Chapter 2
"William the Bloody, a.k.a. Spike," Giles mused. He was pulling books off the shelves. "Where have I heard that name before?"
"The guy’s scary. I mean really." Willow repressed a shudder. "Yee-ee-ee! Nothing like the usual vamps. More like Darla or the Master."
"He’s a killer," Xander said flatly. "Which only begs the question: what were you doing, Buffy, playing kissyface with him?"
"Playing what?" said Buffy dangerously. She and Spike had been at the other end of the alley and her voice had been low as she purred at him, so Xander couldn’t have heard what she had said. But their relative positions must have been suggestive enough.
"If your faces had been any closer, you’d have been trading spit," snapped Xander.
"Like this?" She slammed her hands down on the table in front of him and thrust her face right into his, staring him down. "This seem romantic to you?"
"Uh, no," muttered Xander, trying to avoid the furious eyes glaring at him from less than an inch away.
"What I do is my business, Xander. I’m the Slayer. How I do it is up to me. Don’t ever presume to judge me. Had it with that," she growled.
Xander flung up his hands in surrender. "Hey, no judging! No judging here!"
"Damn straight. I’m done with being told what to do." She spun away, then scowled at Giles and Willow staring at her with their mouths open. "What?"
"Getting in-your-face with Spike seems to be the way you’re acting with everybody," blurted Willow, patting the air frantically in a calming gesture. "What’s up with that?"
"Kind of on edge right now," muttered Buffy. "Juggling a lot. So lay off me, guys."
"Right, right," said Willow with a beseeching glance at Giles and Xander, begging them to agree. They both nodded, still a little dumbfounded.
"Um, I think I’ve found William," said Giles. "Oh, dear."
"Not good news," remarked Xander, hearing his tone.
"He’s old. You were right, Willow. He’s no fledgling. He’s been a vampire for almost a hundred and twenty years. No wonder you were reminded of Darla and the Master. The older the vampire, the more dangerous he is."
"Wonderful," muttered Xander.
"‘Saturday I kill you.’ That’s what he said." Willow caught her breath. "Buffy! Saturday’s the night of St. Vigeous! The time that vamps are strongest. This Spike guy. He must be planning to be in on the attack. Maybe leading it."
"Oh, yeah," Buffy nodded.
"Should we be thinking vacation?" Xander asked.
"We can’t run. That would be wrong," Willow objected, then shuddered. "Could we hide?"
"I’ll deal with it," shrugged Buffy. She knew darn well that Spike, impatient and reckless, would never be able to wait until Saturday.
"Well, he can’t be worse than any other creature you’ve faced," Giles said doubtfully.
"He’s worse," said Angel, coming in the swing doors of the library. "Once he starts something, he doesn’t stop until everything in his path is dead."
"Angel." Buffy swung around and studied him coolly.
"So he’s thorough, goal-oriented," Xander was saying sarcastically.
Buffy wasn’t listening. She was thinking about what Angel had just said. It was all wrong. Spike did stop. When he got bored or impatient or thought his point had been made. It was Angelus who didn’t stop; Angelus who pressed the issue as far as it would go, until everything in his path was dead. Angel was ascribing his own motives and reactions to Spike. She wondered whether Angel had ever really looked at Spike in all those years that they had hunted together. She didn’t think so. Angelus saw everything through the lens of his own ego, had never ever seen anybody but himself.
"He’s lethal," Angel was saying. "He’s one of the most dangerous vampires around. Buffy, you have to be careful."
"I will be," she said. He had that part right. Spike was lethal and savage and deadly.
But that wasn’t all he was. She knew the other side and she knew how to get to it.
"Oh, dear," Giles said, still reading.
"There’s that voice again," said Xander. "Come on, Giles. Don’t keep us in suspense here."
Giles looked up at Buffy, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "Spike has fought two Slayers in the last century, and...he’s killed them both."
"Oh, God," whispered Willow. Xander was speechless.
Giles took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "He’s looking for scalps and I think he means to make you his third one."
"He can try," Buffy said, amused.
"Buffy, this is serious!"
"He’s not going to kill me, Giles. I’m better than he knows." She smiled tightly. "I can take him. He’s mine."
"Angel, isn’t there anything you can tell us about Spike that might help Buffy?" Giles demanded fiercely. When no one answered, he turned and frowned. Angel was gone.
"Okay, that’s it," said Xander. "I’m putting a collar with a little bell on that guy."
"But..." Giles was astonished. "Why did he leave? He seemed to know about Spike. There’s so much he could have told us."
Buffy was unsurprised. Angel had never volunteered very much information about anything and had always been grudging in whatever he did say. And in this case...
"Giles, cross-reference to Angel."
Giles’ brows rose, then he complied. After a few minutes, he looked up at her, his eyes wide.
"How did you know?"
She shrugged and didn’t answer.
"What?" asked Willow and Xander in chorus.
"Angel and Spike are family. It’s the Line of Aurelius. The Master sired Darla. Darla sired Angel. Angel sired Drusilla. And Drusilla sired Spike. They ran together as a pack for decades. The four of them were called the Scourge of Europe. They broke up at the turn of the century. When Angel got his soul, I presume."
"Why did he take off like that then?" Xander exclaimed. "He could have told us so much about Spike. The way he fights, his methods, his weaknesses...Buffy needs to know these things!"
"It’s okay, Xand." Buffy smiled tightly. "When has Angel ever been forthcoming? It doesn’t matter. If he hasn’t seen Spike since the turn of the century, anything he knows will be out of date and useless. I already know all I need to know about Spike."
"Over-confidence is a danger, Buffy," Giles warned.
"I know. I’ll be careful." She smiled faintly. "I’m going to be very, very careful of Spike."
The rest of the night was quiet. So was patrol the next night. Before coming out on patrol, Buffy spent some time in her backyard, practicing her moves. Certain kicks and twists she had learned only with time and her teenage body wasn’t used to them. Her mind would instinctively call for the moves she was familiar with, without even thinking about it, and she didn’t want her body to fail to function correctly simply because it wasn’t accustomed to those moves. She couldn’t afford even a second’s hesitation with Spike. He was fast and deadly, her equal in every way when it came to fighting. She couldn’t let him have the slightest advantage. He would be trying to kill her. She, on the other hand, would be trying to keep him alive. Achieving a standoff was so much more difficult than achieving a death.
When she was satisfied that her body would indeed do her bidding, she headed off on patrol. No vamps showed up, except for one unlucky newly-risen fledgling just pulling itself out of its grave. The others seemed to be keeping low, probably saving themselves up for St. Vigeous. She staked the fledgling efficiently, then looked up to see Angel coming towards her.
She sighed. The last person she wanted to see right now was Angel. She didn’t have time to figure out how to deal with him until after St. Vigeous.
"Angel," she nodded brusquely. "What are you doing here?"
"Something occurred to me," he said. "You know that Spike is here."
"Uh huh." She raised a brow at him. "And?"
"What you might not know is that, if he’s here, someone else will be with him. You’re not facing just one experienced vampire, but two."
"Drusilla," she said and smiled at the look of surprise on his face.
"Your Watcher’s books are thorough."
"Mm. Giles came up with the connection last night. Drusilla is your get. Spike is hers."
He stared at the toes of his boots miserably. "And all the deaths, all the killing that they did and will do, is on my head. I’m responsible."
"Yes, you are. However, that changes nothing. I still have to find a way to deal with them."
"I’ll help you."
"Can you kill Drusilla? Your own get?"
Angel gave her a grim look. "I killed Darla for you. My sire."
"Yes, you did," she said gravely. "But she wasn’t your responsibility. These two are. You made them what they are. And now you want to destroy them."
He frowned. "What else can I do? They have no souls. There’s no way to redeem them."
"Isn’t there?" She bit her thumbnail. "Perhaps you’re right. We’ll see on the night of St. Vigeous."
She wanted to put him off until that night. If Spike brought that gang of vamps into the school tomorrow night, most of them would be dusted and St. Vigeous would no longer be a threat. Plus, it would give her time to figure out what to do with Angel and Drusilla. She already knew what she wanted to do with Spike, she thought with an amused grin.
"I don’t have to worry about Dru," she said. "She’s no threat. I hear she’s sick. Got hurt by a mob in Prague. That’s why Spike brought her here. Something about being helped by the energy from the Hellmouth."
"He’ll be trying to find a way to cure her."
"Unusually caring for an unredeemed, soulless demon." She shot him a glance from under her eyelashes. "Would you have done that as Angelus?"
Angel looked away.
"Didn’t think so. Odd sort of vampire, Spike."
Angel was scowling. "Why are you so interested in him?"
"Know your enemy," she said dryly. Indeed. "Anyway. I’ll see you on St. Vigeous, Angel. I’ve got a lot to do and think about till then. So, if you don’t mind..."
"Shouldn’t I come with you?" He waved a hand at the cemetery.
Her teenage self would have leaped at the chance to be with him even a little bit longer. Adult Buffy had changed significantly and was unmoved.
"Nah. Nothing’s stirring. And I have plans to make. I’ll contact you if I need you."
He went away reluctantly, looking back at her over his shoulder, upset at being so cavalierly dismissed. She didn’t care. She did have plans to make and he was not helping, only distracting her from them.
She went on through the graveyard. After a while, she extended her Slayer senses to see whether he was tracking her. He wasn’t. But someone else was.
Well now. She grinned to herself.
"Come to get it on, Spike?"
A lighter clicked in the darkness beside a crypt. The flare of yellow-orange light illuminated the hard planes of his face and the frown in his eyes as he lit his cigarette. He snapped the lighter off and stepped forward into the moonlight, platinum hair glinting.
"Come to get a few answers."
"To what?"
"To why a Slayer and a vamp like Angelus should be so chummy. Two of you should be tearing each other’s throats out."
"He’s reformed."
"Angelus reformed?" He laughed. "Pull the other one, pet."
"No, really. He doesn’t eat people any more. He’s on the side of good now. Trying to make amends for all the people he did eat."
He looked at her, amused and scornful, as if she were an idiot. "Giving you the puppy-dog ‘I’m all tortured’ act, is he? Didn’t think you’d fall for that Anne Rice routine, Slayer."
"No one’s told you yet, have they?"
"Told me what?" He shook his head and took another drag at his cigarette. "Doesn’t make sense. You dusted Darla. That bitch was poison. But Angelus is ten times worse than she ever was."
"Angel dusted Darla."
"She was his sire," he said patiently. "He wouldn’t have."
"He did. Angel’s good now."
"Angel. Change of name doesn’t mean bollocks, pet. Angelus is the name, and a nastier piece of work you won’t find on the planet."
"He’s got a soul now."
His brows shot skyhigh. "Angelus has a soul?"
"Yep."
"Come on." He gave a disbelieving laugh. "How did you manage that, luv?"
"I didn’t. Some gypsies cursed him with it when he killed one of their daughters."
"Gypsies." He gave her a skeptical look. "And when did this happen? Conveniently, just after he came here?"
"About a hundred years ago, as I understand it. Around the turn of the century."
His hand stopped in the middle of bringing the cigarette back to his lips. His eyes widened.
"He did disappear around that time. Boxer rebellion. He was different. Couldn’t put my finger on it then, but...And the next time I saw him, on that German sub. It would make sense of what happened..."
He sat down hard on a tomb. His eyes were huge and his jaw had dropped.
"Angelus with a soul," he said slowly, shaking his head, trying to take it in.
Then the cigarette dropped from his fingers and he started to laugh.
He laughed and laughed. Buffy leaned back against a gravestone and watched him, chuckling herself because his laughter was catching. It was like watching the owl, Archimedes, having his laughing jag in Disney’s ‘Sword in the Stone’. One couldn’t help laughing too. Spike waved his hand helplessly in the air and laughed himself sick.
Just when he seemed to be recovering himself, she said softly, "Angelus with a soul," and he went off again into another paroxysm.
"Oh, God, Slayer, stop it!" He thumped the heel of his hand on the tomb and wiped the tears from his eyes. "My stomach hurts. Oh, God. Oh, God. If anyone deserved to have a soul shoved up his ass, it’s Angelus."
She couldn’t help it. She grinned as well. "He’s trying to make amends now."
"Now? What’s he been doing the last hundred years then?"
"Um, repenting."
"B-brooding?" She nodded and he chortled helplessly. "I can just see it. Eating...?"
"Rats."
"Oh, God!" He flopped back across the top of the tomb and lay there, gasping. "Slayer, you made my day. You may have made my decade. Never gonna forget this."
She grinned at him affectionately.
She was thinking that she had never seen him laugh wholeheartedly like this before. She tried, but she couldn’t remember him ever laughing after he had won his soul, not until that moment when he was burning up down there in the Hellmouth. Before that, once he knew he was in love with her, she could remember him laughing a couple of times—shortly, ruefully, whereupon she would always cut him off at the knees. The only times she had seen him really laugh, with ease and pure enjoyment, was right in the beginning—when he was this Spike. That was what loving Buffy Summers had done to him—taken away that laughter, that joy in life that was such an essential part of Spike.
God, she had been such a bitch!
"What’s up with you, Slayer?" he asked and she jumped.
"What?"
