He looked her up and down. "Wow," he said. "Hi." Then he got a whiff of her. He frowned, obviously trying to puzzle out why a human reeking of sex and anxiety would be at The Gathering. "Now who are you, baby? The midnight buffet?"

Buffy stood rooted to the spot, trying her best to understand how her subconscious had somehow translated this tallish, darkish, suit jacket-wearing guy into Spike when she saw him. The mind was a funny thing. A laugh a minute, sometimes.

Time to switch gears from tearful lover to avenging hand of justice. Just because it wasn't the first time didn't make it any easier. Although on the plus side, she finally had a target for all this angsty emotion roiling in her gut. She was so ready to kick some Boston ass.

Buffy ran her hand up her thigh. The vampire gave it his undivided attention. She pulled her stake from where she had tucked it into the top of her right boot, and twirled it authoritatively between her fingers for him. "I've been looking for you," she said with a pout. His eyes traveled from the stake to her face. Oh. Ohhh. Oh-oh. He dropped his cigarette.

He didn't change into game face, just backed away from her slow and easy, hands in his pockets, and said, "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." He smiled slyly, dimples creasing into his cheeks. It was a good thing she was going to stake him. A couple more of those smiles and a half-baked declaration of redemption, and she'd probably be making out with him in a Marriott bathroom stall.

"If anyone is going to be described by the words prick and wicked in the same sentence," she told him as she lunged at him, "it's going to be you."

She punched him twice in the head before he managed to kick her feet out from under her. She fell back, her ankles screaming insults at the damned FM boots.

"I thought we might meet up tonight, but not here. You've got balls, Slayer." He landed a good one right to her kidney, and she gasped and let herself roll away from him before she pushed back up onto her feet.
She came at him in a hard spin, the toe of her boot connecting nicely with his nose." You think I'm scared of a bunch of vampires at a convention? Please." He staggered backwards, but recovered just in time for her to head butt him in the face. That was for the pink-haired girl in the bar.

He tackled her, and they danced backwards in a tangle of arms and legs. "No, evidently fear is not a factor for you," he said into her ear. "You're a cold little bitch."

She stopped her fist in midair. "I'm not cold! I'm...toast! I'm cocoa!" He quit trying to impale his knee in her intestines as she expounded. "I'm perfectly able to love someone, and have them love me. At the same time, even. I am a regular love machine. A warm, warm love machine."

He nodded, transfixed by her True Slayer Confessions. "You're not talking about us anymore, are you?"

Buffy shoved him off of her and kicked him squarely in the chest, sending him sprawling to the ground. He didn't try to get up, just lay there, propped on his elbows. He put his finger into the hole where her stiletto heel had pierced both his suit and his skin, and made a tsk-tsking sound.

"Hey," said Buffy cheerfully, "if I can get these boots made with wooden heels, I think I just invented a real time-saver. But until then..." She stood over him, stake poised.

"Yeah, whatever." He held his hand out to her and waggled it. She stared at it, eyebrows arched. "Well," he finally asked, "aren't you going to give me a hand up?"

"You do know we're fighting, right?"

He snorted. "Give it up, Slayer. You could have staked me fifteen ways from Sunday by now. We both know you're not going to do it." She said nothing. "Come on, do you want the book or not?"

Buffy grudgingly took his hand and jerked him to his feet. It wasn't until he wouldn't let go that she noticed his other hand was back in his pants pocket. She was considering her pun options, but then he pulled it out again. He was holding a fistful of something. It looked like wet sand. What the...?

He threw the sand at her. She twisted away from him, and it got her right between the shoulder blades. He began to hastily chant in another language, Latin maybe? Greek? Dakchar Demon? Unlike Giles, Buffy didn't have an ear for foreign tongues. Suddenly, getting the book back didn't seem half as important as stopping him from finishing whatever it was he was saying. She turned to stake him.

Too late. Her back began to tingle where the sand had hit her. And then it seemed like gravity had been working out some, maybe taking steroids, because she started to feel unbelievably heavy. So heavy she couldn't stand anymore. She sank to her knees, struggling to keep her balance, but it was no good. Buffy looked at the vampire, who was grinning enormously. She pitched backwards, her arms no use to her at all. Her head smashed into the pavement. Buffy's back now seemed glued to the ground - she was the world's largest fridge magnet.

Now it was his turn to look down at her, his smile growing even bigger, if that was possible. "How do you like that, Slayer? This stuff is sort of like pixie dust in reverse. Are you thinking a happy little thought?"

She scrabbled at the ground, trying to lift her stake. Her arms and legs felt like she was doing the backstroke in wet cement.

He made time to gloat some more. "It didn't even take me that long to find the necessary ingredients for this concoction last night. Such a simple spell, but look how useful. I tell you, that book is like 'Witchcraft for Dummies'." He laughed at his own joke, then rubbed his hands together. "Enough with the chitchat. Let's finish this."

He took her by the wrists and dragged her towards the hotel. Her back stubbornly refused to part ways with the parking lot. Buffy felt her skin catch and shred on every rock her body passed over. Maybe she wouldn't be returning the dress to Le Chateau on Monday morning after all.

He let go of her arms when they got to the side entrance. Her right hand bounced hard against the concrete, and her stake slipped from her hexed fingers and rolled away. For the first time, Buffy started to seriously worry.

The vampire yanked the door open and kept it that way by pushing the kick-stand into place with his toe. He came back and knelt beside her. It was easy enough for him to pull her over the hotel threshold by her armpits; she was so very small when you got right down to it. He stopped when her head was resting on the linoleum inside the hotel.

He looked at her, his expression now soft and solicitous. "There aren't any Slayer healing powers in there, I'm afraid. That should speed this up." He reached out and touched her dark hair. She could now jerk her head away from him, and did so with as much contempt as she could muster. But the rest of her wasn't going anywhere.

He straddled her, making sure her arms were tucked securely under him. "Killing you is going to make my reputation," he told her smugly. "And did I already say thank you for the book? Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me. The future's so bright, etcetera. Not quite as much for you, of course." She struggled weakly under him, and for once couldn't think of one damn thing to say. Fear filled her stomach and creeped up into her mouth. It tasted like pennies.

So it looked like this was it. Some stupid vampire from the state of Massachusetts was finally going to have his one good day. Buffy had often speculated that this moment would be sharp and anguished, but no, it turned out the edges and corners of her final death were going to be nothing but a soft blur. She could barely feel the cold metal of the door frame under her shoulders. Mostly she felt relief – she knew what was on the other side of this journey. In the face of that, Buffy was surprised how sorry she was to be going. She supposed even clinically depressed Slayers could be curious to see what was going to happen next.

"Let's find out how pretty you are after I put my fist through your face fifteen or twenty times." He pulled his arm back. "Time to die, Slayer."

Dawn, thought Buffy, and closed her eyes.

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Oh no! Buffy is going to die! Unless someone can save her in time. But who???