The outer doors of L'Orangerie were flanked by dwarf orange trees, their small sour fruit just beginning to blush gold with the colder nights.  From  his vantage point in the front seat of the convertible, Angel could see all the way through the archway and into the courtyard beyond, where a fountain  burbled in the center of the flagstone pavement.  Evening deepened and merged with the night as he waited, and the lights in the courtyard came on, glimmering white and gold in the indigo shadows.  The scent of citrus and damp stone contested with the fumes from the unending stampede of cars rushing by on La Cienega Avenue, but the clash of odors didn't bother him; he hadn't inhaled for fifteen minutes.

It had once been his favorite part of the hunt, this--stalking his victim, learning their ways, their fears, their weaknesses, building from the timber of their own hearts the scaffold upon which he would hang them.  Not for Angelus the quick kill; each death was unique and to be savored. He was, in his own way, an artist.  He still found pleasure in pursuit, little though he liked to acknowledge the fact.
       Men in exquisitely tailored suits and women in silk and pearls drove up, entrusted sleek late-model cars to valets and straggled up the walk, to disappear into the restaurant.  Other parties straggled out by ones and twos and fours to reclaim their shining fiberglass chariots.  The clothing was different, and the vehicles moved via internal combustion rather than horsepower, but the patterns of fashionable entertainment had changed little over the past two hundred years. 

Laughter and fragments of conversation fell upon his ears, slices of other people's lives at once enigmatic and banal.  Angel listened.  He couldn't help listening.  He hadn't tried to eavesdrop on Buffy's conversation with Faith, either, but vampire hearing couldn't help but pick up some of it, even from halfway across an echoing room filled with the yammering of two dozen other women trying to connect to the outside world across an inch-thick barrier of smudged glass.  Having heard, he couldn't ignore the implications.  If he could get her away from Spike for awhile, or get Spike away from her, he could... he didn't know what, maybe just run a stake through Spike's chest and walk quietly away.  But if Buffy were as emotionally dependant upon Spike as she seemed to be, he might be running her through as well.  A dilemma.

The players in said dilemma emerged from the restaurant shortly after ten, party of four: Hank Summers, unassuming middle-aged man with greying brown hair and a slight paunch minimized by the cut of his dinner jacket; Linda Gutierrez, a Hispanic woman young and pretty enough to be a trophy girlfriend, though the forceful look in her eyes cast doubt on that notion; Buffy Summers, vampire slayer and sometime love of his life, ethereal in cream and rose, with her tawny-gold hair caught up and bound about the top of her head with a gold fillet; and Spike, former minion, former nemesis, long-time annoyance, lean, pale and elegant in a dark suit and a necktie only true love could have coerced him into.  Linda was grilling Spike, who looked a trifle harried.

"...Tuesday," Spike said, "but it was the bagged stuff from Willie's.  The blood bank can chuck it when it expires or sell it on the black market; who am I to deny some poor overworked intern a little extra income?"

"Uh huh."  Linda was obviously still skeptical.  "And the last time you bit someone?"

"Er... Halloween.  But there were extenuating circumstances!  Tell her, Buffy!"

Buffy was right at his side, her fingers curled possessively around the crook of Spike's arm, laughing at his discomfiture in the face of Linda's rapid-fire questions, her upturned face illumined by a brilliant smile, tinged now with wicked humor.  "If there hadn't been, he'd be Mr. Big Pile of Dust about now."

  It struck Angel that he hadn't seen that smile in a very long time, and for a moment his resolve wavered.  Only for a moment; he had not survived this long on sentiment.  He reached across the front seat and picked up the stake, tucking it into the sleeve of his coat.  His quarry was in sight; he need only cut him from the rest of the herd.  He opened the car door and slipped out into the too-bright L.A. night, a shadow among shadows.

"...didn't know you spoke French," Hank said, unwillingly impressed.

Spike favored Hank with the thirteenth smirk of the evening.  There was an American for you; never mind the bloodsucking creature of the night bits, the astonishing thing is he speaks more than one language!  "Enough to get by.   You spend fifty-plus years knocking about Europe, you pick up what you hear the most: 'Où est la salles des bains?'  'Mon Dieu! Arrêtez, s'il vous plaît. Ne me tuez pas!' the usual. "

"Show-off," Buffy said in the tone which meant she was incredibly pleased with him.  She gave his arm a quick squeeze, her eyes brighter than the lights inside, and who needed a heartbeat when you had a girl like this looking at you like that?  Her lower lip slipped out in a mock-pout. "I could have handled it.  I took two semesters of French in high school."

He dipped his head to nuzzle her ear.  "Love, you ordered a shoe."

Buffy looked sidelong up at him through lowered lashes, daring him to tease the pout into another smile. "So maybe I wanted a shoe.  You can never have too many shoes."

