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by Megan
[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] [Epilogue]
Chapter One
She sat on the top of a hill and
peered down at the field below. Not far beyond were trees so thick that her
sight was limited to barely skimming the surface. There was no indication that
beyond the forest her life was crazy; nothing to show that danger and evil
lurked behind every shadow. Buffy breathed in deeply, shivering at the chilled
air that inflated her lungs as she began the process that would bring her some
relief.
Bring her closer to him.
The darkness quieted
around her, animals hiding and staring out at the crazy slayer perched on the
grass-covered mound with her eyes closed, lips barely parted and a glowing
talisman clutched desperately in her hands.
I can’t stand her
anymore.
The thought burst from her consciousness and Buffy heaved a
huge sigh of relief. No words had passed her lips but she’d confided in someone
at last—even if she had no clue who that someone was. As long as it wasn’t
Willow, it really didn’t matter. And if Buffy didn’t know to whom she was making
her heart’s confessions, well, it didn’t terrify her as much as it probably
should have.
There was no inflection in the reply that returned to her,
nothing that could possibly clue her in on who the closest being in her life
was, but it didn’t matter. Time had shown her that the true value fell on a
willing ear—this person that gave her tender understanding at the drop of a hat
had earned her trust and gratitude.
It’s a wonder you ever
did!
Buffy’s body shook through an internal giggle, her body blind to
everything around her while she focused on the warmth that always came with this
connection. Her senses were on alert for danger, but from where she sat she’d be
able to run in any direction long before an enemy could reach her. Besides,
nothing evil ever breached the boundary of the forest. It was almost as if the
Hellmouth’s influence faltered as soon as the trees gave way to
freedom.
Hey now! Buffy chastised with a smirk. Things were of
the good…once.
She held her breath, melting at every example of his
presence.
Only once? That’s hardly satisfying, is it?
Buffy
knew her secret companion was a man. No, male. She knew he was male and
she wished he was a man—hardly dared to hope that she could have been so lucky
to connect this deeply with someone so seemingly perfect for her, particularly
when every contact had him stealing more little pieces of her heart.
He
flirted with her constantly. Sometimes outrageously, and she soaked up every
second of it. Buffy wasn’t that knowledgeable about men on the whole, but she
was an attractive girl and she’d known flirting—at least, she had done before
she’d become all Chosen and her romantic possibilities began to
suffer.
Maybe not even once. The admission made her heart seize
sharply with apprehension. Flirting was one thing, but she’d not spared a
thought for diving into something more seductive. Something so embarrassingly
personal. Not for the first time Buffy wished she’d been granted the ability to
see him in her head. Not just visualise some romantic ideal which she knew she
had no chance of duplicating in real life. The talisman hadn’t been provided to
fill in her non-existent love life. Being emotionally isolated from people had
made her vulnerable and the flirtatious acts had fostered more than a romantic
yearning to be with her confessor. For all she knew she was mentally coming on
to a monster, but the knowledge of who gave her this magical stone in the first
place stalled her from outright panic. The Powers wouldn’t have wanted her to
initiate a sacred connection with something evil. At least, she hoped they
hadn’t because, ewww, that would be worlds of wrong.
It was funny
how she’d been able to visualise so little about her telepathic companion and
yet she had no difficult imagining him smirking at what she’d just revealed.
Admitting her virginity to someone she’d never met was enough to inspire shivers
of alarm at her behaviour, but to own up to it with hope and suggestion in her
voice, Buffy just knew she was going to end up in big trouble. She was
relieved—though disappointed—when he ignored the obvious opening and returned
the conversation to what she’d opened it with.
So what’s Red done now
that’s pissed you off?
It always struck Buffy strangely when he spoke
like that. It conjured not-distant-enough memories of the previous year and the
peroxide-happy vampire that she’d somehow never been able to dust. The same
cocky jerk that she’d hated with the depth of her soul for his part in taking
Angel from her. The memory of him flitted through her mind on more occasions
than she liked, but Buffy was a realist. It was obvious such a tremendous
failure on her part was going to take root and drive her crazy until he either
came back to town and she turned him into ash, or he finally had his luck turn
and killed her dead. Buffy was rooting for that first option, but it annoyed her
that her attention could be so easily sidetracked to thinking about Spike when
she had other more pleasant people to talk to.
Had someone who genuinely
cared about her—even though he’d never met her.
With a shake and a stern
internal lecture, Buffy straightened her spine and shrugged off the mental image
of black leather and bleached hair, and concentrated on the one who’d given her
more of his time than anyone—except her mother. This friendship she’d forged
with the mysterious man at the other side of the talisman was the one shining
light in her ever-darkening world. It meant so much to her in the absence of
other friendships—particularly Willow’s. The redheaded witch might have once
been her confidant, the girl she could giggle with and share secrets over
chunky-monkey ice cream, but those days were long gone. They were so far in the
past that Buffy struggled to believe those carefree, innocent days had ever
existed.
Loneliness sparked her into talking, unloading more onto her
unsuspecting mental-friend and Buffy again thanked the Powers for whatever
foresight they’d had that she might need this. Many days her craved escape to
listen to his rough wisdom and sexier implications was the only thing that got
Buffy through. So often she’d felt like giving in but the fear of never trading
barbs or secrets—or hey, even recipes—propelled the Slayer back into a fighting,
kicking, screaming defence of her life. It was enough to leave whatever foe that
had caught her renewed zeal as dead as she could make them.
I think
she’s trying to kill me, Buffy admitted quietly. For reasons she couldn’t
quite comprehend, the Slayer was terrified that Willow was able to tap into her
mind and read every horrible, suspicious thought she’d ever had about the witch.
