~ Chapter 10 ~

Spike and Buffy broke apart guiltily and turned to face the woman standing before them. She was tall and slim, and dressed in an immaculate white lab coat, her tight, brown curls scooped into a loose ponytail and tied with a scrunchie. Her face was cool and professional, but not unfriendly. Right then, it even seemed as if she were trying to force back the edge of a smile.

The woman stepped forward and presented her hand to each of them in turn. "I'm Dr. Miranda Peters," she said. "And you must be Buffy Summers and Hostile 17."

"Spike," Spike said, a bit harshly.

Dr. Peters took it in stride. "Nice to meet you, Spike," she said, without a touch of malice in her voice. "Ms. Summers has explained your unique situation to me. Although," Dr. Peters raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow, "she seems to have skimmed over some of the more interesting details."

Buffy and Spike exchanged a look, but neither said anything. Then they realized that Dr. Peters wasn't saying anything else, either; she just watched them, like specimens under a microscope. It did not help diminish Spike's level of anxiety.

"So, uh, why exactly did you agree to help us?" he asked finally. "Don't think either of us would be on the list of the Initiative's best chums."

"No," Dr. Peters agreed, "you most certainly are not. But I have, shall we say, my own agenda." With that, she turned on her heel and began walking toward the building to the right of the pool. "Follow me, please."

Spike turned to Buffy as they walked a safe distance behind Dr. Peters. "This is not doing anything to quell my fears, pet," he whispered.

"Let's just follow this through," she whispered back. "At the very least, we can get some more information, and then bolt if necessary."

He nodded, and then suddenly found himself laughing.

"What?"

"This is shaping up to be a bloody peculiar anniversary."

"Face it, Spike, we can never be normal."

For some reason, this saddened him more than he thought possible, even though he had told her exactly the same thing many times. His laughter died. "I know."

Ahead of them, Dr. Peters came to a halt in front of a shiny metal door, and after punching a code into the small keypad at its side, held the door open for Buffy and Spike. They entered, warily; but the room before them was nothing more than a sparse office, lined with bookcases holding row after row of leather volumes. Dr. Peters gestured for them to sit, before taking her own seat behind the desk. She folded her hands on top of the blotter, and looked up at the couple, expectantly.

Spike found he was fiddling with the gold bolts on the side of his chair. "Look, is all this really necessary?" he asked after a moment. "Can't we get on with it already? Or are you just really desperate to show off your office?"

Dr. Peters' lips separated into a thin smile. "Just trying to make sure no fears go un-quelled," she said in such a way that made Spike doubt that there was any way her choice of words could be a coincidence. They were going to have to be more careful. It was foolhardy to believe that this would be anything close to easy.

He shook his fears away and tried to concentrate as she continued. "Now I know your past dealings with the Initiative have been...less than pleasant. But when you get right down to it, you're either going to have to decide to trust me, or not. If you choose not, then you're free to leave at any time."

"Fine. Just one question. Why?"

"Why?" Dr. Peters asked, looking down her nose at him. "I told you, I have my reasons."

"Well, that's pretty sodding unspecific. Considering that it's my brain you're going to be poking around in a minute, I think we both deserve to be reassured that you're not going to do anything funny once you're in there."

Buffy's hand tightened around Spike's wrist as he spoke, but it was not a touch that asked him to back down, it was one of support. "Yes, Dr. Peters," she said, standing, "I believe we do deserve some sort of reassurance. I know you are fully qualified to perform the procedure - yes, I looked into you," Buffy added, off Dr. Peters' reaction. "Did you think I wouldn't? And so I also know you have a clean bill of mental health. But even people with the best intentions," her voice lowered for a moment, and Spike realized, grimly, that she was thinking about Riley, "still might not deal with this situation properly. Now we have come all the way down here, but we are perfectly content to go all the way back with nothing changed if you do not persuade us otherwise." Buffy took a deep breath, but her gaze never wavered from Dr. Peters' face. "So. Talk."

A multitude of emotions seemed to wash over Dr. Peters' cool features then, but when they had passed, it was clear she had come to a decision. "Very well," she said, finally. "I didn't want to delve into this, but I was naive to think it wouldn't be necessary." She sighed and got to her feet. "Let's begin with a visual aide, shall we?" she said, a bit of a twinkle returning to her deep brown eyes. "I've always been a visual learner myself. Spike, would you come around to this side of the desk please?"

Spike broke contact with Buffy reluctantly, but he rose and went to stand by Dr. Peters. She was taller than he was, he noted, cursing the 19th century for producing such short people, and the 20th for messing about with the perfectly good height median. And then he cursed the 21st century, just for good measure.

He added a little something extra to this last curse when he heard what Dr. Peters said next. "Spike, would you hit me, please?"

Spike looked at her like she was insane, which he was beginning to suspect she was, despite what Willow may have found out about a clean bill of health. "Now why the hell would I want to do something like that? To give myself a nice, pre-surgery migraine?"

Dr. Peters grit her teeth. "Just do it please," she said. "Although not in the in the face, if you don't mind."

Spike continued to waver. He looked over to Buffy, who seemed as puzzled as he was, but nodded nonetheless. "All right, ducks, it's your poison," he said, and let his fist connect with Dr. Peters' shoulder in what really amounted to no more than a sharp tap. And he waited for the pain to come.

It didn't.

Instead, Dr. Peters said "Ow," and rubbed at her shoulder with her other hand.

"It's stopped working already?" Buffy asked, confused.

Spike shook his head, comprehension dawning. "She's not human, pet," he said.

"Impossible. I'd have known the second she walked up to us. But the good ol' Slayer sense isn't going off at all."

"Chip doesn't lie."

"He's right," Dr. Peters said, still rubbing her arm, and wincing in a manner that, at this point, was beginning to border on the pathetic. "I'm a vampire."

Now it was Spike's turn to be confused - again, he thought, disgusted. "Now wait just a bloody minute," he said. "*That* is bloody impossible. Non-human entity you may be, but vampire you are not. I can hear the blood flowing in your veins. I can also hear you breathing. And see you reflected in the sodding picture frame, I might add." He pointed behind them, where Buffy and Dr. Peters' reflections bounced back off the glass of the latter's framed Hockney print. Spike's image, of course, was nowhere to be seen. "Those aren't exactly what I'd call vampiric traits."

"No," Dr. Peters said. "But that doesn't change the fact that I am a vampire. Or the fact that if you and I," she gestured to Spike, "were to go to the airport, we'd set off every metal detector in the place."

Spike's whole world shut down as the pieces clicked into place. He took a step back and found himself leaning against a bookcase for support.

"You have a chip?" Buffy asked. Spike almost wasn't listening anymore, his brain forming other plans.

Dr. Peters nodded. "It makes me appear human in every way. You could almost go as far as to say that biologically, I am human. But I'm not. And were I to have it removed, or shut it off, I'd be just like any other vampire."

"How did this happen?" Buffy asked quietly.

Dr. Peters sighed. "I'll give you the short version. My partner, Dr. Brakeley...he and I had been working for the Initiative for four years, developing this and other implants." Her tone and expression grew wistful. "This was our baby, though. Our theory was that it could work like a vaccine for those who were Turned. If they were reached soon enough after the Turning, and they had the chip implanted, they could retain their humanity without ever experiencing the bloodlust, without ever setting foot down the dark path."

Spike returned from his reverie long enough to roll his eyes at this.

"But the Initiative wouldn't approve it," Dr. Peters continued. "They said it failed to address the problem of the soul. A vampire artificially turned human with the chip would still lack a soul. We were ordered to abandon work on the project, and go back to developing better versions of the chip you have." She glanced at Spike, but he was lost in thought and didn't even look up. "None of which, by the way, were successful. Which is not surprising, considering that less than a month later, the facility in Florida at which we were working suffered from a coordinated attack by a local group of vampires. I don't remember it very well now, but..." Bitterness crossed her features, but she pushed it away. "I was - I allowed myself - to be Turned.

"I don't even want to think what would have happened if Dr. Brakeley hadn't been the one to find me. But he was. And the first thing he did was put our baby in my brain, and he kept it a secret so no one else would ever have to know. He saved me." There were tears at the edges of her eyes as she spoke, and Buffy dreaded what she knew would be the inevitable end to this tale. "Two months later he was gone."

"Vampires?" Buffy asked, because she had to know.

Dr. Peters shook her head. "Car accident." She laughed, bitterly. "The mundane deaths are still just as deadly."

"I know," Buffy said, quietly. She reached across the desk and gave Dr. Peters' hand a squeeze.

The doctor shifted away, suddenly uncomfortable. "Oh, look at me. Crying. How professional." She wiped at her eyes with a Kleenex before disposing with that sole piece of evidence of unprofessionality in the rubbish bin under the desk.

"It's okay," Buffy said. "I think you've said more than enough to convince me that you have reason to be sympathetic to our circumstances."

"I have just one question," Spike said, abruptly surfacing. "And don't take this the wrong way, or anything, 'cause believe me, I'm not one to judge...but, uh, does this mean you don't have a soul?"

The quaver returned immediately to Dr. Peters' voice. "Yes," she said softly. "Yes, I guess it does."

"Do you miss it?"

Dr. Peters stared at the blond vampire for a moment. She saw the lack of malice in his eyes. She saw that his hands were shaking. She saw that the answer to this question was even more important to him than it was to her. And it was very important to her.

"I should, shouldn't I?" she said finally. "But...but you know what? If what I've been taught didn't tell me otherwise, I don't think I'd ever have known it was missing. It just doesn't seem that important to whom I am. I'm still me. I haven't changed. Not in the ways that matter." She looked up at him again. "Does that answer your question?"

"Yeah." Spike's cocky grin returned to his face. Only it was genuine this time. "So now that's settled," he said, getting fully to his feet and running his hand through his hair. "Let's get this show on the road."

~ Chapter 11 ~

It was just cruel. Making her wait outside. Buffy felt like she had been thrust into a baby delivery from the 1940s, only she had to play the roll of the father and wait outside, and...smoke her pipe, or something. Actually, stealing one of Spike's cigarettes didn't seem like such a bad idea. Only the cigarettes were in his coat. And the coat was in the operating room. Where Dr. Peters was probably cutting into his brain at this very moment...

