Historical drama, set after season 5 "The Gift" As well as around the events of "Fool For Love" and "Destiny" Angel and Spike mourn lost love differently, and meanwhile a spell woven in their past threatens to destroy them both.
PG13-NC17.

All Characters and stories relating to said characters belong to Joss Whedon. Please don't sue me.
 

PARIS 1860

The street crackled with the smells and sounds of the city, the clatter of horseshoes, and the rickety carriages pulled by sweating beasts simmering in the heat.  Perfumed women escorted by the Bon-vivants of the evening strolled the Promenade.  The night was arousing, ephemeral.  The Splashes of color advanced and receded in the shadowy avenues.  Soft laughter and the whispering of lovers carried across the warm summer air.

The woman in the velvet dress stepped out from the shadow of a striped awning.  The face, pale, even in the moonlight, wore an expression of ethereal innocence.  Dressed as she was, in blood- red velvet, she was a paradox.  Beautiful, yes, with eyes as fathomless as the ocean.  Her long black tresses were curled, like a China dolls.  She was perfect.  Like ice.

But...

Flaws, an imperfection, impossible to articulate, like a crack in the porcelain, invisible to the naked eye.  It hurt your heart to see her.

"Drusilla."

She turned her face to his voice.  It was gentle, familiar.

"Angelus, I was waiting.  A whisper in the stars tried to tell me that you had forgotten me..."

He moved closer, placing his hand on her waist and pulled her to him.  "Now, Darling, how could I forget you?"

His Irish Brogue finished with a low growl as he crushed her mouth with a hungry kiss.  Her hand fluttered to his face as she caressed his long, brown hair. Her innocence was suddenly gone.  She smiled wickedly.

"Here, my love? In the street? You are a naughty Daddy...."

She pulled away, searching his eyes, her hands tracing the planes of his handsome features.  Angelus allowed the caress.

"It's tempting sweetheart, but we have to go.  Darla is waiting on us back at the house.  You know how she gets...  But, if you're real good I might tie you up later and we can have a little fun"

Tears formed in Drusilla's eyes.

"Do you promise, Angelus?  Can we play a game?"  Her voice was childlike, lost.

"Promise, Precious."  He started to gently shepherd her away from the shadows.

Drusilla smiled and linked her arm with his. Her tears had dried as quickly as they had formed, like a child, she could never maintain more than one emotion at a time.  She tugged at his coat sleeve.  He shook his head with weary affection and followed her into the warm Paris night.

  As they hurried home, a light breeze fluttered the striped awning.  The eyes of the child were perfect.  Her golden ringlets spread like a halo around her head.  She was dirty, unkempt and her feet were bare.  On her neck were the puncture marks that symbolized the last ever hurt she would feel.  Before dawn she would stir.  While the night still claimed the sky she would wake.  And she would be hungry.
 

LOS ANGELES, 2002

"Buffy is dead.  My best friend, gone." Willow thought.  She felt numb.  Lost.  The last few months had been a hellish whirlwind.  Was there ever a time when it wasn't?  The Hellmouth hadn't been the most idyllic, picture -postcard location to live on.  Sunnydale was an ironic title for town so dark, so alive with the evil that lived below the surface.  The very air was poisoned with the stink of it.

Willow had lived on the Hellmouth her whole life. Weird events, disappearances, and extraordinary occurrences, Sunnydale was a magnet, and like most of the general population there, she had accepted it.  Explained it away.  Blind Cadria had lowered a veil.  It had been as if the population of Sunnydale was bewitched.  Or perhaps it was a way of living.  Sometimes reality can be scarier than fantasy.  Sunnydale lived in denial.  Sometimes, Willow wished she could return to that safe cocoon of lies.

Yet here she was.  Thrust into the rude, unforgiving light.  Facing the truth.

"Buffy is dead."  Every time she thought it, she had to stop herself from falling apart. The wound in her heart opened anew.  Fresh tears sprang unbidden to her eyes. Her best friend sacrificed herself to save the world.

Willow shifted in the velvet chair. After the funeral, the ritual of grief, the organization of the hours, Willow, with a strength she never realised she had, comforted Xander, cared for Dawn, and supported Giles.

She had organized the hours. Wasn't that her calling? Keep busy. Fill the hours. Keep the mind active. Anything to stop grief from taking over...

 Don't go that path. That way lays despair.

"...Miles to go before we sleep..."

The phrase turned over in her mind. It kept her going. Kept her from giving in, from giving out, from giving up.

'So. Here I Am.' she thought.

'One final task... Angel.'

 "Please, Goddess, give me the strength to tell him..." It was her fervent prayer that her strength would hold out. It was quiet and cold in the Lobby of Angel's Hotel. It had the air of a Mausoleum. She allowed herself a tiny inner smile.

 'Mausoleum.... Vampire. Angel's a vampire.'

Angel walked like a man on the Earth. But he wasn't a man. In his heart of hearts, Angel may have wished he were human. But the demon was with him all the time. The Demon kept him from his one true love.

 Ironic really. To live in such surroundings must have been a vampire thing. Angel had always liked space. She remembered his mansion in Sunnydale. A lot like this really...She looked around again, appreciating the cool Art Deco interior.

 Totally different to Spike's hole in the ground.

Spike liked reminders of what he was. Although his crypt was very comfortable for, lets face it, a hole in the ground, it still was what it was. A grave. A symbol of his identity.

As one of the 'undead', Spike never hid from what he was. He had no soul. A Government chip, " His artificial soul..." Dawn had called it. Willow could appreciate such advances in science. She was a woman of science. It helped her explain things to herself, and combined with her knowledge of the supernatural, and she had seen Spike do things.... things she couldn't explain.

 His grief over the loss of the Slayer, the tears he shed were real, not the crocodile tears of a soulless Demon. She hadn't seen Spike since the night of Buffy's...ending.

 'One more task...' She thought.

 Willow shifted awkwardly on the blue velvet, and pushed her sudden uneasiness about Spike to the back of her mind.

She hadn't really given him a thought until this moment.

Willow thought of the cosy Dorm room she shared with Tara. The walls were painted black, with peaceful symbols of the Goddess adorning secret places. The thought of Tara made her feel warm and safe. Soon, she would be home. She wanted Tara's arms about her. To lose herself in her kisses, to lie abandoned in her caresses.  To finally let go of the burden of being strong and give herself into the forgiving oblivion of their lovemaking. She suddenly felt very alone and afraid. Icy tendrils crawled down her back, and she shivered despite the warmth of the Californian summer night.

"Where is everyone?" She spoke aloud, not realizing that she had.

 Weird.

She hadn't had so much time alone for a long time. They should be back soon...shouldn't they? What if they were gone for days? Weeks even?

 'I should have called....' She thought. 'Why didn't I call first?'

She eyed the telephone on the counter.

'I'll call Tara.'.

Regroup. Reassess. At the very least hear Tara's voice again.

Willow made a movement to leave the couch.

"CRASH!" A wall of noise and laughter startled her from her private world. She heard muffled voices, and caught the booming tone of Angel's voice as he rushed to open the double glass doors of the Hotel...

"Let me say it!"  He exclaimed, " I wanna say it! ...There's no place like...."

The words died on his lips. Her eyes welled with tears and she made to rise.

'Am I really here? Is this real?'

The thought evaporated when she saw his face. He knew. The look on Angel's face was real enough.

' I don't have to tell him. '

She felt a feeling of relief that she immediately regretted. The words of comfort died in her throat. The tears she promised she wouldn't cry in front of him trickled down to her chin. Angel's face became a mask of despair.

 She vaguely became aware of Cordelia, dressed in a ridiculous costume, the concerned, earnest face of Wesley as he took the situation in, and the indistinct figures of another three people she assumed were Angel Investigations employees. The image became frozen in time, as in front of them all, and for the first time in 240 odd years, the vampire with a soul gave himself over to heart-rending sorrow, His shoulders sagged, his hands flew to his face to mask his grief, as Angel mourned the loss of his first and only love.

Willow stood aloof as Cordelia wrapped her arms around Angel's sobbing form. An image of another vampire flashed into her mind's eye. She realised for the first time, that Spike had truly loved Buffy too.
 

 PARIS 1860

 Baudelaire was giving one of his famous soirees. The 'Night Glamorous' were there to be seen. The mansion blazed with the light of a thousand candles. Elegant Parisians alighted from splendid carriages; they emerged from the inky black, dressed in the finest silks, and were swallowed into the walls of the grand house. There were no doubt that Baudelaire's parties were the talk of Paris. Only the best, the most intriguing, the most beautiful were on the guest list.

Baudelaire himself was an eccentric. A man of 'many parts' it was said. A devotee of the writings of the Marquis De Sade, it was rumored that he was a Philanthropist with a particular interest in young homeless girls he plucked from the filth of the Paris alleys. According to rumor, he transformed them into high class courtesans fit to be Princesses in his Imaginary realm.

Women decorated his mansion like expensive baubles. Exquisite, costly and completely beyond the reach of most men, the women were said to possess extraordinary abilities that could take a man to the heights of erotic ecstasy.  The decadent 'Nouveau Riche', who delighted in gossip and frivolity, flocked to Baudelaire's mansion like moths to the flame.  Strange laughter and screams were sometimes heard by passers-by who hurried on, intent to return to the humdrum existence of their normal and relatively 'safe' lives.

Baudelaire was a strange man, and it was wise not to examine any of his activities too closely. It was whispered that he had made secret pacts with many city officials, and those who had raised a dissenting voice against him had on occasion disappeared without trace. Sometimes, bodies were found mutilated, floating in the icy waters of the Seine. Nothing had ever been traced to Baudelaire, of course. He remained untouchable. And still they came; the rich, the beautiful, the wildly curious. The house was a beacon for the Bohemian, the thrill-seekers and other, less 'savory' elements that kept to the shadows and used the night to hunt.

"You are a vision tonight, my love." Angelus held his hand out to Darla and helped her alight from the carriage. The light gleamed across her golden curls, and she smiled, her lips red as blood. She was beautiful, creamy skinned, pale and delicate as Dresden china. Her blue satin gown was trimmed with Brussels lace, and around her delicate throat a choker of diamonds and pearls glowed in the light of the candelabras.

"Thank you, kind Sir " She murmured as she placed her small, gloved hand into his large one and allowed him to steady her descent to the street. Angelus kissed her hand and turned again to the carriage as Drusilla emerged from the door. She was as different to Darla as night is to day, and Angelus allowed himself a moment's pleasure comparing their relative merits. Drusilla dark haired and beautiful, Darla cool and fair, fire and ice. His women.

Drusilla was dressed in white. Her long tresses tumbled down her back like a cascade of black watered silk.

"Oooooh!" She exclaimed, " The night belongs to heavenly angels tonight my sweet, and the stars themselves will come to the party!" Her face shone with excitement.

Darla allowed a crease of annoyance to furrow her brow. She glanced at Angel, who was smiling indulgently at the lunatic girl, and who had raised a hand to caress her face. Darla shook her carefully coiffed head in vexation. She could never quite fathom why Angel chose to sire Drusilla. The girl was as mad as any Lunatic in the Asylum. Drusilla was looking at Angelus like a faithful, adoring hound. Darla allowed herself a twinge of jealousy, a spasm at most.

 "I'm not jealous," She thought.  "I made him. He's mine. Drusilla's just his 'toy' of the moment. He'll tire of her soon enough."

She glanced over at them again.  Angelus had his arm entwined with Drusilla's. He looked around and held his other arm out for her. She smiled, a frozen little smile that had the look of a cat with a mouse. Angel missed the look, and with a grand gesture toward the house, exclaimed happily, his Irish brogue dripping with casual charm.

"Ladies, Shall we go in then? Baudelaire's expecting us, and we don't want to disappoint him. " He flashed his white smile to both women, Drusilla melting under his attention, Darla secretly miffed and seething with repressed resentment. With a gentle push, he propelled them into the glittering environs of the mansion.

The truth be known, Angel was growing tired of Paris. He preferred the more familiar haunts of London, where the locals all spoke the Queen's English, and the hunt for tasty morsels never took him too far. There were plenty of lonely governesses, avid readers of Jane Austin, or George Sand. Romantic, silly women whom he could fool into believing he was a wealthy squire, seducing, deflowering and killing them over the course of many weeks or months.

 Some, like Drusilla, he tortured with his obsession. He killed their families one by one, or destroyed their reputations and drove them to suicide. For Angelus, the hunt was everything. Without it, he felt like a killer, an ordinary murderer. The 'hunt' was his art. Angelus prided himself on being a true artist. Drusilla was his greatest masterpiece. He had molded her, shaped her with his own hands. Looking at her fractured beauty made him feel like a God. He smiled a lop-sided grin at Darla, accentuating his charms. He knew what she thought of Drusilla. He liked to keep her a little off balance. It made eternity interesting. Well, it made being dead a hell of a lot more fun.

Darla blew him a kiss. Yes. He knew what she was thinking. Baudelaire was HER creation. She had seduced him, driven him mad with desire for her, then, after a night of depraved passion, revealed her vampiric self to him. She had intended to eat him then and there, but the little man had begged for his life with such eloquence, she decided to spare him.

For the time being anyway.

 Baudelaire was still human, but for all intents and purposes, he was as soulless as any demon. It amused Darla to keep him. He provided cover for the more perverse aspects of her bloodlust, and indulged her every whim. Yes, she could afford to keep him dangling for just a little longer. She had promised him the gift of eternal life. It was a promise she had no intention of honoring. Baudelaire loved the danger; she liked to toy with him. It worked nicely. But she could feel herself becoming bored, and as if on cue, she stifled a small yawn.

Drusilla had started to bounce lightly on her toes.

"Drusilla, darling, why don't you find yourself something to play with?" Angelus murmured patiently. Darla turned to face them both. She had to admit, despite the inconvenience of caring for the damaged girl, she had proved useful on more than one occasion since Angelus had sired her.

Used as bait, she had the innocence of a viper beneath a flower. Despite her annoyance, Darla was forced to admit she did feel certain affection for the mad girl, it was grudging, but Darla reasoned that her insane babble had been beneficial to them more times than she could count. Drusilla had the gift of second sight; it had saved them, many times, and had led them to discover this place. She was happy to use the girl to that end. It was the other uses Angelus found for her that rankled. The servant who greeted Angelus and the ladies at the door was a pretty little red haired girl. Angelus flicked an appraising eye over her slender young body and smiled to himself.

"Thank ye, Lass" He growled suggestively as he handed her his hat and gloves, his fingers lingering for an instant on her pale arm. The startled girl trembled at his touch. Darla rapped him smartly with her fan, and shot him a reproving look. The look was enough to curb him.

For the moment.

"Naughty Daddy!" Giggled Drusilla. "You have made Grandmother all mad at her special party"

"Don't call me that!" Darla hissed between her teeth.

"Ahhh! Cherie! Darla! Mes amies!" Baudelaire's deep, rich voice boomed over the heads of the sparkling assemblage.

 Darla, her consternation momentarily forgotten, held her hand out coyly to be kissed, as did Drusilla.

 "You are late, my sweet.." Whispered the darkly handsome Baudelaire. Angelus waved the admonishment away.

" Come on, now Charles, since when did your soirees ever start early? Don't you be takin' that tone with me now..."

 There was an edge of warning in the vampire's voice, and a flash of yellow in his eyes, that was not entirely lost on Baudelaire. Angelus easily towered over the man; in fact he stood head and shoulders above most men in the room. The little servant standing with the hat and gloves inadvertently took a step backward.

 Angelus glanced around. Damn the man. He knew that Darla had plans for Charles Baudelaire, but the foppish Frenchman had a habit of making Angelus want to rip his stupid simpering head clean off his body, in order to use his neck as a chalice. Immediately, the charm returned to his demeanor.

"Charlie, ma boy! It's a fine soft evenin' it is. We are here at exactly the time that serves best. Am I right?" He smiled expansively at the room.
"Well, now. Are you going to keep us here on the stoop all night? Or introduce us to your lovely guests?"

Baudelaire smiled back. Completely won over by the big Irishman's charm. Darla took his proffered arm, and Angelus escorted the giggling Drusilla over the threshold. The fun had just begun.
 

SUNNYDALE 2002

The last candle in Spike's crypt spluttered and died. It hissed and sighed in the gloom, leaving the air about it cold and dank. There was no movement at all in the tomb. No noise. Spike was sprawled in a chair he had rescued on one of his many scavenging expeditions to the Sunnydale city dump. He stared wordlessly into the inky black. As a vampire, he could actually see better in the dark, but the glowing light of the candles had made him feel less dead, somehow. His head was full of her last moments. A leap of faith into the abyss, and her light was extinguished forever from the world.

' I am dead inside,' he thought. 'She was my all.'

 Once he had felt that way about Drusilla. Or had he? His time with Drusilla was like a distant memory now. He had once called her the 'Face of his salvation'.

Drusilla was a creature whose darkness rivaled his own. Together they had been a force of nature. Evil nature. In their day they had wreaked more havoc than a thousand Macbeths. Drusilla was his Lady. He was her brave, Dark Knight.

'Why do they all leave me?   Everyone, and everything I love. I would have given Buffy the world if she had asked. I would have died for her.'

 As he thought it he realised it was true.

'What the Hell is happening to me?' he mused.

 The half empty bottle of mescal at his feet tipped over as he reached for it. Despair covered him like a shroud. Her face was burned into his mind.

'An eternity to live, Spike, old man...'

 The years spread out before him, an endless parade of emptiness. As a vampire, he knew what time was. He had been on this scrap of dirt a good long while. Seen some sights that would make most people run screaming into the night. The world suddenly felt like a cold place without her blinding light.

Now everything he ever was, everything he ever would be had been reduced to this tiny microcosm of time. The three-year period since he had come the Hell mouth. Ironic really.

 'I'm part of the cosmic joke.'

 His world had collapsed to encompass one reality. Buffy.

 He had known with every fibre of his being that it was wrong.

He, a Vampire. She, The Slayer.

He had spilled the blood of two Slayers in his day. When did all that rage and hate turn to love?  Is it possible for a soulless demon to love? He wasn't stupid. He knew the score. She would never return his feelings. He didn't care. He loved her beyond that reasoning. And now her light was gone. Forever.

The poet buried within him recognized the tragedy of the situation. "Just like bleedin' Macbeth," he growled at the darkness. The Fates had him by the short hairs all right.

The Funeral had been a 'Passion Play' of sorts.

Held as it was by the light of the full moon, it had a Pagan aspect to it. There was no way it could be held in the day of course. Giles and Willow had argued that it needed to be held by cover of darkness, to fool the world for a little longer that The Slayer was still resident in Sunnydale.  Spike shifted his position in the chair. A fresh tear rolled forlornly down his cheek. The thought of her funeral, her ending, opened wounds that were still fresh.

He hadn't gone, of course. He could have, a creature of the night, by cover of darkness.

 He had fought alongside her. Helped in his way to save the soddin' world. But it didn't seem right, somehow.

 He wasn't really a part of her life. She had made that perfectly clear on more than one occasion. The bloody Scooby gang would have tolerated him there, but he didn't really feel right going. Her loss was his alone to bear. They may have been her friends, but he had loved her with every fibre of his being.

 So, he wasn't there to see them place her cold body in the ground, too mad with grief, he had shunned all company, and crawled like a wounded animal into the sewers. There, his body healed itself of visible wounds, but his dead heart bled with an ache that would not heal.

Much later, when the craving for blood combined with the need to find her forced him from the underground, he found where they buried her, laid himself fully upon her grave and spilled his tears into the Earth. He would have gladly turned to dust as the sun climbed painfully into the sky. He was weary of this existence.  To lie with her eternally, in the only bed he would ever share with her, would be a fitting end.

 But fate intervened. The memory of the promise, to

'Protect her, until the end of the world.'

 Jolted him from his reverie. He had promised the Lady. He may have been a soulless, evil thing, but Spike had his own code of honor.  Dawn needed him.

"So. Here I am, Pet. Left in the bleedin' abyss where I cannot find you."

 He pulled the bottle of mescal to his lips, and ignored the blood lust that plagued him all his waking hours. He raised the bottle in a silent toast to the memory of the Slayer.

"I'll protect her, until the end of the world, my love," He slurred, passing out as the alcohol numbed his mind once more.
 

PARIS 1865

It was time to move on.

Even in avant-garde Paris one could become a little too conspicuous amid the decadent bon vivants.

Darla brushed an errant curl from her smooth white forehead as she peered through the lace curtain into the street. The glow of lanterns cast ugly shadows along the cold, wet cobblestones.

 Where were Angelus and that half-wit Drusilla?

 The shouting at the end of the alley way was reaching a crescendo.

If they don't come back soon, I'm leaving for Italy without them.

 With an angry tug, she pulled the curtain closed.

  Damn that little rodent, Baudelaire. The treacherous little sneak. He had turned them in, exposed them.

Darla began to pace the floor. What can Angelus be doing? A chill settled on her stone cold heart.

Damn him! Always indulging that idiot girl! Quite possibly he is on his way to Italy with her already.

 The sound of breaking glass startled her from her thoughts. Darla felt the bones of her face shift into the demon, as she prepared to confront the mob amassed outside the house. She was cornered, but she had been in tighter spots before. She hadn't survived this long without learning a few tricks.

 Darla's first instinct was always self-preservation. A deep animal growl rose from her throat, as she prepared for the worst. Outside the elegant townhouse the crowd of angry Parisians hesitated, as the ferocity of the snarl penetrated the chill air. Darla stretched her lips across her canines in a hideous parody of a smile. Human beings crumbled so easily with fear. Inside the house grew very still, as she ceased all movement, and waited, in the dark, for the crowd to make its decision. An uneasy ripple touched the resolve of the mob. Within the house was something they had not believed possible. Darla licked her lips in anticipation. Her eyes flashed gold in the firelight.

I will get through this, she thought as she prepared to fight for her undead life fang and nail.

 And when I do, first I will rip out Baudelaire's entrails and watch him die slowly, and then I will hurt Angelus until he begs me to hurt him a little bit more.

The delicious idea whitened her anger. She then gathered herself into a feline leap, and launched herself screaming like a fury at the mob.
 

LOS ANGELES, 2002.

Angel had retreated to his room, where he sat staring morosely at a pencil sketch he had drawn of Buffy's beautiful face. He knew every line, every plane of her countenance. Somehow, after Willow had left, it had seemed important to capture her likeness one more time, as if he feared he would forget the curve of her smile, the clarity of her eyes. Dulled forever now.

Willow had hugged him wordlessly in a final embrace before she returned to Sunnydale, and between the unreality of the grief, he had been aware that she and Cordelia had talked in hushed whispers in his office. Even in his room, his senses were sharp, his vampire hearing as acute as ever. The words made no sense, he caught fragments of the conversation, funeral, heroic sacrifice, and once or twice through his veil of silent tears, He imagined that Willow had mentioned 'Spike' in passing.

But that was impossible. Spike was in Mexico last he had heard.

A complete feeling of helplessness washed over him, and dulled his senses. Angel was accustomed to feeling sorrow. Real, soul destroying sorrow, for what he was, what he had done. The soul the Gypsies had cursed with him had come with a burden, which doomed him to suffer for all he had done, as Angelus.

Unbidden, the memories of the lives he had crushed beneath his heel like ants crowded in on him, but he pushed them away, for once putting them in order, so that he could concentrate on the loss of his love.

He pushed himself decisively from his chair, and walked over to an old Victrola that stood like a relic from another time in the corner of the room. Gently, for such a big man, he bent down to dust the old vinyl record that he placed with great care on the machine. He wound the handle, and placed the needle in the groove as the machine crackled to life.

"When I grow to old to dream,
I'll have you to remember...
And when I grow too old to dream..
Your love, will be in my heart..."

He allowed the sentimental words of the song wash over his unbeating heart. He sighed, and then whispered softly into the still night air.

"Always, my love..."

He was still standing there when the record finished, and night had claimed the remains of the day.
 

LONDON, 1870

Drusilla hummed a sweet little nursery rhyme to herself as she walked down the dark alleyway behind a row of tenements in the East End. In her mind she could see the stars as they winked beyond the muck of the London fog.

The mud was thick beneath her skirts, as they dragged through the sludge under foot. Her mind wandered aimlessly as she followed her feet and sang her childish tune in a soft whisper beneath her breath. Her dress of green silk was more appropriate for a ball, and was flecked with dirt and blood.

Evidence of the evening's frolic.

Suddenly she stopped, and cocked her head to one side, listening to the whispers only she could hear, of life behind the tenement walls, the men's voices, rumbling low like distant storms, women, shrill, complaining. Common English voices, snatches of lives being lived.

 Common, nasty lives. Poor people, eking out an existence in filthy rat infested slums.

Drusilla giggled, imagining being asked to take tea in one of these houses. She smiled secretively to herself, and looked down at her gloved hand.

