"It can't be that bad," Xander said.  He leaned back against the wall and folded his hands behind his head.  "By definition.  So the Balance tips too far towards the good.  Oh, the horror, not."

Spike exhaled a plume of smoke with a look that said 'If I were Kzinti, my name would be Speaker-to-Idiots.'  "How far are we from the Hellmouth?  Two miles?"

Xander called the grid of Sunnydale's major streets to mind and did a quick triangulation.  They'd gone underground at the manhole at the intersection west of the apartment complex, and the burnt-out wreck of Sunnydale High was...  "Closer to a mile and a half."  An unpleasant thought struck him.  "Or we were before we got stuck in this...whatever it
is.  I have no idea where we are now."

"Right."  Spike rubbed the side of his nose, as if it itched.  "As it happens, yours truly cracked a few books on Hellmouths back when I was making plans to bring Drusilla here to take the waters."

Despite Willow's insistence that Spike was a closet geek, the idea of him cracking books any more demanding than 'Lust Kittens of Venus' was something Xander had trouble taking seriously.  "I feel expository dialogue coming on. 'And as you know, Xander--'"

Spike glared.  "Mystical portal leading to a hell dimension, blah blah, take as given.  Point is, the Hellmouth's aura affects the whole town, and especially these tunnels.  Things happen here, usually bad.  The Hellmouth sends out emanations of chaos and nastiness, attracts the attention of discerning evildoers everywhere--" he bowed with an ironic flourish. "--and hawks up the occasional Ascended demon to bugger up the lives of the common throng."  He wheeled about, craning his neck down one of the passages.  "D'you hear that?"

Xander resisted the urge to peer after him.  If there wasn't anything there, it was pointless; if there was something there and Spike was just now catching it, it was just as pointless, since Spike's hearing was ten times better than his.  "All I hear is the sound of one vamp yapping.  This is Hellmouth 101.  So?"

"So.  Doesn't happen too often that the Balance swings too far in the opposite direction in the vicinity of a Hellmouth, but I ran across one or two mentions--think it was in Ruprecht's Alternus Mundi--or was it..." Spike contemplated the arabesques of cigarette smoke coiling upwards in front of his nose and frowned.  "Ah, bugger it, I can't remember.  Had a blue cover, whatever it was.  What it comes down to is this: under the right conditions, a Hellmouth can do a flip."  The vampire picked up his axe and gestured round at the tiled walls--one, two, three, four.  The rust and mold stains were almost gone now, and the shattered remnants of Spike's earlier temper tantrum had vanished.  The formerly broken section of tile was as pristine as the rest of the wall.  "This look like chaos and nastiness to you?  Perfect symmetry.  Everything getting cleaner and newer and better."

Xander's attempt at keeping a straight face lasted about five seconds.  He broke into a snicker.  "Oh, come on," he chortled.  "You mean we're now living on a... a Heavenmouth?"  He clasped his hands and rolled his eyes skywards.  "Which will spread sweetness and light and, what, hawk up the occasional televangelist?  Even if you're right, what are we
supposed to be scared of?  Random acts of kindness and non-violence?  Do they bring on the comfy chairs?"

"Harris, will you remove your tiny withered brain from its protective wrapping and use it for a change?"  Spike didn't sound as if he were joking.  He was scratching at one ear, twitchy and uncomfortable, as if the air around them were becoming something inimical.  "Forget the harps and halos, this is real life.  Who's the closest representative of the forces of goodness and virtue you know?"

"Buffy, I guess, but--oh."  The forces of goodness and virtue around these parts were not exactly reluctant to kick ass.  "Point taken.  But we're good guys.  Why would they hurt us?  Well, I'm a good guy.  I guess you're toast.  Wish I could say it was nice knowing you, but--"

Spike began a restless quartering of the intersection, hands locked behind his back.  "The Slayer's small change, cosmically speaking--yeh, Buffy took on a hellgod and won, but that's Buffy.  There's things out there that could eat Glory for lunch, things that could send me up in flames with a look."  He met Xander's budding objection with a snort. "And don't get too comfortable yourself, bricklayer.  Remember the Judge?"

"Otherwise known as Xander Harris's finest hour?"  Or maybe second finest; the wrecking ball had been pretty good, too.  "Surely you jest."     Spike's eyes went misty with nostalgia and a wicked grin split his lean face.  "If there's one regret in my life it's that I couldn't be there to see Angelus's face when that bazooka went off."

"Oh, God, it was priceless.  I wish I'd had a camera..."  Xander realized that he was matching Spike grin for grin and forced a frown. Spike's grew a trifle more wicked.

"Keep in mind that at the height of my career as a master vampire, in the midst of a plot to destroy the world no less, I wasn't evil enough to pass the big blue bastard's muster."  Spike blew a smoke ring and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Granted I lost points for taking the destroy-the-world part as a lark that'd never come off, but still.  D'you think you're pure enough in heart to shake hands with his opposite number?"

"I..."  Xander swallowed.  Every rotten thing he'd said and done in the last few years leaped up and started clamoring for attention in the forefront of his mind. Hyena-Xander, shoving Buffy against the wall. Self-centered teenage asshole Xander, blowing off Willow's crush on him. Not telling Buffy about the re-souling spell.  Cheating on Cordelia.  A hundred exasperated public putdowns of Anya...    "...think panic is in order now."

"Wise decision.  Take it from someone who's fought 'em, the forces of good are vicious sons of bitches."  Spike shouldered his axe and started off down the corridor--no reason, Xander knew; just to be moving, just to be doing something.  Xander watched the vampire's black-clad back diminishing in the distance for a minute, then grabbed the tranquilizer gun and broke into a jog to catch up.  Better to follow Spike and pretend they were going somewhere than to sit around in the intersection and pretend it wasn't freaky when Spike reappeared out of the opposite tunnel in five or ten minutes.  If they ran fast enough, would they see the backs of their own heads?

The tunnel transformed subtly around them as they walked.  Xander could never pin down a change in the process of occurring; he'd look away and look back, and something would be different.  The cables were taking on an almost cartoonish regularity in their loops and coils, as each tile became a perfect glossy square of pearly white, the light panels in the ceiling distinguishable only by their greater luminance.  The light grew softer, clearer, paler, and they walked in enveloping radiance.

Xander found his grip on the stock of the trank gun relaxing, even as he listened for something beyond the distant tap-tap-tap of falling water and the sound of their own footsteps.  For all the eeriness of the tunnels, there was a certain comfort in always knowing exactly what the next bend in the road would bring.