Buffy shuddered. She didn't like to think about the actual operation part of it. It bore too close a resemblance to what happened to her mother. Just like then, this was only the beginning. After tonight, the waiting would begin. Waiting to see if something was going to go wrong.

He wouldn't, she told herself. He's come too far. He won't let it happen. He won't make me have to...

...Have to kill him.

No.

She shook the thought away, getting to her feet and walking back into Dr. Peters' office. Spike had been in the operating room with the doctor for over four hours. Now, sunlight was just beginning to drift in the window. Buffy checked her watch. It was after five a.m. This was bad: people would start coming in to work within the next couple of hours, and now it was too late to drive back to Sunnydale. Because of the sun, and Spike's tendency to catch on fire when out in it, they'd have to get a hotel room and wait out the day.

Actually, Buffy thought, that might not be such a bad thing after all.

Unless...

No. She was not going to allow herself to think along those lines.

For what had to be the eight time that morning, Buffy tried browsing over Dr. Peters' books for something marginally interesting to read. What still persisted on being there, however, was shelf after shelf of medical books. Half of the time, Buffy couldn't even understand the titles. God, didn't this woman even have a People magazine lying around or something? Then she could at least do the crossword puzzle.

Buffy sighed and stalked back out to the chair Dr. Peters had set up for her in the hallway outside the operating room. Over and over she had repeated this cycle: chair, bathroom, chair, drinking fountain, chair, office, chair...yup, pretty soon she'd be running off to the bathroom again for fun. It was better than just sitting here and staring at the wall and thinking about all the many, many things that could go wrong...

Actually, now sounded like a good time for another trip to the bathroom.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Bright. Bright light invading his eyelids, forcing them to blink and his eyes to water. He tried to sit up and was overcome by a wave of dizziness. His skin tingled. And he was hungry. Terribly, terribly hungry.

After a moment, he managed to push himself into an upright position. In front of him, Dr. Peters bent over a sink, scrubbing her hands. Her image swam back and forth before his eyes.

He had to swallow a couple of times before he could speak. "Did you do it?" he asked.

Dr. Peters looked up, surprised that he was awake so soon. "Yes," she said, shutting off the faucet. "How do you feel?"

"I don't feel any different." He started to push himself off the table but stopped as another wave of dizziness hit. He reassessed. "Okay, actually, I feel like I haven't fed in about four months. But other than that, no different."

"You're not particularly observant, are you?" Dr. Peters smiled as she walked up to him. Gently, she took his arm, guiding his hand until it came to rest on his chest. "There," she said. "Do you see?"

And Spike whispered, "Oh god."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Buffy walked slowly back from the bathroom, carefully positioning each foot in the direct center of every square tile into which she stepped. Yet another trick to keep herself from thinking too much.

She rounded the corner to find a man wearing Spike's clothes and a ridiculously large grin standing by her chair.

"Spike?" she called, even though it couldn't be Spike; Spike didn't grin like that, not even after (or during) sex. Smirk, yes; smile shyly, yes; flat out grin, no. But this guy was grinning from ear to ear. And he certainly looked like Spike.

She found herself running to him, her legs moving of their own volition.

They came together like opposing sides of a magnet: hard, fast, and not without sticking power. He kissed her passionately, like it was their first time, and held her as if he'd never really touched her before. And then he took her hand and pressed it up against his chest.

"Do you feel it?" he asked, softly.

She felt it. And she remembered the wave of hope that had passed over her when Dr. Peters had first told her tale; the hope that she had quickly pushed away, because it involved asking for something that she had no right to request. But he had given it to her anyway, of his own volition.

"This was supposed to be my gift to *you,*" she said as she felt the rhythm of his heart beating in his chest. "You already got me a bracelet, remember?"

"And you bought me that lovely meal at McDonald's," he said in the pauses between his continuing assault of kisses. "Just like you're about to buy me a really big breakfast. Preferably at some place where we can sit outside in the sun."

She broke away suddenly, laughing. "Oh god," she sputtered. "You. Sun. I just can't believe it." Her voice lowered. "It's almost too good to be true."

The huge, very un-Spike grin returned. "Believe it, baby. Look." He brought her hand to his neck. "Pulse." He held her hand in front of his mouth. "Breath. And did I mention how very hungry I am? And not for blood." He took a breath - *he* took a *breath* - and looked down at her. "That was a hint," he prodded.

Buffy realized she'd been staring at him like he might disappear or implode at any moment, and shook herself. "Right," she said. "Let's get you out of here. Did Dr. Peters..."

"She left. Said sentimental moments made her uncomfortable. Don't worry, I thanked her. Put on a great poofy show and hugged her and everything. Probably inspired her desire to escape."

He turned around as if he was looking for something, and Buffy noticed he was squinting. "Just a sec," he said, and took two steps in the direction of the chair before he was tripping over it. Buffy reached out and steadied him, worry rising in her stomach.

"What's wrong?"

Spike blushed, actual color flooding his pale cheeks. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Kinda forgot to mention it, but, uh, I can't really see all that well. It's a good thing you're driving."

Buffy couldn't help but smile. "Wait a sec," she said. "Does this mean the Big Bad needs glasses?"

"Shut it, Slayer," he said as he fumbled around by the side of the chair, finally coming back up with a small black case gripped between his fingers. "The Big Bad needs contacts, that's all. Come on, let's go." He took a step forward and somehow managed to trip over the chair again. "Okay," he admitted as he righted himself again, "I may need you to help me a bit."

She was more than happy to oblige.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Buffy's original intention was to buy Spike a huge, decadent breakfast at La Jolla's most posh restaurant, but at six o'clock in the morning, the only thing open was the McDonald's. And so they ended up parked in the lot next to the restaurant, sitting on the hood of the SUV and eating Egg McMuffins.

"This is the best thing I've ever tasted," Spike said, leaning back against the windshield and practically moaning from the feeling of the sun beating down on him.

"What about blooming onions?"

"Mmm... I'll have to try those again. I mean, I've always liked human food well enough, but it still paled in comparison to blood. This, on the other hand," he held up the Egg McMuffin like it was a sacred relic, "this is bloody magnificent."

Buffy took another bite of her McMuffin, which she thought was actually rather gross, and smiled at him apologetically. "I promise to get you something really good when we get back home."

"We going straight back then?" he asked lazily. He could lie in the sun for hours. Days, even.

"Well, before I was thinking that we'd have to get a hotel room, due to someone's combustion factor, but that's not necessary anymore." She rolled over onto her side and watched him lick the last of the grease off his fingers. "But we still can, if you want to."

A devilish grin spread across his face. "You expect me to say no?"

"It was kind of rhetorical."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Spike slid quietly out from between the sheets and crept across the carpet to the bathroom. It was odd, the realization that he had to pee. Okay, so this was one of the less pleasant aspects of being human (-ish, a part of his brain that he chose to ignore reminded him). There were worse things. He took care of his business quickly and was about to hurry back to bed when he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror.

He'd been purposely avoiding looking. He'd refused Buffy's offer of her compact and had turned a blind eye to the many reflective surfaces that adorned the SUV. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but this avoidance was not motivated by modesty, but by fear. He was afraid to see what he had become.

But now, there he was, right there on the wall. And he couldn't help but look.

The hair was different, obviously. And the scar on his eyebrow was quite visible. And perhaps there was a hardness to his features that hadn't been there before. But, as far as he could tell - and his vision was blurred, he reasoned, which might account for something - it was still the same face that stared back at him that had been there 125 years ago. Same mouth. Same nose. Same eyes...

No, he thought. The eyes had lost a great deal of their innocence. But they were wiser, too.

Spike smiled then, and his reflection smiled back. Then he tip toed back to bed, wrapped Buffy in his arms, and held her tight, the afternoon light spilling in through the window and basking the sleeping couple in its glow.

"That is the most romantic thing I've ever heard," Sarah says. Over the course of the story, her jaw has taken up permanent residence somewhere around her waist. Roger looks rather like he's been hit in the face with a pan. Zoë won't look at anyone.

"Like 'Romeo and Juliet,'" Sarah continues, "Only better."

"It's not like 'Romeo and Juliet' at all," Zoë spits.

"Yeah," Spike agrees. "I'd prefer not being compared to that prat."

"It's a lie, that's what it is," Zoë says. She looks up at her father, venomously. "One. Big. Fat. Lie."

He sighs. "You know it's not a lie, pet."

"Oh yeah? How am I supposed to know anything when if what you just told us is true, then my whole *life* up to this point has been a lie? Is that somehow preferable?"

Spike shakes his head, sadly. "No. No, it's not. But it doesn't change what's true."

Zoë opens her mouth, and then closes it again. There's nothing she can say. She folds her arms across her chest and turns her back to her father.

"Wait," Roger says suddenly, as if he's just figuring things out. "So you're a *vampire*?"

Spike nods. "That I am, mate."

"And Anne's real name is *Buffy*?"

Another nod.

"Whoa. That is so weird."

Sarah comes out of her romantic stupor long enough to say, "Congratulations, Roger, you just picked up the delayed reaction and understatement of the year awards in one graceful sweep."

Roger ignores her. "And you, like, drink blood?"

Spike looks down at his nails. He needs to find some black polish. "I haven't for a long time, but yeah, I guess I do."

"So how old are you?"

He has to think about it for a minute, remind himself that he isn't 42 like it says on his driver's license. "One hundred and seventy-three," he says, "next November."

"Wow, Zoë." Roger prods her shoulder affectionately. "I guess I don't have the oldest father after all."

Zoë pushes herself further into the corner, away from his touch. "Shut up, Roger," she mutters.

Roger does not shut up. He turns back to Spike, who is still leaning against the trunk, an unreadable expression on his noticeably younger looking face. "So how'd you become a vampire?" he asks eagerly.

Zoë spins back around. "This isn't interview with the *fucking* vampire, Roger!" she screams. And then more levelly, "If he's going to tell us anything, it'll be the rest of the story he just told." She glares up at Spike. "You're leaving stuff out."

Spike looks down at his shoes uncomfortably. The laces on one of his Doc Martens are undone. This strikes him as odd; that never used to happen before. He ties them up tight again.

"There's not really much more to tell," he says.

"Tell us anyway."

