The Violence Of Existing

By Maren

Chapter One

Hurts. So bright, so loud, so hard. No, please. No.

Those were the words that made up the woman’s first coherent thoughts after her soul was shoved back into her body, after the magic had repaired and reanimated her rotting flesh, after she frantically dug her way out of the box that held her trapped under several feet of earth. Those were the first words that entered her mind after she tried to make out the shifting, hazy forms that swam in her not-yet-working vision, after she struggled to make sense of the riotous sounds that were pounding into her newly awakened ears, after she started trying to breathe through her mouth so that she wouldn’t have to breathe in the acrid smell of the burning town. Those were the first words that invaded her fuzzy consciousness after she mindlessly, almost effortlessly, fought the demons who had cornered her in the alley.

Those were the first words that shoved their way into the woman’s head, pounding and unrelenting, as she crouched against the brick wall, four strangely familiar faces peering at her as though she were some circus attraction.

With a cry that sounded like that of a wounded animal, the woman pulled herself up off of the ground and pushed past the people who were crowding her, suffocating her.

NopleaseNo. Hurts. Have to run. Have to hide.

Those were the second set of words that were spoken by the broken, raw voice in her head. An instant later she was throwing one leg over the seat of a dead demon’s motorcycle and kicking it into gear. The sound of the roaring engine and the sensations of the rumbling bike under her were nearly painful in their intensity, but she preferred the discomfort they offered to the bracing, harsh reality staring at her from the eyes of those people who kept calling her “Buffy”.

---

Three days later, Buffy found herself shivering in the shadows in an alley across the street from her father’s apartment in L.A. She was cold, tired, and ravenously hungry, but she couldn’t make herself approach the glass double-doors that would lead into the warm, safe interior of the building.

Her memories had started coming back two days ago. She had fled the loud, burning town on the stolen motorcycle without knowing who she was, where she was (other than hell), or where she was going. She had gotten about an hour out of town before stopping at the side of the road and pulling into a small wooded area. It was quieter there, no people, and she wanted to rest but she couldn’t. No matter how tightly she closed her eyes, she couldn’t stop the memories from flooding in and they were harsh and painful and full of blood and death.

Those memories haunted her now as she stood in shoes with broken heels, her burial dress torn and bloody. As much as she was in desperate need of food and sleep, she couldn’t take those final steps. She couldn’t go to her father in his safe, normal upscale apartment in L.A. because she wasn’t safe—she wasn’t normal. She couldn’t seek shelter with the people who loved her—not her father, not Willow, not Xander, not Dawn, not Giles. She couldn’t allow them to see her for what she finally realized she was. She was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she was a freak who wasn’t welcome in Heaven or in Hell.

Buffy slowly turned away from the beckoning warmth of her father’s apartment building and retreated further into the dark, dank alley. She realized now that she was a creature of night, something that belonged in the darkness, in the dankness with the other dangerous beings. She realized why the Watcher’s Council must have wanted all the slayers to live their lives alone and carefully controlled. Beings like her were hazardous. Buffy had refused to accept that she couldn’t live a normal life, have normal friends, do normal things like go to school and have human boyfriends. Now she knew for sure that she wasn’t normal and could never be normal. The funny thing was that she also knew she wasn’t a truly evil being either—otherwise, when she was expelled from Heaven she would have gone to a Hell dimension. She had died, after all. Fair and square. But here she was back on earth . . .

It might as well be hell

. . . and so she had to assume that neither place wanted her soul. She didn’t dare think about the implications of that, that her soul would be bound to earth for eternity, never knowing the oblivion of death, never knowing peace . . .

Damn, I can’t think about this now

So she didn’t. She shut off those thoughts, shut off the few emotions that weren’t already dead inside her. Buffy didn’t cry for the loss of her life, her death, her dreams and her peace. She just didn’t have it inside her. There were no tears, only pain and coldness. Darkness. The Slayer.

Slayer

When the quartet of three-mouthed demons surrounded her, it came as no surprise. This was her world and she had been a fool to deny it for so long. Perhaps it was this realization or perhaps it was the fact that she didn’t fear death any longer, but when she spun into action, the fight seemed almost effortless to her. She felt . . . detached. Her mind was blank and free of the fear of losing something important to her for the first time ever. She was a machine, an instrument of destruction and death, and she embraced it.

With her mind free of distraction, her body was free to fight at its full potential for the first time in her life (or death). Her fighting body was a thing of treacherous, fatal beauty—what one could see of it anyway. She was a kicking, punching blur of magnificent force. Weaponless, she destroyed the four deadly demons who had mistaken her for a meal in less than 2 minutes, her only injury the reopening of the wounds on her knuckles that had come from clawing herself out of her grave.

As she gazed down at her bleeding knuckles, the first spark of feeling other than pain flickered inside before quickly fading back out. Buffy knew it was the adrenaline of the fight that sparked the fleetingly pleasant feeling, and it made sense to her. She was made to be a killer. Killing should feel good to her.

The crunch of a boot on a stray rock abruptly pulled her attention away from her knuckles and she searched the darkness for the source of the noise. Two, then three seconds passed by before she caught a glimpse of the masked sniper dressed completely in black stalking towards her, and then the blackness of the sniper’s clothing turned into the blackness of nothingness as the tranquilizer shot into her bloodstream.

Chapter Two

It was dark, but the dark wasn’t scary—it was welcoming. It allowed her a certain anonymity, provided her with a small measure of comfort that was otherwise missing in her life (Life? Is that what this was?)

She swam through the darkness, not needing to breathe, not needing to see. She allowed herself to feel the tactile stimulation of the thick darkness washing across her skin and it was a balm for her weary soul.

Suddenly, a bright, unrelenting light appeared in front of her in the distance. She tried to turn, tried to avoid it, but the light was a beacon and her soul was drawn to it as though it were home. It took all of her strength, all of her determination, to stop at the threshold between light and dark, balancing just behind the curtain of darkness as though she were looking through a thin veil of clear, clean water to the side of light.

The woman in front of her was familiar. Blonde. Hazel-green eyes. Tanned skin and short flowery skirt.

“Buffy,” she said to the woman basking in the light.

“Slayer,” Buffy replied, her voice tinged with a sadness and longing that the Slayer couldn’t quite understand.

The Slayer waited in silence. She hadn’t wanted to come.

“It’s your turn now,” Buffy said, her eyes boring into the Slayer’s.

“I know,” the Slayer answered.

Buffy reached out one of her manicured hands to touch the barrier that separated her light from the dark that still encased the Slayer. She let the darkness flow over her hand for a moment before snatching it back to her side, quickly as though the darkness had burned.

“I had to touch the darkness to survive,” Buffy said, mournfully.

“I am the darkness,” said the Slayer.

“Someday, you will have to be the one to reach out,” Buffy informed her.

“Touch the light? I wouldn’t know how,” the Slayer said dismissively.

“If you forget me, you’ll never find the light, you’ll never find the balance,” Buffy warned.

And then the barrier was receding, Buffy was fading into the distance, and the calming darkness surrounded her once again. No more light.

It was a relief.

---

The slayer slowly opened her eyes to see a light only a little less brilliant, a little less blinding than that in her dream. She was lying on her back and she quickly discovered that she was being held there with restraints around her wrists, waist, and ankles. She slowly turned her head to the side, partly to see what she could of her surroundings, and partly to avoid the glaring overhead lights.

She was in a stark white room. It reminded her of the Initiative containment cells, but from what she could see there wasn’t a glass wall. She shifted her head in the opposite direction and saw an imposing steel door. There was some kind of security device mounted to the wall next to it that looked like a keypad set under an expanse of blue screen. Once she had seen as much of the room as her restraints would allow, she tilted her chin toward her chest. The thin white material covering her body looked a lot like hospital scrubs, and she sighed in relief.

Who do I thank for not being naked?

She was just beginning to test the strength of her restraints when she heard a whoosh of air coming from the direction of the door. She turned her head just in time to see a man in an obviously expensive dark grey suit enter, the heavy door sliding shut behind him. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late thirties, with dark hair that was just beginning to turn prematurely gray. The gray hadn’t yet found its way to his dark goatee, though, and his eyes were a beautiful, piercing blue.

“Hello. I’m glad to see you’ve finally awakened. We weren’t sure how much tranquilizer it would take to safely transport you and I’m afraid we may have overestimated. Please forgive us,” the man began, his voice soothing, but tinged with a certain hardness.

She wanted to ask how long she had been out, but she decided to stay quiet for the moment. She simply stared impassively into his handsome face, waiting for him to continue.

It was several moments before he spoke again. First he approached the table she was strapped to and hit a button that tilted her prone body forward so that she was facing him in a quasi-standing position.