 "I am a fine Lady of quality, now," She thought. "Angelus has taken me, and now I am better than them all..."

She looked at the child's doll she held in her hand.

 "We are ladies, aren't we, Miss Edith?" She laughed insanely at a joke only she could understand, and then stopped, listening carefully again.

 Then.

 Ah! There it was!

The sound of a child's voice, a little tiny sigh, a whispered warning. Two little girls.

She sniffed the air delicately, as if she could taste a delicious Yorkshire pudding or a lemon cake on the fetid breeze of the dark alley.

She smiled softly to herself, a delicious thrill heightening her senses. Then she spoke to the darkness, holding the porcelain doll out before her like a present. Little children were so easily bribed with presents, and sweets. She called out to the children, whom she could see clearly in the gloom of the muddy stoop of a rickety house.

"Hullo, Dears" She cooed, holding the Doll before her enticingly.  "Look what I have for you! Her name is Miss Edith, and she loves children. See? She wants to play a game...Miss Edith loves games. Don't you my sweet?"  he addressed the doll, turning the painted face to the children.

The children, two little girls dressed in ragged homespun, aged roughly 8 and 10, with pinched plain faces, and identical brown eyes like little puppies, stared with a spark of interest at the pretty lady with the doll. Upstairs, in the single room they shared with their mother and 3 younger siblings, Tessa, the older girl could hear the muffled beatings, as her father hit their mother in a gin-addled rage, as the other children cried and cowered, huddled together in fear.

She had clasped Emily's hand and scooted out into the street, to crouch breathless on the step, unsure of what to do next. Only knowing, that she needed to get out. Needed to escape for a few minutes. Escape the screaming. The pain . Knowing that when her Father had finished hitting her mother, that he would turn on the rest of them, before, collapsing in a heap on the filthy floor, snoring through the night, as the family cowered in fear.

The Lady before them was like nothing she had ever seen before. Dressed like a green fairy, her pale milky skin, hair like night, and eyes bright as the stars.

Tessa had heard about fairies. There was a little Irish boy who always told stories about Princes and fine Ladies, Elves and Fairies. Tessa looked at the pretty lady with the doll, and imagined that's what she had to be.

Drusilla smiled to herself as the children approached her, curiosity and innocence shining from their eyes. She licked her bottom lip in anticipation.

"See Miss Edith? The little children have come to play after all!"

Then, to the children's surprise and delight, the doll spoke back.

"Yes, Drusilla. What game shall we teach them?"

Tessa stretched her hand out to touch the Doll's golden curls, "pretty" She murmured. Then she looked up to see the fairy lady was no longer there. In place of the Fairy, there stood a woman, wearing the face of a Devil.

Drusilla's strong hands snaking across her mouth quickly stifled Tessa's scream. She looked around for Emily, and registered that her younger sister lay sprawled like a broken toy in the mud, then, she knew no more.
 

SUNNYDALE, 2002

Spike heard the footsteps crunching in the soft earth long before the door to his crypt creaked open, throwing a sliver of white light into the fetid gloom.

Somewhere in his alcohol befuddled brain he sensed a young woman's light step. The smell and sound of warm blood gnawed at his mind, and the bloodlust rose in him like fire in his belly. Blearily, he looked around, his senses sharp despite the self inflicted alcoholic daze, a predator's senses, a warrior's wariness, borne of many hunts and battles.

The smell that called to him had the scent of warm spring air, of days spent walking in the sun, and of something else. He closed his eyes, remembering, dreaming of golden tresses, her warm, honey-scented skin.

 The Slayer.

Without turning, or even opening his eyes, he whispered her name.

"Buffy...You came..."

In his dream she smiled at him, and gently caressed his face.

 "Spike"

He reached up to kiss her hand, and finding it, pressed it to his mouth, holding it to his lips as the tears coursed unashamedly down his cheeks.

 "I knew you'd come. I knew it. I love you! I never got the chance to tell you properly...."

His words came out in a stream of heartfelt emotion, and when he finally looked up, he realised her hand had gently been withdrawn from his grasp.

"Spike" Dawn said gently. "It's not Buffy. It's me."

 He looked up at her, confusion and terrible grief etched like a tragic mask in his eyes. She added her name almost as an afterthought.

"It's me. Dawn..."

"Dawn...Li'l Bit..."

 Spike's voice, raspy and burned through lack of use and drink, grated out the words.

He turned his face away from her, focusing his eyes onto his hand in confusion. "She..I thought.." the words died unsaid.

"I know.." whispered Dawn. Then she reached out and touched his hand again, and waited for him to look at her.

"Spike. Buffy is gone." her voice cracked, and warm tears dripped onto his hand, as he met her gaze. "Two months now..."

Spike looked at her levelly, waiting for her to finish as he processed the thought in his brain.

Two months...how long was that? A wrinkle in time to a vampire...

"I know, Niblet.." He croaked.

The look in Dawn's eyes washed over him, and Spike realised that she  pitied him. The look reminded him of Buffy. His heart ached to see it.

Spike straightened in his chair. "'Ere now, Bit, It's OK. I'm a vampire. I'll survive."

Dawn looked at him, her face red and blotchy. "I know.." She said, pausing a moment to gather her thoughts before she continued.

 "But Spike. We need you. We need your help."

Spike stood up, his bones and muscles screaming in protest. How long had he sat here? He realised his clothes hung loosely on his spare frame. I'm needed... He thought.

It had been a long time since anyone had needed his help. Drusilla had needed him, and Buffy. Damsels in distress. He could never resist them.

He turned to face Dawn, "You need me?" He felt the strength returning to his tortured mind and body.

"I'm there, Sweet Bit. Point me in the direction of the nasty." he lifted his head a little higher.

"Need to change though..." He looked down at his soiled and torn clothing. "I'm looking a bit worse for wear..."

Dawn eyed him, confused by the change in demeanor.

"Spike. You don't understand. Willow sent me. It's Drusilla. She's back in Sunnydale, and we need your help..."

Realisation flooded into his head. It was time to make a choice. And this time, he doubted if he had the strength to make it.

Not alone. But the memory of the promise flooded his consciousness.

He wrestled with his internal turmoil. Why did he even care? She was gone. But while he was needed, he would continue. If Dawn needed him, that was enough.

 For now.
 

LONDON, 1870.

Angelus sat legs crossed in the manner of a man well satisfied with his lot in life. The remains of a very expensive meal adorned the fine napery of the table, goblets of red Burgundy sparked like precious rubies amid the silver candelabras. The meal had been pheasant, beautifully presented on silver platters with feathers decorating the dish speaking volumes about the meticulous care the chef had taken.

Angelus reached across the table to a Waterford decanter and swirled the contents around appreciatively in the warm glow of the mellow candlelight.

"A fine meal, Lord Grant..." He said, leaning back in his chair and patting his stomach appreciatively. "Wouldn't you agree? My complements to cook..."

He raised his glass to Lord Grant, who merely stared at him with a glazed eye, his head on the table. His unfinished glass of wine mingled with his blood to stain the floor.

Angelus surveyed the dining room, and raised his glass in a silent toast to the beautifully dressed corpses seated like so many splendid dolls about the mahogany table.

"Yes, sir..." He commented to no one in particular "You do lay a fine table, Your Lordship."

He sipped the burgundy from the glass and made a face. "Ugh. You must talk to the wine steward though, me L'ud, he's been gettin' you the cheap stuff..."

A movement out of the corner of his eye made him turn quickly, with lightning speed.

Darla stepped daintily into the room, dressed in a gown of cream satine, and scooped low at the neck to reveal her creamy décolletage. She raised her skirt to avoid a stain of blood on the hem, and extended an elegant slipper over the body of a serving wench as she neared Angelus.

"Ah, Darla, love.." Angelus murmured. "You should not be sneakin' up on a man like that.."

Darla smiled. "Afraid, Angelus? You should be. I still haven't forgiven you, you know."

Angelus laughed, a deep throaty, guffaw of a laugh. Darla merely looked at him with a pleasant and Lady-like demeanor. Beneath it, Angelus knew she was deadly serious.

 "Darla! It's been five years now! A grudge is a grudge! But you carry it on like it happened yesterday!"

Darla's eyes flashed gold. "You left me to die, Angelus. Alone, against the mob. You took that chit, Drusilla, to God knows where. It took me three years to track you down!"

Angelus decided to try a different tack. " But the findin' and chasin', the havin'...Don't tell me you forgot?"

He took her hand and pulled her close as he felt for the stays on her bodice. She sighed as he kissed her throat, nibbling the soft skin of her neck, gently biting and kissing, teasing her with his tongue.

"You don't remember the days and nights afterwards, sweet Darla, when we drank the lives of the girls in the convent, and you made them watch as we..." the words were lost as he covered her mouth with his and her gown fell to the ground with a sigh of expensive fabric.

Darla felt for the stake hidden in the stays of her corset, she could and should dust him now. It would be the ultimate thrill. The thought crossed her mind as she reached down to unbutton his breeches.

"I haven't forgotten, my darling boy.." she whispered in his ear.

 Men are so stupid. They think they can buy you with pretty words and kisses.

 She knew Angelus, knew what he was capable of. They had been together nearly 100 years. She trusted him about as far as he trusted her.

But he was right. Being apart had only made their need for each other more intense. The past five years had been a rebirth, of sorts. Angelus had become more inventive, not only in their lovemaking, but also in the murders he committed in an attempt to please her.

As he cleared the table of the dead and dying, and the crystal crashed to the floor, she lay back on the damask cloth and held her arms out to him.

He was magnificent. A stallion. Her creation. She opened herself to his need as she felt herself swept away in the moment, his largeness filling her, and she gasped, as she always did, with the sheer wonder of it all.  Whatever he did, or would do in the future, he was here with her now, loving her, and that was all that mattered.

 Darla put her small white hand on the soft naked skin on his chest positioned above his heart, and as she remembered the stake in her corset, she stayed her hand and realised with growing wonder that she truly loved him. She had created him for this.

Her Lover, her Mate.

Nothing else mattered. Then all was lost as she let herself go in the exquisite pain and pleasure of the moment as she writhed beneath him amid the lace and carnage of a forgotten feast.
 

SUNNYDALE, 2002

The water was ice cold as Spike washed the dried blood and dirt from his thin body.

 Being a vampire, the cold water didn't bother him, he had set up a garden tap arrangement in the recesses of the cave beneath his crypt, being a scavenger for over 100 years had made him inventive. He enjoyed the feel of the water cascading over his aching muscles. The soap had a musk scent, and he washed himself carefully, painfully, feeling guilty as the last traces of his self inflicted pain washed away in the icy stream from the tap.

With the cleansing, the last vestiges of Buffy washed away.

Above him, he heard Dawn walking about restlessly, no doubt feeling a little uncomfortable in his crypt. Not quite knowing where to sit, or stand.

The place is probably a bit ripe as well, Spike thought.

 He was a fastidious vampire, and he liked to live with a little style and grace, even if his home was just a hole in the ground. There hadn't been much time for housekeeping of late.

Not on the list of priorities.

He leaned against the shower as the water formed rivulets over his face and hair. He opened his eyes to look down at himself. Not an ounce of fat remained. He was as lean as a skinny Siamese cat, every muscle stood out in sharp relief, his stomach growled, and he felt a moment of dizziness, as his self preservation instincts kicked in.

The thought of Dawn, young and sweet, alone in his crypt, made his mouth water.

"I need some blood, now." He murmured to the wall, roughly pushing away the thoughts of human blood flowing like fine wine into his mouth, washing over his tongue...

"Spike?!"

A voice called out down the stair

"Are you alright?" A shuffle of dainty feet above as she came closer to the hole in the floor above.

 Spike realised that his features had shifted as if preparing for a hunt.

" I'm fine, Bit!" he called up to her as he snapped back to reality. He then answered truthfully.

"I'm a bit peckish is all. Do you think you might pop out to get me something?"

He didn't trust himself to say the word, blood; he knew that Dawn would get his meaning in any case.

There was a beat, then.. "Sure, Spike...I'll go to the Butcher's. Then we will talk. Are you sure you're OK?"

Spike allowed himself a sigh of relief as he stepped out into his bedroom, and proceeded to dress. His features retained their feral visage. He felt weak as he called out to her in what he hoped was a normal voice.

"Ta, Niblet. I'm fine." He staggered a little.

 "I 'preciate it. Just need somethin' to stop the gurglies. I'll be waitin' here then."

He sat on the bed as he pulled his trousers on, and buckled the belt with a swift and practiced action. He then fell back, exhausted with his efforts, closing his eyes, and as he did, he slipped into a deep and troubled dream, in which Buffy's face lay on the pillow inches from his own, She was smiling at him, kissing his eyes, and he was loving her in return.

"William," she whispered, and he felt himself responding to her gentle hand, as it hovered, feather light above his brow. In his subconscious, he knew he was dreaming, but he didn't want to wake.

 "Wake up, William. You're dreaming..." her kisses became passionate, deeper, more urgent.

" I don't want to." He murmured, I want to stay here, with you.."

Her mouth on his. OH GOD.

"SHHH, I know my sweet, I'm glad to see you as well..."

 But the voice, that wasn't Buffy...

Spike's eyes snapped open. Drusilla smiled down at him.

In her arms she clutched Miss Edith, her doll.

"Miss me Spoike?" she asked as she kissed him once more.
 

LONDON 1880

"No Grandmother" Drusilla sniffed, "His head is too full of you. He won't even hurt me just a little bit.."

The three vampires walked along the crowded London street, Angelus had his arms about Darla, and they walked in a sloppy, self satisfied way, having met Drusilla as she hunted near the docks. Darla expressed annoyance at the term Drusilla addressed her as. Grandmother! Why, she was still as young and beautiful as ever. Idiot girl. And Angelus! Why did he never take her side against Drusilla? He always smiled that silly smirk every time Drusilla called her that.

It was infuriating. Darla hugged Angelus possessively. Well, one thing was certain, she had drawn Angelus into her web once more. Since the events of Paris they had been closer than ever. Drusilla was feeling a little left out. Darla grasped his arm, and turned her attention to the dead sailor lying at her feet.

"Such a waste. All that beauty. Not a freckle. Not a blemish. We probably could have preserved that beauty for eternity" Angelus frowned slightly, not sure of what to make of this turn of events. Drusilla licked her lips, and followed Darla's gaze.

"Still, He'll now not age..." Angelus offered.

 Darla sniffed delicately. "No, but he will rot..."

Angelus looked at Drusilla's forlorn form and realised how lonely she had become. while he had been preoccupied with Darla, he realised he had been neglecting Drusilla.

 Well, He thought.  Will have to remedy that, won't I?

He half heard the conversation between the two women, before catching the words spoken with breathless excitement from Drusilla's beautiful lips.

"I can take the bravest Knight in all the world, and make him mine! With a kiss!"

Angelus began to laugh at her childlike prattle. Drusilla was a joy to him. He loved her open, guileless enthusiasm.

Suddenly, a young man blindly stumbled into the group, head down, breathing heavily and sobbing as he blundered through the crowded pathway. "Ou..out of my way!!!" He stammered as he ploughed into them. Angelus growled menacingly, but the boy blundered on, oblivious to all save his headlong dash into a side street off the main thoroughfare.

Darla stopped and made a wry observation, as she watched the bespectacled young man turn into the gloom of the alley.

"Or, " she said, "You can take the first drooling idiot that comes along.."

She laughed, it was intended as a cruel jest, but Drusilla looked very interested indeed. She walked off in search of her Brave Knight.
 

LONDON, 1870

The smell, putrid and sweet, permeated the air. A single torch burned and threw hideous shadows on the solid wall of the cellar. Baudelaire stared about him at the rat-infested cell that he inhabited with the corpses of other victims. His right eye was fused shut. A long jagged scar muddied the features of his once handsome visage.

Baudelaire was in Hell. A living Hell, where he had been left to rot until the end of his days. His bright beautiful angel, his Darla had done this to him.

She had turned into a viper and had chained him here to die slowly. To await her pleasure. She knew how to bleed him 'till the point of death, making him beg for sweet release, then leaving him in the care of frightened girls whom she later killed and left strewn about like lifeless dolls.

How long had he been here? The days had stretched into months and then into years. Baudelaire laughed an insane giggle that came out as a muffled hoarse cough. Despite it all, he still loved her. He fell back and laid among the rotting corpses, clad in rags and silk, and dreamed he was with her again. Happily enjoying her cool kisses, plotting their next tryst, he leaned over and placed his hand on her chin, drawing her mouth to his, and kissing her deeply.

He closed his eyes, savoring her wet cool kiss. Then softly, he murmured her name, and began to move against her body, feeling her beneath him.

"Darla, Cherie, " he croaked, and slowly focused on her beautiful crystal eyes, eyes that promised to drown him in erotic ecstasy, twin fathomless pools, deeper than a moonlit sea.

 Marveling at the echo of his voice, he looked around him, momentarily. Then Charles Baudelaire began to scream, as he looked onto the dead and putrefying face of the lifeless body he held in his arms. Her mouth gaped open to reveal her rictus grin, her irises were dull in their sockets and the fathomless depths of her eyes stared sightlessly into the gaping maw of Hell.

Baudelaire lost his final shred of sanity as he pushed himself away from the lifeless corpse he had so tenderly made love to moments before.

Somewhere in the distance he heard someone screaming, over and over, mad with fear and mind numbing terror. It was sometime before he realised that the screaming came from him, and then his mind snapped, and he screamed no more.

Darla stood and watched him with a satisfied smile playing on her beautiful face, then, as the torchlight caressed her features, she swept into the cell into which she had imprisoned her prey, and drained him until the point of death, then taking a nail she cut a bloody trail across her breasts, and pushed his face into the oozing wound she had made.

Baudelaire whimpered, and then began to -suck greedily at the dark gift she bestowed.

"Soon, Angelus" she whispered as she felt Charles slip from her grasp, to lie unseeing at her feet, "Soon, my little puppet will make you pay..."

Taking the torch, she lifted the body of the dead French philosopher who's mind she had stolen, and carried him up the stairs into the dimly lit rooms above.

"Now you are mine, Charles. Truly mine. I made you. Don't forget that..."

The breath sighed out of his body, as Charles Baudelaire finally received the gift Darla had promised him, all those years ago in Paris.

Eternal life.
 

PARIS, 1867

The little girls walked barefoot below the sharp shadows thrown in stark relief beneath the light of the full moon. It was as if the dark sister of day had thrown a veil over the sky, and every object appeared muted, but clear and vivid to the naked eye.

Each child was dressed in pretty white silk and lace, identical twins sweet and plump as sugared ice pastries. They huddled together, fearfully blinking tears away from frightened eyes, innocent rosebud mouths quivering in terror, as they crossed the deserted street. The elegant houses stared down at them with darkened windows, glinting like watchful eyes in the unforgiving light of the bright night lantern of the sky.

The trees, normally so friendly in the daytime, assumed the forms of monsters, reaching with shadowed claws across the uneven cobbles of the silent street. The shadows were deep and black, like gateways to the depths of Hell.

The night belonged to evil, and it's perfume made the air heavy with portent. The little girls, no more than eight or nine, pulled each other closer, and stared wildly into the fathomless dark.

Something was moving. Quietly, on predator's feet, the figure followed its prey. It clung to the deep shadow, following at a safe distance, calculating, its breathing becoming rasped with the effort of containing it's glee at finding two such ripe and pretty things to hunt and kill.

And other nasty things.

Suddenly, the children stopped. The Killer reached down to feel the long dagger he had concealed in the waistband of his breeches. He licked his thin lips in anticipation, itching to feel their heartbeats flutter beneath his hands, to feel the warm stickiness of blood as he crushed the life from their tiny bodies. Inwardly the killer smiled. Such plump, ripe plums, there for the taking. No sign of Mama, of Papa. Out all alone, no doubt on a dare, playing a little game.

And here I thought the night would be dull.

He moved closer, then stepped from the shadow of the striped awning. "Allo, Mes Enfants.." He said pleasantly, hiding the dagger behind his back, and giving them what he hoped was a warm smile.

This was not his first time. The hunting and killing was like fine wine. It only improved as he drank more, sipped deeper, tasted more of its depravity.

The little girls gave a sharp little scream and looked at him fearfully.

The killer's fingers tightened on his weapon, as the girls looked at each other, and tensed to run. The Killer laughed, then made an awkward lunge at the pretty figures before him. Too late he realised their faces had taken on the visage of Demons, and his screams were muffled as the sisters fell onto his body, tearing the scream from his throat.

Drusilla stepped from behind a tree, and clapped her hands in delight. "What clever dollies!" She exclaimed.  "You make Mummy very pleased!...Come give mummy a kiss then..." she said, as she held her arms open to the children, who ran over to her and fell laughing, still wearing their demon faces, into her arms.

 "That's right, Dears" Drusilla cooed, as she petted each little blood soaked head, "You're my family. Miss Edith says it's not right that Mummies and Daddies should not look after the little children...."

She pushed the girls back to look at them with adoring eyes.

"Miss Edith is always right. Shall we see the others then?"

The girls smiled idiot grins, and skipped after Drusilla, as she turned and walked into the velvet night.
 

LONDON: 1880.

Angelus paced the confines of the room like a caged tiger. Outside the sunlight burned, and not for the first time, Angelus wondered if he was in Hell. In the 100+ years since Darla had sired him, Angelus had caught glimpses of Hell in his victim's eyes. He looked down at his hands, turning them over carefully, remembering the feel and sound of lives choked out of existence, of the pleasure he felt as he looked into those eyes. His Father's eyes, his mother's.

His sister, Cathy.

In the years since he had become Angelus, He had become more inventive, combining his lust for death, with an artistry for murder. As a human, he had been intent on pleasure, and it was this trait that had followed him into his rebirth as a vampire. The freedom he felt when released from the terrible guilt of being a failure in his Father's eyes, had unleashed a demon long hidden within him, a will to prove that he could be good at something. That he could be a success.

Darla had nurtured that trait, but had observed with casual cruelty, that the approval that Angelus sought from his father could no longer be achieved, in this world, or the next, after he had killed the Father who had so tormented his young life as a human.

Too late, he had realised she was right. It was a mistake he never repeated again. Not for him the casual death, the blood cry.

Angelus had fought hard to suppress his animal instincts. He killed for pleasure, enjoying the delicious thrill that came of physical and mental torture. In a grisly parody of his sister's death, he was doomed to repeat the slaughter of innocents over and over.

 Virgin brides, Young men, Young women, Nuns. Children.

Without realising it, Angelus had become a success. Yet he still baulked at the killing of old men. Darla alone knew the reason. He saw disapproval and rejection in every old man he crossed, and knowing that he would never age to respectable patriarchal status, he avoided the aged as if they had the plague. Which, all things considered in these times, chances were they did.

Drusilla. She was his masterpiece. He felt himself stirring at the thought of her. Pure, chaste and innocent, she had been. In the years since he had sired her, she had never failed to disappoint him, her mind was a blank palate on which he visited every mental torture he could devise before turning her. In his own twisted way, he loved her.

She was his child, His sister, and His lover. His warped reflection.

Darla had been cruel in her disdain of Drusilla. Angelus realised that Darla had been extremely jealous. She could never understand the bond he felt for the lunatic girl. He wasn't sure he understood it himself.

He looked at the golden light streaming through the lace curtains and window, to stain the floor with a golden glow, highlighting the red Turkish rug like blood. It was at moments like this that he touched upon his own madness. What would it be like, he wondered, to stand in that beam of golden death, to allow it to burn and consume, to end this endless existence? He was not afraid of death. But what came after. Of that he was afraid. Angelus paced the room, carefully avoiding the morning sunlight spilling into the room.

He turned at the sound of muffled laughter coming from the hall, and with a final glance at the deceased former occupants of the apartment, a man and his wife, he crossed swiftly to the partitioned bedroom, where he waited with the stealth of a predator for what ever was about to enter his trap through the double door.

Smiling inwardly, he recognised Drusilla's voice, and that of a man.

'Ah, now the boredom will end', he thought.   'She has brought that pathetic creature from the other night to play.'

Angelus well remembered the look of innocence in that face; He had sensed the fluttering heartbeat, the dejection and self-hatred in that pure soul. He was looking forward to destroying that light with his bare hands.

So, it was with a faint sense of disappointment that he sensed not only Drusilla's scent, but also the scent of another, newer male vampire enter the room.

'Still', he reasoned. 'Some fun might yet be had with this one'

Drusilla wouldn't protest too hard if he had a little entertainment. A scent of innocence mixed with passion still clung to this one, and one thing Angelus knew, was how to press an advantage, how to twist and torture innocence until it screamed.

Vampire or no, Drusilla's plaything was fair game.
 

Buddhist Temple, Himalayas, 2002.

Angel surveyed the carnage around him with satisfaction. Body parts of Demonic Monks scattered the floor of the Temple like macabre offerings to Buddha.

