Willow opened the door to her dorm room, tired from a long weekend study session. She was planning to go right to sleep. Instead, she found the television on some movie she didn’t recognize and Buffy sitting in bed, wrapped in a blanket, eating ice cream out of the container and frowning.
Willow dropped her books on her desk and looked at Buffy worriedly. Since her roommate had returned from L.A. she’d been looking forward to spending long weekends with Angel. “What are you doing here?” Willow asked. “I thought you were coming back tomorrow.”
Buffy’s frown got even deeper. “I was. I wasn’t feeling well, so I came back early.”
“Dizzy spells again?” Willow asked in concern.
Buffy nodded. “Worse this time.”
Willow bit her lip. This had been going on for weeks now. The first time had been minor, and Willow had only heard about it in retrospect when the dizziness had recurred a week later. “I really think you should see a doctor,” Willow said, as she had a week before.
“But I feel fine now!” Buffy said back in exasperation. “It’s not fair,” she whined. “All I want is to spend a nice, romantic weekend with Angel. Instead, every time I go to see him I end up feeling sick. And minutes after I get back I feel right as rain again.” She pouted. “How are we supposed to rebuild our relationship when I can’t even stand up straight in his city?”
Willow sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the air or something in L.A?”
“Maybe,” Buffy agreed reluctantly.
“You’ll never know if you don’t see a doctor,” Willow said. “Or, tell Giles, if you think it’s supernatural related.”
“Okay, okay,” Buffy agreed testily, closing up the ice cream. “I’ll do it tomorrow.” Buffy stood, put the ice cream away and began to put on her shoes.
“Where are you going?”
“You look like you want to go to bed,” Buffy said. “I…need to go kill something. Don’t wait up.”
She wouldn’t admit it, but this had been going on since well before the dizzy spells began. She could remember the way she’d felt over the summer, when she’d stayed in L.A. to take care of Angel. The longer she had been away from Sunnydale, the more dragged out and tired she had felt. She hid it well…and then the moment she got back to Sunnydale her energy returned.
It was beyond exasperating. If this got much worse, sooner or later she wouldn’t be able to visit Angel at all. He’d have to exclusively visit her in Sunnydale.
Even worse still, it was taking longer each time for Buffy to recover. Even right this moment she wasn’t feeling perfectly like herself.
Yup, no doubt about it – the situation sucked.
Buffy stalked through the cemetery, tapping a stake in her palm. Her mind wandered. She could feel Angel’s arms around her as he supported her in her latest dizzy spell. She could see his worried face as he waited for her to regain her bearings. She could sense his hesitation at seeing her get in the car to head home. Then, as her mind wandered, the image shifted. Now she saw Angel as he looked when she first arrived at his apartment, the way his smiles lit up his entire face when he saw her. He never used to smile like that before. When he used to smile, and that was a rare event in itself, it had never quite wiped away the sadness that he lived with. Now, his smiles…god, she loved the way he smiled for her.
A rustle nearby made Buffy snap back to her surroundings. She was near the crypts now; they loomed ominously in the darkness. Not the best place to be distracted after dark. She could sense a presence nearby, hovering just out of sight. She knew it was just as aware of her as she was of it.
“Alright, come out,” Buffy called, clutching her stake. “I’m really not in the mood for games tonight.”
A vampire separated himself from the shadows to Buffy’s right. “No games, Slayer,” he said, and his face shifted to reveal the demon within. “Just death.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Where do you get your lines?” she said in disgust. “I’ll tell you, no one just shuts up and dies anymore.”
“Oooh, she’s feisty,” another voice said from in front of her, revealing another vampire. “Will that make her blood taste better?”
“She’s a Slayer,” a third vampire said as if it was obvious. “It doesn’t get better than that.”
Buffy frowned as she noticed two more silent vampires standing nearby. Five against one wasn’t good odds, especially since she only had two stakes with her. But she was one pissed off Slayer. There was no way they’d ever gone up against a Slayer as angry as she was at that moment.
She pulled out her stake in one swift movement. The second talker seemed like a fair enough target; Buffy was guessing she was a newbie. She registered the shock on the vampire’s face a second before the stake impacted, and a second before her companion vampire barreled into Buffy’s side. The blow tore the stake from Buffy’s hand, and it turned to dust along with the vampire she’d hit.
In the split second before she fell with the second vampire on top, Buffy regretted the loss of her weapon. Then she hit the ground so hard the breath was momentarily knocked out of her. She wrestled for a second with the vampire on top of her before she managed to flip him off and spring back to her feet. Her battle stance was only regained for a second before another vampire was aiming a blow for her head. She dodged it, but that put her back in reach of the vampire that knocked her over. He grabbed her hard from behind, arms crossing over her chest and making it difficult for her to breathe. Another of the vampires approached her front menacingly.
Buffy waited a second, then in one movement shoved her feet out into the stomach of the vampire in front of her and her head back into the chin of the one behind her. He released her suddenly and all three of them fell to the ground. Buffy rolled, springing back to her feet quickly. They knew how to fight together. Not good.
“What is this?” she asked breathless. “Four against one? Whatever happened to playing fair?”
“I thought you said no games,” the apparent leader retorted.
Buffy frowned. “Oh yeah. I did.” She pulled out her second stake and rushed at him, hoping that taking out the leader would disperse the other three.
The leader surprised her. A second before she connected he spun aside, grabbed her by the shoulders, and used her own momentum to fling her several yards. Buffy would have gone further but she collided with one of the crypts first. Her head struck the stone with a resounding crack and her vision swam. Oh, eight vampires now. That can’t be a good sign.
The vampires coalesced back into four, but before Buffy could take advantage of her regained focus two of them grabbed her and dragged her back into the fight. A third vampire struck her hard in the stomach, and she doubled over, her breath gone. In that second, while the leader strolled in for the final blow and Buffy hung there trying to catch her breath, she spotted the stake she had dropped seconds before.
She waited a moment more for the third vampire to be close, then sprang straight again. In the split second where the vampires hesitated, she kicked one of the two holding her. It released her, and Buffy dropped in the second vampire’s grip, grabbed the stake, and watched the other turn to dust.
She rolled back to her feet, and her vision swam with the sudden movement. There were still three vampires left and Buffy wasn’t doing so well. This would be a good time to make a strategic retreat.
Translation? Time to run.
Buffy stumbled to a run, sprinting away from the three remaining vampires. She dodged around the cemetery, knowing that she wasn’t going to last against any sort of coordinated attack. Whether it was the dizzy spells she hadn’t fully recovered from or the blow on the head, Buffy was feeling worse by the second. She was short of breath, her vision swam, and her balance was off. Not good at all.
She stumbled over a low headstone and was unable to regain her balance quickly enough. She went crashing to the ground, her legs still tangled on the headstone. A second later one of her opponents caught up with her and went for her throat while she was down. Buffy rolled to her back, pushing the vampire away with one hand. With the other she tried to shove her stake into its chest. The vampire wrestled with her for the stake, trying to tear it away from her. When he couldn’t do that, he twisted her wrist, changing the stake’s direction.
Buffy’s wrist screamed in pain as she felt the bones grind together. The scream tore its way through her throat, but no one was there to hear it except the vampire. And, in that brief moment before the joy of unconsciousness, she felt the stake pierce her stomach at the exact same instant the fangs sank into her neck.
On to Part Five
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