Hello, readers!

I swore I would take a break from the Buffyverse, and I did… years. Definitely longer than I'd originally anticipated. But almost as soon as "No Deliverance" concluded, I began to outline this story. So this has been in the works for a loooooong time.

Buffy and her friends were all 18 in my last story, not 17; this means that my story will have to take place during their sophomore year of college, instead of freshman year. It also means that I'll be playing around with the original timeline. Please remember that this is not cannon. It's fan fiction.

As always, your reviews are greatly appreciated. So, if you can find the time, please leave one!

And now, the sequel to "No Deliverance" begins…

Jenn

The Hellmouth never…just…rested. Buffy knew this. Even when it lay seemingly dormant, something evil was biding its time beneath the surface of Sunnydale.

In the past two years, the peaceful suburb had seen a multitude of new evils come into play. Scabby demons had temporarily given Buffy the power of telepathy, which had enabled her to save her classmates from a homicidal lunch lady. A classmate in her year, Tucker, had released hell hounds at senior prom. A new slayer had burst onto the scene, with severe issues; nipping at her heels, a dangerous vampire named Trick had made it his personal agenda to kill every slayer within city limits. After disposing of him, Faith the Vampire Slayer had chosen to side with the mayor of Sunnydale. Their partnership led to "Ascension Day," known to every other person as "Graduation Day." Buffy, along with the rest of the Class of 1999, opened fire on the hellish snake that the mayor had transformed into, and fought off the horde of vampires that he had rallied.

Even the mundane parts of her life were still addled with the supernatural. Her mother was now privy to her slaying side. And with that knowledge came an over-active presence into a side of her life that she had worked so hard to keep private. On one instance, her mother had followed her on her nightly patrol, only to find the bodies of two slaughtered children…which actually ended up being the ploy of a demon that was obsessed with the human fairytale of "Hansel and Gretel." Willow and other witches became the target of the incensed mob of parents.

And speaking of Willow, the red-head was now a full-blown witch. And she had new love in her life. Oz had abandoned her in the beginning of their freshmen year of college, and Tara, a fellow Wicca, had taken the werewolf's place in her heart.

Xander and Cordelia split up, to no one's great surprise. Neither of them were completely over the other, though. A vengeance demon named Anyanka took advantage of Cordelia's fragile state and granted her wish: that Buffy would never have come to Sunnydale. Anyanka was defeated and, in the process, was made mortal. Of course, the next logical thing was for the former demon to start dating Xander; he was, after all, a magnet for...supernatural women. Cordelia, meanwhile, had taken off to Los Angeles after graduation.

Buffy was tested by the Watcher's counsel. The smug bastards assumed they could control all the variables. Their hubris resulted in Buffy's mother being put in danger, three men being killed, Giles being fired from his Watcher position, and Buffy permanently distrusting their elitist organization.

Her love life had been…stinted by Angelus' sudden disappearance, but she had managed. It had taken a while for her to come around to her classmate's, Scott's, advances. They were equally awkward around each other. When one of his friends had gone Jekyll and Hyde, Buffy had the unfortunate duty of having to kill the abusive miscreant…and then comfort her boyfriend.

Just when things seemed to be going smoothly, Scott had broken up with her, citing an extremely lame excuse. He moved on to greener pastures. Well, more like the other side of the fence. Before coming out, he actually had the gall to tell people that Buffy was the one who batted for the same team. Their physical relationship, or lack thereof, was explained away. Truthfully, Buffy hadn't been ready to sleep with someone else, at that point.

Parker had been her first college love, and he had caught her by surprise. She had slowly warmed up to his charm, as they had flirted their way through the semester. He patiently waited for her to accept his sexual advances, and after they finally made love…he stopped calling.

The next time she saw him on campus, he had smiled briefly at her. Then he kept walking through the quad, with a pretty strawberry blonde under his arm.

Buffy couldn't believe she had been so foolish. She found out later that, while he had been "patiently waiting" for Buffy, he'd actually been sowing plenty of wild oats within UC Sunnydale's female population.

She thought about vengeance, but she really had no one to blame but herself. Parker had been killed in a car accident less than a month after she had seen him in the quad. The strange thing was, his neck was broken in such a way that the investigators suspected foul play. However, no further evidence was found to support that the crash was a cover-up and the case closed.

