[Reviews - 170]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Microsoft Word Chapter or Story | ePub eBook Chapter or Story | Printer Chapter or Story

Has been viewed 7602 times

- Text Size +




Chapter Fourteen

Buffy stood in the doorway until she couldn’t see his flaring leather coat anymore, then slowly closed it, fighting back the feeling that he was leaving her forever. She walked around the living room, picking cushions and brushing any trace of what they’d been doing out of the rug.

Just as she had when she used to leave his crypt without any sleep, she went up to her room and got into bed without cleaning herself off. She drifted off to sleep surrounded by the scent of Spike and really relaxed for the first time in years.

After a few hours of restorative sleep, she showered, got dressed and headed for the school to see what Jenny and Willow had come up with. She was relieved to find that they had found the basic words of the curse on a web site dealing with ancient gypsy customs. Willow was confident that between the soul-restoring spell she had found, and Jenny’s curse, they could restore Angel’s soul if they could just get close enough to him without being killed.

“Okay,” Buffy said confidently, “That’s where Spike and I come in—“

“Spike? What does the bleached menace have to do with it?” Xander sputtered. “Isn’t he part of the problem?”

“Xander, were you not listening the other night?” Giles’ impatience was evident in his voice. “As much as we might prefer it not be the case, Buffy trusts Spike to help her out when she needs it. Please remain quiet if you can’t contribute anything useful.”

The angry boy stood up and spread his arms.

“The only thing I’d like to contribute is a hammer to help her drive stakes into all three of those bloodsuckers. I knew Angel would break bad some day, and now she wants us to trust another undead thing on her say so. I say if all she’s learned in six years is to switch one bloodsucking boyfriend for another…she’s not as smart as she wants us to think she is.”

There was a tense silence in the room when Xander finished his tirade and Buffy knew that everyone else was thinking their own version of the same thing. For just a second, she was back in her time, breaking Spike’s heart every time she left him; so afraid her friends would find out that she was sleeping with him and condemn her for it. She shook those memories off and fixed Xander with a cold stare.

He’d never seen an adult Buffy in full Slayer mode, and he unconsciously cringed back against the table while her watcher moved to intercept her if she should attack the boy. Instead, Buffy just glared at him until he sat down with an ashamed expression on his face.

When he was again seated at the table, she looked around the room and said, “Let me try this one more time. In the future, my future, Spike helps us multiple times. He has opportunities to kill each of you several times, but never does it. Even after he’s—even when he is temporarily rendered incapable of physically hurting any of you, he could have had minions do it. And, when I’m…gone…he stays and takes care of…and he helps all of you patrol. He saves each of you multiple times. You and the people you care about. You’d have been dead 10 times over without his extra muscle.

“I’m pretty sure I mentioned the burning to death to save the world from the First Evil – just in case all the other world saveage, enduring torture, being constantly insulted by all of you and still helping us….You know what? I don’t have to defend him or my feelings for him. He earned every bit of trust and respect I can give him and if I can keep him from having to endure any of that other stuff this time? Bonus points for me.”

She turned away from their open mouthed stares and said, “Now let’s figure out when and how we’re going to do this. I think late afternoon would be good. They’ll just be waking up and probably won’t have left the factory yet.”

As though the whole previous scene hadn’t taken place, she went back to planning the afternoon’s assault on the Factory. When she said that Spike was to be allowed to take Drusilla with him, she squelched Xander’s complaint with one look and went on with the plan.



Spike broke into a vacant home on a deserted street and showered off any trace of the Slayer. He stepped under the water wearing all his clothes and rinsed her scent off them as best he could, then stripped and let the water run over his body.

He leaned against the tiled wall, supporting himself with one hand while the hot water beat down on his shoulders. The heat made him think of Buffy and the incredible way her warmth drew him. He’d never been attracted to a human woman since he’d been turned. In fact, he rarely looked at anyone other than his dark princess, even though he knew she occasionally strayed.

But this tiny girl, this incredibly sexy woman in a girl’s body, reached places in his psyche that he didn’t even know existed. Never had he met a woman, vampire or slayer, who was his equal in a fight; and here was one that could take him whenever she wanted to. He didn’t doubt her when she said she knew all his moves. When he thought back to the fights he’d seen, he could see it. The sudden leg sweep after a feinted high kick, the frontal attack that turned into a flip over the opponent’s head, those were his moves. Moves he’d taught her.

