Chapter 2
Turned on! Turned on by a goddamn vamp! Buffy was just sizzling with fury and shame.
Sizzling with heat as well. The fumbling attempts of the boys at Hemery High had never curled her toes like this. And he had only been playing, hadn’t even been serious. Dammit! Dammit! She had to stop thinking about that!
She raced down the street, trying to find where Willow had gone.
“Xander!” she exclaimed in relief, catching sight of him. “Have you seen Willow?”
“Not tonight, no.”
“She left with a guy.”
Xander’s brows rose to his hairline. “We're talking about Willow, right?” He grinned widely. “Scorin' at the Bronze! Work it, girl...”
“No, I need to find her,” snapped Buffy, interrupting brusquely. “Where would he take her?”
“Why? Oh, hey, I hope he's not a vampire, because then you might have to slay him.”
God, was there a school bulletin? Was it in the freaking newspaper? Was there anyone in the town who didn't know she was the Slayer?
“Heard you and Giles talking,” said Xander smugly. “C’mon, Buffy! There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“Just tell me! Where would Willow go?”
She had her Slayer senses stretched out as far as they could reach. It was a new thing for her to extend them like this and she wasn’t sure whether she was picking up everything she should. The most she had ever done before was scan a place about the size of the Bronze or Hemery High’s gym. But the right kind of feeling was coming from the northeast.
“What’s that way?” she demanded of Xander, pointing.
“Just the cemetery.”
Okay, that made sense. She ran that way and was aware of Xander pounding after her. She didn’t dare take time to try to talk him into going back. The closer she got to the cemetery, the clearer her sense of Willow became. And the clearer her sense of vamps in the vicinity.
That mausoleum. She could hear voices within it, then Willow’s scream. She flung herself through the mausoleum’s doors.
Willow was crouched on the floor beside Xander’s friend, Jesse. Jesse had a bite mark bleeding on his neck. Two vamps turned to stare at her, a male and a female. The male seemed not much more than a fledgling, wearing a carbon-dated outfit that only someone living underground for years would think was still the look. The female was dressed in girlish clothes that were far too young for her, not when one saw the terrible age of her eyes. She wasn’t a fledgling and those eyes had seen centuries.
She heard Xander stumble in behind her and come to a sudden halt in shock.
“Well, this is nice,” said Buffy quickly, trying to focus the vampires’ attention on her rather than on the humans who were their prey. “It's a little bare, but a dash of paint, a few throw pillows... call it home!”
She moved behind a sarcophagus to draw the vampires away from the others.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded the female.
“You mean there's actually someone in this town who doesn't know already? Whew, that's a relief I'm telling you! Having a secret identity in this town is a job of work.”
“Buffy, we bail now, right?” muttered Xander, edging towards the doorway.
“Not yet!” growled the male vamp.
“Okay, first of all, what's with the outfit?” asked Buffy. “Live in the now, okay? You look like DeBarge.”
The male snarled and both vampires closed in on her. She turned to face the female as the more dangerous of the two, but kept her senses tuned to what the male was doing. They didn’t know what she was and her hands were empty, so they thought she would be an easy mark. But tucked into its sheath at the small of her back, she had the stake she had retrieved once Spike had left.
“I’ve got her, Darla,” growled DeBarge and lunged. Buffy yanked the stake out from its sheath and jammed it into his heart. He fell back and turned to ashes. Willow, Xander and Jesse all gaped in disbelief. Darla looked surprised too, taken aback by the fact that Buffy had actually managed to dust a vamp.
“See what happens when you roughhouse?” Buffy remarked. “Xander, go!”
“Don't go far!” purred Darla, heading for Buffy.
Jesse was weak with blood loss from his bite, but Xander and Willow grabbed him and dragged him out of the mausoleum while Buffy blocked Darla. Buffy was aware of them hurrying away as Darla tried to backhand her. Buffy blocked again and followed up with a front snap kick to Darla’s stomach, then slammed her elbow down into her back as Darla folded over from the pain. Clearly she wasn’t a fighter like Spike, though any vamp was dangerous.
“You know, I just wanted to start over,” muttered Buffy. “Be like everybody else. Have some friends, y'know, maybe a dog...But, no, you had to come here, you couldn't go suck on some other town.”
