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Author's Chapter Notes:
Beta by Marilyn Rowan. In other news, the muse has been pretty flaky this week (maybe because I'm manning the night shift), so not much writing has been done on the 13th chapter, but the ideas are there and I have it fleshed out in my mind. Now if I could stay awake long enough to write.
*Saturday evening*


The time had finally come. For three days she hadn’t been able to find anything to slay, except for a couple of fledges on the very first night after she’d received Spike’s invitation. Even the obituary pages in the Sunnydale papers were suspiciously devoid of anything that raised any alarm bells. It seemed that whatever Spike’s plans for the Hellmouth were, they included keeping a tight lid on all things demony. She hated him for it. She hadn’t gotten a good slay in since coming back from LA, and she was way beyond ready for a good fight.

Of course, Giles and her parents were treating all of it like a blessing, using the time to get her mom up to speed on all things slayery, enroll her in a number of fighting classes, and devise new plans for her to be prepared for anything that she could possibly encounter on patrol, not that that seemed to be of much use lately. Buffy snorted to herself, thinking how happy she would have been for the reprieve just a few months prior, but then again, many things had happened since then. She’d died since then. Spike had happened since then, and she hated him for it!

Yup! Good, old-fashioned, all-consuming hate. That’s all she felt, and she dared him to just show the hell up and prove her wrong. That is try to prove her wrong. Yeah, that sounded much better! Not to mention how she hadn’t been able to go Bronzing with her friends, since all her evenings were dedicated to patrolling, and the club was seriously devoid of demons. That reminded her of other unfulfilled needs, like swaying to the beat with a nice, hard, cool body next to her...

Shaking off for what seemed like the millionth time any and all thoughts of the bleached-blond vampire that had managed to turn her entire life upside-down in just a handful of encounters, she focused instead on trying to feel her surroundings, using that special Slayer-sense that she’d been working on so diligently.

Half an hour and a cemetery later, she still hadn’t even seen a peaceful demon cross her path, let alone something killable, or better yet, the vampire in question himself. She was starting to wonder if maybe the ‘Saturday’ the balding vampire had talked about was maybe another week away. That would blow to no limit. There was no way in hell that her parents, Giles, or her friends would let her go out to meet Spike alone again. It had already taken hours, if not days, of pleading, bargaining, bribing, and threatening for them to allow her to go out alone as it was. Another week of those damned planning sessions and she’d probably end up with air support for good measure. She snorted again to herself.

“What’s so funny, Slayer? Care to enlighten me on what exactly’s got you thinking so loudly in the middle of a bleeding cemetery?”

She turned toward the sound of his voice, cursing herself for not realizing he’d gotten so close. When she saw him, her heart skipped a beat. He’s really here! She took a moment to look him over, making sure he looked the same. Boots, black jeans, black t-shirt, red unbuttoned shirt, black leather duster, black nail polish, silver rings and chains, platinum-blonde hair, blue eyes…

She tried to see what impression she made on him, what with all the changes she’d gone through since the last time they’d actually set eyes on each other. She now had steel-tipped boots that might not have been the most fashionable thing she’d worn, but that both her dad and Giles had insisted would be a great help in her duties. Her red leather pants, simple black top and red leather jacket had also been bought from the “Dad’s Special Slayer Fund.” Now that she thought about it, she was wearing his colors, even though inverted. What actually seemed to have captured his attention though, after he’d raked up and down her body with lecherous eyes, was her hair. She’d recently gone to the hairdresser’s and had her highlights redone, opting for a bigger contrast between the different layers, as well as making her hair more wavy. Coupled with edgier make-up, complete with bright red lipstick and smoky eyeliner, it had made quite an impression at school, leaving even Cordelia at a loss for insults. Okay, enough with the ogling and the preening. She pulled out a stake from one of the custom-made jacket’s secret compartments and faced him defiantly.

“You actually decided to show up, for a change. I was starting to think that all this “Master of Sunnydale” bit had made you forget about little old me. Gotta tell you, ignoring a Slayer is never a good idea.”

He chuckled low in his throat, but there was no humor behind it. He dropped the cigarette he’d been smoking and ground it beneath his heel. “So that’s how it’s going to be, is it? Well, good for you love, saves me from going through a whole song and dance.”

He was on her in a flash, his fist sending her reeling back. The fight intensified from there, with a savagery that hadn’t been present in any of their previous encounters, either against each other, or even when they were side by side, going through vamps and demons alike. They both gave as good as they got, while their fight carried them around the cemetery grounds. They were weaving between headstones, fighting on top of mausoleums, trying to use any and all tricks to get an advantage on the other. They left cracked and broken stones and trees in their wake, but neither cared, focused as they were on the battle.

With a particularly vicious blow from the vampire, the stake flew from out of Buffy’s grasp and landed too far from her to be of any use. She couldn’t allow herself even a fraction of a second to panic though, and was rewarded pretty soon afterwards with a golden opportunity. One of her hits that he failed to block properly landed to the side of his chest, where he must have had a still-broken rib. Maybe it was a souvenir from one of those fights she’d heard about at Willy’s. Whatever it was, it caused him to drop his guard for just a moment, and she jumped at her chance. She pressed her advantage, and after a few more well-placed hits and a sweep of the legs, he was effectively trapped under her, his arms pressed to his sides. All she needed to do then was to get her back-up stake from her jacket, and he would be history. As it was, it proved too much of a challenge, as Spike took his chance at head-butting her in the face. He then turned them over, leaving her trapped under him and in mortal danger. Maybe even in more danger than he’d just been, seeing that he didn’t need to get a stake to kill her.

Their eyes met, and time seemed to stand still, both of them stopping their fight for dominance in favor of just looking at one another. She wanted to open her mouth to say something, anything. She’d kept quiet throughout their battle, uncharacteristically foregoing her trademark quips and jibes, because she was unwilling to let slip anything that would reveal her inner turmoil. The conflicting emotions he brought out in her would have been enough to keep a psychiatrist busy for weeks, if not months. And thinking of that usually brought a shudder through her, at the memory of the “facility” in which her parents had dumped her. Right then, though, seeing him so close, feeling his body flush against hers made the need for words overwhelming. Before she had a chance to act on anything, though, he was kissing her, and she was kissing him back, all thoughts of fighting, resisting, or talking having flown right out the proverbial window.

She decided that she couldn’t get enough of his taste, or of the way his hands weren’t exactly holding her down anymore, instead more like caressing. The burning need for more consumed her and for a split second she was glad that she hadn’t put a stake through his heart just moments before. So when he abruptly stopped devouring her mouth with his, she couldn’t even focus on opening her eyes to see what was wrong, let alone try to free her hands from his lax grasp. But when she felt his fangs pierce her neck, her eyes popped open, and she screamed.

***


Her taste was even better than he’d hoped. It had been nearly a century since he’d had his last taste of Slayer blood, and the memory of it, although burned in his brain for all eternity, was clearly just a pale comparison to the real thing. While he’d drained every last drop from the Chinese Slayer, Nikki had been a different matter altogether. Since it had been more about the fight itself and less about tasting her blood, he’d broken her neck before he’d had a chance to even get a sip. Afterwards he didn’t have either the time or the energy to attempt draining her corpse. Without the aid of the all-important beating human heart, getting enough to sate his hunger would have meant his putting more effort into it, by hanging her body from somewhere and letting gravity help him do the job. Needless to say, that wasn’t exactly an option in the metro where they’d fought, so he’d just lifted the coat off her and left on his merry way.

Buffy’s heart was beating and with each pulse more blood would surge into his mouth, filling it with that magic elixir that was her life force. He didn’t get to enjoy it for long, though, before a thought managed to creep to the forefront of his mind. That heart was beating because of him. The air that was filling her lungs, allowing her to scream his bloody ear off, was going in and out of her because he had given her the breath of life. His eyes opened in shock at the realization that had been simmering in the back of his consciousness. Resistance is futile, his mind supplied in a synthesized voice stolen from one of those Sci-fi shows that he’d secretly watched behind Dru’s back. He was well and truly buggered!

Ever since that night back in the Master’s underground church turned prison, he had tried his best to rationalize his actions as evil. Saving her had been a grand and pretty effective ‘screw you’ gesture to Peaches, old Bat-Face, and everyone everywhere as well. It had been anarchy at its purest and he had reveled in the chaos it created like a good evil-doer should.

Then their chance first meeting in LA had been all about getting back at his sire and her precious “Daddy.” Since Angel had stolen his girl right from under him, he’d retaliated by snogging the stuffing out of the girl Angel had been so interested in. Tit for tat, as it were, but still evil to the bone, right?

The scene with her dad had been pure, unadulterated mischief; the look on the blighter’s face alone being priceless. Thank all the Hells that the apartment had been on the wrong side of the bloody building for the sun to come streaming in; otherwise, maybe it could’ve turned out different. No matter, he’d have thought up something equally bad to do instead. The whole mess with the pack of vampires, followed by the group of demons they’d fought together, had been nothing more than him protecting his investment. She was his to kill and nobody else’s, damn it!

Coming back to Sunnyhell, digging up and destroying the Master’s bones after he’d previously gotten rid of that “Annoying” little git meant that nobody could stop him from claiming his spot as the top dog in the Order of Aurelius, one of the most feared and evil there had ever been. The logical next step for any self-respecting Big Bad had been his claiming mastery over the Hellmouth itself. And hadn’t that been a barrel of laughs, with the nearly constant stream of challengers that had only let up once most of the leaders of the various demon clans were dead, their entrails decorating almost every surface of his lair.

Ordering a strict no-killing policy in Sunnydale had been just as evil, of course. And that was because… Well just because he was a goddamn rebel, not to be questioned when he went against the norm. Hell, it had been so radical that it had even earned him a summons from the bloody mayor of the god-forsaken town. Of course, during the meeting itself, he’d found out about the man’s enormous hard-on for becoming an all-out pure demon. Ripping the old sod to pieces, setting those pieces on fire, and scattering his ashes in the same river he’d previously disposed of the Master’s remains was just his way on ensuring that no idiot would ever dare to think of using him as a bloody means to an end. He was his own vamp, for fuck’s sake, not a sodding lap-dog.

And of course, to top this list of truly despicable evil deeds, he had single-handedly fought and bested the Slayer herself, while still being on the mend from the wound he’d gotten from what had seemed like an endless series of epic battles. So why was the nagging voice inside his head that had kept telling him to stop lying to himself—which sounded suspiciously like the Slayer— currently laughing at his claims of being evil? Why did it feel so bloody wrong to snuff out that which he himself had restored and protected—namely the Slayer’s life?

The answer was as deceptively simple as it was unnatural, and it was the reason why his eyes were currently bulging out of their sockets in shock in the first place. He’d done it all just to get more time with the Slayer. No, it wasn’t even something as quasi-potentially evil as a vampire wanting more time to study and enjoy the fight with his arch-nemesis. He wanted more time with Buffy. So if that had meant eliminating every possible threat to her well-being he could find, he’d done it willingly and with such glee that it shook him to the core. Which made him question why in all the bloody Hells he hadn’t stopped drinking from her already?

He carefully stopped the blood flowing from the wound he had inflicted. Pulling back from her neck, he could finally focus on how her heart was beating a lot slower, close to the point where it would start to falter and then stop altogether. Her ear-shattering screams of fear and agony when he’d first started feeding from her had tapered off to weak, gurgling sounds that made something in his chest clench painfully. As he looked down at her pale, stricken face, he knew there was no going back.


Chapter End Notes:
I hope you don't hate me too much for where this is leaving off.



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