Spoilers: None
Rating: NC17 for some sex, violence and torture, but in a very tasteful way, of course…
Content: B/A/A(us) alternate past reality leads to an alternate future. Follow-up to ‘Ma’at’.
Summary: Angelus and Buffy are back together again, but is it forever this time? Do I need to buy a hat?
This story is told from several different points of view.
This is for Deb, who, after several months of correspondence, I actually met this summer. She’s as nice in person as she is in her e-mails. Look forward to the next time, Deb.

We have seen the dance of the eleventh dimension, as universes are carried in a cotillion older than time, stitched onto their branes like beads on a ball gown. We have seen, too, that universes are not all alike, that some have different ways to those of our own. That there are para-universes. Parasite universes. As the dance of the branes ripples and shifts, these primitive swirls of matter and energy reach out with the finest of tendrils, looking for their next host. They are hungry and they need to feed.

We cannot reach out and touch any of these other universes, although they may only be an inch away, but these parasites, these feeders on star stuff, on life, on the energy of the soul itself? Ah, they know how to touch. They have done it before, many times. In some universes, where contact has been close and prolonged, they have left nothing, simply a gaping hole on the brane where a richness of cosmic energy and its attendant life forms once existed. Others survived the encounter, but have been left as pale reminders of their former selves, shadows of star systems and ghosts of galaxies.

Our universe has had brushes with these feeders from the deeps, but no more than that. Yet even though we have felt only their gentlest caress for a few brief moments of time, they have swept life from this, and other, planets. From this, and other, suns. A brief caress from a parasite universe has meant a Great Dying, a Mass Extinction, for the inhabitants of Earth.

Now, one of these parasite universes has been brought forward towards our own, positioned to meet its new host along a broad front, ready to embrace it for millennia. A long, sinuous tendril has reached out, has sensed nourishment. Somewhere, in the far reaches of space, at the uttermost limits of this cosmos, that questing tendril has stretched out from the fathomless darkness and latched on to the outermost star system. Now it has started to suck. The star system has eleven planets. On three of those planets, there are creatures with sufficient intelligence to stop and wonder when their green-tinged sun ceases its movements across the copper skies, in a sudden solstice that will become permanent until the energy has been emptied from it and that nuclear furnace has withered and died; these are creatures that will feel pain and fear as the invader savours the meat of star stuff, spiced with the tang of soul stuff. These will be the first to fall. They won’t be the last.

Somewhere, in a small, private paradise, the Lady and her two consorts, the Duality, are renewing their vows to each other, rediscovering the pleasures of the flesh and of the spirit. Reaffirming their love. Exhausted and satiated by their prolonged lovemaking, they have fallen into slumber, locked in a mutual embrace. While they sleep, the cry of that solar system calls out to them even in this tiny retreat, shivering over them like a chill wind. Their dreams become restless, and they reach out to each other, pressing together for warmth and comfort, feeling the pain of creatures passing into non-existence. The three are unaware as yet of the nature of the threat. Even gods and goddesses have their limitations. All they can do is wait.

I’ve come to Los Angeles. You will not believe where I am. I’m outside a church. I’m intent on going in, as well. You should know that the Soul had more difficulty going into houses of religion than I’ve ever had. It’s all in the mind, you know – or whatever souls have for minds. After all, I’ve spent enough time eating my way though convents full of nuns. They were always my religious house of choice – you don’t get so many of them nowadays, I’m sorry to say. Churches are fine, though – you can have real fun in the confessional.

However, that isn’t my business today. Remember that the Soul came here to find a certain Father Fredericks, looking for help in exorcising an Ethros demon? And the good Father happened to have caught a bad case of a very similar sort of demon, and died from it? Well, the Soul met a nun here. She helped him with that, and afterwards, they sometimes met and talked. She got to know him. I have business with her tonight.

*Sigh*. No, I’m not going to eat her. I’ll eat you if you keep on asking silly questions, though.

I’m looking for another Father, you see. One with a very different service to offer. And no, I won’t eat him either. What is it with you? He’d be no good to me dead. I want to see the nun, because she helped the Soul, even knowing what he was. She might be able to help me find that certain sort of priest. And no, I’m not getting religion. See these fangs?

Okay, so I’m now inside the church. Told you it would be a snap. There is a sort of malaise in the air, a bit like static electricity crawling over my skin, but that’s it. Mind you, I don’t want to go throwing myself at any of these crosses. They sting like a bitch. I don’t want any more scars just yet - I’ve still got one or two lingering after my exertions over the last few weeks. They are nearly gone now, just a reminder to be more careful. I’ve been shot, stabbed, staked, slashed, gashed, poisoned, virtually eviscerated (no, not *that* sort of virtual – this sort was real enough), and a few other things as well. I’m trying to keep my hide in one piece just at the moment.

Ah, there’s the nun. I recognise her scent. I wonder if she’ll recognise me? She’s busy doing something at the altar as I stroll in, so I stand quietly, waiting. I do have manners, you know.

It’s only a few moments before she becomes aware of someone behind her. It’s late at night, so I don’t suppose she was expecting much in the way of visitors. As soon as she turns round, she knows me, despite the gloom in this badly lit old building. At least, she knows the body. She comes forward with a smile on her face, but as she closes the distance, the smile becomes hesitant, and then fades altogether. I see her take hold of the crucifix hanging from her cincture. She knows who I am. She knew the Soul for what he was as soon as she saw him. She’s got a gift, this one.

“Sister Agneta.”

“You’ve killed Angel.”

Direct, and to the point. Gotta give her credit. She’s brave, too. Well, would you take me on, face to face? She’s no spring chicken, you know.

“Not me. His *friends* did that. I’m not complaining, mind you. Seems like he’s gone for good, now.”

“How dare you come into this place?”

It’s interesting. She is very, very angry – I think she must have genuinely liked the Soul – but there isn’t a whiff of fear on her scent. She really is a tough old bird. I quite like her.

I allow her to keep the two or three strides of distance between us. I could so easily close it and finish her off – the cross would be no hindrance at all – but she’s entitled to some respect for her courage.

“I’m looking for a priest. One who will do me a service.”

She looks contemptuous and sceptical at the same time.

“What sort of service could any true priest do for a demon such as you?”

When I tell her, astonishment paints her features. There is a full minute of astounded silence, and then she breaks into true and unfeigned laughter. I can only sigh, and wait for her to stop.

It started a few days ago. As soon as I was back on my feet after the defeat of Fenrix, that werewolf godling, and his Pack, I set about remodelling the mansion. I have big plans. The mansion is just about the most impressive residence in Sunnydale – or would be if half of it weren’t semi-derelict – but it simply won’t be big enough or impressive enough for my plans. Throughout your history – and your prehistory – your rulers have built themselves grandiose halls and throne rooms. The areas where your chieftains and kings have chosen to greet rulers, ambassadors, supplicants, tribute bearers and other assorted visitors, have *always* been intended to ensure that those visitors are overawed by the power, wealth and influence of the incumbent. Even after three thousand years, you remember Solomon not only for his wisdom but also for the splendour of his building projects. Vampires have never had much truck with that sort of thing, so I’m taking a leaf from your book here. This is all a bit new to me, but I want a court that will reflect the position I’m building in the underworld. A court that the Slayer will be proud of. It occurs to me that I’m also following a little in Aurelius’ footsteps. I wonder what he will think?

Wes and Gunn have gone back to Los Angeles. Matters between us are not yet finished. I want to talk to them about bringing them onto my team. I certainly can’t afford to have them on the opposite side, and I need to settle it soon. Aurelius, Sekhmet, and the rest of his court have returned to Cairo, leaving newly vamped Lindsey with me, and I’m just allowing him to stew for a bit. He knows that he and I have a reckoning coming, and that he’s not going to be on the good end, so I’ll let him just think about that for a while. My minions are keeping an eye on him, to make sure he doesn’t run, but I don’t think he will. He’s well aware of how much worse things will get if he does.

So, it’s just the Sunnydale crowd here now, plus Oz and Nina. They are staying over for a while. Oz is catching up with old friends, and Nina is learning that there are many more monsters around than she ever suspected: that she isn’t alone.

So, despite the fact that most of our guests have gone home, the mansion is now noisy and dusty and full of architects and builders and such. When it’s done, I want Buffy to move into the mansion, but I haven’t put it to her yet, not until the place is a bit more peaceful. Less like a building site. I want to formalise our relationship, and suddenly I’m nervous of her response. Demons run on passion, and even I’m not sure how I’ll react if she turns me down; if she sends me away like she did a couple of months ago. I’m definitely reluctant to tell her exactly what the mating ceremony would entail – what it would *have* to entail – and I can’t help remembering the gelding knife I sent to Harris a couple of weeks ago. I suspect she’d borrow it, unless she considered it to be far too merciful. Perhaps I should just kidnap her and run off with her? Perhaps I should just put aside all my plans and make it her and me for eternity? No, I know. It would never work that way. We are what we are, and we have to deal on those terms. Having the Slayer as my mate will enhance my standing with almost all the different species of demons. With some, though, it will sink me beneath reproach. I don’t care. I wouldn’t care if I were outcast from the entire demon world, from my clan and from my family. She is mine. She always will be. You’ve heard of counting the world well lost for love? There you are, then.

Anyway, I’m babbling because the thought of what I’m doing makes me nervous, and I was trying to tell you how I came to be standing here in this church, allowing an elderly nun to laugh at me.

What with everything that’s been going on, Buffy and I have had very little time together since we got back from the werewolf stronghold. If truth be told, it’s years since we really had any time together. She isn’t a teenager anymore; she’s a young woman. The teenager is still there, though, especially when she’s with her friends…

Okay, I admit it. I was lurking. I was expecting to run into her in our favourite cemetery, the Eternal Rest. She still patrols, you know, and stakes more minions than I rescue. I think I’ll just have to go into the body-snatching business until she sees things more my way. So, I was lurking. What I didn’t expect was that she would arrive en masse. I just have time to get up into the protective crown of an elderly yew tree, and conceal myself in that fragrant darkness. Unfortunately, they decide to ensconce themselves underneath said yew tree, Buffy leaning against the bole, the rest lying on the soft grass; the very same soft grass that I myself had intended to lie on with my dearly beloved. If any of them looks directly up, they’ll see me, I’m sure. With her are Xander Harris and Anyanka, Willow and Tara. I carefully close down the link between my mate and me, that mental and physical link that is the result of our bond. I can never shut it down completely, but I can mute it. I don’t want her to know how close I am. Not yet. I’m still in lurk-mode.

They’ve got some of those cans of sugar-free, nutrition-free, taste-free liquid with added chemicals, and Harris takes a long swig of his and belches loudly. Oh yes, they’ve got added gas as well as added chemicals. I can tell by their individual demeanours that they have something they have been trying not to talk about, and it’s Harris who breaks the taboo.

“Buffy, you’ve got to do something about the über-vamp. You *cannot* have him running around Sunnydale as if he owns the place – which, in fact he does, of course. This time, you *have* to stake him. You can’t tell me I’m wrong on this.”

Well, I suppose if that’s my new nickname, it’s a step up from Dead Boy. Buffy says nothing. There’s the smell of guilt and self-pity rolling off her again. *Damn it* but we have been here before, and I am *not* dragging myself round this circle again! Harris is encouraged by her silence, and picks up again what is clearly going to be a rant.

“Slayers slay, Buffy, and what you mainly slay is vampires, with a few pesky assorted demons, fiends and godlings on the side. He’s got Angel’s body, but he’s just another vampire inside. He’s just another demon. He *kills* people. He *eats* people. He was torturing Riley, for goodness’ sake. He killed Jenny. Are you going to stand by while he carries on doing that? Or are you going to stand by his side, holding his coat? Are you?”

“Xander, leave it alone. Please.”

“Turn a blind eye, Buffy? Which one would that be? The blind left one, or the currently available right one? You want me to stop seeing altogether?”

“I’m sorry about your eye, Xander, but if you recall, it was a werewolf that did that to you. Another werewolf – Oz – saved you, and another demon – Angelus – saved both Faith and me, and a hell of a lot of other people, too. This is *my* business. Now leave it alone.”

“Your business, is it? When you’re obviously in thrall to evil? You want me to leave it? You want me to not say anything while you’re under his spell, absolutely helpless under his bloody thumb? And what about that *really* creepy clan master of his, Aurelius, and his even scarier cat? You gonna share Angelus with him? Or even better, you gonna let Angelus share you with him? Turn and turn about? We know every vamp in a clan belongs to the master. Oh, and you gonna let Angelus vamp you, too? So we have to stake both of you?

“Buffy, he is *evil*. Can’t you get your head around that? He’s a devil, and he can never be anything but evil. You cannot be seriously thinking about making your life with him. Demons are bad. Killing them is what we do.”