In the dim light of the cavernous structure, the dust settled, as Angel wiped his hands on his white robes, before walking painfully to the large bronze doors.

In the months since he had been here, he had found an inner peace, his soul had felt free in this place of quiet reflection. The Monks had invited him in, no questions, and had shown little surprise at his obviously disheveled state, his need for silence and solitude, or for his strange requests for blood. It had appeared daily at his cell, left by unseen hands, the blood of goats, freshly bled, the steam of warmth still rising silently from the liquid.

Angel felt a strange melancholy peace settle over his troubled soul. He felt Buffy's presence in this place, as if she was watching over him. Once or twice, he had imagined the silk of her fingers on his face, a memory of her perfume, a whisper of her footstep on the cold stone of his cell.

He would talk to her in his mind, not daring to whisper her name, lest the feeling he felt would vanish into the air like the steam rising from the bowl of blood he cradled in his hands.

The days turned into weeks as he healed his heart and mind of her loss, and when thoughts of returning to his friends in L.A crowded his mind, he pushed them to one side. What use was there? Why continue to fight if she was no longer in the world?

It was as if his mission was lost. As he looked around his lonely cell, he could see it as a metaphor for his life. Empty, dark and cold. The pain was a burden he would bear for all eternity. He closed his eyes and layback wearily on his palette.

He began to dream. In his dream, he floated above clouds, flying through the cool night sky, free, weightless. The clouds were gossamer cobwebs, ethereal, streaks of mist. Below him, he realised the specks of light were forming a pattern. A city floated out of the looming dark. He strained his eyes to make out the shapes and forms of the dark houses, the orderly geometric patterns of the tarred streets.

With a shock of recognition, he realised he was in Sunnydale. The Graveyard, ringed with light. He saw dark shapes loom behind the headstones, and registered the presence of new vampires, clawing their way out of the soft earth.

A sharp turn, like he was being yanked in another direction. He looked down at his feet, and realised that he was standing at the entrance of a crypt. Gingerly, he placed his hand on the door. It opened easily with a slight push. He stood and looked into the gloom, as the last candle in the crypt sputtered and died.

A low growl formed in his chest as he beheld the still figure sprawled in the chair before him.

The figure never moved, never even acknowledged his presence. Angel looked around, his senses on full alert, assessing, digesting the facts. The Crypt was way past fresh. An air of death and decay clung to the air like meat that had soured and gone rancid.

He knew that he was dreaming, but a dream that had surround sound and smellovision, as Cordelia had often called it. He realised then, that this was no dream. It was a vision. He processed the information that the Powers that Be were trying to tell him something. But Spike? What has he to do with the Powers?

He stepped into the darkened crypt, and walked toward Spike, who still showed no indication of realising he was there at all.

He looked at the empty bottles that littered the floor, the broken glass, the torn and bloody clothing, and lastly, the face. Taken aback, he took an involuntary step away. He recognised that look. The look of absolute despair, of the complete loss of hope.

He had seen that look on the faces of the mothers of the children he had killed. He had seen it on Drusilla's face as she had begged with the last scrap of her sanity for her God to release her. And he saw it in Spike's eyes now. In a flash of insight, he knew. Spike had been in love with Buffy.

He backed away from the sight, anger rising in his stomach bitter as gall. He covered the floor quickly; eager to be away from what he didn't want to see. In the darkness, something whispered his name, and he turned to see a wraithlike figure caress Spike's hair possessively.

The air became very still, as she raised her mad eyes to meet his.

"Daddy." Drusilla breathed. "You're home, now we can be a family again"

Spike sat still in the chair, oblivious to it all, and with the look on his face burned in his memory, Angel awoke with a start, hearing the screams that he took a moment to register as Monks dying at the hand of some unspeakable terror.

He ran barefoot to the direction of the screaming, his head filled with the images of his vision.

He knew what he had to do. Slay the evil here, and go to Sunnydale one more time.
 

London, 1870.

Darla screamed as Angelus gathered her to him, biting her neck in the height of his passion, sliding in the blood that mingled with the wine, convulsing with pleasure, the heat in his veins still pulsing from the banquet of Lords and Ladies.

He stared up at her, his face that of the demon, marveling at her appetites. She bent down and delicately flicked the tip of her pink tongue over his chest, drawing a nipple into her mouth and teasing it, nibbling gently, as she rocked him to a state of arousal once more.

Before the Master turned her, Darla had been a high-class courtesan, much sought after in the New World. She had her secrets, her ways of pleasing a man. But she had never really loved any thing, or anyone. As she looked into Angelus' face, he groaned, holding her rigid as she massaged his chest, slowly, and with deliberate sensuality. His face returned to its angelic visage, for which he was named.

He didn't hear the slow and silent footstep of the dark figure who entered the room. He was looking into Darla's eyes, imagining how he would like to make her scream his name until she was hoarse with longing. Too late, he heard the muttered incantation, though he recognised the voice. Darla's eyes betrayed a note of triumph as he slipped into the nether world between dreaming and wakefulness.

He snarled, fighting the magic, pushing Darla away, and standing naked before falling like a drunken sailor, into the waiting arms of his most fickle love. The last thing he heard was her laughter, followed by a mad male giggle, strangely reminiscent of Charles Baudelaire. As the fog took him, he realised that Darla had been waiting for her moment. He realised that she meant to either kill him, or torture him.

 Then he knew no more.

Angel slowly came to. He looked down, and realised with some amusement that he was still naked, a clink of chains also informed him that he was also a captive. It was dark, where he was imprisoned, and the stench of death permeated the dank air.

He sensed a movement to his right, and smelled her before he saw her. Darla, his beautiful decadent Sire. He smiled, anticipating the game before him. Mustering his considerable charms, he managed to stand and face her, as she gasped and involuntarily took a step back into the gloom. He walked the length of his chain, stopping about three feet from where she stood, and glanced down at his naked form again.

His words were low, sensual and calculated to arouse Darla as he spoke them, his accent thick and charming, his words dripping with suppressed lust and portent.

"Now, Darla, love. I get that you still might be a bit on the angry side, but there is no need for ye to do this, now. You know whatever you do to me, love, I will repay to ye in kind..." He slid his eyes over her body, and emitted a low growl. "With interest, of course. And you know, Darla. I like to pay me debts." He paused, and then added with extra menace.

"In full."

Darla smiled, the small tight 'cat that ate the cream smile' he knew so well.

"Really?" She replied primly. "We shall see about that Angelus." She turned to indicate a small huddled figure in the corner. "You remember Charles, of course?"

Angelus could see quite well in the dark with his vampiric sight, but even he had to look twice at the shattered remnants of the man before him. In his mind he remembered a dapper, and handsome Frenchman, this wreck of vampire flesh that shied away from his gaze was not that same man. He looked at Darla, impressed despite Himself.

"So, you went and made him one of us..." He marveled, then, with a note of disgust as the smell reached his nostrils.

"Why? To punish me? For Drusilla? For leavin' you? What possible reason..."

Darla cut him short as she walked toward him, knife in hand, glinting, threatening, despite the dark.

"All of the above, my dearest love.." She crooned. "But mostly, to see you squirm on the hook for a bit. There is more to Charles than you realise, Angelus."

She stopped short of his face, and looked at the chains that bound him. Slowly, she took the knife, and dragged it along his face, cutting the flesh of his cheek to the bone. He inhaled sharply against the hot white pain of the knife. Darla continued down his neck, across his chest, slowly and with the caress of a lover. Angelus grimaced, but did not cry out.

"You see, Angelus" She purred as her hands grasped him and proceeded to draw him closer without once taking her eyes off his face, "You have done me a great wrong, and Charles here is going to make sure that you never wrong me again."

Angelus felt the cold tendrils of his own blood leak slowly from the wound she had made. He looked over at the huddled figure in the dark corner.

"You intend to let him watch, my love?" he whispered." Pardon me for sayin' so, but Charlie there looks a bit, what's the word? Done in, if ye want my thoughts on the matter. He looks as if he would have trouble noticin' much at all.."

He could feel the wounds beginning to heal as he spoke, buying time, and calculating the strength of the chains that bound him. Darla looked at him, reading his mind. Damn her! Why did she have to know himself better than he did sometimes?

"Oh," she said, taking her time, savoring the moment, "I think you know me well enough by now, Angelus, to realise that I never do anything without good reason. Charles is in possession of a very powerful charm that has been in his family for generations. The problem is, only one of his blood can work the magic."

Angelus looked at her levelly. "What has this got to do with..." he began. She placed a daintily white finger to his lips, and then pressing herself against him, she sheathed the knife in his belly as she kissed him, running her tongue down the length of his chest to suck at the wound she had made.

He gasped with the exquisite agony and ecstasy he felt as the two sensations, pain and pleasure combined, and he realised he had passed out, as the world receded into blessed oblivion.
 

SUNNYDALE 2002

Dawn waited in line at the Butcher's shop, her mind in turmoil, feeling sick and tasting bile as she waited her turn at the counter. The store was clean, well kept and full of antiseptic florescent light that gave her a sense of unreality, somehow.

As younger sister to The Slayer, no, she corrected herself, as the sole survivor of the three women in her family, she felt a sense of isolation and aloneness. Ever since she could remember, it had been the three of them against the world. She had felt safe, and loved. Now Buffy was gone, because of her.

 Spike suffered, because of her.

 Everyone she had truly loved had died. The normality of standing in line at a shop hit her suddenly, and she realised, yet again, that Buffy and her mother would never return to her, never stand in a shop, never speak, or think or feel again. The guilt she felt was overwhelming.

'Why didn't she let me go?' She thought. 'I'm not important to the world. I'm nothing.'

"Miss?" a male voice prompted, raising her from her contemplative state "Can I help you?"

Dawn focused, and peered into the face of the smiling Butcher, who lifted his pencil to write her request on a scrap of paper.

"Um, yeah, thanks.." She stammered. "Can I please have 4 quarts of um, Pig's blood?"

The butcher showed little surprise at her request, and called her order over his shoulder to a boy in back of the shop.

"Tom! Four quarts of the pig's blood. We got that right?"

"Yeah Jake.." came the muffled reply.

He smiled at Dawn, who stepped aside for the next customer. 'Poor Spike.' She thought. 'What a way to live.' He had looked so sad in the dark. Buffy had trusted him so much toward the end. She wondered if Buffy might have loved him if she had lived? It seemed sorta strange, how Spike had become so much a part of their lives since Riley had left.

'Almost like a big brother to me..' She thought.

 Since Xander had been so busy with Anya, she found herself hanging around Spike a lot. Buffy had once asked her if she had a crush. It was true. She did think he was kinda cool, and he seemed to empathise with her, what with being on the outer with the Scooby Gang himself.

Spike seemed to understand her.

She smiled inwardly, thinking maybe Spike had been a troubled teen too. Or maybe he had always felt like a misfit, as she herself did.

The fact that he was a Vampire, and evil wasn't lost on her. She wasn't stupid. But she found it hard to reconcile the evil Spike with the Spike she had come to know as her protector and confidant over the last seven months or so.

The chip in his head kept him in check, yes. But that still didn't explain why Spike continued to care about Buffy, or even mourn without a soul. Something had happened to him. Not for the first time, did Dawn suspect that the chip was like an artificial soul, and it had changed him. Buffy had scoffed at that idea when she had mentioned it, but it seemed logical.

Why did he even care now that she was dead?

The Butcher handed her the package, and she started back for the cemetery. Away from the bright clean light of the shop, she began to feel normal again, as if The Cemetery was the place she belonged, and the normal everyday people who were inhabitants of a not-so-normal little town were the imaginary ones, and vampires and monsters were more real than her human life could ever be.

Willow had returned from L.A a few weeks previously. She had said very little, only to say that Angel had taken Buffy's death badly, and had left to be alone for a while.

Dawn had vague memories of Buffy's love affair with Angel. She remembered a lot of strange behavior, of hearing whispered meetings, and of Buffy crying a lot. Angel was Buffy's secret passion. She remembered that much, even though she had been too young to fully comprehend it at the time.

Buffy had very rarely talked about him, but Dawn knew that he had hurt her badly. She realised with a shock that Buffy had been roughly the same age as she when Angel came into her life. It was a sobering thought. Dawn realised that her face was wet, and she wiped the tears away as she neared the entrance to the cemetery. She hoped that Spike was less crazy looking. Not that she was frightened, but she needed his strength.

He had a knack of making her laugh, and she really felt she needed a laugh about now.

She was tired of tears and death.
 

LONDON, 1870

Angelus felt the weight of the chains as he lifted his hand to his cheek, feeling the smear of blood, but found the wound nearly healed.

In his stomach, there was a dull ache, and he remembered what had happened. Darla, and her pet trained monkey, Charles Baudelaire.

He smiled to himself, admiring Darla's inventiveness. It had taken her nearly five years, but now she was about to pay him back.

He remembered the night that he had left her to her fate, in Paris with nothing but her cunning and fangs to help her survive. He and Drusilla had watched from a safe distance shrouded by shadow, and he had marveled then at her cunning, her survival instinct.

He had known then, that she would make it, just as he had known that she would come for him, and that the reconciliation would not be a pleasant one. Drusilla had been the main reason that he had not come to her aid as she faced the rabid angry Paris mob alone all those years ago.

Drusilla, His 'dulcet' darling. She had been having one of her less lucid moments, and in her half crazed state had led him away at the time Darla had needed him most. With little thought for Darla's safety, he had taken Drusilla's outstretched hand as she rambled about fairy feet, and blinding lights, of pain and sorrow beyond all imagining.

With barely a backward glance at the angry mob, he followed Drusilla on her mad path of future echoes, into the woods outside the town, where she revealed the dark secrets of her latest obsession.

The shouts of the townsfolk and the blinding lights receded into the background, as she led him to her hideaway in the forest, an old Druidic cave covered in moss and lichen, and in the cave, Angelus sensed a terrible and ancient evil. The air hummed with power.

Despite his reservations and better judgment, Angelus found himself drawn to that power. He remembered the tales of his long forgotten youth, of entrances to the Faerie realm, where men had been drawn into macabre dances of death with beautiful faerie maidens, of boys who had accidentally stumbled into upon faerie rings, to fall asleep, and awaken as old, old men, crumbling to dust as they stepped from the enchanted circle.

Drusilla held her hand out to Angelus, and drew him into the cave. A strange stupor had overcome him; he heard high shrill laughter, the prattling of children, and the mutterings of many voices at once.

"Look, Miss Edith!" Drusilla had exclaimed, as she bent down to scoop something from the floor of the cave, and Angelus blinked, as the dank interior of dripping stalactites was suddenly alight with the brilliance of day.

The cavern had been transformed in the blink of an eye into a magical grotto, and holding court, amidst a coterie of vampire children and exquisite little people, stood Miss Edith, Drusilla's porcelain doll, but as Angelus realised, not a doll at all, but a tiny living being of flesh and blood.

"Dru..." He started to say, but stopped abruptly as a thousand pairs of eyes turned to glare at him, and his mouth closed.

Nothing much surprised him anymore, but the sight laid out before him was beautiful, miraculous, and he sensed beneath the surface gloss, one of the most concentrated sources of evil he had ever seen, or had the misfortune to witness before.

He slid a look to Drusilla, who stood, her hands clasped in delight, a look of rapture on her face.

A trickle of fear pricked his neck, as he realised that the stories were indeed true. He was in an enchanted realm, and Drusilla, brain-addled as she was, had unknowingly led him into a trap. Men seldom if ever left the realm of Faerie, that much he knew.

He wished at that moment he was with Darla, fighting tooth and claw against the mob. He had no idea if he would ever see her again. Or, hundreds of years might pass before he was allowed to go free.

Drusilla caught his eye at last, and clasping her hands about his neck she crooned into his ear..

"Isn't it pretty my sweet? They want us to stay! They said I could be a Princess! And you!..." She kissed him deeply as she finished speaking..."can be my Prince, and we will live in a real castle forever!"

Angelus glanced around him at the hostile gazes focused on him, devouring his form like knives at a banquet. Then he flashed his most charming smile at the elegant -assemblage, and bowed low to Miss Edith at the centre of it all.

"Well, Ladies. Sure I will be stayin' with Drusilla here, and thankye kindly for your hospitality." He was nothing if not charming, and his charm became positively to the fore when his skin was threatened.

Drusilla clapped her hands in delight, and kissed Angelus again. "That's a good Daddy!" she laughed, and twirled around before running out into the forest.

"Now you are mine forever!" She trilled as she vanished, leaving Angelus to ponder the stupidity of following lunatics into the woods.

All this passed through his mind as he waited, chained and naked awaiting Darla's pleasure. He had never told her of it, preferring to keep some mystery between them. He also knew that if Darla ever guessed what Drusilla had done, and what she had planned all those years ago, Drusilla would be dead at Darla's hand. And that was something he didn't want.
 

SOMEWHERE AT SEA, 2002

Angel peered out of his cabin port hole on board the Merchant ship 'Aurora', before taking a coat from the hook in the galley, and climbing the ladder to the foredeck.

 In the two weeks since leaving the temple in the Himalayas, he had been feeling uneasy in his soul. The sea voyage back to the sunny shores of California had been calm, and he had booked passage as a working member of the crew, taking the night watch, thus making himself instantly popular with the rough sailors who crewed the vessel.

The Ship's mate, a thin man, with skin the colour of tanned cow hide, and a white beard flecked with black, often accompanied Angel in quiet companionship on the watch. As the moon rode the sky like a weary battle mare, Angel gazed at the inky ocean depths, imagining the colour of the sea in his human life, the greeny blue of the Atlantic on the coast of Ireland, and then he would close his eyes, remembering the sands of California, the crashing waves, the sun-kissed shores burned into his memory like a brand. The ring of Amarra had allowed him to see all that, and more.

The memory was a painful one, in more ways than he would readily admit to himself. Buffy had sent him the ring, trusting him with something he barely trusted himself to have. He had told Doyle a stupid story about why he had to destroy the ring. How he would 'stop seeing the people lost in the night, that only he could protect.'

Doyle had sensed the lie, or 'half truth' to be more accurate, but had said nothing, respecting Angel's explanation. Doyle had been a true friend.

The reality was far scarier a prospect. Buffy had trusted him. But he didn't trust himself. More accurately, he didn't trust what Angelus might do with a prize like the Ring of Amarra. Angelus was always with him, like a serial murderer imprisoned in a cage of blood, bone and meat.

Within him, all the time.

 The Gypsy curse had seen to that. In order for Angel to suffer eternal torment, the Romany tribe that had cursed Angel with his soul had ensured that he was aware of every deed and thought that Angelus possessed. Angelus was with him, waiting for any chance to escape. He didn't quite trust that it would never happen again.

Seeing Spike in L.A had made him realise that Angelus could never be given the opportunity to have the power of invincibility in his evil clutches. When he saw Spike, he saw Angelus, the memories of everything Spike and he had done together, with Darla and Drusilla, had come flooding back to him. He knew Spike's mind, as he had once shared the same ideals.

 Torture, murder, with no after thought or remorse.

 It was a sobering thought, one he had never shared with Doyle, with Cordelia, with any of them. In Spike, he realised a small part of Angelus still existed. One of his Vampire family. He knew that one-day, he would have to pay for that as well.

So, he had destroyed the ring, and bottled the truth, and sent it adrift on his sea of guilt. And so, the seas remained black, forever shrouded in night. The sun never lit the sky in his waking hours, and his hope sank like a drowning man in the bottomless ocean. Buffy's death felt like the final nail in that coffin.

"What are you thinking about, Angel?" The first mate asked after finishing the last of his hand rolled smoke, before flicking it into the silent wake of the bow wave.

Angel waited a minute before he replied.

"Not much, Billy. Life, death, the universe, and the meaning of it all.." He smiled bitterly, and inclined his head as he leaned on the ship's rail. Billy smiled back, clapping a friendly hand on Angel's back as he turned on his heel and ambled back toward the galley.

"Tell your troubles to the sea, Angel. She will always listen. I learned long ago that she would never spill your secrets to a living soul."

"Thanks Billy." Angel whispered to the sailor's retreating figure.
Then, softly to himself, he said, "And I learned long ago to never tell my secrets to a living soul.."

In the distance, the lights of the California shoreline blinked, and Angel faced them, wondering again, what his vision might portend. Spike was in Sunnydale. But something didn't fit. He needed to find out for himself what that something was.
 

SUNNYDALE, 2002

The First mate of the Aurora shook Angel's hand as the ship docked in the harbor.

"I'll be sorry to see you go, mate..." He said, firmly gripping Angel's large hand. You seem to be a natural seaman, and he added with a conspirational wink.

"But I'm sure the rats wont miss you though.."

The smile froze on Angel's face, as he eyed the old man warily.

"Don't fret, boy." The old sea dog chuckled, releasing Angel's hand.  " I have been at sea too many years to be shocked at anything anymore. The second day out to sea, I saw you dispose neatly of one of the vermin with your teeth. You did us a favor, keeping the population down, I figure..."

Angel nodded silently, and walked off the gangplank, Cursing softly. Was he losing his edge? The First mate observed him leave, elbows on the rail, a smoke glowing red between his lips.

"Whatever you find, mate!" He called after Angel, "I hope she's worth it!"

Angel thought to himself, without acknowledging the sailor's words..  'She was, and is...' He turned his eyes toward Sunnydale, and began to walk. A car was needed, and soon, if he was to make it to Sunnydale before dawn.

Spike, fully awake now, stared into the mad eyes of Drusilla. Was he still dreaming? Her kisses felt real enough. He pulled away from her and grabbed a T-shirt, dressing quickly, taking note of her amused gaze.

"Ere, love, I thought you had left for good after last time. Not here to settle old scores are we?" He eyed her warily.

 Hang on a tic, she is dressed strangely.

 He remembered that outfit. Black Spanish lace, gloves that matched, long ringlets in her glossy black hair.

She had looked exactly like this on the night she had sired him.

 'Bloody Hell.' He thought. 'I'm losing my marbles for sure, now.'

He took a step back from her, not sure if he could trust his senses. Yet, the scent, the feel of her mouth on his. It wasn't a ghost. It was Drusilla.

She laughed at his discomfort, and started to walk towards him, slowly, sensually, just as he had remembered her all those years ago, sliding her catlike eyes over him, as if she could eat him alive, which of course, she had.

"Willie, now don't take on so.." She scolded, as if he were a child, "It's only me, brought here to see you by Fairy wings...SHHH" she whispered as an afterthought,

 "Mustn't tell Angelus, He will be quite cross when he finds what I 'ave done. "

"Angelus?" Spike felt a tendril of ice trickle down his neck, "Is Angelus 'ere as well, love?" He glanced about the room, suddenly alert, vampire senses screaming at the mention of his Grandsire's name.

 "Not yet, my sweet, my Willie..." Came Drusilla's breathy reply. "But Miss Edith an' me, we been plottin' and plannin', thinking of ways to see into the future."

Her eyes suddenly lost their ethereal look, and Spike recognised a moment of clarity in her demeanor.

"The chessmen are in position." she proclaimed, caressing his face as she continued. Spike knit his brow, and watched her closely, ignoring the faint screaming in his head.

"The stars are aligned. This time is the right time. The fairies told me, and the moon whispered it." Spike felt a wave of nausea pass over him as he struggled to stay upright.

"You are from the past..." He hissed, realising as he said it, it was true. Drusilla walked over and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him to the bed. He hadn't the strength to resist.

"But that's impossible.." he murmured. "I only saw you a few months ago.."

Drusilla pouted, as she moved her hands under his shirt to feel his ribs. "You need a mother's love, William," she announced seductively. "You're skin and bone! Don't worry, Pet. Mummy's here."

Spike looked into her eyes trying to make sense of what he was feeling, touching, then he found himself kissing her neck, her hands, and face, allowing her caresses as she gently removed his clothing. He needed her comfort. He needed to feel.

He felt himself becoming aroused as Drusilla unbuttoned her blouse allowing him to place his hands on the cool skin of her breasts. The familiarity of her body, his lover of a hundred years, came rushing back to him as he stroked the milky silk of her pale skin, and she responded to his touch, moaning as he caressed her pink nipples, bringing their ripe luminescence to his mouth. A low moan escaped him, and he choked a sob as he buried his face into her cool and familiar scent.

"There, there" She soothed as he nuzzled her hungrily, a child in her arms.

"Mummy's here, my love. No more tears.."

"Drusilla..." He murmured as he lost himself in the black oblivion of her familiar and much loved embrace.
 
 

SUNNYDALE, 2002, later that night.

Angel pulled up in front of Buffy's house, his stomach tied in knots. It was still dark, but he could smell the first pink streaks of the dawn drifting across the star filled night.

He looked at the darkened house.  Looking up, He noticed the window of Buffy's room open, the curtain fluttering in the light breeze. Suddenly, he made a decision, and putting his foot on the accelerator, sped away to the Mansion he once lived in on the outskirts of the town. He would wait out the daylight there, and go directly to the Crypt he saw in his mind's eye. He couldn't face Buffy's friends yet. There were things to take care of, first.