Darla leaned against the wall, winded. “Who are you?”
“Don't you know?” mocked Buffy, then was grabbed by the neck from behind.
“I don't care,” rumbled a deep voice in her ear.
She got a fleeting glimpse of a blocky, thickset figure with a face like lumps of clay smashed together. Then she was flung across the room.
The newcomer yanked Darla onto her feet. “You were supposed to be bringing an offering for the Master! We're almost at Harvest, and you dally with this child.”
Darla gave him a resentful look. “We had someone, but then she came. She killed Thomas. Luke, she's strong.”
“You go,” said Luke contemptuously. “I'll see if I can handle the little girl.”
Darla ran out while Luke came toward Buffy as she staggered to her feet. She blocked his blow, then delivered a punch to his gut and a hopping front snap kick to his jaw. He stepped back, amused.
“You are strong.” He landed a solid backhand on her. Buffy went flying. “I'm stronger.”
Buffy hit the ground and rolled, lunged for Luke with her stake the moment she came up. But he was too quick for her, and caught her wrist.
“You think you can stop me?” he rumbled. “Stop us?”
He grabbed the stake with his other hand and broke it.
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
He lifted her by her shirt with one hand and flung her at a sarcophagus. Her spine smashed against the stone rim and she gasped, then rolled off onto the floor, dazed with pain. Her Slayer hearing picked up Willow, Xander and Jesse outside, crying out as their escape was blocked by vampires.
Luke was coming towards her, declaiming as if he were quoting scripture. “‘And like a plague of boils, the race of man covered the Earth. But on the third day of the newest light would come the Harvest. And the blood of men will flow as wine when the Master will walk among them once more. The Earth will belong to the Old Ones. And Hell itself will come to town.'”
Okay. Time to bail. The guy was a nutcase and her friends were in trouble. They had to come first, even if it looked like she was running. She cartwheeled away from Luke, then raced out of the mausoleum’s door. She could hear Willow screaming and a vampire’s roar.
Willow was on the ground, a vamp bending over her and about to bite.
“Hey!” yelled Buffy.
The vampire looked up and Buffy snapkicked him off Willow. He hit the ground in shock, then got up and ran. Just a fledgling and no real threat.
“Xander!” gasped Willow and Buffy saw Xander being dragged away by two vampires.
She ran after them, high punched one and sidekicked the other. No stake. Luke had demolished it. She broke a dry branch off a tree as a makeshift stake and plunged it into the chest of one of the vampires struggling to get up. It dusted and the other rolled desperately, achieved his feet and ran.
“Xander, are you okay?” panted Willow, rushing up to bend over Xander still on the ground.
“Man, something hit me,” he mumbled.
“Where's Jesse?” asked Buffy urgently.
“I don't know!” gasped Willow. “They surrounded us!”
“That blonde woman grabbed him and took off,” blurted Xander.
Buffy looked around. “Which way?”
“I don't know!”
Buffy stood up straight and slowly scanned the cemetery. Nothing moved.
“Jesse!” she whispered, her heart heavy with guilt. She hadn’t taken things seriously, had been heavily into denial, and look what had happened. It was her fault.
“It’s not your fault,” said Giles firmly.
“I was fighting it all, trying to avoid my duty,” said Buffy miserably. “And Jesse paid for it. He was my responsibility and I let him get taken.”
They were in the school library the next morning. Willow and Xander were there too, struggling to come to terms with what they had seen last night. Both Buffy and Giles would have preferred that they not be here, but there was no keeping things from them. They knew too much now.
“If you hadn't shown up they would have taken us too,” said Willow. “Does anybody mind if I pass out?”
“Breathe,” said Buffy and Willow nodded weakly.
“Breathe. Right.” Her gaze focused suddenly on Buffy’s neck. “What’s that?”
Everybody stared at the hickey Spike had left on Buffy’s neck. Her hand flashed up to cover it and she blushed hotly.
“Vamp got too close.” She wasn’t going to tell anyone about Spike and what had happened. That was way too personal and embarrassing.
“You could have died!” Giles exclaimed. “That really was too close, Buffy!”
“It won’t happen again, Giles.” Ever. Focus. She had to focus. “This big guy, Luke,” she said to Giles. “He talked about an offering to the Master. If that’s where they were taking Jesse, not just feeding themselves, then Jesse may still be alive. I'm gonna find him.”
“But how? You don’t know where they would have taken him.”
Buffy bit her lip ruefully. “I looked around, but soon's they got clear of the graveyard, they could have just, voom!”
“They can fly?” asked Xander, clearly visualizing bats, like in the movies.
Buffy just looked at him. “They can drive.”
“Oh!” Xander went red in embarrassment.
Willow frowned. “I don't remember hearing a car.”
“Let's take an enormous intuitive leap, shall we,” said Giles dryly, “and say they went underground.”
Buffy nodded. “Vampires really jam on sewer systems. You can get anywhere in the entire town without catching any rays. But I didn't see any access around there.”
“There probably is one.” Willow reached for the computer keyboard. “Let me just call up the plans.”
Giles stared at her. “The city plans are all just open to the public?”
Willow blushed. “Um, well, i-in a way. I sort of stumbled onto them when I accidentally decrypted the city council's security system.”
“Someone’s been naughty,” grinned Xander as Giles started to polish his glasses.
But when Willow called up the plans, there was no access to be seen anywhere near the cemetery.
“There's nothing here,” Buffy exclaimed in frustration. “This is useless! I’m useless!”
“I think you're being a bit hard on yourself,” said Giles gently.
Buffy shook her head. “I’ve let everybody down. I wasn't prepared enough.” She wasn’t good enough. Not to take Spike. Not to stake Luke and Darla and stop them from seizing Jesse.
‘People are going to die and you won’t be able to stop it,’ Spike had said.
She let out a shuddering breath. “I thought I was on top of everything, and then that monster, Luke, came out of nowhere...”
She stopped abruptly, flashing back to the fight in the mausoleum.
“What?” asked Xander.
“He didn't come out of nowhere! He came from behind me. I was facing the entrance and he didn’t come through there. He came from behind me and he didn't follow me out. The access to the tunnels is in the mausoleum! Darla must have doubled back with Jesse after I got out! God! I am so mentally challenged!”
Xander’s face lit up. “So what's the plan? We saddle up, right?”
“There's no 'we', okay? I'm the Slayer, and you're not.”
“He’s my friend!”
“You can’t fight vamps, Xander. Didn’t you get that last night? They’ll just grab you like they grabbed Jesse.”
“I'm inadequate,” muttered Xander bitterly. “That's fine. I'm less than a man.”
Willow gave him a sympathetic glance. “I know where he’s coming from, Buffy. I'm not anxious to go into a dark place full of monsters, but I do want to help. I need to.”
“Well then, help me,” said Giles. “This Harvest affair seems to be some sort of preordained massacre. Rivers of blood. Hell on Earth. Quite charmless. I'm a bit fuzzy, however, on the details. It may be that you can wrest some information from that dread machine.”
Everyone stared at him. He flushed.
“That was a bit, um, British, wasn't it? Translation,” sighed Giles to Willow. “I want you to go on the 'Net.”
“Oh, sure, I can do that.” Willow began to type.
“Then I'm outta here,” said Buffy. “If Jesse's alive, I'll bring him back.”
It was the middle of the day. She couldn’t think of a better time to go after vamps, even if it did mean cutting classes. With any luck, they’d be sleeping and she’d be able to break Jesse outta there. She ran into Principal Flutie who didn’t buy her excuse about running an errand for Giles during a free period. She got away from him though, but had a sick feeling that this was going to get back to her mother. Great way to start her Sunnydale school year. She could just hear Joyce saying, ‘We haven’t even finished unpacking and I’m getting calls from the principal.’
The mausoleum was deserted when she got there. She came in warily, looking and listening. Now that she was searching for them and not focusing just on what was right in front of her, her Slayer senses did pick up the vamps in the area. The tingle of their presence all around was almost overwhelming. So many! A scrabble of claws on the stone brought her head around sharply, but it was just a rat.
A careful search of the mausoleum at last located the tunnel access. The door was chained and locked.
