When In Disgrace:
Corruption

She snickered softly at her previous ideas of bliss. They were so juvenile. Naive even. Innocent. Then again, maybe her ideas of bliss hadn't changed all that much. Maybe now it was as simple as marrying Angel, moving away from the Hellmouth and then dying - much, much later, after a long life of happily-ever-after. Of course happily-ever-after was long gone, along with Angel's soul. …And she didn’t feel so innocent anymore.

Buffy slipped over the cemetery wall and landed lightly on the other side. It had taken two full days for her knee to heal completely, but now that it had, she was back in the cemeteries looking to put a stake through her lover's heart.

No, she reminded herself sternly. He was not her lover. Despite what had happened that night in the hospital when she had been out of her mind with fever, he was not her lover. He was the demon that had murdered her lover and taken over his body. He was the soulless fiend that had broken into her hospital room and taken advantage of her. He was the ruthless beast that had only a week and a half before held Willow hostage, threatening to snap her neck unless Buffy had agreed to come to him weaponless and helpless. But sometimes…when they met and fought, she thought she caught a glimpse of the man she loved, of her Angel peering out from the depths of the demon's intense regard.

Buffy cursed herself as a fool. He had toyed with her the other night behind the Bronze. He had whispered sweet flattering lies into her ear and like a stupid swoony schoolgirl; she had fallen for his every word. He had told her how much he wanted her, he’d done everything in his power to seduce her and like an idiot, she had believed him. He probably would have snapped her neck like Jenny Calender's once he'd gotten her home, but she had wanted so badly to believe that some part, any part, of her Angel still existed, that she was even willing to believe that Angel's love for her still survived in a soulless, murdering demon.

Pathetic. That's what she was. Pathetic.

The shadows clung to the young Slayer as she moved silently through the burial grounds, quickly and efficiently dispatching the unquiet dead. She exchanged blows, plunging her stake into their unbeating hearts and moving on before their ash even settled to the ground. She had no time for quips or banter; she wanted only to get her sucky duty over with and stake the man she loved, so she could look her Watcher in the eye again. Then she would retreat to her bedroom to wallow in depressing music and suicidal despair uninterrupted - at least until the next apocalypse.

A frisson of awareness skittered over her skin like the brush of a chilled feather and Buffy halted. He was near. She had always somehow been aware of Angel’s presence and his turning evil hadn’t changed that.

"'She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meets in her aspect and her eyes.'" His voice was resonant and powerful, feeling as though his words were echoing in her bones; her body tingled with awareness.

Buffy turned around to face the dark-eyed demon that had once been the man she’d loved; he leaned against a nearby marble crypt. She swallowed nervously and gripped her stake tighter in her hand. It wasn't the first time since that night behind the Bronze that she'd seen him, but it was the first night that Giles, Willow and Cordelia hadn't been sticking to her side like glue, making sure that Angel had no further opportunities to be alone with her, no further opportunities to seduce her.

It would all be much easier if he didn’t say nice things, in fact it would be so much easier if he’d just stick to attempts on her life: those she understood. As for his courting games, she wished he'd stop playing, they were confusing and painful; she hated herself for liking the flowers he continued to send. "You keep reciting me poetry and the other vampires are going to start making fun of you," she taunted.

"Not for long they won't," Angelus growled. "But never mind that. I brought you something."

The tall vampire smirked, obviously pleased with himself and with a quick heave, he threw the large item she hadn't noticed him holding in his right hand. The dark bulk flew across the several yards distance between them and landed at her feet with a heavy bounce.

Buffy stared down at the body in shock. "Gee," she uttered in bemusement. "You...shouldn't have."

The dead man at her feet was dressed in unrelieved black, from his boots, to his pants and shirt, to the gloves that covered his hands. His head was narrow and bald and his skin was a pale bluish-white that made her think that the he’d never seen the sun before. His mouth was open and the tongue within was black as were his filmed eyes. He wasn't human, she realized distantly. She glanced up at Angelus in stunned amazement.

"Girl's gotta know it's just for her," the vampire drawled softly. "For Dru, it's a human heart. For a discriminating girl like you, it's something that demands a little more exertion on my part."

Buffy glanced back down at the dead demon at her feet, blinking as she tried to assimilate the fact that evil Angel had killed a demon for her. Evil Angel, the Scourge of Europe and nasty vampire extraordinaire had killed a demon for her. She said the only thing that came to mind in her present state of stupefaction. "You gave Dru a heart?" She didn't mean it to, but the comment sounded jealous even to her own ears.

"Did you want his?" Angelus asked as he straightened abruptly, pleased that she would ask for so grisly a task. "I'd be happy to pull it from his chest for you."

Buffy took a step backward. "No. I...uh. No. I've gotta." She stopped and looked into his intent chocolate gaze, the passion burning within him frightening her. "Did you wanna...maybe we should just fight."

"Hmmm," he purred, amused at her confusion. "As much as I love trading blows with you baby, cause let's face it, it's just another form of foreplay, I bumped into that present of yours before I had a chance to eat, and I'm feeling a bit peckish."

The Slayer scowled, unpleasantly reminded of why she really needed to put the sharp pointy object in her hand through his chest. And why did he have to compare their fighting to foreplay? Now she was going to think about that every time they fought. Now she knew that he was thinking that every time they fought. "I know you don't think I'm just going to let you happily skip off and kill somebody," she stated fiercely.

"I never skip," he stated softly. "And you have things to do."

The fledgling jumped her from behind, sending the both of them rolling to the ground.

Annoyed with the interruption, Buffy smashed her fist into the vampire's distorted features, crushing his nose and brow ridges before she slammed her stake through his chest. She turned back to where Angel had stood, but as expected, her dark-eyed ex-boyfriend had already disappeared into the night.

"Crap," she muttered.

~

Buffy and Willow weaved through the crowd of students who were all eagerly headed toward the exits; the last period bell had rung and the escaping inmates of Sunnydale High were letting no one stand in their path to freedom.

The girls shifted out of the way of a stampede of football players and resumed their leisurely stroll against the flow of traffic, heading toward the school library.

"So, he killed a demon for you?" Willow repeated in a shocked whisper as she leaned closer to her friend. "A demon?"

"Yep," the slender blond nodded. "Dropped it at my feet and everything. Even offered to rip out its heart and hand it to me."

The redhead wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Eww. That's just so...so..."

"If you say romantic, I am hitting you over the head with a club."

Willow shook her head. "Not romantic. It's so..."

"Stalkerish? Obsessive? Just plain freaky?" Buffy supplied helpfully.

"Yeah,” the hacker agreed, still at a loss for words. “So, what did you do?"

The young Slayer shot her friend a puzzled glance. "What do you think I did? I jumped up and down, screamed 'thank you, thank you' and threw myself into his arms, raining him with kisses."

"You didn't?" Willow said in a scandalized tone.

"No, of course I didn't," Buffy replied exasperatedly. "I told him...he shouldn't have."

Willow halted and caught the blonde's arm. "Buffy, that's like girl-speak for 'I love it' and 'you're so wonderfully thoughtful, it's just what I’ve always wanted.'"

Buffy stared at her aghast. "It is not," she refuted.

The hacker nodded emphatically. "It is."

Frowning, the blond Slayer resumed her walk toward the library. "Well, not the way I said it, it wasn't," she explained distressfully. "And besides, judging from the number of times he has obviously not understood me, Angel does not speak girl-speak."

"He's like two-hundred and forty years old," Willow whispered. "How could he possibly still not understand girl-speak?"

"Attention deficit syndrome? Language difficulties? I don't know. Angel does not get girl-speak."

"Hmmm," Willow vocalized non-commitally. "So, what'd you do with the body? You didn't just leave it there did you?"

"Threw it into the nearest crypt. Giles said he was going to go down after lunch so he could check out my creepy Valentine. I'm sure we'll research it endlessly. What is it? Where'd it come from? What did it want before Angel killed it? And are there more of them out there? At least the flowers didn't require research," she mourned the impending loss of her afternoon.

Willow patted the Slayer's arm supportively. "Did he send more?"

Buffy smiled wryly. "Only every time they start to wilt. If I throw them away, he replaces them the very next day."

"That's so sweet," the redhead sighed, and then stiffened self-consciously under Buffy's raised brow glare. "In a stalkerish, my ex-boyfriend is a fiend from hell and trying to murder all my friends kind of way – and what'd you end up doing with the ankh?"

" It's in my jewelry box with my ring and the cross Angel gave me. I am gaining quite the collection of jewelry I can't wear because my ex would take it as a sign of…something."

“You could probably still wear the cross.”

“Yeah. Cause look, I still use the gift you gave me to protect my throat from the things that go bump in the night. It would probably come under some sort of weird possessive territorial male translation of ‘when do we get back together?’”

Willow wrinkled her nose in silent agreement.

The two girls pushed open the swinging doors and entered the library.

Xander glanced up from where he sat at his usual space at the library table. "Hey," he said tiredly.

"Hey, Xander," Willow greeted him, bouncing across the library floor to set her book bag down on the table in front of him. "How was your first day back? How was sixth period? Are you feeling okay?"

"Great. Aside from the whole school and lecture thing. Oh and Amber Hardy and Leticia Bronson kept kicking my foot every time they moved. Yep. Sixth period sure was great."

“I’m sure they didn’t do it on purpose,” the hacker comforted him.

Xander nodded in consideration. “Yeah. I’m sure that’s exactly why they kept saying ‘oh, I’m so sorry did that hurt?’ all thirty times they kicked me. Thirty. Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Thirty times is a planned assault. Damned bitches. Is it wrong to hope that the local fang-boys turn them so that it’s okay to stake them in their cold inhuman hearts?”

Willow pursed her lips and cleared her throat as she patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “Technically…yeah.”

Buffy leaned against the book checkout counter and watched the pair. She felt like such an outsider these days, but she couldn't quite bring herself to completely forgive Xander for his spiteful remarks; her first time had been traumatic enough without Xander turning it into something dirty. For the moment their friendship existed in limbo, each trying to pretend that the other hadn't said something that the other either disagreed with or found unforgivable. The pretending would probably continue straight into attempting to forget, and in time, maybe they'd succeed.

Willow pulled a squat thermos out from the inside of her backpack. She opened it and poured a frightening green liquid into the cap and then handed it to Xander. "Here. Drink this."

The brown-eyed boy peered at the concoction with dismay. "What is it?"

"Just a little potion I looked up. All natural ingredients and it's supposed to promote faster healing," the hacker boasted proudly. "Drink it."

He looked up into her encouraging gaze and then, taking a deep breath to brace himself, took a tentative sip. "God, Willow. This tastes awful!"

"Resolve face," she stated pointing at the named expression she wore.

"One of these days that card won't fly," he warned her, but he wrinkled his nose and obediently gulped the potion down.

The doors to the library swished open and a man in a delivery uniform holding a bunch of gaily-colored balloons looked around at the young teenagers. "Is a Mr. Giles here?"

Buffy's eyebrows shot up with interest. Balloons? For Giles? "Umm, no. He should be back soon."

"Could you sign for these? I've got other deliveries."

The young Slayer glanced at Willow and Xander uncertainly then stepped forward and signed the delivery roster.

The man nodded absently and without even thanking her or wishing her a nice day, left the balloons to float over the check-in counter.

"Well," Xander muttered in interest. "Giles has been holding out on us. Maybe he’s got a new girlfriend…Kept it mum so Buffy’s creepy-freaky wouldn’t find out and kill this one." The blond Slayer flinched, but held her silence. The dark-haired boy heaved himself to his feet and with an odd thunking noise walked over to the counter to inspect the gaily-colored floating helium-filled spheres.

Willow followed him to the counter. "What are you doing?" she asked as he dug through the curling ribbons for the white envelope anchored to the hovering bouquet.

"Just seeing who would be sending G-man this gaily colored package of latex levity," Xander answered as he opened the envelope and pulled out the card.

"Those aren't yours," Willow scolded.

"You shouldn't open it," Buffy added.

He looked at the two girls mockingly, raising his brows. "What? You mean you're not the slightest bit curious as to who sent these? This is Giles – Giles, stuffy tweed guy. Who would possibly send him a bouquet of balloons? Come on. Come ooonn." As the Pied Piper had once lured hundreds of children to their doom, Xander cajoled the two girls closer. "Giles won't know we looked,” he reassured them softly. “We’ll just take a little peek."

They stepped closer, as curious as he to see who would send the staid Watcher anything so frivolous as balloons. They leaned in closer to read as Xander opened the card; a yellowish-grey powder exploded outward, enveloping their faces in noxious fumes. They coughed and waved at the air, their eyes burning and tearing.

"Is that rotten eggs?" Buffy croaked, coughing and gagging, as pain like a hot knife stabbed up her nasal passages and behind her eyes. She put her hands to her face, trailing the path of the heated pain over her skin and sighed in relief as the burning inside her sinus cavities subsided.

Xander grimaced as the burning shot up through his nose all the way up to his temples. "Yuck,” he complained. “That is the nastiest perfume I have ever smelled! And I think I’m allergic to it."

Willow waved at the air, her face feeling like the worst sunburn of her life. "It's not perfume; it's sulfur."

"Oh that can't be good," Buffy muttered, tears trickling down her cheeks. "Who's it from?"

Xander blinked and peered blearily at the card in his hands. "Ethan."

The Slayer flashed back to the thin Englishman who had only a few months ago turned them into the characters they had dressed up as for Halloween, nearly killing all of them in the process. Then she flashed to the sleep demon and the ugly tattoo that Ethan Rayne had put on her body in order to get the demon to go after her instead of him; it had cost her ninety bucks to get that thing removed.

"Oh," the young blond groaned in disgust. "Him. This definitely can't be good."

"We should wait for Giles," Willow stated, sighing in relief as the burning in her face slowly subsided.

Xander dropped the envelope to the ground and scrubbed his hands though his hair, shaking with pent up tension. Wait for Giles? Wait for that obnoxious, annoying Englishman who was always looking down his nose at him? "And get caught for snooping?" he snapped. "No thanks."

Willow watched as he limped toward the door and scratched irritably at her scalp. She felt as if a thousand insects were crawling all over her skin, burrowing into her flesh; it made her jumpy and irritable.

Buffy blinked and rubbed at her eyes. Why was she in this room? She hated wasting what little free time she managed to wrest between school, her homework, her household chores and her patrolling in here, in this dank, boring, room. "This could be important," she forced herself to say, already not caring if it was.

Xander turned around to face the two girls, disgusted by their ‘Teacher’s Pets’ type of attitudes. "You know something?" he sneered. "Rea-lly don't care. Got better things to do with my after school time than to hang in here." He glanced at the redhead who was his life-long bud, and then at the blond that preferred an undead boyfriend to a living one. "Willow," he said, purposefully excluding the Slayer from his invitation. "Let's hit the Bronze."

The redheaded hacker took a hesitant step after him, and then another as the idea of playing at the Bronze began to take root. He was right. Why should they waste their time waiting to get in trouble? Trouble found them enough as it was. She paused and glanced back at her friend. "Buffy? You coming?"

The dark-haired boy scowled but decided that for the time being he could ignore the Slayer's presence, just as she had ignored his romantic affections.

Buffy stared at the young hacker, responsibility warring inside her before it sank below the more immediate and more important impulses of her own desires. Besides, it was daylight. Nothing end-of-the-world-y would happen during the day. "The Bronze sounds good," she drawled.

The three stalked out the doors, Willow walking between the other two and both girls automatically slowing their stride for the injured Xander. Almost immediately they came face-to-face with the bespectacled librarian whose privacy they had just violated.

"Ah, Buffy!" Giles exclaimed, eager to share his news with the Slayer. "Excellent. I've been to look at that demon and it looks as though it may have been a Grimlocke*. This is simply amazing…and worrying."

The three teens paused.

“What’s so amazing about it?” Buffy asked skeptically. She wasn’t overly concerned about running into one of the Grimlocke thingies; it had looked fairly human-ish and probably wasn’t too much stronger than her, but she did want to know whether or not Angel had, how did he put it? Exerted himself on her behalf.

“Don’t forget worrying,” Willow added in a dry tone. Giles pushed his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose and focused his attention on his young charge. “We-well, the Grimlocke* is a very dangerous species of demon. Like nothing you’ve ever faced before.”

Buffy crossed her arms over her chest irritably. Why did he always have to make such a big production out of supplying her with the littlest amount of information? “What’s so special about it?”

“It’s a magic based demon. A parasite.”

“Aren’t they all,” Xander muttered in a resentful tone.

Buffy shot him a hard glare and the boy sneered back at her. Giles glanced at the three teens curiously, noting their almost sullen expressions and the slight stench of sulfur that clung to them. “Yes,” he continued uncertainly. “Well. Grimlockes are a subterranean demon. They travel from city to city, killing powerful forces for good.”

“How would they be able to tell who was good and who was bad?” Buffy asked.

“I believe they can see auras,” Giles frowned thoughtfully. “But I’m not entirely sure how. They’re not an easy kill for Slayers because they can attack from a distance, choking their prey magically.”

“So…it was a good present,” Buffy concluded.

The Watcher blinked in surprise. “Well…yes. I suppose you could say that, but we’ll need to research – “

“Bored now,” Willow intoned impatiently.

“Right there with you, Will,” Xander muttered.

The diminutive blond smiled coolly and patted Giles on the chest. “You go ahead and do that; you’re the Watcher after all. But thanks for the info. Now, if you’ll excuse us.”

Giles staggered slightly as his Slayer pushed him to the side and out of their path. He scowled at the backs of the three retreating teens as they stalked away. "Buffy? Where are you going?" he demanded.

The blond glanced over her shoulder and grinned smugly. “Anywhere I want.”

The Watcher watched in dismay as without another word his Slayer turned and strolled away along with her two friends. “Willow?” he called desperately. “Xander?”

They ignored him and kept walking down the now nearly deserted hallway, disappearing around the corner.

Frowning thoughtfully, Giles pushed into the library and froze at the residual stink that perfumed the air. He wrinkled his nose in distaste and glanced around the room, his gaze halting on the balloons and the yellowish-gray powder littering the counter.

