4

“I am sooo going to kick his ass!” Buffy fumed, pacing around her kitchen with a fervency that made Darian start to feel nervous again. She was starting to look more like the version of the Slayer that his sire had described. “He’s been there the whole time, and I’ve been worrying all this time over…”

“You have?” Darian was surprised.

Wide-eyed, realizing what she had just said, the Slayer frowned and quickly corrected, “W-wondering! Wondering – what – happened. To him.”

Darian smiled, an oddly knowing smile. “He didn’t seem to think you’d care.”

*But that means he mentioned it,* Buffy realized with an unconscious smile…then abruptly stopped smiling. Why *did* she care? she wondered.

Starting to calm down, thinking back to an earlier statement he had made, she sat back down at the table. “So…he sired you…*in* the Initiative?”

“Yeah. These soldiers just took me off the street. I remember I was on my way to my pre-med classes. They said they needed to question me, that I was to come with them. They were in uniform and all, I – I didn’t think I had a choice. They put me in cuffs, and I asked them if I’d done something wrong. They wouldn’t answer me at all. It was – really creepy.” He shuddered, and Buffy suppressed a laugh at the notion of this *vampire*, creeped out by a couple of humans in uniform.

Darian continued, “They took me to his suite, and…and he turned me.” His voice trailed off, a distant expression on his face. “Not much of a story,” he admitted with a forced laugh.

“I knew it!” Buffy exclaimed, causing Darian to jump as she stood up again. “So there, Riley, I *told* you the Initiative was still evil!” Suddenly she frowned. “Riley! I wonder if he knows about this army-making-vamps thing?”

“L-lieutenant Finn, Ma’am?” Darian asked hesitantly.

Buffy’s eyes widened in surprise as she turned back to him. “You know him?”

Darian’s eyes were filled with a fear that made Buffy feel suddenly very sick. “Y-yes, Ma’am,” he repeated again, softer. “And h-he knows about the turning. He – pretty much knows everything that goes on there – he’s – second-in-command of the whole place!”

Buffy was shocked into silence. “H-he knows? But – but Riley’s…” She shook her head. Riley? Riley who had probably never even pulled a tag off a mattress Riley? How could he be involved with something as sinister as an army group turning humans into vampires?

Standing decisively, Buffy reached for the phone, ,taking Riley’s emergency number from the kitchen drawer where she had stashed in months ago, back when she was certain that she would never actually use it.

After two rings, a professional-sounding female voice said vaguely, “Customer service, can I help you?”

“Lieutenant Riley Finn, please. This is Buffy Summers,” she said, as Riley had instructed her. He had let her know that his staff would know her name and know that she was to be put through immediately if she called. She wasn’t sure how she felt about having that much permanent importance in his life.

But before she consider it, really the moment the words left her mouth, Darian had bolted from his chair and toward the door.

Dropping the phone and employing her Slayer-speed, she managed to be blocking the door before he could reach it. Gripping his arm, she dragged him back to the chair and slammed him none-too-gently back down into it.

Leaning into his face, putting on her best menacing glare, she said, “I said I didn’t want to kill you. Don’t make me change my mind.” She stood up straighter. “I’ll tie you up if I have to,” she added.

She could hear a muffled voice coming from the dropped receiver as she picked it up.

“Buffy?” The familiar voice sent an odd feeling through her. Not a thrill exactly; even in their best moments, Riley had never exactly thrilled her.

“Riley,” she said, keeping her voice level. Glancing at Darian, whom she was still pinning to the chair with one strong hand on his shoulder, she saw him flinch as she said the name. Against her better judgment, irritated that she even cared, she covered the receiver with her hand and reassured him in a whisper, “I’m not going to turn you in.” And she realized with only slight surprise as she said it that she actually meant it.

Shoot. Riley had asked her a question. “I’m sorry, what?” she asked distractedly.

Riley laughed awkwardly. “What’s going on over there? Who are you threatening to kill and tie up?” He paused then added thoughtfully, “Hopefully not in that order.”

“Oh, um, my…sister,” Buffy said, she hoped convincingly. It sounded reasonable enough to her.

Riley laughed. Good. He thought she was joking. Buffy laughed.

God, this was awkward!

“So, um, Buffy,” Riley said finally. “What’s up?”

“Um…I’ve been thinking, Riley,” Buffy finally replied. “I’d – I’m thinking about taking you up on that offer you made when you left.”

There was silence on the other line for a moment. Then Riley spoke, sounding excited. “Buffy, really? I mean, that’s awesome!”

“I’m *thinking* about it, Riley,” Buffy cautioned him. “I haven’t decided anything yet. You know how it went last time I joined up. I want to come check out your operation first; be sure this is what I really want before I make a decision.”

“Oh. Ok, yeah, that should be fine, Buffy. The new commander here is actually dying to meet you. She was really disappointed last year when I told her you didn’t want to join us,” Riley informed her.

“Yeah, well,” She was sooo uncomfortable with this conversation! “been there, done that, didn’t much care for the logo on the T-shirt. You know, the one that said, ‘Let’s assassinate the Slayer’?”

Uncomfortable silence. “I know, Buffy, but it’s different now. You’ll see,” Riley insisted. “When do you want to come?”

When she hung up the phone, she had set up plans to go see the Initiative compound the next day. Riley and a couple of his men would come to her house and pick her up. Immediately upon hanging up she dialed her friends. They needed to meet right away. Once it was decided that they would meet at her house in an hour, she turned around again to face Darian, who was still watching her dubiously.