Even now, in this place that was sacrosanct—guarded jealously—she worried that
the witch knew everything about the connection. Whistler had said the talisman
was protected with magic more powerful than Willow could even imagine, but
sometimes Buffy wondered. It wouldn’t be the first time Willow had been
underestimated.
Her secret friend didn’t reply immediately, but Buffy
could feel the seething hatred that simmered beneath his advice.
Maybe
it’s time you two separated, let her bugger up some other poor sap’s life.
The blonde conceded defeat. It wasn’t like she’d never thought of the
possibility. But where would she go? Other than Willow, Buffy knew nobody. Giles
was dead, along with Xander and Angel. And Faith also gone; Buffy had no idea
who had replaced her sister slayer. She didn’t dare find her mother in fear of
leading danger straight to her door. The Council hadn’t bothered sending her
another watcher and all she had left was Willow. Grief had unhinged the witch,
and while Buffy became increasingly fearful not only for herself but also for
the world, she had enough sympathy and understanding to be unable to leave the
girl on her own. She understood better than anyone why Willow had given into the
lure of darkness to heal her pain. If it had been an option…no, nothing would
have ever made Buffy turn her back so far on humanity. Just because she didn’t
know any of the faces in the crowd these days, it didn’t eliminate the urgency
or importance of her fulfilling her sacred destiny. She had a world to protect
and she’d continue doing it until her time was up and the mission was passed
onto another slayer.
Dark thoughts, little girl. Don’t even think of
your time coming. It’ll be a good long while yet.
Tears stung her
eyes as Buffy smiled sadly. This stranger always knew what was going on in her
head, knew her intimately, somehow even knew her name. Buffy inhaled tiredly.
The game had already arrived and she wasn’t ready. There was so much more she
needed this night and arguing over not being gifted with a name always bugged
her too much to continue making sense.
Not tonight. She couldn’t let it
distract her tonight; tonight she needed the comfort of his concern far too
much.
It’s coming; you and I both know it, Buffy replied
irritably. She was so sick of the futility of her life—the lack of answers, the
narrow path she had to tread. Why was she forbidden the life fulfilment that
other girls experienced? Starting with a boyfriend…just one. Or at least knowing
the damn name of someone she considered her friend. Seems like the perfect
time to finally tell me your name, she prodded, despite knowing first hand
his stubbornness at concealing it. Anyone would think he was afraid to reveal
his identity, Buffy mused with a smirk.
Hopeful seconds ticked by and
then an amused chuckle filled her completely with heat.
Now that
wouldn’t be fair, would it? I guessed your name, you have to guess
mine.
In her mind, Buffy pouted. As if she had any chance in hell. He
never told her too much about himself, willing to listen to her ramble about
Willow, mostly, and her dangerous, almost self-destructive night walks. It had
astonished her that he knew of the monsters that only came out at night, but
then she’d quickly decided he must have a fast track to the Powers in order to
be the other half of this relationship in the first place. His connection to the
Higher Ups kind of dispensed with the surprise at knowing of the existence of
the demon world.
Ugh. Fine. So not in the mood for that aggravation.
Let’s just agree that Buffy sucks in the guessing of all things and concentrate
on how I’m going to survive Willow.
Sometimes, if she’d lost herself
deep enough within the trance, Buffy could actually feel him place his arms
around her. Her body would spark alight like a match, the tiny flame bounding
around every nerve in her body until she was blazing and needy. It was
inappropriate for her to be hinting at Willow’s darker plans to rid herself of
her hanger-on slayer while silently hoping for a virtual touch of a more
intimate nature. Who ever heard of being turned on by a ghost? By hands that
didn’t exist? By a voice that was husky one minute and chilling the next? Not
that she’d ever been warned about having pen pals that only ever
contacted you in your head—and never sent photos. It was all new territory and
Buffy was more than flying blind. She was flying blind but full of unrequited
desire.
Slayer, any time…
She felt the explosive blast of
frustration from him and could even imagine him pacing. She desperately wanted
him to say he’d come to her; she felt it was high time they met in person, but
the fear that that thought always brought quickly swelled and made all her
muscles clench tightly. She wanted it so much she could taste it—wanted him like
he was a pearl of the sweetest nectar on her tongue—and yet the reality of it
scared her to death.
God, what if he was repulsive? What if he was old
like Giles had been? Buffy stopped thinking that line abruptly. This secret
friend had given her more support in the last year than anyone—he was the
only one that wasn’t out to kill her. Was she so superficial now that
she’d only value their meeting if he was good-looking and athletic? No, he’d be
perfect because it was him. The initial contact might be a shock but
there was something there between them—she could feel it humming through her
veins and singing to her in a way that no song had ever done.
Yes?
Buffy encouraged, leaning forward on her hill as she held on to the hope that
this was it, that he was finally going to come to her.
Do you think…is
it time for me to come?
Oh! The images that flashed through her brain
like whipcord lightning strikes made her laugh.
Baby, only you can
tell me that! Happiness surged through Buffy and she waited, breath held and
heart pumping.
Cute, slayer. Real cute and as it just so
happens…
Ewwwwwww! Buffy squealed in her head, but she was
delighted. Their conversations had never turned this deviant before and it
stirred something deep in her belly she’d only felt once before—a memory so long
ago now she’d almost forgotten.
Right, so you can handle Red on your
own then? he teased and Buffy only wished he was here right now so she could
pop him one in the nose. He had to turn it back on her, didn’t he? He was about
to offer and now he had to make her beg. Well, she would. This time it was
warranted and as she realised how very much she needed someone at her side
now—that as lonely as it was supposed to be as a slayer, she really
wasn’t cut out for walking the path alone—the words spilled into her mind with a
fear-laced desperation that made her wince.
Please come? I need you. I
need someone to watch my back.