Foreboding filled him as he walked over to the counter and pressed his finger into the powder; it was gritty against his skin. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, testing the texture of it; it felt like powdered salt. He lifted his fingers to his nose and smelled the concoction carefully; it smelled of sulfur.

"What is their damage?" Cordelia snarled as she and Oz entered the library. "I can't believe Willow called me a slut. And Xander didn’t even defend me. I’m like his girlfriend and he didn’t even defend me. Who do they think they are?"

“Actually, Willow called you a whore,” Oz corrected her. “Buffy called you a slut.”

The brunette glowered at the brown-haired guitarist. “Who do they think they are? Giles, Willow, Xander and Buffy are possessed. Fix them.”

“Yeah,” Oz agreed softly. “Willow doesn’t use that type of language. It was very disturbing.”

Giles ignored the outraged May Queen and tentatively touched the powder to his tongue.

"Oh," Cordelia groaned in disgust. "You put that in your mouth. Do you even know where that's been?"

He searched the ribbons of the balloons, then glanced down to the floor, where the card lay, white and innocent looking. He picked it up and held it aloft. "Yes, Cordelia, it came from this." He opened the festively decorated greeting card and scowled. "'Ripper, see you soon. We've things to do. Ethan.' Bloody hell," he muttered and pulled off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.

Cordelia looked at Giles' worried expression and then at the card. "Is that not good?"

~

Buffy stared carefully at the balls spread out on the red felt-covered table and scanned for her most likely shot. She wasn’t bad with a pool cue, but she typically did better sinking the chalk-tipped stick into a vampire’s chest than she did using it to sink a ball without sending the white ball right after it. Willow, with her affinity for math, played better, having a good eye for angles and both girls managed to do better than Xander, who was lucky if he could hit a ball, much less sink it. Spotting the ball and angle she was most likely to succeed in sinking, the slender blond shifted around the pool table to line up her next shot.

Willow cocked her head and watched as Buffy bent over the table, sliding the smooth cue stick over her fingers; behind the svelte Slayer, several boys craned their necks unsubtly, some trying to peer down her black camisole, others content to leer at the amount of thigh left bare by her skirt and at her butt. The redheaded hacker’s lips twisted into a contemptuous sneer at the sight of their pathetic teenaged lust. She turned toward Xander to make a cutting remark regarding the drooling audience and froze, outraged; Xander, like the rest of the gibbering teenaged boys in the Bronze was leaning to the side to get a better look at the body part of his choice: namely Buffy’s breasts.

Willow glowered at her childhood friend; he had never looked at her like that. He had never once spared a glance to even notice that she had breasts, much less tried to peer down her shirt for a better look at them.

She cast a glance at Buffy’s provocative attire, taking in the silk top and the short black and red miniskirt that barely came down to the Slayer’s mid-thigh, and then the hacker glanced down at her own not only un-provocative but downright demure attire…Well no wonder nobody ever noticed her.

Buffy watched the solid green ball drop neatly into the corner pocket and growled in annoyance as the white cue ball dropped in right after it. No doubt about it: she was definitely better at staking vampires with pool cue sticks than shooting pool. Probably put too much strength in her follow through; sometimes restraint was hard.

“Nice shot, Buff,” Xander crowed mockingly.

The diminutive blond ignored him, as she had ignored every comment made by him during the afternoon. She was getting more than a little tired of his mouth…and truth to tell, more than a little tired of him. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she thought that Angel may have been on to something when he had beaten the ever-loving shit out of Alexander Lavelle Harris: at the moment she couldn’t think of anything thing she would find more amusing than doing that very thing herself.

She nearly shook with the desire to hurt him. For weeks he had been leveling potshots at her regarding her lover, her sex-life and the consequences of sex with a demon. For weeks she had taken it like some sniveling weakling, unwilling to give as good as she got and in some ways believing she deserved the silent the censure of her Watcher and the not-so-silent censure her friends heaped upon her. She’d had enough; she fairly hummed with the desire to break him into so many pieces that he’d be nothing but a pulpy mass beneath his flesh.

Buffy swayed dizzily. She shouldn’t be thinking like that, she thought dizzily. She was the Slayer. She was supposed to protect humans, not contemplate beating one to death. She dropped her cue stick onto the table. “Be back in a few,” she muttered and stalked away toward the ladies room. Maybe a few minutes privacy would help her regain her control.

~

Xander watched the slender blond walk away from the pool table and stood up. Haughty bitch, he thought angrily. First she ignored his romantic attentions and now she just plain ignored him. Did she think that she was better than him? Did she think that she – a whore to a soulless demonic corpse was too good for him?

Angel had had it all wrong a week and a half ago. It wasn’t Xander that needed a lesson in how to treat a demon’s whore. It was Buffy who needed to be reminded of her new status. If she was all right servicing the undead with her tight little body, then she should be just fine servicing him too. After all, after a monster like Angel, she ought to be grateful that a man like himself would even spit on her, much less deign to fuck her.

The dark-haired boy laid his pool stick on the table and started after the arrogant blond. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he told Willow absently.

She watched him walk away, her lips tightening in silent fury as he trailed the path of the blond Slayer. He wouldn’t even notice that she had breasts or that she’d loved him for years, but he would pursue a girl who had already rebuffed him and he made out with a girl he had claimed, over the last ten years, to hate.

~

Xander stalked through the crowd, the weight of his cast making his progress awkward and slow. He clumped along, swinging the added weight forward, annoyed at the off-balance feel of the walking cast that encased his right ankle. It was all that holier-than-thou slut of a Slayer’s fault he’d been hurt. Well, hers and her evil undead honey’s.

Rage for the blond beauty pounded in his temples and it throbbed in his stiffening cock as he pushed through the door that led to the women’s bathroom.

Buffy held him in contempt. Well before he was through with her, she would hold him between her luscious thighs. She wouldn’t be so proud after he had ground her face into the tile and fucked her like the whore she was. And as for that piece of shit Angel…well doubtless his vampiric senses would be able to inform him that his sluttish girlfriend had been had by another man.

Xander sat on the counter next to the sink and waited, nearly trembling with rage and anticipation for Buffy to exit one of the stalls. He had waited nearly a year for her to even notice him and he was tired of waiting.

The slender blond flushed the toilet behind her and opened the stall door. She hesitated slightly at the unexpected sight of the brown-haired boy, her irritation with him surging back in full force. “Get lost?”

Xander smiled and turned on the water in the sink beside him.

The diminutive girl glanced down at the streaming water and then walked forward to wash her hands. “Such a gentleman,” she mocked him softly, lathering her hands up and then quickly rinsing them off. She turned away from him and walked toward the paper towel dispenser. She was the Slayer, she told herself firmly. She wasn’t supposed to want to pound a human being into a sticky paste.

“But you don’t like gentlemen,” the dark-haired boy sneered. He hopped down from the counter and stalked after her. He grabbed hold of her wrist, spinning her around and quickly slammed his cast-covered fist into her face.

Buffy staggered slightly, the hard blow from the plaster casing dazing her and Xander pressed his advantage, shoving her against a sink and bracing his cast against her throat.

The pain in her cheek throbbed and the Slayer glared at him. She wrinkled her nose in disgust as he placed his undamaged hand on the outside of her thigh and began to trail his fingers upward toward the hem of her skirt.

“You should get off of me,” Buffy warned him in a soft conversational tone.

“Or what?” Xander drawled, pushing the soft fabric of her skirt up slightly. “You’ll scream? You’re not that type of girl.”

“Xander,” she warned him again, her muscles already tensing with the desire to kill him. “You should really get off of me. NOW.”

His breaths accelerated into excited gasps as he curved his fingers around the cool flesh of her butt cheek; she was so soft. “You gonna sic your undead boyfriend on me again?” he hissed. “Maybe I should at least have taste of your pussy since I’ve already paid for it.” He pressed his cast hard against her throat, to cut off her air as he snaked his fingers around to the front of her panties.

“You were warned.” Buffy grabbed his hair with one hand, yanking him back and off balance and then caught his wandering hand with the other, twisting the fragile wrist joint sharply and bringing the aggressive boy to his knees.

Xander cursed as the Slayer locked his wrist into a painful hold, effortlessly immobilizing him.

“So,” the diminutive blond drawled. “What did you think you were going to do? Cop a little feel? Just how far did you think I’d let you go? Or is that the issue?” She tightened her grip over his joint, wringing an angry wail of pain from him. “You don’t think. When are you going to get it through your thick skull? I’m not your girl. I never will be. Or do I need to beat that into you? Is that the problem? You need me to hurt you? You want me to hurt you?”

“Bitch,” Xander growled. “Cock teasing cunt.”

Her gaze narrowed and her lips tightened as her hunter’s senses focused on him. She could hear his heartbeat pounding. She could smell his lust and his hatred. If he could, if he had the strength to overpower her, he’d doubtless be forcing his way into her panties at that very moment, but he didn’t have the strength.

This was the second time that Xander had tried to rape her. Perhaps the incident with the Hyena possession had had less to do with the possessing entity and more to do with Xander’s inner desires than she had realized. And if this attempted assault was going to be added to Xander’s other irritations, perhaps she should simply cut the aggravation and kill him; Willow would forgive her eventually…maybe.

And there she was, thinking about killing again. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking that way…at least not about non-demon-y warm-blooded types.

Willow watched from the bathroom door as the delicate blond forced another whimper from her childhood friend’s lips. She smiled, enjoying his pain and wondered what Buffy would do to punish Xander for his transgression and then realized that Buffy probably wouldn’t bother to punish him; she would simply kill him.

“An-gel’s here,” the redhead interrupted in a singsong voice, seeing her blond friend’s eyes narrow on Xander’s bent neck speculatively.

Buffy released the boy’s wrist, allowing him to drop to the tiled floor. She glanced at herself in the mirror, combing her fingers anxiously through her hair. “Where at?”

Willow cocked her head to the side, amused at how Buffy went from the stone killer that was about to snap Xander’s neck to the giddy schoolgirl anxious to see her boyfriend. Even more amusing to see was the cold rage that burned in Xander’s hate-filled gaze as he was once again forgotten because of the presence of the dark-haired vampire. “He was headed toward the back with a skanky little blond clinging to his arm.”

The diminutive blond paused her anxious grooming and scowled with sharp displeasure.

Xander burst into a fit of high-pitched laughter. “Well that’s nothing new,” he sneered. “Of course, if he’s not with his skanky blondes, he’s always got that brunette nut-bag, Drusilla to comfort him during the long, lonely days.”

Buffy glanced down at the kneeling boy and backhanded him, sending him skidding across the tile and crashing into a nearby wall; he slid down to the floor and sat there, shaking his head to clear his vision.

The Slayer smiled coolly at her red haired friend. “Guess I’ve got some business to take care of.”

“I guess you do.”

Both girls flashed each other knowing smiles as the blond Slayer strolled to the door and exited in search of her straying lover. Willow turned her attention to her own respective and somewhat straying man.

“Bitch,” Xander snarled. “Go ahead and run to him! Corpse-loving whore.”

Willow scowled and pulled several paper towels out of the dispenser. She tossed them to the boy she had loved since she was five years old: the boy that would rather fuck the meanest bitch in school, Backseat Cordy, than give her even a second glance; the boy that would rather pursue a girl who was obviously already in love with somebody else than be with her.

“Clean yourself up before you drip blood on your shirt,” she snapped.

She looked into the mirror at her calf length jean skirt, her white tights and the long-sleeved shirt with a sunshine wearing sunglasses on it that she wore; no wonder boys never paid attention to her…except for Oz. Perhaps it was time to make a few changes. She bent over and ripped the slit in her skirt so that it went to her thigh rather than stopping at her knee.

~

Buffy exited the Ladies’ Room and pushed her way through the throng of gyrating teenagers toward the back of the Bronze. Xander’s snide remarks regarding Angel’s possible daytime activities stung more than she liked and jealousy burned hot and acidic in her stomach.

He had better not be whiling away the daytime hours nibbling on that bitch Drusilla. In fact he had better not be touching anyone in an intimate manner. He was not seeing her. She wasn’t seeing him and he wasn’t seeing her. Theirs was a mutually exclusive and strictly monogamous not-seeing-anyone-else-while-not-seeing-each-other sort of ex-relationship.

Perhaps she should get rid of the ex part. It would be far easier to keep tabs on him if they were not-seeing-each-other while they were together. It would be even easier to make sure that Drusilla wasn’t in his bed if she was in his bed, while still not-seeing him of course.

She pushed open the door that led to the alley and went in search of her straying soon to be ex-ex-boyfriend.

He wasn’t hard to find.

Angel was backing his unwary prey up against an alley wall in a move that Buffy might have found sexy, if he hadn't been doing it to somebody else. The bastard. He had been seducing her in that very spot only a week before.

The jealousy that had been stewing in her stomach flared hot and she struggled to control it. Wanting to slay the girl and not the vampire was wrong. It was wrong. She was the Vampire Slayer…but for good or for ill, Angel was hers.

She breathed slowly, forcing her jealousy back. The girl was nothing but food, she told herself. The girl meant nothing, she was just food.

Buffy leaned her shoulder against the wall and examined her glossy pink fingernails; why had she lacquered her nails with such an insipid creamy-pink color? She needed something like Carnage Red or Trespassing Whore’s Blood; those would be good colors. She glanced at her dark lover and then at the teenaged slut that thought she was competition.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Angel and the girl looked at her, the girl surprised at the interruption, the vampire impatient for it.

Angelus smirked, pleased at his lover's presence. She was alone, and she looked absolutely scrumptious in her cherry-red leather jacket, a silky black spaghetti-strapped camisole and a very short red and black plaid skirt. It would be so easy to slide that short little skirt up and invade all the territories that miniscule amount of cloth attempted to protect. He'd wrap her sleek legs around his waist...and they looked very tempting in those knee high black suede boots. "Slayer," he purred in greeting.

“Don’t you Slayer-me,” she snarled. “In case it’s escaped your memory, we are not seeing each other.”

The tall vampire blinked as he processed that information. He was fairly certain that he’d gotten that part of the memo. Not a couple: check. He was trying to change it, now wasn’t he?

“We,” she continued firmly, “are a mutually exclusive, strictly monogamous not-seeing-each-other couple.”

Angelus blinked again. Huh? A not seeing each other couple? What the hell was that?

“After all, what’s really changed? I hang at the Bronze, you lurk in the shadows and watch, we meet later on in the graveyard for calisthenics.”

He grinned leeringly, glad to finally have something to contribute to the bizarre conversation. “If you want calisthenics, I’m happy to oblige.”

She glared at him in irritation. “Don’t be cute.”

The girl looked uncertainly between the diminutive blond and the tall dark-haired man who had lured her from the club with whispered promises of forbidden passion; her cork-screw curls bounced as she shifted her gaze back and forth between them. “Uh, excuse me. Incase you didn’t notice, we were busy.”

Buffy’s attention snapped to the little tramp clinging to her man’s arm. “I’ll deal with you later," she growled at her wandering lover with a glower. “And as for you, Happy Meal….Yeah, you were busy. Just how stupid are you?"

The tall vampire blinked in surprise. Happy Meal? But then he focused on the more important thing: she was jealous. She was snarling frothing at the mouth jealous. Over him. How delightful. He settled back to enjoy the show of his little golden love ripping into his food.

"So," Buffy looked at the girl through the heavy strands of hair that fell over her eyes. "How long have you known tall, dark and deadly here?"

"Awhile," the girl hedged, wondering whether or not she had somehow gotten mixed up with a fighting couple or even worse, one that was into kinky threesomes.

The Slayer cocked her head to the side, her lip pulling back into a disgusted sneer.

Angelus' gaze narrowed on the hard expression in his lover’s eyes, trying to interpret her mood.

"By that, I take it you mean ten minutes," Buffy said sarcastically. She laughed incredulously, amazed at the girl's stupidity. "Ten minutes and you leave a public place for an alley with a guy you've just met." She crossed her arms over her stomach and leaned more comfortably against the brick wall. "He could be anybody. He could be a rapist. He could be a serial killer." The diminutive blond paused as Angel shifted from his handsome human visage to his predatory ridged-brow and fanged countenance behind his prospective victim. "He could be a blood-sucking creature of the night, looking to tear out your spine and dance on your intestines."

Angelus grinned at the description, pleased with his love’s way with imagery.

The girl lifted her nose into the air derisively. "I think you're exaggerating."

Buffy brushed her hair from her eyes. "I hope stupidity doesn't spoil the blood," she commented to her dark-eyed lover.

The demon froze and stared at her cruel expression in amazement. She was actually going to let him kill without making a single move to even try to stop him?

"Bitch," the girl snarled. "This is none of your - "

"Nope," the Slayer decided. "Definitely don't feel like saving you. Bon appetit. And Angel, don’t play with your food."

Not one to pass up an invitation, Angelus sank his fangs into the girl, wrenching a startled scream from her lips. He gulped her down in greedy swallows, ignoring the possibilities of a slow languorous feed. Slow draws were for savoring the blood, possessing the donor, impassioned sex; this wasn't anything important. Just food.

Buffy turned and walked away without a backward glance, uninterested as Angel ripped into his Slayer-free meal. Why should she bother? Anybody that stupid deserved to die. And as long as it was just food, what did she care what girl he grabbed? Food was food and love was love, and there was still a greedy-handed psycho vampiress to deal with.

Angelus looked up and dropped his dead meal to the ground at his feet. His golden goddess was no longer in sight. She had disappeared into the shadows as he had so often done to her.

"Well," he murmured, bemused, "that was new."

~

Willow tossed her white tights into the trashcan and turned to stare critically at her reflection. She looked better, but the shirt absolutely had to go.

She turned her attention to the dark-haired boy in the reflection that continued to nurse his bloody nose and wounded pride. “You’re never going to get her,” she stated coolly. “She’s never going to love you.”

“I don’t want her to,” Xander retorted, dabbing delicately at his nostrils.

The redheaded hacker turned and went to kneel before her childhood playmate. “Then what’s the point of your continuing pursuit?” she demanded heatedly.

