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  Then Buffy finally let the bag go, and it flew into the janitor’s face and sent him rocketing back.

  Dawn couldn’t lead, but she could help. She tossed her sister the big pipe the nerd had tried to hit her with. Buffy caught it without looking and twirled it like a big huge dream majorette baton of death. . .

  “You really wanna keep this up?” Buffy demanded.

  The janitor mocked her. “What are you going to do, kill us?”

  He has a point, Dawn thought anxiously as the three evil beings began to converge on the good guys. Her heart was slamming against her ribs; adrenaline was coursing through her body with no conversion—as yet—into action. They can fight for, like, ever. Not even Buffy can fight that long. What are we gonna do?

  And then pop! went the weasel, and the bad dead guys completely and totally vanished.

  * * *

  Upstairs in the girls’ bathroom, Xander gazed at the broken bits of talisman in his hands. The dead girl who had been riding his back as if he were a mechanical bull while trying to stop him, vanished into thin air.

  The halls—and basement—of Sunnydale High were cleansed of evil manifest spirits with the snapping of the bone.

  Xander enjoyed his accomplishment, and then he set off to complete his appointed rounds as sidekick to the Slayer—making sure she and her sister were okay.

  My work here, nearly done.

  * * *

  The deeper recesses of Spike’s mind processed the victory.

  But Spike’s own victory had eluded him. Buffy’s abrupt arrival had caught him unawares; and though he had planned their reunion, played it out in his mind a thousand times. He had botched it.

  “. . . I had a speech, I learned it all,” he keened to himself, “. . . Oh, God, she won’t understand, she won’t understand. . . .”

  “Of course she won’t understand, Sparky,” a voice answered calmly. “I’m beyond her understanding.”

  A mind clearer than Spike’s would have recognized the speaker as Warren, the evil scientist/member of the evil threesome who had shot and killed Tara, and who had been flayed alive for his crime. Flayed by the red witch, back in England, and Warren should not be here—cuz, dead—but he was, with his dark eyes and brown hair and his smirk.

  “She’s a girl,” Warren continued, dripping with contempt. “Sugar and spice and everything useless, unless you’re baking. I’m more than that. More than flesh.”

  He morphed into Glory the Hellgod, the being who had caused Buffy’s second death as she had swan dived into a sea of mystical energy.

  “More than blood,” she exulted. “I’m . . . you know, I honestly don’t think there’s a human word fabulous enough for me.” She strutted, enormously pleased with herself. “Oh, my name will be on everyone’s lips, assuming their lips haven’t been torn off—but not just yet. That’s all right, though.”

  Glory morphed into Adam, the part-demon, part-metallic-construct created by Riley Finn’s superior, Dr. Maggie Walsh.

  “I can be patient,” Adam assured Spike. “Everything is well within parameters. She’s right where I want her. And so are you, number seventeen. You’re where you belong.”

  Number seventeen . . . my prison ID code, when the Initiative got me, chipped me . . . this monster knows all my secrets . . .

  Adam morphed next into Mayor Wilkins, who had adopted the dark Slayer, Faith, and tried to devour Buffy’s graduating class on Ascension Day. . .

  The Mayor squatted opposite Spike, all affable intimidation, as he had been in life.

  “So what’d you think, you’d get your soul back and everything would be Jim Dandy? A soul’s slipperier than a greased weasel. Why do you think I sold mine?”

  He added pleasantly, “Well, you probably thought you’d be your own man and I respect that. But you never will.”

  And as he reached for Spike’s face, he morphed again.

  “You’ll always be mine,” Drusilla the vampire murmured. She was his beautiful sire, and he had loved her for centuries. Burned for her, until she’d left him . . . and he’d been so ridiculous as to fall in love with the Slayer.

  “You’ll always be in the dark with me, singing our li’l songs. You like our little songs, don’t you?”

  He couldn’t force away her touch, didn’t want to; she wasn’t there, she wasn’t, and yet. . . her touch was real. Her voice, real.

