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Chapter Fifteen

Spike knew he’d made a colossal mistake the second the boy’s hungry lips fed from his wrist. The minute he found Xander’s stare of fascinated horror fixed on the act. The moment he saw the sweat break out on the terrified boy’s brow. Spike just knew it. Should have known it before. Instead, he stared fearfully at the body that collapsed on the bed once he took his arm away, and wondered how much time he had before Buffy would kill him. Or Peaches would gloat before stomping over in his heavy footed hypocrisy and stake him in front of those he was starting to love with everything he had.

He raised wary eyes to Xander, already taking a step back in self-defence and thinking of a way that might justify what he’d done and still hang on to Buffy’s affections. Not love. How could she love him for adding to her nightly worries? Before he even took in Xander’s censure, Spike’s gaze had flitted back to the bed, panic rising sharply as he took another step back. He’d added another monster to the line-up, a young boy who’d had everything to live for before Darla came to this town. All he could see was HER. The one he should have remembered but always forgot.

Tried to forget.

He could feel the shakes starting already, even as he saw the soft waves of renewed healthy silver hair hanging long around her shoulders, the healthy but pale pallor of her skin as she looked at him in disgust masquerading as lust. Saw her lips move as she suggested the most revolting heinous things a good son could never have contemplated with his mother in a million years. A century on and Spike felt wilted by the shame, horror that he’d not learned the lesson, and no matter what he’d decided, he was as good as fucked. He’d let Xander appeal to his vanity—his own belief that he was different, in a way above the others on the demon scale of evil. He’d retained heart and that’s how he was able to love—adore the girl so much it was killing him standing here and observing his huge mistake, all the while waiting for the whip to crack and his ashes to fall.

Fear gave him energy and he couldn’t help but run—run so fast so he wouldn’t have to look at them or face what he’d done. He bolted for the door, leaving Buffy in the presence of his grandsire and his newly made…something. What made the difference between a childe and a minion? He’d never been allowed to know, was never permitted to do anything other than suck them dry or create a little army of servants. Spike didn’t know where that fine line was that would make him responsible for the new demon that lay in jeopardy even as his sire ran like a coward. All he knew was that given the choice, that boy would never have been picked by him to wander immortal throughout the world.

“Spike!” Buffy called at his rapidly departing figure, but he didn’t stop. The last thing he wanted was for her to see the blood from her friend on his lips. He couldn’t outrun the memories though, and suddenly what he felt he needed—what the in-your-face vamp desperately searched for—was a quiet venue where he could grasp firm to calm and try to work out how best to come back from this event. If it was even possible.

The last thing he heard as he powered away from the scene of his latest crime was Buffy’s frantic call for him to wait.

Problem was, he had nothing left to wait for. Judgement would be harsh for this one and he knew it, expected it and even forgave it. How could it be anything else when he failed the test, when the Slayer was his girl? Miracles didn’t happen to evil bodies like him, and…well, he ducked his head in shame. He was off his nut to think it could have ever worked with Buffy. One little appeal from a desperate boy unwilling to lose his friend, and Spike had buckled—raced in to do the easy thing, and now he’d lost everything.

Deserved it. He did, bloody deserved every fucked up thing that came his way. So with a head filled with his impending destruction, rising vampires that wore his mark, he slipped hazardously into the night and into the arms of the Master’s minions.

He was too surprised to put up any resistance as they grabbed his arms and twisted him this way and that, battering him and making him weak before dragging him off to his ancestor. Bugger, he’d forgotten there would be retribution for offing Darla. Just another mistake he’d made of the night.

Spike closed his eyes and surrendered.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Buffy threw her hands up in the air as she watched Spike streak through the really dark shadows of the alley and out of sight. She’d just turned around in time to see Jesse’s shiny red lips fall from Spike’s arm and her once lively friend slumping deader than dead on the sheets beneath him. Spike had appeared shell-shocked by his actions, and Buffy couldn’t help but want to kick his ass for doing something so inherently true to his nature. She thought he could be good, was trying to be good and he couldn’t resist taking a final taste of her friend and then making him into a monster she’d have to kill?

Something so didn’t sit right about this mess.

Buffy was loathe to turn around. For as long as she stood staring out the door and into the now empty but smelly alley, she could ignore a friend grieving and another beyond dying. She could forget that she was led into this situation by a supposedly souled vampire that obviously had trouble seeing where the wrong was. She could forget she was a slayer with a destiny and a duty to rid the world of vampires and just be a girl in love with one. She couldn’t kill the guy she wanted to be hers in all ways possible—eventually—so how could she lift her stake to someone who could potentially have been her friend for the next however many years?

