Chapter Two

Jenny sighed and gazed at her fingernails. She was sitting with her back against the headboard, one leg drawn up, nothing to do but wait. And wait. God, it hadn’t taken *her* this long to come around, she was sure of it.

She cast a brief bored glance over at the body in bed beside her. Rupert was still lying in the same pose he’d been in all evening, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed, the other resting across his chest, head turned to the side, dead eyes staring off into space, blood still tacky around the bite marks on his throat. A small pool of it was congealing on the bed beneath his shoulder and the smell was making her hungry. Angel’d warned her that she’d be ravenous... she’d thought that draining a grown man would have been enough to satisfy it. Apparently not.

She sighed again and went back to inspecting her cuticles. Damn, she wished she’d brought her purse.

Then suddenly, bam, she was on the floor, pinned flat on her back.

“Hello, Jenny. I’m back.”

He pressed a hard brutal kiss against her lips and then hopped up, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet.

“And I’m famished.”

He turned his head and looked down at her from his considerably height, game-faced and grinning, his yellow eyes glittering with an unholy glee.

“Care to accompany me for dinner, my dear?”

She began to grin back, feeling her fangs pressing against her lips.

“Why, Rupert. I’d love to.”

He grabbed her arm and swung her to her feet as though she weighed as little as a feather, then reeled her into his arms. He touched his forehead to hers and looked into her eyes.

“Call me Ripper.”

***

The anger at Angel’s taunting of her mother had lingered, making Buffy tingly and restless. She’d tried to sleep, but it had been useless. She’d laid awake for hours, just tossing and turning, staring around her room, listening to Willow breathe the steady breath of the peacefully sleeping down in her sleeping bag on the floor. Finally, she’d just given up and slipped out the window, armed with her usual assortment of stakes, holy water, and crosses. She might as well get in some patrol hours. Her sleepless night could be someone else’s salvation, after all.

She mused on that as she wandered down the quiet Sunnydale streets. All those people who died while she was off in dreamland. Great, that was a real upper. Like she needed any new depressing thoughts right now, with her boyfriend off being the scourge of the world.

She frowned and fiddled with her stake as she walked.

Seemed like a quiet night, really. No sign so far of demons or vampires or-

No, wait. She froze, listening. Was that a-

Yes! A scream, or at least, an “eek.” Definitely worth investigating. Buffy shot off into the park in the direction of the sound at a dead run. Could be a rabbit, of course, they did make noises like that, as she had become well aware after two years of false alarms and very startled owls...

But no, this was no rabbit. This was the real deal. Two vamps, one male, one female, and one human of undetermined gender... the two feeding vamps were blocking her view. She only had seconds to make the save, so she dashed in at full force. If these vamps had friends nearby, she’d worry about it later. The man was closest, so she grabbed him by the shoulder and flung him back, then shoved the woman away. The human, a young guy, dropped to the ground in a faint, and she spun back towards the male vamp, who had just regained his feet and was lunging towards her.

She froze, stake held high.

The vampires froze, too, and for a long, long moment, they all stood there like statues in the deep darkness of the park, and the only sound was the breeze. And then, very softly, Buffy said:

“Oh God. Giles?”

His lips pulled back in something that could have been a sneer or a grin, or more likely, something in between, and then he shifted out of game-face. His eyes were the same green they’d always been, but they were colder. Emptier. The gentle soul that she’d always seen shining in them was gone. She thought that she just might pass out.

“Buffy,” he said, and his voice was the same as it had ever been, soft and gentle.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement, and she instinctually fell back a few paces, putting a tree behind her back and turning so that she could see both of the vamps. The female had also shifted back to human face, and now moved to curl up against Giles’s side, her arm around his neck and her other hand on his chest, as she watched Buffy with clear amusement.

“Jenny?” Buffy whispered.

“Mm-hmm,” Vamp-Jenny said, then twisted her head up to gaze at Giles adoringly. “She’s very perceptive, isn’t she, England?”

“Oh, yes,” Giles said, “That’s my girl. Very bright.”

A familiar half-smile tugged at his lips and he looked her up and down, his eyes dragging over every inch of her body from head to toe, unapologetically.

“And quite the looker, too. Don’t know why I never did anything. Was in the perfect position to abuse my authority with an attractive young thing. Ethan was right. I was pathetic. Thank god that’s done with.”

Ok, that just went too far.

“No,” Buffy said, though shock was still leaving her far too numb to do anything but shake her head in helpless denial. “No. This is a dream, or, or one of those, those alternate reality thingies. This- this isn’t real...”

Giles detached himself from Jenny and all but glided towards her, one hand coming to rest against the tree trunk just above her shoulder. He was close enough that she could smell him, old books, cologne... dried blood... His eyes stared into hers from a distance of mere inches, and if he could have breathed, she would be feeling it against her lips.

“Oh, I assure you, it is very, very real.”

And then she shuddered all over in horror because she knew, she really knew that it was true. Her every Slayer sense was alive and screaming “Vampire” at her, and there was nothing human left.

With a soul-deep, inarticulate cry, she slammed both arms against his chest and sent him flying back, and in seconds, she had snatched another stake from the waistband of her pants.

He was laughing as she came at him, and he danced aside when she plunged the stake forward. The missed blow sent her reeling, but she recovered quickly, and caught him well before he could get his fangs into her neck. She shoved him away again, but this time, instead of just waiting, he backed away, game-faced and still looking amused, and then he grabbed Jenny’s hand and together the two newly-turned vamps fled into the night.

Buffy slowly lowered the stake as she stared after them. A few moments later, her knees finally gave out. She dropped to a kneel on the dewy grass and sobbed her heart out.

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