# The Darkest Spark
## Chapter 4: "Faith, Hope and Trick"
---
### Part One: The Morning After
Faith woke up warm.
It was such an unfamiliar sensation that she spent a full thirty seconds convinced she was still dreaming. Warmth wasn't part of Faith Lehane's vocabulary. She'd grown up in cold apartments with broken radiators, slept in cars and bus stations and shelters where you kept one eye open because warmth meant vulnerability. Warmth was for other people—soft people, lucky people, people who hadn't learned that the world was made of sharp edges and closed doors.
But she was warm now. Warm and held and *safe* in a way that made her throat tight.
She opened her eyes.
Stiles was still there.
He was lying on top of the covers, exactly where he'd been when she fell asleep, his arm around her shoulders, her head on his chest. He wasn't breathing—vampires didn't need to—but there was something almost meditative about his stillness. His eyes were closed. His face was relaxed. In the pale morning light filtering through the motel curtains, he looked young. Almost innocent.
Almost human.
Faith shifted slightly, and his eyes opened immediately. Gold, then amber. Alert and aware in a way that reminded her he was a predator, no matter how gently he held her.
"Morning," he said.
"You stayed."
"I said I would."
"People say a lot of things."
Stiles looked at her. His expression was unreadable, but his hand came up to brush a strand of dark hair from her face, and the gesture was so tender that Faith felt something crack inside her chest.
"I'm not people," he said.
Faith wanted to say something cutting. Something defensive. Something that would rebuild the walls he kept tearing down. Instead, what came out was: "I'm hungry."
Stiles smiled. "There's a diner two blocks north. Best pancakes in Sunnydale, according to the memories I extracted from a vampire I dusted last week."
"You... extracted memories from a vampire?"
"I can do a lot of things," Stiles said, sitting up. "Come on. Breakfast. My treat."
"You know you don't have to keep buying me things, right? I'm not—I'm not some charity case."
"I know you're not." He stood and offered her his hand. "But I like buying you things. It makes me happy. Are you really going to deny me happiness, Faith? That seems cruel."
She took his hand. "You're manipulating me."
"Absolutely. Is it working?"
"...Maybe."
"Then let's get pancakes."
---
### Part Two: The Diner
The Sunnydale Diner was a greasy spoon establishment that had been serving cholesterol and coffee since 1957. It smelled like bacon fat and nostalgia, and the waitresses all looked like they'd been working there since the Eisenhower administration.
Faith ordered pancakes, eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and a large orange juice. Stiles ordered coffee and watched her eat with an expression of genuine fascination.
"What?" Faith said around a mouthful of pancake.
"Nothing. I just forgot how much Slayers eat. The metabolism must be incredible."
"I burn a lot of calories killing things."
"I've noticed." He sipped his coffee. It did nothing for him—vampires didn't process food the way humans did—but the warmth was pleasant, and the ritual was comforting. "Tell me about Boston."
Faith's fork paused halfway to her mouth. "What about it?"
"You came from there. Before Sunnydale. Before your Watcher died. I want to know what happened."
The warmth in Faith's chest turned cold. She set her fork down.
"I don't talk about that."
"I know. That's why I'm asking."
"Stiles—"
"You don't have to tell me everything," he said, and his voice was gentle now. Not pushing. Just... present. "But I need to know what I'm protecting you from. The nightmares you have—I can feel them, Faith. The fear. It's not just general Slayer trauma. It's specific. Personal. There's something hunting you."
Faith's hands were shaking. She gripped the edge of the table to steady them.
"His name is Kakistos," she said quietly. "He's old. Really old. Like, ancient-Greece old. He's got cloven hands and hooves—he's been a vampire so long that he doesn't even look human anymore."
Stiles's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A sharpening. A focusing.
"He killed my Watcher," Faith continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "Diana. She was... she was good to me. First person who ever was. She trained me, looked out for me, treated me like I mattered. And Kakistos—" Her voice broke. "He didn't just kill her. He made me watch. He tore her apart piece by piece, and he made me *watch*, and I couldn't—I tried to fight, but I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't—"
She couldn't finish. The words dissolved into ragged breathing, and she pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to stop the tears she refused to let fall.
Stiles was silent for a moment. Then he reached across the table and took her hands, pulling them gently away from her face.
"Look at me," he said.
She looked.
His eyes were gold now. Not amber—gold. The Dark One's eyes. The predator's eyes. And they were filled with something that Faith had never seen directed at her before: protective rage.
"I'm going to kill him," Stiles said. It wasn't a threat. It wasn't a promise. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the same certainty as *the sun will rise tomorrow* or *water is wet*. "I'm going to find Kakistos, and I'm going to make him suffer, and then I'm going to erase him from existence. He will not touch you again. Ever."