Spike nodded, excessively sober, and turned on his heel, spinning her around with him.  "Right then, back we go, and you can correct my pronunciation to the waiter--"

Buffy gave a little shriek of laughter as the valet drove up with Hank's Lexus, and wrestled Spike back to the curb.  "Don't you dare!"  Abandoning him for the moment, she grabbed her father in an impulsive, rib-cracking hug and kissed him on the cheek.  "Dad, thank you!  I think this is the first real night out I've had in a year, and it's been wonderful."  Spike made a mental note that if what amounted to a double date with her father was producing this kind of reaction, a romantic dinner for two would probably induce Buffy-meltdown.  Buffy did a little pirouette on the sidewalk, while Hank surreptitiously felt his sides to see if anything had snapped.  "I just wish it didn't have to end--I feel like dancing till dawn, or--"

"Why not, then?"  Spike caught her hand, pulled her back into the circle of his arm, and dipped her tango-fashion.  "Got enough for a cab, don't we?  We can find some speakeasy with a cover charge in the single digits and let the old folks toddle on home--"

Buffy giggled.  "Coming from the only person here who's celebrated a centennial, and uses the term speakeasy with a straight face..."  She threw her father a hopeful upside-down look.  "It won't bother you if we get in late?  I know you said you had to go in to work this weekend..."

Spike suppressed a laugh at the guilt which creased Hank Summers's brow.  If Buffy'd been a less scrupulous person she could have parlayed that look into a weekend at the Hilton at the least.  As it was, Hank handed the valet his tip, hesitated, extracted his Visa card from his wallet and handed it to Buffy.  "Here, sweetie.  Have fun.  Just don't make me come bail you out, hmm?"

  "Ooh, platinum.   My favorite color."  She reached up and ruffled Spike's hair.  It was barely possible, Spike thought, that he and Summers pere had one thing in common--her father seemed to be just as addicted to that glowing smile of hers as he was, looking pleased as hell when Buffy bestowed another hug which threatened the integrity of his internal organs.  "Dad, you're tops.  The concierge had a phone--I'll go call us a cab."  She dashed back towards the restaurant door in a flurry of--well, Buffy would have been able to describe the dress in exacting technical detail, but Spike settled for 'sheer floaty stuff.'  Pity they were going to have to return it in the morning; she looked ravishing in the low-cut, cream-colored bodice which left exactly enough to the imagination...

  "Don't let her get into trouble," Hank said, getting into his car.

Spike tore himself away from his diverting speculation on just how athletic Buffy could get in that dress before coming out of it and grinned.  "Not a matter of 'let,' mate."  He watched the Lexus pull away from the curb and took a deep breath for the hell of it, reveling in the scent of smog and oranges, and gave himself up to the luxury of dithering over whether or not he'd have a smoke.

Buffy's happiness was contagious, but this trip hadn't solved anything, not really--it might take weeks, or months, before the Council buckled under to Buffy's demands, if they ever did.  Till then, she was still in a precarious position financially, and in her custody of Dawn.  The thought of her having to take some scut-work job to make ends meet made him itch to crack a few Watcher heads.  She wouldn't take money from him, for fear of where he might have obtained it.  Spike rocked back on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets, heedless of what he was doing to the cut of his suit.  Buffy could be unreasonably suspicious at times; just because he'd happened to mention that between the two of them they were probably strong enough to rip an ATM machine out of the wall and break it open didn't mean he was planning on doing it.  Not any time soon, anyway.

He needed very little for himself; scavenging, gambling, and the occasional petty theft kept him in blood and beers very nicely, with just enough uncertainty to make life interesting.  He could have gotten a job, even in Sunnydale, where the underworld was a tiny, parochial thing compared to Los Angeles's thriving demon community.  There were several higher-up demons in town who used vampires for muscle, and if there was one thing he was good at, it was kicking ass.  Until recently he'd scorned the idea--he was no one's lackey, and though he'd shed as many of the trappings of his living days as he could, there remained a stubborn core of William-beliefs so deeply ingrained as to be instinct: one opened doors for a lady, one paid one's gaming debts even if one had to knock over a convenience store to do so, and a gentleman didn't sully his hands with trade.

Still, he wasn't a gentleman any longer by any stretch of the imagination, and Buffy was his girl now.  That made him at least partly responsible for her welfare, not to mention Dawn's.  Buffy would most certainly not see it that way, but... perhaps some sullying was in order.  Spike felt a curious internal warmth that had nothing to do with body temperature--it had been a long time since anyone had depended on him for anything.  Pride? Haven't had that in stock since the crash of '98, but root around in the cellar, mate, p'raps there's a crate left in a corner somewhere.

His current reputation was such that some prospective employers might even find it an advantage; owning the loyalty of the vampire who'd done in Slayers and his own kind alike would be a coup in some circles.  On the other hand, his inability to attack humans was a distinct liability.  More to the point, he'd never been good at taking orders from anyone he wasn't in love with, and none of Sunnydale's demon bigwigs were all that appealing.  Scratch that idea, save as a desperation ploy.  What other possibilities were there?  Besides his talents in the ass-kicking line, he spoke a dozen-odd languages, both human and demon, could identify hundreds of demon species on sight, had a working command of black magic combined with an intense distrust of same, possessed an eclectic knowledge of nineteenth and twentieth century human literature, wrote poetry badly, and had a certain knack for interior decorating on a non-existent budget--not exactly a resume calculated to bring in a six-figure salary in a small college town, even for someone who wasn't a legally dead illegal alien.