“We’ve run your prints through the database and we know your name is Buffy Anne Summers, most recently of Sunnydale, California,”

“You’re wrong,” she spoke for the first time, a small, cold smile touching her pink lips. “Buffy is gone, died about 3 months ago actually. But I’m here, and if you think these leather restraints and that fancy steel door with a security code are going to keep me from leaving, you’re deluded.”

“Oh, but Buffy, we don’t want to keep you from leaving,” the man answered with his own calculating smile.

The slayer ripped her right arm free from the restraint and had her hand clasped around his throat in a heartbeat. “I’d suggest you stop calling me Buffy and start telling me what you want from me, then,” she gritted out between her teeth.

If the slayer hadn’t seen the tiny speck of fear that flickered in the man’s eye for a millisecond before disappearing, she would have thought him immune to the threat of her hand painfully squeezing his windpipe.

“We want to offer you a job,” rasped the man. He was rewarded when she loosened her grip and dropped her hand, giving him a calculating look. He stepped back out of her reach and rubbed his throat before continuing, “and what would you like to be called, if not by your name?”

“You can call me Slayer.”

“Ah, the Vampire Slayer. Of course—whatever you want. My name is Harris, by the way. I’ve been assigned to be your contact with the organization and I’ve been authorized to offer you a position that will make good use of your unique skills.”

Slayer narrowed her eyes and studied his face for signs of deception. When she couldn’t detect any, she shrugged her shoulders and moved her free hand to the restraint at her other wrist.

“I’ll probably be more open to your offer if we can have this little meeting without me being tied to a cold table—dontcha think?” she asked, signaling to him that he should start unfastening her ankles if he wanted her cooperation.

“Yes, of course,” he replied, moving to help her out of the restraints. A minute later, Slayer and Harris stood face-to-face on the cold white floor. At least it was cold to her—they hadn’t provided her with any shoes or socks.

Hey, you whiner. Naked feet better than naked ass. Get over it.

Harris watched Slayer as she moved to lean one shoulder casually against the wall, her arms crossed loosely over her chest, her slight weight resting on one leg as the other crossed casually over its mate and rested on the toes of her bare foot. He was impressed with her causal aloofness, with her apparent lack of panic at having been captured and removed to an unknown location. She was either very brave or very stupid, and from what he had seen on the infrared cameras that had recorded the action in the alley where they had found her, he would bet on the former.

“You’re probably wondering where you are,” he began. “I’m not able to give you specific details until you accept our offer, but I can tell you that you are still in Los Angeles and we are. . .”

“A secret government agency that’s aware of the existence of demons,” the slayer interrupted with a roll of her eyes. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

Harris raised an eyebrow in surprise and chuckled. “All right. We’re not associated with The Initiative, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’re more like a demon-world-acknowledging version of the CIA. In fact, our mission is to help protect and ensure the stability of the United States government in this dimension while developing relationships with the governing bodies of other dimensions.”

A very unladylike snort came out of Slayer’s nose. “So you want me to be some kind of hell-dimension ambassador?” she asked in amused disbelief.

Her amusement was quickly obliterated at the hard look that stole over Harris’s face.

“No. Your appointment would fall more in the ‘protection’ arena. Why don’t I take you on a little tour of the facility? What we’re offering you might become more clear in the context of our assets,” he suggested as he moved toward the door.

Slayer shrugged in indifference, but uncrossed her arms and pushed off of the wall she had been leaning on.

As long as I’m not wanted in Heaven, I might as well see what Hell has to offer.

Harris pressed his hand over the blue screen that Slayer had noticed as she was lying prone on the cold table. Apparently it was some handprint scanning device. He pressed in a code and the door slid open, revealing a much less harshly lit hallway that was carpeted in standard office Berber. Standing back, Harris swept his arm out in front of him.

“After you,” he said.

---

Two hours later, the blonde slayer was trying to process all of the information she had gathered on their tour of the sprawling underground buildings. In addition to rooms devoted to the latest technological advances. . .

I hope they don’t expect me to know what to do with a computer

. . . there were rooms of ancient, modern, and space-age weapons, facilities for training on those methods, and additional space devoted to other aspects of physical training. Weight rooms, swimming pools, a full-size indoor track, three dojos, and a room devoted to boxing that included a full-size ring were all part of the training complex.

She had watched as some very buff men and a few muscular women had sparred with a master ju jitsu instructor in one training room. The slayer could not help but appreciate the things that she could learn from the instructors in this place, not to mention the other students. She had been surprised to see two pairs of boxing gloves bouncing around in the ring, seemingly suspended in mid-air. When she had looked at Harris quizzically, the man had smiled at her before answering her unvocal zed question.

“We have a cadre of invisible people who are employed in the agency,” he said.

“Cool. I think,” she had replied.

Now she found herself seated in a large chair in Harris’s office. She was fairly certain he was planning to offer her a job slaying for the agency. She soon found out she wasn’t far off the mark.

Harris slipped on a pair of stylish glasses and pulled a contract out of a folder labeled “Summers, B.A.” that was sitting on his desk. He handed it to her from across the desk.

“Miss Summ. . . pardon me, I mean Slayer. We are prepared to offer you a position as an agency asset in the Department of Problem Elimination. DPE is a highly sensitive and secretive department even within our own agency—they take care of the things that ‘go bump in the night’ that even other things that ‘go bump in the night’ are afraid of. They also are charged with dealing with protecting this country, the world even, from those in this dimension and in others who would threaten it magically or demonically. As an asset, you would be asked to fulfill duties very similar to those you have already employed in the capacity of Vampire Slayer on the Hellmouth. However, your assignments might sometimes include targets with whom you are less familiar dealing with.”

“Like. . .” Slayer began, instructing him to fill in the blanks with the single word.

“Humans. Sometimes we are forced to deal with humans who are involved in magic, demon-worship, or just plain greed. With the security of our country at risk, we often cannot or will not differentiate between a non-human threat and a human threat,” Harris explained, his sharp blue eyes boring into the slayer so that he could read her reaction to this news.

She was a little surprised. One thing that Giles had taught her early was that humans didn’t fall in the slayer’s domain of justice-delivery. She herself had condemned Faith for taking the life of a corrupted man. Slayer’s eyes momentarily darkened in something like consternation, but the soothing caress of deadened emotion beat back any distress that she might have felt in her former life.

“So you’re saying you want me to be an assassin,” she said, her words more of a statement than a question.

“We prefer the term “asset”, but yes, you would essentially be an assassin,” Harris affirmed.

Slayer considered this for a moment. “Why, though? Why should I agree to this and why do you want me? I had this responsibility long before you came along and you saw yourself tonight that I’ll kill demons if they cross my path—I don’t need a formal assignment to do it.”

Harris smiled at her again, but this time it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Why do we want you? That’s easy. Your performance tonight was outstanding. Three separate highly-trained DPE assets have tried to take out that particular foursome of Ro’schar demons, and two of them were killed in the process. The third is the one who tranq’ed you and brought you in. You killed those demons in less than 5 minutes with no weapon but your own body. Having you join the agency as an asset would be unprecedented and we would be positioned to move in several problem areas that have been put on hold while we attempt to cover the biggest threats.”

“What are we offering you?” he continued. “You have worked for 6 years as the slayer with no compensation. We are willing to make up for that lost earning potential as well as pay you handsomely for your current service. You will be provided with the finest tactical training in this dimension. In short, you will have the opportunity to hone your skills to their optimum level with full agency support.”

The slayer considered the offer in silence, her eyes boring into those of the man seated across the desk.

“Sounds great. So what’s the catch?” she asked, breaking the silence, but not her stare. If he was lying to her, or hiding something, she would know.

“The catch is that once you’re trained and in the field, you work at your own risk. This is a dangerous occupation—physically and politically. The agency has to be able to maintain deniability,” he answered smoothly.

“Ah-hah! So don’t come crying to you over my spilled blood, right?”

“Something like that,” Harris answered. “If you sign the contract, you will spend 6 months living and training in the facility. At the end of the 6 months, you will be returned to civilization, so to speak. You will be given the access codes to an off-shore bank account where we will send you untraceable payments for your services. The physical location of this facility will never be divulged to you. You will not have access to this facility after 6 months. The only person in the agency you will communicate with is me, and you will be expected to carry out my orders without question.”

The terms of this arrangement weren’t looking very appealing to Slayer. Her instincts told her that it was wrong to sell her services to the government, wrong to even consider slaying humans no matter their crime, and definitely wrong to put her trust in this mysterious man who would be her only connection to her employers.

Then again, what good was right for a freak like her? Doing right hadn’t gotten her a permanent place in Heaven, and she certainly didn’t think anything that had been described to her was so wrong that she’d be banished immediately to a hell dimension. As Buffy, the slayer was trained to see the world in black and white, good and bad, right and wrong. As Slayer, the woman seriously considered the concept of moral grayness for the first time. The more she considered it, the more she liked it.

“O.k. I’ll do it, but I have some conditions of my own. While I’m here I want privacy and I don’t want to stay in a cold, bright white room. I need darkness. And once I’m out I get to say no to a job once in a while without having to explain why,” she told Harris.

“I can give you privacy, I can give you the darkest, most morbid accommodations we have, but I can’t give you veto power. That’s a no-go,” he countered.

Slayer considered the terms for a moment, then pulled the contract closer to her on the desk. She frowned at the name that was typed on the signature line, but signed it ‘Buffy A. Summers’ anyway. She was a DPE asset.

It’ll give me something to do with my sentence here on earth, I guess


Chapter Three

~~~Two Years Later~~~

The woman stood at the bar, her eyes on the mirror that spanned the wall in front of her, the reflection of dozens of colorful bottles of liquor neatly lined up in front of it giving the impression that the bar could never possibly run out of stock. She watched as the masses of new-age L.A. debutantes, with their daddy’s money and their mommy’s bottle-blonde hair, gyrated to the hip-hop noise that was coming out of the huge black speakers in pounding waves of nearly tangible sound. Each one was staging a show for the boys who cast appraising, hungry eyes at them, and the woman knew what they wanted. Some were here in a misguided attempt to meet the man of their dreams-- the father of their future children-- their provider when daddy died from screwing his mistress. She felt nothing but contempt for them. Others were here to move until they were sweating and breathing hard, here to rub up against willing, firm bodies until they felt the twinge and flood of arousal, here to tease themselves and those around them with inaccessible sexuality. For these, the woman felt something not unlike sympathy. She remembered a time when she had been one of them.

Silly little short schoolgirl skirts. Think that five times fast.

She looked down at the shot glass in front of her and considered the amber liquid inside. It would be so easy to teach them all a lesson about what these boys who were masquerading as men really wanted. They didn’t want wives, and they didn’t want teases. They wanted a woman who would fuck and then leave without wanting anything else, and she knew that from experience. They wanted a woman like her, and it would take her less than 60-seconds to prove it.

Her thoughts were momentarily distracted when she felt a large, strong hand caress her black leather clad ass. She tensed slightly in reaction—men who touched her without her permission always ended up regretting it. A quick glance back up to the mirror assuaged her irritation, and she relaxed again. This man had privileges that others didn’t.

“Contemplating body shots again, Diana?” he asked, his English accent tinged with the droll sarcasm that he had honed to near perfection, one eyebrow raised in mock censure.

The woman rolled her eyes at the mirror and then slammed back the tequila before turning sideways to face him.

“Why Wes, you know you’re the last guy to have had that pleasure,” she answered, leaning against the bar and running one hand seductively across the part of her hip that her low-waisted pants left partially exposed before dragging the tip of her finger over her stomach and up her chest until it rested between the cleavage visible out of the top of the black lace shirt. She gestured to the empty shot glass with her head while her finger traced a light, almost absent-minded path between her breasts. “I can order another one if you want to do it again.”

His blue-gray eyes sparkled with interest, but he ignored her offer. “How many have you had already?” he asked.

She dropped her hand from her chest and shrugged, her boredom supremely evident even in the barely noticeable movement. “Four, maybe five.”

He casually leaned toward her until his lips were brushing the sensitive skin of her ear. “Have you eliminated the target yet?” he asked, his voice a soft, seductive whisper.

Stepping into him and turning so that her back faced his front, she maneuvered them until he had his back against the bar and they were both fully facing the interior of the club. Wesley wrapped one arm around her waist and leaned down to lightly kiss the delicate skin of her neck. She turned her head towards him and he obligingly dipped his head so she could whisper in his ear.

“See those twins sitting in that guy’s lap in the corner?” When Wes nodded, she continued, “Yeah, well, so does the target. He’s up in the balcony and he’s had his eyes on them all night. I’m guessing when they leave, so will he—I think he’s planning on a double-mint dinner. Once he’s in the open I’ll take him out.”

“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

She ran one of her deceptively small hands lightly over the strong arm he had wrapped around her waist and wiggled against him until she could feel his hardness pressing into the small of her back. At the sound of his sharp intake of breath, she allowed herself a small smile.

“This will be an easy target. I want you nice and healthy for later, so why don’t you handle the getaway?” she said.

It sounded like a suggestion, but Wesley knew it wasn’t. When the Slayer laid out a plan, it wasn’t open for negotiation. He’d learned that the hard way a long time ago when he’d defied her order to leave her alone with a target. When he’d shown up, ready to help, she’d taken one look at him, shook her head impatiently, and knocked him out cold with a hard right hook to the temple. When he woke up the target was long dead and she had icily informed him that if he ever pulled a stunt like that again he’d have a freshly opened neck wound. He didn’t believe she’d actually do it, at least not mostly, but he toed the line with her nonetheless. His acquiescence didn’t prevent him from feeling supremely irritated at being left out of the action, however.

At that moment the man from across the room stood and, with one twin on each arm, made his way toward the front door.

Slayer stood up straight, her body tensing in anticipation. “Bring the car to the alley across the street. Give me 10.” Then she pulled away from his embrace and subtlety followed the target out the back door of the club.

The alley that ran behind the club was dark, with fetid air and sticky pavement, just like every other alley in L.A. that Slayer had become intimately familiar with over the past year and a half. Oddly enough, despite their repulsive qualities, she felt at home in the alleys. It was where demons, vampires, and sometimes, evil humans came to die at the hands of the Slayer. It was where Death stalked and then annihilated her prey.

Slayer had come to think of herself as Death. Oh, not in an egoistic, Grim Reaper kind of way, but it was her job. More than that, it was her destiny. Her gift was death after all. Buffy had stupidly thought that it was her own death that would be a gift to the world, but Slayer knew that it was the death that she could dole out to others that was the real offering to mankind. What did it really matter that she did it on the orders of a government agency, or that she got paid extremely well for it? It was still her gift and she was a generous benefactor.

Skills to pay the bills, sayeth the Beastie Boys.

She stood quietly in the alley, giving her eyes a second to adjust in the dark. She could see the target slinking down the wall towards the front of the club. It had shed the glamour that made it appear human and shifted back to its natural demon form. Slayer could make out the large, muscular trunks that made up its legs as well as its broad, razored back. She followed in quick pursuit, her movements fluid and silent. It was startled when she tapped it on its scaly shoulder, and it spun toward her with a loud roar of fury at being interrupted in its dinner hunt. It stopped short at the sight of the petite blonde woman in black leather and lace standing in a loose fighting stance before it.

“Slayer,” he growled, as he flexed his back like a hissing cat, the razors spreading into a deadly arc.

She smiled grimly. “Is there some flyer with my picture on it that gets handed out at Demons ‘R Us? Cause I think I would have remembered meeting a sharp-dressed guy like you,” she said.

He simply smiled back at her, and she couldn’t help but notice that his teeth matched the razors arching out of his back. Damn. He hadn’t looked too bad in the dossier she’d been given, but obviously they’d left out a few details. Of course any other asset would have taken him out with a gun from a distance, but that wasn’t the way the Slayer worked. Usually she wanted-- no. . . . needed-- the sweat and pain and adrenaline of hand-to-hand combat. There were only two things that made her feel alive and killing was one of them. She had only used a gun once, on a human target. That time she hadn’t wanted to touch her prey—had only wanted to complete her assignment as quickly as possible.

Slayer advanced on her prey and let her supernatural senses take over. She wasn’t afraid, was never afraid—it would seem she couldn’t stay dead anyway. Tuning out the faint noise that was emanating from the club and the sound of laughing drunk humans stumbling over themselves just ahead on the lighted street, Slayer pivoted on one foot and struck the target in the face with the steel re-enforced heel of her boot. The roundhouse kick was seamless, flowing, and nearly too fast for the naked eye to detect and the demon staggered back into the wall, the razors on his back making a blunt screeching noise as they connected with the brick of the club’s outer wall. Before it could move forward in counter-attack, she began to hit it with a series of right and left jabs, using its dense face as a punching bag. With a roar of rage, the demon opened its mouth full of razor teeth and snapped at her hand. Slayer was just able to redirect her blow to hit its chest instead of its snapping face, but the change in motion provided just enough weakness in her attack for the target to retaliate. It’s large, meaty fist hit her squarely in the chest, and she could feel her breastbone crack. She landed heavily on the pavement, but had flipped herself back onto her feet before the demon had time to take advantage of her position.

As the fight continued, she began to hum inside. It was times like these that she . . . felt. The crunch of fist on bone, the spray of blood, the pungent smell of demon and human exertion combined with the endorphin rush of the pain and the adrenaline rush of the fight and she reveled in it. It seemed that she had repressed this . . . euphoria? . . . for most of her time as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, as Slayer, she didn’t reject it any more. It was what it meant to be living—for her anyway-- and she embraced it with a fervor that she had felt for nothing else since being thrown out of Heaven.

In less than 5 minutes the target was lying dead at her feet, its thick neck sliced nearly all the way through its dense musculature. Slayer, breathing heavily from the fight, bent over and pushed up the leg of her leather pants so that she could re-sheath the dagger she’d used to kill the target. She watched as her bright red blood flowed freely onto the pavement under her before looking at the gaping slice on her forearm with surprise. She hadn’t even felt it happen.

She felt it now.

Hurrying toward the alley where she knew Wes was waiting, she stepped out into the brightly illuminated street in front of the club. She kept her wounded arm pressed against her side and ignored the catcalls coming from the crowd of people still waiting to be admitted. Her strong strides slowed as Wesley pulled up beside her in her silver McLaren SLR, and opening the passenger door, she slid into the soft black leather interior.

“Give me your shirt,” she demanded as he sped away.

He raised on eyebrow at her in questioning disbelief. “You likely wouldn’t have been cut had you accepted my offer of help, and now you want to ruin my shirt?”

She simply glared at him and stuck out one blood-covered hand. “I’ll buy you a new one. Shirt. Off. This is a serious violation of the ‘no bleeding in my car’ rule.”

Wesley maneuvered the car into a nearly empty parking lot and put it in park. Stretching one hand over his shoulder, he grabbed the back of the neck and pulled the black long-sleeved shirt over his head in one swift motion. Slayer couldn’t help but appreciate the view of his exposed chest. Over the last year as her sparring and training partner, his physique had . . . improved. A lot.

She grabbed the proffered shirt and wrapped it around her shredded arm, tying it tightly over the wound with the sleeves. Sitting back in the seat, she stared out the window as Wes put the car back in gear and sped off toward her loft. Anyone looking at her might assume that she was deep in thought, but they’d be wrong.

Wes settled into driving and waited for her to come out of her post-killing trance. For the past year they had been fighting together nightly, mostly doing routine sweeps of vamp and demon hot-spots in the city. Less often, he had accompanied her on her agency assignments. He had quickly noticed that after taking out the target she was quiet and withdrawn. For some reason, those killings affected her in a way that normal slaying did not, but it wasn’t a topic that she cared to discuss, so he pretended not to notice. Both of them were very good at pretending not to notice things that the other didn’t want to talk about. She pretended that she hadn’t noticed he had kept a woman locked in his closet for a while several months ago, or that he got a haunted look in his eyes every time they were out early enough to see a father laughing and playing with his son. He, in turn, pretended not to notice that she got just a little jumpy when she was in enclosed spaces or that despite her refusal to talk about anything Sunnydale related, she sent a generous check to her sister each month—anonymously of course.

As they neared her loft, Slayer blinked several times in rapid succession and looked at the illuminated clock on the dash. The agency would be eagerly awaiting news on her most recent assignment.

Time to call Harris—the prick.

Picking up the cell phone that was cradled in its car port, she quickly dialed the number that Harris had given her after her agency graduation, just before he’d had her tranqued up and dumped in a random abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. She’d woken up with a cell phone, a headache, and nothing else. Luckily he hadn’t lied about the off-shore bank account and if she’d still been the girl she had once been, if she’d still been Buffy, she would have squealed in excitement when she called to check the balance. Now, the fact that she had more money to her name than she could ever hope to use did little more than give her a vague sense of security. She bought what she wanted, when she wanted it, but the possessions gave her little joy.

Joy? I can’t even remember what that feels like.

No, Slayer didn’t feel joy anymore, or any really extreme positive emotions outside of those she felt in the middle of a fight. The trade-off was that she also didn’t really feel the more negative emotions either. She wasn’t ever sad, she wasn’t depressed, she didn’t get anxious or worried—she just existed.

The phone rang three times before Harris answered. “Yes?”

“The target’s toast. No comps,” Slayer answered. She smiled a tiny smile when she heard his sigh of annoyance. She liked to irritate Harris by refusing to follow DPE communication guidelines.

“I assume you meant to say that there were no complications?” he asked.

“Bingo,” she replied.

“I need your code name for verification purposes,” he persisted, ignoring her continued attempts to get under his skin.

This time it was Slayer who was irritated. She hated this code name shit—she was The Slayer and that should be enough.

“Artemis,” she gritted out, and then snapped the phone closed without waiting for him to answer.

---

Slayer winced as Wesley finished stitching up the cut on her arm. After unwrapping her arm and assessing the damage, they could see that the demon had sliced it almost completely to the bone. Even still, it would be completely healed in a matter of days.

Wes looked up when he felt her wince and gave her a slow, sexy smile. He nudged her knees apart with his body so that he was standing between her legs as she sat on the stainless steel surface of her dining table. Extending one hand up to her neck, he lightly trailed his fingers across the skin until they were touching the nape. The little downy hairs there were standing up from the contact, and he reveled in the feel of her soft skin on one side of his hand and her silky blonde hair on the other. He began tracing the pattern of black ink that he knew stained the skin under his finger. A small Celtic cross—protection for a warrior.

“Diana? Experiencing pain? I thought you liked the feel of the needle piercing your skin,” he murmured. His exploring hand dipped down to her waist and he caressed her exposed stomach until he reached her navel and the metal bar that ran through it. Tweaking it gently, he leaned in until his lips were nearly touching hers, his eyes staring languidly into her hazel green depths. “In fact, if memory serves, you like pain . . . very . . . much.” He punctuated the last two words with increasing pressure on her piercing, twisting the metal bar until it pulled her skin tight. Her eyes darkened with a tinge of lust, and Wesley quickly dropped to his knees in front of her, let go of the metal, and laved the reddened skin of her navel with his tongue, his hands wrapped around her leather-clad hips. He was rewarded with the sound of her sharp intake of breath, her hands wrapping in his hair to pull him closer. He used his teeth to pull out on the piercing and then continued the soothing ministrations with his lips and tongue.

She felt the stirrings of arousal as he teased her with his mouth, and she surrendered to the sensations. Fighting made her feel like she might actually be alive . . . fucking made her believe it, if only for a few precious moments.

Slayer felt one of his hands move to undo her pants and she leaned back and lifted her hips to help him slide them down and off. They made a black puddle on the concrete floor, a pile of leather with a tiny scrap of shiny satin nestled inside. She gasped in shock when the cold steel met the warm skin of her backside, but it quickly turned to one of pleasure when Wesley’s mouth returned to her skin, trailing hot kisses down her stomach toward her exposed center. He teased the tight expanse of skin that spanned the distance between her belly button and her curls with nips, but he was careful to avoid the other inked design that adorned the alabaster skin of her pelvis.

Wes never touched that one—even if she hadn’t forbidden it, he had no desire. He felt himself hardening at the smell of her arousal, and then he was completely erect as she impatiently grabbed a handful of his hair and roughly pushed his face into her sex. Obeying her unspoken demand, he nuzzled into her center and, finding her clit with his lips, he suckled it hard into his mouth and flicked it with the tip of his tongue. She moaned and arched her hips until she was pressed even harder against him. Taking advantage of her raised position, he slipped her legs over his shoulders and slid his hands under her so that he could grip the delectable curve of her ass. He liked to feel her muscles ripple in response to his ministrations.

Slayer shuddered when he pushed his tongue into her wet depths, and then cried out softly when he moved one hand from underneath her to caress the nub at her center. Then he was switching positions so that one finger, then two, were inside her and his tongue was back on her clit. Normally, she would need much more pressure, much more carefully applied pain before she could come on Wesley’s mouth and fingers, but the adrenaline of the fight was still fresh in her blood and the pain in her arm and her already mending breastbone had her body primed. When he used his teeth to bite down gently on her clit, the combination was enough and she threw back her head and gritted her teeth as her lower body convulsed in orgasm.

He felt her inner muscles fluttering around his fingers, and was slightly surprised, but all of his thoughts fled as he looked up to see her head thrown back, her still-covered breasts arched into the air, her long hair brushing over the stainless surface of the table. In moments he was on his feet, his straining cock free of the confines of his own pants, and then he was gripping her hips and pushing himself into her tight, wet depths. His breath whistled through his teeth as he grit them, struggling to maintain control at the feel of her incredible heat and the clutching pull of her inner muscles. He stayed completely still until she stopped pulsing around him and opened her eyes.

“Shirt. Off.” It was his turn to command.

Her lips turned up in a lazy smile, and she pulled her shirt over her head and threw it to the side. She felt the additional surge of blood to his cock as it leapt inside her and she leaned forward until her bra-clad breasts were brushing against his naked chest. She wrapped her legs around his waist, seating him more firmly within herself and began to lick the outline of his clavicle as her small hands played over the smooth expanse of his back. She trailed her lips up until she reached his neck and dragging her tongue over his scar, she dug her nails into the muscles of his back and tightened her inner muscles around him.

Wesley groaned in pain and pleasure and, placing a hand on her fractured breastbone, he pushed her hard, back against the table. She bit her lip and gasped, but let him, using her elbows to support her upper body as she laid spread before him. Finally, he began to move inside her, one hand cruelly gripping her hip, the other moving from one breast to the other. The fabric of her bra was sheer and he could see her dark aureoles and the nipples that were puckered and pressing hard against the fabric. He cupped each breast in turn, rolled each nipple between his fingers, and lightly pinched them in time with his inward thrusts. For each pinch he was rewarded with a tightening of the muscles that surrounded him. Being inside her, with her slayer strength, was unlike being inside any other woman. He wasn’t some untried boy, hadn’t been for some time, especially not since . . . well, not for a long while. But each time he had to struggle for control while he brought her to pleasure.

Slayer’s breath came out in quick pants as she rocked herself against Wes, pulling at his hips with her strong thighs, demanding that he go harder . . . faster. She arched her back, pressing her breasts into his hand. She could feel the muscles in her body tighten in anticipation of her coming orgasm, and she wavered for moment on the edge of pleasure and detached interest in the workings of her body. When his hand left her breasts to find her belly button and twist at her piercing once again, all thoughts left her mind and when his rough thumb found her clit and pressed hard into it as he pounded his cock into her wet heat, she felt the orgasm rip through her and she surrendered to the pleasure.

He felt her convulse around him and groaned in relief that he wouldn’t have to hold back anymore. Two more hard thrusts, and then he was calling out her name as he exploded inside her. “Diana,” he moaned, and held her tightly to him as he came, the pleasure undeniably intense.

Somewhere deep inside, Slayer twinged at the name, but she no longer let him see her annoyance. He always cried out the name that he insisted on calling her when he was in the throes of his orgasm. She, in turn, never made a sound when she came. There were other things that were always the same—he always carefully avoided her lips, her scar, and the tattoo that marked her pelvis with his mouth, and seconds after they were finished the feelings of emptiness and detachment returned.

Still, she was glad to have Wes in her life, as her partner . . . of sorts. It was better with him than it had been with the others and she was able to forget and feel for a few precious minutes. The ones that had come before Wes had either been too afraid to hurt her to be able to deliver the right amount of stimulation or they had been too into trying to humiliate her before she made it painfully clear to them that she wasn’t into that. Wes, on the other hand, wasn’t fooled by the delicate façade of her petite body, and he wasn’t interested in her humiliation. With him she could feel almost human again.

When he fucks me, I know that I’m real.

Wes felt her unwrap her legs, and he pulled himself out of her. He watched, his breath still irregular, his heart still pounding, as she pulled herself up and slid off the table. Halfway across the room, she slipped off her bra and left it carelessly on the floor as she made her way to the bathroom that was situated near the middle of the large loft-space that she called home. It divided the space nearly in half. The side with the toilet and sinks faced the kitchen and dining area and was enclosed with solid walls, but the large free-standing shower and the tub were encased on one side with clear glass blocks. She had once told him that the first thing she’d done when she moved in was to have those walls torn out and replaced with glass. She hadn’t had to tell him that it was because she felt the walls closing in on her every time she took a shower. Wesley heard her turn on the faucets, and he knew that if he walked over to the opposite side of the loft, the side that held her bed and living area, that he would be able to see the outline of her naked body under the cascading water. It was tempting, but he knew that she expected for him to be gone when she reemerged, and he had business to attend to anyway. He pulled himself together and, grabbing his bloodied and ruined shirt, quietly left, locking the deadbolt on the steal door behind him with his key.


Chapter Four

When Slayer padded out of the bathroom wrapped in a white towel, he was gone. Wesley never stayed, hadn’t spent the night once since he had tracked her down a year earlier.

