Chapter 27

-  Twenty-six hours later -

Buffy woke in William’s arms.  A sliver of light crept around the edge of the curtain that surrounded their bed, and she could see that he was deeply asleep.  His sharp cheekbones were covered in a fine dusting of whiskers, and her fingers itched to rub against them.

He looked so innocent in sleep.  Truth be told, he looked pretty innocent while awake, too.  Sometimes, though, when he gave her that sideways glance, something sensual leapt behind his blue eyes that caused her breath to catch.  She moved her hand up to his throat and placed her fingers against it gently, so as not to wake him.  The thrum of his heartbeat never failed to steady her.

She should have been exhausted and sleeping as deeply as William.  The previous night hadn’t gone as anyone had expected.  Just after they’d settled in for the night, and long before anything erotic could begin between the two of them, their train had come to an unexpected halt in the middle of an Ohio cow pasture.  Only thirty minutes earlier, a freight train had derailed several cars due to a stray bull. 

Since they were on an isolated bit of track, there was no side rail to bypass the accident.  They were stuck directly behind the mess for over fifteen hours, waiting as workmen noisily cleaned up the cars and cargo.  The gentle rocking motion of the train lulling them to sleep was replaced by metallic clangs and groans as workers cleared the rails.

Through all of it there was precious little sleep for anyone on the passenger train, and no love-making at all for William and Buffy.

The debris wasn’t cleared until late afternoon, about the time they should have been arriving in Chicago.  Once they were underway again, the conductor had assured those passengers traveling further west that they wouldn’t miss their connection to Omaha, but that it would involve an early morning transfer.  This meant that they’d be spending a second night on the train instead of in a Chicago hotel as they’d planned. 

She sighed heavily.  No nookie last night and no Chicago hotel sex tonight.  Olde tyme trains sucked ass.  They were nothing more than evil, sex-depriving machines.

The engine carried them around a particularly sharp corner, and William shifted subtly in his sleep, pressing his side against her.  Carefully moving her hand away from his throat, she reached over to touch a finger to a lock of hair that had fallen into his eyes.

“Mmm,” he mumbled, nuzzling his nose against her neck.

She shifted so that she faced him and her back was pressed to the wall of the car.  As the train rumbled and clacked over the rails, a pleasant vibrating feeling radiated from her back through her entire body.

He adjusted his position again, capturing her thigh between his legs and letting out a pleasant sigh.  Even through the layers of her dress and his trousers, she could feel his erection pressing urgently into her hip.

She pressed her back even tighter against the train wall to create a little space between William and herself.  Very slowly, she reached down and unfastened the buttons of his fly.  His breathing remained very steady, and she smiled smugly to herself. 

Once his fly was open, she began to very cautiously untie his drawer string.  Just as she tugged on the bow, his eyelids fluttered open.  His eyes were blue lamps in the dark, watching her wordlessly, seriously.  She leaned up and touched her lips to his, whisper soft, feeling him shudder just before he deepened the kiss.  His tongue ran along the edge of her teeth, and he sucked on her lower lip, teasing it with soft nibbling kisses.

She wriggled her hips against his, her hand still caught in their tender vice.  She slid her fingertips just inside his waistband and swept them against the tip of his erection as he groaned his response into her mouth.

He moved his lips to her ear.  “Darling, as much as I want to, as much as I crave you, I wouldn’t dream of compromising your …”

She whispered, “I’m big with the stealthiness.  You’ll see.  Besides, if you think I’m going one more night with no sex, you’re out of your mind.”

When he swallowed, she leaned over to kiss and lick the spot where his Adam’s apple had just bobbed in his throat.  She could feel a rumble of a moan against her lips, but she couldn’t hear a sound above the clacking of the rails beneath them.

Sliding her hand from where it had been pleasantly tucked within his drawers, she busily untied her own set of bloomers and wriggled out of them.  After hiking up her skirts, she tugged the covers up and over their waists.

“See?”  she whispered in his ear.  “If I try, I can be discreet, William.”  She couldn’t resist biting his earlobe, gently.

“Mmmgh,” he groaned, but it was faint enough that she was sure the walrus brothers hadn’t heard.