"Um..." Spike gets to his feet and starts tidying up the bathroom as he talks. "Well, about a year and a half after I got re-wired, your mum turned 25, and she was retired as the Slayer. She was the first Slayer to ever make it to retirement. Her powers went away, and her responsibility ended. But she still stuck around and helped out - we both did. We got married with plans to stay in Sunnydale. But then you were born, and it wasn't safe anymore. We left and came here." He kneels down beside her and takes her hand in his. "We just wanted you to be safe, Zoë."

She jerks her hand away. "Fucking great job you did. And how is mom doing right now? How safe is she?"

Spike takes a step back like he's been stung. His daughter knows just which buttons to push. Great. She takes after him.

"She's alive," he says. He starts to take a breath and then realizes he can't. This is why he needs the cigarettes. "She's being held for ransom by Drusilla and Darla." Zoë and her friends stare up at him, confused, so he clarifies. "My sire and her grandsire-cum-childe." They still look confused, but he's too tired for this right now. "Don't ask," he says.

"What's the ransom?" Roger asks, sobered.

"Me."

"Oh." Roger considers this. "So why wouldn't they take you before? I mean, they were in that house, right?"

"Yes, they were. But they didn't want who I was then. They don't want William. They want me. Spike."

"And you're just going to let them have you?" Sarah asks, her voice quaking.

"Not if I can help it." He walks back over to the trunk and opens it again. Zoë stands as the lid falls back, watching over her father's shoulder. So this was the secret of the trunk. She liked it better when she didn't know.

Again, Spike removes the false bottom, but this time he leaves the black box well alone. It's bad enough that he can feel the little black controller residing in his pocket rub against his leg every time he moves; he wants as little reminder of their situation as possible. He pulls out a large black gym bag and lays it down on the tile floor, yanking open the tired old zipper.

"Whoa," Roger remarks when he sees the bag's contents. "That's a lot of weapons."

"And it may not even be enough," Spike says. He pulls out a handful of stakes, shoving one securely into his belt, and dropping another into his pocket. He hands two more to Zoë, and one each to Sarah and Roger. "You're not to get close enough to use those unless absolutely necessary," he tells them.

Next out of the bag are two fairly worn, but still deadly looking crossbows. "You all took archery in gym, right?"

Zoë ignores the question, but both Roger and Sarah nod. "Had to," elaborates Roger. "You know Coach Wagner."

Spike rolls his eyes towards the heavens. "Do I ever." He hands a crossbow and a small quiver of arrows to Roger and the same to Sarah. "Right," he says. "Then you both know to point this end away from you."

Roger nods again, but Sarah looks down at the crossbow in her hands a little unsteadily.

"Mr. Barnet?" she says quietly. "They had us use longbows in gym. We've never had to use crossbows before."

"And hopefully it will stay that way," Spike says briskly, and resumes shuffling though the bag again. But then he pauses and looks up at the girl standing petrified before him. "Sarah," he says. "Since when have you started calling me Mr. Barnet? You don't even at school when you're supposed to." He puts his hand on her shoulder and is relieved when she doesn't shy away. "Spike is fine. Or William, if it makes you more comfortable. I'm used to both, now."

Sarah nods, but silently she decides that it will be easier not to call him anything. She is not quite how to react to the person standing before her. First of all, he may not actually be a person. Second, he is now holding a large, curved axe with a wicked edge and grinning at it. Third, he is her best friend's father, and her English teacher. And fourth, she is kind of in love with him. Even more so, now that he is wearing many things tight, black, and leather.

This is definitely not of the good. She hopes Zoë doesn't notice.

Luckily for Sarah, Zoë is not in a condition to notice much of anything. Since when did her life turn into this sick, twisted soap opera by the way of Edgar Allen Poe and Wes Craven? How did she possibly end up in her bathroom, clutching two wooden stakes, while her father, the vampire, offers her something sharp and asks, "Would you like an axe, pet?" as if he were offering her a second helping of mashed potatoes?

"Yes, please," she hears herself say, and takes the axe. It feels good in her hands.

"All right, now we have weapons." Spike is already locking the trunk back up again. "Now we're just - bloody hell, Roger! Point that somewhere else!"

"Sorry," Roger says, lowering the offending crossbow. He has already loaded it, and was innocently sighting down the arrow when his trajectory got a little close to Spike's chest. Roger knows he should feel scared and apprehensive, but he can't seem to calm the flood of excitement that has washed over him. Finally, he is getting a chance at a real adventure. With real weaponry, too.

"Take out the arrow until I tell you otherwise," Spike says, proving that he can still be parental even if he is handing out armaments. Roger reluctantly complies. "At least you had the right idea, mate," Spike consoles him. "Aim for the heart, straight and true. You all know that, right?"

"We've all seen fucking 'Dracula,' all right? Aren't we wasting time here?" Zoë hoists the axe up onto her shoulder. It does feel good.

"First of all," Spike says. "Any Dracula movie you might have seen was probably 90% bollocks. I've met the guy and he's a right ponce. Second, it's always best to be prepared. Which is why we're going to make a couple more stops before we settle this matter once and for all. I don't care if it takes more time now; when we settle this; I want to make sure it's settled forever. Got it?" All three of them nod, although Zoë seems a bit more reluctant about it. "Good. Just remember, I'm only bringing you along because I know you would find some way to come anyway. Don't make me regret it later, because the other option is I lock you in the basement."

He grins at them. Sarah and Roger both take a step back. Zoë twirls the axe in her hands and puts a "go ahead and try" expression on her face. Despite his utter transformation from the mild mannered schoolteacher he was just this afternoon, this is still her father. He's still the same guy who fell backward off a ladder and cracked the sink; still the same guy who is intimidated by Coach Wagner; still the same guy who snores like a weed whacker/chainsaw/outboard motor. He's still her father. And she won't let him scare her.

...golden eyes...

"Let's go," Zoë says briskly, and pushes her way out of the bathroom. She walks downstairs, not really caring if the rest of them are following. She can hear their footsteps behind her though, and she only has to wait in the entry hall, in the room with the too-white walls, for a couple of seconds before they are all piling in behind her.

Spike ushers them outside onto the porch, and with one last look at his house - the look that, he knows, might very well be his last - he pulls the door shut behind him. And locks it, tightly.

"So where are we going, exactly?" Roger asks as he and Sarah climb into the back of the Cabrio. As usual, Zoë sits up front with her dad. Roger finds it interesting that their world has been turned upside-down, yet they still follow the same seating arrangements.

"When you were being all twenty questions before, you reminded me how long it's been since I've fed," Spike says as he fastens his seatbelt. "I've got to be in top form if I'm going to be in a fight. We're going get me something to eat, and some smokes."

Roger nods, thinking that he could use something to eat as well, until he realizes that that's not quite what...Spike - he's still having trouble thinking of Zoë's father like that - meant. The whole drinking blood thing suddenly seems much more real and much less cool than it did upstairs in the safety of the bathroom. How exactly, Roger wonders, is Spike planning on getting himself something to eat?

His worst fears appear to be confirmed when Spike pulls up in front of the Champlain Farms. "Gonna get myself a Slurpee," the vampire announces as he hops out of the car. He disappears into the store.

The three teenagers sit for a moment in stunned silence. Roger looks back and forth between his friends, trying to divine what they are thinking. Zoë is staring blankly into the night, but Sarah is gnawing on her fingernails. Oh hell, somebody's got to say it, Roger thinks. "Um," he says. "You don't think..." Zoë turns around in her seat to look at him, her expression unreadable. "You don't think he'd, you know..."

"Just say it, Roger."

"You don't think he meant a Slurpee in a less literal sense, do you?"

Sarah's back tenses. "Oh my god, he's taking revenge on Arnold for being so nasty earlier!"

"Serves him right if he is," Zoë mumbles.

"No!" Sarah says, undoing her seatbelt. "We've got to stop him!" She starts to get out of the car. "Come on, Roger."

"She's right, Zoë. We can't let him do this."

Roger gets out of the car, too, and Zoë reluctantly follows. They are halfway across the narrow stretch of parking lot when Spike comes back out of the store, carrying a brown paper bag in the crook of his arm and sucking red liquid out of a tall Styrofoam cup with a straw.

"Hey kids," he calls. "Why didn't you wait in the car?" He hands the paper bag to Roger. "Look," he says. "I got you some crisps."

Spike gets back into the driver's seat, and the others get back in behind him, warily. He takes another big sip from the Styrofoam cup before turning around in his seat and offering it to Sarah and Roger.

"Want some?" he asks.

"No!" they answer in unison.

"Your loss," Spike says, taking another big sip. "It's strawberry." He finishes off the rest of his Slurpee and chucks the empty cup out the window. It lands, noisily, in the garbage can next to the gas pump.

Spike takes a new pack of Marlboros out of his coat pocket, removes a cigarette, and lights it with an old metal lighter he used to take on camping trips to set fire to kindling.

"Mom's not going to like you smoking," Zoë says quietly.

"Your mum'll understand that under the circumstances, it's necessary," he says as he pulls out of the lot.

"How, exactly?"

"Part of the persona." Spike lets his eyes drift up to the rearview mirror - In which he can no longer see himself reflected, which, as he'd nearly forgotten, gives driving an extra odd little twist - and sees Sarah and Roger quaking in the back. "You two all right?" he asks. "You sure you don't want to go home?"

"Yes," Roger says. "It's just..."

"We thought you were going to eat Arnold!" Sarah blurts out.

Spike stares dumbstruck for a minute, and then he bursts out laughing. "You mean that pillock back at the gas station? Why the hell would I do that?"

"Well, you're a vampire," Roger says pointedly.

"But I wouldn't..." Spike starts to say, but the words die in his throat. "Eat your crisps," he says.

He finds that he is gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the silent veins in his hands are bulging. For the first time in over twenty years, he is fully a vampire. He is not held back by any chip of any kind. He could easily have bitten that stupid, nasty little kid. And yet, the though didn't even cross his mind.

Dru's going to take one look at him and she's going to know.

It doesn't matter how much bleach he puts in his hair, or how tight his clothes are, or the number of cigarettes he smokes. She's going to know. And there's nothing he can do about it.

No. He's going to do everything he possibly can. Starting with nicking a large amount of blood from the local hospital and bathing in it if that's what it takes to get the scent on him.