He is working up to a rage now – probably fuelled by the chemicals in that muck he’s drinking – and spittle is flying from his lips, his face red, his eyes wild. At least he is speaking what he truly thinks. The trouble for Harris, though, is that some small, dark part of him wants to be me, to be the successful alpha male that has the most beautiful women at his beck and call. Some even smaller, darker part of him just wants me. I’ve let him feel the call of a hunting vampire, and he’s taken the invitation into himself and hugged it to his most secret soul. It’s still there. It makes him hate himself, and he’s turning that hate onto me, the perceived architect of all his woes.

My mate is hunched in on herself, as if her very posture were trying to shield her from his words. I really want to just leap down and snap his neck for upsetting her, but I really, really want to know what her answer is going to be. So, I stay where I am and wait.

Anyanka puts her hand on his arm to quieten him, but he is beyond that.

“You going to join him in killing humans? Torturing them? Bathing in their blood? You going to be a vampire groupie, getting shagged by the lot of them? That’s what they do, isn’t it? You going…”

“Xander! Enough!”

My love doesn’t need to stand up to make herself dominate those around her.

“I know that you’re speaking out of concern for me, and I know that you hated Angel and hate Angelus even more. All this stuff – it’s all fanciful nonsense, as you well know. I’m old enough to make my own choices, and I have. I choose him. He won’t turn me, and he will protect me – he’s told me so often enough – and if you think he’s going to allow any one else in my bed, then you don’t understand why he killed Spike. It doesn’t matter though, because whatever happens in our life will be what we decide, him and me.

“He’s done more evil things than you and I can imagine, but I still love him, and something tells me that we are meant to be together. I don’t know why – call it Slayer sense if you want, but I know it’s so. That isn’t why I’ve chosen him, though. It’s just because I love him, and he loves me. He was evil for a hundred and fifty years. Anya was a vengeance demon for a thousand years, but you still love her. Is it so difficult for you to understand?

“A Slayer and a master vampire? Yeah, I know it’s about as off as it’s possible to be, but I don’t care. We’ll have to explore how we can get along, but we will, and how we do it will be our business.

“I’d like us to stay friends, Xander, but if you don’t think you can, I’ll understand.”

With that, Buffy subsides, and Xander stands, open-mouthed at her riposte. Much like me, really. I’ve never heard her defend me so roundly. Suddenly, Xander picks up his jacket and heads off out of the cemetery. Anyanka casts an exasperated look at the Slayer and the witches, and then follows him. The three of them don’t look ready to move any time soon. My options are limited. I really don’t want to announce my presence as an eavesdropper to that little outburst, so I’m stuck with my tree perch for a while longer.

It’s Willow who speaks next.

“He’ll come round, Buffy. He worries about you. He loves you, even if it’s just friendly love now. He’ll never really walk away. Like Angelus – he won’t either. Do you really love him? As much as you loved Angel?”

“God help me, yes.”

Her answer is little more than a whisper, but it’s good enough for me. I guess it’s also good enough to turn my thoughts from ripping Harris limb from limb, although strangely, I don’t feel much inclined to do that after my initial surge of anger. He was, after all, speaking from the heart, and with passion. I can relate to that. He was also doing his best to protect Buffy. He was mistaken in his fears, but in some ways I’m glad he had them and was brave enough to voice them.

“Are you going to… you know… be his…mate?”

“He… he hasn’t… he hasn’t asked me.”

What? We *are* mates, and I have indeed asked her. Well, told her, although it was a while ago, before I left on that fateful trip to Canada. I recall it perfectly.

I’d said to her, “For the mating ritual, I’ll have some rings made. Rings just for us. Until then, I want you to wear this one, the one that Sou…that Angel gave you, and I will wear his. I know he still has a place in your heart, and I won’t try to deny that, so long as you love me as well as you do him.”

I haven’t arranged those formal ceremonies yet, because we have been a bit distracted by other things, such as trying to stay alive, but we are mates and we will have the ritual. I felt sure she understood that, but I must make it plain to her. Straight after I’ve managed to get her on her own and make plain to her quite what an effect she has on my crotch.

“Do you think he will?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how the clan will take to having the Slayer as a member, especially if I’m still human and still the Slayer. Although Aurelius said he was glad that Angelus and I were back together, so maybe that isn’t a problem.”

She pauses then, and even though I can only see the top of her head, I can see that she has more she wishes to confide to her oldest friend. She’s looking at the bare third finger on her left hand, where the claddagh ought to be. Mine, too, is bare. Those rings did not return with us when we were released from the Underworld, and I don’t know why that should be. If you think I’m going back to recover them, though, you can think again. She rubs her finger, just where the ring would be, as if she were missing the feel of it. I know that I do.

“Do you know what I dream about? I dream about a real wedding. A church, and a white gown and bridesmaids. Friends and family. A real, normal wedding. It’s always him, standing with me at the altar, but we’re married in the sight of God and man. Silly, I know, but we all dream about something we can never have. I dream about happily ever after, as well. When I wake up, I just don’t know how it can happen. Somehow, Angelus and I have to come to a compromise, have to work out how to just *be* in ways that the other can live with.”

The witches have moved up to kneel next to her, now, one on either side, and they each take one of her hands. It’s Tara, the quiet one, who speaks next.

“Buffy, you can work it out between you. You’re the sun and moon to him.”

I can almost feel Buffy smiling.

“Thank you, Tara, that’s sweet…”

If Tara were standing, she would have stamped her foot.

“No Buffy! It isn’t sweet; I mean it exactly. With you, he…he can be everything and anything. Like the moon, you bring out all his powers. He can be whatever he wants to be, and whatever *you* want him to be. No one else can affect him like that. If you keep yourself from him, it’s like the sun – it destroys him, and he becomes just the insane, evil demon that everyone is afraid of. I can’t think of a better way of describing it.

“Just don’t threaten his pride in front of others, and he’ll do anything for you.”

They all go into a group hug, and I feel a bit of a shiver, although it isn’t anything to do with the cold. Drusilla left last night. She said she couldn’t stay where Spike had been, until she’d found someone else to love. I could understand that, so I let her go – for now. Before she went, though, she was reading her tarot cards. She pulled out the fallen angel, and Death, together.

“Look, Daddy,” she said, “you’re falling into the Slayer, and you won’t ever be the same again. We’ll all still love you, though.”

I’d told her that the Slayer would change nothing about me, that the sun would stand still in the sky before that would ever happen, that I was master in my own house. She’d laughed at me, with that tinkly little laugh that she has. Oh well, at least she said everyone would still love me. As long as that includes the Slayer…

They talk some more, exchanging secrets. They’re like teenage girls, except these secrets are rather more adult than the teenagers they used to be would have understood. I must say I’m shocked by some of the exchanges, but intrigued as well. I didn’t think that any of them would talk about *those* sorts of things. You know what I mean. Do all girls talk like that when men aren’t around? Even when they have girlfriends instead of boyfriends? I come out of it quite well, though, and I feel very mellow as they walk off together out of the cemetery. Sufficiently mellow that when I catch up to them, I make it seem that I’m coming from somewhere else, and I give them all a hug from behind, eliciting tiny squeals of surprise, before I pick Buffy up in my arms and carry her back to the yew tree.

I then proceed to give her something else to compare notes about.

She’s given me something to think about, too. Well, more than one thing. But there is that one reason why I’m here, in this church, as the nun stops laughing and starts to wipe the tears from her eyes. She’s still looking at me in disbelief, but she does give me a name and address. It’s a priest, at another church in Los Angeles. It’s not too late to go there now. I can get there by Compline, and Sister Agneta tells me that she expects Father Jerome to be taking that office.

I’m just in time for the start of the service. When I see which church she’s sent me to, I have to smile. St Jude’s. The patron saint of lost causes. I walk in just in time for the reflections on the day’s sins, and I go to sit quietly at the back. If Sister Agneta thinks this priest will do as I wish, the odds are he’ll know what I am. So I’ll wait.

There are few enough of the faithful here. These old rituals are losing their power over you, yet you have no real understanding of the protection they can offer. As children, you see clearly. As adults, you forget your childhood beliefs and fail to recognise that there are indeed things that go bump in the night; that there are monsters in the closet. Your church has power to protect you, and these rituals are part of that protection. Your religion would stand you in good stead, much of the time – or at least its rituals would. Admittedly, a sword and a strong right arm would be even better, but you’ve mainly given those up, as well.

Now, I’m about to take the Slayer from you, too.

When the reflections and the hymns and prayers are over, the dozen or so elderly worshippers, having cleansed their thoughts of the day’s small evils, gradually file out on tottery legs, leaving the greater evil in command of their church. I could do whatever I wished, here. I could slaughter each and every worshipper and their priest. I won’t, though. I’m hungry, and I want something to eat, but there’s something I want much more. Something I’ve come here to get.

The priest has finished his duties at the altar, and he turns to look at me. He’s been aware of my presence throughout the entire service. He’s a strongly built man, but he’s old now. Around seventy, I should think. I doubt he’ll see a long and happy retirement, though. No, not because of me. Because of something I can hear within him. His heart. It’s failing fast. I doubt he’ll see another two years. He could, in fact, go at any time. That wouldn’t suit me at all. If he’s agreeable to what I want, I’d better move my plans up a bit. He gives me a nod of recognition, and then disappears into the vestry. It’s only a few minutes later when he reappears, minus his vestments, his robes of office. It occurs to me that he would normally have gone into the vestry earlier; that he waited until the entire congregation, such as it was, were outside and on their separate ways home. Perhaps he already knows me.

I stay where I am, at the back, and wait for him. He sits down in the row in front of me, well within strike range.

“Is there something I can do for you, my son?”

Ah. Is he pretending?

“I saw that you were here for the service, but you did not participate. Would it not have brought you comfort? Eased your mind for the night?”

Nope. Not pretending. He’s got a smirk on his face and he’s taking the piss. I throttle back my anger. He can’t do it dead. Well, I could make sure he did, but I don’t want it that way.

“I didn’t come for the service. I came to speak to you.”

“Would it have hurt you to participate?”

“You know it would.”

He surveys me calmly for a few moments and then, *damn it*, he scents me! His nostrils flare, he tilts his head up a little, and I could swear that he is testing out every nuance of my scent. Humans can’t do that. They simply can’t. You don’t have enough sensory power. Yet that is what he is doing. And he has no fear. None at all. Oh, he’s human all right. But surely he must be something more?

“What is your name?”

“Angelus”

“Ah. You are *that* one. You have killed a great many of our people.”

I shrug. Well, what can I say? It’s true.

“Have you come here to kill me?”

“No. I am here because I wish you to perform a service for me.”

He looks intrigued. The Church does not accommodate vampires, for a start. Also, there is very, very little that the Church could ever do for us. There is nothing that I want, or would ever want, from your religion. Just this one thing.

“What sort of service could you possibly want from me?”

“I want you to carry out a marriage ceremony. For me.”

He looks angry.

“What sort of game is this, Angelus? You want to profane the sacrament of matrimony? You and one of your vampiresses? Get out. Now.”

I make no move to leave, and he remains where he is, righteous in his indignation.

“No. The woman I wish to marry is human. Well, mostly human. She’s the Slayer.” His response is not unexpected. Not after the nun, that is. The indignation vanishes and he dissolves into laughter. I’m getting a little tired of this. I’m still not going to eat him, but it’s becoming a damn near run thing.

He sobers up pretty quickly, though, and stares at me, in a very measuring way. He’s got blue eyes, and they are very sharp. When people get old, their eyes usually become rheumy and faded. Not this guy. His gaze can spear you at a thousand yards. He’s full of power, too. I don’t know what sort, yet, but I can feel it.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why have you come to me?”

“Because Sister Agneta gave me your name. I could find another priest to do it, if I wanted a sot, a fraudster or an imbecile. I don’t. I want a real priest, for a real ceremony. We cannot use the normal religious trappings, but I still want a recognisable wedding.”

“The Slayer – does she know what your intentions are?”

“She’s already my mate.”

He nods slowly, assimilating something that must be a bit of a shock to his system.

“You’ve had that ceremony?”

I shift uncomfortably.

“We haven’t formalised it yet, no. But she is my mate, for all that.”

“Does she know?”

“Yes.”

He nods again, and is silent for a moment.

“Why this? Why marriage? That isn’t the vampire way.”

“Because she has a dream of churches and white frocks. I want her to have that.”

“Angelus, doing something for another. Well, I never thought I’d see the day… When do you want the wedding to take place?”

“At the solstice.”

“Winter solstice?”

“No. Summer solstice.”

“Why then? I would have thought that you would wish the night to represent the height of your powers? That won’t happen on the shortest night of the year.”

I shift uncomfortably again on the suddenly hard wooden bench.

“This is for her. If there is anything mystic going on, it should be in her favour. Will you, or will you not, do it?”

He frowns a little, considering.

“Do you intend to turn her, make her like yourself?”

A knife twists in my heart as I give him the reply.

“Never.”

“Will you continue to kill?”

“I need to eat.”

He looks solemnly at me again, for a long and silent moment.

“I think I can leave that to the Slayer to deal with. Do you truly mean her no harm?”

“Truly.”

“I shall wish to speak to her, you know?”

“I know.”

