The little girl walked down the street holding her mother's hand. She wore a red coat over her dress, white tights with black patent-leather shoes, and a ribbon in her hair. Her mother was holding her hand too tightly and walking too fast, but she'd complained already and her mom hadn't listened. She thought her mom might be scared, and though she couldn't put words to it, the girl had caught this fear like a persistent cold. She'd had it for days, and it was worse whenever they went outside. She used to go out with her mom, to the playground and the zoo. It used to be sunny. Now it was always dark, and when she asked why, no one would tell her. Now when they went outside it was only to get food, and then they returned quickly home.

Daddy went to work in the dark, and stayed away for a long time, and was quiet when he came back. The house was full of whispers in other rooms, and her favorite cartoons weren't on. She didn't go to kindergarten anymore and had to play all alone in her house. She found new ways to play with her toys, but going outside was better.

"It's the funny men, mommy," she said, pointing as she spotted them. They were approaching on the sidewalk in their long coats, carrying guns. She knew what guns were. They were toys.

"Don't point, Candace." Her mother drew her to one side, closer to the shops. Her voice was low and sharp, like when she was upset, but Candace didn't want to hear that.

She waved at the funny men, who looked down at her as they passed. "They have faces like grandpa," she said, though that wasn't exactly right. "Are they really old?"

"I don't know, honey."

Candace's mother, flustered with nerves, dredged up a smile for the pretty blonde woman who crossed their path, whose eyes rested so gently and seriously on Candace that she might have been thinking of some other little girl. They did a sidestepping pas de deux, trying to make way for each other, then moved on separately, Candace dragging her feet a little as she looked back over her shoulder.

Buffy Summers walked freely through the streets of Sunnydale with her black-market signum pinned to her blouse. No one stopped her or even particularly noticed her and though she didn't feel safe exactly, she didn't feel in any immediate danger. It was the strangest thing in a long life of strangeness, being out for a stroll downtown and passing demons and vampires who brushed shoulders with human beings as if it were all perfectly normal. Her two worlds had collided at last. It was like a waking dream experienced in emotional slow-motion. None of the monsters attacked her. She'd thought there might be a chance someone, one of the vamps maybe, would recognize her as the slayer. But it seemed her face wasn't as well-known to them as she'd feared. Maybe it was just her name.

The invaders were tearing down and rebuilding the town, as if it were all just stage sets they didn't like. As she turned from Elm Street onto Main Street, the construction became more prevalent. The world still swam by in that dreamlike state, stretching like taffy. Two vampires walking arm in arm laughed and looked her way as she passed, and beyond them down the street a theater marquee was being reworded by a man on a ladder to advertise The Maltese Falcon. Demons criss-crossed a road free of any cars, shopping bags swinging in their hands. Lights had been hung on the trees and shop windows were brilliantly lit against the endless night, their doors opening and closing to release the scent of fresh-baked bread and Italian food.

Did the Grauth have a taste for pasta primavera? Were they the ones patronizing the busy liquor store and the tiny children's bookshop down the block? It was madness, the world tilting into a vast sea of wrong, and for a moment Buffy couldn't tell, looking at the few neutral human faces that floated by, if she was the only one who felt the enormity of it all.

Somewhere a woman laughed, shrilly enough to break into her thoughts, and Buffy swallowed and moved out of the way of a passing guard patrol, ducking her head to the side casually and pretending to windowshop. When they'd walked by, she resumed her steady pace toward the center of town. She'd had a view from rooftops and from the window of the Magic Box, but this was the first time she'd approached it from the street. It was ground zero for the occupation, thick with suited Grauth filing in and out of office buildings, putting whatever infernal bureaucracy they'd brought with them into effect. The web of plazas and quirky merchant alleys that passed for a historical district had been colorfully restitched with tents, booths, and strands of lights into a bazaar of the bizarre.

It would have been almost appealing except, of course, for being evil.

Buffy wound her way through the increasingly dense crowd until she reached the courtyard she was looking for. In its center was a marble fountain spraying arcs of water, colored pink by tiny spotlights; red Spanish tiles delineated the ground under its tables. On her guard, she scanned the scattered knots of coffee-drinkers, gaze finally alighting on a demon sitting alone. He met her eyes for a moment before glancing away. She ordered a cappuccino and carried it to his table, sat down. He regarded her warily.

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat," Buffy said.

"What frees the prisoner in his lonely cell, chained within the bondage of rude walls, far from the owl of Thebes?" murmured the demon.

She stared back at him, mind blank. "Uh...the fish flies at midnight? Oh, never mind. You're the friend of Anya's?"

The demon, a furry hunch-shouldered creature with saucer-sized yellow eyes, nodded rather mournfully. "I am Omo. A modest purveyor of imports and certain rare spices--"

"That's great," Buffy broke in. "But I need you to purvey something else." She tapped her chest, drawing his big blinking eyes that way. "More signums. Nine of them."

"Signa," said Omo.

"What?"

"The plural of signum is 'signa.'"

Raising her brows, Buffy asked, "Okay, you're a killer spelling bee. Do I look like I came here for a lesson?"

Omo hunched down further and sighed hissily over his espresso. Spidery fingers with black nails tapped the white china. "It's impossible to get so many signa--it was difficult enough to get even the one."

"Hey, I do six impossible things before breakfast. You'd be surprised what you can accomplish, if you--" She paused and sat quietly, hands poised on her coffee cup as a soldier wandered by their table toward the interior of the bazaar, his crisp grey uniform and gun casting a shadow of unease over the other nearby inhabitants. He left a muted stir in his wake. Resisting the urge to glance behind her, she lowered her voice. "Look, I don't care how hard it is. Name your price."

"Price is not the issue. Fur is the issue. I prize my fur, Slayer. And I don't intend to see it skinned and hanging on General Nilec's wall."

Whose wall? Buffy wondered, before dismissing the question. The demon's obstinacy was making her anxious. She was used to being the can-do girl, and she hated returning to Willow and the others having failed at this. "Can you get any signums? ...na?"

"Maybe. Maybe one or two. I will try." A forked red tongue flicked out over lips and chin. "But it will cost you."

She braced herself with a wince, thinking of her nearly emptied bank account and how unlikely it was that she could even access her funds, what with a demon occupation and all. "Do you take Visa?"

Omo laughed soundlessly. Or maybe just had a spasm. "Your human currency is worthless. However, the market is far more flexible now. Guns, blood, nathra horn--I will leave a list with Anya. You procure what you can."

It seemed to Buffy that there was something to protest in this arrangement, even if she couldn't put her finger on it, but as she was forming her lips into a question, gunshots rang out. She leapt to her feet, froze, then sat back down again when she realized she was the only one standing. Around her the patrons of the cafe sat watching, immobile and silent, as a man staggered down the street, tie dangling from his half-bent body, shirt-tail untucked. He held a pistol loosely in his hand; red bloodstains had erupted on his white shirt. Behind him, a Grauth guard approached sedately, raising his weapon and spraying a few more shots into the man's back, sending him collapsing to the ground.

Her stomach twisting into a knot of fire, Buffy forced herself to remain seated while the guards cleared their victim out of pedestrian traffic, dragging him off the road to drop him face-down in the gutter.

"What do you think?" said a voice from a nearby table. Buffy looked over, saw a vampire in a lime-green polo shirt frowning at his brunch partner.
 
"We could ask," said the lady vampire. "I mean, it's perfectly good blood. Why throw away lemons when you can make lemonade?"

Subdued pools of light gleamed off the long, glossy meeting table, cast by a row of lamps which stretched down its middle. The lamps were of discreet height, with black shades, and the small circular glows that outlined them, even added together, were not enough to penetrate the room's surrounding shadows. At each place on the table sat a sheaf of loose-leaf notepaper, a fountain pen in pen-stand, a pitcher of water, and a glass. The pen-stands were embossed with the sigil of the Imperial State of Grauth, a design replicated in the wall banner that hung at the end of the room, behind the chair of General Nilec.

He looked over his staff, mottled face closed up tight as a purse, horns dipped meditatively as he listened to the report being made.

"...and recruitment is up by ten percent this week," said Liyoge. "Most volunteers come to us from the demon communities, but we're attracting a respectable showing of humans as well."

"Numbers."

"Ten percent, sir, as per your quota restrictions." Liyoge stretched back in his chair and twirled his pen with careless, fluid motions. Aristocrats, thought Nilec with disapproval. Impossible to escape the aristos. They bred in the ranks, soft and plentiful as Earth pigeons, cooing endlessly with their gracious tongues. "We've refined our selection process," he went on. "So far it appears that members of the civil service best match our requirements--particularly those previously employed by the Department of Motor Vehicles. We've also tapped local HMOs."

"In what capacity are they serving?" another officer asked.

"As trusties," Liyoge replied, turning slightly in his chair. "They hold minor positions of administrative power, nothing more, working under the guidance of our own people. As our strategic analysts predicted, it soothes the populace having other humans to deal with."

Nilec grunted, drawing Liyoge's glance. The colonel correctly read this as a signal that his report was at an end, and lit a cigar as punctuation.

"Operations," said Nilec, fastening his gaze on another of his staff.

"Sir." The man rose and walked over to the bare wall behind him. At a gesture, the warlock on hand called up a transparent full-color map of Sunnydale, projected against the marble. The chief of operations ran over the map lines with a pointer as he spoke. "We've sectored the city into seven distinct territories, each under the direction of a local field warden. Checkpoints have been established between all areas. Our containment camps are based here, along the edge of town. All undesirables--other than those we've eliminated--have been lodged there. The general population is being gradually relocated to centralized living communities here, here, and here." He pointed to splotches on the map that were shaded yellow.

"Ghettos," said Liyoge, rolling the edge of his cigar across an ashtray.

"Yes," said the ops chief. "We discovered areas of what they call 'subsidized low-cost housing' which were admirably suited to our needs." He returned to his seat, the map winking out behind him. "In general, the humans are compliant and easily maneuvered, but there remain pockets of rebellion."

"Measures?" asked Nilec, steepling his fingers and trying to determine if he needed another manicure just yet. One must keep up with the aristos, at least in appearances.

"Special Forces is taking care of the problem, sir." At those words, every officer's gaze turned down the table, directed with respect toward the head of the Special Forces branch.

Nilec frowned at this collective deference. He himself felt no special fear or respect for the man, and why should he? A subordinate doing his job like any other, that's all he was, with no secret powers or distinction other than the chance fortunes of birth. Nilec didn't credit the rumors that had grown around him like an obscuring mist.

Besides, he was half-human. And Nilec had his reservations about that.

"Colonel Naziren, report."

Naziren raised his head slowly as if from sleep and blinked. His body shifted a half-beat later, rousing itself to lazy attention, and he focused down the long table on Nilec, whose answering scowl deepened. The unnaturally smooth planes of Naziren's face showed no emotion and his dark humanish hair--black as his uniform--flopped in his eyes with an insouciance that goaded Nilec, who'd never found a regulation against it in the dress codes.

"Sir," said Naziren. "We've cleared out three rebel nests in the last week. The remnants of the human army have been scattered and cut off from one another. Our best intelligence suggests they've gone underground, into the tunnel system."

"They should have never gotten so far," Nilec said critically.

"They'll be rooted out, sir."

"By you."

Naziren didn't smile, but something in his face shifted. He was holding a round crystal and he turned it in his hand slowly, contemplatively. "It's not the job of Special Forces to chase tunnel rats. Sir. We leave that to the bullet squads." He was careful not to accept the responsibility Nilec assigned. He was too careful by far.

"The men are having a tough time in the tunnels," said the ops chief with a grimace. "Human sewage."

Liyoge's lips twitched. "A uniquely revolting smell, I understand."

"They'd better get over that, hadn't they?" Nilec said, his voice laced with ice.

"Well, it's the fumes, sir." The ops chief looked apologetic. "They act as a kind of...poison gas. So to speak." He cleared his throat and adjusted the documents in front of him. "We understand there are human military devices called 'gas masks.' We're looking into that."

With one last disgusted glare at his ops chief, Nilec returned his sights on Naziren. "Do you have anything more for us, Colonel?"

"Yes, sir. The slayer."

A sudden silence rippled through the room, like a breeze from an unexpected direction. Heads up and down the table turned, shoulders stiffened.

"What about her?" Nilec said impatiently. "She's dead."

"No, sir. It would seem that she is not." Naziren rotated the crystal in his hand, irritating Nilec inch by inch closer to a rebuke. "I've made it a priority to find her and eliminate her...with your approval, of course, sir." He glanced up from under thick lashes, something almost mocking in his gaze.

"Do it. And do it fast, Colonel. A slayer on the loose has not been factored into our plans." Then, thinking his words might suggest a weakness of strategy, he narrowed his gaze and cast the spotlight back on the other man. "You have a contingency plan for finding her, of course." He took pleasure laying emphasis on the last two words.

"Never fear, sir." Naziren's darkly hooded eyes held his. "I know just where to start."  

Spike looked around his office, captivated more by the novelty than the decor. But the decor wasn't to be sneered at. He had a shiny desk and a comfy chair and one of those damn potted palms. Even had a picture on the wall of old sailing ships, which looked to have been painted around the time he'd once breathed. Someone had done their homework. The wet-bar was nice too, stocked with a few dozen different bottles, all in a lovely range of colors. Everything was so cozy and expensive, he couldn't find a single fault with any of it. It made him suspicious.

"Raus," he yelled, circling behind his desk to take a seat.

His aide came in hurriedly through the open door, straightening his tunic. "Sir?"

He put his boots up on the desk that was mercifully bare of such things as paperwork, which did not befit a gentleman vampire, and which would have bored him silly. "What's on the agenda for today?"

"The agenda, sir?" Raus's eyes flickered with an indefinable response and he hesitated as if stalling or thinking too much, both of which Spike found inappropriate in minions. "Let's see." He consulted a small leather book, finger tracing out appointments. "You have a meeting coming up to troubleshoot current data gathering initiatives, and after that, ah, an orientation to acquaint you with Grauth philosophy and legal principles--"

"That sounds dull," Spike said, cutting him off. "What do you do for fun around here?"

"Well, sir, I'm not sure if there's anything especially urgent requiring attention."

"Not what I asked." Spike's voice was exaggeratedly patient. "What's this organization for?"

Raus's expression said this he could answer. "The Special Forces branch is in charge of difficult or sensitive operations--intelligence gathering, secret missions, interrogation. We do whatever's called for that the other branches can't do."

"Sort of MI5 meets the Avengers, that right?"

"As you say, sir," Raus replied, obviously deciding this was a safe answer even if he didn't understand the references.

"Then again," Spike mused, "could be more like the Gestapo." He kept his speculative gaze fixed on his aide.

"Sir?"

Never mind, thought Spike, dragging his boots off the desk and standing. "I think it's about time I took a look round the castle, got the lay of the land." He strode from his office past Raus, who hurried after him, dogging Spike's heels and making a nuisance of himself.

"Sir, I'm not sure--we really ought to--the meetings are very--"

Yammer, yammer, yammer. Spike tuned him out as he wandered the halls of the building that Special Forces had appropriated for its headquarters. It had the shabby pedigree of office buildings from the twenties and thirties. Lots of old molding and pillars and transoms above the frosted doors, with modernization efforts consisting of little more than waxy floor tile and low-hanging fluorescent lights, half of which blinked erratically or didn't work at all.

"What have we here," he said, stopping in front of a random door on which the Grauth seal now hung.

Raus tugged his sleeve. "Sir, I don't think--" His words dried up as Spike glanced down with pointed attention at where his aide's fingers rested on his tunic. Raus removed his hand at once, and Spike's low growl ceased. Nothing more was said as Spike opened the door and strolled inside. It was a small set of offices, bare of anything but three wooden chairs, a hat-stand, and its two occupants.

"Well, this looks cozy."

The two men inside looked up in startlement at Spike's arrival. One, a Grauth in uniform who'd been interrupted as he jotted into a notebook resting on his thigh, rose to his feet.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Then his gaze dropped from Spike's very non-Grauth face to the insignia on his jacket. The officer, a weedy lieutenant, backpedaled hastily, his arrogance wiped away. "Sir, my apologies, sir."

But Spike ignored him, eyes riveted to the man in the other chair. "Willy," he drawled. "Fancy meeting you here."

Willy's eyes shifted from left to right, a nervous rictus of a smile stretching his mouth out of shape, along with the thin mustache that had crawled onto his upper lip and died. He had a grey patchiness to his face that looked familiar, but Spike couldn't quite place it. "Hey, Spike. Wow, look at you. Quite the uniform." He cracked a tiny laugh. 

"Yeah, I'm a sharp-dressed man these days." Spike took in the details of the scene and did some simple math, his interest catching like a pick-lock in tumblers. "And you're not doing so bad yourself, I see." The human's pin-striped suit was the cleanest and most expensive set of rags Spike had ever seen hanging off the bartender's skinny form. Blighter was even wearing a tie.

Shrugging and laughing again, Willy twitched in his seat. "You know me, Spike. I roll with the punches."

"Smart men do." And you're not smart, Spike thought derisively. Still, Willy was living, worm-like proof that slipperiness and survival instinct could get you far in the world, if you snitched to the right people. It put Spike in strangely good cheer. Warm and fuzzy, like, because even in a world gone topsy-turvy, a snitch was still a snitch, a spy was just a spy. The fundamental rules applied. He repositioned one of the chairs and sat down on it, front to back. "You know, I'm feeling sociable. Think I'll join you."

"Captain," the lieutenant began awkwardly.

"Sit," Spike rapped out. The man sat. "Now," Spike said, turning down his smile to give Willy his full focus. "Where were we?"  

The Initiative complex didn't have a lot to offer in the way of accommodations. Not like your finer hotels. No mini-bar, no soft-core cable or hot tubs. And if you wanted to talk hot, it was very non, with constant drafts sweeping through the rooms and corridors. At least it did have ventilation, though. A total lack of oxygen could have presented a problem.

Xander was cleaning guns. He could do this well, strip them and oil them and reassemble them like a professional soldier. This was more or less an Army Guy thing--a parting gift of his old Halloween makeover that is, not of Riley. Riley hadn't shown him how to clean a gun. It hadn't even seemed to occur to him that Xander might really be interested in such things, even when Xander himself raised it as a topic of conversation. Trying to bond. Riley had tried to bond back of course, and it had been painfully obvious he was doing it for Buffy's sake, to get in good with her through her friends. But he'd pooh-poohed Xander's idea of going to a shooting range with a bucket of bullets. That's my job, he'd said. I don't do that for fun. Hey, why don't we rent a movie? You like Adam Sandler?

Good old Riley. Xander still missed the big lug, with his wooden sense of humor and enviably normal life--at least until he was revealed to be a genetically altered super-soldier controlled by Adam who eventually whored himself out as a blood snack for vampires. No one was perfect, though, and damn, he'd been so close to having a real guy friend for a change. A buddy. Sure it was more like a buddy-in-law, you might say, with Buffy the law, but it had been nice.

Was it actually possible to get tired of girls?

"Oh my god!" shrieked one of Dawn's gang from the other side of the room, her soprano going right through Xander's eardrums to his brain and lodging there like a fishhook. "You are so full of it! I never wanted to date him!"

"Oh, you so did!" Dawn crowed. High-pitched giggles and hoots followed her words.

"What are they doing?" wondered Tara, coming up in a swish of impractical skirts.

"Truth or dare. I think." Who cares, Xander thought. Whatever they were doing helped them pass the time and kept them out from underfoot, and that was all that mattered. "At least they're keeping their clothes on today." He grimaced, then mimed an elaborate shudder to lighten the tone. When had naked teenagers become such a turn-off? Boy, youth was fleeting.

Tara smiled impishly as she took a seat next to him at the table they'd scrounged from an abandoned office. "They're a lively bunch, aren't they."

"Crazy kids." Xander's hands continued to work as he spoke, swiftly and methodically punching the magazine home and racking the slide before releasing it. The smell of solvent hung in the air, vaguely comforting.

"How's it going here?" Tara asked, her gaze drifting across the weapons and cleaning supplies spread across the table. Something in her altered tone made Xander give her a second glance. Her face had lost its smile, assuming a mask too smooth to be truly neutral. He imagined the disapproval she was feeling.

"I know what you're thinking," he said conversationally, setting the gun down and picking up a new one. "Killing bad. And guns kill, so guns bad. A simple philosophy, but one I tend to agree with." He paused, held her eyes. "Except, killing demons? Not bad. So guns that kill demons, not bad. See how that works?"

Tara's mouth turned down. "You know I'll kill them if I have to. But they aren't all--"

"All what? Monsters? Actually they are."

"What about Kethas?" Tara turned her head, directing his gaze across the room to where the Bracken demon sat, slightly but noticeably apart from Dawn and her group. He was perched on a crate, arms dangling off his knees, while the others sat on the floor in a close circle.

"What do you want me to say, Tara--guilty until proven innocent?" Years of complicated moral and ethical frustrations had burned Xander's voice to harshness on this subject. "Fine. But these demons, the Grauth, they've proven themselves plenty guilty."

Tara was gracefully still and upright; her hands, clasped together on the table's scarred surface, somehow seemed to display a resolution that Xander consistently strove to achieve and failed, and even if what she'd resolved wasn't what he agreed with, he respected that about her. He sensed that whenever Tara was at her most certain, she was a gathered calm.

"Do you know Nietzsche?" she asked now. Do I know Nietzsche? He stared at her blankly. "He said, whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself."
 
"Wow," said Xander, feigning admiration with as little meanness as possible. She always meant well. "That would make a great tee-shirt."

Showing rare annoyance, she lowered her head slightly to frown at him. "You know what I'm talking about."