"Keep looking at me funny."
"Like how?"
With a wistful gentleness that he couldn’t understand. It made the William part of him, hidden but still existent inside, sit up and come to attention. Spike scowled and shoved it back down.
"Dunno. Like you think you might get me on a leash, the way you’ve got the Great Poof."
"Who? Oh, Angel," she said dismissively and he grinned.
"Got taste, have you?" He tilted his head to one side, considering her thoughtfully. "No soul here, sweets. Not gonna dance to your tune."
"But you like to dance, don’t you? You’ve danced already. With two other Slayers."
"Watcher looked me up, huh? Yeah. That dance. That dance I like."
"The one with death. The ultimate test. Risking everything. Putting your immortal existence right on the line. Makes you feel alive, dancing over the abyss like that."
He smiled slowly, getting to his feet. "You understand. First one who has."
"I dance with death every day." She rose too, drifting slowly away.
"Never one like me."
He was stalking her now. They circled each other slowly, both smiling.
"Never one like you," she agreed. "We’re made for each other, aren’t we? Mirror images. The shadow sides of each other. The left hand of darkness is the right hand of light."
"Clever. Who said that?"
"Can’t remember. You liked dancing with those other Slayers. Turned you on, didn’t it? Not the Chinese Slayer so much..."
"She was all business."
"But the New York one. Nikki Wood."
"She was hot. Could have danced with her all night. She had a touch of your style."
"I’m hotter."
His eyes lit with heat and laughter. "You are."
"Do I turn you on, Spike?"
His tongue curled behind his teeth. "Oh, yeah, Slayer."
"Good. Wanna dance?"
In one startling burst of vampire speed, he had her up against a tree, his weight holding her there, his hand gripping her throat. He tilted her head to one side, so that her neck was exposed.
"Wanna drink your blood. Wanna drain you dry. That’s what I want."
"Look down," she said softly.
He did. The point of her stake was at his heart.
He laughed and relaxed his grip on her throat. "Glad it’s not going to be that easy."
"Sex and death. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? But I don’t have a death wish."
"Sex then, is it?" He pressed harder against her, his knee pushing her thighs apart. "Vamps turn you on, Slayer?"
Her breath shuddered through her parted lips. God, the way he felt! The familiar weight of him, the cool, hard body supple and powerful against hers, his breath on her face, the cavern of his open mouth, the scent of leather and cigarettes and whiskey and, beneath it all, that particular, unique scent that was Spike himself...It wasn’t sex that she wanted right now. It was just to hold him, feel him in her arms again, feel him alive and in existence. But there was no way to explain that to him. Not to this Spike.
"No," she breathed. " Just you."
His eyes widened and she saw the heat flare in them. His hand slid around to the back of her head, jerked her mouth to his. Then they were kissing greedily, mouths twisting together. And, oh, there it was. The taste of him, the long slides of that wicked, knowing tongue, the way he took possession of every corner of her mouth, hungry and demanding, the feel of their two bodies grinding against each other.
Her right hand still held the point of the stake to his heart. He was still Spike, still dangerous and lethal, could turn on her in a second. But her left arm slid around him under his duster, clenching across his back, holding him to her. They both gasped against each other’s mouths, went back to kissing, unable to drag their mouths away.
He was aroused; she could feel it, feel him hard and urgent against her. And she was aroused too, could feel herself all buttery and throbbing.
"God!" He tore himself away, gasping, his eyes wide with confusion and lust. "God, what is this? You’re the Slayer!"
They were both panting, vibrating with passion, staring at each other in mutual shock at how fast and how urgent the craving had leaped to life between them.
"No," he said, shoving it away, denying it. "No."
And was gone.
***
"You’ve been playing with the sun, Spike."
Spike whipped around. Dru was watching him, her cool, mad eyes giving him that up-from-under look that was Dru at her most dangerous and volatile. Dru knew. Of course she knew. The pixies or Miss Edith would have told her.
"Bad dog. You can dance with the sun, Spike. But only if you put it out."
She was being unusually coherent. Or maybe that was because he knew exactly what she was talking about.
"Dru..."
Her nails slashed out, scoring four parallel scratches across his cheek. He jerked involuntarily backwards, then recovered himself.
"If you embrace the sun, you’ll burn, Spike."
Well, he knew that, didn’t he? He was already burning.
