They ran. Dodging through the gravestones, the mist following them as if it was spilling off the stage at a rock concert. Buffy heard an "Oof" and looked back. William was gone.

"William!"

"Bloody hell. 'M okay," William answered as Spike seemed to struggle up from the mist. "Tripped."

Buffy grabbed him by the leather sleeve and tried to pull him along but he stopped dead in his tracks, looking up. In front of them something was trying to take shape. Something enormous, with red eyes and bat ears and as many arms as an octopus, something whose chameleon skin writhed liked angry serpents. Buffy's heart filled with hatred. She had seen it before. The night Spike died.

Her mind went back to that night, remembering Willow, her eyes and hair black as ink, standing on the bungie jumping platform put up for a local fair. Behind Willow, wavering in the dark, she was the faint outline of this...thing.

Buffy and William turned and ran in the opposite direction, ran through a forest of small obelisks, gray, pink, white, a fad in gravestones from a century ago. They came out into a small plaza surrounded by huge monuments. Some were obelisks as tall as a three-story building, gleaming spires of whiteness piercing the fog. Some were ornate towers crowned with angels. Some were fluted columns mimicking ancient ruins.

They stopped, William panting hard as he joined a huge verdigris-green angel leaning against a stone sarcophagus. His shoulders drooped as he bent over the marble coffin and Spike's coat skimmed the ground. The angel's wings drooped too. One of its hands rested on a huge green angel feather that trailed over the edge of the sarcophagus but the other held a sword. Its angel face was beautiful but sharp and watchful. As was William's face. Or Spike's. She was no longer sure which.

"Buffy, " William gasped between breaths, as they watched the mist tightening a circle around them, "how did you stop it before. Stake through the heart, wasn't it? The heart being the only solid, vulnerable part of the creature?"

Buffy nodded and remembered. Willow had let the demon in, welcomed it for the power it gave her, let it use her magical abilities, let it destroy, let it kill, let it enslave her as long as it was willing to help her get Tara back. Dawn had gotten bored hiding at the DoubleMeat Palace and had gone to stay with Janice, just across the street from their own home. Willow had been keeping watch on the house and had seen Dawn. She had kidnapped her, determined to use her keyness. Tied her to the platform, ready to bleed her to open a portal between dimensions so she could try to snatch Tara back into this reality.

William, still breathing hard, looked around. He gestured toward a huge monument behind the guarding angel. It was shaped like a thin wedding cake, three different levels with stone drapery, angels at each level, and the statute of a young man at the top. "That will be easy to climb. It will put me high enough to strike it in the heart. If you can be bait and lead it to me."

"I can do the climbing and the killing," Buffy insisted, her hate for the demon mixing with a strange fear for William.

William said, "I don't have Slayer speed or stamina. We both have a much better chance if you do the running and I do the climbing."

Buffy hesitated and finally agreed with a nod.

"Right. Down to business then. I'll start climbing. You taunt the bugger and get him to chase you. Run him right at me so he'll pass through me and that tower. As he does I'll find his heart." He paused and said, "Good luck," and, as he did, reached toward her as if he was about to touch her face. Just before his fingers would have brushed her cheek he stopped himself, looking conflicted. Then he turned away and strode over to the monument he had pointed out and started to climb. In Spike's duster, in the darkness, he looked like Spike, was Spike, and she flashed back to that other night.

She remembered Dawn screaming. Spike was climbing up the darkened side of the tower while she climbed the lighted front. Willow kept sending nasties down to try and pull her off the steel lattice and with Willow was the demon, faintly incandescent in the dark.

Buffy turned and trotted through the mist to where she last saw Venalicius. For a second she saw nothing unnatural then a tentacle of darkness rolled out of the mist and toward her. She dodged out of its way. Now she could see the glistening form, the arms flailing, the ears turning this way and that, the red eyes gleaming.

She stopped at an ancient gravestone. The years had all but washed away the letters that had been carved on it surface and moss had covered the rest. It was tilted, really to fall. She wrenched it out of the ground and smashed it on top of another stone and started lobbing its pieces at the silvery shadow. The red eyes glowed more strongly and it rose up taller and began to advance on her. She turned to run and in the distance, saw William nearing the top of the tower.

That night Spike had made it to the top of that other tower without Willow spotting him. But Dawn saw him and, frightened out of her wits, started screaming to him for help. Willow had turned toward Spike, her eyes demon red, and behind her the demon had twisted like a tree in an angry storm.

Buffy could see that William had reached the top of the monument and was clinging there as she lured the demon to him. She increased her speed, weaving through the fog, avoiding the gravestones. Her heart pounded in her ears as she ran toward what looked like Spike, his dark figure clinging to the top of a tower just as he had as she climbed toward him that last night.

While tonight Venalicius was gaining on her, its inky limbs reaching toward her, its red eyes blazing as it flowed across the ground. It was on her heels, almost touching her. Its tentacles seized William's jacket and slammed her to a halt. She slid out of the jacket as quickly as ice cream sliding off a stick on a hot day. She could see William/Spike on the angel tower above her. She ran straight at it, only dodging aside at the last moment. Venalicius began to ooze through the stone structure and as it did, William struck out, hitting the demon but...missing the heart. Venalicius roared in pain and then backed up slightly to glare at William. It snaked out a tentacle and seized him, dragging William from his perch.

Buffy gasped in horror. She remembered that other night and how Demon!Willow had used her powers to drag Spike off that other tower. She remembered him falling past her, his lips forming her name. Willow had sent a rain of stakes after him. He must have been pierced a hundred times. He dissolved into dust without ever reaching the ground.

As Willow let the dark power flow through her and as Spike fell and dissolved and blew away, Buffy had gotten close enough to Venalicius to strike it through the heart. At that the demon's inky substance had oozed out of Willow like a dark cloud, writhing, churning with power, and leaving Willow weak, confused and without even a memory of what the demon had done. What Willow had let the demon do by selling herself to it for the chance to resurrect Tara.

The demon held William high above Buffy. For a moment she was afraid it would throw him down or bash his brains out on the nearest tall monument. Instead a fissure opened under its eyes and William was shoved, shouting, into its mouth and sent sliding down into what must have been the demon's stomach, dimly visible through its translucent flesh. William struggled and thrashed about, still alive, still feeling everything that was happening to him. He stilled for a moment, seeming to orient himself. Then he slid, crawled, slithered to the opposite surface, took a stake out of his pocket and jammed it up, up through the stomach wall, up through the demon flesh, up till William's entire arm was pushing the stake up, up toward the demon's faintly gleaming heart.

Venalicius began to keen in pain, to shake and shudder and throw itself around, trying to dislodge the man forcing a wooden stake toward its vulnerable center but failing since the man was on the inside. William seized the edge of the wound he had made and used it help press the stake farther and farther up - until it finally reached its goal.

Buffy's heart quivered with joy as the demon quivered for a moment then began to fall apart, mutating into threads of dark and light as it sunk down toward the earth. Suddenly it resolved into mist and William was freed to fall the last few feet and land with a curse. Buffy ran to him, touching his face, his hair, feeling for injuries.

"Are you all right!!"

"A bit winded."

William lay back on the grass, catching his breath. Buffy sat beside him, her legs crossed, and found herself, once again, missing Spike. After a night like this Spike would make a few snarky comments then start trying to feel her up. Annoying her. Making her mad. Making her forget every demon in the world but him.

William looked up toward the sky, saying, "The fog is clearing. I can see the stars."

He lay quietly, Spike's coat wrapped around him. His face peaceful. He turned to look at her and said, "All we alright, Buffy? After last night. Now that Willow and I are engaged."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't want you to feel uncomfortable with me but I don't want you to think I proposed to Willow just to just reassure you. Willow and I get along well. We're a good match and I thought it best that I redirect the inappropriate feelings I have for you."

Buffy was thrown into confusion and anger. Was the boob saying he proposed to Willow to keep from sleeping with her!!! Just so there would be NO temptation. She wanted to reach out and throttle him right now. Leave him for the next demon, feed him to Dru. IDIOT!

She leapt to her feet and turned away from him. William rose and put his hand on her shoulder to pull her around to face him. She turned and punched him.

She pulled her punch, didn't give him the full Slayer treatment, but he reacted with a howl of outrage, "You stupid trollop! Do you think you can spend your life punching people whenever you're confronted with a situation you find difficult! Sometimes you seem as unreasonable as that demon. Perhaps you had better have a new Watcher, someone you respect and who respects you, which I DO NOT!"

Buffy seethed with anger and resentment. She also remembered Venalicius' demand, "Give me back what is mine." The plea echoed through her mind. She could hear Drusilla whispering, "Give me back what is mine, my fledgling, and I will give back Spike." Spike insisting, "Give me back what is mine, my body, my mind, my life." And her own heart, as selfish was the demon's, demanding "Give me back what is mine, my monster."

His jaw fixed in anger and his voice an angry growl William turned to her and asked, "We're finished here. Shall we pick up the weapons we left in Spike's crypt or pick up Willow first? Which?"

Buffy remembered Drusilla, waiting patiently for William, waiting with her promises of Spike's return. Buffy thought of Spike smirking at her, his hands on her flesh, his vows of love, his proofs of devotion. She thought of her sister and Dawn's guilt. She thought of herself and yearned for Spike with all the wanting in her soul. She looked at William standing there in Spike's duster, his eyes angry, not hers, no loving, not accepting...but human and alive and complete in himself. And she tried to choose.

The world went into slow motion and she froze as she flashed back to high school, to English class, to the story of a barbarian princess who had to direct her lover to one of two doors. Behind one door was a beast that would devour him, behind the other, a woman who would marry him. She thought of Drusilla behind the door to Spike's crypt, ready to devour William, thought of it with guilt and anticipation. She thought of Willow behind the door of that other crypt, ready to marry William, ready to be happy, ready to destroy Spike forever, as she had killed him once already, thought of it with anger, jealousy and bitterness. She thought of the barbarian princess again. The story never revealed what the princess decided and Buffy suddenly really, really wanted to know. She thought if she only knew what the princess decided then she could make up her own mind. She stood frozen, willing time to stop, as William waited for her to indicate where he should go, waited for her to determine his fate - and Spike's, waited for her to decide to which door she should send him, to which embrace, the vampire's or the girl's? The lady, or the tiger?

~~~~~~~~

Behind Door Number 1... Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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