1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37
Barb
"It's quite simple, Quentin.” Giles set his saucer on the coffee table
and sank back into the armchair. “Her position is that her first responsibility
is to raise and educate her younger sister, and she simply cannot afford to
depend on my charity, as she puts it, to accomplish this. Unless the Council
sees fit to recompense her for her work on their behalf, she has no choice but
to cease patrolling and, er, 'get a real job.'"
There was a long, static-ridden pause, during which Giles reviewed his own
words half a dozen times--too indifferent? Too threatening? He sat
back in the armchair and took the album from the top of the stack on the coffee
table, turning it over and over in his lap, and slipped the record in its inner
sleeve free. Eric Clapton and Cream. The black vinyl gleamed
fitfully. Bulky, fragile things, records, a bastard to ship. He
could have replaced most of them with CDs, but to his mind that would have been
as great travesty as replacing his library with an E-book. No tiny, shiny,
digitized scrap of plastic could compare with the glory of analog sound and
full-sized cover art.
Besides, he'd seen
Spike's lustful glances in his record cabinet's direction, and had a good idea
where half of them would end up if he did get rid of them. He was
reluctantly resigned to Spike’s liason with Buffy, but damned if he was going to
leave his record collection to a vampire.
A trans-Atlantic sigh emerged from the hiss of line noise. "I
see." Travers's tone implied that he did see; with the bulk of the planet
between them, his displeasure still came through the phone lines loud and
clear. "And have you pointed out to her that this decision will cost
lives, even worlds?"
Giles set the album
down again and picked up his teacup, taking a sip. Now for the tricky
part. "Well, er, actually... she was rather worried about that. I
pointed out that, technically speaking, her first death released her from her
duties as Slayer. The Powers evidently intended her to be a
short-timer--the Pergamum Codex had only the one prophecy regarding her, after
all." He reached over and flipped the work in question open, skimming the
relevant passages. How worried they'd all been, all those years ago--and
over a vampire. How quaint. "She did say that she might try
to get a little slaying in on weekends, time permitting."
There was an indistinct noise on the other end of the
line. Best not get too facetious; Travers was neither stupid nor easily
manipulated. No one who rose to become Head of the Council was.
Giles continued, "Several of her friends and associates did offer to patrol in
her stead, but I persuaded them that it was far too dangerous for normal humans
to attempt this alone."
"Indeed?"
Travers's voice was as dry as the California desert. "You managed
adequately all summer, as I recall."
"Mmm. Yes. We managed. With the help of a vampire and a
powerful witch. I'm sure you're aware that summer is the period at which
vampire activity is at its lowest ebb, the Hellmouth is quiescent, et
cetera. Willow is still suffering the effects of over-straining her
magical abilities last month. Spike has, of course, no inclination to risk
himself on behalf of innocent bystanders if it brings him no personal
gain." Travers wouldn't, he hoped, start pondering the question of exactly
what sort of personal gain had prompted Spike to help over the summer.
"This leaves Tara McClay as our sole supernatural resource, and while she's a
competent practitioner, combat spells are not her forte."
"I do sympathize with Ms. Summers's financial woes, but the
Council's resources are not inexhaustible. Forty years of a Labor
government--"
"Yes, yes, men living on the dole
from birth to death--I grew up in the sixties, Quentin, and they've been over
for quite some time now." Giles reined in his temper and stirred his
tea. "Our resources are not inexhaustible, true, but neither are they
anywhere near exhausted. That retreat in--"
Travers cut him off. "This is a matter of principle, Rupert, for me
as much as it is for you. The Slayer is the Council's
instrument--"
"The Slayer is a
twenty-year-old girl who's died twice in the Council's service!"
"No, Rupert, Buffy Summers is a twenty-year-old
girl." Travers's voice grew cold. "The Slayer is far more than
that. She existed long before Buffy was Called and she will exist long
after Buffy is dust."
"Buffy's been
dust. Twice. And both times she's returned to her calling despite
there being no reason for her to do so. You're right, Quentin--she isn't
the Slayer. Faith is. Buffy is a good person who's been aiding our
cause because she knows it to be the best use she can make of her talents.
We owe her. Quentin, think. How often do we have a truly experienced
Slayer at our disposal? How many survive the Cruciamentum--how many live
to take the Cruciamentum? There is no comparison between the girl I met
five years ago and the Buffy Summers of today. I scarcely dare imagine
what she will be capable of in a few more years."
"Yes... what will she be capable of? That’s the question, isn't
it?" Travers said. There was a note in his voice that Giles couldn’t
interpret and therefore distrusted. "There are reasons for the Council
exercising such control over the Slayer, Rupert, reasons that you
don't--"
"Why don't you explain them to
me?"
Silence again. Travers was no
fool. He wouldn't drop obscure hints out of carelessness; he was on a
fishing expedition of his own. "I'm not free to tell you anything I
please, Rupert. But I will say this. Slayers who survive as long as
your Buffy has have a tendency to become ... willful."
"Ah. Very helpful. And I'll be able to distinguish this
from her normal behavior precisely how?"
"Perhaps my terminology is imprecise. Extraordinarily focused upon their
work, and more vulnerable to... dangerous urges. And therefore in greater
need of guidance than ever. Making a Slayer independant of her Watcher at
this point is the last thing I would advise. I'll take the money matter
under advisement, Rupert, but that's all I can promise you."
