Tara dreamed.
“Now you got yourself a boyfriend I can finally be proud of you, girl,” her father told her fondly. “Okay, shame ‘bout you being part demon, but I guess the boys don’t have to know about that part.”
“Boyfriend?” she asked, confused. “I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m gay. Willow’s my girlfriend.”
“Hey, it’s okay, you don’t have to pretend no more. We know he’s a vampire, we don’t mind. A tough, drinkin’, smokin’, brawlin’ stand-up guy. Who cares if he drinks blood? As long as he washes it down with Jack Daniels that’s fine with us. Now come on, child, time for you to get in the car. Put on your helmet, and remember it’s left, left, left. Ain’t no right turns on the circuit at all.”
“Circuit?” she repeated blankly. He just smiled and gave her an affectionate slap on the rump, sending her towards a long, low, car with the Stars and Bars painted on the side and the number ‘666’ on the door. Her brother opened the door for her as she approached.
“666?” she questioned, alarmed.
“’Cause you’re a witch, Sis,” Donny grinned at her. “Child of the devil, y’know. Don’t pay it nevermind, nobody cares now you’re straight. Just put the pedal to the metal and go. Helmet on.” She donned the helmet and he ushered her into the car.
“Gentlemen, and our special contestant the lovely Tara Maclay, start your engines,” a Tannoy blared.
“B-but I don’t know how to drive a racecar!” she protested. Donny leaned in through the window and turned the ignition key.
“You’ll be fine, Sis,” he assured her. “You won’t have forgotten. It’s just like riding a dyke.”
He stepped back from the window and was gone before she could slap him, and her father was there instead. “Buckle up, child,” he urged her, and hastily she fastened the safety harness. She took hold of the wheel and somehow found that she was moving forward and taking up her place on the track.
Suddenly the race was under way and she was accelerating madly. “I don’t understand,” she muttered to herself. “What on Earth am I doing here? Am I dreaming? I can smell the exhaust fumes, feel the heat. No choice but to keep driving.” The engine whined as the revs rose too high and she changed gear smoothly. “What am I driving?” She looked at the dash. “Chevvy Monte Carlo. Winston West Series specification. I’ve never driven anything with this much power.” The howl of the supercharged engine hit her almost like a physical blow as the car approached maximum speed. “If I hit the wall will I die for real?” She passed two other cars, held off another car that tried to pass her, and then pulled away from it and got some clear air between them. Exhilaration began to flood through her.
A black Ford Thunderbird began to fill her mirrors. It closed inexorably. It came close enough for her to make out the driver. No helmet. No safety fireproof overalls. Female, semi-naked, black skin, dreadlocked hair, face streaked with white clay. It fell back a little, and then began to close again. A prickle of fear touched Tara’s heart and goose-bumps began to rise on the back of her neck.
She passed another car, gained some breathing space, and then the black car was closing again. It began to draw alongside her, and to squeeze her towards the wall. She tried to draw ahead but it matched her car’s pace. She thought of dropping back, but another car was close behind, and there was nowhere to go. The unyielding concrete and a collision at one hundred and eighty miles an hour loomed inevitably.
And then it was the last lap and the winning line was ahead and the black car fell away. Somehow there was champagne, and a trophy for second place, and back-slapping from her father and her brother. And beside her on the rostrum a dark figure collecting a third place trophy in the shape of a wooden stake and glaring at her with glowing red eyes.
Jonathan dreamed.
“That noise again,” he said. “Damn funny. Sounds like a train.”
“It’s the hostiles, look you,” Riley informed him, in a terrible Iowan impression of a Welsh accent. “It’s singing they are, is it?”
“That’s an awful fake accent,” Jonathan told him.
“Don’t blame me, I haven’t even seen ‘Zulu’,” Riley said defensively. “I’ve seen ‘Zulu Dawn’, but there aren’t any Welsh soldiers in it. I’m basing myself on Tom Jones in ‘Mars Attacks’.” He turned to Graham. “Miller, get Coors, Michelob, and Budweiser, organise a defensive line and prepare to sing.”
“Coors, Michelob, and Budweiser?” Jonathan repeated unbelievingly.
Riley shrugged. “This is a beer regiment. We’re all named after beers. Wales, ales, you get?”
“Riley Finn? Forrest Gates?”
“Finn’s a small local beer from Portland, Oregon. Black Forrest you make with Guinness and Framboise.” Riley stood tall in his red uniform and sun helmet. “God, Jonathan, you sure are short.”
A line of demons appeared; led by Adam, who was shaking a pair of maracas. Keith Richards was among the demons, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, vampire fangs just visible beside it. He played the guitar as Adam began to sing.
“Please allow to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste, I’ve been around for a long long year, stole many a man’s soul and faith…”
“You think the beers can’t do better than that?” Jonathan asked.
“Well, they’ve got a fine bass section, but no top tenors, that’s for sure, look you, there’s lovely,” Riley answered. “I’ll start the men singing the refrain, and I’ll sing in harmony.”
“Born down in a dead man’s town, the first kick I took was when I hit the ground…” the Initiative soldiers began.
Harmony arrived, bent over in front of Riley, and hitched up her skirt to reveal her shapely ass and a skimpy lilac thong. Riley unzipped himself, pulled aside the thong, and entered her. Jonathan averted his eyes, face burning, but kept finding his gaze creeping back towards the beautiful female vampire actually Having Sex. “Born in the USA, I was born in the USA,” Riley sang. “Told you I was going to sing in Harmony.”
The demons began to sing Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Bark at the Moon’. The Initiative riposted with Joan Osborne’s ‘One of Us’.
