Riley had it all worked out. He'd played the simulations in his head a thousand time s. Every possible permutation, from shameless wish-fulfillment (Riley Finn, International Man of Mystery, strolls into the Circle K with a supermodel on each arm, to buy a Slurpee from remorseful old maid Buffy Summers) to sober, mature speculation (The two of them sit in her living room, balancing the good teacups on one knee--we both made mistakes, can we just be friends?) He'd prepared for every eventuality.

Or almost every eventuality. He'd somehow neglected to run the "Make a stupid personal remark immediately and piss Buffy off from the get-go" scenario. It figured; the moment he set foot back in Sunnydale, things had started to go to hell. Buffy's eyes took fire; her chin came up, and without moving another muscle, the casual curve of her arm around Spike's waist became a political statement. "For the record? Superpowers are optional in the Buffy Boyfriend Sweepstakes, but you do have to be present to win."

Ow. Riley's shoulders stiffened, then slumped. Well, they hadn't exactly parted ways with an exchange of gift baskets. Take it like a man, Finn. "I suppose I deserved that."

Buffy's expression wavered between guilt and annoyance that he'd played the Mature Adult card first. Spike's hand settled on the back of her neck, long pale fingers soothing the taut line of muscle and tendon. It strained belief that Spike's sick little infatuation had come to anything--but there he was, standing at her side with an undeniable air of entitlement, his eyes fixed upon Riley with aloof suspicion. Buffy bit her lip, giving Spike a little glance before meeting Riley's eyes once more. "I'm sorry. I didn't--"

"Don't apologize. I was out of line. Your personal life is none of my business." There, boundaries firmly established. Sort of. He couldn't help it--his eyes kept straying to Spike. Morbid curiosity. The furtive, starving look in the vampire's eyes, that had little to do with physical hunger, was gone. Buffy looked good, too, like a weight had been...not lifted, maybe, but shared. Her hair was a darker blonde than he remembered, the fine lines at the corners of her mouth looked more due to smiles than unendurable strain, and she'd put on a few pounds, regaining the lush, athletic curves he'd seen in only her high school yearbook photos. Buffy had back. Which was the last thing he should be noticing.

"That's the sixty-four dollar question, innit? What exactly is your business is at the moment?" Spike strutted over, nose to chin with the larger man, a wiry, malevolent terrier facing down a Great Dane. Riley had a good six inches and fifty pounds on Spike, and he'd gotten accustomed to seeing fear in the vampire's eyes, back in the old days. There wasn't any now. Sure that Buffy would protect him, or...? "Taking up old habits, Finn? Didn't realize Amherst was pimping his minions out, but--"

"I don't know any Amherst," Riley interrupted, his eyes flinty with distaste. Damn it all. Tonight his past seemed bent on catching up with him in an embarrassingly literal manner. Another ten minutes and the whole mess would have been resolved, one way or another, but of all the gin joints in all the world, Buffy had to show up here and now, with her own personal bloodhound in tow no less. There was nothing to do but brave it out; he'd planted the amulet on the demon in time, the odor of garlic had thoroughly confused his trail, and he was fairly certain neither of them had gotten a positive visual ID. "I made you a promise once, Spike. I can still keep it."

Spike's grin uncurled like a cat stretching in the sun, and there was a ten-cylinder purr in his voice to match. "An oldie but a goodie: Love to see you try."

"Stop it," Buffy interrupted. "I don't want it to be like this. I call do-over, with fifty percent less bitterness." She held out a hand, assuming an expression of determined good cheer. "It's nice to see you again, Riley. I didn't expect to run into you in Sunnydale. In the middle of the night. In a parking lot." She laughed, self-conscious. "Or anywhere, ever."

Riley took her hand, and the tentative shake segued into a clumsy half-hug. Buffy pulled away and reclaimed Spike as quickly as manners allowed--no hint of yearning in her face, no sudden flowering of long-denied passion. Riley couldn't deny a little twinge of disappointment, but it was only a little twinge, thank God. Over. It really was over. Bottle of red, bottle of white kept running inanely through his head--it was good but at the same time sad, like he'd lost a childhood treasure and only just now noticed. He stepped back and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I want you to know--I didn't ask for this assignment. I was just the best qualified, because I know the territory. I was going to call you up tomorrow and give you the heads-up, and...well, ask for your help, to be honest."

Buffy blinked. "Um. Thanks. I think. What with?"

"Him, for one." He nudged the supine demon with the toe of his boot. "We've been tracking this puppy for days. Sam and I almost had it cornered in that old warehouse down on Main and Bleecker, but there was some kind of interference on the scanner, and we lost him. We split up, and it jumped me. Got me pretty good." He patted his right leg. Limp accounted for.

Buffy looked at Spike; Spike looked at Buffy. Both of them looked at him, Yeah, right, metaphorically tattooed on their foreheads. They hadn't bought it. He wouldn't have, if he were them. But all he needed was reasonable doubt.

As if the dubious looks were whizzing right over his head en route to Canada, Riley unhooked the trace scanner from his belt and bent over the fallen demon. He ran a hand through the coarse grey fur; it felt faintly greasy to the touch. Running the scanner over the creature's shaggy chest elicited a series of bleeps and chitters--confirmation, if he'd needed any, that this was one of the targets. Riley punched the coordinates of capture into the keypad, watching the results of the DNA analysis scroll across the tiny screen: traces of three different demon species. A chimera. One of the prototypes for Adam, though after three years the scars and suture-marks were barely visible. He tucked the scanner back into its holster and pulled out his cell phone. "Finn. Hostile 14's been terminated. Condos at 6917 North Bauden, just south of Crawford, parking lot in the back. Send a team along for pickup and disposal, stat." He glanced at Spike. "I may have a line on one of the black sheep."

He clicked the cell off and straightened, turning guileless eyes on Buffy. It was she whom he had to convince; Spike was only along for the ride. "When Fuzzy here started moving so fast along that alley," he jerked a casual thumb back in the direction of the service road, "I figured he'd stolen a car and I was gonna lose him, but you chased him right back into my arms. Thanks for the assist."

"I could have sworn we were chasing something with fewer arms." Buffy frowned down at the sprawled form of the demon.

Serpentine, serpentine! Riley neatly sidestepped and seized the offensive. "You and Spike are really... working together?"

Buffy tucked her arm more securely around Spike's middle and nodded. "We really are."

You could have powered L.A. for a week on Spike's smirk. "Working together, playing together, living together, all manner of togetherness, mate."

"That's..." Riley came to a decision; he had to tell her something. "Buffy, can we talk? In private? I've got a situation here, and this..." He indicated Spike with a flick of one hand. "Complicates things."

Spike's cheeks hollowed, and his scarred brow migrated a sardonic quarter-inch upwards. Buffy answered the question in the vampire's eyes with an imperceptible shake of her head. Couple semaphore. When she turned back to Riley at last, her smile was sincere and sunny. "Of course, but just so it's understood? If you tell me something I think he really needs to know, I'm passing it on. Since Spike and I are working together, and all."

His mind churned as he allowed Buffy to steer him down the row of Beamers and PT Cruisers and a candy-apple red '68 Mustang, standing out like Danny Zucco at a white-tie formal. Spike receded behind them, a Rorschach blot of ink and moonlight against the fender of the Mustang, his ashen head bent over cupped flame. The new-lit cigarette scribed a sigil of fire upon the night.

He hadn't anticipated this. He couldn't have. That Buffy had a not-so-secret fascination for vampires, sure; some of his less-plausible daydreams had involved rescuing her from the thrall of some undead Rico Suave with a Gothic mansion and a copy of Brooding For Dummies.

But Spike... A guy who stole women's underwear and got tanked on JD straight from the bottle wasn't Buffy's style, vampire or not. God knew he was the last person who could throw stones regarding sleazy vampire affairs, but he'd never pretended that they were anything but sleazy affairs. The idea of taking any of those nameless, faceless tricks into his home, much less his heart, was ludicrous. He'd sought them out in an attempt to discover what dark glory it was that drew Buffy into the night, and found nothing but squalor and desperation and hunger, his and theirs. Whatever Buffy got from her liaisons with the undead eluded him to this day. Night's language, which she spoke with such fluency, would forever remain a mystery to him.

She was so tiny, walking beside him. He'd forgotten how small she was; his memory made her larger than life. And she was still magnificent in a fight. The elation in her eyes, the ferocity in her grin, when that demon had come slamming down on the pavement, bones breaking like firecrackers... magnificent, and a little scary. "So, you and Spike. Anything else exciting happen while I was gone?"

She smiled, wistful. "The usual. Two apocalypses and counting, came back from the dead, dropped out of college after Mom died, and I'm teaching beginning and intermediate figure skating. You?"

I spent my first leave drunk off my ass in Tijuana, letting some cheap dead blonde drain me dry. But I got better. "I met a girl," Riley offered. "She even has a pulse."

"You're one up on me with the pulse." Buffy led him all the way to the end of the covered parking, out of range of Spike's inquisitive ears, and stopped. She took his hands in hers, tossed her bangs out of her eyes and looked up at him with great shining sea-mist eyes. "OK, Riley. It's just us. Was that you in the mansion?"

She was so earnest. Part of him wanted to spill the whole sordid tale and let her make it better. But damn it, he wasn't Mission's boyfriend any longer, and he'd never been the damsel in distress that Buffy would have made of him given half a chance. Asking for the Slayer's professional assistance was acceptable, whining to Buffy to bail him out of a jam wasn't. He could clean up his own messes. Riley retrieved his hand and raked blunt fingers through his hair. "I know what it looked like, but I don't do that anymore, Buff. I haven't let a vamp bite me for two years." He held out one arm and rolled the sleeve back. Some of the old scars were still visible in the right light, but the bare unmarked flesh was testimony in itself. "I'll strip so you can check if you want, but--" He allowed his tone to lighten, and jerked his head back at Spike, "I don't think he'd appreciate the competition. Can you trust me when I say it's nothing to do with the mission, and I'll take care of it in my own way?"

She searched his face, obviously torn, but in the end she nodded. and Riley seized the offensive. "Look, I said it was none of my business, and it's not, and I'm sorry, but I have to know. How serious is this...thing...you have with Spike? "

Buffy's eyes iced over. "How serious does it have to be?"

"What I mean is--" He was hacking his way through a jungle of words, none of which said the things he wanted to say. "I know you have, um, needs." Boy, do you have needs. "Sometimes you get caught up in the moment. You think it's only going to go so far, and before you know it you're in over your head..." And they both knew it wasn't her he was talking about. Riley abandoned the botched attempt at delicacy and ripped the Band-Aid off in one pull. "The behavior control microchip that Doctor Walsh's team designed was experimental. It was never intended to last for years under field conditions, and the ones that are still in commission are starting to break down. The aversion parameters in the biofeedback loops become distorted."

Buffy raised a hand. "Um...not Willow. Translation?"

"The chips are breaking down. We implanted behavior-control chips in about twenty HSTs, mostly vampires. About a dozen of them escaped the Initiative complex while you and Adam were duking it out. Until now they've been harmless." The set of his jaw turned grim. "My team's here to hunt down any surviving subjects--capture them and return them for study if possible, kill them if it isn't."

She looked interested, concerned, speculative. The implications weren't sinking in. He knew Buffy; she'd taken Spike out of one mental box and put him in another, and forgotten the old box existed. "It's been years," she pointed out. "What's the chances any of them are still in Sunnydale?"

Riley shrugged. "We have to start somewhere. And I knew for certain that at least one of them would be here." Her eyes were blank; he nodded down the long row of parking spaces. Spike was kicking the tires on the Mustang with the covetous expression of a man deeply regretting his retirement from grand theft auto. "Buffy...his chip is going to become increasingly unreliable. Eventually it'll stop functioning altogether. Odds are it'll fry his brain in the process and leave him a vegetable, but there's about a thirty percent chance it'll go out in a way that'll leave his higher functions intact. If that happens, he'll be able to kill again. Soon."

Buffy's hand flew to her mouth, penning in a gasp that was half relieved laughter, half guilt. "Oh. Oh, God, I forgot. You don't know. Spike--the chip's been gone for a year now. Willow took it out. It's a really long story, and--Riley, don't be stupid! He'd break you in two."

There were tones of voice that could have made those words palatable, even romantic, but Buffy was only a little impatient. And concerned. Always concerned. Riley's knuckles blanched around the stake which had appeared in his hand, muscles knotting across his back and shoulders. Half a parking lot away, the bobbing coal of Spike's cigarette dipped out of sight as the vampire bent to check under the hood of a sporty little Jaguar by the simple expedient of lifting the whole front end of the car off the ground. Riley tucked the stake back into his belt. "He probably could," he agreed.

He'd never been afraid of Spike, and he wasn't about to start now, but he had some mental boxes of his own to re-arrange: cross out Skinny little guy who can't hit back; write in Supernaturally strong, semi-invulnerable demon. He wasn't stupid enough to go Tyler Durden on a vampire who'd killed two Slayers with his bare hands; taking Spike down would require heavier artillery. But some wounds still ached, long after the weapons that dealt them had rusted away. Especially when he still didn't understand why they'd been dealt. "I never had a chance, did I? No one human did. Was it him? When you'd leave me at night after...was it him all along?"

"Was I cheating on you while you were cheating on me, you mean?" Sparks flew in Buffy's voice. "I went out at night to kill vampires, not screw them. If you think--" She cut herself off, squeezing eyes and fists tight. "Maybe I was too closed off. I'm sorry about that. But it's not--I didn't deserve... Even if I didn't love you, I could have, Riley Finn." She opened her eyes, and in their dark-lashed agate depths was all the pain he once could have wished for--ashes, now. "I could have."

This was the Buffy he understood, the Buffy he'd loved, the wounded and determined girl. What lay beneath that sunkissed California surface was something dark and deep and untouchable--the Slayer, glorious in the light and terrible in the darkness, as fey and strange a creature as the things she hunted. The irony was that he'd lost the girl in his desire to understand the Slayer. It could have worked. If I'd been different, if you'd been different, if everything had been different...

She needed to believe that. It would have to be enough.

