Chapter Six
The malice that shone in her eyes chilled his bones. Spike wondered briefly if power had tipped her toward madness, but then there were words—words he couldn’t believe were tumbling past her lips.
“She’s not here right now,” Willow improvised, spurred on by the questioning quirk of Spike’s brow. “But I know where she is. You want to finally add that third slayer notch to your belt, right?”
Hesitantly, he nodded. The thought made bile rise in his throat, but it’s what he needed the witch to believe. It’s what he needed to say so he could survive long enough to save Buffy from whatever her one time friend had done to her.
“You know me too well, Red,” he said with a smirk, fuelling her confidence in him.
Her smile was creepy and Spike felt a shiver run down his back. Buffy was no longer of this world; Whistler had been quite explicit when explaining the connection the former-enemies would have through the trinket, and Spike sure hadn’t been sleeping through the drone of it. His life had already been wrecked enough for him to wilfully ignore what life-changing treats he was up for; being hand-picked for the job of slayer-confidant had already thrown his whole perspective out of whack. Not knowing all the ins and outs would have been foolish. Spike might have been impulsive and rash, but he was never a fool.
Unless he was in love.
Initially he’d thought he could outwit the sodding Powers. Who were they anyway? Did they really believe all they needed to do was hand a bloke a shiny bauble and he’d just bow down and listen to the Slayer’s endless twaddle for the pure fun of it? Well, right, there had been fun. In the beginning. He’d soaked up all of the little blonde’s concerns and fears and he’d fed on them voraciously, picturing vividly how he could use each humiliating fact to destroy the girl who’d almost destroyed him, but who had definitely laid waste to his life.
But somewhere along their path, he’d begun to change. Honestly, he’d started long before then, but the realisation was slow to manifest in his brain. He’d been too busy reacting by blood than to listen to reason about anything, and when his blood started to feed him other, more vivid and sensual images, he’d almost passed out cold. The Slayer who’d been instrumental in breaking his back, making him hopeless and worthless and a victim of his insane and vengeful sire, had suddenly changed from being the one he wanted to punish with death to the one he wanted to protect above all others.
It was bloody barmy, but here he was now, staring into the cold face of the girl who’d held Buffy’s precious life in the palms of her hands, and all he felt was rage. It was all he could do to restrain his impulsive urge to strangle her, clenching his fists spasmodically at his sides instead of curling them brutally around her slim, treacherous neck. Nothing would have given him more pleasure than to see the life drain from her body as her shocked eyes locked with his.
Nothing but to see Buffy alive and welcoming right in front of him.
“I don’t know you at all,” she said, her voice coloured with surprise. “Not really. Buffy was the one that got the brunt of evil back then.” But then she seemed to remember herself and her spirits perked up. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t get to know you now. You look like someone totally worth knowing.” Her grin exposed all her teeth and Spike gagged. If there was one thing on this earth he’d really rather not do it was get to know Willow Rosenberg.
“Maybe later, luv. After I’ve consumed enough slayer blood to make a bloke fully relax.” He hoped it was enough to get the bint in a talkative mood. He could already feel his usual impatience dictate a quick death and it wouldn’t do to give into it now. Not when he still was without a clue where Buffy’s body was. At the very least he could give her a decent burial, and then slit her murderer’s throat in a fitting tribute of revenge.
The witch darted a look behind her into the shop, the wheels of thought ticking over in her head before she obviously reached a decision.
“Okay, I need to level with you. Buffy’s in another dimension right now and I don’t know how to get her back. I was just going to do some research in the magic shop. If you help me, I can get her back faster and you can do us both a favour and drain her dry.”
There was a coldness in the redhead’s eyes that Spike was sure he’d never seen in another human being before. He remembered this girl, friends with Buffy and keen to save the world by her side. She’d been flaky, quirky but a good kid as far as kids these days went. It was terrifying how someone could descend into the depths of evil so quickly and thoroughly.
But Red wasn’t his concern; Buffy was. And if what he was being told was true, he’d lost Buffy from this world unless he helped the witch get her back. At least she seemed willing to do that, even if she was happily handing the Slayer to him already-plated. Well, he’d do what he had to. What choice did he have?
“The books...” he stalled. “Not really my thing.”
“Making deals with demons? Never mine before, either. But we both have a mutual goal here. Buffy is standing in my way and you want to kill her. The quicker I can work out how to bring her back—and believe me, if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t bother—the quicker we can both feel satisfied.” He didn’t miss the double-entendre, though he definitely wished he’d missed the lusty sweep of her eyes. When he managed to catch them, though, there was a brief hint of sadness that Spike fancied might be loneliness. He was just the bloke to recognise it and understand the extent one would go to heal that kind of pain. Not that it meant he should sympathise with her.
“So when you say the Slayer’s out of town, you mean she’s really out of town.” He figured if he had to rely on his jibes to get him through he was going to condemn himself and Buffy to Willow’s wrath. Still, what else did a bloke have left in the face of such bizarre circumstances?
“Yup,” the witch confirmed, and for the first time since she’d revealed Buffy’s whereabouts, Spike allowed himself to hope. “She’s in another dimension helping to fight an army of demons from collapsing the fabric of the universe. I really hope she makes it through because I’m kind of sketchy on what will happen to this dimension if she’s killed.”
Buffy was alive, and Spike felt the lump of grief that had almost destroyed him while on the highway shift. Cold, furious determination to get his girl back fuelled him now and he looked beyond the delusional witch into the dangerous depths of the shop. There was no thought or fear of Buffy’s reaction when he pulled her back through the dimensional rip, only zinging joy that she was alive and that he was going to rip Whistler’s bloody head off for not telling him about the ‘leaving this dimension’ loophole with the talisman.
