Chapter Nine:  Crash and Burn.

Justine staggered towards Wesley; battered and bleeding, sobbing out her tale of betrayal and assault by Holtz, and the former Watcher holstered his gun and moved to support her.  "You have to get to a hospital," he told her, reaching out with his right hand to stop her from falling, holding Connor to his shoulder with his left.

"No, I just have to do -" she began, but was interrupted.

"Wesley look out!"  A shrill cry rang out from behind Justine.

The warning shout came almost too late.  He jerked back slightly, but she was already bringing up a knife in a vicious blow, and it raked across his throat.  Blood spurted; and he staggered, clutched reflexively at the wound, and fell to his knees.  She reached for the baby, ignoring his feeble attempt to resist, but then released her hold and turned to face something that was approaching rapidly.

Wesley slumped forward, desperately trying to shield the infant as he fell, unable to break his fall without letting go of the baby or his throat, and his forehead struck the ground.  There were sounds of a struggle, a gasp, a snarl, and a horrible crunching noise, and he couldn't see what was going on.  Then a body struck the ground in front of him.  Justine.  Her body was face down but her eyes stared sightlessly at the sky as she quivered and jerked spasmodically.  Her head had been twisted all the way round; her neck was broken.

"Bitch!" a female voice snarled; and then, more gently, spoke to him.  "Oh, God, Wesley, she's cut your throat!  Hold on.  I'll try to stop the bleeding.  Keep the pressure on."  Gentle but firm hands took hold of his neck, pressing something against the wound, moving his hand to support the pad, and then helping him to rise. "I won't drink, I won't drink, I'm an empowered woman, I can resist," the girl muttered as she assisted him.  Wesley raised his head enough to see her face and recognised her at once.

Harmony Kendall.  The girl who had been Cordelia's friend, who had tried to carry on that friendship even after becoming a vampire, who had briefly joined Angel Investigations only to betray them to a vampire cult, and who had sent them Christmas cards with her phone number in case they ever needed her help; not that they would have trusted her enough to take her up on the offer.  "I can do this.  I can fight evil, the Host said so.  I won't drink."  She brought Wesley to his feet and helped him towards the car.  "I'll get you to a hospital," she told him, "and then I'll call Angel.  Hey, it's a baby!  What are you doing with a baby, Wesley?  Oh, silly me, you can't talk.  A cute baby.  Come on, Wes, get in, I'll help you.  Hang on in there."

Xander racked up the balls and broke.  A solid ball went down; he took another shot without success, and moved away from the table to make way for his opponent. "So, Spike, I mean William," he said, "Buffy looks like she's hot for you.  What you always wanted, I thought, but you don't seem too keen.  What's up?"

Spike sized up the positions of the balls and bent down for his shot.  "Nothing's up," he claimed.  He struck, pocketed a striped ball, and moved to take aim again.  "I don't mind you calling me 'Spike', you know, Xander.  You've done it for a long time; don't expect you to change overnight."

"So why get pissed at Buffy calling you 'Spike'?" Xander asked, as Spike pocketed the next ball.  "I don't get you.  You spend a year chasing after her, risk your life for her, put up with a Hell of a lot of stick from us – for which I apologise – for her sake, and now she looks like she's ready to let you catch her and you drop her. What gives?"

"The 'Spike' thing with Buffy is just an excuse," the former vampire admitted.  "I want to keep calling her 'Slayer', that's all, and it gives me a reason."  He tried a tricky cut to a middle pocket; the ball went down, but the white continued on further than he had intended, and it bounced off a cushion to end up blocked off from the stripes by two plain balls.

"You want to keep calling her 'Slayer'?" Xander repeated blankly.

"It keeps a distance between us," Spike explained.  "I don't want to get too close.  There's nothing there for me but pain."  He tried an escape shot off a cushion and successfully reached a striped ball, but it went nowhere near the pocket, and he made way for Xander.

Xander hesitated before taking his shot.  "That's never stopped you before."

