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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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As supreme headquarters went, this one left a lot to be desired. It had been a monastery long ago, till the Moslem conquest had put an end to such unhealthy pursuits; then it had been refurbished into lavish summer palaces by a succession of new rulers; then it had been periodically looted and abandoned in several of the many rises and falls of fortune that proliferated in the region. Most recently, it had been a luxury villa for a Lebanese export billionaire till that man had fallen afoul of Hezb’allah, and it was still technically in receivership while his heirs argued over who got what. Built into the terraced hilltops that formed the side of a small mountain, it was sprawling and multi-leveled and made up of dozens of semi-connected structures. Difficult to staff, almost impossible to properly patrol, a labor even to navigate unless one had lived there for years.

Gavin Park, originator and organizer of Cadre after his ignominious flight from Wolfram & Hart (and now the self-appointed Commandant of the new organization), had loved the place on sight, and his wishes overrode anything so mundane as practical considerations.

When she appeared without warning in the amphitheater, stepping out of the portal flare with her shouldered burden, he was actually leading one of his command staff meetings. (He didn’t like her calling them “pep rallies”, but that was what they really amounted to.) Normally, the portal currents were arbitrary and treacherous unless the route had been carefully prepared in advance, but she dismissed such fastidiousness with open scorn, and the gathered department heads and their supporting minions automatically fell silent at her appearance. They usually did, and Park usually resented their automatic deference … as, she saw, he did now. Not easy being Supreme Leader when your troops are more wary of your top operators than they are of you, is it? Their awe meant nothing to her, nor did Park’s seething reaction (poorly hidden) except as a small, unimportant amusement.

They all knew her only as Nightshade. None could say where the name came from, nor did they speculate in front of her, though theories abounded. The foremost was that it was because she styled herself after the Shadow Warriors, the ninja of mysterious antiquity and even more unknown modern operation. It was true, she dressed all in black, with her face hidden except for the eyes, and carried only bladed weapons … but her attire was modern military ballistic fabric, the ‘hood’ was a black silk scarf wrapped around her face, and her blades were a two-hundred-year-old Cossack saber and a throwing-axe that looked like something out of Lord of the Rings but was actually a modern design from Atlanta Cutlery.

She ignored the others, looking only to Park. He stared back, visibly trying to decide what approach would best preserve his authority. His gaze shifted to the long bundle she carried, and he raised an eyebrow to her in voiceless inquiry.

It really wasn’t smart of him to try and outdo her at silent drama; he just didn’t have the command presence for it. Still, if that was the way he wanted to go … she shifted to let her burden slide down, catching it to keep it from simply flopping to the tiled floor, and laid it out lengthwise. Then a flash of her saber and the twining ropes fell away, she had precisely severed the bonds without touching the heavy canvas underneath. Servitors moved instantly forward at an impatient gesture from Park, unrolling the bundle to reveal its contents.

The susurration of indrawn breaths from the other watchers made a comic backdrop to Park’s thunderstruck expression. Swaddled in the imprisoning canvas was a person; no, a girl; no, an enemy; no, one of their greatest and most feared enemies. The Dark Slayer, Faith, bound and bruised and groggy but still looking about her with naked menace, as if marking targets while she decided who to start killing first. Most of those assembled shifted as if wishing urgently that they were somewhere else, because her reputation was terrible and amply documented … but Nightshade had defeated her, apparently with casual ease, and delivered her to them almost literally gift-wrapped.

Park — the ‘Commandant’ — glared at the minions who had automatically stepped back on seeing the captive’s identity, and they uneasily edged in again to take custody of her. He looked back to Nightshade, and she smiled. She knew he couldn’t see the smile beneath the layers of masking silk, knew also that he would read it in the play of muscles around her eyes, knew finally that he didn’t dare challenge her. She followed his orders because it suited her to do so, and he wouldn’t want to find out what she might do if he ever made their association something that suited her no longer. He couldn’t possibly defeat her himself; it was seriously questionable whether all the other forces he had assembled would be able to do so; and, finally, it was far from certain that they would follow him, rather than her, if it ever came to a confrontation. She held the smile, savoring his ill-concealed rage (childish, and she knew it, but he just had that effect on her), then bowed to him in an exquisitely precise gesture of the respect they both knew didn’t exist.

The group leading Faith to more secure imprisonment had grown to a dozen, as nervous foot-soldiers beckoned to their fellows for help, and courage grew with the size of the escort. Nightshade followed them. It would be some time before the Slayer would be able to shake off the drug’s effects — hours, probably — and the minions were armed with weaponry both conventional and lesser-enchanted … but you didn’t want to take chances on something like this, not with this one. Not with Faith.

They led her down, level after level, to the most secure holding cell they had. (Which wasn’t saying much; the conversion from villa to Evil Lair was still far from complete. Still, it should serve, for now.) Nightshade kept her distance, the throwing-axe ready in her hand. Faith never said a word, but the violence hanging around her was almost as visible as desert heat-shimmer.

*               *               *

The moon was huge, and Xander fell across it.

No, he wasn’t falling, not really. And not floating, and not gliding, and not swimming, and not skating, and not skimming. It was like all of those things, but utterly unlike them as well. The closest he could come was to say that he was sifting, across multiple realities or possibilities of realities, probing with senses he didn’t understand for the exact right moment to emerge. Only the moon was a constant, flickering across his perceptions like a faulty projector in a movie theater.

He wore weapons. He wore a backpack. He wore goggles (he didn’t know why, but thRax had been firm on that point). He wore muted SAS camouflage. He didn’t have the least idea what he was doing, he was sure to die — worse, to fail — but there was just no way he could turn back.

He fell.

And fell.

He would fall forever, if that was what it took. As long as forever didn’t make him too late.

*               *               *

The cell was a shithole, and that was being generous. It was also a joke. The chains, though: the chains were a different matter. Even at full strength, she couldn’t have busted these, and she was nowhere near her best right now. Who the hell had chains this heavy just lying around in case they were needed?

Faith knelt, weighted by chains, and glared up at the bitch who had taken her.

She still seethed at the memory of it. How many people (or not-people, you couldn’t forget those) had ever beaten her? Buffy, of course; Angel, and Angelus, separately; Kakistos, even if she was just learning her mojo then; Lagos, ol’ tusk-face himself. That pretty much covered the spread.

Till now.

The other woman stood over her, studying her without speaking. Taller than Faith, maybe an inch or so; much more slender, and Faith was no Drew Barrymore herself. This gal would look more at home on a fashion runway than in that mil-spec ninja crap … but the way she’d fought, Faith had never seen the like. Quick as it had gone, Faith knew she was stronger, maybe even faster, but …

Her senses were quite a bit keener than human, and her experience stretched back further than maybe any other Slayer who had ever lived (except Buffy, of course, Buffy was always the exception to everything), so she could go over her memory of the lightning exchange and actually analyze what had happened. The woman had beat her with precision, making small movements that were perfectly positioned to negate Faith’s superiority otherwise; she’d numbed both the Slayer’s arms in less than a second by simply angling her elbows so that Faith’s own strikes had hit nerve points that left them limp. Then the real work had started: hard, close, explosive blows that Faith’s every attempt to evade led her straight into, leaving her reeling and dazed for the coup de grâce with the nerve agent, jabbed straight into her throat. (Faith could feel her body working to overcome that, but her larynx still wouldn’t respond, she couldn’t even curse the bitch.)

When you were a Slayer — especially when you were Faith — you were at the top of the heap as regarded physical deadliness, and everyone knew it. Very few others dwelt in that rarified atmosphere, so process of elimination didn’t have to work very hard. That blind female assassin that Park’s old bosses used to keep on retainer, she might have been able to pull off something like this … but Faith could see this woman’s eyes, see them seeing her, which ruled out one of only two non-Slayer possibilities. That left only rumor … and the rumors were all about someone called Nightshade.

Face to face with myth, and unable to speak, Faith did her best to simply radiate murder.

Nightshade gave no sign of being impressed. Hard to read expression from eyes alone, but the eyes themselves were expressionless, nor did she waste time with taunts or questions or (for that matter) any words at all. Simply looked at Faith as if trying to find something there, but not really expecting it.

When she moved at last, it was to offer Faith a glass of water. Still without speaking.

Was she kidding?

If so, what the hell. Faith let her face settle into sullen resignation, and leaned forward. Just her head; Nightshade — if that’s who this was — was playing it cautious, keeping one foot solidly on the chains, so that Faith’s wrists were held close to the floor. But by leaning, she could reach the glass with her lips, and the other woman tilted it so she could drink …

Faith snapped her forehead down, knocking the glass free to shatter against the stone floor, then looked up again with the most insolent sneer she could manage (and she was really good at that!). She’d got a reaction at last; at the abrupt movement, the saber had cleared the sash at Nightshade’s waist as instantly as if it had leapt into motion of its own accord. It hung frozen in front of Faith’s eyes, and Faith could see the woman yearning to strike, and locking it back with iron discipline. (Yeah, she knew about wanting to hit, and making yourself not do it. No fun at all.) Then Nightshade sheathed the saber with the same liquid fluency, and wheeled to leave the room.

The cell door slammed. On the other side, Faith could hear the bolt being slid into place.

So. Chained. Drugged. No hope of rescue ’cause nobody knew where she was. And, with her most recent action, no water, either.

Perfect.

*               *               *

The Commandant’s “lair” had a state-of-the-art communications center. He was ridiculously proud of it, as he was of all his achievements. Ethan Rayne had added several of his own refinements, and was himself rather pleased with the results. In fact, he usually spent his leisure time there, unless he could find useful work or amusing diversion in seeding discord among Park’s underlings. (Few would have ever believed Ethan capable of operating within a larger organization, especially one as deliberately corporate-modeled as Park’s “Cadre”. That just showed the limits of their imagination. You could work delightful chaos from the inside, especially if the organization itself offered so many possibilities for effecting larger-scale disruption.)

Just now, he was frowning at his scrying-mirror. One of several interlocking alerts had summoned his attention, and he was doing his best to assess the readings. It was the same conundrum every security specialist faced: set the sensitivity of the alarms too low, and you could miss a real threat; tune them up too high, and they would register every butterfly and mosquito and sand flea. When his own skin might be involved, Ethan preferred to err toward caution, but it was still drudgery to follow out on every little warning. This one now …

He narrowed his eyes, doing his best to interpret the currents that swirled in the inky surface. This, now, it might indicate someone attempting a phase-shift infiltration of the location … but those were notoriously tricky, and Ethan had himself supervised the installation of the sub-etheric disruptors that blurred Park’s headquarters to scrutiny or access. Even the Red Witch shouldn’t be able to get a psychic lock without already knowing where they were, and for anyone else it would be basically hopeless, one or two chances in a hundred thousand. Anyone skilled enough to essay such an enterprise would be knowledgeable enough to know better; anyone reckless enough to try it anyhow would never have been able to attain the technical virtuosity even to make the attempt. It was probably random interplays from atmosphere, ley lines, and even minor conflicts between Ethan’s own shields and detectors.

Probably. Almost certainly.

Still …

*               *               *

What was it Han Solo used to say? “Never tell me the odds …” Xander deeply wished he didn’t know the odds against him right now. Never mind how he’d proceed if he ever got to where he was going: just getting there was like a thousand-foot dive into a tulip vase. Or, more specifically, one particular tulip vase in an acre of them, all outwardly identical.

Couldn’t be done. But he didn’t have any choice here, so he ignored the odds, let his disassociated body flow through the flickering onrush of possibilities … and then reached out with impossible knowing, tuning in on that one there, and jerked himself back into reality/ solidity/ existence/ presence as abruptly as if he had pulled a ripcord.

He was on a parapet, and in the moonlit darkness he could see nearly a dozen other small buildings, distinct but interconnected, built into a hillside. He could be anywhere, hell, he could be about to make a house call on the Grand Overlord of the World Without Shrimp. He wasn’t, though. Somehow he knew that all his new instincts had brought him exactly where he needed to be.

Thanks, thRax.

His arrival had been totally silent. Below him, on a lower balcony, he could see a guard with a slung rifle. The rifle wasn’t good; that almost always meant human, and ‘human’ meant something he wasn’t supposed to kill. Besides which, you were usually better advised to avoid sentries, sneak past or around them, not make contact. He needed answers, though, needed to know where they were keeping Faith, and one man out alone would be much, much easier to deal with.

Xander fastened a line around a secure cornice, swung himself down over the edge of the parapet, and dropped directly onto the unsuspecting guard.

*               *               *

The glass had disintegrated into multiple fragments, but one of them was nearly four inches long and roughly dagger-shaped. Faith held it with her right hand while she turned the left to study the inside of her arm. Then, having picked her spot, she set the sharp edge against skin and began to cut.

There were advantages to having a reputation. For Faith, the main advantage was that anyone who had ever heard of her was likely to wet himself just at the prospect of having to face her … but another was that, known as she was for powering straight through whatever was in her path, practically nobody ever expected anything from her that remotely resembled advance planning. Okay, sure, that was how she liked it, and full-speed-ahead really was her preferred mode of operation. She could learn, though. She had seriously disliked being chained by Angel, and then handcuffed by the Watcher extreme-action team Wesley had called in, and her time in Stockton had cemented her distaste for any shackles that she couldn’t get out of.

So, she made sure she could. She learned (quietly, secretly, ’cause you didn’t want to advertise something like that) how the various locks operated, and how to get around them, and then wheedled David Nabbit into designing and manufacturing for her a handy-dandy little tool that would let her do the job on almost anything. (She hadn’t even needed to promise sex, he was eager to help any way he could. But she saw to it that he got sex anyhow, and even made sure he enjoyed it. What? She could be generous.) He’d made it from a high-concept polymer that wouldn’t show up on metal detectors, or even clearly on most X-rays, and she’d hid it in the one place most people would never dream of looking: inside her own flesh. Slayer healing took care of the rest. In the past four years, she’d needed it exactly once before … and now made two.

Yeah, it hurt getting to it. Big whoop. Pain was just something you saved up till you could start paying it back, with interest.

By the time she got the thing out — multi-angled, multi-hooked, a marvel of complex simplicity — and cleaned off, she’d already stopped bleeding. She flexed her fingers, got a good grip on the lockpick, and started to work on the first shackle.

*               *               *

As Ethan had observed many times before, mostly to himself, the irony was that particularly good chaos took a lot of careful organization. The occasional one-off was good for the soul (albeit his was already destined for several lively millennia in Hell) but really wasn’t much beyond schoolboy pranks, even if a schoolboy with Ethan’s ideas of amusement would have been clapped into the psych ward double-quick. No, for really cracking calamity, you had to build up a careful structure of planning, of overlapping and mutually reinforcing factors, and make sure all the different parts functioned flawlessly. That the end result was pandemonium on a massive scale, well, that only made it funnier.

Which was why, after so many decades of rejecting anything that even hinted at discipline, Ethan Rayne now found himself — even the thought was enough to engender a shudder, but there was no escaping it — keeping dossiers.

