P.S Probably a bit late now, but these characters are not mine. If they were, I would use them differently.

Buffy pulled away from Spike's embrace reluctantly. Where once her heart would have been beating so rapidly that she would have been barely able to contain it, and her breath coming so quickly that she thought that she might faint, now all the feeling that she had was in the rush of immortality-enhanced emotion, that more than made up for it.

Their kiss has been like nothing that they had ever shared, even in the depths of Drusilla's lair, after the torture to which she had been subjected. There was nothing of urgent intensity that had characterised the uncountable times that their lips had met before, but underlying it now was, rather, the endless patience of the knowledge that eternity lay ahead to savour such feelings. It was a heady feeling, that she could enjoy this for all of time itself. Becoming a vampire had been her worst nightmare since before she had even been called, but now she felt the lure of it, the irresistible seduction though, she knew, had it happened any other way, even had Spike sired her himself, she would no longer be who she was. Immortality, she thought, was too seductive for mortals to deny.

He still held her hand in his, reluctant to let her go now that she was this close, and this much of all that he had hoped. The memory of Elizabeth, she knew, would always be fresh, and the pain always there, but she had endless moments in which to allow it to dull, and she knew that as long as his touch would relieve the worst of her introspection, it would become tolerable with time.

He twitched and, though it was almost pitch dark, her enhanced vision caught it. She could see everything in the darkness, more than she could ever have seen before in the light. She almost laughed as she saw the brief flicker of movement cross his face, so incongruous did it seem.

'What is it?'

He looked at her for a long moment, relishing the sight and the feel of her, then sighed and turned away, relinquishing her hand. She felt emptier, immediately, and suppressed a shudder.

'The Call,' he whispered to her in a low voice. 'It summons me, demanding that I go north, to the Winter Palace, to end this. As one of the Masters of Aurelius, its almost more than I can resist. Without you …' He left it unsaid.

'Why don't I feel it? Not that she was overly worried about its absence.

His brief laugh lit up the darkness, so long had it been since she had heard it. 'You are the first of whom I have ever heard that was outside the Hierarchy. There is none to summon you.'

'The Hierarchy?' she asked, thoroughly confused. A lifetime spent fighting vampires, and she found that, before joining their ranks, she had known less about them now then she had known then, when everything was comfortably divided into black and white, night and day, sunlight and shadow.

He ran his hand through his hair. How to explain knowledge that should have been instinctive?

'The First, the original vampire, no one knows who he was or what his name was, other than his four immediate offspring, and three of them are dead. Thoikaris,' Buffy shuddered at the memory of her tormentor, and the ageless malevolence of the vampire queen, 'is the only one left of those, if you coming back hasn't banished her forever.'

'And?'

'Damn it, love, you should know this without having to ask!' he said to her in exasperation. 'Its woven into the fabric of the knowledge of the most impotent fledgling.' He took a needless breath, and continued. 'When the First died, no one now remembers how, his power was split into four, between his four offspring. Aurelius, who was originally an Etruscan prince, Akhenaton, who was Egyptian, Jounn'I, who was from what would now be called Tibet, and Thoikaris, who was a Babylonian noblewoman. This is all about four thousand years ago, right?' She nodded.

He continued. 'His power was huge, but even divided into four it was still immense. So, the original four figured that if they could be the last standing, all the power would devolve to them. Thus, the start of the Order War. All of the original four sired minions, and other Masters, and they fought with an intensity that would make the Mongol irruption seem tame. The war lasted centuries, though it was mostly hidden from mortals.

'Eventually, Thoikaris, who was the eldest of the four and who was, by the way, the only one of them who had children before she was Sired, was able to take out the other three. What she didn't realise, what none of them realised, was that she would have to annihilate all the offspring of the others before the power could devolve to her as the most powerful of the last Order left standing. So she went about doing that, very methodically.'

Buffy listened to his voice, and the story that was telling, with rapt attention, as much for the sound of him as what he was saying, fascinating though it was.

'The heads of the other Orders weren't able to stop her, so they allied with each other to take her out, knowing that they would never be powerful enough to stop her on their own, and knowing too that none of them was powerful enough to expunge the other orders. As long as that held, then the Order War could be held in abeyance, and they fought only for survival. The head of Jounn'I at that point was Qui'chi , who later sired Julia Erenia who, incidentally, was the Sire of your friend Jur'Khan Chung. The head of Akhenaton, even then, was Patricius. And the head of Aurelius was Nest's Sire, Cornokalen. They went after all the Masters and minions of Thoikaris, and took them down, eventually cornering her in Athens, near the Parthenon.