Spike grinned mirthlessly.  "I'm not as fond of pain as I used to be.  And I'm not as fond of Buffy either.  It's taken a long time, but I'm finally over her."

The music in the club was loud enough to drown out most background noises, and so he didn't hear the gasp behind him, and he didn't see what Xander saw; the Slayer standing there, mouth hanging open, and eyes wide with shock and hurt.

The car hurtled through the night.  Wesley huddled on the back seat; one hand clutching the pad to his throat, the other holding Connor's bottle for the baby to drink. He kept as low as possible; no bullets had hit the car for a couple of minutes now, but he still wasn't going to risk exposing himself.  Harmony had been hit twice already; and if she hadn't been a vampire she'd be dead, or critically injured, and he and Connor would be in the hands of either Holtz or the other group of pursuers - Wolfram and Hart, he assumed.

At least Connor had stopped crying now.  It had been bedlam in the car for a while; Harmony screaming and pleading into her cell phone, the engine roaring as she kept her foot hard on the gas, and the baby wailing in fear at the strange noises and at the violent motions of the car.  There were still strange noises; Harmony was singing into the phone, trying to persuade Lorne that she was telling the truth.  Wesley had managed to croak out a few words during her first call, but then his voice had given out altogether and now he couldn't utter a single intelligible sound to help.  The singing had soothed Connor, but it wasn't soothing Wesley.

"When you feel all alone, and a loyal friend is hard to find,
You're caught in a one-way street with the monsters in your head.
When hopes and dreams are far away and you feel like you can't face the day
Let me be the one you call, if you jump I'll break your fall ..."

Much better than her ghastly rendition of "Memories" when she'd first tried to prove herself to Lorne; he didn't know how well the Empath demon's powers would work over a cell phone, but sincerity rang out in every note and she was holding the tune fairly well.  It was just that Wes didn't feel that the most appropriate choice of song by someone who was taking corners at sixty, while steering one-handed, was "Crash and Burn".

Buffy found herself back in her seat with no recollection of how she had got there.  Dawn was frowning at her, and her mouth was opening and closing, but she couldn't hear anything her sister was saying; there was no sound but a voice in her head screaming 'he doesn't love me any more, he doesn't love me any more!'

Gradually she became aware that Willow was trying to attract her attention.  "What is it, Will?" she responded, forcing herself to speak normally.

"You okay, Buff?" Willow asked.  "You looked pretty spaced out there for a minute.  What's up?"

"Nothing," Buffy replied unconvincingly.  Willow looked sceptical, and Dawn was looking at her with eyes wide and worried.  Tara, however, had an expression of sad understanding, even pity, in her big heavy-lidded eyes.

It was Anya, of course, who actually put their thoughts into words.  "Buffy's upset because William would rather play pool with Xander than dance with her," she told the others. Dawn's worried look was replaced by amused superiority.  "Jeez, Buffy, let him have some guy time," she advised.  "It's no big deal."

"It's not guy time," Buffy choked out.  "He said he was over me."  She lost it.  "He doesn't love me any more," she wailed, and burst into tears.  Willow was there immediately, offering comfort, but it didn't help.

Dawn rose to her feet, jolting the table and knocking over a glass, and headed straight for the pool table.  Her face was white.  She grabbed Spike, who was bent over aiming at the eight ball, and pulled him away from the table.  "Tell me it's not true!" she demanded.  "Tell me!"

"Tell you what, Pidge?" Spike asked, baffled.  "What's the matter, sweet Bit?"

"Buffy says you don't love her any more," Dawn told him in a tight, angry, voice.  "Tell me it's not true.  You love her.  You have to."

"I don't have to do anything," Spike snapped back, but then his voice softened.  "I'm sorry, Bit.  It's true.  I still want to be her friend, but I don't love her."

