All About Spike - A Parliament Of Monsters by Barb Cummings

A Parliament Of Monsters
By Barb Cummings

Sequel to Necessary Evils

Chapter 6

L.A.'s demon scene was a glittering labyrinth of excess, a network of glitzy casinos and smoke-filled clubs. Curiosity shops stocked with monkey’s paws and magic carpets huddled furtively in the shadow of glass-sided skyscrapers, sprawling bazaars threaded their way through entire sewer mains, and exotic bordellos where anything and anyone could be had for a price did business twenty-four seven.

Sunnydale's demon scene was Willy's Alibi Room.

It was the shank end of the night, almost closing time, and Evie'd run through her sob story so often she’d memorized the thing. Sunnydale proper currently harbored upwards of sixty vampires, with maybe another dozen or so lairing on campus or hunting the cheap new housing developments which were eating up the farmland on the outskirts of town. Evie figured she'd talked the ears off of thirty of them tonight–-she'd even hit the Fish Tank and Bender's and the Espresso Pump on the chance of running into a hunting pack or two. She'd earned some R&R.

It was Pirates of the Caribbean Night at Willy’s, a promotional gimmick which seemed to consist primarily of flinging a few sad plastic leis across the bar, programming the juke box with nothing but Jimmy Buffet and Bob Marley, and giving all the drinks nautical names. Which apparently justified jacking the price up a buck or two apiece. Not that Evie cared; it was on Spike's tab. She maneuvered past a table full of Fyarl who were tossing back steins of something with a suspicious resemblance to used motor oil to the accompaniment of booming honks of laughter and bellows of "But why is the RUM gone?" and sauntered up to the bar.

"Another of the same," she demanded, slapping down a twenty on the stained oak. Susie, the taciturn Bracken demon who served as Willy's relief bartender, gave Evie a skeptical look and handed her change and another B-pos Bloody Mary. It had been a long time since Evie'd had this much cash to throw around. Evie smirked at her and turned to survey the bar. A quartet of vampires had filed in through the front door as she ordered, Jets all the way, and claimed a table near hers amidst the usual exchange of territorial growls with other patrons. Evie recognized only one of them-no surprise there; ninety percent of Sunnydale's vampire population was an ever-churning froth of expendable fledges, sired on a whim and abandoned on another, and lucky to live a year before the Slayer or their elders did them in.

She sashayed back to her table, seated herself with a flounce and a calculated crossing of legs. Spike hadn't intended his grubstake to cover the slinky new dress, much less the fuck-me pumps, but the mall was open till ten, it fit the bimbo image she was going for, and hey, she was evil. Evie skewered the slightly wilted cherry tomato bobbing in her drink with her yellow plastic cutlass (free with every drink on POTC Night!) and held the trophy up for inspection, trying to put a name to the lantern-jawed goon at the next table. Jer, that was it. He'd been one of the Mayor's crew, and hopefully he'd remember her only as one of Whip's putas, if he remembered her at all, not as Dalton's get and someone who might possibly possess a brain beneath the hairspray and eyeshadow.

She popped the tasteless little morsel into her mouth with a throaty purr and ran the tip of her tongue along the plump curves, licking crimson dewdrops from vermillion flesh. For a finale she vamped out and bit, fangs flashing--well, fang, anyway. Cold red seeds spurted and Evie licked her lips, cleaning up every last drop. She shot a lash-veiled glance at the other table; yep, all four were watching, all right--the guys entranced, the women cynically amused. The puddles on the table were equal parts beer and drool. Technically speaking, vampires reproduced asexually, but anything possessing a dick was generally pretty eager to put it to use.

Five minutes later she was seated with her new pals, pretending to be a few yo ho hos drunker than she was and regaling them with her tale of Kite's mythical offer. The women, Tanker and Linnet, watched with slit-eyed alertness while Jer interrogated her, cats stalking an oblivious mouse. Linnet was small and dark and fluttery; Tanker leather-clad and pierced, with a butchy shock of salt-and-pepper hair and tribal tats encircling impressive biceps. Freddy, the youngest of the group, was a straggly nondescript youth in a backwards baseball cap and jeans perilously close to sliding off his lanky hips. He seemed dead set on living up to every stereotype of the dumb fledge out there, and just sat there in game face, staring at Evie with a faintly worshipful expression which implored her to do the cherry tomato trick again.

"...so I dunno if it's worth it," Evie burbled. "Amherst's got it going, but I hear the Slayer's out for him, and I left L.A. 'cause it was Gang War Central. I don't wanna get caught in the crossfire again."

"That treacherous bastard!" Tanker exploded, pounding a fist on the table. "Alliance my undead ass!" She rounded on Evie with a snarl. "Kite say anything about why he wanted you to get in good with Corvini?"

Jackpot. These must be Corvini's minions. Evie assumed a cheerfully vacant smile and shrugged. "Nope."

"You got no percentage takin' Kite up on it," Jer argued. He was a big rock-shouldered guy whose nose had seen a few too many close encounters with a fist before he was turned. He looked as if he were waiting for the fedora to make a comeback. "You risk your neck for him, and whaddya get? Nothin'."

"Yeah?" Evie dunked her plastic sword in her drink and licked blood off the blade. "I figure I get a place in the baddest gang in Sunnydale."

"Baddest and biggest. Which means you'll get somewhere between diddly and squat when it comes to divvying up prey or perks," Linnet pointed out. "And if you think you can catch Amherst's eye with that sword-swallowing act, think again."

"Whereas there are only four of us. Works out to a better chance for advancement, capisce? Besides, it's what you might call common knowledge that Amherst has already got some high-toned L.A. broad polishin' his ridges, if you know what I mean." Jer took a swallow of blood, followed by a shot of whiskey, and licked his lips. "You work for us, you feed Amherst phony info, and you got a deal worth lookin' at." His big callused hand flexed against the tabletop, and the hair at the back of Evie's neck prickled; if there was anything she was good at it was telling when it was time to cut and run. "Not to mention that Kite ain't currently in the vicinity, and we are. If you don't play ball, there could be considerable discomfort involved."

All four of them leaned forward and grinned, a mass show of ivory. Evie pushed away from the table, an adrenaline tremble in her arms and a hollowing in her chest where the pounding of her heart should have been. If she threw her drink in Jer's eyes and kicked the chair in front of Tanker, then maybe she could...

Spike's mocking voice sounded in her ears: "Bloody hell, you silly bint, you never even tried hitting a demon?"

The muscle-memory of punting the Vernex demon into the junipers rushed through her, and a heady sense of renewed power surged up in its wake, filling the hollow places with a red and joyful rage. Evie's hand crept to her purse and slipped into the outer pocket. Lipstick, change purse, wet wipes for those stubborn bloodstains...there. Her fingers curled around the sliver of metal. "I bet there will be, hijo de una perra," she said. She whipped the nailfile out and drove it point-first through Jer's palm and into the tabletop, pinning Jer's hand to the scarred wood. Evie leaped to her feet with a triumphant, terrified snarl, eyes blazing yellow. "But it's not gonna be mine."

Jer roared and ripped his hand free, then roared again at the further damage he'd done himself. He lunged across the table after her, game-faced and snarling, clawing for her throat. Drinks crashed to the floor, glasses exploding like cherry bombs. Evie exercised the better part of valor and skittered backwards. Jer skidded face-first into the minefield of broken glass and spilled alcohol. Tanker and Linnet sat back, amused and a trifle more respectful, and Freddy burst into whooping adenoidal laughter, breaking off into a yerp! of surprise when Jer lurched to his feet, malt-sodden and bleeding, and cuffed him in the head.