The rasping snarl, pitched too low for human ears, interrupted his musings, and Spike perked up immediately.  Whatever it was sounded large and brassed off, exactly what he needed to banish unprofitable thoughts about profits.  Buffy would be out soon.  Perhaps he should wait...

Right.  He might be whipped and happy to be so, but he wasn't that whipped.  Whatever it is, I can kill the bugger and be back in two ticks.  Piece of cake.

It looked too simple.  Summers and his girlfriend took off, and then Buffy ran back into the restaurant.  The patness of it all made Angel suspect a setup, but there was no way any of them could have known he'd be here tonight; his decision to come had been wholly on the spur of the moment. Sometimes the simple explanation was the correct one, and luck was working in his favor.

Spike stood on the curb, rocking back and forth very slightly from heel to toe and gazing out at traffic with a contemplative expression.  Angel's slow and purposeful stalk had brought him within fifty feet of his one-time protege when he heard the growl.  Spike snapped to attention like a warhorse hearing a distant trumpet-charge, and a glittering, vicious smile spread across his face.  He looked over his shoulder at the courtyard, then turned and strode away across the close-cropped lawn towards the side of the building, breaking into an eager trot at the sound of another growl.  Angel increased his own pace to keep up.  Spike pulled his suit jacket off as he ran, hopped a low stucco wall and disappeared behind a stand of topiary trees.  A third growl segued into a full-throated roar, competing with the thump and rattle of the restaurant's heat pump.  The roar was followed by the crackle of breaking branches and Spike came sailing back through the foliage, leaving a ragged hole in the center of the carefully-manicured privet hedge.  He hit the grass rolling, somersaulted to his feet and shook himself violently, shedding leaves and twigs in all directions.  He threw back his head with a wolf-howl, whooped "Come and get it, baby!" and dove back through the hedge.

Angel called down silent imprecations on whatever demon had wandered up out of the sewers to complicate his plans, and ducked around the hedge.  Spike's opponent wasn't a species Angel recognized; it stood at least eight feet tall and must have measured as much across.  Its haystack of a body was covered with thick slatey-blue fur and an assortment of shiny, multi-faceted black hemispheres in varying sizes radiating out in an irregular whorl from the tooth-filled maw in the thing's upper surface. Whether they were eyes, tympanic membranes, or something else entirely was impossible to say.  It supported its bulk on three elephantine limbs and lashed out at Spike with another three long, whiplike tentacles, each equipped with a set of claws like ebony scimitars.  Spike ducked as the nearest tentacle sliced through the air over his head, close enough to shave off the tip of a bone-white curl or two, and came up again inside the thing's reach.

Angel's first thought was that Spike had just gone insane; there was no way he could fight this thing effectively without a weapon.  It was too large to wrestle, punching and kicking would make little impression on that enormous bulk, and its fur looked too thick for a vampire's fangs to penetrate even had Spike been in game face.  A second later the method in Spike's madness became clear as his fist hammered into one of the shiny black organs, smashing it to glistening jelly.  The demon's roaring escalated and Spike darted back as it reared up on two legs and tried to trample him with the third.

Spike continued his lethal dance, ducking under or leaping over the whirling tentacles, flitting forward to pulp another eyespot whenever an opening presented itself.  His arms were covered with translucent red-black goo to the elbow, and blood was running into one eye from a cut on his forehead where he'd been a hair too slow on a dodge.  His eyes were aflame with kill-lust, his breath came in short harsh explosions through bared teeth, and there was a fine sheen of sweat on his face--physical reactions born of emotion, not exertion; a vampire's body had no need to regulate its temperature.

  Angel wavered on the fringes of the fight, debating whether or not to join in.  If he remained aloof there was a good chance his problem would be solved for him, but then he'd have to dispose of this thing by himself, and he'd left his thrice-cursed cell phone in the car so calling for backup wasn't an easy matter.  The matter was taken out of his hands forthwith; Spike zigged when he should have zagged, and one of the creature's tentacles coiled around Spike's chest, pinning his arms and lifting him bodily off the ground.  The concentric rings of serrated teeth in the demon's maw gnashed like an animate paper shredder as the tentacle propelled Spike towards the opening.  With a curse Angel leaped forward, aiming a roundhouse kick at the thing's near leg.  At the same time Spike vamped out, bent his head and sank his fangs into the wrinkled blue skin of the tentacle holding him, ripping out a sizeable hunk of ichor-dripping flesh.

The creature's roar took on train-whistle urgency.  The tentacle holding Spike spasmed and flung the vampire into the side of the building.  Spike landed hard on one shoulder and plummeted to the ground, gagging on demon blood.  Angel dropped into a crouch, wrapped his arms around the leg he'd kicked, and heaved up and out.  With a basso wail the thing swayed like a redwood about to topple, then tipped slowly and majestically over onto its side and lay there, waving its tentacles and kicking the air.  The tentacle Spike had bitten twitched and shuddered, spattering purple blood across the grass.

