Part: 11 - 13
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~Part: 11~ Ground Rules
"I accept," Angelus said.
Willow stared at him. A sick feeling was starting to twist in the place where her stomach had been just before it dropped through the floor. Because it didn't sound like he was joking, and there were very few good ways to 'offer' yourself to a vampire and god, she'd thought that being bitten would be the low point of her day.
Willow opened her mouth to say that whatever he was thinking, that wasn't what she'd meant, but Angelus' smile was a grayed slash in the darkness and Willow closed her mouth again because he wouldn't care what she'd meant. Oh god, she thought again. Her heart was beating hard and fast.
"So quiet?" Angelus said, sounding disappointed. "It's not like you to just give in. I expected you to argue... fight me..."
His hand settled at the base of her neck, fingers spreading across her skin and Willow knew that if she looked down, she'd see that his hand went almost from shoulder to shoulder, he had such large hands. And then she felt something else, a cool touch where there should be fabric and knew that his hand was under her top, knew it logically and wanted to scream.
He was trying to scare her, Willow knew that, just trying to get a reaction out of her and no, oh no, his hand was still moving, nonono, this wasn't supposed to happen this way.
And then she was fighting him, she didn't remember starting to fight him but she was fighting him as hard as she could, squirming under his weight and kicking out with her feet, pushing with her hands, trying desperately to put space between them, as much space as possible, two feet of space would be okay, two miles would be even better, two hundred miles would be barely enough but she couldn't even get two inches, his hands were pinning her arms behind her back and his legs were heavy and painful on top of hers.
And he was laughing at her, Willow could tell this was just as funny as anything to him, which was almost worse than anything else he could do to her and made her wish that she could hurt him, just a little, even if he killed her for it.
>From somewhere inside the electric buzz filling her mind, Willow heard Angelus chuckle deep and low in his throat and suddenly realized that he was enjoying this way too much, that it was, in fact, making him the exact opposite of angry. She froze.
Predatory, Willow thought. Vampires are predators. Anything that struggles is prey. I don't *want* to be prey! I want to be home, safe! With ice cream!
When Willow dared to look up, Angelus was watching her, looking not at all like ice cream. His lips twitched with what might have been humor or rage or lust or hunger, Willow had no idea, although she thought that the fact that he was pulling her closer again was probably some sort of clue.
"Do you know that you mumble?" Angelus said curiously, settling her back against his chest firmly.
Okay, Willow thought, that's not what I expected him to say. But considering the alternatives, this is good. Wait. mumbling?
"I do not!" Willow protested without thinking. Because hey, she thought a second later, why not argue with him? Why would she want the bloodthirsty fiend holding her life in his hands to be in a *good* mood? Idiot.
To her relief, Angelus seemed amused rather than angered by her denial. "Yes, you do," he said, "but most people can't hear it."
"O-kay," Willow said doubtfully.
Do not, she thought.
Angelus looked like he was trying not to laugh, which was unnerving, but then he didn't look like he wanted to laugh at all, and that was even more unnerving.
And then his mouth was on her neck again, so fast and frightening and soft and there was still no pain or blood but just slow sweet kisses pressed against her skin, painful in a different way, and he still wasn't biting her and what kind of prey did he think she was, anyway?
"Your analogy has a few flaws," Angelus murmured against her skin.
My... what? Willow thought. It was hard to think, harder still to hold her body rigid and pretend that his mouth wasn't there, wasn't shocking and wet and like the time she'd tried to take the toaster apart using a fork while it was still plugged in. "A..analogy?" she said dazedly, because she had to respond, had to show that this wasn't affecting her at all.
And then there was something like an earthquake and Willow was suddenly flat on her back, staring directly up into Angelus' eyes.
"You are not, as you put it, my *prey*," Angelus said slowly, and Willow's heart skipped a beat.
I mumble, she thought wildly. And he can hear me! Stop it, me! Wait, am I doing it now?