Perhaps the only good thing to come out of all the trials and tribulations was Riley Finn. She met him as a freshman in her Psychology 101 course with Professor Walsh. He was the professor's teaching assistant. As with everything else in her life, nothing was that simple.

In reality, the professor was a government agent heading up a secretive organization known simply as "The Initiative." And Buffy's new friend was none other than Professor Walsh's number one operative. Multiple monsters later, the Slayer was now united in their cause to capture and neutralize all "hostile sub-terrestrials" in Sunnydale. Buffy didn't know why the "capture" part was necessary but, with extremely low clearance, she wasn't exactly in the loop. Riley, it seemed, was also in the dark about that part of his job.

Over the course of her freshman year, she and the handsome military man became acquaintances, then friends, then allies, and now…something more. Riley was safe, and he was the good guy. All of her friends insisted that he was the type of guy that she needed. She used the term "boyfriend" liberally around her friends and mother.

The end of her freshman year, both she and Riley were devastated to find out that Professor Walsh and the entirety of the Initiative were not exactly on moral high ground. An experimental creature, pieced together with different human, biomechanical, and demonic parts built by Walsh and her team, had killed his makers and set out to make more superhuman soldiers like himself. He saw it as giving purpose to his unnatural existence. Buffy and her core Scooby squad had invoked a very controversial spell to give her the power she needed to stop the creature named "Adam."

She and her friends had fled the facility as chaos erupted. A broad collection of demons appeared out of a previously sectioned-off part of the underground building, meeting soldiers and scientists and leaving a bloodbath in their wake. Unbeknownst to Buffy or her friends, the high-ranking generals that oversaw the Initiative program declared it a failure and took every measure to make sure that every scrap of evidence was buried.

At the beginning of her sophomore year, Riley helped her move into a private dorm room. She had won the lottery, for once. Willow and Tara had strategically requested to room together. Xander and Anya were still seeing each other, amazingly enough, and they had just moved into an apartment together, thanks to a promotion at his job. Giles had taken ownership of the sole magic shop in Sunnydale, The Magic Box, after the previous owner had met an untimely and rather grisly death. Miss Calendar, Jenny, co-owned the shop with him, and, although they weren't currently cohabitating, they were looking into buying a house together.

Her mother immersed herself in her work at the art gallery, as she rarely saw Buffy due to her school and slaying duties. Joyce coped as well as a parent can, watching their adult child live their life from afar.

And Dawn… as usual, her little sister was an invasive brat that frequently got on Buffy's nerves. Xander didn't seem to mind the crush Dawn obviously had on him, and Anya seemed unfazed by the infatuation, as long as her girlfriend status remained unchallenged. Besides, Anya had found a new infatuation of her own: money.

Willow and Tara sympathized with Buffy's annoyance at her baby sister at times, but they always sought to make sure that Dawn felt included and loved. Giles mostly focused on his duties as an unofficial, unrecognized Watcher, but he couldn't stay completely neutral, especially when Dawn would tag along to her sister's training sessions. Riley felt that Dawn was important to Buffy, being family, and he did his best to be as open and approachable to his girlfriend's kid sister as he was toward Joyce. Dawn did not show him the same courtesy, endlessly niggling at the romantic couple at the most awkward of moments.

Riley, no longer under the protection of Walsh and the Initiative, could no longer serve as a teaching assistant and pretend to be a graduate student at UC Sunnydale. And with his housing destroyed in an "unfortunate electrical fire," he was forced to stay with Buffy, unofficially, until he could find a place of his own. The few survivors from his team took assignments in a demon-hunting black operations unit, including Graham. Had Riley not had Buffy, he would have left Sunnydale, too.

And, as much as she repressed it, Buffy felt the strain of having her boyfriend around her every minute that she wasn't in class. He was just as sweet and considerate as ever. A true gentleman. He adored her, and she loved…being adored.

On this particular night, she awoke in the darkness and looked over at her beau. He was fast asleep, still naked from their love-making. She, however, was restless. Stealthily, she slid out from under the covers, dressed herself, and snuck out of her room.

A little patrolling, a good kill, and back to bed, she thought happily. She was just antsy. A fight-to-the-death would help release the pent-up energy in her bones.