He sighed, his stubbornness easing along with the set of his shoulders. There was no point in arguing with her. "Yeah. I do," he said quietly. He bestowed a crooked smile. "But what if it takes a monster to fight a monster?"

Tara's gaze dropped to her hands, which shifted restlessly, and she didn't immediately speak. A flurry of movement and shouts from the other end of the room caught their attention. Kethas and one of the boys--Jason--were rolling together, limbs flailing as they tried to land blows. The girls had scrambled out of the way and were shouting at various pitches and decibel levels, urging them to stop. A candle was knocked over, landing on a blanket, which began to smoke. Dawn kicked it aside and stamped on it.

He was across the room in several long strides. "Hey," Xander said, on the chance that a sharp word might be enough to pry them apart. But when they continued to scuffle, he shouted more loudly, "Hey!" and reached down to yank them apart. His bark shook them and they slipped apart like scrapping puppies reprimanded by a larger dog. With hands twisted in their shirts, he dragged them to their feet and shoved them a few paces away from each other. "What the hell's going on here?"

Human and demon glared at one another with bristling animosity--literally bristling, in Kethas's case. His spikes stood out all over his angry face, and Xander wished he'd bothered to find out before now if they were oh, say, poisonous.

"This egg-face called me a Hellraiser," Kethas said, his fuming outrage spilling over. "I am not a Hellraiser, I am Bracken!"

Jason snorted. "I called you Pinhead, you freak." He turned to Xander, earnestly seeking understanding. "You know, from the movie Hellraiser?"

Oh, the temptation to nod and commiserate, cementing the bonds of movie geekdom and humanity. But drawing on his full twenty-three years of authority, Xander ruthlessly suppressed the impulse and played it fair. "Both of you are on time out. Go to your separate corners, refine your insults and meet back here in half an hour. We fight our allies with words, our enemies with fists. Got that?"

The boys scowled but nodded, and he let them go. The group broke into camps, their babble rising again almost at once as he walked away.

"What was that all about?" Buffy asked as she came in with Willow. He and Tara met them at the common table, where Buffy pushed aside some guns and set a basket of fresh food down.

"Nothing." Xander watched her unpack bananas with a pensive eye. "Kid stuff." He found himself wondering how many more bananas were left in Sunnydale, and what happened when they ran out. No deliveries coming in, no banana boats docking in the harbor. A life without bananas. And then--what else? What next after that, after the bananas ran out and the apples and that sickening Kiwi Coke that Anya loved?
 
Buffy glanced toward their youthful refugees, her thoughts clearly still on the subject at hand. "Typical kid stuff, or Hellmouthy I've-made-my-therapist-a-millionaire kid stuff?" What do you think? Xander's eyes said when she met them. She grimaced in resignation. "We need to give them something to do."

"Yeah," said Willow, looking thoughtful. "A project."

"Ooh, and it should involve maps," pepped up Buffy. Everyone looked at her. "What? Maps are fun. Maps and little flags, and colored markers--those ones that smell like fruit."

"I love those," Willow said wistfully.

"Hey," said Xander. "Here's a wacky idea. Maybe we should train them to actually, you know, fight." Now everyone looked at him with reproachful girl eyes. Even Buffy appeared dubious at this suggestion, though from her face he could see her giving it thought.

"Xander, they're just kids." That was Willow, conveniently forgetting years of Scooby history. "What--you want to give them guns?"

It was a boggling question, to him if no one else. "No, I thought we could send them out with egg-beaters, whip our foes into a froth."

Willow's face shifted into an expression that said, I hear your sarcasm and will condescend to ignore it because I love you. "They'd be in more danger from carrying weapons than going without."

"That argument's only good in a war-free zone, Will."

Buffy took a deep breath, very leader-like with her troubled brow and air of responsibility. "I'm not sure about guns yet. Maybe we could start them on cross-bows, let them work up?" She looked to Xander with her question. He shook his head. He suspected she already knew the answer, but wanted him to say it.

"Cross-bows take a lot of upper-body strength, at least if you want any range or power. The beauty of guns is that any dummy or imbecilic four-year old can fire one." He jerked his head, not quite glancing over his shoulder. "Or these guys."

With curious regard, Buffy half smiled at him and said, "When did you become such a boy?"

"They tell me at birth," Xander said mildly. "But hey, what do they know."  

Light music tinkled from the piano, the kind of stultifying classical piece whose notes would trap you like a fly in amber, smother all the air from your lungs, and suspend you for eternity in a tiny bubble to be dangled from some rich lady's wattled neck, while your trapped soul screamed and cursed the fates for bringing you to this hellish end and all around you a host of demons in colorful silk dresses lifted their tea-cups and laughed.

"This is very good cake, Lady Elk-Head," Anya said brightly. "What is your secret?"

"That's 'Elked', dear." The Grauth matron smiled and lifted her tea-cup. "It's a family recipe. The fremla beetles should be living when you blend them in. That makes all the difference." Her small eyes twinkled.
 
"Well, it's...amazingly chewy." Anya set down the plate on which she'd artfully rearranged her uneaten crumbs, and took up her own tea-cup. All around her, the Grauth ladies sat on sofas in poised watchfulness, as if waiting for her to spill its contents on her dress. Anya was quite certain that she was going to vomit from sheer nerves any minute now. Far more embarrassing than spilled tea, if that were to happen. Why the hell had she come here? "Thank you so much again for inviting me to your little party," she said, smiling too widely before taking a sip of tea, which still--yes--tasted of socks. Sweaty, unwashed socks. Hiding a tiny choke, she set the cup back into the saucer. It rattled more loudly than it should have.

"Well, it's more of a social club, really," said Lady Elked.

"Yes," said one of the other women, leaning forward eagerly. "The Grauth-Human Friendship Society."

Lady Elked beamed. "You are our first human member."

"Oh, that's...my." Anya stared around uncomfortably from under her lashes, wondering whether the women would chase her if she ran. Regrettable that she'd worn heels. It never paid to wear heels in Sunnydale, even to a tea-party. She knew she should be pleased to find herself, a single businesswoman, welcomed into the arms and parlors of the new elite--if nothing else, it would be very useful for making connections, not to mention new customers. But she wasn't sure yet what they wanted from her, and that put her on edge. "That's so very kind of you," Anya perked at last, desperate to fill the silence.

"And we want to learn all about your culture," the other woman said. Her small, curly horns lay wrapped closely to her head, like elaborate barrettes, visible only because her elaborate wig had over-balanced itself and was gradually sliding off the back of her skull. Anya tried not to notice as the woman went on. "Your movies, your music, your literature--all so fascinating."

"Yes, they are," Anya said without any enthusiasm. What did she know about literature? What would they talk about? Anna Karenina? There had been snow, and a train. Did they want to hear about that? She'd perused thousands of similarly themed books that she'd considered required reading for her job, gobbling them up in her rare and tedious off-duty hours while eating chocolates from a box (when, eventually, they had invented books and chocolates and boxes), and right now she couldn't remember a word of them.

"Tell me," said the wig-tipsy demon, voice lowering into the tone of one inviting a confidence, "have you ever met Bruce Willis?"

Spike had eventually shaken himself free of Raus to make his way alone through Special Forces HQ. It was a big building and easy to get turned around in; byzantine, you might say, if you used poncy words like that. He'd stumbled on a few meetings he hadn't been invited to, the admirably gory interrogation of a Slobchar demon, a martial arts class, a crude surveillance operation, two autopsies, three polygraph tests, and one supply-closet dalliance that made him wonder whether Buffy could be talked into wearing fishnet stockings. Most places he intruded on accepted his presence without demur, though a few times he was kicked out by colonels or cranky generals.

He'd reached a dark, dead-end hallway, tried a few locked doors and, bored, had just about decided to take his leave for the day and renew his hunt for Buffy, when a voice uncoiled from the shadows.

"Captain Aurelius, isn't it?"

Spike turned slowly to face the figure stepping from the recesses of the hall. A door behind him spilled a triangle of light across the dark tiles. "Don't think we've met," he said, squinting to make out his features. The man's next step brought him forward into the light to reveal a faceless mask of black, and Spike jumped back with more intuition than thought as a blur of arm rose from the man's side and a blade sliced the air where he'd been standing.

The first blow was followed by others in quick succession and, snarling and game-faced, Spike was driven back along the hall until he cleared the juncture of corridors, which gave him room to move. He curved like a snake out of the path of another swipe at his chest and used the opening it provided to throw himself at his attacker, knocking his arm wide and grabbing his sword wrist as they struggled. Within moments the weapon clattered to the ground, leaving the man unarmed against him, but no less formidable. A series of blows hailed against Spike's ribs him and it took a few moments to find the opportunity he wanted, before he smashed his fist into the man's jaw and sent him reeling.

It was a hell of a sweet fight, just what he'd needed to brighten his afternoon, and Spike poured himself into a storm of blows and kicks that his opponent answered fluidly. Within less than a minute they had tossed each other up and down the hall, breaking a few doors and supporting columns, leaving constellations of broken glass in their wake. A trickle of blood forked down Spike's cheek, whetting his enthusiasm for the dance, and he let the faceless man get in a few punches just for the fun of it, then parried effortlessly and spun him into the wall with a smash. The man shoved back and tried to kneecap him; Spike went briefly down on one knee and just as quickly came up again, driving into the other's gut like a battering ram, momentum carrying them both to the ground in a tangled roll that ended with Spike on top, fist raised to strike.

He felt the sudden cease of resistance which usually meant he'd beaten the life out of something, but in this case meant surrender. Suspicious, he paused, while the faceless man underneath him began laughing.

"Knocked your wits right from your head, did I?" Spike asked with guarded interest. "Let's see what we've got here." Instead of delivering his blow, he lowered his hand and peeled away the fencing mask to reveal a more or less human face. Surprised, Spike didn't sense another move coming and found himself bucked off and thrown aside as the man twisted free. He stood ready for round two, but the man faced him without further attack.

"I'm Colonel Naziren. Head of Special Forces." He smiled, his face creasing, and Spike realized that what he'd taken for scars down each cheek were the ridged crests that indicated Grauth blood. He had the niggling feeling that something else was off, then noticed that his irises were as black as his pupils. Well, gee. That was downright spooky, wasn't it. Overall, Spike decided, he was one of your ruggedly handsome types. Tall, dark and broody--the kind of bloke women flung themselves at tit-first when they were looking for crime and a bit of punishment.

With a sardonic salute and an inclination of his bloodied head, Spike greeted his commanding officer. "So you're the boss of bosses. I can see why you head up the welcoming committee."

Naziren smiled again. "I like to get personally acquainted with all my men, at least once." He held out his hand. It took Spike a moment to figure out why, then he met the grip with his own. Strong. More or less human was tipping toward less. When Spike started to withdraw, Naziren held onto his hand and turned it over, studying it like a palm reader. Spike's brows crawled for his hairline, but he submitted to the examination. "Cool skin," said Naziren. He looked up. "Like ours."

