“I don’t want you to go,” Anya said. She was standing behind him in the bedroom, fussing with his collar, and Xander pulled her hand away for the third time. Normally he liked her to fuss a little--engage in the mutual grooming ritual, she called it, more to tease him than out of cultural cluelessness these days. Tonight her attentiveness bothered him and he shivered her hands away like a horse twitching flies from its skin.
Patience, always with Anya the patience. “Ahn,” he replied, tugging his coat from its hook in the closet, “It’s your shower. I’m not gonna hang around and mess that up for you.” The living room was filling up with biddies of all ages and several species, and a Sunday night which could have been profitably spent curled up together on the couch watching bad movies and throwing popcorn at the TV screen was already irretrievably lost.
Anya didn’t pout; she never pouted. She just looked at him in that confused-but-eager way she had, trying to understand his Earth logic. “But it’s a party where all my friends give me presents and wish me well. You’re my best friend, Xander. Of course you’re invited. And you don’t even have to give me a present.”
“Girlfriends. Friends who are girls.” He indicated himself with a flourish. “Me, not a girl. I thought we’d gone over this.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, radiant in red (though God, he hoped she’d tire of the platinum hair soon; it reminded him far too much of someone he’d far rather kick than kiss). Her face wore that pinched unattractive frown which had been more and more in evidence lately. Wedding stress, wedding stress--but if the arrival of Halfrek and the rest of her demon pals had cheered Anya, it hadn’t helped relieve him. He’d listened to them chattering in the kitchen while Anya made dinner, stirring up memories of the good old days of slaughter and destruction along with the tuna casserole. Sometimes he had the uncomfortable feeling that Anya’s beauty really was just skin-deep, that at any moment sharp teeth would slice through it from below and the Anya-skin would fall away, leaving... something unpleasant, that was for sure. Xander Harris, demon magnet. Because of course no normal human female could sustain a long-term relationship with the likes of him.
He shook the thought away. Anya tried to be normal. She put a great deal of effort into being normal, but never seemed to realize the source of his nerves was the fact that she did have to put effort into it. Now she was watching him again, trying to gauge his mood from the set of his shoulders. “Sexual segregation at entertainment functions is an antiquated custom. I don’t see why we can’t have an up-to-date relationship.”
Xander ground his teeth and rattled the hangers on the clothes rack so as to have an excuse not to turn around. “Is that what Halfrek says about it?”
“No. It’s a valuable networking opportunity, and besides that, we have Vienna sausages, which I know you like. Why do you keep bringing up Halfrek? You’re not--do you find her more attractive than me?” Anya gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth. “She been flirting with you, hasn’t she? I knew it! She’s always been the beauty! It’s like when she stole that Grud demon all over again! ‘Oh, you’re pretty, Anyanka, but Halfrek, she’s stunning!’ And I happen to know she’s had work done on her facial veins--you can bank on it, they’re not that perfectly defined naturally!”
Why was it that women invariably picked romantic rivals as maids of honor? Some feminine pack ranking thing, maybe, the alpha female depriving the rest of the right to breed? Xander abandoned the pointless re-arrangement of his shirts and walked over to the bed, where he sat down and put an arm around her shoulders. “No, of course not.”
Anya sniffled and laid her head on his shoulder, letting him play with her hair. “You just don’t realize the animal attraction you exude. It’s pheromones, I’m sure of it; it drives women mad. I’ve seen them looking at you. Especially Willow. Honestly, Xander, you drove the poor girl to lesbianism to try to escape her hopeless passion for you.” She searched his face for traces of residual Willow-lust, anxious. “It is hopeless, isn’t it?”
“Anya, honey, sweetheart, darling, you’re making me insane.” Xander caught up her wringing hands in his and stilled them. “I lust after neither Willow nor Halfrek. I love you. You’re gorgeous. And I’m going out on patrol. Spike says there’s a Krallock demon on the loose, and we’re gonna take it down.”
She caught at his sleeve, limpid brown eyes full of nameless fears. “A Krallock demon? Do you have to? Do you realize they can bite through pig iron? If you absolutely can’t stay here, why not go to a movie or participate in something that won’t result in bodily injury and reduced work hours? It’s a Sunday night!”
More patience. Heaping bucketfuls of patience. Anya, after all, came from a long line of demons who sensibly abandoned ship when an apocalypse rolled into town, and he came from a long line of people who were only passingly acquainted with the concept of ‘sensible.’ “I know. But Buffy and Willow and Tara are all coming to your shower, they being of the girl persuasion, and someone’s got to patrol--”
“For one night, don’t you think--”
Patience go bye-bye. “That we can just let people be eaten for a change?” he snapped. Anya flinched away, face crumbling around her wounded eyes, and he immediately felt like a heel.
“I didn’t mean--”
He hated feeling like a heel. “Yeah, that’s the problem!” What exactly did that mean? Oh, well, it sounded good. Forget reason and logic and all the nights they’d blown off patrol to go to the Bronze or study or whatever; tonight Buffy was counting on him. More or less. Xander stormed out into the living room, coat flapping behind him. The effectiveness of his exit was somewhat marred by having to maneuver around a string of middle-aged businesswomen engaged in trying to pass an orange from one end of the line to the other without using their hands, but as exits went, it was one of his better ones.


Willow was wearing the dead Muppet top--sleeveless, bright red, and very, very fuzzy. Buffy was secretly positive that that top was a sign of the coming apocalypse--if not this one, then another one down the line somewhere, involving large toothless furry things gumming them all to death while reciting the alphabet. Its appearance always signified Willow in one of her insanely positive moods, which generally coincided with one of Buffy’s ‘life sucks dead rats through a garden hose’ moods. Buffy gazed forlornly at the small gold-wrapped package in her hands. It was beautiful--red velvet ribbon and professionally crisp store wrapping paper in an abstract pattern of silver and gold bells that didn’t look too obviously Christmas-y... and no acts of hideous evil required. All she’d had to do was change the tags. Out goes the ‘To Buffy From Dad,’ in comes the ‘To Anya from Buffy,’ and ta-da, shower present. Wah .
Tara patted her shoulder. “Be strong. You’re doing the right thing.”
“I don’t want to do the right thing. I want my new Discman.” Weirdly enough, after bawling on Spike’s shoulder, she’d gone home, showered, changed, had another argument with Dawn about her grounding, and, as he’d predicted, felt better. In theory she knew that a good cry and a wash-up afterwards were restoratives, but she’d been sure that kind of emotional resiliency had abandoned her back in the age of dinosaurs. A large part of her relative peace of mind, she suspected, hinged on the fact that she already knew the solution to this problem, however little she wanted to accept it right now. Or maybe she was finally learning to harness the awesome power of Summers’ denial for good rather than evil.
If, of course, her best friend would ever drop the subject. “Me, I think Giles is all over-reacty,” Willow said, dispensing seasonal good cheer and blind optimism. “For all we know? This ‘leave the playing field’ biz could be a good thing. It could mean ‘Buffy gets to retire from the slaying and have the normal life she’s always wanted, yay!’ And it said you’re one of these extra players which means that there’s others and if we find them then we can--”
“Rub them out for the good of humanity?” Buffy asked, extra-perky.
“We could at least find out why the extras are extra.” Willow was not to be deterred by inappropriate humor. “And you could try the retirement option and see what happens. I mean, you’re supposed to be on strike anyway, right? Instead of making a secret identity for your secret identity, you just quit for real for awhile.”
“Maybe you’ve got a point, Wills--several simultaneous points--but we’ve never had much luck relying on kinder, gentler interpretations of prophesy.” She’d been haunted by the specter of an ordinary life for so long--she’d matched wills with Giles for it, fought the Watcher’s Council for it, held on to Riley like a life raft for the prospect of it. She'd thought that the trip to L.A. had finally exorcized it. Now it rose from its grave once more, ranting about how it would have succeeded if it weren’t for those meddling kids. What exactly did she mean by a normal life, anyway? Starring in the Ice Capades and/or marrying Christian Slater wasn’t really an option at this stage.
They checked the building number as they approached the nearest block of apartments--they’d been here a hundred times, but the complex was one of those cookie-cutter places where every unit looked much the same as every other unit, and it wouldn’t be the first of those hundred times that they’d ended up making embarrassed apologies to some retired couple from Minnesota. The three of them crowded onto the landing and Tara knocked; there was no response. “Can they hear us?” she asked, leaning over to peer in the window. The drapes were drawn, and a bass thumpa-thumpa-thumpa made the porch railings vibrate slightly.
Buffy bounced up and down on her toes, trying to see through the window over Tara’s shoulder. “Thing is, I’ve tried quitting before, remember? I can’t just turn the Slayer powers off. Weirdness follows me around and waves its tentacles in my face yelling ‘lookie, lookie!’” A familiar tingle chased up her spine and down again. “Speaking of which...”
She turned, and there he was, the epitome of her non-normal life: Spike, strolling up the walk behind them, a moving shadow in the gathering dusk, slicked-back, bone-colored waves of hair licked with the faintest tinge of gold in the last of the evening light. He had a bulky unfamiliar object slung over one shoulder, and as he got closer she recognized it as the tranquilizer gun he’d taken from Bryce’s men at Halloween. Trust Spike to keep track of the cool toys.
“Hey.” She waved Anya’s present at him. “You’re right. Having a conscience is highly overrated. Turn me now so I won’t have to give this up.” I can joke about this. Healthy sign of emotional distance or flashing neon ‘Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go?’
Spike stopped on the step below her. In the amber glow of the porch light the corners of his eyes were crinkled in amusement and a pious smirk quirked his lips. “Sorry, love, but your stunning example’s completely reformed me. Wouldn’t interfere with your sacrifice for the world.”
“Curses.” Buffy slipped her arms around his waist and leaned into him as if they hadn’t spent half the afternoon shagging like mad things. They flowed together like quicksliver, her head butting against his chest, her hands gliding up the small of his back. Muscle rolled beneath her hands as he shifted the weight of the trank gun. Very touchable, Spike, very tasteable. Blood and smoke on her tongue, complex leather-whiskey-earth scent in her nose and rumbly happy-vampire noises vibrating in her ear; a workout for all five senses. She could spend a year learning the exact proportions of his mouth by heart, charting the curve of his lower lip, the precise angle of the divot in his upper lip as the cool supple flesh grew warm beneath her own.
She pulled away and nodded at the gun. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You were invited to the shower, and decided Anya really needed something to keep Xander from straying out of the game preserve.”
Spike snorted. “Some of us have patrol tonight, Slayer Chavez.” He looked at Willow. “Got ‘em?”
Willow gave him a tolerant smile; Laymen! it said. “Quality spellcasting,” she said, “Takes time. They have to soak for another couple of hours. I’ll zing ‘em them over to you after the shower.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do us if the blighter decides to show ahead of schedule,” Spike grumbled. “Krallock demon,” he added by way of explanation to Buffy. “We’re off to track it down its lair as soon as I extract Harris from the hen party. They’re tough bastards. Red said she could add a little extra mojo to the darts.”
Willow made a ‘pfft’ noise and waved his complaint away, unfazed. “A little! Ho ho. This is no weenie little sleep spell. Au contraire! One poke from these puppies will knock your beastie into next week.” She made an illustrative jab at the air.
Tara looked askance at Willow. “When did you agree to...?”
“Last night? When you guys were trimming the tree with Dawn? And this morning, did you not notice the nasty green bubbly thing on the left rear burner?” Willow sounded the tiniest bit exasperated. “I told you, the magic’s back. I didn’t realize I needed to clear every spell I do with you.”
