Insert, here, the usual disclaimers. These characters are the creatures of Mutant Enemy; may those who transform them into their own private monsters, run screaming from the consequences ... grr! Argh!

Warning: gruesome imagery, adult scenes.

Dream Sequence

The girl with the lioness hair stood in the eye of the sun.

It was afternoon in the California desert, washed with white light that looked harsh as Judgement Day. She wore a buckskin jacket, cords, and a thin sweater of beige wool. The girl at her left hand wore Indian cotton with a print of hibiscus and palm-leaves; the boy on her right sported a hideous mango-and-turquoise Hawaiian shirt. She barely looked at them. They watched her, skittish and a little nervous, and she looked away, around, elsewhere. It was a strange habit for a woman so young. It seemed as if she was constantly scanning her surroundings, watching for unknown dangers.

It was an old habit, for her. But there were lines under her eyes these days; she had lost weight, become careworn. (Cordelia would have taken one look and made scathing cracks about the fashionable anorexic look.) All this was new. Her friends guessed at some of the reasons, but most were secret. A shadow lay over her. Forget the sun.

She had dealt with danger and responsibility for years, after all. Now her worries were different . . . drearier, seamier . . . less apocalyptic. Less epic, more sordid. More mucky-grimy.

"'Course, having to raise the Dawnster would put white in any girl's hair. Not that you're just any girl, I mean. I mean, I bet even Primal Slayer Girl would have her hands full with kid sis. Um . . . she's not watching us, is she? Primal Slayer Girl?"

"No," said Tara, "she's in the spirit realm."

"And that's another thing. Spirit realm is not our realm. Spirit realm is a Giles-y kind with the watchiness sort of realm. And what's with this 'shake your gourd' stuff, anyway?"

"I went over it with Giles on the phone five times straight. We'll be just fine."

"Yeah, yeah, you'll be fine. I'll probably get eaten by a Gila monster or something."

"Maybe run over by an off-road vehicle," said Buffy helpfully. She squatted down by Tara, watching her draw the magic circle. "The dunes around here do look kind of ploughed."

"Struck down in my prime . . . You know, I'd die happier if I knew why we were even here."

"There are some things," Tara said, "that men are not meant to know."

"Cop-out," said Xander.

Buffy stretched and popped her back, watching idly as Tara prepared the magic circle. She checked her supplies: a bottle of water, trail mix in a baggie. That was all. "Last time," she told Xander, "a cougar led me across the desert. I met the first Slayer and she told me--" she made a face, "--oh, the usual prophetic weird."

"Wyrd?" said Tara.

"Deeply, madly, truly weird," Buffy agreed. "I'll take dreams over that trip any day. Listen, are you about ready for the gourd-shaking ceremony? 'Cause X and I both have the weekend off, but I was really hoping to get home before the malls open tomorrow morning."

"Almost ready . . . Who's patrolling tonight, then? Spike?"

"Yep." She swallowed. "Spike." Tara merely sighed. As for Xander, the gagging noises he made went on for quite some time.

Tara ignored him. Straight-faced, as solemn as ever, she made the magik preparations, went through the little ritual and then sat down cross-legged on the sand and sipped from a thermos of iced tea. Mesquite wood was burning within a ring of desert stones. Twilight veiled the earth. Night fell. Their little fire went purr and pop-pop-pop. Xander rummaged in the trunk of his car, and emerged with skewers and a bag of marshmallows.

Buffy stood apart, waiting for a sign. When she eventually got tired of waiting, she wandered away across the dunes.

Some time passed. The moon inched across the sky. Coyotes howled in the distance. "Sounds like an Ano-movic demon in mating frenzy," Xander remarked. Stars rose. Stars set . . .

"What's up with Buff?" asked Xander, after the final marshmallow had been devoured, and he and Tara sat on either side of the little fire, licking their fingers clean.

"She's troubled," said Tara.

"What troubles her?"

"I don't know exactly what. I mean, I, um, don't know any of the details and so on. But it's bad, Xander. Really bad. It has her frightened."

"Well, I'm not surprised," said Xander, helping himself to iced tea from Tara's thermos. "Because she's always had a yen for the gloom and doom. I dunno. I've known her for a long, long time, y'know, and if ever a girl had a lasting blue period, it's Buffy. Ever since the days of Angelus--no, even earlier, ever since we met, and even before, getting back into her Early Slayer era and that whole business with being bounced from the cheerleading squad that has obviously had deep-seated psychological repercussions. Nobody alive now witnessed that unhappy day," he went on, warming up to his theme, "but man-o-man, the carnage must have been ghastly. I mean, she's like the Leaning Tower of Depression sometimes--"

He looked at Tara and wiped the expression off his face. "She's right behind me, isn't she?" he said.

"Sure am," said Buffy. "Any marshmallows left?"

She didn't look any different. Perhaps her gaze was a little sleepier, but that was all. "Nope, but here, take this," said Tara, handing over the last of the iced tea. "To fight, um, dehydration. Power bar?"

"God no, it goes straight to my hips."

"And marshmallows don't?"

"They're soul food. As differing from the fatty-acid, fried, and chocolate food groups," Buffy said. "Just as popular, but no evil caloric content." She swigged iced tea, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ". . . Nothing happened."

"No Hey-Coug?" said Xander.

"Not even a hey-kitty-cat. The powers-that-be were not holding audience and the Wizard wasn't in tonight. I waited and waited and no one showed." She yawned suddenly, deeply. "I'm asleep on my feet. Tara, let's go home."

*

At home, she sat dozing at the dining-room table, amidst Willow's textbooks on philosophy and cultural anthropology. Buffy turned the pages of one book, idly: Tales of the Werewolves and Vampires was the title. '. . . seeing nothing strange in this,' she read, 'she accepted his ring and went to live with him in the Forest of Varagia. He cut wood for a living, and was also a huntsman. "Do not follow me when I go out at night," was his one command to her, "for I go to hunt the beasts that slay the stock, and you could not endure their eyes and claws." But one morning he came home bleeding, with his hand tied up in a bloody rag . . .'

She had to wash and iron her uniform for the Doublemeat. She had to clean the kitchen floor, make a grocery list, mow the lawn and weed it, and put Kill-up on the ant's nest next to the cellar window. She had to change the sheets on the beds and go through the Internet History folder on Dawn's computer. She had to check the due date on Dawn's library books. She had to patrol, paying extra attention to the old abandoned warehouse on the waterfront, which she suspected of harboring a breeding pair of gargoyles. She had to figure out what to do about Spike.

Buffy's hand slipped off the table. She laid her cheek down on the pages, and dreamed.

*

. . . She had been living for years in the Forest, and every night Angel kissed her goodbye at the door, shouldered his axe, and went out into the woods. To cut down the trees. To chop up the Bad Guys. And this was of the good, of the very good--in fact, of the goodness extraordinary. At dawn he came home, and they went shopping. To the bank to arrange the mortgage, to the store for the groceries. Plus, regular visits to the post office. PTA meetings too sometimes. It was the life she had always wanted, and she should have been in heaven. If only it hadn't somehow seemed all wrong . . .

And the nights were very long and cold, alone in her little bed.

"Everything's gone whacky," she said, sitting in front of the dressing-table mirror. "Gotta be someone somewhere who can fix it." So she hurried across the bedroom, the heavy tool-belt jingling round her hips; Xander's carpenter's apron felt strange but useable. She brandished the wrench that had Vanquished the Pipes. But Faith merely twirled her booty on the vanity stool, pursed her lips at the mirror and applied lipstick with a knowing hand. Lipstick so red that it was all but black. Lipstick red as blood roses. "That's not the job we had in mind, B. Sonic screwdriver's no good here. Better work is ahead for you."

"I'm not cut out for a beautician's career," said Buffy doubtfully, the wrench in her hand.

"Yeah, I saw the job you did cutting Dawn's hair." Faith turned the mascara brush thumbs-down. "Feeble, sister. But just look at this . . ."

She brandished a crumpled newspaper.

"Gotta keep yourself current," she whispered, pointing out the headline. CHEVALIER MAL FET TRADES HEMINGWAY FOR BARBARA CARTLAND . . . But the print only made sense if Buffy read its mirror image. There was a picture, but it was an undecipherable blur. Faith had drawn a beard and mustache on it, and was now busy with the lipstick, adding fangs and a drool-mark of blood. Then she stabbed the paper through the heart with her hairbrush, and held it up for Buffy to admire. "More Slayers are turning up every day," Faith went on, "itching for your job, B. You know if you stop running, you're standing still."

Her reflection in the mirror was a mask of clay paint, topped by bristling dreadlocks.

The First Slayer.

Her lips moved and a faint voice reached Buffy's ears: "Death is your gift."

"What was that?" Buffy demanded.

"What, what?" Faith was oblivious. "Focus, B. Monster to fight, prince to rescue."

Buffy brightened. "Slayage! Goody." She shucked off the belt and apron, and bent over her weapon bag. What to fight with, what to fight with . . . "What do I have to kill?"

Faith on the vanity stool plucked at her sushi pyjamas, making a disgruntled face. "Why did I ever buy these?" The First Slayer in the mirror was reading the newspaper. "Not killing," said Faith. "Rescue job. See, your true love's tied to the railroad tracks. You have to find him and free him, before . . ."

Buffy was still rummaging. Why had she packed garden stakes and a trowel? Was she a horticulturist now? Still, a good Slayer made do with what she had. "Where is he?"

"Geez. If anyone knew, why would you have to find him?"

"Okay."

Her bedroom window was open, the lace curtains flapping; she hurried toward it. One leg over the sill, one bare foot planted on the old grey shingles of the roof. Oooh, scratchy! A vague sense of wrongness alerted her. She paused, glanced back over her shoulder. Only then did she realize that she was naked.

"Wait!" cried Faith in alarm. "That's not the right way! Come back, come back!"

Buffy stepped out into the Forest.

*

Spike's face appeared in her mirror. "Baby, I'll always be bad," he said.

1. Angel's Story

It was a Forest of vast green trees, so huge that sun and sky and light could not be seen. Down at ground level there was dimness and leaf-dapples, and the marble gleam of grave-stones. Marble angels jutted, leaning, out of clumps of primeval ferns. It was all the graveyards of her teenage years, but overgrown with venery. When had her Forest turned into a cemetery?

Trowel in hand, Buffy prowled between crypts, and kicked through piles of yesteryear's dead, dry rotting leaves. She tested every step, because she knew there were bear-traps and pits in wait. Which way had Angel gone? She needed to find him. Perhaps he could tell her something, aid her in her quest--

She smiled to herself, fluffed her hair with her fingers. She liked to look pretty for her Angel. Because she loved him so much! She had always adored him, her first real boyfriend, her one and only. That was why she had married him, and let him take over the family business. Why, she had given up her whole inheritance for that man. Too bad Faith had stolen all her makeup--

What was that? Buffy stooped to pick up the picnic basket that lay abandoned in a bank of leaves. Curious, she peered under the lid. And--ta-dah!--there was her lipstick!

A woman's weapon. And here was a compact, and here was a comb. She snapped the compact open instantly--now, at last, she could look at herself--and set about combing her hair. Her long, golden locks. And she was content. Only one thing was missing. Where was the Wolf?

"Buffy?"

"Oh, Angel!" Buffy ran to him, with the picnic basket over her arm. She flung herself exuberantly into his embrace. "Darling! I missed you! I'm looking for my true love, what's up with that?"

"Well, I'm the Woodsman, so maybe I can help." Angel ran a hand through his hair, setting it all on end. "Let me think, here."

"They said he's tied to the railroad tracks, and-- What's this?" She lifted his hand into the light.

A bloody rag was tied round the palm, wound inexpertly round and round till the raveling ball of cloth concealed his entire hand--fingers and all--and still, drops of dark red slipped out and splattered the greensward at their feet.

"It's gruesome," she said. "What happened?"

"Never mind that." Gently, he disengaged her hold and hid the wounded hand behind his back. "Sit down, honey. This could take a while. It's the Prince you're supposed to rescue, isn't it?"

"They said he was in grave danger."

"Think I know something about this Prince. He's under an enchantment, you see." Angel laid a finger upon her lips. "A curse. He has many forms and faces, he changes as the seasons change. A burning coal, a salmon, a swan--just when you think you've got hold of him, the Wicked Queen will snatch him away."

"The Wicked Queen?"

"Your enemy, wasn't she? I remember the whole story now," said Angel, and Buffy wiggled all over with delight and made herself comfortable, snapping her compact open again. While she made up her eyes, he went on. "The Wicked Queen wanted a champion, to guard the way to the Prince. So she made a Knight out of an empty suit of armor. She sang spells over the virgin steel all one endless night--"

"She brought it to life," said Buffy's own reflection in the compact mirror. Buffy started and snapped the compact shut, then looked furtively at Angel. But Angel had not heard.

"--she created the Pale Knight! The Slayer of Slayers, that's his other name. Made of hollow steel, unstoppable, and hungry for life. He kills everything he comes across, because he knows he's not really a living man. Pinocchio, warped. He's searching for what he himself lacks. Beware. He's your natural enemy, Buffy. But that's not all . . . There's a secret you have to know, before you go up against him. The Queen needed more than an empty suit of armor--she needed something to substitute for the Knight's flesh, something to put in place of the bones. So she took her porcelain doll, and--"

"Oh, I already know all about Miss Edith," said Buffy, though she didn't. Then she blinked. Or did she?

"Beware the Porcelain Knight," said Angel's voice hollowly. "You must win past the Porcelain Knight, before you can find your Prince."

Buffy started to her feet, gripping the picnic basket hard, and took a step or two down the mossy path. "Angel?" she called anxiously. "Where did you go?"

But Angel had completely vanished.

Never mind, she'd find him eventually. Buffy tripped down the pathway, swinging her basket. Picnic basket in one hand, garden trowel in the other . . . She felt ready for anything, just anything. This was a part of the Forest she knew very well. She had planted flowers, shrubbery, ornamental trees, and put up little fences here and there; the fences encouraged butterflies to visit, and the flowers encouraged the sun to shine. Not that she needed sunshine to make herself happy.

Ever since she had turned fifteen, she had felt as if a door was swinging open before her. Delightful possibilities abounded, the world was hers--with all its secret raptures, pleasures that made her melt like ice-cream. These were things that had nothing to do with boyfriends or angels, monsters or men. Honey-sweetness that slid down her throat like liqueur, and left her licking her lips in satisfaction. A warmth and delight that moved her with tremors, like vast shuddery earthquakes deep within. Wonders of earth, storms and tides, cyclones and tempests of the flesh. Sometimes it seemed . . . as if her whole body was dissolving into flowers . . .

What was that? A shadow flickered across the green tapestry of her Forest. Was it a deer, bounding away? But a white stag with a strange head, and a shimmer of starlight upon its brow. A unicorn, Buffy thought, and swerved away from the path. She parted a great clump of ferns, peeped beyond. She thought she saw the unicorn stepping delicately behind a tree. As Buffy hurried after, the magic creature paused to touch its horn to something half-buried in a bank of emerald moss--then its head went up as a twig snapped beneath Buffy's feet, and it flashed away like summer lightning.

