Devil's Truth: Rude Awakenings
by MattK
Buffy returned to consciousness slowly, and with a fair amount of pain. This wasn’t an entirely uncommon experience for her. In her tenure as the Slayer, she’d been drugged, shocked, beaten, and body-switched. Enforced naps were something of a job hazard.

Her head hurt. A dull, grinding ache throbbed behind her eyes. Worse, her stomach felt like she’d just taken fourteen consecutive rides on the tilt-a-whirl. *Drugged.* She diagnosed. *I was drugged. That’s a hangover.* If she had been physically knocked out, the pain would be coming from the point she’d been struck, not *inside* her head.

She shifted, instinctively testing her limbs. To her surprise, they were free. Usually, when someone went to the effort to knock her out, they made an effort to make sure that she didn’t get back up.

She opened her eyes and blinked a few times to clear her vision. When it cleared, she blinked a few more times and shook her head, expecting what she saw to vanish like the dream it *had* to be.

It didn’t.

The library. She was in the library. It was whole and undamaged. Not even a scorch. She was sitting at the table around which the Scooby Gang had planned strategy for three years, in her favorite chair--the one that she sat in when she wasn’t sitting on the table. No one else, not even Giles, had been able to tell this chair from the others. But Buffy was always able to identify it by a nick in the left arm, and she felt that familiar nick beneath her hand.

Everything was the same. The dusty smell of ancient leather and paper, the undisturbed silence like an empty church. It was like she had fallen asleep, and the last year and a half had been nothing but a dream.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.”

She was on her feet with a stake in her hand, facing in the direction of the speaker, before the sentence was complete.

A stake? They’d let her keep a stake?

A middle-aged man wearing a navy business suit entered from Giles’s office, carrying a liter bottle of Evian water.

“All right, who are you, where am I, and what’s going on here?” She demanded. She winced inwardly at how confused she sounded. *Way to take charge of the situation, Buffy.* She quickly forgave herself. She’d just woken up. She was still a bit unsteady.

“In a moment,” he replied pleasantly, crossing the room. He showed no fear of her or the stake, and *she* was the one who ended up backing away. He set the bottle of water in front of her place at the table. “Here, drink that. You’ll feel better.”

Buffy lowered her stake and approached warily, examining her companion carefully. As she took her second look, she realized that he wasn’t middle-aged. Or at least, she wasn’t sure he was. His silver-white hair had given her that impression, but his face was unlined. Ageless. He could have been twenty-five or fifty. The warrior in her, assessing him as an opponent, recognized the grace and controlled power of his movements. Underneath that suit, there were muscles. She was sure of that. This man was very, very strong. But what drew her attention the most were his eyes. Shocking, Ice-sapphire blue eyes. He was smiling and he seemed friendly enough, but there was something about those eyes.

“Please, sit down,” he said, waving at her seat. He then took a seat halfway down the table from hers. He grinned apologetically as she sat down and took the water. “I’m sorry about the tranquilizer dart,” he said. “But I simply had to speak to you alone first, and I don’t think I could have arranged that any other way.”

“And you thought kidnapping me would make you more agreeable?”

“No, but I was certain I could get through to you once I got the chance.” He indicated the library with a broad sweep of his arm. “Do you like it? I thought it would make you more comfortable if we talked on your home ground. It was easy to fix, really—“

“Yes, that’s nice.” She interrupted. “You’re very nice, and polite, and you had to tranquilize me to get me here. You’ve answered where and why. Now I want to know just who the hell you are.”

“Oh, me? I’m called Belial.”

Buffy’s breath caught in her throat. One hand gripped the arm of the chair. The other gripped her stake.

“Oh, you recognize the name? You’ve heard of me?”


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