Doing Time and Fighting Slime

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Part 1

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“Hey, Harris!”

Xander looked up tiredly, seeing the police officer standing on the other side of the cell bars, a disgusted sneer on the man’s face. Small wonder, he mused. There was a murderer sitting inside this cell, was there not? He guessed he deserved all the disgust and then some for what he had done.

“Visitor for you,” the policeman continued, gesturing at the man now coming down the corridor. All the corridors in the Sunnydale police station had the same beige color on the walls, Xander had discovered. It was really making him nauseous after staring at it for almost twelve hours straight, though a little better than the wallpaper in his room at home. That normally made him sick after but five hours.

Giles stopped in front of the cell, looking at Xander through the bars. The boy was sitting on the cell cot, dressed in the same clothes he had worn when they had arrested him last night at the library, only a lot more rumpled now. There were bags under his eyes and a look of pure misery on his face.

Giles had a hard time feeling sorry for him.

The policeman unlocked the cell door and allowed Giles to go in, locking it after him. “Just yell when you want out again.”

“Thank you, officer!”

Sitting down on the opposite cot, Giles looked at Xander for a long minute, causing the boy to fidget under his stern gaze. Finally Giles sighed and took off his glasses to clean them.

“You should be out of here soon,” Giles began. “As far as these gentlemen would tell me they have nothing beyond the fact that someone saw you running out of Amy’s house only a short time after her death occurred. No fingerprints on the murder weapon, no blood on you, no discernable cause.”

Xander said nothing, just stared at the floor because he did not want to meet Giles’ eyes.

“Have they questioned you yet?”

He shook his head.

“Strange,” Giles remarked. “What they have is not really enough for an arrest, only for a questioning. If they have not done even that ... something is wrong here.”

“Oh, really?” Xander’s voice was filled with self-loathing.

“I am not here to soothe your wounded ego, Xander,” Giles told him a cold voice. “After what you did you deserve worse than this.”

Xander finally looked up. “Then why are you here? Why don’t you just leave me to rot? God knows my parents don’t give a damn about the whole thing.”

To be precise his parents had not deigned to turn up at the police station, even though the police had informed them of their son’s arrest. Xander was not sure whether they had been too drunk to remember having a son or whether they really did not care. As far as caring was concerned, though, he had long ago stopped expecting anything of the sort from his family.

“I am here because a girl was killed,” Giles informed him, if anything his voice even colder than before. “Even if Amy had not been something of a friend to Willow, that alone would warrant an investigation. And no matter how little I might think of you right now, I know you did not kill her.”

Sighing deeply Xander folded in on himself. “I’m sorry, Giles. Look, I know I ...”

“I am not interested, Xander,” Giles interrupted him. “Nor is there anything I have to forgive you for. I am not the one you hurt and neither am I your confessor. This is about Amy and finding out who killed her. So tell me everything that happened.”

Xander gulped at Giles’ words, but said nothing in return. What was there to say? Giles was right, that was all. At this time Giles was probably the only person Xander had not wounded through his short-sighted pettiness.

Unlike a lot of other people he could think of.

“I ... I went to Amy to apologize for dragging her into his,” he began. “Her door was ajar. I went inside and ... I found her in the kitchen. Her ... her throat was slashed. There was so much blood, so much ...”

His voice trailed off and he needed a moment to regain his composure. Giles said nothing, did nothing, just continued looking at him.

“There was a knife lying right next to her. I panicked, I ... I guess I should’ve called the police, but the only thing I could think of was that someone had killed Amy and that I needed help. So I ran to the library. You know the rest.”

Giles simply nodded.

“Do they have any clues at all?”

“I don’t think so,” Giles said. “As I said, this entire business is strange. The police should have questioned you, not simply locked you away. Plus there is the fact that there has been almost no investigation at Amy’s house. First Angel and then Willow have been watching Amy’s place and the police just went to collect the body, nothing else.”

“What about Amy’s father?”

“Still out of town, I don’t think they managed to reach him yet.”

Xander nodded, forcing the tears back. Amy was dead and it would be the greatest coincidence in the world if it was not his fault.

“Angel and Buffy will go to Amy’s house after dark today,” Giles continued, lowering his voice to make sure the policeman around the corner did not hear him. “Maybe they can pick up some clues the police missed. Willow will try and take a look at the police files with her computer.”

Xander simply absorbed the information. “I guess there is nothing I can do right now, is there?”

For a moment he thought Giles would make some comment about him having done enough already, but the Watcher just looked at him for a moment, then shook his head.

“As I said, they will probably release you soon. Come to the library once that happens, then we’ll see.”

To the library, Xander repeated in his thoughts. The place where all the people he had hurt would be. Just great.

“Maybe they should just keep me here for good,” he mumbled. God knew he deserved it. He was not responsible for Amy’s death, at least not directly, but seven people had died two nights ago because of the spell he had convinced Amy to cast. He could just as well have killed them himself.

“If that is your take on the matter,” Giles said, having heard the comment, “then maybe they should keep you here. If you want to try and make things better, though, you can’t do it from inside this cell.”

Not waiting for him to answer Giles rose and called for the cell to be opened. Xander stared after him long after he was gone, unsure what to say or think.

Make things better Giles had said. Was that even possible? How could he possibly make things better? He could not bring those seven people back to life, could he? Nor could he take back the things he had said and done to Buffy. To Angel.

Lying down on the cot he stared at the ceiling, which was the same beige as the walls. Whatever happened next he was quite sure that he would have quite a few hours left to think things through. Before the arrest, before he had found Amy’s body, he had already arrived at a conclusion and the events of last night did not really change it.

He had done pretty much everything in his power to ruin his own life these last few weeks. He had lost his friends, his girlfriend, and even the man whom he had regarded as some sort of father figure was clearly disgusted with him. This was not what he had wanted, not what he had intended.

What was that saying about the road to hell? With a bitter laugh he thought about asking Angel whether said road was really plastered with good intentions. Not that he had really had any of those. Just selfish ones.

Angel. Things always got back to him. A large part of Xander still hated the vampire. Hated him for what he was, yes, but mostly for what he had taken away from him. No, Xander corrected himself. He refused to go down that way again. It was not Angel’s fault that Buffy had not fallen in love with him. In fact the vampire had done everything to stay away from Buffy at first, giving Xander more than his share of clear shots at wooing the girl of his dreams.

Only the shots had all misfired because Buffy was not interested.

It was an ugly truth, yes, but a truth nonetheless. Maybe it was time for Xander Harris to stare the truth in the face, no matter how ugly it was, no matter how ugly it made himself look. Maybe it was too late to make it right, maybe he had destroyed all hope of ever reconciling with his friends.

He would never know, though, unless he tried.

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Part 2

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Buffy and Angel arrived at the library shortly after dark, having spent most of the day asleep after the exertion of the last few days. Buffy was more than a bit on edge, though, both because of the situation with Xander and also because of her mother’s nagging about getting her a private tutor if she really did not want to return to high school. Well, nagging was probably the wrong word to use, Buffy admitted. She remembered what her mother could be like if she was really pushing things, so this was rather harmless.

It did not help that Angel seemed to think her mother was right, though he had not said it in so many words.

Some part of Buffy had to admit that the two of them might actually be right about this. She had learned a lot from Angel during their journey through Hell, but he would be the first to confess that he was not really on the up and up about things you needed to know to make it through the late 20th century alive. Or the early 21st century for that matter.

Still, it was a stupid idea. She was fifty years old, damn it. She spoke more languages than Giles, knew more about art and literature than her mother. She had no idea how many candles should be on her next birthday cake, but it would have to be in the fifties at least. How could they expect her to listen to some teacher or stuffy private tutor who had absolutely no idea what she had gone through or how far her knowledge reached in some areas?

Thoughts for another day, she mused. Right know they really had more important things than school to worry about.

“Ah, Buffy! Angel,” Giles greeted them as they entered the library shortly after sundown. “We’re all here then.”

All meaning Willow, Oz, Faith, and even Cordelia. Buffy remembered Willow telling her that Cordelia was busy campaigning for Homecoming Queen at the moment, adding that Cordy had mentioned something about her chances having increased a whole lot since she had ditched that loser she had once called a boyfriend.

That comment did not go together with the worried look on her face, though.

Cordelia was not the only one looking worried. Willow was fidgeting in her seat, a bundle of nervous energy with no place to go. Oz was stoic as ever, but some part of his girlfriend’s nervousness seemed to bleed off on him. His left eyebrow was twitching now and then. The only one who seemed halfway relaxed was Faith, though Buffy’s sister Slayer seemed to be pissed about something.

When Buffy sat down in the chair beside Faith she learned why.

“G-man introduced me to my new tutor today,” Faith mumbled, making the word ‘tutor’ sound very dirty. “Stuffed broad nearly fainted when she saw me in my leathers. Then she said that next week we’re gonna start with algebra. What the fuck do I need algebra for?”

“Maybe you could calculate the exact angle at which your stake penetrates a vampire’s heart,” Buffy proposed, glad for anything that distracted her from her own thoughts at the moment. Said thoughts being an ongoing discussion with herself whether she should leave one Xander Harris to rot, even though she knew he was innocent. Of this particular crime at least.

“Very funny, B,” Faith told her with mock anger in her voice. “Let’s see you come to me with your pain when your mom finds the perfect tutor for you.”

Buffy gave Faith a rather panicked look. Seeing as the dark-haired Slayer lived with her mother for the time being there was a distinct possibility that she might know more about Joyce's plans to further her daughter’s education than her. The prospect did little to calm her down.

“Now that we are all here,” Giles finally said, thankfully distracting Buffy from her bleak educational future, “we should get to the matter at hand. As you all know I visited Xander in prison today.”

“Is he all right?” Willow leaned forward, looking a bit chided a moment later. “I just ... I just worry.”

Buffy bit back a response, swallowing her anger. The things Xander had done to her and Angel had to take a back seat for the moment, if only for the moment. This was not about Xander. This was about finding the real murderer of a girl who, in another life, had been something of a friend to Buffy. She just needed to remind herself of that regularly, then everything would be okay.

She absently noticed that Cordelia seemed quite interested in Giles’ response to Willow’s question as well.

“He is well, physically at least,” Giles said. “As for his state of mind, well, I can’t really judge that from the few minutes I saw him, but it seems he is quite distressed over the things that happened. He ... well, he expressed feelings that prison might be the right place for him.”

