#

London, England
Summer of 1999

"This session of the Watchers Council will now come to order."

Wesley Windham-Pryce stood up straighter, looking at the assembled board in front of him. The seven highest-ranking members of the Council were assembled there, all dressed in immaculate gray suits and with stern looks on their faces.

The remaining members of the Council filled the rest of the room, though they were here mostly as observers. These were the Watchers who performed the more mundane tasks for the Council. Collection and analyzing information and lore, trying to make sense of prophecies, finding and training potential Slayers. Wesley had been one of them until about half a year ago. Then he had been given the greatest honor one could possibly bestow upon a Watcher. He had been made the Watcher of the Slayer.

Now he was here to face judgement for that all too short part of his life.

He let his eyes sweep across the seven members of the board. Quentin Travers presence was not a surprise. The older Watcher was the one most involved with the handling of the Slayer. He had been the one to select Wesley for the job. He was the second-highest ranking member of the Council and his expression did not bode all too well for the fate of one Wesley Windham-Pryce.

He gave but brief looks to five of the other board members. They were, respectively, the head of research, divination, training, special operations, and recruitment. Though all of them would hold a vote in his judgement he was not really concerned with them. No matter what the letter of the law said, he knew that his fate rested in the hands of Travers and the final member of the board.

His eyes met those of Dame Henrietta Cleary, current leader of the Watchers Council, but was unable to read anything in her face.

"Wesley Windham-Pryce," Travers addressed him. "The following charges have been laid against you. Failure in your assignment of guiding and training the two Vampire Slayers, Buffy Summers and Faith Capriss. Said failure resulting in the former rejecting the leadership of the Council and the latter changing sides to work against our cause."

Wesley almost winced hearing the charges, but he had expected nothing less. Things had not gone the Council's way lately and someone had to pay for it. He had actually considered not returning to England after his dismissal from Sunnydale, knowing that his welcome would not be a warm one. His career as a Watcher was at an end, there was little doubt about that.

Still, maybe his time in Sunnydale actually had managed to change him a bit. The old Wesley would have accepted whatever judgement the Council decided on, thanked them for being so lenient (whether they actually were or not), and left the room with his tail between his legs.

Though he found his knees being a bit unsteady he fully intended not to do any of these things.

"Is there anything you want to say in your defense?" Travers asked. From the look on his face he did not expect Wesley to make use of that opportunity.

"Actually I do," he simply said, surprising almost everyone.

Travers hesitated a moment, then motioned for him to say his piece.

"I will be the first to admit," Wesley began, "that I made my share of mistakes in Sunnydale. And it is also true that I share part of the blame for the things that have happened. I do not, however, intend to burden all of it on my own shoulders."

He had practiced this speech quite a few times and hoped that he managed to sound as firm as he did on that video recording he had made of himself to see how it came across.

"It was Mr. Travers decision to remove Rupert Giles as Ms. Summers' Watcher for being too close to her. He removed the person that Ms. Summers' regarded as her mentor, maybe even a father-figure. If any of you expected her to just accept this and happily take orders from the new Watcher then thrust upon her I must believe that no one here ever read a single report that Mr. Giles wrote about this girl."

Wesley received quite a few angry stares and felt sweat break out on his brow, but he continued. His career was over anyway. The least he could do was make a good exit.

"Upon learning of Ms. Capriss' accidental killing of a human being it was the Council that decided that she should be brought in for punitive measures. In hindsight I believe that was the single worst thing we could have done at that moment. I regret that I did not see it then, for it pushed her into the arms of our enemy."

Quite a few murmurs went through the rows of the Watchers, but Wesley continued without paying attention to them. He had to force himself to slow down, as he wanted the words out as quickly as possible so he could be gone from here.

"Then, for what I believe was the first time ever, Ms. Summers asked this Council for help in curing the man she loved."

"A vampire," one of the Watchers hissed.

"A vampire, yes," Wesley nodded, "though I might want to add that this vampire has done more to further our cause then most of the people assembled in this room here today."

Had he really just said that? Was he insane? He had promised himself not to bring up the topic of Angel any more than absolutely necessary, knowing how the Council regarded Buffy's relationship with the creature. Somehow the disdain he had heard in that single Watcher's voice, a man who had probably never faced any vampire or demon in the flesh, had overridden his common sense for a moment.

"However distasteful the Council might find the Slayer's bond with that vampire," Wesley quickly went on, hoping to silence most of the angry voices before he was completely cut off, "the fact of the matter is that this bond exists and that it is quite strong. Considering the low opinion Ms. Summers had of this Council at that point it is a testament to her devotion towards Angel that she asked for our assistance in the first place."

He looked at Travers, the man who had called him back that day to tell him that the Council had no intention of helping Angel.

"We slapped her in the face that day," Wesley concluded. "We told her that her personal feelings did not matter to us in the slightest. That we considered the man she loved nothing but a worthless animal beneath our notice. Actually I am quite surprised that she simply informed me of her quitting the Council instead of slugging me."

His palms were wet and he felt a drop of sweat rolling down his forehead, but Wesley kept himself rigid. He would get this over with.

"As I said, I share part of the blame for the things that occurred. It is my belief, though, that the largest part of it lies with this Council, our outdated views on how the Slayer should be guided, and the frightening lack of compassion I have come to recognize among our ranks."

Having said that Wesley took a deep breath and walked back to his chair, dropping into it with great relief.

"I now await your judgement," he added as an afterthought.

#

Several hours later Quentin Travers and James Howell, head of research, sat in the study of Dame Cleary, each of them nursing a cup of tea.

"He might have had a point," Dame Cleary said completely out of the blue.

Both Travers and Howell looked up, startled. Wesley Windham-Pryce had been fired from the Council shortly after delivering his preposterous speech. The three senior members were here now to discuss what to do about Buffy Summers and Faith Capriss.

"I beg your pardon?" Howell said, not sure he had understood her correctly.

"I said he might have had a point, James," Dame Cleary repeated. "Maybe we have become set in our ways."

"Surely that young fool's words did not bespell you, Henrietta. Our troubles have started with that girl, Buffy Summers, and will end once another Slayer is called in her stead."

Dame Cleary gave Travers a stare that sent a shiver down his spine.

"I do not like where you seem to be going with this, Quentin, so I would ask you to abandon that train of thoughts right this moment."

Taking a sip from her tea cup, she continued, "Our troubles may have started with her, I agree, but that does not necessarily mean that she is the cause of them. There is also the oft-ignored fact that Ms. Summers has the most impressive track record of any Slayer within the last thousand years."

"Imagine how great she could be if only she would obey our orders," James said wistfully.

"Or maybe she has become what she is precisely because of her independent nature."

Howell and Travers both gasped.

"You can't honestly mean ..."

"Let us finish this discussion at another time, gentlemen," Dame Cleary interrupted them. "For the moment it is enough to know that Ms. Summers will undoubtedly continue in her duties, even without our guidance. The most pressing questions at this moment are what to do about Ms. Capriss and the Council's current lack of a supernatural agent."

"You know my views on what to do about Capriss," Travers said darkly.

"Yes, I know them. And I will remind you again that this is not our way, Quentin. We serve the light and evil done with good intent is still evil."

"Our two problems are tied together, though, are they not?" Howell asked.

"The Council is without a Slayer and as long as Faith Capriss lives there will not be a new Slayer called. Ms. Summers has died once already, her replacement has already served and perished. Capriss' demise is the only option for us."

Dame Cleary sighed deeply, feeling her age. "I am very aware of this, James, and it is an option we will bear in mind. You should also consider the fact, though, that any new Slayer called after Capriss' death will take years until she is anywhere near the level that Summers currently is. And you know better than anyone, James, that those are years we might not have."

Howell nodded. It had been him who had presented the prophecies to Dame Cleary, after all.

"We know that something big is going to happen, gentlemen, and it is going to happen soon. We have maybe a year or two, but no more."

"All the more reason to act now," Travers mumbled.

"And act we shall, Quentin. But not in a way that will lead us down the path to darkness. No, there is another alternative."

Puzzled frowns appeared on both men's faces.

"I am talking about the Huntsman."

And even Quentin Travers, who firmly believed that, in the war of light against dark, the ends justified the means, paled when he heard Dame Cleary mention that name.

__________________________________________________________________

Part 1

Buffy and Willow sat huddled together on Willow's bed and stared at the little TV screen in front of them, a big pot if ice cream between them. They had turned off all the lights in their dorm room, the only illumination coming from the TV and the latest video they were watching there.

Truth to tell Buffy had long lost track of what movie they were watching and what might be happening to its heroes and villains. Her thoughts kept turning elsewhere, moving to things she really did not want to think about. Not that her mind seemed to care.

She should be happy, should she not? She had survived High School despite everything Snyder, the Mayor, and hundreds of demons and vampires had done to prevent that from happening. She had graduated and gone to college where she was now bunking with her best friend instead of the fiendish demon girl that ironed her jeans. A new life was beginning and it should be great, a big adventure, whatever.

Only everything in her new life seemed to go wrong as of late. Hell, she might as well be honest with herself. Things had been wrong ever since Graduation night when the man she loved had left her standing amongst the smoke and ruins of Sunnydale High, all for her own good. Sometimes she almost laughed at how incredibly cliched it all sounded. Dramatic exit of the lover, leaving behind the heartbroken lass. Only it was not funny at all. It hurt too much to be.

She had tried to forget. Had tried to do what he wanted her to do. Find a normal life, find someone who could walk in the sun with her, have picnics in the park, all that stuff he had seemed to regard as so incredibly important for a good relationship. Now she did let out a chuckle, remembering how that had turned out. She had been so desperate to prove to him, and probably to herself as well, that she could have a normal relationship that it led her into the arms of that jerk Parker.

How could she have been so incredibly stupid to fall for his cheesy lines and sleep with him? How could she have been so stupid afterwards, even to the point of asking him if *she* had done something wrong. Spike had been right to laugh at her that day, she admitted. The mighty Slayer of the undead had behaved like a stupid little school girl.

Buffy looked over at her best friend, who was staring at the screen with eyes still red and puffy from crying. Just when things had seemed to go a little better for once the whole thing with Oz had happened. Oh, she was just too well aware of how very much Willow's situation now resembled her own. Granted, Angel had not cheated on her with another vampire as Oz had done with a fellow werewolf, but both of them had left town because they thought they were not good enough for their girlfriends, too dangerous to be around.

It had only been a few days for Willow and her best friend was hurting. Buffy well remembered how much it had hurt when Angel had told her he would leave. How it felt as if someone was tearing her heart out of her chest, as if she could not breathe anymore. It had taken her most of the long, lonely summer to get past the hurt and arrive at the conclusion that the only thing she could do was exactly what Angel wanted her to do. Go on with her life, try to find some pieces of normalcy among the dangers and battles. No matter how much she just wanted to curl up and die.

"I'm sorry, Buffy," Willow suddenly mumbled.

"Uh?"

"I said I'm sorry."

"Willow, what do you have to be sorry about?"

The redhead turned to look at her. "I ... I was such a bitch. All summer I tried to make you get over Angel by telling you to go out with someone else, to start over with a new guy. I ... I couldn't imagine how much it hurt and..."

"Willow," Buffy interrupted her, "you don't have to feel sorry about that. Yes, it hurt terribly, but sooner or later I will have to get over it. You were right to tell me to move on."

As an afterthought she added, "only maybe you should have waited another month or two."

Willow laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. "I can't even imagine that it will ever stop hurting. I loved Oz so much and he just ... he just up and left. Even sent for his stuff without telling me and ..."

Buffy took her best friend into a hug and held while she cried again. She remembered very well how that felt. The first few days after Angel left had been an endless crying fest, at least once the numbness finally faded and realization that he was really gone finally set in. He had been part of her life for so long and somehow his leaving on his own was even worse than when he had been in Hell. At least then she had known that he still loved her, still wanted to be with her, only he could not.

Now, though, now she had to wrap her mind around the fact that he did not want to be with her. No, she corrected herself. She was not that much of a blonde. She knew that Angel wanted to be with her, just thought that he should not. The threat of Angelus' return, his own overwhelming guilt ... well, her friends probably had not helped much, either. Except maybe for Willow none of them had ever gotten over the events of that dreadful year when Angel had turned against them. Some of them had never even tried.

She shook her head, chasing the gloomy thoughts away. This was not about Angel and her. This was about Willow and Oz. Her best friend needed her right now and she would be there for her. A sad smile appeared on her lips when she realized that, sooner or later, she would have to give Willow the same advice her best friend had given her. Find someone new. Get over it. You can not spend your life with a memory.

It did not help that she still did not have even the slightest idea how to accomplish that little miracle for herself.

#

James Howell took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow and looked at the huge stone door in front of him. The workers had needed over two days to completely unearth it and that had been the easiest part of this project.

He breathed in deep, telling himself over and over again that they were doing the right thing here. Dark times were coming, the prophecies said so. He himself had translated them and was certain that he had made no mistake, had not misinterpreted anything. The forces of light would need every edge they could get.

Having two Slayers around had been a great bonus, but now that one of them was out of commission (which was still better than having her work for the other side, he guessed) and the other, though still on the right path, fighting her battles independent from them, they needed a new edge.

Some days Howell wished that he had never read all the sealed records pertaining to the entity known as the Huntsman. It fell into his responsibility, of course, as the Council's head of research. For many generations only the head of the Council and the head of research had been privy to this information.

This circle had grown only recently to include Quentin Travers, current head of operations. The unique situation of having two Slayers at the same time had been discussed and researched vividly, which had, inevitably, led them to consider the possible interconnections with the Huntsman. Adding yet another complication to what was already a volatile situation.

Howell had spoken against activating the Huntsman. Interestingly enough so had Travers. Granted, his alternative plan of action would have included the cold-blooded termination of the girl Faith Capriss, but maybe it was precisely the fact that such a pragmatic man as him was opposed to this course of action as well that made Howell more certain than ever that this was a very bad idea.

Dame Cleary did not think so, though, and hers was the final word on this matter. They needed a new supernatural agent for the upcoming battles and they needed it now, while they had still time to train it. Howell had read the records pertaining to the Huntsman and knew that, under ideal circumstances, the Huntsman could be a tremendous asset to the Council and the side of light as a whole.

He just doubted that these were anywhere close to ideal circumstances.

"We have finished clearing the doorway," one of the workers informed him.

"Very well. Tell the mages they can begin whenever they are ready."

Howell turned his eyes back to the doorway in front of him. Huge and imposing, the black stone seemed impervious to the ravages of time. Its obsidian surface was covered with runes and symbols. Howell knew them all, of course, had spent the last few weeks researching them. How to break them.

Protection spells. Guardian runes. Ancient magic serving but one purpose.

Making sure that the entity imprisoned behind the stone would never be able to break out. Unless, of course, those that had imprisoned it in the first place wanted it to.

Howell knew the story inside out by now. It had been the Watchers who had set this stone in its place, who had covered it with runes and spells to make it solid enough to withstand anyone or anything that tried to break it. Being who they were, though, they had also left a loophole. A way to break the spells. It was not easy. It required a whole lot of magic and intricate knowledge of the spells. The Council had both, of course.

Closing his eyes, Howell turned away from the door. Soon the mages would begin the complicated procedure of breaking the spells and unlocking this door. If all went according to plan they would be able to open it in about another two days.

Then the Huntsman would walk the Earth once more and Howell just prayed that they were doing the right thing here.

____________________________________________________________________

Part 2

Riley Finn looked across the lecture hall until his eyes found the tiny blonde who had almost given him a concussion the first time they had met. Buffy Summers, he thought with a smile. Having met her was just about the only good thing about this entire cover story.

Working as a TA for a psychology professor. Well, he guessed there were worse assignments, he just had trouble thinking of one. College had been fun when he had been one of the students, but now? Grading papers in his spare time was not why he had signed up with the service, truth be told.

Again he found his eyes trailing towards Buffy. Bad idea, Riley! Bad idea! First rule of undercover assignments: No fooling around with the ladies unless it was part of the job. His first trainer at the academy had told him to forget about all that James Bond stuff. Still, looking could not hurt anyone, could it?

The lecture passed with agonizing slowness and Riley had to force himself to pay attention. He had majored in psychology but two years ago and been recruited right out of college, so most of what Professor Walsh was teaching fell under old news for him. Unfortunately the woman was also a major bitch, which meant more work for him. He could not really blame the students for rather approaching him with questions than her.

Too bad Buffy never seemed to have much in the way of questions. Stop that, Riley!

Needing something to occupy his thoughts with he thought back to the first time he had set foot in Sunnydale.

#

Riley Finn got out of his car and took a seat at the coffee house, ordering absentmindedly. His eyes moved across the room, checking out the other occupants. Odds were his contact was not here yet, as he had arrived about an hour early to check out the surroundings. From what he had seen on his drive into town Sunnydale was a perfectly ordinary place, except for some strange details.

He had never seen a town with so many churches and cemeteries before.

The preliminary information he had received before coming here read like a fantasy novel and he was not sure he believed any of it. Oh, the facts had checked out so far. The long-time Mayor of this town, one Richard Wilkins, had indeed died in the explosion of Sunnydale High School about two months earlier. It was also true that a lot of the people present had told rather strange stories about everything, though most of them had retracted their statements a week or two later, saying that they must have been confused or something.

His train of thoughts was interrupted when a man in a gray suit entered the coffee house. He was tall, maybe taller than Riley himself, and though he smiled his eyes held a coldness that Riley recognized from some of his trainers. Long time in the field, that one.

The man walked toward him and took a seat.

“Welcome to Sunnydale, Mr. Finn,” he said. “How do you like your new home so far?”

“I haven’t seen much of it yet, Mr. Burke. Mainly the churches and cemeteries.”

The man who would be his boss for the foreseeable future smiled.

“I believe you will see much more of those in the months to come. You have been briefed on why we are here, I trust?”

“I have been. Though I must admit that much of it sounds rather ...”

“... like something a fantasy novelist would come up with? I agree with you, I did not believe any of it at first, either.”

Burke ordered a coffee for himself before he went on.

“Believe me, Finn, everything you have been told is true. If anything the initial briefing documents are understated.”

Riley frowned. “If that is so, then why has no one ever noticed anything before? The death rate in this town must be enormous and yet the public records all say ...”

“We have the late Mr. Wilkins to thank for that. Unfortunately many of his personal records were destroyed after his death, probably by his followers, but we have recovered enough to get a rough picture. Apparently he has been keeping this town under wraps for a long, long time. Did a pretty good job to keep it off the federal radar. Hell, half the public records don’t even know that a town called Sunnydale existed until a few months ago.”

His coffee arrived and Burke took a sip.

“After his death, though, it all fell apart. Our Los Angeles office was the first to notice and within a month a full-scale investigation was launched. What we found ... well, it scared even the most hardened of us. That is why you are here now.”

Riley shivered. He had read the briefing documents, but only now, seeing the look in Burke’s eyes, did he start to believe. And it scared him.

“For some reason we have yet to figure out,” Burke continued, “this little town attracts creatures that, until two months ago, we all thought did not exist outside the fairy tales, Finn. The president himself has taken an interest in this and the whole matter is classified ten levels above top secret, you understand me?”

“I know the procedure, Mr. Burke, and I have signed all the forms.”

“Sorry, I did not want to question you. Despite your youth you are one of the best agents we have, that is why you are here. We are still in the process of putting this operation together. Our budget has been approved two weeks ago, but you know the bureaucratic process. To tell you the truth, we are going about this rather half-cocked. Not that we have much of a choice in the matter.”

He paused for a moment, looking rather tired.

“People are dying in this town every night, Finn,” he finally continued. “We have to get this situation under control as soon as humanly possible and we have to do it without the public becoming aware of it. Can you imagine the panic if it came out that vampires and demons are actually real?”

Riley nodded.

“Good! Number one priority on this mission, Finn: Containment. Eliminate as many of those creatures as we can with as little fuss as possible. To do that we will have to learn more about them, of course. We have some researchers on the job, but right now they are mostly busy trying to separate all the Hollywood crap about vampires from the real thing.”

“And my job?” Riley asked.

Burke smiled. “You will have the best job of them all, Riley. You get to go out at night and kill the beasties.”

#

“That will be all for today,” Walsh said, tearing Riley out of his memories. Students began filing out of the lecture hall, some of them coming by his desk. Another few hours seemed to pass until he was finally finished with the last of them.

Too bad Buffy had gone already. Mind on the job, he reminded himself. Mind on the job. He was honest enough with himself to realize that he was crushing on that girl in a major way, but he was not here to endorse his own romantic urges. No matter how much he would like to.

Setting him up with this cover had been a way to integrate people into what was one of the demons’ favorite hunting grounds. Several other agents held day jobs here on the campus, which helped them familiarize themselves with the area and the people.

Making a mental note that he had to grade papers later today he headed towards his car, driving away from the campus toward Sunnydale’s warehouse district. Shipping trade was not exactly Sunnydale’s major source of income, but the docks remained moderately busy and many buildings had sprung up in that area. Many of them had been abandoned again, too, which left many a hiding place for those who wanted to stay out of the spotlight.

Riley took a zigzag route through the maze of shabby buildings until he was certain that no one had followed him, finally heading toward his actual target. His beeper opened the rusted iron gate of the warehouse in front of him and he pulled inside, parking his car alongside a row of other vehicles that stood well back from the entrance, out of sight.

