Fic: A Parliament of Monsters, Chapter 13, Part 2

[rahirah]

Trudging towards Willy's place on her wild Finn hunt, Buffy marshaled her arguments - Hey, Riley, remember my other vampire boyfriend? The one you turned yourself into a human pincushion to 'understand?' Between Giles's unexpected visit and Spike's shenanigans, she'd managed to keep herself too busy to really think about what might be going on with Angel. No, Angelus. Because he had to have lost his soul, no matter what Spike thought. There wasn't any other explanation. She wouldn't let there be.

Angelus wasn't the most powerful foe she'd ever faced. Glory, the First Evil, Adam, the Mayor, heck, even the Master... powerwise, they all left Angelus in the dust. But none of them had been so... personal. Her brain did a half-twist every time it skirted close to what Anya hadn't said, the unasked question on everyone's lips: How long is it going to take you to kill him this time? She shivered, though it wasn't really that cold.

Her boots were already crunching on the cracked asphalt of Willy's parking lot, and she could barely remember how she'd gotten there. When she reached for the tarnished brass of the door handle, it jerked away from her fingers, and she was face to face, or more accurately face to collarbone, with Sam Finn. Absorbed in the screen of her comm unit, Sam didn't even notice her, and only Slayer reflexes prevented a sitcom-level collision.

"No, sir." Sam sounded nervous. Jittery even. Watching a five foot eleven Amazon jitter was an educational experience. "You know how unreliable the equipment's been lately. I'm sure he just got held up. Of course, sir. I'll let you know as soon as I do." She flicked the comm off with a worried frown, and registered at last that she'd almost trampled someone underfoot. "Buffy. Sorry, I'm on duty. Is there something you needed?"

"Since you mention it, yes." Buffy fell in beside her with an undignified little half-skip to keep up with the taller woman's stride. Where was Riley? "That case Spike went to L.A. about has blown up in the worst possible way, and I was hoping I could count on your team for backup."

Sam raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "In L.A.? I think you're forgetting we're not free agents here. We can't just go AWOL on a whim." Acid tinged her voice. "Particularly when we're way behind on our collection schedule because the instruments have been so wonky."

Crappity doo dah. Whatever potato salad and charades had done in the way of converting Sam to Team Demons Yay!, Spike going into asshole mode and roughing Riley up had thoroughly undone it. In retrospect, maybe she should have gone with the little quiche things. "But Riley's in command of this mission, right? He can, like, improvise if the situation changes? And believe me, it's changing. If I can just talk to him - "

"He's not available at the moment." Sam marched over to her car, parked in the island of light from the single streetlamp overlooking the parking lot. Buffy had an odd flash of deja vu as Sam wrenched the door open and swung inside, shoving the key into the ignition as if it were a stake going into a vampire's heart. Well, of course; it was the same white Neon she and Riley had arrived at the party in.

The car's headlights blazed to light, illuminating the dingy houses across the street, bare yards and suspicious eyes peering at them from behind drawn curtains. Suddenly it all clicked. "You don't know where he is," Buffy challenged.

For a second she thought Sam was going to deny it, but then the other woman's head fell and her hands tightened on the steering wheel. "He's going to get us both court-martialed if - " Sam shook her head in frustration. "If it was just between us, that would be one thing. But it's affecting the mission, and I can't - I can't keep making excuses for him." She added, almost too low to hear, "I wish he'd just talk to me, you know?"

Buffy felt a pang of unwilling sympathy. "He does kind of have a strong silent fetish. Granted, after living with Spike, sometimes a strong silent type would be a relief." Through the window, she caught a glimpse of the comm unit Sam had tossed to the seat beside her, displaying a street grid devoid of targets either friend or foe. Riley didn't have a chip in his head, so no way Tara's spell could be affecting him. He must have turned his GPS off deliberately. Slayer intuition or just the Buffy kind, she'd learned to trust it over the years. "I know where he is. And I'll bet I know why. I saw this car leaving a motel on Lincoln a few days ago, and I'm pretty sure patrolling wasn't involved." Technically, she was betraying a confidence here, but at this point, surely Sam had a need to know? "When you got married, Riley did tell you about his, um, experimental phase with vampires?"

"Yeah." Sam threw the car into gear (of course she knew how to drive stick). "But I'd swear he was clean. He's not showing any of the signs. No lethargy, no anemia. And a vamp bite's not like a needle track - you can't hide it between your toes."

"He might be mixed up in something... normal," Buffy ventured. "Gambling, or, or reefer madness. But - " She remembered the mystery stalker on their earlier patrol, the one with the girly shriek. "But either way, skipping out on you... that's pretty serious, right?"

Sam's lips pursed as if she'd bitten into a lemon. "The Army frowns on that sort of thing, yeah."

"So if I help you make sure that his superiors don't find out about this, will you at least come hear me out about the L.A. deal?"

There was an increasingly fraught silence. Narrowed eyes. Possibly the theme music from High Noon playing in the background. "Are you blackmailing me, Summers?"

