Ready, Get Set...
by Alixtii

"You're right. We don't know how to fight it. We don't know when it'll come. We can't run, can't hide, can't pretend it's not the end, 'cause it is. [. . .] I'm standing on the Mouth of Hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me. We're not ready? They're not ready."

—Buffy, in "Bring on the Night"

Sunnydale, California—January 2001

"But we understand that you help the Slayer," Lydia probed as her colleagues protected her with cross and crossbow.

The vampire shrugged. "I pitch in when she pays me," he admitted.

"She pays you?" she asked, hurriedly writing notes down on her clipboard. "She gives you money?"

"Money, a little nip of blood out of some stray victim, whatever."

"Blood?"

"Well, if they're gonna die anyway." He paused, feining consideration. "Come to think of it, though, that's a bit scandalous, isn't it? Personally, I'm shocked. The girl's slipping."

Testimony highly unreliable, Lydia noted. "You've noticed a decline in her work?"

"Oh, yeah," the vampire said. "See, the poor little twig can't keep a man. Gets her all down. Few more disappointments, she'll be cryin' on my shoulder, mark my words."

Intriguing. "Is that what you want?" Lydia asked, probing. "I'd think you'd want to kill her. You've killed Slayers before."

"Heard of me, have you?" Interested, he stepped closer.

"I wrote my thesis on you," Lydia admitted.

The vampire smiled. "Well, well," he said. "Isn't that neat." He stopped smiling "Tell me, pet, now we're such good friends, how's the Slayer doing? Is she okay? High marks in all categories?"

Lydia considered. The vampire's interest in the Slayer was unique, practically pathological for a vampire. Deviant for a deviant, Lydia mused. Did that make him normal, or even more eccentric? The latter no doubt, and what she wanted right now was to sit down with her favourite vampire psychology textbook and integrate these new findings with the research she had put forth in her thesis. But they were here to evaluate the Slayer, not the vampire.

Evaluate? Evaluate what? Not for the first time, Lydia wondered at the pointlessness of the entire review. What were they supposed to do if they didn't find her up to par? Let the world burn in an apocalypse because the Slayer didn't have the information she needed? Find someone else? Bust the mad slayer out of prison (or kill her and wait for a new Slayer to appear)? None of the options were viable—they were stuck with the Slayer they had, little as Travers might like it. What was Quentin trying to accomplish, anyway?

Lydia forced a smile and answered the vampire, "That information will not be made public until after the review is completed. Have a nice day, sir."

Did she just call a vampire "sir"? And wish him a good day? She wasn't sure if she should be embarrassed by her show of respect for the vampire (he was just a creature, after all, albeit an intriguing one and a fascinating object of study) or her terrible lack of tact. Good day, indeed—when the very sun could fry him to cinders. "Good day" was practically an oxymoron for a vampire. Unless you assumed that good things were disagreeable to vampires as a matter of course, being evil (or, in many cases, merely amoral, her scholar's mind reminded her) and all.

Los Angeles, California—December 2003

Spike was a simple man. He would divest all of himself into a few select passions, let them consume him to such a degree that he was aflame with them, they burned away at him until there was nothing left inside him. In life, those passions had been his mother, his poetry, and Cecily. In death, they had been Drusilla, the bloodlust, and the hunt. Then Drusilla left him and he had been chipped and suddenly the flame was gone, and he was an empty shell of a man—no, not even a man—of a vampire.

And then he fell in love with Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer herself, and the flame came back, changed him as it burned away the old Spike until it quite literally consumed him in the Hellmouth beneath Sunnydale, leaving nothing behind but an empty crater.

And now?

At times, he reminded himself of those years when he had first been chipped, trying to still be evil and failing miserably. A failure, an empty shell with no purpose or worth. It was even appropriate that for so many weeks he had been nothing more than a spectre, just the form of William the Bloody without any of the substance. And other times, he looked at those around him at Wolfram & Hart, like Winifred Burkle, and how they were consumed by their own flame, helping the helpless by working for the evil law firm. They were misled, he was sure (he remembered his own dealings with the firm back in the 60's), but they had a purpose. And sometimes, he felt it was a flame he could let consume him, and be his purpose. It was a noble goal, and one he could be proud to work for.

If only it didn't mean working for the Poofter.

Somewhere in Romania....

Drusilla is a creature of death, and so all but the strongest of the creatures of the forest fear her and avoid her. They sense what she is through pure instinct, just as a pomegranate needs nothing but instinct to fall from its tree. The larger animals, they desire her flesh, the potency of her blood; they wish to tear the cold flesh from her body until they sever her neck and she turns to dust in their mouths. They recognize what she is, and hunger for her power as only creatures of this forest would know to do.