He licked his bottom lip hungrily as he undid her bodice buttons with shaking fingers.  Once the front of her dress was open, he tugged up her chemise so that her breasts were exposed, even though they were trapped on all sides by restricting fabric.  He gave her a sinful grin, then dipped his head down to lick and suckle at her nipples like a thirsty babe.  She bit back a whimper and tangled her fingers in his curls, tugging him closer to her.

His hips began to move rhythmically against her thigh, and the support from beneath their bed creaked rather loudly.  Instantly, he pulled back from her breasts, his expression bordering on pain.

“It’s okay, William,” she soothed quietly into his ear as she tunneled her fingers through his hair.

She reached down to his drawers to find that his cock had already escaped its confines and was pressed into the folds of her skirt.  Pulling her skirt to the side, she wrapped her fingers around his erection.  He muffled a hiss of pleasure into her neck.

Moving slowly, so as not to rustle the covers, she placed one leg over his hip.  Still holding his cock in her fist, she guided him toward her entrance, which was already slick with anticipation.  She brought her hips up until they were flush with his and slid his erection into her channel.

“We can be silent if we let the train do the work, love,” she sighed into his ear.

Comprehension dawned on his face and he leaned over to suckle on her earlobe.  “Missed this, miss you … so much.  Oh love …”  His mumblings were disjointed and marvelous.  His hands moved over her like a breeze, stirring first across her breasts, then her sides.

He bit his bottom lip, watching her closely, sheathed so tightly within her as the gentle, swaying motion of the train rocked him steadily within her.  She stroked her fingertips down his cheeks, across his stubble.  He captured her hand in his, bringing her fingers into his mouth, where he nipped and suckled them one by one.

The vibration from the tracks and the gentle rocking motion of the train combined to create a lovely buzzing sensation just where his pubic bone pressed against her clitoris.  When they crossed a bridge, the cla-clack, cla-clack of the rhythm picked up and her orgasm built very quickly, washing over her like a lightning storm in spring.  Her walls gripped his cock as her pussy sent out delicious spasms of pleasure. 

She tried to muffle a groan by tucking into his shoulder, but he quickly moved his hand to her mouth, so that he could watch her face as she came.  Just as she was coming down from her climax, he began.  His eyes, still locked on hers, widened and glazed over.  He pumped his hips against her, pressing her against the wall.  It creaked a moan.  William bit his lips tightly, but she could hear a muffled cry from his throat as he collapsed against her neck.

After a few moments, she brought her fingers up to toy with the curls that had fallen into his eyes.  “I think the brothers are none the wiser, William,” she whispered into his ear.  “We got away with it.”

He pulled back to look at her.  He bit back an impish grin and his cheeks turned red.   It was absolutely charming to watch her shy husband blush even as his cock filled her.

They lay like that for the longest time, watching one another through eyelids that kept falling shut, so heavy with sleep.  Rocked by the motion of the track beneath them and the train around them – lost inside one another.  They were wrapped tightly around one another until somewhere a few hundred miles east of Chicago.  There, with William still inside her, they finally fell asleep.

~*~

Stars above his head, wind in his hair and bucking female beneath him.  Billy was certain there was nothing on earth as fine as fucking while on top of a moving train.  So far, things couldn’t be panning out any better.  Being dead was a hell of a lot more fun than being alive had ever been.

Dru was on all fours while he took her from behind.  When she shimmied, pumping her white rump against his pummeling hips, he grabbed a fistful of her dark hair and redoubled his thrusts.  Since they’d already gone at it three times, he could be patient on this go round.  Only when she cried out in completion did he allow himself to finish – thrusting against her flanks in a gallop until he finally, blessedly, burst.

He stayed there, comfortably held in her cold vice, and ground his hips against her leisurely.  When a band of coyotes yipped in the distance, he felt such a sense of joy, so much blasted euphoria in the moment, that he lifted his head and joined them, barking out into the night air.

After a moment, he gave her ass a playful swat and pulled out so that he could stretch out beside her.  Before sex, she’d carefully laid her gown down which provided a kind of bedroll for them.

