Three for a Secret by Lilachigh
Chp 4 Telling the Secret
One for Silver,
Two for Gold,
Three for a Secret that shall never be Told
The inside of Ross’s car smelt of cigarette smoke and doughnuts. Buffy flung open the front passenger door and got in next to the good-looking young policeman she’d last seen at the Bronze. She turned and stared over the seat to where Spike was lounging in the back. His face was in shadow and he didn’t even say hello.
“Ross, hi, well, so you’re a detective! That’s a - surprise.” Buffy could hear her voice, sounding hideously bright and cheerful and completely unnatural. Although she did wonder exactly which tone would sound normal at nearly four in the morning when you’ve been summoned to bail out the guy who was once your worst enemy and closest lover. She didn’t think the etiquette book had been written that covered this situation.
“Buffy - ” Ross looked uneasy. “I’m sorry to call you, but this guy Spike - he won’t give me his surname - says he knows you and the owners of this shop with the weird name, The Magic Box. I was driving past on my way home from my shift and saw the door was open. He says you’ll vouch that he has permission to be in there in the middle of the night. He insisted I ring you. I didn’t want to drag him down town and do all the paperwork if that’s true.”
“Tell him it was OK for me to be in the sodding shop, Slayer,” Spike hissed and she could tell he was fighting vamping out. She had no idea how he’d managed to stay in human face when Ross caught him.
“Yes, Ross, it’s quite OK. I’ve no idea what Spike was doing there - but I expect it probably research for a - a project he’s helping my sister Dawn prepare for school. ”
“At three in the morning?”
Buffy heard herself laughing, carelessly, as if nothing mattered. “Oh, Spike suffers from dreadful insomnia, don’t you, Spike! He hardly sleeps at all.”
“Well - ” Ross shifted uneasily. “As he’s a friend of yours, Buffy, then perhaps, just this once - ”
Buffy slid out of the car, opened the rear door and half pulled the vampire out onto the sidewalk. “Yes, I quite understand. And thanks a million. Spike certainly won’t be bothering you again. In fact - ” she dug her elbow backwards and felt the vampire’s ribs creak under the power - “if I have my way he won’t be bothering anyone, ever again!”
Ross leant across as she slammed the door shut. “So, I’ll probably see you some time in the Bronze?”
“What? Oh yes, great. Can’t wait. I’ll ring you,” she chattered and waved happily as the car drove away.
“Right! You - inside!” she snapped and pushed Spike violently into the shop. She couldn’t remember when she’d last been so angry. He tried to pull away, but she grabbed him by the shoulders and flung him against the ladder that led up to the top gallery of the shop where all the books that were not for sale were kept.
“What the heck do you think you were doing, Spike? Breaking in here and nearly getting arrested! What if I hadn’t been there when Ross phoned? Were you going to kill him to get away? Or did you fancy ending up in a cell having your fingerprints taken. Waiting for the first ray of sunlight to come through the bars and finish you off! Have you gone completely insane?”
Spike rubbed his face with both hands. “Question, questions, questions. Look, thank you for coming to the rescue. I could have got the law to ring Anya, but I didn’t think she’d be quite so quick to arrive at this time of night.”
Buffy stared at him. “You still haven’t told me why on earth you needed to break into the Magic Box through the front door. Why not come up through the basement tunnels like you normally do when you want to steal something!”
“I wasn’t stealing anything,” Spike shot back, looking hurt.
“Then in words of one syllable, what were you doing here?”
“Doing has two syllables.”
“Spike! Don’t push me.”
He shot a glance at her pale, angry face, the green eyes dark with suppressed fury . He thought he’d never seen her look so beautiful, so desirable, so utterly pissed off with him before.
He’d known, without even thinking twice, that she would come to his rescue. That was odd in itself. How had he known that? He could so easily have hurt the young copper and escaped, but he’d even stopped himself from doing that because he knew the boy was a friend of hers.
“I’m still waiting for an explanation, Spike.”
