Author's Note: As some of my readers are aware, I have some health issues. Because of this, I am updating stories much slower than before. I am still dedicated to my fics (all of them) but I am no longer able to update once or twice a week like I used to.

The good news is some of you were kind enough to nominate this story and Slayer of Nightmares for a total of three Crossing Over Awards. I thank everyone who's nominated me, or who votes!

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Kay woke to the smell of food. She hadn't eaten in two days, and her stomach growled painfully as a reminder. Grimacing, and more than a little confused by what her nose was telling her, she lifted her head from her arms and discovered that there was a bowl of soup plus a plate of cheese and crackers on an end table beside her chair.

She blinked at the improbable appearance of food. Why were they feeding her?

The vampire was present: he sat at a desk with his back to her. He had a laptop computer open, but shut the lid swiftly when he, evidently, heard her move. His tangled, matted, gross,red hair tumbled down his back in an untidy massl.

"Please be assured, Miss Kay, the food's not drugged," he said, without turning around. "I can have one of the servants sample it if you'd like."

"Why?"

"Because you are almost certainly hungry. Lord Torin never feeds his captives."

"Why do you care?" She clarified. Her instincts told her vampires were evil. Everything she'd seen had confirmed that. She'd discovered her super powers a few years before, and had been killing vampires since then.

Absolute silence, from this vampire.

It probably didn't matter if one of the servants sampled things first or not. Sooner or later they'd kill her. She'd seen others killed, in the last day, by the trolls and the vampires. "Will I be ... stuck ... here, if I eat this? Torin's an elf, right?"

The vampire sounded almost reassuring when he said, "This is not Faerie. You're safe."

"Hardly," she snapped, in response to his assurance that she was safe. Then she bit back further insults. She didn't want to give him an excuse to do her in now ... though part of her just wanted to get it over with. Part of her wanted to do it herself, to steal that last little bit of control back from him. If she was going to die, she wanted to do it on her terms.

He turned around, then, and regarded her with those impossibly blue eyes. She stared back at him. She wondered, with what felt almost like frustration, why was he keeping her alive?

He finally responded, "Miss Kay, you are correct. You are not safe. None of us are. Torin intends to open a Hellmouth and it will end Earth as you know it -- you're not safe here and you're not safe there."

"A Hellmouth?" Despite herself, she had to ask the question. What was a Hellmouth?

He rose and walked to the window. "Please come here." She remained seated, ignoring his summons. She was constitutionally incapable of being agreeable to a demon. Particularly one who smelled so very rancid.

"Come. Here." He repeated, then modified it with, surprisingly, "Please. I want to show you something."

Reluctantly, she stood up. Aware of her nudity, she grabbed the blanket off the chair, wrapped herself in it, and joined him at the window. Belatedly, she noticed a uniform similar to his was draped over the arm of the chair. Perhaps it was his -- it looked like his size, which meant it would be a bit small for her. He was a slim man, with narrow hips, a wiry body,and he was an inch or two shorter than she was. While not exactly well endowed, she knew her chest measurements would be a lot bigger than his, and her waist wider as well. That uniform was not going to fit, though apparently leaving it for her was a nice gesture.

The weird flash of gratitude she felt towards him for that consideration felt awkward and wrong. He was the enemy, right?

He glanced at her without comment on her decision to wrap herself in the quilt, then turned his attention back to the window. She stood uncomfortably beside him. Her instincts seemed to be at war within her: he was evil, she knew from experience with his kind. A vampire, and vampires were dangerous demons. But he was being calm, and even considerate.

Why? She couldn't figure out why he was acting this way.

"This world was much like Earth once," he said, indicating the view that stretched out before them.

She looked out at the devastation. She hadn't seen anything like it outside of documentaries on war and in post apocalyptic science fiction movies. It was starting to get light with the rising dawn, and the fields near the keep were scarred and blackened by past, fierce, battle. There were craters and trenches and the charred bones of small buildings. Past the fields, what had once been trees were lined up in orderly rows of dead stumps. Orchards, she guessed, or they had been once. There wasn't a blade of green grass or an intact building to seen -- the only living things were trolls, and the trolls appeared to be fighting one another in a ravaged field not far from the keep. She didn't know if that was a small battle or simply combat practice.