Giles sat there for some time after Travers had hung up,
frowning into space and turning his cup of cooling tea round and round in his
hands. Travers meant to make him suspicious of Buffy's behavior, he was
certain, but to what end? To make him stay in America? To quash the
idea of Buffy getting a separate stipend? What, from the Council’s point
of view, could be considered bad about a Slayer becoming more focused upon her
job?
She's already keeping company
with one of them; how much more focused can one get? His frown
deepened. Surely that couldn't be it... Could it?
Last year Buffy had been worried about the increasing
allure that her midnight hunts held for her, and asked him to stay and delve
into the origins of her powers. Joyce’s illness and death and Glory’s hunt
for Dawn had derailed that plan before it had begun, but now... He sat
back and looked about the room, at the stacks of books and half-packed
boxes. Life in transition. Bloody
hell.
The Krallock demon's
cavernous nostrils flared, and its barnacle-encrusted head swung ponderously to
face the back of the room, spattering seawater all over the floor. Its
damp, weed-draped form filled the entire doorway, making the utility room of
Willy's even more claustrophobic and absorbing the sound of clinking glasses and
barroom squabbles that otherwise drifted back from the front of the building and
. "Vampire," it rumbled. "What the hell is he doing here? Bad
enough the owner lets his kind into the bar."
The three demons at the table shuffled their feet (or whatever passed for
them) looked uncomfortable, and examined their cards, the floor, the pipes in
the ceiling--anything but the Krallock demon or the object of its
displeasure. Said object tapped his cigarette into the nearby ashtray
and leaned back in his chair, a faint smirk enlivening his angular
countenance. Into the silence he drawled, "Playing poker, which is more
than I can say for you."
The dealer's rheumy
eyes took on a distressed squint, and his wrinkled, pouchy throat bobbed as he
swallowed. He laid his ears flat against his skull and tried to still
their nervous twitching. "He's...uh... Spike."
The nictating membranes slid over the Krallock's slit-pupiled,
basketball-sized eyes, followed by the true lids in a contemptuous double
blink. Apparently this was insufficient explanation. Spike's snide
grin widened. He was enjoying their discomfiture--Clem, the dealer, wasn't
so bad, but as a rule, demons despised vampires. Vampires were the lowest
of the low, hybrids hopelessly tainted with humanity: fast-breeding, stupid,
expendable cannon fodder. Not that this didn't sum up Spike's opinion of
most other vampires as well, but he objected very strenuously at being lumped in
with the common throng.
Admitting that they
were a little bit afraid of a mere vampire wasn't going to win Clem and his pals
any points with the big-shot out-of-town demon. Admitting that the mere
vampire's propensity towards taking down big-shot, out-of-town demons wasn't an
entirely unwelcome trait amongst the smaller fry of Sunnydale's demon population
would win them even fewer. "I'm no ordinary vampire, mate.
Scourge of Europe, done a couple of Slayers in my day, used to be the Master of
Sunnydale..."
The creature in the doorway
shook its head and gave a disdainful snort, perfuming the cramped room with
smell of dead fish and salt. "Used to be?"
Spike's eyes narrowed a trifle. His nerves were
singing with that lovely frisson of adrenaline and anticipation which presaged a
fight--and just a touch of fear; Krallock demons were definitely out of his
league. As usual, he fed the last emotion into more swagger. "Gave
it up for Lent. You gonna ante up or stand there like a mop in need of a
wringer?"
The Krallock demon gave the four
of them a disdainful once-over. "I don't consort with his kind." It
snorted again. "Nor do I consort with those who do." It gave Spike a
last look. “Your blood is unworthy to stain my talons.” With that it
backed out of the doorway, its claws leaving a trail of ragged scars in the
apparently worthier linoleum.
With its
departure the atmosphere in the room lightened perceptibly. Spike relaxed,
and Clem breathed a sigh which might have been relief. True, the Krallocks
were a noble line, among the closest to pure, Ascended demons to be found on
this plane. It would have been an honor to have one join them. On
the other hand, they had a habit of biting off heads when annoyed, and like most
pure demons, they were easily annoyed. The small fuzzy purple Skibbnir
demon to Clem's left shuffled through his cards and glared at Spike, and Clem
hurriedly joined in with a ferocious, wrinkly scowl. "He probably had a
dozen tabbies in his brood pouch."
Maintaining face, as expected. "Just enough to cover what you owe me,
eh?" Spike studied his hand--two nines, a queen, a ten and a three.
Plus the jack of diamonds he's palmed earlier, if you wanted to get technical
about it. He rearranged his cards and tossed the three on the discard
pile. "One. Hit me."
Clem burst
into guffaws of laughter and dealt him another card. "I thought that's
what you hung around the Slayer for."
The
Skibbnir made a chittering noise like a forest full of demented squirrels and
high-fived Clem's wrinkled, loose-skinned paw with two of its six limbs.
"Good 'un, Clem!"
Spike turned his new card
over and slid it into his hand. Eight of clubs. And a good thing
or you'd be eating those ears. He exchanged one of the nines for the
jack tucked away in the sleeve of his duster--vampiric speed was a wonderful
thing. "Now, now, boys, no rude remarks about my lady, or I'll have to
give you a refresher lesson in manners.”
Purple snickered. “Your lady now, is
it?”
“Me 'n the Slayer're working
together now, remember." He blew a smoke ring at Purple with entirely
unfeigned smugness. "Though it's not so much work these days. She's
got better things to do with the undead than stake 'em."