“Of course not--it’s just... I mean...”
Tara was looking flustered in the extreme, and Buffy intervened. “Isn’t it a little soon to be making with the big magic? Tomorrow, big spell-casting night, with us needing a well-rested, chipper Willow. It’s not that we don’t trust you, Wills, but two days ago you were wearing yourself out lighting your candle, and now you’re burning it at both ends.”
Willow folded pale arms across her fuzzy red torso, eyes scrunched and lower lip protruding. Her good cheer was beginning to acquire a sullen edge. “I told you, not a problem. If you don’t want to believe me, fine.”
Spike kissed the top of Buffy’s head and murmured in a perfectly neutral voice, “Red knows her own limits best, eh?” To Buffy he added, “Be a love and don’t kill our little pal if you happen to run across it before midnight, hey? Or at least, don’t let anyone see you kill it? I’ve got money riding on this.”
Buffy covered her ears in a hear-no-evil pose. “I am shocked, shocked I tell you! As long as it’s not kittens, I’ll try to restrain my killer instincts. It would help if I had some idea what a Krallock demon looked like.”
“Christ, Slayer, what do they teach you in these schools? Nine foot tall, claws as long as your arm, all over seaweed and barnacles, smells like the Thames at low tide...”
Tara was knocking on the door again, to no apparent effect. Spike made an impatient noise, brushed by Tara and hammered a fist on the apartment door till it shook on its hinges. The porch-shaking backbeat cut off, the door flew open, and from within the apartment a gale of shrill feminine laughter added several degrees of wind chill to the nippy evening.
A tall, statuesque woman in a cream linen suit dress stood in the entryway. She could have just stepped out of a cameo; she had a smooth oval face with regular features and large, fine dark eyes. A mass of dark russet hair was piled atop her head, spilling down her neck in a waterfall of ringlets, and a large, rather gaudy gold-and-ruby pendant which didn’t match the rest of her tasteful attire in the least was displayed prominently upon her bosom. This must be Anya’s maid of honor, in human guise for the moment--Anya’d mentioned she was another vengeance demon. The stone had a fire that drew the eye, and Buffy found herself making calculations as to how quickly she could grab and crush it if the need arose.
“You must be Xander’s friends. Come on in, all of you,” the woman said. Her tone and expression conveyed politely unexpressed curiosity as to why Xander’s friends would be intruding upon Anya’s wedding shower. Buffy’s finely honed bitch-detection alarms gave a warning buzz. “I’m Halfrek. Please call me Hallie.”
Tara mustered a polite smile, and Willow looked at Halfrek curiously--Willow’d come within a hair of being a colleague, after all. Halfrek stepped back and held the door open. The spotless apartment beyond was festooned with streamers in blue and white and full of people. Considering the usual state of Xander’s apartment when he’d been living alone, it gave one a real respect for Anya’s talent for organization.
Willow and Tara filed inside. Buffy hooked her fingers through Spike’s and breezed after them, to be brought up short when Spike remained rooted to the spot, staring at Halfrek. Had he never been invited in? She’d gotten the idea that over the summer Spike had gotten in fairly tight with the rest of the gang, but if anyone was likely to leave him uninvited, it was Xander... She looked over her shoulder, questioning. “Spike? Do you need an entry visa?”
“Eh?” Spike had the pole-axed look of a man running into a girl he’d loved or hated in high school at the ten-year reunion. He returned to earth with a shake and stepped across the threshold, still staring at Hallie’s back as she made for the living room, shooing Tara and Willow before her. His head was cocked to one side in puzzlement. “Sorry, love, thought I saw a ghost.”
“William?” Halfrek asked, turning about, fine large eyes even larger with shock at the sound of his voice. Her hand went to her bosom, (which did, to Buffy’s intense interest, actually heave) covering her pendant in a curiously old-fashioned gesture. “Oh, my stars. It is William! Why aren’t you dead?”
“Cecily?” For a second Spike’s face was naked--not just open, but stripped, peeled bare to expose some quivering inner pith of emotion never intended to bear the sting of open air. Then he straightened, visibly pulling the Big Bad cloak around his shoulders--head cocked insolently back, eyes hooded, one thumb hooked into his belt--a veritable Cherynobl of danger and sex appeal. “I go by Spike these days, and as it happens, I am dead.”
Was there a vibe here? Buffy looked from one face to the other. Oh, we have an entire Moog synthesizer’s worth of vibes. I do not like her, Sam I Am.
Spike looked Halfrek up and down, nostrils flaring. "You took up a new profession after the news about Harding got round?"
"Heavens no. I'd been in the vengeance business for ages before we met. D'Hoffryn took me on right after--" A look crossed Halfrek's face, as at a memory which should have been haunting, but which time and distance had rendered meaningless. "Oh. My. Roger... So that was you." Her voice sharpened. "You didn't go after me. Not that a mere vampire could--"
A slow and unpleasent smile stretched across his face, and Spike's canines extended for a second. "Professional courtesy, Miss Addams."
Buffy was beginning to feel as if she were witnessing some kind of emotional tennis match. Halfrek lobs a funny look into the net, and Spike responds with a backhanded compliment! Fifteen all! “Excuse me,” she said, waving a hand. “Did someone forget to pass out the scorecards?”
Spike was immediately contrite. “Sorry, love. Bit of a shock. This is--was--Cecily Addams. We were acquainted, back in London...” He hesitated. “Before I was turned. Halfrek, this is my girl.” He gave ‘my girl’ a defiant emphasis, as if he feared Halfrek might miss the point. “Buffy Summers, the Slayer.”
Buffy smiled very sweetly and tucked a hand around Spike’s arm, suppressing an urge to take a leaf from his book and growl at her rival. My vampire. You cannot have him on a boat, you cannot have him in the coat.
Xander appeared out of the mob of women in the living room, shrugging into his regrettable brown coat. Buffy had always had high hopes of it being shredded by something with big teeth and a taste for Naugahyde, but so far nothing had obliged her. Xander looked none too pleased with life, but he didn’t give any of them a chance to ask questions. “What’s up, Spike? Old girlfriend?”
Spike and Halfrek said “Not by half,” and “Hardly,” in frosty unison.
Xander’s eyebrows went up. “Well, excuse me for engaging in banter without a license. You ready to rock, Spike?”
“Yeh.” He tossed Xander the tranquilizer gun with a little more force than necessary. “Will’s not gonna deliver the goods till later, so if we meet up with anything before then you’ll have to beat it to death with the stock.” Spike considered this. “The night’s looking up.”
Xander shouldered the trank gun and headed for the door. Spike turned to follow; on impulse, Buffy caught hold of his duster and tugged him back. “Hey, you. I need my recommended daily allowance of Spikey goodness before you go.” Something chilly thawed in his eyes, and the small cold doubt which had started to crystallize in her own gut melted as she felt one of those deep growly laughs go through him. “Well, we’ll have to do something about that, Slayer. Can’t have you going all weak-kneed, can we?”
With an inscrutable look in Halfrek’s direction, Spike bent to kiss her, and mmmmmm, good . In the midst of being ten dollars and fifty-two cents shy of dead broke and Giles leaving and cryptic loas and crazy wizards there was Spike kissage, and it was very, very good, deep, slow, caressing tongue stroking tongue while Xander made gagging noises unheeded in the background and Spike’s strong hand slid down from the small of her back to grab her ass and heave her upright and damned if her knees hadn’t gone out on her there for a second. “You’ll pay for this,” she whispered into his ear, and Spike gave her a wicked leer.
“Can’t wait.” And he and Xander were out the door and gone.
Buffy straightened her blouse, wiped the silly grin off her face, and turned to face Halfrek. “So,” she said brightly. “There’s cake?”


The whole thing was Spike’s fault, of course. Xander wasn’t sure exactly why or how, but if you traced the connections back properly, everything was Spike’s fault. If he hadn’t mentioned the stupid Krallock demon, maybe Xander would have taken Anya’s advice to go see a movie, and the bed waiting for him when he returned wouldn’t be the living room couch, and they wouldn’t be lost in the Sunnydale sewer system.
Not that Spike was admitting to having led them astray. The author of their predicament stood in the middle of the crossroads--or more accurately, the cross-tunnel--half-smoked cigarette askew in one corner of his mouth, his lean face sporting the tight-lipped scowl which usually presaged someone or something getting smashed into very small pieces. The tunnels remained blank and uninformative: each one perfectly straight, faced with ancient tile which had once been white but was now a dingy cream where it wasn’t mottled with stains from rust or mold. Mysterious pipes and cables snaked along the walls, their color-coded insulation slowly flaking away into powder. Every twenty feet or so a ceiling panel provided feeble greenish light. The ceiling was just low enough to make Xander feel like ducking constantly.
Xander set the tranquilizer gun down, one hand straying to the pocket of his coat where the ordinary, un-magical darts nestled. “Look, I know it’s against Guy Rule #147, but I think it’s time to accept that we’re lost.”
Spike removed his cigarette and snarled, “We are not bloody lost!” He whirled around, duster flaring, and stalked ten or twelve paces back the way they’d come. His fingers clenched on the haft of the axe with which he’d supplemented their trank gun, and his pale angry eyes flicked from side to side, examining the featureless tile of walls and ceiling. “I bloody well live down here, in case you’ve forgotten. I know these tunnels like the back of my hand--most of these tunnels--the ones near the crypt, anyway--and this intersection shouldn’t be here. This tunnel’s supposed to take a jog left here and run into the main sewer line for Wilkins Boulevard fifty feet further along.”
Xander folded his arms and leaned against the nearest bundle of mystery cables. “Well, it doesn’t. So we can either wander like Charlie on the MTA until we get completely lost, fall down a pit, and starve to death--”
“I wouldn’t count on you living that long,” Spike muttered.
“--or we can admit we’re slightly lost, backtrack, take the right tunnel, and those of us with steady jobs might possibly get home in time to snatch six hours of sleep before having to be at the site tomorrow morning. I know which option I’m going for.”
Spike glowered for a minute, the muscles in his jaw working. Somewhere in the distance, water started dripping, marking time. Very deliberately, Spike took the cigarette butt from his lips and ground it out against the white-tiled wall, leaving a grey-black smudge. He tossed the butt aside, shouldered the axe and set off without a word. Xander followed with a sense of relief; it was never certain when Spike’s penchant for reckless stupidity would kick in, and he couldn’t help feeling they’d just backed away from the ledge over the bottomless pit.
He trudged down the corridor in Spike’s wake, hands shoved into his coat pockets. His thumbs still ached from last week’s adventures, though the bandage level had subsided and he had most of his range of motion back. Anya was right, as she was with annoying frequency. He never should have volunteered for slaying duty on a work night. He’d already received one warning about clocking in late--just a friendly heads-up from Tony, the job superintendent, who liked his work. The next warning wasn’t going to be so friendly, and might go on his record. He couldn’t blame Tony; there was no room on a construction site for a worker who continually showed up late or sleepy or with mysterious injuries that interfered with his work. It was dangerous, not just for him but for everyone he worked with: power tools, heavy machinery, and heights were just as potentially deadly as vampires when handled carelessly. And around every job site, clustered in every Home Depot parking lot, were the dark-eyed, watchful men--the guys without jobs, men who’d take over his spot in a hot second the minute the job superintendent gave the word. Construction jobs were at a premium, and construction workers were expendable. Hell, at any minute he could get laid off just because some banker backed out and the next project failed to materialize.