Beyond that ... the geometrically crumbling lines of a city stood out in sharp contrast against the sunrise. Skyscrapers, and large buildings. What looked suspiciously like a domed stadium with half the dome gone. A bridge, falling into the water of a distant river. It was a savage, apocalyptic scene.

The vampire said quietly, "Before my time here, this was a bountiful, peaceful world. That city was built by a race of mortal creatures -- not human, but you would recognize them as evolutionary kin from a parallel dimension. That is their city you see."

"What ... happened?" She thought she knew the answer, but she had to hear it for her own ears.

"Evil won. There was a Hellmouth. Not here, actually, half a world away. But it opened and the hordes of hell poured out and this world died. There are some of the natives left in that city, and hunting them is sport for the trolls. The natives live like animals among the ruins of their city, hiding like rats and scavenging like dogs for food. Perhaps hundreds eke a desperate and feral existence out where once millions flourished."

He rested a callused hand on the stone windowsill. She glanced down and noted that his fingers and hands were criss-crossed with old scars. He added, "They are so far gone from their civilized ancestry that Torin imported humans from Earth to staff this keep."

"Kidnapped, you mean."

"Mm. Yes. Though most of the humans you see here are descendants of the original lot. Torin breeds them like livestock."

"Why are you telling me this?" She wanted an answer. He was unnerving her, with his preternatural calm and unvampire-like behavior.

He gave her an answer that chilled her to the bone. "Miss Kay, Torin wants to do the same to Earth that happened to this world. He is limited in his opportunities here; others, of equal power, claim vast tracts of territory in this dimension. Lord Federic Torin wishes to release Hell upon Earth. After Earth is ravaged, he will carve out a kingdom of his own from her ruins, and crown himself monarch."

She shuddered. "Why are you telling me this?"

Silence, from the vampire. Then, after a long moment, he said, "Slayers, it is said, have a natural intuition about situations. What do your instincts say about me?"

"What's a Slayer?" she asked.

He simply gazed at her with those crystal blue eyes and waited for an answer.

There was a calm to him -- it was a quiet, cool reserve far stronger than the taint of evil. It was unlike anything she'd ever sensed from a vampire before. She'd discovered the evil of vampires a few years previously; had turned her share to dust. He didn't feel like they did: he felt grounded, and utterly self-possessed. He seemed wise, and very old, and somehow very human, all in the same moment. He was the sort of man who spoke with few words, and could say more with an eloquent silence or raised eyebrow than some people could with a novel's worth of discussion.

He blinked, once. And still he waited, calmly, for her answer.

It was almost as if she'd known him before. She found she could easily picture him cleaned up. After a good bath, with his hair detangled and swept back into a pony tail, he would be a very striking man. Those incredible, nearly purple, eyes were almond shaped, and he had high cheekbones and fair, pale skin. The long cross-shaped scar that marred one cheek did nothing to damage his looks. If anything, it helped give him a certain masculine appeal: without it, he'd look like a teenage boy.

His unusual and -- under the dirt -- quite attractive appearance didn't mean he was good, but her intuition claimed that somehow, someway, she'd known him before. And that he was not on the side of evil. And that filth wasn't his preferred state of being.

She speculated quietly, voice very low, "You're a mole, aren't you? For the good guys -- I assume there is a force of good guys or something you're fighting for?"

Of course there would be good guys. There were bad guys, and it would be human nature to organize against the bad guys.

He nodded gravely, confirming her guess. In a normal tone of voice -- apparently, he wasn't worried about being overheard -- he said, "And you are one of the good guys. They are called Slayers. Slayers were destined to fight the forces of evil. You were born to this fight."

"More ... like me?" She knew exactly what he meant: the super strength, unnaturally swift and thorough healing, incredible reflexes, and senses beyond the human norm.

"Thousands," he assured her. He sounded knowledgeable about this.

She stared at him, dumbfounded. Was he really telling her the truth? Her gut feeling said he was, and she said quietly, "I thought I was alone."

"I understand that Buffy is still in the process of contacting everyone -- Buffy's their leader. They probably would have found you eventually."

"Their leader is named Buffy?" She burst out laughing as she picked that bit of data out of an overwhelming flood of information. It was, somehow, a welcome relief to have something to laugh about.

He shrugged, and smiled a bit. "She's tougher than the name implies. She defeated me, and her friends forced my humans soul back into my body. I ... wasn't a secret agent. Not until yesterday. And that was the first time anyone had ever defeated the demon I was. The demon's not exactly grateful to have survived the experience, I might add. They simply kill most vampires they cross. However, they needed my help ... so here I am."

