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A/N: See? This is me updating. Yay, right? ;) Thanks for all the reviews I got for the last chapter!
~*~

She was hoping this plane ride wouldn’t be a repeat of the last one. She didn’t much want to deal with falling asleep on his arm again, not after what had transpired first in the alley and then in the motel room. Even if she had initiated part of it…

Luckily for her, there still seemed to be several different entities out to get them. They’d been set on by twenty vampires before they even got to the airport, and by the time they’d gotten on the plane, someone had tried to stab Buffy, and another demon had attempted to stake Spike.

It was really starting to piss her off.

“I know that Willow and her cronies can’t be too thrilled that we’re coming,” she complained to Spike. They’d been on the plane for two hours and were somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. “But seriously, couldn’t she be honest about it? Twenty to two isn’t fair odds at all!”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Vamps don’t play fair, luv.”

Before it had been an empty endearment. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Buffy felt her face turning red. “Well, yeah, but—“

“An’ you’d best be gettin’ used to bein’ attacked,” he added harshly, not looking at her. “Red’s not the only one who’ll be wantin’ to kill us b’fore this is over.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to ignore how much his tone hurt her. “I know that,” she snapped. “Slayer, remember?”

“Not likely to forget it,” he said. It could have been a compliment, but the way he said it, she knew it wasn’t.

“Just like I’m not likely to forget you’re a vampire,” she said flatly.

A smirk came over his lips. “You seemed to forget last night.”

A valid point, and one that hit her like a ton of bricks. Flirting, grinding against him—letting him bite her, even if it had been for the common good of all mankind. “Last night was—“

“An exception, you were off your bird, not gonna happen again, ‘ve heard it all before, Slayer,” Spike cut in flatly. “That’s what you said back in Cleveland, when we were—what the bloody hell do you want?”

The businessman who’d tapped the vampire on the shoulder said politely, “I don’t know what sort of role playing game you kids are doing, but could you keep it down, please? I’m in the middle of a very important deal.”

Spike stared at the man incredulously for a moment before nodding curtly. After the man thanked him and sat back again, Spike growled something about ripping heads off.

For once, Buffy couldn’t have agreed more.

~*~

It was midday when they landed in London. As they got their bags and went out to the terminal, Buffy could only thank the Council that these people spoke English. It wasn’t exactly foreign, but still, there was an air to the place that spoke of a different country. Everything was…off.

Including, she discovered as they were set upon while waiting for a taxi, her senses.

“Oh, shit, she growled, ducking a punch from a particularly nasty-looking vampire and trying to grab the stake in her boot. “Stupid, idiotic, soulless bastards!” On the last word, her stake plunged into one’s heart.

He looked at her indignantly. “Hey!” he yelled before disintegrating into dust.

Buffy rolled her eyes and went on fighting. There were about fifteen vamps around them, fighting but not angry—which meant that they weren’t hungry, they’d been sent by somebody.

“Any idea who did this?” she yelled over to Spike, dealing a blow to a vamp’s stomach and stomping on one’s toes with her boots. Over the vampire’s subsequent howl she heard him say,

“Got no bloody idea. This isn’t Red’s style.”

“Oh, so the airport in New York was just a fluke?” She had time to roll her eyes. “Sorry, but I think this is very much her style.”

He shook his head. “I know her, Slayer. She’s my sodding Childe. ‘f she’d used her power to command ‘em—an’ she’d have to—then I could feel it.”

She digested that information, throwing a hard right cross to the vampire whose collar she held. “We could beat the info out of them.” Or what was left of them; dogged as they were, there were only a few of them still undusty.

“There won’t be any need of that.”

They both froze, foolishly; lucky for them, the vampires they were fighting froze too. Unluckily, they dropped to one knee, facing the creature who came out of the darkness.

Buffy felt her stomach drop. Oh, shit. “Halfrek,” she said flatly.

The vengeance demon gave a tinkling laugh. “Well, well, that Watcher of yours did a halfway decent job, didn’t she?” Her tone was patronizing; clearly, she couldn’t have cared less about Buffy’s Watcher. “I hadn’t expected you to have heard of me.”

“You and Anyanka have been torturing mortals for two thousand years. How could I not have heard of you?”

She felt Spike shift at her side. “Uh, Buffy—“

“Halfrek’s a vengeance demon,” she explained, not taking her eyes off the monster in question. “She and her friend Anyanka, who’s also a vengeance demon, are one of the few plagues I can’t get rid of. They gain their power through—“

“Wishes.” Spike completed the sentence for her. “I know that, luv. What I don’t understand is why you can’t kill the bitch.”

