Chapter 27
The insistent buzzing in Anya’s brain alerted her that her boss was asking her to visit. Well, not asking, more like ordering.
Warm masculine fingers were tracing the dip of her waist, the length of his body brushing against her back almost hesitantly, as if he was reluctant to take what he wanted. As if he sensed her tension.
Anya bit her lip and forced her stiff limbs to move. Away from him.
“Where are you going?” Xander asked, sitting up as well.
He was a man. She lived to use and lose them, sometimes to keep their testicles for a keepsake. When she’d broken them in, she’d never felt the urge to go back and lick them all over again and again. Men were the most unreliable, cheating, selfish species and he was one of them. Only he wasn’t, was he?
“My parents are waiting for me,” she said with a shrug and her tongue almost stammered on the lie. It would have if she hadn’t had centuries of practice. For some reason, she seemed to forget that when he was around and she feared she was starting to get infected by humanity.
“But I thought we could… I don’t know, maybe have some Cheetos and watch morning cartoons?” His brown puppy eyes looked at her accusingly.
Come on, tell him. Tell him it’s over. That he’s a despicable human who isn’t worthy to lick your heels? “How about we meet up later? You can buy me a smoothie.”
“Sure,” he said, acting casual but the pleased eagerness glinting in his eyes was hard to miss.
She knew Xander didn’t have much money and had taken a part-time job so he could afford to take her out. Her gut clenched in an uncomfortable feeling she didn’t recognise but she refused to be bullied into feeling bad at all. If she admitted to being a bit of a heartless bitch and caring about his emotions, she might as well say she loved him. Which was ridiculous because vengeance demons didn’t love. She didn’t.
They traded inane chatter as he watched her get dressed and then pulled her down for one last kiss before letting her go. Her lips still tingled by the time she entered her temporary dwelling and opened the portal to her home dimension.
The shift into a different world hardly registered. When things got done often enough, one could get used to anything. Even an open botanic garden lit up by the 12 planets circling in the sky above.
Snick. Snick.
Her boss, D’Hoffryn, heaved pruning shears higher in his hands and continued trimming the rose bush. “Anyanka. I haven’t seen you in a while. Been busy, I hope.”
She didn’t miss the question in his voice. “Yes. Sunnydale is just ripe for vengeance. Just last week I comforted a housewife whose husband was cheating on her with a postman. I made him—”
“As nice as that is, that’s not why I sent you there.”
“I don’t know who the Potential is.”
D’Hoffryn stopped trimming. “You don’t.”
She barricaded her mind against his mental probing. “No.”
“Well, you’d better go back and find her. You don’t want me to send Hallie, do you? If you can’t get the job done and kill her—”
“I can. You know I’m the best.”
She had just lied to her boss. She had never lied to him before and if he ever found out, it would be her guts he would be trimming with the shears.
“You are. Now go and make me proud.”
The portal behind her zipped open and she crossed over, making her steps confident and deliberately slow to avoid further suspicion.
*******
Spike killed the engine of his DeSoto and got out of the car to light up a cigarette. He knew Joyce would give him hell if he smoked in her house. Rupert wouldn’t mind but Spike knew his wife had Rupert’s balls in a vice and she was the one calling the shots.
A gust of cold wind swatted his cheeks as he stared at the house, exhaling a puff of smoke. He’d left his bike halfway to Cleveland, stopping at a fellow hunter’s place to pick up his black beauty of a car. Not that he wasn’t fond of his bike, but he didn’t much care for getting his arse frozen to the seat. Cleveland did not share Sunnydale’s friendly climate.
He savoured the nicotine flooding his lungs, half-lidded eyes fixed at the front door as his lips massaged the filter. The copies of Valley of the Sun were safely hidden in the inside pocket of his coat, waiting to be decrypted so he could just get on with it.
The front door suddenly swung open and Spike coughed as the smoke got stuck in his throat.
“William?” Joyce called with a frown. “What are you doing out there?”
Getting his breathing under control, he flicked the stub to the ground and ground it with the toe of his boot before striding towards Joyce with a smile. “Came to visit the old man, if that’s all right with you.”