As the train rumbled around a corner, he balanced carefully, then placed his arms beneath his head and looked up.  The stars were out, and brighter than he could remember seeing.  It must have something or other to do with his new vampire eyesight.  Dru rolled over next to him, his contented hell-cat.

“We’ve had four tosses in less than an hour.  I’ve never fucked like that in my life.  This has to do with bein’ a vampire, don’t it?”

She nodded, but remained preoccupied, pointing at the stars and mumbling under her breath.

“What else can I expect?”  She seemed to understand a great deal more about his new condition than she let on, and he was eager to know all of it.  “Since I drink blood, do I still need to make water?”

She stopped concentrating on the stars for a moment and looked at him questioningly.  “Make … water?”

“Piss,” he clarified.

She shook her head and focused her attention back to the sky, wriggling her fingers and mumbling names and numbers.  “Angelus only needed to do that after he drank too much.  It would be the same for you, I think.  Though you’re so very different than him in so many ways …”

Billy was barely able to follow her, once again.  Dru had spoken of the ‘angel’ a lot before they’d had sex.  She’d even winced when he first touched her breast.  But when she spoke of ‘Angelus’, she’d talked of the pain he would inflict, and by Billy’s reckoning the fellow seemed more demon than angel.  Billy aimed to teach her that fucking was a lot more about pleasure than pain. 

“’Splain again why it is we’re goin’ to Utah, will you?”

“I’ve told you, my William.  The slayer’s there.”

“Utah, though?  Not a drop of liquor or lick of fun to be had in the whole miserable state from what I hear tell.  Just a mess of wives and babies and churches.  Why the hell would a slayer set up camp there?”

“William and I will kill a slayer, forever changing the destiny of the Hellmouth,” she repeated her favorite litany, yet again.  Whenever she was bored, or hell, just when there was a sufficient lull in the conversation, she’d mutter that cockamamie prophecy again.  Usually she’d look over to her dolly while saying it, too.  Luckily, they’d left Miss Edith in the freight car below, along with most of Billy’s clothes and the unlucky brakeman they’d dined on.

The train lurched to one side as it went around a particularly sharp corner, and he steadied her with a hand about her waist.  She looked at him, an expression of surprise flickered across her face before it was replaced with a look that held a hint of tenderness.

“We should dress.  We’ll be at the Ogden train station soon, and Miss Edith will have instructions.”

He shook his head at her mention of the damned dolly.  Whenever Dru was away from Miss Edith for long, she’d grow uneasy and find some reason or another to consult with her.  He followed her down the ladder and into the car. While Dru whispered to her little lump of stuffing, Billy went through the belongings of the dead brakeman.  It wasn’t stealing, exactly – more like harvesting.  The man had been carrying two full flasks of very good whiskey, which would be a real pity to waste.

After dressing hastily, Dru motioned him to the smaller door at the end of the car.

“We shall need to leave as soon as the train comes to a halt.  The slayer is outside of town.”

“Will we need to steal a horse?” God, he hoped so.  If he could round out the evening with a little horse thieving, the night would be damn near perfect.

“Don’t want to ride a beastie.  They don’t like me,” Dru pouted.

“They like me plenty fine.  It’s all in how you talk to ‘em.”

Dru didn’t look convinced.

“Trust me.  We’ll double up.  You’ll see.”

The train lurched to a halt with a cloud of steam and hail of screeching metal.  With the flick of her wrist, Dru unlatched the door and they slid out into the dark train yard.

Since it was the dead of night, it was easy to slip out of the train yard unnoticed.  The good citizens of Ogden were all tucked into proper beds, he reckoned, and all was quiet.  The town was laid out so peculiarly that Billy couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What is it?” Dru hissed.

“It’s just … such a queer little town.  All these very wide streets for such a dusty little place.”

“Some day, my William, these little streets will be filled with shining metal and glass.”  She spun around in the middle of the dirt road, hey eyes focused on a vision that only she could see.  “And these paths filled with shining metal boxes.  The sky, too.” She jerked her head up.  “Metal birds that carry people and sing such ugly songs.  They whine and roar …”

Her gaze was unfocused and her jaw unhinged.  An uncomfortable feeling crept over him whenever she got like this.  He touched her elbow as gently as he could and said simply, “Dru?”

