All About Spike - A Parliament Of Monsters by Barb Cummings

A Parliament Of Monsters
By Barb Cummings

Sequel to Necessary Evils

Chapter 9

The crash drew Lawson downstairs at a run, his own feet swifter than the creaky old elevator. Halfway out onto the balcony overlooking the lobby he skidded to a halt, and threw a glance over the railing. A handful of the new fledges were deployed around the lobby, four of them guarding the front doors with a variety of ironmongery clutched in their hands, three more milling around the foot of the stairs holding crossbows like they'd never seen one before. Lawson groaned; not a single one of them was more than ten years out of the grave, and none of them had any real combat training, much less expertise in weapons that had gone out of style a century before their original birth. The first goddam thing he was going to do tomorrow night was head down to the L.A. Gun Club and round up a few dozen semi-automatics.

Angel was a different story. Hell, Angel was a whole different book. He swept across the balcony like a hurricane across Florida, swinging the claymore as if the wind itself bore the blade up. Spike dived off the balcony rail and tucked into a shoulder-roll barely in time to avoid the five-foot hunk of steel which came whistling down in his wake. The oak railing shattered like balsa, sending a deadly hail of splinters in all directions.

Lawson dodged the pencil rain and retreated to the comparative safety of the elevator door as Angel wrenched his sword free of the wreckage and spun to face Spike once more. The two older vampires circled, their faces streaked with blood and plaster dust, demon-masks painted in strokes of crimson and white. Angel attacked; Spike fell back, feinted, and thrust for the shoulder. The saber's point sank home, but the flat of Angel's sword caught Spike with rib-cracking force and sent him flying across the balcony. Spike flailed for the shattered remnants of the rail as he went over, halting his fall with a shoulder-wrenching jerk, and hung there one-handed. His sword pinwheeled to earth below him, landing on the jade-green floor of the lobby with a ringing clatter. The minions at the foot of the stairs surged up, baying for blood, and the multiple twang of crossbows finally granted a stationary target filled the air. Spike howled, curling in mid-air as a bolt slammed into his kidneys.

Angel's lips curled in a lazy, what-have-we-here? grin. He strolled over to the edge of the balcony and stood with one Prada-shod foot hovering over Spike's white-knuckled hand. "Isn't this a bit of a cliché, even for you?" he asked.

"Sorry," Spike gasped, blinking blood and sweat from his eyes. "I'll try something more original." He reached around behind his back with his free hand, yanked the crossbow bolt free, and lunged upwards, ramming it through glossy patent leather and pinning Angel's foot to the floor. Angel toppled backwards with a yell and Spike hauled himself up onto the balcony using his grandsire's body as ballast. Angel tore his foot free with a roar and went for Spike's throat. The two of them rolled over and over, gouging, punching, kicking and biting, fists pulping faces and fangs ripping bloody furrows in each other's chest and shoulders.

The minions had backed off again, uncertain of their chances of hitting Angel in the melée--not that a few of them might not be considering the option, but firing at Angel and missing would invite a fate not to be contemplated. Lawson couldn't fault them for either impulse. This wasn't a formal challenge, but the very fact that Spike was another Aurelian with no small reputation of his own made it more than a personal quarrel. No matter that Spike had less than zero interest in vampire politics--if Angel couldn't defeat Spike decisively, it would undermine Angel's authority all the same.

The combatants slammed against the wall in front of him and bounced off again--Lawson wasn't even certain they realized he was there. If he stepped in now, his support of his sire would both strengthen Angel's hold on the others and shore up his own uncertain credentials as one of Angel's inner circle. It would put him one up on Wesley in the constant struggle for their sire's favor and attention. It would force Angel to...

To what? However belatedly, Angel had already confirmed him as a member of the oldest and most feared vampire clan on the planet, and given him a measure of trust and responsibility. Given him a mission, outlined a plan. What more did he want? What more was there to want?

The elevator pinged, and the doors whooshed open behind him, disgorging a minion just up from the basement. She leaped out and bulled past Lawson with a whoop, waving a flamberge with an enthusiasm which far outstripped her skill. She aimed her blade straight for Spike, whose head Angel was doing his damnedest to remove from his shoulders.

Lawson was no stranger to decisive moments. The day the bombs had fallen on Pearl Harbor. The day he'd walked into the recruiting office. The day he'd looked into Angel's eyes and said I'm the only one. Looking back, it seemed strange that all of those moments had come while he was a living man. Had anything he'd done, anything he'd decided, since dying mattered? He'd been the best vampire he could be, but the lives he'd shattered, the people he'd killed, all would have come to their ends one way or another if he hadn't happened by. Death was universal; he was merely one of its particulars.

He reached down, picked up a fragment of the shattered balcony rail, took two steps forward and coolly inserted it between the minion's shoulder blades. She and her weapon crumbled to dust as Spike jabbed both thumbs into Angel's eyes. Angel released his grip with a bellow of half-blinded agony, and Spike staggered to his feet and reeled back, eyes coin-bright and blood streaming from his flared nostrils. He looked from Angel to Lawson and back again, reached some decision of his own, and bolted for the elevator. Lawson ducked in after him and slapped the close door button. The machinery lurched and grumbled into motion.

"I could smell Taco Girl on that bint you staked," Spike gasped. He straightened himself to his full and not terribly impressive height against the elevator wall and spat out a tooth. "Where is she?"

"Basement," Lawson said, tucking his makeshift stake into his belt as they shuddered to a halt. "Lingerie, notions, and captives." He dug his nails under the brass plate of the elevator controls and pulled; the control box tore free of the wall in a shower of sparks and a bouquet of curling wires. "It'll take awhile for Angel to get the minions under control and go around to the service stairs. You've got a few minutes." He led the way out into the basement, through stacks of featureless crates and cast-off furniture shrouded in the dust of half a century's abandonment, over to a large pair of double doors, and flung them open. "There's an exit into the sewers just off the pool."

Spike snorted. "What, no bowling alley?"

The empty pool made an eminently practical icebox, pre-equipped with drains; all you had to do was hose off the mess every couple of days and toss any bodies into the sewers, where the local scavengers would make short work of them. Lawson flicked the lights on and cocked an ear to the moans and whimpers below. Half a dozen heartbeats tripped away in asynchronous terror. That was down two. The fledges must have been hungry.

Spike knelt on the deck, looking down into the drained hollow. Wesley's toy and the random meals were chained to the pool ladder. Reddish-brown smears of blood stained the cracked plaster, along with less palatable substances. Irritation flickered across his mobile face, and Lawson wondered if that was that what the good guys were supposed to feel in a situation like this. At least Spike felt something, he thought sardonically. Puts him one up on me.

"Keys," Spike demanded, extending a hand--of course there would be keys, and of course Lawson could produce them. The younger vampire obliged, plucking the key ring from its hook and tossing it over. Spike caught it and dropped down into the pool, grunting in pain as he landed, and limped over to the huddled captives. "Right, you lot, let's get a move on."

Spike wasn't a very inspiring figure: with one rapidly blackening eye, a gaudy selection of bruises, and bloody bite-marks lacerating his shoulders, he looked worse than the vamp fodder he was supposedly rescuing. But something in his eyes got the captives shuffling to their feet nonetheless. The snick of tumblers falling into place, the metallic rattle as a waterfall of chains cascaded to the plaster, and it was done.

Lawson frowned as Spike hoisted the last of the woozy, fang-scarred prisoners up to catch hold of the ladder. He couldn't see the point of the exercise. "Angel will round up another batch of them by tomorrow."

"That's tomorrow." Spike clambered out of the pool, a half-conscious Fred slung over his shoulders. "Where's the colored bloke?"

"Gunn? I don't know." Lawson took Fred off his hands, half supporting her weight. "Angel had him locked up somewhere that Wyndam-Pryce couldn't get at him."

"Fuck it, no time," Spike muttered, with an aggravated glance at the little huddle of captives.

"Oh, we've got time," Lawson said, tightening his hold on Fred until she squeaked. "Time enough for you and me to have a talk. You can tell me what I want to know and walk out of here, taking her with you--" He patted Fred's cheek, and she looked up at him blurrily. "Or you can keep playing dumb, and force me to finish what Pryce started. Maybe you've still got enough juice to take me, but maybe you don't, and I can damn sure keep you occupied till the old man shows up."

Dark brows lowered over eyes several degrees colder than they had been a moment ago, but Spike didn't move--no doubt just as aware as Lawson of the shape he was in and his chances against a fresh opponent. "Care to tell me exactly what piece of vital information I'm concealing about my person?"

Silence stretched taut between them. "I need to know that there's a point to all this, somewhere, somehow--what we are, and what we do," Lawson said at last. "I don't know if Angel made me wrong, or if part of his soul got...stuck in me somehow, but the killing, the destruction...none of it means anything! I thought Angel could--he says he's going to rebuild the Order of Aurelius, but that's just more of the same.