Spike lay in Drusilla's arms as she stroked his hair after their lovemaking. The sheets lay in a twisted heap at the bottom of the bed, as she lay, catlike, curled against his back naked and pale in the gloomy dark of the crypt. He felt at peace for the first time in many months.

 Drusilla. 'The face of his salvation.'

 Spike had been collecting an assortment of furnishings of late. Although he hadn't had much opportunity to decorate, the bare bones of a comfortable home was in the making. The bed was his best find, in an abandoned house; it had taken four demon mates to help move it into the hole in the ground.

An old record player, also in the same derelict house, played an assortment of records, all vinyl, all originals, collected over the years. Spike hated CDs. He liked the mellow feel of the original vinyl recordings, and he tended to agree with Tom Petty on that score,

"CDs are like ice, vinyl is like rain"

He stretched out on his back, turning to face Drusilla, feeling his strength return as he gazed into the fathomless depths of her green eyes. He covered her body with his, tasting her, Spanning his hand across her shoulder and closing his eyes to inhale her delicious scent, like bitter chocolate, or ripe plums, fruit so juicy that it dripped into his very heart.

Drusilla sensed his need, felt him stir, and wrapped one arm about him, pulling him closer, devouring him with her kisses. His cock, dumb beast that it was, responded to her tender ministrations as she stroked him gently, her long nails lightly caressing his length.

Sex. The healer. He was her willing slave.

He shivered beneath her touch.

Let her do me then. Help me forget, love.

"Hungry Pet?" She murmured in his ear, "Someone is coming, I hear them, Trip Trap! Trip Trap! Over the bridge. Shall we invite them to dinner?"

Spike broke out of his reverie, and Drusilla felt him tense, and mistakenly believing him to be readying himself for a kill, she restrained him, putting a finger to her lips to quiet him. She could sense his hunger, and it confused her.

 Why was he so starved?

Spike slipped from her clutches, and searched for his pants, strewn on the floor of the crypt.

"Stay here, Love," He whispered, as she lay back to watch him with a predator's stare.  " I'll take care of this..."

"Spike!" Called Dawn as she entered the upstairs section of the Tomb. "Are you there? I've um, Brought you what you wanted..."

Spike moved silently behind her, and with a deft hand, covered her mouth stifling her scream, and causing her to drop her package, which leaked its thick red juices on the stone floor.

Dawn's frightened eyes relaxed somewhat, when Spike raised a finger to his lips, and pointed downstairs. She nodded, and he released her, motioning her outside. He stood at the door, and waved her off.

"It's light out, " He said, staring at the day through the door. "You'll be safe. But get home quickly, and wait there."

Dawn started to protest, but he closed the door, leaving her perplexed and concerned in the harsh light of day.
 

 LONDON 1880

Everything seemed so clear to him now. The last few days with Drusilla had been a revelation.  He remembered a vague sensation of despair, a sense of humiliation, of anguish, and he remembered Cecily, the ice maiden, the woman who had taken his heart and squashed it beneath her heel like a bug.

Then, the grief, as his heart was twain in two, like the sheets of paper in which he had poured his very soul. The dull ache of that memory washed over him, to be replaced by another. Then, a darkness had washed over his soul, hardening his heart, and Drusilla had drifted into his world of despair, and delivered him into her world of sensual pleasures, where he could finally taste, feel and experience the Byronesque world of the darker angels of his nature.

A world he could only dream about, read about. A world in which there was no right, no wrong, just the moral ambiguity of life as an immortal. Being killed made him feel alive for the very first time. Crawling out of his coffin, listening to the bugs squirming out of the Earth, knowing that he had cheated God, the poet in him cried out, He felt like Faustus, dealing with the Devil, cheating him of his due as well.

Drusilla had delivered him from mediocrity. He remembered the intense pain and pleasure combined as she killed him, slipping into oblivion as she exposed her breast to him, and he sucked the blood from her nipple like a child. It was the most sensual thing that had ever happened to him, alone with her in that dark alley, he had become a man for the very first time.

Lying stretched naked beside her, for once feeling no shame at the sight of his own manhood, he marveled how insatiable he had become. It was if she had released all of his inhibitions, together with his inner demon. The Victorian proprieties had slipped away, and stripped bare of his those encumbrances; he wanted to experience it all, the killing, the passion, the exploration of Drusilla, eyeballs to entrails. He wanted all of her. His hunger for her was a greedy feast. Cecily was like a pale milky pudding beside the rich offerings of his dark wicked Goddess.

He lazily ran a finger down her supple, cool and perfect form, resting a hand on her breast, to squeeze it gently, enjoying the sensation as she writhed with pleasure under his touch.

"Willie..." She murmured her eyes fluttering open to gaze at him with calculated sensuality, "You are my Brave Knight...I made you with a kiss.."

William crushed her mouth with his, wrapping his arms about her, and pulled her roughly to him. She nipped the wound she had made on his neck, causing it to bleed, and he inhaled sharply, pulling away from her to look into her eyes, and unable to contain his need, covered her body with his, gently pushing her legs apart with his knee, "You made me Love,' he murmured as he lowered himself to lie within her, Drusilla gasped with pleasure, and giggled as he began to move slowly in rhythm to his need, she wrapped her lithe form about him and pulled him deeper within herself with a little sigh.

" I am eternally grateful that you did..." He finished, and then he knew little else, but the scent, the sensation, and her cries of delight as she moved beneath him.

William the Bloody felt alive for the very first time in his meek and gentle existence. He felt like a God. And when he looked at Drusilla, he knew it to be true.
 

SUNNYDALE, 2002

Angel sat by the fireplace of his mansion in Sunnydale; the memories were like echoes, dry leaves, rustling around his weary mind.

 Over there, the effigy of the demon Acathla had stood, he remembered the day vividly, when Spike and Dru had worked closely with Angelus to send all non-demon life into Hell. Instead, he had been sent there himself, an unwilling sacrifice by Buffy to save the world. Angel closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Sunnydale. Full of memories. Not all of them good.

 But not all bad either.

He looked out of the door at the garden outside, perfumed with night flowering jasmine.  Of course, now, it shimmered in the daylight, no flowers, but green and mysterious. He closed the door, and paced the floor. A memory of Drusilla flooded his consciousness. Drusilla had loved the garden. It was so easy to please her. He smiled at the memory of her face, flushed with excitement over the sight of a particularly bright star, or the gift of a rose...albeit, the rose was set between the teeth of a beautiful young girl, her throat freshly punctured...but still.

Angel shook his head to clear his mind. Buffy's death had made his thoughts more and more maudlin of late.

He didn't really miss Dru, but he was lonely. He knew that, recognised the unchanging aspect of his life. Everyone, everything changed, but him. Spike had once said to him "Demons never change"...

He had always believed that to be true himself, until the soul had been forced on him. The image of Spike in the crypt was etched on his mind.

 Drusilla, Spike.

There had to be a reason why his thoughts and dreams were haunted by their images. He had a sinking feeling in his gut that it had a lot to do with what had happened in the past, and somehow, Buffy's death had set in motion a fold in the fabric of time.

A chill settled on his dead heart. He found himself transported back in time, to a grotto in 1870, where he had made a Devil's bargain with Drusilla, and Darla had held him in a cold dank cellar for weeks after escaping a mob in Paris. He hadn't told her then what Drusilla had done, how a day in an enchanted realm had become five long years on Earth, She would have killed Drusilla if she had ever found out. He remembered all that and more. Baudelaire, and his mad rictus grin as he spoke the words of the spell Darla had sired him for, her ultimate punishment.

OH GOD. It was all returning to him. It was as if a veil had been lifted.

The evil smile of an enchanted fairy porcelain doll, Drusilla's look of delight, and the vampire children she had sired.

A light exploded in his mind, and blinded him with its brilliance. When he opened his eyes, Darla stood before him in a shimmering sphere of light.

"Hello, Angelus..." She smiled sweetly, with a trace of amusement. "Miss me?"
 

London: 1880.

"Who the bloody hell is Angelus?..." William asked Dru, the question died on his lips as he felt, rather than saw a hovering presence in the room. He narrowed his eyes, sizing the bulk of the man before him.

 'Bloody huge' was the first thought that crossed his mind.

Drusilla introduced him, as William eyed him warily. This man exuded menace and power. William's meagre offerings seemed to pale in his presence. He felt immediately threatened, and his suspicions were confirmed when Angelus grabbed his hand and thrust it into a hot, white shaft of morning light.

William let out a surprised squeak of pain, and pulled his hand out of Angelus' iron grip.

"If you ever do that again..." he began lamely, but was cut short by the sight of Angelus extending a meaty fist into the shaft of light, watching with sadistic pleasure as the skin on his own hand smoldered, expressing satisfaction at William's suitably impressed and surprised reaction.

 Angelus asked him about 'sharing the slaughter of innocents,' and if William thought him to be some kind of 'deviant' wanting to share that with 'another man'.

For the moment, William forgot Drusilla, or maybe he was conscious of her there, as he splayed his fingers and extended them into the light. 'A deviant?' he thought, and as he turned the word over in his mind he could feel the idea of corruption appealing to him. His hand began to smoke, and as the pain became unbearable he kept his gaze locked with the big Irish vampire's before him.

A moment of understanding passed between them, Angelus smiled a viper's smile, then burst into hearty laughter, as William withdrew his hand from the punishing light. William leaned in to laugh in companionship with him, for a moment there, he sensed that Angelus was going to kiss him, and it confused him momentarily,

 Because he felt a sudden urge to return that kiss.

Instead, he laughed to cover the disturbing desire, clapping Angelus on the shoulder, and feeling the tense musculature of his shoulder. The touch was like electricity, and as Angelus withdrew, William could sense that Angelus knew exactly what he was doing. Drusilla broke the spell with a clap of her hands.

 "Naughty! Naughty boys!" she exclaimed. "Angelus! William is MY pretty kitty...I made him. He is MY Brave Knight"

Angelus sauntered to the chaise lounge and sprawled there, like a panther.

"Ah, it's alright Dru," he said,  You can keep the pretty man, He seems to be fittin' right in."

William stood awkwardly in the centre of the room, feeling anything but comfortable. He reached up to adjust his glasses, then realised they were no longer there. His eyesight was as sharp as an eagle's, he no longer felt the need to breathe, his heart lay still and silent in his chest, but he knew that if it could, it would be beating with excitement.

Things had changed. He touched the darkness within him, and allowed it to fill the void of his absent soul. Drusilla was behind him, gliding her hands sinuously over his chest, he closed his eyes enjoying the cool feel of her touch, conscious of Angelus' eyes boring into him as Drusilla moved her hands lower to his stomach.

His eyes snapped open to confirm the image in his mind, and there it was. Angelus watching from the couch, with the bodies of the dead couple an audience in a silent play.

A delicious thrill passed through him, and William realised that the thought of Angelus watching him with Drusilla was sending tendrils of electricity through his body. He smiled a knowing smile, and with his gaze fixed resolutely on Angelus' cool expression, he gathered Drusilla to him, pulling her to the floor in a tumble of black lace and lust.
 

 ANGELUS chained IN THE BASEMENT, London, 1870.

The pain was excruciating. Angelus hung from rusted chains, as Darla washed his torso in a mixture of scented oils and holy water.

Baudelaire watched from the corner of the room like a feral wolf, his eyes gleaming yellow by the torchlight, an occasional insane babble breaking the silence of the cellar, for although the pain of what Darla was doing to him caused him to lose consciousness on more than one occasion, he refused to cry out, feeding instead on his own inner anger, blacking out until Darla woke him once more with the cruel touch of a knife twisting in his belly, or the trickle of holy water on his arm.

He knew it would be useless to beg, it would only make her hurt him harder, and he knew from experience that Darla was quite capable of prolonging agony as well as pleasure. He had watched her at work many times.

His mind wandered aimlessly, knowing, that soon, she would tire of the game when she felt he had suffered enough, then he would hurt her in return, and they would make up again. It had been that way for as long as they had been together, and Angelus knew, in his heart of hearts, that she would never kill him, not intentionally anyway.

He felt the copper taste of his own blood as she leaned in to kiss him full on his torn and bloody lips.

"Angelus, " She whispered. "Do you feel sorry for what you did yet, my sweet? Do you promise never to abandon me again?"

Angelus felt her need, he was finely tuned to respond to her after all this time. He broke the kiss, and spat to the side, clearing his mouth of the tang of blood.

"Darla, my sweet," He rasped, looking over her shoulder toward Baudelaire, "I don't trust you. I say yes, and you might make me make promises I can't be keepin', I say no, and ye might get it into that pretty head of yours to dust me here and now..." He attempted a rakish smile, and peered at her from beneath his brows.

Darla considered this. "Good answer" she said at length. She gestured toward Baudelaire who was watching them feverishly, a long silver rope of drool dripping from his chin. "Let him loose, Charles.." She commanded. Baudelaire rose from his squatting position, and reached up to unlock Angelus' chains, allowing the weakened vampire to slide to the floor.

Angelus glanced up at the wreck of a man who had released him, then grated a final comment out to Darla before losing consciousness

" Remind me never to get you really mad, Darla..."

Darla stood over him, and then tenderly bent down to brush a stray brown lock of hair away from his face.

"Never forget that, Angelus, " She whispered to his unconscious body, "And everything will be fine..."
 

London Hotel, 1880

William watched Angelus over the top of Drusilla's breasts, kissing her with gentle abandon as she squirmed beneath him, eyes closed and lost in her inner pleasure, she didn't see William's lascivious grin, as he watched Angelus for his reaction.

Angelus could still taste the corruption, fresh on this one. He watched the boy, and noted with some annoyance that Drusilla seemed to be enjoying his attentions. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and the boy, misreading his movements for acquiescence, doubled his efforts with Drusilla, who was splayed like a wanton strumpet on the Persian rug.

Angelus was fast tiring of the newly made vampire's need to please, to prove himself.

A plan was beginning to hatch in his mind, he could easily destroy this one, bait the hook, let it dangle, and then reel him in. Beneath the soulless aspect of the demon that had taken up residence in William's body, Angelus could scent a touch of gullibility, of innocence and wonder for his newly made condition, and a misguided passion for Drusilla.

He imagined that prior to being sired, the boy had probably been a virgin, and Drusilla had been his first. He almost laughed out loud at the irony. Drusilla had been much the same when he had sired her, and although the boy had already been made a vampire, there was still fun to be had, and Angelus was bored. As he watched William lavish his love on Drusilla, a plan formed clear as Waterford crystal in his mind.

Darla had left him unsatisfied and frustrated after their little "spat" He craved more. Casually, he walked over to where the vampire lovers writhed on the floor, and knelt down to whisper in William's ear. Drusilla's eyes flew open, and Angelus knew that she was perfectly aware and had been, since she had walked into the room. A rush of affection washed over him. Drusilla, his brain-addled, dotty work of art.  A masterpiece and homage to what a decent plan of torture and mind twisting could do to a human being.

"William," He whispered, his voice dripping with seduction and portent, William opened his eyes to gaze with complete trust into Angelus' black soulless orbs. His fingers gently caressed William's golden brown curls, while Drusilla smiled sweetly and trailed a hand over William's back, causing him to shiver involuntarily.

Her attention was fully focused on Angelus, now. And a secretive smile escaped her reddened mouth, bruised by lover's kisses.
Angelus' voice became like a hypnotic drug to him, and Drusilla moved in rhythm to it, the combination of sensations was intoxicating, and William nearly passed out with pleasure. Never in his life did he ever imagine anything like this would ever happen to him, and not for the first time he thanked whatever or whoever was responsible for his change in circumstance.

The ice in his veins felt like fire, as Angelus touched his hair, while Drusilla stroked the smooth muscles on his back. He was aware of being corrupted, but he didn't care. Angelus' voice was soothing, and he felt totally at ease, and sleepy. Something was happening, and he found he didn't mind one bit.

William was free.

He felt as if he was viewing the scene from above the room, as Drusilla weaved back and forth, gently lying him on his side, while Angelus continued to whisper in his seductive Irish brogue, the world fell away, and William the vampire, lover to Drusilla, felt himself falling into a deep hole, one which he knew was taking him to Hell, but strangely, he didn't seem to want to wake. The depth of his corruption was just beginning.

It felt good.

Angelus stood over the prone body of William, and held his hand out to Drusilla. She accepted his help, and rose lithely to her feet, delicately stepping over her lover's sleeping form. She kissed Angelus warmly on the mouth. "Do you like my new kitty, Daddy?" She preened, like a doting daughter, and Angelus gave her naked shoulder a squeeze. Her demeanor changed instantly.

" You can play with him, Angelus. But I warn you; he's mine to do with as I wish. Miss Edith will not be happy if he is badly hurt. We have plans for this one..."

With that, she gathered her clothing, and flounced coquettishly from the room, calling over her shoulder, as she left Angelus, "Remember, my Sweet...He's MINE"

Angelus smiled to himself. He wouldn't forget. How could he? It was Miss Edith who had led him to this moment. It was Darla's torture of him three years before that had given him insights into himself that he had never envisioned before. The newfound knowledge was intoxicating.

At his feet, the still form of William stirred, a crease forming on his brow. "No, Drusilla." He thought, "I won't hurt him. He won't even remember I was here...not for a long time..."

The room suddenly became cold and chill, as if the warmth had been stolen from the day.
 

Sunnydale, Angel's mansion, 2002

Angel stood warily, taking in the sight of Darla as she stepped neatly into the room, one white hand carefully smoothing the folds of her gown. She sashayed toward him, drinking in his form like a hungry cat.

"Hello, Lover.." She murmured as she leaned up to kiss him on his mouth, her soft lips brushing his with a familiarity he remembered well.

Angel gently held her away to look at her. She was dressed in a powder blue silk crinoline, trimmed with Brussels lace, a pearl choker clasped at her slender white throat, their lustre matching the glow of her perfect skin.

He remembered the gown, it was a particular favorite of his, it matched the icy blue of her eyes, it was a vision from another time or place...He shook his head and looked at her again with a feeling of dread forming in his heart.

"Are you real?" He whispered as much to himself as to her. She laughed, a -coquettish, sweet bell like laugh that flooded his memory with images of her from other times and places, and all of a sudden his soul was filled with dread. This was Darla, his beautiful, and deadly sire, not the Darla of this century, but of a century long past.

She pouted as he struggled with a myriad of emotions.

"You don't remember all of it yet, my love.." She began by way of explanation,  "But soon you will. The spell was cast a long time ago, and time is beginning to unravel. Soon it will be as if the past century had never happened at all. Everything will be as it was...Well, almost."

She smiled again, a frozen smile that revealed the evil nature that lurked within.

Angel finally found his voice.  "Darla what did you do?" His tone was low, menacing, and for a moment Darla was afraid, remembering how she had tortured him so many years ago...No, yesterday, one hundred and thirty two years, yesterday.

She lifted her chin. "I'm not sure I like your tone, Angelus.." she began in an attempt to regain the upper hand. "I have come to rescue you from a dreary future. Change your destiny. Charles Baudelaire provided the means, and Drusilla provided the vision. We can be a family again. Don't you see? You will never betray me again, you will always be mine, and we can all bathe in the blood of the innocent again. It will be the four of us. As it should be. Wait until you meet Spike!"

She paused for a moment, seeing the look on Angel's horrified face, he was mentally turning over the events of the past in his mind. The dark curtain was lifting from the recesses of his brain. The spell! Yes! He remembered, and Angelus had agreed to it! He remembered the fire in his veins as he drank the contents of a crystal goblet, the blood of a Farund demon, a powerful memory suppressant that locked his experience away.

He looked at Darla as his mind screamed. The word to break the spell left her lips...

"RESTORATION".

 He gazed about him in awe as the fabric of time slipped away, and he found himself transported to another place and time. Darla's laughter echoed in his mind.

When he opened his eyes, he realised with perfect clarity where he was. The Hotel London, in 1880. The form that lay at his feet confirmed his suspicions.

"Spike" he growled with barely concealed hatred.
 

LONDON HOTEL, 1880

Angel carefully looked around at his surroundings. He remembered this place, and now, he was back. There was Spike. He remembered the wicked things Angelus had subjected the newly made vampire to. His stomach churned at the thought of it.  The boy lay sprawled naked on the rug in front of him, vulnerable, hypnotised by a trick Drusilla had taught him, as Angelus. The memories in his head were jumbled images, but they were returning, slowly.

Darla and Baudelaire's spell, Darla's revenge, Drusilla's compliance.

Oh, God. He remembered everything that he had done to the unconscious boy laying at his feet. Angelus, that sick, perverted bastard. The air was heavy with the smell of blood, musk oil and semen, and nearby William's body laid the instruments of his violation. Angelus had been thorough, he remembered, hypnotizing the boy into limp compliance, as he lowered himself to make suggestions, whispered perversions in the boy's shell like ear.  He had pinned his hands with his own, not that there had been much of a struggle.

 William was already aroused by Dru's attentions, his eyes were squeezed shut, he was completely compliant, malleable, and open to suggestion. Angelus had placed a large and oily bottle within arms reach it smelled lightly of musk.

 'God', Angel thought, 'I remember this'

He felt his own penis strain against the tight fabric of his black pants in memory.

A policeman's truncheon lay at William's side, slick with a mixture of oil, semen and blood.

 'Oh God, yes.'

 Angel remembered it all. Spike moaned at his feet, and Angel realised his cock was hard, pressing above the waistband of his pants, straining to free itself, as he gazed at Spike's prostrate form, his naked and muscular legs splayed wide.

 'Angelus did this.' He thought. 'No wonder Spike hated me so much.'

It wasn't just Dru, it was William.

The images of Angelus' fingers, slippery with oil as he teased into the dark, puckered hole of the virgin boy beneath him sent involuntary shivers down Angel's spine.

'Oh God.' He remembered that.

 The boy was so tight. Then, violating his unconscious body with the London Bobby's police truncheon, viciously ramming it all the way in, watching William buck, and scream involuntarily, his face a rictus of fear, a nightmare from which he could never awake. The trance had been deep. Drusilla clapping her hands in giddy delight, whispering a litany over and over.

'Teach our naughty boy a lesson, Daddy. Teach him. Teach him...'

Angel knelt down next to William, stroking his hair, feeling the weight of his remorse and arousal battling within his soul for dominance. The blood was slick on William's thighs.

 Angelus had lowered himself over that beautiful, young body, and thrust his huge cock into the gaping hole he had made. The boy had whimpered, Pain or pleasure? As Angelus had wrapped his arms around his hips, and lifted him, thrusting deeper into the recesses of his body. Then, he had reached around, grasping the boy's penis in his hand, milking him in rhythm to his violation, until William moaned, spilling cold seed into his hand.

Angel felt remorse then, but with it, came the hatred, borne out of a century of habit. His erection softened, and he looked down at William without pity. He remembered what had happened then. William had woken, eyes still firmly shut, a little perplexed at finding himself on intimate terms with the wool rug. Angel watched warily as William stirred, grimacing painfully as he climbed unsteadily to his feet.

He had Angelus' memories.

 With a shock, Angel realised that Drusilla had orchestrated this moment, the siring of William, his arrival in this place and time, the maneuvering of her vampire family like pieces on a chessboard. It all fit. Angel looked down at Spike, the familiar contempt returning as he looked at his barely conscious form. Then he remembered the vampire children, the faerie realm where time stood still, and then, finally, the evil fixed grin of Drusilla's wicked porcelain doll, Miss Edith. Deep in the recesses of his subconscious he felt the demon within him laugh. Angelus knew it all.

Angelus! Angel thought. Where the Hell was Angelus? The question hung with portent in the quiet room. Angel knelt on the carpet beside Spike. With awful clarity he knew exactly where Angelus was. They had switched places. Angelus was in Sunnydale with Darla.

It was likely Drusilla had joined them.

As he looked down at William's barely conscious form, it crossed his mind that he could kill him. Stake him here and now, and save thousands of innocent lives that were yet to draw breath. It was a sobering thought, one not to be considered lightly. As he thought it, he reached for a stake he always carried about his person, gripping it tightly in his fist and holding it above Spike's heart.

 At that moment, Spike's eyelids fluttered and his eyes opened, and Angel found him-self looking into the wide, trusting eyes of William the Bloody Awful poet, newly made vampire, scrambling to his feet, wincing with pain.

His hand wavered, and William eyed him blearily for a moment, and seizing his chance, stepped back from Angel, stumbling in his haste to put distance between them.

"What the bloody Hell do you think you're doing" William cried out indignantly as he looked around, grabbing his clothes from various far-flung corners of the room.

Angel began quietly, lowering the stake grasped firmly in his hand.

"Spike, I..."

"Spike?!"  Yelled William, his British accent clipped and precise

" My name is William! "

He was obviously not comfortable with the situation, and was edging warily toward the door, looking wildly about him.