“Allow me,” said Spike behind her. She jerked away with a gasp of shock and he grinned at her as he ripped the lock off the door. “Knew you’d figure out this entryway sooner or later.”
“Christ, Spike! You nearly stopped my heart!”
With so many vamp vibrations around, she hadn’t sensed him at all.
He smirked. “Don’t you know my signature yet? Should tune into it. You’ll be seeing more of me. Gonna be around, y’know.”
“Something to look forward to,” she said acerbically, irritated by her failure to detect him.
He saw the way she was gripping her stake and flashed backwards, laughing, to swing himself up onto a sarcophagus and sit there comfortably at ease.
“No need for the stake, Slayer. Not gonna to start a fight. Unless you insist, of course.” He tilted an amused brow at her. “Not here to interfere, just to observe.”
“Another test,” she said bitterly.
“Sure.”
“Were you observing last night too?”
“Oh, yeah. Not your finest hour, Slayer. Didn’t exactly come through with flying colors. You got your friend, Red, out, yeah. But you lost that Jesse git. And you almost lost that Xander ponce as well, by dragging him into the mix. But I suppose you did survive, so that’s something. Not a high score though. Kind of a muddle.”
Her breath hissed between her teeth. “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah.” He grinned at her. “Points right now to the Master. And you didn’t even go up against him. Just his lieutenants. Keep this up and you’re gonna lose. Luke or Darla will take you, forget about old Batface.”
“Darla. Is that the Scourge of Europe Darla? Your...great grandmama?”
“The one and only.”
“No family feeling?”
“Not a whit. Can’t stand the old cat. You stake her, you have my blessing.”
“I’m certainly going to try. With or without your blessing.” She turned to the tunnel entrance.
“Not a good idea to go down there, Slayer,” he said sharply. “You don’t endanger a queen to rescue a pawn. A no-no in any chess game. Very bad move.”
“Jesse is not a pawn! He’s a person and I have to get him out.”
“Because it’s your fault he’s there? That’s not so, Slayer. If he was dumb enough to fall for Darla’s tricks, it’s his own fault. Git was a moron, just a gamepiece lost in play.”
“You would see it that way,” she said scornfully.
“You shouldn't be putting yourself at risk. Not for him. He’s bait, pet. Don’t you see that? He’s the little piece of cheese in the mousetrap. Don’t let yourself be sidetracked. There’s a bigger game on the board. Tonight’s the Harvest. Unless you can prevent it, the Master walks.”
“I've got a friend down there,” said Buffy flatly. “Or at least a potential friend. Do you know what it's like to have a friend?”
“No. But I’ve been a friend. And I’m telling you as a friend, Slayer, you’re wasting your time. He’s gone. Accept that. Focus on the real game. The one that matters.”
“People are what really matter, Spike! Not some stupid game! I’m not here to amuse you, just to do my job.”
“Your job’s stopping the Master, Slayer!”
“My job’s saving lives!”
“You’re a bloody fool! Oh, well,” he sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She gave him a scathing glance, then stepped into the tunnels.
“Head east towards the school,” he called after her. “That’s where you’re likely to find them.”
He heard her let out a breath, whether in acknowledgment or exasperation he couldn’t tell. He slid after her, stood at the crossways, listening. A little while later, he heard Xander Harris arrive. He was tempted to eat the idiot or at least chuck him out of the tunnels and bar the door against him. The moron would make things worse for the Slayer, another human to worry about and possibly lose.
But it was the Slayer’s play and he wasn’t going to interfere. Even when the move was utter stupidity, so blindingly wrong that it drove him crazy. Would more experienced Slayers do this? Would the Watchers encourage it? He didn’t know. He was a vamp and the thought processes of white hats eluded him, were beyond him. Would he have done this as William? But William had been a nerd, only a poet, not a man of action; and he thought in terms of words not deeds. No help there. Spike had become a man of action only once he had been turned and the warrior that he had made of himself since then refused to even consider acting in such a clearly hopeless and pointless fashion.
Jesse had been with them for over fifteen hours. Did the Slayer think they had left him untouched? Dead or turned. Those were the only choices. Yes, he was a meal for the Master. But the Master could always be provided a fresh meal. Storage of a snack wasn’t necessary. If the boy was still alive, he was bait. And what better bait could there be than a bait turned into the enemy, into a vamp? But the Slayer hadn’t even considered that, obvious as the move was.