Spike got to his feet, ran a hand through his disordered hair, and spat out a mouthful of purple goo.  "Like sodding peppermint whale oil, that is.  If other demons didn't taste so disgusting my unlife would be a lot easier. "  He dusted off the knees of his trousers, keeping an appraising eye on Angel.  "Fancy meeting you here.  Wondered if you were going to join in or stand there with your mouth hanging open in appreciation of my prowess."  He rotated his shoulder experimentally, determined that everything was in working order, and walked over to retrieve his coat, all loose-limbed, predatory grace, as if he hadn't just been tossed into a wall like a discarded rag doll.

You know what he is.   Demon animating the mind and body of a man a hundred and twenty years dead, inhuman arrogance an imperfect mask for all-too-human fears.  "So who exactly are you trying to fool, Spike?"

"Eh?"  Spike's dark brows sketched twin interrogation marks. "What're you on about?"  He shrugged back into his coat, concealing the worst of the damage grass stains and demon blood had done to his shirt.  He began going through the pockets, and finally located his lighter and a sadly abused pack of Marlboros.  He extracted a cigarette with care and straightened it out, then held the pack out to Angel.  "Fag?  Or is that too personal a question?"

Angel waved the pack away with impatience; Spike knew damned well that it was Angelus who smoked.  Spike shrugged and lit up, tucked his lighter back into his pocket, and tilted his sleek white-blond head back to exhale a stream of smoke, his face was a razor-cheeked study in quiescent savagery.  What we were informs what we become , Darla had told him, long ago.  Were there still echoes in Spike of the diffident, bookish young man Drusilla had carted home to him and Darla, like a cat proudly presenting its owners with a bedraggled and half-dead mouse?  Not that it mattered; William was dead, and any echoes of him that remained in Spike were only echoes.

"This."  Angel strode over and gestured at the fallen demon. "Fighting things like this when Buffy's not around to watch and give you the Slayer seal of approval.  Running around in the middle of the day, having a nutritious breakfast when the only four food groups you really need are O, A, B and AB--" Faster than thought, he whipped the stake out of his coat sleeve and rammed it against Spike's chest.  "You'd almost pass for human.  But not quite.  You've gotten soft, old pal.  The Spike I knew would never have let me get within five feet of him."

Spike glanced down at the wooden point making a divot in the lapel of his suit jacket, unflustered.  "Yeh, I've gotten into this bad habit of trusting people lately.  Give it a rest, Angelus.  If you'd meant to stake me or Dru you'd have done it years ago, not pissed around setting her on fire--she told me about that little joke of yours.  You're keen on the pre-show, but when it comes to the kickoff you're back in the stands.  You'll beat us, burn us, drag us through hell at your heels--but kill us?  Never."

"Fancy talk from someone whose last conversation with me was conducted with the business end of a hot poker."  Angel held Spike's eyes for a beat, long enough to let Spike grow uneasy about the accuracy of his assessment, and at last let the stake drop.  "Why should I, when I can will hurt you a lot more by letting you live?  Don't expect me to weep for Drusilla.  The crazy bitch deserved it."  He might as well have reached in and run a file right along a nerve; hatred boiled up in Spike's eyes, their golden depths going molten.  This was too easy. "Careful, Spike.  If you keep asking for Angelus, you may get him."

A visible quiver of rage tensed Spike's shoulders, but somewhat to Angel's surprise he held himself back and twitched his coat back into place.  "Right, I forgot.  You're the good twin."

"I've been trying to figure it out all day," Angel said, ignoring him.  It would be satisfying to rip Spike's spine out and tie it in knots, but ultimately pointless.  For vampires physical pain was cheap, healed and forgotten in hours or days.  No, if he wanted to wound Spike, he knew exactly how to do it.  He stepped back a pace or two and studied the younger vampire.  "What's in this for you besides the thrill of notching your bedpost?"

Still abnormally calm, Spike leaned back against the hedge and sucked on his cigarette.  "Don't think I much care for your tone when speaking of my girl."

"Your girl."  Angel's voice took on a gunmetal chill.  "Tell me something, Spike.  Do you believe your own line?"

"What d'you mean by that?"

"Simple interrogative sentence.  Do you really believe you can give up being evil?"

Spike blew a smoke ring. "Give up the killing?  Give up the rush of seeing things go smash?   Give up the joy--" He kicked in another of the fallen demon's eyes with a black glee that suggested he would far rather be connecting the toe of his boot with Angel's face--"of hurting something?  No."  His nostrils flared.   "But I can bloody well be selective about who I kill, and when.  Traitor's not exactly a noble occupation, but you're in it right along with me, so glass houses, eh?"

If there was one thing Spike was not, it was a plausible liar, and his voice was edgy now with anger and sincerity.  Maybe he had convinced himself, as well as Buffy, that he had a prayer of resisting his own nature for more than a token few weeks... no, months now, almost a year.  An eyeblink to someone who'd seen two and a half centuries roll by, hell, an eyeblink to Spike, who was half his age.  "I'm glad you realize that much," Angel said, lacing his hands together behind his back and pacing in a slow circle around Spike and the heap of quivering blue fur.  "That you can't change what you are.  Does Buffy, though--does she really?"

A muscle in Spike's jaw jumped.  "You'd have to ask Buffy that."

