1 Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?
If there's one thing to love about Sunnydale, it's the way you can walk the streets at any hour and find a couple of wandering souls with "hapless victim" tattooed right on their stupid, silly foreheads. You've gotta love it. Here's a town with a violent death rate that's almost 4 times that of Washington, DC, per capita, and these chowderheads will still be out roaming at two thirty in the morning, all by their lonesomes.
I made at least three of them before I crossed town to the Bronze, all of them walking alone, heads down, furtively looking from side to side like they had the brains enough to know they were targets but were bound and determined to expose themselves anyway. I didn't know any of them. I let them go.
I opened the door and stepped into the Bronze, moving through the throng like a shark milling amid the coral. None of the Slayerettes appeared to be around. Just as I was preparing to turn around and head back over to Buffy's house, a harsh voice sounded behind me. "Finn! Get over here and buy me a drink, you cheap sonuvabitch!"
I knew the voice, so I turned around with a big Iowa shit-kicking smile. "Evans! Imagine seeing you here. And Watkins with you."
It was just as well. These guys were trained observers, long time members of the Initiative, guys who had been sniffing out vampires and demons since our little Slayer had put away her last few Barbies. If I was going to be able to fool Buffy about my new status as a creature of the night, I'd better be able to fool them first.
I walked over, trying to use my usual good old boy gait. It was difficult. The rippling power I felt inside made me want to strut and the suddenly overpowering hunger made me want to break into a run and take them both down. Steady, boy. Steady. Plenty of time for that later.
Evans, a tall black fellow with short cropped hair and eyes that always looked like they were laughing, was waiting for me, his hand outstretched. I accepted it, gave it a shake, and whipped out the farmboy grin again.
"Damn, Finn, where you been hiding out tonight? You been in some meatlocker with Muffy all night?"
"Huh?" OK, so it wasn't an original answer, but I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
"Your hands, man. Like to freeze my fingers off. Somebody get this dumb whitebread some coffee." He waved over the barkeep and ordered me some. If I knew Evans, there'd be a shot of bourbon somewhere in the cup as well.
Watkins, short, bulletheaded, and barrelchested, gave me a nod like the transplanted prototypical Sergeant he was. "Sir."
We didn't stand much on ceremony. Simple fact is that while brass and little insignias may mean a lot in a normal shooting war, the kind of thing we do pretty much demands that you're all treated as equals no matter what might be on your sleeves or you shoulders. I nodded back at him and took the coffee from the bartender. The first sip, combined with Evan's blindingly white smile, confirmed my thoughts about the drink. Bourbon. And not the cheap stuff, either.
"So where's your girl at, man?" Evans asked, nudging me with an elbow.
I shrugged. "Kinda hoping I'd run into her here."
Evans raised an eyebrow and looked all the way around the room. "No, man, if you're talking about that hot little blonde you showed me pitchers of, I ain't seen…"
He stopped. For a moment, it was as though everything in the place stopped. I turned my head and glanced in the direction he was looking and…
"Shit." Evans beat me to it, but I couldn't have said it better myself. The mirror clearly showed Evans and Watkins standing there with nothing between them but air.
Evans started to reach under his jacket. Maybe he had a stun gun with him; maybe he had a cross or a stake. I didn't much care. He wasn't getting it out. I reached over and threw his back into the bar, pressing his arm tight against his chest so he couldn't pull out whatever nasty little Christmas present he'd planned on using.
Watkins apparently hadn't seen the mirror bit, because I felt an iron- firm but affable enough hand on my shoulder. "Riley, man, it's cool. Let him go, and…"
I spun my head to face him and went into vamp face. It felt good. The demon inside gibbered and danced within my head as I watched Watkins's face blanch. Still holding Evans against the bar, I whipped my other hand out, caught Watkins by the throat and slammed that crew cut head of his into the bar rail.
He crumpled into a little pile, and I felt an amazing surge of hunger at the smell of his blood, which now painted the bar rail and trickled onto the wooden floor. I looked down at him. Cracked skull. Tough little bastard would be up before long, but I had time to deal with Evans before he did.
I turned back and was momentarily shocked to see tears in Evans's eyes. "Aw, Riley…" he said as I pressed him further back into the rail. "I'm so sorry, man."
I laughed at him. "Sorry? Feel sorry for yourself." I leaned toward him. Stupid mistake. I should've known to check for his other hand. As it was, I barely had time to flinch before he brought his arm up and over and my skin seared where he laid the crucifix against my cheek, damn near taking my eye out.
I pulled back, yanking him off balance and bringing my right hand up to clamp around his wrist. "Evans, that was stupid," I told him as I squeezed and listened with a smile to the bones popping and snapping.
The crucifix slipped from the dead and gnarled thing that had been Evans's hand and I whipped him around, heaving him into a table. The clatter and smashing of glasses sent Bronzers scattering and running over one another in an effort to get away from me. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. One of them stared longer than most of them. Long haired, with big sensuous eyes and arrogantly flaring nostrils, she stared good and long before she made for the door. I wanted a snack, and she looked to be about right for the kind of taste I wanted, but business first.
I looked down at the two soldiers. Evans, God bless him, was still rolling around trying to get some kind of a weapon out, and Watkins was lying still in a pool of his own blood. I smiled. This was the way to send a message. Let her know that there was a new Big Bad around, a guy tough enough to take apart a couple of the I-team's finest.
I reached down, picked Evans up, and smashed him back into the bar rail. Ugly noises seemed to echo from his spine. I closed in on him quickly. After all, he was a comrade. I wouldn't want him to suffer.
********
It was later. I don't know exactly how much later, because the feeding seemed to foul up my sense of time. I was back in my car, a bottle of Jim Beam bourbon in my lap and a pack of cigarettes that I'd liberated from Watkins in my jacket pocket. It wasn't as if the cancer was gonna kill me, was it? I lit up, took a swig from the bottle, and sat across the street from Buffy's house.
I sat there for a while, thinking about how best to play it. Not because I was nervous for once; she was definitely off her pedestal and I didn't have to worry about what she might think of me anymore. But wondering if it was best to play it straight and take her or lure her in with the broken- hearted farmboy routine. I thought back to that haunted look in her eyes; the plaintive note in her voice when she called my name.
I took one last drag of the cigarette, threw my head back and chugged the last of the pint of Beam, and stepped out of the car. I made myself weave a little as I crossed the street in case she was watching. When I stepped onto the porch, the front door was opening. It was the whole pack of them, and they were loaded for bear. I froze for an instant. Could they be coming for me already?
None of them froze. None of them made a move with a weapon. They didn't know. I smiled.
Xander broke the silence, which was no big surprise. Boy couldn't keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it. "Riley, man! What are you doing here?"
They didn't know. I looked from Xander to Buffy and back again. "Figured you would have heard I was around by now."
Xander cut an eye over at Buffy. "Uhhh…not so much." He stepped forward, switching his crossbow to his left hand so he could extend his hand to me. I debated taking him out right then and there.
Instead, I clasped his hand tight and shook it with all the warmth and enthusiasm I might have had a few hours ago. "So you guys have some action? Want me to call in the team?" I glared at Buffy. "I mean, some of you look like you might be a little worn out. Tired from all the action you've been getting. Awfully busy lately and all."
Xander raised an eyebrow at the older scar on my face and the fresh mark the cross had left on my cheek. "Looks like you've been seeing some action lately, too."
I didn't bother to look at him. My eyes were on Buffy.
Buffy's eyes narrowed and she glared at me. "Would you guys excuse us for a minute?" she asked the rest of them rather stiffly.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. "Do we need to talk, Buffy? Is that going to fix something?"
The others had slipped off the porch and were milling rather aimlessly around the front door. "Will," Buffy called, standing on her tip toes to see over my shoulder even though I was still one step down, "take the others over to the Bronze and check out the scene. I.." she looked at me and back to Willow, "At least I'll be there in a little while to meet up with you."
She turned to me. "Why don't you come in and…we can talk."
I smiled. I'm sure she thought I was delighted that she wanted to talk . To hell with that. Now I had my invitation. I followed her through the open door and waited in the living room while she watched the others leave.
She still had her back to me when she spoke. "You left. I ran to catch you, but the chopper was in the air and you were on it and I called for you. I screamed for you. But you were already gone. I'd lost you."
"You never wanted me in the first place." It came out harsher than I'd intended. Damn bourbon.
She turned slowly to me, and though her voice was cracking and her eyes were glistening, she still hadn't shed a tear. She never cried for me.
"I wanted you. You wanted too much."
I shook my head. "All I ever wanted was you, Buffy. But you couldn't see that. Or you saw it and you didn't care."
Her face twisted in rage. "You smug son of a bitch. Who the hell are you to tell me what I feel and what I don't feel? What makes you such an authority?"
I shook my head. "I've got eyes, Buffy. I know what I see."
"And just what is it you saw?" She was really wound up now, hands on her hips, folded into tiny fists, jaw jutting out at me.
"I saw you with your new beau. Just can't keep out of the dark, can you?"
She laughed. "Yes, Riley, to you that's what it was always about, wasn't it? You weren't Angel, you weren't Dracula. Never mind the fact that you and I did things that were more intimate and more intense than anything I'd ever done. Never mind that you slept beside me and woke up next to me. Never mind that I gave you everything I had to give. Your damn insecurities just kept pushing into things, didn't they?"
"Insecurities? Well, silly me, I get to thinking that maybe I'm coming up short when you go jetting out the door to LA at the drop of a hat to save Angel, or get yourself under Drac's thrall. But it was more than that, Buffy, and you know it. You never let me in."
"Jesus, Riley, if you had been any more in me, I'd have had to call a surgeon and have you removed."
I shook my head. "That was just your body. You never took me into your heart. You said you did, but you kept me out. I wasn't enough of a bad boy for you, was I? Too clean cut, too All-American for the Slayer, right?"
"You know, Riley, what you don't know could fill books. When I think about…"
I nodded nastily at her. "That's right. Get indignant and bitchy now. Tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and make it all my fault, right?"
"As a matter of fact…"
I shook my head. "No, baby. You're playing by the old rules. The old ones where you just made them up as you went along. Everything your way, at your pace, and if I went too fast or I stepped out of line, you punished me by pulling away. Those rules only worked because I let them." I took a step toward her. "I let you know that you could do what you wanted to me and I would stick around for it. So you did. Why bother to respect somebody who lets you walk on them, right?"
Her answer was in a much smaller voice. "Didn't…walk on you."
"Sure you did." I smiled at her. "But that's all over now. I'm back, and I've learned some things about myself. I've changed."
She looked up at me. "It's too late," she replied, and this time it looked like she really might cry. But, like she said, it was too late now.
She shook her head. "Nothing's changed, Riley. Nothing is any different. I can't give you any more than I could before. In fact, things being what they are, me being what I am, I probably couldn't even give you as much. And you always wanted more, so it's never going to be enough."
"I only wanted all of you." I reached out, and I took her in my arms. She stiffened at first, but the kiss was hot and her lips were warm enough when I got to them. Her arms slipped around me and it started to feel the way it should have been when I first saw her. "And it doesn't seem like it's too much to expect."
"Riley…wait…no…" She started to push away.
I eased my grip slightly. "What is it, Buffy?"