The third demon, a spidery-thin, pearly-skinned humanoid with
glittering encrustations of blue crystal scattered over its body, discarded a
pair of cards and received his replacements with an impassive face. "We've
heard that song and dance before."
Spike's
grin got wider. "Yeh, well, you'll be hearing a lot more of it. The
Slayer's finally kicked over her traces. Told the Council to piss
off. She's going into a better-paying line of work."
"Uh huh," the crystalline demon said, obviously
skeptical. "And we all jumped for joy when her Watcher got fired, but here
they still are, making our lives miserable."
"Dealer takes two." Clem examined his new hand, cards held up before
his protuberant nose. "I'm in. See your shorthair and raise you a
Persian."
"I fold," Purple said with a
disgusted hiss. "Your life? As if the Slayer knows you
exist."
Spike focused on the crystalline
demon's heartbeat (or whatever it was making noise in there) and tried to decide
whether the speeding up meant he had good cards or bad ones. Clem's right
ear was twitching again, and that meant he had a good hand, or was in the
process of manufacturing one. Cheating was part of the game, accepted
until someone felt like making something of it--they were demons, after
all.
"Live and let live's my motto," Clem
said. He glanced at Spike. "Present company excepted. The
Slayer's never bothered with the likes of us. Vampires, greater
demons... Why, my cousin Ferlie--"
"Like that Krallock demon," Spike interrupted. "Think she'd let that
soggy blighter ponce about town, insultin' the locals, if she were still on the
job? I'll bet you anything you care to name that come Sunday next, she
won't have lifted a finger against it."
Purple and Blue Crystal looked interested. Clem shook his head, setting
his jowls to wagging. "Uh uh. Last time I took one of your wagers I
ended up stuck on top of a fence with my britches caught on a
nail."
Spike's Cheshire Cat expression
didn't waver. "You see any nails around here?"
“Done,” Blue Crystal said, and the other two chimed in. “But
just a friendly bet--money, no kittens.”
"Not exactly an encouraging conversation," Giles said, "But better than
it could have gone."
"Willful?" Buffy said
with a little frown. "It makes me sound like the heroine of a Gothic
romance. If I get a sudden urge to run across a moor in my nightie, Giles,
by all means stop me."
"They're being
ridiculous," Anya said, setting the Council's letter down and sliding it across
the table to Giles. "Slaying is a public service job like a police officer
or firefighter, so Buffy should be making at least as much as they do at similar
levels of experience. Did you point out that it's far more cost-effective
in terms of lives saved to maintain one experienced Slayer than it is to
constantly be training new ones?"
Willow's
fingers tightened around her pencil. She forced them to unclasp, lest she
snap it in half. Again. What was it about Xander that made him
unerringly seek out the most annoying women in Sunnydale to fall for? It
wasn't even that Anya was saying anything rude or clueless. She was making
sense for once. It was just that it was Anya: all by itself, the sound of
that whiny nasal voice had the ability to drill into Willow's skull and start
chipping its way out with a pickaxe. She stared down at the pile of notes
in front of her, trying to concentrate on anything besides the sound of the
soon-to-be Mrs. Harris prattling on.
The notes were just the way she liked them: alphabetized each in their own
folders with the color-coded tabs. Blue for the original spells she'd
based her research on, green for the spells she'd actually used in the creation
of the new one, red for the new spell itself, yellow for notes on the changes
and substitutions she'd made in creating it, orange for miscellaneous additional
notes which might come in handy. The pile of bright manila folders stood
square-cornered on the central glass insert of the table-top, exuding that
new-paper-and-glue smell which conjured up her favorite time of year, the
beginning of school.
A week's worth of
effort, boiled down to 'I can't do it.' Willow shuffled the stack again,
unhappily aware that the nervous dampness of her palms would wilt the folders'
crisp clean newness. The queasy twist in her stomach, the barely-leashed
panic which made her heart pound were familiar. She had nightmares like
this. She couldn't remember the combination to her locker. She'd
forgotten to drop the calculus class, and now she had to read the entire
semester's worth of material in the hour before the final. She was
standing at the front of the classroom, stumbling through an oral report to the
accompaniment of bored snickers from her classmates.
She Wasn't Prepared.
"You don't want to antagonize them more than necessary," Anya chirped, innocent
of the effect she was producing. "If we can make them realize Buffy's a
valuable commodity, it'll make for much better labor-management relations in the
long run."
The really annoying thing,
Willow decided, was that no one else was annoyed. Tara was nibbling on her
pencil and sketching out one of the weird organic-looking doodles that she
claimed helped her concentrate on new spells--this one looked like a cross
between a bagpipe and an okra bush. Spike and Buffy were poring over a
street map of L.A. spread out across the pages of Aurelius the Seer: A
Comprehensive Index of Prophecies and alternating between listening to Giles
and an incredibly pointless argument about the best way to get to Buffy's
father's apartment from the freeway. Dawn, sulking a little because she
wasn't going to L.A. with them, perched on the bottom rung of the ladder up to
the balcony where the restricted books were kept, knees akimbo and her nose in
another grimoire. Funny how no one gives her the fish-eye when she starts
pawing through Really-Dark-We-Mean-It-This-Time Magicks. My raise
the dead spell didn't bring back a shambling zombie, but noooo, let Dawn at the
Crowley, she'll be fine...
Giles,
who should have been annoyed if anyone should, was adjusting his glasses and
nodding sagely at Anya, making little notations in the margins of the
letter. He tipped the glasses down and peered over the rims at
Spike. "Progress on your end?"
