Chapter Two
It had taken a good hour, but after a short stop in his crypt to make sure Harmony hadn't set fire to the place and some trips to the various cemeteries good ole Sunnyhell had to offer, Spike had finally found a vamp to do his bidding. Good to know being William the Bloody did still hold some clout among the younger vamps.
Probably wouldn’t help that he was sending this one off on a kamikaze like mission however.
He needed someone to get word to the Slayer, though. And if he went to tell her he just knew she'd think he was just trying to worm his way back into her life. This was a real threat, though, and he needed her to know about it. So he did the best he oculd think of and sent some barely out of the ground fledgling to the Slayer's house. That way he knew that first, she'd get the message, but also that she wouldn't be in much danger of any kind.
The poor boy would deliver his message and get a nice stake to the heart for his troubles. It all worked out very nicely.
He just hoped the ponce had enough of a memory not to muck up the message.
After everything with Spike and a long night of patrolling all Buffy wanted to do was get in her bed and lie down. Well that and get some sleep; maybe a good eight or ten hours worth. But as per the usual, life didn't have it in it to be kind to the Slayer. The damn vamp apparently wasn't going for tact either as he hadn't stopped shouting, "Slayer, Slayer, come out and face your death!" since he'd arrived. If he hadn't Buffy might have feared her 'death' more than she currently was. Right now the vampire was nothing more than an annoyance; something her sacred duty called upon her to keep the town safe from.
Then she could sleep.
The night was warmer than she would expect from this time of the year--especially after the relatively cool day they'd had--so she was sleeping in only a pair of light pajama bottoms and a thin top. She pulled on a sweater, zipping it up half way before creeping quietly down the stairs; wouldn't do to be showing certain things to some vamp, now would it?
She had enough vampires claiming to be in love...or lust, whatever it was, with her; she really didn't need to add another to the list.
"There you are Slayer! Thought you were afraid to come out and face the bringer of your death!"
"Do they give you some sort of class in cheesy death threats? Because this?" She waved her hand around to indicate the vampire, "Really not scary."
Too tired to deal with anything else, Buffy lunged at the boy, knocking him to the ground with a solid kick to his chest.
Buffy could see his bravado wavering as she straddled his chest before he could react and started to bring the stake down.
“Wait! Wait, Slayer! I have something to tell you!” He tried to get as far away from her as possible, but sadly it was only a few fractions of an inch.
“Yeah?” Buffy didn’t move the stake away, holding it against his chest, not giving him any room for escape. “And why should I care what your ‘message’ is?” Buffy was tired of this. Couldn’t they just let her do her job? Nice simple: stake the vamp and go home. Why was that so hard?
“Have to tell you…tell you,” Apparently fear was causing him to stutter a bit.
“You’ve got three seconds,” Buffy warned, pushing the wood into his chest just enough to break the skin.
“A witch has cursed you!” He finally blurted out. He knew he couldn’t tell her who had told him to warn her and had had to stop himself from doing so.
“What do you mean a witch has cursed me?” Buffy stopped pressing the stake into his skin, but left it right where it was.
“He told me not to tell you more…” It was obvious he hadn’t expected to end up in this situation.
“Who told you?”
“W—A friend,” he might be scared of the Slayer, but he was also scared of William the Bloody; he wasn’t going to give in that easily.
“Not good enough. Tell me what this threat is—“
“I was just told to tell you to you’ve been cursed by a witch and to watch your back.”
“Like I said, not good enough,” She plunged the stake down into his heart, her tiredness causing her to wobble ever so slightly when the form beneath her reduced to no more than dust.
She had no idea why this vampire, this fledgling vampire at that, had come to warn her of this witch’s curse. Surely he knew…okay, so maybe he didn’t know that she was going to kill him, vamps could be delusional like that; even if he didn’t know he was going to meet his dusty end, why had he warned her?
Didn’t’ evil things generally want her dead any way they could get?
All in all it didn’t quite add up. Something, something in this little equation, was not right. Buffy was not even up to figuring it all out right now, wasn’t up to trying to work it all out. Not tonight.
Tomorrow though, tomorrow she could talk to Giles about all of this. Get the gang into research mode and all of that.
Yeah, she could do that tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Tonight she was going to go back upstairs, take off the stupid sweater, lie down in her bed again, and go to sleep. She was going to avoid all thoughts of Spike and everything that had happened those few short hours ago.
Was going to ignore the tiny tingling of guilt that was currently nagging at her, the little thing that tucked away in the back of her mind, where she had put it, was trying to make itself known again. Because she was not going to feel guilty for ‘hurting’ Spike. She just wasn’t.
TBC...........
A/N:
and because I realised I hadn't said anything quite a bit after posting the first chapter: As with Silently Broken, this story will be posted on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
And I want to thank whoever nominated Silently Broken and the Forbidden Awards--I didn't recieve notification of that nomination so I still thouht I was at zero nominations with that story--so, to whoever did the nominating, Thank You so very, very much, I'm sorry if you thought I wasn't grateful (and since it had been a while since I got nominated--back for LC--it was an especially nice surprise). Alright, I'm done with the lengthy thank you now :)
Author's Chapter Notes:
thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday :)