From the moment she stepped off the bus, her first concern had been finding shelter; while it was warm now, the rest of the state had been so damnably cold that she knew it couldn't last. She almost found herself longing for the easy climate of California, the Land of No Weather, but crushed the idea before it could fully form; that way madness lies. Thankfully, according to the two-dollar city map she bought, there was a YWCA in town.

After turning her credit cards into easy cash back in Bakersfield, maintaining her funds had been a worry, but one that hadn't been so important after figuring out bus routes and YWCA locations. The bus routes were cheap ways to get from one place to the next, and the YWCA's were cheap ways to stay in a city until a bus came along that was headed to another one. What she hadn't realized when she had decided to stay at YWCA's wherever she went was this: places that rent beds and showers cheaply tend to attract loonies. She had seen more off-kilter human beings in five cities' YWCA's than she had in two years of slaying.

In the two weeks since she left Sunnydale, Buffy had made it almost halfway across the country, treating her departure less as running away than a vacation. A permanent vacation, but a vacation nonetheless. She had even managed to enjoy herself a bit at certain times, but then she would catch sight of a man dressed in a black suit or a girl with red hair or a skateboarder or someone wearing tweed, and it was all she could do to make it back to her bunk at the Y before the tears began.

That was something else she had noticed: a good many of the women and girls staying at YWCA's--some of them younger than her, some three times her age--broke into tears at the drop of a hat. How many of them, she wondered, were running away from something, like she was? How many of them had seen the horrors she had? How many of them had killed?

She shook the idea out of her head and returned to the present, where she was just another girl on the streets, looking for a place to lay her head. She bundled up tighter, glad that she had brought a thick jacket along in her satchel. Looking at her satchel dispelled any notions that she was just another girl, however. After all, no other girl she could think of carried a cross, holy water, and wooden stakes in a side pocket of her carry-on.

Buffy turned the corner to the YWCA, went inside, and registered. After a hot shower and safely locking up her bag, she decided to go for a walk, taking a stake and a vial of holy water with her. *This isn't the Hellmouth, girl*, she chided herself. *Better safe than sorry*, a voice in her head returned, one that sounded remarkably like her mother. She didn't bother with any weapons besides those against the supernatural. Human scum held no terror for her; she had fought muggers and attempted rapists in three of the five cities she had been in, and none of them, even those with knives or guns, had been more than a nuisance. Her Slayer heritage made normal humans no match for her, and simply served to reinforce the feelings of *difference* that she struggled with.

The only thing that she had taken out of those encounters with normal criminals was the knowledge that, just because a place wasn't a Hellmouth, didn't mean it wasn't dangerous. Still, she hadn't seen one vampire, werewolf, or demon since Sunnydale, and she was beginning to wonder if the things she remembered had ever happened at all. Her life as the Slayer seemed so far away now. Was she one of the loonies she had such disdain and pity for? Were the things she remembered just part of some delusion, some schizophrenic fantasy that she had conjured up to explain running away? Was she just another girl after all, one who carried around vampire-slaying tools and learned Tai Chi and called herself "the Slayer" to reinforce a psychotic self-deception?

Buffy's doubts and fears came to an abrupt halt as she saw something up ahead. She had been so busy asking questions about her identity and past that she hadn't been paying attention to the path she took. Her little walk had carried her into an alley in a part of the city that she hadn't seen and had somehow managed to consume--she looked quickly at her watch--three hours, putting her outdoors well after dark. Giles would be so mad-

She shook her head sharply; Giles wasn't here, this wasn't Sunnydale, and the body she saw up ahead was probably just a drunk passed out after a binge. Still, discretion was the better part of valor, so she made her approach a cautious one. Finally, she came alongside the body, that of a large man bundled up even tighter than she was. Buffy realized how terribly cold the night was, not that it bothered her so much; as the Slayer, she could withstand greater extremes of heat and cold than other people could. She sighed; she had almost managed to forget herself, and now this had happened and her protector instinct was back in full force.

Buffy pulled off one glove and checked the man's neck for a pulse. Not finding one, she checked the other side; her first aid knowledge was a little rusty. Her fingers brushed against something on his neck, something that she found both familiar and chilling. Praying to any god that might exist, Buffy shook her head in denial. *No, please, not here, not this, not now.* She pulled her fingers back from his neck, not even bothering to wipe off the blood she knew was on them--she had so much blood on her hands already, this little bit more wouldn't hurt--and flipped him over.

His face was calm in the sleep of death, but it wasn't his face Buffy was interested in. She pulled back his collar with trembling fingers, hoping that she was wrong, that she would find nothing there. As his throat came into view, Buffy realized that her prayers had been futile, and that Giles had been right all along: she could never run from her destiny.

