Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sunnydale, 1999

“Let’s get her out of here,” said Angel. “They could be back any moment.” 

Buffy wrenched the chains at Julia’s ankle apart with her bare hands. “Can you run?” 

Julia nodded, her eyes wide. Angel strained to hear any sounds of approaching enemies, but the massive turbine-like fans running in this section of the tunnels were too loud. He couldn’t rely on scent either, as the musty wind the fans generated obliterated any kind of trail. 

“Come on,” said Angel. “We can use the ladder we passed in the main tunnel.”

They ran back out into it, where Angel flung out an arm to stop Buffy and Julia from blindly charging straight into a group of three vampires. As he watched, a fourth dropped down through the manhole they’d been counting on using. 

Buffy’s hand disappeared inside her bag and reemerged with a fistful of glow sticks. She threw them in an arc, effectively illuminating the tunnel. Julia screamed. Buffy and Angel both moved in front of her. 

Angel saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned. Three more vampires were closing in behind them. Unlike the ones in front, they were fully suited up in armor. “We’ve got more company.”

The fight in the tunnel was cramped and chaotic. The goal wasn’t to dust all seven vamps, especially when they had no way of knowing if reinforcements were coming, it was just to clear enough of a path to get Julia out. Buffy landed a few blows and succeeded in staking one of the four in front before Angel was dragged backwards into the branch tunnel by the armored vampires and couldn’t see what was happening with her anymore. All he could hear was Julia screaming.

He thought he’d recognized at least two of the vampires around the corner, and he was sure the ones focused on him weren’t just any trio of vampires; they had to be The Three. He couldn’t let them get in close and tried to create as much distance as possible with kicks. One of them lunged at him with a sword. He used the broken manacles Buffy had left on the floor to disarm him.

Julia’s continuous screams suddenly cut off. Fear flooded through Angel as he simultaneously fended off the two still armed. He parried a slashing strike, only for that sword’s wielder to spin past him, having dropped the sword into the waiting hand of the one he’d disarmed, who turned the slash into a jab, running Angel through. Angel’s retaliation left him without his right hand, but the third one impaled Angel too. He couldn’t even yell; they’d punctured his lungs, so the only sound that came out was a bloody hiss of air. He swung again, but his movements were clumsy, and he was swiftly disarmed. He braced for a decapitating blow. The only one that came was a kick to the chest from an armored boot. With two swords still sticking out of him, he flew through the air, back into the main tunnel, and crashed against the wall.

The sight in front of him turned fear to despair. There was no sign of Julia or two of the remaining three vampires anywhere. It was only Buffy and the large one Angel recognized as Luke. The pair were eerily underlit by the glow sticks, and Luke had Buffy by the throat. Angel wrenched the sword he could easily reach free and tried to stand up. Before he could summon the strength, Luke made eye contact with him, grinned, and twisted sharply with both hands.

†

New York City, Nine Days Earlier

Angel knew someone was in his apartment before he entered it. Someone without a heartbeat. His open cases didn’t have anything to do with vampires, but immortality and the ability to hold a grudge indefinitely tended to go hand in hand. He rarely went longer than a year without being confronted by some surviving minion or ally of one of the powerful vampires he’d helped eliminate decades ago, and he’d made plenty more enemies since then. 

Still, if that’s what this was, it already wasn’t much of an ambush. Sword at the ready, he opened the door (undamaged but no longer locked) and stepped inside. 

A tall, slender woman stood in his living room, her back to him. She wore a blue and white sundress that flowed to her knees, and three small daisies adorned the spot in her jet black hair where the loose, low bun met the back of her head. Her hand trailed along the frame of an old photograph hanging on the wall—one of the few that didn’t include her.

A broad smile spread over Angel’s face at the sight of her and he dropped the sword into the umbrella vase. “Drusilla!” 

She turned around and beamed. “There you are! I’ve been waiting.” In a movement that combined the unabashed enthusiasm of a child and the grace of a dancer, she darted across the room and launched herself into his open arms, hugging him with all her inhuman strength. Her scent carried the characteristic hint of death all vampires shared, but it was barely detectable beneath the smells of wildflowers and fresh air. 

“This is a surprise,” he said, savoring the embrace. It hadn’t always been so easy to accept warmth and affection from Drusilla, particularly in the early years when her sanity was still hopelessly fractured, but her sweet soul had won out against everything in the end, even his crippling guilt. “Did you and Spike decide to have your next wedding a year early? I keep hearing about this Y2K thing.” 

“Please, Liam,” she said with a merry laugh, “we work far too hard to let the world end because of a simple number on a calendar. The ceremony will be next summer, right on schedule. I’m thinking of having it in Prague this time, and it’s going to be lovely.” Spike and Drusilla had celebrated the turn of each decade since the ‘50s with a wedding, always in a new country with a wildly different theme, colors, and decorations. Apart from the bride and groom, the only things that remained constant from one wedding to the next were that Angel gave her away and Penn was best man. “But that’s not why I’m here.” She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “We need to talk about the Slayer.”

Angel’s smile dropped and he turned away, his happiness at her presence souring. “The Council put you up to this? I’m not going back. They know that and so do you.”

“Forget the Council,” she said. “My vision wasn’t about them. As far as they know, I’m on my way to visit Penn in Cleveland.”

He faced her again with a wary eye. “So there’s finally a new one. How long’s it been this time? Almost thirty years?” He’d started to think Lena Brzezicka might be the last Slayer the world would ever see. There had never been a gap this long.

“Closer to twenty-seven. The current Slayer was called nearly three years ago now.” 

Angel blinked. Nobody had told him? Though now he thought about it, the Slayer line sputtering back to life might account for the reprieve he’d had from the Council’s relentless pestering lately.

“She’s a tiny blonde thing from California,” Drusilla went on, “and she’s never set foot in the Academy.”

“They missed her?” said Angel, frowning. That was odd. The accepted wisdom since long before the forcible enlistment of himself and his progeny was that the best way to ensure a new Slayer quickly succeeded the last was by putting every single girl with the potential through rigorous physical and mental training in an environment thick with mystical energy. The Council brought them to London from all over the world under the pretense of being awarded a prestigious scholarship, all expenses paid and with stipends sent to their families. Only a handful had ever actually received the increasingly elusive calling, upon which they were typically posted to a Hellmouth or some other hotbed of demonic activity. The majority who didn’t, once they were deemed to have aged out of eligibility, returned home well prepared to find success in whatever careers they chose. Plenty became Watchers themselves or found other ways to remain involved in the fight against supernatural threats. They were free to make those choices.

Drusilla nodded. “They only detected her after she was called. Her first year was rough, but she managed to take down Lothos even with minimal formal training.”

“Lothos? What the hell was the Council playing at, sending a green Slayer after someone that powerful? Why didn’t they send you and Spike?”

“They would have done, but we had our hands full in Edinburgh. By the time we could leave, Lothos was ashes.”

“Impressive,” said Angel.

“Merrick was her Watcher then. The plan was for him to bring her to the Academy as soon as possible, but Lothos killed him. His replacement insisted on relocating her directly to the Sunnydale Hellmouth.”

“Why not just carry out the original plan?”

“Because he refuses to take the girl away from her home, at least before she completes high school, and the Council knows if they sack him for insubordination, they’ll lose Penn, William, and me along with him.”

There was only one person who had that kind of leverage. “Edward Giles?” said Angel. 

“Eddy retired years ago,” said Drusilla, waving a hand, “but you’re close. It’s his son.” 

“Rupert?” Angel did some mental math and was startled to realize how much time had passed since he and Penn dragged the curly-haired lad out of a den of drugs and dark magic in Liverpool. It was the least they would’ve done for any member of the Giles family, but he hadn’t appreciated their meddling in his life. 

“Yes, he’s quite grown up now, much to William’s chagrin. The band still hasn’t found a vocalist on Rupert’s level, and now the others are talking about retiring.”

“I’m surprised he went back.” The Rupert Giles Angel remembered had heartily shared his determination never to be under the Council’s thumb.

“He believes in the cause enough to set aside his reservations towards the organization, and he’s not shy about pushing back against their nonsense from within. He’s not alone in that.” Anyone else would’ve said those words in judgment; Drusilla’s expression and tone betrayed only that she missed seeing Angel every day. 

Angel missed that too. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Damn it. Fine. Tell me about your vision.”

She pulled him over to the leather sofa and they sat down. Her face was bleak. “I saw the end of the Slayer,” she said, her hands trembling as they gripped his. “We all feared Lena was the last and we were wrong, but we weren’t far off. If you don’t go to Sunnydale, the line will end with Buffy Summers.”

“If I don’t go?” he said, bewildered. “But the line’s been losing power for centuries. What can I do that hasn’t already been tried?”

She shook her head. “I fear that’s a question only you can answer.”

†

Sunnydale

Rupert took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Buffy’s recent patrol reports suggested a worrying uptick in the vampire population, the majority of whom didn’t seem to be local. As much as she joked that maybe she would come full circle before graduation, with one vampire overlord in freshman year, one in senior year, Rupert was beginning to suspect that might indeed be the case. They needed more information.

“Are you coming up?” 

He glanced around at Jenny, who stood at the top of the stairs in her very American overnight ensemble of tank top and pajama shorts, yet not looking out of place at all. Strange, how quickly one could grow accustomed to sharing one’s home, even after so long as a bachelor. Her lease had ended at the start of the year, and moving in together seemed the most sensible thing to do. He didn’t even mind that there was now a computer desk under the stairs, but they would probably need to look for a bigger space.

“In a moment,” he said. “I’m about to put the kettle on. Would you like me to bring you a cup?”

“As long as you come with it,” she said with a tired (but nevertheless saucy) smirk that put a silly grin on his face.

He’d barely set the kettle on the stove when there was a knock at the door. He frowned and checked the clock. Past midnight. Buffy didn’t normally drop by his apartment unless it absolutely couldn’t wait, but who else could it be? 

He opened the door, mouth already halfway forming his charge’s name, and froze. It wasn’t Buffy on his doorstep, but someone he hadn’t seen since ’75. No matter how dramatically the hair and clothing had changed, Rupert would never forget that face.

“Angel.” 

“Rupert.”

The vampire would’ve received a wedding invitation in the post a week or two ago, but judging from his expression, he hadn’t come to RSVP in person. This did not bode well. 

†

Gilroy, California

It would have been easy to mistake the man striding through the vineyard as its rightful owner. He had an unmistakable air of nobility—tall, gaunt, and pale, with receding but carefully groomed black hair just beginning to gray at the temples, a pointed goatee, and a precisely tailored three-piece suit. His only accessory was a gold signet ring engraved with the symbol of a blinded eye. His own ice-blue eyes were set off by the beginnings of crow’s feet and hinted at a ruthless intellect. 

Three burly vampires dressed in armor stepped aside for him with heads lowered when he reached the door to the wine cellar. Inside, amid a few leftover casks and plenty of rubble, half a dozen more vampires were hard at work with pickaxes, shovels, and jackhammers, supervised by one as large as the armored guards outside. They had completely destroyed the floor separating the main level from the lower cellar and were expanding outward. One of the workers went past with a wheelbarrow full of broken rock, and the supervisor turned to face the newcomer. He, too, inclined his head, though much more shallowly than the guards had done. “Edmund,” he said. “My brother.”

“Luke,” said Edmund. “What is your progress?” His accent spoke of a very expensive English education. “The other half of the operation moves forward tomorrow. Everything is prepared.”

“So far we have mined nothing but a dozen tons of stone and dust,” said Luke. “Are you certain—”

“Completely,” said Edmund, walking past him and surveying their work. “The guardian woman died protecting this place for a reason. It is here. We dig on.”

Just then, sparks flew from one of the jackhammers down below and a large chunk of stone crashed to the ground. When the dust cleared, a satisfied smile spread over Edmund’s face. “At last,” he said. There, in the newly made crevice, gleamed a stripe of crimson and silver metal.

†

Sunnydale

“Come on, Buffy, don’t you want to dance?” said Willow. “You wouldn’t be by yourself; Oz is on stage so you can dance with me!”

Buffy gave her a halfhearted smile. 

“Is it about Scott?” Willow asked. “‘Cause, if it is, we don’t have to stay. We could go get ice cream?”

“It’s not about Scott. Not…specifically.” The only difference between Buffy’s third failed relationship at Sunnydale High and the first two was that she hadn’t done the dumping this time. Owen had quickly turned out to be too much of a danger junkie for his own health and his recklessness nearly blew their big plan to take down Sunnydale’s evil, immortal, aspiring giant demon of a mayor. Ben was sort of the opposite and couldn’t accept the danger she had to be in on a nightly basis. Scott was sweet and fun in sort of a dorky way and spending time with him could be a nice reprieve from her responsibilities, but he wanted someone normal. 

Buffy couldn’t exactly argue. Everyone else was buzzing about what they were going to do after high school. By contrast, all she could look forward to was getting whisked away to London (where she’d be surrounded by hundreds of girls who probably already hated her for getting the sacred calling they’d trained their whole lives for and she’d done nothing to earn) so that the Council could make up for the early training she never got (as if the hours she spent studying and sparring with Giles every week and all the baddies she’d defeated meant nothing) before sending her wherever on the planet the danger was greatest (to fight until it killed her). 

She glanced over at the dance floor. Xander and Cordy, Jesse and Amy, Oz playing the latest song he’d written for Willow. Dozens of their other classmates happily dancing together. Normal. “I should go patrol,” she said, sliding off the tall stool. She didn’t even feel jealous tonight, only resigned and tired. 

“Patrol?” said Willow. “But it’s Saturday night! Your night off!”

“If only all the new vamps in town got that memo,” said Buffy. “We still don’t know what their deal is, so nights off are officially on hold. Don’t worry about me, though. Enjoy the Dingoes’ new set.” She left before Willow could protest. 

Barely a street away from the Bronze, she felt the telltale prickle on the back of her neck of eyes watching her. Good. She wouldn’t have wanted to bail on her friends for nothing. She didn’t change her pace, but noted where there were people on the sidewalk and headed somewhere more deserted, hoping to lure the danger away from civilians. 

It worked. When she drew level with an alley between a pair of warehouses, two vampires loomed out of the shadows. Between the incredibly ‘80s look of one and the general grease and grime of the other, she’d have been able to clock them even without the fangs on display. 

“Slayer,” hissed the greaseball. 

“Oh so you already know this isn’t going to go well for you,” said Buffy. “Good thing I never needed the element of surprise.” She feinted towards DeBarge. He fell for it and dodged straight into her left haymaker. While he was still staggering from that, she closed in with the stake. 

A scream cut through the night from the direction of the street, and Buffy risked a split-second of her focus to look around. A blonde girl in a Kent Prep uniform and with bangs Cordelia would’ve called “tragic” was standing there, hands clapped over her mouth. She wasn’t being attacked so the scream must just have been from seeing DeBarge turn to dust. 

“Get out of here!” Buffy shouted at her, spinning back around to deal with Greaseball and finding him ready to pounce. She caught him under the arm and used his own momentum to send him flying into the side of the warehouse. He was easy to finish off after that.

The sensation of being watched did not vanish with Greaseball, and it wasn’t coming from the blonde girl, who had evidently followed Buffy’s advice and skedaddled. Stake in hand, Buffy looked up in time to watch a third vampire drop from the roof of the warehouse on the south side of the alley. He was tall and lean with his hair gelled up, shrouded in a long black wool duster. His yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness. He was nothing like the fashion disaster or the walking biohazard she had already dispatched, but his timing suggested they were all in the same crew. 

“Show me what you’ve got,” he said, a hint of a growl to his voice and maybe an Irish accent, though the fangs made it hard to be sure.

“My pleasure,” she replied. 

It became clear within about two seconds that this vampire knew how to handle himself in a fight. Most of them, even when they had combat experience, were overconfident from years of only pitting themselves against regular-Joe victims. Not this one. Buffy struggled to land any significant blows on him as he dodged and spun out of reach, but she wasn’t letting him land his either, deflecting and evading. Before long, the battle began to feel more like a dance. It was oddly exhilarating, but she shouldn’t get swept up in it in case there were more coming. A distant scraping on the pavement told her he could be seconds away from having reinforcements, unless the blonde girl hadn’t actually fled. 

