"Don't wanna sign up for your new religion," he muttered at whoever stood on the other side of the door. "Don't want to buy steak knives or encyclopedias."

Of course, since the door in question was around the back of the house and led into the apartment he'd set up in his parents' bas.e.m.e.nt after high school graduation, he knew that whoever was out there wasn't some door-to-door salesman. Which saddened him in a way, as he had for an instant secretly prayed that he would open the door and find Girl Scouts out there.

For the cookies, of course.'Cause, okay, Girl Scouts, pretty much jailbait, he thought.

Cheese Curls clutched to his chest, Xander pulled open the door. There was n.o.body out there.

"h.e.l.lo?"

He stepped out onto the cement stoop and glanced around just in time to see Buffy heading back toward the front of the house. She turned at the sound of his voice and smiled when she saw him.

"Hey, Xand."

"Buffy, hey. To what do I owe the ecstasy?"

"Just hadn't seen my bud in a while and thought I'd come by, see if you wanna do b.u.mp-in-the-night patrol with me tonight."

Xander blinked and stared at her. Back in high school, he and Willow and Buffy had been inseparable, formed the core of what he'd playfully dubbed "The s...o...b.. Gang." They hung around at the Bronze, they hung around in the school library, they hung around in cemeteries. But with college, things had changed. Xander had come out decidedly against anything resembling more school, even though Willow, Buffy, and Oz had gone on to U.C. Sunnydale. The s...o...b.. Gang still existed, particularly in a crisis, but they did a whole heck of a lot less hanging around than they used to. Buffy just dropping by for a one-on-one visit, and asking him to go on patrol, was a bit out of the ordinary.

"Xander?" Buffy prodded, a frown creasing her forehead.

"Sorry," he replied with a shake of his head. "Brain not able to mult.i.task, and I'm having a hard time not making s.e.xual innuendos surrounding the phrase b.u.mp-in-the-night."

"Got it." She bounced a bit on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, crackling with what Xander thought of as good old let's-kill-something Slayer energy. "So, patrol?"

Still curious, but happy to be asked, he rubbed his chin in a way he hoped would imply actual contemplation. "Hmm, let me see. Eat tasty snacks in front of beautifully orchestrated Hong Kong action, or get a little exercise, witness it firsthand, and put my life in mortal jeopardy." He shrugged. "Don't ever quote me, but for some reason only my therapist would understand, I think I'll take mortal jeopardy for a hundred, Alex."

Buffy seemed puzzled. "No mention of Anya."

"Out spending money on girl fashions. She said it was a gender imperative. Whatever that is." He nodded back toward his apartment. "Let me just grab a jacket."

Nearly two hours had pa.s.sed without any sign of supernatural presence. Buffy had begun to grow discouraged, but she was still more than a little curious about the bat-faced vampires from the night before. The last thing she wanted was to go home empty-handed, particularly since Giles wasn't exactly on fire with the research at the moment. Of course, she could have asked Willow to get started on it - was actually feeling kind of guilty about not doing so - but when they'd met for mochaccinos earlier, Buffy had felt a bit of tension between them. A kind of distance. She didn't like that at all.

Willow was her best friend. She ought to be able to speak her mind if something was bothering her. But, then again, Buffy hadn't exactly spoken up earlier. Both of them had sort of just let the tension drift until Buffy had taken off for Giles's, worried that he still was not answering his phone.

As soon as she got back to the dorm that night, Buffy vowed to talk to Willow, dispel the weirdness that had been between them since that morning. Meanwhile, she deeply regretted having invited Xander to come on patrol with her.

What the h.e.l.l was I thinking?

But she knew the real reason she had asked Xander along. With Giles occupied by Olivia, and with the awkwardness she felt with Willow at the moment, Buffy needed someone around to rea.s.sure her that she wasn't just the Slayer.

Though she and Xander had patrolled around the Bronze and through the major cemeteries, Buffy had rushed through it and drifted west toward the ocean. There were some very nice neighborhoods near the beach, but they were not her target. She certainly did not expect to find the tattooed vampires back at The Fish Tank again, but once the major hunting grounds turned up empty she decided to sweep the wharf area again. Xander complained about his feet and about the distance, but not very much. It seemed to Buffy that half the time he only brought it up to give them something to talk about, to remind her that he was there.

If it had been earlier, she probably would have pretended to bail on patrol and walked him home, then come back out by herself. He made her laugh, of course. Xander was always good for that. Made her feel like herself, just another nineteen-year-old girl. But that was only on the surface. Underneath, she worried for him, and felt guilty for having dragged him along just to mark "hanging out with friends" off the checklist in her head.

But it would be okay, she told herself. That pressure was part of balancing her life.

She refused to let Professor Blaylock's humiliating her, or the research paper that still hung over her head, or even the exam she had in the morning, shatter her focus.

Focus. That was what it was all about.