“She’s strong, but almost impossible to kill,” Buffy said truthfully. “She’s impervious to magic and can walk through realms and teleport as easily as we—I—breathe. Kind of impossible to kill.”

“We can try, though, can’t we?”

“I wouldn’t bother with that, if I were you,” Halfrek said lightly, “I’d only run you through the heart, and if the marks on that girl’s throat are any indication, neither of you would like that much.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes at the demon but didn’t say anything. She hadn’t been beaten with a cane to learn patience for nothing.

“I must say,” Halfrek continued, “I’m rather disappointed in Anyanka. This reality is no different from the one it branched off from.”

Buffy blinked. “Wait—Anyanka? Reality?” Her sitting in Spike’s lap, kissing him, euphorically happy because he was going to marry her and then do all the dirty little things he was whispering in her ear—

No. That was neither here nor there.

“Anyanka made this reality, child,” Halfrek said patronizingly. “Molded it around you, actually.”

“Around me?” Now Buffy was really confused. “So—I’ve only existed for a little while? How did she do it? Why did she do it? Did someone make a wish for things to—to be this way?”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” she said haughtily. “Honestly, girl, do you really think Anyanka divulges every secret to me? Don’t be stupid. I haven’t the foggiest idea why she wants me to kill you.”

Every nerve in Buffy’s body went quiet at that statement. “You want to kill us?”

“No, Anyanka wants you dead, but she’s currently indisposed,” Halfrek said waspishly. “I’m getting tired of explaining this to you, I thought Slayers were supposed to be clever!”

Spike, who’d been silent for longer than Buffy would have thought possible, said, “’f you want us to die, why don’t you just rip out hearts out? Since you’re so all-powerful and whatnot.”

She smiled sweetly. “Because, dear, I’m not allowed to. Not directly, anyway. My power lies in wishing, and in getting lesser demons to obey me.”

Oh, wonderful. Someone who was going to send a bunch of underlings at them. Her day had just gotten a lot better. “Fine. Unless you’re planning on torturing us to death by making us listen to you talk, can you just leave?”

Halfrek smiled, a chilling smile that transformed her already hideous face into something even worse. For all her almost-human looks, she was evil. “Oh, definitely,” she said, and her image started to blur. “But count on seeing me again.”

When she’d disappeared, Buffy groaned and said, “Oh, shit.”

“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Spike said confidently, starting to walk. She had no choice but to follow him. “Vengeance demons, they’re all about taunting people, prob’ly b’cause they can’t do much else.”

“I thought you didn’t know about vengeance demons,” Buffy said, confused.

He snorted cynically. “Dru used to be obsessed with ‘em. Had me catch one an’ let her play with it.”

“How did you get around the teleporting stuff?”

“Easy. Dru wished no one could leave the house till the demon in question was dead. Bint had no choice but to grant the wish.”

“So you just…stayed in there?”

“Dru also wished for a mess of human-types to keep us full. She was rather inventive, an’ there’s not much a vengeance demon can do to avoid grantin’ a wish when they’re all tied up.”

She felt sick to her stomach; he was talking about it casually. Obviously he didn’t think there was anything wrong with torturing a defenseless creature. Even if it had been another evil demon, the Slayer in her was still repulsed. “Oh.”

She didn’t notice the calculating, sidelong glance Spike threw her—but she did notice when he stopped suddenly.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice dropping out of habit.

He smirked at her. “Gotta get m’self a snack. You stay here.”

She saw through him at once. He knew she wasn’t going to allow him to just eat a human. “Spike, please,” she begged, “don’t do this here.”

He cocked his head at her. “Wanna go someplace a little more private, then?”

Buffy closed her eyes. By accepting, she’d be saving Londoners from a terrible fate. She had to remember that, not how good, how purely sexual, it had felt to have him at her throat. “Yes,” she whispered, shame and humiliation flowing over her.

If he noticed, he didn’t show it. Grinning, he held out his hand and said, “Well, then, m’lady, why don’t we get to our hotel?” The hand that wasn’t gripping hers waved for a taxi.

Dread. Dread and that same, secret shame that had lived in her for over a year, ever since she’d seen him in Cleveland and had desperately wanted to love him.

“Okay,” she said quietly. When he held out the taxi door for her to climb in, a tear ran down her cheek and spoiled the fabric below.

~*~





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