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Warning: This chapter contains some racy scenes. In my AU, Dawn is no longer underage. However, there are some
borderline non-consensual elements that carry a Hard-R, possibly NC-17 rating.
Seduced
It took several hours of staring at beer for William to fold his lobes around the thing that brassed him most.
“You are not my father…” Dawn had yelled. And why that? Why had the girl thought to lob that at him as her last
ditch effort to get him riled?
He had always been more of big brother to little sis in regard to Dawn. Or, at a stretch, an annoyingly protective
uncle. Never a dad-type. Not till now.
Turns out, his trial run at Dad-dom had been a miserable fall-apart. He’d seen it plain enough in her eyes. Dawn was
just as screwed up with pain as ever he was. She just dealt with it in a different way. He had been so absentee, he
hadn’t noticed.
So that was it. The bitter kernel of it, the rotten core. He sucked at playing Dad. Painfully obvious. He had hurt
Dawn and woefully neglected Andrew. Pack up, kiddies. We’re goin’ to Wally World…
And as William sat in the back of Shepherd’s watching the bubbles in his beer and making a point of disregarding the
noisy ignorant bliss of a bachelorette party just hatching out up front, he felt the concluding stab of what really
wounded.
What if… What if maybe that was the whole deal behind Buffy’s vanishing act? His heart ached for thinking it, but
only because he feared it true. He’d played sperm donor, put in the Nephillim DNA needed to give The Slayer a child.
His part was done, wasn’t it? He was worthy so long as there was a fight. Otherwise…
Maybe the Powers That Be knew what a tosser he’d be at parenting. Never had much of a role model, unless you
count Angelus, and William desperately did not wish to count Angelus. Maybe they had taken Buffy from him because
they knew exactly what a tosser he’d be. They would want to get her well enough out of harm’s way, once his deed
was done.
William swallowed down that nasty nettling barb with a draught of Guinness.
He knew how Buffy and Dawn felt about their own MIA Dad. Knew how it hurt them that he seemed to move on once
he severed ties with Joyce. Right bastard, William knew, but still he didn’t hesitate to hurl that verbal dagger when
the chance presented itself.
Now Dawn had stormed out and he stormed out, and it was all a mess, and he was still failing them both. Dawn. And
Buffy. Always failing… Always managing to bollocks up a good thing with his mouth, and he didn’t need fangs to do it.
William felt the instinctual tug of someone watching him. He cut his eyes to the formerly vacant chair at the end of
his table. The young woman seemed to have materialized from nowhere. She was a biggish type, a girl with a nice bit
of meat on her bones, with huge mawkish eyes and white confetti caught up in the curls of her ash blonde hair.
“Not in the mood for a chat,” he said, straight up.
“Fine. Neither am I,” she bit out. “’S just the last free chair in the place.”
William glanced around. She was right. Shepherd’s had well packed in, and it was early yet. He wanted to swing a
quick patrol before heading back home to see what peace he could make with…
“It’s not like I was chatting you up, besides,” the woman groused. “I am with the party.”
William got to his feet. He began to pull on his jacket. “Good on you,” he said. He downed the rest of his beer and
started out.
“Wait…” she said, catching his arm. “Perhaps I did hope for a little waffling. My mates are all having such fun, and
I’m…”
William looked down into the girl’s sad-yet-hopeful eyes. They were beguiling little pools of blue with scatters of
yellow in them that conjured a brief yet powerful memory of sailing paper boats in the lake with his dad when he was
a boy…
“…I’m an ever-the-bride’s maid type, you know? And you seem such a sad sort, with those gloomy blues.”
William dragged himself and his attention away from the girl. “Off the market, pet,” he said.
It happened so fast, he didn’t see it. One second, she was there in the seat, looking at him, and the next, she’d
sunk two very long gray fangs into his upper arm, all the way through the sleeve of his coat.
“Hey…” he managed, just before his mouth stopped working. He stared at her while the world seemed to shut down
around him. Lights dimmed. Sounds hushed. Feeling and warmth drained right out of his body. He turned, and his
legs buckled. He fell; she caught him.
As he lost consciousness, her lips pressed to his ear. “Sleep, William. This will only take a moment…”
Paolo’s face flickered in the firelight while a group of the Gypsies set up a tight rope behind the stage. Nighna kept
an eye on Anjelica and Oz until she could no longer spare it. At that time, she whispered to Clarisse to perch on a
branch above them. In that way, Nighna could stretch her consciousness a small amount to watch them, even
though it taxed her mental faculties more than she thought was prudent. Dealing with creatures of the Underworld
often meant panning through conversations in search of sub-textual gold. More often, it meant keeping your wits
longer than the other guy keeps his.
Paolo swung one leg over a mossy fallen log and gestured for Nighna to join him. She took a seat facing him, legs
primly tucked to one side.
“Would you like some wine?” he asked, leaning in close so that she could hear him over the music. “’S made from
human tears. Only the finest suffering…”
“Thank you, no,” Nighna said. “Too bitter for my taste.”
He waved his hand. “Figgered as much,” he said. Paolo grinned at her. In the thickening twilight, his teeth gleamed
predatory. Nighna folded her hands in her lap and eyed him calmly, waiting for him to open.
Taking her signal, he said, “So you’re after Luxe? What’s he done that’s so worth your trouble? This time, I mean…”
“Not him so much as his companions,” Nighna said. Clarisse flitted in the branches. Oz and Anjelica were sitting in
front of the stage, letting the music pour over them.
“The vampires,” Paolo said. “Way Luxe told it, Thellian wanted only the means to restrain his progeny. Which he
accomplished before leaving Limbo.”