He bows his head and is silent, the first time that he has turned his gaze away from me in this conversation. It is as if he is communing with his god. Perhaps he is.

“There will be a price.”

“Naturally.” The Church has been noted for selling its favours. I can feel my lip curling a little. Although, looking around this little church, it could do with some money spending on it.

“There are two things you must promise me.”

Oh? Not money, then?

“Name them.”

“Firstly, when she is dead…”

I feel my demon face burst to the fore, and a growl rumble in my throat. I have to make fists of my hands to stop them reaching for him.

“…You know that I speak of something that you yourself must have already considered, if you are honest in your intent not to turn her. So, when she is dead, you will go to confession.”

“What! Why in the name of everything unholy would I do that?”

“Because I ask it of you – no, I *demand* it as part of the price.”

The growl rumbles a little deeper.

“What good do you think that will do?”

“That is not my business. It is the business of the priest who will hear your confession.”

I bring myself back to my human form. What harm will this do? None that I can see, and I intend it to be a very long time in the future.

“Very well. And the second thing?”

“You will perform a service for me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I have not yet determined the nature of the service. I’ll tell you when it’s time.”

“You aren’t serious? Do you really expect me to agree to something that you won’t specify? You might want me to boil myself in holy water. Get real.” I decide to be a little cruel, because I’ve definitely had enough of trying to be civilised. “Besides, you’d better make your mind up fairly quickly – you haven’t got all that long to hang about, you know.”

He refuses to be goaded.

“I’m well aware of my health, vampire. If I die before I specify the service, you will be free of debt. Let us just say that you will know what it is by the time the ceremony is complete, and it will not be outside the realms of possibility for you.”

“How should I trust you?”

“Because you have my word, just as I have yours. Just as I trust you now not to kill me where I sit.”

Am I prepared to do this? To give my word to an oath I know nothing about? Yet, he smells of honesty.

“Very well. We have a bargain.”

“And you have a little over three weeks. Do you really think she’s going to agree to that? You know what women are like…”

For some reason, I’m thinking of Angelus. Believe me, I try to think of him as little as possible. It’s our fault that he’s here, in Angel’s place. My fault. I should have known better. I always make mistakes. I know everyone does, but it just seems that my mistakes are more… fatal… than most other people’s. I was a failure as a Watcher, then a failure as a friend.

I have to say how surprised I was at his behaviour, though, regarding the Werewolf and his Pack. He was almost… Angel-like. I would not have believed it had I not been part of it. Nina told me all about the horrors of the fight. The whole thing sounds like demons at their most primaeval, but maybe his handling of the situation shows that he’s more rational than he’s been before. Perhaps we can negotiate with him.

You see, Gunn and Cordelia and I have decided to try and make a go of the business by ourselves. I don’t know whether Angelus will try to reclaim the Hyperion. I suppose, technically, it might be more his than ours but I don’t think ‘technically’ is going to be at all important in the scheme of things. If he wants it back, he’ll just take it. I’m sure that would be over our dead bodies if necessary.

Oh, and speak of the devil – in a very literal sense. Look who just sauntered in the door. The vampire himself. I can’t reach the weapons cabinet, but I’ve got a crossbow here – Boy Scout motto. From the office, I can see Gunn and Cordelia. They have the stakes that none of us are ever without, but apart from that they are defenceless. Time to stand up and be counted.

“Angelus.”

“Wesley. Nice to see such a… sharp… reception. Gunn. Cordelia. Do you think we might all sit down? Preferably without the sharp, pointy objects? I happen to like the clothes I’ve got on, and they don’t look better with holes in them, thank you so very much.”

With that, he stalks into the office, and sits behind the desk. Cordelia and Gunn stare at each other, then at me, clearly wanting a decision – and some reaction to Angelus usurping my office. They’re probably also wondering why I didn’t let fly with the crossbow as soon as he walked in the door. I’m rather asking myself the same question. See? I couldn’t even do that right. Well, since he doesn’t seem to want to kill us, I suppose we might as well hear him out. We trail after him, the initiative all his. He’s playing with the paper knife when we get there, but he puts it down with a smirk when he sees me looking at it.

“Let’s not waste time. You all owed Angel big time. He would never have said it, would never even have really believed it himself, but he took all of you and gave you a chance to make something of yourselves…”

“Now just a minute…”

That’s Cordelia. She hates to be indebted, so she simply never accepts that she is. I know, though, and so does Gunn. This vampire will mess with our heads, but he does it with the truth.

“Not now Cordelia. You can have your say when I’m finished. The thing is, I have plans for the future, and I can offer you all a place in those plans. Not as vampires – I’ll let you live – but you *will* swear loyalty to me and mine. I ask no more than your word. You’ll want to think about that, but I’d like a reply before summer solstice.

“Whatever you choose, this place is mine. You’ll learn that I give up nothing that is mine. Nothing. However, I have no problem in you continuing the business from here, and it will be rent-free until I have your answer. What’s more, the place needs even more work doing on it than the last time I saw it. I’ll set that in motion. Can’t bear negligent landlords.

“Meantime, there is something I need, and I’m prepared to pay for it. I want papers that give me a legal identity. The full works, top quality. I’m pretty sure that you Wes, or you, Gunn, know where to get those. What do you say?”

He reaches into a pocket and tosses a medium-sized diamond onto the desk, no doubt one of those given to him in Hylek. I expect that it’s worth around $30,000, even traded in a hurry. That’s more than enough for what he asks.

“When you’ve found someone to do it, call me…” and he throws down a piece of paper with a telephone number written on it, “and I’ll tell you what name the papers should be in.”

“Why do you want papers? That isn’t something that ever bothered yo… Angel… before?”

“That’s something you’ll find out if you’re on board.”

Cordelia chimes in, then, more bravely than I would have expected.

“We don’t want your offers or your money. And this hotel is nothing to do with you. You can’t take all three of us, so just get out.”

His smile is the most feral thing I think I’ve ever seen.

“You’re quite wrong, Cordy, on all three counts. None of you knows where your next meal is coming from, so you really do need me; the business is mine; and I most certainly can take all three of you. You’re alive now because I wish it.”

She’s about ready to flounce off to the weapons cabinet – and perhaps get all of us killed – when Gunn puts a hand on her arm.

“What’s your offer? What do you want of us?”

“California will be my personal territory. I intend to stay in Sunnydale for the moment, but Los Angeles is mine. I don’t suffer competition. I want you to clean it up, just as you have with Angel. Nothing different, for now.”

“And that’s it? For now?”

“That’s it. If I want something different, I’ll discuss it with you.”

“Why would you be working with humans, instead of killing them?” If I’m to go up against this vampire, I must understand what’s going on in his mind. What games he’s playing. He simply shrugs.

“I’ll be working with humans in Sunnydale. I’ve no problem working with you. Not so long as I have your… loyalty.”

I think he was going to say ‘obedience’. Cordelia can control herself no longer.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever persuade me to work for you, you useless piece of shit. Angel would stake you in a heartbeat if he could.”

She storms off out of the office, and runs up the stairs to the room she keeps here. I think she’s crying. Angelus simply smirks at Gunn and me from my seat. I stand up and look at Gunn.

“I think she speaks for all of us?”

Gunn nods slowly. Before he can stand, Angelus is out of the chair and blocking the doorway. Angel rarely moved as swiftly as he was able. I think he didn’t want to remind us that he wasn’t human. Angelus doesn’t care, though.

“You have until summer solstice to reconsider. Meantime, you have a paying job to do for me.”

He looks at us both, and that look is as lascivious as any I’ve ever seen. Then he’s gone. I wonder why the solstice is so important to him? And why my trousers suddenly seem so tight…

Well, that went better than I expected. I found Wes and Gunn and Cordelia to be mostly annoying when the Soul was still in residence, but now that I’m in charge? Well, they are mine. I’ll do with them as I please, and at the moment it pleases me to have them taking out the competition here. Keeping the demonic peace so far as they can. I’ll back them up, of course, and it will be one less source of demons for the Slayer to worry about. Los Angeles is too close for comfort – any demon here will feel the pull of the Hellmouth. I need to have it under my control. They’d do it better if I turned them, but Buffy wouldn’t care for that, so I won’t. They’ll come round. They both respond to strong leadership, and there is unexplored darkness in the pair of them, darkness that I can speak to. Incidentally, did you see the effect my shot of pheromones had? Neither of them has ever encountered a real, hunting master vampire. They have no idea how I can manipulate their minds and their bodies. I wouldn’t be at all averse to taking both of them, really… Mmph!

I need to concentrate. I have one more thing to do before I head back home.

Home. Now that isn’t a word that vampires use very much. Do you know, I could get used to it…

OK, one more thing to do. I have the address, and it’s not yet midnight when I get there. Someone is still awake, if the lights in the downstairs rooms are anything to go by. Let’s hope it’s him. When he opens the door, they are clearly just winding up a dinner party.

“Mr Summers? Mr Hank Summers?”

He agrees that he is.

“I need to speak to you about your daughter. About Buffy.”

He gives a small start – well, house calls, at this time of night aren’t normally good news – and I can smell a little dread and panic oozing out of him, along with the good food and wine that he’s replete with, and the brandy that he is no doubt still drinking. He’s worried about her. Good. I’ll allow him to live, then.

“May I come in?”

“Yes… yes, please do. What’s wrong? Has something happened to her?”

You don’t know how much, Hank, and believe me, your stagnant little brain couldn’t encompass it, even if I told you.

I remain silent, though, as he shepherds me in through the door, and then into a small room off the hall. It’s his study. Now, tell me, would you shut yourself away, alone and unarmed and half drunk with a complete stranger who knocks on the door around midnight? You would? You’ve obviously heard the call of a hunting vampire. Later, I’ll see what we can do about that, but just now, I’m allowing Hank to feel that very same siren song. I’m doing just enough to ensure that he and I remain here, together, for a little while. Still, I guess that he noticed my Jaguar on the street outside, and assumed that I wasn’t there with criminal intent. A dangerous assumption…

He has a genuinely worried look on his face, so I gesture to him to take a seat – there are a couple of generous armchairs in this little study. I don’t want to have to catch him if he falls – he might get the wrong idea. He really isn’t my type.

“Where I come from, Mr Summers, it is considered appropriate to speak to a girl’s father, or to the head of her family, before paying suit to her. I intend to marry Buffy. She is of age, and I therefore have no intention of seeking your permission for this. You cast off your responsibilities as head of the family years ago, and although you are her father, you have taken very little interest in her welfare. However, it’s proper that I should tell you this, since I will, de facto, replace you as head of the family with regard to Dawn, as well.”

He looks as though his jaw has become unhinged. He rallies, though, with what clearly are the first thoughts to surface through his alcoholic haze.

“I have a dinner party – important clients are here. Couldn’t this have waited for a more suitable time?”

Not the sentiments I was looking for. My mate takes nothing of who she is from this man. I don’t change, but I do allow a flash of amber and a slight hint of fang. I also allow a rush of the sort of pheromones used for cowing newly risen whelps.

“Sunlight doesn’t agree with me, Mr Summers, so this can only be done at night. I have come from Sunnydale tonight, to see you. We won’t be long here. I’m sure your guests will be impressed to know that your daughter will be marrying the man who owns half of Sunnydale, and who will own the rest before long.”

He looks interested at that. That’s something else she doesn’t take from him. He’s greedy. I’ve thrown down a challenge to his position as head of the family, and all he’s worried about is my financial standing.

“Who are you? I don’t think we’ve met before?”

For one moment, I’m tempted to tell him my old name. My human name. He hasn’t earned that yet, though. He’d better get used to the real one.

“Just call me Angelus.”

“That’s a strange name…” He sees the glint of amber again, and feels a little frisson of fear. “A good name, though. Unusual. You’d better call me Hank.”

He reaches into a cabinet next to his chair and pulls out a bottle of very good brandy, together with two glasses.

“Join me?”

“Thank you. I will.”

He pours two generous shots, and hands one to me. Then he obviously feels a need to make some enquiries.

“So, how long have you been seeing Buffy? She’s never mentioned you, never said that she was seeing anyone seriously. Still, I suppose she’s never mentioned any of her boyfriends to me.”

“I’ve been seeing her, on and off, since she was sixteen.”

“Oh? You were… at school together?”

“No. Let’s just say I look a lot younger than I am.”

“So, you haven’t proposed to her yet?”

“That would not be appropriate until I had spoken to you.”

And to one more person. Someone much more worthy of the title of father to my chosen mate. He and I have a conversation coming, but it will be far different to this one.

“She might not accept your proposal, then?”

“She will, I’m confident of that. The wedding will be arranged as she wishes. If she wants you to come, you will be invited.”

Just for a moment, I see a wistful look on his face – he perhaps has some notion of what he has missed for these last few years. Then his expression hardens into something that owes more to anger. There must be some red blood in there somewhere, then.

“Well, Buffy is of age, but you have no right to assume any responsibilities for Dawny. She’s my little girl.”

He remembers her, then? The monks were *really* good. I take a long sip of my brandy, savouring the taste, before I reply to him.

