My apologies for the tardiness and brevity of this particular chapter. I've become a lot busier than I anticipated and had a bit of writers block with regards to this particular chapter- on the bright side, the next chapter is outlined and I hope that I won't take so long again. I edited this right after finishing it, which might mean that I've allowed a few more typos to slip though than normal, so if you catch any, drop me a line and I'll try to fix them. Hope everyone is enjoying their summers! My continued thanks for the encouraging reviews!

The mouse's heart must have given out, for it fell over softly on its side and ceased to breathe.

"Oh," Buffy breathed out, surprised at how good it had felt.

Angelus watched her carefully from his seat across the small table they had arranged themselves around in the library of his house. The room was of a decent size, but despite the high ceilings it managed to feel cozy. The windows were covered with heavy velvet drapes and lit with a multitude of candles. Buffy could easily forget that it was early afternoon. But in this particular moment she had other things on her mind.

"That was-"

"Yes," he said with a smile, satisfied.

"But," she began again, "wasn't it- well- bad?" She regarded the little animal, curled up and still with guilt. Mice died of course, but she had never been the direct cause of it before. They had traps and cats for that sort of thing. Angelus looked torn between amusement and disapproval.

"Morality's subjective," he said, "it constantly changes depending chiefly on what's convenient, who's in charge, the religion of the era, and any number of other subjective factors. Ignore it. It's worthless."

She looked at him in surprise. He had always projected an air of unconventionality but this was something else altogether, something dangerous. She was suddenly acutely aware of her situation- alone with this man in his house by his invitation- an invitation which had appeared in her room sometime before she rose in the morning. It had flustered her, but when she's asked, as casually as she could manage if he'd sent someone into her room he'd merely laughed and replied 'Magicks, sweet girl'. It had merely put her further off balance.

"But you can't just-"she argued now, flustered, "there are rules." She glanced away, flushing at her inarticulate response but turned back to be surprised by the uncompromising expression on his face.

He looked at her with a sudden cold intensity that took her breath away.

"Yes. There are," he said. "What of it? In some parts of the world you would be stoned to death for the cut of the dress you're wearing. In others, I might be killed and eaten if I arrived as an outsider. Rules are for the stupid and the self-righteous. The powerful, the passionate, are not so easily bound by restraints." From the tone of his voice it was clear that he believed utterly in what he was saying, and furthermore, that he was challenging her.

"But rules, laws, and yes- morality- they're what make society function," Buffy argued. "Without them, we're little better than animals. And that- what I just did- it's cruelty in a way- and that's wrong!"

He laughed then. The loudness of it startled her.

"My poor innocent darling," he began, eyes glinting, "have you only ever known kindness? Shall I have to introduce you to cruelty? I suppose if ever there was a child likely to only receive sweetness, it would be you, but-"

"I'm not a child!" she interrupted angrily, spots of color appearing in her cheeks. Her hands were clenched into fists and she only just prevented herself from leaping out of her chair.

Angelus stilled, looking at her with glimmering eyes. He was silent for a moment as he examined her, and Buffy began to feel uncomfortable.

"No," he allowed, "You are not a child. You are young, and innocent, and though you might protest it, very naïve, but you are not a child. So stop acting like one. The world is cruel and it is full of people low and high who, unconsciously or not, adapt that cruelty. You are not unintelligent, nor," he continued softly, "are you weak. You have power Buffy, even if you have barely just begun to understand it. And I'm not just speaking of magicks now. You are not a child, and you would do well to start thinking about what that means."

Silence sat between them, a dark animal slumbering. More than ever, Buffy felt she was on a precipice, swaying in the wind. But what lay on either side of the thin edge she danced on was a mystery. She wondered if she would find out before she fell.

xxx

Willow was looking well. Wickedness suited her.

She had joined Buffy for the afternoon at Giles', and though the two girls were taking care to save their more delicate secrets for when they felt most assured of being alone, they had plenty of other gossip and news to feed their conversation. Willow shared Buffy's eagerness about the dinner party she was planning on holding in a day's time. It would be a relatively informal affair, and Giles had assured her that his friends were not the sort who held it against a hostess should her arrangements be anything less than perfect and exorbitant, but Buffy still wanted it to go off without a hitch. She'd already planned the meal, after consulting with Giles and Jenny, who had kindly helped her arrange matters and the servants would take care of setting the table with the good silver. Willow's parents rarely entertained, and when they did Shelia naturally managed things, but Buffy's friend shared her eagerness and was generous enough to listen to her petty worries about the whole affair.

For her part, Buffy had listened to Willow share some old bits of gossip and recall the two parties that she had lately been in attendance for. They passed an hour or more in such a manner before they felt safe enough to talk intimately about more delicate matters.

"So much has happened," Buffy whispered to her friend, eyes wide and eager "I have so much to tell you!" Willow looked equally as excited, her pale face practically glowing. Her smile was eager, and even a little sly.

"So do I!" She exclaimed. "Buffy, you wouldn't believe what I managed to do the other day! I was reading the Copier Compendium, and I realized that theories about transfiguring some object into another, the things that sound like the old stories of alchemy, they bear a startling resemblance to some of the more recent scientific theories about elements and atoms!" She continued speaking at a rapid pace and Buffy quickly found herself lost. When Willow paused for breath some minutes later Buffy blinked owlishly at her for a moment. Buffy was by no means as silly or frivolous as she sometimes pretended, but Willow's genius occasionally managed to leave her stupefied. After a moment, she laughed.

"Oh Willow," she said, "leave it to you to make something that seems as fun and free as this into something so academic and difficult."

Willow blushed a little, but nothing could repress the excitement that she exuded.

"Some more recent theoretical physics bear a startling resemblance to the discussions about conjuring and creating things out of nothing," she clarified, beaming, before launching into a more detailed description of the merits of different theories and their bearing to the reading she had done.

Buffy listened in amazement as her friend continued. She had always known Willow was smart, but sometimes forgot just how smart she really was. She should have been a man, and gone to Oxford or Cambridge and studied something obscure and amazing. The University of London had just begun to admit a handful of women to its degrees, but it was unheard of for a woman of their class to attend, and Buffy couldn't imagine Willow's parents, permissive though they usually were, to allow her to attend.

Hearing about Willow's successes and experiments made Buffy feel a lot better about her own small success, and her confusion about what to do about Angelus. Willow evidently needed little help in learning. Still, Buffy began to tell her about the encounter with a considerable amount of apprehension. Willow, for her part, remained as an expressive audience as ever, gasping in shock as Buffy told her about her fear of being caught

"Incredible," the redhead muttered at the end of it. She looked remote for a moment, and Buffy was sure she was taking in details and considering possibilities that probably hadn't occurred to her.

"It does seem a shocking coincidence," Willow said, a faint line appearing between her eyebrows. She looked up to smile at Buffy's undisguisedly eager gaze.

"What do you make of him?" she asked. Buffy frowned a little.

"It's so hard to know," she said pensively, "What I mean to say is… I mean, I still feel as though I hardly know him. I suppose I should ask him about where he's from, what his family is like, and try to discover ore of him… and it's not as though he hasn't told me some of his encounters, but I only have small pieces of the whole picture of a man, and I suspect he's a man who's very hard to know."

Willow nodded thoughtfully. "Buffy, are you taken with him?" Buffy blushed a little in response.

"I mean, he's very handsome," Buffy admitted. "More than handsome. And he knows so much and he's been so many places and when he's around he'd just got this presence…it's like the lights dim around everything else and he's practically all I can see."

Willow smiled again. "I know how that can be," she said, eyes fond and remote. Buffy winced inwardly. Perhaps telling Willow about Cordelia and Xander might not be such a wise decision. It might be better to preserve her deceit a little longer- ideally some new attractive man would come on the scene and fall in love with her friend immediately and expressively. Or else things might become very awkward very quickly.

XXX

London was a large city. London was a dangerous city. London held murderers and monsters in her perfumed arms and hid them from their enemies, brave men who risked their lives hunting those who were their natural predators.