"This…this isn't right, Riley. I…"
My eyes narrowed. "Spike? Is that what this is about?"
She shook her head sadly. "No, Paranoia Boy. Get it straight. What happened with us was about us. It wasn't about Angel, or Spike, or Dracula, or the skanky vamp hos you were trucking with. You wanted more from me than I could give you, and that's that."
I pulled her in close. "So maybe what I have to do is take what I want."
"Riley, stop it!" she squealed. She pulled her head back from my intended kiss and surprised me with a headbutt. I flinched and felt my vamp face burst forward in pain and sudden fury. It was too late to cover, so I smiled at her.
Her face crumpled, her lips twisted in a cartoonish frown and then the tears came. Honest to God gushers as she pulled away from me and backed against the far wall of the living room.
"No, no, no," she sobbed. "Oh, God, no…"
"It's okay now, Buffy. Now I can be what you want. What you need."
She tilted her head slightly to the left and back again, a look of pity drowning her features. "They finally got you. They took you away from me…" she wailed.
"No, Buffy. They gave me back to you. Back to us." I started toward her, slipping back to my human face as I did. "Don't you understand? Now I have what I was missing before. Now I can tap that darkness you were always looking for. I can be…"
"A monster." Her voice was flat, monotone, but had the sting of a slap. "An absolute abomination…"
II
I laughed right in her face. "I'm an abomination?" I ticked off the names on my fingers as I went through the list. "But Angel, Dracula, and now, Spike, for Chrissakes, are somehow more appealing? I don't buy that. You like your men laced with a little demon."
She shook her head. "Look at what it's done to you. You used to be so kind. So good. Now look at you."
I took another step forward. "No, honey, being turned didn't do this to me. You did. Poor old Riley Finn was never enough for you. But I am now. Am I dark enough for you now? Strong enough? Bad enough?"
"Get out of here," she snarled.
I shook my head. "You don't understand. I love you."
She seemed a little taken aback at first. Her eyes softened for just the fraction of a second. Then the fire lit back into them with a vengeance. "No you don't!" she shrieked. "You don't love me anymore than Spike does! You're a goddamn monster, a beast, a demon, and if you don't get out of here now," she went on, her lips curling around the teardrops still trickling down her cheeks, "I swear I will stake you where you stand…"
"No you won't." I stepped forward again, almost close enough to touch her. "Face it, Buffy. You don't want one of the good guys. You're jonesing for a bad boy, and you always have. A regular Joe Blow human ain't enough for a superhero like you? Well, let me show you something."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small box about the size of your average portable Discman. In the center was a circular screen. I thumbed the power switch at the top. As it hummed I looked back at her. "See, honey? I'll show you. This is one of the Initiative's most recent little toys. Human auras give off electrical discharges that can be measured by this little baby here. If you look down, you'll see that your aura…" My eyes narrowed at what I saw, and I began to laugh again.
"You'll see that neither one of us is human. What a great big surprise that is, Killer."
She doubled over as if I'd kicked her in the guts. "You're wrong. I'm human. I am. I AM. There's nothing wrong with me…"
"Nothing," I replied as I pulled her upwards, "but hypocrisy. You look at this reading and you tell me that I'm an abomination but you're hunky-dory."
"You are an abomination. You chose this. You twisted, sick freak. You went out and finally had one of them turn you." She shook her head, swallowed, and straightened up. "Well, I guess I haven't been strictly human for a while." Her voice was a little different. A little colder. I looked in her eyes and she had her bad-ass, chin-jutting face on. "I'm the Slayer. And you know what that means, don't you, Agent Finn?"
I leered at her. "I know what it's always meant up to now." I reached out and tilted her chin up so that she was looking me in the eye. "Child of the night. Just like me now. I know that there was something missing from me before, and it's here now. And you and I can be right for each other."
"So let me get this straight…you left me, spent a year with the Army doing God knows what to who and where…and come back shocked that I found some comfort elsewhere."
I shook my head. "This isn't about that."
I could have gone on arguing with her all night. At least we were together and thrashing it out. But the moment that my heart broke, the moment when it all came crashing down, was when she pulled the stake out of her jacket pocket and leveled it at me.
"I don't care what it's about, Riley. I'm the Slayer. Which means it's pretty much my job and my adventure to dust your vampire ass if you get in my way. I said get out of here. If I see you again, it'll be for the last time." It might have sounded more dramatic if she hadn't been sniffling. But it wasn't the sound of her command that stung. It was the look in her eyes. Contempt. The bitch looked at me with pity and contempt.
I almost hit her. I wanted to. I could feel it happen; the cool rush of air against my hand and wrist as I swung, the dull thonk as the punch connected. I could even see the contempt melting from her eyes in a rush of surprise and fear.
I contented myself with answering her. "Yes it will, baby. The very last time." I backed toward the door. "Oh…by the way…you might want to check on your blonde boy toy. He was in a bad way last I saw of him."
She didn't answer, but she was wiping her eyes. I guess she could cry in front of me after all. I thought about that look of contempt again. Yes, my little golden girl, we'll just have to see how much you can cry after all.
She pushed her way past me and broke into a run for the cemetery. I watched her, watched the blonde halo of hair as it bounced and shone in the light of the streetlamps. Running to Spike. Damn, if that don't beat all…
Monster. An abomination. I kicked the words back and forth in my head, tasted them mentally, spit them back out. So I wasn't dark enough for her before, and now I was too dark. So what the hell did she want? What did she expect? She was the one always dancing on the edge with the vamps and the hostiles. Look at her friends. Witches, werewolves, vampires with souls, vampires with chips, ex demons. But I was a monster and an abomination. No, this was the same old game. Too normal before, too superhuman now. And she's honestly not sure she could take me if she had to. I'd had a hell of a lot more combat training than either of those panty-waisted UK vamps she was used to having around, and she knows it. With my training and experience, I was tougher than any vamp she'd ever faced.
And maybe that was the whole point of it. Maybe I had to give her a little demonstration, a little show of strength. After all, this girl always goes for the ones who made her life hell, right?
And of course, I did still have my invitation.
I walked back up the front steps and through the front door. If I was a monster, maybe it was time I started acting like one. The thought stopped me in my tracks. All the training, all the indoctrination, all the seminars about "knowing the enemy" were all bullshit. There was no demon controlling my actions. I was more in control of myself, freer than I'd ever been in my life. The Army wasn't in charge of me anymore, Buffy wasn't pulling my strings, and that just left me. And because I was the one calling the shots now, I was an abomination. I walked through the living room, rage beginning to simmer in my gut. I walked up the stairs, heading for Buffy's room.
I stopped in the hallway and smiled as I noticed a thin glow of lamplight streaming from under Dawn's door. Even with the door closed, I could hear her stereo playing. She hadn't heard a thing between me and big Sis. Hell, she was probably supposed to be asleep. I opened the door and stepped into the room.
Her head snapped up. She was lying on the bed, notebook open, doodling idly as she listened to her music. Her hands went down over the page. Part of me smiled, sure that she was covering up some boy's name, passionately inscribed within a heart or some such thing. "I was just finishing up this homework. I'm going to…what are YOU doing here?"
"You're up late, kid."
She wrinkled her nose at me. "I'm not a kid."
"Oh, of course not," I laughed. "You're a full-fledged woman now, right?"
"If you're looking for Buffy, she…"
I shook my head at her. "I'm not. I was hoping you'd be up, as a matter of fact."
She eyed me suspiciously. "Why me?"
I frowned at her. "You know, we weren't always so antagonistic. You used to like me pretty well, as I recall."
"Yeah, well, that was before you slipped away without saying goodbye. I don't think I'm the only person who finds that hard to forgive. Might wanna work on that."
"Well, that's why I'm here," I answered, slowly stepping into the room. "Have some work to do, I guess." I smiled. She didn't return it, but she didn't bark at me to get out of her room, either.
"We're not all that different, I guess," I said as I crossed the room toward her. "We both know what it's like to live in her shadow and jump up and down for a little of her attention."
That got a response. She sat up on the bed and looked at me with eager eyes. "Tell me about it. She goes through these things and it's like, I don't have a sister, I'm just Buffy the Perfect and I can do it all cause I have powers and stuff."
"And if you can't keep up with her, she leaves you in the dust, and if you can, then she immediately thinks something must be wrong…"
She pointed at me and laughed in agreement. "Yeah, she's all like, 'ooh, you must be possessed' or 'help, something's wrong with me!' just because somebody can do the same things she can."
I laughed and sat down on the bed beside her.
"Yeah, and all this time I figured she only did that with me."
She shook her head, clearly pleased that I'd been talking to her for almost five minutes without treating her like a child. "Oh, no, she treats all of us the same way. Like she's been doing it all by herself for all these years and just carrying the rest of us." She snorted. "I don't know about you, but I get really tired of being treated like a burden."
"Try being the strong man in a relationship with her."
"You do know it wasn't you, right? She pushes guys away faster than anybody I've ever met. None of them stay around. I think she does it on purpose."
I nodded. "She's a hard woman to get close to. So many secrets, so concerned about protecting everyone around her from the truth as well as from the monsters."
Dawn snorted again. "Yeah. As if we need it. I'm like, 'hello! Big girl now…been fighting the monsters for a long time.' But she doesn't even notice that. Like she's the gift to the universe."
I nodded. "But you know, she worries for a reason. She makes a lot of enemies. Sometimes the enemies strike back at her through the people she loves. You have to keep that in mind when you're getting upset because she's protecting you."
"Yeah, well, I'm not a kid anymore. I don't need to be protected and watched over. Just spending a little time hanging out now and then would be just fine." She looked at me, suddenly finding herself on a roll. "Besides, I think the bad guys have figured out by now that the only thing they get out of coming after me or somebody else Buffy cares about is an ass kicking." She giggled. "It's like, 'Come up with a new plan, guys!' You know?"
I nodded. "But you know," I replied, "Sometimes you have to go with the classics." I slipped into vamp face and grabbed her before she got out the scream. "You don't understand, KID," I told her as she tried to wriggle out of my grasp. "Big sis wouldn't know how to love anybody without an instruction manual. She needs to learn a few things. And lesson number one is "Love is Pain."
She screamed then, a full out squeal of terror. I'd be lying if I said it didn't give me a pleasant little tingle to see that fear in her eyes and know that for once somebody knew old Riley Finn wasn't bluffing.
She didn't have much wriggle room, but she did manage to do quite a job on the side of my face with her nails, reopening the old scar. I yanked her close and bit hard on her throat, lapping and suckling at the deep red warmth that oozed out. I could feel her struggles slowing and stopping, but her torso and shoulders kept jiggling. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that she was crying.
"It's all right, Dawnie. This is the first day of the rest of your life, kid."
She whined something unintelligible, but it didn't matter what she was saying. I grabbed her, framing her face with the palms of my hands and pulled her in close as if for a kiss. She was too weak to resist as I laid her mouth against the bleeding trail she had left along my face. I felt her try to struggle, felt her lips and tongue against the wound and knew she had tasted. Now she was mine. I pulled her, laying her flat on her back and drank deeply, finishing her off. Then I switched off her light, pulled the covers up over her body, and sat on the floor where I couldn't be seen from the door.
It was a few hours before Buffy came back, opened the door quietly, saw the shape of Dawn's slumbering body in the bed, and made her own way to bed. I smiled in the darkness. Yes, baby, it's time to take you to school.
I waited another hour before I got up, pulled the covers down and off Dawn, and picked her up. Months of marching through the brush had trained me to be quieter and stealthier than ever, so it was no problem silently creeping into Buffy's room and switching off her alarm. I put a white sheet of paper over the clock with a big smiley face in Magic Marker and SLEEP IN written in big block letters that I hoped would pass for a Dawn sign.
Then I took my new baby to school.
The cavernous ruins of the high school were like old home week. Hiding out from the Initiative, I'd learned every nook and cranny of the place, so finding a nice hidey-hole was no problem at all. Shaded from the intrusive sun which was just beginning to peek over the Sunnydale horizon, I nestled Dawnie on some old blankets and scrounged around to find her something to eat.
When I returned, she was sitting up on the blanket looking at me with expressionless eyes.
"You're awake. That was quick."
She looked at me, blinking a few times as if to emphasize her silence.
"You know, I wasn't sure it was going to work." I smiled at her. "You were my first. Yes indeed. Treasure this." With a mock-lovelorn grin, I laid my fist over my heart and lowered my head in a salute to my first.
The food hunt could have gone better. Couldn't find anything around except for a couple of stray cats, and she turned her nose up at them. "Not hungry?" I asked.
She glared back at me. "Why?"
I shrugged. "When I woke up, I was ravenous. I just figured…"
"No," her voice was icy. "Why did you do this to me?"
"Oh, you were enjoying your lot in life? Buffy's little sister, the burden of the family? Your words, kid, not mine."
"Don't call me kid."
I laughed. She had a point, after all. "Okay, I won't call you kid any more, Dawn. Doesn't really fit you any more anyway, now, does it?"
She glared at me, her eyes filled with hate. "So how come I know who I am? I remember everything…."
"Don't tell me you bought into that oh-it's-not-me-it's-a-demon line, did you? Being a vampire means you're beyond life and death. You're beyond human rules and regulations. That's what they consider so 'evil,' Dawn. You're more than they are now. We're more than they are. So they call us demons because we feed on blood."
She wrinkled her nose. "We don't have to feed on people."
I chuckled. "This from the girl who just turned her nose up at cat. They're lesser creatures, Dawn. We feed on lesser creatures. They do, too. Think about it. When you were one of them, did you spend a lot of time boo-hooing because the pepperoni on your pizza used to be a pig named Charlie?" I lit another cigarette and held out the pack to her. "Hell, no, you didn't. So why worry so much about them anymore? We're beyond it. Past the limits of their frail humanity. We're stronger, faster, and more deadly than they are."
"Except for Buffy." She reached over and pushed my hand with the cigarette packet away.
"We're just as strong as she is. Just as fast, if not faster. She wins so many battles against our kind because she's been fighting them for a long time and she has the power of the element of surprise. Nobody expects a wispy little blonde like her to pack that much of a wallop."
"Oh, so now we fight her? Is this some kind of a macho thing? Couldn't match her when you were human, so now you want a piece of her?" She gave me an all too familiar roll of the eyes.
I slapped her. Hard. "Listen up, short stuff," I growled. "This is your big chance to get out of the shadow. Living as 'Buffy's little sister' didn't piss you off? You're damn right it did. So don't tell me I'm the only one with a grudge here."
She rubbed at her face where my fingers had left livid red marks. "Yeah, so? She's my sister. She drives me crazy. Isn't that what sisters do?"
"How come it was so easy for me to get to you, Dawn?"
She didn't answer me. Just sat there glaring and rubbing at her cheek. I could see in her eyes that part of her wanted to tear me limb from limb. Time to get baby primed. "I'll tell you why, pint size. I could get to you because she left you there for me." I looked at her and tossed her one of the cats. "Go on. I know you're hungry. Quit being so picky and eat up. Gonna need your strength."
She deftly caught the cat and started petting it. As I snorted my disgust, she looked up at me. "Why wouldn't she? You're her ex-boyfriend."
"Because she KNEW, Dawn. She knew what I was when she took off out the front door, leaving me here, with an invitation to the house, and her precious kid sister in the upstairs bedroom."
She shook her head. "No. She wouldn't have done that."
I reached over and stroked some stray hairs back from her face. "She did."
It may have started as a protest of some kind, but the next sound she made was simply a whimper.
"All that's over now," I soothed, stroking her hair softly. "Now you're my girl, my responsibility. I'm your sire. Like a parent, you know?"
She started crying then. "No, you're not. You're…you're a thing and you did this to me and you…"
I reached over and hugged her, pulling her close against my shoulders. "Shhhhhh. It's all right. I know you're afraid, I know it's all so different and new, but you're going to see that it's better. Much better here with me. For one thing, I'll never leave you all by yourself. You'll always have me to turn to."
Now the tears came full force and she wasn't pulling away any more, but clinging to me like ivy to the side of a university study hall.
"Let's just go away," she sobbed. "Far away from here and never come back."
I eased away from the embrace so I could look her in the eye. "She'll come after us, Dawn. You know that."
She shook her head, her words gaining speed and losing coherence as she went on. "No. No she wouldn't. She doesn't worry with me anymore. And I could…I could learn to help you. And we can help each other and…"
She stopped as I slowly shook my head left to right. "Do you remember what you told me before I gave you the Gift?" She averted her eyes but didn't answer. "She'll take this personally. She'll hunt you down. She'll hunt us down. We only have one chance here, Dawn, and that's if we strike at her now before she knows it's coming."
"No. We…we have to just go. If we fight her, she'll kill us."
"Oh, but her policy will be so different if we run away? I don't think so. I think her reaction will be pure Buffy. Somebody took something away from me and I want revenge. Never mind that I didn't want it in the first place. It was mine."
"She doesn't think of me as an thing."
"Oh, no?" I shrugged diffidently. "Doesn't sound like she's been treating you much like a person either. Tell me I'm wrong." She didn't answer so I went on. "She'll come for me. She may even spare you…leaving you all alone without a sire. Just like you've been since…well, since your Mom died."
She slipped out of my arms and curled up on the blanket. "I can't talk about this anymore. I can't…"
"You're just hungry," I said softly, picking up one of the cats that were still milling around, looking for food. "Have something to eat and I'll tell you what we're going to do."
She closed her eyes and shook her head once. Twice. Then she licked her lips. "Lesser creatures?" she said in a quiet, hopeful voice.
I put the cat in her hands and watched her as she patted it. "Lesser creatures," I answered. "Now don't play with your food."
She looked at me. She didn't say "Yes, sir," with her voice, but her eyes were submissive. She held the cat for a long moment, steeling herself, and plunged her teeth into its throat. The cat hissed in pain and fear, all paws and claws for several seconds. Then it stopped struggling and Dawn lifted her head from its throat. Clumps of cat hair hung from her face, stuck to the blood running down on her chin as she smiled at me.
"There we go," I said, nodding quietly. "That's my girl."
I almost felt guilty about what I was going to do with her. Almost wanted to tell her the risks she was going to be running. Almost wanted to give in to the strong paternal pull I was feeling toward her. Almost.
We stayed hidden in the darkness under the ruins of the school until the sun slipped below the horizon. If I knew Buffy, she'd be out looking for Dawn by now, and probably so busy worrying about where little Sis had gone that she'd forget to revoke the invitation she'd given me.
I could see Willow through the kitchen window, pacing back and forth nervously as she waited for the teakettle to boil. I gave Dawn the high sign, and she staggered up the steps and lurched against the open back door.
"Dawn," Willow called from inside, "what are you doing out there? Get in here! Your sister's worried sick about you…"
Dawn walked through the doorway, her invitation now secure. I already had mine, so that wasn't a problem, unless by some stretch they'd been able to do the uninvitation spell while they were devoting all their resources to locating Dawn.
I heard Willow making the requisite sounds of worry and watched from my vantage point as she helped Dawn in and up the steps, presumably to her room. Now to wait for Buffy to come back.
I climbed the tree and sat in the boughs so I could see into Dawn's room. Willow was up there, getting the kid settled into bed and generally mother henning. Dawn was playing along with it like a good soldier. I'd told her to milk it a bit; they'd be expecting one of two reactions from her. If she wasn't sullen and moody, then she'd be clingy and in need of some TLC. I told her to play up the latter; it would come in handy later on.
Willow was still fawning and fussing over Dawn when I dropped back to the ground and slipped in through the back door. I switched on the tracker I had shown Buffy earlier. Nothing closer than Willow upstairs. Good. Wouldn't want anybody to spoil my little surprise.
I crept up the stairs silently and waited outside the door to Dawn's bedroom. Willow was still in there fussing.
"Ummm…okay," she was saying. "Now you just get those jammies on, and I'll go figure out how I can get the message to Buffy that you're okay. She's all worked up about you, and the way you came in here, you had me worried me too. I don't mind telling you, Dawn, that…"
Pressure points are areas of the human body that are primarily dominated by nerve centers or major blood vessels. A hard blow to the pressure point I grabbed and squeezed on the left side of Willow's throat would have killed her. I had no interest in killing her. I gave it a light squeeze and held her there for a few seconds until she went limp as a rag doll in my arms.
I slung her over my shoulder and carried her into the master bedroom. It seemed to be the one she was using, although something about that just struck me as wrong with a capital "W". Well, it was just something that would have to change. No way I could take Buffy to live in some burnt out warehouse or in the charred ruins of the high school. It wouldn't be good enough for her. But this…this would be home. I looked around the room as I flopped Willow onto the bed. Yes, this would do nicely. Get some big heavy curtains, block off those windows. Maybe turn one of the rooms into a library. I'd always wanted one of those. And, hell, it wasn't like I wasn't going to have time to read. I looked back down the hall to Dawn's room. And teach. Lots of time to teach, too.
She would learn well. Just as headstrong as her sister, but also flushed with new power. Dawn would want to learn from him how best to use it, learn tactics and techniques. Given the time, I could train her to be more dangerous than her sister. Buffy would always fly by the seat of her pants, trusting her strength and her courage to see her through. Dawn would be wiser, slower to rely on sheer brute force without six years of superherodom under her belt.
I smiled faintly as I whipped the blankets over Willow and snapped off the light. Yes. This would do nicely. She'd be at home here. We'd be at home here.
The front door opened and I could hear the hustle and bustle of voices below.
"Be careful, Xander…he's not a sandbag, he's a person…"
"Ummm…not so much with the person, Buff…"
"Harris, if I wasn't so bloody weak, I'd…"
"You'd what, Dorito Boy?"
"Okay, enough with the testosterone, boys."
"Hey, don't look at me! Goldielocks here started it…"
"You know, Harris, a good thrashing might do wonders for you…"
"A good thrashing might do wonders for both of you!"
I smiled. Maybe she was ready to grow up and move on, after all.
"Did you have something in particular in mind, pet?" I could hear the leer in the peroxided putz's voice.
I heard Spike groan as they settled him down, presumably on the sofa. I smiled a little, knowing he was still in pain. Harmony had really done a job on him. It felt good knowing I had helped.
"Why don't you keep those little asides locked up in that chipped skull of yours, huh?"
"Xander." Buffy's voice was like the crack of a whip. "Leave him alone. He's in pain. It's how he deals with it."