“I’d offer you a blow job, but you’re too short,” Harmony told Jonathan, rocking back and forth as Riley thrust into her. “Hey, remember when me and Amber tried to set you up with Cordy as a joke? That would so have been ridiculous. I mean, Cordy’s as tall as me. Taller even. You’d have been able to walk under her skirt and eat her pussy while she was standing up. Which would be sort of cool, in a weird sort of way. She could have kept you in her purse and popped you into her panties when she felt like getting some but there wasn’t a real man around. ‘Cause, you are just so short. Yeah, yeah, God is great. Yeah, yeah, God is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah,” she cried out as she came. “What if God was one of us?” She pulled away from Riley and adjusted her thong. “Cute, don’t get me wrong, but so totally short.”
“Sometimes it just cracks me up how short you are,” Riley said, zipping himself up. “Way too short to join the Army.”
“I’m taller than Tom Cruise,” Jonathan claimed, “and Michael J. Fox.”
“He played Stuart Little, remember?” Riley pointed out. “You might be taller than him at that. But I’m not sure. Hey, look what’s happening to the demons!”
A dark skinned girl was moving among the demons, an ebony blade in her hand, dancing and slashing in a graceful ballet of death. Demon corpses and piles of dust littered the ground where she had passed. “Extraordinarily nice, she’s a killer, queen, gunpowder gelatine, dynamite with a laser …” Adam sang as she approached, and then stopped short as she sliced off his head.
The dark girl pointed her sword at Jonathan. She was wild, primitive, savage. Animal skins were her only clothing. White clay adorned her face in some sort of tribal pattern. She stared at him with burning eyes. Forrest Gates appeared at her side, his head flopping over limply on his neck and the huge gash in his throat plainly visible. “Man, you are just so short,” he said accusingly. “Guess that was your contribution to the big showdown. Being short. ‘Course, that’s not why Sineya’s gonna kill you.”
Joyce dreamed.
Sheila Rosenberg poured her a cup of coffee. “Of course, the real reason why you’ve made so few friends among the women of Sunnydale,” she smiled, “is nothing to do with the fact that you’re a sad and lonely divorcée who still retains some vestiges of attractiveness and might make a play for their husbands.” She passed the cup to Joyce. “It’s because we all know your daughter is going to die soon, and they don’t want to deal with your grief.”
“Would you like cheese with that?” a little bald man with glasses asked. “American cheese?”
Joyce waved him away. “What about you?” she asked Mrs Rosenberg.
“Oh, my daughter’s going to die soon too,” Sheila said calmly. “Your daughter will drag her into something that will get her killed. We should have finished burning them at the stake; it would have just saved us all a lot of anxiety and saved me the embarrassment over my daughter’s unconventional lifestyle choices. Still, at least she backed off from actually sleeping with a vampire, unlike certain daughters I could mention.”
“And a werewolf’s so much better?” Joyce retorted.
“Oh, my dear, don’t remind me! Although it wasn’t so much the werewolf thing. The boy was a guitarist! A lesbian relationship has got to be a step up from that.” She poured out two more cups of coffee, and passed one to a semi-naked figure who was shrouded in shadow, and the other one to Pat Benatar. The multiple Grammy-winning singer raised an eyebrow in silent comment as she accepted the coffee cup. “Well, I suppose it’s not always a bad choice, Mrs Giraldo,” Sheila conceded, “but not for my daughter. And I’m sure Sineya would agree with me about vampires.” She looked at the shadowy figure, who made no reply other than to glare at Joyce with eyes which seemed to glow.
“I’ve still got your autograph, you know,” Joyce told the singer. “I still listen to your records, although Buffy thinks they’re too old-fashioned and dismisses them purely on that basis. But they still have so much meaning to me.”
“Every mother’s nightmare,” Pat Benatar quoted gravely from ‘Suffer the little children’. “Will it never end?”
Joyce shivered. “Yes. Although I was thinking more of ‘Love is a Battlefield’ and ‘One Love’.”
“We are the children of a thousand days,” the singer quoted from the last named song. “We are the people of the hard rain.”
“I’ve always wanted the chance to ask you what that means,” Joyce told her.
“Once there was a man and he lived to sing the lion’s song, as he travelled on a road of hope,” Pat Benatar quoted further from the same song. “Listen to it again. You know him already.”
“Spike,” Joyce said with sudden certainty. The singer half smiled and nodded.
“Are you sure you won’t have some cheese?” the bald man interrupted. Again Joyce waved him away. When she looked back Sheila Rosenberg and Pat Benatar had gone. The tall African-American soldier who had given his life to save hers, and the lives of Tara and of Jonathan, sat where they had been.
“It wasn’t yours to share, you know,” he said coldly. His dead eyes stared vacantly into emptiness. “She’s going to kill you.”
Spike dreamed.
He walked across a grassy field, Drusilla at his side. He wore a shirt with a pattern of garish flowers, a fringed buckskin jacket, and jeans. His feet were bare, and a daisy-chain necklace hung around his neck. Drusilla wore a kaftan and her eyelids were painted with tiny stars.
“Peace an’ love, moi Spoik,” she giggled, raising a hand in the peace sign. “By the time we reached the crucifixion we was ‘alf a million strong. It’s loik Woodstock, innit?”
All around them vampires strolled, flowers in their hair, tie-dyed shirts everywhere. “Told you I was here, man,” one called out to Spike. “Peace!”
A small group of robed humans huddled together, scowling at the vampires. One called out to Spike in a language he didn’t understand but guessed to be Aramaic. Another translated into Attic Greek. “He says this would be the best crucifixion yet if it wasn’t for all the vampires.”
A century of Roman soldiers marched through the throng. They sang as they marched. “One, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t tell me I don’t give a damn, I’m not a Samaritan. And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates, well there ain’t no time to wonder why, whoopee we’re all gonna die.”
Drusilla kissed Spike on the cheek, and then stepped back. The soldiers drew their swords and surrounded him. “So this is the souled vampire,” the centurion said, pointing with his gladius. “Take him!”
“Hey!” Spike protested. “I haven’t got a sodding soul. Just a plain vampire here, mates. You’ve got the wrong bloke.” They ignored his protests and seized him.
