Sang Real Trilogy Part II: That which kills me...

by Gabriel Hartnell

Part one ended with a 'little bit of' a cliffhanger, but things can only get worse. (no, honestly, they can) Again, a multitude of twists and the ongoing descent into hell make life.. well... hell, for the principles. Another nail biting ending is promise

Sang Réal Trilogy

PART II: That Which Kills Me...

By Gabriel Hartnell

Disclaimer:

All the characters/ scenes, etc in this story are... well, actually they arn't mine at all, but hey? Actually, some of them are, and if Joss and the boys want to use them, they're welcome to- I mean, I used his characters without even asking so what can I say? (I would like an aknowledgement tho, J-man; um... and some money... or even better- a job!) I will try not to upset people with this story- I promise (fingers crossed)

OK, A LOT happens in this story- I mean A LOT. It's set over three episodes (which would be perfect for ep one on Buffy, ep two on Angel and finishing up on Buffy the week after- see, Joss; I've even got the TV schedule sorted out!!!) There's some humor, but it's atypical Buff style humor, so it's pretty dark and turns up where you least expect it. This is (kind-of) set in Season six. (Yeah, I know there isn't a season six yet, but Buffy's doing her finals, so that fits (if I've got the US college things worked out right) But obviously since I'm only writing this post season four, stuff might well happen which will mean my story doesn't 'fit' anmore, but hey- it's only a fanfic. I would tell you more about the story, but since there are so many twists and cliff hangers, if I did tell you, I'd have to kill you, which wouldn't be nice. Any thoughts, suggestions... complaints?!? would be greatly accepted and replied to- my E-mail addy is at the bottom of each part of the trilogy. This is my first fanfic- wish me luck!!!!!!
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Angel blinked heavily and wondered if he was dead.

It should have been a familiar feeling by now, but the again, it had been a long time since he has last kicked the bucket- to him, at least- and a lot had happened since then.

A group of fuzzy figures stood before him like mourners at his own funeral.

He concentrated on one, and his vision began to return as if he was looking through a frosted wind shield; busily wiping away the ice as he struggled to work out what the shapes that confused him so much really were.

The middle shape was the easiest to focus on. Perhaps, given the haziness, this was that celestial hallway in which he had first been introduced to the powers that be. Perhaps not.

This central form was a humanoid. A man. Dressed in a grotesque bright blue. His features became clearer, and jogged a memory. He knew this guy...

"Xander?" Angel shook his head. Despite the time he had put in as a reformed man, he obviously had yet to balance out the evil he had done, and here he was... in hell...

"OK, I think he knows where he is; who he is;" Xander shrugged a pair of shoulders which seemed heavier than normal; "he even knows who I am- do we have to that that 'how many fingers' thing, Will?"

"Angel- can you move?" Willow had posed a good question. He looked around. Wait a moment; same body, same setting- the museum. Same people; Xander, Giles and the gang.

He began to lift an arm then realized he couldn't. He altered his glance down towards his abdomen, wherein lay the problem; a huge, bloody spear of high quality craftsmanship but far from discreet in its application- skewering his body like a kebab and missing his heart by a mere fraction of an inch.

Lying on his back and inescapably rooted to the spot, he looked around, noticing the prostrate form of the demon Faust beside him, head down... or, at least, what remained of his head down.

Giles and Reily took an arm each and carefully pulled the punctured Angel to his feet; the injured party managing only a candid "Mind the heart."

"Jeez." Xander crouched to see the far wall through the gaping hole in the vampire's midsection; "You look half dead, which I guess in your case is a compliment."

A million thoughts were racing through Angel's head right now but one predictably received preference; "Buffy?"

Giles and Willow exchanged ominous glances.

"Where's Buffy?" Every particle of Angel's being that wasn't still unconscious or spread out over the museum floor like bits of a steamrollered haggis demanded an answer.

"She... er..." Giles was weighing up the best possible way to break such a thing to someone. He wasn't a councilor, he was a librarian. "Buffy's... Sang took her. We were trapped and you were... otherwise occupied."

"Where did he take her?" Angel was shaking like a prize fighting pit bull. Like a severely injured, one pointedly vengeful pit bull.

"Errr... I don't know. It took us some time to break out. They'll be long gone by now. I imagine Sang has some sort of hideout somewhere..."

"You couldn't be more- you know- specific?" Xander wasn't exactly being helpful.

"Well wherever he's taken her, we'll find them." Angel pushed past his would be saviors and made for the nearest exit, leaving Giles to hope that he would realize day had dawned before throwing open the doors and going on what would have been a painfully short lived daylight rampage.

Willow - trusting soul that she was, took Giles to one side- "Don't you think we should've told him the truth?" Giles rubbed his glasses and scratched his head. "I'm not sure if even I believe the 'truth ' yet. No. We need Angel in one piece if we are to... if we are to salvage anything from this. If we are to retrieve that chalice before the balance of good and evil is made worse, if such a thing can be imagined. And if Angel is to be of any use to us, he'll need rest- as will we."

****

Angel was pacing up and down. That was a bad sign.

A deadly silence had descended on the room. An empty, lost feeling had captured everyone's hearts like a rogue gypsy curse- a sensation akin to the moment your stomach turns on a bumpy plane ride, but prolonged.

Everyone busied themselves with other things; struggling fruitlessly to fill that void with something else which they knew could never compare. Something was missing- an aching, gaping gap in each of their souls.

Angel- the only one who had not yet been told the whole story, was noticeably the most severely effected- taken over by the most intense frustration, which persuaded Giles that his decision to keep the secret had been a good one.

"Can't you hurry up?" The reformed vampire, despite knowing he was going to live forever, proved remarkably impatient.

Right now, he wanted nothing more than to kill people- in a good way- but when you don't know where to find your preferred victims.

Willow was typing frantically on a keyboard. There must have been some clue somewhere alluding to a crazy vampire-come-slayer with an unhealthy taste in Himalayan stashes of ancient French antiques and an enigmatic comprehension of both the artistic and the brutal. You could get anything on the internet, and that included demonic killer's home addresses, surely?

Reily, despite having graduated with flying colors and always having been the model student at college, still looked strangely out of place with his head in a book.

'Military man = bonehead is one of those classic clichés.

"We're doing the best we can." Angel, looking gruff, took exception to Reily's assurance; grabbing him around the collar like a misbehaving school kid and slamming him up against a swamped and fragile bookcase- "Well the best you can doesn't look good enough."

Reily retaliated in like manner, leaving Willow to break the stare down with a forlorn "will you two stop arguing- it's not gonna bring Buffy b... I mean, its not gonna help us find Buffy."

Both men saw the logic in this and backed down- the issues between them destined never to be resolved.

Xander slammed a rambling and highly irrelevant medieval volume shut and declared to himself that he was an asker not an answerer; an excuse which allowed him to pose all the blatantly obvious questions without ever having to be drawn on a solution. "So G-man; I'm a slayer, I'm a vampire, I obviously live somewhere in cloud cuckoo land and I've just... taken the local demonic butt-kicker- where do I go?"

Giles' eyes remained glued to a worn and largely incomprehensible manuscript as he indulged Xander's amateur attempt at criminal psychology. He realized it was just his strange way of fighting anger, depression and overriding grief to hide behind a veil of humor, and perhaps his approach was more constructive anyhow. Searching ancient texts for information on such a young vampire was hardly likely to yield any tangible results. "I don't know." For Giles this was a notable if inconveniently timed first.

"I mean, you killed this guy once, right?"

"Tried, yes-" Giles readjusted hid glasses in a familiar if slightly more uneasy than usual manner; "and until last night I believed I had succeeded." He had never wanted to think, let alone talk about those times ever again. Years would pass where he would busy himself sufficiently to forget. To have it all flood back; to have the past creep up on him like that and assault him unexpectedly in such a callous manner was a recurring nightmare come true.

"I mean, this Sang guy- he's a psycho, right?" Xander was still trying to get into character for his all too fruitless evaluation of their opponent.

"Err... yes." At least he and the 'G-man' agreed on something mildly intellectual; "Sang- both Jacques and his sister- were friends of mine. They were good friends, but I never appreciated them in my wasted youth. Sang is tortured, and I feel for him; the human being within him at least."

"But he's a vamp, right?" Xander was taking his crash course in demonology right here- "the human being is gone, isn't that how it works?"

Giles rolled the eloquent, priceless but utterly useless manuscript like an exhausted Elizabethan town crier having just finished belting out the day's news to a disinterested and unappreciative community who just wanted nothing more than a bit of peace and quiet. "The body is designed for only one soul. Jacques... Jacques and I broke that rule. When we transferred Sarira's soul to him, the problems began."

"You unbalanced a law of nature-" Willow's contribution to the discussion was always going to be more decisive than her lifelong friend's- "but there's still something I don't get. I mean, Jacques was a good guy before he fought the vamp that he challenged, right? But to become a vampire don't you need to drink of the vampire too?"

"Technically." When Giles said 'technically', he might as well of said 'well, actually, no'- "To be turned by a vampire it isn't enough to be bitten by one. A victim must also share the vampire's blood."

"So how'd that happen when Jacques was a good guy?" Xander had settled well in this 'asker as opposed to answerer' role, which was made easier by the fact that Giles was always forthcoming with the solutions-

"The transference of blood can occur in many ways. A vampire must drain it's victim, but the reverse is not true. There have been cases of people who have died combating vampires turning, for example, due simply to having cut the demon's lips beforehand in battle. There have also been more worrying cases of particularly calculated vampires injecting victims with their own blood."

"OK, sick and twisted stuff aside," For someone who regularly dealt with rabbit's feet and newt's eyes, Willow possessed a strangely queasy stomach- "Sang was turned by the vamp, however it happened."

"Yes. The vampire took my friend's soul- everything he was..."

"So how can a guy be tortured if he doesn't have a soul?" Oz's observation made more sense than any of the musty old books they were laboriously plodding through. He was a man of few words, but those that did slip through often raised important points.

Giles, on the other hand, realized he clearly hadn't waffled enough- the gang had not yet comprehended the delicate processes and results occurring out of a cocktail of soul transference and vampire bites- "The vampire took Jacques soul..."

"But not his sister's!" Something had clicked in Xander's head as if a light bulb had been switched on in the center of his brain like you see in cartoons. He'd got it all figured out... at last- "One bite, one soul, right? I mean, at least in some sadistic kind of way its fair." Giles nodded solemnly but let Xander continue to share his rare brainwave- "That's why he fights like a slayer- he still is a slayer. He still has his sister's soul, even though he's lost his own."

"Which explains the tattoo." Willow had in fairness had most of it worked out a while ago, but had allowed Xander his fleeting moment of glory; "It binds the demon to the host so that the soul left inside can't exorcise it. And it covers just one side of his face because..."

"Because the vampire in actuality doesn't have full control." Giles appreciated that there was a plus point in there somewhere, but in their present predicament it was difficult to decipher.

"OK, so we've got a 'tortured' vampire, so what?" Anya was subtle as usual. Angel tried to look inconspicuous- hovering silently in the shadows as circumstance often befitted him.

"Sang is volatile." If anyone was going to dig out that elusive plus point, it was Giles; "He's unstable. It must be a constant battle in his head. Two dueling forces- the demon and the slayer. The slayer can't win because of the binding spell, but she refuses to give in. It must induce a great amount of pain, and I'd imagine acute scitsophrenia."

"Great." Angel was still miffed as to why he wasn't cracking heads right now; "Well if anyone else is up for inflicting a great amount of pain, I'm just wanting to know where to go to dish it out."

Willow defused another face-to-face between the aggressive Angel and the defensive Reily with an excited- "I've got it!"

The proclamation effected a near group hug around the flickering computer screen. Not wanting enough time to slip by for Angel and Reily's space induced head-to-head to become a much less agreeable fist-to-head, she quickly elaborated. "Look, here- on the Western Railway's web site. This has got to be it."

"Yeah, got to be." Xander was not the only one who failed to see the connection between crackpot, archeology obsessed vampire slayer nibbling vampires and... trains.

"OK, OK-" There was surely method to Willow's twisted deduction... somewhere. "The chalice Sang used to..."

"To tip the scale in favor of evil." Giles would always lend a helping hand.

"...Right. The artifacts in that exhibition were flown into LA then brought to Sunnydale on the old rail route. They usually only use it for industrial stuff these days."

"I know vamps like clinging to old traditions, but haven't they heard of lorries and stuff?" Xander was indeed the archetypical modern man.

"There's an old service depot just outside town where the stuff was being quarantined. It would be the perfect place..."

"If Sang was bringing in more artifacts." Giles was on the ball.

"Or the contents of more templar tombs." Oz's theory was sadly more likely than the idea that the maniacal neck sucker was simply keen to fill up the museum shelves and pull in the punters.

In the course of the conversation, Reily had spotted something right up his street- "His forces must be pretty depleted. He'll need reinforcements."

Angel rolled his eyes and clenched his fist. 'Great to have a military mind on board given nobody seems to be intending to do ant fighting around here any time soon.' He stopped a moment and considered the implications of Willow's little discovery. They had a target, they had a location. What was he waiting for? All they needed now was a method, and in Angel's extensive two hundred and forty five odd years of experience, violence was always the best policy.

"So we go kill the vampire and un-turn the cup?" Xander was back in cunning plan mode.

"Destroying it should suffice." And Giles successfully played Mr. Informative in his own patented dry, humorless fashion.

"Destruction's good- I'm up for that." Xander wasn't great at constructive thought, but destructive thought? "But... suffice for what?"

"To realign the polar opposites on which the universe is based." Giles could make the vastest concepts appear, well, suitably vast.

"Oh yeah, so we burst in there, brawl a bit, wave a few crucifixes, brandish a couple of stakes and generally look scary." Xander had comprehended the plot so far, but at this point lay a slight stumbling block- "One little, tiny, itsy-bitsy problem; no slayer."

Giles nodded. This had been a significant omission from his initial plot, but maybe Xander was to be the one to solve it... Then again, maybe not...

"So what we got? A pissed librarian, a computer geek- no offense, Will- a wolf boy who'd have been great if we didn't have a nice crescent moon tonight, a reformed demon who's conveniently lost all her power, an out of work soldier and the amazing Mr. Dead the talking corpse. Oh yeah, and me." Faces the room over sank in unison. Still, they had Angel- this guy was a one man protection agency. A touchy one man protection agency.

Angel cracked his knuckles and motioned towards the door- he'd had enough. "So we break in, me and Reily hold them off, you guys get the chalice and I go find Buffy."

Reily was about to lodge a complaint, which was Angel's cue to reassert his plan- "I go find Buffy."

****

A fierce bolt of lightening cuddled the pouting night sky and crumpled majestically into an eerie silence as the rusted, decrepit form of the old railway service depot building loomed like a gigantic tombstone out of the dreary dust of rural California.

Nothingness stretched as far as the eye could see; a boundless, featureless expanse of sandy emptiness which just seemed to scream out its lonesome anguish.

A complicated mesh of intertwining railroad tracks ran in and out of each other like a dropped can of spaghetti and a distant freight train rumbled in the distance like an approaching storm.

Willow shivered. Something in the air was not good, and she wasn't referring to the faint smell of rotting fish.

The depot building stood out in the desolate landscape like a nerd in a frat party; a metaphor which made Xander cringe.

It beckoned them in like the wicked witch to Hansel and Gretel; like the bony hand of death welcoming them to their judgment day.

A huge, buckled, stainless steel gate edged open in a minimal wind which should not have been strong enough to budge it, and Xander jumped as another growling bolt of lightening crackled and snapped overhead without warning as if he was in a giant rice krispies bowl. "Sunnydale?" He hid the shock poorly by clicking his neck and bouncing on his toes; "I never knew that name could ever be misconstrued as a poignant piece of irony."

Angel's attitude was a bit more direct, and a lot more decisive.

He skipped through the jeering gateway and slipped into the darkness of the crooning three story building, which persuaded the others to scuttle behind him into what was undoubtedly a trap in the fear that staying where they were may well have exposed them to something lurking out there that the virtuous vampire couldn't protect them from.

****

"Alas poor Faust..." Sang's morbid fascination with death was perhaps only mildly more worrying than the pitch black humored sarcasm he displayed in the face of personal tragedy. "I knew him... well, I knew him, which basically translates as I knew him as an ugly, mute, obsessed, savage hell beast, but hey; I knew him."

Elysia smiled uneasily in a corner. Sang continually both amused and scared her. He lived his life right out there on the edge of comic optimism and absolute insanity. Motivated by a confusing cocktail of nobility and utter callousness, he cut an unpredictable, incomprehensible character. She had given up trying to work him out years ago. Perhaps if she had bared in mind that really she was attempting to analyze two people rather than one, she would have had his number.

Sang struggled to recall any sentence of over three or four words he had shared with the fallen demon Faust in his lifetime and quickly gave up. He was a serial fidgiter; he had been the kind of kid who tapped pen tops on desks and basically pissed all his classmates off. He had been the kind of teenager who couldn't sit down and read one of his bitterly tedious text books without having something else on the go in the background to satisfy his eager and restless mind. As an adult, he had been lucky to have avoided being banged up in a mental institution for some trivial little disorder or other, but only because he'd eaten his psychiatrist for breakfast; literally.

And now here he was; supposedly lamenting his deceased friend's death, and all he could think about was his next madcap venture; the next deadly step towards making this world an uninhabitable hell. "Well, no use in crying over spilt Satan spawn..."

He absent mindedly flicked a well sharpened wooden stake into the air and bounced in blunt side down on his chest like a soccer player controlling the ball before taking a shot on goal. Elysia frowned. Surely for a vampire that was a dangerous habit, but Sang viewed life and death differently to most people, after all, he had a unique perspective. He had two lives; his sisters and his own. Actually, the two tended to duel inside his head and one intermittently took over from the other. This is why, in Elysia's humble opinion, he was so unpredictable. This was why, also, he should have been committed decades ago.

Angel pushed past a gothic stand adorned with dribbling red candles with a fierce, demonic vengeance in his eyes and leapt up a set of narrow oak stairs like a rabid mountain goat; only the rhythmic creak of the wood remaining to indicate which way he had gone by the time the others had got inside the spooky and apparently deserted building.

"Well I say follow the guy who smells the blood." Xander's logic was flawless though obvious.

"Maybe we'd better keep a low profile." Willow held him back.

"Yeah; I don't wanna be too near that guy when he flips; I mean when he finds out..."

There are subtler ways of creeping up on a mourning adversary than making talcum powder of his skeletal bodyguards and storming into his dimly lit, artistically decorated top floor hideaway like a gang of hoologans in a fragile high school, but Angel had never been one for the quiet life.

Sang's twisted grin only became broader in the face of adversity. "Angelus; I've heard so much about you; especially from your slayer friend. Well, actually, I haven't heard much from her per se; she hasn't really said much..."

"Where is she?" Angel bundled by a cohort of clustered coffin shaped crates adorned with lavish Tibetan script and made for the mischievous looking Sang across the dusty, ill kempt floor.

Sang; the smaller and younger man by quite some way though unquestionably the more deranged, backtracked and waved Elysia into the darkness at the back of the industrial debris cluttered room to where that pungent, fishy stench was coming from... He kicked a ceremonial candle stand aside and glanced down at the sprawling pagan symbol he and his colleagues had painted on the floor as the basis for their reanimation rituals; thus opening up an ample space in the middle of the room in which to brawl. Giles and the other crept with much greater caution up the remainder of the rickety staircase and drifted rather than burst into the psychopathic vampire's musty penthouse.

It was at this point that Angel's purposeful march was cut dead as another shape moved slowly out of the darkness towards him. A shape which jogged memories; good memories, happy memories.

Sometimes a little too happy. But his relieved expression duly dropped into one of primeval horror as the shadowy figure stepped into the light. Because since the last time he had seen her, she had lost something...

"Buffy??" With Angel understandably speechless, Xander borrowed his patented line and did the talking for him.

Sang giggled incessantly and watched his uninvited guest's reaction to his new creation. There was some sort of insane pleasure to be gleaned from taking something sweet and virtuous, rippling it apart and resurrecting it as something cold, dark and satisfyingly evil.

It was a demented power trip to take a hero and make it an anti hero.

Buffy, wearing a gaunt and weary look and sporting a somber, tired demeanor, appeared to have had a few too many nights out on the town in quick succession.

Her eyes had dulled to a murky green-gray; doused in an over abundant smudge of black eye shadow which along with her washing powder white skin tint made her look like some kind of emaciated drug addict.

Decked out in jet black lipstick and similarly colored highlights running through her hair in clumsily applied streaks, and dressed in a plethora of grim black from tight fitting PVC top to glinting leather jeans, Xander at first frowned at the notion that she had gone for the techno punk gothic look- a bonifide Buffster fashion no-no, before the far harsher reality set in.

"Buff- that crazy death metal chic look... I would say I see where you're coming from, but you know I wouldn't be seen dead in leather."

A subtle, sinister sneer crept across Buffy's face.

Angel was still pretty much rooted to the spot, mesmerized by a gut wrenching fear he didn't think he had encountered before, and he's seen a fair handful of scary things in his time. Taking that debilitating fear into account, he was unlikely to be able to put two and two together as swiftly as his battle hardened conscience would have liked.

The rest of the gang hung their heads in mixed despair and disbelief, which just left Xander; who habitually warded off terror with humor, and the flamboyant though entirely twisted Sang to carry the conversation.

"Aw, I dunno." Sang was reveling in his newfound role as sire; "I think this is a good stylistic move for her. At least now she can wear stuff off the shoulder without the fear of getting bit."

By this time Willow was drifting in disbelief towards them to get a better look, hoping against hope that Buffy had just dramatically altered her fashion sense and hadn't become an undead American herself.

Xander was still busy combating sorrow with comedy- "What's happened to the puns- the one liners? The black humored wit? Come on, Buff; there's gotta be some of you still in there. This isn't the slayer I know."

Buffy made him cringe with an icy stare as if he was a rabbit caught in the headlights and confirmed that the gang's worst nightmare had indeed become a reality with two pointed words- "Bite me."With this, she sent Xander reeling across the room with a hammering right hand, dealt Willow similar treatment as she shoved her into an uneasy stack of wobbling crates and almost smiled with sadistic pleasure- only her new, no nonsense, rage fuelled attitude persuading her that such displays of emotion were unnecessary when the more appetizing prospect of mindless destruction beckoned.

It was at this point that Angel snapped himself out of his trance like bemusement.

The two sized each other up- moving in an imaginary circle around each other with Angel remaining lost in a mind numbing confusion and Buffy, in contrast, clear headed like never before- purposeful like never before.

"I'm sorry, honey." In her new guise, Buffy seemed to be able to make even a term of endearment sound like a metaphorical stake to the heart; "I'm sorry I got mad at you when you walked out on me that night."

Angel knew only too well the night she was referring to. It had progressively been the best and the worst of his life. Until, perhaps, tonight.

Buffy was enjoying this- "I don't blame you now. I know how it feels..." She pressed her head right up to his just to observe him whimper close up; "... to loose your soul." Buffy smirked like an axe wielding maniac just presented with a sharp, fresh new blade and a group of meek young children to butcher- an evil glint in her eye Angel had never imagined he would ever see there warding him back as if she were uttering some voodoo curse.

The feeling hadn't quite come back into his fingers yet. He was still numb- almost paralyzed with disbelief. In short, he was a sitting target.

Without the slightest pinch of restraint or consideration, Buffy applied a vice like grip to Angel's collar and launched herself into the air- sending them both careering through a grime ridden window of barely sufficient size in one far-from-loving bundle.

Sang raised an eyebrow and shrugged with a deranged kind of delight; "That girl knows how to make an exit."

The situation had just gone from bad to worse. Buffy and Angel were busy plummeting from a third story window onto the unforgiving train tracks below. Sang; both vampire and slayer in one and possessing the strength and cunning of both, was clearly calling the shots, and whether numbers worked in the gang's favor or not, depression can be a crippling thing in the height of battle.

But Sang wasn't quite yet satisfied. He had one more trump card left to play in what seemed to be a veritable full hand of aces. Perhaps this final card had something to do with that vomit inducing fishy smell growing progressively stronger...

"Oh, Rupert- I believe I've yet to introduce you to my boss..."

****

Beneath the intermittent light of a flickering lamp hanging above the old, rotten wood strewn platform- the roof of which they had unceremoniously demolished on their descent- Buffy chopped Angel down to earth as if she was felling a towering redwood with a hateful open handed hack to the face.

Angel straightened his jaw and staggered to his unsteady feet with the aid of a flea bitten cargo barrel only to be downed again with a disdainful knee to the midsection and a double fisted thump to the spine.

The blazing platform lamp swung effortlessly in the night sky, adding brief bouts of bright FBI searchlight style illumination to the dim moonlight which sneaked across the criss cross railway tracks and the docile face of the service depot building as if it were a police helicopter scowering the dead landscape for runaway felons.

Angel coughed and spluttered as Buffy recalled all those occasions where she had been the frightened lamb stalked by the savage wolf who had once been her lover and soul mate.

All those times when Angel had used her affection for him as a weapon against her. 'To kill this girl, you've gotta love her', he had said. How the tables turn.

****

Sang stepped aside as if he was a ringmaster introducing a circus freak- a metaphor not far from the truth.

Giles strained his eyes and searched his worst nightmares in wondering what horror his warped childhood friend would bring up next.

Then bang on cue, a hulking, grotesque, pulsating, horn covered, slime drenched, putrid smelling abomination strode slowly out of a dark corner with the lack of pace and purpose of a condemned man walking towards the electric chair.

Willow summed up the entire purpose, appearance and nature of this newly introduced monstrosity in one word- "Uuuuuuwwww."

The creature halted, taken quite aback; an out of place frown slithering across its horrific visage beneath the dripping puss and slime. Obviously a cruel looking creature with a sensitive personality.

"A chaos demon." Giles' spectacle readjusting was getting frantic.

"Maybe your father taught you more than I gave him credit for;" Sang was mildly impressed by the watcher's on the spot knowledge; "This is Baphomet- my benefactor. Without him, none of this would have been possible." Sang patted the giant creature on the back then inconspicuously wiped his hand clean on a nearby crate.

Baphomet; an enigmatic hell beast clearly fragile and impressionable in mind despite being so burly in shape, appeared markedly elated by these comments, and was only restrained from hugging Sang in what would have been a messy embrace by the scheming vampire's next, less complimentary set of comments- "Yeah, he's big, he's ambling, he's ugly and he stinks, but hey- he's got a vault full of cash and he ain't afraid to put his hand in his pocket." Sang began to smile at his benefactor then remembered he would rather not look at him, which forced the lurking Elysia to comfort the instable demon as best she could without actually having to resort to touching him.

Baphomet squeezed the meaty steel chain locked permanently round his trunk like neck and turned up his bottom lip in a pitiful sob.

Xander, despite that bruised jaw he was cradling, was still intent on drawing the positives out of this hopeless situation. If that pug ugly creature was the benefactor of Sang's whole world ending enterprise, then... "I'm gonna change my outlook on life- money can't buy you love."

"Xander- you can't judge someone by looks, you know- he might be a nice, warm, decent, cuddly person inside." Willow's comment forced a look from Xander like that of a vulture sizing up a potential meal- "Did you learn nothing from that computer guy? You said the same thing about him, and didn't he turn out to be a blood lusting, psycho virtual demon thingy?"

"Well, yeah, but not all demons are..."

"I wouldn't wanna get 'cuddly' with that guy, Will; and yes, all demons are evil."

That comment made, an icy chill went through Xander's body which persuaded him to attempt fruitlessly to cover his tacks and amend what he had just said- stopping only to shiver again as he noticed Anya was listening.

Meanwhile, Sang was pacing impatiently; grinning in his own maniacal manner at the realization that he had just stacked the odds further against his pitiful opposition.

It was true- he did like a fight, but this was just going to be a slaughter. It was quite clear to all that it was the psychotic vamp and not his moping master who was in control here. It was Sang's own twisted game, and he would make and break the rules however he saw fit. It was his design- his anarchic theatre. It was a comedy, a horror- a tragedy, but right now, it just needed a bit of violence.

****

Buffy licked her lips like a sweet toothed kid in an ice-cream factory and drove her former squeeze through a hefty column of collapsible wooden caskets with a spinning back kick to the chest.

She flicked her hair back as if she was the star of some arcane kind of timotei commercial and cracked her knuckles while the physically dazed and emotionally shaken Angel rose painfully to his feet with a long lost look in his eyes. This was fun.

It was as if all the trivial tribulations of day to day life has been lifted from her shoulders. There was no fear anymore; no fear of failure, no fear of doing the wrong thing. No fear of death. When you know that one day- any day, could well be your last, you live in constant fear. Fear of loosing all this- this slippery, intangible thing called life.

When you know one day fate is going to rip this thing away from you without warning, fear rules your life. It determines your every action and motivation- the knowledge that one day you're going to loose grip on life and it's going to slip through your fingers. You're always looking over your shoulder for the grim reaper to raise its ugly head. You feel inclined to do good just in case you'll soon be forced to pay for your sins in whatever lurks on the other side of death's curtain.

When you have all of eternity, however, fear, responsibility, duty- they all go out the window.

Buffy's hands and feet twitched with an eager, sinister intent. She used to be so conscientious- so ethical. So weak. She'd died before, but this was different. She had woken up a whole new Buffy, one who suddenly appreciated the merits of destruction.

"I remember you were always easy, babe."

Angel's fragile heart would have been suitably wounded by those words had that dull, ringing sound in his ears abated by now. "Buffy... you... what's happened to you?"

In truth, he knew the answer. It was just that he wished so deeply that it wasn't so. That he had made a mistake somewhere down the line. That this was all a mix-up.

Buffy was all too keen to enlighten him- "I dunno, I guess I wanted a change of scenery. Something deep inside, you know, was dissatisfied. It was getting to me- something in my soul. So... so I ripped it out and decided to start afresh."

Angel was up to the level of a weary crouch by now, his eyes glazed by a mixture of impending unconsciousness and tears. To Buffy, tears were no less rewarding that blood, but when a hunter spears his prey, he doesn't leave it to crawl away and die in peace, he finishes the stricken creature off- "I thought I'd try living on the other side of the fence; your side. I thought I'd leave you in the lerch and come back with a brand new attitude. I dunno why- I guess someone else gave me the idea. Call it retribution. Some part of me still hurts over that. You should have told me how good life is... OK; how good death is on the dark side. You never told me about the freedom- freedom from duty, from responsibility, from morality. The freedom to do whatever the hell you want."

Angel steadied himself on a crooked old railing- last night's severe spear injury still biting into his chest like a corrosive acid- and found it even more difficult to string a sentence together than normal- "It's not freedom, Buffy. It's hell. It might seem new; fresh; alive, but you're still a slave. A slave to your darkest desires, to your basest emotions- to your passions."

"Slave to passion, huh?" Buffy swaggered like a wild west gunslinger facing a meek mannered sheriff; "Funny- I never heard that when you were stalking me every night; plotting to take everything I loved away from me in the most gruesome way possible. Trying to drive me crazy because you knew I loved you and you didn't give a damn."

"Buffy... I..."

"Well that's loved; past tense. I'm over it. You screwed with me and you shouldn't have, and you just kept on at it- screwing with my head. Well I never paid you back. I just kept on loving you, whatever you did- whoever you killed. But you know, life's a bitch, and now life's over... I can be a bitch too..." With that, Angel's emotional trauma was swiftly compounded with a sudden trauma of the far more physical variety- a swinging roundhouse to the head depriving him of his center of gravity and a neat turn-around heel to the stomach once again dropping him to his feet and sending him

plunging off the worn stone platform to the unforgiving tracks below like a mafia snitch dumped into the Hudson kitted out in the latest in designer concrete boots.

****

Elysia absent mindedly ran a finger around the rim of the priceless antique cup which had brought this whole devilish debacle about; the low pitched, resonating hum alerting Giles to the task in hand- a task, recent revelations taken into consideration, that the would be saboteurs had understandably forgotten about.

"The chalice..."

But while men of thoughts thought, men of action acted, and Reily, for one, was a man of action. Sang waved him on with an impish giggle and stretched a leg out at an impossible angle like a Hong Kong movie stunt double limbering up.

To the depraved mind there was just something incomparably amusing about busting heads.

"Xander- the chalice." Giles was at last getting his act together. It wasn't every day a man sees his protégé not only ruined- desecrated by the very forces he was sworn to combat, but even worse than that- turned into one of them.

He could have moped and mourned. He intended to mope and mourn, but despite feeling as if he'd had his heart wrenched out and eaten by Satan himself, he was well aware that there was a time and a place, and that right now, number one priority was to get hold of that ornate glass cup, smash it to pieces before anything worse happened to this world- if that was at all possible- and pray that the damage that had already been done would therefore be undone.

Xander- still nursing that sore jaw, tried in vain to look as innocent and inept as he could, knowing both what Giles was about to tell him to do and that that command would involve him making his way over there to that dark corner to grapple away that chalice, which, if his calculations served him right, meant somehow sneaking by that big, nasty, pungent, dumb, savage looking demon.

"Xander- the chalice is the key."

"Eeer... and you want me to get it, right?"

"If we are to stop this world plunging further into the abyss- to prevent the balance of good and evil being tilted further towards..."

"You wouldn't believe me if I said my leg just cramped up?" Across the hall, Sang introduced Reily to the astute, pagan icon plastered floor with a series of gravity defying boots to the head. If that was the alternative, maybe Xander was better off going for the cup.

"I'll do it." Anya's all too eager offer had just saved Xander's life. He liked that. A tough woman. A girlfriend you could depend on. A partner with whom a man could be as weedy and pathetic and helpless as he liked and not be ashamed to admit it. Hang on, Anya was surely a soon-to-be-dead partner if that big, slimy, putrid...

"Look, babes, I appreciate you wanna wage domestic warfare on your mom, I mean, don't we all, but if that demon gets you first, I'll... I'll... I'll... Well, I dunno, I might cry or something."

"Me and Oz'll distract him." Here was another woman ready to die for Xander, but then, with Willow that wasn't so unusual. Maybe someone had secretly performed one of those crazy love spells on everyone again.

They formed an amateur looking grid iron huddle with Xander, worryingly, looking as if he was calling the next play. "OK, so here's the deal. Will and Oz distract the big guy, Anya grabs the grail, right?"

Anya wasn't best pleased at this arrangement; "Xander, come on- you're with me."

"Oooooh, no, no, no. When people in normal towns refer to their girlfriends moms as fire breathing dragons, it's meant metaphorically. In this town, I'm not taking the chance."

"Xander- you go with Anya." Clearly Giles, in his infinite wisdom, had the deciding vote.

"But G-man, what about you?"

Giles removed his glasses, carefully folded them up and stashed them away in a concealed shirt pocket. Watcher's aren't taught to do that unless the world is about to end- " I have some unfinished business with the puppet master."

****

Angel's head clunked sickeningly against a stern metal points lever as he reeled from another overly passionate shot from the much changed Buffy.

He cursed whatever malevolent powers were behind all this as he straightened out the facts in his muddled mind. Most importantly, the fact that he now knew what he had to do- what he had never forgiven himself for trying to do that night years ago at the old mansion. That thing his soul would never have forgiven him for once he had got it back.

He would have to do of his own volition that thing that he had nightmares of Angelus doing. He would have to kill Buffy.

But for the moment, the sadistic slayer was very much alive, in a way at least, and most definitely kicking; "You know, this is refreshing. To be on top. I was always a conventional girl- I guess that was my mistake. You were always on top- in reality... in my dreams..."

Angel scrabbled around blindly in the wreckage of a bulky cargo crate which Buffy had previously driven him through like the proverbial hot knife through butter for a shattered piece of wood which could roughly be labeled a stake- trying his level best to block out the verbal torture she was dishing out as he went.

"Well now it's my turn to be on top. To play the games. Actually, I think I've had it with the games already. I've had enough of letting life drift away from me. I'm sick of playing my part like I'm meant to- I'm gonna change the script. I'm wanna live by life, and I've got a lot of it to live, right?" She circled Angel like a playground bully- "I hate loose ends. You can't start afresh- you can't be free, with so many things playing on your mind. You've gotta cut your ties, so I guess for me to live my life, you've gotta die." She shrugged and sent a weighty industrial cog skimming across the dilapidated train tracks with a huge military boot which appeared, like the rest of her unfamiliar gothic getup, contrary to her petite form.

An approaching freight train rattled and groaned nearby; a blurred speck of a headlight chugging into view on what could- if this hadn't been the dead of night- have been a distinguishable horizon.

Angel had stumbled upon an appropriate weapon, and took steps to hide it in his spacious trench coat sleeve.

Buffy, though, wasn't finished- "See that was always the thing about us. That was why we were doomed from the start. Star crossed lovers. I'm the slayer, you're a vampire. Blinded by love we never though to stop and do the math. One day, we'd just have to kill each other."

"And now?"

"Now I guess I fit in across the board. Maybe I'll end up having to kill myself. Maybe I'll balance myself out. But you? You're still a freak. A vamp with a soul. A contradiction. An outcast."

"You're not Buffy." Angel was having trouble convincing even himself, but he knew that if he was to avoid getting himself killed too, he'd have to have it clear in his head that Buffy was gone. That this malicious demon that had stolen her shell was all that was left.

"I'm more Buffy than she ever was. Her strength- her passion. Buffy's more alive in death than she ever was in life."

"You're just a demon;" Angel's grip on his hidden weapon tightened- "a heartless, soulless..."

"But I'm still the chosen one, and right now, I'm gonna do the choosing, and I choose that you die."

Angel skillfully ducked a wild swipe and returned one of his own, this time far more successful.

He kept his stake concealed and sent Buffy sprawling against the edge of the platform with a snapping heel to the head.

He gritted his teeth. This was going to hurt him more than it was going to hurt her.

****

Reily wandered absent mindedly onto a deceptive uppercut and a punishing left hook and found himself floundering to recall being hit by anything other than an inescapable blur as he keeled over like a lofty skyscraper packed at the base with a generous helping of C5.

Sang was quick; double quick, but if quizzed of the nature of his inhuman pace, he doubtlessly would have muttered something about sacred blood, birth rights and so on and so forth, which persuaded Reily to keep any observations he had about Sang to himself. The last thing he wanted was to be drawn into another aimless discussion about Sixteenth centaury myth and legend. That, as he recalled, was Gilles' job.

Sang hopped from one foot to the other like a sprightly welterweight who had yet to be introduced to the harsh, painful pro circuit.

Beating up helpless and innocent humans may well have been fun, but it was hardly challenging.

A hopeful right cross was easily swallowed up by the deranged vampire's undulating guard before Reily was dutifully deposited onto the floor once again with the aid of a jackhammer heel to the jaw.

Reily rolled over a few times, shook his head and scolded himself at his flimsy battle tactics- "Hell, sometimes I wish I still had that chip in my head- it might have messed me up but at least it made me a better soldier."

Sang's dissatisfied expression duly changed as the one human being he would enjoy pummeling to an unrecognizable pulp took a bold although somewhat ill advised step towards him.

"Ripper."

Giles reminded himself not to be drawn into a rash and undoubtedly fatal attack. Sang may have hated him- although the psychotic vampire's emotions were clearly as scrambled as the contents of a bad egg under the wheels of a bug exterminator's truck- and he had good reason. But for every reason he had, Giles had three more to hate him back.

He clenched his fists the way he did when an inconsiderate student brought back a musty tome detailing the specifics of demonic ascensions which he had taken out months ago 'for a laugh' the day after graduation. Thankfully, bonifide students tended not to bowwow such volumes, which was handy, but hey- even librarians have nightmares.

Sang appeared to feed off other people's torment- their frustration; their despair. It amused him. It entertained him.

Giles was a man of letters, and the crafty vamp knew just how to make him squirm- torture him with words- "Come on, Rupert- you've been waiting for this. All those years. Since that night you left me to die you've wished you'd had the guts to ring my neck yourself. Just to be sure. Watching me burn wasn't enough. You wanted it up close and personal- you wanted to feel the life ebb out of me." Giles remained silent. He had no argument with Sang's appraisal of the situation so far.

"But you can't ring a vampire's neck, can you Rupe; you can't choke the life out of something that's already dead. You forced yourself to forget about me, but deep inside you wondered- you wondered if I was still around."

In the background, Riley regained his footing but remained in a cautious crouch. Fighting fire with fire wasn't going to get him anywhere except perhaps to an early grave, which made guerilla warfare the order of the day. He would lurk, await his moment and then strike.

Giles, unusually, by now possessed no such patience, and lunged into Sang with a series of infuriated midsection punches which hardly made the maniacal demon flinch, eventually reducing the attacker to despair and the proposed victim to uncontrollable laughter- "Where's your fighting spirit gone, Ripper? It's not like the old days anymore. When you used to have my number- when you bossed me around, when you beat me up. Times change. You're gonna have to do a lot better than that."

Giles raised his head in defiance only to see an unknown boot connect with Sang's grimly decorated face with enviable purpose and expertise- sending him into a contorting backward spiral which left him rolling painfully onto one knee as an instinctive hand shot up to console the wound.

"That was more like it..." was all he could murmur before rising gradually to his feet. That wasn't the fury of a vexed watcher which had dumped him so unceremoniously on the floor. That shot possessed a style and grace, not to mention force, that could only be applied by...

Faith shrugged her shoulders, dusted off a scruffy looking leather jacket and spat a tasteless hunk of gum out of the shattered hole which had recently housed a window pane- "I think I was called..."

Sang had taken a lot of things in his life. He had dealt with a lot of grief- a lot of frustration. He had had his beloved sister- the only family he ever had- murdered by a callous creature of the night. He had had his very soul stolen from him in a rashly conceived fight to the death with her killer which to this day he couldn't work out if he had won or lost. He had been torched like a weener on a summer camp barbeque by his so called best friend- a friend who had spent his life making Sang's a misery, but unfortunately the only friend he had. He'd taken it all with dignity. He had maintained a positive, comical attitude to life and death, and never let all its trials and tribulations get under his skin.

But this complicated plot of his to reek revenge and bring the world within singeing distance of hell was his life's work? The painstaking decade long hunt for buried treasure, that pompous pagan ceremony, the time consuming reanimation rituals involved in building up a skeletal army capable of ousting a small Caribbean dictatorship, the crafty assembling of a cast of do good, two cent 'heroes' ripe for the slaughter; that challenging battle with the slayer...

All that work and somebody comes along and ruins it.

Faith capitalized on Sang's momentary lapse of concentration to send him careering into an elaborate candle stand with an arching roundhouse which felt like a hammer to the eardrum- "Miss me guys?"

Giles and company nodded uneasily in light of Faith's shall-we-say unendearing relationship with the gang- realizing that she might just be their only hope and if she had had one of her trademark changes of heart it was best to hide the fact that in reality the answer to her question was 'no'.

****

"Mother."

"Anya."

Xander- overcome with a sudden urgency which seemed to bite into his soul like a hungry pair of teeth, placed as much distance between himself and Elysia as humanly possible and spoke as if he was being lip synced in fast forward; "OK, that's the pleasantries over, um... Mrs. Anya- can we have the chalice?"

"Ms." Elysia's eyes blazed with a ferocious intensity which made Xander leap backwards like a petrified kid caught skipping school by an angry parent. 'Scorned woman, right- not likely to be shacked up with a husband in a cozy relationship...' He leant a nervous glance towards Willow and Oz, who were still cajoling the giant but thankfully mahogany plank dense and carnival float slow Baphomet with a set of neatly choreographed evasive steps which had him plodding around between them like a much picked on child having his lunch tossed between two giggling bullies; dripping slime and moaning all the way.

Xander shrugged. That guy belonged in a mental home- or maybe a crypt...

****

Angel was finally getting his act together. He knew what he had to do, and he knew how he had to do it. He was still smitten with Buffy. He still loved her- he always had. Since that fateful day when he was an unkempt, unfed street urchin. When his mentor Whistler showed him a beautiful young girl with a great and troubled future. A girl both innocent and accomplished; fragile and superhuman. He had carried around this bare, void like crevasse in his heart since that day- an unfathomable longing which when she was around him would fill with an unquenchable warmth. A warmth which made him feel he was something- someone. That he meant something. A warmth which made him feel special- blessed. A warmth that made him feel like a man again.

Buffy had always made him feel like that- not just when he embraced her, but even when he pushed her away- when he tried to deny her- when he tried to forget her. When he tried to live without her.

But this... this wasn't Buffy.

He rolled underneath her ferocious back fist like a bowling ball aimed for the ten pin and ended up behind her, rose with a cracking heel to her exposed ribs and hurled her head first by the hair into the sharp edge of an abandoned old goods carriage.

Buffy awarded herself a depraved smirk as she felt the steady trickle of not-so-fresh blood ooze down her face from a nasty eyebrow wound as if such an injury was something to be proud of.

She readjusted her balance and tasted the sweet-sour, nauseating- invigorating taste as the precious hemoglobin seeped unfettered down her misleadingly dainty cheek.

As she turned, Angel's mouth dropped open for a moment and he lowered his fists.

He couldn't bare to see Buffy hurt. Even the smallest scratch and he'd know about it the moment he saw her. He could just tell, whether it was the blood, or the look in her eyes, or in the notion that his and her's were two souls made for each other which felt each other's pain first hand, he wasn't sure. All he knew was that when Buffy hurt, he hurt.

He admonished himself- 'This isn't Buffy...' and jammed his eyes shut as if he had just been exposed to the harsh California sunlight.

Buffy indulged in a mischievous smile and recognized that she had him just where she wanted him- caught between love and hate- heroism and failure.

Angel had known the moment he had decided that he would have to kill the love of his life that this wasn't going to be easy. He blocked out the world for a moment and prayed that when he opened his eyes he would see it all clearly. That he would see Buffy as what she now was- a demon- and not the picture of her he kept and cherished in his heart.

He squinted and realized his prayers hadn't been answered. He would have taken the sunlight any day.

****

Faith nonchalantly belted her shell shocked opponent with a cannonball right and reduced him to a crumpled heap with a pinpoint accurate jumping back kick to the sternum.

She flicked back her head as if she was coming up for air after a lengthy round of Halloween apple bobbing and leant Reily a sultry gaze and the words "Hi honey", which was enough to make him scuttle off like an infant crab escaping a ravenous seagull's hungry swoop- preferring to involve himself in the ongoing battle with the monstrous Baphomet, which at the very least brought less bad memories to mind.

Sang frowned with a genuine concern that the retreating Giles had not seen overcome him since their days as unenthusiastic researchers of the mythological and paranormal. In short, since when he was human.

The disgruntled vampire retaliated in kind with a pendulum like roundhouse which soared over Faith's ducking head before receiving a second blow to the gut as the party crashing slayer backed him into a jutting pillar with a three hundred and sixty degree flying heel to the head which wouldn't have looked out of place in a Jackie Chan movie.

Faith swaggered like a convicted murderer given a life sentence then let out after only a few months on parole- a metaphor effective at least in that the first half of it was true.

In contrast, her opponent spluttered and took a moment to gather his senses, a faint, misbegotten grin beginning to form in the corner of his savagely re-split lip.

It was a paradoxical grin; a twisted appreciation of the old proverb that that which doesn't kill you makes you strong, and that... well... that in his case that which does kill you makes you untouchable.

Nothing could hurt Sang anymore, that was why he enjoyed the pain- it was only transitory. Perhaps that was why he had become a certified head case, and maybe that was what he saw in Faith which he appreciated so much. "You're kind of... fiery, for a slayer." He smudged his streaming mouth with a sleeve which the fashion conscious would thankfully notice was cast in the blackest black; "You're reckless; that's good."

Faith, hands on hips, gestured disdainfully, displaying the kind of explosive cocktail of boundless self confidence and disobedient disregard for the subtleties of her 'profession' which made those in the room who knew her fear and respect her in equal measure; "Yeah, well, you had it easy with B. I've got a bit more bite."

****

Elysia twirled the opaque, glinting goblet in her palm and looked down on her only daughter as if she wished she had never been born.

Anya glared straight back in an uncannily similar manner, which got Xander guessing that if there was an 'icy stare' gene, this was where his oft irritable girlfriend had acquired it from.

At first, Anya too wished Elysia hadn't been born... then she did the math.

"Mom, where the hell have you been all these years, as if I care." It wasn't that Anya was bitter or anything, but then again it wasn't like Elysia had ever sent her daughter a postcard.

"Oh, I gotta answer to my little girl now, huh?"

Xander sighed. His family was bad, but Anya and Elysia were like fire and gunpowder.

Protests swiftly became accusations, accusations became insults, and insults threatened to degenerate into fisticuffs.