Too young. Too naive. And her Watcher new to the job as well.
They were waiting for her of course. He heard it all, his preternatural vamp senses stretched to their limit. Heard her find Jesse shackled, accept him on faith, break him loose of his bonds and hurry him away from the vamps coming after them, only to realize with shock and distress that he too was a vamp.
But she survived again. Pure luck this time, finding that ventilation duct that led to the surface and the safety of the sunlight.
Zero points. For either side. Sure the Slayer had been stupid. But the vamps chasing her had been clumsy. The Master wasn’t going to be happy about their losing such an easy target.
Well, she’d made it. And hopefully learned something in the process.
He extended his vamp senses to hear what was going on in the Master’s lair. The Master was furious and Spike couldn’t blame him. For those vamps to have botched such a perfect setup was astounding. The Master took their group leader’s eye out as punishment for it.
Then a new ritual started—the one that would turn Luke into the Master’s vessel. He wondered how the Watcher was doing researching the Harvest...
“It comes once in a century,” Giles said. “‘On the third day of the newest light.’ The third night of the new moon, don’t you see? Tonight! The Master can draw power from one of his minions while it feeds. Enough power to break free and open the portal. The minion is called the Vessel, and he bears this symbol.”
He drew a three-pointed star on the whiteboard.
Buffy studied it intently. “So I dust anyone sporting that symbol, and no Harvest?”
Giles blinked. “Simply put, yes.”
“Any idea where this little get-together is being held?”
“There...there are a number of possibilities.”
“They're goin' to the Bronze,” said Xander flatly.
Willow stared. “Are you sure?”
“Come on. All those tasty young morsels all over the place? Anyway, that's where Jesse's gonna be, trust me.”
“Then we should get there,” Giles exclaimed, grabbing his coat. “The sun will be down before long.”
“But what’s our plan?” protested Xander. “We’ve got to have a plan, don’t we?”
“It’s real simple,” said Buffy. “I go in the front and start taking out vamps. You all sneak in the back while they’re distracted, get the exit cleared and the people out. That's all! Don't go Wild Bunch on me!”
“Right! Where are you going?” gasped Willow as Buffy broke away from them as they ran down the street.
“I gotta make a stop,” Buffy called over her shoulder. “Won't take long.”
“What for?”
“Supplies.”
She had stakes, crosses and holy water stored at home. She kept the sharpest stake for herself and packed the rest for the others. Joyce came in just as she was shoving them into a bag. Principal Flutie had told her about Buffy cutting classes. So now of course she was grounded.
Couldn’t stay in her room when people were being eaten at the Bronze. She yanked her window open, then nearly banged her head against the sash when Spike looked back at her from the tree just outside.
“Planning on inviting me in, Slayer?” he mocked
“Not that stupid.” She flipped the bag towards him and laughed when he jerked away from contact with it. Even through the tote’s canvas, he could feel the holy water and crosses inside. “Back up, Spike. I’m coming out.”
He jumped lightly down to the ground and waited while she climbed down the tree. The sun had gone down and the indirect light still in the sky didn’t harm him.
“Loaded for bear, are you?” he remarked, lifting a brow at the bag.
“Who’s the Vessel, Spike?”
“Luke.”
“Not Darla?”
“She’s in the Master’s black books right now. Got hungry and took a drink from Jesse while she was bringing him in. Didn’t even think that the Master might get pissed. He doesn’t share and he doesn’t appreciate getting what he thinks of as someone else’s leavings. Four hundred years and she still doesn’t know him. Always was stupid about really obvious things, that bint.” He raised his scarred eyebrow at her. “And talking about stupid, wanna discuss this afternoon’s goings on, Slayer?”
She glowered at him as she strode down the street. “No.”
He kept up with her easily, staying just out of the reach of her stake. “Got away by the skin of your teeth. No skill involved, just luck. Hope you learned something.”
“Shut up, Spike.”
“You really should take up chess, pet. Along with learning how to fight properly. Chess would teach you tactics. Such as, the only time one does a queen sacrifice is to avoid losing the game. In your terms, preventing an apocalypse.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to prevent one now. So just get out of my face, Spike.”
