Buffy fell back against the hard stone with a muffled groan as Spike released her to spin and rise in one fluid motion that spoke volumes of his concern with the return of his dark beauty, who stood in the door in a shadowed silhouette of menace, her eyes glowing a faint red, illuminating the darkness. She wore a dark lace dress that reached to her ankles but left her upper chest bare in a vivid contrast of marble and obsidian. Her black hair cascaded past her shoulders like a princess of myth, but the danger that radiated from her in almost tangible waves would dispel the illusions of even the most romantic of poets. Beauty, yes, but such malevolence beneath.

Her shattered knee screaming at her, Buffy attempted to rise with as much energy as she could summon after withstanding the hours of skilled torture, but her body for once betrayed her, and it was all that she could do to half rise from the ground before falling back again with a moan of agony. Her knee was the core of the waves of pain, radiating out until they encompassed all of her being, but the lacerations on her stomach and chest burned nearly as hotly. Her head thumped rhythmically, nearly obscuring her eyesight so sharp was the pain. In Spike's loving embrace she had been nearly able to forget it, as she had been able to so nearly forget so much else including the tragedies with which she had been forced to deal in his long absence, but his tension and preparedness, focused entirely on the threat of Drusilla removed the last distraction. It was all that the Slayer could do to focus her eyes, and then all that she could see through the oppressive blackness was the perfect alabaster form of Drusilla, malignant child of the insatiable sadism of her first lover. Once more, though it was a needless distraction from the mortal threat in front of her and her love, she reflected on the burning fury that she harboured at Angel. Would that she had never met him.

Drusilla spoke, the ethereal, ghostly tones of her light voice drifting across the cellar like a fog, echoing. 'Do you stand between the Slayer and me, Spike?' she asked, all traces of insanity gone from her, her previous childlike innocence even in the depths of her darkness gone. She sounded formidably intent in a way that Buffy could not remember. She supposed that that intent was the last sight that Kendra had seen before she had her throat ripped out.

'Spike,' she whispered, looking up, seeing the unrelieved black worn by her love, almost invisible in the dim light of the Russian cellar.

He silenced her with little more than a faint touch on her shoulder. 'You've come too far, Dru,' he told his Sire, his voice soft, but colder than the depths of a winter storm. Buffy prayed that she would never hear that tone directed at her, for its menace was barely hidden. 'Too far, and too bloody fast. That amulet was never meant for someone like you, someone that powerful. Christ, even a fledgling would be hard put to handle the kind of power that you have now.'

Squinting in the dim light as Drusilla moved slowly forward, her body held still, Buffy could just about make out a beautiful gold and silver filigree chain that hung around Drusilla's neck, a perfect onyx stone set in the centre. For some reason, there seemed as much threat from that stone as there was from its wearer.

'And you want to challenge that kind of power, my pretty boy?' Dru asked, her voice sibilant, loaded with meaning that Buffy could not fathom. 'You've seen what I can do, what I have done. Power like this is beyond even the oldest of us now, the weakness that we have become over the millennia. With power like this I can rival the Ancients. You know that, and you will still throw your life away for this girl, a girl who will never love you, and who will wither and die in a few decades even you if you are able to save her here, this day? That isn't like you, my William.'

Holding himself slightly in front of Buffy, shielding her prone and damaged body from whatever Drusilla had in mind, Spike replied, his voice still icy. 'We all change. Some things become more important as the years pass. You know that.'

Drusilla's gaze lighted on Buffy for a brief moment as she continued to move through the chamber, darkness seeming to grow behind her as she did so. The chill that Buffy felt when those dark eyes landed on her was greater than anything that she had ever felt. The Master was a benevolent Angel beside the insane, somehow unquenchable desire in those black eyes. Nest had wanted power. What Drusilla wanted, Buffy knew in an instant of dark realisation, was beyond the capacity or even comprehension of anything to grant. And what now stood in her way was a vampire who was hamstrung in his ability to resist by his need to protect a grievously injured Slayer. The irony would have been amusing had the setting been different.

