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Three more to go...how quickly do you want them?
Chapter Nineteen

The room had just settled into an uncomfortable silence when Spike slammed the door, dread settling with the impact of a bullet on Buffy’s heart. It was a horribly incapacitating thought to wonder if she’d so callously done the wrong thing—so thoughtlessly grieved over the impact of losing Angel to his own personal darkness right in front of the new love of her life. She didn’t have to wonder what propelled Spike’s steps away from her—she felt the betrayal of her words it in her heart. Whatever reason was behind Angel’s loss of soul, it was secondary to everything now. He was evil personified, and now she’d replaced him at her side in the fight, as well as in her heart.

What she now had with Spike was so new and untried, and Buffy wasn’t sure that Spike grasped this. They’d become bound to each other in circumstances neither of them understood and ever since, they’d been carried away on the high of such deep feeling—such depthless belonging that it had, so far, defied words. The past few days had been devoted to establishing a strong physical link between them—warriors and lovers on the brink of the fight of their lives. But they were together and that was what gave Buffy strength and confidence.

Until she’d become distracted by late breaking news and opened her big fat mouth. Angel was in her past—true, a not so distant past, but he was mostly gone from her head, definitely gone from her heart, and with what she hoped in her confidence of gypsy magic—her life.

“While it absolutely galls me to admit such a thing, Spike is right,” Giles broke into the silence. “Jenny, I apologise for my lack of tolerance. I can hardly condemn you for not sharing information when I have been as responsible for keeping you in the dark in the past. I-I’m sure it hasn’t been the easiest of times to trust in me a-after—”

“Rupert,” Jenny interjected, standing and making her way to the thoroughly repentant librarian. “I can’t let you take so much blame. I was foolish not to confide in you before now, and I am more than sorry that Buffy had to experience such a cruel—”

If there was one thing Buffy didn’t want to do, it was rehash the reason Spike had just stormed out of the place. It was time to grab the situation and shake a solution out of it. Focus. That’s what they needed—and lots of it. “Okay, you know what? We’re just gonna skip right on over Buffy’s bad experiences and move into the ‘how do we re-ensoul Angel’ part of the discussion. Really, don’t feel sorry for me. I had to go through all that to have Spike, and despite earlier, I think it could be really good for us. But we need to neutralise the Angelus and Drusilla sitch. And then, there’s Mom.”

The room seemed almost smothered in the weight of memory and a sickness fell in more than one stomach.

“Jenny, have you done it? Do you know how to give Angel back his soul?”

The first moment of lightness came with the easiness of the teacher’s smile. “I did. Just as Buffy and Spike burst into the classroom, I’d saved it all on disk. And of course there’s the hardcopy that Spike…er…retrieved when he whipped out the tower.” And there was a grin.

“That’s my guy,” Buffy confirmed with her own indulgent and loving smile. “He’s nothing if not resourceful.”

Jenny turned seductively playful within seconds. “Oh, I’ll bet you’ll find out exactly how resourceful a vampire like Spike can be.”

Xander and Giles choked together at her conspiratorial wink at Buffy, the Slayer blushing bright pink before giggling and nodding in confirmation.

“That is so something you’re never going to find out first hand.” And then she turned sombre, businesslike and determined. “Can you do the spell for my mom?”

“I could help,” interjected Willow, feeling left out with the sex implications and desperate to remind everyone that she was really coming along with her pencil spinning. “I mean, I know it would be a bit of a jump from what I’ve been doing, but I feel like I could do it. I-I think I have the power inside me to do something that big.”

Giles watched the redheaded girl he’d known as a mousy, unconfident, yet highly intelligent student and wondered how he’d missed this development. He contemplated her, seeing her radiate with faith in herself and suddenly knew that she did indeed have the power to be helpful with this spell—and quite possibly much more besides. Despite his own dabbling at magic in his youth, and the very real consequences of his ignorance, he’d embarked on this stint of watcher with the expectation of being in contact with only one special young girl. That he’d blindly fallen in with a gypsy of the clan devastated by Angelus’s run through history and a school girl with the potential to be a very great witch, not to mention Xander who—Giles stopped his mental wandering, not having the strength to convince himself that Xander had any function other than supplying his favourite jam-filled donuts. He knew that was churlish, but he was greatly irritated by the boy more often than not, even though he served a great motivation to Buffy in her nightly fight.

“How soon can this take place, Jenny?” Giles could hardly believe they were at this point, that this nightmare could actually have an end in sight—an end that wouldn’t be devastating for anyone but Angel. And perhaps Drusilla once she lost her last link to her evil world.

Buffy sat on the edge of the discussion, relief that her mother could be returned to her warring with her need to see Spike. To be near him was to feel his arms around her, giving her more security than she’d felt her entire lifetime. That he’d left angry with her was so crushing that she was periodically breathless.

There was no awareness of how much time had passed. Buffy listened vaguely with a sense of static need. She was finding it difficult to function without Spike present—without knowing he was still hers and didn’t hate her for caring for even five minutes that it was her fault Angelus was free. There was no warning—she’d barely managed to talk herself through a pep talk that everything would be fine between them when Spike kicked open the door and barked an order for an invite, her mother unconscious over his shoulder.

“Spike.” Her anxiety over how he would react to her now he was back was her first concern, her eyes sweeping painfully over the figure of her mother before pleading with him to say everything was okay. That fear that had sat like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach quietly waiting for disaster to strike came to life sharply when he avoided her eyes.

“Brought the Slayer’s mum. Angelus is out and about and he’ll be after her. Wanker probably won’t stop till he gets her, so might want to put a rush on the mojo while you can.” Spike moved to put his burden down on the suddenly vacated sofa, neither Willow nor Xander overly keen to see if Buffy’s mom would be as gracious and friendly toward them as she had been in life.

“I only have one orb of Thessula, so who do you want me to curse?” Jenny looked back and forth between Giles and Buffy, feeling surprisingly even less comfortable around the newcomer than she previously had while Spike was still in the room. It could have to do with how he swooped in like a caped avenger to save her life—without his even knowing her. Or it could be the fact that Buffy’s mother had just woken and her amber eyes were watching her with the intentness of purpose.

“Curse?” Joyce slowly sat up, her eyes never wavering from the suddenly apprehensive gypsy. “You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed, her body moving in such a slow seductive manner that most of the room was oblivious to the danger Jenny was in. Standing now and almost fully straightened, Joyce Summers was ready to attack—until Spike stood in front of her and grabbed her around the neck, his fingers digging in painfully until the focus on the teacher was gone and Joyce was growling in pain.

“You’ve got no bloody say in this scenario. I brought you here to save your worthless life. You attack the teach and I’ll have nothing but a handful of dust to remember you by. See that girl over there? The one is your daughter? Don’t go banking on the fact that she’ll be too soft to do it; slayer is one tough bird. There’s no chance she’ll sacrifice anyone here just because you wear her mother’s face.” His voice was hard, more than a little bit mean but Joyce could see the truth to it. She didn’t know Buffy like she’d thought she had, so it would be foolhardy to try and take her daughter on in an untried situation. There was one fundamental point to all of this—she didn’t want to be dust. She wanted immortal life—wanted to see how the world would end.

Her sire had told her very little about this situation with the soul that had taken her own sire from her for a century and more. Drusilla was never very lucid about things and whatever explanations she offered they were tempered with rhymes and strange sayings that Joyce couldn’t decipher. It had ended up just being fun to make things up—pretend scenarios that Drusilla might be prattling on about. Now it would seem that she could have benefited from knowing what the whole soul thing was about.

It was undeniable though—it sounded bad. It sounded like something she wanted no part of. “Whatever your plan is, leave me out of it.” She watched them warily while deliberately moveing back to the sofa. Her eyes contemplated the elder man in the room, remembering his vague familiarity and becoming distracted by the need to remember.

When she returned her attention to the others, the dark-haired woman was preparing something and Joyce realised she should have been paying more attention. She didn’t know what they’d planned, didn’t see the final decision pass from Buffy to the teacher. Nerves and helplessness wound up tighter and tighter until Joyce felt the need to run, to tear at throats and escape now before it would be forever too late. None of them seemed to be watching her anymore, though. Not even her intolerable daughter’s school friends. They’d all decided this magic was more interesting than a friend’s mother turning up a vampire and hungry for their blood. Didn’t they know how easily she could grasp hold of their hair and claim their throat as her wineglass for the night?

That image put a smile on her face—particularly the one where it was Xander Harris. She owed him for his uncoordinated yet successful attack that landed her painfully at the bottom of her own basement steps and at the mercy of her daughter.

She couldn’t help it if it was comical watching Buffy’s only male friend waving a bundle of burning herbs and incense in the air like a really ungifted new-ager. The impatient glances she received were too much on top of the stress, too much added to this weird beginning she’d had and Joyce had nothing left but to laugh. The dark-haired woman passed something to Willow and the redhead was tossing a handful of stones within their tight human circle. It was really quite hilarious in that nervy frightened way. Having no clue what they were planning to do—or if it was going to be to her—Joyce laughed it up, throwing out distracting insults thick and fast in an effort to distract them.

Until Buffy stepped up and slapped her hard. Then she played on the girl’s vulnerability and guilt to good effect. “You hit me,” she said, the shock in her voice really well acted as the demon relished the flush of apology already trembling on Buffy’s lips.

“Too right she bloody well did, you hag.” Spike had seen enough and felt dread at every flinch and sideways look of devastation that Buffy aimed at the undead demon with her mother’s face. It was enough to make him realise that his earlier anger at the mention of Angelus and his previous influence in the slayer’s life had been nothing but battered ego reacting—and he was judging Buffy on Drusilla’s performance of unwavering faith in her sire. “Now back off or I might have to teach you how to stay in line as well.”

Joyce didn’t question why she was suddenly afraid of Spike. She’d been sent to him from Dru with the purpose of reminding him of the darkness he’d rejected and left behind. Not for one second did Dru accept that he was gone for good, and Joyce had just assumed that he was too weak-willed to say no to Buffy. The glint of hardness she’d just seen in the coldness of his human eyes was enough to set her straight. She didn’t think Spike would really be anywhere or do anything he didn’t want to do and that made her suddenly apprehensive about going too far and testing his loyalty to Buffy in keeping her demonised mother alive.

When she ducked her head and their attention diverted, the sound of foreign words tickled her ears while something else tugged at her insides. Joyce moaned low and pained in her throat as the teacher sustained her tranced incantation, her nails clawing at her own flesh, leaving bloody scratches down her arms. The orb glowed and the panic whipped through Joyce like wildfire. She didn’t know—wasn’t sure that this show was for her and that her grandsire wasn’t in line to be put out to pasture, but the fear was building so high that she felt like screaming.

“Acum.”

And she did scream, the sound exploding from her throat in a squalling ball of terror and rage, and then the pain consumed, playing pictures in her head that suddenly had new meaning, had spirit attached and she was falling, dying, killing. All her evil misdeeds, her crime and sins washed up from her aching belly, searing heat in her throat as she brought it up raw, spraying the carpet burgundy as she attempted to purge the hate that had directed her killing. That had murdered her employees like they were nothing but vermin undeserving of life.

As the circle calmed, as the crowd looked on, a souled Joyce wept.

And a thwarted Angelus slept.





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