“Hank. You left your wife and daughters to starve, for all you cared. After Joyce died, Buffy had no money. None. She had to drop out of college and sling burgers to keep a roof over their heads.”

Well, briefly, until my people made her see sense and accept some of my money.

“I have come here because my own rearing would allow nothing else. But you have forfeited any right to be considered head of the family. I am assuming that role. Please remember what I’ve said. Buffy will lack for nothing, and neither will Dawn. Their futures, in that respect, are assured. If Dawn wishes to marry, it will be to someone of whom I approve. I take my own responsibilities more seriously than you clearly do.

“If you need anything, then you may ask me. You can find me at the mansion on Crawford Street, in Sunnydale. The wedding will be at the summer solstice, 21 June. Perhaps you should pencil it in.”

Just making it clear that if he’s family, then I’ve got jurisdiction over him, too, and with that I finish the brandy, and stand up.

“Good night, Hank.”

I don’t offer him my hand; I simply stroll out of the door, leaving him gaping like a fish. I enjoyed that. I just wish he had been slightly more sober – he might have given me more of an argument if he’d had his wits about him. I should have enjoyed that even more. As I turn for the front door, I see his guests – and his second wife – gathered in the main room. I incline my head graciously to them – they really don’t know how lucky they are that I’m leaving it at that – and head off into the night.

As I’m driving through Hollywood, I realise that I haven’t eaten at all tonight, and I am distinctly peckish. I pull over, and set out on the prowl. I want to get back to Sunnydale, but I do feel like having a bit of a celebration – so much accomplished in a single evening – and I start with a dealer and one of his clients. Both of them have the telltale chemical aftertaste, and so I look around for a palate cleanser.

I find a down-and-out huddled in an alley. He hasn’t been this way for long. His clothes are dirty but not yet ragged, and they were once very good. He’s newly fallen from grace. He gives himself up to me without a struggle, though, welcoming both my embrace and my fangs – almost as if I’m doing him a favour. He smells of guilt and sorrow. As I drain the life from him, his battered blue baseball cap falls off – it’s one with ‘Firefly’ embroidered in red across the front. He gives a small sigh of relief, and just for the moment, for reasons that aren’t clear to me, I’m tempted to turn him. In the end, though, I just drain him. Out of habit, I go through his pockets, although I don’t expect to find much of interest. There’s no cash, no wallet, just a fine lawn handkerchief bearing a monogram – the sort of thing that friends or family buy the man who has everything else. Sometimes, I wonder about the life stories of the people who provide me with my ongoing existence, and I wonder a little about him. Not for long though. He’s history now. Time to go home.

Xander’s outburst has made me think about my relationship with Angelus. It’s not like I don’t think about it all the time, but I mean, *really* think about it. About what I’m doing. I love him. I love him as much as I loved – still love – Angel, although in a different way, somehow. I know the differences between them only too well, yet sometimes, Angelus seems almost… Angel-like. Deep inside me, I know that had it been Angel instead of Angelus, then there would have been times when Angel would have seemed almost like Angelus. The two of them aren’t as different as Angel used to protest. They are more like two sides of the same coin, or the two ends of a continuum of good and evil: two ends that must inevitably meet in the middle. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? You do? Good. Then perhaps you can explain it to me.

Then there is this feeling I have. You know I sometimes have Slayer dreams? Dreams with a touch of prophecy, or some such thing, in them? I dream of him, often. Most of the time, those dreams are just ordinary boy/girl dreams. Well, bearing in mind the content, maybe not all that ‘ordinary’. More sort of extraordinary X-rated half the time. Just occasionally, though, I know I’ve been in touch with the Slayer in me. I *know* that, as much as it seems to make me a traitor to my species and to my calling, we are meant to be together. It’s as if the world would fly apart if we ended this relationship. I don’t know any more than that. I wish I did, because that would make it easier for me, would help me to justify what I’m going to do. At this moment, I’m going on love and faith alone. Thinking about it, though, perhaps that’s best. Perhaps I need to have made my mind up based on the love in my heart and faith in my instincts, before I truly understand why it should be meant to be: before I understand why he is my soul mate, just as much as Angel is. Because it really has to be about duty as well as love. It couldn’t be one without the other. I couldn’t stay with him if he were to carry on as the old homicidal Angelus. No matter how much I loved him, I should have to kill him eventually. So there has to be purpose. As the Slayer, I have to be able to use him. If that sounds cold and harsh, I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. That’s why I can only be glad that I love him so much.

It isn’t all about sex, even if that seems to be one of the forces welding us together – he is after all, the hottest thing that you or I will ever fall over, and the best lover you could ever imagine. The things that man can do with… There is very much more to it than that, though. If you listen to what he says, he’s dictatorial, domineering, arrogant and overbearing. He seems to want to control everything, including me. If you look at what he actually does, though, he is continually protective of my welfare, and does everything he can to fulfil my slightest wish. All this, without ever seeming to, of course. Tara was right, I think. I *know* that I can tame this demon. Oh, not completely – he’ll never be a pet cat; he’ll always be a tiger. Do you think that the forces of good might sometimes need a tiger? A being even darker and more focused than a Slayer? Is that why we were meant to be?

Angel was a warrior for the Powers That Be. His soul was – is – that of a hero and a champion, and I loved him with everything in me. Perhaps the Powers needed a darker champion, and perhaps I do, too? I won’t wish again for his soul and his demon to be reunited – although that would be my dearest dream. Look what happened when I did wish it, and it happened: he left me and tried to kill himself. I wouldn’t put him through that again. But Soul and Demon together would balance me, I’m sure, the dark and the light of me, in a way that no human being ever could.

Whatever the answer to that, I’m going to commit to him as wholeheartedly as he will let me. We’ve been apart too much, we’ve been through too much, to take anything for granted. I know he’ll protect me – he’s the best possible protection I could have – and I’m sure my life will be longer because of it. Nevertheless, we’re in a dangerous business, and either or both of us might die on any night. I don’t want to waste any more time. I’m going to talk to him, but I’m going to talk to Giles first. Giles will be hurt, particularly when you remember the personal loss that he’s suffered at Angelus’ hands – literally at Angelus’ hands – and I have to try to make him understand. I don’t want to lose him. He’s the nearest thing I’ve had to a father for years. Even at my age, fathers are important.

Having made that decision, I feel whole, for the first time in years. I’ve sleepwalked through life as if I weren’t part of it. Since losing Angel on my seventeenth birthday, the only time I’ve felt truly whole and alive is when I’m with Angelus. Otherwise, I’ve been a whiny shadow of who I should be. Now, perhaps I can be who I’m meant to be.

I’ve just spent half the night talking to Buffy. She found me here, at the Magic Shop, just as I was locking up, so at least we had the place to ourselves. She wanted to talk about Angelus, and her relationship with him. We danced around the subject for a little while, but then she took the bull by the horns and told me that she would commit herself to the demon. Although it isn’t unexpected, I can’t say I’m happy about it. I started to talk about a demon’s needs, a demon’s physicality, a demon’s lusts, and I don’t just mean sex, and I know I did it with all the subtlety of a tea-drinking English librarian. She rescued me, as I was floundering further into the mire, and talked about their relationship more candidly than I would ever have expected.

She told me about Spike, of how Angelus found them in flagrante delicto and delivered the ultimate in coitus interruptus, and how that precipitated such a terrible reaction from the demon. She also told me how much his behaviour has changed with her, and how she believes it to be changing in other ways. How her Slayer dreams make her think that the two of them were meant to be together. How she believes that perhaps she is meant to turn him into a force for good. I have the greatest faith in her, but I’m not sure that is possible. As evil as he is, how can he ever be a force for good, without a soul?

I don’t know what his intentions towards her are. I know that he sees her as his mate – that they have, in some way, mated already. In the vampire sense, I mean, not in the purely carnal sense. That, I’m afraid, goes without saying. I don’t know how far he intends to push this. He seems to have gathered up Faith as well. Is he going for a harem of Slayers? I can’t imagine that being a happy set-up. And what about his other predilections? Angelus is not only the greatest mass murderer we might ever see outside wartime, he is also an accomplished and extremely experienced torturer. He has a well-developed taste for inflicting pain. Will he try to do that with Buffy? She says he has not, so far, or not more than she has ever wanted, and I know what she means by that. He has been assiduous in his devotion to her and care of her. Can that possibly continue?

And how will I accept any liaison with him? He murdered the woman I love. He has expressed regret, but that will not bring her back. Jenny, though, came to me in a dream and told me I must let her go. I believe that to have been a true dream, but can I do it? I have been here for the remainder of the night, with my thoughts roiling. There was no point in going home, since sleep would have been quite beyond me. So I sit here, contemplating a future in which my surrogate daughter cleaves to the Scourge of Europe for as long as he remains obsessed with her. These are unhappy thoughts.

I’ve just made myself some tea when there’s a knock at the door. It’s gone three in the morning. This can’t be good, except… well, the door is still in one piece, so maybe it isn’t someone with robbery and murder on their mind. Still, it won’t hurt to take this handy little axe with me…

Oh. Speak of the devil.

“Angelus.”

“Hello, Giles.”

Why does he call me that, I wonder? He almost always calls me ‘Rupert’, in that sneering way he has, or ‘Watcher’ in that even more sneering way. He’s used the ‘Giles’ almost deferentially, and with respect. No doubt another of his little mind games. Still, I’m sure I’ll find out soon.

“I’ve just made some tea. Would you like a cup?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I’m really worried by this studied politeness, but I pour tea for both of us. When I bring it to the table, he’s fiddling with things on the shelves. Not in the way I would normally associate with Angelus, that is – fiddling to see what will make the prettiest sound when it breaks, or make the most mess, or wreak the most destruction. He’s fiddling as though he were nervous. I have seen Angelus in situations where he should have been terrified, but was as cool as his reputation would suggest. I have never seen him nervous like this.

I clear my throat gently to let him know I am here, although I can’t imagine that all his senses haven’t already told him so. He turns abruptly from the last object he was absently repositioning – ironically enough, an Orb of Thesulah – and comes to seat himself opposite me. Is that a bad sign? How people seat themselves around a table in respect to the other sitters is a matter of in-depth study in some quarters, you know. Sitting opposite can mean a desire for a showdown. When he speaks, he seems hesitant, unsure of himself. That’s a first.

“I was passing and saw that you were still here. I was intending to come and see you tomorrow night. I can leave it until then if you prefer. If you want to get home.”

“I’m happy to talk now. I wasn’t planning on going home, anyway. What do you want?”

He shifts a little in his chair, as if he were under an uncomfortable scrutiny.

“Giles, there’s a lot of bad blood between us. Nevertheless, there is one thing on which I think we are in total agreement.”

I cock my head in surprise – is there anything this demon and I could really agree upon?

“Buffy’s well-being.”

Indeed there is. I remain silent. This must all come from him.

He thrusts one hand deep into a pocket, and brings out a small box, which he turns around and around in those long, artist’s fingers. Then he places the box on the table and opens it. Inside are two rings. One is a simple, but heavy, platinum band. The other is a circle of diamonds and pigeon’s blood rubies, square cut, set in platinum and banded on both edges with rings of black onyx. Costly, tasteful and extremely beautiful.

“You are the nearest thing to a father that she has. Where I come from, no man would consider paying serious suit to a girl without first seeking the permission of her father. That is why I am here.”

He subsides, and for a moment, I am unable to fill the gap, because I seem to have lost my voice. Eventually, though, I find it again, although I don’t seem to be capable of saying anything very meaningful.

“You are asking me whether you can pay your addresses to Buffy?”

He grins, almost like a little boy.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that. From what I understand, you’ve been paying more than addresses to her for years now, and without any need for my approval.” It comes out more tartly than I had intended.

He doesn’t rise to that, as I almost expected him to do, but simply shifts again. If it were anyone else, I’d say they were shuffling in their seat. When he speaks, I wonder if, like me, it has come out more abruptly than he intended.

“I want to marry her. Churches and frocks and things.”

“What?”

I cannot believe my ears. This *demon* wants a church wedding with my Slayer? To cover my astonishment, I pick up the box and examine the rings. He becomes more uncomfortable, sheepish, even. I’ve taken the rings out of the box before I understand why that should be. The wedding band, that plain circle of platinum, is inscribed on the inside.

Anima mea

My soul.

Oh. My. I’m as sure as I can be that he never intended me to see that.

“You really mean it?”

“It’s what she dreams of.”

“You’ve already asked her?” In view of what Buffy said only hours ago, I didn’t think he had. He shakes his head.

“Not yet. I wished to speak to you first.”

He seems to mentally square his shoulders.

“I will love her as no other being on this planet ever could, and I will protect her with my life. I know those things will be more important to you than when I also say that she and Dawn will lack for nothing. I’ll make a marriage settlement on Buffy – I expect that you will want to agree the amount. I thought…” and he names an outrageous sum. Surely she could never spend half as much? “…and Dawn will be taken care of, too. She will have a suitable dowry. My… means… are adequate now. When it comes time for Dawn to marry, she will need my permission, but I will seek your views, I give you my word.”