Buffy felt sick as she waited for his
reply, so tired of fighting her one-time friend and sleeping with one eye always
open, waiting for the inevitable. It was only a matter of time before Willow
grew tired of sharing the hero gig with her, and while Buffy did it for the
compulsion of saving lives, Willow was definitely in it for the glory alone. How
could Buffy win against someone with that kind of desperate need to
win?
Time ticked away so slowly, but finally he was ready. Buffy’s
fanciful thoughts imagined a cool kiss against her lips, soft and barely there.
But it was enough to seal the deal and she felt herself shiver in
anticipation.
Okay Goldilocks, he said, his voice husky yet
strong. You might not be so happy with what you get, but I’m on my
way.
And then the connection was severed and he was gone.
Chapter Two
Stark silence bombarded
her as Buffy slowly came out of the trance. It was always like this when he left
first, denying her the link she so desperately needed. The world he abandoned
her in was not one she enjoyed. Disappearing into her mind where she could hear
him speak was infinitely warmer, and rather than wondering why that was
possible, Buffy just shivered and stood, surveying her immediate surroundings
for some misleading reason the woods had stalled in time. No owls hooted and no
wind blew against her cool skin, yet nothing supernatural seemed to be poisoning
the air and for that the Slayer felt relief.
And then excitement
steadily infused her with the strength to leave the hill.
He was
coming. He was coming.
She’d not felt this happy in so long and
that sad realisation was enough to halt the progression of cartwheels down the
slight decline, but still…he was coming. She’d finally see his face, watch his
words as they fell from his lips, hug him to her body so hard she’d almost break
his ribs. She felt euphoric and there was no way she’d let Willow and her snide
comments and vague missions into danger bring her down. Finally, in a period of
time longer than she could remember, she had a reason to wake up the next day.
Sure, having the link had given her focus, had given her hope, but it hadn’t
given her life!
Buffy stopped at the bottom of her hill and
breathed deeply, smiling. So much had happened in her short life that she was
wary of getting too hopeful about this, but she was positive he meant what he
said. He was coming and everything would finally be okay.
She hated this
feeling—feeling grateful for something others so easily took for granted, like a
person by her side, because it inevitably brought back the memories of all those
that weren’t. It hurt to think of those she’d failed and yet their ghosts
sometimes didn’t scream loud enough. The guilt wasn’t piled high enough on her
head. Some days she even managed to breathe easily. Buffy was so ashamed that
that was true, but living did that to a person, as did the fight that never
ended.
It had all started the day Spike had rolled into town, bringing
that life-sucking ho-bag with him. Every ounce of reason dictated to the Slayer
that he should have left his sire in Prague to take her rightful end. If she’d
dusted, so much in Buffy’s own life might have been different—no, would
have been different. Taking Angel from her had been the first kick in her steady
defence against the dark and for that Buffy was laying the blame squarely at
Spike’s door. If he ever showed his face to her again he’d be dust quicker than
he could smirk.
That stupid ritual had done nothing but give strength to
an insane vampire. It sure hadn’t been a positive experience for anyone but Dru.
They’d drained Angel dry and Buffy had had to watch as he lost all his vampiric
power to Drusilla and then crumpled in on himself and created an ashen ode to
what he could have been. Retaliation had been sweet and at least Buffy could
smile—even if it was vindictive and completely unbecoming of her—at the fact
that the instigator had had his back snapped in half. It served him
right!
Not that she’d managed to make sense yet out of why Drusilla would
taunt her with the image of a broken Spike before they’d managed to get out of
town. Turning up at the Slayer’s house, pushing a furious Spike in his
wheelchair had really not been of the good. However, the fact that the vampiress
had actually shown the foresight to surround herself with an army of vampires so
that Buffy would have been a fool—and a dead one at that—if she’d even attempted
to fight them all, proved Drusilla to be using faculties Buffy had assumed she’d
been incapable of. That was more than a little worrying. Not that it had
mattered because she’d never seen either of them again, and that was exactly how
Buffy liked her vampires—either dust at the end of her stake or off worrying the
other slayer she’d never met.
Drusilla had left Kendra in the school
library with her throat slit before she’d left town. For that alone Buffy was
going to make sure Drusilla, Queen of the Nutcases, was a footnote in slayer
history before she was done.
Kendra’s replacement had started what Spike
had failed to finish. Faith had bounded along, full of enthusiasm for the
slaying—until she’d made a mistake and turned all dark and dangerous on the good
guys.
They’d been fools not to realise exactly how
dangerous.
Xander found out the hard way. The details were a little
sketchy, but it was no secret he harboured a slayer fetish. Thus, when he’d gone
missing one night and was discovered by Willow and Buffy in Faith’s trashy hotel
room, naked, purple bruises livid at his throat and with eyes that couldn’t hide
his naked fear, the conclusions had been absolute. There was no coming back from
this; Faith the Vampire Slayer was lost to them and no amount of repentance
would ever allow her to break through their consuming grief and be amongst them
again.
As always, the memories unleashed raw, choking emotion in her
throat. Buffy gasped at the pain and collapsed to her knees. Giles had been
next. God, Giles had been her father. He’d protected her where her
biological parent had pushed her aside. He’d had lapses, of course. The
Cruciamentum had almost destroyed everything between them, but at least Buffy
had some relief that she’d forgiven him before his cruel and violent death.
Faith had believed she’d struck at Buffy’s power centre—she’d wiped out
the heart and then destroyed the encyclopaedic mind behind their success. She’d
been wrong. Each and every one of her friends had strength to contribute to the
fight and leaving alive one knowledgeable gypsy and an aspiring witch had been a
mistake. While Buffy’s brute strength had been next to useless against her
sister slayer—both of them still standing, or limping, at the end of every
fight—Willow and Jenny Calendar had joined together in harsh, vengeful grief and
totally decimated the enemy camp. The Mayor’s big Ascension was nothing but an
annoyingly distracting buzz in the air as the duo set every disease upon him
they could imagine, holding Faith in a binding spell so that she was forced to
watch the closest thing she had to a father succumb to infection and rot
alive.