Tall, Dark, and Overcoat managed to get past Buffy from behind, and he clamped a forearm across her throat and shoulders. They were close enough to the north building that she was able to run up the corrugated siding and flip over him, breaking his grip. Once she was back on solid ground, she lunged with the stake, but he dodged yet again, caught her wrist, and pulled her around. Her stomach dropped in horror; however, he only redirected the stake straight into the chest of a fourth vampire who had just come charging up. 

Astonishment at the sight of dust falling through air turned into suspicion about the identity of her opponent. Buffy twisted free, dropped low, and swept her leg out. He failed to dodge this time and she knocked both feet out from under him. Before he could roll or jump back up, she pinned him down. There had been an opening or two for him to press the attack and he hadn’t. Maybe it was an elaborate trick, but Buffy didn’t think so. She took a chance, flipped the stake with a flourish, and tapped the blunt end against his chest, right over his heart. “I win,” she said.

He grinned and held his hands up in surrender. “Nicely done.” The fangs and eyebrow ridges melted into human features. Gorgeous human features. And she could really feel the muscles of his torso from her current position of…straddling him. Gulp. She jumped back up, hoping he wouldn’t notice the heat flooding into her cheeks. 

“Well, that was more fun than sparring with Giles in training pads,” she said as he got back to his feet. The height difference between them became even more apparent now that neither of them was crouched in a combat stance. 

“There was another one on the roof when I got here,” he said. “I think he had something in his hand that didn’t disintegrate with him.” In two quick bounds, he went from the ground to the dumpster to vaulting over the side of the building.

“Anything that could point to who these guys are would be a plus,” said Buffy, and rather than waiting for him to return with the unknown item, she copied him, somehow making twice as much noise even though he had to be double her weight. He was waiting at the edge of the roof with a hand outstretched. “Thanks for taking out two of the four,” she said, placing her hand in his. “I haven’t fought this many all at once since I was in L.A.” 

He shrugged, handsomely. “Figured I’d save you the trouble, Miss Summers.” 

“Buffy,” she said. She caught herself leaning closer and hastily snatched her hand back. Together, they began searching amid the random construction materials cluttering the roof. “And as to who you are,” she said, trying to sound cool, “I met Penn last year when things got hairy with Ethan Rayne and Eyghon, and I’m pretty sure Spike and Drusilla live in London. That just leaves the one that got away, so…it’s nice to meet you, Angel.”

“You’ve done your homework,” he said, pausing in his search to look at her. It really should not be legal to be that good-looking. The penetrating eyes, the mysterious smirk, and those broad shoulders. Buffy made a conscious effort to breathe normally. 

His words took a second or two to make it past the hot guy panic fogging her brain. When they did, she snorted, thinking of the Council training packet waiting for her that was about twice the size of her pile of actual school assignments. “You have no idea how much homework I’ve been doing, but actually one of the first lessons you get as the Chosen One is which four vampires make up the Do Not Stake list.” 

“I’m touched they left me on it after all this time.” 

“Still, it might be more useful if they updated it with photos, especially if that’s how you always introduce yourself to the Slayer.” 

Angel laughed. “Touché.” 

Buffy was pleased with her ability to get multiple coherent sentences out and even participate in some quality banter, but it didn’t make her feel any less ridiculous. Penn hadn’t exactly been hard on the eyes but working with him had never been this distracting. Was it just because she was currently single? It would be okay and not very crazy if she rebounded with a vampire, right? 

Angel toed aside a torn piece of industrial packaging paper. “There.” He bent and retrieved something. In the dim light, Buffy could make out a syringe full of yellowish liquid. The sight of it gave her the creeps. Four vampires, and they’d been planning to stick her with that thing even while knowing she was the Slayer. This hadn’t been random, it had been a trap. Angel held the syringe to his nose and sniffed. 

“Anything?” she asked.

“I’m better with blood trails than chemical compounds,” he said. 

“My Watcher should be able to analyze it. Or possibly Willow, my science nerd friend.” Angel nodded, and she side-eyed him. “How did you know where to find me, anyway?”

 “Rupert said I might be able to catch you at the local club in the evening, since you usually have Saturday nights free. Then I saw those pieces of sh—uh, vampires heading for the alley.”

The sound of Giles’s first name in a voice other than Ms. Calendar’s was just as weird now as when Penn said it, but Buffy shook that off, along with her amusement that Angel didn’t want to swear in front of her. “You made contact with Giles? Aren’t you worried he’ll tell the Council and they’ll try to assign you a Watcher of your very own?” Penn and his Watcher had certainly been a package deal, and she assumed the same was true for Spike and Drusilla—or was the couple on a two-for-one special?

“They’ve been sending Watchers to try to reel me back in for about half a century.” He tucked the syringe carefully inside his coat pocket. Lacking large enough pockets herself and not especially keen to touch the thing, Buffy made no objection. “I should get this to him in case it’s something that breaks down fast.” He took a step towards the edge of the roof.

“Wait!” she said. “Aren’t you going to tell me why you’re in Sunnydale?”

His smirk was back, and with it, her breathing difficulties. “That depends. Do you mind having company on your next patrol?”

She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, hoping it sufficiently masked how eager she was to see him again. “I’ll be starting at Restfield an hour after sundown.”

“Restfield it is,” he said, stepping backwards off the roof and vanishing. 

“Oh boy,” she said into the night.

†

The blonde in the Kent Prep uniform was furious. Furious and terrified. Tonight had been a disaster. He was here; Thomas, Colin, Aleck, and Samuel were dead; and the Slayer still walked free. Her own escape had been a narrow one. A simple change in the direction of the wind could have led to her joining the others in dust. Luckily she’d been able to smell Angel approaching and make herself scarce just in time. 

Now it fell to her to warn the others. If only Samuel hadn’t been so stupid as to rush in when the plan had already fallen apart; she could’ve foisted the unpleasant task onto him.

†

Angel doubted the compound in the syringe was actually so at risk of degrading that it needed to be analyzed immediately, but that had been the best excuse he could wring out of his dazed brain to put some distance between himself and Buffy Summers. 

He was here to prevent the extinction of the Slayer line. He hadn’t the faintest idea how he was supposed to do that but it probably involved staying professional, and in that case, he was already failing. Surprising her on her patrol had seemed like such an efficient way to take an accurate measure of her as a fighter, and it had worked perfectly in that regard, but he found himself wishing he’d asked Rupert to simply introduce them anyway. None of the other Slayers Angel had worked with had affected him like this. Maybe outside of the heat of combat he wouldn’t have found himself so captivated by her beauty, her ingenuity, her wit.

He had to put it out of his mind, as if a pair of large green eyes and a mischievous smile weren’t already etched there, demanding to be captured with charcoals. He hadn’t exactly lived like a monk since being cursed with his soul, and certainly not since being freed from the Council’s control, but he was far from the idiot boy chasing every girl in Galway who smiled his way. He could focus. After making contact with Rupert, he’d spent the previous night familiarizing himself with the town, and there was a lot more of that he still needed to do. The seedy bar that welcomed non-human patrons seemed like a good place to start tonight.

He rounded the last corner to the street where he’d left the Plymouth and swore. If he’d been paying better attention to his surroundings, he might’ve noticed there was someone waiting near the car early enough to double back without being spotted.

“Angel!” said the man. He was tall and lanky, wore wire-rimmed glasses, and was somewhere in his late twenties. Not a hair on his head was out of place and his suit might as well have been made of starch. “Excellent. My name is Wesley Wyndam-Price, and the Council has assigned me to be your new Watcher.” His accent was as crisp as his suit.

“Beat it,” said Angel, shouldering past him. “The Council knows damn well I don’t take their orders.” He popped the hood of the Plymouth and peered into every corner. It was technically possible that Rupert had ratted him out to London, but that left an extremely tight timeframe for the Council to deploy the starched suit all the way to California, and it didn’t explain his presence right next to the car. More likely, they were keeping tabs on him with a spell, and that meant it had an anchor.

“Is, erm, is there something wrong with your vehicle?”

Nothing inside but engine parts. Angel dropped the hood shut. “How long have you people been tracking me?” 

“Tracking?” The word came out with an unconvincing tremor.

Angel shot the Watcher a glare on his way to give the trunk the same inspection. He hadn’t caught it before, but there was the faintest whiff of a foreign scent inside it. He felt along the seam just beneath the lid. Nearly at the right corner, his fingers met something metallic. He pulled a small, silver coin free—a Romanian leu that resonated with subtle spellwork. He flicked it towards the Watcher, who gave a yelp but managed to catch it after some slight fumbling. 

“Ah.” The Watcher pocketed the coin and straightened his glasses and posture. “Yes, well. I haven’t been briefed on all the particulars, but I shouldn’t think it would be a surprise that an organization called the Watchers Council likes to keep eyes and ears on an asset.”

“Former asset,” said Angel, stalking towards him. 

The Watcher’s Adam's apple bobbed but he stood his ground. “The night after you receive an unannounced visit from Drusilla and with cases outstanding at your private investigation office, you set off on a forty-hour drive, barely slowing down to drop her off in Cleveland. That can only mean she came to you about a vision, and since you’ve come here, the subject was either the Hellmouth or the Slayer. Both fall directly under the purview of the Council.”

Angel raised a sardonic eyebrow. “You know, about two dozen Watchers have come along over the years, trying to sell me on the benefits of going back to work for them. There’s nothing you can say to me that I haven’t already heard.”

The Watcher looked affronted. “If there is a threat here urgent enough that you felt compelled to act on it, then the Council must act too!”

“So act on it. Town’s big enough for both of us.” Angel jerked the driver’s door open and climbed in. 

“I’ve secured accommodations that should be ideal for your work in Sunnydale!” said the Watcher, the posh bluster evaporating at the imminent threat of his quarry driving away. “With my name on the lease, you won’t be disturbed by unwanted vampire guests. There’s space for training and research, and a basement with only north-facing windows, complete with a small refrigerator freshly stocked with blood from the local butcher.”

That gave Angel enough pause not to peel out. Considering the stakes of his mission, he might be willing to tolerate the Watcher’s presence. For now. The alternative would probably involve at least one more day of parking under a bridge and sleeping in the trunk until sundown. “Does your fancy headquarters come with somewhere to analyze this?” He pulled out the syringe. “A gang of vamps tried to stick the Slayer with it about ten minutes ago. I was on my way to take it to Rupert Giles.”

The Watcher took it, frowning. “If the equipment I brought along isn’t enough, I can get access to the labs at the university, and Mr. Giles would, of course, be an excellent resource as well.”

Angel nodded, sure he was going to regret this. “Get in.”

†

Edmund navigated his way through the twists and turns of the sewer and electrical tunnels beneath Sunnydale with ease, nothing but the soles of his calfskin leather shoes showing the slightest contamination from where he walked. He made a last turn into a rounded storm drain tunnel that had never been repaired after sustaining damage from an earthquake decades ago, and descended into the remains of a buried chapel. It was still recognizable as one despite having taken on a few qualities of a cave. Several vampires were in the process of gleefully defiling it, smashing pews and painting over holy symbols with demonic ones. The two nearest the entrance had a human victim with them, already drained beyond the point of struggle. 

Edmund walked past them, eyes trained on the figure sitting on a thronelike chair at the center of the chamber. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and knelt on it, drawing a scoff from one of the onlookers, though it was hastily stifled. 

“Master,” he said, bowing his head. 

“Edmund,” said the Master. He gestured lazily with a hand, and Edmund stood. “Report.”

“I’ve found it at last,” said Edmund. “My divinations were correct; its hiding place is barely fifty miles from here.”

The Master bared his fangs in a triumphant grin. “You have done well, my child, as always.” 

“The defenses on it are powerful, but they will not stop me for long. It will be mere days before I place it in your hands, weeks at most.”

“We’ve waited three and a half centuries for this,” said the Master. “What’s a few more weeks to see the destruction of our greatest enemy?”

“It might not be so easy,” said a woman’s voice. Edmund did not need to turn around to place it.

“Darla! How lovely of you to join us. Your talent for bringing our Master ill tidings is truly unparalleled.”

He could feel her wishing him a gruesome death without even looking at her. She drew level with him and made the same supplicating bow before the Master, who gave no indication that she could rise, his expression tightening with disapproval. “I see you have returned alone and empty-handed. No Slayer to lay at my feet. Not even a fresh victim to save me the trouble of hunting. And where are Thomas and the rest?”

“Forgive me, Master. I came straight here to report to you. The others were killed by the Slayer and…,” she failed to conceal a wince, “and Angel.”

The Master was on his feet and moving towards Darla almost too quickly to comprehend. In a second, he had her pinned against a pillar by the throat. All other movement in the chamber utterly ceased. 

“Angel,” he hissed. “Your proud stallion. I have allowed that poisoned branch to remain in my family tree for too long, and now it threatens everything we have worked towards. Tell me, Edmund, do you know of some magic that would help me prune it? Perhaps a ritual to bind Darla’s descendants to her, so that if I decide to tear her heart from her chest, they will cease to trouble me as well.” His free hand hovered an inch to the left of Darla’s sternum.

Edmund kept the glee in his voice to a minimum. “It’s possible the one meant for the Slayer and her potential successors could be adjusted for them. I will gladly look into it.”

“Please, Master,” said Darla, her voice a rasp. “I want them gone as much as you do, and I want the Watchers to suffer for turning them against us.”

“Then prove it,” he snarled, flinging her to the ground. There were hisses, jeers, and cackles from the surrounding rabble. Edmund contented himself with a smirk. The Master cast a sweeping look at all of them. “My children! Nothing will stand in the way of our triumph. The Slayer’s days are numbered. The four traitors’ days are numbered. Only one was foolish enough to come here but we will find the other three. When they have all fallen and no righteous warriors remain, the Hellmouth will be mine for the taking, and what will the Watchers be able to do but watch their world end?”

†

On Sunday, the Summers residence was invaded by Willow, Amy, a pan of Amy’s fresh brownies, and Willow’s tapes of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility that she had carefully recorded without commercials back in freshman year. The original purpose of the girly watch party was to distract Buffy from breakup misery, but that purpose was swiftly abandoned when Willow and Amy found their friend distinctly misery-free.

“How accurate was the description from that Watcher diary we read when Penn was here?” said Willow. “Remember? The one that called him ‘the one with the angelic face’?”

Buffy fought a giggle and lost. 

“Pretty accurate, then,” said Amy. “I wish he’d caught up to you while you were still at the Bronze, so we could see him too.”

“Ooh!” said Willow brightly, “This is a chance for you to use all that stuff you remember about being an 18th century noblewoman from your costume!”

“Sure,” said Buffy. “I possess all the qualities of an accomplished lady. I can curtsey and embroider handkerchiefs better than any of the 20th century girls.” She puffed out her cheeks. “Does that count as a good thing to come out of Ethan’s reign of terror?”

“You mean Jesse and Xander switching into army guy code talk all the time doesn’t?” said Amy in a very flat tone.

“Would you be able to dance like that with Angel?” said Willow, gesturing at the TV, on which they’d made it to the Netherfield ball scene. They would probably need the next tape soon.

“I bet he knows how,” said Amy dreamily.

“I bet you’re right. You should’ve seen how he handed me up onto the rooftop,” said Buffy. “Serious Mr. Darcy qualities there.” 

“Does he have the accent too?” said Amy.

“He wouldn’t have a Mr. Darcy accent,” said Willow. “Isn’t Angel from Ireland?” 

“I wasn’t sure until he pulled back the fangs, but yeah, definitely Irish,” said Buffy. 

“Wow. How long can a person keep their original accent if they spend hundreds of years traveling all around the world?” Willow wondered aloud.

Buffy scrunched up her nose, trying to remember his voice exactly. “There’s maybe a little of something else in there too, like, east coast-y?”

“Very specific,” Amy snickered.

“Hey, I’m not an accents expert.” said Buffy. “Can we overanalyze different details, please?” She watched Mr. Darcy dancing with Elizabeth, thinking that between Angel and Colin Firth, she might’ve failed to give brown eyes their due before now.

“If Penn and Angel have both shown up in Sunnydale, do you think we’ll ever meet Spike and Drusilla?” said Amy. “Their story is so romantic.”

“Ugh, I know!” said Willow. “The way he stayed by her side all through those early years while she regained her sanity?”

“I’m pretty sure we don’t want them to have a reason to show up in Sunnydale,” said Buffy, though so far, she couldn’t say she was sorry Angel decided to come. She looked out at the sunny day and lamented that so many hours still stood between her and the beginning of patrol.