He watched her go, disappearing back into her bedroom, closing the door behind her with a quiet, but very final click. He knew better than to follow her when she was in that mood. She might try to kill him and he would have to hurt her to prevent that. Of course, she would enjoy being hurt. But he wouldn’t enjoy hurting her. Never had. Pain was her turn-on, not his—Angelus’ legacy.
God, this thing with the Slayer! It was so wrong! It was a perversion of the natural order of things.
Slayers and vampires were supposed to kill each other, not lust after each other. They were supposed to rip each other’s throats out, not fuck each other into the ground. Which was what he wanted to do with this Slayer. Which was what she wanted to do with him. He knew it. He could feel it.
It was sick.
He wiped the blood irritably from his cheek with the heel of his hand. That Slayer in New York. Yeah, she had been hot and, yeah, he had been turned on. But that had come to its natural and right conclusion, with one of them dead and her duster a trophy to remind him of a really good day and a death wish that had run in his favor.
No death wish here. This Slayer, this Buffy Summers, she was blazing with life. She flamed with it like the sun. Dancing with the sun. Dancing with death. He had never been able to resist it. Never been able to resist playing with fire.
Drive in the daytime, recklessly way over the speed limit where an accident or even a stone flung up by a passing truck could break a painted window and let the deadly sunshine in. Run through the streets at high noon with only a blanket over him and take the risk that both he and the blanket wouldn’t burn up before he got to shelter. Ingest spicy buffalo wings or onion blossoms with tons of garlic on them just because he liked the taste and over the years had built up a tolerance to that particular poison in his system. Reasonable risks for someone who enjoyed pushing the limits and hated being bound by any rules whatsoever.
Fucking the Slayer. Not reasonable.
Playing with fire there, oh, yeah. Burning. And wanting to burn. That was the worst. The wanting. Couldn’t stop thinking about her mouth and her body against his and the way she had touched him, kissed him.
Hot. So hot. Wasn’t used to that, the heat of the human body. Vamp skin was cool, room temperature. Making love to Dru, cool vamp bodies twining around each other in the cold, deliberate, twisted games of vamp lovemaking. Nothing like this heat. This raw hunger, raw passion...
God! Why couldn’t he stop thinking about it?
Wanting her. And she wanted him.
No one had ever wanted him. Not even Dru. He had thought she had in the beginning, but it hadn’t taken him very long to find out that he was only a substitute for Angelus. It had been made deliberately clear to him very early on that he was only a fuck toy and guardian and minder and anything else the other three required, and that his feelings about it, his feelings about anything, didn’t matter.
He had only wanted two women in his entire existence—Cecily and Dru. And neither of them had wanted him.
The Slayer wanted him. The Slayer was taking some extraordinary risks in wanting him. He could, after all, have ripped her throat out right in the beginning.
Inside him, William was awake. It was William who was responding to the Slayer. And that was a danger. Spike had shoved William right down deep where no one would ever see him. Angelus and Darla had taken great pleasure in savaging William whenever he made an appearance, and Drusilla had been indifferent to him. Spike had learned very quickly that self-preservation meant that William—that stupid, useless, vulnerable git—should never be allowed to rear his defenseless head. There had never been a way to eradicate William totally, though God knows Spike had tried. Bits of William still informed Spike’s gentleness towards Drusilla and his observations about the things around him and his appreciation of the world. Aside from that though, he had thought William completely repressed.
But here he was again, stronger than ever. Just asking to be dusted, that was.
He had to put a stop to it right now.
Slayer thought she had him wrapped around her little finger. Sod that. She was going to learn different.
He paced around the room angrily. In the central room above him, he could hear the Annoying One and his merry band of gormless twits chanting strenuously. Thirty odd vamps, and they needed magic to screw themselves up into taking on one diminutive girl standing all of five-foot-two and weighing maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Brave bunch, they were.
He’d killed two Slayers. By himself. Without any bloody magic or sodding St. Vigeous. And, by God, he was going to kill himself one more.
***
Buffy looked about the lounge of the high school, noticing that people were already leaving. Parent-Teacher night was drawing to a close. Which meant that Spike and his gang should be coming crashing through the window in about fifteen minutes. If they were coming.
The last time they hadn’t come until Principal Snyder had started turning off the lights. Snyder hadn’t started doing that yet. He had taken Joyce off for a private talk and the two of them hadn’t returned yet.
"Willow, Cordy?" she called. "Start getting people to leave. And when they’re all gone, I want the two of you to leave as well."
"Who died and made you supreme commander of the galaxy?" demanded Cordelia at once and Buffy fixed her with a cold stare.
"Just do it."
