Chapter 6
Spike was gone again in the morning, disappeared somewhere with Dehren. Exploring the underside of the city again? Well, she supposed he really would be more comfortable there.
A message came down from Tariess, saying that reporters had been clamoring to speak to the champions and that he had finally decided to authorize a meeting. He was aware that the champions might find this distasteful, but hoped they would condescend to say a few words. Though it was phrased as a request, it was clearly an order.
A press conference! Buffy hadn’t even been aware that they had newspapers here. But probably any culture would have newspapers, once the printing press was discovered. Lord knew, probably back in Sumeria even, there had been little handwritten pamphlets floating around, reporting the latest chariot accident or who the monarch had decapitated that day.
Buffy sent an urgent message through to Adara, who came up at once.
“It is because of the attack on Faisi,” she said. “Lehren and his ilk have been agitating. We need to calm the populace.”
“I don’t know how we can do that,” Buffy muttered. “It’ll happen again, Adara. You know that. How can we stop this thing if we don’t know what it is or where it will strike next?”
“I think they only need to know that we’re trying. Do not be concerned about the press, Buf-fy. There will only be a handful and from the largest newspapers. They have been warned,” said Adara cryptically, which Buffy hoped meant that the reporters wouldn’t be asking the tough questions. Like: who the hell are you, why haven’t you saved us by now and do you really think you can?
“Will they want Spike there?” God only knew what might come out of his mouth.
“It would be better if he were.”
“I don’t know where...” Buffy looked helplessly at Cadhi, who nodded reassuringly.
“We will find him, avera.”
The press conference was set for three o’clock. Adara gave Buffy an idea of the possible questions that might be asked and what the most reassuring answers might be. Spike turned up at two, an amused look on his face, and was carefully coached as well.
“I wouldn’t worry, Slayer,” he said quietly in her ear. “These are intelligent people. They know what the problems are and, if they’ve been okayed by Tariess, they’re not about to make waves. I think what they’re really here for is to confirm that they’ve seen us and that we’re not some bug-eyed aliens even worse than what’s out there incinerating their people.”
A high-up Guild official turned up five minutes before the conference and positioned himself where he would clearly be seen prominently looming behind Buffy and Spike. A statement of Guild approval of their presence here, Buffy realized with relief.
Spike turned out to be right. The conference went well and the reporters were most polite and not at all accusing. It was all very civilized. Buffy suspected the whole thing had been for show. The Guild official suddenly tossed out the helpful tidbit that ballistas were being constructed even as they spoke and would be sent out to every town and village. The atmosphere warmed even more.
Just as the press were packing it in, word came that Baniel’s device had picked up a power surge in the mountains at Rihar.
“Maybe that’s it!” said Buffy, reaching for her weapons.
The press looked hopeful, but before Buffy, Spike and their Guild contingent could even get out of the door, a panting messenger brought further word that it had disappeared again. Faces fell all around.
“At least it kinda demonstrated the problem,” Spike muttered as the press left.
“Maybe too much so,” Buffy sighed.
Spike and Dehren disappeared immediately after the conference. Adara and the Guild official left and Buffy was left alone again. She asked for some isornin and headed into the study to set up a new map dedicated to any findings Baniel’s device might now acquire.
“Much excitement, avera,” said the staffer who brought her the iced tea. She was very young and looked very excited herself.
“Not the kind I like,” Buffy sighed. “I really hadn’t thought that we’d be news.”
“But you are the Champions, avera! Of course, you are news. People are curious. There have been articles about you in the papers ever since you came.”
“There have? Kesi, would you be able to get me a few of these papers? I just want to see what they say.” Adara had adjusted her spell so Buffy and Spike now could read not only graphs, but also the maps and the messages that arrived from various sources.
“Yes, of course, avera.”
Kesi came back half an hour later with a stack of papers and Buffy started going through them. A lot of what was being said was speculation and/or reassurance about the presence and mission of the ‘Champions’ who had been brought here through the genius of the Convocation and the forethought and care of the benevolent and gracious Tariess. It was all in very extravagant and high-flown language that Buffy would have had trouble deciphering even in English
Then she came across a different publication.
“What are you doing up so late?” Spike asked, finding her still in the living room when he came in past midnight. Then he frowned. “Something wrong, pet?”
Sensitive to these people’s customs, Buffy had always been careful to comply with their very formal and decorous attitudes. But the staff were all in bed now. Freed of their constraints, she had yanked open the stifling to-the-throat collar of her jacket, popped the buttons that ran up her forearms and pushed her sleeves up to her elbows. The staff would have considered this the most shocking disarray.
“Kind of upset,” she muttered.
