Standing in the rust-stained tub, he locked his hands behind his head and stretched, gauging the progress his body was making at mending torn flesh and cracked bone. There was still a deep ache in the small of his back where the crossbow bolt had gone in and torn out again, and Angel's sword had cracked a rib or three which would take another day to heal completely. But the minor wounds were closed already, and the bruises were fading from blue-black to yellowy-brown. Good.

He turned off the tap, toweled excess water from his hair, and dressed quickly in the spare clothes Connor's friend had tossed at him--worn blue jeans and a 'Monsters of Rock' t-shirt, not exactly his best look, but better than his current blood-and-sewer-muck-encrusted ensemble.

It was a comforting measure of the menace that he could still project when he wanted to that none of the half-dozen kids lurking at the opposite end of the hall had rifled through his things while he was getting cleaned up. Spike shrugged back into his jacket, dropped into one of the ratty hotel-style armchairs scattered across the rear of the hall, and dug his cell out of the pocket. The kids watched as he punched Buffy up on speed dial, passing whispered judgment he could have listened in on had he cared enough to concentrate. Thin, frightened girls in Super Bitch t-shirts, arrogant boys with baggy jeans hanging low on their hips, talking a little too loudly of their toughness to be convincing. These were the lost ones, runaways, panhandlers, thieves, budding junkies and would-be whores whom no one would ever miss if he dragged them out the back door and drained them dry in the alley. His natural prey.

One of the girls, bolder than the others, sidled closer and smiled. Spike smiled back, giving her the look, the one that said she was the most important thing in the universe. She froze, poised between dread and fascination. He could hear her heart tripping in her chest, smell fear and curiosity edging into arousal. With one twitch of his finger, one curl of his lip, he could reel her in or scare her off.

Six billion people you don't give a damn about.

He had a head-full of complicated chains of relationships: That chit there, could know Buffy's father's girlfriend's grandmother's mechanic; you never know. Better not kill her. But the farther he got from Sunnydale, the more tenuous the connections were, and the harder it was to remember exactly why the fourteen-year-old tart in bad mascara was off-limits. Still, fuck if he'd give Angel the satisfaction of being right. He widened the smile, revealing lengthening fangs, and the girl broke and scampered back to the haven of her peers. That's right, Little Red. Run while you can. Big Bad's hungry.

Hi! You've reached Buffy Summers's voice mail! Leave a message and I'll get back to you soon, unless I don't.

"Buffy? It's me, love. You were right about His Nibs." Christ, he couldn't do this. News this bad should be broken in person, when she could weep and rail and take out on him the fury she'd never allow herself to believe was for Angel. But he couldn't leave her completely in the dark, either. "Wyndam-Pryce's...gone. Fred 'n Cordelia and Angel's brat're safe, for now. Dunno what's come of the others. I'll be heading home for reinforcements as soon as I can." He hesitated. It was inadequate, but... "Love you."

He flipped the phone shut, stuffed it back in his pocket and slumped back in his chair, resisting the urge to ring her up again just to listen to the sound of her voice on the recording. He'd dossed down in worse places. He could just catch a few hours' shut-eye right here, make a dash for the car, and be back in Sunnydale before sundown...

"Buffy, huh? How times have changed."

Spike opened one eye. Connor's friend was looking down at him as if he were a particularly exotic roach she'd discovered under the sink, arms crossed beneath the baby-blue folds of an old blanket. She was small and blonde and vulnerable-looking, with a sweet soft round face scarcely older than those of the kids she was playing shepherd to. Her eyes, though, were anything but soft. Connor stood a few paces behind her, shoulder to shoulder with one of the other shelter workers, the tension in his body screaming that he had a stake behind his back. Spike considered pulling himself out of his slouch and decided it would be a waste of valuable energy that could be put to better use mending those cracked ribs. "Anne, is it? You know Buffy?"

Anne gave him a look of cool appraisal. "We've met. I came from Sunnydale, originally. I know you, too." She raised her chin a fraction, and the morning light played across the old scar on her neck--a pale, ragged double crescent, low and to her right, just over the carotid artery. Cordelia's wound might look like that, five or six years from now. "You don't remember me at all, do you?"

Spike sucked his cheeks in and shook his head, uncertain what she expected him to say in response. Angel remembered everything, but he wasn't so blessed--or cursed, depending how you looked at it. After a hundred and twenty years, even the memorable kills began to blur together. "Should I?"

"You tried to eat me once."

"Ah." Well, that was awkward. He shifted resentfully. Couldn't humans let bygones be bygones? Had he ever held that business with the fire axe against Joyce? "I'm sorry?"

Anne's eyes remained flinty. "Are you really?"

Trick question. "Close as I can come to it," Spike said at last. "Don't want to eat you now, glad I made a cock-up of eating you then. 'Specially seeing as that means you're here to lend a hand." He could tell from her expression that it wasn't enough, but it was the best he could do. It was definitely time to change the subject. "How's the girls?"

"Fred's fine. All she needs is sleep and a few decent meals. Cordelia...she needs a hospital."

"No hospitals," Connor interrupted. "They're public. Angel's minions could walk right in."

"Boy's got a point," Spike said. "But is this place any better?"

"Believe me, if I hadn't wanted you to walk in, you wouldn't be in any condition to walk out," Anne said. "This is the best-warded building in East LA. I figured after the zombies--" Her eyes narrowed. "Actually, I was surprised you could walk in at all. So surprised that I asked a friend to check you out to see if you had a counter-charm we should know about."

"Filled with the milk of inhuman kindness, that's me," Spike muttered. Wards were probably as buggered up as the spell on Rack's place. Bloody amateurs.

"And I told her that no, you were just an expert at poking your nose in where it wasn't wanted."

Startled, Spike sat up for a good look at the man standing beside Connor, took in the lined face and the short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and inhaled sharply. The scent clinched it. He didn't bother to keep the incredulous note from his voice. "Bloody hell! Tanner? What are you doing here?"

Daniel Tanner sat down on the edge of the nearest table, hands clasped between his knees and a quarter-inch of smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He was lot cleaner and a little better fed than the last time Spike had seen him, and his general air of rumpled world-weariness was tempered by the sly humor lurking in his dark eyes. "This minute? Providing character references for vampires. In general? Freelance geomantic consultant. Business cards and everything." He inclined his head towards at Anne. "I help out here every now and then. Figured I might as well put my talent for homelessness to good use."

"Well, bugger me gently with a chainsaw." Spike fought off an answering smile. Not like Tanner was near and dear, but right now anyone who wasn't trying to introduce his small intestine to a hunk of pig iron was a mate. "So, guard or inmate? You still an utter sodding loon?"

The half-smile threatened to turn into the real thing. "Little bit. You still an evil soulless bastard?"

"Little bit." To hell with it; Connor and Anne's baffled faces were worth an all-out grin. "Look, mate, I'm knackered. Give me a few hours' kip and I'll be out of your hair. I'll even nip out and nick what Miss California needs before I head home."

Anne glanced from Tanner to Spike and back. "All right. If Dan says you're okay, you can stay. But I need to know what kind of trouble you're dragging after you. What's the deal with you and Angel?"

Dan, was it? Spike raised an eyebrow. "Anyone susses that out, Oprah's got a book deal waiting. Hasn't lost his soul, but it's definitely got a few dings in it. You acquainted? If he's got an invite, I'd revoke it toot sweet."

"He helped me out of some financial difficulties once." Anne waved around at the Spartan common room. "Where do you think I got the cash for those wards? This isn't exactly a moneymaking proposition." She caught her lower lip between her teeth and turned away, thinking. Spike had subsided into the nappy embrace of his armchair and allowed his eyelids to drift half-shut again before she turned back. "There was one thing I always wondered about, after I left Sunnydale. What happened to Billy Fordham?"

Billy who? Spike pawed through the dustbin of his memory. "That git who wanted me to sire him?" He wasn't going to have to pretend to be sorry about that, was he? "What d'you think? Gave my word, didn't I? Never promised to wipe his arse for him after, though. The Slayer did for him, like she does for most fledges."

Anne studied his face intently, her lips pressed tight as the corners of a military bunk. "Good." She tossed the blanket at him. "Get some sleep. You look like you need it."

Spike turtled down inside the collar of his jacket, inhaling the phantom smells of home. He was never going to figure out the vagaries of the souled, but the conversation had accomplished one thing, at least. He felt less adrift. Tanner. Old name, new place on the list. Anne. New name. Both Sunnydale stock, too, next thing to one of his own. Tanner, Anne, Cordelia, Fred, Gunn (hadn't seen a body; therefore, Gunn), Hank, Linda, Tia Consuela... did the green bloke count, being a demon? And what had become of him, anyway? Connor? Family, no matter how annoying the scrawny little pup was.

A dozen names in a city of millions, the warp and woof of that cobweb-slight tapestry of connections. Spike closed his eyes, and counted the people he didn't particularly want to kill until he drifted off to sleep.

