A/N: Heeheehee, back again! GUESS WHAT? My internet restrictions have been relaxed- now I can go on anytime I like! Only problem is, I hafta pay for what I spend, but I'm willing to do that 'cause y'all so nice about my fics! But still, the exams mean that revision is greater, but I'm still tryin' to churn out a chapter a week at least.

Disclaimer: I may be the author, but Buffy is Joss Whedon's.

Dedication:

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Zachary paced in front of the grovelling vampire, watched as always by the entire cult. In Zachary's strong hand was clutched the scriptures that had been dug by this very vampire who was now cringing in front of him shamelessly. This very vampire who had allowed his squad to be slaughtered by a Slayer and a traitor. This very vampire who was now pleading for his afterlife.

This very vampire who had delivered what might prove to be the key to returning the Anointed One to existence.

Not that that would affect Zachary's sense of cruel enjoyment at witnessing what this demon was reduced to.

"Lee, did I thank you for the scriptures?" His voice dripped with heavy sarcasm. Lee looked up, his face coming into the flickering light of the candles. Exposing the cuts and bruises of a recent beating from his cruel Sire.

"You did." Lee was trembling ashamedly now, weakened by his injuries. He could say no more, for Zachary suddenly stamped hard on one of Lee's outstretched hands. Lee screamed as Zachary ground Lee's fingers into the floorboards until the bones inside snapped sickeningly. As Lee collapsed, Zachary walked away and tossed the scroll in his hand to a waiting vampire, ready to decode the message with a co-scribe. Zachary, meanwhile, decided to continue his little game.

"It still amazes me," he mused. "When I first saw you back in 1904, I believed you might have held some promise in you. You may have risen to be almost as great as me." He sneered at the blonde. "I didn't realise that I would still make mistakes after all my years."

"I am sorry!" Lee cried, dragging him limp hand towards his aching body. "I repent, Zachary, I repent!"

"I am sick of worthless apologies!" Zachary thundered suddenly. All eyes, except that of the scribes, were on the leader and his disgraced childe. "Every day I am expected to accept such insignificant words! You are all not fit to be called demons! This was once an elite force, gathering to the hellmouth to raise our great leader! Look at you all! Reduced to the power of infants!"

Lee let out a small sniff of hurt reluctantly. Never in all of his life, both human and vampiric, had he experienced such pain. Zachary rounded on him at this, viciously kicking him across the room so that he struck the wall. Zachary jeered as Lee slid down the wall in unbelievable agony.

"Snivelling brat!" Zachary yelled, really letting his rage fly out now. "Idiotic, incompetant, pathetic little brat! You allowed five more to die at the hands of a sixteen-year-old Slayer! My army has depleted already and all you can do, you, the 'great warrior', is loose even more of my fighters!"

He stormed over to the broken body of Lee, grabbing him roughly by the lapels of his jacket, hauled him up and slammed him hard into the wall. Lee cowered away from his Sire, loosing whatever shred of the merest form of dignity he may have yet possessed, gabbling defeated pleas through his heavily bleeding lips. Long gone was the time when he had attempted to fight back. His entire being thudded with vehement throbbing and stabbed with fire-like pain. His bones were shattered mostly, his skin was blushing purple-black with bruising, and he could only appeal to whatever sympathetic sliver there may have been in the human side of Zachary's nature.

A lost hope on all accounts. Life wouldn't be worth living even if he was awarded the second chance he desired. He had prooved himself to be nothing, to be below the contempt reserved only for traitors like William the Bloody and Angelus.

Zachary revelled in the terror he had inspired on the once-mighty Lee. He loved to bathe in the aura of fear that those facing their brutal and bloody deaths. Vampire, human, it didn't matter. It was exhilarating. It was stimulating. It was just damn fun.

One day he might have the pleasure of seeing Ambulo Mortuus crushed underneath his fist. But those powers...no matter whether the consequences of the spell had been severe or not, long term or short term, powers of darkness such as those were to be feared. Any vampire with sense- and perhaps even some without- should see that.

How long they remained locked in that embrace of fatality, nobody was entirely certain. Seconds could have become minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days for all they cared. They were riveted. Zachary's gleaming vampire eyes burned with a vile delight at the fright in Lee's pained expression.

"We have found it!" One scribe, a small guy with black hair and glasses, cut into the silence. "We have deciphered the scriptures!"

Zachary kept Lee pinned to the wall by his right arm pressing into Lee's neck, as his left hand reached out for the message. He ripped his eyes from the sight of his childe's panicky face to view his scribes.

"Are you entirely sure that every word is in place?" Two heads nodded. "That every detail is correct?" Two more nods. "That I will not be failed yet again?" Yet another two nods. "Good."

The other scribe, a slightly built man with light brown hair, approached and held the message within Zachary's reach. Zachary snatched it and brought it closer to him, studying it greedily. Slowly, a grin of purest evil spread across his mouth and he looked back at Lee, adjusting his grip so that his hand was clutching it.

"Tell me, Lee, what were your dreams for when the Anointed One rose triumphant once more?" Lee's strangled gurgles of a reply were heard in the ringing silence by all.

"That he would reign victorious as was his right to do so, with you at his right hand..." Lee choked suddenly as the grip on him tightened.

Zachary summed up his decision in one word. "Liar."

It happened so fast that it was a blur to all but the leader himself. He dropped Lee to a crumpled heap on the floor, pulled out a hidden stake and plunged it deep into his childe's heart. Lee exploded without another cry.

Zachary cast aside the stake carelessly, sauntering back over to where he had previously stood. The wooden stick split as it hit the floor, but nobody noticed. Zachary looked back at the paper, grin widening even more.

"Well, well, well," he tutted loudly. "Who would have thought that it was there?"

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Hate to leave you on a cliffhanger...no, wait, actually I don't. Ya see, if you review quickly, the next chapter will apear, and you'll read and review it...and so on and so forth. Plz review! Thanx!