“Hmmm,” Nighna said, recalling that Charon had mentioned as much. “Wonder how he managed that.”
“Connections and ties, milady. The vampire had many allies,” Paolo said.
Nighna considered this, carefully choosing her next question. Paolo watched her, positively leering. Apparently he
enjoyed the fact that he held the higher ground.
“How did Luxe secure passage, Paolo? As I recall, he was not your favorite demon.”
Paolo edged closer. “I despised him utterly.”
“Yet you let him pass? What did he offer?” Nighna knew that Luxe had paid Charon with the only thing he had of
value. Luxe bore her mark, and was technically her subservient, no better than a fugitive slave.
“A nightclub in Paris,” Paolo said simply.
Nighna laughed. “Please tell me you can’t be so easily bought, Paolo,” she said.
He shrugged, offering her a coquettish smile. “Real estate upstairs’ll soon be the hottest tomato, Nighna. Especially
once all Hell breaks loose… Luxe offered and I’m a grabber. I know a buyer’s market when I see it.”
Nighna rubbed the rough bark of the tree trunk with her fingertips. “You really think this bough’s going to break?”
“Oh yeah,” Paolo said. “In a glorious ring of fire and brimstone. From what I’m been hearing, the imbalance out
there’s got the whole world on the totter side. Ash and smoke, Nighna. I’d like a front row seat for that.”
Nighna watched the fire spark in Paolo’s eyes, and though she didn’t trust him, she thought she just might believe
what he was saying.
“Fair enough,” she said. “And what would you like, in exchange for our passage?”
Paolo chuckled. “Yours is simple. A kiss is but a kiss,” he said, mouth spread into a wide smile. “But there is blood on
your girl. None such simple there…”
“Blood?” Nighna snorted, sensing a bluff. “On Helli?”
“Oh yes,” he said slowly, mulling the words as if savoring the flavor of them. “Can’t you just taste it?”
“She is a Slayer.”
Now it was Paolo’s turn to laugh. He threw his head back and bellowed to the boughs of his trees. “Before, Nighna.
I’m talkin’ about innocent blood on her mitts.”
Nighna felt the first flutter of alarm through her tenuous connection with Clarisse. But as she got to her feet,
Paolo’s hand vised down on her arm.
His face hovered close to hers as he rasped into her ear, “It’s too late…”
Dawn thought she just might deserve a BAFTA award for the acting job she managed to put on. When she and Brodie
hit the line outside of Fabric, she had swallowed down all of her tears and put on Dawn’s Brave Face Number 28.
She was revved and rave-ready. Until she saw the pounding wave that was Brodie’s friends, who used to be
Mickey’s friends, waiting for them at the door.
Dawn halted on the sidewalk, catching Brodie’s elbow. “I’ve an idea,” she said, falsely chipper. “Let’s don’t go.”
Brodie, tall and gaunt and sensitive Brodie, looked down at her, his painted face a study of concern and possibly
emo.
“What is it?” he asked. “It is my mates? Because they’re safe.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’re dangerous…” Dawn said.
Brodie smiled. “No. I mean, they’re good on you. They remember you from school.”
Dawn liked the way Brodie spoke. The way he recklessly left off ending consonants, so that school became skoo. She
also liked watching his tongue ring when he talked, which meant that she sometimes floated out of the
comprehension zone while he was busy trying to tell her stuff.
“It’s just,” Dawn said, ignoring whatever Brodie said. “I was thinking we could do…” she touched his waist
teasingly… “Something else.”
“Wha? You mean, now?”
Dawn fluttered her ridiculously long faux eyelashes. “Do you have someplace we can go?”
And no matter how emo Brodie appeared without, he was all teenage horndog on the inside.
He had his hands on her before they even made it inside the house. The fact that his parents were out at dinner and
could bust them at any moment only thrilled her more. Dawn maneuvered him upstairs, kissing him furiously, pouring
all of her frustrated energy into those fevered biting nips. In the end, he half carried her into the room, slamming
her body against the door to close it. She knotted his orange hair in her fists and could feel him so hot and eager
and hard beneath her.
But, once the door was closed, Brodie broke away, putting some distance between them.
Dawn leaned on the door, curious and panting.
“Look, Dawn…” he said and broke off. His eyes kept darting to the belly chain and her jutting pelvic bones, which
Dawn found infinitely entertaining.
“Brodie. It’s okay. Okay?”
“Wait.” He held out his hands to stop her advance. “I heard ’round school, what happened with Augie.”
Dawn halted. “You know Augie? I mean, what did you hear happened? Because things around school, rumors and
things, they aren’t always exactly founded in…”
Brodie nodded. “He said you… used him as some kind of art experiment,” he said.
“I so,” she began. “It wasn’t…”
“No, Dawn. ’S’all right,” Brodie said. “But I’ve a thought.” He hesitated, as if he figured she might laugh at him.
“A thought’s no good unless you share it,” Dawn said, taking another bold step in his direction.
“’Stead of you drawing after, like with… him,” Brodie began. “Maybe if you drew on me. Y’know. Before.”
Dawn’s eyes widened. It was the hottest thing she’d ever heard in her life. “Oh. God…” she said, already feeling the
heat spread from her center.
Brodie grinned. “I’ve a pen set,” he said. Dawn pounced and kissed him breathless.
Oz and Anjelica felt drunk. It was the music. Both agreed without really speaking that it was the best blend of old-
meets-new they had ever heard. To Anjelica, it was Nickel Creek and Radiohead. For Oz, it was Beastie Boys meets
Beatles, with a twist of Weezer thrown in. So, with their bodies nestled companionably together in front of the
stage, they listened to the Gypsies song.