Several carnivorous types at other tables looked up, nostrils and other less identifiable orifices flaring at the scent of blood, and Willy came storming out of the back room, both arms windmilling in futile outrage. "Goddammit, take that outside!" he yelled, the tip of his thin nose quivering. "No freebies!"

"It's a good offer," Evie said. She yanked her nailfile free of the table and backed towards the door, holding it like a shiv. "I'll think about it. You think about how if you dust me, you got no in with Amherst at all, and fuck knows what he's planning. I could find out for you. Tell your boss I'll have an answer for him tomorrow night."

Jer rounded the wreckage of the table in one limping stride, and Evie broke and ran, kicking off her heels as she went. Grrl power was great and all, but there were four of them and one of her, and she wasn't fucking stupid. Every sense strained for the sound of pursuing feet, but Jer's steps faltered halfway across the parking lot, and only Freddy's yelps followed her down the street, as Jer took out his frustrations on the fledge.

Wind beat against her face as she raced through the waning night. Evie slowed to a jog once she'd put a few blocks between herself and the bar, and steered for Main Street. It was too late to use crowds of pedestrians to confuse her scent, but she skinned up the first moderately tall building in her way, and hopscotched from roof to roof for awhile before diving into a couple of the stinkiest Dumpsters she could find. One little black dress a total loss, but she'd rather lose a dress than her spleen if Jer and his pals tracked her to Spike's lair.

Satisfied at last that no one could trail her, Evie slumped against a streetlight and took a non-breather. She was shaking with reaction, fear and the rapture of reawakened bloodlust warring for control of her body. She turned the nailfile over in her hands. She'd never been much of a fighter, even before the chip. She'd always relied on her wits to get by. But tonight... fuck, that felt good.

It occurred to her that she could double-cross Spike, rat him out to either Amherst or Corvini, and probably be richly rewarded for it. But Spike had given her teeth again, and for a vampire, what richer reward was there? She brought the nailfile to her lips and licked it clean before tucking it back into her purse, paying fastidious attention to the blood clotting in the grooves. It tasted like victory.

Sooty fire-edged clouds rose from the coal-bed of vermillion and gold on the western horizon, and the wind smelled of rain come to quench the celestial conflagration. Tara stood at the sink, washing jalapenos and watching the storm roll in. In the living room, Miss Kitty Fantastico washed her paws on the back of the couch and Spike sprawled out below with remote in hand, treating a longsuffering Buffy to an enthusiastic play-by-play of Manchester United's defeat of Blackburn Rovers. Dawn scrunched in a gawky foetal curl in the armchair, thumbing through The Sibley Guide to Demons in a purely informational search for pictures of horns.

Out in the driveway a car door slammed, and Willow raced for the shadowed rear of the house, an undead Isadora Duncan muffled in a violently lime-green scarf. She skipped into the kitchen and plunked her booty down in triumph on the counter, a few stray locks of unconfined hair sparking and frizzling in the last feeble rays of the sun. "Got it!"

Tara examined the book in dismay. Annabel Victoria Pryce: A Watcher's Memoir. To call it a slender volume would be generous; it was practically anorexic. "All the way to Santa Barbara for this?"

"Yup. Unimpressive, huh?" Willow unwound the scarf and pinched out her smouldering coiffure. "But Giles says it's got some material on Slayer legends we can't find anywhere else. He's pretty sure someone did a purge of the Council records around twenty-five years ago--there's a lot of unexplained gaps in the material available to field Watchers. And with his personal persona being non grata, he's gonna have to call in favors by the bushel before he can get access to the main Council Library in London, much less into the restricted files."

Her fingers, still damp from the peppers, were leaving blurry spots on the quaint old typeface. Tara set the book down with a shiver. Slim cool arms entwined her waist and Willow's head nestled against her shoulder, ash-smudged alabaster, a china doll left too long in the attic. Breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, chill as the wind outside. "Nervous?"

"A little," Tara admitted. "Summoning ancient powers and giving them a stern lecture isn't really my kind of magic."

She felt Willow's cheek curve in a smile. "You can do it, baby. We just have to figure out how. You gave me my soul back, didn't you?"

"That was different. A tested spell, and I was--" She didn't know what she'd been, desperate or stupid or brave, but that kind of insane determination wasn't something she could summon up every day.

"Incredible, and don't let anyone tell you different." Willow picked up the book and cradled it to her chest. "I'd better get to work on this. Half of it's in French. It's worse than Uncle Paul's letters to Harriet.”

"Spike knows some French, doesn't he?"

Willow grinned. "I don't think the words Spike knows are likely to be in this book. Should we set the table?"

"I thought we'd just eat in front of the TV tonight. If you want to get out the soup bowls--"

Willow bounced out with crockery in arm, and Tara arranged a mandala of pepper slices on the last cheese sandwich. She piled melty golden-brown sandwiches in a pyramid on the blue willow platter and poured bowls of savory red: tomato soup from the saucepan in front, pig's blood from the double boiler on the back. Cooking was like a spell, in a way: the right ingredients, the right gestures in the right order, and voila, happy people. Tomato slices for Dawn, extra cheese for Buffy, jalapenos for Spike, and extra-light on the butter for Willow, who, in unhappy contrast to her sire, had a delicate stomach for anything not blood.

She had no idea what secret ingredient would make her content with her own lot.

Try harder.

She didn't make the mistake of thinking that advice was cheap, or cheaply given. Spike rope-walked the chasm between good and evil without a net, and Buffy risked her own fall, leaning unsupported across the abyss to take his hand when he faltered. Sometimes Tara thought it might have been easier for her and Willow in some other time and place, where they didn't stand in those larger-than-life shadows. Mostly she knew better--there was no time or place in which this would be easy. In the last year Willow had done everything it was reasonably possible for her to do to make things work between them. But there was no way (no safe way, no easy way) for Willow to un-become a vampire.

That was the seductive thing about magic: it always came with a price, but the temptation to buy on credit was overwhelming. Out in the living room, Willow sat cross-legged, tucked into one corner of the couch, her new find propped on one knee and a literary Tower of Pisa of spellbooks teetering at her side. Her small pink tongue-tip peeked from one corner of her mouth as she jotted down neat columns of notes, coursing from one book to another like a hound on the scent. Just as Buffy had always to remember that Spike, however domesticated, was still a demon, she had always to remember that Willow, however chastened by experience, was still Willow. When Willow reached a limit, her first reaction was to push it.

Everyone converged on her when she brought the platter out, mad dogs when the bread comes. Buffy put her and Spike's dinners on the same tray, soup and burba-spiced pig's blood in dangerous proximity. An unwary sandwich could end up anywhere. Dawn left the Sibley face-down on the nearest TV tray--the wail outside was either the wind picking up, or Giles's moan of bibliophilic anguish from across the Atlantic--and relieved Tara of a bowl of soup. "Are you all right? You look like Mrs. Fitzgibbons after Spike ate her Pomeranian. Want me to check that bandage?"

Tara shook her head, embarrassed. "I'm fine, really. Just thinking about the...the spell for Kennedy." Her fingers were at her neck again, prodding the tender flesh as if to squeeze out the pain like poison.

"Am I ever going to live that sodding dog down?" Spike asked, deeply aggrieved. "Bet 'f I'd eaten Mrs. Fitzgibbons no one'd give a rat's, but lay a fang on the poor little puppy--" He reached for the burba weed, and Buffy took advantage of his momentary distraction to stage a commando raid on the remote. Paul Scholes gave way to Charlton Heston as a singularly unconvincing Mexican. "Oi! We're watching that!"