"Dropped a word or two to Clem and the kitten poker crowd the other night
that Buffy was going into retirement, and let a few other blokes down at Willy's
overhear." Spike shot Buffy a wicked smile. "It'll be all over town by
tonight that the Slayer's taking a holiday."
The shop bell rang and Xander swung in with a brace of pizza boxes
balanced on one hand. "Dinner is served!" he announced, plopping both
boxes down in the center of the table. He planted a kiss on Anya's cheek
in passing and dropped into the chair between her and Willow. Yuck. We
know you're googly-eyed over Anya, Xander, do you have to rub it in?
"Brain food all around. We've got half veggie--and yes, I remembered the
bell peppers--and half black olives and pepperoni. The one on the bottom's
half ham and pineapple and half sausage and mushroom. I think that caters
to everyone's unreasonable topping prejudices. Oh, and extra garlic all
around just for you, Spike."
"Didn't know
you cared, Harris. Ta ever so." Spike grabbed two slices of
pepperoni, trailing cheese strings all over the engraving of his
great-great-ever-so-great-grandsire. He handed one to Buffy and took a
large bite of his own.
"Don't fill up on food
before you've eaten your real dinner," Buffy admonished, accepting the offering
and taking a sedate bite. "Wow. I said that with a straight
face. New heights have been reached on the surreal-weirdness-of-life
index."
Willow stared at the pizza. "I
said no bell peppers, not 'extra bell peppers, the vegetable expressly
designed to make Willow barf.'" She looked accusingly at Xander. "You
know I hate bell peppers."
Xander
made an embarrassed gesture halfway between a shrug and an arm-wave.
"Oops. Sorry, Will. I got you mixed up with Anya. She likes
'em. But there's three other kinds."
Tara laid claim to a slice of the veggie pizza and inspected it to confirm
the presence of bell peppers. "We can pick them off, honey. You
know, I think they're a fruit, not a vegetable. Tomatoes are a
fruit."
"Harris's Law: Anything green
is a vegetable, including Jell-O." Xander watched Spike hopefully for a
moment. "You're not running, gagging, or breaking out in hives. How
disappointing."
Tara smiled, a teasing light
in her eyes. "You know it doesn't have any effect when it's
cooked."
"Hope springs
eternal."
"Don't bother," Willow said under
her breath, as the topic drifted farther from her torment. "The taste
permeates the whole cheese-crust-tomato... complex," she waved a hand at the
box, "and ruins it. It's all got bell pepper cooties."
Since no one, least of all Xander, whose fault it all
was and who should have been far sorrier, seemed inclined to spring up and offer
to get her a replacement pizza, Willow folded her arms and prepared to give Dawn
a run for her money in the sulking department. Why the frilly heck was
everyone in such a good mood when it was obvious they were all doomed? The
whole scene had the Currier & Ives clarity of a moment upon which she would
someday look back upon with nostalgia, the last hurrah of a vanished era.
She watched Tara carefully removing bits of bell pepper from a slice of pizza,
and felt both touched and irritated. Strands of her lover's hair were
slipping from behind her ears, falling across her face in silky wheat-blonde
sheaves, and every now and again she raised a hand to tuck it back in
place. Tara smiled and held out the pepperless slice, a peace
offering. The gesture stirred an obscure longing in Willow, as if Tara
were already an old and treasured memory rather than a real and living
presence. Once again, the big happy Scooby family, all except crotchety
old Aunt Willow. She took the pizza and managed a return smile.
She had to pull herself out of this funk.
Buffy said, "Next item. Spike and I are leaving for L.A. tomorrow
night, so we kick off our web of deception with a couple of days of really
convincing non-slayage. We should be back Saturday night, unless Dad wants
to have some family time." She didn't sound very certain that this would
be the case.
Spike grunted. "Just as
well. More than twenty-four hours with that wanker and I'll go
spare."
Buffy wrinkled her nose at
him. "We can't afford a hotel. Would you rather stay with
Angel?"
"Let me think... flensing or
thumbscrews... ow! Pax, love, I'll behave. Vamp's
honor."
"Like that reassures me.
Console yourself with the knowledge that you annoy Dad just as much as he annoys
you."
"Still not so hot on the vampire
thing?" Willow asked, shooting for sympathetic. I will be mature, reasonable
Willow, I will, I will...
Buffy waved
her pizza in the air and shook her head. "Oh, no, that would mean
accepting that there is a vampire thing. Dad's still clinging desperately
to the conviction that Spike's a victim of poor circulation and a bad UV
allergy." She sighed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "Who just
happens to be able to grow fangs at will. Dad's temperature
approaches absolute zero on the 'no visible means of support and lives in a
crypt' thing. I think he still has secret hopes of me marrying a nice
orthodontist."
Spike finished off his pizza
and licked his fingers before appropriating another slice. "He'll come
round, love. It's all part of my bohemian charm."
Buffy actually giggled. "Oh, any day now." Willow tried
to suppress a double-take. How long had it been since she'd heard Buffy
giggle? "When I called he told me he wanted the name of your coffin
supplier for the next time he redecorates."
Spike pulled her closer, nose to nose, and purred, "I'll put him in a
coffin the minute you say the word, pet."