No one said anything to that, though Buffy could see that Willow wanted to. She knew that the redhead had sheer infinite compassion and was perfectly capable of forgiving everyone, but Buffy really did not want to hear her defend Xander right now. He did deserve far worse than prison. Not because of Amy, no, but because of all the other things he had done. Thankfully Willow kept her quiet, whether it was because of her own anger towards Xander or just out of consideration towards Buffy was not really important right now.

“Be that as it may,” Giles continued, “the more important news is that our resident police force does not seem to eager to work on this case. Xander has not been questioned since he was brought in and, as we know, there was no investigation worth the name at Amy’s home.”

“The police in this town couldn’t get a cat out from a tree,” Faith remarked. “I thought Boston was bad, but at least there the cops pretended to be interested in solving crimes.”

“The Sunnydale police, like the rest of the town, has more than its share of happy ignorance,” Giles sighed. “Even considering that, though, there are some strange things going on here. As it seems they have absolutely no proof that

Xander is the culprit except that someone saw him come out of Amy’s house last night, which makes for something considerably less than a watertight case.”

“Do we know anything about how Amy was killed?” Buffy did not want to hear any more about how Xander right now.

“Yes. It appears her throat was slashed with a knife. The murder weapon remained in the house.”

“So no vampires,” Willow said unhappily, trying to chase the images of dead Amy from her mind. “At least with those we would have ...”

“It could very well be the work of a vampire,” Angel interrupted her. “In most larger towns the vampires are not as careless as in Sunnydale. The practice of slashing a victim’s throat in order to disguise the bite marks left behind is actually quite common.”

“Shouldn’t they be able to tell?” Faith looked at Giles. “On TV they can always tell whether a wound was inflicted before or after the victim croaked.”

“I’m no forensics expert,” Giles admitted, “but I believe you’re right about that. If they actually perform any kind of autopsy on Amy they should discover whether the knife wound was the actual cause of death or not.”

“If they do,” Willow repeated. “What if they don’t?”

“We can’t depend on the cops to solve this,” Buffy told everyone. “Odds are Amy was killed in connection with the spell she cast two nights ago and that means it’s our business, even if Amy hadn’t been a friend.”

“Correct,” Giles nodded. “Buffy, Angel, look by Amy’s house. Maybe your superhuman senses can make out something the cops missed.”

“Ah, there could be a slight problem there, Giles,” Buffy reminded him. “Neither Angel nor I can enter a home uninvited, remember? And Amy’s dad is still alive, so ...”

“Yes, I did not think of that. Maybe ...”

“No prob, I’ll go along,” Faith said. “I like going places where I’m not invited.”

“No, Faith, someone needs to patrol tonight. Maybe whatever killed Amy is looking for more victims tonight.”

“I can go with them,” Oz offered.

“Right,” Willow agreed. “Maybe you can smell something. He’s got a really good nose even on not-full-moon nights, did you know?”

Oz just smiled at his girlfriend’s babbling, then looked at Buffy and Angel.

“We good to go?”

“We gone! Happy hunting tonight, Faith!”

“Thanks, B. But if I run into your killer and dust him before you can fingerprint him don’t complain to me!”

“I won’t, promise!”

Giles looked after them, then turned toward Willow and Cordelia.

“Willow, I want you to try and get some insight into the police investigation with the computer. Maybe you can find out why they are taking things so slowly.”

“You want me to use the library computer to do something highly illegal?” Willow asked him with a big smile on her face.

Giles rolled his eyes. “Why do you find such pleasure in always asking me to say that in so many words?”

Cordelia ignored the exchange between Giles and Willow, her thoughts instead straying to someone who was currently sitting in a jail cell and wondering how it was that, after everything that had happened, she still found herself worrying about him.

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Part 3

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Faith strolled through the graveyard whistling, twirling a stake in her right hand. It was good to be the Slayer, she mused. One never needed to worry about finding an outlet for frustration or tension. Just find the nearest graveyard and beat up a few vampires or assorted demons. And this being Sunnydale you never had to walk very far to find a graveyard.

Not that she would ever admit it, but the last two days had left her a bit peeved. It was not so much about Giles finding her a tutor to continue her education (and not caring in the least about her repeated statements that she had fully intended to end said education when she dropped out of high school). No, it was more than that.

She had only been in Sunnydale for little over two weeks now, but it already felt much longer than that. She felt closer to these people she had basically only just met than she had to anyone else for a long, long time. Yet these last two days she had become only too acutely aware of her status as the new gal, still an outsider.

Everything was about Xander Harris, a guy she had never even met. She knew the cliff notes version of what had happened, what Xander had done to make Buffy so incredibly pissed at him, but it was hard to get into the mood when she did not even know the guy her sister Slayer obviously regarded as the scum of the Earth.

It was easier with Amy, at least she had met the girl once before she got killed. Though she was not exactly proud of feeling that way it was hard to get all worked up over the death of someone you did not know.

Faith shook her head. Where were the vampires? She needed to vent a little.

As if on cue she heard someone scream, causing a big smile to bloom on her face. Okay, she admitted to herself as she started running, she probably should not be so happy about someone’s life being in danger, but she could not help it. Some nasty demon would have a really bad night and she would get rid of all that tension in a productive manner.

The scream suddenly cut off and instead she heard a very strange and disgusting sound just around the corner of the crypt in front of her. It sounded like someone dropping a big pile of jelly on a hard floor.

“Vampires eating jelly?” Faith mumbled, but did not slow down, skidding around the corner with her stake at the ready.

The thing she was facing was definitely not a vampire.

“What the fuck are you?”

The thing did not answer her. It was the shape of a man, at least roughly, but no one could not possibly mistake it for human. It was at least eight feet tall, maybe more, and seemed made completely from a grayish, slightly transparent substance that wobbled and quivered with every small movement. Faith was not sure what it was, but boy was it ugly.

A muffled sound made her look to the side, where she saw a woman lying on the ground. The source of the scream, most likely. The woman was covered in the same grayish substance that seemed to comprise the creature in front of her and part of it had clamped right across her mouth and nose. Her face was turning blue and she stared at Faith with panic in her eyes, struggling for breath.

“Be with you in a sec,” Faith told the woman, then jumped at the gray monster standing in front of her. It did not appear to have any eyes, but Faith was sure it had been staring at her the whole time. She aimed a kick directly at his head, or what she thought to be his head.

Her foot went into the grayish goo and stuck there.

“What the ...,” was all she had time to say before the demon swirled her around. Her last word turned into a long yell and suddenly her foot slipped free, just in time to send her flying into the crypt wall.

The only good thing about hitting the stone hard enough to crack it was the fact that she came to lie right next to the suffocating woman.

“Okay, change of priorities,” Faith mumbled, tearing at the stuff on the woman’s face. It was harder than what she had just felt close up around her foot (she did her best to ignore the icky wet slime clinging there), stretching like hard rubber. Faith needed her full strength to tear it off, along with a few layers of skin. The woman drew in a shuddering breath, no air to scream. Yet.

“You better get out of ...,” Faith began.

“Look out,” the woman yelled with her first returning breath.

Faith moved by pure instinct, jumping out of the way of something that hit the stone wall of the crypt with a wet splat. More of the gray slime, she saw. The demon, its head still with a hole in it, turned to follow her.

The woman was trying to get free, Faith saw, but had little luck doing so. More of the slime was pinning her to the ground, sticking like glue. Faith quickly took a knife from her boot (a lot easier to carry around than that sword Buffy always used, she thought) and threw it to her.

“Cut yourself free,” Faith yelled, ducking yet another dose of slime. “I’ll distract this thing.”

The woman quickly began sawing herself free with the knife, the hardened slime parting around the blade. Cutting it appeared to work just fine, thankfully. Faith had only half an eye to spare for her, though. The thing was still following her movements and she did not think that hitting it would really accomplish more than getting her hands and feet stuck.

Finally the woman was free and quickly ran away, leaving Faith with one less thing to worry about. Unfortunately it also left her without a knife, seeing as the woman had just dropped it to the ground a good twenty feet away.

“Don’t mention it, all part of the service,” Faith mumbled, working on keeping some distance between her and the slime thing. It suddenly appeared tired to throw yet more slime at her, though, and froze where it stood.

Faith was suspicious, but did not intend to waste the opportunity. Jumping past the thing she rolled across the ground and grabbed her knife. The slime monster might laugh at kicks, but maybe getting its head cut off would not be so much fun.

Before she could put that plan into action, though, the slime monster just collapsed into a big puddle of slime and started to get soaked up by the grass.

“Hey, no fair!” Faith sprinted to the spot where it was disappearing. “I didn’t even get to ...”

Without warning the slime exploded from the ground, Faith running right into it. It hit her like a runaway train and knocked her for a loop, sending her tumbling into a nearby tombstone which broke under the impact.

Faith was left lying stunned in a puddle of grayish slime even as the largest part of the puddle that had been a man-shaped heap of slime just seconds ago trickled into the ground and vanished.

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Part 4

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“I barely remember her.”

Angel stopped when he heard Buffy utter those words. They were getting close to Amy’s house and, so far, had walked in complete silence.

“Buffy?”

“Amy,” Buffy whispered. “I barely remember her.”

“You told me you did not know her that well,” Angel said. “And that was thirty years or so ago. It’s not really that strange that ...”

“I know that,” she interrupted him. “Still, it doesn’t change the facts, Angel. Here we are, all of us outraged over her death, angry at Xander for getting her killed, and who among us really knew her? Oz?”

Oz had walked with them, silent as usual.

“Only met her once,” he shrugged. “Last Valentine when she turned you into a rat.”

“See?” Buffy looked at Angel.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. What are you upset about, beloved?”

Buffy sighed, making a noncommittal gesture.

“I’m not really sure. I just ... I think it’s unfair to Amy that all of us are ... pretending that she was a good friend. She wasn’t. She didn’t want to get involved with this whole demon and monster stuff and now it got her killed.”

Angel draped his arm over her shoulders. “Are you afraid that you are only doing this because of your anger at Xander? Because he is the one who got Amy involved in this?”

Buffy just nodded, not looking at him as they continued walking. Oz just observed them, content not to have a part in this discussion.

“And what if Amy was a total stranger with absolutely no connection to Xander, Willow, Giles, or anyone else? We would still get involved, Buffy, you know that.”