"Yeah, but mine comes of being dead."

"I thought vampires existed in a state between life and death."

Poetic nance. Right hook notwithstanding. "Guess you could say that," Spike grudged.

Letting go his hand, Naziren walked away to regather his sword. "Come." He left Spike to follow. After a moment, Spike did, trailing him back to the office he'd originally appeared from. Inside it was like the offices of a more sybaritic Oxford don and for a minute he forgot himself and marveled at the tortured marble statuary, the swords and stelae hung around the walls, the layered Oriental rugs and crackling hearth. And the books. Books everywhere, laddered to the ceilings, fat and thin, leathery and silky-looking, with spines in all colors but tending to the dark.

"Posh digs you've got yourself," Spike said. "Misleading from the outside. Probably get the odd tradesman knocking now and then." He waffled absently without bothering to see if Naziren was listening. He was still glowing from the fight, which mingled oddly with an urge to walk over to a bookshelf and take down one of its volumes. He quelled the feeling by reaching for his fags. A beat later, he remembered he wasn't carrying them and wanted to curse.
 
"Smoke?" Naziren said, flipping open an enamel cigarette box with one hand.

Silently, Spike took one and stuck it in his mouth. Before he could whistle jack, Naziren had followed up with a light. Suave bugger. Spike angled his head down and let the flame come up to meet him. A drop of blood rolled down his jaw and fell to the carpet, but neither of them paid it any mind. When the tip of his cigarette glowed, Naziren closed the lighter with a snap. Spike removed the smoke, contemplated it. "Potent tobacco."

"From our homeland." Naziren sidestepped and settled into one of the chairs in front of the fire. He gestured to the other. "Please. Have a seat, Captain. Let's...get to know each other better."

Oh, let's, thought Spike.

But he obediently took his place across from the Grauth and schooled himself to an equable composure, wearing the stolen face of a cat. Naziren had drawn his legs up and crossed them, showing off bare feet. What with the black garb and the darkish stare he was giving the fire, Spike might have pegged him for an artiste, but he'd already proven himself to be more.

"Where are you from, William?"

Now was probably not the time to mention how much he hated being called that. At least, by anyone but Buffy. Spike curled his tongue into the corner of his mouth, licking at a pocket of blood, then said, "London. Paris. Hell."

Naziren picked up a knife from the table beside him. It was unsheathed, carved from something that had once had a tusk and now didn't. He fondled it absently. Spike's eyes narrowed. It was the kind of thing Angelus used to do, and he'd never held back from tossing his toys at you. For taking the piss, for speaking out of turn, for looking at him cross-eyed. For no reason at all.

As if reading his thoughts, Naziren looked up and caught his gaze, but the next words out of his mouth were, "How many people have you killed?"

"Lost count. Ran out of belt and bedposts fast, though." His mouth quirked coldly at Naziren's slight frown. "For the notches," he added.

"Guess."

"Maybe ten, fifteen thousand." He gave the colonel a flinty look. "I don't rank high in the list of global death tolls. Somewhere above Chernobyl and below the 1932 cholera epidemic, last I checked."

"But you're one man." Naziren's eyes were a brilliant focus, admiration like a prism in which Spike found himself bent. It had been a while since someone had looked at him like that, and for all the so-called wrong reasons. He wasn't sure how to take it.

"Not exactly Chairman Mao here, mate," Spike said, feeling oddly disinclined to brag. Where had his old brio gone, he wondered with a flicker of gloom and nostalgia. Oh, yeah. "You know I can't kill humans anymore. So was it your idea to recruit me, or did you lose a bet?"

"Neither. But I know how to take advantage of my assets." Naziren smiled. "I'm sure we'll find plenty for you to do."

They'd found maps, enough to satisfy Buffy's map-happy little heart. Currently, Willow and Tara were doing a locator spell for demon energies. The rest of them watched attentively as a mist of pale green light gathered over a detailed street map of Sunnydale. Even the kids had stopped their bickering long enough to huddle round the edges. It gave Xander an odd feeling of deja vu he couldn't quite place and briefly, he wondered--would their lives be better or worse if they were trapped inside the Matrix?

"With your knowledge may we go in safety," said Willow. "With your grace may we speak of your benevolence." She opened her eyes to study the glowing map.

"Oh, pretty," said Dor.

"Pretty demons," Tara informed her dryly.

Xander was caught up in the map's implications. "You can see the patterns of occupation," he said. "They've centralized in the downtown area." He began to point this out, then paused. "This stuff is safe, isn't it?" he asked, swirling his finger just above the glowy lights. "Non-toxic?" At Willow's smile, he traced a line down the center of town. "Here's Main Street." He bisected it. "Here's Buena Vista."

"That big clump must be City Hall," said Buffy, tapping her finger at a knot of light. "I noticed a Grauth seal hanging on it when I was in town. A kind of banner."

"It could be their base of operations," Willow said.

"That makes sense." Xander shifted, his voice taking on an edge. "Good location, on the bus lines and close to the theater district." Trusty sarcasm covered for an anger and fear too vast to contemplate. Their town lay stretched out on the table in front of them, and looking at the proof that it was overrun was like looking at ultrasound results for a cancer patient.

"What's this?" Tara wondered, indicating a small but dense swirl of light in the far corner of the map, green at the edges but deepening almost to black at the center. Everyone looked.

"That's Mount Siliyik," said Willow, squinting through the magical vapors at the map. "There used to be a Chumash reservation at the base."

"We took a trip to the museum there last month," Marcos put in. "Borrrring." Xander gave him a lock-jawed look of irritation, but the kid didn't notice. He knew his irritation was unfair. The kid was no more irreverent than he'd been seven years ago; it shouldn't bug him that a seventeen-year old might not be taking things seriously enough.

"Is that the portal?" Dawn asked. Xander dragged his attention back and everyone exchanged glances for a silent moment, confirming that they'd been riding the same train of thought.
 
"Maybe," said Buffy, answering for all of them. "But it's a long trip for a maybe. Our first step is intelligence gathering so we know what we're up against. And for that we start closer to home." Her eyes were fixed to the map, and Xander's gaze lowered to the same spot. "City Hall."

A wispy, ground-crawling fog had materialized in the streets of Sunnydale, drifting out of alleys and hugging shopfronts as it spread. Spike didn't recall ever seeing its like before, but then he didn't remember a sodding big chestnut tree growing in the middle of Main Street either. Its leaf-laden branches spread out far enough to touch the shops on either side. Around it, a patchy bit of grass was fenced in with wrought-iron rails and dotted with benches and old-fashioned lamps to form a small park. A breeze rustled, sending a few orange leaves sliding to the ground.

"Lovely, isn't it?" remarked Naziren, strolling next to him, including the rest of downtown in his wandering gaze. "We have a corps of top wizards in charge of city beautification. Next up, cobblestones."

Interesting priorities, Spike thought but didn't say. It suited his interests well enough if they wanted to play with their erector sets instead of getting up to nastier business. Less call for him to jump through mental hoops as he tried to figure out what the hell Buffy would want him to do. "Better than a parking garage," he said aloud, then paused, tipping his head. "Though I rather like parking garages. Prime hunting grounds."

Naziren glanced sidelong from under the brim of his cap. "You miss the hunt."

Did he miss it? Oh, too right he did. With an itch of fangs and stir of blood. Like learning to fly, then having your wings stripped off. Like being chained to a perch, your senses hooded, while all around you could feel the movement of mice, soft bodies begging to be ripped and gutted. A thing made to kill and feed, starving by inches. Pain in the head and pain in the gut, clouding the memory of what was natural, the fleet chase and the flirtations, how you watched and followed, driving your prey in the direction you chose, cutting her from the crowd, circling around to meet her with a smile of reassurance, reprimanding her for walking alone, offering your escort like a gentleman, all the while scenting the tantalizing nearness of her pulse, feeling her heart quicken and trip as her instincts warred with one another. And under a streetlight, you halted her with a touch on the arm, said listen with head cocked as if unnerved by the night sounds, and when she looked behind her, you ripped your mask off and tore out her neck, stifling all sound as passers-by approached and shook their heads at the licentious lovers and walked on, footsteps fading as she died in your jaws.

Spike gazed into the eyes of the girl in UC Sunnydale sweats who stood, white and upright as a tombstone, in his path. "Yeah," he said, walking through her, feeling her disperse around him like the fog. "Sometimes...hell, all the time. Pig's blood in a bag--'s like margarine instead of butter." His voice was deliberately hard, but he couldn't suppress a glance back at where the ghost had stood. Annoying bint.

"Perhaps there are benefits to your handicap." Blinking himself back to the conversation, Spike looked at Naziren with a bemused frown. "When a man is blind," the Grauth went on, "his other senses strengthen to compensate."

Struggling with this thought, Spike tried to apply it to his own condition. "What, you're saying a chip in the head builds character?" he said, half sourly, half wistfully. A dark splinter of a laugh escaped. "Wish you'd tell that to--" He broke off, compressing his lips before the name could reach them.

"To?" Naziren said lightly as they turned a street corner.
 
"Say," said Spike slowly, staring down the street. "Is that building supposed to be on fire?"

"Not if I don't know about it."

They looked at each other, then ran.  

The manhole cover lifted and slid across the ground with a scrape quiet enough to go unheard in the alley but loud enough to send a rat scurrying away in search of less trafficked dinner spots. Out of the hole, two small hands came, followed by a blonde head. Buffy swung herself up and helped Willow and Dawn out. A moment later Xander appeared, climbing free.

"We need to talk about this new mass-transit sewer plan. Not liking it, I have to tell you."

Ignoring him with the ease of long practice, Buffy looked around and consulted the folded map she'd pulled from her pocket. "We should be right down the street from City Hall," she said.

Xander stood up from recovering the manhole and brushed off his hands. "Whoa, I smell bread. Oh, man." He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes with reverence.

Peering down the shadowed passage, Dawn observed, "We're next to the bakery." She turned a beseeching look at Buffy. "Scone break?" she said, voice rising in hope.

"Don't make me regret I brought you." Buffy warned, wondering why she had. The other kids weren't ready yet for excursions, and they'd had to leave someone of the adult variety to keep track of them. Poor Tara was becoming default babysitter. Dawn had cornered Buffy though, and begged to come, making long and convoluted arguments about her worthiness that drew on a laundry list of vampires killed, demons battled, and weapons mastered, until Buffy had caved more to shut her up than from conviction.

But the world had changed--war had arrived, a time of truth, and compared to most people Dawn was a veteran.

Her sister sighed. "So when do I get a gun?"

Never, thought Buffy. "When Xander says you're ready," she said. She put her map away and looked critically over their group. Dawn in black sweater and jeans, like a junior fashion model moonlighting as a cat burglar, but with a cross-bow strapped across her back. Willow, armed with a spell-bag that Buffy suspected was almost superfluous these days. Xander, resembling a backwoodsman with a high-velocity grudge against big government. And herself, embodying the spirit--and the flannel--of grunge. They weren't exactly the A-Team. She wasn't even sure they were in the alphabet. But at least she had the consolation of knowing they were more dangerous than they looked.