Xander’s lips twisted into a cold smile. “It’s just a game, Will. I just want to fuck her. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a fuck.”

Her blue gaze narrowed on him in disbelief. “And Cordelia?”

The dark-haired boy snorted in cynical laughter. “Well, she said ‘no’ too, initially. Now…she’s just a whore with pom-poms. Really nice pom-poms. But the most popular girl in school is going down on me and let me tell you something, Will, that does something for a boy’s self-esteem, especially after so many years as low-man on the totem pole. I’m no longer the last man on earth for her. And I won’t be for Buffy either.”

Willow cocked her head to the side. “But it’s just a fuck?”

He finished wiping the blood from his nose and crumpled the paper towels into his fist. “That ‘no’ makes me dumping them later on all the sweeter. They get to be Xander Harris’ castoffs.”

“So it’s just one-upmanship?”

“Yeah,” he sighed with a touch of a growl. “All those bitches are finally going to pay.”

Willow pursed her lips thoughtfully. She rather thought she understood where he was coming from. For years, she and Xander had been termed “losers” and the popular girls had gone out of their way to insult them, harass them and otherwise make their lives a living hell. What better way for a guy to get even with them than to use them and publicly dump them as undesirables? But where did his quest for vengeance end? “And me?”

“Willow,” Xander scolded her softly. “You’re my best friend, my buddy, my pal, my amigo. Where you go, I go.”

The door to the bathroom opened and two girls stumbled in, giggling. They halted at the sight of Willow and Xander, glanced at each other and then back at the redhead and the dark-haired boy before bursting into a fresh spurt of high-pitched laughter.

The brunette placed her hand on her hip and stared down her perfect narrow nose. “In case you two losers can’t read, this is the Ladies’ Room, not a broom closet.”

Willow stared at their clothes consideringly and then turned her attention back to her best friend. “Okay, amigo,” she murmured. “Let’s say we put your plan into action.”

“My plan?”

The redhead smiled, her expression cruel. “Making some bitches pay. Come on. I’ve got a plan.”

Xander shoved himself to his feet. “I like plans.”

~

Buffy walked calmly away from the alley. It was nothing to worry about, just food…but who did that stupid girl think she was anyway? None of her business? The bitch had her hands all over her man and the little bimbo said it was none of her business. She hoped Angel ripped her throat clean out. Heck, he could rip out her entire spine if he wanted to.

The Slayer abruptly halted. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking like that. She was the one girl in all the world, chosen to stop the vampires; she wasn’t supposed to be hoping that her vampire ex-boyfriend ripped out a girl’s throat and tap-danced in her blood. She wasn’t supposed to hope that her death had been horribly painful and that he’d killed her with a song in his heart.

She was supposed to stop him.

Buffy pursed her lips thoughtfully. Something was wrong with her…and yet she had never felt better. She felt as though a great and terrible weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

She was free. She had been a slave to destiny and now…now she was free. Free to live as she pleased. Free to do as she pleased. Even free to love as she pleased.

Angel…was still Angel…wasn’t he? A soul was the living force of a human being and life and memory was what made an individual. The demon – as Giles and Merrick had explained it to her – was the animating force of a vampire, but the demon had no memory other than those of the human host, so, in essence, wasn’t it the same person? And if it was the same person, then he was still her Angel…still her love…wasn’t he?

…And that skanky, psychotic vampires was spending her days groping Buffy’s ex-boyfriend…

That did it. The ex-thing definitely had to go…and so did Drusilla.

Buffy turned and started moving again, following the darkened streets toward the Factory. She hoped that they hadn’t found a new lair yet, because she’d hate to spend the evening searching for Drusilla when she just wanted to stake her and get to work on her reconciliation with Angel.

She paused again. What if he didn’t believe that she was serious about reconciling? It was a total 180 of her earlier position. He could think it was a trap and that she was just out to trick him and stake him. She grit her teeth and resumed walking determinedly; she would just have to think of something that would prove her sincerity.

“Ssslayer.”

The sibilant hiss echoed against the brick and aluminum walls of the warehouse district and the wind rose, as if it were the breath of the demon breathing its threat upon her. Buffy rolled her eyes in annoyance. God, not now. Couldn’t a demon ever pick a time to attack her when she didn’t already have plans? No. They had to interrupt her dates, interrupt her parent-teacher’s night, and had even interrupted her birthday. She was getting damned tired of it. As a matter of fact, it would all be much more convenient if they just made appointments, so that she could kill them without interrupting her personal life. Killing by appointment; she could get used to that.

“Slayer,” it repeated.

Buffy sighed in irritation and stopped walking. There was no help for it. It was just going to dog her steps like some stray mongrel until she killed it. She could hardly show up at Angel’s lair to get him back with some slimy, horny, leathery creature in tow; it would ruin the mood.

“Following me typically just annoys me,” she stated to the darkness around her.

“And you think I should worry about annoying you?”

“I think you should worry about it a lot,” she growled. “Now, be a good little whatever you are and scurry on home and the big nasty Slayer won’t have to kill you.”

“Slayers can’t kill my kind, girl. We kill you. You can’t even get close enough to touch us.”

“Is the small talk going to last much longer?” she sniped sarcastically. “I have other things to do tonight. And as for the not touching, it’s probably because you hide.”

“I’m here, girl.”

Buffy turned around. The demon stared at her its eyes black within black and flat and empty as a shark’s. “Not much of a Slayer, are you?” it growled.

She shifted, raising her fists to a defensive position. “What are you talking about?”

“You have the glow of a Champion, but it is riddled with shadow. You’re corrupt and selfish. You smell like a Slayer, but you’re unworthy of your calling.”

The diminutive blond cocked her head to the side, studying his narrow hairless skull and the bluish paleness of his skin; he looked like the demon Angel had so thoughtfully tossed to her feet last night. “You’re one of those Gridlock thingies aren’t you?”

“Grimlocke.”

“Whatever. You’re one of those prissy magic demons that’s afraid to get his hands dirty.”

“Prissy?” he snarled. “I’ll kill you slow.”

“You know, everyone always says that to me, yet I’m not the one blowin’ in the wind or fertilizing flowers. How about this,” she growled, stepping closer to him. “I’m gonna’ kill you slow. And after I’m done killing you, I’m not even going to bother to remember that your blood ever stained the soles of my boots.”

The Grimlocke’s lips pulled back from his discolored teeth. “Your tune will change when you’re gasping and begging for your life.”

“I never beg,” she stated in a throaty tone. “Well…not for my life.”

He lifted his gloved hand toward her and his fingers curled as if he were grasping something.

Buffy watched him interestedly.

The Grimlocke frowned and stared bemusedly at his hand and then he stretched it toward her again, curling his fingers tensely.

The golden Slayer looked at him askance. “Is that it?” she sneered disgustedly. “You’re going to point at me?”

He glared at her. “I see your aura girl. I will steal your life – “

“Alright, that’s enough,” Buffy snapped, annoyed with his little song-and-dance. She stalked forward.

The demon took a surprised step backward and for the first time in three millennia, a Slayer slammed her fist into a Grimlocke’s face, knocking him on to his ass.

“I hope you fight better than you point,” she snarled. “Cause otherwise you are a lousy gift and my lover will know exactly what I think of his stinginess.”

The pale-skinned demon swung his legs into the air forcefully, lifting himself off the ground and then brought his feet back down beneath him to stand upright.

The two combatants circled each other warily.

“So you’re Angelus’ woman.”

She tilted her head proudly. “Maybe it’s more along the lines that Angelus is my demon.”

“You would make a lapdog of the Scourge of Europe?”

Buffy grinned and twisted sharply to land a roundhouse kick to his chest. “Bet you wouldn’t say that to his face. Or maybe your brother did and that’s why Angel snapped his neck and dumped him at my feet as a present.”

The Grimlocke bared his teeth. “I will avenge him with your flesh. And then I will kill Angelus.”

The Slayer smirked. “We’ll see.”

~

Cordelia yanked open the door of the Bronze and stalked in, Willow's boyfriend Oz right behind her. "Why are we here again?" she snapped at the red-haired guitarist.

Oz looked at the temperamental May Queen expressionlessly. "To see if Willow, Buffy and Xander made an appearance. Giles is worried that that powder may have been some sort of hallucinogenic...or worse."

The tall brunette rolled her eyes irritably. She so didn't need to be chasing after the freaky threesome. She wasn't supposed to be doing any chasing at all; Xander was supposed to grovel in her wake, thanking her for deigning to date him.

She glanced around the crowded club, looking for Willow's red hair or Buffy's blond mane. "I don't see them. Should we ask somebody? Who should we ask?"

Oz rolled his eyes and walked toward the bar, leaving the tall brunette to follow. He paused at the crowded counter, taking in the bartender's pained expression and the bag of ice he was holding over his bruised wrist.

Sam looked up and jerked his chin in a greeting to the guitarist. "Hey."

Oz nodded back. "Hey. What happened?"

The brawny bartender shrugged. "Bit of a ruckus at the pool tables earlier. Two girls and a guy in casts jonse'ing for some eight-ball."

"Casts," Cordelia repeated. "That's definitely Xander."

Sam, the bartender, looked at the May Queen in consideration. "Friends of yours?"

"Cute redhead?" Oz asked, confirming the identities before they committed to the friends question. "About yay tall?" He held his hand up to illustrate. "Blond with an attitude?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah."

"Yeah," Oz returned.

The brawny bartender shifted his injured arm slightly out of his way and slapped at slip of paper on the counter in front of the two teenagers. "They have a tab."

"Which way did they go?" Cordelia demanded eagerly.

Sam smiled, his pale blue gaze shifting from the guitarist to the brunette. "You have questions," he observed softly, "I have answers. I have a bar tab and you have?"

Cordelia glared at the muscular bartender in outrage. "You mean you're not going to help us unless we pay that bill?" she demanded incredulously.

"My wrist really hurts."

Cordelia glowered. "Oz, pay him."

Oz glanced at the May Queen in surprise. "I don't have money; I'm in a band."

She growled softly in annoyance. "Fine," she snapped. "How much?"

"One-hundred dollars," Sam replied with a smile.

"For drinks?" she screeched shrilly.

"Hey, they damaged the pool table when they ran out of quarters. I could be charging you for every free game that's going out now instead of just parts and labor."

Cordelia gnashed her perfect white teeth together. Damn Buffy. This was all her fault. "You take credit cards?'

"Yep," Sam confirmed.

She reluctantly surrendered one of her precious cards and waited impatiently for the bartender to run the bill through the machine. She tapped her nails and quickly signed the tag when the husky servant returned it to her. "Fine. I've paid the bill. Now where'd they go?"

"Don't know. Didn't really see."

"What?" she demanded in outrage. "I just paid you a hundred dollars."

"Redhead talked to Dillon, while casts bought a couple of drinks for some college girls. Didn't see him or the girls go. Blondie followed that ex of hers and a girl out back. Red left about two minutes before you got here."

"That's it for a hundred bucks?" Cordelia hissed.

Sam nodded amiably. "I could make something up if you like, but I'm not much of a talker."

The outraged May Queen snapped up her credit slip copy. "I want a receipt on those repairs."

Oz grabbed hold of Cordelia’s arm and ushered her out to the front of the club before the scene could denigrate into a full-blown argument. He glanced up and down the street, trying to catch a glimpse of his redheaded girl friend. "We got problems."

"What?" Cordelia demanded, pulling her arm from his hold.

"Dillon deals Ecstasy."

Cordelia rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Great. Can this night even get worse?"

~

Xander guided the two girls through the shadows of Restfield Cemetery and to the privacy of the DuLac crypt. The ground was uneven, making walking in his cast more difficult than it already was, but the two giggling girls with him staggered along slowly, ogling the headstones as they passed, making it easy for him to keep up with them.

The dark-haired boy sneered silently at their interest in the tall headstones and monuments that surrounded them; they acted like tourists. Graveyards were nothing new to him.

His brown gaze tracked the two tightly clothed bombshells greedily. His anticipation was riding him hard, making him tremble with need; he wasn’t sure if he could wait.

A craving had filled him the moment he had laid eyes on Tammy and Ruth back at the Bronze. It had grown stronger the moment he realized just how much the two girls resembled Amber and Leticia, the abusive bitches of sixth period; now, the craving had grown so strong it had turned into a knotting tension that made him feel weak with nausea and yet powerful at the same time.

He had been aroused before. He was a seventeen-year old boy, of course he had been aroused before, but it had never felt like this. He wanted so badly, the balled tension inside him coiled tighter and tighter until his hands itched with the desire to be laid upon their flesh.

"I can't believe we're actually doing this," Tammy - or was it Ruth? - giggled as she leaned against a marble cherub. “I've always wanted to bust into one of these old places and see if the corpses are actually still wearing the jewels they were buried in." Ruth - or was she Tammy? - laughed uproariously, bending over to lean against her knees for support. Xander peered interestedly down the gaping neck of her leopard print shirt at her lace-covered breasts. "What were you going to do if they were, Tam?” she asked, staggering on her impractically high-heeled sandals. “Rob the dead?" "Yep," Tammy confirmed proudly, shaking her short platinum colored hair from her eyes. The two girls burst into a fresh round of giggles and staggered toward the dark-haired boy who’d brought them out on their adventure. They each tucked an arm around his, Tammy tapping her nails absently against the plaster of the cast on his wrist.

The three continued through the maze of headstones, the boy in the cast making steadier progress than the two inebriated girls.

Xander grinned, pleased with the effect of the alcohol and the Ecstasy that he'd slipped into their drinks earlier. The two college girls had been well on their way to plastered before he and Willow had found them, and after Buffy's aggressive display with the bartender, that dealer, Dillon had been all too eager to surrender a couple of doses of E to avoid having the dangerous blonde sic'd on him.

After that, it had been all too easy to get the girls out of the Bronze. The two co-eds had actually moved to Sunnydale to get their education - something about their mothers not wanting their precious baby daughters getting murdered in the big bad city of Los Angeles, so Sunnydale had been a compromise. And now, after seven months of living on the Hellmouth – seven very lucky months, though they didn’t realize it, the two ditzes wanted to go explore one of the thirteen small town cemeteries…at nighttime.

"It's just in here," Xander told them as he shoved open the door to the DuLac crypt. The three of them paused in the doorway, taking in the wall of sealed resting places and then the two slots that had been broken into months before when Spike had been intent on saving that psycho bitch Drusilla. Tammy and Ruth oohed over the cracked and dismantled resting places, but still, they hesitated by the door. “It's so dark in there," Tammy whined. "You can hardly see a thing."

Xander grinned craftily and pulled a lighter out of his pants. "No light switches, but there are torches. Wouldn't torches add just the right ambience?" The two girls looked at each other again and fell into a fresh spurt of giggles; the dark-haired boy ground his teeth together in annoyance. They were stupid and shallow and their giggling was driving him crazy, but their bodies were proportioned in all the right places. And best of all, they were here.

The dark-haired boy flicked the lighter until fire glowed above the flint and then he led the way into the darkened chamber; Tammy and Ruth followed him closely, holding tightly to each others arms as Xander found the remnants of a torch on the floor. He lit it and then slipped it triumphantly into a tarnished brass bracket on the wall.

"Voila!" He turned back to them and held his arms out, gesturing grandly at the dank and musty interior. "I think that calls for a little appreciation, ladies."

The two girls glanced at each other and giggled wildly. They saw no harm in playing around with the boy, as he seemed young, inexperienced and quite frankly, with those casts, harmless. Ruth approached him and snuggled into his chest and Xander grinned, wrapping an arm around her waist, while Tammy cautiously looked around at the nooks and crannies of the darkened burial chamber. The brunette kissed him lightly and Xander ran his tongue across her lips, grateful to Cordelia for their numerous forays into the utility closet; he’d become rather good at kissing since he and she had gotten together.

Tammy completed her inspection of their surroundings, and walked over to the kissing couple. Not taking his attention away from Ruth’s lips, Xander reached out and wrapped his other arm around the slender blond; he hugged both girls to him in greedy delight. He could feel the weight of one of the girl’s breasts against his chest and it was making him dizzy with lust. Whoever would have thought that he – Xander Harris – would have two girls at once? He almost laughed aloud, giddy at his masculine triumph. The only thing that could possibly make the moment better was a video camera so he could not only view the evening’s triumphs later, but also so he could prove that this ultimate man’s fantasy had happened to him.

He alternated light close-mouthed kisses upon their lips and Tammy and Ruth continued to giggle slightly. "Let's make ourselves comfortable," he suggested in an attempt at suave sophistication as he turned them toward the back corner of the crypt.

Tammy smiled at Ruth meaningfully and the brunette shrugged drunkenly as they decided to have a little fun; it wouldn’t be the first time they’d shared a boy. Choosing to humor him for the time being, they followed him toward the back of the room, the golden glow of the torch giving the dank chamber a slight romantic glow. The trio, made awkward by the girls’ drunkenness and Xander’s casts sank to the ground, with the dark-haired boy in the middle. Xander turned toward the pale-haired Tammy first and bent to kiss her, while Ruth wrapped her arms around him from behind, laying her cheek against his back; neither girl was sober and the world appeared in a dimly lit, pleasurable haze. When he cupped her breasts through her shirt, Tammy only smiled and pulled him closer, seeing no harm in letting the injured boy cop a few feels.

He could hardly believe his luck - he was finally getting his hands on some honest to goodness real breasts. Cordelia, despite her somewhat tarnished reputation had not allowed his hands to wander into any forbidden areas and despite his earlier comments to Willow, his seventeen year-old cock was still as innocent as when Natalie French, the she-mantis had locked him in her sights. Clumsily, he pushed Tammy’s shirt up to continue his groping exploration on her bare skin; Ruth twined her arms around his waist and caressed his chest with long slow strokes. Xander pulled away from Tammy’s lips; he craned his neck and turned to kiss Ruth, his tongue probing into her mouth. As Ruth sucked it teasingly, Xander squeezed Tammy's breast tightly in excitement.

