He was officially worried. He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes, and Buffy never kept him waiting for fifteen minutes. Buffy never kept him waiting at all. If anything, Buffy always showed up for their patrols a few minutes early. Even the night that he’d beat the living hell out of the other slayer, Buffy had been there long enough to witness most of the encounter. She wasn’t one to be late. Not for him. She’d never been late for him.
It was her birthday and she was late, and Spike was worried.
Perhaps he’d been too forward that morning. God knows, the previous night had been unlike anything he’d ever known. Never before had Dru simply let him hold her. Never before had they shared playful banter. Being with Buffy meant sacrificing all of his guards; meant peering over the wall he’d built around himself. She knew him now, better than anyone. She knew the version of himself that he’d kept hidden.
And even if he had been too forward that morning, Spike couldn’t see her being late. Not when it came to their time together. Furthermore, it was her birthday, and from what he knew of her past—both what she’d told him and what he’d witnessed—the Powers seemed to take a sadistic interest in making sure that every year grew a little bit worse for her. That every year she lived—every year she outlasted her incipient expiration—the PTB made it their prerogative to kick her in the gut.
Before she left his crypt that morning, Buffy had jokingly asked him to refrain from feasting on Sunnydale citizens until midnight. Not that she didn’t trust him—though the idea that she did was more than a little heady—but she was worried that the karma that tended to follow her from year to year would catch up. That something terrible would happen—that despite his best intentions, he would end up hurting her against his will.
Knowing that he had a penchant for hurting her anyway didn’t help matters. Oh, but Buffy wouldn’t see it that way. She still refused to see the forced blowjob as something that she should dust him over. And it wasn’t that Spike was hankering to meet the business end of a stake—there was just something about Buffy that brought out a side of his demon that he’d never known before. The sort that would defile girlies without a second thought, and leave the shattered man to clean up the mess and harbor the guilt. The first time had been bad enough; he’d felt Buffy’s pain and confusion alongside his through means that weren’t altogether clear to him. And though he’d sensed none of those things from her last night, that didn’t make it okay.
However, fears aside, Spike was determined to keep from hurting her. Not even the curse of Buffy’s birthday could incite him to break that vow.
And perhaps he was being too hard on himself. Buffy had forgiven him for their first fumbled night together—the night she refused to see as rape, even if he knew better—and she hadn’t thought anything of what had transpired last night.
Rather, she’d told him that she wanted to be there for whatever he needed. Whatever his demon needed. And she’d understood that, at that moment, his demon needed her on her knees with her mouth open. She hadn’t complained. She hadn’t protested. She hadn’t even cried—well, not until she’d panicked over the daft notion that she wasn’t any good.
She’d wanted to please him. All of him. She embraced him when he was sappy and silly just as she did when he was rude and cruel. Not once through this whole ordeal had she turned him away because of who or what he was, rather for the demented notion that he wouldn’t want her for those very reasons. And, as she’d pointed out this morning, she’d never asked him to change. Not once. She hadn’t given him the ‘stop feeding or I’ll stake you’ ultimatum, and she’d never threatened him with tears in the face of the monster he was.
Buffy had given him what no one else ever had: she accepted him. All of him. The good and the bad. The virtues and the flaws. The man and the monster. She accepted every bit.
And she was late. His golden seraph was late.
Over twenty minutes now.
“Okay,” Spike said tightly to himself, kicking at a headstone. “Time to panic.”
Buffy felt as though she was moving through a tomb.
“Spike?”
God, she hated how shaky her voice was. How uncertain. Like a child waiting for a parent’s reprimand at church. The boarding house was so quiet, she heard the dust fall behind her as she moved. There was a very persistent pain in her gut—a strange combination of both slayer tinglies, faded as they were, and the beginnings of familiar pangs of separation.
He hadn’t answered her at all. She didn’t feel him at all.
And what the hell would he be doing in here, anyway?
Angel, Buffy thought, pursing her lips as a dark shudder claimed her violently. That, above all other things, made sense to her. After all, it was Angel who had led her here in the first place. It was Angel who had pointed at the old Sunnydale Arms and told her that Spike was inside, bleeding. It was Angel who hated Spike for being the boyfriend he never was, and it was Angel who had the ego to think that taking care of her and making decisions for her rested on his shoulders.
Buffy’s insides trembled. Perhaps Angel had trapped Spike in here. Perhaps he’d tortured him in hope of releasing the beast. Perhaps Angel wanted to put her in a position where she’d have to stake Spike to save her own life, therein proving that Spike was a monster that had no sense of right or wrong; one that would see her as means to his own survival if pressed.
Only Buffy didn’t feel Spike anywhere near her. And that was worrisome. However, it was her birthday, and that meant that things were always and forever off. If Spike was in here, there was no reason for her to feel him. None at all. As it was, her tinglies were going off like nothing else, which meant that a vampire was near.
“So help me,” Buffy said softly, peeking into another empty, cobweb-infested room. “Angel, if you’ve done something to him, I’ll have your head.”
If she was right—if Angel had caged Spike in here with the idea of shoving the man to the back by provoking the monster—then the joke was on him. Spike’s demon cared for her; she’d seen that last night. He cared for her and he wouldn’t hurt her. He’d just need her to help him calm down.
After that, they could go dismember Angel together. He’d better hope that Spike showed some pity, because she sure as hell wouldn’t.
