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Chapter 2
After everyone had finally left or retired to their rooms, Buffy sat on her bed and stared at the monotonous wobbling of the fan, the flickering shadows it cast over the imperfections in the plaster ceiling. Drusilla was back. That should be positive; a bat-shit crazy villainess was exactly the good, healthy focus she needed to get her head back in the game and kick the apathy habit. And it would probably get Spike off her back….and other parts of her. Spike had always loved Dru. With her back in town maybe he’d finally give up his masochistic ‘dance’ with Buffy. Right. Drusilla’s arrival should have been perfect; it meant a tangible nemesis to focus on, and an end to the perverse degradation that was this, this thing she kept doing with Spike.

So, the knotty feeling in the pit of her stomach had to be the result of one too many nights of pizza and Chinese take-out in a row. There’s no way it could have anything to do with Spike. There would be no Spike-feelings in her belly, especially not of the jealousy and/or lusty kind. Definitely not.

000

As soon as Spike left the Summers’ house he began walking in the direction of his crypt. When he was sure all the Scoobies had gone safely on their ways he doubled back and found the spot outside the bathroom window where Dru had stood, watching them. Watching him make love to Buffy.

Her scent seemed to pool in the grass, like old velvet and the inside of dried up perfume bottles. That smell used to be enough to spur him to destroy cities, and to remind him of the tenderness that was once his only nature. It had engulfed him when he’d nursed her through her weakness, and when he’d licked the blood off her lips when she was strong. He’d clung to her with all the loyalty of a kicked dog through everything; even when she was fawning and on her knees for that bastard Angelus; bloody hell, even in Brazil when she was shagging everything with slime and a rack of antlers. Now, it just curled in his nostrils and made him worry. He shrugged his shoulders deeper into his duster and turned to follow the trail.

Not unexpectedly, it led him to a smallish abandoned warehouse. Street lamps cast murky squares of light through the broken windows, throwing an angular, distorted grid across the cracked cement floor. Drusilla had draped a loading platform with Persian rugs and set up her array of worn Victorian furniture. She lounged on a faded burgundy day bed, smile glinting in the watery light. “My sweet William has found me! Makes a girl’s heart go pitter-patter, devotion like that. Do you make your slayer’s heart go pitter-patter?”

Spike stepped out of the shadows and started towards the make-shift dais, “Not your business, Dru.” He kept his tone carefully light, hiding the warning.

“Cruel boy! Your words cut like a hundred little knives, and not in the way I like.”

“What are you doin’ here, back in Sunnydale?” he asked, ignoring her rebuke and joining her on the platform.

“Not pleased to see me, then.” She pouted.

“Cut the act Dru, yeah? Or did you forget the last time I saw you I was gonna kill you for her. Don’t think I won’t do it now. If you hurt her—” he caught his anger and took an unnecessary breath, “just bloody tell me why you’re back in Sunnydale!”

“Hold your tongue! Nasty boy.” She looked down and twirled a lock of her hair between her fingers, “I’ve made a friend,” she grinned up at him from the day bed.

“A friend? God damn it woman, I’ve never known what you get on about, not after a hundred years.” Spike shook his head, exasperated.

“The friend? That’d be me.” A tall man with a handsomely lined face, faded blue jeans, and worn cowboy boots approached from the rear door of the warehouse.

“Oh and who are you, the sodding Marlboro Man? Really, Dru? You should’ve stuck with the chaos demon.”

“I may’ve been a cowboy, son, but that’s not all I was.” His forehead shifted and he lifted his right arm, a bolt of magenta energy shooting from his palm and slamming Spike across the room.

Drusilla squealed, “ooh, you’ll make Spike cross! Rrrf, rrrf! Fight the bad dog, Aaron!”

Spike picked himself up from the pile of crates he’d landed in and shook on his game face. “Ok man, you’re gettin’ really irritatin’.” He ran, lunging at the grinning sorcerer and punched him in the jaw, knocking him back. Spike advanced without hesitation and landed another heavy punch. Aaron stumbled and laughed, blood showing in his teeth, “you got spunk, boy! Maybe I should let you carry on for a while, see what else you got?”

Spike snarled and kicked him in the chest, sending him to the floor. He was on the sorcerer in a split second, pinning him to the ground and roughly grabbing the front of his shirt. “Let’s skip the cheesy villain banter and get right to the part where you tell me what you’re doin’ in Sunny D sniffin’ around the Slayer, yeah?”

