"Ouch!" Buffy caught the blow dealt by the Tenari demon and slumped to the ground. The creature was horribly strong. She had been fighting it for the last half hour and it should have been long dead by now. The fight had started to get tiring. Buffy turned around, ready for another round, when she saw the slimy thing grab a headstone and pull it out of the ground. God, this was getting dangerous! The demon lifted its arms and dropped the gravestone. Buffy rolled over instantly, and the heavy thing missed the blonde's head by a mere inch or so. "Kathleen Morris, rest in peace,” read the marble that faced her. Buffy didn't have time to get to her feet or even take a breath. The Tenari roared and bent over to tear another gravestone loose from the ground. Just then, something jumped on its back and started pounding away at its head. The growl from the thing that had jumped the demon sounded awfully familiar, Buffy thought. She sighed, got up and helped Spike fight the demon.

A few moments later they were standing opposite each other, panting. The Tenari had crumpled into a heap of blueish slime. A lot like blue cheese, Buffy thought, disgusted. She couldn't help but feel relieved. This one had been kind of tough.

"Well," Spike smirked. "Looks like I just saved your ass there."

Buffy perked up an eyebrow. Why did the bleached blond vampire always have to be so terribly annoying? "First of all, you didn't save anything. I was about to kill it. And second--"

"Yeah, that's why you almost got your head squished by falling gravestones." Spike cut in, the smug smile still plastered across his face. He shrugged. "Dunno why I even bother. I shoulda just let it kill you."

"You're a pig, Spike." Buffy turned around to leave. She couldn't stand spending one more second in the company of the vampire.

"Is that so? Can't you ever come up with something new, Slayer?"

That was it. Buffy whirled around and hit Spike on the nose. "Oww!" he roared, grabbing his face. He jumped up, kicked the Slayer in the chest, and then grabbed his head in pain as the chip went off. This was pretty good, Buffy thought. She hit him, he got hurt. He hit her, he got hurt. All right, she got hurt as well, but it was still amusing.

Neither Spike nor Buffy noticed the hooded onlooker standing next to one of the largest tombs in the cemetery. Neither of them saw him raise his black-clad arms and say in a low voice, "it is taking too long."

The two fighters were oblivious to the outer world until a noise to the right of them caught Spike's attention. "What the…?" he said, abruptly breaking off the uneven fight.

"Huh?" Buffy didn't get why he stopped fighting so suddenly. Then she heard it too.

It was a roaring noise, kind of like that of stampede approaching, and it was growing louder by the second. They felt the wind rise up around them and hundreds of scattered leaves were blown across the cemetery. Buffy turned towards the direction the noise was coming from. The scene she faced stupefied her. Trees were torn from their roots and flew up in the air, circling, turning in a whirlwind bigger than a house. Bricks came flying at them. The sound of the storm was deafening.

"A tornado!" Buffy screamed. "Run!"

They did. But not nearly fast enough. The wind grabbed them before they were halfway to the nearest tomb and they were pulled of the ground. Spike screamed something at her, but Buffy couldn't hear it through the enormous roar of the wind. Suddenly she felt him grab her hand and pull her towards him. Of course, she thought, together they weight more. A better chance of survival. Still Buffy was sure this tornado was going to be the end of it all. The storm had more strength and violence than any creature she had ever faced. Nothing beats nature, she thought vaguely. She and Spike were hauled up high into the air, tumbling, spinning at an impossible speed. They seemed to go faster with every turn. A large tree branch hit Buffy's left side and she became dizzy and sick from the motions. Moments later she was so close to passing out that she couldn't even feel the dizziness or sickness anymore. The wind decided to pull her and Spike in opposite directions, and her arm was nearly torn from her while she tried to hold on to his hand. Then he was thrown into her direction again. She didn't feel her hands anymore now, or anything else for that matter. But she knew she had to hold on to him. It was important. Then she passed out.

