AUTHOR: 1stRabid/Rabid/Raeann
RATING: NC-17
COUPLE: Buffy/Spike
BETA BABES: Mary, Green and Caia
SPOILERS: To S7 “Potential”& AtS S4 “Salvage”
WARNING: MAJOR CHARACTER
DEATH
Here begins the final act of Ichnobate…awards were given on the previous minor character death chapters, so I thought I would distinguish. From here on out it gets bad…loads of pain and suffering…because I am ending the series again. But that doesn’t mean it will necessarily end badly…well…I suppose that depends on your definition…but you know me, right? I think Joss’ ending lacked balls. You have been warned (Rabid with the spooky voice).
SUMMARY: Well, there is this unstoppable hound and it has been called up to kill all the Slayers starting with Faith…and well…Buffy and Co. geared up for war…and won! Or did they?
DISCLAIMER: I have no rights. I’m a wild and impetuous rebel. Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox TV, UPN and the WB own everything but my fancy new Windows XP operating system. That belongs to Bill Gates.
PART TEN
“Patience, my friend,” Ethan said softly.
“Patience?” Wood snarled. He glared at his visitor for moment before turning to pace off the length of the kitchenette.
“I understand it is a virtue.”
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited already? How many years of my life the Council stole? They lied to me, Ethan. And to my father and his father and my great aunt and her grandmother. They lied to us all, and I have been more than patient. How many of our young women were defiled by this spell? Slayers...we've given so many…I can’t even….” His voice cracked on a gag. “Members of my family have served the Council of Watchers for as long as anyone can remember.”
“For generations, I believe. Going back into
Wood gave a guttural, mirthless laugh as he confirmed the guess. “To our tribal roots, yes! For most of my life, I was so very proud of that fact. Proud of my heritage…my line…the exalted Wood family name. We were set apart, never enslaved. We were always free men.” He spat the words out like bitter poison.
“It must have been hard to learn the truth. To finally see how you’d been used.”
The Principal slammed his fist down on the bar.
“Used?” He cried. “We were willing. Far worse than slaves. We were…whores and whoremongers. Like this Buffy Summers and her demon lover, we reveled in our depravity. My father was a Watcher and his father before him. He led me to it. Groomed me for my place. When I think about it I just…want to…”
He took a deep breath and pressed one shaking hand to his brow. “It has to end. I won’t see my children involved in this perversion of righteousness. I’ll strangle them at birth before I’ll allow that to happen.”
“Calm yourself, Robin,” Ethan sighed. “Your hypothetical children are quiet safe.”
“I’ll be calm when the spell is broken, when we are done with it forever.”
“Soon then, I assure you. Already we are well on the way to our goal.”
“Goals,” Wood corrected. “Plural.” There was obvious distaste in his voice. “You and I have radically differing agendas, Ethan. Remember that. I agreed to help you, to act as the inside man, but we aren’t after the same things, here…not at all.”
“Ah, but we are,” Ethan said. He held up a placating hand to keep Wood from interrupting. “It is true. I am a servant of Chaos. What you might consider…evil. I want to free the First and let her lay waste to the world.” Wood sniffed disdainfully. “While you, on the other hand, are less than sympathetic to my religious views. You want only to avenge your family honor, to secure for them a future free of bondage. But, you see, these goals are intertwined. One will lead inexorably to the other. Quite simply, in order for either of us to succeed….”
“…the Slayer must cooperate.”
“And she will.”
Wood barked out a bitter laugh as he poured himself another three fingers of brandy.
“Buffy Summers doesn’t strike me as the cooperative type.”
“Indeed,” Ethan chuckled. “She is delightfully…sporadic…isn’t she? Over and over again she has risen unexpectedly to the challenges before her. Who would have imagined she would take another vampire lover? Or that he ALSO would attain a soul. It’s a bit of a miracle.”
“Excuse me if I don’t join you in celebration. That vampire of hers could ruin everything.”
“Yes, but the very fact of him confirms she is, indeed, the One. Don’t you see? She is full of love, enough to convert the soulless fiend to righteousness. And that love will be her undoing. She has no idea what she is…what’s to come. But the play goes on around her. Your little care package to Mr. Travers destroyed the Council and their records. Ripper and his few remaining associates are cut off. The mysteries of the Convergence are lost to history. Our eyeless friends have culled the surviving Potentials down to a hardy handful. And the Hound…ah…the Hound took out eight more.”
“But not Faith.”
“No,” Ethan acknowledged. Pushing his lips out in a moue, he sank down on the edge of the sofa. “Still it was a good start.”
“A good—?” Wood couldn’t believe his ears. “We are three days from the Divergence, Ethan,” He stalked into the living room and pointed a finger at the calendar hanging over his desk. “Three days! She will bleed tonight or tomorrow. And we are no closer to breaking the spell than we were six months ago. In case you haven’t noticed your almighty Hound is gone.”
“Indeed,” Ethan agreed mildly. “Their witch’s solution was…unexpected.” He crossed one leg over the other, folded his interlaced fingers around his knee and smiled up at the other man. “I, too, was hoping for a much larger death toll. But we mustn’t despair. By their very nature plans work against the disorder of creation and so must go awry, as the adage proclaims. Which is why one must always have a fail-safe. Or three. Tell me, do you know the legend behind Ichnobate?”
“Legend?”
“Yes,” Ethan said.
“It’s quite fascinating really.”
Settling into a more comfortable position, he slipped into a
storyteller’s drone. “Once upon a time in
Wood interrupted impatiently. “Yes, alright, I do know the story. It’s Mythology 101. He saw the Goddess Artemis bathing in a pool and she turned him into a deer…”
“Stag,” Ethan said, holding up a corrective finger.
“…Stag, whatever…then she set his own hounds after him and they tore him apart.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Right, killed by his own dogs…tragic…sure…”
“But the irony runs deeper still. You see, my friend, if Actǽon was a ‘great hunter,’ as the legend tells us he was, then Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, was his deity. She was the very source of his acclaim. He would have prayed to her, sacrificed to her. And she blessed him. She set him apart, gave him his prowess in the hunt. And that power, in the form of his pack of hounds, was the instrument of his destruction. There’s a lesson in that, Robin. It has a sort of…symmetry.”
“What made him powerful destroyed him,” Wood said, nodding.
There was a shimmer of light in the corner of the room and the First appeared. It had taken the form of an imposing West African male. He was darker than Wood and the picture of shamanistic high fashion. He wore feathers and body paint and sported armbands of ornately carved leather. He was elaborately tattooed. A wrapping of colorful cloth covered his loins. He stared haughtily at the modern men and then tapped the end of his ebony staff on the floor three times. There was no sound from the insubstantial tapping.
The apparition spoke in a tongue native to no living man. “Power is ALL!”
Ethan flicked a mote of dust off his cuff, as if bored by the performance and said, “Indeed it is.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dawn Summers couldn’t sleep. Afraid to try, she stared at the stucco swirls on her ceiling, finding faces in the random patterns. Ichnobate seemed to lurk behind her eyelids. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the hulking black body and jagged teeth. Over and over again, Kennedy laughed…bitched…died right in front of her.
In her mind, Dawn knew the Hound was gone but at a primal level she could still sense it, watching her from the deeper shadows of her room. It seemed to shift away the instant she turned to look. The eerie sensation of impending attack raised the hairs on the back of her neck as she huddled under the sheets. It kept her awake as the rest of the household slept. She would doze for a minute or two only to startle awake again at the slightest noise. As the night wore on, Dawn became more and more preoccupied with noises.
Thumping…bumping…creaking
noises…and a scream…I know I heard a scream when I was in the basement…and it
came from upstairs…maybe even Buffy’s room…
But no one else had heard, not even Faith. The high-pitched noise had sent Dawn dashing
up the basement steps earlier in the evening.
The brunette Slayer had been waiting in the kitchen, beer in hand as
Dawn charged into the room, clutching
“I know what I heard,” Dawn had said, struggling. She was no match for Faith’s superior muscle and adult authority.
“Your mind’s playing tricks. I was right here and I didn’t hear anything but B, snoring away upstairs. Come on, kid, cut Big Sis’ some slack. Let her rest.”
But was Buffy resting? How could they tell?
The Slayer hadn’t put in an appearance at the party. Her door was locked. Dawn had checked before seeking her own bed. Rattling the knob, she’d called out, softly at first and then louder. Finally, she’d knocked. There’d been no answer.
There should have been an answer. Spike hadn’t been in the basement when Dawn went down to fetch the laptop. He wasn’t at the party. So, he was either out prowling Sunnydale until the wee hours, definitely not a good. Or he was curled up on the pallet at the foot of Buffy’s bed. The latter was most likely. It was the new sleeping arrangement. Never mind that it didn’t sit well with Dawn or Giles or Xander. Buffy was insistent.
‘I need to keep him close.’
Yeah…well…if he gets any closer, we’ll have to peel him
off you with goo-be-gone.
Dawn flopped over onto her belly and pummeled her pillow a few times. Spike not responding was odd. He was generally as alert as a fox terrier, and quick to shush anyone who disturbed the Slayer’s rest. Why hadn’t he shushed anyone?
A logical reason occurred to her. Dawn tried in vain to shake off the mental image. In her mind’s eye she could see her sister struggling against Spike, pitting her super-strength against his madness. She comforted herself with Buffy’s promise to be careful. But the Slayer hadn’t explained what she planned to do if Spike went crazy in the night.
Of course, she never explained anything anymore. She just snapped off orders. But Dawn was worried. She couldn’t help wondering how clear her sister’s thinking was on the subject of Spike. Would Buffy be able to stop him in time if he went for someone’s throat? Would she kill him like she killed Angel? Did she love Spike? Like Angel? More than Angel? More than—? Dawn’s mind veered away from asking the final question. The answer was in her heart already.
She loves him more than me. She won’t choose me.
If it came down to her or Spike, Buffy would choose
him. Dawn was sure of it. It didn’t seem to matter what Spike
did. Buffy trusted him. He was the one she chose to keep her secrets,
guard her back and care for her loved ones.
If that wasn't love what was it? Dawn had
puzzled over that question all summer, putting the pieces together.
And her reasons...excuses...don't make any sense. She says we need him to fight...but she's the SLAYER...plus, we have Willow and Giles...and now we have Faith. Nothing about Spike and Buffy made sense...unless...it really is love.
Between overheard conversations at home,
If Spike tried to hurt her, she would fight him, call for help…scream. Dawn rolled onto her back again. Her restless mind returned to considering the noise.
Noises…a rhythmic thumping through the walls…and a
scream…I know what I heard.
She kicked her way free of her twisted sheets, pushing with
her feet until the covers spilled over the end of the bed. Unable to sleep, she lay on her side, knees
drawn up. Arms crossed over her chest,
she watched the bedside clock tick off minutes.
Finally, it flashed
Everything was ready for her spell to contact
What if the First interfered?
For the tenth time that day, Dawn wished she could tell Buffy everything. Or Giles even. But all of this was about Buffy. The Oracle eye thing had said so, and so had mom. Buffy was the key. And if she really wasn’t thinking clearly, would Giles believe his golden Slayer or her artificially created baby sister? Buffy trusted Spike. Giles trusted Buffy. Nobody trusted the pesky teenager.
Despite Buffy’s promise to ‘show her the world’, when it
came to Scoobie business, the gang barely acknowledged Dawn’s existence. But that might change if
Mind made up, Dawn eased from beneath the covers. She still wore the jeans and t-shirt she’d
put on for the victory party. The wood
floor was cold under her bare feet as she padded to the end of the bed. She knelt to pick up her shoes and backpack.
The pack was stuffed with potions, candles and
She stopped in the hall to put on her shoes. Then she headed for the bathroom. As she reached the stairwell, something moved at the edge or her vision. Dawn froze, her heart hammering in her chest. A moment later, prickly terror gave way to relief. It was only the headlights of a passing car sweeping across the foyer wall. Feeling silly, Dawn let out her pent breath on a small laugh.
Her gaze slid to Buffy’s bedroom door. She had stopped within a step or two of it. Shifting the backpack to her shoulder, Dawn stretched out one hand for the doorknob. But she didn’t complete the gesture. Instead, as her heart rate returned to normal, she let her hand fall to her side. Without further hesitation, she walked on.
She ignored the block lettered sign on the next door and pushed it open. A single blue nightlight illuminated the washroom. It cast eerie shadows. A steady drip drew Dawn’s eye to the bath. The tub was half-full of scummy water. Dawn frowned. Even in the dim light, she could see the toggle was flipped up, closing the drain. Yet, Faith had insisted the bathroom was out of order. She’d even persuaded Xander and Molly to wait until morning to fix it. Neither of them had required much persuasion.