Somehow, at some point, Oz turned his face to hers, their lips met, and they kissed. A long, languid, lush kiss that
lasted for what seemed like forever. But when they opened their eyes, they found the forest had faded. Instead,
they sat on the edge of an indoor swimming pool. Wan light fell across the water in wavering spangles as a lone
swimmer made her way to the shallow end.
Oz felt Anjelica’s body tighten next to his.
“Helli?” he asked, “I might be still dazed by the kiss, but is this a sudden and unexplained scene change?”
She was shaking her head. “No,” she mumbled. “Not here. Not here…”
The girl, a compact little thing completely devoid of anything womanish, climbed from the pool and wiped water from
her face. Taking a towel from a bench by the wall, the girl left, bound for the showers.
Oz turned to her. Her face had whitened and she shook almost convulsively.
He got to his feet, pulling her with him. He held her hands, but she was unable to do anything but stand there. “Helli?
What? What is it?”
Even as he spoke, the scene at poolside continued. Three young men entered from without. Oz could see their
white and gold lettermen jackets, and knew they had to be several years older than the girl. They whispered and
snickered to each other as they crossed the slick cement toward the showers. As they walked, seeming to wind
down to slow motion with each step, the sunlight caught on the blade of a knife.
And that pervasive, staggering, burning, terrifying twinge seized him again.
“It’s you…” he growled.
“No,” Anjelica shouted. But everything about her said that it was…
“You gave them something,” he said. It twisted under his ribcage, spreading like brushfire through his bones. Oz
backed away from her.
Tears splashed from her eyes. “I didn’t,” she said weakly.
Oz felt tingling in his fingers and around his collar. “What…” he gagged. “What did they do?”
Anjelica was backing away, denying, dissolving into tears. The boys had reached the door and were stealthily pulling
it open.
Anjelica knew what she was seeing, but did nothing but stand there in mute horror. She watched as his fingers
elongated, mouth stretched and contorted into jowls.
“What did they do to you?” he shouted, his voice changing from calm, sweet Oz voice to thick and guttural
werewolf growl. “Helli!”
“Please,” she said. She wrapped her hair around her hands. “Please don’t.”
But Oz was gone. She did nothing to defend herself. When he struck, she fell and she could hear – even as she lay
bleeding – she could hear the boys screaming as he shredded them. She heard their screams as she had before:
shocked, hysterical cries like bruises in her ears. And Oz… was gone.
Brodie splayed across his bed for her. Dawn sat astride, feeling delightfully wanton as she let the tip of her pen dip
and swirl across the smooth planes of his chest. She swept the blade of the fountain pen over his breastbone, loving
the way the ink fanned out along the stroke, making crosshatches of its own.
Brodie himself lay breathlessly alert, a perfect living canvas.
“What are you drawring?” he asked, careful not to move too much.
“I don’t know yet,” Dawn answered truthfully. All she had thus far was an outline, but it was more Place than Person
or Thing. Which was good. Wagging demon tongues did not equal erotic in Dawn’s book, and no amount of Tattoo
Monthly Magazine would convince her otherwise.
She turned the pen in her hand, trailing a steady line down his hairless torso. It tickled and he stifled a laugh. Dawn
paused.
“Jou must hold steel,” she said in her best bad fake French accent. “I cannot work under zeese conditions.”
He laughed again. Then, with a quick return to Sobersville, he ran a hand up her thigh. “Do you want me to touch
you?”
Dawn’s hand trembled. “You mean, while…”
He slid his hand under her, working his fingers into the pliable folds of leather pants. She rocked gently against him,
eyes sliding closed as the heat bloomed under his touch.
“I don’t think I can… hold steady,” she told him. “Oh. But, go ahead.”
Brodie worked the eyehooks on the pants and pushed his fingers into her center. That one touch and Dawn thought
she might explode.
“Here. Let me just,” she said, sliding off of him. He looked confused until he saw her wriggling from her pants. She
hopped back onto him. They were both half-naked now; only their naked parts didn’t match up. “There. All better.”
Brodie returned his fingers to their previous occupation. Dawn, managing to conjure fantastic self-control,
returned her pen to sketching. Picking up where she left off, she swept a line around his navel. The curve of the line
wavered slightly as he rubbed the tender nub of her clit between his fingers. She turned the pen in her hand to close
the outline.
Dawn raised her body, giving Brodie a better angle. He turned his palm over and ran a finger all the way inside. An
expectant moan escaped from her throat. She found forgetting was easy, so long as he was touching her.
“God… Dawn,” Brodie breathed. “You’re…”
She bent low and shut him up with a kiss. When she leaned back, her hand returned to the sketch, flying now with
the light, deft strokes of a practiced artist. Brodie, seeming to read her readiness, thrust a second finger deep
into her, massaging her clit with his thumb. She moved against him, feeling the brink of the wave that built within
her with every arc and twist.
The sketch took shape as he coaxed it out of her. His erect nipple became a full moon in a starless sky. Beneath it, a
wooden platform onto which she began to sketch three figures. One man, two women. A crowd formed along the
border of the sketch, and Dawn bore down on in, trying to draw it into focus, to hold on to it, trying to…
…stand amidst the crowd, facing the raised wooden platform. Above it, three ropes dangle, the loops of nooses
catching circles of dark sky. Three figures – two women and a man – stand beneath the gallows. Their hands are
bound with plastic ties, like the kind Dawn has seen on garbage bags. They are bruised and dirty, their eyes
downcast, and no one in the crowd moves to save them.