Buffy had to fit whatever job she took around her slaying; it was beginning to look as if he was going to have to give serious thought to fitting slaying around his job. And that stank. There were thousands of construction workers, and only a handful of vampire hunters. It was what he did after hours that made his life worth something to the world, wasn’t it? Any schmoe could slap together a condominium; how many could say they’d helped blow away the Judge with a bazooka? But God, Anya wanted kids. How could he possibly--
“Bugger.”
He almost ran nose-first into the back of Spike’s head. The vampire had come to an abrupt halt; they were at another four-way intersection, exactly the same as the one they’d just left. Xander looked around uneasily. “I don’t remember this.”
“That’s because it wasn’t there.”
“That’s impossible. We must have gotten turned around at that first intersection--all those tunnels did look alike. We just went down the wrong one, and this is--”
Spike gave him the ‘Exactly how stupid are you, anyway?’ look and pointed to the wall without a word. There at shoulder height on the grimy tile was a black smudge, as if someone had ground out a cigarette butt against the wall.


There was cake. There was also the ubiquitous veggie-and-dip platter which Buffy suspected of traveling from party to party under its own power, accompanied by its partner in crime, the cheese and cracker assortment. Drinks included a surfeit of wine coolers in flavor combinations never seen in nature, and fruit punch which proved to have been liberally dosed with cayenne pepper--Anya had, apparently, been stricken with this culinary inspiration after the summoning ritual.
Buffy batted aside a cluster of crepe paper wedding bells and began the challenging task of assembling a crack team of hors d’oeuvres on a dangerously bendy paper plate. Between the ritual, two hours of workout, and two or three hours of... other workout, she was starving. As she contemplated the optimal placement of broccoli florets, Willow popped up beside her, earlier grouchiness evaporated. “We timed it just right! The humiliating party games just finished.” Willow gazed around. “I didn’t know Anya knew all these people. Wow.”
“Yeah, how dare she have a social life when we have none?” There were a dozen or so women present, two or three of whom seemed to be friends of Anya’s from her vengeance demon days, and the rest of whom, Buffy guessed, were people Anya knew professionally. She recognized one or two faces as regular customers at the Magic Box. Tara surfaced briefly, conversing with someone from her old Wicca group, before she was sucked up into the crowd once more. Exhibit A, the Normal Life. Buffy tried to imagine herself among them, and wondered if this was what had driven Angel to lurking.
“We’re cool,” Willow assured her. “I know lots of people at school, honest. I even have lunch with them sometimes. I verge upon verging upon popular.”
“True. And I spoke to the counter guy at Albertsons when I picked up milk. Plus, I have an excuse. I’ve been dead. It cuts down on your opportunities to meet and greet.” Buffy stood on tiptoe and tried to get an idea of the lay of the land. Strategy. “Food promotes happy mingling. You get drinks, I’ll get you a plate.”
Willow saluted and made a break for the kitchen, where the ice chest was located. Buffy shifted her own plate to a position of precarious balance on her forearm and started loading up a second plate for Willow. As she tried to remember whether Willow liked cauliflower or not, and if guessing wrong was likely to trigger another sulk, Halfrek’s voice emerged from the background babble for a second, low and mildly scandalized. She was talking to one of the other vengeance demons. “...dating a vampire, can you believe it?”
The second vengeance demon put shocked fingers to her lips. “No!”
“Declassé, isn’t it?” Halfrek looked down her lovely nose. “But then, it’s not as though Slayers are anything but mongrels themselves...”
Buffy was saved from the faux pas of punching the maid of honor’s teeth in by the bride-to-be, who appeared out of nowhere bearing more canapes. “Buffy, you made it!” Anya bubbled, blocking her escape route. “I really thought you’d pretend you needed to kill things tonight and not come.”
“Never crossed my mind,” Buffy lied. Anya looked so grateful, and she’d come this close to forgetting about the party altogether, and closer to arriving sans gift. Bad, inconsiderate Buffy. She really ought to make more of an effort to make friends with Anya, if only Anya weren’t so... Anya. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
Anya’s eyes lit up. “I wanted to ask if you’d like to be one of my bridesmaids. I would have asked before, but you were dead, and it seemed pointless.”
“I--um. It must be a pain to change the plans so close to the wedding.”
“Oh, it is.” Anya gave her a brilliant smile. “But you’re a friend, and one’s supposed to inconvenience oneself for friends. Hallie!” she cried, propelling Buffy over to the little coterie of women seated around the coffee table, poring over catalogs of flower arrangements and gowns. “She said yes! You’ve met Hallie--Buffy, this is Netta. I used to work with her.” Anya winked violently at the word ‘work.’ “And Sandra Murchison and Lorri Collins, Lorri works for one of our biggest suppliers...”
Buffy scrabbled up a cheery smile for the four pairs of inquisitive eyes, human and otherwise, which fastened on her and the two heaping plates of food she was carrying. Hello, everyone, this is my friend with the binge eating disorder. She hurriedly divested herself of Willow’s plate and sat down, attempting to take up the smallest possible space on the couch.
“So pleased to meet you--Buffy, is it?” Sandra extended a hand and clasped Buffy’s in a vigorous shake. “Hi. I’m Max’s wife--I don’t know if you’ve met him; he used to be on Xander’s construction crew? Though I’m confused--Anya, I could have sworn you told us that Buffy was the friend who passed on last May!”
Buffy’s brain threw a rod and froze. “It was more a...”
Anya bounced up and down, alight with enthusiasm and in no mood to let a little thing like death and resurrection interfere with the celebration of her nuptials. “She was. Show her the dresses!”
Was there a glint of malicious enjoyment in Halfrek’s eyes as she passed the appropriate catalog over? Buffy went rigid with horror as she took in the full glory of the dress in the photograph. She swallowed. Maybe Willow could pull it off, considering some of the things Willow’d worn with a willing heart. Besides, Willow was a redhead. Redheads looked good in green. Bottle blondes looked like something fished up out of the estuary at low tide in green, but she was strong, she could take it. Except for the ruffles, no sane human being could take those ruffles, and--
She looked up, stared right into Anya’s bright, hopeful eyes, and said, “It’s gorgeous.”
A cold bottle, still dripping ice water, appeared in her hand. Literally. Buffy almost dropped it in her lap. "Kiwi-strawberry." Willow draped herself over the back of the couch beside her and gestured; her plate of hors d’oeuvres left the coffee table and floated serenely across the intervening distance; Buffy opened her mouth to say something about not freaking the mundanes, but by that time Willow had the plate on the back of the couch and was nibbling on a Ritz. "It's all they had left,” Willow said, waving her own bottle. “I see you’ve been introduced to the Attack of the Asparagus People." Buffy took a swallow of kiwi-strawberry and felt her mouth implode as the cloyingly sweet liquid hit the back of her throat. The wearer of the Elmo skin really had no call to cast stones, and besides, Willow was Xander’s best man and would probably get to wear a nice butchy tux or something while she was trapped in this--this--
“Drink up,” Sandra whispered. “We’re going to need all the courage we can get to wear those dresses in public.”
With a wary glance at Anya, who was chattering at Netta about the correct placement of the hideous cabbage rose corsages, Buffy whispered, “Didn’t anyone try to talk her out of--?”
Sandra snorted and took a swallow of her own drink. “You don’t want to know what we talked her out of, believe me. There were insects involved.”
“I renounce curiosity.” Conversation. She was having a conversation with a normal person--no need to panic; once upon a time she’d spoken to normal people on a regular basis. Sandra looked to be thirty-five, maybe, plumpish, with short poofy blonde hair every bit as natural as Buffy’s and a wicked glint hiding in her mild brown eyes. Give up the slaying and this could be me in ten or fifteen years--husband, two point five kids, white picket fence. A rewarding career by day, PTA meetings by night! Look, in the SUV, it’s Supermom! “So... your husband works with Xander?”
A shadow crossed Sandra’s face. “Used to. There was an accident last year. He’s in a wheelchair. He works in the contractor’s office now.”
“Oh.” And of all possible subjects, Buffy Summers picks... “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Sandra shrugged. “We deal. It’s not easy, but sometimes I think that if I didn’t have a fight on my hands I think I’d get bored.”
Buffy swirled the watermelon-colored liquid around in its bottle, took another sip and unpuckered her lips. “I can relate, I guess. At least my boyfriend’s the walking dead.” Sandra gave her an odd look and Buffy amended, “Uh, when he first gets up. Spike’s not a morning person.”
Halfrek stood and announced that they were going to start opening presents now. The there was a general whoop of approval and the guests gathered round the couch as Netta began ferrying presents over to the coffee table for Anya to rip open and exclaim over. As they turned to watch the celebration of capitalism at its finest, Willow took a swig of her own drink and nudged Buffy’s shoulder with an elbow. “Spike rates the B-word now?” she asked with a teasing grin.
“I should hope so, considering his performance in the foyer,” Halfrek said with an arch lift of one perfectly manicured brow which managed to convey that either way, said performance had been incredibly gauche.
Boyfriend was so completely the wrong word for Spike, all wholesome and malt-shoppy, but until she could think of something fitter for public consumption than ‘demon lover’... Buffy gave Halfrek a smile as poisonously sweet as the wine cooler. “Spike’s... mine.” She did her own swoopy-eyebrow thing, matching Halfrek arch for arch. “So--you knew him when he was--” Mindful of Sandra’s curious presence, she switched tracks from ‘The notorious William the Bloody’ to “--younger? Did you go to the prom together?”
Halfrek burst into peals of laughter. Lovely, chiming laughter. Buffy decided that she really, truly hated her. “We were acquainted socially. William, I suppose, would describe us as intimate friends. He does have a tendency to embroider, doesn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Buffy said, all innocence. In fact, Spike had told her quite a lot about his past; the problem was, she had no idea how much of it was embroidery and how much cloth. In that grilling she’d given him last year, he’d dropped all kinds of vainglorious hints, making out that he’d been a rebel from the cradle on, with a trail of broken hearts and broken heads a mile wide and a continent long by the time Drusilla had been smitten by his rugged good looks and devilish charm. If William the Bloody had been a nineteeth-century gangster, would that make the former Cecily Addams some kind of Victorian moll? But that story didn’t match up with other bits and pieces he’d let fall in less guarded moments, and she’d been warming to the idea of coaxing him out of himself little by little.
Now, confronted with a possible wellspring of information, she felt a perverse sense that this was cheating. Spike had pneumonia when he was twelve, and his mother gave him poetry books, and it’s a good bet his birthday is May 21. Or William’s birthday was. Whatever. I found that out with my very own investigative brilliance, Miss Tattletale Addams.
Halfrek settled comfortably, folding her hands demurely on her lap. "It wasn't simply the fact that I was in vnegeance that made it impossible--he didn't know anything about my career, poor naive dear. I grant his family was respectable enough..."


“Home sweet home,” Xander muttered as they trudged into the intersection for the seventh or eighth time. It didn’t seem to matter which of the four branches they chose to follow. They’d tried each tunnel in turn. They’d tried splitting up and going down two tunnels at once. They’d tried walking backwards. They’d tried looking for trap doors and secret buttons. They’d tried everything but leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, and every single attempt led right back to their starting point.
Xander collapsed, back against the wall, and slid to the ground, laying the tranquilizer gun across his knees. Spike stared around at the four identical tunnels leading off in for identically useless directions, perfectly expressionless; then a snarl of rage contorted his face and he whipped the axe off his shoulder and swung at the nearest wall. “Bloody, fucking... rrrrarrggh!” Tile shattered under the force of the blow and a rain of dust and knife-edged ceramic shards clattered to the floor. Spike stood in the wreckage, golden-eyed with frustration and breathing in short angry snorts. Then he heaved a sigh, propped his axe up in the nearest corner, and slumped down against the wall opposite Xander.
