She took long steps through the alley, back arched a little in a posture that felt familiar now. The brick apartment buildings on both sides of her were damp; it had rained at sunset. Now it was after three in the morning. The air was hot and wet, and the scents lifting from the dumpsters were sickening.

People who lived around here were pretty much oblivious to the rank parade of crumbling pavement and soggy cardboard that backed their swank, high-ceilinged, walk-in-closeted homes. Alleys, they believed, were for the building staff, or the housekeeper.

Buffy knew better. It was a good part of town for such a bad girl.

Fifth floor, corner unit, floor-to-ceilings, hardwood. One thousand square feet of home sweet home. Buffy kicked her strappy heels off into a large pile of similarly fetishist footwear nested in the closet of the second bedroom. It served as a kind of glorified dressing room. When she’d rented the place a half year ago, she’d thought twice about living alone in this much space. It was more than she needed.

But, she eventually decided, not more than she deserved. Fuck, she was the Slayer. What’s too good for the one girl in all the world?

In the bathroom, she peeled out of her black leather pants, rolled a joint while she peed.

She’d dusted three vamps outside the club before work, and then done for a customer who tried following her home afterwards. In between, she’d banked almost eight hundred dollars in tips. She weighed the thick cylinder of small bills in one hand: not bad. Couldn’t tell between the money she’d coaxed from humans and what she’d made off demons. The club was frequented by a good number of both, and she was girl who lured in the evil clientele.

She stood, leaving the pants crumpled on the bathroom floor. Looking herself over in the vanity mirror, Buffy flicked a flame from her lighter and pulled a cloud of smoke into her chest. The dainty crackle of the weed as it burnt down made her grin.

Coiling a long strand of dark red hair around her finger, she checked for splits at the ends. She’d gone red as a condition of her hire. If Rick had known then what he knew now, that she had a raw power about her that hooked customers like trout, he’d have let her stay blond.

She’d only been there a month when he called her back to his office and produced retainer paperwork. There’d been a lawyer, a handshake, and her name in script on three separate forms, and she now got what none of her co-workers did: a salary.

She’d also given up something they all still had: the right to dance anywhere else.

Not that it was much of a sacrifice. Every other strip joint in town was a dive. The feeling of being kept rubbed her wrong, though. She pushed the envelope every chance she got, determined to prove that she still called the shots, fuck a bunch of legal binding contract.

She’d put a ring in her lip and a barbell through the hood of her clit, because Rick didn’t allow piercings. Called in sick on Saturday nights for the hell of it sometimes, just to piss him off. He said not to date the customers, but she took ‘em home when she wanted to. She technically didn’t date them, she supposed, so maybe she was still in bounds with that one.

When Buffy told him that there was a wealthy society of gentlemen in town who got off on pretending they were vampires, Rick told her Bloody Marys would satisfy them. Buffy’s ultimatum, to stock animal blood behind the bar or up her salary by a quarter to make up for the tips she’d lose out on if he didn’t, fueled the partnership between Rick and Dulano, the butcher on 10th Street. It took concealing four health code violations, but Buffy got what she wanted.

They came to her now, slews of them, and she teased them until they were at her mercy. Nothing got her hot like lap dancing a vamp; the rush of power was better than any drug she’d tried. The best slays of her life were the vamps who panted as she ground her leathered pussy on their engorged cocks, begging her to stake them, hissing please again and again.

The custodians never asked about the dust.



*


One hadn’t been enough.

Before he’d killed Xin Rong, Spike had lusted after her, after all of them, every Slayer in history, and all the Slayers that would come later. Every vampire dreamed of bagging a Slayer, but Spike had been fixated. He’d sought her out, gone to her, bugger the warnings he’d gotten from Angelus, and the ones his own undead body sent tearing through him. The closer he got, the more his skin sang, and itched, and finally felt nearly on fire.

That battle, that consummate kill, had been his becoming. It elevated his status in the Order of Aurelius. It won him Dru’s heart, and her cold, tight quim, and her mark. That night she bit him, the first time since he was turned; swallowfulls of the Chinese girl’s blood washed down her throat. She bit him and fucked him and owned him, and the mystical transfusion permeated it all: his first real sex, as man or demon.

They’d holed up for days.

Overlaying it all was the constant presence of the fight, fight of his bloody unlife. Over and over he told it to Dru, a dozen different ways. Xin Rong had been worthy, had demanded the height of his skill and strength and concentration, pushed him past fury straight into the belly of passion, of desire. He thought of the fight while Dru pumped her pelvis up and up, a shard of moonlight laid out beneath him, mouth the coppery flavor of blood. Thought of it while she slept and he couldn’t, bathed in silent awe and gratitude at the fact that there was another. Already there was another, and he could have her again, again and again, a hundred times again if he pleased.

Xin Rong had taught him a truth he shared with only a scant handful of other vampires: you couldn’t know what it was to want a Slayer, not the real, consuming enormity of it, until you’d had one. And once you did, the wanting would become who you were, every last fiber of you. The wanting of one girl, and the knowledge that you could, if you were powerful and ruthless enough, kill her endlessly.

He’d had to wait almost a century to kill her again.

Nikki had nearly taken him. Could have gone either way. That was part of it, the ecstasy snarled up in the risk. Memory of the exquisite sting of each connecting blow on both sides; the freefall of her resistance when he twisted her neck into a break; the flesh-muffled crunch that sounded his triumph, he parceled them away with such great care. He dreamed of riding the tube in New York, and he’d live it again, every detail, even the smell of her hair, the screech of the rails.

His cock, when he woke, would be achingly hard. He’d palm himself slowly, drawing it out, whispering her name.

One girl in all the world.

Spike sauntered through the night. His black leather duster, legacy of the last time he’d killed her, swirled around his ankles like low-slung wings. A neon martini glass blinked on the horizon, then the word, RICK’S, letter by letter, blinding magenta. His eyes watered, twitching from blue to gold and back, hands and neck rigid. He’d been traveling for days, following the sirens in his head. When he almost remembered the feeling of his own pulse, he knew he was in range.

And now he could smell her, rich and hot and cocky, strong. Tonight he’d kill her again.

Two hadn’t been enough.