For on his neck, piercing his grey and exsanguinated skin, were two fang marks.

Returning to her cot that night, Buffy found sleep elusive and unsatisfying. The small amount of sleep she did get was filled with nightmares of a sort she hadn't had since dying in the Master's lair.

The next morning, again warmer than was normal for this part of the country, Buffy returned to the scene of the crime, hoping to look for clues to the location of the vampire's sanctuary. She arrived there just as the police were departing, a chalk outline and several bloodstains the only thing that remained of the victim. As she snuck into the alley, past the police tape, something struck her: why were there bloodstains at all? Vampires might be evil killers, but they were generally neat eaters. She shrugged it off--it didn't matter why the vamp left any behind, finding it was all that mattered.

The only person left at the scene was obviously there covertly as well, judging from the way he moved; he wore a battered fedora, and for a moment Buffy wondered if the Whistler had followed her, but the man turned, revealing a decidedly non-Whistler individual. Seeing the old-style camera around his neck, Buffy guessed he must be working for one of the local newspapers.

"What happened here?" she asked him, though she knew the answer already. The man, tall and thin, almost gangling, jumped nearly a foot in the air and stifled a scream only by the slimmest margins.

"Whew, kid, you scared me good," he said amiably, removing his fedora and using its brim to mop his forehead. "Places like this always make me jumpy. What are you doing here? This is no place for a girl your age." The man's crane-like face showed concern and confusion, his brows bunching below a receding hairline.

"I... uh, I live around here," Buffy lied easily. "I heard the sirens, and I came over to see what happened. So, what *did* happen?" The man replaced the fedora on his head and visibly debated between telling Buffy and telling her off. Finally, he seemed to decide, and told her.

"Well, some guy got knocked off last night." Buffy feigned an adequate facsimile of disgust and horror, and the tall man continued. "The police found a couple of holes in his neck, like he got bit by a vampire. Funny, huh? Not like funny, ha-ha, I mean, but you know, funny, strange. Weirder thing, though, it ain't the first one. The police have been keeping a pretty tight lid on it, but there's been five more just like him over the last month, maybe more they ain't heard about."

"Then how did you hear about it?" asked Buffy.

"Oh," the tall man said, "I work for the Boulder Dispatch; we're just a small-time press, only about fifty employees. I'm a freelancer--I take photos sometimes, other times I write pieces for the paper. My name's Blake, Jack Blake." He extended his hand, which Buffy took gingerly. "Let's get out of here, huh? This place creeps me out." Buffy agreed, and they walked out of the alley together.

Hoping to entice him to reveal more details about the murder, Buffy let it drop that she was just about to eat breakfast. Jack agreed that it was fairly early in the morning, he hadn't even had coffee yet when his scanner picked up news about the body's discovery. Buffy said that there were several places nearby that had fair breakfast menus, and even intimated that she wouldn't mind some company as she ate. Seeming slightly surprised, Jack consented to having breakfast with her. Over the next hour and a half, Buffy subtly pumped the older man for everything he could tell her about the murders, letting him go only after he noticed the time and told her that he had to get over to the paper's offices before ten.

After breakfast--which she had only picked at, leaving her almost as hungry as before--Buffy returned to the Y to plan her actions. Laying on the soft cot, Buffy was grateful that no one else was in this dorm-style room at the moment; she wanted peace and quiet while she thought. She retrieved her satchel and pulled out the city map she had bought at the bus station, then began to mark the areas Jack had said were the sites of the other murders. Vampires were extremely territorial creatures, Buffy knew; they wouldn't go farther than they had to. As she had expected, there was indeed a pattern; all of the killings had taken place in a four-block area... which just so happened to encompass the YWCA where Buffy was staying.

Buffy smiled a grim smile. Good; she wouldn't have to patrol very far tonight. Hopefully, she would find the vampire's lair right away--in Buffy's experience, vampires weren't cautious if they didn't have to be--stake it, stake any more it might have made, and be on the next long-range bus out of Boulder by the day after tomorrow.

At that thought, Buffy frowned slightly. *And after that bus*, she thought, *the next and the next and the next... And where will it end? How long will I keep running?* And to that question, she found, she had no answer at all.

Buffy caught a quick nap in the afternoon and even found time for a small meal before she went out hunting. Her nerves were tense, her fighting instincts screaming for action, but beneath the anxiety and anger, there was at least a little excitement. She was slightly horrified to find that she was *hoping* for a confrontation with a vampire, longing for it in the way she had longed for shopping trips when she was still a normal girl; she regarded the event itself with a frenetic need for action, ignoring the events that had led up to it.