The temperature had dropped considerably in the hours after dusk, and she shuddered despite the heavy wool jersey she wore over her shirt. Xander turned up the collar of his jacket. Buffy rotated her head and a muscle in her neck popped, releasing some of the tension she felt. The canvas bag over her shoulder was a minor annoyance, but worth it for the crossbow she carried inside it. Xander had a couple of stakes she had given him stuck in the pockets of his dark brown jacket. Together they walked down a deserted sidewalk in a block of run-down apartments that ended with a gas station on the corner.

Across the street from the gas station was a dingy-looking Italian place called Maria's that Buffy suspected might be Mafia-owned. Next to that was a tattoo parlor, and on the other side of that, the Kat Skratch Club. It was an ugly-looking place with a lot of neon in the window and on the sign, but a layer of grime seemed to sit over the whole thing. A blinking string of letters in the window promised "Live Girls," which Buffy appreciated, considering the not-so-unrealistic alternative was dead ones. The Kat Skratch had topless dancers 365 days a year, according to a hand-painted sign in one window that they spotted as they crossed the street toward it.

"Maybe we should stop in, rest our feet, grab a . . . mineral water or something?" Xander suggested.

Buffy shot him a doubtful glance and Xander put on his wide-eyed-innocence face and shrugged in return.

"Why'd you bring me?" he asked suddenly.

Buffy was surprised by the earnest expression on his face. She would have asked what he meant by the question, but she didn't want to play coy woman with him. Just wouldn't be fair.

"I'm not allowed to miss you?" she asked.

"You're not allowed, you're required," he told her archly. "But there's more going on. You could've asked Willow. Or Giles. Not that I'm anything less than battle-ready at all times. Xander Harris and his fists of fury await the call of combat. But . . . there's a but. You can feel it in the air. A but. So what's the but?"

Buffy nodded slowly and sighed. Then she shot him a hard look. "I do miss you, though."

"Understood."

"I kind of had a fight with Willow. And, y'know, I'm all about the learning now. Got an exam in the morning and I'm pretty much ready. How often can I say that? But I blew a major deadline in my soc cla.s.s today and I don't even know how it happened. I mean, I'm totally on top of things. Except, apparently, this."

Xander smiled. "You've got a jam-packed life, Buffy. It's gonna get messy sometimes."

Buffy stared. "I can't afford to have it get messy anymore, Xander. Sometimes I feel like Buffy's going to disappear and then there'll just be the Slayer left."

"Not as long as I'm around. That's what your friends are for." Xander's smile disappeared after a moment and he studied her with great seriousness. "Speaking of, what's up with Willow?"

For a moment Buffy tried to find the words to explain not only her argument with Willow, but her feelings about it. Then she glanced over at the front door of the Kat Skratch Club and saw three men and a woman shoving and laughing as they spilled out onto the sidewalk.

All four of them had bats tattooed across their eyes.

Buffy reached into her bag.

"Hold that thought."

CHAPTER 3.

"Wow, you let girls in the club, too? I wish you'd told me, so I could get a goofy tattoo onmy face." The four bat-faces glared at Buffy. As they did, their eyes began to flare with orange sparks. The female, cinched and draped in black leather like the others, took a step forward and tilted her head with curiosity, eyeing the Slayer up and down. Buffy had dropped the bag in front of the p.a.w.n shop and now held the crossbow in both hands, primed and ready. It was an old-fashioned Chinese model, a repeater, able to shoot six bolts with only a couple of seconds between them.

"What are you supposed to be?" the female asked, an expression of amus.e.m.e.nt on her face. Her forehead and the corners of her mouth crinkled and Buffy saw that she had caked white makeup on her face, apparently to make a more striking contrast with the black ink of the bat.

Buffy returned her smirk. "Me? Look in a mirror lately?"

One of the males, a broad-shouldered goon with a face like a bulldog and a chain that ran from his right ear to his nostril, snorted with derisive laughter. His electric eyes blazed brighter.

"You don't know how funny that is," he rumbled in the same weird accent she had heard the night before. Seemed they all had it.

"Actually, I do."

That gave them pause. All four of the vampires regarded her a bit more closely. A dog began to howl down along the block and several took up the cry in response.

It was chilling. Buffy shivered, but she smiled to cover it. She had faced evils older than man, demons whose depravity would make the bravest soldier weep, and had come out on top. Four wannabes with face paint weren't about to rattle her.

Yet in some way, they did. That bat tattoo was part of it. It spoke on an instinctive level to some primal part of her, and a frisson of fear ran through her that she could not blame on howling dogs. But more so, their eyes bothered her, for with that burning energy came her memory of the way the one the night before had sapped her strength. If she had not broken away when she did, she would have been powerless.

Powerless. Nothing frightened her more.

Xander had approached them with her, a good six feet back and over her left shoulder, just where she wanted him. Now she sensed him shifting slightly, perhaps unnerved by the dogs.

"Not sure I like the math here, Buff," he whispered.

The vampires glanced quickly at him, as one, almost like a pack of dogs. One, whose bat tattoo spread its wings almost all the way around his bald head, licked his lips. Then they grinned and turned their attention back to Buffy, and their faces shifted all at once, their fangs protruding from their mouths, their brows growing thicker and more b.e.s.t.i.a.l.

"n.o.body likes math, Xander," she said, almost under her breath. "But we do it. For instance . . .

subtraction."

Buffy lunged.

The vampires rushed her.

"Don't let them touch you!" she snapped at Xander.

With a grunt deep in her chest, right hand holding the crossbow out to one side, Buffy used her left arm to grab the nearest bat-face around the neck and choke him. With her weight on him, she launched a snap-kick high and hard, and the side of her foot caught the bulldog with the nose chain under his jaw.

Bulldog crashed backward into the clown-faced girl and they both went down. When she came down, she was still choking the first one that had attacked her. Buffy twisted him around and flipped him onto the pavement. It was a throw her first Watcher, Merrick, had taught her when she was fifteen years old.

That was one of the earliest lessons she'd learned as the Slayer. Go with what works.

"Xander!" she shouted.

Even as she turned to defend herself against the bald one, she caught a glimpse of Xander falling upon the one she'd flipped and dusting him with a stake.

Suddenly, Buffy felt a little better. These guys were faster and stronger than other vamps she'd fought, and they seemed to surge with that weird, phosph.o.r.escent energy . . . but if Xander could dust one, how tough could they be?

Bulldog was furious at having been knocked on his b.u.t.t. He had just extricated himself from the clown-faced girl, or was trying to. She b.u.mped into him, cost him a half a second. The bald one rushed Buffy then.

Crossbow held firmly in both hands, she fired a bolt into the vampire's heart, which exploded into dust.

The next bolt snapped up into position and she swung the crossbow at Clownface and Bulldog, who froze for just a moment before rabbiting back toward the club. Buffy fired two more bolts before they slammed through the front door of the Kat Skratch, and both of them thunked into Bulldog's back with a wet, tearing noise. He didn't even slow down.

"Happens every time," Xander said as he stepped up beside her. "They see me, they cower in terror and then flee."

"You're a pretty imposing presence," Buffy confirmed. "Really. I think it's the bowling shirt."

Scandalized, Xander glanced down at the blue and brown shirt he wore beneath his jacket. "Hey, this is very much in style. And, okay, a bit pungent, but Mom's a little behind on the laundry, okay?"

"Your mother stopped doing your laundry when you moved into the bas.e.m.e.nt."

Xander raised an eyebrow. "That explains a lot."

"So," Buffy went on. "Four minus two."

"Equals two. Call me the math whiz. What next?"

Buffy looked at the door to the club. "We keep subtracting."

"Never thought I'd be happy to hear that, but live girls await. Lead on!"

The inside of the Kat Skratch Club was awash with multicolored lights and roiling with music so loud and jarringly discordant that Buffy doubted it could still be called rock 'n' roll. For a place dedicated to the consumption of alcohol and the ogling of half-naked women, n.o.body seemed to be having a very good time. Bikers and fishermen and dockworkers made up most of the male population of the place . . .

which pretty much made up the population of the place. There were very few women there who weren't either onstage or waiting on tables, and Buffy figured most of them were either prost.i.tutes or girls who worked hard at looking like prost.i.tutes.

When she and Xander walked in the bouncer had his back to them, his gaze locked on a girl onstage who wore the remnants of a Catholic-school uniform several sizes too small for her. The bar ran down the entire left wall, and two stages jutted out from the wall on the right. In between there were plenty of tables. Buffy narrowed her gaze against the strobing lights and concentrated enough to cut out most of the music. There was no sign of the vampires, nor any sign that anyone had even noticed them come rushing through.

"Suddenly b.u.mp-in-the-night patrol has a whole new meaning," Xander said, voice tinged with awe.

The bouncer heard him. The burly, bearded guy turned to glare at them and his eyes ticked to the crossbow in Buffy's hands, then back to her face. "Only way you're getting in here, girlie, is up on that stage."

"Not that the idea doesn't hold some appeal," Xander told the man, "but youso should not have said that."

With a violent twinkle in his eye, the bouncer scoffed and moved toward Xander. "Yeah, weasel? And why not?"

At his most charming, Xander grinned. "Mainly 'cause I'm guessing Lloyd's of London? Not holding an insurance policy on your teeth?"

Just as the burly guy reached for Xander's throat Buffy grabbed the bouncer by the wrist. He winced in pain, stared at her in surprise, then tried to pull away. Buffy held on. He could not break her grip.

"You're not going to touch my friend or me. We're not here to drink. We'll be in and out before you know it. You shouldn't have tried to hurt him."

"You arrogant little -" the bouncer growled, cutting himself off as he threw a punch with his free hand.

Buffy stopped the punch with the stock of her crossbow, then shoved him back, hard. He went down onto the beer-sticky wooden floor without so much as a grunt.

"Five minutes. Then we're gone like we were never here."

The bouncer swallowed once and rubbed his wrist. Then he nodded slowly and began to rise, turning back toward the door to the club. A ripple of angry mutterings went through the club, and onstage two of the girls stopped dancing to stare. A couple of bikers got up from a nearby table and loomed menacingly toward them.

"Sit," Buffy said impa.s.sively, as she raised the crossbow to chest level. She would never have shot them with it, of course, but they didn't know that.

They both glanced at the bouncer, then sat down.