The centurion handed Drusilla a bag of coins. “You’re lost to me, Spoik,” she called to him. “Oi can see ‘er, all around you. Loik bombers turnin’ into butterflies above our nation. When logic an’ proportion ‘ave fallen ‘er sloppy dead, moi White Knight is talkin’ backwards an’ the Red Queen’s ‘orf wiv ‘er ‘ead’, remember wot the dormouse said. You’re still the bravest knight in all the land, Spoik, but you ain’t mine no more.”
The centurion removed his helmet, revealing the dead face of Forrest Gates. “He belongs to Sineya now,” he stated. “Crucify him.”
Tara walked through the woods behind her father and her brother. They both carried rifles, and blazed away at anything that moved. Her cousin Beth walked behind, picking up the fallen animals and putting them into a sack.
“Hey, I got a black-footed ferret!” Donny boasted.
Mr Maclay fired twice. “I got a Northern Virginia flying squirrel,” he announced. “Blew it right out of the air.”
“But they’re endangered species!” Tara protested.
“Sure are,” Donny grinned. “Endangered as all get up. Really got my shootin’ eye in today.” He fired again. “An Alabama beach mouse!” he gloated. “Think so, anyway. There ain’t all that much left of it for identification.”
“One day we’re gonna have to go on Safari to Africa,” Mr Maclay announced. “Shoot us some black rhino, some mountain gorillas, maybe some bongo, a Hunter’s hartebeest or two.”
“I want to go to Madagascar and shoot lemurs,” Donny declared. “They’re just so damn cute it makes me sick. Hey, those bouncy ones would make one hell of a good moving target.”
“Sifaka? You want to shoot a sifaka?” Tara asked, horrified.
“That what they’re called? I wouldn’t know. You’re the one with the education, Sis, the one who went off to College and left us scraping a living to support you. Should have been me.”
“It could have been, if you’d worked at school instead of spending all your time drinking beer and shooting things,” Tara retorted. “Although maybe you were just born dumb.”
Donny’s face darkened and he drew back his hand for a blow.
“Now, son, didn’t I raise you better’n that?” their father spoke up, stopping his son. “Don’t you go raising your hand to a woman, no matter how much she might deserve it. If she needs chastising just read her from the good book.”
“You’re right, Dad,” Donny agreed. He took a battered volume from his pack and began to read aloud. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
“You’re reading from ‘Pride and Prejudice’?” Tara raised her eyebrows.
“You sayin’ it ain’t a good book?” Donny asked.
“No, of course not. I’m just surprised, that’s all. Carry on.”
“Don’t think I’ll bother, Sis,” her brother replied, putting the book away. “Guess you’ll get punished enough by Sineya.”
Joyce stood in the hall of the old Sunnydale High School.
“I always hated your daughter,” Principal Snyder told her. “Always acted as if I hated you too, but of course that was mainly because I wanted to fuck you seven ways from Sunday from the moment I laid eyes on you. Knew you’d never go for it.”
“Well, certainly not the way you acted,” she told him severely. “If you’d had any chance at all you would have blown it. There have been nights when I was so lonely that I might not have been unattainable, but there were no openings for a megalomaniac asshole. You were rather pleasant on that night when we were all teenagers again. Why couldn’t you have been like that all the time?”
“It didn’t get me anywhere,” Snyder grumbled. “That librarian was there to take advantage. Him and his smooth English accent and his height. I’d never have been able to fuck you on the hood of a police car.” Joyce blushed.
“Don’t know why he bothered,” another voice cut in. Hank Summers. “She always was a lousy lay. Why do you think I left her?” He stood nearby, wearing an Italian suit and an open-necked shirt with a medallion visible against his chest. Two bikini-clad babes hung on his arms. One was the beautiful model and actress Leila Arcieri, and the other one was an ebony-skinned girl with dreadlocks and a painted face.
“I beg to differ,” Rupert Giles spoke up. “She is passionate and extremely talented. Had circumstances been different I would have wanted to repeat the experience again and again.”
“Can’t help noticing that you still went for something younger, darker, and more exotic, just like I did,” Hank shot back, gesturing at Olivia, who came into view from behind Giles. She was wearing a pale green teddiette from Shirley of Hollywood and looked stunning.
“I will concede that, good as Joyce is, Olivia is even better,” Rupert admitted. “But that is beside the point. Your credibility is jeopardised by the fact that this is a dream, and in reality there is little chance of you getting even a second glance from Miss Arcieri.”
“So?” Hank shrugged. “If Joyce dies in the dream she stays dead. Who is to say that if I screw Leila in the dream she doesn’t stay screwed?”
“Hot damn!” Snider exclaimed. “I never thought of that. I’m off to look for Pam Grier.” He hastened away.
“If I die I stay dead?” Joyce queried, alarmed. Sineya grinned at her and made a throat-cutting gesture.
“And I must take my leave too, Mrs Summers,” Rupert told her. “Olivia and I will search for a suitable vehicle, on the bonnet of which we shall engage in vigorous sexual intercourse. Perhaps a taxicab, or a Highway Patrol vehicle, or – ah! I have it. A limousine.” Joyce watched them walk away together, hand in hand, and then looked back towards her ex-husband to find that he and the actress had disappeared. Only Sineya remained.
Slowly the dark woman slipped off her bikini pants, threw them aside, and then peeled off her bra and stood magnificently naked. Muscles rippled under her gleaming skin. She pulled the bra into a tight line and made an unmistakable garrotting gesture, and then began to advance slowly towards Joyce.
“Can’t we just talk about this?” Mrs Summers said nervously. “Who are you? What have I done to upset you?”
“She’s been asleep for eleven and a half thousand years,” Forrest Gates said from behind her. “You woke her, you and the others. Touched something that wasn’t meant to be touched. Can you blame her if she woke up a little cranky?”
“A little cranky? She wants to kill me!”
Forrest shrugged. “It’s what she does. She’s the First Slayer. She lives to kill. Usually demons, but she’s not that fussy.”