Spike materialized at Buffy's side, a feral glitter of eyes in the dark, fifty yards of asphalt covered in less time than it took to say it. "Company."

Headlights pinned the three of them to the wall with as the APC hove into the parking lot, matte-black and deadly. It rumbled to a halt and a small battalion of men piled out of the vehicle and pounded across the lot, trailing long stark prison-break shadows and a demon-sized body bag like the flag at some surreal Iwo Jima. Riley's heart lightened at the sight of the tall, statuesque brunette leading the charge. Not everything had gone wrong tonight.

Without a word exchanged, Buffy and Spike had shifted positions, the vampire moving to the Slayer's left, each of them covering the other's off side. There was a fugitive gleam of gold in Spike's eyes as he watched the men at work, and a near-inaudible growl in his throat. Riley felt an unexpected surge of pride. It was good to be part of the thing that monsters feared. Sam jogged up, poked the muzzle of her modified M-16 through the zippered slit in the bag and nudged the demon. "Positive ID?"

"Absolutely, hon." Riley handed her the scanner and pulled her into a non-regulation embrace. "And check this out. Ninety-five point eight percent integration on the genetic scan. Halberg's gonna go wild."

Buffy looked from him to Sam, wary. "I'd heard the military had loosened up, but..." She sounded pardonably confused.

Riley blushed, and broke into a grin equal parts proud and sheepish. "Sorry. Buffy, this is Sam--Samantha Finn. My wife."

Dawn always left the porch light on for her. Mom had done that, once. At least twice a week, Buffy would turn the key in the lock and open the front door with her customary post-patrol stealth, to find her sister curled up in robe and slippers on the living room couch, yawning over her reconditioned Thinkpad and a supposed late night of homework. After the first couple of lectures on the importance of a good night's sleep to the educational process, Buffy gave up and restricted her pseudo-parental urgings to forbidding the consumption of caffeinated soda after twelve A.M.

Besides, there were certain things that absolutely required the liberal application of sisterly balm and solace.

"He had the nerve to ask if I was sneaking around with Spike before he broke up with me. Hello? Dumpee, not dumper! And then?" Buffy took a bite of her sandwich and flourished the remains in Dawn's general direction. Tara always left them something easy to fix for a post-patrol snack--more of a post-patrol dinner, really, since these days her schedule meant that breakfast was more often than not lunch. Mom had done that, too. Buffy sometimes pondered the fact that it took two people to fill Joyce Summers's shoes, three if she counted herself, because she always did the dishes after. "He said he knew I had needs. Which everyone knows is code for 'You're a great big ho.'"

"You can't be a ho," Dawn pointed out. "You're not getting paid." She selected a potato chip, scrutinized it for structural soundness, and began piling on successive layers of dip, bologna, pickle relish, and Cheez Whiz, the apparent goal of the enterprise being to create a Sears Tower of condiments before the chip got too soggy to support them. "You're a nymphomaniac."

Dawn didn't seem to have a handle on the whole balm-and-solace routine yet. "I don't have time to be a nymphomaniac," Buffy grumbled. Jobs and minions and slaying meant that those five-hour shagfests were a thing of the past. They could barely squeeze in an hour before bed these days. Maybe two. Three on weekends, tops. The post-workout quickies in the training room barely counted. Or the extended detours on slow patrol nights. Or the wake-up sex first thing in the morning. Or that time of month, when you couldn't keep Spike away with an Uzi... or...oh God, she was a nymphomaniac.

"Soldier Boy's just rightly jealous of the fact that you're my nymphomaniac." Spike plunked himself down on the couch with a bottle of Sam Adams and a plate of raw liver, which Buffy was given to understand was the vampire equivalent of Godiva chocolate. She didn't want to know what constituted the vampire equivalent of, say, broccoli or Spam. He propped his boots on the coffee table, vamped out, and pried the bottle top off with a fang, which, considering it was a screw-top cap, was a pointless display of macho vampire something-or-other and shouldn't look nearly as hot as it did. "Two bob says the World's Largest Cub Scout was lying through his pearly whites."

"Riley is innocent until proven guilty, hurrah for the overthrow of the Napoleonic code," Buffy replied loftily. "I mean, who hasn't had a perfectly harmless midnight rendezvous with a vampire in a deserted mansion at some point in their life?"

Spike popped a bloody, oozing chunk of let's-not-think-about-it into his mouth and waggled an eyebrow. "I meant about the wife. Bet she's hired for the occasion."

"Spike's right. Doctor? Demon fighter? Peace Corps volunteer? Sheeyeah, right." Dawn nibbled on another chip and cast a speculative eye on Spike's plate, but mangled bits of raw beef liver were apparently beyond even her elastic culinary pale. "I bet she's a robot or a clone or something. Is Warren out on probation? Did she make any whirring noises?" She swung into balm mode with belated enthusiasm. "Anyone who just dumps you and runs off to Bolivia for no reason isn't going to end up married to the lesbian love child of Mother Theresa and Xena, Warrior Princess."

"Belize. Riley had... reasons," Buffy protested, aware that her argument was suffering from severe anemia. "Secret, military reasons." Spike leaned forward, malicious amusement gleaming in his eyes, and opened his mouth. Buffy promptly stuffed it full of liver. Dawn might be mature and sophisticated and the same age she'd been when she'd started slaying, but there was no way in hell she was going to explain the vampire hooker fiasco. She ran a hand down the buttery folds of leather and fingered the tri-cornered tear in the sleeve of Spike's jacket. "This is pretty nasty." Look at the shiny non-sequitur; you are getting sleepy, sleeeeepy...

Spike choked down his unexpected mouthful and fell in with the diversion. "It's seen worse. I'll have someone take care of it." 'Someone,' Buffy knew, would be Not-A-Minion. It sometimes disturbed her that they ended up performing so many services far outside the range of what could reasonably be expected of an employee. Spike was perfectly capable of cleaning up after himself, but saw no reason to exert himself if he could bully or cozen someone else into doing it. Weirdly, the not-minions seemed to feel better about the whole arrangement when Spike imposed on them. Not that their emotional well-being made even number six on the list of priorities. Spike aimed a pointed look at the clock. "Bit, you get any forwarder on that report? Isn't it past time you were..."

"Off to bed so you can grope my sister?" Dawn collected her crumb-speckled books and got to her feet. "Yeah, I'm almost done. I don't know how much of your story I can use, though. I need to figure out how to cite 'Personal recollection of immortal vampire' in the bibliography. Mrs. Dembeau gets unreasonably fussy about stuff like that. "

Spike waved this objection away. "Giles went and wrote a whole bloody treatise on me; cite that and let the old bat argue with the Watcher about sources."

Buffy ran water into the sink while their voices receded up the stairs, Dawn badgering Spike about the details of some tall tale about vampire-crewed U-boats. Personally she thought the story ranked somewhere below "I've always been bad," on the accuracy scale, but she had other matters occupying her mind at the moment.

There were at least seven hundred and forty-two things she hadn't expected to see in that parking lot, and while Riley Finn might not have been number one, he certainly made the top twenty. She shuffled through the emotional Rolodex as she stacked plates--startled, stunned, surprised... oooh, looky, there in the corner, a little left-over betrayal!

Was that all? She'd shared almost two years of her life with the man. It wasn't Riley's fault that Angel had come along first and taken so much out of her, or that Spike had come along after and given her so much more back. Maybe he'd never roused the agonized longing Angel had, or the unbridled passion Spike did, but Riley'd been...nice. On paper, the perfect guy. That was the trouble: her vampires rated Harlequin-level adjectives, while Riley made do with 'reliable' and 'thoughtful.' Except he hadn't been so reliable there in the end, had he? She'd been so angry at him when he left, and at herself--that had to mean there'd been love, didn't it? Now even the anger was all dusty and tarnished around the edges. If all she could give him was time and space to deal with his problem, whatever it was, she'd do it. She owed him that much.

Spike strolled back into the kitchen, enveloped her from behind in a garlic-and-tear-gas scented embrace and nuzzled her throat with a little grrrff of content. "Evie'll have some news on Amherst by tomorrow," he said. "We find out who this bird Finn was meeting is, and we'll--"

"Let him be for now." Buffy frowned at her reflection in the wet china and handed Spike the plate; after a moment's horrified, uncomprehending stare, he picked up a dishtowel with a martyred sigh and began drying. "He did break up with me, you know. With ultimatums. I definitely remember ultimatums. Stupid me, I thought we were happy." A bolt of sheer terror ripped through her and she whirled, grabbing Spike's elbow in panic. "We're happy. Aren't we?"

His eyes darkened--sky in December, from clear pale morning to azure dusk. He stooped like a hawk upon her mouth and mantled over her, bent her back against the counter and settled against her body with the evident intention of staying for a good long time. Spike's kisses were nothing if not thorough.

Her hands found their way along familiar paths, along the curve of his back to the blade-bones of his shoulders. Up and down and up again, the long languid deep-muscle caresses that set him purring like an outboard Evinrude. The water was still running. She didn't care. He had liver breath. She didn't care. They were about to knock the plates out of the dishrack. She didn't care. The only thing in the universe was that cool, supple mouth systematically despoiling her own. Riley's words flitted through her head: They have such hunger for me... Maybe she understood that, now.

Spike let her up for air with a lazy grin, and ground his hips against hers. "I feel happy. You?"

The sink was poking into her spine, Spike was poking into her belly, and the swoony feeling in her middle had nothing to do with tear gas. She was pretty damn hungry herself. "I could feel happier." Buffy reached behind her to turn off the faucet, grabbed Spike round the waist, slung him over one shoulder and sprinted for the stairs. "Shower first. You smell like an Al-Qaeda deli."

"Oi!" Spike yelped, sounding anything but unhappy about the situation. "I'm being repressed! Put me down, you pint-sized Amazon bitch!"

"What language! You shock me, sir," Buffy smacked his ass, hard, grinning as she felt his cock jerk and stiffen against her shoulder. "Someone needs his mouth washed out with soa--eep!" Spike's hands snaked round her hips, undid the button and zipper of her jeans with Blurry Vampire Speed (tm) and yanked them down around her knees. He vamped out and ripped into her thong with his fangs, shaking the scrap of damp magenta silk back and forth in his teeth with a raunchy growl. She stumbled to the floor, trying desperately not to break into housemate-awakening shrieks of laughter. Somehow in the next five minutes they managed to completely divest one another of clothing and get the shower in the master bathroom going without ever actually taking their hands off one another. Synchronized vampire stripping. Cirque Du Soleil, Buffy considered, was missing out on a good thing here.

The word for today was tingly.

Tingly was goooooood. Tingly was Spike's hands holding her firmly from behind, thumbs pressing the base of her spine, fingers spread across the twin arches of her hips--lovely big hands, anchoring her at the warm steamy heart of the deluge. Tingly was Spike's voice, like burnt caramel and whiskey, crooning, "...sweet li'l pussy, stroke her fur and she gives me cream..." Tingly was Spike's very presence, which thrummed along her spine and radiated out along every filament of nerve. His hands concentrated it, his mouth intensified it. His cock was a lightning rod, every thrust a miniature electrical arc.

Water drummed against her shoulders, as hot as she could stand it, a tropical storm to go with the lightning. Buffy spread her feet as far apart as the walls of the tub allowed and braced her forearms against the cold tile, tipping her face up to meet the spray. Her throat was still a little sore from the gas, but the humidity helped. Helped lots. The wet slap of flesh on flesh made the laughter bubble up again; lovemaking was really a very silly activity when you thought about it, but, oh, who could think when there was so much to feel instead: cold tile and hot water and juuuust right vampire filling her so full...

"Happy, pet?" A hand slicked up soapy skin to squeeze one jouncing breast, down to plunge between her thighs. Working her hard before and behind, groaning and breathless with the effort of holding his own when she arched into his strokes and squeezed. "...make you happier, oh, yeh, come on sweeting, come for me, right where you live--" Buffy gave vent to an inarticulate, whimpering moan, vibrating all over as his fingers found that spot and dove in for the kill. Her body hummed beneath his touch like a swarm of bees. "Sweet my love, cunt on you like a velvet beartrap, arse like a ripe peach, tits like--like--oh God oh Christ oh Slayer oh Buffy have mercy upon me now and in all the hours of my death!"

How the hell could he keep up a running commentary on his own orgasm when she could barely get out a 'Guh?' She let her body say the things she couldn't, every muscle focused upon holding him tight in a grip of silk and steel, drawing him deep, drinking him down. Spike seized up, wordless at last, and she was sunlight, she was water, she was golden honey and pounding spray, melting and reforming, subliming into something utterly new and taking him with her.

Then she was Buffy again, plastered against the tile, and Spike was plastered against her, his arms locked around her waist and his head against her shoulder as the water sluiced over their intertwined bodies, both of them drawing great gasping breaths of sultry air. Spike smelled like earth after rain, like her mother's rose garden, dark, rich, musky clean-vampire smell. Willow had explained it once; something about actinomycetes and lower body temperature. What it boiled down to was boy smell good.

She shut off the cooling water and reached for a towel. Spike stretched wolf-fashion, fore and aft, and got out of the shower. He stood smug and dripping in front of the indifferent mirror, squeezing wasteful amounts of toothpaste onto his brush. There were times when it startled her to see Tara or Dawn's face reflected beside her own, she'd gotten so used to Spike's invisible presence. Buffy reached for the bottle of Pantene they'd knocked off the shower caddy and frowned at the level of product. "You've been using my conditioner again."

He blinked golden eyes over a mouthful of foamy fangs. "Have not."

"Have too. Even I with my puny human nose can smell it. Jasmine-cucumber. Revitalizes and enfullens."

Spike spat, rinsed, grabbed his comb and yanked it through his wet and suspiciously tractable hair in a defensive huff. "Smells like a bleeding fruit salad. Why don't you get some of the unscented? And 'enfullens?'"

"It's a perfectly cromulent word. Why don't you just buy your own?"

"Because I don't use conditioner," Spike countered, secure in this bastion of unassailable masculine logic. He leaned over and licked her shoulder--most of the cuts from the shattered window had healed already, but the hot water had washed the scab off one of the deeper ones, and tiny rivulets of scarlet were trickling down her back. Spike caught them on his tongue like snowflakes and followed them back to the source, licking, nuzzling, not quite sucking the wound. Instant tingles from slightly rough, minty-fresh vampire tongue and the illicit thrill of fangs on tender skin. Towels fell forgotten to the floor as Spike kissed her owies all better.

She didn't return the favor; vampire blood was just plain gross. But other parts of him were oh, so tasty and she still had room for dessert. Always the gentleman, Little Spike, rising whenever she entered the room. She worked magic with hands and mouth, forging adamant from pliant flesh with small savage nips and whisper-kisses on dark satin. This time it was her tongue which stole his words away and left him a trembling, gasping, glorious wreck. Look up, and there's her beautiful vampire, backed glaze-eyed and slack-jawed against the sink, white hands gripping smooth white porcelain, the back of his damp tousled head bumping the mirror. Look in the glass behind him and there's only her own face, smoky-eyed with abandon, taking him in.

The one good thing about not making it to the bed was that no one had to sleep in the wet spot. By the time they rolled under the covers, she was sore and sated, warm and full. Full of Spike. Overflowing with Spike. Buffy wanted nothing more than to curl up with him and fall asleep--and that, naturally, was when Spike chose to start the argument.

"About the lot at the crypt, pet." Spike rolled over, drawing patterns around her navel with one finger. "They're going to come in for grief if we go after the big boys without taking precautions."

Buffy dragged a pillow over her face and groaned. "We're not talking about this."

"Bloody well are." Spike snatched it away with a growl and pinned her arms down, the muscles in his own cording, one hundred and sixty-seven pounds of irritable vampire pressing her into the mattress.

Buffy stared up into his eyes, and struck--knee to the gut, whip her arms free of his grip and use the momentum to flip him over her head. Their positions were reversed and Spike was gazing up at her with a mixture of lust and exasperation. She smiled, kittenish. "Aren't."

And the bastard head-butted her.

Two seconds later they were straining and snarling, Spike trying to get her in a headlock while she did her damnedest to pin him again. Spike had always been heavier than he looked, being all solid whippy muscle, and he'd filled out nicely in the last year. Plenty of vampires over the centuries had killed Slayers and drained them dry, gotten one dizzying hit of that powerful blood. Not so many had been in a position to feed off one...well, snack on one, anyway...over time. Giles would be taking notes, if either of them were stupid enough to inform him that Spike was getting the vampy equivalent of experimental vitamin supplements.

She could still take him. But she wanted to go to sleep, dammit. He was hard again--no surprise, fighting always turned him on. Buffy abandoned her Shaniqua impression for a snake-strike between his thighs, squeezing and rolling with merciless precision. Spike's eyes went wide with desperate intensity, every fiber of his being focused on not coming for just one minute longer, and the mixed pain and rapture on his face shattered her into a million fizzy pieces inside. "OK," Buffy gasped. She made the mistake of looking down; his quivering cock strained towards her, a strand of liquid pearl drooling from the head. His long, hard, thick, curved-just-right, OK, maybe this wasn't such a great idea. "You last for more than five minutes, we talk. Deal?"

Spike glared at her, canines dangerously pointy and eyes flickering yellow. "RRRRRAAAAARRRGHH!"

For the record, twenty-one minutes and forty-two seconds. Possibly the longest forty-two seconds of her life.

"Riley was right," Buffy murmured, dazed.

"Not precisely what a bloke's looking to hear at a time like this," Spike mumbled into her shoulder. "Try 'Oooh, William, you incredible stallion, in your arms I scale Himalayan heights of pleasure undreamt of by mortal man,' instead."

"Would you settle for 'guh?'"

Spike's chuckle mellowed into a smug grin, and he rolled over, reached beneath the bed and produced a package of Marlboros and a plastic lighter. How long had he had those stashed there? Buffy considered making him put it out, but that would have required the utilization of large muscle groups, and all of hers were on strike at the moment. Besides, she had to admit that in this particular case, he'd earned it.

It wasn't the superpowers. She'd held back physically with Riley--of course. He'd never had the strength or stamina to push her to those Himalayan heights, but that was the least of it; she hadn't even known what she was missing. Till that last night, she'd never raged at Riley, never turned the knife-edge of her tongue on him, never...pushed him, the way she pushed Spike daily. Fearing in the fastness of her heart that she dared not, because he wasn't ready to see the dark inhuman power that moved her, and worse, the neediness, the self-involvement, the petty meanness that was wholly human. That she would break him, in ways that had nothing to do with physical strength. That he would be unable, in the end, to push back, and would instead be pushed away.

Irony sucked. She glowered at Spike. "Fine. You win. Talk."

Spike exhaled a long self-satisfied plume of slate-blue smoke. "Simple. You think vampires bright enough and level-headed enough to live without killing grow on trees? It's taken a year to collect this many, and we let 'em get dusted, we'll be a long time finding more now that the Hellmouth's not drawing vamps like flies. We don't have the workforce, we miss filling orders, we lose customers, we go broke, Dawn don't get that Ivy League education we're aiming for." Spike scowled and jabbed his cigarette in cindery emphasis; he was really serious about this, Buffy realized with a slightly guilty start. He was giving her vampire logic, all quid pro quo and what's in it for me, but she had to admit he had a point.

"On top of that, we're partners, right? That's for the good and the bad, innit? They're our min--employees. We're responsible for 'em. I told 'em they gave up killing, I'd look after 'em. My word as an Englishman, and that's not something I give on a lark. So if we're partners, my word's yours, innit? And yours mine. Only right."

"Spike--" They're vampires. She had no illusion that Spike's gang were friends or even allies; they kept their bargain purely out of fear and an eye to a sweet deal. They just weren't worth her time to take down when there were so many other clear and present dangers to deal with.

She'd scorned that argument not so long ago, when Giles had used it to justify his failure to bring Whip's establishment to her attention. She'd been just as horrified and angry with him then as Kennedy was with her now...though the discovery that Riley Finn had been frequenting said establishment had a good deal more to do with her outrage than she liked to admit. Spike had brought Whip to her notice--and now he was the reason she spared the Restfield vampires. Kennedy was right: she could have taken the lot of them out easily; they trusted her, insofar as trust meant anything in this situation.

She'd given her word, and kept it, ever since David had first worked out his arrangement with Spike. Her word wasn't lark material either. But this was new--one thing to turn a blind eye; very, very different to actively protect the things she was sworn to kill. David and Denny and Nadia and Evie...she shouldn't have learned their names. It was the first step towards thinking of them as people, and she'd always had trouble with that. How many times had she let Angelus or Harmony or Spike himself walk away because something in her said person even as everything else was screaming vampire, kill!

Are you sorry you let Angelus and Spike walk away?

Are all the people who died because you let them walk away sorry?

And those questions led to more questions, and finally to the big one, the one the Council feared above all others, the one that prompted them to hide the secret of the Slayer's power from generations of their tools.

If one demon can work for good...

If one vampire can stop killing...

Then...

Spike was watching her. Her tame vampire, grown sleek and well-fed on loving her, as content with his lot as any demon could be...whose eyes still flashed sulphur and hellfire, whose teeth were still razors, who was still, even now, the most dangerous creature in the world to let into her heart.

If they were partners, really and truly...

Buffy drew a shaky breath. "OK. What are we going to do about defenses for the crypt?"

The scent set hooks in his nostrils and hauled Angel out of the murk of unconsciousness even before he opened his eyes. Woman-smell, warm, musky and tantalizing, masked beneath chemical layers of soap and deodorant.

He took a single deeper breath, sifting the scents: antiseptic and floor wax, isopropyl alcohol and adhesive tape, sickness and fear and despair. Some kind of hospital, but not a human establishment--he could smell traces of demon mixed with the mouth-watering scent of prey. Gregson. Crowley had mentioned Gregson, and Gregson owned a clinic. He'd operated on James there, removed the pussy-whipped loser's heart in exchange for a spell of temporary invulnerability--had Crowley paid the doctor to do the same to him, turn him into an invulnerable and short-lived assassin? If so, he knew who his first target was going to be.

His eyes slitted open on a sterile fluorescent glare which could have been noon or midnight or any point in between. It was a private room, at least. No windows. His bed was surrounded by a pale green curtain, pulled half to; he could see half a dozen mysterious boxes set up on gurney, and he was hooked up to all of them, needles and tubes trailing from chest and skull and arms. Their uninformative faces displayed readouts in glowing red and blue and green, measuring...what? He was dead. The machines didn't seem to care; they whispered and beeped among themselves, happy to record the non-events occurring in his body. Angel raised his head, crowned with a wreath of electrodes, and looked down. He was wearing one of those peek-a-boo-ass hospital gowns. OK, Target Zero was going to die a little more slowly than usual for that.

The nurse whose scent had woken him bent to adjust the strap confining his left wrist, her starched white uniform straining over middle-aged bulges. Saliva flooded his mouth and his fangs ached in his jaw, and the impulse shot through him like red lightning--Take her. Tear her open. Plunge your hands elbow-deep into the pulsing Crackerjack box of her body and pull the toy surprises out, pink and red and glistening. Let the glorious crimson torrent course down your throat, rich as cream, strong as whiskey, warm as fire. Make her life your own, and when it's fled, kiss her dead lips, close her dead eyes, toss her aside and go on to the next, and the next, and the next...

You'd think a soul would weigh like lead, but you'd be wrong--it was light as air, and as inescapable. He waited for the guilt.

It didn't come.

The restraints encircling his wrists and ankles were too sturdy for even vampire strength to break, but his ravenous snarl sent the nurse skipping back with surprising agility. She goggled at him, her mouth an O of Mr. Bill horror. One greying lock of hair straggled over her eyes. She tucked it beneath her cap, still staring. He lunged against his restraints again, and she broke and ran, a jiggling blancmange of a woman calling, "Doctor! Doctor Gregson! He's awake!"

Angel fell back in the bed, giggling. It wasn't gone. His soul still bound like cheap briefs, but somehow it didn't matter any more. Someone had hurt him, and someone had pumped him full of painkillers. He felt like shit, woozy and shot through with pain--needles to the head, knives to the heart--but at the same time light and warm and buzzy. Happy. Manufactured happiness, but who cared? Better unliving through chemicals. He felt so good, so clean and free. Strip the soul away, and layer upon layer of emotion came with it, the impasto of guilt and remorse, the sfumato of obligation and gratitude, baring the underpainting of his psyche. Portrait of a killer.

There had to be some way to get loose; this momentary emancipation would be torn from his grasp the minute the drugs wore off. Seize the day, and anything else within his grasp. There was fresh young meat only rooms away, and if he played his cards right, he might yet get to check out the hospital food. The restraints were heavy-duty nylon and high-impact plastic. He tested each one in turn--was there a fraction of give in the left wrist? He'd interrupted her in the midst of adjusting it. He clenched his fist and pulled, exerting steady pressure. Clench, relax, clench, relax... If he could work even a little slack into the straps... Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, and Angel froze.

"Doximal," a voice said. Soft, slightly nasal. He didn't recognize it. Gregson? "Along with a carefully calculated mix of stimulants to counteract the soporific side effects. With further testing we can transition to a targeted euphoric, but for now I felt it was best to use a proven formula."

"You're certain he'll be coherent?" That was Crowley, the prissy little fuck.

"I do know my business, Mr. Crowley," the first voice said. "And speaking of business, there is the small matter of my fee."

Crowley's reply was frosty. "I've contacted my associate regarding the artifact. Providing the operation was successful, you should have it by the end of the week."

Gregson sniffed. "I can't guarantee the patient's cooperation. But I think you'll be pleased with the results."

The door to the room swung open and two men stepped in--or one man and one demon; the tall, thin, balding man in the lab coat looked human, but his scent gave him away. The old man and the thing that walked like one strolled over to the foot of his bed. Crowley looked Angel up and down like a man who'd received a mail-order bride and wasn't entirely satisfied with the merchandise. Gregson glanced at the monitors, picked up the chart and made a note.

"Mr. Angel," Crowley said, clasping his hands behind his back. "Or do you prefer Angelus?"

Angel relaxed as far as the restraints permitted. Interesting question. He'd defined himself by the presence or absence of a soul for so long. Angel, not Angelus. A negative space. I am not that. What am I, then? Only Angel pondered that question. Angelus knew. "What's in a name, Mr. Crowley? Do you prefer me to crush your shiny bald head like an egg and watch the brains dribble out your ears, or string you up by your toes and skin you from the soles of your feet down?"

"Angelus, then," Crowley said, rocking primly back and forth. "Perhaps you are inclined to reconsider the offer I made you earlier today?"

"Kill Spike?" Angel consulted the fluorescent light overhead. "Now, why did you want me to do that again? Oh, yeah--because he's living soft in the Slayer's lap, deluding himself that he's one of the good guys. Pretty damned pathetic, falling for a Slayer. I should know." His voice darkened, deepened, aged in oak and gall of wormwood. "And what a shame it didn't happen twenty-five years ago. Who knows, if Nikki'd done one thing, said one thing different, maybe our William would've developed a taste for chocolate. Close..." Angel rolled his shoulders, turning a dagger-toothed grin on his captors. "...but no cigar. Mr. Crowley, I couldn't have come up with a better torture for a washed-up failure of a Watcher like you if I tried for twenty years. Why the hell should I lift a pinkie finger to stop Spike causing you pain?"

The old Watcher's pink and shaven jowls quivered. There was raw, helpless hatred in his eyes. "Perhaps because you have an interest in this particular Slayer?"

"Had an interest in her." Crowley's discomfiture made him chuckle, and his voice grew mocking. "What, you think I give a shit that she's fucking a vampire? That I'd be jealous? Because I still wuv Buffy?" He burst into laughter. "Who the hell do you think I am? Spike? Don't get me wrong, pinning a Slayer down like a frog on a dissecting table and stripping her to the bone is always fun for the whole family. But it's not the overriding goal of my existence, Crowley my boy. That would be getting off this table and ripping your larynx out through your ass." He settled back with a sneer, savoring the devastation in the old man's eyes. "Unfortunately, by the time I finish with that I'm pretty sure the happy pills will have worn off."