She looked at him, her eyes bright and empty as those of her dolly.

“The slayer?” he asked.

“Yes!”  She clapped her hands enthusiastically and gave him a grin.  Looking down to the bundle in her arms, she touched the tip of her dolly’s nose.  “Where might we find a horse then, Miss Edith?”  After a moment of staring into the doll’s dead eyes, she looked up at Billy with no trace of her momentary madness.  “Just down the street, we’ll find a lovely bay mare inside a white barn.”  

Billy nodded and followed her lead.  Sure enough, the bay was there waiting for them, and he had her saddled in no time.  After he’d settled onto her back, he coaxed Dru up where he held her tightly in front of him.

“Just don’t move sudden-like, and the mare will be fine.  She needs to get used to us.” 

Dru took his words to heart, nodding her head almost imperceptibly.  It took a moment to even register that she was agreeing with him, and he couldn’t help but grin at how seriously she had taken his command. 

With a shake of the reins the horse moved out of the barn and, following the direction of Dru’s gaze, Billy guided her east.  From time to time Dru would slowly and carefully lift the dolly to her ear, then make a slight adjustment to their course. 

They’d been riding for over an hour and had just crossed a dried up creek bed when Dru gave him an urgent look and tilted her head toward a lonely one-room cabin tucked at the end of the gully.

 “Here?” he whispered.

She gave him another tight nod, and Billy brought the mare to a halt.  Though they were still a good distance from the cabin, he climbed off the horse and tied her to a fencepost before reaching up to ease Dru from the saddle. 

“This slayer fellow – he won’t be expectin’ us, will he?”  Billy reached down to check the chambers of his pistols – a quick ritual that never failed to reassure him.

Dru muffled a giggle.  “The slayer is a girl, William.  A sixteen-year-old named Henrietta.”

“Well, I suppose if the world made sense, men would ride sidesaddle.  Still, a young girl like that and two of us?  It don’t seem right.” 

“Henrietta is more than she appears to be.  And Miss Edith says there are no men about.  Our slayer is one of four wives but is alone tonight, except for her sleeping babe.”

Dru tilted her head to the side and surveyed the cabin thoughtfully.  Slowly, she lifted her dolly, looking at Miss Edith’s painted porcelain pout as though her lips were moving.  Listening carefully, Dru nodded, a smile gradually widening her mouth.  “Clever dear,” she said, patting her dolly’s head before turning to Billy.

“We’re to stage a little play for the slayer!  On Miss Edith’s command.”

Billy said nothing to this, preferring to fiddle with his gun while Dru elaborated.

“I’m to play Damsel in Distress while you get the role of Evil Villain.”

She was no easier to follow than usual, and Billy bit his lip, waiting for more explanation.

“You change into vampire form and wait back here, by the beastie.  I’ll wake the slayer by pounding on the door.  You pretend to attack me, which will lure the slayer out of her cabin where we can take care of her.”

“Seems pretty damned convoluted to me.  Can’t we just go in there and … slay her?”

“Can’t go in without an invitation, William,” she chided, as though that was the most obvious thing in the world.  For being the all powerful undead, there seemed to be an awful lot of rules to the situation.

There was no point arguing with her, with the two of them, really.  Billy nodded and shifted into vampire face, hanging back by the mare.  Dru ran a hand through her hair until she looked good and disheveled, then ran toward the cabin door with a very convincing scream.

Dru fell against the door, pounding her fists and yelling for all she was worth.  Billy was almost surprised the door held – the flimsy structure was, strictly speaking, far more shack than cabin.

It wasn’t but an instant before the door opened and there she stood.  The slayer.  He couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt less threatened by a being.  Henrietta was small, even for sixteen, and she nearly tripped on the edge of her nightgown as she yanked open the door. 

He was so surprised by her appearance that he’d nearly forgotten his role in their little passion play.  Recovering quickly, he made a growling sound and ran toward the cabin as fast as he could.

True to Dru’s – and the dolly’s – prediction, the slayer stepped out of the cabin and past the woman at her door, raising a wooden stake above her head, threateningly.  As soon as she passed Dru, Dru’s features shifted into her vampire form, and she whirled on the girl.

Perhaps sensing the transformation that had occurred just behind her back, Henrietta turned to see that she was now trapped between vampires.

Billy looked to Dru, her yellow eyes glowing, and relaxed his expression, shifting back into human form.  When Dru shot him a questioning look, he shook his head.  “You have a go, Dru.  Two of us against that little scrap of a girl just wouldn’t be sportin’.”

“But the prophecy says that together we will …”

Devil spare him from hearing that miserable prophecy one more time.  He cut her off.  “I won’t.  You’ll do fine.”

Dru grinned with savage intelligence.  In one moment she threw Miss Edith toward him.  He caught the bundle reluctantly and stepped backwards to give the women room to fight.  Even before Miss Edith had landed, Dru lunged toward the girl.  Henrietta dropped to a crouch and side-stepped Dru, who fell hard against the cabin wall.

The slayer ran up to the side of the small gully and began to climb up the crumbling sandstone wall.  She was a natural fighter, to seek the higher ground.  Dru was just as quick, however, and leaped up, just catching Henrietta’s ankle and yanking her to the ground with a feral snarl.  The slayer hit the earth and rolled to one side, springing to her feet in an instant.

She’s stronger than she looks, Billy thought with a hint of admiration.  Faster, too.

Dru considered her foe through narrowed eyes and lunged for the girl’s feet. The girl leapt up just before Dru touched her, and Dru landed in the dirt with empty arms.  Henrietta leapt on Dru’s back, and it gave a sickening crunch.   Immediately, the small girl crouched and pulled her arm back, ready to drive the stake into Dru, when the vampire twisted, throwing the girl to the side and towards Billy.

“Do something!”  Dru growled at him, as she sprang to her feet.  Billy shook his head, holding firm.

Dru swung her foot around, and though Henrietta jumped back, it wasn’t quite far enough and Dru’s boot hit the girl’s midsection, knocking her back a good three feet.  The slayer made a whoofing sound and placed her hands on her knees with her head bent, gasping for air.  Dru pressed her advantage, lunging for the girl.  The slayer ducked, so Dru overshot her goal and landed in a heap just behind her. 

The slayer jumped astride Dru in a flash. With her knees, she pressed both of Dru’s arms into the dirt, pinning her to the earth.  While one arm held Dru by the throat, the other coiled back, preparing to drive the stake deeply into the vampire’s chest.

Billy only had a split second, and he knew it.  Without even letting go of Miss Edith, his free arm flashed down to his pistol, and he drew on the slayer.  His aim was more a product of instinct than conscious thought, and he fired – shooting the stake clean out of the girl’s fist and taking most of her thumb along with it for good measure.

Henrietta’s expression was one of complete and utter surprise, though it barely had time to register.  Even before the sound of the gunshot had faded, Dru made the most of the moment, twisting her hips and knocking the bleeding girl off balance.  With one fluid movement Dru kicked out from under the girl and grabbed her head with both hands, snapping the slayer’s neck with a ferocious twist.

Billy felt the dolly stir within his grasp.  Miss Edith gave a shuddering movement, almost like a sigh, and it made his blood run even colder than it already was.  He lifted the dolly up for a closer look, holding it at arm’s length as if it was a rattler.

Miss Edith’s dainty porcelain lips were no longer set in their permanent dolly’s pout. Now the edges of her mouth were turned up, very slightly, pulling back her lips to show just a glimpse of tiny white teeth.  Her eyes too, looked different somehow.  Instead of a glassy stare, she looked back at him as if a living being had crawled behind her eyes.  He instinctively dropped the thing in the dirt and began to back away.

“William!”  Dru looked up.  She’d torn a jagged hole in the young girl’s neck and was drinking deeply.  She seemed giddy and almost … drunk.  “You mustn’t treat Miss Edith so.  After all she’s done for us.”

“That thing’s not right,” was all he was able to get out as he staggered backwards, nearly tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to escape.

Licking her lips like a cat after cream, Dru carefully arose from the slayer’s corpse and approached her doll.

“Miss Edith?”  Dru called, reaching out a tentative hand to where the thing lay, face down in the dirt.  She picked it up tenderly.  Turning it over, her look of concern was quickly replaced with a look of horror.  “Darling?” 

“No!” she screamed into the dolly’s face as she began to shake it from side to side.  “Please, no…”  She looked quickly at Billy and then back to her doll and began to howl like a mad thing.   “What did he do to you?  Where did you go?  Miss Edith?”

~*~

On a westbound train just outside of Chicago …

Elizabeth Pratt awoke from a very disturbing dream.  In it Warren Mears was in a Sears Tire Center screaming with rage. 

She sat up in their little compartment, pulling the covers around her, feeling more than unsettled.  Feeling like … older, wearier.  Feeling like a different person all together.

Her breath was coming in frantic puffs and she took a large gulp of air and held it, to steady herself.

She could remember last night, making love with William, and their time on the train before that.  New York City, The Adriatic, and … another dream with Warren.  One in which he’d taken away … something.  Her memory!  Ten years of her memory.

Images began to fly at her so quickly that she couldn’t breathe.  William looking into her eyes, smiling shyly on their wedding day.  Holding his hand while he wept by his mother’s side as she lay dying.  Making love with him for the first time.

She must have been making a sound, because William woke and reached a tentative hand to her shoulder.  “Buffy?  Are you all right?”

“I remember, William,” was all she was able to say through the flood of memories saturating her mind.  Seeing his eyes brought back how he looked at the Hellmouth, as Spike, when he gave his life to save them all.  Holding his hand, trying to hold onto him through the fire.

“Buffy?”  His voice shook.

“All of it.  I remember being Elizabeth,” she managed to get out before the memories took her under the tide again.

He looked at her groggily.  His mouth moved, but no words came out.

Not just being Elizabeth, she thought.  The forgotten years she’d spent as Buffy also came back.  Losing Tara and seeing the hate rise inside of Willow.  That nearly destroyed them all.  And her mother.  Oh, god.  Kneeling by her mom’s body while the center of Buffy’s life left for good.

“Oh, William …” Her cheeks were damp with tears, and her breath came in choking hitches.  She felt trapped, claustrophobic in this curtained chamber and climbed over William, frantically refastening her bodice buttons along the way.  She tore open the curtains and fell into the aisle in a heap.  William followed closely behind and helped her to her feet before asking her, simply “Elizabeth?”

She nodded. 

He seemed torn between emotions – one moment looking terribly concerned and the next appearing overjoyed. 

“Do you know how or why?”  He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts.

“I don’t know why it came back to me but I know how it started.  I have a perfect memory of a dream and Warren.”

He gave her a confused look.

“Long story.”  She reached up to the edge of the top bunk, to steady herself.  As she moved, she couldn’t help but notice how strangely her body felt – almost as though it didn’t quite belong to her.  Her muscles bunched and tensed beneath her skin in a way they hadn’t in a long, long time.

Not expecting anything to come of it, she tugged on the end of the bunk and the chain snapped as though it was made of paper.  With a very loud shout, the walrus brothers came tumbling out.  The grouchiest one landed on the bed she’d just vacated, and the fatter one fell in the center aisle with a thud loud enough to wake everyone in the car.

It confirmed her suspicions in an instant.

It wasn’t simply a matter of recovering all her lost memories.  Somehow she had become Buffy Elizabeth Summers Pratt, Vampire Slayer.  What was she going to do about that?

------------------------------

Author’s notes:

Historical accuracy and Mormons:  For fairness sake, I need to point out that most Mormon men didn’t marry a bunch of women and set them up to homestead land for them, only to abandon them and their children.  My great-great grandfather was a turd, however, and did exactly that.  My great-great grandmother, his third wife, was kind of bad-ass (she killed a bear all by herself) and deserved a better life.  In her way, Henrietta was a slayer.

Where credit is due:  In “Across the Plains,” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about his travels west on an immigrant train in 1880.  It’s an entirely different experience than William and Buffy’s and far more ghetto.  It’s also free if you have an e-reader and I’d encourage you to read it.  He poignantly describes sitting on top of a rail car and compares the grasslands of Nebraska to an ocean.  His train top experience was far more eloquent and involved, well, way less fucking, so thanks and apologies to Bobby-Lou!