"'Cause I'm not sure she really gets it," Angel continued.  Spike turned uneasily in place, trying to keep him in sight.  "The urges.  You know.  Not just for blood.  For destruction.  For a good slaughter.  The sweetness of inflicting pain, the delicious scent of fear--not just any fear, either.  Human fear.  Human pain.  That's our natural prey, Spike.  Hard to imagine you've given it up entirely."

"'Our'?" Spike asked, his eyes hooded.

"You think I don't still feel it?"  Even with a soul, even with the twin goads of guilt and remorse constantly pricking him, he'd given in to those urges more than once; he still woke sometimes from dreams of Kate's rich living blood gushing into his mouth, or the artistic satisfaction of closing the doors on the crowd from Wolfram & Hart.  Remorse was stronger than the satisfaction, but Spike knew none, and Spike had never possessed his self-control; the chip only provided him with an illusion of it.

  Spike snorted, folding his arms across his chest.  "Didn't think you'd admit it if you did.  What's all this in service of?  I've got a lady waiting."

"Harmony showed up in L.A. last spring."

"My condolences."

"Decided she was going to be a good guy."

"Really?"  Spike looked intrigued for a second.  "Did the bint make a go of it, or did she work the Kendall magic once again?"

"What do you think, Spike?  She betrayed us to a vampire cult within twenty-four hours.  So I'm just not all that convinced that your little turn-around is for real.  I'll grant you've beaten her record. I'll even grant you love Buffy, the same sick way you loved Drusilla, and that makes it bearable being the neutered little lapdog you are today.  But I know you, Spike.  You're a monster, and furthermore, you love being a monster.  You don't regret a single life you've taken, the first thought in your head when you see a human being walk into a room is 'Mmm, tasty!' and if that chip came out tomorrow--"

Spike's lips peeled back in a wolfish grin over sharp white fangs, and a harsh bark of laughter escaped him.  "I'd what?  Enlighten me, Angelus.  What'm I going to do?"

"Right--you've changed.  Got a quote for you: 'Not us!  Not demons!'  Name that tune, Spike."

"A prize fuckwit of my acquaintance."  Between one absent breath and the next Spike was nose to nose with Angel, or as close to it as he could get given the difference in their heights.  "You tell me something, Angelus!  You had her!  Had her in your arms, in your bed, all warm and alive--you tasted the closest thing to heaven our kind will ever know!  How the bloody hell could you get up the morning after and rip her heart out?  She loved you!  She would have loved you even without your precious sodding soul if you'd let her, and you threw it all away!  And later--you can't shag her lest you experience perfect happiness and lose that inefficiently attached soul again, and what d'you do?  Turn the world upside down to find someone who could diddle with the curse?  No, not our Angel!  He scarpers off to the big city and starts a detective agency.  Bloody brilliant!"

Angel grabbed him by the lapels and hauled him up level; Spike didn't fight it, just sneered into his thundercloud frown.  "Do you think I had a choice ?" Angel snarled.  "Do you think I wanted to hurt her?"

"In a word, yes!" Spike snarled back.  "What's your sodding soul got to do with it?  You love her or you don't, Peaches!  You want an explanation?  Here it is: Buffy's with me because you let her go, you bloody great git!"

Angel dropped Spike in one motion and in the next his fist connected with the younger vampire's jaw hard enough to slam him back into the wall of blue fur behind them.  "I let her go because it was the right thing to do!  Something you're incapable of understanding."

Spike pulled himself upright on one of the thing's tentacles, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.  It left a gory smear of mingled red and purple across his sleeve.  "What I'm incapable of is leaving her--not unless she gives me the boot herself.  I'd fucking well rather walk out into the sun and burn.  She makes me feel--balls, why am I telling you this?  You know!  And you left anyway, because you'd bloody well rather wallow in misery than try to solve the problem!"

"Better to face the misery than delude myself into thinking we had a future," Angel snapped.  "And that's all it would be: delusion.   Every single thing that made it impossible for Buffy and me goes double for Buffy and you.  You're evil.  She's not.  You're immortal.  She's not.  You'll burn in the sun and she'll wither in the dark.  It's not meant to be."

Spike's lip curled up to expose one razor-sharp canine and he all but spat at Angel's feet.  "Why should I give a toss what's meant to be?  I'm not the special pet of the Powers, with a bouquet of prophecies pinned to my manly chest.  I can do as I sodding well please with my unlife--not that I wouldn't anyway.  What's meant to be is what happens, when it happens, and not a minute sooner."

"What's happened," Angel said, emphasizing the word very deliberately, "Is that Buffy died.  That's a traumatic experience."

"Yeh, seems to me I remember it being a tad upsetting.  Can't recall you being there."

"She told me that when she first came back, you were the only thing that seemed real to her.  She figures that's love."  Angel's dark eyes raked Spike up and down.  "I figure it's instinct.  She's a Slayer.  Killing your kind is what she was born for.  Of course you're going to be the first thing she focuses on."  He gave Spike a knife-edged smile.  "But you know what?  She's waking up now.  She's starting to see other things again.  I'm betting that when she realizes that there's a whole real, daylight world out there for her--she'll walk out into it.  And you won't be able to follow her.  What are you going to do then?"