Dawn shut and locked the door behind her. She needed to pee. Afterward, she could test the plumbing. If the tub drained, she would start the
shower running. That should give her ten
minutes to do the spell, maybe another fifteen to talk to
The whitewashed door was closed. Its tiny hook lock dangled unfastened. Dawn felt her stomach lurch. She should have locked the door. Spike could walk in on her at any moment. He could walk in and see her, here…in the room where it happened…where he nearly raped her sister. Dawn wondered if the door was locked from the other side. She needed to check. Before she did anything else, she needed to look in on her sister. It was the right thing to do. And if Buffy was sleeping, she wouldn’t even know.
Nature served, Dawn adjusted her clothing and, after a brief hesitation, flushed. As she’d suspected, there was nothing wrong with the toilet. But the rush of water, swirling easily down the drain, seemed overloud in the quiet house. Dawn tensed, waiting for the echo of sound to die away. Then, as the silence folded in again, from behind her, from inside Buffy’s room came a low rumble. It was a threatening sound, menacing and just at the edge of human hearing. A chill danced over Dawn’s skin, lifting the hairs on her arms. She whipped around to stare at Buffy’s door. As she turned, her one hand slapped down on the light switch. Dawn blinked in the sudden brightness.
What the hell was
that? It sounded like…like a dog…or…
She didn’t want to think it. But her mind skipped ahead to form the word…vampire!
Dawn tried to reason with her racing pulse. She told herself Spike was just having a bad dream. It would make sense for him to growl if he were disturbed in his sleep. She could almost believe there was nothing to be scared of. Almost. Eyes wide, Dawn padded across the tile floor. She hunkered down beside the closed door to her sister’s room and listened, ear pressed against white wood. There was no repeat of the sound.
Slowly the tension uncoiled in Dawn’s chest. She breathed again. Aware of the passing time, she glanced at her pack on the vanity. In the starkly lit, shadow free room, Dawn’s paranoia seemed ridiculous. A feeling of embarrassment tingled under her skin. Ichnobate was dead. Spike and Buffy were asleep. The overused plumbing had been groaning for weeks.
Releasing a sigh, Dawn straightened out of her half-crouch and stepped away from the door. The floorboards creaked as she shifted her weight. And the growl repeated. Dawn’s fingers closed around the doorknob of their own accord.
The knob turned easily under her hand but, as she pushed in, there was resistance. Dawn looked down and spotted the problem. A tangle of dark cloth was bunched under the edge of the door. She kicked at the mass with her foot but it wouldn’t budge. Finally, she was forced to bend over and try to free the blockage by hand. It was denim. Her fingers recognized the material, and her mind supplied the explanation, Spike’s jeans. Cast carelessly aside, they'd caught under the door. He'd obviously undressed in haste. There at the corner of the bedside table was his boot.
Something about the realization made Dawn’s gut clench. She shoved hard against the stubborn jam of cloth. It gave way suddenly. Overbalanced, the Slayer’s little sister stumbled to her knees, falling forward into the bedroom. The glow from the bathroom light spilled past her, cutting a wide swath of illumination in the darkness. It hit Buffy’s bed like a spotlight.
Caught in the unforgiving beam, Spike crouched over the Slayer’s body. He was holding her like a lover but his amber eyes burned with red coal centers as he looked up. Buffy was sprawled under him, naked and quite dead. Her head was tilted back, hanging over the edge of the mattress. Her eyes stared sightlessly into Dawn's. Buffy's golden hair, caked with blood, cascaded to the carpet. Blood drenched the sheets. It pooled on the floor. At least two-dozen bites glistened wetly on Buffy’s brutalized flesh. She was marked at the throat, on both breasts and along her inner thighs. Only her face was unblemished.
Dawn screamed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Giles jerked awake. Someone was screaming. Moving before his brain registered the sound completely, he fumbled his glasses off the nightstand. Just for a moment, he imagined he was still asleep. This was, after all, his recurring nightmare. But the sharp pain in his shin as he careened off the edge of his stacked suitcases cleared his head. He wasn’t dreaming. Once he reached the hallway, it was easy to pinpoint the noise. The hall was full of people doing just that.
“It’s coming from Buffy’s room,” Vi
said, in response to
Faith shoved by Giles at speed. “Bastard better not be messing with B,” she snarled as she passed.