'We all change, my William,' Dru told him. 'Some of us in different ways. Some become weaker. You are but a shadow of my glorious, irreverent boy, the boy who cut bloody holes through Europe.' Buffy winced at the joy in Drusilla's voice as she remembered what Buffy wished that she could forget about Spike's blood-soaked past.

'And … what?' he asked her, staying close to Buffy as she attempted, again, to rise. The pain almost drove her again into unconsciousness, but she hung on, trying as best she could to ignore it, but dealing with this kind of pain had never been part of any of her training. She grunted to herself as she struggled to her feet through a haze of pain. Any Watcher would have written her off at this stage of menace. 'You want to be the new Master? You want to inherit the arrogance of Nest? You want to challenge the Ancients?'

Buffy, having been able to rise, leaned heavily on Spike's leather clad shoulder, her face drawn and her body unreliable, barely hearing what her lover was saying, and understanding nothing of what she did hear. She knew that if it came to it she would be unable to do much in a fight against a vampire of the power, and maybe enhanced power, of Drusilla, but if was better to be standing. Through the thick leather of Spike's duster, she could feel his muscles more tense than she could ever remember them. A … man … who normally gloried in battle now, she knew, he feared it. She shuddered to think of what Drusilla had become for Spike to fear her that much, Spike who had withstood the full fury of a God without hope of escape, now feared his Sire more. Buffy had no troll hammer this time, nor strength to wield it if she had.

'I want power, my love. I want my family back, too. Darla is around somewhere, Angelus is always ready to come out and play. What about you, Spike? You abandon you family for the Slayer?'

'She is my family, Dru,' he told his Sire, his arm moving to encircle Buffy and hold her close as though the feel of her would lend him the strength that he needed to protect her. Through the pain, Buffy marvelled at both the words that he spoke and the iron certainty with which he spoke them, as though will alone would be enough to defy the strength of his Dark Queen. 'And I'm not abandoning anything so I can hold your coat while you assault the ranks of the Ancients.'

'No, my love, I don't suppose that you will.' Drusilla pondered the words, the last shred of her attachment to Spike and his century long loyalty to her finally vanishing against the strength of his love for the Slayer than he held prone in his arms. Buffy remembered the fervour with which Angel had responded to threats against her, but it was as nothing compared to the cold passion that Spike was summoning. He would fight and die for her, here and now, she knew. And she still had never felt more safe than she did now in his arms, the darkness encroaching as Drusilla moved in, the faint light of the candles around the room seeming to recede as though it, too, was afraid.

'Don't, Dru,' Spike told her, his jaw clenching. 'Don't make me hurt you. I don't want to do this again. Just let us go and you won't hear from either of us again.'

'You're right, my love,' she told him, almost purring. 'I won't.'

Buffy crumbled again to the floor with a scream of pain she crashed to the stone, a blur of black all that she could see as Drusilla moved with impossible speed to send Spike crashing against the stone wall, smashing the metal links of the chains that had recently held Buffy into small splinters of metal with the force of his impact. Buffy screamed again as she felt her lank and filthy hair being grabbed.

Hauled to her feet against the agony, she was held in one hand by the vampiress. She attempted to break free, but such was the strength of Drusilla's grip that she doubted that she could have done it were she at her peak, and she never remembered a time when she was further below it than she was now. She might as well have tried to fend of f a storm than break the iron grip in which she was held. Drusilla barely noticed her ineffectual flailing as Spike hauled himself up painfully, using the wall as a support, blood leaking from the side of his mouth as he favoured his left side. The force of the blow had obviously damaged his ribs.

'Let her go, Dru,' he warned his Sire as she dragged the Slayer towards him, until they were barely separated from him by a few feet. Buffy could smell the blood coming from his side, and see the stain spread on his black shirt. He was not yet badly hurt, she knew, and would heal, but he was weakened.

Never had she felt more helpless, and never had she hated the feeling more. Held securely by Drusilla as though she were an afterthought, it was more than she could do to put up any more the slightest semblance of a struggle.

And even that was ignored as Drusilla reached across and grabbed Spike by his throat with her other hand, lifting him effortlessly and pinning him against the wall. Spike held in one hand, Buffy in the other, and she seemed to be barely sweating. Whatever it was she had stolen, it had indeed magnified her power many times.