“Bit careless, wasn’ it?” he wondered absently, barely making out a bookcase of old, evil looking books in the nearly pitch black shadows beyond the door. “Sending the Slayer off to save one world when it could possibly end our own?”
Her expression turned hardened even more and became downright arctic and Spike was unable to repress a shiver of foreboding.
“I’m confident I can get her back. And if you want to kill her half as much as you did last time you were here, you’ll help me find out how.” Without further consideration, Willow turned her back on him and walked into the shop, muting the bell above the door with automatic familiarity of the place’s layout.
Spike cursed his tongue and followed her at a respectful distance. The bitch might have a head full of false superiority that would surely do her in eventually, but he didn’t dare discount how easily she could render him a dust mound with the embarrassingly simple flick of her finger.
“Right then, let’s get to it. You’ve got a world to save and I’ve got a slayer to kill.”
He only hoped it wasn’t too late for either.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
“Buffy.”
He wasn’t mistaken. He could even tell the difference now it was pointed out to him. His Buffy shone and it had nothing to do with the reflection on that bloody beautiful weapon that was glued to her hand. It had everything to do with the connection that no amount of hiding could sever between them.
She stood as still as he recognised shock could do to her, and he hurt for all the confusion. This shouldn’t have been the moment they returned to each other, and not for the first time, Spike cursed himself for the gutless wanker he’d been. He’d been fooling himself all along: fooling himself that she wouldn’t care about his return, fooling himself that she wouldn’t kill him for lying to her about being back, fooling himself that Angel gave a toss about either one of them. He’d been fooled and a fool and he almost laughed to himself. It always happened when he was in love. Bloody always.
He shook his head at his own gullibility and then noticed where her eyes were focused. As much as he wished he held her attention, there was no fighting how bizarre she’d have to find it to come face-to-face with herself.
Slowly she turned back to him and he huffed out a relieved sigh at her look of comprehension. Until she opened her mouth and he realised she didn’t understand a bloody thing.
“Is this why you didn’t call?” she asked tremulously.
He hated when she did this, asking him stupid questions with hurt almost pouring from her in suffocating waves. Truth be told, he didn’t rightly recall why he’d never called. He didn’t know if he’d seriously believed the bollocks that he’d gone out in the only way she’d be proud of, or if he was too terrified to be rejected again. Whatever excuse he’d told himself, which ever thing he thought Angel would support, it reeked of William’s classic wankerish uselessness.
He’d spent a century killing every last part of that in himself and he’d fancied he’d succeeded. Even souled he wasn’t such a prat. He wasn’t a coward.
“’Course not,” he replied finally, cursing the rain that obstructed the clarity of the moment.
“But you’ve made another bot. An evil Wolfram and Hart bot. Is she evil Buffy? Wasn’t I enough? Did you come back without your soul? Damn. Andrew didn’t mention that part,” she criticised to herself.
And she had the bloody nerve to back up a few steps.
Spike felt anger course through him and he wondered not for the first time why everything had to be so bleeding difficult.
“I didn’t make another bloody bot, Buffy.”
“Then…who is she?” Her slender finger shook as Buffy pointed at herself and Spike could sense her fear in the way he sensed everything about her—in a gut-clenching, knee-knocking finality. She was in his blood—never mind that he’d never tasted the nirvana of her crimson vitality. Buffy was everything he was and he’d been the biggest idiot on the planet for not going to her the second he had the legs to do it.
“She’s you, pet,” he started before being elbowed aside, none-too-gently by the pint-sized twin of the girl he couldn’t take his eyes off.
“It would appear that I’m you,” the Buffy at his side confirmed, “but from a dimension that makes a bucket load more sense than this crazy place.”
His Buffy stepped closer, so close he could almost taste the salt of her tears for him, but as usual, he was deprived of the emotional moment by her preoccupation of her mirror-image.
“Wow,” she said in wonder, not wavering in her intent study of herself. “I look good.”
“I keep telling you that, pet,” Spike reminded, unable to hold back the satisfied smirk as she finally looked shyly at him.
“Shut up, Spike,” his Buffy replied automatically, but he could see the underlying smile that she tried to hide at the opportunity to say the familiar insult again. “Willow said this fight was gonna be bad,” she said, mystified eyes still glued to her own image at Spike’s side, “but she didn’t give it a rating of two Buffys.”
Nobody missed the other Buffy’s flinch at the mention of Willow. She seemed to get taller before their eyes as determination straightened her spine. “I appear to have come through without a weapon,” she told them instead of satisfying their curiosity. “And if I’m not mistaken, the hounds of hell are upon us.”
Buffy turned and Spike followed her gaze, frowning as a stampeding herd of evil blew its dust closer. Buffy tossed her twin the open bag of weapons and quietly approved as the seemingly younger slayer withdrew a gleaming short sword and an axe. All suited up, both girls turned to Spike.
“Come on then. Better find Peaches. Wouldn’t do to leave him defenceless against dragons and the like.”
A combined force of power, the three Champions ran toward the alleyway that was quickly filling with the remaining survivors of Angel’s crew. It was a sorry bunch and both Buffy’s looked on in sadness. It shouldn’t have come to this. The reality of death was encompassed by the missing friends and yet they were grieved little because of the fight still to come. Grieved unfairly. Gunn stood barely conscious and Buffy blanched at the matter-of-fact way his death was predicted by the strange blue woman in tight leather reminiscent of the best science fiction.
And before they knew it, all the descendants of Hell were released and came raining down on their heads—blades, teeth, nails slashing and bestowing death.
Spike took one look at both Buffys and prayed. This was an apocalypse he was determined they’d all three come out of alive.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I want to thank those that review me on this site so very much. You are by far the most responsive of any other site and I am so very grateful for you. I hope you enjoy this chapter.~~ Megan