Thanks for the reviews…. The only reason why I interrupted the narative with the times, is because I absoloutely needed people to take notice of the time there, so when the story comes to an end, they can go back and see HOW a certain thing came to happen, and they can say "ohh, will you look at that".

I should be updating more frequently than I have been for Post Grave, well, I hope so anyway. Here's the next chapter

Chapter 1

There was blood everywhere in the cavern. The dead watcher lay on the ground with his limbs at odd angles. It didn't look like he'd died an easy death. There was nothing around except a figure in a red hooded robe, who was clearing up after the ritual. Two mòping were laying on the ground next to a circular platform raised half a foot off of the bottom of the cavern floor. The two mòping had a ball of yellowish energy inside each of them. The figure in red robes picked up the body of the dead Watcher and carried him outside to where there was a red Ford Ute, with a shovel in the back. The sky was cloudless and all the stars beamed down strongly on the desert floor. The figure dumped the body on the ground and went to get the shovel but was stopped as a voice called from the shadows.

"Good job. I see you have the two mòping. You must guard them with your life," the voice said. A figure stepped out of the shadows on the entrance of the cavern.

"Now why should I do that?" the robed figure replied while taking off the red robes, revealing tight clothing underneath. The girl was of an average build and, normally, had brown eyes and hair, but now they were black, from too much usage of black magick. She spoke with a sharp voice as she challenged the figure. The figure stepped out of the shadows. He had a long scar across his eye and shoulder length hair.

"Amy, Amy, Amy. You know you're my favourite. You know that I'll give you power beyond anything that you can conceive. You only have to do these simple things for me, because, as you know, I can't," Rack said as he put his hand through a nearby boulder. "Being incorporeal and all." Amy Madison just stood there, appearing to be lost in thought.

"Fine, whatever. Just as long as I get the power," Amy replied.

"Good, there's my girl," Rack said before disappearing. Amy stormed back inside the cavern and reached out her hand. The two mòping came flying towards her, where she grabbed them out of the air and carried them to the Ute. She got in and started the engine.

"He'll get what's coming to him, and so will that bitch of his," Amy muttered under her breath before speeding off into the desert.

Gunn walked into the Hyperion Hotel carrying the paper and a couple of groceries. It was mid-morning, and he, Fred and Connor had stayed up all night trying to help keep the vampire population down as well as look for Cordelia and Angel. That was until they had run into the Slayer chick; Faith. They didn't know what to think about what she had told them. They didn't know Faith at all, and they really needed Angel to help them. At least he'd be able to tell if Faith was lying or not. They decided to let her go, half hoping that she was telling the truth about the Council coming to kill her, half not. That night, Gunn had thought about what it would be like to be a Slayer, and he didn't want any of it. He'd heard the stories Angel had told them all, and after Faith's little story last night, the super powers weren't worth it. He didn't like the whole idea of a top secret organisation hunting you down just because you've worn out your expiry date. He put the groceries on the front desk and unfolded the newspaper. Gunn saw Fred coming down the stairs, obviously just woken up.

"Morning," she called mid way through a yawn.

"Hey," Gunn called back across the foyer. He started to read the front page of the newspaper. Fred was coming over to him. "Damn. Think we were in the wrong part of town last night," Gunn said.

"Hmm? Hey? Why's that?" Fred inquired, half asleep.

"Look here. It says that the entire crew of the White Celeste was found dead this morning on their boat which was just drifting in the harbour. They all have neck wounds, which means vampires," Gunn explained from the paper.

"Oh," was all Fred could say in reply. She saw Gunn's distress that they'd missed the vampires that had done the damage. "We can't get them all you know… last night, we did well. We got about five of them," Fred said. "And who knows how many Connor got."

"I know. You just can't help but feel like you could have done something more. We know what did this, and hardly anybody else does," Gunn said.

"If it makes you feel better, we'll go down and have a look after breakfast," Fred said reassuringly.

Across the town, someone else was looking at the same newspaper report, and they weren't going to wait to go and investigate. Grabbing his coat, Wesley went out the door to his apartment, heading straight for the docks. He wanted to make up for what he'd done in the past, and this was how he was going to start.

Cassia didn't like being here, not one bit. Here she was in a room, with two people who had been her mentors for a large part of her life revealing that they weren't all they seemed to be; that they were holding information back, and that they could be working for the forces of darkness. She didn't believe what Samantha and Montague were telling Willow and Giles, she could see it in their eyes that they were lying. It was that simple. Willow was pacing around the magickal barrier that now held Samantha and Montague. Cassia couldn't understand, Willow was fine with her magicks now. She could sense that the way she used magick had changed, she was staying in balance. When Cassia had asked her about it, Willow had just replied that someone had made her look inside herself in a dream. What that meant, Cassia didn't know, and Willow didn't want to elaborate anything further. She looked over to Giles, who was sitting in the chair, leaning forward towards Samantha and Montague. She could see that both he and Willow were getting tired of trying to pry information out of Samantha and Montague. That didn't really matter to Cassia, as long as they got out of the cabin. That was her main concern, and she had also noted that Willow and Giles seemingly didn't seem to care about that.

"For the last time, can you just tell us what is happening. What's coming?" Giles stressed. He was just met with blank stares from Samantha and Montague. "We're slowly starving to death! We want to get out of here! We need to know what's coming, because we'll be involved in it! For god sakes! Tell us something!" Giles burst out, again. Cassia saw that that was happening a lot, and she knew that it must be from all the stress he was under. She knew that he wanted Willow to be alright, and the events of the last couple of days didn't help that, and now he was stuck in the cabin with two people who wouldn't cooperate.

"Surely you want to get out of here. Starving to death isn't really the way I pictured myself dying," Willow said. "I don't think its what you two pictured either." She was just met with blank stares as well.

Willow took a deep breath and decided that she needed to go outside. She stopped pacing and looked towards the door.

"I'm going for a walk," she said to Giles and Cassia. She could feel their confusion at what she had just said. "Around the cabin," she added. She smiled as she saw recognition go through both Giles and Cassia. She walked out the door and down the step, and when she looked up, she was surprised to see most of the coven assembled outside the cabin, all looking at her. In the front were Clifford, James and Michael, all standing up to the barrier, looking at Willow. Willow walked up to the barrier and put her hands to it. She could now feel the power of the barrier and where it was coming from, but she was afraid to try and do anything about it. She heard Michael say something, but couldn't understand it. The barrier distorted what he was saying into unintelligible sounds.

Willow thought about the dream she had had just a few hours ago. She didn't want to think about it, all those Vampires. She figured that she didn't even have to think about it, but something inside her said that she must. She got a bit frustrated with everything that was happening, and how she was feeling. She was holding herself together now. The earlier dream had helped with that, as well as the pressure of finding out what Samantha and Montague knew, it was a very good distraction to keep her mind off of… other things. She decided that she'd try Samantha and Montague again, and hopefully this time they'd cooperate.

The executives of the Watchers Council of Sweden, located in Västerås, were all assembled in a large conference room. They were discussing the current issues of their operatives going missing, and were getting reports from England that operatives all over the world were turning up dead, and all their assignments were failing.

"What about Queen Harishmen, wasn't she brought in?" one of the men asked. Unlike their British counterparts, the Swedish Watchers dressed in modern clothes.

"The reports say that she was brought in, but it seems that she vanished into thin air, and the operative, Harmond Normanby, turned up dead at the docks, where he was to capture and bring in Queen Harishmen. We needed her help," another man said.

"What is the price of the failure of this mission," the leading executive asked.

"Queen Harishmen didn't like the current vampire organisation of Sweden. She was to lead a revolt of vampires against those ruling. We don't know why, or how, but we thought that her cooperation could have been very crucial. Now that she is dead, word says that the vampire revolt is fading away, as they don't have a leader," one of the ladies said. Just then, the executive's secretary entered the room carrying a small bundle of papers. She whispered in the executive's ear and left the room. The lead executive looked at the pieces of paper he was holding in his hand and then looked around to everyone in the room.

"Men, listen. This just came in from England. Our orders are to mobilise every operative we have, now, and start killing vampires and demons. It seems that England has worked out that something is organising vampires and demons world wide, and we can only guess that this organisation is the same that is killing our operatives. Orders from England are to minimise the threat as soon as possible. They say that it looks like the largest possible threat to human kind from the supernatural world since the dark ages," the lead executive said.

In the blink of an eye, a loud bang echoed throughout the building. In the space of three minutes, the doors to the conference room were kicked in and crossbow bolts were flying as vampires, all armed with crossbows invaded the building and killed all the executives. Organising the battle was a large figure, draped in dark hooded robes, standing at least a foot taller than most people, and the sight of them swept pure fear into the hearts of all those people who lived long enough to come across it before they died.

The tall cloaked creature walked over to the corpse of the lead executive and knelt down and placed it's gloved palm onto his chest. It stood up, and slowly, features of the lead executive formed on the creature, until there was no possible way to tell the difference between the corpse on the ground, and the figure standing; except that one of them was dead and the other wasn't.

In another part of the world, she was crouched inside a box, fear emanating throughout her entire being. She had no idea where she was, why she was here, or who the person was that was standing outside the small box that she was confined in.

"Welcome back… again… Darla," Lilah Morgan said.

Wesley ducked under the police tape stopping entrance to the pontoon that the White Celeste was moored to. There were police officers swarming all over the scene, and when asked what he was doing, Wesley just flashed his wallet saying that he was a private investigator who was hired by the family of one of the victims to look into the tragedy.

He climbed aboard the boat, and unfortunately, for him, the police had removed the bodies already. But he could see where they were by the white chalk outline of them on the deck of the boat.

He moved around the ship, looking for any clue that he could find at all, to lead to anything. Most of all, he was just here because something inside him had told him that he had to be here, looking, doing this. He had found clues of the signs of a struggle, and he saw indentations in the side of the boat. He only guessed that the boat had either run into another boat or a large rock, or that something of great strength had climbed aboard.

He was just about to finish up, when he saw a white card on the floor. It was soggy, meaning that it had been submerged in water for a long time. He picked it up and looked at it, and was very surprised to see the words "Angel Investigations" written on it. His mind filled in the blanks and he guessed that Gunn, Fred and Connor had been down already and must have dropped it.

He was walking away from the crime scene, when he saw Gunn and Fred approaching. He walked up to them, knowing that they probably didn't want him around.

"You should be more careful in the future," he said to them while holding up the card.

"Hey? What are you talking about Wes?" Gunn asked.

"I found this on the boat, you must have dropped it while you were looking around," Wesley said. "The police could think that maybe you had some sort of involvement in the crime."

"Where'd you get that? We haven't been down here yet. We were just going to look now," Fred said. Wesley looked at them both.

"Well then, who put it there?" Gunn asked. At the same time Fred and Wesley said;

"Angel."

There was a faint dirt path going in either direction, and Spike knew that this must have been the road the driver was talking about. He didn't like his cryptic talk, and now, he was dead. Spike felt right. He was feeling better than he had been in years. He was feeling like his old self again, and nothing was going to get in his way this time, not anything, not anyone, least of all the Slayer. The way he figured things would go was that as soon as Spike knew where he was, he'd get a trip back to the States, and stay clear of Sunnydale. That way, the Slayer couldn't mess with his head the way she had. She wouldn't be able to turn him into a pathetic excuse for a warrior. He'd go and find Dru, and he'd get back with her, and they'd rampage throughout the countryside, just like old times. He was looking forward to getting back. Now, the only problem was which way was he to go. Spike decided he'd go left, and he started walking.