"I talked to a lot of vampires in Sunnydale. Most of them think you're crazy. Even your own minions." His hand tightened on Fred's throat, feeling her bird-fine limbs tremble and shiver against him. "But you know what? They follow you anyway. Because you're crazy."

Spike scowled, and there was no answer in the bruised and bloodied planes of cheek and jaw, the impatient blue eyes, no clue in the irascible quirk of that scarred brow. "Mate, you want to natter on about life, the universe, and everything, get me good and rat-arsed some night I'm not running for my life. There's a time and a sodding place, and this isn't either."

Panic shot through Lawson like fire through the California scrubland. What if there really were no answer? "Not good enough! Tell me, damn it, or Fred here will regret it!"

"What do I look like, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi?" Spike snapped. "It's not like there's a sodding manual! Slaughter and mayhem don't turn your crank any longer, find something that does. Collect stamps, join the Wank Of The Month Club, start at A and insult everyone in the phone book--pick one, and leave me out of it." He looked down at Fred, eyes narrowing, turned on his heel and stalked towards the exit, shoving past the confused prisoners. "Cheers. Enjoy yourself. I'm off."

The dramatic exit was somewhat marred as he caught the toe of one boot in a tangle of discarded chain, and half-stumbled with a curse. Lawson bit back disappointment. Spike was only doing what any sensible vampire in his situation would do, cutting his losses and getting out. Hell.

But Spike had never been a sensible vampire. The stumble turned into a spin, and Spike whipped around like a released slingshot, kicking the chain straight at Lawson's head. In the same instant Fred sank her teeth into his hand--a minor distraction, but an effective one. Lawson flung up one arm to block the chain and Fred squirmed out of his loosened grasp, snatched the shard of oak from his belt and would have rammed it home in his heart had Spike's fingers not closed on her wrist at the last instant.

"Oh, no, you're not gonna stop me," she said, glaring wild-eyed up at Spike. "Uh uh. I'm real sorry, but he's gonna have to die. I'm thinkin' something with ants. How much of a vampire can get nibbled away before they dust? It's a question, a real question."

"Scientific inquiry later, love," Spike said, taking away the stake and tucking her under one arm (with some difficulty, as she was almost as tall as he was). He eyed Lawson with disfavor. "You're obviously mad as a hatter, so I'll make allowances." Without warning he lashed out with the butt-end of the stake, and Lawson yelled as a fireball of pain exploded in his nose. "But not many. Lesson the first, when you're asking advice of your elders and betters, bloody well mind your manners. The bona fide white hats aren't nearly so forgiving as your loving nevvy."

Lawson closed his eyes. The steel-wool rasp of desperation in his voice was more eloquent than the words. "Spike--I can't go on like this. I get nothing, nothing from being a vampire, and I don't know how to be anything else."

Spike sighed. "Neither do I, mate. The fault's not in our sires, but in ourselves." Shouts and the pounding of footsteps on the stairs interrupted them. He straightened, weariness forgotten, and bellowed at the captives, "Don't fucking well stand there, run, or I'll eat you myself!" He cocked his head, tongue curled against his bloodstained teeth. "Coming with?"

Moments of decision. Moments that, when you looked back, defined your entire life, or death. Pick one. Lawson shook his head. "No. Go ahead. I'll hold them up. I don't think he saw me stake that girl upstairs; it happened just as you were trying to gouge his eyes out. Besides, he's a dick, but he's still my sire." He nodded at the fragment of balcony rail, and met Spike's eyes. "Make it look good."

"Been staked. Hurts like fuck."

If that was an out, Lawson wasn't taking it. "Yeah, well... that offer to get you drunk still good?"

"Always. Glenlivet, neat, as long as you're buying." Spike hefted the stake with a wry smile, and plunged it without hesitation into Lawson's chest.

Crouched on the rooftop, a pipestem gargoyle gazing down at the bright sterile windows of the building on the corner opposite, Connor pondered his options. The medicines he needed were in there, but getting hold of them had proven to be a thornier problem than he'd anticipated. The white-clad woman at the front desk had first tried to shoo him away to the free clinic downtown, and then threatened to call out her guards if he didn't leave. The shifty-eyed man in the parking lot who'd offered to get him what he wanted for a price was asking for more than his meager funds could cover. Breaking in would be simple enough, but medicines here came in the form of tiny featureless pills, not the herbs and potions he was familiar with. He couldn't read the local language well enough to tell what was what.

With a sigh of resignation, Connor dropped over the side of the building and skinned down the drainpipe. He was just going to have to enlist someone who could. He comforted himself with the thought that he'd be killing two birds with one stone. A scouting mission into enemy territory was long overdue, and if he could liberate someone from the Hyperion who could help him out of his own dilemma, so much the better.

Connor had never heard of the saddest words of tongue or pen, but if anyone had asked him what the sweetest were, he'd have answered without hesitation, "I told you so." He'd known, in the same way he knew that the sun would rise in the morning and rocks would fall when you dropped them, that Angel would turn on them sooner or later. And now everyone else knew it too, but since all of them were dead, delirious, or captured, his opportunities for gloating were limited. In a way it was his own fault. He'd had the chance to take Angel out for good last summer. Instead he'd chosen to pursue his father's--his real father's--plan of vengeance. It was painful to admit it, but Holtz had been wrong, blinded by the smoke of his long-burning hatred. In the long run, vengeance was too costly. It was much better to take your enemies out hard and fast, the first chance you got.

It was getting on for five in the morning as he approached the hotel. There was still an hour or so till full dawn, but low down on the eastern horizon, the sky was taking on a luminous pewter sheen. The Hyperion's battlements loomed high overhead, a castle to be stormed, and a single lighted window squinted blearily at the coming dawn.

What there wasn't was any sign of a lookout at the front gate, and that was weird. Angel hadn't yet started recruiting local vampires, mainly because there weren't any local vampires stupid enough to lair within two miles of the Hyperion, and the Sunnydale imports were as yet unfamiliar with the territory. They patrolled the neighborhood aggressively nonetheless. Twice in the last week he'd run afoul of vampires nosing around his lair. The first time there'd only been one, and he'd disposed of it quickly. The second time there'd been three, and he'd stayed hidden until he was certain they'd left. It was only a matter of time before someone found him out.

Now, though, there was no sight or scent of a sentry. Connor melted into the shadows of the entryway to the office building across the street, straining his eyes to catch any sign of movement in the foliage of the courtyard, or anyone lurking beneath the trees lining the sidewalk in front of the hotel. What did the uncannily deserted posts mean? Simple malingering, or was something else going on? Suspicious, he retreated half a block to Norton and slunk down the side street, slipping from shadow to ink-blot shadow in the eaves of the storefronts. The bandana he'd used to wash Cordelia's wounds was still in his back pocket; he tore a thin whippy branch from one of the trees, tied the bloodied rag to the end, and poked it cautiously around the corner. After ten minutes of vamp-fishing and no bites, he gave up: there weren't any of the usual lookouts at the side doors or the service entrances, either.

Connor debated a quick reconnaissance. His ears were as keen as any vampire's, and once inside he should be able to tell quickly if there were any human survivors, and get a rough idea of where in the building they were. On the other hand, it might be a trap, possibly not intended for him, but deadly even so.

A grating noise further down the street made him freeze. Flattening himself to the wall, Connor peered around the corner, his vamp-bait fluttering forgotten to the pavement. Half a block away, the manhole cover in the center of the street hiccupped, then flipped upwards with a loud CLONK! and shivered to rest on the pavement like a settling quarter. A head gophered up out of the hole, its features in shadow and its unruly hair a flat shocking white in the street lights. Connor's lips drew back from his teeth as he caught the faint scent of vampire.

The vampire hopped out onto the street, a lithe silhouette crouching beside the manhole. A sinewy arm reached down and hauled a smaller, slimmer figure out, then a larger, bulkier one, and another, and another, until there was a small herd of people that Connor's nose informed him were unmistakably human--and pretty ripe humans, too, stinking of blood and filth. They milled around in blinking confusion on the pavement. A couple of them started sobbing at the sight of open sky.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" the vampire snarled. "Get out of here, and be quick about it. Sun's almost up, and I'm not going to fry shepherding you gits home."

"But I don't know where I am!" a woman wailed.

"Sunset and Camden," the vampire growled, "And if you're not elsewhere inside five minutes, you're going to be inside me."

"Wilshire's two blocks thataway, and the number 20 bus runs every half hour." That was--Fred? Definitely Fred, sounding bone-tired and on the verge of slipping back into wall-scribbling mode. "But don't you go back up by the hotel, go around that way." She pointed down the street. "Spike, you got money?"

