Author's Note: Yaw613 – Quit asking me to write the next chapter. I am still ahead about fifteen chapters (not including this one that I am uploading today) and if I continue my pace of uploading every other day then I will not run out of chapters to upload till after the first of June when I will actually catch up to where I am currently.

Chapter 47: Never Leave Me

July 6, 2003

The Slayers had called Watcher Headquarters, and Quentin Travers, as Council head, was the man to speak with them. As the rest of the Council looked on, he listened to them speaking from across the pond, in Sunnydale.

They told him that they were looking for Giles.

"He's not answering any of his numbers," Buffy explained.

Quentin remained polite, if aloof, as he said, "Miss Summers, Miss Lehane, ever since Mr. Giles pulled up his stake in Sunnydale, we've not made it our business to follow his every move. I suppose if you feel the matter's urgent, we can look into it."

He could tell that they were aware that he was simply trying to mollify them.

After he hung up, he looked down the expanse of the polished wooden table at the other Watchers and informed them, "They know nothing." He rose. "And we need to find Rupert Giles as soon as possible."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Addictions scream with unbelievable power for satisfaction. Base, primal hungers wreak havoc on the system when denied, make sane men mad, and make madmen madder still.

In their bedroom, Buffy and Willow had tied Spike to a chair, and they were watching him shiver and shake as he withdrew from drinking human blood. Buffy sat on her fern-green-and-cranberry bedspread. It was agonizing to watch.

"Buffy," Willow said as she watched Spike vamp out.

Buffy turned and saw Spike raging at them, chomping and clacking like a mindless feeding machine, fighting his restraints. She looked at her wife. "I think we need to get him some blood."

"Do you want me to kill Anya?" Willow asked helpfully.

It was decided that Willow should go the butcher's and get some animal blood. Willow was eager to run the errand. "Why don't you," she explained as she mimed waving a wand. "Xander's installing the new windows and he keeps lecturing Sirius and Harry on proper tool maintenance."

"Sirius idea actually," Buffy said. "Plus, I think Faith likes watching him work with tools."

"You don't think?" Willow replied.

"She is interested in Sirius, actually I do," Buffy said. "And I think it's mutual. The question is, is Faith ready for a commitment."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Andrew Tucker was number 87 at the butcher shop, and he had a list for the grouchy butcher man waiting to take his order. Andrew had on his coat, his boots, and his cool hair, and he felt very out of place among the mundanes in the shop.

The butcher prepared to write his order, and Andrew moved to Step 2 of Plan B. He said anxiously, "I'd like twelve pork chops, two pounds of sausage, eightquartsofpigsblood, three steaks, a halibut . . . some toothpaste . . ."

The butcher looked at Andrew as if he were an idiot. "This is a butcher shop, Neo," he said, referring, no doubt, to Andrew's outfit. "We don't sell toothpaste."

"Oh, okay," Andrew said.

The bag was enormous; he picked it up and lumbered out of the store, colliding with someone as he crossed the threshold. Chops and sausages and several clear packages of blood went flying all over the place.

But that wasn't the bad part.

The bad part was Willow Rosenberg had been on her way into the store.

Willow stared at him, wide-eyed and obviously very, very clear on who he was.

He ran down the street and into an alley.

So, did she.

He begged her, "Don't kill me! Don't torture me and send me to an eternal pain dimension! Warren killed Tara. I didn't do it. And he was aiming for Faith anyway."

Willow glared at him. "Not making it better."

"And you got your revenge. You killed my best friend. We're even."

She looked shocked. "Even? You think I get satisfaction from what I did?"

"I'm protected by powerful forces," he went on, trying a different tack. "Forces you can't even begin to imagine, little girl. If you harm me, you shall know the wrath of he that is darkness and terror. Stand down, she-witch. Your defeat is at hand."

Realizing that she could use his weirdness against him, she decided to run with the scary Willow iteration. Getting herself in character, she pushed him soundly against a brick wall. "Shut your mouth. I am a she-witch, one of two very powerful she-witches, or witch, as is more accurate. I'm not to be trifled with. I am Willow." And I sound like the Wizard of Oz. But he's buying it. "I am death. If you dare defy me, I will call down my fury, exact fresh vengeance, and make your worst dreams come true." She raised her brows. "Okay?"

He believed her, and she forced him to go to Summers' house with her.

She marched him into the house.

Anya stepped on his coat!

Then they tied him up police-interrogation style and threatened to hurt him if he didn't tell them why he was back in town.

"I haven't done anything wrong," he pleaded.