"Speaking of ready," Xander said, a gentle prod.

"Yeah," Buffy replied, gathering herself. "Okay. We'll come out of the alley on the west side of the grounds, and jump the fence there. We should have cover if we stick to the bushes. We'll go in through the side." She knew that she was repeating directions for the third time, at least, but her nerves were stretched thin. "If we run into any guards--run. Guns are a last resort. We don't want to attract--" A huge boom filled the night, sending shockwaves through the pavement, the disruption quickly followed by the unmistakable rattle of gunfire.

"--attention," Buffy finished.

With startled glances at one another, they made for the end of the alley and peered out. The street in front of them was lined with an innocuous collection of stores, closed for the night, and a few taller office buildings. In the middle of the otherwise empty street a figure in cammo stood with a shouldered weapon that Buffy was intimately acquainted with, aimed at the upper stories of a rooming house.

"Hey," exclaimed Dawn, "Is that a rocket launcher?"

Buffy was already running as fast as her feet could take her, but she heard the whistling arc of the rocket before she reached the shooter, and then the blossoming explosion hit. She slammed into the man's back, sending him to the ground and covering him as a hail of glass and splintered brick bounced around them. When she looked up, fire was sprouting from the upper windows. A burning form stumbled into view, then half-fell, half-dived to land on the sidewalk in front of the building.

Sickened, Buffy grabbed the collar of the person under her and wrenched him up to face her. He was just a man, she saw. Not a Grauth, but a soldier with a buzz cut and a bloody cheek. While she was staring he smacked her in the throat and leapt to his feet. She grabbed her throat with one hand, coughing and trying to catch her breath, and heard Xander and the others run up.

"I wouldn't do that," Xander said, and Buffy looked up to see the soldier reaching for his pistol. Xander had his gun trained on him and wore a grim, no-nonsense expression. More gunfire was popping in the distance as smoke from the burning building rolled across the road.
 
Buffy drew herself upright, adrenaline mixing unpleasantly with pain to make her cranky. "Who are you--and what the hell are you doing?"

The soldier glared at her. He reminded her a little of Graham, with the same kind of unyielding bedrock behind his eyes that didn't soften for women. "Grissom. One twenty-third. Who the hell are you?"

"Buffy...class of '99." And, oh, screw it. Secret identity be damned. "Vampire slayer."

The man blinked, an uncertain look passing over his face before disappearing behind a frown. "Well, Buffy, what I'm doing is protecting this town from hostiles. So you might want to get out of my way."

She jerked a hand at the rocket launcher, then at the burning building. "There could have been humans in there!" As if to punctuate her words, the front door to the building was flung open with a bang. Grissom unholstered his gun in reflex and everyone looked over as Grauth families began streaming out, covered in soot and hacking from smoke inhalation. A few of the women wailed and sobbed and wrung their hands.

At the same moment they all heard the approach of a siren, the universal signal of emergency help on its way, even when the ambulances and fire engines had been appropriated by creatures from the pits of hell.

"We need to move," Xander warned, looking down the street.

"I haven't got time for this," said Grissom, and turned to leave.

Buffy grabbed his shoulder and spun him back around, feeling buried grievances she'd had with the military mind suddenly take a new lease on life. "Make time," she said flatly, and yanked him toward the alley. He went grudgingly while the others brought up the rear. In the relative safety of the alley, she shoved him against a wall and put her hands on her hips. "Talk."

He rubbed his face and looked them over as if he highly doubted their authority to make demands, but Buffy was used to that and waited him out with a gimlet eye. "Look," he said finally, "I don't know who you people are, but you're human, so we're on the same side. We're taking back this town tonight. These fires are just a diversion."

"Fires?" Willow repeated, face creasing.

Grissom paid her no attention, concentrating on Buffy. "You want in on the action, that's fine with me. But I've got to get back to my squad now."

A hundred questions jostled in Buffy's head and clamored to get out. She may not have a great fondness for the military, but right now they were the only game in town and they had their uses. "How many of you are there? What's your plan? What do you need?"

Before she could get any answers, there was a tattoo of boot heels from nearby and then a voice called out from down the alley, "Grissom! Come on, man!" Another soldier in cammo waved impatiently. Grissom pushed past Buffy, sprinting away without hesitation.

"This is getting more Strangelove by the minute," Xander said.

"What do we do?" Willow's anxious gaze was cutting Buffy open for answers. "We didn't plan for this. An attack of this scale, this soon--I don't know how much magic I can summon."

"They're way out of their depth," Buffy said quietly. "They can't win." She knew that in her gut, and yet some tiny part of her hoped it might turn out otherwise. "The question is, do we stick around and help?"

"Of course we help," Xander shot back, intensity sharpening his voice. He held his gun raised, pointing at the sky.

"And if we're sacrificing our lives for a snowball fight in hell?" Buffy asked him, holding his gaze. "We're probably the only chance this town has."

His eyes were dark but clear. "Then you go--I'll stay." He smiled faintly, diffidently. "No one can say the fate of the world depends on me."
 
Buffy swallowed, moved by his bravery even as she hated everything that demanded it. Any minute now she was going wake up from all this and be in her own bed, watching daylight hit her window as she shook herself free of dreams and faced another boring, ordinary day at the magic shop.

Any minute now.

"We all go, or we all stay," Buffy said. She stole a look at Dawn and then Willow, whose faces reflected the same certainty.

Dawn raised her chin a half-inch, her eyes glinting. "Let's kick some ass," she said.

The burning building was a townhouse whose bricks matched the color of the smoke billowing from its windows. When Spike reached the scene with Naziren, an overhanging tree had just caught fire and its canopy was quickly scorched bare, leaving its skeletal arms burning. A red blanket hung incongruously from one low branch, twisting up into a curl as flames rose along its edges. The street outside the house was churning with human women, many crying and slumping against their Grauth captors. Heavy chains laced their necks and arms.

"The auction house," Naziren said, nodding at the conflagration.

"Humans," Spike said, eyeing the crowd.

"For the most part."

"Someone help," moaned a woman, looking wildly around. Her blonde hair flared around her head, strands lifting and dancing on the wind like a parody of the blaze. "Please--my sister's still inside!" Her eyes locked on Spike with a plea as she mistook him for human. "Please save her!"

A moment earlier he'd had not the slightest inclination to put himself out, but now some vastly regrettable instinct drove Spike forward. Before he could make it two steps, a hand latched onto his arm, drawing him back. "Not exactly your element, William," Naziren cautioned. "The fire brigade will be here soon."

Spike met the woman's eyes and forced himself to look away. It wasn't as if he really gave a toss. Who cared about one more soft body, when the smell of blood and death was thickening in the air? If he was honest, and he was always brutally honest with himself, it might as well have been a cook-out. In the midst of grief and roasting flesh, he was getting hungry, pangs stirring and exciting him with a restless need to...attack, fight, kill. These were his true instincts, deeper than any mirror could reflect. Everything else was just frippery and diversion.

Still, he liked frippery. Damn.

A not-so-distant boom shook the street, sending light ripples through the plate-glass windows along the street. Naziren drew his breath in with a hiss of anger. "This isn't an isolated incident," he said. "We're under attack."

"What do we--" Spike glanced over, but Naziren was already racing off. "Right then," he said, a bit at a loss. "You go ahead. I'll just catch up."

Xander would rather have stayed by himself, a one-man show with no one else to worry about. Buffy and Willow could handle themselves, but they had all split up, and somehow he'd pulled Dawn duty. Her presence made him nervous.

"Sorry you got stuck with me," she said as they crept down the alley. Spooky little mind-reader.

With a reassuring flash of smile, he stopped and pulled out one of his other weapons, a pistol he'd had shoved in the small of his back. "Here," he said. Her expression was amazed. "You remember how to use this, right? Like I showed you."

"I remember," she said, rallying stoutly. The gun looked huge and strange in her delicate hand. She tucked it into her pocket, then pulled out her cross-bow, gave him a half-smile. "Figure I'll shoot my wad with this first."

Xander's eyes widened a fraction. "Okay, you can shoot that gun--but leave the R-rated talk to the professionals, missy."

"Deal."
 
"Come on," he said, glancing down the passage. "We're gonna need to get closer."  

Buffy and Willow didn't have a hard time finding the center of the action. The square in front of City Hall was teeming with Grauth and Army forces in ferociously pitched battle, with countless smaller skirmishes overflowing into the surrounding streets. In the middle of the square, a statue dating from the first world war loomed with outsized indifference above the combatants milling around its base. As Buffy watched, a Grauth stumbled back into it, shoved by a human soldier who was using the long barrel of his gun to try and choke the demon, without much success. A moment later, the Grauth got the upper hand and sent the soldier sprawling to the ground from a blow to the head.

"I'm going to get a better vantage," Willow said as she took in the view. "For the spells." Buffy nodded distractedly and Willow headed off, skirting the square as she ran.

Well, here's where I do my stuff, Buffy thought, and looked around for a place to start. Spotting a Grauth soldier nearby taking aim at an unknown target, she launched herself at him, knocking him out cold and taking his semi-automatic away as he fell. With the weapon gripped in both hands, feeling like Rambo and hoping she looked more like Ripley, she took position and began shooting.

"Ah ah ah," Spike said, stepping in front of a running human soldier and watching with interest as he bounced off and fell dazed to the ground.

Spike reached down and picked up the man's gun with an eyeful of appreciation for its design. Useful bit of hardware--if you were able to use it. "Interesting thing," he said, turning his irritable attention back to the groaning slab of meat on the pavement. "Chip doesn't fire for moshers and suicidal gits like you." He drew the dazed man upright, wondering what to do with him. "So, er, go turn yourself in, okay?" The man stared at him, mouth gaping unattractively as he processed this in befuddlement. Spike rolled his eyes. "Wink wink, nudge nudge--what do I have to do, paint you a bloody picture?" He vamped out. "Run!"

The man did.

"That's the spirit, mate," Spike remarked to himself through his fangs. "Live to die another day." He lifted the gun he'd taken and inhaled a lungful of smoky air. "Now let's see. Which way's the fun?"

The sky stretched above the rooftops, vast and dark. No clouds broke the false night, but the illusion of stars clung to its roof like a billion sightless eyes. Willow stood with her feet planted on the safety wall that edged the roof she'd chosen, the tips of her boots jutting over the edge, sixty feet above the battle taking place below. With hands outstretched, she bid the power to flow into her.
 
"Surasundari, Caligo, Umbria, hear me. I seek you in supplication. I offer my hands to you and my praise."

The familiar electricity was filling Willow, and the blackness of power opening like space in her soul. It rolled down from her head to her hands, tingling as it charged. It was brilliant, it was beautiful, it was--

Good.