Spike didn't share it; he had stopped breathing and was gliding along in full hunting mode, his scuffed Docs making no sound at all on the floor.  Xander studied the sweep of black leather in front of him. Whoever Spike had originally stolen that duster from had been several sizes larger than Spike was; the vampire swam in the thing, but as the coat slapped against him, you could still make out the lines of his torso, tapering sharply from breadth of shoulders to narrow hips.

Made a good target.  Xander reached into his other coat pocket, the one that held the stake he was seldom without, and turned the length of sharpened oak over and over in his hand.  The point would go right there, in the angle between the spine and the left shoulder blade, right between the ribs and into the heart.  Buffy could drive a stake effortlessly through bone and muscle from any angle.  Xander, merely human, had to worry about stakes getting stuck between the ribs or glancing off a shoulder blade.

He imagined the length of hardwood punching through matte-black leather and the thin layer of black cotton beneath, through ivory skin and into innards just as wet and red and fragile as any living human's, until the stake-point penetrated the heart and all dissolved into dust.  He used to do this all the time--with Angel, and later with Spike--imagine what he'd do if either of them ever gave him the excuse.  He wondered why he'd stopped.  He'd gotten out of the habit, over the summer, led astray by shared patrols and games of pool and arguments over exactly which Plastic Ono Band album sucked the most.  He'd lulled himself into--not forgetting, but worse, ignoring, the all-important fact that at the end of the day, Spike was still pretty much a vampire.  The whole resurrection thing had jarred him back to reality, and now...

Now he was just slipping back into casual acceptance of this... this thing in front of him?  Phone ringing as Anya welcomed the first batch of guests.  Spike's North London drawl on the other end of the line "Harris. Got a line on a Krallock demon.  Feel like killing something?  I'll let you use the big gun."  As much an overture, in its way, as him showing up at the crypt with spicy chicken wings.  And he'd accepted it.  Fuck.  And here he was, following along behind pretty-much-a-vampire with no real intention to plunge that stake in where reason and logic said it should have gone years ago.  Double fuck.  What was the matter with him?  Hanging out with Spike was wrong.

"If you keep playing with it, you'll go blind."  Spike turned on his heel, swift, silent death with ears that could the heart thudding away in his chest, or the scrape of callused fingers against wood.  "The suspense is killing me faster than you are."

Xander stopped in the middle of the tunnel, feet braced, holding the gun with the vestige of the professional ease his stint as Soldier Guy had left him.  Step back, dart into the chamber, aim, cock, pull trigger...it would be easy.  You know one of these babies will take a vampire down.  And then the stake .  Spike stood there looking at him, dark brows angled in exasperation, not even slightly worried.  Trusting him.  How twisted was that?  "You know something, Spike?  Your little fling with Buffy has nothing to do with the reason I hate your guts."

Spike sighed, eyes imploring the heavens for patience.  "Do tell."

It didn't.  Not the way Spike thought.  His crush on Buffy was a thing of the past.  All right, he had occasional lusty thoughts.  What guy wouldn't?  Maybe if the two of them weren't so damned obvious about it. Maybe if they didn't touch so often.  Maybe if he didn't have the image of Buffy standing in his foyer with her tongue halfway down Spike's throat burned onto the back of his eyelids...

Maybe if Buffy can love an out-and-out demon and I can't handle an ex-demon there's something wrong with me, not her.

Slam that thought back in lockup where it belonged.  "It's real simple.  Half a dozen kids I grew up with, ate lunch with, and got beat up by ended up as snack food for you or Dru or one of your minions.  And a few of 'em came back for a return engagement on the business end of Buffy's stake.  Never hesitated a minute."  Four-year-old memories came flooding back--how had he forgotten all this?  How had all of them come to tolerate Spike's  company?  How could two years' worth of grudging, chip-goaded help possibly make up for a century plus of cheerful murder?  "What the hell makes you so special?"  Spike's face remained impassive, and Xander took a belligerent step forward.  "How come you're walking around and not Jesse or Andy Runyon or Terry Lane?"

Spike studied him for a long minute.  "Because life's got steel-toed boots and delights in applying them to the family jewels, Harris.  You haven't figured that one out by now?"

"You gonna claim you're sorry they're dead?"

"No."  Spike cocked his head to one side, what looked like real regret time-sharing with wary curiosity in his eyes.  "But sometimes I wish I could be."  He scratched absently at his jaw.  "Then I come to my senses.  Is there a point to this conversation besides the one you're fondling?"

There was a point, all right--if he admitted for a second the possibility of not-enemyhood with Spike, he was betraying real friends.  And if that was bad when he did it, how much worse was it when Buffy, the Slayer herself, slept with the enemy?  Everything seemed so clear down here, in the pearly glow of the tunnel.  Spike was evil.  Evil through and through.  There were no shadows here, no greys, just pure, white, comforting light which showed him that Spike was...

Red in the face?  Now that was wrong.  "Uh... Spike... Are you supposed to sunburn indoors?"

Spike touched a startled hand to his cheek and drew it away with a hiss; the pale marks of his fingertips lingered on his skin for a few seconds before fading back to unnatural ruddiness.  "Balls!  Sunlight!" He glanced up and around; there was no shelter to speak of in the slowly brightening tunnels.  "Enough dicking around.  We've got to get out of here."

Xander shook his head again, hard, trying to shake the fuzz out.   His thoughts were all his own, but down here some thoughts were more equal than others--ways to dispose of Spike sprang easily to mind.  Cooperating with an evil soulless vampire to get out, on the other hand--he couldn't wrap his brain around the idea; he was blundering through a spiritual algebra class, all his thoughts blunted and sluggish.

But he was used to that, wasn't he?  Used to being the last one to get it, and getting it anyway, in his own good time.  And no fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good tunnel of love was going to mess with his head and get away with it, any more than some cut-rate Prince of Darkness was going to make him play Renfield again.  I'll hate Spike on my own dime, damn it, I don't need any help from you.  "Yeah.  We do."  He forced the words out with a sense of triumph.  We.  Take that, fuzzy goodness!  "How?" 

 

Spike flicked his cigarette butt down the corridor, hefted his axe and grinned, squinting against the too-clear light.  "If you can't find a way out, you bloody well make one."  The skin across his cheeks and the backs of his hands was starting to prickle and burn, just as it had walking under cloudy daylight skies.  Should have been impossible; a vampire's little sunlight allergy was metaphysical, not physical--no man-made light, no matter how closely it duplicated full-spectrum sunlight, should have been able to do the trick.  Obviously the lights in this tunnel were no longer exactly as men had made them.