As Dawn watches, she senses a strand of excitement rippling through the crowd, bright as electric wire. A group of
hooded figures appear, ringing the platform and the prisoners. Dawn watches, helpless, as one of the figures
moves forward to slip the noose around the neck of one of the women. And as the floor drops beneath the damned
woman she screamed…
Dawn came shudderingly against him. The sheer pain of it brought her around to the realization that something had
gone wrong.
She opened her eyes to find that both of Brodie’s hands were occupied by tightly gripping her upper arms. As she
looked down into his shocked face, she tried desperately to put the pieces into some kind of sense-making fit.
“D-Dawn,” he whispered. “Where? You…?” His eyes darted downward, and she followed his cue.
“No.”
“I tried…” he began. He sounded near tears as he fumbled to explain. “I tried to stop you.”
Clearly, Dawn had taken matters into her own hands. The masterpiece she had drawn spilled down his body all the
way to the place where their bodies joined. Fully, entirely joined.
“Oh,” Dawn sobbed. She slipped from him and collapsed in a tangle at the foot of the bed. The last waves of her
release shuddered through her. Brodie was getting up, coming to help her, saying something incoherent and
apologetic. She grabbed her pants and bolted.
He awoke in a dark place. A halogen blue cast the room in dismal monochrome. She had him sprawled on a stone slab.
In the haze of his waking, he still couldn’t see or hear worth a damn. Panic flared when he tried to raise his head
and realized he could not. He was bloody paralyzed.
“Oh, you’ve wakened, William. You are strong,” the woman purred. She moved around the end of the table, cloaked
in darkness. “Makes it more fun for me.”
She gripped both of his boots and hauled his unresponsive body forward. She stepped between his legs and went to
work unfastening his belt. In the absence of light, he saw only white hands and the glimmer of her eyes…
No.
“What luck have I,” she sang. “Lucky thing that I am, to have this task…”
She leaned forward, letting the light fall on a sweep of her hair and the orb of one smooth white breast. Nipple-less.
Navel-less. He struggled, inwardly screaming, and that seemed to excite her. She slipped her hands into William’s
pants.
“Ah, big boy you are. I knew it. Could sense it. Be a good boy for me,” she said.
William’s cock hardened obediently in her hand. She loosened his pants and tugged it roughly forward. She ran her
large hand all the way down its length to the base.
“Gather the seed, the seed. And yours is special, special… My sweet,” she said. She stroked her hand rhythmically
as she spoke. With each downward motion, he felt himself stiffen against her fingers.
“Seeds of angels,” she said, throwing her head back. “Mustn’t be spilled. And look how eager you are for my touch.”
“No…” William managed to croak.
She bent her head to take the tip in her mouth. She licked it with the blade of a forked black tongue. William
writhed, the stone biting into his shoulders.
“So strong. So eager.” Her strokes fell harder now, swifter. “I will carry your seed in me. As will my sisters. We will
make an army from your angel’s seed…”
The surge in him grew. His body, the betrayer. Though he fought until his stomach twisted and his balls shrank
against his ass, he knew… his body would do what nature had deemed fitting.
His earlier thoughts seemed cruel in their irony. He was a tool. A vessel. A thing to be used…
But Buffy had seen more than that. Buffy… William squeezed his eyes closed against the swirling, burning pain of his
engorged flesh.
“See, he cries. Weeps like a babe. Raw and tender. Will it be nice to take this story home – how the great Spike
wept as I made him come for me?” she said. Her motion was frenzied now, both hands coaxing and teasing the long
shaft to a crippling hardness.
“Come for me, come for me…” she whispered.
William clenched his fists and his jaw. Her venom was wearing off, but not fast enough. He began to growl and
thrash.
“Twist and turn, it’s all the same,” she uttered harshly. “Look how hard you are for me.”
In a blinding motion, she vaulted onto the stone table, pinning his thighs with her knees. She continued relentlessly
pumping, her white fists clamped on his flesh, bruising him senseless. He glimpsed her legs, then – plump goat thighs
covered with a thick pate of curling gray hair. But her body was smooth and pale and hairless.
He knew what kind of beastie she was. She lowered her sex toward his…
And William released. His semen shot across her abdomen, spilled and spent. He managed a thin, satisfied smile.
The creature gave a throaty moan. “Silly, silly boy,” she said, sliding back. She folded her body in half and lapped the
ejaculate from her skin. She raised her head again, licking the milky fluid from her lips. “I can take your seed this
way as well. I am the vessel…”
“No,” he growled. “That’s what I am,” he said.
William reacted quickly. Summoning every bit of energy from every last cell in his body, he punched a hole clean
through her chest. She stared down at him, yellow bile leaking from her sneering lips. With what strength he had
left, he shoved her lifeless body off of his.
Time crept by, and still the paralysis clung to his limbs. He slid down from the table to crouch unsteadily beside the
dead Succubus. With his Nephillim dagger, he began the painstaking task of severing the bitch’s head. Took for
sodding ever, given his diminished motor skills, but he didn’t stop till it was done. He didn’t want to take any
chances…
Afterward, sore and bloody, William dressed himself. He felt numb with guilt and that old self-loathing, at letting
himself be used, washed over him.
Couldn’t dwell on it. Not right now. Not when it would be morning soon, and he had a home to get to. Wards to look
after. There were monsters in the night, and if he had forgotten, this would be a right sobering reminder. He had
let his guard down, and nearly…
William shook his head to clear it. He crept on legs that felt like stilts into a system of sewer tunnels, probably, he'd
wager, right below Shepherd’s. But the harpy’s poison had done its trick. Each agonizing step took all of his
concentrated effort. Even with his rapid healing, it would be hours before he could make it home.
borderline non-consensual elements that carry a Hard-R, possibly NC-17 rating.
