Chapter 1
As the sound of the sign flattening under his tires ripped through the air he felt himself slip into game face. This, this knowing you were practically invincible, was what life was all about; he growled loudly as he threw open the door and stepped out into the soft inky blackness of the Sunnydale night. As he whipped around the car, going to help Dru, he whispered, "No need to watch your back, Slayer. I'll as sure as hell be watching it for you."
She watched another one turn to dust, a small pile forming in the harsh light of the streetlight. "That's, what? The eighth one tonight? Plus the creepy horned thing on the way home from the school. Are you sure there's no mystical heebie-jeebies coming up soon?"
Giles shrugged, pushing his glasses further up his nose in thought. "Yes, well, I'm fairly certain...I'll check again once we reach the library, Buffy. It's most likely a fluke, however, nothing to worry about."
"As long as nothing comes between me and Parent Teacher Night, I'm Happy Buffy," she sighed, rolling the stake between her hands anxiously. "Oh, Giles, that reminds me! I need to go home and finish baking the cupcakes, I've only got fifty done..."
"I think we've done enough for tonight anyway," Giles replied, smiling. "If I find anything in the research I'll tell you right away tomorrow morning. Don't want to disrupt the baking."
Buffy grinned and waved good-bye to his retreating figure, increasingly difficult to see through the eerie darkness. She turned around and started for her own home, humming softly to herself to break up the silence. She went through the checklist again in her mind: banners, check; lemonade, check; cupcakes, half-check. She was almost halfway certain this Parent Teacher Night wouldn't end in complete disaster - she'd worked everything out, as long as she kept Snyder and her mother away from each other she should be fine. And that was if, and only if, her mother even found out there was a Parent Teacher Night.
"Again?" she sighed, turning around just as the vampire walking behind her gave a halfway menacing snarl. "You're cutting into valuable baking time here, you know."
The room was fairly large, posters peeling from the walls and cold hard gray light filtering down from the old flourscent lights. Demons were scattered throughout, some downing multiple shots at the bar and others cheating at poker, roaring with laughter at dirty jokes. The room slowly became quiet as the heavy steel door was flung against the wall and several vampires stalked into the room, ugly sneers covering their mouths.
"This is how the undead evil of Sunnydale spend their nights?" Spike asked in shock, walking in with an arched eyebrow and a beaming Drusilla at his side. "Hiding away in an old abandoned warehouse when you're sitting on the bloody mouth of hell?"
"Hey, man, you don't understand," a troll in the back said, putting his cards down tentatively. "The Slayer, she's tough -"
"Oh, so you have a bit of a Slayer problem, do you?" he sneered, pausing for a moment before turning to Dru. "You know what I find works real well with Slayers, love?"
"What?" she breathed quietly, glistening excitement dancing in her eyes. She reached up to gently slide her nails down his neck and she giggled when she heard his breath hitch.
"Killing them," he whispered just as quietly in her ear, and she brought his mouth down to hers with a fierce growl.
After a few moments the troll cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Yeah, but this Slayer, there's something different about her. Not even the Master could do her off."
Spike pulled away, raising one eyebrow defiantly. "Yeah? Sod the Master. I've killed two Slayers and something's telling me Sunnydale's housing my third." The troll looked a little astonished at that, and promptly shut his mouth. As he looked around at the room full of demons a smile slowly washed across his face. "We're going to do a little less hiding and a little more killing now that I'm around," he said, "no more of this wishy-washy hiding crap. So, if any of you are tired of spending your nights sitting around playing bloody poker when there's hell to be paid, I suggest you help a fellow out."
He grabbed a bottle of whiskey off of the bar counter and jumped onto the decaying couch, propping his feet up at the ends. He took a deep drink before asking, "So? Who's got any helpful bits of information they're willing to share on this Slayer?"
"And that's the last tray," Buffy said with a flourish, shutting the oven door with a crisp clang. She sank to the floor, bits of flour still sitting on her disheveled hair. "Will, I honestly don't know what I'd do without you."
Willow smiled, bringing the trashcan over to the counter to start throwing away the mess still thrown about the countertops. "Well, you'd be dead, for starters," Mrs. Summers said from the doorway, a tired smile stretched upon her face. "Honestly, Buffy, was it really necessary to create this much of a mess? And why were you in the kitchen, anyway?"
Buffy shot back up, her mouth gaping uselessly for a few moments as her brain raced to find an explanation for the three-hundred iced cupcakes sitting on their kitchen table and the twenty-five baking to a golden crisp in the oven. "It wouldn't have anything to do with this, would it?" her mother asked after a few moments, pulling a crisp bright pink slip out of her coat pocket. "'Sunnydale High Parent Teacher Night,'" Mrs. Summers read with her eyebrows raised. "Were you even planning on telling me about this?"
"Yes. Yes, I was. I so was," she replied, looking over at Willow for support, who vehmently nodded her head. "You just seemed so...exhausted lately, what with the gallery and everything, and Parent Teacher Night isn't that important anyway, and I figured...you could...take the night off."
Joyce folded the paper again and stuck it in her coat pocket, offering her daughter a warm smile that wasn't reflected in her admittedly tired eyes. "Buffy, that's sweet, but I really need to meet your teachers. Make sure that...what happened isn't happening again." She paused for a moment before looking over at Willow, who was standing awkwardly against the fridge with her "KISS THE COOK" oven apron still slung over her fuzzy pink shirt. "Willow, dear, you know how much I appreciate you, but would you mind giving me and Buffy a few moments -"
"Oh, of course, Mrs. Summers," Willow said quickly, pulling her apron off and laying it carefully on the counter. "You need to let the cupcakes cool for five minutes before you can ice them," she instructed Buffy, gesturing towards the oven. "See you at school tomorrow!" she called over her shoulder as she grabbed her denim jacket from the coat pegs on the wall.
She was halfway out the door when Buffy realized there could be still be vamps stalking the shadows around town. Ten - she'd dusted another one in her neighbor's driveway - in one night was something she usually only accomplished when there was something strange going on, something strange like the Harvest, a memory which still made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. No matter what Giles or his research said, something was going on, and until Buffy at least got to the bottom of it, she wasn't allowing her sweetly naieve best friend to wander the streets of hell alone.
"Will, wait!" Buffy called. She turned to explain to her mother. "Willow's mom doesn't like her to walk home alone. Could I...?"
Mrs. Summers nodded after a moment, sighing and walking around to the cupboard to grab a teabag and a cup of hot water from the sink. "Hurry, Buffy. I don't like the thought of you wandering out after dark, either. And I need to talk to you about a few things."
"Thanks, Mom!" she hurriedly kissed her mom on the cheek before slipping out of the back door with Willow in tow. The night was even blacker than it had been while she had been on patrol; not even the stars seemed to be out tonight, twinkling like little papercuts in the sky. The stifling heat from that morning had died down; now Buffy was almost chilly in her jacket. There weren't any animals scapering around the ground, either, another large warning sign. "Here," she whispered, slipping a hand into her jacket pocket and pulling out an extra stake. "If something comes at us I don't want you to be all defenseless."
"Something's going to come at us?" She gripped the stake tightly, holding it straight out in front of her in case anything charged them.
"No. I'm thinking no. But I've been known to screw up now and again, so I'm also thinking you need to have some protection for the time being." Buffy paused a moment. "Wait, that came out wrong."
"Why's tonight any different from a regular night?" Willow asked slowly, still looking around to make sure the trees and bushes were staying still and no vamps were hiding behind them. "I mean, normally I walk home everyday and you don't have any problems with it -"
"Something's going on," Buffy sighed, raising her voice above a whisper. It was ridiculous to hide from things that should be hiding from her. She was their Slayer, after all, wasn't she? "Me and Giles were out patrolling earlier and I staked ten vamps and some sort of demon - I hardly ever get three in a night unless something all creepy and Hellmouthy is happening."
Willow's eyes widened a little and she stared directly in front of them, making no sound louder than a subtle squeak of her sneaker on the walk back to her home.
"The stars, they sing out to me, all sugar and spice and everything nice," Drusilla said dreamily, her eyes clearly in a dimension that did not belong to him. He tuned her out, not keen on listening to another hour or so of her mental rambling. Once in a while he could glean a gem from the surrounding crap, but that only happened on occasions when he really goaded her, and he was in no mood for goading at the moment.
He could feel it in the air, hanging around him. Victory - he could almost taste it now in the form of the Slayer's blood. If he played his cards right, the kill would almost be too easy to get any real satisfaction out of. Almost.
If what those demon low-lives at the bar had said were true, that the Slayer had friends who were becoming more powerful than the average human, well, the solution was glaringly obvious. How thick-skulled were the demons here, that they couldn't even come up with a decent plan when it was highlighted in sodding neon yellow? Honestly, the Slayer was getting a lucky break; if she had to face a real demon like, say, him, she would probably quake in her boots. Which is exactly what he was planning on making her do.
She was a good fighter, they'd said. Not too many years of experience, but good enough. He loved the fight - it was what made it all worth while, the thrill of possibly losing before turning it all around and seeing the pure desperation on their faces as they realized these were the final few moments they would get to spend on the earth. He hadn't even seen her yet, but he was entirely sure the girl could look like a Chaos Demon and he would still love watching her face as she died. All because of him.
"Daddy," Drusilla screeched, "it's coming. Oh, oh, make it stop, tell it to stop," she had placed her arms over her head, "make it stop!"
"Shh, Dru, baby," he whispered, pulling her into his lap and stroking her hair reassuringly, "I'll make it all go away."
"This school is filled with mindless automatons, droning on about sex and drugs and homework but too stupid to do anything at all about it. Sometimes, though, we get someone like you, Miss Summers. Someone with a real passion for mayhem, someone who actually causes it instead of just sitting back and enjoying it." Principal Snyder paused. "And that is precisely why we need to knock it out of you before you make any more trouble around these premises. You learned something from all of this, I hope. Since Shelia has mysteriously stopped coming to school altogether, if anything goes wrong tonight, you will be expelled. So, please, cause all the mayhem you want tonight. Open the gates of hell for all I care. Because, Miss Summers, nothing would make me happier than having the honor of telling you you are no longer allowed on any inch of this building."
With that, he turned around and opened the door to his office with a smile. As soon as he had slipped away behind the covered window, Buffy groaned. She now had to worry about a possible apocolapyse and the infinite evil that was Principal Snyder. If he was evil, that gave her permission to stake him or something, didn't it?
"Hey, Buff, what's with the grim face?" Xander asked, stopping on his way to history when he saw the horrified expression she was wearing.
"Possible expulsion, the Hellmouth could be going haywire, you know, the usual," she replied. "And, oh God, there's that quiz in history I totally didn't have time to study for!"
"Ah, the Hellmouth," he said wistfully, "where demons don't care about things like pop quizzes. Makes me go all -"
"Buffy," Giles said urgently, wheezing slightly and running up suddenly behind them, "we need to talk. Now."
She was sitting at the desk, carefully pouring her dollies more tea when he came in. She had already slipped into her demon face when she turned around, smelling the blood. "Brought you a few more, pet," he said, throwing them onto the stone floor. "You need to keep up your strength if you're ever going to get better. You need to get better," he added, whispering the last sentence.
Drusilla looked over his offerings. There was three of them, young, terrifed, practically shaking on the floor. Easy enough to pick off; she was too frail for much of a fight. "Well, alright, if Daddy says so," she said, flashing him the kind of smile that made his knees go weak in the first few weeks after his transformation. It still did, although he would never admit that to anyone.
She bit into the first girl with a ferocious growl, the first one she'd given while feeding since Prague. One of the other two girls screamed and scrambled up to her feet, trying to run to the exit, but Spike blocked her pathway. "Sorry, love, but this is where you lose." He grabbed her by the neck and shot a meaningful glance at the one still quivering on the floor.
Fifteen minutes later Dru was sprawled out across the floor, giggling and carelessly wiping blood from her mouth. "See, that wasn't so bad, was it, pet?" he asked, petting her hair absent-mindedly and smiling down at her. She was so beautiful, even with the blood smeared across her face. Especially with the blood smeared across her face.
"Boss," one of his new recruits panted, bursting in through the door with some bright pink paper crumpled in his hand, "didn't you say you were looking for -"
Spike groaned, reluctantly pushing himself off of the bed. "Bloody hell, don't you gits ever knock?"
"Sorry, I'll come back la -"
"As long's you're here, might as well tell me what it exactly you found," he sighed, gathering the corpses littering the floor and contemplating the best thing to do with them. Bury them? Send them out with the garbage? He wasn't entirely sure what the Sunnydale etiquette entailed. "Just hope it's something worthwhile," he added, raising a menacing eyebrow.
"Well, you said you needed more bodies," the vampire - whose name Spike was still uninterested in - said, holding up the pink sheet. "Sunnydale High Parent-Teacher Night's coming up; the Slayer should be there, along with a lot of easy pickings." He motioned to Dru, who was muttering something in Miss Edith's ear. "I don't know how much more blood the crazy one needs -"
"Don't you ever talk about her like that again," Spike said, his voice deathly quiet and eerily calm, "or you will wake up to find a stake through your heart."
"Sorry! Sorry, I didn't mean it like that," he said quickly, slipping and sliding through his words. "I..."
"Just give me the bloody paper and sod off," Spike growled, throwing the bodies into a corner and holding out his hand expectantly. He glanced over the paper the terrified vampire had thrown into the room before running off, smiling at the word "MANDATORY" typed in bold across the center of the center. Dru needed more blood, it was true; he was trying everything he could, but her condition was worsening by the minute. Lock the doors, create panic...it'd be practically effortless to pick up a few tidbits for her.
And, of course, the Slayer.
Thank you so much to anyone who read all of that! Haha, I know it's not the best but...please review and let me know what you thought! Should I keep writing it? Oh, and I couldn't remember the beginning of season 2 exactly but I can remember in season 7 the First, acting as Drusilla, always calling Spike "Daddy" (which I thought was kind of creepy, but...) so, please, if I'm wrong tell me so I can fix it! :) And thank you again!