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Author's Chapter Notes:
An update....a real update.
hope you all enjoy, let me know, cause my muse thrives on reviews
Chapter 8

It was a week before Kate and Spike were seen again. The vampire had picked up the unconscious woman and carried her to her quarters, her feathered skin tickling his arm as he bore her through the corridors. He could sense the other beings hiding behind closed and barred doors but was more worried for his friend. The one being that had been decent to him, seen him as a person and not just an experiment or fighting machine, and she was unconscious in his arms.

When he arrived at the room he felt the tingle of the wards as he pushed open the door with his foot. Manoeuvring her carefully through he dumped her on the unmade bed and covered her now naked body with a thin blanket. The last of the feathers vanished as he did so.

'Stay,' she whispered and he couldn't resist her plea. The pheromones still scented the air, overriding his brain and thought processes. No male could resist and he slipped off his boots and joined her on the rumpled bed.

His raging libido had kept them sequestered there in her rooms, completely incommunicado. In those seven days she had taught him more about sex than he had thought possible to ever know. His skilled fingers explored every part of her body and their mutual passion had brought them both to completion time and time again.
On the morning of the eighth day it was though a switch had been flicked: Spike looked at Kate as she lay sleeping from their last bout of lovemaking, and although she was a beautiful woman, he felt no longing to share her body again, no desire to bury himself within her. As she awoke, he could tell by the look in her eyes she felt the same. Mutual respect and friendship were there but no passion, no lust.

'Thank you for saving me from myself,' Kate said as she wrapped her dressing gown around her body, tying the belt tightly. 'Not many men would have risked everything to face down a veela.'

'Not a man, pet,' he told her, lighting a cigarette.Kate wrinkled up her nose but didn't say anything; her over -sensitive nose had put her right off smoking for the last week.

'You are to me,' she told him, sitting down with her coffee on the sofa next to him. 'I really mean it, you saved not only me, but all the other men around here, and I will never be able to thank you for that.'

Spike felt that it was a real compliment, it had come straight from his friend's heart.

'At least all the men can have those bloody cock rings turned off for another five years!' Kate added with a laugh.

':ive years?' Spike took the coffee from her hands and took a sip: there was the distinct taste of the added brandy and he smiled at her before returning the cup.

'Yep: that's how long it will be 'til my blood gets the better of my mind again,' she told him. Hoping he wouldn't ask too many questions. The Veela part of her heritage always took a lot of explaining and she really wasn't in the mood to go into too many details this morning.

'So why not just go out and find someone who would be willing to help you out?' Curiosity got the better of him at that moment.

'Cause a single human would be killed in the first onslaught from a veela and if it were more than one male they would have to be very good friends and share: not many willing to do that,' she told him, quietly sipping her coffee before putting the empty mug down on the low table.

'No, not many.' He agreed before heading into the kitchen area to fix himself a mug of blood.

Blousey poured the vampire another whisky; the pair of them had polished off a good half a bottle of fifteen year old Islay Malt and they hadn't finished yet. He looked towards Spike again and had to smile; he had changed in the month since the veela attack. His hair had lightened to the point it looked bleached, and he had a certain something about him. There wasn't a single female operative in the area that hadn't felt the pull of the veela blood that Spike had racing through his system. Blousey wondered how long it would be before the vampire himself noticed what had happened to him. He was a walking sex god and he didn't know it.

Blousey smiled to himself as he wondered how it would affect the being when he finally realised what had happened.

Blousey and Thynne had spent weeks talking about the way the vampire had matured and grown in the months he had been with them. Their greatest seer had pronounced him ready for the next part of the operation. She would arrive in the morning to talk to Spike and then he would be off, away to the other side of the world and his preordained destiny. But he was still a vampire and still had a vicious temper that erupted occasionally, but for the most part he kept it and his demon well under control.

Dru tapped lightly on the door that led to the classroom. Spike had been studying for months, and it was time that she had spent regaining her sanity and her soul. It had been a long and painful process but Lady Edith Druscilla Smythe, youngest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, was whole again, a vampire but whole. She used her preternatural senses to listen for a reply to her knocking and rapped harder when there was no answer. He had to be in there, the wards on the door were strong enough to prevent even the most skilled mage; Spike wouldn’t have the power to break them and she knew Spike hated magic with a passion. A passion, that was a good description of anything Spike did: he was filled with passion.

Edith Druscilla banged on the door again harder this time and listened: she could hear Spike shouting for her to come in and stop making all the noise. She waved her hand across the sigils that allowed access to the room. It swung open, allowing her to walk through the doorway.

Spike watched carefully as his erstwhile Lady made her way graciously to the seating area. His manners had kept him standing.

‘What do you want, Dru? Come to gloat about the lost puppy?’ He really wasn’t in the mood to talk to her: it still stung that she had passed him along to Octavia like a worn out pair of shoes - but the sight and sound of her... the smell of her... it was driving him crazy. He sniffed the air, scenting her mood, but she didn’t smell quite the same, there was a sweetness to her now, violets and moss. There was no undercurrent of death in the air at all.

‘Sweet William,’ she started to talk, ‘we have so much to talk about, there is so much to tell you.’ She looked across at her much loved childe and knew this was going to be hard….

‘What? Like how you sold me out to, to, to, whoever these people are? Like how they can just yank my chain and I do as I’m told? What do you need to talk about now?’ The vitriol came spewing out of his mouth. He'd behaved amongst the humans and near-humans but his quieter half had lost its battle for control on seeing the woman who had sold him to the highest bidder.

‘I would like you to sit and listen to me for a few minutes: I will try and explain as much as I can.’ She settled more comfortably into the seat and plumped up the cushion behind her.

Spike threw himself down into a chair; he really didn’t want to listen but he knew he had to. Spike picked up the cigarettes from the small table and took one out of the packet with his teeth. He flipped open the Zippo and took a deep long drag. He looked over at Dru: she had changed. Really changed. Her love of elegant clothing was still obvious, but now they were stylishly modern.

‘Explain then, as if anything can, what you’ve done,’ he demanded. 'And you can start with why you turned me in the first place.’

'You want to start that far back?’ she asked, watching him as he fiddled with his lighter and his drink. He nodded once, looking almost fearful about what she was going to tell him.

'My name is Lady Edith Druscilla Smythe, and I was born in 1804 to Lord Henry Smythe, youngest son of the Earl Of Roxbrough.'

'We’re family, then?' That surprised Spike no end. He had been born well, nearly sixty years after his sire - but they were related?

'Not just as vampires; we would have been cousins if I had lived.' She smiled and it lit up her face with an inner light. 'Because I had already taken some of my vows, my soul was protected, it didn't really belong to me; I had already pledged it to God, you see.'

He nodded his understanding; much as he wanted to be angry he needed to understand what had happened and tried to keep his temper to himself.

'This organisation was sent to help me, and they did. Angelus had driven me mad before ever turning me: again it meant my soul was going to be trapped inside the body, alone with the demon. So they hid my soul, removing it for safe keeping until such times as I was ready to get it back. But I had some tasks embedded into my subconscious, tasks that would aid light in the longer term. However, your constant love and devotion paved the way for its return, and for that I thank you.' She watched his reaction closely, needing to be sure he wouldn't take what she was saying the wrong way and start fighting.

'So I'm responsible for the sane Dru?' he asked her quietly.

'In some ways. Have you ever heard the story of king Arthur and his knights?'
Spike was well used to his sire's habit of switching topic and just nodded.

'Well, this is the direct descendent of Arthur's round table. Beings who have vowed to keep this world as free from evil as possible. They have taken vows and dedicated their lives to the pursuit of the true evil that resides...'

'Demons?'

'No, not just demons; some demons just want a peaceful life and to raise their young. Some humans want to destroy everything around them; who is the more evil, the Brachaan demon who works delivering pizza late at night on a hell mouth - or Pol Pot, or Hitler? They make no distinction due to species, it's intent that counts around here. A vampire working on the side of light, no problem; a human experimenting on demons like that Initiative lot you met in the Second World War: kill them. Black and white, heaven and hell, it's that simple. It's who your masters are that counts.'

'And me?' The question was a serious one.

'You are a special case: like all with blue blood you are descended from those knights, in your case Sir Gawain, the purest of the knights. It's been 50 generations since he walked the world and then you arrived, but you were supposed to help back in 1880. Then Cecily happened.'

'Cecily Underwood? What did she have to do with all this?' Spike was truly confused now.

'She wasn't the daughter of Lord Peter Underwood, she was a vengeance demon called Hallfrek who was sent to try and mess things up. Some idiot in the future tried to have you destroyed.' Dru spat out the words as though they were a curse.

'Wonderful!' His exasperated tone said it all and he took another drag on his fag; despite not originally wanting to listen he was fascinated with the story Dru was telling him.

'We had two choices. Allow Angel to turn you and you would have helped destroy this world completely; or turn you ourselves and have the chance that William would not vanish in the process.'

'So you turned me,' he stated coldly.

'It was the only thing I could do.' She had to make him understand.

'And my mother?' It was one of the few acts that still haunted his nightmares, turning and then killing his own mother.

'If she hadn't died that night, Angelus would have tortured her for months before her illness took her. This way she died quickly and painlessly and her unblemished soul went straight to heaven.' Dru explained to him patiently.

'But now for your future,' she continued. 'You are prepared in every way possible and tomorrow you will start your journey to America where the next slayer has been called. Your job is to keep her alive and well until she hits 25.'

'What happenes then? I'm relieved of my post with a quick stake to the heart?' He stubbed out the cigarette in the cut glass ashtray with enough force to send it spinning across the table. Dru put out her hand to stop it breaking on the floor.

'No, then she turns into the slayer sultana and takes over the council of watchers, allowing the two organisations to meld into one. And you get an honourable discharge for your efforts and the offer of another job.'

'So when do I leave?'

'Tomorrow,' was the only word she said.





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