She opened the bruised pools of her eyes and looked out over the town square. "Fire, fire burning bright, in the darkness of the night; strike your tongue upon the bane, bring them death and bring them pain."

Fire shot from her hands and broke like lightning across the square, and screams soon filled her ears. Willow almost smiled, but it might have just been the shifting of her skin as her own dark spirits rose to the surface and replaced her face with their own.

"That's Willow," Xander said with awe, watching as an arc of fire shot through the air and landed amid a nearby knot of Grauth. Demons went flying on impact, uniforms burning and peeling from their bodies. He squinted toward the roof-top, trying to see her, but couldn't make out anything through the smoke. Impatient to join the fray, he began edging closer to the square, darting out from behind the protection of a building to take position next to an unattended car. Dawn dogged his heels and crouched behind him.

His heart was hammering in his chest as if powered by trolls, making him slightly breathless. It was time to cut Dawn loose, he realized; she didn't belong in a fire-fight. "Take cover," he said to her. "Choose your targets, and if anyone sees you, run--you can take the tunnels back to the Initiative."

"Xander, wait!" She pulled at his sleeve.

Pausing, torn by conflicting imperatives, he wasn't sure if he'd have been able to make himself stay, but he didn't get a chance to find out because just then a Grauth soldier appeared.  

The mist rolled in, mingling with smoke from scattered fires, and Spike materialized from the fog at the edge of the town square, a thing black and glittering in uniform, cape swinging around him. His head tilted as he lit a cigarette. A Grauth civilian ran by, dragging a roped line of crying girls. Ignoring them, Spike looked casually out over the battle, eyes glittering with fascination at the chaos he surveyed. He half-smiled, wondering what Dru would say if she were here--it was her kind of spectacle--and then the smile was wiped off his face. His cigarette dropped unnoticed from suddenly nerveless fingers.

"Dawn," he breathed, face slack in disbelief. The wind sent a drift of smoke rolling across the vision, snapping him from his shock. Rage slammed into him like a tiger and he snarled, running toward his last sight of her, cutting across one edge of the square. He threw off anything that got in his way, wincing a few times as his velocity spun aside humans, the pain only increasing his determination and fury. By the time he'd reached the other side, he'd skinned off his human face again and was looking for something to kill.

The Grauth soldier in front of him barely had time to register his arriving growl before Spike wrenched his neck with a crack and dropped him to the ground. Xander and Dawn, their hands raised in a frozen pose of surrender, stared at him in startled relief.

Violence pulsing through him, Spike couldn't have devamped if he'd tried. He grabbed Xander's shirtfront and shoved his face close to the human's. "What is she doing here?" he said coldly, the urge to maim leashed in by only a few millimeters of government-issue metal.

"Fighting," Xander said, swallowing only once. "Like the rest of us."

"Let him go," Dawn said.

Caught off guard, Spike looked over to find a pistol in his face and the littlest Summers holding it. He let Xander go, a reluctant delight stirring in him. "Look at you," he said with admiration. "All tough and gun-toting." He cocked his head as he inspected her grip. "Might want to take the safety off, pet."

Her mortified expression was precious, more so when Xander turned to her accusingly and said, "You said you remembered how to use it!"

"I'm sorry!" she said, squeakier than she likely intended.

Xander shook his head. "You're lucky it's just Spike."

"Hey," Spike said, out of habit. "I'll have you know I'm a high-ranking...oh, sod it." It wasn't worth it. Scowling at Xander, he counter-attacked with, "Why don't you do something useful and get her out of here. This is no place for kids."

The human looked briefly guilty, then said to Dawn, "He's right. This probably wasn't a good idea."

"Buffy said I could come," Dawn retorted with a flash of spirit.

"Buffy's here?" Spike broke in sharply. "Of course Buffy's here," he added, answering his own question with self-disgust. Pointing at them, he commanded, "You two--go home." He whirled before either of them could voice the protest clearly rising to their lips, and headed back into the square where he belonged. With his love. Fighting by her side.

The power shuddering through Willow was beginning to take its toll, raising a fire within her to match the fire she created, a fever that would burn her out if she kept it up. She cried out as the pain became too great, and felt the current flicker and die. Slumping at the edge of the roof, she caught her breath and gazed down over the scene below. The battle had turned with her help; the human Army forces now seemed to outnumber the remaining Grauth and were driving them back from the square. On the stones below lay scores of charred and smoking bodies, curled into unnatural shapes like the letters of a demon alphabet.

It filled her with a sense of triumph greater than she'd ever felt before, and for a moment she savored her own power and what it could wreak.

Then she heard the choppers approaching and saw the lights of endless trucks racing down the darkened streets, closing in from all sides. And she knew it hadn't been enough.

"Buffy," Spike yelled through the smoke and fog. "Slayer!" He should be able to sense her, he thought with a surge of self-contempt at his ineptness. But she was nowhere in range, and he could only curse and cut a swathe through the remaining forces as he searched.

Buffy had emptied her gun of bullets, borrowed a few more and emptied them, and then kicked enough ass to put a scuff on her boots. Around her, human soldiers were chasing down fleeing Grauth, pushing them back from the perimeter of City Hall. Sensing it was time to relocate the fight, she scooped up a gun lying near the outflung hand of a dead demon and headed out of the square at a trot, trying to figure out the direction of the tunnel entrance. Was the bakery ahead or behind her?

"Slayer!" she heard, in a voice that froze her with recognition. She halted on the edge of the square, peering back through the mists, then whirled at a movement behind her, bringing her gun up for one terrible moment before she recognized who it was.

"Dawn!" Buffy looked past her sister, searching and finding an unwelcome absence. "Where's Xander?"

Panic shone in Dawn's eyes. "We were heading home--but he left me in the alley and went back to get guns. He said we'd need them. I waited, but he didn't come!"

"Damn it!" Anger and frustration surged in Buffy's chest, almost strong enough to override her fear. She didn't know whether to be frustrated with herself or with him. She tried hard to give her friends their due, not to second-guess their moves. Too many times the one running off half-cocked had been her, and with equally good or not-so-good reasons. But it was hard to be fair and reasonable in the middle of disaster. And that's what this felt like.

As Buffy was trying to decide what to do, Willow ran up, her previously shiny red hair looking fried, her eyes circled with dark feathers of exhaustion. "There's more troops coming," she said.

"Army?" Buffy said, heart skipping with renewed optimism.

"Grauth." Having dashed her brief hope, Willow looked around anxiously. "Where's Xander?"

"Oh my god," Dawn cried in a strangled scream, hands flying up to cover her mouth as she stared past them toward the square, and Buffy turned, not wanting to see what she was going to see.

The mists had cleared enough to reveal a troop of arriving Grauth led by a tank, whose turret gun poked out menacingly as it nosed through the square. On the stones knelt a handful of captured prisoners, hands lashed behind them. Xander was among them, profiled with a slightly hanging head in front of a pacing guard, rivulets of blood visible on his face.

"No," Buffy said, starting forward, but Willow and Dawn grabbed her. "No!" said Buffy more loudly, as Willow shushed her in desperation. Buffy felt her all the little clicky parts of her brain tumbling and tumbling, like a ball on a roulette wheel, but she knew she couldn't come up with a winning plan for this. She latched fiercely onto Willow, fingers digging into her friend's arm. "A spell, you have a spell--"

"There's too many of them, Buffy--and I'm all juiced out." Willow's face wore a mirror of her own agonized despair.

Buffy turned back, mind still busily scrabbling for answers, and went a funny kind of still all over as Spike strode out of a break in the fog and joined the company of Grauth. He greeted one of the officers with a smart salute, and stood several yards away from the prisoners, lips moving in a mild and conversational fashion, saying things she couldn't hear. His black cloak flared behind him with an errant wind and she watched him scan the square from under the brim of his cap, an arrogant curve to his cheek and jaw. He didn't look over at Xander. Xander didn't look up at him.

Suddenly his gaze arrested in her direction. Buffy stiffened and moved back a step, deeper into the shadows of the alley. He might be able to see her, even from such a distance. Keen vampire eyesight, her own blonde hair. He was tilting his head, he was--

He was nodding.

Buffy swallowed down her fear. And nodded back.

Well, this was fun.

Xander sagged in his chains, tried to blow a strand of hair from one eye, failed, blew again, failed, blew again. When he focused, the Grauth guard was staring at him in something close to wonderment, as if he were a peculiar type of zoo animal on display.

"Hair in my eye," he said. "Hate that." He smiled, cracking the mask of blood on the left side of his face. The vision on that side was a bit blurry, but he figured that would correct itself when the swelling went down. He hoped.

"Say, you wouldn't happen to have a Fresca, would you?" Xander asked. Impassively, the Grauth lifted his whip and brought it down across Xander's chest again. "Guess not." The manly, sardonic thing was working for him. He felt pretty sure of that. He had a whole Clint Eastwood vibe going. It hurt like hell, though. Clint...had the man ever cried? You had to wonder. Did he have a soft side? Or even one soft cell in his body? Maybe a fondness for daytime soaps. Yeah, you could see that. Disney cartoons? Bet he'd cried at The Way We Were. How could you not...that and Dumbo were the two saddest movies ever, and no, he wasn't a girl, he was a man, like Clint.

Snap went the whip.

Xander raised his head with a sharp intake of breath. "Can we go back to the part where you question me and I crack wise? Because I think--"

Snap.

"--I think we had a real rapport going."

And then Spike entered the room. Xander stiffened, unable to look away from the casual stroll of his black boots, the movement of his hand rising across his body, removing the cigarette that had been perched cockily in his mouth. His cap was angled low over his eyes, making them sly and shadowed and dark.

"I was wondering when you'd show up to gloat," Xander said, blinking away a fresh trickle of blood.

Spike tilted his head curiously, impeccable in its reserved regard. "Do I know you, human?" He spoke slowly and measuredly, and managed to inject real puzzlement into his tone, matching the slight frown between his brows.

"What's the matter, Spike? Don't want them to know you've rubbed shoulders with the rebel element?" He laughed and said to the guard, "You people are suckers for trusting him. He'll turn on you the first chance he gets." Spike's eyes lost their pretense, flashing a clear and impatient warning over the guard's shoulder, but Xander ignored it. "Forget about me. If you want to get yourself a promotion, arrest him. He's the real menace you should be worried about."

The guard looked at Spike doubtfully and perhaps a touch suspiciously. "Do you know this man, sir?"

"Never seen him before," Spike said with dismissal, his cold eyes boring into Xander's.

"Oh, Spike and I go way back. We even lived together once." Xander paused, glanced at the guard again. "Not in a gay way." Even if he was about to be tortured to death by demons, he wanted to make that very clear.

Spike rolled his eyes, then quickly composed his face when the guard squinted back at him. "Poor chap must be demented," he said in a brisk, not-quite-Spike voice that turned into a more familiar scoff: "You ever heard of a vampire living with humans?" He took off his cap and cloak and placed them on a chair. "Why don't you go get yourself a coffee," he suggested. "I'll take over the questioning for a bit." A nasty, suggestive smile crossed his face.