As Spike attempted futilely to break free, Drusilla smiled. It was the first real smile that Buffy had seen from the previously insane vampire, and it was unpleasant, for it held within it promise of torments as yet unimagined, and the will and power to carry them out. Formidable though she had been before at the height of her power, now she was truly terrifying.

She was purring again, the ease with which she could hold two of her most powerful enemies without apparent effort obvious. Buffy remembered fearing her when she was insane because of the sheer unpredictability of her actions, but now that the veil of her dementia had cleared revealing the pure malice of an ancient creature steeped in every cruel form of evil.

'Want to see what the Slayer tastes like, my Spike?' Drusilla cooed, laying as much contempt on the form of address as she could, which was considerable for a daughter of nobility raised amid the rapier wit and restrained commentary of Victorian London. 'Want to see if it compares to the others?'

A faint smile lit Spike's face as he looked down at his Sire from where she was holding him by the throat at least a foot from the ground. A sneer would have been more in character for him a few years before, but this twist of his lips was replete mainly with a defiance that Buffy would not have suspected existed within him until a few months before, the defiance of a man who had seen his world crumble and had built for himself a new one, only to see that shatter in a forgotten alley.

'I know what she tastes like, Dru,' he told her, in tone that could have passed for nostalgia.

The smile left Drusilla's face, to be replaced by a slowly mounting fury. 'Tastes better than you ever did, pet,' he continued relentlessly. His ice blue eyes never left her black orbs, pinning her with their intensity. 'Like the sweetest honey. You tasted like ashes. What's that feel like, Dru?' he pressed on, seeing and feeling the massive anger that his Sire was barely holding in as she held them both. 'What's it like to know that despite all that Angelus could do, and all that you could learn in a hundred and fifty years, a twenty one year old girl is better than you?' He snorted with contempt. 'Must be a blow to the ego.'

She screamed in fury, and Buffy moaned with pain as her grip tightened. 'I'll let you know if I agree,' she snarled at him, throwing him to the left through the air. He landed hard, but was able to rise in time to scream, 'NO!' as Drusilla smiled faintly and wrenched Buffy's head to the side, raising her neck to drink. Drusilla's eyes were locked on Spike's as she slipped into her demon face and bent her head to drink, her fang's brushing Buffy's neck.

'Quintus Eranus said that you can run as far as you like, but you'll never be able to run far enough to get away from his vengeance,' Buffy whispered hoarsely as she felt Drusilla prepare to strike.

The vampire stopped, frozen, her fangs barely touching the soft skin of Buffy's throat. It was as though time was suspended as Buffy continued.

'You can convince yourself that you can take him if you need to,' the Slayer continued, going for the kill. 'You can delude yourself that you are enough with what you have stolen to be able to face anyone. But Patricius Quintus Eranus is more than even you can take. He's coming, and he's coming for you.'

Drusilla screamed with untrammelled fury, hurling Buffy from her in rage. She tumbled across the room, hitting the ground with a scream of agony that was drowned out by the howl of Drusilla's rage, which echoed throughout the chamber with such force that an Apocalypse would not have seemed out of place. The naked purity of her anger was awesome, though Buffy had to fight against the pain of her injuries to stay conscious long enough to appreciate it.

'Buffy?' Spike asked, hurrying to her side in spite of his own injuries which were bad enough themselves, bad enough that the scent of his blood when he was close outweighed the stagnant smell of the dark, fetid cellar. As he tried to help her to her feet while hurting her as little as possible, knowing nothing of what she had said to his Sire to send her to such heights of fury, the howl of rage petered out.

They both turned in time to see Drusilla standing still, resplendent in black lace, the full plenitude of the power that she had stolen radiating from her in waves that needed no interpretation to understand the threat that they represented. The Master himself seemed puny by comparison, Angelus a child, Spike a babe. Spike's Dark Queen had transcended her state and moved to something else, something that she would not have reached were to exist for another thousand years. Foot soldiers only in the Legions of Darkness, despised for the impurity of their blood, vampires were not meant to hold the level of power that Drusilla could now summon, enough to make the small cellar seem smaller still, to make the walls seem closer.