Sineya sprang forwards, the bikini top stretched between her hands in a line aimed for Joyce’s throat. The older woman threw herself aside instinctively and stepped into nothingness. She plummeted into darkness. She had fallen down a rabbit hole.
The Romans hauled Spike before the Anointed One, who sat in state in an over-large toga and a laurel wreath. “From now on there’s going to be a little less fun and a lot more ritual around here,” the annoying child vampire lord proclaimed.
Two other prisoners stood before the court. Angel, who wore plaid trews and was decorated with woad, and Harmony, who wore a shocking pink bell-bottom trouser suit and whose hair was brushed up into a beehive. Both were in chains, and Spike found himself chained up beside them.
“We have here three vampires who are accused of fighting for the cause of Good,” the Annoying One addressed them. “Only one of them has a soul. Only one must perish. I shall have Angel crucified and let the others go free. Which of you is Angel?”
“I’m Angel,” both male vampires spoke up together.
“Wait, wait, I know this one. Spartacus, right? Oh, yeah. I’m Angel,” Harmony claimed. “It, it’s like short for Angelica.”
The Annoying One stared at her sceptically. “You don’t have a soul. You have a chip in your brain. You’re evil. I was going to let you go. Why are you trying to give up your life for your friends?”
“Hello, vampire! Already dead here,” Harmony pointed out. “Why not? I mean, giving up my life for my enemy would be like totally stupid.”
“Let them go, I’m the vampire with the soul,” Angel claimed. “I can prove it. I’m bloody stupid and my hair goes straight up.”
“Only because it’s lime-washed after the style of a first century Pict,” Spike pointed out. “Let the harmless little bint and the daft Irish clot go, mate. I’m the one you want.”
“He’s not the vampire with a soul, he’s a very naughty boy!” Joyce Summers shouted, pushing her way through the crowd of vampire spectators.
“Oh, great,” Spike groaned. “What next, the crack suicide commandos of the Vampire Liberation Front and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Vampires?”
“I tire of this,” the Anointed One declared. “Crucify all three of them. With a nice East view. I haven’t forgotten what you did to me, Spike, and Dawn is approaching.” He climbed down from his chair.
“Should we wait until after The Who have done their set?” Centurion Gates asked. “With special guest vocalist Jenny Calendar?”
“No, just make sure they have a good view,” the child vampire decided. He walked to an iron cage and climbed inside. “But not as good as mine. Hoist me up.”
Jonathan was lost in the jungle. Hacking his way through elephant grass, taller than his head, with a machete clutched in his hand.
“This way to the Lost City of Zinj!” an unseen voice called in the distance. “This way for the City of Zinj!”
“Diamonds and killer gorillas!” Jonathan breathed reverently. “This is what I signed up for.”
“I’m your great white hunter,” another voice spoke from behind him, “but I happen to be black.”
Jonathan turned and saw Forrest Gates, wearing a safari suit and a hat with a leopardskin band, holding a rifle. “I’m really sorry about what happened to you,” the young man said awkwardly. “You were a hero, you know that? You saved me, saved Tara, saved Mrs Summers. Probably Spike too, don’t know what would have happened to him if we’d died while the spell was in effect.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the dead soldier replied. “Sineya will kill you all anyway. Unless you can find Amy.”
“Amy the good gorilla? Cool. Can you show me the way?”
Gates pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket and handed it to Jonathan. “One pill makes you larger and the other makes you small,” he said. “Choose or die.”
Jonathan hesitated. “Which is which?” he asked.
“Which will save you, large or small? Do you know? Then what does it matter which pill does what? Choose.”
Jonathan picked a pill at random and gulped it down, and then cried out in horror as he found himself shrinking. Down he shrank, down to the size of a rodent, so that the grass towered above him like sequoias and Forrest Gates loomed over him like King Kong.
“She comes. Down the rabbit hole, quickly,” Forrest warned him in a voice of thunder. Jonathan threw himself into a hole and tumbled into nothingness.
Tara stood ankle-deep in the mist from dry ice. Coloured spotlights lit up the area around her, lasers flickered through the clouds. Her father and brother stood nearby, giving her thumbs-up signs from behind a metal fence. Spike stood at her side. “Spike!” she said to him urgently. “My family think that you’re my boyfriend.”
“Don’t worry about it, love,” Spike said soothingly. “If you weren’t gay I’d be up you like a ferret up a drainpipe, no problem.”
Tara blushed. “But what about Buffy? And Willow?”
“Well, if Buffy was gay she’d be up you like a ferret up a drainpipe too,” Spike assured her. “Or whatever is the lesbian equivalent. And Willow already is. You’re a sex bomb. A babe and bloke magnet. Now, get on down there and give it your best shot. You’ll be fine.”
“Give what my best shot?” she asked, baffled, but he was gone. Music boomed from huge speakers. Melissa Ferrick’s ‘Drive’. She looked around, and saw that she was standing on a runway leading into an arena. A wrestling ring stood in the centre, with a crowd of thousands sitting and standing all around it. Many held banners aloft, reading ‘Tara Rules!’ and ‘Season of the Witch!’ She looked down at herself, and saw that she was wearing a spandex body, fishnet tights, and wrestling boots. She blushed crimson.
From the centre of the ring Stephanie McMahon announced “Here she comes now! The girl you’ve all come to see! The hottest witch on the planet, the Alabama Slammer, Tara Maclay!”
Tara stood transfixed, terrified. Her father and brother gestured frantically to her from the sidelines, urging her on, and she found herself making her way down the runway. Fans clustered at the barriers, leaning over to wave at her and to try to exchange high fives with her, and she blushed even brighter. She began exchanging slaps with the greeting hands because she hated to disappoint people, and for the same reason she forced a smile to her face. Before she knew it she was standing in the centre of the ring.