Not if he’d hurt Spike in order to make a point. An incredibly Angelish point. The kind with a moral and everything.
Not at the expense of my boyfriend.
Buffy shivered again. That was at least the third time she’d referred to Spike—whether to herself or to others—as her boyfriend. It wasn’t entirely true, of course, as they were would-be platonic patrol colleagues who had to fight every urge in their bodies to keep from ripping each other’s clothes off. But the label, misleading as it was, filled her with warmth.
Maybe after she and Spike finished dismembering Angel, they could go to Giles about this stupid spell and see about getting it broken. After that, if he still felt the same way, they could look into making the boyfriend label a more permanent feature.
But she hadn’t found Spike yet. Spike was still somewhere in the house. Somewhere where he either couldn’t hear her or couldn’t respond. And he was still bleeding.
“Spike?” she called again, stepping over a jagged plank in the floorboard. “Spike? Make some sound so I know where you are.”
As if waiting for a cue, the walls moaned and the ceiling trembled under the weight of something heavy. Buffy’s eyes darted upward.
He was upstairs.
“I’m coming!” she shouted. “Just wait there, Spike! I’m coming!”
It took a few minutes to locate another stairwell. The halls were filled with dust and debris; a few paintings hung crooked in broken frames. It was the sort of place that she’d ignore if she passed it; one of the many condemned buildings in Sunnydale. A place for demons to claim when the graveyard was not an option.
Buffy’s nose wrinkled in disgust as she stepped over a broken crate, nearly stumbling onto the second floor. What a rat-trap. Yeah, there was absolutely no way that Spike would come here voluntarily.
“Spike?” She frowned and peered down the hallway, jumping when a long, vampiric roar finally answered. A roar followed by a bang, leading her eyes to the big crate that sat against the wall in the next room. “Oh my God.”
Angel had crated her boyfriend? And then, what, led her here?
It had to be a show of power. After all, she’d said it outside. The vampiric nature could not be denied. Not Angel’s, and as he was hoping to demonstrate, not Spike’s, either.
“Angel, I swear, you are so dead,” she gritted out. Then paused. “Again.”
There was another growl and a bang against the door. Buffy sucked in a deep breath, her legs breaking into a jog.
“I’m coming!” she called out. “Spike, I’m coming!”
Her heart was about ready to leap out of her chest as she yanked the door open.
And screamed.
Oh my God.
Buffy stumbled back in shock as the vampire stepped out of the crate, shrugging off what looked to be the shredded remains of a straightjacket. His yellow eyes flashed, his tongue licking his fangs as his lips pulled back in a smirk.
A smirk that definitely wasn’t Spike’s.
“My hero,” he quipped.
He was such an idiot. Such a prize idiot wanker.
“Killed two slayers,” Spike grumbled under his breath, lowering his fist from Buffy’s door. “Killed ‘em right quick. Could write the bloody book on slayers an’ all the sodding birds that get Chosen. Start shagging one, an’ you lose your marbles. Bloody brilliant, Spike. Good show.”
Not to mention he was talking to himself, which was never good.
It had hit him from nowhere—a bullet of knowledge that drove straight for the heart. Buffy’s lack of strength—the same that coincided with the days leading up to her birthday. Her eighteenth birthday. He knew this part of the slayer training; Christ, the knowledge of it had driven him mad with curiosity once he stumbled over the text that detailed the rite.
The Cruciamentum, the Watchers called it. The sodding Cruciamentum. How the sodding hell had he forgotten about the Cruciamentum? The ritual in which the Council came in, drained their selected warrior of all her power, and pitted her against a powerful foe in a test that resulted either in her death or the next phase of her training. Fuck, he’d known this. He’d always been fascinated with the idea that the Council would ever test a trained, strengthened slayer by trying to off her. If they offed her, the next was called. If not, they continued on with training with a smile and a nod.
It always struck Spike as a particularly barbaric ritual with no point other than butchering slayers; something he had thought rather funny until recently.
Until now.
Until it became Buffy rather than some faceless name in the long line of slayers.
Now she was in danger. It was her birthday—the night of the ritual—and she was in danger. And he would have known if he’d stopped to think about it, he’d have put sodding two and two together. But in these past few days, he hadn’t been thinking at all. Everything that had anything to do with Buffy had something to do with the spell, or whatever had brought them together. He hadn’t been thinking straight, and now, Buffy was in danger.
Buffy was in danger because others had put her there. And Spike would rip apart whoever touched her. Whoever touched her and whoever was responsible for having her touched.
The Watcher. Spike snarled. The Watcher would be in on this. The Watcher, and from the way Buffy kept going on about Angel and the Watcher’s budding friendship, his wanker of a grandsire likely was, too.
If anything happened to her, they would beg for death before he gave it to them.
Spike tore away from her front porch with a growl. He had nowhere to look. Nowhere to begin. He could go torture the Watcher for information, but by the time he got to the school library, it might be too late. He had nothing.
Nothing but a rush of alien fear that nearly knocked him to his knees. Spike’s throat quaked with a tremulous roar. It came from nowhere, saturated his insides, spilled into his veins, and filled him entirely with her essence. Suddenly, the air was thick with her scent, and his demon roared to life.
He didn’t know where she was, but he felt her.
He felt her. And she was terrified.
And to find her, all he had to do was follow his instincts.
To be continued…