CHAPTER ONE

It’s the after supper crowd at the Bronze. Light, a few couples gathered at tables here and there. Soon, it will be the thrashing hour. That time before midnight and after ten that throbs with dance beats and pulsating hormones. There is real life to the place then. Now it’s slow, consistent, and predictable. It’s almost easy to guess when the guy at table four has finally ingested all the beer he can before he has to excuse himself from his buzzing lady love in favor of a trip to the men’s room. In Buffy’s meter, she has clocked him in at three, then time to pee.

She is lingering a bit too long over the counter, watching the patrons and occasionally sighing deeply, dreamily, until the peevish bartender nudges her with the tall Guiness Stout he has pulled from the newly tapped keg. She holds the beer in her hand for a minute, watching the brown bottom devour the beige foam on top. And she is prompted again to return to the floor.

This tray is easy. All of them are easy, actually. The bartender intentionally fills the tray with all manner of scooners, mugs, pitchers, and snifters to see how much she can handle. But she can handle anything, he has learned. She lifts everything over her head with equal ease. He wonders sometimes if she’s a superhero.

She wanders out onto the floor. She forgets for a moment where she’s supposed to go. Was it table number five or table number twelve? They both have that “v” and sound very similar when shouted out above the roar of the DJ’s music. She looks around. Who looks the thirstiest? Well, the college-age students always look thirsty. Even if they have two full pitchers in front of them, it’s as though they could have five more there and still want more.

Like vamps, she says to herself.

She begins to wind her way around the club, bending to everyone she sees who sports a nearly empty mug or glass. But no one has ordered the tall Guiness. She hasn’t checked the upper tier. That’s not her station anyway. Unless the disgruntled waitress she talked to last night made good on her promise to turn in her apron that day and Buffy’s suddenly been assigned to both the upper and the lower. But surely the boss would have told her something…

“Did you say table five or table twelve?” she asks the bartender after she’s finally given up.

“Five,” he says as he dunks a plastic pitcher into a sink full of dark suds.

“Table five. OK. I’m on my way,” she says, hoisting the tray once again. She feels silly. Table five is right by table four, where the girl sits all alone, waiting for her Beta Theta Eta chested boy to come back from the restroom.

But table five is empty. And it was empty when she checked there moments before. Undaunted, she puts the beer on the table. But she shouldn’t have done that. The napkin first, the napkin first! she beats herself on the head about. Always the napkin first! Why can’t I remember that?

“Are you sure it was table five?” she says, upon her return to the bar. “There’s no one there.”

The bartender leans his hands on the table. “Look, Buffy, I took the guy’s drink order because you were wandering around looking for the folks who ordered the Pims and strawberry daiquiris. He said he was at that table right over there,” he says, inclining an arched thumb towards the empty table beside the now cooing college students’.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Positive. He ordered cooking sherry. When I laughed at him, he said Guiness would do. And then I told him he’s have to wait because I needed to bring in another keg.”

Something strange comes over Buffy now. Actually, it’s what she’s been feeling since she first walked to the empty table and set the beer down. There had been someone there. And it was someone who didn’t want her to see him just yet.

“Did you see him?” she asks.

“Nope. Had my back turned.”

Damn.

“But he spoke with a British accent, if that helps.”

Oh, that helps her a lot. Too much.

She spins around from the bar. The table is till empty. And the beer is gone. She strides toward number four. The college students are holding hands, gazing longingly into each others’ glassy eyes.

“Excuse me,” she says to the couple. They stare up at her as though she had just threatened their mothers’ lives. “Did you see anyone at the table next to you? Anyone?”

They look at each other. Why this intrusion? How hard is it to keep up with a few dozen customers? Is she stupid or something?

“No,” the boy replies. “Did you, hun?”

“Not a soul,” she says.

Not a soul, Buffy thinks to herself. And then there’s no question.

Spike is back.

Tara, Willow, Xander, and Anya enter the Bronze that night. It is a Thursday, an almost weekend night. And the club is beginning to fill up. There is a table by a two drunken college students, a boy and a girl, who are so into each other their beers remain untouched. But they are they only things at the table that remain untouched.

“Woah! PDA alert in effect!” Xander says, raising his hands in the air. “Haven’t seen that much tongue since I used to hang out at the butcher’s shop.”

They settle down at the table, looking out for Buffy. They soon collectively spot her, tray in hand, searching for the folks who have just ordered three scooners of beer, four pitchers, and a dozen or so tequila shots.

“That can’t be one order,” Willow says.

“Not unless Dylan Thomas fell back to earth,” Xander says.

“Aw, honey,” Anya says. “Dylan didn’t drink tequila. Whisky was his drink. I know. I drank with him the night he wrote ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.’ I was the one who suggested ‘curse, bless me now’ instead of ‘hide, taunt me now,’ or something like that. He thought I was his friend Ioan. Damn drunk. I guess I could have killed him, but he was just so sweet.”

“You knew Dylan Thomas?” Tara asks.

“Well,” Anya muses. “No one ever truly knew him.”

Buffy is now at their table after depositing her drink order at four different tables. Her tray is empty now, and she holds it at her side like a ready shield.

“Hi, guys,” she says.

“Buffy!” Xander says. “Imagine seeing you here!”

“Where else have I been for the past six months?” she says.

Though Xander intends to keep the air light and lively, be cannot help but be stunned by the weight of her comment. And as he looks around, he sees that his friends share the same concern. All of a sudden the toll of the last six months seem frighteningly obvious on the seemingly unburdened shoulders of the Slayer who holds an empty tray. But she seems hunched, a bit tired. Her smile wants to match their giddiness of sharing a night out, but she is working. She is serving them. In her face is all the heartache of the time since February, since her mother died, since she had to sell the house, since she had to quit school, since she had to take this job…

The suddenness of their combined realization hushes them and they cannot speak for a while. It is Buffy who spins the tray around on her smallish hand who speaks next.

“So what’ll it be?” she asks.

“Oh, I was thinking of something…” Anya says. “Something…oh, God! What was it called? Dylan used to order it all the time.”

“Bob Dylan?” Buffy asks.

“No, Dylan Thomas,” Xander says. “Turns out Anya knew him.”

“Yeah, you missed it, Buffy. Anya was telling us all about how she was with him the night he wrote ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,’” Willow says.

I miss a lot of things these days, she thinks to herself. But she doesn’t dare say it. She can tell they’re already forming pity parties for her in their minds.

As she stands there drumming her tray, they do realize how much she has missed. There is an empty seat there. But she won’t sit in it. She hasn’t even looked at it.

She takes their drink order.

“I’ll have a diet coke,” Xander says. “And an order of spicy hot buffalo wings.”

“Xander, we just ate!” Anya says.

“Two hours ago,” Xander says.

“We went to that new Thai place that opened,” Anya says, gripping Xander’s hand. “Mmm mmm mmm.”

“It was a show with everything but Yul Brynner,” Xander says.

Everyone bursts into giggles as Buffy fixes them with a puzzled look.

Willow recovers enough to explain, “The whole time Xander kept quoting ‘One Night in Bangkok.’”

“‘Siam’s going to be the witness to the ultimate test of cerebral fitness!’” Xander says.

“I’ve never even heard the song and I was in tears,” Anya says. But she sobers at Buffy’s nonplused glare. “But I guess you had to be there.”

“Guess so,” Buffy says.

The others quickly place their orders and Buffy saunters off for the bar. In the wake of her absence, there’s a guilt that ricochets from one face to the other. The words “poor Buffy” are the ones that one to come to the surface. But they have said that so often among them it’s totally meaningless now. They watch her at the bar, leaning over, her blond hair up in a mussed ponytail. She offers the bartender a charming smile, communicating with him in a way that she hasn’t with them in a long time.

“Buffy…” Xander says, eliminating “poor” just because… “Following in the fine tradition of Florence Jean Castlebury, Rachel Green and,” he takes a breath, “Jenny Gump.”

“She’s doing all right though,” Tara says. “Or she will be.”

“What do you mean?” Willow asks.

“There’s something in the air.” Tara feels something. It’s so tangible she can almost skewer it with her finger. “There’s something here. Some presence. It feels…protective towards her.”

“I don’t know, Tara. Could it be…us?” Xander says.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s not us. It’s something else. It’s something that wants to help her…” Her eyes close involuntarily and there is a twinge of pain at her side. Or harm her, her mind says, though she does not.

Buffy is standing by the bar, one arm on her hip, waiting for her drink order. The bartender is pulling another Guiness stout.

Where is he? she wonders.