Stepping through another door, this one opened by a key card, ruined the illusion of the abandoned warehouse quite thoroughly.

Their base of operations was still in the building phase, of course. The fact that they could only work with minimal noise and could not afford to have large truckloads of equipment delivered during the day slowed down the process.

Right now the base consisted of little more than a communications room, set up in what had originally been the office of the warehouse manager, a training area, a weapons cabinet, and several rooms for the research people. Apart from the working crew only a skeleton staff was present, most of the agents assigned to Sunnydale currently going about their day jobs.

Riley approached Burke, who was talking with the researchers.

“Anything new on our guest?” Riley asked.

The first few operations here in Sunnydale had been anything but easy. Oh, finding targets had not been a problem. The town was swarming with them come nightfall. Unfortunately they knew very little about them so far and had to go through a trial and error phase when it came to fighting them.

They had lost two men so far and none of them had gotten away without at least some minor injuries. Guns were useless against these creatures, could slow them down at best. They were freakishly strong and blindingly fast. Taking them on one on one was suicide. The best method they had worked out so far was putting them down from a distance with rifles, then closing in to deliver the killing blow by cutting off their heads with large combat knives. It was an imperfect method at best, though. The bastards recovered too quickly.

A few nights ago, though, they had gotten lucky. His team, consisting of four operatives, had come upon a single vampire who appeared quite busy talking to himself. He had not noticed them sneaking up on him and Riley had made the quick decision not to eliminate this one. The researchers had been screaming for a test subject to put through the wringer and after the rather disastrous results of their first nights out Burke had decided that they should get their wish. Every little bit they learned about these things could only help.

Thankfully vampires had proved to be every bit as receptive to tasers as humans were.

“He is rather uncooperative,” Burke snorted. “Keeps ranting about something called the Slayer whenever he feels unobserved. Has quite a vocabulary, too.”

Riley looked at the screen that showed them a picture of the jury-rigged cell where they had put their first and only captive. The vampire was dressed in a long black coat and kept pacing the length of the cell, mouthing curses and wringing his hands.

“Apparently his name is Spike,” the researcher added.

____________________________________________________________________

Part 3

Only one rune remained and James Howell stared at the row of young men assembled behind him. Little more than boys really, the oldest among them twenty years of age. All of them were prepared, or as prepared as they could be after a mere two months. Most of them had been raised by the Watchers, intended to comprise the next generation of the Council. Now, though, one of them would go on to be something very different.

“We are ready, Mr. Howell,” one of the mages told him.

“Very well,” he answered, wiping sweat from his brow again. “The process should begin the moment the door is unlocked.”

He looked over at his colleagues, standing a short distance away. Jefferson Mayhew, the head of training, was the one who had selected the fifteen young males standing close to the entrance and his weathered face was a mask of anxiety. Next to him Quentin Travers watched the whole scene with a mix of anticipation and dread playing over his face.

Howell’s job was almost at an end now, he realized. He had researched the runes and what would happen once the Huntsman was unleashed. He had prepared everything as best he could. Now, though, he could only lean back and see what happened. If everything worked then it would be up to Travers. If it did not, well ...

“Do it,” he said almost resignedly.

The mages began to chant as he took a few steps back, now reduced to the role of spectator. Howell had a certain talent when it came to magic, but not nearly enough for this task. The Council employed a special cadre of mages just for tasks like these and they had had their hands full these past few days.

The chanting reached a crescendo as the final rune on the black stone door began to glow dimly. The hairs on Howell’s neck stood up straight as the air around him was supercharged with magical energy. He resisted the urge to fiddle with hands.

Then the final rune faded and the black stone creaked as it opened.

#

Jackson King had celebrated his eighteenth birthday a few months ago and at that time his life had run pretty straightforwardly. He had been born a member of the Watchers Council and had been brought up knowing he would one day do his part, though maybe a rather small one, to help keep the world safe. He knew that the Council’s work was vital to the survival of the human race and he was filled with the pride of belonging.

Now, though, he found himself to be rather anxious for the first time he could remember. Something would happen today, something that no one had prepared him for from birth, and he was scared. Especially since the older Watchers had remained rather vague about the whole thing.

He knew the basics, of course. There had been a falling-out between the Council and its supernatural agent, the Slayer. It was unheard of for this to happen, but happened it had and the Council had taken steps to deal with the realities of it. Jackson for his part could not understand why the Slayer would abandon the Council, but would be the first to admit that he did not know enough about the circumstances surrounding that event to be truly objective about it.

As a result of the Slayer’s absence the Council was looking to find a substitute. That was pretty much the extent of his knowledge. There were a lot of rumors, of course, as there always were. Jackson had not given much credence to them until about a month ago, when he and fourteen other youths from the Council’s ranks had been selected to accompany Quentin Travers and Jefferson Mayhew to a secluded location in Eastern Europe.

Prior to that trip they had been put through rigorous physical training, as well as lessons in meditation and focusing. None of them doubted that they were being prepared for something, though what that something might be? Nobody knew.

One of the younger boys, a lad called Martin, had joked that they had enough of rebellious girl Slayers and would now be choosing a man as the new Slayer. A few people had laughed, but everyone knew that it was not a possibility. The Slayer only choose girls as its host, had done so for the past thousands of years. Jackson doubted that even the Watchers would be willing to tinker with that for fear of what might go wrong.

Since coming here to South America the rumors had intensified. They had overheard some of the mages and knew that they were working on opening a magical seal, the door to some sort of prison. They were to free something from that prison. What this had to do with the fifteen of them was anyone’s guess.

Now they stood lined up like soldiers in front of that very same door and it was slowly opening. Howell had said that the ‘process’, whatever it was, would start the moment it did. Jackson was waiting with held breath, trying to be ready for everything.

Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next, though.

Later he would remember seeing a flash of light in the opening doorway, but it all happened much too fast for him to consciously register it at that point. The next thing he knew a terrible, searing pain was shooting through him, liquid fire filling up every cell of his body. He screamed as he fell to his knees, screamed until his throat was raw, but the pain kept coming.

His blood thundered through his veins like molten quicksilver as he felt himself changing. Words could not describe the sensations running through his body. His fingers dug into the ground, somehow searching for an anchor, anything to keep the pain at bay. His right hand closed around a rock and moments later it shattered under the pressure, torn apart like cheap pulp.

Jackson was dimly aware that there were people around him, though most of them stayed well back. He was still screaming, in too much pain to ask them for help, and none of them came close. They just watched with rapt fascination as an invisible fire consumed him, melted him down into slag only to rebuild him into something new, something different.

It seemed to take hours, though he was later told that only seconds passed. The pain slowly faded and the world came into focus once more. Jackson panted, feeling like he had just run a marathon, yet at the same time he felt stronger than ever before. He had always been into sports and kept himself quite fit, yet right now he was prepared to lift a mountain without breaking a sweat.

What had happened to him?

“Mr. King? Can you hear me?”

He looked up and saw Quentin Travers standing over him, his eyes guarded. For a moment Jackson’s vision shifted and he swore he could see the pulse beating in Travers’ throat, swore he could hear the beat of his heart all the way over here. Travers was nervous, even though his face did not betray him.

“I can hear you, sir,” Jackson said, his voice rough from the screaming. He slowly got back to his feet.

“Easy, son! You have been through quite an ordeal.”

Jackson shook his head, trying to dispel the cobwebs. Everyone was staring at him, including the fourteen youths he had arrived with. The looks on their faces varied from curious to excitement to ... jealousy?

“What ... what has happened to me?” he managed to ask.

“Something extraordinary,” Travers said, though the look on his face did not match the positive tone of his voice. “You, Mr. King, have been chosen.”

“Chosen?” he asked, not understanding.

“Yes, Mr. King. Congratulations. You are the chosen one of this generation. You are the Huntsman.”

The Huntsman. The name echoed through his head over and over again. He had never heard it before, he knew that, but somehow there was a resonance somewhere deep inside him. Something stirred upon the uttering of that name, telling him that it was right, that it fit. The Huntsman. Yes, he was the Huntsman.

Suddenly a face flashed before his eyes. The face of a young woman. She, too, was unknown to him, yet again there was that feeling of rightness, of familiarity. It was as if he knew her, knew her on a level far deeper than any conscious thought or memory.

Moments later he realized who she was.

“The Slayer,” he whispered. “Where is the Slayer?”

This time Quentin Travers did not manage to keep his face neutral.

#

Half a world away Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer, suddenly looked up from the report she had to write for her psychology class and a shiver went down her spine.

___________________________________________________________________

Part 4

More than ever Riley had problems concentrating during Walsh’s lecture. Maybe it was the fact that it was already quite late in the afternoon and he had had a really boring day with little more than his own thoughts to occupy him. Or maybe it was just frustration with the way things were going on this assignment.

Over the past few days he had spent most of his time observing the vampire they had imprisoned, the one who called himself Spike. Had watched as the researchers tried to get information out of him, first by starving him, then through various forms of torture. It was not an experience Riley particularly enjoyed and he had to keep reminding himself that this thing that looked like a human being was actually nothing but a dead body, somehow animated and out for the blood of the living.

Unfortunately so far they had had little luck. Spike refused to answer any of their questions, though he kept mumbling about all the things he would do to someone or something called the Slayer. They had managed to gather some data, for example how long it took the vampire to recover from a gunshot to the chest or head; that any and all kinds of gas and poison were utterly useless; several other details they had not known before. All in all, though, they were not much smarter than they had been before.

It was getting frustrating, especially considering the situation in the field. There was a limit to the size of the special operations forces they could employ in a town like Sunnydale without the citizens becoming aware of something going on. Heavy weapons were out of the question unless they were in remote areas, too much noise. All circumstances pretty much worked against them and Riley was all too aware of how ineffective he and the other ‘beasty-killers’ were so far.

If all of that was not frustrating enough, well, there was that other thing. That thing called Buffy Summers and the fact that he could not stop thinking about her. A few days ago she had actually come down to ask him a few questions and they had chatted quite amiably. It had taken all his self-control not to ask her out right then and there, especially seeing the way she smiled at him. A smile so innocent and beautiful, yet at the same time somehow laden with sadness and hurt.

Rumors around the campus had it that Buffy Summers was ‘damaged goods’. Riley had almost punched the guy who had told him that. According to the grapevine she had fallen for a jerk called Parker, one of those who collected one-night-stands like other people did stamps. A big part of Riley wanted nothing better than to look up that idiot and beat the shit out of him. Several times.

Not his place, he reminded himself.

Yesterday he had talked to Forrest, one of his colleagues, who was also something of a friend. They had gone through the academy together and then found themselves assigned to the same mission. They worked well as a team and Forrest was an easy guy to talk to. Something of a macho, though.

Riley had somehow hoped that Forrest would strengthen him in his conviction to stay away from Buffy, but quite the opposite had happened. His friend did not see a problem in them having some good times with the local girls as long as it did not jeopardize the mission.

Of course ‘having some good times’ was not exactly what Riley had in mind. He had never been the guy to just sleep around and forget about it a week later. Sometimes he regretted that, guys like Forrest seemed to have it easier with the ladies, but he had never tried to change, either.

As the lecture ended and the students began filing out of the room Riley had come to something of a resolution. His thoughts kept going back to Buffy and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. It was distracting, keeping him from performing his assignment as best he could. He had tried ignoring it, denying it, reminding himself of all the things his trainers had taught him about things never to do while in the field.

As none of that had helped any he decided to try something else. Ask Buffy Summers out on a date. No, maybe not a date. A cup of coffee. Yeah, that sounded a lot better. Neutral. He could always tell her it was just to talk about college stuff. A backdoor to weasel out through if things turned awkward in any way.

And if they did not? Well ... he would be here for some time with the way things were going. This could be quite the long-term mission and if it turned out that Buffy and he could become ... something ... he could do that. He would have to be careful to juggle all that in addition to his cover story and the mission, but it could be done, could it not?

Gathering all his courage he stood from his desk and walked toward Buffy as she and her redhead friend were filing out of the room.

#

“Oh, Riley at three o’clock,” Willow whispered to Buffy.

The Slayer turned to look at the approaching TA, stepping to the side a little to let the other students pass. Ever since their little pity-fest a week or so ago she and Willow had made a pact to help cheer each other up. That included pointing out potential boyfriends, but did definitely not include any kind of setting-up or encouragement. Both still needed time to heal and Buffy doubted that she was capable of doing more than enjoying the occasional eyeful right now.

Still, she clearly saw that Willow was excited about any potential romance for her friend. Buffy smiled. Willow was a person who could find almost as much joy in other people’s happiness as in her own and she envied the redhead for that ability. It could be unnerving sometimes, especially when Willow went out of her way to make other people happy whether they wanted to or not, but after everything that had happened with Oz Willow had gotten a lot better at stifling that particular urge of hers.

She studied Riley as he came closer. During their few talks she had come to regard him as a genuinely nice guy. He had helped her somewhat when she was down and out after that terrible mistake with Parker, had cheered her up. He was a tremendous help when it came to the whole psychology stuff and talking to him was easy and enjoyable.

The possibility that he was interested in her had not really entered her mind so far, but the undertone in Willow’s voice clearly showed that she thought so. Judging by the look on Riley’s face, a rather adorable kind of anxiousness, she might not be too far off the mark there.

“Hi, Buffy. Willow.”

“Hi,” the two girls said almost in unison, causing Willow to giggle.

“Buffy, could I talk to you for a second?”

Willow smiled and excused herself, leaving the two of them alone in the now empty lecture hall. Riley stepped from one foot to the other, causing Buffy to grin. He was really cute when he was nervous.

“What’s up, Riley?” she finally asked him.

“Well, ... I was wondering if you would like to go for a cup of coffee. With me.”

He gave her a shy smile and Buffy almost said yes right then and there. There was something about his shy farm boy charm that really called to her. Then, though, she remembered the last time she had fallen for someone’s charm so easily and so quickly. Her smile fell a bit.

“Riley, I ...,” she began.

His beeper went off and Riley muttered a curse as he took it out, looked at the number.

“Just great,” he muttered.

“Problem?”

“Yeah, I really have to go. Something of an emergency. Listen, about ...”

“Let’s talk about it later, okay? Go deal with your emergency.”

There was a somewhat hurt look on his face, maybe he had expected a more positive answer from her than ‘later’. Buffy was a bit sorry to see him like that. He was a good guy, that much she believed. Then again, she had believed that about Parker, too.

“I’ll take you up on that,” he finally said, smiling again, before he turned to walk away. Buffy looked after him for a moment, then shook her head. Riley seemed nice, but ...

She really needed something to distract herself. The sun was about to go down and she was on for a long patrol tonight, hopefully finding and killing quite a few vampires in the process. Before that, though, she had promised to visit Giles. He had done some research on those strange black-clad S.W.A.T.-team type guys she had seen popping up around Sunnydale as of late and wanted to talk to her about it. Maybe he had found out something. Something that would require her to fight and beat up someone.

A girl could hope, could she not?

#

Riley reached the base in record time and his car had barely come to a stop when he jumped out and ran inside. The number on his beeper was the emergency alarm code, calling all operatives back to the base for immediate action. The small gun he always carried under his jacket was in his hand as he stormed through the final door and came upon the chaos inside.

The main area of the warehouse was in shambles. Tables overturned, computer screens broken on the floor, the two paramedics on their team busy with several wounded men. The emergency exit door had been pulled off its hinges.

He saw Burke talking to one of the agents assigned to research, quite loudly so, even as several operatives where in the process of suiting up, loading weapons and getting ready for action.

“What happened?” Riley asked, picking out his own equipment in the process.

“Damn researchers fucked up, that’s what happened,” Forrest said, an angry look on his face. “They let that vampire escape.”

“What?”

“That’s what I said, too.”

Burke came up to the men, looking rather angry and out of patience. Agent Weinheim, the man in charge of research, trailed along behind him, looking somewhat subdued.

“He escaped ten minutes ago,” the senior agent said. “Timed his escape just right to go through the emergency door the second the sun set.”

“We theorized that vampires have some sort of internal clock that lets them know when the sun ...”

“Shut up,” Burke interrupted Weinheim. “Termination order is in effect. That vampire has seen too much of our operation here. He must be destroyed tonight. Find him and do it!”

Riley looked around. The current roster of their special operations force contained twenty agents for search and destroy assignments. Fourteen of them were present and Riley knew that two were still in intensive care at the moment, having run afoul of some vampires a few nights ago. The others were probably on their way right now, but they could not wait for them to arrive.

“I don’t suppose we have come up with any way to track them yet, have we?” he asked.

Weinheim motioned toward the night vision gear they all carried.

“Data gathering on the vampire has shown that his body generates no heat of its own. They are always room temperature. Use the infrared mode paired with motion tracking. If you see a moving body with no heat signature ...”

Riley shrugged. Not the best of ways to track something, but better than nothing.

“The vampire has been starved for some time,” Burke told everyone. “He will probably be looking for a victim first thing. Teams 1 and 2 will check out the college grounds. Team 3, take the harbor district and check the bars. Team 4 will head for that nightclub, the Bronze. Stay in radio contact at all times and call in the moment you find him!”

Riley nodded. Moments later they were on their way and all thoughts of teaching, dating, and everything else not connected with the hunt for their fugitive disappeared from his mind.

#

Spike panted unnecessarily as he reached the edge of the college grounds, an angry snarl permanently frozen on his face. Somewhere around here was that bitch of a Slayer. He would find her and this time there would be no alliances, no fancy magical rings, no daylight, no angry mothers with axes. This time he would simply kill her.

”Think your friends can take me off your back, do you?” he mumbled under his breath. “You’ve got another thing coming, Slayer.”

____________________________________________________________________

Part 5

Like so often as of late Willow found nothing better to do with her evening than to lie on her bed and study. Okay, maybe the word studying was not really the appropriate term for the mindless turning of pages, their content forgotten the moment she took her eyes away. It did not help that most of the material in her current lectures was already known to her, as she had taken college-level classes during her final year at Sunnydale High.

All of which left her all too much time to think.

Oz was gone. He had left saying that he might not be back for a long time, not until he learned to understand and hopefully control the wolf that lived inside him. He had cheated on her, yes, but somehow that did not change the fact that she loved him and she missed him so much. It was like there was this terrible hole in her side, some part of her torn away without warning. There was no telling whether he was ever going to be back and the mere thought of spending the rest of her life without ever seeing him again was almost too much to bear.

She had thought she understood what Buffy was going through when Angel left, but she had not had a clue. Not one. It had only been about four months for Buffy and she was more or less back on her feet, though still hurting. A part of Willow was even happy that there seemed to be some sort of sparkage between Buffy and Riley, though she doubted her best friend would let anything come of it. The largest part of her, though, was simply hurting. Hurting for Oz, hurting because she could not imagine being back on her feet in four months, hurting for the boy she loved so dearly.

There was a knock on her door.

“Come in,” Willow absentmindedly said, not really caring who it was. Maybe Buffy was back from her talk with Giles. The Slayer wanted to patrol tonight, that she knew, but maybe she had changed her mind and would stay with Willow. They could watch some movies, stuff themselves with ice cream, that sort of thing.

Buffy would not knock on her own dorm room door, though, would she?

Maybe it was Xander. No, probably not. Her oldest living friend was much too busy keeping his new girlfriend happy these days. A tear came to her eye when she thought about that. Anya was strange, which had to be the biggest understatement of the year, but at least she was someone he could share his time with. Someone he could love, no matter how little she understood the reasons for that. She wished ...

“Slayer is not here, eh?” a voice interrupted her thoughts. A familiar voice.

Willow froze. It could not be him. She slowly looked up and her denial shattered upon seeing him standing in the door.

Her last encounter with the vampire called Spike had been almost exactly a year ago, when he had kidnapped her and Xander in order to force her into performing a love spell for him. Drusilla had broken up with him and he wanted her back. Willow knew that he had been back in Sunnydale since then and had fought Buffy, but that fight, like so many others, had not gone in his favor and he had fled once more. Oz had told her how he followed him to Los Angeles, trying to get the Gem of Amara from Angel, but that, too, had come to naught.

Somehow they had all hoped he would be gone for good this time. Only here he was now, standing in her dorm room, smirking at her.

“Nice of you to just invite me in, though,” he shrugged, coming closer toward her. “I guess we’ll have to pass the time somehow until sweet little Buffy gets here.”

Willow was shaking with fear and Spike knew it, it was evident in his smirk. She inched back from him, got off the bed on the other side, but he was still solidly between her and the door and she knew that she would never have the time to open one of the windows and climb out.

Spike’s face changed into its true demonic shape and he advanced on her.

#

Team 2, comprised of Riley, Forrest, and two other special operations agents, was busily combing the southern part of the Sunnydale college grounds. A lot of students were still about this early in the night. A lot of opportunities for a starved vampire on the lookout for easy prey.

“This is taking too long,” Forrest whispered. “He could have killed a dozen people by now.”

“Odds are he hasn’t. The Sunnydale police is terribly incompetent, but we would have heard something on the police radio if bodies had been found.”

“Maybe he hid them.”

“I doubt he cares about hiding his deeds at the moment, hungry as he must be.”

They were checking building by building, the combined use of infrared and motion tracking equipment allowing them to check out the tenants from the outside. So far all they had found were warm bodies, which would have been fine any other night.