She went forward cautiously, standing on tiptoes and peering around. Was that a faint sound she heard? A squeak, emanating from the thick pile of moss tangled with leaves. Ancient gravestones leaned at drunken angles; all of them were topped with gleaming marble angels. Angels with disfigured faces. Buffy glanced down. "Mr Gordo?"

Beaming with happiness at the sight of her childhood toy, she bent over and thrust her hand into the moss. But the instant she did, she saw that she had been wrong. It was no stuffed pig she touched, but a great soft half-wrecked teddy bear lying limp in a welter of fluff and cotton-batten; its head hung to one side, and where its eyes had been, were crude X's of coarse black worsting. Penitent, Buffy stroked its pale velveteen face. "Oooh bear, who beat the stuffing out of you like that?"

". . . lost my spectacles . . ."

She thought she saw the toy's lips twitch as the faint voice reached her ear. Buffy knelt down and began to clear the moss away. Really, it was very thick and overgrown, and all tangled with thorny briars. A thorn stabbed her ring finger, and she licked away the drop of blood that welled from the scratch. "Poor bear. I bet you belong to somebody. I bet some little girl's crying for you right now."

". . . lost my books . . ."

"You're nasty and dirty, but we can clean you up."

". . . lost my eyes, have you seen my eyes, have you . . . ?"

"What happened to you, bear?"

". . . fell into a hole . . ."

Its voice got smaller and smaller, dwindling away; it was like Angel. Buffy bent over and put her ear to the ground. What was it saying? Some kind of story, plainly. ". . . she heard the women in the market talking about the Beast, which had killed three hunters from the castle the previous night. They had been unable to wound it with axe or arrow. Only, one of the king's knights had slashed its paw with his sword, cutting one claw entirely away, and when they went looking for this trophy afterward, they found a man's severed finger lying in a puddle of scarlet gore . . ."

The moss came out in thick clumps, damp and cool but not unpleasant. As she pulled away more and more of it, she realized that the teddy bear was getting bigger every instant. It was now as large as the biggest carnival prize imaginable, and still growing. That meant there was constantly getting to be more of it to uncover. Already, a sizeable pile of moss surrounded Buffy; she was kneeling waist-deep in moss, it was heaped up everywhere. Also the bear seemed to be sinking deeper into the forest loam. Fell into a hole, indeed! Buffy felt peevish; she was never going to get anywhere this way. She looked about for her garden trowel, but it had vanished. The teddy bear, too, had all but vanished by now. Only its doleful voice, fainter than ever, reached her with a few final words: ". . . beware the werewolf . . ."

Furious, Buffy thrust her fingers deep into the springy moss. She had to come to the rescue! She was the Gardener. Again she plunged her stiffened hand into the moss, punched and dug at it. Right over the teddy bear's chest. Her fingers broke through a barrier like the crust on a loaf of bread, into something squishy. Warm. Yielding. Wet. Yellowish and stinking matter welled up around her wrist. Oooh--it was--repulsive!! As she yanked her arm hastily out, green fluid and rotten brown slime gushed after. She had punched a hole right in the ground-- And the hole was spreading. In the blink of an eye, it was eight feet long, four feet wide, a veritable black pit; Buffy fell forward, only catching herself at the last moment with both hands braced on either side--

"Get in there with me," said a deep hoarse voice in her ear.

A man's hands gripped her around the waist, and tumbled her headfirst into the hole.

Buffy screamed.

Then she sat up and fussed with her disheveled clothing, smiling, while the sun shone bright on the flowered meadow and the chequered picnic tablecloth. In her hand she held a large wooden spoon. Bread and marmalade and strawberry jam were there to choose from, and there was a jar marked 'Honey'. Honey. "Honey," she said, "do you want the African Killer, or the domestic blend?"

Angel, lounging beside her, straightened the collar of her blouse. "He's epileptic," he said. "He's like an epileptic circus leopard."

She licked away the honey dripping from her fingertips, and smiled.

"There's a bad moon rising tonight."

Buffy sighed and draped her arms around Angel's neck. She thought of violin music and champagne, and dozens of fat candles flickering brightly, hypnotically. Her mouth opened so softly to his kiss. "I love you," she whispered, all defenses gone, as he tilted her head back and traced the line of her throat with tickling brushes of his lower lip. Infinitely soft against her skin. So terribly affectionate. "I love you for all the good in you. Such goodness. Everything that's noble. You're my hero." Both lips pressed in a kiss at the hollow of her throat, and she let herself hang limp, hands trailing, her body bowed half-across his knee. She felt so helpless in his grasp. Only his silver ring burned cold fire upon her finger, tightening its pincers as his hands opened her clothes. "My hero."

Raven-wings flicked across her vision. The embrace of the ring was sadistic. A circle of tiny teeth, chewing inward. Her lover laid her down across the picnic dishes, head in the basket, the red and white gingham cloth rucked uncomfortably at the small of her back. He picked up her hand tenderly, and drew a V on it, with yellow mustard dipped from the mustard-pot. "You know how the story ends," he said. An L of strawberry jam on the inside of her wrist, an E of grape jelly at the base of her life-line. After each letter, he licked the spoon. A ketchup O traced around the base of her ring finger. Angel cradled her painted hand in both of his and raised it toward his mouth.

She thought vaguely of plastic knives and forks, cutting, cutting, cutting. He had to gnaw the ring off and set himself free of the trap--yes, that was it. Yes. Like a wounded animal snapping at its own leg. "Does it hurt?" he asked her solicitously, and her own voice replied, faint and faraway, "They always say it hurts at first, but then it gets much better." As Angel bit and chewed, her gaze was drawn toward his bandaged hand. She reached for it, vaguely curious. It all seemed very far away--in slow motion, underwater even--but she got hold of a trailing thread, and began to unravel it.

"It's my first time," Buffy told the potato salad. She unwound the bandage, laying Angel's secret bare, and saw that his little finger had been chopped right off by the sword of the king's knight.

She lay in a spreading lake of blood, her husband eating her alive. His whole head was buried in her stomach. Chewing, jerking, yanking savagely at her insides.

Buffy screamed. Angel lifted his head from the puddle of gore that had been her womb, and his face was not a man's, but a beast's.

The heel of her hand snapped his chin back. Her elbow shattered his collarbone and dislocated his shoulder. He roared. Buffy bucked under him. And thwock went her knees into his midsection, catapulting him over and off. As he landed on his back, his shirt split right open. His snout extended, stiff with bristling fangs. Look how his ears grew! And oh how big his eyes. Rank hair sprouted out of his buttonholes, and great curving claws from his crooked fingers. Five claws upon the left hand, and four upon the right. And--and--and--was that a bushy tail, poking out of the seat of his pants?

She screamed again as the werewolf stood upright and fixed her with a mad yellow glare. It padded toward her on naked feet. Then she was up and running, running for her life.

Through the Forest, with her red cloak floating behind her, and her wicker basket over her arm.

Everything whirled around her.

She saw her house, the school, the library go flying up in fragments and explode into the dream-reality of the Forest. Mother had been eaten by the wolf, she knew that somewhere deep down. The big bad wolf. She had lost her stake, and was defenseless. Giles was gone. The worst thing was that there was no enemy to fight--no vamps here, no demons--only the Thing she had mistaken for a good boyfriend. Who was the Big Bad in this bedtime story? There was no way to find out, no way to tell. Who was the Big Bad? Who?!?

She plowed to a stop on the brink of the abyss, windmilled her arms frantically. Balancing on her heels, she teetered wildly to and fro. At last she toppled.

She landed plump upon the vanity stool.

Back in her own bedroom, with her own image in the mirror gazing wildly at her. The mirror. "The key is the mirror," said her own mouth, reflected, and Buffy understood that the mirror was a liar. A swift glance over her shoulder showed her the Beast climbing through the bedroom window. Slaver drooled from its grinning jaws, yellow saliva and froth splashing on the pink flowered carpet. With a bound, it gained the bed, crouched astraddle her fluffy pillows and the immaculate lace-edged coverlet, threw back its head and howled till the roof rang.

It had no reflection.

Buffy leaped at it, enraged.

For an instant, the Beast sprawled threshing across her lap, and Buffy looked into its red-rimmed eyes and saw evil. Then they were wrestling, grappling madly--she was pinned across the bed all helter-skelter, kicking out her feet, shoving its pointed muzzle away from her throat. It was on top of her, heavy and hot. Snap snap went its teeth, inches from her face--hot saliva flecked her skin--its claws scrabbled amidst the chintz sheets and hooked snarls in her crochet pillow-covers. Ripping them to shreds! Making a wild animal's den out of her bed! Buffy heaved. Then she was flying head over heels, tumbling toward the vanity mirror.

One last nightmare glimpse of the werewolf springing after her. Then into the mirror she went. As she hit the glass, a shimmering ripple passed over the entire surface. She went straight through, leaving not a single crack behind--into a world of radiant light.

Now who would show her the way to her true love?

2. Spike's Story

Immediately, Buffy forgot everything.

She sat up and looked around her bedroom. "What am I here for?" It was only her everyday bedroom, not even reversed right to left. There was no sign of her battle with the werewolf; instead, Mr Gordo in fluffy stuffed majesty reclined on her impeccable bedcovers. "There you are!" Buffy stormed across the room and grabbed him, convinced that she had lost him somehow--only now, after long journeys and questing, had she come full circle and found him again.

And her childhood. Impulsively, she hugged the stuffed pig, turned round and round on her fleecy rug, surrounded by her treasures. Oh, she might move from place to place but all her best memories were here . . . and all the toys she had ever prized, right down to Miss Sadie Ragdoll--Buffy swooped over to her closet, flung the door open and delved under a pile of sweaters for the flaxen-haired doll--her dearest doll, given to her by her mother and father soon before Dawn was born. Her toys were the only things that had always been true. Still hugging Mr Gordo, she opened drawers and reached under the bed, scavenging in every corner to find the toys squirreled away. There were old photo-albums, books about Jack and Jill, and a full array of Beanie Babies strangely assorted, monstrous things: devils and vampires and teensy demons, wolf-men and Frankensteins and evil Basement Things, gill-men and hyenas in rainbow plush, oh yes, she had them all--

It was only that she didn't know what on earth she was here for.

Mr Gordo slipped out of her hold, fell unnoticed on the bed as Buffy looked wildly around. Oh, she remembered her life, her name, the number to call home. But she had been searching for something--something good, something rare, something she had longed for ever since she could remember--something more important than all these--toys!

What was it?

"I always knew this would happen," she said sadly. "I'm bassackward."

And what was with the mirror, anyway?

What was . . . with the view through the mirror . . . ?

"Who's that sleeping in my bed?" whispered Buffy, and did not know she spoke. "Spike?"

There he was in the view through the mirror, in the other bedroom, in her bed. Lying abandoned under her comforter, his cheek upon her pillow. He held a book. It lay open, upward, across his stomach, with his white hand spread upon the smooth white pages. At a glance, it seemed to be a book of poetry (and this mystified her no end) but she couldn't read it, because the print was all backward. His eyes were shut, his face soft and defenseless. He was asleep.

The sleep of the dead. She made a trumpet of her hands, and shouted. "SPIKE!!!!"

Spike's eyes snapped open, blue.

Someone said:

"O rose, thou are sick:

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy;

And his dark secret love

Doth thy life destroy."

It wasn't Spike talking; his lips never moved. It must be Buffy herself, for there she was in the mirror--on the other side of the glass, so she must be the real Buffy. (And she, looking on, was only a reflection.) Real Buffy, pressed up against the glass with her little hands spread, nose squashed. Pretty Buffy wearing tatty gloves of Victorian knitted lace, a big cross around her neck. She perched on the vanity stool, exactly where Faith had been, and she wagged her finger in mock-reproof at mirror-Buffy, saying, "You're the one whose every word is a lie. It's not what you think, after all. Not about the ghosties and ghoulies. It really is all about you."

Then real-Buffy stooped over Spike in the bed and kissed him, saying, "Prince Charming, wake up."

Spike knuckled his eyes and sat up, the book tumbling off his lap. He looked so strange, with his hair in an unruly brown mop (like Little Lord Fauntleroy, thought mirror-Buffy, with a dim recollection of a childhood story) and the cutest little spectacles perched on the end of his nose. A young and vulnerable William. "Is it time yet?" he asked.

"Dolly's tea-time, sweet William," hissed real-Buffy, and her teeth lengthened and her nails grew into vampire claws and her face was the mad face of Drusilla. Mirror-Buffy gasped and recoiled. Real-Buffy crooked her talons, and Spike trembled and flinched like a Gothic heroine, one arm up to ward her off. "Look, Daddy, what a pretty poppet I found thrown away in the gutter."

"The boy's not even dead yet," said Angel, sauntering after Drusilla. "Didn't I tell you not to play with your food?" He yawned, bored. "Finish it, Dru."

"Oh, I don't know," said Darla in period costume, swishing a riding crop. "Look at those cheekbones. I think he'd make a stunning fashion accessory--"

"Daddy, I want to keep him!"

Slowly, his eyes enormous, William shrank back as the vampires surrounded the huge canopied nineteenth-century bed.

There were bloodied and swollen chew-marks along the entire length of his throat, from his chin to the open collar of his nightshirt.

"Very well, Dru," drawled Angelus, setting one knee on the bedspread so the mattress dipped and William, clutching the book to his narrow chest, tried to scuttle away up the headboard. "But everyone has to have a bite of your cake, you know. Good little girls share." When had the room filled up with vampires? Mirror-Buffy couldn't remember. But it had--dozens of them closing in around the curtained bed, vamps with demonic visages and red blood weeping from the corners of their mouths. While Angel laughed and Darla tittered. Drusilla bent over William, whispering tenderly in his ear. "Silly boy, the doctor told you it would only hurt a bit. Now lie back and enjoy." He didn't make a sound. She pushed him back, seated herself astride him with an erotic wriggle, and reached to take the riding crop from Darla's hand. She was Buffy, golden-haired Buffy swinging her whip, and all the other vampires crowded after her, more and more vampires, blocking out mirror-Buffy's view of the bed with dreamlike silent eagerness--

The mirror clouded over, like a steamed-up car window. Seconds later it was painted scarlet by a fine spray of fresh blood. And a voice said:

"O wretched world! but wretched above all,

Is man: the most unhappy animal!

Not knowing to which state I will belong,

I tug your heavy chain of love along.

So many roads to choose, yet no signposts show

From whence come I, nor, after, where I go."

"That," said Buffy to herself, "is the dumbest poem I ever heard, and anyway, what does it have to do with me?"

Wondering about it, she turned.

Spike sat in the furthermost corner of the mirror-bedroom, half-hidden by Buffy's enormous collection of stuffed snakes. His back was against the wall. He wore dead black, his shirt ragged and torn, and his posture was so unlike him that it gave her pause--his shoulders bowed, his head down almost between his spread knees, and both hands clenched in his disheveled and curling hair.

He looked up and he seemed years older. "Hello hound voice," he whispered. "Poor Thel."