'The trapped her, and would have killed her but, as long as she had offspring, she could not be killed. The problem was that Patricius had fallen in love with one of her Masters, a female called Helena, who was a Corinthian princess originally.'

Buffy shuddered with the memory of the shared communion with the Master of Akhenaton, the attraction for whom she could still feel, eating away at her like a canker, and the love that he bore his mate.

'So they struck a deal. She was put to sleep in a diamond chamber, frozen in time, outside the law of nature. Still alive, she was beyond the power of the Orders, and would stay that way until Patricius thought that he would be able to revive her without danger to his Order, or the others. That actually shouldn't have worked, but somehow it did. So, they used magic to unlock the protection wards around Thoikaris, and killed her. But they forgot something.'

He paused, reflecting. 'The vampire offspring of Thoikaris were all dead, but her human descendants were legion, after the passage of a thousand years. So, they cast her into the ether, but she was still linked to the world through the call of her mortal blood.'

Buffy listened with mounting horror at the implications of what he was saying, but remained silent, waiting to hear it, knowing what he would say but, at the same time, sustaining what was left of her innocence in the last few moments before he said it.

'In the last moments before she was cast out,' he continued, his voice subdued, 'she vowed vengeance on all of them, that she would return and claim the power than was hers but, until then, she would see all of them suffer. At the hands of her children, Buffy. At the hands of her legion of offspring. Thousands of them, at that stage.

'Mostly girls, it turned out.'

'Slayers,' she breathed, the horror suffusing her at finally, shockingly, knowing what she was, even though it was no longer her.

'Yeah,' he confirmed, meeting her eyes. 'Slayers. One chosen in every generation, to fight the darkness, to kill the vampires, to thin the herds of the creatures of the night. The revenge of Thoikaris,' he added. 'The bitch always was vindictive. Every generation, a little bit of her that was left crept into the soul of another innocent girl of her own blood, giving them strength, the urge to kill the demons. What better revenge could she have had? She couldn't have the power, but she could assure that they would not be able to claim it, either, not as long as there were Slayers.

'Probably would have stayed that way, until … Until Nest, really. Until that day over the Hellmouth.'

She remembered, the terror and the resignation, the knowledge that she would that night meet her fate at the hands of the creature that was fated to kill her.

'I'm only sixteen, Giles.'

She remembered the wonder that she felt when she had awoken, Xander looming over her with despair in his eyes, Angel behind him with the bitter knowledge that he had failed again. She remembered the joy that she felt, knowing even then that she still had to go on and defeat him, but the pure, primal joy at knowing that the prophecy could be cheated.

And now nothing of it was pure. Nothing of the memory that had given her strength through some of her darkest moments, the knowledge that nothing was foreordained and that her destiny was her own, was sullied by knowing what it was that had made her unique. Nothing more than the malevolent revenge of a three thousand year old vampire too tenacious to slip away.

'What happened then?' she asked, her voice more dead than even the day when she escaped it.

He moved to take her hand, but she shrugged it away, lost in her thoughts, not seeing that his face revealed nothing less of the horror that she felt, though he felt horror at knowing what she was feeling and that, once again, there was nothing that he could do, nothing that he could say other than to end the story, in preparation for the endgame.

'When you died for the first time, another Slayer was called. The black one, the one that I –'

'Kendra, her name was Kendra,' she told him, remembering with fondness the girl whose flame burned far too briefly, pinched out by Drusilla on the orders of Angelus. The same day that she and Spike … The same day that she first realised that he was different.

'Yeah, Kendra,' he said softly, introspectively. 'Funny how all the names run together after a while. Live a century or more, names just don't seem to matter as much any more.' His voice was lost for moment in the avalanche of faces that he had seen in his long life. Some were laughing, some were frowning, some were staring.

Most were screaming for their lives, knelt in futile supplication.

'When she was called, and you were still around, Thoikaris started to move, though she was still trapped. More of her slipped through when Kendra died and the next one was called, more than any human could handle, more of he spirit and more of her malice, more of the hatred that alone sustained her. No young girl, no one at all who was mortal, could handle that. So, the new one, Faith … changed.

'She was always different,' Buffy whispered, staring at the floor, filthy from years of neglect.

'She couldn't help but be, different and more ruthless, more concerned with power than she ever was with its use. I wasn't there at the time, remember, but I heard about it later.'

Buffy raised her head. 'But … I put her into a coma, and I think she's still in prison. How could Thoikaris get out just because of that? Not just because … because of this.' She gestured to herself, and what she had become.