A sigh. Probably Xander's. "I'm sorry we couldn't find her, Buffy. If you want, Anya and I can go out again and…"
"No. You have work tomorrow and it's getting late as it is. Besides, you know Dawn. Probably up to something she thinks she can get away with."
"Yeah. I guess so."
I heard the crinkle of Xander's jacket as they hugged and heard his heavy footsteps out the front door.
"Will?" Buffy's voice was wary, mistrustful. Little sister missing. Willow not coming down to meet the others. Should have thought about that.
But then, I hadn't been expecting her to bring Spike. It didn't sound like he was in much position to worry about, but still it rankled. Wasn't she done with him yet?
"All right, just settle down and lie back…"
"Oh, are you going to take care of me?"
"Well somebody has to. Look what happens when I let you take care of yourself."
His reply was stung. "Well, it wasn't exactly as if I should expect any real trouble from Harmony, for the love of sweet…ow!"
"Stop being such a baby, I'm just seeing how they're healing…"
"Well maybe I should start poking about in holes in your body….hey…that sounds like a lot of fun, come to think of it."
"Down. Lie down. Bigger fish to fry right now."
"I've got a big fish for you," he grumbled sardonically.
It was getting to me. I had to fight the urge to storm down there and just finish the job right there in front of her. But I couldn't. That would alienate her. I couldn't afford that at this point. This was where I had to show her what we could do together. Having her kill Spike would be just the beginning, after all. It was worth waiting for.
"This isn't the time, Spike. Why isn't Willow answering?"
"Maybe she's asleep. She's been sleeping a lot, you know, since…"
Buffy sighed raggedly. "Since Tara left, I know. She's depressed."
I heard the metallic squeak and snap of Spike's Zippo. "There's more than that to it, luv. She lost Tara, she lost her magic…she's lost her reason for being around here."
"Like hell she has." She started up the steps and I melted back into the shadows.
She stormed up the stairs, apparently angry with Spike's very logical insight. That's my girl. Get mad at 'em when they tell you the truth too often. I wondered idly if that's what happened to Giles. Hadn't seen him around since I'd gotten back in town, and if taking out the two I-teamers over at the Bronze hadn't sniffed him out, I doubted anything would at this point. Another useful bit.
She reached the top of the stairs and never saw me hanging back in the doorway to her own room. She peeked into Willow's room. From the light streaming up from the living room, I could see that she was unhappy about Willow lying down on the job. She sighed and opened the door to Dawn's room. I heard her gasp and slipped up behind her as she stepped inside.
"Dawn? Where have you been all day? The school called, and you didn't come home, and…"
Dawn moaned dramatically. Yes, the girl was a fast learner. The moan brought Buffy right up to the side of the bed and that gave me the time I needed to slip the door shut and twist the lock. Buffy spun and glowered at me. "I told you to get out of here," she practically spat. "Especially in here. You stay the hell away from my sister." She cut an eye over to Dawn, who was feebly trying to sit up in the bed. "Dawn, Riley was vamped last night. He's not okay. Do you understand me?"
Dawn's arm slipped out and around Buffy's throat, capturing her in a headlock and bending her back across the bed. "Perfectly. Do you understand now, Big Sis?"
"Shhhhhh…." I soothed, slowly crossing the room to her. "Buffy, it's all right. I'm fixing things. One by one, we're going to make things all right."
She craned her neck back and looked at Dawn. She closed her eyes and shuddered, seeing that Dawn had let her vamp face show. "Why?" Buffy squeaked out, her voice a watery, choked sob.
"Don't you see that it's what has to happen? This is who you are, Buffy. You're not seeing it right now, but it's true."
"Why did you do that to her?" she snarled. "I thought you loved her."
I nodded. "I do, Buffy. And now, Dawn and I have a bond that you can't even imagine. At least not yet. But it's incredible, Buffy. And it changes everything."
She was crying now. "Yes. Yes, I can see that it does."
I waved an arm at Dawn and she released Buffy. "Don't make any snap decisions here. You've been doing this too long to still believe that over- simplified bullshit the Council shovels, haven't you?"
"What bullshit is that, Riley? That vampires are evil? Thinking you proved that when you vamped my sister, you sick son of a bitch…"
"I'm a thousand times better off, Buffy," Dawn said excitedly. "And you'll see. It's hard at first. But you get used to it. Being stronger, being…"
"A demon." Buffy's voice was flat, emotionless.
I shook my head. "Aren't you the same girl who warned me not to overgeneralize about werewolves? Aren't you the one who pals around with vampires and demons and ex-demons?"
"None of whom touched my SISTER…"
"We're family now, Buffy. Me and Dawn…and you."
She shook her head. "I could never call a monster like you family…"
"Oh that's rich, coming from Buffy the Vampire Layer. Besides, this is about a lot more than just you, Blondie. It's about time you look around you. Dawn needs you. I love you. We can make this happen. I'm just as strong as you are now, so you won't have to hold back or worry about me getting hurt anymore. We're on the same plane."
"If you really believe that, Riley, your plane crashed a long time ago."
I shook my head. "You keep telling yourself that, but you know different. All those nights you left me in bed so you could go hunting…you never knew I woke up every time, did you? I knew when you weren't next to me. I knew when we weren't close against one another. I always knew when you were pulling away from me, throwing yourself into the darkness."
She averted her eyes that time, and I knew I'd hit a nerve. "I was doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm a Slayer."
"You're a killer. You always have been, and you've always known it. But none of that matters anymore, Buffy. We're all hunters now." I smiled at her. "And now you don't have to pull away from me when the other side of your nature cries out to be freed. We can let it loose together, you and I."
I crossed the room to her. "We don't have to be enemies. We can be so much more than friends. You loved me once. At least you said you did. And you know I've always loved you…practically from the first moment I saw you in the University Bookstore. And now we're free to do what we have to…what we need to. Dawn's with us. Giles is gone. Your mother is…well…there's no other family to concern yourself with. We can be all the family you need."
She lifted her chin to look at me and I kissed her. Her lips were salty, almost like blood, and then I realized she was crying.
"It's all over, Riley," she said through her tears. "Don't you see that? I'm not the girl who chased after you in that damn helicopter. That girl died. I'm all that's left. And I'm only here because I was pulled out of where I belong…"
"Right. So you aren't human anymore, either. So what's to be self- righteous about? We can give you the love you need. We can make sure you're never alone again, no more lonely tears or grief or pain…"
"Spike feels pain."
"He does now," I agreed. "But he was never for you, Buffy. You know that. He's an animal, a lapdog, a mongrel."
"And you, Riley? You're pure?"
"I'm not perfect, Buffy," I said softly. "But I'm perfect for you. And we can work this all out. All the pain, all the anger, it goes away…and we'll have nothing left but our love. That love we used to have."
She looked at me, her eyes dry and her lips peeled back. "What love we used to have, Riley? Love you? Never. I needed you. I wanted you. But there wasn't enough of you to love. Ever."
I grabbed her, cupping her chin. "Well, there's a little more of me now, doll."
She hit me with everything she had. It was a lot. I felt my jaw exploding and I tumbled across the room, landing on a hope chest covered in stuffed animals. I heard a snarl and as my head turned back up, I saw Dawn jumping for Buffy from behind.
Buffy ducked, grabbing hold of her sister's wrists and flipping her onto the floor with a loud "wummph".
"Buffy?" Spike's voice was worried. He'd heard the noises. Let him come.
"Your own sister. You don't have any love in you at all, do you?" I launched myself across the room and clocked her with a roundhouse to the left cheek. She saw it coming in time to flinch, but enough of it clipped her to send her back onto the bed and give me a few seconds to pull Dawn out of the firing line.
"Stay over here," I told Dawn, and stepped in front of her, taking a defensive position. "It doesn't have to be like this, Buffy," I said, moving quickly to parry a kick directed at my midsection.
"You kill my sister and then you tell me everything can be just peachy? I don't think so."
"Hah! I gave your sister something more than you could. The chance to live forever."
She threw another punch, this one for my throat. "You aren't alive any more than she is."
"Or you," I shot back, dropping to the floor and sweeping her legs out from under her with my right leg.
She hit the floor and I was on her in an instant, pinning her wrists to the floor and straddling her. She strained against me and we were groin to bucking groin. I smiled. "Well, you know, honey…this was never the problem, now was it? We were always good at this."
"Yes, and some of us thought we were a lot better than we ever were, too," she spat and tried to knee me in the groin. Fortunately, I had her pinned, so the only thing that hurt was what she said.
"Buffy!" Spike was pounding on the door now, feebly but still at it.
"It's all right," Dawn cried.
"Niblet? 'Zat you?" he shouted. "I'll be right there…"
"Spike, get…" I cupped my hand over Buffy's mouth, but it was too late. The feeble taps became loud, echoing booms as he hammered away at the door. The wood around the jamb was beginning to splinter dangerously.
"It didn't have to be like this, Buffy. Now I have to kill him." I sighed heavily and pushed myself up to a crouch as the door finally gave, shards of wood flying into the room and Spike collapsing in and onto the floor from the strain.
Buffy rolled out from under me as I grabbed Spike, flinging him into the hallway. "Stay out of this!" I roared at him.
I turned and saw Buffy with a long plank of wood from the door.
I held my hands out toward her. "We can do this, Buffy. I love you. We can make it work. You and me and your sister. Don't you want to give her some peace? Knowing that we'll always be with her. Isn't that important?"
She turned to Dawn, who cried out and reached for her tenderly. "Dawn," Buffy said, pulling her into a hug. "I love you. Of course I want you to feel that peace."
"NO!" I shouted as I saw Buffy's hand sliding up, the lethal shard of wood clenched in her fist.
Dawn had time to gasp in surprise as the wood sank into her back. Her face froze in a momentary rictus of shock and then she was gone, a shimmering cloud of ash coating her sister and the bed she had called her own.
Tears of rage flooding my eyes, I punched Buffy in the mouth as hard as I could. She fell back against the bed and I looked down at the pile of nothing that had been my first offspring. I reached out and grabbed Buffy by the throat, heaving her back up off the bed. Her eyes bugged out at me in a silent pantomime of panic as my thumbs pressed off her windpipe.
"You want a monster?" I snarled at her. "You want a war? I wanted a family. I wanted to love you…but you couldn't allow that, could you? Couldn't love Riley. Not your type. Even when he's exactly your type. Never good enough for the Princess."
And yet I looked into her eyes and I couldn't finish it. Heaving her away from me, into the hallway to the arms of her bleached nightmare, I cried out, "You want a monster? You want a war? You've got one, bitch!"
I leapt out the window in a shower of tinkling, shattering glass and down to the street below. It was time to move my car before the I-team started digging around. Losing two members in a barfight with a vampire would be enough to scramble the team, and they'd be looking for me, wondering if something had happened.
I turned on the ignition and watched the front door. She didn't come after me. Probably nursing Spike again. I rolled my eyes and switched on the radio.
1.1 I gave my heart and soul to you, girl
Now, didn't I do it, baby? Didn't I do it baby?
Gave you the love you never knew, girl
Now, didn't I do it, baby? Didn't I do it baby?
I cried so many times, and that's no lie
It seems to make you mad each time I cry
Didn't I blow your mind this time? Didn't I?
I looked up at the house as the song played, teardrops coursing down my cheeks. Didn't I?