"...so then out of nowhere, this demon jumped me." The vivid tactile memory of a sinuous body writhing against her own, and sun-warmed scales sliding beneath her fingers made Kennedy shiver. It had started out as an attack, that was for sure. "Then I woke up and Willow was, uh, pulling me off Tara. Sorry about that, by the way."

"Hey, who hasn't tried to kill their friends in a mystic trance at least once in their lives?" Buffy whipped the Cherokee into the last space in the parking lot of the Sunnydale Marriott, and winced as the bumper groaned against the fender of the car alongside. She craned worriedly out the window. "Did that sound paint-scrapey to you?"

"God, you're such a girl." Kennedy grinned. "Seven-time savior of the world, foiled once again by parallel parking."

"You? Can go subvert yourself." Buffy tucked her keys in her bag, frowning. "Dreamwise...you're sure you couldn't hear anything the people up on the hill were saying?"

Kennedy got out and eyed the bumper, but she couldn't tell which of the several dings and scrapes was the most recent. She folded her arms and leaned across the engine-warmed hood, feeling the fiberglass dimple ever so slightly under her weight--maybe there was something to be said for Spike's solid steel monstrosity. "Nope. Too far away, and I was kind of busy." She picked at a hangnail. "Isn't it a little weird, you being in my dream?"

Buffy was doing that eye-avoiding thing she did when something made her uncomfortable. She fiddled with her bag, needlessly re-arranging compact and lipstick. "I don't know. Faith showed up in one of my dreams before. I think--I think we're all connected, somehow."

"Slayer long-distance plan, huh? The coverage is for shit."

The Sunnydale Marriott was everything that the fleabag on Lincoln wasn't, new and clean and multi-storied, but something was making Kennedy's spidey sense tingle. She scanned the spacious marble-floored lobby while Buffy stabbed the elevator call button. Nothing in sight but a tired-looking businessman checking in, and a few suitcase-laden gurneys by the service elevator. Maybe it was just the hotel creep factor; no matter how bright and new the carpet and the paint, there was something spooky about those lines of numbered doors. She nudged Buffy's arm. "Hey. You getting that vampy feeling?"

"No..." After a moment, Buffy added grudgingly, "You're better at that than I am. Gimme a 'Polo!' when we get warm."

With every floor that the elevator rose, the jitters increased, and by the time the bell dinged for the tenth floor, Kennedy's Slayer sense was screaming and her bones were three feet to the right of her skin. "This Wood guy didn't say what his family heirloom was?" she asked as the elevator doors whished shut behind them.

From Buffy's distracted expression, she could feel it now, too. "Not in the sense of employing nouns and adjectives. He said it was an important piece of Slayer history, dropped a few Watcherly names, and made with both the cloak and the dagger." She consulted the scrap of paper on which she'd written the mysterious Robin Wood's room number. "1046--this way."

Their footsteps hush-hushed on the thick patterned carpet. The entire hotel was a sound-eating monster. Kennedy shoved her hands in her pockets. "Thanks for asking me along."

Buffy shrugged, downplay city. "You're a Slayer, it's Slayer biz. No big. Besides, if this Wood guy turns out to be, gasp, shock, horror, lying, I may need backup."

Somewhere up ahead, a door closed and a woman laughed, a lilting, delirious trill that sent tendrils of ice twining out along Kennedy's nerves. A man's harsh rebuke, muffled by distance and acoustic ceilings, cut the unnerving giggle off. Kennedy's cocky grin faltered. Buffy's face went white, and she broke into a run.

The door to the stairwell was closed as they rounded the hall corner, and no one was in sight. 1042, 1044--Wood's room was only a few doors away from the stairs. Tiny dark spots freckled the clean new carpet; Kennedy bent to touch one, and her fingers came away stained with scarlet. Left, right--check on Wood or follow the eerie laughter? Buffy's words from the cemetery came back with a boomerang kick: every choice a Slayer made had a life hanging on it.

Buffy rapped sharply on the door to 1046, and the echoes died away in the silent hall. "Mr. Wood? Hello? It's Buffy Summers." No answer. Buffy twisted the knob hard and slammed a shoulder into the door. Brass shrieked and dented in her grasp, and the wood of the door-frame cracked along its length. Buffy skipped back a step and looked at Kennedy, wordless, imperious command in her eyes. Kennedy didn't argue, or catalogue all the reasons that Mr. Wood might not answer; if they interrupted him on the pot, they could apologize later. Together they jump-kicked for the door.

Jimmy Choo and Sketchers hit the door one-two, and the entire latch mechanism ripped free of the wood as the door flew open. She and Kennedy toppled through the doorway in unison, and in unison they froze.

"Oh, God," Kennedy whispered, clapping a hand to her mouth. She wasn't some green kid. She'd killed vampires. Lots of them. Two in carefully supervised Council training sessions, five or six in the wild. One of them she'd caught in the act of feeding. She'd seen the ragged wounds in the victim's throat, seen the blood welling through the torn skin. She wasn't naive, she wasn't squeamish, she didn't faint at the sight of...

Robin Wood had been a handsome man once: tall, dark, and athletic, with a fashionably shaved head and sharp goatee. Death bleached the warm brown of his skin to a sickly ochre, clashing with the blood soaking his tailored charcoal suit. His killer had propped his corpse up against the headboard of the bed, head tilted to expose the torn throat, and the empty, crusting eye sockets stared blindly up at the ceiling. His eyeballs were cradled in the red-smeared hollows of his outstretched palms, a mute offering to indifferent gods. Upon the mirror over the dresser crude letters of blood spelled out QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES? Latin, she knew, something famous, but she couldn't remember what it meant. Another hand had scrawled on the wall above the bed MAMAS BOY. Kennedy turned aside, gagging.

A distant, wondering pity blossomed in Buffy's eyes, as if at a pain she could recognize in others, but no longer remember for herself. Her hand hovered within an inch of Kennedy's shoulders. "It's all right if you... It's...it's different when they're having fun."

Kennedy swallowed hard and straightened, shaking off the pat on the back that wasn't. Buffy closed her eyes, opened them, turned on her heel and headed for the hallway. "Let's go."

Kennedy gaped. "What? He's--"

"Dead. If we hurry, maybe he'll be the only one." She rounded the door and collided with a wall of khaki. "Riley!"

The newcomer was a big guy in camo, blue-eyed, snub-nosed, and hunky in a red state kind of way. "Buffy!" He looked over their heads into Room 1046 and those hall-wide shoulders sagged. "Damn it! Too late."

"You saw who did this?" Buffy demanded. "Which way did they go? Got an ID?"

"Sam's on it." He slipped past Buffy and into the room with an economical grace surprising in a man his size. "We think they were heading for the sewers via the hotel basement. As far as ID goes..." he hesitated, with a significant look at Kennedy.

"She's on the team," Buffy said, no qualifications, no explanations, and for a minute Kennedy wished she really were on the team. Only a minute. The team was freaking nuts.

Riley gave Kennedy the military once-over, then shrugged. Maybe Buffy didn't notice the cool hostility in his eyes, or maybe she just didn't want to. "Sam and I were in the café downstairs eating lunch. She said something about two people in costume behind me, going through the Staff Only door. I looked up at the mirror behind her, and I could see the door closing, but there wasn't anyone there." He spread one hand; the conclusion was obvious. "She followed them, and I tried to back-track and see where they'd been." He pointed to the bloodstained carpet in the hall, and his eyes were grim. "Wasn't difficult."

Driven by an urge to so something, anything useful, Kennedy walked over to the bed. The contents of a wallet were strewn across the bloody coverlet and the carpet, a flurry of official confetti confirming that yes, this was Mr. Robin Wood of Beverly Hills, California. Something about the name was familiar, though she couldn't remember Ms. Chalmers ever mentioning it.

Buffy followed her and began sorting through the papers. Kennedy frowned; looking for next of kin wasn't their responsibility, was it? The police took care of that. Riley had finished his quartering of the room, and was talking quietly into his cell phone, something about sending a team over stat. He hung up with a curse. "Sam lost them in the sewers, but I've got a team on it. Sam says there's definitely two of them, a man and a woman. The man was wearing a long dark coat. The woman was wearing an old-fashioned dress. She never got close enough to hear what they were saying, but Buffy...they both had English accents."

"Out-of-towners," Buffy said. She held up a fan of yuppie food stamps, crisp new twenties straight from the ATM. "There's still money in his wallet. Locals would have stolen it and made it look like a robbery."

Riley bent over and picked up a cigarette butt, holding it delicately in his big fingers. It had burnt out on the flame-resistant carpet, leaving a small black scar. "They weren't trying to be subtle, that's for sure. This is a no-smoking floor. It's not Wood's. And there are bloody footprints in the bathroom. Really nice imprint of a Doc Marten sole."

"Lame attempt to pin it on Spike, huh?" Buffy flipped the wallet over, and her eyes widened. "Nikki!"