She searched inside herself, looking for the protector urge that had initially caused her to check on the man in the alley, and found nothing at all except hot rage and a boiling need for a fight. If anything about this entire trip had frightened her, this attitude was it. First and foremost, her duties as the Slayer had always been to protect those that could not protect themselves. While she had not always been successful, right up until her final days in Sunnydale she had always tried her damnedest to fulfill that particular duty. When her hatred of Angelus had not been enough to let her face him, the need to prevent anyone else from meeting Jenny Calendar's fate had.

Where was that urge to protect the weak now? Gone, as though it had never been. And that, in the end result, had been the main factor in her decision to leave Sunnydale. Not being kicked out of school--that could have been viewed as a blessing. Not being kicked out of her home--she could have dealt with it, and she had a feeling that, in time, her mother might actually have had a change of heart. Not even Angel's death at her hands--as much as that had hurt, she might have proven strong enough to survive it. But all of those together, plus her own sudden indifference? That had finally broken her.

No, she wasn't hunting this vampire tonight to protect mankind, or even really to avenge the dead, as much as she would have like to believed. Buffy had always been terrible at lying to herself, and she knew that her real reason was so much more simple, and so much more awful: she wanted to hurt something, to take out her own rage on an uncaring world. And while she still had enough of her Slayer instincts left to prevent her from harming human beings, she felt absolutely no compunction towards staking a few vamps. It was her job, right? So why not have a little fun with it?

Buffy's reflections came to an abrupt end with the chilling sound of a scream of mortal terror, one that was probably less than two hundred feet from her current location. She began to run towards the sound, hoping that it wasn't already too late for the victim--after all, he might be able to identify his attacker.

By the time Buffy arrived at the location of the scream--yet another back alleyway; Boulder seemed full of them--the scream itself had cut off, rather suddenly. She checked the alley, her preternatural senses keenly attuned to the slightest movement or the lowest sound. What she heard and saw sickened her, as it always did, regardless of the number of times she had seen it: a figure dressed in dark clothing was hunched over a prone body, slurping noises coming from the upper figure, and slight gasps and choking noises from the one laying on the ground. Buffy sprang into action, flipping toward the two figures, her hands coming up in an offensive martial arts posture as she landed.

"Hey, pal," she taunted, "why don't you pick on someone who can pick back?"

As the upper figure turned her way, surprise etched on every motion it made, Buffy saw something that struck her as surreally funny: the vampire had on a bib and held a long metal straw in one hand. Fighting back a perverse and intense urge to giggle madly, Buffy advanced. Rather than attack, the vampire chose to flee; he turned so quickly that she didn't get a good look of his face and ran away at a rate normally attributed to Olympic medalists, stumbling once as he went. She started to chase after him, but the figure on the ground rolled and moaned; he was still alive, after all.

Buffy wrestled with herself for a moment. A year ago, six months ago, two months ago, there would have been no question in her mind: aid the survivors first, then hunt down the monster. Now, Buffy found herself of two minds. On the one hand, her drive to protect was bugging her--not as strong as it once was, but still alive apparently--and it was eating at her now. But on the other hand, she would be leaving Boulder in two days, regardless of what happened tonight or tomorrow, so better to catch the vamp now and let the regular authorities deal with the victims. Finally, Buffy made her choice; she knelt down beside the wounded man and began to tear his shirt into strips to use as makeshift bandages until she could get him to the hospital.

She helped him to his feet and led him down the alleyway, out of this dark place and into safety. As she passed the spot where the vampire had almost tripped, a small, reflective object caught her eye. She propped the man against the alley wall, eliciting a small moan of complaint from him, and stooped to pick up what her enemy had dropped. As she turned the small, flat card in her hands, watching the distant street lights shimmer on its surface like oil on water, she suddenly had her answers--where the vampire was, who he was, almost everything.

And the answers chilled her to the bone.

Buffy went back to the Y that night, but found sleep to be more difficult to attain than usual. As she tossed on the cot that night, she heard weeping come from three bunks down. This time, rather than ignore it, she sought out its source, finding a small, thin girl about her own age. The girl was dressed far too lightly for the Boulder weather, so Buffy guessed she was an out-of-towner and not a local runaway.

"Hey," said Buffy gently, "are you all right?" The girl sniffed, drawing her tattered sleeve across her face to dry her tears.

"A little better now, I guess," she responded. "Thanks for asking."

"No prob." Sensing the girl's tentativeness, Buffy continued. "I get weepy like that sometimes, too. Nothing to be ashamed of. I'm Buffy, by the way." She offered her hand, but the other girl simply stared at it, so she retracted the proffered limb.