If there's one thing to love about Sunnydale, it's the way you can walk the streets at any hour and find a couple of wandering souls with "hapless victim" tattooed right on their stupid, silly foreheads. You've gotta love it. Here's a town with a violent death rate that's almost 4 times that of Washington, DC, per capita, and these chowderheads will still be out roaming at two thirty in the morning, all by their lonesomes.
I made at least three of them before I crossed town to the Bronze, all of them walking alone, heads down, furtively looking from side to side like they had the brains enough to know they were targets but were bound and determined to expose themselves anyway. I didn't know any of them. I let them go.
I opened the door and stepped into the Bronze, moving through the throng like a shark milling amid the coral. None of the Slayerettes appeared to be around. Just as I was preparing to turn around and head back over to Buffy's house, a harsh voice sounded behind me. "Finn! Get over here and buy me a drink, you cheap sonuvabitch!"
I knew the voice, so I turned around with a big Iowa shit-kicking smile. "Evans! Imagine seeing you here. And Watkins with you."
It was just as well. These guys were trained observers, long time members of the Initiative, guys who had been sniffing out vampires and demons since our little Slayer had put away her last few Barbies. If I was going to be able to fool Buffy about my new status as a creature of the night, I'd better be able to fool them first.
I walked over, trying to use my usual good old boy gait. It was difficult. The rippling power I felt inside made me want to strut and the suddenly overpowering hunger made me want to break into a run and take them both down. Steady, boy. Steady. Plenty of time for that later.
Evans, a tall black fellow with short cropped hair and eyes that always looked like they were laughing, was waiting for me, his hand outstretched. I accepted it, gave it a shake, and whipped out the farmboy grin again.
"Damn, Finn, where you been hiding out tonight? You been in some meatlocker with Muffy all night?"
"Huh?" OK, so it wasn't an original answer, but I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
"Your hands, man. Like to freeze my fingers off. Somebody get this dumb whitebread some coffee." He waved over the barkeep and ordered me some. If I knew Evans, there'd be a shot of bourbon somewhere in the cup as well.
Watkins, short, bulletheaded, and barrelchested, gave me a nod like the transplanted prototypical Sergeant he was. "Sir."
We didn't stand much on ceremony. Simple fact is that while brass and little insignias may mean a lot in a normal shooting war, the kind of thing we do pretty much demands that you're all treated as equals no matter what might be on your sleeves or you shoulders. I nodded back at him and took the coffee from the bartender. The first sip, combined with Evan's blindingly white smile, confirmed my thoughts about the drink. Bourbon. And not the cheap stuff, either.
"So where's your girl at, man?" Evans asked, nudging me with an elbow.
I shrugged. "Kinda hoping I'd run into her here."
Evans raised an eyebrow and looked all the way around the room. "No, man, if you're talking about that hot little blonde you showed me pitchers of, I ain't seen…"
He stopped. For a moment, it was as though everything in the place stopped. I turned my head and glanced in the direction he was looking and…
"Shit." Evans beat me to it, but I couldn't have said it better myself. The mirror clearly showed Evans and Watkins standing there with nothing between them but air.
Evans started to reach under his jacket. Maybe he had a stun gun with him; maybe he had a cross or a stake. I didn't much care. He wasn't getting it out. I reached over and threw his back into the bar, pressing his arm tight against his chest so he couldn't pull out whatever nasty little Christmas present he'd planned on using.
Watkins apparently hadn't seen the mirror bit, because I felt an iron- firm but affable enough hand on my shoulder. "Riley, man, it's cool. Let him go, and…"
I spun my head to face him and went into vamp face. It felt good. The demon inside gibbered and danced within my head as I watched Watkins's face blanch. Still holding Evans against the bar, I whipped my other hand out, caught Watkins by the throat and slammed that crew cut head of his into the bar rail.
He crumpled into a little pile, and I felt an amazing surge of hunger at the smell of his blood, which now painted the bar rail and trickled onto the wooden floor. I looked down at him. Cracked skull. Tough little bastard would be up before long, but I had time to deal with Evans before he did.
I turned back and was momentarily shocked to see tears in Evans's eyes. "Aw, Riley…" he said as I pressed him further back into the rail. "I'm so sorry, man."
I laughed at him. "Sorry? Feel sorry for yourself." I leaned toward him. Stupid mistake. I should've known to check for his other hand. As it was, I barely had time to flinch before he brought his arm up and over and my skin seared where he laid the crucifix against my cheek, damn near taking my eye out.
I pulled back, yanking him off balance and bringing my right hand up to clamp around his wrist. "Evans, that was stupid," I told him as I squeezed and listened with a smile to the bones popping and snapping.
The crucifix slipped from the dead and gnarled thing that had been Evans's hand and I whipped him around, heaving him into a table. The clatter and smashing of glasses sent Bronzers scattering and running over one another in an effort to get away from me. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. One of them stared longer than most of them. Long haired, with big sensuous eyes and arrogantly flaring nostrils, she stared good and long before she made for the door. I wanted a snack, and she looked to be about right for the kind of taste I wanted, but business first.
I looked down at the two soldiers. Evans, God bless him, was still rolling around trying to get some kind of a weapon out, and Watkins was lying still in a pool of his own blood. I smiled. This was the way to send a message. Let her know that there was a new Big Bad around, a guy tough enough to take apart a couple of the I-team's finest.
I reached down, picked Evans up, and smashed him back into the bar rail. Ugly noises seemed to echo from his spine. I closed in on him quickly. After all, he was a comrade. I wouldn't want him to suffer.
********
It was later. I don't know exactly how much later, because the feeding seemed to foul up my sense of time. I was back in my car, a bottle of Jim Beam bourbon in my lap and a pack of cigarettes that I'd liberated from Watkins in my jacket pocket. It wasn't as if the cancer was gonna kill me, was it? I lit up, took a swig from the bottle, and sat across the street from Buffy's house.
I sat there for a while, thinking about how best to play it. Not because I was nervous for once; she was definitely off her pedestal and I didn't have to worry about what she might think of me anymore. But wondering if it was best to play it straight and take her or lure her in with the broken- hearted farmboy routine. I thought back to that haunted look in her eyes; the plaintive note in her voice when she called my name.
I took one last drag of the cigarette, threw my head back and chugged the last of the pint of Beam, and stepped out of the car. I made myself weave a little as I crossed the street in case she was watching. When I stepped onto the porch, the front door was opening. It was the whole pack of them, and they were loaded for bear. I froze for an instant. Could they be coming for me already?
None of them froze. None of them made a move with a weapon. They didn't know. I smiled.
Xander broke the silence, which was no big surprise. Boy couldn't keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it. "Riley, man! What are you doing here?"
They didn't know. I looked from Xander to Buffy and back again. "Figured you would have heard I was around by now."
Xander cut an eye over at Buffy. "Uhhh…not so much." He stepped forward, switching his crossbow to his left hand so he could extend his hand to me. I debated taking him out right then and there.
Instead, I clasped his hand tight and shook it with all the warmth and enthusiasm I might have had a few hours ago. "So you guys have some action? Want me to call in the team?" I glared at Buffy. "I mean, some of you look like you might be a little worn out. Tired from all the action you've been getting. Awfully busy lately and all."
Xander raised an eyebrow at the older scar on my face and the fresh mark the cross had left on my cheek. "Looks like you've been seeing some action lately, too."
I didn't bother to look at him. My eyes were on Buffy.
Buffy's eyes narrowed and she glared at me. "Would you guys excuse us for a minute?" she asked the rest of them rather stiffly.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. "Do we need to talk, Buffy? Is that going to fix something?"
The others had slipped off the porch and were milling rather aimlessly around the front door. "Will," Buffy called, standing on her tip toes to see over my shoulder even though I was still one step down, "take the others over to the Bronze and check out the scene. I.." she looked at me and back to Willow, "At least I'll be there in a little while to meet up with you."
She turned to me. "Why don't you come in and…we can talk."
I smiled. I'm sure she thought I was delighted that she wanted to talk . To hell with that. Now I had my invitation. I followed her through the open door and waited in the living room while she watched the others leave.
She still had her back to me when she spoke. "You left. I ran to catch you, but the chopper was in the air and you were on it and I called for you. I screamed for you. But you were already gone. I'd lost you."
"You never wanted me in the first place." It came out harsher than I'd intended. Damn bourbon.
She turned slowly to me, and though her voice was cracking and her eyes were glistening, she still hadn't shed a tear. She never cried for me.
"I wanted you. You wanted too much."
I shook my head. "All I ever wanted was you, Buffy. But you couldn't see that. Or you saw it and you didn't care."
Her face twisted in rage. "You smug son of a bitch. Who the hell are you to tell me what I feel and what I don't feel? What makes you such an authority?"
I shook my head. "I've got eyes, Buffy. I know what I see."
"And just what is it you saw?" She was really wound up now, hands on her hips, folded into tiny fists, jaw jutting out at me.
"I saw you with your new beau. Just can't keep out of the dark, can you?"
She laughed. "Yes, Riley, to you that's what it was always about, wasn't it? You weren't Angel, you weren't Dracula. Never mind the fact that you and I did things that were more intimate and more intense than anything I'd ever done. Never mind that you slept beside me and woke up next to me. Never mind that I gave you everything I had to give. Your damn insecurities just kept pushing into things, didn't they?"
"Insecurities? Well, silly me, I get to thinking that maybe I'm coming up short when you go jetting out the door to LA at the drop of a hat to save Angel, or get yourself under Drac's thrall. But it was more than that, Buffy, and you know it. You never let me in."
"Jesus, Riley, if you had been any more in me, I'd have had to call a surgeon and have you removed."
I shook my head. "That was just your body. You never took me into your heart. You said you did, but you kept me out. I wasn't enough of a bad boy for you, was I? Too clean cut, too All-American for the Slayer, right?"
"You know, Riley, what you don't know could fill books. When I think about…"
I nodded nastily at her. "That's right. Get indignant and bitchy now. Tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and make it all my fault, right?"
"As a matter of fact…"
I shook my head. "No, baby. You're playing by the old rules. The old ones where you just made them up as you went along. Everything your way, at your pace, and if I went too fast or I stepped out of line, you punished me by pulling away. Those rules only worked because I let them." I took a step toward her. "I let you know that you could do what you wanted to me and I would stick around for it. So you did. Why bother to respect somebody who lets you walk on them, right?"
Her answer was in a much smaller voice. "Didn't…walk on you."
"Sure you did." I smiled at her. "But that's all over now. I'm back, and I've learned some things about myself. I've changed."
She looked up at me. "It's too late," she replied, and this time it looked like she really might cry. But, like she said, it was too late now.
She shook her head. "Nothing's changed, Riley. Nothing is any different. I can't give you any more than I could before. In fact, things being what they are, me being what I am, I probably couldn't even give you as much. And you always wanted more, so it's never going to be enough."
"I only wanted all of you." I reached out, and I took her in my arms. She stiffened at first, but the kiss was hot and her lips were warm enough when I got to them. Her arms slipped around me and it started to feel the way it should have been when I first saw her. "And it doesn't seem like it's too much to expect."
"Riley…wait…no…" She started to push away.
I eased my grip slightly. "What is it, Buffy?"
"This…this isn't right, Riley. I…"
My eyes narrowed. "Spike? Is that what this is about?"