†

Angel was holding firm to his anti-Council sentiments but had to admit that this Watcher was doing far more to win him over than his predecessors had. The location he’d secured for them was a downtown shop that had sat vacant for a year, ever since the mysterious death of its previous owner. The basement stockroom made ideal sleeping quarters for a vampire. The Watcher had set up a cot for himself in the back room upstairs, and he’d filled some of the empty shelves with his research materials. 

When Angel emerged onto the main sales floor in the evening, he found the Watcher hunched over a microscope and surrounded by a lot of lab equipment that hadn’t been there before dawn. He glanced at a notebook lying on the counter. The Watcher had written a list of possible compounds and crossed a few off.

“Still narrowing it down?”

The Watcher jumped. “What?” he said. “Oh, yes. I’ve ruled out a few of the common poisons so far, both mystical and mundane, but there’s quite a long way to go.”

“You’re assuming the intent was to kill, not capture?” said Angel. 

“Good point,” said the Watcher, grabbing the notebook and scribbling away madly. He went on to describe his plans for additional tests, some of which would require the use of lab rats. Angel left him to it as soon as he began hinting at how effective of a team they would make when they finished their work in Sunnydale. 

Buffy Summers was already at Restfield when Angel arrived for their rendez-vous. Even though he only breathed recreationally, his breath managed to catch at the sight of her. Half of her hair was gathered into a jeweled pin at the back of her head, with the rest cascading softly against the collar of a long coat the color of raspberries. No, charcoals would never do her justice; he’d have to brush up on his watercolors. She stood in front of a fresh grave, stake in hand.

“That one’s quiet,” Angel said. She turned to face him. “If he was going to rise, I’d be able to hear him scratching at the coffin lid by now.”

“Handy skill,” she said. Her tone was casual but her heart rate had shot up as soon as he spoke, and her eyes sparkled on finding his. He was lucky she kept talking, because he seemed to have forgotten how. “Giles gave me three to check out tonight. Just once, I’d like all the new graves to be right next to each other, but at least Shady Hill and Sunnydale Cemetery aren’t that far.”

“Let me carry that for you,” he said, picking up the duffel bag of weapons and supplies she’d left at the base of the headstone and slinging it over his shoulder. 

“Thanks,” she said, pink flaring across her cheeks. They walked towards the east gate side-by-side, him half a step behind. 

“You were right about the Council being quick to find me,” he said.

“What?! But I was kidding! Giles doesn’t even like the Council!”

“I’m glad to hear it, but it wasn’t him. I found an anchor to a tracking spell in my car.”

“Oh,” said Buffy, looking relieved. Then she grimaced. “That’s…not really better.”

“The Watcher they sent seems harmless, at least. Pompous and stubborn, though. I hope you don’t mind that I gave him the syringe to keep him busy.”

“Whatever it takes,” she said. They crossed the street and turned right. “It’s a couple more blocks.” She glanced at him. “So, when do I get to know why you’re in town?”

“That’s the thing; I’m not quite sure why, myself. Drusilla doesn’t tend to get a lot of detail in her visions, but when she tells me it’s important for me to be somewhere, I listen.”

Buffy shivered. “I figured it had to be something big to pull you back into the game.” For a moment, the bright, playful attitude wavered and he saw a frightened girl struggling to hold onto any last shred of control over her own life and future. His heart went out to her. This fight was his penance. It could never make up for what he’d done, but protecting innocents from what he used to be at least made it possible to live with himself. She, on the other hand, had been caught up in it by a whim of fate. She hadn’t even been raised to expect this life like the rest of the girls. “I hope coming here didn’t ruin any plans you had.”

“I know a telepath in Queens and he was happy to take over my open cases.”

“Open…cases?”

“One looked like a pretty standard haunting in Brooklyn. Another is to do with a turf war between a demon gang and the Russian mob. Could get dicey. There’ve also been sightings of what might turn out to be the Jersey Devil. I’m sorry I won’t be there to solve that one; it sounds exciting.”

“Wait,” said Buffy, stopping in her tracks and staring at him. “You mean you’ve still been fighting demons this whole time?”

Angel nodded.

“But you…you got out! And you’re immortal! Other than going sunbathing, you could’ve done anything you wanted to do!”

He chuckled. “I tried that at first. Lasted about five months.”

“What happened?”

He tilted his head, pondering his reply. “If your Watcher didn’t give you those lists of graves to check,” he said, “would you be able to sleep easy, knowing what you know?” He raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t last night supposed to be your night off?”

She said nothing, but she was clearly stunned. He smiled. “I turned my back on the Council, not on the fight.” He looked past her down the sidewalk. “Is that Shady Hill?”

†

The Shady Hill grave did contain a vampire, and said vampire was not smart enough to try her luck with staying put and rising another night. Buffy happily dispatched her the moment her torso was out of the ground far enough for the stake. 

At Sunnydale Cemetery, someone was already waiting at the target grave, holding flowers and doing a terrible job of looking like an ordinary mourner. 

“If you’re here for the funeral, I think it finished a few hours before sundown,” said Buffy, approaching from the front while Angel silently crept around from the other side of a mausoleum. The bouquet-wielding vampire snarled and moved towards her, tossing the flowers aside. Angel materialized out of the darkness and seized him by the shoulders, giving Buffy an opportunity for another tidy staking. As his ashes drifted to the ground, the new fledgling’s hand punched through the soil of his grave. Angel did the honors this time, grabbing the hand, hauling the vampire up, and staking him.

“I’d say the Whac-A-Mole portion of the evening was a rousing success,” said Buffy. 

“What’s the next portion?” said Angel. 

“Checking out a few demon hideout type places for a while to see if anything’s brewing. I was thinking of hitting up Willy the Snitch for intel.”

They headed back towards the heart of town without incident. When they slipped inside Willy’s bar, the proprietor seemed less unhappy to see Buffy than usual. 

“Must be my lucky day,” he said. “A visit from the Slayer, along with my newest patron. You two working together?”

The bar was mostly empty and emptied further at his words. 

“We might be,” said Buffy, pleased at the implication that Angel had already done enough recon to have found this place. 

“You gonna buy any drinks this time?” said Willy. “A lot of the new vamps in town are stingy S.O.B.s and I could use the business.”

“Got any Diet Coke?” said Buffy. Willy’s hopeful expression wilted a little, no doubt because of the $4 gulf between soft and hard drinks. 

“I’ll take pig’s blood if you have it,” said Angel. “Along with anything you can tell us about the stingy S.O.B.s.”

“I don’t know a lot, I’m afraid,” said Willy, reaching under the bar and coming back up with a jug of very dark liquid, a bottle of Diet Coke, and an empty glass. “I’ve seen a few big bruisers, a pretty little blonde lady, and one guy who looks like he could be a professor. Even the biggest guys seemed scared of that one. Haven’t caught any names yet, and they wouldn’t say anything within earshot of me but if they weren’t vampires I’d’a been sure they were in a cult.” He poured the blood and popped the top off the bottle. Angel passed him some cash before Buffy could reach for the pocket of the duffel where she’d stashed her purse. If he was going to continue doing date-like things, she wasn’t going to object. They headed for a secluded booth.

“That description resemble any vampires you know?” said Buffy.

“Could be a lot of vampires I know,” said Angel. “Heavies, a brain, and a pretty face are the basic essentials for any vampire clan.”

Buffy snorted. “Great, so not only could they be anyone, but all they sent last night were the grunts. I’m feeling kinda insulted.” She frowned, thinking back to the fight. “Although, there was a blonde girl too. I thought she was a civilian but maybe she was one of them.”

“Did you get a good look at her?”

“Not really. Bangs and a boarding school uniform. My height. Actually we could probably raid each other’s closets.” Off his expression, she asked, “Does that somehow narrow it down?”

“It might,” said Angel, brow furrowed.

†

The Watcher was bustling around amidst yet more lab equipment when Angel returned to the shop. “Still no ID on the syringe?” 

“I believe I’ve identified one ingredient,” said the Watcher, clearly frustrated, “but I’m nowhere near the full picture. I’m hoping Mr. Giles will have more ideas.”

“Did you hook up the phones?” said Angel.

“Yes, of course.” The Watcher put his eye to the microscope while pointing at the unused cash register. Angel picked up the phone next to it. He barely had to think about the numbers as he punched them in. 

On the second ring, someone picked up. “Robson Professional Clock Repair. Our hours are—”

“Hey, Robson.” Angel interrupted. “Penn there?” He respected Penn’s Watcher as much as he did Spike and Dru’s, but he wasn’t interested in chatting.

“Ah. He just got in. I’ll get him for you.” 

“Thanks.”

After a few seconds of indistinct shuffling, a different voice got on. “Angel? What do you need?”

“I know it’s a long shot, but do you have a bead on Darla?”

“Sorry, man, last confirmed sighting was Brazil in ’92.”

“How about the rest of Aurelius?”

“You know we’d have called you in if there was any progress on arranging a family reunion. They’re so far under the radar some of the Council believe they might’ve been wiped out by another clan as far back as the ’20s.”

Angel grimaced. “As if we could be so lucky.”

“You think they might have their sights on the Sunnydale Hellmouth?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. I’ll call again if I get something concrete.”

“Likewise.”

†

Whenever the Master was this close to a target, no one more than two decades out of their grave was allowed to attract the attention of the Slayer, any of the turncoat vampires, or Watchers. Darla was the only exception, as she had enough history of traveling separately from the Master’s retinue not to draw scrutiny on her own, and it was foolish to entrust only the very young with scouting out the enemy’s movements. 

The first attempt on this Slayer had been sloppy, relying heavily on the assumption that she’d be alone. That wouldn’t happen again. The Master didn’t like the complication Angelus presented but Edmund was confident he could use that to their advantage, and, as he often did, the Master deferred to Edmund’s judgment. It made Darla’s blood boil every time, so it was fortunate that she didn’t have to stick around in the lair and witness more of it.

Locating Angelus was simple; any sire vampire could find her progeny without too much effort. Whenever he wasn’t holed up on the other side of an invitation barrier with a prissy-looking Watcher, he was with the Slayer, hunting his own kind. The more Darla observed them over the next few nights, the more secret glances she caught in both directions. Whenever they came in physical contact, they were slow to separate, and the Slayer would often blush and look down to hide her smile. Darla thought she’d seen every expression Angelus’s face was capable of making, but when he looked at the Slayer, she didn’t recognize him. 

Once upon a time, the very suggestion of him feeling anything for someone else would’ve made her explode with jealousy and immediately begin plotting revenge against both of them. She would’ve dismembered her rival with glee and demanded decades of groveling from him. After a century living in humiliation as the progenitor of four traitors, all she could muster was bitter revulsion. If only she’d staked the newly cursed Angelus in Romania the night he crawled back to her reeking of vermin and remorse. It wouldn’t have done anything about the Master favoring Edmund, but she wouldn’t have spent a quarter of her life so far as a pariah.

†

Every evening that week, Angel was there to meet Buffy for patrol. In the quiet hours between fights with vampires and demons, they swapped stories about past battles, and that turned into telling each other about their lives. Even amidst the continuous butterfly storm he set off in her stomach, when he was there, she felt lighter somehow. Ever since Merrick found her at Hemery, a knot of fear had lived behind her sternum like an ulcer, shooting icy lines down her limbs whenever danger closed in. She’d learned to live with it. It got easier the more dangers she defeated, and having Giles and friends who knew about her calling made it much better, but it never quite went away. 

Until now. Every time she went on patrol and found Angel waiting to join her, the knot loosened a little. She didn’t think it was as simple as having backup in a fight for a change, or fighting alongside Penn would’ve had the same effect. It was Angel. 

“I feel like we’ve worked together pretty well so far,” said Buffy, early into Wednesday’s patrol as they made their way to the graveyard behind St. Raphael’s. “And I’ve been wondering, how come you’ve been flying solo for so long? I mean, I get feeling like the mission has to come first, but wouldn’t taking assignments from the Council be easier than getting all Humphrey Bogart about it?”

“How much did they tell you about my kin’s history with the Watchers?” said Angel. There was something foreboding about the way he said it, but he didn’t appear offended that she’d asked. 

“I tried to get it out of Giles again yesterday, but he always says it’s not his story to tell, and there wasn’t much of an opportunity to ask Penn last year. I know there was a curse that involved Ms. Calendar’s ancestors, and they used it to give the four of you your souls back.”

“The original curse only targeted me. The Kalderash restored my soul in revenge for what I’d done to them.” 

“How is that revenge?” said Buffy, baffled. “Did they run out of boils and blinding torment?” 

“They wouldn’t have been satisfied with physical pain. They wanted something much deeper. Guilt, remorse. The kind of suffering that lasts.”

Buffy’s confusion turned to creeping dread. “And you need a soul for that.”

He nodded. “That’s right. A bit more effective than boils.” 

One thing he definitely had in common with Penn was the bottomless well of sorrow behind his eyes. Penn buried it behind a dogged focus on whatever enemy they were up against. Angel used more charm and deadpan humor, but it wasn’t really hidden. Now she understood where it came from and felt a rush of sympathy for all of them. 

“But that’s not an effective revenge at all!” she protested. “Your soul isn’t guilty!”

To her surprise, he chuckled. “You should hear Spike and Penn when they start arguing about that. The Council learned about my soul and they saw their opportunity to stop up the gaps in the Slayer line, but just one vampire warrior wouldn’t do. They wanted an army of us to regain all the ground lost in the war against demonkind during years with no Slayer. They joined forces with what was left of the Kalderash people to rework the curse. To their dismay, there were limits to that magic. They could alter it to be unbreakable, but it would only work on me and vampires who shared my blood. Penn, Drusilla, and Spike.”

“Right, and that’s why you’re the only good vampires.”

He snorted. “If only the Watchers saw it that way. Even with souls, they didn’t trust us not to succumb to our demonic urges, so they used magic to bind us to their will. Every command they gave, we had to follow.”

“They made you into their puppets?” said Buffy, horrified.

“We still had our minds, but the Council had a different attitude than the Kalderash about the value of pain. Whenever they gave an order, disobedience or even delayed obedience resulted in unbearable agony.”

“They can do that?” said Buffy. And if they could, what would stop them from doing it to a Slayer if she didn’t want to meekly toe their line forever?

“Not anymore, they can’t.” A growl came into his voice, sending a shiver up her spine. She’d retained even less information in her classes than usual over the last three days, and that growl was largely to blame. It was almost distracting enough to prevent her from imagining being forced under the Council’s control. Almost.

“But how can you be sure?” she asked. Her breathing was speeding up and her voice was getting higher. She couldn’t stop it. “They could do it again. They could—” Before she could blink, he had moved to stand in her path and brought a hand up to the side of her face. She stared up at him.

“They can’t. Not even if they want to. I know that because I personally tracked down every last record that was ever made of that ritual and burned them to ash.” 

His fingers were the same temperature as the cool night air, so how did they make her feel so warm? The knot behind her sternum, sending venomous, ice-cold darts down her arms and legs just a moment ago, was barely noticeable now. His gaze drifted to her lips. With that for encouragement, she went up on tiptoe and closed what little distance remained between them. The kiss was slow and tentative at first, but not for long. Her arms wound up around his neck and his fingers tunneled into her hair. 

Minutes or hours later, she pulled away first with a hearty gasp. “No fair that I’m the only one who needs to come up for air,” she said, and he laughed. It was a wonderful sound, and she became intensely aware that she’d blown way past rebound territory already. That would’ve been a scarier thought if he wasn’t giving her plenty of reasons to believe he felt the same way. 

“Oh, this is the church,” she realized. “The graveyard’s back here.” She grabbed his hand and led him to one of the smaller cemeteries in city limits. Angel reported that a new vampire was waiting for them, but he’d barely breached his coffin and would be digging for a while before they could do anything about him. Still hand in hand, they leaned against the new gravestone while they waited. 

“So, um,” said Buffy. Now that she wasn’t wigging out anymore, she really wanted the rest of the story, and then maybe more kissing. “How did you break the Council’s spell, if they were controlling you?”

“We didn’t,” said Angel. “They lifted it themselves, in November of 1948.”

“What made them change their minds? Did it take them that long to see that you were doing good?”