Willow pushed open the old wooden door and paused in the entrance, her blue gaze focused on Xander wrestling on the ground with two half-naked college girls. She scowled in annoyance; Xander was hers. He had been hers since they were five years old together in kindergarten. He had been hers all through grammar school and he would have remained exclusively hers all through High School if Buffy hadn't shown up. She had tolerated his infatuation with Buffy because it was obvious that the Slayer wasn't going to give him the time of day, but then there was Cordelia and now, this. It was time that Xander understood that this was an activity that they did together, just as they'd done everything together the whole of their lives.

The red-haired hacker leaned against the doorjamb, glowering at the writhing trio "You started without me," she murmured in a scolding tone.

Xander gathered the dark-haired girl in his arms and rolled Ruth beneath him, eagerly pushing her skirt up her thighs. "Will," he exclaimed with a delighted smirk. "Where've you been?"

“I didn’t get a ride in a car. I had to walk over.” Tammy looked at the scowling redhead and stood up, straightening her clothing uncomfortably. She looked at the cold smile on the redhead's face and then at the strange gleam in the eyes of the young man who had brought them to the cemetery. Was this some sort of weird foursome thing? She and Ruth sometimes shared their boyfriends, but this was too much.

"I'm not into this," the platinum blond stated, shaking her head to try and clear her mind of the haze that continued to fog her senses.

Willow closed the door of the crypt firmly casually sauntered slowly toward them. She held her hands behind her back as she approached them, hiding the objects that she carried from their view and then, as she got closer, she held them out proudly displaying the objects she carried: a partially full bottle of wine and an empty beer bottle. With her eyes trained on the girl standing next to her, the young hacker set the wine bottle down.

Tammy glanced down at her friend, still pinned beneath the injured boy. “C’mon Ruth, we should get going.”

Willow struck quickly, grabbing hold of Tammy’s arm and swinging her around to pin the blond against the wall. Tammy struggled briefly, but froze when the harmless looking redhead broke the bottle she still held against the wall next to her. Willow pressed the sharp edges of the broken bottle to the pretty blonde’s face. "A ménage a trois is fine but a ménage a quatre is too much? Or is it me?"

Xander looked up from his position over Ruth and smirked. “Sorry but she doesn't take rejection well. She took an axe to me," he offered informatively.

Tammy swallowed nervously and looked at the bottle with wide frightened eyes. "It's not that. I just…don't feel well."

"Awww,” Willow crooned sympathetically. “That's too bad." Her tone changed as she traced the sharp glass along pretty blonde’s cheek. "You're gonna feel worse."

"P-p-pl-please don't kill me,” Tammy gasped, the fear sobering her despite the drugs and alcohol in her system. “My boyfriend thinks I'm in LA."

The hacker cocked her head to the side, her expression innocent though her words, frighteningly enough, were not. "So you won't be missed."

Ruth, feeling the same nervousness as her friend now that the threatening redhead was in the room, joined the conversation. "I'll miss her."

Willow cast a nasty smirk down at the brunette pinned beneath her best-friend’s weight. "And who's going to miss you?"

Ruth shifted slightly, trying to move the dark-haired boy’s weight off of her. "They'll look for us."

“In LA." Xander taunted. He laughed wildly, pressing his groin hard into the vulnerable notch at the apex of her thighs.

Ruth began to cry in real fear, the harmless looking boy they had left the club with no longer looking so harmless. "Please!" she whimpered brokenly. "Please don't rape me."

~

Buffy cradled the Grimlocke’s chin in her palms and stared at him with wicked delight, relishing his surprised expression. “I must say,” she conceded with a friendly smile, “if your brother was even half as good as you, he was a wonderful present. In fact, if he was anything like you at all, he was probably the best present anybody has ever given me.”

Actually, if the demon Angel had killed the night before had been anywhere as skilled as his brother, Angel had exerted himself quite a bit to please her. She smiled, beaming joyously: how sweet.

The pale-skinned demon stared at her silently, his black eyes wide and his mouth opened in a silent O.

The blond Slayer grinned. “Well,” she murmured regretfully. “I hate to fight and run, but I’ve got plans. You take care now.” She dropped the Grimlocke’s narrow-boned head next to his still twitching body and strolled away, leaving bloody footprints in her wake.

She rolled her neck and shoulders, stretching luxuriously and then dusted herself off, removing any fragments of windshield glass that might still be clinging to her clothing or hair. True to her word, by the time the film of blood on the soles of her boots had thinned enough to no longer leave prints, she had already dismissed the demon that she had spent the last forty minutes fighting from her mind.

She had more important things to occupy her thoughts: namely making sure that her evil creature of the night ex-boyfriend knew that the ex part of their relationship was over. She had tried the single Slayer life and it just wasn’t working out for her; she missed him. She missed talking with him; she missed kissing him; she missed him. Besides, he wanted to get back together with her; she wanted to be with him, so who cared what her dried up old Watcher wanted? Or what her friends thought?

Buffy hummed softly as she stalked briskly through the shadowed warehouse district of Sunnydale. “Ahhh, ahh-ah,” she crooned. “’I will burn for you, feel pain for you, I will twist the knife and bleed my aching heart, and tear it apart.’”*

She paused as her earlier uncertainties returned. What if he didn’t believe that she wanted to get back together? What if he thought it was a trick? What if he thought she was lying just so she could get close enough to put a stake through his heart?

The thought that he wouldn’t believe her was distressing to say the least. Here she was, tossing aside her sacred duty, her Watcher’s respect and her friend’s support and he might not even believe that she was sincere.

How could she possibly make him believe her?

An arm wrapped around her throat, pulling her hard back against the lanky and somewhat smelly body of a denim-clad man. There was a soft snicking sound and the man pressed the cool steel of a knife against her throat.

“What’s a pretty little girl like you doing out all by herself?”

Buffy arched her neck away from the blade and shifted her gaze to the bristly face of the man who held her. “I was just going to see my boyfriend,” she answered softly.

The man chuckled softly and leered at the cleavage revealed by her silky camisole. “That’s too bad, cause you ain’t never going to get there. I’m your boyfriend now, and you, you’re my old lady.”

She narrowed her gaze on him speculatively. Perhaps the answer to her dilemma had just been dropped in her lap. Angel had brought her a present to show her his sincerity; maybe she just needed to return the favor.

“I don’t know,” she drawled to the human being that thought he could hold her captive. “Angel gets awfully jealous.”

“Shut your mouth sweet cheeks,” the man growled, stroking the blade of the knife against her cheek. “I’m the only man you gotta concern yourself with now.”

The diminutive blond widened her eyes in what she hoped looked like fear. “Oh please don’t hurt me,” she wailed, already wondering whether or not she was laying it on a bit thick.

“You just do what Daddy says, little girl, and you won’t get punished…much.”

She snapped her hand up and clamped her fingers hard over his wrist, already bored with the game.

The man grunted in surprise and then groaned as her tiny little fingers locked around his bones and sinew like steel.

Buffy twisted out from beneath his arm and squeezed a little harder; the switchblade dropped from his nerveless fingers and spun away from the two combatants.

The lanky male glowered down at the blond beauty, already promising himself of the many and varied ways he would punish her for struggling against him. He swung his free fist towards the smooth line of her jaw.

The delicate Slayer caught his fist in her own and squeezed, bringing the smelly human being to his knees. “Daddy? Let me just say ‘Eww.’ Now, I’m on my way to my boyfriend’s place and I don’t think I should go empty handed.”

How easy it was to bring a human to his knees. She didn’t know why vampires liked it. It was too easy, not requiring any exertion or skill on her part, just the slightest flexing of her muscles.

Angel was right: they were so fragile; how easy it would be to snuff out a mortal life.

~

Xander felt his cock pressing hard and insistent inside his underwear and jeans. The tension inside him coiled tighter and he suddenly knew precisely what it was he wanted: he wanted to hear them beg. He wanted to humiliate them. He didn’t just want to break their hearts; he wanted to break them. Girls like this had snubbed and humiliated him and Willow for the last ten years of their lives, and now, finally, the shoe was on the other foot. It was going to be music to his ears to make them beg.

"What's that? What did you say?" he asked sarcastically, pressing the weight of his cast against her throat – with better results than when he had tried it with Buffy. With his left hand and knees, forced Ruth’s legs apart and made himself at home between her splayed legs as Willow and Tammy watched.

Tammy flinched away from the bottle and began to sob softly.

Ruth gasped and clutched at the plaster pressed against her throat and wiggled. “Please,” she whined, begging frantically. “I won't tell anyone if you stop this."

Xander thrust his hips against the girl and groaned, loving the feel of her against him. “Did you hear that Will? She won’t tell anybody if we stop. Did you want to stop? Or did you want to give the princesses the royal treatment their kind deserves?”

“Keep going,” the hacker told him coldly. Years of abuse and now she got to be the instrument of a lesson in humility. Stop now? No way.

The brunette trapped beneath the dark-haired boy wept in broken gulps and her tears trickled down her cheeks, streaking her makeup and giving him an additional thrill; unable to resist, he bent down to kiss her again.

The weeping brunette turned her head away, avoiding his lips. “Aw. She doesn't want to look at you." Willow chuckled derisively. "Open your eyes, little slut, or I'll have to hurt your friend." Ruth opened her eyes and stared past the boy humping against her crotch to her friend.

Xander shifted his arm off of her neck and grabbed a fist full of her hair, shaking her head ruthlessly. "What?” he snarled. “You didn't come here to fuck? Were you just going to play around then leave me high and dry, weren’t you, you little cock-tease? Weren’t you?!”

"N-n-n-o," she stuttered, shaking with fear.

Further aroused by her terror, he reached between their bodies and pushed her bra up, pinching her nipple; he pulled hard, tugging on the sensitive peaks.

The trembling brunette cried out. "You're hurting me!"

The dark-haired boy smirked up at his friend. “I’m hurting her,” he wailed mockingly. Nearly giddy with the feeling of power that was flooding him, he slid his hand between the girl’s legs, trailing his fingers over the cotton of her panties. Ruth tensed, holding herself absolutely still. This could not be happening to her. This could not be happening to her. "Beg me to take them off."

"Fuck you," she snapped. Maybe she could brazen her way out of this mess. Maybe if she fought back, he would let her go.

Xander shifted his weight onto his knees and smacked her with the hard surface of his cast. Ruth’s head cracked against the concrete floor and pain throbbed in her cheek and the back of her skull. Willow laughed and watched as the brunette princess struggled, twisting and writhing beneath her friend, but she was unable to escape from Xander’s looming weight. "Don't!" Ruth cried.

Tammy watched, frozen in terror. How could this be happening? They weren’t in the big city; they were in a worthless little burg called Sunnydale.

Willow ran the bottle along the girl’s face, loathing her perfectly made up features and her perfectly styled hair. "Hey, Tammy, isn’t it? Are you lonely? Want a taste of what your friend's getting?"

Tammy looked away from the frightening redhead and tried to ignore the sharp edges of the bottle she traced along the outline of her own bust line. She thought briefly about shoving the girl away from her, but the jagged edges of that bottle poked into her threateningly.

"You asshole," Ruth shrieked, spitting into Xander's face. Tired of dealing with her squirming when he wanted to move on to other things, Xander slapped her hard across the face with his cast again, smashing her again and again until she gave up her struggles, and collapsed weakly on the ground beneath him, blood running from her nose and split lip.

He gripped her panties and yanked them downward, pulling them off her crotch, completely exposing her for the first time to all the occupants of the crypt.

Ruth moaned in pain and in shame as the cool air touched her flesh.

"Fuck!" Xander cried out excitedly, pulling back to stare. It was his first look at a naked woman up close and he found the sight unbelievably arousing. So much so that he nearly came in his pants. "Shaved too!" he chortled, his eyes greedily drinking in her bare flesh. Ruth was silent, humiliated past anything she had felt before. She was exposed and vulnerable to anything Xander and the girl he called Will chose to do to her. She shuddered, feeling the boy’s breath against her skin, and she tensed, tightening every muscle in her body in silent rejection as she anticipated his touch.

Tammy watched in horrified fascination as her best friend was brutalized.

“Take of your shirt.”

The platinum haired girl looked at the redhead in shock. “What?”

“I said take off your shirt. I don’t want it to get dirty.”

“No – “

Willow flashed the bottle forward, nicking Tammy’s cheek with a sharp edge. “The shirt.”

Weeping, Tammy slid the black lace wrap top off over her shoulders and then over her head.

Willow tossed her shirt to the side and then, with a sweet smile, she grabbed Tammy by her short blond hair and forced her brutally to the ground next to Ruth and Xander. She sat on the girl’s back and wrenched her arms up behind her, pinning her as effectively as a butterfly on a pin.

Ruth sobbed softly as Xander's roughly explored her nether regions, his inexperience in the task obvious, leaving bruises on her vaginal tissues to join those he’d inflicted upon her thighs.

Willow watched him fumble for several moments, quickly tiring of his continued ineptness. Perhaps letting him practice on other girls was in her own best interest. “Lick her," she suggested. Xander reared back and met his best friend’s steady gaze with widened eyes. "Really?"

Tammy struggled suddenly, her terror of the two growing to uncontrollable proportions. The red-haired hacker leaned forward, grinding Tammy’s face into the dirty floor and straining her arms nearly to the breaking point. “Now, now. You behave, or I’ll have to cut you again."

The dark-haired boy turned back down to the naked flesh before him and stared consideringly. Well, Willow was a girl, she’d know. He pushed Ruth's legs up and back and then lowered his face between them; with no skill or finesse or even consideration for her pleasure he started sucking and licking her pussy lips into his mouth. He probed inside her with his tongue and after about 30 seconds or so of exploration, he sat up and licked the tangy juices from her off of his lips, making an exaggerated smacking sound.

Ruth whimpered beneath his assault, but didn’t struggle to free herself. She was afraid that he’d bash her head in with his cast if she struggled again.

“That’s not bad,” Xander muttered.

Willow watched him with cold eyes, keeping Tammy pinned beneath her. “Go ahead,” she encouraged. “Don’t stop now. Fuck her.”

Xander looked up at her and grinned, his lips shiny from the girl he’d just abused. “You are my bestest friend in the whole wide world, Will.” He opened the fly on his pants and pushed them awkwardly down his hips before he settled himself between Ruth’s splayed legs.

Ruth wept softly as he pressed his cock against her unprepared body. "Please, don't rape me. Please. I'm not on the pill! I'll suck you. I'll suck your dick. Please."

The brown-eyed boy laughed softly. “You can suck me off later.” He rubbed his erection against her again and then, unable to wait any longer, pushed forward, forcing himself into her dry and tight channel. "Oh,” he groaned. “This is going to be a tight fit."

"Want to watch Xander fuck your friend?" Willow asked sweetly. She leaned hard against Tammy’s arms and then grabbed her head, turning her and forcing her to watch. Xander shuddered and shoved his hips forward, pushing himself hard into Ruth’s body; she screamed with the pain and pushed at him weakly.

"Please stop,” she sobbed. “It hurts."

"God!" Xander shouted and rapidly began to seesaw back and forth. "You're so fucking tight." Tears streamed down Ruth’s cheeks as Xander forced himself in and out of her, faster and harder until, in another few minutes, it was over and he spurted his seed inside her. She mewled, crying softly and he pulled out of her.

"Was that fun?" Willow asked, looking at her best friend and then at the girl who hadn’t enjoyed a minute of his attentions.

"Hell, yeah!" Xander grunted. He reached forward and jammed a finger into Ruth’s sore cleft and pulling it out, he made a face - it was coated with his slimy and sticky cum. "Look how messy and gross you are now, Ruth." He leaned over and shoved his fingers into her mouth. "You should clean up."

Willow stared at Xander’s exultant face and then at the broken girl beneath him. Was that all it took to break a princess? It looked remarkably easy.

“You got a face there ,Will,” Xander said softly. “Whatcha thinking?”

She pointed to the wine bottle. "I'm think I’m gonna fuck my little doll too."

~

Buffy stepped into the burnt shambles of a room and paused at the doorway, surveying the damage that she and Angel had wrought during their last altercation. What little furniture there had been was singed and all the boxes that had still lingered from the Factory’s shipping days were burnt to ash, but since a majority of the inside was of brick and steel, there really wasn’t that much damage to the integrity of the structure. In other words, still safe to lurk…if you didn’t mind the local Slayer knowing where you lived. Spike and Drusilla were in the lower level of the room, their pseudo-family room. The maddened vampiress was lying on the singed dining table, humming a nursery rhyme while Spike sat close by in his wheelchair, watching over his dark princess.

The slender girl wrinkled her nose at the sight of the couple, her early jealousy of the brunette vampiress rekindled. Even ensouled Angel had hesitated to kill the maddened vampiress, not only allowing Drusilla to leave a playground unharmed after a failed hunt, but also lying to Buffy about even meeting up with the sickly vampire. And after losing his soul and returning to the dark side of the force…well Angel’s first priority then had been to return to the loving bosom of his undead family and retake his role of iron-fisted patriarch.

Spike and Drusilla…They were Angel’s vampire family and a major pain in her ass, what with Spike’s repeated macho attempts to bag himself another Slayer and now, Drusilla tended to cling to the tall vampire like a bitch in heat. All in all, Buffy would rather stake the odd couple than have them forever hanging at hers and Angel’s elbows, but she rather thought her demonic lover would be upset with her if she arbitrarily staked his children – or whatever Spike was…but perhaps he would get over it.

Drusilla looked up at the blond intruder standing on the staircase above them and her blue eyes widened as she took in the Slayer’s calculating stare; she stopped humming. The mad vampire sat up and moved warily off the table, never taking her gaze from the predator that had come to pass judgment on herself and her mate. “Naughty Slayer,” she scolded. “Daddy's not home.”

Spike turned his gaze up to see the blond girl at the top of the steps. Bloody hell! The bint didn’t normally come to the lair. What the hell had Angelus gotten up to, to bring Miss Goody-Two-Shoes to the nest?

Buffy smirked at the brunette vampiress. “Naughty Slayer?” she repeated, already looking forward to the evening. Oh yes. Angel had been right all those weeks ago: things were definitely about to become very interesting. “How'd you know?” she taunted.