"No! I mean... yeah, I kind of am." This was necessary, Buffy told herself sternly. Skeevy, but necessary skeeve, and it wasn't like she hadn't stolen, lied, and killed in the service of the greater good before. "Look, I don't have time to strand you on a desert island and win your trust with seaweed, or whatever. I have an incredibly dangerous situation in L.A. that I have to stop right now, and I need your help. I'd love it if you volunteered that help, but if you won't, well, you'll thank me when the world doesn't end." She looked Sam in the eye. "That's the stick. Here's the carrot. I've been thinking about your 'mission,' and I think someone's decided to reboot Maggie Walsh's original project, the one she had before she took stupid pills and started building Adam. Remote-control vampire soldiers, right? Or something really close to it?"

"That's above my pay grade." Sam's poker face was good, but not quite good enough.

"I can get you volunteers. To test the Chip 2.0 I'm sure someone's working on right now." Ideas half-formed since her earlier talk with Spike crashed into each other, faster than her words could keep up. "The vampires who live off the bite junkies - they kill people sometimes, but it's mostly by accident. It's bad for business. Offer them something that would keep them from killing off their clients and keep me off their backs? At least some of them would go for it. Plus there's a minion of Spike's who, uh, might be interested."

"That's...a very interesting offer," Sam said slowly. She sounded as if she were considering it seriously, at least. "But I'm a little surprised that you're OK with this."

"I am a million miles from OK with it," Buffy shot back. "I think it's a terrible idea. But it's not like I can stop the Army from trying it, and I need your help. So if you help me, and I help you, and in the process, I'm in a position to do something when your black ops remote-control-vampire project goes completely haywire? I'm calling it a win."

Sam's appraising look went on several minutes longer than Buffy was comfortable with. "You're a lot more... practical than Ri thinks you are," she said at last. "I suppose living with a vampire will do that to you. But I'm more practical than he thinks I am, too. You've got a deal. Now get in the goddamn car and tell me where to find Riley."

Practical. Sam was right; living with a vampire was a series of carefully negotiated compromises, and occasional knock-down drag-out fights, on both sides. It was too late to worry about slippery slopes now; she was already slaloming down an ethical black diamond run with only one ski. But at the foot of the hill, they were more to her side of the middle than Spike's, weren't they?

God, she hoped so. Buffy got in the goddamn car.

***********

A few bland, modern Best Westerns had infiltrated the ranks, but most of the motels along Lincoln were little 50s and 60s-era bungalows ranging from kitschy to dilapidated. At the Desert Palms, a neon golfer swung his flickering club beneath an electric palm tree, while glowing red and blue letters advised travelers that AIR CONDITIONING was theirs for the asking. A dozen cabins in various shades of peeling pastel paint horseshoed around the pool, and queen palms leaned at crazy angles overhead, their shaggy heads swaying slightly in the February breeze. California Gothic. If only, Riley thought, he had a pitchfork.

"It's not like I'm asking for much!" Harmony pouted. She wriggled across the bed towards him, trying for sweet reason, vampire style. "I don't know why you're making this so difficult. I mean, she totally dumped you for Spike, didn't she? I'm giving you an opportunity for revenge. You should be happy! Just kill the Slayer for me, and I'll be out of your life, and SaMANtha doesn't need to know a thing." Her voice modulated from whine to wheedle. "Please? For me? You know she never understood what you needed like I do, baby."

"For the last time, I'm not killing Buffy!"

Harmony broke into a flirtatious grin. "If that's the last time, then if I ask you tomorrow you'll say yes?"

The idea that this creature understood him on any level was sickening, moreso because her insistence wasn't completely delusional. They really had shared something that night in Mexico. The raw need he'd once spoken of to Buffy, yeah, but something beyond that: a moment when she'd made him laugh, and for an instant broken him out of the prison of his own regrets. But one moment couldn't erase what she was, and he wasn't going to let it erase who he wanted to be. This was the last time she was going to drag him to one of these sordid rendezvous. Tonight he was going to man up and kill her. Absolutely, positively -

A boot hit the door with a resounding crash, snapping the flimsy lock and sending it slamming inward. His wife stood framed in the doorway, a Kevlar-clad Fury with bared teeth and blazing eyes. Buffy was barely visible behind her, standing on tiptoe in a vain attempt to see around Sam's shoulder. Panic warred with a strange sense of calm - he was screwed, but at least the agonizing fear of discovery was over.

Harmony's china-doll eyes went wide. "The Slayer! She's found me!" She flung herself at Riley, entwining him like an undead boa constrictor. "Riley, punkin, save me!"

Riley staggered under the onslaught - she wasn't that heavy, but she'd caught him off-balance, her dead (literally) weight hanging from his neck. One flailing arm caught the back of the crappy motel chair, which snapped off and sent both of them tumbling to the floor. Harmony's wails intensified to supersonic proportions as she realized that she was surrounded by a spinney of splintered chair-rungs. She leaped away as if Riley were a hot crucifix and dove behind the bed, raising her hands in a not terribly convincing Michelle Yeoh imitation. "You'd better just watch it, Slayer! I've been taking tae kwon do lessons!"