He shook his head. “Most of them refused to, but there was one exception early on. Edna Fairweather. Where her colleagues saw muzzled and leashed monsters, she saw real people in pain, worthy of compassion and trust. She was assigned to Penn at the beginning of the Great War.” 

There was a different kind of sadness in his tone now, and Buffy’s eyes went wide. “Did they…?” she began, her mouth dry.

“Fall in love?” Angel finished. He looked into her eyes. “As deeply as any two people I’ve ever known. Her superiors didn’t approve, of course. They separated them when they found out—reassigned her to Spike and Dru and banished him to another continent. I carried some of the letters they sent each other after that. Penn refused to let her waste her life waiting for him and urged her to move on. She didn’t want to, but after a few years, she married a former pilot who ran a grocery store in her village. Flight Lieutenant Arthur Giles.” 

Buffy gasped and stared at him. Angel smiled. “That’s right, she was Rupert’s grandmother. Even as Edna Giles, she never stopped fighting for our freedom, no matter how many enemies it made her. Her boy Edward took up the cause alongside her as he grew up.” 

Buffy was reeling. Now she understood why Penn had acted like he was Giles’s uncle or something when he was in Sunnydale, and she was amazed. He could’ve hated Edna’s family for taking his place in her life, but instead he continued to protect them long after she was gone. “Giles told me about the time you and Penn showed up to stop him from falling into Eyghon’s clutches alongside Ethan Rayne and their friends. It’s not just Penn; you’re all still looking after Edna’s descendants.”

“We can never repay her for what she gave us,” said Angel. “It took her and Edward decades to get their way. I thought they might never win enough votes to overrule the holdouts on the Council, but then my last Watcher demonstrated that keeping us under human control might create more problems than they believed it solved.” He suddenly sounded very bitter, and her creeping sense of dread was back. “He thought he’d found a clever loophole around the limitations of the curse—a way to solve two of the Council’s problems at once. Only vampires who shared my blood were eligible, and the Academy was full of twenty-something young ladies who’d already been passed over by destiny once.”

“Oh God,” said Buffy. “He ordered you to…?” The thought was so awful that words failed her before she could complete the question. 

“Council headquarters sits on top of the remains of a medieval fortress,” said Angel. “The dungeon is still intact. He locked me in it with three of the girls, ordered me to turn them, and left. Edward found us hours later. By then, I thought my head was going to burst from the pain of disobeying. The girls told him what my Watcher did. He and Edna interrupted a full Council meeting and exposed him. By the end of the night, they relented and lifted the spell.”

It took Buffy a few moments to take all of that in. “Do you think some of them agreed with your Watcher’s plan?” she asked eventually.

“I know they did, but it was never going to happen. All four of us would sooner have driven stakes into our own hearts than turn even one of those girls. Their power over us was already broken. They had no choice but to free us.”

“And that’s why you left the Council,” said Buffy. “Why did the others stay?”

“Penn likes to keep his friends and enemies close, and the Council is both. Drusilla is able to direct her and Spike’s assignments through her visions, and in the meantime their main focus is protecting the girls at the Academy.” Angel looked at Buffy. “As for me? Even if I felt like forgiving them for what they did, it’d still go against my Irish blood to voluntarily take orders from Englishmen.” He smirked before turning much more pensive. “You’re right that it’d be easier to take assignments than hunt down my own leads, but Watchers don’t see everything.”

Buffy leaned her head on his shoulder. Considering how the Council had reacted to Edna and Penn, Buffy felt that might turn out to be a very good thing.

†

The shining weapon in Edmund’s hands resented being there. The leather and metal pushed at his skin like magnetic repulsion, but he held fast, carrying it through the tunnels with Luke, the Three, and the rest following in reverent silence. Three and a half centuries of caution and careful planning were all coming to fruition. 

They reached the sunken church, where they were greeted by their awed brethren, who fell to their knees as the passed. That was as it should be, but Edmund delighted most in the cold fury in Darla’s eyes.

He knelt again before the Master and held out the weapon. The Master accepted it. “You have done well, Edmund. You have succeeded where millennia of your former colleagues never did. Take your eternal place at my side. Tell everyone why you have earned this honor.”

Edmund rose and stood at the Master’s right hand, facing the full assembled Order of Aurelius. “This gift I brought to our Master was forged for Sineya, the first Vampire Slayer. With it, she slew the last of the Old Ones, whose blood created our kind.” 

There were snarls and hisses to that, and one fool shouted “Destroy it!” At a gesture from the Master, silence was restored.

“Its existence might have been forever lost to time, but I found it,” Edmund continued. “With it, our days of hunting the world over for the Slayer are at an end.”

“Yes,” said the Master. “In one stroke, I will avenge our creator and eliminate the Slayer forever. Let us go out and celebrate!”

The vampires in the cavern erupted into such a storm of exultation that they shook dust from the ceiling. 

†

Buffy dreamed of sparring like dancing and sharing gentle kisses in graveyards. She wanted it to last forever, but good dreams never did for the Slayer. 

“Beware, słoneczko.” Buffy looked around the graveyard. Angel was nowhere to be found and a woman who had to be older than her mom was standing a few feet away. She wore a dirty white dress, her brown curls were bedraggled, and chains trailed from her wrists and ankles. Both sides of her throat were covered in layers upon layers of what could only be bite scars. “He has taken what is ours, and he is coming for you.”

“Who?” said Buffy. 

Before the woman could answer, the ground broke in front of the headstone beside them. A wave of terror rooted Buffy to the spot. The vampire rising from the grave wasn’t some clueless fledgeling. His fingers were tipped with deadly sharp claws, his ears were pointed and his nose deformed, and his skin was chalk-white except for the bloody stain around his mouth. His eyes weren’t yellow like normal vampires, they were scarlet.

His hand stretched towards her throat. 

†

Buffy sat bolt upright in bed, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The icy lump of fear was back with a vengeance, and the morning sunlight streaming into her room did nothing to thaw it. She tried to hold onto the mental image of the vampire that attacked her as she got ready for school and forced down enough breakfast to keep her mom from worrying, but the details were bleeding away fast.

The nightmare had her so rattled that she wasn’t even in the mood to describe the kiss to Willow and Amy, and it wasn’t until lunch that she was able to make it to the library. Inside, she found that Giles had company in the form of a smug-looking beanpole in a suit. 

“Buffy,” said Giles, “this is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.”

“Hello, Miss Summers,” he said briskly, sticking out a hand. “I’m here as Angel’s Watcher.”

“I trust he’s aware you’re calling yourself that,” Giles muttered over the rim of his coffee cup while Buffy merely raised her eyebrows at the offered hand.

Wesley looked indignant. “Mr. Giles is helping me identify the contents of the mysterious syringe.”

“That’s good,” said Buffy. “Giles, can I talk to you?”

“I’ll take these to the shop and phone you if I turn up anything new,” said Wesley, gesturing to the circulation desk, which was piled with books and a whole bunch of lab equipment. He began loading some of it onto a cart while Giles ushered Buffy into his office.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Did anything happen on your patrol?”

“It’s been a little too quiet since Saturday, but I think that’s about to change. I’m pretty sure the big bad boss vampire was in my dream last night.”

“What do you remember?” said Giles, grabbing a notebook and a pen from the desk. 

“Not much. Just the red eyes. And there was a woman.”

“Another vampire?” 

“No, she was warning me about him. She was maybe in her 50s. She was in chains, and she said something like…swan edge cough?” Buffy grimaced. “I don’t think it was English.”

“I should hope not,” said Giles. “I’ll see what I can find out. The red eyes might not seem like much to go on for identifying our vampire threat, but we can certainly rule out anyone under a thousand years old.” 

“Great,” said Buffy. She was sick of this creep lurking in the shadows. If he was the arrogant type to gloat about how much stronger he was than her, they’d have something to use against him, but they didn’t even know if he operated out of Sunnydale or was sending minions in from somewhere else. She looked over at the books on the desk. An open envelope sitting on top of one of them caught her eye. A piece of cardstock with rounded corners and the Continental logo was sticking out of it. She frowned. “Giles, are you flying somewhere?”

“What?” he said. He followed her gaze. “Oh. Erm, no. Mr. Wyndham-Pryce brought it.” He passed it to Buffy, and she slipped the ticket out of the envelope. Four details stood out to her: “SUMMERS, BUFFY ANNE” printed on the passenger line, the destination, the date, and the complete absence of any return flight information. Her blood seemed to freeze in her veins. 

She looked up at Giles. “I thought they were going to let me stay until your wedding. Now I don’t even get a week after graduation?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he said, taking the ticket back and returning it firmly to the envelope. “This is only their, shall we say, opening salvo. In no way do I expect you to board a plane at the beginning of June.”

Between the nightmare and the plane ticket, Buffy spent the afternoon in a haze. Why make even a cursory attempt to absorb information in History, Physics, or Trig? None of it mattered. By the time the ink dried on her diploma, the Council would take full control of her life as effectively as if they could still do the spell they’d used on Angel and the other vampires.

She didn’t want to tell her friends. They wouldn’t be able to make the Council back down. The best she could hope for was that Giles could convince them to let her stay a few more months. But the more she tried to pretend everything was fine, the more convinced her friends were that it wasn’t. She broke before the final bell. 

With everyone gathered on the couches in the commons, she explained about her dream and about the Council’s plans for her. Four faces stared back at her in dismay as she finished speaking. Oz was an outlier on one extreme with only hints of the same sympathy and frustration the others felt showing in his expression. Cordelia was at the other extreme. “How can they just do this?” she exploded. “What’s the point of American independence if England could just kidnap someone like that?”

“The Council isn’t England, they’re just in England,” said Willow, but Cordelia seemed to consider that a meaningless distinction.

“What are you going to do?” said Xander. 

“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do,” said Buffy. “I’m the Slayer, and if the pattern keeps going like this, there might not be another one after me for fifty years. They’ll never leave me alone if I try to get away from them.”

“Is your mom on board with this?” said Amy.

“She doesn’t know what it really is,” said Buffy. “They’ve got her all starry-eyed with the fancy scholarship cover story they send out to all the families of girls they bring to the Academy. She thinks she’s rooting for my best future every time she drinks coffee out of the swag mug.”

“Couldn’t Angel help?” said Oz. “He’s not a fan of the Council.”

The thought had crossed Buffy’s mind. “It’s a lot to ask. We’ve barely known each other five days.”

“But he likes you,” said Jesse.

“Yeah, and he came here all the way from New York to help you,” said Amy. 

“He came to help with a big demonic threat, not with this,” Buffy protested.

“You could still ask him,” said Willow. “Do you know where he’s staying?”

“I saw the new Watcher guy going into that empty shop on Maple Court yesterday,” said Cordelia.

“Angel said he set up a place they could use as a temporary headquarters,” said Buffy. “That’s probably it.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” said Jesse.

“For patrol, I guess?” said Buffy. “What, you think I should go right now?”

“Jesse’s right,” said Xander. “You could spend the evening stewing until you change your mind, or you could do something. With this kind of stuff, you’ve gotta act before you have time to think.” The two boys high-fived without looking at each other.

“Normally that would sound like terrible advice, but I agree,” said Willow. “Carpe diem, remember?”

“Well the new Watcher is going to be there too,” said Buffy. “He’s still working on the syringe.”

“Then you just need someone to distract him!” said Willow brightly. “I can come with you and pretend Giles sent me to help with the science stuff.”

“I’ll drive,” said Oz.

“Yeah,” said Amy. “And the rest of us can stay here and help research ancient red-eyed vampires. Go find Angel.” She offered an encouraging smile.

Buffy returned it gratefully and she, Willow, and Oz grabbed their stuff to leave.

“You are gonna let us meet this guy someday, right?” Xander called after them. 

†

Angel woke up to the sound of a youthful female voice upstairs. It seemed Buffy’s science nerd friend Willow was here to join the efforts to identify the substance in the syringe, and the second heartbeat accompanying her belonged to her boyfriend, Oz. Willow’s voice sounded oddly strained, but the Watcher didn’t pick up on that. 

Willow did not introduce the owner of the third heartbeat. That was interesting. 

Angel quickly got dressed while that heartbeat moved closer. The door to the sales floor opened just as he was slipping on his coat, and Buffy appeared at the top of the stairs. She closed the door very quietly and took the steps one at a time, keeping her eyes on the door and barely making a sound. Angel watched her progress with amusement. The sun hadn’t quite set outside but he could feel how close it was. He moved to stand at the foot of the stairs.

“I thought we were meeting at Sunnydale Cemetery tonight,” he said when she was two steps away. She spun to face him, eyes wide. Some of the smells from upstairs reached his nose and he reflexively scrunched it up. “Is there a werewolf upstairs?”

“What? Yeah, Oz. He got bit last year.”

“Oh.” Not a big deal, apparently. Buffy looked the same way she had before they kissed, and Angel’s face fell. “Are you alright?”

Her eyes welled with tears and she threw herself into his arms. She cried into his shoulder for a good five minutes while he held her, his imagination running wild trying to think what could have caused this. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I thought I was keeping it together okay.”

“What happened?” he brushed a few of her tears away. 

“The Council already bought me a one-way ticket to London. I’ve known their plans for me for years, but they got a lot more real today. Giles thinks he can delay it, but…”

“Do you want to go?” Angel asked. 

“And never see my friends again? Maybe not Mom and Dad either? No, but do I have a choice?”

“Doing what the Council wants isn’t part of a Slayer’s calling,” he said, cupping her cheek in his hand. “Your only duty is to the people you save. Don’t let a bunch of suits in London trick you into thinking they’re the ones with the power.”

“You’re right,” she said. She shook herself and a steely determination hardened behind her eyes. “Take me back to New York with you. I need to figure out what I’m going to do, but I can’t do that here. We could go tonight.”

A possibility occurred to Angel at her words. Drusilla had seen the end of the Slayer line if he didn’t come here, and Buffy had become the Slayer in defiance of all the Council thought they knew about how the line worked. What if all these centuries, the problem wasn’t in the Slayer line itself, but in the Council’s control? What if the harder they tried to keep an iron grip on it, the more they choked the life out of it?

“Okay,” he said simply.

She blinked. “Really?”

“You deserve to be in charge of your own future. I’ll help you however I can. Do we need to get anything from your house first?”

Her face lit up with a blinding smile. Still standing above floor level, she didn’t have to go on tiptoe to kiss him this time.

†

Buffy’s mom was watching the news in the front room when she came inside. Buffy stayed downstairs to chat with her long enough to not seem suspicious before going up to her room. She opened a window as wide as it would go. “Angel?”

“I’m here,” he said. She stuck her head out past the sill and found him crouching on the roof a few feet away. 

“Come in,” she said. He did so at once. Buffy fished her suitcase and her duffel out of the bottom of her closet and threw them on the bed. 

“How can I help?” 

“Keep an ear out for Mom. If she starts to come upstairs before I’m done packing, I can go out and pretend I just want dinner.”

Angel nodded and stood by the door.

Her toiletries bag was already sitting in the bathroom cupboard in preparation for another L.A. weekend with her dad, but those had come fewer and farther between lately. She added her toothbrush and toothpaste to it and grabbed her makeup bag too. She threw a week’s worth of outfits into the suitcase. Angel tactfully turned away when she got to the underwear drawer. Next she tossed in a few weapons, Mr. Gordo, and her Diskman and CD case. 

“Damn,” said Angel sharply. “Buffy?”

“What is it?”

“I think you’d better go down and watch the news report.”

A pit forming in her stomach, she did as he suggested. 

“—I’ve never seen a crime scene like this in my twenty-two years on the force. Eight victims, all killed brutally in one night. It looks like multiple perpetrators. Between the guest registry and the staff, we’ve identified all the bodies, but one couple had a teenage daughter who may have been in the house at the time. Her name is Julia Teague, and we found no sign of her. Catching these monsters and finding that girl are our top priorities.”  

The coverage switched from the on-the-scene police sergeant interview to the news anchor in the studio, a photo of the missing girl displayed next to him. She was pretty, maybe a couple years younger than Buffy, with strawberry blonde hair. 

“Isn’t it just terrible, Buffy?” said Joyce. “All those people, and that poor girl. Oh, I hope they find her.” 

†

“That attack was him,” said Buffy. “The vampire from my dream. I know it.” The image of his face flashed in her mind, full and clear. Of course it would come back to her now that she’d stopped trying to remember the details.

“What vampire?” said Angel. “You’ve seen him?”