It had turned Buffy’s stomach. Watching such a display of evil did
nothing to help her heal from losing her mentor, or her friend. And added to it
was the grief at losing Willow as well, because even then Buffy knew the redhead
would never be the same. Ms. Calendar had left as soon as the dust had settled,
claiming everything she stood for was gone, and Buffy found it hard to miss
her.
Not when so much more loss had left her heart bloodied and
sore.
Wesley Wyndham-Price had found it abhorrent to his sensibilities
and had departed as suddenly as he’d arrived. Buffy knew he was still wandering
out there somewhere, looking for his purpose, and truly, she wished him luck.
He’d so quickly been rendered a watcher without a slayer, with Faith’s defection
and Buffy’s refusal to give him the authority needed to do his job. But now,
alone and constantly in fear of attack by her remaining contact in the world,
Buffy wished he’d come back—naïve outlook and all. At least he wouldn’t be
sending her into danger and hoping for her failure.
The walk back
into Sunnydale proper was too short and Buffy marvelled at how quiet the night
seemed to be compared to how dark and loud her thoughts had become. The only
bright point had been enticing him to finally come to her, and now that
Buffy’s euphoria had been shattered by her heaviest memories, she felt
exhausted. Seeing her front door wasn’t a relief though, for she didn’t need to
be a rocket scientist to know that whatever Willow had waiting for her behind it
would be bad. Wasn’t everything Willow found for her to do these days? Almost
impossible demons to fight—impossible to find, impossible to kill.
It was
with a weary step that Buffy approached her house and ascended the porch steps.
Soon everything she did would be shaded with excitement and maybe she’d finally
have a chance at some happiness. But for now, there was duty and
darkness.
Willow looked grave when Buffy finally returned. Anger vibrated
around the room and Buffy took a step back in surprise before forcing herself to
continue inside. The redhead stood with her arms crossed and her spine stiff,
disapproval evident in the flat line of her pale lips.
“I’ve been waiting
for you for hours. Even my locator spell wasn’t working. Where were
you?”
Buffy quirked a brow as she casually pulled out a chair in the
dining room of her old house and sat in it. “Gee, Wills. I thought you knew I
patrolled at night. Every night. Fought some big hairy, crackly demon
thingy. He was a bit sparky with the electricity so maybe there was some kind of
magic dampener field or something that prevented you reaching me? I’m totally
clueless.” Desperate to appear unconcerned, Buffy did a quick thank you
prayer to whichever god had influenced her decision to keep a fruit bowl on the
table and reached for an apple. The crunch of her bite was distracting enough in
that it annoyed Willow about something other than her magic failing to do the
simple task she’d set.
“Well, maybe that’s what I was trying to find you
and warn you about,” she covered churlishly. All the softness had left Willow
the previous year the second Xander’s body had been found naked and purple.
She’d declared that Faith had fucked the life right out of him and had set about
planning the other Slayer’s downfall. Buffy was exceedingly grateful she’d never
given in to Xander’s many offers to date. Watching Willow decimate another human
being had been rather gory and sickening; it was something Buffy had never
wanted to see again but had been forced to as Willow made ever-widening excuses
about which human scumbag could live and which couldn’t. It was a train wreck
that Buffy couldn’t run away from; she wasn’t put on this earth to dole out
judgement to humans. She was a vampire slayer: strong, proud and fixated on her
mission. Willow was the one who blew their boundaries wide open.
Willow
was the one that was slowly absorbing all the power and control.
“Well, I
killed it,” Buffy puffed, her blasé attitude obviously pushing Willow’s
Irrit-o-meter to the limits.
“Well, we still have a problem. A really big
one and I needed to contact you about it urgently. We don’t have a lot of time.”
She turned her back and stomped sullenly from the room and Buffy rolled her eyes
in a manner that had become quite clichéd the last year. Willow made her grand
announcements—somehow pinning blame on Buffy where there was no blame to be
had—and Buffy buttoned her lips but rolled her eyes. They had a swell
slaying relationship.
Before she could work up the effort to follow the
witch, Willow had returned, her trusty laptop in one hand and some strange
looking multi-pointed shell that she held next to her ear in the other. There
was a serious furrow between her brows and Buffy was reminded of the
conscientious Willow of old—where research and the desire to help Buffy stay
alive was enough for her.
“There’s been some weird atmospheric
disturbances happening in LA so I did a spell.” She looked up and Buffy wondered
if she was supposed to be surprised. Willow and spells—both good and bad—were of
the extreme these days. Barely an hour went by where Willow didn’t find
something that needed a spell immediately to make matters right.
Buffy
said nothing, knowing well enough by now that it didn’t matter, Willow would
bound on with her discovery and ignore Buffy’s apparently-useless comments
anyway. No better way to take the power in a relationship than when you simply
ignored all input from the other person.
“Angelus is trying to end the
world.” She paused, obviously hoping to get some kind of emotional reaction from
Buffy—taking pleasure in inflicting hurt now wherever she could. As usual, she
wasn’t disappointed.
Buffy exploded from her chair. “That’s impossible.
Angel is dead. I saw him dust.”
The redhead smirked, her eyes flashing
black and making Buffy’s skin crawl. “Oh, sorry. I forgot to mention that this
Angelus is from another dimension.”
Hatred at Willow’s unnecessary
cruelty burned deeply; Buffy slowly sank back into her chair and stared coldly
at the preening witch. “Go on,” she seethed through tight lips.