That led to thoughts of the other things he’d obviously taught her and he was suddenly hard again remembering her mouth and hands on his cock. He groaned with the ache that was settling in his balls to match the throbbing in his cock at the thought of the soft and yet so strong body he’d been allowed to enjoy. Even thoughts of Dru and Angelus, shagging each other bloody back in the factory couldn’t push away the vision of her tanned body riding him, and with an angry snarl, he grabbed the soap, quickly using its slippery foam to take the edge off what he was afraid was about to become a permanent condition.

When he had finished his shower, he put his damp clothes back on and, stealing a curtain off the window to throw over his head, he bolted out the door and down a manhole. Using his uncanny sense of direction and smell, he found his way to the factory through the sewers and tunnels under the city. He wasn’t happy with what the water was doing to his boots, but thought it would help cover any lingering smell from the Slayer.

He gingerly fingered the place on his neck where she had sucked so hard on his skin that she left a mark. He remembered her whispered, “mine” and shuddered a little at the thought of being bound to a Slayer. Telling himself that there hadn’t been any actual exchange of blood, and no reciprocating on his part, he tried to shrug it off as a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing that she didn’t mean.

When he finally emerged through the basement of the factory, he was, for once, more grateful than jealous that Angelus and Dru were so wrapped up in each other. They barely acknowledged his arrival and paid no attention when he shed his wet clothes and replaced them with new dry ones. He threw the wet ones down to another level of the building and went off to sleep by himself in a far corner of the big room.


Angelus and Dru went back to where they had been since the vampire’s return to the fold – on the double bed mattress that Spike had installed in a side room for Dru to rest on until she recovered. The sounds coming from the room told Spike she definitely had her strength back and he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block out the sounds of her screams and whimpers as she cried out her happiness at her “daddy’s” return.

He was finally able to drift off to sleep when he allowed himself to visualize silky golden hair, soft pink lips, and warm green eyes smiling up at him.

When Spike woke up, his instincts told him it was late afternoon and he got up and stretched, wondering if the red-haired witch and the gypsy woman had come up with a way to shove a soul back into the other vampire.

(That or the Slayer’s gonna shove a sharp piece of wood into his chest.) he thought wryly. (No way is Angelus gonna take this little girl. I’m guessing she knows him as well as she knows me and he never was all that great a fighter anyway. More of a bully than a warrior.)

He was smiling at the thought of the ass-kicking Buffy was going to give Angelus when he and Dru came out of the their room. Dru cocked her head at Spike and began in a sing song voice, “Spike’s been a bad puppy. My sweet William’s been playing in the sun. The sun makes him smile, but it will burn him.”

Angelus just shook his head at her babbling, but Spike got very still as he realized what she was saying. Even without being close enough to smell him or see the mark on his neck, she knew what he’d been doing. He decided to brave it out and shrugged as he lit a cigarette and blew smoke at her.

“Fair’s fair, pet. Jus’ getting’ a little of my own back.”

She rolled her eyes in a way that told him she wasn’t fooled at all, but then spun away from Angelus and began to dance slowly to music only she could hear. As she danced, she sang nonsense words that meant nothing to either vampire.

Angelus didn’t approach the younger vamp. He clearly expected Spike to be very angry about losing Dru and was wary of him. Even though Angelus was the older of the two by almost a century, he’d spent enough years toughening Spike up and teaching him to fight to respect the other vamp’s fists and fangs. No one took joy in a fight the way Spike did, and Angelus had no desire to be on the receiving end of the other vamp’s jealous rage. He was mildly surprised that Spike didn’t appear angrier than he was, but put if off as the result of an all-night binge and a hangover.

He extended an uncertain peace offering to his grandchild, saying, “We’re going to go hunting as soon as the sun is down all the way. Do you want to come with us?”

Spike looked at him coldly and turned away without answering. Suddenly he felt the fading mark on his neck tingle and his head flew up so that he could listen.

“Show time,” he whispered to himself as he waited for the Slayer to appear.


Chapter Fifteen

Buffy felt a tingle in the healed scratches on her neck and knew that Spike’s unintentional claiming was still active. She paused and shut her eyes for a second and was rewarded with a wash of excitement and anticipation that she knew was coming from the blond vampire. Wishing she knew more about claiming and the side effects, she tried to send a message of confidence and warning but couldn’t tell if he received it or not.

In a whispered conversation, she told Jenny and Willow where they could hide while they worked on the combined curse/spell. Her intent was to keep Angelus busy fighting her long enough for them to work their magic on his demon.

“I promise you,” she said to Willow’s frightened face, “I will not let him near you. If it comes down to it, I’ll stake him and let the future worry about itself. You just stay behind the machinery, and let me do the rest.”

“And what about William the Bloody and Drusilla?” Jenny asked quietly. “I believe you when you say Spike won’t harm you or us, but what is to prevent his consort from doing to us what she did to Kendra?”

“Spike will,” Buffy said shortly. “All right, let’s go.”

When Spike felt Buffy approaching, he suddenly became very animated and began stalking toward Angelus, growling about his having “taken my soddin’ woman for the last time.” Keeping one eye on Drusilla, who had stopped dancing to watch with interest the two vampires preparing to fight over her, he insulted, provoked and generally distracted Angel to prevent the older vampire from hearing the entrance of Buffy and the witches.

Had Drusilla not whirled at the sound of Willow sneezing in the dusty room he might have been able to keep the other vamp busy until the spell was well underway. However, the sneeze and Dru’s subsequent wail of, “The sun is here to take my daddy away,” tore Angelus’ attention off the advancing blond and focused it on the petite form entering the room.

“Well, hello, lover,” he crooned. “I didn’t really expect to see you so soon. Thought you’d want to take a while to mourn the passing of your boy friend.”

Buffy blinked at him in genuine confusion for a second, before she realized that he meant his soulled self and not Spike. Angel had not heard her speech about Spike’s unconditional love for her and apparently thought he was still the love of her life, even though she thought she had made it clear that they had no future together.

When she realized what he meant, she smiled grimly and said, “Haven’t lost him yet, demon.”

While she and Angel were exchanging pleasantries, Drusilla was working her way toward the Slayer, swaying back and forth like a cobra as she did so.

“Sunshine thinks she has captured my sweet William. She wants to pull both my lovely boys into the light with her, but they don’t want to leave their dark princess, do they Miss Edith?”

She cocked her head as though listening for a reply, then snarled at the Slayer.

“Miss Edith says you tried to take what’s mine. She says I should kill you like I did the other Slayer.”

As Dru moved closer, trying to get the Slayer to look her in the eye, Spike was crossing the room swiftly and he grabbed her around the waist just as she got to Buffy. Although the slayer was careful not to look the insane vampire in the eyes, she couldn’t help but be distracted by her weaving approach and sing song voice.

When Spike grabbed the dark vampire before she could reach for the Slayer, Buffy’s attention was distracted enough that Angel was able to leap for her, his weight carrying them both to the floor. The force of the fall with the vampire’s large body on top of her, knocked the wind out of her and she was immobilized for a few seconds as she struggled to get air into her lungs.

Angel took advantage of that to pull her hands over her head and fully pin her down, using his legs to hold hers still. When she tried to buck him off, she could feel his erection pressing into her crotch and she recoiled reflexively.

“Oh,” he snarled, “the virtuous little bitch doesn’t like that, eh? Maybe before I kill you, I’ll have to pop that cherry you’re so proud of.”

“Too late,” she snarled back as she bashed her forehead into his face and tried to pull her arms free. She cursed her sixteen year old self for the baby fat coating the body that had become taut with muscle in her own time. She knew that if she was in her own body she would have been able to overpower the large vampire, but in this body she felt more helpless than she had in years.

While Spike was busy trying to contain a shrieking, struggling Drusilla, Angel bared his fangs and prepared to sink them into Buffy’s exposed neck. Just as he reached for her throat, the marks on it flared into visibility and Buffy could feel them emitting some sort of power. The snarling vampire recoiled in fear and astonishment as Spike’s claim became visible, allowing Buffy to free one hand and use it to push his head back far enough for her to wriggle out from under him. She rolled to her feet and fell into a fighting stance as he gaped at her

“You…you’ve been claimed! How…who…no one claims a Slayer.” His surprise was replaced with anger, “No vampire claims what’s mine. I’ll kill you and him.” He advanced on the slayer, snarling the whole time. “Tell me who it was. Did you stake him for it, or do I get to rip his head off?”

Surprised that he couldn’t tell that the tiny marks belonged to Spike, Buffy breathed a sigh of relief that she could feel was echoed by the the vamp still wrestling with Drusilla. The dark vampiress was shrieking about spells and witches and gypsies and tearing at Spike with her nails and teeth in an effort to break loose and attack Willow and Jenny.

Buffy couldn’t risk taking her eyes off Angelus long enough to watch the seer, and she prayed that Spike would be able to control her while she kept the fuming master vampire busy. When he charged her again, she was ready for him and leaped over his head, kicking him as she did so. She whirled and planted another kick in his back, sending him to the floor hard enough to stun him. When she didn’t follow up with a stake in his back, he staggered back to his feet with a knowing smile.

“You can’t kill me, can you, lover? I knew you couldn’t. It would break your little teen-aged heart.”

He stalked toward her, only to be met with a flurry of punches and kicks that put him back on the floor, bruised and bleeding, but undusted. He sat there, blinking up at her angrily.

“Give it up, Buffy. Admit it. You. Can’t. Kill. Me. You love me too much.”

Buffy rolled her eyes at his arrogance and spat back at him, “I can kill you, if I have to. News flash, Angel, I already have. Sent you right to hell, in spite of how much I loved you. And, Angel? This time around? I don’t think I even like you very much.”

“Then why haven’t you…” His face showed his sudden understanding and he leapt to his feet with a roar. “Where are they? You’re stalling me! Trying to put that miserable soul back. I don’t want it, Slayer. I won’t go back to being what I was.”

Buffy positioned herself between the furious vampire and the large piece of machinery behind which Willow and Jenny were frantically chanting, trying to finish their combined spells before Buffy had to stake him.

Angel’s roar had distracted Spike long enough for Drusilla to break free and she flew across the big room to where the chanting was almost ready to take her daddy away again. Buffy turned to run toward Drusilla and Angel tackled her to the floor once again. This time he wasted no time on threats or taunting, just reached toward her nearest body part with his fangs. Spike was frozen in place for a fraction of a second, torn between saving Buffy and saving the two chanting women.

When Willow screamed, he crossed the floor in two leaps, tackling Drusilla away from the shrinking red head. Before the spitting, hissing vampire could rip into him again with her claws, he brought his fist up and with a soft, “Sorry, luv,” he connected a hard uppercut to her chin that knocked her unconscious. He gave Willow and Jenny an apologetic shrug, then whirled to help Buffy, only to find the Slayer kicking his grandsire’s semi-conscious body all over the room.

“If,” smack! “you,” whump! “don’t stop,” crack! “trying to bite me,” bam!, “I’m going to stake you anyway and the hell with your freakin’ redemption!”

He grinned in admiration as she punched and pummeled the large vampire until she could drag his unconscious body up to where Willow and Jenny were finishing their interrupted spell casting. She dropped him in front of the frightened women, put her hands on her hips and said, “Well?”

“Done!” Willow said, sagging with relief. Jenny nodded her head and they all turned to watch Angelus’ body stiffen and shake as the spell hit him and his soul was restored. Turning from the now-groaning vampire, Buffy looked from Spike to the still unconscious Drusilla. She reached a tentative hand toward his bleeding face which was covered in cuts from his lover’s claws.

He flinched back away from her hand and cringed at the pain that flashed across her face.

“We need to go, Slayer. She’s gonna be really brassed off when she wakes up. Better if we’re on our way to South America by then.” The two blonds stared at each other for what seemed like forever before he said, softly, “I’m sorry, Buffy. I wish it could be different.”

She nodded silently, afraid to trust her voice as he lifted the limp vampiress to his shoulder and turned to go.

“Take care of yourself, luv,” he said as he walked out of the building without looking back.

“You too, Spike,” she whispered almost to herself. “Come back to me.”





You must login (register) to review.