One month later, on the opposite side of the city from Siron’s luxurious penthouse suite, in which such untold horrors were being visited upon his helpless prisoner on an almost daily basis by this point, other torments of a much different kind were being inflicted on another relatively helpless young male.

Or rather -- they would have been torments -- if he hadn’t loved every moment of it.

Mostly.

It should have been terrifying, living in a house with a dozen young women who were all physically capable of breaking him like a twig any time they felt like it, and yet seemed more inclined to use him as a lifesize Ken doll-slash-shopping buddy than to inflict bodily harm.

Slayers.

The two he had known before this had not even begun to prepare him for the experience of serving as a Watcher-by-proxy to a dozen willful, hormonal, and mostly inexperienced junior Slayers. Truth be told, he sometimes wondered if he was really up to the task, considering his own inexperience, not to mention his dark past as a former minion of evil.

But Andrew was usually more than willing to give it a try.

At the moment, however, he was not quite so sure.

One of the younger Slayers, Cassandra, had placed unyielding hands on his shoulders and held him down in his chair, until he had finally submitted to her desires -- and allowed her best friend Bridget to practice her French manicuring skills on his unfortunately girlish hands.

“You know, I don’t think you guys are really showing me the respect that is due someone in my position of authority,” he observed mildly as Bridget applied a second top coat to his flawlessly feminine nails. He frowned at the finished effect in front of his face and asked dubiously, “This stuff comes off easy, right?”

“I hope *this* comes off!” another young feminine voice declared angrily as three more Slayers strode noisily into the living room. “This is *disgusting*!”

The one who had spoken, Tina, was covered in some sort of bluish tinted goop, most likely the remains of some defeated demon -- and she did not look happy about it. The other two were laughing, still exhilarated from the battle they had just come from -- but Tina didn’t quite look as if she was ready to stop hitting things.

“These shoes are brand new -- and that was my favorite tank!” she griped, throwing herself down with a huff in the middle of the couch.

“And that -- was -- my favorite couch,” Andrew muttered with a sigh. “Actually, it was our *only* couch. So, you might wanna get up and go wash the demon goo off before you ruin every piece of furniture we own, ‘kay?”

Still grumbling, Tina got up and made her way toward the stairs, followed by one of the two who had come with her from patrolling. The third young Slayer, Melinda, glanced at the dampened sofa with a little grimace of distaste, before choosing an armchair beside Andrew instead.

“So I’m guessing patrol was successful then?” Andrew remarked, still frowning at his white-tipped fingernails, as Cassandra and Bridget got up and headed upstairs, following the other two.

“Sort of. A couple of Eilrach demons -- and a couple dozen vampires. But no sign of Siron or his men, no clue what they’re up to at the moment.”

Andrew sighed again, with a visible effort tearing his attention off of his fingernails and looking up at the pretty, chocolate-skinned young Slayer sitting beside him. “I kind of figured. Otherwise you would have said.” He paused a moment before continuing a bit morosely, “How are they hiding so well? I just don’t get it.”

“Yeah,” Melinda agreed, her full, pretty lips forming a slight pout as she frowned into space, considering the dilemma. “You’d think something as big as rebuilding Wolfram and Hart would be a little more obvious, you know? I mean -- it was a huge office complex, right? How do you hide something like that?”

Andrew shrugged, leaning his head against the back of his chair. “No clue. But our recon people haven’t noticed any activity whatsoever on the old site where Wolfram and Hart was. Nobody’s been in and out of what’s left of that building since…well, since all hell broke loose there. Whatever they’re doing -- they’re not doing it there.”

Melinda fought back the urge to roll her eyes at his exaggeratedly dramatic tone of voice and the knowing narrowing of his eyes as he looked at her, but she could not quite suppress a smile, shaking her head to indicate that she was at a loss as to what the forces of darkness were up to this time.

“Maybe they just haven’t started yet,” she suggested after a moment’s thought.

“Oh, they’ve started,” Andrew insisted in a low, dark voice that was incredibly out of place coming from the slight, completely unintimidating boy. “You can feel it -- see it -- the stench of darkest evil in the air…all around us…”

Frowning slightly, Melinda glanced at him speculatively as she asked, “Don’t you just -- *smell* a ‘stench’? And evil’s always all around us, that’s the first thing they teach us…”

“Whatever -- I can feel it,” Andrew shrugged with a dismissive wave of his hand, waiting a beat before adding flatly, “that, and the Council’s seers have picked up on increased activity in this area in the past two months.”

Melinda turned her head to hide the roll of her eyes and the smirk that rose in a natural response to his endearingly pretentious ways, glad that in that moment, the phone rang, and rising to answer it kept the young Watcher from noticing her amusement.

She seemed to see Andrew differently than many of the girls in the house did -- less as an annoying not-very-authoritative authority figure, and more as an eagerly helpful, somewhat more experienced than her, friend. Andrew was just who he was, and though he drove many of the girls nearly crazy with his nasal voice and constant references to obscure American pop culture, Melinda had learned to like him and accept him over the past few months.

After all, he really did mean well, and he didn’t look at the powerful, beautiful girls he was constantly surrounded by as nothing more than pieces of meat to be used to suit his own purposes -- and in her book, that counted for a lot.

As Andrew left the room to get the phone, Melinda rose from her chair and walked to the window, glancing out into the brightly lit city street. Until just about a year earlier, most of the girls in this house had had no idea of what dangers, what darkness, lurked in the shadows untouched by those lights -- and the idea of actually fighting it was the last thing on any of their minds.

Except Melinda’s.

Melinda had been fighting that darkness all her life.