“He’s bald, his ears and nose look like a bat’s, he’s got a serious case of fruit punch mouth, and his eyes are red like blood.”

Angel’s eyes flared wide. “The Master. It has to be.”

“You know him?”

“I only met him once, a few years after I was turned. He’s the head of my bloodline. The others are all devoted to him.” 

“Then we can’t leave Sunnydale,” said Buffy. “Not now.”

“We should leave now more than ever!” said Angel. “If the Master’s here, he’s the threat in Dru’s vision and his plans directly involve you. You can’t be anywhere near here. I’ll call in Penn, Dru, and Spike and we’ll deal with this. Believe me, we’ve been waiting for this fight for a hundred years.”

“Good, call them,” said Buffy, tossing him the cordless handset from her bedside table. “I’ll take all the backup I can get, but I’m not leaving. If he wants me and I’m not in town, he’ll go after the people I care about next.” She put her luggage back in the closet without unpacking it. “When you’re done, I need to call Giles. We know who; we still don’t know where. I want to go see what we can find out at that boarding house. There might be a trail to follow. If the missing girl escaped, she might be able to point us in the right direction.”

†

Buffy and Angel watched the crime scene guys drive away from the boarding house from the bushes across the street, leaving just one uniform officer standing guard outside.

“Fake badge or sneak in around the back?” said Angel.

“Sneak in,” said Buffy.

They did so, whereupon the mystery of how vampires could’ve gotten past the invitation rule solved itself; there were two chalk outlines on top of blood spatters in the back garden, one next to a mower only a third of the way through cutting the lawn and the other by a pair of pruning shears. They’d caught the owners outside in the middle of their evening yard work, leaving the guests and possibly Julia inside as sitting ducks.

“As much as I enjoy contaminating crime scenes,” said Angel, “I don’t think we’ll have to. He pulled aside some of the ivy draped over the back wall, revealing a dark red smear right at the top.

“Is that from Julia? Do you think they took her alive?”

“Either they took her or she escaped.”

They vaulted the wall, behind which was forest. “This way,” said Angel.

“Do the regular human P.I.s in New York even bother or do they just hand you all their cases?”

“You might say I’ve built up a reputation.” 

Angel pointed out the occasional spot where the blood trail continued, here on a tree trunk, there on the leaves of some underbrush. After about five minutes, it led them towards a large storm drain outlet above a manmade creek. It hadn’t rained in weeks, so the whole thing was bone dry. Angel bent down and picked up something sparkly right inside the drain. He handed it to Buffy. It was a necklace with a broken clasp and a J-shaped pendant on it.

“The police station is a ten minute walk from here,” said Buffy. “There’s no way she would’ve gone in there of her own free will instead. What are the chances she’s still alive?”

“Higher than you’d think, but if they’ve had her since last night, she might wish she wasn’t at this point.”

They both pulled out stakes and stepped inside. Buffy cracked and shook up a few glow sticks as a precaution. She’d keep them inside her bag until she needed them and take advantage of Angel’s eyesight in the meantime. 

She could just make out a ladder ahead of them, a few feet past the outline of a heavily padlocked door. “Did she climb that?” she asked without much confidence. 

Before Angel could offer his opinion on that, a voice spoke from up ahead. “Is somebody there? Oh God, please help me!”

They exchanged a look and broke into a run to the T-junction a little way ahead. About fifteen feet along the adjoining tunnel, Julia Teague was shackled to a pipe. A large dark stain that could only be blood spread from her collar down the right side of her shirt.

“Let’s get her out of here,” said Angel. “They could be back any moment.”

Buffy bent down and wrenched the chains at Julia’s ankle apart with her bare hands. “Can you run?”

Julia nodded, her eyes wide.

“Come on,” said Angel. “We can use the ladder we passed in the main tunnel.”

They started running that way, Buffy supporting Julia a little, but as soon as they reached it, Angel flung an arm out to block their path. Buffy saw three silhouettes—no, four. She plunged a hand into her bag and threw the glow sticks out in an arc in front of her. Two bounced off the legs of vampires snarling at them from just ten feet away. 

Julia screamed and Buffy and Angel moved to put themselves between her and the vampires. The hairs on the back of Buffy’s neck stood up at the same time that Angel announced there were more coming up behind them. She looked down the other tunnel as quickly as she could.

Seven versus two. Not good, and it could easily get worse from here. No matter how many there were, Buffy wasn’t about to let them see her worry. “Oh look, we’ve got Sporty, Scary, Ginger, and Posh,” she said. From left to right, there was a huge dude in a tracksuit, a skinny guy in a spiked collar and an entire stick of guyliner, a woman with long, braided red hair, and an older gentleman so blatantly English he made Giles look like an American football fan. “I guess Baby couldn’t make it?”

The vampires attacked from both directions. Buffy focused on fighting through the ones in front of them enough to create an escape route for Julia, going for Scary first and kicking at any of the other three that tried to get closer. Finally, she dodged under his punch and drove the stake into his chest just as Angel and his armored opponents disappeared around the corner.

Sporty was waiting behind Scary when he turned to dust and seized Buffy by the arm before it even began to fall. Posh grabbed her other arm while Ginger brandished a syringe just like the one everyone had been trying to solve all week. Buffy struggled but couldn’t stop Ginger from jamming it into her neck. 

Her surroundings swam around her and a tingling wave of weakness flowed out to the tips of her fingers and toes. Julia was still screaming yards away, but Ginger moved out of sight and the girl went quiet. At the same time, Sporty shoved a ball of dirty cloth into Buffy’s mouth so that she couldn’t make a sound either, then threw her to the ground. Ginger threw Julia down next to her. 

Sporty and Ginger kept Buffy and Julia pinned while Posh approached them, holding a large gemstone. He began muttering something Buffy couldn’t make out over the noise of the fans. After a few seconds, the gemstone glowed a brilliant blue. He continued muttering until the blue light expanded and moved towards Julia. She thrashed, but neither of them could stop it from swallowing her. Before Buffy’s eyes, Julia Teague’s loose, wavy hair became shorter and blonder and gathered itself into a ponytail, her bloodstained shirt was replaced with a white lacy top and leather jacket, and her features transformed. Within seconds, Buffy was staring uncomprehendingly at an exact copy of herself, from the heart-shaped tip of her nose to the tan boots she’d bought in L.A.

Posh pocketed the gemstone and grabbed Buffy off the grimy stone floor. Ginger opened the padlocked door for him, and he immediately jerked Buffy through it. Before the door closed behind Ginger, Buffy caught one last glimpse of the shapeshifted Julia, whom Sporty had hauled off the ground by the neck.

She realized through the thickening haze in her brain what Angel was going to see if he survived his fight with the other vampires. She tried to yell through the wadded cloth and wrenched against Posh’s hold. Her strength was practically nonexistent. All she managed to do was tug a ring off his finger before he slapped her hard across the face and redoubled his grip.

Chapter Text

Two Days Later

Buffy’s heart pounded and a stitch stabbed in her side with every breath. She had to find a way out of this horrible labyrinth of a house. The vampire pursuing her barely seemed to be making any effort, but whenever she slowed down, she heard his mocking laughter coming closer again. She didn’t understand; what had happened to her strength? How had she even gotten here?

†

Angel perched on the roof of the abandoned shop-turned-headquarters, though it wasn’t much of a headquarters now that Wesley had taken all his books and lab equipment to the library to pool resources with Rupert. The nearly-full moon was just breaking free of the horizon, and the remnants of pink and gold were starting to melt into deep blues and purples.

The last traces of Angel’s sword wounds had faded. The memories of Buffy’s friends’ reactions when he carried her body into the library never would. Willow had broken down sobbing. Oz held her, tears streaming down his cheeks. The skinny black-haired boy punched a wall. The stockier black-haired boy punched Angel. Both were reprimanded by their crying girlfriends. 

Rupert was the worst, at least until Buffy’s mother was told. His expression reminded Angel of his own father’s when he saw Kathy slumped dead against the wall of their home. Out of the whole group, Jenny Calendar was the one who held it together well enough to get Angel’s account of what happened in the tunnels.

He should’ve insisted on taking Buffy out of town. Of course it had been a trap. He hadn’t seen that because it seemed like it would have been too easy for them to have missed the bait. One missing girl in a news report? No clear proof she was kidnapped? It was obvious enough now, not that it would’ve changed anything. Buffy was never going to be okay with saving her own skin when there was a chance of saving someone else first. That was one of the things that made her who she was. 

The funeral would be held in two days. Angel wouldn’t even be able to attend due to a morning service and eastern exposure in the funeral home. She would already be in the ground by the time he could be there for any of it.

“Why am I not surprised you’re up here?”

“Maybe because you’ve known me for two hundred and thirteen years.” Angel looked around at Penn. Of the four of them, Penn probably changed his appearance the most often. Right now, he’d fit in advertisements for vintage motorbikes, one of which was exactly what he’d ridden into California on.

“Robson got the call from London. No new Slayer in the Academy so far.”

“There won’t be one,” said Angel. “The line is dead. I failed. Dru put her faith in me, and now Buffy’s gone, along with the girl we were trying to save.”

“So we avenge them,” said Penn. He slapped Angel’s back. “Come on, show me where it happened. You even been back to the scene yet?” 

“No.”

“Then what’re we waiting for? Let’s do some recon before Spike and Dru get here. It’s hard enough stopping Spike from rushing in when we do have a plan; it’ll be impossible if we haven’t even started.”

†

Wesley felt dreadful. He’d considered himself well up to the challenge of working past Angel’s obstinacy about the Council, but now he was intruding on the grief of these people in Sunnydale. What could he do but keep working? There was an ancient vampire sect to eliminate, and if anything, Buffy’s death only made that more urgent. But even if he managed to solve the damn syringe mystery, it was too late to do her any good. He’d made a list of the ingredients they’d managed to isolate, but they still couldn’t match them to anything. He was starting to suspect it was an original concoction.

In stretches when he had to wait for test results, he’d taken to perusing the Watcher diaries around previous gaps in the Slayer line. Only four Slayers in the entire twentieth century, nine in the nineteenth, seventeen in the eighteenth. There hadn’t been two in a row since the 1650s. Was something different about the last consecutive Slayer, he wondered? He flipped to about a third of the way through the diary from that period, to the records about Christabell Stratton: called in 1651 at age sixteen, found dead by villagers in 1654. There were sketches of her and her Watchers. Like Buffy, she’d had two. The first was killed by vampires, and all his successor had to say on the subject was that no body was recovered and Miss Stratton wouldn’t speak for weeks afterward. 

Wesley frowned when he reached a reference to Christabell’s performance in the Cruciamentum. The author used the term casually, but Wesley was fairly certain he’d never heard it. He went farther back. Ishikawa Kuma in Osaka: called 1646 at age seventeen, killed by an Oni in the mountains in 1651. There too, a passing reference to a Cruciamentum.

“Mr. Giles?” said Wesley somewhat hesitantly.

“What?” said Mr. Giles. He looked rather haggard and hadn’t spoken much to anyone but Ms. Calendar as long as Wesley had been working out of the library.

“Have you heard of something called the Cruciamentum? I’ve just seen it referenced twice in the history of 17th-century Slayers, before the gaps began. In context, possibly a rite of passage?”

“It’s familiar,” said Mr. Giles. “An ominous etymology, certainly. I might’ve come across it in one of the released volumes of the Council’s old internal records. I’ll see if I can find that again.” 

The door swung open and Miss Rosenberg and Miss Madison walked in, both with puffy eyes and red noses. It seemed they’d only left the school long enough to get dinner. “Xander and Jesse are still at the funeral home with Buffy’s mom,” said Amy. 

“Is there anything we can do here to help?” said Willow.

†

“Can’t hear or smell worth a damn in here,” said Penn. They’d reached the T-junction in the tunnel. Angel’s mind had already been replaying the events of that night. Being back here made it that much more visceral, as well as the fact that it looked like it hadn’t been touched at all. The glow sticks were still there, their light faded to almost nothing. “How’d it go down?”

“There were seven of them,” said Angel. “The Three were here, and so was Luke. There was another one I saw back in 1760 when Darla introduced me to the Master. Very aristocratic. I never got his name, I just knew he and Darla despised each other.”

“The Master sent four of his best fighters in the group,” said Penn. “How’d you manage to get out alive?”

“They let me go. Luke said I was to bear witness.”

Penn was quiet for a long moment. “I’m sorry, Angel. You deserved at least as much time with her as I had with Edna.”

“What?” said Angel, staring at Penn in shock. 

“Don’t tell me I’m imagining things. You look the same way I felt when she was dying in my arms. This is the first time your heart’s gotten involved, isn’t it?”

Angel said nothing, but Penn’s patience rivaled his, and he waited him out. “How do you stand it?” Angel finally asked.

“I don’t know that what I say can help you,” said Penn. “Edna lived a full life, married to a good man. I had his and their boy’s blessing to be there for her in her final years when she was a widow. It was equal parts pain and peace. I don’t expect to find anything like it again but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

“Buffy was a Slayer,” said Angel. His throat felt raw. “She was never going to have a peaceful death. She knew that, and all she wanted was to be in the driver’s seat for whatever time she could get.”

Penn gripped Angel’s shoulder. “We’re going to kill them,” he said. “Every last one of them.” Angel nodded. “Now tell me the rest.”

“She was fighting four out here. Julia was with her.”

“The glow sticks were clever,” said Penn, nudging one with his boot. “They wouldn’t have taught her that in the Academy.”

“I’m pretty sure the Three were just toying with me. I ended up impaled twice, and then they kicked me back into this tunnel. By then, it was down to just Luke and Buffy. He snapped her neck while I watched.”

“Do you think she got the rest?”

“There had to be someone left to get away with Julia.” He looked at the floor. “There’s the dust from the one I saw her stake.”

“At least she got one.”

“She did better than me. All I got was a hand.”

Penn bent down and retrieved something from under the ladder. “This isn’t a glow stick.” He handed it to Angel. Another syringe, but this one was empty.

“They had one of these on Saturday too.”

“So they tried the same play then?”

“They only sent four—no, five. The blonde Buffy saw that night had to have been Darla.”

“So, what, the syringe was insurance? Poison or weaken the Slayer before taking her down? If they’re close enough to stick a needle in her, why not just finish the job already?”

Angel’s brow furrowed. A lot of little things weren’t really adding up. He hadn’t noticed them before because he’d been so focused on his own mistakes.

Penn kept looking around. “Which way do you think the survivors took the girl? Up the ladder or through the door?”

Angel had another look at the door. “The padlock was closed when Buffy and I went past here. That way would’ve been easier with a victim.”

Even without the padlock, the door would’ve been difficult for a human to open. Penn had to put his shoulder to it. From this close, Angel heard it squeal over the continuous noise of the fans, which sent the air whistling past them into the new corridor too. 

“Electrical tunnel access?” said Penn. 

“Looks like it.” 

Footprints were just visible in the dust, and about thirty feet along, something glinted on the floor, partly hidden under the lowest pipe running along the wall. Angel picked it up and showed it to Penn. It was a heavy signet ring with a gouged-out eye carved into it.

“Metalwork looks mid-17th century,” said Penn. He stared at the symbol. 

“What?” said Angel.

“They’re not too common these days, but Robson has a ring just like that, only the eye isn’t slashed open on his. He’s from a line of Watchers going back at least ten generations, and the ring’s been passed down since the first one.”

Angel turned it over and over in his hand. The vampire who’d been standing so close to the Master in 1760—he was the key to all of this, somehow. The ace up the Master’s sleeve. There had been no sign of anyone from Aurelius in more than eighty years, and suddenly all of them were in Sunnydale. Five of them tried to attack Buffy with a syringe and no other weapons, and when that failed, they did it again with better fighters and greater numbers in a location that nullified two of Angel’s senses, where they forced him and Buffy apart during the fight. All of the weapons were aimed at him, not the Slayer, and yet they only used them to incapacitate him. They reduced their own numbers by hauling the harmless human teenager away in the middle of the fight, then made a point of forcing Angel to witness Buffy’s death before leaving him alive to spread the word. 

He gritted his teeth. None of that changed the fact that he’d carried her body back to the surface, but they were definitely still missing something.

“Well, we found a trail,” said Penn, his gaze following the footprints.

“Not yet,” said Angel. “The Watchers need to know about this.”