"Yes," Angelus said, "and you are *mine*. I don't have to chase you, hunt you or catch you." His voice seemed to be on a downward slope, sliding down into growling territory, getting deep and rough now, and he punctuated each word with a slight shake that flung Willow's head back and left her dizzy and blurred.
"On the other hand..." Angelus continued, and the sudden shift from molten anger to pure sensuality made her skin crawl with... relief? Fear? Willow couldn't tell any more. Crawling was her skin's natural condition at this point.
"If I *want* to chase you..." Angelus said, and one of his hands slipped to the small of her back. "If I *choose* to hunt you..." And he leaned his weight into her, slowly forcing her to the carpet. His next words were breathed an inch from her mouth, the cool air tingling against her lips. " I 'll always catch you, Willow. Again, and again and again..."
Willow's thoughts were a tangled mass of panic and hatred and the softness of the carpet against her back and the stifling darkness that surrounded her and the hardness of Angelus' body pressed against her own and the fear that she wasn't going to get out of there alive. A thousand confused things all pressed into a tight little ball in the center of her chest and a frantic waiting for what was going to happen next.
And then it was happening, no more waiting, Angelus' mouth pressed tight to hers, hard and hurting like he didn't care if she could breathe or not, and no more air in her lungs. Willow gasped, suddenly afraid, more afraid of this than of anything, but closing her lips against him didn't work and then there were ridges pressing against her forehead and fangs biting at her lips and the pain of that and the fear when he licked away the blood and hoping that he'll get distracted and just bite her already, please, please, but his mouth was already back on hers and there was no denying it, he was kissing her.
Kissing her again, she should say, and this time he was smart enough to force her lips to open, so strange when that happened, she's not quite sure how it happened, but there it was and Angelus was holding her head tight in an iron grip while his smooth cool tongue was in her mouth now, her mouth, Willow's mouth, and it was getting very difficult to pretend that it wasn't happening. It was so different from Oz, different from Dream Xander too, and knowing it was *Angelus*, evil Angelus, evil murder-torturer-Buffy's boyfriend Angelus, was really freaking out her mind but her body didn't seem to get the concept.
It was something like an itch, Willow thought clinically as her hips started to move on their own, just a little, rocking just a little, and then her hand was in his hair and she wasn't quite sure how it'd got there.
Willow could feel it when Angelus smiled against her mouth, and she was just about to respond by pulling away when he beat her to it, his mouth suddenly gone, and the smile that she'd felt very much in evidence as she looked up at him through half-closed eyes.
He was surprisingly gentle when he tilted her head to the side, a good thing, she thought, because her body felt like it had melted, or maybe evaporated entirely. And then the next thing was the sharp pain in her neck and Angelus' body trembling against hers. She didn't struggle. It was almost a relief, after all. It meant that it was over.
Willow was almost used to it now, the black drowning feeling when the blood was going out and the world was closing in, the pain at first unbearable and then just a dull localized ache. And then should come the unconsciousness, but Angelus was pulling away and Willow was still conscious, though dizzy.
Which was good, Willow supposed, but it would have been so much simpler if she'd been unconscious.
Angelus got to his feet quicker than she could see, no longer a weight on Willow's chest but a tall figure standing over her. And damn it, Willow thought hazily, she still wasn't unconscious, although she almost made it when Angelus reached down and dragged her up so fast that her head seemed to turn inside out. But no, still no fainting, because that was just the way her luck was running tonight.
Willow swayed, couldn't get her feet to work right, and would have fallen if Angelus hadn't been holding her wrists so tightly. He wasn't looking at her though, he was staring past her into the darkness around them and his eyes were yellow and shining. Willow twisted slightly in his grip and looked around nervously, trying to see what had alarmed him.
"Lights," Angelus said, and the darkness burned away into light.
Willow blinked and blinked again and finally had to close her eyes for a few seconds against the brightness. When she opened them again, she could see. And she really, really wished she couldn't.
Because there they were. Standing along the walls, draped over couches, crouched no more than a few feet from where she stood. Vampires.
