OK, is this too silly?

• * *

When Crispin kicked the front door of Number 17 half off its hinges, Emma thought she'd somehow strayed into some bad student knockoff of an Antonioni flick.

The first thing she saw was the freaky-faced bird with the vampire ridges - Drusilla, Crispin had called her - running the longest tongue Emma had ever seen along the length of her potential dinner's throat. She'd got her dinner's tie-dyed Indian peasant shirt off, or perhaps Spike had done that, and was cradling the girl in one arm, supporting her head, tilting her back to make the most of a long, supple neck. The thunderous crack of the door slamming into the wall and parting company with its hinges apparently startled Drusilla; her mouth dropped open, her grip relaxed, and the unconscious and presumably unwilling blood donor du jour bounced to the floor.

"That wasn't nice," Drusilla said reproachfully. "You've gone and made me spill my tea all over the floor."

"Don't meet her eyes!" Crispin, circling Spike with a stake in one hand, yelled the reminder. Since he was having to do this while not turning his back on Ethan, Emma realised it was up to her not to let Drusilla get into the game.

"Who in sodding hell are you people, anyway?" Spike, the bell-bottoms of his tight velvet pants flapping as he crouched and circled, was clearly irritated. Looking over Crispin's shoulder, he got his first look at Emma. "Blimey! If that's the Slayer, she can slay me anytime!"

"Well, I don't like her. And now I'm all cross." Drusilla, prancing on her preposterous shoes, lunged at Emma, who kicked her halfway across the room. As she straightened up, stake in hand, she suddenly became aware of the low voice in the middle of the pentagram, and heard what Ethan Rayne was chanting.

"....eight, nine, vampires to dust, ten, eleven, man and woman together, oh Eyghon I offer these up unto thee, thy spell complete, eight, nine..."

Apropos of nothing, really, I find the image of Dru in preposterous shoes utterly charming.

Can't you just see her swanning about in four-inch heels with silk ribbons fluttering off in every direction?

I almost don't like writing Dru. She's so damned easy.

Hee!

I'd cut

you bad lady, you."

Because the Dru pouting menace comes through more clearly without it.

Heh. Good point. Shall do.

Although I flatly refuse to touch "and now I'm all cross."

It's SO damned Dru.

Oh, no touching that. It's perfect.

...especially if you imagine her lunging, in full tooth and claw mode, one nanosecond later.

bit more for now:

"....eight, nine, vampires to dust, ten, eleven, man and woman together, oh Eyghon I offer these up unto thee, thy spell complete, eight, nine..."

"Bloody hell!" Emma turned towards the pentagram, and then dropped hurriedly to one knee as Dru sailed over her and smacked into a hideous claw-footed Victorian table.

"Emma! Get that girl out of here! Hurry!" Spike, either more careful or less foolhardy than his berserker ladylove, was feinting and dodging Crispin's moves. Emma's drop distracted him momentarily into a stare of admiration, and the lapse cost him, since Crispin promptly put the side of his foot against the vampire's chin. The kempo move would have snapped the neck of most men; Spike merely yelped and became instantly more careful.

"Not yet!" Emma called back. She hadn't forgot about Drusilla, who was weaving about a bit groggily, but Ethan Rayne had just taken precedence. Something was materialising behind him, something huge and dark and scaly. Hearing it, or perhaps sensing it, Ethan screamed "BEHOLD EYGHON!" and leaped for the edge of the pentagram.

"Oh no you don't, love," Emma said furiously. Grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt, she promptly tossed him back into the chalked icon. His eyes wide with disbelief, he backed away from both the furious Valkyrie he was supposed to be feeding to the demon he'd summoned, and from the demon itself. In doing so, he nearly backed into Dru. He shrieked and edged away, freezing as it suddenly occurred to him that he'd run out places to edge to.

"Ooooooh," she said. "Big and black and hungry. Big sharp shiny teeth. It smells of corpuscles and sewage. Yummy yums!"

The demon, taking on some definition, made a noise. Even Spike had stopped now, and was staring at it.

"Bloody hell," he said, "is that what Junior was doing all along, then? Doesn't he know you can't feed that sort of demon a vampire?"

I'd give a lot to see that on film.

For fuck's sake. It's hard to get something to 1000 words. Really, I'm going to have to get terse.

What? The flashfic challenge?