Close enough, though.  Was he starting to smoke slightly, or was that just the remains of his cigarette?  Time for some preventive maintenance.  Spike flipped the axe end over end, caught it and jabbed upwards, ducking aside as the haft smashed through the nearest light panel and shattered the bulb inside into a thousand razor-edged snowflakes.  He repeated the process with the light panels on either side.  "Much better," he breathed as the final shower of glass heralded the return of relative darkness along a twenty-foot segment of the tunnel.

Spontaneous combustion forestalled for the time being, Spike shook glittering fragments of glass off his shoulders and reversed the axe again, swinging it through a limbering arc.  There was something out there in this infinitely reflected latticework of tunnels, pacing them, spying on them; he could sense it, just on the edge of his perceptions, a magnetic repulsion.  His opposite number, more or less, probably gritting its teeth, if it had any, over his presence at this  moment.  And who better to open the door than the blokes who built the castle?  "We're probably going to have company soon," he said.  "Don't imagine the proprietors will look kindly on me making a mess."

Xander looked up and down the tunnel.  "I thought we were avoiding the forces of goodness and virtue?"

"Changed my mind.  Who better to let us out than the blokes who built the place?"  Spike ran his index finger down the axe-blade's notched edge, licked it, savoring the pain and the taste of his own blood with connoisseur's appreciation.  The prospect of action was cheering.  "Not likely we'll attract anything much nicer than I am nasty, this early in the game.  But if we do, you'll just have to put in a good word."  His grin went sharp-fanged and feral, eyes shining lambent yellow under ridged brows; William the Bloody, not even trying to be good, not the least little bit.

The axe-blade whistled through the air and sank into the nearest bundle of wall-cable with a THOK!, half-severing the whole mass. Another fountain of sparks exploded outwards, and the tunnel filled with the stink of ozone as individual strands of cable sprang apart, red and blue and green, hissing and crackling like an angry hydra.  He jumped back, feeling something in his shirt-pocket thump against his chest.  The lights flickered and dimmed for fifty feet in either direction.  "YEAH!" Spike howled, and hauled back for another strike, lion-gold eyes burning in the manufactured darkness.  The axe-blade flashed again and electrical mayhem ensued.  More light panels died.  "Burn me up sight unseen, will  you?  CREATURE OF SODDING DARKNESS HERE!  YOU WANT ME?  COME GET ME!"

"These are the torch-you-with-a-look guys?  Is this really a good idea?" Xander backed nervously down the tunnel.

"One of my plans, and you have to ask?"  The third blow bypassed the cables and smashed into the tile, which exploded into mother-of-pearl powder under the force of it.  The fourth sent chunks of plaster and concrete flying like shrapnel.  Somewhere Xander was yelling at him to watch it, but Spike was lost in the moment, face a snarling demonic mask of fury, caught up in the orgasmic rush of destruction.  Nothing in the world existed but to break and tear and ravage, to ruin the dull perfection of this place--and the only thing missing was best part of all, the sour tang of fear and the screams of the dying.  Harris's racing heart was a siren song, calling up lush, sensual images of the blade tearing through bone and muscle like a knife through Camembert, of fangs in flesh and sweet hot blood flowing and the bastard had never liked him, fine to use old Spike for muscle but God forbid you let him touch the women and all he'd have to do was lose that last sliver of self-control and--

--and the chip, thank God and That Fucking Bitch Walsh, would knock him flat on his arse.  There was a perverse freedom in knowing he could let his worst self rage and foam and not have to worry about the consequences.  Spike put his back into it and swung again, and the whole wall shuddered and cracked, plaster and cement falling away in huge flaking slabs and choking the tunnel with dust.  The axe-blade was starting to blunt and deform under the force of his blows, but Spike was past noticing; the hole in the wall was deep enough to stick an arm in up to the elbow.

CEASE.

It came from everywhere and nowhere, a voice like the tolling of bells, like a chord struck on an organ whose pipes were the winds themselves.  Spike froze mid-swing at the sound, hated it from the first note and longed for it never to fall silent, yearning so mixed with loathing it made him physically ill, tied knots in his gut and pulled them tighter with every note.  Radiance flooded the tunnel again and he threw a hand up to guard his eyes, snarling, fighting to regain ascendancy over himself.

It was a whirlwind of eyes, a rush of wings, a clash of blades, a  shining in the air.  It slid away from any attempt to pin it down with  words; it was beautiful beyond thought, and Spike balled up his desolation  and fear and longing and stuffed it down into the sub-basements of his mind.  He turned to face the approaching creature with all his customary bravado, leaning on the handle of his beat-up axe and smirking into the face of heaven.  It spread vast pinions, every covert a glittering razor, every primary a saber of light.  CREATURE OF DARKNESS, YOU HAVE NO PLACE HERE.

"That's ducky by me," said Spike.  "Why don't you let us out, then?"

"Spiiiike,"  Xander said, jabbing him in the ribs with an elbow.  He  gave the thing a sickly grin.  "Don't pay any attention to my idiot friend  here, he's got Tourette's.  It compels him to stupidly insult supernatural creatures way bigger than he is.  If you'll show us the way out I promise to take him home and put him to bed with a nice bottle of whiskey and--" Aside, to Spike, he hissed, "What is that thing?"

"Harrier demon," Spike whispered back, taking the opportunity to feel around under cover of the duster.  What the hell did he have in his pocketses?  String, or... his fingers met glass and metal.  Bloody sodding hell, not nothing, his glasses.  After Buffy'd left the crypt this afternoon he'd put them on to read the footy scores and gnash his teeth over the match report of Man U's humiliating loss to West Ham.  He must have tucked them into his pocket after, while constructing an elaborate and impractical scheme to stow away on a cargo plane to England and eat Jerome Defoe.  The second time he'd done that lately, and he couldn't afford to be that careless with them; it wasn't as if he could pop over to the nearest Lenscrafters and get a new prescription.  Xander was staring at him curiously; Spike stuffed the spectacles back down in his pocket and affected indifference. "Heard of 'em.  Never seen one before."

"If it's a demon, what's with the 'creature of darkness' line?"

"It's a good demon, nitwit." And unfortunately well into the  incinerate-vampires-with-a-look range.  He hadn't expected anything this  powerful.  "Working directly for the Powers--they don't often mingle with  the riff-raff."

"There's good demons?"