Even his voice was different.

"Spike?"

". . . I'm not here. You're not you. This isn't real." He blinked, tilted his head, looked past and through her with some anxiety. "What's happened to my pet?"

"What the hell happened to you?" she snapped. "Spike!"

"High and solitary and most stern," said Spike, suddenly breaking down in laughter, "like--like a long-legged fly upon the stream--like what Crazy Jane said to the Bishop--?" He cut off, resumed doggedly, "No, no, I've got it wrong, it's all about God--like what the lady said to the chambermaid--that's it!"

It was gibberish. But every line of his body, every bitter half-tone in his voice, made living poetry, eloquent of desperation and shame. And defeat--when she had never, ever seen anything in him but cocky defiance. Hunching forward, he began to draw lines on the floor.

"--three hundred and eleven, twelve, thirteen, f-fourteen, fifteen--"

"Stop that." She yanked his hand up by the wrist, then let go when Spike lifted his haggard face into the light. What was wrong with him? "I mean, uh, what're you doing, anyway?"

"You made me lose count. I have to count them all."

She could barely hear him.

"Spike?"

Worried, she crouched in front of him. She had an impulse to snap him out of it with a few swift punches, but suppressed it. Anyway, he had stopped counting--what was he after anyway, reliving his glory days?--and simply huddled there, looking hangdog and dumb. Buffy poked his knee. Instantly, he jerked away from her, raising one arm to shield himself (what did that remind her of?) shrinking further into his corner. "Like a worm stirred with a stick," she said aloud, and Spike answered instantly: "The chambermaid's second song."

"--and what a revolting comparison that is. Spike? Hey Spike, can you hear me?"

As she reached out to poke him again, to her great surprise she read the word ENEMY printed across the knuckles of her hand, and her ring finger--the finger that Angel had gnawed--was all ripped and gory, dripping thin red blood. Splashes of blood. And in slow motion, in silent fascination, she watched droplets dampen Spike's black-sleeved arm, splatter the back of his hand like strange writing, and paint his pale face with tiny dots and dashes. Even his mouth was marked by it.

His tongue darted out and licked his lips. His gaze was fixed on her bleeding finger. Then, to her utter disgust, he began to drool.

"H-hungry," said Spike. "Feed me?"

Buffy hit him. She knocked him back against the wall, she leaped to her feet and halfway across the room, and there she stopped, yelling. "In your dreams, vampire! Like we're even going there." She paused. "Um, Spike?"

He remained where he was, on hands and knees like an animal, and his face was now a mask of despair. "I'm starving," said Spike.

Buffy stared.

"Can't go on any longer. Can't do any more, Buffy. Nothing left inside. I'm done."

She began to speak, fell silent.

"Do I have to beg?" Then he lowered his head. "All right. I'm begging. Buffy, please. Help me."

Crack.

Something furry and repulsive ran like a streak of lightning over her bare foot. "Ughh!" cried Buffy in disgust.

"Oh please," said Spike. She turned and there he was staring with an evil glitter out of the mirror, her old familiar Spike in black and red, a leer upon his handsome face. Spike was in the mirror? Where had Spike in the corner gone? "You're in a glass bedroom here, Slayer." He waved his hand. "See? Whole world's watching."

"Ohmigod!" With frantic haste, Buffy grabbed the dangling edges of her negligee. There it was flapping open! Everything she had was exposed to the four winds, for when she dared to glance she found her bedroom walls were transparent as air.

The lace of the negligee shredded under her fingernails. Why was it so stubborn--? She tried over and over to yank the thing shut, to tie the sash, but no matter what kind of knot she used--

Even the floor was glass now. Silent people, looking up, lined the living room and crowded on the stair, and the street outside was full of faces, eyes and gaping mouths . . . They were all there: Snyder, the Mayor, Parker, the staff from the Doublemeat, and every Watcher she had ever met. Kids from school. The tellers from the bank, Dawn's social worker. And Willow with her eyes as big as saucers. Xander was under the tree in the front yard, his expression utterly flabbergasted, and next to him stood her mother, looking on in silent disapproval.

"What's the fuss, pet? A little performance anxiety?"

No matter how she pulled, some part of her body was left exposed--a nipple here, a flash of thigh, the material rucked high over her butt or else yanked down to show both breasts--and she twisted, contorted, tried to figleaf herself with her arms, but Spike's leer only grew wider, till her whole face was hot and red. And still all those people were watching! Her mother was now shaking her head sadly, and Giles was washing his glasses, poor guy, three shades of scarlet with embarrassment. It was the Peep-Show That Would Not Die.

"They only want to see what you got, luv," said Spike reasonably. "Put a little soul into it, willya? And none of that stage fright nonsense. Just remember: imagine the whole audience is naked."

He leaned his whole weight on the mirror-glass, his feet planted wide and legs open. "Eyefuls all around tonight. See?" He pointed downward. "They used to claim the devil had his face down there," he added. "Bunch of rubbish if you ask me, I know where my devil is. And all those nice folk, they're waiting to see yours, Slayer. See the face that's underneath your skin."

"No! No!! Not in front of everyone!"

His attention was suddenly caught by her bleeding hand; Spike's tongue flicked out against his upper lip, he all but kissed the glass separating them. "Why, Buffy! What an interesting finger. Let me suck it."

"You are so--so--"

"Got a rat in your bed, Slayer. Better stomp it fast."

She abandoned the effort of modesty, flung herself headlong at the mirror. Spike upon the other side roared with laughter. But this was the Spike she knew and hated, the seed fallen on stony ground; no flower would come of their love. Not that there was love. No, never any chance of that. Buffy swung her fist against the glass--have to hit harder, she wasn't making an impression--and found herself screaming wordlessly at the taunting image on the other side. Oh, there he was, the monster all black leather and wild sex, inciting her with wicked lures-- "You know you want it, how do you like it? Cream on top, on the side, on the rocks, vanilla or black--under the skin you belong with me--with me, forever, in the dark--" till she snapped and struck out, pummeling the maimed, bloody, beaten thing under her and Faith smiled and said, pleased, "That's my girl!"

Crack.

The mirror was intact. Her strongest blows had bounced right off, there wasn't even a scuff-mark on the frame. Buffy, sitting flummoxed on the floor, looked down and the limp body in her hands was a great brown rat, big as a cat, its neck broken and its savage head hanging loose. Alone in her empty bedroom. She let go with a cry of disgust, scrambled away covering her mouth with shaking fingers. She had to get out-- Somehow she made it to the bedroom door, pulled herself upright by the knob, and wrenched the door open.

Crack.

"Jill feels Jack is devouring her.

She is devoured

by her devouring fear of

being devoured by

his devouring desire

for her to devour him.

She feels he is eating her

by his demand to be eaten by her.

Two people who originally

wished to devour and be devoured

are devouring and being devoured."

She was back in the Forest, in a midnight place. Figure-skating. Turning vast loops and figures upon a great lake of frozen blood. Below--miles below--at the very bottom of this witch's cauldron was the Hellmouth itself, she somehow knew; and she knew that the Hellmouth was opening. Here and there, the surface of the ice was marred, roughed by icy bubbles; had it been boiling, before it abruptly froze over? Buffy wondered. But still she leaped and spun in rapture, managing to disregard all doubts. Music rang out around her. Her own soundtrack--was it the score to "Love Story"? And in her heart, she was going for Olympic gold.

Then she looked down, through the crystal-clear red ice, and saw Spike far beneath.

Frozen, swimming upward, through the lake of blood.

Crack.

"Jack thinks Jack sees what he does not see

and that Jill sees what she does not see.

"Jack tells Jill

what Jack thinks Jill does not see.

Jill realizes

that,

if Jack thinks Jill did not see that,

which Jill thinks she does,

Jack did not see

what Jill thought

Jack saw."

Whose was that voice?

She was in a basement.

A gloomy dark place. But the rat was still with her, its broken corpse under her spike-heeled shoe; the stiletto of her heel had slain the beast. "At last," said Buffy, looking down, "utilitarian purposes for my pseudo-hookerwear." She wore old jeans and a frilly cotton blouse with angel sleeves. What was this place?

Fastidiously, she worked the heel of her shoe free, drew back her foot and toed the dead rat a little away from her. She'd always been revolted by icky things like it . . . but a girl had to live in the real world, and that meant facing vamps and rotting zombies and boyfriends that went bad and had to be sent to Hell, and (later) probably possessed babies that spat green pea soup. Yes, a girl couldn't afford to be scared of getting her hands dirty.

Anyway, she'd been mopping out the bathrooms at the Doublemeat and changing the grease on the fryers for months now, and squeamishness just didn't work with a job like hers. She found a piece of scrap paper on the floor, used it to shield her hand as she picked up the rat by its tail. Garbage can, garbage can . . . Then she jumped a foot, as Spike came round a corner at her, out of the dark.

He had almost been running on hands and knees, swerving between bits of broken furniture. When he saw her, though, he shied back with what sounded like a cry of fear. Right back into the corner, with both hands covering his face. "No, no, no, no, no, no--"

Oh. She looked from him to the rat and back to him again. Had he been . . . hunting it? "That's so disgusting, I could hurl," said Buffy, flinging the fuzzy thing down. One swift kick, and into the darkness the rat flew--landing almost at Spike's feet. "So you're hungry, huh? Don't let me interrupt."

Slowly, he took down his hands--staring silently at her. "Are you real?" he asked. And his voice was quiet, educated, the gutter-accent totally vanished. Clear as a bell.

"Strictly speaking I guess I'm not, 'cause this is all just a dream." Buffy examined Spike in sudden curiosity. "Spike--"

"My name is William." Did he sigh a little there? But still, she caught him stealing a ravenous glance down at the rat on the floor. And he seemed to shiver, bending over and wrapping one arm across his midriff. "Why are you here, Buffy?"

Oh yes, he was still hungry. Buffy moved closer to him; something predatory in her sensed a weakness. "I'm lost," she said.

Spike looked nervous. "So am I," he said in a small voice.

"How can you hunt, anyway? Won't the chip fire when--" He only looked away. They were almost touching. Buffy felt the deep-down pleasure she called, privately, her 'slayer-stuff': a hot-and-cold shiver across her skin, hair prickling on her arms and the back of her neck, excitement and supercharged energy--as if she could take on the world and whip its ass. Thrills and chills, a wildness in the heart. That vampire-is-near feeling. When her blood sang in her veins, reminding her that she was the Slayer. That she too was made to hunt. And vampires were her prey.

"Aren't you going to eat your rat?" she needled.

"So you can watch the show?" Spike snapped back. Then, astonishingly, one corner of his mouth went up. "No thank you, Buffy. Maybe another day. Because I think I've lost my appetite."

One last glance down. Then, holding himself very straight, he stepped over the rat and walked away around the corner.

Buffy's mouth fell open. "Wow," she said.

Crack.

So she turned and there he was, a shadowy figure half-hidden in darkness. "Everywhere I go, there you are!" Buffy accused. She looked around; they were still in the basement, but all the walls had shifted. She walked forward. This time Spike stepped into the light to meet her. He wore a tight blue shirt, very gigolo chic as far as she was concerned, and his hair was longer, falling in loose curls, brown showing at the roots. And he looked at her as if she was his madness and his obsession, his hope of heaven or hell.

Then he blinked. "You're not real," he said.

Oh, yes--she was still on the wrong side of the mirror, though she had lost the mirror itself and hadn't a clue how to find it. But maybe Spike could help her find the way back.

Besides, he wasn't the real Spike either. The real Spike had never acted like this in his life.

"What's happening to you, Spike?"

Spike tilted his head and answered in verse; and by the sound of his speaking voice, she realized who had been reciting all those times before.

"Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told

(the witch he loved before the gift of Eve)

that ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive

and her enchanted hair was the first gold.

And still she sits, young while the earth is old,

and, subtly of herself contemplative,

draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,

till heart and body and life are in her hold."

"Drusilla?" said Buffy wildly. "Drusilla's responsible for all this?"

He shook his head. Putting a finger to his lips, he pointed ahead into the dark, then beckoned her to follow. "Shhh," he warned. Buffy nodded and made a sign like zipping her lips; she walked quietly next to him, slipping a stake into her hand. An axe or sword would also have been welcome. This place made her skin crawl.

They had been walking for some time before she realized that Spike was speaking again. Somehow it seemed as if his words made no sound, came softly as her own silent thoughts. ". . . werewolf stories and vampire stories both go way back, even further back than dragon stories. The werewolf stories are oldest, I believe. But there's a basic difference between them. Werewolf stories are about marrying the boy and then, just when you've read the banns and should be traipsing off all lovey-dovey on the honeymoon, he turns into a monster. And vampire stories are about the monster you knew all along was a monster. The seducer, who entices you off into the dark." Spike smiled sideways at Buffy. "With wild sex," he said, bending close to her ear, "deviant practices, luv, unnatural lusts and rough trade. All such dark tricks. Fit to spoil an innocent boy or girl for wholesomeness forever . . ."

Buffy recoiled.

Then Spike stiffened. He seemed to peer into the shadows. He darted ahead before Buffy could hold him back, vanishing like a mirage. All that was left were words trailing behind, chanted in a cracked and crazy voice. "--and as when first eyed, draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide--"

She ran after him.

Through the dark shadows, her stake in hand. Through the ominous underworld of the basement. Walls shifted and fell around her, things moved--she glimpsed them from the corner of her eye--and now there was a rumbling in the air, earthquakes and upheavals, apocalypses promised. Where had he gone--her rightful prey?? She was made to stalk and capture him. She was the Slayer, and what was natural between them was stakes and fangs, her flinging him into walls, her fist hitting his face. She wasn't a little girl anymore. Wasn't inexperienced, shying away whenever a boy expressed interest. She was a grown woman, more than the equal of any man.

She almost ran headlong into the mirror.

There it was! But how, but why--? The mirror, standing alone in a glimmer of light from a barred window. There was no reflection to be seen in it anymore, instead it was like a clear pane standing upright for her to gaze through. Buffy had backed away; now she moved nearer cautiously, brushing the glass with her fingertips. She looked through the mirror, and saw--

Spike in the basement. Well, duh. It was just the same old thing again. But--she peered a little, rubbing the mirror's surface as if to clean it--what was he doing now? He had a stub of a candle on an old crate, and he was sitting with his elbow propped by the candle, writing on a sheet of crumpled paper. Chewing the end of his pencil, with a bemused look on his face. The paper had been erased and rewritten so often that it was torn in places, rubbed right through. But Buffy was too far away to read what he had written.

Then at a flicker of motion high above, he looked up.

It was a silent dumbshow, unreal as . . . as a dream. Something was flying through the shadows of the basement, a flash of feathers. A tiny bird, strayed in somehow from outside. A little bird. And Spike, when he saw it, sat up eagerly and dug in his pocket, coming up with something wrapped in a stained cafeteria napkin. It was a half-eaten sandwich, almost squashed flat. It looked like he had found it in a garbage bin. (Buffy, watching, wrinkled up her nose in distaste.) Spike pulled the sandwich to pieces, and tossed a bread-crumb in the bird's direction. Then he leaned forward, whatever he was writing forgotten, and seemed to hold his breath as the little bird fluttered down to eat.