“I think I have something,” the third member of Riley’s team, agent Graham Miller, said. “The building over there.”

The four agents turned their night vision equipment in the direction he indicated.

“First floor, fourth room from the right.”

Two bodies were moving in the room he had indicated. Only one of them had a heat signature.

“Let’s go!”

#

Panic overtook Willow when Spike came toward her, but only for a moment. She was unable to tell how often she had been in deadly danger during the last three and a half years of her life. Most of the time it had been Buffy who had bailed her out, sometimes Xander or Giles, but there had been times when she had been forced to fend for herself.

Buffy had given her some self-defense lessons during the summer, mostly because she had desperately needed something to distract herself from brooding over Angel’s departure, but also because they both figured that Willow needed those skills. She had also become rather adept at the art of witchcraft and, though far away from being a true witch, she had some tricks up her sleeve.

Finishing her slide off the bed she quickly uttered the words of a rather simple spell. Spike never expected the bedside lamp to come flying toward him seemingly by itself, so he was too slow to keep it from crashing painfully into the side of his head. Willow quickly grabbed the covers from her bed and threw them over the vampire’s head, effectively blinding him for a few crucial seconds.

She was almost at the door when Spike’s hand clamped down on her shoulder and violently threw her back into the room. The back of her head collided with the bedside table and stars exploded in front of her eyes.

“Nice moves, red,” he snarled at her. A trickle of blood down the side of his face showed where the lamp had hit him. “I’ll be sure to let little Buffy know you put up a decent fight before I snacked on you.”

Without warning the lights in the building suddenly went out, causing Spike to pause. Willow could barely see the outline of his body, but he did not advance on her for the moment, seeming confused.

“Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” she heard him mutter.

Moments later the door crashed open and Willow saw dark shapes moving in, heading directly for Spike.

#

It took them but a moment to find the building’s fuse box and disable it, plunging it into darkness. Riley hated the delay, especially seeing as the vampire was already in the same room with a potential victim, but this was probably the quicker way to do it. Dressed as they were in black combat armor and armed to the teeth they would draw too much attention if they were seen.

Confused students filled the corridors, but the agents shouldered past them in the darkness without drawing more than some rude words, no one able to see them properly. Their night vision equipment, though, made things clear as day and they arrived at the room in question within a minute.

Things happened incredibly fast the moment they broke the door down. The vampire stood in the middle of the room, a young girl cowering from him near one of the two beds. Riley recognized her. Willow? Was this Willow and Buffy’s dorm room then? Where was Buffy?

The creature had already turned to look at them, the darkness seemingly no hindrance, and attacked the same moment they did.

The close confines of the dorm room quickly became a death trap. Forrest got off two shots from his Glock before the vampire, barely slowing down from the bullet impacts, caught him with a vicious kick that sent the agent flying right out the door and hard into the opposite wall with a sickening crunch. Riley, his assault rifle to cumbersome, had drawn his combat knife and slashed at the creature’s neck, managing to draw some blood before he suddenly found himself on the receiving end of its inhuman strength.

His night vision goggles shattered and the world was plunged into darkness and pain. He found himself lying on the floor, the sounds of battle somewhere to his right. This was not going well, he realized. Not well at all.

“Put me in a cage, will you?” he heard the vampire snarl, immediately followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking bones.

Riley’s fingers found the butt of his assault rifle. He had trouble seeing anything in the darkness, but he knew all the agents were wearing Kevlar. A stray bullet should not hurt them. The sound of a machine gun going off in here would no doubt attract attention, but their battle had already accomplished that quite nicely, he bet.

Before he could press the trigger, though, a new shape suddenly exploded into the room, making a byline for Spike, and tackled him with enough force to make both of them tumble across the floor. Had the other teams arrived? No, not enough time had passed for that. The shape was not dressed in black, either. White, he thought. None of the agents wore white.

Riley fought back to his feet, still dizzy and feeling the rather distinct pain of a broken rib. This was going just great, was it not?

The lights began to flicker, apparently some of the students had reached the fuse box and were trying to get it back into working order. Between spots of light Riley saw the vampire Spike tangled up with a smaller figure, but they were moving too fast through the twilight for him to make out more than that. What he did saw, though, were his teammates sprawled across the wrecked room and corridor.

The lights went out again, but not before he saw the vampire crashing through one of the windows and disappearing into the night.

”Abort,” he yelled, pulling Forrest back to his feet. “Return to base!”

They scrambled out of the room. One last look back showed no trace of whomever had attacked Spike and thereby saved them. Willow seemed all right and he now spotted Buffy as well, quickly scampering over to see if her roommate was all right. Both the vampire and their mysterious savior were gone.

How was he supposed to explain any of this to Burke?

___________________________________________________________________

Part 6

Willow flinched for a moment when the door opened, closing her eyes and cursing herself for a moment. It had been two weeks, she reminded herself. Two weeks with no further sign of Spike. They had done the spell on their dorm to revoke his invitation. He could not come in and she would certainly never again invite someone without looking who it was.

Still, it did not help much. She was still shaky from the vampire's attacking her. It was a bit strange. Harmony had come much closer to killing her. Spike had barely even touched her, much less sank his fangs into her neck. Somehow, though, it was hard to see Harmony as a true danger. Spike, though, was a whole different story.

She was afraid of him.

"You all right, Willow?" Xander asked, seeing the look on her face.

"Peachy," she said, plastering a false smile on her face. "I just ... I was afraid it would be Buffy and she'd ask me where all that food I was supposed to get is and I haven't gotten it yet, so she might be mad at me for wrecking her Thanksgiving dinner and ..."

Xander walked closer, putting a hand on her shoulder to stop her babbling. He knew exactly what was bugging his best friend. They had both come rather close to being killed by Spike once upon a time and though he tended to do things off with a joke and a smile he had not been any less frightened.

"Hey, it's okay. We'll get the foodstuff in time for the big Buffy-dinner, okay?"

For a moment Willow allowed herself to relax. These days she often felt as if life itself was out to get them. Oz had left. Spike had almost killed her. Her best friend was hurting every bit as much as she did, even though she had had more time to get over it. Getting over being left by the guy you loved was not really a matter of time, she guessed.

Ever since Spike's attack Buffy had been out every night, patrolling for hours on end to find and kill the bleached vampire once and for all. It tired her out and had yet to produce any results. Willow was afraid what would happen should she come upon Spike in that weakened condition.

Tonight, though, they would have their big Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe all their problems could wait until tomorrow.

"Okay," Willow said, squeezing Xander's hand in return. "Let's get the foodstuff."

#

Riley had called in sick for a few days after the nearly lethal encounter with Spike in the dorms. The other teams had looked all over Sunnydale to find the vampire, but had come up empty. Which, considering Team 2's track record fighting him, might not have been the worst thing that could have happened to them, Riley had to admit.

By now they knew that vampire did not necessarily equal vampire. Fighting those that regularly prowled the many graveyards of this town was tough, but most of them were not skilled in any form of martial arts, had nothing but brute strength and inhuman speed going for them. Spike had been a different matter, though. He knew how to fight.

By now Riley knew that their capturing him as easily as they did had been equal parts carelessness on Spike's and good luck on their own part. The second time around they had not been lucky and that had nearly spelled the end for Riley and his teammates.

Worry over the still free vampire had also managed to distract him quite nicely from the thing he had planned to do just before Spike had broken free. Truth to tell he had barely seen hide nor hair of Buffy these last two weeks. She had skipped some classes (and gotten a thorough chewing-out by Walsh in return) and when she was present she looked tired and worn out. Not once had she even looked in his direction.

So when they ran into each other at the all-night supermarket neither of them knew what to say.

"Uh ... hi, Buffy," Riley said after about a minute of awkward silence.

"Hi," she answered, shifting the shopping cart she had with her back and forth.

"I ... it's been a while, but remember that I wanted to ... you know ... invite you for a cup of coffee?"

Buffy just nodded, not meeting his eyes.

"Well ... the offer still stands and ... I was kinda hoping you'd take me up on it."

She remained silent, then looked up with an earnest _expression on her face.

"Riley, listen. I ... I like you. A lot, actually. You're a great guy, but ..."

"Sentences that start that way usually don't end well," Riley mused.

A small smile graced Buffy's lips. "How about another cliché then? It's not you, Riley. It's me. I ... I've been in a pretty long and ... intense relationship until about four months ago and ... I'm just not ready for something new. Or someone new."

Riley nodded. He had actually expected something like that from the hurt look he had often seen flash in her eyes. He was a psychology major, after all, and Buffy showed all the textbook signs of someone who had been hurt on a very personal level.

"Bad break-up?" he asked.

"No. Yes. I ... the break-up ... well, as break-ups go, I guess it wasn't the worst. We didn't part hating each other or anything, but ... I still miss him and ... and I like you too much, Riley, to make you into rebound guy."

Should he feel good or bad about that now, he mused. Buffy considered him a good guy, she liked him, and precisely because of that she did not want to go out with him. Somehow this really did not sound like a good deal.

Still, looking at her as she waited for his response, he knew that he, too, liked her even more now. She had bared her heart to him, or at least a small part of it, and somehow that made her even more beautiful than before.

"Wow," he finally muttered, brushing his hand through his hair. "I ... well, I didn't expect something like this."

"I know guys don't want to hear this," she told him, "but ... could we just be friends, Riley? You've helped me quite a bit these past few months. I don 't want things to become awkward between us."

Riley sighed, looking away from her for a long moment. This really was not what he wanted, was it? He had worked up the courage to ask her out expecting to either be rebuffed completely, thereby freeing him up to really concentrate on a mission that was right in the middle of being fucked up, or to make it into a relationship that would serve as some sort of balance to all that darkness he suddenly found himself immersed in.

Becoming friends with her, though? Just friends? He really was not sure he could do that. How was he supposed to be friends with someone whom he not only really, really liked, but also would have to lie to all the time? Okay, the second would have been trouble in a relationship, too, but ...

"Too late for that, eh?" Buffy asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"I guess," he mumbled, looking at her again. "Buffy, I ... I guess I ... sorta hoped for something else, but ... I understand that you don't want to get involved again. And ... well, one can never have too many friends, right?"

Okay, so maybe that last line could have sounded a little less pathetic, he told himself. Still, if all she was ready to offer him at this point was friendship, then friendship he would take. For now.

"I'm glad," she said, taking his hand. "I really am."

He squeezed her hand back.

#

From outside the supermarket the dark shape watched as Buffy and that strange young man held hands and an unbeating heart ached with seeing it. This was what he had wanted, was it not? What he had told her to do. Find someone else. Someone human, someone who could give her all those things a good relationship should entail. All the things he could not give her.

Still, to see her actually doing it ...

Angel tore himself away from the scene and melded into the darkness of night. He was here for a reason and, though it did have to do with Buffy, there was absolutely no reason for her to know about his presence. It would only hurt her more.

He was only here to make sure she was safe and then he would leave again. Leave her to go on with her life, no matter how much it might hurt him.

_______________________________________________________________

Part 7

It was a very Spike thing to do, they all agreed afterwards.

The bleached vampire had always been an odd mixture of base cunning and unpredictable aggression. At one moment he would make an intricate plan to search the Sunnydale sewer system for the Gem of Amara, employing dozens of vampires and moving strategically, the next he would simply attack Buffy without any plan or strategy whatsoever.

Ever since his sudden reappearance in their lives two weeks earlier Buffy and the others had waited for him to strike. After his near-fatal attack on Willow they had all been sure that he would not simply leave them alone. Buffy had run herself ragged scouring Sunnydale for him, but without success.

It did not help that she was constantly getting this tingly feeling somewhere in her belly, the one that she still recognized to hold a very special meaning. Only it could not be that same feeling, for its usual source was far away from here. Had removed itself from her life for good, whether she liked it or not.

Finally Buffy had decided that they all needed a night off. Willow was down because of Oz and still frightened because of Spike. Xander, she had come to realize, was feeling left out as the only one not going to college and his relationship, if one could call it that, to Anya was anything but relaxing, either. Giles, though still her Watcher as far as she was concerned, was not exactly flowering in the slacker life. She herself had enough issues to found a self-help club all by her lonesome. They all needed something fun to distract themselves and Buffy had decided that it would be a Thanksgiving dinner.

Giles apartment was the location she had chosen, despite her Watcher’s hearty attempts to dissuade her from it. She had mobilized the others to gather food and decorations, had invested a lot of time in talking Willow into participating. The redhead was not particularly fond of a holiday that, in her mind, stood for the white man’s taking the land away from the native Americans. Still, she had finally agreed to come and be merry, or at least pretend to be.

In hindsight Buffy should not have been surprised that Spike choose that night of all nights to spring his latest surprise on her. Then again hindsight was always perfect.

They were all gathered around the table, Buffy, Giles, Joyce, Willow, Xander, even Anya, having a somewhat good time with the meal Buffy and her mother had prepared, when the windows of Giles apartment suddenly blew in.

“Knock, knock,” someone yelled from outside as everyone dove under the table. “Get your butt out here, Slayer! I got presents!”

Buffy peeked out from under the table, the hailstorm of glass shards having passed them by, and growled under her breath. “Spike!”

“Spike?” Joyce asked. “But didn’t he give you his word that he would never ...”

“He’s a bad guy, mom,” she told her mother, still weirded out by how chummy her and Spike had been last year during his ‘Drusilla-left-me’ moping fest. “It’s kinda a union requirement for him to break his word in regular intervals.”

“He can’t come in, right?” Willow whispered. “I mean ... no one invited him in, right? I know I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t.”

“Relax, Will,” Xander patted her shoulder. “The Buffster will stake his ass this time. Right, Buffy?”

“You bet!”

Buffy rose, stake in hand, and carefully approached the shattered window. Outside in the court of the apartment complex Spike stood waiting with a bored _expression on his face, about a dozen vampires and other assorted demons surrounding him.

“There you are,” he smiled as he saw her. “I was starting to think you weren’t allowed to come out and play.”

“Oh, I’ll play, Spikey! But why don’t you introduce me to your friends first?”

Spike shrugged. “They can introduce themselves. Get’em, boys!”

Two of the non-vampire demons immediately stormed forward and ran down the door, not needing any invitation to enter. Giles and Xander had helped themselves to some weapons by now, though, as had Willow and Anya. Joyce, too, was holding a crossbow in hand, but did not seem all that certain what to do with it. Buffy just hoped that she would not poke out somebody’s eye with it.

Spike continued taunting her, but she did not take the bait. The vampires could not come in, so the most stupid thing she could have done now was go outside and face them. Instead she turned around to deal with the demons inside first.

“I’ll be out in a few, Spike,” she yelled over her shoulder as she dove into the mayhem that had become Giles’ living room.

“I’m sure you will,” Spike simply said, taking his time walking up to the shattered window front. He could not enter, that was true, but he had never planned to, either. Slowly he reached beneath his coat and took out a shotgun.

“Not usually my style,” he mumbled to himself as he carefully aimed it at Buffy’s back, “but when you’re cheating by bringing in outside muscle, well, I can hardly be blamed, can I?”

#

Angel was still watching as Spike and his posse started their attack. Everything inside of him was screaming to get involved now, to stop caring whether Buffy saw him or not. He held back, though. Buffy had survived without him so far and the only reason he was here was because of Doyle’s vision.

He still remembered the look on his friend’s face when he had come out of the painful trance. Doyle had seen Buffy die, killed by Spike. Angel had barely taken the time to pack the barest essentials before he was out the door, saying a prayer of thanks to whomever had created polarized car windows.

The last two days he had tailed Buffy all night long, careful to stay out of sight. He had seen her tense a number of times, seen her looking around, her eyes searching for what her senses told her was there. Seen the disappointment when she did not find it. It had taken every bit of self-control he had ever possessed not to show himself, not to walk out and take her in his arms.

That was not what he was here for, he kept reminding himself. He was only here to keep her safe and it would be less painful if she did not see him.

So he watched as Spike attacked, watched as Buffy did the smart thing and refused to be baited, dealing with the demons inside before concerning herself with the vampires outside. He frowned, trying to figure out Spike’s game. His childe was smart, that much he had to admit, and knew Buffy well enough to know that the Slayer would not make so basic a mistake. What was he planning?

When he saw Spike remove the shotgun from his coat he knew. He was frozen in surprise for a moment, but only for a moment. Whatever reason Spike had from abandoning his usual hands-on approach when it came to Slayer, fact was that Buffy would die unless he did something quickly. The Slayer had her back turned, certain in the knowledge that the vampires could not enter and attack her, unaware of the weapon pointed at her even now.

Angel sprang into action without another moment’s hesitation. Spike had three other vampires with them, but they were all watching the show inside. None of them saw him coming.

#

“Say goodbye, Slayer,” Spike said, but before he could pull the trigger something grabbed him by the collar of his coat and wrenched him backwards, sending him flying across the courtyard. Even before he hit the ground he heard the characteristic sound of a vampire exploding into dust. No, two of them. He hit the ground, the ringing in his ears almost drowning out the sound of the third dusting.

When he looked up again he saw his attacker and sighed deeply.

“Aren’t you supposed to be living in the big city now?” Spike asked his Sire as he got back to his feet.

“I heard you were in town, boy,” Angel growled, sliding his wrist-mounted stakes back into the sleeves of his coat. “Couldn’t stay away.”

“I’m touched.”

Without further banter the two vampires started exchanging blows, their fight quickly carrying them away from the still-raging battle inside Giles’ apartment. An uppercut by Angel threw Spike down the steps and nearly onto the street, but the bleached vampire recovered quickly enough to greet him with a painful kick to the ribs when Angel caught up with him.

“Must be getting old, peaches,” Spike goaded him. “Time was you would have had me across your knee the instant I pissed you off.”

“I didn’t have you across my knee often enough, it would seem. Maybe you need a refreshment course in obedience.”

“Now you’re talking like my Sire, mate! You didn’t loose that pesky soul again, did you?”

“No, but for you I’ll put it away for the night.”

“You say the nicest things.”

They clashed again, neither able to gain a clear advantage over the other. Angel was the more skilled martial artist, but Spike countered through sheer determination and stubbornness. He wanted to kill the Slayer tonight and he would do it this time, Angel or no Angel.

The fight spilled back into the courtyard after a thunderous roundhouse by Spike, sending Angel flying. The older vampire looked up from the floor at his approaching childe.

“What happened, Spike? Since when do you need a shotgun to take care of a simple Slayer?”

“Ran out of patience,” Spike growled.

“I hear you.”

Spike had about a second to realize that Angel had come to rest right next to his lost shotgun, the one that should have blown a hole in the Slayer’s back. Then everything vanished in a haze of red.

#

Angel threw the shotgun away, his dislike for fire weapons having given way to pragmatism but briefly. Spike slid to the floor, a hole the size of Angel’s fist right through his chest. The vampire still lived, of course, but would not a good long while to recover.

Angel had other plans with him.

“Angel?”

Looking up Angel saw Willow and Xander standing in the door of Giles’ apartment, looking first at him, then at Spike.

“Is Buffy all right?” he asked them, concerned that he could not see the blonde Slayer anywhere.

“She’s fine,” Willow said, still seeming somewhat shocked. “One of the demons retreated upstairs and she followed it. Told us to check on Spike and the other vampires.”

“I’ve handled it.”

“So I see,” Xander remarked, looking at the prone body of Spike. “And may I just add ‘yuk’!”

“Will you ... are you gonna stake him?” Willow asked.

Angel looked at his prone childe and demon and man reached one of their rare accordances.

“Eventually,” he just said. “Not for a while, though.”

Willow nodded, then quickly darted forward and kicked the prone body in the side, quite forcefully so. Angel could not help a smile.

“I owed him one,” the witch said meekly.

Angel just stood and hoisted Spike over his shoulder, starting to leave the courtyard, then remembered something else.

“Don’t tell Buffy I was here, okay? It would ... it would just make things more complicated.”

“What should we tell her about Spike?” Xander had few qualms about keeping Angel’s appearance a secret. The less Buffy had to think about him the better.

“You’ll think of something, I’m sure.”

A few minutes later, with Spike safely locked into the trunk of his car, Angel was on his way back to Los Angeles.

________________________________________________________________

Part 8

Angel descended the steps to his apartment at the slowest pace possible. It was not just because of the numerous bruises he had received, the ones that were not healing as quickly as he was used to. If it was just those he could have dealt. It would take some getting used to, but he could.

It was all the things that had happened these last 24 hours that made him reluctant to enter his own home. How could so many things change so very fast?

Thinking back he should have known that Xander and Willow would not be able to come up with a convincing lie for Buffy. The redhead especially had never been able to keep a secret. Buffy had no doubt heard the shotgun blast, had seen the dust of the destroyed vampires in the courtyard, had seen the mess made when Angel had blown out half of Spike’s chest with his own weapon. In the end the two teenagers had spilled the beans and Buffy had learned that Angel had been in her town.

He had not expected her to follow him to Los Angeles, though, had not expected her to walk into his office in the middle of the day. Seeing her then, framed by sunlight, anger on her face as she looked at him, had nearly torn him apart with conflicting feelings of joy and dread. He did not want a confrontation with her, had done his best to avoid it while still being there to keep her safe from Spike.

It was just too painful.