She stepped back and ushered him in. “Of course. I didn’t know you were coming. You should have called. I would have made you that cheesecake that you like so much. Oh God, the house is a mess—”
“Joyce,” he said with a chuckle and closed the door behind him. “Relax. Your house is as lovely as always.”
She cupped his face and searched his face with a critical gaze. “You’ve gotten thinner. Have you been eating properly?”
He gave an embarrassed shrug and stepped away, not too keen on her motherly concern. Even less keen on needing it when he’d tried to keep both her and Rupert at arm’s length ever since Rupert had found him in the alley in London.
Her arms dropped and she gave him a sad smile that made him feel both guilty and slightly annoyed. She knew he didn’t let anyone close.
“Can you make me hot chocolate though?” he asked, knowing that she needed to fuss over him and he should let her because pretending to give in was the only way to escape an even closer scrutiny.
“Of course. With little marshmallows?” She smiled over her shoulder as he followed her into the kitchen.
“Cheers, love.”
He watched her get busy, precise and graceful like a warrior in the field. And she could be. As stubborn and deadly as any hunter he’d ever met. But unlike the lot of them, Joyce had an open heart. She reminded him of Buffy, in some aspects, especially her hard-headed ways. God forbid the two of them should ever meet. Not that they would, he thought, casting his eyes to the ground. He’d made a right mess of things. Wouldn’t be surprised that if he ever saw Buffy again, she wouldn’t even want to talk to him.
“You’ve gotten quiet,” Joyce said, her voice unthreatening but too intent for his peace of mind. She stirred the hot chocolate. “Anything troubling you?”
“Beside the usual, you mean?”
She gave a little snort. “I’ve known you for years, William. And I know you refuse to think of us as your family but that’s what you are to me. I can tell this is something else. This isn’t about Angelus.”
He hopped on the counter, ignoring her reprimanding look. “So, humour me then? What do you think is troubling me, as you so nicely put it?”
“A girl.”
Spike gaped.
“So I’m right then.”
Spike sputtered, shifting on the counter. “N-no. There’s not—”
She lifted her eyebrow.
“Yeah, okay. Maybe,” he admitted petulantly and crossed his arms over his chest. Damn that woman. She always made him fold like a cheap garden chair.
“So who is she? Dish!” The excitement in her voice did nothing to alleviate his tension or the urge to dash as far away from her interrogation as humanly possible.
“Dish?” he asked mockingly instead.
“Yes.” She grinned. “You’re not getting any hot chocolate until you do.”
She turned the stove off and poured the delicious smelling beverage into two mugs with dancing kittens on them. The scent made him salivate and he knew that she knew it. What kind of a woman took advantage of a man’s weakness like that?
She dipped a marshmallow into her cup, blew at it and popped it into her mouth with an exaggerated sigh of bliss.
Bloody hell. He was a weak man. His shoulders dropped in defeat in the face of Joyce’s superb manipulation skills and he started to talk.
*******
The front door clicked open and shut followed by sounds of shuffling and groaning before Rupert lumbered in, briefcase hanging from one arm, three thick tomes balanced in the other. Probably getting back from the university where he taught history.
He stopped in the kitchen doorway and blinked. “Spike?”
He glanced up from his mug miserably, feeling a bit relieved to see the older man. Finally, he would be saved from the stream of questions and Joyce’s meddling. She meant well and was a very sympathetic ear but he’d already told her more than he should have.
“For God’s sake, woman. What did you do to him? He looks as if he’s been beaten up by a pack of Fyarl demons,” Rupert said and dropped his briefcase on the kitchen table.
“Not on the table, honey.”
The briefcase was removed within seconds.
“I didn’t do anything to William. We just talked, that’s all. Love trouble.”
Rupert seemed at a loss, not much into discussing other people’s emotional state. He and Joyce were polar opposites. Spike figured that was why they got along so well.
“I came here to talk to you,” Spike said, standing up, eager to drop the subject of ‘I screwed up and now the girl hates me’. “Need your help with something.”
“Yes, indeed. Shall we go to my study?”
Spike nodded, grateful that he’d be saved from disclosing even more of his non-existent love life. Joyce could give Buffy a run for her money when it came to nosiness.
He followed Rupert to the study and sprawled in a plush leather chair opposite the older man who sat down in a much more refined way, his elbows resting on the mahogany desk between them.
“You didn’t come for Christmas,” Rupert said, watching him from behind his spectacles.
“Straight to the heart of the matter, eh? Think Joyce might have infected you with her lack of diplomacy.”
Rupert pushed his glasses further up his nose, a corner of his mouth twitching. “I dare say it was the other way around. I wasn’t always this…”
“Stuffy?”
“Thank you, William. That’s precisely what I was trying to say.”
The use of his pre-Spike name was a clear sign he’d managed to annoy Rupert. “Well, you know me. I aim to please.”
“Any chance I’ll get an honest answer out of you?”
“About?”
“Christmas. Thought you were too old to keep up the nonsense and—”
“Nonsense?” Spike asked, his spine stiffening. “You know why I never spend the holidays with you. I’d hardly call it a nonsense.”
Rupert heaved a deep sigh, the lines on his face deepening. “It’s been about a decade that—”
“Twelve years,” Spike interrupted with blazing eyes. “And ten years since Dru… so yeah, sorry I can’t quite get over it yet.”
“I’m not asking you to get over it. All I’m asking is that you start to see there is more to life than revenge. That you think before you rush headlong into a suicidal mission. We will get Angelus eventually. We’re gathering resources. Even the Council keeps track of his activities, seeking Potentials to keep them safe. Well, more like checking up on their own interests,” he said bitterly.
Rupert had quit the Council after his slayer had been murdered in Cruciamentum. The Council called it a ritual. Spike called it slaughter. After that, Rupert and a bunch of other freelance demon hunters set up their own organization to fight against evil but he still had connections within the Council to keep track of their activities.
“I’ve got resources of my own,” Spike said in a cold, unyielding voice. “I’m doing this and I’m doing this on my own terms. I’m not waiting for a bunch of old farts to get off their arses to do something about it. Angelus is mine. You and your fellas had better not be standing in my way either, Rupert.”
“Standing in your way?” His palm slapped down on the wooden surface. “I’m trying to help you!”
Spike leaped from the chair, hands splaying on the desk palm-down, his shoulders straining under the weight of his denial. “All I need from you is for you to translate the book.”
Red blotches bloomed on Rupert’s face. “Heaven forbid you’d admit someone might actually care about you, William.”
He didn’t have friends. All he had were colleagues, fellow hunters, acquaintances. Never would he call anyone family or a friend again. Sever all ties, keep the gaping crater of indifference between him and everyone else. “Just translate the book, Rupert. If you don’t, I’ll find someone else who will.”
Rupert collapsed back into his swivel chair, tension draining from his body like air from a burst birthday balloon. “I promised I would help you and I shall, but… you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Maybe,” he admitted with shrug, pushing himself away from the desk. “But I’ll take him down with me. Isn’t that what you’re all about? The bigger picture? What does one person matter if the sodding world keeps spinning?”
“It does matter.” Rupert took off the glasses, avoiding his gaze. “Bring me the documents.”
With a nod, Spike went to get his coat, feeling a vague satisfaction and even a more disturbing sense of regret. What was there to regret? He’d got Rupert to help him. So what if he denied admitting he saw him and Joyce as more than associates? No. There wasn’t anything to admit because people were expendable and died too fast. It was the way of the world, he thought as he yanked the photocopies out of his coat, hesitating when he encountered Buffy’s locket. After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped it into his jeans’ pocket. He faltered in his step as Joyce looked at him from the kitchen with concern that jostled that soft spot in his heart Buffy had woken.
“Are you staying here for the night? I’ll prepare the guest room for you,” she said, sliding closer towards him.
The words ‘I’ll stay at a motel’ were prepared to leap off his tongue, but instead he said, “All right. Thanks, pet.”
She gave him a nod and he resumed his stride to Rupert’s study, all the while convincing himself it would be easier to assist with the translation when he was nearby. That was the only reason he was staying.
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you everyone who filled out my survey last week!! You basically saved my life. :) Three assignments handed in, so I thought I'd celebrate by updating. Hope you'll enjoy!
Beta'd by the awesome All4Spike.
Beta'd by the awesome All4Spike.