Xander covered his ears, shut his eyes and felt his spirit drop. This was going to be a long night. It was perhaps this self saving action which prevented him from noticing until too late Elysia- her noticeably short fuse already burnt out, shoving her daughter into him and consequently leaving both of them in prostrate positions on the floor gazing up into the groaning pine rafters.

"Eeer... she's strong, your mom."

Anya sighed while she concocted the next personal dig she would deliver to her despised parent; "Yeah, inhumanly strong."

****

Sang punched the air in delight as he connected with a leaping crescent kick, only to cop a brutal spinning heel to the teeth the moment he landed.

Faiths' follow-up short punch to the stomach was returned with even greater ferocity by her opponent in like manner before a clumsy straight kick was caught at the ankle by the unnervingly swift and exuberant slayer.

Sang's combat conscious mind was working overtime- the pace of the entire exchange electric. He didn't even have to think- he just let himself go and the flow of the fight would carry him. Faith was strangely similar.

Sang performed an athletic back flip to break Faith's grip and immediately unleashed a whipping inside-out side kick to the temple which threw his eager opponent across the breadth of the vivid pagan symbol scrawled floor shoulder first into a collection of assorted boxes and barrels which crumbled sorrowfully into a mismatched heap at the momentum of her landing.

Giles- relegated to the sidelines- strained his eyes and fought to keep up. These two were fuelled by something perhaps entirely beyond their control.

Faith's axe kick was avoided only through the clever utilization of Sang's ultra quick reflexes, and the undead brawler's reverse roundhouse fared little better as the slayer crouched down like an NBA superstar in a low ceilinged room.

Another twirling heel from Faith soared just vital inches above Sang's head before her opponent could muster the strength to fling back a whole hearted spinning top style foot which sailed, again, inches over her head.

Both paused simultaneously. There was a suspenseful hush in which Giles envisioned a cluster of tumbleweed trundling across the scene while Faith and Sang retained their fighting stances but stopped to take a momentary break while she drew back all the oxygen she had lost in that high octane clash and he redrew his battle plan- "You're good." Sang was honestly impressed.

The pair circled each other like two ends of a taught piece of string.

"You're not bad yourself." And Faith's praise was also worryingly genuine. There was a mutual respect here; a natural, unspoken comprehension of each other's crazed minds.

Faith felt strangely at home here- a warped firebrand in her element. She and Sang had a lot in common, despite battling for opposite sides.

This time it was the vampire who sought the first opening; twisting around to deliver an uncompromising foot sweep which Faith somehow managed to hop over as if she had had some prior warning that it was coming from the gods.

Returning the murderous intention with a corkscrew spin kick, Faith was no less surprised to see Sang; relying solely on instinct, drooping into a stooping position just out of range.

Next, Sang took his turn; a full turn in mid air garnished with a snapping heel which also only struck thin air as Faith dropped to the floor with a wide sweep which, sure enough, the vampire evaded with a deft jump.

Slayer and demon exchanged puzzled yet strangely relaxed- almost playful- glances.

The two appeared to be of such comparable spirit, ability and outlook that there was almost a psychic bond here.

"You fight like my sister..." Sang lowered his guard a little; something which as a rule he never dared do. But there was something about Faith that he saw reflected in himself, and vice versa. Both were outcasts; passionate, unorthodox, dangerous even to themselves; not quite there; constrained by their own malfunctioning minds to the point of unbridled insanity and yet free spirited like starving birds of prey released from their cages and introduced into a wild world just waiting to be torn apart.

If you have the power, skill and drive, flaunt it. If you have a lust for life; a passion for the fight, use it. Rules are made to be broken. Authorities are meant to be tested.

Violence awarded both Faith and Sang release- the thrill, the rush- the heat of battle.

They let their raised fists drift a moment, mesmerized by the fallacy both were bust committing. Slayer and vampire- hunter and prey- reconciled?

It never worked, but in both Faith and Sang's extensive experience of things that never worked- or wasted lives and fumbled opportunities- could either ever say 'never'?

Sang shook his head clear. Faith followed suit, and they exchanged sadistic smirks. These were fragile minded, strong willed people with one track minds. To both it was clear that they had finally met their match, so to hell with it- they might as well just kill each other.

Giles, meanwhile, had had a brainwave. This was not an especially unusual occurrence, but it was timely nonetheless.

Xander- having not-too-courageously but unquestionably craftily snuck away from the heated mother-daughter slanging match on the other side of the hall, barely saved himself from being sandwiched in between Sang and Faith as they lunged at each other with flurries of swift kicks and punches with a tactful leap out of harm's way.

He tried desperately to conceal his exhaustion as he sought refuge behind the assorted crates where his former librarian stood pondering, as usual, the deeper implications of what was going on here.

"So, eeer.. is this a good thing?"

"You mean Faith?"

Xander's eye twitched uncontrollably. He hated it when people mentioned that name. "Yeah, I mean- she's fighting for us, right?"

"So it would seem."

"So that's good..."

"Yes..." Giles was distracted by something else.

"G- what's the deal? That's good, right?"

"Something Sang said- his sister..."

"The slayer- his sister the slayer? Yeah, well, from where I'm standing, the present seems more pressing."

"Faith reminded him of his sister. He saw a bit of himself in her..."

"What are you saying?"

As per usual, Giles was devoting an incalculable age to relaying the simplest of propositions, and just to keep with tradition, Xander still wasn't getting it.

"Sang still has his sister's soul. That's what the tattoo is for- it keeps the demon in, as it were- preventing the slayer from driving it out."

"Yeah, didn't you say all that before? Senility- its' a wild and crazy thing. I hear drugs are good..."

"If the slayer is still in him... If we can draw her out..."

"What? Turn that nut to the light side of the force?" Though history would contest his theory, Xander was sure Giles' logic was flawed somewhere along the line.

"The slayer's soul is evidently more powerful than the demon." Giles was beginning to grown positively animated by all this arcane psychology.

"So what? We appeal to his feminine nature?"

"Well... I, well... yes." This was one hell of a plan, 'hell' being the operative word.

****

Angel shoulder barged the slight but deceptive Buffy into the stern platform edge and continued to batter her ribcage with venomous hooks and short punches, all the while having to remind himself not only that his former love was gone, but that this was the creature who had replaced her. Neither proposition was entirely convincing.

A lengthy freight train howled past them on the other line, rattling like a huge penny in a giant sized jam jar and causing every observable object in the vicinity to shake and tinkle in the wind. The formerly still and silent night air was suddenly transformed to quite the opposite as if some ruckus dwarf's death metal band busily jamming in Angel's earlobe had only just remembered to switch on their gargantuan amps.

If anything, the interminable racket woke Buffy up. She had let Angel get the better of her. She had been complacent. She had gone for the heart; metaphorically, at least, then she had allowed his time to recover- to cultivate his anger and channel his despair. That was sloppy. It was time to twist the knife, or in this case, the stake.

Angel's searching right was promptly blocked with a conclusive forearm before Buffy took him by the wrist and span him around; hurling him towards that speeding train just a split second too late.

Angel relied on a last minute change of direction to toppled uneasily onto the pulsating rails and miss the back of the thundering contraption by the merest of distances.

He paused, thanked whatever force governed such things that as a vampire he seldom feared such fates as death by electrocution on railway tracks, and rose to his feet unscathed like a lotus blooming in a dirty swamp.

This new Buffy was brutal, blood thirsty- evil. Angelus would have liked her.

Angel gripped his makeshift stake as if it was a stress sponge. This Buffy needed to be destroyed.

****

Faith and Sang were brawling like a pair of rottweilers in a fight pit; exchanging fierce blows with hands, feet and whatever else came to mind at such an alluring pace that even Giles- usually meticulous in his concentration- had to fight against being hypnotized by it all.

Faith forced the unexpectedly swift vamp back with a string of relentless spinning kicks all of which skimmed her opponent's nose as he instinctively pulled his head back before an unnoticed, shuddering wall seemed to creep up from behind and put an end to his gradual escape.

Having planted one solid foot into the undead miscreant's mouth and loosening a few jagged incisors, Faith embraced her all encompassing violent streak and clutched hold of Sang's collar in order to run his head across a sharp edged collection of jumbled crates and caskets.

The kooky demon retreated, dabbed at a handful of new wounds scattered over his face like the beginnings of a botched impressionist painting and nodded, impressed; "A sacred duty to do good combined with an unquenchable instinct to perform evil. I like that in a woman."

Faith failed miserably in hiding her appreciation of what to an everyday heroine would have equated a derogatory dig- "What can I say; I go with the flow."

Sang seized his opportunity to deck the unorthodox slayer with a whirling back fist which struck like a churning helicopter blade, but could not quite conceal his delight at finding himself involved in a proper fight.

It was lucky for humanity that these two textbook anti heroes appeared to prefer beating each other senseless to getting together to bring down the world as a whole.

****

Anya was having no joy in sweet talking her mother into giving up Sang's prize possession. This was nothing new; in her youth, the two were perpetually at each other's throats. Mom looked after number one- that was her philosophy, after dad left her at least. Of course, that was hundreds of years ago, and dad had been dead longer than Anya could imagine. Men- they never stick around...

Elysia had never had much time for her daughter's wants and needs, which was possibly how the seeds for the bitterness that now existed between them were sown. It was probably also why Anya was here now lining up repetitive slaps to her mother's face which may well have made her sway like a candle in the wind, but wouldn't make her drop that damn chalice.

****

Faith hurled another concussive hook only to see it blocked with an improvised forearm before she was ceremoniously introduced to the grimy floor with a well timed shoulder throw. Sang wasted no time in raising a heel and bringing it down towards the fallen slayer's face like a hammer to a tent peg, but not before his agile opponent had made good her escape.

Both combatants breathed deeply as if they had just run double marathons and hastefully relaunched their quick fire attacks; Sang's spinning back fist caught and countered with an inescapable flat of the foot to the nose.

The crazed hemoglobin-oholic; driven on by the taste of his own blood, barely managed to sum up the strength to swing a docile knee at his opponent before both backed off for some breathing space. When involved in a war, its is advisable to opt either for the slow and steady or the swift and brief approach. Mix and matching quick and lengthy will only burn both opposing armies out.

Faith leant against an uneasy stair rail and panted like a fish out of water; "I really... ought to kill you..." Sang nodded through a near asthmatic wheeze; "Yeah, I ought to kill you..."

Both slayer and potential slay-ee maintained eye contact across the hall; both imagining ripping off each other's heads, but struggling to find the strength to even pick themselves up and move.

Faith began to readjust her balance, felt a numb, queasy feeling in her legs and decided against it; "Just a minute..."

Concealed by the shadows, Xander, as usual, failed to comprehend the tactics involved in this sudden postponement of fisticuffs; if there were any. "This is just a sneaky prelude to staking him while he least expects it, right? It's a rope-a-dope... right?" Giles wasn't so sure.

Faith and Sang continued puffing in exhausted unison. Both ached for a battle; for a war; on a daily basis. Fighting was their shared raison d'etre. But you can have too much of a good thing. Then a funny thought came into Sang's head. Actually, it wasn't funny at all, it was worrying; even more so in that some playful metaphorical imp in his subconscious persuaded him into putting it into words; "uuum... You OK?"

More worrying still that Faith saw it fit not only to offer a reply, but to return the courtesy: "Yeah... five by five.... You?"

Now Xander had gone from puzzled to perplexed.

There was an uneasy warmth-come-tension between the two which was difficult for either to pin down. Hell, whatever it was, it was ruining Xander's spectator sport.

"You know; we don't have to kill each other." Coupled with his offer to help Faith up, this suggestion became doubly out of place since that was exactly what both had been intent on from the beginning.

Faith and Sang retained preparatory clenched fists and gazed at each other carefully; both sure the other was about to spring some wily trick.

"You're not like most slayers." Coming from Sang that comment was particularly ironic. "You're not exactly orthodox yourself."

There was an uneasy hush. Xander waved a hand to indicate this was Faith's cue and mimed a clumsy staking motion.

"We don't have to kill each other..."

"But its fun." With that, Faith returned to what she did best; a leaping spin kick missing the target by a hair's breadth and thus rekindling the action.

Xander breathed a sign of relief. "Jeez, for a moment there I thought those crazy kids were courting or something." He knew Faith had always been unpredictable; ally one second, nemesis the next, but getting snuggly with a vamp? That just wasn't done... well, not often...

"Fate's a funny thing..." Sang assured himself a running commentary was necessary as he ducked a stinging right cross and sent Faith crashing against a wall with a spiteful side kick to the midsection- "Everybody is made for something- meant to follow a certain path- built for a purpose. You might have a guilty soul; a tainted soul, but maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. You carry a wholesome liveliness, yet you flirt with annihilation."

Faith cut her opponent's self indulgent and yet strangely accurate philosophizing short as she cracked a firm left hook into his already bloodied cheekbone both out of anger at the fact that he had gotten into her head and delight that she really did like to flirt with annihilation- "Who died and made you... death?"

Sang backward rolled out of harms way and continued the unnecessary monologue; "You and I play with death. With responsibility. With morality. We understand the paradox- fragility and strength, success and failure, right and wrong..."

"Good and evil- life and death." Faith had just about stopped in her tracks as if struck by a profound religious realization. A wry smile began to form as she basked in the obscure comfort of this. Of having found someone of like mind- a tortured soul turned torturer. She had lived her life on the edge for so long, and so had he. Neither had contemplated for a moment the possibility that they weren't alone. "We're not like other people- " Sang was back on his oratory pedestal- "The rules don't apply to us. We're set apart. We're better."

Either this crafty vamp could read Faith's mind, or he really had had the same realization as she had had long ago- that the pernickety little laws that applied to normal human beings couldn't apply to them- that slayers had a kind of sacred importance that set them apart. Then again, maybe he was just trying to lull her into inactivity to strike the fatal blow. Trust had never been Faith's strong point.

"Sarira!" Giles was out to spoil the party.

Sang blinked heavily- yanked out of his sublime deadlock with Faith by a voice, and a name, from the past.

He hadn't been addressed by that name for a long time, and he didn't want to be addressed by it now; "Shut up, Ripper." He grit his teeth and began sizing Faith up for another lightening onslaught as the denounced slayer followed suit.

Giles pressed his point- "Sarira- there's still salvation- even for you..." He was sounding like a Bible belt preacher.

"Shut up, Ripper." His words more pointed but recognizably less self assured, Sang paid for his lack of concentration on fistfights in hand as he was caught wide open with a jab and elbow to the jaw which he only barely managed to counter with a short punch to the ribcage and a clever sweep of the front leg.

The vampire hesitated. There were two opposing forced dueling in his head, it was just that when he managed to suppress the fact, the demon won, and that was what he preferred. Then again, maybe that was just what the demon preferred.

His life was full of contradictions. He never really knew what mood he would wake up in; what persona chance would have him adopt. That was what the binding tattoo was for- to counter that uncertainty, otherwise he would just fear sleeping every day on the off chance that he may wake up quite literally a different person.

His life was like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates- he really never knew what he was going to get; what mood he would be in.

He supposed that was what happens when you have two polar opposites battling for control of your head. And that was why his fight with Faith was so poignant. He had to fight her like the slayer- he had to use Sarira's skill, otherwise he wouldn't have survived this long.

He understood Faith- her duty, her anger, her hunger, and even her guilt, and why?

Because deep down, under all that hatred, under that crazed bloodlust, despite all he had done- regardless of his many sins, he, like her, was still the slayer...

"Sarira! You're in there- I know you are."

... And that was why Giles' incessant cajoling from behind the shield of a cluster of assorted boxes got to him so much- dug so deep. It made him a sitting target. It made him resist and cower in equal measure. It struck a horribly raw nerve... because he was right.

****

Reily gathered Willow and Oz together as if he was a basketball team coach on the wrong end of three point final quarter discrepancy with only seconds to play. Though undoubtedly challenged in the intellectual department, this hulking, retarded chaos demon made up for lack of brains with a more than adequate amount of brawn, and that little detail was making this struggle all the more of... a struggle. "OK- here's what we do." Baphomet was closing in like a wild tsunami on a fragile fishing town. "We need weapons."

"These candle stands look handy..." Oz was playing Mr. resourceful, after all, it was the wrong time of month to play Mr. fangy.

"Ok; that's good. You and Willow take a candle stand and go for the legs." Talking of which, the lumbering giant was slowly but surely making up ground.

"And what'll you do?" Willow was worried that the reputation generals tended to have was that they didn't wander too close to the battle, "I'll go for the head." But she could have been wrong.

****

Meanwhile, Giles' prodding was irritating Sang like a pesky mosquito at a summer's day picnic, not that he had seen too many of those in a good few years. Couldn't he see he was trying to kill a slayer?

Faith; never one to neglect a good opportunity, snapped the distracted vamp's head back with a close range sidekick and floored him with a full blown leg sweep.

Sang spat dust, wondered why creatures of the night such as himself insisted on picking the hideouts with the least respectable health and safety records and rose to his feet with one eye on the slayer, the other on the watcher.

Faith backtracked again. Whatever Sang felt, she felt too. It was some kind of bond; a fellowship of miscreant heroes. It was weird; up until now all she had ever wanted to do with a vampire was stake them. "You feel it, right?" Sang was back to his old psychological warfare. "We're of the same blood. A blood passed down through the ages. Saints, martyrs, saviors..." He licked his own split lip to remind himself of his eternal obsession. He was special, and he liked that. He had once even been unique. He had thought that there could only ever be one, at a time at least, but this town appeared to have two. Either that or since his day the calling worked faster than it used to.

He put Faith off enough to make her back up again. There had never been a point in history where two slayers occupied the same timeframe; where two slayers could meet face to face; not to his knowledge, at least. He had always wondered what would happen. After all, slayers can sense other vampires; why not other slayers, however warped and twisted they are?

Faith had forgotten about her defensive guard completely. It was almost as if both she and her opponent had become hypnotized by each other's presence; locked into a groggy stalemate.

"Sarira!"

"WILL YOU SHUT UP?!?" Sang span around to face Giles like a rabid hound, thus shattering the ambient if emotionally strained atmosphere.

It was just so annoying when someone was so intent on speaking to the other side of your split personality.

Faith shook her head and gathered her bearings. What the hell was she doing putting her foot off the pedal in a fight like that? What happened to going with the flow?

Giles rubbed past a dusty wall mirror and made for the stairwell, quickly followed by Xander, as Sang's at best artisan self control fell apart like an otherwise delicious chocolate chip cookie dunked into a mug of bitter black coffee; making way for an all pervading fury.

He overturned a flea bitten table, wiped his fangs with a dusty sleeve and muttered curses like an enraged Torettes sufferer.

It was about time he did something he should have done half a lifetime ago; kill that accursed, meddling ex best friend of his.

Unfortunately for him, Faith had regained her sense, and harbored similarly aggressive tendencies. A sharp flying kick to the spine sent the vengeful vampire into a painful face first flop, thus reminding him he still had one notably more proficient adversary to rid himself of before he went for the meeker flesh. That said, he appreciated Faith's lack of sportsmanship; striking a man from behind. All's fair in love and war, after all.

He coughed dirt again, placed his murderous hands on the floor beside him in preparation to flip onto his feet and looked up... into that full length mirror...

What greeted him should have been utterly immaterial. An eerie void which would make those uninitiated into the quirks of demonology jump. The sight which greeted Sang as he stumbled to his feet was far from immaterial.

Standing there before him, gazing longingly into his eyes; mimicking what little movement he could muster while feeling himself rooted to the spot as if he had just looked into the face of a serpent haired Medusa, stood a petite teenage girl dressed in a well styled but dated black gown; her long, silky black hair tumbling like a dark waterfall down her back, her lost but concerned look digging into Sang's heart and making his insides ache as if a disruptive electrical current was busy slithering its way through his body.

He shivered uncontrollably like a mouse in the arctic as hesitant tears welled up in his eyes; "Sis?"

****

A flimsy stone guard's hut crumpled under Angel's weight; or, more accurately, under the force with which Buffy threw him into it.

Forced to look upwards, he stared into the grim, clouded over sky and wished the sun would peak through and swallow him up. But that was negative thinking and it wasn't going to get him anywhere.

He lifted himself and thanked the powers that be that he had maintained his hold on that sharp piece of wood. A final gift for a lost love.

Buffy's graying hair billowed up behind her as another rumbling goods train rattled past behind her. She sneered with a bitter hatred which didn't suit her and stepped over another set of rusted tracks. At one point in her life, she had wanted to be with Angel for all of eternity. Now, this next, painful few minutes would be more than enough.

****

Willow and Oz simultaneously batted out the monstrous Baphomet's huge, slimy knees with their twin cast iron candle stands, therefore reducing him to a size accessible enough for Reily to attack man on... well, man on demon. "I feel like I'm in the mafia..." Oz squinted at he hacked away at the creature's limbs in case he got some of that sickening bile it was secreting in his eye while Willow did her bit and wondered why she couldn't just have a normal, happy, geeky life.

****

Sang shook his head as if it was an old fashioned money bank. His vision had blurred. The tips of his fingers and toes had become tingly and numb.

A strange feeling of displacement had come over him. He was just transfixed on that ghostly reflection. Nothing else mattered. Not the horribly cluttered and gloomily sinister room around him, not his far fetched, devilish plan, not...

"Sarira." Giles' address was enough to snap the heavy headed vampire out of it.

"Giles???"

Faith backed off like an overly compassionate wild cat allowing its crippled prey to die in peace. This was just too weird.

Sang looked around as if he was a child having dropped off to sleep and awoken in never-never land, although this grim scene was in truth quite the opposite. "Wh.. where am I?" He held an only vaguely familiar hand up in front of his face and shuddered. "Who am I?"

Xander nudged Giles as the two began to move cautiously out of their hiding place; "This is good, right? Tell me this is good."

Sang; noticeably jittery and suddenly overcome with a severe case of amnesia, fought to recollect what had happened to him and failed miserably. Only snapshots remained. A picture of a dark medieval castle in the dead of night. A hospital bed. A fork toothed, absent eyed demon. His brother...

Giles approached with open hands. This was a risk, after all, Sang was one of the craftiest vampires he had had the displeasure to meet. "Sarira?"

"Giles. You look... different... and yet..." Everything was a muddle. Past, present, even identity. It was all an anarchic mess.

Xander and Faith shrugged in unison. In a world where 'weird' was such an everyday world that the mundane almost became the weird and vice versa, there wasn't really much that ever rattled them. And of course, there was never anything Giles didn't understand.

"I don't understand this." The stuffy librarian scratched his head, declining the notion his mind offered him to 'stake him now while you have the chance' on compassionate grounds.

"What happened? I was sleeping..." Sang's tone had become markedly gentler, and his attitude both concerned and alluringly innocent. It was as if he was a different person altogether. "Where's Jacques; he was with me? Where's Rupert?"

"This is Rupert; Giles... Rupert... Rupert Giles; see?" Xander's baby talk clearly didn't help the dizzy Sang, but his words dislodged a vital holding stone in the confused watcher's head, and that unleashed a veritable mental landslide; "Giles, of course. Brother and sister in one body..." Faith screwed her face up. This was the kind of freaky nonsense that had solidified in her mind the philosophy of 'stake first, ask questions later'.

"...You mean my father; the watcher." Sang appeared a little more settled. Things were starting to slowly come back, but Xander was in desperate need of Giles' explanations.

"Jacques and Sarira share the same body, as it were."

"Vampire and slayer; yeah, we've been through that."

"Neither one is able to maintain a hold of the host all the time. They have to take it turns."

"Otherwise its like a worm whose head says go one way and its tail says go the other."

"Exactly. It could take anything for the switch to occur; a chance observation, perhaps, or an emotionally charged deed, or a vivid memory."

"And evil insane bad guy turns good?"

"Well, in a way..."

Faith had had enough. She was enjoying this until that meddling watcher had begun to run his mouth. "Look, good guy, bad guy; whatever. I'm a slayer, who do I slay?"

"Ummm..." Giles, for once, was lost for words. If only he had had his books with him there and them he would have been indulging in some heavy duty research on this unprecedented turn of events.

Xander thought he had better play watcher for the moment. After all, someone had to direct traffic without becoming directly involved; "I'm thinkin' number one candidate for slayage is probably right now that big, gluttonous, smelly demon guy..."

****

After some half dozen fully fledged punches to the head, the disheartening fact dawned on Reily that he wasn't making any progress.

Baphomet was more thick skinned than he had imagined under all that gunge.

"Why is it always David and Goliath?" He shook a row of bruised knuckles and contemplated perhaps having chosen a different career; flower seller, perhaps, or an office job. Even university lecturer would have been less perilous.

"And anyway, why do I always end up playing David?"

At this point, a terrible thought came to him. He had sidetracked himself; started daydreaming. He had neglected the discipline required for a soldier of his caliber.

He raised a curious eyebrow just in time to see a gigantic hand descending on his throat and another wrapping itself around the roof of his skull as if the abominable beat was trying to keep the lid on a broken fruit blender.

Reily choked and attempted unsuccessfully to shake himself free. He tugged on the snarling demon's gangrenous arms and slipped off his slimy skin every time.

He kicked at the massive creature's chest but to no avail. The breath was being squeezed out of him like a set of human shaped bagpipes.

Oz and Willow swiftly revised their battle plan- readjusting their aim to the grotesque giant's head and neck, but apart from sickening squelches and a gross worsening of that putrid stench, the demon hardly even offered a flinch.

Baphomet gripped the squirming Reily's scalp like a huge melon and dribbled acidic yellow saliva which dripped down to the murky brown floor and fizzled like a miniature row of steaming New York manhole pits.

Reily, having tuned an ugly dark blue, felt his eyes water and almost pop out of his drowsy head. He stared into the evil creature's brutal and bloodshot eyes and began to welcome unconsciousness like a comforting safety blanket.

Oz and Willow, given their comparably minute size, never had any chance of overpowering this particular hulk of hell spawn.

In fact, possibly the only individual capable of restraining the homicidal beast and saving Reily's life was on her way, and Baphomet was not about to allow Faith the chance to spoil his fun.

With what could loosely be described as a lecherous smile, Baphomet twisted his bulbous hands, broke his helpless captive's neck clean in two and dropped the body at the feet of the fast approaching slayer as if this action equated a throwing down of some sick gauntlet.

Oz and Willow gave each other forlorn gazes like toddlers suddenly deprived of their mother's attention. Sunnydale wasn't heaven by any means last week, but in comparison this one had thus far been hell on earth.

****

Things were starting to make some sort of sense to the weary Sang.

Memories which had previously been accessible only as still pictures in his head were beginning to slip into a tangible chronological order. How his life had progressed. Being told for the first time that he was the chosen one. Taking on that accursed vampire... Sitting paralyzed in that hospital bed, unable to move, let alone defend himself. Some kind of life story was starting to take shape.

But there were other memories- confusing memories. It was like when he looked into the past, he saw two conflicting pictures of his life running consecutively; like watching two different films superimposed over each other. It was enough to drive a sane person crazy, which made him glad he didn't qualify on the former count.

This other set of memories were primarily of a physical nature. They bore no feeling- no emotional attachment. They were like watching life go by on a massive film screen placed right in front of his face rather than actually living life.

They were memories over which he never had any control. It was like they were someone else's, and as if while these events were taking place he was in somebody else's body... just like how he felt now, inhabiting this body.

He feigned mental togetherness and displayed a genuine concern in his eyes which reminded Giles unnervingly of the compassionate expression Sarira used to pout whenever informed of the most terrible of demonic crimes and cruelties.

He had forgotten that side of her character. In truth, he had never appreciated it when she was alive. That unwavering passion to do what was right. That gut wrenching empathy she felt with every human life wreaked by the never ending hordes of the undead.

The way she would hang her head at the news of every new, macabre atrocity and yet decline what must have been a persuasive temptation to punish herself; to take the dark, fatal journey towards doubt and depression which had led so many people who cared too much to salvage their sanity and end this grisly nightmare called life at their own hand and therefore in some tragic manner escape.

It had never occurred to Giles in those days how much the suffering in the world hurt her- how much she took on board. He had been too self involved; too distant to acknowledge what a weight Sarira carried on her shoulders. The efforts she would make, the pain she subjected herself to for 'the cause' and the scars she had to carry around.

He remembered how she had said a silent prayer every time a life was lost in the eternal battle against the forces of darkness. He even recalled once how, after slaying a man possessed by a vengeful demon neither he, Jacques or his father could exorcise, she had dropped to her knees beside the fallen creature, kissed his forehead, shut his eyelids and prayed for his soul.

Giles had forgotten all that, or perhaps he had suppressed it. Suppressed it because his own weak willed, carefree, chaotic lifestyle paled in comparison. Because he was always less a human being than her. Because she felt everything so deeply and he just didn't care. Because she felt it her duty to carry the world on her shoulders, no matter how much the weight crushed her into the ground, and there he was living the high life- letting others clear up the mess he left behind.

He had ignored her, and he had forgotten her. He had let her down, and he had let down her memory. But now he was reminded, and it hurt, because as time had passed he had become a different man- a better man.

He recalled the old adage that for evil to prosper, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing. He despaired that in his delinquent youth he had laughed off such wise words. If he had taken heed, maybe things would have been different. Maybe Sarira would not have been subjected to this- to this prison. To live as one half of a scitsophrenic tangle of opposites. To have to hold onto the memories of atrocities committed by her other side- by her lost, demonized brother- as if they were her own. For such a virtuous and receptive person to have to live with the experiences of committing such evil deeds.

Giles barely managed to prevent himself sobbing.

He could not imagine this story having a happy ending, especially after what had already happened in the last few days.

Sang was destined to live like this- cursed. Flitting uncontrollably from slayer to demon; from saint to sinner; from good to evil.

The violent, callous, sadistic, murderous vampire and the gentle hearted, caring, considerate, selfless slayer.

It was a prison for both, but a punishment only for the innocent Sarira.

Giles shook his head in shame. Sarira must have been ruined by all this- torn apart. She had lived her life utterly by the book- by the heart. She had fought evil all her life and somehow managed to survive unstained by it. Then because of what he and Jacques had done, she had been possessed by the very thing that she had fought so hard, so endlessly, to defeat. The only thing worse than the fact that she had been taken over by what she had battled against so hard was the realization that all this time- all these decades- she had been witness to it. She had experienced it first hand. Every time her hands had killed she had felt it, however much her mind resisted. For someone so incomparably compassionate to have to feel that blood on her hands and be utterly powerless to do anything about it but despair was truly a tragedy of epic proportions.

"Rupert... help me up?"

Giles was jerked out of his complicated contemplations as Sang gestured towards the ensuing battle between Faith and Baphomet- a battle the replacement slayer was quite clearly loosing. Brute force verses brute force is not the perfect strategy against an opponent of such size and bulk.

"Sari... Sang; you're disoriented. I wouldn't recommend..."

Sang hobbled gingerly onto his feet and gradually began to feel his equilibrium returning, although a disturbing fear that at any moment he could revert to... to what his brother through his own over confident ignorance had become cut into his mind like a knife and at least made him susceptible to the notion of doing good now, while he could.

"I'm the slayer, Rupert- it's my duty, remember?" This was the old Sarira; plunging herself headlong into the storm at great personal risk despite carrying debilitating physical or mental injuries. Giles, recognizing he was in no place to argue with him, nodded solemnly, still subconsciously blaming himself for this whole fiasco. If only he had been level headed and studious then as he was now, perhaps none of this would have happened.

Perhaps heaven and hell would have been reversed.

****

Faith hacked away at the slobbering Baphomet's stagnant body with a repetitive roundhouse motion until the vexed demon grabbed her by the ankle and knee and hurled her into a badly plastered wall. Now it was Sang's turn. He wobbled at first like a uncooperative patient fighting to climb out of his hospital bed and down the hall after a quese inducing anesthetic; still tying to get his bearings back, and thrust a whimsical kick at the towering beast before being shoved unceremoniously across the floor as if he was a particularly strange looking rag doll.

"Well, I guess this could be considered a dramatic turn of fortune..." Xander was soon tugged along to aid his irritable girlfriend in her simultaneous verbal-physical assault on her own mother.

Meanwhile, Faith was back up like a jack in a box; applying a soaring heel to Baphomet's lurid cheekbone and landing in just the right place to whack his head from side to side with a series of rights and lefts.

Baphomet emitted a deep throated growl and took hold of the gigantic steel chain affixed to his neck; whirling the weighty hunk of metal around his head like a lasso and rocketing Faith backwards some thirty feet as the clumsy weapon struck her clean in the jaw.

The slayers exchanged worried glances; both still lying unintentionally side by side in the heavy dust. Some sort of plan was required here.

****

Angels' fist cut across his ex lover's soured face and drove her back a step.

Rain had begun to fall, echoing the dismal feeling he felt inside.

Much as he hated to do this, someone had to, and he didn't see anyone else either willing or able around.

He dug his forearm into her neck and shoved her into the side of an abandoned passenger carriage.

"If you're gonna kill me..." Angel shut her voice out and tried not to look at her as he pressed his arm deeper into her windpipe and attempted to render her breathless and therefore utterly defenseless.

But love dies hard, and despite this not being the Buffy he knew; despite the urgency of the situation and the danger to his own semi-mortal existence, every inch of his body itched as if some evil scientist had poured a bottle of corrosive acid down his throat while he slept.

"You can't kill me; can you?" Buffy was playing psychological games; quoting the newly turned Angelus when she found much as it needed to be done, she couldn't kill him.

Angel closed his eyes and increased the pressure on her neck; having to press so tightly that his temple started to rub against hers.

Buffy fought to disguise her discomfort while endeavoring to wound the reformed vampire further where it hurt him most; in his heart. "You're not gonna get rid of me so easily, honey. Recently, I dunno; I've just felt I do what I wanna do."

Angel grit his teeth and wished she'd shut up. At least in a moment, when she had no oxygen left, she'd have to.

Then he remembered- vampires don't need to breath, and besides, Buffy had scorn in here yet. "If you wanna kill me, you're gonna have to kiss me. What did I used to say; when you kiss me, I want to die?"

She edged her black lips closer to his as she felt the last of what could loosely be described 'life' slip out of her... until Angel flinched and released her; turning his back in a mischievous combination of torment and lust which allowed the fallen slayer ample time to recover.

Angel kicked a huge wheel in anger and pulled the pointed piece of wood he had obtained earlier out of its hiding place in his spacious coat pocket. This wasn't going to be easy.

****

"OK, you go for the body, I go for the head, then we switch, right?"

Sang nodded timidly. The feeling was beginning to return to his legs, and if Faith was going to add some sort of meaningful strategy to the mindless violence which had been inevitable from the offset, who was he to quibble?

A flying kick to the face was enough to make Baphomet teeter but remain upright, and accompanied by Sang's synchronized shot to the abdomen, the leering monster was just about reduced to an uncertain wobble.

Faith picked a curved fang out of the rubber sole of her boot and tossed it aside like a discarded KFC chicken bone. "Hundreds of years eating nothing but human flesh and I guess my teeth would be in urgent need of dental care too..." She followed up with a crescent moon shaped twirl of the leg and forced Baphomet's trashcan sized head into an awkward jolt as Sang pooled all his strength into making the oversized creature stoop with a gut wrenching knee to the stomach. He clenched his fists and let out a short, crooked smirk. He was beginning to enjoy this again.

****

Elysia's eyes moved from left to right and back again; weighing and re-weighing the odds against her. This was not good. When it was just mother and daughter, it was fine. She had always got the better of Anya in arguments; basically because she was bigger, wiser and of course not impartial to the odd whack around the ear.

Anya had stormed out one night after a fierce row shouting that she 'wished her mom would just lay down and die.' At the time, Elysia had countered something along the lines of 'yeah, right; as if I'm gonna makethat one come true', although with hindsight she recognized the statement had been rhetorical.

Elysia skipped town in a hurry after that; it was her big chance.

She hadn't seen her 'beloved' daughter since, thank God.

But now here she was; and with all her freaky, do gooder vigilante friends.

"Give it up, mom; we want the chalice."

Elysia bit her tongue and twiddled the precious cup in her hands. Willow, Anya and Oz were staring her down like a pack of wild hyena on the prowl. Giles appeared more concerned about her letting the sacred relic slip out of her fingers.

"Mom..." Anya's tone was growing steadily more aggressive, and hell hath no fury like a woman... Elysia summed up the whys and wherefores of staying here to fight what was looking like a loosing battle and alternatively getting out in one piece and never having to speak to her daughter again, made her decision in the blink of an eye, cast off the beautifully sculpted antique and bolted for a back exit nobody had noticed was there before.