Xander glanced at his watch. The liquid crystal display was a featureless silver-grey. He frowned and shook his wrist to no effect. He’d just put in a new battery last month. “How long have we been down here?”
Spike grunted. “Does it matter?” Anger still simmered in his eyes, little golden flecks boiling up out of the blue. “Stupid bint,” he muttered. “Probably telling the Slayer tales out of school right this minute. Doesn’t know when she’s got it good. Could’ve killed her then if I’d taken the fancy to. Could kill her now if I could get her bloody pendant; she seems to forget she’s a sodding demon--”
“Spike, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Bloody Cecily bloody Addams is what I’m talking about!” Spike leaped to his feet and began tiger-pacing back and forth. “Your Halfrek. Woman’s a bleeding menace. Not as if I wasn’t going to tell Buffy eventually, but the time’s got to be right for a thing like that. You don’t just go blurting out your entire history to a bird on the first date.” He twitched a sneer in Xander’s direction. “Or maybe you do, not having any history to speak of, but--”
“Whoa, not my Halfrek. You want her, you can keep her. Anya’s got some insane idea that I’m hot for her.” Where the hell had that come from, anyway? He’d seen what Halfrek looked like in her true shape, and had been trying to avoid thinking about Anya’s having once looked the same ever since. Even if the thought of falling for the veiny and terrifying Halfrek wasn’t absurd, where did Anya get the notion he’d prefer anyone to her?
“Not that daft an idea for her to get, is it?” Spike retorted. “You’re not exactly throwing yourself into the nuptial frenzy.”
“Look, I just wanted to go to a JP and get it over with!” Xander snapped back. One of the voices in his head--the sarcastic one--pointed out that ‘get it over with’ was not exactly the most romantic terminology with which to refer to his ultimate union with his beloved. “The big wedding with the big guest list and the bigger price tag was Anya’s idea.” He tilted his head back, staring up at the water-marked ceiling. “I just can’t believe...” Spike was watching him with snide amusement. “Forget it. You’ve got no idea what kind of commitment this--”
Spike stopped pacing and roared with laughter. “Commitment? You lost track of who you’re talking to? Hundred and twenty years, mate. And if you think your demon bird’s high-maintenance, you give Dru a try.”
Xander surged to his feet, fists clenched. “Anya’s not a God-damned demon! Stop calling her that, or I’ll--”
Spike’s brows climbed up his forehead, accompaniment to a smarmy grin. “What’s the matter, Harris, afraid your firstborn will pop out all veiny and vengeful?”
Xander didn’t think; he just swung. He didn’t even see Spike move; one second the vampire was there, and the next second he wasn’t, and Xander’s fist smashed into the wall behind him. “AAAHHHHH!!! Fuck!” Xander fell to his knees and contracted into a ball of agony around his throbbing knuckles.
“And not even a hole in the wall to show for it,” Spike observed from his new vantage point three feet to the left. He slapped his palm against the tile. “Quality workmanship, this.” He put his head to one side and regarded Xander with pursed lips and hollowed cheeks. “You really are the biggest prat in creation, Harris.”
Xander slumped against the wall, his forehead pressed into the cold tile. After some minutes of strained, breathless gasping of ‘ow, ow, ow,’ he rolled over painfully and cradled his injured fist in his lap. “And you’re thinking that there’s some chance I haven’t noticed this?”
“Not really, but I never tire of calling it to your attention.” Spike dropped to his haunches and draped a hand over each knee, rocking back and forth with a look of honest curiosity. “What the hell are you narked about? Is this still about me and Buffy?”
Yes. No. I take the Fifth. “Let’s see.” Xander started to tick things off on his fingers, thought better of it, and continued sans visual aids. “Buffy’s lost her mind and is dating another vampire.”
“If it’s any comfort, I wouldn’t say there’ve been any actual dates involved.”
“Shut up, I’m on a roll. Anya has half a dozen old co-workers in town, all of whom think I’m human trash, and has been gabbing happily on about the good old vengeancy days of yore--and yeah, it does bother me just a tiny bit that the woman I love spent a thousand years maiming and torturing guys who may have been creeps of one sort of another but probably didn’t all deserve to have their parts rot off and their bodies devoured by army ants. I know that’s not PC of me, but tough. And in less than three weeks I’m getting married and I’m going to be personally responsible for the welfare of another human being for the rest of our lives, so I am just a little bit nervous, all right? Everyone else around here gets to explode in random violence whenever they’ve had a bad day; I’m just joining the club.”
“Ah. Translation: It’s hard to get shirty about the Slayer’s choice of snogging partner when Anyanka’s record of bloodshed and destruction puts yours truly to shame.”
Exactly. “No, it’s totally different. Anya’s human now.”
“Ah. Right. That old song again.”
“Eat flaming death, English pig-dog.”
They sat there for awhile. “She’s a tidy bird, Anya.” Spike pulled his cigarettes out and shook one free. After ceremoniously drawing it to life and taking a long drag, he flicked off his lighter and propped the hand with the smouldering cigarette up on one knee. “You muff this up and you’re a bigger wanker than I thought.”
“Thought you didn’t like her.”
“I don’t. Don’t think she’s too fond of me, either, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get on.” At Xander’s expression he assumed a smirk of superiority. “It’s a demon thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Well, it won’t matter if we end up wandering around the bowels of the Great Underground Empire for the next sixty years.” Xander shoved his hair out of his eyes with his good hand and tried to estimate the time. It felt like hours, but the corridors were only a couple hundred feet long at most, and it couldn’t possibly take more than five minutes to walk from intersection to intersection. Figure in more time for arguments, secret panel hunting, and staring hopelessly into space, and they couldn’t have been here more than an hour, hour and a half tops. Not long enough to feel hopeless about getting out, but plenty long enough to engender growing panic about job security. We are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Except not twisty. And not likely to be eaten by grues. Vampires, on the other hand... “Academically speaking, exactly how hungry do you have to get before the pain just doesn’t matter any more?”
Spike closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. “Doesn’t matter; you’ll be dead of thirst inside a week and I can eat you in comfort.” His lip curled. “I’d rather gnaw on loose insulation.”
At least there was a plentiful supply of it, Xander thought morosely. He looked up at the nearest bundle of cables. Strands of clean, unflaking plastic twined about one another, their colors bright and eye-catching. What the... “Spike?” Spike looked up from his cigarette, which had gone out, glower set on ‘kill.’ Xander pointed to the cable. “Does this look different to you?”
“Of course it--” Spike flicked his lighter off and stuffed it back in his pocket, and crawled over to peer at the cables. He frowned at them from below for a moment, looked over his shoulder at the other cables visible, and got to his feet. Round the circuit of tunnels he prowled, poking, prodding, and sniffing. At last he halted in front of one of the bundles, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and looking perplexed. All of them were like new. “There’s not even any nubbly bits left on the floor,” he said.
“But this is the same intersection.” Xander clambered to his feet rather less gracefully. Why the hell had Spike had to mention dying of thirst? Now he was parched, and the constant distant drip, drip, drip of water that they never reached wasn’t helping. He tapped the tile with the black smudge in the center. “There’s the cigarette burn, right...” He blinked. There was, in fact, no black smudge to be seen.
“No, it’s this one, you--bloody hell.” Spike made another round of inspection. “It’s gone.”
Xander worried the inside of his cheek. “OK, I thought I knew what was going on here. Some kind of teleport trap. Oldest trick in the Dungeonmaster’s Handbook. But this is downright disturbing. It can’t be of the good.”
“Oh, can’t it?” Spike looked grim. “Did it ever occur to you to wonder what exactly happens when the Balance gets too far out of kilter on the side of goodness and light?”
“Not really. 700 Club marathons?”
Spike’s shoulders twitched in an involuntary shudder. “Hang on a bit and you’ll find out.”

"It can't be that bad," Xander said. He leaned back against the wall and folded his hands behind his head. "By definition. So the Balance tips too far towards the good. Oh, the horror, not."
Spike exhaled a plume of smoke with a look that said 'If I were Kzinti, my name would be Speaker-to-Idiots.' "How far are we from the Hellmouth? Two miles?"
Xander called the grid of Sunnydale's major streets to mind and did a quick triangulation. They'd gone underground at the manhole at the intersection west of the apartment complex, and the burnt-out wreck of Sunnydale High was... "Closer to a mile and a half." An unpleasant thought struck him. "Or we were before we got stuck in this...whatever it
is. I have no idea where we are now."
"Right." Spike rubbed the side of his nose, as if it itched. "As it happens, yours truly cracked a few books on Hellmouths back when I was making plans to bring Drusilla here to take the waters."
Despite Willow’s insistence that Spike was a closet geek, the idea of him cracking books any more demanding than 'Lust Kittens of Venus' was something Xander had trouble taking seriously. "I feel expository dialogue coming on. 'And as you know, Xander--'"
Spike glared. "Mystical portal leading to a hell dimension, blah blah, take as given. Point is, the Hellmouth's aura affects the whole town, and especially these tunnels. Things happen here, usually bad. The Hellmouth sends out emanations of chaos and nastiness, attracts the attention of discerning evildoers everywhere--" he bowed with an ironic flourish. "--and hawks up the occasional Ascended demon to bugger up the lives of the common throng." He wheeled about, craning his neck down one of the passages. "D'you hear that?"
Xander resisted the urge to peer after him. If there wasn't anything there, it was pointless; if there was something there and Spike was just now catching it, it was just as pointless, since Spike's hearing was ten times better than his. "All I hear is the sound of one vamp yapping. This is Hellmouth 101. So?"
"So. Doesn't happen too often that the Balance swings too far in the opposite direction in the vicinity of a Hellmouth, but I ran across one or two mentions--think it was in Ruprecht's Alternus Mundi--or was it..." Spike contemplated the arabesques of cigarette smoke coiling upwards in front of his nose and frowned. "Ah, bugger it, I can't remember. Had a blue cover, whatever it was. What it comes down to is this: under the right conditions, a Hellmouth can do a flip." The vampire picked up his axe and gestured round at the tiled walls--one, two, three, four. The rust and mold stains were almost gone now, and the shattered remnants of Spike's earlier temper tantrum had vanished. The formerly broken section of tile was as pristine as the rest of the wall. "This look like chaos and nastiness to you? Perfect symmetry. Everything getting cleaner and newer and better."
Xander's attempt at keeping a straight face lasted about five seconds. He broke into a snicker. "Oh, come on," he chortled. "You mean we're now living on a... a Heavenmouth?" He clasped his hands and rolled his eyes skywards. "Which will spread sweetness and light and, what, hawk up the occasional televangelist? Even if you're right, what are we
supposed to be scared of? Random acts of kindness and non-violence? Do they bring on the comfy chairs?"
"Harris, will you remove your tiny withered brain from its protective wrapping and use it for a change?" Spike didn't sound as if he were joking. He was scratching at one ear, twitchy and uncomfortable, as if the air around them were becoming something inimical. "Forget the harps and halos, this is real life. Who's the closest representative of the forces of goodness and virtue you know?"
"Buffy, I guess, but--oh." The forces of goodness and virtue around these parts were not exactly reluctant to kick ass. "Point taken. But we're good guys. Why would they hurt us? Well, I'm a good guy. I guess you're toast. Wish I could say it was nice knowing you, but--"
Spike began a restless quartering of the intersection, hands locked behind his back. "The Slayer's small change, cosmically speaking--yeh, Buffy took on a hellgod and won, but that's Buffy. There's things out there that could eat Glory for lunch, things that could send me up in flames with a look." He met Xander's budding objection with a snort. "And don't get too comfortable yourself, bricklayer. Remember the Judge?"