Seduced
It took several hours of staring at beer for William to fold his lobes around the thing that brassed him most.
“You are not my father…” Dawn had yelled. And why that? Why had the girl thought to lob that at him as her last
ditch effort to get him riled?
He had always been more of big brother to little sis in regard to Dawn. Or, at a stretch, an annoyingly protective
uncle. Never a dad-type. Not till now.
Turns out, his trial run at Dad-dom had been a miserable fall-apart. He’d seen it plain enough in her eyes. Dawn was
just as screwed up with pain as ever he was. She just dealt with it in a different way. He had been so absentee, he
hadn’t noticed.
So that was it. The bitter kernel of it, the rotten core. He sucked at playing Dad. Painfully obvious. He had hurt
Dawn and woefully neglected Andrew. Pack up, kiddies. We’re goin’ to Wally World…
And as William sat in the back of Shepherd’s watching the bubbles in his beer and making a point of disregarding the
noisy ignorant bliss of a bachelorette party just hatching out up front, he felt the concluding stab of what really
wounded.
What if… What if maybe that was the whole deal behind Buffy’s vanishing act? His heart ached for thinking it, but
only because he feared it true. He’d played sperm donor, put in the Nephillim DNA needed to give The Slayer a child.
His part was done, wasn’t it? He was worthy so long as there was a fight. Otherwise…
Maybe the Powers That Be knew what a tosser he’d be at parenting. Never had much of a role model, unless you
count Angelus, and William desperately did not wish to count Angelus. Maybe they had taken Buffy from him because
they knew exactly what a tosser he’d be. They would want to get her well enough out of harm’s way, once his deed
was done.
William swallowed down that nasty nettling barb with a draught of Guinness.
He knew how Buffy and Dawn felt about their own MIA Dad. Knew how it hurt them that he seemed to move on once
he severed ties with Joyce. Right bastard, William knew, but still he didn’t hesitate to hurl that verbal dagger when
the chance presented itself.
Now Dawn had stormed out and he stormed out, and it was all a mess, and he was still failing them both. Dawn. And
Buffy. Always failing… Always managing to bollocks up a good thing with his mouth, and he didn’t need fangs to do it.
William felt the instinctual tug of someone watching him. He cut his eyes to the formerly vacant chair at the end of
his table. The young woman seemed to have materialized from nowhere. She was a biggish type, a girl with a nice bit
of meat on her bones, with huge mawkish eyes and white confetti caught up in the curls of her ash blonde hair.
“Not in the mood for a chat,” he said, straight up.
“Fine. Neither am I,” she bit out. “’S just the last free chair in the place.”
William glanced around. She was right. Shepherd’s had well packed in, and it was early yet. He wanted to swing a
quick patrol before heading back home to see what peace he could make with…
“It’s not like I was chatting you up, besides,” the woman groused. “I am with the party.”
William got to his feet. He began to pull on his jacket. “Good on you,” he said. He downed the rest of his beer and
started out.
“Wait…” she said, catching his arm. “Perhaps I did hope for a little waffling. My mates are all having such fun, and
I’m…”
William looked down into the girl’s sad-yet-hopeful eyes. They were beguiling little pools of blue with scatters of
yellow in them that conjured a brief yet powerful memory of sailing paper boats in the lake with his dad when he was
a boy…
“…I’m an ever-the-bride’s maid type, you know? And you seem such a sad sort, with those gloomy blues.”
William dragged himself and his attention away from the girl. “Off the market, pet,” he said.
It happened so fast, he didn’t see it. One second, she was there in the seat, looking at him, and the next, she’d
sunk two very long gray fangs into his upper arm, all the way through the sleeve of his coat.
“Hey…” he managed, just before his mouth stopped working. He stared at her while the world seemed to shut down
around him. Lights dimmed. Sounds hushed. Feeling and warmth drained right out of his body. He turned, and his
legs buckled. He fell; she caught him.
As he lost consciousness, her lips pressed to his ear. “Sleep, William. This will only take a moment…”
Paolo’s face flickered in the firelight while a group of the Gypsies set up a tight rope behind the stage. Nighna kept
an eye on Anjelica and Oz until she could no longer spare it. At that time, she whispered to Clarisse to perch on a
branch above them. In that way, Nighna could stretch her consciousness a small amount to watch them, even
though it taxed her mental faculties more than she thought was prudent. Dealing with creatures of the Underworld
often meant panning through conversations in search of sub-textual gold. More often, it meant keeping your wits
longer than the other guy keeps his.
Paolo swung one leg over a mossy fallen log and gestured for Nighna to join him. She took a seat facing him, legs
primly tucked to one side.
“Would you like some wine?” he asked, leaning in close so that she could hear him over the music. “’S made from
human tears. Only the finest suffering…”
“Thank you, no,” Nighna said. “Too bitter for my taste.”
He waved his hand. “Figgered as much,” he said. Paolo grinned at her. In the thickening twilight, his teeth gleamed
predatory. Nighna folded her hands in her lap and eyed him calmly, waiting for him to open.
Taking her signal, he said, “So you’re after Luxe? What’s he done that’s so worth your trouble? This time, I mean…”
“Not him so much as his companions,” Nighna said. Clarisse flitted in the branches. Oz and Anjelica were sitting in
front of the stage, letting the music pour over them.
“The vampires,” Paolo said. “Way Luxe told it, Thellian wanted only the means to restrain his progeny. Which he
accomplished before leaving Limbo.”
