Chapter 5
Friday night came round all too soon. There had been no real information found out about the Villa Rosa and its occupants, except for the fact that it hadn’t changed hands for about 150 years. The Du Pris family had bought it in 1850 and had lived there ever since.
The men-folk were waiting in the hall for the ladies to join them. Giles and Xander had worn dinner jacket and black tie for the occasion. Spike had dressed up in a dark suit with a blue silk shirt. All three looked incredibly handsome. All three had also checked the clock at least four times.
Xander checked his weapons again. A stake attached to his ankle and a water pistol with holy water in it. Giles was carrying a gun; Spike went into and out of game face, also practising.
Dawn led the way down the stairs, her hair up and dressed in an ankle length blue silk dress. She checked her purse for the small crossbow and bottle of holy water. Willow and Rachael came next, Willow in her favourite green and Rachael in russet. Both were also armed with stakes and Willow had added a couple of useful potions to her bag.
But it was Buffy who took what little breath Spike had away. She looked wonderful dressed in red silk with her blonde hair done up with silver covered, wooden spikes. Looked good and useful too; trust his Goldilocks to come up with something that clever. Although they went to dinner under the truce and parley, they weren’t stupid, and went in armed.
Buffy only had eyes for Spike; no matter how short a time they’d been apart, she needed him, needed to feel him close. Buffy still couldn’t believe that this beautiful man loved her so intently. Every woman loves the feeling of being cherished, and Spike did so cherish her.
The limousine arrived, all seven got in, and were driven off into the night by the human chauffer who refused to answer any questions.
When they arrived, Villa Rosa was lit up completely. Light shone from every window, illuminating the drive and gardens. They approached the portico and were driven under the arch. Matilda was waiting at the doors to welcome her guests into the house. Spike felt humans all over the place. He could only feel three vampires but they were masters; there were no childer or minions.
‘How many vamps can you feel, love?’
‘Not many,’ answered Buffy, ‘three.’
‘Please, come in, all of you,’ Matilda said, making sure the barrier was removed before Spike had even approached it. Spike could hear her heart beat from the bottom of the steps. Human, the power coming off her said Slayer, but older than Buffy; it didn’t make sense.
‘Welcome to my home all of you, I would imagine you have many questions, but first formalities.’
Matilda turned to Spike ‘William, I offer you truce and parley within my home, do you accept?’ she said as she offered Spike her wrist.
‘I accept.’ Spike replied, gently licking the inside of the woman’s wrist before switching into game face and sinking his fangs into her blood. A couple of small pulls and the crimson liquid soaked the back of his throat.
‘Peace between us,’ He said and offered his wrist to Matilda. She repeated the taking of the blood, hurting him slightly when her human teeth broke his skin.
‘Peace between yours and mine,’ Matilda completed the ritual.
Matilda stepped back and let them see into the large, well-lit marble hall. There were doors off right and left with a huge sweeping staircase rising up two more floors.
Giles looked around with interest as the girls took off their coats, pleased that they had judged the dress code correctly. Matilda was also dressed up in a silk evening dress.
Xander and Buffy starting appraising the situation: where the doors and windows were, and the quickest exits. Rachael stayed close to Dawn, and Willow started ‘sniffing out’ any spells that had been laid. Within a minute they looked at each other and gave a tiny nod, all clear.
Matilda seemed quite content with their behaviour. She waited patiently whilst they all reassured themselves that it was safe, before she spoke again ‘I’m afraid Charles is running a little late in joining us. It’s his turn to read the bedtime story and my daughter always seems to manage to persuade him into one more page. She really is a daddy’s girl.’
The evening was definitely getting stranger: a vampire with a ‘daughter’.
‘When did we fall down the rabbit hole; I feel like Alice in Wonderland?’ Dawn asked Giles.
‘I’m not sure, but I think it’s going to be a dinner party for the history books,’ Giles tried to reassure the young woman.
Dawn was still looking around her when she noticed a small figure at the top of the stairs running away from a man, a vampire in ‘game face’ who was chasing her. The child was laughing as she evaded capture but the vampire didn’t seem to be as fast as she knew Spike could be. Dawn looked towards the others in her party. They had walked ahead, unaware of the little drama unfolding upstairs. The vampire growled, alerting Buffy, Spike and Rachael to his presence. They looked around them, Dawn pointing upwards to the chase still going on upstairs. The child was laughing as she took a leap for the banister, and leaping on top of it she slid down towards the ground floor, picking up speed as she came. The vampire laughed and stepped off the top floor, seeming to fly to the ground. He went to the bottom of the stairs and was ready to catch the little girl as she flew off the end.