Thus determined, he pulls into one of Porter Hospital's many parking lots. The town may be small, but there are still plenty of cars parked in front of the hospital at this time of night, and the windows of the ER are ablaze with light.

"Wait here," he says as he gets out of the car.

"What are you doing?" Roger asks.

"I do have to eat, you know," Spike says, flicking the butt of his first cigarette away. Immediately, he goes to light another one. Old habits die hard.

"You don't mean..." Sarah's voice trails off.

"Blood bags!" Spike says, exasperated, flicking ash all over the place. "Jeeze, a little faith..."

"Dad," Zoë says, coldly. "I think, under the circumstances, it's more than understandable if none of us are feeling entirely comfortable with the whole trust thing. So just get your blood already, okay?"

Spike takes a long drag and walks away, muttering. The three teenagers watch his back until it pushes its way through a side entrance and disappears.

"I always thought I was born here," Zoë says once she's sure he's gone. "I mean, they never said, 'Oh, yes, Zoë, you were born at Porter,' but I just assumed, you know?" She stares straight ahead as she talks, not looking at her friends. "I mean, everyone in the area was born at Porter. You both were born at Porter, right?"

Roger and Sarah nod, and then realize that Zoë can't see them. "Yes," Roger says quietly.

"Right. So I just assumed." Out of nowhere, Zoë's fist slams into the dashboard. "I assumed an awful fucking lot!" she screams. And then she sinks back into the seat, quietly resigned once more. "Well, I am not assuming anymore, ever again."

Neither Roger nor Sarah really knows what to say to that, or even if there is anything they can say. Roger does not want to admit that he is actually rather jealous of Zoë; he'd give anything to discover that his parents were more than they seemed, but they remained a dentist and a shopkeeper: mundane, just like he was. Sarah wants to comfort her friend, tell her that everything is going to be all right. But even Sarah, an optimist, knows that that is probably not true.

"I'm sorry," is all she says. Zoë doesn't answer. She doesn't expect her to.

After a couple more uncomfortably silent minutes, Spike comes running back out of the side door, several plastic bags full of thick red liquid clutched in his arms. He thrusts them at Zoë.

"Sorry, luv, could you just hold these for a sec?" he says, hopping into the car next to her. He pulls out of the parking lot, hurriedly. "I wasn't quite as covert as I would have liked."

They speed away down the road. Looking back over her shoulder, Zoë sees a man in hospital scrubs burst out of the door and peer off into the night. After a moment, he stomps back inside, angrily slapping the side of the building with his palm.

"They didn't catch us," Roger says happily.

"I can't believe that little ponce saw me in the first place," Spike fumes.

"Worried that you're losing your touch?" Zoë asks, acidly.

"No," Spike says. This is true. He isn't worried that he's losing his touch; he's worried that he's lost it, permanently. He glances over at his daughter, clutching the fruits of his efforts in her hands. He slows the car down to a more reasonable 55 mph and holds out his hand. "May I have one, please?" She hands him a bag, not looking at it. He tears it open with his teeth. "You comfortable holding the rest?" he asks.

Zoë stares down at the bags of blood apathetically. She can hear Sarah making mildly disgusted noises from the back seat, but nothing about the red liquid in her hands bothers her. It's just blood. She's pulled far grosser things out of the drain when cleaning the shower.

"Sure," she says.

"Thanks." He takes a big swig from the bag in his hand. The blood slips down his throat like rich, liquid copper. He is surprised to find it doesn't taste as good as he remembered. And it's human blood, too, not pig or cow. Well, it is cold. Maybe that has something to do with it. "Wish I had some place to warm this up," he mumbles.

"You warm it up?" Roger asks. "Why?"

"Tastes better that way." He doesn't want to explain why, and luckily, Roger doesn't ask. Spike finishes off the rest with a gulp, and crumples the bag in his fist. He almost tosses the crumpled plastic out the window, but thinks better of it, and shoves it down into the map slot in the car door.

"May I have another?" Zoë passes him another bag. He drinks this one just as quickly, not really enjoying it. There are three more left. He should probably drink them all, get as much of the smell on him as possible, but he really doesn't want to. He's still kind of hungry, though. "Roger?" he asks. "You still got any of those crisps left?"

Roger hasn't touched the chips, and neither has Sarah. He hands Spike an unopened bag of Lays, wordlessly.

"Thanks, mate," Spike says. He devours a huge handful of sour cream and onion chips and licks his lips, thoughtfully. Now these taste good; salty and crispy and delicious. Much better than...

"Fuck," he says under his breath. Zoë looks up at him, but doesn't say anything.

Dru's going to know. Dru's going to take one look at him and she's going to know.

He drives on, feeling sicker and sicker all the while.

Pretty soon, they are pulling up in front of the college rec center. Spike parks the car and gets out, slinging his axe up onto his shoulder. "We walk the rest of the way," he says.

No one questions him. Seatbelts are unfastened, doors opened, weapons gathered. Sarah can't help but think back to this afternoon, when they'd all climbed out of the car in Zoë's driveway in much the same manner, only now they're heaving weapons around instead of backpacks. She weighs the crossbow in her hands. She hopes she's up to this. She doesn't want to let Zoë down. Or William. Spike. Whatever.

Roger puts his hand on her shoulder and gives it a light squeeze. "It's gonna be okay, Sarah," he says. "We're gonna kick ass." He smiles, but he doesn't look particularly convinced.

They start walking, Spike in the lead, with Zoë following close behind, but over to the side, not next to him. Roger and Sarah walk a few steps behind her, huddled close together. There are four people, and three units. It worries Roger that father and daughter have separated themselves. They should all be one unit, or father and daughter should walk together, or Zoë should walk with him and Sarah. But Zoë won't even look at him anymore; won't look at anyone. And this is not the kind of thing that anyone should go into alone.

He grabs Sarah lightly by the wrist and pulls her up next to Zoë. "Hey," he says.

"Hey," she says, quietly.

"You all right?" he asks. Stupid question, he thinks.

"Peachy," she says.

They don't say anything else after that.

About a hundred yards away from the house, Spike stops walking and turns to face them. "Look," he says. "If at all possible, I want you to avoid having contact with Darla and Dru. We're all going to go in the house, but you're not to leave the first floor. I'm going to go in and get your mum and send her down. I want you three to get her out of there. I'll follow...as soon as I can."

From the expression on his face, Zoë knows that could be never.

But sometimes, there just aren't any more choices.

She nods, and follows him into the house.

Anne had never been very good at waiting. Sitting around when there was something useful to be done seemed like such a waste of time. No, she was always action girl. If someone was in trouble, she'd find a way to deal with it, quickly and efficiently. She'd rescue whoever needed rescuing.

She doesn't like how the tables have turned. She doesn't like being the one who needs to be rescued.

They've removed the blindfold, but not the gag. The dirty strip of cloth has grown damp from resting between her jaws. Perhaps it will soon be wet enough to bite through. She tries to moisten it with her tongue, but her mouth is so dry now that it is a useless endeavor. How long has it been since she has had something to drink? If this keeps up, she'll die of thirst before they have a chance to kill her.

Good. She doesn't want to give them the satisfaction.

Part of her hopes that no one is coming for her; that William did the smart thing, took Zoë, and got as far away from here as possible. But part of her, the selfish part, is praying that William will come for her. And she knows William enough to be pretty confident that it's the selfish part that is going to win.

She hears him before she sees him, a slight creak on the stairs. And then he sweeps into the room with cat-like grace, like smoke swirling in the breeze. And her breath catches in her scratched throat at what she sees.

It's like a vision from the past. The years have melted away from his face, vanished along with all the color in his complexion. It pulls at her, pushes her brain in directions it does not want to go. It confirms her fear that everything was no more than a facade, a fancy scientific glamour. A monster in a man's clothing.

It's not his fault, she tries to remind herself. He had to deactivate the chip. But it still hurts her, to see him like this again, after so much time...being normal.

"Face it, Spike," she had said, "we can never be normal."

For once, Anne wishes she could have been wrong.

All semblance of normalcy is long gone, however. He strides into the room, the forgotten but familiar swagger back in his step. His duster floats around him and his beautiful blue eyes flash gold. And he is grinning, a wild, manic grin. A predatory grin.

He walks right by her as if she were not even there.

"Dru," he murmurs, seductively, and Anne is desperate to see what is going on. She can hear Drusilla squealing with delight, but she can't turn around. She is forced to listen to her husband fool around with his ex behind her back. Literally. It's far worse torture, she decides, than anything that Darla could have come up with.

But Darla doesn't seem to be particularly happy, either. She is standing in the corner, just barely in Anne's line of sight, her arms crossed over her chest. She is watching the reunion of Spike and Dru, her suspicion openly displayed across her face. She bites her lip, and then disappears out the door.

It is not any sort of residual Slayer sense, but just plain old maternal instincts that let Anne know that her daughter is in trouble. She realizes, with sudden horror, that Spike would be just stupid enough to bring reinforcements in the form of their daughter, and quite possibly, some of her friends. If Darla could smell them...

Her body is too weak to fight her bonds at all effectively, but Anne strains violently against her gag. She tries to shake it off; she gnaws at it, but to no avail. Finally, she resorts to screaming into the cloth. But the sound is horribly muffled. Worse still, it falls on deaf ears; from what she can hear, Spike and Dru are so engulfed in one another that the house could fall down upon them and they wouldn't notice.

Exhausted and beaten, Anne sinks back into her chair. And for only the third time since her mother died, she begins to cry.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Zoë waits with her friends at the bottom of the stairs. Around them looms a miscellany of furniture from the past. Covered in sheets, the antique chairs and love seats and end tables appear like ghosts, frozen in space as well as in time. All and all, this house would be pretty cool - if it weren't for the circumstances that brought them here.

Zoë spins her axe around, getting used to the weight of it in her hands. Always one to prepare for the worst, she tries to imagine what it would be like to thrust the axe into another human being - or humanoid being, she amends. What would it feel like the moment the blade sinks in, and steel meets flesh? Zoë decides she is being too morbid, and tries to think of something else.

Unfortunately, "something else" is the thing that has been bothering her all evening, the line of thought she cannot push away. It teases her, like an itch at the back of her throat, impossible to scratch. There is still something wrong with her father's story; something that doesn't quite seem to fit. And try as she might, Zoë can't seem to put her finger on it.