“Why?” Spike picked up one of the newspapers that littered the couch and glanced at it. “Bloody hell!” He started to laugh. “Angels with flaming swords, are we?”
“That seems to be the party line.”
He dropped down into an armchair opposite her and scanned the article, his eyes alight with amusement. “Haven’t seen this kind of high-flying prose since I was a boy. And even that was mild compared to what it used to be at the beginning of that century. You wouldn’t believe the heated and rolling periods they used to come out with round the 1800's. Well, I know their expectations are kinda high, pet, but...”
“Not that one. This one.”
He looked over the newspaper that she handed him. His brows rose, then he laughed and threw it aside contemptuously. “Yellow journalism. Those are the Lehren git’s friends.”
“It’s...it’s...”
“The word you’re looking for is scurrilous, pet.”
“How can they say things like that? They don’t even know us and they accuse us of the vilest... They haven’t even seen us, but they say we look grotesque, that we’re monsters and eat babies and are really in cahoots with that thing that’s burning their villages because we come from the Void as well...How can they be allowed to say such things?”
“Ethics in journalism only turned up around 1910, pet. Hell, the things that used to be in print before that! His enemies used to say Abe Lincoln was an ape and a baboon and accuse him of the most depraved actions, things that would put us demons to shame. Opponents of anybody in the public eye could call that person anything from a cannibal to a serial-killer to a pedophile and get away scot free.” He flicked the paper with a scornful hand. “It’s just a rag, pet. Ignore it.”
“People will think...”
“It’s mudslinging. Doesn’t matter.”
“Mud sticks!”
“Not here.”
“The people who read this...”
“Pet. You still don’t understand, do you?” He leaned forward and touched her wrist lightly. His eyes were gentle. “It doesn’t matter. The people who know us won’t believe that. Cadhi and Dehren and the Guild, Adara and Tariess, the staff.”
“But...”
“The populace doesn’t matter. Maybe we’ll leave here in a blaze of glory. Maybe we’ll go out dismal failures. Once we’re back in Sunnydale, who’ll know? Who’ll care? We’re out of our proper time and place here. Once we’re back home, this will all seem like a dream.”
“Then why even try?” Buffy asked in exasperation.
“Because that’s the way you’re made. And because they’re nice people. I wouldn’t want to let down the ones we know. The staff and all.” He grinned crookedly at her.
She laughed a little. “Their opinion matters to you.”
“Yeah, I guess. Care about them. Opinion only matters if you care. Don’t you see? And there’s a hierarchy to that too. With the people you care most about on the top. The people you love, for instance. And then your friends. And then your acquaintances. The general public? That comes last.”
“And this general public won’t exist for us once we’re back in Sunnydale.”
“Now you’re getting it. And even there, what does anyone’s opinion matter, as long as you’re doing what you think is right?”
She shifted uneasily. That cut too close to the bone.
“Your all-free zone, even there,” she mocked.
“You’ll call that vamp thinking, I suppose,” he said dryly. “Where do you come in your hierarchy, pet? Bet it’s not at the top as it should be. Bet you put all sorts of people’s opinions ahead of your own.”
She didn’t want to think about that, made an irritable gesture, brushing that away, deliberately misunderstanding him.
“Want, take, have? That’s not right. And even you don’t do that. Not with Dru.” She saw that now. She remembered that night at that vamp-wanna-be club when he had given up all the blood and the killing the moment she had put her stake to Drusilla’s heart. Dru had come first.
“Ah, well, that’s different, innit?”
“Well there,” she said triumphantly. “You choose your own hierarchy.”
“That’s right,” he said. “You choose.”
He looked up at her and his eyes were all blue light and intense shadow in the glow of the gas lamps. She jerked to her feet, uncomfortable with what she saw moving behind those intense eyes.
“I’m going to b...turn in.” She stopped short abruptly. “I forgot. You haven’t had...”
He stood up and took the wrist she held out, drew her to him. Too close. She put her free hand on his chest to hold him away, then frowned a little.
“Your T-shirt’s damp.”
“Went swimming. You should get Cadhi to show you their spa. Got a pool down there the size of a lake and every luxury you can think of set up around it.”
“Glad someone’s enjoying himself,” she growled resentfully and he grinned.
“Trying to change the subject, pet? Think if you don’t say the word ‘bed’, I’m not going to be thinking about it?”
“Spike...”
“You don’t even know, do you?” His cool fingertips ran the side of her face, leaving a trail of fire. “You don’t even know what it could be like.”
She pushed his hand away. “Don’t.”