~~~~~~1 year earlier~~~~~

She had been sitting in a dark corner of one of her regular after-slayage goth clubs, doing a line of coke and trying to lose herself in the pounding music when he had slipped into the booth beside her.

“I’m so glad you’re hanging up your stalker hat. It was getting harder and harder to pretend that I didn’t see you,” she said.

Then she had looked at him, up close, for the first time in over 3 years. What she saw surprised her. This man was not the prissy, ineffectual Watcher who had tried to make her toe the Council’s line. In fact, he didn’t even stick out too much in this scene, with his all black clothing, his tousled hair, and his three day growth. She raised her eyebrows in appreciation and nodded toward the line that was still on the table.

“Want?” she offered.

“No thank you. I seem to recall a time in the not overly distant past when you weren’t so eager to have your body polluted with chemicals, but I suppose death might change things,” he’d answered. His voice was deceptively smooth and calm, and she had made an internal note to be ready for whatever had made him finally approach her.

She had laughed, and it sounded more than a little hollow. “Don’t worry Wes, I haven’t been promoted to head crack-whore yet.”

He had been skeptical at first, but soon he found out that even though she drank and did the occasional line, she never lost control. She wasn’t a burn-out and she wasn’t a drunk. It was almost as though she weren’t capable of excess anymore.

“So are you going to clue me in on why you’ve been following me around, or am I going to have to beat it out of you? If you’re here on behalf of your boss, you can get up and walk right on out” she had said. Her voice was chipper and sweat, belying the words that she spoke.

If he thinks I’m going to see . . . well, I won’t. I can’t.

It was his turn to bark out a bitter laugh. “I don’t have a boss, but that’s a tale for another day—perhaps I’ll share it when you tell me how a dead slayer is walking, talking, and breathing,” he had replied.

Slayer waited for him to continue, staring at him mutely with something close to disinterest in her eyes.

“You killed a . . . friend . . . of mine. Several weeks ago. A woman, tall, brown hair, evil to the core. Ring any bells?”

The haunted look that briefly flashed through her eyes was all the answer he needed.

“I had no idea it was you, Buffy. . .” he started to continue, before her sharp retort interrupted him.

“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice low and laced with warning of imminent danger to his person.

He gave her a quizzical look. “Fine then. If you don’t wish to be called by your name, what do you prefer?”

“Slayer.”

He stared at her for several long moments. “As I was saying,” he finally continued, “at first I didn’t realize it was you. The night you killed Lilah, I saw you leave her building on my way up. I knew you looked familiar, but of course I never presumed that it could be you, as I knew you were dead of course. When I found her. . .” his voice had trailed off for a moment. When it resumed, it was silky smooth and threatening in its calm, cool delivery. “When I found her lying there in a pool of her own blood, I began . . . interviewing . . . my sources. Even though I was quite . . . persuasive, you were a difficult woman to find.”

“Silly Wes. You never would have found me if I didn’t want to be found,” she drawled, tilting her head flirtatiously to one side and giving him a seductive half-smile. Only her eyes betrayed the hard calculating look of a warrior engaged in battle.

His eyes had roamed appraisingly over her body in response, had darkened with a hint of lust as he lingered on the swell of her breasts over the black bustier, had raked slowly down to the exposed flesh of her stomach before briefly settling on the firm thighs that were encased in red leather. When he raised his eyes to meet hers again, she was still smiling at him. This was not the girl he had known in Sunnydale. No, this was a woman, and she gave a little laugh as she tossed back her head, her long mane of dirty-blonde hair falling in sexy, tousled layers onto her shoulders and back, the tips in front just brushing the luminescent swell of her breasts.

“So, Wes, what is it that you want?” she questioned.

It was then that he had moved towards her, his eyes burning into hers, and she had been only slightly surprised to feel the cool feel of the tip of a blade pressed firmly against the skin of her abdomen.

“What I want is the answer to a single question. Precisely when did you begin murdering humans?” he had bitten out, the hand holding the knife steady, his face a hard inscrutable mask.

Slayer had reacted to the threat by running to meet it. She’d pressed herself slowly toward him so that the point of the knife punctured the skin of her belly, pressed forward until she could feel the blood welling up around the blade and run in a trickle down her skin. Her expression never changed—there was no acknowledgement of the imminent threat, or the pain. She stopped moving when the tip was buried just inside her and her lips were mere inches from his.

