The next day, I felt…odd. For a variety of reasons. Not the least of which being that I had just gotten smashed about by a giant robot demon. What an interesting sentence that is to be able to say.

Not only did I still feel weakened from that, as it turns out, Jenny Calendar had secrets of her own, as Giles informed me, though he still didn't know her full story himself. Just that she knew about Moloch and other demons. There was no telling what all she might know.

That had been the night before, however, when we returned to the school to inform Giles of our victory.

We returned home, weary but relieved, and the next morning dawned, and I didn't wake.

I didn't wake because I was wrestling with my own personal demons. Literally.

Most of my dreams were nearly always about my past; the mistakes I had made, the beast I had been, the lives I had claimed, the innocents I'd drained. I still had certain scenes flit through my subconscious, if for no other reason than just because it was habit for me to see them in my sleep.

There was always one scene in particular that always returned, even if all of the others changed…

…That poor, poor child…

I'm not ready to speak of it yet, I'm sorry. Patience, though, reader, patience if you will. No doubt it will be revealed in due time, but that memory…it's too bitter to repeat often, so I will refrain from doing so.

The nightmare that came after them, however…it was different, and disturbing in an entirely different way.

What was so disturbing was that it seemed far, far too real. So real in fact I completely forgot I was dreaming.

In the nightmare, I seemed to wake up from having fallen asleep at a study table.

I heard a chuckle behind me when I woke, and turned to see Giles coming towards me, book in hand.

"I know I should have woken you," he said, "but you've been working so hard lately I thought you deserved a rest."

I looked about in confusion. I couldn't remember entering the library. I couldn't remember anything prior to waking up in the library, except…

"Willow?" I asked him, standing up quickly, "Is she all right? Moloch? Did he-"

Now it was Giles' turn to look confused.

"Moloch?" he said, then took a few steps closer, looking concerned, "That was weeks ago, Margery. Have you forgotten?"

I remembered then. Of course, we'd defeated Moloch. That explained why my shoulder and leg hurt so badly then…

Come to think of it, they were hurting quite badly.

I tried to move my left arm, but couldn't lift it past my hip because of the dislocated shoulder. I grunted in pain and dropped my hand again, and then felt something odd on my other shoulder; something thick, warm, and wet, and something which gave off a very familiar scent: blood.

My head whipped around and I hastily clawed away my shirt to reveal the bullet wound had opened back up again and was pouring blood. But it didn't look natural. It was thick and dark, like a syrup, and the smell was off too. It smelled…rotten.

I was rotting.

I began to panic and looked up at Giles, he was staring at me in shock and revulsion.

"G-Giles?" I begged, coming towards him. The pain in my leg intensified and I felt older wounds opening up. Across my back, I felt afresh the whip marks my mother had given me, and a myriad of other cuts and holes began to leak that awful smelling blood.

"Giles, what's happening to me?" I choked out. Even my mouth tasted of that horrid, viscous liquid. He shook his head in bewilderment, unable to say anything. The rotting smell must have reached him because he went pale and brought a hand to his face, shuddering as he did so.

"Giles?!" I all but screamed at him in panic. He turned to face me again, and as he did, something about him changed.

Fix it

'Fix what?'

What's happening to us

'How?'

You KNOW how, fool

And I did. I knew very well how to fix what was happening.

Giles, he didn't look like Giles anymore, not really. That's not to say he changed in any way physically. It's just that I was seeing him differently.

He looked…small, somehow. Weak, and painfully fragile. His skin looked thin, pale, and translucent. I could see his veins, see the life pumping through them, life that I craved and needed to survive.

It seemed…such a waste for so much life to be pumping through so weak a creature. Even his bones seemed fragile. In fact I was certain I could snap his arm like a twig if I wanted.

A clawing began in my stomach then, a gnawing, ravenous hunger that spread up into my throat and through my chest. It filled my head and my ears, and all I could hear was the sound of his heart squeezing more life through his body.

Take it

'Take it?'

Take it and live

'Could we?'

Of course we could, we've done it before haven't we?

'Of course…why not?'

Why not? Look at him, what use is he?

'Take the life.'

Take it and live, it's what we deserve

'It's what we need.'

Yes, it's our right

Giles' lips were moving, but I didn't hear him. He looked…scared, but I didn't see that. All I saw was my chance at survival moving towards the door.

He shouldn't have run. It triggered something in my brain.

Before I even knew I had moved, somehow I was on top of the prey and it was screaming, pushing against me, begging, hitting, trying to get away.

I bit down into soft, yielding flesh and felt life course down my throat in a burning, beautiful river that I gulped down eagerly, cherishing every drop and craving more.

Then I noticed that all movement had stopped, and something pricked at the back of my mind that something about this whole thing wasn't right, even while another part of my mind reveled in what I was doing.

I pulled back, then, and realized what I had done.

Giles stared at the door, his wasted chance of escape, but his eyes held no spark of life.

I recognized him then. Not as prey, not as thing to be used, drained and discarded, but as Giles.

The horror of what I'd done swept over me, and I recoiled.

There was red everywhere. It dripped from my face onto Giles' as his life gushed from the hole I'd ripped in his neck in my enthusiasm to get to the treat underneath.

My hands were shaking, as were my shoulders, and someone was screaming a wild, terrible wail.

When I woke up I discovered it was me.

Needless to say, when I arrived to school, late, I felt very badly shaken. Especially since my leg was indeed still hurting, even after I'd had an entire blood-pack before bed. My left shoulder ached as well. To make matters worse…the healed bullet wound was beginning to throb now, too.

I'd missed the entire first period, and most of the second, so I just tried to find my young friends.

I found them in the courtyard, all seated on a bench. Willow was sandwiched between Xander and Buffy, and as I approached I heard Willow saying: "-Malcolm, Moloch, whatever he's called. The one boy that's really liked me and he's a demon robot. What does that say about me?"

She sounded…sad.

I couldn't really understand why she was questioning herself. She'd done nothing wrong, nothing whatsoever.

"It means, dear heart," I interrupted them, they all turned to look at me, "that you're so sweet even demons love you." I smirked, "I mean, it wasn't as though you were making blood sacrifices in order to make him happy, were you?"

I moved around so that I faced them and Willow smiled sheepishly at me while Xander chuckled.

"Besides," Buffy added, " have you forgot that the one boy I've had the hots for since I got here is a vampire?" She flashed me an apologetic look. "No offense."

I shrugged.

"Right," Xander nodded, "and the teacher I had a crush on? Giant praying mantis."

"And my interests?" I said, feeling a bit left out, "All dead."

Willow's smiled broadened a little.

"That's true!" she said.

"Life on the Hellmouth." Xander said with a shrug.

"So none of us are ever going to have a happy, normal relationship!" Buffy said, sounding surprisingly chipper about it.

"We're doomed!" Xander grinned.

They all began laughing, but the laughter quickly faded, replaced by rather sad countenances. I rubbed the back of my neck with the arm that didn't hurt, though I felt my shoulder still slip around a bit. We couldn't leave this conversation on such a sour note.

"Youths." I scoffed, they looked at me in surprise, "One failed relationship and you always think that's the last time you're ever going to be in love." I shook my head in mock disappointment, "You never change, do you?"

I motioned for them to get up, which they did, and we started moving back towards the school building, walking abreast of each other.

"Perhaps we should start calling ourselves the Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club?" I asked, linking arms with Xander and Willow.

Xander looked at me in shock while Willow giggled. I winked at Xander.

"Love the Beatles." I whispered to him.

"Is there ever going to come a time when you don't surprise me with something like that?" he asked, grinning.

"I hope not," I said as seriously as I could, but still with a laugh edging its way into my voice, "because what good is a half-vampire if they don't keep you surprised?"

The little group of children laughed at this, and I joined in, but as I did, the image of Giles sprawled in his own blood on the library floor filled my mind and squeezed the laughter out of my throat.

'What good indeed?' I thought.