He had to. At the level where he now operated, you simply had to keep track of all the players, where they stood, how they could be set against one another or used to bolster other elements. He had nearly a dozen files spread out on his desk now. (Yes, he had a desk, and an office, and — Janus forgive him — even a secretary. Good thing he’d got self-degradation down to an art, because this was it with a vengeance.) Those who were most active, a few who weren’t on the board at the moment but were significant enough that they had to be accounted for, even the ones who might be manipulated into joining the game. Park, of course. Nightshade (ah, one of his masterpieces, and the beauty was that she knew he was using her and didn’t care). Boone, even if he almost always operated as a wild card. Faith herself, and the Red Witch, and the insufferable Buffy Summers, and several interesting others.

There was another, smaller set, however, stacked off to the side. Those files were closed, but photographs were paper-clipped to the outside. These were the players who had been swept off the board, sometimes by Ethan’s own machinations but sometimes from the unexpected twists of events. He picked up two from the top, the two losses that he regretted most, and allowed himself a few moments of truly maudlin sentiment.

Drusilla. That one had been the walking embodiment of chaos, whimsical in her impulses and utterly unpredictable in her madness, as deliciously artistic as Ethan himself and incalculably more vicious. In what she was, she had been unsullied perfection (and a demented ocelot in bed, though that wasn’t an experience one exactly sought out, even if she made it stunningly memorable on the erratic occasions she sought you out, and whoever would have dared refuse?), and it was truly a tragedy that she would never again wreak her personal brand of cyclonic disorder on a dismayed world.

A shame, such a shame … but he found himself looking again at the other photograph. Ah, Ripper. So close so many years ago, such a stiff-necked implacable enemy for so many years afterward, and Ethan still missed him. He’d long ago recognized that many of the things he did — even the parts that he carefully kept secret — were, deep-down, done to impress Ripper. Though he had resigned himself to the reality that the two of them would never again perpetrate chaos together, he had still drawn true pleasure from the appalled reaction of his old chum whenever he pulled off a solid corker and made sure it came to Rupert’s attention. Some fun never grew old, and that one had proven unexpectedly long-lived …

Over now. Over now, and never again, and it was just so bloody annoying —!

Uncharacteristically, Ethan’s sadness (both for the mad Drusilla and for Rupert Giles) was actually genuine. He didn’t know, of course — couldn’t know — that one of them wasn’t actually … quite … completely gone …

*               *               *

Though she had no idea why she had returned, Nightshade found herself standing again outside Faith’s cell. There wasn’t even a guard, which ordinarily would have been inexcusable sloppiness, but Ethan himself had devised the binding ritual worked into the doors and walls; without skills and materials she would have no reason to possess, Faith couldn’t possibly get out even if she weren’t fettered. Only an approved person could relax the seals, once they were set … and Ethan had, of course, made sure that every “approved” list always included both Nightshade and himself.

She owed him more than she would ever admit. She owed quite a bit to Faith, too, and had paid back a lot of that earlier today, and drawn deep satisfaction from the transaction. It just hadn’t been … enough … somehow. She needed more, she needed —

She didn’t know what she needed.

Disturbed, annoyed, and distracted, Nightshade waived the main seal (just by sliding back the bolt, but not everyone could do that) and opened the door, still trying to work out just what she was seeking here. And, the moment there was enough space, the chain shot through the gap with rattlesnake swiftness, the manacle cuff at the end smashing into her face.

Faith came in right behind the first blow, powering in a foreknuckle fist that rocked and stunned her startled captor. Still moving, knowing her own weakness and trying to blow past it through sheer savage momentum, Faith seized the other woman’s web-vest and yanked her inside the cell, using the same motion and force to swing herself out as the other woman fell. A hand closed on her ankle, Nightshade had gone down but hadn’t quit, and Faith used hip and shoulder to slam the door on the outstretched arm. And again, and only on the third such impact did the other woman finally let go. (Suck on THAT, bitch-face!) Faith shot the bolt on the outside — that should give her a few seconds, maybe even a few minutes — and began staggering down the empty hallway.

She had used up practically all her recovered strength just in getting out the door, she wasn’t a fifth of her normal self. Fine. She had learned long ago not to rely on anyone but herself; she had unbent enough in recent years that she could work with others, but that didn’t mean she ever let herself depend on them. She had spent most of her life facing the world alone, she was used to it, and this was just more of the same. No big.

Faith hefted the chain she still held. She was loose, and she had a weapon, and anyone who crossed her path was damn well going to wish he hadn’t.

*               *               *

Landing at the impossible destination on the first try? Great start. Knocking out the guard he’d meant to interrogate? Bad follow-through. Xander lowered the unconscious man to the rough pavement of the walkway and tried to decide on his next move.

What was he doing here? He and Faith had been carrying out routine collection of semi-mystical artifacts in and around Kharkiv, been diverted to negotiate with some other-dimensional entity wanting to come into the humans’ world to look for his headstrong girlfriend who’d gone off adventuring some years before. Smooth-talking sonuvagun, reasonable and plausible and oh-so-reassuring of his benign intentions, they might actually have been able to reach an eventual arrangement even if the entity’s proposed means of travel was a definite thorny point …

… only Faith had been snatched, and the only way to follow her had demanded action right now, and Xander — the King of Cretins, the Zeppo, comic relief and fetcher of doughnuts — was the only one available to make the jump.