I suck as a waitress, Buffy thinks to herself as she sits perched on the roof of a mausoleum.

It’s a little after two in the morning. Here lately combining her slayer duties with her 48-hour plus work schedule has been no easy task. She’s lucky sometimes to climb into bed before five in the morning. This usually works because her shift doesn’t begin until four in the afternoon. Sometimes she feels as though she hasn’t seen Dawn in years, though. When she encounters her sister in the apartment they share, it’s like, “Hello, stranger.”

It’s late summer now and even in this late hour the air hangs heavy with a dewy humidity and her skin is drenched in it. Occasionally there will be a stiff breeze, and she feels a chill, but it feels refreshing and cleansing to her, like a quick shower in the afternoon.

The night is silent, except for the sound of the leaves clapping together in the wind. Her hair blows in her face. She is aware that she still smells like the Bronze. That heady scent of curly fries, stale beer, and cigarette smoke. She’s certain that the vamps in town have caught onto to this new scent she’s wearing. They probably think it will make her a more delicious treat when she’s eventually caught and killed.

Presently there is the sound emanating somewhere from the ground. It is the sound of earth being moved aside, torn away. The ripping and tearing of freshly made grave. She knows it well.

She springs from the roof of the mausoleum, her stake clutched in her hand just as the vamps’s torso emerges from the ground. Oh, he’s a heinous one, she notes. And angry. And for a moment, she understands. If her family buried her in such an obviously polyester knit 1970’s suit with lapels as wide as the Colorado River, she’d be mad too.

Having fully extracted himself from the ground, he rises to his full height. He is twice her size and his arms are the size of fat, newly shorn sheet. In his life he probably never even heard of the Slayer. She feels compelled to introduce herself.

“Welcome back,” she says. “I’m Buffy. And this is your last night on earth.”

Her terse wording elicits a confused growl from the vamp. Apparently, he’s unaware that newly acquired immortality comes with a small price to pay, in that, eventually, all undead can count on at least a meet and greet with the tiny blond girl who wields a stake and fights like a fiend.

She begins with a kick to the chest that doesn’t land him on his back like she thought it would. Instead, he’s sort of thrown off kilter. This one’s going to require a little extra work, she quickly surmises. But it’s nothing she can’t handle.

She throws an upper-cut to his jaw. Still nothing. This is like fighting Chewbacca, she thinks to herself. She doesn’t give him time to recover. She throws another, and another. Her knuckles are burning from the punishment against his jaw, his cheek, and then, when all else fails, her lower abdomen. Kidney punches are illegal in boxing, but Thank God they’re fair game in slaying. The one she throws doubles him in half. She has him now. With one blow to his chin with the toe of her shoe, he is now on his back. In the pale moonlight, she sees his yellow eyes nearly rolling in the back of his head.

She bends near him. “I’m not normally this rude when I meet people for the first time, but, what can I say? I was raised by wolves.” She raises the stake, readying to a deep plunge. “But it’s been nice meeting you.” And she sinks the stake into his heart.

She sits for a moment, watching the wind pick up the dust the vamp has just left in the wake of his demise.

Yeah, I may suck as a waitress, but I’m still the Slayer.

The wind shifts. Where it has been docile and barely perceptible before, all of a sudden, there is a blast of air and her hair flies around her face like thick cobwebs. She gets to her feet immediately, the wind nearly knocking her down. It seems there’s going to be a storm, but the sky is cloudless and the moon in its fullness is surrounded by dozens and dozens of shining stars.

She hears something. A whisper. It sounds human. It sounds like her name.

“Slayer…” the voice says.

She whips her head around in the direction of the voice. She sees nothing. But she can feel something pressing down on her. A phantom, bearing down on her with a dark presence she has felt before. She spins completely around, looking for the source of the voice, waiting to hear it again. But there is nothing. There is nothing but the sound of the wind dying down.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something dark, something moving in the shadows. Her heart leaps. Her feet can barely keep pace with the orders she’s mentally giving herself to run and catch up with it, whatever it is that she saw, whatever it was that called her name. But clear paths are nearly impossible to find in this part of the cemetery where the population seems to be tripling everytime she enters. She hops over each headstone, landing each time with the grace of a gymnast but the frustration of a doomed Javert. Finally she is out of the thick of them. She is near the entrance of the cemetery now. There is no one around. She is completely alone as she stands at the gates.

So this is how he’s going to play, Buffy thinks as she enters the apartment building and slams the door behind her.

Even with the late hour, people are still awake. In a nearby apartment a baby is testing his mother’s instincts with a high-pitched wail as she hears a woman’s voice give way to sobs. The boys in 1E are listening to techno and she can see can smell incense burning inside. She mounts the stairs, having noted that the elevator is out. Again.

She doesn’t believe he has followed her home. The last place she felt his presence was after he called her name. And then it left. She thought she saw it…him…but it could have been another headstone, turned black in the shadow of the one standing before it. There’s nothing trailing or haunting her now. The footsteps she hears on the staircase are all her own.

She undoes the locks on her door and notes that the super still hasn’t put the peephole in as she has requested days before. Now there’s just a hole. She clicks her tongue and pushes inside.

Once inside, she flops down on a chair, her tip money rattling in her pocket. She counts the bills, tiredly, carelessly. She heard the other waitress mention that she had made $250 that night. Buffy made…well, Buffy made considerably less than that.

She had been distracted that night while she was working. But her instincts had been keen in the cemetery. She thought sometimes that if she could incorporate some of her Slayer intuitiveness into her waitressing, she might just be able to anticipate when table number six needs another Heineken. But then she might get confused and start slaying, which, on some nights wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would get her fired, but she’d be striking a blow for the tired, underpaid wait staff of the world.

She is alone in her apartment. Dawn has probably been asleep for hours. She could curl up and fall asleep right there, but…

There are footsteps in the hall.

She rises slightly from the chair, her ears curving around the noise of heavy, clunking steps on the carpeted floor outside. She gets up. She can’t see anything from the peephole. Cautiously, she undoes the lock just so she can peep out through the space the chain lock permits. Still, she can see nothing. She slams the door, unfastening the chain lock, throwing the door open wide. She hears a door slam up the hall. It was a neighbor, she comforts herself. It wasn’t him.

Once the door is shut, she leans against it, breathing in deeply, exhaling slowly. He doesn’t know where she lives. Yet. There is the strangest thrill in her when she thinks about the day when he’ll find out, when he might confront her here, catch her unaware.

But for now, she is alone.

In the days that follow, the feeling of being alone is as completely foreign to Buffy as Icelandic currency.

The next night at the Bronze, the bartender tells her casually, “Your friend was back again tonight.”

Friend? She thinks.

Or fiend?

“What did he look like?” she asks breathlessly.

“I actually did good look at him this time,” the bartender said. “About yea high,” he says, indicating a height just above his shoulders. “But that’s all I can tell you.”

“You didn’t see his face?”

“That was the weird thing about him. He was wearing a hooded cloak, like a monk.”

“Then how do you know it was him?”

“The voice. It was the same British accent. Sounded like in the same breath he was using to order his drink he could just as well be insulting or threatening me.”

Bingo, she says to herself.

“Where did he go?” she asks.

“Table five. Just the same as last night.”

She peers over at the table. There’s no one there. The table is empty. And so is the pint glass.

A man wearing a hooded cloak shouldn’t be too hard to find in this crowd, she says to herself. But something tells her also he wouldn’t make himself that obvious. She’s going to have to search for him.

But all night, no one matching that description comes into view. It’s the same crowd as last night. It’s the same crowd as always. Anya, Xander, Willow, and Tara even stop by to tell her what a good movie they saw and how much they missed her.

The next night, she is asked to go into the walk in refrigerator to get some limes for the bar. It’s a busy Saturday night and the kitchen staff is rushing around, slapping things on plates without looking and screaming orders. She is not acknowledged when she slips in the refrigerator door.

The inside is completely sealed off from any outside noise. She doesn’t know where the limes are immediately. Nothing is ever in the same place twice. She notices a pan full of ground beef sitting right on the floor. Health violation, she thinks. She needs this job, so she stoops to pick it up and put it on one of the shelves. As she’s doing this, she notices that the door handle is turning, very slowly.

Her hands are still gripping the pan. When the door suddenly swings open, she, drops the meat to the floor.

In from the fluorescent light of the kitchen, she can see it’s the head cook. She scrambles for an explanation. “I’m sorry. I…I’ve been a little on edge lately,” she says.

“You can take that out of my paycheck.”

