# The Darkest Spark
## Chapter 2: "Dead Man's Party"
---
### Part One: The Morning After
Buffy Summers woke up feeling... wrong. Not sick. Not hurt. *Wrong* in the way that a compass needle feels wrong when you hold a magnet next to it—pulled in a direction it was never meant to go.
She sat up in bed and touched her neck. The skin was smooth. No puncture wounds. No bruising. Nothing. If it weren't for the ghost of that golden euphoria still humming in her veins like a second heartbeat, she might have convinced herself it was a dream.
But it wasn't a dream.
She remembered everything. Every detail. The smoke. The cold fingers on her chin. Those eyes—gold like a dragon's, then red like fresh arterial blood. The way his voice had wrapped around her mind like silk chains. The bite. God, the *bite*. It hadn't hurt. It had felt like drowning in warm honey, like every good feeling she'd ever experienced compressed into a single, overwhelming moment.
*"You're mine now. My favorite little pet."*
Buffy's jaw clenched. She was the Slayer. She wasn't anyone's *pet*. She wanted to scream it. She wanted to run downstairs and call Giles and tell him everything.
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Not nothing as in she couldn't find the words. Nothing as in her throat physically refused to form them. The compulsion sat in her brain like a locked door made of adamantine. She could think about what happened. She could replay every second in agonizing detail. She could feel the fury and the confusion and the lingering, traitorous warmth in her chest.
But she could not speak a single word about it to anyone.
"Damn it," she whispered to the empty room. That worked fine. She could talk. She could say anything she wanted—as long as it wasn't about *him*.
She showered. She dressed. She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time, looking for something different. Her eyes were the same. Her skin was the same. But there was a flush in her cheeks that hadn't been there yesterday, and her body felt... energized. Like the blood he'd taken had been replaced with something better.
*What did he do to me?*
She grabbed her bag and headed downstairs.
---
### Part Two: Joyce
Joyce Summers was in the kitchen, navigating the minefield of their newly repaired relationship with the careful precision of a woman defusing a bomb. Ever since Buffy had come back from her summer of running away, every conversation felt like it might be the one that detonated everything.
"Morning, honey," Joyce said, setting a plate of eggs on the counter. "Did you sleep okay?"
*A vampire god teleported into my room, mind-controlled me, and drank my blood, and it felt better than anything I've ever experienced in my life.* "Fine," Buffy said. "Slept great."
"You look good," Joyce said, tilting her head. "You have color. Have you been using that new moisturizer I bought?"
"Must be," Buffy said flatly.
She ate the eggs without tasting them. Her mind was a war zone. Part of her—the Slayer part, the part that had faced the Master and Angelus and literal death—was already planning. She'd find this "Stiles." She'd figure out what he was. She'd kill him. Stake, sword, holy water, whatever it took.
Another part of her—a part she refused to acknowledge—was remembering the way his hand had felt on her chin. Cool and commanding and somehow, impossibly, *safe*.
She shoved the eggs away and stood up.
"I'm going to school," she said.
"Buffy, you barely touched your—"
"Not hungry."
The front door closed behind her with a bang.
---
### Part Three: The Library
Rupert Giles was already in full research mode when Buffy arrived. Books were stacked in towers on the main table. Willow was at the computer. Xander was eating a jelly donut and contributing nothing, which was his primary skill set.
"Ah, Buffy," Giles said, cleaning his glasses. "Good. We have a situation."
"When don't we?" Buffy muttered, dropping into a chair.
"There's been a string of disappearances," Giles continued. "Six people in the last two months. All young women. All last seen in the vicinity of the Bronze or the warehouse district. No bodies recovered."
"Vampires," Xander said through a mouthful of donut.
"Possibly," Giles said. "But there's no pattern consistent with typical vampire feeding. No bodies means either they're being turned, which would result in a noticeable increase in fledgling activity, or—"
"Or something's keeping them," Willow said from the computer. "Alive, I mean. Something that feeds but doesn't kill."