"Harmony? Why are you even in Sunnydale?" Buffy sounded affronted by Harmony's existence. "Your sister said you were working for a law firm in L.A.!"

"A person's allowed to come home for Christmas, aren't they?" Harmony sniffed.

"It's February!"

The epic confrontation of Harmony and her nemesis took an abrupt back seat to Sam's epic confrontation with him. Sam stood over him, every line of her body sketched in cold fury. He'd seen her this angry before, but never at him. "What the hell is going on here?"

Riley gulped air through his bruised windpipe. "It's not what it looks like! I can explain - " He could pour out words from now till eternity, and there would still be no explanation he could give her, or himself, that would make his presence in this room comprehensible. "She's been trying to blackmail me. I'm sorry, I thought - I thought I could get rid of her. I was going to do it tonight, I swear." Wretchedly, he hung his head. "God, Sam, you were my new clean start. I never wanted you mixed up in...." He waved a hand at the squalid little room. "This."

"God damn it, Ri," said Sam. She wasn't crying, too mad for that, but the hurt in her words was a palpable thing. "I'm not your fucking fresh start, I'm your wife! Why the hell didn't you tell me what was going on? That's been the worst part. I couldn't believe you'd be involved in anything so terrible you couldn't talk to me about it." She nodded at Harmony, a freezing contempt in her eyes. "Did she bite you?"

"No!" Riley spat out the word like poison. But that wasn't strictly true, and he had to come clean here, or he was doomed. "Not recently. Once. Before I met you."

"Like I would." Emboldened by the fact that she hadn't been dusted immediately, Harmony straightened up, brushed splinters from her skirt, and attempted hauteur. "I only bite people who ask me very nicely now. It's way tidier. No gross smelly corpses to clean up in the morning. Besides, Mr. Amherst gets me real imported sea otter. He knows how to treat a lady, unlike some bleached-blond jerks I could name. I haven't bitten one single person in Sunnydale, so if Buffy stakes me she's broken her own stupid rules. So there."

"You just asked Riley to kill me!" Buffy exploded.

Harmony rolled her eyes. "But I didn't try to kill you myself. Besides, we're nemesises. It's what we do." A malicious smile lit her flawless face. "If you're just getting your jollies by harassing all of Spike's old girlfriends when they hit town, you'd be better off going after Droodzilla than me."

"What?" Buffy raised her stake in surprise, and Harmony backed up against the wall with an eep. "Drusilla's in Sunnydale? Tell me about it, or I'll make the maid's job a lot harder."

"She was in town," Harmony clarified. Sullen, she looped one golden curl around a finger. "The other night. And she had some new English boy-toy in tow. They stopped by Mr. Amherst's lair to pay respects. I think she was trying to make Spike jealous, making a big splashy kill in his territory, but since he was out of town, they left."

Riley could see where this was headed. Of course. Fob the blame due to Spike off on some convenient out-of-towners, and the vampire would come out of this smelling like roses, while Riley Finn ended up reeking of what they grew in. Not that it wasn't his own fault for not staking Harmony when she'd first started stalking him. "How do you know they'd made a big splashy kill?"

"Because the blood was splashed all over them, duh! And she was babbling about it, till the boy-toy made her shut up." Harmony sniffed. "He was all about this grody old handbag they'd stolen. He tried to convince Mr. Amherst that it was some kind of big deal, but there are some styles that never come back in." She gave Buffy's outfit a once-over. "As you should know. Are you going to let me go now?"

"Leave Riley alone from now on," Buffy said, voice hard. "Or I'll forget how many people you haven't bitten, and remember the ones you have. Now get out. Oh, and tell your sugar daddy that Spike's going to have a proposition for him soon, and it's to everyone's advantage if he accepts."

"Fine," muttered Harmony. She edged around the end of the bed, keeping a wary eye on both Buffy and Sam - he, apparently, didn't rate - and flounced out through the remains of the door with head-toss and a disdainful, "Some people can just never be happy for others."

Buffy sighed and turned to face him. Once she would have been the one raging at him, but times, he guessed, had changed; now she was all business. "So. Put that together with the bite mark evidence and Spike's alibi, and are you satisfied he had nothing to do with Robin Wood's death?"

Damn it. He couldn't ignore evidence, no matter how little he liked it. Harmony had no reason to lie to them, not about this. Riley gave a grudging nod. "Yeah."

"Good. Moving on." Buffy nudged the shattered chair with the toe of one boot, suddenly cheerful. "You know, it's actually a good thing that you didn't stake Harmony right away," she said. "Otherwise it might have been a lot harder to clear Spike."

"Don't rub it in," Riley muttered. He straightened, feeling a million years old.

"Riley. Tell me one thing. Why didn't you just stake her?" Sam asked. Her level brown gaze demanded a straight answer, one that might make or break his marriage. "You must have had opportunities."