"I'm Stacy. I'm not from around here."

"Yeah, I kinda guessed that. I'm not local either; just kinda passing through on the way to... well, I'm not really sure where I'm headed just yet, but I'll figure it out." Buffy looked closer at Stacy's face. The other girl, while pretty, had her good looks marred by an extremely dark tan; even this desert-burn couldn't keep the bruises on her cheek and neck from showing up, however. Noticing Buffy's scrutiny, Stacy's hand fluttered to her face, touching the bruises lightly as though she were slightly embarrassed about them.

"I suppose you're wondering about these, huh?" she asked meekly. "It's not what you're probably thinking; I'm not, like, a domestic abuse case or anything."

"I didn't say a word," said Buffy. "Whenever I get bruises like that, it's 'cause I got slugged by an evil undead monster wanting to take over the world." Buffy's smile faded as she noticed that Stacy wasn't laughing. "That was meant to be a joke."

"Oh. Ha-ha." Stacy seemed on the verge of retreating within herself, appearing to shrink somehow. Buffy sensed something deeper to her uneasiness, but decided not to pursue it. She had done her good deed for the night; now she could go to sleep with a clean conscience.

"Are you sure you're okay now?" Buffy asked again. At Stacy's nod, she stood and began to move away. "Okay, but if you want to talk about anything, I'll be a few bunks down. I know what it's like to be alone and scared; sometimes it's better just to have someone to talk to." Stacy smiled weakly and nodded her head. "'Night, then."

"'Night," repeated Stacy.

Buffy went back to her bunk, confused. She didn't know why she had wanted to comfort that girl, only that her gut told her that they were connected in some way. What that way was, Buffy didn't have the slightest clue, but even if she hadn't helped Stacy, talking to another human being had helped her greatly. She finally made it to sleep, and this time her sleep was undisturbed.

The next day, Buffy gathered her weapons together and debated on which to use. Finally, she decided on a simple stake, though with what she had discovered the previous night, she wasn't sure if it would help her. She pocketed the card she had found, trying her best to keep it from disintegrating between her fingers and her pocket.

She headed out, walking a few blocks down and over, and eventually found the apartment building she was looking for. She examined the nameplates and buzzed up.

"Yeah," came the slightly lazy voice from the speaker.

"It's me," she said, knowing that the owner of that voice would recognize her, one way or the other. "I've got some information for you."

"Who...?" The voice seemed confused for a moment, then made the connection. "Um, Buffy, isn't it? Come on up; I'll unlock the door."

Buffy entered the building and began to pace up the stairs. Even though he had said he would unlock the door, she knocked lightly before entering. If she was wrong in her deductions, she didn't want to put him through more than necessary. And if she was right... she didn't want to leave more evidence than she absolutely had to. She walked in after the apartment's owner acknowledged her and closed the door behind her, locking it surreptitiously.

"Okay," said Jack Blake, looking even ganglier without his fedora, "what's this evidence you say you have?" Buffy reached into her pocket slowly; this was the moment of truth, when she was proven right or wrong.

"This," Buffy said. Blake leaned in for a closer look, and pronounced that he couldn't tell what it was. "That's because I found it in a puddle of water at the last murder scene. Not the one where we met, but the one last night." Blake started slightly at that.

"There's been another one?"

"You know there has. See, before the water damaged this card too badly for me to read it, I saw what it was: an old-style press card. You know, the kind that's supposed to fit in the brim of a hat... say, a fedora hat?"

"What are you...?" started Blake before Buffy cut him off.

"You're really an old-fashioned boy, aren't you, Jack? You wear fedora hats, carry printed press cards, use a camera from the Fifties..."

"It's a 1946 Kodakchrome," he said, all intonation gone from his voice. "They had more definition than virtually any other camera made before them, but fell out of favor with the general public a year later with the development of the Polaroid Land Camera, the first self-processing still camera ever made."

"And you like high definition, don't you?" Buffy asked with a deadly tremor in her voice, stalking closer to the now-retreating Blake. "You like their faces to show up as clear as you can get. But why not color?" she added venomously. Blake continued to back away from her, until finally his back was pressed against a shelf filled with books on photography and even a couple of flashes and lenses. His prized Kodakchrome was on the shelf as well, about shoulder-high to the tall man.

"Color has less impact. Black and white photos are starker, grimmer, more angst to them." Buffy was almost shaking from barely-checked anger at this point, so it can be forgiven that she didn't notice his right hand fumbling with something on the shelf. It is slightly less forgivable that she wasn't able to dodge when Blake brought up his right hand, holding a hard-back camera case, and slugged her across the temple with it.