"Where is Drusilla?" It was one thing to have the big hulking vampire watch him with Drusilla, quite another to be trapped in a room alone with the fiend.

Angel began to speak, but thought better of it, realising that his American accent might confuse Spike further, he looked down at himself, and realised that he was dressed in a tight black sweater and pants, strange attire for the 1800's.

William was looking at him warily as he dressed himself in the corner of the room, and Angel could virtually see his thought processes going into overdrive. It was confusing enough being made into a creature of the night without all the added confusion of a time traveler who may or may not be a bloody poof hovering over your naked body with a stake balanced in one meaty fist.

Angel almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the situation, but then he realised something himself, if he was ever to get out of this predicament he would have to enlist Spike's help. And with William in the corner of the room looking as if he was a rabbit caught in the headlights, he realised that a softly, softly approach was required. Putting what he hoped was an amiable smile on his face, Angel held out his hand to the flustered fledgling vampire.

"William, " He began. "You may want to sit down for what I'm about to tell you...Nothing is as it appears to be.."

His tone was low, soothing and hypnotic.

 It's all coming back to me now, Angel thought.

William narrowed his eyes.

 What is the bloody poof playing at? Where is Drusilla?

"I don't know what you are playing at, Angelus, but it doesn't amuse.."

William looked down at himself, and saw the blood. A crease furrowed his brow.

What the bloody Hell happened to me?

But he was listening, Angel noted with some relief.

"First things first." Angel began.

 "I'm not Angelus. Angelus is in the future. William, You have to help, or your future as well as mine might be in danger.." He paused.

Well, so far, so good.

William walked over to the couch where the dead couple was seated, their eyes staring into nothing. He eyed Angel warily. His shirt was still unbuttoned as were the flies of his trousers, and he self-consciously began to button both garments as he felt Angel's steady gaze on him.

Angelus' strange accent, attire and manner had thrown him somewhat. He sensed something different about him, but the future story? It sounded like something from a book he had heard tell of, by Mr. Jules Verne.

But then again, what had happened to him in the last few days was something he would not have believed could happen until it did. He finished dressing, pulling his suspenders over his shoulders and snapping them into place with a deft hand, then he stood, and walked over to where Angel stood, placing one hand on his shoulder and pinning him with an icy blue stare. Making a decision.

"Alright, Whoever you are...You're from the future. My future is in danger too, you say? Then I'll help. But first things first. You can't go about dressed in your under things like that. It's positively indecent. And your hair? It looks as if you have had a fright! Angelus' rooms are there, " William gestured  "Find yourself a decent suit, and fix yourself, or you will scare away the ladies. I'm hungry. It's almost dark. We can talk while we hunt.  I'll meet you in the lobby."

His words were decisive, but Angel felt the tremble in his voice. William was unsure. He had no idea what had happened to him, but he wasn't letting on. Maybe he thought Angelus was playing a trick on him. The blood on his body was confusing, and the unfamiliar feel of a freshly cored arse must have his internal imaginings warping into overdrive.

Angel couldn't resist a dig at William as he turned to leave.  "I wouldn't be too hasty with the denigrating remarks about my hair and clothing William, " He growled.

William stopped and looked at him quizzically. Angel couldn't resist.

" In the future, you dye your hair white and wear a pin in your eyebrow.."

William snorted, the tension broken.

 "That's the most preposterous fabrication I have ever heard" He stated pompously. "Why would I ever dye my hair?"

And with that he was gone, leaving Angel to find some 'decent' clothing. The prospect of hunting with Spike again in this century sent a chill of anticipation down his spine, which he quickly smothered.

 'There will have to be a way around it. ' He thought. 'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.'

He couldn't let Spike know about his soul. In fact, he would have to be very careful about how much he let Spike know from now on.
 

 Sunnydale, Spike's Crypt. 2002

Spike looked at the mess of ruby red elixir seeping through the cracks of the cold stone flags of the crypt floor. For a moment he was tempted to get down on his hands and knees like a dog to lick the congealing mass, he was so hungry, then he noticed with relief that two bags remained intact.

He cursed himself for his hunger, and then grabbed the bags ripping into one with his teeth. The sweet coppery tang of the blood caressed his tongue and he drank the two bags in quick succession, his features shifting involuntarily into those of a vampire.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, feeling his strength return as the magic juice did it's job, sustaining him, feeding more than his hunger.

 God! What he wouldn't give for a decent drop of human blood!

Trickles of red coursed down his chest, like tears he thought randomly. A movement combined with her whisper caught his attention. Drusilla was by his side, her hands on his chest, tracking the rivulets of blood and licking one slender finger.

She made a face and spat...."Ugh! Animal blood!" she glared at him accusingly.  "What is this, Willie?..."

He opened his mouth to speak, then realised he couldn't. Not this time. Not again. He moved over to his familiar chair, and flopped back wearily into it. The exhaustion and resignation was evident in every sinew of his body, as Drusilla knelt at his feet, trying to fathom his mood by intently staring into his eyes. He closed them, his long black lashes like a smudge of charcoal on his white cheeks.

"You've got a chip...Sweet Willie" Drusilla announced in her clipped British accent. Spike's eyes flew open at the words.

'No!' he screamed inwardly,  'Not again! Please God, not again!'

Drusilla cupped her hands around his face, and forced him to look at her. The words sent a chill down his spine.

'Bits of plastic, sending out nasty blue shocks' she announced, smiling as she bent his head forward to kiss him, gently, on his temple. He allowed the caress as his arms reached up for her. He kept his eyes squeezed shut.

"You're a bad dog William, always will be," she continued, her kisses becoming deeper, more insistent as she licked her lips to wet them, and started teasing his soft mouth by sucking his bottom lip gently before releasing it and then regarding him coolly. "It's alright, Pretty Spoike, " she whispered, "Drusilla's here to make it all right again".

"Oh, God!" Spike exclaimed

He returned her kisses with a passion borne of grief, of loss, of pent up desire never returned, or wanted. Buffy had thrown his love back at him as if it were a useless bit of filth she might step on in the street. In the arms of his old lover, he might find peace, this time.

What else was there to do?

 Drusilla gasped with pleasure at his sudden arousal, as he pinned her arms above her on the floor of the crypt. He didn't even notice that she repeated the words of some long forgotten dream.

"And there you are, my darling, deadly boy..."
 

 Revello Drive, Sunnydale, 2000, Night.

Xander was perched on the arm of the large couch under the window, as Anya stood primly behind him, her arms crossed over her chest. Giles stood by the door. It felt like old times. A full meeting of the Scoobs, bar one.

"So," Xander began, " Let me get this straight." He paused, sucking in his bottom lip, and gesturing expansively before he spoke. "You're sure Drusilla has returned to Sunnydale, AGAIN, and she's teamed up with Spike."

Dawn expressed an exasperated "No!" and appealed to Willow to explain to Xander what actually was going on. Dawn loved Xander, but man oh man he could be so obtuse sometimes. Giles moved over to the settee and sat down next to Xander, quietly observant.

Willow exchanged a look with Dawn, and with her hands intertwined sweetly with Tara's, began to relate the circumstances of Drusilla's sudden appearance in Sunnydale. She locked eyes with Tara for a moment before speaking.

"Tara and I were doing a spell..." she began, and off Tara's sweet smile and encouraging nod, she continued. "It was a...a. soothing spell, one to help us get through the grief process a little easier..."

Xander stared at her intently, waiting for her to finish, then impatiently, he splayed his hands wide in an open palmed gesture, before clapping them together and leaning forward.

"And...?" The tone was accusatory. Anya put a hand on his shoulder in solidarity, prepared to be angry on behalf of her man. Willow couldn't meet their eyes, and lowered her gaze to finish.

"I was trying to help...When I saw Angel in Los Angeles.." She faltered, her voice catching. Tara kissed the top of her head. "Well, lets just say, it was bad. We have all been feeling it. The spell was designed to help make the hurt go by faster..."

"Oh, Willow.." Giles ventured, then thought better of it, and carefully removed his glasses, polishing them with a white handkerchief he always kept about his person.

Xander stood up suddenly and crossed the room in two short steps; he hugged Willow tightly against his chest as the tears spilled on to his T-shirt. Her voice was tiny, muffled and defeated.

"I messed up. Xander. Again. My 'I will it so' spell? That was nothing compared to this. I was so sad. The Buffybot is nearly ready to take over, but looking at it every day, working on it.... I..I.. should never work magik when I'm emotional.."

The last word came out a strangled sob.

"Well." added Anya helpfully. "PMS does that to all of us. But you don't see me conjuring an evil vampire witch to Sunnydale to help ME forget what I am upset about.."

Xander shot Anya a reproving look. "What?" She mouthed.

Dawn smiled. Anya was a pain, but she had a way of breaking heavy tension in the air.

Willow smiled through her tears, and wiped her eyes.

"It's OK." she said, "Anya's right. I made a big booboo. But I think I can fix this. Somehow, when I was conjuring the healing spell, something or someone latched onto my magik and used it as a conduit to get into this dimension. I had a vision of Drusilla at the time, but I thought it was just my mind playing tricks.."

Off their puzzled looks she added quickly...  " Well, I have nightmares, I thought she was residual from the dream I had the night before."

Giles suddenly snapped to attention."Dream? What sort of dream?"

Willow's voice became small as she repeated the dream to them all.

"Oh, dear Lord" Giles muttered. "Angelus, Darla, and Drusilla? Why didn't you say something before?"

Willow's eyes were clouded with misery as she spoke.  "I thought it was just, you know, a bad dream. It wasn't until I did the spell and saw Drusilla appear in the Sunnydale Mall, that I thought maybe something ookie was going on.."

 Xander hugged her again. "It's OK, it's not your fault"

"I sent Dawn to warn Spike, just in case..." Willow faltered and Dawn quickly added,

"It's alright, everyone." She said, off their alarmed looks, "I wanted to go see him anyway. I was worried about him."

Xander let a disgusted noise leave his mouth. Giles silenced him with a reproving glare.

"So, Drusilla, Darla and Angelus all could be roaming Sunnydale as we speak" Giles said finally.

Dawn nodded. "I think Drusilla was at Spike's earlier. He told me to come straight home, that I'd be safe here.. But guys, I don't think Spike knows what he's doing at the moment. He looked kinda scary when I saw him today.."

Willow looked alarmed. "William the Bloody type scary?"

"No" said Dawn quietly. "He was grieving, really, really grieving. I don't think he's eaten in months.  I told him about Drusilla, and that we might need his help. He seemed kinda out of it. I got him some blood at the Butchers. When I came back, he was really agitated. Totally changed. Practically threw me out of his crypt. I think Drusilla was there. ...Clifts notes version" She added lamely, by way of explanation.

Giles added quietly,  "I don't think we can count on Spike's help, this time. Buffy is gone. He has no reason to help us any more."

Now it was Dawn's turn to get angry.  "How can you say that? After everything he has done for us! For ME!" Her voice practically screamed.  "Spike is the strongest warrior we have..." She was painfully aware that she sounded a lot like Buffy at this moment, and she could see by their eyes that they were thinking the same thing as well. Then she added quietly,  "We have to help him. I think it's the right thing to do. And, " She added, knowing that this was the clincher,   "I think Buffy would have wanted us to."

Anya broke the awkward silence that followed.

"What do you suggest?" She ventured.

Now, it was Willow's turn to speak.  "I think it's time Buffybot was on line" She said quietly.

"Are you sure she's ready?" Giles spoke the words, but the question hung in the air above them all.

"We'll never know, if we don't try" Willow answered reasonably. She stood up, and moved toward the basement. In a tiny voice she added, "I hope this works.."

"Well if it doesn't, " said Xander as he and the others moved to follow her,   "We can always try to raise the dead.."

It was a lame joke, he knew, but the tiny smile he saw playing at the corner of Willow's mouth sent a shiver down his spine.

The pieces on the chessboard were moving into position.
 

 ANGEL'S MANSION, 2002.

Darla's senses were reeling. The blinding light, the tug of the future, the rush through space and time had left her exhilarated. Baudelaire's secret family business had performed its wonderful magik, and she felt like the Rubiayat, who had, "Caught the Sultan's turret in a noose of light".

Darla hugged herself with a shiver of joy and waited patiently as the vibrations of the room dissipated; a ripple effect left over from Angel's sudden disappearance from this dimension. She crossed over to the fireplace, and seated herself daintily, spreading her skirts about herself in a flurry of watered silk. A smile played on her flawless features, preserved like a rose under glass. She reached down, and plucked an imaginary speck of dust from her gown, and waited, a pretty ornament, for Angelus.

Drusilla had foreseen a vision of this future, she had seen "scraps of a distant dream", in which Angelus was in Sunnydale, and she had said that he had to return to the past.

"To learn a lesson from William."

 It had all been planned months ago. William. Who would have thought the boy would prove useful? Drusilla's vision of the future had William as a "Big Bad".

Darla found it difficult to believe, but Drusilla's visions were never wrong. If she saw it, it was so. In truth, she could hardly wait to meet up again with the Angelus of her own time; he would be contrite, malleable.

 Especially after the lesson I have just given him.

 The smile on her mouth twisted. It was exactly as she had planned it. The night was upon this strange town, and the dark spoke of wicked promise. Darla wasn't sure how, but she sensed that Drusilla was here in this time as well, an invisible thread connected them somehow.

She sniffed the still air. William. He was also here, his future self. Darla could almost taste him. The bloodline of Aurelius was strong. It called to her. The four vampires had a tenuous link to one another, it wasn't just blood. Baudelaire's family secret had also loaned a hand.

"Soon," She thought, "Angelus will join us here".

 It had been Drusilla's idea to send Angelus back in time to the newly made William. She had argued convincingly that William might benefit by the experience of a 240 year old vampire, and besides, she had sensed that William was still alive in 2002, and she was dying to see what he had made of himself.

 Darla had agreed, mainly because she was afraid that the Angelus of the future might not be too kindly disposed to her, maybe after one hundred odd years he might have moved on to someone else, and Darla couldn't bear that. Better to bring Angelus with her from the past. Darla hated to be surprised, Angelus on the other hand, loved surprises.

 Suddenly, she was roused from her private thoughts, as a light crackled to life, twisting and expanding throwing fingers of lightning into the room. Darla's hands fluttered to her white throat like two doves. A sphere of light appeared. Within it, a dark shape pulsed, menacing, opaque. Angelus! AND he's half dressed! Darla noted with some consternation.

 He is naked to the waist his hair is tousled.

Darla sniffed delicately. He smelled of blood and other earthy fragrances. Sex. Darla allowed a small crease to form in her brow. What possible activity had her lover been engaged in to render him in such a disheveled state?

She pushed the thought away as he crossed the floor with one giant step to gather her in his arms and crush her doubts with a hard kiss, lifting her high in the air with his muscular arms and pushing her against the solid masonry wall behind. She pushed these thoughts to one side as she bathed in the joy of being reunited with her mate.

"It worked my love..." She murmured breathlessly into his neck as she bit him hard with her blunt human teeth. In return, he grasped her shoulders, holding her away from him as a trickle of blood oozed down his throat.

"Nothing like a trip through time and space to get a man's blood pumpin'...so to speak.." He added as an afterthought.

She grasped his face firmly in her delicate hand.

"Angelus..?" she said, her voice low and dangerous with a hint of venom behind the honey, "Where and HOW did you leave William?"

Angelus smiled, the look of a naughty schoolboy with his hand caught in the cookie jar. He wiped his fingers across his mouth, where the burn of her kiss still lingered, searing him, like a brand. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. Darla waited patiently, resisting an urge to tap her foot.

"William..." Angelus rolled the name over his tongue, savouring it with his soft Irish burr. "I left him asleep, in the Hotel London, But he wasn't in any condition to travel through time, or across the room for that matter..." He laughed softly at his private joke.

 Darla's eyes flashed, "You are a FOOL!" She spat, slapping him across the face with an angry open hand.

"You had your fun, but the Spike of THIS time will remember what you did. The spell depends on the magiks being uncontaminated ... Your foolishness may cost us in this time!" She stopped her tirade, noting Angelus' confused countenance.

"Spike?" He began.

Darla waved him aside impatiently. "He names himself Spike shortly after Drusilla sired him in 1880.." She explained quickly. Angelus nodded approvingly.  "A better name than William, any road. It just didn't strike the right note of terror." He licked his lips, tasting blood in his mouth from the blow across his cheek.

Will you remember what we did in this time, Will? God. I. hope. so.

He smiled inwardly at the memory of William lying helpless on the Persian rug of another place and time. Did he still remember? He had been hypnotised at the time, the destruction of happiness and sanity was Angelus' specialty. He hoped that 'Spike' had become a monster; he hoped that every vestige of hope had been stripped away. Darla had her games, of that he was well aware. Well, he had his, and it was time she learned a lesson about who he really was. Angelus was nobody's fool.

Darla walked toward him, her pale arms outstretched and he pulled her to him, kissing her soft mouth roughly, then pushing her against the wall.

"I'm nobody's fool, Darla," He whispered into the silken gold of her hair, and she gasped as he pressed her painfully against the rough stone. His voice held menace, tinged with desire.

"Don't you forget it, my love..."

Then he reminded Darla who he really was.
 

SPIKE'S Crypt, Sunnydale, 2002.

Time is like a ribbon. It has two sides; it twists in the howling wind of past and future. Everything, everyone, has a tenuous link to the past, and to the future, it reaches out and grabs us, squeezing the moment, fraying in parts. But no matter how intangible the link, it remains. Memory. Fractured mirror images of our lives, deaths, births. The people we touch, and who touch us.

Spike felt the link of his very existence as he lay with Drusilla. His past, his present, and his future lay entwined in he long clean limbs, within her, without her, breathing her in. Her scent surrounded him, rich and dark. A memory of depths sunk to, and of heights achieved.

He felt his very essence unraveling. The past was reaching out for him, and as he touched the familiar planes of her alabaster body, he felt the locked and forbidden doors to his mind opening, revealing, disclosing, and confronting him with the truth of who, and what he really was. It had all led him to this moment, this time, this place. Spike had never been one for self-introspection, he tended to close his mind to the finer instincts he knew deep down, he possessed. William was dead.

 Angelus had seen to that.

Drusilla stirred at his side, purring like a small kitten, her eyes closed, her mouth seeking his, exploring its depths. He responded to her. Habit. He had always been her dog on a leash. He felt joy and despair simultaneously. He wanted to forget the past, but to lose it would mean losing himself. He felt empty inside, the thrill of the hunt, of being a vampire, of crushing a life with its endless possibilities no longer seemed reason enough to go on. So he was reduced to this.

 A plaything for an insane woman who would want him only as long as he played by her twisted sense of 'the rules'.

Would he change this existence for a moment's peace in the cool Earth? He longed for death, the finality of it. To lie rotting in the ground, long dead, his soul soaring in heaven? The man within him craved it. William wanted release. Spike silently cursed the man he had been for his weaknesses, but at the same time he exhilarated in them.

 Drusilla's attentions became more urgent, She knew of his weaknesses, his strengths, and she knew how to manipulate them. Spike knew this, and knowing it, he found he didn't care. Drusilla's mouth was on his own, she was kindred. He was home. Her heart was black, and she was fickle, but William had loved her, once. Now, as Spike poured him self into her, all rational thought left his mind, and all he could feel was sensation, sight, smell, touch, taste and sound.

A whisper of the past tugged at the corners of his mind, a low laugh, masculine and cruel, and he felt himself transported back in time by the unraveling ribbon of his memory, and suddenly, he felt as if he was there, a decadent chintzy room in The Hotel London, it was 1880, and he was William again, newly made, his soul freshly ripped from its precious place within his conscience.

Drusilla was moving beneath him, emitting little sounds of pleasure. Deja Vu. He flicked his eyes over her, tasting her skin, ripe plums and Earth. Her body was liquid quicksilver in his hands, velvet and secretive. He wanted to devour her, taste blood from the silver chalice of her neck, loose himself in her dark embrace forever.

Drusilla wrapped her long legs about the small of his back, pulling him closer within her, and he buried himself within her depths. "Buffy!" he thought, as he cleaved to Drusilla's length. His movements became rougher, less fluid, more desperate. He reached around to her back and pulled her closer, tears streaming down his face. He felt his features shift his teeth lengthen. The ridges of his brow expanded, as he became the demon, savagely biting her exposed neck, feeling the nectar of her blood washing over his tongue.

Unable to contain his voice, he screamed her name into her shoulder as he rose up in one final and desperate thrust, emptying his essence, his grief and anguish into the blessed and black abyss of the past.

 As he lay spent and sobbing into Drusilla's gentle caresses, her kisses feathering his face, he remembered a similar time when she had soothed him just this way.  "Forget, My sweet William.." She crooned as his features smoothed back to human once more. Only this time, it wasn't what Angelus had done to him that he needed to forget.

 Buffy. He was nothing without her. He laid his head on Drusilla's breast and allowed her to stroke his forehead gently.

"Shhhh..." She soothed.   "Let Mummy make it all better again."

He closed his eyes and let out a long shuddering sigh.

"Well, well.." Said Angelus. "This looks a bit familiar.."

At the sound, Spike disentangled himself from Drusilla's embrace, leaping quickly to his feet, his body tensed to fight, his thoughts reeling and confused.

The sight that greeted him almost snapped his tortured mind in two, he tensed his muscles and launched himself toward the two figures silhouetted against the moonlight.

 Darla and Angelus!

 Without thinking, and with bone-crunching fury, Spike launched himself against the man who had made him a monster. He collapsed in pain as his ribs were snapped brutally on the right side of his chest, Angelus brandished a club, beating him across the darkened crypt as if Spike was little more than a child.

Through a red film of pain, Spike lay gasping, exhausted. His last reserve of energy lost in that leap of fury. Drusilla rushed to his side, her raven hair flowing over his bruised chest as she knelt protectively over him.

Angelus ambled over to Spike, and Darla followed, her nose wrinkling at the filthy floor, as she lifted her skirt away from Spike's outstretched foot, as if touching him might contaminate her. Spike lifted his head painfully, and stared hatefully into the amused face of his tormentor.

Angelus chuckled, as he lowered himself to speak softly to Spike.

"Well, now Willie. It seems that every time we meet, you are playing with something that isn't yours. Have you not learned your lesson?"

His black-hearted gaze was met with defiance by Spike's ice blue stare. Drusilla cradled Spike's head protectively against her naked breast, the blood from the wound to her neck trickled through his hair, leaving a crimson path in its wake.

Angelus flicked his gaze over their naked bodies.

"Well, now. " He drawled, "This is familiar...Drusilla, don't you leave about now?" His eyes sought Spike's again, but if he was looking for fear there, he didn't find it.

Hatred yes.

He could feel that coming off the boy in waves.

A 'battle of wills', then. Angelus smiled a lopsided grin, indicating Drusilla with his head.

"It's good to see you still have the good sense, Willie my boy, to know when NOT to move."

 He waited for his words to have the desired effect. Behind him, Darla hissed a warning. Angelus simply smiled, barely acknowledging her. This was between him and William.

He had to know.

The silence hung on the air like thick molasses, as Spike tried to form coherent thought in his tired brain. The images came then, unbidden, unwanted. He broke his gaze from Angelus, and closed his eyes, the charcoal blackness of his lashes stark on the pale sweep of his cheeks.

Images of torture flashed into his head, snatches of another time, a locked door to his subconscious opened. He tried to shut it. But the light crept from under it, spilling onto the floor. In the distance, he thought he could hear Drusilla humming, a low, tuneless song. Snatches of another time invaded his thoughts. Of floating, of being held down of fear, and hurt, and pain, of helplessness...one face featured above all others.

 Angelus!

The image smiled, a cruel, thin smile, and Spike could see the club, slick with blood, his blood. All at once, he remembered what he had tried so hard to forget. Finally, he found his voice, as his eyes flicked open to look into the face of his torturer.

"You. Bloody. Poof!" He annunciated carefully, each word between gritted teeth,  "If you want another go, you're sadly mistaken." He snarled, roughly removing Drusilla's arms from him, he made an effort to stand, leaning against the wall, his ribs grating painfully in his chest.

He glared defiantly at Angelus, face to face.  "Touch me that way again, and I'll kill you." His voice lowered to a menacing growl as the words 'kill you' left his bruised lips.

Behind Angelus, Darla screamed, a flurry of very un-lady-like expletives escaping her pretty lips. Drusilla began giggling insanely, her hands flying to her mouth to suppress a titter that began low in her belly. Spike glared at her, and she stopped, suppressing her smile of amusement behind her thin fingers. Painfully, Spike climbed to his feet, ribs grating brokenly in his chest, an air of dignity clinging to him, well as much dignity as a naked man could muster. Until he winced painfully as his head began to swim with the effort and confusion of the last few hours and months.

With a yell of pure fury, Darla launched herself at Angelus and began beating him about the head with her fists.