Riley took her hands, hoping his grip could convey what his words couldn't. "I was going to. Just before you broke in." And a hundred times before that. She had to realize he meant what he said, had to hear the sincerity, the misery in his voice, didn't she? "God's honest truth, Sam? I don't know. I wanted to, half a dozen times. I just... something always made me hold back." He trailed off with a helpless shrug. "It's not because I don't love you. If you don't believe another word I say, you've got to believe that."

"I know why." The last thing he wanted right now was sympathy from Buffy, and he was living in an Alanis Morissette song, because she was probably the only person who could give him any. "Just once, you looked into her eyes, and saw someone. Maybe only for a second, but you can't unsee it. You can't slay a someone. You can only kill them, and that's... so much harder." She looked at Sam. "Mrs. Finn, your husband couldn't stake her because, well, he's a fundamentally decent person when he's not being a macho idiot." Riley didn't dare look to see if his wife's expression had softened. Buffy went on, "You just have to remember that in Harmony's case, she was an evil, vicious, supremely annoying person - "

"I have super hearing, Slayer!" a distant, aggrieved shout came from outside. "And I am not annoying!"

Buffy snorted. "Like I said. Come on, let's go."

Thankfully, Harmony was gone by the time they headed for the car; Riley insisted on paying the night clerk for the damage to the room before they left. He glanced ruefully at the wrecked cabin as they walked to the car; could he justify putting this on the Army's tab as collateral damage in a hostile-tracking exercise? Probably not. Sam's back was military-stiff as she strode out of the manager's office ahead of him. Her look told him this wasn't over yet, not by a long shot. But she was a professional, and so was he, and they had work to do. She'd hold back until they were alone.

He clenched his jaw in resolve; he could never allow this to happen to him again. Whatever weakness in his psyche had led him to this night, he'd root it out, starve it, make certain it never had a chance to bring him this low again. And like it or not, it wasn't his wife who could show him the first step. "How the hell do you do it, Buffy?" he asked, as Sam went round to the driver's side of the car to unlock the doors. "How can you put Spike in one box, and all the other vamps you stake without a second thought in another, and keep them there? Keep them from... bleeding over?"

In the glow of the neon palm tree, her smile was small and sad and one hundred percent Slayer. "I can't."

***********

Spike was waiting for her on the porch when Buffy got home, smoking a cigarette. He'd been there long enough to scrub up and change - instead of looking like an undead raccoon who'd been run over by a semi, he looked like an undead raccoon after a three-day bender.

"The Finns are right behind me," she said. "Is everyone else here?

Spike snorted. "In body if not in spirit." He pitched his butt into the roses and followed her in.

Once inside it was obvious what he meant by that. Willow had made coffee, but caffeine seemed likely to just make everyone crankier faster. Giles was jet-lagged, Dawn was falling asleep, and Kennedy eyed Giles as if she expected him to sprout horns and start seducing her to the demon side of the Force. Buffy had no idea what was going on with Anya and Xander, but the cold shoulder Anya was giving him could have generated enough snow for Mammoth Mountain to open a month early. Riley and Sam, when they entered a minute later, were unnaturally expressionless and polite. Tara had retreated to the kitchen under the guise of assembling snacks. And Spike hadn't even bothered goading the others into fighting for his amusement, which was a measure of how tired he had to be.

Taking up her very best inspiring-Slayer-speech stance in front of the fireplace, Buffy sensed rather than saw Spike glide in behind her, propping himself against the mantelpiece at her shoulder. A fraction of the tension within her eased. If nothing else was going right, at least she had him back at her side, and he was keeping the jealous vampire crap to a minimum. "First order of business," she said, her briskness only a little forced. "Agents Finn and Finn have agreed to help us out with our current problem, and - " she shot a questioning look at Spike, who nodded, "and we'll have some help from Spike's crew, too.

"So let's sum up. The Watcher's Council tried to make a Slayer army, and ended up with an unusually-athletic-teenaged-girl army instead. Kendra's old Watcher thinks they're going to try to erase their mistake lethally. Angel's lost his soul, and he's up to something in L.A. He's turned Wesley into a vampire - " Anya shrugged, and Giles, Willow and Xander made pro forma murmurs of dismay, but everyone else exchanged blank looks; Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was ancient history so far as Sunnydale was concerned. " - and sent him and Drusilla to Sunnydale to kill Nikki Wood's son and steal the magical Slayer doojiggy he was bringing us. According to Kendra's old Watcher, said doojiggy was designed to boost a Slayer's power, and therefore," she took a breath, "We head up to L.A. ASAP, put Angel's soul back, and use the doojiggy to repair Kennedy and her not-quite-Slayer pals back home. Neither easy nor peasy, but at least it's uncomplicated. I like uncomplicated." She couldn't entirely keep the savage out of the satisfaction in her voice. "And if Travers tries a final solution on a few dozen full-powered Slayers, he'll deserve whatever he gets."

"B-but what does Angelus want with something that makes Slayers stronger?" Tara blurted out. Everyone turned to look at her, and she flushed. "It's just... we think he sent Drusilla and Mr. Wyndam-Pryce here to steal it, right? So he must have found out about it before we did, and wanted it for something."