Her face crumpled up.  "But you have to!" she repeated.  "I was so happy.  We were going to be a family again."  She began to cry.  "I hate you!" she yelled, turned on her heel, and stormed off back to the table, bawling her eyes out.

Spike stared after her for a moment, his face grave, and then turned back to the pool table and sank the eight ball in one smooth motion.  He tossed the cue onto the table.  "Thanks for the game, Xander," he said politely, and followed Dawn.

Tara intercepted him before he reached the table.  "I thought you told her yesterday!" she snapped at him accusingly.

"I did!" he protested.  "While you were unpacking, just like I said I would.  What's everybody so upset about?"

"She finds out you don't love her by overhearing you telling Xander, and you wonder why she's upset?"  Tara stared at him coldly.  "I thought you were better than this."

"I did tell her," Spike insisted.  "I told her we'd tried being lovers and it didn't work, but that we could be friends.  She was okay with that.  She was fine."

"Then you didn't tell her well enough," Tara scolded him.

"Wait a minute," Xander put in.  "You and Buffy were lovers?"

"We had a thing," Spike explained.  "Maybe 'lovers' is putting it too strong.  We did some things, but any love was just from me.  I was just convenient for her.  She hurt me and hurt me until I just couldn't take it any more."

Xander swallowed hard.  He knew what Spike meant by 'some things'.  "She was boinking you when you were still – you know?"

Spike nodded reluctantly.

"In that case she loved you," Xander told him.  "I know the Buffster.  No way would she do that if she didn't love you.  Maybe once if she was drunk; but if there was more than once then she loved you, whatever she said.  Whatever she told herself, even.  But why keep it a big secret?"  He answered his own question. "Because she thought we'd be all down on her, maybe an intervention.  So she hides it, feels guilty, takes it out on you – don't blame her, Spike.  You want to be pissed at someone because of how she treated you, be pissed at me."

"Look, I didn't think it over and make a conscious decision to stop loving her," Spike told them.  "It just happened, same as falling in love with her in the first place just happened.  It's not my fault."

"It's your fault you messed up breaking it to her," Tara insisted, still annoyed at him.

"If I'd known she loved me I'd have spent a lot longer on it, sure," Spike explained.  "But I hadn't any idea.  Why did she never tell me?  I can see why she didn't tell you lot, yeah, but why tell me the complete opposite?  I asked her if she even liked me and the most she could say was 'sometimes'."

"Buffy's bigger in the land of de Nile than the Great Pyramid, you should know that by now," Xander reminded him.  "Best not go back there for a while, I think. Get you a beer?"

"One wouldn't be enough, and I don't want to start drinking again.  I'll stick with Diet Coke."  Spike shook his head.  "That's another thing.  Why have I stopped drinking?  I don't remember making any decision about that either."

It didn't take Giles long to find them.  They had laid claim to that table back in their High School days.  He strode urgently through the Bronze towards the group, noticing as he approached that it was an unhappy and tense gathering.  In fact it appeared to be two distinct groups, at odds with each other, and the division wasn't one he would have expected.  Xander, Anya, and Spike in one; Buffy, Dawn, Willow, and Tara in the other.  However, their social relationships were not his immediate concern.

"Giles!" Buffy exclaimed as she saw him, with a smile which didn't quite reach her eyes.  "Come to join – no, you haven't."  She saw his expression, and recognised that it wasn't a social occasion.  "Something wicked this way comes?"

"Yes, actually," Giles confirmed.  "And we have to rescue her, oddly enough."  He saw her puzzled look, and the attention of the entire group turning to him, and went on to explain.  "Harmony phoned wanting Spike.  She's being chased by several carloads of gunmen, she's got Wesley and a baby with her, and she's making a run for Sunnydale.  Wesley's badly hurt, and she needs help."  He turned to Spike.  "I drove over in your car, I hope you don't mind?"

"'Course not, Rupert," Spike assured him.  "I told her Angel sounded like he had some kind of trouble, she must have looked in on him and got mixed up in something.  Gunmen, she said?  I'd better stop off at the crypt and pick up my shotgun."

"I feel like hurting something," Buffy said grimly.  "Count me in.  Dawn, bed at a sensible time, okay?"

"You sure this isn't some kind of trick?" Xander asked.

"Harm hasn't got the brains for tricks," Spike pointed out.

"Wesley managed to say a few words.  She's telling the truth," Giles confirmed.  "I think we might need magical support," he went on, looking dubiously at Willow. "I wonder if there might be a connection with the demon that Angel asked me to research.  The presence of a baby implies some sort of sacrifice."

"I'm in," Willow said determinedly, glancing at Tara and getting a look of approval in return.  "This is what magic is for.  I'd lost sight of that for a while, but I'm back on track.  Let's do this."

Spike ran back out of the crypt, carrying the shotgun, and wearing the old leather duster.  He passed the shotgun to Giles and got behind the wheel.  "If we're going into a big fight I need to feel like the Big Bad again," he explained to Buffy, who was looking at the coat and frowning.  "Will," he went on, buckling his seatbelt.  "I was never that great at maths.  Do that 'two trains' problem, would you?  Work out where we'll meet, assuming Harm's going at maybe eighty or so."

"How fast will we be going?" Willow asked, as Spike started the engine.

The former vampire gave a tight, determined, smile as the car shot forward and the acceleration pressed everyone back tightly into their seats.  "One hundred and fifty five."

"It's sort of like 'The Hallelujah Chorus', isn't it?" Harmony commented.  They were out of LA by now, on the open road, and she was pushing the car along at over ninety on the straights.  Wesley could reply only by directing a puzzled stare towards where the driving mirror failed to reflect her image.

"No, it was 'The Hallelujah Trail', come to think of it," the vampire girl went on.  "It had Burt Lancaster in it as the Cavalry Colonel.  There was the wagon train of whisky going to Denver, and the miners coming from Denver to meet it, and the Temperance women going to stop it, and the Native Americans from the reservation going to steal it, and the cavalry going to protect it, and they were all heading in different directions and they all met up in this big sandstorm and had this big battle where nobody could see each other, right?"

Wesley looked at the mirror again, trying to convey 'yes, I remember the film, it was good but what the Hell does it have to do with our situation?' with only facial expressions and a brief thumbs-up with the hand that held Connor's bottle.

"See, we're heading for Sunnydale, and those two lots of guys – think they must be two lots, 'cause they were shooting at each other as well as at us – are chasing us, and the Host says Angel's chasing them, and Mr Giles is coming our way from Sunnydale with Spike and maybe the Slayer as well if she'll come, and the Host's going to follow from LA with Gunn and some guy called Fred."

One of the pursuing cars drew almost level, the front seat passenger aiming an M-16 in their direction and gesturing to them to pull over.  Harmony lifted Wesley's revolver from where it lay on the seat beside her and fired twice.  She hit the driver, and the car swerved off the road and disappeared from sight.  Connor woke at the noise and began to cry.  Wesley pushed the bottle towards his mouth, and to his relief the baby took it in and stopped crying.

"So we'll all meet up somewhere between here and Sunnydale," Harmony went on as if nothing had happened, "just like the wagon train and the miners and the Indians and the cavalry and such.  Only hopefully not in a sandstorm."

When Spike had said they'd be going at a hundred and fifty five he hadn't been kidding.  Buffy had never experienced anything like it.  The world flickered past at an insane speed; when they overtook another vehicle it was in front of them one second, a hundred feet behind them the next.  Oncoming cars in the other direction flashed past like meteors.  NASCAR racetrack speeds on the open highway, at night.  Scary didn't even come close.  Buffy played nervously with the pockets of the Kevlar vest she'd snatched up in a quick detour to Revello Drive on the way to the crypt.  Would it achieve anything in the event of a crash?  Probably not.  Seat belts, airbags, Kevlar, Slayer strength; at this speed none of it would matter, there wouldn't be enough left of her to bury.