Matilda stood watching and, turning to Buffy said, ‘I send him up to read stories and calm her down and instead he winds her up so she won’t sleep. Do you have a stake handy, I may need it in a minute or two?’
Buffy watched as Matilda went to the bottom of the stairs and joined the vampire, Buffy recognising him as he came closer; it was Charles Richards. The vampire they had met in the park.
Matilda looked at Charles, ‘well?’ she asked.
Charles looked a little shamefaced. ‘She wanted to meet everyone.’ He looked at Matilda. ‘Sorry,’ he added.
‘Well seeing as you’re down, Issi, come and say hello; then straight to bed.’
The little girl walked across to the adults. She was about six years old with dark hair and eyes, eyes that seem to see into your very soul.
Unafraid of anything, she walked up to Spike first. ‘Lord Carrington, may I present my daughter Isabella. Isabella, this is Lord and Lady Carrington, Miss Dawn Summers, Mr Alexander Harris, Miss Willow Rosenberg, Miss Rachel Hunter and Mr Rupert Giles.’ She introduced her guests and the little girl shook hands with each in turn. Isabella went back to Spike. ‘Are you a vampire like Daddy?’ she asked with a child’s innocence.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Can I see your bumpies?’ she asked. Spike looked towards Matilda, who nodded, so Spike slipped slowly into game face. ‘You look funny, like Daddy does,’ she said as she made her way back to the stairs. Spike watched as she left the gathering with her father and made her way to bed; with his preternatural senses he could smell the familial link between the little girl, the vampire and the Slayer.
‘She is your blood daughter; I thought she must have been adopted.’
‘No, she is really ours, one of the many miracles available to those of us in the Covenant. I will explain more at dinner.’ With that Matilda led the way into a formal dining room where a table was waiting for them.
Charles soon joined them and Giles watched him carefully.
‘Nicely staged,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Charles.
‘A man or vampire, doesn’t start a war with his child in the firing line. A nice way of showing the non-vampires amongst us that we really are safe.’
‘I really didn’t mean it that way, I was supposed to get her to sleep, but if you feel more secure I’m glad. We really do only wish to talk,’ he replied.
They all sat down to a sumptuous dinner. Five courses and Brandy. The vampires had glasses of blood served to them, not pig, but something tasty, Spike couldn’t quite work out what it was.
‘A mix of otter, deer and bear, we get it from a farm in Romania, they prepare it especially for us. We can send you over a couple of hundred pints or so, bagged and frozen of course.’
‘Most kind.’
The conversation roamed over many informal topics during the meal. The latest exhibitions, museums worth visiting, the best shopping centres, clubs worth visiting. Matilda and Charles seemed to be the perfect hosts.
It was Giles that broke the mood during brandy with the comment:
‘To business; there are questions.’
‘And we have answers,’ replied Charles, ‘but first let’s go into the drawing room for coffee where we can relax a little more.’
The guests rose from the table and Matilda led the way back across the hall.
Half way across the hall, Charles turned into game face again, heightening his senses whilst he listened for any noise from upstairs.
‘All asleep.’
He followed Matilda into the drawing room, where a fire had been lit in the ornate marble fireplace.
Buffy, Spike and the others sat around the low coffee table, taking up positions on the various sofas and chairs. Matilda handed around the coffee and offered brandy to those who wanted it. She looked towards Willow.
‘Would you prefer tea? I have some peppermint made. Most of the witches I know seem to prefer it.’
‘Many thanks,’ replied the redhead, accepting the cup of tea.
‘As Giles so succinctly put it, to business. You must all be wondering what we want, and what we have to offer. Well, now’s the time for secrets to be shared.’ Matilda started.
‘I was born in 1756, and I am a Slayer. When you get back, I suggest you check what records you have left, Giles; they can confirm a period around 1771 when the Council couldn’t track down the Slayer for about 15 years. Charles is a vampire, a Master, sired long before I was born. In fact he is one of the oldest masters still on earth. I have not been turned and am as human as I was when I was born. We belong to a group of people known as The Covenant, a group of vampires and slayers, helped by the Guardians to be what they truly should have been in the first place. I believe you met a Guardian in Sunnydale before its fall, didn’t you?’
Buffy just nodded. She was trying to take in what had been said about there being other slayers, with vampires.
‘But you haven’t aged much,’ pointed out Xander, ‘you don’t look that much older than us, and certainly not as old as the G-man.’
Giles snorted. ‘Would you please stop using that ridiculous nickname, Xander?’
‘Slayers are immortal, Xander: we’re born that way. We can be killed but we don’t die of old age. None of us.’
