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M x f Fanfic Buffy, bimbofication , mindbreak , hypnosis , demon

Description: Buffy, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, is turned into a bimbo.

Tags: Buffy, Vampire Slayer, mindbreak, mind control, hypnosis, hypnotized, demon, sex.

I’m always on my guard in dreams. It’s kind of a rule. True, most of your nightmares don’t clue you into murder or end with you killed or demon-possessed. But it doesn’t have to happen all the time. It just has to happen.

This one was different. It had started out the same as a lot of other dreams, with me wandering aimlessly through a strangely empty version of somewhere I knew. School, the Bronze, the mall - everywhere was fair game. Really harshed the waking vibes.

This time, I was in the gym at my old school. That’s what tipped me off, because this particular building was suffering from a terminal case of demolish.

I should know. I’m the one who burned it down. You would have too, if it had been full of vampires. And if you’d been called at age fifteen to slay them. Otherwise you probably would have gotten fanged. Nothing against you. They don’t pick fair fights.

Look, if I sound like I’m dancing around the point here, it’s because I am. It’s not easy to spill about the point in your life when everything changed. Especially when you dream about it being… I haven’t even picked a word for it.

All I know is that I was alone in the Hemery High gym at sunset. The windows cast orange blocks of light across the wood, filtered through dust in the air you never would have seen during the day. It was like that one movie where you have to put on the glasses to see how creepy everything really is.

So I was alone until I wasn’t. That’s happened enough times that I didn’t really think anything of it in the moment. One second I was in the middle of the gym, wondering why I was there. The next moment I could tell that someone was behind me. My Slayer senses still worked in dreams. I guess they worked the way anything works in dreams, in that they were trying to tell me something. God, it’s like being in lit class.

It was this guy Lothos. Tall, long red hair, outfit a couple centuries out of date. The sort of vampire who could afford to be obvious because he was powerful. I knew him because I’d killed him, which was still the best thing I’d ever done with a #2 pencil.

“You’ve grown, Buffy,” he said, smiling like the jerk he was.

“Humans do that,” I said. “Kind of creepy to point it out. Or have you forgotten?”

“I never forget a Slayer.” He was walking toward me, totally soundless. “No matter how many I kill. Will you be the first, I wonder?”

“Harsh. But you’ve got to be alive to forget. Not really my goal.” I sized him up. He was wearing that fur coat he liked - completely goofy for L.A. weather, even in January. Not to mention gauche. Fashion sense aside, a thick layer of clothing was useful to tangle an opponent with.

“And yet you’ve dressed so memorably,” he drawled, teeth bared. “That is, not at all.”

A chill skipped across my skin. It was bleachers in a winter football game all of a sudden.

I shot my hands to my chest, between my thighs. Nothing but California girl. My clothes were gone. And I seriously had to wax.

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so it’s one of these dreams.” Jaw clenched, I settled into my loose neutral stance. “I don’t need clothes to kill you again.”

“Perhaps this is a dream,” Lothos said. “Yet those too may become real, in their way. Why not enjoy them before they do?”

I blinked. He was naked too. Not a hair on his body. And yeah, that definitely did make him look bigger. Xander really hadn’t been lying.

“You’re not seriously coming back from the dead to hit on me,” I said. I couldn’t believe it. Really. But my hand froze, still in a fist, as I brought it up to - to play with my hair, I realized. I felt the ghost of that gesture twitch in my muscles, remembering times when I’d talked to boys and imagined the conversation progressing elsewhere. Without words. Or with dirtier words.

Lothos was within arm’s reach of me. I could have done anything to him by this time. I remembered the hollow spots in this gym floor. I was standing on one. All it would take was one well-placed stomp and bam, instant stake.

So why had I let him get closer?

My skin was shivering like I’d stepped out of a hot shower. He was so close. So tall. He could do whatever he wanted with me.

“If I let him” struggled and died before it could fully form in my head. My mouth was dry, metallic, as I looked up at his face, the red lips that hid those fangs I’d spent my whole life punching in.

I was sinking to my knees before his hand even touched my shoulder. My whole body tightened when he did, and not just from the coldness of his fingers. I wanted to warm them up, impossible as that was. Some memory from science class skated by. Heat flowed toward cold until it warmed up, but Lothos never would. He’d just keep sucking it from me until there was nothing left to suck.

He was halfway in my mouth before the unfortunate phrasing occurred to me.

His length was like ice in my mouth. I thought about popsicles and immediately stopped. No popsicle could have trained me for the way he moved. A dead man wasn’t supposed to move that way.

I realized I’d had that same thought about Angel. That’s what pulled me out of it. While I… well, never mind.

The point was that I was conscious of what I was doing. This dream had gone decidedly lucid. And there I was, lucidly sucking Lothos’s cock while he moaned and ran his fingers through my hair. His touch was soft, his voice loose on whatever chain he kept it on, every piece of him coming unglued as I bobbed my head on his length.

It was a vulnerability I recognized, that it flipped me inside out to recognize. The last time I’d felt it, the world had almost ended. That had been from somebody I’d loved harder and more desperately than I’d thought myself capable of. To feel it from this creepazoid was…

I shivered. It was like any other guy I’d been with, at least compared to my sample size of two. My chest ached to be held, pawed, squeezed. My hips were squirming, rolling, thrusting against nothing as the warmth between them blazed higher and oozed out of my core. It was turning me on in every way I didn’t want it to.

But more than that, it was…

Empowering.

I had him totally in my grip.

Slayer sense wasn’t totally asleep in dreams. As I leaned into the blowjob on my first big bad, I shifted on my knees, listening for where the floor creaked. Lothos didn’t notice.

Even a vampire as old as Lothos could be tripped up by a human mouth, properly applied. So by the time I felt him start to withdraw, it was already too late. I plunged the heel of my hand into the gym floor and found the end of a loose board.

“Hey, Lothos,” I said, pulling off of his cock. “Courtesy tap.”

The sound of my improvised stake ripping from the floor filled the empty gym like smoke from a covered candle, smothering Lothos’s choked cry. He looked… perturbed. Disappointed. More surprised than staked. I guess even vampires got blue balls.

Or gray balls, I thought, as the self-styled vamp king exploded into dust.

I was glad that he hadn’t been in my mouth at time of death. I would have brushed six times a day for a month.

The sunset hadn’t budged. The gym was frozen in time, as tended to be the case in dream settings. But as I stood and brushed the splinters off of my wrist, I touched fabric and realized that I was clothed again. It was like I hadn’t had a sex dream at all, let alone about a centuries-old vampire.

This was a part of my life I always tried to leave behind me. I looked around and tried to make sense of why it would come back. I thought of Lothos, of my first watcher Merrick, of what I’d learned from going from prom queen to crazy arson girl overnight.

But as the sunlight melted into the darkness of the gym, as the gym melted back into my unconscious, I was left with an indescribable feeling that wasn’t bound to my past or my present. Lightness. Power. I didn’t know what the dream was trying to tell me, but it had been…

Hot. That’s the word I was looking for. Or I guess it found me.

