Though she had yet to turn eighteen, Buffy Summers was intimate with death. In some ways, death was her life.

The wind had shifted just right, and she could smell the salty tang of the ocean on the night breeze. It should have been a pleasure, but Buffy ignored it. Leaves rustled in the trees above her head, and somewhere off to the north, on one of the typically tidy suburban streets that lined Weatherly Park, a woman shouted at her dog to stop barking.

Buffy wondered what the dog was barking at.

In any other town it might have been something no more threatening than a neighbor kid on his bike. In Sunnydale, the thing that set the dog off might well be something horrible that had crept from the darkness out into the glow of the streetlamps.

If so, it would be Buffy's responsibility to find it and destroy it. That was her calling. She was the Chosen One. She was the Slayer. Sunnydale, California, was a magnet for the unnamable horrors of the world, things the rational human mind insisted did not truly exist. But, oh, they did exist.

The dead. The undead. The Slayer spent far too much time with them, lurking in cemeteries to await their predatory resurrection; stalking parks and playgrounds in search of the tribes of the night -- vampires, demons, werewolves. She had died once herself, actually. For a moment. Before she was resuscitated.

Resurrected.

Buffy Summers was, to her own mind, far too intimate with death. But in some ways, it was her life.

She crouched in the darkness among the trees that lined the western fence of Weatherly Park and listened. Not for barking dogs, blaring car radios, or the wind in the trees. Buffy listened for the sounds that would reveal the presence of the dead.

The presence of a vampire.

Something had been stalking people in the park, yet again. If Sunnydale was the Hellmouth, then the park was one of its hunting grounds. It was a regular stop on Buffy's usual patrol. But lately, patrolling hadn't been enough. In the last week, six people had been slaughtered in the park. The sign on the gate said the park was closed at ten, but that didn't matter. The rules were regularly ignored, the fence frequently vaulted by teens looking for a place to party or be alone with their boyfriends or girlfriends.

The bodies had been savaged more brutally than was common even for a vampire. There was anger in those killings, and neither Buffy nor her Watcher, Giles, had been able to determine the source of it.

Now, she sat and waited. Giles had told her she ought to be able to sense when a vampire was near. It might be her imagination, but she was certain that she did sense something. Evil. Danger. Bloodlust. Whatever it was she felt out there, she couldn't focus on it, couldn't narrow it down. She had been in the park nearly two hours and hadn't seen anything more than a few guys she recognized from school drinking too much warm beer.

Buffy was getting anxious. Angry with herself. While she was sitting there, the vamp could be killing again. Waiting just wasn't good enough. She should be out looking for it, hunting it the way it was hunting fresh human prey.

The waiting was driving her a little crazy.

She promised herself she'd give it to the count of one hundred.

At seventy-nine, she heard a scream.

"About time," Buffy snarled, and sprinted across the park in the direction of the scream.

She vaulted a park bench, trampled a patch of yellow flowers she couldn't name if her biology grade depended upon it, and angled toward a copse of trees next to the duck pond at the center of the park.

Another scream shredded the night air; a male voice, terrified beyond any concern for masculinity. The scream of someone being murdered.

Branches whipped past her face. Buffy dodged around the wide trunk of an ancient oak. Then it was there, in front of her, lips stretched wide over the pale, blood-spattered throat of a homeless man whose eyes were already glazed with death. The corpse was sprawled on the ground in the midst of a clearing. The vampire crouched over it, like a dog worrying a bone.

Before it had died, the vampire had been a boy, not more than eleven or twelve years old. Buffy thought she recognized him, in fact. Maybe she'd seen him, walking to the middle school.

For once, Buffy Summers had nothing to say.

It turned on her, wide yellow eyes blazing bright in the darkness. Bloody fangs flashed in the dim moonlight that streamed through the trees. Then it was rushing at her, fingers curled into talons.

Buffy reached inside her leather jacket and withdrew a stake she had slid into the long pocket there.

"Come on, then, kiddo," she whispered. "Mommy's calling you. Time to go home."

Though Buffy had never asked to be the Slayer, nor wanted to be, she had found to her surprise that she was quite adept at it. Once upon a time, the idea that she might have some kind of talent for violence, for murder, would have horrified her. But that was before she knew there were things in the world which deserved nothing but death. The world needed a Slayer. And Buffy was Chosen.