The music changed. Jimi Hendrix’s performance of ‘Voodoo Child’ from Woodstock. Through the dry ice clouds a dark figure strode. “Everybody’s worst nightmare,” Stephanie McMahon intoned. “Even nightmares’ worst nightmare. The superwoman from the Stone Age, the First Slayer. Be afraid. Be very afraid. I give you - Sineya!” The First Slayer stalked down the runway, the crowds shrinking away from her, and leaped from the arena floor straight over the ropes and into the ring. Tara’s mouth went dry. She was totally inept at physical combat, even Willow had her outclassed by a considerable margin, and Spike had shaken his head sadly and abandoned his one attempt to teach her self-defence. Now she was to all intents and purposes facing a clone of Buffy. Perhaps even more formidable, certainly more savage, and angry at her for some unknown reason. This was going to be painful.
The referee was a small bald man. He held a tray out to her. “Embrace the cheese,” he urged. Tara looked at the cheese slices and frowned. For a second she considered snatching up the metal tray and using it as a weapon, but dismissed the idea almost instantly. It wouldn’t really help. Buffy could punch holes in metal of that thickness, ignore blows from people far stronger than Tara, and she had no reason to believe that the Slayer’s Neolithic predecessor would be any less resilient. Also, and a not unimportant consideration, it was against the rules.
“W-w-wait a m-m-minute,” Tara stammered. “Can w-w-w-we talk about this? W-why are you angry at m-me? I helped to save B-B-B-Buffy. You should b-be pleased.”
Sineya gazed at her impassively. The bell rang. The First Slayer hurtled across the ring and clotheslined Tara across the throat, sending her crashing to the mat. The witch lay stunned and helpless, her head spinning, as the dark girl leaped up onto the turnbuckle, bent her arm towards the crowd and slapped her elbow meaningfully, and then fixed her glowing eyes on Tara and poised herself to deliver a devastating attack.
Joyce wandered through a vast rabbit warren. She passed a chamber laid out like a student dorm room. A metal cage stood on a desk, some kind of small animal moving through Habitrail inside it. She was about to go in to investigate when she heard weeping from another direction and headed that way instead. She found Anya, kneeling in the corridor, sobbing. “Bunnies!” the former demon wept. “They’re all around. They’re evil. I hate them. I’m frightened.”
“I haven’t seen any bunnies,” Joyce told her. “Keep calm. Follow me. We have to find our way out of here.”
Anya climbed to her feet and threw her arms around Mrs Summers. “I’m lost and I’m frightened,” she wailed. “Will I ever fit in? I used to be a demon, my best friend’s a vampire, and I haven’t found my place in this world.”
“You’ll find it,” Joyce reassured her. “You’re honest and brave and loving. Xander will take care of you. He’s a good boy.”
“But what if he leaves me?” Anya wailed.
“If he leaves you he’d be a fool, and I doubt if he’s that,” Joyce said comfortingly.
Xander made an appearance at that moment, clad in cap and bells and waving a pig’s bladder on a stick. “Hey, I’m a wild and crazy guy!” he called. “Think there’s a slot for me on ‘Saturday Night Live’?”
Anya took one look at him and dissolved in floods of tears again.
“Xander, stop that,” Joyce scolded him. “Anya, a liking for stupid jokes doesn’t make Xander a fool. Both of you behave yourself and follow me out of here. We have a serious problem. The First Slayer wants to kill me.”
“Oh dear,” Anya sniffled, wiping her eyes. “Giles was a little worried about that aspect of the spell. Drawing on the power of the First Slayer to supercharge a vampire. I take it she’s not happy?”
“You could put it that way,” Joyce replied. “Dry your tears and follow me towards the light.”
“Is it the rockets’ red glare or twilight’s last gleaming?” Anya asked.
“I think it’s Dawn’s early light,” Xander said, pointing towards a distant glow. They headed towards it through the tunnels.
Spike hung from a cross in front of the stage. Uncomfortable, but not painful. They’d tied him there rather than using nails. All in all he’d been in worse places, apart of course from his impending dusty death at sunrise, especially as he had a magnificent view of The Who performing a pretty good set. He wasn’t even suffering any pain from contact with the cross, rather to his surprise. The Gem of Amara still gleamed on Harmony’s finger, even though he distinctly remembered getting it back from her before he’d left the Initiative complex. She’d remained behind to have adjustments made to her chip, whereas he’d headed back to Revello Drive with the Scoobies for a post-apocalypse video party.
Harmony hung beside him. Angel had gone. The Anointed One had changed his mind and proclaimed that one of the victims should be freed, invited the crowd to vote, and they had shouted for Angelus. The child vampire had agreed, conceding that he was less of a traitor as the soul had been forced on him, and Angel had been released from his chains. He had departed rapidly, saying that he was going to fetch Buffy. Not that there was anything the Slayer would be able to do against the massed vampire throng anyway.
Jenny Calendar had performed creditably as a guest vocalist on ‘Acid Queen’ and ‘Go to the Mirror’. Somehow the deceased gypsy schoolteacher had seemed to be singing directly to him in the latter song. He had no idea why or what it might mean. He was becoming more and more confused. This was obviously a dream, but it was unlike any dream he’d ever had before. It had been going on for hours, in incredible detail, and it was full of physical sensation. Most of it unpleasant, but not excessively so. Was there a meaning behind it all?
A bald Roman soldier extended a lance towards him, a cheese slice impaled on its point. “Can I interest you in some cheese?” he offered. “No thanks, mate,” Spike declined, and the Roman turned towards Harmony. “How about you, beautiful lady? American cheese?”
“Bleeding Hell, I must have a sodding weird subconscious mind,” Spike muttered to himself.
“I know I can’t be a hero,” Harmony remarked to him. A crown of thorns was perched on top of her beehive hairdo, ruining it. She’d complained for a while, until Spike had pointed out that it was actually an improvement. “I’m a token vampire sidekick, right? But maybe I could be an important sidekick. Like, if you and Buffy are Willie Garvin and Modesty Blaise, I could be like Stephen Collier or Giles Pennyfeather, maybe. Except they both slept with Buffy, I mean Modesty, so not so much. Guess I’m more Dinah Collier, ‘cause she started off by boinking Willie. Or maybe I’m Little Krell. ‘Cause, hello, evil here, but converted to being good because you’ve all been so kind to me, like Modesty was to Little Krell. And hey, got pretty good at the combat, so another similarity. ‘Cept, he died. Really sad. I cried myself to sleep when I finished ‘The Xanadu Talisman’.”