Willow's porcelain brow wrinkled. "Giles, do you think he knows about the Council's problem?"

"Unlikely," Giles said. "It's a closely-guarded secret. Bernard Crowley did live in Los Angeles, and he's recently disappeared, so it seems logical that Angel learned of the artifact from him somehow. It's conceivable that he simply wants to keep it out of our hands, but we can't discount the possibility that he has some other purpose for it. There must be a reason Quentin Travers and his predecessor were content to let Crowley hide it away for thirty years."

Buffy tried to curb her impatience. All of that was irrelevant, if only.... "And if we put Angel's soul back, we can just ask him. Will, what's the outlook on the resouling front?"

Willow's shoulders hunched in apology. "Partly cloudy, at best. We have the revised Ritual of Restoration I made last year. Since I can't put the pow in that kind of power any more, I was thinking I could adapt the ritual for a whole coven, which would split up the power requirements. That's going to take a good solid week of book-hitting, minimum, and also? We don't have a coven. Or an Orb of Thessulah, but Anya's looking for one." She made an unhappy gesture with one hand. "Basically? It's doable, but not quickly."

Her heart sank. A week. Maybe longer. How many people could Angelus kill in a week? She'd always tried to avoid thinking about that, back in the bad old days. She couldn't snap at Willow; that wasn't fair. One way or another, Angel had always been her problem. Even if it was Willow's own fault she was all powerless now, when they really needed a soul pulled back from the aether. But Willow knew that as well as she did, and looked miserable enough about it.

Tara's eyes were glued to the toes of her ballet flats. "I - I'm willing to try - "

For a second hope flared, bright and treacherous, but then conscience stabbed it in the heart. Anya had been blunt earlier, but she was right: the Ritual was well above Tara's magical weight class, and casting it a second time might destroy her. Losing your magic is as bad as losing your soul, Willow had said once. Worse, because losing your soul doesn't hurt once you've lost it. "No," Buffy said. "No, I can't ask that of you. Will, keep working on it. Until then - "

"Here's a radical thought." Kennedy was on her feet, her whole body a challenge. "We kill him. What is this, the second or third time this Angel guy's lost his soul? How often does it have to happen before someone decides he's a menace? If Summers here won't do the job, then I will."

"That sounds pretty damned good to me," Sam Finn chimed in. "Why else did you call us in, Buffy, if not for that? I meant it when I said we were behind on our collection schedule. If we divert to L.A. to help you now, we're gonna need an awfully convincing reason to hand the brass back home."

Gah, if she was going to compromise her morals and blackmail people, couldn't they at least have the consideration to stay blackmailed? Every minute they sat here and argued was a minute more when Angel (no, Angelus) could be out doing - things she wasn't going to think about. "Fine. I can talk to some people who can talk to some other people, and you'll get your subjects, all of them." Buffy carefully avoided looking in Tara's direction. If she was going to give an inch here, she was damned well going to get a few feet back in return. "Of course, all of those people will be way more willing to talk to each other if I can guarantee them that the chips will be removed before they start frying brains, and that the owners of the brains will be released unharmed."

Sam looked unconvinced. "You know damned well that some of these demons are killers - "

"Then I'll kill them," Buffy snapped. "After they're de-chipped. My demon street cred's built on the fact that I keep my word. Even to killers." She looked around the room. "If we can't put Angel's soul back right away, we'll take him prisoner and keep him locked up until we can. Anyone else have objections to the plan?"

"Love," Spike said with reluctant determination, "I'm not convinced he's lost it. He kept going on about how he was beyond good and evil, and in my experience, it's only punters with a guilty conscience stashed away somewhere do that." He looked at her, that desperate thirst for understanding in his eyes. "And soul or no soul... is he trying?"

Et tu, Spike? Maybe it was a good sign for his moral development that he was willing to argue with her like this, but right here, right now, it was like a knife in the back. With equal reluctance, Xander said, "Buffy, you know I love you to pieces." He wouldn't meet her eyes, and Buffy's stomach sank under the weight of dread - a part of her had been waiting for this all along. "But I'm with Sam and Kennedy and God help me Spike on this one. How many times can we go through this? We need some other plan besides sticking another psychic band-aid on Angel's gaping metaphysical chest wound."

Buffy could feel the heat spreading over her cheeks and the tips of her ears flaming.. There were words boiling up like magma in her throat, unforgivable words about "Kick his ass," and the hypocrisy of certain vampires who were willing to go all out to save their undead BFFs and not her undead exes, but before she could say anything they'd all regret, Tara stood up.

"Wait.." Her voice was squeaky with nerves. "There's something I could try. A sort of variation on a location spell. It could tell us whether Angel's soul is in the aether or not. That would give us something solid to go on, right?"

And she was saved. Buffy took a grateful breath. "Yes. Please. How long will it take?"

Tara looked flustered, as if she hadn't expected Buffy to take her up on it. "Um. Not long, if we can find the components. Do you h-have anything that used to belong to Angel?"