“Hmmm,” Nighna said, recalling that Charon had mentioned as much. “Wonder how he managed that.”
“Connections and ties, milady. The vampire had many allies,” Paolo said.
Nighna considered this, carefully choosing her next question. Paolo watched her, positively leering. Apparently he
enjoyed the fact that he held the higher ground.
“How did Luxe secure passage, Paolo? As I recall, he was not your favorite demon.”
Paolo edged closer. “I despised him utterly.”
“Yet you let him pass? What did he offer?” Nighna knew that Luxe had paid Charon with the only thing he had of
value. Luxe bore her mark, and was technically her subservient, no better than a fugitive slave.
“A nightclub in Paris,” Paolo said simply.
Nighna laughed. “Please tell me you can’t be so easily bought, Paolo,” she said.
He shrugged, offering her a coquettish smile. “Real estate upstairs’ll soon be the hottest tomato, Nighna. Especially
once all Hell breaks loose… Luxe offered and I’m a grabber. I know a buyer’s market when I see it.”
Nighna rubbed the rough bark of the tree trunk with her fingertips. “You really think this bough’s going to break?”
“Oh yeah,” Paolo said. “In a glorious ring of fire and brimstone. From what I’m been hearing, the imbalance out
there’s got the whole world on the totter side. Ash and smoke, Nighna. I’d like a front row seat for that.”
Nighna watched the fire spark in Paolo’s eyes, and though she didn’t trust him, she thought she just might believe
what he was saying.
“Fair enough,” she said. “And what would you like, in exchange for our passage?”
Paolo chuckled. “Yours is simple. A kiss is but a kiss,” he said, mouth spread into a wide smile. “But there is blood on
your girl. None such simple there…”
“Blood?” Nighna snorted, sensing a bluff. “On Helli?”
“Oh yes,” he said slowly, mulling the words as if savoring the flavor of them. “Can’t you just taste it?”
“She is a Slayer.”
Now it was Paolo’s turn to laugh. He threw his head back and bellowed to the boughs of his trees. “Before, Nighna.
I’m talkin’ about innocent blood on her mitts.”
Nighna felt the first flutter of alarm through her tenuous connection with Clarisse. But as she got to her feet,
Paolo’s hand vised down on her arm.
His face hovered close to hers as he rasped into her ear, “It’s too late…”
Dawn thought she just might deserve a BAFTA award for the acting job she managed to put on. When she and Brodie
hit the line outside of Fabric, she had swallowed down all of her tears and put on Dawn’s Brave Face Number 28.
She was revved and rave-ready. Until she saw the pounding wave that was Brodie’s friends, who used to be
Mickey’s friends, waiting for them at the door.
Dawn halted on the sidewalk, catching Brodie’s elbow. “I’ve an idea,” she said, falsely chipper. “Let’s don’t go.”
Brodie, tall and gaunt and sensitive Brodie, looked down at her, his painted face a study of concern and possibly
emo.
“What is it?” he asked. “It is my mates? Because they’re safe.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’re dangerous…” Dawn said.
Brodie smiled. “No. I mean, they’re good on you. They remember you from school.”
Dawn liked the way Brodie spoke. The way he recklessly left off ending consonants, so that school became skoo. She
also liked watching his tongue ring when he talked, which meant that she sometimes floated out of the
comprehension zone while he was busy trying to tell her stuff.
“It’s just,” Dawn said, ignoring whatever Brodie said. “I was thinking we could do…” she touched his waist
teasingly… “Something else.”
“Wha? You mean, now?”
Dawn fluttered her ridiculously long faux eyelashes. “Do you have someplace we can go?”
And no matter how emo Brodie appeared without, he was all teenage horndog on the inside.
He had his hands on her before they even made it inside the house. The fact that his parents were out at dinner and
could bust them at any moment only thrilled her more. Dawn maneuvered him upstairs, kissing him furiously, pouring
all of her frustrated energy into those fevered biting nips. In the end, he half carried her into the room, slamming
her body against the door to close it. She knotted his orange hair in her fists and could feel him so hot and eager
and hard beneath her.
But, once the door was closed, Brodie broke away, putting some distance between them.
Dawn leaned on the door, curious and panting.
“Look, Dawn…” he said and broke off. His eyes kept darting to the belly chain and her jutting pelvic bones, which
Dawn found infinitely entertaining.
“Brodie. It’s okay. Okay?”
“Wait.” He held out his hands to stop her advance. “I heard ’round school, what happened with Augie.”
Dawn halted. “You know Augie? I mean, what did you hear happened? Because things around school, rumors and
things, they aren’t always exactly founded in…”
Brodie nodded. “He said you… used him as some kind of art experiment,” he said.
“I so,” she began. “It wasn’t…”
“No, Dawn. ’S’all right,” Brodie said. “But I’ve a thought.” He hesitated, as if he figured she might laugh at him.
“A thought’s no good unless you share it,” Dawn said, taking another bold step in his direction.
“’Stead of you drawing after, like with… him,” Brodie began. “Maybe if you drew on me. Y’know. Before.”
Dawn’s eyes widened. It was the hottest thing she’d ever heard in her life. “Oh. God…” she said, already feeling the
heat spread from her center.
Brodie grinned. “I’ve a pen set,” he said. Dawn pounced and kissed him breathless.
Oz and Anjelica felt drunk. It was the music. Both agreed without really speaking that it was the best blend of old-
meets-new they had ever heard. To Anjelica, it was Nickel Creek and Radiohead. For Oz, it was Beastie Boys meets
Beatles, with a twist of Weezer thrown in. So, with their bodies nestled companionably together in front of the
stage, they listened to the Gypsies song.