“You ever think that things were easier in Hell?” The change of topics left Angel confused for a moment. “I mean easier in the sense that we only had ourselves to worry about. We knew that we would not be able to help anyone else who was trapped down there, we learned that lesson in the Fourth Circle. There was just the two of us, no one else. No one who could get hurt by getting mixed up in our stuff.”

Angel nodded, understanding.

“There was no one else to worry about in Hell, yes,” he admitted, “but there was also no one else to laugh with. To talk with. People you love, people you care about. Having no one around to care about isn’t the same thing as not caring about anyone, Buffy. All through our journey you never stopped thinking about the people we had left behind. That has not changed and I don’t think it ever will.”

They walked on in silence again, Buffy and Angel pressed against each other. Angel knew how much Buffy worried over the changes she had gone through. Or rather about how those changes had changed the relationship to the people she loved. Her mother, Willow, Giles, even Xander.

Some part of her seemed unable to accept that the fundamental parts of her being had not changed and never would.

“We’re there, guys,” Oz said a minute later. “This is the address Willow gave me.”

“That’s Amy’s house, yes,” Angel confirmed. “I was watching it last night when the police was here.”

Buffy had been here two nights ago as well, when they had been looking for Amy’s help about the spell that had fallen over Sunnydale. That was before they had learned that it had been Amy herself who had cast it, had brought out the monster in all of them. Especially those citizens of Sunnydale who were completely and thoroughly human.

The question was whether that same spell had resulted in her murder somehow. Whether someone had been angry enough about it to kill her.

The three of them went up to the porch, all their supernatural senses extended to make sure that no one was watching them. The last thing they needed was to give the police yet more suspects to look away. The front door was barred with yellow police tape, but apart from that everything looked normal.

“There’s something here,” Buffy mumbled, frowning as she looked over the porch.

“There was,” Angel agreed. “A vampire. Not a fledgling, either.”

“I can smell blood,” Oz added, crouching close to the floor in a movement that did not exactly look human. “Spilled right here.”

Buffy straightened, looking at the door. “Okay, let’s say a vampire was here and he killed Amy out here. How did he get her inside?”

Angel looked at the front door for a moment, then walked toward it. Breaking the lock would have drawn a little too much attention, but during his long life he had picked up quite a few skills. Angelus had been subtle bastard and picking locks was an art he had perfected. Less than a minute later the door swung open and Angel ducked under the police tape, walking inside.

“Okay, how come?” Buffy looked after him. “You shouldn’t be able to go in there ...”

“Unless the owner of the house is dead,” Angel finished. “It appears that Amy owned the house. You said she lived here with only her mother before. Maybe the house was left to her.”

“But her father lives here, too.”

“I don’t know the exact boundaries of this, Buffy, but I suspect that if he’s away as much as Willow said he probably doesn’t count as a resident.”

Buffy nodded, wondering what it was with fathers that left their own daughters alone so much. Once again she found herself thinking about Hank Summers, her biological father. She barely remembered what he looked like and felt no emotional connection to him whatsoever.

She wondered if Hank even knew that his daughter had been gone for three months (and thirty years) and was back now. She wondered if he cared.

Following Angel inside with Oz at her shoulder the three of them began looking through the house. There was a chalk line on the floor of the kitchen, along with some puddles of dried blood. The smell of it still hung in the air, leaving Buffy’s mouth watering and herself disgusted at her reaction.

“Definitely a vampire,” Angel said, his eyes closed, sniffing the air. “The scent is a bit familiar, but I can’t place it.”

“Too cold to follow,” Buffy added, picking up the same scent. “We should have come here sooner.”

“The police would have given us funny looks,” Oz said dryly, gesturing at the three of them sniffing the air.

“Probably.”

Angel knelt down beside the chalk line, frowning.

“Okay, he kills her outside, then brings her body inside and slashes her throat with the kitchen knife.” He sighed. “Why go to all this trouble?”

“Yeah, one would think he’d just leave her outside. What’s one more body with puncture wounds on the Sunnydale record?”

“A vampire not into the Sunnydale-way of killing people?” Oz offered.

Buffy looked around the room. “Or someone who wanted this murder to draw attention. Maybe to see who would come to investigate.”

#

Mr. Trick was not a happy vampire.

Part of the reason for that was the fact that he was still in Sunnydale after having sworn to himself little more than two weeks ago that he would not come back to this town. Pull of the Hellmouth aside this was truly not a place to spend much time in. Too few places to go to for a man with any taste, too much sunshine year round, not to mention the presence of people who liked to go up against powerful vampires and won most of the times.

No, Sunnydale was not the place to be for a sensible businessman. So why was he still here? Well, money was the main reason. A lot of it, to be precise, offered for what had looked to be a relatively simple job.

It had been simple so far, Trick admitted. The gizmo the Mayor had given him had let him straight to the young witch. The Mayor wanted her dead for casting that spell over the town and Trick had delivered. It had been easy, even easier than he had expected, seeing as the girl had been stupid enough to step out of the safety of her home in the middle of the night.

Only simply killing her had not been the whole job, no. The Mayor also wanted to know whether the witch had done this alone. So Trick had arranged the body in a way that was more certain to draw attention in a town where vampire killings tended to be largely ignored, then placed some video cameras in strategic spots and waited to find out who would come along.

The boy who had found the body had not seemed significant in any way, probably just a friend coming over. A bit later Trick had been amused by the police of this town. Watching them go about their work had left him wondering how any criminal, demonic or not, got caught in this town. His amusement had ended a few minutes ago, though, with the arrival of the newcomers.

Trick did not know who the boy was, but he well remembered the other two. Angelus, the vampire who had gone up against Kakistos, along with the girl at his side, a blood junkie who might well be a Slayer, or so the Mayor thought. Trick was not quite sure how that was possible, seeing as the vibe he had gotten from the girl the last time had said she had been drinking Angelus’ blood for many years, decades probably. Still, Slayer or not, he had seen her fight. That had been more than enough for him.

His contract with the Mayor was very specific. A simple killing plus some surveillance, guaranteed avoidance of Slayers, master vampires, and blood junkies.

Picking up the phone Trick planned to be properly compensated for this clear violation of his contract and then leave this town behind, for good this time.

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Part 5

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“Is this the demon you fought?”

Faith looked at the picture Giles was presenting to her and managed to resist uttering the first comment that sprung to mind, namely that all puddles of gray slime looked pretty much alike to her. Who said she had no self control?

“Could be,” she shrugged. “As I said, it was gray slime. Lots of gray slime.”

After she had recovered from being blasted by said gray slime she had gone straight to Giles to tell him about this new creature she had encountered. Well, to be perfectly honest she had gone by his apartment first and foremost to make use of his shower. No way in hell would she have gone back home to drag the stuff clinging to her body all over Mrs. S’ carpet.

When exactly had she started thinking of it as home, anyway?

It had taken nearly three hours and a lot of scrubbing to get all of the stuff off, minus the small sample that Giles insisted she preserve for analysis. Even with the mirror and her probing fingers telling her that she had gotten all of it off she still felt as if the slime was clinging to her skin all over her body. She wondered if she would ever feel clean again after that.

With the new day dawning they had made their way to the library where they met up with Buffy, who looked rather sullen and was wearing the darkest shades she could find. Faith knew that, due to the changes she had undergone, Buffy was anything but comfortable moving around during the day. It being a bright and sunny morning would not be helping the matter, she was sure.

Well, she thought, let her be sullen. At least Buffy had not had an encounter of the really gross kind with Slimer’s big, homicidal cousin.

“I believe the creature in question is a Bloorkas demon. Basically it is ...”

“A big heap of gray slime?” Faith offered with disgusted look on her face, resisting the urge to scratch imagined remains of slime from her arms.

“Well, yes,” Giles said. “A Bloorkas is a malleable creature, it does not have a fixed form. It does need to maintain a certain mass in order to survive, though, limiting the amounts of ... well, slime ... that it can use to attack its opponents.”

“Meaning if we cut him into enough tiny little pieces he’ll croak?” Faith’s mood improved a little.

“Uh ... yes.”

“What is it doing here?” Buffy spoke up. “And what did it want with that woman Faith rescued?”

Giles looked at the book again. “The Bloorkas are not among the smartest of demons. I would assume it has been drawn here by the Hellmouth, nothing more fancy than that. As for the woman, well, in order to ... replenish its mass the Bloorkas needs to ... ah ... swallow people.”

“Swallow?” Faith made another face.

“Yes, it ... basically it draws them into its own form and ... digests them.”

“Eeew,” was Buffy’s only comment.

“The best way to destroy it,” Giles continued, “seems to be following Faith’s suggestion. Cut it apart until it has too little mass left to survive.”

Buffy sighed deeply, picturing her and Faith cutting their way through heaps of gray slime. “I wonder if this is a battle we can possibly go through with our dignity intact.”

#

It was around noon when Xander finally got to see the sky again. After another night spent in the cell he had been taken to some kind of interrogation room, where two police officers questioned him for the better part of an hour. Well, questioning was probably the wrong word to use. They had accused him of murdering Amy and tried everything short of physical violence to get him to confess.

For a long time Xander had actually been tempted. He had not killed Amy, not directly, but he was quite certain that his convincing her to work that spell had resulted in her being murdered, to say nothing of the seven other people that had gotten killed during that night when all the monsters of Sunnydale had come out to party. He was guilty and maybe he should be locked away.

He remembered Giles’ words, though. There was no way to make things better when he was sitting inside a jail cell. Plus there was the fact that the police did not seem interested in solving this case, just pinning it on someone. During his years of living in Sunnydale Xander had seen quite a lot of incompetence in the local police, but most of these guys had at least tried to do something, though their own happy ignorance had always gotten in the way of actually accomplishing that.

This time, though, it seemed they were actively covering something up. He did not know why, but he had a feeling that it was connected with whomever had really killed Amy and by God he wanted to find that bastard. Amy had been innocent, only involved because of his stupidity, and she had died for it.

The police had finally been forced to let him go, seeing as there was no proof he had killed Amy. The only thing they could prove was that he had been there sometime after her death, that was it. So they let him go, reminding him not to leave town until this was cleared up.

Xander had no intentions of leaving Sunnydale. He had a lot to take care of here, a lot of stupid mistakes to try and make up for. Starting right here and right now.

#

Mayor Richard Wilkins III studied the video tape Mr. Trick had brought along while the vampire in question was pacing the confines of the darkened office, clearly upset. Looking at the tape, Wilkins was not too surprised with that.