The bird--it was nondescript brown--pecked up the bit of bread in an instant. It cocked its head and hopped a few inches closer. Spike tossed another crumb, and the bird had it almost before it landed. Another, this time almost at Spike's feet. The bird flashed in, snatched the bread, and flew out of reach. Spike grinned. He scattered bread-crumbs all around his feet, and sat absolutely still to let the bird feast.

This had the air of a ritual, something the two of them had done many times before. When it had cleaned up all the crumbs, the bird chirped expectantly. This time, Spike held out the rest of the sandwich on the palm of his hand.

(Buffy thought of the rat. Her stomach turned. Oogh.)

The bird flicked its wings, landed in Spike's hand. He didn't move a muscle. It demolished the sandwich, twittering in rapture, and Spike never twitched. His expression was like a very small boy's. The little bird, finished, fluffed out its feathers importantly and seemed to preen. It hopped onto Spike's sleeve, hanging onto the fabric with tiny sharp claws. It sidled along his arm like a tame finch, and Spike watched it in delight.

At last he tossed it into the air, and laughed as it flew free.

(He had made a pet of it. And--Buffy suddenly flinched--had the rat been a pet too? Had she killed his pet rat, flung it down like trash before him, and expected him to eat it?)

A woman walked into the light, slowly approaching Spike.

A young woman dressed in black, her hair pulled severely back, her painted eyes as calm and cruel as--as an Athena in Grecian armor, a warrior maiden with a sword. It was, indeed, a sword that she carried in her hand. At her appearance, Spike had scrambled to his feet, snatching up the piece of paper. He seemed to tremble as she came nearer. He took a tentative step forward to greet her; her face never changed. Her face was as perfect as a porcelain image's. Flawlessly painted, glazed in the fiery kiln. Eerie.

(Who was this? Why, she was a complete stranger; Buffy didn't recognize her at all.)

He was trembling. They spoke. The girl was about six inches shorter than Spike, and as they talked, she tilted her face up to his, her profile cold and calm. A porcelain girl. The Porcelain Knight. A lovely doll from Bradford Exchange, on offer at a cost Spike couldn't possibly afford. Once he put out his hand shyly to touch her, and she twitched away out of reach.

Spike bowed his head, extended the paper in her direction.

But she only walked away without a backward glance.

Spike, rejected, stood alone. The paper slid out of his hand and wafted gently floorward.

A second woman tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He spun and she was there, all in angelic white, beautiful as a vision, approachable and warm. Shining. Spike's face lit up. The woman took his hands in hers, looked down and twirled one toe in the dust, blushing even through her smiles; they spoke. At something he said, she tut-tutted and tapped his cheek. Then her eyes went solemn and she stood on tiptoe, pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

She stooped, keeping hold of one of his hands, and picked up the rejected paper. A moment passed while she read what was written on it. Spike seemed to shiver all over, half-frightened, half-hopeful--and when she raised the paper to her lips and kissed it, he became incandescent with happiness.

She threw her arms around him, guided his head to rest on her shoulder. She settled her cheek against his hair.

Buffy on the other side of the mirror was staring open-mouthed. The girl who held Spike looked straight at her, met her gaze with amused eyes, and smiled. The paper was still in her hand, held where Spike couldn't see.

She said distinctly: "There's not a bird of day that dares," and it sounded like a spell.

She crushed the paper in her fist, and threw it away.

Buffy watched the paper fall.

When she looked up from it, Spike faced her, his shirt ripped open. The girl stood behind him, laughing. One of her arms wrapped around his head, across his eyes, blinding him--tilting his head sideways as she buried her mouth against his throat. The other hand snaked down toward his belt buckle. One last look up from her, mocking Buffy--then she bit into Spike's neck.

Her eyes were lambent fire. The paper on the floor shone with reflected fire. The little bird circled down from above, landed upon the ball of paper, bright as a falling spark. Paper and bird went up in flames together.

Buffy went berserk. She hurled herself against the barrier of the mirror, hammering it with fists and kicks, till it smashed into a thousand pieces and the flying fragments of glass obliterated the dreadful sight and the sound of it was like a breaking heart--

CRACK.

3. Buffy's Story

She was the warrior who stood guard at the mouth of hell.

. . . And, with a swift twist of her wrist, she yanked her bloody stake out of the heart of the dragon. The beast slumped down, one last breath flickering like pale flame from between great jaws; its teeth were the length of her arm, and its mighty neck had once stretched so high as to blot out the sunshine. A giant snake, that was what it was. With a big throbbing head . . . hot as a furnace, dripping slime . . . a fire-gouting thing. But like every other giant snake that writhed out of the Hellmouth and attacked Buffy Anne Summers, it was doomed to deflate in the end.

Buffy smiled. She wiped sweat off her brow--geez, she felt flushed all over--and stooped, taking hold of the dragon's jaw. How to do this, how to do this . . . Oh wait, it was going to be easy. The immense length of the slain Beast folded in on itself, accordioning between her hands like a funhouse souvenir. Till she had it crumpled into a mass like a pair of socks, and then she picked up the tube that lay on her vanity table. This was a cardboard tube about eight inches long, lidded at both ends, and decorated with brightly-patterned paper. It was the work of a moment to slip the folded snake inside, under tension but held by the tight fit of the lid.

There. Buffy tossed the snake-in-a-tube aside. It would do for Dawn to play with--at least until something better came along.

She looked around her bedroom, wondering where she had left the Hellmouth.

That pesky Hellmouth! It was always going astray . . . The mirror over the vanity had been well and truly smashed, so well that not so much as a single piece of glass remained in the frame. But that didn't matter now. A picture of her father caught her eye instead. It was in a snazzy pewter frame--her father's face, smooth and blandly handsome, looking out of an oval of rosebuds and flirting cupids with arrows--and she picked it up idly, and stood examining it. On the knick-knack shelf just below where the picture had stood, several Ken dolls sat propped in a row. They were the beloved companions of her teenage years. She had named them all. There was her Angel holding a prominent place in the very front; he was Valentine Ken in tux and tie, and held a tiny crystal heart. There were Scott and Parker, High School Sweetheart Ken and the almost-identical College Boy Ken, and then came Doctor Ben Ken, and Commando Ken in his black uniform, walky-talky clipped to his belt . . . poor battered Riley, she had played too hard with that one. Last of all came Rocker Ken.

All her dolls and toys. Buffy smiled, looking about the room, unsurprised to find that the stuffed monsters had multiplied and now a myriad of toys sat heaped on every side. Every one had a face and name. There was a stuffed Xander teddy-bear, a rag-witch Willow; elsewhere, photos of family members and acquaintances completed the collection. Giles. Her mother. Dawn. Everyone who had ever met anything to her was here. This was her life.

This was the pattern of her life, and it filled her with deep sorrow.

On impulse, she plucked the Parker doll off the shelf, dropped it on the floor; it didn't really fit and never had. Then she set down her father's photo in Parker's empty space. It occurred to her, as she did, that her father looked a lot like Ken.

An eerie coincidence! But she couldn't deny it: set her father at one end of the row, and all the Kens were as alike as . . . as plastic dolls stamped from a mold. All except Rocker Ken, the radical new model with his leather coat and sleek cold painted hair.

Spike Ken.

"But this is all wrong." That wasn't her voice. It was a thin whisper emanating from somewhere over her left shoulder. Buffy started. What had she been thinking? It was the story of her life: all these boyfriends, one after another, from Angel to Spike . . . and every last one always did her wrong. Used her, abused her. Failed her in the end.

A pain stabbed through her right hand. Dripdripdrip the blood fell from the ends of her fingers and splattered on the virgin coverlet of her bedroom.

Slowly, she raised her hand.

LOVE it had said, and ENEMY. But the word written in raw scratches across her knuckles had changed again. What it said now was MAN.

"Wrong."

Buffy bent over, retching, seized by sickness. Cramps deep down--and the throbbing agony in her hand--oh god--it hurt, it hurt--

It had never hurt so much before--the cramps in her belly, the bleeding and vulnerability, that had started the year she became a Slayer. When vampires first began coming for her. The bedroom spun dizzily around her. Why--why did it always have to hurt--? Tears splashed out of her eyes, and her neck hurt too, as if a man's teeth had savaged her. She fell to one knee. Her hands splayed over the bedroom carpet, clenching, crook-fingered with spasms of pain. Livid upon the back of her right hand were wild scrawled words FIGHT KILL ATTACK HUNT DESTROY.

Then all the toys around her flew up and hurled themselves into her face.

It ended.

She was sitting on the carpet next to the bed, astonished, and the pain was over. What had happened? It was as if the whole pattern of her world had changed. A change as radical as the two sides of her mirror, the lie that became the truth. Buffy drew a deep breath and looked about her.

The toys had fallen into a new order, dazzling as a revelation. Her Ken dolls now lay in a neat line atop a whole pile of toy monsters. Some had vanished completely: Parker for instance. Valentine Angel smiled from the pinnacle of a heap of vampires: the Master, Darla, Dru. Riley held up his plastic arms to her in mute appeal, but he was half-buried in severed parts from action figures, tin soldiers and rubber guns and a big evil Frankenstein figurine. Was that Adam? Yes, it was. Behind Ben was Glory--a Glory Barbie all sparkles and cocktail gown--boyfriend and hell-goddess conjoined like Siamese twins. And there was a new doll in the lineup, midway between Angel and Riley.

It was Faith. Barbie Faith, a dot of bright red lipstick upon her lips. Complete to a tiny matchstick stake, chrome knife and glossy faux-leather jacket. Around the body of the Faith doll, though, was wound a ghastly thing . . . a snake's shed skin, hollow and repulsive.

It was the story of her life: all of them, from Angel to Spike, and every last one always did her wrong. Used her, abused her. Failed her in the end.

No. It wasn't that way!

She was the warrior who guarded the Hellmouth, and with each new era, she was called upon to rescue a victim from the Big Bad. But every last time, something went wrong, and she was left alone and weeping. Never learning from her mistakes. Every time, she failed them in the end.

Each time, behind the one she had to rescue, some kind of Monster waited. Had she been so hellbent on killing the Big Bad, that she walked right over them in her haste to do battle?

Was she doomed to repeat the pattern, till the end of her life?

One of her dolls was missing.

Buffy felt a cold prickling menace between her shoulder-blades. Spike was gone. Out of all her Kens, that one alone had not ended up in the heap; who had stolen him? A flash of a memory scorched her heart: Spike in the basement, that thing stripping him naked, and his eyes flying open--such an expression of shock and pain in them!--as its hands went all over him, and the teeth bit down--

And she turned, and there was the broken mirror from her dream lying across the counterpane of her bed. That gilded frame was like a yearning mouth. The doll which was Spike lay sprawled in the exact center of the mirror-frame. Great drops of blood slowly fell and splattered over doll and mirror-frame and bed, as Buffy--black horror freezing the blood within her veins--tilted her face up and saw Spike himself high above her, bound on an immense wheel, arcane symbols sliced into his chest with razor blades. Opening, beneath him, were the jaws of Hell.

When had her bed become the Hellmouth?

*

She had to fight.

Clattering down the steps, past the framed photographs of gates hung upon the wall, she rushed onward--shouting, "Mom! Xander! Willow, Giles! Everyone, get ready, I--" And they were all waiting for her, in the kitchen. Xander clapped her on the shoulder, Willow hugged a stack of books to her chest and beamed from ear to ear. Giles, overcome with emotion, took off his glasses and polished them. Her mother, at the sink, turned and smiled at her with honest love.

"I'm so proud of you, darling," she said.

The others were babbling, but Buffy barely heard. "It's gonna be dark down there. I'd better take all my weapons. Where's that spell you promised me, Willow? Where's my new armor? And my weapon?"

"It's a total A+ on the spell front, Buffy." Willow flung down her books on the table. "We were up all night chanting--me and Tara both. And the armor's all finished and spicky-spanny. Isn't it beautiful?"

Tara, hovering just behind her, held out a tea-tray upon which were ranged an array of lipsticks and mascara brushes and other cosmetic products. Draped over her arm was a suit of clothing, which Buffy looked at with dismay. "It'll be perfect on you, Buffy," she said. "You'll look so lovely. Look--magic lipstick too! Xander's got your new super-weapon ready--"

"But--this?"

She plucked at the supposed "armor". Dorky blue jeans and a black tee and a man's loose plaid shirt, far too big for her . . . this was what she had to wear? But Willow patted her consolingly: "I know it doesn't look like much, but we had to work with what was at hand. I got them out of the storage room--did they use to be your father's?"

"Daddy's cast-offs? Yuck! Can't I have Cordelia's cast-offs for my Slayer's armor instead?"

"Now, now," her mother reproved mildly.

"I'm wearing Spike's old coat, myself," Xander chimed in. "Found it in the closet. And see?" He held up something else. "Brought my demon magnet."

"Okay, okay," said Buffy sulkily. Again, she plucked in disgust at the plaid shirt. "I'll put it on. But I reserve the right to barf."

"Superstar!" said Willow, shiny-faced with innocent optimism. Anya and Dawn were quick to set up a folding screen. Then and there, in the kitchen, the girls descended upon Buffy and got to work, while Giles studied the ceiling and Xander whistled a casual tune. On went the armor, baggy jeans and all. Tara advanced with blusher and eyeshadow in hand. "And here's the weapon you'll need," Willow went on. "I know, I know, it's like the armor, it's just this old collar I picked up but hey, we can imagine it's made of gold--"

It was a dog-collar, the leather thick and shiny with use, studded along its ring with diamonds of dull steel. "Its strength is as the strength of ten," Buffy said at last, "cause it used to belong to a pit-bull."

Giles was paging through Willow's books. "This is the relevant passage, in Grimmold's Ascent of Heroes," he said. "Ah, thank you Willow, for bookmarking it. Pages twelve hundred and three through thirty-seven inclusive. It tells of the Demon Queen. Here's an engraving of a typical henchman." He held the open book above the edge of the folding screen; Buffy peered critically at the illustration, while fending off Anya's hairbrush. The figure depicted was oogly-boogly in her estimation, all monk's robes and eyes gruesomely stitched shut. "Or 'harbringer,'" said Giles, turning pages. "And here. The Queen . . . is a disembodied spirit, which rises out of 'the black gulf within the human heart'. The Eater of Souls. Suicides and those who die by the hands of loved ones, belong to her. She is always accompanied by her demon Champion, a monstrous engine scarcely less powerful than the Queen herself." Giles looked up. "Created," he said, "by three drops of the Queen's own blood let fall into a consecrated vessel. It is called in cabalistic circles the Porcelain Knight."

"Magic lipstick," whispered Willow, painting Buffy's mouth. "Finally perfected it. Last-ditch weapon: sunshine bomb."

"Does the book say how to defeat her?"

"Buffy, you have to descend into the Hellmouth. Are you ready for that?"

She steeled herself. "It's that time of the month," she said quietly. "But yeah, I'm up for it."