He grunted, and reached behind the bed for a small hip flask. Unscrewing the top with a shaking hand so pale that it was luminescent in the darkness. Taking a long swallow, he offered it to her. Not remembering her reaction the last time he had offered her the same flask, she took it without demur, relishing the warmth of the liquid as it flowed down a throat that was reconfigured for something altogether different.

'There's another story,' he told her. 'Remember I told you about the vampire of Thoikaris' line that Patricius loved? The one that he kept asleep for all those long centuries?'

She nodded dumbly. 'Helena,' she replied, seeing an image of a beautiful woman flash through her mind, though it was gone so quickly that she would have thought that it was a mirage, if she did not by now know better.

'Well, when you …' He took an unneeded breath. 'When you jumped from the tower, during the days that you were gone, the other sliver of Thoikaris' essence, the part that was in you, couldn't go anywhere, went to her. She woke, luv. She moved for the first time in three millennia. She wouldn't have noticed it, she was almost as bad herself, but it went out of you. Remember how you felt so empty when you came back?' She nodded. 'That was why. Nothing of what had made you a Slayer was there any more except the strength, nothing of the drive to kill, the duty that you felt. That's why you felt the way you did, why we …' He left the rest unsaid. 'I know that you thought it was because you were ripped from where you were, but you would have recovered much more quickly, otherwise.'

'And Helena?'

He sighed. 'There's the other half of the story. Patricius obtained an artifact, the Charm of Ba'Quavar, designed to make a vampire more powerful than any. He got it so Helena would be able to stay with him, come what may. But Drusilla stole it, and killed Helena before she was able to recover. It made her powerful, though. She was powerful enough already, but not enough to head the Order of Aurelius. I was next in line, actually, but I never wanted it. Rituals and stuff never were my thing,' he said bitterly, reflecting on his mistake, one whose consequences he could never have imagined when he had sent that obnoxious child hurtling upwards into the fatal rays of the morning sun.

'He realised, then, that he could do it all at one go. Take his revenge on Drusilla, and finally end the Order War. Dru was powerful enough to supersede both myself and even Angelus, if he ever came back. Jur'Khan Chung was always there, waiting. Like a spider who knew his prey would come to him. Patricius killed his lover, Julia Erenia, centuries ago, and the two of them have been stalking each other ever since, waiting for the right moment. Now, its come. Patricius understood that with your soul being empty now, for the first time there was a descendent of Thoikaris who could serve as a perfect vessel for her return. That's why he did what he did. The Order War wouldn't mean anything unless all the players were ready, unless all the four Lords were present.'

'I've been getting these flashes,' she told him, 'images, of Patricius when he was human, of his lover, his mate. Bits and pieces, really, but he was able to talk to me when … just before Drusilla did what she did to me.'

'Subtle as a serpant, is Quintus Eranus,' he replied. 'He was a general in the early days of Rome, just before the start of the First Punic War, one of their best. He even defeated Hadsrubal when he was trying to reinforce his brother across the Alps, though he was Sired the next day by Akhenaton himself. He linked you to him through Helena, though she was dead by then. Helena was the last vampire of Thoikaris' line – even the minions and fledglings were killed during the first war. He used your link to your ancestors, Thoikaris' mortal children, to speak to you when you were asleep, and I don't doubt that he's been following you since you first came here. I think that he thought that doing that would sow enough seeds of mistrust between myself and Dru that I'd kill her myself, then leadership of Aurelius would devolve to me when the last battle went down. Even without the Charm, I'm not as strong as Dru if she's sane. I would have had to assume the mantle of Aurelius' Lordship for the fight itself, and I'm no strategist or tactician.'

'Kill all the rest, leave the Slayer for me.'

She continued for him. 'And he probably thought that what I felt for you would confuse Thoikaris when she re-emerged within me, enough that all he would have left to deal with was Jur'Khan Chung.'

'Who is blinded by his hatred. Not a bad plan, really. All of it hinging on the twin feelings of hate and love. He was a good politician when he was mortal, too.'

He sighed again, twitching again. 'But now, we have a problem.'

She turned to him, the darkness growing behind her as even she, child of no Order, could feel the preparations commence for what was imminent in the Winter Palace of the Romanov's. That was where the Revolution started in Russia, she thought to herself idly. Fitting place for another one. 'We have several problems,' she said dryly with her first flash of humour in what seemed like an eternity.

He set his jaw, his eyes cold, and reached behind the filthy pallet on which he had slept for months while attending his Dark Queen. With a grunt, he removed a sword.