–

Sunnydale never got cold cold, except for that one Christmas when it snowed, and that was special for reasons we’d probably never understand. But in November it got just cold enough that I couldn’t sleep through the night without wrapping up in two blankets.

I was all tangled up in both of them, trying to unwrap myself without exposing my eyes to the sunlight. Somehow it was brighter early in the morning than at any other time of day. I guess that would explain why I saw so few vampires at that time.

I hated waking up like this. I’d never been sure if it was a Slayer thing or just part of getting older, but my body had the annoying tendency to wake up early, before any time I’d dream of setting an alarm. Slay ready, and yet not a morning person.

I was thinking about dragging myself out of bed and at least making coffee when I noticed the crotch of my pajamas was wet. I shot a hand down there, eyes wide - surely it was early for me to start this month.

Nope. I’d just woken up from an extremely horny dream.

It came back to me in disconnected flashes, one moment skipping into the next like a bad videotape. There I was in my old school’s gym; there was Lothos; there I was on my knees, making with the suck; there was Lothos turning to dust.

If my recollection was an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, I’d gotten the corner pieces. At least Willow wasn’t speaking French with a monkey this time.

I hadn’t thought about Lothos in years. Couldn’t even remember the last time I’d thought about Hemery. I didn’t pretend that all my dreams made sense. But this felt too close to home to not mean something.

In the meantime, whatever mood Dream Buffy had been in still lingered. I could tell that by the embers still smoldering low in my abdomen. I had nowhere to be until eleven and Willow was off campus this weekend playing roadie with Oz.

And my hand was still between my legs.

I closed my eyes, breathed deep, and leaned my head back into my pillow.

My alarm clock went off at precisely that moment.

The sound stabbed into my head. It stabbed still through the pillow I pressed into my face. The real world was demanding an audience.

–

Truth be told, the day actually went uphill from there. Nobody had turned up dead in the morning paper. I found my diary under my bed after having lost it a week ago. It was the one place I’d apparently never thought to look. The new, cute barista at the student center (baristo? Boyrista?) smiled at me when he gave me my latte. Okay, he also pronounced my name “Boofy,” but that was part of the charm.

Something felt different during class late that morning. I didn’t put my finger on what it was until the bell rang. As I was packing up to leave, I realized I’d filled six pages with notes. I hadn’t even drifted into the margins for doodles and calligraphy.

I allowed myself a moment of panic. Was I becoming boring? Would my wardrobe go grayscale? Would I wake up one day as an actuary? What did actuaries even do?

Then I smiled. Willow would be proud. I must have gotten a really restful night’s sleep. Wherever it came from, I decided I wouldn’t mind more.

–

But first there was Slayer patrol. I’d worked my way clockwise around Sunnydale’s cemeteries, and I was approaching the one I’d started in earlier this month. Giles had advised me to keep my patrols unpredictable; it wouldn’t be hard for a smart vampire to knock some heads together and wait for me at ten o’clock if he figured out I’d cleared out seven, eight, and nine the nights before.

That was true. But the smart ones, and most of the dumb ones, were still running scared post-graduation. That incident with the Gem of Amara had quieted things down, too. If the Slayer could beat a vamp that had gotten his vampy hands on the magical vamp invincibility ring, what couldn’t she beat?

Nothing and nobody had answered that question - not for long, anyway - and none of the vamps I’d staked tonight would, either. I’d happened upon a pack of three in the graveyard sucking down some student - who luckily was able to run off without getting a good look at my face. I recognized her from my lit class.

They were nothing special, as vampires went. It wasn’t uncommon for new vamps to dress conspicuously nice - if you found yourself with undeath and super strength, human laws about shoplifting suddenly didn’t seem like so much of a concern.

But whatever store they’d knocked over had clearly sold out of this year’s fashion.

The other thing about fighting fledgling vamps was that they didn’t know their own strength. This made their moves easier to predict and counter, if they had any moves. But if you didn’t know your own strength, you tended to be more indiscriminate with it. And that meant if they hit me, it hurt. A lot.

Keeps a girl humble, to say the least.

I’d dropped one right away when I crashed their party, and that left two. They were pretty bad teammates to each other, each getting in the other’s way as they tried to rough me up. It should have been easy to take them down.

But something kept me from landing the kill on either of them. It wasn’t like I was pulling my punches or toying with them. But I was making choices I wouldn’t have made if it was life-or-death - or more life-or-deathy than usual. Punching them over gravestones where I could have staked them. Sweeping the legs and cartwheeling out of reach. Knocking one down and then immediately turning to the other.

Even though they were undead, they were getting tired quicker than I was, and somehow I felt energized off of that. It was like I was sucking energy from them instead of the other way around. I wanted more of this, wanted to feel faster while they slowed. I wanted to see how far this could go, how long before they crumpled to the ground in exhaustion.

Then I could do whatever I wanted with them. I could make them do what I wanted. Have them whatever way I wanted.

I shook my head. Where had that thought come from?

It wasn’t the last. I grabbed one to whirl him around and throw him into his friend, and I had to force myself to let go. The hardness of his vampire skin reminded me of another sort of hardness entirely, one I knew only too well that vampires were still capable of - and the reality was so sickeningly better than the dream.

A lightbulb finally seemed to go off in their heads, and they attacked me in tandem instead of unilaterally, starting to coordinate their attacks rather than just swinging and hoping for the best.

The fight was finally starting to get interesting, but I couldn’t help imagining what else they could do to me at the same time. I did a split so they ended up punching each other in the face, and while I looked up at them from the ground I imagined them standing over me naked, ready to take me from either end. One in my mouth, one in my pussy. I wondered which could do better at which.

I wheeled and dropped them both to the ground. It would be so easy, I thought as I stood over them. I could have my way with either or both. I was stronger and smarter than they were. And I was willing to bet I was hornier than they were too. Both of them combined.

One of them jumped up and grabbed me around the waist. I seized him by the shoulders and threw myself to the ground, planted my feet on his stomach, and launched him screaming over a row of gravestones.

There was a groan below me, and the ground shifted. I’d rolled right on top of the other guy. I was sitting on him.

It was like someone had pulled a fire alarm in my head. Everything was fleeing - my tactics, my danger sense, my fierceness. All that was left was this formless desire - something I could fulfill right now if I so desired.

The vampire looked up at me, openmouthed, as I placed my hands on his shoulders and straddled him. “What the–”

“Shh,” I said. I ground my hips into him and gasped, felt him hard beneath his jeans against my crotch. I was doing this to him even as I was trying to kill him. I could off him right now if I wanted to, make it so getting me off was the last thing he ever did. Xander had once told me, in a goofy accent, that the French called orgasm “the little death.” I could make that happen. I could turn this vamp into an examp…le. Look, I wasn’t in a mood to come up with better rhymes.