Angelus and Buffy Summers. The boy with them was an unknown, but nothing he was overly concerned with at the moment. No, he was quite concerned enough about the presence of these two at the place where that meddling witch had been killed.

By now Wilkins knew that Buffy Summers, who had been the Slayer for two years here in Sunnydale, and the blood junky that Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, as well as Mr. Trick, had seen with Angelus were one and the same. He still did not know how that was possible, seeing as all the vampires agreed that Summers must have ingested Angelus’ blood for decades to become the creature she now was, but he suspected that it was connected with that mystical event that had preceded their return to Sunnydale. A time warp maybe? Some kind of dimensional doorway? Something connected with Akathler?

Well, he sighed, whatever had happened to them over the summer, they were here and they were interfering with his plans. Amy Madison, the witch who had cast that interfering spell over his town, was dead and they had come to investigate. The question was whether they were concerned because she had been a friend or because the witch had cast that spell for them. Did they know anything about his plans? Had they tried using the spell to expose him?

It was unlikely, but with his special day less than a year away and so many preparations yet to be taken care of he could not take a risk with this.

“I can see why you are concerned about this, Mr. Trick,” he finally spoke, addressing the vampire.

“Concerned might be too weak a world,” Trick replied, his cool exterior clashing with the tension in his voice. “My contract for this job clearly states that there will be no encounters with Angelus or any of the two Slayers.”

“Yes, I am aware of that, Mr. Trick. You will of course be recompensed for this unfortunate incident, do not worry.”

“Good!”

Wilkins took his checkbook from his desk and wrote out a fairly large sum, handing the check to Mr. Trick. For a moment he mused where this money would be coming from. Health care fund? No, he had channeled quite a bit of money from that source these last few years. He probably could take a bit from the police budget. God knew they did not need it.

He made a mental note to hold a charity fund raiser next month. Maybe something with the school band, Snyder had been bugging the school board about that for a while now. Children did hear too much of that awful modern music these days anyway.

Mr. Trick took the check and carefully put it away into his wallet. “Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I trust this concludes our business.”

“A job well done, Mr. Trick,” the Mayor nodded. “Again, I am sorry that this did not play out quite the way we had planned it, but I trust it will not hamper our future working relationship.”

Trick raised an eyebrow at that, clearly not too thrilled at the idea of working in Sunnydale again.

“I don’t think it will,” he said neutrally. “Now, if you will excuse me, I do have an appointment in Los Angeles tonight and I do not want to leave my client waiting.”

“Certainly not.” Wilkins smiled at him. “Punctuality is one of the most important things a good businessman should possess.”

They did not shake hands. Trick just gave Wilkins a friendly nod and then turned toward the door, doing his best not to seem in a hurry. As his hand touched the door handle the Mayor’s voice called him back once more, though.

“Before you leave, Mr. Trick,” Wilkins rose from his desk to catch up with him, “I was wondering if you could provide me with one final consulting service. Recompensed, of course.”

“Consulting?” Trick looked at him questioningly.

“Yes, Wilkins nodded. “I was wondering if you know any good assassins.”

______________________________________________________________

Part 6

#

“So what’s this about Xander?”

Buffy looked up from the vampire she was currently pounding into the ground. Faith had just staked another one to her left and was now busy brushing dust from her jacket. There was a strange look on her face, situated somewhere between curiosity and amusement.

Realizing that the amusement part was probably due to the dazed vamp Buffy was straddling, whose hands were busy feeling her up. With a groan she drove her stake down and rose as the creature exploded into dust.

“What’s what about Xander?” Buffy looked at her sister Slayer. She felt Angel’s presence a few yards to their right, probably finishing off another vampire right at this moment. They had found no signs of Faith’s slime demon so far, but plenty of undead to spend their time with.

Faith almost fidgeted under Buffy’s amber gaze, wishing her sister Slayer would keep her contact lenses in for their patrols, but kept her ground.

“I just ... well, I know the cliff notes version, but ... I don’t know the guy. I mean, he’s causing all sorts of trouble, every second sentence around here has his name in it, and I’ve never even met the guy. Well, except for that one very short meeting in the library when he got arrested.”

Buffy sighed, thankful that Angel was coming over to drape his arm around her shoulders once more. The newest member of their circle trailed along with them, still looking curious. Buffy decided that she probably deserved to know more than then three sentence background Giles had given her on Xander.

“He was my best male friend in the world,” Buffy began. It was old memories she found herself calling forth, buried beneath thirty years of hate. “Him, Willow, and me, we were the Scooby Gang. Every week or so there would be some kind of evil monster around and we would research, slay, and party.”

God, how she missed these times.

“He always had a crush on me,” Buffy continued. “Seeing him fumble around was actually kinda fun. Then one day he worked up the courage to ask me out and ... well, even if I hadn’t already met Angel by that time ...”

“You shot him down?”

“Pretty much, yeah. We were distant for a while, but then everything seemed to return to normal. I was getting closer to Angel,” she tightened her embrace on the man walking silently at her side, “but I didn’t think it would hurt our friendship. What I didn’t get was how intensely jealous Xander was.”

“In Xander’s mind I took Buffy away from him,” Angel added.

“Then my seventeenth birthday came around and, well, you know what happened there.”

Yes, Faith knew. Giles had given her the cliff notes version on that one, too. Gypsy curse, happiness clause, Angel reverting to the bad ass demon he had once been. She would have liked some more details on that, too, but the look on both Buffy and Angel’s face told her that asking them about it was not a good idea.

“For Xander it was the validation he had been looking for,” Buffy continued after swallowing. “Now he had a legitimate reason for hating Angel and he kept pressuring me to kill him. Then, on the day that Angelus tried to open Akathler, he refrained from telling me that Willow would try and restore Angel’s soul to him.”

A tear ran down her cheek. “You know the rest.”

Faith nodded, looking away from the pure misery on Buffy’s face. Man, this Xander really had messed up royally.

“And nothing changed after we came back,” Buffy added. “He’s still the same judgmental idiot he’s always been and now his meddling got Amy and some other people killed.”

“Want me to beat him up for you?” Faith asked her with a sympathetic smile on her face.

Buffy managed a smile of her own. “No! I’m afraid pounding sense into him never worked. Then again, we never tried actual pounding, did we?”

She looked up at Angel with a teasing look on her face.

“I fear it won’t help,” he just said.

Faith watched as Buffy and Angel seemed to drown in each other’s eyes, forgetting the world around them. How could anyone look at them and not realize how much in love they were? What had that idiot boy been thinking? God knew that Faith herself had pulled quite a few hair-brained stunts of her own, done a lot of things she was not very proud of, but she figured that she was trying to do better now.

Watching the two lovers interact, though, Faith had to admit that it was very easy to get jealous. Very, very easy. She wondered if anyone would ever look at her that way, if she could ever return such a look.

Though she was surrounded by good friends for the first time in a long time Faith suddenly felt very, very lonely.

#

His room, Xander mused, did not look all that different from the prison cell he had been in the last two nights. Well, there was the presence of furniture, posters on the wall, lots of stuff lying on the ground, the TV, the stereo, and many other things that the cell had not had, but still Xander felt like he had exchanged one cell for another.

Maybe it was the wallpaper. Or maybe just the fact that he felt completely helpless.

Amy was dead and there was a killer out there, someone who had killed her because Xander had convinced her to do a spell for him. She should not have died, but she had, so now the only thing Xander could do to make this any better was to find her killer.

Yeah, sure. Him, Xander Harris, king of cretins and champion at fucking things up would find the killer and bring him to justice. Good one. Even if he got lucky and did find him odds were he would just join Amy in her grave. Come to think of it, with the way he felt right now that might actually turn out to be an improvement.

He banished those thoughts. Enough drowning in guilt and self pity. Angel had done that for a century and it had not helped him. Angel! There was one thing Xander really did not want to think much about. Only problem was that he had to.

There was no way around it. His only real chance at finding the killer was by joining up with his old friends again, who were no doubt already doing their best. Xander was fully aware that, during the last month, he had done pretty much everything to alienate all his friends to the point where he did not know whether making things better was even possible.

He only knew two things. One, that he had to try, and two, that the only place to start was with the one person Xander really did not want to start with.

Angel.

#

Rupert Giles was sitting in the library, looking at the white board in front of him where he had tried to put together the clues and information they had.

There was Amy, who had cast a spell that unveiled all the monsters normally hiding behind human masks. It had led to a very bad night, even by Sunnydale standards, and seven dead people.

There was the counter-spell, performed by some unknown party, who had not only reversed the effects of Amy’s spell, but had also caused everyone with no direct knowledge of the fact that a spell had been performed in the first place to forget everything that had happened that night. It took an accomplished mage to perform such a spell, that much was for sure.

As much as Giles would have liked to believe differently, the conclusion he leaned toward was rather simple. Someone or something had not liked the spell, probably because he, she, or it was hiding behind a human mask as well, and had therefore taken measures to rectify that situation.

Which led to conjecture number two, the murder of Amy Madison. Giles was not a great believer in coincidence, so his bet was that the same person or people who had cast the spell had also taken measures to ensure that Amy would not do something like that again. Which meant killing her.

From what Buffy and Angel had reported the killing had been done by a vampire. There were not many among the undead who were crafty in the magical arts, therefore Giles suspected that the vampire killing Amy had been hired or coerced to do it.

Which, in turn, led to something else that had been bugging Giles for quite some time now. Shortly after their return from Hell Buffy and Angel had found themselves stalked by two vampires, who had followed them for quite a while and then tried to kill them. They had not succeeded, but to this day they did not know why these two had followed them.

The fact that both vampires had worn suits and carried cell phones and guns led him to believe that they were from out of town. Plus Buffy had told him that, shortly before they had tried to kill them, the two vampires had apparently talked to someone on their cell phone, receiving orders for the kill.

Willow had taken a look at said cell phone when Angel and Buffy brought it back, but unfortunately the only calls made from that phone had gone to an unlisted number. Some hacking later Willow had found out that the number belonged to a public pay phone and she suspected that someone had routed the calls through there. There was no way for her to find out who it might have been, though, unless the caller called again, which Giles found highly unlikely.

Interestingly enough, though, that pay phone Willow had told him about was inside Sunnydale’s city hall. Giles had not thought much about that fact at first, had in fact put it aside and nearly forgotten about it. Now, though, with the police’s obvious reluctance to even investigate Amy’s death, apart from trying to frame Xander for the killing, there was some loose connection there.

Maybe it was all coincidence.

