“Willow!” Buffy shook her head. “Of course it was Willow. To really cause mayhem takes Willow’s special brand of magic.” There had been more than a few incidents since her beloved friend had taken up magic as her own ‘super-power’. Willow had come a long way from floating pencils! But this! This took the cake. “The cake, the ice-cream, party hats and ‘My Little Pony’ party favors.” Really, who needed enemies when your own friends could cause such havoc?
The woman had a look of caution on her face but her slight stumble had more to do with the amount of Scotch she had been imbibing rather than fear of the Big Bad on her doorstep. “Look missus, I did my part of the bargain. Gettin’ out of Sunnyhell with my lady like I promised. If everythin’ isn’t all wallowin’ in hell ‘fore long then the Slayer’s done her part too.” The woman just looked at him with owl-eyes. “Girl’s had to snuff her first love. Bound to have issues. Needs her mum to step up and act like the grown up. Heard you tell the girl to not come home but she’ll need you now more than you need another drink.” Spike produced a trembling small lapdog and thrust it at Mrs. Summers. “Time for the good-guys to take care of their own. Make everythin’ safe for puppies and Christmas and all.” Joyce watched bemused as the frightening man marched off of her porch and got behind the wheel of a large black car. She absent-mindedly petted the small dog and tried to collect her wits.
He’d looked like trouble from the first glance. All black costume that screamed danger, bleached hair that complimented the look. The blue eyes, though, they revealed something different, something more. Buffy remembered that first impression as if it were only yesterday. Every encounter from then until now only reinforced the confusion. How could anything so dangerous, likely evil, possess such soulful eyes?
A normal person would probably be shocked at finding an unconscious and mostly naked vampire on their front porch an hour before sunrise. Especially this particular vampire. But then normal was not a label often associated with Buffy, thanks to the whole Slayer gig. A quick scan didn’t hint at the cause of said unconsciousness, and nothing short of getting a closer look would help with that. The question was, should she?
Principal Snyder sucked. And not in the more often than not too literal I-want-to-suck-your-blood way that was common in Sunnydale thanks to its vamp population; but in the very real possibility that he was a spawn of Satan way. What kind of tyrant assigned detention on a Friday night? A Friday night that the Dingoes were playing at the Bronze no less? He was positively evil.
As far as epic love stories go, you wouldn’t think threats of impending death would rank up there in top ways to meet your soulmate. But apparently, Cupid had a sense of humour.
“I wish this stupid town could just be normal for one day,” Dylan muttered as he turned back toward his house, resigned to begging his mom for yet another soccer ball that would inevitably disappear. He didn’t notice the veiny-faced woman across the street watching him with something like amused compassion. And he certainly didn’t hear her triumphant “Done!” as she touched the strange pendant around her neck.
Buffy woke, disoriented, her vision dark. A cool weight was pressed against her back. Her first thought was that she’d somehow fallen asleep patrolling, as had happened once, her wearied self leaning against a headstone as she waited for a vamp that never showed. It had been the most accidentally reckless thing she’d ever done. Of course, realizing she was actually in Spike’s bed, enfolded in the vampire’s sleeping embrace, was probably a close second. And this had been anything but accidental.
“Knock it off,” Buffy hissed.
Spike regarded her unreadably. “If you say so, pet." Then, with a wicked grin, he knocked the entire stack of books to the floor.
It had taken three frustrating, mentally exhausting hours to locate Dawn. Buffy had dragged Spike out of the Alibi Room purely to take advantage of his nose, but his exuberant enthusiasm for the hunt of a teenage girl—behaving far more like an excitable puppy on his first official outing than a century old master vampire—had done more to make Buffy wish she could stake herself to escape this misery. The only way she could shut his presence out was to imagine his painful death—or Dawn’s well deserved grounding for life. It was sheer dumb luck that they even discovered her sister. Vampire and Slayer came to an abrupt halt, staring down at Dawn twirling her hair as she stood in the middle of a deep, empty—thank God—grave, in the cemetery clear across town.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that when things on the Hellmouth were about to go kablooey, it more often than not was likely to be a Tuesday.
Graham stood looking at the printout that had been passed around his unit. The words explaining the slayer and what she was, was sewn up in a nice, neat paragraph. One girl, chosen to fight vampires. One super strong girl, who was fast, athletic, mission-oriented and at a glance, lethal. He looked up, grimaced at the look on Riley's face and thought that he knew exactly what it was that the unit leader was having a problem with, and felt sorry for the girl. He wasn't sure if it had occurred to anyone yet to wonder who it was that chose these slayers, or where their power came from, but he was good with it being some mystical entity that they didn't understand. What he wasn't good with was the kind of relationship Riley hoped to gain from pursuing her. Or the wheel turning in the Professor's head.