“Haven’t got the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, Harm,” Spike said apologetically. “I’ll have to read the books. Must be pretty good, I guess, if they’ve impressed you that much. I saw the film with Terence Stamp and Monica Vitti and it was absolutely sodding awful. Put me right off.”
“So not surprised, it was nothing like the books,” Harmony agreed. “I was thinking about finding the guy who made the film and eating him, except good now, don’t do that sort of thing. I’ll lend you the books.” She looked uncomfortably at the eastern sky. “If we get out of this, that is. Maybe I’m going to be like Little Krell and die tragically pretty soon.” She seemed to have forgotten that she was wearing the Gem, and Spike didn’t dare remind her in the presence of thousands of evil vampires.
Spike followed her gaze. A glow was indeed beginning to light up the sky. Oddly greenish for sunrise. There must be a storm brewing.
“Lower me to the ground,” the Annoying One ordered from his cage up above the multitude. The Romans ignored him.
“Attention!” Forrest Gates barked. “The Emperor and Empress approach. Hearken to their herald Pandora. She comes.”
“Lucky Pandora,” Harmony sniffed. “I’d meant to spend tonight getting boinked by Riley, not being crucified. As Anya would say, I’ve missed out on my orgasm quota.”
The glow in the sky was growing brighter, and the vampire hippies were scurrying for shelter. Above them the Anointed One was shouting orders which went unheeded, and which turned into anguished pleading as the light intensified.
Spike closed his eyes. “Goodbye, Harm, pet. You’re a treasure, you know. Riley’s a lucky bloke. Tell Buffy I – no, she knows I love her. Tell her goodbye from me, tell her to live.”
“Blondie Bear!” Harmony squealed. “It’s daylight and we’re not burning up!”
Spike opened his eyes. A green sun had risen fully above the horizon and the Anointed One was shrivelling in its rays; but he was unharmed. “Stupid colour for a Dawn,” he muttered. “Bloody dreams. Could do with waking up. This is just sodding weird.”
“It’s not a dream in the normal sense,” a female voice came from the base of the cross. He looked down and saw a pretty girl with raven hair and olive skin. She was wearing a himation, an echo from his long-ago classical education told him, an Ancient Greek cloak from the fifth century BC. “It’s a mystical experience. You are in the realm of Morpheus. If you die here you stay dead.”
“Bugger,” Spike muttered.
“You couldn’t let me down, could you?” Harmony asked nervously. “I mean, willing to die for my friends if I have to, but on the whole I’d rather not. Not yet.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not really here. You’re in Spike’s dream, or vision, he’s not in yours. You can’t die here, and when you wake you will remember no more of this than if it had been a normal dream.”
Harmony relaxed. Spike didn’t. “Why am I here?” he demanded. “Who are you?”
“I’m hurt that you don’t recognise me, Spike,” the girl smiled. “You carry my gift, although you don’t remember it. I am Pandora.”
Jonathan wandered aimlessly through underground tunnels until he heard familiar voices ahead. Joyce Summers, Xander, and Anya. He headed in that direction, trying to catch up with them, but his tiny legs couldn’t keep up and the voices grew fainter and fainter. Scuttling noises and squeaking came from behind him. He looked that way and saw a long sinuous shape. A weasel. A deadly threat to him at his current size, and he fled in terror. A doorway opened into a room which looked inhabited, and he ran inside and looked around. No-one was there, but a rope ladder just the right size from him hung down from a table and offered an escape from weasels. Laboriously he made his way to the top of the ladder and stood on the tabletop.
A metal cage stood in front of him. Its door stood open and a figure stood inside. A tiny human figure. Amy Madison, no longer a rat but still rat size. “Amy!” he called. She gestured for him to come to her, and he set off across the table. “So,” he said aloud as he walked. “The Amy I had to find wasn’t Amy the gorilla at all. I’m safe. Except, I’m five inches tall and trapped on a tabletop by a savage weasel. This is some whole new definition of safe I hadn’t known existed.”
Tara lay stunned in the middle of the ring.
As the First Slayer poised herself to leap from the turnbuckle Willow ran out of the crowd behind her and seized her ankle. Sineya toppled from the ropes and crashed face first to the floor of the ring. “Nobody hurts my girl,” she said firmly.
Tara found herself looking into the dark girl’s eyes as they lay almost side by side. Much to her astonishment Sineya smiled, although only for a fraction of a second, and then closed one eye in an unmistakable wink. She then leaped to her feet and raced across the ring to smash Willow in the face with a forearm and send her flying into the crowd.
Tara scrambled to her feet. Rage flooded through her and she charged towards Sineya and began punching her with great fury but little skill. “You hit Willow!” she shouted.
Sineya smiled again, ducked under the punches, grabbed Tara’s ankles, and jerked her from her feet. She lifted the witch into the air, whirled her around her head like a hammer-thrower, and flung her out of the ring.
Joyce emerged from the rabbit warren to find herself in a brightly-lit factory. Robots were assembling cars on a conveyor belt, and robed monks were supervising and operating the machinery. She glanced behind her and found that Anya and Xander were no longer there.
A monk emerged from an office and came towards her, a smile on his face and his hand extended in greeting. “Pozdrav, Mrs Summers, my nabídka tebe vítat. Welcome. Forgive if my English is not good.”
“Hello,” Joyce replied, shaking his hand. “Were you expecting me?”
“We wait for you long time. Come, we must brát tvuj miry – measure you. We have laser measure. Most modern in Europe. All must be absolutne prepjatý – just right. She must be perfect. All must be just so to hide her from clen urcitý bestie.”
“Hide who from what?” Joyce responded, baffled.