The bleached vampire had been but a short side topic in their conversation. Buffy had wanted to know whether he was dead. Angel had told her not to worry about him. He was not dead, no, but by now he probably wished he was. He would be wishing for death for a very long time. Thinking about it now made Angel a bit queasy. Dealing with Spike had definitely been a job for Angelus, not Angel, and the demon had been about it with a lot of enthusiasm. Things had changed since then, though.

Once assured that Spike would not be a danger any longer Buffy had then gone on to chew him out for his lurking ways. Why was he allowed to see her but not the other way around? They had talked in circles, finally resolving that staying apart was easier, when suddenly they found themselves under attack again.

The demon, as he learned later, was a Mhora. Buffy and Angel had followed it through the sewers, finally splitting up to cover the daylight areas as well. Angel had found the demon deep in the tunnels and had defeated it, but not before something extraordinary had happened. Something he would never have believed possible.

The thing’s blood had turned him human. Human. After nearly 250 years he felt his heart beat again, felt his lungs draw in needed air, felt the warmth trailing off his own skin.

Felt the pain of every single bruise he had gotten today.

Things had happened so quickly then. The Oracles had released him from their service, telling him that he was no longer a warrior. Doyle had asked him what he wanted to do now and he had known exactly what he wanted. He had found Buffy, found her out in the sunlight, and kissed her without thinking.

They had almost managed to rationalize their way out of going further than that kiss when their hands had touched, putting an end to rationality. The hours spent together in his apartment seemed like a dream to him, the most wonderful dream he ever had. Never in all his years had he known that it could be like this. Liam had never loved anyone with such a burning intensity. Angelus had never loved at all. And Angel, well, Angel the vampire had never been allowed to love except that one all-too-short night he had lost his soul.

Now, though, they could be together, together like a man and a woman should. No curse stood between them now, not sunlight nor immortality. They were free to play, free to do everything he had ever wanted to do with her.

Like all dreams, though, it had to come to an end. Doyle had had a vision of the Mhora coming back and Angel had realized that, simply because he was now human, it did not absolve him from his responsibilities. He found himself incapable of letting it go. He knew the things that went bump in the night, had been one of those things for centuries, and could not stop fighting them simply because he was not a strong as he used to be. He also knew that, if there was to be any future relationship between him and Buffy, he had to be able to hold his own.

Unfortunately determination alone had not proven to be enough. The Mhora had nearly killed him before Buffy arrived and even then it had been a close affair. More than that, though, it had been the demon’s words that had chilled him to the bone.

“Together you were strong. Alone you are dead.”

He had gone to the Oracles as soon as he could stand again, had gone despite Buffy’s protests that he needed to rest. He had asked them whether the Mhora’s words had been true and they had confirmed it in their own cryptic fashion.

Buffy would die because he was not there to fight at her side.

He had then asked them to change him back. Give him back the strength to help her even if it cost him his newly regained humanity. None of it meant anything if Buffy had to die because of it. The Oracles had been impressed with his resolve, had complimented him for it. It had not changed anything, though.

“What has been done can not be undone,” the male Oracle had said.

“You are what you are,” the female had agreed. “Your time as a demon has passed.”

“I need to be able to help her,” Angel had pleaded. “There must be something you can do.”

The two had conferred silently for a long moment, then the female had spoken to him once more.

“There will be new opportunities, warrior. If it is truly your intention to continue aiding our cause, to aid the Slayer, then you will be given a chance very soon.”

“What kind of chance?”

“Be vigilante, warrior. It will be your only chance.”

With that they had dismissed him, refusing to answer any more questions. He did not know what it meant. Another chance? A chance at what? He was still human, still too weak to help Buffy fight. What could they possibly have meant?

His feet finally finished their way down into his apartment and before he even knew it a blonde whirlwind was upon him, closing her arms around him in a painful hug.

“Thank God you’re back,” Buffy held him close as if her life depended on it.

‘It does,’ a voice reminded him. ‘She will die if you are not there.’

“I’m here,” he just said, holding her close as well, ignoring the pain of his bruises. “I’m here.”

“What was the big idea, mister?” she asked him when they finally let go, giving him a stern look. “You can barely stand. What was so important that you had to go out right now?”

He looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. “Nothing. I ... it wasn’t as important as I thought, Buffy.”

She looked at him quizzically for another minute, but then seemed to resign.

“Okay, but that’s enough heroics for today. You’re getting right back into bed and you’re gonna stay there until you are healed and have promised me that you’ll never go off like that again, okay?”

He was about to protest, tell her not to worry about him, but finally thought better of it. She was right, he did need to heal. She was also right that he had been stupid to go after the Mhora by himself. He was human now, vulnerable, no longer her equal.

You will be given a chance very soon, the Oracle had said. What kind of chance? What would happen? How could a mere human have a chance to be strong enough to fight by the Slayer’s side?

Buffy manhandled him into bed and tugged him in, lying down beside him with an air of worry on her face.

“I don’t want to lose you, okay?” she whispered to him, the love and worry in her voice causing his newly revived heart to ache. “Not now, not when we can finally be together.”

Her small hand tenderly touched his chest and he closed his eyes, unable to meet her gaze. Somehow this was all going wrong. He had been so ecstatic at first. Being human he could be with her, like he had always dreamed but never believed it could happen. Now, though, he realized that being human entailed almost as many, if not more problems than being a vampire.

Buffy was the Slayer, would be as long as she lived. She had human friends who helped her, yes, but no one to fight by her side as an equal. He had been that equal until circumstances had forced them apart. Now those were gone, but he was no longer her equal. He could be with her now, but only to a point. She would have to go into battle alone and it would kill her sooner rather than later.

“We will be,” he whispered back, wrapping an aching arm around her slender form. “No matter what happens, we will be.” The alternative was unthinkable.

Exhaustion began to claim him, his wounds and the warm presence by his side pulling him under. There had to be some way to solve this, some way he could be with her in all ways, in all things, for better or worse.

“You will be given a chance very soon”, the Oracle’s words echoed through his mind as he finally fell asleep in Buffy’s arms.

__________________________________________________________________

Part 9

And here she had thought her life was spiraling out of control before, Buffy mused.

Everything had changed so fast, so very fast. She had gone to Los Angeles to chew Angel out for visiting Sunnydale without telling her. He had come riding in like the dark knight in not-so-shining armor to save the not-so-helpless damsel in distress and then vanished again, trying to cover up his tracks by making her best friends lie to her.

Good thing they had never been able to do that. If they had she would never have gone to Los Angeles. Never been there to see Angel change the way he did. Human, she thought with a broad smile blooming on her face. He was human now. They were back together, or rather together for the first time, really together. Memories of the two nights they had spent together still made her tingly all over.

He was still in Los Angeles, of course. There were a lot of loose ends he had to tie up before he could come home to her. Home. She liked the sound of that. Maybe they should be looking for a place to move in together. Buffy was, at all times, aware that being the Slayer entailed a shorter life than most people and she wanted to spend every free second of it with him.

Something had been on his mind, though, had been even that final evening before she had to get back and they had made love for the last time. Was he still worried because of his poor performance against the Mhora? Buffy had to admit that it would be difficult to get used to Angel no longer fighting by her side. He had been her only true equal, the only one she could really trust to fight by her side and handle it. It had not been that way with Faith, the younger Slayer always too busy doing her own thing, fighting her own demons. With him, though, it had been perfect.

If that was the only thing she lost in exchange for all the other things they now could do, though, she would accept it with a big smile on her face. It was worth it a hundred times over.

She had barely gotten back to Sunnydale when more weirdness started. Her friends did not know yet about Angel, his turning human, or his coming back to Sunnydale. She did not know how to tell them. Maybe it would be best just to present them with fait accompli. Xander would probably throw a fit, but his opinion did not hold much weight with her, at least not where Angel was concerned. Willow would probably be supportive once she got over her hate-Angel-because-I’m-your-best-friend-and-he-hurt-you phase.

Her true worry was Giles. Her Watcher had lost a lot to Angelus and, though he had tried, she knew he had never quite been able to forgive Angel. When Buffy had given Angel her blood in order to save his life he had been extremely upset with her, though he had never said anything about that, either. He did not have to. She had seen it in his eyes.

Then there was her mother. She, too, had never been happy with her relationship to Angel. Buffy loved her mom, but that did not mean she was blind to some of her shortcomings, either. The main reason why Joyce had managed to remain oblivious about Buffy’s life as the Slayer for so long had been her own desire to give her daughter the perfect life, the one she herself had never got. The perfect life with the perfect loving man. A man who was not a vampire.

Well, Angel was not a vampire anymore, was he? Maybe that would be enough to win her mother over to her side.

“Well ...,” the man sitting on the bed opposite her said, pulling her back to the present. Right, there was that other problem she had almost managed to put out of her mind.

Riley sat on Willow’s bed, the dorm room around them almost as quiet as the entire town had been these last few days. It was over now. The Gentlemen, the demons who had stolen everyone’s voices, had been defeated. In the process, though, she had learned some things about Riley. He had learned some things about her, too.

“Wanna start?” she finally asked him. He had been the one to come around to talk, after all. Only they had spent the last ten minutes or so doing anything but that. For a moment she had wondered whether the Gentlemen had returned and taken both their voices again. In some ways that would have made things a lot easier.

“I’m not sure where to start,” he admitted. “I ... I haven’t really managed to wrap my mind around everything that happened last night.”

Yeah, Buffy agreed, last night had definitely been one of the stranger nights, even in a life like hers. She had finally managed to find the Gentlemen’s lair, had followed them and started beating the crap out of their hunchbacked minions, when someone else had arrived. Someone dressed in black combat gear, his face hidden behind a black ski mask and night vision goggles.

She had seen men dressed like that before, of course. During Halloween they had come across a whole group of them, but had figured they were just dressed for the night. A few weeks later, though, she had run into one of them in the forest when she had been hot on the trail of Oz. He had delayed her, delayed her to the point where she had almost been too late to save Willow’s life from a transformed Oz.

Plus there were the things Giles had heard from his various sources, things about some sort of amateur demon hunters having taken up residence in Sunnydale. Willy’s bar had been rife with rumors about them as well. To top it all of there had been that little fight with Spike in this very dorm room just a few weeks ago, the one where the vampire had quite thoroughly kicked black-clad ass.

Seeing as they had been in the middle of a fight they had joined forces by unspoken agreement, taking out the demons and finally managing to destroy the Gentlemen as well. During the fight, though, one of the creatures had managed to smash her mysterious partner’s goggles and rip off his mask, revealing a rather well-known face to her.

Riley had recognized her as well, of course. Had seen her perform fighting moves that were above and beyond anything a normal human could do. Now he wanted answers. Well, so did she.

“What are you?” Riley asked out of the blue.

“Buffy Summers,” she deadpanned. “Freshman. You?”

“This isn’t funny.”

“No, it isn’t. What were you doing there last night, Riley? You could have gotten yourself really, really dead.”

She was surprised at how deeply that fear disturbed her. Riley was someone she considered a friend, though that might change now that she knew ... well, she did not know all that much, really, except that he was not what he had seemed. Still, the thought of him getting killed was not a good thing.

“I would say the same about you, but somehow I got the impression that you were rather capable of handling everything these ... things threw at you. I mean ... I’ve seen a lot of good fighters, but you ...”

“You didn’t do too bad yourself,” she said. Which was true, he had handled himself well ... for a normal human, at least. She could not help but think back to Angel again. Angel, who was also human now. Angel, who had also nearly gotten himself killed fighting demons.

“Thanks,” Riley did off her comment. “But I don’t think I managed to throw these things for a loop with a single punch. There is also the fact that I’m covered with bruises today and can barely walk. You seem right as rain.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“I bet.”

There was silence between them once more.

“Let me take a wild guess here,” Buffy finally restarted the conversation, realizing they had to go somewhere before they both died of old age. “You are not really a psych TA. From what I’ve seen you are a trained fighter and you carry a lot of equipment I’ve only seen in James Bond movies so far, so I’d say you are part of some sort of demon hunting group that has set up shop here in Sunnydale. That about right?”

“I ... I’m not really allowed to talk about it,” Riley looked away, uncomfortable.

“The way I see it,” she continued, “you are either part of some underground organization that has taken it upon themselves to rid the world of evil,” she was thinking of a certain England-based bunch of snotty bastards, “or you work for some sort of government agency that has finally noticed that Sunnydale is the murder capital of America and decided to do something about it. Door number one or two, Riley?”

The young man sighed deeply. “I would be a lot more comfortable with this if I knew at least a little bit about you in return, Buffy. Until yesterday I thought you were a normal college girl and now ...”

“I am a normal college girl,” she interrupted him. “I just ... I have some unusual hobbies.”

“Like demon hunting?”

Buffy tried to figure out how to go about this. Riley had not confirmed any of the theories that she and Giles had come up with regarding the black-clad commando guys, but neither had he denied them. From the look on his face he was reluctant to reveal anything and extremely uncomfortable with her knowing even as little as she did.

“I’m not a vampire or something,” she told him, “if that was what you were thinking.”

“I figured that much, seeing as I’ve seen you in the sunlight a couple of times. But you can’t tell me that there isn’t something ... unusual about you. No human being could have done the things you did last night.”

“I am human,” she emphasized. God knew she had been internally debating that point often enough. “I’m just a little ... well, I’ve got a little something extra, you might say.”

“And that would be?”

She did not know whether she could trust him. A day ago she would have said yes, would have said he was a nice guy with nothing to hide and a nice smile. Someone she might have fallen for if her heart had not been given away long ago. Now, though, she knew that he had been hiding things, living behind a mask. Who knew how much of that mask she might be looking at even now. Was Riley even his real name?

Still, she could not exactly throw stones about the hiding and he had been fighting those demons, not been in league with them. If the rumors they had heard were true then these demon hunters were doing their part, however small, to make Sunnydale safer.

Giles would probably chew her out for this, but Buffy decided to trust her instincts.

“I’m the Slayer,” she told Riley.

Riley did not manage to keep the look of surprise from his face completely. The Slayer? The vampire Spike had muttered endlessly about someone or something called the Slayer while he had been their prisoner. He had come up with an impressive amount of things he would do to this Slayer the moment he got free. None of them had had any idea what a Slayer was, but considering that the vampire had obviously not been very fond of it Riley was tempted to place it on the side of the good guys until evidence to the contrary presented itself.

Only now ‘it’ turned out to be Buffy?

“I ... I heard some rumors about someone called the Slayer,” he said carefully, hoping to disguise how little he really knew. “Some vampires were talking about ...”

“Let me guess,” Buffy interrupted him again. “Not my biggest fans.”

“Not really, no.”

“Let me give you the short version, Riley. I’m the Slayer. I kill vampires and demons for a living. I’m stronger and faster than your average human so I can do it well. Sunnydale is keeping me mighty busy, so I’m not ungrateful for any kind of help. Still, I would really like to know what kind of help it is I’m getting from you and yours.”

Riley just stared at her, obviously struggling to make sense of everything she was telling him. A part of her was busy berating her for just spilling her secrets like this, but her instincts were telling her that Riley was a good guy and she trusted them. For now, at least.

“I ... I really can’t tell you anything, Buffy. I’m not allowed to ...”

“Okay, fine. Let me tell you something, though, Riley!” She stood, walking closer to him. “I saw your guys fighting against Spike, right here in this room. Were you there?”

He nodded and a pang went through her heart. She had seen what Spike had done to the commandos that night. If she had arrived any later it would not have gone down without casualties.

“He almost killed you. All of you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you came because otherwise Willow would probably have ended up dead, but ... correct me if I’m mistaken, but you haven’t been all that effective in your demon hunting mission so far, have you?”

Slowly he nodded again.

“I thought so. Riley, this is not a game, okay? Most of the things out there are a lot stronger than humans and perfectly willing to make a meal out of you. As I said, I’m glad for every bit of help I get, but if the only thing the help manages is to get itself killed then it isn’t really worth the effort is it?”

Riley did not know what to say, just stared at her. Buffy could not help but think of another man, now human as well, who had almost gotten himself killed fighting demons with nothing but human strength and determination on his side. A man who, she was almost certain, would do it again because that was simply the way he was.

The very thought of losing him ...

“I don’t want to see you dead, Riley,” she told him, though her words, she realized, were really meant for someone else. “Maybe ... maybe you should think about giving up this job.”

__________________________________________________________________

Part 10

Rupert Giles was up late, going over the latest information Buffy had apprised him off. They had spent quite a few hours these last few weeks theorizing about these black-clad commandos who kept popping up in Sunnydale to make life a little bit more difficult for the local demonkind. None of their theories had been validated so far, but they were a bit smarter now than they had been yesterday

Riley Finn, Buffy’s psych TA, was one of the commandos.

Truth to tell Giles was a bit angry at his Slayer for simply spilling her secret to the young man, but he had to admit that she usually had good instincts when it came who to trust and who not to. Besides, seeing as Riley had already seen her perform superhuman feats in battle against the Gentlemen creatures there really was not that much left to hide and it was better this way. God alone knew what he and his associates might have tried to do if he had thought her to be some sort of demon.

Something else was preoccupying Buffy apart from that, though. Giles knew her long enough to recognize that. Buffy was not a good liar and neither was she particularly proficient at keeping secrets from him. The last time she had been preoccupied like this she had hidden Angel from them, shortly after his return from Hell. Maybe it had to do with Angel again? It had started after she returned from Los Angeles after all.

He banished those thoughts from his mind. True, he had been very angry with her for concealing Angel’s presence, but he himself had done worse less than a year ago when he had drugged her for the Council’s stupid test. No, he had to trust her to know what was right and had promised himself never to second-guess her again unless he had something concrete to worry about.

For the moment he should concentrate on those commandos Riley worked for. Maybe Willow could find out something by way of her computer skills. She had tried before, but without any kind of lead to start with she had come up empty. Maybe she could take a look at Riley’s personal files and then ...

The ringing of the phone distracted him from his train of thoughts. Picking up the receiver he expected Buffy or one of her friends to call him. Or maybe that nice young woman he had met a few nights ago when he had been playing guitar at the coffee bar.

He certainly did not expect to hear the voice of his former boss on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Rupert,” Quentin Travers said.

“Quentin. This is something of a surprise.”

“I know. Listen, Rupert, there is something you should be aware of. Something concerning the Slayer.”

Giles sat down on the couch with the receiver still in hand, an angry frown beginning to form on his face.

“She no longer works for you, Quentin. I had thought she made that quite clear.”

“She did, yes. This is not about her quitting the Council, though I guess you can imagine that no one around here is particularly happy about her decision.”

“You have no one but yourself to blame.”

“Rupert, please! Let us put our animosities aside for the moment. Something rather more important has come up with.”

Giles sighed, leaning back. He had a lot of problems with Quentin Travers and the older man’s methods and opinions regarding the fight against the dark, but they were still fighting on the same side, more or less.

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“How much do you know about the Huntsman, Rupert?”

Giles frowned. The Huntsman? He dimly remembered having read something about an entity called the Huntsman once. Must have been a long time ago, as the memory eluded him.

“I’ve heard the name before, but I don’t really know ...”

“I will be sending you the necessary documents, Rupert. We are ... we are not quite certain how big of an emergency this actually is, but we want to be prepared for the worst.”

“The worst? Quentin, what is this about? What is the Huntsman and why does it concern us here in Sunnydale?”

There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end of the line.

“The Council has decided,” Quentin finally said, his voice making clear that ‘the Council’ did not include him in this particular instance, “as a reaction to the Slayer’s desertion, to activate a new supernatural agent to aid our cause. The Huntsman is that agent. Unfortunately Jackson King, the host of the Huntsman, has disappeared several days ago. We ... we believe that he will be heading for Sunnydale to ... meet the Slayer.”

For a moment Giles was speechless, just trying to assimilate all this information. The Council had created some alternative to the Slayer? How? And they had lost him?

“Why ... why would he be coming here?”

“I am afraid there is no short version to this story, Rupert. You will be receiving all the relevant information by express mail no later than tomorrow, it will answer all questions you have. Just keep one thing in mind! The Slayer and the Huntsman must not meet!”

“Why ...?”

“It’s essential, Rupert! Jackson King must not find Buffy Summers, is that clear? The results could be ... catastrophic.”

Giles had a hundred more questions to ask, but Quentin Travers hung up on him. For a moment the former Watcher positively seethed with anger at the arrogance of his former boss, still ordering him around as if he had not fired him about eight months ago.

There had been true desperation in Quentin’s voice, though. The older Watcher was genuinely afraid of something, that much was clear.

Giles looked at his watch and sighed. He doubted he would be able to find much sleep now, not with Quentin stirring him up like he just had.

“The Huntsman,” he mumbled, racking his brain to remember where he had read that before. Approaching his book shelf, the one that held all the books they had saved from the destruction of Sunnydale High, he brushed his fingers across the leather-bound book backs.

“A supernatural agent,” he continued mumbling to himself. “Something the Council might use as an alternative to the Slayer.”

He finally selected a few volumes and settled back down on his couch to read.

#

The early morning bus pulled into the Sunnydale Greyhound station and came to a stop. Grabbing his bag from the empty seat beside him the young man got up, pausing after his first step off the bus to draw in the air of his new home.

Yes, this was definitely the right place. Everything inside him was screaming that it was so, his senses wide open and alert to draw in the multitude of sensations this town had to offer. So much evil gathered in so small a place.