She shook her head sadly. "No, Paranoia Boy. Get it straight. What happened with us was about us. It wasn't about Angel, or Spike, or Dracula, or the skanky vamp hos you were trucking with. You wanted more from me than I could give you, and that's that."
I pulled her in close. "So maybe what I have to do is take what I want."
"Riley, stop it!" she squealed. She pulled her head back from my intended kiss and surprised me with a headbutt. I flinched and felt my vamp face burst forward in pain and sudden fury. It was too late to cover, so I smiled at her.
Her face crumpled, her lips twisted in a cartoonish frown and then the tears came. Honest to God gushers as she pulled away from me and backed against the far wall of the living room.
"No, no, no," she sobbed. "Oh, God, no…"
"It's okay now, Buffy. Now I can be what you want. What you need."
She tilted her head slightly to the left and back again, a look of pity drowning her features. "They finally got you. They took you away from me…" she wailed.
"No, Buffy. They gave me back to you. Back to us." I started toward her, slipping back to my human face as I did. "Don't you understand? Now I have what I was missing before. Now I can tap that darkness you were always looking for. I can be…"
"A monster." Her voice was flat, monotone, but had the sting of a slap. "An absolute abomination…"
II
I laughed right in her face. "I'm an abomination?" I ticked off the names on my fingers as I went through the list. "But Angel, Dracula, and now, Spike, for Chrissakes, are somehow more appealing? I don't buy that. You like your men laced with a little demon."
She shook her head. "Look at what it's done to you. You used to be so kind. So good. Now look at you."
I took another step forward. "No, honey, being turned didn't do this to me. You did. Poor old Riley Finn was never enough for you. But I am now. Am I dark enough for you now? Strong enough? Bad enough?"
"Get out of here," she snarled.
I shook my head. "You don't understand. I love you."
She seemed a little taken aback at first. Her eyes softened for just the fraction of a second. Then the fire lit back into them with a vengeance. "No you don't!" she shrieked. "You don't love me anymore than Spike does! You're a goddamn monster, a beast, a demon, and if you don't get out of here now," she went on, her lips curling around the teardrops still trickling down her cheeks, "I swear I will stake you where you stand…"
"No you won't." I stepped forward again, almost close enough to touch her. "Face it, Buffy. You don't want one of the good guys. You're jonesing for a bad boy, and you always have. A regular Joe Blow human ain't enough for a superhero like you? Well, let me show you something."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small box about the size of your average portable Discman. In the center was a circular screen. I thumbed the power switch at the top. As it hummed I looked back at her. "See, honey? I'll show you. This is one of the Initiative's most recent little toys. Human auras give off electrical discharges that can be measured by this little baby here. If you look down, you'll see that your aura…" My eyes narrowed at what I saw, and I began to laugh again.
"You'll see that neither one of us is human. What a great big surprise that is, Killer."
She doubled over as if I'd kicked her in the guts. "You're wrong. I'm human. I am. I AM. There's nothing wrong with me…"
"Nothing," I replied as I pulled her upwards, "but hypocrisy. You look at this reading and you tell me that I'm an abomination but you're hunky-dory."
"You are an abomination. You chose this. You twisted, sick freak. You went out and finally had one of them turn you." She shook her head, swallowed, and straightened up. "Well, I guess I haven't been strictly human for a while." Her voice was a little different. A little colder. I looked in her eyes and she had her bad-ass, chin-jutting face on. "I'm the Slayer. And you know what that means, don't you, Agent Finn?"
I leered at her. "I know what it's always meant up to now." I reached out and tilted her chin up so that she was looking me in the eye. "Child of the night. Just like me now. I know that there was something missing from me before, and it's here now. And you and I can be right for each other."
"So let me get this straight…you left me, spent a year with the Army doing God knows what to who and where…and come back shocked that I found some comfort elsewhere."
I shook my head. "This isn't about that."
I could have gone on arguing with her all night. At least we were together and thrashing it out. But the moment that my heart broke, the moment when it all came crashing down, was when she pulled the stake out of her jacket pocket and leveled it at me.
"I don't care what it's about, Riley. I'm the Slayer. Which means it's pretty much my job and my adventure to dust your vampire ass if you get in my way. I said get out of here. If I see you again, it'll be for the last time." It might have sounded more dramatic if she hadn't been sniffling. But it wasn't the sound of her command that stung. It was the look in her eyes. Contempt. The bitch looked at me with pity and contempt.
I almost hit her. I wanted to. I could feel it happen; the cool rush of air against my hand and wrist as I swung, the dull thonk as the punch connected. I could even see the contempt melting from her eyes in a rush of surprise and fear.
I contented myself with answering her. "Yes it will, baby. The very last time." I backed toward the door. "Oh…by the way…you might want to check on your blonde boy toy. He was in a bad way last I saw of him."
She didn't answer, but she was wiping her eyes. I guess she could cry in front of me after all. I thought about that look of contempt again. Yes, my little golden girl, we'll just have to see how much you can cry after all.
She pushed her way past me and broke into a run for the cemetery. I watched her, watched the blonde halo of hair as it bounced and shone in the light of the streetlamps. Running to Spike. Damn, if that don't beat all…
Monster. An abomination. I kicked the words back and forth in my head, tasted them mentally, spit them back out. So I wasn't dark enough for her before, and now I was too dark. So what the hell did she want? What did she expect? She was the one always dancing on the edge with the vamps and the hostiles. Look at her friends. Witches, werewolves, vampires with souls, vampires with chips, ex demons. But I was a monster and an abomination. No, this was the same old game. Too normal before, too superhuman now. And she's honestly not sure she could take me if she had to. I'd had a hell of a lot more combat training than either of those panty-waisted UK vamps she was used to having around, and she knows it. With my training and experience, I was tougher than any vamp she'd ever faced.
And maybe that was the whole point of it. Maybe I had to give her a little demonstration, a little show of strength. After all, this girl always goes for the ones who made her life hell, right?
And of course, I did still have my invitation.
I walked back up the front steps and through the front door. If I was a monster, maybe it was time I started acting like one. The thought stopped me in my tracks. All the training, all the indoctrination, all the seminars about "knowing the enemy" were all bullshit. There was no demon controlling my actions. I was more in control of myself, freer than I'd ever been in my life. The Army wasn't in charge of me anymore, Buffy wasn't pulling my strings, and that just left me. And because I was the one calling the shots now, I was an abomination. I walked through the living room, rage beginning to simmer in my gut. I walked up the stairs, heading for Buffy's room.
I stopped in the hallway and smiled as I noticed a thin glow of lamplight streaming from under Dawn's door. Even with the door closed, I could hear her stereo playing. She hadn't heard a thing between me and big Sis. Hell, she was probably supposed to be asleep. I opened the door and stepped into the room.
Her head snapped up. She was lying on the bed, notebook open, doodling idly as she listened to her music. Her hands went down over the page. Part of me smiled, sure that she was covering up some boy's name, passionately inscribed within a heart or some such thing. "I was just finishing up this homework. I'm going to…what are YOU doing here?"
"You're up late, kid."
She wrinkled her nose at me. "I'm not a kid."
"Oh, of course not," I laughed. "You're a full-fledged woman now, right?"
"If you're looking for Buffy, she…"
I shook my head at her. "I'm not. I was hoping you'd be up, as a matter of fact."
She eyed me suspiciously. "Why me?"
I frowned at her. "You know, we weren't always so antagonistic. You used to like me pretty well, as I recall."
"Yeah, well, that was before you slipped away without saying goodbye. I don't think I'm the only person who finds that hard to forgive. Might wanna work on that."
"Well, that's why I'm here," I answered, slowly stepping into the room. "Have some work to do, I guess." I smiled. She didn't return it, but she didn't bark at me to get out of her room, either.
"We're not all that different, I guess," I said as I crossed the room toward her. "We both know what it's like to live in her shadow and jump up and down for a little of her attention."
That got a response. She sat up on the bed and looked at me with eager eyes. "Tell me about it. She goes through these things and it's like, I don't have a sister, I'm just Buffy the Perfect and I can do it all cause I have powers and stuff."
"And if you can't keep up with her, she leaves you in the dust, and if you can, then she immediately thinks something must be wrong…"
She pointed at me and laughed in agreement. "Yeah, she's all like, 'ooh, you must be possessed' or 'help, something's wrong with me!' just because somebody can do the same things she can."
I laughed and sat down on the bed beside her.
"Yeah, and all this time I figured she only did that with me."
She shook her head, clearly pleased that I'd been talking to her for almost five minutes without treating her like a child. "Oh, no, she treats all of us the same way. Like she's been doing it all by herself for all these years and just carrying the rest of us." She snorted. "I don't know about you, but I get really tired of being treated like a burden."
"Try being the strong man in a relationship with her."
"You do know it wasn't you, right? She pushes guys away faster than anybody I've ever met. None of them stay around. I think she does it on purpose."
I nodded. "She's a hard woman to get close to. So many secrets, so concerned about protecting everyone around her from the truth as well as from the monsters."
Dawn snorted again. "Yeah. As if we need it. I'm like, 'hello! Big girl now…been fighting the monsters for a long time.' But she doesn't even notice that. Like she's the gift to the universe."
I nodded. "But you know, she worries for a reason. She makes a lot of enemies. Sometimes the enemies strike back at her through the people she loves. You have to keep that in mind when you're getting upset because she's protecting you."
"Yeah, well, I'm not a kid anymore. I don't need to be protected and watched over. Just spending a little time hanging out now and then would be just fine." She looked at me, suddenly finding herself on a roll. "Besides, I think the bad guys have figured out by now that the only thing they get out of coming after me or somebody else Buffy cares about is an ass kicking." She giggled. "It's like, 'Come up with a new plan, guys!' You know?"
I nodded. "But you know," I replied, "Sometimes you have to go with the classics." I slipped into vamp face and grabbed her before she got out the scream. "You don't understand, KID," I told her as she tried to wriggle out of my grasp. "Big sis wouldn't know how to love anybody without an instruction manual. She needs to learn a few things. And lesson number one is "Love is Pain."
She screamed then, a full out squeal of terror. I'd be lying if I said it didn't give me a pleasant little tingle to see that fear in her eyes and know that for once somebody knew old Riley Finn wasn't bluffing.
She didn't have much wriggle room, but she did manage to do quite a job on the side of my face with her nails, reopening the old scar. I yanked her close and bit hard on her throat, lapping and suckling at the deep red warmth that oozed out. I could feel her struggles slowing and stopping, but her torso and shoulders kept jiggling. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that she was crying.
"It's all right, Dawnie. This is the first day of the rest of your life, kid."
She whined something unintelligible, but it didn't matter what she was saying. I grabbed her, framing her face with the palms of my hands and pulled her in close as if for a kiss. She was too weak to resist as I laid her mouth against the bleeding trail she had left along my face. I felt her try to struggle, felt her lips and tongue against the wound and knew she had tasted. Now she was mine. I pulled her, laying her flat on her back and drank deeply, finishing her off. Then I switched off her light, pulled the covers up over her body, and sat on the floor where I couldn't be seen from the door.
It was a few hours before Buffy came back, opened the door quietly, saw the shape of Dawn's slumbering body in the bed, and made her own way to bed. I smiled in the darkness. Yes, baby, it's time to take you to school.