"Buffy, be careful." That was her mother. The others retreated; Joyce came to Buffy, taking her hands. "I hope you know what you're doing. Oh . . . you're so lovely. You'll knock 'em dead."

"I'll be fine, Mom." Buffy fretted, eager to be on her way. She eyed the stakes and crosses laid out waiting, nearby on the kitchen island. "Be back with Spike before morning."

"Safe and sound, I hope. Don't lose your eyes like the creatures in that nasty picture." Still, Joyce held on to Buffy's hands . . . wouldn't she ever let go? "I worry about you," said her mother, "but if this is what you want, what you really want--"

"Mom." Buffy freed herself gently. "It's no big deal."

"But are you sure? I know, since it happened he's been--well, so much calmer, so much easier to handle, and I'm glad he's on our side at last, but--stubborn?" Joyce rolled her eyes. "Oy vey!"

"Mooom!"

"Why, I think he'd walk into fire without flinching, if he decided it was right. William the Bloody's not a good enough name for him. They should have called him William the Bloody-minded."

"Mooo-om!"

"All right, off you go. The others are waiting. I'll have the kettle boiled and hot chocolate waiting when you get home."

Buffy rushed out of the kitchen.

"But I'm afraid," Joyce said sadly, "there won't be any way you can help this time."

*

"Do we even know where we're going?" asked Xander, as they gathered at the basement door. "We've never looked for Spike in your basement before."

"This is the place." Buffy was confident. "Or anyway . . . I've got a feeling it doesn't matter which basement we go into, they're all the same thing in the end." She opened the door. "Too bad Giles isn't coming. Or . . . Mom . . ."

Her voice trailed off. Something dark seemed to pass across her field of vision. Why--wasn't her mother dead?

They stepped into the basement.

They walked down the stairs.

Buffy moved unerringly toward the darkest corner, there to halt. She looked up. "I think this is it," she said. "Yes. Directly under my bedroom." She stamped her foot. "Aha! There's a trapdoor."

Opening the trapdoor was the work of a moment. What lay beneath, though . . . was a black pit, steps hewn into the virgin rock of Sunnydale, leading downwards along a winding path. Slick moisture coated the stone walls and dripped wetly from the low ceiling; and the way ahead seemed to open and close without warning. It was claustrophobic. Hot. With stalactites like vampire teeth. Buffy shuddered slightly, her skin creeping; this was not a place that was natural for her to explore. (But Xander and Willow, behind her--why did they seem so much more at home?) Buffy's feet skidded on the unpleasantly moist surface of the steps. "So dark," she said aloud, and Xander touched her on the shoulder, passed something forward to her.

It was a blazing torch.

The firelight startled an answering glimmer from somewhere not far ahead. Buffy froze. "Don't. Move. A. Muscle," she whispered. She gripped the dog-collar tightly. Were those three humanoid figures on the stair below, lying grimly in wait? They were. Defenders of the Hellmouth guarding the way, getting more distinct with every step. Buffy had known there would be defenders. The magic collar would be useless against them, better put it away and get her stake--

But as they came closer, the three of them saw it was merely a huge mirror set across the tunnel, barring the way. A great sheet of glass reflecting Buffy's torch, and in it, swirling with smoke, were the images of Buffy and Xander and Willow . . . but . . .

The light flickered madly. There she stood flanked by her friends, the Scoobies all three (and when they stood together, was there anything they couldn't face?) but what did they remind her of? No. Yes. It wasn't. It wasn't the Scooby gang in the mirror, but the Nerds in all their glory. Jonathan with his sad puppy eyes, implements of magic clutched to his chest; he had always longed to be in with the gang, but would always be out of step. Andrew the nonentity all got-up in a costume of black leather and big boots, demon magnet raised in laughable menace. And in the center, armed with a big stake, was Warren the misogynist in his loosely-hanging blue-green plaid shirt.

The ineffectual Nerd Trio: the magician, the demon-raiser, and horrible Warren who beat and abused women. They were the Big Bads, Buffy knew--but the faces looking out of the mirror were those of Willow and Xander and Buffy.

Below, she heard derisive laughter.

Buffy's stake slammed forward, the mirror shattered. CRACK!! Shards of brilliant glass showered down like a rain of tears. Glass crunched under her heels as she plunged through the broken mirror, the disturbing images obliterated. She ran down the remaining stairs.

A vast cavern opened out around her.

She had an impression of immense spaces, almost high enough overhead to expect stars, and bats shifting in teeming masses upon walls of raw rock. Torchlight. Things moving. Shadows that shifted and swam. And reflections--a million mirror-images, on every side, above and below, hanging bright upon the air. Herself. Xander. Willow, all of them a thousand times repeated. Other people, both known to her and unknown. And . . . her own image, dressed in angel-white, somewhere ahead of her, turning to glance back . . . meeting Buffy's gaze with bright and empty eyes . . . till the image waved a mocking hand and flitted away through the bewilderment of reflection and shadow--

"This way!" Buffy ran after.

There was a staircase, every step built of polished glass, and like a strange Cinderella the other Buffy danced up it, her shoes chiming like crystal--like a song. It was narrow, it was high. Very high. Into a world of light. The real Buffy charged in the unreal one's wake. Where was the Monster? Where was the Porcelain Knight?

The top of the stair came into view. Everything else in the world, was darkness. Only here was light, starbursts and flashes. Then she saw Spike.

Flash. He was high above her, a moth pinned in a candle of whiteness, with the other Buffy just reaching him. Spike, his hair a corona and his face turned aside as if in shame, bewilderment, defeat. Was that blood running down his body? Was that a trail of blood lengthening across the jerking muscles of his belly, along one thigh, sudden black drops falling to splatter his bare ankle and burn like acid into the mirror of the shining stair--

Flash. The other Buffy lifted her hand to Spike's cheek, and even at a distance, the way his whole body yearned toward her was heartbreaking. He turned toward her like a flower turning toward the sun. She seemed to speak; it seemed as if all the anguish in him melted into bliss at the mere sound of her voice. What was she saying to him?

"--Spike, it's you. It's you and it's me, and we'll get through this--"

Such a sweet loving voice.

Flash. They were an image in stark black and white, photo-negatives of themselves.

"You should never have left me," said the voice. "Not that you should blame yourself, you understand, but none of this would have happened if you hadn't betrayed me in the first place. And don't say I didn't make you happy, because I know I did."

Flash. Spike tossed his head, bared his teeth. His face was barely human. He was saying over and over, forcing the words out as if against grinding pain: "Can't hear you, can't hear you--"

"We've had such fun times together and now look, you're in pain--but darling, I can help--"

Flash. "Wait, Buffy, it's not working!" cried Willow's voice behind her. No matter how Buffy climbed and climbed, still she seemed unable to reach them.

". . . just one little thing," crooned the other Buffy. "Such a little thing to give up, only a tiny pain and over so easily. Not even the first time for you, lover. And then . . . you'll see . . . like anyone's first time--" Standing on tiptoe, she seemed about to kiss him. "A whole world of delights just waiting. But--you know that's impossible, until you-- Can't touch you unless you let me . . ." Her hands--did they pass right through him? Softly, cajoling: "All you have to do is let me in."

Flash. The other Buffy was gone. What stood in her place was a black hunched monstrous thing, many-handed, moving against Spike. Its humped form obscured his entire lower body. It growled, yanked away--and Spike cried out and moaned--then it turned, and Buffy caught a glimpse of a beast's fanged face, all snarl-wrinkled muzzle and lolling tongue, streaks of white running out of its open mouth.

While the voice whispered on: "Then all we need is a needle and a little bit of twine, and I'll stitch those nasty eyes up and make everything all right."

Buffy set foot upon the top step of the stair and roared in a Slayer's voice: "Stand and face me, Beast!"

Everything changed, then. The Beast left Spike, rising to its full height. Buffy swung her stake. The Beast stepped aside--and it was the other Buffy again, even her clothing mirroring Buffy's own now: the plaid shirt, the baggy man's jeans and shirt. Her lipstick was a gloss of shimmering golden light. Magic lipstick. Sunshine bomb. Her eyes were rimmed with mascara like a pagan Athena's, wide open and sorrowful in a marble-hard face. She feinted, spun and kicked, and the real Buffy only barely dodged in time.

Spike shouted, "I won't hear you! I won't hear you!"

"Too late," said the whispering voice from every side. "I have what I need from you." The other Buffy licked her lips, grinned; with the back of one hand, she wiped stickiness off her chin. She spoke to Buffy. "He's given me what should have been yours. You lose, Slayer. Too bad. And now--" Her face writhed into a vampire's mask, all teeth and savagery. She clenched her fists and then raised great claws. Blood ran from her hungry mouth, trailed over her chin and fell in thick gouts upon her breast. Where it fell, the flesh transformed. What was left behind was a thick white glazed surface like enameled steel--

She was becoming the Porcelain Knight.

Buffy leaped at her. Mr. Pointy smashed against the invulnerable surface of the Knight's body. The Knight laughed, swung her claws, and Buffy was hurled backward and went tumbling down the shining stair. Willow and Xander caught her. Above, the Knight took a step, and the earth shuddered. Another step, slow and ponderous as her entire body became as hard as stone; huge rocks fell from the unseen cavern roof, the stair shook and began to crack apart. Mr. Pointy was broken, useless. Buffy charged, collar in hand. Dog collar. Sunshine bomb. "Kick her ass!" yelled Xander somewhere behind her, and Willow shrieked, "Buffy! You have to save Spike!"

The voice said: "I am the warrior who guards the mouth of hell, and in every generation, the little girls they send to fight me, fail and die. That's the way it's always been. Slayer fights vampire, vampire kills Slayer, vampire eats Slayer and picks his teeth with her bones. Did you really think you could defeat me?"

Down came the Knight's fist.

Buffy rolled under the blow, and went straight past--toward Spike.

The Knight began to pivot, unhurriedly as an earthquake. The mirrored stair caved in. Willow and Xander were gone. Buffy hurled herself against Spike, got the collar on, snapped it shut--

He convulsed in agony, tears springing into his eyes. "B-buffy--" He choked, clawed at the collar around his neck. Worse than his strangled groans was the look of betrayal in his face. "It's killing me--I'm dying--"

The Knight laughed, lurched forward.

Buffy sank to her knees, trying helplessly to hold Spike up, but he was a dead weight in her arms, and now he was screaming. Screaming and screaming. "Oh bloody hell--Buffy, please--" She almost bent to kiss the pain away, but remembered at the last moment: magic lipstick. If she had done it-- The Knight was almost upon them. Oh god. What had gone wrong? The collar was meant for Spike, to restrain the demon inside him; why did it hurt him so? He was slipping out of her hold. There was only one chance left.

She left him, sprang straight at the advancing Knight--and pressed her lips to the other Buffy's vampire mouth.

Sunshine bomb.

Golden sunlight blazed through the Hellmouth cavern, and everything fell away. To ashes. Ashes. The Porcelain Knight was gone in a flash of incandescent light. Buffy had a split second to enjoy her triumph. She swung around, saying, "William--?"

She was in time to watch Spike's death, as he crumbled to dust and blew away on the wind.

She had failed.

4. The Awakening

Buffy woke.

Or perhaps she only thought she woke, from still inside the dream. A dream of waking. And, after the manner of dreams, it seemed completely logical to know she was still asleep, to understand that this was a dream. As REM-normal as flying, or that sudden unpredictable public nudity thing. She opened her eyes, she sat up and yawned, rubbing at her hair, stretching and looking with great satisfaction at the familiar surroundings of her bedroom. "Day's come at last," she said aloud. "Time to rise and shine."

The room was full of sunlight, dazzling with it. Buffy jumped out of bed. She felt something . . . why, it was something she hadn't felt for so long that it seemed new and almost intimidating--the most radical sensation. She felt good. She felt well. She felt chock-full of beans and righteousness, all the things she had missed since coming back from the grave; it took her back to years gone by, when she had welcomed each new day like an adventure. Joy-of-Buffiness. Joy of life. Her strength was as the strength of ten Buffies plus two.

But it was wrong, a false note in the tune.

Something to set her teeth on edge. Disturbing as the writing she had noticed last week, at the Bronze, on the women's washroom wall--I'M SPIKE POUND ME IN gouged into the wall, so deeply that the letters wavered. Unsteady writing from a bitter hand. She had shaved the graffiti clean with her Slayer's knife, tried to put it out of her mind. But her mouth had tasted of bile all evening after.

This feeling of health nagged her the way that feeling of shame had gnawed. Deep down, didn't she know one was as wrong as the other?

Another thing, this was clearly her bedroom, but it wasn't the bedroom she expected. It was her mom's old room, the master bedroom. "When did we move my things in here? Come to think of it, when did Willow and Tara move out?" Maybe she should have claimed this room as her own the instant she came back, but it hadn't seemed important then. Would things have turned out better if she had asserted herself from the start?

She showered and dressed, wondering, and then opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the sunshine-filled house. She heard happy voices rising from below. She heard laughter--was that Willow and Xander?--and a delighted girlish squeal that just had to be Dawn.

Laughing herself, suddenly eager, she hurried toward the stairs.

The house was full of conversation and people. All her friends were there! Oh, yes--Anya in reading glasses pored over account books on the coffee table, while Dawn lay on her back across the couch, long legs stuck straight up, twiddling her bare feet as her toenail-polish dried. With a phone glued to her ear. "--she's so crazy in love with, you've never seen anything so cute--" She waved airily as Buffy walked past. Other teenagers, completely unknown to Buffy, sat round the television and ate pizza. Giles wandered out of the kitchen, cup of tea in hand. In his other hand was a book, open; he was reading it as he went toward the dining room. And the dining room table was covered with books. The polished wooden surface glowed with the sun, and it was plainly research time.

Or study time? There was no air of a crisis. Yep, study time for Willow, busy with her laptop, smiling from ear to ear--for some reason, another completely unknown girl sat next to her and they were both absorbed with whatever was on the screen, but Tara stood behind Willow's shoulder, looking at them both with approval and love. Tara glanced up at Buffy as Giles went past, and she winked. At the far end of the table, Xander had several construction blueprints spread out, and was making notations on them. He looked happy too. Still lost in his book, Giles pulled up a chair and sat down. He pulled a pen and pad over, and began to write something. Buffy kissed the crown of his head. He crinkled his eyes at her and covered her hand with his.

Such a big table. Big enough to hold Xander's blueprints, Giles' books, Willow's computer . . . and Spike, too, in the midst of all these things.

Suspended between disbelief and dream-acceptance, Buffy looked at Spike.

He was naked, lying curled on the table. There was nothing unseemly about it; he had his knees drawn up, one arm wrapped loosely around them, the other pillowing his head, and nothing indecent showed. A modest pose. That was the first jarring note. Where was Spike's usual lewd sprawl, everything he had on display? Where was William the Bloody, a guy who--by his own account--had been flaunting himself open-legged before the whole world ever since the eighteen-eighties? Well, he wasn't flaunting anything now. His eyes were shut, he was napping.

