Authors Note: Hello Fair Reader, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways... Or not. Once again I am down on my knees begging you to bless me with the love of a review. It would mean so much to me. Thank You Darklover for reviewing last time. If the reviews stop, I stop writing cos I figure people don't like my story. Hell, do you hate my story? Tell me that too. Tell me that you wish Dawn would wear tambourines on her head and eat snake egg jelly or whatever. I just like to know you guys are out there. Hell do you have an idea for the story? Tell me that too, I am always looking for mre ideas. Do you wish I would crawl into a small dark hole and die? Don't tell me that cos I won't listen to you anyways. Okay the pleading stop here. For those of you who are reading, please enjoy, tell your friends, tell the monkeys at the zoo (but not the hyenas never the hyenas), and most of all give yourself a hug from me, cos I don't live close enough to you to hug you myself. BTW: I am looking for a Beta-er and a place for NC-17 fic to live. got any ideas? Wanna be my Beta love? email me: ladydrae@execpc.com BTW: This chapter might piss some of you off, once again I am using Artistic License, this is my universe based on Joss's universe.

"Did it work?" D'Hoffryn asked his newest member of the fold.

"Beats me, it probably did, but I haven't been able to get an update on that. It's not like the cameras are still in place, I can't monitor them all the time anymore." Warren replied.

"She needs to be made weak. She has to fall apart, I want Anyanka to come back to us, permanently. I want her out of that town, I want her away from those people, the only way for that to happen is if Buffy cracks. If the group is severed she will leave them and come home to us."

"I know, I'm working on it."

"If the vampire would just kill her it would make things so much simpler. Are you sure he has it in him?"

"He loves her, if I know anything of love I know that if she doesn't love him back, it'll be enough to drive him to murder."

"This vampire is very particular. He has been wavering between to worlds for quite some time. He is confused, his demon hidden."

"He'll do it okay? If you could have stopped Anyanka from granting the Slayer's wish it would have made this so much simpler."

"Anyanka was doing her job. The Slayer had been scorned, she did not break any rules, unlike you. You know your insolence will not be tolerated."

"I know! But I had to get the job done, now didn't I?"

Anyanka suddenly appeared.

"Anyanka my love! How are things!"

She turned to Warren, "Don't I know you?"

"Nope, never met you, gotta run." Warren disappeared.

"D'Hoffryn, what happened?"

"What are you talking about?"

"When I moved back time, something went wrong, and I know it wasn't my doing! I don't mess up vengeance."

"Again, I don't understand."

"When I moved time back, an object went missing. A very important object."

"You didn't lose your necklace again did you? Cos really Anyanka, if you are going to be that clumsy perhaps I don't want you back."

"Not my necklace, a chip."

"You're angry because of cookies?"

"What? Not that kind of chip! A brain-chip thing-a-majig. It was in one of the subjects heads, and now it is gone. Only someone who was acting on my vengeance could have pulled it when the transformation happened. The only one who that could have been was you."

"Are you suggesting I purposely involved myself in your work?"

"Yes. I know how jealous you can get, I am sure you didn't miss the Spike and Anya show, apparently no one did, we should have charged. You would have reason to involve yourself in his existence. Perhaps this is your way of punishing him, knowing that the Slayer won't tolerate him being restraintless, maybe you want him dusted."

"Why would I want him dusted? He is a fierce warrior of darkness, a Master Vampire, second in line to head the order of Aurelius. Why would I want to hurt him?"

"Why would you want him chipped? I guess that's the real question then isn't it? I see what's going on here, you want him to be returned to the warrior he was! You sneaky sneaky demon!"

"Now really Anyanka, you know me, I wouldn't interfere with your work, nor is it my place to act on the universe without it being asked of me. I work with the same rules you do, I can only grant the wish."

"I'm going to figure out what's going on here, and if you're involved, next time I'll bring the damn Slayer with me, and you don't want to fuck with her!"

I didn't actually sleep. I tried. The slayer was upstairs, and I know I could've broken free from my chains if I had tried. But I didn't bother. Around 3 am Willow came plodding down the stairs.

"What's up Red?'

"Ah!" she jumped, "Oh, sorry Spike, you scared me." She looked ill. I could see the beads of sweat, she was pale, and I could faintly smell blood.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, marvy, just super-de-dooper." There was little excitement in her voice.

"Then why're you up in the middle of the night? Me? I'm a creature of darkness, currently tied to a chair, never got good at sleeping while chained up, and trust me, I tried!"

"Cos I'm not fine." She walked over and sat on the couch, wrapping a blanket around her. "I'm still kinda going through withdrawls. It's better with Tara here, but I still get these cravings. They turn my insides all wobbly. It's like I can feel the power trying to take over me, trying to over power me, pun completely intended. Makes me shaky, and sweaty, and cold, and hey new thing tonight, nose bleeds!"

"I know the feeling."

"I bet you do. With that demon stuck in you, and not being able to do anything to quell it, fighting it back all the time."

"Yup, and now I can just let it be free right? Wrong, dead wrong Red. You know I can't do that."

"But you have nothing holding you back, no chip, no soul, no girlfriend who is trying to make sure you don't give into the darkness and let the magick eat you alive. Okay maybe that last part applies to me moreso than you."

"I don't know Red, I just can't even really imagine going back to that. I've had the ability to hurt, beat, and even kill Buffy, and I just can't. I mean, I love her you know? And that makes things different."

"Love makes you do the wonky."

"Yeah, and she doesn't think its even possible for a souless demon to love. Like we are safe from it. If anything we are even less safe than the lot of you, we have an eternity to learn that too."

"How so?"

"While the demon is in there, well, its always in there isn't it? It's hungry for life. It's what makes me crave blood, and carnage and death. But it also craves love, it's starving for love because we are so full of violence. I think that's part of the whole being damned thing. You get to love but you can never get enough, it always passes too quickly because the violence eats it up. But if we can control the violence, the demon, we can love, and love so well. I think that's why lots of vamps end up spending an eternity with one other creature, because over time the violence can't eat any more of the love, and you have someone who can understand that too. Dru, for as crazy as she was, understood that, taught me that even. And now Buffy, Christ! She's worse than Dru, not with the insanity, although sometimes I do wonder. But she's got the same thing in her, darkness. She shuts out love, and I whole heartedly blame Angelus for that, but if she keeps doing it, the darkness will take over her too. She's got demon in her, although she's souled, and gifted and all that rot, she's still got a demon in her. But she's got no one else that understands that, no humans anyways. It's starving, and soon it's going to start eating her. What makes me crave blood and carnage and death, makes her crave saving the world over and over again. She's hungry for life, same as I. She fights the forces of darkness all around her, but now she's fighting the light too."

"Wow, I mean, Buffy's not a demon."

"I never said she was a demon, I said she's got a demon in her. It's part of her slayer deal, she's not super-human, she's like a hybrid. How else could she fight us? Don't you know the story? Hadn't she told you?"

"No, I mean she's told me a lot of stories, but not much about the slayer gig."

"See, as I understand it, and I only get the vampire version. Angelus told me, when he first told me about slayers, about where they come from. It's sort of a way to rally the troops over killing a slayer. See, vampires aren't pure demons, lotsa demons like to remind us of that. Our demon is like a parasite it needs a human host to survive. Without it we cannot exist, our demon has no home. So a long long time ago, ages ago really, demons ruled the earth. Then came man. Now man was pretty defensless against us, cos hey, demons are stronger and faster and the like. But humans, well you're better at the thinking, and the magick. So this bunch of Shamen in Africa or some place came up with a plan. They'd make a defender, someone to fight the forces of darkness, a warrior of light. But the only way to make that warrior that strong was to put the same thing in it that made the demons strong. Why they chose a girl, personally I'll never know, probably somehting to do with one of those mother earth goddess cults, bollocks if you asked me."

"And I didn't."

"Right. Well they needed to make sure that a human body could hold the demon. So they put the demon in a girl, a dead girl, and it backfired horribly, guess she drained two of them dry before escaping. They made a vampire. It was an accident, and as a vampire I know we have heard it many many times, that the whole lot of us are nothing but a bunch of man made mistakes, which after time we have come to resent. So with their first attempt amounting to new demon creation, they had to start all over again. But by then their girl had figured out how to make more, her demon knew it, I think they tried to put some blood-demon in her, thinking it would give her a blood lust against other demons, but all it really made her do is want to eat humans. And when she was done, she replicated herself by feeding the corpses her blood, something this other demon did as well. The Shamen made sure to wipe out all of those demons, and they did, but again, the magick didn't work as well as planned, and it didn't wipe out the vampires, it just made them the only blood suckers in town."

"So this is a lesson on why magick is bad isn't it?"

"Never thought of it that way. I guess, it was magicks fault that I'm here today so I'm not really complaining all that much, but also I do understand that magick has consequences, but you know that now don't you?"

"Yup. All too well. Go on, so what happened then?"

"The Shamen realised that the demon in us vamps was residing quite well, suprisingly well actually considering they put it in a corpse. And it transferred easily as well, filling the dead and bringing them back, although not alive, thus lacking a soul. Now original vamp girl she was assembling an army cos she knew what those Shamen were really up to, and she figured if she made them all into tasty snacks, they'd fail. Long story made slightly shorter, the Shamen captured her, and took part of the demon from her. This demon is special though, manipulated, for when the host dies, and the host has to be a living breathing girl, it moves out, takes up space somewhere else, a new girl, a Slayer. When they messed with the demon to make it travel like that, they also put this notion in it, that where it came from had to be destroyed. So once it was in the girl, and from what I hear she was an ugly thing..."

"Yeah she was, dreadlocks and mud, not flattering. Sorry, she tried to kill all of us in our dreams, I'm not a big fan. "

"That makes two of us. Just as I can feel a vampire around me or when one enters a room, so can she, so in a sense we're even like that. But we can feel her too. Well, she killed the original vamp, thus declaring a sort of war on our kind. Cos demons aren't fans of demons who kill other demons, unless it follows a whole 'rules of warfare' thing which is antiquarian and completely bonkers. Since then, it's vamps jobs to kill her, and her job to kill us, and whatever other nasties get in the way. But deep down inside we are made of the same thing."

"Magick?"

"I should say the same Demon. See but the demon in her, well it needs to travel, and Buffy's rightly fucked that up. The slayers after her have been different, weaker. The first one was too easily killed by Dru, few slayers fall for the whole thrall thing, so I'm pretty sure she just wanted it. And that Faith bird, well her demon sort of killed a human and never forgot the feeling. It probably awoke something long lost to her demon, and it took over, again a fragmented demon can be dangerous."

"Why isn't Buffy then? I mean shouldn't her 'demon' be all sorts of broken up?"

"No, she's the strongest of the three of them. Even after being brought back twice, she's built up the demon. Most slayers barely lasted a year, she's lasted what, 5, 6? It makes it stronger, so it can whack a piece off and not end up all messed up. Plus she's probably built back up whatever was taken. What Faith ended up with, was from the other girl, not Buffy. I suppose only if both of them die can the two pieces be brought back together, and I predict they'll join like oil and vinegar."

"Now I'm not saying that this is true or anything, but what if Buffy doesn't know this? I mean the watchers, they're probably decended from the Shamen right? And I doubt they really want their story getting out about their big giant oops. So I mean, what if they just didn't tell the Slayer that sort of thing, afraid that they might rebel against them?"

"I suppose, but you know that story's a lot like the Bible, been passed down through the ages, probably embellished upon, other parts subtracted off. You know that anything that didn't suit the vampires, well they probably 'forgot' some of the less desireable parts to make the story favor them. A hero tale if you will. There was another part, about the First Slayer. They sort of set her free, and she sort of started killing everything, humans, demons, vamps, it didn't make a difference, she was just a killing machine. The demons got pretty excited about it, tried to tempt her over to our side. She probably just didn't know what to do, her demon and her human fighting each other, so the Shamen killed her. And when another girl was chosen, they kept her under their wing, feeding her the agenda, training her, you catch my drift here?"

"Watchers, they became watchers cos they screwed up again. Nice to see not much has changed. When Faith went evil they figured that to be a solution again. No wonder the First Slayer tried to kill us all, she was crazy!"

"Later I came to understand the story a bit better, actually it was after I killed the first girl, the Chinese Slayer. She had no human equal, no one like her, except us. She danced with us every single night, and it was never a question of skill, it was curiosity. She wanted to know what was on the other side, I know, because I am the other side. That's part of a Slayer's weakness, their demon always wonders what it's like to be us, because it knows that it is us, so it drives the girl, steering her to her eventual death. Death, in hopes of being returned to where it came from. But it's never that simple. As long as the slayer lets in the light, as long as she fights the darkness that the demon craves she lives. When you brought her back, at the end of summer, I was scared."

"Why? I mean she's fine, well, now she is."

"I was scared that what you brought back would be the demon only. And in a way it was, because it was stronger than her human, I could hit her."

"Tara said that was just like cos her cells were different enough to not register in your chip."

"And I'm telling you I could see it in her, the demon. Was the first time I ever saw it in a Slayer. I always could feel it, knew it was there, but I couldn't see it, when she came back, I could see it. She needed to fight it, but she didn't want to. And the lot of you had no idea something was wrong with her. I couldn't have told you, none of you would have believed me, not even the Watcher. So I tried to satiate her demon, get it to move back. I loved her so much that i thought maybe it could help to let in the light, let love shine on her. In a way I guess I succeeded, if only because she was so disgusted with herself she pushed it back. See all of you kept her alive this long cos she was so full of light, of love, it used to blind me, I could see it. The light never wondered what it was like on the other side because all of you kept her from letting the demon move forward. I never saw what happened at that tower coming. I should have. I saw it in the eyes of the Chinese Slayer and later in those of the one in New York, a second of darkness, a second of wonder, and I grabbed it. I never saw it on her. If I had I would have, well i don't know what I would have done, I just know I wouldn't have let her do die."

"Wow. I mean, wow."

"Yeah, so I can't go back to killing. I learned how to fight the demon back, I learned it from her. She helped me truely love, I mean I loved Dru, but nothing like this. it pales in comparison, it's like Buffy's light, it's like it's in me. Not her soul, but like it. I can't put it out now."

"That's how I feel about Tara, she's the only thing keeping me from falling over the edge, from giving in to what I know is there. I've tasted it, and god, it was good. Amy showed me that, but Tara, she showed me love. It's like I feel her all over me, dancing, and as long as that is there filling me up, I'll be okay."

"Hmpf, who'da thunk it Red? Me and you, partners in misery, love's bitches."

"Hey it's better than being a bitch, cos trust me, I met evil me, and she is not so pleasant."

"How about this? A deal, you stay on the wagon for me, and I'll stay on the wagon for you. No magic for you, no people eating for me."

"Deal. I can't believe I'm making a dealw ith the evil undead."

"Just don't let the wanker know. I'd shake on it, but I'm a bit tied up at the moment."

"I'll take you on your word." Willow got up and winked at him. "I'm gonna get some water and head back to bed. Night Spike."

"Night Red, stay good."

I was sitting at the top of the stairs. I wasn't asleep, I had heard Willow wake up. I was going to follow her down, but I heard her and Spike and stopped. I could barely believe what I was hearing. He was lying, I knew he was. Tomorrow I would call Giles and let him know the bullshit that was being spread as Slayer myth amongst the vampires. Then when he told me what I already knew, I'd stake Spike so he couldn't spend one more minute spreading such lies. but a piece of me did believe him. Sometimes I had urges, thoughts I couldn't attribute to myself, things that made me think for a while I had been brought back without a soul. But Tara affirmed that I was fine. I was no demon. But by the end of their conversatoin, I almost didn't want to kill Spike because he and Willow had a deal, and I would hate to send her over the edge. Hell, I didn't really want to kill Spike, I just hated how he knew things, things about me, things about others, just so damn insightful. When they were done, I got up quick and scurried back to my room. I was in bed pretending to sleep before I heard Willow's foot hit the first step. I fell asleep soon after with visions of his lies in my head. They weren't true, they just couldn't be.

When Red left, I heard a noise at the top of the stairs. And then I recognized the faint smell of her, I should have known she was there the whole time, but my sense was dulled from being around her so often. She probably heard it all. It was better late than never. Sheneeded to know what she was, then maybe she could accept what he was, what he was to her.