The blond vampire tilted his chin arrogantly. Oh this was going to be so fun. Here he was, all better and ready for action and the Slayer didn’t know what was in store for her with two Big Bads just waiting to drink her down like the nummy treat she was. “Look, Dru. Delivery.”

The diminutive blond grinned and stepped closer to the staircase, for the first time revealing that she wasn’t alone: being dragged behind her, in her delicate, tiny hand was a tied and gagged biker of impressive dimensions.

Spike’s eyes widened as the Slayer walked sinuously down the staircase, carelessly dragging her futilely struggling prisoner with her and letting him thump painfully down each step.

“What were you expecting?” Buffy quipped sarcastically as she eyed his wheelchair. “Drive thru?” She heaved her hostage forward, letting him tumble the last seven steps of the steel staircase.

The jean-clad gang member grunted and groaned as he bounced down the steps, landing hard on the concrete floor at the bottom. Whimpering, he rolled fearfully out of the path of the young teenaged girl who hadn’t turned out to be as easy a victim as she had looked. She had taken his switchblade from her throat, snapping his bones as she had done so and then had driven him to the ground with two crushing blows from her tiny fists. The raging hard-on that had encouraged him to attack the helpless looking blond in the first place was long gone.

Buffy sauntered down the last steps and her prisoner flinched away from her feet with a satisfying whimper of fear. She smiled, enjoying his terror of little old her.

Drusilla cocked her head to the side as she stared at the golden heroine. “World is topsy-turvy,” she moaned, swaying back and forth. “Doesn't make sense. Doesn’t make sense. Slayer is bad. Sky is falling and smells of fire and brimstone.” She lifted her hand to her ear and wiggled her fingers, imitating mouths moving. “Whisper, whisper. Slayer is mad. Mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

Spike stared down at the human man who was lying bruised and whimpering on the floor of their lair. A bruised and whimpering human being that had been delivered by the Slayer’s own slender hands. He shifted his gaze from the man to the girl who was poised in front of them on the bottom step, a very cruel twist on her lips. “Thanks for the info, luv,” the blond vampire muttered to the swaying madwoman. “But she's here now and it's a bit late to know.”

“Nasty Slayer,” Drusilla hissed. “Daddy’s heart stinks of you.”

Buffy grinned in delight. “And here I was worried that his flesh would stink of you.” She lunged toward Drusilla and in a swift move, she planted her fist hard in the brunette’s face, crushing her nose.

Drusilla cupped her hand to her face, staggering back from her attacker, but the Slayer twisted gracefully around in a roundhouse kick that sent the brunette vampire flying to land on the floor several feet away.

“Nothing personal Dru,” the Slayer commented conversationally as she approached the fallen vampiress. “But your presence in Sunnydale is really starting to annoy me. I think it’s time you blew town.”

Drusilla scrambled to her feet, backing away from the golden predator that was closing in on her. She whimpered slightly, her blue eyes glazing with fear. “Daddy will be cross,” she whined.

Buffy shrugged one shoulder, unconcerned with Angel’s supposed ire. “He'll come around.”

“Right then,” Spike muttered. “Straight to the fighting, just the way I like it.” He launched himself out of the chair towards the golden haired girl’s back. The diminutive blond twisted, dodging Spike’s lunge and slamming the heels of her palms into his chest; the vampire flew back several feet and crashed to the ground. He stood up quickly, ready to defend his mad sire and ready to gulp down another Slayer.

Buffy smirked arrogantly. “Should've stayed down Spikey,” she purred menacingly. “I was gonna go easy on you…Or maybe I wasn’t. Hadn’t really decided yet.”

“No need to hold back pet,” he growled. “I can take you.”

She laughed wildly, gleefully, feeling more alive than she ever had. “In your dreams.”

Free. She was free from all those pesky rules of morality. She was free from any innate sense of fair play. She was free from the veneer of civilization that had been holding her back from being the most efficient killing machine that demon-kind or humanity had ever seen. The Slayer fell into the most brutal fight she’d ever conducted in her life. Every blow she landed cracked their immortal bones. Every kick sent them flying, into walls, into furniture and into each other. Slowly and systematically she beat them, letting them know in no uncertain terms that neither of them was a match for her, either alone or together. They were nothing; she was the Slayer.

Drusilla crawled out of the range of the combat, whimpering as her Spike and the golden predator still circled each other. Spike growled, the noise barely recognizable beneath the multiple broken bones of his face. His jaw was so fractured that he couldn’t even open it to sink his fangs into her throat even if he did manage to gain the advantage.

Buffy laughed lightly as she danced around the injured vampire, having more fun than she’d had in a long time. “Sorry,” she crooned with false sympathy. “I forgot to make it quick and painless.” The blond vampire bared his broken teeth. “I’m really gonna make this hurt, little girl.”

She grinned gleefully. “Not as much as I’m going to.” She arched her back sensuously, stretching out her muscles, feeling powerful. “I’m going to break your back and put you back in your chair. And Dru? I’m going to pull your pretty little fangs before I shove a chair leg through your little black heart. And Spike, after I’ve dusted Dru, I’m going to make you eat her ashes before I dust you too. On the plus side though, I’ve found that I really love those breaking noises your bodies make when I hit you and ash just doesn’t have the same satisfying sound, so you both have about as long as it takes for me to stop enjoying this.”

Spike felt a slight frisson of wrongness. This was not how the world was supposed to be. She was supposed to be his enemy. Well, she still seemed to be, but she was supposed to be the Slayer, representative of all that was cute and cuddly and nice, not standing in a vampire’s lair telling him how good breaking his bones sounded. That was too…too…demon like. She didn’t act like a champion of good, more like an encroaching demoness trying to take over their nest…or establish herself in their hierarchy.

He snarled. There was no way in hell he would tolerate the humiliation of a Slayer joining their cadre. He lunged towards her, intent on ripping out her golden throat.

Buffy laughed gleefully as she met him mid air

~

Giles peered at the powder beneath the microscope, then flipped through the book at his side, still trying to identify the compound that was the cause of all their present difficulties. It was undoubtedly sulfur based, but what else was in the powder? Would it wear off or did it require an antidote? Knowing Ethan, it undoubtedly required an antidote.

Cordelia leaned against the railing of the staircase and crossed her arms over her chest. “She like beat him up. And I practically had to twist his arm to get any information,” the May Queen continued to complain, glowering at the apparently inattentive Watcher.

Oz sat next to Giles, watching the librarian calmly. “It was a sprained wrist,” he stated calmly, not letting the temperamental cheerleader exaggerate.

Giles paused in his studies and looked up at the brunette in amazement. “You sprained the bartender’s wrist?”

“No,” Cordelia snapped. “Buffy did. I think it’s a safe assumption that that powder did something bad. She’s being way more freaky than usual.”

“Hmmm. Yes, well, any word on where she may have gone?” the Watcher asked, worried as to what else she might get up to. If she was purposefully injuring humans, it might not be too large a step for her to start killing them if they annoyed her or attacked her.

“Sam said she’d followed Angel and some chick out back,” Oz commented, his usual monosyllabic comments set aside for the emergency of finding Willow before something happened to her.

Giles looked at Cordelia intently. “And there was no sign of Buffy, Angel or the girl?”

Cordelia shook her head. She and Oz had checked the alley briefly and there hadn’t even been signs of a struggle back there, much less a body or a pile of ash.

Oz glanced at the two, puzzled by their concern. Angel and Buffy had been quite the item for awhile there, surely if something were wrong with the young blond, even if they were no longer dating, he’d take her to the hospital or make sure she got home safely. Heck, the couple might even talk out their issues. “Maybe the girl hightailed it out of there and Buffy and Angel got back together again,” he offered reasonably.

Good lord, Giles thought in horror. He hadn’t thought of that. What if while under the influence of this drug she joined Angel and his nest? No. No it wasn’t possible. True demonic vampires would never allow a Slayer amongst them. Not as anything other than a meal.

The guitarist looked from Cordelia’s stunned expression to Giles’ horrified face curiously. “Why’d they breakup anyway?”

Cordelia and Giles glanced at each other uncertainly.

~

Buffy yanked brutally, enjoying the piercing wail of the vampiress beneath her; Drusilla’s second primary fang gleamed wetly in the teeth of the Leatherman pliers she had found on the biker.

Drusilla whimpered weakly, blood pouring from her defanged mouth. “It doesn’t matter what you do,” she hissed at the golden Slayer that loomed over her, a stake now in her tiny hand. “He will always be mine.”

Buffy lips curled in disgust. “No part of him is yours unless he gives it to you,” she retorted sharply, raising the stake to bring it down into the mad vampire’s chest and finish it once and for all. She hesitated, her own words echoing in her mind.

No part of him was hers unless he gave it to her.

If she did this, if she staked his vampiric family, he would not simply stop caring for them or even remembering them. Indeed, if she killed Drusilla now, the mad vampiress would always hold a part of Angel’s heart that the Slayer would never be able to claim.

No. Angel would have to kill Drusilla himself. That was just the way it was. He had only completely released his ties with Darla after he had staked her and it would have to be the same with Dru.

Buffy sighed disgustedly; she had so wanted to stake the wild-eyed vampire and get it over with, but she wanted complete possession of Angel’s heart more than she wanted Drusilla gone.

She would wait…but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t hurt her.

The delicate Slayer pushed away from the broken vampire and grabbed a fistful of her dark hair. “Come on Dru,” she growled. “Bad little vampires spend their time in the corner with a cross in their mouth.”

Drusilla whimpered and crawled awkwardly as the golden predator hauled her toward the corner. “Daddy,” she cried.

Buffy laughed mockingly.

~

Angelus stalked into the lair enraged. After dropping his Slayer-blessed meal into the nearest dumpster, he’d taken off to find his golden girl, but she had completely disappeared. She hadn’t returned to the inside of the Bronze, she hadn’t gone home and she hadn’t been patrolling at any of the thirteen cemeteries. Where the hell could she have gone?

The dark-haired vampire walked down the steel steps and halted, frozen by the unexpected sight of his thoroughly thrashed offspring lying broken on the concrete floor. Spike lay on his side several feet from his wheelchair and from the appearance of his back, the blond vampire had been freshly broken; it could be several more weeks, even months before Rollerboy was able to make a foray out of his chair.

Drusilla knelt in the corner of the room, like a naughty child placed in a time-out, though she was not facing the wall. A silver chain hung from between her bloody lips, her mouth smoking and sizzling, indicating that there was a cross at the other end of that metallic rope. She whimpered and rocked, but she did not spit out the object that was causing her distress.

On the floor was a human, tied hand and foot and gagged with his own clothing. The mortal was bruised and judging from the angle of one of his restrained arms, a tad bit broken. The lean man curled into a fetal ball, his impressive size looking very unimpressive in that protective huddle.

And amidst all that chaos was his future mate. Buffy was lying on the table staring up at the ceiling; the most delectable meal ever spread out on that piece of furniture he was sure. She arched her neck in an erotically submissive display as she shifted to see him prowl down the steps. “Honey,” she drawled, in a sensuous purr. “You’re home.”

She watched him, her eyes riveted to his masculine beauty. He was both the man of her dreams and the man of her worst nightmares. He held the lead roles in both her idyllic daydreams and in her most erotic fantasies. He was everything to her, love and hate, death and life and she was no longer afraid to admit it to herself or to him. That was the point of her being here, invading his lair, and abusing his childer…she was here to prove to him that she belonged to him and that he belonged to her.

She rolled to her side, a dreamy smile curving her lips and propped her head up to look at him directly. Her moss green gaze flicked admiringly over him, taking in his tight leather pants and the deep burgundy silk shirt he wore, the color emphasizing the pale cast of his aristocratic features. He was the most exquisite creature she ever seen in her life and he was hers, she would make sure of that.

Angelus studied her, amazed at the scents that clung to her: human fear – not her own, most likely that of the offal she had dropped on his floor; vampiric fear – not an easy scent to inspire - and blood - the blood of his childer that stained her slender hands; demonic fear and death, a little something she must have run into on her way to his home and beneath all those other scents was her own sweet and intoxicating arousal. She was a veritable feast of aromas. Pain, terror and suffering and now that he had arrived, those aromas were being spiced by her interest in him. Oh, his baby had been a very busy girl in his absence…something was most definitely up with her…

“All I need is some slippers and a pipe to make this scene complete,” he commented wryly, walking down the rest of the steps. “What a homecoming.”

She watched him, her smile unchanging as he walked to his smoking childe.

Angelus grasped the trailing ends of the silver chain hanging out of Drusilla’s mouth and gently pulled the cross from between her lips.

Drusilla spat out the painful holy object and wrapped her arms around Angelus’ leg, pressing her face into his thigh. “My Angel,” she whined. “Mummy’s mean. She pulled my teeth and broke my Spike.”

“Mummy?” Angelus breathed, impressed that the Slayer had managed to wring such an accolade from his maddened childe while still a human being. Oh yes, she was going to be an absolutely perfect vampire. He turned towards the Slayer and shook Dru irritably off his leg. “Picking on crips, Buff?” He shook his head mockingly, tsking at her. “That’s not like my sunshine.”

Buffy waved his comment away irritably. She didn’t want to talk about Spike or Drusilla; she wanted to talk about them. “I did you a favor. He was out of his chair.”

Angelus’ brows shot up in interest. So, Spike had healed while he’d been out? About damn time. “So you decided to put him back in it? Wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

She chuckled and shrugged, her red-leather jacket creaking softly. “I figured I should begin as I mean to go on. You may be my equal, but those two,” she jerked her chin contemptuously as his childer. “They are not. It’s best if Spike learns to respect my authority now.”

Angelus strolled over to his crumpled grandchilde and knelt. He turned Spike from his side so he could see the damage that his mate had wrought and was impressed despite himself: every bone in Spike’s sharp-featured face was shattered. It wasn’t subtle and it didn’t have a lot of artistic finesse, but as a beginning to torture, it was very effective, especially since vampires often healed quickly. Lengthy convalescences were rare indeed and it looked like it would be another several months before the blond vampire was healed enough to return to ‘raising a bit of hell.’ Yes…she was very effective.

The tall vampire stood and turned back to face his golden mate. He should punish her for usurping his authority, he knew he should, but he was just so damned pleased to have her there, trying to fit into the nest with her inexperienced brutality that he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with her: perhaps another time. “Spike doesn’t respond too well authority,” he informed her, remembering the many lessons of respect and discretion that he had attempted to beat into the boy himself.

Buffy smiled sinisterly. “Then I’ll just keep breaking him until he does.”

Why not? Angelus mused. It was exactly what he did himself. And it could only thrill him to watch his sweet, innocent girl perform such brutal acts. Soulboy had never once admitted it, in fact he’d hid it damn well, but the demon and the soul – much to his shame – had both been wildly aroused when Buffy had tortured that female vampire for information regarding the Master’s resurrection. This was even better. She wasn’t out to save anybody, she wasn’t out to prevent great evil from rising, and she had just tortured his childer to prove that she was in charge. This was everything he had wanted. She was exactly how he had fantasized she could be…And not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but just why had this all so suddenly and so perfectly occurred?

Drusilla watched her sire talk with the nasty Slayer and slowly stood. Her Spike was all broken again…and Daddy had a new Mummy. She wasn’t sure if she liked the new development, but Mummy had been most firm that she wasn’t to interfere. In fact she wasn’t to touch Daddy again and another punishment could well be in store for her for breaking that rule already. She took a step towards her fallen mate.

The movement of the slender vampiress drew the Slayer’s attention, distracting her from the visual feast of her sleek lover and the throaty flirtation that had been passing back and forth between them. Buffy glowered at the brunette vampiress, her lips tightening with displeasure and she lifted her hand from her hip, snapping her fingers loudly at the slinking madwoman.

The angelically handsome vampire watched as at the sound his childe instantly dropped to her knees and crawled the rest of the way to her broken lover. “You’ve taught them new tricks,” he murmured thoughtfully.

Buffy sat up and swung her legs over the side of the table, letting her toes dangle. She smiled as she watched Drusilla continue to crawl even as she pulled Spike slowly from the room to their bedroom in the back. “You’ve been too soft,” she scolded her lover accusingly.

Angelus shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’ve been distracted.” He walked toward the head of the table and pulled out a chair, sitting down in it. “Now. Not that I’m not pleased to see you baby, but what are you doing here?” he asked curiously. “Last night you were a bit…less enthusiastic about our relationship.”

How could things have changed to such perfection in the space of one day? What could possibly have transpired to turn his shy, moral lover into this exquisite femme fatale? And what did he have to do to keep her this way?

“I was a little surprised at your gesture last night, but tonight, I’ve decided to return the favor,” Buffy stated.

“Favor?”

The diminutive blond hopped off the table and grabbed a pewter goblet from the scarred surface before she strode over the bound human on the floor.

Angelus leaned forward to watch her, spellbound by the aggressiveness and barely restrained violence in her every step. This was an act wasn’t it? This was all an act to throw him off balance so she could kill him. There was no way that she could have changed so drastically from his bashful and hesitant lover of last evening into this wicked beautiful virago…was there?

“Stating my intentions,” Buffy answered. She pulled the switchblade she had liberated from the biker out of her skirt pocket and knelt next to her prisoner. Smiling sweetly at her demon lover, she slit the biker’s throat in a sudden and brutal move that made Angelus jerk with surprise, and then she held the pewter goblet beneath the gushing wound, filling the glass.

The dark-eyed vampire stirred, unable to take his eyes from the sight of her filling a wine goblet with the blood of the man she had just killed.

She had killed. She had killed a human being.

He listened carefully, focusing on her tempo of her powerful heart, for a moment frightened that somebody else had had the privilege of turning her, but no, she was still deliciously and temptingly human.

The blond Slayer dropped the body carelessly to the floor and carried the full goblet to the table. She placed it before him and cocked her head to the side, gauging his reaction to her gift.

Angelus stared at the blood-filled goblet and then looked at her bloodstained hands. It was no trick. She had killed a man before his very eyes and she had carried the man’s blood to him.