Despite the roar of the engine, the rumble of the tyres on the road, and the rush of the air past the bodywork at more than hurricane velocity, the car was quiet enough for conversation on the inside.  She could hear Giles and Willow in the back, books open in their laps, discussing a spell to neutralise some demon who seemed to be called Sergeant.  She hadn't thought that demons were that organised.  Except there was that saying about the Legions of Hell, so maybe they were organised, and perhaps she should hope that Captain, or Major, or General didn't turn up.  Although maybe Sergeants were the tough ones, like Sergeant Rock and Sergeant York.  Whatever.  Demons she could deal with.  Poke them with pointy things until they stopped moving, that usually worked.  Relationships were harder.

She glanced across at Spike.  The perfect boyfriend.  Yeah, right.  She'd made him into exactly what she wanted.  Except that now he didn't seem to want her.  He wouldn't even dance with her except if nagged into it, whereas he was racing at lunatic speeds to the aid of his ex.  Did Halfrek operate a returns policy?

"I'm sorry," he said suddenly.  He didn't even glance towards her, kept his eyes glued to the road ahead, for which she was sincerely grateful.  "I never meant to hurt you.  I thought we'd agreed to be friends."

"We didn't agree anything.  I just said 'friends' meaning I didn't want to argue any more.  I thought you loved me.  Until the end of the world.  What happened to my 'willing slave'?"

"You beat him to death in the alley across from the police station," Spike replied bitterly.  His eyes flickered to her for a single second.  "Oh God.  I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have said that."

"It's okay," Buffy told him, fear overriding the hurt.  If Spike had one of his crying fits at this speed they were all dead.  "I was wrong.  I'm sorry.  I can live with being friends.  I want to be more, but I know I hurt you.  Friends is good."

"'Friends' is utter rubbish," Spike contradicted her.  "Especially that episode where they went to England.  Total garbage.  England's nothing like that.  It was just a load of ridiculous clichés."

Buffy smiled weakly.  "Come on, Spike, it's funny.  Plus, Jennifer Anniston."  An odd thought struck her.  Spike's repartee lacked something without the odd English swearwords.  She actually missed him saying 'total sodding garbage' or 'a load of bollocks'.

"If I wanted to watch a blonde with stupid shampoo commercial hair I'd just watch you," Spike replied absently.  Buffy's heart leaped.  Was there still something there?  He'd mocked her 'stupid hair' shortly before that ghastly 'date' when she'd first found out he was in love with her.  There was still hope.

"It's them," Spike announced, spotting a cluster of headlights approaching; they were waving about erratically even though the road was straight.  He lifted off the accelerator for the first time since leaving Sunnydale and put his foot on the brake, and Willow and Giles held onto their books as the g-force pulled at them fiercely and the car stopped in an impossibly short distance.

"How do we stop them?" Buffy wondered.

"That's for Harm to manage," Spike replied, flashing the headlights three times and then pulling the car to the side of the road.  "I'm not using the Jag as a road block.  Okay, get ready to prod some serious buttock."

Willow and Giles looked at each other, then at Spike, and spoke in unison.  "You read Terry Pratchett?"

They were in trouble now.  One of the pursuing vehicles had got ahead of them, and it was a Hummer; bigger and heavier than their car, and tough enough to come off best in any collision.  It was trying to force them to slow down, and another car was drawing alongside.  Harmony had emptied the revolver into the car ahead without achieving anything other than getting a return shot through her chest; the bullet had gone clean through her, through the seat, and had wounded Wesley in the leg, luckily not seriously.  She'd passed the gun back to him, and he had reloaded one-handed, but had had no chance to either pass it back or fire himself.