I waited another hour before I got up, pulled the covers down and off Dawn, and picked her up. Months of marching through the brush had trained me to be quieter and stealthier than ever, so it was no problem silently creeping into Buffy's room and switching off her alarm. I put a white sheet of paper over the clock with a big smiley face in Magic Marker and SLEEP IN written in big block letters that I hoped would pass for a Dawn sign.
Then I took my new baby to school.
The cavernous ruins of the high school were like old home week. Hiding out from the Initiative, I'd learned every nook and cranny of the place, so finding a nice hidey-hole was no problem at all. Shaded from the intrusive sun which was just beginning to peek over the Sunnydale horizon, I nestled Dawnie on some old blankets and scrounged around to find her something to eat.
When I returned, she was sitting up on the blanket looking at me with expressionless eyes.
"You're awake. That was quick."
She looked at me, blinking a few times as if to emphasize her silence.
"You know, I wasn't sure it was going to work." I smiled at her. "You were my first. Yes indeed. Treasure this." With a mock-lovelorn grin, I laid my fist over my heart and lowered my head in a salute to my first.
The food hunt could have gone better. Couldn't find anything around except for a couple of stray cats, and she turned her nose up at them. "Not hungry?" I asked.
She glared back at me. "Why?"
I shrugged. "When I woke up, I was ravenous. I just figured…"
"No," her voice was icy. "Why did you do this to me?"
"Oh, you were enjoying your lot in life? Buffy's little sister, the burden of the family? Your words, kid, not mine."
"Don't call me kid."
I laughed. She had a point, after all. "Okay, I won't call you kid any more, Dawn. Doesn't really fit you any more anyway, now, does it?"
She glared at me, her eyes filled with hate. "So how come I know who I am? I remember everything…."
"Don't tell me you bought into that oh-it's-not-me-it's-a-demon line, did you? Being a vampire means you're beyond life and death. You're beyond human rules and regulations. That's what they consider so 'evil,' Dawn. You're more than they are now. We're more than they are. So they call us demons because we feed on blood."
She wrinkled her nose. "We don't have to feed on people."
I chuckled. "This from the girl who just turned her nose up at cat. They're lesser creatures, Dawn. We feed on lesser creatures. They do, too. Think about it. When you were one of them, did you spend a lot of time boo-hooing because the pepperoni on your pizza used to be a pig named Charlie?" I lit another cigarette and held out the pack to her. "Hell, no, you didn't. So why worry so much about them anymore? We're beyond it. Past the limits of their frail humanity. We're stronger, faster, and more deadly than they are."
"Except for Buffy." She reached over and pushed my hand with the cigarette packet away.
"We're just as strong as she is. Just as fast, if not faster. She wins so many battles against our kind because she's been fighting them for a long time and she has the power of the element of surprise. Nobody expects a wispy little blonde like her to pack that much of a wallop."
"Oh, so now we fight her? Is this some kind of a macho thing? Couldn't match her when you were human, so now you want a piece of her?" She gave me an all too familiar roll of the eyes.
I slapped her. Hard. "Listen up, short stuff," I growled. "This is your big chance to get out of the shadow. Living as 'Buffy's little sister' didn't piss you off? You're damn right it did. So don't tell me I'm the only one with a grudge here."
She rubbed at her face where my fingers had left livid red marks. "Yeah, so? She's my sister. She drives me crazy. Isn't that what sisters do?"
"How come it was so easy for me to get to you, Dawn?"
She didn't answer me. Just sat there glaring and rubbing at her cheek. I could see in her eyes that part of her wanted to tear me limb from limb. Time to get baby primed. "I'll tell you why, pint size. I could get to you because she left you there for me." I looked at her and tossed her one of the cats. "Go on. I know you're hungry. Quit being so picky and eat up. Gonna need your strength."
She deftly caught the cat and started petting it. As I snorted my disgust, she looked up at me. "Why wouldn't she? You're her ex-boyfriend."
"Because she KNEW, Dawn. She knew what I was when she took off out the front door, leaving me here, with an invitation to the house, and her precious kid sister in the upstairs bedroom."
She shook her head. "No. She wouldn't have done that."
I reached over and stroked some stray hairs back from her face. "She did."
It may have started as a protest of some kind, but the next sound she made was simply a whimper.
"All that's over now," I soothed, stroking her hair softly. "Now you're my girl, my responsibility. I'm your sire. Like a parent, you know?"
She started crying then. "No, you're not. You're…you're a thing and you did this to me and you…"
I reached over and hugged her, pulling her close against my shoulders. "Shhhhhh. It's all right. I know you're afraid, I know it's all so different and new, but you're going to see that it's better. Much better here with me. For one thing, I'll never leave you all by yourself. You'll always have me to turn to."
Now the tears came full force and she wasn't pulling away any more, but clinging to me like ivy to the side of a university study hall.
"Let's just go away," she sobbed. "Far away from here and never come back."
I eased away from the embrace so I could look her in the eye. "She'll come after us, Dawn. You know that."
She shook her head, her words gaining speed and losing coherence as she went on. "No. No she wouldn't. She doesn't worry with me anymore. And I could…I could learn to help you. And we can help each other and…"
She stopped as I slowly shook my head left to right. "Do you remember what you told me before I gave you the Gift?" She averted her eyes but didn't answer. "She'll take this personally. She'll hunt you down. She'll hunt us down. We only have one chance here, Dawn, and that's if we strike at her now before she knows it's coming."
"No. We…we have to just go. If we fight her, she'll kill us."
"Oh, but her policy will be so different if we run away? I don't think so. I think her reaction will be pure Buffy. Somebody took something away from me and I want revenge. Never mind that I didn't want it in the first place. It was mine."
"She doesn't think of me as an thing."
"Oh, no?" I shrugged diffidently. "Doesn't sound like she's been treating you much like a person either. Tell me I'm wrong." She didn't answer so I went on. "She'll come for me. She may even spare you…leaving you all alone without a sire. Just like you've been since…well, since your Mom died."
She slipped out of my arms and curled up on the blanket. "I can't talk about this anymore. I can't…"
"You're just hungry," I said softly, picking up one of the cats that were still milling around, looking for food. "Have something to eat and I'll tell you what we're going to do."
She closed her eyes and shook her head once. Twice. Then she licked her lips. "Lesser creatures?" she said in a quiet, hopeful voice.
I put the cat in her hands and watched her as she patted it. "Lesser creatures," I answered. "Now don't play with your food."
She looked at me. She didn't say "Yes, sir," with her voice, but her eyes were submissive. She held the cat for a long moment, steeling herself, and plunged her teeth into its throat. The cat hissed in pain and fear, all paws and claws for several seconds. Then it stopped struggling and Dawn lifted her head from its throat. Clumps of cat hair hung from her face, stuck to the blood running down on her chin as she smiled at me.
"There we go," I said, nodding quietly. "That's my girl."
I almost felt guilty about what I was going to do with her. Almost wanted to tell her the risks she was going to be running. Almost wanted to give in to the strong paternal pull I was feeling toward her. Almost.
We stayed hidden in the darkness under the ruins of the school until the sun slipped below the horizon. If I knew Buffy, she'd be out looking for Dawn by now, and probably so busy worrying about where little Sis had gone that she'd forget to revoke the invitation she'd given me.
I could see Willow through the kitchen window, pacing back and forth nervously as she waited for the teakettle to boil. I gave Dawn the high sign, and she staggered up the steps and lurched against the open back door.
"Dawn," Willow called from inside, "what are you doing out there? Get in here! Your sister's worried sick about you…"
Dawn walked through the doorway, her invitation now secure. I already had mine, so that wasn't a problem, unless by some stretch they'd been able to do the uninvitation spell while they were devoting all their resources to locating Dawn.
I heard Willow making the requisite sounds of worry and watched from my vantage point as she helped Dawn in and up the steps, presumably to her room. Now to wait for Buffy to come back.
I climbed the tree and sat in the boughs so I could see into Dawn's room. Willow was up there, getting the kid settled into bed and generally mother henning. Dawn was playing along with it like a good soldier. I'd told her to milk it a bit; they'd be expecting one of two reactions from her. If she wasn't sullen and moody, then she'd be clingy and in need of some TLC. I told her to play up the latter; it would come in handy later on.
Willow was still fawning and fussing over Dawn when I dropped back to the ground and slipped in through the back door. I switched on the tracker I had shown Buffy earlier. Nothing closer than Willow upstairs. Good. Wouldn't want anybody to spoil my little surprise.
I crept up the stairs silently and waited outside the door to Dawn's bedroom. Willow was still in there fussing.
"Ummm…okay," she was saying. "Now you just get those jammies on, and I'll go figure out how I can get the message to Buffy that you're okay. She's all worked up about you, and the way you came in here, you had me worried me too. I don't mind telling you, Dawn, that…"
Pressure points are areas of the human body that are primarily dominated by nerve centers or major blood vessels. A hard blow to the pressure point I grabbed and squeezed on the left side of Willow's throat would have killed her. I had no interest in killing her. I gave it a light squeeze and held her there for a few seconds until she went limp as a rag doll in my arms.
I slung her over my shoulder and carried her into the master bedroom. It seemed to be the one she was using, although something about that just struck me as wrong with a capital "W". Well, it was just something that would have to change. No way I could take Buffy to live in some burnt out warehouse or in the charred ruins of the high school. It wouldn't be good enough for her. But this…this would be home. I looked around the room as I flopped Willow onto the bed. Yes, this would do nicely. Get some big heavy curtains, block off those windows. Maybe turn one of the rooms into a library. I'd always wanted one of those. And, hell, it wasn't like I wasn't going to have time to read. I looked back down the hall to Dawn's room. And teach. Lots of time to teach, too.
She would learn well. Just as headstrong as her sister, but also flushed with new power. Dawn would want to learn from him how best to use it, learn tactics and techniques. Given the time, I could train her to be more dangerous than her sister. Buffy would always fly by the seat of her pants, trusting her strength and her courage to see her through. Dawn would be wiser, slower to rely on sheer brute force without six years of superherodom under her belt.
I smiled faintly as I whipped the blankets over Willow and snapped off the light. Yes. This would do nicely. She'd be at home here. We'd be at home here.
The front door opened and I could hear the hustle and bustle of voices below.
"Be careful, Xander…he's not a sandbag, he's a person…"
"Ummm…not so much with the person, Buff…"
"Harris, if I wasn't so bloody weak, I'd…"
"You'd what, Dorito Boy?"
"Okay, enough with the testosterone, boys."
"Hey, don't look at me! Goldielocks here started it…"
"You know, Harris, a good thrashing might do wonders for you…"
"A good thrashing might do wonders for both of you!"
I smiled. Maybe she was ready to grow up and move on, after all.
"Did you have something in particular in mind, pet?" I could hear the leer in the peroxided putz's voice.
I heard Spike groan as they settled him down, presumably on the sofa. I smiled a little, knowing he was still in pain. Harmony had really done a job on him. It felt good knowing I had helped.
"Why don't you keep those little asides locked up in that chipped skull of yours, huh?"
"Xander." Buffy's voice was like the crack of a whip. "Leave him alone. He's in pain. It's how he deals with it."