She was unsure of what to make of this.

"I am not altogether happy to have been pulled into the mortal world either. I was resting. However, they did desperately need my help." He sounded as exhausted as resting would imply, and closed his eyes as he said this. She found she missed that clear, piercing gaze. He continued quietly, "You could destroy everything, with what you know now. Destroy Earth itself. However ... to make this work, I will need help. An ally, on my side, that I can trust, absolutely. It's a lot to ask, but you're the best chance I have to find that ally."

"Torin expects you to kill me." She was stalling for time because she truly didn't know what to say. Was she really being handed the chance to destroy Earth or save it, with her own actions? Of course she'd keep his secret. But it was an overwhelming responsibility.

He shrugged, a gesture that seemed to indicate uncertainty rather than dismissal of her concerns. "I think I have a solution to that. It wouldn't be the first time that I took a human lover, for a time. It -- the demon I was -- likes to string women along -- make them think it loves them, that it's redeemable. One time, it tortured and killed a woman on their wedding night. And mocked her for loving him."

She stared at him. She'd begun to trust him, and now he reminded her of what he was, and what he had done.

Again he closed his eyes. "I ... obviously won't expect you to consummate the relationship. But, regardless of my expectations, you may need to make it look good for Lord Torin."

She glanced at him, at the filthy, matted hair. She could smell him, and he stank of body odor and carrion. It was enough to make her want to gag when she focused on it.

He sighed. As if reading her mind, he said mournfully, "I wouldn't want to touch me either."

Impulsively, she reached a hand out and cupped it against his cheek. He stared at her in shock, blue eyes going wide with astonishment that she'd reached out to him. Then he looked sharply away, and swallowed hard. Had he been human, she though he would have blushed. She lowered her hand, wondering why she'd done that. Weirdly, she didn't feel contaminated by the touch. The way he looked, she ought to want to shower after just standing next to him. However, she had no real desire to repeat the experiment of caressing his cheek, either. Not, at least, until he'd been dunked in some hot water, scrubbed good, and perhaps sanitized with some bleach for good measure!

She decided what he'd told her about being a good guy -- it was all true. Nothing evil could have feigned a response like that. "Vampires don't go in much for hygiene, do they?"

"Depends on the vampire." He swallowed again. "My demon didn't care, and Torin doesn't provide bathing facilities for his minions, in any case."

"You're right. I don't want to touch you, much less ... fake intimacy ... with you."

He flinched.

"Worse, if Torin's any student of humanity, he'd know something was up if a woman was being ... intimate ... with someone who looks and smells like you. You stink like a bum that's been sleeping in a dumpster behind a butcher shop. No human woman would willingly fall in love with a man who smells like you do."

He scowled at her. "Miss Kay, maybe I will eat you, just for that comment."

She grinned, letting him know she was teasing. As he was. She was, somehow, not surprised to see humor light in his incredibly blue eyes. His deep sadness was pushed back for a moment. That sparkling twinkle gave her a sense of deja vu; where had she seen this man before?

He raked a hand through his tangled hair. "I think you just gave me a good excuse to take a bath, actually. I'll make a point of mentioning why I'm clean to Torin -- that I'm playing mind games with you."

He pulled his hair forward and glowered at the locks. "Maybe I'll just cut all this off ..."

"No!" She protested. Somehow, she could easily picture him with thick red hair swept back into a long ponytail. He would look good, like that.

"I don't know how I'll ever get the snarls out." He frowned at his hair some more. Then he seemed to dismiss the problem. "At any rate, I need to run some errands on Earth tonight, and I was going to make a side trip to see the Slayers and drop off some information they need. Do you want to come, and meet them? They should know about you, and that you're working on my side -- and you can go to Earth when I can't, during the day."

He frowned, then added in that quieter tone of voice, "This will be very dangerous for you. Do you realize that?"

She shrugged. She was scared, yes, but his arguments -- and a certain knowledge that he was telling the truth that seemed to be instinctive, that she just couldn't shake -- were compelling. She said, "I thought you were going to kill me. Now you're offering me the chance to help save the world."

