It had taken courage to come back this far. He’d lost himself in the mire of guilt and grief over the past two days and it had taken tremendous effort to regroup and attempt that bold step back on the right road—and right now the road led to Rupert Giles.
It wasn’t what he might have wished. A beacon of shining blonde hair might have made the passage brighter and less fraught with catastrophe, but he thought that way could lead to instant dust. That option he’d obviously miscalculated as the Watcher stared at him down the shelf of a lethal, loaded crossbow.
“What are you doing here?” There was no concession in the Watcher’s icy glare and Angel cursed himself again for not thinking of the wider ranging consequences of his actions. Of course, this man—this man who had devoted his life to fighting on the side of good and training the one girl whose sacred duty it was to save the world and the precious lives within it—would not look well upon a misguided vampire who believed it acceptable to sacrifice the one if it meant saving the many.
He’d had no choice but to show Spike up for the lying, scheming vermin that he really was, and there had been no other way he’d seen to do it. It wasn’t as if their little friend hadn’t had a death wish in the first place—even if Angel was more firmly placed to understand the seductive personality of Darla and her erotic promises.
He had no choice now but to put forth a good argument. If he didn’t, then he didn’t fancy how many times Giles would make him try and catch the bolts shot unerringly accurate.
“I thought I could help you fight the Master.” Not needing breath aided him in stillness and he thanked whatever star had blessed him that being undead robbed him of the adrenaline that notched up fear.
“We are currently managing…if not fine then definitely adequately, from your previous version of help. My Slayer is faced with the possibility of slaying someone she called friend—and before you attempt to lay the whole blame on Spike for doing the turning, let us wonder at your less than stellar actions in not coming to the rescue of the boy. Pillock.” The crossbow wavered just slightly, but the bolt remained fixed and sharp on its intended target.
“He was too far gone under Darla’s spell. You’d have had to chain him up for weeks to get him to let her go. The power of a vampire like Darla is indescribable, indeterminate—” Angel became lost in the lure of his memory—of the night he’d succumbed to her and all her promises. He felt the blow hard when the Watcher’s voice broke in and reminded him of his difference.
“Yes, for you, perhaps. And if chaining is what it would have taken, then chaining we would have done. You had no right to make a decision of such magnitude and then claim that you are good by virtue of possessing a soul.” Giles took a crucifix off the study table and held it tight before letting the still loaded crossbow rest on the polished wood. “Were Buffy here, she would have staked yo; make no mistake of that. She still bloody might—and I would be the last to step in her way.” And then he gave into the misery of being the smart one—of being her watcher, the trained one entrusted with her safety and her skill.
Angel glanced at the now relinquished weapon and stepped closer, his eyes narrowing at the human and seeing the pain that suddenly overwhelmed him. He watched as Giles slumped into a chair, his hand clutching at his glasses as his other swept roughly through his hair. In a room filled with books, only one stood out on the table.
The Watcher was lost in his focus of it to the extent of starting when Angel took a seat opposite. The vampire tried his concerned look, but it gave quickly away to curiosity as he identified the book as the Codex he’d left behind when he’d first dropped the soulless Spike bombshell. Not that it seemed to have the widespread results he would have appreciated.
“It would appear that I would need your—if not your help, then certainly your confidence.” Rupert Giles looked tired beyond measure and Angel nodded by way of acceptance, his curiosity piqued as to why this strong, knowledgeable man seemed weaker than the most oblivious human. He had information and awareness of an existence the world knew nothing about—and yet it wore on his efforts to even the fight. “It would seem that my slayer is to die in this battle against the Master. And there isn’t a damn thing I can do to prevent it.”
So that was it. Well, they hadn’t wanted his advice before now, and Angel couldn’t help the feeling of ‘I told you so’ that wanted to rocket off his tongue at their mistake.
“Why don’t you just ask Spike? He’s been more than creative in the past. Stealing my destiny was one of his more brilliant examples—and you all fell for it.” The churlish tone crossed the barrier and Giles sat up straighter, his stare harder.
“Spike would appear to have disappeared, and no, I don’t believe it is for any such nefarious purpose as setting Buffy up. I think you are more out of touch with your family than you even realise.” The suggestion that Giles knew more of Spike than Angel possibly could drifted untouched on the air and Angel felt like biting him for the audacity.
“If you’re about to ask me help you find Spike, you’ve really tipped back too much—”
“You really are blindly oblivious to the good around you, aren’t you? Spike is not the issue here, though I will admit that had he been I might have received some actual help with this awful miscarriage of justice. You claimed to be here to aid Buffy in her fight for good. So far, all I have seen in you is a vindictive streak that you bow to before all else. You sacrificed a human life so as to expose a vampire you haven’t even known for a century. Your view on this situation is wrong, and it appals me that you would rather continue on this childish expedition to change Buffy’s feelings than to actively aid in saving her life—and the world.” The passion died in the librarian’s eyes suddenly and he gave into the wave of hopelessness he’d been struggling against since the moment foreign words began to make sense to his tired brain and a prized book became his most hated possession.
The hypnotic jaw clenching almost made him snap as he took one final look at the vampire that could have become their greatest ally and decided he would be best to enclose himself in his office and contemplate the best way to circumvent these predictions.
“Just…just go, will you? There is nothing you can do here, and I rather think Buffy is far from wanting to see your face in her current predicament.” He dismissed the vampire with less than a look, just a callous wave of his hand as he stumbled to the back of the library in total preoccupation.
It’s the Codex. It’s never been wrong. The events have always come to pass. Oh God, Buffy. Whatever can I do? He mumbled, repetition of his mind and words mixing to create a horror in his heart that made it difficult for him to breathe.
And Angel slipped out as unwelcome as when he’d arrived.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Twisted little hearts danced around her in his mind. Naked and glorious, her breasts were young and pert and just straining for the first lick of his tongue. But she was covered, covered in the bizarre caricatures of love as they flipped and slipped across her skin.
His hands itched to pluck them away, to reveal the glory of her body, taste the richness of her flesh as his fangs raped her resistance away. He understood her fear—wasn’t he scared the first night Dru had shown him the pain of forever? Hadn’t he been afraid when she’d stroked his cock and he’d gathered his wits enough to slide in his possession, to lay rights to her nights?
As life altering as that moment had been, he knew Buffy would surpass it all.
Touching her would award him the taste of freshness he himself had offered Dru—fresh untainted blood with the spice of arousal. He’d kissed Buffy and knew. Till the day he dusted, she was meant for him. As irrevocably as Dru had known that particular something the moment she’d come across him weeping in a stable, he knew that Buffy was his and he’d make sure she understood how satisfying it was to know the place you belonged.
What little awareness he had left allowed Spike to know where he was. He hung in the drafty hall between caves and he burned from overextended muscles and a bleeding heart. She would come for him. He knew that—in between the times he felt like his body was crumbling to the floor, only to jerk awake and find that Dru was just pouring dirt upon his head.
He hated her now.
Where once her cool beauty had mesmerised him completely, now he heard her voice and felt every year of strain that he’d spent with her. Every year of resentment that she’d held out for the return of her precious sire. And every second she’d made Spike clear her path with his bare hands while she swept a parade laughing around his heart.
Fanciful visions flickered between the red of his hatred and the blood of his love. Yet Drusilla whispered, saying things that were sending him not so quietly insane.
She enacted his end, showed him how many particles he’d be on the floor when Buffy had had enough of him—warning that it was a ‘when’, and not his hoped for ‘if’.
Only when she was gone would he fight to remember the look on Buffy’s face the night they’d spent curled up in each other’s arms, the reality of Dru a distant hurt that had lost all its sting the moment he’d indulged in the truth. The moments were sweet and he could clearly picture her smile, the affection in her touch and the desire in her kiss as she visited him in this hell where he hung.