Connor was crying again, loudly, partly from fear and partly, judging by the smell, because he needed his diaper changing.  Harmony was crying too, muttering to herself between sobs "Spikey will be here soon, Spikey will save us."  It was far too soon for anyone to have got there from Sunnydale, Wesley knew, even assuming that the newly human – according to Giles – Spike would still be willing to respond to a call for help from his vampire former girlfriend.  He had no way of disillusioning her, even if he had wanted to; better that she had some hope to cling to, however futile.  He was beginning to sink into despair.

"Three flashes!  It's Spikey!" Harmony cried gleefully.  "Hold on to your seats, it's going to be a bumpy ride."  She turned the wheel and braked hard, and they slewed off the road and bounced over the fields.

Angel ripped an assault rifle out of the hands of a Wolfram and Hart trooper, breaking his arms in the process, and turned to butt-stroke one of Holtz's thugs in the face.  He didn't hold anything back, striking with everything he had, and the man flew backwards through the air to land in a crumpled heap.  He was probably dead; Angel didn't care.  He had to get to his son.

He smashed his way through the chaos.  Holtz's men fought Wolfram and Hart, guns blazing and knives stabbing.  Wesley shot someone through the throat at point-blank range.  Harmony Kendall clutched Connor to her breast, her clothes so soaked with blood that she looked like a victim of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in full vamp face, and punched a Wolfram and Hart guard so hard that his jaw shattered.  Angel closed on her, the rifle in one hand, readying a stake in the other.

Now there was a new element in the fight.  Buffy Summers, her full Slayer strength unleashed against humans for perhaps the first time, felling them like ninepins; and when she hit someone, they didn't get up again.  Spike, his leather duster swirling, ducking and weaving his way through the combat, leaving a trail of the fallen in his wake.  Someone unseen, firing a shotgun from the fringes of the battle, picking off anyone clear of the melee who used his space to aim at Buffy, or Spike, or Wesley.

None of this mattered to Angel.  He closed in on Harmony, snarling in rage.  The traitor Wesley who had stolen his son would pay later; first he would deal with his accomplice.  She saw him and her game face melted away, replaced by a human smile.  Did she think she could fool him that easily?  He drew back the stake for a thrust, preparing to snatch Connor before the vampire's combustion could injure him.

Someone grabbed his arm with crushing force, halting his strike before it could begin.  "She's on our side, you daft Irish pillock!" Spike yelled.  Angel hit him with the rifle, knocking him away, and then followed up with the stake.

Buffy screamed and threw the nearest thing to hand at Angel to stop him delivering a possibly fatal blow.  Angel stumbled backwards under the impact, and then saw what had been used as the missile.  Holtz.  He seized the vampire hunter by the throat and raised him into the air.  "Drop your guns!" he commanded.  "Or I kill him."

"I second that," Rupert Giles spoke out, advancing into the pool of light from the vehicles' headlamps.  "I don't know who this lady is, but she seems to be important."  He was holding a shotgun to Lilah Morgan's head.

"Do what he says," Lilah ordered the shattered remnants of her force.  Sullenly they began tossing down their weapons, as did the few survivors of Holtz's mercenaries.  For the time being, at least, the battle was over.

"Now give me my son," Angel demanded.

"The baby's yours?" Harmony asked, passing Connor to the souled vampire without hesitation, her eyebrows sky-high in amazement.  "I thought we couldn't.  Oh shit!  Do pregnancy tests work on us?  'Cause, no way of knowing if I'm late or not."

Giles stood watching over the Wolfram and Hart medic as he worked on Wesley.  The Watcher had returned the shotgun to Spike and now held a Heckler & Koch MP-5K submachine gun.  Spike had taken charge of Lilah Morgan, who was glaring resentfully at her captors.

Angel had been distracted from his mission of vengeance against Wesley and Harmony by a furious Buffy, who was giving him a tongue-lashing which would make a chameleon envious, and insisting on a full explanation of Connor.

"So, human now?" Harmony said to Spike.  "How's it working out for you?"

"Not too bad, Harm," he replied.  "How are you getting on?"

