Title: Prologue Thingy

Series: Vicious Strays

Author: Kiara (Kiara_Rogue@hotmail.com)

Pairing: S/X

Rating: overall NC-17, but its pretty tame most chapters. There'll be a warning before the nookie.

Summary: Necrophiliac monks with a necronomicon help our boys perform necromancy to save the world? Huh?

Disclaimer: I'm not nearly insane enough to be considered even remotely Josslike, so, not mine.

Distribution: Take it, I don' need it.

Feedback: um...yes please? I'm a sad lonely bum so I like it

A/N: Okay so I started this story a zillion years ago and ran out of inspiration and then the other day I was sitting on the bus wondering why the lady in front of me hadn't discovered deodorant yet and my muse attacked. I went home and sat typing from 6 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. when migraine induced blindness forced me to take an unpleasant break. And now I have it. Its unbetaed so all mistakes are mine, but here it is.

This takes place in a Buffy quasi mid-season four kind of place. Anya never came back after prom and so the Scoobies are all in a flirty kind of place. Buffy with Riley, Willow with Tara, and Xander with...um. guess! *snort* And yes. my version of Buffy is insane. Why do you ask?

%%- indicates thoughts

~~~~

Prologue thingy!

~~~

Xander woke in the middle of the night and then proceeded to spend a few minutes trying to figure out why he was awake. He listened hard, but heard nothing. Looking around his room in the dark, he could see nothing obviously out of place. He was just starting to drift off again when he jerked awake to an unpleasantly familiar sound. There was a thin window near the ceiling over his bed that he usually kept cracked open an inch at night to keep the basement from being dank, damp, and stuffy instead of just dank and damp. Through that crack he heard the wretched yowling of a very large, very mean tomcat.

Xander sighed and pulled his pillow over his head to try and block out the sound but the persistent creature knew exactly what he had to do to get what he wanted. He kept yowling under the window. "I put out your milk, dammit! I'm not letting you in you big mean bully! Go play with some vampires!" Xander called, exasperated and desperate not to have to get out of bed. The yowling continued. After a minute wallowing in how much he hated that damn cat he rolled out of bed and secured his blanket around his shoulders and shuffled across the cold floor.

When he opened the door the huge orange tomcat gave him an imperious meow and waited primly for Xander to step aside as instructed. He grumbled and moved out of the way and watched the evil cat high-step into the basement, surly human shuffling obediently after him. "Don't you have any poor defenseless rotweilers to be torturing?" He asked. The cat ignored him and jumped up on his bed and turned to face him, meowing another order. Xander sighed and crawled back into bed and rearranged his blankets. A moment later a purring lump settled on his feet and Xander was permitted to go back to sleep.

~~~

Spike was about two minutes from throwing a tantrum to rival all tantrums when he heard the sound of someone approaching from outside Giles' apartment. He remained on the couch where he'd been building up to a Watcher-induced screaming fit and listened to the footsteps.

As far as Spike could tell, there was only one being outside. Whoever it was scampered up to the door, dropped something heavy on the porch and ran away like hell itself was on its heels. Spike looked to Giles who was still hovering over him yammering on and on about blood and mugs and forks in the toaster. The only other person in the flat was Xander, who could care less if Giles blew a gasket on the vampire, so Spike decided it was his duty to interrupt the old blow- hard before he vented his delicate Watcher-rage on himself.

"You expectin' any deliveries, mate, or is the package on your doorstep a bomb or somethin' equally fun?" Giles halted mid-lecture and blinked owlishly at the vampire.

"What are you blathering on about, Spike?" Spike snorted. %Pfft, yeah, I'm the one blatherin' on. Watcher needs his bloody ears checked.% Spike got to his feet and strolled casually to the door. He swung it open, appearing casual, but ready for explosions or flaming paper bags. When he got a look at what was on the porch he sighed disappointedly. Xander and Giles had come up behind him to see what he was talking about. Upon seeing it, Xander turned to Giles excitedly.

"Look, Giles! One of your old books followed you here all the way from England!" He turned to the ancient-looking tome on the welcome mat. "Thats a good book! Thats a good, smart book! You get a treat!" Spike had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing at the moron's severely whacked out humor, or just hitting him to shut him up. Suddenly the boy paled and looked concernedly at Giles, who was studying the cover of the book curiously. "It didn't really, though, right? Its just a normal, not evil homing pigeon book, right?"

Spike allowed himself a smirk at the boy's worry and then turned his attention to the book itself. It was old. Really old. And it smelled, too. Sniffing idly, he blinked at the myriad scents rising from the book. There was a lot of dust, sulfur, oil from human hands, and an overlying odor of sex. Spike puzzled over it while Giles carefully picked it up and turned it over to study the binding. Either the book was a sex-manual or the thing frequently saw hot sweaty booky action. Spike snorted and affected a bored look as he returned to his sprawl on the couch.

"This is amazing!" Giles exclaimed after a moments study. Spike rolled his eyes at the Watcher's original response. "This is a Necronomicon from the Order of Blahblahblahblah..." Needless to say, the book wasn't nearly as amazing as the Book-Freak thought or Spike and Xander would have paid attention.

So as Giles nattered on about the wonder and greatness of the Book-that-smelled-like-sex, Spike and Xander stared at the television. and the wall respectively.

The only other person to take an interest in the Book was Willow when she arrived later. She listened with shining eyes as Giles extolled it's virtues and then got Buffy to distract him with patrol talk while she got it alone. As she studied its scrawled writing and strangely familiar smell, she decided that deciphering it would be her new project and wondered if Giles would get mad if she highlighted some of the text.