He nodded, accepting that. "I'll tell Torin that I've convinced you I'm a little lost boy in need of saving and you've fallen in love with me. Or words to that effect. Like I said, he'll probably believe it -- particularly if I send you off on an errand and you come back to me." He glanced at the table, and then added, "While I go talk to Torin about the errands I'm going to run, you should eat. And get dressed. You probably don't want to know what the demon's saying in my head about you being naked in my quarters, and me not taking advantage of it."

"You wouldn't, though. Take advantage." She knew that -- knew, in fact, somehow, that this man would be painfully shy and it would take effort to draw him into a relationship with anyone.

"No." He looked up at her, tone very serious. "I never would."

Kenshin glanced sideways at his unexpected companion. They were climbing the stairs to Lord Torin's command room, which was at the top of a tower. She easily kept up with him -- wasn't even breathing hard -- and yet, he still found himself automatically slowing down. He was used to humans not having his stamina.

Most people didn't have my speed and stamina even when I was human, he recalled, absently.

Slayers were a different order of creature entirely.

Kay had squished herself into his uniform, though he'd had to find her an undershirt as she couldn't close the top few buttons and the shirt had therefore exposed more cleavage than either of them was comfortable with. He'd also had to help her with the snap on the pants. With clothes on, and easily trotting up the steps beside him, she looked infinitely more confident.

An ... ally.

He'd gone from being terrified that she'd blow his secret to considering her an ally, in the space of moments. Once he'd gotten her calmed down, his own instincts had screamed for him to trust her. He had good people sense and he had long trusted his ability to read others.

Again, he looked over at her. He wondered at the power behind that sense of trust.

"Hitokiri, are you okay?" she asked, apparently aware that he kept glancing her way.

Hitokiri. Torin called him that, as a sort of affectionate nickname, and apparently she'd learned his 'name' from his Unseelie master. He wondered if he should ask her to call him by his real name, at least in private.

Himura Kenshin, he thought. I am Himura Kenshin.

//Himura Kenshin, killer of thousands!// The demon gibbered in his head.

//Yes.// He didn't argue the point. As a hitokiri, and then a swordsman on the field of battle later, he'd killed quite a few men, though the souls on his conscience were numbered at significantly less than a thousand. Possibly, more than a hundred -- he'd made a point not to keep count during those awful blood filled years at the end of the revolution. Of course, the demon was responsible for vastly more deaths over the last century. Still, he'd killed his share. And it wasn't worth arguing this with the voice in his head. He was trying very hard to ignore it, truth to tell.

"Hitokiri?" she repeated.

He realized he hadn't responded. "Yes, I am fine."

He would not ask her to call him by his real name -- neither Kenshin, nor even Himura-san, he decided. Torin might overhear and take note of it, and wonder why he had told her his real name. The vampire didn't normally use it -- as many vampires did, he had nearly forgotten the name his human body had been called by. There would be two likely outcomes, if Torin overheard: either Torin would realize something was different about his general, or Torin would think that he had told the girl his real name because he was soft on her. It wasn't completely unheard of for a vampire to fall in love with a human -- generally, the vampire then turned the human. Vampires could certainly love.

If Torin thought he actually had an emotional attachment to Kay, it could be used against both of them if his -- their, now -- secret was discovered.

He would have to be very, very careful in all respects.

At the top of the stairs, the command room door was open. Kay followed him through the door, treading a little close to his heels. He would need to coach her on proper behavior, here.

Torin, inside, was seated and writing at the map table. He glanced up, saw Kay, and said, "You brought leftovers, my hitokiri?"

Kay had a bandage artfully affixed to her neck, implying he'd bitten her. Under the bandage was, indeed, a bite -- though he hadn't gone so deep as to draw real blood. He was being careful.

"Turns out she's a good lay, too." He shrugged casually. "Decided I'd keep her around for awhile."

"Mm. Well, good to see you getting your rocks off. -- Is she going above, with you?" Torin sounded only absently interested.

Kenshin smirked a very suggestive smirk. "I'm good in bed too."

"This, I know." Torin snorted an amused laugh, just as the demon hit Kenshin with a whirlwind of its memories of Torin demonstrating that he was well aware of his hitokiri's skills. The man liked the artful application of pain, apparenly, and the vampire had liked receiving it. Kenshin had been peripherally aware of this, of course, but the reminder was embarrassing to the point of humiliation. Torin continued, with a grin, "Maybe you'll share."

"I'm Hitokiri's. Not yours!" Kay snapped, with her fists balling.