Aaron grinned smugly. “Ok by me.”

Spike flew back and was yanked to a halt in midair by cuffs of deep pink energy burning into his wrists and ankles. Aaron got up slowly and dusted himself off, slipping back into his human face and carefully adjusting his jaw with one hand. He walked over to where Spike hung, the cuffs pulling his body into the shape of an X. “You’re a queer kind of vampire, son. Trying to woo the Slayer when the rest of us are so bent on killing her. But I have to say, I like you’re originality, and I’ve got a mind to help.”

Spike smirked, “don’t need your help, MckLintock. As Dru the peepin’ tom over there can tell you, I’m doin’ pretty well by m’self.”

“Oh sure, we can all smell ya, and you reek of sex. Congratulations, big man, you fucked ‘er. But how’s the rest of it going? She love you yet?” Spike glared, and the other vampire laughed, pacing leisurely around him. “I reckon, and you let me know if ya think I got it wrong, but I reckon she won’t ever love you, on account of her having a soul and you, well, no need to be bashful. None of us here miss our souls, do we, sweetheart?”

“Rotting, impure things, took Daddy from us. And now my Spike’s gettin’ drunk off hers…” Drusilla sent Spike a forlorn look.

“Just the point I wanted to make, sweet pea, and it brings me to our boy Spike’s original question: why we’re here.” Aaron turned back to appraise Spike; then continued his circular stroll. “You see, a slayer’s not actually all that different from us vampires. I was a sorcerer even before I was sired, and I’ve picked up some odds ‘n’ ends since the good ole days of manifest destiny. And do you know where a slayer gets her power? All that strength, speed; being able to get up and walk away from just about anything that doesn’t kill her outright, and some of what does.” He paused in his pacing and fixed the blond vampire with a look, “it’s demon power, son, just like ours. Exactly like ours. Only two differences: a slayer’s alive, and she’s got a soul. ‘Cept for Buffy it’s only the one difference, innit? Seeing as how she’s already sorta dead.”

Until this point Spike had stayed quiet, biting back his anger as Mr. John Wayne-wannabe circled him like a self-satisfied shark. But recognizing the argument he’d used to get under Buffy’s skin for weeks echoed in the words of this stupid, arrogant prick broke the feeble limits of his patience. He lunged as much as he could, straining against the searing shackles, “she’s not dead! And she’s damn well not a bloody thing like any of us!” Spike growled.

Aaron chuckled calmly, like a teacher conceding to a student’s slightly misguided but amusing point, “well, maybe not yet,” he grinned, “but she will be. Come over here Drusilla, and bring the Muo-Ping.”

Drusilla swayed over to the other two vampires and lifted the glass sphere from the bag at her hip, handing it to Aaron. “Don’t fret dear Spike, now you’ll be able to see again, without the Slayer’s soul muddying your pretty eyes.”

“What’re you—” Spike started, but the sorcerer cut him off.

“Now, Drusilla!”

She put her hands on either side of Spike’s face and pulled his head down, pressing her mouth to his. Her tongue darted out, pushing apart his lips, and giving his mouth a probe before she inhaled and pulled back, breaking the kiss. She turned and took the small globe from the sorcerer and with a sly smile, brought it to her lips. A pale blue glow slipped from them and lit the sphere briefly, before fading away.

“Not sure why it works really, but it’s kinda poetic, innit? A kiss stolen from the last person who was intimate with the Slayer binds her soul to the Muo-Ping. Now it’s just a simple ritual to suck it out of her and trap it in here. It would be harder to do with any other slayer, but Buffy’s soul has already been knocked a bit loose by coming back from the dead a second time, so one good yank oughta do the trick.”

000

A choked scream sounded from Buffy’s room, waking Dawn and the witches. Dawn was on her feet fastest, and she slammed open Buffy’s door in time to see her sister kneeling on the floor beside the bed. Her back was arched, her body cruelly contorted, and a blinding white light streamed from her eyes, mouth, and chest. Willow and Tara arrived just as the light went dark and Buffy slumped back down, head lolling between her knees. Dawn rushed to her side and carefully reached out to touch her shoulder. “Buffy…are you ok?”

There was a pause, and everyone held their breath, but then Buffy spoke, her voice a little weak at first. “Yeah, I feel…” she sat up slowly and lifted her head, “I feel great!”





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