"Correction. You were watching that. For the third time." Buffy tossed the remote to Dawn, who clutched it to her bosom with a maniacal cackle.

"Fine." Spike slouched down amidst the couch cushions with a martyred pout. "You just keep this in mind the next time you want me to watch some great nance sliding around an ice rink in sequined knickers."

Buffy laughed and curled up at Spike's side, and Dawn settled herself on the floor between his knees, the two of them teasing a deep purring growl out of him in no time. Tara sat sandwiched between Buffy and Willow, acutely aware of the pressure of Willow's thigh against her own. So very ordinary, 95% of living with a creature of the night. Why couldn't she handle that 5%? In the moments when vampire became only another thing that Willow was, no more or less important than the red hair or the quirky grin or the frog fear, it all worked--couldn't she make those moments last longer? Maybe there was something, some meditation or exercise, which would allow her to...not notice vampire-ness, somehow? Right. Because the last time you cast a spell to not notice demons, it worked SO well. Not that there was much to notice right now. Willow ate her sandwich the way Willow had always eaten grilled cheese sandwiches: cut diagonally, first one corner, then the other, nipping off neat, symmetrical bites from each end, and if she hadn't known that there was blood in the soup bowl... But she knew.

On the TV, Heston deposited his clueless American wife in a near-deserted hotel outside Los Robles. "What, did he just overdose on stupid pills?" Dawn asked, "Put her on the grill, she's dead meat."

Willow shuddered and tugged the red and blue afghan up over her knees. "That motel guy gives me both heebies and jeebies."

Try harder. She'd had the right idea, the other night; she'd just gone too far, too fast, and in a really stupid direction. Buffy'd had considerable acerbic commentary on that: Accepting Willow as a vampire doesn't mean accepting yourself as an hors d'oeuvre. Arm around the shoulders; that was good. Willow gave a happy little wriggle and snuggled closer, her body sweetly pliant against Tara's own.

Buffy had mentioned in passing once that vampires really, really liked having their brow ridges stroked. That was a nice, safe, middle-of-the-road thing to do, right? Solidly balanced between brandishing crosses and offering up one's jugular. "Sweetie? Change," she whispered. "Please?"

Willow blinked, confused and a little apprehensive, but her eyes closed green and opened gold. Tara brushed bright strands of copper from her lover's newly-furrowed brow, tracing the curves of bone and cartilage. Willow's gasp, and the small moan with which she butted into Tara's palm, indicated that 'like' was a rather inadequate descriptive verb. Or at least that it should have come with several more 'reallys' attached. The alto counterpoint to Spike's baritone rumble burst from Willow's slim chest, and the whole couch vibrated to a two-part harmony of predatory bliss, straight from where the wild things were.

She liked cats. Maybe she could think of vampires as being like cats. Big, dead, evil cats.

On the TV, the motorcycle gang closed in, and Janet Leigh screamed. Willow's yellow gaze riveted on the cinematic carnage and her purr deepened to a throaty snarl of anticipation. Only for a second, and then she was shrinking into Tara's side with a meep! of dismay at on-screen naughtiness, but Tara's heart was battering its way out of her ribcage anyway. The doorbell rang and she sprang to her feet. "I'll get it! That must be..." A pizza guy, UPS, wandering Mormons, anyone would do. She fought a gust of cold rainy wind for possession of the door and froze, open-mouthed with surprise. "Kennedy?"

"Hey." Kennedy's tone was deliberately casual, and she stood with an indifferent elbow propped up against one of the porch columns. She was dressed to slay in a rain-speckled blouse of blood-red silk cinched with a silver concho belt--real Navajo silver, if Tara was any judge. Artfully distressed designer jeans and a pair of Italian boots calculated to induce paroxysms of shoe envy in Buffy finished off the ensemble. "I was patrolling, and I thought I'd stop by and see if there's any news." Kennedy stood fidgeting with her belt for a moment, and cleared her throat. "About the spell."

"Oh." It was barely half an hour past sunset, and prime patrolling time wasn't for another hour yet; most vampires were just getting up about now. "Uh...not really. We're just starting to..."

The fidgeting escalated to toe-tapping. "Mind if I don't stand here and catch SARS? It's starting to rain like a sonofabitch."

Tara stepped aside--without issuing an explicit invitation, because in Sunnydale you never knew--and Kennedy strolled right in, alive and well and fetchingly damp around the edges. She was wearing a musky, exotic, come-hither perfume, and the scent wafted through the room with her every movement. Willow's nose twitched, Spike's nostrils flared, and a glint of fang showed as Kennedy hip-swished past the couch. She made a runway turn in front of the fireplace, tossed her stormcloud hair and halted. Licorice-dark eyes homed in on Willow, and her tongue caressed raspberry-glossed lips. Maybe she didn't get that when a vampire said you looked edible, they meant it literally. "Got something for me?"

Willow gaped at her. "Oh! Right. Yes. Not, um, to scale and I haven't painted it or anything--" She fumbled for her notebook. "No sign of a spell or mystic illness on this end. Total certainty's on hold till Faith checks in, but since Buffy's not lacking in the power department..."

Buffy finger-waved from the couch. "Full of zingy Slayer goodness."

"...it's not real likely that there's something wrong with the source of Slayer power, either. It's fine, you're fine, you're just not getting any. Enough. Um, power. Whatever the problem is, it's only affecting you--"

"It can't be just me!" Kennedy interrupted. "It's ev--" Faced with multiple stares, and she broke off. "Check in from where? Is John Edwards making house calls?"

"Faith's not dead." Buffy didn't elaborate. "'Ev' what? Wanna tack on a few syllables?"

Insouciance dissolved into an uncomfortable squirm. "I just meant it could be affecting Faith. We don't know."

Spike sucked his cheeks in and folded his arms across his chest, his eyes a blue so pale and cold it was almost grey. "Minute ago you thought Faith was dead."

Kennedy's lips drew noose-tight, and she met the vampire's eyes with a defiant glare. "Until a few minutes ago no one bothered to tell me any different."

Willow broke the standoff with a small, diplomatic cough. "ANYWAY. We're trying to come up with a non-Nightmare-On-Revello-Drive way to contact the First Slayer. Assuming we can get her to talk."

"She's definitely on the pre-verbal side," Buffy said, scrunching her nose. "Also big with the homicidal mania."

"She spoke through Tara, last time," Willow countered. "Or at least, through your mental image of Tara. So the real thing..."

She beamed, and Tara ducked her head. "That's--I mean, that's the kind of magic I'm b-best at. Communication, synthesis, interpretation...it's worth a try."

"Whoa!" Kennedy flung up both hands. "I thought you people were all gung-ho for this demon-power story. Now you're talking like it's a person or something."

"Not a person, exactly." Tara looked thoughtful. "More of a personification."

Willow nodded. "I mean, true, there had to be a flesh and blood first-ever one-girl-in-all-the-world once. Council tradition says that her name was Sineya--that's the name Giles used in the enjoining spell, when we made the Uber-Slayer to defeat Adam? But whatever the enjoining spell woke up–it might have, well, echoes of the real Sineya-if-that-was-her-real-name, but it couldn't really be her, because dead, obviously, and ghosts manifest in the material world, and the First Slayer only appeared in our dreams. And Giles says no human ghost could possibly last from the Stone Age to the present, anyway. Half-life. The ectoplasmic matrices break down, and they fade away after a few hundred years. Which is really sad when you think about it. You go to all the trouble to haunt someplace--"

"The First Slayer's more like...an avatar," Tara said, trying to allay Kennedy's obvious confusion. "An archetype. The distilled essence of Slayerness."