Buffy shot a dire look at Spike, who jammed his hands into his pockets and looked mulish. "As a matter of fact, I do. Just a minute." She dashed off upstairs. On her dresser was her jewelry box, one of the few things her father hadn't packed off to Goodwill when she'd been dead. Mainly because Dawn had saved it. And in the jewelry box... she never wore it any longer, but she'd never been able to bring herself to get rid of it, either.

A few minutes later she descended the stairs once more, a silver cross on a delicate chain in one hand. She held it out to Tara. "I don't think it belonged to Angel for long, because really not his style, but he did give it to me." She bit her lip. "Will it work? What else do you need?"

Tara took the necklace, the sinuous links pooling in her hand. "We can try. Okay, I need an assaying scale, a feather, a rock - granite would be good, or basalt...."

Dawn and Willow scurried off to find the necessary items. Buffy watched, arms folded and face stony, as the spell took shape: A pigeon feather in one tray, a stone from the Summers' garden on the other, a circle of candles around them, and the necklace dangling pendulum-fashion over the whole thing, suspended from a hastily-procured wire CD rack.

Tara knelt on the carpet before the table, lighting the candles one by one, widdershins. "The feather represents the aether," she said, at Buffy's questioning look. "The stone represents the earthly sphere. If I were trying to do this for Spike, it would just spin around and go nowhere, because his soul's not in either place. But if Angel's lost his soul, the necklace will be pulled towards the feather; if not, towards the rock." The last candle lit, she closed her eyes and laid both hands flat on the table. "Powers of the East, heed me. I, Tara Maclay, call upon you. Heed me, hear me, in the name of Osiris, who walks in the land of the living and the land of the dead; in the name of Persephone, born of spring and wed to winter..."

She could still hear the echo of his voice in her dreams, sometimes, so like Angel, and yet so unlike: Take all that away and what's left? Buffy forced her muscles to relax. She knew which direction the pendulum would swing.

Didn't she?

***********

Angel floated towards consciousness like a man rising from deep water, for a moment suspended between the artificial rapture of the drugs and the unceasing torment of the soul (in its way, just as artificial, wasn't it? Imposed from without rather than arising from within?) For that moment, neither Angel nor demon, just a guy whose father had named him Liam, and who the hell was that anymore, really? Angel was a construct, but you couldn't build without raw material; surely that must mean he had the makings of a good man in him, somewhere.

It was just so much more fun to be a bad one.

Hand on his shoulder, shaking. "You awake yet? Sheesh, what's a guy got to do to get a prophecy fulfilled around here?"

Hospital scents flooded Angel's lungs as he inhaled. Right. He was back at the clinic again, swaddled in clean white sheets, his chest banded in fire where they'd sliced him open a second time. No restraints this time. His arms felt like lead, but when he managed to get them moving, his probing fingers found the rim of a small plastic port set between two ribs on his left side, just below the pectoral muscle. He had a vague memory of Doctor Gregson explaining his plans for modifying the Doximal pump just before he'd gone under; that had to be for the refills.

The doctor was nowhere to be seen now. Hovering at his bedside was a ferrety little man with an impatient expression on his all-too-familiar face. "Whistler. Get lost."

"You remembered," the little man said. "I'm touched."

"Sure and I'm the one who's touched if I fall for your bullshit a second time." Angel tried to sit up, and thought better of it. Even vampire healing had its limits. "You've got nothing I want. The last time I got a taste of humanity I couldn't spit it out fast enough."

"Hate to break it to you, but once the Rosenberg chick got a soul, the Shanshu Prophecy went up for grabs, and to be honest, your chances aren't looking too good." Whistler pulled up a chair and sat down. "But that's old news. I hear you've come into possession of a little doo-dad the Watcher's Council had squirreled away."

How the hell had Whistler come to know about the shadowcaster? Angel studied that deceptively human face, but the little shit had no tells. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Yeah, you do." Whistler leaned back in his chair and shoved his hands into his trousers pockets. "The shadowcaster's powerful, but its application is what you might call limited. Only a Slayer can use it, and the Council's been too chickenshit to let that happen for the last few centuries." He cocked an eye at Angel from beneath the brim of his hat. "Go on. Ask me why."

Angel's lip curled in a derisive smile. "If you're trying to convince me that it's too dangerous to use..."

"Would I do that to the guy who unleashed Acathla? Far from it. I'm trying to convince you that whatever you've got planned for it is thinking too small." The little man extended both hands, framing an imaginary picture. "Mauritania, 1685. Arab invaders had raised an army of djinn, and the Watcher on-site made a judgement call. The Slayer - her name was Nkiruka - used the shadowcaster and gained incredible power. She allied with the local obeyifo leader to send the djinn packing. On the eve of the final battle, her Watcher wrote his last letter, describing the happy couple: 'On the battlefield, they are without Peere, and the Djinni scatter before them as Leaves before the Wynd. It is said that in the Heat of their Paffion they glow, as doth an Ember plucked from the Fyre, and I fear that in my Haste to avert this Disafter, I have unloosed a far Greater Ill upon the world.'