He glanced away from her furious face. “I needed - more burba weed. Run out. Got a visitor, haven’t I? Arabella likes the hot taste of it in her blood as well as me. Family thing. Like you and Niblet liking popcorn.”
“And you needed to break into the Magic Box for that - in the middle of the night! Come on, Spike. Don’t treat me like an idiot. I thought we - well, I thought we trusted each other - just a little.”
There was a long silence broken when he said, his voice very low, “You know I trust you, Slayer. I love you.”
“So you‘re always telling me, Spike. But hey, can’t feel a lot of love in the air at the moment.”
“It’s - difficult. You’re the Slayer and Arabella said - ”
Buffy turned away, not wanting the hurt to show on her face. “Oh well, if Arabella told you not to tell me about the problem, that’s all right, isn’t it? Perhaps she can bail you out of gaol next time you get arrested!”
Spike stood up and reaching out, pulled Buffy round to face him. She glared defiantly into the burning blue eyes.
“You sound jealous, pet.”
“What, of Arabella? God, Spike, haven’t we had this conversation before? At her house a few weeks ago? I will say it again, once and for all, I am not and never will be jealous of your skanky vamp cousin, so - ”
Her words were lost beneath his mouth as he kissed her. She tried to push him away, then realised her hands had linked themselves tightly around the back of his neck as he kiss deepened, growing more and more passionate.
She felt her body lighten as she rose on tiptoe, pressing herself against him, smiling even as they kissed at the response she was getting from his body.
His hands were roaming roughly across her skin under her top, and he was growling softly deep in his chest, as if he was a desperate man deprived of food and drink for too long.
The darkness of the shop seemed to be whirling round and round and Buffy felt herself slipping out of control. The old, familiar sensation of being swept away flooded over her. She felt her inhibitions vanish, all the ‘good girl’ behaviour that she paid lip service to in her waking moments was disappearing under a flood of feral desire that never ceased to stun and shock her.
Then, to her astonishment, she felt herself being pushed away. For the first time since they had becomes lovers, Spike was distancing himself from her, holding her at arm’s length, his face a frozen mask of pain.
“I’m sorry, Buffy, I - I can’t, I mustn’t. I’m sorry.”
She felt a chill run through her body to the very bone. Every nerve in her frame was screaming at her to turn and run. She had been rejected too many times in the past, and here it was happening all over again. Obviously he was getting all the sex he needed from his cousin and now was feeling disloyal to Arabella by kissing Buffy.
She would never know what stopped her turning on her heel and running out of the shop. Pride? She didn’t think she had any left where Spike was concerned. Disbelief? Oh no, she was quite capable of believing that someone else could hurt her in this fashion.
No, she stood, swaying, waiting for the roaring in her ears to subside. All she could see in the dim light was Spike’s anguished face. This wasn’t a man who was keen to dump an unwanted girlfriend, this was someone who was fighting against what his mind and body were telling him to do.
“Spike - ” Her voice sounded odd - hoarse and rough. She reached out a hand towards him. “I know something’s terribly wrong. Please - I’m not trying to interfere. But let me help. You must let me help!”
Spike sank down onto the dusty floor and buried his head in his hands. He could have fought her if she’d been cutting or abrasive. But compassion, pity - he had no defences against those when the Slayer offered them to him.
“I broke into the Magic Box to find a book,” he said at last, lifting his head and looking directly into her eyes. “One of the old ones I know Giles used to keep up on the back shelves. I’ve seen it there a couple of times, but never thought I’d need it.”
“A book of spells?” Buffy asked incredulously.
“More like guidelines, I suppose. The means of finding certain paths, opening certain doorways.”
“But why? And why break in? You could just have asked Anya to get it for you.”
Spike shrugged, the leather of his duster creaking as he moved. “Buffy, have you ever been told a big secret - something so enormous, so wonderful, so bloody mind blowing that you can’t think straight?”
She winced. Did discovering that Angel was a vampire count? That Dawn was really green energy and not her sister? That she was deeply in love with a platinum blond - ”
“Yes.”
“Arabella’s been carrying a secret like that for over a hundred years.”
