"Hurry! They're going to catch up with us!"
Buffy blinked, her face creased with confusion. "Where... what...."
"No time!" Riley grabbed her arm and pulled hard. "They're going to catch up with us! We've got to get away from here!"
"Who? What...." Her question was cut off when a snarling body slammed into her from the side. Her head hit the tiled floor hard, and she barely saw Riley leap forward and stake the vampire that had attacked her. As the dust settled she saw lockers and brightly colored flyers tacked to a corkboard on the wall. Sunnydale High? How was that possible? The school had been destroyed months before she'd even met Riley.
The floor melted and shifted under her cheek, tiles sliding together and merging. A wall of mist moved up in front of the row of lockers. Through it she could see brief flashes of stone, then marble, then glass, and finally trees. The surface beneath her had changed to cement. She was lying on one of the pathways that criss-crossed the UC Sunnydale campus. It was night. Riley yanked her to her feet.
"Come ON!" His eyes were wide, looking at something behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw one of the dormitory buildings falling into a firey chasm in the ground. An ominous rumbling came from deep below, causing the cement pathway to shudder.
They ran through the campus and out into the streets, houses and bulidngs passing by in a blur until Buffy had to stop. She leaned against a parked car, chest screaming from lack of oxygen. Riley wasn't even breathing hard. Why wasn't he breathing hard? She frowned, and looked around. The streets seemed wrong, the colors too bright for night, the shadows too deep... and the stars. The stars were.... moving?
Riley grabbed her arm, panting, face dripping with sweat. "We've got to GO! It might already be too late for Dawn!"
"Dawn?!?" Buffy's eyes grew wide. "They've got Dawn?" She pushed away from the car and ran after him. The came to a halt in front of the old mansion on Crawford Street that Angel had used. Riley pulled her down into the shrubbery outside.
"What.... who has D..."
Riley put his finger over her lips and shook his head, gesturing for her to follow. They crept through the bushes closer to the front of the mansion. Lights flickered inside, and the air crackled with magic. A faint, whispering chant caressed her ears. Riley silently counted off with his fingers, mouthing "One, two, three" and they made a tandem dash at the door, kicking it in. Buffy took a few steps forward before she was frozen by the tableau in front of her.
Dawn hung, suspended in mid air with her arms over her head in a Y shape over the center of a pentagram that glowed a dull red. She was wearing a lacy white old fashioned nightgown, stained red by something Buffy's eyes wouldn't let her comprehend. Dawn's head lolled loosely to one side, eyes staring and glassy. Her skin hung in tiny strips from the thousands of cuts made on every exposed inch to make her blood flow. It still dripped down, every drop sucked up by the hungry pentagram that glowed steadily brighter. Two black robed figures stood in front of her, holding knives. The smaller one slowly turned around.
"Hello Buffy." Willow smiled, showing elongated fangs. Her eyes were solid black. "You're just in time for the festivities."
Buffy lunged forward, but was stopped by a blur of white flesh and black leather crashing into her from the shadows. Before she could react, Spike was on top of her, snarling and smashing her face into the marble floor. She felt something crack inside her as he grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted her head up so she had to look..
"The problem with Hellgods is that they're so... short-sighted. The Key is so much more than just a magic bus ticket. Just think, Glory was going to waste.... all.... this.... power...." Willow raised the ceremonial dagger to her face and slowly licked the blood off. She took a step forward and pulled the other robed figure down into a deep, lingering kiss.
"No...." Buffy's voice cracked with pain as Spike pulled her back even further, arching her back and caputring both of her wrists in one hand.
Xander smeared the blood from his own knife across Willow's lips, then leaned in and licked it away. He turned his head and smiled at Buffy, his eyes flashing a sickly green. "What can I say, Buff? You can take the boy away from the hyena... " He slid his dagger across Willow's lips again, kissing her around the blade.
Spike yanked down hard on Buffy's arms, dislocating them both at the shoulders. He stood up, stomping once on her lower back.
"'Ere now. Save some of that for me."
Willow broke away from the embrace, annoyed. "You'll get some of the second course, Spike. I promised."
"Damn straight I will. "Aven't 'ad this much fun since China, 'ave we poodle?"
Buffy heard a high-pitched giggle from behind her. She struggled to turn and raise her head and saw Riley's bloodless body fall forward into her line of vision with a thump. Bare feet and white lace-trimmed skirts flowed over him towards her. She felt cold hands on either side of her face and then a wrenching pain as she was pulled to her feet. Drusilla stared into her eyes, then tilted her head to one side, smiled, and kissed Buffy on the forehead.
The world swam white. White like the fabric of Drusilla's dress, white like the light that Buffy had thrown herself into to save Dawn... for what? An even worse death? Bitter tears like acid stung Buffy's face and she felt the familiar sensation of falling. Falling away from the pain, falling away from the world into the warm, welcoming white.
Warm? The hands on her face were warm?
Drusilla was gone. All of them were gone, and Buffy was surrounded by a glowing mist. A dark-skinned girl in a flowing dress stepped back.
"K-Kendra? You weren't here the last time this happened?"
The other Slayer shook her head and smiled.
"Merrick say t'tell ya, 'Y'never did pay attention."
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"Is it just me, or was Buffy acting really strange this morning? Well, stranger than she usually is..." Dawn reached over and picked an apple out of the bowl of fruit sitting on the counter in the Summers kitchen. She took a big bite.
"Well, I guess she's just worried, Dawn...." Willow was bent over the pager they'd found in the Magic Box, a soldering iron in one hand and a pair of jeweler's tweezers in the other.
"Yeah, I know that. We're all worried. But I didn't think she was gonna let me out of her sight long enough to even get dressed, and she must have jumped three feet when you came up behind her in the hall."
Willow frowned. Dawn was right, Buffy had been reluctant to let her sister leave the house this morning, until Willow had walked in. Then Buffy couldn't seem to get Dawn out the door fast enough, like she didn't want her in the same room as Willow. She didn't need to be reminded how she'd let Dawn be hurt, but she thought that Buffy had forgiven her for that. She snapped the black plastic case back together and flipped a switch on the side of the pager. The LCD screen came to life, flashing a series of numbers and symbols.
"Is it working?" Dawn tossed the core of her apple at the trashcan and craned her neck to get a look at the pager.
"Yeeeah... but it's encrypted. Encrypted?! Who puts encryption on a pager?" Willow slapped the table in frustration.
"Maybe someone will call the number?"
"Maybe." Willow's face showed how useful she thought that would be.
"At least Tara's going to be ok."
Willow's expression brightened. "Yeah." Tara still hadn't fully regained consciousness, at least not enough to tell them who'd attacked her, but the bleeding under her skull had stopped. It was only a matter of time until she woke up. "I'm going to go back up and see her as soon as I get this cleaned up."
"Take me with you?"
"Sure, Dawny. Just let Buffy know where you've gone."
Dawn rolled her eyes, but walked over to the phone. Before she could call the Doublemeat Palace, it rang.
"Hello? Oh, hi Riley. Buffy's not here." Dawn was less than enthusiastic. She still hadn't forgiven Riley for walking out on her sister. "What? No, we're not. Willow and I are getting ready to go to the hospital. Tara's waking up, isn't that great! Riley? Hello? Oh, ok. I won't tell her. Bye." She hung up.
"What was that about?"
"That was Riley. He said he wanted to do something special for Buffy tonight, take her out to dinner or something like that to make up for last night. He was gonna send her some flowers, until I told him that no one was gonna be here to answer the door. We should stop and get Tara some flowers, or some of those balloons on the way over... think they'd let her have those in her room?"
"Well, maybe not the flowers, Dawny... but balloons are a good idea. We'll stop and get her some.
Dawn beamed, and they walked out the front door.
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Riley snarled and slammed the phone into the wall, sending splinters of beige plastic and cement dust flying.
"Um, boss?"
He kicked a folding chair, catching it as it rebounded off the wall and twisting the metal into an unrecognizable shape.
"Boss?"
The mangled metal screeched as the chair snapped into pieces.
"Is something, er, wrong, boss?"
Riley spun around and glared at his minions. He stabbed a finger at Mitchell. "You. Take the other two to Sunnydale General and finish the witch off before she can open her big mouth. Make sure...."
He was interrupted by a weak, coughing laugh from across the room.
"Thwarted by... cough Glinda the Good Witch, oi? Tossers. Good for... cough good for 'er."
Riley went so still that he didn't seem to be made of flesh anymore. Only his eyes betrayed any life, golden demon sparks flickering beneath the blue. Long seconds passed. Mitchell and the other two minions tensed, eyes darting towards the exits. Finally, the gold flecks faded and Riley spoke.
"Make sure you aren't spotted. Try to hold your faces until you get to her room. No biting. If I find out that they suspect vampires were responsible, I will cut the tendons in your arms and legs and leave you outside to fry. Do. You. Understand. Me."
One of the minions peeked around from behind Mitchell and hesitantly spoke up. "Um, how should we kill her, then? If we can't bite her..."
Riley stared for a deadly moment. "Smother her. You..." he pointed at the minion who'd spoken. "Hold her down. You watch the door. And Mitchell? You take her pillow and smother her with it. Do it quick. Make sure no alarms go off. And make sure you're not seen. Got it?"
They nodded, and headed towards the door.
"Wait. Your faces. Fix your faces."
They stopped, and looked at each other. Mitchell concentrated for a moment, and the ridges on his face smoothed out. It wasn't that easy for the other two. They closed their eyes, screwed up their features and strained. Finally, one of them shifted back to his human face slowly, with a crunch and a pop. The last one stood there, eyes tightly shut, fists balled up. He grunted, and a red flush spread across his cheeks. A low chuckle came from the table across the room. Riley grabbed a baseball cap and a pair of wraparound sunglasses and threw them at the minion.
"Here. Wear these, keep your head down, and try to stay behind the others. And get out of my sight before I decide this is a two-man operation."
The three hurried up the ladder and into the sewer exit.
"It's so hard to find good cough help these days, innit? Or maybe cough it's just you, Cap'n. The worth of a leader is told by his men, and all that rot."
"The worth of a man. Very interesting you'd bring that up. I had some long, deep conversations about that very subject in South America with a charming young lady. Well, not really 'young', strictly speaking, but oh... so... charming. I think maybe you know her." He walked across the room and leaned over, whispering in Spike's ear. "Drusilla sends her love."
Spike gorwled and bucked against his restraints, causing the wounds across his face and chest to reopen. A bloody froth came to his lips. He hissed weakly: "You're lying."
"I could be. But if I was, would I know about the little star-shaped mole she has on the small of her back? Or how much she likes to be kissed right there? Or the sound she makes when you bite her, right on..."
Spike howled in rage and pain, fighting against the reinforced steel that held him to the table. The cuffs bit into his wrists and ankles, shredding the flesh, and causing fresh blood to trickle out into the pools that had already formed underneath him. Riley watched him struggle, smiling indulgently. It wasn't long before Spike's injuries caught up with him and he fell back against the table and lay still.
"We had such a good time, she and I. For a while. She's really quite kinky, you know? Oh, of course you do. Too kinky for me, really, she's one sick bitch. I prefer my women sweeter... blonder... but Dru taught me all sorts of interesting things. Like that trick with the tendons. Let me show you a few of them... I'm not supposed to meet Buffy for another couple of hours. We've got lots of time."
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