Fleetingly he was soft and gentle—the moments passing into the heat of sex and power where he was eager to have her dwell. He could feel the childe of his blood rising, could sense the anger and hatred that swelled in this new abomination and the demon inside of him relished it. Revelled in the test of Buffy’s love in her response to its existence.
He’d passed beyond using the creature to free him. He knew it would be automatic, that the boy would demand they rescue him and then attempt to eat them in gratitude. The part inside Spike that had been trying—no, succeeding to be good for Buffy, quailed at the notion that she and her friends could perish for trusting his get. It was the part that was being suppressed more and more as visions of his goddess nude and covered in marks seduced him to his darker side.
Fangs bursting from his gums, Spike slumped against his wall and swallowed up the image of his Buffy coming for him. She looked older, smaller, yet bore the ravages of time enormously well. As she walked closer, he could see her hands clenched, her jaw ticking as her eyes swept over his demon’s face and screwed up in disappointment.
“I don’t want YOU,” she said. Her lip curled in disgust as she swept a glance over his broken and pale body, noticing every small prick of his skin that had pained him, destroyed his flesh while he’d been waiting for a miracle.
Primal violence welled up within and Spike felt like he’d blacked out. It must have only been for seconds but by then he felt strength flow through him, felt anger at being rejected renew his efforts to break out, and he roared in reaction to his loss.
“Too fucking bad, Goldilocks. I’m what you’ve got.”
The creak of shattering rock and stretching chains filled his ears as he tried to hold in the snarl—and then he was free and on her, ripping her clothes from her body and punishing her for daring to discard any part of who he was. He bruised her and ripped her open as many times as he could find places, defying her treacherous mouth to open and tell him more lies.
“How’s that feel, Slayer?” And he thrust himself hard beyond her restricting passage, feeling her rip; loving her tears. Celebrating the song of her screams.
He was brought back to reality with a hard fist to his gut, and Spike choked and dry wretched into Luke’s hideous face.
“You were looking far too happy, Spike.”
There was no shame in the tears he shed for Buffy. The lapse would cost him as his control slipped well beyond his grasp.
Spike only hoped Dru staked him before she arrived.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Willow hadn’t believed the story that Xander had told her. He had a busted bottom lip to prove it when she’d been so overwhelmingly angry with what he was trying to say. Making jokes about Jesse becoming a vampire was really not funny.
It had taken hours for him to convince her he wasn’t lying and to come to Buffy’s basement to see for herself. And now she stood at the bottom of the stairs, tasting her dinner in the back of her throat as she fought to decide between throwing up, staking her friend, or running all the way back home.
He was staring at her. No, leering and licking his lips and it was the most unnerving—terrifying—experience she’d ever had. Jesse had never looked at her like that before. Oh, once she might have hoped he’d take an interest in her—for the five minutes before she’d pegged all her hopes on Xander—but not for a long time had she had the slimmest thought of him as anything but a friend. Now she could see why—because his lewd interest was making her sensitive skin crawl.
Though it was wrong of her to blame him now that he’d been taken over by a demon. Wasn’t it?
This was a friend—a friend Xander was apparently so fond of that the thought of letting him die with his soul intact and travelling to the good place people went when they were murdered by vampires, was just unbearable. That he’d actually encouraged—no wait, she remembered his explanation, emotionally blackmailed—Spike to do this was almost too much to process. Still, friend as human. Surely the example of Spike showed them that it was possible to have a friend as a vampire as well?
“J-Jesse?” She took one tentative step forward then felt a part of her childhood die at his callous laugh.
“Awwww, Willow. You didn’t even dress up for me.” His eyes lowered and stayed on the fabric gently stretched across her breasts and he laughed at her gasp of humiliation.
He’d never made her feel inadequate before—not enough to be uncomfortable around him. Until now. Just one foul opening of his demon’s mouth and she was shuddering and whimpering in confusion and fear. Where was sweet—do-anything-for-his-Willow Jesse?
