Imperium - Part Three

Disclaimer – Don't own anything you might recognize. They all belong to their respective owners.

AN – Some of this chapter has references to Buffy's dream in chapter 3. A couple of them are pointed out, but are couple aren't so keep an eye out for them :D

Imperium – Part Three

It wasn't until he and Buffy had had the dating talk earlier that day that Dean had even considered his brother in the tangled web of confused thoughts inside his mind. If Sam really liked Buffy, then what right did he have to be such an ass about the whole situation? Damn, if Sam really liked Buffy then he seriously needed to just get a grip and get over the entire thing, stop having crazy thoughts about her and stop being such a jealous jerk towards his brother. If this was something that Sam wanted then there was no way that he was gonna stand in his way.

"So, how was you're uh...date, last night?" he asked Sam as the pair of them trundled through a graveyard, flashlights in hand so that they could thoroughly search the place. He was only asking because he wanted to take an interest in his brother's life, he told himself. Not because Buffy had refused to give him any information earlier on.

Sam rolled his eyes. Maybe the whole joke had just been a really bad idea. He was pretty sure he wasn't gonna hear the end of this for months. "Leave it out, Dean. Do you really think now is a good time to be discussing our romantic interests."

Dean pulled a face but conceded Sam's point in silence. For a minute. "But you like her, right?"

Sam stopped and turned to face his brother, curiosity shining on his face. "Do you like her?"

Dean blanched. "Dude! What...That's just...nutty!"

"Are you sure? Because you seemed awfully pissed last night when me and Buffy were heading out."

Dean forced his mind to work quickly to come up with a reasonable excuse. "Well, it's because I don't like her. And I was worried about you, little brother. Don't want Little Miss Bitch of the Year upsetting you, do I?"

"You're sure that's it?"

"Yeah! Why would you think that I like her? I cant stand her! We cant even be in the same room for five minutes without fighting.

Sam shrugged in acceptance, seeming satisfied, so Dean – not wanting to push his luck any further – turned away to sweep his eyes across the graveyard once more. "This place is a bust," he surmised. "Let's head back to the car."

Sam agreed and they made their way swiftly back to the Impala. As Dean got in, he realized he had left his cell phone on the car seat. It must have dropped from his pocket as he was climbing out. "Crap," he muttered, when he saw he had a message. It was from Faith, telling him and Sam to meet her and Buffy somewhere called Kimbrough forest. The message wasn't from that long ago, and she was telling him to hurry.

"Why didn't she call you?" Dean asked Sam.

Sam winced. "Uh, I forgot to charge my battery," he admitted. "It ran out like an hour ago. I didn't think it'd matter because we were all together."

Dean shook his head, mumbling insults about his incompetent excuse for a brother under his breath. As he started up the car, he said to Sam, "Get the map out and find where this forest is. The girls are there by themselves and that's where the big evil is."

"Should we call them back?"

"No. They'll probably be there by now and if the bad guys haven't found them yet I don't want them being alerted. You know what Buffy's like. She's always forgetting to turn her phone on silent."

"Alright then, let's go."

The forest was quiet. Very dark and very quiet. And it didn't sit well with neither Faith nor Buffy.

"Couldn't Willow get a more precise spot?" Faith asked. "This forest has gotta be huge."

Buffy shook her head. "The map wasn't all that specific, and that's all she's got to work with. I don't think they do maps of the forest. Or do they? I don't know. I'm not a ranger."

"Well, I don't like this. It seems too still to me."

"I agree. It feels weird."

They walked deeper into the forest for a few more minutes, before both stopping at exactly the same time.

"Can you feel it?" Faith murmured, shifting her shoulders in preparation.

"Oh yeah. Bad guy tinglies."

They looked around, peering through the trees, but it was too dark to see very far.

"I don't see them."

"Faith," Buffy said, her voice low. She nudged her and nodded to a point ahead of them, where a dark shape was moving towards them. The closer it got, the easier it was to see that it was man shaped, and the vibes they were getting were enough to let them know that it was a vampire...and not alone. The two girls twirled around. Vampires were edging out of the shadows all around them, forming a circle through the trees. Buffy lost count as she tried to keep track of them all. How many were there? More than a dozen. Two dozen? More than that?