‘I thought I was the longest lived slayer ever,’ said Buffy. ‘The council seemed really annoyed about it.’
‘You are the longest- lived of the new council’s slayers; but I digress. I will give you some details, tell you what we want and why and then answer any questions you have, but before I start there are two others I want to introduce you to. She is like me, a slayer, and he is a vampire, but they are part of our Covenant and will not hurt you. I know you brought weapons here, and I understand your caution, but before she comes I would ask that Xander and Giles be especially careful. This lady has no love for watchers; when you hear her story you’ll understand, but I simply ask that you are gentle with your movements. Spike will confirm that the demon in a vampire will do anything to protect his mate and they are truly mated, so if she gets distressed we will get them both away as quickly as possible. If any of you must approach her, I suggest Buffy or Rachael, then Dawn and Willow. She won’t be scared of Spike but demons tend to get jealous and we don’t need that. It has taken a lot for her to even be in the same building as two watchers without doing something she’ll regret.’
Buffy looked towards Spike, ‘I thought we couldn’t mate; you said we couldn’t when I asked. I thought it was a vampires only thing.’
‘So did I luv, but it seems a lot of what we thought we knew is getting blown away here. Charles can walk in daylight, there is a child upstairs that is blood kin to both Charles and Matilda: she’s their true daughter.’
‘Impossible,’ spluttered Giles.
‘No, not impossible; she’s upstairs as we speak and then you add that vampires and slayers can mate fully. I’m lost,’ Spike replied.
The door opened and a young woman entered, accompanied by a ‘hottie’, as Dawn put it. She was slender, but with womanly curves, long true blond hair with sad grey eyes. It was obvious to all that she’d been crying. The man with her scanned the room, checking where everyone was. He growled when he saw Xander and Giles but Charles answered the growl before the tension could escalate. The woman sat down on a chair close to the door and the man- vampire- stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder. Growling very quietly, which seemed to relax her. She looked lost and scared, but Dawn went slowly towards her and knelt at her feet. Dawn reached towards her hand and gently took it.
‘It’s all right, we won’t hurt you, Giles and Xander won’t hurt you, I promise. We are here under truce and parley; we won’t hurt you.’
The woman relaxed even further and began to speak.
‘I’m sorry, I find this situation very difficult. My name is Rosamund and this is…’
The growling got louder, a warning.
‘As I said, I am Rosamund, I was called as a Slayer in 1435.’
The uproar was amazing. This woman was nearly 700 years old and she looked so frail and young.
‘I was one of the last Slayers called by the Old Council before it was changed. And it did change. I lived under that change and that was the information you need. Rupert Giles, you are rebuilding the council, trying your best but you are still a watcher, through and through.
‘You speak the words, the chosen one, you speak of her as the one in her generation to stand against the forces of darkness, but you really don’t think what that means.’
Giles looked stunned and looked around at the others. Rosamund’s words were striking home.
‘One in her generation; and yet you seem unsurprised when a slayer dies after only a year or two. When I was young a generation was at least fifteen years, the time between one becoming a mother and one becoming a grandmother, a generation; with the lengthening of lives, it grew to twenty-five years and yet you still expect the one in every generation to last only a few very short years. To die before she has a chance of a life of her own. The council tell her who her friends can be, who she can take as a lover, whether or not she can even tell her own mother what she is. But it was not always so. When I was young, and for the slayers before me, the Council was father to us but not mother. They protected, guided, sheltered, us. Cared for us when we were sick and when we were old enough looked around for a husband for us, one who would be our equal. Not human though, as no human can ever equal us physically. And before you argue about arranged marriages, they were the norm when I was a girl. This is what the cruciamentum was all about. A Master Vampire, preferably one who annoyed me but I couldn’t actually kill, would be approached. I was stripped, not of my powers but of my bloodlust, as was he, and we were shut into a house for as long as it took for us either to know that we were mates or to know that we never could be. If I were to ask you Buffy, if it had been Spike that you’d faced when you were eighteen, do you think you would have killed or kissed him, especially if you knew that your friends were happy about your choice?’
Buffy looked thoughtful. Rosamund’s words were making sense.
Rosamund continued ‘When the first slayer was chosen, she was offered a deal, an arrangement. It was agreed before that first council that she would take on the demon that made her the slayer, but in return she would be given all she needed to live in this world. Friends would surround her’ She said looking at Willow, ‘a true Guardian who would love her like a daughter.’ She looked straight at Giles.