"Ring you up and cry on your shoulder.  Here, did you just hunt me down to--half a mo'."  Spike cocked his head to one side, ice-blue eyes slitted, an incredulous grin curling across his face.  "Bloody hell, I get it--you want me to cock up, don't you?  You'd throw a sodding ticker-tape parade if I slipped and took a nibble from the nearest warm body.  If I can be a good boy, you can't can keep yourself toasty warm at night with your woolly blankie of moral superiority.  You didn't help breaking her heart--no, that was Angelus.  Can't hold the bloody special soul-having Angel responsible for what the soulless monster did!   Well, bugger that!  I've sussed it out, Peaches--it took almost a year for Buffy to admit I could love her, and she's still half convinced there's something wrong with her that you couldn't love her without your bloody soul.  If I'd no other reasons I'd play white hat just to spite you, y'pathetic wanker!"
       "You know, Spike, I came out here tonight with half a mind to kill you, and--"

Spike's eyes went wide and Angel felt a twinge of irritation; surely he wasn't going to try the old 'There's someone behind you!' trick.  A second later he recalled that Spike was the world's worst liar, and spun around.  Not someone; some thing.

With a gargantuan shudder the blue-furred monstrosity rolled over, coiled its two uninjured tentacles around the nearest lamp post, and heaved itself upright to the accompaniment of metallic pops and groans.  Spike dropped to his knees as a tentacle lashed out and the ropy appendage whipped over his head and wrapped itself around Angel.  The creature had learned its lesson; the thing gripped him too low around the waist for him to reach it with his fangs.  Spike, crouched on the grass below, looked up at him and laughed, then sprang at the demon, aiming for another eye.  Before he reached his target a small lithe shape bearing a long, spear-like object came hurtling down from the roof of the restaurant.  It landed squarely on top of the demon's rolling back, astride the gnashing pit of teeth, and thrust downward with the thing in its hands.  The demon shrieked in pain.

"Past time you got here, pet!"  Spike yelled.  "You missed Peaches admitting he's got half a mind!"

"Shut up and hit things, Spike!"  The thing she'd rammed into the demon's maw was a push-broom, one of the industrial fiberglass-and-metal models.  The demon choked and shook itself, and Spike laughed, pulping another eyespot.  Buffy grinned down at him, her now-unbound hair a wild golden halo about her head, her eyes shining green and alight with feral joy. This time his arm went deeper; he hauled out something fibrous and necessary-looking.  The demon jerked and staggered, a Brobdignagian marionette with tangled strings.  Its rings of teeth pulsed futilely around the head of the broom, unable to spit it out or snap it into pieces small enough to swallow.  Buffy hung on to the shaggy blue carpet of fur as it spun ponderously in place and started its second topple of the night.  Angel struggled wildly in the grip of the creature's tentacle, and horror chased excitement from Buffy's face as she realized it was going to land right on top of him.  She yanked on a double handful of fur in a hopeless attempt to steer the creature's bulk sideways.

 Something slammed into him from the side just before he hit the ground, stretching the tentacle out to its fullest extent so that as the black-speckled blue hulk descended, it crashed to earth several inches short of Angel's body.  The tentacle uncoiled on impact, and Angel rolled head over heels and fetched up against the foot of the privet hedge.  The thing which had slammed into him lay draped across his shoulders for a second, then sat up and shook itself.  Spike.  Angel's eyes narrowed.  "What the hell did you do that for?"

Spike began picking privet leaves and clumps of mangled rye grass off his jacket.  "Oh, there's gratitude for you."  He cocked a sardonic eyebrow at his grandsire.  "Because I love her more than I hate you."

Buffy let go of the demon's fur, dropped to the ground and ran over to them, skidding to a halt on her knees.  "Are you all right?"  Her words made no distinctions, but it was Spike's shoulders her arms encircled.   Her hands traveled over his face and body, checking for damage.  Buffy cradled his head on her shoulder, her face buried in the sticky tangle of his hair, and Spike nuzzled her ear with a resonant growl.   

"Never better, love."  His eyes shimmered from gold to blue at her touch, and his brow ridges receded--no shame there at her touching his demon face; more as if he were slipping into a more comfortable set of clothes.  "You?"

"Fine.  Great.  Wonderful.  Mmmm..."  Angel heard her breath catch and resume and her heart trip faster than her recent exertions could justify.  Her lashes swept a fringe of dark silk across her flushed cheeks as grey-in-this-light eyes darted for a moment in his direction; had he not been there, Angel was convinced, the two of them would be tearing each other's clothes off and having at it on the blue-furred hulk at this moment.  He had a queasy sense of deja vu on multiple levels: Spike making savage love to Drusilla, couched upon a heap of exsanguinated corpses.  Buffy tearing across the dance floor of the Bronze to leap on him, giddy with her own strength and sensuality, heedless of the danger of unleashing it on him...or perhaps welcoming that danger. 

He'd seen something close to the core of her being that night, and again on the night when he'd given her those scars on her neck, something deep-rooted and frighteningly strong.  Something Faith's fall from grace had frightened her into keeping under rigid control ever since.  Now, as she nestled in Spike's arms, he could sense that the bonds she'd placed on herself were loosening and fraying.  Spike might not have prompted her dangerous intoxication with the darker side of her nature, but it was obvious that his presence encouraged it.