The cook studies her carefully for a minute, hands on hips. Then be bends and begins scooping up the meat by the fistful, cramming it back into the pan. “I wouldn’t worry about it. The pan’s probably no cleaner than the floor.”

She notes to herself, I guess the threat of Mad Cow disease isn’t the only reason to avoid the meat here.

The next night she goes down to the store room in the basement to get a can of bloody mary mix. This is something she’s done literally hundreds of times alone, without thinking. But this night, she feels someone is tagging along, trailing her.

She’s been scouting around all week for the hooded figure. And if such a person exists, he’s blending better than one would think. Sometimes she thinks he would be easier to spot if the whole club turned out for “Dress Like A Monk” night.

But still, the presence is undeniable. Threatening. Exciting.

There are no footsteps behind her, just the semblance of a being, stalking her with a beastly shadow. As she descends the stairs, her heart begins to pound, not so much out of fear, but anticipation. If he’s going to confront her now, it’ll probably be here. And part of her hopes that this is where it all does come to a head. She’s tired of waiting, tired of being viewed through the long-lens longing of this presence, tired of being played.

The basement is cold, tomb-like. Overhead the ceiling booms with the bass beats of the music being played on the floor above. Aside from that, she can hear her own breath, coming out in pants.

She is in the middle of the storeroom. She feels the air grab her bare arms. She allows herself to feel the presence. She wants it. She’s calling to it by being alone, bating it. She’s vulnerable now. She’s JFK in the back of the limo in Dealy Plaza, moving slowly.

She calls his name. “Spike?” It comes out a lot softer than she has anticipated. She feels sort of foolish, like she’s recalling the name of an imaginary friend she had when she was a child.

She licks her lips and is embarrassed to find they are trembling. Not with fright. She is not afraid. She has never been afraid of him.

“Spike?” she calls, louder this time.

A door opens somewhere upstairs. It is not the one to the basement, though. She hears footsteps, but they are en masse. It is the sound of a conglomeration of tracks being made as the DJ plays a record that summons everyone to the dance floor.

She is alone after all. The only other people are the ones upstairs, dancing.

Releasing a long-held breath, she grabs the bloody mary mix and heads upstairs.

But then comes Thursday.

Buffy was called in on her day off. This is enough to put her in a black mood, but it is made more intense by the fact that for almost a solid week she has been tracked by something she can’t see. This soldier in the jungle pursued by the lurking Viet Cong routine is growing old and tonight she’s ready to Napalm the place.

As she’s loading up the tray for another walk-about through the bar, there is a break in the music.

“All right, all you Bronzers,” the DJ says. His voice sounds strained, as though he has recently strangled on something and is trying to recover his breath. “I have just received a very special request. This is going out from S to B. Southside, by Moby with Gwen Stefani.”

The beginning beats of the track fill the room, fill every inch of floor space, every molecule of air. In a short time, she is breathing the music. It is the only thing that is sustaining her and she feels a sudden light-headedness as she begins to sway as the light begins to fade in front of her eyes.

That memories of that night come rushing back to her with such intensity she feels she’s right there again, in his arms. He wasn’t taking no for an answer that night. He just took her. She remembers the sound the door made when it came open, the look in his eyes as he stood there, knowing that she would be his that night. And he knew this because the look she was giving him told him, yes, I will be yours.

They had experienced just one night. This song had played over and over while he touched her, while he explored the taste and feel of her skin. While he kissed her all over. While he entered her with the precision of a heat-seeking missile.

Without saying a word to the bartender, she abandons her tray and runs. She doesn’t know where she’s going and doesn’t pay much heed to the bartender’s increasingly hollow threats. She’s got to find him. He’s got to be there. This is his clue. He’s ready to see her and he’s ready to be seen.

But if this is the case, he is not being entirely forthright. Face after face turns to her in a gallery of looks that go from blank stares to frank peevishness. She is calling his name now. She doesn’t feel so foolish now. She knows he’s there. She knows it.

Show yourself, you bastard. Show me you’re really here! Why are you doing this to me? Her mind screams as she races now, up the stairs, to the upper tier of the dance floor. It’s darker up there, harder to see faces, place names to faces. She doesn’t know a soul, though. Not a soul.

Where are you, you soulless bastard! You left me and now you’ve come back. Do you think I’ll be mad at you? Do you think I’m going to stake you for leaving me and not even calling me to tell me where you were? I was expecting that.

She reaches for the stake concealed in the front pocket of her apron, jostling her tip money. Dollar bills rain at her feet as she tears down the second staircase, leading down to the lower floor.

People fly past her. She can’t even see them anymore. The music blares. It is almost over. It’s the last chorus. There will be no repeats on this one.

Buffy pushes her way through the fire exit and finds herself out in the cool night, in the shadows of the alleyway. Her heart is racing and she can’t catch her breath. She backs up against the wall and slides all the way down to the pavement. She closes her eyes, dropping her head into her hands. There are a million thoughts coursing through her bewildered head. She is sick. Her stomach is in knots and she feels at any minute she’s going to retch.

But suddenly, the shadow she has been feeling all week is right over her. It is right before her. She opens her eyes. Yes, he is there, right in front of her. He is no longer a shadow. He is real. His features are obscured by the darkness of the alleyway, but when he speaks, there is not doubt in her mind who the shadow is and for whom the shadow has come.

“Daddy’s home,” he says in a deep, teasing growl.

She gets to her feet slowly, scraping her back against the wall as she does. She doesn’t know why she is so stunned. She has known all along that it had to be him, stalking her, crouching over her, making her doubt her sanity.

He opens his arms. She wants to be in his arms, so badly. She wants him to touch her, to hold her, to take her right there. But before she loses her head, before she lets desire take her down one more time, she feels her hand curl into a fist and connect with his nose.

He is cursing her now, holding his nose and stumbling in the dark. But he soon shakes it off, the pain, the humiliation. All with a smile.

“Not the welcome I was hoping for,” he says.

“You told me you loved me,” she says, punching him again. “So you had to leave me!” her fist connects again with his nose. “Because you knew it wouldn’t work out.” And the second punch to the nose felt so good, there has to be a third in there somewhere. And there is. “You didn’t write. You didn’t call. You treated me just like you treated Harmony…” She stops to consider what she has just said and rage fills her to bursting. “And the fact that I just put myself in the same category as Harmony…” This one deserves a kick…where it hurts most. “Just exactly what were you expecting, Spike?”

“Oh,” he says, still smiling through the hurt. “A little peck on the cheek. A little understanding. A little tenderness.”

“You want tenderness? I’ll tenderize you,” she says, throwing another punch, this time across his back.

As he struggles to recapture the wind that has just left his lungs, he rises slowly from his crouched position. When he is finally able to speak, he says, “I didn’t want to have to do this, but…”

She doesn’t see his fist coming. But she feels it, all across her face, down deep beneath the bones. She’s so shocked, she cannot speak; she cannot even begin to form any words except, “What the hell?”

She views him over her hands as she fans her fingers across her bruising flesh. He is smiling in his victory, loving the sight of her awareness that he’s back in the game again.

“Guess what’s not a problem anymore?” he asks teasingly.

CHAPTER TWO

She continues to stare at him in disbelief as many minutes clock by. She cannot see his face in the darkness, but she senses a slow, satisfied grin spreading across his lips. She is aware that every minute she is standing there, he could be gearing up for the kill. She can’t let that happen. Not in the alleyway of the Bronze and her shift only half over.

Without saying a word, her fist flies at his face and he flails awkwardly to steady himself. She throws another punch, this time to his jaw. He counters with a jab to her left cheek, which she in turn counteracts with a blow to his right cheek. She has forgotten his power and his stamina, how unrelenting he can be when engaged in battle. Though she has beaten him many, many times before, he’s almost had her in his deadly clench as well. But she senses tonight he is not going for the knock-out. He is reintroducing himself into the ring. This is his comeback.

She won’t let up, not for a moment. He is trading blows with her, matching the force, matching the precision. They’ve always fought well. Here, when engaged in battle, they understand each other most of all.

“So is this why you came back?” Buffy pants out, delivering another punch to his chin. “To kill me?”

“No,” he grunts out as she returns a blow to his stomach. “The chip may have left my head, but the love I have for you in my heart remains intact.”

She’s had enough of the jabs and changes tactics, grabbing him by he arm and flinging him against the wall. She bends his arm across his back, twisting until she can almost hear bones breaking. Almost. She can hear him wheeze, hear him weakening. Relief builds in her shoulders. It’s almost over, she says to herself.

“Then you came back to sire me? Do what Dru did to you? Make me your little love slave for all eternity?” she breathes into his ear.

He ushers a sickening, growling laugh through his parted lips. “I’ve already done that, love.”

Oh, you dead, dead bastard, she thinks as her head thunders with new fury. In one move, she grabs him by the arm and pitches him to the pavement. There is moonlight on his face now. She can see him, clearly, for the first time in six months.

She doesn’t let any sentimental thoughts betray what she has to do next. She straddles him before he can scuttle away like a wounded crab and produces her stake. She lets it hover over his heart, not quite making contact. The executioner wants her prey to see the weapon that’s going to send him out of this world and make him someone else’s problem.

“You’re out of practice, Spike,” she announces. “This was too easy.”

“I know,” he says. “I wasn’t really trying there at the end. I just wanted to feel you on top of me again.” His hands creep up her backside and she turns crimson at his touch. “Feels just as I remember.”

“Does this feel just as you remember?” she says, jamming the stake closer to him, piercing the leather of his black duster.

“Definite familiarity there,” he says in mid-groan.

The moonlight reveals that his features have now left the realm of smugness and assuredness and are now hovering somewhere over fright and apology. She digs the stake through the duster, endeavoring to drill right through his tee-shirt, right through his skin.

“Wait, Slayer!” he pleads, exhaling sharply at the touch of the stake. “Slayer, don’t do this. Not until you hear what I have to say. Not until I’ve had a chance to explain my whereabouts for these past six months.”

“I don’t want to know,” she says through gritted teeth. “You were gone and you came back and for some dumbass reason you thought I’d be all, ‘You got your chip out! Great! Here’s my jugular as a reward for being such a good sport while you couldn’t kill anyone.’”

“Just let me tell you where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing.”

“I’m sure it’s an epic story, Spike. And it ends here.” She raises the stake in the air.

She’s got him so surely, so squarely certain. His life is in her hands. His death is in her precise aim at just the right spot in his chest. Her heart is racing. This is the moment of the kill. The hairs stand up on the back of her neck. There is always an odd arousal about this that goes beyond the sexual. It’s a rush, a demon-drip of adrenaline that courses through her veins and makes her feel her power through every atom of her being. Her skin tingles from the sensation. She raises the stake over its intended target.

But before the weapon can come down for its fatal plunge, she sees his face break out into panic and for a moment she is terrified for him. And in this brief moment in time that she allows herself to connect with him, she feels just as vulnerable as he must feel, pinned under her, awaiting death. He’s not a nameless vamp scrambling from a grave for his first kill. He’s not a skunky demon out for a night of prowling and vengeance. He was once her greatest enemy and she has tried so many times to get him just where he is now. He is completely helpless now. And all she can think about is how much she wants to wipe the look of fear from his face when she pulls him to safety.

“Slayer,” he whispers. There is a plea in his voice. For mercy? Understanding? Pity?

She is no longer sitting on top of her long-time foe. She is straddling her former lover. The arms that are pinned under her legs once held her. She has taken this creature to her bed. She has allowed him to touch her, to put his lips to her lips, to her skin. And she has touched him as well. She knows the curves of his bold, strong pecs. She knows the firmness of his abdomen. She has defined it with her hands, with her mouth. She knows his heart. And in that heart is his love for her.

Her hand falls to her side.

Buffy doesn’t move for several minutes. Spike remains prone and still. In his eyes there is gratitude. She doesn’t graze over that look to long.

As she lifts herself off him, she mutters in a tone that she hopes doesn’t sound as defeated as it feels to say, “Get up.”

He scrambles to do just that, hopping up straight into the air. She doesn’t turn her back to him. She wants to make sure he is completely gone before she can turn her back.

“Get out of here. Now!” she intones.

He reaches out to her, “Buffy,” he begins.

She catches his hand as it’s about to go for her shoulder. “Get out of here and don’t ever come around me again.” She is avoiding his eyes. She is training her look somewhere between his chin and his mouth.

“Buffy, just hear me out this one time. Just this once.”

She decides to give him a listen. The stake hasn’t left her hand.

“I know I hurt you, love. I know I’ve been perfectly awful to you. I am aware that these six months have had a terrible toll on you. And I’m to blame for the lot of it.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she says.

He raises his hands to shush her. “Buffy, if you just let me explain. I’ve been to a lot of places in the past year. A lot of places on the globe, a lot of places in myself I didn’t know existed. But I came back to you, love. I told you when I left you I was going because I knew we couldn’t make this work. But I know something now. Something I should have known then, but was too cowardly to accept.” His hand is now caressing her cheek. And she is not moving away. “I’ve got to make things work with you because it’s the best thing I’ve ever had and will ever have for that matter. You are why I exist, Buffy. You are the love of my life.”

She is now looking into his eyes. There is truth there. And pain. And love. He is not mocking her. He is not ingratiating himself for an apology. He is stated the facts, purely and simply.

She is not standing in the alleyway of the Bronze now. She is at the doorway of her house, trying to say good-bye to him, trying to let him go. But she can’t. He’s too much a part of her. He’s too much in her soul. He has made her feel his love for him and she returns it in full measure.

Then why is he saying good-bye?

Just then, the side door of the Bronze comes open. An angry, booming voice bounces off the walls.

“Buffy! If your ass isn’t in here in five seconds, you can turn in your apron and forget you ever had a job here!”

His hand is still on her cheek, cold, yet comforting.

“I’ve got to go,” she says.

“I know,” he says.

Now she turns away. He remains where she left him as she heads for the door, tucking her stake back into her apron.

“Buffy!” he calls to her before her hand is on the door. “The playground by the school,” he says. “Will you meet me there after your shift?”

She nods her consent without even thinking as she fiddles with the sharp tip of the stake.

“I’ll be there,” she says.

Now why am I doing this again?

It’s almost four o’clock in the morning as Buffy walks across town to the designated place. Ass he walks by silent house after silent house, she realizes sleep is taking place all around her and she keenly feels the fatigue in her bones and the aches in her muscles.

Tonight she has fought with Spike for the first time in years and for a while it felt like old home week. Sometimes when they fought she was made more aware of her place in the world, her role in this life. She was placed here to kill. She has been trying to kill Spike for the past four years and with his finality so firmly in her grasp, she had let him go. Why?

She couldn’t stand to see that look in his eye. That hurt. That plea. Don’t kill me my love. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life, he seemed to be saying to her there at the end. She knows why she let him go. She had been in that position before, with a different lover, a different vamp. She had killed Angel without realizing his soul had been restored and that action had haunted her, had nearly hurled her into insanity’s clutch. When she was holding that stake above his heart, when she was so much in control that it seemed she had the power of every empire that ever ruled the world, she knew she was making a big mistake. Spike came back for a reason. It wasn’t to kill her. It wasn’t to sire her. What was it?

She had to know. And that is why she finds herself in a playground a little after four in the morning on a Friday.

He is there waiting, by the swings. He is pacing, smoking a cigarette. She doesn’t even have to announce her presence. When she arrives, he knows. And he comes to her.

As he approaches her, his arms are open and she feels herself wanting to go into them. Oh, hold me…she’s thinking to herself.

I’ve missed you…He is returning these thoughts to her. He is leaning his face to hers, the intention of a kiss coming nearer and nearer. But just as he’s about to make contact, she stiffens. This is not the right time. There are apologies that need to be made and dissected for their validity. He knows this too and temporarily abandons hope for the touch of his lady love’s lips on his, again with a smile. He does everything with that smug, self-satisfied grin, whether he’s endeavoring to murder someone or make someone a victim in another way entirely.

“So we’re not quite ready for the kiss and make-up bit yet,” he drawls. “I understand, love. But you’re here. That’s half the battle won, I suppose.”

“Spike, I’m tired and right now all I want to do is crawl into bed for the next fourteen hours. You better make this quick.”

“Now, now, Slayer. I’ve been gone for six months. And what I’ve been through can’t exactly be illustrated on the head of a pin. You came here to find out where I’ve been and I’m here to tell you. So sit down and wipe that petulant, I don’t wanna be here look off your face. We have to have a talk.”

There’s a bench on the playground. When school’s in session, this is probably where the teachers sit while waiting out recess. School won’t start for another two weeks or so. Preparations are being made for the students’ return. There’s a bucket of paint by the teeter totter. Buffy imagines that somewhere in Sunnydale children are counting down the days. Summer’s almost over. And when school starts, this is where they will come to play and run around between learning ABC’s and long division.

Spike is leaning his elbows on his thighs. His hands are folded together, almost in prayer. He takes a breath and exhales in a blast of cold air.

“I never thought I’d come back here,” Spike says. “When I left you that morning, I thought I was turning my back for good. I remember looking at everything as though I were seeing the place for the last time. Felt all sentimental, a little sad. But I had to go. There was no question. And for a while I didn’t know where I was going. I just wandered from place to place, traveling by night. In Flagstaff I found an abandoned car, hot wired it, and drove for the longest time. I would find these long stretches of highway where I was completely alone for miles and miles and then, all of a sudden, another motorist would pass and I’d realize I wasn’t alone. It’s odd, when you get it in your head that you’re the only person in the world and then you see that other people do exist. Other people with lives, other people who know other people who you will never know or encounter. Or maybe you have and just don’t know it.” He sighs. “Well, enough of my treatise on loneliness. On one of those highways, I found out why the car had been abandoned. It was a piece of shit car that made me wish that Yugoslavia had never learned how to build motor. It broke down on me. It was a little bit before dawn. I had been heading for a hotel that promised good accommodations, a fair price, and a swell continental breakfast in the morning. I didn’t quite make it. And for a while, I didn’t think I was going to make it at all. The sun was coming up over the hills. And I was in the bleeding desert. I thought about starting off the in the direction of the hotel. I grabbed the blanket, the one you have me. But the sun was bursting on the horizon and I felt myself weakening. I knew I was about to feel a kinship with the desert sand that you humans know nothing about. I had to keep moving, though. Moving targets are harder to hit, I kept reminding myself. But eventually, it was too much for me, and I fell to the ground. ‘Well this is it,’ I told myself. ‘This is where it all ends for William the Bloody, out in the desert, all alone.’ But then something happened. I felt myself in a stranger’s grasp. I was being lifted. I found myself being slung across the back of a horse and being carried rapidly away. I thought this was rather amusing. Old Spike being rescued by a knight in shining armor. I must have passed out or something because I don’t remember anything until I woke up on a tweedy sofa in the living room of someone’s house. There was an old man there, an old Indian. Scared the piss out of me when I first saw him. He was just sitting there, staring at me from across the room. There was something brewing on the fire and he got up and spooned some in a mug for me. He tried to feed it to me, but I refused. I told him I needed blood. He muttered something under his breath and I asked him what it was. He told me, ‘you are the one that stalks the night and knows no soul.’” I said, ‘Spot on, Geronimo. Now get me some blood.’

“Now, when most people learn that they have a vampire in their home, they’re not exactly hospitable. Your mum hit me on the head with an axe, remember? Well, I was expecting a similar action from the old man, but he couldn’t have been nicer. In a short time, he did find me some blood---buffalo’s blood. Not as tasty and spicy as the wings, but quite satisfying. So I drank and he talked.”

And the night got deathly quiet and his face lost all expression/Said if you’re going to play the game boy, you gotta learn to play it right…Buffy thinks tiredly.

“So you wandered into a really bizarre Kenny Rogers movie of the week and found yourself in a wigwam,” Buffy says.

“It wasn’t a wigwam, Slayer. It was a house. With walls and brick and everything. Even a telly.”

“So why didn’t the Indian kick you out of the house when he found out you were a vampire?”

“He suspected I couldn’t kill. He wanted to know why. I told him all about the job the government chaps did on Old Spike’s noggin. He could sympathize. Apparently he had seen his share of ill treatment from the government as well. He explained his tribe had once numbered in the thousands. He and about a dozen others were all that was left. They had originated from Tennessee and were sent west in the early eighteen hundreds. Those who could adapt flourished, and those who couldn’t died. His great great grandfather had been a medicine man, he said. Once a devastating fever went through his tribe and he saved everyone with a combination of herbs and desert flowers. But he was killed by some cavalrymen out for a game of spook the Indians. He said many of his fellow tribesmen, the ones that were left, were scattered about. Some of reservations, some in the suburbs. He kept his homeplace there in the desert. He had lived alone for the better part of his seventy-odd years.

“He wanted to know the nature of the chip. What it did to me. I told him about the pain, the excruciating pain every time I tried to even make a fist at another human being. He told me that was nonsense. The machinery in my head had nothing to do with the fact that I couldn’t kill or defend myself if attacked. If I couldn’t extract the chip from my head I had to live with the consequences of my violent actions. And I thought, well, duh, that’s what I’d been doin' all along. But then he told me something. He said that I had been giving too much credence to the control the chip had over my actions. He taught me a little trick that his people had used when they were tortured by the bloody soldiers who invaded the plain with their eyes on Manifest Destiny. He told me that I had to pull myself out of my body to endure the pain. I had to leave my body if I wanted to let go of what was hurting me. Sounded like a lot of rubbish to me. Until he demonstrated it to me. He went over to the fire and put his hand right in the flames and held it there for minutes. I could smell the odor of burning flesh and hair. I could hear the sizzle of his skin giving away to blisters and blood. But he just stood there, calmly, watching me. He removed his hand from the flame. There was nothing but pulp there at the end of his wrist. He prepared a potion of medicinal herbs and simmered it over the fire for the rest of the evening. And when applied, the salve restored his flesh. He cured himself. I thought I had met the most invulnerable human being I would ever meet. And for a moment, I was terrified, because I knew there was nothing I could do to this man to hurt him.”

Spike rises from the bench. He is now pacing slowly, stubbing the toe of his boot into the ground, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“I had to learn how to do this. I wanted him to teach me. He cautioned me that spirituality is what brings the calm, and my spirit was long gone. But I wanted to give it a try anyway. He told me that I had to imagine that I was heading for the sky. That the skies were opening for me. That I had the freedom of flight and that I could embrace the heavens. I had to steal a part of the sun, which made me uneasy. But it turned out, all I had to do was envision the sun and its beams, not actually go near it. I hadn’t felt the warmth of the sun in ages, but I did as instructed and an amazing thing happened. I did feel the sun. I did feel warmth on my skin. Almost in my soul…” he trails off. It sounds like his voice is breaking. “I felt as brilliant as a diamond. I took a swing at the Indian. And I did not feel anything but my fist connecting with his face.”

He is not looking at her as he is speaking. It is as though he has forgotten that she is there, listening to his monologue. On the stage alone, the actor has forgotten his audience.

“Now, this is the sort of thing that takes practice, takes time. It’s an acquired art. So I tried to be patient. Every day I worked on drawing myself out of my body. At first it took nearly five minutes. A long wait for someone about to engage himself in battle. But eventually I got it down to seconds. I couldn’t believe how well it worked. And neither could the Indian.”

There is a look now on Spike’s face of bitter remembrance. Buffy knows instantly what this is.

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

He studies her for a minute, trying to gauge what her reaction will be when he tells her the truth.

“Well…yeah,” he says. “It was the desert and I was a bit parched. Then I stole his horse and rode away. So now it can truly be said that I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name. Although I think this one did. Can’t remember what it was, though.”

Now she doesn’t know why she has come at all. And she doesn’t know why he is so happy about revealing to her that he is a killer again. There has to be something else, she tells herself. She had him at death’s door earlier that night and it wouldn’t take much to drag him back to that threshold again.

“So let me guess, after you discovered you could kill again, you went on a big spree and eliminated a good chunk of California’s populace,” she says.

In a sudden movement that takes her aback, he is on his knees in front of her. His hands are on her thighs, rubbing gently. His face is right before hers. On his breath is flesh and blood and she breaths it in with disgust.

“One would think. But that didn’t happen. I found that I could use to same tactics the Indian taught me to alleviate my pain to ward off my urge to kill. I didn’t have to kill. I only have to kill when I need to.”

“That still makes you a killer,” she says.

“But I don’t have to be,” he says. “It’s all up to you. All you have to do is say four little words, love.” He leans into her, searching for her ear. He is dangerously close to her neck, she realizes. But she doesn’t feel teeth there. Only his breath mingled in a sigh. “I want you back.”

He is letting his lips linger by her ear, broadcasting his longing for her in harsh, violent breaths. He is smelling her hair. His hands are in her hair now, stroking the long locks from scalp to tips. He is bringing her face to his. But there’s not a kiss yet. He wants it. He knows she wants it. But there’s more to say. He wants her to hear everything, to know everything.

“Sometimes at night,” he says softly. “I’d wake from sleep after dreaming about you. I could feel you right there with me. And when I came back into consciousness, and realized you weren’t there, I ached with desire for you. You were so far away. I had been with you, you were so close. I wanted to feel that closeness again. I nearly howled at the unfairness of it all. I’d clutch the empty space beside me, wanting so much to feel your body there. I wanted you beside me, under me. I wanted to touch you so badly. I couldn’t torture myself any longer. I had to come back to you. Right or wrong, I needed what we had. The memory of that night was too potent. I wanted it all back. I wanted to be with you again. So I came back.”

Without thinking, she has parted her legs and his is embracing her. She has not yet found the courage to hold him. Her arms remain at her side. His hands are all over her back. Now she does feel his kiss, right by her ear. Then on her cheek. Hips lips are moving quickly. Soon they will be on her mouth. She knows this and her heart begins to pound. Now they are kissing. And she is holding him. Her arms do this without her consent. His touch is too much of a reminder of that one night. She wants it. She wants it badly enough that she is saying his name as she pulls him closer.

His hands are going down her back, discovering the brevity of her tee shirt. He raises it slowly as his fingers glide under her bra strap.

“You remember this?” his voice curls seductively into her ear.

She does. Too well.

His hands are fully under her bra now. She has allowed enough space for him to maneuver his hands around to the other side. He squeezes and releases her bare breasts and she moans. Her tee shirt is up around her shoulders now. The night air is prickling her nipples as he tastes them with his mouth and leaves them damp and exposed.

Now his hands are gliding down her stomach. She feels his fingers playing with the elastic on her underwear. They find easy access once the snap of her jeans is undone and the zipper is lowered. He is caressing her inner flesh, eliciting moans from her that she has been storing for months.

“And you remember this, too?” he says as his fingers loiter across her labia, waiting for admittance inside.

Oh, she remembers. She lets her head fall back. But as she does this, cold air rushes against her neck. His mouth! She thinks instantly. No, it’s not there. But it is enough of a scare to wake her, to snatch her from the clutches of this erotic dream made real by the presence of her former lover and foe.

Her hands push against his shoulders. In one shove, he is on the ground in front of her, looking stunned.

She rearranges her shirt, tucking everything in where it should be.

“Yeah, I remember,” she says. “But I also remember the last six months.”

And with that, she walks away.

CHAPTER THREE

“Guys, I’ve got some news,” Buffy says to the Scoobies the next afternoon. She has just finished training and her clothes are sweaty and she’s wondering if her friends are noticing the sopping wet rings under her arms. She thinks at least Anya is because she sees her nose wrinkle a couple of times. Maybe I stink, she thinks to herself. “We’ve got the Big Bad to deal with again.”

“Which one?” Willow asks.

“The one who likes to think of himself as the original Big Bad. El Capo de tutti capi of the Big Bads. The Grand Poobah of the Big Bads. The Merchant of Big Badedness.” She hopes her friends will get what she’s trying to say, because she’s running out of euphemisms.

“Oh!” Xander says. “Has my former roommate blown back into town? And he didn’t even bother to come by and say hello. Well, that’s friendship for you. See if I ever commiserate with him over a game of pool again.”

Giles is scowling while he shakes his head slowly. “I knew he couldn’t stay away for long.” He is trying to engage Buffy with his eyes, but she is not looking in his direction.

“But there’s something you should know about him,” Buffy says.

“He’s got an evil twin,” Xander says. “No! Wait! He’s your twin brother!” When his remarks are met with annoyed glances, he feels the need to explain. “Sorry. Anya and I were doing the Star Wars trilogy thing yesterday.”

“All six and a half hours,” Anya says bitterly.

“It still really bothers me that Obi Wan didn’t tell Luke about Leia being his sister. I mean, the guy’s living in a desert, harvesting dirt crops and eating what looks like very soggy cornflakes. He meets this groovy princess who packs heat and doesn’t wear a bra. There’s an attraction there…” He shakes his head. “I know because of the whole mythology thing, Luke couldn’t know about Daddy Darth yet, but surely he could have been let in on the whole sister Leia thing before he started thinking about what she looked like out of her white dress. Or how good she looked in the iron bikini.”

“Honey, that’s the fifth time you’ve mentioned Leia and her iron bikini since last night,” Anya says. “Am I going to have to go out and buy one of those for you?”

“Please?” Xander says.

Buffy is standing silent with her lips pursed, looking like an irritated professor whose lecture has been interrupted by some students’ noisy note passing.

“Sorry, Buffy. You were saying?” Xander says.

“Guys, this is serious. I know it’s been a while since we’ve thought of Spike being a threat. It’s kind of hard to take a villain seriously when he’s wearing one of Xander’s Hawaiian shirts, but.” She takes a breath. “All I’m saying is, The Initiative’s peroxided guinea pig is back to his former self.”

Those gathered around the table exchange baffled looks.

Finally Willow speaks. “No chip?”

“Chip is still there, but not a big problem any more. Apparently, he’s found a way to control the pain now.”

“How did you find this out?” Giles asks.

“The hard way. We fought.”

“And you won?” Willow asks.

“I’m standing here speaking to you now, aren’t I?”

“And you didn’t kill him?” Xander asks.

“No,” Buffy returns slowly. They’re going to want to know why and none of them knows what went on six months ago…She knows then that she should have killed him. She is staring at five reasons to have plunged the stake in his chest. But while she had the stake in her hand, the reasons against killing him were too clear. She can see the fear building in their eyes. She knows what they’re thinking. He’s spent all these years under the control of the chip. Now he’s going to unleash a reign of terror not seen since the days of the French Revolution. They’ve been mean to him. Brutal. Almost as evil as he has been to them. He’s going to want revenge. All their necks are prime targets. She should have beheaded that platinum blond Robespierre before a single innocent head fell into the basket.

I’m supposed to keep them safe. They count on me. And in a moment of weakness I failed. I should have remembered them, not him…

“It’s the Dawn thing, isn’t it?” Willow asks.

“What?” Buffy asks.

“The Dawn thing. He took care of Dawn after your mother died. That’s why you couldn’t kill him.”

She shrugs her shoulders. “That must have been it,” she says. At that moment, she does look at Giles. He is fixing her with a cold, soul-searching stare. Sometimes she wishes he couldn’t read her so well. Apparently there is no off position on the Watcher switch.

“So,” she says. “If you see him, don’t think he won’t attack. Keep your crossbows handy, avoid going out alone at night, and keep your de-invite spells in good repair.

“And darn it, Anya and I were going to have him over for brisket,” Xander says.

Buffy is still aware that Giles is looking at her. She stares off in another direction, twisting one foot into the ground. “I don’t think that he will hurt you, though. He says he can control his need to feed now. And he knows what will happen if he goes near any of you.”

“Does he?” Giles says under his breath.

But it is loud enough for Buffy to hear. And feel.

After the meeting is over, Giles draws Buffy aside. She is expecting this. She knows it’s lecture time.

“Buffy, I never did inform the others of what went on between you and Spike after your mother’s death. Mostly because I am not completely certain of all the details and I’m not one to spread rumors and innuendo, but…”

“You want to know if I still have feelings for him,” Buffy says.

“Do you?” he asks, relieved that she has filled in the blanks for him.

She hesitates before answering, aware that he is going to weigh everything she says with a rather accurate scale. “There was some sparkage,” she says.

“Buffy…”

“I know, I know, I KNOW what you’re going to say. I should just leave him alone. I should just stay away from him. Shouldn’t encourage him. You know, in the time he’s been gone, I have been trying to forget I ever went near him. He told me he was gone for good and I accepted that. But then when I saw him, all the old emotions came flooding back. The kind a Slayer isn’t supposed to have for a vampire.”

“Good Lord, Buffy. Obviously I am missing something here. How could you possibly feel any affection towards someone who’s made being evil and vile his unlife’s quest? Think about all the terrible predicaments he’s put your friends through. Think about the terrible predicaments he’s put you through.” He pauses briefly. “Did you at least try and kill him?”

“I did. The stake right there, ready for action. But I couldn’t do it…I just couldn’t. I saw something in his eyes. And in his heart.”

“What sort of hold does he have on you, Buffy?”

She is remembering what transpired on the bench in the playground. This she will not share with her Watcher. “I don’t know. But it’s there. He told me he wouldn’t kill if I took him back.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I’d like to. But I’ve got some trust issues right now.”

“I didn’t think it was possible, but I do believe he’s far more dangerous loving you than he ever way when he was trying to up the tally of his Slayer kills.” He touches her arm. He is afraid for her. She hasn’t seen him look this worried for a long time. Fatherly concern consumes his features as he speaks to her. “Please, Buffy. I trust you to do the right thing.”

She has always been trusted to do the right thing and it’s starting to get on her nerves.

“I will, Giles.”

“You still got the de-invite spell on your apartment,” he says. “Don’t let him convince you that he deserves admittance.”

“I don’t think he knows where I live yet.” At least she thinks.

When Buffy arrives home, all she wants to do is get out of her sweaty, clingy clothes and jump in the shower for about a half an hour. She is so ready for the steam and the pulsating rhythm of the water hitting her skin, she heads straight for the bathroom the minute she enters her apartment. But something stops her. She is aware of voices. Her sister’s and…

He is in the apartment. She hears his voice. His loud, braying laughter with Dawn’s girlish giggles intermixed. They are in her bedroom.

The door is slightly ajar. She peeks in to find them sitting on the floor. Dawn is opening her CD player, about to insert a disk.

“You’ll like this one. It has some really rare live tracks that you can’t get anywhere anymore,” Spike is saying. “I actually saw this show. I could tell that Sid was on his way out. I wanted to help him, but I thought about all the heroin in his blood. Didn’t want to become a regular commuter on the smack train like he was.”

“They were so ugly,” Dawn says. “Look at all the scratch marks on this guys chest. Did he have a cat or something?”

“He liked to cut himself, I hear. Liked the pain and the adrenaline and all.”

“Ewww….”

A this point, Dawn happens to notice her sister at the door way. “Oh, Buffy! Look who’s back!”

Spike has followed Dawn’s glance. He is smiling now. Yes, love. I am back in the fold, he seems to be saying.

“Yes, I see,” she says, straining her works through gnashed teeth.

“He brought me all these CD’s. I am so over that whole *NSYNC deal. Those guys were such butt munches. I finally got to see them in concert and went back stage. They were like, so immature and stuff. I felt like I was in junior high again.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re going into high school this year,” Spike says.

“Two more weeks,” she says proudly.

“Well, at least the blokes who built this new school had the good sense not to build on a hellmouth. I’ve been there. There’s no evil there. Just a lot of wankers wearing oversized jeans and bints with nose rings.”

“Spike, may I see you for a moment?” Buffy says.

“Certainly, love.” He jumps up from the floor. “Be right back, Little Bits. Big sis and I have some catching up to do as well.”

When she gets him out in the hall and out of earshot of Dawn, who is now cranking up the CD player, she slams him against the wall.

“How did you find me?” she asks, holding his shoulders firmly against the wall.

“Wasn’t too hard, Slayer. I went to your old place. An old lady answered the door. I thought to myself, well, either the Slayer has aged over night. And not very well, I might add. Or she’s not here anymore. The kindly old woman, Bev something or another, I believe, informed me that she didn’t know of your whereabouts, but thought you might be living in Sunnydale Heights. I thought to myself, ‘Buffy? In the projects?’ And I didn’t believe it until I came here and saw your name on the mailbox for this apartment.”

“You didn’t---

“No, I didn’t lay a finger on that lady’s poor gray head. She was rather puzzled by my appearance. Thought I was a monk, I believe. Have you seen my new cowl? The Indian stitched it together for me out of the blanket you gave me. It---

She forces him against the wall again, letting his head bounce off the wall. “Spike! Let me make one thing perfectly clear. You are not welcome here. I don’t know what you did to get Dawn to invite you in, but I’m going to undo it.”

“Little Bits was happy to see me,” Spike says. “She hugged me and everything. Told me she missed me. Which was more than I got from you. And I didn’t sleep with her.”

“Spike, do you feel what’s under your feet? It’s thin ice. And you’re treading on it.”

“Ooooh. What are you gonna do, Slayer? Stake me? Are you gonna dust old Spike right here in your clean and neat flat? You couldn’t do it last night, could you? I thought, here’s my only love in the world, who happens to be the only girl in the world who can hand me a death sentence, and she can’t bring herself to do it. She can’t do it because she loves me. She doesn’t know it. Can’t accept it. But can’t fight it either.”

She is trying to block out what he is saying. Trying. She is trying to concentrate on the music coming from Dawn’s stereo. It sounds so odd after all these years of hearing songs that contain so many repetitions of the word baby, she has once considered calling Dawn’s room the nursery.

His arms are coming around her. His words are encircling her in his spell as well. What sort of hold does he have on you, Buffy? Giles had asked that afternoon. She can’t define it, can’t point it out with any accuracy, but it’s so powerful that when he touches her, she can’t think of anything else.

“Do you think I risked my life today so that I could bring Dawn some old CD’s? Do you? As good as it was to see her again, there was only one reason I came here. I want what we had six months ago. I want it so bad I’m willing to test the mid-day’s sun’s heat, feel the flames, just for your touch. Just for your scent. Just for you.” She can feel his hands in his hair now. “I know why I was wandering for those six months. I didn’t have you to keep me centered. I didn’t have my anchor. You’re the only one who makes everything clear to me. Gives the world meaning. Lying beside you, as your lover…that is the one thought that consumed me the whole time I was away. It was the one thought I couldn’t put out of my head no matter how I tried. Every time I killed, I hated myself. She would hate me for doing this, I said to myself whenever my teeth sank deep into some anonymous neck. The blood would trickle into my mouth. I would taste it, embrace all its sweet sustenance. But I’d think, Buffy wouldn’t like this. She’s turned me into an Angel clone. And though the thought of being an Angel clone is as distasteful to me as a pitcher full of buttermilk, I considered perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, considering you loved him. You tamed the bad boy in him. You’ve done the same for me, love. I am totally and completely whipped. And if you think that this is something someone like myself admits to on a day to day basis, without some sort of reward waiting in the wings, you’ve got another thing coming.”

She can feel that a kiss is coming and she is preparing her lips for it. She wants it, a little. No, she wants it bad.

“But I can tell you’re not quite ready to take me back,” he says, in the voice of reason once again. “I can be a patient fellow. Contrary to popular belief. You say the word, love. And I’ll be back in your arms where I belong.” He kisses her forehead. “Forever.”

She is standing there, still in his arms, still wondering why she is there. There is such yearning in her that she is about to come out of her own skin. As he moves away, there is an urge to do something. Grab a weapon. Dispatch him quick with his back turned so that she doesn’t have to see his eyes. But she does nothing.

“Dawn, I’ll be back for the CD’s later,” Spike calls.

“You leavin?” her voice trails from the bedroom.

“’Fraid so, Little Bits…”

“Aww…”

The music stops and Dawn rushes out of the room into the hallway. She runs to him and Buffy watches in befuddlement as her sister’s arms go around Spike’s torso. Spike is watching Buffy with a triumphant smile beaming from his face.

“When are you coming back?” she asks, a wide-eyed plea on her upturned face.

“That’s up to your sister, Little Bits. Ask her,” he says. “For now, I’ve got to run.”

Both watch as he collects his cloak from the chair beside the door and exits in a flowing stream of black.

“So when is he coming back?” Dawn asks. “I had forgotten how much fun he is. He was just killing me in there.”

Buffy looks at her sister’s innocent face. She doesn’t know, she thinks. And I don’t know how to tell her.

But she knows what to do next.

She goes to the phone.

“Buffy, what are you doing?” Dawn asks. When her sister doesn’t answer her, she asks, “Buffy, who are you calling?”

Buffy ignores her sister and listens to the rings. One, two, three. And then a message. “Hi, you’ve reached Willow and Tara’s place. Leave a message at the beep. Thanks!”

Buffy clears her throat. “Willow and Tara, it’s Buffy. I need you to restore the de-invite spell on the apartment as soon as possible. As soon as you get this message.”

Dawn’s mouth flies open wide. “Buffy! Why?”

Buffy sets the phone down gently. She turns to her sister. Dawn, so trusting, so sweetly unaware that she has just invited a killer into the house.

“Oh, honey…” she begins as she lays a hand on the side of her sister’s face. “There’s something you should know.”

She doesn’t see him that night. And she doesn’t hear from Willow and Tara.

The next night she is at the Bronze. It’s her fourteenth night in a row. She loves the overtime, but hates the fact that she has no life. She waits from the phone call from management, telling her that she has to come in because someone else has quit.

There’s a lot to do, always. Enough to make her think that waitresses deserve CEO’s salaries. It’s mindless work, mostly. She misses her college days sometimes. However brief they were. Her mind was engaged then. She thought about taking up a history major. Or an English major. Psychology, until Maggie Walsh ruined that for her.

Buffy wonders why she hasn’t seen Spike. Why he didn’t show up at her apartment, knowing he had been invited in. She fully expected to see him waiting for her last night, when she got home. But that wasn’t so.

“Now this goes to table number 12,” the bartender enunciates clearly. “That’s table 1-2”

“I hear you,” Buffy says, visibly offended as she hoists the tray over her head. “I’m clueless sometimes, not deaf.”

She takes the drinks to the designated table. She has another drink order for the bartender. But he is busy. She places the tray between herself and the bar, rocking against it.

And that’s when she spots him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a blond head. He is over by the very end of the bar. And he is talking to a girl.

Buffy doesn’t know who this girl is. She has been to the bar before. Not very often. She is not a regular. But she has been there enough for Buffy to know that the girl is a about twenty-something and still ID-able.

The girl is wearing a halter-top. A plunging neckline so deep that Jennifer Lopez wouldn’t dare wear it. She is all alone. It is so evident that she is there to pick up men that she may as well be holding a sign that says, “Will give blow jobs for drinks.”

“Buffy, this goes to table fourteen, that’s 1-4,” the bartender says.

How could she fall for him? He’s so obviously out for a scrump, Buffy thinks to herself. Or worse.

“Buffy? Table fourteen?” the bartender says.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting to it,” Buffy says, not taking her eyes off the girl. But she has to train her eyes elsewhere as she looks for the table. It’s at the other side of the room. Don’t go anywhere until I’m back, she threatens him in her head.

She goes off in search of her thirsty customers. And when she returns, the girl has disappeared.

Oh, God, she thinks. He’s taken her off somewhere. He’s convinced her that he’s a decent guy and now she’s dinner.

But then she sees them. They’re out on the dance floor. The girl is still holding her beer. He is too. They are drinking together. And her hips begin to grind into his.

He is whispering things to her. She laughs and grinds deeper into him, slapping his arm playfully.

“Buffy, table number fifteen,” the bartender says. “Number 1-5.”

“OK, OK,” she says, hefting the tray over her head. She turns to see that Spike and his decidedly pixilated flavor of the night are now fully engaged in foreplay right there on the dance floor.

She returns to the bar. The girl and Spike are still together. He is either pretending that he doesn’t see her, or pretending that he doesn’t care. He hasn’t made eye contact with her yet. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking. No, she knows what he’s thinking. I’m going to make the Slayer jealous, he is thinking.

“I need a bloody mary and two shots of tequila for table twelve,” Buffy says.

The bartender has his back turned. He is tallying up a bar tab and is seemingly astounded by the final amount he is coming up with.

“Bloody Mary? Two shots of tequila… sometime soon?” she says again.

“In a second, Buffy,” the bartender says.

His consternation over the tally provides her with an opportunity to view the dancers of the floor. Spike is still fully entwined with his newfound sweetie. He does look hot in his black ensemble. He does look sexy, always. He moves sexily, he talks sexily, and he entices sexily…

Spike’s face comes down around the girl’s neck area. Buffy sees this happening, even though the girl is perfectly oblivious, so grateful that she’s found someone to hold onto when drunkenness becomes the order of the evening.

Buffy forces her way onto the dance floor. The couples that have joined forces in their ardor look at her in exasperation as she pushes through. She finds them, solidly together. He is caressing her backside. She is touching his as well.

“Excuse me,” Buffy says, tapping a finger on the girl’s shoulder.

The girl is slow to respond. But Spike sees Buffy right away. He has been noticing her all night, her aggravation that there is someone else in the world he might be keen on spending the night with.

“Hey,” the girl says, “We didn’t order anything.”

“I did,” Spike says, spinning the girl off in another direction. He grabs for Buffy. She finds herself against him as the song ends and another song begins. “This is exactly what I ordered.”

The song begins. It’s an old one, by Depeche Mode. Buffy listened to it when she was about ten. It was just about the first song she ever knew. It didn’t mean anything to her then. But it does now.

He grasps her firmly, unrelentingly. She feels the beat of the tune. She feels him against her.

“You feel so good against me,” Spike says to her. “So bloody good.”

She is aware of the hardness imposing itself against her pelvic region. His lips are on hers now in a fierce clench, tearing away at mouth. She again feels that loss of all sensibility, with arguments ranting through her head, but no one there to hear them. All urges she has to do the right thing, as Giles has trusted her so whole-heartedly to do, fall by the wayside. The creature inside of him when he’s wearing his human face is not even given a second glance. In his kiss, there is humanity, there is passion, and there is goodness.

His mouth moves away from hers. Her eyes are still closed when she feels his lips’ absence. They open to find him licking the corners of his mouth, tasting her, she is sure.

And then his lips are on hers again. His hands as well. And she hears him say, “Oh, Buffy, I want you…I want you so bad….”

“I want you too,” she stutters out as he forces himself against her even more.

“When can you get away from here?” he asks her, letting his bottom lip drag on her earlobe.

She is thinking. She is supposed to close tonight. She can always ask the other waitress to cover for her. Do double duty. Buffy can make up for it. Everyone knows she needs the money and that she’ll do anything to remain on. And she’s done countless favors for the other girl, when she was too hungover to come to work. Like the last week…

There are three waitresses patrolling the tables this night. Any two can handle the crowd, she is sure. Buffy’s handled both floors some nights with a crowd this light. It’s late summer. People are suddenly away. There’s an urgency to the end of summer and those who are embracing these final days before the Jerry Lewis Telathon are off at beach resorts. Not to Sunnydale.

It’s almost 11:00 pm. She could leave. Closing time is within three hours.

“Wait a minute,” she says.

She leaves Spike in the center of the dance floor as she searches for the waitress who owes her a favor. He sways all alone on the floor, swigging his beer, fully expecting her to return with bad news. And then he would have to kill.

But in moments, she is back of the floor, back in his arms.

“We can go to my apartment,” she says.

“Now?” he asks.

“Now,” she reaffirms.

They are walking through the firedoor, out into the alleyway. The night air is cool in comparison to the heat of the dance floor. Anything is cool in comparison to the heat on the dance floor. A fiery furnace, a vacation on the sun, the pits of hell…

But as they are walking, hand in hand, something changes. She can sense it brewing but can do nothing to alter the course. She is being slammed against the brick wall of the Bronze, right there in the alley. She feels the coolness of the wall, And then she feels his mouth against her neck. All it takes it one little slip up, she had been reminded over and over. This is it, she tells herself. This is how it ends. Spike can add

Slayer #3 to his resume.

But on her neck now, she doesn’t feel his teeth. Instead, there is the feather-light touch of his lips. He moans against her.

“Slayer…” he says.

There’s no time to get home. He is fiddling with the snap on her shorts. She helps him as his mouth crashes against hers. She feels her panties being lowered, falling just below her knees. They feel so warm. Then she feels the coldness of the wall against her exposed posterior.

He is inside her. Unceremoniously. She gasps at his entrance. Had she known it would be here, she would have steeled herself against the penetration. But she’s been wet since she first sensed he was in town. She’s been waiting for him.

She is against the wall, with him deep inside her. She is reacquainting herself with his muscles. His arms are so large and so strong. And his back muscles. She could feel them forever. They are the asps’ neck expansion as he poisons her once again.

She hugs her inner muscles against him.

“Oh, I’ve missed this,” he utters in a whisper. “Oh, God, I’ve missed this.” He kisses her violently. She squeezes him again. “Oh, God, you’re so good.”

“Did you come back just for this?” she asks as she clamps down on him once again.

He groans as he repositions his hands on the wall. “No, I came back because…” he feels her closing in around him again, tighter than before. “Oh, God…I love you more than anything in the world.”

“More than blood?” she says, as her muscles clench again.

She wonders if he has broken him. He remains still for several minutes before he resumes the assault.

“More than blood,” he says in a promising voice.

He feels her legs against his backside. Her arms are around him as she calls his name. He has pulled her tee shirt; her bra as well. He kisses her breasts. He can’t get enough of her breasts. They are suddenly the most delicious treats in the world to him. But he feels the terror in her as well. The terror when she knows she treading so close to death. She knows that at any minute there can be a sea change and his fangs can be in her as sure as he is in her now and she thrills at the danger.

When he is done and she is nearly slipping from the wall onto the ground, she whispers into his ear, “Spike, promise me something…”

“Anything,” he says as he’s feeling everything he has stored inside of him going directly into her.

“Promise me you won’t kill.”

“I won’t. Ever,” he says, kissing her.

“You won’t kill?” She is surprised by this. Or she is surprised by the honesty in his voice.

“I won’t kill,” he says. “I promise.”

As he remains inside her, as he leans heavily against her, kissing her neck, but never coming close to inserting an incisor, she believes him.

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