"Not too bad," she echoed him.  "I'm trying to be good.  Living on blood I get from a guy at the blood bank.  Well, there was this mugger last month, but he attacked me, so I guess it was okay to eat him, right?  Speaking of which, I'm hungry, and I've been hurt real bad.  Can I eat anybody?  They're bad guys, right?"

"Sorry, Harm, I still can't let you eat them," Spike said apologetically.  "Unless any of them are dead, I suppose.  Would that be okay, Rupert?"

"I suppose she does need blood to heal, and she has suffered greatly in rescuing Wesley and the child," Giles conceded.  "Quite remarkable.  An unsouled vampire willingly putting herself at risk to protect innocents.  Not unprecedented," he shot a meaningful look at Spike, "but almost so.  You are a remarkable young lady, Harmony."

"Thanks, Mr Giles," she smiled.  "Wesley's a friend of Cordelia, so of course I helped him."

"You betrayed us before," Angel reminded her coldly, escaping from Buffy and approaching the blonde vampire.

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry, okay?" she responded.  "You put too much responsibility on me, and I was weak, and I was tempted by the pretty robes and the organisation.  I said 'a little light typing, and guard the cars', and you put me straight on this undercover thing and I wasn't up to it.  I've regretted it every minute since.  I want to come back.  I want to work with Cordelia again and be her friend."

"And you think helping Wesley steal my son is going to advance your case?" Angel asked incredulously.

"I don't know what was going on.  I just saw this woman cut his throat and try to steal the baby, so I helped him, and when I was taking him to hospital all these guys turned up and attacked us.  Hello, vampire here, not expected to know about right and wrong.  I just know helping your friends is good and hurting babies is bad.  You're the one with the soul.  You know stuff.  But I'll do what I'm told and not eat anybody unless you say it's okay.  Cordelia will show me the way, that's what the Host said.  I didn't follow her, and everything went wrong, but I want to try again."

Angel's expression softened.

"Give her a break, Angel," Buffy said from behind him.  "Wesley too.  He can't talk to explain, but I'm betting he had a really good reason for what he did.  If you do anything to him before he can speak for himself, I'll do it right back to you."

"He met with Holtz behind my back, knocked out Lorne, and took Connor," Angel growled.  "I can't see how there can be any good explanation."

"And got his throat cut, got shot, and fought while badly wounded to protect the baby," Buffy reminded him.

Before Angel could reply there was an interruption.  A car drove up and pulled to a halt beside them, causing the victors to ready their guns and stakes, but it proved to be Lorne, Fred, and Gunn.

"So you're back on track then, my little Cacophony," Lorne greeted Harmony.

"Hey, I looked that word up, and it wasn't nice after all," she complained, but smiled at him.  "It's good to see you again.  I'd hug you, but hey, covered in blood here."

"That's okay, cupcake, I'm not exactly blood free myself," the green demon assured her, pointing to the gash on his face where Wesley had struck him during the taking of Connor.

"Nothing in Wesley's place to show why he took Connor," Gunn reported to Angel.  "Looks like he can't talk, that right?" "I know he had a good reason," Fred put in.  "You were trying to protect him, Wes, weren't you?"

Wesley started to nod, thought better of it when the medic looked alarmed, and signalled a 'thumbs up' instead.  The matchstick-thin girl smiled with relief and hastened over to him, pulling out a notebook and pen from her bag, and handing them over.

"Prophecy," she read out as Wes wrote.  "'The father will kill the son'.  He saw a prophecy that Angel would kill Connor!  I knew he had a good reason."

Before Angel could reply the air nearby shimmered and a robed form took shape in the emptiness.  A hideous demon, face of grey wrinkled skin covered in scars and symbols.

"Centuries of effort that prophecy took," Sahjahn grumbled.  "All wasted because none of you were where you were supposed to be.  Looks like I'll have to do this the hard way."

He stepped towards where Angel held Connor.  Harmony leaped to bar his path, morphing into game face in mid air.  "Touch that baby and you're in a world of hurt," she snarled.  "I've paid too much in blood to let anything happen to him."