“You’re gonna do exactly as I tell you. Can you handle that?” I slid my hand down to his hip. He swung at me from his prone position and I broke his wrist, brought my stake up to his heart with my free hand. “Try not to buck too hard,” I said beneath his screams. My hand rested in the space between his thigh and his groin.

I was the Slayer. I could take what I wanted. It didn’t mean I would. Didn’t mean that I should. But the vamp didn’t need to know that. Faith had had a point after all, even if she didn’t have restraint.

I’d barely unzipped his pants when I was struck from behind, right between the shoulders. I pitched forward, my whole weight thrown onto the stake. The vampire I was straddling didn’t have a chance. One minute my face was buried in his undead chest. The next I was eating grass.

Of course I rolled and came up swinging. Instinct alone guided my stake into the heart of my attacker. He exploded into dust. The dying scream of the demon inside him was swallowed up by the graves.

Just like that, I was alone.

There was always a moment of weightlessness after a fight; always a feeling like I’d been leaning against a window that suddenly disappeared, like in that one kids’ book everyone was nuts over.

It buoyed me out of the graveyard and down the street. I felt like I could have jogged until the sun rose. I hadn’t felt adrenaline like this since patrolling with Faith.

I wondered where she’d ended up. She could have made sense of what I was feeling all of a sudden. Odds were she would have offered to help, and I was surprised - pleasantly, even - that I didn’t think I’d mind in the slightest. I’d probably end up wondering why I hadn’t done it before.

–

The Master was no spring chicken. His skin was giving more rotisserie vibes. He was hissing like one too, like he was being slowly turned over a flame.

You made all kinds of weird sounds when you were being jerked off. My limited experience told me this.

Once upon a time, I had died to get this close to him. I was aware that I’d killed him, too. Yet here he was, reclining in the pool he’d drowned me in, relaxing into my arms like I was a body pillow. A decidedly Slayer-shaped pillow.

That honestly wasn’t even what clued me in on this being a dream. No, that was the fact that the Master’s chamber was apparently a giant diorama, or a dollhouse or something, and someone much bigger than we were kept reaching in to make tiny adjustments to the furniture. If our giant artist noticed us defiling this pool, they didn’t mind.

“The prophecy said I’d kill you, Slayer,” the Master said. He leaned back against my chest and grinned up at me. I’d seen his mouth before on Shark Week. “But you know something? I’ve always believed in letting myself be pleasantly surprised.”

My attention was fixed on the stake that rested just behind me. I didn’t dare look down at the Master’s vampire cock, no matter how it twitched in my hand. It was easy to be tempted to give in to this intoxicating feeling of holding my enemy literally in my grasp. I guess that was a rule when it came to mystical powers. Any magic you wielded could end up wielding you.

I didn’t know what kind of magic led me to “wield” my opponents, but I’d take a little gross if it meant the world was saved.

“Good advice,” I said. “I’ll have to remember it.”

The Master barely had time to be confused. I staked him right at the moment his cock started bucking in my hand. I shut my eyes as he exploded in my grasp, a different way than he’d intended. The water sloshed around in the pool as it rushed in to fill the space he’d once occupied.

Unfortunately, his cum didn’t turn to dust. Men were gross, human and otherwise. At least it was a dream, if a sticky one.

–

I was still sticky when I woke up. I was going to have to do laundry more often.

But even though this was the second time in a row that I’d had a dream - a nightmare? - about hooking up with a deadly enemy, I found it no less arousing. It was almost like edging myself to try and grab hold of the dream as it faded from my memory, as the specifics drifted away to be filled in by my own imagination. I could get closer and closer to what I’d seen and experienced, but not quite reach it.

Not for lack of trying.

And hey, I’d never felt more rested. I even asked questions during that day’s lecture.

–

“Buffy! You’re up early on a Saturday.”

He was happy to see me, but I could tell that happiness had to share space in his head. There were levels to Giles furrowing his brow. His usual was a minor wrinkle, a default confusion state as he navigated this modern world of crop tops, CDs, and Clinton. I’d only seen his top level when the world was ending, or when he’d found out I was sheltering Angel and chewed me out.

“Can I come in? I’m kind of dealing with something personal and I thought I could talk to you about it.”

His expression was somewhere on the lower end of the concern scale, but with plenty of room to escalate. In a town built over a Hellmouth, it frequently did. I didn’t take it personally.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Come on in. I just put tea on.”

“Warning acknowledged.” I’d never understand drinking water that leaves had been in, but Giles couldn’t get enough of the stuff. It must have been a British thing.

I didn’t think I’d ever get used to how normal Giles’s house was. I expected it to be a nerdier version of his office - all degrees and artifacts and books in languages I’d never heard of. But he had a TV (much to Xander’s surprise), he listened to music from this century, and he even had guests over who weren’t of the slaying variety.

I sat down on the couch and blew on the tea that Giles handed me. Then I sipped, letting the steam warm up my lightly-made-up face. As a rule I didn’t need to get too pretty to visit my ex-Watcher. Watcher emeritus? Guy Who Looks? All these questions ran through my head while I hid behind my mug of leaf water, trying to figure out how on earth I’d tell Giles what I’d been experiencing lately. It was like talking to your dad about sex.

“You’ve taken to the Silver Needle, have you?” He had one eyebrow cocked. He knew something was up.

“Nope,” I said truthfully. I hadn’t a clue what the Silver Needle was. Some kind of artifact? “We, uh, we hid it over at Angel’s place. With the Gem of Amara.”

“The tea.”

“Oh! Yeah. Silly Buffy.” I took a big sip. It wasn’t boiling, and there was barely any taste to it. It was actually eminently chuggable, not that I was about to admit that.

“Buffy, what’s wrong?” Giles already had a book out; he was running his finger through the index, presumably looking for “evasiveness.” There had to be demons that caused it.

“I’ve… I’ve been having dreams again.”

He flipped back a page in his book. “Dreams. What kind?”

I’d thought I’d make up something plausible and less R-rated. But his simple question shorted out my make-things-up circuits. As I explained to him the dreams I’d had - without going into too much detail - I decided that it was better to be a little embarrassed now than to withhold something crucial and get burned later.

“And then, because I had the Master… distracted… I was able to stake him. Way easier than in real life.” I looked at Giles again. He wasn’t blushing. He hadn’t stopped me. Still had that concerned look, but it hadn’t upgraded to alarm.

“And then I realized I was still naked this time, and you’re taking this remarkably well,” I said.

He shook his head, cracked a good-natured smile. “Buffy, do not presume to think you’ve invented something novel or illicit. I have stories from my Ripper days that would shock you–”

“Probably. Can we not shock the Buffy with the Giles, please?”

“Right. Go on.”

“Anyway.” I put down my mug, but I didn’t let go. I felt like I needed to be holding something. “I’d ordinarily chalk it up to spicy hormones. But… I was patrolling the other day.”

“At ten o’clock.”

