“No, no, no,” the first old man objected in a thick southern drawl, waving his arms adamantly and shaking his bald head. “B Line Road's the old Baxter Road, they changed the blasted thang when Trewalla went and runned off with that there travelin’ circus!”

“That was the Baker girl what runned off with the circus!” the second old man disputed in the same thick drawl, his shock of white hair a sharp contrast to his friend’s bald pate. “The Baxter girl decided she were gonna be a movie star and runned off ta Holl-ee-wood. B Line Road's the old Baker Road, west o’ the Piggly-Wiggly.”

Buffy ground her teeth and held her hands up as the first old man spat tobacco juice in a spittoon, getting ready to object again. “Look! Isn’t there anyone around here that knows where B Line Road is for sure? I’m really in a hurry … it’s a matter of life and death! And I mean that literally!”

“Arnie would know,” the first old man answered authoritatively, nodding sagely.

“Right as rain, that is. Arnie would know,” the second agreed, matching the first man’s nod.

Buffy waited, looking expectantly from one to the other of the old men sitting at the worn, Formica-topped counter in the small diner / gas station that proclaimed: “Smiley’s Reststop. Eat here and get gas!” on their sign.

She’d stopped in to ask directions to B Line Road; she’d been unable to find it on the map she had. She’d driven around a bit on the outskirts of Dripping Springs, looking desperately for it, before giving up on that course of action and pulling in to the first place she came to – this place: Smiley’s.  It was a bit ironic; no one here seemed to be smiling; though the contention of eating and getting gas was probably accurate.

When neither man said any more, Buffy threw her arms out in frustration. “Well!” she demanded. “Can we call Arnie and ask him?”

“Naaaa … Arnie’s dead,” the first old man replied, spitting another trail of tobacco juice into the pot on the floor.

Buffy screamed, clenching her hands into fists, and closing her eyes in frustration. She took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling a moment as if to find some divine intervention there as she tried to calm down.

“Yep,” the second man agreed, taking a bite of his pecan pie. “Nigh on three years now. Heart attack.”

“Is there anyone that might know where B Line Road is who is still alive?” Buffy ground out through clenched teeth, keeping her voice as calm as she could.

“Sammy-Ray might know…” the second man suggested.

The first man pulled a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and nodded as he pinched some between his fingers and shoved another wad into his already distended lip. “Reckon he might at that.”

“Great, can we call Sammy-Ray?” Buffy pressed impatiently, pulling out her cell phone.

“Naaaa … he runned off with that man from the bank … what was his name? Barrows, Borrows, Barrels …” the first man replied, deep in thought.

“Barrowman… ” the second man supplied, swallowing his bite of pie.

“You cannot be serious!!” Buffy screamed in frustration, her face turning nearly purple and contorting as if in physical pain.

“‘Fraid so, missy. Don’t you feel badly, now. Was quite the shock to everyone ‘round these parts, includin’ Sammy-Ray’s wife.”

Buffy flung her arms out again and spun on her heel, heading for the door. If she stayed in here another second longer, there would be two fewer old men in the world. She’d just have to find another place to get directions. She’d already wasted too much time, first searching for B Line Road and then with these two nincompoops.

“You could call a cab,” the waitress behind the counter suggested, entering the conversation for the first time.

The two old men at the counter snorted their disdain at the suggestion, giving her a snide look.

Buffy spun back around, utterly exasperated. “And why would I want to do that?  I don’t need a ride! I have a car! I need directions!”

The young woman shrugged and looked down shyly, tugging on a loose string on her apron. “Just seems a cab driver would know where all the roads are. Saw it on a movie once … you could just follow him in your car. ‘Course, you’d still have to pay him for the fare…”

Buffy’s mouth opened, ready to bite the girl’s head off, but then closed again as she considered the suggestion. She took a deep breath, letting some of her anxiety and frustration go as she exhaled and began to walk toward the payphone at the back of the diner to use the phonebook.

"What’s the best, quickest, cab company to call?” she asked the girl as she passed.

The waitress looked up and smiled proudly. She stuck her tongue out at her two patrons, giving them a ‘so there’ look over her shoulder as she passed, going over to a bulletin board on the wall. She plucked a card from it, finding it immediately amongst the plethora of business cards and hand-written advertisements, and handed it to Buffy. “My boyfriend works for this here company … they’re the very best.”

**~**

Joan parked the DeSoto in the deserted parking lot of a long-abandoned beer bottling plant, centering it perfectly between the faded white lines right near the front door. Still in the car, she switched on her newly installed Pulse and Heartbeat Simulator and sniffed her clothing one more time. She’d put on some of Buffy’s dirty clothes before leaving the house. In the enclosed car, the strong aroma seemed reasonable and appropriate. She was satisfied that it should be enough to deceive the vampires inside the building, at least from a distance.

Satisfied, Joan got out of the car, carefully closing the door without making a sound. She did one last check of her weapons, smoothed her jeans and straightened her shirt, and strode into the large, imposing building. Despite it being midday, the bottom floor of the old metal building lacked windows and was nearly completely dark. The only light came from small rust holes and bullet holes that had been shot through the heavy metal siding. She activated her night-vision as the heavy, metal door fell closed behind her, and stopped to take in her surroundings, both looking and listening carefully.

She heard Spike’s laugh coming from the second floor. Her brow furrowed as she tried to correlate this behavior with the information they had about him being taken prisoner. It seemed inconsistent with that data. Unless she could find new evidence, she decided that the information they’d gathered thus far supported the notion that he had been taken prisoner, not that he had joined his sire and grand-sire willingly. She would work under that assumption until that verdict was proven incorrect.

“What’s your name?” came a child’s voice from a position to the right and above Joan. “I’m Hana.”

Joan turned toward the sound and looked up. Atop a tall pyramid of wooden crates sat a small girl. Her feet swung idly, her heels kicking the old wooden side of the box she was perched atop.

Joan studied the child a moment before replying, “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.”

Suddenly the crystal center of the flower the girl was holding began to sparkle to life. The child giggled as she watched the rainbow of colors dance around in the darkness, like a prism lit from within with its own miniature sun.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire…” she began to chant as she leapt effortlessly down the ten feet from her perch, landing lightly on the floor in front of Joan.

“You aren’t a gumdrop!” Hana accused gaily as she began to skip happily around Joan in a wide circle.

“♫Alouette, gentille Alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai,” she began to sing gleefully as she skipped.  “Je te plumerai  la tête. Je te plumerai la la tête. Et la tête! Et la tête!”

Joan turned in a circle, watching the girl as she sang and giggled, dancing and skipping about without a care in the world. She moved in close to Joan, then back again as she played her game, her long, brunette hair swinging freely about her shoulders as her teal-blue eyes glittered with laughter.

The next time she came within reach, Joan stopped the child’s singing with a violent wrenching of the girl’s head, turning it around 180 degrees and nearly pulling it from her shoulders.

Hana’s eyes went as wide as saucers as her song ended abruptly. The rainbow of colors in her crystal flower slowly died, the teal-blue brilliance of her irises faded to dull-grey, and her body went completely limp in Joan’s grasp.

“I am not a skylark and I do not believe I would care for you to pluck my head... or any other part of my anatomy,” Joan responded flatly as she dropped the girl onto the dirty floor in a heap.

With the room now silent again, Joan once again listened for sounds of the other demons in the building. Her processors whirred wildly as she heard Spike’s laugh turn into a gurgling choke and then a scream of pain. Joan concentrated on calming herself; she was the Slayer. The Slayer did not panic. The Slayer had a job to do and she would do it. After listening a few more moments, Joan located the stairs, switched into stealth-mode, and began padding up them as silently as a cat.

The second floor had more light than the first, with several dirt-encrusted, decades-old, twelve-pane windows along the front wall. There was one large room in the front along the windows, with individual offices lining the back wall. Cases of glass bottles, left over from the old bottling operation, were scattered around the area. Some were still on the steel gravity conveyor system that snaked from one end of the floor to the other, while others were on work-benches or on the floor, awaiting their labels. Off the main line of the steel conveyor system were side-tracks, which deposited the bottles at various workstations along the way.

Joan’s eyes locked on one of the offices in the furthest corner of the second floor as Spike’s scream was cut off sharply. She scanned the floor one more time, but saw no adversary standing in her path, so she began working her way through the labyrinth of the conveyor system to the back corner.

She hadn’t gotten very far when she was stopped by a shrill whistle coming from behind her. Joan froze in her tracks, turning her head slightly to locate the source of the sound.