Or maybe it was not. Giles had always been amazed by the extent of the happy ignorance holding sway over Sunnydale and the fact that the sheer number of dead bodies with puncture wounds in the neck never caused any public attention.

Maybe because someone higher up was keeping a lid on things. Someone who would not look kindly upon a spell that revealed all of Sunnydale’s hidden monsters. Someone who had the influence to make the police pay only very little attention to a murder case.

If nothing else, Giles mused, it warranted further investigation.

#

Part 7

#

“Ladies, gentlemen, and ... whatever the hell you are, thank you for coming here.”

Mr. Trick surveyed the small group of assembled demons, assassins, and creatures he did not know what to make of. There were six of them, all of them renowned for their hunting skills, and eager to make a name for themselves by hunting down two Slayers. Trick found that rather stupid himself, but as it would not be him who risked his skin in this endeavor, well ...

When the Mayor had asked him for the telephone numbers of a few good assassins, Trick’s first thought had been the Order of Taraka. They were the most infamous bounty hunters around and he had made good business with them before. Then, though, he had found out that they had been after the blonde Slayer before and failed. Well, failed in the sense that they had not managed to kill her before she took care of the vampire who had put out the bounty. The moment the bounty was gone the bounty hunters had lost interest.

Seeing no good sense in trying a scheme that had failed once before Trick had decided to go with some other talent he knew. They had all assembled at one of his safe houses in Los Angeles and would head for Sunnydale before nightfall.

“As I told you during our initial talks,” Trick continued, “my client has put out a considerable bounty for the elimination of these three individuals.”

He motioned for one of his assistants (the word ‘minion’ was so outdated) to turn off the lights and activate the beamer. Clicking on the infrared mouse he held in his hand Trick called up the first Powerpoint slide. An image of Buffy Summers appeared on the wall.

“This is target number one. Some of you know her as the Slayer.”

One of the two vampires among the six assassins growled under his breath. That was Lyle Gorch, Trick knew, who had lost his brother in battle with this particular Slayer not one year ago. Gave him added motivation.

“Now, for those of you who are familiar with this beautiful young thing, you should know there have been some changes. Our lovely Slayer is not just a Slayer anymore, she is also a blood junkie.”

Gorch and the other vampire, who happened to be his wife, both seemed puzzled, while the other four just seemed confused.

“If you are not familiar with the term,” Trick went on, “it means she has ingested the blood of a powerful vampire regularly for some time. This gives her some vampiric characteristics, such as enhanced senses and a demon’s temper, yet also some added weaknesses. She is dependent upon her master’s blood and ... well, let’s just say it won’t be pleasant for her should she not get her fix when she needs it.”

“She is still human, though?” The question came from one of the human assassins, one of the Gruensthaler brothers. “Or do we need a stake to kill her?”

“No, my friend, she’s still human, at least as far as ways to kill her are concerned. Bullets will do fine.”

He clicked on the mouse and the next slide came up.

“This is the vampire in question, the one on whose blood our little Slayer depends. I am sure many of you have heard of Angelus, formerly the Scourge of Europe, formerly the only vampire in the whole wide world who happens to have a soul. We are not a hundred percent sure about the soul thing these days, given that he returned to his old ways about half a year ago, but soul or not, he is dangerous. Angelus is a direct descendant from Master Nest, meaning he is a tough one. According to our information he and the blonde Slayer also have something of a romantic involvement.”

“It’s disgusting,” Gorch said. “I’ve seen them together the last time I was in that dive of a town. They were smooching all the time.”

“So use that to your advantage,” Trick advised him. “People who are concerned about others make mistakes, my brother. Now, let us get to the last of our three targets.”

The next slide appeared, showing the picture of a dark-haired girl.

“Now, even though we all know there is supposed to be but one Slayer at a time, there are currently two. This is the second, a girl called Faith. She has only been the Slayer for about four months now, but she is quite the wildcat. I know from personal experience.”

He motioned for the lights to be turned back on.

“Now, my client wishes all three of these people dead as soon as possible. The bounty will only be paid when all targets have been eliminated. A certain amount of ... discretion is also expected. We do not want the beautiful town of Sunnydale to be turned into a war zone in the process.”

Looking around the gathered group, Trick went through the names once again. Lyle Gorch and his wife (whose name he had not bothered to remember) were highly motivated, though Trick did not think they would be the ones to take the Slayers down. The Gruenthalers had a better chance, as the Slayers were not used to going up against humans, especially humans using guns.

He did not know much about the yellow, spiky demon sitting next to the German brothers, but an associate of his had assured him that the fellow could dish out a lot of damage. Finally, the last member of the half dozen had not said much so far. Robert Bearclaw was a half-demon whose hunting experiences reached back to the buffalo herds of the old west and he had killed people for money for the last three centuries.

Trick nodded, more or less satisfied. They were not prime material, but they would do nicely.

“Any other questions?” He looked around again. “None? Good. I will let my client know that the hunt will begin tonight. I trust you will see to your own transportation to Sunnydale and handle this matter professionally. Ladies, gentlemen, and spiky-headed looking creatures, good day and happy hunting.”

Having finished the preparations, Trick resolved not to answer any more calls from the Mayor of Sunnydale. This little bit of consulting, together with his other Sunnydale revenues, had put him in the black for the foreseeable future and he was looking forward to doing a lot of business far, far away from that town.

Unless of course the assassins succeeded and killed the two Slayers and Angelus. Then he might just be convinced to work there again.

#

After managing to drag his feet for most of the day Xander finally found himself standing in front of Angel’s apartment door about half an hour before sunset. He thought of the one and only time he had been here before, more than a year ago. Back then he had come to get Angel’s help in saving Buffy from the Master and together they had managed to do just that. They had brought her back and Buffy had prevailed against the bat-faced wonder.

He still remembered the words he had used back then. About not liking him, but seeing as Buffy was thinking of him as a real person he would give Angel the chance to prove her right. And had he not? Had Angel not done everything possible to prove that? Not to him personally, no, but to Buffy and, by extension, all of her friends.

Xander shook his head. This was all so incredibly fucked up. Here he was, standing in front of Angel’s door, trying to work up the courage to go in and finding himself scared to death. Interestingly enough it was not because of Angel, or rather not because he feared that the vampire might actually do him bodily harm. No, he was quite sure Angel would never do that, though considering the pain Xander had caused him and Buffy maybe he should not be so sure about that, either.

No, what he really feared was the upcoming talk. Maybe Angel would not even be interested in listening. And what if he was? What if he did want to listen? What could Xander possibly say? Sorry I got you sent to hell? Sorry I did everything to make your life hell even before that? Sorry I did my best to drive you and Buffy apart even though I know I never had a chance with her?

He had spent the entire day looking for words and now realized that he had not found any. Maybe he should turn around. Go back home and come back later when he had thought of something to say. Yeah, right, what were the chances of actually thinking of something to say anyway? Were there even words that would fit?

No, he resolved. Maybe all he could do was stutter around, but he would pull this off. Now, before he lost his nerve again. Before he managed to do something else that would only alienate his friends further, maybe cause more people to be ... to be ... killed.

Gathering all the courage he could possibly find Xander raised his hand and knocked on the door.

Only to take a step back when said door was opened by an amber-eyed Buffy, who looked at him with pure disgust on her face.

“Xander,” she snarled. “What are you doing here?”

Excellent question, Xander thought. Excellent question.

___________________________________________________________

Part 8

#

The only reason why Xander did not pray for the ground to open up and swallow him on the spot was the fact that he had lived in Sunnydale too long, so he knew better than to wish for such things this close to the Hellmouth. Still, the prospect of being swallowed by Hell itself did not seem all that bad right now in comparison.

Buffy was looking at him with hatred in her eyes. Suddenly it did not matter that she was looking at him with eyes that would have been more at home in the face of a cat rather than a human being. The only thing that did matter was that this girl (who was really a fifty year old woman, some part of him added) had once been his friend and now ... now she looked ready to strangle him.

Xander had to swallow a few times before he managed to speak. “Can I come in?”

He almost bolted when Buffy’s eyes flashed with even more anger, her fingers curling into claws. He could not help but remember their first meeting after her return from Hell, where she had lost her temper and almost killed him. Then she visibly forced herself to relax, though, and stepped aside, motioning for him to come in. Xander gulped and stepped inside.

The last and only time he had been in Angel’s apartment he had not taken the time to look around much. Things had been much too hectic then and the only thing on his mind had been getting Angel to help him save Buffy. Even so he could not miss the fact that the apartment had changed a lot.

With a start he realized that Buffy was living here now. He probably should not have been surprised at that fact, not after Willow had told them that they had been in Hell together for thirty years, together nonstop and without break. Was it any wonder that they were unwilling to part company now?

Some dark part of him raged at the fact that Buffy had moved in with that undead bastard, but he quickly clamped down on that thought.

Angel was sitting on the couch, buttoning up a black shirt, his dark brown eyes resting on Xander. The vampire said nothing, just looked at him, and there was nothing to be read on his face. Somehow Xander preferred the anger and hatred he saw on Buffy’s face. At least that did not leave him totally in the dark as to what might be going on behind it.

Buffy walked past him and settled down on the couch beside Angel. They did not exactly snuggle against each other, but the lengths of their bodies were touching and one of Angel’s hands rested on Buffy’s thigh. Seeing them like this sent a flash of jealousy through Xander, but again he clamped down on it.

Angel finally gestured at a chair, on which Xander settled down in as complicated a way as he could think of, hoping to buy a few more seconds. Once he sat he fidgeted, his hands with a nervous life of their own, and looked for a place to start.

“Sunset is in twenty minutes,” Buffy finally said. “We’re on a schedule, so make it snappy!”

Twenty minutes, Xander groaned inwardly. How the hell was he supposed to explain everything to them in twenty minutes? Then again, he could probably try for hours and not get anywhere. What did he have to explain to them anyway? Were they even interested in hearing his explanations? Would he be if the situation was reversed? Probably not.

He finally looked at Angel and said the only thing he could think of. “I came to tell you I’m sorry.”

For a moment no one said anything, then Buffy gave a dry laugh. “You’re sorry,” she said mockingly. “Whatever are you sorry for, Xander?”

Buffy would not make this easy for him, he realized. No reason why she should, really.

“For being a stupid idiot,” he continued. “I guess I ... no, I know that I made a lot of mistakes and ...”

“Mistakes?” Buffy interrupted him again. “Oh, you mean like that ‘mistake’ of not telling me about Angel’s soul and causing me to send him to Hell?”

She was starting to rise, inflamed by the hurt Xander could hear all too clearly in her voice, but Angel gently restrained her, pulling her back against him. The vampire still did not say anything, just kept looking at Xander with a completely neutral expression.

“Yes,” Xander nodded. “I ... look, I know sorry doesn’t cut it, Angel, but I really don’t know what else to say. I wasn’t thinking on that day, okay? I only knew that Buffy was going out to kill you and that she would hold back if she knew you’d be getting your soul back. I wanted you dead for all you had done to us.”

He sank back into the chair, sighing. “I didn’t want to see you and Angelus as two different guys, I really didn’t want to. Because if I did then ... well, then I’d have to admit to myself that it wasn’t an evil monster who had ... who I thought had ruined my every chance of ever getting Buffy to love me.”

Getting the words out had been hard, but Xander felt oddly relieved. He turned to look at Buffy.

“I crushed on you the moment I saw you,” he told her. “I know you never returned my feelings and I ... I thought I could get over that after we cleared the air at Spring Fling. I even thought I could get over the fact that you and deadb... Angel were getting closer and closer. I was starting to fall for Cordy and then ...”

He turned back to look at Angel. “Then you turned evil. Suddenly it all made sense to me. You were a monster and somehow you had caused Buffy to fall in love with you, which was the only reason she never fell for me. I mean ... God, I don’t even know whether I was still in love with Buffy at that time, but it didn’t make a difference. I only knew that you were evil, had always been evil, and I wanted you gone, no matter what it took.”

He hesitated a moment, holding a furious internal debate whether he should actually say the next thing on his mind, but then decided that honesty was really the only way to go here, no matter where it might take him.

“I don’t know whether it was wrong not to tell Buffy about you getting your soul back,” Xander looked at Angel. “I only know I did it for the wrong reasons.”

Buffy opened her mouth to say something, but Angel was faster.

“It was the right thing,” he simply said. Buffy stared at him, but he continued, “Angelus was ready to kill her that day. Had Buffy held back in any way he would have done it.”

Putting a comforting hand on Buffy to calm her down, he still looked at Xander. “Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, though, is a good way to go to Hell fast.”

Xander nodded. “I thought I had figured that out during the summer. I thought you were gone, both of you, and it was my fault.”

“Too bad your little epiphany didn’t hold up,” Buffy spat, clearly not impressed by his words so far.

“It didn’t,” Xander agreed. “When you came back and ... looked like this ...,” he gestured at her eyes, her fangs, “... I only knew that Angel had done this to you. Willow tried to explain to me that he had done it to save you, but I ... the only thing I could think of was that he had stolen your humanity from you. Made you a monster just like him.”

He looked down, muttering “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“You said so before,” Buffy growled at him. “You think that makes up for everything you did to us?”

“It doesn’t,” Angel said when Xander did not answer immediately. “But it’s a start.”

“Angel ...,” Buffy started.

“You have a lot to make up for, Xander,” Angel told him. “Believe me, I know what that is like. It won’t be easy and it will take a lot of time. Saying you’re sorry is only a start, nothing more. You won’t regain your friends’ trust overnight.”

Xander looked up, meeting Angel’s eyes. “I hurt you the worst,” he whispered. “I’m ...”

“... sorry, yes, you said so,” Angel interrupted him. “Now what are you going to do about it?”

What was he going to do about it? What kind of question was that? What could he possibly do to make up for what he had done to Angel? Not just on that fateful day and later, but also the whole year before that. The jokes, the insults, the constant attempts to get between him and Buffy in any way possible.

Looking into Angel’s eyes Xander realized that he could not. There was no way to change the past, no way to undo what he had done.

He could only try to do better in the future.

“I want to help find Amy’s killer,” he finally said. “I want ... I want to help the Scooby Gang again.”

#

Once the sun went down they were heading for the library, Buffy and Angel a few steps behind Xander. Angel knew that she was anything but happy with him right now, he could feel her tension from where their hands interlaced.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she mumbled, too quiet for Xander to hear. “I can’t believe that you’re just forgiving him.”

“I’m not,” Angel told her.

“Then why ...?”

“I’m giving him a chance to earn forgiveness, Buffy, there’s a difference.”

“And how do you figure he deserves even that much after what he did?”

“I have to believe that everyone does.”

Buffy tensed, habit almost making her reprimand him for what she thought to be the start of another brooding session. They had almost ceased to happen during their trip through Hell, but had returned here on Earth. Buffy and Angel had long ago forgiven each other for all real and imagined wrongs, but she knew that he still held a lot of guilt toward her friends and family.

Was this his way of working through that? Was he trying to redeem himself in their eyes by helping to redeem Xander? He did not need to do this, she knew. It had taken time, but Giles, Willow, even her mother knew that Angel and Angelus were two different people. He had had no control over the things the demon had done to them.

Unlike Xander.

“Don’t expect me to forgive him,” Buffy finally said. “I don’t think I can ever forgive him for what he did to the both of us.”

Angel said nothing to that, just held her close as they continued walking. He knew that Buffy was slow to let people into her heart, but once they were in they stayed there for life. Unless they betrayed her trust, of course, like Xander had done. Betrayal by people she trusted was not something she easily forgave and he knew that, arrogant as it might sound, the fact that Xander had hurt the man she loved only made it worse.

Angel was quite sure that Xander’s remorse was genuine. He also believed that everyone deserved a chance to try and redeem himself. Whether Xander could actually make use of that chance, whether he could rise above his own pettiness and small-mindedness, well ...

It remained to be seen.

______________________________________________________________

Part 9

#

There was an icy silence when they entered the library, all eyes turning to Xander. Even though none of the looks he got made him as uncomfortable as the looks Buffy and Angel had given him earlier, the mere fact that everyone was looking at him with emotions ranging from anger to barely polite disinterest was making him want to bolt all over again.

“Xander,” Willow finally said, but made no move to come toward him from where she sat at the table. Oz was by her side, not saying a word, but with just the tiniest bit of anger in his eyes. Cordelia was looking at him with open distain, while the girl by her side just looked, period.

That left Giles, who was just emerging from his office and stopped in mid-stride.

“Now this is a surprise,” he mumbled, adjusting his glasses.

“Xander came by our apartment earlier,” Angel explained to the others. “We talked an he wants to help find Amy’s killer.”

He did not say anything about the other things they had talked about, for which Xander was rather thankful. The mere fact that the three of them had come in together - though Buffy was keeping quite a bit of distance and gave him the occasional glare - told the others all they needed to know about tonight’s talk as far as Xander was concerned.

“Good,” Giles said when no one else seemed inclined to comment. “Good.”

The brunette girl standing next to Cordelia came toward him, the smile on her face making Xander very uneasy. He had seen her twice before, once on the night he had been arrested, once the night when the spell had spread chaos throughout Sunnydale. The fact that she had had glowing silver eyes then tipped him off that she was probably not as human as she appeared to be. A witch maybe?

“So you’re Xander,” she said, stopping just out of reach, looking him up and down. “I don’t know, after all I heard about you I’d imagined you’d at least look a little more buff.”

Her words made it clear that the things she had heard about him had been anything but flattering. Which was no surprise, actually.

“Xander, this is Faith,” Giles made the introductions, “she was called as the Slayer after Kendra died. Faith, this is Xander.”

Another Slayer? Xander stared at her, took in how comfortable she seemed with the rest of the gang already. How long had she been here? How much had he missed?

“Any news on Amy?” Angel steered the conversation towards a new topic and again Xander found himself grateful. Twice in five minutes he found himself grateful towards Angel? God, things were definitely changing. He had to believe it was for the better, though, because he could not really imagine things getting worse. Which did not mean that it could not, of course. This was Sunnydale, after all.

Faith gave him another look, but seemed to accept the change of topic for the moment.

“What about Faith’s slime demon?”

Buffy walked past Xander, doing her best to pretend he was not there, and sat down on the table. Lots of books were spread there, most of them showing drawings of demons of various sorts. Willow’s computer was up and running, displaying several files on loan from the Sunnydale police.

“Nothing much on either, I fear,” Giles sighed. “The police did not take fingerprints at the site, so even if our vampire was kind enough to leave any ...”

“A vampire killed Amy?” Xander looked at him, wide-eyed.

“It appears so, yes,” Giles said, seeming none too fond of the distraction. “I attempted to put our clues together today, but all I came up with are a lot of theories, nothing concrete. Unless we find Amy’s killer or the person behind it ...”

Giles spread his hands.

“Great,” Buffy mumbled. “All dressed up with nowhere to go.”

“Don’t fret, B,” Faith said, dropping into the chair next to Buffy and draping her arm around the other Slayer. “We’ll go and patrol for some ghoulies later on. Maybe we’ll ...”

The rest of Faith’s statement was cut off when one of the library windows exploded inward. Several black objects came flying in and hit the library floor, immediately starting to spew forth smoke like crazy.

“Gas grenades,” Giles yelled, putting his handkerchief in front of his mouth. “Don’t breathe in!”

Buffy, Angel, and Faith had started moving the moment the first window shattered, fanning out to try and spot whatever was attacking them. The gas quickly spread through the room, but they managed to avoid the brunt of it, their superhuman constitution handling what little they could not. Not so the others, who were quickly reduced to coughing, teary-eyed wrecks.

“We have to get them out of here,” Buffy said, diving into the gas to drag out Willow. Angel, not needing to breathe, just closed his eyes and navigated by hearing alone, finding Oz and Xander, leading them toward the doors. Faith grabbed Cordelia, while Giles had managed to find the door on his own.

Faith was the first to peek out into the corridor, but instinct caused her to draw back immediately. Something brushed past so close to her face that she felt the air move against her skin. The bullet narrowly missed her and struck the far wall.

“Okay, who the fuck is shooting at us?”

They heard the crash of yet another window and a very non-human growl. It came from somewhere behind them, among the stacks of the library.

“More company.”

Angel made a quick leap out the door and across the corridor, not particularly worried about bullets. The tail of his coat was torn by several shots, but no direct hits. He ducked behind the corner and looked back to the library entrance.

“Muzzle shot is about twenty feet away,” he told the others, “located behind the lockers. I could probably reach him, but it would put me out of the fight for a while.”

Buffy flinched at the image of Angel riddled with bullets, but she knew it would only hurt him, not kill him.