  I am utterly mad. I’m mad as a. . . weasel.

  “You always liked them, right from the beginning. And that’s where we’re going.”

  She stood, and gone was his Dru. And in her place . . . The vampire who had sired Darla, who had in turn sired Angelus, who had in turn sired Dru, who had inturnsired. . . Spike.

  The Master.

  A vampire so old he was more batlike than human, him in his leathers and his monstrous fangs and fingers . . . the creature responsible for Buffy’s first death.

  “Right back to the beginning,” the Master proclaimed evilly. “Not the ‘Bang,’ not the ‘Word,’ the true beginning.”

  Not there, not there, Spike told himself, rocking back and forth.

  “The next few months are going to be quite a ride,” the Master added, “and I think we’re all going to learn something about ourselves in the process. You’ll learn you’re a pathetic schmuck, if it hasn’t sunk in already.”

  He towered over Spike’s hunched figure, magnificent in his contempt.

  “Look at you,” he spat. “Tried to do what’s right. Just like her. You still don’t get it. It’s not about right. It’s not about wrong.”

  The most terrifying transformation had been saved for last, as the Master morphed into the one being in all the world who had consumed Spike body, heart, and soul. . . who could spell his end. . .

  Buffy.

  With a quiet smile, she said, “It’s about power.”

  Chapter Two: “Beneath You”

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Tattoo Nachtlocal was the Potential’s hangout. It had been easy to find her there, with her hot pink hair and her black bangs, her nose ring and metal collar.

  She raced across the breezeway of the technoclub and jumped down a level; then she dashed into an exterior door and scaled down the building.

  Ja. She was safe, back outside with some of the other club patrons . . . until her robed pursuers pushed her back inside and shut the door.

  She fought back, but there were too many. Then one of them pulled a long curved dagger. She blocked his swing.

  She missed the other one.

  It went so deep inside her the assassin’s wrist was soaked with blood.

  Her dead face stared out. Flecks of blood freckled her cheeks and her eyes glazed. Then her mouth opened, and an inhuman voice rumbled out of her:

  “From beneath you, it devours . . .”

  * * *

  Buffy screamed.

  And woke up.

  Her sheets were bunched around her, sweat dripped off her brow, and Dawn’s were hands on her shoulders as her sister tried to rouse her.

  “I heard screaming,” she told Dawn. “And there was a girl . . .” She processed some more nightmare, recalled the unnatural voice.

  “ ‘From beneath you, it devours.’ That’s what she said, and then they . . .” She took a breath, seeing the death again. “There’s more like her, Dawn. Out there somewhere.”

  Buffy rose and looked out her window, at the uneasy somnolence of Sunnydale.

  “And they’re gonna die.”

  England

  And Willow snapped out of her vision, sprawled on the lawn before the old stone house, while Giles urged her to breathe.

  She had collapsed. She was lying on the ground with her hands in the grass. She looked up at Giles, stunned by what she had seen and felt . . . by what she knew . . .

  “We were talking,” she told him. “And I felt. . .”

  She jerked her hands away from the grass.

  “I felt the earth.”

  She looked at Giles unea
sily. “It’s all connected, it is, only it’s not all good and pure and rootsy . . . there’s deep, deep black, there’s . . . I saw the earth, Giles. I saw its teeth.”

  He understood at once.

  “The Hellmouth,” he said.

  “It’s going to open.” She was terrified, swaying with what she knew. Sick from it. “It’s going to swallow us all.”

  Sunnydale

  A rat. Just a wee beady-eyed one, but bloody mammal all the same. Spike was on it, a wee bit of smackerel, rather like a scrambling kipper, blood and whiskers and a small heart to beat it all. . .

  Then rumbling blasted through like a train, like a hellish California earthquake, pervading his basement. The rat felt it, too, and took off; the rumbling jittered Spike’s fingers and his fangs and his brains; until it shook him hard like an angry, drunken uncle. He screamed in agony for it to stop. Begged the monsters, begged his mum. . .

  But it did not.

  * * *

  Dawn was perky for someone who had slept very little, but then, she was young. She was very excited that Buffy was going to be working at her school.

  “You understand you cannot talk to me, look at me, or hang out with any of my friends, right?” she continued.

  Buffy understood.

  Principal Wood was there to greet her on her first day as a member of the faculty. He had personally offered Buffy her part-time job as liaison to the world of troubled teens. It seemed rather convenient, she being the Slayer with a sister to protect, he having his office directly atop the Hellmouth. Maybe it really did have something to do with her being young enough to remember what a special hell high school could be . . . even in a normal town.

  She hoped to God it had nothing to do with mom hair.

  “Just remember that while you’re here to help,” he advised her as he led her to her brand spanking new office, “you’re not their friend. Trust me, open that door, these students will eat you alive.”

  She took a breath. “You heard about Principal Flutie, right?”

  She couldn’t be sure what he’d heard about. But he seemed to be up on his discipline. “There’s only three things these kids understand: the boot, the bat, and the bastinada. Bad joke,” he added, seeing her blank stare. “It’s the ‘bastinada.’ No one ever knows what that thing is.”

  Without hesitation, Buffy replied, “Wooden rod they use to smack the soles of your feet with in Turkish prisons, but if you use the right wood, they make an awesome Billy club.”

  Following this revelation, there was a long pause as Principal Wood stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. Then he smiled.

  “Think you’re going to fit in just fine,” he said.

  Then he left her alone, leaving her to sneak off to the basement to see how Spike was doing.

  But of the bleached-blond vampire, there was no trace.

  * * *

  The streets of Sunnydale were dark and deserted, but Nancy didn’t mind. Alone was good. Alone was . . . free. It was far more pleasant to walk Rocky, her little Yorkie, even though the stubborn little creature had yet to pee, than it had ever been to toe the line with her psycho ex-boyfriend, Ronnie.

  “Come on, baby,” she urged the pup, a little bored.

  Rocky trailed behind, sniffing at everything. Nancy groused, “Could have gotten a cat, but nooo. . .”

  She waited.

  There was a small, almost imperceptible jerk on the leash line, followed by a tiny yip.

  Frowning Nancy turned around . . . and there was no more Rocky. Just the leash, and then . . . a hole in the ground. Just a hole.

  She took a moment to process the odd tableau.

  It was a moment too long.

  For suddenly and violently she was jerked off her feet by a mighty tug on the end of the leash; she hit the sidewalk in a full-body dive, hard. Dragged along, she realized that the leash was being sucked into the hole, and she was being pulled toward it, that there was nothing stopping her progress as she was reeled in like a helpless fish. . .

  Then something roared and burst out of the ground; it was hideous, unbelievable. Screaming Nancy managed to crawl back as fast as she could, untangling her bloodied hand from the leash just in time. She screamed, ran and ran into the broad chest of a dark-haired guy, who said, “Hello.”

  * * *

  I meet women in the oddest ways, Xander thought.

  He had brought the hottie in distress, whose name was Nancy, to Buffy’s house. Nancy was telling them what had happened, in the words of someone who was not so used to the dark side as they were.

  “You hear things in this town, living in Sunny-dale,” Nancy was saying, “but no one actually believes them. You have to be crazy and . . .” She took a breath and looked at Buffy, Dawn, and Xander. “You all think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “I don’t,” Xander assured her.

  “We’ve seen things too, Nancy,” Buffy chimed in.

  “And we’re gonna do something about this,” Xander said manfully. “It’s your lucky night. Considering, you know, your dog just got all ate up and stuff.” Oh, smooth, Harris, he chided himself. “Can I fresh up that tea for ya?”

  “So you say this thing just came up out of the ground without any warnings or anything?”

  “Just this kind of rumbling, you know, like just before an earthquake?”

  Uh-oh, Xander thought, as Buffy gave voice to his thinking.

  “ ‘From beneath you it devours.’ ”

  Nancy was puzzled. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Buffy murmured.

  “Nothing good,” Dawn added softly.

  “It’s sounding monsterific, all right,” Xander observed.

  “Round up the gang?” Dawn suggested.

  “Good thinking. Except . . .” Xander was glum. “This is the gang.”

  Buffy turned to Nancy. “We’re going to get into this,” she informed her. “And if your dog’s alive, we’ll find him. I promise. The only thing we need. . .”

  “What you need is help,” said a suave, deep, and vaguely familiar voice. “Fortunately you’ve got me.”

  If someone had slapped Xander with an electric eel, he wouldn’t have been more shocked.

  Spike stood before them, cool, calm, collected. Well dressed—blue was a good color on him—and looking rather studly, not that Xander noticed.

  Totally together, like the last time Xander had seen him, when he wasn’t trying to rape Buffy. . . .

  * * *

  He’s different. He’s not crazy anymore, Buffy thought, perplexed. She felt terribly anxious having him in the house, and confused about the one-eighty that seemed to have taken place since she saw him in the basement.

  What’s going on with him?

  * * *

  Then Buffy was talking to Spike, while Dawn and Xander tried to explain to Nancy that Spike was Buffy’s ex, only more so, and Xander’s shockometer soared when it came out that Buffy had recently seen the former object of her twisted obsessions—and guess where: in the mucho mojo basement of Sunnydale High.

  And Spike wanted to help?!

  “Help me what?” Buffy demanded, and Xander was right there with her.

  “I was kinda hoping you’d tell me. You’re the Slayer. Connected to the visions, the long line of worthies. Right? And I’m just a guy with his ear to the ground, but even I can feel it. Something’s coming. Don’t know what, exactly,” Spike continued. “But something’s brewing and it’s so big, ugly and damned, it makes you and me look like little bitty puzzle pieces.”

  It’s like Casablanca, only not, Xander thought.

  “Ball’s in your court, Slayer,” Spike concluded.

  And Xander thought, Man. Bastard waltzes right in here after what he did. Talk about balls. . .

  England

  Coat on, bags packed. Willow sat in the old stone house that had become her refuge. In the drive, the taxi idled, ready and willing.

  Willow was not so much. She wasn’t ready to leave her safe
heaven.

  “What exactly are you afraid of?” Giles asked her.

  “How about the Hellmouth’s getting all rumbly again and now I know it’s got teeth. And those are literal teeth, ’cause I don’t know if I can handle it. And what if I can handle it? Does that mean I have to be a bigger, badder badass than the source of all badness? What if I have to give up all this control stuff and go all veiny and homicidal again? And what if—”

  “They won’t take you back?” Giles asked gently.

  And of course that was very high on her list.

  “I would offer some guarantee you’ll be welcomed back in Sunnydale with open arms. But I can’t,” he admitted, his face so kind, yet honest. “You may not be wanted. But you will be needed.”

  Sunnydale

  I don’t want him every again, Buffy thought, as she and Spike patrolled, coming up on the hold that had swallowed Rocky, and I need to let him know that.

  So she told him. She delivered the words harshly, aware that they fell on him like blows, and he took them, seemingly more interested in finding the monster they were after than in finding his way back into her good graces.

  “I can’t say ‘sorry’ and I can’t use ‘forgive me.’ All I can tell you, Buffy, is I’ve changed.”

  “I just know what you’ve changed into,” Buffy said frankly, as she shone the flashlight in the hole. Spike crouched examining the darkness. “You come back to town, you make with the big surprises—twice—and I don’t know what your game is, Spike, but I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “You’re right. But we’re not best friends anymore, so too bad for me,” he said. “I’m not sharing.”

  Then he rose, wiped the dirt off his hands . . . and whatever moment they had, whatever closure they had achieved, was done.

  * * *

  We’re having a moment, Xander thought, even if it was all about walking Nancy home to make sure she could there in one piece . . . or at all.