Chapter 2

Siro was groggily watching the sun go down, his well muscled torso wrapped in a blanket and shivering every few minutes. He could not figure out why he was so cold. He'd tried to get up and go down stairs, but his legs were not cooperating. Rather than end up in an undignified sprawl, he decided to remain in bed. He tried to call for Taja and Kung Lao, but his voice seemed uninclined to pass through his throat. He was thirsty, so thirsty.

He heard the entrance door open and close as though from a great distance. He was aware of footsteps on the stairs, of the door to his room opening. With a major effort, he dragged his half closed eyes away from the window and looked around. She was here. He didn't even notice the other four people, just the black haired woman. He smiled and reached for her. Luckily, she caught him before he hit the floor.

"You came back," he whispered. Everyone in the room could hear the love in his voice, the need.

"Yes, indeed. It's all right. I'm here now," Cheri responded softly.

She searched his eyes for answers that his greeting had already given her. Yet she knew it was not herself who had attacked him. She smoothed his sweat soaked fine, hair back from his face. Yep. Puncture marks, right over the jugular. According to Taja, the vampire had fed twice from him. Three times a charm? Was the vampire trying to bring him across? To make him another undead, or just - just what? This guy was borderline dead as it was.

"Why don't we get you downstairs to the fire. You look cold."

His eyes never left hers. "Not as long as you are here," he told her.

There was no mistaking that hot glow in his eyes. The man was in love - or hypnotized to think he was, she corrected with a mental grimace.

"I'd like to go down. With your friends." That was not exactly what she had meant to say, but it would do until she untangled her thoughts and her tongue. She slid under his arm and helped him to his feet. He wasn't as heavy as she had expected someone as muscular as he was to be. She frowned. Kung Lao helped him from the other side. Siro never took his eyes off Cheri.

Rayden held the door for them, Taja and Buffy, sizing each other up, brought up the rear. Buffy was of the opinion that Siro was dead, taken, a demon and should be staked like any other vampire. However, that did not seem to be an immediately useful option here, and she had been known to show reason even where dead things were concerned. Consider Spike and Drusilla. Consider Angel. No. Not the time to go there.

Cheri and Kung Lao settled the shivering warrior in a seat before the fire and pulled the blanket around him. Kung Lao made tea. Cheri saw to it that Siro drank it. There was a long drawn out silence.

"So," Buffy broke the silence. "Now what?"

Cheri looked around at her. "We wait for the problem child to show."

"Right. Wait is not what I'm good at. I really don't do *wait*."

"Sooo- You want to go hunting?"

"Yeah. I find if I go after them, it shortens this *wait* thing. Then I can go home - and, like, stake some more vamps - There seems to be a flaw in this - But, I don't know where, so I think I'll go hunting."

"I'll come with you."

Everyone but Siro looked at Rayden. Cheri shook her head with a laugh. "Great. Storm lord and Slayer. This is one for the books - if I just live long enough to write one."

The front door slammed open. Wind whipped through the room, lifting even Cheri's long locks. In the doorway, barely clad in frail black draperies, stood a tall, slender woman who looked exactly like Cheri, only less solid. Her fine bones were just under the translucent skin. There was no tracery of blue veins beneath the skin. Her eyes were wide and dark, almost solid black with no trace of iris around the pupil. She stepped in past the swing of the doors. They closed noiselessly behind her.

"You." It was a hiss, a denouncement. Her blood colored lips writhed back from sharp, wicked looking fangs. Her fingers curled into taloned claws. Her eyes glowed gold.

Buffy flipped forward, stake in hand and was backhanded out of the way. The woman spared not a glance for the slight blonde slayer. She moved forward, ignoring all but Cheri. Buffy shook her head to clear the pretty lights and shiny twittering birds from her vision, and pushed herself to her feet. Rayden helped her up. He was frowning at the two women, so alike, yet so unlike.

"Hi, Tan. What's up?"

The vampire stopped at the matter of fact greeting. She growled low in her throat. "You are here. Finally, I will destroy you." The voice was reedy, hollow sounding.

"I don't think so. How'd you get to be a vampire?" Cheri's tone was conversational. It seemed to confuse the other woman.

"What?"

"How'd you become a vampire?"

"I - was - bitten," she said slowly. She frowned as though trying to remember.

"Ah. When?"

"What?"

"No, not what. When."

The vampire frowned. Buffy coiled to strike. Rayden placed a hand on her arm and shook his head. She relaxed and looked annoyed for a moment. Then she started paying attention to what was passing between the vampire and Cheri.

"When? Why does it matter? It is."

"Tanya, just answer the question. It's important. If you haven't been a vampire long enough, you can't hurt me."

"What? I am death incarnate. I can touch anyone." She started forward again.

Cheri stood her ground and shook her head. "Nope. Have to be at least a thousand years old to do in an immortal."

The vampire stopped again, the cant of her head shifted as she stared at Cheri and Siro and tried to force her brain to puzzle out the words of her enemy. "A thousand years, " she whispered. She had not been a vampire a thousand days yet. All right, but she could finish the man.

She moved forward again to find Cheri between her and her target. She growled and tried to backhand Cheri out of her way as she had the small blonde woman. The blow was countered. Even her enhanced strength could not move the murderer of her father.

The scream of an enraged hunting cat poured out of her mouth, fangs distended, face contorted in anger. She threw herself on Cheri, fingers curled to claw, her mouth searching for a hold, something to fasten onto, to rip out of the other woman. Cheri fought back as years of martial arts and hand to hand combat techniques had taught her. Taja and Kung Lao pulled the vampire off of her intended victim and tried to hold her. They were tossed away like sticks in the wind.

Siro, only dimly understanding that there was a battle being fought, stood and stepped forward. He fell under her onslaught, her fangs sinking into the flesh of his neck. He felt the lethargy, the sweet fall into her arms, into her need. He could feel the blood, his very life draining into her. He wanted only to hold her in his arms, to love her. He moaned softly, then bellowed in pain as she was pulled away.

Rayden held the vampire. Cheri pulled the wounded man into her arms. The blood wasn't fountaining from his wound as she expected. His pulse was faint, erratic. His heart beat was fading.

"I need a knife."

"What?" Taja echoed the thoughts of all but the vampire.

"A knife. Now. You're losing him. A few more minutes and he'll be beyond all help."

"Except mine," Buffy inserted. She didn't mean to sound menacing, but a vampire was a vampire and it was her duty to exterminate the damned things. She didn't care for the looks everyone else gave her. Oddly, it was Cheri who didn't look particularly annoyed by the statement. "I think I'll just - wait over here." Buffy gestured to an unoccupied area by the stairs and suited action to words.

Taja pulled her own dagger and, after a moments hesitation, handed it to Cheri. She was as aghast as anyone when Cheri took the dagger, slashed her own wrist and held the dripping wound over Siro's neck. The blood was thicker, darker than Siro's. The wound in his neck seemed like some strange battle ground as their blood mixed.

"Fast transfusion," Buffy noted, her color a little off as she considered the possible problems with an impromptu and un-typed transfusion. She fought back a gagging noise as she watched fascinated. Siro's eyes fluttered open to see Cheri bending over him. His throat hurt, ached. He shifted against the pain. Cheri wrapped her arms around him as he convulsed. She held him hard, disregarding the pain in her wrist where there was still an open wound. He convulsed again. Once more, not as hard as the previous two. The wound in his neck was a red scar fading to white. His breathing settled as his muscles relaxed. His eyes opened again to look into the twin pools of emerald above him. He smiled.

"Hello," he said softly and reached up to brush a strand of black hair out of her face.

The vampire howled in frustration. She fought to break free of Rayden's grip. Vampire vs. Thunder God. It was an unequal battle. She was held fast. Buffy stepped forward, stake in hand, to finish things.

"Wait. Please."

The Slayer looked around at the immortal who was helping Siro to his feet. "Now what?"

"Well, technically, vampirism is a granting of immortality."

"By a possessing demon, yeah. Your point?

"What if the body possessed is already immortal?" Cheri pushed aside the *demon* part of this girl's explanation of vampirism. She'd worry about that later.

Buffy thought about this. She wished she had Giles available to consult. If one immortal took over another immortal - it made her head hurt the way "if one train is traveling x mph on one track and another train is traveling y mph on another track, how hard do they hit each other" problems made her head hurt. "Your point?" She hated to repeat that, but she seemed to be missing something here.

"What happens when you stake a vampire?"