"Try it and you'll be occupying an urn right next to him, sweetie," Buffy
cooed back.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Xander
yelled, making a time-out sign. "I'm remembering exactly why this
relationship is so twisted and sick! There will be no cutesy Eskimo kisses
between Slayers and the eating-way-too-much-of-my-pizza undead in my
presence! I have a delicate stomach!"
Spike smirked at him. "Yeh, I remember. Next time I'll steal
an RV with independent suspension."
"Might I remind everyone that this is a business meeting?" Giles broke
in. Willow decided that Giles was the only bearable person in the
room.
"Business. Right." Buffy
sat up and folded her hands all prim and proper on the table. "I want to
get started on the Tanner thing as soon as we get back. Are we go for
that?"
"Oh, yes," Tara said, nodding
vigorously. "I found dozens of spells to cripple a rival's
magic."
Well, of course, Willow
thought. Magic was the same as anything else; it was always easier to
break something than to build something. Naturally Tara would find
success, and she'd crash and burn like the failure you are.
Tara rushed on, "The main problem's been that most of them did a lot more than
that--they're spells for wizards' duels, mostly, and we don't want to hurt
him."
Speak for yourself. The
memory of her ignominious defeat at Tanner's hands still stung.
"So I've been working on isolating the magic-deadening
elements from the more destructive effects, and I think I've got it pared down
to what we need." Tara handed Giles and Anya a short list of
ingredients. "I'll need a focal object, something we can bring him into
physical contact with. We've probably got something in the shop that'll
work. Anya and I can look through the inventory this weekend. I'll
cast a separate binding spell on it so that once it's on, he won't be able to
take it off. It'll work like a lighting rod. He'll be
grounded. Any spells he tries will just fizzle
harmlessly."
Buffy looked
pleased. "Coolness. Will? How's your end going?"
What the clues were, Willow wasn't sure--voice a
little too bright and chipper and Happy-Buffy, her expression a little too
eager, perhaps--but she was instantly certain that Buffy knew perfectly well
that she had bupkis to show for the last week's labor, and was covering for her
out of pity. She plastered a smile across her face. "Working on it,"
she said. "I've got the spell altered to do exactly what we need, but
there's still the whole power source problem."
"That's what you've been saying for days. Don't you think it's time
to try another approach?" Anya asked. "Honestly, Willow, now that you're
powerless you need to be a little more flexible."
"I am not powerless!" Willow's head lashed around to face her
ex-demon nemesis, her eyes going liquid black as eldritch forces coiled through
her body. For a brief moment she felt like herself again, as she'd felt
blasting open the hospital doors. Anya jumped back in her chair, ducking
behind Xander's shoulder. Tara's hand closed on her arm, Tara's anxious
face brought her back a measure of calm. She relaxed, muscle by muscle,
dispersing the energies she'd marshaled. She had to conserve. If she
used them, she was done for the next day. "I'm...
semi-powered."
"Will..." Xander looked
concerned. All of them looked concerned. "You're...
jumpy."
"And you need to watch where
you jump," Anya grumbled. "You could curse someone's eye
out."
"We've got till we get back from
L.A., anyway," Buffy said. "No pressure." She hesitated, worrying
her lower lip. "But maybe we should have some kind of backup plan, just in
case?"
"I said I'd have it ready, and I
will!" Willow snapped, then immediately dropped her head, giving the folders
before her another unneeded shuffling. "Sorry. I'm just a little
tired." Anya frowned at her and Willow gritted her teeth. Just
one little spell. One little spell--no black magic, just darkish
grey--would shut her up. Give her permanent laryngitis, or hiccups, or
something. One teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy spell... But that, as
Buffy was fond of saying, would be wrong.
This is the same Buffy getting snuggly with the
vampire?
A chill raced over her and
the fine hairs on the back of her neck lifted. It took a moment to muster
the courage to look up, then duck back down behind her notebook. Across
the room, reflected in the glass of the display cases where her own reflection
should be--Willow, yet Not-Willow. Alabaster skin, cat-green eyes, hair
like a fall of glowing embers, a sweet wicked Mona Lisa smile Willow had
practiced in the mirror for hours and never managed to get right: the vampire
version of herself whom Anya had once summoned accidentally from an alternate
dimension.
Except it couldn't be,
really, because they'd sent Vamp-Willow back where she came from, right?
And more, the whole mirror thing. Vampires didn't reflect, so a vampire
being a reflection? "Pretty sure that's not normal," she muttered,
then realized she'd spoken aloud as Tara looked up from her sketching, a
question in her eyes. "This, um, thing." Willow grabbed the Index
of Prophecies and pointed at random to one of the illustrations.
"Rusnak demons have, um, three horns, and this one has, uh, three horns, so
obviously I'm looking at the wrong picture, ha ha, don't mind me!"
Tara's forehead wrinkled in perplexity, and multiple
transparent copies of Vamp-Willow blew her a kiss from the panes of glass.
No one else noticed. Willow scarcely heard Buffy and Giles start
discussing the Council situation again. We sent you away!
Oh, I never really left. The
vision in black leather and red lace got up and sashayed around the reflected
table to run a languid finger along the spine of the nearest reflected
book. I've always been... right... here. She tapped a
long-nailed finger against her chest and Willow felt an icy twinge over her own
heart. Wrong, her alter ego said, with a little moue at the
reflected Buffy and Spike, who were exchanging lascivious caresses.