So much to destroy.

Jackson King closed his eyes and concentrated on all the new senses he had come to possess just a few short weeks ago. Every night since then he had had strange dreams, visions that finally pulled him away from the Watchers and here to America, to this town, to the blonde girl he somehow knew lived here.

The Slayer. She was here, there was no doubt about it. He had to find her, had to be with her. He was not sure why, not sure what it was that connected them, but neither did he care. He was drawn to her like a moth to the flame and now, with her presence singing in his blood, he felt stronger and more powerful than ever.

Opening his eyes again he laid out his plans. First he would get a place to rest, a motel would suffice. Then, as soon as the sun went down, he would go out and find her.

#

Across town Buffy tossed and turned in her sleep, her dreams invaded by a vision of a young man with short brown hair who looked at her with an intensity that made her skin burn, that caused things low in her body to tighten with anticipation.

When she finally woke she was drenched with sweat and shivering so violently that Willow was by her side in an instant, hugging her close and asking whether she was all right.

It was a question Buffy could not answer.

___________________________________________________________________

Part 11

Angel hit the mats hard, the air driven from his lungs by the impact. Some things about being human really stank, he muttered to himself. Things like this unfamiliar need to breathe, like the sweat that was pouring down his face, or the painful presence of the bruises he had received today.

“I think I know what the problem is,” his opponent said, offering him a hand to pull him up.

Looking at the woman who had just sent him tumbling to the mat Angel thought back a few weeks. Mara Shilow was a martial arts instructor, one of the best according to what he had heard. They had met when one of Doyle’s visions had sent him her way, saving her from a vampire attack. He had been impressed by her fighting skills, though they had not been too much use fighting creatures that simply brushed off blows that would have hospitalized normal men.

She had seen his true face during the fight and he had given her an abridged version of who and what he was. They had met once more since then, Angel having gotten the idea of her giving Cordelia and Doyle some fighting training after the two of them had nearly gotten killed when beset by a vampire when he had not been there. Angel was an accomplished martial artist himself, but doubted his ability to teach his moves to someone with mere human or even half-demon strength.

Now he himself had nothing but mere human strength to rely on and needed to know whether he was still able to hold his own. From the thrashing he had just received he rather doubted it, though.

“How long have you been ... different?” Mara asked. She was still getting used to the idea that vampires and such existed, trying to avoid mentioning them whenever possible.

“A long time,” he just said.

“That’s what I thought. Did you get any fighting training before you got all that super strength to play with?”

“Not really, no. I was ... I fought a lot, bar brawls and such, but never got any professional training until much later.”

She nodded, apparently having her suspicions confirmed.

“I’ve seen cases like yours before,” she said, then quickly amended, “not exactly like yours, of course. One of my own trainers was the best fighter I ever met. Then he lost his left arm in the Gulf War. It took him a long time to regain even a portion of his old skill level.”

“He couldn’t adapt?”

“Exactly. He had become so set in his fighting style that changing it, accommodating the lack of a limb, was almost impossible. Your case is even more extreme, Angel. You’ve had superhuman strength for God knows how long and much of your fighting style relies on that strength. Your body ... remembers being able to do things and tries to keep doing them, even though it can’t do them any longer.”

Angel nodded, knowing what she meant. Just a week or so ago he would have had no trouble flipping over Mara’s head in the blink of an eye. When he had tried it a few minutes ago he had almost managed to crack his skull open. His legs simply did not have the necessary push anymore, his balance and reflexes were off as well. To speak nothing of his strength and speed.

“I need to do something about that,” he resolved. “Will you help me, Mara?”

“Of course,” she smiled at him. “I owe you my life; it’s the least I can do. I have to warn you, though, it will take time. Ingrained skills like yours aren’t changed in a day.”

He sighed, thinking of Buffy. Every day he spent apart from her was torment and not just because he missed her so much. Every day he was not by her side, able to hold his own, might be the day the Mhora’s words came true.

“Then let’s start,” he told Mara, resolve in his eyes. “I don’t have as much time as I used to.”

#

“You are certain about this?”

Riley watched as Burke spoke to their superior over the video phone, the weathered face of associate CIA director James Mason looking back at him from the screen. With the discovery of the supernatural threat the Central Intelligence Agency had quickly created a new department, naming it ‘Special Domestic Operations’. So far this new department had nothing but a skeleton staff and no experience to speak of, but a budget that would make the senate scream if it knew about it.

“Now that we have a better idea what to look for,” Burke explained to his superior, “we found quite a few notes on the Slayer in the files we confiscated from the late Mayor Wilkins. It confirms what Ms. Summers told Agent Finn.”

Mason shook his head. Sometimes the unreality of what they were dealing with really got to him.

“So this girl is ... what? A supernatural defender of the world?”

“That’s what it says, yes,” Burke confirmed. “I wouldn’t believe it myself, but Agent Finn saw her fight. She is definitely stronger, faster, and tougher than any normal human being has the right to be, sir.”

Mason nodded. He, too, had known about the supernatural for but a few months now and had adopted something of a ‘I’ll-believe-anything-for-now’ philosophy of dealing with his new job. It was the only way to go about it that would not drive him mad within the year.

“After your initial report our analysts put together a preliminary file on Ms. Summers,” Mason said, taking the folder lying on his desk. “By all accounts she seems to be a rather normal young woman, though prone to get into trouble. She was suspected of murder about one and a half years ago, but the charges were dropped a short time later. She also burned down the gym of her first High School, it seems.”

“Knowing what we do about her it does not come as a surprise that she got herself in trouble now and then, does it?”

“No, it does not.”

Mason briefly looked through the folder, then put it aside again.

“You are the man on the spot, Burke. What is your recommendation we do about Ms. Summers?”

Burke turned to glance at Riley for a moment. They had discussed Buffy Summers’ words to him quite thoroughly during the day.

“Sir, Ms. Summers brought up a very good point, I fear. So far our men have not done well containing the supernatural threat in this town. These creatures are too strong and too vicious to deal with them the way we have done so far. The way I see it we have two alternatives on how to proceed.”

“Those would be?”

“Number one, we could escalate our activities here. Bring in heavier weaponry, more men. These things are tough, sir, but only very few of them use any kind of modern weaponry. If we outfit our men with stronger ordnance we can take care of things.”

The thought of taking out a nest of vampires with a rocket launcher somehow appealed to Riley, he had to admit, no matter what his psychology training might say about that idea.

“That would almost certainly cause the public to take notice, will it not?” Mason asked.

“That is the downside of it, yes. Which brings me to our second alternative.”

Once again Burke glanced at Riley. It had been his idea, truth be told, and though Burke had some misgivings about it, he could not dispute its potential gain.

“Sir, if what we have learned about Ms. Summers is true, then what we have here is an individual with years of experience in successfully fighting these creatures. She is still alive, which is no easy feat after what I’ve seen these last few months, and even more importantly she has done it with hardly anyone noticing it. This is a resource we should exploit.”

Mason stared at him. “Burke, this operation is classified a dozen levels above top secret. Are you honestly proposing that we involve a civilian in it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The associate director sighed deeply, rubbing his eyes for a moment. Then he looked past Burke at Riley.

“Agent Finn, you are acquainted with Ms. Summers, correct?” He nodded. “What is your opinion on this?”

“I believe, sir, that she could be a tremendous asset to our operation. I have seen her fight and she is more capable than any of our operatives here, including myself. I believe she is also deeply committed to fighting these creatures. Convincing her to work with us will not be easy, I suspect, but the potential gain from having her on our side is enormous, sir.”

Mason kept looking at him for a long moment, then reluctantly nodded.

“Very well, I see your point. I will discuss this option with director Tenet. Considering the implications I suspect that even the big boss will have to have a word in this.”

Riley managed to keep from stiffening. Mason wanted to carry his proposal all the way into the oval office? Maybe this had not been such a great idea after all.

“I will get back to you as soon as I have a decision,” Mason finally said. “If we do approach Ms. Summers I want you to make certain that the paperwork is in order. Sign the non-disclosure agreement, swear her to secrecy, the usual. Agent Burke, I want your teams to keep an eye on her. From your report I assume she does not know too much about our operation yet, but I don’t want anyone else to learn even that little, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

The screen went dark and Burke sighed.

“That went better than expected, actually.” He looked at Riley. “If this works out I’ll get you a medal, son.”

“I didn’t know the president was directly involved,” Riley muttered, still in a bit of a shock. “He’s gonna go to the president with this?”

“What did you expect? Looks to the contrary this is one of the most important covert operations you’ll ever hear conspiracy theories about, Riley. And unlike what you may read in the tabloids the president is very much aware of all the things we’re doing in our little spook show.”

“Do you think they’ll agree?”

“I have no idea, Riley. If they do, though, things are going to get mighty interesting around here, that much I can assure you.”

Riley could not help but remember that the phrase “May you live in interesting times” was generally considered a curse.

_______________________________________________________________

Part 12

Buffy Summers was not a happy camper. This had several different reasons, but chief among them was the continued absence of a certain male individual who had, until very recently, been numbered among the walking dead. Said man had also promised her that he would follow her to Sunnydale soon. Granted, they had never quite defined what exactly he meant by 'soon', but Buffy was quite certain that two weeks did not qualify anymore.

Not that they were completely out of contact with each other, no. They talked on the phone almost every night, long conversations that made Buffy glad her boyfriend was rather well-off money-wise, as the bills were no doubt quite impressive. Still, talking to him on the phone was not the same as having him by her side and Angel kept evading her when she asked him when he would finally come.

She would have packed her bags and gone off to Los Angeles to drag him back herself if not for several things that kept her busy at the moment. Not least among them her studies, which took up a rather indecent amount of her time and made her think hard about switching religions just so she could stick pins into voodoo dolls made to resemble some of her professors.

Giles had also told her of some new menace coming toward Sunnydale, something the Watchers Council had warned him of no less. They had sent him a huge amount of information to wade through, so he was not a hundred percent on the up and up about it yet, but he had told enough to worry her.

The Huntsman. As far as she had been able to make sense of his lectures it was something like a wandering spirit with certain similarities to the Slayer, taking over hosts and imbuing them with superior abilities. Only unlike the Slayer this Huntsman was very unpredictable, violent, and not necessarily as liable to care about the welfare of the human race.

Apparently the Watchers had activated it when she had quit, hoping that it would give them someone new to order around. Unfortunately they had done so before decoding all the various information about it. An earlier generation of Watchers had apparently gone to great pains to make sure that their texts did not fall into the wrong hands and even now only half of what they had written was actually readable.

One of the parts they had decoded only after freeing the Huntsman had said something along the lines of 'DO NOT OPEN UNTIL DOOMSDAY'. Fancier wording, of course, but that was the gist of it. Giles was working day and night to decode the rest, as did the Watchers overseas, but it would take a while longer.

Apparently Quentin Travers feared that the Huntsman, a young man called Jackson King, would come here to Sunnydale. He had not said why, probably because he did not know. One of the decoded texts said that the Slayer and the Huntsman should not be allowed to meet. Of course it did not say why. That would have been too easy, right?

They had sent her a picture of Jackson King and Buffy had recognized the young man she had seen in her dreams a few nights ago. This actually disturbed her more than anything else, as her dreams had the bad habit of announcing bad things. The Master, Angelus, the Gentlemen, it did not constitute a good track record.

Ever since she had had that dream she had felt uneasy. During patrols at night she was overcome by an almost perpetual case of Goosebumps, the hairs on the back of neck standing at constant attention. It a bit like when Angel had still been up to his stalker ways, but it could not possibly be him. He was still in Los Angeles after all and she doubted that he was still as light of step as he had been back then.

A dozen times or so these last few nights she had attempted to catch whoever might be stalking her, but without any luck. Maybe she was just imagining it. Maybe her worry about Angel and all this talk about the Huntsman was driving her batty.

Then there was Riley.

"What is this?" she asked, eyeing the piece of paper he had put in her hand.

Riley had called her a few hours ago, asking her to meet him at the Espresso Pump. To her surprise he had not come alone, though. He was accompanied by another man, older, his face hidden behind a scruffy beard and what seemed to be a perpetual scowl. Riley had yet to introduce them, instead he had begun their conversation by asking her to sign a form.

"It's a non-disclosure agreement," he told her. "Basically it says that you will not repeat a word said here today to anyone. If you do you will be brought up on criminal charges."

She read through the document, finding it surprisingly short and straight. Open your mouth and we will throw the book at you. A really big, heavy book. For a moment she considered simply ripping it apart and leaving, angry that Riley did not trust her after she had told him who and what she was. It had probably not been his idea, though. Buffy had but a quarter semester of psychology to draw on, but she had no trouble realizing that the man beside Riley was his superior.

With a sigh she signed her name below the form and handed it back.

"Do I get a copy?"

"A copy of what?" the scowler asked with a perfectly serious expression, the form already vanished inside his briefcase.

"Can we get down to business now?" Buffy leaned back and studied the two man.

"Yes, we can. First allow me to introduce myself. My name is Thomas Burke and I am the agent in charge of this operation."

"Operation?"

"Killing demons," he simply said. "I will not go into too much details right now, but suffice to say that we are working for the government. It's our job to make sure that the creatures in this town are stopped and we would very much like to do so without the American public becoming aware of it in the process."

"Just a tip," Buffy smirked at him. "Don't let your agents storm occupied dorm rooms in full combat armor."

Burke frowned, but otherwise did not react.

"Agent Finn here," he motioned at Riley, "told me of your little talk a few days ago. Though it saddens me to say this, you were quite right. My men are inexperienced and unprepared for this mission and things are not going well for us."

Buffy managed to keep a more or less neutral face despite her surprise. She had expected something like being admonished for interfering in some kind of all-important black ops spook operation, not an admittance of the facts.

The government guys in X-Files were a lot different.

"So you will call it all off?" she asked the man called Burke. "I'm kinda sad to see that. Every little bit helps. But I guess it's better than ..."

"You misunderstand me, Ms. Summers," Burke interrupted her. "I do not intend to call off this mission. Quite the contrary, actually. I am more convinced than ever that these creatures need to be contained. Eliminated completely, if possible."

"But then what ...?"

"I am authorized to offer you a position as a civilian consultant, Ms. Summers."

For a long moment she just stared at him.

"What?"

"Ms. Summers, in the last few days we have managed to gather quite a bit of information about you and have come to the conclusion that your input would be invaluable to our operation. You have more experience fighting these creatures than anyone else we are aware of. To make it short ... we want you on our team."

"Uncle Sam wants me?" Buffy giggled saying that, but she felt anything but amused. Shocked was more like it.

"You would, of course, be compensated quite nicely," Burke continued as if he was conducting a job interview for the local supermarket. "Absolute secrecy would have to be maintained, of course, but ..."

"Wait, wait! Slow down for a minute, okay?"

Burke complied as Buffy closed her eyes and just breathed for a moment, trying to make sense of it all. Some kind of government spook operation wanted her to work for them? To help them kill demons? They would PAY for her help?

The government guys in X-Files were a lot different.

"What ... what would this 'consultant' thing entail?" she finally managed to ask.

"Basically we want you to show us how to kill demons," Burke said nonchalantly. "Our operatives are among the best-trained fighters in the world, but most of them have never even suspected that vampires and other demons exist, much less know how to handle them. We have very little hard data on these creatures. What their vulnerabilities and habits are, how they think. Every little thing you could tell us about them would be a great help to us."

Buffy sat back, thinking. What Burke was telling her seemed almost too good to be true. The Watchers had never paid her, nor given her any kind of support system except Giles and his books. Now she was asked to train a group of trained combatants, show them how to kill vampires. Not only would this make her own job much easier, they would also PAY her for it.

Definitely too good to be true.

"I will have to think about this," Buffy finally said.

"I understand," Burke nodded. "I would appreciate it, though, if you could reach a decision quickly. This operation is of high importance for national security and quite a few highly-placed people are hoping you will take us up on our offer."

"How highly placed?" Buffy asked, intrigued.

"I am afraid that is classified. At least for now. I hope you understand that, until we have your decision, there is only so much I can tell you. Contact Riley when you have decided."

Burke was starting to rise.

"One other thing," Buffy said, causing him to sit down again. "If I agree to this, then I want another person included in this deal."

"Oh?"

"Yes! I don't know how much you have found out about the Slayer, but it's always a package deal."

"Package?"

Buffy could not help but smile a little. It was almost funny how little these guys knew about the world they were immersing themselves in.

"Every Slayer has a Watcher. Something like mentor, trainer, and teacher all rolled into one. He is the guy with the books who knows all the demon trivia, handed down from God knows how far back in the stone age. If I decide to take you up on your offer he will have to be in on it."

"This is a bit unexpected," Burke said after thinking for a moment. "We will have to discuss this with our superiors. What is the name of your Watcher?"

Buffy was about to say Giles' name, but then thought better off it.

"Let me talk to him first, okay? I want to get his input on this before we go any further."

Burke obviously was not a hundred percent happy with this, but apparently decided that he could not admonish her for her secrecy. He was not sharing everything with her yet, either.

"Very well, talk to your ... Watcher. I will try and sell the idea to my superiors. Before we can agree to this, Ms. Summers, we will have to run him through a security check, of course. I hope you understand."

"Totally."

"I hope to hear from you soon then."

Buffy had hoped to talk with Riley for a minute in private, but he rose together with Burke, stopping just long enough to pay for their coffees.

The government guys in X-Files sure were a lot different than these guys.

__________________________________________________________________

Part 13

"So what do you think?"

Buffy cradled the phone to her head as she sat cross-legged on her dorm room bed. Willow was still at the library, studying late as she so often did these days. All to distract herself from the pain of losing Oz. Buffy was convinced the redhead was not getting enough sleep, but she could understand it. The first month or two after Angel had left her she had been afraid to sleep, too.

"It's hard to say," Angel's voice rang out from the phone. "It sounds like a great opportunity, but ..."

"Yeah, but ...," she agreed. They had both seen too much to believe in good things that came without some kind of catch.

"I will try and call in a few old favors," Angel said after a moment of silence. "Maybe I can find out a little bit more about this government operation. Has Willow found anything on her computer?"

"She managed to get a look at Riley's files here on campus. Born in Iowa, farm boy through and through. Psychology major. No trace of any military career, nor that he is working for any kind of government agency. Willow even called his parents in Iowa, just to check whether they actually exist. They do; she says they're pretty nice people and love to talk about their son."

"Most of what is in his file is probably accurate. The best lies are those that stick closest to the truth."

She nodded, trying to stifle the longing of having him here with her, sitting on the bed, instead of a hundred miles away at the other end of a phone line.

"What does Giles think about the whole thing?" Angel asked.

"Well, once he got over being flustered he tried to approach things rationally, which pretty much led to stuttering and repeated questions whether or not I thought I was doing the right thing trusting Riley. If I had a good answer to that I would have a lot fewer problems."

There was a pause at the other end and Buffy wondered whether Angel might feel a little bit jealous about her relationship with Riley, if one could call it that. She had considered him a friend, though she was aware that he wanted more than that from her. Now she simply was not sure what to think about him, though some part of her was quite smug with pride that they were asking her to join their team and show them how it was done.

If only she could be sure that their offer was genuine.

"I told him I would not be doing this without him," Buffy added. "If I get to be secret agent Buffy than he has to be secret agent Giles."

"You did the right thing there," Angel assured her. "And if their offer is indeed genuine than they should be happy to get someone with such a deep knowledge of the demonic as Giles."

"Plus it might get him off his slacker couch once in a while. He really needs a job."

They both laughed. Angel's laugh was a beautiful thing, Buffy thought, even more precious because she heard it all too seldom. God, how she missed his presence.

"How goes the training?" she asked, wanting to change the topic for a bit.

Angel had told her that he was getting martial arts training in Los Angeles. At first she had been rather upset about that, both because it meant he was going to take longer to get back to Sunnydale and because he was going to a stranger in order to spar instead of doing it with her.

His arguments had been solid, though. He needed to learn to fight without super strength and, seeing that she was the Slayer and used to him being as strong as she was, she had to agree that she was probably the wrong person to help him with that. The fact that he obviously still intended to fight by her side made her uneasy, but she could not honestly fault him for it. If their situations were reversed she would not be able to simply stay home and worry, either.

"It goes slow, I fear," he told her honestly. "I'm still not used to my reduced speed and strength. Plus I've discovered that I've gotten into the habit of pulling my punches when fighting against a human."

Buffy nodded, understanding. When one had enough strength to punch a hole into a brick wall one had to hold back when hitting a human, otherwise a single blow could well be fatal. When that strength was suddenly gone, though, that same habit could turn a knockout blow into a love tap that would produce nothing but laughs.

"Any idea when you will be home?" she finally asked, completing the ritual. She asked him that question every time. He always evaded her, said something about he would come when he had wrapped things up in LA, when he completed his training, when he felt confident that Cordelia and Doyle would be okay without him.

"I can't say," he admitted. "If you don't mind, though, I would like to come over for the weekend."

"Really?" Buffy immediately perked up, not quite believing what she had just heard. "The whole weekend?"

"I miss you, too, Buffy," he said softly.

Happiness closed down her throat, made her unable to utter anything in reply. A few times these last two weeks she had woken up in the morning and wondered whether it might all have been a dream. Angel turning human, the two days they had spent together in LA, maybe even their nightly phone calls.