"Holy crap," Faith muttered.

"Boy am I glad I brought this," Buffy said, fingering the scythe.

"You and me both, sister." Faith lifted up the sword in her hand.

"Guess we know why the vamp numbers have been upping recently."

"For this Hatoss dude? To protect him or guard him or something?"

"That's what I'm thinking."

They had no time to discuss it further before the first wave of vampires attacked.

These were no fledgling vampires, and they surely knew what they were doing. Ordinarily, Buffy and Faith could have taken them on easy. But there were just so many of them. Every time they staked one, another two sprang forward to attack.

Faith ducked an attack and span around and decapitated the offending vampire with her sword. Suddenly, four were advancing on her. "Buffy," she called.

Knowing what Faith was calling for, Buffy threw her the scythe and they swapped weapons, just as they had been doing back and forth since the fight had begun.

Faith dispatched the four vampires and twirled around so that she and Buffy were fighting back to back. A burly vampire managed to get in a kick to her stomach, and as the action caused her to bend over, he kicked her hard nose. She felt it crack, and then the uncomfortable sensation of blood spurting out and down into her mouth. Shrugging it off and spitting it out, she punched the vampire in the face and then elbowed him, before ramming the pointy end of the scythe through his heart..

"Dammit, B! There's too many!" she shouted, as another two came at her from both sides. "We need help!"

Buffy's eyes widened.

Back in the forest, she and Faith were fighting back to back against two dozen vampires.

"There's too many!" Faith shouted. "We need help!"

Just like in their dream!

But her momentary lapse in concentration cost her, and she felt the blade of a dagger nick her chin and swipe across her shoulder, before her legs were kicked out from under her.

Just as she was really beginning to regret her decision to send the other slayers back home to safety, the sound of a gunshot rang loud and clear throughout the forest. The vampire attacking Buffy glanced away to see where it had come from, giving her the chance to flip back up on her feet and stake him from behind. Hearing Sam and Dean's unintelligible shouts, Buffy allowed herself a moment of relief before realizing that the reason they were yelling so loud was because they were being chased by a dozen knife wielding Tababton.

They were even creepier in reality than they had been in their dreams or the picture. Behind the pallid, white skin and the blood red eyes and the hunched back and the claw like fingers, Buffy could almost see how they were once men. It made them scarier, somehow. The Tababton joined into the fight with a ferocious intensity, seeming only to be focused on one thing – capturing Buffy.

Buffy was fighting against four vampires when two of the Tababton appeared suddenly on either side of her. So taken by surprise as she was, she was too late to react by the time they had grabbed a hold of her arms and pinned her against a tree.

She struggled to get away, but their grip was too strong. To her right she heard Faith give a strangled shout, and as she glanced across she saw that she too had been pinned up against a tree. One of the white faced demons had a hold of her arms with one large hand, and had her pinned by the throat with the other.

Faith's eyes widened in horror as she looked back at Buffy, and Buffy looked down just in time to see one of her captors pull out a large, shining knife.

"No!" Faith screamed, as the knife plunged towards Buffy's stomach.

Buffy gasped, closing her eyes against the searing pain that was sure to come. And then Dean was there, barreling into the demon and knocking it to the ground. Making a mental note to thank the holy hell out of him if they survived this, Buffy was able to kick her other captor off of her rejoin the fight.

Dean's timely save of Buffy's life seemed to give everyone a new lease of energy. With a whoop, Faith threw her own Tababton off and had it immobilized within a matter of seconds. The foursome began to attack their foes with more vigor, and Buffy's heart jumped at the thought that they might actually all make it out of this fight alive.

And then suddenly, the remaining vampires were running away.

"What the-" Dean started, ducking as a Tababton demon swiped at him.

"Take Sam and go after them!" Buffy called to Dean. "Me and Faith will stay and deal with these guys!"

Sam and Dean didn't even hesitate. That amount of vampires – there was just no way they could let them run off without even attempting to thin the herd.

Buffy turned back to the fight just in time to see a small rock bounce off of Faith's head. It wasn't enough to knock her out, but it left her dazed for just a second. And a second was all it took for two of the demons to grab her arms and yank them behind her back. Faith struggled against them, her expression vicious as she tried and failed to kick out. Buffy instantly moved forward to help her, but her lack of concentration gave the Tababton the upper hand and just as quickly as they had got Faith, they had Buffy in the same position. Captured. And this time there was no Dean to save her.

