“Oh my God, takes you long enough to return a call. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. I can’t go to dinner with you tonight. I’m not even in London. Hell, I’m not even in Europe. We’ll have to go out after I get back.” Spike’s head shot up and he looked hard at me. I then realized it sounded like I had just canceled a DATE. Oops! I was about to correct the misconception when I was interrupted.
“Well, I was gonna tell you that I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a family reunion in L.A.,” he said.
“Are you kidding? Guess where I am,” I exclaimed.
“Not sure.”
“L.A! What are the odds? We can have dinner when you get here!” We climbed into the elevator. Spike wouldn’t even look at me. “Hey, I’m gonna turn on my cell phone speaker thing so everyone can hear you. I’m getting glowered at.” I pressed the button. “Okay…so, remember the dream I told you about last week? The one I keep having? Or kept having, as would be more accurate,” I asked.
“The one about Spike?” Spike turned confused eyes to me. I could tell he was struggling to remember the voice, and I also saw that Angel already knew who it was. That made sense; Angel had had a lot more contact with him than Spike.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Turns out, it wasn’t just a dream after all. It happened.”
“That’s interesting…so I assume Spike is alive then and that’s why you jumped country?”
“Wolf boy?” Spike interrupted. “You have dinner with Red’s ex tumble?”
I chuckled at his wording. “Oz,” I corrected. “And yeah, we hang.”
We walked out to Wesley’s car. Angel left us at the door, stalking silently out into the lightening street. I guess he wanted to wander off to brood. He really did do that a lot. Xander and Willow, and hell, even Spike was right about it. Why hadn’t I noticed that in high school?
Fred and Wesley got in front and I helped Spike get in the back, then I followed and shut the door. “When you get to L.A. we should have a get together. Of course, that’s if you aren’t to busy hanging with the parentals.”
“What kind of get together? I mean, is it a gathering, a shindig, or a hootenanny?” Oz asked.
I giggled. “Remind me of the difference again?”
“Well, a gathering is Brie, mellow song stylings. Shindig is dip, less mellow song stylings, perhaps a large amount of malt beverage. And hootenanny, well, it's chock full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny,” Oz answered.
The car erupted into peals of laughter. Even Spike chucked. “How about you call me when you get some free time here, and we’ll figure it out. I have some nifty new friends for you to meet.”
“I’ll bring my guitar then. Okay, I’ll see ya, Buffy.”
I hung up my phone as Fred turned in her seat to face me. “He sounded fun.”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “He was Willow’s high school boyfriend. You remember him, right, Wesley?” He nodded and I continued. “He was the master of stoicism. He’s opened up a bit since then. He’s a musician. Dawn, Andrew, and I were at a club in Surrey and Oz was playing. We hadn’t seen him in at least three years. I had a drink with him between sets and we’ve been trying to have dinner or something at least once a week now. Last time, he came to my flat with his guitar and we wrote a song,” I added.
Spike said incredulously, “You wrote a song?” He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Just like modern day poetry.” I smiled at him.
I turned back to the two people sitting in the front seat. “Oz is a werewolf, but through travel and meditation and something about Tibetan monks, he can control his shifting. Like, he doesn’t have to shift for the full moon. It’s pretty cool. Two of his new band mates are shifters too. One wolf and one leopard. I didn’t even know there were different kinds. I always assumed wolves were…you know… it. They aren’t like normal were-animals either. They shift fully into their animal counterpart, not like a half and half thing. They look like normal versions of their beast and they retain their human mind. They can draw on their beasts’ strength when in human form. They have amazing control. They’re teaching Oz to do it too.”
“Fascinating, I had no idea there were different breeds and limits of control with shifters,” Wesley exclaimed. “I should like to talk to him about that when he gets here. Maybe he will be able to help Nina.”
“Who’s Nina?” I asked.
Fred, who was still turned around in her seat, answered. “Nina is a girl that was bitten by a werewolf, some really rare and violent breed. She comes in and spends her three ‘shifting nights’ in a cell in Wolfram and Hart.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “She has the biggest crush on Angel, but he seems determined not to notice. I think he’s afraid of getting close to someone after everything that happened with Cordelia.”
Cordy? I wondered what had happened with Cordy. But Angel’s love life was none of my business and I wanted to keep it that way.
“There’s actually a group of them.” I continued. “The wolves have a pack and the leopards have a pard. They go out into the wilderness to shift and they hunt together. Deer, wild boar, whatever is in wilds of England, I guess. We have an agreement with them all at the Council. As long as they keep their killing to wild animals, that’s cool with us and we let them walk free. But if a human is bitten or killed, I get to exercise ‘Slayer Law’ and we’ll blood test them all. The one with the human blood in their system, the pack will execute. Either that, or I will. No one has lost control yet. Jason and Nathaniel, Oz’s band mates tell me that between the pack and the pard, no human has been bitten in three years, that they know of.”
Spike looked at me skeptically.
I glared at him. “They are a lot of things, but they aren’t liars.” I turned back toward Fred and Wesley. “The whole pack dynamic is based on dominant and submissive pack members. Kind of like a vampire family. They have leaders. The more dominant, the more respected. Jason is in the middle of the pack structure, while Nathaniel is at the bottom of the pard. A step above food. They both acknowledge that I am more powerful than them, so they won’t lie. That, and they’re my friends.
“ I mean, sure, Jason’s a lech and will come on to anything with breasts. He makes Lorne look shy. And Nathaniel is like a little boy trapped in a mans body, totally scared and unsure of himself around me, but they readily embraced me when Oz introduced me, one literally and the other figuratively.”
Fred giggled.
“Some bloke you barely met gets to bloody hug you?” Spike growled.
“Jealous, are we?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Bloody right, I am!”
I scoffed at him. “It’s his job to be flirtatious. Both of them really. They’re strippers…at a club called ‘Guilty Pleasures.’ Oz is a bartender there. I’ve been there a lot lately.” When Spike turned to fully face me and stare a gape, I amended my statement. “To drink, Spike, not to watch the men. Andrew goes with me and we hang out at the bar with Oz and the others if they aren’t working. No ogling. I have been ogle free for some time now.” I winked at him and whispered, “I haven’t had anyone to look at.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Jason, Nathaniel, and Guilty pleasures are borrowed from Laurell k. Hamilton