"Otherwise known as Xander Harris's finest hour?" Or maybe second finest; the wrecking ball had been pretty good, too. "Surely you jest." Spike's eyes went misty with nostalgia and a wicked grin split his lean face. "If there's one regret in my life it's that I couldn't be there to see Angelus's face when that bazooka went off."
"Oh, God, it was priceless. I wish I'd had a camera..." Xander realized that he was matching Spike grin for grin and forced a frown. Spike's grew a trifle more wicked.
"Keep in mind that at the height of my career as a master vampire, in the midst of a plot to destroy the world no less, I wasn't evil enough to pass the big blue bastard's muster." Spike blew a smoke ring and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Granted I lost points for taking the destroy-the-world part as a lark that'd never come off, but still. D'you think you're pure enough in heart to shake hands with his opposite number?"
"I..." Xander swallowed. Every rotten thing he'd said and done in the last few years leaped up and started clamoring for attention in the forefront of his mind. Hyena-Xander, shoving Buffy against the wall. Self-centered teenage asshole Xander, blowing off Willow's crush on him. Not telling Buffy about the re-souling spell. Cheating on Cordelia. A hundred exasperated public putdowns of Anya... "...think panic is in order now."
"Wise decision. Take it from someone who's fought 'em, the forces of good are vicious sons of bitches." Spike shouldered his axe and started off down the corridor--no reason, Xander knew; just to be moving, just to be doing something. Xander watched the vampire's black-clad back diminishing in the distance for a minute, then grabbed the tranquilizer gun and broke into a jog to catch up. Better to follow Spike and pretend they were going somewhere than to sit around in the intersection and pretend it wasn't freaky when Spike reappeared out of the opposite tunnel in five or ten minutes. If they ran fast enough, would they see the backs of their own heads?
The tunnel transformed subtly around them as they walked. Xander could never pin down a change in the process of occurring; he'd look away and look back, and something would be different. The cables were taking on an almost cartoonish regularity in their loops and coils, as each tile became a perfect glossy square of pearly white, the light panels in the ceiling distinguishable only by their greater luminance. The light grew softer, clearer, paler, and they walked in enveloping radiance.
Xander found his grip on the stock of the trank gun relaxing, even as he listened for something beyond the distant tap-tap-tap of falling water and the sound of their own footsteps. For all the eeriness of the tunnels, there was a certain comfort in always knowing exactly what the next bend in the road would bring.
Spike didn't share it; he had stopped breathing and was gliding along in full hunting mode, his scuffed Docs making no sound at all on the floor. Xander studied the sweep of black leather in front of him. Whoever Spike had originally stolen that duster from had been several sizes larger than Spike was; the vampire swam in the thing, but as the coat slapped against him, you could still make out the lines of his torso, tapering sharply from breadth of shoulders to narrow hips.
Made a good target. Xander reached into his other coat pocket, the one that held the stake he was seldom without, and turned the length of sharpened oak over and over in his hand. The point would go right there, in the angle between the spine and the left shoulder blade, right between the ribs and into the heart. Buffy could drive a stake effortlessly through bone and muscle from any angle. Xander, merely human, had to worry about stakes getting stuck between the ribs or glancing off a shoulder blade.
He imagined the length of hardwood punching through matte-black leather and the thin layer of black cotton beneath, through ivory skin and into innards just as wet and red and fragile as any living human's, until the stake-point penetrated the heart and all dissolved into dust. He used to do this all the time--with Angel, and later with Spike--imagine what he'd do if either of them ever gave him the excuse. He wondered why he'd stopped. He'd gotten out of the habit, over the summer, led astray by shared patrols and games of pool and arguments over exactly which Plastic Ono Band album sucked the most. He'd lulled himself into--not forgetting, but worse, ignoring, the all-important fact that at the end of the day, Spike was still pretty much a vampire. The whole resurrection thing had jarred him back to reality, and now...
Now he was just slipping back into casual acceptance of this... this thing in front of him? Phone ringing as Anya welcomed the first batch of guests. Spike's North London drawl on the other end of the line "Harris. Got a line on a Krallock demon. Feel like killing something? I'll let you use the big gun." As much an overture, in its way, as him showing up at the crypt with spicy chicken wings. And he'd accepted it. Fuck. And here he was, following along behind pretty-much-a-vampire with no real intention to plunge that stake in where reason and logic said it should have gone years ago. Double fuck. What was the matter with him? Hanging out with Spike was wrong.
"If you keep playing with it, you'll go blind." Spike turned on his heel, swift, silent death with ears that could the heart thudding away in his chest, or the scrape of callused fingers against wood. "The suspense is killing me faster than you are."
Xander stopped in the middle of the tunnel, feet braced, holding the gun with the vestige of the professional ease his stint as Soldier Guy had left him. Step back, dart into the chamber, aim, cock, pull trigger...it would be easy. You know one of these babies will take a vampire down. And then the stake . Spike stood there looking at him, dark brows angled in exasperation, not even slightly worried. Trusting him. How twisted was that? "You know something, Spike? Your little fling with Buffy has nothing to do with the reason I hate your guts."
Spike sighed, eyes imploring the heavens for patience. "Do tell."
It didn't. Not the way Spike thought. His crush on Buffy was a thing of the past. All right, he had occasional lusty thoughts. What guy wouldn't? Maybe if the two of them weren't so damned obvious about it. Maybe if they didn't touch so often. Maybe if he didn't have the image of Buffy standing in his foyer with her tongue halfway down Spike's throat burned onto the back of his eyelids...
Maybe if Buffy can love an out-and-out demon and I can't handle an ex-demon there's something wrong with me, not her.
Slam that thought back in lockup where it belonged. "It's real simple. Half a dozen kids I grew up with, ate lunch with, and got beat up by ended up as snack food for you or Dru or one of your minions. And a few of 'em came back for a return engagement on the business end of Buffy's stake. Never hesitated a minute.” Four-year-old memories came flooding back--how had he forgotten all this? How had all of them come to tolerate Spike's company? How could two years' worth of grudging, chip-goaded help possibly make up for a century plus of cheerful murder? “What the hell makes you so special?" Spike's face remained impassive, and Xander took a belligerent step forward. "How come you’re walking around and not Jesse or Andy Runyon or Terry Lane?”
Spike studied him for a long minute. “Because life’s got steel-toed boots and delights in applying them to the family jewels, Harris. You haven’t figured that one out by now?”
“You gonna claim you're sorry they’re dead?"
"No." Spike cocked his head to one side, what looked like real regret time-sharing with wary curiosity in his eyes. "But sometimes I wish I could be." He scratched absently at his jaw. "Then I come to my senses. Is there a point to this conversation besides the one you're fondling?"
There was a point, all right--if he admitted for a second the possibility of not-enemyhood with Spike, he was betraying real friends. And if that was bad when he did it, how much worse was it when Buffy, the Slayer herself, slept with the enemy? Everything seemed so clear down here, in the pearly glow of the tunnel. Spike was evil. Evil through and through. There were no shadows here, no greys, just pure, white, comforting light which showed him that Spike was...
Red in the face? Now that was wrong. "Uh... Spike... Are you supposed to sunburn indoors?"
Spike touched a startled hand to his cheek and drew it away with a hiss; the pale marks of his fingertips lingered on his skin for a few seconds before fading back to unnatural ruddiness. "Balls! Sunlight!" He glanced up and around; there was no shelter to speak of in the slowly brightening tunnels. "Enough dicking around. We've got to get out of here."
Xander shook his head again, hard, trying to shake the fuzz out. His thoughts were all his own, but down here some thoughts were more equal than others--ways to dispose of Spike sprang easily to mind. Cooperating with an evil soulless vampire to get out, on the other hand--he couldn't wrap his brain around the idea; he was blundering through a spiritual algebra class, all his thoughts blunted and sluggish.
But he was used to that, wasn't he? Used to being the last one to get it, and getting it anyway, in his own good time. And no fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good tunnel of love was going to mess with his head and get away with it, any more than some cut-rate Prince of Darkness was going to make him play Renfield again. I'll hate Spike on my own dime, damn it, I don't need any help from you. "Yeah. We do." He forced the words out with a sense of triumph. We. Take that, fuzzy goodness! "How?"


Spike flicked his cigarette butt down the corridor, hefted his axe and grinned, squinting against the too-clear light. "If you can't find a way out, you bloody well make one." The skin across his cheeks and the backs of his hands was starting to prickle and burn, just as it had walking under cloudy daylight skies. Should have been impossible; a vampire's little sunlight allergy was metaphysical, not physical--no man-made light, no matter how closely it duplicated full-spectrum sunlight, should have been able to do the trick. Obviously the lights in this tunnel were no longer exactly as men had made them.
Close enough, though. Was he starting to smoke slightly, or was that just the remains of his cigarette? Time for some preventive maintenance. Spike flipped the axe end over end, caught it and jabbed upwards, ducking aside as the haft smashed through the nearest light panel and shattered the bulb inside into a thousand razor-edged snowflakes. He repeated the process with the light panels on either side. "Much better," he breathed as the final shower of glass heralded the return of relative darkness along a twenty-foot segment of the tunnel.
Spontaneous combustion forestalled for the time being, Spike shook glittering fragments of glass off his shoulders and reversed the axe again, swinging it through a limbering arc. There was something out there in this infinitely reflected latticework of tunnels, pacing them, spying on them; he could sense it, just on the edge of his perceptions, a magnetic repulsion. His opposite number, more or less, probably gritting its teeth, if it had any, over his presence at this moment. And who better to open the door than the blokes who built the castle? “We're probably going to have company soon," he said. "Don't imagine the proprietors will look kindly on me making a mess."
Xander looked up and down the tunnel. "I thought we were avoiding the forces of goodness and virtue?"
"Changed my mind. Who better to let us out than the blokes who built the place?" Spike ran his index finger down the axe-blade's notched edge, licked it, savoring the pain and the taste of his own blood with connoisseur's appreciation. The prospect of action was cheering. "Not likely we'll attract anything much nicer than I am nasty, this early in the game. But if we do, you'll just have to put in a good word." His grin went sharp-fanged and feral, eyes shining lambent yellow under ridged brows; William the Bloody, not even trying to be good, not the least little bit.
The axe-blade whistled through the air and sank into the nearest bundle of wall-cable with a THOK!, half-severing the whole mass. Another fountain of sparks exploded outwards, and the tunnel filled with the stink of ozone as individual strands of cable sprang apart, red and blue and green, hissing and crackling like an angry hydra. He jumped back, feeling something in his shirt-pocket thump against his chest. The lights flickered and dimmed for fifty feet in either direction. "YEAH!" Spike howled, and hauled back for another strike, lion-gold eyes burning in the manufactured darkness. The axe-blade flashed again and electrical mayhem ensued. More light panels died. "Burn me up sight unseen, will you? CREATURE OF SODDING DARKNESS HERE! YOU WANT ME? COME GET ME!"
"These are the torch-you-with-a-look guys? Is this really a good idea?" Xander backed nervously down the tunnel.