†

Rupert didn’t much like his young colleague so far, but having something specific to research was a helpful distraction. For now, at least. He expected that would change after the funeral. 

It took a little over an hour to locate what Wesley had asked for. He found it inside a particularly large tome containing summaries of the items of business covered in every Council meeting in the 1600s. He brought it out to the study table. 

“Here,” he said, pointing at a line from the middle of April, 1650. Willow and Amy leaned across the table to have a look too. “‘Vampire specimen secured for upcoming Cruciamentum. Shipment to Okawa to be arranged. In latest correspondence, Mr. Sugawara has requested a supply of curare leaves or recommendations for a local substitute to complete Miss Ishikawa’s preparations. Securing the poppies will not be a problem.’”

“Vampire specimen?" Amy repeated.

That didn’t seem to be the part that caught Willow’s attention. “Did curare mean something different in the 1600s?” 

“Possibly,” said Rupert. “Why?”

“Because that’s one of the plants they used in South America to make blow darts. We learned about those in biology, remember Amy? Even a tiny dose is enough to paralyze you.”

Why would it be the official business of the Council to ensure that a Watcher had access to blow dart poison and opium to use on his Slayer? Rupert frowned and looked at the list of five ingredients. Wesley had written them in large letters on a chalkboard he’d commandeered from who knew where. The first item was “Muscle Relaxant/paralytic agent — Alkaloid poison?” and the second was laudanum.

Wesley wasn’t paying attention to any of them, still absorbed in the records. “Here’s the one from 1653. ‘Mr. Ashbury has registered his concerns over subjecting Miss Stratton to the Cruciamentum but has been overruled.’ Wait, that can’t have been long before Mr. Ashbury was killed.” He flipped through one of the Watcher diaries and laid it in front of them. “Yes. ‘Miss Stratton has rediscovered her voice and is now attempting to refuse my services. She insists she cannot trust another Watcher after the ordeal of her 18th birthday. Perhaps it was unwise of me to suggest that her lack of trust may be what brought about Mr. Ashbury’s unfortunate demise in the weeks following.’”

That more or less confirmed Rupert’s theory. The girls exchanged looks of dawning horror. They appeared to have put the same pieces together, at least about the Cruciamentum.

“And—my God,” said Wesley. “From 1662. ‘The Council has resolved by a slim margin to cease the practice of Cruciamentum. Until we discover the cause of the two-year wait between Miss Stratton’s death and Miss Hassan’s calling, it would be imprudent to carry out a test that many have not survived.’”

“It was a gauntlet,” said Rupert, getting slowly to his feet, eyes still on the list of ingredients. “If a Slayer reached her...eighteenth birthday, was it? Her Watcher was to administer a cocktail of drugs to weaken her, then place her into some potentially deadly situation.” By reflex, he removed his glasses and began cleaning them vigorously. “I believe we’ve just identified the compound in the syringe.”

“Good.” They all turned to see Angel and Penn striding into the library. “Because they used one on Buffy.” Penn held up a syringe identical to the first.

“You found that in the tunnel?” said Rupert.

“Along with this,” said Angel. He placed a gold signet ring on top of the open book. Rupert held it up under the lamp and squinted at it. “That ring belonged to a Watcher, and I think it still does.” He pulled a little flip notebook out of his coat pocket and tossed it onto the table, open to a sketch of a vampire. “That’s what he looks like. He’s been in the Master’s inner circle since before my time.”

“That’s him!” Wesley shouted, making everyone jump, even the vampires. He grabbed the Watcher diary and slammed it down triumphantly beside Angel’s sketch. “Edmund Ashbury, first Watcher to Christabell Stratton. He died shortly before her, weeks after she completed the Cruciamentum, and his body was never recovered.”

There was no mistaking it. The sketch in the book was without question the human version of the vampire Angel had drawn. 

“They’ve got an evil version of Giles?” said Amy. “With evil anti-Watcher jewelry?”

“I believe the anti-Watcher jewelry is merely decorative,” said Giles dryly.

“I guess he’s not as upset about using that drug on a Slayer as he was when he was alive,” said Willow. She looked like she was on the verge of crying again.

“What, er, else does the diary say about him?” said Rupert, looking away from her, pain lancing through his throat. 

Wesley’s eyes raced back and forth across the diary entries. “He was the second son of a baron and wouldn’t inherit, which is why he sought a profession. He…witnessed a vampire attack in his youth, and that, paired with a lifelong fascination with sorcery, is what drew him to the Watchers.”

“What kind of sorcery?” said Rupert.

“He excelled at alchemy,” said Wesley, flipping a page. “Transmutations...illusions. He reminisces fondly here about a misadventure involving a spell that made him look like his brother, which he used to frighten away a much-detested admirer who was only after the family fortune.”

“Rupert,” said Angel almost before Wesley finished. “Tell me you know a way to break a spell like that.” 

Rupert’s heart was hammering. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing,” said Angel. “Not until I check. All I know for sure is that an undead Watcher who’s been an expert in making someone look like someone else for over three centuries went to a hell of a lot of trouble to stop me from seeing, hearing, or smelling anything happening in Buffy’s part of the tunnel for almost that entire fight.” He was getting louder and louder, drowning out Willow’s and Wesley’s gasps of realization. “So tell me you know a way to break a spell like that!”

Rupert opened his mouth, but Amy, to his surprise, spoke first. “I might have a few,” she said, a hand in the air like she was in class. With all eyes suddenly on her, she went bright red and lowered it. “For a few months after I got switched back into my body, I was so scared Mom might come back and try it again—or do something worse—that I couldn’t sleep, so I looked through the books in here until I found one about detecting spells, warding against magic, seeing through illusions, all kinds of stuff. I kinda…stole it? I’ll pay the fine, Giles, I promise!”

“Get it,” said Angel. “Bring it to the funeral home.”

†

The girl in the casket was and wasn’t Buffy. They’d made her up like an angel, in the dress Joyce picked out from her closet. Joyce had barely left her side in two days. Hank had come and gone and would be back for the funeral. Arlene would be here in the morning. Some of Joyce’s friends from both L.A. and Sunnydale had visited. Buffy’s friends came and went regularly—three of them were here now: Jesse, Xander, and Cordelia. They all cried with her, sometimes relating a funny story that would make them laugh and then crying even harder. That nice boy Buffy was dating until recently showed up, only for the three of them to glare him right back out. 

Buffy wasn’t supposed to die first. It wasn’t right. Joyce didn’t know how Arlene had survived it when Celia died. Buffy was supposed to go off to that prestigious London school, find a decent man, have a family and a career, and say a speech at Joyce’s funeral. Every time Joyce tried to comprehend that none of that could ever happen now, it was like the world wasn’t in color anymore.

What had possessed Buffy to try chasing down the boarding house murderers herself? Joyce wanted to scream at her. She wanted to go back to Thursday and smash the TV before they could see that report. They’d have had a nice dinner together, gone to bed, and she’d have driven Buffy to school for a normal Friday.

Some kind of disturbance outside the room shook Joyce out of her thoughts. She stood up, frowning. Before she could investigate, a whole crowd of people came piling in—the rest of Buffy’s friends, Mr. Giles, a tall man in a suit and glasses (his nephew?), the eccentric new age-y computer teacher, and two handsome but very physically imposing young men. The entire group was now pushing their way towards the casket. Somewhere in the middle of all of them was the frazzled funeral director.

Joyce moved instinctively in front of the casket, trying to shield Buffy from the chaos.

After at least a full minute, an ear-splitting whistle broke through the cacophony. Everyone stopped yelling at once (and the imposing young men became a little less so as they winced and clapped their hands over their ears). They all looked for the one who made the noise and Joyce wasn’t alone in being startled that the culprit turned out to be Willow’s boyfriend. “Okay, Amy, do your thing,” he said.

Amy nervously tucked her hair behind her ear. Jesse squeezed her hand and nodded. “It’ll work better if I have some help,” she said. She glanced at Willow and the computer teacher, and all three of them came closer to the casket.

“What is this?” said Joyce. “What’s going on?”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Summers,” said the computer teacher. “Possibly more than okay. Just let us do this. Think of it as…a blessing, to help her be at peace.”

Confused and on the verge of breaking down again, Joyce looked at Buffy. These people all cared for her. What could it hurt? She nodded and stepped aside.

Amy pulled a candle out of her bag and set it on the floor in front of the casket. It gave off a harsh herbal smell once she lit it. She stepped back and took Willow’s right hand in her left and the computer teacher’s left hand in her right. “I’ve got this one memorized, so just repeat after me. We’ll say it three times, and the candle should go out once it’s working.” From there, she began chanting.

Joyce had taken a classics class or two in college, enough to recognize Latin when she heard it. The candle flame rose with every repetition of the words. Joyce had made every effort not to notice odd things like that in the last few years, but for reasons she couldn’t fully explain to herself, she now wanted them to be real.

The final repetition drew to a close. Right on cue, the candle extinguished itself with a puff of smoke. 

Joyce blinked. 

The body in the coffin was not Buffy.

“Uh…when did the missing girl from the news get in here?” said the funeral director.

Pandemonium broke out once again, though the atmosphere had completely changed. Deep blue shapes bloomed across Joyce’s vision, and the renewed shouts were somehow being filtered through radio static. Her legs buckled out from under her.

†

Angel caught Mrs. Summers before she hit the ground and laid her on the sofa. They all quickly left the funeral home after that, not wanting to discuss anything in front of the funeral director. Angel had tried hard not to hope back in the library, and now he was torn between ecstatic relief, fear, and rage, such that the return trip to the high school went by in a blur. He and Penn led the way back inside, closely followed by the Watchers.

“Do you realize what this means?” said Wesley. 

“Obviously,” said Rupert. “The Master has her prisoner somewhere.”

“Beyond that!” said Wesley. “Edmund Ashbury’s been working against the Council since 1654, and he has precisely the knowledge and skillset to convince the world the Slayer is dead when she isn’t. Don’t you understand? This isn’t the first time! He did it to his own Slayer first, and then to every Slayer after her all the way to Lena Brzezicka. There were never any gaps! The Order of Aurelius has committed the world’s longest con on all of us, and we fell for it for three and a half centuries.”

“You fell for it?” Penn snorted. “We’ve lived through most of that and we had no idea either, even when we were on their team.”

“Ashbury’s the power behind the throne, and he runs a tight ship,” said Angel. “Darla mustn’t have been in on it until after the curse.”

“So once we find the hideout, we’re talking infiltration strategies, right?” said Xander. “Time to bring out the big guns?”

“That’s an affirmative,” said Jesse. “They won’t know what hit them.”

“Um, guys?” said Willow. “What’s stopping them from just leaving town?” said Willow. They were just about to the library doors. “They could take her anywhere in the world. Maybe they already have. Or even a different world! What if that Edmund guy can make interdimensional portals?” 

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said a voice from inside the library as they stepped inside. 

Drusilla sat primly on the circulation desk, Spike lying beside her with his head in her lap while she stroked his hair. The composition was like a modernization of paintings of knights and ladies, with her looking radiant in a sunflower yellow dress and with matching flowers woven into her crown braid, contrasting perfectly against Spike’s bleach-blond punk rocker aesthetic. Since Angel last saw Spike, he’d acquired a deep curving scar on his right cheek that pulled slightly at his eyelid and accentuated the cheekbone—a souvenir, Angel knew, from the mission to take out Kakistos in ‘95.

Their Watcher stood looking over the research materials left on the study table. She was in her mid-40s, with medium-length afro-textured curls haloing her face. The ankle-length duster she loved so much was aging just as well as her. As they watched, she popped the clasps on a massive rolled pack. It unfurled across the table, revealing a comprehensive array of anti-vampire weaponry. Xander’s and Jesse’s jaws dropped open.

The next few minutes were lost to happy reunions and introductions in every direction. Drusilla was positively giddy to be surrounded by all three of “her boys” for the first time in years, Willow and Amy wanted to gush over the immortal soulmates, the newcomers (Drusilla in particular) all insisted on hearing Rupert and Jenny’s engagement story, and Nikki bragged proudly about her son’s doctorate work at Cambridge. Xander even offered a sheepish apology to Angel for punching him, and he and Jesse weren’t very subtle about attempting to ape the mannerisms of the vampires. 

Morale for the entire group had shifted radically since the beginning of the night, but they had a lot of work to do.

“Why are you so sure the Master and Buffy are still in Sunnydale?” said Rupert.

“Because there are two more things he can only get here,” said Drusilla. She gestured at Angel, Penn, and Spike. “Us dead, and the power of the Hellmouth for himself.”

“He won’t be getting either,” said Nikki.

“We can get back on the trail in the tunnels,” said Penn.

“No need,” said Spike, smirking at Drusilla. “Tell them what you saw on the way here.”

†

Darla stayed close to the Master’s throne in the sunken chapel, waiting to be given some important part to play in the final phase of the plan. Killing one or more of the traitors, for instance. She looked at the Slayer, who lay on the altar, eyes closed, her features twisted in distress. Darla wondered what nightmare the Master had crafted for this one. Whatever it was, it would end much more quickly than those of her predecessors.

“It makes a nice change that we won’t be keeping this one alive long enough to have to feed her,” said the Master. 

“No more Slayer blood, though,” said Luke. “That’s the only real shame in all of this.”

“We’ll soon have access to vintages so fine that you won’t remember what Slayer blood tasted like,” said Edmund. Darla rolled her eyes.

“Is everything ready?” said the Master.

“Nearly. The others are retrieving the last few ingredients I need for the linking ritual. It will bind the Slayer to any who are connected to that power. The girls at the Academy, the ones the Council failed to detect, even those whose time passed them by. Once begun, the connection will build until the full moon reaches its peak. And that, my Master, is when you will fulfill your destiny. With no one left to inherit the calling, the the ruse we have crafted will become a permanent reality.”

The Master’s gaze drifted towards the ceiling. “I believe the rest of my wayward descendants have arrived. Haven’t they, Darla?”

“Yes, Master,” said Darla quickly. “I sense them too. We won’t have to hunt them; they’ll be coming to us.” The Master turned away from her with no change in his expression. That dismissive motion may as well have been a backhanded blow. The rest of eternity stretched out ahead of her. Angel and the Slayer might only have one day left to live, but Darla would be forever tainted, and Edmund would get everything that should’ve been hers. 

“We will leave nothing to chance,” said Luke. “The entire Order will be in the tunnels in a tight perimeter. Not a single creature tainted with a soul will be able to enter this place until it is too late.”

“Perimeter or no, they will be wasting their time searching for an entrance,” said Edmund with a satisfied smirk.

“And as for the seer…,” said the Master, baring his fangs.

“Will she discover our plans?” said Luke. 

“Let her try. I have something special prepared for her.”

†

Every time Buffy was sure she’d found an exit, the air around her legs turned to molasses and the corridor would accordion in front of her. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel a pair of red eyes boring into her. The vampire was going to catch her. She rounded another corner, crying from sheer exhaustion, and froze. 

It was impossible to tell where anything was in here, but she knew she’d never been in this area. There was a gleaming axe twenty feet ahead, its curved silver blade embedded in obsidian. Its other end was a stake. She’d never seen such a beautiful weapon before, and she knew it belonged to her. She walked forward to claim it.

Without warning, the floor gave way. She screamed, falling through darkness, the axe disappearing from view.

†

If Wesley had begun the week skeptical about whether it was appropriate for several ordinary high school students to be involved in Miss Summers’s Slayer work, he now had to admit that they were earning their keep. Amy was making protective talismans for everyone with the help of Cordelia. The two immature boys, who bewilderingly kept referring to their extensive military careers, were brainstorming battle tactics and had brought in a truly obscene arsenal of water pistols and balloons they had managed to fill with holy water. Ms. Wood happily took them both under her wing, declaring that they reminded her of her Robin when he was a teenager. 

Willow, Oz, and Ms. Calendar had printed out and taped together a massive map of the network of sewers, storm drains, electrical tunnels, and natural caves beneath Sunnydale, on which they and Mr. Giles had marked every access point and every spot that had seen demon activity they knew of, trying to find something that matched Drusilla’s somewhat disjointed descriptions.

“Not a cave,” she said, eyes closed, her fingers to her temples. “Not really. There’s a tunnel there.” She held out a hand. “Round, made of brick.”

“Could be part of the old system,” said Oz, pointing to a few of the lines on the map. “Some of them got filled in but a lot of them are still there.”