He wasn't in love with her any longer, nor she with him, but he loved her still, if only for the sake of what she'd done in dragging him as far out of the darkness as it was possible for him to come.  He couldn't allow Buffy to fall into the abyss she'd rescued him from.

Unwitting of his realization, Buffy drew back and took in the condition of Spike's clothes with dismay.  "I think I speak for both of us when I say thank God for Nordstrom's generous return policy."  She jerked a thumb at the demon.  "What is that thing?"

"Rudnark demon."  Spike got to his feet and gave Buffy a hand up.  "Not very bright, but they take a lot of killing.  Teach me to go anywhere without an axe again."  The Rudnark made a violent choking noise, something like the dying wheeze of a fork-clogged garbage disposal, and gave a final shudder.

Buffy gave it a kick and yanked the broom free.  "On the other hand, maybe we've just been underestimating the lethal possibilities of janitorial supplies for all these years."  She turned to Angel and took his hand.  "We're lucky you happened to be here..."  Suspicion clouded her eyes.  "You did just happen to be here, didn't you?"

Angel looked at Spike, who shrugged infinitesimally: Your move. Spike had saved him from a painful convalescence at least, though he'd done so only for Buffy's sake, and keeping Buffy's trust at this point was paramount.  "Cordelia had a vision."  True; Cordelia had had lots of visions. 

"What you might call a fortuitous coincidence," Spike said, a wicked gleam in his eyes.

"Well, it's a good whatever he said."  She squeezed Angel's hands and smiled up at him; a century of sunrise encompassed in a single human face--she'd never looked less like someone with a death wish.  "Thank you.  You know--I was terrified of seeing you.  Terrified of telling you about... everything.  But you've been--wonderful."  She looked down at herself and wrinkled her nose.  "The disco fever has definitely broken.  Maybe we should just go find a hotel with dry-cleaning and room service and check in for the night.  We can take a cab back to Dad's apartment before sunrise, sleep in, and head back to Sunnydale this evening."

Spike wrapped his arms around her from behind and nipped at her ear.  "Mmm, I love a woman who takes charge.  Lead the way, love."

"Thanks again!" Buffy called as they started off towards the waiting cab.  "Say hello to Cordelia!"

  Angel stood with hand in pockets and a deeply unhappy expression as the two of them walked off arm in arm, covered in purple ichor and palpably eager to be alone with each other.  He had more sense than to ever admit to Cordelia that he'd been within twenty miles of Buffy Summers tonight.  He felt a sick twist in the pit of his stomach.

  He was going to have to call Giles.  The Watcher hated him quite as much as Spike did, and for far better reason; if his passion was quieter, it was no less potentially deadly.  But there was no help for it, given Buffy's disturbing behavior.  Angel drew a pained sigh and headed back towards his car, and that thrice-cursed cell phone.

Candles, black.  A whole bank of them, a Milky Way's worth of miniature stars.  The circle inscribed in red ochre and sulfur, sigils drawn at each cardinal point with blue chalk, because you couldn't get powdered lapis on such short notice and Anya would have noticed something funny if she'd special-ordered it.  Real frankincense, a fine powder scattered across the glowing coals in the brazier.  It smouldered and melted around the edges as its languorous perfume rose into the still air of the cavern.  Crow's feather to the left, an ebony slash against the rock.  Cock's feather to the right, glowing tawny red in the candlelight.  In the center of the circle, the knife.  Silver, hand-long blade, triangular--a knife designed for the penetrating wound, for drawing blood.

Of course, there would be blood. 

Willow smoothed the crumpled, ink-stained pages of the grimoire flat once more, tongue-tip wetting her lips.  She'd copied as much as she could of the text and pored over its translation for the last several nights, even tried a small spell to leech the ink-stain out of the ancient paper, but there were still large segments of commentary she couldn't read, and the exact purpose of the spell remained obscure.  The blue chalk worried her, but Buffy would be coming back to Sunnydale tonight, and tomorrow--tomorrow she'd have to have her miracle ready.  She'd compensated by using the frankincense instead of the combination of stoat's musk and pine resin the spell called for--frankincense was expensive, but she had no idea where she was supposed to find a stoat.  She'd taken other precautions, too: she'd drawn another, larger circle in corn meal and turquoise chips around the circumference of the cavern and called on Raven and Corn Mother and all the powers of an entirely different and antithetical tradition to confine any energies which might escape the inner circle. 

She knelt in the center of the inner circle, sweating palms folded on her lap.  Compared to some of the spells she'd done in her life, this one used comparatively little raw power.  It was well within her current limits.  Probably, if anything went wrong, she could break off the invocation, refuse to harbor the power she was calling and send it packing.  Probably.  There was no kidding herself that this wasn't dangerous and stupid, but--

Visions of a wretched landfill encampment she'd never seen with her own eyes flashed through her brain, phantom shapes wracked with misery and fear that she could alleviate-- if only .  Buffy's face, her eyes full of disappointment: I thought I could depend on you, Will.  Tara's earnest voice, full of pity: I thought you were someone special.  Other faces, other memories: Moloch, advancing on her with mechanical deliberation; Mayor Wilkins, cheerily threatening her with death; Spike, drunk and vicious and about to slice her face open; Verruca, laughing at her weakness; the scarecrow figure of Daniel Tanner, tearing her mind free of its moorings...

