TEASER

"Holy shit!" Faith was forced forward as a vampire landed hard on her back, claws of one hand digging into the shoulder of her denim jacket and the claws of the other gripping her hair to stay in place. The sudden unexpected weight had her staggering backwards again.

Growling reverberated inside her left ear and she could only assume that the sticky wet shit running down her cheek was drool.

Great, she was gonna get killed and she was gonna puke doing it! So not the way she wanted to go.

Ignoring the pain from the hair-pulling, Faith twisted as best she could with a devil on her back and rammed her shoulder into the corridor wall, crushing her attacker.

He or she screamed and Faith felt a handful of hair come loose from her scalp. "Ow, that friggin' hurt!" Standing free again, she pulled back her arm and socked the vampire - male, as it happened - hard in the face.

Any pain he felt he shook off easily and came back at her and the two started exchanging blows in the narrow hall between the kitchenette and the empty shop. Faith had the upper hand, but only just slightly and she was only too aware that another three vampires were watching openly from the dark doorway halfway up the corridor.

They weren't attacking yet though. Maybe they were just enjoying the show or maybe they knew that there just wasn't enough room for all four of them to have a go at her at once or maybe they were just too lazy to lend a hand in the killing and were gonna let their buddy do all the hard work before sitting down to eat.

Yeah, well they'd bitten off more than they could chew this time. Faith grimaced at her cliché and put extra force into her next punch to make up for it. Her strength was down, she knew it, it would be a couple of dozen hot meals before she got it fully back, but what she was missing in muscle mass she could make up for in sheer anger.

"All I wanted to do was sleep," she grunted between punches.

"Hey, yuh know, I think she's a Slayer," she heard one of the watching Vampire's say conversationally.

"You don't say," Faith's vampiric punching bag growled to them. He was still on his feet, but he was pretty much just dodging blows now. "How about a little help?" He ground out between his fangs.

"Sure thing." Faith switched tactics and shoved her stake into his heart.