"Which we accidentally poked up out of Buffy's subconscious." Willow mimed stabbing something. "Which, let me tell you, is one scary place. In theory, she ought to be pokeable through any Slayer's subconscious, given a sufficiently pointy stick. Maybe she can give us a clue what's wrong."

Kennedy edged closer to the couch, craning her neck to see Willow's notebook. "So what do I have to do?"

"We're not sure yet," Willow admitted. "There's this meditative ritual I want to try in Orpheia's Akhashic Guide, for the manifestation of the anima. I figure if we kit-bash that with a tailored summoning spell, and--"

"Yipe, look at the time!" Buffy leaped to her feet. "I'm supposed to meet--excuse me, rendezvous with--Riley and his Mystery Date at eight. Fill me in when we get back, Will." She grabbed her jacket, snatched stakes from the weapons chest, considered a sword and then put it back with a grimace at the rain now pounding at the porch roof. "You want to sit in?" she asked Spike, who was collecting his things in a far more leisurely manner.

"Nah." Spike shrugged into his jacket. "But I'll drop you off." He extended an arm. "Walk you to my car, little girl?"

Buffy took his elbow with a flirtatious grin. "Only if you give me candy, mister. Later, guys!"

Kennedy's lip curled as Dawn shut the door behind them, and she rounded on the younger Summers with narrow-eyed disapproval. "Doesn't it bother you at all that your sister's with a guy who's kind of...dead?"

Dawn shrugged. "He's a consenting adult corpse, right?"

"Well, it makes me sick." Kennedy gave the couch a once-over for vampire cooties and then sat down close enough to Willow to contract a major infection. "So, tell me about this First Slayer chick."

Dawn gave a small, restrained snort and began collecting the dinner things, a plate here and a bowl there. She aimed a look at Tara over the top of her precarious armful, and jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen. Mystified, Tara trailed after her; she needed to put away the leftovers anyway, or try–-fitting anything into the refrigerator was kind of like playing edible Tetris. Dawn dumped the dishes into the sink, walked over to the stove and switched the range fan on, muffling the sound of conversation from sensitive vampire ears. Dawn thought of things like that. "You realize Kennedy's totally crushing on Willow, right?"

"What?" Tara banged her head on the freezer door, bit back an intemperate word or two, and straightened. "No! That's not--she doesn't like vampires!"

"Excuse me? Personal experience with the smitten Slayer in play here." In a family which had elevated the eyebrow thing to a fine art, Dawn didn't win many points on style, but she got the message across. "Remember the last person who wore red silk and Eau de Fuck Me Silly to tell a vampire he had no chance with her whatsoever?" She slapped the back of one hand to her forehead and adopted an exaggerated Buffy-falsetto. "'Spike, it can never be! You're evil! It would be wrong!" Dawn grabbed a bunch of celery and tango-dipped it over the counter. "Take me now, you dead, passionate fool!' Puhlease. Look at her."

Tara peeked over the top of the refrigerator door. Willow was sorting spellbooks into piles while Kennedy looked on--anyone can read this, Spike can read this, and where the hell is Giles when you need him? "Oh, yeah, I see what you mean," she said, solemn. "That's hot. I'd better just pack my bags now."

"Watch," Dawn hissed. Kennedy leaned close. Definitely in Willow's personal space, and okay, maybe her blouse was one button shy of indecent exposure, but lots of people wore their clothes that way. When Kennedy reached for a book her hand met Willow's and didn't flinch, but didn't linger, either. Willow, engrossed in literary triage, handed the book over with barely a glance.

Kennedy didn't flinch. Tara huddled behind her shield of chrome and white enamel, gut-punched with revelation. All her joints felt watery and her stomach seemed to have become a vast empty cavern threatening to suck all the air out of her lungs. Kennedy might hate vampires, but she wasn't physically revolted by them. She'd got it all backwards. Willow had fought hard to conquer her demons, literal and otherwise. Confronted often enough with I can't love a vampire, she wouldn't resort to magic to make Tara come to her, or attempt some desperate, dangerous ploy to change herself into something acceptable.

But she might just find herself a girlfriend who could love a vampire.

She'd worried so much over whether or not she'd have to leave Willow, it had never occurred to her that Willow might leave her. Even the obsessiveness of Aurelians had its limits; Spike had given up on Drusilla eventually. "It...it's n-not like there's a law against thinking Willow's cute," she got out at last.

"Fine." Dawn abandoned her celery beau to its vegetative fate and headed for the stairs with a flounce and a Theda Bara eyeroll. "Gazillion-year old ex-Key and reigning expert on the love lives of Slayers, but hey, don't mind me--I've got essay questions to fake."

Tara buried herself in the freezer, re-arranging things until her fingers were stiff with cold. Dawn was seeing things, and she was borrowing hammers, and if she tried one more configuration of leftovers, the entire refrigerator was going to collapse into Food-9. She slammed the door and walked back to the living room with calm determination. Dawn had left the Sibley on the TV tray, and Tara picked it up and straightened the spine, flipping through it at random in a concerted effort to distract herself from self-fulfilling prophecies.

...in the veins of the Mohra demon flows the blood of eternity.

She wasn't sure why the page caught her eye. She'd seen it mentioned once or twice as a component in a some of the more powerful and dangerous healing spells. Terribly rare, terribly expensive. Nothing that would ever show up for sale on Anya's shelves.

"Sweetie?" Willow held out one of the books. "You think we'll need this one?"

"You never know." Tara tucked the Guide to Demons into a sweater pocket. If Willow noticed the renewed pounding of her heart, she didn't say a word.

When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange...

Raindrops hit the side windows running and raced each other to the back of the car as the DeSoto hummed along wet black streets littered with palm fronds and pulpy fragments of paper, heading for the shiny new Marriot by the freeway. The radio sputtered and an announcer interrupted Jim Morrison to warn of possible mudslides in the vicinity of Kingman's Bluff. Buffy watched the wipers dashing sheets of quicksilver to the right and left, bringing her closer to her rendezvous with every tick.

"...if they've half a brain between them, they'll attack through the sewers in the daytime, and try to catch us between the sun and a hard place. The lower level's defensible enough since we had the doors put in, 'less they bring explosives, but I want to set someone tunneling parallel to the sewer main outside the lower level doors." Spike had gone game-faced for the slight sensory edge it gave him, and his pupils flashed, tarnished pennies in a dark well. "Make a crawl space, like, with a few arrow slits for crossbows, or just for recce."

Buffy pinched her lower lip. "How many people can we afford to pull off regular work for that?"

"I'll put Denny on it. Not like he's good for anything else." Spike fidgeted, thumbs tapping the wheel, and considered. "Or we could just round up a few stray fledges, work 'em till they drop, and stake 'em after."

By vampire standards, working strangers to death in preference to his own minions made him a soft touch. "That doesn't seem very...sporting," Buffy said carefully. Sometimes she envied Willow and Tara--once Tara got used to the whole vampire thing (and of course Tara would get used to the whole vampire thing. Wouldn't she?) they'd have it made. She and Spike were always going to be engaged in a tug-of-war between It would be wrong and Yeah, so? "Killing them I'm on board with, but using them for slave labor and then killing them is... squicky."

Spike's forehead acquired a few more convolutions as he tried to work that one out. "We could pay them before killing them," he suggested, with only minimal sarcasm. "If they showed promise I'd be for keeping them, but seriously, love, how else do we get it done quick and on the cheap?"

The vision of half a dozen vampires punching a time clock and exploding into dust forced a snort of laughter out against her will. "I don't know! God, I'm turning into a demon OSHA inspector. What about magic?"