"Yes, sir."

The guard left. Spike watched him go until the door closed behind him, then turned to Xander, head swiveling slowly and threateningly, like a raven eyeing a worm. He looked more disgusted than angry, though. "Are you the thickest git on this planet?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

"Count your blessings I'm chipped, mate, because at this point I'd have to kill you on principle before you pissed in the gene pool."

"Guess there's no chance you'll ever have children, huh. What a pity." Xander shifted in his chains and dripped some more on the floor. He could see Spike eyeing his blood with a greedy glint. "If you lick me, you are so dead."

"Wouldn't sully my tongue." Then he moved closer, face softening, eyes turning sympathetic. "You in a lot of pain?"

Despite himself, Xander felt the compulsion of an honest response. "Only when I breathe."

The sympathy dropped off Spike's face, replaced by a smirk. "What a pity." But while Xander hung in an irritated seethe, he inspected Xander's wounds, walking around him full circle with a critical detachment possessed only by veterans and vampires. "Just warming up so far, looks like. You'll live."

"Long enough for them to kill me," Xander said bitterly.

Spike frowned. "Yeahhhh. Now that's a problem."

"And you'll cry big tears, I'm sure."

A look of exasperation crossing Spike's face, he poked Xander in his unprotected gut, not hard enough to set off any chippy retribution. "Not going to let you die, am I?"

"Because what would Buffy say," Xander remarked with knowledgeable cynicism.

"Oh, perfect timing," Spike said irritably, but not to Xander. He was talking to the empty air by his side. "Why don't you wear some big neon blinkers so I can be sure not to miss the moral."

Okay, suddenly it was more disturbing to think Spike might be crazy than to think he might be evil, because Evil Spike might help him escape for his own reasons, but who knew what Crazy Spike might randomly decide to do next. "Who the hell are you talking to?"

"Never mind. Just some ghost with a mission to tick me off." He glared sideways at the air. "The more you hang about, the less torn up I am," he warned the emptiness.

For a moment, Xander felt an almost universe-altering sense of absurdity that transcended mere hatred. "Spike, you light up my life. Don't ever change. Die, sure, but don't ever change."

Spike gave him an odd, bemused look. "Love you too, Harris."

"So how are we breaking out of this joint?"

"Haven't got a clue." Spike seemed put out, but had resumed his frowny thoughtfulness. "Can't just march you out of here and turn you loose--they'd check up. Could pretend to kill you, but that's risky."

"Uh, yeah." Xander shifted in his chains as Spike paced the cell and smoked. His welts burned and his hands were beginning to go numb. "Any chance you could loosen these manacles?"

"Better not. Wouldn't look good."

"Oh, yeah. You're a real friend to the downtrodden human, aren't you. How could I ever have doubted you?"

"Hey." Spike pointed his cigarette at him. "Next time don't get caught."

It was hard to argue with that. Xander thought about doing so anyway--because, really, what else was there to pass the time? But he held his tongue.

"I've got an idea," said Spike, stopping in mid-pace. Xander, who'd been absently admiring the cut of his suit, guiltily glanced up in relief. "Wait here," the vampire said, exiting the room.

Xander watched him go with resignation. "Always the comedy man."

Outside the cell, Spike headed for the officer's break room, the facets of his plan unfolding in his mind. Sometimes he amazed himself with his own brilliance. He'd have to call Raus, see how to go about officializing the details. There had to be paperwork you could file for this sort of thing.

"Captain Aurelius," said a smooth voice, interrupting his thoughts.

Spike halted and turned. It was Naziren, standing at the other end of the hall with arms laced behind his back. He'd taken off his cloak, and in the uniform he'd changed into earlier cut an imposing figure.

"I'd like to debrief you on our recent engagement." The colonel stood next to an open door, signaling an unmistakable expectation of Spike's attendance.

"Right," Spike said distractedly. "Just give me two ticks--" He began to turn away.

"Now, Captain."

Steel had entered the Grauth's tone and Spike was forced to turn back. "Sir," he said carefully, searching for a ready and reasonable excuse. A good con artist was never totally bankrupt of those. But there was no leeway in Naziren's eyes, and after a momentary battle of impulses and will, Spike clenched his jaw and nodded in obedience. "Yes, sir."

When the door opened again several long minutes later, Xander looked up with a complaint for Spike ready on his lips. But it wasn't Spike, and it wasn't the guard from before. This time it was a Grauth soldier in uniform black, carrying a small leather bag. Xander's eyes fastened to it with an apprehension that made his breath hitch. Small leather bags were never good. Oh, no sir. Serial killers carried those, and mobsters, and other people who needed hobbies.

"Okay, I saw that scene in Marathon Man," he said to the Grauth, who was setting down his bag and removing his tunic. "I was only eight and it made a big impression on me." He offered a sickly, lopsided smile and swallowed. "So, hey. What do you want to know?" He wouldn't of course tell them anything important, but he could make stuff up. He was a pretty good liar. Few people truly knew that about him--in itself a mark of success.

The Grauth smiled at him as he rolled up his sleeves. "Such a hurry," he said. "Do not be in a hurry. We have all the time in the world." He came close and turned Xander's head from side to side, examining his wounds.

"Actually, I have a date later. She gets angry if I keep her waiting. Throws things. She once threw a hamster at me. It's not quite as bad as it sounds. It was dead. Frozen, in fact. But...but that's another story."

Taking a nut from one pocket, the Grauth popped it in his mouth and chewed crunchily as he prodded Xander's ribs. He had an air of relaxed competence to him that didn't bode well. You didn't want your torturers to be at the top of their profession. You wanted them to be the guys who slid by at the bottom of the curve, cutting class and skipping the finals.

"You are a comic, ka?" There was joviality in the Grauth's voice, a conversational tone. "I tell jokes myself. My wife, she will not laugh. Tell me, have you heard the one about the three-tailed zygarak?"

Xander blinked. "Uh, no."

"It made the beds that much quicker!" Tapping the side of his nose and winking, the demon broke into chuckles and turned away toward his bag. Xander watched him open its mouth and rummage inside. Please let it not be dentistry. Or anything involving orifices of the body.

"I can see you have a bright future ahead in the Borscht Circuit," Xander said, hearing his voice rise in pitch as his heart accelerated. He couldn't shut off the babble valve. "I have an uncle who does bookings. I could make a few calls--" The Grauth held up his hand and Xander stopped, staring at the glove he was drawing on. It was black metal and it crackled with electricity.

The Grauth soldier turned back around with the glove upraised, blue sparks arcing across its gleaming surface. "I apologize," he said in a low, sincere voice. Xander stared at him. "I cannot remember," the demon went on, "if your species has one heart or two." He waited expectantly for a moment, but Xander said nothing. "Well, I'm sure we'll find out." Taking a step closer he placed his hand just in front of Xander's chest, millimeters from the skin. "Now," he said gently. "Tell me if this hurts."

"That's it," said Buffy, nodding across the street at the deceptively ordinary looking building to which she'd followed Spike and the prisoners. "That's where they're holding him." Willow and Dawn pressed close to her, their own gazes locked on the guarded gates. She could feel their worry as if it were a living presence, a kind of trembling heat that begged and gave comfort.

"What are we going to do?" Dawn asked. Her voice was thin but brave. "Are we going to break him out?"

Buffy looked at her sister, so young in years but so old, standing in a dark alley in the middle of a demon-infested town, gun in hand and ready to use it. She wanted to hug her, but it wasn't the right time. "No. We're not." She glanced at Willow. "Spike is."

Tensing, Willow's face revealed her bitterness at this news. "Buffy, my god, you can't trust him. Not with Xander's life. Not at all! You've seen what he is."

"I know what I've seen. What have you seen?" It was the first time she'd asked about Spike's part in the visions, and she wished she had sooner. After the shock of seeing Spike on that stage in uniform, being celebrated as a hero of the New Grauth Reich, she hadn't been thinking like an investigative reporter or even a girlfriend, but a slayer. And since then she had been thinking of him as little as possible. Now she couldn't afford ambiguity or ignorance.

"I-I told you what I saw--I saw him betraying us."

"How?" Buffy asked impatiently. "What did he do? Is he unchipped now? Did you see him hurt someone?"

Willow's face was a petaled curl of confusion, as if Buffy's questions were meaningless. "I saw him smiling as the town burned, dressed as a traitor. And you, you were captured."

"He captured me?" she said skeptically. Somehow when she tried to envision this, all she could see was her fist capturing his face.

"Buffy, the visions weren't like a, a movie reel. And okay, maybe it wasn't all spelled out, but it wasn't hard to read between the lines."

Between the lines. Over the years Buffy had spent a lot of time between the lines, done some heavy reading there herself. She couldn't blame Will for that, but maybe it was time for her to take another look at the lines themselves. Time for both of them. "We'll have to talk about this later. Right now, I have to trust Spike. He's the only one who can get Xander out." A look of hurt flashed across Willow's face, one that Buffy recognized; it was the hurt of accepting one's own uselessness in a situation. Right now she wore hers on the inside.

"What if he can't get him out?" Dawn asked. "I mean, we don't know how much of a big shot he is. Just how much he acts like he is."

Somewhere in that muddled remark was an actual intelligent thought, but her sister's question was even more important. "If Spike can't break him out, I break in." She eyed the roof. "If I can climb up, I should be able to--"

"Look," Willow whispered.

Across the street, the front doors were opening. The guards snapped to attention, and one hastened to hold the entrance wide as Spike walked out with Xander next to him. Watching with her heart in her throat, Buffy saw Xander stumble on the steps as he descended. Spike's hand shot out and gripped his elbow, steadying him. Instead of protesting or pulling away, Xander leaned against him a little. They moved together down the front walk and out the gates, then hesitated together.

Biting one side of her lip, Buffy said, "Spike" and saw him cock his head. Then, a moment later, he began to stroll with Xander toward their hiding place. When they appeared, she had to stifle a gasp at Xander's appearance. His face was bruised and scraped, and pale as paper under the injuries. He stumbled again slightly and Spike guided him into Willow's waiting hands.

"Xander!" she cried softly, wrapping her arms around him. He hugged her as if there had never been any acrimony between them these past few weeks, and Buffy felt another rip in the fabric of friendship close up as it healed.

"Hey," he said to them all, smiling over Willow's head at Dawn and Buffy, then wincing visibly.

Willow pulled back. "How badly are you hurt? What did they do to you?"

"I'm okay. Just some light whipping and the Body Glove of Pain." He took a careful breath. "Full report later, I promise. But...I'm all right." Glancing to the side where Spike lurked in his fidgety silent way, Xander added, "Thanks." His voice was flat, the delivery a formality, but the word signaled to the rest of them that Spike had helped, and at least one subtle undercurrent of strain eased.

Only to flare up again as Dawn said furiously to Spike, "He was beaten! You didn't stop them?"

"Couldn't," Spike replied shortly.