He’d been in worse danger than this before, but never had to undertake a task so horrendously beyond his capabilities. This was some kind of lame-ass fortress, and a posted guard might mean more of the same stuff, maybe regular check-ins or a roving patrol. He didn’t know how many enemies he might be facing, or where to begin looking for Faith in this sprawling mess, or (perhaps most important, if he lasted that long) how he’d even begin to fight anyone hard-core enough to take Faith.

Okay, first things first, none of the other stuff mattered unless he could find his way to her, and Xander turned to look around for some avenue he might explore and crap!, there was the patrol he’d worried about. Party of three, dressed like the unconscious man (uniforms, that might mean organized opposition, yet more not-good), they checked for an instant at the sight before them and then drove at him with daunting eagerness. First one was a vampire, no mistaking how they moved even if his demon’s-features hadn’t been visible already. He ran straight into the thrown stake, Xander had staked vamps before but never with a throw, he was hitting on all cylinders tonight! Nobody had raised the alarm yet — too busy trying to get him for themselves — so he didn’t want to use the machine-pistol he’d brought, keep it quiet for as long as he could, and Xander went at the other two with desperation and resolve and a snazzy little item called Baerlath’s Stave, part of the collection he and Faith had amassed before she was so suddenly hijacked.

The one now in the lead dived out of the path of Xander’s swing, and the short staff caught the one behind him full in the ribs. There was a deep, low reverberation, like a distant gong being struck with a padded mallet, and the stricken soldier froze, shimmered, and then vanished in a low flare of dull phosphorescence. Xander had caught a glimpse of horns curving under the scalloped helmet so he hadn’t just killed a human being, he hit the remaining man as that one came to his feet, hit him again, clubbed him down finally with the last swing.

O-o-kay. Limited magical charge in the stave, or did it only release its mojo against demons? There wasn’t exactly an owner’s manual and time was short, Xander secured the stave again in the little looped back-sheath and turned to get the first guard’s rifle, an extra weapon was a definite plus. Bad mistake, the one he’d beaten down grabbed him from behind, and the hard-tipped nails digging into his throat told Xander this one wasn’t fully human, either. His body reacted before he could, he twisted to reach back, sliding one arm around to hook under his attacker’s shoulder, and a powerful drive of torso and hip and reaping leg catapulted the other from his feet and over the railing of the balcony.

The whatever-it-was started to scream part of the long way down, but struck some outcropping a split-second later, chopping off the sound as crisply as an axe. Leaving Xander alone, shaken and breathless and bewildered.

He’d done that? He, Xander Harris, had done that?

And then, almost below the threshold of conscious perception, he felt something that might have been similar to a soft, satisfied chuckle.

Oh. Right.

*               *               *

Ethan jumped up, triggering the sigils that set off a wave of alarms. (The ‘Commandant’ might love mechanical systems, but Ethan put his own trust in spellworks.) Something had just vaporized one of the Graunt, with a blaze of energy that shouldn’t be here, and that definitely meant Interesting Things Were Happening. Jerking open his desk drawer, he extracted a .455 Webley top-break revolver, then sprinted from the control room. Startled soldiers looked up as he ran out, and he waved them to follow without wasting any breath on commands, plunging toward the location where his screens told him that tantalizing energy had manifested.

(Leading from the front? Nonsense. Ethan simply wanted to see what was going on, and meant to have a good-sized cohort backing him when he arrived. And, if his seeming courage and initiative happened to make Park look deficient by comparison, well, many entertaining things could be done with that.)

When he burst out onto the sentries’ walkway, only one figure was visible: crumpled against the low railing, pushing himself up shakily on one elbow, that preposterous helmet that Park thought made his soldiers look impressive falling down over his eyes. With a wobbling hand he pointed to where the walkway curved around the side of the building, but the only sound that emerged from his throat was a faint, inchoate croaking. Ethan dashed in the direction Park’s lackey had indicated, again waving for the others to follow.

Behind him, Xander stood up the rest of the way, adjusted the pilfered helmet (protection and disguise, oh yeah!), slung the rifle, and went through the door Ethan had come out of. (Ethan Rayne! Damn! This just kept getting more complicated!) Behind him, shoved around the nearest corner, the unconscious sentry lay awaiting eventual discovery.

*               *               *

Even though the seal couldn’t hold her, the sliding bolt on the cell door had offered far more resistance than Nightshade ever would have expected. She had almost been tempted to portal out, the damned thing was so stubborn … but such a step wasn’t to be taken casually, and she wasn’t about to let a plain piece of metal defeat her, and she broke free at last just as Ethan’s alarms began blaring.

She paused, considering. Retrieving Faith would be the first priority, but the cacophony echoing around her now might signify anything from confirmed intrusion to all-out assault. Much as she preferred to operate by herself, this wasn’t a solo situation … and she might need help, to take the Dark Slayer alive a second time.