Now, though, he would coming to Sunnydale. Only for a few days, granted, but he would be here. In the flesh.

Where her friends would see him.

They chatted on for a while, but Buffy was now preoccupied with a mixed feeling of anticipation and dread. Should she tell her friends now, before he came? Should she just walk up to them with Angel holding her hand in broad daylight?

The combination of still hearing Angel's voice through the phone and her own racing thoughts proved potent enough to keep her from noticing the shiver that went down her spine, the hairs that stood up straight on her neck.

She never noticed the dark shape that was watching her through the window of her dorm room.

#

Jackson King was confused.

It was not really that strange a state for him as of late. His life had changed completely that day in South America when he had been chosen as the Huntsman. He felt different, he thought different, sometimes he even wondered whether he was still the same person at all. Maybe Jackson King had died that day and he was just walking around in his body, carrying his memories.

Most of the time, though, his thoughts were occupied by other things.

For several days now he had followed the girl around the town, his eyes watching every move she made, his senses drinking in her presence. It was her, there was no doubt in his mind about that. She was the Slayer and her name, as he had learned from overhearing a conversation, was Buffy.

She was the Slayer and he had come here to find here, to be with her, to satisfy some indefinable urge that only her presence could quell. Yet somehow it had not worked out quite the way he had imagined it to.

It was not so much something he knew, but rather something he felt he should know. He had read that, once a new girl was chosen as the Slayer, she simply knew things. How to handle a stake, how to find a vampire's heart, how to fight any number of demonic creatures without ever having learned how to do it. Maybe this was something similar? If it was, though, it was off.

Somewhere deep inside his mind he had played out their meeting a hundred times already, certain that it would go down exactly this way. He would approach her, find her, and she would feel his presence. They would be drawn together, unable to resist each other, and then ... well, he had never been too clear on what would happen then, but he was certain that events would play out the way they were supposed to. All this was destined, that much he knew. Or thought he knew.

Only things had not gone down that way. He had approached her, watched her from the shadows. She felt his presence, it was evident in the way she tensed whenever he got close. Sometimes her eyes would scurry the darkness for him, try to find him. They never did, though, and after some time she always shrugged and went about her business. And he, well, he never showed himself to her, though he could not really say why.

Something was off about her, about him, about what should have happened between them the moment he first saw her. It was as if he was waiting for something, some sort of circuit that should close between them, a click that would make everything clear as day. Only it had not happened and he did not know why. It was certainly not made easier by the fact that he had absolutely no clue as to what should be happening.

Unfortunately for him he did not know what to do now, so he decided to just keep up what was quickly becoming his routine. There was not really any alternative to it. Even though things had not happened they way they should have he knew that leaving Sunnydale was not an option for him. The very thought of leaving the Slayer behind and going elsewhere was enough to cause him almost physical pain.

He would stay. He would keep following her. And maybe ... maybe whatever it was that kept them apart would simply go away.

It just had to.

______________________________________________________________

Part 14

The decision, in the end, was a pragmatic one.

After some long hours of talking things through Giles and Buffy had agreed that, seeing as Burke, Riley, and company already knew quite a bit about her, the best thing for them to do was to find out as much as they could about them in turn. The easiest method to do that was by joining up. If things turned out fine, just great, if they did not ... well, then they would have to think of something.

Buffy called Riley and gave him Giles’ name for that security check Burke had wanted. It took but another two days for Riley to call them back and say that things had checked out. The fact that Giles was not an American citizen had not made Burke all that happy, but in the end he had agreed that the potential gain of acquiring a thousand and more years’ worth of demon knowledge was worth the extra trouble of getting security clearance for a foreigner.

It was on Thursday, one day before Angel would come to Sunnydale, when Giles and Buffy were invited for their first tour of Special Domestic Operations.

“This is still a rather improvised location,” Riley told them as his car pulled into the warehouse. “Also that vampire Spike did a lot of damage when he escaped from us.”

Riley had told them about Spike’s capture and escape, leading up to the battle in Buffy’s dorm room. Buffy and Giles had silently agreed not to let Riley in on Spike’s later fate for now, not that they themselves knew all that much about it. Their mission was to find out more about the commandos before unveiling any more secrets to them in turn.

“Why a warehouse?” Buffy asked as they got out of the car. “I kinda expected something like a super-secret underground headquarters or such.”

“You’ve seen too many James Bond movies,” Riley replied, smiling. “How do you suppose we could build something like that without everyone in Sunnydale noticing? Besides, why spend millions on fancy digs when all we need is a staging area. We’re not planning to take over the world from here, just kill a few demons.”

They reached the deceptively run-down looking door in the back of the parking garage, the only thing suspicious about it its surprising solidity. Riley took a card out of his pocket and swiped it through a carefully hidden reader beside it.

“When do we get cards of our own?”

Riley did not answer, instead ushered them through the opening door and into the main area of the warehouse. It was not exactly what she had expected, Buffy thought, admittedly having imagined to find something out of a James Bond movie. Silver metal walls, high-tech gadgets, maybe some monorails for people to ride around the vast headquarters.

What she saw instead was a rather mundane-looking warehouse that had received something of a face-lift recently. The walls remained gray and what few windows there were had been closed up tight.

One side of the main area was stacked with boxes, a second glance revealing them to be some sort of pre-fabricated housing units. Right next to them were several rows of military-style lockers, one of them currently open with a black-clad young man taking several weapons from it.

The far corner housed an improvised gym. The floor was covered with training mats, several pieces of workout equipment standing next to them. More lockers, as well as some more of those housing units. Probably showers, Buffy suspected.

A metal staircase led up to a second floor of sorts, consisting mostly of a separate room that had probably started out as the warehouse manager’s office some time ago. Through its windows Buffy could see several tables stacked with computers and phones, several people operating them.

All in all the place looked a lot less science fiction and a lot more mundane than she had expected it to be. There were maybe a dozen people around at the moment, most of them dressed in civilian clothing. Most of them had turned to look at the newcomers.

“Welcome to our humble abode, Ms. Summers,” Burke came up to greet them. “Mr. Giles, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Giles shook the offered hand, but said nothing in return for now. The Watcher’s eyes were busy taking in the surroundings, lingering for a moment on the only other exit.

“About three quarters of our current operation teams are here at the moment,” Burke lead them toward the training area, where most of the people had gathered. “All of them hold some kind of day job here in town to avoid suspicion, so getting them all here at any one time can be a bit of a bother.”

Riley, walking ahead of them, was quickly approached by his friend Forrest.

“You’re kiddin’ me, right?” he asked, seeing Buffy for the first time in the flesh. Riley had told him quite a bit about her, but from everything he had heard he had kind of imagined her to be ... taller. “This is the Slayer?”

“In the flesh,” Riley just said.

“Listen up, people,” Burke said, calling for everyone’s attention. “As I’ve been telling you, we are getting some reinforcements here. This is Ms. Summers, the Slayer. You’ve all read the briefing documents, I trust? The gentleman to her right is Mr. Giles, her Watcher. I believe our research people are dying to sit down with him and talk shop.”

Buffy swept her gaze across the assembled agents. There were twelve of them at the moment, ten of them men, two women. All of them looked to be in top shape and ready for action, though some carried quite a few bruises from recent scraps.

Most of them were giving her looks that ranged somewhere between skepticism and mild amusement.

“Mr. Burke,” Buffy addressed the senior agent, “would you mind if we start the day with a demonstration?”

Burke looked down at her, a slight smile softening his perpetual scowl. He knew that most of his people would not accept such a little girl without seeing some kind of proof of her abilities. Riley vouching for her was one thing. Seeing her in action would be another. Besides, he had yet to see her in action himself and was rather looking forward to it.

“Go right ahead, Ms. Summers,” he motioned her forward. “They are all yours.”

Buffy smiled, then walked right onto the mat into the middle of the gathered agents. She was dressed in blue jeans and a simple white shirt, her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, a picture of innocence and helplessness.

“Let’s start simple, shall we?” she addressed the others. “I’m a vampire, you need to kill me before I kill all of you.”

Someone chuckled, obviously amused by the notion of this girl taking on a dozen trained combatants all by her lonesome. The chuckle had barely begun when, without further warning, Buffy exploded into action.

To their credit the operatives reacted quickly when the pretty little girl suddenly transformed into a whirlwind of punches and kicks. Only one of them went down before the others got over their surprise and started fighting back.

It was a new situation for Buffy as well, she mused. Most of the times vampires ran in packs of no more than three or four members, if that many. Most of them did not have any fighting skills worth speaking of, though their superhuman strength and speed usually made up for that just fine. Seldom had she been forced to fight so many skilled opponents at the same time. Had they been vampires she would have been in quite a bit of trouble.

As it was, though, she did just fine.

The fight lasted three minutes before the final member of Burke’s teams crashed into a corner, dazed and close to unconsciousness. Buffy stood in the middle of the training mats and contemplated her torn shirt with a pout. One of the agents had gotten a grip on it before she could knock him cold.

“Now that was a slip-up,” she sighed.

“I see we need to work on your rear guard some more,” Giles deadpanned.

Burke was speechless. He had expected a lot after hearing Riley’s accounts, but actually seeing it ... he would have to watch that fight in slow motion later, the cameras having recorded everything.

“That was amazing, utterly amazing.”

Buffy turned to look at the newcomer standing beside Burke.

“And you are ...?”

“Daniel Weinheim,” he quickly introduced himself, shaking her hand. “Agent in charge of research. I have to say I was skeptical at first despite reading about you in Richard Wilkins’ files, but ...”

“The Mayor had files on me?” Buffy asked, looking disgusted. “There were no photos in there, I hope? That guy was really sick!”

“Ah ... no, no photographs. He did not even record your name, just ... well, some notes on how you were dangerous to his plans, but nothing that could not be dealt with in time.”

“Ah, how the mighty have fallen,” Buffy sighed theatrically.

“Agent Finn was not exaggerating, I see,” Burke said, finally regaining his voice. “Those were our best people.”

“They weren’t bad,” Buffy admitted. “I think the basic problem is that they could not adapt to someone as small as me having such speed and strength. Unfortunately that is what they will face with most of the vampires out there, too. Turn a ten-year-old girl into a vampire, she’ll be almost as strong as me and perfectly willing to put that strength to use.”

Riley, still grinning, went over to Forrest who was trying to get back to his feet just then. He had been taken out a minute into the fight, a roundhouse kick to his jaw having sent him flying into the wall.

“Now that was humiliating,” he mumbled, accepting Riley’s hand to pull himself to his feet.

“Told you,” he just said.

“Yeah, you did. Quit grinning!”

Most of the agents were back on their feet a few minutes later, hurting for the most part, and no longer giving Buffy looks of amusement.

“If I had been a vampire you’d all be dead,” Buffy told them. “Vampires come in all shapes and sizes and their strength does not depend on their bulk or gender. Most of them have no trouble passing for human and got decades, sometimes centuries of fighting experience under their belts. They can be hurt, but they don’t stay down unless you cut off their hands or ram a stake into their hearts.

“None of you can match strength with a vampire, so don’t try! Your best chance is to take them out from a distance. Bullets will slow them down, but only wood will kill them. Crossbows work just fine most of the time, though some vampires are fast enough to catch the arrows in mid-air. If that happens, run! Those are not the ones you want to tangle with.

“If there is no other chance but to get close and personal, team up! At least three or four guys per vamp. Two or more holding him down, one doing the staking. Crosses can repel vampires to a certain degree, keep them from tearing you apart. Holy water works as well, though it’s generally not fatal.”

Buffy took a breath, looking around to see whether everyone was listening. She felt a little strange to lecture these people, all of them were older than her, but it was good kind of strange. Maybe she could actually get to like this.

“We will set up training sessions with Ms. Summers these next few weeks,” Burke announced. “Mr. Giles, Ms. Summers, and myself will work out the program. Standard patrols will continue, but keep actual contact to a minimum for now. That’s all!”

Most of the agents headed for the showers, looking forward to soothe their aching bones. Buffy had barely worked up a sweat.

“I would like to begin the training program as soon as possible,” Burke told her. “We could start on Saturday and ...”

“I kinda have plans on the weekend,” Buffy interrupted him with a sheepish smile. “Can we start on Monday?”

Giles gave her a strange look, unaware of any plans his charge had this weekend, but kept his silence for now. Burke frowned for a moment, but then nodded. It had been part of the agreement that Buffy would be able to schedule her own hours unless some kind of emergency came up.

“Certainly. Mr. Giles, I hope you will be available for consultation before that, though. I believe Mr. Weinheim has about a million questions for you.”

The agent in charge of research nodded vehemently.

“Certainly,” the Watcher agreed. He rather hoped to receive some answers in turn.

_______________________________________________________________

Part 15

Buffy skipped along the cemetery path, looking to finish her patrol early tonight. Her first meeting with Riley’s people this afternoon had gone well, or so she thought, and tomorrow Angel would arrive in Sunnydale. She did not even worry about the whole telling-her-friends-that-Angel-was-human thing anymore. They would handle it and if her friends could not understand it, well, that would be their problem.

Things were definitely looking up, she thought, and she was determined that nothing and no one would ruin the coming weekend for her. A moment later she chided herself for the thought. Sunnydale was definitely not a jinx-free part of the world.

She quickly went over her mental list of current problems. Giles was still not a hundred percent sure whether or not Burke and his gang were on the level, but she had seen that the Watcher had been taken in by Weinheim’s undisguised enthusiasm for the demonic. Until proof to the contrary presented itself Buffy was prepared to belief that they had done the right thing in joining up with the SDO (though she was determined to find a better name than that. There were too many three-letter acronyms in this world already).

The only other thing currently on her list was this Huntsman thing the Council had warned them about, but so far the young man called Jackson King had not made an appearance in her life. Maybe the Watchers had been wrong about his coming here.

About a minute later Buffy would condemn the universe for its very basic sense of the dramatic, for it chose that very moment to make the object of her thoughts appear right in front of her.

She was in a fighting stance before she recognized the young man, the dark shape leaping from the tree with catlike grace sent all her instincts into full alert. He landed in front of her and stood up straight, looking her directly in the eye from less than a kick’s distance away.

He did not say anything, just looked at her. Buffy was about ready to throw a quip, followed by a punch, but somehow her mouth refused to work. Instead her eyes drank in the sight of her opposite. Dressed in a simple pair of blue jeans and a tight black shirt he was not the most impressive of sights, though quite handsome in a boyish way. His clean-shaven face and slightly pouting lips made him look younger than the eighteen years the Watchers’ files had said he was.

His gaze locked with hers and, impressive or not, Buffy felt her mouth go dry.

“I’ve decided not to wait anymore,” he told her, making a step forward.

Buffy just stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. What was going on here? By now she should be moving, running her mouth, doing something ... anything. The Watchers had said that this man was dangerous, that meeting him would have dangerous consequences. Not that she trusted the Watchers much these days, but she would not simply disregard a warning from them, either.

Her entire body was singing with tension, her heart hammering so violently that she feared it would break free of her chest. Her fists clenched and unclenched, sweat was beginning to form on her forehead even though she had barely moved a muscle.

What was happening to her?

“You feel it, too, don’t you?” Jackson King asked, his voice barely more than a growl. He was panting, his face shimmering with sweat as well. She could see the muscles of his upper body tense under his tight shirt and she swallowed, unable to explain the strange reactions her body went through.

“Feel what?” she finally managed to ask, her voice shaky.

“Us,” he answered, moving closer still. Barely a foot was between them now and she had to crane back her head to keep eye contact. “I’ve sought your presence across half the world. The Watchers did not want me to come here, but I knew that I had to.”

Buffy wanted to take a step back, wanted to flee from whatever this man was doing to her, but her body refused to obey. It was all she could do to make herself stand still instead of doing what her every instinct urged her to do.

Which was quite the opposite of fleeing.

“I can feel you in my blood,” Jackson whispered, his hand slowly rising to reach out and touch her. “Can’t you feel it, too?”

She opened her mouth, wanted to deny feeling anything like that, but then his fingers softly touched her cheek. A white-hot sensation lanced through her body with that slight contact, pain and pleasure all wrapped together, and before she knew what was happening she leaped forward, tackling Jackson to the ground with a growl coming from her lips.

He responded in kind, all reason vanishing from his face to be replaced by pure animal passion. They rolled across the ground, entangled with each other, each trying to gain the dominant position. Buffy’s skin was humming wherever it touched Jackson, the barrier of their clothing insufficient to dampen the sensations. All conscious thought seemed to flee from her, nothing existed but this other, the one to whom every fiber of her being was calling out.

Jackson ended up straddling her, his arousal evident against her pelvis, but she threw him off a moment later and was back on her feet, jumping him again. They tumbled backwards over a tombstone, crushing it beneath them as they struggled. Buffy dealt out blows without thinking, aware that they were not meant to defeat this opponent, just to show him her strength. Every contact seemed to spark electricity between them. Jackson responded, dishing out blows of his own, and she felt his strength where he hit her. He seemed ever bit as strong as she was. Every bit as fast, too.

All sense of time was lost as they fought, paying no heed to their surroundings. They crashed right through the wall of a crypt, barely feeling the impact as brick and mortar gave before their power. Both were sweating profusely now, their body temperatures spiking in a fever that hailed from somewhere deep inside them.

Buffy, her fingers curled into claws, ripped the black shirt off Jackson’s chest, leaving four deep scratches on his skin in the process. His own fingers dug into the waistband of her jeans and she could hear the sound of fabric tearing.

Suddenly they found themselves interrupted by a hissing sound and looked up to find three vampires approaching them, salvia dripping from their exposed fangs, hunger in their inhuman eyes. The crypt they had tumbled into was a nest for the undead and the inhabitants were angry and looking to make a meal out of these disturbers.

Without even exchanging a look or a word the Slayer and the Huntsman moved, immediately attacking these new foes.

Two of the vampires did not even have time to react. Buffy was upon one of them, not a stake to be found, and drove her stiff fingers right through its throat. But moments later, using a foot on the vampire’s chest for leverage, she tore off its head and reduced it to dust. Jackson, for his part, simply picked his vampire up bodily and threw him out the crypt door and into a tree, an extending branch spearing the creature right through the heart.

The third vampire mumbled something like “Oh, shit!” before they both grabbed him. He never even had a chance. Jackson held him and Buffy tore his head off his shoulders with barely even a strain.

Before the dust had even settled they were attacking each other again. The remains of Jackson’s shirt vanished somewhere in the shadows and Buffy’s jeans were so much tatters now, flapping loosely around her legs. They barely noticed, the only thing they were interested in was the battle at hand. Desperately clawing at each others bodies, wanting to be close even if it meant tearing the other wide open and wrapping the skin around oneself.

A violent attack by Buffy tore open Jackson’s jeans from hip to ankle, leaving him all but naked before her. Moments later he grabbed her, lifting her into the air to smash her against one of the crypt’s walls. The stone barely held up under their onslaught this time, cracking with the impact. Jackson moved in and Buffy’s legs went around his body all by themselves, her mouth hungrily searching his as they kissed with abandon, looking to devour each other to still this strange hunger that had overcome them both.

Suddenly there was no barrier between them any longer and Jackson thrust deep into Buffy’s body, grinding her back hard against the stone. The sensation of feeling him inside her penetrated right through the haze that had wrapped itself around her mind. The reality of the situation hit her with sudden crystal clarity.

Oh my God, what was she doing?

“Stop,” she yelled, but Jackson was too far gone to hear her, thrusting into her again. Buffy dug her hands into his shoulders, trying to shake him off.

“Stop it, please!”

He did not hear her and it took three more tries until she finally managed to throw him off. Buffy crumbled against the wall, panting, shocked at what had just happened, refusing to believe that it really had. This was not her, it could not be her. She did not simply jump people and ...

Jackson was getting back to his feet, the wild look in his eyes clearly showing that he was not interested in stopping any time soon. And some part of Buffy did not want to stop, either. A part that seemed to grow stronger by the second.

Rationality won out, though, barely, and when he approached her once more Buffy delivered an uppercut that threw Jackson down again, dazed and barely conscious. Without waiting for him to recover Buffy gathered the tattered remains of her clothing around her and ran. She did not care where she was headed, she just wanted away from here. Her vision was obscured by tears of shame running freely from her eyes.

Oh, God! Oh, God! What was that? Why had she done that?

Her body was aching all over and she could still feel the screaming in her blood, a violent urge to turn around and finish what she had started. A dark, animalistic part of her mind was craving it, longing for it with an intensity that caused her knees to shake. It took every ounce of her strength to keep running, her thoughts in pure chaos.

What had she done? What had she done?

Without any conscious thought her feet were carrying her to the one place she felt she could go now. She could not head home and face her mother, not like this. Neither could she go to the dorms, the risk of meeting people she knew in those corridors was just too great. Xander’s basement apartment was on the other side of town and Angel was still in Los Angeles, not that she would have wanted to face either of them in this condition.

Which left only Giles, the only one who might be able to explain to her what had just happened. Her body shaking with sobs of shame and fear Buffy arrived at his apartment and frantically pounded against the door.

#

When Jackson King recovered from the near-knockout blow he had received the Slayer was gone. This confused him greatly. Why had she left him? Why had she left when her own desire could no more be fulfilled than his own?