“Looking for someone?” the brunette woman asked sarcastically as she stepped from behind a stack of crates in the back corner.

Joan turned to face her, recognizing her immediately as the bitch that had stolen her axe and insulted Buffy’s ass: Faith, the Vampire Slayer.

“No. I have established Spike’s whereabouts,” Joan replied. “I simply need to retrieve him now.”

“Oh, yeah? Well … hate to tell you this, B, but to retrieve him, you’re gonna have to go through me.”

Joan tilted her head, studying the Slayer who held the red axe in her hand. “Very well,” she agreed after a moment.

“And me,” came another voice from behind Joan. The Bot turned and faced the new sound, identifying him as the Magnificent Poof.

“And me…” purred another woman’s voice very close to Joan.

The Bot turned again and was face-to-face with a wild-eyed Drusilla.

Dru held up two fingers and pointed them into the Bot’s eyes, then back into her own. “Look at me, dearie. Be... in my eyes. Be... in me.”

Joan smiled at Dru. “No, thank you,” she replied, backhanding Drusilla and sending her flying backwards into the air. The dark vamp hit the wall of one of the offices with a cracking thud, creating a Dru-sized dent in the drywall, before sliding to the floor in a heap of velvet and lace.

In the next moment Faith was behind Joan, the scythe in her hand drawn back and ready to strike. Without looking, Joan ducked and swept one foot out, hitting Faith in the ankles. The dark Slayer fell to the dusty floor, but popped back up again only a moment later. In that moment, however, Joan’s fingers closed around the shaft of the axe and she yanked it with all her strength. Faith held on to it with both hands, but was pulled off-balance by Joan’s inhuman strength and flung to the floor again, face first.

As Faith fell, Joan wrested the scythe from the Slayer’s grip, twisting and pulling it free of the brunette’s clutching fingers. Before Faith cold flip back up to her feet, Joan brought the stake-end of the weapon down in the middle of Faith’s back, just to the left of her spine.

Faith froze, face down on the floor, her breath caught in her chest. “I’m not a vampire,” Faith reminded the Slayer standing over her, speaking as calmly as she could manage.

“And yet, there is a reasonable probability that a stake through your heart would kill you all the same,” Joan retorted. “But, I believe you have first-hand knowledge of that, do you not?”

“That’s just it, B. I’m human – you aren’t gonna kill me. Not in your nature,” Faith argued, though she didn’t make any move to get up.

“Is it not? Are you willing to bet your life on that assumption?” Joan wondered. She pressed down a little harder on the stake and broke the skin on Faith’s back as the sharp point slid into the Slayer’s muscular flesh, drawing blood. “Perhaps my nature has changed,” she suggested as a growing ring of crimson soaked through Faith's shirt around the embedded point of the stake.

“Ahhhh … ok! Uncle. You win!” Faith exclaimed, holding her hands up off the floor in surrender.

“Yes. I am aware of that. You have a firm grasp of the obvious,” Joan agreed.

“Buffy, Buffy, Buffy…” Angelus cajoled, walking slowly across the floor, gliding around the conveyor system towards the two Slayers.

“There’s no need for that. We’re all reasonable people here,” he continued.

“Actually, I believe the majority of the life-forms in this room could not be categorized as ‘people’,” Joan countered. “And I, for one, have recently become quite unreasonable. It is a consequence of watching someone you love die … then suffer the darkness you cast her into and die again.

“If you would like to have this human returned to you with her heart still beating in her chest, then release Spike,” Joan demanded.

“The offer I made was for a trade, Buff,” Angelus reminded her.

“Yes. Trade Spike for a Slayer. I am offering the same trade, simply a different Slayer,” Joan retorted. “You do not wish to pique my temper further. You will not be content with the outcome. This skank ho’ with the saggy ass will be even less pleased.”

Angelus stopped moving and considered her in silence a few moments. There was something off about her, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. His brow furrowed as he listened and sniffed the air contemplatively – it certainly smelled like Buffy, sounded like Buffy. The dark vamp steepled his fingers together, the tips of his fingers touching his lips as he thought. Then the answer came to him, it was so obvious: he'd broken her, driven her shit-house-rat crazy. At last! This victory was going to be the sweetest one of all.

After a few moments, Angelus nodded. “Okay, if that’s how you want to play it,” he agreed. “Dru, get Spike …” he ordered the thin vampire who had been slowly struggling back to her feet on the far side of the room.

Dru sniffed and straightened her dress. She lifted her chin proudly and took a step toward the back office to get Spike, stumbled once and wavered before catching herself on the wall to keep from falling again. After recomposing herself, she began again, this time without faltering.

“So, how’s this gonna work, Buff?” Angelus asked as he began moving toward Joan and Faith again.

“You will release Spike and I will release this skank ho’. It is a simple exchange. Even a gormless plonker like you should be able to follow the plot,” Joan replied.

“Been hanging around Spike too much, Buff. You used to be much more clever with the insults,” Angelus chastised, still moving forward.

“Spike’s cleverness is eclipsed only by his washboard abs and impressive dangly bits,” Joan contended.

“Yeah … about those,” Angelus wheedled, making a pained expression. “Not really quite so impressive anymore.”

Joan’s eyes narrowed into angry slits as Dru emerged from the back office carrying Spike’s bare, limp, shredded, and blood-soaked body.

Joan could clearly see the jagged ends of numerous rib-bones protruding through the bruised, bloodied, and burned flesh of his chest. Spike’s face was equally grotesque, swollen almost beyond recognition and covered in both dried and fresh blood. His lower body had large, round, deep plugs missing from the meat of his buttocks and thighs, as if someone had used a biscuit-cutter to remove the flesh like a baker would remove rounds from a sheet of dough. His feet were swollen grotesquely, black and bloodied; each toe seemed to be pointed in a different direction. She couldn’t see his dangly bits with the way Dru was carrying him, like a child cradled in her arms.

“What have you done to Spike?” Joan demanded angrily, barely able to restrain herself from leaving Faith and running to his aid.

Angelus shrugged nonchalantly. “We just played some games … had a little fun. Nothing serious.

“If I were serious, then I’d tell Dru to see if Spike can fly … in the sun,” Angelus threatened, motioning with his head for Dru to take Spike over near the window.

“What do you think, Buff? Can vampires fly?”

Joan felt all her microprocessors surge at once as Dru neared the grimy windows with Spike’s limp body. She unconsciously pressed down harder on the stake, only noticing when Faith began to yell and squirm wildly beneath her.

“Let Faith go and put down the pretty axe,” Angelus demanded. “Or we’ll find out how well Spike handles a tan.”

“Slayer … no,” came a gurgling, scarcely-audible plea from the barely-conscious, blond vamp.

Joan’s internal drives whirled as she tried to determine the correct course of action. Her eyes darted from Spike’s bloodied and battered body down to Faith and then over to Angelus. Her data told her not to trust Angelus, but she also knew he was ruthless. There was a reasonable chance he was capable of sacrificing Faith in order to gain the upper hand in this negotiation. He also knew that she was not prepared to sacrifice Spike. This disadvantage put Joan in a weak bargaining position. But she had one thing he wanted: at least for the moment, he still thought she was Buffy.

“Agreed. Let Spike go and I will take his place,” she offered immediately.

“Nooo,” Spike croaked from the other side of the room. His arms and legs began thrashing weakly and painfully as he tried in vain to get free from Dru’s grasp.

Joan tried to ignore the painful grunts and groans emanating from the broken vamp and keep her attention on Angelus. It was one of the hardest things Joan had ever done in her entire existence.

“Let Faith go first,” Angelus insisted, also ignoring his grand-childe.

“No. Spike first.”

Angelus looked at Dru and nodded one time. Dru lifted Spike’s limp body up over her head, preparing to toss him through the dirt-stained windows and into the bright, mid-day, Texas sun.

“NO!” Joan screamed, pressing down sharply on the scythe in her anger and distress.

Faith gasped as the sharp, supernatural stake slid between her ribs, into her chest, and impaled her heart in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Blood poured into the cavity around her heart, drowning her, as she tried in vain to breathe, tried to keep her skewered heart beating.

Joan looked down as Faith struggled against the weapon longer than seemed possible under the circumstances, but finally went perfectly still. The only movement coming from the dark Slayer was the blood quickly soaking through her clothes and forming a shimmering, crimson puddle beneath her.

“Ooops.”

**~**