"Who?"

"A Slayer." Buffy held out the wallet. Framed in plastic was an old photograph of an athletic young woman with a 70's 'fro, arm in arm with an Asian man. "A couple of years ago this bigshot in the LA magic scene, Magnus Bryce, got the idea to raise a Slayer or two from the dead to be some kind of magical bodyguard. I was one of the Slayers on his short list. Nikki Wood was another. I saw the files, after--there was a copy of this photo in them."

Kennedy eased the photo free of its casing and flipped it over. Mom & Dad, 1975 was written on the back in fading ballpoint. She held it up, comparing Wood's ravaged face to the photos. She couldn't have pinned it down to one feature, but there was a resemblance. Something in the bones, blood calling to blood across the generations. "This guy is--was her son?"

"That must have gone over big." Buffy took the photo back and replaced it carefully in the wallet along with the rest of Wood's ID. "The Council barely tolerates us speaking to other human beings, much less breeding with them."

"Maybe she got knocked up before she was called. Nikki Wood..." Kennedy scowled and tugged on her lip. "I know I've heard that name somewhere else."

"Spike killed her," Buffy said flatly. "It's probably in the Slayer Handbook."

""Mama's Boy,'" Riley said, just as flat. "Well, there's Spike's motive."

Buffy looked at Riley as though he were a kid whining for a Snickers bar when she was trying to buy asparagus. "What motive? Look, I know you're mad at him, but Spike is in L.A.. And if he wasn't? If Spike had killed Christopher Robin here, he wouldn't leave the body lying around for me to find. And if he did? I've seen Spike kill, boys and girls, and there are no artistic tableaus and quips about janitors on the wall. There are just dead bodies, and lots of them." She tossed the wallet back on the bed. "Wood called me less than two hours ago and claimed to have some super-secret Slayer doojiggy he wanted to give me. Looks to me like someone else knew he had it, and got here first."

Riley's mouth acquired a bitter twist. "Really? And I've got what besides your word that any of this is true?"

Double-take on the Buffy front. "Since when do you need more?"

"Since I saw Hostile Six in Spike's crypt not three hours ago!"

The blood exited Buffy's face stage left, and Riley prowled forward like a hunting tiger, facing Buffy down across Wood's grotesque corpse. "You're so sure your precious Spikey hasn't killed anyone, but Spike doesn't have to kill in person when he has a whole crypt full of minions who can do it for him. Somehow that little detail got left out." There was more pleading than anger in his eyes. "Tell me you didn't know about this, Buffy. Tell me Spike's been lying to you, too. Tell me, and I'll believe you."

For half a second Buffy's face was perfectly blank, and then she was nose-to-chest with him, clenched fists trembling at her sides. "I didn't tell you because it was none of your business! Evie's in the middle of infiltrating Amherst's gang for Spike--for me! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get an in with the Mayor's old cronies when half the police force is still in their pockets? I've been looking for a chance like this for six months! If I turned her over to you who knows how long--"

"And you couldn't tell me this? Couldn't trust me to--God, you haven't changed a bit, have you?"

"Not after you were so eager to Gitmo Susie, no!"

"Oh, that's right, the Bracken demon." Riley's face could have been hewn from granite. "What vital undercover mission is she involved in? Chilling Spike's beer? Or does she front for his drug-running? Playing bartender at Willy's would be a great way to--"

"For his what? I told you, Susie's completely harmless!" Buffy exploded. "Have you ever seen a Bracken demon who wasn't? Look, you turn up a chiphead who's an actual threat, and I'll get my pom-poms out of storage and cheer you on as you haul them away, but you know what? You're not going to find any here because any of them who WERE a threat would have run off to L.A. as soon as they escaped and--"

Enough was enough. "SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!" Kennedy yelled. Riley and Buffy, who'd obviously forgotten she was in the room, froze in mutual They started it! Kennedy jabbed a finger at Wood. "In case it's slipped your minds, dead guy! Me, I think Spike'd kill someone for pocket change, but dammit, Buffy's right. If Spike did this, or ordered it done, he's a moron. If he's really in L.A., he'll have an alibi. Buffy claims he's got all those minions under control. So we should be able to, I dunno, measure their fangs or something, and find out if any of them did it."

"She's right," Buffy said, abandoning her eyeball duel with Riley. "Look, Riley, I...do the police-handling thing, please? We can talk about this later. I'll call David."

Riley held the great stone face a second longer, then nodded, whipped out his cell and strode out into the hall. Kennedy heard him talking rapidly with the 911 operator as he headed for the elevator.

In the absence of an immoveable object to fling herself against, Buffy slumped dispiritedly into the chair by the window. Kennedy hitched a hip onto the table. "Lemme guess. History?"

"Old boyfriend." She arched a brow beneath her fingers. "Out of curiosity, are old girlfriends any less psycho?"

"Not so's you'd notice." Kennedy swung her foot. "He got a case?"

Buffy snorted. She got up and turned Wood's head to one side. "Spike's left-handed. He bites to the left. Whoever killed Wood bites to the right. Plus look at the spacing of the marks." Her small strong fingers pulled the torn flesh of the neck taut. "Whoever bit Wood is bigger than Spike."

Kennedy couldn't resist. One eyebrow canted in innocent challenge. "And you know the exact size of Spike's bite how?"

"From tripping over people he's bitten," Buffy said acidly. "It's a memorable experience."

"I notice none of your reasons is 'My precious Spikey would never kill anyone.'"

"You noticed correctly." Buffy dropped into the chair again. "But not here, not now, and not like this." Wearily she pulled her cell out and punched speed dial for the crypt. "David? Slayer. You're up? Good. We've got trouble." She listened for a moment, mouth tightening, eyes hardening. "I see. No, I was just going to call him. Right. Willy's, tonight at seven. We have a lot to talk about." She leaned back and massaged the bridge of her nose. There were tired little lines etching at the corners of her eyes.

"You told me that Spike had minions," Kennedy said at last. She jerked a thumb at the hallway. "Why didn't you tell him?"

"You needed to know. He didn't." Buffy leaned back and stared up at the stucco-patterns on the ceiling. "I always hated being the Slayer," she said. "Hated the responsibility. Hated that I had to--to make decisions. I couldn't see anything good about it--it wrecked my grades and my social life and my parents' marriage and yeah, solipsistic much? But when Kendra came along, and then Faith--I hated that I wasn't the only one any longer. That I wasn't special. And I especially hated that they loved what they did. That they...they were better at being me than I was."

"You feel that way about me?" Kennedy was a little surprised at the sting in her voice.

Buffy shook her head in swift denial. "No. I mean, don't get me wrong, you really, really, really annoy me. But..." She nibbled on her lower lip. "When I hated being a Slayer, I didn't want anyone to share it."

"Afraid you'd lose your 'No one can understand my pain!' club card?"

"Something like." Buffy made a wry face. "It's different now. Since I came back. I don't hate being a Slayer anymore. I mean--" her eyes strayed to the bed. "I hate that stuff like this happens, but I don't hate that I've got the power to stop it. Kendra told me once that being a Slayer isn't what you do, it's what you are. Riley told me that being a Slayer was just a job. He was wrong."

She sat up, earnest. "But Kendra was wrong too. A Slayer is what I am, yeah--death is my art, my gift, whatever, though really a gift card at Saks I'd have been fine with. But it goes both ways. I'm what a Slayer is. I've got other gifts, and so do you, and so does every girl out there with the potential to be called." Buffy's eyes shone with fierce purpose. "We don't have to be just killers. We can make ourselves more than that. We can be--" She broke off with a shrug and a sheepish smile. "That part I haven't quite figured out yet."

Outside in the hallway a radio squawked. Buffy stood and stretched, hands clasped over her head. "That's the police. Get ready for fun."

Kennedy scarcely noticed the officers piling into the cramped hotel room, caught up in her own uncomfortable revelation. Buffy Summers didn't trust her All-American ex, but Buffy trusted her, trusted the fate that had made them both Slayers. She wasn't just in, she was in. Mission accomplished, right?

So why did she feel like crap?

Cordelia lay in a fitful doze in one of the four Army surplus cots in the cramped little room euphemistically labeled the girl's dorm. Connor hated it; it felt like a box trap, and he expected the walls to close in at any minute. An attempt had been made to brighten up the room with posters of young, pretty people he didn't recognize, but it was only a place to sleep at need, not a place to live.

He sat beside the cot, guarding Cordelia's restless slumber. She was so beautiful. Even now, thin and feverish after a week of illness, her damp hair a tangle of sable against the worn white cotton of the pillowcases, Cordelia Chase burned with an inner light. Connor leaned forward and smoothed a lank strand of hair away from her face. As his fingertips brushed the hot, dry skin of her cheek, Cordelia's lashes fluttered, wrestling a dream beneath bruise-blue lids. She butted her head into his touch and nuzzled blindly against his hand, murmuring words too soft and sleep-drugged for human ears to catch. Connor scarcely dared breathe.

"Angel..."

His fingers closed hard on the blanket, compressing the thin folds into a hard twist of wool. Holtz had told him a story, once, of a hunter who kept his heart from breaking by binding it with three iron hoops. Snap, snap, snap. He stood up fast, kicking the rickety folding chair aside with a screech of metal on linoleum that he half-hoped would wake her. It didn't. Probably just as well. Eyes open, eyes closed, it didn't matter--she didn't see him. He was lost behind Angel's hulking silhouette.

He rested his forehead against the doorframe, blinking as blistered paint went out of focus before his nose. They called Quor'toth a hell dimension, but the only pain he'd felt there had been physical. It didn't matter, he told himself resolutely. He had work to do. A back-handed swipe across his eyes smeared any tell-tail traces of moisture away into the thin layer of general grime.

When he'd left the main hall a few hours ago, it had been empty save for Spike cat-napping in a chair. Now Anne and a couple of the other volunteers were hanging makeshift crosses by each window, and Tanner was reading from a worn leather-bound book, "...his verbes, consenus rescissus est."

The remaining invited vampire was awake and twitchy, pacing the length of the room and back like a loose-limbed, bleached-blond cougar. A rapt audience of teenage girls packed the sofa, following Spike's every move. Several of the boys lounged indifferently nearby, pretending they weren't listening.

"...garlic's not worth fuck-all unless you're trying to make your vamp sniffle himself to death. And unless you know exactly where the heart is and that you're strong enough to punch through ribs to get at it--" Spike demonstrated with a swift jab to an imaginary opponent, "--leave staking to the experts."

Several of the girls oooohed!, though it was hard to tell if they were applauding Spike's technique or his biceps. Connor crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. He had muscles too. They just weren't so... obvious. He clenched a surreptitious fist and prodded at his upper arm with one finger.

"Mostly likely you can't kill a vamp, but you can make it hard enough it's not worth their while to kill you." Spike caught each pair of worshipful eyes in turn, cobra and snake-charmer in one. "Never go quietly--won't help you if you do. You get cornered, scream. Kick 'em in the balls if they've got balls. Keep a lighter on you, set 'em on fire. Better yet, don't get cornered. Stick to crowds and bright lights and always have someplace you can call yours, even if it's a cardboard box."

"Say I wanna kill you," one of the boys challenged, nudging his companion in the ribs. "Any tips?"

"Say your prayers, stick your head between your legs, and kiss your arse goodbye," Spike drawled. "But lucky for you, you're not up against me. Angelus's minions aren't the brightest, or they wouldn't be his minions. They're stronger and faster than you, so sod fighting fair. Taser's best, if you can get your hands on one. Drop a vamp like a stunned ox, that will. You got someone you're none too fond of, you can dope 'em up with tranquilizers and use 'em for--" Several of the girls looked appalled. Spike took note and grimaced. "Right, never mind that one. But a shotgun's good, too."

"I thought vampires were immune to bullets," the second boy muttered.

Spike's eye-roll started out yellow and finished up blue. "We're not bloody Superman. Bullets hurt. Hollowpoint ammo's brilliant for vamps. Go for the shoulders, knees--can't catch you if we can't move, yeh? Blow their sodding faces off. I guarantee that by the time they heal, you'll be dead of old age."

"What about crosses?" A buxom girl in corn-rows tossed her beaded hair and fingered the necklace in the cinnamon cleft of her breasts. "I always wear this, so they can't touch me, right?"

"Jenna, innit?" Spike ambled over to the couch, his voice falling to a smoky rumble. "Believe me, pet, when I want to reach out and touch someone..." His hand snaked out, and Jenna squeaked as the necklace disappeared. Spike extended his clenched fist, uncurling smoking fingers to reveal the tiny gold cross crisping his palm, eliciting startled shrieks from his audience. "I can do it--ow, ow, ow, fuck!"

"I don't get it," Connor muttered as the girls crowded forward, cooing like a flock of concerned pigeons.

"It's pheromones," Tanner said gravely. "When I was in high school, there was this guy with a letter jacket--"

Connor's ears burned. "You never said you were a wizard," he accused. Middle-aged shelter workers weren't supposed to have mysterious pasts.

The older man shrugged, composure unruffled. "I never said a lot of things. Do you really care about the story of my life?"

Well, no, he didn't. Connor flipped the hair from his eyes and jerked his chin at Spike, who'd tossed the cross back to Jenna and was sucking on his burnt fingers. "You told Anne you knew him. Did he try to eat you, too?"

"Nope. He saved my life. I tried to suck his brain out. It's a long story." Tanner tucked the spellbook under his elbow and rocked on his heels. "I was telling Spike earlier, there's a place a couple of miles from here, out on Graves near the Garvey Reservoir. The Gregson Clinic. Very exclusive. They treat both human and demon patients, and they might be willing to sell you what your friend needs with no questions asked."

"What are we waiting for, then?" Connor demanded. He strode over to Spike and thumped him none too gently on the shoulder. "Cordelia's worse. We need to leave."

The vampire glanced through the nearest window at the sun, hanging swollen and orange on the smoggy western sky. Connor expected an argument, but Spike just blew out his cheeks and fished his car keys out of his jeans. "Right, then," he said, with a glare at his new fan club. "You're on your own. Try not to embarrass me and get yourselves killed straight out of the gate."

Connor jittered by the Center's front door, watching the sun sink lower and trying to drag Spike after him by the gravitational force of his will. They had a goal, they had a car, what was the problem? Spike took his excruciating time gathering his things, checking his voice mail, looking in on Fred and carrying on low-voiced conversations with Anne and Tanner.

"Just watch your step," Tanner said at last. "Gregson's a big name in black market demon organs, and the word is he's not terribly worried about where he gets them." He looked pointedly from Connor to Spike. "He's always looking to expand his own personal collection, and somehow I think he'd find both of you interesting specimens."

"This Doctor Gregson wouldn't commonly be known by the definite article, would he?" Spike asked, testing the points of his canines with his tongue. "If so, I've got a bone or three to pick with him. Preferably his bones. He human?"

"Slod demon. He's passing."

"Just what I wanted to hear." Spike flung his jacket across his shoulders with a matador's flare, flipped his keys into the air and caught them. "Come on, sprout, time's wasting."

The first time Connor had ridden a motor vehicle, he'd been clinging to the top of a Number 17 bus. Subsequent and more conventional rides with Fred and Gunn and Cordy over the summer had failed to capture the rush of that first wild careen across L.A., but Spike's driving style came close. He'd been too worried about Cordelia the previous night to pay much attention to the drive over, or perhaps Spike had tempered his vehicular brinksmanship in deference to his passengers, but now the vampire took on the road two falls out of three. The DeSoto ran down SUVs and terrorized MINI Coopers, bulling through traffic by sheer intimidation.

Headlights blinked to brilliant life in front of them as the sun set, sparking oil-slick rainbows from the whorls of grease on the blacked-out windows. Cigarette in one hand and a sports cup of pig's blood from the cooler in the trunk wedged between his knees, Spike threw his head back and sang along to Blood, Sex, and Booze, a study in road rapture sketched in fading bruises. Braced against the dashboard, Connor laughed with a surreal, suicidal joy he hadn't felt since Quar'toth. "You should go faster!" he yelled, and Spike kicked up the radio, stepped on the gas, and whooped as they scraped between the median and a Honda Civic by the width of the paint on the bumpers.

"How do you do it?" He'd barely realized he was speaking aloud till the words came out, and the minute they did, Connor wished he'd nailed them to his tongue.

"How do I do what?" Spike yelled over the radio, tapping his cigarette ash rather haphazardly out the window.

Connor slid down the seat in a creaking of leather and scowled out the window. "Back at the Center. They know what you are. They should--but they--they...notice you."

Spike's eyes grew wicked, mirroring the hellfire glow of his cigarette. "Ooooh, someone's soft on the cheerleader, are they?"

"Shut up."

"Bit perverse, innit, seeing as she changed your nappies and all?" Spike grinned around the filter of his cigarette. "And I speak as a bloke with some experience in the perverse."

"Shut UP!" Connor snarled, fighting an urge to grab the wheel and run them into the nearest semi. "You don't get to talk about her like that! Cordelia's brave, and smart, and--she's a champion, and you're just--" He broke off, chest heaving. "You're just a monster."

"Takes one to know one."

"I'm human!"

"Yours truly walking into your cozy little room with no view last night sans invitation says not," Spike said, stretching luxuriously behind the wheel. "Look, you want Queen C, just wait ten years. She'll have a wrinkle or two to her name and your voice may have broken by then, and she'll be flattered as all hell that a younger man wants to shag her. Right now there's easier ways to piss the old man off."

Connor shot a poisonous look in the vampire's direction. "I dunno, fucking his last girlfriend worked OK for you."

Spike's hand shot out, fast as he'd snatched Jenna's necklace, and grabbed Connor by the scruff of the neck, thumb pressing iron-hard and cold into the carotid. Connor lunged dizzily across the front seat to ram stiffened fingers into Spike's not-quite-healed crossbow wound. Spike yelped, and the DeSoto swerved wildly into the next lane as the vampire banged Connor's forehead into the dashboard.

There was a wild flailing moment of Connor kicking and struggling while Spike growled, "Hold still, you pestilent little nit!" and tried to wrestle the car back under control one-handed. Brakes screeched and tires squealed, drowning out the shrill electronic beeble of Spike's cell going off. Behind them there was a horrific crash as the Durango which had braked to avoid them was rear-ended by a Chevy Impala. Six or seven cars back, the lights of a highway patrol car burst into bloody glory and the wail of a siren split the darkening air. Spike floored it with a curse, and the DeSoto shuddered and leapt forward with a roar. For a second, blinded by the black racing wind outside the windows, Connor thought they'd get away clean, but then the patrol car broke free of the crush and roared after them, howling on their heels. A solid wall of traffic ahead of them forced Spike to brake, and the patrol car pulled up alongside, trying to herd them to the shoulder.

"I know those city guards!" Connor yelled. "They're crazy! They don't care who they kill!"

"Take the wheel," Spike said, and crawled out the window.

Connor grabbed the steering wheel just as the car began to drift, and tried to remember which of the pedals on the floor was the brake. Wait, there were three of them--what did the third one do? A horn blatted to his left and Connor looked up frantically from the pedal puzzle, leaning close to the peephole in the windshield and crouching over the wheel.

Spike was crouched on the rim of the window, halfway in and halfway out, clinging to both sides with enough white-knuckled force to dent the door-frame. "Get your ass out of my face!" Connor hollered, and Spike laughed and stood up in one acrobatic twist. He swayed violently, leaning into the wind with his shins wedged against the sides of the window, and then he leaped. For a second he hung suspended in the strobe-flicker of headlights, and then he landed on the hood of the patrol car with a thump, game-faced and still laughing. He pressed his flattened, bestial nose to the glass of the windshield and mouthed a sharp-fanged, "Boo!"

The patrol car spun a hundred and eighty degrees, Spike starfished to the hood, and screeched to a halt athwart the two center lanes. Connor clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and slammed down on two pedals at random. Luck was apparently with him--the DeSoto screeched to a gear-stripping stop fifty feet down the highway from where Spike was punching a hole through the shatterproof windshield of the cop car and ripping the radio bodily out of the dash. The vampire straightened and hurled the black box over the median, where it struck sparks across four lanes of oncoming traffic and plunged into darkness, wires trailing behind it.

Two officers piled out of the patrol car, faces white with terror, pistols trained on Spike's slim shock-headed form. A shot rang out; Spike staggered and spun as a .9mm round tore through his side. He clasped his heart melodramatically, twirled round twice, and toppled off the hood. The cops edged cautiously around the car--and Spike hopped to his feet, blew a kiss to the officers and took off with vampire speed, which meant that to human eyes he'd virtually disappeared on the spot. Half a second later he was wrenching the driver's door of the DeSoto open and shoving Connor aside.

"Why did you do that?" Connor yelled. "We're supposed to be getting Cordelia's medicine, not playing games!"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time!" Spike killed the headlights, threw the car into reverse, backed up and roared down the exit they'd just passed. Connor thumped back against the seat as they whipped down side streets, turning corners at random until the huge grassy bulwark of the reservoir loomed up out of the night ahead of them, a vast pit of darkness in the encircling cityscape. The DeSoto rolled to a halt on the shoulder of the access road, and Spike bent over the steering wheel, clutching his bleeding side and giggling till tears ran down his cheeks. And Connor, without the slightest idea why, found himself laughing hysterically along with him.

"I thought you said that bullets hurt," Connor said, as soon as he could breathe again.

Spike wiped his eyes and slumped down into the buttery black leather, still giggling. "Yeh, well, some things are worth a little pain."

Buffy punched her speed dial and listened as Spike's voice mail picked up--again. Spike. Leave a message and maybe I won't kill you in the morning. BEEP. She suppressed the urge to pretend the phone was Spike's head and bang it against the nearest curb. Where did he get off, leaving her cryptic messages about Angel and then not answering his phone? Stupid vampire. At least it was ringing, which meant that it hadn't gone up in dust with him, and Spike was a big strong vampire and could take care of himself and why the hell didn't he answer?

"No luck?" Riley asked.

His tone was diplomatic enough to bring peace to the Middle East. Buffy briefly imagined his head taking the place of Spike's in the curb-bowling championships, then dismissed the fantasy with a guilty twitch. Somehow it wasn't quite as cathartic when directed against the human and breakable. "It's early," she said, placing a hand on the handle of the Alibi Room's front door. "He's probably asleep."

Riley's look was dubious, but then, so was her argument--he knew as well as she did that Spike was an early riser for a vampire, and besides, it was after six. It was easy to forget that Riley Finn hid a pretty sharp mind behind the jock facade. She couldn't afford to let her guard down.

Beyond the door was a typical Saturday night at Willy's: a few dozen humans eyeing their drinks, a half-dozen vampires eyeing the humans, and a random sprinkling of demons, drinking, dancing, and bellowing threats at one another over the blare of Bare Naked Ladies on the jukebox. In the booths in the back, dark figures huddled together, plotting darker deeds. Of course, the mix was different than it had been a few years back. Lots fewer vamps, and most of demons were species who posed a greater threat to the stray cat population than to mankind at large. Not that Willy's was wholesome family entertainment, but...

The room fell silent as she walked in, and several members of the crowd began edging towards the exits. But a pair of vamp hookers turned their attention back to their johns with an air of relief, and a family of Anamovic demons nodded with wary respect as she passed their table. "Slayer," the eldest of them said, hesitant. "We've been having some trouble with a Glarghk Guhl Kashma'nik raiding the trash cans..."

"On it. Just don't ask me to pronounce it."

The Anamovic ducked its head and smiled, and Buffy felt perversely irritated. Fear she got. You demon, me Slayer. The respect made the back of her neck prickle. When had that happened? Why had it happened?

Behind the bar, Susie straightened, wringing the washrag with which she'd been polishing the Formica in both hands as Buffy sauntered up with Riley looming at her heels. The robin's-egg blue of her spine-bases had paled to an ashy grey, and her eyes were white-rimmed with panic.

"Don't shoot!" Willy yipped, ducking behind the cardboard standup of a beer bottle in a football helmet. "I surrender! She's right there!"

"Willy, you're flunking labor/management relations big time." Buffy folded her arms and leaned against the counter. "Susie, it's OK. Agent Finn's not going to touch you; you've got my word on it. Bud Light for him, Tab with a twist for me."

"Slayer, you know we don't got--" Willy started to complain.

Susie reached under the bar and produced a can of Tab--the Alibi Room did not, in fact, serve Tab, but Susie had long since worked out that keeping a six-pack on hand made for a happier Slayer, and a happier Slayer made for fewer insurance claims--and a rather sad-looking lime. "For her we got twists," she said firmly.

The delegation from Bloody Vengeance Inc was seated in the two booths at the back. David and Anya had commandeered the larger of the two, and sat opposite Nadia and Clem. Evie straddled a backwards chair at the end of the booth, and Elise, Fernando, and three unfamiliar vampires crowded into the second booth, eyeing her uneasily across the tops of their blood smoothies. Without Spike to explain the niceties of vampire custom to her, Buffy couldn't be certain, but she was betting that Evie's escapades had won her a promotion. Clem threw her a little wave and a thumbs-up. David rose and waved her to a chair. He didn't offer one to Riley. "Allen, Nita, and Diego," David said, pointing to three newcomers. "Spike still has to vet them."

Buffy nodded and took her seat with an aplomb she was certain was shower-curtain transparent. "I have good news and bad news," she said. "What do you have?"

Half an hour later, she was still listening intently as Evie related her adventures. "...so I snuck out underneath a pool float and got to shadow." Evie took a healthy swallow of B-neg and scratched at the healing burns on her cheek. Willy didn't part with human blood cheaply, but this was, after all, a business dinner, tax-deductible and everything. Besides, Evie looked like she needed it; her face and forearms were covered with a lichenous mottling of new pink skin and red-brown scabs. Young vampires didn't heal as quickly as their elders. "First I thought I'd just hide out until tonight, but then I figured I should see if that Lawson guy was feeding Corvini a line. So I went back to Kite that evening and told him I had some dirt on Corvini, and yeah, it sounds like Amherst sent a couple of fledges to L.A. too. So did Nguyen, and scuttlebutt has it that Lawson rounded up half a dozen loners on his own."

Buffy frowned and ran a finger across the table top, doodling through the watery pattern of interlocking rings surrounding her Tab. "All fledges, right? No right-hand vamps?"

"Right," Evie agreed.

Riley re-directed his gaze from his untouched beer to Evie. "What's that mean?" It was the first time he'd spoken since sitting down. Half a dozen pairs of unfriendly yellow eyes bore into his, but Riley didn't so much as blink.

"It means that none of the gang leaders trusts or fears Angelus enough to accept an alliance," David replied. "Even if he's offering one. They're only sending minions they can spare, or that they want to be rid of. Angelus has been out of the game for years, and the last time he showed up he left the Order of Aurelius in tatters. He's still got reputation enough that they don't want to offend him unnecessarily, but he's not powerful enough or close enough to really frighten them."

"Which is of the good for us," Buffy said. "We're not going to have to worry about the locals unifying under his lead. Yet."

David shook his head. "Give Angelus a month to build a real power base in L.A. and it'll be a different story."

"He's not going to get a month." Buffy bit down viciously on her slice of lime. She needed information, damn it. Did Angel have his soul, or not? If he didn't, well, they could rustle up another Orb of Thessulah somewhere. And if he did...she shied away from that question.

My city, he'd said, and full of hot, wounded pride, she'd honored that demand, even when outrageous rumors had floated back from L.A. on the vampire grapevine. A roomful of lawyers, a miracle baby--that Angel had had the gall to get on her back about Spike when Darla had a bun in the oven still infuriated her, though deep down she knew it wasn't a rational fury; Angel hadn't even known about Connor's existence when he'd come to Sunnydale trying to save her from herself. Darla-boinkage, with intentions of soul-lossage aforethought. Not something she could easily forgive, because damn it, she'd be the one who had to kill him. Again.

Angel's city, Angel's problems. None of her business, not anymore, until the bodies started piling up. She and Angel were over. Still...yeah, she still loved him, in the part of her heart that was still sixteen. It wasn't fair that the two of them still had all these complicated tangles of guilt and longing and anger tying them together. Or at least she did; she had no idea what Angel felt any longer. Sometimes she wondered if she ever had known what he felt. She'd kept so much inside that last year they'd been together, love and resentment and lust and confusion, stuffed it all down into a tight hard ball and nailed the storm shutters of her heart closed over it. That was what Riley had gotten--battened-down Buffy, braced to weather another storm. She wondered if he had ever realized just how great a compliment she'd given him when she told him that loving him was relaxing. After Angel, she needed to relax.

"Right," she said briskly. "So you know what I said about having good news? I was lying. What we have is a messy murder with some circumstantial evidence linking it to Spike, and that links it to you guys by proxy. What with all this shiny new information I'm thinking it's connected to Angel's little breakdown somehow, but I need hard proof that none of you did it. And no, I'm not gonna take 'I was with him!' for an alibi, unless the him is Clem--or Anya, in which case 'her,' because no offense? but the rest of you are evil."

"None taken," David murmured.

Buffy held up her cell. "I snapped some pictures of the body before the forensics team showed up, and Agent Finn managed to get one of his people on the scene to take some measurements. I'm sending Willow over later, and all of you will be good little minions and do exactly what she tells you to do. Anyone gives her any lip, they're dust. Capisce?"

David nodded. "Understood."

"Any chance that if we get someone up to the hotel room where he died they can get a scent of the killer?"

Nadia snorted. "After half the police department's tromped in and out of the place? What do you think we are, werewolves?"

"Worth a try. Elise, you head over there later tonight. Pretend to be a maid or something, and see if you can smell any other vamps." The whole minion, er, employee arrangement was undoubtedly evil, and asking Elise to pick up her drycleaning on the way, even just this once, would be bad and wrong, but sometimes it was awfully nice to deal with people who didn't argue with you, and if they did, you could kill them. "Now. One last thing." Buffy reached into her coat pocket and tossed the little plastic bag down on the scarred tabletop. "This came from the crypt. Explain."

David hefted the Tricycle dust, or whatever it was called, turning it over in his long pale fingers, examining the fall of iridescent powder within the plastic baggie. He looked up, his expression as controlled and his olivine eyes as unreadable as ever. "It's not ours."

"You're positive?" Buffy asked.

"If you had any idea what this was, you wouldn't have to ask," Anya said. "We specialize in spell components. Triathskai dust's a hallucinogen. Extremely addictive, extremely dangerous, extremely valuable."

"Are the...um...Triathskai nice demons?"

"Are you kidding? They'll bite your head off soon as look at you." Anya plucked the baggie from David's fingers. "And believe me, you don't want to know about their mating habits, unless razor-sharp proboscises turn you on. But they're intelligent, sort of, so even if the dust didn't have a one in four chance of turning your brain to chop suey--and not good chop suey, either, the gloopy canned kind--it's nothing we'd carry."

"Besides, it's way out of our league," David put in. "The dust supply line for the West Coast is sewn up by the Doctor."

"Well, that's a pretty big fat clue, then, isn't it? Someone's trying to frame us," Anya said crisply, "and it's someone with resources." She bounced the baggie in the palm of her hand. "This has a street value with an aesthetically pleasing number of zeroes at the end. Golly, who has Spike pissed off lately who has lots of money, a multinational organization, and the West Coast distribution of Triathskai dust in his back pocket?"

Riley's jaw tightened--he was in for some serious TMJ problems if he didn't relax. "Fine. You have a case. But I can't afford to take your unsupported word for something this important. Maybe Spike's operation isn't dealing in dust--but maybe Spike decided that if he can't beat the Doctor, he's better off joining him. Maybe someone from out of town killed this guy Wood. But there are way too many coincidences here to--"

Buffy sighed, and stabbed her speed dial again, more to have something to do with her hands than out of any hope of getting an answer. One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies...

"If you're not Buffy you're sodding dead."

She melted down into her chair in stupidly giddy relief. "This is my lucky day, then."

There was an unidentifiable and alarming crash in the background. "Look, pet, bit busy."

"Angel. Soul. Yes or no?"

A moment of silence. "Can't tell. Off his chump in any case, building the New Aurelian Order or some such rot. Could be a spell, or maybe the soul got to be too much for him and he's snapped." The worried edge in his voice belied the flippancy of his words. "Going to have to rally the troops and take him down fast if we don't want him getting too big for our britches."

She felt sick, glad she'd skipped dinner and even gladder she'd resisted the doubtful temptations of Willy's nachos. It was happening all over again. But it wasn't going to happen the same way if she had anything to say about it. "OK. You know he's been recruiting here, right?"

"Yeh, had a chat with the recruiter. Can't imagine that's gone over well with the kids back home."

"Very much not. In fact..."

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

A quick glance at Riley. Oh, he wasn't going to like this. Not one teensy tiny bit. She wasn't all that zippity doo da about it herself. "It can't come from me. They wouldn't listen. You've got to get back here, and--Spike, someone killed a man here, a guy named Robin Wood. Nikki's son." She heard the sharp intake of breath. "They set it up to look like you did it. Riley thinks--"

Spike swore softly. "When did he die?"

"Between eleven and two this afternoon."

"Got a dozen human witnesses who can swear I was elsewhere. Tell Finn to bugger himself with whatever's closest and least comfortable. Any other cock-ups I need to know about?"

"Eh. The Doctor's trying to frame you for drug running. Gib Cain planted some freaky dust in the crypt. No biggie."

His growl raised goosebumps even at a distance. "I told Cain I'd kill him if caught him on my ground again."

Buffy's stomach iced over and her heart slid pell-mell down the slopes. "I can't let you do that. He's--"

"Human, yeh, got the memo. But he's fucked with me once too often. You see him, tell him he'd better not be on my ground when we all meet up again, and that way everybody's happy."

"We'll talk about it when you get home." She clicked the phone off, schooling her face to a chipper calm and hoping it concealed the churning stomach and shaking hands. By Spike's lights, he was just issuing fair warning. She'd always known that someday they'd be vampire and Slayer again, not Spike and Buffy, but she was going to put that day off as long as possible. "David," she said, "I want everyone back at the crypt in half an hour for testing on the Wood biz. And then I want Gib Cain. Alive and unharmed. Get him for me, and get him for me now."

David looked at her--unlike Riley, he'd heard the whole conversation, and he was smart enough to understand the implications, even if most of the rest of the minions weren't. He regarded her with a detached interest. "You understand I won't go against Spike's direct orders?"

She didn't rise. She didn't have to. "I understand that I'm Spike's full partner in this business--and everything else. I understand that I'm the Slayer. The question is, do you understand?"

David remained perfectly still, studying her with that mild and utterly inhuman gaze, but in the end it was his eyes that faltered. He nodded, slowly. "I think you've made yourself clear. If we run acrosin which we find him."

She took a swallow of her Tab as David got up and beckoned the rest of the vampires to follow, feeling the burn of carbonation all the way down her throat. Maybe he'd bring her Cain. Maybe he'd kill Cain himself, and then she could stake him. Either way, it would break the stalemate between her and Spike. Spike would be pissed off, but she'd deal with that later.

"I have to get home," Anya said, checking her wristwatch. "I'm ovulating, and Xander's expecting me back by nine. Should I expect you to show up at the Magic Box with a warrant to look at our books, Agent Finn?"

Riley shook his head, and Anya raised an eyebrow and sashayed out. Riley watched her go, then returned to the study of his beer-bottle label. "They certainly follow your lead," he said, peeling a strip of blue and silver paper away from the dark glass. He nodded in the direction of the Anamovics. "I'm impressed by your... rapport with the hostiles."

"There is no rapport," Buffy said, sliding her Tab across the table on a trajectory that turned her careful pattern of condensation-circles into a shapeless wet smear. "There's choosing your battles. Spike and Anya have forgotten more about demons than the Council ever knew. If I use what they know, I can pick my targets. Get allies and informants and make plans, and actually make a difference instead of just treating the symptoms night after night. When there's only one of me and hundreds of them, it kinda makes sense to concentrate the firepower on the biggest and bitey-est, doesn't it?" Doesn't it?

"You can't nursemaid him forever." At her questioning look, Riley tapped a thumbnail on his bottle cap. "Spike. Someday you're not going to be there. And it'll kill you. Is that fair?"

"No." She did get up this time, slinging her bag over one shoulder. "It's not. Neither was Mom's tumor, or Angel's curse, or Dawn getting the good hair genes, or Dad living with a woman who's not nearly skanky enough for me to hate her properly. Come on. Willow and your guy should have the equipment set up by now."

She tried to ignore the looks of non-total-Slayer-loathing and the couple of outright smiles she got on the way out. There was too much going on right now to let herself get rattled by...by what, Riley's factual observations about Slayer/demon relations? By the uncomfortable reminder that there were times that no matter how hard Spike tried, he wasn't human, and she couldn't slip up and treat him like one? It wasn't like she was some kind of demonic Michael Corleone, after all. She was just...adaptable.

Outside Willy's was a bright blue recycling bin, wheeled up from the alley. A crudely-lettered cardboard sign entreated customers to keep the parking lot free of broken glass. She tossed the Tab can into its bright plastic depths, taking a meager satisfaction in the clunk when it hit bottom. She'd been afraid, once, that loving Spike would destroy her. Maybe part of her still was, deep down. But she'd been afraid that loving Angel would destroy the world, once, and she'd kept on doing that, too.

"Who was that?" Connor hissed.

Spike ignored the edge of suspicion in Connor's voice and tucked his cell back into his jacket. "The Slayer."

"That's not Faith's voice." On the floor, the pharmacist, whose badge proclaimed him Doctor Nakamura, moaned and tried to sit up. Connor smashed him over the head with the bedpan again and he went limp. The boy had technique, had to give him that.

"I said THE Slayer, not a Slayer." Spike turned in circles, eying the pharmacological bonanza on the shelves overhead and the bins under the counter: Pills of every size and color, multicolored powders, syrups in murky bottles of blue glass, a wild array of tinctures, infusions and poultices. A computer with a brand-new flatscreen monitor glowed sedately in the corner. The counters were crowded with pill-cutters, labels, gelatin capsules, mortars, and tiny scales, but the clutter was disappointingly modern. What the place really needed, Spike thought, was a stuffed crocodile and an astrolabe or two.

Getting into the Gregson Clinic had been easy. As it served patients of the demon persuasion, it was a twenty-four hour operation. All they'd had to do was stroll in and chat up the admitting nurse, whose unnaturally bluish hair might have been evidence of either demon ancestry, punk pretensions, or a hairdresser with a long-standing grudge. The silly cow had practically wet herself giving them directions, and with minimal recourse to the large, helpful color-coded maps of the facility on the walls, they'd taken the elevators to the second floor, found the pharmacy and introduced themselves to the harried-looking young man behind the counter. He'd walked in figuring to snatch what they needed for Cordelia and get the hell out; he'd had his fun for the night. Buffy's call had changed everything. Gregson had thrown down a gauntlet, and Spike had every intention of picking it up and cramming it down the Doctor's throat. No time like the present.

Spike dropped to one knee, removed Dr. Nakamura's glasses, and peeled back his right eyelid, studying the contracting pupil. He had a good deal of expertise in telling exactly when a bloke who'd been bashed about the skull was merely out for a bit and when he was polishing up his harp preparatory to a permanent departure, and he judged Nakamura would be safe for awhile. Maybe he shouldn't have cold-cocked the git, but said git had started asking questions Spike was in no mood to answer. He

The pharmacy consisted of two connected rooms, the front one serving as a waiting area for patients or doctors to hang about while getting their scrips filled, the back room housing the pills and the equipment. If they hid Nakamura in the back and locked up as they left, it might be hours before anyone found him.

Connor flung open a cupboard and rummaged through the rattling bottles. "There are hundreds of these things! Which one is right? Cordelia could be dying!"

"Not likely in the next half-hour," Spike said. "Look for anything that says 'antibiotic.'" He scanned the labels on the bulk pill dispensers, squinting at the unfamiliar names. Clarithromycin, Cefoperazone, Troleandomycin--what the bloody hell had become of plain old penicillin, or was that out of fashion now? He had a vague memory of hearing something about resistance, ten or fifteen years back, but as vampires didn't get infections, he hadn't paid much attention. Besides, humans dying horrible deaths while they waited in vain for their pills to take effect had struck him as pretty funny at the time. Bugger. "Here, just take some of each."

As Connor filled a zip-loc bag with a rainbow assortment of pills that probably wouldn't kill Cordy any faster than the infection would, Spike surreptitiously slipped on Nakamura's horn-rims. The sodding things were just far enough off his own prescription to give him a headache, but it make reading the labels easier. He skimmed down the row of bins and made a few strategic withdrawals of his own--painkillers and amphetamines were as good as cash on the demon black market. He'd learned the hard way that Buffy got unreasonably stroppy if he sold the things, but he could always trade them for information, or pass them out to the minions as treats for good behavior. Pity the days when any doctor worth his shingle had a stash of cocaine lying around were long gone.

As Spike distributed his brain candy to various jacket pockets, Connor held out two bags, bulging with pills in pink and green and yellow like mutant dinner mints. "Is this enough?" He nudged Nakamura's shoulder with the toe of his sneaker. "I think he's waking up."

"Not any more." Spike moved to kick the pharmacist in the head, and hesitated, feeling a prickly unease which was no substitute for human compassion, but which was bloody annoying nonetheless when there wasn't supposed to be anything at all firing on that particular emotional cylinder. Humans were delicate; best not press his luck. He bent over and stuffed a handkerchief in Nakamura's mouth instead. "Hand me that strapping tape." He crouched over the feebly twitching body and stripped off the semi-conscious man's lab coat before letting Connor go at it with the tape. Nakamura was taller than he was, and a bit soft around the middle, but the bulk of his leather jacket made up the difference. Spike fished the keys and the magnetic ID card for the elevators out of Nakamura's trousers pockets. "Finish up here and wait for me. I've got business here yet."

Connor whipped another length of tape around the doctor's ankles and scowled. "What business? I can't wait around while you play dress-up!"

"Then don't," Spike cut him off. "Leaving that meddling bastard Cain alive's just made Gregson think he can push me around. Has to stop, here and now, and as I'm here now, I'm going to stop it. You've got what you need; you can scarper on back to the car if you want."

He appropriated a clipboard from the nearest counter, shoved the borrowed glasses up his nose, and marched out of the pharmacy with the assurance of a man who had every right to be parading the halls of a demon clinic with a small fortune in stolen Vicodin in his pockets. Directly across the hall from the pharmacy were a pair of computer labs bracketing the cool room for the server. Spike tried the door, peered in, and grinned. He waved to the security camera in the corner, walked round the humming cluster of machines to the tangle of cables leading to the power bar along the wall, reached in, and flipped off the surge protector. On the way out he ripped half-a-dozen coils of blue T100 cable free of the router for good measure. Curses and shrieks of unmaidenly dismay erupted from the nurses' station and a couple of the labs as the server went down and the surveillance cameras spazzed into static. Spike slipped out and walked with unhurried swiftness towards the elevator.

"Where are you going?" Connor was hurrying after him, a far-too-adult annoyance twisting his youthful face. Spike rounded the corner into the second floor lobby. The nurses at the station were all crowded around the computer or making frantic calls to the IT department; no one noticed a white lab coat ushering a patient into the elevator.

"Upstairs," Spike informed him. The elevator pinged and they stepped in. Spike waved the key-card at the sensor and hit the button for the fourth floor. The elevator pondered for a moment before deciding the key-card was legit, then lurched into motion. The doors whooshed open on the restricted floor, and Spike paused, listening for approaching footsteps. He could hear raspy breathing in a couple of the nearest rooms, and the whir and bleep of monitors, but beyond that, nothing. The acoustics in the clinic had been well-designed--to muffle the screams, perhaps.

There was no nurse's station on the fourth floor. Here, according to the helpful wall charts, were private rooms and operating theatres for the...special cases. Doors were reinforced, and the few that were open revealed stark tables fitted with restraints that might have been fun in other contexts, but here held a definite air of menace. Trays full of gleaming scalpels and clamps and drills sat uncomfortably close at hand, and all the windows were barred. Spike ignored the urge to sightsee and prowled down the long, single hall--he wasn't here to gawk at the accommodations. What he was after...

"Hey! What are you--"

Spike spun the clipboard at the uniformed guard, knocking the radio from his hand, and leaped, lab coat billowing--sooner or later he was going to have to get another duster, no two ways about it. The guard vamped out, but instead of going for Spike, he dashed for the radio, which had spun away to bounce off the baseboard of the nearest wall and into an empty room. Spike put on a burst of speed and tackled the guard from behind, wrapping both hands around a boney ankle and yanking his legs out from under him. Connor's leaped over the two of them as they rolled across the floor and came down on the radio, smashing it.

"Intruders on level four!" the guard howled, and Spike clawed his way up the squirming vampire's body, grabbed a double handful of scalp, and hauled backwards till he heard vertebrae crunch. The body beneath him went limp, and the guard-vamp's eyes bugged out. Spike clamped a hand over his mouth. "Tell me where the organ bank is and I'll kill you 'fore this has a chance to heal crooked. Keep mum and I'll chop your bits off and leave you a pretzel-shaped eunuch for the rest of fucking eternity."

A garbled bleat was the only answer. Spike scrambled to his knees, knelt on the guard's chest and slapped him across the mouth hard enough to rip his lower lip open on his own fang-points. "Fourth door...left," the guard croaked. "Elevator. Never get in. Retinal scan..."

Spike rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on. Everyone knows the answer to that one." He crooked two fingers. "Right or left?"

"I thought you were going to kill him," Connor said as they hurried down the corridor a few moments later.

"I will. Soon as we don't need this anymore." Spike tossed the blood-smeared, grape-sized orb of flesh up and caught it. "With luck everyone's busy dealing with the computer fuckup, and won't notice he's missing. Here we are."

The doors swung open on a huge, chill, chrome-plated cavern of a room, windowless, lined with freezer compartments. Shelf upon glassed-in shelf filled the center of the room, housing bell jars ranging from salt-cellar tiny to turkey-roaster huge. Within each jar, something throbbed or pulsed or quivered. Hearts, livers, lungs, glands of every shape and function, pink and red and purple and bile-yellow. Huge translucent sheets of skin, wrinkled or pebbled or feathered, pegged out on stainless steel tables and nourished with glowing tubes of nutrients. Horns and claws and eyeballs, antennae and proboscises, scales and teeth, a disemboweled demonic Noah's ark. Spike stared, torn between awe and a feeling it took him a minute or two to identify as revulsion. He'd seen more gutted corpses than he could count, and done his fair share of the gutting. This was different from Angelus's bloody artistry, from Dru's mad whims, from his own carefree slaughter. The methodical bloodlessness of it all made him come over a bit queer. No one had gotten any fun out of these deaths.

"What is this?" Connor whispered.

"Gregson's collection," Spike whispered back, and then, louder, "The common stuff, anyway. Wager he's got his prizes in a vault somewhere."

"Why are we here?"

Spike bared his teeth. "Why d'you think?"

He picked up a tubular stainless steel chair and swung it at the nearest shelf. Half a dozen jars rocked, toppled, and exploded in a shower of glass, and half a dozen unidentifiable lumps of flesh bounced to the floor with a splat. For a second Connor just stared at him, and then the boy grabbed a chair of his own and got into the spirit of things. Spike bashed and smashed with joyful abandon, punted football-sized hearts into wastebaskets, squashed goosberry-sized eyeballs like grapes underfoot. He grabbed the handle of the nearest freezer and yanked it open, spilling out vials of demon blood onto the floor, popsicles of topaz and emerald and carnelian shattering on the linoleum.

If he hadn't still been wearing Nakamura's glasses, he'd have missed it. But there it was on the label: Mohra, 10-13-01 EXP 12-31-06. Well, what did you know--this was his lucky night after all. Brilliant. Spike pawed through the remaining vials and found two more with the same label. There was a small cooler on the nearby counter; he grabbed a couple of cold packs from the freezer, tucked the vials in beside them, and sealed it up.

A swift glance revealed Connor hacking sausage-sized lengths off a cats-cradle of bright purple intestines. Spike hopped an overturned shelf, skidding a bit in the multicolored smears of goo on the floor. "Come on, sprout, we've had our fun. Time's wasting."

They were almost to the elevator when he remembered the guard. Could leave him, of course; he didn't mind the Doctor knowing who was responsible for the carnage. Pretty much the point of the exercise, after all. But he'd promised to dust the stupid wanker, and Spike made few enough promises that he prided himself on keeping them--to the letter, anyway.

Ahead of him Connor skidded to a stop in front of the elevator and stabbed the buttons. Both of them jumped as a klaxon went off.

"Christ on a sodding minibike," Spike snarled. "They're onto us." He thrust the cooler full of Mohra blood into Connor's hands, and tore off down the corridor.

"Spike!" Connor yelled. "Get back here, you asshole!"

"Half a mo'! Got someone to kill!" Spike pounded down the hallway, linoleum tile a blur beneath his feet. He grabbed the doorknob of the room he'd left the guard in as he raced by and swung into a skidding turn, sliding across the floor on his knees. The guard stared at him, something like gratitude glistening in his one remaining eye, blood and lymph weeping from the ruined socket of the other. Down the hall Spike could hear shouts and the crackle of a police radio. Fucking hell, the LAPD's finest, and all of them human by the scent of them.

He grabbed the guard and hauled him up onto the exam table, ripping the badge and nametag off his uniform jacket, and skinned out of the lab coat. He wrestled the guard into the lab coat, snatched up the billed cap and jammed it down over the blazing platinum beacon of his hair--that was it, thirty years was enough, he was done with the fucking bleach.

He was morphing into game face when the rest of the guards burst in. "I've got this one!" he barked, in what he hoped was a passable American accent, and wrenched the guard's head a hundred and eighty degrees on his shoulders. Spike thumped ungracefully to the floor as the body exploded into dust. "Did you see the others? Two went down the staircase and the third one took the elevator up to the roof!"

For human wizards, for true demons, for the members of the LAPD who happened to be in the know, vampires were nothing--forgettable, replaceable cogs in the demon machine. For the last century Spike had carried on a single-handed crusade to change that little fact of vampiric existence--I'm William the fucking Bloody, LOOK at me! Now he hunched his shoulders and ducked his head and pulled up every memory of every excruciating ball and dinner party he'd suffered through in his living days, trying to summon up that talent for invisibility he'd spent the last hundred years trying to eradicate. Christ, he was still wearing the sodding glasses.

For a minute, it almost worked.

The four officers drew their pistols as one and fired. Shots ricocheted through the room, spanging off the reinforced walls and gouging holes in the concrete. Those were no .9mm rounds; they were packing a serious non-regulation punch. Spike rolled behind the exam table and kicked the tray of instruments with all his strength at the doorway. It careened across the room and into the two foremost policemen, knocking them back into the two behind, and sending clamps and scalpels flying. Spike leaped atop the exam table, kicked off and dove through the door over their heads, slamming shoulders first into the wall of the corridor opposite. He twisted in mid-fall to land in a crouch, came out of it with a feral snarl. The policemen were turning, aiming, firing, but he was Neo and they were stuck on the wrong side of the SFX divide. No vamp could keep up the super-speed forever, and at this rate he was going to burn out and collapse any minute now, but it beat a bullet in the head; he didn't want to find out how long it took to re-grow brain tissue.

Spike plucked two pistols from outstretched hands before the third and fourth went off at point-blank range, hollowpoint ammo exploding flesh and bone in brilliant red flowers of agony. He wanted to laugh; at least they were following his sage advice on vampire-killing. He staggered, snarling, cocked the two pistols he'd nabbed and backed down the corridor, firing randomly. A man screamed and went down, clutching his thigh; another spun round, blood bubbling up from the hole in his chest. Might be his first human kill in years, and no fucking time to enjoy it. One hammer clicked on an empty cartridge, then the other; Spike flung the pistols back in their faces and ran, white-hot coals stitching his ribs and blood soaking his clothes. He could feel the black tide of exhaustion rising; he still wasn't completely healed from his little encounter with Angelus. Another shot rang out and pain ripped through his thigh. He skidded round the corner into the lobby and fuck, fuck, fuck, there were two more policemen stationed at the stairwell.

And they went down like sacks of potatoes when Connor rabbit-punched them from behind. "Come on!" he yelled, and Spike gathered his last reserves and leaped over the stair-rail, plummeting down four stories. With a curse, Connor leaped after him, and in the rush of wind before they hit, Spike laughed. The kid was a bit of all right.