OK, so, here's the bit that was added to the last part of Needfire:

• * *

I went to Speakers Corner, and sat, opening the black purse on the ground. Four glass bottles, one through four. One tiny key. I took the bottles out and opened each, in order, setting them down.

I closed my eyes, and spoke. "Papa? Ecoutez, papa."

I am here, petite.

"Tell me how to do this, papa." I was sitting in silence; no one could have heard, no one could have seen. I was Speaker, and my father listened. "Tell me how to go, how to leave this behind. Tell me how?"

That is why I came. Ask yourself first: are you certain, that this is what you want? To go? Because the key to peace, to freedom, is there to your hand. But this is not an easy river to cross, petite. So you must be sure.

(The river of Jordan is muddy and cold, it chills the body, but not the soul....all my trials soon be over....)

"I'm certain, papa. Where will it take me, this key? What does it open?"

A little house, Amadee. I thought I heard a laugh, a warm loving sound, moving down the dead skin and fire-damaged neurons like a hug. A door, to a little house, where you may be lost, or found. Your own little place, yours alone, to move at will between walls of this world and many others.

I drew a breath. "Show me."

Each jar, in order, opening. The first bottle: air. He gave me the casting, my fingers running around the lip of the bottle three times, a breath of sound from the jar, whispering into the tawny streaks of first light breaking, three times, the spell wound up. Second bottle: earth, three times around the lip, a call, a cry from the bottle as the contents rose to meet the air, swallowing the air, then sinking into it.

I began to understand. It was music, the music of the spheres, the power of eternity and infinity, the song that held the universe together. And it sang for me.

Third bottle: water. Three times around and my fingers felt salt water, and clear water, tears and streams, and the song was the voice of a waterfall. They hung around my head, three lines of music, awaiting completion.

Fourth and final bottle: fire. Three times with my dead finger this time, remembering the needfire, hearing with my good ear the sudden howl of sound from the jar. Here was the final tone: dissonance, to balance consonance. All around me the universe hummed and sang, twisted its spherical music.

"Papa?"

Watch the Corner, Amadee, my darling girl. Take the key in your hand. Have it ready. Your moment is coming. And trust yourself, always. Au revoir, petite.

The air began to move. I could see it, molecules of spectral light, of shadow and solidity, the air shook and shuddered and shaped. A portal, a gateway, a door.

I took my bags in hand and went through without a backwards glance.

• * *

Deb, I'm relatively new here. I just wanted to say how great the Needfire story is. It makes me go 'Wow' every time I read it.

I'm through gushing now.

and the song was the voice of a waterfall.

Deb, may I tag? I need this.

Also,

remembering the needire

left out an F

moving, and complete. Thank you for making the changes. I didn't realize they were really needed until I read it.

Hey Kevin -- we all gush at Deb. I'm surprised she doesn't feel all slobbery.

Deb! I love you!

I just got home, I'm still currently reading the copy on my own machine and I'll probably email you some minimal (gushy as heck) (not Hec) comments when I'm done there, but, feel absolutely free to post the rest in this thread.

t happy as a bivalve

OK, will post the rest of "In Re" momentarily. Just back from lunch with Eli, and screaming at Republicans, and stuff.

Deena, f added to needire. And no one needs to ask me before tagging anything of mine, unless you want to attribute it by adding "that Grabien cow" after the quote.

Kevin, that's extremely kind. Needfire is actually a prequel; the story it leads to is this one.

more of "In Re The Events of Autumn, 1888":

"The price?" Angelus, his face altered, was terrifying, a sexual engine whose only sure destination was death. "Why, blood, ladies, of course."

"How much blood?" How could Am sound so unperturbed? I managed to turn my head, just as Dru hissed and backed away from me. I saw Am with the string of rosary beads in her hand, and took out my own. A small voice in my head asked me if I truly wanted Dru to move away.

Angelus burst out laughing. "I like them both," he told the table. "How much? I'll tell you what, here's a bargain for you both, nothing to do with what's between Bram and me. You'll give a drink now - from the wrist, not the fountain of those lovely lily stem necks of yours - and we'll take you to the Ripper, let you see him at his work. When you've got what you wanted? We take our second drink. Not to drain you, either of you. " He nodded towards the two women. "But enough to make them warm and happy. And more than enough to make you dizzy. I know when enough becomes too much, and I won't let it get that far. My experience? It's vast, I assure you."

"It's a bargain." Am spoke without any hesitation at all. She extended her wrist across the table to Darla. "Help yourself; and remember, I've got my rosary in my other hand. You'll stop when he tells you to, when I tell you to."

"Dominant little thing, aren't you?" The blonde reached out and took Am-Chau's extended hand, turning the palm upwards, pushing back the sleeve. She leaned over and examined the tracery of delicate veins. "Just like me. We'd bring sparks, you and I. Let's taste you."

She kissed the pulse at Am's wrist, and bit. The motion was nearly too quick for me to follow, but I heard a small scream from Am, quickly stifled. Darla drank, her eyes fixed on Am's rapidly whitening face. A tender ribbon of scarlet dripped and splattered in a rosette on the table. Darla's free hand reached out, and stroked what she could reach of Am's throat. She stroked, she stared, she held Am's eyes, and still she drank. I had never seen anything so sensual, not even in the books in my brother's library, those photographs of bare-bottomed girls in stockings and laced boots.

"Enough," Am whispered, and Angelus nodded. Darla lifted her face and turned towards him. He licked away the blood that smeared her chin, and turned to me.

"Now," he told me, and trembling, I gave my arm to Dru.

Unlike Darla, Dru was beside me. She ran a hand up and down my arm, stroking, stroking, teasing the sleeve upwards with a finger, and I knew, somehow, that this dark playing with the moment was her way of arousing both of us. A fingertip, hooking in my sleeve, a hand beneath my elbow, Dru's eyes like waves into which one might walk, willingly, be taken....

She found the vein in my wrist, I felt her teeth, a moment of intolerable pain that must be what the moment before sudden death is like. Penetration. And then something I could do no justice to, not with any words I know. Life and death and all of me, flowing into her, becoming a part of....

"Stop."

Was that my voice? No, it was Am's. She held out the rosary. Angelus said something, I was too dizzy and far away to understand, but the teeth were out of me and I was hot, cold, swaying in my seat. I managed to lift my head, and looked at Dru.

"Beautiful Rebecca," she told me, my blood on her teeth. "Pretty song, the miller played his music on you." She still held my arm, and licked the last bit of blood free of the skin. I could see the veins, pale and pulsing as they fought to refill. "I can play my music on a Rebec, just like Mister Chaucer did."

The landlord brought us wine, then, real wine, not blood. The rest of the patrons had mostly gone, melting out into the cold fog. I drank my wine gratefully; Am, who had recovered from her bloodletting already, fussed over me, making sure I had not lost too much. She turned her head up, and fixed Angelus with a steady look.

"We've honoured the first part of our half of the bargain," she told him. "Time for you to honour yours. Who is Jack the Ripper? Tell us."

"I'm going to do better than that." He was on his feet, pulling on his coat, motioning to the two women to follow. "I'm going to show you."

We all went out together into the blackness of a London night in November.

• * *

(continued)

We followed these compelling creatures through the twisty maze of Whitechapel. Angelus led the way; it seemed he knew precisely where he was going. Once or twice, along the way, he stopped and sniffed the air, then started off again. We went past barred shopfronts, tenements, courtyards where lime trees once grew in the days before the Heugenot locals came to understand that the climate would always defeat them. London, the Smoke, is not a place for the faint-hearted of any species. Mister Darwin would have known that.

"What's he sniffing for, do you suppose?" Am's voice was the barest whisper, but it seemed these creatures had accelerated hearing, among their other attributes, for Darla turned around and gave us a beautiful, happy smile.

"Blood, of course," she told us casually, and I knew she was amused. My own senses seemed to have become more acute, just from the brief contact with Dru. "Saucy Jack's hard at work, tonight. Another whore for Inspector Abberline's files, another carved-up drab for the mortuary slab at the Women's Institute."

"Another whore, another whore, but this time Jackie's gone indoors." Dru was dancing, her heels tapping on the filthy pavement, and her voice was a sinuous melody. She slid her hand up the back of Am's neck, and I caught the barest glimpse of something that might have been a smile. Am arched her neck, and something moved inside me, a taste of envy.

As if she had sensed it, Dru came back to my side. "Don't be worried, my pretty rebec," she breathed at me. "I'll not let the big bad loneliness take you away to the dark place."

I reached out suddenly, and took her hand. She swung mine lightly; she had a grip like iron. "Dru..." I faltered, not knowing what, exactly, I wished to tell her.

"Here."

We'd come to a tiny street, lined on both sides with tenements. In the distance, I heard the big clock at Westminster toll the hour: it was half one in the morning, the dead time of day.

"Where are we?" Am had come up beside me; she was alert, watchful. Her voice was very low, but Angelus turned and moved back to us.

"Millers Court," he told us. "And up there, at Number 13 - he's there, and he's busy." In the deadness of the night air, I saw his ridged face gleam as he lifted those terrifying canines in a smile. "It's all right. Soon as he's done? We'll be busier."

We settled down to wait. It seems mad to me now, that I sat in that Whitechapel slum, knowing that the monster who had invaded all our dreams at night, the monster whose sure identity would give Am-Chau and me our heart's desire, was committing an act of gore and atrocity the like of which London had never seen, not ten yards from where we sat. Behind the dark rough curtains of a cracked ground floor window at Number 13, Miller's Court, Jack the Ripper went to work on a pretty blonde girl who had once been called Mary Kelly, leaving behind him a saturnalia of blood and legend.