Faith stared at him. Her heart was hammering. Her hands were still shaking, but not from fear anymore.
"You don't even know if he's coming here," she said.
"He is." Stiles's eyes narrowed. "I can feel it. There's something approaching Sunnydale—something old and dark and hungry. It's been getting closer for days. I thought it was just ambient Hellmouth activity, but now..." He squeezed her hands. "He's coming for you. And he's going to find me instead."
"Stiles, you don't understand. Kakistos isn't like the vampires here. He's not some fledgling or even a Master. He's—"
"He's nothing," Stiles said flatly. "Compared to me, he's *nothing*. I've faced things that make Kakistos look like a particularly aggressive housecat. I've fought werewolves, kanimas, darachs, alpha packs. I died fighting a true alpha who could have torn this entire town apart. And then I woke up as the Dark One—the most powerful magical being my world had ever produced—with no limitations on my power and eternity to learn how to use it." He leaned forward. "Kakistos is old. I'm older. The memories in my head go back to the dawn of civilization. The magic I command could unmake continents. And I am telling you, Faith—I am *promising* you—that I will kill him for what he did to you."
Faith couldn't speak. She couldn't move. She could only stare at this boy—this monster, this god—who looked at her like she was worth protecting, worth avenging, worth *keeping*.
"Why?" she finally managed. "Why do you care so much?"
Stiles's expression softened. The gold faded back to amber.
"Because you're mine," he said simply. "And no one hurts what's mine."
---
### Part Three: The Library
Buffy was in the library when Faith and Stiles arrived.
She was sitting at the main table, surrounded by books that Giles had deemed essential reading for "understanding the current supernatural climate." She looked up when they walked in, and her expression cycled through several emotions in rapid succession: surprise, annoyance, something that might have been jealousy, and finally a carefully neutral mask.
"Look who finally decided to show up," Buffy said. "Did you two have a nice... whatever that was?"
"Breakfast," Faith said. "It's this thing people do in the morning. You should try it sometime."
"I eat breakfast."
"Dry toast and angst doesn't count, B."
Stiles smiled at the exchange and took a seat at the table across from Buffy. "Good morning to you too. You look well-rested. Did the nightmares stay away?"
Buffy's jaw tightened. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course you don't." He picked up one of the books Giles had left out—a heavy tome on demonic hierarchies—and began flipping through it with casual interest. "Where's your Watcher? We need to have a conversation."
"About what?"
"About the ancient vampire that's coming to Sunnydale to kill Faith."
The library went silent. Faith tensed. Buffy's eyes widened.
"What?" Buffy said.
"His name is Kakistos," Faith said quietly. "He killed my Watcher. He's been hunting me ever since."
"And you're just *telling* us this now?"
"I—I wasn't sure he'd follow me here. I thought maybe if I ran far enough—"
"Running doesn't work," Buffy said, and her voice was softer now. Gentler. The voice of someone who understood running all too well. "Trust me. I know."
The library doors swung open, and Giles entered carrying a stack of files. He stopped when he saw the gathering, his eyes moving from Buffy to Faith to Stiles with the wary assessment of a man who had learned to expect the unexpected.
"Ah. You're all here. Good. I've been doing some research on—" He noticed their expressions. "What's happened?"
"We have a problem," Buffy said. "An old vampire named Kakistos is coming to town."
Giles's face went pale. "Kakistos? You're certain?"
"Faith told us," Buffy said. "He killed her Watcher."
Giles set down his files and removed his glasses, polishing them with the nervous energy of a man confronting very bad news. "Kakistos is one of the oldest vampires in recorded history. The name itself is Greek—it means 'the worst of the worst.' He was already ancient when the Watchers' Council first began keeping records. The accounts describe him as..." He trailed off, glancing at Faith. "As particularly savage."
"He's got hooves," Faith said flatly. "And cloven hands. He's been a vampire so long he's not even human-shaped anymore."
"Yes, well." Giles put his glasses back on. "The deformities occur in extremely old vampires. The demonic essence begins to physically manifest over time. It's quite rare—most vampires are killed long before they reach that age."
"How do we stop him?" Buffy asked.
"That's the difficulty. Kakistos is far beyond the power of a typical vampire. He's survived assassination attempts by multiple Slayers over the centuries. Standard methods—stakes, holy water, sunlight—are reportedly far less effective against him. Some accounts suggest he can only be killed by—"
"He can be killed by anything," Stiles interrupted. "As long as that anything is me."
Giles turned to look at him. The Watcher's expression was complicated—equal parts wariness, academic curiosity, and the reluctant respect of someone who had seen Stiles disintegrate thirty-seven zombies with a wave of his hand.
"You believe you can defeat Kakistos?"