It was a concept that her mother was having a great deal of difficulty dealing with. Buffy had hidden the truth from her mom for as long as she was able, and truth be told, she thought that Joyce Summers had been working very hard not to see the clues that might have led her to that truth.

Eventually, however, all hell had broken loose. Pretty much literally. And then Buffy had no choice. Her mother had to know. In some ways, it was a relief not to need excuses. At least her mother could stop wondering how a girl could get as much "tutoring" as Buffy supposedly did and still barely squeak by in the grades department. But in other ways, it was a disaster. Joyce did not handle the truth very well at all.

For a while after that horrible night, Buffy had left town. She just couldn't take it anymore. But she was back now, and back to stay, and she and her mother would just have to deal with the awkwardness between them.

They avoided the subject whenever possible. Purely to avoid having to talk to her mother about where she was going, what horrors she might face, Buffy still snuck in and out her window a lot of the time. It was just easier that way.

Up the tree, then through the open window. The climb only got easier every time she did it.

Buffy slipped into her darkened bedroom, and her mother was sitting there on the edge of her bed, holding something in her hands. For a moment Buffy was reminded of the horrible night when she'd entered this room to find her mother's late boyfriend, Ted, waiting for her -- it was a night that had ended violently. For him. Then the memory was washed away as she saw the sadness on her mother's face, and recognized what she held in her hands. It was a small trophy Buffy had won for figure skating when she was nine years old.

"Hello, Buffy," her mother said.

"Mom," Buffy said, trying not to meet the woman's gaze. "Y'know, I've been meaning to pick up my room for days. I promise I'll take care of it tomorrow..."

Buffy swallowed as her mother rose and flicked on a light.

Joyce's face was streaked with tears.

"All I asked was that you show," she said quietly. "I didn't tell you what to wear. I didn't ask if you might bring a date with pierced eyelids and tattoos... somewhere. I just wanted you to come."

Once again I fail Daughter 101, Buffy thought sadly. She looked down, and wished she hadn't. On the edge of the bed was a flyer for the benefit at her mother's art gallery. SAVE THE LOST, it said in bold letters. Beneath that, it read:

In these troubled times, so many of our young people don't know where to turn. Too many of them turn to the streets.

Join us for a special showing of a private collection of paintings by Mary Cassatt, followed by a silent auction of a few select works to raise operating funds for the Sunnydale Runaway Project.

Buffy swallowed hard. She knew all about running away.

Mary Cassatt was known for her paintings of mothers and their children. When a wealthy L.A. couple had donated a group of Cassatt paintings for the auction, Buffy's mom had been ecstatic. Joyce had lovingly shown the pieces to Buffy, each one depicting a mother with her child or children, holding them, bathing them, rocking them to sleep.

"Look at the tenderness. The love," her mother had said, eyes moist. And her smile as she gazed at her own daughter had made Buffy ashamed. Because she didn't deserve a mother like hers. She so constantly let her down.

Like tonight.

Joyce gazed levelly at her. "A lot of people came tonight. We made a lot of money for the project." Her voice cracked. "And a lot of people asked me where my daughter was. Oh, I smiled and said you were studying at the library. Buffy, I know you have your... obligations, but you promised you would be there."

Buffy looked down at her hands.

"Mom," she said again. But there was nothing more to say. Nothing more she could say.

"Just go to bed," Joyce said wearily, and turned to go to the door.

Defeated, Buffy sat down on her bed, hating her life.

"Sometimes I just wish..." Joyce murmured as she stood in the open doorway, and the hair stood up on the back of Buffy's neck.

She wished what?

That Buffy had never come back?

Her mother walked into the hall, then stopped, half-turned, but did not turn. Almost as if she couldn't quite look at Buffy again.

"A couple came to talk to the representatives from the runaway project," she said softly. "Their little boy has been missing for almost a week. His name is Timmy. He's in the seventh grade. They're frantic. Have you any idea what it's like to wonder, night after night, where your child is?"

Tears rolled down Buffy's cheeks.

Timmy.

Little Timmy Stagnatowski. Now she remembered that face. She had seen the flyers at the grocery store: Missing. Please help us find him.

Buffy knew exactly where he was. Or rather, where he last had been: earlier tonight, she had driven a stake through his heart.

Her mother reached behind herself and closed the door to her room.

It was a long time before Buffy managed to get up to turn out the light. She undressed and then crawled beneath the bedclothes.

It was after two in the morning before she finally drifted off to sleep.