Spike gave the Harrier a long-suffering, 'see what I have to put up  with?' look.  "Now about letting us off this roundabout--"

Unimpressed, it shimmered in the air before them like a heat-mirage in summer, a roiling mist of light and air and terrible swift swords.  Its attention fixed upon Xander for a moment, examining, evaluating, and discarding in seconds.  YOU ARE FOUND WANTING.  YOUR SINS ARE MANY.  It paused.  BUT INSIGNIFICANT.  Its Argus-eyed regard turned upon Spike.  I AM CHARGED WITH THE ELIMINATION OF SUCH AS YOU.  And blades lashed out like lightning in all directions,  searing brilliant tongues of flame.  

"...the property was entailed, of course, and went to the cousin in Leicester, but the will settled five hundred pounds apiece on each of Letitia's children..."

"Uh huh."  Buffy squinched her eyes at the ceiling a few times, hoping to avert their incipient glazing-over a few seconds longer.  She  took another swallow of kiwi-strawberry, which, as an alternative to listening to Halfrek, was becoming downright palatable.  In order to  explain how she'd come to be William's (snarl) intimate friend, Halfrek  felt it necessary to explain in detail the history of their respective  families for three generations back.  No matter how juicy, gossip lost its  piquancy when it was a hundred and fifty years out of date, and this gossip had been on the desiccated side to begin with--so far Spike's--William's--family came off as the sort of people who showed up as background characters in a duller-than-average A&E miniseries.

"...so when the family removed to Hampshire, William's father married the youngest Cavendish girl, and..."

Another generation down.  Maybe they'd get William conceived before the party was over.  Buffy began assembling a cast list in her head for Middlemarch II: The Revenge of Dorothea.   Spike in a cravat.  Mmm.  Not bad.   She added black leather boots, a riding crop, and those skin-tight riding breeches to her mental image and mussed up its hair a little.  Mmmmmm... very bad.

On the other side of the coffee table, Anya shucked the wrapping from another combination waffle iron/grill and added it to the varicolored paper mountain at her feet.  There were two identical gifts in the pile of opened presents already, and Buffy felt a faint sense of satisfaction that at least her present hadn't been a re-run.  "This is lovely, though redundant," Anya said, examining Waffle Iron #3.  For Anya, that was the height of tact.

"It does Belgian," Lorri pointed out.

Anya's eyes grew damp and her lower lip trembled.  "Xander loves Belgian waffles."

Trembly Anya + pissed off Xander = another argument.  Buffy tossed her hair out of her eyes.  Maybe she should try to talk to him... Advice to the lovelorn from Buffy Summers, number one on the doomed relationship hit parade for five years running!  Run, Xander, run!

"...hate My Little Pony," Sandra said to Tara, who was hanging  over the back of the couch next to Willow.  "Horse craziness is all about girls coming to terms with sex and masculine power, for that you need a horse.  Take the Black Stallion novels--"

"See, this is why I was destined for the lesbian thing," Willow said.  "Horses are just four hooves waiting to step on your foot."

Tara pouted.  "I loved those books!  And 'King of the Wind!'"

Sandra nodded and gestured violently with a carrot stick.  "The whole point is that the Black's a half-wild killer, but he loves Alex and will do anything for him.  Our daughter eats that up.  The toy companies of America take this primal symbol of power and virility and neuter it, make it into these harmless little pastel eunuchs with fluffy tails..."

"...so when the season opened I came up to London and was most displeased to discover William had let a room in..."

Drat.  Missed William's conception altogether.  "Buffy, when can we fit you for your bridesmaid's dress?"  Lorri cut across the several lines  of conversation.

It was astonishing how much a wine cooler or two did to reconcile one to asparagus green.  Though the thought of those ruffles still elicited a shudder of horror.  Buffy selected a Triscuit and topped it with a slice of cheddar.  "Um... I'm probably free Tuesday or Wednesday.  Monday we have that, um, thing."

"Ah, yes.  The thing.  Wednesday is good," Anya said.  She surveyed Buffy with an appraising eye.  "It's a good thing I didn't ask right after you came back.  You're gaining weight and the dress wouldn't have fit by January."

Buffy choked on her cracker.  "Thank you, because I so needed to hear that."

Anya patted her shoulder with a kindly smile.  "Oh, don't worry, you're still way too skinny."

Sandra paused in railing against the evils of small pink plastic horses to the prepubescent feminine psyche to eye Buffy's reed-slim body and raise a skeptical eyebrow.  "Please, God, can I gain weight like that?"

Leaning back against the sofa cushions and listening to the voices swirl around her, Buffy could see with Slayer-vision clarity--perhaps it was the kiwi-strawberry going to her head--a future where this was her life, where there was no mysterious thing on Monday to interfere with dress fittings, where her conversations would revolve around diets and children and office gossip and subverting the paradigm of corporate America.  And it wouldn't be perfect and it wouldn't be safe, because husbands had industrial accidents and mothers died of brain hemorrhages and sisters got caught shoplifting.  Side by side with the two-point-five-kids-and-white-picket-fence future was another: darker, stranger, wilder.  Herself at thirty, or forty, or fifty, a thin tough woman with stormy eyes and hard hands, going places and doing things which defied description, with a lean pale man at her side who looked far too young for her.  No kids, unless Dawn provided some nieces and nephews for her and Spike to spoil rotten.  No marriage, unless heart given for heart counted for as much or more than legal formality.  No easy answers as she grew older and he didn't.  And the only thing that picket fence would be used for was making stakes.

Door Number One, Door Number Two.  Or you can go for the box behind the curtain...

The building shuddered.  Little shrieks and yips of surprise broke  out around the room; pictures rattled on the wall and dishes clinked and  jittered on the tables.  In the contents of every half-full glass and  bottle concentric waves shivered in and out of existence and a few of the women dashed for doorways in the native Californian's instinctive search for load-bearing masonry.  Outside a grinding rumble culminated in a cannon-loud crack of noise--had one of the other buildings collapsed?

Buffy was halfway to the front door before her brain caught up with her reflexes and pointed out that the noise was far out of proportion to anything such a mild tremor should have caused.  As she threw open the door, the parking lot exploded in a blaze of white light, bright as midday, shining from a raw crater thirty feet across in the middle of the landscaping between Xander's building and the next.  The turf was thrown back as if exploded from below and a whole segment of the adjoining sidewalk and parking lot was a crumpled bank of asphalt and concrete; the carport over the residents' parking spaces was peeled back upon itself like the lid of a sardine tin, its supporting posts poking crazily into the floodlit sky.  Several cars had tipped over, wheels spinning helplessly like the feet of glittering upended beetles.  And rising out of the crater...