Giles heard his voice as if from a great distance. “I-it’s not Buffy,”
he said. He was sure it wasn’t his
Slayer screaming. It was only as he
spoke that he considered the alternative horror. He repeated soft as a prayer, “Not Buffy.”
People were spilling out of doors on all sides. Steps thundered on the stairs. Xander arrived on the second floor, closely tailed by Rona and Anya.
“I know I asked for a later wake up call,” Xander managed to gasp. Giles ignored him. Faith was reaching for the doorknob.
“Kick it in,” Giles ordered as the scream was cut off suddenly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You see before you, my friend, the Seal of the Convergence.”
“I’ve seen it,” Wood remarked in a bored voice. “They spilled my blood on it when I took my oath as Watcher. Some offer up their seed as well. Thankfully, I drew the line at that.”
Ethan didn’t appear to hear the other man’s gruesome confession. He was too engrossed in using spilled sugar to draw a complicated image on the coffee table’s glassy surface. It appeared to be a triangle decorated with symbols.
“It represents,” he said softly, “the greatest spell ever cast. One girl dies and another is chosen.”
Wood snorted, rolling his eyes ceilingward. The Englishman continued working. He used his teaspoon to make a minor adjustment to a rune at the apex of the confectionary pyramid. Then, he tipped the extra grains he’d collected into his cup of Earl Grey and stirred briskly. Bringing the cup to his lips, he took an experimental sip before continuing his lecture.
“It is a masterpiece of magic, my friend. Flawless. Here at the peak of the thing,” he indicated the recently corrected rune. “Is the Slayer. Beneath her…nothing but power, neither good nor evil. And that power increases exponentially as it approaches the source.” He drew a series of slashes across the triangle working down to the base of it. “Have you ever wondered about the protean nature of her strength?”
“No,” Wood replied simply. “The Council teaches us about that during our training. The spell keeps the Slayer in check. It allows her just enough power to defeat her opponent, never more than she needs. So, even if she went mad, she couldn’t rule the world. An ordinary man might defeat her, given enough incentive. This also assures she will one day be killed. She always has a fighting chance but no more than that.”
“So she may kill a Hell God and then die at the hands of a newly sired vampire. It is amazing, truly! What minds these ancient shamans had. And yet their spell…like all mortal work in our gloriously impermanent universe….”
“…failed?”
“Will fail, perhaps, is the more appropriate way to put it. All things will fail, Robin. All plans will in the fullness of time come to naught. Chaos rules! And this expertly crafted spell is no exception to that rule.”
He spooned up another serving of sugar and carefully sprinkled the white crystals onto the table, drawing a rune across one leg of the triangle. “Here we have the current Slayer, Buffy Summers. Notice she is no longer in her place.” He rubbed across the apex symbol with two fingers. “And here,” he added an identical emblem to another side. “We have her twin.”
“Faith,” Wood breathed. “Two Slayers. It can’t happen. But it did.”
“And it was foretold. Part of the grand plan. Not chaotic, not unforeseen. In fact, bound to happen…eventually. A fail-safe was established early on. As long as each Slayer pulled in opposition to the other, one good and one…not…the two could still balance the whole…for the length of one lifetime.”
“I’ve met Faith. She didn’t look that evil to me.”
“I hope you aren’t implying we all look alike, Robin,” Ethan intoned, lifting an eyebrow. After a tense moment, he chuckled and conceded, “Well…as to that…Faith is Evil only to the extent that Buffy is Good. Did Miss Summers seem a paragon to you?”
Wood rolled his eyes, again. “Hardly!”
“You see? There is a natural equilibrium there.”
“But when a third was added?”
Ethan smiled. Dumping the few remaining sugar crystals out of the bowl of his spoon, he used the tip of the implement to erase part of the base of the triangle.
“Yes…that alone was unforeseen. A break in the pattern. The power flowed free, unchecked. And from that break, things began to unravel.” He expanded the rift, pushing the sugar lines into indistinct mounds. Then, with the flat of his palm, he brushed across the triangle, blurring the entire image.
“But why?” Wood asked. “Why couldn’t all three pull as one and balance the whole? If the sides are equal…”
“Ah, but are they equal? Good and evil certainly are balanced. But what would the third side represent?”
“Indifference?”
“Possibly,” Ethan considered the notion, nodding his head slowly. “Yes, there could have been an equal measure of indifference. But the third was, in fact, not indifferent at all. It wasn’t simply power, existing for no reason, but was, instead, power given direction.”