Buffy sat edge of the table and watched him stare at the goblet, a pleased smile on her pink lips. “I’m proving my sincerity,” she purred. “I was thinking we should get back together.” She lifted her blood stained fingers to him, offering him the vitae that stained her flesh. “What do you think? Do we have a shot?”

The vampire leaned forward and took her index finger between his lips. He sucked the blood from her skin, curling his tongue around her supple flesh and then probing for any moisture that remained beneath the perfect oval of her painted nail. Finished with one tempting digit, he slowly suckled her next finger and then the next, maintaining eye contact with her as he cleaned her hands of the blood that she had spilled.

Buffy’s lashes fluttered as she watched him suckling on her fingers. Her hands wasn’t where she wanted his lips, but the pull of his mouth seemed to reach beyond her fingers and tug on her nipples and at that hidden place between her thighs where only he had ever touched her. She moaned beneath his ministrations, freely enjoying the sensuality of his touch.

Angelus smirked, pleased with her responsiveness. He cleaned the last bit of blood from her smooth flesh and released her hands to sit back and stare at her contemplatively. He glanced at the wine goblet then back to her partially glazed green gaze. “Not to seem ungrateful lover, but why the sudden change of heart? And why did you let me kill that girl earlier tonight?”

She leaned toward him tilting her head invitingly, offering him her lips. “To say thank you for the flowers. And thank you for beating up Xander. And to admit I should’ve jumped into your arms last night and showered you with kisses and praise for killing that demon just to please me. And to tell you I didn’t know what I was missing and swear that I’m done hiding from what I feel for you.”

Her lips hovered close to his and unable to resist her invitation, he caught her lips with his. He clenched her hair in his fists and held her still for his possession, licking and nibbling at her lips before plunging his tongue deep into the heat of her mouth; he wanted to devour her; he wanted to be devoured by her.

Buffy purred with pleasure, and when he pulled back, she whimpered slightly at the loss. She blinked and put out her lower lip in a charming pout. “Aren’t you going to drink that before it gets cold?” she asked. She tenderly reached forward and brushed the soft locks of the vampire’s hair from his forehead. “I killed him just for you.”

Angelus nearly groaned at the pleasure of it all. The world could not be more perfect. Whatever it was that had happened, it had made Buffy completely willing to at last be his. No more hesitations, no more withdrawals and no more refusals. He no longer had to hold back for fear of frightening her. She was here and she was willing. Tonight…tonight he would claim her and tonight he would bring her across to the night.

“Drink,” she encouraged him softly.

The dark-eyed vampire lifted the goblet to his lips and drank. The blood wasn’t particularly fine, nor was it still as hot as that taken fresh from an artery, but it was still flavored quite nicely with the man’s pain and terror. It wasn’t a perfect meal, but it had been sincerely and tenderly provided by the Slayer’s own loving hand; and that made it perfect unto the moment.

Buffy watched him, his pleasure in her offering her reward for the bloody task. His throat muscles worked and she leaned toward him to press her lips to those contracting muscles.

Angelus swallowed the last drop in the cup and set the goblet back on the table, keeping his head tilted back to enjoy the ministrations of his sultry-eyed mate. The heat of her open-mouthed nips and caresses was sweet, but he forced himself to push her back gently. He looked at her, his dark gaze intent as he studied the vibrant green of her eyes. “And where do we go from here?” he asked her.

The blond Slayer smiled slightly and slid off of the table. She eased one knee onto the chair, next to his hip and then, grasping his shoulders for balance, settled herself astride his lap. The handsome vampire trailed his fingers up the long muscles of her tanned thighs, tracing her smooth golden skin teasingly. Then, as he’d wanted to do since the first time he’d seen that miniscule skirt, he slid his palms beneath the hem of the flirty black and red cloth and cupped her butt. He pulled her more tightly into his lap, groaning as the heat of her feminine core rested directly above his quickly rousing flesh.

Buffy tightened her hands over his shoulders, digging her nails into his flesh as she bent to nuzzle his throat, nipping and kissing her way along his cool flesh, moving unerringly toward the heaven of his lips. “I thought I’d worship you,” she whispered hoarsely. “You don’t mind if I worship you, do you?”

She took his lips in a hungry kiss, sweeping her tongue in to explore the cool recesses of his mouth. The faint coppery taste of blood still lingered on his tongue and it annoyed her, not because the taste of blood repulsed her, but because it distracted her from the taste of him. She licked and nibbled at his lips, sinking herself into the mindless pleasure to be had from his talented mouth.

After several minutes, Angelus pulled back from the heated splendor of her lips, astonished at her initiative. His unnecessary breaths fell against her ear as he whispered against the petal softness of her cheek. “What type of worship are we talking about?”

The Chosen One smiled blissfully, luxuriating in the feel of his powerful body beneath her. No greater heaven could she find than where she already was, crouched hungrily over him, with his large hands pulling her more tightly against him.

“Sacrificial,” she murmured, enjoying the tickling sensation caused by the hairs stirred by his unneeded breaths. She rubbed her face against him in a feline-motion. “Devoted,” she breathed, trailing delicate kisses from his temple down to the strong perfection of his jaw. “Body and blood,” she whispered, arching her back so she could continue down the line of his throat. The soft silk of his shirt brushed against her cheek and she glanced up at him from beneath her lashes with a mischievous smile. “And did I mention oral?” She sank her teeth onto one of the buttons of his shirt and yanked it sharply free; she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and blew the button to the side. The plastic fastener bounced on the floor with an unnaturally loud ping.

Angelus groaned, the leather of his pants abruptly too confining and thrust upward against her soft body.

Buffy laughed softly with delight and bent to the open throat of his shirt, breathing open-mouthed kisses over his cool flesh. She found the next button and snapped it free of the cotton threads that held it anchored to the shirt and then spit that one to the side as well.

His pale chest was sculpted with hardened muscle and she fell to it with a croon of delight, nipping at him and soothing those love bites with her tongue. Button by button she freed him, inch by inch she revealed him and kiss by kiss she praised the beauty of his body as she slowly slid off of his lap to kneel between his legs. Angelus breathed in heavy unnecessary gasps, wondering whether his little near-virgin would go through with her insinuation or if she would back out at the last and most frustrating moment.

Buffy nipped along the belt line of his leather pants, swirling her tongue into the indentation of his navel before she raked her nails down his chest to the fastenings of his pants.

The handsome vampire stared down at her golden crown and watched her ease his hardened flesh out of his confining pants. She studied the hardened muscle, trailing her fingertip over the bulbous head and then down the sensitive seam along the front of his shaft. Angelus shook with the force of his restraint, allowing her to explore and study as his cock hardened to nearly painful proportions before her fascinated gaze. Her green gaze flickered up at him coquettishly and he knew he couldn’t take too much more of her teasing: he’d been too hungry for her for too long. He opened his mouth to demand that she suck it, but the words were strangled in his throat when the wet heat of her mouth closed over the head of his cock.

She wrapped her fist around the base of his shaft and held the throbbing muscle still for her ministrations as she slid her mouth further over his straining member, swirling her tongue over the head and into the little indentation at the front.

The vampire quivered slightly as his inexperienced lover made up for that lack of experience with a good deal of enthusiasm and curiosity.

Buffy slid her free hand up his belly and trailed her fingers over his nipples, flicking them as she continued to suck voraciously on his cock. Her head bobbed and she bent forward, allowing the golden locks of her hair to trail across the bare skin of his belly, the fine strands tickling him.

Angelus groaned and concentrated on the wet heat of her mouth, trembling when she began to pump his shaft in time with her suction. At that rate he knew he wasn’t going to last very long, and then he lost track of time as the daze of pleasure flooded his brain, leaving him mindless to anything but the wet suction of her hot mouth.

She breathed him in, reveling in the clean spicy scent of him, enjoying the taste of him in her mouth and most of all loving the fact that she could make him quiver with delight.

He didn’t know how long it lasted, how long her tongue swirled over his sensitive flesh, how long her soft fingers pumped him or how long she pleasurably hummed over his engorged cock, all he knew was that she had tipped the scales of his control and his release was powerful.

All he knew was that he snarled as he arched into her, his balls tightening almost painfully as he shot his cool dead seed into the warm haven of her mouth; he nearly came again when he saw that she swallowed him down.

She felt him quiver beneath her and she kept her mouth over his quiescent flesh, sucking the last of his emissions down her throat without thought. Slowly, she released his cock from the prison of her lips and laid her cheek upon his thigh, her warm breath caressing his softened flesh as she looked up at him, studying how the pleasure had softened the arrogance of his features.

Buffy smiled softly; she had done that to him. She, an inexperienced teenaged girl had brought that look of carnal fulfillment to this experienced man’s face.

If his heart beat, he was sure that it would have exploded. He had expected pleasure. It was a blowjob; even the worst blowjob was still fantastic, but he hadn’t expected her to take to it so enthusiastically, nor had he expected her to react so attentively to each of his responses.

Damn. He felt his demonic visage smooth back down to his human countenance and looked down to meet the golden Slayer’s pleased gaze. He scowled, embarrassed by her pleasure at his lack of control.

“Well you’ve improved,” he sneered, knowing that the stupid remark was more trouble than it was worth, but unable to stop his mouth from saying it. He had lost control like an untried youth and he hadn’t been an untried youth in over two hundred and fifty-five years. Hell, by the time he had taken possession of the body, Liam was no longer an untried youth, and he had been brought to climax in a matter of minutes by an inexperienced seventeen year-old girl.

Buffy chuckled softly and slid up his body to perch astride his lap again. She leaned against him, pressing her breasts against his chest and stroked her fingers lazily through his hair. "Don’t be like that baby,” she cajoled. “Besides, that won’t play this time. You already showed your cards on that one, lover."

He scowled, bemused by her confident answer. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

The golden Slayer lifted one of his large hands in her own, pressing her palm to his, comparing the disproportionate sizes of their fingers before she laced them together. She smirked knowingly and with her free hand, traced the curve of his lower lip. “Your lips said all the right hurtful words, and at first,” she admitted, “I was crushed. I wept and sobbed my little heart out into my pillow, just like you wanted me to. I kept going over and over every detail, wondering what I could have done wrong, how I could have disappointed you, but then your hand betrayed you.” The pleasant afterglow of orgasm was still pulling at him, trying to sink his mind into dull lassitude, but Angelus forced his still shaking body to still, so he could concentrate on what she was saying. His beloved raised his hand to her face, stroking her cheek against the backs of his fingers. “What the hell do you mean?” he repeated.

She laughed again, a soft teasing note. “’Was it good for you?’ You wrote. You're the king of double messages. That was there to ask me if killing Jenny’s Uncle Enyos was as good for me as it was for you. But you also wrote it to put in one more dig about my performance in bed. One more dig to let me know just how unmemorable I was. Except…One. Little. Word. Changes. Everything. I was inexperienced, that's part and parcel with the whole virgin thing, but let's not pretend, okay baby?” She leaned against his chest and pressed a tender kiss to his stern lips. “You had a good time,” she stated without doubt. She raised his right hand to her lips and pressed several open-mouthed sucking kisses to each finger and digit as she spoke. “Your hand, your talented, beautiful hand wrote 'too', T-O-O, meaning also, and revealed the truth behind your beautiful,” she lifted her lips from his knuckles and turned instead to place a gentle kiss on his mouth, “lying…lips."

He blinked in shock. Too. Had he really written ‘too’ on that stupid wall? He looked down into her amused gaze and sighed in resignation. Yes, he had. He had been so busy trying to prove that the passionate encounter had meant nothing to him that he had let slip that it had meant a great deal and his normally not-detail-orientated girl had caught it. Ah well, even demons had off days.

Buffy leaned back on his lap and gave him a sexy leer. “Now, are you going to pout all night, or are you going to make me glad I’m here.”

Angelus laid his hands on her hips and squeezed the muscled fullness of her curves appreciatively. “Demon’s don’t pout, we brood.”

She grinned. “You don’t brood. You scheme…you plot…you scourge.”

He laughed softly and pulled her in to kiss her, the languor of his climax already fading as a new hunger began to build. He shifted his hands to her silk covered breasts, palming a plump mound and flicking his thumb over her nipple.

The delicate blond moaned as her lover tormented her mercilessly, tugging at her nipples until they stiffened beneath his insistent touch.

The delicate perfume of her growing arousal filled his nostrils and Angelus growled softly, pleased at her response. “Are you wet for me?” he crooned, already knowing the answer.

Buffy arched her breasts more fully into his hands; they ached, her nipples throbbing in time with the ache that was steadily building between her legs. “You know I am,” she panted, pressing her satin-covered crotch down hard against his cool naked groin.

“Check for me,” he ordered. “Slide your fingers between your legs and tell me what you feel.”

She moaned in distress; she didn’t want to feel her fingers there, she wanted to feel his.

“Do it,” he ordered her firmly, bending to take one of her engorged nipples into his mouth. He wet the silky cloth of her camisole and sucked the tight little bud between his lips.

Obedient to his will, the delicate blond slid her hand down to the flirty material of her skirt. She lifted the fabric to the side and slid her fingers into her panties, pushing into the moist folds of her sex. Her core ached for the full press of him inside her and she pressed down hard against his lengthening cock, trying to alleviate the emptiness inside.

Angelus arched her back over his forearm, lifting her away from his cock. She would not steal satisfaction from him; she would beg for it. “Tell me,” he reminded her as he released one turgid nipple and turned to give its mate equal and ardent attention.

“I’m wet,” Buffy groaned. “I’m wet, and slick and hot.” She traced her fingers through her own plump folds, trying to give herself some relief from the hunger he so effortlessly and so powerfully aroused. “I’m swollen…”

The dark-eyed vampire growled warningly and caught her hand, preventing her from delving deeper into her hungry flesh. “What do you want?” he demanded tauntingly.

“You,” she sighed. “I want you.”

Pleased with her answer, he released her wrist and delved beneath the black satin of her panties himself. He combed through her nether curls and stroked her throbbing flesh skillfully.

“Yes,” she hissed, arching more fully into the caress, wanting him deeper, wanting him inside where she was empty. “Please.”

Always happy to oblige such sweet requests, Angelus sank his middle finger deep into her slick core, wringing a wail of startled pleasure from her lips. “Like this?” he purred, easing the long digit in and out of her heated channel. “Or this?” he asked as he pushed a second finger into her slick folds, pumping his fingers in and out of her moist heat, building her hunger for fulfillment higher. The vampire circled his thumb over her clit, flicking the stiffened bud of her pleasure as he pumped his fingers inside her. “Yes,” she mewled, arching her breast against his moving lips and pressing down harder into the hand that moved between her thighs. “Yes...Ohh…Yes. Oh God, Angel.”

Angelus snarled at her murmur and stood abruptly, lifting her with him and then slamming her down on the surface of the dining table; the pewter goblet bounced away with a metallic clang.

Buffy opened her dazed eyes and focused on the irritated features of her lover, knowing that she had done something to anger him, but not quite sure what it was. She arched against the fingers still within her core. “Please,” she whispered.

“Angelus,” he told her.

She gasped, lifting her feet up to the table to give herself leverage to move against his still hand. “Wh-what?”

“Angelus.”

The diminutive blond moaned and whimpered when he clamped his teeth over an aching nipple firmly.

“Say it,” he demanded, plunging his fingers deep within her channel.

“Angelus,” she wailed, arching high against his talented fingers.

The master vampire crouched over her, paying devoted attention to her swollen breasts as he sent his other hand down to join the first in tormenting his passionate lover. He ripped the satin protection of her panties from her, giving himself free access to her moist femininity and plunged three fingers into her grasping core as he teased her outer folds with his second hand.

“Oh God,” she whimpered breathlessly.

“No,” he scolded thickly. “Not God. Me. Angelus. Say it. Say it.”

“Angelus.” she cried, arching her hips up hard.

“Again.”

“Angelus.” She said it. “Angelus.” She sobbed it. “Angelus.” She keened it as he continued to ply her body with his skillful caresses. She chanted it, gasping the syllables out in time with her ragged breaths and her thundering heart beats.

The angelically handsome demon kissed her passionately, delighting in the way she continued to breathe his name against his lips. Pleased with her responsiveness, he nipped her passion-swollen lips and built her desire higher until she was clawing at his shoulders, desperate for the release only he could give her.

He paused and she arched, frozen at the pinnacle just before climax, whimpering beneath his masterful hands.

“Now scream it,” he ordered her hoarsely, pinching her swollen clitoris skillfully and spinning her into the overpowering explosion.

“Angelus!” She screamed it.

He continued to stroke her, shoving her into one rippling climax after another until she trembled uncontrollably beneath his slightest caress, clawing wildly at his shoulders. “Please,” she whimpered raggedly, clutching at him weakly. It was too much. Too much pleasure and she needed a respite. He slowed his fingers to a soothing caress, letting her come down from the peak of her pleasure, waiting for her to return to her senses. Long minutes ticked by as she shivered beneath him, quivering in the aftermath of her climaxes before she slowly opened her vibrant green gaze.

Languorously, Buffy looked up at him, her gaze partially glazed in shocked pleasure. Her breaths came in short bursts and her heartbeat thundered so wildly in her ears she briefly wondered whether or not he was listening to it.

The Master Vampire smirked down at her, at the blond beauty sprawled across his dining table like a succulent meal, her sleek thighs spread wantonly apart and his fingers deep within her moist sex. Masculine triumph speared sharply through him and with his left hand he gently smoothed her sweat-dampened hair from her face.

"You're a bad, bad man," she whispered in a shaky tone, digging her nails into his shoulders as she searched his dark gaze intently.

Angelus chuckled softly, pleased with the dazed expression in her eyes and leaned over her, a looming predator over his helpless prey. "Tell me more, baby,” he rumbled. “Tell me just how bad I am."

Buffy moaned as his movement changed the position of his fingers in her sensitive core and pressed the thick length of his cock against the portal of her body. He nipped her beneath her chin and she tilted her head back, baring her throat submissively. Her body tingled, the pulse points in her throat, her wrists and between her legs beginning to throb with renewed hunger. Would it never stop? Would she always need more of him? Would she always need more of his lips, more of his hands and more of his sleek powerful body between her legs?