He looked--well, healthy. His skin glowed with it. Where was the gauntness she knew of old, every tendon whipcord-plain and the bones all there to be counted? This Spike was sleek. Like a well-cared-for animal, muscular and contented. That was the second jarring note.

The third jarring note was the expression on his face. He was sleeping peacefully, even though all his enemies were around him. But--Spike loathed the Scoobies. The gang hated Spike. They'd stake him for a dollar. When she thought about it, that seemed like the most disconcerting thing of all.

And it wasn't that only she could see him, it wasn't that the others were under a spell. Even as Buffy watched, Willow glanced in Spike's direction and made some comment across the length of the table, addressing Xander; and Xander looked straight at Spike and made a face.

Something else struck Buffy. She leaned sideways, her eyes going wide. Spike wasn't quite in the altogether. No, not quite. There, around his neck, was a golden collar.

It gleamed like real gold, brilliant as treasure. Obviously magical. She reached out irresistibly to touch it--and Spike opened his eyes.

She jerked her hand away.

"You're out of balance," he said.

"What?"

"Out of balance," Spike repeated. He sounded patient, and that was so deeply wrong. He sat up, leaning his weight on one arm. His knees were still drawn up to his chest, nothing exposed to view, you could have plastered his photo on billboards all over California and all people would have thought about was Calvin Klein. Nevertheless, Buffy found her eyes wandering. Yep. Definitely more meat on those bones. Wholesale beefsteak . . .

She yanked her attention elsewhere by main force.

"Well, you're starkers," she counter-accused. "Clothing, Spike. Embrace the concept. Where do you get off, parading yourself in front of my kid sister this way--"

"Buffy," Xander said, without looking away from his blueprints, "trust me on this--no one but you has the slightest interest in what White Fang's got."

"And what about that, then?"

She pointed at the collar, indignantly.

Spike hooked one finger in the golden ring, and tugged at it. "This is your dream, Slayer," he said. "Everybody's got their personal symbolism. Mine runs to the strictly Christian, so I got my flesh and my blood and my bleeding crown of thorns, but you were raised a pagan Yank and you see things different."

"That's my symbol?" She eyed the collar dubiously. "Don't think so, thanks tons. Hey, and I'm not a pagan!"

"Sure you are. And," said Spike, "out of balance."

"I am not! As if you'd know."

"Buffy," said Giles. "Enough. Much as I hate to admit it, Spike may have a point."

"Gotta agree," Willow chimed in. "You're way out of balance, Buff."

It was surreal.

"What's happening here?!" Buffy took a step back from the table. "With the sunlight? And the wholesomeness?? And Giles, aren't you supposed to be in England? What happened to you while I was asleep--" Her voice ran out. Almost inaudibly she added, "And if it was my symbol, it wouldn't be a dog collar. It ought to be a crown or something instead."

Her friends applauded mildly. Even Dawn and Anya had come in from the front room and were hanging over Gile's shoulders, clapping their hands.

"Or maybe a sword," she added. "Anyway, Spike, why aren't you--"

"--blackened, Cajun vampire? Cause this's a dream," said Spike reasonably. He turned one shoulder into the light; it glowed across his back, caught the golden collar and all but blinded Buffy with the resultant liquid fire-flash. "Sun can't burn me here. Got to recharge my batteries," he added, and touched his mouth. "It's a magic thing."

"I remember!" She gasped the words. Suddenly her hand was on his arm, clutching; she jerked it off just as quickly, appalled by her own actions. "The collar. The mirror, the--the kiss. Ohgod. I was rescuing you and you, you--I failed--" She found herself hanging her head. "But how come you're okay?"

"The dream thing again. You get a second chance."

"Oh," she said, her voice very small.

"Do better this time, will you, ducks?" said Spike. "And here. Got this for you. Your collar."

It unsnapped in his hands, came apart like a bracelet, and he held it out to her all glistening and gleaming. She backed further away, slowly, her gaze on it. "Can't take your eyes off it, can you?" He leaned across the table, reaching out with the collar. "You know you need it, can't go any further without it . . . Take it, Slayer. Use it well."

At last, she extended her hand and touched it.

The instant she did, something happened. A shock went right through her. With almost a click, her fingers seemed to stick to the surface of the golden collar, and she couldn't let go--not for the life of her. Buffy yelped. "Hey!" Spike still held the other side of the collar. It was as if they were connected by it, and bright sunshine showered over them both till her eyes were dazzled and she had to blink back tears . . . Then the collar came away in her hold. She almost fell down then and there, but when she regained her balance, he was regarding her with silent approval, and the thing was in her hands.

Glowing there.

And he smiled.

Amazement brought her closer--a drag like the undertow of the tide--till she fetched up against the edge of the dinner table, breathless. The collar in her hands was like a shining diadem. She raised it wonderingly, set it on her head. "And one last thing for you," said Spike softly. "Here."

He bent down and kissed her, with the warmth of the sun in his lips.

The world changed.

*

This was the Bronze.

Buffy stood on the catwalk, gripping the railing with both hands, looking down. Saturday night. Nothing strange here. She was in party clothes. The dance-floor below was jam-packed, a hot band on the stage; the throb of the drums was like a beating heart. Below Buffy, dancing girls in their skimpy party-best swung to the music, shook their booties in front of their boys. And their boyfriends pounded the ground with their feet, lost in a testosterone haze. They grinned, teeth bared, purred and snarled fetchingly as the pretty girls danced past. They hung together in gangs by the coffee bar, eyeing their natural prey--chins jutting out, eyes overbright, all but drooling at the feast. Handsome animals out for blood, doing what came natural; it was the balance of nature she saw, right there on the dance-floor. Every boy had his game face on. Every boy was a monster under the skin. And the girls-- Well, one good look and you knew what those girls were. These girls were primed to knock 'em dead. These girls were ready to go out and slay them.

Just another night in Sunnydale.

But there was something she was missing, something vital. Something wicked important that had slipped her attention, lions lurking in the back of her mind--some grave error on her part, a miscalculation large as a misplaced year. She groped desperately at memories, images of death and rebirth, and sickening things ill-done with Spike--scuzzy and disgusting things, things that made her want to curl up and die--and she shut her eyes in pain. But . . . what?

Never mind it. She remembered her fists shattering the bedroom mirror, the thing taking Spike in the basement. If he had changed, then it was her business to save him, and that was that. She lifted one hand, raised it to her brow. There was the golden collar, a delicate construction of chains and filigree, binding back her hair. Fit for a princess--that was what it was like. Straight from the pages of a bridal magazine. Her lips still glowed with the impress of Spike's kiss. This time, she would do better. She wouldn't fail.

She descended the stairs to the dance floor, slowly. And the high ceiling with its naked pipes hung like a rainforest canopy over her. Animal sounds rose from all sides, hoots and wolf whistles and chimpanzee yells. Oh yeah. This place was a jungle.

Then at a glance over her shoulder, she caught sight of the only other human being in the club. He stood where she had, above her--against the catwalk railing, gazing down with a human face. Buffy froze. One blink and he was gone-- Where had he gone? Suddenly she was hurrying after, pushing past couples--when had the place gotten so crowded?--heading desperately toward the stairs. Boys and girls turning to look at her in surprise--

"Buffy! Where are you going?"

"What?" She turned, catching at his hand. Instantly, her troubles melted away. "Oh, there you are!"

Together they moved in the steps of the dance. He spun her just so, dipped her over his arm and let her rise again, till she felt all glowy with happiness and the best mirror in the world was the admiring smile in his eyes. His chest rock-solid under her palms, and the way she had to tilt her head way far back to meet his gaze; his handsome face, his dark hair combed so it stuck straight up in front--just like a little boy's. And how luscious was that? They circled. They dipped. Her hip slipped past his muscular thigh, their hands came together and clung. Buffy's head spun. Just another boy and girl in the crowd, slaves to the balance of nature.

"Oh, Angel." She leaned her cheek against his chest.

On the stage, the band struck up a new song. Eulenspigel said the logo on the biggest drum, and underneath, in smaller letters, were the words Owl Glass. "Who are you really?" Buffy asked. "Tell me!" His mouth moved. The music was deafening. Faintly, she thought she made out the words: "William . . . Lambsprinck . . ."

"You're the great love of my life," she murmured, "the only man I ever loved."

What was he saying? ". . . the wicked mirror . . . cracked . . ." While the iron shackles that burdened his limbs clattered and clanged with the measures of the dance. ". . . got me in the heart, Buffy, and another shard went right through my eye . . ." Chains? He was all hung with chains? "I have to do what you say," he said. "After all, you guard my home."

"Home?" she said in confusion. "Whose home? And why are you all decked out like Marley's ghost, anyway?"

"Cause that's who I am, o' course," he answered, and it was true that the light went right through him, his shackles clanked in spectral gloom and his face was sunken and bleak. "And I can only touch you this way cause we're in a dream." He brushed her cheek. "Never let me do that in the waking world, see? Come to give you a warning, Slayer."

". . . Spike?" But he had been--

"Give it up," purred Spike in her ear, breath feathering along her cheek, and Buffy shivered all over, because his voice was pure chocolate sin with a side order of deep-fried temptation. "Give up, give up, don't think you can win. Cause you know you can't. Just a little bit of a thing, aren't you?--all alone, far from home, give it up, Slayer. And you're . . . out of balance."

"That's all lies," she whispered.

"Course it's not. You've been astray ever since you went into the woods that time--"

"What?"

"--into the woods--"

"Huh?"

"--into the woods. All I did was show you where Frankenstein's kid brother was really spending his nights. You did the rest," said Spike, and the words were damningly gentle. "Slew your rivals in rage and vengeance, sullied the Forest with their ashes and dust. Wasn't your Slayer's duty drove you then. You were the one stepped too far into darkness, Buffy. Got to come back to the light."

Hypnotized, she found herself shaking her head. He raised a hand all clanking with heavy chains, reached for her crown of magic gold. It was then that she knew he was neither Spike nor Angel.

"I know what you are," whispered Buffy.

"No you don't," he said, and he was smirking, smirking. All the strength had left her limbs. She shivered from head to foot as an icy blast crisped frost into her party clothes, froze her to the marrow of her bones. "Now," said the thing she was facing. "Will you have the blue pill, or the red pill?"

"The blue pill," she said. And as his fingers brushed the golden diadem, she wound the chains round them and netted him, framed his face in her hands--as his mouth opened in a silent cry of shock--pulled his head down--and captured his mouth in a kiss.

The thing that resembled Spike burst like a soap bubble between her fingers, and she was--

*

--alone. Still in the Bronze, but alone. And now the drums and sound equipment on the stage were merely hummocks of fallen snow; white drifts lay in every empty corner, while the floor itself had cracked apart and heaved up in crystalline red slabs, and she could see deep down into it, all the way to the broken heart of the earth. "Hey, we're not in Kansas anymore!" said Buffy. She turned in a bewildered circle, and when she came around again, someone was saying, "You are alone," but nobody else was there.

"I can see right to the Hellmouth and it looks like a, um, well, never mind." She stomped her foot on the crazed surface; it was the lake of frozen blood. Yes. But no Spikey all popsicle-like imprisoned down there, she was very glad to see. Though when it came to rescuing him, that would be pretty easy--a few good whacks with a sledgehammer, pop the vamp into the microwave--no wait, maybe not the last step. But anyway, no Spike. So what was up?

Wait. She heard something. She was sure she did.

Whew, it was cold. She was warm in only two places: her lips and where the golden crown rested upon her head. And she was sure her ears were numb. But still she was convinced she had heard something. And . . . there it was again! She whisked around without warning, and crowed with triumph. "Gotcha!"

It was a little boy sitting on the floor, a huge book weighing down his arms. "Angel?" said Buffy doubtfully.

"My name is William," he said.

"You think?" she said, taken aback. "Well, whatever. I've come to save you."

Paying no attention, he went on paging through his book.

"I have to find the word love somewhere in this," he told the air.

"Angel? Did you hear? I'm here to save you." Hopefully, she held out the collar, took a step nearer and pursed her lips, ready to smooch. "But. Um. I. Don't know how." But all he did was frantically turn page after page of the book, and Buffy realized--her heart falling at the thought--that the pages were blank, as clear as glass, no print etched on them that could be read, only his fingerprints left splotches of scarlet on them as he searched. Puddles of blood spread, dripping from his small hands. And that was because the edges of the pages were cutting into his skin like razors.

"Oh, no. H-how can I help?" He rocked as he read, crying in tiny choked gasps like a little boy who's ashamed to be seen in tears. In desperation, Buffy tried to shove the collar into his hold, and when he failed to take it, she bent her head anyway and pressed her mouth to his fingertips. Could she heal him with a kiss? It made no difference. He only cringed away from her touch, and went on hurting himself on the pages of the book.

"Angel, listen! I think there's something I'm missing. Something I forgot? I mean this whole place feels like a dream--all of it, right back to this part where I'm driving out into the desert with Xander and Tara and we're going through this whole Slayer ritual-- And why do I keep thinking that Tara's dead?"

It was the sick horror on his face that made her stop. In slow motion, the book fell from his hold, and shattered into a thousand shards of ice.

*

. . . she lowered the collar. The Bronze throbbed with noise, the dancers spun around her, the air was hot and raw with desire. Spike watched her gravely. With astonishment, she noticed how his hair was long and light-brown, how his eyes were wide and innocent and blue. And the clothes he wore! A costume-party coat, with the snuggest trousers--oh, she could just drool--and boots up to here. The old-fashioned clothes of a proper Victorian gentleman.

"This is still my dream," she said, half to herself. "You're William--I mean, Spike the way he was. I met you before in the mirror, when Drusilla and Angel--" She broke off, heat in her cheeks. "When you were human."

"You broke the mirror," he agreed. "And I fear the motes in my heart and eye will be with me for eternity."

"What the hell happened to you, Spike?"

". . . father sent me away a long time ago." His words were fading. "Gave me to an angel who took me up on a mountaintop but then--" She couldn't catch what he said next, it was too noisy. "--forbidden fruit--" The collar was suddenly burning, cutting into the skin of her fingers. Her lips throbbed painfully. "--and father welcomed me back and then ate me--" What the hell was he saying? Her attention whipped back to the story. "But it all came out well in the end," he finished.

Her fingers cramped and itched and stung, and besides, the collar was heavy. It made her angry. Then, suddenly, she knew what she was there for. "William," she accused. "It's time."

"No--don't make me--Buffy, I'm afraid--"

"Get past it." She brandished the collar, thrust it stiffly toward him. "Take your medicine. Get your licking, punch that ticket, don't give me any more excuses, William . . . Call your demon."

"I don't want to!"

"Do it! Now!"

He was on his knees by then, chains clattering, arms wrapped around his head. "Don't make me do it--a nice child's crying is ugly, so bad verses mean the author is a good man--Buffy, I'm trying--" But she crossed her arms, implacable. "--Buffy, having seen my body," he gabbled, "borne before her on a shutter, like a well conducted person, went on cutting bread and butter--" Buffy tapped her toe. William's jaw set in sudden misery; he looked up, finally nodded. "All right then," he said. "I'll call it."

"Make that call," said Buffy.