"I don't believe anything," Stiles said. "I know. Kakistos is old. I'm older. He has strength and speed and centuries of predatory experience. I have unlimited magic with no price, the combined knowledge of every Dark One who ever lived, and a personal grudge against anyone who hurts people I care about." He smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. "He's coming here to kill Faith. I'm going to make sure that's the last mistake he ever makes."
Giles studied him for a long moment. "And what do you propose we do in the meantime?"
"Business as usual. Patrol. Research. Whatever it is you people normally do. I'll handle the surveillance—I can sense supernatural entities within a fairly large radius, and Kakistos's signature should be distinctive. When he arrives, I'll find him before he finds us."
"And if he brings reinforcements?" Giles asked. "Kakistos is known to travel with a considerable entourage."
"Then there will be more dust to clean up."
---
### Part Four: School
The school day passed in a blur of mundane normalcy that felt increasingly surreal.
Stiles attended classes. Not because he needed to—he had the accumulated knowledge of centuries of Dark Ones, which made high school curriculum hilariously irrelevant—but because it maintained his cover and, more importantly, allowed him to stay close to his Slayers.
He sat behind Buffy in English, watching the back of her head while the teacher droned on about symbolism in *The Great Gatsby*. He could feel her tension—the rigid set of her shoulders, the way her fingers drummed restlessly on her desk. She knew something was coming. Her Slayer instincts were screaming, even if she didn't consciously understand why.
He found Faith between classes, leaning against a row of lockers with her arms crossed and her jaw set in an expression of defiant boredom. She looked tough. She looked untouchable. She looked exactly like someone who was terrified and trying desperately not to show it.
"Hey," he said, stopping in front of her.
"Hey yourself."
"How are you holding up?"
"Five by five." The standard Faith response. The verbal equivalent of a closed door.
Stiles leaned against the locker next to her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. "You know that lying to me is pointless, right? I can hear your heartbeat. I can smell the adrenaline. I probably know you're scared before you consciously realize it yourself."
Faith's jaw tightened. "So what? You want me to fall apart? Cry on your shoulder? That's not who I am."
"I know who you are. I'm not asking you to be someone else. I'm just reminding you that you don't have to pretend with me."
She was quiet for a moment. Around them, students flowed past, oblivious to the conversation happening against the lockers—oblivious to the fact that they were standing next to two of the most dangerous beings in Sunnydale.
"He's in my head," Faith said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "Every time I close my eyes, I see him. I see Diana. I see—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I've faced a lot of monsters, Stiles. I'm good at the job. But Kakistos... he's different. He's not just a monster. He's *my* monster. The one that broke me."
Stiles turned to face her fully. He reached out and took her chin in his hand, tilting her face up to meet his eyes.
"Listen to me," he said quietly. "You are not broken. You are scarred. There's a difference. Broken things don't work. Scarred things work just fine—they just carry proof that they survived something that tried to destroy them." His thumb traced the line of her jaw. "Kakistos tried to destroy you. He failed. And tonight, or tomorrow, or whenever he finally shows his deformed face in this town, I'm going to make sure he never tries again."
Faith's eyes glistened. She blinked rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall.
"You really think you can take him?"
"I don't think. I know."
"But what if—"
"Faith." His voice was firm. Final. "I killed a demon that had been raising the dead for three thousand years by *squeezing* it. Kakistos is a vampire. A very old, very ugly vampire, but a vampire nonetheless. He's not a god. He's not a primordial force. He's a dead Greek guy with hooves who's been terrorizing people for too long." He paused. "I'm the Dark One. I have no limits. And he hurt you. That's a combination that's going to end very, very badly for him."
The bell rang. Students began shuffling toward their next classes.
Stiles released her chin and stepped back. "Go to class. Act normal. I'll find you when it's time."
"What are you going to do?"
He smiled. It was the predator's smile—all teeth and dark promise.
"I'm going to prepare a welcome for our guest."
---
### Part Five: Preparations
While Faith and Buffy attended classes and pretended to be normal teenagers, Stiles spent the afternoon doing something far more interesting.
He stood in the center of his manor on Crawford Street, surrounded by the six young women he had kept as blood sources for the past two months. They were watching television in the next room, laughing at a sitcom, completely unaware that their captor was about to release them.
Stiles watched them for a moment through the doorway. They looked happy. They looked healthy. They looked... content.
The Dark One's memories whispered justifications. *They're better off here. You take care of them. They don't remember the feeding. They don't suffer. This is mercy.*
But Stiles wasn't Rumplestiltskin. He wasn't going to rationalize his way into becoming the kind of monster that his father would be ashamed of.
He walked into the living room.
"Ladies," he said, and six faces turned to look at him with bright, compelled adoration. "I need your attention for a moment."