Somehow, at some point, Oz turned his face to hers, their lips met, and they kissed. A long, languid, lush kiss that
lasted for what seemed like forever. But when they opened their eyes, they found the forest had faded. Instead,
they sat on the edge of an indoor swimming pool. Wan light fell across the water in wavering spangles as a lone
swimmer made her way to the shallow end.
Oz felt Anjelica’s body tighten next to his.
“Helli?” he asked, “I might be still dazed by the kiss, but is this a sudden and unexplained scene change?”
She was shaking her head. “No,” she mumbled. “Not here. Not here…”
The girl, a compact little thing completely devoid of anything womanish, climbed from the pool and wiped water from
her face. Taking a towel from a bench by the wall, the girl left, bound for the showers.
Oz turned to her. Her face had whitened and she shook almost convulsively.
He got to his feet, pulling her with him. He held her hands, but she was unable to do anything but stand there. “Helli?
What? What is it?”
Even as he spoke, the scene at poolside continued. Three young men entered from without. Oz could see their
white and gold lettermen jackets, and knew they had to be several years older than the girl. They whispered and
snickered to each other as they crossed the slick cement toward the showers. As they walked, seeming to wind
down to slow motion with each step, the sunlight caught on the blade of a knife.
And that pervasive, staggering, burning, terrifying twinge seized him again.
“It’s you…” he growled.
“No,” Anjelica shouted. But everything about her said that it was…
“You gave them something,” he said. It twisted under his ribcage, spreading like brushfire through his bones. Oz
backed away from her.
Tears splashed from her eyes. “I didn’t,” she said weakly.
Oz felt tingling in his fingers and around his collar. “What…” he gagged. “What did they do?”
Anjelica was backing away, denying, dissolving into tears. The boys had reached the door and were stealthily pulling
it open.
Anjelica knew what she was seeing, but did nothing but stand there in mute horror. She watched as his fingers
elongated, mouth stretched and contorted into jowls.
“What did they do to you?” he shouted, his voice changing from calm, sweet Oz voice to thick and guttural
werewolf growl. “Helli!”
“Please,” she said. She wrapped her hair around her hands. “Please don’t.”
But Oz was gone. She did nothing to defend herself. When he struck, she fell and she could hear – even as she lay
bleeding – she could hear the boys screaming as he shredded them. She heard their screams as she had before:
shocked, hysterical cries like bruises in her ears. And Oz… was gone.
Brodie splayed across his bed for her. Dawn sat astride, feeling delightfully wanton as she let the tip of her pen dip
and swirl across the smooth planes of his chest. She swept the blade of the fountain pen over his breastbone, loving
the way the ink fanned out along the stroke, making crosshatches of its own.
Brodie himself lay breathlessly alert, a perfect living canvas.
“What are you drawring?” he asked, careful not to move too much.
“I don’t know yet,” Dawn answered truthfully. All she had thus far was an outline, but it was more Place than Person
or Thing. Which was good. Wagging demon tongues did not equal erotic in Dawn’s book, and no amount of Tattoo
Monthly Magazine would convince her otherwise.
She turned the pen in her hand, trailing a steady line down his hairless torso. It tickled and he stifled a laugh. Dawn
paused.
“Jou must hold steel,” she said in her best bad fake French accent. “I cannot work under zeese conditions.”
He laughed again. Then, with a quick return to Sobersville, he ran a hand up her thigh. “Do you want me to touch
you?”
Dawn’s hand trembled. “You mean, while…”
He slid his hand under her, working his fingers into the pliable folds of leather pants. She rocked gently against him,
eyes sliding closed as the heat bloomed under his touch.
“I don’t think I can… hold steady,” she told him. “Oh. But, go ahead.”
Brodie worked the eyehooks on the pants and pushed his fingers into her center. That one touch and Dawn thought
she might explode.
“Here. Let me just,” she said, sliding off of him. He looked confused until he saw her wriggling from her pants. She
hopped back onto him. They were both half-naked now; only their naked parts didn’t match up. “There. All better.”
Brodie returned his fingers to their previous occupation. Dawn, managing to conjure fantastic self-control,
returned her pen to sketching. Picking up where she left off, she swept a line around his navel. The curve of the line
wavered slightly as he rubbed the tender nub of her clit between his fingers. She turned the pen in her hand to close
the outline.
Dawn raised her body, giving Brodie a better angle. He turned his palm over and ran a finger all the way inside. An
expectant moan escaped from her throat. She found forgetting was easy, so long as he was touching her.
“God… Dawn,” Brodie breathed. “You’re…”
She bent low and shut him up with a kiss. When she leaned back, her hand returned to the sketch, flying now with
the light, deft strokes of a practiced artist. Brodie, seeming to read her readiness, thrust a second finger deep
into her, massaging her clit with his thumb. She moved against him, feeling the brink of the wave that built within
her with every arc and twist.
The sketch took shape as he coaxed it out of her. His erect nipple became a full moon in a starless sky. Beneath it, a
wooden platform onto which she began to sketch three figures. One man, two women. A crowd formed along the
border of the sketch, and Dawn bore down on in, trying to draw it into focus, to hold on to it, trying to…
…stand amidst the crowd, facing the raised wooden platform. Above it, three ropes dangle, the loops of nooses
catching circles of dark sky. Three figures – two women and a man – stand beneath the gallows. Their hands are
bound with plastic ties, like the kind Dawn has seen on garbage bags. They are bruised and dirty, their eyes
downcast, and no one in the crowd moves to save them.