"Quick, yeh; cheap? Not if we want it to last more'n fifteen minutes before collapsing of its own weight."

Buffy acknowledged the point with a moue; there was a big difference between a spell that reamed out fifty feet of earth and a spell that reamed out fifty feet of earth, disposed of the excess fill in a safe and responsible manner, and provided drainage and support beams and a preliminary scrying to avoid bursting the odd gas main in the process. Spike leaned back, one hand draped carelessly over the top of the steering wheel. "We'll have a better idea how much time we've got once Evie's cradled in the bosoms of the ungodly and plucking their brains for us."

Evie had chutzpah, no doubt about that. She could see why Spike had made the impulsive decision to recruit her. Still... "You think she can handle that, first week on the job?"

"She's a clever bird." Spike shook a cigarette loose from the perpetually half-full pack in his pocket–would he use a cigarette case if she got him one, or dismiss it as poncy?--and lipped it, bracing the wheel with one knee while he felt around for his lighter. "About to graduate university when Dalton turned her. Wanted to be a marine biologist, as I recollect, or some egghead thing like that." Smoke streamed out the window and dispersed into the rainy night. "She was right hacked off about missing out on the cap-tossing--though come to think, she did go in the end. Ate the professor that gave her a B-."

"Keep talking. I'm starting to warm to that slave labor idea." Buffy laid her forehead against the window and trailed a finger through the faint mist of condensation which bloomed on the glass. The problem with leading Spike to ethical water was that it made her think, too. At the moment her brain felt like one of those bent nail puzzles--somewhere there was a trick that would untwist everything into bright, shiny, simple pieces, but darned if she could figure out what it was. She couldn't afford to think of vampires as people. The lines that allowed her to function as a Slayer were already dangerously blurred, and handing out socks to the minions could only lead to badness. But some still small voice told her that thinking of them as a commodity was equally dangerous. Every one of the nameless, faceless vamps she'd sent to dust in the past had a past--had been a person, once, and if they weren't that person any longer, were still a someone, not a something.

Spike didn't think of it in those terms. He had his own lines in the sand, but they divided the people he cared about--vampire or human--from the rest of the world, whose continued existence depended solely upon how interesting or useful they happened to be to him today. Except his lines had gone smudgy, too, 'interesting and useful' grown to encompass a category of people so broad and vague that he could barely define it any longer, and got grouchy when asked to try. Their lives had gone from the stark clarity of pen and ink to a blurry watercolor brilliance.

Rows of rain-spangled cars shone diamond-bright in the headlights as they pulled up in front of the Sunnydale Marriot. "What are we doing here, Spike?"

She wasn't talking about the hotel. Spike's lion-gold eyes were pensive beneath that gargoyle brow, and what was she, really, that she found the savage lines of his demon face so beautiful? "I don't know. Got to do something, though, don't we? It's what we're made for, both of us." He toyed with his cigarette, rolling the slim white cylinder between nicotine-stained fingers, and looked up with a grin, half shyness and half deviltry. "'Spect we'll figure it out as we go along, like always."

He pitched the half-smoked cig end over end and got out to open her door for her, half-drenched in the time it took him to walk around the car. Buffy stood tip-toe, brushed lips to his cheek--cold as vampires were seldom cold in sunny California--and turned towards the sterile glow of the hotel doors. Spike caught her wrist and pulled her back, enfolding her like the rainswept night.

They clung together in a blind roaring universe of water. Spike's cold nose found refuge in tendrils of tawny hair curling at the base of her jaw, and Buffy pressed close, muffling the misty billows of her breath against his shoulder till warmth blossomed there like crocuses in winter. She laid a palm flat against his chest, mapping the place where his heart should have beat. She didn't miss the thump and rush. Enough to feel the solid swell of pectoral muscle tense and relax at her touch, and the singing thrill of Spike, right here! from her Slayer's senses. She let her hand slide down the firm plane of his belly, fingers exploring the interesting gap where his t-shirt was riding up--it was one he'd acquired the summer after her death, when he'd gotten so razor-wire thin, and it was a little too small for him now that there was a healthy amount of flesh between skin and bone. There were certain advantages to that, involving the ticklish, anticipatory twitch of cool satiny skin, and the tiniest wisp of dark hair trailing down from his navel, just begging to be tweaked...

"Sure you don't want to come?" she whispered.

Spike growled into the tender folds of her neck, lips teasing at her earlobe. "I want to come, all right. But I've got Evie to see to, Willow didn't fill the sodding gas tank like I told her, and this rain'll flush those Frewlar demons out of hiding. 'Sides, Captain America and Bucky'll likely talk freer if I'm not about." His tongue curled, and his eyes glinted in the aqueous light. Blue now; he'd gone human in her arms. "Just wanted to see you off proper."

It was refreshing that Spike was handling the Riley situation without a trace of the sulky jealousy still all too likely to erupt between him and Angel...but also fairly tasty to be seen off properly. "Mmm. You'll have to see me off improperly sometime. Bronze at eleven?"

"If it hasn't taken on two of every creature and pulled up anchor."

Spike's vehicular dinosaur forded the primeval swamp of the parking lot, and the wicked red eyes of its taillights faded into shrouds of rain as it disappeared down the access road. Buffy tilted her head back and squinted up at the hotel's facade, trying to read the room numbers around the scalloped edge of the awning. A raindrop seeped through a seam in the burgundy canvas and fell in her eye.

"Buffy! Ready to move out?" Sam Finn strode briskly through the front doors, an exceptionally wholesome Emma Peel in Kevlar and sleek black government-issue all-weather gear. Her low-slung utility belt bristled with assorted tracking and communications gear, grapples, a taser, and several mysterious items Buffy suspected were just there to make the belt balance. Riley loomed right behind his wife, sporting an even more impressive array of gadgets. They looked like they'd stepped out of the Sharper Image His N' Hers catalogue.

Buffy blinked and rubbed violently at her eye, hoping fervently that her mascara lived up to its billing. "More like swim out, but all rarin' to go." She hunched her shoulders in her silly bright teal windbreaker, feeling slightly underdressed. Rather to her disappointment, Mrs. Riley Finn showed no signs of being anything but a perfectly normal gorgeous, statuesque Amazon. It wasn't that she grudged Riley moving on, Buffy told herself sternly. It was just that the universe was a better, fairer place when all the guys who dumped her were cursed to wander the world, doomed never to experience perfect happiness. She was pretty sure it was in the contract somewhere.

"Here's our targets." Riley fanned a sheaf of laminated sheets in front of her, each one stamped all over with TOP SECRET, EYES ONLY, CONFIDENTIAL, and for all Buffy could tell, DO NOT OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS. Most of the faces were vampires, shown in full-face and profile, both game-face and human. There were a few demons: a Fyarl, a Bracken or two, something that looked like Clem's older, saggier cousin, and one thing she couldn't identify at all. It looked like someone had ripped a couple dozen wanted posters off the wall of the Mos Eisley Post Office. "The ones with the red Xs through have been confirmed killed--either we found their bodies in the complex before we locked it down, or we've got reliable reports of their deaths later. The blue Xs are the one's we've recaptured.

"About half of the subjects had tracers implanted." Riley was punching coordinates into a Rockwell Collins GPS receiver. "We don't know how many are still generating a signal, or at what strength. The plan was to quarter the town in the van till we picked up a target, and then close on foot, but it looks like our lucky night." He tilted the unit to allow Buffy to see a detailed schematic of Sunnydale's streets scrolling across the tiny screen, which impressed her somewhat less than it might have before Willow had introduced her to Mapquest. "It's got a little something extra under the hood," he said with a grin. The flick of a button, and the view changed to the layout of the cave system. "Turns out that infrared satellite photos are good for more than finding Mayan ruins." The view snapped back to street-level again, focusing on the industrial park west of the hotel. "There's our boy."