"What is--?"  Willow was right behind her.  "Oh my--Buffy, is that a demon?"

Buffy licked her suddenly-dry lips, staring down at the incandescent  creature below.  "I don't know."  Small dark figures swam across the bright background.  "But whatever it is, there's people--"

Anya shouldered her way through the door, shoving Willow and Buffy  aside.  She stood on the landing with fingers pressed to lips.  "Xander!"

"Anya!  Wait!"  Buffy cried, grabbing for her arm, but Anya was gone,  racing down the steps and out into the parking lot.  Buffy sprang after  her, shouting "Come on, Will!" over her shoulder and taking the clattering  stairs three at a time.  

A wing of light arced across Spike's midriff, shearing through cloth and leather and flesh, the sword-blades of its primaries stained with dark blood when they swept away. The vampire dropped to a crouch, flinging the tails of his duster up and over his head as his flesh began to scorch in the intensity of the blaze.  Xander charged forwards with a yell, whirling the trank gun overhead, straight into the face--well, the front, at least--of their opponent.  It hadn't expected that, and instead of parrying reared up and back, trying to avoid hurting him.  Whirlwind supernatural energies met earth and stone, colliding with the low ceiling, and the tunnel rocked with the basso rumble of earth tearing apart.  Tiles fell in a blinding ceramic rain and half the roof vaporized.  Screams and the blaring of half a dozen car alarms floated down through the hole in the sky.

If the falling ceiling didn't bury him, he was going to choke to death.  Xander stumbled blindly for a minute, totally lost.  A sunburnt face loomed out of the dust and Spike's cold hard fingers circled his wrist, yanking him forward through the falling rubble.  "Listen whelp, if I give you a toss up, can you catch hold up there?"

Xander shoved lank dark locks of hair out of his eyes and looked up; tattered indigo sky framed in fractal black had replaced gently glowing tile.  "I have no idea."  The air crackled as the Harrier surged towards them.  "Find out, now!"

Spike immediately shifted his grip to Xander's belt and coat-collar.  Xander had the stomach-churning sensation of being lifted off the ground like a kitten.  With a grunt of effort Spike heaved him overhead and tossed him into the air, and Xander was sailing over the Harrier demon's head, or top, or whatever, seeing his spread-eagled, flailing self reflected in dozens of astonished crystalline eyes.  He slammed face-first into the sloping rim of the crater, sliding downwards in a small landslide of earth and gravel and catching himself with a few desperate frog-kicks at the rubble.

He clawed his way over the rim and turned around in time to see Spike take a running leap straight at the Harrier.  It might look like someone had blown the CGI budget, but the blades it was slicing and dicing and trying to make Julienne vampire with were real enough.  His burnt lips skinned back over his fangs in a savage snarl, Spike brought the axe down and the dulled blade sank home, cleaving translucent eyes that bled rays of light into the dust-laden air.  Spike hauled himself up along the haft of the axe, the toes of his boots jabbing for purchase among the joints of wings which flickered in and out of existence like the ghosts of bad cable reception.  He stood for one precarious moment balanced on shifting air; then his lean body uncoiled, all the power in the muscles of calf and thigh released at once.  Fifteen feet straight up he shot, his outstretched arms straining for the sky.  At the apex of his leap one hand grasped a projecting shelf of broken asphalt, fingers raking gouges in the crumbling tar. 

Out of the roiling mass of dust and grit the Harrier rose, a sunrise in the depths of midnight.  It shook the axe free, its wound closing even as they watched, and soared upwards in glory.  A fury of blades whirled upwards, and Spike, bathed in its painful light, jerked both knees up to his chest barely in time to escape losing a foot.

Xander belly-flopped over the edge as far as he could reach and clamped his hand around Spike's wrist.  The normally-cool flesh was radiating heat from the burns he'd sustained, and it must have hurt like hell, but Spike didn't flinch.  The asphalt outcropping disintegrated under the pressure of Spike's fingers and his full weight came down on Xander's arm and shoulder with a bone-wrenching jerk.  For a small eternity Xander held a hundred and sixty pounds of dead weight vampire one-handed, dangling over the lip of the new-made pit.  Then he heaved upwards, panting with effort; Spike's free hand found another ledge, and he was up and over the rim.  Spike lurched to his feet and the two of them stood swaying on the precipice, clutching one another's shoulders as if that'd make a difference if the whole edge dropped out from under them.

Spike favored Xander with his smarmiest grin.  "Awwww.  Harris is my bestest pal."

"So do you actually want to end up a big pile of dust?"  The Harrier spun up out of the crater, a tornado of sunlit razor plumage. "I think you got it mad," Xander observed.

"You think?"  Spike swiped his sleeve across his nose--on second  glance, maybe he wasn't as badly burned as Xander'd thought, not too much  worse than the sunburn he'd gotten showing off last week.  All to the  good; watching charred vampire bits flake off wasn't high on his big fun  agenda.  Xander looked around; half a dozen car alarms were still blatting a maddening symphony in the background, set off by the noise and tremor, and people were pouring out of the complexes to see what was going on.  There were several overturned cars in the parking lot, one of which, a small dark blue Tercel, was teetering precariously on the very edge of the crater.  He felt a most unheroic relief at the thought that his car was parked at the other end of the lot.

With a thunder of wings the creature was out of the hole and after them.  Spike toppled backwards, dragging Xander with him.  Both of them scrambled away from the pit on hands and knees before lurching to their feet.  Xander spun round in place, looking for a weapon.  Rocks.  There had to be something a step up from rocks.

"Xander!"  Anya's voice, a terrified screech over the car alarms.   "Are you all right?"

The Harrier halted, mantling its multitude of wings, a raptor  sighting new prey.  It didn't attack at once, as if Anya confused its  senses.  It hovered in place, undecided between two targets, the wind of  its passage kicking up a flurry of dust and debris.  CHILD OF ARASHMAHAR? it asked, its voice the crackle of windblown flame.  Anya froze, mesmerized by the creature as it hovered over the parking lot, but new  determination filled her dark eyes and she started towards Xander again.  

"Oh, bollocks!"  Spike was off like a flash, tearing off round the rim of the crater in the opposite direction, to what purpose Xander couldn't tell--saving his own skin, maybe; with his departure the terror of wings and eyes swooped down upon Anya, whirling blades leaving trails of fire on the air. 