Willow gave Buffy a nervous glance and pulled Cordelia around. "Better do as she says. She’s been kind of jumpy the last few days."
"PMS or what?" muttered Cordy, but started going around with a wide smile to all the parents remaining. It gave her the opportunity to show herself off and play the gracious hostess, so she wasn’t complaining.
A little while later, everyone was gone except a few teachers. Buffy knew that she wouldn’t be able to get them to leave and only hoped that they would survive. She wondered whether she would have time to run to the library and tell Giles, Xander and Jenny Calendar to leave as well. But then she saw Snyder and her mother approaching and knew she would not. She sighed and ran her hands down her tank top and jeans. No short white skirt this time; not when she was going to have to climb up into the ceiling and crawl through all that dust again.
"In the car. Now," Joyce said furiously and Snyder gave Buffy a smug smile as he brushed past her to turn off the lights at the window end of the lounge.
Buffy watched him narrowly as he switched off the lights.
"Will you pay attention to me, young lady!" Joyce exclaimed when Buffy didn’t do what she was told.
"Just a minute, Mom."
Two vamps suddenly crashed through the window. Snyder yelled. Several more vamps stormed in. Buffy smiled tightly when she saw Spike in the lead.
He smiled back, a gleeful, dangerous smile. "What can I say? I couldn’t wait."
Buffy tossed a chair into their midst to slow them down, then grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her into the hallway. The teachers were running about in a panic.
"Come on!" Buffy yelled at them. "This way! You too, Mr Whitmore!" She grabbed at the teacher who had got himself killed by Spike the last time. "Especially you!"
She saw vamps running towards them from the other end of the hallway, and yanked everybody around.
"This way! C’mon! C’mon!" She shoved them all down another passageway. "Get into a classroom and barricade yourselves in!"
At the far end of that passageway, the library doors opened and Giles, Jenny and Xander came running out.
"Spike and an army!" she yelled at them, then saw a vampire heading their way fast. "Look out!"
Jenny screamed.
"Back!" yelled Giles and they fell back into the library and shoved the swing doors shut just as the vamp slammed into them.
Buffy could hear them dragging things across to barricade the doors, but didn’t have much time to pay attention. She was too busy pushing her bunch through the doors of the science classroom. She got them all in and slammed the door just as vamps reached it and started to pound on it.
"Shove something across it!"
Snyder and another man heaved a storage cabinet in front of the door while Buffy ran to the other door and locked it. The lights suddenly went out, then the emergency lights came on.
"They’ve cut the power."
"Who are those people and what do they want?" someone shouted.
"I didn’t get much of a look," Joyce said, "but is there something wrong with their faces?"
"Yes!" Snyder yelled. "PCP! It’s a gang on PCP! We’ve got to get out of here!"
"No!" Buffy caught him as he tried to open the window. "You can’t go outside! They’ll kill you!"
Snyder pulled away. "You don’t tell me! I tell you!"
She ignored his blustering, caught up a stool and set it on a lab table.
"Who do you think you are?" Snyder was yelling.
"I’m the one who knows how to stop them."
Joyce grabbed at her as she climbed up and pushed a ceiling panel aside.
"Buffy, these guys are serious! You can’t go out there!"
"That’s why I’m going up here," Buffy grinned and swung herself into the ceiling. "Don’t worry, Mom."
She could hear Spike searching for her as she crawled through the ceiling.
"Slaaaayer! Here, kitty, kit-tyyy!"
"Be with you in a tick, pet," she murmured in a bad British accent, grinning. "Just need to get some of the deadwood cleared out first."
She kicked out a ceiling panel in the library and looked down at Giles’ and Jenny’s startled faces.
"Hey, guys."
"Oh, thank God you’re all right!" Giles exclaimed.
"Toss me up that bag of stakes, Giles."
He did so. "Where are the others?"
"Science room down the hall."
"I sent Xander through the stacks to get Angel."
"Good."
"What’s your plan?"
"Vamps are scattered all round the building. I’m gonna take them out one by one. Set ‘em up and knock ‘em down."
"You’ll need help..." Giles started to move towards the barricaded library doors.
"No! What I need is for you to take care of my mother. I’m going to take out the vamps in the hall first. Then I want you to get my mother and the others out of here."
"Watch your back!" Giles called after her as she disappeared into the ceiling space once more.
Prescient knowledge was a real plus. She knew exactly where the vamps were, took them out quickly and efficiently, clearing the hallway as fast as she could before Spike became aware of her whereabouts.