He came out a half hour later, slipping into the street. I don't know what we had been expecting, perhaps the Mister Hyde of the Stevenson play currently drawing crowds in the West End, perhaps a twisted devil. Instead, a thin young man in a worn overcoat, his hands in black gloves, slipped into the street. He saw us at once, and turned to flee. With speed beyond what our eyes could record, Angelus had him. He lifted the killer by the throat, twisting the man around, to show us.

"And here's my half of the bargain, ladies. Saucy Jack. He'll answer your questions, I think."

Am stepped up. Her voice was shaking. "What's your name?"

The man said nothing. His eyes, wild and unfocussed, moved across the inhuman whorls and depths of the vampires, and then settled on us. His mouth stayed closed.

"Darla. Dru. Search him."

They went through his pockets. When Darla got down to his breeches, he kicked out at her. Sidestepping him with speed and ease, she lifted one hand to his face, and slashed his cheek to the bone with one fingernail.

"Silly man," she told him sweetly. "Did you think you were the only one with a taste for sharps?"

"He's called Montague." Dru had his card case, and was giggling. "What a crumpet-ish name for a mad killer. Montague! And he's a solicitor, as well. I wonder, silly little man, do they call you Monty?"

He looked at her with hate. Angelus, holding him tightly, looked at us.

"Dru. Give that case to Am-Chau. What's his full name, then?"

"Montague John Druitt." Am was shuddering with reaction. "He must be a total maniac. And he's killed a woman in that room?"

"I expect he's left blood on the ceiling. I can smell it from here." Darla licked her lips. "I doubt he left much in her body, anyway. Nothing there to eat."

I was aware of a pang of disappointment. Something in me suddenly wanted to go inside, to see the carnage, to feed.....I shook myself. What was I thinking?

"Well?" Angelus watched Am-Chau. "Have I kept my part of the bargain?"

rest of it:

"I'll tell you in a moment," she told him, and walked up the shallow stairs to the broken window of Number Thirteen, ground floor. Reaching inside, she twitched the curtain to one side, just as a cloud scudded past, leaving the moon shining brightly.

I heard the noise she made, a strangled cross between horror and something I couldn't name. She backed away from the steps, nearly falling. Taking a moment to compose herself, she faced Angelus.

"Yes," she nodded, "you've kept it. I have the Ripper's name. And I believe we each owe you another drink."

"Oh, I won't need it, not tonight." The fangs gleamed as he turned his head in the moonlight. "You might offer it to the ladies, though."

He put his mouth to the base of Montague John Druitt's throat. Even from where I stood, I heard the rip of flesh as those enormous fangs met muscle, and skin, and defeated both, finding the great vein beneath.

Angelus held the Ripper up, ignoring the initial struggles, the kicks that became progressively more feeble as Angelus steadily drained him of his life's blood. I missed his final moments, for Dru had taken me in her arms.

"Thirsty," she whispered, "thirsty for you."

"Drink me, then." The decision had been made hours earlier, with the first breath against my cheek. "And let me drink you."

She held a wrist out. Using the same technique Darla had used, she opened one of the blue-tinted veins at her slender wrist, and offered it up to me.

I drank.

I tasted her blood, I took her life into me, a rich coppery darkness. It was sweet, and metallic. I was unaware of it, when she leaned forward to open the jugular and drink, and I made no attempt to stop her.

Just before I lost consciousness, I looked up and across at Am. She had tossed the card case on top of Montague John Druitt's empty shell of a body, and had given a wrist each to Dru and Darla.

• * *

We're still in England these days, Am-Chau and I, but the others are scattered and lost. Darla is gone, three times dead; Angelus bit a gypsy girl and was cursed with a soul. Dru is still out there, in the night; sometimes I dream of her, and she comes to us, Am and I.

Montague John Druitt was fished out of the Thames, with stones and money in his pocket, an apparent suicide, a month after Mary Kelly's death, our own deaths, in Miller's Court. We never put a name to the Ripper, but by then, we had our own need for blood. And, as Am says, there are women reporters everywhere. You can hardly put the telly on without seeing one.

A hundred years and more have passed, and the world has changed enormously, but we adapt, for the night is always the night and the food is always plentiful.

finis

Teppy, the fic I was asking after wasn't Graveyard Shift it was the Spiderman/Spike. Which I still want to see.

Well, I tried Spike and Spider-Man (not slash!) and it wanted to become "Graveyard Shift," and on edits, I took out the scene with drunk!Spike wondering what would happen to *him* if he drank from Spider-Man, or what would happen to Spidey if he were vamped.

It was kind of funny -- it was Xander and Willow babysitting drunk!Spike in Willy's Place.