She stepped back as the faint moonlight coming through the window reflected from its polished steel surface. It was a sabre, that much she knew, with a curved blade, sharp as a razor on one side and tapering to a needle-sharp point on the upturn. The hilt was embossed gold, with filigree carvings around the hand guard, and there were indecipherable markings carved on the polished hilt.

He threw it to her. Surprised, she bent at the hip and caught it by the hilt. It was a beautiful weapon, far more so than the crude blade that she had wielded all those years before when she had fought Angelus in the abandoned mansion.

She stiffened when he withdrew another blade, this one a katana, a Japanese samurai sword, the best edged weapons ever made, of thousands of folds of sheet steel, lovingly crafted by Japanese artisans, with a straight blade and plain hilt. The beauty was in the construction itself, not the decoration that frequently adorned European swords like the one she held.

'That sword you're holding is Drusilla's,' he told her. She looked at it, wondering how many lives had been ended by it. 'She was going to use it at the final battle.' He saw her confusion. 'It will be fought with swords, that has been laid down for millennia.' He held his own straight in front of his face, as though saluting her with chivalric honour. 'This is mine. This is what I was going to use. As one of the seven Masters to Aurelius, my job would have been to protect Dru while the others tried to get to her. If she falls, if any of the Lords fall, then their lines die with them. All of them, throughout the world. So, in order for us to live, they have to live.' He pointed to her with his blade. 'You're the problem, luv. You are outside the hierarchy, bound to no Lord, not Thoikaris, not Patricius, because you weren't Sired, you were made.'

'So, no matter what happens, I'll live, no matter who triumphs,' she realised.

'Exactly, pet. But, knowing you, I know that you'll try to take out the winner, to ensure that vampires no longer plague the night. You might well be able to, too. Whoever wins will be more powerful than any vampire since the First, but they will be weakened by the battle, and they might fall. If its Patricius, and it probably will be, then you can take him down. So too with Jur'Khan Chung. I can't deny the Call for much longer, my love. If its either of them, I'll already be dead. But, if its Dru …' He left the rest unsaid.

'Then you die with her,' she whispered in horror.

'That's the price of love, pet,' he told he bitterly, knowing just what a price it was. 'You can leave Drusilla alive, knowing that she will be one of the most powerful creatures to walk this earth, free to remake it in her own twisted image, or you can kill her. And kill me with her, because even if I could refuse the call, which I can't, I would still die even if I were a thousand miles away. Just like all the others outside the hierarchy who will crumble to dust without knowing why when the Lord of their Order falls.'

She grasped his hand, strongly enough to hurt him, drawing him close. He came forward reluctantly into the faint light, his alabaster skin seeming even more pale than normal with the thought of what lay ahead. 'I followed you around the world, Spike,' she told him fiercely, the love for him that she had denied for so long burning deep within her. She could almost feel it, physically, now.

'If my heart could beat, it would break my chest.'

'Natural law, my love,' he told her sadly, brushing a hair away from her beautiful green eyes that were moist with tears that she suppressed with supreme effort. 'No way around it.'

She touched his chest, looking up at him. He was not much taller than she, but at that moment, she felt small, like she was a child again, contemplating the death of her parents for the first time in the way that all children do. 'I followed you around the world, Spike,' she told him, her voice breaking. 'You were the father of my child. With ten times the strength now than when I loved when I was mortal, and that was with more intensity than I ever thought that I could ever feel. I won't see you die, not when we're this close, not after all of this.'

Their swords touched with a soft metallic ring, the steel between them like a wall as they drew closer to each other. His hands were on her face, his touch worshipful. Hers were on his, their eyes locked, though they drew no closer.

The time was at hand, she knew. The Call that she could not feel, she knew beckoned him like a siren song, irresistible. She knew that he had been able to fight it off for so long already because of her, but she knew that he would not last much longer before it became impossible to stay, before the final battle would commence, one that could end in two ways.

But for her, only one ending. Even if she was no longer the Slayer, even if she had not been for months before she had been turned, she still could not allow Drusilla to live if she emerged victorious.

For her, only one ending. Her love would die.

When she had killed Angel, sending him crashing into eternity for the folly of Angelus, she had said her goodbyes weeks before it had happened. Now, she had barely moments. And short moments they were.

They did not kiss, it would have made the sorrow at losing what they had only recently found all the worse.

They parted, the feeling of his touch slowly withdrawing almost more than she could bear as the tears overcame her control. 'I love you, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' he told her, his voice controlled and deep, resigned. 'I always have and, come what may, I always will.' Saluting her with his sword one last time, he put on his coat, almost ritualistically, like a knight arming himself, and turned to leave, the leather billowing behind him.

'I love you, Spike,' she whispered.

Love.