"NO!" Xander screamed, the harsh panicked sound of a man losing something vital.  He forgot Spike, forgot the fact that this thing could turn him into shish kebab, forgot everything except the fact that it was bearing down on Anya.  He broke into a stumbling run around the edge of the pit, jumping chunks of sidewalk.  Anya screamed as well, fear and anger striking sparks in her voice, and flung a ragged fist-sized hunk of asphalt at the oncoming Harrier.  It hit a sword blade and bounced off.

"Keep away from her!" he yelled, painfully aware of his complete  inability to back up his threat.  He skidded to a halt, interposing himself between Anya and the Harrier.  A quarter of the way around the pit, he caught a glimpse of Willow, her hair an unmistakable blaze of red in the parking lot floodlights.  She floated up to perch on the bed of an  overturned Ford Rambler and stood there like a general surveying a battlefield, then flung her arms skyward and began a chant.  The words squirmed away from his head when he tried to remember them.  Violet lightning began to gather about her outstretched hands, snap crackle pop. 

If it wasn't willing to hurt him, and he could just play human shield  for long enough... Willow'd come through. 

I HAVE NO WISH TO HARM YOU, the Harrier hissed in the dry wail of  Santa Ana winds, feinting right and left with razor-tipped wings.  

"Well, then, don't!" Xander wondered if he could get behind a car or  something, but all the vehicles were on the other side of the crater.  A  bush, then, or a lamp post--anything besides thin air.

IT IS MY DUTY TO SLAY CREATURES OF EVIL.

"Harming her is harming me, you Electrical Parade reject!"  Xander pulled Anya into a protective hug and she burrowed into his shoulder, sobbing.  "And she's not a demon!"

NO.  YET HER ESSENCE CONTAINS VAST DARKNESS.

Essence?  "Ahn, what's it's talking about?"  Was that her soul?  They never talked about that trickiest of subjects if they could help it; easier just to assume that human form came with a human soul included.  

The Harrier shimmied back and forth, restless and, to Xander's possibly biased perceptions, pissed off.  THERE IS IMBALANCE HERE.  CONFUSION.  

"Sodom and Gomorrah, rains of frogs, Slayers and vampires living  together, yeah, yeah!  What's that got to do with Anya?"  

HAVE YOU NOT TOLD HIM, CHILD OF ARASHMAHAR?

Anya moaned, and Xander looked wildly from her to the Harrier.  "Told  me what?  Anya, what--"

Her head drooped, and then Anya straightened, pulling away from him  and straightening her jacket.  She looked the Harrier in the eyes, fear replaced with resignation.  "It  can tell," she said, her voice shaking only a little.

"Tell what?"

"What I am."  Anya began putting her hair in order, unnaturally  composed.  "What I've always been.  Well, not always, but for the last  thousand years, give or take a decade."

Xander stared at her.  Anya: straightforward to the point of rudeness.  Able to rattle off the histories of a dozen major demon clans in excruciating detail and completely in the dark about the social relevance of Star Wars.    Rapaciously intelligent about subjects that interested her, a financial whiz and cutthroat business woman, beautiful, sexy, desperately in love with him... and human, absolutely, positively  human.

Except that she'd started out with no more concern for the welfare of  non-Xander humans than Spike had for non-Buffy humans, and still wasn't  exactly a font of charity.  And she looked back as fondly on her days of  meting out destruction as Spike did.  And...  "You don't have a soul," he  whispered.

"I do too!" Anya shot back, unnatural calm giving way to familiar and reassuring brusqueness.  She stamped one well-shod foot.  "I was born  human, you know!  I have a perfectly good soul, it's just--complicated.  When D'Hoffryn recruits us to be vengeance demons we're... converted.  Given the demonic aspect, and the powers, and the pendant to control them.  And cleansed of..."  She gave a fidgety twist of one hand.  "Distractions."

"Distractions?"  

"You know."  Anya folded her arms defensively across her chest.   "Empathy.  All that tiresome feeling sorry for people.  We wouldn't be any good as vengeance demons if we got half-way  through a wish and started feeling sorry for the victim, would we?  I  became a demon when I was seventeen, and..."  A spot of hectic red appeared on each cheek, but she kept her head high and defiant.  "I never un-became one.  I gave myself human form to grant Cordelia's wish, and when my pendant was destroyed I got stuck this way, but it didn't change who I was inside.  I've always been Anyanka--if D'Hoffryn would ever give me a new pendant, the big meanie."  

The Harrier demon flickered from side to side; Xander suspected that had it not been beneath its dignity, (and had it possessed a visible mouth) the thing would have been smirking and saying I told you so! Xander drew a deep gulping breath. "Anya's not evil.  No matter what else she may be, she's not evil.  She helps people now."

"I never was evil," Anya said, irritated.  "More amoral.  Most demons are.  Honestly, with the exception of species like vampires who give the rest of us a bad name, the whole 'demon equals evil' thing is overdone."  She gave the Harrier a nervous smile.  "As you should know, uh, sir, being a good demon yourself.  Not to mention that I'm all contaminated again with feelings about people I really have no reason to feel about..."

YOU HAVE CAUSED GREAT SUFFERING.  YOUR DEATH IS JUSTICE.  Its myriad eyes turned to Xander.  I HAVE NO WISH TO HARM YOU, BUT IF I MUST DO SO TO DESTROY THIS CREATURE, I SHALL.

Xander wondered if this was one of those dreams you woke up from to discover you were still dreaming.  Here he was, standing in a parking lot, having just saved a vampire's ass and trying to keep his ex-demon fiancée from being touched by an angel, or as near to one as he was probably ever going to see.  All his worst fears confirmed.  All that was left was to look down and discover he wasn't wearing any pants.  And there was Anya gazing at him with brown-velvet eyes no different than they had been this morning, when they woke up together.  Eyes brimming with tears and anger.  "Why didn't you tell me?" he choked out.

She shook her head.  "You would have left me."

It was just a flat statement of fact, and it got him right in the gut.  Xander turned back to the Harrier.  

YOU KNOW WHAT SHE IS.  WILL YOU STAND ASIDE?

Xander stared at the ground, stared at the toes of his boots, stared at his hands.  At last he looked up.  "Sometimes," he said, sounding far too reasonable in his own ears, "You just get to a place in life where you have to make a radical re-evaluation of the whole good-bad demon-human thing and let me see if I can explain this... I understand Ahn's a demon.  And..."  He folded his arms and stood foursquare in front of Anya, who looked at him with dawning hope.  "I DON'T CARE!"  