“A force for good?”
“That remains to be seen.”
There was a glimmer of light and for the second time that night a being appeared out of thin air. This time it was a beautiful woman with long dark hair and mad eyes. She twirled into the center of the room like a music box ballerina.
“Oh, that was marvelous fun,” she confided in a giggly whisper. “Screaming and shouting and terror.” She wafted her hands from one side to the other as she spoke, dancing to her lilting refrain. “Terror and shouting and screaming. And Spike. Oh, what a darling boy. You should have seen him. All,” she growled in her throat flashing sharp teeth and then shivering theatrically as she morphed into a bright childish smile. “It nearly gave me gooseflesh, seeing him like that again. He set that little girl screaming with one look. Makes a mother proud, it does.”
“That’s that then,” Ethan said. Dusting sugar off his hands, he got to his feet. “On to phase two.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spike was dreaming of blood. Pools of it…lakes…rivers of rich…warm…Slayer blood. He was floating in it and it was heavenly. Crimson rose petals fell from the sky, showering his upturned face. He closed his eyes and when he opened them he was home. His sweet Buffy was sitting on the edge of the tub, watching as he bathed in her vital fluid. Her naked flesh was unmarked. The blood in the bath was freely given, not taken by force. Spike knew he could drink his fill without harming his beloved.
Buffy smiled at him and Spike smiled back. He felt giddy as he looked at her, so very happy. She glowed with health and good humor. Stretching out a leg, she playfully traced her toes over his bare chest. He grabbed her ankle and pulled. Buffy slid laughingly in on top of him but as the red fluid lapped around her hips, Spike was wrenched out of his dream.
Bit was screaming, close at hand. Too close. Something was terribly wrong. Spike tried to focus. The bed rocked and Dawn’s scream ended abruptly. Sitting up, blinking in the half-light, Spike barely had time to process the open bathroom door before the hall door was kicked in.
Splinters of wood showered out from the lock and the doorknob bounced off the far wall. People crowded into the room. The overhead light flared in Spike’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. Voices shouted. Hands dragged him from the bed. Half-tangled in the linen, he struggled numbly. His pleasure sated, dream-drugged muscles were slow to respond to the unexpected deluge of noise and bright light. Someone threw him into the wall. His head cracked painfully.
“What did you do?” Xander bellowed in his face. “Answer me, you worthless shit!”
Spike saw the stake heading for his heart a second before it made contact. He blocked it and pushed back hard against the mass of humanity crowding him. Only Faith and her stake were important. He held fast to her arm to keep her from taking aim again.
The dark Slayer twisted in his grip, breaking free. But, before she could strike a second time, a tawny shape hit her at the midsection. There was a brief scuffle and then Faith flew across the room. She landed with an audible grunt on the bed.
Buffy turned her furious glare on the rest of the humans.
“What the hell are you people doing breaking into my room?”
“Rescuing you,” Anya declared, “from the crazy bloodsucking fiend.”
She waved a hand at Spike, eyeing him salaciously in the process. Spike pulled a face and quickly covered his dangling parts with both hands. Seeing the exchange, Buffy lost a small measure of her indignation. She glanced down at her own nakedness, blushed and scuttled sideways to grab a sheet from the bed. Her yank on the linen tipped the dazed Faith unceremoniously onto the floor.
“Why are you both nude?” Giles asked, his slow, modulated enunciation giving the question monumental weight.
For a moment, Buffy could only stare blankly at the deeply disappointed face of her former Watcher. Then, a flurry of movement at the hall door caught her eye. Her startled expression caused the group to turn as one, following her gaze. Andrew was bobbing up and down at the back of the group, waving frantically with one arm. As soon as he had everyone’s attention, he pulled a portable message board from beneath his other arm.
Bracing the board against his hip, he uncapped a red erasable marker with his teeth and then boldly wrote out a single word. He showed the word to them all.
“SEX?”
“Right in one, Andrew,” Spike said, barely suppressing a grin.
“I think we have a winner, Alex,” Buffy exclaimed, in a Don Pardo boom. “And that concludes tonight’s episode of ‘Your Dysfunction is Way Creepier than Mine.’ Thank you all for playing.” She pointed theatrically at the bedroom door as she went on. “Please be sure to pick up a complementary version of our home game on your way out of my private life.”
END THIS PART