“No time explain. You wish one day to have grandchildren? Follow me.” A winged arrow on the wall pointed along a corridor and the monk walked off quickly in that direction. Joyce shook her head, frowned, but followed him anyway.
Jonathon sat beside Amy on a piece of Habitrail, close to a water dispenser, their feet in sawdust. “So you’re still small. Like me. Any idea how we can get out of it and back to our normal selves?”
“’Fraid not,” Amy admitted, her nose twitching. “But you’re smart. You’ll figure it out. If you do there’s a blow job in it for you. And if you like I’ll wear my cheerleader outfit.”
Jonathan blushed and looked at his feet. “Err, any chance of the blow job now, sort of on account?” he asked hopefully.
“Eww!” Amy exclaimed. “That would be so totally gross. I’m a rat. Squeak.”
Jonathan looked up again and found that he was indeed sitting next to a rat instead of a pretty girl. A cute rat, sitting up on its haunches and brushing its whiskers with its paws, but still a rat.
A tremendous noise distracted him. A deafening clang of metal, as if a girder had fallen from a building under construction and landed on concrete. He looked in the direction of the noise and saw that a colossal hand was depositing an immense steel serving tray on the table. “Cheese?” a voice boomed. “American sliced cheese. Delicious for both rodents and humans.”
Amy scuttled out of the cage and across the table, scaled the edge of the tray, and began to devour the cheese. She squeaked ecstatically, twitched her tail, and vanished.
“Could it be that easy?” Jonathan asked. He jogged over to the tray, leaned over to grasp a colossal cheese slice, and tore off a manageable section. He raised it to his mouth and began to nibble.
Tara flew through the air, crashed into a stack of empty cardboard boxes, and landed totally unhurt. She floundered on her back for a moment. A spectator extended a hand to her, offering assistance. She took it gladly, and was helped to her feet by an elderly gentleman with an immense white beard. He wore a thick tweed suit of a style she had only seen in TV dramas set in the nineteenth century. Beside him stood a man in a clerical collar who looked speculatively at her through old-fashioned metal-rimmed spectacles.
“I would say it is not possible,” the elderly gentleman rumbled through the beard. “This delightful creature cannot possibly be demonic in nature. How say you, Brother Mendel?”
“My experiments would suggest that her inheritance cannot be as claimed,” the monk agreed. “Or else her brother would also be part demon. But things have moved on since our time, Professor Darwin. We should refer to Professor Dawkins.”
“It’s complicated,” a man with a superficial resemblance to Giles put in. “There are recessives to consider, sex-linked characteristics, but broadly speaking, you’re right. She’s human. Any other explanation would just be so complex and involved compared to the simple one of her family being a bunch of liars that it really isn’t worth considering.”
“Thank you!” Tara gasped. Hands seized her from behind and she found herself being dragged back towards the ring. Sineya lifted her from the ground and pushed her under the ropes, and then vaulted lightly over them. Tara stood up, shook her head to clear it, and Sineya seized her by the throat.
Muscles stood out in the First Slayer’s arms as she squeezed mightily. Tara tensed herself in an act of futile resistance but then realised that she could feel virtually no pressure. The strangulation was only for show. Sineya winked again, imperceptibly to anyone outside the ring, and ducked her head briefly. She was, Tara realised, giving her a signal.
Tara brought her hands up over Sineya’s arms in a move she had seen Spike and Buffy use, brought them down, and forced the First Slayer to bend her arms and come closer. There was almost no resistance. Sineya’s face was ideally placed for a head-butt, which Tara duly delivered. Not hard at all, but Sineya still released her hold and staggered backwards, clutching her face. Tara followed up, grabbed hold of the other girl, and found that the First Slayer was arranging herself so that Tara had her in an actual wrestling hold. “You’re not really trying to kill me at all, are you?” she whispered into Sineya’s ear.
Sineya reversed the hold and held Tara in a firm grip. “She comes,” she rasped in a voice which sounded as if it had been unused for centuries. “Fear comes. Madness. You must be tested. Be strong.” She reversed the hold again, making it look as if Tara was doing the work.
“You’re preparing me to face some big danger?” Tara asked. Sineya nodded, and threw Tara over her shoulder. The dark girl followed up her advantage quickly, pinning Tara while the referee laid out two cheese slices on the mat, but allowing her to raise a shoulder before the third slice could be added. They rolled over so that Tara was on the top.
“I was wrong before,” Sineya rasped. “No friends, just the kill. All went wrong. This time we fix. Friends are good on day of battle.” She reversed the position again, pinning Tara to the mat and sliding her thigh between Tara’s legs.
“Before?” Tara asked uncomprehendingly. “This time?”
Sineya reached out, scooped up a cheese slice from the mat, and held it over Tara’s mouth. She responded to the invitation and took a bite from the cheese. Before she could chew Sineya lowered her head and clamped her lips to Tara’s, her tongue probing and invading. Despite herself Tara responded. She could feel herself becoming aroused. Very aroused. In fact, as their tongues shared the cheese inside her mouth, she suddenly felt an orgasm building fast, taking her over, and exploding within her. And then there was nothing in the world but bright light.
Joyce took the cup of tea that the monk offered to her, and sipped it gratefully. The small bald man reappeared and offered her cheese. “Cheese release me let me go,” he said, extending the tray. This time Joyce accepted the offer and picked up a slice.
“Now, what is this all about?” she asked, turning back to the man who appeared to be the head monk.
“You are good woman, and good mother,” he praised her. “We have chosen well.”
“Chosen me for what?” Joyce demanded.
“Love her. Care for her,” the monk replied.
Another monk dashed in. “Ona ale jdete!” he cried in alarmed tones.
“Clen urcitý bestie?” the head monk asked, equally alarmed.
The other monk shook his head. “Sineya,” he replied. “Clen urcitý nejdríve zavraždit.”
“Nabídka ne odpor, on má ne náš neprítel,” the head monk instructed.
Joyce concentrated on trying to remember the sounds of the foreign phrases. Spike might be able to translate them for her later. If she could survive and return home, of course. She took a bite of the cheese.
