All he could focus on was her. The world itself melted around him. Dracula was intoxicated with her scent, her sight, the sense and very essence of Illyria. He bathed in her, not in anyway like he would a girl beneath his lips, but a child before a God that would warp and change the path of time itself for him. If he were alive his heart would stop and his lungs would seize.
Stood like stone, Dracula stared down the blue and red demon time itself forgot. No thrall, no magic would dare compel her to him, so he moved closer to inspect and scrutinize the very scent and aura of this terrifying presence.
"You have power." He stated the obvious, but that word could not contain its true meaning. Could not adequately, nor subsequently describe just what he felt emanate from this old creature. "You are ancient, primordial even. Such power is indescribable and intoxicating."
He turned around her step by step until her hand met his throat. He was almost dizzy with the sensations that filled his cold body. If only he had such power, but yet that's just why he had come to this dead little town.
"Bleat at me no further. You are a worm in the earth." Illyria let go.
He hissed, growled, and rejoiced his freedom, but part of him loved the torture of her strength. Not sexually, he could feel nothing for her in such a way as she was more than body, but a Goddess. Not the word, but the true thing.
This entire display before the humans. Mortified and fascinated with terror and confusion. Giles, stood with the others at the counter, all jostled as Dracula approached the Old One. His name unknown to them yet, all save for Xander, the bug eating fool that mused at his master's antics.
"My apologies," Dracula made no attempt to turn to the mortals behind him, for he only had eyes on the pure, unadulterated essence of power before him. "I am Dracula, the Dark Prince, the Count. I am the night and the–"
"Dracula?" Giles cut in. "This is he?"
"I do not care who you are. You are far too close and much too pale." Illyria would be no source of comfort for any of them.
Dracula heeded the warning and stepped back. At last he turned to Giles, the only one of the students bold enough to approach. Though a threat no doubt, Dracula would be dust before his fangs touched a single inch of flesh. Illyria's speed and power, though intoxicated him, would be the end of him before a thought graced the dead cells of his cold, impulsed mind.
"Of course!" Xander bleated, "no one could mistake the unholy Prince!"
All eyes slowly strayed to the fool. Giles grasped the concept quicker than the others, and nodded his head. Of course it would be Xander.
"What do you want?" Giles asked, hand in his tweed jacket where a cross lay hidden within a pocket. He was bold for sure, but Dracula was outnumbered.
He hoped.
"I'd like to know that as well."
Buffy arrived. Late to the dead man's party.
One last sight of the catacombs buried within the Deeper Well showed the entity a strange flicker of hope. The tomb of Illyria was empty, a void for sure as she had surfaced many years ago in a dimension far, far way. Maloker also empty, for the same reason, yet not so distant in the past of time itself. One well, one reality, the Old Ones defied the laws of the multiverse and here with the clarity of its eyes that saw from beginning to end of time and space encompassing, it could stair down the vein of the well and see all things for what they were. Three other tombs emptied and coddled with dust, riddled with heat and rocks, and left a void in the Earth where something should have been forgotten.
The Old One in the Hellmouth, you wait, you linger, but now a corpse.
When world ended, another began but without a scream. Just a whisper because weak casts pull them out of the stream.
Two remain. From beneath you it devours. No, there is another.
Here in the Deeper Well the entity climbed with ease like a swift smoke that billowed up the side from sarcophagus to crevice. A figure not a moment material slipped through and past the well's protector like merely a breath of stale air.
In the land of Gods and monsters, I'll be your Angel.
"Deep inside me, there is a seed. A black rose that has grown and strangled my bones with its thorns." He eloquently explained enough to confuse them all as he looked across the blank eyes.
"Raise your hand if 'what?'" Willow broke the silence. "I think it is poetic, but maybe Giles should explain."
"Uh, right," he turned to her, shifted his glasses and tried to come up with something. "I wish I knew, actually. We've been working on discovering this Anointed One and The Master's rise."
"Pieces of me have begun to shift, merge even." Dracula peeled away his shirt button by button in a slow sensual fashion that only amused Xander until the sight betrayed his cool and beautiful exterior.
Giles inspected the chest that seemed to display properties of a demon most unlike a vampire. An image of a mortal, human, a vampire should always looks as the human host it consumed lest time itself change it into something more of a demonic structure like The Master, but Dracula had yet to stretch across the pages of time to wither into the wrinkled form of his demon self.
"That's not normal." Giles pondered, allowed to touch and inspect. He stepped back, unsure of what to make of the sight, let alone the presence of the one and only Vampire.
Pale and consumed with vanity, Dracula's torso began to darken in flesh and stretch like it were old, taut, and threatened to tear him apart as it would certainly burst forth.
This alarmed the Slayer. Arms folded, she realized this may be on her and Illyria. She had to know.
"When did this start?"
"Around the time you came to the land of the Sun, Slayer."
"How do you know when–"
"I know all."
Illyria knew very well what curse befell the vain one's veins. Illyria kept silent, stoic, and apathetic to all, but this did peak her interest. Should Dracula transmogrify into Maloker, it would decimate the city.
"He is transforming into the Old One, Maloker." She threw them a bone, if only this once. What they did with it was up to them. "He will surely be torn from limb to limb and ascend into the pure demon."
"When?" Dracula, concerned, begged for her knowledge, for her empathy and found deep within her icy blue eyes none of it.
"Well, we'll certainly find out." Giles added, "we'll find a way to stop it."
He turned to the students and one by one each were sent to a stack. Books on the old ones, the unnamed, assuming they could find that which could not be written down. Whatever he had would have to do and they'd have to find it.
He had no knowledge of the demon in question, but also no desire to see it birthed.
A reluctant man, Giles was set on saving Dracula. Equally reluctant, the suave vampire even in the face of his own demise turned toward Buffy, his sworn enemy, now a fair-weather friend.
"This demon cannot come to pass, Slayer. You will stop this." He begged to pull her under his spell, to assure himself she would be his to control, to save him, to stop this, and eventually to feed him.
"Are you trying to use your thrall on me?" Buffy accosted him. "Not gonna' work. You think because you're all tall, dark, and–" She shook it off.
He turned away. His eyes on Illyria as the mortals went to work, yet again distracted by their otherwise pressing matters of life and death and trivial things like the repugnant demon beneath them, he found himself under the thrall of the ancient beast before him instead.
Her power echoed like a hollow shell within them. The power of Maloker frightened the vain vampire, but yet filled him with its aura and threatened to consume him well before the flesh could tear. How did she?
How did this unnamed deity before him fit so snug in the tight shell of a broken mortal and yet still her power was unfiltered. She could burst, and he could feel it for he felt the same way and yet she stared blank, and spoke plain, and existed with a casual sense of disdain for all of reality save for her own like nothing mattered and she could stand eternal in this cage of flesh and bone.
Then it hit him.
The darkness that surrounded her, how dare he not notice it for this energy surrounded the Slayer as well.
"Why are you here?" He prodded deep into her eyes for the answers the he knew the Slayer could not reveal.
This must be her doing.
That night, Angel slipped into the shadows of the Bronze and perused the corners of the building. He had hoped the Slayer would show. Though worlds apart, he couldn't help but love her, couldn't help but yearn for her sight, her presence, and for her to save him.
The live band played on, students from the school that formed a band called 'Dingoes Ate My Baby' and collected body after body onto the dance floor. Some among them he noticed were vampire.
"Darla."
He sprawled across the floor to a nest like swing seat where a young school girl smiled innocently at him. She slowly stretched her fingers, cold as the steel that held the swing up to the ceiling and graced this statuesque man with her eyes and presentation.
"Angelus."
"Last time I saw you it was Kimonos."
"And the last time I saw you, it wasn't school girls."
"What are you doing here?"
"What do you think?"
He traced her eyes across the Bronze as the feeding began. Ten vampires total beside her. Warm bodies absorbed the cool touch of their dead forms as they fed. No remedy for memory of this soulless fiend as she smiled, her face wrinkled and disfigured into the demon he once knew and loved.
Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the demon he was intwined in their dark paradise and as he opened them, the hell he fought to stay awake in.
His face was like a melody that would never leave her head, but his anger flared to her delight and pulled her from the swing to crack her spine into the metal support that lead to the catwalk above them.
"You can't stop the Master's plans."
It watched Angel as he sprung to action. Above the scene that played before the entity, the figure that stuck to the world like a spider on the wall. All eyes on the vampire with a soul, the man described as more than human.
Darla beneath it snatched a young, beautiful woman that screamed as she fed and forced the girl to feed on her. Few would be graced with the world of the undead, but as it watched, most would simply be fed on.
The girl stared up at the entity, a dark mass that suddenly spilled through the mesh of the catwalk to form into a humanoid figure that touched her cheek, felt her pulse slowly fade and stare deep into her whitened eyes.
"It's okay, Cordelia. Things are changing, you're part of that now." It spoke to her, a voice soft and almost angelic like the cosmos itself tucked neatly into her ear and cradled her mind with the warmth of a billion stars. She smiled, until the muscles could tighten no longer and her body faded collapsed upon itself. A black hole in human form, she grew pale and cold as it touched her to feel the change firsthand.
The entity froze with her as the world around them thrashed and tore into chaos. The Slayer had burst through the doors far too late to save her and the lives that had fallen, but lucky for her the vampire with a soul had been there.
Lucky.
Always so lucky.
It watched as Dracula himself and the Old One Illyria swiftly dealt with the vampires and the scourge of Sunnydale with little to no effort. How out of character for the Hollywood Undead that he fight side by side with the Slayer so early in this timeline, but yet how fitting for her to twist it like this.
When Buffy crossed the floor toward it, Darla retreated into the alleys where only Angel would follow. She gazed down upon the corpse of Cordelia and a sudden realization struck her like a fist, like cold metal that slapped her into reality.
I did this.
"Yes, Buffy." A voice beckoned her from above.
She lifted her head and saw only feet. Big black boots that kicked her back so she may see who it was that called her out.
"I'm afraid you did do this." The entity, a man of pale flesh adorned and sparkled like the stars themselves with jewel and radiance stared down at her with a smile, yet eyes that bore into her with empathy and knowing.
"Darla's gone." Angel returned, fruitless in his effort to stop her.
The party was over. The so called heroes of the night gathered together to cast their eyes upon this knew threat, or so they hoped it wouldn't be.
"Illyria." He spoke almost as if he knew her. "Maloker." His eyes met Dracula, fearful of that name and the power that carried his voice down to them. "Angelus and Buffy Summers."
"Who are you?" She was lost. Adrift in this sea of something very new, something she was not prepared for.
"Remember the First?" He toyed with her, "from beneath you it devours?"
Was this another image of the First Evil? Another apparition to annoy her? Had their arrival in Sunnydale summoned the ancient evil forth?
"Time is running out for you, Buffy." He added as his form faded and shifted into a dark smoke, a void of light itself like the space between the stars. "Don't look up, for I have fallen for you."
and you alone.
Dissipated, it left a void between them. This was not what she had signed up for.
For once in this broken world she felt like the sixteen year old girl that had just discovered the only way to defeat the master was to die.
Lost, alone, and surrounded by monsters, Buffy stood silently and uncertain.
Who was that?
What was that?
Where does she go from here?
What have they done?
In the world between worlds, in a time thought forgotten to the Slayer and the ancient demon that called him her pet, Spike forced his way through the crag until the mirrors crashed into him face first like Buffy's fist to his cold sunken cheek.
He felt the cold surface of the black voids that was the glass that stopped him from moving forward, from reaching her.
"Buffy?" He called to her, but no Slayer called back, no demon pushed him against the glass and no shadow crept up behind him.
Instead, he found nothing by darkness stare back at him.
Where had they gone?
How does he get there?
Spike transformed his face and struck the glass before him with anger, fear, and passion.
"Well done William." He peeled his fist back to feel the cold blood run and his knuckles twisted under torn flesh.
The blood that stuck like glue to the glass absorbed quickly thereafter.
His fingers touched the stain of his cold veins and begged for her to reach back for him, begged for him to find her again.
Reluctant to give up, he pushed ahead and with resolve and passion in that unbeaten heart, the void reached out to pull him through.