Buffy's blood went cold. *He feeds on humans. Girls.*
She knew. She *knew* with absolute certainty that this was him. The disappearances had started two months ago—right around the time he would have arrived in Sunnydale, based on what he'd said about seeing her at school. He'd been here. Feeding. Building his territory.
She opened her mouth to tell Giles everything.
Her throat locked.
The words dissolved like sugar in acid. She could feel them—*There's a new vampire, he's called the Dark One, he was in my room last night*—but they evaporated before they reached her tongue.
"Buffy?" Giles asked, noticing her expression. "Are you alright?"
"Fine," she managed. "Just... thinking."
"Well, that's new," Xander said. Willow elbowed him.
"I'll patrol tonight," Buffy said. "Check the warehouse district."
"Take care," Giles said. "We don't know what we're dealing with."
*I do,* Buffy thought. *And I can't tell you.*
---
### Part Four: The Hallway
She saw him at lunch.
He was leaning against a row of lockers like he'd been born there, wearing a charcoal henley with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and dark jeans that fit like they'd been tailored by someone who understood the concept of intimidation through fashion. His hair was artfully messy—not the styled chaos of someone trying too hard, but the genuine disorder of someone who didn't care about anything enough to fix it.
He was talking to Cordelia Chase.
Cordelia was laughing.
Cordelia Chase did not laugh at things said by people she hadn't personally vetted through her social hierarchy, which meant either Stiles had somehow infiltrated the popular crowd in a single morning, or his supernatural charm was leaking.
Buffy stopped in the middle of the hallway. Students flowed around her like water around a stone.
Stiles looked up.
Their eyes met.
He smiled. It was a slow, knowing smile—the smile of a cat watching a mouse realize the cage door was closed. He said something to Cordelia that made her touch his arm and walk away giggling, and then he pushed off the lockers and walked toward Buffy.
Every step he took felt like a countdown.
"Morning, Buffy," he said, stopping two feet in front of her. Close enough that she could smell him—leather and ozone and something underneath that was purely, impossibly *dark*, like the scent of a thunderstorm over an open grave.
"Stay away from me," Buffy said through gritted teeth.
"That's not very friendly," Stiles said. He tilted his head, studying her like she was a painting he was considering purchasing. "Especially considering how well we got along last night."
"You *violated* me," Buffy hissed, keeping her voice low. Students were everywhere.
"I fed on you," Stiles corrected mildly. "And I made sure it didn't hurt. You're welcome, by the way. Most vampires in this town have all the finesse of a garbage disposal."
"You mind-controlled me."
"I compelled you. There's a difference. Mind control implies I'm steering the ship. Compulsion just... locks certain doors. You're still you, Buffy. You can still think, feel, plan, brood—whatever it is you Slayers do. You just can't talk about me." He paused. "Well, you can talk about me. You just can't tell anyone what I am or what I've done."
"I'm going to kill you," Buffy said.
Stiles laughed. It was a genuine laugh, warm and bright, and it was so jarringly *normal* that it made Buffy's stomach flip.
"No, you're not," he said. "But I appreciate the ambition. It's one of the things I like about you."
He reached out and brushed a strand of blonde hair away from her face. His fingertips grazed her temple, and she felt that spark again—that electric jolt that made her synapses misfire and her heart stutter.
"Don't touch me," she said, but she didn't move away.
"Your mouth says no," Stiles observed. "Your heartbeat says something very different. Slayer blood is fascinating, by the way. It's like... if champagne and lightning had a baby. I've been feeding for two months, and nothing—*nothing*—compares to you."
"The girls," Buffy said, seizing on the opening. "The six missing girls. That was you."
"Guilty," Stiles said without an ounce of remorse. "They're alive, if that matters to you. I don't kill my food. That's wasteful. They're in a house on Crawford Street, living very comfortably, completely unaware that anything unusual has happened to them. I compelled them to stay, compelled them to forget the feeding, and compelled them to be happy. They think they're on an extended vacation."
"That's *sick*."
"That's *efficient*. And honestly, it's more humane than what the local vampires do. Have you seen the Master's leftovers? I have. It's not pretty."
