Chapter 8 Shifting

A/N. (As promised, here is the next instalment. A little late due to complications such as New Year festivities (no, I didn't get drunk, I never plan to get drunk in my life…) and the fact that I'm juggling two fics at the moment, but here's the next chapter anyway! Since I won't be going away again, the next instalment should also be on time, sometime next week.

And now, before we move onto the chapter itself, I'd like to give my thanks to whoever it was who reviewed me under the name of 'blank'. Your message was probably the most important that I've ever received in relation to a fic, so thank you for reminding me about the power and the importance of my story inside me. I've recently re-read both Starlight and what I've written of Starlight II myself, and that has been what has started my fingers itching to type this world out once more. Thank you for your wise words that will stay with me with everything I write, and for everyone else who has reviewed. I write for myself, but I also write for you and everyone else who has followed my stories.

So I hope you enjoy this chapter.

8 8 8

Revello Drive had never looked so comforting, and yet so frightening. Even though she didn't have Spike's nose and supernatural feelings, as Cassandra stepped closer to the doorstep they had vacated only ten minutes ago, she swore she could almost sense the fear that had drenched them here. Tendrils of it still wove around the stone and brick, and at their memory, the image of Buffy with her eyes wide and implacably hard struck her.

She shivered.

"Cass." Daniel's breath misted an inch from her ear.

It was a statement, but she turned around and looked questioningly at him. He was hard to read in the brightness of the porch light. "What?"

"Do you know what's going to happen next?"

She watched as Spike strode up to the front door, his boots silent against the cement path, and shook her head. "I wish I did."

Dawn drew closer, her face shadowed. "Something's happened tonight, and he's not telling us…" she petered off, and then clenched her fists. "And somehow I doubt that my beloved sister will be any more forthcoming."

Cassandra was about to open her mouth to reply with an empty platitude when the door opened a fraction of a second before Spike's hands contacted with the knocker. Buffy emerged from the house, her face pale and drawn, and her eyes searingly hot on Dawn's features. Dawn scowled back at her, angrily and silently.

The Slayer had enough grace to look slightly ashamed, before she stiffened again as she caught sight of Daniel and Cassandra. Instantly she crouched in readiness to fight. Spike looked at her, surprised.

"Slayer?"

"Dawn?" Buffy bit out. "Get inside the house. Now. You too, Spike."

"I don't think so," Dawn stood her ground squarely, hands on her hips. "What the hell is going on, Buffy?"

Spike's gaze flitted back and forth between the two sisters, recognising the pinched stubbornness mirrored on both of their faces, and groaned inwardly. "Slayer? Can't you just let us all inside away from the beasties of the night and then we can talk?"

A sudden remembrance hit him, and he took a step forward. "And what happened? I didn't expect you to be back here so soon. Where's the monk?"

"Dead," Buffy said, her eyes never leaving Cassandra and Daniel. Her voice trembled a little as she kept going. "He died on the way back. I couldn't do anything."

Spike moved instinctively to put a hand on her shoulder before he was knocked back. "But this can all be dealt with later. Get inside. Away from them."

With the last word, she looked squarely into Cassandra's eyes, and the girl shrunk back from her. In the harshness of the porch light, it seemed almost as if the Hellmouth itself was reflected in the blackness of the Slayer's pupils. Perhaps it was her fear, but Cassandra couldn't help but remember a long time ago, when she'd stared, fixated, into the television screen, as a chained girl pulled at her bonds and screamed as a demon merged with her to form the Slayer.

"Buffy."

It was the Slayer who started this time as Spike's low, rough tones voiced her name. A firm hand clasped down on her shoulder, and the vampire turned her towards him. "Buffy," he repeated, just as low, never losing contact with her suddenly wide and vulnerable eyes. "Slayer. What is going on?"

"I…" Buffy put her hand on the doorframe and rested against it, as if exhausted. It was only then that they saw her coil slightly against her stomach, and Cassandra knew then without a doubt what had happened.

"Okay. Inside then," Buffy said wearily. The fight seemed to have drained out of her, but as they passed, she stared so keenly at Cassandra and Daniel they felt hollow inside.

The living room reached out and enfolded them in its warm arms as they entered, and with a sigh of relief, the tension that had kept Dawn upright and stubborn vanished. Within seconds, she was curled up on the couch, luxuriating in the feeling of safety and familiarity. Cassandra and Daniel hesitantly followed in her footsteps, but just as they'd managed to sink into the softness of the seat they were squarely confronted again by a determined Slayer.

"Who are you, and what do you want with my family?"

Daniel started back. "W-what are you talking about, Buffy?" he swallowed once, and then continued without the stammer. "I thought this got cleared up ages ago," he forced lightness into his voice. "Cass and I… we're the ones with a strange prophecy attached to us by the Powers that have no sense of rhythm whatsoever. And from what it says, I guess we're here to help. For whatever reason."

Cassandra bit her lip at the uncertainty in his voice and knew why it was there. How could two teenagers with no special powers whatsoever help the best Slayer the world had ever seen? It just didn't make sense. And the prophecy didn't help, as convoluted as it was. "Why are you even asking this, Buffy?" she asked timidly, already knowing the answer. "What happened? Was it… something to do with before when you were acting strange?"

The petite Slayer's lips turned downwards and compressed. "Yes."

"Well, don't stop there," Spike said impatiently as he lowered himself into an armchair. As his gaze flitted from the Juniors' faces to the Slayer's, he began slotting in every scattered piece of information he had managed to gleam into place. His eyes narrowed as he realised how uncharacteristic the semi-completed jigsaw appeared. "What's this all about, Slayer?"

Buffy struggled with herself, briefly, and then answered. Her eyes were still hard as she swept the two teenagers in front of her. "I found the perfectly sane security guard yesterday doing an incredibly realistic impersonation of an absolutely crazy guy today. But he told me things. He said that they'd come at me through my family. Mum's been getting her headaches again."

"Come off it, Slayer," Spike's words jarred with his oddly gentle tone. "You know Mum's been feelin' a bit down after the operation, but the doctor's said that's expected."

"But he said it," Buffy's eyes took on a troubled, faraway gaze. "And so I had to try. I had to at least try."

There was a silence as they breathed and their hearts beat out of time and Buffy turned away. No one noticed Dawn's suddenly murderous eyes.

"Had to try what?" Spike demanded, his voice suddenly dangerous.

"Giles told me," Buffy said softly, still looking away from them as if she were somewhere else completely. "A trance state where I could see traces of magic, of energy. There was nothing on Mum. Nothing. But…"

She stopped then, and suddenly she was back in her body, back in the living room, and back into Slayer mode. "But there was something on you two. Something that gives me every reason to think you should stay the hell away from my family."

Before Daniel or Cassandra could even react, Dawn pounced, her voice high and accusing. "You're not telling us everything. You saw something else, didn't you? You saw something in me."

Buffy's battle stance slackened. "Dawnie, I…"

"Don't you dare lie to me," Dawn hissed as she leapt off the couch and stalked up to her sister. "After everything you've done today, don't you dare lie to me. I'm not stupid you know. You knocked the other two out, but you saw something in me that made you even more scared and angry than Cassandra and Daniel together."

Buffy straightened and glared. "Stay out of this Dawn. This is about Cassandra and Daniel."

"No it's not!" Dawn yelled furiously. "It's about me! Or at least the three of us together! You kind of gave it away when you threw all of us out, idiot!"

"Hey!" Spike sprung up between the two of them just as it looked as if Dawn might abandon all self-control and attempt to throttle her sister. "Settle down, Nibblet. It's been a bad night, so let's not make it any worse, eh?"

Dawn opened her mouth to protest, but Spike spoke again before she could. "And you, Slayer…" he studied her stubborn-set face, beautiful and hard in her rigid defiance. "You could have the decency to tell all of us what happened."

"Decency?" Buffy's voice went up several octaves. "As if you can talk about decency! You're the most infuriating, irritating, and, and… just plain rude vampire that I've ever met"

"Cut me deep, pet," Spike's face was expressionless. "But you're not answerin' the bloody question."

Things were beginning to spiral out of control. Cassandra looked at all of the pinched, angry faces around her and saw the fear behind each one. And with that recognition she closed her eyes in frustration, only to see an image flash up so bright against her eyelids that she recoiled. It was only there for an instant, but one instant was enough.

Cassandra stood up then, a resolution born into her so strong and so fierce that it almost hurt.

"I know what you saw," she said quietly, and she did not quaver at the suddenly stricken Slayer's face. "And if you can't, I will tell them."

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

"She's here."

Kyrel swung around from her endless pacing to stare at the young girl sitting cross-legged on the stone floor. Her eyes were closed, her light brown hair floating gently around her shoulders. She would have looked almost beatific if it hadn't been for the demonic smile that had just split her features.

Suddenly, she was moving. Pale unlined flesh stretched impossibly over tight knuckles, and then the girl was up, her diabolic smile widening, her eyes open and gleaming with eldritch flame. As always, Kyrel was torn between joining this dark mistress in her dance, prostrating herself on the floor before this one who had given her such power, and doing nothing in a vain attempt to reaffirm a nonexistent independence.