“No, it was closer to mid…” I rolled my eyes. “Okay, I’ll roll one of those nerd dice next time. But I staked three vamps, and while I was fighting them, I felt like…” I swallowed. “I felt like… how Faith felt. When she was fighting, and she was enjoying it a little too much. Except… I wanted to enjoy it like in my dreams. You understand what I’m saying?”

Giles nodded. “I think I do, actually.”

“Really?” I looked away. “Gross.”

“Let’s not dwell on that,” Giles said. “There do exist forces… demons, or other beings… that play on the motivations of mortals, let’s say. How do you feel when you… finish a book?”

“Uh… ‘Oh boy, did I take good enough notes? Maybe I’ll just copy off Willow.’”

Giles pinched the bridge of his nose in that way he had, when he knew he hadn’t quite gotten his point across. “Yes. Why don’t we back up a bit. When you achieve something difficult, how do you feel?”

I shrugged. “Lighter, I guess. Like I could go another round.”

“Exactly. Now say there’s an entity that can give you that feeling under certain conditions. Like… like a drug, perhaps. Once you know what you associate with that sensation, you seek it out. You disregard limits, become capable of things you’d never thought possible. You spur yourself to greater heights.”

“Until I fall and splat. I see where you’re going with this.” Though to be honest, he was making it sound pretty nifty.

“Just be cautious, Buffy,” Giles said. “I’ll do some more research. Keep me posted on anything else you experience.”

“Giles! Eww.”

He rolled his eyes and chopped the air with his hand. “Within bounds of propriety, obviously.”

I dove back into my mug. “This tea is actually really good.”

“You hardly need to hear it from me. But in my experience, anything that speaks to you through a medium as personal as dreams… well, it already knows more about you than you could ever have dreamed of telling someone. Even your closest friends. It will use that knowledge.”

I smiled. “I’m an open book. But I’m not that open.”

–

Ethan Rayne flipped through Buffy’s diary, variously chuckling and rolling his eyes. For a Chosen, she was shockingly shallow. Slayers were only human, when you got right down to it, but it was still a sort of whiplash to see one musing about outfits, singers, and boys from her class that, being boys her age, were doubtless even more vapid than she.

Either the world was doomed, or magic really was in decline.

But there were insights to be had, memories to unlock, if you could stand the slog. Every one of her adventures was recorded here, waiting for Ethan to add some flavor.

He’d gone to a lot of effort to get it. The RA for Buffy’s floor hadn’t reacted well to being possessed, and he’d nearly fumbled the thing during the room inspection. There was no keeping it; Buffy had access to at least one practitioner of magic, and a tracking spell would have led her straight to him. Nor was it possible to take pictures of the pages and use those. The spell Ethan had in mind demanded the genuine article.

So he’d tracked down a diary just like Buffy’s and spent a whole weekend forging a copy. Every reminder, every fantasy, every idiot little doodle of a Slayer staking a vampire (or some American football troglodyte). It was that copy that found its way back under her bed.

The genuine article was the subject of a ritual of indefinite length. By night it sat on a stand in the middle of an intricate casting circle, surrounded by purple candles and totems taken from the Slayer - hair ties, a photograph, even a discarded coffee cup with lipstick stains. If it had touched her or represented her, it could establish a connection.

Ethan flipped to the next empty page and wiped sweat from his forehead. Blimey, it was humid down here.

Spike had really done a number on the Sunnydale underground. Vampires could work longer hours than humans did, and he’d whipped his archaeological crew into a frenzy looking for the Gem of Amara. It was amazing what you could accomplish when you didn’t have to worry about frivolous things like labor laws. Or sleep, or food that hadn’t been running through someone’s veins once upon a time.

Buffy had fallen into a patrol pattern of late as well, one that didn’t involve retracing her steps through the Sunnydale underground. That gave Ethan plenty of room to maneuver.

He clicked a pen open and shut, open and shut, before he started to write. “Let’s see,” he muttered. “Tonight should be a double feature…”

–

I was at the Bronze that night. Not unusual for a Saturday; I generally liked to blow off steam once I’d spent Friday afternoon getting my notes and homework done early. It was packed almost shoulder to shoulder with high school and college kids alike, sometimes distinguishable only by the presence or absence of a wristband. Beer castes.

Nobody was naked this time, thank goodness. I wasn’t really into the human body in isolation. Nudity was awkward unless it was being used somehow. Unless I was being seen, touched.

“Buffy.”

Angel didn’t need to be naked. He had a presence that radiated strength, defied space, like his sweater was stretched over a star. You felt him before you saw him, if you’d been close enough to him. We’d been pretty close.

“Thought you’d skipped town,” I said. I turned around.

I didn’t run to him this time. I was getting better at that. We both knew that we had to. But I smiled nonetheless. Halfway.

He nodded. “Yeah. So did I.” He held that broody duster of his over one shoulder, cast his eyes about the room, looking everywhere but at me. “Sunnydale has a way of dragging you back, I guess.”

“Hellmouth.” I took a step forward. “Do you see yourself staying dragged?”

“Couldn’t even if I wanted to.” He’d had a couple centuries to practice gazing into the middle distance, and it showed. “There are people in L.A. that need my help. People who can’t defend themselves. I have faith in you, Buffy.”

“That’s a pretty complimentary way to say goodbye.” I changed the subject. “So. L.A. You run into Cordelia?”

He chuckled. “It’s kind of a funny story. She’s my secretary.” Part of me figured this might just be Dream Buffy doing the wishful, but I got the sense that this was true. Or maybe I still trusted Angel by default. That was a whole other conversation - a whole other problem.

He looked down at me then, and I forgot why it was a problem. I’d stared down vampires centuries older than Angel was, and even now I found it hard not to run to him and collapse into his embrace, let him lift me off my feet and bury my face in his chest like I was being held by a cliffside. A cliffside that could shear off at any moment and crush me. It had happened before. By the laws of that Romani curse of his, it could happen again.

I wanted to risk it. That was exactly why I had to resist.

I was getting better at it. But in a dream it was a different story. And why shouldn’t it be? I’d still be Buffy when I woke up.

We were inches apart before we knew it. Angel raised a hand, brushed my cheek with the back of his cold fingers. I leaned into it. I could at least let myself feel this, if only for a–

“If you two spent half the effort fucking that you did staring, Angel never would have gotten his soul back.”

I whirled. Spike. He was wearing that stolen jacket of his, leaning against a pool table, cue in one hand, cigarette in the other. “Spike. Drusilla kick you out?”

He leaned against the pool table and made a shot behind his back. “I’ll live.” Seven in the corner. “At least my partner didn’t try to end the world.”

“No.” Angel stepped up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. “But she did a number on yours.”

Spike clenched his fist so hard that smoke shot out from between his knuckles. No more cigarette. “Just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean I can’t kill you.” Spike grabbed a glass with his cigarette hand, washed the ashes off with a flick of his wrist, ran his wet fingers through his hair. “So. What’ll it be? Indoors or out?”