She went to the second-tier alcove, more than half-hoping her ‘minions’ had already gone to join the hunt, but glumly certain they wouldn’t have. The Red Three were formally under her direct command — she didn’t want them, but Park had refused to rescind the arrangement — and as such took a gloating pride in exempting themselves from the duties of the ‘other’ servitors here.

She pulled open the door without knocking. They were there, waiting, jagged-toothed faces split in sickening grins. It was an idea about as moronic as any of Park’s other brainstorms: take accomplished martial artists, have them turned, and then present this vampiric team to ‘his’ most accomplished warrior as a subordinate squad.

They actually were very, very good, that part couldn’t be argued. She hated vampires, though, and Park knew it, and saddling her with them (even if she had never before lowered herself to actually deal with them) was one of his little power-games. She wouldn’t refuse to use them when there genuinely was a use for them, but it required ruthless practicality to override her own distaste and pride.

As their name indicated, they had been garbed at Park’s direction in theatrical red ninja attire. (A not particularly subtle insult aimed at her, but then his imagination was considerably more pedestrian than he was capable of recognizing.) They waited for her orders: Nocturne, and her katana; Reaper, holding the kama-morningstar combination; and Dave, with twin sai. Dave was probably the smartest of the trio, or at least self-aware enough to eschew the kind of grandiose name the others had chosen; as far as Nightshade was concerned, however, a vampire’s gratuitous sadism would counterbalance any amount of intelligence.

She hadn’t sunk so far yet as to speak to them, not without absolute necessity. With a jerk of her head to indicate that they should follow, she set off to find Faith and the source of the alarms.

*               *               *

Faith hung back for longer than she ever would have believed, looking for the catch, because what she was seeing was so flat-out stupid, it seemed like it just had to be a trap. Whole joint is hopping, right? red alert, APB, scramble all units. So right in the middle of the hornet’s nest, two guys are standing their post, holding set while everybody else is out hunting juicy li’l Faith. Why not just post a flashing sign: Something really important here, come grab it!

Had to be a trap, no two ways about it … except she knew (’cause she’d been there herself) that some people actually were that friggin’ stupid, and if this was a trap it was also a dare, and when had she ever been able to pass up one of those?

So, okay, two guys, rifles at ready. That sucked, not that she couldn’t handle guns but that usually went with human, which she technically wasn’t supposed to kill. (Okay, screw technically: she’d done it, remembered how it felt, didn’t ever want to go there again.) Taking ’em down without killing could be tricky, ’specially right now when she was still trying to shake off the nerve agent Bitch-face had used on her. On the other hand, those helmets looked pretty sturdy … and the alarms were covering any noise she was likely to make …

They weren’t even standing back-to-back, just posed looking out, and she darted forward — okay, kinda lurched — and swung the chain in a huge loop. The manacle end whang!ed solidly against one helmet, a twist of her wrists caromed it off the other, and then she was close enough to grab the men and slam their heads together. She put some muscle into it, too, she was way below par here and she just had to hope the helmets were enough to prevent crushed skulls. Both men dropped, one fully slack and the other with a feeble attempt to catch himself, she grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over and punched him in the face with what wasn’t quite all her current strength. Musta judged it right, his face didn’t cave in and he was still breathing when she let him drop. She fell back a step, tense, looking around with the chain ready to swing again … but no, no trap, so now was the time to see what these bozos were guarding.

Low cabinet, okay. Lock, good enough against casual curiosity but not when smashed with a rifle butt. She opened the lacquered doors, took a look, and only the paralysis in her throat prevented a yelp of astonishment and glee.

A jump-stone! They had a jump-stone! These things were the Swiss army knife of teleportation, you didn’t have to be a wizard or have any special skills, they’d take you anywhere —!

She had to get outside. If she remembered it right, one of these had to be tuned to a new user under a full moon, and this was a full moon night, two minutes outside and then she could be back in Kharkiv, or the new Council headquarters, or waving for a piņa colada on a beach in Rio. Christ, talk about luck!

Clutching the stone in one hand and the manacle chain in the other, Faith stumbled away from the two senseless men, heading for the next set of stairs. Up and out, keep going up and out, sooner or later she was bound to hit open air and then it was sayonara, suckers!

*               *               *

Perched unseen in the high-beamed rafters above the door of the empty cell, Nocturne smiled to herself as she looked down at the man who was about to die.

He was studying the cell door as if trying to memorize it, or perhaps visualize what had transpired within. Nocturne could smell the blood that had been spilled there — recently, within the hour — and it stirred her thirst for more. The man she was watching wore a sentry’s helmet and rifle, but the uniform didn’t match, and (save for special cases such as Nightshade, her sponsor Rayne, and the Red Three themselves) the Commandant was a severe stickler for uniformity. Different meant stranger, and stranger meant prey, and that was all exactly as it should be.