Thess didn't seem to have any such issues. From where the female vampiress had been licking the still-bleeding wound of their latest prey, she unwound with a supernatural grace and began languidly swaying to the same unspoken beat that the young girl was twirling to. Kyrel watched both of them, frozen in indecision and suspicion.

"W-wait," she called out.

Immediately, the young girl froze. With a black air of inhuman irritation, she slowly turned around and faced the ridiculously powerful fledgeling and scowled, the black eldritch flame rising up in her eyes. Kyrel cursed inwardly at the apprehension that had trembled her voice and at the misplaced confidence which had inspired it. She should have known better than to disturb the Mistress, the Source of all the power, the Bringer of silence and death.

Through the scowl, the young girl's features seemed to change slightly. Her skin elongated along her face in strange ripples, as if something inside was shifting. Mottled blotches of colour appeared on those incredibly pale cheeks; icy blues and poisonous greens that had no place on any living creature. The force that Kyrel had been exerting to rebel against her natural instinct to prostrate herself before her Mistress vanished under her gaze, and the vampiress threw herself down on the floor, still trembling. "I… I'm sorry, I…"

"No," the voice was inhuman now; low, cold, and strangely alien now to Kyrel's sensitive ears. "Speak, you have spoken already."

"I… who is this 'she' you speak of?" Kyrel spoke to the stone beneath her, still afraid to raise her head. "I r-remember when you spoke of other arrivals. But those were with a-anger. You speak now with joy. I… I wish to know…"

She could not see, but Kyrel could almost picture in her mind the young girl's lips being drawn back over her teeth, distorting that pretty face, until self-control resumed. She dared not look up as a low chuckle echoed throughout the entire cavern, seeming to come from every corner in a crescendoing cacophony.

"Who is this 'she'?" the terrible voice resounded across the stone. "It is one who will cancel out the three. It is one who will prove beyond a doubt our greatest ally. It is one who will descend this world into a chaos so sweet I can feed…"

The thing in the young girl paused, and then smiled. The cavern seemed to brighten a little again, and Kyrel slowly looked up from the floor. The mistress looked back at the vampiress and kept smiling. In a completely normal, girlish tone, she spoke again.

"She is Glorificus. And she shall bring us the Icari, and gift me with the truth of the Silent Death once more."

8 8 8 8 8 8 8

"What are you playing at, Slayer?" Spike's eyes were granite. "I didn't save the Juniors just so you could almost kill them again."

Dawn was back on the couch, her face white and her knuckles taut in confusion as Buffy regarded the vampire blocking her way to Cassandra and Daniel with grim resolution. "Get out of my way, Spike."

"Listen to yourself!" he cried out in exasperation. "Have you forgotten we're all on the same bloody side, you daft bint? Look, whatever you saw, it doesn't change the fact that Platelet helped save your life by warning us about old Drac coming, or that Junior's been pullin' his weight around by takin' care of Giles."

"You want to know what I saw?" Buffy demanded. "I'll tell you, and then you can make your judgement on whether it changes the facts or not! I saw…"

"You saw your sister fading in and out before you, and everything you knew about her along with it."

Everyone paused. Spike swung around. Cassandra's eyes were transfixed in a golden light, her hands semi-outstretched to the air as she spoke in a voice that wasn't hers. Buffy's open mouth slowly shut. The dark-haired teenager didn't even register that she was now the complete centre of attention, because she wasn't registering anything.

"You saw two youths transform before you, like mist over water, into an owl and a snake and then back again. You thought of evil magic but did not stop to consider a path not unlike your own."

Her hollow, almost transcendent words continued, sounding at once like only one voice, and yet also the voices of a million people speaking behind her, male and female, human and demon.

"You saw all your memories of a sister, all your memories of your past placed in question. For there was green emptiness where there should have been flesh and blood of your own."

The golden light that had been shining out of Cassandra's face slowly dimmed. The otherworldly voice grew softer, weaker, and the girl started to sway on her feet with the pressure.

"You saw the Power of the Ancient and the Companion of the Singers. You saw reality and dreams call, and you didn't know which one to answer. You saw the products of time bending and chose…"

Entranced in the spell of listening to that strange voice emanating from Cassandra's mouth, only Daniel was quick enough to react when the golden light suddenly vanished completely and his friend collapsed. Before her limp body hit the ground, he was cradling her in his arms and laying her gently down on the carpet, awe and confusion warring across his face.

With her collapse, the enchantment was broken. Buffy and Spike moved to help even as Dawn leapt to her friend's side. As Cassandra slowly blinked, unseeing, and tried to struggle upwards to sit on her elbows, Dawn's fingernails left dents in her own skin.

"Why?"

There was no sound after that plaintive call. Cassandra blinked slowly, and then shifted painfully upwards to sit against Daniel's steadying arm. Her eyes were almost black as she registered the question, and the words came out as a whisper. "Maybe… maybe we're not real here."

Daniel turned his head and snorted. "Tonight's near-death experience was real enough for me."

Cassandra swallowed, and Spike caught the rough bobbing of her Adam's apple. "You're real enough for me to smell the blood in your veins, Platelet," he said, the odd gentleness creeping back into his voice. "You're real and alive. Just because the Slayer is seein' funny things doesn't mean you're not."

His bright blue eyes fixated on Dawn, shrunken on the floor, her hands locked around her friend's arm and her hair covering her face. "Same goes for you, Platelet. All three of you are alive and real. Solid enough to bite. Doesn't matter what a crazy guy or the Slayer says. I can hear your heartbeats just as solidly as anyone's."

"You… you mean it?" Dawn looked up hopefully.

"Would I say it if I didn't?" he snorted.

The three of them raised their eyebrows almost simultaneously, and Spike sighed and threw up his hands. "Can't a Big Bad get some peace here without anyone questionin' his motives?" he complained.

It broke the mood. "You're not exactly the Big Bad any more," Dawn needled, a wicked grin appearing out of nowhere to transform her laughing face.

"I so bloody am," he retorted indignantly. "Didn't you see me take out those three vamps in under ten seconds? An' me with a few flesh wounds already?"

"Yeah, but you were taking out vamps," Daniel chuckled. "And that has 'white hat' scribbled all over it."

"Plus, you took them out to save us," Cassandra blinked up at the suddenly gobsmacked vampire, faux-innocence drenched in her tone. "And that was just such a good thing to do…"

Buffy looked back and forth at the three suddenly cheerful teenagers and the spluttering Master vampire and wondered when things had gotten so difficult. Her head hurt. She was supposed to find the evil things and slay the evil things. Even more conveniently, the evil things usually had bright markers like fangs and a ridged face telling her that they were evil.

She was pretty sure that the Slayer's handbook Giles had never showed her had nothing about what to do if you saw your sister and her two friends fading in and out, replaced by some sort of mystical emerald energy and the hazy images of a snake and an owl. She'd be surprised if any handbook told you what to do in that situation.

She was about to open her mouth and vent her exasperation when the shrill ringing of her cell phone broke through even the good-natured bickering in front of her. Annoyed, she swung it open with a decent degree of violence.

"Hello?" she snapped into the receiver.

"Buffy?"

Giles' voice sounded oddly tinny and strained over the line, and she quelled her rising anger to digest it. "What's wrong?"

There was a pause and a crackle, and then her Watcher spoke again. "It seems the Council has decided to pay us a visit," he said stiffly. Her ears pricked, and the sliding of chairs and clinking of teacups in the background of Giles' voice hit her. "They've requested that we all meet at the Magic Box immediately."

Her eyes narrowed. "By all do you mean…?"

"Yes," she couldn't see him fish for the cloth he normally used to wipe clean his glasses, but she could imagine it. "Spike as well. Oh, and Cassandra and Daniel too."

Her voice sharpened. "I'm not leaving Dawn alone in the house."

Dawn started from the couch. "Save it, Buffy," she snapped. "I'm safe now, seeing as, for the moment, my crazy sister hasn't thrown me outside."

"Surely Joyce is home…"

"Not yet."

Giles looked heavenward. "Buffy. Dawn is fifteen years old now. I'm sure she can survive by herself for one or two hours in a locked and protected house."

Her mind rushed through everything that had happened that night. The visions of her sister replaced by a shimmering column of emerald green energy and the morphing of Cassandra and Daniel into unknown shapes and faces. The strange woman/demon/whatever who had managed to trounce both the Slayer and a Master Vampire. The monk and his moaned confession of Dawn's true heritage.

All events which screamed out that Dawn should definitely not be left alone that night for any reason whatsoever. But for some reason, an inner voice pushing gently against her ribcage spoke differently. Buffy closed her eyes in frustration and opened them again, not sure whether to trust her gut or her reason.

There was one brief moment of turmoil, and then, against her better judgement, the Slayer's lips thinned. "Fine. But this meeting better not take too long."