“I’m not gonna turn you over to them,” Buffy repeated impatiently. “Stop looking at me like that!”

“You’re just going to *join* them,” he corrected with a biting sarcasm in his voice that was now painfully familiar to her, now that she knew just where he had picked it up.

“Um…no…” she said in a slow, patronizing voice, then muttered under her breath what sounded like “stupid vampire!” Aloud she said, “If they’re doing what you say they are, I’m gonna bring them down. Even if I have to do it from the inside.”


The door to Spike’s suite swung open, and he stood up immediately. In this place, he never knew what was coming, and it couldn’t hurt to be ready. A soldier carelessly flung a battered, bleeding fledgling toward him. The childe stumbled a few steps, then collapsed to the floor.

“Take care of it,” the soldier ordered coldly, and slammed and bolted the door.

He sighed wearily as he approached the trembling, sobbing fledgling. This was not an uncommon thing, for a beaten, devastated childe of his to be brought back to him for care; after all, the fledglings *were* “officer material” – even if the humans were allowed to beat them like dogs, and could not be bothered afterward to clean up the mess they had made. But this childe was different, held a special regard with him.

This was his only daughter.

He had been shocked when they had first brought her to him. The Initiative did not seem aware of equal opportunity laws. He had only been made to turn young men before – never a girl. She had been trembling, terrified, and he was stunned by her beauty, even panicked and sobbing. Ok, he *was* a vampire -- *especially* panicked and sobbing!

But the thing that had caught his attention was how much she looked like *her*. And perhaps that was why, in spite of the fact that it went against his very nature, he had found himself trying to calm her. Her name was Diana, and she had just been walking home from a club she had frequented with her friends, when the soldiers had taken her, she told him. He had somehow managed to get her to stop crying and relax a bit; she had been exhausted and overwrought and had actually fallen asleep in his arms. Then, wondering why he bothered, he had been as gentle as possible in following his orders, and she had slept through the whole thing.

When she had awoken, she had punched him in the face – a rather nasty surprise, as *he* had still been sleeping at the time!

Oh yes, she was *very* much like *her*!

But of course, she was no Slayer, only a newborn fledgling, and he managed to quickly subdue her, and then begin the process of calming her again. He had told her that it wasn’t so bad, she was special, because she was his, and would have a fate better than most of the others here because of it. She would have a position, and would be as fortunate as a vampire could be in this miserable place. All the while he had felt like a sell-out for trying to convince her that it would be ok, just to keep her from hating him for what he had done to her.

The first time they had brought her back to him, he had felt like worse than a sell-out. He had felt like a liar and an utter failure as her sire. Because he realized at that point with a sick sense of shock just what he had turned her for.

Some soldier had taken a fancy to her on the outside, but as a human she had had none of it. It seemed this soldier was someone of importance, and had privileges the others did not, because to his complete surprise, the order to turn her had indeed come from the general herself. But the truth hit him almost as hard as the primal rage that followed in its wake: she had been turned to be some soldier’s personal plaything!

Eventually through her tearful descriptions and details here and there, he had figured out who the soldier was. Then it all fit – her striking resemblance, the reason that it had been allowed at all…

Her human “master” was Lieutenant Riley Finn.

When the door had opened hours after she had been brought to him, it had been Lieutenant Finn himself who had come for her. At the sight of his childe, trembling and cowering from this miserable human, Spike had heedlessly given vent to his rage, hurling himself upon the startled lieutenant and ripping quite a vicious gash in his throat, draining him so much that he passed out, before the chip fired enough to take his own consciousness.

When he had awakened, the first thing he thought was that whatever the general had done to the chip, it had made it much more painful than it used to be. The second thing he had noticed was that the general was standing over him. Before he had time to register the third thing – the tiny device in her hand – the chip had fired again, with cruel, excruciating intensity.

And kept firing. For an hour.

When it was finally over, and the tremors that shook his agonized body had subsided enough to allow him to process her words, the general had warned him that if he ever, *ever* attacked a soldier again, it would not be an hour.

It would be a day.

With a new seething hatred in his heart for both her and Finn, he had helplessly gone on watching Diana be abused day after day, sometimes so badly that she would be brought to him to care for her, like this time. He wondered with disgust what the Slayer would think of her wholesome, corn-fed Iowa boy if she saw where his obsessions truly lay. He realized a second later that she would surely be as disgusted as he was.

She must have fought him this time, he observed as he tended to her injuries, various scrapes and numerous bruises. She clung to him, begging him wordlessly to make her suffering stop. And his helpless rage continued to build.

One day he would loose it upon this place, starting with Finn.

When the soldier arrived to take Diana back to her quarters, he leered openly at her beautiful body, partially exposed beneath her torn clothing. “She looks better,” he noted suggestively, looking her up and down.

Before he knew what he was doing, Spike had gripped the soldier’s collar and jerked him toward him menacingly. But he stopped there – just short of an actual attack.

The soldier’s smile faded quickly; then he smirked at him, glancing derisively at the hand fisted in his shirt. But Spike could see the fear that was still in his eyes; he could smell it on him.

But when the soldier pulled free with a sneer, brushing his collar straight again, he let him and took a step back. When the door closed, he put his hand to his head and braced himself with a hand against the door, trying to get his temper back under control.

He had not attacked the soldier. Not really. Still, he knew he would be getting a visit soon. He had to get a grip on his rage if he was going to survive this place.

Or, he could release it – and this place would not survive him!