Kenshin cuffed her -- hard enough to hurt, nearly hard enough to bruise his hand. She was a Slayer; he knew he could hit her considerably harder than that before he did any permanent damage. Kay went to one knee, then sprang back to her feet and spun around with her fists balled. Her reaction was instant fury, not fear, at being struck unexpectedly by him. A second later, she also looked close to tears. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'll try to do better next time! I'm sorry!"

Kenshin, who was internally wincing at the blooming bruise on her cheek, said angrily, "Don't talk back to Lord Torin, or he'll be the one to hit you next time."

Torin roared with laughter. "Better teach your little pet some manners, my Hitokiri. Or I will!"

Kenshin planted a hand in the middle of her back when she spun to face Torin and his mocking words. He wasn't sure what she was going to do, so he shoved her hard towards the dimensional portal that was installed on one wall of the command room. He planted his hand on the control panel and thought clearly of Los Angeles, and a terminus of the portal they'd built in an empty warehouse's basement.

The portal sprang to life, showing a shimmering image of industrial conveyor belts and some sort of metal stamping press. He roughly pushed her through ahead of him, shut the portal down with another slap of his palm on a panel on the far side, and then wheeled on her. "If you ever do something like that again, I will kill you myself."

She blinked at him. She looked stunned by his declaration of anger.

"There is far too much at stake to risk Torin deciding he's annoyed enough at you to have a little fun. You have no earthly idea what he is capable of, and I do not think you would be able to withstand his ... affections ... for very long without breaking, that I do not!"

He could picture it now, in his mind's eye: Kay tortured past the point of all bearing, bargaining with Torin for relief with what she knew of the Slayer's plans. To make the torture stop, she would tell. And then all would be lost. And Torin would still kill her.

Torin would kill her. That defiant blue gaze would be extinguished.

"You hit me."

"Torin would have expected me to." He heard his voice soften before he was even aware that he'd reacted with sympathy and not continued anger at her. He wondered if he was making a very bad mistake, but he couldn't seem to help himself -- he'd always been a sucker for women in need. And he could rationalize this by the fact that having an ally against Torin would be very, very useful. "I'm sorry. Let me see ..."

She blinked at him, but much to his shock, did not pull away when he drew closer. He knew he had not broken the orbit of her eye, because he would have felt the bones crunch, but he'd given her a spectacular shiner.

"Don't apologize," she said, finally, as he scrutinized the injury. "You were right ... I was foolish. It won't happen again. Just ... be aware that I'm not exactly the most ... cooperative ... of women. This simpering fool you want me to play? It's not me."

He nodded curtly. "Kay-dono, a simpering fool would have neither the courage nor strength of spirit to do what we made need you to do. I will need allies to make this work, particularly one like you, who can run errands during the day."

They stared at one another, for a moment, and he, for one, didn't know what to say. Finally, he changed the subject. "I come above fairly often. I've got a car here, and Kagome's sent me directions to their home. We'll go there first, and then swing by Office Max."

"Umm ... Office Max?"

He said absently, as they climbed a set of steel stairs to the ground floor, "I need printer ink and paper. I can't exactly send a troll to fetch it. And Torin killed my last vampire lackey for insolence a few months ago. Neither of us trust the human servants above without supervision; they're several generations removed from this world, and don't know the culture or the technology. They would stand out."

"Umm." She frowned at him. "Doesn't your appearance get ... some comment?"

"Oh, yeah. The demon never much cared." He scratched at his hair, reminded again of what he looked like. "I imagine they think I'm homeless or something. I'm probably a bit of a puzzle, to them, actually. I am sorry for how offensive I am to the nose, truly."

However, a homeless man wearing a strange uniform would create far less comment than some of the humans from the keep -- who were cowering, simpering, clueless fools. They'd never even seen Earth, and would not have any idea how to act.

"You should tell Torin that a store banned you from entering because of your stink, so that's why you took a bath." Her lips curled up in a grin. "Bitch about it a bit, play it up. Maybe claim to plan on eating the manager later or something."

He sighed. He suspected behind her -- what, teasing? Constructive suggestions? -- there was quite a bit of real revulsion. Nevermind being afraid of him; he was surprised she didn't recoil in abject disgust. "I suppose this means we need to ride with the windows down in my car, that we do."

She snickered.

He realized, in that moment, that he really did like her.

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