"When Council Headquarters finally got that letter, thirty Watchers offed themselves inside a week rather than face what they thought was coming." Whistler's tone had turned ghoulish. "Premature, the way it turned out. Nkiruka and the vampire she allied with both died in the final battle."

Angel bit back his sarcastic retort before it could form. Whatever else you could say about the Watchers' Council, they weren't prone to mindless panic. It occurred to him that maybe it would be to his benefit to play Whistler's game for a while. The fact was, he didn't have a real plan for the shadowcaster yet, and Crowley's untimely death had derailed his attempts to learn more about it. Whistler obviously had inside information, maybe even more than the old Watcher had possessed. "So this thing supercharges a Slayer. Fine. But even a supercharged Slayer's only one girl. What's the Council really afraid of?"

Whistler was watching him intently now. "There's a prophecy. One as old as the universe itself. They say that about all the prophecies, but anyway, it's old. A Slayer and a vampire - an extraordinary Slayer and an extraordinary vampire - will come together and give birth to a new world. A world that will supplant this one, like a chick hatching from an egg, and sweep this tired old place away like the failed experiment it is. Buffy's not the first Slayer to cozy up to the undead. Common it ain't, but it happens. Raises a warning flag. Add the shadowcaster into the mix, and you've got metaphysical dynamite." He leaned back in his chair. "You tried to destroy the world once, sure. But any dope with a hammer can smash something. What do you think about remaking it instead?"

That wasn't what he'd expected to hear. Angel quashed an unwilling spark of interest. He didn't like to admit, even to himself, that Lawson's jibes had hit a nerve, but perhaps it was time he started thinking about a larger canvas. "I don't think you'd like a world made in my image."

"Not just your image. You provide only one half of the balance. Buffy Summers provides the other. Honestly, I thought she'd fulfill the prophecy last year when she and Spike fucked the Hellmouth closed. Close, but no cigar. Guess someone wasn't worthy."

That was a transparent attempt at sucking up if he'd ever heard one, but the idea of Spike failing to qualify for anything was really, really goddamn satisfying. "How do you know it wasn't Buffy who didn't make the cut?"

"Let's just say there's this whole Wille zur Macht component somebody's lacking in, and it ain't Summers. Closing the Hellmouth sets her up as a Slayer who's done something no other Slayer has ever done. And you're still the first vampire with a soul - so if you're thinking about getting rid of it on a permanent basis, I'd think twice if I were you. You two, you've got a connection. Fate. Destiny. Whatever. You can't escape it, but you can be its bitch, or its master. Your choice."

He'd have liked to break into incredulous laughter, but it would probably burst his stitches. He really needed some blood, preferably fresh and human. Where was the call button for the nurse? "Just how stupid do you think I am?" Angel asked. "Do you seriously expect me to believe the Powers are behind this?"

Whistler shrugged. "Did I say they were? Look, I've been playing errand boy to the Powers for a hell of a lot longer than you have. Born to it, you might say." A fleeting look of bitterness crossed his face, and Angel stowed it away for future reference. "I've been a good soldier. Followed orders. The needs of the many, etcetera. But we don't have Balance. Not really. We got a teeter-totter, back and forth, nobody ever wins, nobody ever loses, and nothing ever changes." The bitter edge was back. He leaned forward, hands on thighs, intense. "The Powers are all about the status quo. What I'm talking about is a revolution. You claim you're beyond good and evil, so how about putting your money where your mouth is? Whaddaya say, Angel - does godlike power and forging a new universe in the fires of Creation sound like your kind of deal?"

The shark-toothed grin Angel could feel spreading across his face had nothing to do with a Doximal high. "Now that, little man, is a proposition after my own heart."

*********

As the chant built, Tara felt the energy rise with it, stronger, more complex with every iteration, straining against her as a ridden horse strains against the bit when it desires freedom. This was what she was best at. Spells of communication and finding, spells that made connections. Shooting fireballs and flinging ethereal knives, that was Willow's forte, or had been, but here, in her own sphere... she was good. She forgot that sometimes. Her mount was high-spirited and willing; her will and her words the rein and saddle, bit and spur which guided it. Tension hummed in the lines; the reins tautened, and she gentled the magics as she'd gentle a fractious horse. With a deep breath she gave the power its head and let it run. Last year a god had ridden her, and she'd learned something from the experience. The plea she issued was no order, but a request. "Where wanders the soul of this man, Liam of Galway?"

There; her mount scented home. Someone, far away, cried, "Look! It's moving!" The power reared, exulting, and the world rushed towards her at a gallop. All of a sudden she was splayed on her knees in the Summers' living room again, gasping for breath against a pounding headache. Thrown. But not before her race was run. Blinking spots from her eyes, Tara looked up to see the necklace standing out at an angle, pulled towards the hunk of river rock from the front yard as strongly as if it were a magnet.

Buffy was staring at it, her eyes haunted, her mouth a forlorn O. "I don't understand," she whispered. "How could he...?" Her voice firmed. "No. There's got to be something else going on. He wouldn't just - he couldn't! We have to get to L.A., now, and find out what's going on."

