Chapter 2

Chapter Two:

They arrived at the Circus of the Damned five minutes after full dark and both scowled as Faith's one-night-stand-turned-narc opened the employee entrance and waved them in.

The blonde werewolf had the sense to look a little sheepish at the deadly glare Faith was sending his way, though he didn't seem the type to be truly repentant about anything so mundane as turning a bed-partner in to his boss.

Buffy toyed with the hem of her maternity shirt nervously, hoping she didn't look like a TOTAL reject. At least it wasn't the one with pink storks all over it. That would've been too humiliating to bear. It was bad enough that the stork shirt was probably the only one that would fit her in another week.

Luckily, the pants were halfway decent. Faith had somehow managed to find a pair of pleather maternity pants.

Buffy hadn't thought the white v-neck maternity shirt looked horribly bad before she left, but she was having second thoughts now.

"Should've let me wear the 'Bite Me' shirt," she muttered at Faith's back, crossing her arms over her considerable girth.

Faith tossed a saucy grin over her shoulder. "I didn't hold you down and dress you, B. But, seriously, meeting a vamp in that shirt would be like ringing the dinner bell."

Buffy's eyes narrowed and she seriously considered walking on the backs of Faith's heels. For all of the three seconds it took her to admit that it would be more childish than she could deal with. Damn hormones.

A few more moments, and Jason led them into what looked like some kind of Sultan's lair; all silks and draping satins and pillows arranged artfully on the floor for lounging.

Faith and Buffy exchanged a look, both barely able to suppress their smiles at the pretensiousness implied.

"Thought the Master was a Frog?" Faith questioned, arching an eyebrow at Jason, who gave an odd little choking sound at her words.

Buffy muffled a laugh behind her hand at the werewolf's deer-in-headlights expression.

"I do hope Jason isn't bothering either of you ladies," the smooth, cultured, lightly-accented voice seemed to slide out of the shadows and trail a sensuous path down both Slayer's spines.

"Naw, we were bothering him, actually. He just made the funniest choking noise," Faith said, trademark careless somewhat-challenging expression in place as she and Buffy turned to face the speaker.

The dark-haired vampire stood dressed in tight, poured on black leather pants, a pure white ruffled shirt, and a brocade waistcoat with silver trimming, looking like he'd just walked out of some historical romance novel.

Flanking him on the right was another vampire, this one wearing a pair of neatly-pressed tan slacks, and an icy-blue button-down silk shirt that almost matched the color of his eyes, one half-hidden behind a curtain of metallic-gold hair.

To his left was a slightly-tanned man with golden-brown hair just reaching below his ears, as if he were growing it out from a fresh haircut.

Buffy looked back and forth between them, then shook her
head. "Aren't there ANY ugly guys in St. Louis?" she demanded
petulantly.

It wasn't fair.

Three of the most gorgeous men she'd ever laid eyes on-nevermind that two of them were vampires-and here she was looking like a beluga whale.

A brief flicker of shock passed through the dark-haired vampire's eyes before he laughed, a sound that somehow managed to reach into Buffy and touch places that shouldn't be able to be touched except by a surgeon.

That cinched it. The Powers That Be were plotting against her.

TBC...