"You stupid idiot!" She screamed." You have ruined it all!" The last thing Spike heard as he slipped into unconsciousness was Darla nagging Angelus like a fishwife.

He smiled before he passed out.
 

 SUNNYDALE, Revello DRIVE, later that night.

The basement was kind of crowded as Willow walked over to the shrouded figure leaning stiffly against the wall. She swallowed nervously, glancing around at the hushed expectant gathering of her friends.

"Well," she murmured under her breath, "Here goes nothing".

With a flourish she removed the sheet, then spoke softly to the mechanical miracle before her. Her voice was the trigger that would activate the robot.

"Buffybot!" she said in a clear but shaky voice, "I command you. WAKE!"

Nothing.

Willow shrugged her shoulders, and then smiled hopefully at the life-size inanimate doll.  "Please?"

Giles stepped forward and touched Willow's shoulder reassuringly. She looked at him.  "I don't understand, Giles." She said in a small voice, "I did everything right, I know I did!" A small frown creased her brow.

"Willow" Giles said softly, "You did your best. We will have to think of another way."

Willow stared at him, her eyes filling with tears. The others looked on, uncomfortable in the presence of Buffy's graven image. Spike's Sex-bot.

Giles enfolded Willow in his arms.  "It's OK." He murmured into her hair.

"BIP!"

"Hey!" said Xander, "Is it me or did the robot burp?" He was grinning widely.

Willow turned away from Giles to see for herself.

"Hello, Willow, Dawn, Xander, Anya, Tara, and Giles." Buffy-bot announced cheerily.  "I did not burp. Where is Spike? I love him and miss him." She smiled, looking at them all expectantly.

Willow smiled back, and then turning to the others, she explained,  "There are a few kinks I have to iron out in her programming, but I have rerouted most of it, so that she will obey me, primarily...but, um, she still has some residual um...Spike obsession I have to get rid of."

As if on cue, Buffy-bot announced:  "Spike is an animal in the sack. He's a bloody marvel!"

Giles cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner, the others all avoided eye contact.

Anya broke the silence.  "I like her." she pronounced. "She has a certain directness I admire."

Willow smiled.  "Like I said. Kinks."

"Um, well," said Giles as he wiped his glasses for the millionth time that day,  " As long as she can fool the resident population into believing The Slayer is still very much alive, she may not have to talk too much, after all," he finished,  "Actions speak louder than words."

Willow nodded.  "Oh, she can fight, and she's extra strong, and virtually unbreakable.."

Dawn eyed the robot. Her face was guarded.

" She won't replace Buffy." she said quietly. Tara's look was pained as she gently took Dawn's hand in her own.

"Of course not, sweetie" she reassured her,

"But we need to think of this as an interim plan while we think of something more permanent."

Xander's lips were pressed tightly together, he nodded stiffly at Dawn, and Tara took the hint to guide her gently from the basement. A lone tear escaped her eye and dripped forlornly down her cheek, but she followed Tara meekly up the stairs.

Giles waited for the door to close completely before he spoke.  "I think you all know how important this is." He began.  "Willow, I think you need to take Buffy-bot out patrolling tonight. Take the others with you." As an afterthought, he added,  "Drop by Spike's crypt. We need to know what he is up to. Can Buffy-bot be trusted around him do you think?"

Buffy-bot chimed in with:  "Spike is evil. He's a vampire!"

Willow gave an exasperated sigh.  "A few minor tuning issues still, " She said, "But I will try my best to sort them out before we go. It won't take long."

Giles nodded, trusting her judgment.  "Fine, " he said. "We can't afford any slipups tonight, I'm afraid."

In answer, Buffy-bot smiled brightly and nodded emphatically.

Anya reached out and patted it on the head.  "Good robot. No getting us killed tonight, OK?"

Xander smiled at his love affectionately.  "Took the words right out of my mouth." he joked.

But no one laughed.
 

LONDON, 1880, The Hotel, then a dark alleyway.....

Angel stole a sideways glance at the young vampire walking warily at his side, sensing confusion coming from him in very palpable waves.

He had forgotten how very new Spike had once been, how very eager to please. So unlike himself, he had known exactly what he had wanted from the moment he himself had been sired, William had only wanted some form of acceptance. He knew that now.

Angel remembered everything, in minute detail surrounding the events of the London Hotel. He thanked the 'Powers that Be' that for the time being, William didn't. The hypnotic spell had made him forget.

Angelus, in 1880 had sensed a corruptible innocence within the boy, as yet untouched by Drusilla. Despite the fact that his soul from his body had been, 'untimely ripped', to misquote Shakespeare, Angelus had sought to exploit that fact to his advantage, and the vision of that fateful day was still clear in Angel's mind, together with every other horrible and merciless deed he had ever committed, thanks in no small way to the encumbrance of the Romany curse.

The words still echoed in his mind..

"I've often wondered what it would be like, to explore the destruction of innocence, with another man..." He had growled seductively, his cold eyes boring into William's suspicious blue ones, his smile widening as William registered with a small measure of shock what Angelus had just implied.

"You don't think that makes me some kind of deviant, do ya?"

Angelus was a predator, through and through; He had smelled the excitement, the subtle change in William's chemistry, felt his awe, as he made the lewd and thinly veiled suggestion to the virgin boy. A willingness to please. Angelus had exploited and broken that trust. Taught the boy a lesson in evil. A lesson that he alone remembered.

 For the present.

William walked semi casually at his side now, unaware of the violation, the cruel twisting of his will. Angelus had meant to use it against him, one day. The soul had intervened.

 'But it wasn't me.' Angel thought. 'It was Angelus.'

But deep down, He knew. He WAS Angelus.

 William was watching him now. He could sense the confusion.

 Of all the horrible things he had done, Angel had never seriously counted Spike as one of them.

 'Why?' he mused.  'Why do I feel guilt for Darla and Drusilla, and not Spike?'

The question was new to him. He had never considered it before, but looking at the young man at his side, he felt a wave of sadness. Before he had been sired, a few short days ago, the boy had been a true innocent.

William had bathed before they had left the London Hotel, with a soapy cloth; he had washed the confusing scents of Drusilla and Angelus from his body. He had gingerly caressed the unexplained bruises on his pale flesh, bruises already yellowing and fading into nothing. He had tasted his own blood in his mouth, and had wondered when he had bitten his tongue. There was a mist of confusion in his mind.

 Where had Drusilla run off to? The future...This strange Angelus had said. Was he telling the truth? Was it some kind of memory game? Why were there blank spaces in his subconscious? Time lost, and holes on his recollection.

 The last thing he remembered clearly was Drusilla in his arms, and the low hum of Angelus' voice, then, oblivion.

Something wasn't quite right.

Being a vampire was confusing. He had so many questions. If vampires could time travel, could they fly? He had always wanted to fly. He flapped his arms experimentally as he eased himself from the warm bath water.

"Spike!" came a muffled call from the hall, "Hurry it up! We haven't got all night.."

"Alright! I'm dressing now!" He called back.

Why did Angelus insist on calling him Spike? He had to admit, the name was starting to appeal to him.

William was such a soft sound to it, and Drusilla had a dreadful habit of calling him Willie. At the thought of Drusilla his heart lurched. He wished he had a pen handy and a scrap of paper so he could right a sonnet to her perfect breasts.

"SPIKE!!!"

"Coming!" yelled William, as he rushed out into the hall, buttoning his waistcoat with fumbling fingers.

They stepped into the still London evening. The moon was full, luminescent, surrounded by the smoke of ten thousand chimney stacks, the stars were impossible to see, hidden from view by the muck and filth that spilled into the air from a nineteenth century industrial city.

'Thank God I don't need to breathe' Thought Angel, as he and William headed for the first dark alley on their left.

William cleared his throat, asking the most obvious question he could think of.

"So. What's it like in the future? Am I still a vampire?"

A beat.

"Yes.."

"That's FANTASTIC!"

Angel stopped his easy stride to stare quizzically at William. He sounded so much like the Spike he knew and loathed just then. Cocksure, overconfident. He felt a familiar wave of annoyance wash over him.

William's gait had become more purposeful, a future echo of the swagger it would become. He picked up his pace to catch up.

'Moron,' he thought. All feelings of remorse and regret disappeared as he remembered that in the future, this little upstart had the absolute temerity to fall in love with 'his' Buffy. A hundred plus years from now, he would still be the same. Demons never change. Spike had told him that once, or he would, one day, in the future.

Angel comforted himself with the knowledge that Buffy had loved him, Angel. She could never love Spike. Buffy would never lower herself to love a soulless demon like Spike. A thought niggled at the back of his mind as he recalled the image of Spike in his dream, beaten, resigned, grief covering him like a shroud, in the dim light of a lonely crypt in Sunnydale. He shook his head to clear the image.

'He has no soul' He reminded himself.

William broke into his thoughts.

"Is this a test? Do all vampires have to speak to someone from the future?"

Angel sighed heavily. It had started. The endless barrage of questions. He remembered this part, well. Drusilla had been off with the fairies, literally, when she had sired this fledgling. It had largely fallen to Angelus to 'show him the ropes' so to speak. Darla had barely acknowledged the boy, one disdainful sniff, and she had ignored him. It was her way. She cared for no one but Angelus then. Angel realised suddenly that William had not even met Darla, yet.

"Angelus?" William repeated the question.

"No." Sharp, and to the point.

"Oh, right then. I get special treatment?"

"Yes."

"Because my future self is in danger?"

"Yes."

"What about Drusilla?"

Angel smiled despite himself. It would be so tempting to tell him the truth about Drusilla here and now, but the thought of her playing Spike like a fish on a line for the next hundred or so years was too appealing, so he answered simply.

"Her future is in danger as well."

William thought about this for a minute.

"Well, then. We have to save her."

Angel stared at him solemnly. How did he do that? Maintain such a fierce devotion despite the demon within him? He shook his head. Best not to think about deconstructing Spike right now, not that he wanted to ever go THERE.

"Right, " He said decisively, "I need to think. Shut-up, Spike"

"William" Spike corrected him quietly, but without much enthusiasm. Then he narrowed his eyes and peered at him, as if trying to fathom his thoughts. A very 'Spike-like' expression. A smirk played at the corners of his mouth.

"Alright, then, Angelus." He said finally, "But by Harry you sound like a bloody Colonial!" and with that, he stalked off, chuckling to himself.

Angel followed, shaking his head. He had to find Charles Baudelaire, and fast. Only he could undo this spell, and return him to his own time. The outlines of what had actually happened were slowly coming together in his mind.

Darla had sent him back here with a purpose.  He alone knew what that purpose was, but Angel knew something that Darla didn't. She hadn't factored in that he was ensouled, now. She was also totally in the dark about the secret plan that Angelus, Drusilla and Miss Edith had hatched, all those many years ago.

What had started out as a fun diversion to pass the time, and a way to pay Darla back for her torture of him in the basement all those years ago had become a dangerous game of Russian roulette. His evil self was in Sunnydale. With Darla.

Spike, both past and future, was never in on the plan. Ever. That had been Drusilla's idea. She had wanted to surprise her 'Sweet William'. So she said. Angel had begun to wonder if Drusilla had her own agenda.

Angelus was supposed to return here, only to fetch Charles Baudelaire and bring he and William back with him to the future. Double the terror. That was the plan.

Their past selves teaming with their future selves, held in the iron grip of a magic spell that had been the secret of a powerful witch in Baudelaire's family. Passed through the generations, each family member able to invoke it's energy, but over the generations losing the ability to do so, until Darla had rediscovered the ancient crystal and incantation, once thought of as lost to time and history.

"RESTORATION"

The word chimed in his head. He hastened after William, who had surged on ahead. He had to find Charles Baudelaire, and fast. With no slayer in town, Sunnydale was wide open to be picked clean by the four most corrupt vampires to walk the Earth.
 

 London Alley... 1880, same night.

Angel felt his insides twist at the memory of Drusilla's vivid and terrible plan. She had an insane kind of logic that made her dangerous and innocent all at the same time. Her mind was a convoluted maze of moments of clarity combined with an almost diabolical and insane kind of evil. She was a madwoman, gifted with the power of insight, she could see more than any of them ever really knew.

Angel had seen into her idea of the future. It was like a dreamscape, of Edvard Munch grotesqueness, of stunted reality and twisted innocence. Vampire children, hundreds of them, marched across its barren landscape, Faeries as ancient and evil as time itself following in their wake.

Darla never knew, even then, the depths to which Angelus was prepared to sink in order to destroy all innocence in the world. Only he alone knew. Drusilla was a monster, molded out of his own hands, human clay shaped in the fires of his Hellish vision of perfect evil. His brow furrowed with worry. What if he was too late? No. They would stick to the plan. There would be no carnage until he returned with Baudelaire and the clueless William to Sunnydale in 2002. There was time yet to think of a way to stop it.

Ahead of him, William called out, breaking into his thoughts once again.

"Well! Angelus! Look! One each!" He spun on his heel to face Angel, and bounded back to him with all the enthusiasm of a big happy puppy, his curly brown locks bouncing engagingly around the chiseled delicate features of his earnest face.

Angel smiled despite him self, pushing the worry to the back of his mind momentarily as he fell easily into the role of Teacher.

"Don't be too eager, William." He said quietly to the boy, "You're a vampire. You're supposed to be dangerous. Tone down the bounding eager hound act."

Hurt marred William's handsome face. Then he smiled.

"Alright then. Do you want the tall, or the short one? To me, it matters not."

The two women were whispering to each other conspirationally, the taller of the two, a thin and faded beauty in a worn yellow dress stepped toward Angel. William looked at him expectantly, and Angel, with dawning horror, realised he could not meddle with the established events of the past.

This was going to happen. Had happened, he remembered this 'lesson' clearly. To influence the past in any way, to kill Spike or change events that had already taken place, could have dire consequences on the future.

 A pit formed in his stomach, and a stone of despair settled there when he realised he had no choice but to help Spike kill these women. Again. They were already dead. He was staring at ghosts.

"What now, Angelus?" William inquired politely, lowering his voice so that the women were forced to move closer in order to hear.

Angel closed his eyes. 'I can't think too much about this.' He thought. 'It's already done...' At the same time, a delicious thrill coursed through him.

To William he said:  "Follow my lead." He held a hand out to Yellow dress and smiled at her. The sense of deja vu was overpowering, now. The scent of the whore's blood pumping tantalizingly at the pulse in her neck called to him, an echo of the past. William sauntered by his side, attempting to appear casual, looking shyly at the smaller woman, a mere slip of a girl, barely a woman beneath her heavily rouged face. He lowered his lashes, and looked shyly at the girl.

'Trust me' his demeanor said. 'I am new at this.' and in a sense he was.

The boy has a natural talent for this, Angel acknowledged grudgingly.

The girl was a natural beauty beneath the paint that was intended to make her appear older than she was, Angel noted painfully.

"Two coppers each Gents." intoned yellow dress, an air of authority in her voice. Angel guessed she was teaching the girl at her side the ropes of her profession, just as he was teaching William his. His heart lurched painfully, his soul wracked with guilt at the thought of reliving this moment again.

William's eyes widened, but he said nothing, reaching into his trousers for his purse, and dutifully pouring four coppers into the outstretched palm of yellow dress. He looked at Angel again, waiting for instructions. Angel grabbed the hand of yellow dress, and motioned William to the younger girl. William complied, willing and ready to learn from someone he considered being a Master Vampire. Well. More experienced than him, anyway.

Angel's senses were finely tuned, as he slipped effortlessly into the mode of predatory hunter, feeling the familiar nagging, and never-ending lust for blood sweep over him. William trembled at his side, touching Angel's arm inadvertently, his eyes still not meeting the girls' amused gaze, playing the role of the innocent callow youth well.

 'Was it an act?' Angel wondered. Despite William's outward appearance of confidence, Angel knew he was still pretty unsure of himself.

Prostitutes were a whole new world to him, just as shocking as his new condition as a Vampire.

" 'Ave you gents got somewhere in mind, or do you want to go at it right 'ere?" said yellow dress.

OH GOD. Angel remembered this. It wasn't just a hunt. Angelus had taught William a far more carnal lesson than that...

William nodded dumbly, his blue eyes wide in his face.

Yellow Dress smiled, attempting to put him at his ease.

"I'm Mary. This is Rose.." she said, indicating the other girl, who giggled.

"Right then. " she continued whilst secreting the money within a pocket in her skirt.

"Lets do this." She said the last part in a low, seductive growl, as William looked on with growing fascination.

She lifted the skirt slowly, seductively to her thighs, all the while fixing her eyes steadily on Angelus, the fingers of her left hand laced around his neck, pulling him closer to her. Pressing her hips against his crotch, she felt for the bulge she knew she would find throbbing there.

"You need some help with that Ducks?" She crooned, reaching a deft hand down between his legs and resting her fingers lightly on the growing telltale hardness in his pants. Angel moaned softly under her expert touch. How long had it been?

She whispered softly in his ear. "Wanna let the whelp watch, Ducks? No charge.." she breathed. In answer, Angel moaned, covering her mouth with his. OHMYGOD  he thought, as the lower more primal function of his brain took over, filling his soul with need.

Rose took that as her cue, pushing William against the alley wall, and William nearly fell, surprised at the sudden change of pace.

Rose fastened her hot mouth on William's like suction, drawing his tongue into her lips, plumbing his depths for all she was worth. Her sharp little hands traced the shape of his chest. And she widened her eyes when they wandered lower, feeling the size and shape of him groaning against his trousers.

"Cor..." She murmured into his ear as she stopped for breath, looking at him earnestly.

 "You are a pretty one, aren't you?" He fought to hold himself up at her sudden and eager onslaught on his person. He gasped at the sensation of warmth invading his mouth, her hands invading his lower regions, so unlike Drusilla, and he growled low, regaining control over his initial surprise, by thrusting hungrily against her hip.

Her eyes widened, and she reached down with deft fingers to release the hardness that pressed achingly against her thigh. The buttons popped easily, as she lightly traced down her body to push two fingers into herself, finding herself already wet beneath her skirts. She felt as if the night might turn out more interesting than she first supposed. This was no scabby inept youth.

This man, although obviously inexperienced, aroused a spark of interest in her hungry mind. She found herself responding to the combination of innocence and menace that flowed like a tangible expression from his trembling body.

"And 'ere I thought the evenin' would be dull" she whispered into his mouth, as William's hands commenced a feverish exploration of her form.

 William continued to kiss her the hot ripeness of her rosebud lips smearing her clumsy attempts at makeup, feeling his hunger rise together with his lust for her body.

It was the most delicious sensation. He glanced over at Angelus, who was in a similar state. Angel caught his eye.

"Don't. Spoil. The. Surprise." Angel gasped and William nodded. Understanding his Grandsire's instructions.

Rose chose that moment to remove two moistened fingers from her sex, slick with the musky juices of her body, and with that same hand grasped the silky tower of William's hardened cock, her hot hand closing gently on the cool shaft, teasing up and down it's length with deft fingers over the velvet skin. William inhaled sharply, the sensation causing him to temporarily lose what little control he had.

Rose caught his eyes with her own, and using no words to communicate her meaning, gently guided him between her legs, hoisting her skirts high to grant him access.

William thrust his manhood into her hand, nearly coming with the sheer pleasure of it, but she squeezed him at the base, holding off his climax, guiding him into her wet inviting hole, and with one thrust, he entered her, sliding in and out of her, his hips grinding against her belly, as she gasped with the sheer power of his lust.

With a quick twist, he turned her so that she was against the wall, and he could gain more purchase in order to plough deeper into the hot delight of her body. He held her hands prisoner in his own as he nuzzled her neck, nipping the smooth skin with blunt human teeth, scenting her blood, the smell of her excitement, and ...Fear. He growled into her neck, writhing against her, enjoying the sensation.

The low ache in his balls begged for exquisite release, he looked over at Angelus, who, with eyes closed had begun to feed on the throat of the yellow dress girl, Rose? Who had a look of rapture on her face, unaware as yet that the love bite on her neck would be her death... William felt his climax building as he shifted his features into the face of the demon, and as Rose writhed and screamed in terror, he erupted inside of her, whilst simultaneously tearing the scream from her throat, drinking her life essence as he shuddered in to her.

It was the most amazing thing he had ever felt.

He continued to thrust into her body as he felt her pulse slowing, and shivering with his orgasm, he savored the taste of her as her blood spilled over his tongue like ambrosia.

When he opened his eyes, hers were staring back at him, empty, lifeless.

He slid his softening erection out of her dead body, falling to his knees in the alley as she slipped slowly down the wall in a crumpled mess of blood and soiled fabric.

The warmth of her blood coursed through him., and her final scream echoed in his ears.

He looked over at Angelus, grinning, begging for approval. He wanted to laugh out loud. But Angelus only looked down at the two women. He wouldn't look at William.

And he wasn't smiling at all.
 

THE GRAVEYARD, 2002, Sometime later that night..

Buffy-bot's legs pistoned happily ahead of the reluctant group, consisting of Anya, Xander, Giles and Willow. Her cheerful demeanor was at odds with their wary silence, as they walked, stakes drawn, through the eerie darkness of the cemetery.

"I'll never, no matter how many times we do this, ever feel comfortable in this place."  Xander muttered half to himself, his voice soft.

Giles eyed the Bot's straight and purposeful back as it walked ahead of them with a swinging stride. His heart ached with memory, and he chided himself gently.

Buck up, Rupert. She is gone. The show must go on.

Anya hissed at Xander as she walked by his side. "Is this such a good idea? I mean, the .."  (She lowered her voice a little more) "Buffy-bot wasn't exactly making with the coherent language construction back at the house. Some of her statements were quite odd."

Xander squeezed her hand and smiled, but he said nothing, instead glancing at Willow, who walked at his left side with grim purpose.

The grave markers around them loomed and receded in the pallid gloom of the full moon. It was almost as bright as day in the cemetery. Buffy-Bot made her way unerringly through the field of stone. Giles was prompted to remember a line from Wuthering Heights:

How could anyone imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet Earth?

There was a kind of comfort to be had, getting back in the saddle, so to speak. Giles smiled inwardly at the ridiculousness of the situation. His life was like a bad teenage horror film, complete with ensemble cast. He half expected Freddy Kreuger to leap out from behind a headstone.

There are worse things in Heaven and Earth that are dreamt of in our philosophy...

The memory of her brave bright leap into the open jaws of death still haunted him in his dreams. He couldn't help but think that he had failed her as a Watcher, and as a friend. He felt the weight of his years upon him, and he wished with every fibre of his being that it was Buffy who walked ahead of him now, and not this mindless parody of wire and silicon. He cursed himself for feeling relief that the Buffy-bot walked, to carry on the charade that Buffy yet lived. He cursed his sense of duty, embedded in him through habit. The oath he made to protect the world.

To condone this walking obscenity of her life.

The creature leaped on his back, growling, scratching, clawing at his neck, it's fetid breath stinking of death. Giles reacted by instinct, gripping the stake, and angling it back to stab the vampire with the sharpened point. The flurry of confusion that followed appeared to be played in slow motion, as Giles was knocked unceremoniously to the ground, covering his face in the final moment as the vampire exploded into dust above him.

Buffy-Bot stood over him, her blonde hair settling softly around her shoulders, a bright smile painted on her lips.  "I am Buffy the Vampire Slayer!" she stated cheerfully. "Vampires, BEWARE!"  With that she spun on her heel and stalked off in relentless pursuit of her prey.

Giles coughed delicately as Anya reached down to help him to his feet.

"You were very lucky not to be killed by that large vampire." She intoned, with her knack of obvious statement.

"I was" he cleared his throat "coming up with a move to kill the fiend, I was about to bring my knee up.."

Anya held a hand up in front of his face. "Giles, you were about to be dinner to the undead. Buffy...bot saved you."

Willow watched as Buffy-Bot marched cheerfully about them in a circle.  "Well. At least we know she works." She said quietly.

Xander gave her a hug. "You done good, Will."

Willow smiled sadly. "Wanna drop by Spike's crypt guys?"

Giles dusted himself off as he answered her. " I don't think that's wise, Willow. Dawn mentioned that something wasn't quite right with him. I don't really fancy walking into his crypt to find Drusilla there, and your 'dreams' have a disturbing element to them I would prefer to research further. I think we should leave Buffy-bot to patrol tonight, and perhaps visit Spike in the morning. I don't really relish seeing him at present."

Willow nodded. "Buffy-bot is programmed to slay until daybreak. She will return home in a few hours. She is to come to me if anything malfunctions. I think it'll be O.K."

Anya folded her arms and gazed at the Bot.  "She seems very determined." A vampire exploded into dust as she spoke, while another two hissed, backing away to run into the night.

"I think we can safely say that the news will get around that the Slayer is back from her summer vacation by morning." Xander observed, watching Buffy-bot chase the retreating figures of the undead.

Giles turned to go, motioning the others to follow. "And we have a night of research ahead of us, and Spike to deal with in the morning."