"Dust. Ashes."

"Instant dissolution?"

"What?"

"They disintegrate in a hurry?"

"Yeah. Poof. Very satisfying and not very messy. No icky carcasses to deal with."

"Ah. OK. Do it."

"Thank you." As though she needed permission.

"Noooooo!" the vampire howled.

Stake entered vampiric heart. Vampire howled. Demon howled. Body sagged? Body? Sagged? Huh? Buffy reviewed her execution and could find no fault with the entry of the weapon into the target. So, how come there was still a body? She released her grip on the stake to ponder the question. No sense in giving the thing a chance to get up and bite somebody while she was thinking. Body.

"OK. What is this?" She turned to Cheri for an answer. There was something squirrelly going on here and Buffy wanted an answer. Now.

"Simple. Tan's already immortal," Cheri pointed out in a whisper, almost as though she didn't want the body to hear what she had to say. "Even demonic possession can't deny that. So, if staking causes the demon to go away, that should free her."

"We want her freed?"

"As long as she isn't a vampire, yes."

"OK. So, how do we find out if the demon's gone?" Buffy asked sweetly.

"Pull the stake."

"You pull the stake. I think I'll get back up."

"All right." Cheri moved forward. Siro followed her. She stopped and looked back at him. Oh, dear. He had recovered from the wound, but he still seemed to be under her spell - the vampire's spell - it was a little confused, but there was no mistaking that look.

She reached out and pulled the stake out of the vampire's chest. It made that peculiarly nasty sucking sound that chest wounds can make. Nothing.

Cheri looked at Rayden. "You could probably put her down now."

"She's dead."

"For the moment," Cheri agreed.

Rayden gave her a very long look. "For the moment?" he echoed.

"Yeah. Chest wound. Major damage to the heart. Give it a couple of hours. She'll be OK. Well, as OK as she ever is."

"Great. You mean I have to stake her again?"

"No. I mean - whoa." Cheri put out a hand to steady herself. Along with everyone else, she realized she was still bleeding from the self inflicted wound on her wrist. Siro caught her and sat her down in the seat he had vacated. He gently bound up her wrist, his gaze never straying far from her face.

"Better?"

"Uh, yeah." Cheri looked into his eyes and realized that he was still gazing at her in that faintly unnerving fashion. Not quite dog at a bone, but close. She looked away and found that Rayden was grinning at her, faint laughter in his eyes. She gave him a very old fashioned look. She turned her attention back to Siro. "Uhm - Siro."

"Yes."

Oh, boy. How to give the poor guy the heave ho without too much damage to his ego. "Do you have any idea what happened to you?"

"I found you," he responded cheerily.

"Uh - Not exactly." Where the hell was help with this sort of thing when you needed it. Taja was watching her curiously. Kung Lao was talking to Rayden. Buffy was being politely disinterested as she watched the body of the non-dusted vampire. "Look, you were attacked by a vampire."

"Yes."

"And you - were convinced you were - I mean - you were ensorcelled." He thought about this for a moment and nodded. He remembered his desire for the vampire. He remembered thinking his world would end without her touch, her kiss, her - bite. Rational thought was beginning to reassert itself, as much as it ever did. He frowned at the woman before him. "You believe that - my feelings - are -"

"Probably a hangover from the vampire's spell. I mean, we are pretty much identical in look -"

"But not in character," he assured her.

She grinned at him. "Well, no. You got me there. But we've really only just met, whatever your mind and - well - your body - may be telling you."

He started to say something, and then really looked at her for the first time since they'd met. What had she said about immortality? Did that mean? He realized that it probably did mean that she was immortal also. What did an immortal woman want with him? Ignoring truly rational thought, he followed this side alley to its ultimate conclusion. She was trying very gently to tell him that his regard was not returned, that he could have no place in her life. He swallowed hard and looked away. "I -"

She touched his hand. "It's OK. I've gotta take her home, anyway. It's a long trip - on one level." She wished he had looked back at her, but he didn't as he moved away, toward his friends. Oh, well. Tanya was going to be enough to deal with for several days, she really didn't need a lovelorn warrior, no matter how appealing he was. She sighed softly. Sometimes being immortal and Tanya's *twin* was damned inconvenient.

A heartbeat. One, two, picking up rhythm. Breathe. The first gasping intake of breath after having "died". Tanya's eyes snapped open. She was on her feet, gasping for breath, but crouched in defense, before anyone including Rayden could move. One glare around the room brought her attention to Cheri. With a scream of pure anger and frustration she threw herself at the other woman.

Buffy moved to get a vantage point to intervene. Rayden held a hand out to stop her. This was no vampire attack, this was pure rage backed by martial arts of a high order. Cheri defended herself adroitly. Letting Tanya "kill" her would end the attack, but she just wasn't in the mood for this nonsense. Cool thought prevailing over anger, Cheri got the upper hand and pinned her opponent against a wall.

"Quit it!" she snapped, sounding for all the world like a parent out of patience with a recalcitrant child.

Tanya bucked under her hands. "Let me go. I hate you."

"This is not news."

A noise of pure frustration escaped the other. "Let me go."

"Behave yourself?"

"As soon as I kill you."

"You can't."

Tanya took a deep breath and let it out. The sheer reasonableness of the statement took a lot of the wind out of her sails. "All right. I will behave," she agreed, her usual Russian accent becoming deeper than ever. "But not because you believe you have bested me. I chose not to continue the fight."

"Oh, great face saver. Maybe I oughta let the Slayer stake you again."

"What?" Tanya, freed, whirled to face the rest of the gathering. Eyes like aquamarines, hard and shiny, roved over the faces looking at her. She snorted her disdain for all of them, although she met Siro's gaze longer than any of the others. He was a strikingly good looking man and she had a weakness for beach blonds.

Outside there was a beginning to be familiar roaring noise. The square, empty of all people, was again the center of a whirling, eye-twisting mass of - something.

Cheri looked out the door and took it optimistically. "Ready to go?" She had to shout to make herself heard over the building noise of the vortex.

Buffy, still a little confused as to why she was wherever she was and wondering how annoyed the principal was going to be with her for missing whatever class she was missing, nodded. Maybe Giles could explain all of this so that she could explain it. She considered that thought for a moment and shook her head. Nyah. She took a breath and dove into the vortex.

Tanya Kropotkin took one last look around the gathering, decided anywhere was better than here, and dove after the diminutive blonde. Cheri also took a look around. She was almost expecting the vortex to disappear after Tanya went in. She smiled at the four remaining people, shook hands with Taja & Kung Lao, bowed respectfully to Lord Rayden and, speech being impossible over the roar of the vortex, impulsively pulled Siro into a kiss both of them would remember. With a wave, she followed the other two into the vortex.

On the other side, Buffy landed and rolled on the grass outside of Giles' house. A moment later, Tanya fell out of clear air, hit and rolled. She took one look around, discovered her hair had changed color and went to look for something to remove the abhorred color from her normally tawny tresses. Maybe she could shave her head, go punk for a while?

Cheri landed with a bone jarring thud that knocked the wind out of her and made little stars and streaks of light dance in front of her eyes when she bothered to open them. "Ow."

"Giles!" Buffy greeted her Watcher as he came out of his house.

"Buffy - er - Buffy?" It was about seven in the morning on a Saturday, not a normal time for Buffy to be visiting her Watcher.

"Yeah. I feel the same way." She turned her attention to Cheri. "Are you OK?"

"Uhm, I think so," Cheri answered without opening her eyes.

"Cheri? Cheri Yuconovich?"

Cheri wasn't certain she liked the intonation of her name, although the basic accent on the basic voice was nice. She cracked one eye open to see if the stars were going in like good little balls of gaseous matter. Standing above her and a bit to one side was a tall, tweed covered man whose face was somehow familiar, though not at this exact angle. Cheri took a breath, released it and sat up. Nothing crunched, this was always a good sign. She got the rest of the way to her feet and still found herself looking up into the greeny hazel eyes of - "Ripper?" she asked bemusedly.

Giles looked pained. Buffy looked interested with a tinge of worry. The last time someone had called him that, Ethan Rayne had been mucking about in town and he was a real pain in ass.

"Miss Yuconovich. It has been some time, hasn't it?" The last was uttered as it dawned on Rupert Giles that Cheri looked, if anything, younger than she had the last time they had met, over twenty years ago.

Cheri had the grace to look abashed. Oh, well. She'd never really gotten the hang of the quiet life, had she?