He must be more like an eighteenth century father than he could ever have imagined. He’s almost feudal. Still, is that such a bad thing? And where did that thought come from? Of course it’s a bad thing that he should have anything to do with these girls…women. I can’t find the words to properly say that, yet, so I ask something that has bubbled to the top of my confused thoughts.

“How can you possibly expect a priest to perform a wedding ceremony for you?”

“It’s taken care of.”

Oh my, that can’t be good. No real priest would ever contemplate this. Has he delved into the darkest closets of the Church?

“An unfrocked sot of a priest, I suppose…?”

“No. A real priest who wishes to interview Buffy and make sure that she does this willingly. From St Jude’s in Los Angeles.”

The patron saint of lost causes. I can’t help but laugh, and even he gives a wry smile. It’s a smile that’s very reminiscent of Angel, and I mustn’t think like that. This vampire is nothing like Angel.

“But you aren’t a person. I mean, in the eyes of the law. You don’t have an identity.”

“Taken care of.”

Really? He has been busy.

“I’m not her father. Surely you should be talking to Hank Summers?”

“I’ve done that. Not like this,” he hastens to add. “I simply told him I was marrying her, and that he would be invited if that was what she wanted. I should have just eaten him.”

That last is said rather wistfully, and do you know, that’s the second thing tonight on which I find myself in wholehearted agreement with him? He stands up then and, after retrieving the rings, walks over to the counter. Leaning over it, he fetches out the bottle of single malt that he knows I keep there, and two glasses, holding them up in a gesture that seeks approval. That’ll be a damn sight better than tea, so I nod.

He returns with two well-filled glasses.

“Do I have your approval?”

“Would it matter if I said no?”

“Not to me, but it would to her.”

“If she says yes, then I suppose I must give my approval.” He has Jenny’s, I think, although I can’t imagine why. Nor can I imagine how I shall ever live with myself after this. I feel like running back to England, but if I do, then I leave her here with him. Her, and Dawn. True, she will have two powerful allies in Willow and Tara, and I’m almost certain some of the demons and vampires at his court hold her in high regard, although I’m equally sure that none of them will ever go up against Angelus. I believe that even Aurelius regards her with respect and affection, unlikely as that seems. With Dawn and Xander and Anya she wouldn’t be alone. Does she need me?

He seems to read something of this in my face.

“I understand if you decide to leave Sunnydale, but I would prefer you to stay here. I know Buffy will want you to. There is a place for you at my court. We will have many disagreements, I’m certain, but I also think that we can work together, if we can put aside the one action that I can never take back.”

I’m silent, drinking my whisky, and it’s his turn to leave me to speak. Now is the time for honesty. I wonder how he will feel if I say what I truly think? Will he kill me for it? If he did, would that change Buffy’s mind about cleaving to this monster? If so, surely it would be a worthwhile sacrifice? I decide to plunge in and speak my mind.

“I may act as if I have forgiven, but I have certainly not forgotten.”

“I know.”

“I would still like to kill you for what you did to Jenny.”

He doesn’t respond. What, indeed, could he say?

“If I give the Slayer into your keeping, it would be against all my better judgement.”

“I know.”

I pause for a moment, and he understands that I am not yet finished, so he remains silent. He is taking this rather well, with as much maturity as Angel would. Has Angel left something of himself inside this beast? Could that be possible? Is that what Buffy sees? And what about her Slayer dreams and senses? Is she fooling herself, or is there a deeper purpose? He has certainly saved her life time and time again. Even I have admitted to myself that he keeps her safer than I ever could. And, buried deep inside me, is the knowledge of how much he loves her. I don’t know how I know, but it’s true. I cannot imagine that fierce and passionate love ever diminishing. Yet thoughts of Jenny, unavenged, still tug at me. It’s time to make a decision, though. I cannot leave Buffy unsupported, and she won’t leave him.

“If you hurt her, I *will* kill you.”

“I know.”

“I will visit upon you every hurt that you cause her.”

“You have my permission.”

I truly believe that he means it, and that he would bare his back to the lash willingly if ever he caused my Slayer pain. Then, the balance between us changes, and he takes back control of the conversation. He is once more the master and I am… not.

The demon says, “This enmity between us must cease.”

“I know.”

“You are my possession, my responsibility, so long as you remain here. And probably afterwards, too.”

That makes me shiver, but there is no point in pretending he could ever act in any other way.

“I know.”

“You will serve me and you will serve her.”

“Yes.”

“What is past is written in stone and cannot be changed. We must live with it.”

“I know.”

Yet thoughts of Jenny still lie heavy on my heart. He has not suffered as I have suffered.

“Then we will turn a new page, a new leaf, from today? For her?”

Jenny, my love, forgive me.

“Yes. We will.”

I have just sold myself to the devil, for the sake of a Slayer whom I love like a daughter. I hope Jenny understands, because my heart does not.

He stands up again and holds out his hand in farewell. He is cool to the touch, not unpleasant. I wonder, for one brief moment, how he feels to her, when… And how she feels to him in that same act…

And I remember the poesy, the inscription, on the ring.

Anima mea

My soul.

It is that, more than anything else, which makes me think this couple might have a future together. But if he hurts her, I *will* kill him.

I’m moderately surprised by how much I managed to achieve last night. I’m also moderately surprised that I let the Watcher live after he saw the inscription I’ve had put into the wedding ring I got for Buffy. It was an extremely private sentiment, a very personal whim. I really think, though, that this would be a sin that she would not forgive. I must never kill her friends or family, and oddly enough, I rarely feel the urge to do so – only when they are being more than normally irritating. I keep reflecting on Tara’s words in the cemetery, and I’m beginning to feel a bit like one of those dangerous fighting dogs that are always kept on a leash and wearing a muzzle. A Japanese Akita, maybe. And the Slayer holds the leash. Someone should die for that but, just now, I’m not sure who, because I think I’ve probably put the muzzle on myself. I should go out and find a really vile kill to take the taste of this… neutering… away.

But Buffy was right. We are going to have to find some accommodation with each other, or we’ll finish up with a life filled with fucking and fighting, and nothing else. I don’t mind the first two at all, but after a few decades a life with nothing else would really seem pallid compared to what we could have had. Besides, I do have broader wishes. So, I must look within myself at how I am prepared to compromise and what she might be prepared to live with. I can’t and won’t stop her slaying, either – it’s who she is, after all – so I must give her some leeway. She’s my equal, not my inferior. That’s one of the reasons I love her. Only one of them, though.

I’m off to find her now. Faith has settled into the mansion – she doesn’t seem to mind the builder’s rubble, and the prospect of cleaning up with a wheelbarrow – and she is keeping a weather eye on Lindsey. Well, she’s keeping something on Lindsey; let’s leave it at that. One day, I’m going to deliberately walk in on the pair of them, and demand some compensation in kind for disturbing me… Not that I need an excuse, you understand. I could simply insist on my rights as master here. I prefer to make it something of a game, though. It’s more fun and less pompous that way. For now, though, I’ve taken the penthouse suite at the Sunnydale Hotel. My hotel. I’ve got a couple of surprises for my Slayer there. You’ve seen one of them.

When I get to her house, she has a surprise for me. She isn’t there. Dawn, sulking because she’s not been allowed to go with her sister, tells me that they had reports of some demon fish attacking swimmers off the beach. She’s gone to investigate, and to slay it. Damn it, she’s going to have to learn that she does not go slaying dangerous things unless I’m there with her. And I’m not dressed for the beach.

It doesn’t take long to get there, and she’s easy to find when I do. She’s the one with the sword. The other one is, indeed, a demon fish, and at the moment it’s winning. I am *not* going to lose her now.

It’s a Sarroth demon. It can take the form of any fish it likes, but it generally likes the look of a sunfish. Now, these can grow to 16 feet and weigh 2 tons. They are perfectly disc-shaped, and pretty harmless. They eat meat, but only little things, because they have quite a small mouth. Not the Sarroth. In the real sunfish, the head can be a third of the body size. The Sarroth has a mouth to match that head, with an impressive array of fangs. I hate Sarroths. The body armour is invulnerable to bladed weapons, and there’s only one way to kill them. Buffy doesn’t know it, and she certainly isn’t going to do it. Not if I have any say in the matter, and I do. Damn. I had other plans for tonight.

I stride down the beach and into the sea. In the shallow water, the Sarroth is on its side, all the better to bite her, and she can’t, as I thought, get the sword to bite back. I capture her wrist with my hand – we’ll have no accidental beheadings here, thank you – and duck just in time to dodge the punch that she throws. She laughs with relief when she sees that it’s me. I’m definitely frowning, though. She has no idea how dangerous these things are.

I take the sword from her – she protests, and I’d love to shut her up by kissing her, but not with the demon snapping at my balls – and I slap her on the rump to send her back to the beach. I’ll suffer for that later, and I just can’t wait to see how…

I smack the demon hard across the nose with the sword, and that huge maw opens up. I have to time this just right to avoid those really lethal fangs. As the jaws gape wider, and in company with quite a large quantity of ocean, I dive down the demon’s gullet.

It isn’t fun down here. It’s messy, and smelly, and there are all sorts of things that even I don’t feel the need to enquire into. None of my clothes will ever be the same again. Well, silk and digestive juices just don’t mix, do they? The job is simple, though. Break through the stomach wall, hack the heart into tiny pieces, and then cut my way out through the gills. Simple’ish. These things are *really* slender, for all their size, and there’s not that much elbow room. There’s not much standing room, either, so all this has to be done at a crouch. Try it sometime. It isn’t good for the temper. Something a bit smaller than a sword would have been good, so it’s more a case of mincing and slicing than cutting and hewing. It gets the job done, though, if a bit more slowly. This particular sort of demon goo is a sickly custard yellow. You really don’t ever want to see it. When I’m done, I never want to see it again, either.

When I’m finally out, despite the vast expanse of ocean around me, the demon goo sticks like, well, demon goo. It’s in my hair, all over my clothes, up my nose – you can imagine. I stalk back onto the beach as the demon’s body washes gently out into the Pacific, to find that my love has come out of her horror at seeing me disappear into a demon’s gullet, and is laughing uncontrollably at the sight that I present. I glower at her for some very long seconds, and then I, too, see the funny side. Soon, we are both kneeling on the sand, our sides aching and our eyes streaming. In my case the sand adds a fetching textural effect to the demon goo. I have to say that laughing at myself hasn’t been a common practice of mine, but I’m enjoying it now.

Soon, like two overgrown children, we are rolling around in the sand. Apart from anything else, she’s using it as an abrasive to get the goo off, and she’s letting it into all sorts of places that the goo never originally reached, with interesting sensual effects. When I finally wrestle her to a standstill – or a lie-still might be a better description – I am aching for her in all sorts of ways. Discretion is the better part of valour just here, though, since I’ve no wish to introduce lashings of sand into our coital activities. Gently, she starts to remove my clothes, and when I move to stop her, she shushes me and carries on. Oh, well. I’m sure I’ll manage somehow.

That isn’t her intention, though; at least not for now. When we are both naked, and my desire for her is perfectly evident, if a bit sandy, she pulls me to my feet and leads me by the hand out into the ocean. Now, there is something you should know about vampires and large bodies of water. Buoyancy, for a human, is provided by the air in your bodies. As a dead man, I don’t have so very much of that, so I have to remember to breathe. Even doing that, I’ve never been a natural swimmer. She is superb. Out in the deeper reaches, she teaches me movements that a merman would envy, and all the time she is cleaning me, cleansing me, purging me of the inner stench of the demon. Rocked on the billowing waves, entwined with my mate, I can think of only one finer way of spending the night. It’s a close thing at that.

Eventually, we allow the waves to wash us gently back ashore. My clothes, heaped up with hers on the beach, are ruined but there’s nothing else for me to wear, so we clean them up as best we can. All I can say is that it’s a good job that I routinely keep a couple of blankets in the car, for emergencies, and that the hotel has a private elevator from the car park to the penthouse suite. Oh, and the suite has a really good shower. Big. It’s amply big enough for two, in fact.

As we soap each other down, I tell her at length how foolish she is for trying to tackle something like a Sarroth demon without backup. Without me. She makes absolutely no reply. I’m sure she’s listening, though. As we rinse each other off, I go on to explain to her, again at length, how, whenever she goes out slaying, I’ll be with her in future. Still, she says nothing, but she trails her fingers gently around some of the more tender spots that have recently been liberated from their coating of sand and salt. At least one of those more tender spots comes up to greet her, eager to feel more of those questing fingers.

I start to ask her if she understands my strictures on her reckless conduct, but even I can recognise by now that the sounds coming from me aren’t really words anymore. There’s the occasional hissed ‘yessss!’ and ‘more’ and ‘harder’, but the rest is no more than animal grunts and moans. A small, protest of loss escapes me when she withdraws her fingers, but they are instantly replaced by a rhapsody of lips and tongue and teeth. Oh yes, and those fingers again. By this time, I am leaning into the wall, my palms and forehead pressed against the cool wetness of the blue tiles. I am panting. Old habits die hard. When she brings me to an explosive, all-consuming fulfilment, I have no capacity for thought, no ability to remember that I have ever wanted to prohibit her from doing anything, except stopping what she is doing now. That, I utterly forbid.

