Love can be so boring.

Pike was confused to say the least. He was staying with one of the weirdest guys, er, vampires on the planet. There was no other explanation. Over the past two weeks from their twin bedded hotel rooms in the Mirage, he'd discovered some things about his new roommate.

Since they'd been there for two weeks, they'd went down to the casino quite often. It was another strange experience. Though William's age was rather hard to determine, and they sometimes checked your ID if you looked under 30, no one ever carded William whereas Pike had been carded twice. No one ever gave the vampire a hard time either. William liked to play poker, and though the stakes were often extremely high, no game ever got out of control. The games were remarkably calm and low-key, totally different from the emotionally charged ones of the same level that Pike had seen previous.

Undoubtedly William had the best read on people that Pike had ever seen, and after four years in Vegas, he'd seen alot. William always seemed to know instinctively when to bluff, when not to, and how to pick out those who were. Pike watched him like a hawk, trying to figure out how William knew every single time. The man wasn't counting the cards or cheating in any way that Pike could see.

Sharing a room with William was odd as well. They'd talked, in a way. Pike had filled William in about his past four years without Buffy and the topics of sports, weather, and music were equally exhausted. He kept quiet about his time with Buffy since it hurt to talk about and because William never said very much about himself or his reasons for helping Buffy.

There were also long moments of silence when William would stare off into space for anywhere from ten to twenty minutes. It only happened in the room; his eyes would go blank and sometimes he would come out of it smiling and other times swearing.

It was hard at times to remember that William was a vampire because he didn't drink blood. Other than taking some from Pike during their escape, William had not partaken a drop of the red stuff. Pike knew enough about vampires to see something was extremely off about that. A day or two wouldn't have worried him, but fourteen? For someone who was probably starving, William was much stronger than he should have been. He was much stronger than any vampire had a right to be. The first night William hadn't liked the arrangement of the furniture, so he moved it, all by himself. Pike had never seen anyone lift an entertainment center, widescreen TV and stereo system included, with one arm and carry it elsewhere.

It was no surprise that Pike had questions about William, but every single time his mind went in that direction or he started to say something of that nature, Pike would lose his train of thought. He knew he was missing something very important, yet he couldn't get the words out to actually correct the lack. Somehow he just couldn't voice his concerns in any way shape or form. He could hardly think about them.

The only question Pike had been able to ask was why the vampire could be picked up on the security cameras. (Casino Security might have been worried if they saw cards playing poker themselves.) William had just chuckled, "Welcome to the digital age, kid. No mirrors, no invisible man."

William found lots of things that Pike did amusing. Especially the clothes. Upon leaving his home at such short notice, Pike had quickly realized that he didn't have much more than the jeans and leather jacket he wore. So now he was wearing some of Williams clothes, whose basic wardrobe was composed entirely of black and red. They had the money to buy stuff, but William refused to leave the Mirage or buy tourist label clothing, so Pike wore the black and red.

At the start of their fourteenth night in the hotel, William suddenly announced they were leaving. Packing the little they had, they piled into the car with its signature blackened out windows and left the Mirage.

Instead of heading toward the freeway and thus California, William turned in the opposite direction, en route to the roughest part of Vegas.

The car stopped, and Pike recoiled when he saw where he was. It was the black heart of the Las Vegas demon community. He himself had only driven by it once in the daylight and had been scared out of his wits. It was a place, he'd heard, where unsuspecting humans became very dead, very fast.

Then why was William getting out of the De Soto and leading him into a nearby bar?

"Follow me," William didn't sound worried in the slightest.

"Why are we here?" But Pike did.

"Tying up some loose ends," William opened the door, and Pike fervently wished he were almost anywhere else. "Stay close and keep your mouth shut."

Could it be I'm haunted?

They were seated in the exact center of the bar. Pike had never been so uncomfortable. He was the only full human sitting in plain sight. The rest of the customers were not. The werewolves were easy to pick out. There were fyarls and at least one vengeance demon. He caught a glimpse of a whole set of fish-looking folks, two reddish demons, six zombies, and a large number of other creatures that Pike had no clue on.

The worst part was the looks. No one was looking at Pike. In fact, their gazes practically slid around him to center on his companion. Everyone was watching William, and there was something about William that scared them.

William, on the other hand, was eating up the attention. He was almost giggling as the pale, shaking bartender took his order for brandy. Pike ordered water because he was concentrating on what was going on around him, not the alcohol.

The bartender scurried off and brought their drinks in record time. William just glowered at him, and he ran back to his place behind the counter.

"What's going on?" Pike whispered, the atmosphere was a bit too tense.

Making no motion to drink his brandy, William answered, "We're about to receive a visitor. No matter what happens, don't do anything."

Pike gripped his class of water tightly and asked, "Who?"

A shadow loomed over their table, and Pike saw one of the scarier patrons had come to them. He had to be about seven feet tall, not including his antlers. On one side, he appeared humanoid, but his skin had a slimy cast to it that turned Pike's stomach. Then there were the eyes, bright, bright orange, hot like the sun.

"I thought it might be you," the demon addressed William, paying no mind to Pike. "Were you looking for me?"

"Just like a Chaos demon. You need to be the center of everyone's universe."

The demon placed his hands on the table, "There's been rumors about you. They say you went soft," He smiled at William, "I didn't put much into them because I knew it was true. Dru told me."

"Did she now?" William replied calmly.

"Where is she? She leave you again?" The demon glanced around the room, finally focusing on Pike. "That's not her."

"No shit, Sherlock." William laughed loudly, almost out of place, "Dru's dead, you pounce."

The demon's arms caught William by the collar, pulling his face close, "What the Hell happened to her, Spike?!"

Spike.