Reflected-Buffy tossed a look of scornful amusement at her, and Willow's cheeks
grew hot. So very, very wrong. He's still a bad, bad boy, you
know. But, oh, so much fun. Reflected-Willow grabbed
reflected-Anya's hair and yanked her head back, trailing one blood-red nail
across the bared throat. We could have all kinds of fun with the
little demon girl. That smile again. Or anyone
else. She strolled over to the reflected Dawn, who radiated a
flaring nexus of emerald-green energy, and ran her hands down over the girl's
translucent shoulders. If it's power you
need...
"...we can use that glamor I
worked up to infiltrate Bryce's group," Tara was saying. "Then the two of
you could patrol, but you'd be under cover."
"That'll be great. And oh--I had that interview
with the gym today and they said they'd call back if they wanted to see me
again, so be sure--"
Willow looked down, but
there was no escape; that too-familiar face smiled slyly up at her from the
inset glass of the table. Silly, isn't it? All this fuss over
money, when any decent witch could enchant an ever-full
purse...
She scrunched her eyes shut
and shook her head, hard, not caring who noticed or how strange it looked.
When she opened them again, all she saw in the glass was her own pinched and
worried face.
The
night was luminous around them. Only the brightest stars were visible
overhead; Orion and the Great Bear made their circumference of the heavens
against the lurid glow of Los Angeles, which suffused half the sky ahead of
them. Headlights streamed past in an endless strobing line behind them.
The wind was brisk and chill, which bothered Spike not a whit--cold was
something like color for him; a thing he could easily distinguish but which made
little impact on his physical comfort. Buffy, seated on the edge of the
rest stop picnic table in front of him, was another story, still bundled up in
her coat. Her hands burrowed under his duster, drawing leisurely
revolutions over his shoulderblades, and her head rested in the crook of his
shoulder, her breath warm against his neck.
Spike rocked against her, hips cradled between her thighs, each
stroke slow, deep, strong, wave after languorous wave rolling in to shore.
He was drowning in her, gladly, going down for the third time, caught in the
rapture of the deep: Buffy Summers his ocean, and Here There Be Monsters.
Buffy locked her ankles together behind him, threw her head back and arched into
his thrusts. Her body clasped him in counterpoint to his rhythm, drew him
deeper, his soft liquid growls and her little kitten-mew gasps lost in the roar
of traffic.
It was a contest, as so
many things were between them. An eternal moment in which they strove
together, all their opposites reconciled in that striving, dark and light, male
and female, the quick and the dead--vampire and Slayer made one greater whole,
lasting as long as they could bear it. He broke first this time,
shattering against some invisible high-water mark, crying out, and his
capitulation triggered hers; her body clenched and trembled around him as he
gave himself up to long shuddering spasms of release. She slumped
backwards onto the table, gasping for breath, and he followed, unwilling to give
up a fingersbreadth of contact. They lay there together for a moment,
feeling the tremors of their conjoined bodies die away.
He felt a shiver that wasn't born of passion run through
her, and swore softly. "Sorry, love. I'm not much use as a
bedwarmer."
She smiled in the feeble
imitation of darkness. "You're a pretty good windbreak." As he
pulled out she made a disappointed little noise, but when he slid down her
torso, nibbling at the bare goose-fleshed skin below her navel, she groaned and
twined her fingers in his hair, holding him back. "No--don't start!
I told Dad we'd be there before midnight. We can't get into another
six-hour lust-a-thon."
The lack of
conviction in her voice was absolute balm to the--well, not to the soul, but to
the something--of a man taking the current love of his life to meet the former
love of hers. "How about a four-hour one? It's only half an hour to
L.A. from here, pet. I'm a thirsty man, and it's not your neck that's my
chalice. Besides," he licked a milky streak of their mingled juices from
her inner thigh and leered up at her, "I've got you all messy. Only right
I should clean you up."
Buffy looked torn
for a second, but another car rolled into the rest stop parking lot and her
expression firmed. "That's what I brought wet-naps for." She tugged her
skirt, which was rucked up about her waist, down over her hips and rolled over
to grab her purse off the adjacent bench. Spike promptly ducked under the
hem and followed his nose. "Here--oh--Spike, damn you, quit
th-th--"
Half an hour later, virtue had
prevailed, mostly, and they were roaring south along the Coast Highway, windows
rolled down and the radio blasting KSPC over the howl of the wind. The
DeSoto roared its challenge to lesser vehicles, which got out of the way if they
knew what was good for them--fiberglass crumple zones and airbags could do only
so much when pitted against a quarter-ton of solid steel. "They're playing
our song, pet! 'You know you want what's on my mind, you know you need
what's on my mind...'"
"I hear that
these days they record songs with, you know, lyrics and melodies and stuff,"
Buffy said, mock-reflective. "Maybe we should try to find
some."
"'Wind Beneath My
Wings?'"
"Oh, shut up.” Her lower lip
slipped out in that criminally adorable pout. “That was the
spell."
“Keep telling yourself that,
pet.” Spike tightened his arm around Buffy's shoulders, grinning up at the
hunter in the sky. He had a cooler full of blood in the trunk, music that wasn't
completely revolting on the radio, Buffy's head on his shoulder and her hand
resting possessively across his stomach. They were headed off to see the
two men in all the world he'd have been happiest to see staked out on an
anthill, and he was downright giddy about it because it meant a precious few
hours when he had her entirely to himself, free of the demands of friends and
family and job interviews. The fact that a legitimate stop to use the loo
had segued irresistibly into a nice little session of shagging didn’t hurt his
mood either.
