Title: Night of the Old One (3/5)
Author: Alixtii
Timeline: Post-NFA. Book I of Dark Champions.
Spoilers: All of Buffy and Angel.
Characters: Faith, Illyria, Drusilla, Lilah, Andrew.
Disclaimer: Joss owns everything. Yeah, even that.

Faith didn't know whether she should be insulted or relieved that conversation simply continued when she entered the demon bar. On the one hand, she was the Slayer, and her entrance should have struck fear into every demon in the room. On the other hand, she didn't want a fight; she wanted a drink. She made her way straight to the bar.

When she got there, she had to do a double-take. She definitely recognized one of the women at the bar, a brunette nursing a pint of some bright orange beverage. Faith slipped into the stool next to her. "What's a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?" she asked.

Fred jumped, startled, then turned to see who had spoken. "Faith!" she said, her face lighting up with reconition. "How are you? I haven't seen you since—"

"Yeah. Since Wes' funeral." She turned to the bartender. "My regular, Joe." She looked back to Fred. "So what are you doing in town?"

"I live here now," Fred announced with a proud smile. "I have a job. And they're not evil this time." She paused, a thoughtful frown replacing the smile. "I think. I should really check up on that."

Joe set Faith's rum and coke on the table. "So we're Clevelandites now. I think we can drink to that." She picked it up her drink and held it above her head. "To Hellmouth living."

"To Cleveland," Fred toasted, raising her drink as well. "My new home."

Faith looked again at the bright orange fluid within Fred's glass. "What is that?"

"Nahdran tonic."

"May I?" Fred nodded and handed Faith the drink. The Slayer kicked back a very small amount—only to gag almost immediately. "God, that has a hell of a kick to it."

Fred shrugged and downed the rest of the drink without changing her facial expression. "I'll have another," she announced to Joe. He shrugged at Faith and refilled the glass.

"Have you heard any word from Angel?" Faith asked Fred.

Fred turned serious, shook her head. "Not a word."

"Damn," Faith said, putting down her rum and coke. "Where could he be?"

"There's always the possibility—"

"Don't say it," Faith interjected before Fred could finish. "I don't know what went down in L.A., but whatever it was, Angel got through it. He's a survivor."

Fred nodded. "I hope you're right," she said, clearly unconvinced.

Faith reached over and placed her hand on top of Fred's. "I know I am," she said, but even she could hear the doubt in her own voice.

Lilah entered the darkness of her apartment, tired from a day of work. It was better far than hell, but seeing how a hot shower was actually an option—

"Everything's changed, hasn't it?" a voice called out from the shadows. "My two boys messed up your plans, and now the vinegar's in the winepress. Can't go on as before."

Lilah crossed the room in the dark to hang up her jacket in the closet. "The Senior Partners are flexible, Drusilla. The apocalypse goes on."

"Poof!" the vampire said cryptically, standing in the doorway of Lilah's kitchenette. Since the kitchenette light was on, she was backlit—a slender black silhouette among the shadows. She stepped forward, into a stray beam of moonlight, and Lilah saw that Drusilla was wearing a sleek black dress which she supposed must have been the height of style in, say, the 1920's. "The end of the world. Only where's the fun in that?"

"I do what I'm told."

Drusilla smiled, walking closer to Lilah, the glint in her eye present indicating she knew something she wasn't letting on. And since she was both prophetic and insane, that was pretty much all the time. "Such the obedient little evil bitch queen," Drusilla observed. "Of course, you haven't much choice anymore, do you?" she asked, putting a hand to Lilah's neck and pulling away the scarf wrapped around it, revealing the thin scar where Wesley had severed her head.

Lilah quickly recovered the scarf from the vampire, rewrapping it around her neck. But Drusilla was no longer interested in it, her mind already moving on. "Fate is an interesting thing, dear," the vampire said. "It's something that even you and your masters cannot defy, no matter how much you try."

"You see something?" Lilah asked, trying to figure out what the hell Drusilla was trying to get at with what all the cryptic mutterings. The task was more or less hopeless, but she knew she couldn't afford to let a prophecy go unheeded. To much stood in the balance. "What is it?"

Drusilla stepped closer to Lilah, so close their bodies were practically pressing against each other. The vampire leant in and whispered into her ear. "You'd better hide while they have their hands over their eyes. The rules of the game are about to change. Again."

What? It was only about the thirty thousandth time that Lilah had cursed Angel's name (or memory?) but it occurred to her that if Angelus had never made Drusilla mad, she wouldn't have to be going through the trouble of trying to decipher the vampire's ramblings now. "They?" she asked. "The Senior Partners?"

Drusilla's only response was a pout. "I want to hunt."

Knowing that Dru's mind was too nonlinear for Lilah to ever be able to get her to retrace her steps and continue talking about whatever the hell it had been she had been talking about, Lilah simply opted to go with the flow. "Faith is out there, on those streets," she pointed. "And Illyria. There's blood in the fridge."

The vampire's nose wrinkled with disgust. "It's cold."

"Then learn how to work to microwave."

"The machine of plastic and metal?" asked Dru. "It can make it hot, but not warm. It lies when it says it's warm. It's not the warmth of an innocent body, singing out to me." The vampire placed a hand on Lilah's temple, traced the contours of the lawyer's skin down to her neck and collarbone. "A warmth you and I will never again feel in our own blood. The blood sustains, yes, but it is the hunt which nourishes us."