“I-I didn’t know I had to,” the flustered red-head fumbled as an excuse—always feeling like she owed it even when commonsense told her she didn’t. Buffy and Xander were there with her, intellectually she knew that, but the experience of this Jesse overwhelmed her senses and she couldn’t recognise the security of knowing her friends—one super-powered at that—were right at her side.
Her eyes could focus on nothing but the vampire—and that’s what he was now. Willow could see the changes immediately—and not just the lumpies and the sharp fangs that were being traced by a roughened tongue.
“So sad. Poor fashion-challenged Will. I live in hope. Or not. Get it?” He cracked up at his less-than-funny pun and Willow felt the numbness take over, ignored the cracks at her composure as a river of tears flowed down her frozen cheeks.
“Stop it.” Xander stepped forward, horrified, yet clinging to one last hope that the change could be reversed. If only Spike would show; he could control his new little vampire recruit and make him the Jesse they all knew and loved.
“Stop it,” the evil demon mimicked before automatically flinching at Buffy’s authoritative step forward.
“I’m only letting your ass remain undusty until Spike gets here. If he can’t improve your manners for you, it’s bye-bye cruel world. Capische?” Despite the tough words, Buffy knew he could hear her heart beating faster, could, perhaps, smell her fear as she bluffed her way through this first conversation with the evil in her basement. If only her mom could see her now, she’d be certified crazy with her ass back in a pretty white cell faster than you could scream ‘vampire’.
“Yeah, should probably do something about that. Daddy Spike is kinda—all tied up? Well, you know what it’s like when the evil enemy vampnaps you and tortures you for days? Ah, guess you don’t. My bad,” Jesse mocked coldly, his tone betraying his lack of interest in the real fate of his sire.
Pure cold horror raced through Buffy’s nervous system at his implication and she felt the loss of control in several parts of her body. Bile rose in her throat, disgust at her own naïve ignorance barely allowed her to continue standing and she at last faced the reason why Spike had disappeared and not returned.
“H-how do you know? How can you know where he is?” Her tone held as much disbelief as she could muster, despite the building sense of terror that it made too much sense and Spike—even if scared of her reaction—wasn’t such a coward that he wouldn’t face this mistake. And one hard look at Jesse and his almost dripping fangs told her it was absolutely a mistake.
“I can feel it,” he said confidently. “In here,” he said with a grin as he tapped his head, and then continued with a jerk of his hips and a defined bulge in his jeans. “And most definitely here. He’s thinking of you, little pretty. He wants to fuck you raw.”
Willow gasped and Buffy vaguely heard Xander’s shocked placating ‘that’s so not nice, man’ before she could control the urge she had to step forward and rip his foul head off.
“Do you know how to find him?” she ground out, a burgeoning hatred developing in her heart, and yet a hesitant belief that maybe it wouldn’t be too late. Hoping, but not quite believing, that with Spike, this vampire could redeem himself.
She watched as Jesse tipped his head to the side, her stomach clenching in revulsion that he’d emulated one of Spike’s signature characteristics, and saw his contemplative nod.
“Think so. He’s kinda been calling for me for the past few hours at least. Sending some pretty interesting daydreams, too. Hey Buffy, how do you look with fang marks and cum dripping from your—”
Xander beat her to the punch; she was too weakened by the need to empty everything she’d ever eaten onto the floor.
“Y-you’re disgusting,” Willow sobbed at the boy she’d spent years growing up with, sharing sandpits and sandwiches, and then in a show of strength all of them were unaware of, grabbed Buffy’s arm and tugged her to the stairs.
The demoralised slayer stumbled her way upward to sanity and collapsed against the kitchen island, feeling the return of her strength only when she could finally push her lungs into accepting air.
Xander stood silent as he shut the basement door and watched his friends—these girls. And he offered silent penance for his selfish mistake.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
There's possibly one of you that remembers this fic. If you do, I hope you enjoy!