It was possible that if he
looked down he'd find the distant look in her eyes again--it came upon her less
and less often now, which pleased him immensely, but even his ego wasn't quite
up to assuming that a week's worth of slap and tickle with him was enough to get
her over a little thing like being dead. He hadn't managed it in a hundred
and twenty-some years, after all. He chuckled quietly and reached into his
duster pocket for a cigarette, steadying the steering wheel with his
knee.
"You do that a lot more than you used
to," Buffy observed.
He paused in the
complicated operation of lighting the fag one-handed. "What, smoke? I'll
have you know between the Niblet's dirty looks and your refusal to invest in a
bleeding ashtray I'm down to half a pack a day."
"No--laugh." She hitched herself up a little straighter, but stayed
close to his side, maintaining contact. Over the last day or two she’d
begun, almost shyly, to return his casual touches, and to initiate her
own. He liked that--hell, loved it. Dru had never been one for a
cuddle; she wanted petting and cosseting often enough, but like a cat of
uncertain temper, she could go from purring on the hearth to clawing your arm
off in half a second. Harmony had been keen on it, but he hadn't been keen
on her. He wondered briefly if Megan had been serious about Harm coming
back to Sunnydale for Christmas, and who he'd have to kill to prevent it from
happening. "It's... nice. I don't think I saw you smile once last
year--well, no... you did with Mom and Dawn."
He covered her small warm hand with his large cool one. "Didn't
have a lot to smile about when you were about, sweetling, what with unrequited
love on one hand and constantly being smacked in the nose on the
other."
She sniffed, tossing her
head. "I had issues."
"And a mean
right hook." He laughed again, reveling in the steady beat of her heart
and the feel of her slim, strong body against his. Her curves were as delicious
to trace with hands as with eyes. Tara's not-so-subtle attempts to feed
her up were starting to show results; Buffy was still thinner than he liked to
see, but there was some muscle between skin and bone now, and she no longer
looked as though the slightest breeze would bear her away from the land of the
living. She radiated a warmth he could feel even through her
coat--sometimes he thought he could feel it all the way across the room, his
personal ray of sunlight. He buried his nose in her wind-tousled hair,
taking in a breath imbued with the sonata of fragrances that spelled
Buffy: body wash and shampoo and mousse, rose and strawberry and citrus
and half a dozen others, and beneath it all the musky female scent that was her
and her alone.
Her hand was tracing the
ridged bands of muscle along his abdomen, wandering lower and lower, and parts
south were starting to take notice. Less than an hour of playtime wasn't
nearly enough to wear either of them out. "Love, unless you fancy learning
the fine art of administering a blow job in a moving vehicle, I wouldn't do that
if I were you."
Buffy jerked her hand
upwards with a guilty look (or was it slightly intrigued?) but didn't remove it
entirely. "Sorry. It's--seeing Faith has me wigged. I can
handle Angel, but she makes me insane. And I've got to play nice.
I've got to."
Spike glanced down at her,
perplexed. "This isn't like you, love. What did she do to
you?"
A shudder ran through her.
"Nearly killed Angel."
"Ooh. My kind
of girl."
Her voice went flat and
hard. "Found a spell that switched our bodies. Got me locked up for
crimes she'd committed, went out and played 'Hi, I'm Skanky Ho Buffy!' with
everyone I knew, slept with Riley--and he didn't even know the
difference!--and--"
A sudden memory of a
two-years-gone night at the Bronze rose up in his head, a weird little
Buffy-encounter he'd written off as the result of one of her rare attempts to
drink more than one beer at a sitting. "Bloody hell, that night you told
me you'd got muscles I'd never even dreamed of, and you could squeeze me till I
popped like warm champagne--that was Faith?" That turned out to be
prophetic . He swerved into the carpool lane to pass a semi and
suppressed another chuckle; he didn't think Buffy would appreciate this
particular irony. "I just thought you were legless. Don't think I
care for this bird--you can be a right bitch, love, but you were never a
cocktease. Much."
Buffy shot
upright, fire in her eyes. "She told you what? Fine, forget
diplomacy, I'm just going to strangle her."
"Do that and in twenty-four hours the Council will have a shiny new Slayer of
their very own to play with."
"Oh.
Right. Fooey." Buffy subsided grumpily, then bounced up in
excitement. "Ooh, look! Dairy Queen, next
exit!"
"You're sublimating,
love."
"Thank you, Count Sigmund.
Sometimes a waffle cone is only a waffle cone." She folded her arms across
her chest, a frail attempt at defense. "She was... she was me. All
the horrible grotty parts of me, blown up twenty times, in living color and 3-D
stereophonic sound. She... enjoyed being a Slayer."
He gave her the eyebrow. "And you
don't?"
"Not like
that."
"Like what? You don’t love it
that you’re faster and stronger than everyone else? You don’t love it that
you can walk through the dark and fear not a single sodding beastie that makes
the night its home? Christ, love, I hope you enjoy it! If you
could see yourself--the way your eyes light up the moment you get that little
tingle that says the game's afoot! The way you move--like silk, like
lightning!" She was looking at him, fascinated, revolted, entranced.
"The look in your eyes when you make a kill--it's like the look in your eyes
when I'm buried up to my balls in your sweet little quim and making you
scream. You're alive, Buffy! So alive that--" Spike wrenched
the wheel around and the DeSoto slid across three lanes of traffic to swoosh
down the exit ramp. The centrifical force sent Buffy careening into his
side; her knee hit the tuning knob on the radio and Mick Jagger howled You
make a dead man co-o-ome! Spike grinned and switched back to the
alternative station.