She didn’t have the answers. Buffy never wanted to have the answers. That’s what the Council paid Giles to have, and in deciding what to do about Jesse, he could make with those answers, too. She so was not going to be the one that ruled he had no chance of being good—of being how she thought Spike could be—simply because she was irrational and trusted a vampire she thought was more soul-having than the actual one was.

“Just what the hell went on here?” Eyes squeezed tightly shut, Buffy had no choice but to turn around and face the know-it-all smirk of a brunette she was coming to totally detest, and Xander, his expression a mix of shattered grief and hope.

“Let me go after him, Buffy. I’ll be able to scent him and then dust him so you won’t have to even face it.” Angel stood before her, eager and renewed in purpose now his grandchilde had screwed himself over and was surely on borrowed time. He reminded her of a hyena, that bloodlust very firmly showing on his shirtsleeve.

The thought of Spike’s fate being nothing but indiscriminate ash in some dirty, public yet unknown point was too much for her to bear and the knowledge that if she didn’t find him and bring him to safety—Angel surely would, but so without the safety part.

“No.”

The cold derisive snort that came along with the denial didn’t come from her and Buffy looked at Xander in surprise. Sure, she hadn’t known him long, but God his moods were unpredictable. Nobody knew how another would respond to the death of a friend, but this was even beyond that. This was Xander’s best friend from childhood about to be raised a soulless demon. And that really should have sounded more doom and gloomish than it had in her head.

Buffy took tentative steps toward Xander, her hand reaching out for his as they stood looking at the body.

“What happened, Xan? Why did Spike do this? Why would he put me in this position of having to stake my friend?” The sadness of failure was creeping up on her and Buffy felt the smallest wobble of her bottom lip even as her eyes felt the sting of tears. Her other hand clutched her stake and she marvelled briefly that it hadn’t even known the thrill of piercing an undead heart tonight, and yet the devastation of death was rife in the little room.

“I asked him to do it. He didn’t want to, so you can’t punish him for it. I-I didn’t know…not that he’d feel bad about it. Didn’t know he’d run off—” Xander shook his head, his eyes never wavering from the stillness of Jesse as they waited.

“Oh,” Buffy began before Angel jumped in, oozing confidence now that Spike had dug his own grave and run off like a monumental idiot.

“He knew he’d be staked, that’s why he ran off. Knew Buffy would plant that stake as deep into his heart as she could push, and his self-preservation kicked in.”

Pure rage ran through the two humans, passing from one to the other through the hand clasp that whitened their hands with the tightness of the hold.

“Then he was worlds of wrong,” Buffy spat, her frustration and irritation at Angel climbing notches faster than Spike disappearing into the night. “There will be no staking of Spike. Go near him and it will be you who gets to feel the wind rushing through more than your hair. Capiche?”

Angel stepped back in confusion. He’d finally been provided with the perfect opening to get rid of the most irritable boil on the butt of vampirism, and he had every right after the blond fool had destroyed his sire. Darla. Oh God! The thought suddenly hit him and all strength departed his body and left him fumbling on his knees so close to her ashes. The pain in his chest built and burst into a crescendo of howls that he couldn’t control and it was as if the demon spawn of her making had curled in on itself and huddled Angel into a corner of the room.

Buffy and Xander watched in a mixture of disgust and ethical interest before sinking down to the bed, adrenaline sapped from them due to the death at their side. It was way too easy to ignore him.

“I’m so sorry, Buffy.” Xander couldn’t even look up as Buffy started, but firmly squeezed his hand.

“None of this is your fault. Maybe he’d have been a little more careful if we’d warned him, but somehow I’m guessing that her being a vampire wasn’t that big a surprise.” It was a brave but tragic smile that graced her lips, yet Buffy couldn’t bring herself to stand and walk away. Her friends needed her, both boys needing something that only she could give at this point. Strength of protection against the evils not so beyond their current door, but also the truth of knowing what had happened. Even Willow wouldn’t have been enough this time. She hadn’t seen the devastation, the choices left to them with Jesse’s heart beating every beat like it was about to be his last.

“He was thinking with that thing most of us guys think with. It’s a highly productive thought—most of the time.” He chuckled humourlessly, the sound difficult to hear against Angel’s wailing the opposite end of the room. “God, can’t he put a cork in it?”

Buffy giggled. “I guess he’s having memories of when HE only thought with that thing boys think with.”

The shared humour, the laughter was too short lived and they were quickly focused again on Jesse.

“Spike really only did this because you asked him to?” Buffy watched Xander’s eyes harden through her watery view on the world and sighed as his jaw ticked.

“Nope. He did it because I ordered him to. I don’t think I was probably very fair, but this is my friend. He deserves the chance, doesn’t he, Buffy? Please don’t tell me I did the wrong thing.”

All Buffy could do was be silent.





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