"One of my plans, and you have to ask?" The third blow bypassed the cables and smashed into the tile, which exploded into mother-of-pearl powder under the force of it. The fourth sent chunks of plaster and concrete flying like shrapnel. Somewhere Xander was yelling at him to watch it, but Spike was lost in the moment, face a snarling demonic mask of fury, caught up in the orgasmic rush of destruction. Nothing in the world existed but to break and tear and ravage, to ruin the dull perfection of this place--and the only thing missing was best part of all, the sour tang of fear and the screams of the dying. Harris's racing heart was a siren song, calling up lush, sensual images of the blade tearing through bone and muscle like a knife through Camembert, of fangs in flesh and sweet hot blood flowing and the bastard had never liked him, fine to use old Spike for muscle but God forbid you let him touch the women and all he'd have to do was lose that last sliver of self-control and--
--and the chip, thank God and That Fucking Bitch Walsh, would knock him flat on his arse. There was a perverse freedom in knowing he could let his worst self rage and foam and not have to worry about the consequences. Spike put his back into it and swung again, and the whole wall shuddered and cracked, plaster and cement falling away in huge flaking slabs and choking the tunnel with dust. The axe-blade was starting to blunt and deform under the force of his blows, but Spike was past noticing; the hole in the wall was deep enough to stick an arm in up to the elbow.
CEASE.
It came from everywhere and nowhere, a voice like the tolling of bells, like a chord struck on an organ whose pipes were the winds themselves. Spike froze mid-swing at the sound, hated it from the first note and longed for it never to fall silent, yearning so mixed with loathing it made him physically ill, tied knots in his gut and pulled them tighter with every note. Radiance flooded the tunnel again and he threw a hand up to guard his eyes, snarling, fighting to regain ascendancy over himself.
It was a whirlwind of eyes, a rush of wings, a clash of blades, a shining in the air. It slid away from any attempt to pin it down with words; it was beautiful beyond thought, and Spike balled up his desolation and fear and longing and stuffed it down into the sub-basements of his mind. He turned to face the approaching creature with all his customary bravado, leaning on the handle of his beat-up axe and smirking into the face of heaven. It spread vast pinions, every covert a glittering razor, every primary a saber of light. CREATURE OF DARKNESS, YOU HAVE NO PLACE HERE.
"That's ducky by me," said Spike. "Why don't you let us out, then?"
"Spiiiike," Xander said, jabbing him in the ribs with an elbow. He gave the thing a sickly grin. "Don't pay any attention to my idiot friend here, he's got Tourette's. It compels him to stupidly insult supernatural creatures way bigger than he is. If you'll show us the way out I promise to take him home and put him to bed with a nice bottle of whiskey and--" Aside, to Spike, he hissed, "What is that thing?"
"Harrier demon," Spike whispered back, taking the opportunity to feel around under cover of the duster. What the hell did he have in his pocketses? String, or... his fingers met glass and metal. Bloody sodding hell, not nothing, his glasses. After Buffy’d left the crypt this afternoon he’d put them on to read the footy scores and gnash his teeth over the match report of Man U’s humiliating loss to West Ham. He must have tucked them into his pocket after, while constructing an elaborate and impractical scheme to stow away on a cargo plane to England and eat Jerome Defoe. The second time he’d done that lately, and he couldn’t afford to be that careless with them; it wasn’t as if he could pop over to the nearest Lenscrafters and get a new prescription. Xander was staring at him curiously; Spike stuffed the spectacles back down in his pocket and affected indifference. “Heard of 'em. Never seen one before."
"If it's a demon, what's with the 'creature of darkness' line?"
"It's a good demon, nitwit." And unfortunately well into the incinerate-vampires-with-a-look range. He hadn't expected anything this powerful. "Working directly for the Powers--they don't often mingle with the riff-raff."
"There's good demons?"
Spike gave the Harrier a long-suffering, 'see what I have to put up with?' look. "Now about letting us off this roundabout--"
Unimpressed, it shimmered in the air before them like a heat-mirage in summer, a roiling mist of light and air and terrible swift swords. Its attention fixed upon Xander for a moment, examining, evaluating, and discarding in seconds. YOU ARE FOUND WANTING. YOUR SINS ARE MANY. It paused. BUT INSIGNIFICANT. Its Argus-eyed regard turned upon Spike. I AM CHARGED WITH THE ELIMINATION OF SUCH AS YOU. And blades lashed out like lightning in all directions, searing brilliant tongues of flame.


"...the property was entailed, of course, and went to the cousin in Leicester, but the will settled five hundred pounds apiece on each of Letitia's children..."
"Uh huh." Buffy squinched her eyes at the ceiling a few times, hoping to avert their incipient glazing-over a few seconds longer. She took another swallow of kiwi-strawberry, which, as an alternative to listening to Halfrek, was becoming downright palatable. In order to explain how she'd come to be William's (snarl) intimate friend, Halfrek felt it necessary to explain in detail the history of their respective families for three generations back. No matter how juicy, gossip lost its piquancy when it was a hundred and fifty years out of date, and this gossip had been on the desiccated side to begin with--so far Spike's-- William's--family came off as the sort of people who showed up as background characters in a duller-than-average A&E miniseries.
"...so when the family removed to Hampshire, William's father married the youngest Cavendish girl, and..."
Another generation down. Maybe they'd get William conceived before the party was over. Buffy began assembling a cast list in her head for Middlemarch II: The Revenge of Dorothea. Spike in a cravat. Mmm. Not bad. She added black leather boots, a riding crop, and those skin-tight riding breeches to her mental image and mussed up its hair a little. Mmmmmm... very bad.
On the other side of the coffee table, Anya shucked the wrapping from another combination waffle iron/grill and added it to the varicolored paper mountain at her feet. There were two identical gifts in the pile of opened presents already, and Buffy felt a faint sense of satisfaction that at least her present hadn't been a re-run. "This is lovely, though redundant," Anya said, examining Waffle Iron #3. For Anya, that was the height of tact.
"It does Belgian," Lorri pointed out.
Anya's eyes grew damp and her lower lip trembled. "Xander loves Belgian waffles."
Trembly Anya + pissed off Xander another argument. Buffy tossed her hair out of her eyes. Maybe she should try to talk to him... Advice to the lovelorn from Buffy Summers, number one on the doomed relationship hit parade for five years running! Run, Xander, run!
“...hate My Little Pony," Sandra said to Tara, who was hanging over the back of the couch next to Willow. "Horse craziness is all about girls coming to terms with sex and masculine power, for that you need a horse. Take the Black Stallion novels--"
"See, this is why I was destined for the lesbian thing," Willow said. "Horses are just four hooves waiting to step on your foot."
Tara pouted. "I loved those books! And 'King of the Wind!'"
Sandra nodded and gestured violently with a carrot stick. "The whole point is that the Black's a half-wild killer, but he loves Alex and will do anything for him. Our daughter eats that up. The toy companies of America take this primal symbol of power and virility and neuter it, make it into these harmless little pastel eunuchs with fluffy tails..."
"...so when the season opened I came up to London and was most displeased to discover William had let a room in..."
Drat. Missed William's conception altogether. "Buffy, when can we fit you for your bridesmaid's dress?" Lorri cut across the several lines of conversation.
It was astonishing how much a wine cooler or two did to reconcile one to asparagus green. Though the thought of those ruffles still elicited a shudder of horror. Buffy selected a Triscuit and topped it with a slice of cheddar. "Um... I'm probably free Tuesday or Wednesday. Monday we have that, um, thing."
"Ah, yes. The thing. Wednesday is good," Anya said. She surveyed Buffy with an appraising eye. "It's a good thing I didn't ask right after you came back. You're gaining weight and the dress wouldn't have fit by January."
Buffy choked on her cracker. "Thank you, because I so needed to hear that."
Anya patted her shoulder with a kindly smile. "Oh, don't worry, you're still way too skinny."
Sandra paused in railing against the evils of small pink plastic horses to the prepubescent feminine psyche to eye Buffy's reed-slim body and raise a skeptical eyebrow. "Please, God, can I gain weight like that?"
Leaning back against the sofa cushions and listening to the voices swirl around her, Buffy could see with Slayer-vision clarity--perhaps it was the kiwi-strawberry going to her head--a future where this was her life, where there was no mysterious thing on Monday to interfere with dress fittings, where her conversations would revolve around diets and children and office gossip and subverting the paradigm of corporate America. And it wouldn't be perfect and it wouldn't be safe, because husbands had industrial accidents and mothers died of brain hemorrhages and sisters got caught shoplifting. Side by side with the two-point-five-kids-and-white-picket-fence future was another: darker, stranger, wilder. Herself at thirty, or forty, or fifty, a thin tough woman with stormy eyes and hard hands, going places and doing things which defied description, with a lean pale man at her side who looked far too young for her. No kids, unless Dawn provided some nieces and nephews for her and Spike to spoil rotten. No marriage, unless heart given for heart counted for as much or more than legal formality. No easy answers as she grew older and he didn't. And the only thing that picket fence would be used for was making stakes.
Door Number One, Door Number Two. Or you can go for the box behind the curtain...
The building shuddered. Little shrieks and yips of surprise broke out around the room; pictures rattled on the wall and dishes clinked and jittered on the tables. In the contents of every half-full glass and bottle concentric waves shivered in and out of existence and a few of the women dashed for doorways in the native Californian's instinctive search for load-bearing masonry. Outside a grinding rumble culminated in a cannon-loud crack of noise--had one of the other buildings collapsed?
Buffy was halfway to the front door before her brain caught up with her reflexes and pointed out that the noise was far out of proportion to anything such a mild tremor should have caused. As she threw open the door, the parking lot exploded in a blaze of white light, bright as midday, shining from a raw crater thirty feet across in the middle of the landscaping between Xander's building and the next. The turf was thrown back as if exploded from below and a whole segment of the adjoining sidewalk and parking lot was a crumpled bank of asphalt and concrete; the carport over the residents' parking spaces was peeled back upon itself like the lid of a sardine tin, its supporting posts poking crazily into the floodlit sky. Several cars had tipped over, wheels spinning helplessly like the feet of glittering upended beetles. And rising out of the crater...
"What is--?" Willow was right behind her. "Oh my--Buffy, is that a demon?"
Buffy licked her suddenly-dry lips, staring down at the incandescent creature below. "I don't know." Small dark figures swam across the bright background. "But whatever it is, there's people--"
Anya shouldered her way through the door, shoving Willow and Buffy aside. She stood on the landing with fingers pressed to lips. "Xander!"
"Anya! Wait!" Buffy cried, grabbing for her arm, but Anya was gone, racing down the steps and out into the parking lot. Buffy sprang after her, shouting "Come on, Will!" over her shoulder and taking the clattering stairs three at a time.


A wing of light arced across Spike's midriff, shearing through cloth and leather and flesh, the sword-blades of its primaries stained with dark blood when they swept away. The vampire dropped to a crouch, flinging the tails of his duster up and over his head as his flesh began to scorch in the intensity of the blaze. Xander charged forwards with a yell, whirling the trank gun overhead, straight into the face--well, the front, at least--of their opponent. It hadn't expected that, and instead of parrying reared up and back, trying to avoid hurting him. Whirlwind supernatural energies met earth and stone, colliding with the low ceiling, and the tunnel rocked with the basso rumble of earth tearing apart. Tiles fell in a blinding ceramic rain and half the roof vaporized. Screams and the blaring of half a dozen car alarms floated down through the hole in the sky.
If the falling ceiling didn’t bury him, he was going to choke to death. Xander stumbled blindly for a minute, totally lost. A sunburnt face loomed out of the dust and Spike's cold hard fingers circled his wrist, yanking him forward through the falling rubble. "Listen whelp, if I give you a toss up, can you catch hold up there?"