Lilah peeled the vampire off her and pushed her back to a foot away. "It's too dangerous."

The vampire stepped back. "I'll meet them, soon enough. You're counting on it. But not yet. It's too soon. Trust me, I know. I always know."

And with that, the vampire walked to the door and slipped out of the apartment, leaving Lilah alone in the dark of the room. Of course, thought Lilah as she went to switch on the lights. Of course.

Fred gestured for Joe to refill her glass. "Hey, look lasy. That drink is mystically enhanced. It's designed for demon constitutions."

"It's all right, Joe," Faith said. "I'll make sure she gets home safe." She turned to Fred and took a good hard look at the physicist. "Man, if I knew you could hold your liquor like that, I would have taken you to Harry's last time I was in L.A."

Fred's eyes didn't quite meet hers. "Last time you were in L.A., I couldn't."

Suddenly, Faith felt like an insensitive fool. "Wes?" she asked softly. Fred didn't answer. "I know what you mean. Have to admit, downed quite a few Jack bottles since the funeral. I mean, Wes was my Watcher. Didn't approve of everything I did—in fact, approved of very little I did for most of the time he knew me. But that didn't matter. What mattered was the that he bothered to have an opinion one way or another. He was really the only one to care even that much. He paid attention no matter what. And now, no once cares anymore. I've lost my audience."

"I'm sure that's not true."

"Here I am on a Hellmouth, and who do they send to watch my back? Geek boy."

Fred just looked at her, not understanding. "Huh?"

"Never mind. It's okay. This way, when I screw up, it won't matter."

"It matters," Fred insisted. "That's when it matters most, 'cause then you are doing it because you know it's the right thing, and not because of anyone else."

Faith nodded. It sounded like the sort of thing Angel would say. She wondered if he had said it, and Fred was just repeating. Of course, look where it had gotten Angel. "But then, when you get down to it, how do you know what's right?" asked Faith. "I don't have the best track record for making decisions, you know."

Fred nodded. "No one knows," she said, throwing back the tonic. "That's what makes life so difficult. And interesting."

Three bottle blondes stood on the Cleveland street corner, chattering excitedly, one on a cell phone. Drusilla watched them from across the street as they talked on, oblivious to the terrible danger they were in. Cry Baby Bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting. "I know you are there."

The man stepped out of the shadows, leaning on his wooden cane for support. "You are perceptive for a half-breed."

"And you fail to see what is right in front of your nose," Dru pointed out. "When you have a nose."

The man looked at her, took a few limping steps towards her. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Drusilla had seen this all before. "I see a vampire who is going to attack some poor unsuspecting mortals. Only, I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

"You want them for yourselves."

The old man's wicked smile gave a quick look into the evil Dru could sense inside. "You have a problem with that."

Drusilla shrugged, uncaring. "Life has not always been kind to me," she said. "Death neither. You rail and you curse, but what shall be inevitably come to pass."

He looked at her as if some portion of what she had said made sense to him. He was mistaken, of course—he looked at the vegetable patch and all he saw were caterpillars. "You," he said. "You see the future."

"It has pomegranates," Drusilla admitted, agreeably. "But the apples—they will rot and die. Turn into mushrooms."

"And you're insane."

Drusilla had to laugh at that "Now you begin to see. But not enough. Not nearly enough."

"Oh?" the man asked, leaning in on his cane towards her. "And just what might I have missed?"

"Your prey," answered Dru. "You don't need their blood. You simply enjoy causing pain, the chaos and the destruction which it brings." Ah, yes, chaos. Tin soldiers falling to a shadow from which they couldn't hide. Completely ignoring the old man's presence, engrossed with the images which flashed across her eyes, Drusilla continued. "Feeling the warm flesh in your hands as you are about to rip it to pieces. So weak, so frail, so mortal. You feel the rush of power as you sink your claws into the skin—"

"Miss?" the elderly gentleman interrupted, breaking Drusilla out of her reverie. She turned and looked at him, surprised to find he was still there.

"You see, the thing is," she said, as she watched the three girls get into a convertible car across the street, behind the gentleman's back, "you've just lost them."

"This is me," Fred said, as they passed an apartment building. "Home, sweet home."

"Well," said Faith, searching for something to say, "it was good seeing you again."

"Yeah," agreed Faith as she started up the front steps. "We'll have to plan something."

And then the petite Texan vanished inside the building, and Faith walked on, pulling out her stake and preparing to begin her patrol.

Illyria unlocked her door and slipped inside her apartment, pausing in front of the mirror as she watched Winifred Burkle's face stare back at her. Fascinating. The Slayer known as Faith had not even realized she was not the shell, just as the shell's progenitors had not done. She had started a new life under the shell's identity, using the shell's qualifications and the knowledge which now reside within Illyria's mind, passed on to the Old One from the shell. And yet she was not the shell. Or rather, she thought as she remembered the rather disturbing nightmare from the night before, Winifred Burkle had passed on, leaving the shell to Illyria.

"Fascinating," Illyria's voice echoed her thoughts as she watched her hair, eyes, forehead, lips all turn blue in the mirror.

A/N: The meeting between Faith and Illyria-as-Fred at Wesley's funeral mentioned in this chapter can be found in my short story "Funeral" which is a sort of a prelude to this series.