"Then you won't mind if we ask you a few questions," Xander said.

"Yeah, okay," Andrew murmured.

"What were you doing buying blood at the butcher shop?" Xander demanded, as Anya listened, too.

He gave them his pre-thought-up story: "I-fell-in-love-with-a-beautifulvampire-girl-down-in-Mehico-and-now-we're-trying-to-make-a-go-of-it-onthe-straight-and-narrow-and-put-our-lives-back-together-here-in-Sunnydale."

Xander privately suspected he was getting his material from Tarantino's From Dusk to Dawn.

"You think this is a game, junior?!" Anya yelled at him, grabbing him, shaking him. "People are dying! Our friends are in danger!"

Andrew whimpered in fear; Xander looked genuinely surprised at Anya's behavior.

"And you want to waste our time with deceptions? Not on my watch!" And she backhanded him a wicked one across the face. He screamed in pain.

Xander stopped her, asked to speak to her privately. They went into the bathroom, giddy over their performance.

"Did you see that?" Anya asked. "I actually made him cry!"

"You were perfect," Xander told her. "I was worried I overdid it with the whole easy way/hard way thing."

"No, that was great," Anya congratulated him. She shook her hand like it was stinging. "I wasn't sure if I should slap him, but then he made me want to slap him so I thought, 'Slap him.' "

"He'll be singing in no time," Xander said happily.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"Now we let him stew in his own juices for a bit, then we give him the hard brace," Xander told her.

Anya nodded. "Right."

Faith and Buffy came out of Buffy and Willow's room. Anya didn't miss a beat, nodded to them, all tough and NYPD Blue. "What's the status with your guy?" she asked the Slayers.

"He hasn't talked yet," Buffy admitted

Anya reported happily, "The weasel wants to sing. He just needs a tune."

"He's primed," Xander agreed. "I'll be pumping him in no time."

Amending that, he tried again. "He'll give us information soon."

Faith and Buffy nodded and returned to Spike.

"It's all flashes here and there," Spike admitted. "It's like I'm watching someone else . . . do it, kill people. I've been losing time for a while now, waking up in strange places. Things have been wonky since . . ."

He hesitated, and Faith filled in. "Since you got your soul." He lowered his head in assent. "How did you do it?"

He sighed at the memory. "I went to seek a legend out. Traveled to the other side of the world, made a deal with a demon."

"Just like that?" Buffy asked sharply.

"There was a price," he said, face stony. "There were trials, torture, pain, and suffering . . . of sorts." He looked at her. "I have come to redefine the words 'pain' and 'suffering' since I fell in love with you."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Xander got into character and went back into the room, where a very frightened Andrew flinched at the sight of him. He offered Andrew some water. After he drank, he muttered, "That chick's psycho."

Xander let out his breath and looked sad. "You don't know the half of it. She's a vengeance demon, you know." He sat down. "She's bad news."

"This one time I saw her having sex with Spike," he told Xander.

Xander winced but said nothing. Then he continued. "She's killed a lot of men. She tortures them. Anyone who incurs her wrath. There was this one guy . . . she took his heart, then she replaced it with darkness . . ."

Seeing that his own personal pain was not impressing Andrew, he added, "then she tore out his intestines and rubbed his face in it."

That worked.

Then the door flew opened and Anya charged into the room, all hellfire and fury, and shouted, "You're gonna tell us what we need to know, and you're gonna tell us right now!"

She went for Andrew's throat, knocking his chair backward in her wrath.

As Xander pretended to try to stop her, she slapped him, gave him a visual apology cue, and got back to her interrogation.

"Get her off me!" Andrew shouted. "I'll tell you what you need to know."

Hearing the ruckus, Faith and Buffy left the room to see what was going on

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Anya and Xander looked to be beating the truth out of Andrew, which was fine with Faith and Buffy; they started to go back to Spike when they overheard Spike from behind the closed door. It sounded as if he was talking to someone. And . . . singing?

Faith opened the door and they entered the room, warily looking around. She eyed Spike, who seemed to have calmed down quite a bit. "Who were you talking to?" she asked him.

"Nobody. I was just keeping myself company," he said steadily. He was so different from the unhappy mess they'd left less than a minute before ... composed, at ease.

"Are you okay?" Buffy asked him.

"Fine," he rejoined, as if the answer should be obvious. "Feeling a bit peckish, I suppose." He looked over at the bags of pig blood on the night table by the bed. "Do you mind?"

Faith kept her eye on him while Buffy went to get the pig's blood.

