Hands seeking her in the dark, warm and alive, gentle and tender. Two men, heads bent together, close in conversation, conspiring in things best left unseen. Sweet-smelling cigar smoke drifting around them. One looks up, eyes shockingly blue in the midst of the haze, sweetly blue with his sandy hair. She realizes what he means to do and calls out to him—
"Spike, no!" Buffy sat up in bed, her sheet clutched to her chest, head clouded with sleep and confusion. What had made her call out his name? She'd been dreaming of—
Two men, that's all she knew, and neither of them were Spike. But it seemed as though they were all Spike these days. Rather than dulling with time, everything seemed to be sharpening to a point so fine as to impale her without resistance. Running her hands through her hair, she looked at the clock. 2 A.M. Still dark outside. She needed no more invitation than that. Slipping into jeans and throwing a denim jacket over her camisole, she headed out of the house, stopping only to check on Dawn.
"Be back soon, baby," she promised her sleeping sister in a whisper.
The town was tomb-silent, the dark only occasionally interrupted by the blinding slash of headlights, the silence occasionally split in two by the far-off thumping of someone's car speakers. There were no screams, no cries for help, but Buffy pressed on. Did it make her a bad person to hope for trouble?
She kept her steps slow and measured, her eyes roaming about for any sign of… anything. One block passed by without note, and her steps quickened. Two blocks, and the only signs of life she'd seen were a cop and a man arguing heatedly over a cell phone by his car.
By the third block she was running, running as she hadn't in months, letting her hair stream behind her and her lungs fill with humid night air. Her legs carried her as though someone were chasing her, her feet beating an even tattoo on the pavement below her. She didn't stop until she reached the riverfront, water stretching out on both sides, sparkling with rippling moonlight.
She let her eyes skip to the sky, her head tilted back, her mouth hanging just the tiniest bit open.
She hadn't taken much time to look up in her life. If she looked up, she was liable to trip and fall. If she looked up, it left her throat open for the kill. When did life get so bloody weird? she wondered, hugging herself for contact more than for warmth.
Setting her sights on a star, she began to chant under her breath. "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight."
Dropping her head and letting a single tear fall, she called herself an idiot for wishing for the impossible.
As she turned to go home, she regretted that no one was following her.
~~~
The two men walked in silence, each intent on their own thoughts.
William hadn't left any word for his mother. What was he supposed to say? "Sorry, Mum, but there's this thing with this girl and being a vampire… have a nice life!" So he'd leave her to make explanations, and hopefully, to socially cash in on the intrigue of having a missing son. He figured he'd be more admired if he were gone, anyway. He didn't know what was about to happen, how was he supposed to tell anyone else?
A large part of William felt it would be best at all costs to just leave his mother. The last time—the other time—he had left, he tried to bring her along and consequently was forced to kill her.
Laramie thought of his own Slayer, the only Slayer he had been assigned to. He knew he would be assigned no other, but rather allowed to stay in the Council to hunt the "others." Those others who crept in the night and hid in the shadows. The Council used his rage and allowed him to take out his vengeance because it served them well. His Watching days were officially over.
But he still watched his Slayer.
"Stop," he told Spike, holding out an arm to halt his friend's long gait. "Someone—something— is here."
Spike tensed, suddenly alert, wondering why he hadn't noticed it. The street was quiet, the many alleyways branching off of it bathed in dark and swimming with shadows. It was a perfect place to hunt.
Ramie heard her before he saw her, the low, feline growl that was more playful than predatory. She slipped out of the shadows, not yet in game face but growling nonetheless. The demon suited her so well that it didn't even need to change its face to make an appearance. Her dark red hair was arranged into innumerable complex twists on her head and her dark eyes were large, absorbing the gloom.
"Ekaterina." Laramie said no more than her name, his large, wide-palmed hand reaching out toward her, then fluttering to his side. "Katya…" the nickname fell from his lips, dampened to silence by the mist in the air.
Oh, bugger, Spike thought, seeing the look on the Frenchman's face. Anything but this, you bloody fool.
"Hello, Human. I did not realize it was you, or—" the beauty shrugged eloquently as her husky, Russian voice faded off. "I much like your friend here," she added, tilting her head and approaching Spike.