The people dancing, drinking, and playing pool around us didn’t seem to mind. “Yeah, I noticed that too,” said Spike. “Explains why my opponent never stepped up.” He vamped out and spread his arms. “Come on, Angel. You’ve got all the day in the world to brood in. I can’t be the only one who came here to have fun.”

I shifted my feet. “You’re going to need a bigger cue.”

“This old thing?” Spike smacked it against his palm as he approached us. “This isn’t for him,” he said.

Angel’s grip tightened on my shoulder. I tried to shrug him off. Nothing doing. “Who’s it for?” I asked. Something was wrong.

Spike paused, pointed the cue at me. I could barely feel the chalk against my nose.

“It’s for you,” he said.

I didn’t even have to hear Angel growl. I reached up to grab his arm and wrenched my whole body into a throw. It caught him off guard and he flew ten feet into a pool table, scattering the game that Spike had walked out on. Nobody seemed to notice.

I barely could myself. Spike had slid around behind me while I was at the peak of my throw and seized my wrists in one hand. I made to kick him, but he jerked me an inch off the ground, just enough to kill my leverage. In one smooth move he had my arms bent over the pool cue behind me. I wrenched left and right. He ducked each end of the cue. All the while I was straining to break it, to give myself two stakes to use against Spike and Angelus 3.0.

Nothing. My breath hitched and my vision blurred as I strained at the cue behind me. No matter how I tried to snap it, it was like bending steel. No, worse - I could do that. This thing wasn’t budging.

It was like the Tent of the Circus Master, or whatever the Watcher’s Council called that awful test where they took away my strength. All the strength that slept in my body, whether I was awake or asleep… just kept on sleeping. And here I was, arms restrained, trapped between two vampires with their war faces on, both of whom had tried to kill me before.

Worst of all, I was loving it.

The pool cue they were using to spread my arms was an exquisite stretch. I wanted to feel just how far they could open me up. It penetrated to the depths of my useless muscles, and I knew that when I stretched in the morning I’d be in search of that feeling for as long as it took me to forget this dream. If I ever forgot.

The Bronze was happening around us as if we didn’t exist. Spike bore down and forced me to the ground, slid his foot next to mine and spread my legs too. The motion pulled me into myself, deadened the sounds of dancing, drinking, and music, pinned my focus to the pulse thrumming through my limbs, strongest in my core, my chest, lighting me up in places I yearned for them to touch but didn’t dare beg for.

Angel picked himself up off of the ruins of the pool table. He brushed himself off, shook his head hard, hopped up and down, threw a few practice jabs. “Whoo! Have fun with this one, Spike. One thing I’ll say for her… she really keeps you on your toes.”

“I can still reach to stake you–ow!” Spike kicked my foot out from under me and pushed me down, cracking my knee on the concrete floor of the club. It hurt, but that washed away pretty quickly. I was too busy imagining what he could do to me in this position. The pool cue was like a gearshift that could move me straight into overdrive… or notch me up one level at a time, as slowly as Spike wanted.

Nothing Angel could do to me could compare to what I was conjuring up in my own head. I imagined them from every angle, attacking my every hole with their every extremity. I was so lost in the fantasy that I’d lost track of when I’d stopped struggling. So gone that I didn’t even notice Angel taking out his cock.

Its mass against my cheek brought me back to reality. The dream-reality. The distinction sort of didn’t matter to me when he was making me blow him.

It was something I hadn’t even dared to try the first night we spent together as lovers. It hadn’t even occurred to innocent, newly adult Buffy. It occurred to me now. It occurred hardcore.

Angel in my mouth was endless, enthralling. I could have explored his skin all night, devoured his hardness encased in cool vampiric velvet and still never had my fill.

It was matched only by Spike behind me. He’d passed the pool cue to Angel and moved his hands to my hips. Vampire hands were cold; they were the perfect counterpart to the heat that was growing between my hips, dry and hard against wet and soft Buffy.

God, I thought. I have a fetish.

I didn’t need the realization to sense a possibility in every one of Spike’s fingertips, to imagine them moving independently, in concert, anywhere he wanted, anywhere he could reach, to say nothing of his own cock. I didn’t know what they’d do to me, and that left everything open. It occurred to me, dimly, that the chill of his hands on my skin meant that I was naked again. Perfect. No notes. I doubt I could have even remembered how buttons and zippers worked, not when there was Angel to focus on.

Angel throbbed inside my throat and moaned when I purred around him. Spike had just entered me. Not even Angel could get me to make that sound. I wondered if he could do that in real life.

The thought occurred to me that he’d tried to kill me, but then so had Angel. We could discuss our past once we’d wiped ourselves down.

There in the dream Bronze, surrounded by all the Bronzegoers, being fucked in front and behind without a care in the world, I regretted that these people weren’t real. They couldn’t see the Slayer whoring herself out for two of the most dangerous vampires she’d ever met. It wasn’t enough to experience this on my own. I had to show the world just what I was capable of - no, just what I wanted, could take, right before I claimed my final victory.

Even now I felt my arms pulsing with need, my legs aching to kick and assert myself, my whole body boiling with energy even as it convulsed around my enemies, coiling to strike even as it squeezed and sucked.

With Angel’s cock spilling his seed down my throat, with Spike’s hammering into my pussy and meeting me warmth for warmth, both vampires were otherwise occupied as I found my strength again.

A snap just above me seemed like such a small sound, swallowed up in the music of the Bronze, for a turning point in a battle for my life. But there it was, sung by the broken pool cue whose halves tumbled into my hands as if thrown to me by a close ally.

I brought one foot up under me and twisted. Spike slid out of my cunt, my mouth popped off of Angel’s cock, and they barely had time to protest before I drove the makeshift stakes into the two old friends at precisely the same time.

They crumbled to the floor, twin masses of dust that once were vampires that once were men. They’d somehow overpowered me without a fight, they’d had their way with me… and they’d paid with their lives. Something in me had awakened and overcome my moment of weakness, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. It had been something in the way I submitted - no, Buffy, not submitted, accepted like a gift offered up to a goddess waiting for tribute.

It was just like the encounter in the graveyard - and I knew I couldn’t let myself be weakened like in this dream. Next time, I’d be proactive.

Cheers and whistles rose from all around me. I stood there in the Bronze, naked and beautiful, everyone smiling and leering, and wondered what other kind of tribute I could extract.

–

This time I didn’t let the alarm bother me. My pulse pounded in my ears and drowned everything else out as I took the morning to myself. I was lucky that the walls were cinderblock.

–

I didn’t usually wear heavy makeup. Eyeliner was great for a night out, but I generally got by with little more.

But I put on a full face the morning after my Angel-and-Spike dream. I knew in real life that things like that wouldn’t just happen. Opportunities came along to lure in and extract power and pleasure from an enemy, but it wasn’t enough to just have them handed to me. I needed to seek them out and take them. That’s what power was all about.

I had to restrain myself from getting off in the shower. All the ways that I could use this power were straining against my skin. I could sleep with a professor for a better grade. I could seduce an enemy vamp to get information on his boss’s plans. Even club security would be no match for me.