*
The first thing he felt was grass. It was cool and slightly ticklish against his cheek. Spike slowly sat up and clutched his head. Damn, that tornado had hit him hard. But he was still alive, or rather, undead. Next to him the Slayer lay sprawled out on the ground. To his regret, she wasn't dead but just unconscious. He stood up and surveyed their surroundings. It was still night, thankfully. He had no idea how much time had passed. Or where they were, for that matter. He stood in a large grass field. A hill rose up in front of him, with tall brick ruins of what must once have been impressive buildings on top of it. They cast long shadows over the field in the light of the crescent moon. Nearing dawn, he concluded. Behind the ruins he saw the outline of a darkened city. It wasn't very big. Middle size, maybe. A strange feeling of familiarity slowly came over him.

A soft moan from the ground told him the Slayer was starting to wake up too. She sat up, rubbing her forehead, and stared up at him wonderingly. Then she jumped to her feet rather energetically considered what they'd just been through, while she brushed the dirt of her disheveled denim skirt and even more disheveled pink top. She seemed to check if she still had all her limbs, which she did. Spike looked down and saw his own clothes were still pretty much intact. The thick leather of his long black coat had held up good in the twister, and his jeans were looking all right as well.

The Slayer now took in her surroundings with much the same wondering expression on her face as he must have had moments earlier. "Where are we?" she finally said, staring at the walls in front of them.

"I don't know." Spike answered. "But it seems kinda familiar."

"Not to me it doesn't," she threw in. "Enlighten me."

"It looks kinda like." He knew how this was going to sound. "Like Rome."

She turned and stared at him as if he'd gone insane.

"Y'know, the place that wasn't build in a day," he added.

"That's ridiculous! So not funny! All right, so that tornado thing sends us flying. It can't have dropped us that far off!"

For the first time in maybe ever, Spike wished he could agree with the blonde. But the familiar feeling only got stronger the longer he stood looking at the stone walls in front of him. Rome. He and Dru had spent a decade or so hunting the streets of the eternal city back in the 1910s. Those had been good times. His dark princess had charmed the hell out of those Italian buggers, and they had feasted every night. A strong feeling of melancholy overcame him at the memory. He missed Dru. It all seemed so far away, suddenly, their time together. Over a century of love and happiness, lost, just like that.

"No Slayer, I'm afraid I'm not joking," he said under his breath. "I recognize this place. This is bloody Rome alright." He paused, searching his pockets for his smokes. He could use a ciggie right now. Taking one out the package, he added, "I’ve got a hunch that tornado wasn't an ordinary one."

"Spike." She sounded exasperated. "Tornados are never ordinary. And this is not Rome. It can't be."

The vampire didn't listen to her. He was busy lighting a cigarette and then inhaling the smoke deeply. He closed his eyes briefly, savoring the taste of it. Good. Now what was she babbling about? How this couldn't be Rome. "Slayer," he said, "Believe me or not. I don't care. I don't know how we got here but I know where this is. And right now," he studied the sky, "it's looking like it's gonna be light out here soon. So I'm gonna go over to those ruins for the day and think about what to do."

He did as he said and immediately started to cross the field towards the hill in front of them. She didn't follow him. He shrugged. She could do what she wanted. Deep inside Spike thought it might be better if they stayed together for a while. After all something pretty weird had happened, or was maybe even still going on, and they seemed to be the only two it had happened to. But he would never admit that to her.

"Fine," Buffy shouted after him. "You stay in the broken down place. I'm going into this city and find someone who can tell me where we are and get home."

She didn't know why she was calling after him. Why would she care what he was going to do? Annoying vampire. No, more than annoying. Messing with her mind with his Rome story. She really hated him. He had seemed terribly sure though. She shook her head, no, don't let him get to you, Buffy. "It's not true," she said out loud. But a small voice in the back of her mind was already sowing sour seeds of doubt. "You live on a hell mouth. Weird stuff happens all the time."

Buffy kept staring after Spike until the shadows of the ruins swallowed him. She suddenly felt quite alone. But why would she want the company of Spike? She didn't. No wanting company. Buffy started to walk towards the left side of the ruins. It wasn't far; she estimated it might be about a ten minute walk up to the high wall that surrounded the city. It was kind of strange for a city to have a wall around it, she thought. And ruins, for that matter. She didn't know any city that had that. Well, where there were walls, there had to be an entrance somewhere. And she would find it.
 

Continued...