They gathered around him, eager and attentive. Maria, Jessica, Amber, Theresa, Carrie, and Diane. Six women between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. Six lives he had interrupted, controlled, and consumed for his own benefit.
"I'm going to do something now," Stiles said. "And when I'm done, you're going to go home. You're going to return to your lives. You're going to forget everything about this house and everything about me. You'll remember the last two months as an extended vacation—a trip to visit relatives, perhaps, or a spontaneous road trip. You'll be happy and healthy and whole."
They nodded, smiling, trusting him completely.
It was obscene.
Stiles raised his hand, and magic flowed through him—not dark magic, not light magic, just *magic*, pure and unlimited and utterly his. He reached into their minds and carefully, meticulously rewrote their memories. He erased himself. He erased the feeding. He erased the house and the compulsion and every moment of controlled contentment.
When he was done, six confused women stood in the living room, blinking at each other and at their surroundings.
"Where—where am I?" Maria asked.
"You're in Sunnydale," Stiles said, and his voice was different now—not the warm, charming tone he used when they were compelled, but something gentler. More honest. "You've been on vacation. A long one. But it's time to go home now."
He snapped his fingers, and six wallets appeared in six hands—driver's licenses, credit cards, enough cash to get them wherever they needed to go.
"There's a bus station three blocks east," he said. "You should go there. You should go home."
They left, one by one, still confused but no longer afraid. Stiles watched them go from the window of his manor, and when the last one disappeared around the corner, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
*One debt paid,* he thought. *Only about a thousand more to go.*
He turned back to the empty house and began the real work.
The wards came first. He reinforced every magical barrier around the manor, layering protection upon protection until the building was effectively impregnable to anything short of a god. Then he extended his senses outward, feeling for the approaching darkness he had detected earlier.
It was closer now. Much closer. A cold, ancient presence moving through the night toward Sunnydale like a shark through dark water. Kakistos. And he wasn't alone—Stiles could feel the cluster of lesser presences around him, the entourage of fledglings and lieutenants that Giles had mentioned.
"So you brought friends," Stiles murmured. "Good. I was worried I might get bored."
He walked to his study and picked up the Dark One's dagger from its place on his desk. The blade hummed with familiar power, his name still etched into its surface in flowing script. He tucked it into his belt—not because he needed it, but because there was something satisfying about carrying a weapon, even when your very existence was a weapon.
Then he sat in his chair and closed his eyes.
He reached out with his mind, extending his consciousness across Sunnydale like a spider feeling for vibrations in its web. He felt the Hellmouth pulsing beneath the earth. He felt the vampires in their nests, the demons in their lairs, the hundreds of ordinary humans going about their ordinary lives with no idea what lurked in the shadows.
He felt Buffy in her house, eating dinner with Joyce, pretending everything was normal. Her fear was a low hum beneath the surface calm—fear for Faith, fear of the coming battle, fear of him and what he represented.
He felt Faith in her motel room, pacing like a caged animal, her terror spiking every time she heard a noise outside. She was waiting for the hammer to fall. She was waiting for Kakistos to come and finish what he'd started.
*Not tonight,* Stiles thought at her, even though she couldn't hear him. *Not ever again. I promised.*
He opened his eyes.
The ancient presence was entering Sunnydale. Moving through the eastern outskirts, heading toward the warehouse district. Kakistos was here.
Stiles stood up, straightened his jacket, and smiled.
"Welcome to Sunnydale," he said to the empty room. "Let me show you how we treat guests."
---
### Part Six: The Warehouse
The warehouse on East Harbor was exactly the kind of place where ancient vampires liked to establish themselves: abandoned, decrepit, and reeking of industrial decay. It had been a fish cannery once, before the fishing industry collapsed in the seventies. Now it was a hollow shell of rust and rot, perfect for creatures who had crawled out of the darkness long before America had a name.
Kakistos stood in the center of the warehouse, surrounded by his acolytes.
He was every bit as monstrous as Faith's descriptions had suggested. He was enormous—nearly seven feet tall, with a body that had been warped and twisted by millennia of demonic essence. His hands were cloven, split down the middle like hooves. His face was a nightmare of ridges and fangs and eyes that burned with ancient, malevolent intelligence. He wore no shirt, and his chest was covered in ritual scars and brands—trophies from victims, marks of power accumulated over countless centuries.
Around him stood his entourage: fifteen vampires of varying ages, all of them hardened killers who had survived by pledging themselves to the oldest monster in the room. They looked at their master with fearful worship, the devotion of animals who knew they existed only at his pleasure.
"The Slayer is here," Kakistos rumbled. His voice was deep and harsh, like stones grinding together. "I can smell her. The one who ran. The one who *watched*."