Xander shoved lank dark locks of hair out of his eyes and looked up; tattered indigo sky framed in fractal black had replaced gently glowing tile. "I have no idea." The air crackled as the Harrier surged towards them. "Find out, now!"
Spike immediately shifted his grip to Xander's belt and coat-collar. Xander had the stomach-churning sensation of being lifted off the ground like a kitten. With a grunt of effort Spike heaved him overhead and tossed him into the air, and Xander was sailing over the Harrier demon's head, or top, or whatever, seeing his spread-eagled, flailing self reflected in dozens of astonished crystalline eyes. He slammed face-first into the sloping rim of the crater, sliding downwards in a small landslide of earth and gravel and catching himself with a few desperate frog-kicks at the rubble.
He clawed his way over the rim and turned around in time to see Spike take a running leap straight at the Harrier. It might look like someone had blown the CGI budget, but the blades it was slicing and dicing and trying to make Julienne vampire with were real enough. His burnt lips skinned back over his fangs in a savage snarl, Spike brought the axe down and the dulled blade sank home, cleaving translucent eyes that bled rays of light into the dust-laden air. Spike hauled himself up along the haft of the axe, the toes of his boots jabbing for purchase among the joints of wings which flickered in and out of existence like the ghosts of bad cable reception. He stood for one precarious moment balanced on shifting air; then his lean body uncoiled, all the power in the muscles of calf and thigh released at once. Fifteen feet straight up he shot, his outstretched arms straining for the sky. At the apex of his leap one hand grasped a projecting shelf of broken asphalt, fingers raking gouges in the crumbling tar.
Out of the roiling mass of dust and grit the Harrier rose, a sunrise in the depths of midnight. It shook the axe free, its wound closing even as they watched, and soared upwards in glory. A fury of blades whirled upwards, and Spike, bathed in its painful light, jerked both knees up to his chest barely in time to escape losing a foot.
Xander belly-flopped over the edge as far as he could reach and clamped his hand around Spike's wrist. The normally-cool flesh was radiating heat from the burns he'd sustained, and it must have hurt like hell, but Spike didn't flinch. The asphalt outcropping disintegrated under the pressure of Spike’s fingers and his full weight came down on Xander’s arm and shoulder with a bone-wrenching jerk. For a small eternity Xander held a hundred and sixty pounds of dead weight vampire one-handed, dangling over the lip of the new-made pit. Then he heaved upwards, panting with effort; Spike’s free hand found another ledge, and he was up and over the rim. Spike lurched to his feet and the two of them stood swaying on the precipice, clutching one another's shoulders as if that'd make a difference if the whole edge dropped out from under them.
Spike favored Xander with his smarmiest grin. “Awwww. Harris is my bestest pal.”
“So do you actually want to end up a big pile of dust?” The Harrier spun up out of the crater, a tornado of sunlit razor plumage. "I think you got it mad," Xander observed.
"You think?" Spike swiped his sleeve across his nose--on second glance, maybe he wasn't as badly burned as Xander'd thought, not too much worse than the sunburn he'd gotten showing off last week. All to the good; watching charred vampire bits flake off wasn't high on his big fun agenda. Xander looked around; half a dozen car alarms were still blatting a maddening symphony in the background, set off by the noise and tremor, and people were pouring out of the complexes to see what was going on. There were several overturned cars in the parking lot, one of which, a small dark blue Tiercel, was teetering precariously on the very edge of the crater. He felt a most unheroic relief at the thought that his car was parked at the other end of the lot.
With a thunder of wings the creature was out of the hole and after them. Spike toppled backwards, dragging Xander with him. Both of them scrambled away from the pit on hands and knees before lurching to their feet. Xander spun round in place, looking for a weapon. Rocks. There had to be something a step up from rocks.
"Xander!" Anya's voice, a terrified screech over the car alarms. "Are you all right?"
The Harrier halted, mantling its multitude of wings, a raptor sighting new prey. It didn't attack at once, as if Anya confused its senses. It hovered in place, undecided between two targets, the wind of its passage kicking up a flurry of dust and debris. CHILD OF ARASHMAHAR? it asked, its voice the crackle of windblown flame. Anya froze, mesmerized by the creature as it hovered over the parking lot, but new determination filled her dark eyes and she started towards Xander again.
"Oh, bollocks!" Spike was off like a flash, tearing off round the rim of the crater in the opposite direction, to what purpose Xander couldn't tell--saving his own skin, maybe; with his departure the terror of wings and eyes swooped down upon Anya, whirling blades leaving trails of fire on the air.
"NO!" Xander screamed, the harsh panicked sound of a man losing something vital. He forgot Spike, forgot the fact that this thing could turn him into shish kebab, forgot everything except the fact that it was bearing down on Anya. He broke into a stumbling run around the edge of the pit, jumping chunks of sidewalk. Anya screamed as well, fear and anger striking sparks in her voice, and flung a ragged fist-sized hunk of asphalt at the oncoming Harrier. It hit a sword blade and bounced off.
"Keep away from her!" he yelled, painfully aware of his complete inability to back up his threat. He skidded to a halt, interposing himself between Anya and the Harrier. A quarter of the way around the pit, he caught a glimpse of Willow, her hair an unmistakable blaze of red in the parking lot floodlights. She floated up to perch on the bed of an overturned Ford Rambler and stood there like a general surveying a battlefield, then flung her arms skyward and began a chant. The words squirmed away from his head when he tried to remember them. Violet lightning began to gather about her outstretched hands, snap crackle pop.
If it wasn't willing to hurt him, and he could just play human shield for long enough... Willow'd come through.
I HAVE NO WISH TO HARM YOU, the Harrier hissed in the dry wail of Santa Ana winds, feinting right and left with razor-tipped wings.
"Well, then, don't!" Xander wondered if he could get behind a car or something, but all the vehicles were on the other side of the crater. A bush, then, or a lamp post--anything besides thin air.
IT IS MY DUTY TO SLAY CREATURES OF EVIL.
"Harming her is harming me, you Electrical Parade reject!" Xander pulled Anya into a protective hug and she burrowed into his shoulder, sobbing. "And she's not a demon!"
NO. YET HER ESSENCE CONTAINS VAST DARKNESS.
Essence? "Ahn, what’s it's talking about?" Was that her soul? They never talked about that trickiest of subjects if they could help it; easier just to assume that human form came with a human soul included.
The Harrier shimmied back and forth, restless and, to Xander’s possibly biased perceptions, pissed off. THERE IS IMBALANCE HERE. CONFUSION.
"Sodom and Gomorrah, rains of frogs, Slayers and vampires living together, yeah, yeah! What's that got to do with Anya?"
HAVE YOU NOT TOLD HIM, CHILD OF ARASHMAHAR?
Anya moaned, and Xander looked wildly from her to the Harrier. "Told me what? Anya, what--"
Her head drooped, and then Anya straightened, pulling away from him and straightening her jacket. She looked the Harrier in the eyes, fear replaced with resignation. "It can tell," she said, her voice shaking only a little.
"Tell what?"
"What I am." Anya began putting her hair in order, unnaturally composed. "What I've always been. Well, not always, but for the last thousand years, give or take a decade."
Xander stared at her. Anya: straightforward to the point of rudeness. Able to rattle off the histories of a dozen major demon clans in excruciating detail and completely in the dark about the social relevance of Star Wars. Rapaciously intelligent about subjects that interested her, a financial whiz and cutthroat business woman, beautiful, sexy, desperately in love with him... and human, absolutely, positively human.
Except that she'd started out with no more concern for the welfare of non-Xander humans than Spike had for non-Buffy humans, and still wasn't exactly a font of charity. And she looked back as fondly on her days of meting out destruction as Spike did. And... "You don't have a soul," he whispered.
"I do too!" Anya shot back, unnatural calm giving way to familiar and reassuring brusqueness. She stamped one well-shod foot. "I was born human, you know! I have a perfectly good soul, it's just--complicated. When D'Hoffryn recruits us to be vengeance demons we're... converted. Given the demonic aspect, and the powers, and the pendant to control them. And cleansed of..." She gave a fidgety twist of one hand. "Distractions."
"Distractions?"
"You know." Anya folded her arms defensively across her chest. "Empathy. All that tiresome feeling sorry for people. We wouldn't be any good as vengeance demons if we got half-way through a wish and started feeling sorry for the victim, would we? I became a demon when I was seventeen, and..." A spot of hectic red appeared on each cheek, but she kept her head high and defiant. "I never un-became one. I gave myself human form to grant Cordelia's wish, and when my pendant was destroyed I got stuck this way, but it didn’t change who I was inside. I've always been Anyanka--if D'Hoffryn would ever give me a new pendant, the big meanie."
The Harrier demon flickered from side to side; Xander suspected that had it not been beneath its dignity, (and had it possessed a visible mouth) the thing would have been smirking and saying I told you so! Xander drew a deep gulping breath. “Anya’s not evil. No matter what else she may be, she’s not evil. She helps people now.”
“I never was evil,” Anya said, irritated. “More amoral. Most demons are. Honestly, with the exception of species like vampires who give the rest of us a bad name, the whole ‘demon equals evil’ thing is overdone.” She gave the Harrier a nervous smile. “As you should know, uh, sir, being a good demon yourself. Not to mention that I’m all contaminated again with feelings about people I really have no reason to feel about...”
YOU HAVE CAUSED GREAT SUFFERING. YOUR DEATH IS JUSTICE. Its myriad eyes turned to Xander. I HAVE NO WISH TO HARM YOU, BUT IF I MUST DO SO TO DESTROY THIS CREATURE, I SHALL.
Xander wondered if this was one of those dreams you woke up from to discover you were still dreaming. Here he was, standing in a parking lot, having just saved a vampire's ass and trying to keep his ex-demon fiancé from being touched by an angel, or as near to one as he was probably ever going to see. All his worst fears confirmed. All that was left was to look down and discover he wasn’t wearing any pants. And there was Anya gazing at him with brown-velvet eyes no different than they had been this morning, when they woke up together. Eyes brimming with tears and anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he choked out.
She shook her head. “You would have left me.”
It was just a flat statement of fact, and it got him right in the gut. Xander turned back to the Harrier.
YOU KNOW WHAT SHE IS. WILL YOU STAND ASIDE?
Xander stared at the ground, stared at the toes of his boots, stared at his hands. At last he looked up. "Sometimes," he said, sounding far too reasonable in his own ears, "You just get to a place in life where you have to make a radical re-evaluation of the whole good-bad demon-human thing and let me see if I can explain this... I understand Ahn’s a demon. And...” He folded his arms and stood foursquare in front of Anya, who looked at him with dawning hope. “I DON'T CARE!"


A handful of Anya's party guests had followed her out to the parking lot and were milling about in confusion. Spike didn't see Halfrek among them; no surprise there, as the gang from Arashmahar generally buggered off at the first sign of trouble. As Spike reached the Tiercel, someone else finally noticed the movements behind the tinted windows that his far-sighted predator's eyes had picked up on at once. An unfamiliar woman's voice shouted, "Lorri, call 911, there's someone stuck in this car! It's going to fall in!"
Ignoring the onlookers, Spike leaped atop the car and crouched beside the driver's door like some exceptionally athletic gargoyle, studying the interior through the window. The door-handle had jammed; pulling at it, he knew from experience, would just rip it off. He needed leverage. Spike balled up a fist in his duster and sent it smashing through the glass, which dissolved in pea-size fragments, then grabbed the window-frame in both hands and pulled. The door shot open with a crash, torn half off its hinges, and Spike ducked head and shoulders inside. Inside was a small dark woman; she'd somehow slipped free of the shoulder harness when the car tipped over, and was hanging half-suspended from the seatbelt, her knees jammed into the steering wheel. He could smell blood, but it was scarcely noticeable over the scent of his own; not enough to indicate serious injury. In the distance he heard the wail of approaching sirens. Best hurry before Sunnydale’s finest showed up to complicate matters.
