Chapter One

Finally, the sequel to Always Blood. I have been working on this since posting that little one. I would encourage reading it first (yeah, that is shameless self advertisement), but you don't have to.

BIG thanks to whomever nominated this for CoA!

Disclaimer: All characters from Buffy and Criminal Minds are owned by people other than me. They are just visiting my brain for fun.



~~~1~~~



All things truly wicked start from innocence.
Ernest Hemingway



It had been a particularly grueling night for all the Scoobies, but success had been theirs in the end. The bad guy/thing had been defeated, and rule number one had been obeyed. All that was left the eating of celebratory hot fudge sundaes and recuperating, precisely what they were doing now.

Xander and Buffy were watching some TV show. Dawn was alternating between reading and watching. Giles was softly snoring in this corner cozy chair, and Willow was surfing the Internet. Faith had gone back to the kitchen to refudgify her sundae. All was calm. And we all know how long calm lasts.

“Guys, I think we have a serious situation here.” Willow jumped up from her computer and ran over to the bookshelf. She pulled out a weathered book and gingerly began turning the crumbling pages.

Buffy looked away from the cheesy space opera named after a bug Xander had insisted on watching. “Not another Big Bad, please. My apocalypse clothes are still at the dry cleaners.”

Willow shook her head and sat back down at the computer, still looking at the book. “Not that kind of bad, but definitely still of the bad. Maybe more of the will-be-bad.”

“What’s the bad? Did they stop making Giles’s favourite tea?” Xander joked halfhearted. His grin was turned grimace by Buffy elbowing his bruised ribs.

“The bad where we have to send Dawn to talk to the FBI again.”


~~~1~~~