Her eyes skipped from one to the other as though she could make them disappear and it was even worse than she'd thought, because they were all staring at her, watching *her*, not Angelus, and the one crouched on the floor was so close that she could have reached out and touched him, ruffled his soft brown hair, but she thought that he'd probably bite her hand if she tried.
Wait, Willow thought. She'd lost a lot of blood and she could still taste Angelus' mouth on hers, but wait.
How long had they been there?
Had they been there when Angelus was laying down the rules?
Had they been there when she tried to get away?
Had they been there when he. when she. well, they must have been, right? And so they'd seen everything. Heard the little noises that she hoped she hadn't made. Oh no, no, no, this was humiliation on a whole new level, this was Cordelia times ten times her entire high school career up until the day Buffy sat down beside her.
And it was horrible because they were still watching her, so many pairs of golden eyes watching the blood rush to her face.
Angelus growled low in his throat and said, "She's *mine*, proven and witnessed. Anyone here want to argue it?" His burning eyes sought out each vampire in turn. "Don't be shy."
One by one, the vampires shook their heads. One by one, with palpable regret, they said, "Yours."
When the door slammed behind them, Willow turned to face Angelus. He was leaning against the door back to the Bronze, an expectant look on his face. She took a step towards him and he shook his head, smiling at her.
Willow lowered her head to hide her eyes.
"I'm yours," she said to his feet, and thought about killing him.
~Part: 12~ Ground Rules
Willow lowered her head to hide her eyes from Angelus.
"I'm yours," she said to the floor, and thought about killing him.
Willow was shaking, couldn't seem to help it, and there was a sick shamed feeling in her stomach. She wasn't supposed to have to admit that he had power over her; she knew that. She was supposed to tilt her head up proudly and say something clever and wait for Buffy to come in and save her.
But Buffy wasn't coming, and wouldn't kill Angelus even if she did, and Willow was afraid.
It was humiliating.
But now she was thinking, as she stared at the floor, that maybe this was worse than fear, because saying it out loud made it all seem so much more real, so much more permanent. Like something that could be forever.
Still, she thought, trying to cheer herself up, it could have been worse. There could have been other people here to hear me say that, like there was - memory flash of vampires watching her, in the dark, with Angelus' hands on her and her hands in his hair - yeah, she was going to stop thinking about that right now.
A pair of black shoes entered Willow's field of vision, and then a hand had hold of her chin, the feel of skin on skin an unpleasant shock, and he was forcing her head up, fingers grinding against her jawbone when she tried to pull away. Stubbornly, she lowered her eyelids as he raised her head and kept her eyes on the floor.
And of course, because nothing worked against him, this left her with her face held firmly in her hands and the feel of his eyes on her face somehow so much more frightening because she couldn't see him, her downcast eyes making her feel somehow vulnerable. Submissive, she thought.
Angelus' chuckle broke the muffled silence in the room. "Hardly," he said.
Damn, damn, *damn*, Willow though. The mumbling. She was still doing it. Unless.
"Hardly yours?" Willow said hopefully, darting a quick glance up at him. She got a brief impression of amusement sliding into anger before she looked away. He tightened his grip on her face, fingers digging painfully into her skin.
"It's a little late to be coy," Angelus said, and he sounded so friendly and he was *hurting her*.
Willow opened her mouth to speak and choked on a sudden gasp of pain, a small hurt sound that brought the smile back to Angelus' face.
"You know that you're mine, pretty girl," Angelus continued calmly. "Don't you."
Nod, nod, nod went Willow's head and she kept nodding, because Angelus' hands wouldn't let her stop. She could barely see his face, her world was blurring, and she didn't remember bringing her hands up but they were there, trying uselessly to pull his hands away.
"Mine," Angelus said, and Willow's head nodded emphatically. "And now every important vampire in Sunnydale knows it."
That was a different kind of pain, that memory a sharp twist in Willow's chest, and she tried to stop her head from nodding but couldn't.
Angelus stopped it for her, abruptly back in focus, abruptly closer as he dragged her forward until her chin was almost on his chest. "You *should* be thanking me," he said in a put-upon tone.
You *must* be kidding, Willow thought.
Angelus released her face, one short second of freedom, not enough time to run, before his hand had resettled in her hair, twisting a handful of it to force her face to stay tilted up to his. It was an awkward angle, and Willow was going to have a major crick in her neck in a few minutes, but at least she could talk again. She could talk her way out of this.
"Are you kidding?" she said incredulously, unable to stop herself. "I should thank you? For what?"
Humiliating me, drinking my blood... Oh yeah, she thought. Thanks muchly. There's a reason that Hallmark doesn't make cards for this kind of thing, you know.
Angelus' mouth twitched.
Damn it, Willow thought.
"You know," Angelus said reflectively, "there's a fine line between innocence and stupidity. Which side of the line are *you* on, Willow?"
Willow narrowed her eyes. She didn't like where this was going.
"Let's think about this, shall we?" Angelus said, and his voice was as condescending as Cordelia on her best day. "Where did all those vampires out there come from, do you think?" "I-" Willow said, and stopped.
Angelus' smile was an unpleasant shock. "Good girl," he said softly, "A- for effort. All the vampires that were in *here* were out *there* before I got here. All for you, darling. All wanting to take you, *waiting* to take you. Doesn't that make you feel special?"
Willow wanted to die. They had been out there, watching her? She was trying to remember what she'd been doing. Had they seen her looking at Xander? At Oz? Had they - oh no, had they seen her trying to dance?
And none of that mattered, because they wouldn't have cared about any of that, they would have killed her without even bothering to ask if she hand any kind of spell on her and yes, the laugh would have been on them, but she wouldn't really have been in any position to enjoy it.
Stupid. He was right. She was stupid.
" If I hadn't come to find you, to protect you, Willow, you would have died," Angelus continued remorselessly. His voice gentled, and he added, "Isn't it better to be mine?"
Stupid, Willow thought. How could she - what had she been - stupid, oh, what was wrong with her? She only dimly realized that she was trembling.
She could see what almost had happened, every grisly way she could have died, almost feel the pain at throat and wrists and hear herself begging, and when arms enfolded her she let them pull her close and she buried her face in his shirt.
"It's all right now," Angelus said from somewhere above her, and Willow was holding on to him now, her arms wrapping around his back as she pushed her face hard against his chest, mumbling incoherent angry words into the cloth.
Stupid, she thought savagely. And she couldn't even tell anyone, couldn't ask Buffy for forgiveness, couldn't ask Xander to give her his extra cookie at lunch tomorrow, she was all alone.
"It's all *right*!" Angelus repeated, sounding slightly confused and irritated by her reaction. "They know who you belong to now. They'll leave you alone."
Willow reluctantly pulled her head back and looked up at him. He was the one causing all her problems, she reminded herself. Therefore, he's really not the one to be crying on. Not unless he was wearing a silk shirt, of course, because then it would be water-stained and hah, that would show him. Wait -
"Is that why you did it?" Willow said hesitantly, "You know, all of... that?" She waved her hands in a nebulous gesture meant to symbolize everything that had happened in the room.
Angelus looked down at her, and his mouth twisted. "Yes," he said.
Thank God, Willow thought, and felt like smiling for the first time in hours. Because she could live with the biting, but the rest... yikes.
"But..." Angelus said slowly.
'But'? Willow thought. No but! That was a good answer!
"That isn't to say it won't happen again," Angelus finished smoothly, and Willow suddenly realized that his hands on her back, which had been comforting, had begun a slow stroking motion. Up. Down. Up.
Yipes!
Willow pushed hard against Angelus' chest and managed to lever herself all of two inches away from him, which would have been more encouraging if the smirk on Angelus' face hadn't made it clear that he was letting her to do it.
"But... blood!" Willow said hopefully.
She couldn't believe that she was trying to talk him into biting her. Again. Oh, this was a banner day for Willow's self-esttem.