He raised her arm to his mouth, but instead of bending to her wrist, his head dropped to the hollow of her elbow. His tongue slid across it lingeringly, then ran up the inside of her forearm. That tongue had gone raspy like a cat’s and the sensation was incredible. She shuddered involuntarily.
His eyes had gone yellow as he looked at her. “Feel that, pet? Anyone ever done that to you?”
No one had. Angel had stayed human, that one time he had made love to her.
“Think of that all over, pet.”
Oh, God! She tried to jerk her hand away. But he had it fast and now his fangs were sinking into her wrist. As usual, he took only a mouthful, but this time he took his time about it. The draw was slow and deliberate, and when that singing rapture began it went on and on. Her knees folded and she couldn’t help leaning against him. If it wasn’t for his arm hard about her waist, she would have slid right down to the ground.
The fangs withdrew and that raspy tongue licked her wrist to seal the punctures.
“Think of feeling that euphoria while you come, pet,” he murmured, his lips a breath away from hers as she gasped. “It’ll send you to a whole new level, send you higher than you’ve ever been before.”
Oh, God!
“Let me show you, pet. Lovemaking, it’s an art. You have no idea what I could do to you, how it would make you feel.”
“Spike...”
“I can give you what you want,” he said softly. “I can give you what you need.”
She tore herself away and fled.
But that wasn’t the end of it. He was under her skin now. Those words, that touch, that tempting murmur...
She was a novice at lovemaking. She’d only made love twice, had no real experience. She had been almost passive with Angel; it had all been so new and she had been too shy to explore. And then he was gone, turned into Angelus. Parker? Well, the less said of that the better, though she had been somewhat more aggressive. Parker had been too busy chalking up another conquest to make it a really enjoyable experience, even if she hadn’t had to hold back the way she had been forced to, because he was human.
‘It’s an art,’ purred Spike and just the brush of those cool fingers, the look of dark sensuality in those knowing, sardonic eyes opened up whole new vistas she’d hardly even suspected, only read about somewhat unbelievingly in books and magazines. She didn’t disbelieve anymore. She had no doubt that he could show her what she had been missing, could play her like a violin.
Serpent. Knowing, mocking, seductive serpent.
‘Always is a dark side.’
There was a dark side to her that responded to him, that wanted to find out what she was missing, wanted to indulge in it.
And she could, here in this dimension. He was so right. Nothing here would filter back to Sunnydale; nothing in Sunnydale had any weight here. What Giles or Angel or the Scoobies thought didn’t matter here. They would never know. That business with the newspaper had made it vividly clear. Nothing that happened here had consequence. Nothing would return with them across the Void. There was no price.
‘I can give you what you want. I can give you what you need.’
She did want it. Her body thrummed with wanting it. She felt sick with need. She lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, in the glow of the gas lamps that she had refused to put out. Darkness would have been worse, would have allowed no distraction from her thoughts. But the light didn’t help. Nothing seemed to distract from the ache that seemed to be in her very bones. She felt hot all over, was glad that these people’s idea of a nightgown was just a loose tube of some silky material. If it had been anything heavier or with those ever-present buttons, she would probably have ripped it to shreds in sheer exasperation.
She got up in frustration and went to open the doors to the balcony to let the cool night air flood in. The bedroom balcony was only the width of the doors and just a couple of feet deep. Protected from the sightlines of other apartments, it was built to allow fresh air since apparently it could get very hot here in summer, Emer had said. It was spring right now, but she was still hot. She leaned on the cool stone of the balustrade and sighed.
He was a vampire, a monster, evil, soulless. It was wrong.
Did that matter here? a tiny voice inside her retorted.
“Dammit!”
She was never going to get any sleep! She flounced out of her room, heading for the library. She could read their books now. What she needed was some weighty, boring tome guaranteed to knock her out like a light.
There was a real light on in the living room. Spike must have left one burning and Emer would be upset. She stamped into the living room irritably, then stopped short at the sight of Spike sprawled on the couch.
Okay, big mistake. He was wearing only his jeans, his damp T-shirt discarded on top of the scattered newspapers and his Docs tossed negligently on the floor. All that hard muscle and clean bone and satin skin gold in the warm yellow light of the one gas lamp still burning. A shudder ran through her, subterranean and slow; a violent flush of heat. She stopped breathing.
He was unfolding himself, coming to his feet. “Thought you were going to bed, pet.”
“Uh, yeah. Came to turn off the light. How come you’re still up?”
His mouth twisted. “Couldn’t sleep.”
They stared at each other. She saw his eyes widen, heard the sharp catch of his breath.
She didn’t know who made the first move. But suddenly, in a burst of vampire speed, he was crushing her to him, his arms like bonds of steel about her, so tight that it hurt. She didn’t care. A flame rose in her in response such as she had never known or thought to know. She held him as fiercely, her arms clenched across his back.