A handful of Anya's party guests had followed her out to the  parking lot and were milling about in confusion.  Spike didn't see Halfrek  among them; no surprise there, as the gang from Arashmahar generally  buggered off at the first sign of trouble.  As Spike reached the Tiercel,  someone else finally noticed the movements behind the tinted windows that  his far-sighted predator's eyes had picked up on at once.  An unfamiliar  woman's voice shouted, "Lorri, call 911, there's someone stuck in this  car!  It's going to fall in!"  

Ignoring the onlookers, Spike leaped atop the car and crouched beside  the driver's door like some exceptionally athletic gargoyle, studying the interior through the window.  The door-handle had jammed; pulling at it, he knew from experience, would just rip it off.  He needed leverage.  Spike balled up a  fist in his duster and sent it smashing through the glass, which dissolved in pea-size fragments, then grabbed the window-frame in both hands and pulled.  The door shot open with a crash, torn half off its hinges, and Spike ducked head and shoulders inside.  Inside was a small dark woman; she'd somehow slipped free of the shoulder harness when the car tipped over, and was hanging half-suspended from the seatbelt, her knees jammed into the steering wheel.  He could smell blood, but it was scarcely noticeable over the scent of his own; not enough to indicate serious injury.  In the distance he heard the wail of approaching sirens.  Best hurry before Sunnydale's finest showed up to complicate matters.

At the sight of Spike coming through the window she began struggling  to get away, flopping like a gaffed fish.  Spike tried grabbing an ankle,  to no avail.  "Quit wriggling, you stupid bint, you're being rescued!"   The woman's only response was a terrified scream and an attempt to claw  through the back of the seat.  Spike realized belatedly that he was still  in game face and switched back to human features.  It didn't seem to help;  the woman kicked him in the chest, drawing an answering stab of pain from the cut across his belly.  "OW!  Bloody--if you don't be still so I can get you out of here, I'm going to knock you senseless, sod the headache!"

A familiar and welcome scent tickled his nose through the tang of hot metal and dust, and a second later  Buffy dropped down past him through the open window and began undoing the  tangle of seatbelts.  "Ma'am, calm down!  You're going to be all right!  Your knight in shining armor act leaves something  to be desired," she observed as Spike bent the steering wheel out of their way a tad.  "Maybe more of a Will Smith vibe, less of a  Jack Nicholson?"

The car creaked and wobbled under their added weight.  Spike shifted as much of his weight as he could forward, and the unnerving teetering stilled for the moment.  "New to the hero business, love--I'm still working on my theme song.  Here, pass her up."

They handed the dazed woman (she kept staring at Spike and shaking her head, and he had to exert a great deal of willpower to keep from flashing her a little fang just to see her jump) off to one of the newly-arrived paramedics and hopped down off the Tiercel.  Spike watched them lead her away, eyes hooded, an indefinable yet strangely familiar emotion teasing round the corners of his heart.  He wasn't sure he wanted to pin it down; it reeked of something he didn't want to face head-on yet.  Buffy glanced up at him, a little smile curling the corners of her mouth.  "The George Hamilton look?  Not working."

"Ta ever so.  I'll pawn the tanning bed."

"What're we looking at?" 

From teasing to General Buffy, all terse and commandery, demanding a report from her second-in-command.   Spike glanced across the pit; Xander was still playing dodge 'em with the winged wonder.  "Harrier demon.  They're warriors of light--don't usually muck around with us vamps; it'd be like shooting flies with a cannon.  They get sent after things like your late unlamented Mayor."

"Then why's it after Anya?"

Spike shook his head.  "Buggered if I know.  'Less it can tell she used to be a demon; they can sniff out the wicked like bloodhounds, and vengeance demons are a bloody sight more powerful than a mere vampire.  D'Hoffryn's girls can only grant wishes according to the rules, and  Harriers are keen on rules--but the collateral damage from a few badly-phrased wishes alone would set that shiny bastard off. Our Anya was a  vengeance demon for a long, long time."

"Well, she's not now."  Buffy looked grim.  "How do we stop it?"

A bark of laughter escaped him.  "Got a bazooka handy?"

Buffy chewed on her lower lip.  "If it's one of the good guys, we can  talk to it.  It's got to listen.  We just need to get its attention."  

"Mmm.  Suppose beaning it with an axe wasn't conducive to negotiations, then."

Buffy's jaw dropped.  "Why did you--?"

Spike opened his mouth, realized he was about to say  Because it bloody near broke my only pair of glasses, that's why! and was overcome with the dire conviction that this, in conjunction with whatever Halfrek had already told her about the general pathetic wankerdom of his breathing days, would undoubtedly mean the end of his and Buffy's short but eventful relationship in a fit of hysterical laughter.  "It hit me first."
    "Oh.  Then I wouldn't hang around the mailbox waiting for a letter from the Nobel committee, no."  Buffy looked around, then pointed to the collapsed carport, a crumpled length of fiberglass and steel draped across the hoods of half-a-dozen assorted cars.  "Attention-getting device."

Spike grinned at her.  "On it, love."  Buffy crouched down, wrapped  her arms around the base of the support beam and pulled, her face  contorted with effort. Spike took hold of the scalloped edge if the roof  where the two pieces were bolted together and ripped.  Rivets popped and  sun-weakened fiberglass snapped, and the whole thing tore free with a  crash.  Spike shoved the roof section away, and it landed with a crash,  doing serious damage to the roof of the Geo Metro in the nearest parking  space.  No loss there; the owner should thank him for forcing them to get  a real car.

In a trice they wrestled the support pole free of its moorings.  They  had a weapon, twelve feet of twisted metal, one end terminating in a club  of cement where they'd torn it free of the pavement.  Unwieldy as hell,  but big enough to make the Harrier sit up and notice without putting them within slashing reach.  He hefted the pole to shoulder height and Buffy looked at him, her nose adorably smudged, her teeth bared in a fighting grin.  "Charge!"

Xander pulled Anya out of the way of another slashing appendage as Spike and Buffy barreled towards them at full and terrifying speed.  The pole was a bitch and a half to run with, over-balanced at the club-end and inconveniently shaped to grip, but the two of them never missed a step, flying over the uneven ground as if they'd practiced it for weeks.  "DUCK!" Spike bellowed, and Xander dropped flat with Anya beneath him.  Vampire and Slayer leaped over their heads in unison and rammed the club-end of the rebar into the center of the whirlwind.  Half a dozen blades struck sparks rebounding off the metal, and their combined strength and momentum slammed the Harrier back a good twenty feet, spinning above the center of the crater like a psychotic buzzsaw.