It hit her in a shock of realisation that vied within her for the sudden surge of joy that she felt. So intense was it that it took her a moment to compose herself. He was almost out of the door, his shoulders set squarely to encounter what he thought would be the last night of his life.

Helena, my love. That was why she felt what did for Patricius. It wasn't attraction at all, she finally understood. It was her mind trying to reveal to her what it was he had been trying to tell her, all along.

'Spike!' she shouted at him as he was about to leave.

He squared his shoulders and turned, unprepared for the shock of contact as she ran into his arms.

'Thoikaris was dead, right?' she asked him, the words spilling over themselves in her eagerness. 'She was dead for all those years that she was banished. I mean, for practical purposes, she was dead.'

'Yeah, she was, luv,' he told her, trying to pull away though she would not let him, trying to end this quickly.

'You said that when the Lord of an Order falls under the strictures of the war, all the others fall with them, right?'

'Yes.'

'Then how was Helena left alive?' she asked with desperate urgency. Seeing his face puzzled at where she was going, she rushed ahead. 'She should have fallen when her Lord was killed.'

'I know,' he told her, trying to look away, but she caught his face and forced his eyes to meet hers. 'I could never figure that part out.'

'She changed Orders, Spike,' she told him, willing him to understand.

He was silent for a moment as the wind blew in from the open door behind him. 'You can't change Orders, my love,' he told her. 'It can't be done.'

'He mated with her, William,' she told him, using his given name, hoping that he would realise what she knew to be true. 'That was how they did it. Helena had to be put to sleep for Thoikaris to die, because she had the blood of her Sire, but she no longer of her Order.' She brought his lips crashing down on her own, relishing the feel of him, though he was too stunned to respond. Her tears, now of joy, touched his face, and he pulled back.

'Vampires can mate, right?' she asked, her voice quick. 'There's some sort of ritual, isn't there? Some sort of ceremony?' She almost threw back into the room when he twitched again with the lure of Drusilla's call, but controlled herself.

'We drink from each other's right wrists,' he told her, trying to combat the primal urge to obey the summons. 'Then we kiss, the blood mingles in the mouth, and we each swallow half. Never done it, mind you. Drusilla never would,' he added bitterly 'Said it would stop the stars speaking to her.'

Ignoring his long held anger, she continued with mounting excitement 'One has to be dominant, right? One of the two has to control it, and the other submit?'

'So I've been told,' he confirmed, then stopped, his eyes burning with what she was saying as he finally realised.

She pulled away from him, and raised her right wrist. Before she could do anything, he grabbed it. 'You're sure, Buffy?'

She nodded and, for the first time, her face changed, the ridges becoming prominent. She could feel her teeth lengthening, and knew that her eyes were yellow. She closed them, and took a breath.

The pain of her teeth ripping into the soft skin of her wrist was exquisite. She opened her eyes, and saw that his face had also shifted. However, he made no move to raise his wrist.

'Spike?' she asked him, her voice deeper and more guttural now.

'That's how dominance is decided,' he told her. You bite yourself, and give me your blood. I don't bite you, I just drink.'

He shrugged off his coat, and raised his wrist, turning it so that it faced her mouth. She had never felt anything like this before, the animal urgency that had towards him. It was like nothing that they had shared before, nothing like the sex that they had shared, primal though that had been. This was that, magnified a hundred fold by a ritual that was older than civilisation itself.

He bent, and took her wrist to his mouth. She could feel him drinking from her, could feel the blood flowing from her, and it was so exquisite that she almost buckled.

Taking a breath, sliding his pale, smooth wrist along her face, all the time her yellow eyes never leaving his of the same colour, she opened her mouth, and bit down.

She almost fainted with the rush of pleasure that was more than any human could ever experience. Even at his best, before, he could never have made her feel like this.

They slid to the floor together, their eyes locked as they drank. Slowly, he pulled away, and she did the same, though it almost caused her pain to do so. The feeling of the blood running down her throat …

He moved closer, and she leant into him. Their mouths, full of each other's blood, met.

She groaned from deep within as the blood mingled, some of it dripping from her chin onto her chest. Even when she had surrendered her innocence to Angel, she had never felt closer to another being in her life, could never have imagined that such closeness was possible.

Their tongues vied with each other through the blood that they had taken from each other, their eyes finally closed, their bodies intertwined, though both were still fully dressed.

She swallowed, the blood coursing through her, and arched with the pleasure of it as he did the same.

An age passed. She finally opened her eyes, again green, seeing the blue of his.

'Do you still feel the Call?' she asked, brushing his face as she lay beside him.

'No,' he told her softly.