The name clicked for Pike. William was Spike. Pike knew who that was. Spike was one William the Bloody, a vampire feared for his gruesome actions of cruelty, second only to his sire Angelus in brutality toward humans. He had an SOS, stake on sight, assignment from various vampire-hunting organizations in LA, Reno, Miami, Cleveland, and any number of cities. Supposedly he ran full-time with an insane vampiress called Drusilla, who was apparently dead now. Spike was one deadly tough customer.

And Pike had been spending the last two weeks sharing a hotel room with him, wearing his clothes. By all accounts, Pike should have been dead.

Spike curled his lip up, showing fangs as he shifted into his demonic vestige, "Let go." It was a command, harsh and black in the ears of all. The demon dropped his hands meekly, eyes toward the ground.

Pike understood the atmosphere now. Everyone in the room had seen this confrontation coming except him. It was Dodge City with the outlaws riding in while the sheriff sat in waiting in front of the bank. Everyone else was an innocent bystander in the showdown.

Some were more innocent than others. In a motion so swift Pike's eyes almost missed it, Spike's hand flicked forward. His bread knife embedded itself in the wall, pinning the bartender's arm in place through the cloth of his sleeve. "No interference," Spike growled at the bartender's choice of weapon, a stake.

Pike just stared. The knife was buried to the hilt, at least six inches into the wall. No vampire was that strong.

Refocusing on the Chaos demon, Spike said, "Now, where were we?" His voice was almost lazy, "Oh yes, Dru. Look up." Unwillingly, the demon raised his eyes to Spike's yellowed ones.

And Spike didn't seem so lazy anymore; he looked dangerous. "Look into my eyes. Be in me," His voice cajoled, hypnotically. The eyes of everyone in the room were dragged to the mesmerizing stare the Chaos demon was receiving. "Be in me." Spike swayed to the left; the demon (and half the room) swayed to the left. "Be in me." Spike swayed to the right; the demon (and the other half of the room) swayed to the right.

Spike poured his drink on the cotton tablecloth and lit one match, its light reflected brighter in his own yellow eyes. He held it there for a second, a lit bomb, before dropping it on the table, igniting the alcohol and the tablecloth. "Hold up your hands."

Though he had to be acting against his will, the demon raised his hands. "Put them in the fire." Pike looked at the fire. With the tablecloth as fuel, it was a slow burn.

The demon obeyed, passing his hands directly into the flames. Instantly, steam rose as the shiny hands began to sizzle. They didn't catch on fire, but the skin charred by layers. It turned red, then gray, and then black before flaking off in large chunks.

That had to hurt.

"I'm only gonna share this once, so listen up." The air practically shimmered, full of angry power. Pike knew with absolute certainty that Spike was going to do something to that demon. The message oozed from his pores, stronger than a flood. The thought occurred to Pike about how absurd he'd been when he'd worried going into the bar. He entered at the side of one of the Night's most dangerous hunters.

Spike leaned over the fire, letting his face get a mere inches from the demon's, "I - killed - Dru." Such hate was conveyed in those three short words, an age of malice purified down to its simplest form.

"And if we ever cross paths again, I - will - kill - you." The cold wrath Pike could feel shot from Spike to the demon. Pike physically saw the mental strike slam home with the power of an asteroid hitting earth. The demon toppled, hard.

No one in the audience moved or breathed. Spike gave them a careless glance, "Sleep." Absolutely everyone else with the exception of Pike was instantly snoring.

Spike picked up Pike's glass, which he hadn't even noticed he'd stopped holding, and emptied it on the remains of the tablecloth.

As the fire sputtered and died, Spike walked to the back of the bar to a mostly hidden human in a gray suit. "And what do I spy with my eye?" He reached into the man's jacket and removed a running tape recorder. Spike crushed it, pocketing the shattered tape, "Wolfram and Hart. Little bastards don't know how to stay on their side of the fence."

Taking a pen from the man's jacket, he wrote four words in bold strokes on the man's forehead. El Boca de Inferno.

"Isn't that where you said Buffy lives?" Pike asked in trepidation.

"Slayer's home, all right." Spike smiled, "Don't worry. Nobody here is gonna remember any of this when they wake up in ten minutes." He walked over to the bar, where the bartender stood sleeping, his arm still stuck to the wall. Spike dropped three hundreds on the table, explaining, "For damages. Let's go."

Pike took a second to take it all in, the slumbering bar, the smoldering remains of their table, the Chaos demon stretched out on the floor, burned and unconscious. All of this had been done by one vampire, in a way Pike was having trouble even believing he had seen.

Passing the demon, Spike stopped and delivered a powerful kick to the demon's head.

"What was that for?" Pike had to ask.

"That," Spike replied, "Was for touching my girl." He strode out the door, and Pike came to resolutions on two things. First, to never ever touch Spike's girl, whoever she may be, and two, his thoughts had been right. William, or Spike, or whatever he called him, was just plain weird.

You're just the best I ever had.

Police psychologist Mary Collins paid for the postage on her stack of mail, nearly dancing with joy. Her transfer had come through! She was on her way back to the safer streets of LA in a few short days!

She pulled an envelope out and looked at it critically. Since her visit with those odd people over two months back, she'd done some research. Her findings scared her. Some of the stuff she'd uncovered was too freaky to believe rationally. Take that recent 'gas' explosion. In most cites it would have taken a week or two to declare an official cause. The police chief took a day. Pretty quick for the destruction of a frat house that didn't have gas heat. But no one argued, and from what Mary had seen from many different files, that was not the least of the strange events.

Carefully thinking, Mary changed the address on that particular envelope and dropped her mail in the slot. There was one person in LA who might believe her findings. And if the person didn't, they'd have a good laugh together over it.

The best I ever.