SLAYER?  The massive composure in its voice wavered for an instant.  Had they wounded it?  Considering how easily it had shrugged off the axe, that didn't seem likely; they'd done the equivalent of knocking the breath out of it, no more.  YOU OPPOSE ME?

Buffy crouched on a concrete slab, teetering on the edge of the pit, her face washed of detail by the Harrier's actinic light.  "I won't let you hurt Spike and Anya!"

I AM WHAT YOU ARE.  A WARRIOR OF LIGHT.  THEY ARE... WHAT WE ARE BOUND TO DESTROY--YOUNGER SISTER, YOU BETRAY YOUR HERITAGE AND YOUR PURPOSE.

"Better that than betray my friends!"  Buffy's voice shook with outrage. 

Two of the women who'd followed Anya down--Lorri and Sandra--joined Xander in shielding her.  Spike gave the two of them an irritated look.  Sod it all, they would have to be helpful; he was going to have to revise his list of people he wouldn't kill if the chip came out again.  Lorri waved her cell phone at the Harrier angrily.  "Leave her alone!  What's she done to you?"

IF IT IS YOUR CHOICE TO ALLY YOURSELF WITH CREATURES OF DARKNESS...  The dispassionate, beautiful voice rang with genuine regret.  THEN I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO...

"Now just a bleeding minute, you've got it backwards!" Spike took an indignant step forward.  It was one thing for the Harrier to go after him, or even Anya, quite another for it to slang Buffy.  "The creatures of darkness are allied with her!"

"Exactly!"  Buffy's chin jutted.  "They're helping me.  You don't need to hurt them."

The Harrier hovered there, fizzling to itself like a Guy Fawkes bonfire that hadn't quite come off.  YOU ALLY YOURSELF WITH HER FOR SELFISH REASONS? it asked, sounding almost hopeful, as if this would give it a comfortable out.

"Right," Spike said, plumbing new depths of sarcasm.  "Completely, utterly selfish. Makes a big difference to my hapless victims."  He tapped his skull with a forefinger.  "The batteries go south tomorrow, and I happen on a tasty morsel in some alley during my midnight stroll--"  He bared his fangs and adopted a menacing crouch.  "Grr, argh!"  He whipped round and cowered away from himself, wringing his hands.  "Eek!  Please don't eat me, you ruggedly handsome creature of the night, you!"  Spike drew himself upright and struck a noble pose.  "It's your lucky day, little lady!  Happens I'm off eating people; it upsets the missus.  On your way!"  Another volte face.  "You mean you're not letting me go out of devotion to good for its own sake?  You nasty vampire, get right back here and open a vein this minute!"

FACETIOUSNESS DOES NOT ADVANCE YOUR ARGUMENT.

"Yeh, well, it keeps me amused."

YOU LEFT YOUR COMPANION TO SAVE ANOTHER.  WHY?

"Bloody hell, I don't know!  Because..."  Because why?  He hadn't thought about it, he'd just done it.  Man U's tragic defeat by West Ham (honestly now, West Ham?) sending him barmy?  Some kind of conditioned reflex?  "Because it's the... the thing the Slayer'd want me to do."

The searchlight intensity of the Harrier's regard sliced scalpel-sharp through heart and mind, weighing all it found on scales infinitely precise.  Weirdly insignificant moments drifted up from the vaults of memory: Dragging Dru away from the Crawford Street mansion, feeling a twinge of concern--He's going to kill her .  (Then he shrugged it off, and beat it out of town.)  Pouring out his sorrows to Joyce, and leaping to her defense when Angel startled her .  (Then Buffy showed up and things went downhill.)   Xander, standing in front of the ghost-infested Lowell House, asking Who's with me? I am.  (Then he talked himself out of it.)  Lisa, in the park, flinging her arms around him and sobbing in relief...

There was a note of surprise in the Harrier's voice  when it spoke again.  CREATURE OF DARKNESS, YOU ARE... TAINTED.  IMPURE.

Whatever primal awe had struck him at the Harrier's appearance was wearing off fast.  "I can't bloody well please any of you lot, can I?" Spike snapped.  What did it matter what this jumped-up Christmas tree topper thought of him?  "Not bad enough here, not good enough there--blow me a tune I don't know, Gabriel."  Not as if he'd expected a pat on the head from a representative of the Powers, any more than he'd expected Harris to jump for joy at the news Buffy was giving him a tumble, and it didn't sting either, not a bit.  What had he expected, wide-eyed astonishment and 'Well, Spike old man, aren't you extraordinary?  Evil as the day is long, but doesn't the white hat look dashing?'

It paused, almost... uncertain?  INTERESTING.  The Harrier stood quiescent for a moment, considering, then swelled like a startled cat, shedding sunbeams.  It gave vent to a long-drawn hiss.  IF THE SLAYER CLAIMS YOU AS AN ALLY, THEN THE SOURCE OF THE IMBALANCE THAT DREW ME HERE--

Behind them, from her vantage point on the Rambler, Willow's chant reached its climax.  Raw black-violet flame arced across the alarm-filled air.  A multi-hued, inhuman scream rose from the Harrier demon, and all its light and flame turned in upon itself, imploding in darkness.  With a wail of agony it turned tail and dove back into the tunnels, trailing streamers of glowing fluid that writhed in the air for minutes before fading away. Willow sat down on the fender of the Rambler with a thump and a small grin.  "Don't know my own strength."

Spike eyed Willow.  Witch'd never said a truer word.  "Guess we didn't need the bazooka after all."

Buffy dropped her end of their improvised lance and bent over the edge of the pit.  "Wills--that was amazing, but it was about to--we almost found out--we were talking to it!"

Willow looked puzzled.  "Yeah, I saw.  Good job keeping it occupied, guys!"

Buffy's lips thinned in frustration, and she leaned into Spike's side.  Spike wrapped an arm and the somewhat tattered remnants of his duster around Buffy's shoulders as a couple of police officers came trotting up bearing rolls of yellow tape, and together they allowed Sunnydale's finest to shoo them away.  One by one, behind them, the car alarms fell silent. As they made their way across the parking lot, Buffy shook her head and looked back at the pit.  There was no sign of the Harrier.  Softly enough that only Spike's ears could pick the words up against the ragged chorus of police radios, she whispered, "Oh, this isn't gonna look good on the permanent record."

Part 22

Part 24