“And where do you think that’s happening?”
“At the Bronze.”
“Good guess.”
So Xander had been right.
“Got any more of your useless tips?” she said to him scornfully.
“Yeah.” He stopped just outside the gates of the main cemetery and grinned at her. “Better hurry, Slayer. People are already dying.”
Her eyes widened and she ran. She could hear him laughing behind her.
Giles, Willow and Xander were at the front door of the Bronze, which was locked. All of them could hear the screams coming from inside. They looked at her helplessly.
“What now?” Xander asked.
“I’ll get in somewhere in the front. You all go round to the back door. They may have forgotten about that. Here.” She tossed Giles the bag. “There’s crosses in there. Put them on. And stakes and holy water in case you need them.”
Breaking the front door of the Bronze open would warn every vamp in the place and bring them all down upon her. Buffy couldn’t take on all of them. She had to focus on Luke. Dust Luke and the threat of the Harvest would be over. She broke open an upper window and crawled through there instead.
She was up on the catwalks that gave access to the Bronze’s stage lighting. From there she had a good view of vamps herding terrorized humans towards the stage where Luke was feeding on one after the other.
“I feel him rising,” Luke yelled in triumph, fangs dripping blood. “Every soul brings him closer. Tonight is his ascension. Tonight will be history at its end!”
At the cemetery, Spike had his vamp senses extended both ways—out to the Bronze and the melee going on there, and downwards to where the Master was stalking around his invisible prison, testing his confines. He could feel the Master’s growing triumph.
“Almost free!” Heinrich Joseph exclaimed. “More! Give me more!”
Spike ran forward to where he could look into the window of the Bronze. Giles, Willow and Xander had managed to break in the back door of the Bronze. He could see them grabbing at people and shoving them hurriedly out the back. In the excitement, Luke’s vamps didn’t notice their presence.
Buffy had somersaulted down from the catwalk and was going straight after Luke. Spike winced.
“I hoped you’d come,” said Luke with satisfaction. “Your blood has the power the Master needs. And I always wanted to kill a Slayer!”
“Sod it!” muttered Spike. He didn’t want Luke snaffling her. Slayer was his.
Slayer was good, but not good enough in a straight fight with an older and more powerful vamp like Luke. Luke was a hundred years older than Spike and physically he was enormously strong. Buffy’s spinning hook kicks and roundhouse kicks staggered but did not stop him. Spike snarled as Luke threw her right across the stage and she thudded painfully onto her back.
“Come on, pet. Get up!”
The one thing Spike had to grant this Slayer was that she didn’t give up. She hung in there. She staggered to her feet and went on fighting.
Spike caught sight of Darla leaping onto Giles as he tried to get the front door open when the crush of fleeing club patrons was too much for just the back. There went another Watcher, he thought, amused.
“Get off of him!” Willow yelled and flung all of a small bottle of holy water into Darla’s face. Darla recoiled as if acid had struck her, her flesh smoking. She screamed, tore loose and rushed from the Bronze.
Well, that would mess up the beauty Darla was so proud of for a while. She’d heal of course, but it would keep her out of everyone’s hair for a month or two.
Buffy had grabbed a microphone stand and was holding it like a javelin.
Luke sneered. “You forget. Metal can't hurt me!”
“There's something you forgot about too,” Buffy threw back. “Sunrise!”
She hurled the stand straight through a small window behind Luke. The window broke and bright, yellow light flooded through over Luke. He flung up his hands against it instinctively, then realized that it was only a spotlight. But in his moment of horrified distraction, Buffy slammed a stake into his back and right through his heart.
“It's in about nine hours, moron!” she laughed.
Luke staggered, fell off the stage and exploded into ash.
Spike laughed outright. Deep below the cemetery, the Master howled in rage and frustration. Spike could hear him.
“Noooooooo!”
He had been only moments away from breaking free of his prison. Now he could not, and there was no time to create another Vessel.
“Score!” grinned Spike. “Well, how about that, mate? Teeny little still-wet-behind-the-ears Slayer did you proper!”
In the Bronze, Willow and Buffy were high-fiving each other.