Now that
she’d achieved her cheap shot, Willow continued, unfolding her laptop and
putting the shell down on the table. “Okay, this is bad. Angelus has attacked
and killed a number of members of The Circle of The Black Thorn and demons from
all dimensions are preparing an attack. There’s no way he can win this fight and
that much evil in one world will do a lot of damage. I’m talking end of
the world stuff—and not just ours. It’ll be like, dimensional tsunamis of
damage. You’ll have to go and stop him.”
Okay, that bit sunk through
Buffy’s hardened protective layer. “And why can’t the Slayer in that dimension
do all the stopping? What, I’m intergalactic Buffy now?”
Willow stopped
short, irritation dangerously close to the surface. “I didn’t say anything about
sending you into space. You’ll still be on Earth, Buffy. It will be the same
places and the same people—just…different. As for the other slayer...there’s no
guarantee that she knows. I mean, the people in the other dimension might not be
able to work this kind of stuff out. Maybe there’s no Willow there or if there
is, maybe she’s…less like me.”
And wouldn’t that be a blessing to all
concerned, Buffy thought spitefully before standing and heading for the
stairs.
“Fine. I’m going to wash off the demon gunk, then you can tell me
when we do this—”
“There’s no time,” Willow interjected, actually
reaching out and grabbing hold of Buffy’s arm. It was the first time she’d
willingly touched the Slayer since Xander had been buried deep within the earth.
Buffy wished she’d continued to refrain because now the cold, claw-like fingers
caused a sensation of revulsion to travel through her and Buffy wanted to get to
the bathroom to scrub her skin clean now more than ever.
The touch had
clouded her understanding of words briefly but Buffy panicked as soon as she
realised what the witch was telling her. She couldn’t go. Not now! At least, not
immediately; not without using the talisman to communicate to her nameless
friend what was going on. For all she knew this was a trap—an elaborate and
dangerous one it was true, but those words weren’t long shots for Willow when
she had her mind set on achieving something, and getting rid of Buffy without a
trace—not that she needed a trace—was a possibility the Slayer was willing to
overlook. As far as Willow knew, no one would suspect a thing if she went
missing. Her mother might grieve but believe her death to be at the hands of
evil—especially if a torn up, contrite Willow was the one to deliver the news in
person. The witch didn’t know about the talisman or the friend Buffy had at the
other end of it. She didn’t know that someone was going to turn up here and
demand answers. Buffy knew what Willow would do. She wouldn’t think twice about
taking out the obstruction to her path to true, all-encompassing power.
Destroying another slayer would be all the redhead would need to cement her
position as a leader in the fight against evil—the fact that she was more than a
little left of the good side was something no one, least of all Willow herself,
would accept.
The talisman burnt a hole in her jeans pocket and Buffy
felt the itch on her thigh. She had to warn him, tell him it was too late to be
her saviour. Determination glittered in her eye and Willow backed away, a
hardness taking over her as she stood up to the Slayer. “There’s no time, Buffy.
The destruction of The Circle is already taking place. They plan to stand and
fight in an alleyway and some of their army are already dead. You need to be
there to stop it.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to do that against an
infinite army from across all dimensions? I mean, God, there could be dragons. I
can’t fly, Will.”
The other girl was panicked, already gathering
together her ingredients and making the familiar sacred circle with sand,
plonking herself down in the middle of it, along with her fascinating shell. Her
hands were shaking and for the first time Buffy realised how big a deal this
was. Despite Willow’s new wonky world view, she still lived in the world and
didn’t want it to end. If the witch was this rattled, Buffy knew it was urgent.
The Slayer surged forth and took control. Buffy patted the talisman and sent a
mental apology she knew he’d never receive and prepared herself for the
unknown.
“How do I get back?”
The portal opened with a whoosh,
blue light gyrating and flickering in the small space.
Willow pursed her
lips nervously and refused to look up and meet Buffy’s eyes. “I don’t know.” For
a second she looked genuinely upset, as if realising that as much as she hated
sharing the glory with Buffy, the blonde was still the only person she had left
in this world. For that alone Buffy dismissed the risk of this being a trick, a
plan to get rid of the Slayer.
“This is real,” Willow appealed and
Buffy shrugged. There was no choice if this fight was going to end the world.
She had to go.
“Okay. Just…find some way to bring me back.” She
stared into the blue light, mesmerised with the possible death going through it
might bring.
Willow looked up. “I will,” she promised, then nodded toward
the light. “You better go. All the worlds need you.”
Buffy stepped
forward, hesitated for just a second, and then took the leap.
She was at
the world’s command.
Chapter Three
There was no way he was
returning from this trip unless it was as dust particles blown half-way across
the continent on the breath of a furious slayer. Still, the inevitability of his
imminent demise wasn’t enough to stop him throwing everything he owned into an
old brown leather bag, sweeping his dirty, repugnant quarters with disillusioned
eyes, and striding toward the Desoto with a renewed spring in his
step.
There were many challenges he was about to hit nose-on, but
if Spike was a good judge of character—and he prided himself on being bloody
amazing at reading people—one Buffy Summers was going to have the very stuffing
knocked out of her the second he rolled into town and announced he’d been privy
to her every thought, complaint and fear for the past year. He’d be lucky if he
escaped with only his balls served to him on a platter.
A smirk
betraying his complete insanity stretched across his mouth and Spike felt like
whistling. Bugger it; he’d sing for all that was holy. His
departure from not-so-good old SunnyD had been nothing short of despaired. He’d
been carried away like a baby, deprived of his ultimate kill by letting the
adorable bitch break his back. Oh sure, if he’d been able back then he’d not
have even hesitated ripping her heart out through her mouth, but now…now he was
brimming with admiration for the girl. Things had changed for him on so many
levels that he still had to shake himself every morning he awoke to truly
believe it all was happening.
Not that being in his new situation was
always good, but he could never say it was boring.