"Yes, Master," said Mr. Trick, a well-dressed vampire who served as Kakistos's chief lieutenant. He was younger than the others—turned in the 1990s—but he was clever, ambitious, and ruthless. "My sources say she's enrolled at the local high school. Hiding in plain sight."
"Hiding," Kakistos repeated, and his lips twisted into something that might have been a smile. "She thinks she can hide from me. After what I showed her, she thinks she can simply... run."
"She's not alone, Master. There's another Slayer here. The senior one. Buffy Summers."
"Two Slayers." The smile widened. "Good. I haven't fed on Slayer blood in decades. Two will make excellent sport."
"There's something else, Master." Mr. Trick hesitated. "Reports say there's a new player in town. Something powerful. Something that destroyed a demon called Ovu Mobani with a gesture."
Kakistos's eyes narrowed. "Ovu Mobani was old. Strong. What could destroy it with a gesture?"
"Unknown, Master. The accounts are... contradictory. Some say it was a vampire. Some say it was a sorcerer. Some say—"
"I don't care what it was." Kakistos's hand shot out and seized Mr. Trick by the throat, lifting him off the ground as if he weighed nothing. "Nothing in this world is older than me. Nothing is stronger. I have walked this earth since the Greeks built their temples to false gods. I have killed Slayers, sorcerers, demons, and kings. Whatever this new player is, it will kneel before me or it will die."
He released Mr. Trick, who dropped to the floor gasping.
"Find the Slayer," Kakistos commanded. "Bring her to me. I want to finish what I started."
The vampires scattered to obey.
None of them noticed the shadow in the corner of the warehouse. The shadow that had eyes of gold and a smile like a knife.
Stiles had been there since before Kakistos arrived. He had watched the ancient vampire make his grand entrance. He had listened to the threats and the posturing and the casual cruelty. He had studied his enemy with the patience of a predator who knew that the hunt was already over.
*"Nothing is stronger than me,"* Stiles thought, echoing Kakistos's words. *Oh, you poor, stupid fossil. You have no idea.*
He dissolved into smoke and drifted out of the warehouse, leaving Kakistos and his minions to their planning.
He had preparations of his own to make.
---
### Part Seven: The Motel
Faith was pacing.
She'd been pacing for three hours, wearing a track in the thin carpet of her motel room, her stake clenched in one hand and her nerves screaming with every creak and groan of the old building. She knew she should sleep. She knew she should conserve her energy for the fight that was coming. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw Diana's face—Diana's *pieces*—and sleep became impossible.
The knock on her door nearly stopped her heart.
She spun, stake raised, every muscle tensed for combat.
"Faith. It's me."
Stiles's voice. She recognized it immediately—would have recognized it anywhere—and some of the tension drained from her shoulders. She crossed to the door and yanked it open.
He was standing in the hallway, still in his charcoal suit, looking as immaculate as he had that morning. But there was something different in his eyes now. A sharpness. A focus.
"He's here," Faith said. It wasn't a question.
"He's here. Warehouse on East Harbor. Fifteen minions, plus one fairly clever lieutenant who dresses like he's auditioning for a music video. Kakistos himself is..." Stiles paused, searching for the right word. "Theatrical. He gave a very dramatic speech about how he's the oldest and strongest thing in the world and how nothing can stop him."
"That sounds like him."
"It was adorable." Stiles stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "I'm going to kill him tonight. Within the hour, probably. I wanted to check on you first."
Faith's stomach lurched. "Tonight? You're going now?"
"Why wait? He's not getting any weaker. And every hour he's alive is an hour you spend terrified in this room, and I don't like seeing you scared."
"I'm not—" She stopped. What was the point in lying? "Okay, I'm scared. But I should be there. I should face him."
"No."
"Stiles—"
"*No.*" His voice was firm, but not harsh. "This isn't about your courage, Faith. I know you're brave. I know you'd fight him if I asked. But you don't need to. You've already faced Kakistos once, and he broke something inside you. You don't need to prove anything by facing him again. You need to *heal*. And you can't heal while he's still breathing."
"So, what? You just go kill him, and I stay here and... wait?"
"Yes."
"That's bullshit."
Stiles moved closer. He cupped her face in his hands the way he had at school, tilting her chin up so she had no choice but to meet his eyes.
"Faith. Listen to me. You are one of the strongest people I've ever met. You survived things that would have destroyed most humans. You became a Slayer. You watched your Watcher die and kept fighting anyway. You ran across the country, alone, terrified, and you kept going. That takes a kind of strength that has nothing to do with punching things."
His thumbs traced the lines of her cheekbones. His eyes were warm and fierce and utterly certain.
"But strength doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself. It doesn't mean you have to face every demon. Sometimes, strength means letting someone else take the hit for you. It means trusting that you're worth protecting." He paused. "You're worth protecting, Faith. And I'm going to protect you. That's not weakness. That's love."
Faith's breath caught.
"Love?"
Stiles smiled—not the predator's smile, not the Dark One's smile, just a simple, warm, human smile.
"Did you think I was doing all this for my health? I'm a vampire. I'm immortal. I don't need another Slayer ally. I don't need another source of blood. I don't *need* anything." He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers. "I *want* you. I want to protect you. I want to watch you become everything you're capable of being without some ancient monster looming over your shoulder. That's love, Faith. Weird, possessive, probably unhealthy love—but love nonetheless."
Faith's eyes were burning. She blinked, and tears spilled down her cheeks—tears she would have died rather than shed in front of anyone else.
"I don't know how to—I don't know what to do with that," she whispered.
"You don't have to do anything with it. You just have to accept it. Can you do that? Can you accept that someone loves you without expecting anything in return?"
"I..." She swallowed. "I can try."
"That's all I'm asking." He kissed her forehead, soft and lingering, and then stepped back. "Stay here. Lock the door. Watch bad television. I'll be back in an hour, and when I am, I'll bring you something."
"What?"
His smile turned sharp. Predatory. The Dark One surfacing beneath the tender boy.
"Kakistos's ashes. I thought you might want to scatter them yourself."
---
### Part Eight: The Hunt
Stiles arrived at the warehouse on East Harbor at 11:47 PM.
He didn't teleport this time. He walked. There was something satisfying about the slow approach—the gradual closing of distance, the inevitability of arrival. The vampires inside would feel him coming. They would sense the approaching darkness and mistake it for one of their own.
They would be wrong.
The warehouse doors were locked, guarded by two fledglings who looked bored and cold. They straightened when Stiles approached, their hands moving toward concealed weapons.
"Who the hell are you?" one of them demanded.
Stiles smiled.
"I'm the Dark One," he said. "And I'm here to see your master."
He raised his hand, and both vampires disintegrated. No fire, no explosion, no dramatic buildup—they simply *stopped existing*, their bodies unraveling at the molecular level and drifting away as fine gray ash.
Stiles walked through the space where they had been and pushed open the warehouse doors.
Inside, chaos had already begun.
The remaining vampires had heard their compatriots die—or rather, they had heard the *absence* of their compatriots, the sudden silence where there should have been two heartbeats (or, in vampire terms, two presences). They were scrambling, grabbing weapons, turning toward the entrance.
Stiles stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the streetlights outside.
"Good evening," he said. "I believe your master said something about nothing being stronger than him. I'd like to provide a counterexample."
Mr. Trick, who was smarter than the others, took one look at Stiles and ran. Not toward him—*away*, toward the back exit, toward survival. It was the correct choice, strategically speaking.
It didn't help.
Stiles flicked his wrist, and Mr. Trick froze mid-stride, suspended in the air as if caught in amber. The other vampires stared, paralyzed by something they had never encountered before: genuine, absolute helplessness.
"Now, then," Stiles said, walking into the warehouse. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous space. "Where is Kakistos? I'd like to introduce myself."
"*Here.*"
The voice came from above. Stiles looked up to see Kakistos descending from the upper level, dropping the twenty feet to the warehouse floor and landing with a crash that shook the building. Up close, he was even more monstrous than Faith's description had suggested—a wall of twisted flesh and ancient malice, his eyes burning with the fire of a predator who had never known defeat.
"You are the one," Kakistos rumbled. "The new player. The one who destroyed Ovu Mobani."
"Guilty as charged."
"You are young. A vampire, but young. Your power smells strange—like fire and shadow and something older than this world." Kakistos circled slowly, studying Stiles with the patience of a creature who had all eternity to kill. "What are you?"
"I'm the thing that's going to kill you," Stiles said simply. "But first, I want to understand something. Faith. The Slayer you tortured. The one whose Watcher you murdered in front of her. Why?"
Kakistos laughed. It was an ugly sound, like bones scraping together.
"Because she was *alive*," he said. "Because she burned with that Slayer fire, and I wanted to see it go out. Because breaking a Slayer is the sweetest pleasure in this world, and breaking one so young and fierce—" He made a sound that might have been a sigh. "It was exquisite. Even now, I can taste her fear. She's in this town, somewhere, cowering in a hole, waiting for me to find her. And I will find her. And I will finish what I started."
Stiles's expression didn't change. His voice remained calm.
"Thank you," he said. "I wanted to make sure I wouldn't feel guilty."
He raised his hand.
Kakistos moved—faster than any creature his size should have been able to move, a blur of ancient power and predatory instinct. He crossed the distance between them in less than a second, his cloven hand sweeping toward Stiles's head with enough force to decapitate a normal vampire.
His hand stopped an inch from Stiles's face.
Stiles hadn't moved. Hadn't flinched. He simply stood there, his hand still raised, his expression mildly curious.
"That was your best shot?" he asked. "Really?"
Kakistos's eyes widened. For the first time in two thousand years, he felt something he had forgotten existed: *fear*.
He tried to pull back. He couldn't. His body was frozen, trapped in the same invisible grip that held Mr. Trick suspended across the room.
"What—what are you?" Kakistos gasped.
"I told you. I'm the Dark One." Stiles stepped closer, looking up into the ancient vampire's face with an expression of cold curiosity. "I'm the accumulated power of every dark sorcerer who ever held my title. I'm a vampire without weaknesses. I'm magic without price. And I'm the thing you're going to spend your last moments being very, very afraid of."
He reached out and placed his hand flat against Kakistos's chest.
"This is for Faith," he said. "For Diana. For every person you've tortured and killed in your pathetic, endless existence."
His eyes blazed gold.
Kakistos screamed.
It wasn't the scream of a monster. It was the scream of something that had forgotten what pain felt like and was being reminded in excruciating detail. Stiles's magic flowed into him like fire—not the fire of sunlight or holy objects, but something far worse. The fire of *unmaking*. The fire of a power that could erase existence itself.
Kakistos's body began to crumble. Not burn, not explode—*crumble*. He came apart piece by piece, layer by layer, his two-thousand-year-old form disintegrating like a sandcastle in a hurricane. His screams intensified, then began to fade as his throat dissolved along with everything else.
The other vampires watched in horror. Some tried to run. Stiles didn't bother to stop them—they would carry word of what happened here, and word was useful. Let them tell their nests, their masters, their demons. Let them tell every dark thing in Sunnydale what happened to those who crossed the Dark One.
Kakistos's eyes were the last thing to go. Ancient, burning eyes that had witnessed the fall of empires and the rise of religions, now wide with terror and agony. They stared at Stiles in incomprehension, unable to accept that this was happening, that *anything* could be doing this to them.
Then they crumbled to ash, and Kakistos was gone.
The warehouse was silent.
Stiles lowered his hand and looked at the pile of gray dust that had been the oldest vampire in the Western Hemisphere. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet pouch.
Then he knelt and carefully, methodically, scooped the ashes into the pouch.
When he stood, he released his hold on the remaining vampires. Mr. Trick dropped to the floor and scrambled backward, staring at Stiles with the expression of someone who had just witnessed the face of God and found it terrifying.
"Go," Stiles said. "Tell everyone what you saw here. Tell them the Dark One has claimed Sunnydale. Tell them that if anyone threatens my Slayers—*my* property—they will end up exactly like Kakistos."
Mr. Trick didn't need to be told twice. He ran, and the remaining vampires ran with him, scattering into the night like cockroaches before a light.
Stiles stood alone in the empty warehouse, holding a velvet pouch full of ancient ashes.
Then he dissolved into smoke and went to give Faith her gift.
---
### Part Nine: The Gift
Faith was still awake when he returned.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, stake in hand, staring at the door with the coiled tension of someone expecting violence. When Stiles materialized from the shadows, she jumped to her feet, her heart hammering.
"Is it—did you—"
He held up the velvet pouch.
Faith stared at it. Her hand trembled as she reached out to take it.
"Is that..."
"Kakistos. What's left of him." Stiles watched her face, his expression gentle. "I thought you might want to be the one to scatter them. Some kind of... closure, maybe."
Faith looked at the pouch. Such a small thing to contain two thousand years of terror. Such a light weight for something that had haunted her nightmares for months.
"How?" she whispered. "How did you..."
"I unmade him. Molecule by molecule. I don't think even Hell will take him—I destroyed his essence along with his body. There's nothing left to punish. Nothing left to torment. He's just... gone."
Faith's knees buckled.
Stiles caught her before she hit the floor, pulling her against him, holding her as the weight of the past months finally—*finally*—came crashing down. She sobbed into his chest, ugly, heaving sobs that shook her entire body, and he held her through all of it. He didn't speak. He didn't try to comfort her with words. He just held her and let her break.
When the storm finally passed, Faith pulled back and looked at him with swollen eyes and a tear-streaked face.
"He's really gone?"
"He's really gone."
"And he'll never—he can't—"
"He can't hurt you anymore. He can't hurt anyone. He doesn't exist."
Faith looked down at the pouch in her hands. Then, with a sudden, violent motion, she threw it across the room. It hit the wall and burst open, scattering gray ash across the cheap motel carpet.
"Good," she said, her voice raw. "Good."
Stiles watched her with something like pride. "How do you feel?"
Faith considered the question. She felt empty. She felt exhausted. She felt like she'd been holding up a building for months and someone had finally taken it off her shoulders.
"I feel..." She searched for the word. "Free."
Stiles smiled. "That's a good start."
She looked at him—really looked at him, without the filter of fear and desperation that had colored their every interaction. He was beautiful in the low light, all sharp angles and warm eyes and a darkness that should have been terrifying but somehow wasn't.
"You love me," she said. It wasn't a question.
"I do."
"That's insane. You barely know me."
"I know enough. I know you're strong and fierce and broken in ways that make me want to put you back together. I know you taste like whiskey and wildfire. I know you've been alone your entire life, and I know what that feels like, because I've been alone too." He paused. "I know I want you to stay with me. Not because I compelled you. Not because you owe me. Because you choose to."
Faith's heart was pounding. Not with fear this time. With something else.
"If I stay," she said slowly, "what happens?"
"We figure it out together. We fight things. We protect this town. We find Buffy and convince her that she's also mine, which will probably be more difficult. We build something." He reached out and cupped her face. "We build a family."
The word hit Faith like a physical force. *Family.* She'd never had one. Not really. Her mother had been a drunk. Her Watcher had been murdered. She'd been alone for as long as she could remember.
Until now.
"Okay," she whispered.
"Okay?"
"Okay, I'll stay." She took a shaky breath. "I'm yours. For real this time. Not because of the bite or the compulsion or whatever. Because I choose it."
Stiles's smile was radiant. He pulled her close and kissed her—properly this time, not the desperate collision of the night before, but something slower. Deeper. A kiss that was a promise.
When they broke apart, Faith rested her forehead against his.
"What about Buffy?" she asked.
"What about her?"
"You said she's yours too. But she doesn't seem very... on board."
"She will be." Stiles's smile turned mischievous. "She's stubborn, but so am I. And I have all eternity to convince her."
"And you want both of us? Like, together?"
"I want my family. However that looks. However you and Buffy want it to look." He pulled back and looked into her eyes. "Does that bother you?"
Faith considered it. By every standard she'd grown up with, it should bother her. Sharing wasn't something she'd ever been good at.
But when she imagined Buffy beside her—Buffy, who was strong and good and carried the same weight Faith did—she didn't feel jealousy. She felt... relief.
"No," she said, surprised by her own honesty. "It doesn't bother me. I think... I think I might like it, actually. Having someone else who understands."
"Then that's what we'll do. Slowly. At whatever pace you both need." He kissed her forehead. "But for tonight, you should rest. The monster's dead. The nightmares can wait."
Faith let him guide her to the bed. She let him pull the covers over her. She let him lie down beside her, his arm around her waist, his chest solid and cool against her back.
For the first time in months, she slept without dreaming.
---
### Part Ten: The Slayer
Across town, Buffy Summers jolted awake with the absolute certainty that something had changed.
She lay in the darkness, her heart pounding, her Slayer senses screaming. Something was different. Something had shifted in the supernatural fabric of Sunnydale, like a weight being lifted off a scale.
She reached out instinctively, the way she always did when she sensed something wrong, and felt...
*Nothing.*
The ancient presence she'd been sensing for days—the dark, predatory weight pressing on the edges of her consciousness—was gone. Not weakened, not dormant. *Gone.* As if it had never existed.
Kakistos. It had to be Kakistos. He was dead.
Stiles had done it. He'd killed an ancient vampire that had survived multiple Slayers, and he'd done it so thoroughly that she couldn't even sense the aftermath.
Buffy should have felt relieved. She should have felt grateful. She should have felt any number of reasonable emotions appropriate to the situation.
Instead, she felt something far more complicated.
She felt *his* presence, too. Stiles. Across town, he was with Faith—she could sense them both, their presences intertwined like threads in a tapestry. She could feel their connection, their intimacy, their *bond*.
He had claimed Faith. Fully. Completely.
And some part of Buffy—a part she refused to acknowledge, a part she would die before admitting—felt jealous.
She rolled over and stared at the ceiling.
*I am not jealous of a vampire's pet,* she told herself firmly. *I am not jealous. I am not.*
Her heart continued to pound.
*He said he wanted me too. Both of us. His Slayers. His pets. His... family.*
She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
The compulsion sat in her mind like a locked door, keeping her silent about everything she knew and everything she felt.
But behind the door, something was stirring. Something that responded to the echo of bliss still humming in her blood from that first bite. Something that watched Stiles from a distance and felt drawn despite herself.
*I'm not his,* she thought.
Somewhere across town, Stiles smiled in his sleep as if he'd heard her.
*Not yet.*
---
**END OF CHAPTER 4**
---
*Next: Chapter 5 — "Beauty and the Beasts." The full moon rises. Oz's secret is revealed. And Stiles discovers something unexpected in the woods—someone he thought was lost forever.*