"Maybe I can't see the forest for all the trees," she murmurs.

"What?" Roger looks up from the floorboards he is studying.

"Nothing," Zoë whispers. "Sorry."

She is trying to figure out which parts of the situation correspond to the forest and which parts are the trees, when she feels a tingle race up her spine like an icy finger. She jerks around, but sees nothing in the oppressive darkness, just the ghostly shapes of the furniture that wait silently around the room, like a sleeping army. Zoë shivers in spite of herself, and she remembers why she spent so many years afraid of the dark.

Then she hears Roger's voice, distant and childlike. "Zoë?" he asks. "Where's Sarah?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

There was a time when holding her like this would have been the closest thing to heaven for Spike. Her long dark hair in his hands, her cool white skin against his, her soft red lips dancing over him. No chaos demon, no Angelus; just him and his Dru.

But as he holds her now, as she runs her sharp nails down his chest and looks up at him with her sad, insane eyes, he knows that time is long gone. And now, it is nothing but a game.

"I've missed you," she coos. But her expression is sad. "Are you finally free? I feel the chains pulling at you, Spike. You swing upside down by your ankles, but you smile. You are the hanged man, never again to stand on your own two feet, but laughing all the while." She pushes a stray strand of hair back into place, much as she did one fateful night over 140 years before. "You scare me, William," she says, and she steps away, her pale white hands falling to her sides.

Under other circumstances, it could be considered closure between them. But it is in that moment that William knows he has failed.

So for Darla to come in with Sarah held tightly under her iron nails is just redundant, really. But Darla has never been one for subtlety.

"Lookey here, Spike." She spits his name out like bitter wine. "I brought you a welcome home gift."

She pushes the girl to him, and Sarah lands sobbing against his arm. He tries to hold her steady, but she claws away from him, hysterical with fright, her thin blond hair coming loose from its carefully constructed knot and falling across her face, where it becomes stuck down with tears. Instinctively, he grabs hold of her wrist when she tries to push away, and pulls her close into a deadly embrace. She shudders against him, blubbering.

William looks up at Darla's expectant face. He thinks about sacrifices, and what is best for the cause. And he knows what he must do.

Quickly, so that he doesn't have to think about it, he manhandles the screaming girl until they are standing in Anne's line of sight, directly in front of the door. He grins wickedly up at Darla. "I want her to watch," he says, indicating Anne.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Anne resume struggling against her bonds, even harder than before, but he does not allow himself to look at her. Instead, his gaze is fixed on Sarah's smooth expanse of white neck. He twists his hand into her hair, jerking her head back. His game face comes on without him even having to summon it. He runs his tongue across her skin, feeling her blood throbbing in her jugular and tasting her sweat. She whimpers, but no longer has the strength to struggle against him. And so he lowers his teeth to her neck, and he whispers, "Run."

His movements are fluid; he'll still give himself that much credit. In one graceful motion, he pushes Sarah toward the door and whips around, pulling out a stake. But Darla is just as quick. Within seconds she is upon him, a fury of teeth and claws. She is older, and meaner, and not out of practice, as he is. And unlike him, she doesn't have four other people to worry about.

It is his desire to make sure that Sarah has made it out safely that enables Darla to take him down. He turns his head to the door to check on the girl, and even though he is relieved to see her disappear down the stairs unharmed, it is enough of an opening for Darla to slip in and disarm him. The stake flies from his hand and skitters across the floor. William delivers a swift kick to Darla's midsection, and she staggers backward, but before he can free his second stake from his pocket, or reach the axe he left propped by the door, she is on top of him again. She pins his arms down with her elbows and holds him tight.

"You didn't fool me for a second," she tells him.

He brings his knees up, forcing her off. He gets to his feet, licking the blood from his lips. "Probably better for me in the long run," he says.

"You don't have a long run."

She backhands him, and he blocks it, but sloppily, and the force of the blow still sends him stumbling backward.

"Ooh, you're rusty," Darla clucks.

"That's what you think." Deftly, he spins around, his elbow connecting firmly with the side of her face, and she reels away. He leaps for the axe, but as his hand closes on the handle, he glances upward and catches sight of the figure standing in the doorway.

"Zoë?" he says, and at that moment, Darla charges him from behind. His head slams into the wall, his mind exploding into stars, and the last thing he sees before he slips away is his only child, alone in a room with Darla and Drusilla.

~ Chapter 15 ~

"Well, this just keeps getting better and better," Darla says. She gives William's unconscious body a kick. Laughing, she turns around to face Anne. "If this is the cavalry, then you're in big trouble, sister."

Anne shoots daggers at Darla, but a slow smile has begun to spread across her shrouded lips.

Darla is oblivious, however, her gaze now focused on Zoë. The girl stands in the doorway, funneling all her anger and fear into forcing her hands to stop shaking. She grips the handle of her axe, a determined expression on her face. Her friends flank her on either side, their eyes wide but angry. Sarah, especially, is seething.

"I'm going to kill you," Zoë says with certainty. "You've ruined my life."

Darla smiles sweetly. "And now I'm going to end it," she says.

She lunges at Zoë, but is stopped short by the chair that comes crashing down on her head.

Anne stands triumphantly, holding the remains of the shattered chair high above her head. The ropes that held her hang in tatters around her wrists and ankles, having been worked down to nothing by hours of patient twisting and pulling.

Anne has never been a patient person, but extreme circumstances bring out the hidden talents in everybody.

"Don't you dare touch my daughter!" Anne says, her voice steady even though her body trembles. She remembers how her own mother protected her once, and she is determined to do the same. She hoists one of the broken chair legs in her hand; voila, instant stake. "You're going to die for what you've done."

Darla snarls, and gets to her feet. She and Anne begin to circle one another.

"Oh, have we ruined your little television fantasy? What did you think this was, 'Leave it to Beaver?' 'Ozzie and Harriet?' Honey, that is so over. All families are dysfunctional nowadays. Did you somehow miss the memo?"

Anne lunges, but Darla knocks her back, easily. Seeing that her mother is in no condition to fight, Zoë prepares to join the fray, but before she can move two steps, a figure blocks her path. Zoë stares up at that thin white face framed by long dark tresses, and into those deep, insane eyes, and finds that she cannot move.

"I know you," Drusilla says, studying the girl. "You are mine, too."

"Leave her alone!" Roger steps gallantly out in front of Zoë, blocking Drusilla's path. Dru swats him aside like a discarded rag doll and he falls unconscious to the floor. Dru takes another step forward and she holds Zoe's chin in her hand.

"You too are chained," she says. She runs a cold finger down the side of Zoe's face. "But you still have the key."

"Zoë?" Sarah says, uneasily. She shifts her crossbow in her hands, unsure what to do with it.

"Shut up," Zoë whispers.

Sarah wavers, not knowing whether to pry Zoë away from the woman with the lost eyes or see if she can help Roger. "Zoë..." she starts again.

"Shut up!" Zoë says, more forcefully, and Sarah makes up her mind, rushing to Roger's side.

"What key?" Zoë asks.

Dru caresses her cheek with her icy hand. "Plastic magic has locked you away in a little black box," Dru says. "But you will free yourself, and you will come back to me. We will be a family again." And then with one last touch, she drifts away, back into the shadows.

Zoë shakes herself, feeling like she is surfacing from a deep pool. The first thing she sees is Darla land a punch to her mother's face, sending her sprawling to the floor.

"You stupid girl," Darla says. "You forget that you are not the Slayer any longer." She straddles Anne's heaving form, bleeding again from too many cuts to count. Darla laps up a stream of blood running down Anne's cheek. "Ah, but you still have a Slayer's blood," she says happily, her game face coming on as she leans over to finish the job.

And then a crossbow bolt erupts in her shoulder, and she falls back, howling. She spins around to face her assailant, and is shocked to see that it is Sarah who holds the bow.

"Get away from her!" Sarah says, surprised that her voice doesn't shake.

"Sorry, sweetheart, I can't do that." Darla pulls the arrow from her shoulder and tosses it angrily to the ground. "But I'll be sure to save time to play with you later."

"Never," Anne says, getting back up off the floor. Her whole body protests, screaming from pain and blood loss, but she finds her feet, and prepares to engage Darla once more.

The vampire turns around to face her, but as they once again begin to circle, Anne turns to Zoë one last time.

"Run," she says. And then, "Please."

And suddenly, Zoë understands. The forest stretches before her, it's gnarled mass of trees clear to her eyes. But not only that; Zoë sees the path that, twisted though it may be, leads the way out of the woods. And so wordlessly, Zoë lifts Roger's crumpled form into her arms, and with Sarah's help, takes him out of that place as her mother fights on behind them, holding out just long enough for them to get away, and not a second longer.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Darla stands over the former Slayer's broken body, victorious. She has waited so long for this moment. Because of this woman, Drusilla lost her Spike. Because of this woman, Darla lost her Angelus. Because of this woman, Darla lost her life.

Even the anticipation of revenge is sweet.

Anne looks up through swollen eyes. Her body is spent. She can't even lift a finger in her own defense as Darla leans over, licking her lips. But she forces her tongue to work, and as Darla's fangs sink into her neck, she whispers, "You'll lose."

And then suddenly, the weight is lifted off her body. Her eyes flutter open again, and she sees Drusilla's hand on Darla's shoulder, holding her back. Darla looks up furiously at the dark haired vampire, but Drusilla's chin is set in defiance.

"You mustn't, grandmummy," she says. "You mustn't."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"But you don't have a license!" Sarah sputters as Zoë pulls the spare set of keys from where they are hidden, taped to the bottom of the car. It's a good thing Anne never broke her habit of locking the keys in the car and got William to follow her safety precaution as well.

"Oh, you're worried about the Middlebury Police Department now?" Zoë says, forcing the key into the ignition and glaring at her friend. "I wouldn't. They're all at home, asleep in bed like normal people."

She starts the engine and maneuvers the car away from the curb. Sarah hastily tightens her seatbelt, and not a moment too soon, because Zoë takes a speed bump too fast, and the car shudders.

"Ooops," Zoë says. "Sorry."

In the backseat, Roger finds himself jolted back into consciousness. He opens his eyes, blearily, and then starts, realizing where he is, and with whom.