Something was still off, he realized. This night he had decided to take things into his own hands, no matter his feelings that something was still not right. This was how it should have happened from the start. Slayer and Huntsman, destined to meet in combat and passion. Destined to fight together against the dark and find pleasure in it the likes of which no mere human could ever hope to understand.

For some reason the Slayer, Buffy, had resisted. But why? She, too, must have felt the power they unleashed between them. He had seen it in her face, the feral grin of pure joy it had shown for those few precious minutes before she had fled from him. Now, with his own reason returning, he realized that her face had changed in the last seconds before she had clobbered him.

It had shown nothing but shame and fear.

Why? Why would she fear him, fear what was between them? Why would she be ashamed of it? Something had to be terribly wrong, something that needed to be fixed before destiny could run its course.

And it would. If he had ever had any doubts about that they were gone now. For a few brief minutes everything had been as it was intended, the Slayer and the Huntsman together in all ways, all things.

It would be thus again. Soon.

___________________________________________________________

Part 16

It was definitely a night of surprises for Rupert Giles, that much was already clear. But hours ago he had received news from the Council, learning that one of the major texts regarding the Huntsman had now successfully been decoded. Since time was of essence the Watchers had faxed it to him. It was actually the first time Giles ever used the fax machine Xander, Willow, and Buffy had bought him for his birthday last year. They had labeled it as his first step into the 20th century before it was too late.

He had not yet had a chance to take a look at it, though, when Buffy suddenly arrived at his home. Her clothing in shambles, her small body shaking with sobs, he barely managed to get a coherent sentence out of her. She was clearly in shock. Something had happened to her, something terrible, and the only thing he could clearly understand between repeated utterances of 'I'm sorry' and 'I didn't mean to' was a name.

Jackson King.

Giles called Willow, hoping that Buffy's best friend might be able to calm her down. He had managed to maneuver Buffy into his bed, tucking her in, but she was still in shock, it seemed. The redhead arrived barely five minutes later, concern evident in her every gesture and _expression. Giles merely motioned upstairs and she vanished into the bedroom, immediately taking in the devastated state of her friend.

"Buffy, my god," she sat down on the bed, softly touching the Slayer's shivering form. "What happened?"

"I didn't mean to," Buffy whispered under her breath. "I didn't mean to."

"Didn't mean to what?" Willow asked, but Buffy barely seemed to register her presence.

The redhead cast a side glance at the torn remains of Buffy's clothing which Giles had draped across a chair nearby. It looked like a wild animal had torn them apart. What she could see of Buffy's skin was covered with cuts and bruises that were already a deep purple. Her friend's accelerated healing would get rid of them by tomorrow, but now they stood out against a skin that was almost as white as the sheets.

She had seen Buffy with worse injuries, though, had seen her beaten half to death. Even in those cases, though, her friend had never been in a state like this. Something more than a fight gone bad must have happened to her.

"Buffy, please," Willow tried again. "Tell me what happened!"

Suddenly Buffy's head snapped around, her eyes wide and shimmering with tears. An air of desperation was on her face.

"He mustn't know," Buffy told Willow. "You mustn't tell him, Will! I only just got him back, I don't want to lose him! I didn't mean to do this, but ... he would understand, wouldn't he? But what if he doesn't? I can't lose him again, Will! I just can't!"

"Lose him? Who, Buffy?"

About ten minutes later Willow left the bedroom, her friend having fallen into an exhausted slumber for now. Giles looked up at her expectantly.

"What did she say?"

"I'm not sure," the redhead confessed, dropping onto the couch. "She kept repeating that she did not mean to do 'it', whatever 'it' might be. Oh, and that 'he' should not find out, yet at the same time how could she not tell 'him'!"

"Who? Jackson King?" That did not make any sense at all, he thought.

"Angel," Willow said after a pause. "She said something about only just having gotten him back and that this might ruin things again."

Giles sighed, remembering his own thoughts from just a little while ago. How Buffy had behaved like she was hiding something and how it had reminded him of the time when she had hidden Angel from them.

Why did this not come as a surprise?

"You ... you think they are back together?" Willow asked. "She didn't tell me anything about that, but ... well, ever since Thanksgiving she was a bit ... lighter. Happier."

"I think we can safely assume that she and Angel have found something of a middle ground, though I can't really imagine what it is. Nothing has changed about them that I know, so ..."

He interrupted himself, feeling how tired he was.

"I guess we have two choices now. Letting her sleep and hoping she will be more lucid in the morning or ..."

"...we could call Angel and ask him what's going on," Willow finished the sentence for him.

The Watcher and the witch briefly discussed their options. Leaving Buffy in the state she was in seemed like a bad idea, so they discarded it rather quickly. They considered calling Xander for help in getting Buffy to talk about things, but quickly decided against it. From what little they knew it seemed this was a rather delicate situation and, no matter the boy's loyalty towards his friends, called for more tact and sensitivity than Xander would ever possess. Especially when it came to the topic of Angel.

With no idea what else to do the Watcher, reluctantly, picked up the phone and called Angel in Los Angeles. He had barely begun describing the situation, though, when the other man interrupted him, saying he would be there as fast as he could. He hung up without further comments, leaving Giles and Willow every bit as clueless as before.

Barely ninety minutes after Giles' phone call Angel arrived at the apartment, having broken just about every speed limit his car was capable of breaking. He simply breezed by both Giles and Willow, barely a word of greeting on his lips, making a straight line for Buffy and slamming the bedroom door behind him.

It was probably a good thing that neither Willow nor Giles consciously registered the significance of Angel casting a reflection as he passed the mirror on the stairway. They had quite enough to keep their thoughts busy this night already.

#

Buffy was awake as he entered. She felt his presence, of course, she always did. He could see it in the way her body tensed, the way the tingling in his own belly seemed to change. She was turned away from him, though, lying on her side and staring at the window. Even when he sat down on the bed she did not turn to face him. He placed his hand on her arm and felt her shiver.

"Buffy?" he asked, softly caressing her where he touched. "What happened, beloved?"

For a moment he thought she would not speak to him. As he passed Willow the redhead had called after him, saying that she might not want to talk to him about what had happened. He could almost see her fighting an inner battle as he waited for her to say something.

"I'm so sorry, Angel," she finally whispered under her breath, so softly that he was not sure she had really said it.

"For what?" He gently laid down beside her, slowly pulling her body against his. For a moment she resisted half-heartedly, but finally relented. "What happened?"

"I ... I didn't mean to ... there was nothing I could do, Angel. I didn't want to, but ... I just couldn't stop it."

He made calming noises as he felt her trembling, her voice telling of the state of shock she was in. Something terrible must have happened to her and he could not imagine what it was, especially with the shame and self-loathing she positively radiated in all directions. What could possibly have reduced his strong Buffy to this shaking wreck?

"Tell me, beloved," he whispered into her ear. "Whatever it is, we'll handle it."

It took almost half an hour and repeated assurances of love on his part to finally get the story out of her. She told him what happened in the graveyard with the young man called Jackson King. Over and over she told him that she was sorry, that she had not meant to do it, something had forced her.

White hot anger filled Angel's veins, but none of it was directed at the girl shivering in his arms. Buffy had fought for their relationship more vigorously than anyone, including himself. The very thought that she would cheat on him now was simply ludicrous. No, something else must have happened to her. Something they needed answers about.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Buffy," he assured her, kissing the back of her neck. "We'll get to the bottom of this, I promise you."

He also made another promise to himself in that moment. Whoever this Jackson King was, however he had forced himself onto Buffy, Angel would make him pay for it. Superpowers or no superpowers.

#

Almost an hour after Angel had entered Giles' bedroom he emerged again. He had convinced Buffy to take a shower, wash the dirt and grime of her encounter with the Huntsman off her body. He had watched for a minute, seen the frantic way she scrubbed her skin. The thought that Buffy felt guilty for what had happened was almost more than he could bear.

Walking down into the apartment he saw Giles and Willow both flinch back from the look on his face. He forced himself not to show the seething anger that held his heart in its grip. Instead he filled the other two in on what he had learned, giving them a condensed version of this night's events that had found Buffy's agreement. It left out how far things had really gone.

Even without knowing the full details Willow was appalled, at a loss for words. Giles sat down in his chair, burying his face in his hands.

"I was afraid something like this would happen," the Watcher sighed.

"Did you know it would?" Angel asked, the anger showing on his face again. "Why didn't you warn ...?"

"I didn't know," the Watcher interrupted him. "Our information on the Huntsman was sketchy so far. Tonight, though, the Council sent me a newly decoded text. I did not have time to read through it before Buffy arrived, but ... well, you were upstairs quite a long time, so I did some reading."

"What does it say?"

All three of them turned around to see Buffy standing at the top of the stairs. The little blonde's hair was still wet, but she had dressed in some clean clothes from the small emergency stash she had here at Giles' apartment. There were dark rings under her eyes and her skin, what they could see of it, was red and raw from her scrubbing in the shower.

Angel saw that her hands were shaking.

"Buffy," Giles began softly. "Are you sure you want to ...?"

"I need to know, Giles," she told him in a surprisingly firm voice. "Something ... something happened to me tonight and I ... I need to know. I just need to."

The Watcher took a deep breath, then nodded and motioned for everyone to sit down. Angel and Buffy took the couch, the former quickly pulling her against him in a comforting gesture. For a moment she tensed, her entire body screaming of the shame she felt, but then she relaxed against him, drinking in his still unfamiliar warmth. Unlike the storm-like presence of Jackson King being with Angel felt soothing. Safe.

Willow and Giles both noticed their intimacy, but wisely refrained from commenting for now.

"Very well," Giles said, taking up the papers he had received tonight. "Here is what the Council has learned of the Huntsman so far:"

___________________________________________________________

Part 17

The Huntsman's Story:

Centuries ago members of the Watchers Council unearthed an ancient accounting of something called the Huntsman. At first they did not know what it was, but they understood enough of the texts they had found to realize two things. First, it was powerful, and second, it had something to do with the Slayer.

At that time the Slayer had served the Council well for many centuries, but they were no closer to understanding its true nature than they were when they first encountered it. They had perfected magical spells that allowed them to predict, with a high level of accuracy, who might be chosen as the next Slayer if the current one should perish. They had developed methods to hone the Slayer's skills and powers. But where it came from and what it truly was, these things were a mystery to them.

Thus much effort was dedicated to translating these ancient texts. They spoke of the Slayer and the Huntsman, describing their role in the scheme of things. Two warrior spirits, created long ago by a power without name. Male and female. Animus and Anima. Just as the Slayer would only choose females as its avatars, so did the Huntsman select only males. They were made to fight together, side by side, perfectly complementing each other.

Only something had gone wrong a long, long time ago. Somehow someone had trapped the essence of the Huntsman, locked it away from those who should have been chosen by its power. This not only deprived the side of light of one of its warriors, but it also weakened the Slayer. For together the Slayer and the Huntsman would be greater than the sum of their parts, a nearly unstoppable fighting force.

The Council, upon learning all this, dedicated their every resource to finding the trapped essence of the Huntsman. This was during a time when the forces of darkness seemed to hold the upper hand, right in the middle of the dark ages. The Watchers believed that, with the Slayer and the Huntsman fighting side by side as they were intended to, they would be able to beat back the dark. Maybe destroy it forever.

It took them decades to find what they sought. When they finally did, it took them almost again as long to break through the many and powerful magical seals and containment spells that trapped the Huntsman. Eventually, though, they managed. In the presence of the Council leaders and the current Slayer the Huntsman was freed and, as the Council's clairvoyants had predicted, it immediately chose an avatar, one of a handful of young men the Watchers had selected for this purpose.

At first everything seemed to work out just fine. The Slayer and the Huntsman went into battle side by side and nothing and no one could stand against them. Demons and vampires alike fell before them like grass before the scythe. There was passion between them as well, something the Watchers had not expected, but did nothing to hinder, either. The Slayer's name was Maria Carmella Giordano, the Huntsman was called Charles Augustine. They became lovers and were eventually married by the leader of the Council himself.

Soon, though, things started going wrong. The Watchers, at first blinded by the staggering might of their warriors, began to realise that change was upon them. Augustine threw himself into battle with a mindless dedication and aggressiveness that went above and beyond the call of duty. This was doubly strange as he had been a mild-mannered boy before being chosen by the Huntsman. Now, though, he approached the battle against the dark with a ferocity that scared even his keepers.

What frightened them even more, though, was the fact that the Slayer, Giordano, was also changing. She had been a gentle spirit, fighting because it was her sacred duty, not because she liked it. She had wept for those she could not save and had killed quickly and painlessly when she had to. Now, though, Augustine's no-prisoners approach seemed to have infected her as well. In one battle her own Watcher, a fatherly man whom she had adored, was killed by a vampire that she could easily have stopped, had she not been too busy slaughtering his companions. She dismissed her Watcher's death, not crying a single tear.

When the Watchers tried to separate them, hoping that distance would cool their lust for combat and destruction, they suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of the same violence they had so eagerly unleashed upon their enemies. Giordano and Augustine refused to be separated, killing everyone who got between them, be they human or demon.

In the end the Watchers saw no choice but to kill them both. It cost them many lives and great pain. They hoped that, with the two warriors' death, the nightmare would be over. They went so far as to make sure that the next Slayer and the next Huntsman would never, ever meet. They would not even be told about each other's existence. Each would be made to believe that they were the only warrior for the light.

It did not help, though. Slayer and Huntsman felt each other's existence across whatever distance the Watchers decided to put between them. They disregarded their orders, fought against their keepers, and found each other. It was a repeat of Giordano and Augustine. These two people, who had never even met before, immediately took to each other as if they had been made that way, igniting a passion between them that could burn the world into ashes.

Finally the Watchers came to realize that the unleashing of the Huntsman had been a mistake. Maybe it had not been the powers of the dark that had locked its essence away in the distant past. Maybe imprisoning this warrior of the light had been necessary back then.

It certainly was now.

The Watchers lured the Huntsman into a trap, separated him from the Slayer, and recast the same seals and wards that had bound him once before. Its current avatar, a young man named Alexander Hamish, withered and died almost immediately. No new Huntsman was called, its essence locked up once again. The Slayer who had been at his side, a girl called Maliya, went insane. There was no curing her and ten months after the binding she was killed to make room for a new Slayer, one uncontaminated by the inexplicable bond with the Huntsman.

Every piece of information about the Huntsman was encoded and then locked away, sealed with a warning never to set it free again unless the world itself was in peril. The Watchers knew that there might come a time when the fighting fury of the Huntsman and the Slayer combined might be the only thing that could save the world from destruction, but they hoped it never would never come to that.

For the price was much too high.

#

Silence answered Giles as he finished reading, everyone trying to digest what they had just learned. Angel was unconsciously pulling Buffy tighter against himself, the Slayer still shivering slightly.

Finally it was Willow who found her voice first.

"Why did they free it?" she asked Giles.

"That's what I'd like to know," Buffy added. "I mean ... God, I ..."

"I understand, Buffy," Giles assured her. "That was actually one of the first questions I asked the Council when they started sending me information. It appears that they are in possession of several major prophecies that predict a great battle in the near future, no more than a year or two down the road."

He sighed. "I guess they thought they would need the Huntsman's power for this battle."

"Fools," Angel whispered.

"They did not know most of what I just read, Angel. They only knew that the Huntsman was a creature of great power."

"All the more foolish to free it then when they knew so little about it."

Buffy shook her head, trying to get her thoughts back under control. "Okay, let's just ... let's just take a few steps back and start at the beginning, okay? From what you just told us ... I mean, you are telling me that I have no choice in this? That it's ... what, fated?"

"I don't accept that," Angel said. "Whatever truth this text might contain it was wrong about one thing. Buffy broke away from King, broke whatever spell he had over her."

"It wasn't King who had her under a spell, Angel," Giles reminded him, weary of the anger he could see in the other man's eyes. "The Slayer and the Huntsman are drawn to one another. King would have no more control over it than Buffy."

"But Buffy had control! She broke away from him, not the other way around."

"I'm not sure I could do it again," Buffy confessed, whispering. "It was so ... powerful. Like my thoughts were just ... swept away."

"What about the rest?" Willow asked. "I mean ... it said that you would be more powerful together than apart. Did you ... I mean, did you feel stronger?"

Buffy closed her eyes, shuddering as memories overcame her.

"We were ... interrupted ... by three vampires. We ... God, we just tore them apart with our bare hands. It took about ten seconds."

"Giles, we need to find something to protect Buffy from this ... whatever it is that draws them together."

"I agree, Angel. The Council is still looking into it and I am doing my own research here. Until then, though, the best thing we can do is try to ensure that Buffy and King do not meet face to face again."

Buffy looked up.

"He was stalking me. I ... I couldn't really place the feeling before, but now that I ... know what he ... feels like, I know he has been following me for a while."

Angel cursed. "Then he probably knows where you live. Everything."

"This is strange, though," Giles frowned. "If he has been here for a time then the two of you should have ... I mean, the text says that Slayer and Huntsman were drawn together immediately. You should have felt his presence and ... well ..."

"I did feel him," Buffy said. "I just ... I just didn't know what I was feeling."

Giles shook his head. "We are still missing something here. I'm not sure what it is, though."

"Buffy could simply be stronger of will than those two Slayers mentioned in the text," Angel offered.

"A possibility, yes. I just wish there was some way to be sure about it."

"I have an associate in Los Angeles," Angel told the others. "He has some ... unusual connections. I will ask him to look into this, maybe he can find out some things."

"Good, every pair of eyes helps. Buffy, you should get some sleep now."

Buffy, never having moved from Angel's side, looked up at him with shock still evident in her large eyes.

"You ... you're staying, right?"

He leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. "Just try and make me leave you!"

Giles and Willow shared another look as the couple left together, but said nothing. The redhead made a mental note to press her friend for details the first chance she got, though. Something was going on between these two and she intended to find out what it was.

They could certainly use a little happiness in their lives right now. Maybe not perfect happiness, though.

___________________________________________________________

Part 18

To say that Xander Harris was out of the loop would be a serious understatement. To be more precise he was at a loss as to what had been going on with Buffy and the darker side of Sunnydale as of late. He was feeling left out, quite a lot actually, and it was not a feeling he particularly cherished.

It was to be expected, of course. Buffy and Willow were going to college, he was not. They were sharing a dorm, he lived in his parents’ basement. Willow was still his best bud, he did not doubt that, and he was glad he was able to be there for her ever since the whole thing with Oz and then Spike had gone down. Still, he was pretty much in the dark as to what Buffy was doing these days.

Well, hopefully that was going to change now. Buffy had invited him over for a meeting, saying only that she was going to fill him and the others in on everything that had gone down as of late. Her voice had suggested that ‘everything’ was not all roses and sunshine. The upside, though, was that they were meeting in the park in the middle of the day for a picnic. No possibility of vampire ambush there at the very least.

When he and Anya arrived they saw only Willow and Giles there, busily spreading a blanket on the grass and taking wrapped sandwiches out of a basket. There was no sign of Buffy yet.

“Hey, Wills,” he greeted them. “G-man, what’s up?”

“Don’t call me that,” Giles said without looking up. “Sit down, Buffy should be along momentarily.”

“She is making us wait?” Anya asked, plopping down beside Xander. “She called this meeting, how come she is making us wait? That’s just plain rude!”

“She said something about a surprise,” Willow said, shrugging. She was actually getting used to the former demon’s bluntness. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and ...”

Willow’s voice suddenly trailed off and her eyes widened, focused on something behind Xander. He quickly turned around, expecting something horrible and demonic to come at them even here in the middle of the day. Did he have a stake somewhere? No, of course not, why would he pack a stake for a picnic? Of all the stupid ...

His own thoughts trailed off as well when he finally saw what Willow was gaping at. Buffy was walking toward them with a big smile on her face and holding her hand was ... someone who could not possibly be here. Not in a park filled with sunshine in the middle of the day.

“Hi guys,” Buffy said to her stunned friends. “Surprise!” She and Angel remained standing some feet away from the blanket, waiting for one of them to say something.

“How ...? When ...? How ...?” Willow was looking back and forth from Buffy to Angel so fast her head was starting to spin.

“It’s day, right?” Xander asked no one in particular. “I’m not imagining that, am I? It’s day!”

“Brightest day, Xander,” Angel said with a smile on his lips. “Lots of sunshine.”

“You are not wearing the Gem of Amara,” Giles said, the Watcher studying the non-combusting, sunlit form of the supposed vampire. “How can you ...?”

“He is no longer a vampire,” Buffy said, rubbing a hand across Angel’s warm flesh. “It’s a long story, gang. You want to hear it?”

“He’s a real hunk,” Anya said into the ensuing silence. “I didn’t really see you when you came over at Thanksgiving. Why did no one tell me he was such a hunk?”

“An, really not the time!”

“Don’t worry, Xander! You’re still my ...”

Xander quickly clamped his hand over her mouth, not wanting to hear whatever nickname she had thought up for him right now. Whatever it was, he was sure it was nothing he wanted his friends to hear. Or Angel. Human Angel.

Did this mean he could no longer call him deadboy?

Buffy and Angel settled down on the blanket, sitting so close together that no one could possibly mistake the state of their relationship. There was a somewhat angry look on Xander’s face, but he refrained from commenting. For now at least.