But they no longer seemed intent on harming the girls, and were instead simply holding them in position.

The reason why soon became all too clear, for out of the shadows stepped a new figure. It was a man. An ordinary looking one, as far as Buffy could tell, though his face still remained hidden by shadows. But even so, she knew he was evil. She could feel it crawling all over her. And it was a darker kind of evil than anything else they'd faced tonight. Hell, anything they'd faced since they last hellmouth they'd stood on.

As he stepped forwards, Buffy gasped in recognition. He was the man from the dream!

The man glanced in the direction the vampires and the Winchesters had sped off in and chuckled. "Had to send them away," he said. "They were ruining the party."

Buffy wasn't sure who he meant, the vampires or the Winchesters. But in the next moment it didn't matter because like in her dream, he was holding up his hand, dangling the sparkling pendant from one of his fingers.

"Buffy, don't look at it!" Faith yelled, wary of what Willow had learned about it.

But it was too late.

"Imperium," the man hissed.

Suddenly, Buffy was seeing the pendant in a whole new light. "It's so pretty," she murmured, as it cast off a brilliant glow.

Faith – to whom the pendant hadn't changed at all – began yelling Buffy's name in earnest. But Buffy didn't even hear it.

Stop struggling against the Tababton, a voice whispered to her. And so she did.

"Aw crap! Buffy!" Faith yelled. "Buffy, don't do this! Snap out of it!"

Ignore her.

The man turned and began to walk away, gesturing for half of the remaining Tababton to follow him. Not wanting to be left behind in the darkness where the pendant didn't glow, Buffy allowed them to guide her as they stumbled after him.

"Kill her," the man called back to the rest of them, gesturing towards Faith.

Buffy didn't even flinch at his words.

Buffy continued to follow the man and the pendant, not taking the slightest notice of where they were going. She didn't notice when the trees began to thicken, or when the path disappeared. She didn't notice when they came to a large rock face, or when the man led them through a barely visible opening. She definitely didn't take any notice of how the dark entryway led steeply downwards the further inside the dark cave they traveled.

She wasn't aware of how long their odd little group walked, but eventually the narrow path began to widen and they entered a large, dank, damp underground room. The rocky walls were lined with fiery torches, and the low glow only seemed to emphasize the shadows of the shapes moving around inside it.

There were more people in here, waiting. Another man. Oldish looking, hunched over a steaming cauldron. And a young, dark skinned woman. Buffy was sure she was supposed to know her. If only she could clear this fog in her mind, then maybe she would be able to figure out how.

"I am not amused, Hatoss!" the man leading Buffy roared towards the other, older looking man. "One of your disgusting foul excuses for demons almost gutted my slayer! I thought I told you to give them strict instructions not to damage her!" He threw the pendant at him, and the older man caught it easily and placed it inside his robes.

The man who appeared to be called Hatoss rolled his eyes and waved his comments away. "I told them not tokill her. You think I couldn't fix any flesh wounds they inflicted upon her? They could have cut off her hands and feet and I could have had them back on in a trice." Hatoss seemed offended at the lack of faith the other man had in him, but when he looked over at Buffy, his face twisted into a mask of pleasure. "Ah, so the spell I gave you for the pendant worked?"

"It did indeed. But look into eyes, she's fighting it off already." He was pleased by this. She just proved she was stronger than he thought all the damn time. "Now we have her here, we need to take her blood and do the proper spell. The permanent one."

Hatoss nodded and waved distractedly at the Tababton. One of them stepped forward, a sinister grin on its face as it lurched over to Buffy, a sharp, jagged edged knife in its hand.

Stand still, don't struggle, the whisper in Buffy's mind demanded.

She watched, without really seeing, as the demon pulled off her jacket. And then it was running the blade across her upper arm, slowly and deeply. She couldn't even feel it.

After it had finished, it moved backwards and another came forward, lifting an empty glass tube up to her arm to collect the steady flow of blood.

As Buffy watched him, her eyes began to narrow and the mist in her mind began to clear. She was beginning to come back to herself.