That was Spike vamped out again. He roared with vampiric fury, breaking the chair arms in his struggle to free himself. He stood; Faith and Buffy dashed at him, ready to fight, but he pushed them down and turned on his heel, racing in the other direction.

In Dawn's room, Andrew was against the wall, spilling his guts. "We needed more blood to activate the seal of Danthaza—"

A hand broke through the wall behind Andrew. Another hand grabbed his chest. Screaming, Andrew was yanked through the wall, breaking the plaster, and into the next room.

He was in Spike's clutches; the raging vampire pushed his head to one side, and chomped into him.

"Dawn, Sirius, Harry!" Buffy yelled.

Dawn came running up the stairs. She instantly saw what was happening and pulled out her wand, pointing it at Spike and Andrew. "Stupefy!" she yelled. The moment the spell hit them they were knocked instantly unconscious.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

While he was out, Buffy had Dawn open a portal beneath Spike dropping the vampire into the basement where Buffy and Faith chained him to the wall. Then Faith and Buffy met with the others in the living room, trying to understand why he had changed so much.

"We were having a conversation with Spike," Faith said. "He was fine. I mean, you know, fine as Spike can be. And then we went to check on you guys, and when we got back it was like he was a completely different person."

"Different like 'William the Bloody' type different?" Xander asked.

"He was talking to someone," Buffy remembered. "And then he started singing. He mentioned something about a song in the cellar. And he changed there, too. I mean, instantly became another person."

"He's under a muggle form of an Imperius curse," Sirius said.

"What's that?" Xander asked.

"With the Imperius curse the person under the curse is under the control of the person who cast the curse."

"Got ya," Xander said as he got it. "In this case it's a trigger. It's a brainwashing term. It's how the military makes sleeper agents. They brainwash operatives and condition them with a specific trigger, like a song, that makes 'em drastically change at a moment's notice."

"Is this left over from Halloween?" Willow asked him.

Xander favored her with one of his patented self-deprecating looks. "No, this is left over from every Army movie I've ever seen."

"Which means he could be under the big bad's control," Dawn said as she looked at Sirius, Buffy and Harry. "Like I was with Voldemort before the Slayer spirit threw him out."

"Spike said he's been seeing things since I found him in the basement," Faith put in. "So, he gets his soul back, he starts seeing spooky things, and he goes extra, extra crazy."

"If he is triggered or under an Imperius curse or something else," Buffy said. "How do we make it stop?"

"Well according to Crouch when he was pretending to be Mad-Eye," Harry said. "The Imperius can be fought if you have the strength of character."

Xander was not as much help on detriggering. "Well, usually the operative completes his task and either blows his head off or steals a submarine."

"All right," Faith said. "If Spike's a bomb, then B and I need to know how to diffuse him."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Spike lay inert on the basement floor, his hands and feet chained to the wall. The shadows shifted as Dawn walked across the floor with a bowl of water and a towel in her hands, giving Spike the illusion of movement.

She knelt and tenderly dabbed the blood off his face, and he opened his eyes. Weakly, fearfully, he asked, "Did I hurt anybody?"

"You took a good bite out of Andrew," Dawn told him. "He'll be okay."

"I don't remember," Spike said. He sounded weary and defeated. "Li'l Bit, I don't know why."

"We think the big bad that's coming has been playing you," Dawn said. "Somehow either through muggle means or a curse has gained control of you. Buffy and Faith has everyone researching it."

Spike pulled himself to a sitting position and said. "Kill me. I know you're a Slayer, Li'l Bit. Kill me."

"Not happening," Dawn said.

"Do you have any idea what I'm capable of?"

"You said it yourself. I'm a Slayer so yeah I have at least the faintest idea," Dawn said.

"Dawn, you have never met the real me. Buffy and Faith won't do it. Do you know how much blood you can drink from a girl before she'll die? I do." He swallowed, determined to go on. "You see, the trick is to drink enough so that they'll still cry when you . . ." He began to lose his composure, but he held on. "'Cause it's not worth it if they don't cry."

"It's not your fault. You're not the one doing this," Dawn said.

"I already did it," Spike said. "It's already done." He paced, an animal in misery, then stepped toward her. "You want to know what I've done to girls' your age?" He saw her glance away, saw that he'd gotten to her. "Li'l bit, this is me. You've got to kill me before I get out."

"No," Dawn said. "I will not do it. I know the promise you made Buffy if she had died for me on that tower. You wouldn't want me doing that…"

He rolled his eyes and cut her off. "Don't rationalize this into some noble act "

Then at that moment, the lights flickered and went out. The glass in the basement door exploded inward, and a black-hooded figure burst into the room.

He was carrying a staff and he smacked Dawn across the face with it, sending her flying across the room.

"Dawn!" Spike shouted, and over his voice, he heard the sounds of more attacks coming from upstairs.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

They came through windows.

They broke down the doors.

Hooded figures burst upon Willow and Harry in the living room. From the kitchen more swarmed in; one of them hit Anya in the back of the head with his staff. She dropped to the floor.

Xander moved to take him on when he was hit from behind by two more of them. Their hoods fell back, their faces were revealed. Symbols carved in black covered their eyeless faces.

Chaos continued to unfold: one of them rushed Willow, whacking her across the neck with his staff. She flew back, hit the wall, and dropped to the ground.

Another one charged Harry, he pulled out his wand and shouted. "Stupefy!"

The robed man slid to the floor unconscious.

Buffy, Faith and Sirius stood in Buffy and Willow's bedroom as one of the robed figures burst into the room, dropped his staff, and took out two crescent-shaped daggers.

Buffy grabbed the attacker; another one dashed into the room. And another. As Andrew managed to stand, Faith grabbed him and used him as a battering ram à la Jackie Chan, holding him by the shoulders and driving him into the chest of one of the figures.

The third attacked Sirius held up his wand and shouted. "Stupefy!" he shouted.

Faith heaved Andrew out of her way, grabbed Two-Knives' weapons, and stabbed him as he rushed her, directly in the stomach.

The other figure rushed Buffy, and Faith threw one of Two-Knives' weapons to Buffy who stabbed him in the stomach with it.

They fell to the floor, dead.

"Faith! Buffy! Sirius!" Xander shouted, running into the room. He was carrying one of the staffs, all action man and yecch face as he saw the bodies.

"Dawn?" Buffy demanded.

"She was in the basement," Xander said.

They raced out of the room and into the basement.

Dawn lay unconscious on the floor and Spike's shackles were empty, he was gone.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

In the living room, the wounded tended to each other and to themselves.

Willow brought the first aid kit and was just sitting down when Buffy and Faith carrying Dawn came into the room followed by Xander and Sirius. There were dead guys lying around, too.

"They were so fast," Xander observed. "And organized."

"They were after Spike all along," Buffy replied.

"And we were just in the way," Xander added.

After setting Dawn down next to Willow and Harry; Buffy knelt to inspect one of the robed people lying face-up on the floor. "I know these guys," she said, as it all came together. "I fought them before. This isn't some demon." She had figured it out. "It's all the same thing. Spike's ghosts," she looked at her girlfriend, Dawn and Harry, "the people we saw, from beneath us, it's all the same thing. I know what we're up against." She paused, frightened. "The First."

"That's," Faith said remembering a story that Angel had told her when she was in prison. "You faced them the day it snowed here. The day that Angel tried to dust himself."

"Yeah," Buffy said.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The members of the Watcher's Council were in an uproar as they tried to contain the damage that had been inflicted upon them.

The building had been ransacked—maps torn off walls, files cabinets emptied and overturned. The atmosphere was frantic, though some of the Watchers cleaned up and spoke on phones with characteristically grim Englishness.

Through this all, walked Quentin Travers, surveying the damage, a grave look on his face.

Phillip briefed him.

"They took our files, wiped out our records. We've lost contact with operations in Munich, Switzerland, and Rome. We've got casualty confirmations coming in from as far away as Melbourne."

Lydia, the young blonde, blurted, "Sir, we are crippled."

Quentin gazed at her, and soothed, "It's all right." Then he quoted Winston Churchill, who had been Prime Minister of Britain during World War II, when London was being blitzed on a regular basis by Adolph Hitler's Nazis: "'We are still the masters of our fate, we are still the captains of our souls.'"

The words worked their magic on the young woman. Then Quentin said to the group at large, "We feared that Voldemort would try and recruit demons and vampires to his cause. This is much worse. The First Evil has declared all-out war against this institution. Their first volleys have proved to be most effective." He paused for dramatic effect. "I for one, think it's time we struck back."

All gazes were riveted on him. He could practically hear the others saying,

"Hear, hear."

"Get me confirmations on all remaining operatives. Begin preparations for mobilization. Once we're accounted for, I want to be ready to move. We'll be paying a visit to the Hellmouth." He continued, "My friends, these are the times that define us. Proverbs 24:6: 'For by wise counsel, you shall make your war.'"

And in the next moment, the Council Building exploded into a huge conflagration of bombs and flames...