Xander prevented the cruel intentions of his flustered girlfriend from becoming a bloody reality with a restraining arm while Giles dived theatrically to the floor to save the plummeting artifact... then remembered his primary objective had been to destroy the thing anyway.

Anya scowled at the slamming fire escape door as her mother disappeared into the night; "Not the first time she's walked out on me..."

****

Sang raised a lovingly crafted candle stand above his head and decorated the puss filled demon with a cluster of crater like holes in the cranium. Faith compacted Baphomet's eternal misery with a heel to the bridge of the nose; or at least what she recognized as such, and nodded her appreciation at her new colleague's prowess.

"I can't resist it, you know..." Sang was back to his old, brutal, wise cracking self; "too much TV; its a bad influence. Now I just love sadistic violence."

Faith slammed the comparably green but not-so incredible hulk into a set of storage crates with another deft kick to the head. "What the hell do you keep in these things?"

"Corpses."

To this Faith returned a disbelieving shrug; "Right..."

"No; honestly." He intertwined his fingers and offered Faith a leg-up. After all, this demon was too tall to strike properly without a lengthy leap and had thus far proven himself similarly difficult to sink.

Faith read Sang's intention and took a running jump; placing one foot on his hands for leverage and the other crunching sickeningly into Baphomet's slime spewing nose.

There was a momentous crash and a resounding quake of floorboards and support joists as the mammoth beast at last hit the canvas with a pitiful moan.

"Bigger they are..."

"Harder they fall." Faith wasted no time in approaching the floored demon and grabbing hold of his king sized dog collar chain. She wrapped the huge links of steel around his tyre thick neck, leant back and began to choke the unsightly ghoul out.

Sang raised an eyebrow and watched from a distance; "This girl has class..."

Baphomet whined and cursed, stuck out his limp blue tongue and struggled to stop the churning, pulsating veins in his forehead from bursting. He grabbed the jarring coils of his own archaic neckpiece with both giant hands and groaned like a frustrated poltergeist trapped in a house with only plastic cutlery to throw around.

Faith grit her teeth and tugged at the chains as if she was attempting to drag a particularly resistant rottweiler out for a walk in the park.

Baphomet's eyelids drooped and closed. The putrid monster hung its head and welcomed the blackness of death. The room became silent for the first time, and Giles was able to breath a solemn sigh of relief. Sang, however, saw it fit to spoil the silence with a congratulatory if blood thirsty clap; "That was cool; kind of Boston strangler-come-Princess Leia."

Faith nodded her approval; "Well, you know; can't let the demons get all the neck..."

The pair smiled deranged smiles at each other.

Sang stood over his former employer's lifeless, bile dripping body and wondered why he hadn't done something similar sooner. "Yeah; that was well played. It's a good feeling; to turn things around; to reverse roles."

"It's a buzz. Violence is a wonderful thing."

"Yeah;" Faith and Sang were tripping on this whole brutality-breeds-empowerment thing like a couple of spaced out hippies in the LSD era; "It's kind of..."

They turned to the others with glazed tints in their eyes and echoed each other's warped psyches in unison; "...evil."

****

Angel growled like a neglected zoo tiger locked in an inadequate cage alone for a long and boring lifetime and sent Buffy tumbling head first into an unforgiving set of concrete steps.

Buffy had had her games. She had gotten so far under Angels' skin that he had become the savage animal she had once wished she didn't hate. She had played with his mind; with his heart. Now it was time to spit him out before he did some real damage.

She drew a trusty stake from her back pocket and dangled it in the air like a baiting carrot to a donkey. Angel put on his poker face and revealed his own splintered piece of wood. Somebody was going to go up in a shower of dust.

****

"Eeer.... you guys can stop kidding now, OK; joke's over." Xander stammered and back peddled. Faith and Sang began descending on them like wasps on a golden river of honey; equipped with barbaric gazes and murderous intent.

"I said jokes over, guys; you know; hahahaha; its over..." Giles clutched the sacred goblet to his chest and joined the others in backing off towards the stairwell. To say something was not right here would have been a gross understatement. He soon realized all eyes were on him. That was the bane of being, as Xander would have said, 'Mr. explanation guy'.

"Ummm. Don't panic." It was a little late for that. Faith and Sang; like dogs fed live meat by inconsiderate owners, had just had a taste of blood, and when dogs taste live blood, they tend to go wild.

"Faith; Sarira..." Giles had had more than his fair share of accomplices becoming foes, but this was ridiculous; "Are you... OK?"

Oz could decipher an answer to that query merely with reference to the oncoming pair's lustful stares; "I'm guessing that's a no."

"Giles; they're possessed, right?" Willow did have a habit of going for the jugular in sharing her darkest fears.

"I'd go for plain, simple insanity myself." But worryingly it was Xander who had hit the nail on the head. As Giles' spine struck the banister behind, he realized they didn't have a great deal more space to escape into; "I'm inclined to agree. Sang posses two distinct personalities in one body. He does appear prone to the odd unpredictable switch; especially when incited by acts of carnage such as..."

"Such as strangling a demon?" Willow was too innocent of character to be baring in mind such concepts. "It would suffice, I'm sure. Faith, as we know, is unstable, to say the least, not to mention impressionable."

"Great, so, G-man..." Xander had a suggestion; clearly the world was descending into hell; "I say we... like... destroy that nice little cup thing you're holding; thereby redressing the balance and undoing all this evil stuff Sang's brought about- like... now, before he brings about more evil; specifically our gruesome deaths?"

Giles nodded. This was a good idea. "Yes, quite..." He had wasted enough time, anguish and energy for a lifetime here, and belatedly decided it was time to wipe the slate clean.

Funny how in mere moments all this chaos; all this death and destruction would be reversed.

Simple spells and rituals may well have the power to turn the world on its head; to shift the balance in favor of the most evil lunatics on god's green earth, but by the same token, spells can easily be broken.

Giles raised the multifaceted glass chalice over his head, took one last disgusted look at this nightmarish world Sang's callous pagan ceremonies had brought about, and smashed it into a thousand pieces on the dank, squalid floor.

There was a moment of hesitant silence.

Nobody knew quite what to think.

An uneasy lull descended over the entire scene.

Giles gazed skyward and counted on his fingers. It would make an interesting footnote in his watcher's diary how many seconds it took for the effects of such spell breaking to be made manifest.

He counted to five, then ten.

Xander shrugged his shoulders; impatient at the best of times.

That old, worried look started to emerge on Willow's face.

Oz glanced around curiously and sniffed the air for any sign of change, but Giles kept on counting. Faith and Sang began with mischievous giggles, but soon ended up in fits of deranged laughter.

Xander pointed a finger; "OK, so something's funny because...?"

"As usual, geek boy, you don't see the big picture." Faith prodded his styleless multicolored woolen top with an inhumanly solid finger and gave him an off the wall passionate-sadistic look any brutal serial killer would have been proud of, which was fitting since in actuality that was just about what she was. Giles saw the big picture quite clearly, and then some; "Good heavens..."

"Beg to differ, Ripper;" Sang licked his damaged lips and delighted in the shock etched on his former buddy's grim face; "good hell. You know, I was so sure I had it all worked out just right. I'm positive the ceremony went well..."

The crestfallen gang had been reduced to a sorrowful silence.

Faith shook her head with a condemning smirk like a hardcore drill sergeant informing a raw recruit that he wasn't going to make it through the course without even having to resort to language.

Her eyes had been opened by this whole slayer-vampire conundrum. Up until now, she had been branded a freak- a lunatic- and when enough people say it, it's difficult to deny even to yourself.

She had been down in the gutter and picked herself up. She had been rejected. She had been used. She had had her friends wiped out twice- once back home by an ancient vampire, once with the tables turned entirely as her all too human colleges ran riot and wiped out her newer demonic colleges. She had been stuck in a coma reliving this persistent dream that she was crazy; that she deserved all she got. But she'd done all that alone. She had driven herself up the wall. She had convinced herself she did deserve it; that she was crazy. She had persuaded herself she deserved to die. Hell- part of her even believed that now.

But now she wasn't alone. She wasn't the only crackpot slayer out there. In fact, the crackpots outnumbered the squeaky clean watcher's pets two to one- maybe three to zero if you count Buffy on the dark side. And if you have enough crackpots, surely the crackpots become normal and it's the 'normal' who become insane.

She had clicked with Sang because he had tasted what she had tasted, and neither were bound by tradition too much to deny the fact that they had developed a lust for it.

Like her, he had blood on is hands, and when you have blood on your hands, you can either do the big guilt trip and scrub and scrub those hands until the blood becomes your own, or you can embrace the madness and use it instead of let it use you.

Faith smiled a wicked smile. Doing good wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

The lunatics were most definitely running the asylum tonight, and that was the way she liked it.

Sang was still pacing; trying to figure out quite what had happened.

With the chalice destroyed, they should have been standing in a world of milk and honey right now. All his 'good' work should have been undone.

"I did everything right. I researched for years. I sifted through mountains of dirt in the four corners of the earth looking for that thing- the cup of Christ- the thing everyone has been looking for since the crucifixion, and you know what? I don' think any of it worked. I don't think that's the cup of Christ at all. All of Baphomet's money and... oh yeah... Baphomet's life; wasted."

Giles cowered by the stairwell, motioning to the others to indicate that it would probably be best if they made their escapes now while they still could.

He didn't know why they were still here in this hellish world, but one thing was for sure, he didn't like it. Good for the intellectual purists, then, that Sang had stumbled upon a solution; "If my spells and ceremonies amounted to nothing, and if that isn't really... wasn't really the holy grail, then the truth can only be better than fiction..." He leant his overly tattooed, textbook madman's face towards his childhood friend and preached the awful truth; "... that the world was supposed to be this way."

****

Buffy and Angel exchanged back fists, the now torrential rain drenching them like misguided down-and-outs having taken shelter in a car wash.

Angel staggered and cracked Buffy across the face with the blunt side of his splintered stake.

Buffy responded in like but less human fashion; producing an inch long gash down one side of Angel's face with the sharp end of her own weapon.

Angel dropped to one knee and felt the blood- diluted by the incessant rainfall- trickle sown his cheek and drip rhythmically onto the harsh, worn rails below.

Stopping Buffy's advance with a well timed foot to the ankle, he tightened his grip on his short wooden weapon and drew what would have been a long breath if he had still been human.

Buffy picked out her target and did the same.

Attack, in such situations, is often the only available form of defense.

Both star crossed lovers gasped and paused together; their eyes rolling instinctively downward to observe pointed pieces of wood imbedded in each other's chests.

Time stood dead as if God had pressed the divine pause button on the holy VCR remote with which he controlled birth, death and the entire multitude of vivid and dull, vast and insignificant things which habitually congregated in between.

The world around them dropped into an unintelligible haze, and all the concerns of existing; of living, faded like a thin covering of snowfall exposed to a sunny California day.

Angel felt himself detached from his body, or at least no longer dependent on it.

It had been a vehicle for him for over two centuries, but that was all it was; a vehicle. It wasn't him.

It was what people saw; what they recognized, but he was more than that. It was like shedding a skin.

In death, there is no longer any reason to cling to things. The old saying is that you can't take anything with you, and that was why nothing mattered anymore to either Buffy or Angel.

Except one thing.

The two quite inescapably staked vampires gazed into each other's eyes as if whole lush and heavenly landscapes panned out within them, obscured only by their tears.

Two souls linked by a bond neither death nor utter extinction could destroy.

"Angel?" Buffy couldn't imagine anything else she could possibly say with her last breath.

All her demons had parted; all that she had fought suffered was no longer even a memory.

The victories, the defeats; they didn't matter anymore.

Time is nothing but a human construct; something we create for convenience's sake.

There was to be only one moment, and if, for Buffy, this was to be it- here, now, in Angel's arms in one fatal embrace, then she welcomed it.

Angel looked into her and saw that indescribable thing he had been lacking like a gaping hole in the heart for his entire two-hundred-and-fifty or so years of existing on this earth.

He had known from the moment he had first set eyes on her that they would be together, and that everything else was just a precursor to that inevitability.

"Buffy..."

With that, physical form faltered, all the assorted cells and microbes that make up a human being bursting like two spectacular fireworks exploding in tandem in the night sky- two clouds of blossoming green dust intermingling effortlessly as they fell and frolicked almost poetically in the wind and rain until they settled in rest at last.

Two souls dependent in life, united in death.

On to the conclusion: 'Deals with devils'

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