“Let’s try something else first,” Faith proposed, quickly diving back into the smoke behind them. There was a loud growl again, getting closer, but moments later Faith emerged once more, holding one of the still smoking gas grenades and throwing it out into the corridor.

“Good thinking, Faith,” Giles complimented as the corridor filled with smoke. Angel darted forward when visibility dropped to zero. “Okay, let’s get going!”

There was a crunch outside, Buffy recognizing the sound of someone’s head being bashed into something hard and metallic, then they heard Angel’s voice. “Coast is clear!”

Supporting the others they quickly made their way down the corridor, catching up with Angel even as Buffy saw something big with yellow skin appear in the library door. Whatever it was, it was ugly.

“The shooter was human,” Angel said, taking part of Oz’ weight off Buffy’s shoulders. “He won’t bother us for a while.”

“What’s an armed human doing working with a yellow-skinned demon?”

Said demon was catching up with them a moment later, swinging some kind of organic-looking blade. Faith ducked just in time to save her neck, losing a few strands of hair instead. Buffy surged forward, kicking the creature into the chest, but it barely staggered, now swinging at her.

“We need to get the others to safety before we can fight them,” Angel said, shoving the demon back into the smoke.

“In here!” Faith pointed toward the door to a storage room. They quickly helped the others inside, Giles entering last.

“Barricade yourself,” Buffy told him. “We’ll deal with these things.”

“Be careful, Buffy,” Giles pushed the door closed, leaving Faith, Buffy, and Angel standing in the corridor. The yellow demon was getting back to his feet and charged them again, even as they saw other shapes appear from the smoke inside the library.

“Why did I ever drop out of school,” Buffy sighed. “All the fun happens right here.”

Faith just smirked and jumped into battle.

____________________________________________________________

Part 10

#

“How many of them are there?” Buffy peeked around the corner of the high school building, trying to make out their attackers.

“At least one more sniper,” Angel said. “I make out two vampires, plus at least two demons whose species I can’t place.”

The one good thing about the battle so far was the fact that the attackers’ targets had soon become evident. The yellow demon had seen the others barricade themselves in the storage room, but had gone right past them to follow Buffy, Angel, and Faith. No one seemed interested in Giles and the others, they were only hunting the Slayers and the vampire.

Which was just fine with them.

Buffy closed her eyes and inhaled, picking up the scent of a human moving in closer to them. He was creeping up behind their position, the smell of gun oil clinging to his form. There was also a demon close by, not the yellow one, but she could not quite make out his location. Somewhere in the underbrush behind the parking lot.

“You take the sniper,” she whispered to Angel. “Faith, yellow guy is yours. I’ll try and track down that other demon that’s sneaking around here.”

“What about the vamps?” Faith whispered back.

“Can’t locate them right now,” she admitted. “Let’s hope the others aren’t in danger.”

“Should we double back and make sure?”

“We would lead the others right back to them. The gang can handle two vampires.” I hope, she added silently.

#

“Can you hear anything?”

Giles was leaning his head against the door, trying to pick up any sounds from outside. There was nothing but silence, though.

“It appears the fight has moved away from us,” he told the others, who were slowly recovering from the gas.

“Who were these guys?” Xander looked at the others. “Any clue?”

“None whatsoever,” Giles admitted, though he had a feeling that it was once again connected to everything else that had happened to them recently. He doubted that it was a coincidence that they were subjected to an organized attempt at their lives on the same day that Xander had gotten out of prison and Buffy and Angel had visited the scene of Amy’s murder.

“They seem to be after our three super people, though,” Oz added, still wheezing from the gas. “I mean, so far no one has tried ...”

There was a disgusting, slurping noise right outside the door and moments later a gray, oozy substance began to pour in below the door.

“This is not good,” Giles mumbled, inching back.

#

Lyle Gorch looked at the gray slime thing that was trying to get into the room that held the Slayer’s human friends and made a face.

“Now that’s really disgustin’!”

Candy, his wife, stood beside him and looked even more revolted than he did.

“Ya think this thing will kill’em, honey?”

“Ah doubt it’ll want to make nice.”

#

Angel had managed to take out the second sniper with but one gunshot wound to show for it when he saw something really disturbing. He was on the roof of the high school, where the sniper had tried to get a good position to kill them, and could see most of the surrounding area that had been turned into a battlefield.

Faith was fighting the yellow demon and seemed to be holding her own, despite the fact that her knife was a lot smaller than the organic blades the demon used. He did not see Buffy, but he felt her moving through the underbrush near the parking lot, clearly on the hunt.

He also saw a faint trail of gray slime leading into the school.

“Great,” he mumbled, jumping off the roof and sliding his sword out of the spine sheath. “Faith’s slimy friend is here.”

As if they did not have enough trouble already.

#

“What is this thing?”

Giles motioned for them all to get back, trying to keep himself from panicking. Which was not all that easy, given what was breaking down the door right now. The only door leading out of the room, to be precise.

“This must be the slime demon Faith encountered,” he told the others.

“Why a slime demon?” Cordelia complained. “If we are to die at a demon’s hands, why does it have to be a slime demon of all things?”

More of the gray mass was oozing through the door, which was reduced to a broken wreck by now, torn apart by the pressure put against it. Giles dimly saw two figures out in the corridor, but as they were not rushing in to help he felt it safe to assume that they were part of the attackers.

Probably wanted to make sure that no one made it out of here alive.

“The only way to kill it is to hack it into pieces you said, right?” Oz was standing beside Giles, wishing that Willow had already gotten around to modifying Amy’s spell for him. If he could have shifted into his wolf form at will then maybe he would be able to do something here. Something other than dying, that was.

“It’s mass must be reduced below the critical level,” Giles nodded.

“How many pieces is that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do we have anything to cut it into pieces with?” Xander asked, which caused Oz to produce a pocket knife. “Great,” Xander groaned.

#

“Honey,” Candy said to Lyle, “shouldn’t we go lookin’ for the Slayers and Angelus? They’re the ones that’ll bring us the bounty.”

Lyle was busy watching through the busted door as the slime demon crept towards the humans inside, but the mention of the money managed to shake him loose.

“You’re right, honey. Maybe we should let’em know their buddies are in trouble. I’m sure that would have come a’runnin’.”

“A little late for that,” a voice came out of nowhere and Lyle Gorch had just enough time to see that it was Angelus who had spoken before a sharp blade separated his head from his shoulders. Candy jumped back, screaming as her husband crumbled into dust.

Angelus looked at her. “Still interested in the money?”

Candy didn’t need to be told twice and ran for her unlife.

#

“Now would be a really great time for a last-minute rescue,” Cordelia screeched as they pressed back against the wall. The slime demon had reformed into a semi-humanoid shape and was still coming toward them in eerie silence, broken only by the squishing it produced with every step.

Without warning something slashed right through the figure’s chest, effectively cleaving it in two. The demon crumbled into puddles, revealing Angel standing behind it with a sword in hand.

“Get out, quickly!”

No one needed more encouragement than that, especially seeing as the slime was already moving once more. As the others stormed past him Angel raised his blade again, unable to help the thought that was popping into his head as he watched the slime reform itself.

This was going to be disgusting.

#

By the time Buffy finally caught up with the second demon she had had to evade two bear traps, a weighted capture net, a razor tripwire, and several other nasty surprises someone had put up around Sunnydale High. She also kept worrying about who would clean up this area before unsuspecting students would arrive in the morning, but thankfully she remembered it was a Friday night.

The demon looked human except for his hands, which were claws, and the abundance of facial hair, which left little more than his eyes and mouth bare. The moment he spotted her he tried to skewer her with a thrown spear, which she evaded, and then shot at her with a bow, forcing her to catch the arrow. He also moved extremely fast, Buffy barely able to lay a finger on him.

She finally managed to get a solid hit on him, the impact carrying him back into a tree, when she heard the sound of an exploding wall. Turning around she saw that one of the school’s walls had exploded outward, courtesy of the large spurt of gray slime that was only now trickling to a stop.

Leaving a motionless body lying in a puddle of the stuff. A body dressed all in black.

“Angel!” Buffy forgot all about her own opponent and started running toward the slime demon that was even now reforming all around her lover, seeking to trap him inside its own form. Unfortunately her opponent had not forgotten about her and threw something at her from behind.

Buffy had never seen a bola, but that did not change its effectiveness. The steel string wrapped around her body in a flurry, pinning her arms to her side, tying her legs together. Buffy stumbled and fell, unable to even soften the impact with the ground.

The demon rose and came toward her with a knife in his hand.

_____________________________________________________________

Part 11

#

Giles, Willow, Oz, Cordelia, and Xander had managed to reach the end of the corridor when the crash of the exploding wall caused all of them to duck. Turning around they saw a big hole where a wall should have been, the edges still dripping with gray slime.

Angel was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s in trouble,” Willow said under her breath.

“Gross,” Cordelia added, watching the dripping slime. “Why did it have to be slime?”

Giles did not say anything, but he saw the sword that Angel had been holding a second ago lying abandoned on the floor of the corridor, also covered in slime. Needing but a moment to overcome his inner revulsion he ran back, grabbed the sword from the floor, and jumped out through the gaping hole.

“What’s he doing?” Cordelia looked after him. “He isn’t going to ... is he?”

Xander was frozen. For a moment he played with the same thought, going after Angel, helping him. Maybe if he saved Angel then Buffy would forgive him, some very selfish part of his mind added. Was that not how it always went in the movies? All he needed was come through for them, show Buffy that he was really here to help, and everything would be okay again. She would thank him for saving Angel, maybe even ...

Willow was clutching Oz, while Cordelia seemed to be involved in a struggle between fear and disgust. And Xander? Xander just stood there, frozen.

#

Faith was covered in cuts and bruises, but she finally managed to bury her knife in the yellow demon’s throat, finishing him off after a good ten minutes of fighting. She was panting and out of breath, hurting all over, but given that her senses were still tingling she doubted that now was the time to rest.

A loud crash drew her attention to the wall of the school, just in time to see Angel making a hard impact with the parking lot ground, covered with gray slime and remains of the wall he had been knocked through.

“Oh great,” Faith swore. “Slimer is back!”

The creature began to reform even as she started running toward it, Angel still down and seemingly out. Faith did not know whether she would be able to cut that thing into enough pieces using only her knife. Maybe she should have swiped a sword from Giles’ weapons locker after all.