"Zoe's driving?" he says vaguely, and then promptly passes out again.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They reach Zoe's house relatively unharmed. Zoë and Sarah awkwardly carry Roger into the house and lay him down on the couch. Sarah sits down beside him. She stares up at Zoë, her eyes wide.

"We shouldn't have left," she says.

"We all do what we have to do," Zoë says, softly.

Several minutes pass, in silence. Then Zoë seems to shake herself; her shoulders fall back, and she lifts her head again.

"You'll sit with him?" she asks. Sarah nods. "Good. I have something to take care of." She turns and walks away.

Sarah takes Roger's clammy hand in hers and squeezes it tightly. She glances down at her wristwatch with its little picture of the Eiffel Tower. It's just after two o'clock in the morning. Four more hours until dawn, and the end of the longest night of their lives. Sarah closes her eyes, and allows herself a moment's worth of peace.

It all comes back to the trunk, Zoë thinks ruefully. It still sits, rather innocently, in the bathroom, looking out of place next to the bathtub and toilet. She kicks it, and the wood chips a little bit, but it doesn't make her feel any better.

Roger was right, she thinks. It really is a treasure chest, and the prize it holds is the truth. And like every good bounty, this one comes with a curse.

Ignorance *is* bliss.

Zoë wonders, then, when they would have finally told her if all this hadn't happened. Would they have ever aired out the attic and shared their little secret? She honestly doesn't know. And it's not like it matters anymore anyway. She knows.

Steeling herself, Zoë flips open the trunk and removes the false bottom just as she saw her father do. The little black box is cold and heavy in her hands.

"So this is what they've kept me locked up in," she says aloud.

The box has a six-digit combination lock on it. Zoë doesn't bother with it. Instead, she lifts the box high above her head and smashes it down against the side of the tub. It repels back, and chips off paint, both black and white, come flying into Zoe's face. She ignores them, and brings the box down again. After two more hits, a crack forms. In three, it widens. In five, it shatters.

Zoë reaches down among the debris and picks up the black plastic cube, still nestled in its bed of gray foam rubber. She studies the single black button; it seems made for her thumb. She itches to press it. But she contains herself; she must be ready first.

She goes to the mirror and checks to make sure everything is in order, knowing that it will be her last chance to do so. In front of the mirror, she primps - a rare experience for her: she's a jeans and t-shirt girl. Now she wears a version of her Halloween costume from the previous October: Death, from her favorite comics and films. Zoë has outfitted herself in tight black pants and a black strappy tank, black boots, and a black belt studded with silver. A large silver ankh hangs around her neck in place of her usual cross, which she knows is no longer safe to wear. What a pity that she never thought to use it while she could. Apparently, she thinks, the lessons pounded into you from birth are the first ones you forget under stress.

Zoë decides she is satisfied with her appearance, but then, as an afterthought, she shuffles through the makeup cabinet beside the sink and pulls out a tube of her mother's eyeliner. In one deft movement, she draws a small black swirl under her right eye, completing the look. She looks good, and she tries to smile, but her stomach clenches. She doesn't want to admit it, not even to herself, but she's terrified. So many things could go wrong. She remembers a fairy tale she read when she was younger, one of the not-nice ones. In it, a princess wished that she could grow younger every day instead of older. The princess' wish was granted, and she aged backwards until she was a helpless baby in her crib. Then she disappeared into nothing.

Zoë thinks of this now, and she has to grip the edge of the sink to keep herself upright. No, she tells herself, no getting cold feet now. Not when you've come this far. Not with so much at stake.

Stubbornly, she raises her chin, and takes the black cube back into her hand. She runs her fingers over its cold surfaces, much as her father did, pausing with her thumb just above the button. She takes a deep breath.

"Death is before me today," she whispers, and doesn't know whether it is funny or sad. "I'm coming home."

And her thumb comes down.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"I don't see why we can't just kill them."

Darla is walking in furious circles around Drusilla, who is braiding the hair of Miss Edith, version 108.

"She'll know," Dru says, "and she won't come back."

"So what?" Darla screams. She can still taste Slayer blood on her lips, and she hungers for more. She also hungers to see the expression on William's face when Anne takes her last breath. But Dru is forcing her to fast.

Darla takes a deep, unnecessary breath and forces herself to regain her composure. "I appreciate your need to be thorough and all," she says, "but we've got what we came for. Granted, things didn't go exactly as planned, but I think the casualties are more than reasonable." She looks over to where William sits, his hands bound by ropes he could easily break, but won't - simply because she told him that if he did, they would kill Anne instantly. "Let's just cut our losses and get out of here."

Dru's mouth turns down into a pout. "Not without my girl," she says.

Darla sighs and kneels down beside the other woman. "Dru, honey," she says, stroking her hair like she would a child's. "She's just another girl. She's not special, she's not a Slayer, she's nothing. We can find another just like her somewhere else, somewhere where we don't have to live in an icky old house, and feed off the four bums who live in this hick town. The girl is inconsequential."

"No!" Dru hand flies out and cracks Darla squarely across the cheek. Darla cups her wounded face, smoldering with rage. Once, this would not be allowed to happen. But Darla is not the head of the line anymore - Drusilla is.

"No," she says again. "Her veins glow." She gets up from her chair and begins to spin, like Gene Kelly with his umbrella. And as she spins, Dru sings, "She's family..."

~*~*~*~*~*~

There should be pain. But there isn't.

One minute she's human, and the next...

"Oh god," Zoë says, her golden eyes rolling up toward the ceiling. "Oh, god..."

She can feel the strength coursing through her. She's high on it. She's high on the sharpness that every object in the room has taken on. She's high on the sounds she hears: the animals outside, the furnace, the water rushing through the pipes. She's high on the way her body feels now that every bit of physical pain it suffered from has vanished like an unpleasant memory.

Zoë looks up at the mirror in front of her, and the unobstructed view of the cabinet behind her it displays, and she throws her head back and laughs.

"Why didn't you tell me, Dad?" she asks the empty room through peals of laughter. "Why didn't you tell me how wonderful it is?"

And then her stomach clenches, and she feels the hunger for the first time.

Okay, she thinks. I know how to deal with this.

Carefully, she re-wraps the black cube in its nest of foam rubber and places at the bottom of her little black knapsack. She closes the trunk, giving it another kick for good measure, and walks confidently out of the bathroom.

At the top of the stairs, she pauses. She can hear voices from the living room; Roger must have woken up and is talking with Sarah. Zoë finds that not only can she make out the words far better than before; her ears alert her to their presence in other ways as well. She can hear them breathing: Sarah drawing quick, short breaths; Roger's breathing more slow and drawn out. And she can hear the blood flowing through their veins, and smell it, too. It sings to her, a sweet melody, a Siren's call. Zoë finds she is unconsciously running her tongue across her lips. She is so hungry...

Slowly, she moves a step down, and then another, and another, the call of the blood drawing her closer and closer to the cliffs.

~ Chapter 17 ~

Sarah screams the second she catches sight of her.

"What's wrong?" Zoë starts to ask, but Sarah is already scrambling to find a weapon and get Roger to his feet.

"Stay away!" Sarah says, holding out a stake in a shaky hand.

"Guys, it's just me," Zoë says, wondering how they can even tell that she's done anything. Then she remembers what she's wearing. "Okay, I know the outfit's a little weird," she says, "but it's really nothing to freak out about."

She takes a couple more steps into the room, and Sarah screams again. "Get back! Get away from us!"

Roger peers around Sarah's shoulder, getting his first real look at what is making Sarah yelp. He scrunches up his nose. "Zoë?" he says, blearily. "Why are you all bumpy?"

"What?" Zoë says. And then she realizes, and her hand flies to her forehead, feeling the equally strange and familiar ridges of her demon visage. "Oh, crap." She concentrates for a second, and the ridges melt away, leaving her human face behind.

The stake drops from Sarah's hand and she stands aghast. "Sorry," Zoë says, feeling like a science experiment under her friends' stares. "I was planning on breaking it to you gently."

"Breaking it to us gently?" Sarah sputters. "That - that you're one of *them,* too? How can you break *that* gently?"

Zoë doesn't know what to say. Her hunger is proving to be very distracting.

"I mean, what is this, 'The Twilight Zone'?" Sarah is saying. "Is *everybody* a vampire?"

Roger raises his hand. "I'm not a vampire," he says helpfully. He sounds a little disappointed.

"Okay," Zoë says. "Is it just me, or must he have been hit on the head harder than we thought?"

"Definitely." Sarah allows herself a little laugh, and then she realizes that she has been led off topic. "But that's not the point. Since when are you a vampire?"

Zoë sighs and sits down on the arm of one of the chairs. "Since always, I think," she says. Sarah still looks confused, but Zoë doesn't really know what to say to clarify the situation, since she doesn't understand it herself. "I think I was born this way. I think that's the bit my dad left out of his story: that I wasn't born normal. So they chipped me right away, and tried to pretend that I was." She looks down at the pale white skin of her hands and remembers her dream. "But you can't hide what you are."

Sarah doesn't know what to say to that. But she reaches out and takes Zoe's hand.

"I was born with six toes on my right foot," Roger says.

Their laughter, which increases when they catch sight of Roger's dazed smile, does them both good.

And then Zoë realizes that she has been staring longingly at Sarah's neck, and her laughter dies. "Do you know what happened to the rest of the blood bags?" she asks, breaking contact and taking a couple of steps back for safety's sake.

"Oh, eww," Sarah says.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Roger is watching the mug spin around in the microwave with quite a bit more interest than the experience warrants.

"Roger, you really need to snap out of it." The microwave begins to beep and Zoë moves Roger gently out of the way so she can remove the mug.

"I'm fine," he insists. "Just a little woozy..."

"You think he got a concussion?" Sarah asks as Zoë, mug in hand, takes a seat across from her at the kitchen table.

"Maybe. But do concussions make you act so weird?"

"I dunno. Maybe it's just his brain's way of dealing with..." she trails off, watching Zoë take her first sip of blood. A low moan escapes the new vampire's lips. "...All this stuff," Sarah finishes.

"Oh, God, that's good," Zoë says, running her tongue across her lips to scoop up any last drops. She can feel her forehead wanting to do *that thing.* She doesn't let it.

"May I try?" Roger asks.

Sarah gives him a disgusted look. "What? No! Eww!"

"Sure," Zoë says and pushes the mug across to him.

