Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy-verse.
Chapter 1
Loud sniffling echoed down the empty street, filling the darkness with the sound of a lost and frightened child. Short, weary footsteps trudged down the alley, accented by the sound of a little girl's party shoes clicking on the pavement. One lone shadow detached itself from those painting the walls here, moving toward the sound.
"Aw, poppet. Have you lost your mummy?" Turning wide, scared, violet eyes upward to the voice, the little girl nodded shakily. Her chin trembled as if at any moment she would break out sobbing as she so obviously had been doing recently. One of the girl's long, curling pigtails was coming loose from its ribbon, and her white party dress was not quite so white as it had once been. A single large tear ran down her cheek, leaving a shining track in its wake.
The man who had spoken reached down and with a smile brushed it away. "Well, then darling, let's go find her." He held out his arms and the child allowed herself to be picked up. She must have been five or six, but hardly weighed anything. 'Oh, well,' he thought. The girl snuggled into his shoulder and was almost immediately asleep from the exhaustion of her ordeal.
Smirking, the man's face shifted into sharp ridges and angles. His eyes glowed yellow and his canines sharpened and elongated into fangs. 'Easy supper.' He smirked, moving the lovely blonde curls aside and sinking his teeth into the warm, delicate neck.
He drank and drank and seemed to drink for ever, and still the child sighed happily and slept in his arms. The blood was so sweet, and this tiny body had so much! The fiercely beating hart refused to slow, refused to stop, refused to die. So much blood! He began to grow sleepy, warmed inside by the little girl's crimson blood. So warm, so sleepy. His eyes closed and the vampire fell to the ground.
The girl stirred. Sitting up, she smiled a little as the wounds in her neck closed over without even a hint of scaring. Reaching through a tear in his t-shirt, the girl placed her hand over his undead heart. A quick thrust and she had it in her hand, smiling at the silvery vampire blood that dripped from it. A hole opened up in her own chest, and she placed the vampire's heart inside, beside her own beating heart. The hole sealed shut again without a trace. The vampire blinked and sat up beside the little girl who had stolen his heart.
"Feeling better now?"
"Yes, much better, Lyddia."
"Good. Take me home."