When I am quite recovered, I carry her through to the bedroom and return the favour. In detail. With interest.

Eventually we are sated and at peace, me spooned around her back, my arms enfolding her, holding her warmth and her life into me. Now might be as good a time as any. Well I’m not the sort to go down on one knee, you know.

“Marry me?”

Okay, I’ve done better, I admit it, although never with that particular sentence. She’s dozing a little, though, and doesn’t quite hear.

“Hmm?”

I snuggle a little closer, my mouth against her ear. I give her earlobe the gentlest of nips.

“Will you marry me?”

I hear the sharp intake of breath, and the sudden thump of her heart.

“A…a vampire…wedding?”

“No. A priest and a church and a white wedding gown. Marry me?”

Using her slayer-strength, she forces me to loosen my hold so that she can turn over, and look me in the eye. She thinks I’m teasing her.

“I… I don’t understand what you mean?”

I release her and reach back to the bedside cabinet, bringing out the box that I brought with me from Los Angeles. These rings were made by a family of Plath demons. I’m going to try to attract one of them to my court. They’re superlative gem carvers and jewellers, and I am sure I shall want to give her many other gifts. I open the black velvet box, and hand it to her. I feel like the callowest youth, waiting for her answer.

I was angry with him for not trusting me to kill that fish demon, then horrified at what he actually had to do to kill it. When he stalked back out of the sea? I’ve never seen him look so ridiculous. Or so boyish. Cleaning him up and making love to him in the ocean was almost beyond anything. Although not quite beyond making love to him here, tonight.

I love lying next to him, you know. He’s never overheated and sweaty, like a human male. Angel took my virginity and changed me in more ways than one. He spoiled me for any male, except his two halves, physically as well as in my heart. When my demon holds me close, as he was doing just now, he brings a stillness, a calmness, to me that I seem to lack when he isn’t there. I was close to sleep, I remember that, when he said something. His voice was intense with passion, but kept low, and I didn’t quite hear.

“M..y m..?”

“Hmm?”

He snuggles a little closer, his mouth against my ear. He gives my earlobe the gentlest of nips, sending shudders down my spine. I start to crave him all over again, and I’m definitely not sleepy now.

“Will you marry me?”

Did I hear that right? What on earth does he mean? Is he asking me to be his mate? I thought he said we already were. Does he mean an actual mating ceremony?

“A…a vampire…wedding?”

“No. A priest and a church and a white wedding gown. Marry me?”

What? I can’t be getting this right. Or he’s being crueller than he’s ever been to me. I can’t believe that.

Using my slayer-strength, I force him to loosen his hold so that I can turn over, and look him in the eye. I badly need to see him, see his face.

“I… I don’t understand what you mean?”

He releases me and reaches back to the bedside cabinet, bringing out a black velvet box. He opens it, and without a word he hands it to me. There’s something very vulnerable about his expression. It makes me want to hold him and never let him go, to reassure him that I will always be his. Then I look at the box. There are two rings in it. One is a circle of alternating diamonds and deep red rubies set in what looks like platinum or white gold. They are long stones, square cut, curved into parts of a circle, and they sit between two perfectly smooth rings of some black stone, maybe onyx or jet. It is absolutely beautiful, and so Angelus. So me, as well, I think.

The other is a plain, heavy band, again platinum or white gold. It’s a wedding ring. Even I can see that. He said that he would give me a ring to wear, and that we would wear the two claddagh until he had done so. Those little silver rings were somehow lost in the Underworld and my finger has felt naked without it. I don’t know how he has felt, but I have sometimes seen him rubbing that finger, as if something were missing. Now, he has offered me his own. I feel lost for words, a little numb, even, and in this space of time before the emotions hit me – as I *know* they will – I take the two rings from the box and lay them in the palm of my hand. I can see that there is an inscription in the wedding ring.

Anima mea

I don’t know what that means.

“What does the inscription say?”

My voice doesn’t sound like my own. Neither does his, when he answers, but his eyes, those sparkling, devilish eyes, are filled with warmth.

“Anima mea. It’s Latin. It means ‘My soul’.”

That’s when I burst into tears.

He stiffens for a split second, and then hugs me close, almost tipping the rings out of my palm and into the strewn bedclothes. He strokes my hair gently and murmurs soothing words to me, nonsense words, simply giving me comfort. I can’t help it. The emotions have swelled within me until I feel my skin about to burst. I’m too full to speak. I don’t know how, or even if, it can be accomplished, but this demon, my soul mate, loves me enough to want to marry me. And he loves me enough to think of me as his soul. Never, in whatever time we may have together, could I love him more than I do at this moment. He doesn’t understand though. He thinks he’s done something wrong.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I should have thought. I should have known… You still love Angel. It doesn’t matter… I’ll get it changed… Or, we don’t need to have a wedding, if you don’t want…

His voice is gruff, as if he might be close to tears himself.

I tug at a corner of the sheet and use it to wipe my eyes. I could really do with blowing my nose, but not on the sheet. I make do with a deep sniff and swallow, and then I bring up my hand, pulling it out of his embrace to stroke his cheek. I pull his head down towards mine and give him a warm but watery kiss. When I break it, he looks confused and a little lost.

“Don’t you back out on me now, you fool. And you’ll change nothing about those rings. Do you really think you can pull a wedding off?”

That takes a moment to sink in. The smile on his face is worth waiting for.

“If you want it, it’s already fixed. No point proposing, if I can’t deliver.”

He looks a bit like a puppy that has learned a new trick. I hug him to me, just as hard as I can. If he were human, I would probably have broken several of his ribs.

“Don’t think you can wriggle out of it now – that would be breach of promise. You’d better tell me what name I’m going to have. Mrs Angelus?” He opens his mouth to speak, but I put my finger against his lips. “Not now. Tell me everything later. Everything. Do you know how much I love you, my mate, my husband-to-be?”

I then proceed to show him, in no uncertain terms. I think he gets the message, but just to be sure, I show him a second and then a third time. By that time, I’m fairly certain he understands, but I need to demonstrate it in a different way. I’m still clutching the rings. I hand the wedding ring back to him, and tell him to put that in the box, then I put the other, the engagement ring, on my finger. Third finger, left hand.

“Tell me where you got these from. I’m going to get a matching wedding ring for you – don’t think you’re going to get away without one. You are *mine*, understand?”

“Got it…”

His smile is so unlike his usually rakish smirk, and so like Angel’s, that I could cry again, but I swallow that back. He pulls the sheet over us as we lie together, my head resting on his chest. There are so many things that need to be explored, so many lines to be drawn in the sand, and accommodations to be reached, but none of that is beyond us, I’m sure. Tomorrow will be soon enough for that.

I told you I’d got another surprise for her, didn’t I? I gave it to her the next morning. Her marriage settlement. The bills for the wedding will all come to me, of course, but she’s scrimped and scraped for long enough. She needs money of her own. We had a fight about it. She refused to ‘be bought’ and I insisted that she have her financial independence. I don’t want her coming to me for money – for other things, definitely, but not for money. If there comes a time that I haven’t got it, she won’t be able to have it, but that isn’t now. When I say we had a fight, it wasn’t just words.

We broke some of the furniture. Well, a lot of the furniture. I said that, since she was now a well-to-do woman of means and since these are the days of equal opportunity, I would allow her to pay for the breakages. That made her laugh. So we stopped fighting and did the other thing. That was much better.

She was just as surprised when I told her the date for the marriage. She protested vigorously, and we almost broke some more furniture, but when I confessed that the date was chosen for her, to give her a mystical independence as well as the financial one we’d already fought about, she became uncharacteristically quiet for a few minutes, then just nodded her head and pulled me back down for more of the other thing. There was something on her mind, though. I can always tell. Eventually, as we lie snuggled up in the afterglow, she puts it into words.

“I thought vampires mated, rather than married.”

Her voice is worried, anxious.

“Yes, they do.”

“Why do you want to marry me, rather than… you know…?”

I can’t do it, just yet. I can’t tell her everything I should. I want to, but I’m too afraid. I want her safely tied to me first. Then I’ll tell her. I’d thought that the simple mating ceremony would be enough, but I’ve been thinking about that. It won’t. It won’t protect her from the plotting, in-fighting and sheer power politics of the vampire world. There is another ritual that will, though. The ritual of eternal mates is a cleaving to each other for the whole of eternity. That’s what we are, but even more so than with a normal mating, the proper rituals need to be performed if she is to have the protection she needs. It’s just that the form of it won’t be acceptable to her. I know it won’t. I’m going to have to ask her, though. Oh, don’t worry, if she doesn’t want to, we won’t do it, but that will give us a whole raft of other problems. Still, we seem to have been living our lives one problem at a time, and who’s keeping score? I prevaricate.

“We are mates, even without the ceremony. We’ve made oaths to each other and exchanged blood. After we’re married, we can talk about whether we want the formal ceremonies for a mating. It’s not important.”

It is, but I can’t say it yet. I can tell she’s not entirely satisfied with my reply, but she lets it go.

I really don’t want to dwell on the next three weeks. Anyone who has ever been involved in a wedding in any capacity whatsoever will know why. I go back, often, to the idea of just running away with her. Cowardice in the line of fire, I know. Just name me one man who hasn’t had the same feelings of terror.

The priest is true to his word, and he comes to talk to Buffy. I introduce them, and am hustled out of the door. I don’t know what they talk about, but both of them look satisfied afterwards. That may be one of the strangest things about this whole affair.

He has reached agreement to borrow the Church of St Michael for the ceremony. I know it – it’s perhaps the most beautiful in Sunnydale, outside as well as in. It stands on a hill to the north of the town – churches dedicated to St Michael, the warrior archangel, seem to be almost always on a hill, as if standing guard. He suggests that we use the exterior. There is a prettily planted garden on the approach to the church, the edges of which blend into the graveyard. There is an expanse of grass, suited to our purposes since this will not be a large wedding, and we can put an arbour there, beneath which we can be wed. It sounds perfect. He has produced a service that will not involve me getting burned by holy objects nor require me to swear oaths by any almighty god. Perfect.

The mansion won’t quite be ready for the day, so the reception will be held at the hotel, and I’ll carry Buffy off for an extended honeymoon afterwards. I’m keeping our destination a close secret. That will be just for us.

At the moment, Buffy is drawing closer to her friends and family, which is good, but she’s becoming quite coy with respect to us. I suppose all brides are like that – saving the best until the wedding night. I’m content to play along. I’ve got any number of willing bedmates, including another Slayer. I haven’t made a move on Faith, though. Somehow, that doesn’t seem…right. There’s Lindsey, though. Let’s just say that when I need to relax a bit, I’m occupying myself with Lindsey, as nice a piece of ass as you could find anywhere.

Lindsey was always drawn to the Soul, but the Soul never used that against him, as he should have. It was a weakness he could and should have exploited, rather than trying to make Lindsey want redemption. I’m not so foolish. Lindsey is Japheth’s childe, and I don’t feel inclined to bond him, to share the extras in my blood now that I have so much more of Aurelius, of Sekhmet and of Buffy than ever before. Perhaps I’ll bond him later. Or perhaps, when Drusilla comes back, she can do the bonding. He’ll be akin to my grandchilde then. Or perhaps it won’t matter. I say that, because he’s as attracted to me as he was to the Soul and he’s just as attracted to the power base that I’m building here. He can see a future that might not have some of the disadvantages of a future with the law firm.

He’s finding that he likes the pain as much as the pleasure, too. Well, some of it. He’s finding a whole new world of sensation. So, he makes a nice distraction, while I wait for my bride. Faith can amuse herself elsewhere for a few weeks.

As the day grows nearer, I grow more nervous. Just like you humans, damn it. So long as she isn’t having second thoughts… Tell me again why I haven’t simply run away with her.

I can’t imagine anything more perfect, unless Angel were to be here, too. I’ve come to terms with that, as well as I ever will. I understand that the limitations on soul magic mean that the curse can never be renewed. Three times in, three times out, and that’s it. The power of three. So now I pray for his soul, every day. I pray that it has found a peaceful haven, and that we may be reunited in the afterlife. I try not to think too much about the afterlife, though, because what I would really want is for all three of us to be together. I don’t want to be parted from my demon, and I really don’t see how any of that is possible. Still, I can’t do anything about it, so I simply pray for Angel’s peace.

As for the wedding, I have only to wish it, and Angelus ensures that it’s there. It’s making me a bit complacent, but I can’t tell you how good it is to be able to let him shoulder all the responsibilities, just for a little while. He hasn’t talked to me about it, but I know that he has his people patrolling for strangers – strange demons, strange criminals, whatever. For a short space of time, I don’t have to be the Slayer. He hasn’t killed recently, and he’s made no new minions. It’s a sort of truce. Perhaps it’s one we can build on.

