Even in the summer, when the wicked sun warms the earth in its motherly embrace during the day, the nights are cold. And it's not just the pavement that I walk on, or the walls I lean against. It's not just the lacy dress I'm wearing over nothing else at all.

It's the vacant looks I get from the people I pass. They stare out unseeing, uncaring if you are death or salvation walking beside them.

I don't like it at all.

I want there to be fear. I like the fear. I've liked it for a long time, ever since I was a child. I used to hate the visions I would have, but I would love the look of fear and horror that flooded my mother's eyes. She used to tell me that she would kill me someday. She'd kill the devil's child as soon as God told her the time was right.

But the devil came and took the child away. God lost.

When I found her, sprawled out on the bed she shared with my father, who I had already discovered in the den, I immediately looked at her eyes to see if the fear was there.

It was.

She died with that fear pounding in her heart and racing through her veins, chilling it cold. I smiled before I screamed and they carted me away, taking me to the convent, needing to get me closer to God.

I did get closer to him. I can create. I can destroy. I'm pretty sure that the nuns didn't mean for me to become God, but given the choice…well, I guess we all know I didn't have a choice.

My life was guided, very skillfully out of my hands and into those of the two men I love. My Daddy, my creator, my Angel. He's the man who made me what I am. And my Spike. He's the man who made me who I am.

He's also the reason I'm walking through the very cold, very dirty, very quiet streets of Brazil.

People have been dying here for weeks, thanks to a host of demons that have settled very nicely into the local populace. They've wormed their way into the night life and now, there's very little life in the night. I'm planning to move on, as soon as I can decide where to go.

I know where I want to go. I want to go back to Sunnydale. I want to feast on the heart of the woman who turned my Spike into a traitor. I want to rip the Slayer's heart out and sink my teeth into it then howl my pleasure to the moon and sky.

And the stars.

The streets here are littered with fallen stars. People with no hope and no future. People who would willingly tilt their head and let me sink my teeth into their neck so that they could find some measure of peace.

If I wanted a dinner that would come willingly to the table, I would have been a vegetarian.

It's the struggle, you see, that makes it all worthwhile. It's what makes my heart sing with joy and elation. It's what makes me dance. It's what lights up the eyes of my best friends…my dolls are gone. They're all back in the mansion that I cannot return to. I know that she's touched them by now. I know that their black eyes stare at her, heralding my vengeance.

I will have it. My vengeance. My Spike.

He was so surprised when I told him to go play with the Slayer. I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn't want a pet. I wanted a real demon. One with sharp teeth and a bloodlust rivaled only by his lust for…other things.

And Spike didn't appear to be any of those things.

Not that I blame him for not standing up to Angel. Angel is his sire and it's dangerous to fight with your Daddy.

I think I've made Spike soft, like butter inside. All gooey and creamy, like filling. But not the human kind of filling that fuels me and runs down my throat like rivers of the finest chocolate, bathing me in its glorious hue.

The last time I saw him, he brought me flowers. Red roses, deep as blood and full of thorns. He also brought me the lovely little girl who made the mistake of trying to sell them to him.

I let her go when I told him to leave. She ran like she had her own demons driving her and I wondered, for a moment, if she would run to God like I did. As I watched her, long dark hair flying out behind her, I tilted my head and told Spike I didn't need him anymore. I didn't need his gifts of girls and flowers and other trinkets of love.

I didn't need the love of a man. I needed a demon.

And he wasn't a demon anymore.

He was worse than Angel was with the Slayer.

So he left and I'm here on my own in these dirty streets, looking for something to guide me where I need to be. I'm waiting for a vision or a dream or a sign. I want an omen burned into my flesh, deep and hot like blood.

I want…

I round the corner, stepping over a drunk and someone who, very likely, has died of an overdose. I wonder what the night holds in store for me, wonder if I might find what I have spent the last few weeks looking for.

And I do.

She's standing there on the opposite corner, basket over her arm, blood red petals falling, dripping over the side of the basket onto the street, weeping like an open wound.

Spike gave her to me, so she's mine. Even if she is stupid enough to come out after dark again.

She's standing under a street light and it shines around her like her own spotlight, a discarded star fallen to the Earth and left to fade into nothingness. Fade into dark.

I approach her slowly, watching her just as she watches me. There is something in this one, a hope that so many of the others that I see and feed from have lost. She has youth and beauty and, if flowers on a street corner don't pay off, a life in prostitution to look forward too.

I won't let her get that far.

I come up behind her and grab her, my hand closing over her mouth to silence her scream. She drops the basket as I sink my teeth into her supple flesh and drain her hope, her life from her. I feel her essence flowing through me and revitalizing me, making me young and beautiful again. Making me hopeful again.

I drop the husk of her form to the ground and bend down. Arranging the flowers neatly around her, I make her look stunning. Her dark skin and hair shine in the yellow light and the blood red roses and carnations make the air spicy.

Picking up one of the tight buds, I put it in my hair and twirl around, dancing down the street.

I have my sign now, you see.

And it says welcome home…to Sunnydale.