Hatoss saw this. "Quickly," he hissed to the others. In a snap, the cauldron had disappeared in a shimmer and the torches had gone out and the room was pitched into a black darkness.

Buffy blinked and looked around, shaking her head as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Where the hell was she? The last thing she remembered was being back in the forest and being held back by those gross demon things. And there had been a man. Who was he? How had she got here? Where was Faith, and the Tababton? Why couldn't she remember? Why was she feeling so dazed?

Suddenly, a single, solitary torch began to burn near one of the walls, and in the dim light she spotted one of the Tababton. It began to chuckle quietly, making no move to disappear into the shadows. Buffy began to stalk over to it, but was stopped by the sound of a low voice, chanting. She couldn't tell where it was coming from. Somewhere in the shadows? She tried to make out what the voice was saying, but she couldn't understand the words.

"Hello?" she called, her voice filled with false cheer. "Hatoss, that you? Here, little warlock..." There was no answer to her teasing. "You know, you might as well come out from wherever you're hiding, I'm gonna kick your skanky butt anyway."

The chanting stopped and another torch lit up, though it was still not enough to see where he was. "I think not, little girl," he replied with a chuckle.

And then half a dozen Tababton vaulted forward, grabbing at her arms and legs and dragging her over to the far wall. Buffy flinched as she saw the thick chains bolted there, and with a pounding heart began kicking desperately to get away. Where the hell was her damn scythe?

They had managed to chain one of her arms to the wall when the sound of pounding footsteps filled the cave.

"Buffy?" she heard Faith's voice shout out, followed by Dean asking, "Are you sure this is it?"

"Of course I'm damn sure! I can feel her, you-"

"Faith!" Buffy yelled, only to be back handed by one of the demons.

"Buffy! We're coming!" Sam yelled.

And then Faith was there, storming the room, scythe in hand. Behind her, Dean and Sam followed, looking equally as deadly. Both Sam and Faith moved straight in for the attack, but as soon as Dean saw Buffy he was at her side in an instant, fear evident in his eyes as he checked her for deadly injuries.

"Thank God," he murmured, again and again, and Buffy wasn't quite sure if he was talking to her or himself. "Thank God, you're not dead."

Despite her dire situation, her heart began pounding for an entirely different reason as the sound of relief and desperation in his voice filtered into her brain.

"Dean, behind you!" she warned, her own voice panicked.

He turned quickly to find a Tababton demon hobbling speedily in their direction, knife poised and ready to attack. Dean raised his gun and shot it straight between the eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked, turning back to Buffy. "We got back to Faith and killed the rest of those sons of bitches but I couldn't see you anywhere and then she told us they'd hypnotized you or something and taken you away and I was so...uh, we were so scared."

Buffy felt her heart give a strange lurch at the look in his eyes. She moved forward, before remembering her chained up arm. She gestured at it to Dean. "I'm okay, really. But, uh, kinda stuck here."

"Oh yeah, right." He shook himself and tried to clear his mind. "Okay. Uh, key?"

Buffy shrugged helplessly. "One of the white guys has got it. I don't know which though, they all look the same to me."

"Can't you just use your super strength and yank it off?"

Buffy pulled her 'Dean's an idiot' face. "What? Like you think I haven't tried that already?"

Dean rolled his eyes, told Buffy to move as far away as she could, and aimed at the chain with his gun. It took a couple of shots, but she was finally able to move away from the wall.

Buffy held her newly freed hand up, complete with manacle and a little bit of chain. "Thanks." She smiled indulgently. "You better know how to pick a lock."

"Later," he replied.

Faith called Buffy's name and with a reassuring smile, threw her the scythe. Buffy and Dean glanced at each other for a second, before joining in the battle. Soon enough, with the four of them working together once more, they had destroyed the remaining Tababton with an almost laughable ease.

As they stood over the corpses, panting from exertion, Buffy frowned. If this Hatoss guy was so powerful, why hadn't he stopped them from killing all his minions?

From the shadows, a furious roar rang out, sending a wave of echoes throughout the cave. Buffy span around, her head darting from side to side as she searched for the source of the noise.

"No!" a man cried out from where he was knelt on the floor. He was old – maybe a few years older than Giles, and he had eyes that sent shivers through Buffy's heart. Black and red, possibly the scariest combination she had ever seen.