I know he will never be faithful to me, and that bothers me more than I can tell you, but we’re going to have to work that out as we go along. I knew that when I accepted him as my mate. I knew it even more when I accepted him as my fiancé, but perhaps I can keep him sated enough that he won’t want to wander very often… The killing worries me more, but perhaps he knows that. Perhaps he’ll keep on compromising.

Nevertheless, I am going to love him, but I am going to use him, if I can, to create a wider peace for humanity than a single slayer ever could. That was what I told Father Jerome, and he seemed content. He talked to me for a long time, and seemed satisfied that Angelus is in no way forcing me into this relationship. That seemed his greatest worry, not the relationship itself. Yet, when I asked him, he knows exactly who Angelus is. He did tell me, though, that if I am in need of help, I should go to the Church of St Jude’s in Los Angeles. I will always find help there, he says.

I’ve stayed away from Angelus, so far as I can. No, we’ve spoken and we’ve seen each other – I haven’t stayed away like that. But I’m sleeping alone, with only my memories of Angel. I won’t be able to indulge myself like this afterwards. He always seems to know when I’m thinking of Angel, and although he has said that he doesn’t resent my love for his other half, I don’t want to test that too hard. He’s a very unpredictable demon.

Apart from that, I feel nervous, like any bride whose wedding day is almost here. Will he change his mind – he’s so very mercurial, after all? Surely not. I don’t feel anything but love and contentment coming through the link. My love for him seems to have filled every part of my heart. I once read about a Queen of England who said that, when she died, they would find the word ‘Calais’ written on her heart. When I die, I’m sure the name ‘Angelus’ will be etched into my very bones. It will be alongside the name ‘Angel’.

It’s the day at last. Or the night, rather. It’s the summer solstice, and from now on the power of the night will be growing. I wasn’t entirely selfless in choosing this night. There won’t be too many people here. Our respective households will attend, of course, including Faith and Oz and Nina. Aurelius is here as my best man. Cordelia, Gunn and Wesley have come from Los Angeles. They haven’t given me an answer yet, and I must deal with that before we leave for our honeymoon. Perhaps I’ll just give them an extension…

Buffy has invited Hank and his new wife – I refuse to name her Buffy’s stepmother – on the strict condition that I do nothing to terrify them. Even though Hank is here, he won’t be giving her away. He was a bit put out by that, but hasn’t made any trouble. Giles will have the honours, and that is much more fitting. Dawn and Willow and Tara will be her bridesmaids.

I’m just putting the final touches to my toilet, and nerves are making my fingers clumsy. This is ridiculous. Aurelius has taken over, and is tying my tie. This is so lowering. He has something he wants to talk about, and he decides that now is a good time. Now? Talking? My brain is like porridge, with my nervousness. Now is so not good. Still, perhaps it will take my mind off what is to come. Listen, I may be quite a lot older than you are, but this is still my first marriage.

“Angelus, I have a gift for you, for your wedding.”

Gift? He’s already brought gifts, I know that.

I squint down at him as he fiddles under my chin to finalise the knot.

“I’ve been without a beta for too long now. I’m offering that to you.”

What! That could be either a gift beyond price or a poisoned chalice. With my chin stuck in the air, I have to swallow audibly before I can reply. Damn.

“Why would you offer that to me? You have a number of childer of your own, all much older than me, with higher standing.”

That pains me to say, but it’s the truth. He smiles.

“None of them want it. And before you ask, you are held in sufficiently high regard that I have no doubts about doing this.”

I am? Well, now. There is another issue, though.

“What about Buffy?”

He looks positively mischievous now.

“She may have to demonstrate that her place is at your side, and that she is worthy of their respect, but I don’t doubt that she can do that. Provided you mean to go through with the mating ceremony, that is.”

Ah, there we are again. The thing I haven’t talked to her about. I tell him that.

“Hmm. I can see why you might be wary of raising it, but you must, you know. My childer won’t be a problem, but it will be up to you to deal with the other branches of the clan. And to make sure there are none who will… encroach… from other clans.”

No, I’m not prepared to explain yet. Not until I’ve tried to explain it to Buffy. I nod in silence. He’s absolutely right. I never considered myself to lack courage, but I’m yellow through and through where this is concerned.

Still, he needs an answer on the offer he has made to me. It is a very handsome offer. It will involve a lot of time and travel for me in the years to come, but it will give me power and status beyond my years.

“Thank you for the offer. I’m very flattered.”

And I am, especially having so recently challenged him for leadership, and been let off with my life. I may have been defeated, but he’s given me the next best thing.

“You’ll do it?”

“Yes.”

With that, he smiles his pleasure, and leads me out to the car. When we get there, he checks that he has both rings – Buffy has had a duplicate wedding ring made, exactly the same as the one I bought for her. The only difference is in the poesy – after all, she needs no other soul. The one she has shines so brightly now that I’m bedazzled by it, I admit. The inscription she’s had put there made my blood run even colder when I saw it, though.

Endless like my love. Forever.

You have a saying when you feel like that – ‘someone has walked over my grave’. Maybe someone did. It’s not that I doubt her. I don’t. It’s simply that I am eternal, and she isn’t. I know that one day, in the fullness of time, she must die. That ring will remind me of it every day of our lives. Still, I wouldn’t need the ring to do that.

When we arrive at the church, the rest are gathering. The priest is there, in his vestments, standing by the arbour. It is an arch lavishly entwined with red and white roses for true love and passion, and edged with orange blossom, for eternal love, purity and innocence. She’s all that to me. We go to join the priest. I’m amazed that he seems so comfortable with what he is doing. I also remember his price. We agreed that he would tell me what service he required me to perform, and that I should know it before this ceremony was concluded, but he has said nothing. If he does not, I shall consider myself to be free of debt. Perhaps.

As I stand waiting, I wonder what the incumbent priest of St Michael’s thinks of having this alfresco arrangement in his churchyard. I ask Father Jerome. He smiles slyly, and tells me that the good priest owed him a favour.

I have not been allowed to see Buffy today, and although I’ve paid for it, I haven’t been allowed to see her dress. I wonder what she has chosen. And then here she is. Two limousines, decorated with white flowers and ribbons, pull up beside the path. Xander and Anya help the three bridesmaids, all in flattering gowns of palest sea green, from the first limousine, which pulls away so that the second can allow its passengers to alight. Giles gets out first, on the far side, and walks around to help his charge. He opens the door, leans forward, and hands her out. She is the most exquisite creature I have ever seen.

Her hair, shining even in the moonlight, is knotted high on her head, with glowing curls hanging in ringlets from the knots. Her dress is ivory silk, and she wears the silver cross that the Soul gave her when he first met her. It seems right that she should do so. If he hadn’t loved her, and she him, perhaps we wouldn’t be where we are today. She hasn’t lowered her veil yet, and I can see the breathless excitement on her face as well as scenting it in the air, even mingled with the heady fragrances from the bower. She’s holding a simple bouquet of white roses set in a variety of everlasting flowers, blue and white. I suppose the everlasting flowers signify my non-human status.

Giles helps her to shake out her dress. Xander and Anya move back towards the little congregation and the bridesmaids start to move towards her, taking up position at her back.

I know what it is as soon as I hear it. The shot has been silenced, but it still rings out loud and clear to my demonic hearing. All my senses shift to maximum and I *see* the bullet in its trajectory. It’s perhaps three hundred feet from the arbour to the car, and I cover it with the best speed I can muster. I doubt any of the humans here actually see me in motion. Yet, I’m too slow; I can never be anything but too slow. Still, I must try. I watch the bullet flying to its target, and although everything is moving so slowly that there seems to be all the time in the world, I cannot get there in time. I see her stagger from the impact, and I am too late. I watch the perfect petals of crimson and scarlet unfurl on the ivory silk. Blue blood and red blood, arterial and venous, it’s all heart’s blood from my mate. I’m there to catch her as she falls, and although I’m not in time to stop the bullet that has created those perfect red petals, I am in time to feel the second as it hits me in the back, exactly where her heart would have been had I not caught her. It almost knocks me to the ground, but I manage to keep hold of her, cushion her from the fall.

Gently, gently, I lower her to the ground, my beloved sinking towards the grass and the earth, towards the grave dust at the edge of this graveyard, until both of us are on our knees, and I am clutching her body to mine. The bullet has missed her heart by a hairsbreadth, but it will still kill her. Even if it didn’t, the assassin has made sure she will die. My roar is one of pain and rage and grief. Any vampire within fifty miles will hear it and know my loss.

Then Aurelius is there, with the witches, still in slow motion. The humans have barely moved, but he has brought these to my aid. It’s too late. Once, when she was mortally wounded, I gave her a few drops of my blood to strengthen her. Now it would only speed her end. I cannot help. But, Never give up, she would say. Never stop fighting.

“Willow. The bullet has fragmented. It had poison in it.” S

he chants and gestures. I feel the pain as the pieces of lead are pulled back out of my body the way they came. I see the bullet that has murdered Buffy. It falls, oh so slowly, down the front of her gown. Tears are chilling their way down my cheeks, as Aurelius takes my shoulder and asks something. I don’t know what it is. He repeats it, and is not pleased with my silence. He hits me, hard, across the cheek, and suddenly the humans are starting to move again and time has snapped back into joint.

“What is the poison? Tell me! Now!”

“I don’t know. It’s enchanted. It’s aimed at her, not me.”

It may not be aimed at me, but I can feel it dulling my wits.

“Get away from her.”

Never. I’ll never leave her. I’ll stay here until the sun burns me to ash.

“Angelus. If we are to save her you *must* move. Now.”

Too slow. I’m too slow.

He’s speaking to the witches, and they have fallen to their knees, in this newly blooded grave dirt. They are chanting. Whatever they are doing is not working. I can hear her heart slowing and faltering. Willow speaks to Aurelius.

“I can’t get it out. It’s as if the magic has sunk claws into her. It won’t move. We need to know how to break the spell.”

Her heart is now fluttering wildly, like a trapped bird. Aurelius can hear it, too. He hits me again, and the force knocks me apart from my dying love. He kneels down between the witches, says a few more words to them and takes both their hands. Buffy is lying crumpled on the ground in front of them, the scarlet flower on her breast opening its petals ever wider. His eyes close, and he starts a chant of his own, in counterpoint with their new one. He’s calling on the power of the Hellmouth, a power that neither Willow nor Tara knows how to use, yet. But like me, he does.

They are stopping time. That takes enormous magics, and only here, on the Hellmouth, can they buy me the time I need. Senses, of some sort, have returned to me, and I know what I must do. As the power flows into the three of them, and the bubble of time arises around them, Aurelius looks up briefly.

“Get the bastard. Find out how to undo it.”

And then the three of them, and Buffy, are a frozen tableau, reliving a dying second over and over.

It is Xander who helps me to my feet, careless of my blood, sticky against the palm of his hand. My faculties start to function again, and I feel the rage fuelling my thoughts, as it has done for so very many long years.

“Giles. Wesley. See what you can find out about the poison. If you use some of my blood, will that work?”

It is Wesley who answers. Giles is pulling himself together, but he is still too shocked to take things in.

“If we get a sample quickly, before you alter it.”

We need a receptacle, and there isn’t one. Father Jerome has now joined us, spry for such an elderly, ailing man. He sends Thomaso sprinting for the church. When my minion returns, he is carrying a chalice in his smoking hands, trying to cover the metal with his sleeves. The priest takes the chalice and murmurs a few words over it.

“Put some blood in there. It’s deconsecrated now.”

I must look askance at him, even in my extremity. His reply is impatient.

“We’ll wash it and give it back later. Hurry up.”

I slash my wrist and fill the chalice.

“Take some to Hylek and anywhere else you must.” That to Ezrafel. Then to my court in general, I nod towards the time trap and towards Giles and Wesley and Ezrafel, my researchers. “Anything they need. Anything.”

Xander grips my arm, and for now we are united in hatred.

“Don’t worry about here. Just find him.”

As the rest of the congregation recover their powers of movement, and hurry down to the stricken scene, I’m off and running towards the place where the shot came from. I doubt more than three minutes has passed since then. Whoever it was won’t have gone far. As I reach the spot, more than half a mile away, a fact that argues a trained sniper, I recognise the scent on the breeze. It’s overlaid with gun oil and gunpowder, but it is unmistakeable. I expect my fangs to drop, but find that they already have. So much for not terrifying the in-laws. I have been in demon face almost certainly since the moment the bullets started their flight. I should have killed him when I had the chance. Riley.

I had hoped that no one here would ever have to call on the power of the Hellmouth, but that was a fond and foolish hope. There is no time to grieve or mourn. Not yet. If we are quick, and lucky beyond belief, we may have to do neither. My charge, my Slayer, my would-be daughter, is trapped in the cycles of time, and we must hurry, must find out how to undo what an assassin has done. Aurelius is channelling unbelievable amounts of power to Willow and Tara. Willow is the one actually working the magic, and the magic is now working her. It’s lacing itself through her, black in her veins, her eyes dark with power. Her hair is spread around her like a black corona, motionless. She holds the darkness of the Hellmouth in the palm of her hand, and only Tara is keeping her human. I don’t know what is happening to the vampire, but he’s keeping up the energy flow.