A yellow dot zipped between the ghostly outlines of the buildings, heading away from the freeway. "Ooh, retro. Pac-Vamp."

The dot jittered and fuzzed out for a moment, then reappeared further down the street. Riley grimaced. "Either the tracer's running out of power, something's interfering with the signal, or it teleports," he said. "Sometimes it's all three. Let's go." He plunged into the rain, and Sam took off in perfectly coordinated unison. Buffy stuffed the photos inside her windbreaker and scrambled to catch up. Right. Of course. Not the leader of the pack, not tonight. She could do that.

Over hedges, around corners, between cars, her racing feet found the high spots of their own volition, and Buffy skimmed across the wet neon surface of the night, outpacing the raindrops. She caught up to Team Finn in a matter of seconds, and reined herself in to a jog. It had been a long time since she'd patrolled with anyone but Spike. Xander wasn't up to it anymore; even after a year of PT he still limped, and he and Anya were retired, anyway. Dawn had school. Tara and Willow came along occasionally, when they didn't have evening classes, but for the most part she ran with wolves. She'd lost the habit of holding herself to human limitations.

Not that Sam and Riley weren't good. They dodged from cover to cover, slipped single-file through the narrow slot between two barracks-style office complexes, alert, wary, silent as all get-out–but they weren't Spike, attuned to her every move and vice versa. There was distinct third-wheeliness in the air. Or was that fifth wheel? Had to be, because three made a tricycle. The pair of them dropped to a crouch behind a lone Subaru. "He's moving fast," Sam whispered, with a nod at the GPS unit. Buffy did a little bunny hop, trying without success to see over the Great Wall of Finn. Sam looked at Riley, biting her lip. "You think...?"

Without a word, Team Finn split to cover the parking lot, skirting the shabby little oleander hedges which dissected the asphalt. The whole non-verbal communication thing was really irritating when it was some other couple doing it. Buffy did a quick eeny meeny and took after Sam.

Vampire, vampire, who's got the vampire? She stretched her Slayer senses to the limit, breathing in the chalky odor of wet stucco and the faint sickening smell of oil-slick pavement. The industrial park stretched away into the murk, rank upon infinite rank of featureless Lego buildings distinguished only by numbers half-obscured by rain and darkness. No go. Where instinct failed, thinkiness would have to suffice. If I were a vampire in this part of town, where would I be going?

"Damn," Riley muttered as they came together in the lee of the next row of offices. "Signal's gone again."

Buffy beckoned. "This way." Riley and Sam didn't follow immediately, much to her irritation. She whirled, dancing on her toes. "Hurry!"

Sam looked dubious, but Riley gave her a come-on jerk of his head, and this time they followed as Buffy tore off down the covered walkway fronting the nearest block of offices. The clack of her boot-heels reverberated off the concrete and her reflection capered from window to blank black window at her side. Rain slapped her in the face as the walkway came to an end, and she was out in the open once more, stake in hand, no, stake bad, they wanted this puppy undusted. She could sense her prey now, close, a tinfoil skittering along her nerves.

There--a shadow darting along the top of the cinderblock wall surrounding the park. For a split second the floodlights reflected sleek and silvery from its head. A second shadow broke from the insufficient cover of an oleander and made a panicked scramble for the wall. It was a skinny kid in ragged jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt, eyes mad with hatred and terror beneath a mop of unkempt black hair. Buffy half expected Spike to be crouched atop the wall, grinning down at the fun and ready to pounce, but there was a distinctly girly shriek and a windmilling of arms, and the wall-top shadow disappeared with a muffled thump.

The skinny kid snarled and made a predictable feint left before dodging right, worn sneakers skidding on rainbow slicks of oil. Buffy was where he was going before he was, meeting his bared fangs with a feral grin. "May I have this dance?" He fled, and she was before him again, doing a Gene Kelly round the nearest light pole. There was no challenge in a foe who couldn't fight back. "That's so like a guy, just hang around by the punchbowl all night." Sam and Riley pounded across the wet pavement towards her, eyes wide. "Oh well, you'd probably step on my toes anyway." She hauled off with a straight right to the jaw. The vampire spun around and collided with Sam, who jammed a taser into his shoulder. The vamp's head snapped up, chin to the sky, and he convulsed, golden eyes rolling back blank and white in his head. He collapsed in a limp awkward heap on the pavement.

Riley rolled the body over with one steel-toed boot. "Damn, Buffy. How'd you know he'd break this way?"

"Easy. He had to be heading for Lincoln Avenue." Light failed to dawn, and Buffy elaborated. "He's got a chip in his head, right? Feeding opportunities therefore limited? Lincoln's Ho Central. All those seedy motels. He could get someone to hire him for a suck job there, easy." She wrinkled her nose. "Someone with no standards in personal hygiene, but--"

"Oh." She could have sworn Riley was blushing. "I didn't realize--"

Hopefully Sam appreciated having a guy who'd lived in Sunnydale for two years and never realized where the hookers hung out--the human ones, anyway. Riley bent to run one of his blinky devices along the creature's lanky torso. "Hostile Eleven," he said with a grin. "The genetic signature matches perfectly."

"Well, that was...anticlimactic." Buffy rubbed her knuckles and stared down at their first...victim was the wrong word, but she couldn't think of the right one. There was something ignominious about this; it was vermin control, not an epic battle of good and evil. But someone needed to spray for roaches. "There's another one out there." She started for the wall, but Riley grabbed her shoulder, his hand large and startlingly warm.

"Hold your positions," he snapped. "I'll check it out."

Buffy almost opened her mouth to object, but the look in his eyes and the minute shake of his head stopped her; this was something to do with his mysterious personal business. He disappeared into the shadows. Buffy watched the dark spot where he wasn't for a moment longer, itchy--she couldn't tell for certain if the second vampire was still anywhere nearby. Sam didn't look particularly happy with the situation herself, but she only pulled out her cell and dispensed terse directions to the pickup crew. That done, she hauled the groggy vampire up, snapped a pair of not-at-all-sexy manacles around his bony wrists, and dragged their captive under the minimal protection of the covered walkway. She leaned back against the cruddy stucco, a little too casual. "Pretty lucky coincidence, you running into Ri the very first night we're in town. How often does something like that happen?"

Buffy tucked her hands into her armpits. The rain was starting to soak through her less-than-high-tech windbreaker. Now that she wasn't moving, she was starting to get cold. "About once a week," she muttered. There was something in the other woman's eyes she couldn't fathom, an assessing look which went beyond the wariness a new wife might feel around an old girlfriend. "So, uh, congratulations, and everything. How long have you and Riley been married?"

"Our first wedding anniversary was in October."

Wedding bells less than a year after Riley'd left Sunnydale. Hmph. Never mind that she'd been lying awake nights a scant month later, calculating the correct angle from which to jump Spike's bones. That was, naturally, completely different. "Not a believer in long engagements, huh?"

"Not in our business." Sam looked at her, dark eyes under dark level brows, a perfect oval of a face--Raphael's Madonna and Kalashnikov. "I'll be square with you--I resented it sometimes, that he was spending time with me getting over you."

Sign here, and tell me where you want me to unload the shipment of awkward. "I hope you don't think–because it's so over. There's Spike, very much there's Spike. And you. And not that Riley isn't a great guy, he is, but we're just not...it didn't work out and..." Buffy covered her eyes with a groan. "Can I back up and maybe do this with hand gestures?"