“Your fuck buddy was my first,” she purred. She had watched his eyes flicker in anger and before he had the chance to plunge the knife he was brandishing into the depths of her gut, she had one strong hand wrapped around his scarred throat, applying unrelenting pressure. The slight relaxation of his hand on the knife told her that he knew she could crush his windpipe in an instant. They had stayed that way, frozen in an impasse, for several long moments. It was Slayer who finally broke the silence.

“I’m thinking that maybe the question you should have asked is why.” She had dropped her voice in a faux whisper. “Technically I’m not allowed to tell you, but I’ve never really cared too much about technicalities. Show me a rule, I’ll break it—it’s like a motto.”

He had given her a calculating look before pulling back the blade. She had dropped her hand from his neck and they sat back in the booth, guarded and distrustful. The next hour had been spent with Slayer telling him about her assignment to eliminate a female lawyer who had made a deal to open a dimensional portal for a demon warlord. Lilah’s file had been thick, but the last deal was the one that signed her death warrant. Her ambition, her greed, and her willingness to do anything that might give her more power—including damning their world to a long, drawn-out war with highly trained demons intent upon conquering this dimension—had all combined to make her Slayer’s first, and thus far, only human target. The Agency had wanted her dead, and Slayer had fulfilled her assignment. She didn’t tell him how she had bent over and thrown up as soon as she had reached the relative safety of the alley where she had left her car parked.

Wes had listened quietly, occasionally breaking in to ask a question, but mostly just trying to digest the information. He had known that Lilah worked for the bad guys but he hadn’t ever fully considered the extent of her personal culpability. Still, her death had affected him. His anger at Slayer had dissipated as she talked, but his grief over Lilah did not. They parted when the club closed for the night, both still alive, neither feeling the need to eliminate the other any longer.

The next night Wesley wordlessly joined her on patrol. She’d let him. After, they had gone to his apartment to talk. Slayer told him about her banishment from Heaven. He had shared his own fall from grace with her in cold, detached tones. Only his eyes gave his true feelings away. For a moment, before she regained control of herself, she was certain her own eyes must have betrayed her own surprising surge of emotion at hearing that Angel had had a son with Darla. Slayer felt as though she had been sucker punched in the gut at the news, and it had taken her a moment to push it back. She struggled to regain her usual sense of emotional neutrality, and when it hadn’t come right away, she’d settled on turning the anguish into anger. She had verbally attacked him for his betrayal of Angel. He had responded with his own healthy dose of anger at her over killing Lilah. In the end, their verbal assaults turned to a physical assault, and then they had been naked and writhing together on the floor amid the ruins of broken pottery that hadn’t weathered the fight.

In the end, Wes refused to continue calling her Slayer. He had tried so hard to divorce himself from his history with the Watcher’s Council and he couldn’t remind himself of their personal history every time he had to call out her name. He insisted that if she didn’t want to be called Buffy, she pick a different human name. She had simply glared and refused. It had been two weeks into their renewed acquaintance when he had overheard her part of an assignment call from Harris, his eyes lighting up with sardonic amusement when she had begrudgingly given her code name for verification. When she hung up the phone, he had spoken.

“Artemis, Greek Goddess of the Hunt,” he had murmured, thoughtfully. “Quite appropriate. I think I know what I’ll call you then—Diana, her Roman goddess counterpart.” When she gave him a warning glare, he had simply smiled. After several days of his persistence, she reluctantly gave in. As long as he didn’t call her Buffy. . .

So now he called out “Diana” when he came inside her, and she called out nothing.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care for him—she did. They respected each other and they trusted each other. They felt connected—the outcasts, the unwanted, and the broken. They did not feel love. They weren’t even technically exclusive, although neither had ever taken another lover.

No, she said nothing because the one time she had moaned out a name during sex with Wesley it hadn’t been his and neither of them had wanted to be reminded of the one whose name it was. He, because of his betrayal of the one whose name was spoken. She, because that name belonged to Buffy, not Slayer.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Slayer pulled herself from her thoughts and finished drying off her body. Throwing on a pair of yoga pants and a tank, she looked longingly at her big comfy bed with its fluffy white down comforter and soothingly cool cotton sheets, before turning toward the padded bench that sat in front of one floor to ceiling window. From that vantage point, she had a relatively unobstructed view of the city skyline. Sometimes, when she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she sat there for hours and stared out at the city that had taken in her and made her one of its own after Heaven had dumped her back to earth.

Tonight was going to be one of those nights. She pulled her knees up and rested her head on them as she stared out into the night sky.

Lights pretty. Smog bad.