Buffy reeled away from the blow, tripping over the ugly plush carpeting and landing in an ungainly heap on the floor. Blake advanced upon her, holding the camera case over his head, obviously hoping to crush her skull with it. Buffy feigned weakness until he was right on top of her, then used her heels for a tripping leg hook that sent Blake stumbling against the shelf once more. She regained her feet almost instantly, dodging to one side as Blake charged her. She extended her arm, bent slightly at the elbow, and caught his thin neck in it, flipping him and sending him crashing to the floor.

Blake had managed to hold on to the camera case, and he threw it at Buffy's head. Buffy dodged him again, and the case struck the shelf a jarring blow. She half-turned as she heard a loud "thump" from behind her, and was stunned for a moment by the flash of a camera. She turned back toward Blake, shaking her head to clear the spots from her vision, only to find that he had taken advantage of her momentary distraction to make a break for it. He got as far as the door before Buffy caught up to him, grabbing him by the back of the neck and slamming his forehead into the door he had so strived for, thus rendering him unconscious.

Buffy dragged Blake's insensate body over to the couch and debated with herself over what to do with him. She pulled out her stake and looked at it with an unholy intensity. *He isn't a vampire*, she said to herself. *No, he's just a ghoul*, returned a mental voice that sounded like hers. Buffy frowned. Where had she heard that before? Thoughts clashed against each other inside her head, forming and disappearing before she could grip them fully.

*Yikes. The quality of mercy-*

Was it Xander that had said that?

*-is not Buffy.* No, she supposed it wasn't. She hefted the stake, and prepared for the blow to the chest that would end this miserable creature's life. As she prepared, more voices came.

*You can't just give and take lives like that. It's not your job.* She shook her head, trying to clear it of the doubts.

*The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats.* *Shut up, Giles. This is my decision.*

*Think of me as your judge, jury, and executioner.* *Great. Not that little Nazi again.*

Buffy continued to hesitate, the long minutes passing by in an excruciating daze. Finally, as Blake's eyes began to flutter open, she made her choice. Her hand descended in a blur, gripping the shaft of the stake even tighter than before. Blake's eyes started open as he saw what was coming for him. The stake came whizzing down like the finger of some avenging angel, sweeping toward Blake's heart with unmistakable intent...

...and altered its course at the last possible moment, turning so that the haft was now horizontal, sweeping on a new path. Buffy's clenched fist, made heavier still by the weight of the stake, smashed into Blake's face, returning him to the bleak oblivion of unconsciousness. Buffy threw the stake aside, and her hands rushed to her face to cover up hot tears.

Buffy had made her choice, and she found that it was the only one that she could live with.

Buffy tied up Blake, smashed open his bathroom door, and scattered dozens of photos all over the apartment. Then she called the police, giving them a short message that detailed the location and identity of their "vampire killer." Finally, she surveyed her work, retrieved her stake, and left the apartment. She almost left the building before she recalled something she had seen in a movie once, and went back to polish the doorknob with her shirt sleeve.

She ran back to the Y, gathered her things, and ran on to the bus terminal. Quickly examining her options, she bought a ticket for a bus headed to New Orleans, by way of Oklahoma and Texas. It was a long, circuitous route, one which would afford her with plenty of time to think on the events of the last few days, maybe clear her head a little. She had discovered on this trip that she could just tune out the world while watching the countryside go whizzing past, perfect for dealing with any issues she might have.

As Buffy boarded the bus, she realized that her choice with Blake had also decided a number of other things for her. While she was not going to return to Sunnydale right away, maybe not even for a long time, she would go back eventually, if only to make things right with her friends, Giles, and her mother. And while she might not ever be the Slayer again, at least not full-time, she would continue to protect the world as best she knew how. Filled with a new resolve, her spirits buoyant for the first time in what felt like a long time, Buffy's bus pulled out, leaving her unaware of two very important things.

First, Stacy, the girl Buffy had comforted in the Y, had come running up to the terminal just as the bus pulled out. She waved her arms and jumped up and down, visibly trying to get the bus to stop. Either the driver did not see her or he chose not to see her, but whatever the cause, the bus did not stop, leaving Stacy behind with a look on her face that suggested that she had something vital to tell Buffy.

The other thing was so subtle that she might not have noticed it anyway, had she been paying attention. Off in a dark corner of the terminal, a place that lent itself greatly to covert observation, stood a small man. He wore a black jacket over a white T-shirt, but the most visible part of his attire was his anachronistic fedora, cocked crazily on his scalp.

He was smirking.

Read the Next Chapter

Back to Previous Chapter