As Dawn watches, she senses a strand of excitement rippling through the crowd, bright as electric wire. A group of
hooded figures appear, ringing the platform and the prisoners. Dawn watches, helpless, as one of the figures
moves forward to slip the noose around the neck of one of the women. And as the floor drops beneath the damned
woman she screamed…
Dawn came shudderingly against him. The sheer pain of it brought her around to the realization that something had
gone wrong.
She opened her eyes to find that both of Brodie’s hands were occupied by tightly gripping her upper arms. As she
looked down into his shocked face, she tried desperately to put the pieces into some kind of sense-making fit.
“D-Dawn,” he whispered. “Where? You…?” His eyes darted downward, and she followed his cue.
“No.”
“I tried…” he began. He sounded near tears as he fumbled to explain. “I tried to stop you.”
Clearly, Dawn had taken matters into her own hands. The masterpiece she had drawn spilled down his body all the
way to the place where their bodies joined. Fully, entirely joined.
“Oh,” Dawn sobbed. She slipped from him and collapsed in a tangle at the foot of the bed. The last waves of her
release shuddered through her. Brodie was getting up, coming to help her, saying something incoherent and
apologetic. She grabbed her pants and bolted.
He awoke in a dark place. A halogen blue cast the room in dismal monochrome. She had him sprawled on a stone slab.
In the haze of his waking, he still couldn’t see or hear worth a damn. Panic flared when he tried to raise his head
and realized he could not. He was bloody paralyzed.
“Oh, you’ve wakened, William. You are strong,” the woman purred. She moved around the end of the table, cloaked
in darkness. “Makes it more fun for me.”
She gripped both of his boots and hauled his unresponsive body forward. She stepped between his legs and went to
work unfastening his belt. In the absence of light, he saw only white hands and the glimmer of her eyes…
No.
“What luck have I,” she sang. “Lucky thing that I am, to have this task…”
She leaned forward, letting the light fall on a sweep of her hair and the orb of one smooth white breast. Nipple-less.
Navel-less. He struggled, inwardly screaming, and that seemed to excite her. She slipped her hands into William’s
pants.
“Ah, big boy you are. I knew it. Could sense it. Be a good boy for me,” she said.
William’s cock hardened obediently in her hand. She loosened his pants and tugged it roughly forward. She ran her
large hand all the way down its length to the base.
“Gather the seed, the seed. And yours is special, special… My sweet,” she said. She stroked her hand rhythmically
as she spoke. With each downward motion, he felt himself stiffen against her fingers.
“Seeds of angels,” she said, throwing her head back. “Mustn’t be spilled. And look how eager you are for my touch.”
“No…” William managed to croak.
She bent her head to take the tip in her mouth. She licked it with the blade of a forked black tongue. William
writhed, the stone biting into his shoulders.
“So strong. So eager.” Her strokes fell harder now, swifter. “I will carry your seed in me. As will my sisters. We will
make an army from your angel’s seed…”
The surge in him grew. His body, the betrayer. Though he fought until his stomach twisted and his balls shrank
against his ass, he knew… his body would do what nature had deemed fitting.
His earlier thoughts seemed cruel in their irony. He was a tool. A vessel. A thing to be used…
But Buffy had seen more than that. Buffy… William squeezed his eyes closed against the swirling, burning pain of his
engorged flesh.
“See, he cries. Weeps like a babe. Raw and tender. Will it be nice to take this story home – how the great Spike
wept as I made him come for me?” she said. Her motion was frenzied now, both hands coaxing and teasing the long
shaft to a crippling hardness.
“Come for me, come for me…” she whispered.
William clenched his fists and his jaw. Her venom was wearing off, but not fast enough. He began to growl and
thrash.
“Twist and turn, it’s all the same,” she uttered harshly. “Look how hard you are for me.”
In a blinding motion, she vaulted onto the stone table, pinning his thighs with her knees. She continued relentlessly
pumping, her white fists clamped on his flesh, bruising him senseless. He glimpsed her legs, then – plump goat thighs
covered with a thick pate of curling gray hair. But her body was smooth and pale and hairless.
He knew what kind of beastie she was. She lowered her sex toward his…
And William released. His semen shot across her abdomen, spilled and spent. He managed a thin, satisfied smile.
The creature gave a throaty moan. “Silly, silly boy,” she said, sliding back. She folded her body in half and lapped the
ejaculate from her skin. She raised her head again, licking the milky fluid from her lips. “I can take your seed this
way as well. I am the vessel…”
“No,” he growled. “That’s what I am,” he said.
William reacted quickly. Summoning every bit of energy from every last cell in his body, he punched a hole clean
through her chest. She stared down at him, yellow bile leaking from her sneering lips. With what strength he had
left, he shoved her lifeless body off of his.
Time crept by, and still the paralysis clung to his limbs. He slid down from the table to crouch unsteadily beside the
dead Succubus. With his Nephillim dagger, he began the painstaking task of severing the bitch’s head. Took for
sodding ever, given his diminished motor skills, but he didn’t stop till it was done. He didn’t want to take any
chances…
Afterward, sore and bloody, William dressed himself. He felt numb with guilt and that old self-loathing, at letting
himself be used, washed over him.
Couldn’t dwell on it. Not right now. Not when it would be morning soon, and he had a home to get to. Wards to look
after. There were monsters in the night, and if he had forgotten, this would be a right sobering reminder. He had
let his guard down, and nearly…
William shook his head to clear it. He crept on legs that felt like stilts into a system of sewer tunnels, probably, he'd
wager, right below Shepherd’s. But the harpy’s poison had done its trick. Each agonizing step took all of his
concentrated effort. Even with his rapid healing, it would be hours before he could make it home.
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends