~*~


Spike sat in his gutted home in a state of numbness. For a creature of such strong emotions, being in a position of feeling nothing was foreign to him. Buffy had gone, really gone this time. Spike had feared this from the time Captain Cardboard had barged into his crypt hurling accusations. Accusations that Buffy didn’t once question.

After destroying Spike’s home, Buffy had returned to destroy his heart. She wasn’t even angry. That was the part he couldn’t really process. She was calmer than he had ever seen her. She looked happy even.

She said their affair was killing her and that she didn’t want to hurt him anymore. Well, she didn’t want to hurt William anyway. That was who she addressed her farewell to, William, not Spike, as if he had some multiple personality disorder or
something! Angel might want people to think that Liam and Angelus were two different people and that neither had a thing to do with Angel, but Spike knew who HE was, knew who the poof was too, for that matter.

Spike thought he knew Buffy too. He had been sure that she felt something for him that was real, as real as what he felt for her. Spike had been counting on time for Buffy to realize that she wouldn’t keep coming to him if she didn’t have feelings for him. Time would help her to decide those feelings were love.

Now it was all in ashes around him, just as his crypt was.

He hadn’t bothered to defend himself to Buffy with Finn there.

He hadn’t wanted to expose his plan for those eggs either, or the reason for it. Not with "Mr. Normal Life" standing there acting so superior. GI Joe kept calling them Suvolte eggs and not once did Buffy act like Finn could be anything but right.

He had half expected Buffy to come back and stake him; he hadn’t been prepared for her to just pull his unbeating heart from his chest and destroy him, while leaving him alive, or as alive as a vampire can be. Spike didn’t expect it to be over this soon, to run out of time. It hurt like hell.

Spike walked in a daze to the sarcophagus that acted as storage for the more potent alcohol he kept on hand and lifted the lid. He finally fell asleep, passed out actually, after depleting the contents of his stash.

The vampire woke to the sound of his crypt door being kicked open and a blur of movement he was still too inebriated to follow. When the taser hit him, he recognized his visitor and growled in anger.

"Finn. Well I shouldn’t be too surprised to see you back. Come to drive another plastic poker in me, did ya? Well, don’t have a heart for you to poke now, do I?

What’s with the cattle prod, not manly enough to face Buffy’s follow up choice without usin’ that toy?", he asked.

With that, Spike found himself being tasered again and again until he lost consciousness. Riley had let his weapon do all the talking he was going to do.