“Okay,” Buffy began, seeing that she had her friends’ undivided attention. “It all started when I went to Los Angeles to chew him out for his visit at Thanksgiving.”

Buffy told them the whole story, except some of the more intimate details. Angel mostly held his silence, only adding a fact here and there and telling them about things Buffy had not seen in person, like his battle against the Mhora. Giles, Willow, and Xander listened with rapt fascination and even Anya seemed intrigued by the tale.

“This is amazing,” Giles said when they finished. “I’ve heard rumors about Mhoras and the mystical properties of their blood, but I had no idea that they could actually bring a dead body back to life.”

“I certainly did not expect it to happen,” Angel admitted, “but I can’t really complain either, can I?”

“No complains here,” Buffy added with a big smile on her face.

“So ... Angel, you’re here to stay?” Willow asked.

The former vampire nodded. “I will need to make some short trips back to LA to take care of some leftover business, but yes, I will stay.” He turned to look fondly at Buffy. “Period.”

Willow needed a moment to digest this fact, but then quickly moved over to gather both Buffy and Angel into a big hug.

“I’m so happy for you two,” she squealed. “This is like a fairy tale ending, guys!”

“I hate to spoil the mood,” Giles said after quietly observing for a minute, “but this fairy tale is not exactly over. We have other problems, don’t we?”

A somber look came to Buffy’s face. She had almost managed to put the events of two days ago out of her mind. Angel had been with her nonstop, ensuring her of his love and that he did not blame her for what happened, and for a time she had been able to pretend that the rest of the world simply did not exist. Especially that part of the world that contained a guy called Jackson King.

Giles was kind enough to take over filling Xander, Anya, and to a certain degree Willow in on what else had been going on. All of them already knew about Riley and his undercover guys, though Buffy and Giles’ decision to join them for now was news to most of them. Any questions or comments they might have had about that were forgotten, though, as Giles explained about the Huntsman and what they knew about its connection to the Slayer.

“You mean this guy and the Buff here,” Xander said, “are destined to ... and everyone who comes between them ...?” He looked at Angel.

“It won’t come to that,” both Angel and Giles said at the same time. The two men shared a quick look of understanding.

“Buffy has been able to break this ... mating bond or whatever it is,” Giles explained. “We are not sure why, but I am looking into various possibilities right now.”

“I spoke to Doyle in Los Angeles,” Angel said. “He’s a friend of mine and has something of a direct line of communication with the higher powers.”

“How does that work?” Xander asked.

“He gets visions of people in trouble,” Angel explained. “Also there are the Oracles, spokesbeings for the Powers That Be and ...”

“Oh, the poor guy,” Anya said. “I knew a woman who had these vision things once. Blew out the back of her head after a while.”

“Blew out ...? He does get terrible migraines whenever they hit, but ...”

“He isn’t human, is he?” the former demon asked. “Normally only good demons are supposed to get these things, but the Powers are messy about that.”

“He’s a half-demon, Anya.”

“Oh, that’s okay then.” With that the topic seemed closed for her. Angel gave her another look, but then continued with the matter at hand.

“Doyle has asked the Oracles about the Huntsman. They did not tell him much, but what they said apparently confirmed what we learned from that text the Council sent you, Giles. Slayer and Huntsman were created as a mated pair of warriors, but unfortunately the mating bond was made too strong. They can’t control it and that’s why the Huntsman was locked away.”

“Until those Council idiots freed it,” Buffy swore. “Trust the guys who are supposed to help me save the world to screw it up again.”

“Did they know why Buffy was able to resist the mating bond?” Giles asked.

“They did not say. The only other thing they told Doyle was that it was a matter of essence. All that makes the Slayer is drawn to the Huntsman. Whatever they mean by that.”

Giles frowned, a thoughtful look on his face. “All that makes the Slayer ...,” he mumbled.

“Oh, I think G-man is in full deduction-mode,” Xander said.

“Giles?” Buffy asked. “What is it?”

“Hmm? Oh, I just ... they said ‘all that makes the Slayer’, yes?”

“That’s what Doyle said, yes.”

The Watcher nodded, taking off his glasses to clean them.

“That would make sense,” he said to no one in particular. “All that makes the Slayer.”

“Giles, you’re wigging me out,” Buffy complained. “If you know something about this, share! Now!”

“It’s just a theory, Buffy, but ... the only previous time we know of that the Huntsman and the Slayer met there was but one Slayer.” He looked up at Buffy. “Now, though, there are two.”

Buffy needed a moment to understand.

“Faith?”

#

In a hospital on the other side of Sunnydale a dark-haired girl was lying in a bed, the same bed she had been in for many months now. The doctors did not honestly expect her to ever wake up again, the damage her head had sustained in a terrible fall back in early summer was just too great.

Not one of these doctors was around, though, to see her sleep grow restless. As a matter of fact it had been restless for quite a while now. She moaned in her sleep and tossed and turned, almost as if she was in the grip of a nightmare she could not wake up from.

Had anyone been able to take a look inside her head, inside her dreams, they would have seen the face of a young man called Jackson King.

___________________________________________________________

Part 19

San Francisco, California

The name on the mailbox read ‘Jessica Blackwood’ and the woman who lived here had almost gotten used to it by now. At first it had been difficult. Someone would call her by that name and she would not react, leading to some awkward questions and lies about a hearing disorder. Now, though, after more than twenty years, things were getting easier. Jessica was her name now and the woman she had been in another life was gone.

Except for a few nights every month, that was.

She still had nightmares sometimes. Nightmares of that infernal place where they were betrayed, treated like something less than human, used by others for their own personal gain. It was over, though, long over. The people who had hurt her and the others were long gone and they had made sure that it could never happen again, neither to themselves, nor to others. The nightmare was over and the memories were fading a little more with every year that passed.

Sometimes she caught herself watching the news or reading the paper and looking for the name of that place. It did appear in the news now and then. Just a few months ago she had seen an article about it. Something about a school blowing up. She wondered whether it had really been an accident or something else. There were things a lot worse than roaming gangs or leaky gas pipes in that deceptively innocent little town. She knew that better than anyone.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Only a few people had her number and she wondered if it might be Steve, up for a little repeat performance of last weekend. It had been a long time since she had trusted herself to be with anyone. Another thing those bastards had messed up in her life. They were dead, she reminded herself once again. The nightmare was over.

“Hello?”

“Julia?” a voice on the other end asked.

She froze. No, this could not be! Not now! Not when things finally settled down! Only four other people alive today knew her true name, knew that she had once lived under the name of Julia Fernandez. None of them would call her. They had made a promise never to call each other unless ... unless the nightmare was not over. Julia put a hand in front of her mouth to stifle the sob she felt building in her throat.

“Julia, are you there?” the voice asked again.

“Yes, I ... I am here, Daniel.”

She had recognized his voice, of course, despite not having heard it in twenty years. Daniel Stark, one of the aforementioned four living people who knew her, knew who she truly was. He knew because he had been there as well, one of the few survivors. Daniel, Julia, and three other people had gotten out alive. Everyone else had died.

“It’s happening again, Julia,” Daniel said.

“Are you certain?” she asked him, praying that he would say no. She did not want to go through this again. More than twenty years had passed and she had almost managed to forget.

“My old contacts don’t lie,” he answered, sounding grim. “Sunnydale has appeared on the radar again and the company has sent a covert action team in.”

Julia closed her eyes, somehow hoping that this would all turn out to be some kind of dream. Yet another nightmare in a long string of nightmares, all resulting from that place called Sunnydale. She pinched herself, but apart from a brief flash of pain there was nothing. No waking up in sweat-soaked sheets. This was real. It was happening again.

“Have you called the others?” she asked.

“Henry is on his way, but it will take him a few days. I haven’t reached Allan and Joshua yet. I’m still in New York. You are closest to Sunnydale, Julia.”

He did not say out loud what he wanted her to do and he did not have to. A lot of time had passed, but she remembered their last meeting. The plans they had made in case something like this would ever happen. One of them, whoever was closest, would go to Sunnydale for recon. Hopefully that person would find out that it was all in error, that the nightmare had not started up again.

If it had, though, that advance scout would call in the others. And they would do what was necessary.

“Any details your contacts could come up with?” she asked.

“Fancy new name for the op,” Daniel said. “Special Domestic Operations, if you can believe it. Not sure how many agents are already in place. The agent in charge is a guy named Thomas Burke.”

Julia nodded, the cold and practical part of her mind already going over the things she would have to do. Call in sick at work. Dig up the old stuff from the attic. A dozen other little details. That part of her mind that was screaming in terror went ignored for now.

“One other thing, Julia,” Daniel said. “Apparently this Burke guy has already put some things in motion. My contact could not get a look at the full reports, but there was some talking about some kind of special agent they were recruiting for the team. Someone, and I quote here, ‘superhuman’.”

Julia’s heart skipped a beat.

“There is no hope then, right? It’s happening again.”

“I pray that I’m wrong, Julia.”

“Let us both pray then,” she murmured, then hung up.

Packing her bag was done as if in a trance, her hands taking out clean clothes and bundling them up without any help from her mind. She was miles away already, her thoughts going back to that town she had sworn never to return to unless ... well, unless the things Daniel had just told her were happening happened. They had all sworn an oath that final night, more than twenty years ago.

She went up into the attic and removed the large chest from where it was hidden behind a loose wall panel. She gave the equipment inside a once-over, nodding in satisfaction. It was all a bit out of date, of course, but she had taken care of it, keeping it in working order. Just in case.

The large assault rifle with the phosphor bullets was clean and clicked in all the right places when she quickly took it apart and reassembled it. Two knives with wooden inlays, every bit as sharp as they had been back then. Two handguns with the same ammunition as the rifle, also in full working order. She took extra time checking the belt of grenades. Some of them were of the standard exploding variety, others would release a large cloud of holy water vapor once primed.

She quickly moved the weapons into the old military-style shoulder bag when something else drew her attention. A framed photograph was lying at the bottom of the chest. Without really wanting to she took it out, blowing a thin sheet of dust off it before taking a long look.

The photograph showed nine people in military fatigues, leaning against two green jeeps and smiling at the camera. Eight men, one woman. All of them looked so incredibly young and confident. Invulnerable. There was nothing in the world they could not handle. Her fingers traced the words written on the bottom right corner.

Sunnydale, California
February 17, 1978

A single tear came to her eye as she looked at those young faces on the picture. At that time it had been a major issue for a woman like herself to be assigned to a special operations unit. Unheard of, really. She had had to work ten times as hard as any of her male colleagues to make it and when the assignment came she had been so incredibly smug and proud.

They were the best, the best of the best. When the Seals could not hack it and Delta Force ran in fear they were sent in. Officially their unit had not even existed and they did the kind of missions the congress never learned about. By the time that picture had been taken they had boasted a one hundred percent success rate with zero casualties.

Julia sighed. Two weeks later four of them had been dead and the rest ... the rest had gotten the worse end of the deal. They had survived. Survived to learn exactly what had been done to them and by whom.

A surge of anger went through Julia, anger the kind of which she had not felt since that time. They were doing it again. Once again they sent unsuspecting soldiers who had served their country faithfully and to the best of their abilities into this nightmare and ... with a flash of pain she felt her hand change, skin ripping apart, bones breaking and healing back together in a heartbeat.

Her anger only grew worse as she looked at her hand, fingers elongated into claws, dark fur covering the skin. Not now, she told herself. There would be time for this later. A part of her yearned for the taste of warm flesh, spilling blood just for the beautiful color it took on when it burst forth into the air. No, she yelled at herself. Never!

Only one time had she allowed those urges to control her. Only one time had she allowed the monster they had turned her into to run free. She did not regret it, never had. It held a certain irony that the only casualties of the monster were its own creators and the world was a better place with them gone.

Only maybe it was not. Julia did not know how it could have started again. They had destroyed all the files and all the people in the know where dead now. It was no use to second-guess themselves now, though. Maybe a few files had survived. Maybe someone else had simply had the same idea. It did not matter.

The only thing that mattered was going to Sunnydale and ending this nightmare before it could claim the lives of yet more innocent people.

And if that meant to let the monster run loose once more, than that was what she would do.

___________________________________________________________

Part 20

A week had passed in relative silence without Jackson King making another appearance. Giles theorized that the young man was every bit as confused about what had happened as Buffy was, only he was without the guidance of a Watcher, having nothing to rely on but his instincts. No one was quite sure what those instincts would tell him to do, but him leaving Sunnydale was not something they considered likely.

Angel stayed in Sunnydale, unwilling to leave Buffy alone while King was still out there somewhere. He made but two brief trips to Los Angeles to train with Mara and have another talk with the Oracles. The former was far more successful than the latter and by the end of the week Angel and Buffy sparred together for the first time since he had turned human. He ended up on his back a lot, of course, but was slowly getting used to having mere human strength. It was a start.

Buffy also told her mother about him and that they were back together. Joyce was, at first, not particularly happy about it, but that was before she heard about Angel’s recent transformation. She had also not missed how depressed her daughter had been ever since Angel had left town and, with most of the reservations she had had about him linked to his vampire nature, decided to give the two of them a chance. It helped, of course, that Angel was quite charming when he wanted to and also knew a lot about art and history.

Buffy went about her new duties as trainer for Burke’s SDO agents and found that it was a lot of fun. After the initial breaking of the ice the agents quickly warmed up to her, recognizing the skills and experience she brought to the team. By the end of the week Buffy took them out on their first joint patrol and things went quite good, though they met but few vampires. Burke was quite happy and Buffy secretly basked in the occasional looks of admiration she got from her new colleagues.

The entire gang paid a visit to the hospital where Faith was still in a coma. By now the doctors had noticed the sleeping girl’s almost constant nightmares. There was nothing they could do for her, though, and some theorized that it might even help her wake up if her sleeping state grew more uncomfortable. Buffy was not so sure about that and said a short prayer for her sister Slayer before they left.

No new revelations about the Huntsman were found in the remaining texts the Council decoded. Giles conferred with them several times and a decision regarding the fate of Jackson King was reached. If the young man did not show himself capable of suppressing the violent urges of the force hosted inside him then the Watchers would have no choice but to try and bind the Huntsman again. This would, of course, lead to Jackson King’s death.

No one wanted to see him dead, though, not even Buffy and Angel. Their best chance was to try and capture him. The best chance for that to happen, though, involved Buffy’s new colleagues, who as of yet knew nothing about the Huntsman.

#

Riley approached the Summers home, not really sure what he was to make of Buffy’s invitation for tonight. They had something to discuss, she had said, something she preferred to talk about outside the SDO barracks.

That was fine by him, actually. Ever since he and Buffy had learned the truth about each other and her joining the team they had been ... distant. Okay, they had not actually been all that close before (at least not as close as he would have preferred to be), but they had been friends of a sort and Riley had enjoyed that. Now, though, their relationship seemed to have been reduced to the strictly professional. He realized it had only been little more than a week, but in that time they had not exchanged a single word that was not about business.

Thus her dinner invitation had come as something of a surprise.

Riley raised his hand to knock on the door, but it opened before he could and Buffy stood there, smiling at him.

“Hi, Riley! I’m glad you came.”

“How could I not?” he asked, smiling back.

Buffy took a step forward and closed the door behind her, the smile on her face growing a bit guarded.

“Riley, before we go in there is something you should know. I ... remember how I told you about this guy I was together with a long time and how I was not over him?”

He just nodded. How could he forget about the guy who was to blame for Buffy’s reluctance to risk another relationship.

“Well, he’s here. You’re gonna meet him in about a minute.”

That was something of a surprise to be sure. Riley just looked at Buffy for a long time, then managed to gather his wits back together. Reminding himself that he was her friend, nothing more, he stifled the irrational bout of jealousy he felt rising.

“Are you ... I mean, you are back together then, I take it?”

“Yes, we are,” Buffy said, her blooming smile telling him all he needed to know. Buffy was happy, there was no mistaking that. Riley sighed. If only she would smile that way because of him. Well, it appeared there was nothing he could do about it and as long as she was happy, well, he could live with that. Somehow.

“I just wanted to tell you first,” Buffy went on. “I didn’t want any awkward silences in there.”

“No silence from me, then. I promise.”

“Thanks!”

Buffy opened the door again and led them inside, where something of a crowd had already assembled. Riley was taken aback for a moment. He knew Giles, of course, as well as Buffy’s dorm mate Willow. The woman who was busily preparing the big dinner table was her mother, he guessed. There was a certain resemblance there.

As for the rest, though ...

“Okay, introductions are in order,” Buffy announced their presence to the room. “Everyone, this is Riley. Riley, these are Xander, Anya, my mother Joyce, Doyle, and Angel.”

The way she said that last name made it clear that he was ‘that guy’. Buffy immediately went to him, slipping an arm around his waist. Angel pressed a kiss to her crown before looking at Riley again.

“Pleased to meet you, Riley,” he said, holding out a hand. “Buffy has told me a lot about you.”

“Well, she did mention you, too, once or twice,” he answered, shaking the offered hand.

The man had a strong grip and for a moment Riley considered turning this into a little contest of strength. Childish, he chided himself a moment later. It was not Angel’s fault that Buffy had fallen for him long before Riley had met her. Riley was envious, there was no denying that, but again, nothing to be done about that. Especially not by some childish display of machismo.

Riley greeted the others, getting a brief explanation of what place they took in Buffy’s life with each handshake. He was rather taken aback by Anya’s calling him James Bond’s farmboy cousin, though, and not just because he was unaccustomed to women complimenting him so directly.

“Ah, Buffy, could I talk to you for a moment?”

“Sure!”

They went into the kitchen, out of earshot of the others.

”Buffy, do they ... does everyone in there know about SDO?”

“Well, of course ... not,” she added after seeing the look on his face. “My mother doesn’t ... I mean, not in so many words. She does know I’ve ... but she really doesn’t know anything. And Anya, I don’t think Anya paid much attention when I ...”

Riley sighed deeply.

“Buffy, remember that document you signed?”

“Oh! You mean the one that said ... uh, am I in trouble?”

Riley moved a hand through his hair. This was exactly why it was never a good idea to mix business with private stuff. For all intents and purposes Buffy had violated the non-disclosure agreement she had signed, telling several people without security clearance about classified matters. She could be brought up on criminal charges for that.

“They are my friends, Riley,” she told him. “Well, except maybe Anya. But it doesn’t matter, really! They all know about me being the Slayer and haven’t said a word to anyone for over three years now. I couldn’t simply not tell them. I haven’t told them Burke’s name or any details, I promise!”

“Buffy, I ... okay, let’s forget that for now! You obviously had a reason for getting me here tonight. Probably not just to meet your friends, right?”

“No. Let’s rejoin the others, okay? We’ll eat and then I’ll explain everything.”

Riley nodded, his thoughts still racing about Buffy’s blatant breach of secrecy. If he told Burke about this it could put an end to their so-far very productive cooperation. Burke might understand, but his superiors probably would not.

He finally decided to let things be for now. He would get to know Buffy’s friends better and play it by ear. Hopefully none of them would blab on about this to yet more people. Yeah, hopefully.

Buffy’s mother served dinner and they chatted amiably for some time, ignoring everything that had to with vampires, secret government operations, and chosen warriors. Buffy’s friends were a strange lot, especially that Anya girl, but quite likeable in their own way.

After a hefty round of ice cream that made Riley take a mental note to run two extra miles tomorrow they settled down on the living room furniture and got down to business.

“Riley, the main reason we wanted you here tonight is this guy,” Buffy said, handing him a photograph. It showed a young man, no older than twenty at the most.

“What about him?”

“His name is Jackson King and, to make a long story short, he is extremely dangerous.”

Giles then filled Riley in on the lore of the Huntsman. Riley was curious about this Watchers Council he briefly mentioned, but did not press the older man about that. When he learned what happened between King and Buffy but a week ago he almost lost his cool.

“That bastard,” Riley growled.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Buffy calmed him. “We were both driven to it by ... whatever it is that makes us what we are. According to everything we know he is an innocent in this, Riley. Think of him as a little boy who was given a really big gun and tries to figure out what it is and how it works without anyone around to show him.”

A deep breath later Riley had calmed down somewhat, sharing a brief look with Angel. The other man was no more happy about King than Riley was, that much was obvious. It almost made him smile. If the choice was between a guy whom Buffy adored and this Huntsman guy, well, that was no choice at all, was it?

“Okay, so what do we do about him?”

“We need to capture him,” Giles said, taking over the reigns of the conversation again. “As I said, King is probably extremely confused and unpredictable. For obvious reasons we can’t risk Buffy going out to hunt him down and, well, I fear the rest of us would not stand that much of a chance to take him down should we find him.”

“He is as strong as Buffy,” Angel said, “maybe stronger. But he is still human, so unlike a vampire he will be vulnerable to things like tranquilizers, gas, things like that.”

“I get it. So you want our teams to go and look for him, is that it?”

Giles nodded. “Remember, Riley, this is an innocent young man out there. Under the right circumstances he could be a tremendous asset to our cause. We need to capture him alive. If he dies then another youngster will be chosen as the Huntsman and, I fear, all this will start over.”

Riley still had trouble believing in the whole ‘chosen by a higher power’ thing, but he understood the problem they were facing. Buffy needed his help in this and, after what he had heard, he intended to give it to her, no matter what he had to do to convince Burke.

King would find the tables turned on him very soon.

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