Hatoss, Buffy presumed.

But he didn't seem to be mourning the loss of his creations. Instead, he was looking at his outstretched hands in horror. Energy was gathered around them, but every time he tried to aim it at them it would just fizzle out into harmless sparks.

"What have you done to me?" he demanded.

"I called Willow," Faith murmured smugly to Buffy. "Right now she's got a nice little protection spell working on us. Wont last for long though, not with someone as powerful as him. Wanna do the honors?"

Buffy hoisted up the scythe and looked Hatoss up and down, her expression darkening. "Love to."

"Back!" he screeched as she advanced towards him, holding his hands outstretched arm towards her. When she continued stalking in his direction, he waved to towards the walls. Large chunks of rock broke off and flew towards her, but as soon as they got within a foot of her body they bounced off of an invisible barrier. "I said back!"

"Guess what, Voldemort," Buffy said, her voice full of fire She lifted her weapon up into the air. "You don't get to tell me what to do anymore." And with as much strength as she could muster, she swung the scythe, successfully separating his head from his body in one sweep. The decapitated head landed on the floor with a sickening thud.

Buffy let her weapon arm drop, but didn't move from where she was standing. She looked down at the body, breathing heavily, hatred washing over her even though he was dead.

There was a heavy silence in the cave, until Sam finally spoke up. "Uh, is he dead?"

Buffy looked pointedly at the head and then at the body.

"I just mean, he was this powerful warlock. Is beheading enough? I think I can speak for all of us when I say I do not want this guy coming back."

"Good point," Buffy conceded. "Faith, could you call Willow and see what she thinks, please?"

"Yeah, sure. I was gonna call her and tell her she can finish with the protection spell anyway."

Faith moved up and out of the cave so that she could get a better cell reception, and Buffy went back to staring at the deceased form of Hatoss. He had wanted to control her. He had controlled her. He'd gotten inside her mind, made her forget who she was. It made her feel so...violated. She wished she could remember the events of what had happened in between being captured in the forest with Faith and waking up in a dark cave who knows how long later. But it was all blank. And she felt there was something she should remember, she just had no clue whatsoever as to what.

She should have kept Hatoss alive, at least for a little while. Giles would be pissed that she hadn't kept him around to answer a couple of questions – again. But she had just been filled with so much rage – over what he had wanted to do to her, what he had done to Maggie, because she felt it safe to assume that Maggie had been involved in this whole mess. Hell, even for what he had done to those creatures, the things that had once been men. Besides, they didn't know how long Willow's spell would have worked against him anyway. He could have been up and introducing them to their ugly, painful deaths if they had left it to long.

After she still hadn't moved for a whole minute, Dean cautiously moved over to her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. Her body was tense, but he was sure he felt her relax just the smallest bit at his touch.

Sam, while pulling a disgusted face at the gross, headless body, knelt down next to it and gingerly moved apart the robes. He pulled out the pendant with the tips of his fingers and dropped it a few feet away from the dead warlock, wary of holding it for very long in case it still had any effect on Buffy.

"You'd better destroy it before anyone else can get their hands on it," he said, casting her a glance.

She nodded in agreement, and lifted up the scythe once again.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said a soft voice, drifting out of the shadows.

Buffy froze. Sam and Dean lifted up their weapons, and Buffy's eyes widened as she recognized the voice.

"Show yourself," she demanded.

A young girl sauntered out of the shadows. A young, dark haired, dark skinned girl, whose voice wasn't the only thing that Buffy recognized.

The weapon in her hand dropped to the floor with a loud clang as all of the blood drained slowly from her face.

"Kendra?"

Oh, him and her. Her and him. I like him, but she's nothing. I hate her. Older than me, but younger than you, though age has nothing to do with it.

Maggie's words echoed through Buffy's mind. Kendra. Of course they meant Kendra. But Kendra was dead.

"You're not her," Buffy said. Her voice was low and dangerous, but Kendra just smirked and stepped closer.

"Buffy, who is this? Do you know her?" Sam asked out of the corner of his mouth.

"You died," Buffy blurted shakily, not even hearing Sam's question. "You died. I...I saw your body. Drusilla killed you."

Kendra tutted and shook her head. "You should know more than anyone, Buffy, that death is not always the end."

Buffy shook her head in denial and took a step back. "No! You're not her! You're not Kendra! Kendra was good, and pure. You're...you're evil, disgusting. I can feel it all around you."

Dean didn't know who this Kendra person was. Didn't know who she was in relation to Buffy. Didn't understand half the things they were talking about apart from the fact that this girl seemed to be dead, and yet still here. And it was because of that that it was all coming together in his mind.

"Buffy," he murmured. "She's the shapeshifter. Remember? The person who Giles thought was you? This must be her. I don't know who this girl was when she was alive but she's not the person you knew. You have to kill her. Silver through the heart, remember?"

Kendra laughed loudly. "Are you going to kill me again, Buffy?"

Buffy blanched. "I didn't kill you."

"Not directly, no. But you never saved me either. Just like you didn't save Maggie."

Buffy's grip on the scythe tightened. "You killed her."

Kendra shrugged. "Poor little Maggie. She hated being the slayer, and none of you even knew. Not you, or your watchers, or her fellow students. She hated the world and you couldn't even see it." Kendra chuckled. "It made manipulating her easier, in any case. She spent months bringing my master and I information from the school, until she began to doubt herself, of course. So he killed her. Tonight, in fact. He took pleasure in it."

"Well, I killed your master, so I guess we're even."

Confusion crossed Kendra's face for one tiny moment, and her gaze flickered across to Hatoss. But it was quickly covered with a superior looking smile. "Yes, you did. Not that it matters. I never liked him anyway."

"What do I look like? Your agony aunt? Can we get to the me killing you already?"

Kendra cocked her head in agreement, before leaping towards Buffy with a hiss and a flash of her silver eyes. Before Buffy could react, the scythe had been knocked out of her hand and across the room. She gave back as good as she got. Better. The shapeshifter was strong, Buffy admitted as they traded blows, but nowhere near as strong as Kendra had been, and Buffy soon had her pinned down beneath her.

"Buffy!" Dean yelled. She turned quickly, and caught with one hand the silver knife that he had thrown towards her. She lifted it up, and then looked into Kendra's eyes.

"You can't stop me," Kendra breathed. "Even if you kill me, another slayer will be sent to take my place."

Buffy froze. Those were the exact words Kendra had spoken right after she had revealed she was the slayer, the first time they had ever met.

Her hesitation gave the shapeshifter enough time to flip Buffy off of her and onto her back. Buffy, still frozen, landed hard on the ground, barely even noticing the fact that the breath had been knocked out of her.

Jumping up, Kendra knocked both Dean and Sam to the ground before rolling to the floor and grabbing Buffy's dropped scythe. Returning to Buffy, she lifted it up in the air, and was about to deal the final blow when her eyes widened and a choked sound emitted from her throat. Buffy looked down from her face to see the tip of Faith's sword protruding out of the front of Kendra's chest, right at her heard. The sword was pulled backwards, and the Kendra lookalike dropped to the ground, her eyes flashing silver one final time.

Behind her, a deadly looking Faith stood, her blood soaked sword held tightly in her hand. She held out her hand to Buffy and pulled her up. Buffy, blinking tears out of her eyes, looked down at the shapeshifter.

"I couldn't do it," she admitted quietly. "I just couldn't kill her."

"Who was she?" Faith asked, staring into the face of the dark skinned girl. She felt as if she knew her, as if sheshould know her.

"Kendra."

The slayer who had come before her. Buffy had never really talked about her before, but Faith had read about her in Giles' journals. She had been the perfect definition of a slayer – obedient, focused, book smart. The complete opposite to Faith. She wished she had known her. "Oh."

Behind them, a groaning Sam and Dean picked themselves up off the floor.

"Will you please just destroy that damn thing so we can get the hell outta this place?" Dean grumbled, gesturing to the pendant with one hand and rubbing his sore head with another.

"That I can do," Buffy replied. She removed the scythe from Kendra's fingers and brought it down with a cry on the pendant, shattering it into tiny pieces.

The all waited for a moment for something monumental to happen. An explosion or a release of mystical energy. Maybe even just a burst of bright light? But none came forth, and the four were forced to concede that that anticlimactic ending was all they were gonna get.

"Is it over?" Sam asked.

"Looks like," Buffy affirmed. Though something was nagging at her. Something she was sure she'd forgotten. But for the life of her she couldn't think what. It was probably nothing, or something inconsequential like a lamp left on at the apartment.

"Willow said the beheading should have been enough," Faith said, nodding over at Hatoss. "He probably could have healed himself if he'd have lost any of his other limbs, but lopping his head off is pretty finale. Cause he wasn't immortal, you know? Just prolonging his life with all his psycho magic."

"I'd feel a whole lot better if we salted and burned him though," Dean announced. "Her too." He gestured towards Kendra.

"I agree. Though we should probably take them outside to do it," Sam added. "Who knows what kind of chemicals have been used in here." He looked around and shivered. "Not that I'd mind this cave being destroyed but people might have a thing or two to say if the whole cliff face collapses."

The others agreed and together, they lifted the two dead bodies up and out of the cave, before doing the same with the Tababton on the off chance that a civilian ever went down there. After they'd made a pile of the bodies, they salted and burnt them successfully.

"Man, I need to sleep," Sam claimed, as they watched the flames grow taller.

"We should probably go back and check in with the others first."

They all turned to stare at Buffy.

"Really?" Dean whined.

Faith pulled a face. "She's right. They don't like to be left out of the loop. And I guess Willow deserves an update. She did kinda save out butts tonight."

"Big time," Buffy agreed.

They watched the fire for a moment longer, before an awful smelling smoke began billowing out of it.

"Oh God," Buffy gasped, covering her nose with her sleeve. "It smells like rotting corpses!"

Dean rolled his eyes and chose not to state the obvious, instead leading the way out of the forest and back to the car.

None of the noticed the pair of furious, yellow eyes watching them from between the trees.

After they had shared the news of their victory with the others back at the school, everyone insisted – in no uncertain terms – that they take the four of them out to celebrate.

They had resisted at first, grumbling that they were too sore and tired, until Kennedy had teasingly told them they were getting too old, after which Faith had bustled the other three home, demanded that they patch and clean themselves up and get ready for a serious night of partying, determined as she was to prove she could still boogey with the best of them.

So along they went to the club – which, thankfully, had not been one of the bars that Buffy and Sam had visited only a couple of nights before – when all they really wanted was a stiff drink and a weeks worth of deep, dreamless sleep.

And now Faith, Buffy, Andrew and a couple of the older slayers were letting off steam on the dance floor, while Sam and Dean and Xander were chilling at the bar. Willow and Giles were watching the hyped up dancers from a nearby booth with barely concealed amusement.

Sometime later, Buffy and Kennedy dispatched themselves from the packed dance floor and skipped over to the booth. Buffy flopped herself down and took a large gulp of Willow's soda, while Kennedy wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at her girlfriend and pulled her up out of her seat and onto the dance floor.

"You okay, Giles?" Buffy asked once she had clenched her thirst, grinning at the uncomfortable looking older man.

He cringed as he looked around his surroundings and sighed. "Every time I find myself in one of these dingy bars I always tell myself it'll be the last time, and then I allow myself to be dragged here, yet again."

Buffy laughed, and they watched the dancers for a moment in companionable silence. Buffy moved her gaze from a wild looking Faith, to a content looking Willow and Kennedy, to a grumpy looking Xander as he lost a game of pool to Dean – abysmally. She searched the room for Sam, laughing out loud when she saw that he had somehow been dragged out onto the dance floor by an ecstatic Andrew, who was showing him how to do the funky robot. Sam looked more and more embarrassed as the seconds ticked by.

"Are you okay, Buffy?" Giles asked softly, watching her knowingly.

She nodded her head and took another sip of Willow's – nonalcoholic - drink. "Yeah...fine."

"You don't seem so fine for someone who overcame a potentially very dangerous threat this evening."

"That's just it, Giles," she confided in a hushed tone. "This big, potentially very dangerous threat. If it was so big and bad, why was he so easy to destroy? It just feels...wrong to me."

"From the way you and the others told it, he wasn't very easy to conquer at all."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Well, no it wasn't. In a fighting a gazillion vamps and Tababton and losing my memory and almost getting shishkabobbed with my own shiny scythe kinda way. Not to mention the beheading and the scary dead slayer lookalike. But, what about the man Faith and I saw when we were fighting the vamps?"

"I thought we agreed that he was probably the shapeshifter in another form?"

"I know, but what if he wasn't?"

"And who do you think he would be?" Giles asked patiently.

Buffy sighed and rubbed her face with her hands. "I don't know."

"Do you remember seeing him again?"

"Well...no. But I don't remember anything from when he held up the pendant in the forest to being in the cave in the dark." She shook her head. "You're probably right, he was just the shapeshifter. I'm just tired. It's making me a little crazy."

Giles smiled softly. "It's perfectly understandable. It's been a stressful couple of weeks."

Buffy laughed. "Not had this much fun since Sunnydale, huh?"

"No, I daresay we haven't." He stifled a large yawn underneath his hand, and then looked over at Buffy apologetically. "I'm afraid I must head on home, I'm getting rather too old for this."

He bid her farewell, and waved goodbye to the others before disappearing out of the door.

Buffy sat in contemplative silence for a time, deciding that Giles really was right and that she should just be glad it was all over. Her thoughts were broken when Sam stumbled over towards her, a desperate look in his eyes.

"Save me!" he pleaded, his gaze darting from side to side before he looked back at her.

Buffy giggled. "What from?"

"Andrew," he whispered, leaning down close to her so that she could hear him. "He wants to teach me to salsa. I only got away because he's getting drinks. Appletini's. You need to save me."

"And how do you propose I do that?"

"Dance with me." And without waiting for her to respond, he grasped a hold of her hand and dragged her onto the dance floor.

Back in the cave, the man wandered across it, marveling at the destruction that had been caused.

But his earlier anger had dissipated. All was not lost.

He stepped over a blood stain on the floor to where the pendant had been smashed up on the floor. The slayer hadn't take it. Stupid girl. He bent down and brushed the broken pieces into his hand.

He shook his head. Looked like the slayers and the Winchesters weren't as smart as they liked to think. "No one ever said it had to be whole to work its magic," he sang to himself. He looked around the room once more. "Videor," he hissed, and in exactly the same spot that it had vanished earlier on, Hatoss' steaming cauldron reappeared.

Yes, all was certainly not lost.

He reached inside his jacket pocket for where he had – thankfully – placed the vial of Buffy Summers' blood before she had broken free of the mind containment spell, and unstoppered it before adding it to the potion, along with the broken shards of the pendant.

Brushing off his hands, he turned and looked at the splatter of blood on the cave wall, the only remainder left of the legend that had been Hatoss the warlock.

Damn it all! Now the fool was dead and he'd have to find someone else to complete the spell. That was going to waste valuable time. And Hatoss had said it himself, for any witch or warlock other than himself it could take months, possibly even years.

No! He wouldn't allow it. Months it would have to be.

He sighed. So acquiring control of the slayer would take longer than he had originally planned. He'd just have to move his plans around a little, that was all.

He switched his gaze from one splatter of blood to another. The shapesifter's. Treacherous thing.

They'd watched together, hidden from view, as the slayer had killed Hatoss. He could have stepped forward and stopped it, but that would have meant revealing himself to the Winchester boy, and it wasn't time for that. Yet. But she had insisted on being let forward to stop the girl from destroying the pendant, and he had foolishly allowed it. He should have known she'd had an ulterior motive. Trying to kill the slayer when she knew how important she was, the little tramp. He knew why she'd done it, it was jealousy, that's all. He'd smelt it on her every time he's brought Miss Summers' name up. And now the shapeshifter had gone and got herself killed. Oh well.

He wondered if he felt some sort of emotion for her passing. Sadness maybe? No, sad was far too strong an emotion. He was perturbed, that was it. She'd been a damn fine minion. You didn't find many shapeshifters that were willing to play well with others. Never mind. He'd find another demon somewhere whom he could persuade to tend to his needs. And then he'd have Buffy Summers. And then Sam Winchester. And then...then he'd unleash Hell up on earth.

In the dank, dark cave deep, deep down under Kimbrough forest, Cleveland, Azazel grinned in delicious anticipation as he thought of his upcoming plans.