Maybe I was able to resist because I simply couldn’t decide on just one fantasy.

–

I flipped through my address book, frowning. That one was too young. That one was too old. I wished there was some way I could just line up all the guys in Sunnydale and pick one to experiment with. Some kind of database where I could say yes or no with a simple gesture. I idly traced my fingers around my inner thighs, not wanting to dive inside myself until I had a name and a face in my head.

There were so many to choose from, and I was squirming in my chair waiting to get out of my own way. Any second now I’d go back to my new morning routine and, fun as it was, nothing would get done. It was getting harder to get myself off, almost as if whatever entity or magic was driving me was forcing me to seek pleasure from others.

I didn’t entirely hate that idea.

But I didn’t entirely like the idea of hooking up out of the blue with someone I knew. It had to be someone I’d never met. Someone I wouldn’t see again. I still had some restraint to my name, right?

It was a step up from only seducing people I could immediately stake afterwards, but that thought never crossed my mind.

My decision surprised me when it did. It wasn’t necessarily pleasant. But I could make it pleasant. I was the Slayer.

–

“So.”

“So.”

“We gonna talk about the other day?”

Willow was curled up on her armchair in the dorm’s common area. She had a textbook propped up between her and one arm, her notebook across her thighs. I was sure she’d forgotten more about art history than I’d ever learn, but she always told me that being good at something meant recognizing where your knowledge was incomplete. That probably meant I was good at a lot of things.

No. Bad Buffy. Now was not the time to be self-deprecating.

I shrugged. “We’ve had a lot of those, Will.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Willow was looking at me in that way that had made her such a good teacher in our senior year of high school. It was impossible to resist that crinkle of her eyebrows, raised in the middle over a disappointed gaze made irresistible by genuine concern. It was the sort of look you got from an especially compassionate worker at a convenience store if you were six years old and you’d gotten caught stealing candy.

Of course, some six-year-olds are more stubborn than others.

I sighed. “Look, Willow, I know it’s a little messed up that I slept with your dad. But…” I shrugged. “Well, there’s no ‘but’ about it. I’ve kind of been trying out a new Buffy lately. Kind of like Faith, but with less murder, and more smooches. Giles was researching it. He thinks I’m possessed or something. But Willow, when I tell you I don’t just feel more powerful, I am more powerful… I wish you could feel what I feel when I just hold someone down and grr. Human. Vampire. Whoever. You know?”

I happened to steal a glance over at her notebook. She was writing in Hebrew - the same few words over and over again, I was able to make out. I wondered if it was a prayer. I wondered how she was able to stay on the lines while she looked at me.

She’d gone pale. Paler. “I actually didn’t know about that. I was going to talk about when I walked in on you…” She covered her face with her notebook and went “Uh. Uh.”

“Ah. You… saw that, did you?” I bit my lip against the thought of Willow walking into our room and seeing me knuckle-deep inside myself. At least I’d been under the covers.

“Buffy, this isn’t like you. We need to get to the bottom of this.”

“You’re right. It’s not like me.” I took a deep breath. “I guess that’s what makes it so intriguing.”

“You talked to Giles about this?”

“Just the other day.”

“...All of this?”

“Okay! I told him I’d been having sexy dreams and it was spilling over.” I took a quick look around. A couple of people on the other side of the room had glanced over, but I didn’t hold their attention for long. “He’s trying to figure out what’s going on,” I said, lowering my voice. “It wasn’t serious enough to put me under lock and key.”

Willow put a sympathetic hand on my forearm. “Buff, that’s just it. We don’t know when it’ll click over. You remember the whole candy episode.”

“I remember,” I said. “It starts out funny and benign, and next thing you know there are babies being sacrificed and your mom is banging the librarian, and God I think you’ve just completely solved my horny problem.”

“Don’t mention it,” Willow said.

Pause. I made eye contact. “I’m… sorry about your–”

“Not the issue!”

–

Willow took my dadcest remarkably in stride. I guess she’d drifted far enough from him that the prospect of the occasional Seder with someone I’d banged didn’t really bother her.

Not that I’d try it again. Friends didn’t sleep with friends’ dads if told not to. Girl Code was a stronger and deeper magic than whatever was grabbing my ovaries and turning up the dial. And hey, it wasn’t like he was going to tell Mrs. Rosenberg.

Anyway. We mutually agreed that I needed something to take my mind off seducing the family of friends. “Can’t we just take Buffy’s horny and point it at something else?” Xander had asked, once Willow had filled him in. “And while we’re at it, can we find her a chastity belt? Giles has to have one of those lying around.” He’d immediately regretted throwing the image out into the world. We all did.

Distraction came in the form of a tip from Willy the Snitch, for which Xander not-so-generously bribed him. Apparently there had been a couple of vamps in the bar talking a big game about UC Sunnydale’s basketball team and how they planned on ambushing and turning them on their way to an away game.

That was familiar territory for me, at least. I remembered the last time a basketball team had gotten vamped, and apart from the obvious threat of athletic vampires, it gave them a real unfair advantage on home court or away. It wasn’t happening again on the Slayer’s watch.

So I talked my way onto the bus as a chaperone, and by that I mean we looked up the bus driver and I blew him. Willow didn’t need to know - she thought I’d just volunteered. And anyway, she was distracted helping Giles research what might be happening to me. She was probably glad for the distraction, too.

The ride was overnight to LA, and around one in the morning the bus driver slammed on the brakes, sending us each careening into the seats in front. “What the hell?” I craned my neck to look over his shoulder. The bus’s headlights threw a long shadow from a body lying facedown in the middle of the lane. It was a surface street close to our destination, with no other cars around for miles.

It was the usual vamp trick - one of them plays dead out in the road to stop the bus, and the others move in when the driver goes out to check on the not-victim. I was almost thankful for the distraction - though I’d been avoiding talking to the boys on the basketball team, I’d been sizing them up in the rearview mirror and rating them based on attractiveness. I told myself I wasn’t picking an order for them to go in, but that was as much of a lie as the dead body was.

Like I said, I knew the trap, so I wasn’t going to let the bus driver spring it. As soon as he opened the door, I reached across him, buckled him in against his protests, and leaped down the bus steps and onto the road. The not-dead vamp didn’t even have time to roll over before I pinned him to the asphalt with a foot of aspen.

Five other vampires swarmed the bus from all directions. I shouted for the basketball team to stay where they were. They complied, defaulting to someone who seemed to know what she was doing in an impossible situation.

It was over inside of a minute. I tripped one, staked him, climbed to the top of the bus to rough up and kill two more, and snagged a fourth while he was trying to climb through an open window.

The last one knew when he was outmatched and wisely took off running. I stuck out a thumb to aim by and threw my stake at him.

Dusted at a hundred yards. Not bad for a horny evening.

I returned to the bus to stunned silence and then cheering. A few of the team were Sunnydale High grads and filled their teammates in on my expertise when it came to the supernatural. Even the driver joined in.

