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Author's Chapter Notes:
I think this is pretty much the last of the angst....I swear!
Chapter Six

Buffy awoke slowly, her body still aching from the beating it had taken the night before. She went over the evening in her head but remembered nothing past her hysterical crying on Spike’s chest. She did remember his soothing words and gentle hands, and since she had no memory of his leaving, she assumed he’d stayed with her for at least a while after she stopped crying.

(All right. Honesty didn’t work; I guess it’s time for more feminine wiles. Who would have thought that some day I’d be trying to woo Spike? The vampire who stalked me for a year before I gave him his crumb. Who allowed me to use and abuse him and returned nothing but understanding and love. Who went and got his soul because he thought he’d hurt me. The vampire who died to save the world for me. The one whose love I took for granted for so many years I don’t even know how to begin to earn it back.)

Deciding a hot bath was a good start; she forced her aching body out of the bed, pausing to sniff the pillows that still smelled faintly of tobacco and leather. She began filling the tub with hot water and collected her shampoos and bath gels in preparation for a good long soak.

She luxuriated in the tub until the water began to cool, then quickly washed her hair and got out. She spent more time rubbing lotions on her body, making sure her skin was soft everywhere he might touch her. She threw on some clothes and ran out to have an early meal, allowing herself plenty of time to get ready before darkness set in. She couldn’t have said why she was confident that he would come back that night, but she knew that he would. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer intended to be ready for him.

She was in the midst of trying on and discarding outfits to wear that evening when she heard a knock on the door of her room. Frowning slightly, she looked out the window to see that it was still daylight, so unlikely to be Spike showing up early.

Years as a slayer had her hiding a knife in her sleeve as she went to the door and pulled it open slowly. Standing on the other side was a very determined looking Anne, clutching a small book to her chest.

“Can I come in?” She stared defiantly at the smaller blond, refusing to back down from the cold glare.

Buffy silently stepped back and opened the door the rest of the way. She made a big show of taking the knife out of her sleeve and putting it down on the nightstand, before going back to her wardrobe.

“We’re mated, you know,” Anne astonished her by stating baldly.

“You’re whatted?” Buffy’s knowledge of vampire mating rituals was very slight. Giles had never felt it necessary to address that side of her enemy’s nature, feeling the less she knew about a vampire’s ability to love, the easier it would be to do her job.

“Mated. I’m claimed.” Anne tilted her head and pulled back her long hair to display the scars on her neck.

“He bit you,” Buffy said coldly. “That’s not a life-long commitment; that’s a snack.” She spoke firmly, but her stomach was suddenly turning over in trepidation. She remembered seeing Spike nuzzle the marks on her first day there and the way it had made her feel.

“If a vampire bites you, without wanting to kill, it’s a claim. An irrevocable connection that lasts until one of you dies. It’s all right here,” she said, thrusting the book at Buffy.

Buffy glanced at the title “Mating Rituals of Vampires” and said slowly, “No. Spike wouldn’t do that to me. He would have told me if he and you—“

“Spike is too nice for his own good,” the other woman said angrily. “He doesn’t want to hurt you. That’s why he didn’t tell you. This mark means I belong to him – and he belongs to me.”

“Only until he gets his memories back,” Buffy said through gritted teeth. Her heart pounded in fear that she might be speaking optimistically out of ignorance of what the bites actually meant, but she kept up a confident front in the face of her rival. Neither woman was making any attempt to pretend they weren’t having a confrontation over the vampire.

“Buffy,” Anne tried to sound reasonable. ”Spike loves me. I’m sure of it. But I think he might have loved you too. A long time ago.” She ignored Buffy’s high pitched, “MIGHT have loved me?” and continued as though she was explaining things to someone very slow to understand. “What do you think will happen if you find a way to bring back his memory and he finds himself mated to me for life? Knowing you still want him and he can never be with you? It will break his heart. Is that really what you want? To tear him apart like that?”

“I can’t control what happens with his memory,” Buffy replied, fear clenching her heart at the thought of hurting Spike again.

“If you’re not here, there won’t be so much to remind him of things. And even if it comes back, if he thinks you don’t want him any more he’ll be willing to stay here. With his mate. Where he’s been happy.”

“I don’t believe this mate stuff,” Buffy growled. “So he bit you once. That doesn’t make it a claim or a mating.”

“It does if he did it while we were making love,” Anne insisted. “It’s all right here in this book. You can read it for yourself.” She tossed the book on the bed and turned to leave before it could occur to the slayer that she might solve the problem by throwing Anne out the window. “Just remember,” she offered as her parting shot, “if he spends the rest of his life miserable because he can’t be with you, it’ll be your fault.”

Buffy stood frozen, the shirt she’d been trying on still in her hand. Cursing herself for not paying more attention to vampire culture and ritual, she eyed the book on her bed as though it was an angry cobra. She went back over Spike’s behavior the past two days. The obvious desire in his eyes and his unusual – for him- ability to walk away from what she offered. She’d seen the conflict in his face, felt the trembling of his body as he resisted the physical memory she’d awakened. A sudden terror seized her heart at the idea that Anne might be telling the truth, that the vampire she was in love with had unwittingly bound himself forever to another woman.

She dropped the shirt on the floor and, with a trembling hand, picked up the book and sat down. She stared hard at it for a full minute, as though the force of her glare could change what she was going to find inside, then sighed and opened it to the first page.





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