‘A family to love her,’ pointing at Xander and Dawn, ‘and most of all a mate who was her equal, who would love her totally. The men didn’t understand why any of this was necessary, they thought only of duty, but the women made them promise, and so they accepted it.’ Rosamund looked at Spike and then at the Vampire behind her. She grasped his hand tightly as she asked, ‘any questions so far?’
Spike spoke up. ‘You are a Master, but who are you? You haven’t given us your name yet.’
‘I will when the time is appropriate; if I told you now, I doubt if you’d listen to everything we have to say, nor would you listen to what we want to ask of you. Patience young one.’
Buffy and Xander laughed out loud at Spike being called ‘young one’. The other Vampire, whoever he was, must be old.
Matilda and Charles hadn’t said a word during all of this, they just sipped their coffee and watched what was going on.
Giles was flabbergasted; everything he had ever been taught was being shot down in flames. He waited, along with the others, for the next revelation.
‘The next bit is going to be very hard on you all, especially on Giles, Willow and Xander, but I ask you to listen to everything I say before you shout at me.
Firstly, Giles, may I ask you a couple of questions?’
Giles nodded and so Rosamund continued.
‘Firstly you went to University, and I should imagine a very good one, so why, when one of the first things you are ever taught is to question every and all sources of information, do you think you accept what the Council tells you as though it were unassailable truth?
‘I hate the Council, I hate what they stand for now and what they have done, and I will tell you why. This will be very hard for me, for us, and I hope you let me get through it.
‘Secondly, you all trust Buffy with your lives, as she trusts you, that is obvious, so why, do you suppose, didn’t you trust her with her own? Time after time you disagreed with her choices, you took memories away from her, you tried to manipulate her; you wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t all been under a compulsion to do so.’
Uproar ensued, Willow denying everything, Giles angry, Dawn guilty about throwing Buffy out of her own house. Rosamund look scared and then angry. Charles and Matilda moved forward. The vampire behind Rosamund growled a warning, picked the woman up in his arms and ran out of the room. Spike could hear him in the hall trying to settle his mate. The blond made his way through the door quietly.
‘Why wasn’t I affected?’ he asked quietly, the question seemed to ease the tension a little.
‘No soul. The mage who cast the spell cast it on souls, so you fell under the radar, and when you got your soul you already loved her and trusted her completely,’ the vampire explained.
Rosamund looked up at the both of them. ‘I’m terrified of what I will do if I go back in there; but I must. Could you ask the watchers to calm down? It’s them I have the problems with and I will explain why, but to all of you.’
Spike nodded and went back in. The room was still very loud, everyone shouting at everyone, except poor Rachael who was trying to dig her way into the sofa by the looks of things.
Spike caught Buffy’s eye and gestured her over to him.
‘We need to quieten the rabble, pet. Seems we’ve only heard the first bit so far.’
Buffy stuck her fingers in her mouth, gave Spike a look to warn him to cover his ears, which Charles also took as a hint, then let out a shrill whistle that loosened the earwax of everyone in the room.
‘When you’ve all quietened down, we can ask the lady to rejoin us and continue her story.’
The fighters looked around themselves and the room, slightly ashamed of the way that they had behaved. They resumed their seats and Matilda went back to the hall to fetch Rosamund and her vampire.
Coffees were refilled and Rosamund started her tale again.
‘After we had been mated for about 15 years, I handed my powers over to the next slayer: I was officially retired. We travelled with my family and my watcher to some wonderful places. Did you know there is a temple complex at Karnak in Egypt that is dedicated to the slayer line? You have to be a slayer to enter it still. The slayer blood opens the door for you to go in. The archaeologists still haven’t found it nor will they, protected as it is by glamours and wards. But I digress. We had been travelling for three years when I found out I was pregnant. So we came back to Europe for me to await the birth of my first child. We settled here in Italy, high in the north and I gave birth to a beautiful little girl, who we named Sophia. When she was six years old there were vampire attacks in our local village, and my watcher asked us to help. We went out for the evening patrol, leaving my watcher to care for Sophia; half way round we both had this awful, dreadful feeling, and raced back to our house. To find out that my watcher had sacrificed my daughter in a ritual designed to give him immortality. He had killed our child as a first step. He then fled to Britain and took over the Council, said I had gone mad with grief because a vampire had killed my daughter. He then set about changing the Council’s teachings to what you knew.
‘Our price for giving you back all the original teachings and power, for helping Spike to become a day walker, for showing Buffy how to live as a true slayer with the chance of children and to give Willow access to the true and honest neutral power of the earth, for everything you want we need to ask your help to track down and kill the mage that has caused all of the slayers’ problems for more than 600 years. We need help to get Quentin Travers.’
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to my beta who is still adding punctuation. and thanks to cordykitten for her encouragement