Nightshade had stationed them at various points of likely approach, and Nocturne had benefited from the workings of chance, for the intruder had come here first and so this kill would be hers. With the katana she was more skilled than any surgeon, blindfolded she could flick the wings from a fly by sound alone. The lightest whisper-stroke would open this man’s carotid artery so smoothly he might not even feel it, and then she would drink deep as the life drained from him. Barefoot, she gripped the beam with long-nailed toes and unfolded downward, at the same moment beginning the swing that would pass the blade-tip through the precise millimeter of delicate flesh —

— but her target bent forward at the instant the blade arrived, so that it passed him harmlessly, and she couldn’t halt the downward arc of her body and he wrenched the cell-door out to crash against the side of her head, her toes lost their grip and she fell and he swung the door the other way and smashed the opposite side of her head, she hit the floor with an impact that jarred the unnecessary air from her lungs and smacked the back of her head against the stone. It took less than a second for her vision to clear, but his hand held a stake now and he struck downward and

*               *               *

Xander shook his head sadly as the dust of the sword-wielder settled. Killing vamps didn’t bother him a bit, but every one was a human who had already died, so that each triumph was simply the resolution of a tragedy that could never be reversed. Okay: cell empty, obviously broken out of, so unless these jokers were keeping another prisoner who could snap the hinge of a stout door and tear the bolt bracket loose, that meant Faith had escaped. Which was good, except he still didn’t know where to find her.

The stairs. They’d imprisoned her on one of the lower levels, so she’d go up to escape. He went to the stairs, started up, and stopped. There was someone standing halfway up, waiting for him, someone not-Faith. Another of the red ninja types, this one held a pair of sai, and he smiled and began a smooth, fluent kata with them as he descended the stairs, the long-tined weapons blurring as deft fingers spun and swooped them in intricate, glittering patterns.

Good grief, didn’t this moron realize he was duplicating the scimitar-twirling scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Xander drew and leveled a pistol, just as Indy had done, and the vampire’s grin widened. He might as well have said the words aloud: Puny human, don’t you realize that bullets can’t harm me? He was still smiling when Xander pulled the trigger and the signal flare spat from the wide barrel, streaking up the stairway in a blaze of white-green fire. It buried itself in the vampire’s chest before he could even begin to try to dodge, and he torched up and vanished into ash while the scream was still forming in his throat.

Yeah. Suck on that, fang-face!

*               *               *

At the next level up, Nightshade and Reaper heard the report of the flare gun, and with a quick gesture she indicated where he should place himself. He took station on one side of the doorway at the top of the stairs, while she stood at the other, saber ready. This was the natural path from where the sound had come. If the intruder followed it, they would take him as he emerged; if not, they would go after him within a minute. Though they had diminished by now, the alarms were still warbling, but they could hear the soft sound of booted feet coming up the stairs. Reaper began swinging the morningstar in gathering readiness, the spiked ball whirling at the end of the high-test nylon cord that connected it to the kama. Quieter than the traditional chain would have been, and strong enough for most purposes, and Reaper had the good sense to keep the preparatory movement clear of the field of view of their approaching target. Nightshade herself waited with the deceptive relaxation that would allow the swiftest action, and without needing to agree in advance, they both struck in the exact moment that the intruder came into the doorway.

At which point, things went very wrong very quickly.

Either he had known they were there or his reactions were so instantaneous as to be already in motion, for he was responding to the attacks even as they were launched — no, moving ahead of them! — he caught the morningstar in a gloved hand and he had shifted so that Nightshade’s saber slashed past his head without contact. She was fast, too, reversing the cut in a tight vee of backstroke, but he had flipped a loop of the nylon cord around Reaper’s neck and used it to jerk the vampire into the path of her saber. It sheared through the faux-ninja’s spine, high enough that it apparently qualified as decapitation because the intruder’s kick came straight through the collapsing column of dust and drove squarely into Nightshade’s sternum. She was thrusting even as the blow staggered her, but some kind of insane cartwheel carried him clear, the blade went up one of his sleeves and parted the fabric as smoothly as a zipper but didn’t actually touch him, and the heel of his palm hammered down against her jawline with the force of a thunderbolt.

She let herself fall, shaping for the cut that would hamstring him when he came at her in follow-up … but he was running instead of continuing the attack, she had lost vital seconds to that miscalculation, and with an unvoiced curse she spun back to her feet and sprinted in pursuit.

*               *               *

Faith had finally found outside access, which was good, because she had pushed way past what should have been inflexible limits, her body was still trying to clear out the toxic crap that had been pumped into her and she was about to crash hard. With wobbling knees she propped herself against the nearest wall, away from the door, faced the moon, and raised the jump-stone so the same light would fall on them both. Let it seep in, settle in, coalesce and come into resonance … and what kind of kick was it that she was actually remembering one of Wesley’s lectures? Gotta send Wes a thank-you once she was out of this, which he might actually read if he and Fred and Illyria ever tore themselves away from arguments about the whichness of what in the Netherverse —

She felt it happen, knew it was solid, and was focusing a destination into the stone when someone ran out of the doorway through which she’d made her exit. Too late, asshole, she was outta here!, but in the next instant she realized he couldn’t see her, she was out of his current line-of-sight and there was no rush here. He ran past her at an angle, speed and urgency and desperation blaring out of every motion and holy Jesus Christ that was Xander! She couldn’t see his face, he was wearing goggles and actually had on one of those dumb-shit helmets, but the body language was unmistakably him. He’d come here, he’d dropped himself into this snake-pit for her, was he off his friggin’ bird?