Drusilla does not fear them, of course; she is a creature of death, and she brings death to them oh-so-quickly, using her claw-like nails to slice through one, then the next. Soon the pack of wolves lies dead at her feet, and she picks them up, one by one, and begins to feed off them until she is full. So much wolf-blood, much more than she could ever need, so she uses her fingernail to cut open her wrist, and the lets the blood fall into the mouth of the dying wolf. She drinks some more, then turns another.
What will happen to them? Can animals become vampires? Even the stars do not know; it has never happened before. But they watch intently, through the dense trees which shield Drusilla from the sun, eager to find out.

She does not bury them. They are animals, unbaptized, and in no need of funeral. But she waits with the stars, to see if they rise with the moon.

Cleveland, Ohio

Kick, kick, punch, block, kick, block, kick, punch. It wasn't a bad way to blow off steam.

Beeeeep, beeeeep, BEEP-BEEP. Beeeeep, beeeep, BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

Oh, great. She couldn't imagine worse timing. She jumped into the air and sent a flying kick with each leg, each of her feet connecting with a different vampire's jaw. The two creatures of the night went flying back into the ally; as they pulled themselves to their feet, the Slayer whipped out her cell phone, checked who it was, hit the "talk" button, and lodged it between her shoulder and her chin.

"What is it, G'?" she asked, as she blocked a couple of vampire attacks and delivered a blow to one's upper chest. "I'm sorta busy right now."

"I'm sorry, Faith," Giles answered. "But I've just received a disturbing call from the Council."

"Oh?" Faith asked as she grabbed the heads of both vampires and slammed them into each other. "What do the bastards want?"

"You are aware of Drusilla, I presume?"

"Spike's sire?" asked Faith. "I never met the chick, but I hear she's bonkers. Causing problems?"

"Erm, yes. Possibly. She has been detected in Romania. Some members of the Council fear she may be trying to de-ensoul Angel."

Faith sighed. "Just what we need, Angelus back on the warpath. But between B' and me, we should be able to get him under control. Does Willow know?" She pulled the wooden stake out of her belt and plunged it into the vampire's heart.

"She and Kennedy are beginning to make preparations as the Council attempts to procure an orb of Thesula—Willow's old one was destroyed with Sunnydale—and ship it to her. Hopefully, however, it won't come to that: Buffy and Dawn are traveling to Romania as we speak. What we need you to is go to Los Angeles and stay there, just in case Drusilla succeeds. I've already sent Andrew to Wolfram and Hart; I'd prefer you to stay in the shadows, out of Angel's radar."

Faith looked at the second vampire she had been sparring with, looked her in the eyes as they exchanged blows. "That's fine with me, G'," she said. "I'm right at home in the shadows."

Somewhere in Romania....

"We'll never find her in here," Dawn Summers complained. "There's too much forest, and just the two of us, and there might as well only be one of us, because it's too dangerous for us to split up."

The elder Summers sighed. "What do you want me to do, Dawn? Say 'Oh well, Drusilla's gone into the forest, guess I'll let her go and de-soul Angel'?"

"No," said Dawn. "But there has to be a better method than this."

"Look," said Buffy. "I know this isn't how you wanted to spend your Christmas break. But I'd rather be back in Rome right now too. If Angel goes evil, we'll all be inconvenienced."

Dawn didn't see why she should suffer just because her sister's ex- boyfriend had a tendency to go evil. But she didn't say anything; she knew it wouldn't help and that, in the end, her sister was right: no one wanted Angelus on the loose. Dawn thought back to those days six years ago (she knew she really didn't exist six years ago, but damn it, she had the memories) when Angelus was on the loose, terrorizing both Buffy and her friends. Mom hadn't found out about Buffy's slayer-ness yet due to her massive refusal to see reality in the way typical of Sunnydale residents, but Dawn had been able to put two and two together (and get five) enough to be scared out of her wits. It wasn't a situation she wanted to relive.

She looked up at the sky. The foliage was so thick that hardly any sun managed to reach the forest floor, which meant that Drusilla would have pretty much free reign 24/7. Not a good thing.

Unlike most of the other major villains Buffy had faced, Dawn didn't have any real memories of Drusilla. She caught a glance of the vamp once when Xander cast that spell to have everyone fall in love with him (Dawn had already had a crush on him then, so it didn't affect her all that much, luckily), but she hadn't known the girl was a vampire then, so she hadn't bothered to get a good look. What would it be like to be a vampire? Dawn wondered, not for the first time. What would it be like to be crazy? (She knew the answer to that one—she only had to look at Buffy or maybe Andrew.) What would it be like to be crazy and a vampire? She couldn't imagine, which was a good thing, she decided, because she wasn't sure she really wanted to be able to.