"Mom! Come on!"
Giles opened the library door, just as everybody rushed out of the science room. Buffy shepherded them all into the library.
"Get them out through the stacks, Giles." She pushed her mother back as Joyce started to follow her. "Mom, don’t come after me. I’ve got something to do and I’ve got to do it alone. I want your word."
Joyce opened her mouth to protest, then closed it at the determined look on Buffy’s face. "All right. I promise."
"Thank you."
She did a spiral around the school, dusting the outlying vamps one by one until the only ones remaining were those in the group with Spike at the lobby.
She scooped up a fire axe lying on the ground as she closed in on the lobby. She could hear Spike and Angel talking. Spike was playing with Angel, pretending he didn’t know about the soul. She glanced around the corner of the hallway just as Spike sucker-punched Angel. He put all his strength behind the blow and she couldn’t help grinning at the beatific look on his face when Angel thumped against the wall and nearly fell.
"Come on, people," Spike snarled at the other vamps, catching up a metal pole. "This isn’t a spectator sport!"
Angel and Xander fled out of the school and the vamps rushed after them. Spike started to go with them, then stopped abruptly, raising his head and sniffing the air. He turned slowly, smiling, his fangs flashing in the glow of the emergency lights. He was in full gameface. It was a deliberate statement. That he was a vamp and that there would be no quarter.
"Slayer. Wondered when you’d show up. Knew you wouldn’t duck a confrontation."
"Aren’t you going to call the others back?" she asked, smiling. She knew he wouldn’t.
"This is between you and me. Shall we dance, Slayer?"
"Oh, yeah, we’ll dance." She raised her brows at the metal pole in his hands. "Do we really need weapons for this?"
He ran his hand downwards across his stomach meaningfully. "I just like them. They make me feel all manly."
But he threw the pole down, trusting her to do the same. She smiled. He didn’t even know that he was trusting her and what that said about him. Another step closer in the long dance, a crack in the armor that he had so carefully raised against her. And even that armor was a giveaway, the fact that he needed it. Yet he wasn’t even aware of it himself.
She tossed her fire axe negligently away. "You shouldn’t have come here."
He grinned. "No, I messed up all your doilies and stuff. But I just got so bored."
"Is that why you didn’t wait for St. Vigeous?"
"St Vigeous! All that chanting and scourging. Pfft!" It was a disdainful, contemptuous expulsion of breath. "Don’t need magic to take you on, Slayer. Don’t need some fake edge. Got a rep to maintain. I didn’t need any dirty unfair advantage to take care of the other two. We do this, we do it proper."
She was easing away from the hallway corner into a clear area of the lobby, where they would have space to fight properly.
"So that’s why you let the others go after Angel," she said to keep him distracted from what she was doing.
He gave her a wide, flashing smile that let her know that he knew perfectly well what she was doing and was letting her. "Yeah."
"You really enjoyed whacking Angel like that."
He laughed. "Oh, yeah. Sod deserved it. Deserves a lot more. One whack doesn’t make up for two decades of shit. I do you, pet, and then I go after him."
"Gotta do me first," she said and hit him.
The next moment they were in a whirl of motion, punching, kicking, blocking, trying for the least little bit of advantage.
They were both fast and deadly. But she knew his moves and he didn’t know hers. She knew better than to try anything standard, used only the moves that she had worked out—with him— over the years. The unique blows and kicks that he didn’t know yet and would not expect. It gave her just that tiny edge over him. She had the harder job, trying to achieve that standoff rather than the death that he was looking for.
It was difficult. He was good, better than she had thought. She realized that he had never really used his full strength and expertise against her before in all their years of sparring, had always held back just that little bit. She needed everything she had learned in the past seven years of fighting to stay ahead of him.
Despite the danger, they were both grinning. It was exhilarating, pure joy, to have a truly worthy opponent. To use both body and mind to the fullest, to test one’s limits. But time was running out. Very soon, Angel would have taken care of the fledglings outside and then he and Xander would come running in. She couldn’t afford to have them interfering.
The end came abruptly, when neither one of them was expecting it. He got past her guard with one powerful blow that struck her to the ground, then was on top of her, his fangs flashing towards her throat. She scissored her legs around him in desperation and rolled.
Then she was on top and her stake was at his heart.
"Shit," he said and let his head fall back in resignation. "You’re good, Slayer."
"So are you."
"Not good enough." He sighed. "Fair fight though. Finish it."
"No."
His brows rose. "Why not?"
"Haven’t got what I wanted yet."