There was a blast of trumpets and the Roman legionaries snapped to attention and raised their swords in salute. Spike raised his head and stared in amazement at the approaching dignitaries.
The man being saluted as Emperor wore no toga. Instead he was clad in faded khaki pants and a ‘World Vision’ T-shirt. Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses shielded his eyes from the glare of the green sun. Definitely not Roman; he was dark chocolate brown, pure African.
The Empress was even darker, and wore animal skins. Her hair was long and matted. White clay was daubed on her face. She moved like a panther. Spike’s instincts would have screamed ‘Slayer’ even had she not been followed by a train of attendants all of whom he recognised. Faith. Kendra, who Drusilla had killed two years ago. Nikki Wood, who Spike had himself slain in New York in 1977. Bringing up the rear was the Chinese Slayer whom he had killed in 1900; she was riding on the back of a unicorn.
“Oh wow,” Harmony breathed, awestruck. “Like, wow. Wow. A real unicorn.”
Spike refrained from pointing out that it was a dream and the unicorn therefore not real. He fixed his eyes on the Slayers he had killed. He felt somehow as if he should apologise, but it wasn’t really something you could apologise for, was it? Anyway, once the fights had started it had been kill or be killed.
“Yo, Harmony, how’re you hanging?” Faith addressed his companion.
“Okay, ‘cept for the being crucified thing,” Harmony said with a beaming smile. “I’m boinking Riley. Going steady. How’s it going for you?”
“Five by five. No boinking, not being into the girl on girl scene, but no trouble neither. Going for the good behaviour ticket. Write me sometime, ‘kay?”
“Oh, would you like that? Cool. A pen pal. Spikey, remind me when we wake up, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Spike agreed. He had no idea if a deal between Dream Harmony and Dream Faith would mean anything to the girls in the waking world, but agreeing was easier than debating the point. “So, you doing all right then, Faith?”
“I’m cool. Five by five, like I said. Thanks to you two, and to Angel and to Buffy.” She drew a wicked-looking knife from her belt, looked towards the Empress, and received a nod of approval. She climbed up the cross and cut Harmony free. The two girls descended together and Faith led Harmony towards the Chinese girl, who descended from her mount and gestured to its back in invitation. Harmony mounted, waved to Spike, and rode off. She disappeared into heat haze within moments.
“So, what is this, then?” Spike asked the figures below him. “Some sort of trial? A punishment? Or just some sort of vision quest thingy?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” the Emperor told him. “Pretty well, it looks like. You’ve got the girl, saved the day, got friends and even family. So far so good. Of course now it gets a bit harder.”
“Do I know you?” Spike asked, frowning.
“Not yet,” came the cryptic reply. He turned to the Empress. “Well, Sineya, are you satisfied with my choice?”
“Too white,” the First Slayer said critically, and then smiled. “But I take him.”
“Just thinkin’,” Faith grinned. “He was the Slayer of Slayers, right, no offence to you two intended,” she glanced briefly at Nikki and at the Chinese girl, “and now he’s the Layer of Slayers.”
“Here! Just the one Slayer, love, in case you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Spike said, alarmed. “Just Buffy.”
“Man, if you only knew,” Faith grinned again, shaking her head.
“You think you know what’s to come, what you are,” Pandora said cryptically. “You haven’t even begun.”
“Love is your gift,” Sineya told him. “Death has led you to your gift.”
“Sorry, pet, not really getting your drift here,” Spike complained. “Maybe I’m a bit slow today, but you’ve got me foxed.”
Faith smirked, exchanged a look with Nikki Wood, and both girls began to giggle, perplexing Spike even further.
Sineya silenced them with an imperious gesture. The cheese man approached her with his tray and she selected a slice with great care. She tore the slice between her fingers until it formed the shape of a heart, put it into her mouth, and then leaped high towards Spike. She clung to the cross, wrapped her legs around him, and pressed her lips to his. She passed the cheese to him with her tongue and his brain exploded in sensation.
“So not fair,” Buffy complained to Spike. “The First Slayer tries to kill me in my dreams, and she tries to boink you in yours.”
“I think ‘b-boink’ is a b-bit of an exaggeration,” Tara stammered. She received a quizzical look from several of the others, especially from Willow, and went scarlet.
“She tried to boink you?” Anya asked.
“W-we just kissed,” Tara muttered, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. “Okay, there was some wrestling. But really just a kiss.”
“Eros and Thanatos,” Giles said, scribbling in a notebook. “Sex and death. Fascinating.”
Joyce repeated the monk’s words to Spike as closely as she could.
“Czech,” he confirmed. “The first bits were pretty much the same as he said to you in English, mum. The other bits, well, there was something about a Beast. ‘She comes, is it the Beast? No it’s the First Slayer, don’t fight she’s not our enemy’. Something like that.”
“A bad danger is coming, to quote ‘Watership Down’,” Giles deduced. “Something we need to be on top form to face. I’ll research. A beast. But also a ‘she’. One of the ancient Babylonian demons, perhaps? Hmm. A Czech connection. Germanic or Slavic. I wonder.”
“Some other time, Giles,” Buffy suggested. “It’s either too late for research or too early. Bed or breakfast. I vote for breakfast. I don’t feel that tired, and it’s dawn or near enough.”
“Yeah, it’s dawn,” Spike confirmed. “Wonder why dawn would be green in my dream? And what was all that with the cheese?”
“Well, I think I’ll head back to my apartment,” Giles announced. “Cheese leaving home, bye bye.”
He just managed to get out of the door before Spike and Joyce started throwing cushions.
END OF BOOK ONE: “THE HUNGRY HEART”
COMING NEXT: BOOK TWO, “GLORY DAYS”
The characters in this story do not belong to me, but are being used for amusement only and all rights remain with Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the writers of the original episodes, and the TV and production companies responsible for the original television shows. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER ©2002 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer trademark is used without express permission from Fox.