“I thought she’d have something to do with all this!” Buffy snapped. “You were fine till she appeared on the scene again.”
“You see, she was involved. She knew, but didn’t dare tell me. Didn’t see what I could do, so she kept quiet. She thought I’d die if I tried to change things and she - well, whatever you think, she cares for me, Buffy. I’m her cousin.”
‘And she wishes you were far more,’ Buffy said to herself but managed to stop the words from escaping her lips.
“Spike, you’re talking in riddles,” she said gently instead and sat down next to him on the floor. She took his hand and ran her thumb over the long slender fingers that could cause such havoc on her body. She could feel his body shaking.
“In all these years, you’ve never asked me about my father,” he said suddenly. “His name was William, too.”
Buffy bit her lip. Fathers were a sore subject in her life. “I suppose, well, you never mentioned him. I thought perhaps he died when you were small.”
“Or that I’d killed him when I was turned? Well, I would have done if he’d sodding been around. He was - well, he was - weak. He liked women. Hell, why am I poncing about with nice phrases. He liked sex, Buffy. Lots and lots of sex. He had women, a mistress.”
Buffy flinched. “Your mother - ”
“Oh she knew. He never kept it a secret. But in those Victorian days, nicely brought up women just accepted it and said nothing. Sex was what men did. They had animal urges, so their wives just turned away and didn’t see. Pretended they didn’t care. But I knew. And I hated him.”
Buffy felt his grasp tighten on her hand so hard that she wondered if the bones were going to crack.
“God, how I hated him! And I hated myself for not doing anything about it. I was a weak, stupid fool. Head in the clouds about my poetry. But I knew all about my father and his mistress.”
“What was her name?”
“Celeste. She was French. But she’s not important. Darla killed her.”
“What!”
Spike got to his feet and strode to the shop counter. He leant on it as if he could no longer stand up straight. He was speaking faster now, the words tumbling out.
“When Dru turned me, there was a killing spree. No good pretending it didn’t happen. It did. I’m not ashamed of it. Hey, we were vampires. It was what we did. I had no idea until later who’d died. I killed friends and relations I disliked. Dru feasted on my neighbours. Angel and Darla - well, my grandsire was too busy knocking the shit out of me to teach me manners to have the time to kill anyone, but Darla - oh she was always the one for tradition. If you got turned, then your family had to die. There had to be no one left who could weaken you.”
“But Celeste wasn’t your family. What about your father?”
Spike laughed bitterly. “Oh, he had the usual slice of luck that bastards such as him always have. He was away in Ireland on business when it all happened. When he got back - well, we’d all long gone. He never knew.”
Buffy was puzzled. “So, what’s the secret, Spike? What does Arabella know that you didn’t?“
Spike turned back to her. Buffy could sense the tension in his body. “Darla didn’t just kill Celeste. She got rid of Celeste’s child - my half-sister, Hope.”
“Your sister?” Buffy felt as though the ground was falling away from under her feet. “You had a sister?”
“Something else we share, Slayer. I only saw her once. She must have been about seven or eight, I suppose. I was horrified, stupid prat that I was. An illegitimate sister. What a disgrace! What shame. What would I do if my friends found out. If Cecily, the woman I loved discovered the truth. It sounds ridiculous now, but in those days, I can’t begin to tell you what that would have meant. So I never went to visit Hope. Had nothing to do with her. God, I’d have liked to have staked the person I was then.”
“Wait a minute, you said Darla ‘got rid’ of Hope. Are you telling me - she didn’t kill her?”
Spike spun round, his eyes blazing with blue fire. “Exactly! That’s the secret Arabella knew. Darla was apparently experimenting with all sorts of magic at that time for the Master. She wanted a victim, someone to play with. She chose Hope. She sent that innocent little girl into another bloody dimension. And Buffy, don’t you see, as far as Arabella knows, Hope could still be alive!”
to be continued
[Reviews - 138]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 2834 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you for all the great reviews. The prequel to this story - Cousin Arabella - has been nominated on 2 award sites for best original character. I am more than thrilled.