Buffy's fists clenched at her sides. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to drive a stake through his heart. She wanted to—
*She wanted him to bite her again.*
The thought surfaced from the deepest, darkest trench of her mind, unbidden and unwelcome, and she crushed it immediately. That wasn't her. That was the compulsion. That was whatever he'd done to her blood.
"I see it," Stiles said softly, watching her face. "The war. The Slayer versus the girl. The duty versus the desire." He stepped closer, and his voice dropped to a murmur. "I'm not your enemy, Buffy. I could be, but I'd rather not. This town is sitting on a Hellmouth, and there are things coming that are going to make the Master look like a particularly aggressive Chihuahua. You're going to need me."
"I don't need anyone," Buffy said.
"You needed Angel," Stiles said.
The name hit her like a physical blow. She actually flinched.
"And we both know how that turned out," Stiles continued, his voice gentle now. Not mocking. Genuinely gentle. "I'm not Angel, Buffy. I'm not going to lose my soul and try to destroy the world. I don't have a soul to lose. What I have is power—more power than anything on this Hellmouth has ever seen—and I'm offering to use it on your side."
"In exchange for what?" Buffy asked. "My blood?"
"Your blood is a perk," Stiles said. "What I want is simpler than that. I want you. All of you. Your loyalty. Your fire. Your fight." He paused. "Your heart, eventually. But I'm patient."
"You're insane."
"Probably," he agreed. "Comes with the territory. Do you know how many Dark Ones' memories I have rattling around in my head? Centuries of power-mad sorcerers, all whispering their secrets. It's a miracle I can form coherent sentences."
The bell rang. Students began shuffling toward classrooms. Stiles stepped back and adjusted his henley like he was straightening a tie.
"I'll see you tonight," he said. "I'll come to you."
"I won't be waiting."
"You will," he said. And then he turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd like smoke into fog.
---
### Part Five: Faith
Faith Lehane didn't scare easy.
She'd been called as a Slayer after Kendra's death, and she'd spent the months since then killing vampires with the kind of savage enthusiasm that made her first Watcher nervous and her second Watcher dead. She'd come to Sunnydale because she'd heard about the Hellmouth, and because she had nowhere else to go, and because running toward danger was easier than running away from herself.
She was staying at a motel on the edge of town—the kind of place where the sheets smelled like bleach and regret and the walls were thin enough to hear the couple next door arguing about whose turn it was to buy cigarettes.
She was doing push-ups on the floor of her room when the smoke appeared.
It materialized in the corner—a column of purplish-black vapor that smelled like ozone and old magic—and Faith was on her feet with a knife in her hand before it had fully coalesced.
Stiles stepped out of the darkness like he was stepping through a doorway. He looked around the motel room with an expression of mild distaste.
"This is where you live?" he said. "This is genuinely depressing."
"Get out," Faith said, her knife hand steady. "I don't know what you are, but you've got three seconds before I start cutting."
"You already know what I am," Stiles said. "You felt it this morning. That thing in your gut that told you to run instead of fight. Slayers have good instincts. You should trust them more."
"I don't run from anything."
"I know," Stiles said. "That's what makes you interesting. Buffy runs. She runs from her feelings, from her duty, from her past. She came back to Sunnydale, but she's still running. You, Faith? You charge straight in. You don't care if it kills you. In fact, part of you is hoping it will."
Faith's jaw tightened. "You don't know me."
"I know everything," Stiles said, and there was no arrogance in it. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the casualness of someone commenting on the weather. "I'm the Dark One. I have the memories of every Dark One who came before me—centuries of accumulated knowledge, magic, manipulation, and power. I've read people for longer than this civilization has existed. And I can read you like a billboard, Faith."
"So read this," Faith said, and she threw the knife.
It was a perfect throw—fast, accurate, aimed directly at his heart. It would have killed any vampire. It would have given any demon pause.
Stiles caught it between two fingers without looking.
He examined the blade, then set it on the nightstand.
"Cute," he said.
Faith's heart was hammering now. She grabbed the stake from under her pillow and lunged.
Stiles didn't dodge. He didn't block. He simply *was* where the stake wasn't. One moment he was directly in front of her; the next he was behind her, his hand resting lightly on the back of her neck.