'Quintus Eranus can challenge me if he wants to, girl,' Drusilla spat, the venom on her face terrifying in its intensity. 'Let him come, let him try. I might even keep you alive long enough to let you see me rip his head from his shoulders. I'll let you see what happens when someone challenges me now.'

'You won't get the chance,' came a deep, cold voice from the doorway. Before Buffy turned, she was able to see Drusilla's eyes narrow with hatred and malice as she, too, followed the voice.

Dressed in a dark grey suit of exquisite cut, with a light blue shirt and dark tie, stood the Roman vampire Patricius Quintus Eranus.

She remembered him from her dream, remembered the strong face and broad shoulders, the dark eyes that betrayed some humour known only to him, the bearing of a noble that the millennia could not erase, the gleaming silver armour and crimson cloak that he wore then making him no more striking than he was now, dressed as any prosperous man of the twenty first century might. And still, even lying on the ground in Spike's protective embrace, she could still feel the attraction that she felt for him suffuse her. She had felt nothing like it before. Not when she had first met Angel, not when she had first seen Riley, not even when she had first seen Spike, and that had been enough to send chills down her body though his enmity had been as obvious as his beauty. What she felt now was primal, an urge that went beyond reason and well into instinct. There was nothing of feeling to it, nothing of emotion beyond the basest lust, but that lust was almost overpowering. She moaned again, as much in arousal as in pain. Spike mistook the sound for agony, and helped her to her feet to face both him and the woman for whom he had been searching for months in search of vengeance for what she had stolen.

'I told you that continents could not keep me away from you, Drusilla,' he told her, his voice polite, almost reasonable in its calmness, but cold. 'I told you that, come what may, I would find you, and I would punish you for that of which you have deprived me.'

'And I told you that there was nothing that you could do to me that I could not do to you twice over,' she replied, her face settling back into its more familiar human form, though no less frightening for it. 'Once I took the amulet, there was nothing that you could do to me. You should have given up the search.'

'We have to leave, Spike,' Buffy whispered urgently to Spike, who bent his head to hear her, so faint was her voice with both exhaustion and fear. All her instincts screamed at her to be gone before Drusilla and Quintus Eranus began to battle in earnest. It was a battle in whose crossfire she neither needed nor wanted to be. 'We have to get out of here.'

'I know, luv,' he whispered back to her, inching them towards the door, though it was still blocked by the former Roman general, towards whom Buffy tried her best not to look, lest she be overwhelmed with what she did not want to face, for it negated the effort that she had made to trace Spike across the world. The fire that burned in her side and her knee reminded her as much of that as they did of Drusilla.

The vampiress stood imperiously as she faced down a vampire whose power would have been obvious even had his identity not been known. As she and Spike inched their way across the room, attempting more with hope than expectation to stay beneath the otherwise occupied attention of the protagonists on either side of them in the small cellar, Buffy was reminded of the vampire novels that she had read in amusement, of the power that vampires were supposed to possess beyond their status as earthbound, physical beings. Of mind control, of telekinesis, of near-irresistible control over their environment, of invulnerability. Amusing, she remembered thinking, wondering what disappointment those authors would feel if they ever met a real vampire. Now, she found herself wondering if they had. Maybe they had met one like him.

'Take it, Patricius,' Drusilla crooned, majestic and unafraid. 'Come and take it back., Take your revenge, see if it will bring Helena back.'

The rumble of his laughter echoed, the growling of a tiger in the tall grass as it stalked its prey. 'Helena is gone, Drusilla,' slowly removing his jacket and laying it carefully on the ground. The picture of an old-fashioned gentleman preparing for a duel, awaiting the order to fire, facing death for a point of honour. 'She died when you left, when you … finished with her. There was little of her left, at the end.'

'There will be less left of you,' she told him disdainfully. Her black eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, drawing in the faint light around her until she seemed, in Buffy's eyes, to stand in a pool of pure darkness, illuminated only faintly by the candles sputtering in the faint, foul wind of the door slightly open behind the Roman.

'You understand love, William, do you not?' Patricius asked Spike, turning his gaze in the direction of the lovers for the first time. Buffy almost buckled beneath the intensity of his eyes that seemed to see only her despite the object of his question, despite them looking elsewhere. She lost herself in the depths of those eyes, Spike's arms seeming an eternity away amid the silent communion of the Slayer and the Ancient.

Dragging her back from the brink of her silent capitulation, Spike's voice rang throughout the shadowed chamber with all the defiance of old, the brash impudence and the refusal to be cowed by anyone that had made a reputation unlike any other. 'Yeah, I do,' he told the Ancient. 'I've felt it, I know it. Both of the women that I've loved are in this room, and I've just betrayed one to save the other. So, yeah, I understand all sides of it. The hope and the despair, combined.'

'Don't look to that coward for help against me, Roman,' Drusilla warned her adversary. Despite her protestations of defiance, of her confidence, she seemed reluctant to strike first, as if the amulet that nestled like a dark eye over her alabaster breast was not in itself enough. 'He doesn't know what he is anymore.'

Spike rounded on her and snarled, his grip on Buffy loosening as his rage took over. 'I damn well do, Dru!' he snarled at his Sire. 'I know exactly what I am. A vampire in love with the Slayer, a traitor, a killer of his own kind. That is what I am.'

'Is it enough?' Patricius asked softly. He, too, seemed reluctant to strike. Were his speed the match of hers, he would have already been at her throat if he had the desire. 'Is it enough to be that? Or do you seek something more? Something of your old purpose back, William? Something of the real fear your name could once summon? The most audacious Master in history. That has to mean something to you.'

Despite Buffy tugging at him weakly, knowing that neither Drusilla nor Patricius could afford the distraction of dealing with them and that they could be gone if they wished, Spike hung back. 'I heard about you, Roman,' he said contemptuously. 'Heard that your offers aren't worth a sparrow's fart.' His gaze landed on Drusilla. 'And I know better than to listen to that anymore. All I want is my Slayer.' He looked at her for a moment. 'I think that she's all that I ever wanted, even a hundred years before she was born. Even before I was a vampire, I think that she's all I hoped for.'

He turned back to Drusilla as Buffy came crashing back to earth, hearing those words spoken without feeling for all the feeling that was behind them that she was sure only she could sense. She could still feel the eyes of the Roman, though she refused to meet them. That would be the worst betrayal of the heartfelt sentiment just expressed. Though she was in his arms, and dependent on him for escape, she knew in that moment that he needed her even more.

'Sorry, love,' he said to his Sire with real regret, though it was the regret of an old friend. 'I don't think that you were ever what I needed. I think that you were just keeping the bed warm.'

Without warning, Drusilla raised her arm and pointed directly at his chest.

Time seemed to slow for Buffy in that moment as she saw the energy start to build, as she saw Patricius, too, raise his arm, turning slightly. The anger that burned in the vampire queen could be felt with ever shudder of the air as it almost seemed to shrink back from the power being summoned.

The bolt of energy that flew from her hand seemed to ionise the air as it passed. It struck Spike directly in the chest, sending him flying back against the wall with such force that the old stones shattered behind him, the awful sound of that drowned out by his mindless howl of agony. He slumped against the ground, unconscious. Comatose.

'Spike!' Buffy shouted with horror, struggling to reach him though he was yards away and would never be able to if Drusilla wanted to stop her.

Another bolt flew, and Buffy could feel her end come with it.

Then it stopped.

Buffy had reached Spike and, drawing in a deep breath, hefted his dead-weight with all of her remaining strength, gritting her teeth against the pain. She was able to see Patricius standing, her arm outstretched, his power having blocked that of Drusilla.

They stood facing each other, waiting for whatever would force them into combat with powers that could level the desolate capital of the forgotten Tsars.

'You don't leave, Slayer,' Drusilla told her, never taking her black eyes from Patricius. 'You wait for me.'

'No, you wait for me, you mad bitch,' came a low voice the doorway.

Jur'Khan Chung, Lord of Hordes, stood in the black of the crumbling doorway, never taking his eyes from Patricius.

'Leave, Slayer,' he told her softly. 'You've given me the Roman.'