Chapter Five

~~~Two Weeks Later~~~

The incessant ringing of the cell phone sitting on the night stand next to her ear pulled Slayer out of her restless slumber. She cracked one eye open to see that the clock read 9:00 a.m., groaned, and pulled a pillow over her head. When the phone continued to ring after several minutes, she threw the pillow off and, sitting up, grabbed the phone.

Fuck! Goddamn Harris—I’m going to kill that little prick.

“What?” she snapped into the phone.

“Good morning,” Harris chirped back, overlooking the fact that she had ignored the ringing for a full 5 minutes. He generally hated it when any of his subordinates wasted his time by making him wait, but hers was a special case. Plus, he’d known when he’d called this early that she wouldn’t be happy—which is precisely why he did it.

“I just got to sleep 2 hours ago after 3 days of no shut-eye. You do realize that people go crazy when they don’t get enough sleep, right? Let me assure you that you are at the top of my “to kill” list when I go off the deep-end,” she threatened.

“You have an assignment,” he said crisply, ignoring her outburst. “Code name?”

“Fuck you and your code name,” she bit back, refusing to give him her ridiculous alias.

Her reply was met with a temporary silence, and she smiled when she heard Harris’ harsh breathing on the other end. She was rarely able to piss him off like this. When he spoke, there was a hard edge to his voice. “Fine. You’ll have to get the details from your pick-up then. Your deadline is two weeks from today.”

Slayer flipped the phone shut without saying anything else and threw it hard against the concrete wall, watching dispassionately as the shattered pieces ricocheted across the floor.

________________________________________


Slayer moved through the dark streets stealthily, keeping to the shadows as much as she could. She was going into this assignment nearly blind—she knew that her target was a vampire and she had an address, but Harris hadn’t bothered to give her any more information than that. Slayer knew it was his way of punishing her for her insolence, his way of making her job a little bit more difficult, his way of making her work a little harder. Frankly, she welcomed the challenge, and it wasn’t like she could kill the wrong vamp by mistake—they were all marked for death by Slayer.

As she neared the address from the file, Slayer looked around for the best place to hide and begin her surveillance. She chose a spot in the shadow of a doorway directly across the street from the entrance to the building where the target lived. It was an impressive structure, but a strange choice for a vampire. The old hotel didn’t appear to be completely abandoned, as evidenced by the light emanating from the lobby and there were way too many windows that faced in every direction to be safe for a vampire. In Slayer’s experience, vampires usually nested in old abandoned buildings with a minimum of sun exposure.

Her attention was drawn away from the building by the approach of a man and a woman. They were walking with their arms entangled, he looking down at her with a beautiful smile, she looking up at him with wide eyes and a giggle. Slayer watched with interest as they turned into the entrance to the hotel. It was obvious from their behavior that they were a couple and that they lived there. What wasn’t completely obvious was whether either were her target. They didn’t exactly act like vampires, but Slayer didn’t know too many humans who willingly lived with their predators. Unfortunately, she couldn’t sense whether they were human or demon, particularly not from this distance.

It figures I got the nightmares but not the cool spidey senses out of this deal.

Leaning back against the door frame, she settled in to wait. It was early in the night and if they were demons, they would be back out for a hunt at some point. Slayer sighed and rubbed one hand gently over her face, massaging her temples. She hadn’t been sleeping well for a while, even for an insomniac. Most of the time she hadn’t been able to fall asleep at all, but when she did, the nightmares brought her out of it. Worry wrinkled her brow as she thought about those dreams. She knew that they had been terrifying and she felt like they may have been prophetic, but she could never remember them when she woke up. It was as though her inability to feel strong emotions was tied to her consciousness, as though her ability to act as the slayer most efficiently was tied to something that she couldn’t experience any longer. The nightmares woke her up, heart racing and sweat dripping from her body, but when she tried to remember, the terror faded away and the serenity returned without the memories of that which woke her.

Now, standing here in this shadowed doorway, Slayer felt as though the lack of sleep must be catching up with her. She felt . . . off. Her muscles were tight with tension and her nerve endings were humming as though she were high. She felt almost . . . anxious.

Yep, lack of sleep makes me of the crazy.

Slayer dropped her hand and shook her head in frustration. Now was not the time for ruminating about sleep, or nightmares, or feelings that she shouldn’t be having. She forced her mind to go blank and her body to go still as she had been trained.

Several hours later, she saw the shadows over the entry to the hotel shift, and she heard the sound of voices floating out over the night air, reaching her ears in sharp staccato bursts of banter and laughter. She winced—those were not sounds that were familiar to her unless they were surrounded with irony or bitterness.

The man from before emerged first from the foliage that surrounded the entry and hid it from her eyes, and he looked around warily before stepping fully out onto the sidewalk. Slayer recognized the fighter in him at that moment, and she studied him more carefully than before. He was tall and well-built, his shoulders broad under his long-sleeved t-shirt, his skin a beautiful chocolate hue. If he was the target, he would put up a good fight, and Slayer smiled in anticipation.

Then the woman walked out, her head turned to look back over her shoulder, laughing. She was tiny, almost frail-looking, and Slayer dismissed her as a threat. No, the real threat with her would be the other one, the man who put a possessive hand around her waist and kissed the top of her head.

“I don’t think he’s coming, Charles,” the woman said, looking up at the man who held her, and then back into the shadows of the entrance.

“Oh yeah he is,” the man replied, before yelling toward the entrance. “Believe me man, nobody wants to hear you butcher Manilow, but you’ve been acting weird all night and Lorne might be able to give us the 411.”

Slayer couldn’t hear the muttered response, but the sound of the voice made her body tense even more. Her stomach clenched and she watched as the source of the voice materialized into the light provided by the street lamps.

Time seemed to slow down to a syrupy trickle as she watched him step out onto the sidewalk, his long black duster fanning out behind him. The nerve endings that had been tingling all night went into overdrive and she had to fight to keep from doubling over from the almost cramping sensation in her stomach.

When he stopped in mid-step and spun until he was facing her hiding spot, a look of confused recognition playing over his face, it took her a second to realize that a low, wounded moan was coming unbidden from deep within her and she froze, cutting off the sound and willing herself not to move a muscle.

He took a step into the street as the man and woman looked at him in confusion.

“Buffy?” he questioned, his eyes searching the shadows for the woman hidden inside.

Anguished panic rose up inside her and she felt like she might lose what little dinner she had eaten on the sidewalk in front of her.

Then he started moving quickly across the street, calling out the name that wasn’t hers.

“Buffy!”

For the first time in over 2 years, Slayer turned and ran, a single word pounding through her head with each stride.

No no no no no no no no no no no. . .

---

Wesley rapped sharply on the door, and when she didn’t answer, pulled out his key and let himself into her loft. He hadn’t seen her in two days—he’d been away, chasing yet another lead on his years-long quest to find a way into Quar-Toth. He knew, intellectually, that it was too late to save Angel’s son, but he couldn’t stop searching for information anyway. In his life, he’d seen a few miracles and there was a part of him that hoped they’d be graced with another one. He didn’t share this hope with anyone—it was private and fragile and fleeting. When he disappeared for a few days at a time, Diana never asked questions. It was one of the things he appreciated about their relationship.

He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a drink. This most recent trip had been worthless, as always. The lead had led to yet another dead-end and Wesley was getting tired of beating demons within an inch of their lives for information that never led to the elusive Hell dimension. He downed the drink quickly and as he moved to set the empty highball glass on the table, he noticed the assignment envelope.

Reaching over, he placed his fingertips on the envelope and slid it toward him. This must be where she is, then, he thought idly as he opened the large envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside. A frown started with a wrinkle in his brow and quickly spread across his face as he pulled the sheet forward. When he read the address, he froze, caught in a moment of sheer panic and an almost blinding anger.

Buffy wouldn’t kill Angel, he thought, and he let the feeling of relief wash over him. It took him a few seconds to form his next thought, and when he did, he dropped the paper and rushed toward the door. But Slayer might. . .

He was running down the stairs, not wanting to waste a single second on waiting for the lift, when he literally ran into her. As their bodies collided, he reached out his hand and roughly grabbed her upper arm to steady her. She was breathing heavily and her long hair was tangled around her in a wind-whipped mess, as though she had been running for hours.

“Did you do it?” he asked desperately, his eyes searching her face for any sign of the truth but only seeing a strange, vacant, slightly panicked look on her face. It terrified him. He had never, in the time since he had become reacquainted with her, known her to look so . . . affected . . . so . . . out of control.

At the sound of her harsh, humorless laugh, he felt his own control snap. Every dim, barren hope that he could gain Angel’s forgiveness, his trust, was dashed in the shrill sound emanating from her throat and the wild look in her eyes. All of his fury, all of his impotent aspirations of absolution, rose to the surface and he snarled as ferociously as a man could and tightened his grip on her arm.

“What did you do?” he clipped out, and it wasn’t a question as much as an accusation. Turning swiftly, he pulled her behind him as he made his way back up the steps to the privacy of her loft. Wesley’s rage didn’t allow for him to consider that she wasn’t fighting him, that she was allowing him to drag her behind him as though she weren’t the most powerful creature he had ever encountered.

Slayer barely felt Wes’s fingers biting into her upper arm as he led her through her door. Her body felt almost completely numb, as though the nerve endings had shut down to give her mind the energy it needed to feel. And feel she did. The unfamiliar emotions were hitting her, wave after wave of panic and gut-wrenching anguish and grief and . . . . love?

Nonononononononono.

The single word continued to run through her mind as it had from the moment she’d heard him call out that name. Now Wesley had her by the arm and she couldn’t think and her senses were jumbled and she was feeling and it was wrong. She had to stop this, she had to divert her body’s resources away from her mind, back to her nerve endings.

For the first time in two years, Slayer was going to fight and she was going to fuck and she was going to do both so that she could stop feeling.

The sound of Wesley’s voice pulled her out of her inner turmoil and she looked at him to see his eyes narrowed in something close to frenzied hate, his mouth pulled in a grim line when he wasn’t speaking.

“What kind of monster have you become, that you would do such a thing?” he hissed, grabbing her other upper arm and shaking her limp, numb body until her teeth chattered.

She forced a smile onto her lips and knocked his hands off her with one swift movement.

“Yeah, like stealing his kid was the act of a saint,” she returned, the only hint of her state of mind the slight hitch in her breath.

Wesley visibly flinched at her words, and before he considered what he was doing, he curled his hand into a fist and then it was connecting with her jaw.

Slayer saw his fist flying at her face, had plenty of time with her preternatural reflexes to avoid it, but she let it come, welcomed it as it connected, nearly laughed in triumph when it sent the pain shooting through her face into her neck as her head snapped back.