For as long as she could remember, she had lived in L.A. She had probably been born there, as well -- though she would never really know for sure. Someone -- presumably her mother -- had left her on the steps of the hospital one autumn night, with no identification, no anything but the pitiful, ragged clothes she wore, and the thin blanket that had been wrapped around her.

During her entire childhood and adolescence, Melinda had known nothing but the California foster care system, shifted constantly from one foster home to another, with little say in the matter at any point. Some of the homes she had lived in had actually been nice; some others had not been all that bad.

Some had been *very* bad.

The first time one of her foster parents had come into her bedroom at night, uninvited and with no pure purpose in mind, she had been eleven years old, and already knew far more than an eleven-year-old child should have had to have known. As soon as she had realized what he had in mind, she had done her best to fight him off -- even when he covered her mouth to stifle her angry, panicked screams…even when his strong arms managed to pin her down…

Even when he shattered her innocence with his perverse need.

Melinda had always been a strikingly pretty girl, and while he might have been the first to violate her, he was certainly not the last. Melinda learned to be wary of men who willingly took other men’s daughters into their homes. Some seemed to have good, kind motives; others definitely did not -- and many times she was forced to fight for her very dignity.

Melinda might not have always won -- but she had always fought.

The last time she had been attacked -- by the last foster father she had ever had -- she had been fifteen years old.

The man had come to her in the middle of the night, as he usually did, and attempted to force himself on her as he already had done several times before. She knew that he was stronger than her, knew that she could not hold him off for long, but was determined that at the very least, she would make sure that he knew his crime.

There would be no question as to her consent.

The first clue she had gotten that something had changed, was when her first, awkward attempt to push him off of her sent him sailing not only off of her, but off of the bed, and into the far wall. She got up, still partially stunned and expecting him to come after her again, and poised to flee the moment he moved.

Except -- he hadn’t moved.

He had never moved of his own volition again.

The official reports stated that it had been self-defense -- as was the truth -- but Melinda had long since been branded a troublemaker by the social services system, and things had not looked good for her after that incident. She had been headed to juvenile hall, she knew, until her eighteenth birthday.

And then, Andrew had shown up, with the confident, powerful blonde that Melinda would never forget meeting -- and not only because she had explained to her about how her life, her destiny, had been irrevocably changed. That young woman had exuded power and authority, and had a beautiful strength about her that was not soon forgotten.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she was the longest living Slayer ever.

Or maybe it was the fact that she’d died twice, and was still alive.

Either way, Melinda’s life had been forever changed that day.

She had had her doubts as to whether or not this grand “destiny” they had described to her, the reason for her suddenly increased strength, would be able to begin until after her eighteenth birthday, when she would be released into the public again. But apparently, the British based organization they worked with had a lot more power than Melinda had guessed, because by the end of the day, she had been released and was on a plane to England with her new-found friends.

And the rest was history.

She had barely graduated the extensive training program they had placed her in, when news of the apocalyptic occurrences in L.A. had reached the Council in London. Andrew had seemed rather sobered by the news, though Melinda had not really understood at the time why this was any worse than any other averted apocalypse she had been through in the past months.

Neither Andrew, or Mr. Giles, the current head of the new and improved Council of Watchers, had had much to say on the subject, brushing off the girls’ inquiries by stating that it had to do with shared history, and personal connections, and that to anyone besides the few who remained to remember the days before they had changed the world by activating the Slayers, the events in L.A. would really not seem all that climactic.

However, Andrew had said once, in quiet, hushed tones of reluctant secrecy, that Buffy -- known by most of the girls by now as the “original” Slayer -- had not left her Italian apartment for a month after hearing the news.

So Melinda privately thought that it had to be pretty important.

A few weeks later, Mr. Giles had dispatched Andrew, Melinda, and the rest of the girls in the group to the townhouse in L.A., to prevent the rebuilding of the evil law firm that had been Wolfram and Hart.

Only -- there didn’t appear to be any rebuilding.

Oh, every now and then, a few of the girls out patrolling might catch a glimpse of the unusual humanoid breed of demon that were supposedly responsible for overseeing the rebuilding -- but there had only been one or two brief scuffles with them so far, and they always managed to slip away before they could be captured or killed. and they also had managed to give the slip to any of the young Slayers who attempted to shadow them back to their headquarters, to this point undiscovered.

Since there didn’t appear to be any action at the old site of Wolfram and Hart, and the demon general Siron and his men were lying low, there hadn’t been much for the girls to do beside hone their battle skills with routine patrols.

But as overdramatically as Andrew had stated it, Melinda knew what he was talking about.

Something in the air just didn’t feel right.

Something was happening -- they just didn’t know where, how, or what, precisely.

And that was never a good thing, as far as Melinda was concerned.

Andrew’s rushed footsteps -- clearly recognizable by his clumsy gait, and the thumping, clattering sound of a trip midway to the living room -- drew Melinda out of her remembrances, and she turned back toward the doorway to face the young Watcher, gasping and out of breath as he gripped the back of the chair he had sat in earlier, grinning up at her with wide, excited eyes.

“We’ve got a lead on Siron!” he announced, fairly bouncing with excitement. “That was Mr. Giles on the phone, and our witches managed to do a locator spell using that sword that one of them left behind after that fight last week,” he explained, his tone rambling and breathless and almost too quick for Melinda to follow, “and they’ve traced them to a ritzy apartment complex across town!”

Melinda raised her eyebrows, understandably doubtful. “Do demons usually live so high class?”

Andrew shrugged, not surprised by the situation. “Some do,” he answered simply. His grin widened as he asked her, “Ready for a mission? Something a little more interesting than patrolling?”

“Am I!” Melinda agreed emphatically, thrilled at the relief from her boredom promised by his words. “What’s the orders?”