The engine gunned to
uproarious life and Spike laughed with joy as he scattered a crowd of people
milling in an area they should have known to avoid. It was almost like the
stupid morsels wanted to have pieces bitten out of them. Wasn’t his problem. He
had other fish to fry and Sunnydale seemed to be the perfect little hell-like
pond. One little chit he’d like to string up and scale would be Red. He’d have
to come up with a plan there and hope that his impatience wouldn’t bollocks the
whole thing.
Twelve months ago he’d never have imagined how dazed he
could become with anger at someone hurting the Slayer. Twelve months ago he’d
banked on being the lucky son-of-a-bitch that bagged his third slayer before
having a celebratory drink with his fellow demons somewhere reputable for his
gloat. So much could happen in twelve months and as much as he’d cursed the
talisman that had taught him about hearts and souls, he was also grateful that
his existence had found meaning. Feeling worthwhile when you were being punished
for being a soft, useless vampire went a long way to mending
bridges.
There was nothing to inspire a backward glance and Spike roared
out of the industrial district in which he’d found refuge. His journey was
finally beginning and he couldn’t help but wonder if he was making a mistake
heading to Buffy without preparing her first. Without warning her that when he
showed, he had no intention of burying his fangs in her smooth, supple skin;
rather, his mind had been obsessively focused on the promise of a kiss and the
honey taste of her flesh.
Not for one second did Spike question he was
losing his marbles. He was changing, and for the most part he didn’t believe it
was for the better; it wasn’t fitting, a vicious killer becoming the Slayer’s
shoulder to cry on when fighting his kind got too rough for her. It wasn’t
right—but he wanted it anyway. Those days when the talisman burned in his pocket
and he felt her pain were the days that he slept better. Not for knowing she
hurt, but from knowing she lived. Over months of intensity, Spike had been able
to forge a link direct to her. He didn’t need the talisman anymore to know if
she’d been wounded, or if Willow had made yet another cutting remark. He didn’t
need the talisman to know when she’d fallen asleep for the night or when she’d
turned to thinking about that plonker none of them should rightly miss, even if
the two women in his life still did.
Angel was a burden they were
all best rid of and Spike refused to shed any tears at his decision to harness
the power of Sire’s blood to bring back the strength to his own. That Dru wanted
to punish him for destroying her precious Angel meant nothing to him anymore,
and now that she’d completely turned her back on him, Spike wouldn’t allow
himself to wallow at not being enough yet again. He’d gained much understanding
this last year, and that he mattered far less to Dru than Angelus had been
enough to cut the emotional ties he’d had to her for good. He’d always love her,
but he refused to be her whipping boy again. He refused to let her kill him
slowly for saving her life.
He was barely on the road for twenty
minutes—only a few hours from crossing back into Hellmouth territory—when a
great searing fire braced against his chest and then pushed with a mighty thrust
to blast his ribcage wide open. Letting go of the wheel, Spike roared in agony
as he gripped his chest, the old car swerving dramatically from lane to lane,
furious car horns the symphonic backdrop to his destruction. With the little
presence of mind he had left, Spike recognised the wheels were tearing up dirt
and rock and he slammed his foot down hard on the brake, screaming as he felt
disaster loom up and cloud him in black. The car spun around fully before it
stopped, but Spike kept on screaming, knowing finally what it was that tore his
existence to shreds.
The pain receded slowly, his facial ridges
protruding and his fangs just dripping to sink into some nosy bastard that tried
to muscle in past Spike’s tears. He wasn’t grateful cars had stopped to check on
him; he wasn’t grateful for anything right now excepting his car’s failure to
burst into gasoline-fuelled flames. The last thing he needed was an audience as
he was ruthlessly severed from the link he shared with her.
Buffy
Summers was gone, and he was going to make whoever was responsible pay with
their life.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
She passed through running, not even
taking time to watch her home close off behind her as the dimensional fold
collapsed in on itself. The talisman throbbed in her pocket and despite not
knowing this part of LA—as if she could tell one alleyway from the next!—she
suddenly knew the force of direction as her body led her somewhere unknown. She
ran for ten minutes at full slayer-speed, breath whooshing from her lungs in
perfectly trained rhythm and Buffy gladly handed herself over to auto-pilot. She
trusted in the power of something she didn’t know, directing her into who knew
what kind of hell, and believed it was what she was sent here to do. She had to
find them, help them in this poorly thought out fight and keep the balance of
worlds, or perish.
She stopped in front of a gleaming silver building, an
office block that was nondescript and meant absolutely nothing to her, but Buffy
knew that inside there was something so important that she was going to die this
night if she didn’t go in. A scalding pain had settled against her thigh, the
amulet almost screaming in either joy or pain. It was so different to the
inanimate state it had occupied from the moment it was placed in her hand and it
momentarily stopped her cold to find it reacting so vibrantly now.
Making no effort to influence the direction of her feet, Buffy stepped
through the large glass doors and quickly made her way to the elevator, raising
a perfectly sculpted brow as her finger jabbed the button directing her to the
top floor. She was rushed upward, almost losing her balance with the disruption
to her equilibrium as it came to a startling stop, the doors whooshing open on
the most horrifying scene she’d witnessed in a lifetime.
Spike gaped at
her, and he clutched harder the babe in his arms.
“Buffy?”
He’d
lost focus on the demons about to attack him, she could see. That note of
yearning in his voice was strange and creepy, yet Buffy’s first duty wasn’t to
understand the speech inflections of a murderous vampire. Her sacred duty was to
protect those that couldn’t protect themselves, and the innocent didn’t come any
more so than a vulnerable little baby.
The three saggy grey-skinned
demons attacked, their limbs accustomed to fighting in robes but not used to a
slayer in their ranks. She appropriated a sword from one of the demons as it hit
the floor hard from the impact of the sole of her boot. She killed with militant
precision, mere seconds disappearing before their bodies hit the ground with
brutal finality. Her eyes had never left his, alert to his every possible
attempt to harm the baby and ready for what needed to be done.
“Buffy,”
he breathed again, awe stroking his eyes and lips until she was swimming in
confusion. That switch to attempted understanding undid her and before she could
slam back into fight mode, he was upon her, the baby cradled carefully between
them as cool lips savaged her own.
Shock exploded inside her. Buffy
reeled mentally but physically was struck useless on the spot. There was nothing
in their previous association for her to have ever suspected this kind of
disarming attack in his arsenal, and as much as she wanted to kick him where it
hurt and disengage from his fervent touch, the kiss did not betray any intent to
kill.
Heart thumping wildly, Buffy hesitantly parted her lips and was
lost. His free hand wound into a fistful of her hair, her neck stretched almost
painfully as his passion bent her head back. His mouth possessed hers, roughly
sucking and biting her lips before he deepened the kiss further and ecstasy shot
to life along her veins. A moan speared the quiet between them and Buffy felt
herself crane closer, momentarily forgetting the baby he still held in his arms
as she craved the connection she’d been denied with another human being since
Angel had been taken from her.
By Spike.
Memory achieved what her
treacherous body had been unable to do and Buffy tore herself away, panting hard
as she treated him to a glare worthy of the true relationship between them.
Enemies.
Her hand lingered at her mouth, body shuddering at an
unwinnable conflict—one side of her wanted to cling to that kiss with everything
she had, but then the saner side wanted her to purge the revulsion from her lips
and spit out her hatred. As usual, though, it was the wrong time to indulge in
personal issues. She had a war to win, starting with the infant cradled against
a notoriously evil vampire’s chest.
“Give me the baby.” A stake in one
hand, she held out the other, hoping he wouldn’t decide to fight her and risk
the baby’s life.
“No time, Goldilocks. Have to get the little one back to
his mum. Bloody good to see you, though. Thought you were all caught up in the
Immortal Wanker’s nightlife in Rome. Should have known not to underestimate
you,” he said proudly and Buffy wondered what on earth she’d stepped into the
middle of. Returning a baby to its family would imply Spike to be a good guy,
and no matter how hard she tried to wrap her head around that, it was
impossible. Before she had time to think, he’d stolen another light kiss and
taken her hand with his free one and she was running again.
“What, um…I
have to find Angelus,” Buffy finished strongly, purpose reverberating around the
elevator cage.
“Oh, yeah. You lot still think he’s turned bad, huh?
Completely off-base this time, luv. Had us fooled for a while too. Not to worry.
We’ll be meeting up with Peaches soon as the bit is in his mother’s arms safe
and sound. You’ll get your fight in.”
And he smirked at her. That same
infuriating smirk she’d witnessed one too many times back in Sunnydale when he’d
taken Angel from her; before she’d learned what the souled vampire could mean to
her.
“I know Angel,” she spat, thoroughly sick at this messed up reality.
“He would never set something like this into play. It’s totally
suicidal.”
Spike stopped short and Buffy became aware with a burning,
frightening need that she was holding his hand and how much she wanted to banish
the nudge of sense that told her she needed to let it go.
“Far be it for
me to question your unbelievably juvenile loyalty to that berk, but Angel is not
evil and right now he’s exactly that suicidal. Only thing the bastard has
going for him is that we’ll make an impact on our way out. Now stop yammering,
princess. We’ve got a rendezvous to keep.” Spike turned sharply on his heel, his
body a coiled spring of controlled rage that she didn’t understand as he tugged
her along.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, other than what
Willow told me—”
“Ah, the witch. Is that how you found out I was back
from the land of perpetual torture? Or did the boy finally spill the
beans?”
Buffy shook her head, confusion making her head ache. “Who
the hell is The Boy? And…were you dead? When were you dead? And why would I
care? Probably that loopy bitch that hauled you off did you in, and if that’s
the case, colour me impressed you managed to drag your dusty ass back into the
world.”
Spike stopped dead, again, the baby wriggling impatiently
in his arms. “That’s cruel, Buffy. Even for you.” And he turned back to the
path, deciding to ignore her as intently as he was ignoring the shard of hurt
that tore through his heart.
“Okay, whoa up there, slick. I don’t know
what’s going on here but there’s something that really needs to be said to clear
the air, so, whatever Buffy turned your world upside down, I am so not her.”
Feet braced against the pavement and arms crossed against her chest, Buffy
wasn’t going anywhere until she could gain a better grip on this
world.
“You got that right. My Buffy wasn’t such a raving, heartless
bitch in the end. Knew you didn’t mean all that ‘I love you’ claptrap. Make it
easier to run out of there and leave poor Spike burning to death from the inside
out, did it?”
Eyes impossibly wide, Buffy felt her heart stop. There was
something very wrong when a notoriously evil master vampire said she’d told him
she loved him. Leaving him helpless in the arms of his embittered sire was
probably the exact thing that could unsettle his mind—and the only
explanation for the sheer lunacy that was flowing from his mouth like
acid.
Buffy took a slow step backwards, needing distance from his
distracting touch so she could figure out a way to get the baby off him.
Although, he did kind of imply he was going to do the right thing there. Taking
a deep breath, she studied him and for the first time she noticed the softness
and vulnerability in his eyes.
“I’m not the Buffy from this dimension,”
she confided quietly. “I was sent here because Angelus…or Angel,” she trembled,
overwhelmed by the possibility of seeing him again and wondering what it was she
truly felt. “I was told he was setting an apocalypse to end all apocalypses in
motion and if he failed the fight, all the dimensions might come to a sudden and
disastrous end.”
“You’re not my Buffy?” He nodded, accepting her claim as
he tipped his head to the side and smiled indulgently.