She walked around one of Sunnydale's many cemeteries and willed a thing of evil to confront her.

"Here, vampy, vampy, vampy!" she called out mockingly. She looked around, but she saw no bodies, dead or alive. She sighed and kept trudging past the plots.

There had been a strangely fierce storm earlier. Lightning and thunder, rainfall, and high winds were not often seen in California in September. The rain-soaked earth squished under her feet, and the Slayer frowned when she realized a fight could get her covered in mud.

I'll just have to win quickly and avoid falling down. Shouldn't be a problem.

"Oh, no! I am lost and alone! And my poor heart is beating so fast…I hope I'll make it home safe!"

Nothing.

Wow, am I losing my touch? Did I lay on the victim-speak too much?

She glanced out into the night one last time. She had been out for over an hour, she was sure of it.

As she turned to leave, she almost ran right into a man.

No, not a man.

He had a pale, solemn face, sharply angled and handsome. His shoulder-length hair was black as night, as was the majority of his very formal wardrobe, save for the crimson dress shirt under his vest. He looked through Buffy's eyes as if he saw into her soul.

Buffy braced herself.

"It took you long enough. I was just about to turn in, but I was looking for a fight!"

His smile was unnerving, and it made hers falter.

"We are not going to fight," he stated in a very thick Eastern European accent.

"What did you have in mind, then? Draining me after a game of checkers?" Buffy's taunt didn't seem to affect the vampire in front of her.

"You are more beautiful than what I expected, Buffy Summers." His eyes raked down her body, taking in her petite frame.

"You know who I am?" Buffy wasn't used to being known by name, only by her colorful moniker of "The Slayer."

"Naturally. Your fame as a Slayer has reached the farthest corners of the earth. That's why I came here. To meet you."

"And you are?"

His expression changed, then. He looked surprised.

"My apologies, I assumed my reputation preceded me." He looked stoic, proud. "I am Dracula."

That was the last thing she expected to hear. She couldn't control her jaw dropping and her eyebrows shooting up in amazement.

"Get out!"

The vampire smiled seductively.

"Are you serious? Because there's a lot of vampires out there claiming that they are the 'Dark Prince,' or Lestat, or whatever."

"I think you already know it to be true."

He held her gaze and moved steadily toward her. Buffy found herself torn between wanting to fight him and wanting to be bitten by him. Her body was oddly rooted to its spot. He gently cupped her cheek and tenderly turned her head to the side. Her eyes widened, but she allowed him to lean into her neck.

"You have been tasted before." It was a statement, not a question. The bite mark from the Master had never fully healed. It was the only injury she had ever received that left a scar. Physical injury, anyway.

"Yes," she whispered.

He smelled her neck, but then pulled away from her. His eyes darted to an area behind her.

"I must go. But we will meet again, Miss Summers." He took a few more steps back, then disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

Buffy shook herself out of the trance and concentrated on breathing evenly. She ran back to her room, having had enough excitement for one night.

Giles needs to hear about this. Dracula?! Maybe Miss Calendar will know more about him…

When she had vanished from view, the smoke condensed and Dracula once again appeared, watching in the direction she had run off.

"Angelus," the ancient vampire called out. "How nice to see you, again."

Another dark figure emerged from behind an especially large tree trunk. He walked toward the famous villain, stopping when they were side by side.

"Not her, Drac."

Dracula scowled. "You know I despise casual names."

"Not her," the younger vampire insisted. "She is mine. The bite mark proves it."

"I heard the story of her killing your master, Angelus," Dracula pointed out, shaking his head. "It is not your bite. You have no more claim to her than I do. If she allows herself to be bitten by me, then she will have made her choice."

Angelus growled low, letting the sound reverberate in his chest.

"She gave me her innocence, her virgin blood."

Dracula turned to look at him, then, surprise on his handsome features. He began to walk away from their meeting.

"Will you be leaving Sunnydale, then?" Angelus called out.

"No, not yet. I did not travel so far to enjoy the sun. I will leave after I have had my fill of amusement."

With that, the Count transformed into a bat and flew off into the night sky.

Angelus watched his ascent through narrowed eyes, knowing that he could no longer stay in the shadows.

Time to get reacquainted with my favorite Slayer, he thought. See ya soon, Buff.