"Stop," he said.
It wasn't a request. It wasn't compulsion—not yet. It was a command delivered with such absolute authority that Faith's body obeyed before her brain could override it.
"I'm not here to hurt you," Stiles said. "I'm here to make you an offer."
"I don't make deals with—"
"With what? Vampires? Demons? Monsters?" He turned her around gently, and she let him, hating herself for it. "I'm none of those things, Faith. I'm something new. Something this world has never seen."
He looked into her eyes, and his pupils shifted—gold, then red, then back to warm amber. "I have a Slayer already. Buffy. She's magnificent, but she's broken. Brittle. She carries so much guilt that it's going to crush her eventually. She needs someone to share the weight."
"So get her a therapist."
Stiles smiled. "I was thinking of something more... practical. Two Slayers. Matched set. Both under my protection. Both mine."
"Yours," Faith repeated flatly.
"Mine," Stiles confirmed. "I feed on you. I protect you. I give you a purpose that goes beyond 'slay things until you die young.' In exchange, you belong to me. Not as a slave—I have no interest in mindless obedience. As a partner. A predator in your own right, but leashed to something bigger than yourself."
"You're out of your mind."
"Entirely possible," Stiles agreed. He stepped closer, and Faith could smell him now—that thunderstorm scent, that impossible darkness. It was intoxicating. Her Slayer instincts were screaming two things simultaneously: *KILL IT* and *SUBMIT*.
"Let me show you," Stiles murmured. "One taste. That's all. If you hate it, I'll leave. I'll walk out that door—well, I'll teleport out that door—and I'll never bother you again. But if you feel what Buffy felt..."
"What did Buffy feel?" Faith asked despite herself.
Stiles leaned in. His lips were an inch from her ear. "Bliss," he whispered. "Pure, uncomplicated, golden bliss. No pain. No fear. No past. Just warmth and belonging and the knowledge that something in this miserable world actually wants you—not your power, not your body count, *you*."
Faith's eyes burned. She would never admit it—not under torture, not under death—but those words hit something inside her that nothing else had ever reached. She'd been unwanted her entire life. Her mother was a drunk. Her Watcher was dead. The Council saw her as a replacement part. Even Buffy looked at her with barely concealed suspicion.
*Something that actually wants you.*
"One taste," Faith said, her voice rough. "And if I hate it—"
"I leave forever. Dark One's word."
She tilted her head, exposing her neck. It was an act of defiance, not submission—*Go ahead, try it, I dare you*—but Stiles took it for what it was offered.
He put one hand on her waist to steady her. The other cupped the back of her head, fingers threading into her dark hair. He let his fangs descend—long, elegant, nothing like the crude ridged faces of Sunnydale's vampire population—and he bit down.
Faith gasped.
It hit her like a freight train made of sunshine. Every muscle in her body went liquid. The motel room disappeared. The fear disappeared. The self-loathing, the anger, the bone-deep loneliness that she carried like a second skeleton—all of it dissolved in a wave of warmth so profound that tears spilled down her cheeks before she could stop them.
She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him closer, a sound escaping her lips that was half moan, half sob. This was what she'd been starving for her entire life. Not blood, not violence, not the adrenaline of the kill. *This*. Connection. Belonging. The feeling of being held by something powerful enough to actually keep her safe.
Stiles drank slowly, savoring it. Faith's blood was different from Buffy's. Where Buffy tasted like champagne and lightning, Faith tasted like whiskey and wildfire—rougher, rawer, with an undercurrent of desperation that made it almost unbearably rich.
*Two Slayers,* the Dark One's memories whispered. *A matched pair. One of light, one of dark. Together, they'll be unstoppable. And they'll be yours.*
He pulled away after a long moment, healing the wound with a brush of his thumb. Faith swayed on her feet, her eyes glassy, her cheeks wet.
"So," Stiles said softly. "Do you hate it?"
Faith looked at him. Her walls were down—all of them, every last barricade she'd spent her life building—and in that moment, she looked exactly like what she was: a seventeen-year-old girl who had never been held with anything resembling tenderness.
"Do it again," she whispered.
Stiles smiled. It was a genuine smile this time—not the predator's smirk, not the Dark One's knowing grin. A real, human smile from the boy who had once been Stiles Stilinski of Beacon Hills.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Tonight, you rest. Eat something. Drink water. Your body needs to recover." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of hundred-dollar bills—conjured, of course, because the Dark One's magic had no price—and set it on the nightstand next to Faith's knife. "Get a better room. Somewhere with sheets that don't smell like a crime scene."
"I don't need your money," Faith said, but her hand was already reaching for it.
"You don't need it," Stiles agreed. "But you deserve it. You deserve a lot of things, Faith. And I'm going to make sure you get them."
He stepped back into the shadows and dissolved into smoke.
Faith stood alone in her motel room, clutching a roll of hundreds, tears still drying on her face, the taste of bliss still echoing in her blood.
"Damn," she said to the empty room.
---
### Part Six: The Night
Buffy patrolled the warehouse district alone.
She told herself she was looking for vampires. She told herself she was investigating the disappearances. She told herself she was doing her duty as the Slayer.
She was looking for him.
She found him at midnight, sitting on the roof of an abandoned cannery, legs dangling over the edge, looking up at the stars. The Sunnydale sky was hazy with light pollution, but somehow the stars above him seemed sharper, clearer, as if the universe itself was paying attention to where he sat.
Buffy climbed up the fire escape and stood behind him.
"You said you'd come to me," she said.
"I was going to," Stiles said without turning around. "But you came to me first. That's more interesting."
"I'm not here because I want to be."
"Liar."
Buffy's hands clenched. "I came to tell you that whatever you think is happening between us—it's not. You're a vampire. I'm the Slayer. This ends one way."
Stiles finally turned to look at her. In the moonlight, he looked almost human. Almost like a normal teenage boy with messy hair and an easy smile. But his eyes gave him away—those ancient, knowing eyes that held centuries of darkness.
"You said the same thing to Angel once," Stiles said. "Almost word for word. And then you fell in love with him. And then he lost his soul. And then you had to kill him. And then you ran away." He paused. "I'm not Angel, Buffy. I won't lose what I am. I can't. The darkness isn't a curse for me—it's a feature."
"That's supposed to be comforting?"
"It's supposed to be honest." He stood up and faced her. The wind caught his hair, and for a moment he looked like something out of a dark fairy tale—the handsome prince who turned out to be the dragon. "I met Faith today."
Buffy's stomach dropped. "You stay away from her."
"Too late," Stiles said. "She's mine now, too. And before you get protective—she chose it. I gave her the option to refuse. She didn't."
"Because you *compelled* her—"
"I didn't," Stiles said firmly. "Not Faith. I compelled you because I needed to, because you would have fought me and alerted your Watcher and turned it into a whole production. Faith, I gave a choice. A real one. And she chose me." He stepped closer. "You could, too. Choose me, I mean. Not because of compulsion. Not because of magic. Because you want to."
"I don't want to."
"Not yet," Stiles said. "But you will. Because I'm going to prove to you that I'm worth it. I'm going to fight beside you. I'm going to protect this town. I'm going to be everything Angel was and everything he wasn't—present, powerful, and *permanent*."
He reached out and took her hand. She didn't pull away.
"The Hellmouth is going to open eventually," Stiles said quietly. "Things are coming, Buffy. Things that make the Master look like a warm-up act. A demon called the Mayor is going to try to Ascend. A military organization is going to try to weaponize the supernatural. A hell-god is going to come looking for a Key. And after all of that, the First Evil itself is going to try to end the Slayer line forever." He squeezed her hand. "I know all of this because I've seen it. I have the memories of beings who existed outside of time. I know what's coming, and I know how to stop it. But I can't do it alone. I need my Slayers."
"*Your* Slayers," Buffy repeated.
"My Slayers," Stiles confirmed. "My pets. My partners. My—" He hesitated, and for the first time, he looked uncertain. Vulnerable. Young. "My family. I died in my world, Buffy. Everyone I loved—my dad, my friends—they're gone. I'm alone in a way that you can't imagine. The darkness keeps me company, but it's not the same."
Buffy looked at him—really looked at him—and for the first time, she saw past the power and the predation. She saw a boy. A dead boy who woke up as a monster and was trying, in his own twisted way, to build something worth living for.
It didn't excuse what he'd done. It didn't make it okay. But it made it *understandable*, and for Buffy Summers, who had loved a vampire with a soul and killed him with a sword, understanding was a dangerous thing.
"I'm not your pet," Buffy said.
"Not yet," Stiles said with a small smile.
"Not *ever*."
"We'll see."
He released her hand and stepped to the edge of the roof.
"Go home, Buffy," he said. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be interesting."
"Why? What happens tomorrow?"
Stiles looked over his shoulder, and his eyes flashed gold.
"Tomorrow," he said, "is the night of the dead man's party. And I plan to be the life of it."
He fell backward off the roof and dissolved into smoke before he hit the ground.
Buffy stood alone on the rooftop, the ghost of his touch still warm on her hand, and tried very hard to convince herself that the fluttering in her chest was hatred.
She failed.
---
### Part Seven: Crawford Street
Before going home, Stiles made one more stop.
The house on Crawford Street was a Victorian manor that he'd claimed during his first week in Sunnydale. It sat at the end of a dead-end street, surrounded by overgrown gardens and wrought-iron fencing, and it was protected by every ward, enchantment, and magical barrier that the combined knowledge of every Dark One could devise.
Inside, six young women lived in perfect, compelled contentment.
They had their own rooms. They had food, clothing, entertainment. They watched television and read books and talked to each other and laughed. They didn't remember being bitten. They didn't know they were prisoners. As far as they were concerned, they were guests in a beautiful house owned by a generous, charming young man who asked for nothing in return.
Stiles walked through the front door and was greeted by a chorus of warm hellos.
"Hey, Stiles!"
"Stiles, we made dinner—there's leftovers if you want!"
"Stiles, come watch this movie with us!"
He smiled at them—a real smile, not his predator's grin—and spent twenty minutes sitting on the couch, listening to a girl named Maria talk about the book she was reading. He asked her questions. He laughed at her jokes. He was, for those twenty minutes, nothing more than a charming teenage boy enjoying the company of friends.
Then he went upstairs to his study, closed the door, and sat in the darkness.
The Dark One's dagger sat on his desk. It was a twisted, black blade with his name etched into it in flowing script: *STILES STILINSKI*. In the old world—the *Once Upon a Time* world—this dagger would have been his leash. Anyone who held it could command him. Anyone who killed him with it would become the new Dark One.
But the rules had changed when the darkness found him. There was no price for his magic. There was no weakness in his vampirism. And the dagger, while still bound to him, could not be used to control him. It was a symbol now, not a chain. A reminder of what he was, not a tool to be used against him.
He picked it up and turned it in his hands, watching the moonlight play along the blade.
*Rumplestiltskin,* he thought. *Nimue. Zoso. Gorgon the Invincible. All of you lived in fear of this dagger. All of you were slaves to the darkness.*
He set the dagger down.
*I'm not a slave. The darkness is mine. The power is mine. The magic is mine. And there is no price.*
He closed his eyes and reached out with his senses. He could feel the Hellmouth beneath Sunnydale—a churning vortex of dark energy that pulsed like a diseased heart. He could feel every vampire in the city, every demon, every supernatural entity. He could feel Buffy in her bed, tossing and turning, dreaming of golden eyes. He could feel Faith in her new motel room—she'd upgraded, as he'd suggested—sleeping more peacefully than she had in months.
His Slayers.
His pets.
His *family*.
Stiles opened his eyes, and they glowed gold in the darkness.
"This is my town now," he said to no one. "And God help anything that tries to take it from me."
---
**END OF CHAPTER 2**
---
*Next: Chapter 3 — "Dead Man's Party" continues. The zombie mask rises. Stiles attends the party. And the Scoobies learn that Sunnydale has a new apex predator.*