"Bad,” she panted raggedly. “Very, very, bad. Big, bad, evil man."

The vampire grinned and curled his left fist into the lapel of the soft red leather jacket she wore in lieu of the one he had given her and jerked her closer to him. "Just accept it, baby,” he crooned. “You strayed from the path, Little Red, and now the Big, Bad Wolf's got you."

Her breath hitched anxiously. "Are you going to eat me up?"

The dark chocolate of his eyes lit with fiendish deviltry and his gaze shifted down to the vulnerable flesh bared by her spread thighs. Angelus grinned wolfishly. "Oh, yeah, baby,” he drawled. “I'm definitely going to eat you."

Her heart skipped a beat as the dark predator pressed a hard ruthless kiss to her swollen mouth, nipping her sharply on her lower lip before he began to slide down her body.

“Angelus,” she moaned.

He rumbled softly and nipped the curve of her clavicle before he slid down to capture a pebbled nipple between his lips. He suckled on the jewel hard tip of her breast, lashing his tongue over the sensitive point and Buffy moaned at the sensations, shifting against the long fingers that rested unmoving within the hot channel of her body.

Angelus grinned against her breast and curved his fingers as he slowly withdrew them from her body, tickling her inner walls and brushing against the bundle of nerves beneath her mound. She arched hungrily against his withdrawing fingers, her core already moist and achingly empty. “Please,” she whimpered. The demon ignored her soft plea and traced his lips down over her ribs and the concave firmness of her belly, pausing to nip sharply above her hip.

The diminutive beauty allowed her fingers to slip from his shoulders and trailed them to his dark hair. Restlessly she shifted beneath him, stroking and clenching his hair in her fingers. Angelus pressed a kiss beneath her navel, nipping that soft flesh as well before he shifted away from her arching body. He pushed her skirt up until it was little more than a band of fabric wrapped around her waist and feasted his eyes upon the inviting lushness of her moist sex.

His unneeded breaths fell across the plump folds of her femininity and Buffy moaned as he placed his lips not on the her slick femininity, but on the inside of her thigh, licking and nibbling on her smooth skin.

“Angelus.”

He ignored her and turned his attention to her other thigh, rubbing his cheek along her flesh and pressing cool open-mouthed kisses along her tense muscles.

Buffy groaned and bracing her booted feet on the scarred surface of the table, arched hungrily toward him. He had done this act the night she had lost her virginity, rendering her so mindless with desire that she had never felt a moment’s pain at the breaching of her hymen. There had only been the lashing pleasure of his lips and tongue, the ruthless pleasure he had plied her with until she had begged him to be inside her and end the empty ache of her body clenching upon itself when she needed him.

Angelus pressed her firmly down to the table and then lifted her right foot. He eased the knee-high boot down her calf and then completely off, revealing a white ankle sock; he grinned at the Nike swoosh and the little stenciled words that encouraged his relentlessly slow exploration: ‘Just do it.’ He slid the sock off of her foot and dropped it with the boot and then lifted her tiny foot and her crimson-painted toe nails to his lips.

The Chosen One sighed as her vampire lover pressed his lips against the soft arch of her foot before sliding an open-mouthed kiss to her ankle and nipping gently at her Achilles tendon. Her skin tingled and his every brush against her skin shot violent shivers along her spine.

His hands smoothed up and down her thighs, his fingertips brushing just against the lips of her weeping core and then sliding away.

Her second boot and sock followed the first to the floor and he pressed ardent kisses against her soft soles and ankles before he slid her legs over his shoulders. “Angelus…please.”

The angelically beautiful fiend slid his hands along her legs, tracing her sleek musculature and following his lazy exploration with his lips.

Buffy clenched her thighs over his shoulders, attempting to use her calf muscles to force him where she wanted him; Angelus pressed her hips ruthlessly back down and sharply nipped her inner thigh as punishment while growling a warning at her. “Little Red Riding Hood does not force the wolf to her,” he scolded, his lips caressing her legs and drawing closer and closer to the apex of her thighs. He trailed his fingers over her, combing her golden curls and then tracing the slick folds of her sex. “Nor does she attempt to force the wolf to eat her. She is simply eaten, despite her screams, despite her clawing and despite her cries for mercy.”

He slid his fingers against her slick femininity, trailing his long fingers against her until her hips were churning restlessly against him, “Oh, God Angelus,” she whimpered. “Please. Please.”

“That’s right baby,” he growled, his dark gaze lighting with the saffron gold of demonic passion. “Scream for mercy, but you shall have none.”

She panted raggedly, a breathless but willing victim to his carnality and keened in delight when he at last placed his lips at the lips of her sex.

He licked her along the moist cavern of her body, his broad shoulders widening her thighs. He explored her with his tongue, dipping in to investigate her every fold and crevice. He trailed his fingertips lightly along the outer lips of her pussy and swirled his tongue around the bundle of nerves that fueled the height of her pleasure.

Buffy shifted until the soles of her feet rested on his bare shoulders and arched hard against the heaven of his mouth. Desire lashed at her with every stroke of his tongue, shoving her higher and higher in the maelstrom of her hunger for him. She curled her toes into his shoulders, whimpering softly.

“Please.”

As he had promised, there was no mercy to be found. He ate and licked at her until her muscles quivered and her hips churned anxiously against his mouth. Delicately, he slid a finger into her hot channel and she wailed, sliding her legs back down over his shoulders to clutch him tighter to her.

“Oh God…oh…yes…Please. Angelus. Angelus. Angelus.”

A delicious roll of her hips accompanied every utterance of his name as she tried to lure his fingers deeper into her, but he denied her, forcing her hunger and the ache of emptiness to nearly unbearable extremes. No more satisfaction would she have from him until he was inside her, and he would not come inside her until she begged him.

He ate her and she wailed. He licked her and nibbled her and she screamed and writhed against him. He ignored her pleas for more and ignored her entreaties for him to stop. He kept going until she sobbed weakly, keening his name over and over again.

The emptiness inside her hot slick channel became over powering and Buffy reached down to grab the loose flaps of his shirt pulling him desperately up her body. “Inside me,” she begged. “Come inside me.”

Angelus growled and caught hold of her wrists and pinned them roughly to the table, his eyes blazed demonic gold as he stared triumphantly at the writhing girl beneath him.

“Don’t stop,” she begged him. “Don’t stop. Inside me. Please. I need you.”

He held her pinned against the scarred surface of the table and bent over her, his larger body easily pinning her smaller more delicate one. “Do you accept me as your mate?”

“Yes. Yes,” she panted mindlessly.

The vampire tightened his grip over her wrists. “Who am I?”

“Angelus,” she whispered.

He impaled her with a hard, sure thrust and she screamed, her body bowing into an arch as her orgasm rolled over her. Giving her no time to recover, he thrust forward until he was sheathed to the hilt in her heat. He growled low in his throat, snarling possessively.

She gloried in the fullness, in the ecstasy of being filled by him again; he began to move, his hips pistoning in and out of her powerfully. The violent throbbing between her legs increased and despite the climax that had just claimed her, another exploded through her system. She slammed her hips up to meet his every thrust, whimpering helplessly as climax after climax exploded along her nerve endings.

Satisfied with her supplicant cries of bliss, Angelus released her wrists and gathered her close to him, pounding into her hot silky depths with near mindless ferocity. Buffy wrapped her arms around him, digging her nails into his shoulders and wrapping her legs tightly around his waist. She panted and cried out her encouragement into his ear, arching high against his every thrust.

He plunged into her over and over again, the violence of his possession shocking him. He heard her cry out, a thin wail, and wondered whether or not he had pushed her past the resiliency of Slayers and into the fragility of mortals, but despite her high, piercing wails, he could not bring himself to stop. She was his. He would make sure she never doubted that she was his again.

“More,” she demanded, digging her nails into his skin so deeply she drew blood.

The vampire snarled in ecstasy.

“Harder,” she cried out.

Her heartbeat thundered in his ears. The exquisite scent of her and him filled his nostrils. Her breaths fell like warm mist against his skin.

Driving harder into the searing heat of her body, he kissed her passionately, sucking and biting at her petal soft lips. She pulled reluctantly away to breath and denied her lips, his atavistic gaze fell to the throbbing pulse beneath her jaw.

“Want you,” he snarled, burying his face against her neck as he pounded into her.

“Yes,” she breathed.

Unable to resist, Angelus felt his brow ridge up and his fangs drop as the driving passion between them escalated beyond his control. He must have her, all of her. Knowing that he would never be able to stop himself if he sank a fang into her artery, he forced himself to her shoulder and sank his fangs into the cord of muscle that led to her beautiful throat. Blood burst across his tongue and he swallowed greedily, the rich power of her blood and the taste of love flooding his senses.

The ferocious pace continued until he could no longer hold his climax back and their mutual pleasure exploded within them, hot and intense.

Buffy arched hard into his downward thrust and screamed ecstatically as she was impaled on both cock and fang, her orgasm rolling so powerfully over her she felt the world slipping away into darkness.

The master vampire released his bite and collapsed weakly against his mortal lover, his unnecessary breaths short and erratic. He licked delicately at the neat wound he had place on her shoulder and he purred in bliss. There was no greater ecstasy in the world than this delicate woman’s fervent embrace.

Her arms slipped limply from his shoulders and her thighs slid slackly away from his hips.

Angelus jerked back, worried that he had taken too much from her in his near-mindless passion and had killed her, but her heart beat on, its rhythm strong, and her breaths were slow and even.

The only death he had offered the golden Slayer was the Petit Mort – the Little Death, and true to his tradition, he thought with a smug grin, he had offered it with a song in his heart.

He stroked her hair tenderly, a deep satisfied purr rumbling softly in his throat.

Long seconds ticked by until at last her eyes fluttered open. Buffy looked up at him, her gaze partially glazed in shocked pleasure and smiled languorously up at her demon. Pleasure thrummed through her body and she felt dizzy with delight. She was eternally lost beneath this man’s spell and there was no use pretending that she wasn’t.

“I love you,” she breathed.

What? She what? Angelus froze as he stared down at her passion-flushed features in disbelief. It was what he had wanted, what he had set out to accomplish, but now that she had said it, he didn’t know if it was just the heat of the moment or whether she meant it. She was human – she was the Slayer, he was a demon, how could she mean it?

“What?” he asked, pulling back from her.

“I love you,” she repeated.

“Me?” he demanded roughly.

“You,” she whispered. She twined her arms around his neck and quickly clamped her thighs around his hips, preventing him from moving away from her. What she was about to say could enrage him, but she needed him to know it. “I loved Angel.”

Angelus snarled, angered by the mention of the soul. How could she even mention the choirboy after the rapture he had just shown her?

Buffy held him tightly. “No,” she breathed. “Listen. I loved Angel with all of my heart and soul. He was the kindest, bravest, most thoughtful and loving man I’d ever known.”

“Brave,” Angelus sneered. “He was afraid to go with you to face the Master.”

“But he came anyways,” she defended. “Brave is not being without fear. It’s still going forward even if you’re afraid. I loved him. No other man ever treated me like he did…as if I were – infinitely precious to him.”

She had been.

Now she was infinitely precious to him too.

The vampire ground his teeth together trembling with rage, resentment and – yes, hurt – that she would dare utter that abomination’s name after he, Angelus, had brought her to such uncontrollable rapture.

She turned his face gently with her palm, forcing him to look down at her. She searched his gaze imploringly, begging him to understand what she was saying. “The very nature of a vampire deems that the possessing demon – you – is imprinted upon the memories of the host – Angel. You have no memories previous to being inside of this body, do you?”

The demon was silent and stiff within her embrace, arching away from her angrily, but the golden Slayer pulled him insistently back down against her. She pressed gentle kisses against his hardened jaw.

“That makes you an echo of the personality that was,” she continued determinedly. “You are an echo, a dark reflection of the man who was Angel. And he was so wonderful, so worthy a man that the demon who is his echo is worthy of my devotion. You are the demonic incarnation of the man I love and as such, I can’t do anything other than love you too, because I loved him so much. My darkling,” she kissed him persuasively. “Mine. I love you.”

“I am not the echo,” he snarled resentfully. “He is the echo of me. You would never have loved that worthless drunkard Liam and your ‘precious’ Angel was imprinted and born of me. That makes him the echo.”

She cradled his glowering face and pulled him insistently down to her lips. “Whoever was the echo of whom, does it really matter when I love both? You’re here now. You’re with me. You’re the man that just made love to me. You’re the man who just made me scream. You’re the man who defends my honor and kills demons to please me.” She tightened her internal muscles over the softened flesh of his cock. “And you’re the man who’s still inside me.”

Angelus closed his eyes as he listened to her impassioned plea, allowed her to place tender, persuasive kisses along his the line of his jaw. His plan had been to go through her affections for soul-boy to win her heart and it had worked, but he wasn’t certain whether it was enough.

Did she love him in his own right or could she see that that weakling soul was still trapped inside of him? No. She didn’t love the pure aspect of the demon, but he no longer even was a pure aspect of a demon; he hadn’t been since the moment he had been born in Liam and he had become even less so during the decades of incarceration within the ensouled Angel. He was a tarnished demon, but it was that very tarnishment that the woman in his arms loved.

It was enough…for now. She was here willingly. She was in his arms willingly. In time, she would prefer him to that weak soul. In time, she would find out that of the two of them, he was the more worthy of being with her. He was the more loyal and committed of the two men, for in the end, when things got tough, Liam still ran. Besides, that loser Angel was the one who was banished into obscurity beneath Angelus; the demon was now the dominant personality and that weakling soul would never control the body again.

“Angel?”

The lilting, little-girl voice of the maddened vampiress was a jarring and unwelcome interruption that shattered the fragile emotional moment between the two lovers.

Buffy sighed and drew her hands away from Angelus’ jaw as the Master Vampire growled in irritation.

He shifted to rise from his position over her, but she tightened her intimate clasp on his hips, preventing his withdrawal.

Angelus glanced at her challenging expression then mentally shrugged and turned his head to look at his cowering childe. “What is it, Dru?”

“Angel, my tummy is all rumbly and my Spike won’t wake up. You have to take me out for the crimson dance.”

The handsome vampire stared down at the beautiful girl beneath him, stretched out like a forbidden offering, her muscled thighs gripping him tightly to her. Leave this? Now?

“I’m done dancing that song tonight, Dru. Take the biker and drain what’s left in him. If that’s not enough, you’ll just have to go out alone.”

“Daddy – “

“Go,” he snarled, his face shifting.

The brunette whimpered softly and went to grab the dead man by the wrist. She dragged him from the room, trailing his body behind her like a sullen child dragged her favorite blanket when sent to bed.

As the dark-haired vampiress disappeared back into her bedroom, the Slayer looked up at her predatory-featured lover and raised her eyebrows inquiringly. “How come she gets to call you Angel?”

Angelus bent down over her, a low rumble building in his throat. “Because Dru knows exactly who she’s talking to.” He lifted her arm and pressed a kiss against the crook of her elbow, the points of his teeth pricking her skin. “Before this night is over, you’ll know too.”

“Will I?” she asked breathlessly, trembling in anticipation as his brow ridges thickened and his fangs lengthened.

His golden eyes flared brightly and he grasped her shoulders, pulling her roughly up to kiss her fervently. “You’ll never doubt it again,” he vowed thickly.

Buffy curled her fingers into his shoulder, her nails digging into his flesh. “Really? How are you going to manage that?”

The golden-eyed vampire smirked, his sensual lips pulling into a faintly cruel smile. He withdrew from her body and backed up a pace, pulling her upright and off the table with him.

Her thighs slid slowly down his legs until her toes rested on the floor. She staggered and clutched his shoulders for support, her legs feeling rubbery.

“Well?” she taunted him softly.

Angelus growled softly, a vibrating vocalization that was somewhere between a warning and a purr, and bent to pick her up in his arms. This dominating the Slayer thing was apparently going to require effort; a master vampire like himself loved challenges.

He carried her out of the common room and into the privacy of his own bedroom.

~

“Bloody hell,” Rupert Giles mutter explosively as he pulled away from the eyepiece of the microscope. “Cordelia, this would go a good deal more quickly if you would stop hovering at my shoulder.” The brunette May Queen shifted away from his side haughtily. “Well you’re taking too long. God only knows what those losers have gotten up to. I mean please! Willow bought Ecstasy.”

“I am quite aware of what’s at stake. Now, I believe I’ve identified the last compound in the powder,” Giles took off his glasses and polished the lens carefully. “It’s lilies – or to be more exact, dried lily petals.”

Cordelia dutifully noted his conclusion down on the note pad. “So, sulfur, mistletoe and lilies? Kind of a weird combination.”

“Yeah,” Oz agreed in a bemused tone. “Two out of the three are poisons.”

Giles nodded absently. “Yes, but I believe their physical toxicity has somehow been shifted to magical toxicity.”

“So they’re still a poison of some sort?” the brown-haired guitarist asked.

Giles picked up several books, glancing at their spines briefly as he searched for his herbology resource. “I do believe so. But with the poisons shifted to the magical plain, there’s no telling precisely what this concoction does until I’ve researched the mystical qualities of the items in question.”

Cordelia dropped into one of the chairs surrounding the library table and drummed her fingertips impatiently.

“And do stop that irritating patter,” Giles muttered, flipping open one of his botanical books.

The doors to the library suddenly swung open and the tall lean form of Ethan Rayne entered. He grinned triumphantly at Giles and strutted toward the trio. “Ripper,” he greeted in a gloating tone. “There you are. I hope you’re feeling like your old trouble-causing self again. I need your help.” He glanced at the beautiful brunette then the short brown haired boy. “Why don’t you kiddies run along so we grownups can have a little chat?”

Giles clenched his teeth as the cause of all his troubles strutted arrogantly forward. The bespectacled Watcher set aside his books and slowly stood up. “Ethan,” he smiled as he approached his old disreputable friend. “I didn’t think you’d be back in town so soon after I last kicked your arse.”