He frowned in puzzlement. "What’s that?"
"The oath sanglante."
His eyes widened and he bucked suddenly under her, trying to throw her off. But she had been expecting something like that and just gripped her thighs tighter around his sides, pressed her weight harder into his diaphragm and held him where he was.
"Won’t be your minion, Slayer!" he snarled. "Won’t be anybody’s minion! Shit, even Angelus couldn’t make me his minion and he broke half my bones and beat me bloody trying. Dust first!"
"In vampire terms," she said coolly and steadily, "I’m the Overlord of Sunnydale. The Anointed One has no real claim. He may have been chosen by the Master, but the Master did not have the right to name an heir. This is my territory. I won it from the Master in fair fight. Sunnydale and its people belong to me. I rule."
"You’re not a vampire!"
"I looked it up last night in my Watcher’s books. It’s any supernatural entity. I’m the Slayer. I qualify. Challenge fight. I won. I’m the de facto ruler of Sunnydale."
"Still won’t be your minion!"
"Don’t want that. I’m not a Master. I’m an Overlord. What are the rules for either a Master living in or an ordinary vampire passing through an Overlord’s territory?"
He went completely still under her.
"Challenge, submission, retreat or pax," he said slowly.
"You lost the challenge. You won’t submit. Only choices left are die, leave or choose pax."
He was watching her narrowly. "What terms for a pax?"
"I understand that they are negotiable, right? And if no agreement can be reached, then the challenge can be renewed or the challenger must leave the area. If there’s a new challenge, there must be a formal statement of intent. Can’t just snarl and leap."
He laughed wryly. "You did your research."
"We can negotiate terms tomorrow. Right now, I want to establish the pax."
He grinned. "What’s the hurry, Slayer? I’m kind of enjoying having you on top of me like this. Would enjoy it more if you’d move down just a little bit."
"Maybe later." She grinned back, but kept the stake carefully pressed over his heart. Until the oath was taken, he was still dangerous, would renew the fight if she eased up even in the slightest. "We’re going to be interrupted any minute and I want that oath."
"They’re still busy out there but, yeah, it won’t be too much longer." He frowned up at her. "Why are you doing this, Slayer? Why don’t you just dust me?"
She smiled. "I think you know. Why didn’t you fight me all out?"
His eyes flicked away from hers. "I..."
"You kept hesitating. Think I couldn’t tell?"
She snapped the point of the stake at the side of his neck, cutting his flesh, then brought the stake back to his heart as quickly as she could.
"Don’t have the fangs to make this a proper blood oath, but it’s all symbolic, isn’t it?"
She reached out and deliberately nicked her wrist on one of his fangs, held it out to him as it bled.
"You take your life from my hand, vampire. Pax?"
"I take my life from your hand," he agreed slowly and reluctantly. "Pax."
He licked the blood from her wrist. She saw his eyes half-close with heavy sensuality at the taste of Slayer blood, bent and licked the cut on his neck lightly, tasted his blood coppery on her tongue. He shivered suddenly under her.
"Done," she said. She drew the stake away, laid it down on the ground beside him. "Liked that, didn’t you?"
"Oh, yeah. ‘The blood is the life,’" he said dryly. "Any blood exchange arouses."
She looked down at him, smiling. The T-shirt he was wearing was the loose type he used to wear. She almost liked it better than the tight ones he changed to later, because it bared the strong, supple lines of his throat. She laid her palm delicately on his throat, fondling him.
"I could claim you with that exchange of blood," she said softly. "Should I?"
His eyes widened and the gameface melted suddenly away into his human features. She heard his breath shudder in his mouth before he closed it tightly.
"Would you want to?" he asked almost under his breath.
She stroked his throat lightly with her fingertips, smiling, as he stared at her. "Would you say yes if I did? Would you want it, Spike?"
His lips parted, but no sound came out. Then he jerked his head around.
"They’re coming," he said.
She slid off him to sit to one side. "Find me tomorrow and we’ll negotiate the rules."
He sat up slowly, got one knee under him, then stopped abruptly. His hand caught the back of her head and pulled her forward. He kissed her intensely, bruisingly hard, and her mouth opened to him without a thought. Passion flared, insistent and demanding. They devoured each other’s mouths, just about eating each other alive.
Snyder’s voice sounded outside. They broke apart, staring at each other blankly. Then he gathered his feet under him and was running towards the broken window in the lounge, leaped through it and was gone.
TBC
[Reviews - 61]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 12553 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +