Author's Chapter Notes:
Set in S4, between Harsh Light of Day and The Initiative
Look at him. He thinks she's just a girl, but I know better. She's beautiful enough standing out on the sidewalk talking to the clueless college git, but this isn't really where she belongs. It's in the hunt that she really comes alive. Then she's a Titian painting, a Mozart composition, a Shakespearean sonnet, a true predator. Like a lioness... same tawny hair, same glint in her eyes, same lithe grace in her attack, makes the prey go down proud and grateful to give their life up to such a one.

I follow her when she makes her excuses and slips out into the night, heading for the cemetery and her hunting grounds. Her steps are longer now, her head held high as she looks for tonight's victim. But she's not going to find what she seeks out here, not as long as she continues to deny who and what she really is. She needs a challenge, needs to face something that really could rip her throat out, and all she's going to end up with is some worthless fledgling who can barely manage to kill a toddler without getting it all over themselves. The likes of that are never going to really satisfy her, and it's a shame that the fools she's surrounded herself with can't see that.

My idiot of a sire gave her up, to walk in the daylight and share the sun with a human man. Just proves how stupid he's always been, really. She's like us, like all hunters; she belongs to the night, to the dark and the kill. She's the quintessential fighter, the killer of killers, who can only find her true match in another like her. Nobody else will ever be able to make her happy, not for more than a few heartbeats, and she deserves a helluva lot more than that. The Watchers call me the Slayer of Slayers, the only vampire known to seek out its only natural enemy. Do they really pretend they don't know why I hunt their little girls, why I seek them out and force them to face the reality of who and what they are? All vampires are driven to find their mates, and I'm not taking anything less than the finest for mine.

And here she is. She finishes toying with the fledge and stakes him, exhilaration from the kill that she would never admit to enjoying coming off her in waves. She's riding high from the fight, so much that she can't even sense me in the shadows, almost close enough to touch. When I step out behind her, though, she senses the movement and whirls around, dropping into a fighting stance that calls out to me in the sweetest of dark purrs.

“Spike,” she spits out, her eyes hard and flinty as she stares at me.

“Slayer,” I reply, giving her a short nod.

She eases out of her stance when she realizes that I'm not making a move to attack her. “What do you want? I'd've thought you'd be miles away by now... or did you decide you needed your ass kicked yet again as some kind of going away present?”

Oh, Slayer, don't you realize that it's the dance that draws you here, even more than your sacred calling? There's so much I could show you, if only you'd let me, things that you've only dreamt of in your safe and cozy little room. I can take you places you never knew existed, fling you right up to heaven and keep you there for hours before I let you come back down to earth. But she's not ready to hear any of those truths, so I just shrug and tell her, “Thought I might stick around for a bit, see about settin' up a nice little summer getaway, yeah?”

“Just go away, Spike.” She lowers her stake and that's when I see it- the first faint glint of dimming light in her eyes, the creeping fatigue that every Slayer falls prey to, sooner or later. She's probably got a year left in her, maybe a year and a half if she's lucky, but the end's in sight, and she's starting to feel the tug of yearning towards it.

I've dreamt of seeing that look in her eyes, but it's not giving me the kind of joy I'd expected. I'm not excited about the prospect of watching the light go out completely, and while I still want to drain her, there's a new idea forming, something else curling around the edges of my mind. It's absolutely insane, never even attempted before, and that alone is enough to make me want to try it. But the thing that finally tips the balance is the way she brightens when she hears something behind her. She whips around to stake the stupid minion, and in that second, the fatigue falls away and my mind's made up.

When she turns around again, I'm right there. She doesn't even have a chance to scream before my fangs slide into her throat, and her blood's flooding into my mouth, hotter and richer than I'd ever thought it could be. I want to slow down, want to savor it, but there's no time. I can't take the chance that she'll manage to pull some last ditch getaway or one of her little friends will come around, so I drain her as quick as I can, then rip my wrist open and shove it against her open mouth. She'd probably fight it if she weren't half-dead, but thankfully she's too weak to do anything but swallow.

The first taste proves as addictive for her as it does for everybody, and soon she's latched on, sucking like she's trying to pull every last bit of blood out of me. I give her as much as I can before I have to pry my wrist out of her mouth. She looks up at me one last time and then her eyes glaze over and she's gone. The Slayer's dead... for now. I pick her up and start towards the dorms. No tiny boxes and dirt mounds for my girl- no, she's going to wake up in her own bed, with her little witch of a friend served up as a very special first meal

Everyone thought she was just a girl, but I know better, and this town's going to bleed when she shows them all the truth. I can't wait to see what kind of a vampire she's going to make.





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