At the sight of Spike coming through the window she began struggling to get away, flopping like a gaffed fish. Spike tried grabbing an ankle, to no avail. "Quit wriggling, you stupid bint, you're being rescued!" The woman's only response was a terrified scream and an attempt to claw through the back of the seat. Spike realized belatedly that he was still in game face and switched back to human features. It didn't seem to help; the woman kicked him in the chest, drawing an answering stab of pain from the cut across his belly. "OW! Bloody--if you don't be still so I can get you out of here, I'm going to knock you senseless, sod the headache!"
A familiar and welcome scent tickled his nose through the tang of hot metal and dust, and a second later Buffy dropped down past him through the open window and began undoing the tangle of seatbelts. "Ma'am, calm down! You're going to be all right! Your knight in shining armor act leaves something to be desired," she observed as Spike bent the steering wheel out of their way a tad. "Maybe more of a Wil Smith vibe, less of a Jack Nicholson?"
The car creaked and wobbled under their added weight. Spike shifted as much of his weight as he could forward, and the unnerving teetering stilled for the moment. "New to the hero business, love--I'm still working on my theme song. Here, pass her up."
They handed the dazed woman (she kept staring at Spike and shaking her head, and he had to exert a great deal of willpower to keep from flashing her a little fang just to see her jump) off to one of the newly-arrived paramedics and hopped down off the Tiercel. Spike watched them lead her away, eyes hooded, an indefinable yet strangely familiar emotion teasing round the corners of his heart. He wasn’t sure he wanted to pin it down; it reeked of something he didn’t want to face head-on yet. Buffy glanced up at him, a little smile curling the corners of her mouth. "The George Hamilton look? Not working."
"Ta ever so. I'll pawn the tanning bed."
"What're we looking at?"
From teasing to General Buffy, all terse and commandery, demanding a report from her second-in-command. Spike glanced across the pit; Xander was still playing dodge 'em with the winged wonder. "Harrier demon. They're warriors of light--don't usually muck around with us vamps; it'd be like shooting flies with a cannon. They get sent after things like your late unlamented Mayor."
"Then why's it after Anya?"
Spike shook his head. "Buggered if I know. 'Less it can tell she used to be a demon; they can sniff out the wicked like bloodhounds, and vengeance demons are a bloody sight more powerful than a mere vampire. D'Hoffryn's girls can only grant wishes according to the rules, and Harriers are keen on rules--but the collateral damage from a few badly-phrased wishes alone would set that shiny bastard off. Our Anya was a vengeance demon for a long, long time."
"Well, she's not now." Buffy looked grim. "How do we stop it?"
A bark of laughter escaped him. "Got a bazooka handy?"
Buffy chewed on her lower lip. "If it's one of the good guys, we can talk to it. It's got to listen. We just need to get its attention."
"Mmm. Suppose beaning it with an axe wasn't conducive to negotiations, then."
Buffy’s jaw dropped. "Why did you--?”
Spike opened his mouth, realized he was about to say Because it bloody near broke my only pair of glasses, that’s why! and was overcome with the dire conviction that this, in conjunction with whatever Halfrek had already told her about the general pathetic wankerdom of his breathing days, would undoubtedly mean the end of his and Buffy’s short but eventful relationship in a fit of hysterical laughter. “It hit me first.”
“Oh. Then I wouldn't hang around the mailbox waiting for a letter from the Nobel committee, no." Buffy looked around, then pointed to the collapsed carport, a crumpled length of fiberglass and steel draped across the hoods of half-a-dozen assorted cars. "Attention-getting device."
Spike grinned at her. "On it, love." Buffy crouched down, wrapped her arms around the base of the support beam and pulled, her face contorted with effort. Spike took hold of the scalloped edge if the roof where the two pieces were bolted together and ripped. Rivets popped and sun-weakened fiberglass snapped, and the whole thing tore free with a crash. Spike shoved the roof section away, and it landed with a crash, doing serious damage to the roof of the Geo Metro in the nearest parking space. No loss there; the owner should thank him for forcing them to get a real car.
In a trice they wrestled the support pole free of its moorings. They had a weapon, twelve feet of twisted metal, one end terminating in a club of cement where they'd torn it free of the pavement. Unwieldy as hell, but big enough to make the Harrier sit up and notice without putting them within slashing reach. He hefted the pole to shoulder height and Buffy looked at him, her nose adorably smudged, her teeth bared in a fighting grin. "Charge!"
Xander pulled Anya out of the way of another slashing appendage as Spike and Buffy barreled towards them at full and terrifying speed. The pole was a bitch and a half to run with, over-balanced at the club-end and inconveniently shaped to grip, but the two of them never missed a step, flying over the uneven ground as if they'd practiced it for weeks. "DUCK!" Spike bellowed, and Xander dropped flat with Anya beneath him. Vampire and Slayer leaped over their heads in unison and rammed the club-end of the rebar into the center of the whirlwind. Half a dozen blades struck sparks rebounding off the metal, and their combined strength and momentum slammed the Harrier back a good twenty feet, spinning above the center of the crater like a psychotic buzzsaw.
SLAYER? The massive composure in its voice wavered for an instant. Had they wounded it? Considering how easily it had shrugged off the axe, that didn’t seem likely; they’d done the equivalent of knocking the breath out of it, no more. YOU OPPOSE ME?
Buffy crouched on a concrete slab, teetering on the edge of the pit, her face washed of detail by the Harrier’s actinic light. "I won't let you hurt Spike and Anya!"
I AM WHAT YOU ARE. A WARRIOR OF LIGHT. THEY ARE... WHAT WE ARE BOUND TO DESTROY--YOUNGER SISTER, YOU BETRAY YOUR HERITAGE AND YOUR PURPOSE.
"Better that than betray my friends!" Buffy’s voice shook with outrage.
Two of the women who'd followed Anya down--Lorri and Sandra--joined Xander in shielding her. Spike gave the two of them an irritated look. Sod it all, they would have to be helpful; he was going to have to revise his list of people he wouldn’t kill if the chip came out again. Lorri waved her cell phone at the Harrier angrily. "Leave her alone! What's she done to you?"
IF IT IS YOUR CHOICE TO ALLY YOURSELF WITH CREATURES OF DARKNESS... The dispassionate, beautiful voice rang with genuine regret. THEN I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO...
"Now just a bleeding minute, you've got it backwards!" Spike took an indignant step forward. It was one thing for the Harrier to go after him, or even Anya, quite another for it to slang Buffy. "The creatures of darkness are allied with her!"
“Exactly!” Buffy’s chin jutted. “They’re helping me. You don’t need to hurt them.”
The Harrier hovered there, fizzling to itself like a Guy Fawkes bonfire that hadn’t quite come off. YOU ALLY YOURSELF WITH HER FOR SELFISH REASONS? it asked, sounding almost hopeful, as if this would give it a comfortable out.
"Right," Spike said, plumbing new depths of sarcasm. "Completely, utterly selfish. Makes a big difference to my hapless victims.” He tapped his skull with a forefinger. “The batteries go south tomorrow, and I happen on a tasty morsel in some alley during my midnight stroll--" He bared his fangs and adopted a menacing crouch. "Grr, argh!" He whipped round and cowered away from himself, wringing his hands. "Eek! Please don't eat me, you ruggedly handsome creature of the night, you!" Spike drew himself upright and struck a noble pose. "It’s your lucky day, little lady! Happens I'm off eating people; it upsets the missus. On your way!" Another volte face. "You mean you're not letting me go out of devotion to good for its own sake? You nasty vampire, get right back here and open a vein this minute!"
FACETIOUSNESS DOES NOT ADVANCE YOUR ARGUMENT.
“Yeh, well, it keeps me amused.”
YOU LEFT YOUR COMPANION TO SAVE ANOTHER. WHY?
“Bloody hell, I don’t know! Because...” Because why? He hadn’t thought about it, he’d just done it. Man U’s tragic defeat by West Ham (honestly now, West Ham?) sending him barmy? Some kind of conditioned reflex? “Because it’s the... the thing the Slayer’d want me to do.”
The searchlight intensity of the Harrier’s regard sliced scalpel-sharp through heart and mind, weighing all it found on scales infinitely precise. Weirdly insignificant moments drifted up from the vaults of memory: Dragging Dru away from the Crawford Street mansion, feeling a twinge of concern--He’s going to kill her . (Then he shrugged it off, and beat it out of town.) Pouring out his sorrows to Joyce, and leaping to her defense when Angel startled her . (Then Buffy showed up and things went downhill.) Xander, standing in front of the ghost-infested Lowell House, asking Who’s with me?I am.= (Then he talked himself out of it.) Lisa, in the park, flinging her arms around him and sobbing in relief...
There was a note of surprise in the Harrier's voice when it spoke again. CREATURE OF DARKNESS, YOU ARE... TAINTED. IMPURE.
Whatever primal awe had struck him at the Harrier's appearance was wearing off fast. "I can't bloody well please any of you lot, can I?" Spike snapped. What did it matter what this jumped-up Christmas tree topper thought of him? “Not bad enough here, not good enough there--blow me a tune I don't know, Gabriel.” Not as if he'd expected a pat on the head from a representative of the Powers, any more than he'd expected Harris to jump for joy at the news Buffy was giving him a tumble, and it didn't sting either, not a bit. What had he expected, wide-eyed astonishment and 'Well, Spike old man, aren’t you extraordinary? Evil as the day is long, but doesn’t the white hat look dashing?'
It paused, almost... uncertain? INTERESTING. The Harrier stood quiescent for a moment, considering, then swelled like a startled cat, shedding sunbeams. It gave vent to a long-drawn hiss. IF THE SLAYER CLAIMS YOU AS AN ALLY, THEN THE SOURCE OF THE IMBALANCE THAT DREW ME HERE--
Behind them, from her vantage point on the Rambler, Willow's chant reached its climax. Raw black-violet flame arced across the alarm-filled air. A multi-hued, inhuman scream rose from the Harrier demon, and all its light and flame turned in upon itself, imploding in darkness. With a wail of agony it turned tail and dove back into the tunnels, trailing streamers of glowing fluid that writhed in the air for minutes before fading away. Willow sat down on the fender of the Rambler with a thump and a small grin. "Don't know my own strength.”
Spike eyed Willow. Witch’d never said a truer word. “Guess we didn’t need the bazooka after all.”
Buffy dropped her end of their improvised lance and bent over the edge of the pit. “Wills--that was amazing, but it was about to--we almost found out--we were talking to it!”
Willow looked puzzled. “Yeah, I saw. Good job keeping it occupied, guys!"
Buffy’s lips thinned in frustration, and she leaned into Spike’s side. Spike wrapped an arm and the somewhat tattered remnants of his duster around Buffy’s shoulders as a couple of police officers came trotting up bearing rolls of yellow tape, and together they allowed Sunnydale’s finest to shoo them away. One by one, behind them, the car alarms fell silent. As they made their way across the parking lot, Buffy shook her head and looked back at the pit. There was no sign of the Harrier. Softly enough that only Spike’s ears could pick the words up against the ragged chorus of police radios, she whispered, “Oh, this isn’t gonna look good on the permanent record.”

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