The others fell in behind him, locked into their private thoughts as they walked home in the warm Sunnydale night.
 

SPIKE'S CRYPT, Sunnydale, that same night.

Spike was painfully aware of the restraints that bound him hand and foot to the familiar surrounds of his own bed before he became fully conscious.

The smell of blood.

 His blood. Combined with something sweeter, more tantalizing and ripe, like liquid sunshine permeated the darkness. He became dimly aware of the candle-glow throwing macabre shadows crazily against the rough dirt walls.

It hurt to open his eyes, but he did so, slowly, wincing as one eye refused to open, swollen and sore. His mind tried to piece together the series of events that had led him to this moment. It was hard, when pain raged through him like a sharp knife, cutting his senses.

"Dru... Drusilla?" He whispered into the gloom, and moved his head painfully, searching the environs for his Dark Goddess. Her scent still lingered, black, familiar. His head swam with it, mixed with the other scents, powerful, familial.

"She's not here, William."

The voice, low and sensual followed a creaking on the end of the bed, where Angelus sat, his bulk filling Spike's vision.

"I sent the ladies out to hunt. After all, a hundred years is such a long way to come without sustenance."

Spike's hands flexed in the iron restraints that tied him to the bed.

Not too tight. A good tug will pull these loose.

As if reading his mind, Angelus growled, a low, menacing timbre that Spike remembered well.

"Don't try it, boy. You're weak. And even if by chance you do manage to get loose, I will kill you before you have time to think."

Spike turned his head away from his Grandsire's hard stare.

" You might have to kill me then." He resolved. "Because no way in Hell am I gonna let you touch me again.." His teeth clenched as he ground out his hatred.

"William wouldn't and couldn't of fought you." He turned his face to give Angelus the full benefit of his piercing, defiant blue stare.

"In case you've not noticed mate. I ain't William no more. And I sure as Hell ain't your soddin' rent boy, Angelus."

The effort of that little speech exhausted him, and he closed his eyes, his jaw clenching and working around the pain his outburst cost him.

"Christ!" He thought. "One Hundred plus years on, and he still has all the bloody power."

Memories of blood soaked sheets.

His blood. Use and abuse. Painpleasurepainpleasurepain.

Angelus was a monster in every sense of the word. He had wanted to break William.. Crush his spirit. Use him and drive him insane. The torture had lasted eight long years.

Then. Suddenly. It. Stopped.

In hindsight, Spike now knew it was because of the soul. At the time, it was like manna from Hell. For the first time, Spike tasted freedom. Darla had been distraught, fearing that Angelus was lost to her. Spike had piled all of Angelus' devices, the restraints, the long tapers of wax, the gags and chains into the middle of the floor of their rented Romany house, and then burned everything, house included, to the ground. Darla had barely protested, and Drusilla had clapped her hands with maniacal glee, and then kissed him, dragging him into the dirt and ashes, to rut with him by the glow of the cleansing flames.

 Drusilla had become his, that night.

Eight years of torture had ended. But his mind and heart was irretrievably scarred. Evil and soulless he may be, but Angelus had given him a taste for cruelty, a lust for the power terror could inflict, and a burning desire to inflict the pain that he himself had received at Angelus' hands on to the innocent flesh of others.

His specialty had been women, and in particular, young virgin girls. Angelus always told him to specialize. Have a trademark. And even as Angelus beat his body red with whips and chains, forced him to lay open to his every whim, Spike knew, and understood that this was how it had to be. It felt right, and good.

The gentle poet in him had died a million little deaths.

Thank you Grandsire.
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU.
This is me.
Kneeling naked at his feet.
Kissing his hands.
I deserve punishment.
Whip it out of me.
 Please.
I know that nothing is mine.

Because nothing is as dirty as love. And William loved, so he had to suffer.

When it had finally stopped, he had sobbed. The loss he felt, the sadness, the emptiness consumed him. With tears and blood he had paid the price for what Angelus saw as a human and filthy imperfection. When the restraints were finally removed, he missed their cold embrace. Look where love had led him.

Angelus had been right all along.

The memory had become clouded after Angelus had disappeared that first time.

When next they met, he had lived up to and fulfilled his promise, was well on the way to becoming the 'Big Bad'. Killed himself his first Slayer. He had walked up to Angelus, an equal that night.

Do you see? Look! I have become what you wanted!

He held two trophies in his macho fists. The Slayer's hair, ripped from her scalp, and Drusilla, whom he'd had over and over by the cooling flesh of the Slayers corpse.

It had been one of the best nights of his life. With a pang of guilt, he remembered telling Buffy exactly that. He had expected that she would be impressed. It was with some surprise that he realised that her features registered disgust. Loathing. Hatred.

The same look Angelus had that night.

 A moan escaped his lips.

"Spike. William. Whoever you are now. Look at me boy."

The commanding tone of Angelus' voice snapped him from his reverie. Like Pavlov's bloody dog he responded, slavering at the bloody bell for a crumb whether it was offered or not. He looked at Angelus with one eye.

IdontcareIdontcareIdontcare

Angelus grabbed his jaw, gently, forcing him to look into his eyes.

" I'm not gonna hurt you boy." Angelus said softly.

Spike giggled, a grating sound, hopeless and bitter that shook his body, causing Angelus to release his hold on his face.

"Listen." He continued,

Spike looked at him dully. 'Finish me now' he thought. 'Kill me.'

"Spike. I need your help. I need you."

The scarred pathways in Spike's mind started to process what he had just heard.

"Need me?" He croaked finally. Oh God. Here it comes. Bloody Hell.

"Darla and Drusilla, Spike. You have to help me stop them. Darla doesn't know what Dru has planned. Damn dolls and vampire children."

He lowered his face to within a breath of Spike's mouth. Smiling softly. Spike felt the cool touch of his breath as he whispered the words. He shivered involuntarily. The man knew exactly what he was doing.

He remained silent, waiting for Angelus to finish, his one good eye staring unblinkingly into the twin black irises of his Grandsire's orbs.

Angelus moved momentarily out of his line of vision, to reach for something by the bed. Spike followed the movement out of the corner of his eye, mildly curious. What sexual torture did he have in mind this time?

"You can't hurt me." He rasped. "Not anymore mate. Nothing can hurt me now."

The scent. Bottled Sunshine.

Spike found himself staring into the glazed eyes of a dying girl's whitened face. The lights fading slowly through blood loss and shock. Her jugular was slashed; white bone gleamed dully amid the ruby red of the wound. The last little beats of her heart pumped into the former pulse of her neck, bubbling up slowly now, to drip tantalizingly between her breasts like strawberry jam.

"Eat" Angelus ordered. "You need to get well quickly, help me stop Dru and Darla, before they ruin everything. You smell of the barnyard, boy. You need this." He finished softly. Was there a hint of compassion in his voice? Spike thought he might have imagined it.

Spike felt his fangs lengthen; his vision and senses sharpen as he went into game face.

The heady scent of virgin blood.

MMMM. My favorite.

The chip wouldn't be a problem. God! He needed this! No strength to resist now.

The light dulled in the girl's eyes.

 Just meat now. Dead meat.

With a growl, Spike latched on to the gaping wound, taking in great gulps of the girl's virgin blood, letting it wash over his tongue, copper scented ambrosia flooding the back of his throat. Warm, fresh.

In the back of his mind, Buffy cried out in horror. Spike NO!

The demon brushed her away. This was good. This was right. It was who he was. What he was.

The final barriers of his resistance collapsed as he felt Angelus' cool hand on his thigh.

His family had returned to claim him.

Maybe it would be all right after all.
 

LONDON: 1880.

Angel felt the familiar pall of grief and darkness descend upon him, washing him in the blood of the thousands of victims who had died various unspeakable deaths at his fangs and meaty fists.

At least had been able to spare this one the final terror, sucking her gently to sleep in rhythm to his orgasm.

Yellow dress had barely been aware of her own impending demise. All vampires had this ability, of course, to make a victim's death as painless as possible, and many chose to kill their prey in just this way. It was a convenience that Angelus had chosen to circumvent in favor of the artistry of the kill. Evil didn't necessarily mean painful bloody death, and a merciful and painless death was always an option.

Angel chose that option, this time.

It had been very different before.

Angel still vividly recalled the woman's screams as he made her beg for her life on her knees, making her perform the lewdest and most degrading acts on him as he threatened her life. Finally, he had released her, and as she started to run, sobbing and bloody, her dress torn in ragged shreds, he had reached out casually, tipping her balance, and in a final terrorizing act, revealed his demonic face to her wide eyes, tearing her final scream, "PLEASE! I have a child!" from her throat.

William had watched him with awed fascination, contenting himself with merely fucking the girl against the wall, before draining her dry and allowing her corpse to slip slowly from his grasp.

Angel glanced over at William. Well, at least that scenario hadn't changed.

He knelt down beside yellow dress. ROSE! And felt her wrist for a pulse.

William merely stood there, his chest rising and falling slowly with unnecessary breath in the misty air.

Angel glanced up at him, his features slipping back into their handsome human form, and William followed suit, his eyes losing their feral yellow gleam, returning to the mild cerulean blue orbs of William. The expression on his features was that of a completely sated man. His every need catered to. A tiny trickle of blood stained the corner of his soft mouth, and he licked it with the pink tip of his tongue.

Angel found the gesture oddly arousing.

William knelt down beside Angel, careful to keep the knees of his pale suit distanced from the filth in the alley.

"Well." He said at length. "That was a bit of alright." He reached over to yellow dress and rifled through the folds of her skirt for a moment, before rising triumphantly, his four coppers held aloft, with the addition of an extra two grasped in his white hand, a wide grin splitting his chiseled features.

"Not a bad evening's work, eh Angelus?" He commented "Shall we leave them for the Constabulary to find or what?"

"No." Angel stated quietly.

William waited for Angelus to finish, his earnest gaze pinning him in place.

"We tie stones to their petticoats and drop them in the Thames."

William nodded his assent.

He knelt again to help to lift the dead girl in his arms.

"I'm glad I'm with you." he said. "Drusilla took a fancy to our last meal and made me carry him about for a day or three. Damn bothersome! Bits started to fall off."  He laughed, grunting with the effort of keeping the girl upright.  "She does take on some strange fancies, doesn't she?"

Angel gave the boy a tight smile before hoisting yellow dress to her feet.  "The trick is," He instructed "Is to make them appear drunk, like so."

He straightened Yellow dress' collar, hiding the red slash on her neck, holding her close to his hip, and walked out, her lifeless corpse held firmly against his side. William nodded quickly, and followed suit. They left the alley like this, and returned to the throng and bustle of the London streets, winding their way through the crowds, stumbling to keep up the charade of drunken revelers cavorting with loose women with even looser morals.

Some people even looked the other way as they passed, and not for the first time since being turned, William was surprised at how easy murder really was.

He wondered if he had ever actually seen a murder when he was alive and not realised it.

A whole new world, dark, mysterious and exciting had opened up to him.

                                                              ***

Angel watched as her impossibly white face sank slowly beneath the murky water of the Thames.

His soul felt sickened by the sight.

But scarier than that. He enjoyed it.

He heard a gentle splash to his left, and watched as William followed his example.

'The boy always did learn his lessons well.' He thought, 'But he needed correction. Often.'

William moved beside Angel, and contemplated the swirling water.

"Now we can talk."

Angel glanced at him, as if surprised to see him there. He sighed heavily, mind momentarily released from endless soul searching.

"We have to find Charles Baudelaire. He is the key to all this. Well, him and A Fairie Queen." He explained.  "I think I know where Darla keeps him stashed."

William's eyes widened in surprise.  "Baudelaire? THE Baudelaire? I thought he was dead! I read his essays at Cambridge. A brilliant man!"

"Not dead." Corrected Angel. "Undead. One of Darla's playthings."

"Darla? Your Sire?"

"One and the same."

William nodded then, understanding.

"Like Drusilla made me."

He poked his tongue out in an annoyingly endearing fashion, then.

Idiot boy.

Angel didn't dignify the comment with an answer.

"So, Baudelaire is a vampire." William mused.

"He is." Said Angel. "But not so brilliant any more. Darla broke him."

As they talked, they walked along easily together; Angel shoved his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, a habit that had followed him through two centuries.

"If his mind is gone, how can he help us?" William ventured.

"We don't need his mind." Said Angel. "Just him."

"Will there be torture involved?" William asked, sucking tantalizingly at his full lower lip.

"Count on it." Mumbled Angel, as he stalked ahead, missing the lascivious smile that crept across William's face.

"Good." He whispered before hurrying to catch up.
 

Spike's Crypt, 2002.

He felt warm.

Opening one eye, he smiled happily, feeling the strength of her love enveloping him. She sat, quietly at his side, threading her fragile fingers around his hand, then, with a gentleness belying the inner jump his heart made at the simple gesture, she kissed his mouth, flicking her tongue between his lips probing, tasting, until he felt undone and liquid beneath the sweet perfection of that kiss.

Buffy...

She was silent, and terrifying, beautiful and wonderful, and all at once he felt himself stirring at the sight of her long silken tresses brushing lightly against his chest as she withdrew her mouth from his, and turned her attention to the tiny pearl buttons that held the front of her light summer dress closed, all the while holding his gaze prisoner within her own.

He wanted to reach for her, take her, and make her his very own... My Love!

She melted against his embrace, her breasts hard against the bare skin of his chest, and he moved against her, gently biting, nipping, tasting her mouth, her collarbone, the sweep of her neck, gasping with short unnecessary breaths as he moved his hands over her body, finding the sweet nectar of her centre, warm, and waiting, her invitation clear in the soft secret folds, and the moisture he found there.

Mine..

Her fingers laced with his, pressing his digits harder into her, finding the delightful nub and urging him to plunge into her liquid depths. His senses were overcome with the wanting of her, the ache that began in his dead heart spread out like fire, he was hers.

I'm drowning in you Summers, I'm drowning in you...

Her small hands fluttered down to his throbbing erection, and grasped it, filling her hands as she pulled him towards the very centre of her being. A whisper in his ear, barely a murmur broke through the solid wall of sensation..

I want you Spike. I've always wanted you.

He barely had time to process the elation her admission gave him, before he found himself buried deep within her, her scent, her heat, her liquid core moving around him, beneath him, surrounding him, and he felt all coherent thought leave him as he shuddered into her, his climax peaking in waves as he kissed her mouth and called out her name.

Buffy! I love you!

Buffy also cried out, riding the tidal wave of his passion, she clamped her legs about him, pulling him deeper within herself, and he felt her inner muscles squeeze tightly about him, and a warmth mix with his essence as she came, leaking sticky delicious fluids between her legs and on his thighs. He collapsed on her then, spent and happily numb, as she reached up to run her fingers through his hair. He found her eyes and gazed into their depths, and nuzzled into her cheek with his nose, smelling her, smelling them, mixed and messy together.

She looked at him, as a lover should, unfocussed, satiated, and then she parted her beautiful mouth, and said the words he was longing to hear.

I love you.

He felt his birth, his life, his death melt away as she uttered those longed-for crumbs from banquet of her table. And in an instant, it was as if she had staked him.

This is a dream. It's not real.

She regarded him sadly, cupping his face gently in her hand.

No. Not real. But this is.

She kissed him again. Tears clouded his vision, as she hushed him, rocking him in her arms.

Remember your promise to me, William.

He nodded dumbly, pulling her close, kissing her, hiding the shame of his tears.

Please, he murmured into the column of her neck, let me stay here with you. Don't make me go back. I am so tired. So tired...

I know, my love She soothed, lips brushing the salt of his tears, tasting his love, his longing for her. But I need you to be strong. For me. For us.

At this, he raised his face, and her heart nearly broke with the pain she saw mirrored in his eyes. He turned his face from her scrutiny, misinterpreting her gaze for disgust and pity.

'I have no soul...I am not worthy. I am weak. Drusilla...She...'

'Shhh. None of that matters, Spike. You have more heart than anybody I have ever known. You love without a soul. I feel it, in here.'

She indicated her heart, between her breasts, her fist clenched for emphasis as she tapped the hollow there. His sapphire eyes followed the gesture, and he covered her hand with his own.

'But, I am afraid'.

The voice was small, and he couldn't meet her eyes. She touched his chin, tilting it so she could look at him.

'Everybody is afraid, Spike. But you have strength in you that can overcome the fear.  I believe in you Spike...'

He met her intent gaze then, and locked his eyes with hers. Hope surged within him. Could she really see him? Beyond the pathetic shell of a man he was? Beyond the demon that plagued him every moment of his existence? Pride and admiration stirred within him. God! He loved this woman. Death was merely an obstacle that could be overcome.

He drew her to him, his spirits soaring. She smiled at him sadly.

'Spike. I have to go. This...this is not real, but it is a glimpse of what might be...'

Spike gathered her closer. 'No!' But he knew the truth of it. And her words had comforted him. A glimpse of what might be? He could hold on to that, to this, and die happy, knowing that she loved him.

'Don't forget your promise. Protect her. She needs you. They all need you, Spike.'

Her voice was fading, Her body more insubstantial in his arms.

'I love you...'

'I love you too, Buffy..'

Then she was gone. He felt as if his heart had been ripped in two.

He squeezed his eyes shut to ward of the inevitable flood of tears.

No more crying, you stupid poncy git. There's work to be done. She believes in you.

He opened his eyes slowly. The dull ache of her body still surrounding him.

Her perfume still lingered in the air.

"Nice dream, William?" Angelus smirked, inclining his head at the evidence of Spike's obvious nocturnal emissions. Spike's belly was sticky with cum, and he felt a little off balance as the reality of where he was came flooding back.

"Bugger off, you bloody poof." He ground out through clenched teeth, and with one hard yank, he was free of the chains that bound his hands to the bed, and had those same hands wrapped tightly around Angelus' throat.
 
 

Somewhere in the Cemetery, that same night

Darla lifted her skirts as she padded through the dew that clung wetly to the freshly mown grass around the graves. She stopped, sniffing the air delicately, and her face shifted her porcelain mask into the hideous ridges and golden stare of her true identity.

Drusilla had wandered on ahead, intently plucking withered flowers from near the headstones, singing a low and tuneless song snatched from the recesses of her memory.

'Run and catch. Run and catch. The lamb's caught in the black'bry patch...'

Darla hissed at her to be quiet, and Drusilla complied, standing still and silent by the figure of a heralding angel, flowers bleeding from her white hands, broken and torn like dead birds.

They listened.

Voices. People, in the cemetery at night! Drusilla grinned at Darla, then stepped back to meld into the shadow of the statue. Darla used her own stealth to do likewise, finding shelter by the bulk of a large crypt.  No breath came from her lips as she became as one with the night, the perfect predator, eyes glittering gold in the shadows.

"Well, I think Dawn is right."

Willow and Xander walked together through the Graveyard, Buffybot trailed obediently behind them, occasionally making stabbing movements through the air with her right hand, then examining it, a puzzled expression on her cheerful countenance.

" He's a blood-sucking fiend, Will" Xander explained. "SOULLESS blood-sucking fiend"  He added for emphasis.

Willow stopped walking, and Xander propelled forward, hands deep in his pockets, taking three or four steps before realizing that Willow was no longer with him. He turned to face her. She and Buffybot stood by the gravestone of Bridget Sorrenson, Mother of Two, wife of Harold REST IN PEACE, with identical stances.

Willow had 'determined face' firmly in place. Her thin arms folded across her chest.  " We need him, Xander." She said calmly.

Buffybot nodded emphatically. "Yes Xander, We need Spike. We all NEED Spike."

Willow looked exasperated.

" It makes sense, Xander, and you know it."

"We can't trust him."

Willow sighed deeply. "We don't have a choice. We can't do this alone. Now that The Slayer is gone, we need his strength. He fought alongside us against Glory. He loves... loved Buffy. I think he still loves Dawn in his own way. I think he will agree to help."

Buffybot was nodding emphatically, and looked at both Scoobies expectantly.

"Alright." Xander finally agreed. "But this stinks. He's a stalker and he's evil." He spat.  "You may have forgotten, but I haven't"

"As long as we're clear." Said Willow as she pushed past him, determined and purposeful in the direction of Spike's crypt.

Xander shrugged, and glanced at Buffybot, who threw him a dazzling smile.

"This can't end well." He murmured as he hurried after her.

Buffybot stood for a few moments before moving off. Her sensors had detected something, but it wasn't quite solid. "Vampire?" She questioned the dead air around her.

Nothing replied. But it was her experience that Demons and Vampires generally never answered when you called them. It was confusing. It was polite to answer when someone talked to you! Maybe their courtesy chips had malfunctioned.

She shrugged, and followed after the others. They were going to see Spike! A wide smile spread across her plastic features.

"Wait for me!" She called cheerfully.

Darla watched her leave, a slow smile spreading across her features. Drusilla moved to her side, and they stared after the retreating figures.

"Did you hear that?" she murmured.

Drusilla grinned. "Yes Grandmother," she whispered "The tasty treats are going to play a game at Daddy's, and they are taking tea to my William." She licked her lips.

"Shall we be like the big bad wolf and dress up as Grandmamma and surprise them?"  Darla intoned.

Drusilla clapped her hands. "I can fetch my dollies to play!" Darla shot an exasperated glance Drusilla's way.

"Meet me back at the crypt, girl." She hissed. "Did you also hear that The Slayer is gone? This town is ripe for the picking."

Drusilla nodded slowly. "And my William will return to himself."

Darla made a noise indicating that the exchange was at an end.

'Idiot Girl. Half the time she made no sense at all.'

And with a swish of her skirts, she left Drusilla standing alone in the inky black.

Drusilla smiled. "Now to find my dollies." She said to herself.

                                                        *****

LONDON: 1880: A darkened house near the Thames.

Angel paused to sniff the air.

"You smell that?"

William nodded.

A sickly sweet odor permeated the chill air, a mixture of death and alley filth. It was strangely quiet and the water lapped at the rotting docks as they picked their way along the riverfront.

"If I remember rightly," Angel continued, "I think Darla kept her trained monkey around here." He indicated an old brick house looming up ahead of them. The moonlight shone wanly amid the jagged glass of the windows, it appeared as if the property had been untenanted for some time.

William picked delicately amid the mud, trying vainly to keep the thick ooze from staining his trousers, which were pale. Angel glanced at him, shaking his head. William caught him looking and ceased his fussing, clearing his throat and feigning interest in the brick house, narrowing his eyes as if he were trying to make out details in the moldy brickwork.

"It appears that the house is vacant." He commented, whilst making a sweeping gesture with his arm. The night's adventure had ceased to be of interest to him. He was already displaying the impatient trait that was to be the bane of his eternal existence, although he hardly knew that, yet.

Angel growled at him. "Appearances can be deceiving, boy." He commented, slipping easily into the role of long suffering Teacher. "Darla has kept Charles at that house for a long time. She thought Angelus...I... didn't know, but I knew. I knew her mind very well. She kept him for the bloodline. He is the only one that could make the magic work."

"So. We kill Charles Baudelaire, and everything returns to normal? Drusilla will come back to me?" The note of longing in William's voice was palpable, and his blue eyes took on a steely glint at the thought that he was about to rescue his Princess.

"That's about the sum of it, yes." Angel said softly, half to himself.

"But there's something you don't know about Drusilla's part in all of this, Spike...William."

William waited expectantly for Angel to finish.

"Drusilla has her own plan. She is in league with the Fey and at this moment, she is more dangerous than anything Darla has in mind. She has an army at her disposal."

William scoffed at the idea, and Angel turned to face him. He was tired. So tired. Buffy was dead, now this. It seemed that no matter how far he ran from his past, his bloody deeds as Angelus, they always seemed to cast a wide net to drag him back to despair, and a deeper remorse than he ever thought possible.

Something in Angel's eyes caused William to take a step back, and he stopped his endless fidgeting in order to wait for Angel to finish, for the first time taking him seriously.

"Drusilla, She really has gone, hasn't She?"

Angel pressed his thumb and finger into his eyes, and spoke without looking at William's earnest face.

"Drusilla plotted this a long time ago, Spike. She has been siring children for over twenty years, with the aid of a wicked little Fairie Queen trapped in the body of that little doll of hers."

"Miss Edith?" William supplied.

Angel confirmed this with a barely perceptible movement of his head.

"But why?"

"I killed her family." Angel said quietly. "She is punishing me. I took them all away from her when I turned her. Killed her little sisters slowly, in front of her." Angel's voice was toneless, empty as he described his greatest sin to the fledgling Spike.

He shrugged his shoulders. "She made replacements. But Darla knows nothing of this. She is trying to make me atone for leaving her in the lurch one time, when she got into a bit of a tight spot in the form of an angry mob.

Darla is using Baudelaire's magic to time travel, as Drusilla, as you may, or may not be aware, can see into the future, and she has pin pointed a time in the year 2002 when the time is ripe, a window of opportunity where the Hell mouth is without a Slayer to protect it, and where YOU are supposedly a vampire of some importance on the Hell mouth. The details are a little hazy there... " He finished lamely.