"Cool," he says, the same dazed look in his eyes. He takes a little sip. His eyes go wide, and for the first time in a while, clear. "Oh, eww!" The mug is slammed back down onto the table, and Roger rushes to the sink, spitting and fumbling with the faucet so he can wash the taste away. "Ick! That's disgusting!"

"Zoë!" Sarah says. "Why'd you let him do that?"

Zoë licks the remaining blood from the mug and places it casually in the sink. She slaps Roger playfully across the back. "Welcome back," she says.

Roger draws a hand across his soiled mouth. He glares at Zoë. "So what's your big plan?" he asks, angrily.

Sarah looks up from the table, her eyes big and questioning. "Yeah, Zoë. What are we going to do?"

Zoë braces herself against the edge of the counter, and looks straight ahead, her teeth clenched down tight. Her whole demeanor has changed in an instant; gone is the smallest trace of a laugh or smile. "I'm going to go back there," she says. "And I'm going to kill her."

"But if your dad--" Sarah starts to say.

"My dad," Zoë says, evenly, "was too careful. That was his fatal mistake: he was always protecting my mom, or me, or one of you. It was always a rescue mission for him. But not for me." Zoe's eyes flicker gold as she speaks. "I don't care anymore about rescuing people. It's too late for that. I just want her dead. And so I'm going to go back to that house one last time, and I'm going to kill her." She pauses, but her golden gaze does not waver. "Even if it kills me."

Roger and Sarah look at each other, and shake their heads. "We won't let that happen."

"Than you'll probably die, too," Zoë says, and she walks out of the room without looking back.

Without a word, her two friends rise and follow.

When Zoë looks up from checking the weapons in her black backpack and sees them there, a hint of a smile passes across her lips, but it dies quickly.

"You'll be on your own if you come," she says. "I won't protect you."

"We know."

Zoë looks them up and down, taking in their scuffed sneakers and ripped clothes. She sees the red marks on Sarah's neck left by Darla's cruel fingers; she sees the big purple bruise blossoming across Roger's forehead where it connected with the floor. She sees how fragile they are, and how undeserving of a night like this.

But then, did her mother deserve what has happened? Did her father? Did she?

Zoë nods solemnly at her two friends, and together they walk out that door to face whatever the night may bring them.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Well this is just sad," Darla says when she sees them. "Haven't you figured out yet that charging in here will just get you dead?"

"Somebody dead, anyway," Zoë says, and she flies at Darla's throat.

Darla rolls her eyes. "Oh, please," she says, making no effort to move out of the way. And then Zoe's fist connects with her jaw, and she reels back.

"What the hell?" Darla holds her wounded chin and stares up at Zoë, whose game face has automatically slipped on, twisting her smile into something truly terrifying.

"Surprised?" Zoe's yellow eyes flash.

"How -" Darla starts, but then everything clicks into place in her mind. So this is what Dru meant. It complicates things, surely, but it also makes them more interesting. Darla smiles. She begins to move to the familiar rhythm; Zoë catches it, and the two women circle each other, the rest of the world fading away to nothing.

"Boy, your mother must have been surprised when she went to have a baby and *you* popped out instead. Bet you gave the nurse a heart attack."

"I'm sure I did. What's your excuse?"

They come together, then, in a fury of fists and fangs that would have made a younger Spike proud. But now, William does not even watch the fight; he sits on the floor, tied back to back with his wife, his eyes fixed on the shadows. He can still feel his sire's presence in the room, but he can't see her: she is hidden in the darkness, in some distant corner. And he knows she is watching, and waiting.

He hears Roger and Sarah approach, but doesn't bother to turn and face them.

"You shouldn't be here," he whispers, his eyes never leaving the shadows. "Get out, now. And take her with you."

Roger and Sarah exchange a look; they don't have to see William's face to understand. Quickly, they go to work on the ropes. Once freed, Anne's limp form sags to the floor. Roger catches her head before it hits the wood, and he and Sarah lift her up. She is surprisingly, frighteningly light, as if she has not eaten for days, as opposed to the mere span of hours she has actually gone without.

As the two teens carry her away, both of them throwing nervous glances around the huge, empty room, they just barely hear William whisper, "Thank you." And then he goes back to watching for his dark princess' return.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Zoë can taste her vengeance; it is hovering before her, like a piece of ripe fruit, hanging low, ready to be plucked from the bough. She runs her tongue across her fangs in anticipation, her lips spreading into a thin smile. She can't believe that it has been this easy, nor that it could possibly taste this good.

Zoë has never had any formal martial arts training, save for two weeks of Karate lessons when she was in the seventh grade. So far, she has fought entirely on instinct, her body making the choices, not her mind. And she has found something, something fast and sharp and pure deep within herself. And now, Zoë has Darla pinned up against the wall.

The blond vampire hisses, straining against the body that forces her back against the wood, and at the small but sure hand that grips her throat more surely than a heavy chain.

"This is going to be fun," Zoë says, using her free hand to pluck a ready stake from her open bag of weaponry. She positions the deadly piece of wood above Darla's silent heart, ready to strike. "You ended my life. Now it's my turn to end yours."

Darla struggles fitfully, but it is no use: Zoe's wicked grin only widens as she brings the stake down.

And at that moment, Sarah screams.

The protective bubble that separated Zoë and Darla's battle from the rest of the world bursts, and even though Zoë promised herself, and cautioned her friends again and again that she wouldn't save them if they got in trouble; even though she knows it is a mistake the second she does it, Zoë turns to see what is wrong.

Sarah's leg has crashed through a weak floorboard, causing her to drop Anne's feet. She is startled, but unhurt; she doesn't even need Zoe's help.

But it is just the opportunity that Darla needed. With Zoe's concentration broken, she twists away as the stake falls, causing it to sink into the wall instead. And now Zoë is off-balance: all that Darla needs to knock her to the floor. Before Zoë even has a chance to react, Darla is straddling her, pinning her arms down with her thighs. The older vampire rips Zoe's bag away from her, upending it and sending stakes and knives and a small black object wrapped in foam crashing to the floor. Darla clutches greedily at one of the stakes, smiling at the weight of the wood in her hand. A look of horror fills Zoe's eyes as the stake is positioned right above her heart.

"You were right," Darla says. "This is going to be fun."

~ Chapter 18 ~

Time stops as the stake descends. Like the image in a blurred photograph, Zoë can see every position in space it has occupied in its slow route from Darla's raised hand to her own unbeating heart. And then the wood pierces her flesh, and the pain engulfs her, and she can't see anything anymore.

It's over as swiftly as it began. Yes, the pain is still there, but it is already subsiding, dissolving into a distant memory. Zoe's eyes flicker open. She looks up to where Darla kneels beside her, staring down at the younger vampire's chest, her mouth dropped open in shock. Zoë follows her gaze there, buried firmly in her chest, is the stake. Blood dribbles from the wound, but that's where the blow's effectiveness ends.

Zoë throws her head back and laughs. "I can't believe it!" she says. "You had you're chance, and you missed! You missed!"

"Impossible!" Darla protests.

Zoë lashes out with her foot and laughs again when it connects solidly with Darla's abdomen. The blond vampire tumbles backward, crashing into the pile of discarded stakes, all of which roll away, just out of her reach.

Zoë gets to her feet. With a groan, she pulls the stake from her chest and spins it in her hand. She stands over Darla, completely in control. "It wasn't my day to die," she says.

Darla is inching away, crawling backward like a crab. Zoë halts her movement by bringing the heel of one black boot down on her ankle. It emits a satisfying crunch.

"But it is yours."

"No!" Darla pleads, too frightened to hate herself for begging, for being reduced to this. "Don't do this! I can show you things. I can help you. I can help you take revenge on everyone who's ever wronged you."

An image of Kelly and Emily, their vacant eyes staring up from a floor stained red with their blood, takes a tempting trip through Zoe's mind, but it is fleeting. She banishes the last of that urge by crunching down on Darla's other ankle.

"Sorry," she says, "but I was raised better than that."

She forces Darla firmly backward with her foot, and readies the stake. Darla fumbles about her on the floor for some weapon, any weapon, but there is nothing to be found but dust, dust and gray packing foam...

"Besides," Zoë says, "you're all the revenge I need."

Darla's hand closes around the small black cube, a flash of recognition in her eyes...

Zoë brings the stake down...

And just as wood meets flesh, Darla crushes the cube firmly within her fist, reducing it to nothing more than a mess of wire and plastic.

"Ooops. Look what I did," Darla says, and then she explodes into dust.

Zoë gets shakily to her feet. She is too stunned, too high on the fulfillment of her dream of vengeance and on her miraculous escape from death to fully comprehend the magnitude of what has just happened. Numbly, she gathers up her stakes and the remains of her only link to humanity, and places them gently in her backpack. She slings it over her shoulder, and turns to collect her father.

William is standing now, but his eyes have not left the shadows. Involuntarily, Zoë shudders this was just the kind of thing that scared her when she was young: that space where the light couldn't reach, where anything could be lurking, waiting...

From the blackness into which father and daughter stare, a figure emerges. Her long black hair cascades down her back, and her small white hands trace patterns in the air. Zoë finds herself compelled to move forward - to support her father, she reasons. But really, she is a moth drawn to the white-hot flame that is Drusilla.

"Zoë, don't come any closer," William says. But he doesn't look away, nor does he make a move to leave.

Drusilla twirls, her thin arms spinning out around her, dancing on the air, and then coming to rest draped over William and Zoe's shoulders. "My children," she says. "Do you know what mummy has sacrificed for you?"

"Leave her alone, Dru," William says. "You can't have her."

"Oh, but I can." Drusilla runs her fingers across Zoe's face her features have returned to their human guise, but Zoë can feel the demon edging closer to the surface at the dark woman's touch.

Zoë shakes herself. "No," she whispers. Her hand tightens around her stake, still wet with her own blood and sprinkled with Darla's last earthly remains. But Dru places one cool hand over her own, and the stake slips from her grasp and clatters to the floor.

"It won't be you," Dru says. "Nor you, sweet William." She takes his hand as well. "You could never kill me. We're connected, us three, tied tight in a web of veins and arteries and tiny, tiny little capillaries. We'll always be together."