There is nothing I can do here. Angelus’ household – the rest of us, since I am one of them now – will take care of everything here. Some of us set off to the Magic Shop, as fast as the limousine can go, carrying the sample of the vampire’s blood that we pray will tell us what the poison is, and what the magic is that stops Willow from fixing it. Angelus will find the assassin, and I have no doubt he will torture him without mercy to find out what he needs to know. Torturing a human: well, he’s done plenty of that in his very long life. He’s probably the most expert torturer this planet has ever known. What am I going to do about it, to demonstrate that we are different from demons?

If necessary, I’ll hold his coat and pass him his tools.

Riley has not been gone more than a minute or two. I can try to run him down, but my stamina is not infinite, especially wounded as I am. In the long run, a car will win. Depends how long the run is, though. His scent trail is clear, and I can follow it with ease. I concentrate hard, not because I think I might lose it – it’s much too fresh for that – but to stop me thinking about something else. Aurelius and the witches will do whatever can be done. There is no one under the sun who could do more than they. I mustn’t think about her. Not yet. I must concentrate.

He’s driving fast. I don’t need to stick to the roads, but if I’m not quick, he’ll be onto the main highway, and a long, straight run out of town. I can’t win that race. Then a small, sporty yellow car comes towards me, travelling at high speed. I position myself at the side of the road. It’s a soft top. It was a soft top. Now it has no top, and I have a stranglehold on the driver. As soon as I can, I toss him out, and the car is mine by force majeur. A quick U turn, and I’m off. It only takes minutes to catch up to his anonymous SUV. I overtake him before he realises who is in the car, then a handbrake turn puts me back on a collision course. Neither of these cars will be needed, so that’s okay. At the moment of impact, I leap onto the SUV, reach through the door to pull my prey out, and we’re rolling onto the soft verge to the tune of tortured metal. I’m protecting him with my body. I don’t want him damaged. I’m going to do all the damage myself, for as long as it takes to make him tell me what I need to know. After that, we’ll just have to see.

I strangle him into unconsciousness, and lope back to the mansion. That’s where my tools are.

I don’t actually need tools to torture someone, but I want this over as quickly as possible. Who knows how long they can keep time in stasis? When I get to the mansion, it’s silent and in darkness. Everyone else is about my business, and there’s little reason for them to come back here. That’s good. The basement is pretty well soundproof, but privacy is good.

By the time he comes round, he’s chained hand and foot, spread-eagled in the middle of the very end basement, hanging from the ceiling and shackled to the floor. This is where I keep the things that could never be classed as toys, even in the most intense encounters. This is serious business, in this part of my home. I’ve changed into a pair of leather trousers I keep down here. They’ve seen better days. They’ve seen some extremely *good* days, in fact, and are a little too bloodstained to be seen anywhere else. I’m not wearing anything else, just the trousers. The blood will scrub off me easily enough.

He takes a shuddering gasp of air as he comes round, and another one when he opens his eyes and sees me lounging in a chair in front of him. The extent of his peril becomes clear to him a moment later as he realises that he is in chains. Oh yes, and he’s naked. Instant access to all areas. I’m holding a blue roll of cloth that contains the implements I’ve decided to start with. I really don’t expect to need any more.

I get up, and walk over to him. I have a table, handily placed by his side, where he can inspect whatever I put on it in exquisite detail. I unroll my tool kit onto there. I have a large number of surgical instruments – scissors, scalpels, knives, probes, saws, shears, and the rest. It’s amazing what surgeons need to do to the human body, and how lucky you are to have anaesthetics. Luckier than Riley, any way. There are other things as well. Lots of ordinary household objects can cause intense pain, agony even, if used just right. I know exactly what ‘just right’ is.

I stand back to let him admire the view. I shift into demon face, all the better to encourage him in the belief that he will get no human mercy here. There isn’t even any demonic mercy, I promise you.

I raise one claw to his eye, and stroke across the lid, gently. He tries to toss his head backwards, but he can’t get away from me.

“I’m only going to offer this to you once, Riley. You will tell me exactly what was in that bullet. You will tell me how to undo the poison and the magic that activates it. You will tell me why you tried to kill my bride, and you will tell me exactly who else was involved. You will tell me anything else that I need to know about this assassination. If you do, I promise you a quick and absolutely painless death. I promise not to turn you; you will be quite dead, and your body will be sent wherever you wish for decent burial.

“If you do not, then I promise that you *will* tell me, sooner or later. You won’t be able to imagine the agony that I will give you between now and then, and I will make quite sure that none of it kills you. You will be my prisoner for the rest of your life. If I wish, that will be an extremely long life, and you will never know anything but pain. If she dies, I shall turn you, and you will never know an end to the pain. Eternity can be a very, very long future.

“Choose.”

He’s terrified. The thick scent of his fear is rolling off him in waves. He remains silent, though. I select a fine needle from the table and dip it into a small glass bottle that stands open. It’s acid, and for this I need only the thinnest coating on the slender piece of steel.

“Speak, boy.”

He clamps his jaws together, as if I were going to put the needle there. No such luck. I reach up and slowly, tenderly, with utmost patience, ease the needle under the nail of his left hand little finger. An oldie but goodie. He whimpers, and can barely keep from screaming as I manipulate that needle, pulling it out, easing it in, moving it here and there.

“We are going to stay here until you tell me what I want to know. You have ten seconds before my offer expires. It will never be repeated.”

He spits in my face. Well, at least he’s got balls. For now. I’d hoped to do this the quick way, but I hadn’t really expected that to succeed. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way then. The hard way.

First, to get his nerves as receptive as possible, and his mind as humiliated as I can. Ah, something before even that. This was an organised assassination, I’m positive about that. He doesn’t have the brains to put something as complex as this together. Suppose he’s been given the wherewithal to commit suicide? He’s naked and chained. He can’t hide anything or reach anything, but you’ve heard, I’m sure, about secret agents and cyanide capsules in a hollow tooth? I’ve actually seen it. Had my entertainment cut short by it, twice in fact. It’s a damn silly idea. I mean, what if you were eating a chocolate Brazil, or a crunchy toffee? But Buffy can’t afford me to take any chances. I briefly consider yanking out all his teeth, but that tends to lead to a certain incoherence when it comes to the time for him to spill all the information he’s trying to hide. I know from experience that he’ll be incoherent enough as it is. In magic, words can be vitally important, and I can’t risk mishearing. We’ll leave the teeth; they can always come out later.

Besides, I’ve got no intention just now of depriving him of any appendage. Once you hurt something by removing it, you can’t go back and hurt it some more. That’s a foolish way of trying to torture someone. So, for now I content myself with that dinky little implement that dentists use to keep your mouth open so they can practice their own form of torture. He’s loath to open wide, but eventually he does. Of course, I open him up a bit wider than he’s comfortable with. Every little helps.

Fine. Back to the nerves then. A man’s nerves are never more sensitive than when he is aroused. That’s easily accomplished. It takes care of the mental humiliation, too. As he responds to me, I nuzzle around the big pulse in his inner thigh. When he’s pretty well at full size, I leave him, and allow my fangs to slide gently into that artery. I don’t take much, and what I do take, I draw gently from him. Vampires can allow their meals to feel pleasure or pain, as we choose. I intend for him to feel maximum pleasure. I feel him swell a little more, and just before he reaches an irreversible climax, I knot a quick, but effective, cock ring from the shoelace in my hand. It’s tight enough to give him both pain and pleasure, but it will keep his nerves where I want them. He’s about to discover the real relationship between sex and pain and pleasure, and how much more agony there is in the world than ever he thought possible.

I start with his right hand. I want it easier to reach, so I buckle a belt around his waist, and handcuff his wrist to it. Then I reach for a pretty little pair of surgical shears. They look like dainty up-market garden secateurs, but they are strong enough to cut through bone.

“We’re going to start with an easy question, Riley. One that it isn’t worth hurting for.”

I need him to start talking as soon as possible, while the fear is still so fresh and strong. Every answer becomes easier after the first one.

“Why did you shoot her?”

I take hold of his smallest finger and let him feel the pressure of the shears.

“Hmm?”

When he remains silent, I run the shears lightly around the finger, in that tender area just above the base of his nail. That slight pressure cuts down through nail and skin and muscle, and I twist the shears in a circle. The finger remains intact but the flesh is scored to that tiny bone. I allow the pain to swell, then I move the shears down a little way and score down to the bone once more. The whimpering starts again.

“You’ll need to let me know when you want to talk, Riley, so that I can adjust your mouth. If you aren’t ready to do that, you just let me know when this finger hurts too much, and you want it cut off. Until then, I’ll just keep shredding it, shall I?”

And I do.

We are working to try and analyse what is in Angelus’ blood. It would have been better to use Buffy’s, but impossible to get at with the stasis field intact. Wesley is carrying out as many tests as we have equipment for. As he finds something, I am hitting the books. Ezrafel has gone to Hylek with a sample. Faith and Oz and Nina are here, ready to run any errands or beat answers out of anyone who might have them. Everyone else is at the church, prepared to do whatever can be done to help the four trapped in time. Hank and his new wife are having hysterics, and there is no time for that, so Cordelia has actually made herself useful and taken them back to the hotel. I don’t know what they are more hysterical about – Buffy getting shot, seeing Angelus’ true face, or watching dark magic being worked.

I am trying to suppress the urge to find out where Angelus is and how he is faring. It would serve no purpose; I can be more useful to my Slayer here, researching; and finding him would only demonstrate to me just how much darkness there is in me. I can only hope that he is living up to his reputation. He has more chance of success than we do.

It has been hours now. I don’t know how long the stasis spell can be maintained, but we need a resolution soon. Apart from anything else, this is the shortest night of the year. If dawn comes, we’re all going to have some big problems.

And then the phone rings. It’s him. *Who* shot her? Good grief. Riley. It seems that Riley doesn’t know what needs to be done to break the spell. The man who cast it does, though. Rack. Damn and blast, I thought he’d left this town for good. I didn’t know he was back. He must be close, apparently, because the spell on the toxin only had a lifespan of hours before it needed to be initiated. Oh, and Angelus has an address.

He wants to go and confront Rack, but Riley has not yet told him who else was involved. Who was the prime mover in this. We need to know that almost as badly as we need the information about breaking the spell. There might be another assassin close by. I make my suggestion. We here, plus a contingent from the church, will go and tackle Rack while Angelus continues to question Riley. If we fail to get answers, we’ll bring Rack to Angelus.

He gives that the go ahead.

We need to take Rack quickly and cleanly – he’s a powerful magician. Oz researches the binding spells we will need. As soon as we are kitted up, we’re off.

I’m in serious need of a shower. I’m covered in blood, none of it mine. I now have all the information that Riley can give me, I’m sure of that. Wolfram and Hart are behind this. Riley doesn’t understand their motivation. He only knows what he thinks – that Buffy is a traitor to her calling, and that I will use her to make mankind suffer. The same applies to Faith. He knows that she is also part of my personal household. His intention was to kill them both, so that a new Slayer would be called. One uncontaminated by me. One who hasn’t felt my fangs.

When he was approached by a representative of Wolfram and Hart, he accepted their proposal as a matter of duty. I can believe that. He knows that the bullets were supplied by Rack, and must be used within two hours. They were targeted specifically at Buffy. They were going to deal with Faith later. He has no knowledge of the magic required to break the spell. I’m sure he’s telling the truth.

He’s a mess now. I’ve done nothing to him that a vampire wouldn’t recover from – eventually – but a human? He can mend from this, but he’ll never be pretty again, nor have full use of all his body parts. I’m thinking that maybe I can now go and take that shower, get dressed, and go to help my people with Rack. Riley will keep here just fine. Out of habit, whilst I’m reflecting, I wash up all the instruments I’ve used on him, and lay them out neatly on the blue cloth. I’ll leave them to dry completely before wrapping them back up. I move Riley from the centre of the room, and hang him in one of the sets of chains on the wall – he’ll be out of the way there – then swill down the floor to remove the worst of the bloodstains. The minions can finish the job later, when we all have time.

That’s when Faith comes down into the basement. She looks at the equipment I have here with some interest. Then she looks at me, and at Riley. I think I see her mouth make a little moue of distaste, but it’s very fleeting. Well, he’s a very distasteful sight indeed.

“I see you’ve been having a good time,” she says, in that sultry come-hither voice. Another time, maybe. Right now, I need to know something.

“Buffy?”

“Well, assuming what they all got between them is right, then she should be OK. They’re working on it now. Ezrafel got some stuff from Hylek, and Rack gave it up pretty easily. Question is, was he telling the truth? Everyone seems to think so. They’re whipping up the magic right now, big boy.”

She looks at Riley again.

“You done with him? He give it all up, you think?”

“He’s not holding anything back, I’m sure of that, but I’m done with him when