You had to hand it to Crowley; the guy recouped fast. "That would be inadvisable," the Watcher said. "Because then the happy pills will wear off."

Angel's lion-gold eyes flicked from Crowley to Gregson's bland and deceptively human face. "Suddenly my interest level rises."

A smile hemmed Crowley's mouth in tight, unpleasant lines. "I began researching your recent history several months ago, in the event that your...er...better half refused my offer of employment. Removing and returning a soul is a lengthy and dangerous ritual no matter what method is used. But I discovered a newspaper article linking you with a certain Rebecca Lowell, who was extremely helpful--"

Memory matched the name to a face--young and beautiful, and never quite young and beautiful enough. The actress who'd wanted him to sire her. Too bad he hadn't been able to finish the job. She'd had some promise. Angel turned to Gregson with a nasty chortle. "You have done your homework. What'd you do, promise her monkey gland injections?"

Gregson looked down his nose. "Please. Doctor-patient confidentiality."

Crowley hid a cough behind a translucent, blue-veined hand. "Based on Ms. Lowell's information, and with Dr. Gregson's invaluable assistance, a device has been implanted in your thoracic cavity. At scheduled intervals, it injects a cocktail of drugs into your descending aorta. The device contains sufficient medication to last for several weeks--so long as it receives a daily remote signal from a second device, the location of which I shall not divulge. Should it fail to receive this signal, it will cease to operate, the drugs will wear off, and you will revert to your usual self." His eyes were raven's eyes, dark and shining, waiting to feast on the dead. "If you are considering torturing me for the location of the second device as soon as you are free, please remember that I am old, frail, and a Watcher. I will be dead long before you can break me, and very shortly thereafter you will regret your actions exceedingly. If you cooperate with me, I shall, upon the completion of your mission, provide you with unlimited supplies of the most efficacious drug we discover to...maintain your current condition."

The implications took a moment to sink in, but when they did the jolt was like feeding off a crackhead. Freedom. Limited, conditional freedom, but freedom still, from the thing that bound him far more effectively than Spike's chip ever had. Angel felt his soul's chafing, far away and deep within and easily dismissible. He smiled, his face human once more, and a lilting hint of his Galway youth tinged his words. "Mr. Crowley, for that I'd send my own mother to hell, if I hadn't already done so. We have a deal." For now.

Crowley bowed his head and let go the breath he'd been holding for both of them, the steel melting out of his spine. Those fragile, ancient hands twitched once, and fell to his sides. "Very well. I shall leave you to recuperate." He shuffled past Gregson and paused in the hall outside the doorway. "I am a cautious man, Angelus. Please don't imagine that I'm so foolish as to have no other failsafes in place."

"You're doing very well," Gregson said, making another note and hooking the chart back on the foot of the bed. "You should be able to leave in the morning. We have sewer access from the morgue. The orderly will bring your dinner shortly."

The bulk of his body hid his left arm from the doctor's view. Angel began his stealthy work on the loose wrist strap again. "Human blood. I'm not drinking any more of that pig slop. And make damned sure it's fresh."

The doctor smiled, satisfied with his labors. "Of course."

Gregson followed Crowley out and closed the door behind him--it shut with the definitive snick of a well-constructed lock. They weren't taking chances. Angel let his gaze go unfocused and allowed his head to thump back onto the unyielding hospital pillow. Clench, release, clench, release. His left side was beginning to twinge as his efforts pulled on the half-healed staples in his breastbone. He was in worse shape than he wanted to admit; even vampire healing couldn't make light of having your rib cage sawed open.

No two ways about it, Crowley would have to die, preferably in extended public agony. Something creative with hot oil and tweezers, perhaps. No one controlled him and got away with it. He'd make the Watcher an example. But not until he'd discovered what those other failsafes were, and neutralized them. He didn't trust the old bastard; no Watcher would willingly let Angelus loose on the world unhindered. Gregson, on the other hand, might prove useful for a bit longer.

He worked doggedly on loosening the strap. The last time he'd lain so comparatively helpless, it had been the day and night following his rescue from the bottom of the Bay. He'd drifted in and out of uneasy slumber a dozen times or more, and always when he'd woken, Cordelia or Wesley or one of the others would be at his side, pressing more blood on him, tending to the open sores where things had come in the murky water and shredded his skin with tiny relentless needle teeth.

Once in the still small hours, it had been Spike.

He slumped boneless in the big wicker chair across the room, chin propped on one hand, a Caravaggio vampire in bleach and black leather. Lamplight gilded the long lashes, the elegant curvature of a wrist, the careless out-thrust of a bent knee, aureate highlights on a ground of ebony. When Angel stirred, Spike rose, his broad spare shoulders blocking the lamp, and shadows devoured him whole. Radiance limned him from behind as he stalked over to the bed, a walking figure of fire.

Spike hated him, but when Cordelia had called Sunnydale for help, Spike had come to L.A. (Buffy hadn't, the bitch; some feeble excuse about being a material witness at Warren Meers's trial.) With Spike the line between love and hate was always a knife's edge, and it was oh, so easy to turn the blade against him. He and Buffy were alike in that.

Buffy. He still despised the way she'd made him feel. Ensouled, he'd loved her--how could he not? She was the warrior of light who'd stooped to lift him out of darkness, the living face of his salvation. And fucking hot to boot, a juicy little seventeen-year old package of pout and wriggle. Joan of Arc in hot pants. She'd made him yearn after lost humanity, and there was no forgiving that. But it had been years since she'd dominated his every thought, and enough water had passed under that bridge that he no longer felt the need to burn it behind him immediately. Angel tugged on the strap, his keen ears catching the creak of stressed fabric. Crowley's attempt to play upon his jealousy was futile, but it hadn't been a bad ploy. Jealousy generated from love like maggots from rotting meat, and there were men in whom that most human of weaknesses was cankered so deep in the bone that even the loss of a soul could distort and darken but never wholly erase it.

He'd never been one of those unfortunates.

They all forgot--even he, sometimes--that Angel hadn't sprung full-grown from the forehead of Angelus, just add soul and stir. No, he'd built Angel with his bare hands: forged a new self out of guilt and misery and the least promising of raw materials, day by day, year by laborious year. Liam of Galway had never been a good man, in life or in death, with a soul or without one. Once upon a time he hadn't been an evil one, and that was the highest goal he could conceive for himself after his soul had been thrust back upon him.

In Buffy's arms he had believed, for the first time in two and a half centuries, that he could aspire to more than simply not evil. No mere girl could give him that, but Buffy was no mere girl.

Skin abraded and nylon burned against his wrist as he wrested one more millimeter of give from the straining buckle. The sharp tang of his own blood stung his nostrils as Angel set his teeth and pulled. Bone compacted against bone, and he laughed, welcoming the pain as an old friend.

When Spike loved, it was as simple and direct as a blow to the head. With Drusilla, with Buffy--everything they were or could be, good, bad, indifferent, Spike loved with everything he was and had been. Angel's love for the Slayer was as complex as Angel himself, a tapestry of a thousand thousand threads--draw but one, and the pattern would change. So much easier for a demon to tear down than to build, and he gloried in his own wreckage. Salvation was the last thing he wanted now. He'd owed the Slayer a lingering death for years, and he intended to pay off, with interest.

His hand tore free of the straps in a splatter of crimson. He clawed the buckles on his right hand open, jack-knifed up to wrench the manacles from his ankles, and rolled off the bed with a snarl of triumph, ignoring the sting of IV needles as they ripped free of his flesh. A quick survey of the room revealed no easy concealment, and the bed was a mess of crumpled, blood-streaked sheets, the childbed wherein he'd died giving birth to himself. Angel surged into game face and snapped razor teeth at the ragged flap of skin dangling from his wrist, severing it neatly. The scrap of bloody flesh slid down his throat, slick and salty, himself into himself, an Ouroboros afterbirth for the devouring. He glided over to the door, licking the blood from his mangled hand, and cocked his head: footsteps approaching, and the rumble of wheels. Dinner was served.

He flattened himself against the wall. The doorknob rattled and turned, and the orderly's cart bumped it open. Angel didn't wait for the man to see the Grand Guignol of the bed; he grabbed the cart and shoved it across the room, sending the orderly into a staggering half-fall as it was torn from his grasp. Angel's hand closed around the man's throat, strangling his yell, and hauled him inside. A quick kick and the door slammed shut behind them. The orderly's eyes were wild with all the terror his throat couldn't utter; all that came from his mouth was a dry raspy wheeze. The vampire smiled and caressed the man's cheek with his free hand, leaving finger-trails of dark gore. This mark, upon this threshold, was none that an Angel would pass over. Faster than human sight could follow he struck, yanking the jaw up with punishing force and plunging his fangs into the exposed neck.

Flesh burst like ripe fruit, and blood fountained up to meet his lips. Angel drew at the wound with the oblivious greed of a babe at his mother's tit, lost in the hot rush of stolen life. Beneath him the man's eyes fixed and glazed over, his thrashing limbs stilled and his hoarse bubbling mewls faded away. Once, twice, his chest convulsed, and then breath ceased and heartbeat faltered and fell silent.

Angel tossed his head back with a voluptuous moan, flinging gobbets of scarlet aside to spatter against the walls. The blood was always sweetest at the moment of death. He could feel it pulsing through him already, bringing a flush of false warmth in his cheeks, knitting abused flesh together and lending new strength to sinew and bone. Licking his lips, he bent to the corpse once more, fangs scoring the ravaged throat anew, sucking hungrily at the cooling feast. He didn't intend to eat and run; Crowley and Gregson just needed an object lesson in exactly who they were dealing with.

He needed a plan. The last time he'd been stir-crazy, insane with liberty after a century of soul-guilt. More than just crazy--stupid, allowing his humiliation and fury at the Slayer to drive him to mad excesses. This time would be different. He'd need to quell any suspicions at Angel Investigations. Or maybe just kill them all. The AI crew knew him too well to fool them for long, Cordelia especially.

He'd definitely need allies and pawns of his own. Buffy wasn't a naive, heartsore teenager any longer, and Spike was unpredictable. Their mutual destruction would be a challenge. Spike wanted schooling as badly as Crowley did: a lesson in what he was, and the futility of attempting to be otherwise. Given the choice, he'd prefer to bring his black sheep back into the fold. Spike was as much a work of art as Drusilla in his own way, perpetually unfinished, forever throwing up rough edges that needed polishing. In the end, Spike would thank him for the catechism of pain.

Angel let the orderly's skull hit the floor with an invigorating crunch and stood, stretching in full-fed satisfaction. Maybe he did prefer Angelus, after all.

L.A.'s demon scene was a glittering labyrinth of excess, a network of glitzy casinos and smoke-filled clubs. Curiosity shops stocked with monkey’s paws and magic carpets huddled furtively in the shadow of glass-sided skyscrapers, sprawling bazaars threaded their way through entire sewer mains, and exotic bordellos where anything and anyone could be had for a price did business twenty-four seven.

Sunnydale's demon scene was Willy's Alibi Room.

It was the shank end of the night, almost closing time, and Evie'd run through her sob story so often she’d memorized the thing. Sunnydale proper currently harbored upwards of sixty vampires, with maybe another dozen or so lairing on campus or hunting the cheap new housing developments which were eating up the farmland on the outskirts of town. Evie figured she'd talked the ears off of thirty of them tonight–-she'd even hit the Fish Tank and Bender's and the Espresso Pump on the chance of running into a hunting pack or two. She'd earned some R&R.

It was Pirates of the Caribbean Night at Willy’s, a promotional gimmick which seemed to consist primarily of flinging a few sad plastic leis across the bar, programming the juke box with nothing but Jimmy Buffet and Bob Marley, and giving all the drinks nautical names. Which apparently justified jacking the price up a buck or two apiece. Not that Evie cared; it was on Spike's tab. She maneuvered past a table full of Fyarl who were tossing back steins of something with a suspicious resemblance to used motor oil to the accompaniment of booming honks of laughter and bellows of "But why is the RUM gone?" and sauntered up to the bar.

"Another of the same," she demanded, slapping down a twenty on the stained oak. Susie, the taciturn Bracken demon who served as Willy's relief bartender, gave Evie a skeptical look and handed her change and another B-pos Bloody Mary. It had been a long time since Evie'd had this much cash to throw around. Evie smirked at her and turned to survey the bar. A quartet of vampires had filed in through the front door as she ordered, Jets all the way, and claimed a table near hers amidst the usual exchange of territorial growls with other patrons. Evie recognized only one of them-no surprise there; ninety percent of Sunnydale's vampire population was an ever-churning froth of expendable fledges, sired on a whim and abandoned on another, and lucky to live a year before the Slayer or their elders did them in.

She sashayed back to her table, seated herself with a flounce and a calculated crossing of legs. Spike hadn't intended his grubstake to cover the slinky new dress, much less the fuck-me pumps, but the mall was open till ten, it fit the bimbo image she was going for, and hey, she was evil. Evie skewered the slightly wilted cherry tomato bobbing in her drink with her yellow plastic cutlass (free with every drink on POTC Night!) and held the trophy up for inspection, trying to put a name to the lantern-jawed goon at the next table. Jer, that was it. He'd been one of the Mayor's crew, and hopefully he'd remember her only as one of Whip's putas, if he remembered her at all, not as Dalton's get and someone who might possibly possess a brain beneath the hairspray and eyeshadow.

She popped the tasteless little morsel into her mouth with a throaty purr and ran the tip of her tongue along the plump curves, licking crimson dewdrops from vermillion flesh. For a finale she vamped out and bit, fangs flashing--well, fang, anyway. Cold red seeds spurted and Evie licked her lips, cleaning up every last drop. She shot a lash-veiled glance at the other table; yep, all four were watching, all right--the guys entranced, the women cynically amused. The puddles on the table were equal parts beer and drool. Technically speaking, vampires reproduced asexually, but anything possessing a dick was generally pretty eager to put it to use.