He glanced over at William, who was standing, mouth agape as he listened to the sordid tale of Angelus' past indiscretions toward the women in his life.

There was an uncomfortable silence, until the corners of William's mouth twitched upwards, and he burst out into howls of laughter, slapping his thighs, and nearly toppling over into the mud, shaking with mirth.

"Well, Angelus!" He gasped in between loud guffaws; "You do have bleedin' tragic luck with the ladies, don't you?"

Angel scowled at him, and stalked off toward the house, William trailing behind. Still laughing.

                                                        *****

SPIKE'S CRYPT, 2002

"You should never have come here you bloody poof!"

Spike felt the strength coursing through his veins, the blood had replenished his starved body, and through a film of angry red, he saw the surprised look on his Grandsire's face.

His hands grappled for purchase around the larger man's throat, as his eyes searched about the room for a weapon, any weapon, to end the unlife of the vampire who had made him what he was.

Angelus morphed into his demon countenance, gaining strength with the change, prising the smaller man's hands from his throat and shoving him back onto the bed with a roar.

Spike immediately leaped into a fighting stance, lashing out at Angelus with liquid grace, causing the larger vampire to grunt as a blow landed in his midsection, driving him against the wall of the crypt. Spike moved toward him grasping the remains of his chains in each fist like a pair of bondage knuckledusters.

Angelus raised his hands in supplication.

Spike lowered his hands a little, panting with unnecessary breaths, the light of the candles lending chiaroscuro dignity to his naked body.

Angelus laughed. There was a grudging respect reflected in his eyes. Spike regarded him warily.

"What are you laughing at, Angelus?"

Angelus reached out to him and grasped his shoulder. Spike flinched, flexing his fists and raising them again.

"You, Boy. A true Aurelian. A Warrior. Who would have guessed? From such humble beginnings. I heard about you and the Slayer, the local Demons are very forthcoming with the required information." He lowered his face to Spike's, who glared back at him his gold eyes flashing hell flame.

"It's no business of yours what I do anymore, Peaches. Been my own Master for over a hundred years, I don't know what Drusilla told you about the future, but I know one thing. You are not a feature in it." At the last remark, Spike allowed his features to melt back into human form, his anger dissipating as he sat wearily on the bed, reaching for a pair of pants from a trunk and pulling them on with a fluid grace.

Angelus frowned.

"If this is true," He pondered, "Then you have no choice but to help me."

Spike looked up, surprised, as he pulled a fresh black T over his head.

"How do you figure?"

"Because one thing I heard from Drusilla about you, William, is that you were always entirely naive when it came to the ladies. Drusilla and Darla are planning something. If you don't know about it, and I don't know about it, and it concerns both our future and past selves, you have to help me stop them. Darla wants revenge, and so does Drusilla. You were always blind where she was concerned, so she says. She also talked a whole lot about bats in the ceiling and the stars biting her feet, but by the state of how we found you, I'm guessin' that chances are, you have allowed another woman to drag you around by your balls..."

Spike stood angrily, his jaw clenching with suppressed fury.

"You know NOTHING about me, or Dru you great poof!" He spread his fingers wide, causing the chains to rattle like a parody of Marley's ghost.

"For over one hundred years you never cared to! Too bloody full of the soddin' milk of human kindness to give a damn about your own, and me and Dru, we did just fine without you. I killed two Slayers, more than you ever managed you fucking prick, and as for being naive, the only time I could ever be accused of that particular crime, is when I trusted you, and you pulled the fuckin' wool over my eyes, raped me, and left me senseless in that bloody hotel in 1880!"

Spike shook with rage, his muscles tensing as he prepared for the inevitable blows to rain down on his head. Angelus was always quick to anger, and equally swift with retribution.

It didn't eventuate.

Spike looked up to see Angelus cross the crypt floor to kneel at his feet.

His voice was low.

"William; whatever I did back then, I can't atone for now."

Spike glared at him.

"I only know what Drusilla has told me. I remember you in that hotel boy," He licked his lips unconsciously. "One minute I am contemplating the pretty white length of your beautiful back, next thing, I blink, and I'm here. My guess is that my present self is back at the hotel enjoying the view..."

 Spike's fist connected with Angelus' jaw and he fell back with a convulsive thud.

In a flash, Spike was on him, legs straddling his chest as he rained heavy blows into his Grandsire's face.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" He screamed, eyes filling with furious tears, humiliating and icy cold. Angelus made no move to block the attack, submitting mutely to Spike's pent up anger, a hundred years of resentment, for a crime committed against him as a fledgling vampire.

Spike made a decision.

"I'm sick of crying over this." He spat as he eased away from his Grandsire. "You're not worth it. You never were. You never will be. You may have fooled Drusilla and Darla, but after that first time, you never fooled me. I am not the same vampire you had your way with back then. This is my time, and my world you sick Bog Irish asshole, and you'd best remember it if you want my help to get you out of this. And if you so much as look sideways at me you fucking Irish pansy, I'll skewer your balls and stuff them in your stupid gob before I stake your worthless hide and dance on your dust."

Angelus started to laugh, a sound both hollow and resigned. Blood stained his teeth, and he raised his head, spitting awkwardly to the side before speaking.

"I think we both need a drink. Got any whiskey?"

Spike stared at him, and reached for his boots and coat.

"Help yourself, Angelus." He indicated a bottle on the dresser.

"I've had my fill. I need to go and see a Lady."

He pulled the black leather coat about him, and it settled on his shoulders with a familiar comfort. Angelus raised himself on to his elbows., and watched Spike's retreating form as he climbed the stair.

"I'll just wait here then, shall I?" He voiced into the gloom, and then smiled as he reached for the bottle.

"Women." He muttered, wincing as the hot whiskey poured over his abraded mouth.

Nobody answered his remark.

                                                        *****

LONDON, 1880: A house by the Thames.

William stared at the wide bulk of Angel's shoulders shifting easily beneath the cloth of the black coat he wore, and hurried to keep up with the larger man's stride.

A myriad of confusing images were playing merry hell within his mind, the most prominent being a clear picture of Angelus leaning down to kiss him. He had never really considered the prospect of doing that with another man, of course, he was familiar with Sodomites, whilst at Oxford, many of the young men he knew had formed friendships that were homosexual in nature, it wasn't as if he was a total innocent!

Whilst William wasn't exactly a 'man of the world', he had heard and read of such things.

And now, without the annoying moral compass to hinder him, he felt comfortable to consider the idea freely. He wondered what it would feel like to kiss Angelus. What would it feel like to plunder the mouth of another man? As if reading his thoughts, Angel stopped suddenly at the door of the old brick house, and leaned in close to William's face and growled under his breath, holding a hand to William's mouth to quiet him.

William felt a little thrill of electricity go through him at his Grandsire's cool touch.

"Do as I say, boy. Baudelaire's mind may be gone, but if memory serves, he has the cunning of a madman. Follow my lead, say nothing."

William nodded quickly behind Angelus' hand, and resisted the urge to lick the length of the meaty palm. Angel lifted the hand away from William's mouth, and turned back to cautiously open the heavy carved door of the crumbling tenement.

SUNNYDALE 2002, The Initiative Caves.

Drusilla felt the shiver of anticipation touch her skin as she landed with cat-like grace amid the twisted rubble of the ruins of a Government experiment gone awry, and snuffed the air with delight.

This place reeks of death...

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, her ears caught the unmistakable signs of life far off to her left. A low feral growl. Drusilla smiled, her mouth stretching impossibly wide, as she swiveled her head in the direction of the sound.

"Here Kitty! Niiice kitty..." she coaxed. "Are you a soft kitty? Let Dru stroke you, pretty kitty..."

A figure materialized from the shadows, huge, hulking and dark. A growl, low and dangerous vibrated through the molasses thick air. Drusilla held her hand out, lowering her lashes coquettishly, clutching Miss Edith to her chest with her free hand.

She stepped forward, cool slender fingers curled in an invitation.

"Are you a dangerous kitty? A kitty with velvet claws?"

The creature continued to growl, and Drusilla began to sway, her eyes becoming black fathomless pits, as she locked her stare with the demon's. Wide beautiful and dark met with red and otherworldly, and the menace left the creature's demeanor as understanding passed between them.
"What is your wish...Mistress.."

The oddly formal title sounded forced from the serrated lips of a creature one wouldn't normally associate with the gift of speech, and Drusilla smiled as she reached out to caress the creature's jowl.

She reached up to pull the distorted mouth to hers, and left a lingering kiss on the hideous countenance.

"My children need a Daddy to love them.." she whispered into the creature's mouth, pulling back to smile at him affectionately. She pressed herself against the slime-encrusted chest, and pressed her cheek against him. The Demon's arms wavered awkwardly around her back, before settling against her spine with a wet caress.

Immediately, Drusilla's ethereal beauty was replaced with her demonic aspect as her fangs appeared, and her eyes glowed with a yellow inner fire.

"My William is all gone.." she murmured, her hands toying with the horned growths on the creature's arms. "My Angel no longer wants me.."

She pushed away from him, and smiled at the doll in her arms, before placing her reverently on the cave floor.

Confusion played momentarily across the creature's face. It was unaccustomed to talking, unaccustomed to feeling anything. Since being captured by the initiative it's one thought had been to survive, and it had done so by being the biggest and the strongest, by fighting off all challengers, killing and eating with no thought but to live another day.

This pretty wraith unnerved him, in more ways than one. He could feel the pull of her magic, black and powerful, covering him with the sticky tar of a captive, but not quite pulling him under.

He decided to bide his time, and see what she might offer. He noticed the effigy she held, then placed so reverently facing them. He sensed a vague disquiet emanating from the thing, a faint aura, jagged and otherworldly, and then he fell into the spell of Drusilla's caress.

"I am yours..." He hissed before ripping her dress with one taloned hand, as Drusilla gasped with delight.

SUNNYDALE, CEMETERY, that same moment:

Spike felt alive. His strength was returning to him in very palpable waves. For the first time in months, his mind felt clear. It was as if a puzzle had been completed in his mind. He was invigorated, imbued with a sense of purpose.

"It won't be in vain, pet.." He muttered under his breath. "I know the truth of it now, that bloody ponce and his sire won't get away with it."

He paused then, at the very gates of the cemetery, and closed his eyes, shutting out the soft drone of late night traffic, and the whispered sigh of ghosts and things squirming in the earth, to concentrate on the scents that assailed him. The bones in his face shifted, and his senses immediately sharpened again, honing in with a predator's instinct on his prey.

Four humans had passed by here recently. He stilled himself, and concentrated, cataloguing the scents, two females, and two males. A smile curved the corner of his mouth, which had begun to water a little as he caught the scents of Anya and Willow.

Both on their monthly cycle.

He licked his lips unconsciously. If they only knew... He thought. Women working or living together eventually cycle together. It had made his unlife a living Hell in the months leading up to the confrontation with Glory... All that delicious blood...

He shook his head. Concentrate you wanker! He turned right, and walked purposefully out into the street.

Headed back to Casa Summers...Good.

Spike disappeared into the inky black of the night, bounding with eager grace as he trailed the scent of his humans.

The cemetery resumed its pall of casual abandonment, until a faint scream of exploding vampire tore the silence in two.

Buffybot straddled the foot marker of an empty grave, and smiled after the direction Spike had gone. A single syllable escaped her perfect mouth with a breathy sigh.

"Spiiiike..."

She stepped over the exploded dust, settling in ashy tendrils at her stylish yet affordable boots, and followed the retreating form of the neon beacon glowing with bleached perfection in the starless night.

MEANWHILE...

Darla was becoming increasingly annoyed. Nothing was going according to plan. Nothing felt right in this new century. Drusilla was even crazier, if that were possible! And Angelus! Darla stopped her purposeful stride as angry tears flooded her vision. She clenched her fingernails so that they stabbed red crescent wounds into the fine white silk of her palm.

My Lover of over one hundred years has betrayed me...

She sucked unnecessary air into her lungs and a tiny squeak of a sob escaped her perfect pink mouth. The Master had been right, after all, only, she hadn't tired of 'The Stallion' He had tired of her. Blind rage battled with her grief. Her Lover, Her mate, Angelus her perfect boy. Betrayed her with a man! The humiliation was almost too much to bear.

Drusilla had been bad enough, but Drusilla was nothing, a toy! A bauble! Angelus' little amusement. But, William, Spike... everything Drusilla had told her of him, the awed reverence with which she spilled forth her future visionary fragments of 'William The Bloody, Slayer of Slayers, Master Vampire and Direct descendent of The Aurelian line' had whet Darla's thirst for the future, one so rosy and blood red with promise...humans who were ripe and ready for the taking, like fruit on the vine, a Hell mouth with no Slayer, and a powerful Master of the Master's line firmly on a throne of bones.

'He didn't appear so powerful in the Crypt', Darla thought.

A sneaking suspicion was creeping through her still veins.

What if Drusilla had been lying all along?

Spike's Crypt loomed in front of her. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

Why am I crying? She admonished herself. Angelus is still mine. I made him. I am the one thing that can make him beg. She felt a surge of feminine pride, brushing her fears aside.

A little pain, wrapped in the silk of her touch would remind him of his obligation to his Sire.

She stepped up to the Crypt door, and pushed it open. Angelus turned at her step, lifting the bottle of whiskey in a parody of a toast. He was sprawled in Spike's chair, his large frame spilling languidly over the side, naked and feral, as the light from the flickering box played like candle flame across the cool musculature of his body.

"Angelus!" Darla stamped her foot, taking the bottle from him, and throwing it against the wall. " Where is Spike?"

A low chuckle escaped Angelus, and he waved a hand airily in the direction of the door.

"Spike..." He annunciated, " Is his own man he is..."

Darla slapped Angelus across the face, her eyes blazing. He grabbed her arm, and pulled her down to him. Her skirts settled over them both as he pulled her in close for a hungry kiss. She melted into the steel coolness of his familiar embrace, returning his passion with equal fervor.

Yes, my beautiful man. You still belong to me.

"Oh, My God..." Giles stood framed in the doorway of the crypt, a look of horror frozen on his face. Before he could react, and back away, Willow crowded around him to see, her concern for Spike evident in her voice.

"Is Spike OK?" She asked, trying to push past Giles as he barred her way.

The older man's steel grip bruised her arm as he pushed, then pulled her away from the entrance to Spike's dwelling. "Angelus. Darla." He hissed. Willow's face paled, and she wordlessly turned on her heel, running blindly into Anya and Xander who reacted to her terror with wide-eyed confusion.

"RUN!" yelled Giles.

Darla sensed the movement of the potential prey long before they had walked in on her tryst with Angelus.

She smiled lovingly down on her mate, who returned the smile with a rakish tilt of his head as he looked up at her within the fraying edges of a whiskey golden haze.

"Hungry, love?" Darla purred seductively. Angelus nodded, and she reached down with slim fingers to caress the hard length of him, eager and rigid against his stomach.

He closed his eyes, as her hand fisted him, raising his hips and hissing with pleasure as she tightened her hold, caressing his balls, the cool flesh of his erection pulsing under her firm ministrations.

Darla leaned over him, and brushed her lips over his ear. Angelus shuddered beneath her expert touch.

"Let me get you something to eat, my love" she growled, and with that, she leapt away from him, ending all contact, and disappeared with supernatural agility into the cemetery

Angelus gasped in surprise, then cursed, his lust raging through him unsatisfied and aching for release.

Spurned by two lovers in one night!

Fuck.

What a Bitch.

LONDON, Baudelaire's hideout, 1880.

The screaming did it.

Angel grunted with effort as he shoulder charged the rotting door. It may have been old, and the wood may have splintered, but it was solid oak, ancient, weathered.

Angel stepped back, and William slipped in beside him to lend his strength to the task.

The unnatural inhuman screaming from within was getting on his bloody nerves. However, Angelus had failed to comment on it, and so William decided not to remark on how the noise was causing the hairs on the back of his neck to raise themselves in alarm. Instead he concentrated on the task at hand.  The two vampires used the strength of their combined demons to add supernatural effort to pushing against the door, and finally it splintered and gave way with a shriek of protest.

William peered into the complete blackness of the room. The smell of rot assailed him, enveloped him, and he raised a hand to his mouth and nose, as the stink permeated his sense of smell, and he tasted it bitter and rotten at the back of his throat. A glance towards Angelus confirmed that the older vampire
was suffering a similar fate.

The high-pitched screaming had ceased, and had been replaced by low sobbing gasps, interspersed with inane giggles. Masculine? Feminine? Hard to tell, whispers, low and seemingly all around punctuated the complete darkness, and with a pleasing shock, William realised he could see shapes looming out of the gloom.

Vampire senses William explained to Himself, and not for the first time he had a moment of supreme joy that Drusilla had turned him.

"William!"

Angel's voice hissed like a knife through the molasses stink, his eyes gleamed gold, beacons in the velvet black.

He indicated with a finger to his lips the need for stealth, and then pointed to a hole in the floorboards to the right of his foot. William's eyes followed the downward direction, and using his sense of smell and enhanced hearing to probe the depths of the hole, he started to sift through the information his senses revealed.

The sickly sweet smell of rotting corpses was the overriding assault on his sense of smell.

Rictus grins, jagged gaping maws, black fathomless staring sockets, chiaroscuro forms flickering in the perfect darkness were made vivid to his eyes. William realised that he had slipped unwittingly into his vampiric visage, the heady scents assaulted him, the sights assailed him mercilessly, and underneath it all, the mad laughter and movements of what remained of Charles Baudelaire.

William felt the first tendril of fear sniff delicately at the pit of his stomach. His eyes sought Angelus' for reassurance, but Angelus was no longer focused on the fledgling vampire at his side. William followed his Grandsire's line of vision and beheld the mutilated ruin of what once had been a man.

"By all that's unholy..." William gasped as he took a step back. This proved to be a serious mistake. He stumbled across the outstretched limb of a moldering female corpse; he tripped and fell heavily, and found himself embraced by the skeletal and half rotting charms of a dead body. Baudelaire was on his prone form in a flash, and William screamed as the vampire gnashed his teeth inches from his jugular.

William felt a surge of adrenaline course through him as his demon fought back against the threat, and he pushed at the mad vampire's jaw with his hand, feeling a satisfying crunch as the bones cracked and splintered his assailant's face.

Baudelaire howled in pain, scampering away, dragging at the outstretched hand of the rotting corpse, gathering it to him, and putting it behind him protectively, and glaring with hate filled yellow eyes at the two intruders to his realm.

Angelus had remained strangely immobile during the exchange, his brow beetling and his chest heaving with unwanted breath. William cautiously raised himself to a kneeling position, keeping a wary eye on Baudelaire, who was now fully attentive to his rotted charge, unmindful of his ruined jaw, he was kissing the empty sockets of the corpse, and gently caressing her faded dry hair. The blonde silk of it whispered soft as gossamer against his touch, and William stared, shocked into silence at the horror before him.

"I know what you came for..."

His voice was cracked, flat and dead, and it sent shivers down William's spine. He looked into the eyes of the wretched thing across from him, and saw Hell itself reflected in the gold orbs.

Angelus spoke. "Hello, Charles."

His voice seemed to fill the darkness with sound.

Baudelaire turned his attention back to his skeletal lover. "She loves me, Angelus..." He raised his eyes to a point above the taller vampire's head. Angel nodded, a barely perceptible movement of his head.

The mad vampire's eyes filled with tears, and he slipped back into his human face. The jaw was ruined, blotched and broken, it grated noisily as he spoke, and unmindful of the pain he must surely be in he screamed out his declaration.

"LOVES ME!" He wrapped his arm around the body he clutched to him to point to his chest. He began to wail, a high, thin inhuman sound that stabbed the inky blackness with his insanity.

Angel stood there, witnessing in stoic silence the shadowed ruin of a brilliant mind.

William was feeling bored. He looked from one vampire to the other, and made a decision. With the feline grace that was to become his fighting trademark, he leapt upon the crazy vampire, and wrapped his hands around his thin and dirty neck.

"Where is Drusilla, and how the Hell can I get her back? Tell me now, or I will let Angelus snap you in two like a twig." He leaned in closer, and watched with satisfaction as a flicker of fear played across the insane face.

He felt Angelus' heavy hand on his shoulder as he pulled him roughly away. A flicker of annoyance coursed through him, as he shrugged the big paw off of him.

Angelus knelt in front of Baudelaire, and searched his eyes.

"Charles, " He began, his voice low and coaxing, "This is going to end now. Help us, and you will be with Darla again."

The little man began to rock back and forth, and he closed his eyes as a fat tear leaked from the corner of his eye.

"Darla, ma petite Cherie..." He murmured into the hair of the corpse, behind them, William gave a disgusted snort.

"I say..." He protested, "Why don't you just start ripping bits off him?" He was becoming tired of Angelus and his soft approach, he felt a need to express himself, violently, and if Angelus wouldn't do it then...

"Shut up, Spike..."

The command froze him. The air of menace was unmistakable. William was no fool. He narrowed his eyes and stood down, his fists falling to his sides.

'Alright, Angelus, I'll wait, but if any harm comes to my Drusilla...' He left the thought unfinished.

SOMEWHERE NEAR SPIKE'S CRYPT, Sunnydale, 2002

Xander felt Willow in his head before he saw her.

"Xander, can you hear me?"

A look of shock traveled across Xander's mobile features, as he registered a range of emotions, fear, relief, fear, did he do fear? Check. Fear definitely there.

Anya briefly registered a change in Xander (He was no longer at her side running from the hideous death that awaited them) before she stopped all forward momentum in her legs, coming to rest breathlessly against a rather large and ornate crypt at the southern edge of the cemetery.

Xander caught the confused look in Anya's eyes before speaking in a low whisper.

"Willow, where are you...?" Cautious, not at all freaked out at the mind invasion.

'Yeah, right' He admonished himself.

"Xander? It's only me. Don't be freaked. I can help. We are safe here for the moment."

Apparently, Anya could hear Willow as well, because she hissed, "Willow! How the frilly heck are you doing that? Where are you?"

"Shhhh." Answered Willow. "No need to speak, it's a simple mind link. It saves time."

She paused. "I'm above you." A pair of startled faces tilted upwards to stare at Willow.

Her hair fanned out about her, a halo of red against the soft light from the globes that dotted the Graveyard wall.

"Holy Moly." Anya cursed under her breath.

"How are you doing that? How is she doing that?" Xander queried, his face a mask of confusion as he directed questions to both the Willow in his head, and the very solid form of Anya at his side.

"No time for this." Willow said suddenly, her tone impatient.

Xander gathered himself and made a choice to trust his friend.

"OK, Will, but you and me are going to have a serious talk about this after we get the heck out of this fine mess." Then he added with his mind, "It's kinda freakin' me out here."

Willow inclined her head to look at him, considering. Then Anya shook her head vigorously in the affirmative. "Um, I hate to interrupt the wicked Wicca vibe you are giving off, Willow, but where is Giles?"

Willow nodded, her brow creasing in concentration for a long minute.

"I can't feel him." She answered finally.

A look of alarm passed between the three friends.

" Maybe he's knocked out." Reasoned Anya. "Giles gets knocked out a lot. Maybe that's why you can't invade his private thoughts like you have with Xander and me?"

This time, both Xander and Anya felt Willow's annoyance, before she quickly masked it, making her presence in their minds benign and non-threatening once more.

Willow floated down from the top of the crypt to land in front of them. Anya reached over to close Xander's open mouth with an audible click.

"That's a neat trick." She said aloud, eyeing the redheaded witch with a new respect.

"Aren't we the little Prodigy?"

Willow didn't react, and Xander felt her presence slowly withdraw from his mind, before she addressed him in an authoritative whisper.

"I think that Darla has Giles. Are we going to do something about it, or are we going to wait until he is dead?"

How could they answer that?

Xander lowered his eyes and focused intently on a spatter of grease on his shoe.

Anya, ever the wordsmith, answered the question with her usual forthrightness.

We go save Giles, of course, that's what we do." She looked around, as if she was searching for something.

"What are you doing Anya?" Willow asked, her voice calm.

Anya shrugged. "I don't know." She said. "And don't turn me into a toad for asking, but where is Buffybot? It seems to me that she might come in handy with the rescuing of a certain missing Watcher."

Xander whistled low through his teeth. "Seems like another ordinary night in Sunnydale to me. A missing Watcher, An evil troika of Vampires come to rain Hellfire and Brimstone on the town, an absent robot, a dead Slayer and a vampire who may or may not be batting for the evil side, and my best friend has gone all Nightmare on Elm Street."

Anya patted him on the back as they walked away.

"Don't worry Sweetie. I've seen worse...there was this one time..."

Their voices carried on the summer air, and a hundred pairs of eyes watched their departure from the shadows.

A Child's laughter followed them into the street.