William's hand trembles under his sire's grasp, but his voice is steady. "Not anymore, Dru. Our roads diverged. We're leaving." He takes Zoe's free hand in his, so now they *are* all connected: a circle of clutched hands, William to Drusilla, Drusilla to Zoë, and Zoë to William. But then father and daughter break away so that the two of them stand together, and Dru stands, once more, alone. Slowly, they begin to back away.

"I can wait," Dru says as they walk away. Her voice sounds almost clear. "I've waited this long."

"Goodbye, Dru," William says, and he and his daughter leave that place forever.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Outside, at the bottom of the hill, Roger and Sarah are waiting for them, Anne's still unconscious body supported between them. Roger lets out a whoop when he sees them, and Sarah begins to sob, joyfully. William rushes forward and takes his wife into his arms, and Zoë grabs both of her friends hands in hers, and holds on tight. Together, as one unit, they turn and walk away, and never look back.

There is one hour until sunrise.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The blinds are drawn tight across the windows of William and Anne's bedroom. Roger and Sarah are safely returned to their respective homes, sworn to secrecy, and giddy from their adventure, now that they know everyone is going to be all right. Anne is asleep in the bed, having woken, briefly, once William and Zoë got her home she sipped the water and soup they brought her, gratefully, before nodding off again. Now William and Zoë sit by her side, both terrified at the thought of letting her out of their sight.

They ought to be more concerned about waking her, as the volume of their voices continues to escalate the more they talk.

"You shouldn't have done it," William is saying. "It wasn't worth the risk."

"You're my parents! I couldn't just *leave* you there!" She stares him down, and he grows quiet.

"I didn't want you to have to do..." He hesitates, but she already knows what he means. "...This. I didn't want you to find out this way."

"Well, we don't always get what we want, do we?" Zoë says bitterly. She sees her father's crushed expression, and quickly amends, "It wasn't your fault, Dad."

"Yes, it was," he says, and she doesn't argue. Not about this.

William reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a crunched pack of cigarettes.

"Do you have to smoke?"

He nods, fitting the filter between his lips. "Last one," he says, lighting up. "Then we reactivate the chips, and I'll never smoke again, okay?"

A horrible heaviness settles over Zoë. "Sure," she says. "Right."

And right then, William knows. But he won't let himself believe it.

"Zoë, you are going to reactivate the chip," he says, hoping that by being stern, he can keep the fear out of his voice. "It's not up for discussion."

Zoë doesn't say anything.

"Zoë," he says, dread sweeping over him. "You do have your controller, don't you? You didn't...lose it or anything?"

She looks away. "I didn't *lose* it..."

He is truly scared now, perhaps more frightened by this new revelation than he has been by anything else that has happened this night. "What happened?" he asks.

Zoë swallows. "Darla broke it."

He wants to scream, to swear, to break something, to break *somebody.* As it is, his fists clench into tight balls, and his teeth grind into his lip. His eyes begin to water as he squeaks out, "What?"

"She broke it," Zoë says again. And then she hurries on, "But that's okay, right? Because I can still use yours, right? Right?"

"Zoë," William says, just barely keeping himself in check. "Each controller was programmed to the individual chip. Mine won't work for you."

Everything seems to grow very quiet. "Oh," Zoë says. And then, more softly, "Fuck."

William takes his daughter into his arms, then holds her close. He runs his fingers through her hair, just as he has since she was young. He remembers his fear when they first saw the ultrasound, the ultrasound that confirmed their worries that something was *wrong.* He remembers Anne - although she was still Buffy then - forced to give birth in the back of the Magic Box, in a horrible parody of a thousand movies' "Bring water, hot water, and lots of it!" scene, with Willow playing the roll of midwife. And he remembers the moment when Willow finally pulled Zoë screaming from her mother's womb, and gave her to him to hold and how, even though she was red, and howling, and in full vamp face, he loved her then, just as he loves her now.

"We're going to get through this," he says. "We always do."

And Zoë looks her father in the eyes, in his old, old eyes and she says, "I know."

~ Epilogue ~

Dear Roger,

I know you must be mad at me for running off the way I did, without saying goodbye. I hope you know that I would never have done it if I there had been any other choice. But there was no other choice.

As I'm sure you figured out, there were some problems with my chip, and so I'm stuck like this for a while. It would have been too difficult to stay there and pretend everything was normal: I wouldn't have been able to go to school - and I know this makes you jealous. Cut it out! - and Dad and I would have been constantly raiding Porter's blood supply...It just wouldn't have worked. Besides, we want to figure out how to fix this thing, so Mom called in an old favor, and got us a couple of leads. We're heading west now, which is pretty cool. Hey, you know how much I always wanted to get out of Vermont - now I'm traveling across the country!

The night after *that night,* my Dad went off to the hardware store and bought a whole bunch of black paint and he and I coated all the windows on the Cabrio with it. Now there's just a tiny blank space on the windshield so that whomever's driving can see, and Dad and I don't have to worry about getting dusted. That's what my Dad calls it - getting dusted. I'm learning all this new vampire terminology. Oh joy.

So anyway, we packed up and were gone by sunrise. Mom was still kind of out of it, and she slept for most of the day. I think talking to whomever it was she called to get information took a lot out of her it certainly put my Dad in a bad mood. He stormed around for a good half hour after she called, muttering under his breath and chain smoking. The smoking bugs me, but I understand: Dad has to stay all vampy now, too, even though there's nothing wrong with his chip. He said he wasn't going to let me go it alone. I feel bad for him I think he got sick of the whole vampire thing a long time ago, and now he's only doing it for me. What makes me feel worse is that about half the time, I enjoy it - being a vampire, I mean. I feel strong, and powerful - things I never felt before. And people look at me differently, now: perfect strangers respect me, fear me, even. I can see how it could go to your head.

Mom and Dad are determined *not* to let it go to my head. My dad's teaching me to "control my demon." I reminded him that I *am* my demon, which I thought would piss him off, but instead he started talking about how *everyone's* got demons in them, and that ours are just a lot less subtle about it. I guess that's true, but it still irritates me that he makes me eat normal food even though I'm not hungry for it, and watch a lot of dumb TV, and do other things that my Mom says "kept him rooted." I asked my Dad about this, and he said that he doesn't want me to lose touch with the things that made me human. I said that was silly, and that I didn't see how I could lose those things, no matter how many blooming onions I did or did not eat, because those things were just as much a part of me as the demon - the demon's just a lot less subtle about it. This made my Dad very happy, and he stopped smoking so much, at least for a couple of days.

So at night we drive, and during the day we stop at crappy motels. My Dad says it's safer this way, because there's less chance we could get stopped by some cop who noticed our out-of-state plates and didn't like our car's creative paint job. Having to explain why neither of us could get out of the car, or even roll down the windows, would be very unpleasant. Anyway, it's normal for my Dad and me to sleep during the day, and my Mom says she really doesn't mind she dealt with a similar schedule for ten years when she was the Slayer.

Speaking of which, it appears I've inherited more than I thought from my Mom's side of the family. Dad asked me to show him what I did to beat Darla, and I ended up totally kicking his ass! Well, okay, maybe that first time didn't count, because I don't think he was really trying very hard, but we spar quite a bit now, and I beat him at least 50% of the time. Mom theorizes that I've got all this inherent Slayer stuff, without actually being *The* Slayer. That, on top of the vamp strength makes me pretty unstoppable. (Okay, I'm bragging now. I can't help it.) Why none of these fringe benefits could have showed up while I still had to endure gym is beyond me...

While we're not driving, fighting, watching bad daytime television, or sampling the finer aspects of rural American cuisine, my parents entertain me with tales of their youths. Boy, Roger, do I wish you could hear some of the stories they tell! You would love this stuff: lots of violence and sex (the latter severely edited, of course, but I'm not stupid) - all right up your alley. I think that if we ever get all of this worked out I'm going to write all these stories down and try to get them published. I'd have to pretend they're fiction, of course but I swear, I'll blow Anne Rice out of the water.

I wish I could give you a better idea where we're going, but my Mom and Dad have become incredibly paranoid. My Dad blames it on the guy my Mom called: apparently, he works for some top-secret branch of the military (could this *get* any more X-Files?) and now they're most likely after us as well. By "as well" I mean that Drusilla is most likely still following us, so now we're on the run from the government *and* my Dad's psychotic sire.

I take it back this isn't an Anne Rice novel in the making, it's a sitcom. All we need is a wacky neighbor.

I just re-read that last paragraph, and I guess this is proof of how twisted my sense of humor is getting.

Damn. I really didn't want to get into this, but I think that there are some things you need to know. I'm not the same person I was - and I'm not talking about just the obvious physical stuff. Emotionally, I know I've changed. How could I not? I mean, I'm on the run in a Cabrio, for Christ's sake. So, I'm still me. But I'm different, too.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that I don't want you to hold on to some idealized version of me, because, at this point, even an un-idealized version of Then-me may not be an accurate version of Now-me. And it's not fair for me to expect you to hold on to something false. Now don't get me wrong: this is *not* a Dear John letter. I'd love to be selfish and ask you to wait for me but that's exactly what it would be: selfish. I have a lot of crap to work through right now, and it would be wrong of me to expect you to hang around, twiddling your thumbs, while I do it. Especially since, as much as I don't like to think about it, there's always a chance that I may *never* be able to sort through this crap, in which case you'll be stuck waiting for a very long time. And that would just *suck.* Someone as great as you shouldn't be wasted.

You're my best friend, Roger. We've been friends for a very long time, and we were just recently getting to experiment with being something more. I wish we'd had more time. But who knows, you know? Life is full of surprises - we've certainly learned that in the last week. We'll see what happens. But just know that I love you, okay? Don't ever forget it.

Take care of Sarah for me.

Love,
Zoë

P.S. Don't forget to take off your socks.

She is sitting on the swing in the late afternoon sun, her arms hanging lazily at her sides. Her feet trace circles in the gravel. Suddenly, she is seized by the desire for momentum, and she kicks off, her hands moving up to grip the chains, her legs pumping. Higher and higher she goes, until she threatens to swing right up over the bar, to fly off into the sky until she meets the sun.

She throws her head back, and she laughs as her shadow dances on the grass below her.

~*~*~*~*~*~

In a crappy motel room, somewhere in the vastness that is America, Zoë Barnet smiles as she dreams.

The End

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