What they all said was kind of a blur, because my blood was pumping and my belly was full of fire. It was that feeling Faith had told me about - after she got done with a particularly one-sided fight, she needed a cheeseburger and a good hard fuck.

The cheeseburger I could do without, even with my athletic habits. But I crossed my legs very tightly as we resumed our drive to the hotel. Then we definitely all went to bed and I definitely didn’t invite the team to run a train on me while the driver watched.

–

A sharp ring broke through the haze of semen, sweat, and bodies that I woke up in. The basketball team was still out cold, I suppose because I had Slayer stamina and they didn’t. Up front, the bus driver slept in his seat, his video camera unattended on the dashboard. I’d threatened to break it if he filmed us, and he’d known when to fold ‘em.

Shame about the hotel rooms. Those would have been comfier.

I was thirsty, I was hungry, and Slayer stamina or no, my pussy ached. I winced as I grabbed an armrest and pulled myself wobbling to my feet. Thank goodness I was on birth control.

I wiped fog from the bus window and immediately saw where the ringing was coming from. There was a pay phone on the edge of the parking lot. The sunrise had just lit up the metal, and I had to squint to look at it.

Pay phones didn’t receive calls, I thought. Unless someone at AT&T had decided to stalk me, this was magic.

I stumbled off the bus. No amount of birth control could make me walk straight, but I made my way to the phone nonetheless. Anything to put an end to the ringing that was stabbing into my head and stirring.

I nearly ripped the phone from its booth. “Hello?” I didn’t bother giving my name. Whoever was trying to reach me on this clearly knew who I was.

“Buffy?” Yep.

“Giles?” Relief swept through me. The hangover from the basketball gangbang had left me thirsty, throbbing, and craving any trace of a world I was familiar with. Even if that meant magic.

“Buffy, thank goodness. I’ve had a breakthrough. It’s most likely not a demon or other entity possessing you.”

I smiled. “Oh, wonderful. The Buffster’s just a slut after all.” Not that I was disappointed.

“Buffy, of course not. I cast a tracking spell before you left on patrol tonight. That’s how I was able to reach you just now.”

I shrugged. “Really putting the ‘watch’ in “Watcher.”

“Not the point. Another spiritual signature came up when I cast it.”

It was my turn to furrow. “What, like another me?”

“Weaker. It’s consistent with a part of you, or perhaps one of your possessions. Has anything of yours gone missing lately?”

“Well, no,” I said. It was hard to think. The miasma of my long night on the bang bus was caressing me, threatening to pull me back in like the skin memories of a warm bed. Only wetter. “I mean, I found my diary the other day after I thought it had–”

I stopped. “Oh, jeez. I knew there was something weird about that surprise room inspection. I thought my RA was just hung over, but–”

“Buffy, someone’s influencing you through your dreams, and they’re using your diary as the focus of the spell. I’ll email you the coordinates.” Giles exhaled sharply. “This has Ethan written all over it. Nobody else would do something so…”

“Fun?”

“I was going to say insipid.”

“Judgy much?”

“Get to a library and use one of their computers. I’ll send over everything you need to know by the time you do.”

“Roger.”

“And for God’s sake, put some pants on.”

He hung up before I could ask how the hell he knew that. Not that the idea of being spied on this way was unwelcome.

I pinched myself. This was Giles we were talking about. “Jeez, I really do have to get it together.”

–

I made my excuses to the team and got a taxi back to Sunnydale. They even pitched in for the ride. Once upon a time I would have felt a little like a ho, but I wasn’t about to question the largesse.

According to Giles’s message - I was surprised he’d learned how to use email - my diary was being used to mind whammy me, and it was happening somewhere off the UC Sunnydale steam tunnels. I knew the territory well enough. Spike had been doing his best mole cosplay down there not long ago, when he was in search of the Gem of Amara. With the steam tunnels now connected to the spacious Sunnydale sewers, the underground spanned just about the entire city - maybe even all the way to the cove where my high school swim team had permanently gone fishing, so to speak.

One of these days we were going to make a project of mapping it all out. But we didn’t have near the manpower or time for it now.

So I had rough coordinates and a rough direction, and I was picking my way through a maze of rough-hewn stone walls with a half-drawn map. Xander and Willow had wanted to come along, but I’d insisted on flying solo. If it was just Ethan, I could take him on my own. All his power was in sowing chaos, working behind the scenes, making up for a low Strength score with high Intelligence. Oz had described him that way, and I hadn’t bothered asking what he was talking about.

It was warm down here. I briefly thought back to the dream I’d had - the one where I was jerking off the Master. Maybe it had been prophetic. I wondered what the Angel-and-Spike one had meant. Hopefully something empowering about rising above past mistakes and not making new ones. God, I’d die before I dated Spike.

This wasn’t the time to speculate on weird dreams spun up by a creepy British man. I had to keep checking the map and feel my way across the empty spaces between the parts of Sunnydale’s underground that we knew about. In those places I only had a vague cardinal direction to go on.

But eventually I came to a corridor that looked a little more built than the rest of them. Rafters started appearing, the floor shifted from dirt to concrete, and if I listened closely with my Slayer senses I could hear someone breathing in a closed room at the end of the hall.

It might have been locked. It didn’t matter.

I felt for my stakes. All there. Holy water, check. Cross around my neck. I gritted my teeth and forced down the ambient smolder between my hips. This was not the time to be wet, I knew intellectually. Whatever was through that door I could deal with.

If I didn’t lie back and let it ravage me first.

I didn’t wait for it to hear me coming. I sprinted the last twenty yards and launched a kick into the door. It blasted off its hinges, spraying splinters and dust into the surprisingly well-lit room. Candles - the non-ritual variety - blazed from sconces, and decidedly more ritualesque ones burned in a circle around a book I immediately recognized as my diary. I tasted something sour in my mouth as I saw other stuff of mine in the circle. Pictures. A coffee cup. What kind of pervert had been through my trash?

The kind that stepped out from behind a pillar as if he’d been waiting for me. Ethan Rayne, all six feet and evil-Giles haircut of him. He probably had been waiting.

“Well, if it isn’t Buffy the Vampire Layer. I was wondering when you’d show up,” Ethan said.

“Ethan.” It hadn’t been long enough. Never would be. “I just followed the old book smell. Oh, and evil. Let’s not forget that.”

He nodded. “So you can follow instructions.”

“Cut the crap and tell me how to break the spell.” I looked over at the obvious casting circle.

“Well, I’d recommend true love’s kiss, but–”

I raised my stake. “This isn’t just for vampires. How does it work?”

“If you’d ever bothered to crack that ponderous tome Ripper’s got lying around, you might have some idea,” he said.

“You’re gonna have to be way more specific than that,” I said, cocking my arm to throw.

“VAMPYR? Ring any bells?” He shook his head. “Of course not. Why would it?”