"Ramie," Spike rasped, shaking his head. "Say this isn't her." But it had to be. She was young, no more than eighteen, and her way of moving was that of a Slayer. She prowled instead of walked, targeted rather than stared. All the while, her tongue darted out with tiny, catlike strokes at her lips and her body was held combatively rather than seductively.
"Mon ami," Ramie shook his head, fighting back tears. "I am sorry that I did not tell you."
"Perhaps you did, I just wasn't listening." Spike stepped forward, feeling no fear as he stared down at his friend's former love, the Slayer who had been turned into what she hunted. He had no doubt she was a threat, an enormous one. A vampire with knowledge of a Slayer's life was fatal, and Laramie had let her live.
Spike could no longer doubt that Ramie understood love eternal and the pain that accompanied it.
"Well, love," he said softly, watching the girl's eyes flicker chartreuse. "You waitin' for somethin' or do you like to toy with your food first?"
He didn't know what he expected. He wanted to test her, to push her, for his friend's sake. He had a feeling she wouldn't feed in front of Laramie. No matter what her demon might have been, she had been steeped in her love for Laramie before her death. Spike had good reason to know that many human attributes could survive the turning.
Her eyes narrowing, Ekaterina pushed Spike. She did not do it out of violence, however. If she had, he would have been thrown into the wall behind him. Instead she pushed him with her fingertips, small teasing shoves. She lowered her head slowly, her eyes never leaving his and never letting the demon to light. As she neared his skin, her nostrils flared and she stumbled back.
"Ty zalupnul!" she hissed, wiping a hand over her mouth. "You cheater! What kind of thing is this that looks like a human and smells like a vampire?" She dug her fingers into his arm as if to test the flesh there and hissed again. "You are some sort of…" she threw her hands in the air, at a loss for words. "Freak," she spat.
"Oh, and that's not the pot callin' the kettle black, love." He wanted to alleviate the situation, but he saw Ramie's face was growing paler by the second. "This is a good dance, cutie, but I'm afraid I'll have to bow out." So saying, he grabbed Laramie's arm and dragged him down the street, not knowing or caring where they were going.
She did not follow them, but a name whispered along the breeze after them.
"Alain…"
Laramie winced at his given name and kept his head down. "We're going left up here," he told Spike, dragging his feet as a man wounded. When Spike said nothing, the Watcher stopped and spoke quietly. "You must think terribly of me," he said, leaning his head against a wall, the hazy moonlight and streetlights reflecting off the tears running down his face.
"How could I? I couldn't have killed her, had I been you." Flicking his barely-smoked cigarillo to the side, he blew a plume of smoke into the air. "Not even if she asked me to," he added. Seeing the cringe that brought forth from Ramie, he nodded.
"Well," Laramie said, straightening and shaking his shoulders. "That fulfills my weekly encounter with my Katya. I am sorry you had to meet her."
"I'm sorry you had to give her up," Spike returned. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, torn between comforting the man who had comforted him and pressing onward.
As though attuned to Spike's thoughts, Laramie turned and slammed a clenched fist to the seemingly blank wall. "Tenfold times three, threefold times ten, the Hub is where it begins and where it all ends. If I wish to speak, to entreat, to see, I shall tell the Hub who I may be," he chanted. Inside the wall, a voice spoke.
"Who's standin' out there?" It took Spike only a moment to identify the accent as Brooklyn, as thick and attitude-laden as any New Yorker he'd meant in his stint there. Puzzled, he shot Ramie a look.
Lowering his voice, Laramie rolled his light eyes. "He's different every week, in looks, voice, mannerisms. He has the whole world to draw from, so he tends to have a short attention span." Raising his voice again, he leaned his head to the brick. "It is Laramie… Alain Lewiston."
In one moment the wall was solid and clear, and in the next Ramie and Spike stood in a large room bustling with music and activity. A young woman dressed in clothing that would not even be dreamed of for another few decades danced onstage, winking at customers. Directly in front of them sat a corpulent man, resplendent in a well-cut white suit and gleaming silver cufflinks.
Spike's head was reeling. How easy it must be for Ramie, he thought, who can regard these things merely as wild and weird. But for me… He was looking into a 1920s nightclub, complete with bootleg liquor and flappers. He once more felt, acutely, the two halves of himself regarding one another, and then the fat man sitting before them broke his thoughts.
"How can I help you boys?"