"Yeh, but--"

"Give it here." Fred plucked Spike's wallet from his hand and thrust a handful of crumpled bills at her fellow-prisoners. "That oughta be enough for all of you. There's a 7-11 two blocks east where you can get change, assuming they don't think you're crazy people, which they might, 'cause honest, you look like crazy people but it's a big help if you talk to each other and not to yourselves. Now hurry up, all of you, or you'll miss the bus and Spike'll eat you and that would just be unfortunate. Shoo!"

With many an apprehensive look, the little crowd of ex-prisoners wandered off down the street. The vampire watched them go, one hand clenching and unclenching at his side, and a gleam of predatory calculation in his eyes. Fred's eyelids fluttered, and Spike whirled, catching her before she could slide to the ground. "Come on, pet, don't go south on me now," he crooned.

Fred stirred in his arms and mumbled something incomprehensible about pancakes. Connor could see, now, that her reedy limbs were covered with bloody scrawls of runes, reeking of dark magic and ill intent. He was no stranger to torture, dealt out or received; he'd been weaned on pain and privation, and he harbored a certain amount of scorn for Angel's human minions, who imagined that their lives had been so hard. The mean streets of L.A. and even the slave-pens of Pylea were nothing compared to the blasted wilderness of Quortoth and Holtz's harsh and unyielding brand of...well, he'd thought it was love at the time, and nowadays he tried not to think about it at all. Still, his gut stirred uneasily at the sight of those lovingly-inflicted wounds.

Spike, still cradling Fred in his arms, looked up with a growl and a blood-red flash of pupils--he must have caught Connor's scent. Connor expected to see ridges and fangs, but the vampire's face, when he straightened and faced the darkness, was wholly human. "Come on out, whelp," he said, in a voice stripped of menace by weariness.

Connor weighed fight against flight--Spike wasn't much bigger than he was, and obviously in bad shape. There wouldn't be a better time to take him on if it did come to a fight. On the other hand, was it worth a fight? Fred didn't look like she was in any condition to break into the surgical center. He didn't owe her anything after she'd sided with Angel against him. He could find someone else. But then...with anyone else, he'd have to waste time explaining.

Besides, more than anything else he wanted Fred to gaze up at him with big dark doe-eyes and say in a trembling, penitent voice, You were right, Connor. He's a monster, and we never shoulda pulled him out of the ocean.

He stepped boldly out of the shadows, facing Spike down. "I know you," he said. "You're the one who helped Wesley and Faith pull Angel out of the Bay."

"And you're the chap who put him there," Spike replied equably. "Can't say as I don't understand the urge." He glanced to the east and hoisted Fred up over one shoulder. "Sorry, mate, no time for autographs."

"I don't think so." Connor moved to block Spike's path. "You're a monster. Just like him. You're not going anywhere with her."

"Yeh? Well, if I stand here with her, we'll go up in flames in about fifteen minutes, and I'm bloody well not letting you drag her back in to Daddy, so--"

"You think I'm working with him?" Connor spat. "I'd kill him first. Or myself."

Spike rolled his eyes. "Classic cry for attention. Mark my words, at the end of the day all you want is a pat on the head and a lolly from your Da."

"Oh, yeah? You're the one who helped rescue him," Connor retorted, dripping scorn. "You're his friend."

"If I weren't otherwise occupied, I'd rip your tongue out for that," Spike snarled. "Angel and me, we'll never be friends. Now, Fred's hurt and I'm combustible, so get out of my way and let me get her to my car or I'll give you a taste of what I gave your old man just now."

Connor scowled. Aspersions cast against Angel's fighting ability carried an unaccountable sting, if only because they reflected indirectly on his own prowess. He eyed Spike's bruised face and bloodied body with a sneer. "What, beating your face repeatedly against my fist--wait, you have a car?"

Holtz had taught him to look at any new element entering a situation as something to use to his advantage, and car opened up sudden vistas of possibility. Spike was a monster, but he was a monster with wheels, and he was working against Angel for some reason. "I've got a...a friend. Cordelia--you remember her? Angel attacked her, and the wound's festered. I need medicine for her, and I need to get her to a safer place. I know someplace I could take her, but it's across town, and I couldn't carry her there without hurting her--but you've got a car. Help me, and I'll let you bring Fred along. It's a human's place, so Angel and his minions can't get in. They'll be safe. And the person who owns it knows about vampires, so she'll know not to invite them in--she's got wards. It's--"

Spike cut him off. "Car's this way. Come on."

"So let me get this straight," Angel said, his voice the thrum of an electric knife. "The six of you couldn't catch up to one kidney-stabbed, beaten-to-a-pulp vampire who was nursemaiding an entire herd of half-drained humans down two hundred yards of wide-open sewer pipe?"

The row of unhappy minions ducked heads and shuffled feet, elbowing one another until the smallest one was shoved forward, a flock of undead penguins offering up a sacrifice to the leopard seal. The scapegoat's eyes glazed with panic. "He went topside," she croaked. "It was almost dawn."

"Almost dawn," Angel repeated. He strode over to the window, ignoring the stabbing pain in his shoulder and the grinding of small bones in his foot, and jerked on the sash. The curtains flew open and a wash of silver light flooded the room. The minions cringed back against the far wall, crying out and flinging up their arms to shield their eyes. "It sounds to me like you people aren't really familiar with how much light a vampire can stand. I think a demonstration is in order."

He grabbed the nearest minion by the scruff of the neck and thrust him through the window in a crash of shattering glass, out into the open air. "Notice," he said blithely, "that indirect light is merely uncomfortable, not fatal." The fledge screamed and writhed like a speared trout in his grip as the first rays of sunrise broke over the LA skyline and lanced across the rooftops. "Direct sunlight, on the other hand..."

Angel's arm remained rigid as iron as the rising sun sliced down the Hyperion's wall and flayed the minion with a blade of fire. His hair blazed up in a crown of flame, and his screams were lost to the rush and crackle of burning. Skin charred, guts boiled, bones incandesced into traceries of living coal, and as the agonized, upturned face dissolved into ash in the wind of its own destruction, Angel let go.

A shower of sparks spiraled down to the street on the morning breeze, and Angel yanked the blinds down and turned to face the others. He held up his scorched fist, the arm blistered all the way up to the elbow. "You had him in reach and you let him go," he snarled, "because you're afraid of a little sun. You're Aurelians! Pathetic, inbred, last-chance Aurelians, but when I give you an order I expect you to carry it out or die trying. Is that understood?"

A few nods and whimpers. The woman they'd pushed to the fore fell to her knees. "Master, I--I followed as far as I dared, and I saw--he left with a boy." She held out a scrap of red cloth. "He dropped this."

Angel took the offering, eyes slitting as the scent reached his nostrils. Connor. "For that you live. You three, go round us up some fresh blood--I know it's daylight. Be inventive. You, go see to Lawson, you, get this mess cleaned up and get that window fixed, and you," he pointed to the one who'd given him the bandana, "come with me."

The minion followed him down the hall at a respectful distance, awe in her protuberant eyes. He didn't have to think of her as 'the minion'; he remembered her name, because he remembered everything. He just didn't care. Perhaps he'd kill her, too, just for the hell of it... but no, she was the only one who'd showed even the dimmest spark of initiative. They hadn't wanted to catch up. Spike had cut and run, a tacit admission of defeat, but he'd left a trail of destruction behind him--minions dead, Angel wounded, Lawson very fortuitously staked not quite in the heart. These were young, stupid, Sunnydale vampires, to whom Angelus was a distant, defanged boogyman, and Spike a real, ever-present menace. Big mistake on their part, and they might not survive learning otherwise.

Back in his own room, Angel tossed a first-aid kit at the minion and stripped off his blood-soaked shirt and ruined shoes. He sat on the edge of the bed while she cleaned and bound his wounds. He felt edgy, in need of a kill or a fuck or both, and the minion didn't look up to satisfying either craving. She was thin and mousy, with an unfortunate mole on one cheek, and she'd die with the same drab dullness with which she lived. He'd hoped that at least a few of Lawson's catch would be worth keeping, that he'd have a few competent family lieutenants trained up before he started recruiting local vampires. So far he'd been disappointed. The Master had been fussy about whom he sired, but his descendants hadn't been nearly so discriminating--and of course, Buffy had taken out all the truly dangerous members of the Master's court years ago.

He was going to have to turn Gunn, no matter how pissed off Wesley might get; he needed both competence and loyalty. Lawson's dealings with Spike made him suspect now, a liability. If he weren't so short-handed, he'd stake the possibly traitorous bastard.

If you can take him, of course.

The muscles in his jaw tightened. There wasn't any if about it.

Yeah? Spike could have won that fight. Not easily, maybe, but you think about that, old man.

His soul might be doped into quiescence, but the self-doubt it engendered could still sink its claws into his gut, turning on him with the same diabolical guile that his demonic urges employed. He'd lost fights to Spike once or twice in the past, but those infrequent defeats had always been due to Spike cheating somehow. In a straightforward brawl, there had never been any doubt in his mind that Spike would lose. Until tonight.

Angel straightened and smacked the minion away with a grunt of annoyance. "Get out." She bobbed her head and scurried away roach-like, slamming the door behind her in her haste. Idiot, and get of idiots. He rose and flexed his shoulder, testing the give of the bandages and wincing a little as the wound twinged, and pulled a white wifebeater out of the top drawer. He'd heal in a day, and he'd given Spike something to remember him by, but it was damned annoying.

A glint of light on the dresser caught his eye as he shrugged into the undershirt. It was the DVD Wesley had given him. Clips from the surveillance cameras that the Meers boy had planted on Buffy last year, Wesley claimed, including a few scenes of Buffy and Spike sparring. An underground classic, no doubt. He picked up the silvery disc and flipped it over. The label was a cheap home-stamped thing featuring an improbably busty blonde doing questionable things with a stake and the title 'Sizzling Action With Cold Dead Seed.' "Aw, Wes, you shouldn't have," Angel murmured. "I didn't get you anything."

He limped over to the entertainment center, slipped the disc into the tray of the DVD player, lowered himself onto the bed with a stifled hiss of pain, and clicked the remote. He'd miscalculated. He wouldn't do so again. Spike wasn't a fledge any longer, but a vampire in his prime, and since taking up demon-fighting, he'd honed his considerable skills to a razor's edge on creatures which far outstripped him in size and strength. And there were those clandestine nips of Slayer's blood--a savage growl rattled the bars of Angel's chest. That blood was his, his to savor, his to spill. He jabbed the play button with one thumb, imagining it was Spike's eye socket. He never got tired of fights he couldn't lose, and the reason he didn't lose them was that he knew his enemies. Doing my homework like a good boy, Wes.

Whoever had burned the DVD couldn't edit for shit. Scenes were clipped short or bracketed by unrelated snippets of action--or more often, inaction. He fast-forwarded through fifteen or twenty minutes worth of barely-visible humping before the abrupt cut to the well-lit training room at the Magic Box. Pause, play.

--Buffy's fist to his nose. Spike drops, sweep-kicks for her knees. She leapfrogs over his leg and lashes out mid-air with a kick of her own, one-two to the head. He goes down and kips up again, catching her with a double-handed blow to the jaw as she comes down. She staggers, rolls, somersaulting to her feet and launching herself at him again. Spike grabs her ankle in mid-air and twists--she's slammed against the wall, kicking off to--

The scene cut short, replaced by an out-of-focus shot of Buffy's bedroom. Angel hit rewind, and the blurry figures squiggled back into position. He unleashed the deadly choreography again, frame-by-frame, move and counter-move coming so quickly the camera captured only their blurred ghosts. The remote was in his left hand now, as his right crept downwards to cup hardening flesh.

They are beautiful when they dance, two magnificent animals, all sleek rolling muscle and sinuous curves. They've both filled out in the last year; the spectacular cheekbones that always make Angel's fingers itch for a pencil are closer to sheer cliffs than cavernous hollows these days. Beneath her tank top, Buffy's breasts bob and jiggle. Pebble-hard nipples tent the thin pink cotton, a siren summons to the answering bulge in Spike's jeans. Buffy's eyes are diamond-bright, eager, and Spike's grinning, breathing hard--

Angel was breathing hard and fast himself, fondling his aching erection through his trousers. He could imagine the whiff of her, sweat and arousal and rich hot blood pumping just beneath the fevered skin. He knew the taste of that blood, salty and metallic, the taste of seawater, the taste of womankind. Wherever Spike had been, he'd been first, and likewise with Buffy. His fangs grew sharp and his cock throbbed at the memory. Squeeze, stroke, from root to head and back again, tight as a Slayer's virginal cunt, hard as a naive young fledge's humiliated tears. There was nothing they could discover of one another that he had not laid bare long since.

Right, said the sardonic voice in his hindbrain. You fucked her twice. She doesn't remember the second time and believe me, the first time was--well, hey, I guess it was fine for a terrified virgin and a guy who'd been dating his right hand for the past century. And Spike, of all the times you knocked him around, the one he remembers is the one that ended with you on your knees calling him Will...

Angel snarled, groaned, straining suspended half-way between release and agony. Elastic scraped scratchy tracks down the underside of his cock as he yanked the waistband of his sweats down over his hips. Freed, his cock sprang up to slap against his belly, the milky droplets already seeping from the head spattering damp spots on his undershirt. Remote. Where was remote? For that matter, where was hand? Hand, meet cock. Get better acquainted. Fast forward.

Front yard. Fireflies overhead like tiny Japanese lanterns. Spike lounging against the rough bole of the oak tree, his pale flesh luminous in the night. Buffy leaning into him, gold into silver. Spike lifts her up and spins her around, bracing her back against the tree. His lips move against hers; he's reciting Marvell as she undoes his fly. He's half-erect already, drawing arabesques of pearl on her belly. Her mouth captures his and poetry is swallowed in a kiss. Her legs entwine his waist like ivy, bare toes curling and flexing, and he's inside her now, vaster than empires and more slow, fucking her hard against the tree. Oh yeah. Make her scream and beg and bite her, rip her open, make Valentine's lace of her entrails--he's not biting her, God damn it, Spike, you don't have a soul, what the hell is your excuse? Poser, pussy, cunt-licking failure of a demon! There's bark in her hair and she's biting his shoulder to muffle her screams. They topple heedless to the grass, an avalanche of flesh, and the camera goes dark.

Was this romantic bullshit all there was? Impossible that the mask wouldn't fall sooner or later, and they remember what they were to one another, demon and slayer of demons. He stroked harder, working the foreskin over the head, pinching, tugging harder (Darla's fangs as she swallows him whole, Drusilla's ecstatic screams as the whip comes down). He thumbed the remote with one hand and himself with the other, and oh, yeah, paydirt..

Bedroom. Spike splayed out, naked, erect, bound. White skin, red stripes, dark curling hair. Buffy stands at the foot of the bed, dark lashes sweeping flushed cheeks, Spike's belt in her hands. She doubles it, snaps it, and the crack of leather is gunshot loud. Spike's hips jerk; his balls are tight and almost as dark as the coarse hair they rest in, his leaking cock swollen to impossible dimensions. Buffy crawls onto the bed, stalking him like a lioness, and straddles his lean hips. She's playing with her breasts as she sinks down on him, head thrown back, eyes near-closed, taking him in inch by inch. They gasp in unison as she begins to move.

Yes, oh, yes, this was more like it. He had the rhythm now, hard and relentless.

She rides him mercilessly through three explosive orgasms, and he's still hard. She writhes and gasps and pants, taunts him into game face and fucks him back out, bites his small taut nipples till he roars and strains against the ropes, and the bed-frame shudders dangerously around them. Crack! goes the belt. Buffy's whipped it around his neck and yanked it tight, and Spike's whole body convulses with something so far beyond pleasure not even seeing it play out across that endlessly expressive face can convey the intensity.

A spasm wracked him, and Angel fell back shuddering and unfulfilled, balls aching as if he hadn't come at all. He threw his head back against the headboard with a roar of frustration. On the TV screen the masque continued, spectres caught in an eternal passion play.

He spends and spends and spends within her, everything in him emptied out, and sinks back at last, utterly, paradoxically replete. Buffy collapses on top of him, herself spent, kissing the fading lines of red, curling around him. She nuzzles him, cheek to cheek, vampire-fashion. Casually, Spike reaches up and wraps a hand around one of his bonds, snaps it, and holds her close. As one, they draw breath.

Kill them. Kill them both. No, fuck them both, fuck them blind and bleeding, they have no goddam right to be happy when I have--I have--

This rage was not a demon's rage; this jealousy was not a demon's jealousy. This was the isolation and fury of the man, who still, after all these years, needs killing. He wasn't jealous of them, but of what they had, what remained forever beyond his reach. A whisper in the night, a shadow in the corner of the eye, an elusive scent--scent!

Angel grabbed the bandana and crushed it to his nose. Yes. Her scent, lingering just beneath Connor's. Of course. Find one, and he'd take them both. How would his boy's blood taste, when he finally bound that rebel child to his side with bonds he couldn't break?

He clutched the bloodstained bandana, thrusting into the crumpled cloth, seeing Cordelia's cool dark beauty, flawless face, lush body. That body helpless beneath his, his cock lost in the valley between her breasts. Connor's face in the background, terrified and worshipful, watching as Angel took back hat was his by right. Her neck bared to his fangs, her blood flowing down his throat like metallic sunshine, her screams ringing sweetly in his ears and her heart slowing and ceasing forever before she rose again as a fit consort for the master of the Aurelians--he would have that, have her, soon. Tonight, tonight--

Angel's climax hit like a freight train, hips arcing up off the bed as jizz splattered across his belly. He came again, and again, bucking and thrashing against the mattress, and in the bowels of the Hyperion the minions shuddered at their master's roar of triumph.

Three bright strands of copper braided with a piece of red string, the whole wound carefully around the smudge stick: celery, acacia, yarrow, goldenseal, each herb chosen carefully both for its properties and its effect on the others. The portable spell circle, spread out on the minuscule square of carpet between the bed and the door of her room, inscribed with ominous sigils in red and black Magic Marker. Six candles set carefully around the perimeter of the circle, alternating black and white. An altar set up on the cheapass dresser, right in front of the flickering TV set, the brazier smoking gently beneath the yellowed NO COOKING ALLOWED IN ROOMS sign. All these things had failed utterly to transform Kennedy's cruddy little rent-by-the-week room into a haven of all things magical.

In fact, Kennedy thought, the whole thing was pretty damn lame. But she'd seen enough results so far to keep her thoughts to herself. Along with her hands and her eyes and any other body part which might accidentally come within five feet of Willow Rosenberg, which was really difficult in a room the approximate size of an ant farm. But Willow had insisted that the spell had to be done in Kennedy's place of power, or as close as they could come to it, and at the moment, this was it.

"You're sure about the blood?" Tara asked, reading over Willow's neatly printed spell. Kennedy couldn't have said whether her tone was worried, accusing, or frightened, which probably meant it wasn't any of those things, and she was driving herself nuts. "This is a little more...intense than I was expecting."

"I know you can handle it," Willow said, arranging a small magnet and the crystal with Kennedy's aura-picture in front of the brazier. "You were Ghede's horse, weren't you? It was Kennedy's idea, really. The spell just wasn't coming together--more of a dis-spell than a spell, you know?--and she reminded me that the First Slayer's on the dark and ancient side, and it's not gonna manifest for some weenie little herbal bath." She began circling the brazier with whitish, lumpy objects. Bones? Suspiciously human bones? Oh, no, couldn't be, because where would a vampire get human bones? Except of course from the steaming bodies of--

"I thought you were going to throw those out," Buffy said from her cross-legged perch in the center of the bed, where she was grinding something green and gooey into something green and gooier in a mortar. She wrinkled her nose in disdain. "Don't they have Acathla cooties or something?"

Willow clasped the last bone protectively to her breast. "I prefer to think of it as a long and distinguished mystical pedigree," she replied. "These bones have been through two and a half re-soulings, three major conjurations, a de-lusting, and that... incident."

Tara winced. "The one we decided never to mention again?"

"That's the one." Willow regarded the bone dubiously. "Maybe I should throw them out."

"Herbs go squish now," Buffy announced, holding out the mortar. "Next?"

Tara produced a small silvery knife with a triangular blade. "Kennedy? If you'll hold out your hand..."

Yeah, right, I'll let the witch whose girlfriend I just macked on come at me with a knife. That's the ticket. Kennedy swallowed and held out her hand, relieved to see that it didn't tremble. So far Buffy and Tara had said and done nothing to indicate that they knew what had happened that afternoon in the basement, and she'd been avoiding Willow's gaze so assiduously that she had no idea if Willow was nervous or not. Kennedy wasn't reassured by the general silence. Even if Willow kept mum, Spike knew, and he could be plotting to use his knowledge of her flagrante delecto to his advantage. It was obvious he wanted her gone. He could turn Buffy and Tara against her, and God, what if Travers found out? Would he decide that she was just as contaminated as Buffy was? For the first time a thrill of real fear ran through her.

Tara mistook her shudder for aversion to the knife. "I'll be quick." She lowered the point of the athame to Kennedy's palm with clinical precision, and drew a slim red line with one swift slash. It felt like a paper cut: one moment of numb burn, and then a throbbing ache as the skin parted and the blood welled up. Tara turned her hand over, and the crimson drops splashed down into the mortar, mingling with the pulpy green of the mullein and valerian.

"And just a spritz of extra-virgin olive oil..." Willow mixed with verve. "Voila. Magic pesto."

Buffy laid a hand on her shoulder. "Crucial thing? Don't let it con you into thinking it's in charge."

Kennedy nodded. "Yeah. Got it."

"I think we're ready," Tara said. She stepped into the spell circle, held the still-bloody athame high and intoned, "I call upon Sineya, first of the Ones. I offer my tongue to she who is without words that she may speak." Without a flinch, without a wince, she licked the bloodied edge of the knife straight on.

Willow dabbed the blood-and-oil mixture on Kennedy's forehead, breastbone, and palms. The pungent mixture trickled down cold and gelid to her eyebrows, and stung as it worked into the cut in her hand. Willow turned to Tara, who opened her mouth, and Willow let three drops of the mixture fall onto her tongue. Tara knelt and inscribed 'Head' on the first of the white candles with the point of the athame, leaving tiny bloodstained curls of wax shavings. "Ignite!" The candle flickered to life. "Here do I light the first Lamp. May it be a beacon to that which we summon."

Buffy, anxiously consulting her copy of the spell, took the smudge stick and held it over the brazier till it caught, sending heavy roiling clouds of white smoke up towards the ceiling. She waved the smudge stick around the altar, setting everyone except Willow coughing, until Kennedy managed to wedge the front window open. They had, luckily, thought to take the battery out of the fire alarm first, though Kennedy suspected it was probably dead.

"Is anyone going to notice the smoke?" Willow whispered.

"They'll just think it's pot," Kennedy said with a shrug. "Let's get on with it."

Tara repeated the process with the second and third white candles, inscribing them with 'Spirit' and 'Heart.' "Here do I light the second Lamp. May it illuminate the passageway between worlds. Here do I light the third Lamp. May it bring enlightenment within as it brings light without." She held out the athame, and Kennedy took it with a nervous breath.

Kennedy knelt down, extended her wounded hand over the nearest black candle, and squeezed out a last drop of blood. "I beseech Sineya to speak to her daughter this night. As these candles burn, so burn the hearts of Sineya's children for her wisdom."

As her blood hit the candle-wick, all three black candles burst into eldritch flame, blue and baleful, and the smoke from the incense billowed up around them in choking clouds. Tara's head jerked back and she uttered a strangled cry, collapsing to the floor. Kennedy started to get up, to do something--that was what she was for, wasn't it? To do something about...about...things like this. The room swam in dim smoky circles and her head throbbed. There wasn't any air. She was choking, smothering, dying--

"Aaah!" Kennedy shot upright with a gasp. The air in her lungs and her aching throat was clean and pure as no air on earth, not a single molecule of burned hydrocarbon sullying its crystal clarity. She looked around. The sky overhead was a brilliant blaze of blue, the sands which stretched off to the horizon a bleached bone-white. Heat waves shimmered across the dunes, turning the desert into a melting Daliesque dreamscape. Here and there an outcropping of rock, a gnarled mass of dead root and trunk, or the skeletal remains of some vanished leviathan broke the surface.

Blinking the grit from her eyes, Kennedy got to her feet and looked around. She was alone.

"No," Tara said. Kennedy whirled around. Tara stood on the baked earth where she absolutely hadn't stood a second ago, a light breeze ruffling her wheaten hair. At her side crouched a thing barely human, tattered remains of clothing winding like gravecloth about its dark limbs and white streaks of mud caking its savage face, outlining the skull beneath the skin. "You're not alone. That's the problem."

"Is that her?" Kennedy demanded. "Is she the First Slayer? Sineya?"

"She has no name," Tara said. "She's grown beyond the curse of human features."

The dark angular creature rose from its crouch and Kennedy realized that it--she--was human, after all, a human body moved from within by something wholly inhuman. She prowled across the parched sand between them and stood upright, studying Kennedy with chill, alien eyes. "Thief," she rasped, and turned away, lip curled in contempt, loping away across the dunes.

Kennedy stood open-mouthed for a second, too stunned to do anything else. Was it talking about Willow? She couldn't think what else she might have stolen lately, and hell, it wasn't like Willow hadn't--she broke into a run. "Hey! Come back! I came here to find out why I don't have the power I should have!"

Heat blasted up from the ground, and shifting sand sucked and clutched at her boots with every step. She caught up to the lean dark figure and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around. "What do you mean, 'thief'? Answer me, damn it!"

"Rrrraarrghh!" The face that rounded on her was as demonic as any vampire's, wild tawny eyes and sharp white teeth bared in an inhuman snarl. "We live in the kill," she rasped. "We are born and we die in the kill. Alone!"

Fingers thin and knotted as twigs and as strong as steel wire closed around her throat as Kennedy kicked and pummeled at her opponent. They tumbled together down the sloping face of the dune, sand pouring in scalding showers around them. At the bottom of the hill she scrambled to her feet, coughing; Sineya had vanished.

Tara sat a little higher on the dune, arms folded over her bent knees. Along the crest of the dune marched a line of women, of girls. Buffy Summers was at the head of the line, and right behind her was a dark-haired, dark-eyed vixen in black leather who had to be Faith. She gave an insouciant puff on her cigarette and waved. Behind her were...shit, Rona, and Vi, and Soo-lin and Chloe and Molly, and a couple she didn't recognize, little kids almost, couldn't be more than fourteen.

The First Slayer prowled among them like the shadow of death, reaching out claw-like hands for the youngest of the girls. "No!" Kennedy yelled, scrambling upwards through an ever-growing avalanche of sand. "You can't have them!"

"Blood is her due," Tara said. "Promised, sealed, and delivered in the time before time. Such bargains are not lightly broken."

"What bargain? I haven't--"

Tara stood up. "You have your answer."

"No! I don't! I don't have a fucking clue!" Kennedy yelled. She lumbered up the dune towards Tara, slipping and falling back a foot for every one she gained. "Is there some goddam cryptic quotient you've got to fill for the month?" She grabbed Tara's shoulders and began shaking her unresisting body back and forth like a rag doll. "Explain to me exactly what's going on, or--"

"Raaaugh!" Something leaped on her from behind, not the First Slayer--it was some kind of demon, all horns and fangs and bright green scales. It lashed its barbed tail and dug its claws into her back, trying to pry her away from Tara, but damned if she was going to let go before she had her answers--

"Hey, B. Think we ought to do something?" Faith asked.

Buffy blinked, looking down at the brawl at the foot of the dune. "I don't know," she said. Her head felt muzzy and light. "It's not our dream, is it?"

Faith took a drag on her cigarette and scratched her head. "Guess not. Still..."

"Doing stuff is what we do." A cold nose nudged her fingers and she reached down absently and patted the shadow-beast at her side. It was so much better behaved since she'd started letting it out at night. "The question is, who do we do it to?"

"Well, they aren't going to be much help." Faith jerked a thumb at the girls behind them. "Not in the shape they're in."

Buffy looked. None of the girls' shadows showed more than a flash of paw, a Cheshire Cat blink of sullen golden eyes. "That's never going to work." She knelt down and opened up the bag, plunging her hands in up to the elbow and drawing up spread fingers dripping with ashen mud. She clapped both hands to her cheeks, cold in the hot sun. "Time to get my game face on."

"You sure about that?" Faith asked. "There's no going back, you know. And there are other ways." She pointed to the tower, looming over the tallest of the dunes, its shadow as black as pitch.

Buffy stared down into the depths of the bag, doubt nipping at her. Faith was right, of course. That would be the easiest way. But...she looked up into the eyes of the youngest girls, huddled together at the back of the line. "You think you're going to get all of us up there? No longer an option, I'm thinking."

Faith gave a little 'just sayin'' shrug.

"It'll be easier if I go first," Buffy said resolutely. She smeared the mud across her forehead in the mask older than counted time, down her nose, there and there and there. Getting it right was important, because she could only do this once. Something was buzzing, distracting her from her task. Flies, or mosquitoes--were there mosquitoes in the desert? Buffy slapped at her arms, trying to still the insistent chirping whine. Where was it? The thing sounded as big as a crop duster, for crying out loud--

She rocketed up, dizzy and gasping for breath. She was sprawled on greasy asphalt between a battered blue Lincoln and a towering Dodge Ram in the parking lot of the Sunset Arms Motor Lodge. Her head ached and her cell phone was going crazy in her purse. Rolling over, with a whimper at what extended contact with oil-encrusted gravel was doing to her pink suede jacket, she could see Kennedy was curled up on her side a few feet away, twitching as if in the throes of some violent dream. There had been a dream. Something about a desert, or luggage? Slayer dreams were usually unforgettably vivid, but this one slipped away in a swirl of sand and sun-glare, leaving her with the uncomfortable sense of having tapped into someone else's phone line.

The door to Kennedy's room gaped wide, and Willow emerged from a cloud of turgid yellow-grey smoke with Tara's limp body cradled in her arms. She laid Tara down on the pavement with panicky care, smoothing her hair back from her forehead, and looked over at Buffy. "I practically had to peel Kennedy off her! Is she breathing? I can't tell! They're supposed to fog up a mirror, but I don't have a mirror, because why would I carry a mirror, and also, if she's not? Vampires can't do CPR! Buffy! Can you do CPR?"

Buffy rolled to her knees and crawled groggily over. Why couldn't vampires do CPR? If they could smoke and heave martyred sighs and sing Barry Manilow...maybe Angel just hadn't known CPR. "Willow, stop with the mouth and start with the ears. You can hear her heartbeat, remember?"

"Oh! Oh, right!" Willow gazed worriedly into Tara's shuttered eyes. "Can you turn off your cell phone?"

"Eep. My bad." Buffy stood up and walked a few feet away, squinting at the phone's readout. Whoever was calling wasn't satisfied with voice mail, apparently; this was the third time they'd called. The number wasn't familiar, and it was a Sunnydale area code, so it couldn't be Spike checking in from L.A. Who on earth...? She glanced over her shoulder. Tara was sitting up and coughing, so the vampire CPR question was thankfully moot. "Hello? Buffy Summers. Kinda busy at the moment, so--"

"Miss Summers?" The voice was deep, rich, educated, and no one she knew. "My name is Robin Wood. I believe I have something that belongs to you."

The motel was the sort that rented rooms by the hour, equipped with a stained mattress, matted and ancient shag carpet, and a television which could also be rented by the hour. Its single mean window was mostly blocked by a hulking old air conditioning unit. Even to Riley's human senses, it smelled of sweat and sex and despair. He'd spent too many nights in rooms like this.

In that tawdry setting, the girl seated before the empty mirror was like Kino's pearl--lustrous, glowing, and destructive. She ran the brush through the crackling mass of her golden hair one last time, white arms curving like the necks of swans. Perfect. She was perfect. Perfect tits, perfect ass, perfect face, perfect white teeth that morphed into perfect white fangs. A marble Galatea, still a step away from life. Maybe that was why it was so hard to take her out of the world; you didn't meet perfection often.

Harmony Kendall made a moue at her absent reflection. "So Rileykins, have you made the deal with the Slayer yet?"

Riley's fingers closed around the stake behind his back, feeling the comforting solidity of the oak against his palm. Today he was going to kill her. Today he was going to walk out of the door and into Sam's arms a free man. He should have done it the first night he'd rolled back into Sunnydale and discovered her waiting for him--hell, he should have done it two years ago in that Mexican suck-joint. "No, I haven't, and I'm not going to."

Her fists went to her hips and her face twisted in a girlish pout. "Rileeeeeeey! You promised!"

Perfection? Bull. She was shrill and stupid and shallow, someone he'd never have slept with regardless of species if he hadn't been drunk and depressed and certain he was on his way to a quick, messy death in the South American jungle. He'd made the mistake of looking into her eyes, the morning after, past the stupid and the shallow to the hope he'd seen too often in his own mirror: Maybe this time he really loves me. Sick at heart and stomach both, he'd left her, and never darkened the door of another vamp brothel since.

Ever since that day a part of him understood why Buffy had never been able to stake Spike. But it wasn't a part of himself he wanted to pay much attention to. "I didn't promise anything," Riley snapped. "You're trying to blackmail me, remember?"

The pout acquired reinforcements in the form of arms crossed defiantly beneath the pneumatic bosom. "Well, I wouldn't have to blackmail you if you'd just be a gentleman and protect me!" Harmony got up, tossing her hair dramatically. "But since you're being such a dick about it, I guess it's time to tell little SaMANtha about our understanding."

"We don't have an understanding! We had a one-night stand, before I was married--"

"It doesn't have to be one night," Harmony cooed, sidling up and running a finger along the line of his jaw. Her other hand drifted downwards. "I can make you feel soooo good. You do like me just a teensy bit, don't you? Even when you're a big ol' grumpy bear? After all, either you've got a stake in your pocket, or--" A disappointed look entered her eyes. "Oh. You do have a stake in your pocket."

"Harmony, I kill demons for a living! Of course I have a stake in my pocket!"

She shrugged, popping her gum. "You never know. I mean, Spike? You'd never think such a little guy would have such an enormous--"

"I really don't want to hear about Spike's--"

"--ego, but he's so full of himself that--oh, wait, sorry, I'm blackmailing you! I forgot!" She sashayed over to the phone. "Do you have to dial 9 on this thing?"

Riley snatched the receiver from her hand. "Damn it, don't you get it? I can't guarantee Buffy will lay off your boyfriend! I don't have any pull with Buffy at all! Go blackmail your other ex. He's the one sleeping with her."

Harmony rolled her eyes. "Duh! THAT wouldn't work. Buffy already KNOWS I slept with Blondie Bear." A Malibu Barbie smile lit her face. "I bet she just writhes every time he accidentally screams my name in the throes of passion."

That Buffy writhed every time Harmony's name came up was actually a good bet. "Have you considered just asking her not to kill you? God knows half the other demons in this town seem to have a pass for some reason or other--"

"Hello?" Harmony thwapped his forehead with a perfectly manicured fingernail. "Are you not listening? Buffy is my NEMESIS!" She began pacing agitatedly back and forth. "I'm not meeting you in sleazy motels and burnt-out buildings for the kink factor, mister! I have refined tastes! I have to be totally vigilant, because the minute I let my guard down the Slayer will be hot on my trail, hounding me mercilessly in her never-ending quest for vengeance! I mean, how else do you explain it?"

"Explain what?"

"The TIMING!" Harmony waved her hands. "She always concentrated on slaying those crypt-trash vampires hanging around in the cemetery before, but the very minute I get back to Sunnydale and meet a nice guy who appreciates me for my finer qualities, the Slayer goes all vendetta-y on poor Mr. Amherst! Coincidence? I don't think so!"

"Of course," Riley muttered. "Why didn't I see that?" He frowned. "Do you smell smoke?"

He pulled the dingy curtains aside and peered through the slit of flyspecked glass above the air conditioner. Across the four lanes of desultory weekend traffic on Lincoln, one of the somewhat less sleazy motels across the street was on fire...or at least, the parking lot was a haze of yellowish smoke, billowing out of the doors and windows of one of the units.

"Omigod!" Harmony wailed, throwing herself at Riley's chest like a salmon swimming upstream, oblivious to her technical advantage in strength. "She's trying to burn me out! Save me!"

Since the smoke was thinning and fading even as they watched, revealing an indistinct trio of figures stumbling around the parking lot, that didn't seem too likely...until a gusty breeze whipped the lingering smudge away, and the figures resolved into Willow, a dark girl he didn't recognize, and Buffy. How the hell had she come to be here, of all places? Any second she might look across the street and recognize his rental car, or worse, him. Buffy might not be hounding Harmony, but he was beginning to feel as if she were hounding him.

"I'm leaving," he said, prying Harmony's fingers from around his neck.

"Good idea," she said breathlessly. "You draw her away so I can escape! Oh, Honeypunkin, you're so brave!"

"Yeah, I'm a hero all right." He could plunge the stake into her back right here, right now, end this farce in a shower of dust. He'd done it dozens of times before, and he could do it again, because she wasn't human, wasn't pitiable--she was a monster who'd killed hundreds without remorse and would kill hundreds more if he didn't--

Riley burst head-down into the sunny midwinter morning, leaving Harmony gnawing her knuckles in the shadow of the door. Self-disgust roiled in his gut as he flung himself into the rental car and gunned the engine. He wheeled out of the potholed motel lot and turned blindly at the first traffic light that presented itself, then again, and again. When he looked up at last, the Neon was nosing down a familiar street, and an equally familiar ivy-girded wall loomed to one side. Restfield Cemetery. He pulled over to the curb and got stiffly out of the car, standing on the leaf-strewn sidewalk and gazing through the rusting, vine-bound bars. Through the gaps, tombstones gleamed white in the winter sun.

The side gate was locked, but it was an easy climb. Riley stood in the middle of the broad rolling lawn, listening to the complacent twitter of starlings. In daylight the cemetery looked completely different, a haven of serene, sunlit marble. Even the grass was still green in places, where the overhanging trees sheltered it from Sunnydale's infrequent frosts. The peace might be illusory, but it was seductive. Riley shoved his hands into his coat pockets and scuffed down the gravel path that wound towards the center of the cemetery.

He had to pull himself, and the mission, together somehow. Harmony was just a stupid, petty distraction, but he couldn't afford stupid petty distractions. Barton and Randall were checking out the leads he'd gotten at the dinner party, but he didn't expect them to find anything--even if Buffy and Spike had been telling the truth about the Doctor having agents in Sunnydale, he couldn't believe that that was the whole story. The Doctor had agents all the way from Seattle to Houston; he must have had one in Sunnydale for years. That wouldn't explain the sudden convenient disappearance of all their targets. No, something else was going on, and Buffy had to know what it was. He kicked a rock. It ricocheted off a mausoleum half sunk in moss and spanged into the gloomy shadows of a live oak.

"Ow!"

Even in Sunnydale, trees didn't complain when you chucked a rock at them. Not often, anyway. Riley dodged behind the nearest tombstone, his hand closing on his taser before moving on to the butt of his Army-issue Beretta. No vampire would be sneaking around in broad daylight, but there were plenty of diurnal hostiles who could be lurking in the shadows.

Silence and the occasional chirp of birdsong reigned over Restfield. One of them had to move first. It was a battle of wills, and Riley won. A dark, broad-shouldered figure in a long trench coat broke from the shadows to the rear of the mausoleum, heading for the fence. Mud smeared the man's knees and shoulders, and a large leather satchel bumped at his side.

Riley whipped out the taser and fired. One of the prongs embedded itself in the man's back, but the other went wide. With a curse Riley exploded from cover in a low diving tackle. He rammed shoulder-first into his quarry's knees, taking them both down, rolled once through the litter of dead leaves and acorns and came up astride the grunting, leaf-spackled heap of his opponent. Riley slammed the stranger one-two in the jaw, and it occurred to him somewhere between the first punch and the second that he might be pounding some innocent groundskeeper into jelly.

The professional forearm-block which stopped the second punch reassured him on that point. Riley contorted to avoid the murderous jab to the heart with the steel-cored stake which followed--the point would tear right through the light Kevlar of his flak jacket if it connected. Underneath the enveloping folds of the trench coat, the stranger was as big as he was, and in just as good shape despite looking ten or fifteen years older. Granite-hard eyes glittered beneath the brim of a battered leather hat until Riley's fist pulped one of them shut. The stake came at him again, and Riley twisted at the last moment--the point burned along the flesh of his forearm and plunged into the man's own satchel, pinning it to the damp ground. The man rolled away and the satchel ripped free and burst open, spilling a gristly tangle of claws and teeth and scales from a dozen different demon species. Tightly-corked glass bottles and Ziploc bags containing squishy lumps of flesh in every shade imaginable rolled every which way across the grass.

With a bitten-off yell of rage the man tore himself free of Riley and lunged after his scattered loot. Riley surged to his feet. His boot came down on the interloper's hand, and a second later the barrel of his Beretta jammed against the man's temple. His quarry froze on his hands and knees, shoulders knotted with fear, and Riley wasn't the kind of guy who went out looking to beat things up to salve his pride, but damn, that felt good.

"I'm betting you're the famous Gib Cain," he said.

"What the hell of it?" the man snarled.

What do you know, Spike had been telling the truth for once. "I like to know who I'm threatening. Adds the personal touch." If anything could salvage this disaster of a mission, it would be getting a solid line on the biggest black market dealer in Southern California. Riley glanced at the cornucopia of demon parts strewn about them and began reeling in the taser prongs. "Now what do we have here? Gathaur scales, a Fedmach'kroth's tongue..."

"Yeah, and so?" Cain sneered.

"Pretty small potatoes for the Doctor, isn't it?" Riley waved at the assortment. "More like the kind of thing some two-bit independent operator might go after. Last year the Doctor cleared a cool fifty million in Hombja'moleev musk alone, didn't he? You'd think a warlock with the power to use the stuff wouldn't need it, but I guess there's pathetic losers in every line of work." He eased off Cain's hand and backed up a step or two, nudging the nearest plastic bag with the toe of his boot. The powder inside shifted with an iridescent shimmer. He'd seen its like before--once he'd even gotten a look at the creature which produced it, chained to a concrete block in a dingy hut, its rainbow moth-wings in tatters from the constant scraping. It had tried to bite through his skull and suck his brains out. "Now this...this is more like it. Triathskai dust, isn't it? And pretty high quality by the color." He picked up the baggie and shook it, avoiding looking too long at the hypnotic oil-slick slither of colors within. "Nasty stuff, but oh, so profitable."

"I'm not breaking any laws, soldier boy," Cain spat. "Out in the real world, word is demons don't exist."

"That's the cool thing about the unit I work for," Riley said pleasantly. "It doesn't exist either. You know a guy named Ethan Rayne?"

A wary frown creased Cain's brow. "Chaos mage, wasn't he? Nobody's heard from him in years."

Riley grinned. "Exactly. But let's face it, Cain, you're small potatoes too. My bosses don't give a damn about you, and neither do I--but they do give a damn about your boss. I'm gonna take you in, and you're gonna have a nice long talk--"

Apprehension silvered Cain's eyes, quickly replaced by cunning. "We can talk now, kid. You know a guy named Spike?"

"We've met."

A tell or two must have undermined his poker face, because Cain relaxed visibly. "He's got that effect on people. Goddamn bloodsucker. Look, I'll play straight with you. Yeah, I've done a few jobs for the Doctor, but I've done jobs for a lot of people. And I've got more witnesses than you can count who can testify I've only been in Sunnydale off and on. You want an agent in place, you don't have to look any farther than that crypt over there." He pointed towards the center of the graveyard. "Where do you think I got this stuff? Look, it's even got their logo on the bags!"

Several of the baggies were indeed stamped with the red axe of the BVI logo--not the pixie dust, but that didn't mean anything. Even Spike wasn't idiot enough to slap his personal trademark on quasi-illegal euphorics--and if he was, Anya would have stopped him. "The Slayer told me about Spike's sideline," Riley said, expressionless. "She assured me that Bloody Vengeance Inc. doesn't trade in anything addictive or dangerous."

"Yeah? You really think your Slayer tells you everything?" Cain asked, getting to his feet. "I've run into her before, you know. She's always been soft on demons, even before she started fucking them." He brushed grass off his hat. "You said it yourself--I'm small potatoes. Let me walk, and I'll show you something I guarantee you'll find interesting."

For a moment Riley hesitated. "Let's see it. Then we'll talk."

Cain smirked. "Come on, then."

Riley expected Cain to lead him back to Spike's crypt, but instead the man took a circuitous route through the tombstones, weaving through hedges and irregular rows of marble and granite monuments until they came to an open grave, or what looked like one. Cain hopped down into the muddy earth at the bottom, reached down and grabbed something that turned out to be the handle of an earth-smeared trap door. He grinned back at Riley. "Hope you're not claustrophobic. I took out the sentry, and in the middle of the day they're all asleep, but we're still gonna to have to be careful."

That explained the mud. The tunnel was barely large enough to crawl through on all fours; if you could see in the dark and didn't have to breathe, it might have been bearable, but even for a vampire it couldn't have been pleasant. Riley tucked his pistol into the front of his belt and crawled after Cain, alert for a possible ambush. The tunnel ended in another trap door which, for all its rustic make, opened on hinges as smooth and noiseless as metallic silk. This door opened into a larger, partially-excavated runway which seemed to parallel a sewer main; it ended in a jumble of shovels and buckets propped against a wheelbarrow. Amber light seeped into the end of the tunnel from the chamber beyond, and Cain held a ghostly finger to his lips and motioned Riley after him.

Riley drew his pistol and advanced, step by careful step. He barely recognized the lower level of Spike's crypt--he'd been down there once or twice, years ago, but then it had been a damp, unfinished hole in the ground, decorated with moldering bones and a few decaying coffins. Now it was better equipped than some dorm rooms he'd stayed in. A handful of guttering candles cast their mellow glow over the chairs and tables, the TV and the bookshelves and the mini-fridge and the dartboard and the curtained-off shower and a couple of X-Box controllers and...Jesus Christ, Buffy could have moved in here instead of Spike moving into the house on Revello.

Just now he was surrounded by the uncanny stillness of sleeping vampires. A new nest must have taken over the crypt after Spike had vacated it. Riley caught his breath in his teeth; if he could have muffled his heartbeat with a hand he would have. But it was too late; from one of the alcoves came the snuffle and snort of someone waking. "Who's there?" a voice said, sharp and suspicious. "Denny, is that--"

"Human!" another voice yelled. A blurred shadow flashed across Riley's vision and the candles flicked out. Darkness fell, full of golden eyes and savage growls. Riley spun, but Cain was gone, vanished back down the tunnel. He cocked, aimed blindly towards the sound of the voice, and squeezed off three shots in rapid succession--he might not hit anything, and a handgun wasn't much use against a vampire even if he did, but the crack of the Beretta in the enclosed space was deafening. A couple of anguished wails followed by blundering crashes bore witness to the effect on sensitive vampire ears. Riley retreated towards the tunnel and fired again, but he'd misjudged in the dark, and his shoulders bumped against the cool, root-laced earth of the crypt wall. One pair of cold callused hands wrenched the gun from his grip while a second pair grabbed for his wrists. A third pair snatched the taser. Riley struck out with fists and feet and elbows, feeling the crunch of flesh and bone as he connected. A chill ring of metal rammed up against his temple, accompanied by the deadly snik of the Beretta cocking, and Riley, like Cain before him, froze.

A match hissed and flared to life with the stink of sulfur, and flame blossomed on half a dozen candles a minute later. Two vampires were holding him down, one on each side, and a third, a tall, balding vampire with eyes as cold as the barrel of the pistol he had leveled at Riley's head, watched the proceedings with interest.

A dishwater blonde in an oversized t-shirt and bunny slippers was peering down the tunnel, calling frantically, "Denny! Denny!" There was a swelling bruise on her cheek and her nose looked like it might be broken; he'd done some damage, at least. She turned to the balding vampire. "David, he's not answering!" She whirled on Riley, fangs bared, tears streaking her freckled cheeks, and jabbed the taser at him menacingly. "You dusted my brother!"

"Nadia, calm down," David cautioned. "You know this one belongs to the Slayer."

"I don't give a damn! He killed Denny, the bastard! I'm going to rip his goddam eyeballs out and play marbles with 'em!"

"Spike said--"

"Spike's not here!"

A small dark vampire woman with a strangely familiar face stalked up and slapped Nadia hard enough to shock her out of game face. "Spike may not be here, but I am, and you can fucking well wait till your Master gets back to kill this maricon! What kind of fucking example are you setting for the new guys?" She waved at the quartet of vampires clustered blinking in the far corner of the room.

"Look, maybe we should go," one of the putative new guys said, nervously fingering the hem of his t-shirt. "We just figured that with that LA big shot trying to move in that maybe Spike wasn't offering such a bad deal after all, but if you guys are having problems, I hear Rack's looking for muscle, and he's always got someone to eat--"

"Sit down and shut up," the dark-haired vamp girl snapped.

"Christ on a crutch, Evie, a week ago you were the new guy!" Nadia snarled. "Who forgot to die and made you boss?"

This wasn't some new nest moving in on Spike's old territory, this was... Minions. Spike had minions. Riley fought back hysterical laughter. It wasn't a laughing matter. He could count at least half a dozen shadowy, golden-eyed figures besides General Woundwort here skulking around the corners of the crypt, plus the four new guys, whatever that signified. Which meant--Oh, God, it was funny, it had to be or he'd start screaming--that Spike was running the biggest vampire gang in Sunnydale. Buffy couldn't know...

"Evie's right, Nadia," David said shortly. "At the very least we can discuss the matter with the Slayer tonight. Mr. Finn, please remember I have a gun aimed at your head, and no compunction about using it. Did you stake Nadia's brother?"

Or maybe Buffy knew just fine. "I never met the guy," Riley ground out through clenched teeth, "but if I had, damn right I would have staked him."

"He's telling the truth," another vampire said, ghosting in from the tunnel. "Denny's scent-trail ends where it intersects the older one left by Cain. Cain's second trail and this guy's are half an hour newer and don't come within twenty feet of Denny's dust."

David's serpentine eyes blinked once. He lowered the Beretta and ejected the remaining clip, tucking the ammunition into his shirt pocket. "Well, then, Mr. Finn, it appears you're only guilty of trespassing and breaking and entering. Elise, Nadia, track Cain as far as you can. We have Spike's permission to kill him, but I think capturing him would be more prudent. He may have information we need. Fernando, get a couple of those bear traps out of storage and plant them in the access tunnel in case he comes back." He waved to the vampires holding Riley. "You're free to go, Mr. Finn. Next time, I suggest you knock."

Five minutes later Riley stumbled out of the crypt's front door to the tune of Evie's hand planted firmly between his shoulder blades, his empty gun in hand. "Get lost, meat-sack," Evie said. As she slammed the door shut behind him, her sullen little face was momentarily framed in the barred grille, and Riley realized in a flash where he'd seen her before, and not just where he'd seen her--where Buffy had seen her. The binder full of target photos.

Spike was harboring Hostile 6... and Buffy Summers had known all along.