"Provo to base. Hostile has been incapacitated. Beginning transport as soon as target has been secured. Out". Riley snapped his cell phone shut and began to bind the unconscious Spike in a way that would allow little or no movement from the
vampire should he regain consciousness. Everything had gone too well so far for a slip up at this point.

~~~~~

(flash back to just after Riley and Sam "left" Sunnydale)

"No, Sam, I’ll be the one to recover Hostile 17. Right about now, he should be good and drunk. I don’t think he’ll put up much of a fight. I’ll taser the son of a bitch and we can get him back to the labs by morning", Riley said.

"I’d like to be there, Ri. This creature escaping was the start of all the horrible things that happened to mom. I owe it to her to be hands on".

Samantha Walsh held her greatest hatred for Buffy Summers, of course, but the vampire ran a close second. The visit she and Riley Finn had just made to Sunnydale had been bittersweet.

Sam had reveled in the anguish she saw on Buffy’s face as they had presented themselves as happy newlyweds.

She and Ri had done plenty of recon before making the contact. Ri knew just how to get to his ex girlfriend.

They had easily stumbled on the secret affair between the Vampire and the Slayer. Riley had suspected the two would be involved by now. He had known Buffy well enough to realize that she would not go public with her relationship with another vampire. He had seen the attraction between the two even before he left. Knowing how the Scoobies felt about Spike, there was no way that Buffy would be openly involved with him. Riley’s suspicions had been right on all counts.

His pose with Sam as a married couple, happily in love and fighting the good fight with first class weaponry, had been the perfect method to make the Slayer even more uncomfortable with her love life choices, her entire life actually.

Part of Riley felt sorry for his former love; the other part could only feel that Buffy deserved the pain for betraying her calling once again.

Sam had known Riley Finn ever since her mother, the late Dr. Maggie Walsh, had pulled him from Special Forces and made him her top muscle with the Initiative. He was like a brother to Sam and that had helped make their easy familiarity so believable to Buffy and her friends.

The Scoobies had been almost too easy to fool. The conspirators had made sure to not have Sam come into any contact with the vampire, however. Spike was unnaturally observant and would have raised a question or two that might have ruined the entire plan.

It had been a gift to arrange for the vampire to be egg-sitting some Ferrisite offspring. For once, being overheard while discussing the plan with Sam had been a blessing. Enemies made strange bedfellows, indeed!

Riley knew that Buffy wouldn’t know the way Suvoltes bred and if they were egg layers or not. He figured that all he had to do was identify the eggs as Suvolte and imply that Spike was dealing in demonic weapons of mass destruction and Buffy would accept his word at face value. He also knew that she wouldn’t stake the vampire either, but it would end the relationship. Everything had gone according to plan, perfect in
every aspect.

Now all they had to do was immobilize Hostile 17, take him to headquarters and the lab so the doctors could do their tests before allowing Riley the pleasure of ending the vampire’s existence once and for all.

The Initiative had lost the American government funding that had been so useful for years. However, any great idea could find funding elsewhere.

The many medical and military personnel from the Initiative that had been involved based on a deep belief in their work went along with the reorganization. The addition of some disgruntled former members of the Watchers Council had added to the store of knowledge of the demon world and the world of Slayers as well.

The resulting group was now made up of true believers, those who sought to rid the world of every demon on it while discovering and using anything they could from those demons.

The group was well funded and used as mercenaries for more than one international government in need of demon eradication.

The former Watchers Council members were few, but their skills were quite an asset. They knew more Slayer and Demon lore than the Initiative had ever been able to collect. That knowledge had made some of the experiments unnecessary and saved plenty of time.

A few demon species had been completely wiped from the planet because no further information was needed from working on them.

There were a handful of former "wet works" Council members that had joined as well. They were well versed in methods of killing the various beasts.

They had a particular hatred for the current Slayers due to their consorting with Vampires and going soft on certain members of the demon population.

In their opinion, both the current Slayers should have been "put down" and a proper Slayer called. The sloppy Watchers who had allowed the girls to get out of hand should be punished as well.

The one responsible for the acting Slayer, Miss Summers, had been removed and was undergoing "re-education" in London even now.

The other, Wyndam-Pryce, had thrown his lot in with one of the worst of the creatures he had sworn to eliminate. Although, if informants could be believed, there was now some kind of estrangement there and the vampire had turned on the former Watcher.

The doctors who had served under Maggie Walsh had a special interest in Hostile 17. He was the only vampire that they had chipped who was still among the living. He should have been finished a few months after his escape. Just why the vampire was still functioning was a puzzle that the doctors were determined to solve. To do so meant recovering Hostile 17.

Riley had volunteered immediately. He had issues of his own where Spike was concerned, as did Sam. The higher powers of the organization had a vague knowledge of the issues Colonel Finn had with the Slayer, but knew he could be counted on to keep his head and get the job done.

They also knew he had some personal grudge against the escaped Hostile and, to sweeten the deal, they had promised that when the doctors were done Finn could have the duty of terminating the vampire with extreme prejudice and they would turn a blind eye to any method Finn chose to use. Riley had looked like a child at Christmas at the prospect. Payback was going to taste sweet.

Their first contact in Sunnydale was a short, long-tailed demon who looked more like a middle-aged librarian than anything else. He went by the name of Doc and he too had a score to settle with the Slayer and her Vampire lover.

Doc had been hiding, keeping a low profile, ever since he had recovered from the injuries he had incurred in his fall from the tower the previous year.

His only source of joy had been realizing that the Slayer was dead, until he heard the rumors that she lived yet again. From that moment on, Doc had a purpose in his life: revenge. The Vampire and the Slayer were going to suffer enough to wish that Doc had been successful in opening the portals and letting loose the hordes of demons in this dimension.

When he overheard Riley Finn laying groundwork for his plan to entrap the vampire, Doc’s ears perked up. He offered his services and an additional idea to the original plan. In return, he was going to be allowed to help Finn when it came time to put an end, a slow end, to the soulless traitor of a demon that was Spike.

In the months of planning and laying groundwork for the plan, Doc looked for just the right go between.

He spotted the Ravnar, Argot, as he was shuffling off to hunt up supper for his family. The payment Argot received from Doc in making the deal with Spike was enough to allow him to take his large brood and move to a cooler, and safer, clime a much richer demon.

Doc felt it money well spent. It hadn’t been too big a step from "Doc" to "The Doctor". Since no one was going to meet this "human researcher", his true identity would go unnoted. He didn’t even have to do anything more than purchase a few Ferrisite eggs. Even better was the fact that the soldier group gave him the needed cash and contacts to make that part the easiest job of his very, very long life.

Naturally, Doc didn’t trust the humans one bit. Having a chance to even the score with the Slayer and her pesky, interfering vampire made his discomfort bearable, however. Doc could hardly contain his excitement at the thought of the look that would surely be on Spike’s face when he saw just who he had been egg-sitting for!

Now all the months of preparation and planning were about to come to fruition. Doc waited at the designated place for his two human co-conspirators to arrive. The box was ready for Spike to be placed inside for transport as their moment of revenge was at hand.