The brown-haired sorcerer smiled in an ingratiating fashion. “Well, you know me. Never can stay away from what promises to be a good time. And I’m sure the Ripper I know and love is back.” He glanced at the floating bouquet meaningfully. “I see you got my balloons. Are you ready to take care of some business? I’ve found the Scrolls of Aberjaan. Even have a client already chomping at the bit, eager to buy, but I thought that since they regard the End of Days battles, it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a translation of my own before I hand scrolls over to those backstabbing lawyers. You translate and I’ll go…say 30/70 on the sale.”

“Really,” Giles lifted his hand to stroke his chin, pretending to contemplate the offer. “And why would I be agreeable to that?”

“Well, becau – “

The staid Watcher slammed his fist abruptly into Ethan’s supercilious face, knocking the slickly dressed sorcerer to his back.

Ethan clutched his hand to his bleeding nose and glared accusingly at his attacker. “Didn’t you read the card?” he demanded indignantly.

“Yes,” Giles commented, quickly closing in on his friend-turned-enemy to plant a solid kick in his ribs. “But I didn’t open it.”

Ethan groaned and curled into a ball to protect himself. “Well, bugger,” he grunted.

“Yes, quite,” Ripper drawled with false sympathy. “Now, what did you use Ethan?”

The chaos worshipper grinned up at the Watcher through his blood. “What’s the matter Ripper? Your girl open your card? Is she out backing the forces of darkness?”

Giles turned his gaze to the shocked expressions of the May Queen and the young guitarist: no point in them witnessing this, especially since Oz still didn’t know about Buffy being the Slayer. “Cordelia, Oz, why don’t you two go and locate Willow and Xander before they get into any mischief. Ethan and I,” he paused to walk to the weapons cabinet in the cage and withdrew a double-bladed knife, “will have that little chat.”

Cordelia shoved away from the table and headed toward the exit, Oz right behind her. They cast several interested looks over their shoulders, but apparently decided that Giles was about to reveal some depths to his character that they didn’t want to know about.

The Watcher turned his attention back to his guest and called out a last instruction to the departing teens. “Call when you find them.”

Ethan rolled to his back, watching the knife that his adversary held. “This really isn’t necessary…”

“What did you use?” Giles asked pleasantly.

~

Willow placed her hand on the bruised face of the platinum-haired princess she had been playing with and tilted her face toward the light, her gentle movement at odds with her earlier brutality.

The blonde’s grey eyes were fixed and dilated, her once pretty features now bruised, lacerated and quite slack.

The red haired hacker scowled petulantly and firmly pinched the princess’ chin between her fingers as she shook her head. “This one's broken. She doesn't cry anymore.” She got up from her broken toy and wiped the spatters of blood off of her face with the torn shreds of the girl’s skirt. “Bored now,” she sang irritably.

Xander pulled his pants back up over his hips and fastened them. Using his foot, he shoved sweet writhing Ruth over onto her back and stared at the broken bones of her once pretty face. “Not much to work with over here either,” he sighed. “Well, why don’t we go back to the Bronze?”

“Sounds good,” Willow replied, tossing the shreds of cloth she had cleaning her face and hands with to the ground. Carefully she stripped off her shirt, letting the grinning sunshine drop to the ground and with a sigh of satisfaction, she pulled on her new shirt: a black lace wrap that emphasized the swells of her breasts and made her skin look pale and flawless.

The dark-haired boy watched his best friend as she changed and then stepped away from the broken girls, careful to not put his cast in any of the pools of blood that now stained the floor. He grabbed up the torch from the wall and calmly set fire to the bloody rags and Willow’s old shirt. Stepping closer to the two sprawled and catatonic girls, he paused to admire the blond. “Nice work, Will. You do that with a beer bottle?

“Uh-huh. Let’s go.” She turned and walked toward the door of the crypt, pausing to glance back at her friend. But before we do…Kill them for me.”

Xander smiled cruelly “Anything for you, Will.” He lowered the torch toward their bodies and paused when a sudden wind from the crypt door caused the fire to flicker violently. He looked toward the now open door and at the slender brunette that stood in the entryway.

Drusilla peered interestedly at the two broken women on the ground. “You were having a tea party,” she observed but then added sadly, “I never get invited to parties anymore.”

Willow and Xander peered back at the vampiress, taking in the blackened flesh around her bloodstained mouth and the dark bruises that marred her pale skin.

Xander snorted with laughter. “Hey look Will. It’s the looney-toon and it looks like she got her ass kicked.”

Drusilla turned her gaze to the dark-haired boy and the redhead, her lip stuck out in a little-girl pout. “Mummy was cross. Daddy was pleased.”

“Mummy?” Willow repeated in interest.

The wild-eyed vampiress nodded forlornly. “Slayer threw me through the looking glass, has bewitched my Angel and broken my Spike.” She whined softly, like a dog, whimpering over her injuries and then pointed to the two girls lying on the floor of the crypt. “I must bring the oysters home for dinner. You’ve spilt your tea. Clean cup, clean cup, move down.”

Xander stepped forward between the mad brunette and his kills, brandishing the torch threateningly. “You move down.”

Willow grabbed his arm and gently restrained him “No, she right. The party’s over.” The redhead grinned cunningly. “Let her have them.”

Drusilla smiled radiantly, revealing that the charred flesh surrounding her lips continued inside of her mouth and that several of her teeth were missing. “Thank you for the pastries, Red Queen.”

Willow nodded graciously as she and Xander cautiously circled around the injured vampire to the door. She waved gaily as they walked away into the night. “See you at the ninth square!”

The mad vampiress watched them leave and then stooped to pick up her prizes, tucking one injured and non-struggling girl beneath each arm.

~

She curled around him languidly, her body feeling boneless and pleasantly numb from their wild sexual marathon. She wasn’t quite sure how they’d ended up in their current position, with her the crossing top to his T, but all in all despite the fact that she couldn’t wrap her self around him like a clinging vine at present, she had no complaints. She rested her left cheek on her out-stretched arm and smiled blissfully, content to have her natural enemy use her stomach as a pillow. She enjoyed the silence between them, enjoyed the soft hazy afterglow that clung to them and unable to stop touching him, she ran her fingers tenderly through his hair.

Angelus turned his head slightly and looked at his golden lover; she had the appearance of a woman who had been recently – and thoroughly – loved: her skin was flushed, her hair was wildly rumpled and her lips were swollen from the ferocity of his kisses.

“What are you smiling about?”

Buffy curled her fingers in his hair and tugged gently. “Pierce Brosnan.”

The master vampire blinked at the unexpected answer. “Who?” he rumbled.

“Just an actor,” she sighed.

“And just why,” he growled, “are you thinking of this man when you’re in bed with me?” Surely she hadn’t been fantasizing about this Brosnan character while they’d been –

“My mom went on a real Pierce Brosnan kick a few months ago,” she explained, continuing to stroke her fingers through his hair. “I think we must have watched every movie he ever made. Anyways, there was this poem in one of them. I was just thinking about that poem.”

He rolled slightly to look at her more directly. “You’re going to recite poetry to me?” he asked skeptically.

“Hey, you get it from books, I get it from movies, but poetry is poetry. Now, do you want to hear this or not?”

His brows arched in amusement. “Tell me,” he invited, wondering whether he was about to be subjected to some bubblegum pop version of “Roses are Red and Violets are Blue.”

Buffy stroked her fingers down his face, tracing his brow to his cheek and then the sensual curve of his lips. “’Because thou lovest the burning ground,’” she intoned softly, “’I have made a burning ground of my heart, that thou the keeper of the eternal flame, may dance thy eternal dance.’”

He thought about it: thought about the barely leashed violence within her; thought about the man she had killed to please him; and thought about her vicious brutality to his childer. Somehow, for some reason, the Slayer had made room in her heart for a demon to burn, and to make sure he was comfortable, she had turned up the heat within herself.

Angelus rolled to his side and cupped her jaw, tilting her head back to meet his kiss. No more raging inferno tonight…or rather, no more raging inferno at the moment: just the hot, slow heat that simmered between them.

Buffy moaned softly in delight, sliding her fingers from his hair to his shoulder as the pleasure of his lips and carnal caress curled her toes.

He pulled back from her lips to look at her, his young lover. His young mortal lover. She was so terribly young, but he knew that it was not time that would try to steal her away from his arms. No. Time was the least of her dangers. Brutal destiny was the problem. Those vicious fucks that were the Powers That Be would not be satisfied until his golden goddess lay bleeding and broken on a pile of rubble, her beautiful green eyes glassy and empty with death.

No matter what side she fought on, good or evil, the Powers were never satisfied until their Champions and their Swords were broken and a new innocent was ripped from her life and forced into divine servitude.

Well, he would not lose Buffy to their self-righteous cruelty. She would not be stolen from him…not by conflict…not by time.

“You look unhappy,” Buffy murmured, stroking her fingertips along the furrows of his brow. “Didn’t you like it?”

“I did,” he replied, sitting up. “But it touched on something that we should deal with.”

“You’re spoiling the mood,” she pouted.

“We’ll have others. Other nights. Other days. In fact we could have an eternity of them.”

She stiffened and sat up slowly to face him. “What are you saying?” she asked him carefully.

Angelus combed his fingers through her hair and then let his fingers trail down the naked length of her body, from her shoulder, to her breast and down to her hip. “Eternity. I want to spend eternity with you. You’re mortal, and though as the Slayer you’re stronger than most mortals, you’re still so very fragile. Let me make you. Come across to me. Cross into night and leave daylight behind. Be with me, always.”

Buffy closed her eyes and clenched her fists, the pain of his request striking deep into her heart. How could he? After all that she’d done to prove herself, how could he ask her this?”

“Buff?”

Unable to stop herself, her hand flew out and cracked hard against his cheek with a resounding smack. “How dare you?” she hissed, springing off the bed.

The vampire snarled, enraged and baffled by her response. He stood up from the bed and stalked after her, catching her by the wrist and spinning her around to face him. “What?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”

She whirled around, hand raised to strike him again and he caught hold of her wrist; feminine punctuations of ire aside, slap or no, she was still the Slayer and she had quite a bit of punch to smack.

Buffy struggled in his hold, shoving hard against his chest and pushing him away. “How dare you? How dare you ask me to surrender you to some demoness whore!”

Angelus blinked. What?

“You just want the body? You just like the way the package looks? Then get Dru plastic surgery and some bleach!” She lunged toward him and slapped at him, open handed feeble blows that were meant to communicate her displeasure rather than be any form of punishment; she managed to land a few before he caught hold of her again, tightening his grip over her wrists so she couldn’t break away again.

“Are you Angel?” she demanded. “Are you the soul I fell in love with? No! You are an echo of him because of the curse, because of the hundred years you two spent in the same body. But that’s not the way vampirism works! It won’t be me!” A sob burst from her lips, and then another as tears began to spill from her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. “How dare you. How dare you ask me to turn my lover over to some whore along with my body?”

Angelus caught her against him and held her tightly. He didn’t want to admit that she was right, but he knew she was. That was the way that vampirism commonly worked. He was different because of those damned gypsies. And Buffy? Well, the demoness would have her memories and her mannerisms, but the eyes that looked up at him would be flat and empty, the love that burned inside her now, gone, replaced with automatic and empty responses.

He could not give her up. He adored her beautiful, radiant soul. But her body was mortal and destiny or not, time was ticking against him.

Buffy sobbed against his chest, struggling half-heartedly but her demon lover held her firmly.

“Shh,” he soothed, rocking her against him. “I want you. You. Not some demoness. I’ll find a way. I’ve done the impossible and won a Slayer’s heart, I’ll not lose her to destiny or time.”

Her tears trickled down his chest and slowly she allowed him to calm her. She tilted her head up to look at him, her eyes wet and searching his intently, seeing within him a distant fire that reassured her that this demon was different from all others. “I can’t lose you, Angelus.”

“You won’t,” he promised, cradling her head in his palms. “I swear you won’t. And I won’t lose you. I’ll find a way.”

She rocked up on her tiptoes and twined her arms around his neck, taking his lips in a soft kiss.

He could taste the salt of her tears and feel the soft puffs of breath she blew against his mouth. No more tears. She was not alone any more; there was the two of them now. There would always be the two of them. He deepened the kiss, nibbling on her lips and pulled her tightly to him, pressing her hips firmly to his groin.

The Slayer sighed and her belly gave a long loud protest of neglect.

Buffy and Angelus froze in shock.

Embarrassed at her body’s inopportune complaint, Buffy pulled away as Angelus’ gaze slipped down to the taut muscles of her slender waist.

“Hungry?” he asked with a smile.

Flushing, the delicate blond nodded.

“Crawl back into bed, baby,” he murmured with a soft laugh. “I’ll order something in for you.”

“Chinese?” she asked hopefully.

“Anything you want,” he promised her softly, stroking his thumb over her bottom lip.

~

Cordelia shoved open the door to the Bronze and entered the crowded club, Oz trailing in her wake. She scanned the gyrating dancers, craning her neck as she searched anxiously for some sign of her missing boyfriend…and Willow.

“Uh, Cordelia, we already looked here,” Oz commented as he glanced at a girl walking by wearing a textured shirt that looked as though something were ripping its way from inside of her.

“It’s either here or the library – Oz. Oz, can you pay attention here. I swear, all you guys are the same. Some girl walks by in a short skirt – “

“What? That was a nice shirt. And contrary to popular belief, when a guy looks at a girl, the first thought in his head is not always sex. It’s within the top ten, but it’s definitely not always the first.”

Cordelia stared at him, in bafflement. “Why couldn’t Devon be more like you?”

The brown-haired guitarist looked at her in surprise. He would never have guessed that Cordelia Chase would be interested in a guy like him, but then he also would never have guessed that she’d have been interested in a guy like Xander Harris either. He turned and walked away from her, “C’mon, we’ll see better from the catwalk above.”

Minutes later they perched by the steel rails of the second floor platform and scanned the lower level. Cordelia sighed impatiently. “Where the hell else do those losers hang?” She spotted a familiar sight of a brilliant pok-a-dot dress amongst the crowd below. “And I cannot believe she is wearing that Todd Oldham knock off again.”

Oz nodded absently, his attention not on the fashion faux pas in question.

The door to the Bronze swung open and Willow and Xander walked in.

The May Queen watched as the couple headed toward the dance floor, her eyes sharp on Willow’s new and less innocent appearance. “That’s not the shirt she was wearing earlier. Oh my god. Is that blood on Xander’s temple?”

The pair above watched as the pair below stepped close to each other to dance; Willow ran her fingertip over the blood streak on Xander’s temple and licked the crimson liquid.

Oz flinched slightly, ”Well, that was gross.“ He watched her wrap her arms around Xander’s neck as they began to sway to the music and he remembered that not so long ago, Willow had been hopelessly in love with the boy she was now dancing with. Cordelia’s lips tightened as she watched the little redheaded nobody wrap her arms around the dark-haired boy. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and agitatedly punched in the number for the library; the phone rang several times before Giles answered. “We found Willow and Xander. And Willow is all over my boyfriend. What do we do?”

“Stay out of sight. Be careful. I’ll be down as soon as I have the antidote.”

The connection was broken and helpless to do anything else, Cordelia put the phone back in her purse.

The music changed from one song to another and the pair above watched the pair below unhappily.

~

Giles stared coldly down at the man who had once been his friend, unmoved by the damage he had wrought. He would do far worse than bruise the chaos worshipper if anything permanently damaging had happened to his Slayer. If anything happened to Buffy, he’d bloody well take a chainsaw to Ethan.

“Had enough?” the bespectacled Watcher asked calmly.

Ethan Rayne rolled onto his back and ran his tongue experimentally over his teeth, checking to make sure that they were all in tact and not loose. He sneered through the blood that still oozed from his nose. “Only if you’ve come to the end of the enjoyment you receive when you kick me when I’m down.”

Giles kicked him again.

The wiry sorcerer groaned, curling slowly into a fetal ball to protect his bruised – and perhaps cracked – ribs.

The blond-haired Watcher stared thoughtfully at his nemesis aware that he was running out of time. The longer the children spent under the spell, the higher the likelihood that they would do something irreparably and irrevocably bad; once they had done that, they would not thank him for releasing them from the insidious spell they were under. There was, he realized grimly, only one way to assure that he got the information he needed before it was too late. He had sworn never again, but needs must when the devil drives.

Ethan blinked blearily and frowned when he realized that Ripper had grabbed a piece of chalk and was quickly and methodically sketching a conjuration circle around him.

“You can give me the antidote and I’ll let you run away,” Giles stated in a flat tone as he completed the outer ring of the circle and began to quickly draw protective runes, “or we can do this the hard way.”

The dark-haired sorcerer sat up slowly. “The hard way? Rip-per,” he muttered uneasily. “What are you doing?”

“I haven’t done this in so many years,” Giles commented conversationally. “Do you think a demon would give me the antidote before or after it ate you?”

Ethan stared hard at Giles’ implacable features and realized in sick fascination that the staid Watcher wasn’t bluffing. He had wanted to bring Ripper out to play and here he was, but not the way he had wanted. “I’ve had enough. I give.”

Giles cast a basiliscan stare in his direction as he opened as ancient and bloodstained book. “’I give’ is not the answer.”

“It’s the Umbra Labes – the Shadow’s Corruption,” Ethan squeaked out quickly. “Blow some baking soda in the girl’s face to counteract the sulfur and say ‘Dis-pel-ler-e.’ After that and a bit of vomiting to get the toxins out of her system, she should be right as rain and ready to once again fight the forces of darkness.”

Giles tossed the book on to the library table with a resounding thud and then smudged the conjuration circle with his toe, opening it to allow Ethan to leave. “She had better be. And as for those scrolls, the Aberjaan Scrolls, they deal primarily with the role of a souled vampire in the End of Days battles. Since there no longer is a souled vampire in existence, I’d say they’re worthless. Now get the hell out of town. And if you come back again, Ethan, I’ll kill you.”

Without another word, Giles walked quickly out of the library, leaving the man he had tortured laying weakly on the floor.

Ethan panted and shivered slightly; he was fairly certain Ripper had actually meant that last remark.

Next Chapter