A New World (2/?)

Faith looked up at the middle-aged man's anguished cry. Her blood chilled as she watched a grey projectile crash into the five storey building that served as the Council base. A half-second later she was flung to the ground as the centuries old building exploded, flinging chunks of debris into the air and flames spurting into the sky.

For a moment Faith stared up at the blazing ruin unable to believe what she was seeing. Then it hit her. "WOOD!" Her heart pounding hard enough to shatter her rib-cage, she bounded upright and charged towards the inferno. "Noooo!"

"Faith!" Giles leapt in front of her, his face haggard. She reached up to knock the Watcher aside. Her eyes widened in shock as a pain shot through her body, turning her muscles to jelly and knocking her to the muddy ground.


Rio

Willow grinned as she watched her string-bikini clad girl-friend lie on the recliner on their hotel balcony, her curvy body bathed in the night's moonlight. She'd seen the way other women and men, of course men, looked at her Slayer when they were on the beach. "I'm a lucky girl," she muttered before speaking up. "Aren't you getting dressed sweetie?"

Kennedy turned to her and smirked. "I thought it would be more fun getting undressed."

"It would," Willow admitted with a giggle. "But tickets to the ballet remember?"

"Ballet?" her girl-friend sighed before rising sinuously and striding over to her, her hips swaying seductively. "I spent the first ten years of my life being dragged to those stuffy places by my culture vulture parents. Besides," her girl-friend slowly ran her tongue over those curvy lips that Willow loved to kiss so much. "I can think of much more productive ways of passing time."

"Uh, uh, uh, no siree bob!" Willow giggled as she shook his head. "I'm wise to your tricks you hussy. Remember the opera last month? You distracted me until it was too late. But not this month, oh no."

"Damn it," Kennedy mock-scowled while all the time the Slayer's hands did interesting things with Willow's lower body. "You're wise to all my tricks."

"Well yes I am missy and let that be a less-," her voice trailed off when the brunette's gaze turned to the door. "Sweetie, what's wr-." Her mouth dropped open when the hotel room door crashed open and over a dozen vampires stormed in. Pushing her shock aside, Willow prepared to utter an incantation.

And hit a magical wall, blocking her from her power. Stunned by the presence of two familiar but much unexpected magical signatures she was helpless to prevent a vampire powering her to the ground. The last thin she heard was Kennedy's rag-filled screams. And then her attacker's fangs tore into her.


Rome

"Come on Dawn! Immortal will be here soon!"

"You kept the bathroom busy for over an hour, remember? Can slay vampires but can't manage to slay one zit? What's up with that?" her sister snapped through the bathroom door. "I've only been in here for twenty minutes."

"My boyfriend not yours," Buffy pointed out.

"You can keep him," came the reply. "You and evil guys, what's up with that?"

Buffy bit back her angry retort. "Reformed remember?"

"Whatever. Just go without me, okay?"

Buffy counted to ten before replying. "No Dawn, this trip was about us reconnecting remember?"

There was silence. "Just give me five, okay?"

"Okay," Buffy agreed. Her triumphant smile faltered when her gaze dropped to the photo on her bedside table of her, Willow, and Xander. Hands trembling, she picked the photograph up, her thumb tracing the outline of her friends' faces.

"So long," she muttered. This photo had been taken in her first year in Sunnydale. Before all the bad stuff had happened. In her mind everything had gone wrong after her first death. Faced with her own mortality something had broken inside her, starting a retreat from her own humanity that other events – Angelus, Kendra's death, Faith's betrayal, Angel leaving, her mom's death, her second death, and her dalliance with Spike had only hastened. Only now was she starting to get it all back.

And re-finding herself had involved her cutting herself form those who'd grown used to just seeing her as Buffy the Slayer and just being Buffy Summers. "But soon," she promised in a husky whisper. "Soon-."

Her head snapped towards the apartment door. "Dawn," Buffy opened her bedside table drawer and pulled out Mr. Pointy. "Get out of here," she ordered, her voice tight with fear. "Go to Giles."

"What?"

"GO!" she screamed as the door burst open and close to twenty vampires swarmed in. Buffy flung the bedside cabinet into the lead vampire's face, the impact of her attack lifting the demon off his feet and flinging him and the two vampires nearest him back through the doorway.

A doorway that they shouldn't have been able to enter through. Except....

"He sold us out." Buffy whispered as a shocking realisation hit home. The Immortal owned the lease on the place they were living at. He must have invited the vampires. Her sister, the sister she'd once died to protect, was going to die because of her lousy taste in men.

"NOOOO!" A scream on her lips, Buffy lunged forward, ducking beneath a clumsy left to plunge her stake into the nearest vampire's heart. Sensing a demonic presence behind her, Buffy launched herself into the air, allowing the demon to run under her leaping split before staking her would-be killer upon landing.

A hand grabbed her left shoulder, she reacted with an instant elbow to the throat before spinning round and staking the vampire. Out of the corner of her eye she saw another demon charging her from the right and countered with a side-kick before turning to stake the monster.

"Damn it!" A brawny arm snaked its way around her neck, forcing her to turn her attention away from her would-be attacker. Instead she slammed the back of her head into her attacker's face, crunching bone.

Grinning slightly at the vampire's protesting cry, she spun to face him. "NO!" she screamed in protest as her right high heel snapped, knocking her off balance. Before she could right herself, the vampire behind her kicked her in the back of her legs, forcing her to the ground.

The next few moments were agony, the only comfort the knowledge that she'd given Dawn a chance. And then nothing.


LA.

"Poofter, Gunn's fading fast!"

"I've got vampire hearing too Spike," Angel snapped. "I can hear his heartbeat." And his strangled gasps.

"Well then mighty leader," his grand-childe's sarcasm cut him deeper than any of his wounds. "What do we do?"

The hell of it was Angel didn't have a clue. After the battle they'd retreated to the Hyperion. He'd refurbished his hotel with money he'd embezzled from W&H to upgrade the property, including the best security and surveillance system money and David Nesbit could provide. He hadn't truly expected to live through the battle with the Circle. Now that some of them had, he was lost, drained by his injuries and an age-old weariness.

"What were they?"

He turned at Illyria's question. "You didn't recognise them?" he didn't have to ask the re-born goddess who she was referring to. During the battle, several hundred strange humanoids had appeared, cutting through the Black Thorn's hordes like a knife through butter. They hadn't been human or demon, but other than that.... Deciding they hadn't the resources to fight this new foe, they'd retreated to re-group.

"I have not encountered them in the past," the goddess' eyes narrowed and her head turned towards the door. "What is that?"


Agent F smirked down from his rooftop opposite the hotel as he watched the rocket he'd just fired crash into the building. "Bye, bye, Angel," he whispered as the establishment burst into flames. "I always told Buffy the only good vampire was a dusted one." Still chuckling he melted into the darkness.