This plummeted into the conversation like a stone for a few endless beats until Xander, effort written on his face, dug further into himself to say, "Scared the piss out of my pen pal, though." The words came out in a kind of methodical acknowledgment. "Don't think he'd seen the fangs before. Pantywaist." He coughed a few times, then dragged in a breath.

"C'mon," Willow said. "We need to get you out of here." She eased around and took one arm as Dawn took the other.

"You guys go on," Buffy heard herself say. Willow cast her a sharp glance and looked as if she was about to say something, then didn't. No good-byes were made as they left.

And then she was alone with him, for the first time in weeks. They looked at each other; looked each other over. Buffy's eyelashes felt heavy; that must be why her eyes dropped from his clear blue ones to study his uniform jacket instead.

"I've been looking for you, slayer."

"That was good, what you did," she said, talking to the shiny ribbons on his breastplate. "Getting Xander out."

"And Anya--bloody wench wouldn't tell me anything."

"What'd you have to do, bribe the guards?" She forced herself to meet his eyes again, just in time to see the flare of impatience cross his face. Then his features readjusted themselves to a familiar resignation and he sighed.

"I registered him as a snitch."

She blinked. "Say huh?"

"Told them he was useful, got important intel for me. Too valuable to damage. All that sort of yak. Don't know why they bought it, really," he said, voice lifting a little. "Anyone looking at him could see what a priceless wally he is."

Despite his meanness, she smiled faintly. "But you got him out anyway."

"Well, yeah." He stared at her, frowning. "Knew you'd come over all weepy and pitiful if I let the boy get scragged." Eyes narrowing, he added warily, "Not going to shoot me again, are you?"

"Give me a reason not to."

Permission granted, he took a step closer, and his voice lowered to an earnestness she wished she could believe. "I'm doing this for you." There was an intensity to his gaze, a shining light from within, like something luminescent rising from the darkest fathoms. It felt like forever had passed between them. She'd forgotten how he could look at her, what it did to her. What had their last fight been? She couldn't remember that either. Something pointless and small and stupid, timed to coincide with the end of the world as they knew it. Everything had changed since then. And here he was still talking, desperate tones making his voice husky. "All this, Buffy," he said. "It's just flash and gimcrack. So I can help. That's all I want, love. To help."

"So help me," she said, grabbing hold of his jacket and wrenching him one final step closer.

He made a ragged sound, close enough to paint false breath across her lips. His eyes half-closed, he looked as if he were in pain, and then he grabbed her roughly and kissed her. His hands clasped her arms like steel cuffs and his lips bruised hers, but his tongue was silken and fluid, eating up her breath. She shoved against him without any decorum, hips riding his as her own hands roamed. His uniform was thicker than she'd expected, of some heavy material that wouldn't give.

They stumbled against the wall, catching their breaths, and then a horn blared from the street and they both stiffened. It was just a Jeep passing, but its closeness was a spur and drove them deeper into the alley and then inside one of the buildings.

"Easy," Willow said as they stumbled on the way back toward their bolt-hole. On his other side, Dawn pressed closer as if ready to support him in case he fell.

Xander took a deep breath and stopped, straightening. The women were forced to halt too, but didn't entirely let go of him. It was like being herded home by friendly sheepdogs. Not that he'd make the comparison in so many words. Out loud. "I'm actually not in bad shape here," he reassured them, finding a smile in reserve. "This awkward hobble you see me perform is just a blatant excuse to squeeze a little TLC from my two favorite girls."

Raising her brows, Dawn said, "I'm thinkin' that short list would look a bit different if Anya were here."

"I swear--of all the women in this alley, you two are my favorite. But I think I can go crutchless now."

"You don't have to be a tough guy." Willow rubbed his arm gently. "You were a hero tonight."

God, it was laughable, but he didn't laugh. If he had, he'd have been laughing at himself, not her. And then crying. The memory of pain was like knives in his flesh. He met her eyes, trying not to wallow too obviously in the grimness he felt creeping up on him. "I got caught and beaten up and had to be rescued by a vampire," he said simply. "Not feeling the hero here, Will."

"Xander--"

But he didn't want to hear it. Not this time. He had other business to attend to. Lucky for him Buffy had lingered behind with Dead Wood. "Look, I think I'm going to head to the shop, see Anya."

"Xander, it's," Willow glanced at her wrist, which was bare of any watch, "late...ish. I think." She looked at Dawn. "Isn't it?"

"It's night," Dawn confirmed. "Not so's you could tell."

"She'll be there. She's sleeping in the shop now, in the back."

"Oh." Strangely crestfallen, Willow still hesitated. "Should we--"

"You go on," Xander told them, keeping his bearing steady, his shoulders back. See the bright and shiny man. He no broken. "I'll be fine." The promise his eyes made was matched to his words. "I'm a sturdy little toaster."

Not to mention an excellent liar.

Stacks of crates and cartons crowded the interior, a storage maze illuminated by safety lights. Buffy knocked Spike's cap off, baring his hair, which absorbed the glow and cast it back brilliantly, a whiteness in her eyes, like the skin that was revealed as she ripped apart his jacket buttons. Palms sliding around his chest to meet behind him, she kissed him again and he kissed her back in that longing way of his, a licking fire inside her mouth.

"Buffy," he groaned.

And oh god, it was the wrong time and wrong place, bad and wrong altogether, but she could feel her heat bleeding into him, her heart pounding against her ribs to be let out. He was shifting against her, one leg between hers, his hips moving as he gasped. She clasped him like a vine as he whirled her around, pushed her onto a crate, undid his trousers and her own. He was in her in a moment, one long thrust, fierce as a sword, cloak pouring across his shoulders to surround their bodies. He was a romantic novel taking her wholly in, and she could feel imaginary page edges fluttering as if thumbed, down in the folds of her body where he moved.

She arched into him and his face brushed hers and when he drew back, thin strands of her hair stretched between them, clinging to his cheek. His hips quickened, his lashes fell shut, and in the spidered light from above Buffy could see his face opening, shattering from the inside, in the way that sometimes made her believe there was more man to him than vampire.

"Buffy," he whispered like a prayer. "Buffy, love, oh love--"

It was so hard not to answer him, not to cry out, but she was afraid if she did, she wouldn't be able to stop. His name filled her throat and nearly choked her. She tightened around him, body striking hot beats against his, and felt a ribboning pleasure pulled out of her, and god, how long had it been, why had it been so long, all this darkness crashing down on their heads, sending them underground, suffocating them--

"Don't stop!" she cried out when he began to falter, the rhythm warning her of his release, and he tensed and shuddered and held fast inside her, obeying her command. His thrusts picked up speed and depth again, and she gasped as she clenched suddenly. It was as if every breath and sound had been sucked from her body; all she could do was ride the juddering heat of him and try not to shatter into a million pieces.

He rolled onto his back and took her astride him, laid out like a sacrifice to her pleasure, and she threw her head back and worked herself on him, forgetting the darkness as the light began to swallow her again and again. And when she could open her eyes, he was there beneath her, stricken to a fury of effort and will that wrote itself across his face, devouring her with his eyes like an animal. His uniform was in disarray, his cloak a crash of wings, his rank undone.

Eyes boring into hers, his jaw worked. "I answer--" he ground out, "--only to you." And then he arched, head tipping back and eyes closing, and showed her how.

The street was empty, which made its darkness seem even darker, a real night instead of the day-in-night pall that had settled over the town. A wind sent dry leaves skittering for the corners and from somewhere in the distance the whistle of a refitted train broke the silence.

A single Grauth soldier walked along the street on his way home, a folded newspaper held up in one hand as he read in the dimness of streetlights, the other hand dipping into his pocket for nuts that he cracked between his teeth and swallowed, shells and all. As he passed the window of a dress shop he glanced at the white-limbed mannequins without breaking stride, perhaps thinking of what he might buy his wife or mistress when his next pay-check arrived. Crossing the mouth of an adjoining alley, however, his footsteps paused and he cocked his head, looking around and behind him with a sharp squint. After a moment he shook his head and walked on. It wasn't until he'd passed the chocolatier's that an arm suddenly broke from the shadows and brought a heavy pipe down on his head.
 
The soldier staggered, dropping his newspaper and a handful of nuts before being hit again. He fell to the ground and a figure dragged him off the street into the alley, then through a discreet door into a storage bay. Inside, the soldier was dropped to the floor with no ceremony, and his hands bound behind him. The work done, his attacker backed away. The soldier groaned as his eyes opened to see two feet in muddy black boots retreating across the floor.

"Get up," said a voice.

Blinking to clear his eyes, the soldier heaved himself to his knees and then his feet. He swayed in place, focusing on his attacker until recognition set in. "You. You are free now--I do not fight."

Xander tipped his head to one side, bringing his bruised face into the light. He twitched the gun in his hand as if to say hello. "But I do."

"You have come to get your revenge, human?"

The demon's shoulders shifted as it tested its bonds. Its expression was wary but unafraid, and it was unclear if it would sneer or bargain. Xander watched it, his own face composed. "Revenge is such a...very appropriate word, actually."

"You will kill me, ka? Why bother--I merely do a job."

Xander's eyes took on a gleaming intensity. "What makes you think I don't?" A humorless laugh broke from him, cutting the air with the clear light sound of a cleaver on a chopping board. "You get vacation days with your job? Because I don't. No health plan either." His lips curled at the edges in a funny smile. The demon said nothing. A beat passed, and Xander's false lightness darkened. "Now I can take a beating. I'm very good at taking a beating." He licked a spot of dried blood of the corner of his mouth, continued to smile and stare into the demon's eyes. "You can see that, right? But here's the thing...you think you can just come into my town, my town, and spread your filth here? I've lived in this town my whole life, and I've been fighting demons for years, all year round. Spring, summer, fall and winter. No days off, no way to shut it off. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of monsters walking around like men, of things like...you." He raised his pistol, which filled his hand like an upside-down question mark. "I think I deserve a little payback, what do you think?"

Without waiting for an answer he shot out one of the demon's kneecaps. It lurched and clutched its bleeding wound in one hand, its leg buckling but not quite failing. "Yeah, I think so," Xander mused. He tilted his hand, took aim, and shot the other knee out. The demon fell to the ground, rolling to its side with harsh cries.

Eyes fixed unwaveringly, almost blankly on this interesting display, Xander tucked the gun back into his belt and withdrew a large hunting knife. Its blade gleamed in the swinging overhead light. One edge of his lips quirked up.

"Now," he said gently. "Tell me if this hurts."

I hope the new style is user-friendly. I think I may go back and edit previous stories in this format.

Tenth episode in an alternative season 8, with an AU season 7 in between; everything branches off from "Gone." All Things Bright and Beautiful in this story belong to Joss and I am just raiding the pantry or the toybox or whatever metaphor you want to invoke that has been used before in a hundred disclaimers. Do not archive. Links are fine, though. My blog is here, my homepage is here, at least if you aren't reading this page in frames.