Buffy took a shuddering breath.

“Did you guys see that?”

Spike nodded.

“Vampires!”

“Maybe its Halloween,” Tara said.

“It doesn’t feel like Halloween,” Dawn whimpered.

“Even if it is, those guys are definitely not kids, and those are definitely not costumes. Randy's right. Looks like we have vampires,” Xander countered.

A shout demanding that the group send out ‘Spike’ came from the creatures outside of the Magic Box. Two vampires burst through the window, and, instinctively, Buffy leapt across the room and dusted the first, as Spike simultaneously beat and dusted the second vampire. She smiled broadly as the dust settled.

“I think I know why Buffy’s the boss! I’m like a superhero or something…and so are you, sweetie! That must be what brought us together.”

Smiling, Spike drew Buffy against himself and kissed her deeply. Dawn rolled her eyes.

“Geez you guys, get a room!”

Buffy frowned at her.

“We’re in a room.”

“Shyeah, you know what I meant. Ick, it’s like watching my parents make out.”

The vampires still outside pounded on the door.

“Send us Spike! Now, Slayer!”

Anya frowned.

“Well this is just enough. As a shopkeep, I feel it is my duty to protect our livelihood and my money and the books and stock and my family’s safety and such,” she said waving a random book in the air. She grabbed a handful of herbs, lit a stick of incense, and waved it in front of herself. “Ostendo meus prosapia nemus!”

A bright red light shone at the hearts of Spike, Buffy, Giles, Dawn, and Anya, linking them all together in a branch-like manner. Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them.

“Oh, dear lord.”

Anya frowned at him.

“What? What did I do wrong?”

Giles rolled his eyes.

“You just cast a spell!”

“I know!”

“Do you know what it did?”

“It protected my money by making red lights connect us!”

“No, you daft cow, ‘ostendo meus prosapia nemus?’ Don’t you speak Latin?”

Anya scoffed, but was mesmerized for a moment as the red lights faded into nothingness.

“Of course not. I’m too pretty to have to do any intense reading.”

“Obviously. You told the spell, or gods, or whoever the hell you invoked to show your family tree. That is, if they could understand your horrific Latin!”

“I read it right out of the book you…you jerk!”

“Well that’s obviously not the right book!”

Grabbing another book at random off the shelf, Anya scowled at Giles.

“Then, here’s the one for us. Bara bara himble gemination!”

Anya shrieked in terror at the fuzzy white rabbit that appeared in front of her, and, without thinking of the consequences, ran to the door and opened it, attempting to shuffle the bunny outside. Four vampires ran in, and Dawn, Willow, Tara, Giles, Xander and Anya ran into the training room, locking the door behind them. Buffy and Spike set to beating the crap out of the vampires, Spike slipping into his vampiric visage as he fought. When the vampires were disposed of, Buffy gasped at Spike’s face. Spike raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“You…you’re a vampire!”

“What? No I’m not.”

“Check the teeth! And the lumpies….”

Spike ran his hand over his forehead and teeth, and shrugged.

“Huh. Well, that would explain why you were feeding me blood before.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only thing I can remember, love. The night we got engaged…we were talking about claiming or something and then you gave me a novelty mug full of blood.”

“Ick. Wait, what’s a claim?”

Spike shrugged and then grabbed a book off of the shelf, smiling as he handed it to her.

“Well, lookie here, ‘Vampire Mating Rituals.’ Sounds promising.”

Shoving the book underneath her arm, Buffy nodded at Spike.

“Right. I’m going to go let the rest of them know we’re okay. Then I think we should take a walk.”

The Scooby Gang settled in around the table, books piled high in front of them, as Buffy and Spike walked out of the door into the night, promising to return within the hour with fresh information. Anya doodled a diagram on the back of a piece of receipt paper, writing a few names on it, and passed it to Giles.



Me (Anya)
V
Rupert
V
Randy -- Buffy
V
Dawn

Giles squinted his eyes at her.

“What does this mean?”

She shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’m just diagramming how the red lines appeared. They connected for Randy and Buffy and pointed to Dawn, but there were just single lines pointing from me to you and from you to Randy. What do you think it means?”

Willow leaned back in her chair a bit too far, and fell onto the crystal in her back pocket with an “eep!” It crumbled underneath her, and she looked up, ashamedly.

“Oopsie.”

--

Buffy and Spike sat, propped up against a gravestone in Restfield cemetery, which they were drawn to, for some reason beyond their amnesic comprehension. Buffy shoved the book into Spike’s lap, pointing at a small section.

“It seems pretty simple. You have to draw blood from each other during sex and one of us says ‘mine’ first, and the other says ‘yours,’ and then we repeat that, only doing the opposite.”

Spike nodded in understanding, and then smiled leeringly at her.

“So…you want to do this now, love?”

“Well, we should probably wait until we get our memories back….”

“Love, we were already planning our wedding. This can be just our little secret…no one has to know what goes on but us…we can have your big to-do wedding with doilies and such…but this is just for us.”

Buffy nodded and crawled on top of his lap, straddling him.

“In that case, I think it’s a great idea.”

Their mouths crashed together, and their clothes were quickly thrown in a heap on the grass next to them. In a desperate thrust, Spike slid into Buffy’s dripping slit. She threw her head back in ecstasy, an act just enticing enough for Spike to pounce on, and he gently pierced his fangs into her throat.

“Mine!”

“Yours,” Buffy assented, as she nipped at Spike’s throat, drawing a trace amount of blood. “And you’re mine!”

“Yours, pet, always,” Spike moaned.

With one deep thrust, their orgasms finally pulsed through them. Buffy rested her head on Spike’s shoulder as a strange fullness passed through her, and he covered them with his duster, neither wanting to move just yet. Spike took a deep breath in Buffy’s hair, smiling and thinking to himself, She smells bloody great. Buffy giggled.

“Thanks, but you don’t have to talk about me in the third person, considering what we just did.”

“Wait…what? You heard that?”

“Stop being stupid Ran….”

The harshness of their memories fell onto Buffy and Spike, coupled with the added bonus of their new mate’s memories. After a few painful minutes that seemed like hours, Buffy sat up and looked frantically at Spike, who had begun to scream and moan, clutching his head and rocking back and forth on the ground.

“Spike?”

--