She was halfway toward Angel and the slime demon when she heard another sound from the opposite direction. There was Buffy at the edge of the underbrush, crashing to the ground as some kind of rope or string wrapped itself around her body. Another demon, one with a wicked-looking knife, was stalking right toward her.

“Shit!” Faith knew she could not reach both Angel and Buffy in time.

#

“The weapons locker,” Willow suddenly called out, startling the others.

“What?”

“If everyone is out there we can go get Giles’ weapons. Don’t you think the guys are gonna need them?”

Everyone started running back to the library. Xander hesitated but a moment, then snapped out of it and followed.

#

Buffy struggled against her bonds, but the steel string was just wrapping tighter around her body. She simply could not get enough leverage to snap them.

“Don’t bother,” the demon coming toward her growled. “I’ve hunted Slayers before. I know your strength.”

“Tough guy, eh?” Buffy managed to turn enough to look at him. “Why are you doing this? Is it a demon pride thing or what?”

“The thrill of the hunt.” He knelt down beside her, moving the knife toward her throat. “Plus the very high monetary reward for delivering your head, pretty Slayer.”

“Reward? Who put out a reward on us?”

Buffy never learned whether he had planned to answer her or would have just slit her throat, because at that moment Faith jumped the demon, knocking him over until the two of them tumbled across the dirty ground in a tumble of arms and legs.

“Faith, Angel needs help,” Buffy yelled, not really thinking about the fact that the knife had been awfully close to her throat.

“G-man is handling it,” Faith yelled back, delivering a kick that knocked the demon off his feet once more. The knife fell from his hand and came to rest right next to Buffy, who wasted no time grabbing on to it.

“Big heap Slayer hunter, are you?” Faith’s voice was ringing from somewhere behind a tree, lost to sight. “Why don’t you show me your big gun?”

The only sounds she heard from the demon were pain-filled.

Her fingers finally reached the knife and moments later the steel string broke, finally freeing her. Buffy jumped to her feet, looking around. Faith did not seem to need any help, which reminded her of someone who might. The reason she had turned her back on the demon in the first place.

“Angel,” she yelled, running out into the parking lot.

Her lover was no longer motionless, now weakly struggling against gray slime that was trying to swallow him whole. Giles was there, hacking into the stuff with Angel’s sword, but not doing too much good. Whatever pieces he hacked off reattached within seconds.

Buffy just gripped the demon’s knife harder and jumped into the slime.

#

Xander and Oz stormed out of the school entrance, armed with swords and crossbows, shortly followed by Willow and Cordelia who were also armed to the teeth. All four of them skidded to a stop, though, when they saw the mess in front of them.

“Eeew,” was Cordelia’s only comment.

Buffy, Angel, and Giles were sitting on the concrete, all three of them covered head to foot in gray slime and looking rather beat.

“Where is the slime thing?” Willow held her sword out in front of her, seeming more likely to put out someone’s eye rather than slay demons. “Where is it?”

“Over there,” Angel said, pointing toward a parking car.

“And over there,” Giles pointed in the other direction.

“And way over there,” Buffy finished, making a sweeping motion all around her.

“And may I just add, eeeew!” Cordelia turned away.

Faith strolled toward them with a smile on her face, made all the more scary by the spots of blood on her cheeks. Slung over her shoulder was some kind of leather strap with lots of teeth fastened to it, some of them yellow with age, others pearly white.

“Hunter guy got demoted to hunted,” she told the others. “He got some wicked cool trophies, though.”

She looked at the three people sitting in the slime. Giles was shaking his head at his ruined suit, Angel discarded his equally ruined leather coat, which hit the pavement with a wet slurp, and Buffy seemed on the verge of despair seeing the disaster that was her long blonde hair. Faith’s lips spread into a full-fledged grin.

“Don’t worry, B, it’ll only take about six hours of showering to get that stuff off, no more.”

Angel, Buffy, and Giles just looked at for a moment, then simultaneously started throwing remains of the slime demon at her. Within a minute all eight people present found themselves involved in yet another battle, though not all of them voluntarily.

“EEEEEEW!” Cordelia’s scream could be heard across half of Sunnydale.

_____________________________________________________________

Part 12

#

They spent the rest of the night making extensive use of the gymnasium shower stalls, breaking open a few lockers to get their hands on the necessary soap-based products. Giles was not happy about the latter, truth be told, but when faced with the alternative of staying in his slime-soaked clothes even one more second he relented, planning to recompense the appropriate parties come Monday.

When Xander finally emerged from the shower, feeling more or less clean and dressed in mismatched exercise clothing he had scrounged from his own much neglected gym locker, he found Cordelia sitting outside, looking at the first hints of dawn on the horizon.

“Cordy,” he called out softly, approaching her. She tensed for a moment, then proceeded to ignore him.

Xander sat down beside her. “Can we talk? Please?”

“About what? The incredible denseness that is your brain or some other topic for once?”

Xander sighed, resting his head on his hands and trying not to get too excited about a still-wet Cordy sitting beside him, dressed in the only outfit she had had available at school. Her cheerleading uniform.

“Tonight is the Homecoming Queen coronation, isn’t it?”

Cordelia seemed a bit confused by the topic, but nodded.

“So ... I figure you’re gonna win, right?”

“I might. Though I did not have the time to campaign properly, seeing as some idiot was causing a lot of trouble around Sunnydale at the time.”

She was not going to let this go, was she? Well, he deserved nothing less than that.

“I wanted to apologize,” Xander finally said, looking at her.

Cordelia looked back at him, no give in her eyes. If Xander thought she was going to make this easy for him he had another thing coming.

“I wanted to apologize,” he repeated, “for not telling you how I really felt about you. Cordy, I ... I never saw you as second-best to Buffy, you have to believe that.”

“Do I?” She snorted at him. “And why do I have to, seeing as all you ever did was prove it over and over again?”

“I had a crush on Buffy for a long, long time,” he confessed, “but I think around Halloween last year I realized that it would never come to anything. Buffy loved Angel, there was nothing I could do about that.”

“Did not keep you from trying.”

“No, it didn’t. I guess ... I guess by that time it was habit. Or maybe I was just angry at Angel for taking something away from me. Something I never had in the first place.”

He shook his head. “What I’m trying to say, Cordy ... it had nothing to do with you, I promise. What I feel for you has nothing to do with Buffy, Angel, or any of that bullshit I did during the last few months.”

He fell silent, just looking at her, until Cordelia snorted again. “What are you expecting me to do now, Xander? Fall into your arms and sob that I forgive you? Newsflash, Xander! Not on your best day!”

“I didn’t ... Cordy, I know I will need a lot of time to make up for ...”

“Zip it! You’re a waste of space, Xander Harris, and I hope whatever remained of that demon who possessed me to give you the time of day in the first place was suffocated in that gray slime out there.”

Cordelia rose and walked back inside, leaving Xander sitting by himself. Why did this have to be so hard? He was sorry for what he did, could they not just believe him when he said that? It was true, could they not tell?

Probably not.

#

Faith had not planned to eavesdrop on the conversation between Xander and Cordelia, but when she heard them talking around the corner she could not help but listen. A minute later she melted back into the shadows as Cordelia walked by, face stoic and emotionless, but with a hint of tears in her eyes.

Faith was not the best when it came to picking up emotions from the people around her, but one thing was painfully obvious. Cordelia still cared for Xander, though she might hate herself for it.

Which once again left Faith with a feeling of loneliness. She had friends now, good friends, plus a woman who was almost like a mother to her, but she was missing one thing. One thing she had never had before, one thing she desperately wanted. Some part of her kept saying that she should be happy with all she had gained in so short a time, but she did not listen.

Instead she wondered if there was anyone out there who would ever cry because he or she could not help but love her, no matter what she did.

#

Mr. Trick wished that he had ignored the ringing of the phone.

“I must say, Mr. Trick,” Mayor Richard Wilkins said in his usual friendly tone, “that the people you hired for this job performed anything but stellar.”

“Mr. Mayor, the people you want killed are not your garden-variety easy prey. They destroyed two very old Master Vampires, defied the Order of Taraka, and killed more of my brothers than anyone I would care to meet. Did you really expect this to be easy?”

“I expected you to deliver me quality personnel.”

Trick was rapidly growing tired of this talk. He was also growing tired of the Mayor of Sunnydale, Sunnydale and general, and anything associated with Slayers and vampires with souls.

“Mr. Mayor, you asked for my consultation in regard to hiring assassins. I did not give any guarantee in regard to their ability to accomplish the job, I just said that they were the best one could hire on short notice and you said that you were satisfied with that.”

He had that in writing, thankfully.

The Mayor sighed deeply. “Be that as it may, Mr. Trick, I still have my original problem. I ...”

“I am afraid my calendar is quite full at the moment, Mr. Mayor,” Trick interrupted him. “I have some important business to attend to these next few weeks.”

“I see,” Wilkins just said.

“Good day to you, Mr. Mayor,” Trick said before hanging up the phone, thankful that this was over with. Despite the money he had made from his business in Sunnydale he had developed a severe dislike for Mayor Richard Wilkins III. and did not plan to ever work for him again. Honesty forced him to admit that enough money might yet change his mind, but for now he was just satisfied to be far away from Sunnydale and its very troublesome population.

“And Mr. Mayor,” he spoke to himself, “if you’re worrying about the Slayers and their friends, well, I left them a little surprise that should keep them occupied for a while.”

No one should say that Mr. Trick did not do his best to ensure client satisfaction, even if he could not stand said client.

#

When dark fell over Sunnydale once more the Homecoming Queen coronation began at the Bronze. Buffy and Angel were there, as well as Willow and Oz. Faith had dressed up for what she thought was only the second or third time in her life and busy scouting the local guy scene, but not having much luck. If one defined luck as finding something more than guys willing to spend the night, that was. Xander had shown, but was busy standing in a corner and wondering whether being ignored by Buffy and Cordelia was a good or a bad thing right now.

Cordelia did not win the Homecoming Queen, but somehow she was not really as upset about that as she had figured she would be. She also figured out that she was quite upset about other things, one thing in particular, but refused to spend too much time thinking about it.

Some distance away from the Bronze was one of Sunnydale’s larger cemeteries, Sunny Rest. Three nights earlier the body of Amy Madison had been found dead in her house. One night ago she had been buried, which was quick even for Sunnydale standards. There had been no autopsy, which was also quite unusual in a murder case.

Amy Madison’s body had been in the ground for little more than 24 hours when something that was definitely not Amy Madison burst free from her grave.

THE END

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