"Well, if that's the plan, we'd best step lively. I did for a few of Angel's minions while I was up there, but he'll turn more." Spike poked at his ribs, as if testing their readiness to be broken again. "But we haven't even touched on Chase's mad idea for Niblet.."

Dawn turned on him, eyes narrowing. "Wait, what?"

"I still vote for dusting him." Kennedy's fists were balled at her sides. "That's the only way to end this for good."

Immediately, everyone was arguing again, auras sizzling with the sickly pea-green of old grudges and half-healed wounds. Tara was too spent and dizzy to keep track of it all. Cold hands took her arm, and for once the inhuman strength in them was a comfort. Willow was helping her to her feet. They'd be warm hands soon enough, Tara promised herself. When this thing with Angel was over.

"You OK, sweetie?" Willow asked, her face a study in pride and apprehension. "That was - wow. The cloaking spell you did on the chip-heads was pretty impressive, but this - this was like a step above anything I've ever seen you do before. "

"It's still about two steps below where I need to be." It probably wasn't fair that she listened extra-hard to catch any buried note of envy in Willow's voice, but if it was there, it was buried very deep indeed. Which made her feel relieved, and then feel bad about feeling relieved, and then feel resentful about feeling bad about feeling relieved, and couldn't they just re-set the clock somehow, because she was so tired of everything being so complicated between them? And that made her feel guilty, because things were way more complicated between Buffy and Spike, and Buffy and Angel, and Buffy and just about anyone, really. Her head still hurt. "I don't feel so..."

She almost fell over. Willow caught her and eased her down into the armchair, dabbing a tissue at her face. It came away stained with red. "Your nose is bleeding! Here, sit down and eat something, you need to get your blood sugar up." She regarded the cluster of slightly withered grapes on the snack tray doubtfully. "Fructose is fructose, right? I'll get you some tea."

She dashed off towards the kitchen. Willow fussing. Willow fussing was nice. Concentrate on the nice. Ignore the surreptitious (hungry) looks at your nose blood. Because that's only temporary now. Tara nibbled on a proto-raisin and looked around the living room. Everyone else seemed to have cleared out while she wasn't looking. Spike and Buffy were whispering to one another at the foot of the stairs; Buffy had the expression of someone who was staunchly ignoring every word she was hearing. After a moment she headed upstairs. Spike sighed and passed a hand over his face. He looked about as bad as she felt.

"You OK?" Tara whispered. "You look a little... roadkill."

Spike's mouth twitched in a half-smile. "Mutual. Piece of advice, pet, just because you can walk through a hail of bullets doesn't mean you should." He leaned against the bannister. "Got what you were looking for, though. The Mohra blood. It's on ice over at the crypt now, any time you and Will want to give it a bash."

"W-what? Really? So soon?" Excitement took fear two falls out of three, and she tried to keep her voice from shaking. She wasn't ready. They hadn't come anywhere near creating a spell to utilize it safely. But, oh, to have Willow back, the real, whole, warm, living Willow - best not put it like that to Spike, though. "I mean, thank you! But, but I thought Mohra demons were really rare?"

One foot on the stairs, Spike shrugged. "Got lucky. I had to break into a demon clinic to fetch antibiotics for Chase - long story, but they had some Mohra blood in storage. Clinic's owned by the same arsehole who busted up the Magic Box, so I figure he owes us."

This probably wasn't the time to argue about Spike's peculiar ideas of retroactive morality. And she didn't really want to, not when the means of restoring Willow was only a hop, skip and a cemetery away. She tottered up out of her chair and pulled the vampire into an impulsive hug, and for a moment the dead-cold-creepiness of him didn't matter at all. Spike froze, and then after a second returned the hug, awkward and one-armed. "Wasn't anything," he muttered.

"It's a lot to me." She let him go before she could do anything really embarrassing and soppy. "How's Buffy?"

Spike grimaced. "You saw. Thing is, even if she's right, there's not just Angel to deal with. Pryce was a hard enough customer when he was human, and Dru's a bloody force of nature. Not to mention he may have turned that Gunn bloke by now. We can't just shove souls into everybody. Not practical."

"I guess not." She couldn't blame Buffy for being willing to try anything to save Angel - hadn't she done the same for Willow? "Isn't there any other way to stop him? Besides the dusty way, I mean?"

He sighed, and headed after Buffy. "You come up with one, pet, we're all ears."

"Here you go," Willow said brightly, emerging from the kitchen with a steaming mug from which wafted the heavenly smell of peppermint. "What are you doing up? You really need to rest. Sit back down and I'll give you a head rub - I warmed up my hands over the teakettle, so no icy finger issues."

Tara allowed herself to be led back to the chair. Willow's hands had already cooled a little, but that was all right. It was only temporary, she reminded herself. Only -

Oh. Oh.

The chill in Willow's hands was suddenly nothing to the ice in her own belly, as Tara realized that the other plan, the alternative, the thing that could potentially fix Angel for good, was sitting in Spike's crypt right now. And all it would take was giving up her heart's desire.