She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, breathing deeply to calm her racing heart.  She raised her arms, palms outspread, and began.  Willow picked up the cock's feather, and flung it onto the coals.  The stench of burning feathers joined the heavy odor of the incense.

    Herald of the Dawn, guardian of the gates of ivory,
    Let that which I summon enter!

She could feel the currents of power stirring, rising within her.  She picked up the crow's feather and tossed it after its mate.

    Herald of the Dusk, guardian of the gates of horn,
    Do not bar the way, but hold it open!

Willow fumbled for the hilt of the knife; the silver was chill against her skin, an interstellar cold.   Willow scrunched her eyes shut, gritted her teeth, and plunged the knife into her palm, the point slicing through skin, stabbing through muscle and tendon, sliding between the metacarpal bones to emerge from the back of her hand.  "Thus do I grasp the door into the Great Abyss!" she screamed, yanking the knife free.  Agony lanced through her, pain too great to encompass shooting all the way up into her shoulder and coiling around her spinal cord.  "Thus do I open the door!"  Tears blinded her; blood flowed from the double wound in scarlet rivulets, dripping onto the coals and hissing like a nest of snakes.   "Thus do I consecrate the threshold!"

Willow slapped her bleeding left palm down on the brazier.  The red and black of the coals seared itself onto the back of her eyelids, and there was noplace she could escape.  Fire and ice, meeting, melding, becoming one pain impossible in its scope and perfection.  She could smell her own flesh burning, and a part of her mind flung up memories of summer barbeques and hamburgers broiling on the back yard grill.  She almost vomited at the image, but with iron determination she swallowed her own bile and pulled her hand away.  "The way is open, the path is clear!  Enter in where you have been made welcome, Lord of the Great Dark, make of me the vessel for your power and I shall be thy willing servant!"

  A wind sprang up where no wind should have been, and the candle-flames dipped and lay almost flat for a breath, for two--and then they were gone, every flame snuffed out, and the great dark they'd kept at bay rolled in and drowned all.  There should have been thunder, there should have been lightning and the howling of wolves.  There should have been the wailing of damned souls as the Hellmouth gaped wide.  But the wind was gone as quickly as it had come, and there was only the deep silence of the caves, made deeper by the slow insistent drip, drip, drip of water in the far distance, in some jet-black fastness where the earth yet labored to bring forth a garden of stone, building its cold limestone blossoms petal by petal over the millennia.  Willow knelt alone in the dark, cradling her throbbing hand in her lap and rocking back and forth in pain.  Her sobs made pitiful little dents in the silence. 
    Out of the darkness a greater dark coalesced, black as night, black as ice in the deeps of midwinter, an absence of light so intense that it froze the eyes no less than too great a concentration of light could burn.  Vast it rose above her, stretching itself from floor to roof-beam, from wall to wall, and perceiving her huddled there stooped like a falcon upon a dove.

Woman, why are you weeping?

There was nothing else she could say.  "It hurts.  It hurrrts!"

Then bid it stop.

Too dazed to do anything but obey, Willow mumbled, "Wounds be healed, pains be eased." 

The pain stopped.  And there was no joy in the universe so great as that moment, when the mind still comprehended the full extent of the pain and realized it was no longer there.  It was the feeling you got when the Midol kicked in, except a million times better.

Willow crouched on the bare stone floor, holding her uninjured hand.  "Fiat lux," she whispered.  A ball of golden light sprang into being over her head, shining down on the half-melted ranks of candles, the sullenly smoking brazier, the bloodstained knife.  She looked down at her palm; beneath the film of drying blood, the skin there was pink and smooth and perfect, save for a thin silver scar running through the center, bisecting the lines of head and heart and life.  Turning her hand over revealed a matching scar on the back, from knuckles to wrist.  She flexed her fingers, probing inwardly for the scraped-dry feeling.  It wasn't there.

She scrambled to her feet, looking around.  There was her book bag and her trusty blue nylon duffle.  She pointed at the brazier.  "Cool!"  She bent over and touched the rim with tentative fingers; the metal held no trace of heat.  She picked it up, knocked the half-burnt coals out, and straightened, cupping it in her hands.  "Clean!"  Instantly, the metal sparkled in the witchlight.

And she felt fine.  Just like her old self.  Willow broke into a grin, and a giddy laugh escaped her.  She hugged the brazier to her chest and spun around, scuffing the now-powerless sigils beneath the soles of her sandals.  "Woo!  I did it!  Ignite!"  The candles sprang back to life.  "Volo!"  She rose into the air and swooped around the cavern, narrowly missing a stalactite--Disneyland had a new E-ticket ride.  "Willow Rosenberg, wicca supreme, rides again!"

The cold black voice brought her up short in mid-swoop.  As it should be.  But there will be time for celebrations later.  It is time to meet your new companions.

  One by one, from out the pitch black depths of the tunnels on every side, the eyeless men began emerging.  

Part 18

Part 20