She looked up at the
exit sign. "I--I didn't think you were really going to get
off."
"How the hell could I help it,
love? Any lady of mine wants a waffle cone, she gets one." He craned
his neck out the window, looking for the illuminated sign. "There we
go."
As they sat in the drive-through,
waiting for change, she said, small-voiced, "That’s why you love me, isn’t
it? You’ve always seen that dark part of me.”
A surge of anger rose in him, at her parents, at Angel, at everyone who'd
convinced her that she was ordinary, and that ordinary was a good thing to
be. In a way, she was as crippled as he was, her true nature as prisoned
by her own fears as he was by the chip. He drummed his fingers on the
steering wheel. “Bloody hell, Buffy, of course I have. I don’t go in
for safe birds, any more than you go in for safe blokes. Always seen the
part of you that rushes in nightly to save crews of brain-dead gits who’d better
serve the world as vamp snacks, too, haven’t I? All that’s best of dark
and bright meets in your aspect and your eyes.”
“Faith’s nothing but a killer.” There was challenge in her eyes
now. “What if I don't want to be that way?"
He shrugged. "You are a killer, love. Just like
me. Who said you were nothing but?"
She sat back against the ancient leather upholstery, frowning, the red-and
white glow of the Dairy Queen sign limning her features against the umber
shadows, and allowed him to gather her close again. Not happy, but neither
panicking nor lashing out at the implications of what he was saying--that was a
good sign, wasn’t it? "Spike... do you remember... being
dead?"
He flicked ash out the window.
Taking the gold in the non sequitur Olympics... "I've been devoting
my Friday afternoons to my remembrance of being dead, pet. Barring
tomorrow, when the company'll only make me wish I were deader."
She squirmed slightly in the circle of his arm, taking
his hand in hers and playing with his rings, turning them round on his
fingers. He noticed with an odd little thrill that the necklace she was
wearing was the ring he'd given her back when, under the influence of Willow's
mis-cast spell, strung on a chain--it would have to be, it was far too large for
her. "I mean really dead. After Drusilla drained you, but before
you... woke up as you."
He took a
thoughtful drag on his cigarette and let the smoke trickle out slowly through
his nose. "Dunno as I can answer that one, pet. Technically, I'm not
even sure it was me who died--" Absolute terror, waking in the cramped dark
confines of his coffin, gasping for breath he didn't yet realize he no longer
needed. Screaming, begging, weeping for rescue that never came, until
finally panic melded with an unfamiliar fury and drove him to tear his way
through four inches of silk and mahogany and six feet of good English soil, to
collapse bloody-handed and half-mad with fear in Drusilla's waiting arms...
"Strike that, I'm sure it was me. But I remember the waking more than the
sleeping. Maybe it's the bits of William I've lost that remember that
part."
"I can't remember either."
He could hear the frown in her voice. "And I should, shouldn't I?
Five months. I was dead for five months. I didn't just... go out
like a light, did I? If you brought me back, there had to be a me to
bring back, right? The spell didn't just... make up a copy or
something? Or just bring back scraps and pieces?"
That was an uncomfortable question. He and Willow had known
that there'd be a chance, as with any resurrection spell, that what they brought
back would be something other than a whole, complete Buffy Summers. At the
time, he'd told Dawn and Willow that he'd dispose of any failures, but he'd have
told Willow bloody near anything at that point, and Dawn... well, he'd never had
to cross that bridge, thank whatever passed for God in Heaven these days.
"You're Buffy Anne Summers in all her irritating glory, love. I'd know if
you weren't. Trust me on that."
The
girl at the drive-through window handed him the cones, frozen yogurt swirl for
her, chocolate for him. He handed Buffy's over to her and she took it,
licking up the drips with sensual delight. There was still trouble in her
voice. "But I'm not. I'm five months away from Buffy Anne
Summers. I came back before, but that was just minutes. I keep
thinking...it has to mean something, that I'm back again. Not in a
prophecy way--I have to make it mean something. I always tried to do the
right things, before, and I ended up--I was alone with everyone around me,
and--I have to make it different this time. I know it. I feel
it." She placed her palm on his chest, and for a second it felt almost as
if his heart had jolted to life again. "I don't understand this, but
you're part of it. You said it, last year--it's wrong, us being
together. I tried all the right things, and... they weren't right.
You're the wrongest thing I know, and... you fit." She looked up at him,
light pooling like quicksilver in her eyes. My mistress's eyes are
nothing like the sun... "She's taken... everything, at one time or
another, and I can’t lose you too. I won’t. I guess the prospect of
Faithness is putting me into Cave-Buffy, mark-my-territory mode. I'm
sorry. Especially since I'm probably going to be a big scaredy cat about
telling Angel about us--I'm going to try, but--"
Spike tossed his cigarette out the window as they pulled back onto the
highway; it bounced out of sight in the rear-view mirror in a shower of orange
sparks. Heedless of traffic, he bent to kiss her, breathing in rose and
violet and strawberry and oranges and sweet girl-musk, made richer yet by their
recent play--and fainter, but there, the mingled odors of leather and tobacco
and whiskey. A satisfied growl rose in his throat. They were all
over each other; they'd crawled into each other's skins, drunk each other down
as surely as if blood had been exchanged. As Angel would realize the
minute he inhaled. "Nothing to apologize for, love. You can mark my
territory any time."
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37