And the demon came.

It was a vampire prowling among the oblivious boys and girls, a monster red in tooth and claw, and when it caught sight of William cowering in his shackles, it went straight for him. As it did, Buffy put herself in its way. She spun to gain momentum, snapped out a kick, slammed in an elbow blow on the backswing, and in the eyeblink of time it took to execute these moves, had the golden collar aimed straight for its throat. On with Mr Magic Collar, a good smack on the lips with the handy-dandy sunshine kiss, and goodbye Mr Demon as Buffy saves the day--

It was only then that she realized the demon had gone straight through her--flashing through her body as if she was transparent, a ghost--and past her, onto William.

As she turned, it was on top of him. He went down, desperately trying to fend it off. It snarled, smashed him flat beneath clawed hands, fastened onto his throat and howled with triumph as it did, as Buffy punched hopelessly at it with the collar, and both hand and collar went through it without the slightest effect. Without touching anything. She was only a specter. A spectator.

Screaming from her ringside seat at the hideous sucking sounds crescendoed.

Hearing the sounds of human flesh rending apart.

But the worst thing was the noise William made as it happened--an inhuman noise, like cloth ripping between merciless hands. She had never heard anything as horrible in her life.

He had known this would happen, he had begged her not to make him do it, and she had gone ahead and made him anyway.

It was over. The demon rose from William's broken body, blood running from the corners of its mouth. For a long moment, it stared Buffy in the eyes. And it grinned at her, leering from ear to ear, its tongue lolling out like a dog's.

She looked down: at her feet was a corpse in chains. There was no blood, but William's fine coat had been slashed till it lay in a thousand ribbons. Even the chains and manacles had been cut, the heavy steel of the links shorn like butter. Buffy bent numbly and picked up a loose link, and the marks of the demon's claws on it were polished diamond-bright.

She looked up: the demon was just shrugging itself into William's likeness, putting on his image as if donning a new suit of clothes. A few twists and wiggles, and Spike the vampire stood at ease, licking his lips and running one hand over his slicked-back hair with that old swagger of his. A thumb hooked into his belt, crotch forward, feet apart. A nonsense rhyme came into her mind: Hot Beast is the feast I can't stand in the least. The way he eyed her was an insult in itself.

She looked down and the useless collar was in her hand. Her fingers clenched. She wanted to smash the thing till it was nothing but mangled bits and scrap.

"You got to pick your story, girl," Spike crooned. Then he swung away from her, and ran.

She chased him.

Through the busy nightclub. Which became the Forest. No, wait, it had been the Forest all along, hadn't it? Girders became trees, floor transformed to ferns and moss, doors loomed like gravestones and the courting girls and boys were angel-headstones with marble faces and gargoyles draped lasciviously over them. This was the forest that was the graveyard. Where better for her to dance with Spike?

He let her catch him at the door of a crypt. She knocked him crashing into the masonry wall, her fist smashed him right in the fangs. Spike yelled. He catapulted head over heels, and Buffy went after him. She pounced, he dodged. Tombstones flashed past in her view, every one graven with a name: Goldilocks. Red Riding Hood. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. Snow Queen. She hit the ground and skidded. Then she rolled, coming to her feet with a bounce and leaping in his wake.

A roundhouse punch. Buffy oofed and doubled over, pain shooting through her midsection. Seconds later he took her by the hair and jerked her upright, bending her mercilessly over his arm. More pain in her scalp. "Oww!" Spike bent and ran his tongue over the arched curve of her throat in a long burning lick.

"Mmm, tasty--"

She knocked him off with an elbow to the Adam's apple, yanked free and dived forward, getting out of his reach. Somersault. Up. Turn. An idea struck her. "Look!" she said. She pointed, his head whipped around. While he was distracted, she stepped in grinning, to snap the collar around his--

Spike twisted her wrist, the collar dropped. He took her into his arms, and they toppled together and lay full-length on the green sheet of the ground.

*

"We shouldn't be meeting like this. Right out here in the open--it's not safe--"

"Thought that was the whole point, pet. Can't have you getting bored."

"But--"

"But? You know you love it."

"I d-don't--"

"Sure you do. Living on the edge. Can't get enough."

"But not here! It's . . . perverted. Why, anyone might come by and--"

"See me slipping you the Bad? Well--that's half the fun right there, innit?"

The night sky spread clear and vast above where they lay, ablaze with stars staring down. Soft grass and hard edges of wooden ties were against her ribs, and an edge of ice-cold metal dug into the nape of her neck. She squirmed away from it. Such a view there was from here! Whichever way she looked, it seemed she could see for miles and miles. And all Sunnydale could see what she was doing.

Buffy averted her eyes.

". . . knew I had to bring you here," Spike was murmuring in her ear, "first time I saw this place. Knew it was perfect for us. And . . . isn't this fun? Admit it is. You know you love to dance with the devil like this."

"The earth is moving."

It really was. The vibrations ran through her rib cage, made her skin tingle and her head ring hollowly, all the blood gone somewhere else. Far away, a long shrill shriek split the night sky, an inhuman noise. The steady thumping rhythm--drowning the pounding of her pulse in her ears--made her dizzy, sick with anticipation. On edge, her heart filled with dread. This was something no Slayer could fight.

"Get off me," she said softly.

"Make me." He bent, licked a fiery streak down her throat again. "Anyway, this is your story, Buffy. You're the one who gets to choose."

"So I can be anyone?" She managed to free one hand, waved it weakly at the headstones. "Pick any of them to be?"

"All those old Slayers? Yeah, sure." Another long delicious lick. "Mm hm, tasty treat all right. Golden delicious. Go ahead--make me drool."

"Oooh," she sighed.

"--Ain't got much--time left--" He arched upward, a snarl of rapture on his face. "Choose, Buffy," said Spike.

She bit him, right on the hollow of his throat. And was rewarded by his sudden choked sound of surrender, as he groaned and collapsed on her, boneless. "I'm Goldilocks then," she breathed, darting her tongue against the wet mark. "Saw--something--I didn't like, and--ran all the way home!"

"Willya just go ahead and choose your bleeding story already? And you're never Goldilocks. Haven't run home to Mommy for years now, ducks." Raising himself on his elbows. His head dropping, to look down between them. "No matter what little nasty you happen to catch sight of," he crooned.

"Well, I won't be Rapunzel or Snow White either--they're both entirely too passive--"

"Got that. Isn't you. Fine then, go with the girl-empowerment theme. You'd better be Gretel, or maybe that Gerda. But you gotta choose whether I'm Hansel or Kay then. And I tell you, I don't feel . . . like a brother to you . . . right now . . ."

"Snow Queen it is," said Buffy against his mouth, and--

"No!" Spike cried.

They rolled apart in a single mirrored motion, slamming backwards and away from each other. Then Buffy lay alone, panting, by the side of the railroad tracks, as the train went roaring past.

"God damn it!" She turned and drove her fist into the ground.

When the locomotive had finally gone by, Buffy rose and looked across the tracks--her head down, her shoulders braced, her hands clenched. She gritted her teeth. Spike, standing opposite, bared his fangs at her. "It's that time again," she said.

"Time for me to call my demon," he nodded.

"I wish it wasn't."

"You know it has to be done."

"Spike, this time . . . will it be as . . . ?"

"It won't be as bad as it was," he said. "Look at me, I'm years older. Not that wet-blanket William anymore." A growl rasped in his throat, the vampire mask slid off his features--like greasy dishwater slicking off clear glass. "Can put up a fight for myself now. All according to your plan."

"Like I'm going to take the word of a guy who calls himself Lambsprick. But . . . Oh, well." Buffy hesitated. Were they doing the right thing this time? Then she took off the magic collar and pitched it underhand across the tracks.

Spike caught it. "Here we go," he said.

The demon came.

It had taken on many of the features of Spike, becoming something like his shadow: a thing that strode hipshot, hands in pockets, leather coat swirling like a cape. Even its eyebrow was scarred, now. A negative Spike image. And . . . this time, it saw Buffy. It saw her. Before, it had darted right through her, intent on Spike; now it flicked a glance at her, and almost hesitated. Almost. Then Spike called out, "Hey, slugger! Come and get it!" and the demon spun in a second, hung poised on the midnight air--and went straight for his throat.

They fought like panthers.

The demon moved like a black panther; her Spike, gorgeously colored as a leopard, whirled and leaped around it, bashed it with the collar, returned kick for kick while his hair shone gold-white in the moonlight and his red silk shirt flared like a flag. They were mirror images of each other, one dark, one bright. (What did that remind her of?) Buffy backed down the hillside, afraid to meddle. This wasn't her battle. She'd only distract Spike, get in the way. They had it all planned: it was up to him to get the collar on the demon, and then when he had it pinned, she would sprint in and do the kiss thing-- Ick, sucking face with a demon. Oh well, a girl had to do what a girl had to do. She was still gagging mentally over the task ahead when the collar went flying, and Spike began to scream.

Then she began to run forward.

The collar had fallen on the grass; the demon, on Spike, ripped and slashed. Buffy sprinted desperately up the hill. Too late. Too late. The faster she ran, the farther back she receded. An infinite distance now seemed to separate her from them. On the hilltop, the demon's arm rose and fell, claws raking against the skyline.

*

Here was the Forest. Here was the frozen lake at the heart of the Forest, and here was the castle at the heart of the lake. Wondering, she took the last step off the arching bridge, stood in the courtyard; the walls loomed high overhead. She almost expected to see either Angel or Spike gazing down from the tower window at her . . . but no, this place was as silent as the grave. There was no one here. She was alone.

She had come seeking her true love's heart.

And her armor shone, her sword was as light as a wooden stake in her fist, as she walking into the castle of ice. Ice it was indeed, as had been the bridge she had crossed, and the lake of blood that was its moat; every pinnacle and flying buttress aglitter and the windows pale-bright with many-colored ice panes, and even the pennants hanging from the walls were stiff with crystals of rime. A dream palace, built of the driven snow, and howling winds blasted through it.

Something led her to a high hall where a throne of ice blazed on the surface of the frozen lake, with vast silvery snowflakes wheeling silently through the frigid air. There was no one about, the throne was empty; not even lackeys sleeping under mounds of snow to be seen, and Buffy felt a vague nibble of apprehension. (What was she missing? Some little clue--) But wait! The castle wasn't as forlorn as it had seemed. She heard a clink of ice on ice; someone was sitting on the icy floor, in the corner behind the throne. She hurried over. "Hello?"

It was her boy, the boy she had lost. "I've found you!" She crouched down by his side. "Where did you go? And what's this you're doing?"

He was fitting pieces into a puzzle that lay spread on the floor; every piece was a perfect snowflake carved out of ice, but they melted from the heat of his fingers within instants of being touched, and even as he scrambled to fit together piece after piece, the puzzle melted faster than he could solve it. And he was crying with frustration as he worked. "I have to put it together again! I have to fix it--" His tears fell upon the half-completed puzzle, and they melted it even more.

Only then did she realize what the image on the puzzle was: the body of a naked woman.

Oh dammit. Here they were going round the same old ride again. Buffy stared at the boy and the puzzle and the ice-castle, and something snarled inside her. "Enough," she ordered. "Spike. Stop playing. This is pathetic. Enough."

He had taken something out of his pocket and was now holding it out to her. Buffy stared. It was nothing, it was the wrong damn fairy tale, it was only an apple, a perfect Snow White apple: half red and glossy, and half unappetizingly green. If he thought he could trick her into taking a bite . . . ! "You gave it to me," he was saying, in a whisper, "but I have to give it back to you again." And Buffy snapped.

She snatched the apple, hurled it away, swung the sword. Spike fell. Buffy kicked him over. "I don't need this garbage. Where's the Snow Queen then! Bring her on! Call her up, and boy, you just watch me boot her back to hell--"

The puzzle had shattered in a zillion pieces. Spike lay unmoving, a broken doll. He hadn't made a move to save himself.

Buffy stood over him, panting. But she knew what she had to do.

She drove the sword into his heart, carved it out and ate it off the point of the blade. Only when she was finished, did she taste the flavor of ashes in her mouth.

What had she become?

*

Buffy sat up, gasping. "What have I become!"

It was daytime, and she was alone.

"How long have I been lying here?"

Under the uncaring skies, lost in the immense Forest. The sun stood directly overhead, and Spike had vanished. How much time had gone by--? "Okay, so I've been sleeping. Gotta wake up. Figure this out. Cause if I don't, then . . ." Buffy shivered. This Sunnydale was empty. She could feel it. "I'm on my own."

Just herself, down all the remaining years of battle--wasn't that the Slayer's lot? Till death did her--cleave apart. All alone.

She had failed. Repeatedly. And this was her reward.

Her arms crept around herself; she shivered again.

"You'll always be alone, then."

It was her own voice speaking her thoughts aloud.

"But," she said slowly, "isn't that the way it's always been? It's your story, Buffy. And whichever way the road leads, you're on your own in the end, girl."

She bent over, wrung by sorrow. "But I don't think I can bear the loneliness."

She held herself for comfort. Rocking a little, fingers rubbing her arms. Hadn't Spike once told her that her greatest strength lay in friends and family, the very things that made her human? In love. "Oh God. If I don't have the love, what will I do when night comes?" Her hands slid up to her shoulders. Further yet, to cup her face, caress her lips. Bitter tears leaked out as she tilted her head back, gazing up into the uncaring sky. With her arms around herself.

"You did it wrong from the very start. Getting hung up on the battle of the sexes. It was never like that, was it? It was always Buffy versus Buffy."

Yes, that was it. She had always been her own adversary. Poor lame Penelope, lost without a villain or two to twirl their mustaches and put her in peril.

Her hand wandered down her body, settled between her legs.

"Accept it, girl," she said.

Buffy settled languidly back, the tears slowly drying on her face. Knowing herself alone. But still feeling the touch. That wandering touch. It was all unreal--like a spell--the delicate stroke and flutter of her fingertips, pleasure without guilt, in solitude. With her own voice whispering, "You can only be this free because this is a dream." (But what was the vital thing she had forgotten?)

She slumped down and lay limp across the railroad tracks. Oooh yes . . . that ol' train was coming again . . .

"But isn't this better? All on your own, no responsibilities. To be able to give up the fight? Wouldn't you give your soul for the chance? Well, in this world you can choose your path. You can let go."

"--I never asked for this, you know--"

"Face it, girl. In the end, all you ever had was yourself."

What the hell was happening?

Buffy exploded to her feet. With both fists, she clutched her skirt (it had been rucked up almost to her waist). The sun was hot on her face, the hilltop stark and bright; here under the eye of the day was the last place to find monsters lurking. Wasn't it? Wasn't it?!? And it seemed like she ought to know the thing that got up slowly from where they had been lying, adjusting its own skirts, with a knowing look in its cool mascara-rimmed eyes. The thing that had been with her all along. And--she thought, through a growing haze of confusion--shouldn't she recognize it, didn't that make perfect sense? Because what she faced was her own mirror image.

"What are you?" Buffy demanded.

The thing stood opposite her, head down, eyeing her, smiling. It slid one finger almost to the knuckle into its mouth, and began suggestively to suck.

"You're what I talked to in the Bronze," Buffy realized with growing horror. "What I danced with--and you looked like, like Angel, or Spike--but the real Spike was up on the balcony looking down-- Who are you?"

"Why, Buffy . . . You know what I am, Buffy. I'm you."

Just like that, the ice sheathed Buffy's limbs, froze crackling in the stiff folds of her skirt and laced ice-patterns upon the stake from point to base. "Stole a kiss," murmured the thing, leaning forward, all but kissing her ear. "Slipped right in. You know what I am."

Buffy felt as if her heart had become a lump of lead, and her body was as light and fragile as hollow tinsel. She spoke through lips all fuzzed with frost. "You're the Snow Queen."

"Yep, I'm the evil that lurks in the hearts of man." It threw back its head and howled with laughter--and just like that, it was Spike, it was Spike grinning wickedly at her. "Gotta love that corny old stuff! I'm his reflection."

"I'm gonna kill you."

"Can't do it, Slayer. You threw your weapons away. Apple of the knowledge of good and evil, lover's ring, your trusty Spike--just tossed them all aside. Why, you know not even the hottest of the hot--" Running a hand down the front of its shirt, fondling the red silk. "--can manage to melt you. Cause it's in you. The darkness. Or you gonna tell me you were never on the outs with your friends? Never fought, never kept secrets, nothing festering under the skin? Cause those things, those are the Bad. And they're in you, Buffy."

"That's not true!"

"Oooh, do I strike a nerve?" it mocked. "It's the balance of nature, pet. You're connected to the good and the Big Bad both, and it's the soul can tilt the scales. You know what the soul is?" It paused. The inquisitive tilt of its head was so much like Spike that her heart was wrung again. "It's the thumb in the balance, that's what. It's free will."

She almost reached out--

Swift as a snake, it spat on the ground between them. Smoke rose, as if acid had burned a hole. "Filthy stuff," it concluded.

Buffy recoiled.

"That's all lies," she said.

"Think so? Then," said the Spike-thing, "you going to tell me, some Suzy Homewrecker breezes into town, trashes your house, steals your sweetie and flaunts the evidence all over Sunnydale, and of course, you'd--"

"I wouldn't!"

The thing grinned. "But it's you who started this, you know. Stealing my boyfriends time and again. Luring them away--but I'll get them back--cause they can't stand the cold, y'know--" Quietly, it finished, "And you haven't exactly been doing well lately, huh?"

"I'll get the job done," Buffy protested.

"Yeah, yeah, sure thing. You may be the apple at the very top of the tree, but you're not exactly the brightest bulb in the bunch, are you? I'll give you a clue, Eve: the magic collar has to go on voluntarily. Otherwise--well, the magic just doesn't work, does it?"

"You're mixing up the story now," Buffy managed to say. ". . . um, I don't suppose I can bluff you into putting it on now?"

"I don't think so. But I'll make a bet with you." With wicked delight: "One last try, Slayer. Have your boy call up his demon. Bet you won't get the collar on in time, before . . ."

"Before what?"

"Let's just say that if you lose, well--say goodbye to him. And you'll be alone. Forever."

A howling wind sprang up. The thing wavered on it, dissolved. It was nothing but a ghost, eyes and mouth blurring into grey holes in the blizzard, and then it blasted apart completely and flew into Buffy's face, words trailing after on the wind: ". . . forever . . . forever . . . forever . . . !"

*

Here was the Forest. Here was the frozen lake at the heart of the Forest, and here was the castle at the heart of the lake.

Wondering, she took the last step off Revello Drive, stood on the lawn under the big old tree. Above, a man looked out of the bedroom window.

And her porcelain armor crackled with rime, her stake frozen in her hand, as she stepped into the house of ice. Ice it was indeed, as had been the lawn crunching under her soles, and the lake of blood which lay beneath, its surface cracked and heaved, and the upwelling of the Hellmouth leaking out like diabolical sewage into the basement. Walls of ice surrounded Buffy, built up with the winter of years. Frost painted the front-room window solid white, and snow had drifted into all the corners. This house had been freezing over for a very long time.

As with it, so had all Sunnydale frozen. Every road was dead-end, the glacier of Buffy's heart had torn her town down; it was completely blighted, and spring would never come again.

When she glanced at her own arm, she was not surprised to see how it was translucent and glistening, the flesh slick as fine bone china. She had become the monster, the Demon Queen, the evil Snow Queen with the goblin mirror. She herself had become the Porcelain Knight.

She had a brief flash of insight, like a snapshot of herself as she walked upstairs. A doll-white girl on the steps, eyes hazy as dry-ice, and behind her were framed pictures of gateways hung on the frost-patterned wall. But where the gateways led to, Buffy's mother had never told her.

Her bedroom was as strange as a maze, though--lonely and echoing and made entirely out of ice. Half of it was white with snow, half in shadow black as death. She stepped in cautiously, afraid of slipping on the skating-rink of the floor. The vanity-table mirror was smashed, wrecked, gone. Glass crunched under her heel . . . and it was cold, so cold. As cold as perdition. Had the upheaval in the Hellmouth gotten this high already?

She thought herself alone, till she caught sight of something in the darkest corner. At first she tensed, then she sighed. What had caught her eye was a simple small thing, but desperately welcome: two yellow eyes, and the brief scribble of a match-flame.

"Spike," she said.

He was leaning against the wall, wrapped in his black leather coat. "Hello, darling," said Spike.

Now that she knew he was there, she could make out a few more details. The hard angle of his cheekbone, the white slant of his cigarette. An ember glowing at the cigarette's end. A wisp of luminous smoke. Then he shook the match out and tossed it down, to land with a faint splash. (A splash?) "Well, you're late," he said. "Missed the whole damn fight."

"But--your demon--?"

"It's been and gone, Buffy. But don't you fret." He slipped further back into the shadows, but not before she saw the rare sweetness in his smile. "This time, was me who won."

And she remembered everything.

"Spike!" Astonishment carried her halfway across the room. "Your soul! You got it back, and--and--this whole last year." Buffy halted, jaw dropping. "The First Evil, your soul, the whole Slayer Army thing. All this time I've been dreaming as if none of it ever happened and I, I was still just back from the dead, and--" Full stop. "And with you," she finished.

"And burying yourself in me."

"Well, we're both out of the grave now. Aren't we?"

He just shrugged it off. Still, Buffy stared, dissatisfied somehow. And struck anew by the change in him. It was in his voice, his words, even the way he stood--what she could see of it. All she could really make out was the lit end of his cigarette, a jitter of fire. Not quite steady. Trembling.

God, it was freezing! She shivered again, arms wrapped around herself. And what was that sound she heard, that splatter-splatter-splatter like a sink overflowing? Puzzled, she went closer, reaching for him.

"Do you still love me, Spike?"

She tugged him forward into the light. His steps raised little waves in the ankle-deep blood that now washed across the bedroom floor. She had time to gape down at it and ask herself whose blood it was; then she had time to watch his feet coming toward her, his stumbling dragging feet. All but falling over each other. Then she saw his face.

"With all two thousand body parts," said Spike, and pitched forward onto the bed.

She clutched at him. "Spike!" He was white as snow, cold as ice. She had never seen him so pale. Against his skin, his hair looked dingy and dark.

He had been completely drained of blood.

"Buffy it's coming," he whispered, voice fading to nothing. "The demon. It's time."

"But you said you defeated the demon, you said, you said--"

"Not my demon. Yours."

Then the demon came.

Its advent was in the creaking walls, the floor heaving under Buffy's feet. She started, clapping a hand to the magic crown; next instant she lost her balance, and sat plump down on the corner of the bed. Then she grabbed hold of the sheets as the bed itself began to jiggle wildly and shudder crabwise across the room. "What's happening? It's an earthquake--?"

"It's the Hellmouth," said Spike, faintly.

Photos leaped off the wall, hit the floor and shattered. Buffy scrambled desperately for purchase as the entire floor rose groaning to a thirty-degree slant. At the window, the casement creaked, the wood twisting itself out of shape. Then the whole window simply burst free of the wall, nails pulling away from the wood and shards of glass raining down. The earth shook all right, and it wasn't just a train passing through. All California could have come apart in this upheaval. The world was ending--

"This isn't real!" She anchored Spike, holding him in place when the tilt of the bed would have dumped him right off. The ceiling was shaking itself apart, chunks of plaster and ice raining down. A wintry wind blasted through the broken window-casement. "This didn't happen with your demon before!! What's happening?"

They sheltered together, huddled on the bed, two children lost in the storm. "Can't fight it," whispered Spike. He was slipping in and out of game face as he spoke, licking deliriously at his own lips. Already, he smelled of ashes. "Only you can."

"What do I do? What do I do?"

But when she looked wildly at Spike, he was face-down on the frozen sheets, with frost growing in his hair.

"Oh, hell," said Buffy.

She yanked the golden crown off her head, snapped it open and closed it--a collar again--around her own neck. Then she dragged Spike up and cradled his face against the crook of her throat. "Drink!" she said.

Instantly, he came alive.

He lost his game face first. She felt it happen. It melted away like an evil dream, and he gasped and moved his lips against her. His flesh warmed under the palms of her hands, and then he stiffened, reared up against her, mouth fastened to her neck, sucking. His tongue darting out. Licking. Suddenly abashed, she tried to jerk backward, but found herself pinned down with him holding her shoulders, and he lunged at her like a serpent, fastening onto her again. Again and again, striking with his mouth. She gasped. Tears ran from her eyes. Tingles went through her, like the nerves reawakening after being numbed by blows. She was shaking all over, now. Spike kneaded her breast, purring, and then bent and rubbed the crown of his head against her there. His hair was like roughed-up cotton batting. (Where have my clothes gone? she wondered. Oh, this is such a dream--) Spike kissed between her breasts, and Buffy turned the wide black wings of his coat back, and nestled under them with him at last.

They had done so many obscene things together, but they had never done this. It had never struck her before, but she had had her hands on his body so often--she had slammed him onto beds or floors, hammered him into alley walls, handled him as roughly as she pleased--and she had known how thin and famished he was, but he had never tried to taste her blood. Strange, because she had come to him bleeding from battle almost nightly, fought him till they were both scratched and clawed. He had been starving, and she had been the only one he could have drunk from. But he never had. Maybe he had known that if he had, she would have staked him for sure--

But no. That kind of caution just wasn't in him. He was too much a creature of impulse for that.

His lips were incredibly soft, as she crooked an arm around the back of his head, drew his mouth back to rest in the hollow of her throat. Couldn't decide which was better--cradling his head and ruffling his hair, or kissing him. Kissing him was easy to start, hard to stop doing; every time they drew back even a fraction of an inch, they lunged back together again, lips parted, teeth bumping, unable to stop smiling. She laughed at their own awkwardness, rubbed the tip of his nose with hers. Spike gasped something, rolled them over, slid first the flat of one hand and then his knee between her thighs, rubbing hard. Buffy stopped thinking. Her back arched, and she ran her hand all the way down his body and gently took hold of him. He froze, staring wildly at her. "This is a dream," she said solemnly, "symbolic of my realization that my inner demon needs a, um, really thorough staking. And that's why all of a sudden you're not wearing anything but the leather coat."

He grinned. His eyebrow went up, and Buffy's heart sang. One of her hands was on his bare hip, the other still holding him possessively; she guided him into position, let him sink into her. With Spike leaning over her, arms round her waist, lifting her to him. And she wrapped herself around him. His face was buried against her throat, he was sliding in and out of her. Joined everywhere. Drinking from her. Every drop of blood in his body had been drained, now she was filling him up with Slayer blood. Turning him. I'm turning him into a man.

The Master had bitten her and that had been rape. With Angel, she had been too young, overwhelmed by the violent things he had made her feel, and in the end she had beaten him off her by main force. That had been the moment of their parting, not when he went to LA or when she had slept with him and stolen his soul. Dracula had tried to show her the bite as seduction, not attack; but Buffy had been unwilling to learn her lesson. She had been left untouched. Virgin.

She didn't care.

Spike warmed her from within, all the way inside, for the first time ever. Not like before. He had always been stone-cold from near-starvation, draining all the heat out of her, leaving her aching and sore. Eating her with his eyes, never stopping staring, his face hard and merciless as they did--such loveless things. Things that should have been sweet, but only ended up ugly. Before he had the soul. They had never managed to be more than two animals together, before. Now, though--this was different.

He had drooled over every inch of her body, but never kissed her the way he was kissing her now: deep, slow, tender smiles of kisses, kisses like happy endings. Kisses fit to wake the dead. She couldn't keep her eyes off him; the sight made butterflies flutter in her heart and her eyes sting with unfamiliar emotions. Contentment. Hope. Happiness. Spike rocking blindly against her, his forehead now resting against hers, his expression utterly abandoned. Since he had come back, they had been so tentative with each other, so much that--she ticked off a mental calendar--they might have gotten to holding hands by the middle of August, or maybe kisses on the cheek before next November. That was, if the apocalypse hadn't come by then.

But just look at them now!

Best of all was the way his eyes opened wide and glazed at the apex of every thrust; then he would go completely still, eyelids slowly falling shut in ecstacy. As they moved together. Making love with all two thousand body parts, not just the heart, but the soul and the will and the demon badness that had to be collared and accepted.

At some point, she reached up to touch her own throat, and brought her fingers away clean, unstained. She thought: he didn't even break the skin.

The golden collar had vanished too.

Around them, the ice melted and the snow dripped away; the damage to Buffy's house vanished like a puff of smoke. As with it, so went all Sunnydale. Walls melting, her heart melting. She could hardly believe this was her. Wherever her hands slid, his flesh warmed into humanity. Color coming back into his cheeks, a pulse in his veins. All her old heartaches were being soothed away, cleansed and cured, while the world outside melted into daytime, springtime. Like something wakened by a sunshine kiss.

She had a vision of the earth's own hungry mouth yawning, first under her house, then in a ravenous grin wide enough to engulf all Sunnydale, then from ear to ear across the whole world. That devouring mouth. Then she forgot the apocalypse.

"Spike!" she cried. One last kiss, one more gentle touch, as they shuddered together and sighed into stillness . . . and the Hellmouth snapped shut at last.

Buffy and Spike lay curled in the nest of her bed. He breathed against her, his heart was beating. The world outside their walls had returned to normal.

Only a few pieces of broken glass were left on the carpet, lying in the shape of the word LOVE.

*

Buffy smiled as she slept, in the quiet house, slipping out of her Slayer dream.

And outside her bedroom window, perched smoking on the edge of the rooftop, the man Spike would become finished off his cigarette, and waited for her to wake.

Note: the poems quoted in part two are, in this order: The Sick Rose, William Blake; On the Difficulties of Religion, Jane Barker; Hound Voice, Yeats; The Book of Thel, Blake; a whole basketful of mixed Yeats; Knots, R. D. Laing; again, Knots; Lilith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Thomas Hardy, The Phantom Horsewoman; and Yeats, A Last Confession.

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Posted March 16th, 2003.