A sigh. Probably Xander's. "I'm sorry we couldn't find her, Buffy. If you want, Anya and I can go out again and…"
"No. You have work tomorrow and it's getting late as it is. Besides, you know Dawn. Probably up to something she thinks she can get away with."
"Yeah. I guess so."
I heard the crinkle of Xander's jacket as they hugged and heard his heavy footsteps out the front door.
"Will?" Buffy's voice was wary, mistrustful. Little sister missing. Willow not coming down to meet the others. Should have thought about that.
But then, I hadn't been expecting her to bring Spike. It didn't sound like he was in much position to worry about, but still it rankled. Wasn't she done with him yet?
"All right, just settle down and lie back…"
"Oh, are you going to take care of me?"
"Well somebody has to. Look what happens when I let you take care of yourself."
His reply was stung. "Well, it wasn't exactly as if I should expect any real trouble from Harmony, for the love of sweet…ow!"
"Stop being such a baby, I'm just seeing how they're healing…"
"Well maybe I should start poking about in holes in your body….hey…that sounds like a lot of fun, come to think of it."
"Down. Lie down. Bigger fish to fry right now."
"I've got a big fish for you," he grumbled sardonically.
It was getting to me. I had to fight the urge to storm down there and just finish the job right there in front of her. But I couldn't. That would alienate her. I couldn't afford that at this point. This was where I had to show her what we could do together. Having her kill Spike would be just the beginning, after all. It was worth waiting for.
"This isn't the time, Spike. Why isn't Willow answering?"
"Maybe she's asleep. She's been sleeping a lot, you know, since…"
Buffy sighed raggedly. "Since Tara left, I know. She's depressed."
I heard the metallic squeak and snap of Spike's Zippo. "There's more than that to it, luv. She lost Tara, she lost her magic…she's lost her reason for being around here."
"Like hell she has." She started up the steps and I melted back into the shadows.
She stormed up the stairs, apparently angry with Spike's very logical insight. That's my girl. Get mad at 'em when they tell you the truth too often. I wondered idly if that's what happened to Giles. Hadn't seen him around since I'd gotten back in town, and if taking out the two I-teamers over at the Bronze hadn't sniffed him out, I doubted anything would at this point. Another useful bit.
She reached the top of the stairs and never saw me hanging back in the doorway to her own room. She peeked into Willow's room. From the light streaming up from the living room, I could see that she was unhappy about Willow lying down on the job. She sighed and opened the door to Dawn's room. I heard her gasp and slipped up behind her as she stepped inside.
"Dawn? Where have you been all day? The school called, and you didn't come home, and…"
Dawn moaned dramatically. Yes, the girl was a fast learner. The moan brought Buffy right up to the side of the bed and that gave me the time I needed to slip the door shut and twist the lock. Buffy spun and glowered at me. "I told you to get out of here," she practically spat. "Especially in here. You stay the hell away from my sister." She cut an eye over to Dawn, who was feebly trying to sit up in the bed. "Dawn, Riley was vamped last night. He's not okay. Do you understand me?"
Dawn's arm slipped out and around Buffy's throat, capturing her in a headlock and bending her back across the bed. "Perfectly. Do you understand now, Big Sis?"
"Shhhhhh…." I soothed, slowly crossing the room to her. "Buffy, it's all right. I'm fixing things. One by one, we're going to make things all right."
She craned her neck back and looked at Dawn. She closed her eyes and shuddered, seeing that Dawn had let her vamp face show. "Why?" Buffy squeaked out, her voice a watery, choked sob.
"Don't you see that it's what has to happen? This is who you are, Buffy. You're not seeing it right now, but it's true."
"Why did you do that to her?" she snarled. "I thought you loved her."
I nodded. "I do, Buffy. And now, Dawn and I have a bond that you can't even imagine. At least not yet. But it's incredible, Buffy. And it changes everything."
She was crying now. "Yes. Yes, I can see that it does."
I waved an arm at Dawn and she released Buffy. "Don't make any snap decisions here. You've been doing this too long to still believe that over- simplified bullshit the Council shovels, haven't you?"
"What bullshit is that, Riley? That vampires are evil? Thinking you proved that when you vamped my sister, you sick son of a bitch…"
"I'm a thousand times better off, Buffy," Dawn said excitedly. "And you'll see. It's hard at first. But you get used to it. Being stronger, being…"
"A demon." Buffy's voice was flat, emotionless.
I shook my head. "Aren't you the same girl who warned me not to overgeneralize about werewolves? Aren't you the one who pals around with vampires and demons and ex-demons?"
"None of whom touched my SISTER…"
"We're family now, Buffy. Me and Dawn…and you."
She shook her head. "I could never call a monster like you family…"
"Oh that's rich, coming from Buffy the Vampire Layer. Besides, this is about a lot more than just you, Blondie. It's about time you look around you. Dawn needs you. I love you. We can make this happen. I'm just as strong as you are now, so you won't have to hold back or worry about me getting hurt anymore. We're on the same plane."
"If you really believe that, Riley, your plane crashed a long time ago."
I shook my head. "You keep telling yourself that, but you know different. All those nights you left me in bed so you could go hunting…you never knew I woke up every time, did you? I knew when you weren't next to me. I knew when we weren't close against one another. I always knew when you were pulling away from me, throwing yourself into the darkness."
She averted her eyes that time, and I knew I'd hit a nerve. "I was doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm a Slayer."
"You're a killer. You always have been, and you've always known it. But none of that matters anymore, Buffy. We're all hunters now." I smiled at her. "And now you don't have to pull away from me when the other side of your nature cries out to be freed. We can let it loose together, you and I."
I crossed the room to her. "We don't have to be enemies. We can be so much more than friends. You loved me once. At least you said you did. And you know I've always loved you…practically from the first moment I saw you in the University Bookstore. And now we're free to do what we have to…what we need to. Dawn's with us. Giles is gone. Your mother is…well…there's no other family to concern yourself with. We can be all the family you need."
She lifted her chin to look at me and I kissed her. Her lips were salty, almost like blood, and then I realized she was crying.
"It's all over, Riley," she said through her tears. "Don't you see that? I'm not the girl who chased after you in that damn helicopter. That girl died. I'm all that's left. And I'm only here because I was pulled out of where I belong…"
"Right. So you aren't human anymore, either. So what's to be self- righteous about? We can give you the love you need. We can make sure you're never alone again, no more lonely tears or grief or pain…"
"Spike feels pain."
"He does now," I agreed. "But he was never for you, Buffy. You know that. He's an animal, a lapdog, a mongrel."
"And you, Riley? You're pure?"
"I'm not perfect, Buffy," I said softly. "But I'm perfect for you. And we can work this all out. All the pain, all the anger, it goes away…and we'll have nothing left but our love. That love we used to have."
She looked at me, her eyes dry and her lips peeled back. "What love we used to have, Riley? Love you? Never. I needed you. I wanted you. But there wasn't enough of you to love. Ever."
I grabbed her, cupping her chin. "Well, there's a little more of me now, doll."
She hit me with everything she had. It was a lot. I felt my jaw exploding and I tumbled across the room, landing on a hope chest covered in stuffed animals. I heard a snarl and as my head turned back up, I saw Dawn jumping for Buffy from behind.
Buffy ducked, grabbing hold of her sister's wrists and flipping her onto the floor with a loud "wummph".
"Buffy?" Spike's voice was worried. He'd heard the noises. Let him come.
"Your own sister. You don't have any love in you at all, do you?" I launched myself across the room and clocked her with a roundhouse to the left cheek. She saw it coming in time to flinch, but enough of it clipped her to send her back onto the bed and give me a few seconds to pull Dawn out of the firing line.
"Stay over here," I told Dawn, and stepped in front of her, taking a defensive position. "It doesn't have to be like this, Buffy," I said, moving quickly to parry a kick directed at my midsection.
"You kill my sister and then you tell me everything can be just peachy? I don't think so."
"Hah! I gave your sister something more than you could. The chance to live forever."
She threw another punch, this one for my throat. "You aren't alive any more than she is."
"Or you," I shot back, dropping to the floor and sweeping her legs out from under her with my right leg.
She hit the floor and I was on her in an instant, pinning her wrists to the floor and straddling her. She strained against me and we were groin to bucking groin. I smiled. "Well, you know, honey…this was never the problem, now was it? We were always good at this."
"Yes, and some of us thought we were a lot better than we ever were, too," she spat and tried to knee me in the groin. Fortunately, I had her pinned, so the only thing that hurt was what she said.
"Buffy!" Spike was pounding on the door now, feebly but still at it.
"It's all right," Dawn cried.
"Niblet? 'Zat you?" he shouted. "I'll be right there…"
"Spike, get…" I cupped my hand over Buffy's mouth, but it was too late. The feeble taps became loud, echoing booms as he hammered away at the door. The wood around the jamb was beginning to splinter dangerously.
"It didn't have to be like this, Buffy. Now I have to kill him." I sighed heavily and pushed myself up to a crouch as the door finally gave, shards of wood flying into the room and Spike collapsing in and onto the floor from the strain.
Buffy rolled out from under me as I grabbed Spike, flinging him into the hallway. "Stay out of this!" I roared at him.
I turned and saw Buffy with a long plank of wood from the door.
I held my hands out toward her. "We can do this, Buffy. I love you. We can make it work. You and me and your sister. Don't you want to give her some peace? Knowing that we'll always be with her. Isn't that important?"
She turned to Dawn, who cried out and reached for her tenderly. "Dawn," Buffy said, pulling her into a hug. "I love you. Of course I want you to feel that peace."
"NO!" I shouted as I saw Buffy's hand sliding up, the lethal shard of wood clenched in her fist.
Dawn had time to gasp in surprise as the wood sank into her back. Her face froze in a momentary rictus of shock and then she was gone, a shimmering cloud of ash coating her sister and the bed she had called her own.
Tears of rage flooding my eyes, I punched Buffy in the mouth as hard as I could. She fell back against the bed and I looked down at the pile of nothing that had been my first offspring. I reached out and grabbed Buffy by the throat, heaving her back up off the bed. Her eyes bugged out at me in a silent pantomime of panic as my thumbs pressed off her windpipe.
"You want a monster?" I snarled at her. "You want a war? I wanted a family. I wanted to love you…but you couldn't allow that, could you? Couldn't love Riley. Not your type. Even when he's exactly your type. Never good enough for the Princess."
And yet I looked into her eyes and I couldn't finish it. Heaving her away from me, into the hallway to the arms of her bleached nightmare, I cried out, "You want a monster? You want a war? You've got one, bitch!"
I leapt out the window in a shower of tinkling, shattering glass and down to the street below. It was time to move my car before the I-team started digging around. Losing two members in a barfight with a vampire would be enough to scramble the team, and they'd be looking for me, wondering if something had happened.
I turned on the ignition and watched the front door. She didn't come after me. Probably nursing Spike again. I rolled my eyes and switched on the radio.
1.1 I gave my heart and soul to you, girl
Now, didn't I do it, baby? Didn't I do it baby?
Gave you the love you never knew, girl
Now, didn't I do it, baby? Didn't I do it baby?
I cried so many times, and that's no lie
It seems to make you mad each time I cry
Didn't I blow your mind this time? Didn't I?
I looked up at the house as the song played, teardrops coursing down my cheeks. Didn't I?