“You did it! You did it!” Willow squealed. “No more Harvest! The apocalypse is over!”
“But not without cost,” muttered Giles, looking at the dead bodies scattered around the stage.
“Jesse,” said Xander under his breath.
“Xander! Did you dust him?” gasped Willow.
“I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. He was my best friend, Will! Someone pushed him and he fell onto my stake.”
“He wasn’t Jesse anymore,” said Giles quietly. “Jesse was already dead, Xander. The creature that was staked wasn’t him. It was the thing that killed him.”
“It looked like him. It talked like him. It was just like him. But it was a demon, right?” Xander rubbed at his wet eyes. “I hate vampires!”
“Let’s go home,” said Buffy gently. “Can we do that, Giles? What about all this mess?”
“It’ll sort itself out.” Giles turned his head at the sound of sirens. “Someone’s already called the police and the ambulances. I think it might be best if we just make ourselves scarce.”
“I’ll go with you,” Willow said to Xander and he nodded numbly.
Buffy and Giles watched them go, Xander walking along with his hands jammed into his pockets and his shoulders hunched, and Willow trotting at his side, looking at him worriedly.
“I wish they hadn’t gotten involved in this,” Buffy muttered.
“So do I,” said Giles. “But we weren’t given a choice.”
“Well, we averted the Apocalypse,” sighed Buffy. “I give us points for that.”
Or Spike would, in that game of his, she thought bitterly as she walked home by herself. She didn’t know quite how to feel. Whether to be joyous or depressed. The cost had been high. But they had won, after all!
“Averted the Apocalypse?” Spike said softly. “No, you haven’t, Slayer.”
She looked up in surprise. He was crouched like some great cat on the top of one of the concrete pillars of the cemetery’s gates. His white hair gleamed in the moonlight and she could see the blue glitter of his eyes.
“The game’s not over, Slayer. If this were a race, I’d say you just did the first lap.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Spike? The Harvest’s over! We won!”
“You killed the Vessel, sure. You dusted Luke and, yeah, the Harvest’s gone bye-bye. But that’s just the beginning, pet. The Master’s still here. You didn’t dust him. Or Darla. The two of them, they’ll find a way to free him. To open the Hellmouth. And in the meantime you got most of the Order of Aurelius wandering around, snacking on your town. Gonna let them do that, Slayer?”
“Aw geez,” she sighed.
“The race goes on, pet.” He laughed at her. “Did you think it was gonna be that easy? You’ve been in Sunnydale only three days and now you think you can sit back and relax?”
She hadn’t really been thinking. She had just been focusing on stopping the Harvest, hadn’t thought of what came after.
“You won by a fluke. Luke would have broken you in half. You tricked him. But he wasn’t all that bright, y’know. He was just strong and fanatical. Not all the vamps you’re gonna come across are gonna be stupid or fledglings. Darla isn’t. I’m not. And you’re not ready for anything. Haven’t got the training. Haven’t got the moves. I could have taken you last night.”
She bit her lip. She knew that he could have.
“Could have made you my minion.” He grinned at her. “Might be more fun, at that. Don’t have to kill you to get that notch on my belt. Word would get around. Spike has a Slayer minion. What a coup that would be! I’d rule! Slayer blood on tap. Slayer herself getting fucked in my bed every night.”
She glared at him, completely taken aback and horrified. “Never!”
“Think you’d have a say in it? You’d be my slave. You wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.” He tilted his head consideringly. “Yeah, that does have its attractions.”
“I’d rather die!”
“Then you’d better learn to dance a whole lot better than you do now.”
In a flash of vampire speed, he jumped lightly down from the pillar and was right in her face. She slashed at him with the stake that she had kept concealed at her side the whole time she had been talking to him.
He caught her wrist before the point of the stake even grazed him. They were equally strong and the stake went nowhere.
“Think I don’t know your tricks, Slayer? I saw that coming a mile away. Gotta work on both your moves and your tactics, pet.” He grinned down at her, his eyes intensely blue. “Or I’ll...have you.”
He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose lightly, then let her go and flashed off, laughing. She flung the stake after him and missed because he did a smooth jink to one side as he went.
“Told you I know your tricks, Slayer,” he called back over his shoulder and she snarled.
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
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