Five minutes later she was seated with her new pals, pretending to be a few yo ho hos drunker than she was and regaling them with her tale of Kite's mythical offer. The women, Tanker and Linnet, watched with slit-eyed alertness while Jer interrogated her, cats stalking an oblivious mouse. Linnet was small and dark and fluttery; Tanker leather-clad and pierced, with a butchy shock of salt-and-pepper hair and tribal tats encircling impressive biceps. Freddy, the youngest of the group, was a straggly nondescript youth in a backwards baseball cap and jeans perilously close to sliding off his lanky hips. He seemed dead set on living up to every stereotype of the dumb fledge out there, and just sat there in game face, staring at Evie with a faintly worshipful expression which implored her to do the cherry tomato trick again.

"...so I dunno if it's worth it," Evie burbled. "Amherst's got it going, but I hear the Slayer's out for him, and I left L.A. 'cause it was Gang War Central. I don't wanna get caught in the crossfire again."

"That treacherous bastard!" Tanker exploded, pounding a fist on the table. "Alliance my undead ass!" She rounded on Evie with a snarl. "Kite say anything about why he wanted you to get in good with Corvini?"

Jackpot. These must be Corvini's minions. Evie assumed a cheerfully vacant smile and shrugged. "Nope."

"You got no percentage takin' Kite up on it," Jer argued. He was a big rock-shouldered guy whose nose had seen a few too many close encounters with a fist before he was turned. He looked as if he were waiting for the fedora to make a comeback. "You risk your neck for him, and whaddya get? Nothin'."

"Yeah?" Evie dunked her plastic sword in her drink and licked blood off the blade. "I figure I get a place in the baddest gang in Sunnydale."

"Baddest and biggest. Which means you'll get somewhere between diddly and squat when it comes to divvying up prey or perks," Linnet pointed out. "And if you think you can catch Amherst's eye with that sword-swallowing act, think again."

"Whereas there are only four of us. Works out to a better chance for advancement, capisce? Besides, it's what you might call common knowledge that Amherst has already got some high-toned L.A. broad polishin' his ridges, if you know what I mean." Jer took a swallow of blood, followed by a shot of whiskey, and licked his lips. "You work for us, you feed Amherst phony info, and you got a deal worth lookin' at." His big callused hand flexed against the tabletop, and the hair at the back of Evie's neck prickled; if there was anything she was good at it was telling when it was time to cut and run. "Not to mention that Kite ain't currently in the vicinity, and we are. If you don't play ball, there could be considerable discomfort involved."

All four of them leaned forward and grinned, a mass show of ivory. Evie pushed away from the table, an adrenaline tremble in her arms and a hollowing in her chest where the pounding of her heart should have been. If she threw her drink in Jer's eyes and kicked the chair in front of Tanker, then maybe she could...

Spike's mocking voice sounded in her ears: "Bloody hell, you silly bint, you never even tried hitting a demon?"

The muscle-memory of punting the Vernex demon into the junipers rushed through her, and a heady sense of renewed power surged up in its wake, filling the hollow places with a red and joyful rage. Evie's hand crept to her purse and slipped into the outer pocket. Lipstick, change purse, wet wipes for those stubborn bloodstains...there. Her fingers curled around the sliver of metal. "I bet there will be, hijo de una perra," she said. She whipped the nailfile out and drove it point-first through Jer's palm and into the tabletop, pinning Jer's hand to the scarred wood. Evie leaped to her feet with a triumphant, terrified snarl, eyes blazing yellow. "But it's not gonna be mine."

Jer roared and ripped his hand free, then roared again at the further damage he'd done himself. He lunged across the table after her, game-faced and snarling, clawing for her throat. Drinks crashed to the floor, glasses exploding like cherry bombs. Evie exercised the better part of valor and skittered backwards. Jer skidded face-first into the minefield of broken glass and spilled alcohol. Tanker and Linnet sat back, amused and a trifle more respectful, and Freddy burst into whooping adenoidal laughter, breaking off into a yerp! of surprise when Jer lurched to his feet, malt-sodden and bleeding, and cuffed him in the head.

Several carnivorous types at other tables looked up, nostrils and other less identifiable orifices flaring at the scent of blood, and Willy came storming out of the back room, both arms windmilling in futile outrage. "Goddammit, take that outside!" he yelled, the tip of his thin nose quivering. "No freebies!"

"It's a good offer," Evie said. She yanked her nailfile free of the table and backed towards the door, holding it like a shiv. "I'll think about it. You think about how if you dust me, you got no in with Amherst at all, and fuck knows what he's planning. I could find out for you. Tell your boss I'll have an answer for him tomorrow night."

Jer rounded the wreckage of the table in one limping stride, and Evie broke and ran, kicking off her heels as she went. Grrl power was great and all, but there were four of them and one of her, and she wasn't fucking stupid. Every sense strained for the sound of pursuing feet, but Jer's steps faltered halfway across the parking lot, and only Freddy's yelps followed her down the street, as Jer took out his frustrations on the fledge.

Wind beat against her face as she raced through the waning night. Evie slowed to a jog once she'd put a few blocks between herself and the bar, and steered for Main Street. It was too late to use crowds of pedestrians to confuse her scent, but she skinned up the first moderately tall building in her way, and hopscotched from roof to roof for awhile before diving into a couple of the stinkiest Dumpsters she could find. One little black dress a total loss, but she'd rather lose a dress than her spleen if Jer and his pals tracked her to Spike's lair.

Satisfied at last that no one could trail her, Evie slumped against a streetlight and took a non-breather. She was shaking with reaction, fear and the rapture of reawakened bloodlust warring for control of her body. She turned the nailfile over in her hands. She'd never been much of a fighter, even before the chip. She'd always relied on her wits to get by. But tonight... fuck, that felt good.

It occurred to her that she could double-cross Spike, rat him out to either Amherst or Corvini, and probably be richly rewarded for it. But Spike had given her teeth again, and for a vampire, what richer reward was there? She brought the nailfile to her lips and licked it clean before tucking it back into her purse, paying fastidious attention to the blood clotting in the grooves. It tasted like victory.

Sooty fire-edged clouds rose from the coal-bed of vermillion and gold on the western horizon, and the wind smelled of rain come to quench the celestial conflagration. Tara stood at the sink, washing jalapenos and watching the storm roll in. In the living room, Miss Kitty Fantastico washed her paws on the back of the couch and Spike sprawled out below with remote in hand, treating a longsuffering Buffy to an enthusiastic play-by-play of Manchester United's defeat of Blackburn Rovers. Dawn scrunched in a gawky foetal curl in the armchair, thumbing through The Sibley Guide to Demons in a purely informational search for pictures of horns.

Out in the driveway a car door slammed, and Willow raced for the shadowed rear of the house, an undead Isadora Duncan muffled in a violently lime-green scarf. She skipped into the kitchen and plunked her booty down in triumph on the counter, a few stray locks of unconfined hair sparking and frizzling in the last feeble rays of the sun. "Got it!"

Tara examined the book in dismay. Annabel Victoria Pryce: A Watcher's Memoir. To call it a slender volume would be generous; it was practically anorexic. "All the way to Santa Barbara for this?"

"Yup. Unimpressive, huh?" Willow unwound the scarf and pinched out her smouldering coiffure. "But Giles says it's got some material on Slayer legends we can't find anywhere else. He's pretty sure someone did a purge of the Council records around twenty-five years ago--there's a lot of unexplained gaps in the material available to field Watchers. And with his personal persona being non grata, he's gonna have to call in favors by the bushel before he can get access to the main Council Library in London, much less into the restricted files."

Her fingers, still damp from the peppers, were leaving blurry spots on the quaint old typeface. Tara set the book down with a shiver. Slim cool arms entwined her waist and Willow's head nestled against her shoulder, ash-smudged alabaster, a china doll left too long in the attic. Breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, chill as the wind outside. "Nervous?"

"A little," Tara admitted. "Summoning ancient powers and giving them a stern lecture isn't really my kind of magic."

She felt Willow's cheek curve in a smile. "You can do it, baby. We just have to figure out how. You gave me my soul back, didn't you?"

"That was different. A tested spell, and I was--" She didn't know what she'd been, desperate or stupid or brave, but that kind of insane determination wasn't something she could summon up every day.

"Incredible, and don't let anyone tell you different." Willow picked up the book and cradled it to her chest. "I'd better get to work on this. Half of it's in French. It's worse than Uncle Paul's letters to Harriet.”

"Spike knows some French, doesn't he?"

Willow grinned. "I don't think the words Spike knows are likely to be in this book. Should we set the table?"

"I thought we'd just eat in front of the TV tonight. If you want to get out the soup bowls--"

Willow bounced out with crockery in arm, and Tara arranged a mandala of pepper slices on the last cheese sandwich. She piled melty golden-brown sandwiches in a pyramid on the blue willow platter and poured bowls of savory red: tomato soup from the saucepan in front, pig's blood from the double boiler on the back. Cooking was like a spell, in a way: the right ingredients, the right gestures in the right order, and voila, happy people. Tomato slices for Dawn, extra cheese for Buffy, jalapenos for Spike, and extra-light on the butter for Willow, who, in unhappy contrast to her sire, had a delicate stomach for anything not blood.

She had no idea what secret ingredient would make her content with her own lot.

Try harder.

She didn't make the mistake of thinking that advice was cheap, or cheaply given. Spike rope-walked the chasm between good and evil without a net, and Buffy risked her own fall, leaning unsupported across the abyss to take his hand when he faltered. Sometimes Tara thought it might have been easier for her and Willow in some other time and place, where they didn't stand in those larger-than-life shadows. Mostly she knew better--there was no time or place in which this would be easy. In the last year Willow had done everything it was reasonably possible for her to do to make things work between them. But there was no way (no safe way, no easy way) for Willow to un-become a vampire.

That was the seductive thing about magic: it always came with a price, but the temptation to buy on credit was overwhelming. Out in the living room, Willow sat cross-legged, tucked into one corner of the couch, her new find propped on one knee and a literary Tower of Pisa of spellbooks teetering at her side. Her small pink tongue-tip peeked from one corner of her mouth as she jotted down neat columns of notes, coursing from one book to another like a hound on the scent. Just as Buffy had always to remember that Spike, however domesticated, was still a demon, she had always to remember that Willow, however chastened by experience, was still Willow. When Willow reached a limit, her first reaction was to push it.

Everyone converged on her when she brought the platter out, mad dogs when the bread comes. Buffy put her and Spike's dinners on the same tray, soup and burba-spiced pig's blood in dangerous proximity. An unwary sandwich could end up anywhere. Dawn left the Sibley face-down on the nearest TV tray--the wail outside was either the wind picking up, or Giles's moan of bibliophilic anguish from across the Atlantic--and relieved Tara of a bowl of soup. "Are you all right? You look like Mrs. Fitzgibbons after Spike ate her Pomeranian. Want me to check that bandage?"

Tara shook her head, embarrassed. "I'm fine, really. Just thinking about the...the spell for Kennedy." Her fingers were at her neck again, prodding the tender flesh as if to squeeze out the pain like poison.

"Am I ever going to live that sodding dog down?" Spike asked, deeply aggrieved. "Bet 'f I'd eaten Mrs. Fitzgibbons no one'd give a rat's, but lay a fang on the poor little puppy--" He reached for the burba weed, and Buffy took advantage of his momentary distraction to stage a commando raid on the remote. Paul Scholes gave way to Charlton Heston as a singularly unconvincing Mexican. "Oi! We're watching that!"

"Correction. You were watching that. For the third time." Buffy tossed the remote to Dawn, who clutched it to her bosom with a maniacal cackle.

"Fine." Spike slouched down amidst the couch cushions with a martyred pout. "You just keep this in mind the next time you want me to watch some great nance sliding around an ice rink in sequined knickers."

Buffy laughed and curled up at Spike's side, and Dawn settled herself on the floor between his knees, the two of them teasing a deep purring growl out of him in no time. Tara sat sandwiched between Buffy and Willow, acutely aware of the pressure of Willow's thigh against her own. So very ordinary, 95% of living with a creature of the night. Why couldn't she handle that 5%? In the moments when vampire became only another thing that Willow was, no more or less important than the red hair or the quirky grin or the frog fear, it all worked--couldn't she make those moments last longer? Maybe there was something, some meditation or exercise, which would allow her to...not notice vampire-ness, somehow? Right. Because the last time you cast a spell to not notice demons, it worked SO well. Not that there was much to notice right now. Willow ate her sandwich the way Willow had always eaten grilled cheese sandwiches: cut diagonally, first one corner, then the other, nipping off neat, symmetrical bites from each end, and if she hadn't known that there was blood in the soup bowl... But she knew.

On the TV, Heston deposited his clueless American wife in a near-deserted hotel outside Los Robles. "What, did he just overdose on stupid pills?" Dawn asked, "Put her on the grill, she's dead meat."

Willow shuddered and tugged the red and blue afghan up over her knees. "That motel guy gives me both heebies and jeebies."

Try harder. She'd had the right idea, the other night; she'd just gone too far, too fast, and in a really stupid direction. Buffy'd had considerable acerbic commentary on that: Accepting Willow as a vampire doesn't mean accepting yourself as an hors d'oeuvre. Arm around the shoulders; that was good. Willow gave a happy little wriggle and snuggled closer, her body sweetly pliant against Tara's own.

Buffy had mentioned in passing once that vampires really, really liked having their brow ridges stroked. That was a nice, safe, middle-of-the-road thing to do, right? Solidly balanced between brandishing crosses and offering up one's jugular. "Sweetie? Change," she whispered. "Please?"

Willow blinked, confused and a little apprehensive, but her eyes closed green and opened gold. Tara brushed bright strands of copper from her lover's newly-furrowed brow, tracing the curves of bone and cartilage. Willow's gasp, and the small moan with which she butted into Tara's palm, indicated that 'like' was a rather inadequate descriptive verb. Or at least that it should have come with several more 'reallys' attached. The alto counterpoint to Spike's baritone rumble burst from Willow's slim chest, and the whole couch vibrated to a two-part harmony of predatory bliss, straight from where the wild things were.

She liked cats. Maybe she could think of vampires as being like cats. Big, dead, evil cats.

On the TV, the motorcycle gang closed in, and Janet Leigh screamed. Willow's yellow gaze riveted on the cinematic carnage and her purr deepened to a throaty snarl of anticipation. Only for a second, and then she was shrinking into Tara's side with a meep! of dismay at on-screen naughtiness, but Tara's heart was battering its way out of her ribcage anyway. The doorbell rang and she sprang to her feet. "I'll get it! That must be..." A pizza guy, UPS, wandering Mormons, anyone would do. She fought a gust of cold rainy wind for possession of the door and froze, open-mouthed with surprise. "Kennedy?"

"Hey." Kennedy's tone was deliberately casual, and she stood with an indifferent elbow propped up against one of the porch columns. She was dressed to slay in a rain-speckled blouse of blood-red silk cinched with a silver concho belt--real Navajo silver, if Tara was any judge. Artfully distressed designer jeans and a pair of Italian boots calculated to induce paroxysms of shoe envy in Buffy finished off the ensemble. "I was patrolling, and I thought I'd stop by and see if there's any news." Kennedy stood fidgeting with her belt for a moment, and cleared her throat. "About the spell."

"Oh." It was barely half an hour past sunset, and prime patrolling time wasn't for another hour yet; most vampires were just getting up about now. "Uh...not really. We're just starting to..."

The fidgeting escalated to toe-tapping. "Mind if I don't stand here and catch SARS? It's starting to rain like a sonofabitch."

Tara stepped aside--without issuing an explicit invitation, because in Sunnydale you never knew--and Kennedy strolled right in, alive and well and fetchingly damp around the edges. She was wearing a musky, exotic, come-hither perfume, and the scent wafted through the room with her every movement. Willow's nose twitched, Spike's nostrils flared, and a glint of fang showed as Kennedy hip-swished past the couch. She made a runway turn in front of the fireplace, tossed her stormcloud hair and halted. Licorice-dark eyes homed in on Willow, and her tongue caressed raspberry-glossed lips. Maybe she didn't get that when a vampire said you looked edible, they meant it literally. "Got something for me?"

Willow gaped at her. "Oh! Right. Yes. Not, um, to scale and I haven't painted it or anything--" She fumbled for her notebook. "No sign of a spell or mystic illness on this end. Total certainty's on hold till Faith checks in, but since Buffy's not lacking in the power department..."

Buffy finger-waved from the couch. "Full of zingy Slayer goodness."

"...it's not real likely that there's something wrong with the source of Slayer power, either. It's fine, you're fine, you're just not getting any. Enough. Um, power. Whatever the problem is, it's only affecting you--"

"It can't be just me!" Kennedy interrupted. "It's ev--" Faced with multiple stares, and she broke off. "Check in from where? Is John Edwards making house calls?"

"Faith's not dead." Buffy didn't elaborate. "'Ev' what? Wanna tack on a few syllables?"

Insouciance dissolved into an uncomfortable squirm. "I just meant it could be affecting Faith. We don't know."

Spike sucked his cheeks in and folded his arms across his chest, his eyes a blue so pale and cold it was almost grey. "Minute ago you thought Faith was dead."

Kennedy's lips drew noose-tight, and she met the vampire's eyes with a defiant glare. "Until a few minutes ago no one bothered to tell me any different."

Willow broke the standoff with a small, diplomatic cough. "ANYWAY. We're trying to come up with a non-Nightmare-On-Revello-Drive way to contact the First Slayer. Assuming we can get her to talk."

"She's definitely on the pre-verbal side," Buffy said, scrunching her nose. "Also big with the homicidal mania."

"She spoke through Tara, last time," Willow countered. "Or at least, through your mental image of Tara. So the real thing..."

She beamed, and Tara ducked her head. "That's--I mean, that's the kind of magic I'm b-best at. Communication, synthesis, interpretation...it's worth a try."

"Whoa!" Kennedy flung up both hands. "I thought you people were all gung-ho for this demon-power story. Now you're talking like it's a person or something."

"Not a person, exactly." Tara looked thoughtful. "More of a personification."

Willow nodded. "I mean, true, there had to be a flesh and blood first-ever one-girl-in-all-the-world once. Council tradition says that her name was Sineya--that's the name Giles used in the enjoining spell, when we made the Uber-Slayer to defeat Adam? But whatever the enjoining spell woke up–it might have, well, echoes of the real Sineya-if-that-was-her-real-name, but it couldn't really be her, because dead, obviously, and ghosts manifest in the material world, and the First Slayer only appeared in our dreams. And Giles says no human ghost could possibly last from the Stone Age to the present, anyway. Half-life. The ectoplasmic matrices break down, and they fade away after a few hundred years. Which is really sad when you think about it. You go to all the trouble to haunt someplace--"

"The First Slayer's more like...an avatar," Tara said, trying to allay Kennedy's obvious confusion. "An archetype. The distilled essence of Slayerness."

"Which we accidentally poked up out of Buffy's subconscious." Willow mimed stabbing something. "Which, let me tell you, is one scary place. In theory, she ought to be pokeable through any Slayer's subconscious, given a sufficiently pointy stick. Maybe she can give us a clue what's wrong."

Kennedy edged closer to the couch, craning her neck to see Willow's notebook. "So what do I have to do?"

"We're not sure yet," Willow admitted. "There's this meditative ritual I want to try in Orpheia's Akhashic Guide, for the manifestation of the anima. I figure if we kit-bash that with a tailored summoning spell, and--"

"Yipe, look at the time!" Buffy leaped to her feet. "I'm supposed to meet--excuse me, rendezvous with--Riley and his Mystery Date at eight. Fill me in when we get back, Will." She grabbed her jacket, snatched stakes from the weapons chest, considered a sword and then put it back with a grimace at the rain now pounding at the porch roof. "You want to sit in?" she asked Spike, who was collecting his things in a far more leisurely manner.

"Nah." Spike shrugged into his jacket. "But I'll drop you off." He extended an arm. "Walk you to my car, little girl?"

Buffy took his elbow with a flirtatious grin. "Only if you give me candy, mister. Later, guys!"

Kennedy's lip curled as Dawn shut the door behind them, and she rounded on the younger Summers with narrow-eyed disapproval. "Doesn't it bother you at all that your sister's with a guy who's kind of...dead?"

Dawn shrugged. "He's a consenting adult corpse, right?"

"Well, it makes me sick." Kennedy gave the couch a once-over for vampire cooties and then sat down close enough to Willow to contract a major infection. "So, tell me about this First Slayer chick."

Dawn gave a small, restrained snort and began collecting the dinner things, a plate here and a bowl there. She aimed a look at Tara over the top of her precarious armful, and jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen. Mystified, Tara trailed after her; she needed to put away the leftovers anyway, or try–-fitting anything into the refrigerator was kind of like playing edible Tetris. Dawn dumped the dishes into the sink, walked over to the stove and switched the range fan on, muffling the sound of conversation from sensitive vampire ears. Dawn thought of things like that. "You realize Kennedy's totally crushing on Willow, right?"

"What?" Tara banged her head on the freezer door, bit back an intemperate word or two, and straightened. "No! That's not--she doesn't like vampires!"

"Excuse me? Personal experience with the smitten Slayer in play here." In a family which had elevated the eyebrow thing to a fine art, Dawn didn't win many points on style, but she got the message across. "Remember the last person who wore red silk and Eau de Fuck Me Silly to tell a vampire he had no chance with her whatsoever?" She slapped the back of one hand to her forehead and adopted an exaggerated Buffy-falsetto. "'Spike, it can never be! You're evil! It would be wrong!" Dawn grabbed a bunch of celery and tango-dipped it over the counter. "Take me now, you dead, passionate fool!' Puhlease. Look at her."

Tara peeked over the top of the refrigerator door. Willow was sorting spellbooks into piles while Kennedy looked on--anyone can read this, Spike can read this, and where the hell is Giles when you need him? "Oh, yeah, I see what you mean," she said, solemn. "That's hot. I'd better just pack my bags now."

"Watch," Dawn hissed. Kennedy leaned close. Definitely in Willow's personal space, and okay, maybe her blouse was one button shy of indecent exposure, but lots of people wore their clothes that way. When Kennedy reached for a book her hand met Willow's and didn't flinch, but didn't linger, either. Willow, engrossed in literary triage, handed the book over with barely a glance.

Kennedy didn't flinch. Tara huddled behind her shield of chrome and white enamel, gut-punched with revelation. All her joints felt watery and her stomach seemed to have become a vast empty cavern threatening to suck all the air out of her lungs. Kennedy might hate vampires, but she wasn't physically revolted by them. She'd got it all backwards. Willow had fought hard to conquer her demons, literal and otherwise. Confronted often enough with I can't love a vampire, she wouldn't resort to magic to make Tara come to her, or attempt some desperate, dangerous ploy to change herself into something acceptable.

But she might just find herself a girlfriend who could love a vampire.

She'd worried so much over whether or not she'd have to leave Willow, it had never occurred to her that Willow might leave her. Even the obsessiveness of Aurelians had its limits; Spike had given up on Drusilla eventually. "It...it's n-not like there's a law against thinking Willow's cute," she got out at last.

"Fine." Dawn abandoned her celery beau to its vegetative fate and headed for the stairs with a flounce and a Theda Bara eyeroll. "Gazillion-year old ex-Key and reigning expert on the love lives of Slayers, but hey, don't mind me--I've got essay questions to fake."

Tara buried herself in the freezer, re-arranging things until her fingers were stiff with cold. Dawn was seeing things, and she was borrowing hammers, and if she tried one more configuration of leftovers, the entire refrigerator was going to collapse into Food-9. She slammed the door and walked back to the living room with calm determination. Dawn had left the Sibley on the TV tray, and Tara picked it up and straightened the spine, flipping through it at random in a concerted effort to distract herself from self-fulfilling prophecies.

...in the veins of the Mohra demon flows the blood of eternity.

She wasn't sure why the page caught her eye. She'd seen it mentioned once or twice as a component in a some of the more powerful and dangerous healing spells. Terribly rare, terribly expensive. Nothing that would ever show up for sale on Anya's shelves.

"Sweetie?" Willow held out one of the books. "You think we'll need this one?"

"You never know." Tara tucked the Guide to Demons into a sweater pocket. If Willow noticed the renewed pounding of her heart, she didn't say a word.

Raindrops hit the side windows running and raced each other to the back of the car as the DeSoto hummed along wet black streets littered with palm fronds and pulpy fragments of paper, heading for the shiny new Marriot by the freeway. The radio sputtered and an announcer interrupted Jim Morrison to warn of possible mudslides in the vicinity of Kingman's Bluff. Buffy watched the wipers dashing sheets of quicksilver to the right and left, bringing her closer to her rendezvous with every tick.

"...if they've half a brain between them, they'll attack through the sewers in the daytime, and try to catch us between the sun and a hard place. The lower level's defensible enough since we had the doors put in, 'less they bring explosives, but I want to set someone tunneling parallel to the sewer main outside the lower level doors." Spike had gone game-faced for the slight sensory edge it gave him, and his pupils flashed, tarnished pennies in a dark well. "Make a crawl space, like, with a few arrow slits for crossbows, or just for recce."

Buffy pinched her lower lip. "How many people can we afford to pull off regular work for that?"

"I'll put Denny on it. Not like he's good for anything else." Spike fidgeted, thumbs tapping the wheel, and considered. "Or we could just round up a few stray fledges, work 'em till they drop, and stake 'em after."

By vampire standards, working strangers to death in preference to his own minions made him a soft touch. "That doesn't seem very...sporting," Buffy said carefully. Sometimes she envied Willow and Tara--once Tara got used to the whole vampire thing (and of course Tara would get used to the whole vampire thing. Wouldn't she?) they'd have it made. She and Spike were always going to be engaged in a tug-of-war between It would be wrong and Yeah, so? "Killing them I'm on board with, but using them for slave labor and then killing them is... squicky."

Spike's forehead acquired a few more convolutions as he tried to work that one out. "We could pay them before killing them," he suggested, with only minimal sarcasm. "If they showed promise I'd be for keeping them, but seriously, love, how else do we get it done quick and on the cheap?"

The vision of half a dozen vampires punching a time clock and exploding into dust forced a snort of laughter out against her will. "I don't know! God, I'm turning into a demon OSHA inspector. What about magic?"

"Quick, yeh; cheap? Not if we want it to last more'n fifteen minutes before collapsing of its own weight."

Buffy acknowledged the point with a moue; there was a big difference between a spell that reamed out fifty feet of earth and a spell that reamed out fifty feet of earth, disposed of the excess fill in a safe and responsible manner, and provided drainage and support beams and a preliminary scrying to avoid bursting the odd gas main in the process. Spike leaned back, one hand draped carelessly over the top of the steering wheel. "We'll have a better idea how much time we've got once Evie's cradled in the bosoms of the ungodly and plucking their brains for us."

Evie had chutzpah, no doubt about that. She could see why Spike had made the impulsive decision to recruit her. Still... "You think she can handle that, first week on the job?"

"She's a clever bird." Spike shook a cigarette loose from the perpetually half-full pack in his pocket–would he use a cigarette case if she got him one, or dismiss it as poncy?--and lipped it, bracing the wheel with one knee while he felt around for his lighter. "About to graduate university when Dalton turned her. Wanted to be a marine biologist, as I recollect, or some egghead thing like that." Smoke streamed out the window and dispersed into the rainy night. "She was right hacked off about missing out on the cap-tossing--though come to think, she did go in the end. Ate the professor that gave her a B-."

"Keep talking. I'm starting to warm to that slave labor idea." Buffy laid her forehead against the window and trailed a finger through the faint mist of condensation which bloomed on the glass. The problem with leading Spike to ethical water was that it made her think, too. At the moment her brain felt like one of those bent nail puzzles--somewhere there was a trick that would untwist everything into bright, shiny, simple pieces, but darned if she could figure out what it was. She couldn't afford to think of vampires as people. The lines that allowed her to function as a Slayer were already dangerously blurred, and handing out socks to the minions could only lead to badness. But some still small voice told her that thinking of them as a commodity was equally dangerous. Every one of the nameless, faceless vamps she'd sent to dust in the past had a past--had been a person, once, and if they weren't that person any longer, were still a someone, not a something.

Spike didn't think of it in those terms. He had his own lines in the sand, but they divided the people he cared about--vampire or human--from the rest of the world, whose continued existence depended solely upon how interesting or useful they happened to be to him today. Except his lines had gone smudgy, too, 'interesting and useful' grown to encompass a category of people so broad and vague that he could barely define it any longer, and got grouchy when asked to try. Their lives had gone from the stark clarity of pen and ink to a blurry watercolor brilliance.

Rows of rain-spangled cars shone diamond-bright in the headlights as they pulled up in front of the Sunnydale Marriot. "What are we doing here, Spike?"

She wasn't talking about the hotel. Spike's lion-gold eyes were pensive beneath that gargoyle brow, and what was she, really, that she found the savage lines of his demon face so beautiful? "I don't know. Got to do something, though, don't we? It's what we're made for, both of us." He toyed with his cigarette, rolling the slim white cylinder between nicotine-stained fingers, and looked up with a grin, half shyness and half deviltry. "'Spect we'll figure it out as we go along, like always."

He pitched the half-smoked cig end over end and got out to open her door for her, half-drenched in the time it took him to walk around the car. Buffy stood tip-toe, brushed lips to his cheek--cold as vampires were seldom cold in sunny California--and turned towards the sterile glow of the hotel doors. Spike caught her wrist and pulled her back, enfolding her like the rainswept night.

They clung together in a blind roaring universe of water. Spike's cold nose found refuge in tendrils of tawny hair curling at the base of her jaw, and Buffy pressed close, muffling the misty billows of her breath against his shoulder till warmth blossomed there like crocuses in winter. She laid a palm flat against his chest, mapping the place where his heart should have beat. She didn't miss the thump and rush. Enough to feel the solid swell of pectoral muscle tense and relax at her touch, and the singing thrill of Spike, right here! from her Slayer's senses. She let her hand slide down the firm plane of his belly, fingers exploring the interesting gap where his t-shirt was riding up--it was one he'd acquired the summer after her death, when he'd gotten so razor-wire thin, and it was a little too small for him now that there was a healthy amount of flesh between skin and bone. There were certain advantages to that, involving the ticklish, anticipatory twitch of cool satiny skin, and the tiniest wisp of dark hair trailing down from his navel, just begging to be tweaked...

"Sure you don't want to come?" she whispered.

Spike growled into the tender folds of her neck, lips teasing at her earlobe. "I want to come, all right. But I've got Evie to see to, Willow didn't fill the sodding gas tank like I told her, and this rain'll flush those Frewlar demons out of hiding. 'Sides, Captain America and Bucky'll likely talk freer if I'm not about." His tongue curled, and his eyes glinted in the aqueous light. Blue now; he'd gone human in her arms. "Just wanted to see you off proper."

It was refreshing that Spike was handling the Riley situation without a trace of the sulky jealousy still all too likely to erupt between him and Angel...but also fairly tasty to be seen off properly. "Mmm. You'll have to see me off improperly sometime. Bronze at eleven?"

"If it hasn't taken on two of every creature and pulled up anchor."

Spike's vehicular dinosaur forded the primeval swamp of the parking lot, and the wicked red eyes of its taillights faded into shrouds of rain as it disappeared down the access road. Buffy tilted her head back and squinted up at the hotel's facade, trying to read the room numbers around the scalloped edge of the awning. A raindrop seeped through a seam in the burgundy canvas and fell in her eye.

"Buffy! Ready to move out?" Sam Finn strode briskly through the front doors, an exceptionally wholesome Emma Peel in Kevlar and sleek black government-issue all-weather gear. Her low-slung utility belt bristled with assorted tracking and communications gear, grapples, a taser, and several mysterious items Buffy suspected were just there to make the belt balance. Riley loomed right behind his wife, sporting an even more impressive array of gadgets. They looked like they'd stepped out of the Sharper Image His N' Hers catalogue.

Buffy blinked and rubbed violently at her eye, hoping fervently that her mascara lived up to its billing. "More like swim out, but all rarin' to go." She hunched her shoulders in her silly bright teal windbreaker, feeling slightly underdressed. Rather to her disappointment, Mrs. Riley Finn showed no signs of being anything but a perfectly normal gorgeous, statuesque Amazon. It wasn't that she grudged Riley moving on, Buffy told herself sternly. It was just that the universe was a better, fairer place when all the guys who dumped her were cursed to wander the world, doomed never to experience perfect happiness. She was pretty sure it was in the contract somewhere.

"Here's our targets." Riley fanned a sheaf of laminated sheets in front of her, each one stamped all over with TOP SECRET, EYES ONLY, CONFIDENTIAL, and for all Buffy could tell, DO NOT OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS. Most of the faces were vampires, shown in full-face and profile, both game-face and human. There were a few demons: a Fyarl, a Bracken or two, something that looked like Clem's older, saggier cousin, and one thing she couldn't identify at all. It looked like someone had ripped a couple dozen wanted posters off the wall of the Mos Eisley Post Office. "The ones with the red Xs through have been confirmed killed--either we found their bodies in the complex before we locked it down, or we've got reliable reports of their deaths later. The blue Xs are the one's we've recaptured.

"About half of the subjects had tracers implanted." Riley was punching coordinates into a Rockwell Collins GPS receiver. "We don't know how many are still generating a signal, or at what strength. The plan was to quarter the town in the van till we picked up a target, and then close on foot, but it looks like our lucky night." He tilted the unit to allow Buffy to see a detailed schematic of Sunnydale's streets scrolling across the tiny screen, which impressed her somewhat less than it might have before Willow had introduced her to Mapquest. "It's got a little something extra under the hood," he said with a grin. The flick of a button, and the view changed to the layout of the cave system. "Turns out that infrared satellite photos are good for more than finding Mayan ruins." The view snapped back to street-level again, focusing on the industrial park west of the hotel. "There's our boy."

A yellow dot zipped between the ghostly outlines of the buildings, heading away from the freeway. "Ooh, retro. Pac-Vamp."

The dot jittered and fuzzed out for a moment, then reappeared further down the street. Riley grimaced. "Either the tracer's running out of power, something's interfering with the signal, or it teleports," he said. "Sometimes it's all three. Let's go." He plunged into the rain, and Sam took off in perfectly coordinated unison. Buffy stuffed the photos inside her windbreaker and scrambled to catch up. Right. Of course. Not the leader of the pack, not tonight. She could do that.

Over hedges, around corners, between cars, her racing feet found the high spots of their own volition, and Buffy skimmed across the wet neon surface of the night, outpacing the raindrops. She caught up to Team Finn in a matter of seconds, and reined herself in to a jog. It had been a long time since she'd patrolled with anyone but Spike. Xander wasn't up to it anymore; even after a year of PT he still limped, and he and Anya were retired, anyway. Dawn had school. Tara and Willow came along occasionally, when they didn't have evening classes, but for the most part she ran with wolves. She'd lost the habit of holding herself to human limitations.

Not that Sam and Riley weren't good. They dodged from cover to cover, slipped single-file through the narrow slot between two barracks-style office complexes, alert, wary, silent as all get-out–but they weren't Spike, attuned to her every move and vice versa. There was distinct third-wheeliness in the air. Or was that fifth wheel? Had to be, because three made a tricycle. The pair of them dropped to a crouch behind a lone Subaru. "He's moving fast," Sam whispered, with a nod at the GPS unit. Buffy did a little bunny hop, trying without success to see over the Great Wall of Finn. Sam looked at Riley, biting her lip. "You think...?"

Without a word, Team Finn split to cover the parking lot, skirting the shabby little oleander hedges which dissected the asphalt. The whole non-verbal communication thing was really irritating when it was some other couple doing it. Buffy did a quick eeny meeny and took after Sam.

Vampire, vampire, who's got the vampire? She stretched her Slayer senses to the limit, breathing in the chalky odor of wet stucco and the faint sickening smell of oil-slick pavement. The industrial park stretched away into the murk, rank upon infinite rank of featureless Lego buildings distinguished only by numbers half-obscured by rain and darkness. No go. Where instinct failed, thinkiness would have to suffice. If I were a vampire in this part of town, where would I be going?

"Damn," Riley muttered as they came together in the lee of the next row of offices. "Signal's gone again."

Buffy beckoned. "This way." Riley and Sam didn't follow immediately, much to her irritation. She whirled, dancing on her toes. "Hurry!"

Sam looked dubious, but Riley gave her a come-on jerk of his head, and this time they followed as Buffy tore off down the covered walkway fronting the nearest block of offices. The clack of her boot-heels reverberated off the concrete and her reflection capered from window to blank black window at her side. Rain slapped her in the face as the walkway came to an end, and she was out in the open once more, stake in hand, no, stake bad, they wanted this puppy undusted. She could sense her prey now, close, a tinfoil skittering along her nerves.

There--a shadow darting along the top of the cinderblock wall surrounding the park. For a split second the floodlights reflected sleek and silvery from its head. A second shadow broke from the insufficient cover of an oleander and made a panicked scramble for the wall. It was a skinny kid in ragged jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt, eyes mad with hatred and terror beneath a mop of unkempt black hair. Buffy half expected Spike to be crouched atop the wall, grinning down at the fun and ready to pounce, but there was a distinctly girly shriek and a windmilling of arms, and the wall-top shadow disappeared with a muffled thump.

The skinny kid snarled and made a predictable feint left before dodging right, worn sneakers skidding on rainbow slicks of oil. Buffy was where he was going before he was, meeting his bared fangs with a feral grin. "May I have this dance?" He fled, and she was before him again, doing a Gene Kelly round the nearest light pole. There was no challenge in a foe who couldn't fight back. "That's so like a guy, just hang around by the punchbowl all night." Sam and Riley pounded across the wet pavement towards her, eyes wide. "Oh well, you'd probably step on my toes anyway." She hauled off with a straight right to the jaw. The vampire spun around and collided with Sam, who jammed a taser into his shoulder. The vamp's head snapped up, chin to the sky, and he convulsed, golden eyes rolling back blank and white in his head. He collapsed in a limp awkward heap on the pavement.

Riley rolled the body over with one steel-toed boot. "Damn, Buffy. How'd you know he'd break this way?"

"Easy. He had to be heading for Lincoln Avenue." Light failed to dawn, and Buffy elaborated. "He's got a chip in his head, right? Feeding opportunities therefore limited? Lincoln's Ho Central. All those seedy motels. He could get someone to hire him for a suck job there, easy." She wrinkled her nose. "Someone with no standards in personal hygiene, but--"

"Oh." She could have sworn Riley was blushing. "I didn't realize--"

Hopefully Sam appreciated having a guy who'd lived in Sunnydale for two years and never realized where the hookers hung out--the human ones, anyway. Riley bent to run one of his blinky devices along the creature's lanky torso. "Hostile Eleven," he said with a grin. "The genetic signature matches perfectly."

"Well, that was...anticlimactic." Buffy rubbed her knuckles and stared down at their first...victim was the wrong word, but she couldn't think of the right one. There was something ignominious about this; it was vermin control, not an epic battle of good and evil. But someone needed to spray for roaches. "There's another one out there." She started for the wall, but Riley grabbed her shoulder, his hand large and startlingly warm.

"Hold your positions," he snapped. "I'll check it out."

Buffy almost opened her mouth to object, but the look in his eyes and the minute shake of his head stopped her; this was something to do with his mysterious personal business. He disappeared into the shadows. Buffy watched the dark spot where he wasn't for a moment longer, itchy--she couldn't tell for certain if the second vampire was still anywhere nearby. Sam didn't look particularly happy with the situation herself, but she only pulled out her cell and dispensed terse directions to the pickup crew. That done, she hauled the groggy vampire up, snapped a pair of not-at-all-sexy manacles around his bony wrists, and dragged their captive under the minimal protection of the covered walkway. She leaned back against the cruddy stucco, a little too casual. "Pretty lucky coincidence, you running into Ri the very first night we're in town. How often does something like that happen?"

Buffy tucked her hands into her armpits. The rain was starting to soak through her less-than-high-tech windbreaker. Now that she wasn't moving, she was starting to get cold. "About once a week," she muttered. There was something in the other woman's eyes she couldn't fathom, an assessing look which went beyond the wariness a new wife might feel around an old girlfriend. "So, uh, congratulations, and everything. How long have you and Riley been married?"

"Our first wedding anniversary was in October."

Wedding bells less than a year after Riley'd left Sunnydale. Hmph. Never mind that she'd been lying awake nights a scant month later, calculating the correct angle from which to jump Spike's bones. That was, naturally, completely different. "Not a believer in long engagements, huh?"

"Not in our business." Sam looked at her, dark eyes under dark level brows, a perfect oval of a face--Raphael's Madonna and Kalashnikov. "I'll be square with you--I resented it sometimes, that he was spending time with me getting over you."

Sign here, and tell me where you want me to unload the shipment of awkward. "I hope you don't think–because it's so over. There's Spike, very much there's Spike. And you. And not that Riley isn't a great guy, he is, but we're just not...it didn't work out and..." Buffy covered her eyes with a groan. "Can I back up and maybe do this with hand gestures?"

"I didn't mean to put you on the spot." Sam shifted her grip on the taser with a rueful smile. "OK, maybe I did. Look, let's not talk about it." A silence almost as awkward as the speech followed. "So how did you and Spike meet?"

"We were in a band," Buffy deadpanned. She pulled the sheaf of laminated photos out of her purse and shuffled through them again. It was like looking over old yearbook photos--you know that guy, the one who threw the Jell-O at the gym teacher? This was the guy who sat behind him in algebra. "Hey!" She pointed to a mug-shot of a Bracken demon. "That's Susie! She's the relief bartender at Willy's. She's..." Not exactly a friend, but not someone she'd expected to see flashy-thinged and carted away in a black helicopter, either.

"We got another positive ID? Fantastic." Sam whipped out her cell again. "I'll alert the team–two tags in one night is–"

Slayer reflexes let Buffy grab her arm before she could hit the speed dial. "Whoa, there, Black Mamba! You can't just go all KGB on Susie. She hasn't done anything."

Sam looked down at her. "Buffy... Ours not to question why. Our assignment is to retrieve or eliminate. Riley wouldn't tell you this," her voice dropped: quiet, confidential, serious, just between us Amazons. "But you need to know. He's putting his career on the line, making this end run around orders for your boyfriend. His record in Sunnydale's not good. I've seen the files–AWOL, assaulting a superior officer–the only reason he's not rotting in a military prison somewhere is that someone in Washington likes him. Friends in high places can only protect you so far."

"That's Riley's decision to make, isn't it?"

"Not saying it isn't. But it won't look good if our superiors find out he's subverting the mission objectives for one HST, much less two." She looked honestly perplexed. "You're not what I expected. Ri talked about you a lot, how you were this legendary warrior for good–"

"Yeah, well, I'm an independent contractor these days. What's going to happen to them? The specimens you collect?" Visions of the Initiative holding facilities rose unbidden from memory, featureless cages and electro-shock forcefields. Spike had been in one of those cages, once. At the time, she'd thought it was the funniest thing in the world. "I'm all for science, yay cell phones and Midol, but--"

Sam's shoulders rose and fell, unconcerned. "That's not my department, but they'll be studied, to see how the chips have modified their neural patterns and their behavioral responses to various stimuli. We're scientists, not the Spanish Inquisition."

"And what happens when the study's–"

At that fraught juncture the Herkimer Battle Jitney roared in through the main gates of the park, sending up twin arcs of spray from its massive wheels, and the hup-hup-hup crew poured out like ants, and in two seconds flat the fallen vampire was being prodded, poked, measured, and tagged by a swarm of ninja paramedics. A moment later Riley's head appeared atop the cinderblock fence. "Whatever it was, it got away from me," he said, a little too cheerfully. The rain was beginning to slack off, and patchy black holes were starting to appear and widen in the overcast sky, and Riley stretched, flexing those mile-wide shoulders. "Not a bad night's work."

"Gonna get better, hon," Sam said with a grin and a Mona-you're-a-brick punch to his arm. "The Slayer gave us an ID on one of the missing."

"The Slayer is having second thoughts," Buffy interrupted. "Look, we went through this once with Oz, didn't we? Rounding up the dangerous ones is one thing, but Susie's not a threat even if she didn't have a chip. Bracken demons are harmless, unless you try to pat them on the back and impale yourself on the spines. And of course, the violet eyeshadow with her complexion? Huge mistake unless she enjoys looking like a giant bruise, but I don't see a warrant from the fashion police. You can't just... just kidnap her."

Riley sighed. "No promises. I'll talk to my commanding officer. Maybe we can arrange a release when the study's complete."

"Thanks." Would it torpedo Riley's military career if Susie just happened to get a phone call tipping her off that the Initiative was back in town? Probably not, and ever so much quicker than dealing with military bureaucracy. Buffy shuffled Susie's rap sheet back into the sheaf of photos as if that would hide her from the long arm of the law, glanced at the top photo and froze. Long dark hair, café au lait skin gone a shade or two paler in death. Middling-pretty face enlivened by wide sloe eyes, brimming with fear and fury in the picture before her. Hostile 6, vampire, female, est. 0-5 yrs post-infection.

Evie. Of course. She should have realized. Spike had said she was chipped.

"Recognize someone else?" Riley asked.

Buffy handed the photos back without a hitch. "Nope. 'Fraid not."

Wesley's apartment was scrupulously tidy as always, full of ancient, breakable artifacts and angular furniture. No sybaritic overstuffed armchairs for Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. Even the lampshades were boxy. Beneath thee austere geometry there was something humid and rotten, the lingering scent of decay and despair. Or maybe that was just Lilah Morgan's perfume. Cordy rubbed her temples and took a sip of the tea her host had provided–Wesley might be slouching around in designer stubble and modeling the John Constantine collection these days, but the tea was eternal.

"You're certain?" Wesley scribbled the address on a post-it pad. "Yes. You've been most helpful." He hung up the phone and leaned back on the low-slung couch, fingers steepled before his lean impassive face. "Bernard Crowley moved to California from New York in 1978 following the death of his Slayer, Nikki Wood. He relocated from Beverly Hills to Pasadena in '92 and has been living there ever since. There's no current contact between him and the Council–none they'll admit to me, anyway. Apparently he had some kind of falling-out with them over the proper course of action regarding Nikki's son–"

Cordelia looked up from her tea. "A Slayer with a kid? That's wrong and disturbing."

He shrugged. "Unusual, but not unprecedented. Not that long ago a girl of sixteen might well already be married when Called. I gather the normal procedure was to arrange for an abortion or an adoption, but Nikki insisted upon keeping the boy, and Crowley backed her up. He raised the child after her death. And that," he said with a grimace of mild frustration, "is the one and only thing which distinguishes him from any other retired Watcher the world round. The son enjoyed a brief career as a vampire hunter in his early twenties, but Crowley himself has no history of any particular interest in Angelus or in Angel. So the question is...why should he go to such lengths to kidnap Angel now?"

"No, the question is where did he take Angel, and how do we get him back," Cordelia snapped. "You don't seem to get that I woke up on the floor. With a paperclip stuck to my face. For this you pay, bowler hat man."

"Yes, I can see where that would inspire a quenchless thirst for vengeance." Wesley rose and paced over to the glass-fronted bookshelves, hands clasped loose-limbed behind his back as he regarded the irregular ranks of books and artifacts displayed thereon. "Crowley's place is the logical starting point for a search. Unless you feel it best to wait until Fred and Gunn return--"

God, it was so frustrating, that touchy, guilt-ridden pride of his. Cordelia's fingers tightened around the handle of the teacup, vestigal good manners all that prevented her from chucking it at his head. Angel had forgiven if not forgotten, but Wesley was still spanking his inner moppet, and she was beginning to suspect that his inner moppet got off on it. She, on the other hand... "If you don't knock off the jaded urban sorcerer act, I might. You opened a vein for him, so don't try to convince me you don't give a damn now. Just get in the car and–"

There was a knock at the door. The two of them exchanged a startled glance. "Who's that?" Cordelia whispered. "You don't actually know anyone anymore, do you?"

"Regrettably, no," Wesley murmured. He took a medium-vile looking dagger from the weapons rack by the bookshelf, and opened the door with silent dispatch.

Angel stood on the threshold, still wearing yesterday's clothes (uncharacteristically rumpled, as if they'd been stuffed in a locker somewhere), a fading scrape across his cheek the only evidence of foul play. Screw the angst. Cordy shot past Wesley and barrelled into the prodigal, flinging her arms around that massive chest in a bear-hug. "Angel! You're alive! More or less! What happened? How'd you get away? Did you–"

To her utter shock, he pulled her into his arms and returned the hug hard enough to make her squeak, and my, didn't it feel good, wrapped up in all that vampire muscle? "Mr. Crowley had a proposition for me," he said, big blunt hands sliding up to tangle in her hair. Omigod, he's...sniffing me?! "I admit it didn't seem very attractive at first, but in the end he made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

There was a secret humor in his tone. Cordelia pulled away, suspicious. "What's he up to? Some kind of Watcher Amway?"

Angel smiled. Not the sketchy upturn of lips that was all he'd usually commit to--this was a great big brilliant Irish grin, complete with a twinkle in those normally unreadable eyes. "Let's just say our little problem isn't a problem any longer."

And he kissed her. Kissed her with all the ease of two and a half centuries' practice, kissed her till her heart pounded and her knees went wobbly, though maybe that was just oxygen deprivation. It wasn't the first time; they'd done this before, once or twice...or thrice, who was counting? But it was always furtive and guilt-ridden, left them less rather than more satisfied. A stolen pleasure that didn't really count, like broken cookies, no calories. This kiss was definitely illegal, immoral and fattening. One big square hand firm between her shoulder blades--all, really, that was holding her up at the moment--the other cupping her ass, thumb drawing maddening circles. She clung to him like lichen to a mountain, God, he was so big all over, she could fall into him like falling into the earth itself, dark and secret and strong. Someone was making embarrassing little moany sounds...oh, right, that was her.

"You went to the shaman," Wesley breathed.

Angel broke off and gazed at Wesley over the top of her head. "Not exactly. But I think I can safely say my soul's not going anywhere for a good long time. Gonna ask me in?"

Wesley's throat worked for a second, the long pale scar rippling across his Adam's apple. "You've always been welcome in this house."

"Now that makes me very happy, Wes." Angel's eyes were scalpels, blunted, maybe, by this odd mood, but still capable of inflicting damage. "Not perfectly happy, but sometimes in this world we just have to settle. You know all about that, I guess. How is Lilah doing these days?"

The tone of his voice, the manic glitter in his eye, the offhand cruelty--all of it slid neatly into place, knives filleting the breath out of Cordelia's lungs more effectively than the kiss had. Something within her was wailing, It's not fair! I was good, I was careful! If this was going to happen anyway, why couldn't I have gotten one night to remember out of it? She forced words past the lump of sick, frozen terror in her throat. "Wesley! He's–"

Too late. A blur of movement, and Angel had flung her aside and slammed Wesley into the bookcase, one hand around his throat, the other ramming Wes's own knife into his gut. Glass shattered, the Euclidean purity of the shelves transformed in an instant to fractal chaos, and a small fortune in rare texts tumbled to the floor. Cordelia screamed and cast wildly around for a weapon–Wes had ten million antique thingybobs scattered around the apartment, surely one had to be within arm's reach.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, darlin'," Angel snarled. Wesley made a strangled croaking noise, turning almost black in the face as Angel's fingers dug into his windpipe. Cordelia froze, hand inches from the haft of a battleaxe, mesmerized by thin trickles of blood on Wesley's temple, red against the rapidly empurpling skin. Blood-flowers bloomed on his shirt-front, scarlet petals opening and spreading across the cotton. One of the worst deaths you can die, Angel had told her once. Not that he'd needed to tell her; she'd been there, still had the scar that was such a bitch to make up for bikini shots. "Or there'll be one less ex-Watcher in L.A."

Wesley's eyes were imploring: Kill him, though it destroy me! That was why Angel had rejected her as a hostage, she realized; Wesley wouldn't have hesitated. Her voice was eerily steady in her own ears. "You're just going to feel like shit when Tara puts your soul back, so--"

"Cordy? Shut the fuck up." He gazed at Wesley with a smile obscenely close to loving. "Don't look so glum, Wes. I'm going to give you what you really want. I told you I was going to kill you for what you did to my son. Took me awhile to get around to it, is all. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth–you've been begging for it, haven't you? But don't think this is all just fun and games for me, though it really, really is–" He jabbed the knife in further, gave it a vicious twist–"I've been thinking I needed to keep you guys off my back. Thinking I needed flunkies, minions, the usual–and then d'oh! It hits me. Already got 'em. They just require a little fine-tuning. You're gonna be my right-hand man, Wes. Just like old times. And Cordy can be... well, you don't actually know how to do anything, do you? Ah, hell, with those tits who needs talent? We need to find Connor."

"Do we?" Wesley choked out.

"Yeah, Wes, we do. He's family." He grinned, his teeth saw-blades in ivory, his eyes a sulfurous blaze in the shadows of his ridged brows. "And now so are you."

Cordelia lunged for the battleaxe. Angel turned, all smooth terrible power, and flung Wesley aside, a limp bloodied scarecrow. He wrenched the axe from her grasp, trapping her wrists in one hand, and hauled her up by the hair. "Cordy, Cordy, Cordy," he caroled. "You seem stressed. How about I just buy you a new wardrobe–that's the going price for a Get Out of Cordelia's Self-righteous Condemnation Free card, isn't it? "

She wrenched at his arm, and might as well have been wrestling granite. He was always so infinitely careful with her, she forgot how inhumanly strong he was. The bones in her wrists were screaming under the pressure of his hand, a little metacarpal chorus of agony. "I'm not buying that that old goat could give you a moment of perfect happiness! This has got to be a spell or something! Angel, you've got to fight it! It's not real!"

Angel's eyes softened from teak to brown velvet, and his hands dropped to his sides. "Cordelia," he murmured. "It's–it's incredible! Your love has warmed my stony vampire heart! For you and you alone I'll give up evil and live the life of a virtuous champion!" He slapped her hard enough to rattle the teeth in her jaw. "Or not. 'Fight it, Angel!'" he mimicked. "You stupid cow. Of course it's real. It's the big damn hero who's the fantasy. And you fell for it, hook, line and sinker, didn't you? God, you're pathetic. Had a chance at power most humans can't even conceive of, and you gave it up–for what? To be with him? Well, here you are, no visions, no power, no purpose, and where's that grand romance you sacrificed it all for? You're useless. Useless to him, useless to yourself." He leaned in close. She could smell the meat-locker stench of recent feeding on his breath, and his eyes were great golden bonfires. His voice lowered, roughened. "But I've got a use for you, Cordelia Chase. Every time he looks at you, I'm watching through his eyes. Every breath he forgets not to take, I'm smelling your wet little cunt. Every time he thinks about you, every time he lies awake, every time he touches--"

Cordelia kneed him in the groin and flipped backwards over the couch, landing hard on her ass. Angel roared and doubled over, careening around the couch after her and sending the end table flying. She crab-scuttled backwards, but Angel pounced, scary-fast, pinning her shoulders to the floor with two hundred-plus pounds of lustful demonic fury. His teeth were in her throat and she was writhing wildly beneath him, trying to get leverage and screaming Don't don't don't! and--

An arm came down like lighting and Angel arched backwards with a yell, clawing for the broken table leg lodged in his back. Wesley was standing, God knew how, a blood-soaked revenant with eyes dreadful in their calm acceptance of what was happening. I guess, Cordelia thought crazily, he's used to being cut open by now. Blood everywhere, great swathes and gouts of it. "Run," he rasped through bloody foam, and then Angel was upon him.

Cordelia ran. She veered round in the doorway, one hand to her ravaged throat, heartsick and dizzy. Angel looked up from his work, grinning, Wesley's blood on his lips, his blood on Wesley's.

"Go ahead, run," he purred. "We'll be along presently."

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