She still couldn’t make any sound come from her throat but she was about to clap her hands for his attention when another figure appeared in the doorway: Bitch-face, sighted in on Xander and drawing back some crazy orc-hatchet for a throw. Faith pushed away from the wall, driving forward on legs that wouldn’t hold her, too late too slow ohgod­ohgod­ohgod, and she threw herself, staggering between the two of them. That was all, she was done, she’d take the hatchet in the spine or the back of the head and that was okay, that was good, it was worth it as long as Xander was alive —

— Xander was turning, whirling on the instant of her movement, he held a boxy pistol and she still couldn’t make her fucking throat work, he leveled the pistol and fired directly at her —

— no, not at her, past her, beneath her upraised arm, the bullet scoring a red-hot line across the underside of her left tit, and the sound of the shot was mirror-echoed by the spang! of metal behind her, the crazy bastard had shot the hatchet out of the air without even pausing to aim! Her mind whirled with a tornado of questions but still no time, she stumbled toward him and he darted toward her and caught her as she started to go down, he used the wrist of his gun-hand to shove up those goofy goggles so he could study her anxiously with both eyes.

Wait a minute: eyes?

Still no time, but she made time anyway, simply by forcing everything into the same three-fifths of a second: triggering the jump-stone for the Cleveland house while forcing the rock-hard insistence, both of us; looking at his wrist where something had cut the sleeve and seeing moonlight glint off the quarter-inch silvery tendrils that feathered out from beneath the skin; looking up to meet his eyes — his eyes, both eyes, that kind of healing meant he had volunteered to host the other-dimensional symbiote — and put everything she had into one searching plea before they winked out from the fortress: You did this? for me? you did all this for me?

And she saw his unvoiced answer in the same timeless instant: Did you ever think I wouldn’t?

To rescue her, he had accepted the symbiote … which, she guessed, meant he had agreed to help this thRax dude find his runaway mate. Which was funny, ’cause Faith had a sinking feeling she might have just found hers.

Then they were gone.

*               *               *

She stared at the spot from which the two of them had vanished, the outlaw Slayer and her nameless rescuer. Failure was bitter gall in her mouth, and Nightshade had become long unaccustomed to failure. She had thought she was ready, known she had transcended and left behind her earlier nothing-self, the final test against Faith had settled it with what should have been unassailable certainty … but this man, this unknown, had thwarted her with a brisk dexterity that shattered all her hard-won assumptions and made her continuing failure impossible to mistake.

Nightshade. Though she wouldn’t admit to it, she had chosen the name for herself, and its meaning was similarly unspoken because this, too, she didn’t want anyone to know. Buffy Summers had ruled the night, the thing feared by its most fearsome denizens, and she wasn’t even a shadow of Buffy … and, at the same time, was the shadow that had fallen across the Slayer’s life till that life was brought to an end by her having been shoehorned into a world that had no place for her. Too, nightshade was a delicate, seemingly harmless flower that hid a deadly poison, and she had poisoned the Slayer’s existence, bringing tragedy simply by being.

Well, Buffy was alive again now: Ethan had kept his part of the bargain, making the subtle, behind-the-scenes negotiations and arrangements that eventually allowed the Slayer’s resurrection; and she had honored her side as well, going with him and letting him use and mold and guide her, all the while never losing sight of her long-term goals. She had believed she was there, or at least close; but now, now …

Unready. Undeserving. Unworthy. (of Xander) Xander … Xander had been every bit as powerless as she, back then, but he had always hurled himself into combat with his every last ounce of will and determination and commitment. She knew, because she had seen it, that he would have unhesitatingly died for Buffy a dozen times over. Instead, Buffy had died, for her … and she couldn’t stand to remain after that, couldn’t bear to face him as she must appear in his eyes. She had spent years remaking herself into something strong enough to need no protection, to never again have anyone die for her, and if some of the people she worked with were evil, well, you could take that in stride without letting yourself be consumed by it. Just keep your eyes on the goal, that was all it took —

Except she’d been wrong. She wasn’t ready, not yet. The mystery man, the nameless, faceless cipher who had bested her as contemptuously as if she were still a freckled eighth-grader with ice cream on her mouth: he was the final test. She would prepare for him, and she would find him, and she would beat him … and then, perhaps, she might at last be able to face Xander again without shame.

She placed two fingers on her left wrist, feeling the tendrils that bristled beneath the cloth of her sleeve, and thought, I need to be more. I’ll do my part, thReen, I’ll push myself twenty hours a day, but you have to make me more. More speed, more skill, more strength. I’m not there yet. I need more.

She felt a sullen awareness beneath the sub-threshold, but there was no answer. It wasn’t important; the message had been heard, and tomorrow she would begin acting on it.

As always, the words that mattered most were the ones that didn’t need to be spoken.

– end –
 

---

 
Cast
(in order of appearance)

Gavin Park as the Cobra Commander
‘Nightshade’ as Storm Shadow
Faith as Scarlett
Xander as Snake-eyes
Ethan Rayne as Destro
.....and, in a special cameo,
Giles as the Baroness

Questions? Comments? Any feedback is welcome!