"Yes," Angelus said, the word low and disturbing. His fingers lingered over the pulsing vein in her neck. "Your blood makes you mine." The cool weight of his fingers was on her face now, leaving a trail of ice where they traced over the bone. "But the rest of you belongs to me too. Which means that..." His smile was pure devilment. "I can do whatever I want with it."
There didn't seem to be anything to be said to that. The only things that Willow could think of to say were either:
Hey! I don't belong to you! And I'm not an it! - Which is pretty much suicide, she thought.
Or:
But... why would you want me? - which sounds like I'm begging for compliments.
So she didn't say anything.
In retrospect, that wasn't the best move either.
She had about a second to regret it, and then Angelus pulled her close and her mind went blank. Angelus' lips were cool, soft, and frighteningly gentle when he brushed them against her eyelids, her cheeks, so gentle that she wanted to cry because it was all a lie and reality was sharp and painful.
But then his mouth was on hers, still gentle, soft and coaxing as his tongue traced the closed frightened line of her lips, and it was so hard to remember that it wasn't real when there was something bright and complicated twisting itself up in her stomach and she opened her mouth under his and felt rather than heard the satisfied hum he made, and forgot it entirely when his hands slid around to her hips and pulled them hard against him.
She was making noises again, small desperate noises that sounded like they must have been coming from someone else, and they blended into the sound of his voice when he spoke softly, encouragingly, against her skin and told her what a good girl she was, how well she was doing, such a good girl, and Willow felt drugged and distant when he silenced himself again on her mouth and she closed her eyes and forgot who she was.
Angelus drew away first and dropped his hands and stepped away. And left Willow standing alone and suddenly bereft.
Willow looked at him with dazed eyes, feeling forgetfulness drop away like a shroud and remembering that this was wrong, all of it, completely wrong, and she took in the unruffled calm of his expression and the faintly amused smile on his face as he watched her struggle back to memory. At that moment, her emotions were uncomplicated: hate.
Hate for him knowing just how to get to her, for making her not fight him, for making her feel things that made her ill to think of now, with him looking at her like that, Angelus, darkness and pain and evil and *calm*, unstirred by an experience that had shattered her, was still shattering her.
One more second of that awful calm watching and she still couldn't speak, and Angelus took her by the arm and pulled her to the door and opened it.
"Tomorrow, Willow. Be home," he said, his fingers dropping away from her arm. "Now go find your friends and let them know that you're fine."
Is that what I am, Willow thought numbly. Fine?
She stepped out and the door closed behind her, melting invisibly back into the wall of the Bronze. Willow turned to walk away and nearly bumped into Buffy.
"Willow!" Buffy said with an uncomplicated smile. "There you are! Where'd you go? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Willow said softly, and wondered when it became so easy to lie.
~Part: 13~ Testing the Limits
Willow's life was becoming blurred, hard to hold on to, a mismatched patchwork quilt of fear and smiling and crying and math classes and blood and...
"Willow?" Buffy said, "Could you pass me the protractor?"
"Sure," Willow said, and smiled as she passed it over.
"Great. Now, could you do the problem for me?"
Blink and Willow smiled again, a little too slow, a pause there for Willow to think 'what would Willow do?' and decide that the Willow-that-used-to-be would have found it funny.
"No," Willow said. "That would defeat the purpose of practice questions."
"But I'm the Chosen One! And also stupid, apparently." Buffy pointed out, looking bitterly down at the paper. "Doesn't that get me special treatment?"
"Which one?"
"The stupid one?" Buffy tried.
"No," Willow said.
"The Chosen One... um, one?"
"No," Willow said, smiling again.
"Fine," Buffy said, settling down in her chair with a sulky expression. "But when I get kicked out of school, and have to get a job at the malls selling shoes to Cordelia, I'm *not* slaying any more school monsters. Not unless they give me class credit for it." Her expression brightened and she sat up straight. "Hey, do you think that - "
"No," Willow said emphatically.
"But-" Buffy started.
"Just... no," Willow said, and this time she really did smile. "Nice try, though."
Buffy made a noise like 'hmph' and bent over her paper.
Maybe I should tell her, Willow thought unexpectedly. Maybe it doesn't have to be this way.
Out of the corner of her eye, Willow could see Buffy scribbling something on her notebook that looked suspiciously like a stick figure version of the demon they'd found that afternoon in the girl's washroom on the second floor.
She looks so young, Willow thought. She is so young. And everything about Angelus hurts her; you can see it in her eyes.
Buffy was now adding a round head being crushed in the demon's jaws, a scowling head with X-ed out eyes and long dark hair.
Heh, Willow thought, momentarily distracted.
Buffy smiled at the drawing, and Willow's heart sank. She's happy, Willow thought. With all that's going on, she's still happy some of the time. That's a fragile thing. I could take that from her. I could be the thing that breaks her.
I can't tell her.
And the day blurred again.
Six hours later, Willow was blinking into the driving rain, flat on her back on the muddy ground with no breath in her lungs and a stick poking into her back.
Buffy extended a hand to her. "You okay?" Buffy asked.
Willow nodded numbly. She took Buffy's hand and let her friend pull her to her feet, trying very hard not to stare.
Buffy was death in a tank top, blood and dirt matting in her wet hair and trickling across her forehead, angry red scratches sharp as tattoos on her arms where the demon had clawed her. The demon itself was a barely identifiable shape lying on the ground behind her, bleeding green and gold that melded with the rain and washed away.
You know, Willow thought dazedly, maybe Buffy isn't all that fragile.
Maybe I could tell her.
Maybe that's just the concussion talking.
"C'mon, Wills," Buffy said cheerfully, taking her arm. "Let's go tell the guys that we came, I slew, and now they get clean up duty."
"Well, I didn't really do anything -" Willow started to say, and then caught herself. Hey, she was being pursued-caught? controlled? something anyway, something not good-by a bloodthirsty demon, and in that situation even she didn't feel like talking herself into clean up duty.
Willow smiled at Buffy, another real smile, a banner day, and said, "You're right. They can do the cleaning up."
Buffy grinned back at her. "I knew you'd see the light. And while they do the icky, wanna come over to my house? We can watch movies, do our nails, sharpen my weapons, talk, you know - girl stuff."
Talking could be good, Willow thought. Unless it led to *talking*, in which case all of my friends will die and I'll suffer horribly. Which would be less good.
The sun was going down.
"Sorry," Willow said, meaning it, "I have to get home. It's getting dark."
"Now, why can't everyone in Sunnydale feel that way? It would make my job *so* much easier." Buffy said. "Okay, you head home. I'll just tell the guys where the body is, and then I'll come over."
No, Willow thought wildly.
"N-" Willow said wildly.
"And I'd better hurry!" Buffy cut in as the headlights of a passing car washed over them, briefly illuminating the corpse thinly veiled by the sheets of rain. "The police are pretty oblivious, but I don't want to push their stupidity too far! See you soon!"
"No, but, but..." Willow called after Buffy's quickly disappearing back. But then Buffy was gone, and Willow was alone with the corpse, and the corpse was the least of her problems.
I hate my life, she thought.
She turned and started to walk towards her house, walking slowly despite the rain running down her neck and into her shoes. Her mind turned over scenario after scenario of how the evening could go. Most of them ended with her dead. Some ended with Buffy dead.
One, hopelessly optimistic, ended with Angelus taking up a new hobby, maybe crossword puzzles, and forgetting about Willow entirely. Willow liked that one. She could buy him a 250,000 piece puzzle with a picture of a black cat at midnight, and by the time he'd finished that the rest of them would have died of natural causes.
Oh god, Angelus wasn't going to like this.
Willow frowned. "No," she said aloud, her voice lost in the thunder that crashed overhead. "I'm *not* going to think like that. Angelus' mood is not my top priority." She walked faster, feeling a sudden need to move, to escape; to escape from her thoughts, from the rain, and from the part of her that had accepted it all as inevitable.
I hate my life, she thought again.
This is not my life.
I'm not going to let it be.
*****
Buffy sprinted away through the rain, leaving Willow behind. She could hear her saying "But... but..."
Picking up her pace, she was out of earshot in a matter of seconds. Don't hear you, Willow, she thought triumphantly. Too bad. You're having company tonight.
Willow had been being way too antisocial every since... Buffy's mind stopped there, shying away from the memory of Willow lying on the floor, all pale skin and dark circles. Better to think of Willow smiling as Buffy forced her to eat more pizza, blushing when Buffy teased her about Oz. Yes. That would make things better.
She turned a corner and caught sight of the rest of the gang crouched surreptitiously behind a Dumpster. It would have been a more effective hiding place if the axe hadn't been poking out on top. It was a very large axe.
Buffy waved at them and ran over, "It's all over, folks," she said cheerfully. "We came, we found, we slayed."
"You killed it?" Giles said, frowning.
"Yep!" Buffy said. "Smile, will you? It's a happy thing!"
"Yes, of course, but..." Giles' voice trailed off, and he looked down at the axe in his hands.
Xander clapped him on the shoulder. "There, there," he said, "I'm sure you' ll get to use your Axe of Greyskull on some other demon."
"Maybe Skeletor will show," Oz added.
"It's the Axe of Grizkill!" Giles snapped, "And it's specially made for this type of demon. As it happens, they're very rare."
"And getting more so," Buffy put in brightly.
"Yes," Giles said, still looking put out, "How did you, er, dispatch it without the axe?"
Buffy shrugged. "I beat it to death with a hockey stick."
"Ouch," Xander said, wincing, "It's the penalty box for you, missy,"
"Missy?" Cordelia said witheringly.
"As fun as this is, guys," Buffy said, "Willow's waiting for me. You guys get cleanup."
"Where *is* Willow?" Cordelia said, her voice strident. "If *I* have to do this..."
"She helped me," Buffy said firmly. "She went home, and now I'm going over there." She turned to repeat her successful unequivocal-statement-and-run procedure, but paused. "Oh yeah. The body is in the park."
She disappeared into the gathering darkness, leaving behind some very wet and bitter friends.
Hoisting the axe, Giles sighed. "Right then. Off we go."
Once out of sight, Buffy slowed to a walk. She couldn't really get much wetter, and she didn't want to draw any attention.
As she drew closer to Willow's house, Buffy could feel that there was a vampire nearby. It was a strange feeling - like a cross between pins and needles and stepping out of a hot bath into cold air. Not pleasant.
She slowed down and looked around casually. With malicious optimism she hoped that it was the same vampire that had attacked Willow. Now what had Willow said he looked like? Oh yeah - short, stocky and balding...
Her sharp eyes searched the area, looking for anyone lurking suspiciously. Sucking blood from someone would be also be a tip off. She saw no one.
This is not to say that there was no one there.
>From the shadows under the balcony, Angelus watched Buffy looking for him.
I do hope my new toy hasn't done anything foolish, he thought. Something like telling the Slayer about the *special* relationship we have. His lips parted in a wolfish grin. I'd have to punish her.
Looking out from her window, Willow saw Buffy come to a stop in the middle of the road.
Oh no, she thought, *please* just have lost something, please leave, or come in, but don't, don't, *please* don't -
As she watched, Buffy surreptitiously slid a stake from her shoulder bag, palming it.
No, Willow thought, and she was on the balcony now, rain pouring down her face, her hands tight and painful on the railing, please.
It felt like a dream, like she knew what was going to happen, so much so that she didn't even flinch when a dark figure separated from the darkness underneath her balcony and moved towards Buffy. Willow didn't need to see his face.
Willow's hands gripped the wood and she was surprised that it didn't splinter, and Angelus was almost behind Buffy now. A dream still, a nightmare now, moving towards a certain disaster.
I should scream, Willow thought numbly, warn her, but... If he knows, he'll... If I don't, she'll die! I don't want her to die. I don't want to die.
No decision at all, really.
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