For a moment his face swam in her vision, oddly white and strained. Then his mouth took hers and she was lost—lost in the taste of his mouth, the slide and thrust of his tongue demandingly against hers, the feel of his body hard and urgent and vibrating with passion as it bent hers back over his arm, the wild surge of excitement that crashed through her, uncontrollable, a flame of pure physical passion, pure animal desire.
He was moving her backwards out of the living room.
“The light,” she muttered. “Is it safe? Emer will...”
“Oh, for...”
He flashed to the lamp, turned it off, flashed back unerringly in the blackness. All she glimpsed was a glimmer of white skin as he moved through a patch of moonlight, but he could see perfectly well with that vampire sight. He caught her head, hands twisting in her hair, and kissed her again, bruisingly hard.
“Buffy...”
“Oh, yes,” she gasped. “Yes. Don’t care. Want you.”
“God!”
His hands slid down the sides of her neck, pushed the straps of her gown off her shoulders. It fell loosely right off her, puddling around her feet.
“Convenient,” he muttered and lifted her up out of it.
“Spike...”
Then his open mouth was on her bare breast, that catlike tongue rasping across her nipple.
“Oh, God!”
Her brain blanked out to everything but sensation. She felt air moving against her naked skin, didn’t even realize that he was carrying her along the passageway to her room. She was too focused on the feel of his mouth working upon her breasts. Then they were falling across the width of the bed and his weight was upon her, heavy and demanding, pressing her down into the tangled bedclothes. Her legs came up without volition to lock about his hips.
“The lights...” she muttered, coming back to herself for a moment and seeing the blaze of golden light that surrounded them. She had not turned down any of the lamps in her room and they were all full on.
“No.”
“But...” Both times before, she had made love in the dark, was used to that comforting veil of dimness that covered her actions, hiding the raw truth of what was happening.
“No. I like to see.” His head came up, his eyes dark and brilliant, staring down at her, their pupils dilated, intensely black and burning within a thin rim of incandescent, blazing blue. A muscle jumped diagonally in his cheek as his jaw clenched. “Want you to see. Want you to know what you’re making love to. Want you to know it’s me.”
“Vampire,” she mocked. “Monster. I know.”
“Giving in to the dark side, are you, pet?” He kissed her painfully hard, his mouth brutal.
She laughed and kissed him back as hard, uncaring. “Yes.”
“Passion’s just as good as love, innit?”
He was right. She was drowning in his passion, all thoughts of any other love burned away. Angel? Who was he? She couldn’t remember, with Spike’s mouth raking across her, and his hands kneading and demanding, and his body moving insistent upon her. She arched to him, her hands clawing at him.
“Come on, come on!” She tore at his belt buckle, wanting him, needing to have him right now, couldn’t wait. Couldn’t believe the way she was acting, couldn’t believe herself this needy, this wanton.
He twisted to tear off his jeans, his mouth avid on her breasts.
“Oh, God, Spike...!”
And then he was above her, settling himself between her thighs, his erection hard against her. Her eyes widened at the feel of him, so big, so urgent.
“Sp...Ohhh!”
He took her hard and her head fell back, her whole body arched to his. So perfect, that moment of entrance, his thickness within her, his eyes watching her with that strange look of darkness and heat and wonder. She had never felt so full, so complete.
They thrust against each other, straining together, gasping against each other’s faces, every nerve ending on fire. No need to hold back. She clenched upon him, clawed at him, bit—and he just laughed in pleasure and drove deeper into her, his hips twisting at the end of every stroke, hitting every sweet spot in her body. Then his fangs slid into her neck and she lost herself in that flaring-up of ecstasy that flamed into such a bonfire of consummation that burned away all other longings, all other desires—all other loves. Came and came again helplessly, her mind reeling with shock and rapture, felt him jolt and pulse within her.
Her brain came staggering back from that blankness of absolute delight to find him moving again upon her, lips sliding across her body, tongue rasping across her skin.
“Oh, no, no...twice? It’s not possible...”
He laughed against her navel. “It’s possible, pet. Don’t know vamps, do you? Or that Slayer stamina.”
“Spike...”
He bit her softly, the light sharp pinpricks of his fangs across her stomach incredibly arousing.
“We’ve barely begun, pet.”
Oh, God, she was gonna die!
The rest of the night was pure delirium.
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
The fabulous banner is by the awesomely talented Ben Rostock.
Chapter End Notes:
Glossary: aver: sir / avera: ma'am / averin: plural / nefai: gentle being / nefa'in: plural / ri: 3 miles