"I didn't mean to put you on the spot." Sam shifted her grip on the taser with a rueful smile. "OK, maybe I did. Look, let's not talk about it." A silence almost as awkward as the speech followed. "So how did you and Spike meet?"

"We were in a band," Buffy deadpanned. She pulled the sheaf of laminated photos out of her purse and shuffled through them again. It was like looking over old yearbook photos--you know that guy, the one who threw the Jell-O at the gym teacher? This was the guy who sat behind him in algebra. "Hey!" She pointed to a mug-shot of a Bracken demon. "That's Susie! She's the relief bartender at Willy's. She's..." Not exactly a friend, but not someone she'd expected to see flashy-thinged and carted away in a black helicopter, either.

"We got another positive ID? Fantastic." Sam whipped out her cell again. "I'll alert the team–two tags in one night is–"

Slayer reflexes let Buffy grab her arm before she could hit the speed dial. "Whoa, there, Black Mamba! You can't just go all KGB on Susie. She hasn't done anything."

Sam looked down at her. "Buffy... Ours not to question why. Our assignment is to retrieve or eliminate. Riley wouldn't tell you this," her voice dropped: quiet, confidential, serious, just between us Amazons. "But you need to know. He's putting his career on the line, making this end run around orders for your boyfriend. His record in Sunnydale's not good. I've seen the files–AWOL, assaulting a superior officer–the only reason he's not rotting in a military prison somewhere is that someone in Washington likes him. Friends in high places can only protect you so far."

"That's Riley's decision to make, isn't it?"

"Not saying it isn't. But it won't look good if our superiors find out he's subverting the mission objectives for one HST, much less two." She looked honestly perplexed. "You're not what I expected. Ri talked about you a lot, how you were this legendary warrior for good–"

"Yeah, well, I'm an independent contractor these days. What's going to happen to them? The specimens you collect?" Visions of the Initiative holding facilities rose unbidden from memory, featureless cages and electro-shock forcefields. Spike had been in one of those cages, once. At the time, she'd thought it was the funniest thing in the world. "I'm all for science, yay cell phones and Midol, but--"

Sam's shoulders rose and fell, unconcerned. "That's not my department, but they'll be studied, to see how the chips have modified their neural patterns and their behavioral responses to various stimuli. We're scientists, not the Spanish Inquisition."

"And what happens when the study's–"

At that fraught juncture the Herkimer Battle Jitney roared in through the main gates of the park, sending up twin arcs of spray from its massive wheels, and the hup-hup-hup crew poured out like ants, and in two seconds flat the fallen vampire was being prodded, poked, measured, and tagged by a swarm of ninja paramedics. A moment later Riley's head appeared atop the cinderblock fence. "Whatever it was, it got away from me," he said, a little too cheerfully. The rain was beginning to slack off, and patchy black holes were starting to appear and widen in the overcast sky, and Riley stretched, flexing those mile-wide shoulders. "Not a bad night's work."

"Gonna get better, hon," Sam said with a grin and a Mona-you're-a-brick punch to his arm. "The Slayer gave us an ID on one of the missing."

"The Slayer is having second thoughts," Buffy interrupted. "Look, we went through this once with Oz, didn't we? Rounding up the dangerous ones is one thing, but Susie's not a threat even if she didn't have a chip. Bracken demons are harmless, unless you try to pat them on the back and impale yourself on the spines. And of course, the violet eyeshadow with her complexion? Huge mistake unless she enjoys looking like a giant bruise, but I don't see a warrant from the fashion police. You can't just... just kidnap her."

Riley sighed. "No promises. I'll talk to my commanding officer. Maybe we can arrange a release when the study's complete."

"Thanks." Would it torpedo Riley's military career if Susie just happened to get a phone call tipping her off that the Initiative was back in town? Probably not, and ever so much quicker than dealing with military bureaucracy. Buffy shuffled Susie's rap sheet back into the sheaf of photos as if that would hide her from the long arm of the law, glanced at the top photo and froze. Long dark hair, café au lait skin gone a shade or two paler in death. Middling-pretty face enlivened by wide sloe eyes, brimming with fear and fury in the picture before her. Hostile 6, vampire, female, est. 0-5 yrs post-infection.

Evie. Of course. She should have realized. Spike had said she was chipped.

"Recognize someone else?" Riley asked.

Buffy handed the photos back without a hitch. "Nope. 'Fraid not."

Wesley's apartment was scrupulously tidy as always, full of ancient, breakable artifacts and angular furniture. No sybaritic overstuffed armchairs for Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. Even the lampshades were boxy. Beneath thee austere geometry there was something humid and rotten, the lingering scent of decay and despair. Or maybe that was just Lilah Morgan's perfume. Cordy rubbed her temples and took a sip of the tea her host had provided–Wesley might be slouching around in designer stubble and modeling the John Constantine collection these days, but the tea was eternal.

"You're certain?" Wesley scribbled the address on a post-it pad. "Yes. You've been most helpful." He hung up the phone and leaned back on the low-slung couch, fingers steepled before his lean impassive face. "Bernard Crowley moved to California from New York in 1978 following the death of his Slayer, Nikki Wood. He relocated from Beverly Hills to Pasadena in '92 and has been living there ever since. There's no current contact between him and the Council–none they'll admit to me, anyway. Apparently he had some kind of falling-out with them over the proper course of action regarding Nikki's son–"

Cordelia looked up from her tea. "A Slayer with a kid? That's wrong and disturbing."

He shrugged. "Unusual, but not unprecedented. Not that long ago a girl of sixteen might well already be married when Called. I gather the normal procedure was to arrange for an abortion or an adoption, but Nikki insisted upon keeping the boy, and Crowley backed her up. He raised the child after her death. And that," he said with a grimace of mild frustration, "is the one and only thing which distinguishes him from any other retired Watcher the world round. The son enjoyed a brief career as a vampire hunter in his early twenties, but Crowley himself has no history of any particular interest in Angelus or in Angel. So the question is...why should he go to such lengths to kidnap Angel now?"

"No, the question is where did he take Angel, and how do we get him back," Cordelia snapped. "You don't seem to get that I woke up on the floor. With a paperclip stuck to my face. For this you pay, bowler hat man."

"Yes, I can see where that would inspire a quenchless thirst for vengeance." Wesley rose and paced over to the glass-fronted bookshelves, hands clasped loose-limbed behind his back as he regarded the irregular ranks of books and artifacts displayed thereon. "Crowley's place is the logical starting point for a search. Unless you feel it best to wait until Fred and Gunn return--"

God, it was so frustrating, that touchy, guilt-ridden pride of his. Cordelia's fingers tightened around the handle of the teacup, vestigal good manners all that prevented her from chucking it at his head. Angel had forgiven if not forgotten, but Wesley was still spanking his inner moppet, and she was beginning to suspect that his inner moppet got off on it. She, on the other hand... "If you don't knock off the jaded urban sorcerer act, I might. You opened a vein for him, so don't try to convince me you don't give a damn now. Just get in the car and–"

There was a knock at the door. The two of them exchanged a startled glance. "Who's that?" Cordelia whispered. "You don't actually know anyone anymore, do you?"

"Regrettably, no," Wesley murmured. He took a medium-vile looking dagger from the weapons rack by the bookshelf, and opened the door with silent dispatch.

Angel stood on the threshold, still wearing yesterday's clothes (uncharacteristically rumpled, as if they'd been stuffed in a locker somewhere), a fading scrape across his cheek the only evidence of foul play. Screw the angst. Cordy shot past Wesley and barrelled into the prodigal, flinging her arms around that massive chest in a bear-hug. "Angel! You're alive! More or less! What happened? How'd you get away? Did you–"

To her utter shock, he pulled her into his arms and returned the hug hard enough to make her squeak, and my, didn't it feel good, wrapped up in all that vampire muscle? "Mr. Crowley had a proposition for me," he said, big blunt hands sliding up to tangle in her hair. Omigod, he's...sniffing me?! "I admit it didn't seem very attractive at first, but in the end he made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

There was a secret humor in his tone. Cordelia pulled away, suspicious. "What's he up to? Some kind of Watcher Amway?"

Angel smiled. Not the sketchy upturn of lips that was all he'd usually commit to--this was a great big brilliant Irish grin, complete with a twinkle in those normally unreadable eyes. "Let's just say our little problem isn't a problem any longer."

And he kissed her. Kissed her with all the ease of two and a half centuries' practice, kissed her till her heart pounded and her knees went wobbly, though maybe that was just oxygen deprivation. It wasn't the first time; they'd done this before, once or twice...or thrice, who was counting? But it was always furtive and guilt-ridden, left them less rather than more satisfied. A stolen pleasure that didn't really count, like broken cookies, no calories. This kiss was definitely illegal, immoral and fattening. One big square hand firm between her shoulder blades--all, really, that was holding her up at the moment--the other cupping her ass, thumb drawing maddening circles. She clung to him like lichen to a mountain, God, he was so big all over, she could fall into him like falling into the earth itself, dark and secret and strong. Someone was making embarrassing little moany sounds...oh, right, that was her.

"You went to the shaman," Wesley breathed.

Angel broke off and gazed at Wesley over the top of her head. "Not exactly. But I think I can safely say my soul's not going anywhere for a good long time. Gonna ask me in?"

Wesley's throat worked for a second, the long pale scar rippling across his Adam's apple. "You've always been welcome in this house."

"Now that makes me very happy, Wes." Angel's eyes were scalpels, blunted, maybe, by this odd mood, but still capable of inflicting damage. "Not perfectly happy, but sometimes in this world we just have to settle. You know all about that, I guess. How is Lilah doing these days?"

The tone of his voice, the manic glitter in his eye, the offhand cruelty--all of it slid neatly into place, knives filleting the breath out of Cordelia's lungs more effectively than the kiss had. Something within her was wailing, It's not fair! I was good, I was careful! If this was going to happen anyway, why couldn't I have gotten one night to remember out of it? She forced words past the lump of sick, frozen terror in her throat. "Wesley! He's–"

Too late. A blur of movement, and Angel had flung her aside and slammed Wesley into the bookcase, one hand around his throat, the other ramming Wes's own knife into his gut. Glass shattered, the Euclidean purity of the shelves transformed in an instant to fractal chaos, and a small fortune in rare texts tumbled to the floor. Cordelia screamed and cast wildly around for a weapon–Wes had ten million antique thingybobs scattered around the apartment, surely one had to be within arm's reach.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, darlin'," Angel snarled. Wesley made a strangled croaking noise, turning almost black in the face as Angel's fingers dug into his windpipe. Cordelia froze, hand inches from the haft of a battleaxe, mesmerized by thin trickles of blood on Wesley's temple, red against the rapidly empurpling skin. Blood-flowers bloomed on his shirt-front, scarlet petals opening and spreading across the cotton. One of the worst deaths you can die, Angel had told her once. Not that he'd needed to tell her; she'd been there, still had the scar that was such a bitch to make up for bikini shots. "Or there'll be one less ex-Watcher in L.A."

Wesley's eyes were imploring: Kill him, though it destroy me! That was why Angel had rejected her as a hostage, she realized; Wesley wouldn't have hesitated. Her voice was eerily steady in her own ears. "You're just going to feel like shit when Tara puts your soul back, so--"

"Cordy? Shut the fuck up." He gazed at Wesley with a smile obscenely close to loving. "Don't look so glum, Wes. I'm going to give you what you really want. I told you I was going to kill you for what you did to my son. Took me awhile to get around to it, is all. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth–you've been begging for it, haven't you? But don't think this is all just fun and games for me, though it really, really is–" He jabbed the knife in further, gave it a vicious twist–"I've been thinking I needed to keep you guys off my back. Thinking I needed flunkies, minions, the usual–and then d'oh! It hits me. Already got 'em. They just require a little fine-tuning. You're gonna be my right-hand man, Wes. Just like old times. And Cordy can be... well, you don't actually know how to do anything, do you? Ah, hell, with those tits who needs talent? We need to find Connor."

"Do we?" Wesley choked out.

"Yeah, Wes, we do. He's family." He grinned, his teeth saw-blades in ivory, his eyes a sulfurous blaze in the shadows of his ridged brows. "And now so are you."

Cordelia lunged for the battleaxe. Angel turned, all smooth terrible power, and flung Wesley aside, a limp bloodied scarecrow. He wrenched the axe from her grasp, trapping her wrists in one hand, and hauled her up by the hair. "Cordy, Cordy, Cordy," he caroled. "You seem stressed. How about I just buy you a new wardrobe–that's the going price for a Get Out of Cordelia's Self-righteous Condemnation Free card, isn't it? "

She wrenched at his arm, and might as well have been wrestling granite. He was always so infinitely careful with her, she forgot how inhumanly strong he was. The bones in her wrists were screaming under the pressure of his hand, a little metacarpal chorus of agony. "I'm not buying that that old goat could give you a moment of perfect happiness! This has got to be a spell or something! Angel, you've got to fight it! It's not real!"

Angel's eyes softened from teak to brown velvet, and his hands dropped to his sides. "Cordelia," he murmured. "It's–it's incredible! Your love has warmed my stony vampire heart! For you and you alone I'll give up evil and live the life of a virtuous champion!" He slapped her hard enough to rattle the teeth in her jaw. "Or not. 'Fight it, Angel!'" he mimicked. "You stupid cow. Of course it's real. It's the big damn hero who's the fantasy. And you fell for it, hook, line and sinker, didn't you? God, you're pathetic. Had a chance at power most humans can't even conceive of, and you gave it up–for what? To be with him? Well, here you are, no visions, no power, no purpose, and where's that grand romance you sacrificed it all for? You're useless. Useless to him, useless to yourself." He leaned in close. She could smell the meat-locker stench of recent feeding on his breath, and his eyes were great golden bonfires. His voice lowered, roughened. "But I've got a use for you, Cordelia Chase. Every time he looks at you, I'm watching through his eyes. Every breath he forgets not to take, I'm smelling your wet little cunt. Every time he thinks about you, every time he lies awake, every time he touches--"

Cordelia kneed him in the groin and flipped backwards over the couch, landing hard on her ass. Angel roared and doubled over, careening around the couch after her and sending the end table flying. She crab-scuttled backwards, but Angel pounced, scary-fast, pinning her shoulders to the floor with two hundred-plus pounds of lustful demonic fury. His teeth were in her throat and she was writhing wildly beneath him, trying to get leverage and screaming Don't don't don't! and--

An arm came down like lighting and Angel arched backwards with a yell, clawing for the broken table leg lodged in his back. Wesley was standing, God knew how, a blood-soaked revenant with eyes dreadful in their calm acceptance of what was happening. I guess, Cordelia thought crazily, he's used to being cut open by now. Blood everywhere, great swathes and gouts of it. "Run," he rasped through bloody foam, and then Angel was upon him.

Cordelia ran. She veered round in the doorway, one hand to her ravaged throat, heartsick and dizzy. Angel looked up from his work, grinning, Wesley's blood on his lips, his blood on Wesley's.

"Go ahead, run," he purred. "We'll be along presently."

Continued in Chapter 7