He paused, breathing heavily, and staring down at his fist while he fought for control. He hadn’t lashed out at her in anger since the night they fought over Lilah and although his technique had improved, he couldn’t hope to last 2 minutes with her and he knew it. But he didn’t really care.

When she hit him back, Wes could tell she was pulling her punch, as evidenced by the fact that his body only flew back enough to land on the coffee table and not all the way into the far wall. He felt pain radiating from where her fist had connected with his chest, and from where his back was lacerated by the broken pieces of the table that lay shattered beneath him. And then she was on top of him, ripping his shirt open, her mouth biting and sucking on his neck and chest, tongue tasting and teasing his nipples.

Wes wanted to hate her, wanted to push her away and leave and never see her murdering self again, but when it came down to it, this is what they were about—what they had always been about and he couldn’t stop himself from wanting her now. Pain and pleasure, hate and affection—they were feelings that were braided together for them, inseparable. So instead of pushing her away, he groaned and pulled her shirt over her head before cruelly crushing one of her sinfully perfect breasts in the same hand that had been clenched in a fist just moments before.

---

Angel stood completely still and concentrated on finding her smell again. He didn’t know if it was because he was finding it difficult to clear his mind to track her, or if it was because she was purposely trying to cover her trail, but he kept losing her. He wanted to roar in frustration and fear . . . frustration that he couldn’t keep her scent, that time was ticking by each time he had to stop and search . . . fear that he wouldn’t find her, wouldn’t be able to verify with his eyes, and his nose, and his touch that she was alive.

He’d felt her presence in every cell of his dead body before he’d seen her standing there in the shadows, but it had taken that sighting for him to recognize what his soul had been trying to tell him all night. It was impossible that she was alive . . . she had died and been buried for well over 2 years now and he had dealt and learned to exist in a world without her. But he had found out long ago that the impossible was always possible and that the dead didn’t always stay dead. Still, he hadn’t been sure, hadn’t trusted his senses until he called out her name and she had turned and run.

That’s when he had seen her briefly in the light and he knew for certain it was her. If he lived another thousand years he would never forget the exact shape of her body or the texture of her hair, even from a distance. Her smell was a little different, but still the same—she didn’t use the same scented soaps and shampoos that she used to, but underneath the new, austere scents of her body products her signature, personal scent was the same. He knew it was her, and he knew that he had to find her before she faded into the night and was lost to him once again.

Angel forced himself to clear his mind and tap into the hunter inside him. He allowed the demon to come closer to the surface, let it sniff the air for any trace of its obsession, and his eyes glowed golden as he finally caught her scent. He moved swiftly now, surely, and this time he didn’t lose her scent. It led him to an old warehouse, and as he stepped inside, he realized it had been converted to living space. Angel ignored the elevator as he tracked her up the stairs, pausing as he caught traces of another scent that was familiar. Pushing it away, he concentrated on her, and soon he was in the shadows outside her door—a door that was cracked open, letting a sliver of light splash across the stairwell, letting the sounds from inside float out into the space in which he stood.

He raised his hand to knock. It dropped, just as quickly and as if by its own volition, when he heard the noises that were coming from inside and realized who the other scent belonged to.

---

Wesley crouched on his knees in the middle of the bed, looked at the tableau in front of him, and panted in angry want. She rested her weight on her elbows and knees, her hands shackled to the iron rungs of her bed. Her head was thrown back and she looked at him over her shoulder, a self-satisfied smile playing on her lips, her eyes a dark green and tinged with some sort of desperate wildness that he had never seen in her before. His eyes narrowed and he reached forward and grabbed a handful of her hair, pulling it back roughly so that she wasn’t looking at his anymore, but at the ceiling.

She murmured in approval, and he watched as the muscles in her shoulders and back flexed and rippled as she arched her back and strained against his pull. Wes couldn’t resist the call of her alabaster skin and he reached over with his free hand and ran it lightly over the smoothness of her perfectly round ass. She wiggled back against him when he moved his hand over her upper thigh, and she held her breath when he caressed the silken heat at her center.

His anger and his grief drove his passion, and he wanted to make sure he took it all out on the perfect body that she was offering to him. She was offering him an exorcism, demanding that he punish her in every word that she had spoken since he had run into her on the stairwell, in every movement she made against him since she had straddled his bleeding form in the center of her floor. Now he found himself eyeing the instrument that she had pulled out with the shackles after she’d maneuvered him toward the bed. They’d never used it before—Wesley had been reluctant, and Slayer hadn’t pushed it, but now he found he wasn’t quite so hesitant. He picked it up, tested it’s flexibility in his hands, and then reached under her to draw its tip across the hard peaks of her nipples, down over her taut stomach, and then into the cleft between her legs. He heard her breath hitch in excitement before she moaned, and when he pulled the riding crop back away from her body, he could see her wetness glistening on the black leather.

Then he was using it to strike her against the delicate skin of her buttocks and upper thighs, spurred on by her moans of pleasurepain and the sounds of her begging.

“Harder . . . please,” she panted.

She needed to feel the sting, needed it to block out the other feelings that had flooded into her tonight, unwanted, unwelcome. Throwing her head back, she made herself hold perfectly still while Wesley took out his anger on her flesh. Her blood was pounding in her ears and she could feel it beating in time with the strokes of the riding crop across her rear, and it wasn’t enough. She begged him not to stop, to make it harder, but she could tell he was hesitating now, not wanting to hit her any longer or any harder. And then he hit her one last time and the leather sliced through her reddened flesh, carving a thin wound in her skin, her blood bubbling to the surface. She screamed out in a mixture of ecstasy and pain and arched her back when she felt Wesley’s hands on her hips. Then he was inside her, pounding his hips against her hot, throbbing ass, pounding himself so deep inside her so hard that she had to brace herself against the rungs of the headboard with her bound hands.

Each stroke against Slayer’s flesh had her hissing in pain and mewling in pleasure, and she ground back against Wesley as he hovered over her, one hand continuing to grip her hip for leverage, the other trailing over her body . . . first her back, then her over her breasts, and finally, blissfully, over her clit until she was mindlessly clenching around him as he roared his own release.

For only the second time in their history she called out a name during her climax. For the second time, it wasn’t his name. And for once, he didn’t call out a name at all.

As soon as he could gather his energy, Wesley pulled out of her and moved to dress in his ruined clothing. He was still seething with his anger, but now it was tinged with feelings of self-loathing and disgust for where he had let that anger take him. It didn’t matter to him that she had been willing, or that she had clearly enjoyed it—he had lost control and gone further than he had ever wanted to. Wesley winced as he looked at her reddened, bruised body that was still curled up face-down on the bed—her skin a mottled mix of red and purple that was already beginning to turn the sickly green color of a fresh bruise, the outline of his fingertips that were pressed into the flesh of her hip, the thin split in her skin that was already beginning to heal. Gritting his teeth to keep from screaming in disgusted rage, he moved to release her from the shackles.

“I didn’t kill him Wesley,” she whispered to him as he unlocked the metal that bound her to the bed.

His hands stilled on the shackles and he closed his eyes and hung his head in something not unlike defeat as the relief washed through him. He should have known she wouldn’t kill Angel, but he didn’t and now something between them was irreparably broken. Wesley silently mourned that loss as he reached forward to gently stroke her hair. Then he finished unlocking her and wordlessly stalked out of her loft.

In his hurry to get away from her, from what they had done, Wesley didn’t notice the vampire standing in the shadows of the hall, didn’t notice how closely he brushed against Death as he ran down the stairs and out into the night.

---

There were very few times since his re-ensoulment when he had been this close to his demon, and Angel stood completely still outside her door, gripping his hands in fists so tight that his short fingernails bit into the palms of his hand. When Wesley. . .

That bastard

. . . had stalked out of her apartment mere minutes after violating her (and he thought of it as violation, regardless of the fact that he had been intimate witness to the sweet smell of her arousal and the sounds of her pleasure), he had to force himself not to reach out and snap his neck right there. There would be time for Wesley later—right now there was no way he was leaving until he saw her, made sure she was o.k.

Angel had heard the hiss of the riding crop as it ran through the air before it made contact with her skin and he had moved toward the door, a low growl of warning rumbling from his throat. It wasn’t her door or the invisible barrier against uninvited vampires that kept him from breaking in and interrupting the torture session—it was her moan of pleasurepain followed by the sound of her voice, begging.

Those sounds were permanently imprinted on his brain . . . echoing in his ears . . . mocking him. . .

But not mocking him as much as the unrelenting hardness of his erection, pressing tightly against the front of his pants—the erection that grew with each stinging blow against the skin that he could only imagine, each hiss and mewl that emanated from lips that he had spent years dreaming about, each rattle of the chains that he didn’t have to see to know bound her delicate wrists.

And then, when he thought he couldn’t be more disgusted with himself, he smelled her blood mix with her arousal and his face morphed into his demon visage. He couldn’t stop it anymore than he could stop himself from growling loudly, the sound a mixture of anger and want, when he heard her call out as she came.

Called out his name.

And now the borrowed blood was still pumping furiously into his cock and he couldn’t make himself turn and walk away any more than he could tamp down his demon and change back into his human face.

So he stood, panting in harsh, unneeded breaths in front of her door and waited-- for what he didn’t know-- until it happened.

In slow motion, the heavy steel door opened and he stood facing the woman who haunted his dreams, the woman who must be able to feel his presence as acutely and ecstatically painfully as he could feel hers, the woman who was supposed to be dead and rotted by now. But she wasn’t—she was very much alive and as much as she was different, she was the same. She stood before him in her tight, midriff baring tank-top and tiny white cotton panties, her skin so much paler than he remembered, her hair a darker, dirtier blonde as though it hadn’t been touched by sunshine any more than he had. She stared into his golden eyes with her gray ones, unflinching, dispassionate, and he longed to see them turn green, to see her lips turn up into a smile, her smile. Still, he could feel her as though she was wrapped tightly around his very soul and he knew her. She was Buffy, and she was alive.

Buffy is alive, Buffy is alive, Buffy is alive

It was a mantra running through every cell of his body.

The moment seemed to extend into eternity but in reality it was only a minute, perhaps two, until she spoke, breaking the silence between them.

“You aren’t welcome here,” she said, her voice strong and devoid of emotion as she ran her eyes over his body, stopping at the sight of his still-straining erection. A smirk passed over her lips, so far from the smile that he wanted to see planted there that he cringed. Then the door was closing in his face, and he could only watch as she turned and walked away from him after he had just gotten her back.

To Be Continued...