“Arches,” said Drusila. 

“A McDonald’s?” said Xander. Cordelia smacked him on the arm. 

“What lovely stained glass,” Drusilla went on. “But no, that’s all gone now. And there—” She yelped and jerked her hand to her mouth as if she’d scalded her fingertips. “A cross. They’ve broken the others but left this one.”

“So we’re talking about a church,” said Willow. 

“There are forty-three churches in Sunnydale, above ground level,” said Mr. Giles. “There would be more, but two collapsed in the earthquake in ’37. An old Spanish mission on what is now the university campus—” He circled the spot. “—and a cathedral not far from here.” He circled that one too. “Either could have been buried while remaining partially intact.”

“My money’s on the cathedral,” said Angel. “The Master wants the Hellmouth, and that’s miles closer to it than the university campus.”

“Not to mention it connects easier to the tunnels we were in,” said Penn.

“Then that’s where he is?” said Wesley.

“Brilliant,” said Spike. “Let’s go right the hell now.”

“No!” said Drusilla, her hand leaping out to catch Spike’s arm. Her tone had everyone exchanging nervous glances. “Not tonight. It must be tomorrow. Go at sundown, not before. You must wait, my love, no matter what happens to me.”

“Dru…what do you mean by that?” Angel growled.

“Promise me!” she said, her nails digging into Spike’s skin.

“I promise,” said Spike, “but tell me!”

“He saw me coming,” she said. She was smiling, but there was terror in her eyes. “I’ve given you what you need. I’m sorry I won’t be there to fight beside you.” A shudder rolled through her, her pupils contracted down to pinpricks, and her head snapped back.

Horrified, Spike grabbed her by the shoulders. “Dru? Drusilla!” 

Angel and Penn were at either side of him in a second.

“What’s happened to her?” said Penn.

“It’s the Master,” said Angel through gritted teeth. “He must be attacking her mind.”

“The last mistake he’ll ever make,” said Spike.

†

Drusilla walked the familiar path home from St. James’s. It didn’t feel quite so familiar somehow. The carriages and gas lamps seemed odd. Before she could really examine it, that thought faded from her mind, replaced by an inexplicable sense of dread. She changed directions, heading for the market instead. A man with a handsome face and pretty words was offering to walk Penelope home from there, but she should not go with him. There was malice behind his smile. 

Drusilla broke into a run. Time was running out. She reached the market gasping for breath and saw Penelope at the other end of the street, laughing at something the man said. He turned and met Drusilla’s gaze. She saw it all in a flash: Penelope struggling to no avail, his hands pinning her against the alley wall, his teeth sharpening into fangs—fangs that tore into her neck. Drusilla came back to herself with a strangled cry. There was no sign of the man or her sister anymore. She fought through the crowd, drawing a few scandalized shouts from people she knocked into.

She reached the alley and fell to her knees. Penelope lay sprawled on the cobblestones, eyes staring blankly, her neck a torn mess of blood. The monster stepped over her body towards Drusilla, dabbing at his mouth and chin with a handkerchief. 

“Do you know who I am?” he asked. 

“Angelus,” said Drusilla, though she couldn’t have said how she knew it. 

“You know why this is happening, don’t you?” he asked. He made his voice soft and kind. “Evil is drawn to you and your gifts. Now, attend to your dead. You’ll be seeing me again soon.”

He sauntered past her, leaving her alone in the alley. Even as she wept helplessly over her sister’s body, she could see a demonic face in her mind, somewhere far above her, his crimson gaze pinning her in place.

†

Sunday

There wasn’t much time left before sunset. Everyone who wasn’t allergic to daylight was getting set up, and the vampires would be arriving within minutes of nightfall. Willow had a 10-inch wooden cross dangling from her neck alongside the protective talisman and a modded, camo-painted CPS Super Soaker strapped to her back. 

“Got everything?” said Oz, testing the strength of the bars. It was the cage Penn built for him last year after the one in the library proved disastrously insufficient, and he and Spike had helped him take it down and reassemble it in a mausoleum. This way, he could at least contribute to the battle by barricading one of the tunnel exits. “I wish I could do more than block an escape route.” 

“We’re all ready,” said Willow. “I’m sorry you won’t be able to be there—well, no, I’m sorry any of us will be there. But it’s for Buffy. We can do this.” She kissed him, then hugged him extra tight for good measure, then left to join Xander and Cordy outside.

†

The sun sank below the horizon and an eerie quiet fell over Sunnydale. Vampires would find every manhole five blocks out in from the sunken church extremely unpleasant to use, so they would have to run farther into the tunnels and face Angel, Penn, or Spike, or else try to reach the surface via one of three remaining exits, all of which were fortified and had a Watcher-led team stationed at them. Willow and Jenny were with Giles at the sewer access grate across the street from the school gym, Amy and Cordelia were with Wesley at the electrical tunnel entrance up the street, and Xander and Jesse were with Nikki at the storm drain in the gully. 

The minutes crawled by with no sign of vampires.

“Blue Squadron, Gold Squadron, this is Red Squadron checking in,” said Xander on the walkie-talkies at the half-hour mark. “Any movement yet? Over.”

“Uh, negative,” said Willow. “Over.”

“No movement here either,” said Cordelia. “I’m not saying over.”

“Does that mean the Soul Squad has this one covered?” said Jesse.

“Oh, they’ll be coming,” said Nikki, pumping the action on her shotgun. “Stay alert, but we could be in for a wait. Give the boys some more time to stir up the hornet’s nest.”

†

Angel stared down three vampires in the tunnel ahead of him. They hadn’t made a move to attack. “What’s the matter, lads? Don’t like your odds?”

“They’re alright now. They’re about to get better.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

“Because at midnight, you lose.”

This wasn’t a battle to them, it was a siege. “Too bad you aren’t making it to midnight.” Angel pulled a crossbow out of his coat and fired at the middle one before closing in fast with his sword. 

†

“Is that the best you can do?” Spike shouted down the tunnel. Two low-level flunkies. The fight barely lasted five minutes. He pressed forward. According to the plan, as long as they didn’t open up easy escape routes besides the fortified ones, they were fine to close in. Spike wanted a crack at the Master for Dru’s sake. Leaving her on that cot in the shop, trapped in a nightmare he couldn’t wake her from, was one of the worst things he’d been forced to do since the Council gave up on the magical leashes.

†

Buffy didn’t land on the ground, but amid a forest of grasping clawed hands. She couldn’t see anything but yellow eyes and glittering fangs. A scream tore its way out of her. She thrashed and kicked, trying to fight her way free, to at least get solid footing. Nothing she did had any impact. 

She braced herself for the dozens of savage bites she was sure were coming, but instead the hands loosened. The vampires were starting to withdraw. They weren’t paying attention to her anymore, turning to snarl at something she couldn’t see.

†

“The packs are definitely the best addition,” said Jesse. “It’s the pump-action that still slows us down. For a continuous holy firehose effect, we really need to figure out a motor system.”

“Take these things fully automatic, right,” said Xander. “I dunno, though, I’m not sure we’ve optimized the existing features as much as we can yet.”

There was a heavy thump behind them. They looked over their shoulders.

“Ms. Wood!” 

†

“Do you think they’re okay in there?” said Willow. She glanced at the full moon, thinking as much about Oz as about the vampires.

“They’ve been doing this for a hundred years,” said Jenny.

The walkie-talkie issued a burst of static, before Xander’s voice came back on. “This is Red Squadron. Ms. Wood is down. I repeat, Ms. Wood is down, over.”

“Oh my God, what happened?” said Willow. Giles took the walkie-talkie.

“We don’t know,” said Jesse, “she just collapsed out of nowhere, over!” 

“You aren’t being attacked?” said Giles.

“No, still nothing out of the tunnel, over.”

“Have you checked her pulse?” said Amy’s voice.

“She’s alive, she’s just unconscious. We tried waking her up but nothing’s working so far. Over.”

“Make sure she’s comfortable, at least. Put something under her head and elevate her feet if you can,” said Giles. “And stay alert.”

“Roger, Gold Leader,” said Xander. “Over.”

†

The Jeanne D’Arc Academy for Excellence, London

Every morning on the way to set up his classroom, Robin walked past the training yard where the Upper Sixth Form held their drills. Considering the students only had the potential to become Slayers, he regularly witnessed truly impressive feats of martial arts, and spring was when they prepped for their competition routines. It was a little odd that he couldn’t already hear them shouting.

He rounded the corner into the corridor that opened on one side into the courtyard and froze in his tracks. The girls and their instructors (former potential Slayers themselves) were all sprawled across the grass, unmoving, as if they were marionettes with their strings cut. Robin’s lesson materials tumbled out of his arms. He ran onto the grass and checked the pulse of the nearest girl. It was strong and her breathing was regular. 

“Kendra?” he said, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. “Kendra!” No response. He tried the next girl. “Faith!” Nothing. He stared around. They were all like this, and they’d clearly collapsed all at the same time. “What the hell is happening?”

†

The sounds of fists and boots striking flesh reached her. In the dim but brightening light, Buffy could see that someone was fighting the vampires off. Multiple someones. There was a short-haired girl in medieval plate armor, driving a lance through two vampires at once, an Asian girl spinning a katana around her like a baton, and the same older woman with brown curls from Buffy’s dream wielding a stake. 

“It’s alright, słoneczko,” she said. “You are not alone.”

“You will never be alone,” said the girl in armor.

More girls and women with weapons were pouring into the chamber, battle cries on their lips. The light was growing brighter. Buffy looked down at her hands and realized the light was coming from her. She clenched them into fists and rounded on the vampires, a growing army to either side of her. The vampires shrieked and clawed at each other, trying to get away. There was nowhere for them to run. 

†

Sunnydale

“It’s working,” said the Master. The air around the Slayer was beginning to ripple, and her skin glowed. The same was happening to the weapon. 

One of the younger ones came running into the sunken church. “Master, they’re picking us off in the tunnels! The others are getting restless. They want to rush them.”

“You will tell them to follow their orders,” said Luke. “Claw, The Three, Zackery, and I will deal with the traitors ourselves.” He gestured to them and they all went out into the tunnels. 

“Master, if they are drawing closer, I must go ensure that the illusions are holding at the perimeter,” said Edmund.

“Go,” said the Master. He let his fingers drift in the swirls of power emanating from the Slayer and frowned. Drusilla was still hopelessly lost in the mental prison he had devised for her, endlessly reliving her worst human memories. The Slayer, however, was fighting him.

†

Penn was spattered with blood. His last opponent must have fed within an hour or so, because stabbing a vampire wasn’t usually that messy.

There was a commotion among the unimpressive mooks he was about to start cutting his way through, and a vampire with a giant claw in place of a right hand shoved his way to the forefront, accompanied by Zackery, an Aurelius enforcer almost as highly-regarded as Luke.

“I’m glad you’re done wasting my time,” said Penn. 

Zackery lunged first, swinging a morning star. The mooks crept closer as Penn dodged and two of them ran past him when he slipped under a slash from the claw.

†

“You should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” said Angel. “What was so important about letting me leave with Buffy’s body? You could’ve dropped that off outside her Watcher’s place yourself. Nobody would’ve been left who knew the location of the fight. They couldn’t have found the empty syringe or your pal Edmund Ashbury’s ring. Sloppy.”

“An oversight, perhaps,” said Luke. “But one that can be corrected.”

†

“Well if it isn’t The Three,” said Spike, sizing up the armored vampires. This was more bloody like it. “Well, more like the two-and-a-half, I suppose,” he corrected, gesturing at the stump where Curly’s right hand used to be. “It looks like the Master never bothered to turn a surgeon in case any of his flunkies end up with bits lopped off. Sorry about that, mate.” 

They rushed him together. He vaulted over Moe and Larry easily but wasn’t blind to the aforementioned flunkies creeping along the opposite side of the tunnel. Those kids out there had better be ready for this.

†

As many as there were, the vampires stood no chance against the army. In moments, they were all dust. Buffy couldn’t stop staring at the women—her predecessors. 

“What is this?” she asked. “How are you here?”

“He brought us here,” said the older woman who kept calling her that strange word. “He thinks he understands us. He understands nothing.”

She reached out to Buffy and placed a hand directly over her heart. The light around Buffy seemed to pull the woman in. She disappeared, and Buffy felt a wave of warmth. The next woman did the same, and the next. The Slayers were lending her their power. She had no concept of time; it could’ve taken moments or years, but she had never felt stronger or more sure of her calling.

Finally, only one remained. Her hair was wild, her face hidden behind warpaint, and she wore strange gauzy rags. For all of that, she was beautiful and her gaze was steady. The first Slayer. She carried the Scythe in her hands, the one Buffy had seen before buried in obsidian.

“It is yours now,” she said, holding it out to Buffy. “There will always be those who try to stop you from being who you are. Do not let them.”

When Buffy accepted the Scythe, her surroundings changed. She found herself in what looked like something by Charles Dickens. 

“Wait,” said Buffy. “This isn’t the exit, is it? Past Slayer ladies?”

†

The fight had finally reached the defenders on the surface. Vampires came boiling out of each of the three exits and were immediately met by copious amounts of holy water, shotgun blasts with rounds full of tiny rosary crucifixes, and the physical obstacle of the palisades. At the storm drain, one vampire saw the spikes in time to stop, but was still shoved onto them by another vampire rushing up behind him.

†

Luke might not be known for his mental acuity, but he was stronger than Angel. Stronger and faster. He dodged slashes from Angel’s broadsword easily, and one punch from him threw Angel into the wall. He kept Angel on the defensive. The other vampires didn’t do anything to help him, they simply ran up the tunnel the way Angel had come. They were headed straight for Wesley’s exit.  

†

Buffy got no reply from the former Slayers and she was getting worried. What was she doing here? She needed to get out. She tried to stay calm. She still had the Scythe, even if it was only in the dream world. She took stock of her surroundings. Victorian street, lots of people walking around, some people on horses. It definitely smelled like horse. Ugh, not something she, Willow, and Amy had exactly factored into their period drama fantasies. 

One figure caught her eye in the crowd. “Angel?” she said. He was talking to a brunette in a pretty green dress, flashing her a charming smile, only there was something…wrong about it. His eyes darted to someone at the other side of the crowd and his smile became a wicked grin. Okay, that was not Angel. At least, not yet.

†

Angel lunged with the broadsword again. Instead of dodging, Luke deliberately took it through his right forearm, straight between the bones. He gave a sharp twist, and the blade broke off two inches above the hilt. He grinned as he tore it free and tossed it aside. He seized Angel by the throat and lifted him off his feet.

Angel realized that the fight had brought them beneath one of the booby-trapped manholes. With what was left of his sword, he slashed across Luke’s face, making him drop Angel and rear back, then hurled the hilt as hard as he could up at the manhole cover. It hit with enough force to flip the metal circle like a coin, tearing open three plastic bags full of holy water positioned at the edge and releasing their contents. Angel dove aside just in time. Luke did not, and the water poured straight onto his head, drenching his hair and rapidly soaking into his clothing. He let loose a roar of agony and flailed his arms. Angel recovered the blade of the sword from the other side of the tunnel and pushed it through Luke’s neck, putting him out of his misery once and for all.

†

It was tight maneuvering in the electrical tunnel, but that was as much of a problem for Penn’s opponents as for him. One well-timed dodge and Claw-Hand McGee’s prosthetic came down right on a bundle of live wires. Penn staked him, but the circuit hit him for about a second before he turned to dust, leaving him open to Zackery’s attack. He regained control of his muscles in time to take the stake in the shoulder instead of the chest, and he kept Zackery grappled in close so he couldn’t get it back out and try again.

†

From the other side of the illusion barrier, Edmund watched the youngest of the traitors fight the Three unassisted and felt the first shiver of uncertainty. Spike’s reckless and unconventional style was making him difficult for the experienced warriors to pin down, especially when they hadn’t had time to adjust to the loss of the leader’s sword hand. An unexpected back kick gave Spike room to stake him. He caught his falling sword and beheaded another, then rounded on the third, who was so stunned by their deaths that he didn’t move fast enough to counter his own demise.

Spike continued along the tunnel with a jubilant shout, passing right by the illusion barrier without stopping. 

Edmund doubled back and went to the next intersection, where he found Penn pacing his section of electrical tunnel, examining every inch of the wall. He was alone except for ashes and Claw’s prosthetic, which was no longer attached to its owner.

The story was the same when Edmund reached Angel’s storm drain. He arrived just in time to see Luke, his head barely visible behind the billowing steam coming off it, meet his end. 

Something brushed past Edmund. He looked around and his lip curled. “Darla. Why have you remained inside the barrier? No interest in helping the others?”

She watched Angel. “I worshiped the Master, you know.”

“Of course you did,” said Edmund. Her use of the past tense was an interesting piece of disrespect that he looked forward to seeing her punished for. “You were a dying whore with nothing and no one.”

“Yes,” she said. “He saved me from a pointless death at the end of a pointless life, and I was his favorite…until he found you.” She faced him. She had a satisfied air to her that he did not like. “Turning a Watcher was an idea that amused him, and that’s all it was supposed to be, but you filled his head with all your grand plans for attacking the Slayer line. You took him away from me.” She looked back at Angel. “And your plans are the reason the Watchers took the rest of my family. You’re so close to victory that you can taste it, aren’t you? I think that’s close enough.”

She withdrew something from the pocket of her skirt. Edmund’s hand flew to his own coat pocket and he realized with a jolt that she had stolen crystal powering the illusions from him. He lunged for her, but she danced out of reach. “You will die for this treason!” he yelled.

“Maybe,” she said. “But you’ll die for it first.” And she smashed the crystal against the wall.

†

There was a flash of light. What had been solid wall was now a branching tunnel, right where it was supposed to be on the map. Two vampires stood inside it: Edmund Ashbury and Darla. The former met Angel’s gaze for a second and bolted. By contrast, Darla sauntered forward, looking almost bored. Angel raised his fists.

“You could kill me, Angelus,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe you’re capable of it after all these years. But you don’t have time for that if you still want to get to the Slayer. All you have to do is let me walk past you.”

“You’re turning on them? On the Master?” said Angel incredulously. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe,” she said. “I just want Edmund to finally lose.”

Angel stared. He decided to run with it. “Don’t take the storm drain exit,” he said. “The next time I see you, I’ll kill you.”

She smirked and kept walking. “We’ll see about that.”

†

Edmund ran as fast as he could back to the sunken church, cursing Darla all the way. But her treachery didn’t have to mean the end of the plan. It was close enough to midnight; the moon’s power would have sufficiently strengthened the link for the ritual to do its job. The Master only had to know it was time to act.

†

The girl in front of Angelus ducked her head shyly. He held his hand out to her. She gave him hers and allowed him to tuck it into his elbow. He ushered her towards an alley just off the market. Buffy followed close behind. As soon as they reached the alley, she tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and she punched him right in the face. The girl screamed and ran. 

Angelus growled. “You don’t want to get between a vampire and his dinner, lass,” he said.

“Actually that’s exactly what I want to do,” she said. She blocked a punch and dodged a kick from him. It shouldn’t surprise her that in this form, in this time, he was just like the other vampires who’d grown complacent in battle by fighting only those weaker than themselves. “Okay, I think I’d rather spar with the better version of you than drag this out now.” She knocked another punch aside and drove the stake end of the Scythe home. Shock registered in those horribly empty eyes, and then he crumbled to dust. 

Buffy turned to face the mouth of the alley in hopes that it might have sprouted a giant door with an exit sign over it. It hadn’t, but there was now a black-haired girl standing there, staring at her with very large eyes. She looked a lot like the girl Angelus had brought into the alley.

“You’re Buffy,” she said. 

Buffy nodded, and suddenly she knew who this was. “Are you Drusilla?”

Drusilla nodded too.

“And this place…it’s before everything happened.” 

Drusilla looked at the pile of ash beside Buffy. “This isn’t how it happened.”

“I know,” said Buffy. “None of this is real.” 

“No. The Master created it.” Tears streamed down Drusilla’s face. She wiped them away with a lacy handkerchief. “You understand what he wants now.”

“He connected all of their lives to mine, and he has the Scythe.” The words sprang to Buffy’s lips automatically. “When he kills me, they’ll all die too. The end of the Slayer, forever.” 

“He believes it is his destiny,” said Drusilla, stepping forward and wrapping her hands around Buffy’s on the Scythe’s handle. “He will open the Hellmouth and bring darkness to the world. But he miscalculated. You feel it, don’t you? He handed you the power to destroy him. You must use it at the right moment.”

†

With the illusions down, it wasn't long before Angel met Spike and Penn in the tunnels. 

“Thank God, you’re both alive,” said Penn.

“Don’t tell me you were worried!” said Spike. As was often the case with him, it was false bravado; he was just as relieved as they were, and just as worried about what was still ahead.

“You two, go back and help the humans,” said Angel.

“You’re not taking the Master on alone!” Penn protested. 

“Yeah, not when he’s got Dru too!”

“She’s not the only one who needs help,” said Angel. “You know what she’d want us to do here.”

Spike ground his teeth. “Bastard,” he said. “You owe me.”

They all ran in different directions. Angel finally reached the larger, older brick tunnels Dru had described. Nearly there.

†

“Master!” cried Edmund, reappearing at the entrance. “The time has come. You must do it now, or we will lose our chance!”

He sounded far less confident than usual. The Master would deal with that in due time. For now, he raised the weapon above the Slayer, taking great pleasure in how much the thing detested being wielded by him. She was fully bathed in that yellow-white glow now. 

“So ends the Slayer!” He brought it straight down, aiming the stake end directly for her heart. 

The point was less than an inch from her chest when her hands snapped up from her sides and clamped around the stake. The Master snarled. This was impossible! Even with every ounce of his strength, he could not push it a millimeter closer. Her eyes flew open, and brilliant golden light spilled out of them. It was so much like sunlight that he couldn't help but flinch away. The weapon leapt almost deliberately from his fingers and fell straight into hers. The glow doubled in intensity. The Master held up his arms to shield his face against the angel of death before him. He felt terror for the first time in over a thousand years.

“You will not be the end of the Slayers,” she said. Her voice rang with the force of prophecy. “But the dawn of our new age.” She swung the bladed end. It sang as it cut through the air, and then the Master of the Order of Aurelius knew no more.

†

Xander and Jesse were doing everything they could to keep the vampires from getting anywhere near Ms. Wood, but they were running out of ammo and five of them were closing in, leaving the two maimed by the crucifix shrapnel dying slowly behind them. 

The boys and the vampires all knew it was over, and the vampires were happy to take their time now. Xander and Jesse looked at Ms. Wood’s sleeping form and at each other. Jesse’s arm was bleeding badly, and Xander was pretty sure he had at least two broken ribs. But it didn’t matter; they weren’t going to run and leave her here. 

Right when they were bracing for the vampires to pounce, Ms. Wood sat up. 

“Hoo!” she said. She bounced onto her feet with the agility of someone half her age, her long coat whipping around her legs. “Hot DAMN, I could get used to this.”

“Are you okay?” said Xander, even as he and Jesse moved to stand back-to-back in a triangle with her. 

“Better than okay, kid.” A vampire lunged forward, and she sent him flying with a kick. “Who else wants some?”

†

London

It wasn’t just the girls in the courtyard. It was every student, nearly every female staff member in both Jeanne D’Arc and the Watcher Academy, and a quarter of the Council members. The disturbing phenomenon might’ve gone unnoticed because of the early hour, but Robin raised the alarm. 

“Has anyone tried reaching the operation in Sunnydale to see if they have anything to do with this?” said Robin. “My mother’s there with all four of the vampires.” 

“See if you can make contact,” said Quentin Travers. They stood on the side of the courtyard while the medic team rushed about pointlessly, unable to do much for the girls except cover them in shock blankets. “I’m bringing every sorcerer in our employ together. Whatever enchantment caused this, they can surely break it.”

A rush of wind blew over the school. Robin looked up. The next moment, the courtyard was full of groans. Kendra was the first girl to push herself into a sitting position, followed seconds later by Faith. When they opened their eyes, faint golden light was shining out of them. They looked down at their hands, then at each other. 

“Do you feel—?” said Kendra.

“A hell of a lot stronger?” said Faith. “Yeah.”

Robin’s eyebrows shot up, and he glanced at Travers, who looked positively gobsmacked.

If this was what he thought it was, everything was about to change.

†

Sunnydale

Willow and Jenny were screaming, trying to hold onto Giles while three vampires pulled him towards them and the sewer grate. All they were going to succeed at was getting pulled in too, and he was starting to make faces like he was going to make them let go if they didn't do it voluntarily.

The force they were pulling against suddenly decreased. “Sorry I couldn’t get here faster.”

“Penn, thank God!” said Jenny.

The other two released Giles and rounded on Penn. One of them dove at him directly while the other took the time to rip a spike off the palisade.

Giles fumbled around in search of the crossbow that had been knocked away from him earlier. He slotted the new bolt into it and drew it back. The vampire wielding the palisade spike made a flying leap at Penn. Willow screamed, and Giles pulled the trigger. Nothing but dust drifted over Penn, who had just separated the other vampire’s head from his shoulders. The chunk of wood clattered to the pavement.

“Did he just—,” said Penn, looking from it to Giles. “Did you just—?”

“Well I wasn’t about to let you get out of being best man that easily!” said Giles.

Jenny let out a hysterical laugh and threw her arms around both of them.

†

Cordelia had wedged herself under the palisade the second she ran out of holy water balloons to throw. Wesley made a valiant effort with a sword, but dropped it before a vampire even came close enough to try disarming him him. Amy proved herself the MVP of Blue Squadron with some super freaky magic, turning two vampires into rats. Which was great, except that it left them one perfectly intact vampire each.

“None of that now,” said a coarser English voice than Wesley’s. “That’s not playing nice.” Cordelia caught a glimpse of Spike fighting the vampire away from Amy. The one attacking Wesley went to help, but not Cordelia’s. She screamed as loud as she could, swiping and kicking at the approaching vampire. His hand reached for her throat, and then he went rigid, his back arching. He turned to dust, revealing that vampire lady Drusilla, holding his bloody, shriveled heart in her hand. Cordelia offered a feeble smile of thanks. Even though she was one of the good guys and had great taste in dresses, she could be way creepier than the others.

“Dru!” said Spike, ecstatic. “You’re alright!”

“Of course I am, William,” she said. He picked her up around the waist and spun her, laughing, then put her down only to kiss her soundly. 

“Holy crap,” said Amy. “Holy crap. That was close.”

“Don’t take this as me not being grateful for the reinforcements,” said Wesley, still lying flat on his back and struggling to draw breath. “But aren’t you meant to be assisting in the tunnels?”

“Don’t worry,” said Drusilla. “There’s only one thing left. Well—” She planted her foot hard in a spot just off the sidewalk, eliciting a squeal from a rat, whose tail she had trapped beneath her shoe. “Two more things. Help me find the other vampire rat, will you darling?”

†

Edmund screamed in rage as he watched the Master wither away to a skeleton, the skull rolling out of sight behind the Slayer. This wasn’t possible. Everything he had worked for. His calculations, his spells, his plans. All for nothing.

The Slayer's attention now fixed on him, light continuing to stream from her eyes. He turned to face the exit, but Angel was there, and it looked like he’d recovered one of the Three’s swords to replace the one Luke broke.

Edmund swallowed and faced the Slayer again. She walked towards him without urgency, calmly stepping over the uneven portions of the ground.

“Hello again, Mr. Ashbury,” she said, but not with the little California chit’s voice. It was another voice, one he’d nearly forgotten. “It’s been a long time.”

“Christabell,” he said. “I suppose this is appropriate.”

“It’s what you taught me.”

He felt the tip of a sword between his shoulder blades. A pit of fear was growing in his stomach. There was nowhere to run, and oblivion awaited.

“Axe or stake?” she asked.

His demonic nature overcame his refined exterior and he lashed out, making a grab for her hair. The stake slipped effortlessly under his outstretched arm.

“If only I’d been able to do that the first time around,” were the last words he heard.

†

It was safe to say that Angel's reverence for Slayers had reached new heights.

“He was a good man, once,” said the girl who wasn’t Buffy. Christabell, Ashbury had called her. “A good Watcher. I forgive him for putting me through that test, but the creature that captured me and took me to the Master wasn’t him anymore. I hope he’ll be at peace now.”

“I can’t promise you that,” said Angel. “But I hope you’re right.”

She smiled at him. He could see the hint of the other Slayer’s features in it. Whoever had done the sketch in the diary wasn’t bad. “Farewell, vampire with a soul. It is an honor to have you and your kind for allies in this fight.” With that, the light faded from Buffy’s eyes, and she slumped forward into his arms, the axe clattering to the floor. When she opened them again, he could tell that she was back to herself.

“Angel,” she said, steadying herself but not breaking contact with him.

“Buffy. Nice to have you back. Got any fight left in you for tonight? There might be a few stragglers left on the surface or hiding out somewhere nearby.”

She picked up the magnificent weapon and grinned. “Then let’s get to work.”

†

Darla watched over her shoulder to make sure no one had followed her. It was hard to hear anything over the fans that blew constantly. This was the last time she was ever going to live underground. She was going to Paris—maybe Tuscany—and she’d find a decent view that would never again include Edmund Ashbury.

She pushed open the gate to the mausoleum exit, and only then did she hear the guttural snarl and smell the foul stench of wet dog.

“Shit.”

†

The Following Morning

It was Easter weekend, so none of the Scoobies had school on Monday, but they probably wouldn't have gone even if they did. Most of the human combatants had required some degree of medical attention, but even that couldn’t dampen their spirits. They spent the whole day at the abandoned shop on Maple Court, enjoying their victory party. 

Buffy was delighted to finally have the opportunity to introduce Angel to her friends. They had already met him while she was in the Master's clutches, of course, so it was done with much laughter, Willow and Amy treating it like a formal Regency-era ballroom introduction. Spike and Oz spent hours talking music (Spike doing most of the talking but Oz still finding more words than usual), with Giles frequently joining in. A jam session seemed inevitable. 

A lightbulb went off over Buffy’s head not long after Giles and Ms. Calendar stepped out to pick up the lunch pizza order from down the street. “Hey, if you’re all so close to Giles’s family, did he send you a wedding invitation?” she asked Angel.

“He did.”

“Then you would’ve come to Sunnydale in a few more months even if Drusilla never had that vision?” She liked the idea that their meeting didn’t need to hinge on some mysterious peril.

“I would.”

“And…you should probably stick around until then. I-if you don’t get any cases you can’t miss.”

“Summer tends to be slow,” said Penn, thumping Angel on the back.

“It’s true,” said Drusilla, her tone about as convincing as Penn’s loss of balance. “That’s why we always have our weddings in June.” 

Angel rolled his eyes at them but smirked at Buffy.

For the entertainment, Buffy, Angel, Penn, and Spike all wanted to take turns sparring with Nikki, who was more than happy to oblige. Buffy and Angel each barely won. Penn lost, and Spike held on as long as he could.

“You were supposed to be coming up on the end of your fieldwork days,” Spike complained after crying uncle. “What the hell am I supposed to tell Robin?”

“You tell him his mama is going to keep whooping ass until she’s good and ready to retire. Maybe you can take a turn as the Watcher for a change.”

Wesley pulled Angel aside from the laughing group. He struggled for words for a moment, gave up, and stuck out a hand. Angel shook it. “It’s been a privilege working with you,” he finally managed to say.

“Likewise, surprisingly,” said Angel.

“No matter what happens with the Council going forward, if you ever find yourself in need of assistance, I would be happy to be of service.”

Angel pretended to give it some thought. “I think I might be able to use your help. How much do you know about the Jersey Devil?”

Sometime later, Giles approached Buffy with a familiar envelope in hand.

“I’m not sure I’m gonna like this any better than last week,” she said, looking at it warily.

“I think you will,” he said. “Open it.”

She did, and several torn pieces of a plane ticket fell onto the floor. She looked up at Giles in wonder.

“You aren’t the only Slayer anymore. The Council is rather thoroughly outnumbered by your new sisters-in-arms, not to mention discredited for letting Ashbury’s trick make such a fool of them for so long. I can confidently say that you are free to choose whatever you would like next out of your life. I only wish it wasn’t too late for you to send in college applications for the fall. I’d be happy to put in a good word at Oxford.”

“I dunno,” said Buffy, a grin spreading over her face. She looked over at Angel, who was watching her from across the room with an achingly soft expression. “I think I might want to take a gap year. I’ve heard a lot of good things lately about New York.”