Sahjahn stopped in surprise.  "Why are you involved?  I don't detect the presence of a soul."

"I don't smell a soul anywhere on you.  Why do you even care?"  Spike remembered the words spoken by Doc on the tower where Buffy had died and his lips curled back in a snarl of such viciousness that it almost achieved the effect of game face.  He began to raise the shotgun, but stopped as Buffy took off in a flying kick straight at Sahjahn's face.

And sailed right through him.

"Ah, incorporeal, as I thought," Giles observed calmly, as Buffy landed awkwardly on the far side of the demon.  "A Granok demon.  Dimensional shifter.  Probably intends to attack by opening a portal.  Willow!  Now!"

The red-haired witch had stayed back out of the battle, leaning against the door of the Jaguar, her laptop open and resting on the car's roof, watching from beyond harm's way.  At Giles' shout she drew a knife blade across the palm of her hand and chanted "Corpus Granok Sahjahn Demonicus!"

The demon laughed.  "Doesn't work without a -" A lightning bolt descended from the clear sky and struck him.  "-pentacle," he finished uncertainly.  He stamped his foot.  Dust rose.

"What can I say?" Willow shrugged.  "I improvised.  Turns out one drawn on a graphics program works fine."

"Fools!" Sahjahn roared, backhanding Harmony and knocking her twenty feet through the air.  "All you have achieved is your deaths.  I am invincible.  I feared only one thing, and it is years away.  The child of prophecy is but an infant, and will never grow up now."

Giles emptied the machine-pistol into the demon with little effect.  His skin was as tough as Kevlar.  Buffy attacked again, knocking Sahjahn back but not hurting him significantly, and she had to throw herself backwards to avoid a powerful counter-blow.

"Eleven hundred years I've lived with this threat," Sahjahn went on, advancing again towards Angel, who was backing away holding Connor.  "When I first saw the prophecy, engraved in blood on an official scroll, it freaked me out.  'The one sired by the vampire with a soul shall grow to manhood and kill Sahjahn.'  Me.  Well, I've spent centuries on complicated plots to avoid it, but I think I'll just go for the simple option now.  I'll bash its brains out."

Spike laughed loudly, a sound so incongruous that it brought everyone to a halt, even Sahjahn.  "You got it wrong, rhino-face," the ex-vampire shouted.  "Meet the one sired by the vampire with a soul, now a man.  Me."

"Impossible!" Sahjahn gasped, but his face showed fear.  He seemed to regain his confidence as Spike came towards him wielding the shotgun.  "That puny weapon cannot pierce my skin, mortal," he sneered.

Buffy kicked him between the legs from behind and the Granok demon bent forward in pain, mouth opening wide with shock.  Spike thrust the shotgun barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

"I thought Drusilla sired you," Buffy quibbled, her mouth screwed up in disgust as she combed demon blood and brains out of her hair.  She had joined Spike in watching over Lilah and Holtz.  Giles was supervising the medical attention to Wesley, Angel was dismembering the mortally wounded Sahjahn, Gunn and Fred were changing Connor's diaper, and Lorne was tending to Harmony.

"She made a total cock-up of it," Spike explained.  "Didn't give me enough blood.  I'd have ended up an idiot minion, in game face all the time.  Angelus knew she wanted a proper vampire, so he finished it off for her.  They're both my sires.

Buffy frowned and pursed her lips.  "Connor's mother was Darla, who was Angel's sire, but she was brought back human and sired by Drusilla, who Angel sired in the first place.  So, what relation is Connor to you?"

There was only one answer Spike could possibly give to that question.  "Buggered if I know."

The characters in this story do not belong to me, but are being used for amusement only and all rights remain with Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the writers of the original episodes, and the TV and production companies responsible for the original television programmes.  BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER ©2002 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.  All Rights Reserved. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer trademark is used without express permission from Fox.