I did vaguely recall that book that Giles had introduced himself to me with, but I’d never opened it. Buffy and Watcher Council rules were foreign bodies, like two planets whose orbits were locked on opposite sides of a star. There was a word for that that I wasn’t nearly nerdy enough to recall.

Ethan steepled his fingers. He could do a pretty slick Giles impersonation when he wanted to. Maybe it was the British thing. “You may be intrigued to know that that book cannot be written in anymore.”

“So I can’t doodle in it. Big whoop.”

“Anymore, I said.” He started pacing. Very Bond villain. “Once, legend has it, it could… when the laws of the supernatural were first being set down in print.” He shrugged. “No way of knowing, of course, but one evening not so long ago I got to thinking of it as a very powerful Marlovian Authorial Intent spell. Write in a book, things happen. Of course, mere mortals can only influence and suggest, not alter the very fabric of reality.” He stopped and turned to face me. “I didn’t need to alter reality. I just needed to make you–”

“Your plaything. Your sex toy. You’re sick, you know that?”

“Oh, I couldn’t care less about who you sleep with,” he said, totally sincere. “Honestly? I just wanted to see the look on Giles’s face when he found out what you’d become.”

“You know, I could get all kinds of angry about you casting me in your messed-up fan fiction,” I said. “But right now? I’m just pissed that you stole my diary.”

Ethan smirked. “Borrowed.”

“Why’d you do it, Ethan?” I shrugged. “I mean, when you were my age they still hadn’t decimalized your currency. You’re old old. What could you possibly have wanted from a freshman girl’s diary?”

“The same thing I want from everything,” Ethan said with a shrug of his own. “Fun.”

“And your idea of fun is turning me into a slut.”

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”

“Oh, I’m about to flaunt it all over you.” I bit my lip. “That sounded wrong.”

“You’re telling me.” He swept his hand forward. The flame of one of the purple candles billowed into an inferno like an ignited gas leak. I threw myself out of the way. I felt my whole left side tingle as the fire singed my clothes, but I’d avoided getting cooked.

The heat was pierced by the cool aura of a blade. Ethan had only intended that fire trick as a distraction. I’d barely hit the ground before there was a shortsword in my face.

But only in my face. I’d caught the blade between my palms, the way I’d done back when Angel tried to end the world. I remembered someone in one of my history classes talking about things happening first as tragedy, then as farce.

Why couldn’t I have that kind of recall when a professor called on me? Maybe it had to be life or death. Everyone had their motivations.

I thrust my hands forward, making Ethan strike himself in the chest with the pommel. He doubled over, stumbled back, and made it extremely easy for me to hop up and knee him in the jaw. He was lucky he didn’t bite out his own tongue.

The sword clattered to the ground. Ethan, senseless, reeled back and tumbled directly into the casting circle, scattering candles and spell components.

I dove for the cavern’s entrance. I knew enough about magic to be worried when a ritual was disrupted. Who knew what kind of eldritch explosion or devil deal might be triggered if just one thing was out of place?

Fortunately, neither of those things happened. Well, not to me anyway. There was a sharp crack, a yell from Ethan that shrank to nothing very quickly - not like he was getting quieter, but like he was getting farther away somehow - and then a crazy rustling of pages. I peeked around the corner just in time to see my diary slam shut.

No Ethan.

The candles had gone out, and all of the things Ethan had stolen from me were crumpled up and smoking like they’d been burned. Guess whatever magic they had had been used up.

I walked through the dead circle and picked up my diary. It tingled slightly to the touch, but it didn’t envelop me in flames or make me drop to my knees and start fingering myself, so I figured it was safe. I flipped through it, smiling at some entries and wincing at some others. “Buffy Angel.” When you don’t know a guy’s last name, use his first name, I guess. Way to pine, high school Buff.

The handwriting shifted as I got closer to the end of the diary. Ethan’s, naturally. I smirked at the entries he’d added - all the lurid nonsense about my past that he could get his hands on.

I got to the last blank page and let them flip. And flip. And flip. That was weird. This went on for about thirty seconds. It looked like whatever spell he’d cast on my diary had made it so it never ran out of pages. Convenient.

I would have closed the book had something on one of those pages not caught my eye. Something was moving, like a bug had gotten into the paper. Gross.

But it wasn’t a bug. I flipped to the page in question, and there was Ethan. A very lifelike sketch of him, anyway. It was moving, too - he was slamming his shaded fists at the edges of the pages like a mime in an invisible box. I took a moment to admire the line work.

He noticed me noticing him and smirked. No sound emerged when his lips moved, but words appeared on the page next to him. I’ve gotten out of tighter prisons than this one. There are fates worse than being trapped with your silly crushes.

There was a pen lying on the ground near where my diary had been. I picked it up and wrote next to Ethan: I bet there are.

I smiled. He didn’t.

–

“So he wrote in your diary? What a freak. And now he’s trapped in there?” Cordelia made a sound over the phone like a snake choking on a rabbit. “He could be looking at anything. Honestly, you’re lucky you’re mundane.”

“That’s what’s interesting to me,” I said, ignoring her nonsense. “He didn’t get specific about what they did to me in my dreams. Just vague innuendo. ‘Illicit encounter,’ ‘romantic rendezvous,’ that kind of thing. Horny Buffy brain just kind of filled in the blanks.”

“So when you go out on patrol, do you usually–”

“This was kind of a new thing for me, Cordelia,” I said, in a tone that indicated that line of questioning was a no go. “But you know something? He never said what happened after that. All the stuff about seizing the moment and going for the kill when they were distracted by the sexy…” I grinned. “All me.”

Cordelia sighed. “Well, listen - use protection when you’re sleeping with the things that bump uglies in the night, okay? The last thing we need is some vampire baby with Slayer powers.” I heard her dry heave. “Oh, God, I just thought of you reproducing.”

“So how’s the apartment search?” I deflected.

“Oh, long over. The studio’s putting me up in this incredible apartment in Playa del Rey. The ocean is the first thing I see every morning, and you might see me on a certain soap in the near future! I can’t tell you exactly which one yet, but it rhymes with All My Children…”

I tuned out the obvious lies and flipped open my diary. There wasn’t much to write about - the weather was the same, my grades were the same, and Cordelia was in denial in the big city. All was right with the world.

Ethan - the black-and-white drawing he’d become - was smaller on this page, hiding in the background of an exquisitely sketched cityscape. He was in an alley, being stalked by monsters of all shapes and sizes. I said my goodbyes to not-so-dearly-departed Cordy and scribbled a quick line under the scene: It was then that the alley weasels realized Ethan had stumbled directly into their lair.

I shut the book just as the page started filling up with curses and vowels, struck across the page in clumsy handwriting as if by a panicked scribe.

Maybe I’d call up Parker. I’d gotten over him a lot quicker than I anticipated I would. I knew he wouldn’t mind me getting under him again.

He’d just have to be ready for a more dominant woman than he was used to. I’d learned to believe in letting myself be pleasantly surprised.