanished into the clouds to be extinguished by the maelstrom, Angel forced himself to look back towards the prone vampire immobile at the centre of the circle. The spells were now balanced and working together. Their combined power was obvious; the amulet on Spike’s breast lit the turbulent sky like a searchlight, holding steady, waiting, ready to snap closed around its prey. The whole night seemed tense and troubled, caught between intakes of breath, as if waiting a long beat drawn out to uncomfortable length. The wind quietened, the storm above grumbled, lightning licked the clouds: electricity on a short circuit that could never break to earth. Angel felt his stomach tie itself into knots. Everything was waiting for the big finale.

A finale that never seemed to come.

Something was wrong; with the spell or the magics, Angel couldn’t guess, but even he could tell that the battle was locked into stalemate. Paused. The amulet still held off the night with the towering column of light before them. Spike remained prone and still and unconsumed. The First did not appear. The trap did not close. Minutes passed as they waited.

Eventually uneasy looks began to be exchanged amongst them as it became obvious nothing was going to happen.

“No!” Willow scrambled clumsily to her feet. “We did everything right! Giles?”

But Giles did not have an answer for her, only questions. “Are you sure we did everything? Perhaps we missed something? Wesley, was that all the spell required us to do?”

“I believe so,” Wesley pulled out the large book and started to mull over the ritual once more. “I will check again for anything in the Codex we might have overlooked, but the coherency of the work and the condition of the vellum makes it impossible to be totally sure of anything Mormundi might have intended.”

As Wesley started to trace the erratic lines with his torch, mouthing the words over as he went to ensure there could be nothing he’d missed, Willow went to check the silver dish she’d set before Spike. He must have knocked it over in his throes, its charred contents had spilled out and were scattered haphazardly across the grass. She set the dish upright again and started to replace the herbs with fresh bundles from her pocket, anxiously counting them back in. “Althea, masterwort, belladonna, asafoetida, wormwood…”

With the others preoccupied with the spell rather than the vampire it should have affected, Angel cautiously went over to the centre of the circle to check on Spike, willing to take the risk of getting too near to help a fallen comrade. Even though there had been many times when Angel would have savoured the image of Spike being devoured by ball of fire, he couldn’t leave him to this fate, although whether he wanted to close his eyes for a final time or give some comfort to the condemned, he didn’t know.

He knelt at Spike’s side and shook his immobile shoulder. It was hard to see in the harsh glare, but these were not the scorched remains Angel had expected to see. Buffy had reluctantly described what had happened the last time Spike had worn the amulet deep in the Hellmouth and this seemed very different. Although Spike had been the centre of an inferno only moments before, one that should have flamegrilled his body past extra crispy well into burnt, he wasn’t even singed; the exposed pale skin of his face and hands remained untouched by the flames that had engulfed him. Even his ubiquitous coat bore no signs that it had been on fire only a minute or two before. Spike wasn’t dust or ash and was no nearer to becoming part of the amulet than he had been that afternoon. Instead, he lay motionless; lifeless, as still and as perfect as in death. With the brightness of the light leeching the colour from his pallid skin, he was finally the corpse he would have been if Drusilla hadn’t turned him all those years ago. That was something. The spell had not taken Spike. Not yet.

With all the herbs arranged in their dish and gently smoking as they burned in the pungent oil, Willow glanced up at him, worrying her bottom lip with concern. “Angel, is he okay?”

He couldn’t guess what was okay in this situation. “I don’t think he can feel anything,” was the best he could offer her.

She crawled over to take a place at Spike’s head. Patting his lifeless face none too gently; she spoke to him, “Spike?” but she too received no response to her urging.

Angel tried again, this time grabbing him by both shoulders and shaking harder this time, careful not to disturb the amulet, but not prepared to give up until Spike showed something of his annoying self. “Spike! C’mon!”

Spike’s head rolled back, but a small, pain-filled groan issued from his unmoving lips, the first sign he’d showed that he was more than just a vacant cadaver.

“Angel, stop!” Willow grabbed Angel’s arm and batted his hands away. “That won’t help him.”

Frustrated, Angel dropped Spike’s body back down onto the grass. He could see Spike’s pain now in the tightness of his jaw and the clench of his teeth, but the other vampire didn’t speak or move again. Angel didn’t even think he was conscious.

Willow placed a hand on Spike’s forehead, a somehow compassionate, yet testing gesture. Then, when she’d seemingly got some satisfactory result, she shifted to place both her palms to his temples. “Spike? Spike, are you with me?” she called.

“What’s going on?” Angel asked. “Is he okay?”

“Shhh!” She closed her eyes, concentrating on delving into the depths into Spike’s subconscious. “I can’t get in,” she said after several minutes had passed, “but he’s still here. He can’t move, but he’s in there. He can’t speak to us.”

“Thank goodness for small mercies,” Giles said as he joined them. He was looking at the chunky stone resting on Spike’s chest, curious but unwilling to touch it. “It appears that the amulet is open as it should be,” he mused. “Wesley?”

Wesley was still frantically flicking through Mormundi’s book trying to make sense of the ambiguous swirling patterns of the man’s writings, but the pretty paragraphs scrawled in the shapes of strange flora and fantastic animals weren’t the easiest to read quickly in the dark. “We’ve done everything right and set the trap,” he said eventually. “The ritual was supposed to work. Spike should be in the amulet with The First.”

“Great, 'supposed to work’ isn’t good enough, Wes,” Angel snapped, but he was not really surprised. “Maybe that’s all this Mormundi was: some kind of mad man.”

Wesley ignored that, still clutching the great book like it was their lifeline. Maybe it was. “It’s all we have. We’ll figure it out. If we can just—”

His words were devoured by a crack of thunder overhead. A bolt of lightning hit the tallest stone and shot around the sacred ring, bouncing from stone to stone, snuffing out their candles one by one until it found a weakness in their defences. One of the stones to the South split in two and then exploded. The ancient rock was pulverised, blown into bits, the rubble crashing inwards as the circle was broken.

Ducking the spittle of stones striking his back, Angel tried to look back at the break in their boundary. He could barely see beyond the circle, the night was deep, impenetrable; the blinding light bursting from Spike’s chest creating a bright oasis in a desert of darkness, but he could hear the disquiet forces of The First as they took their opportunity to approach again.

“Willow!” Angel shouted at the witch.

She released Spike’s head and pulled her athame from her pocket. “I’m on it!”

As she leapt to her feet to speak the words to invoke the circle once more, the spirits appeared at the gaps between the stones. Somewhere deep in those distressed woods, a horse whinnied; at least it sounded like a horse to Angel, if one that hadn’t taken a breath for a hundred years; the sound rattled dryly in its dead throat, the sound unsettling, disturbing, pitiful. And getting closer.

Willow rushed through the spell, calling on the elements, the protective spirits of the four corners of the compass to aid them again in their need. She was answered almost as soon as she had finished the incantation. The candles on the stones fluttered back into life just as the spirits committed their assault against the boundary. These were vengeful souls seeking solace and revenge for their stolen lives, stolen deaths, in violence. Dead and banished to nightmare, their flesh and their ties to the world long gone, they were just lost, angry souls seeking retaliation. They did not care who had plucked them from their rest, they lashed out indiscriminately at the magic they blamed for their macabre state, hoping to tear down the spell Willow had cast and devour those within.

Some, Angel saw, still wore the faded rags of their burial, funeral finery taken to ruins by the soft and soil. They clawed at the air, bodiless, incorporeal, staring without emotion on their broken eyeless faces, but despite the damage to the fallen upright, Willow’s hasty spell seemed to be holding, if only just. Fleshless limbs punctured the circle where the magic wavered and the dead reached in with bony fingers, seeking to grab at anything they could reach, only to be pushed back once more as the circle regained its strength.

Behind the spirits flinging themselves at the circle in their fury, beneath the close, forbidding clouds, chaos reigned; the ground trembled, the rain whipped the hill, horizontal and vicious. Screams tore through the night; evil, shrieking voices carried on a spiralling hurricane of spectral energy that shook the trees, ripping them from their roots and plucking the boughs from their trunks like a child would pull the legs from stricken insects. These too were hurled at the circle to bounce off the stones.

Then out of the shadows, a horse appeared; stamping as it tossed its fleshless head, rearing up on its hind legs as its hooves crashed against the circle. Its shrouded rider, the master of the Wild Hunt, threw out its ragged arms and wailed a piercing war cry straight from Hell. The sound seemed to slice through the night straight into Angel’s heart. The horse snarled and pulled at its bit, lurching forward again only to be repelled as the circle of The Dancers held firm.

But the return of the Wild Hunt was the least of Angel’s worries.

He could feel something new start to tug at him, then gain momentum, sweeping over him like rough, seeking hands; making his skin crawl uncomfortably as cold, invisible fingers probed into his flesh, penetrating his most personal space as they searched inside every cavity of his body for any part of its malevolent quarry that might be lurking there. No cell, no capillary was spared the search.

He gasped in something like pain, although this was deeper, rawer, more intense than some plain hurt.

Wesley heard him cry out. “Angel?”

Angel opened his month to answer his friend, but no words would come. His world became nothing more than the agonised territory of his body. He fell to his knees as the spells rummaging through his innards pulled him inside and out, stretching and twisting him; sucking the darkness from his very marrow. He could even see it now: a nasty black vapour oozing from his pores.

Their trap was finally closing.

On him.


tbc

The horror of learning the truth made Buffy’s heart plummet to her queasy stomach.

She felt so dumb; The First had just been toying with her all along, making her think she was thinking for herself when really she’d been blindly following its plans at every step. The First had finally beaten them and it was all her fault.

As she processed the reality of their defeat, her insides churned angrily and a new wave of light-headedness made her nauseous. It was obvious now that the stinky sarcophagus gas was doing something to her deep within; changing her body internally into something horrible and new. Whatever it was in the gas, it was nasty and strong and she could sense it was truly evil. The burn in stomach didn’t feel like she’d just eaten a bad burrito. For an icy weakness was spreading from her centre out along her limbs, an insidious numbness seeping slowly through her extremities until she could barely feel them anymore, like she was turning to stone under Medusa’s flinty stare.

Dizzy and disorientated now her body was being quietly stolen from her, she couldn’t keep her balance and she staggered, fighting Drogyn ineffectually as he tried to lift her off the sarcophagus. She felt as if she was plummeting backwards in slow motion. Out of her head. Flying…

… until she was placed gently back on her feet, returned to solid ground.

“Ugh,” she wobbled slightly, her legs felt like liquid now. “Stupid legs.”

Quickly, Drogyn dipped a shoulder under her arm and lifted her so she could stand up straight before she crumpled. “I’m sorry this has happened to you,” he said, “I lament I have failed my sworn duty. Please ask of me any question you wish,” He placed a comforting hand on her arm as he spoke, his words earnest and full of sorrow.

“What’s happening to me?” she asked quietly; glad that she wouldn’t have to fight him for answers this time.

He lowered his eyes and said, “You have been inflected.”

Thankful for his support, she really didn’t know what she would have done without him; she reached out, grasping at his tattered tunic to have something to cling on to. “Infected?”

He nodded solemnly. “I fear it may be too late.”

Not understanding what he meant and finding the meaning of his words hard to grasp and hold on to as her mind floated, floated away, she furrowed her brow, just about hanging on to reality by her tingling fingertips. “What is it, supernatural flu?”

“It is much better than that.” The smirk, the glee, was evident in The First’s voice as it ran a loving hand along the top of the sarcophagus, its fingers idly tracing the branching cracks. Then, as if the entity had decided there was no time for such reverie, it pushed away and swaggered over to them. “Illyria, pet,” it leaned in too close and whispered into Buffy’s ear, “meet the Slayer.”

As the ancient name was spoken, the Bringers moved as one, prostrating themselves on the cavern floor, as if acolytes of this great primordial god.

“Illyria…” Buffy muttered, tasting the name and not liking its flavour. Filled with dread, she wrenched her mind back into focus, fighting through the fuzz in her whirling head. “Illyria? Who’s she?”

The First retreated and crossed its arms. It raised an eyebrow at Drogyn. “You know, don’t you, Dro?”

Drogyn nodded slowly, his eyes full of regret as he looked down at her and answered, “I am afraid Illyria is one of the Old Ones that was left in my charge.”

Buffy sagged against him, using his strong body to keep her from sinking into her knees. “I don’t want to hear this, do I?”

“But I am afraid you must.” Drogyn insisted, shifting to adjust her weight so he could pull her straight again. “Every one of these demons seeks its resurrection. Illyria is but one of those. Your body shall be its vessel.”

“And me? What happens to me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid you will…” Drogyn’s voice was bleak and full of apology and sadness; there was little hope to be found there. “You will not exist any longer.”

Buffy blinked, unable to process that revelation. “Then what? I die? I go back to heaven?”

“Then nothing,” The First shook its head as it backed away to lounge against the sarcophagus once again. “Your essence shall be no more. You face oblivion.”

That didn’t make any sense. Buffy pointed a wavering finger at The First. “But you need me. I’m your sacrifice.”

“Kind of.” It agreed with a shrug of its shoulder that was far more casual than the situation really warranted. “Plus a side of revenge.” Its demeanour changed at that, hardening as it stared at her, its face echoing Spike at his most dangerous. “Did you really think that something like the Deeper Well would just open up for some slayer’s heart tossed into its depths? If it was that simple I’d have done it centuries ago. Not hard to find a slayer, even when there was only one girl in all the world. You see, you are just the beginning, Slayer. My little experiment. I have a well full of Old Ones and you made an army of slayers ready for them. Perfect vessels. Strong, limber and quick. Just what I need.” It looked down at Wyndham-Pryce’s cooling body without emotion. “And the Watchers? They did their part. This one sent them rushing to save some poor town not worth saving. Gathering all those new vessels together in Milton Keynes, each one just waiting to be filled.” It looked back up at her, still grinning, still drunk on its victory. It drummed its fingers on the top of the sarcophagus as if it had all the time in the world. “There’s a new Demon Age coming, eternal war, and the last human defence will fall. And the fun all starts here, with you.”

“How can you do this?” Drogyn demanded; the outrage evident in the tone of his soft voice.

“It’s complicated, I know.” The First put out a hand as if to calm or stop him, but Drogyn didn’t move. “Takes lots of work, lots of blood; lots of this and that and the other. And power. Real power. Yeah, there’s rituals. Always is. Someone has to die; in a special place,” it waved at the Well. “At a special time,” it made a show of checking a watch it wasn’t wearing, tapping its wrist with a pale finger. “And that time is, ooh almost now! Just need a bit more help. You see, it takes an Old One to open the Well. Bit of a paradox that, but I bent some rules. I can do that. There’s nothing to stop me waking one of them up in the Well.”

And then Buffy realised how the last piece of the puzzle fit into the plan. There was an Old One now living inside her, but all she had heard about them contradicted what The First was trying to do. “Why would it do that? Why would it free its rivals?”

The First’s stare now grew serious and penetrating again. “Because I’ll tell it to.”

Lamely, because there was little more that her body could do, Buffy warned, “I won’t let you do this!”

The First snorted, hardly impressed with her threats. “You will. You’ll be dead. Don’t worry, it’ll be quick. Horribly painful, but quick. I can’t wait to see the light go out in your eyes!” It grinned to itself, relishing that thought. “It’s sad you know, if you’d been human, not just some bimbo pumped up on the magic of the Shadow Men, this might have taken a couple of days: Illyria slowly hollowing you out from the inside until you are nothing but a shell, but I won’t get to relish it. That’s the funny thing about the human immune system when it’s strong, young, healthy; it fights too hard and just helps the infection along. And what’s stronger than a slayer?”

Buffy mind raced, searching for a solution, while also trying to avoid – and failing – to take offence at the entity calling her a ‘bimbo’, as if that was important right now. She could barely stand and she only had Drogyn to help her; her axe was out of reach and Drogyn’s sword was now lost somewhere out amongst the Bringers; there was nothing she could use now but her fists and her wits. She’d got by on less in the past. She wasn’t a bimbo.

And then she had it. Nothing else had worked and this might be the only shot she’d get. Without hesitation, pushing through her weakness and trying not to think of The First’s resemblance to her vampire lover, she reached out and pulled the obsidian knife from the lid of the sarcophagus. In one movement, she plunged it deep into The First’s chest, ramming it right through its unbeating heart.

The perpetual smirk vanished and Buffy knew then she was right. It looked at her desperately, those blue eyes that were so easy to mistake for Spike’s were shocked and betrayed as it clawed at the knife, trying to pull the blade free with hands that no longer had the strength to grip the hilt. It gasped, mouthing wordless obscenities, then toppled back, hitting the floor as it convulsed, its back arching in spasms. As the entity writhed, a thick, black steam issued from its exposed skin as its essence separated from its body.

Immediately, Buffy felt something rise up her throat to choke her. She coughed hard, trying to force out whatever it was that was blocking her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, smothered from within. Coughing again was next to impossible when nothing would come. She could feel her lungs clench as she fought and failed to fill them. Drogyn held her tight around her middle, but there was nothing he could do except hold her steady and fuss. Then suddenly, just as she thought she couldn’t stand the pain any longer, the blockage broke free and a bitter mouthful of the same black and hideous vapour came up so fast she spat it out as she spluttered to take a breath. Coughing out the last of it, it too rose up to join the rest pouring out of The First’s pores. It billowed and rolled then disappeared upwards past the flimsy rope bridge far above them and out through the tunnels near the top of the Well.

As Buffy tried to catch her breath again, the Bringers came to life. Their master fallen, dead or gone, or whatever, now they were anchorless, disorientated; vulnerable without their leader to guide them. Where before they moved together in unison with common purpose, they were now disorientated and witless. Without will or reason of their own beyond their blind service, they panicked, or seemed to, fleeing in different directions at once. They fled for what remained of their lives.

All that was left of The First was a pale corpse, ashen skinned and sunken-cheeked. Spike. But not really. What was The First had departed, leaving that part of it that had been re-made in a poet-punk vampire’s image; something now dead and empty, nothing more. Yet Buffy knew this was only half of the battle. She had driven The First out, but it hadn’t just been banished for good. She knew that it was still out in the world, ready to regroup and return when it could. But she had done all she was able to; The First had got its revenge on her and she had little time left. Perhaps it would leave her friends alone now. That would have to be her victory.

The physical effort of wielding the knife and all the coughing had made her feel woozy again and Buffy found her mind was slipping away from her down a dark, fathomless tunnel. Her legs forgot they were meant to support her and she sank to her knees, oblivious to the chaos around her. Drogyn sprung to catch her, but he was only quick enough to ease her lightly to the floor.

She steadied herself on his arm. “I can do this.”

With an iron resolve she gathered herself and let go, forcing her rebellious limbs to obey her. Her head swam as she propped herself up on her hands. Of course her body would do what she told it to, she was… she was... the Slayer!

She was, wasn’t she?

She felt… odd now, uncomfortable in her own body as if it didn’t belong to her anymore and she noticed a strange blue flush was starting to spread down her fingers from the tips, although she didn’t think she was cold.

“Lady, I have you.” A voice said kindly, soothingly. It was a new voice in her life, not Spike or one of her friends, but it was familiar. Friend, not foe. Where had she heard it before?

A sweat broke on her forehead as she reached out for the owner of the voice again and pulled herself to her feet.

Her fingers were turning blue! She had to stop this. Her hands weren’t supposed to be some strange colour, unless she’d painted the nails that way, but blue? She wouldn’t choose that. Totally not her thing. Shivering, she stumbled forward, finding each step with difficulty, but drawing herself up to fight whatever it was that was attacking her. She tried to look dangerous and defiant; neither of which she felt.

A hand was placed on her arm to steady her and it shook her insistently for her attention. She opened her eyes – she hadn’t even realised she’d closed them – to focus on the man trying to get her attention. Dro… Drog… Drogyn, that was what he was called right? Weird name.

“Lady,” Drogyn said, “you are strong and the infection is but new. You may fight this.”

Forming words was tricky, but she managed one: “How?”

“You must push the demon out,” he insisted. “Find something, anything that could contain it and cast it from you.”

“Like what?”

“What do you have? A mirror? A crystal on a necklace or a trinket perhaps?” He looked over at the two corpses in front of them. “If all fails, use one of them.”

“No.” She shook her head, regaining a little focus. “I can’t. Spike. I… I have a crystal, I think. In my pocket?”

“That will be perfect.” Drogyn rummaged through her coat, trying each pocket in turn. Then he pressed something into her hand. Fighting the fuzziness in her head and the conflicted muscles that didn’t know who they belonged to anymore, she curled her fingers around the object he’d given her: the crystal Willow had insisted she take as she’d left the Retreat.

“Push Illyria out,” he urged. “Cast the demon from you. It will fight you, but for now you are stronger yet.”

Barely able to focus on anything other than the blue streak leeching the healthy colour from her arms, the crystal fell from her weak grip. Drogyn picked it up and placed it back in her palm, this time holding his hands over hers to keep it tightly in place.

“Push it out,” he encouraged again.

She tried but she didn’t know how to do what he asked. “How? I don’t—”

“Push.” He squeezed her hand and her head cleared; just a little, but enough.

The stone was the earth and reality and everything that was her. She looked up at Drogyn and nodded. She understood now. She fought the pressure within her with all she had, forcing the threat out of her body until the crystal started to vibrate with the energy she was pushing into it. This was working. Taking the chance, she shoved with her mind, throwing the presence from her body and out. The crystal, which been light and clear like a pale winter’s sky, darkened as she struggled, the stain invading her fingers leaching into the stone, flushing the crystal with the deep indigo of a clear, moonless twilight. Suddenly the pressure became too much and the crystal sheared and shattered, exploding into a million tiny sapphire shards, but that didn’t matter: Buffy was free and her head was all hers again.

Drogyn looked into her eyes, examining her closely, searching her gaze for any trace of the infection. “You are fortunate,” he concluded. “Illyria has been banished. You may yet survive.”

She nodded. She knew that was true.

He released her and Buffy found could finally stand by herself. No more staggering or knees like quivering Jello. She looked down at Wyndham-Pryce’s body, trying not to look at again that the dead thing that wore her lover’s face, but she hoped she had bought Spike the time to save him from the amulet. She tried not to think too much about that, there was nothing else she could do for him now. His fate was in the hands of her friends and their unacceptable plans. Instead, she tried to forget her powerlessness and concentrated on what she was going to tell Wesley about his father. She would need to choose her words very carefully. At least there was something good she could say about his death; Wyndham-Pryce might not have known it, but he’d given her the opportunity to win even in his betrayal. He might not have deserved the eulogy, but his son did; she would try to honour his father with that at least.

“Come, we must leave this place,” Drogyn said as he recovered his sword from where the Bringers had abandoned it. He looked back at her as he slipped the blade back into its scabbard, waiting patiently for her answer. He looked as eager as she was to end this for good.

She nodded at him, ready. She wasn’t going to argue with him, she’d had more than enough of the cavern, the ledge, or whatever it was now, she wanted to get back to her friends, to Spike, she needed to know if she had been quick enough, yet somehow now she felt hopeful that he was going to be okay.

But duty came before her worries.

She picked up her axe and followed Drogyn towards the exit to the caves. The Bringers and the fledging vampires were still out there and would need to be cleared up. There was still one hell of a battle to be fought out there.

This was not quite a victory to celebrate yet.



tbc