Angelus stalked a man in near darkness, creating no more sound than the faint, though unmistakable, splashing of wet footsteps. Ahead of him, a man, his heart racing, ran down the sewer in an attempt to escape the predator behind him. Angelus allowed him to get ahead. He was in little enough hurry, and by his calculations, he could overcome the man in a matter of seconds should he need to. Besides, it was miles before the next opening that would allow the man to escape to safety above ground.

The man, little more than a boy, was not even the true object of Angelus' hunt. It was his partner, currently attempting to follow him through the tunnels beneath the city, who was the one likely to have information he might be… persuaded to share.

Earlier that day he had received a message from an old acquaintance, a vampire who went by the name Geoffrey. Unlike Angelus and his brethren, he preferred to stay in London, where he had carved out a certain amount of territory and power that satisfied him well enough that he wasn't tempted to explore the continent. Angelus privately disdained his way of living, but nevertheless respected him enough not to give offence when the other vampire had proved amiable enough in the past. Geoffrey was very willing to provide Angelus with the information he sought, and had already been made aware of the presence of new vampire hunters in the city. They had apparently arrived shortly before Angelus and his family had, and had made quick work of many of the scattered and unattached minions and fledges within the city.

This was an inconvenience to the more powerful demons who resided there, but they didn't truly recognize the extent of the threat until more powerful nests began to disappear. There had been suggestions that the Slayer was among them, but she was reportedly elsewhere and it soon became apparent that the new group of hunter, whoever they were, were not members of the Watcher's Council.

What they did know was that they hunted in pairs or in small groups. Two had been killed together, but their bodies had, upon their deaths, had burned. Searching them might have yielded more information, and it appeared that the hunters were practical enough to take precautions to prevent it. The spell was a clever bit of sorcery that Angelus wouldn't mind knowing. If all went well he might be able to pry the information out of someone very soon.

Angelus ducked into the shadows at the intersection of two tunnels and waited. His eyesight and senses being what they were, he had no need for the torchlight that his prey were using. The soft footsteps behind him began to slow. He didn't bother to turn around, but waited until his pursuer mustered up his courage and moved to strike.

A crossbow bolt made an unnaturally loud sound as it struck the wall of the tunnel and clattered to the ground. Angelus moved silently out of its path by taking a swift step to the left, where he paused before turning to face his attacker. His yellow eyes gleamed in the dark, and he smiled slowly, assured that the picture he presented, teeth and eyes the only bright points in the tunnel, would be suitably terrifying. He'd always had a keen sense of the dramatic.

The man's heart rate increased rapidly, but to his credit, he quickly fired off more shots that Angelus avoided with the grace and speed that were benefits of his advanced age. He wasn't so old as to be unusual by any means, but vampires gained power at vastly different rates, and many enough never made it to an age where they gained enough power as to make cleverness unnecessary. For each arrow he dodged, he took a step closer to the man who was following him. With his well-groomed appearance and smart suit, well-made but not flashy, he appeared the picture of respectable middle age. Probably a barrister or wealthy tradesman by day.

"James," the older man called, his voice low. He should have known that it wouldn't make any difference. Still, Angelus had found that terror made men a bit foolish. He moved then, swifter than he had allowed himself to before, and snapped the man's neck.

Angelus let the first man fall with a splash and stepped back quickly as the body went up in blue flames, which devoured the corpse far quicker than any ordinary fire could have. The younger man, the one he had been ostensibly pursuing earlier reversed course, running away from his dead partner. Angelus didn't doubt that he felt for the other man's death though, not with the sweet scent of grief and pain tickling his nose. It was an easy matter to come up behind him and snatch him by the throat. The man's cry was quickly cut of as Angelus covered his mouth and nose with a large hand and waited until he heard the faltering of the only remaining heartbeat.

He gave the man a shake, and was reassured that he was unconscious. In the dim gloom of the tunnel he could see a certain resemblance between the two, and wondered if they were father and son, uncle and nephew, or related in some other way. He would no doubt find out soon enough. Glancing at the sodden ashy remains of the first man, Angelus shrugged and hauled his quarry over his shoulder, beginning the trek back to his residence. It was time to get some answers.