“No,” she
admitted, breath tight in her chest, and for just a second, she kind of wished
she was.
Eight hours earlier…
“Giles!!!”
The combined voices
of Dawn and Willow carried with the force of thunder down the empty corridors of
the new Council building. It was fractionally homier than the original, but
Giles found it more manageable and he hoped it would add life to the
organisation that had, quite frankly, been seriously lacking. Travers had kept a
very tight, unemotional and not-so-impenetrable ship and Giles was counting on
the numerous slayers hired as security to keep them safe. Foolhardy perhaps, but
there were many measures in place this time to warn them should anything
untoward happen again.
Now, the beginnings of a headache were rushing in
on him and he prepared himself for the twin hurricanes that were about to lurch
into his office and blow his quiet, comfortable existence
apart.
“Giles!!” they exclaimed again, just as loudly—just as urgently,
though this time within the small confines of his office. The blasted window
wasn’t even open so his head reverberated with the intolerable sound of his own
name.
“I’m quite positive I’m not deaf,” he grouched, wincing as he
watched them gather a new wind.
“So it’s easy to forget that an old guy
like you still has most of his faculties,” Dawn covered, waving her hand in easy
dismissal. “Listen up. We’ve got information and it’s kind of urgent.” She gave
a sideways look at Willow, and the redhead was almost overcome with the rush to
relay the news.
“Absolutely,” Willow nodded in agreement. “The coven
just confirmed we have big problems in LA, which…we kind of knew, being that we
spy cam on Angel all the time. He tried to fool everyone with that hokey glamour
spell, but luckily the camera still films the truth and all it took was a few
words to remove the spell and hey presto, we have his whole plan in living
colour.” She paused and Giles waited impatiently for the punchline. Not that
what she’d said so far wasn’t fascinating, but worrying over Angel and his
ill-thought out motives for taking over Wolfram and Hart had long been
eradicated from his list of must-do’s each and every morning. Giles knew the
pillock would undoubtedly end up dead sooner or later, and judging from the way
both Dawn and Willow were almost turning blue with the slow rationing out of
their news, he was ready to believe the time was nigh.
Willow made no
indication that she’d resume her tale anytime soon and Giles spluttered an
exasperated sigh. “Is there an actual point to your bellowing in Council halls
or am I supposed to guess?”
The witch’s eyes widened and she clasped her
hands together nervously. “Oh! Angel’s attacking The Circle of the Black Thorn
tonight.”
That got his attention rather smartly and Giles was
standing before he’d even thought to do it, his chair almost toppling over
behind him. “What the devil is he thinking?” The exclamation didn’t require an
answer for all three of them refused to even hazard a guess at Angel’s
motivations.
“Who cares what he’s thinking?” Dawn proclaimed wisely.
“He’s totally going to get Spike killed…again…and then Buffy will wipe the
street with his superhero ass.” Not that she was going to deny the wonderful
visual putting a twinkle in her eyes.
Giles stared at her dumbly. “Oh my,
yes. Spike. Well, we simply can’t let this happen. There’s no telling what Buffy
would do to all of us if Spike perished before she has the chance to reunite
with him. Bloody idiot, tying himself to Angel. Doesn’t he realise that that
vampire brings death to all who stand by him?” The glasses came off in an
agitated swipe and Giles clutched them hard in his hand. Chaos was about to be
unleashed and he had so little time to organise anything.
“It’s okay,
Giles. Willow and I have already sent Buffy the word and she’s on her way with
her little troupe of super-soldiers. We thought if we sent Faith’s in as well,
that should even the odds up a bit.” Dawn smirked knowingly. As much as Giles
fancied himself the head of the new Watcher’s Council, so much went on around
him that he was often the last to know the finer details. Or in this case, any
details at all.
Behind her back, Willow clasped Dawn’s hand tightly. It
had been difficult to engineer this rescue without Giles knowing anything about
Angel’s activities, but the fear that he’d order them away from the whole thing
brought bile to her throat. She’d learned too late to do anything to help Fred,
and while she was unsure that anything could have actually been done, Willow
hated that she wasn’t given the chance to try.
“The Circle of the Black
Thorn,” Giles mused, a growing smile of respect on his lips. “Bloody impressive
move if he pulls it off.”
“Yeah?” Dawn stalked closer, enjoying the look
of discomfort he revealed as she stood right in his personal space. “Not so much
if he happens to bring Hell down on all our heads.” She backed off abruptly and
flopped down in one of the visitor’s chairs Giles had fastidiously positioned on
the receiving side of his desk. “Besides, the things he had to have done to get
into that secret club I’m positive I wouldn’t want on my conscience. Aaand, he’s
expecting every single one of them to die. Kind of a useless act when
who-knows-what’s around the corner just waiting for the good-guy numbers to be
depleted by a souled vamp or two.”
Giles tiredly nodded his concession
of the teen’s point and then focused on Willow’s shaky frame. “They might need
an experienced and powerful witch should it come to what I think it will. I
seriously doubt Angel really understands what he is about to unleash. While the
act of striking a massive blow in eliminating The Circle is a noble one, it’s
also foolhardy in the extreme. Wolfram and Hart are much more powerful than that
and this is a fight Angel and his friends can’t win.”
“At least…not
alone,” Willow interjected, an excitement for winning the un-winable
fight beginning to bubble in her blood.
“Not even with the help of
friends, Willow. Good cannot exist without evil; it is the balance we must fight
to sustain.” Giles saw her sad, defeated expression and raised it with a deep
sigh of remorse. “What Angel is planning will undoubtedly unleash hell on LA,
but the Senior Partners have access to evil from all dimensions.”
“And we
have a super-powerful witch from one. We beat The First, Giles. We can totally
do this.” There was no evidence of pleading in her composure; Dawn Summers had
done a lot of growing and maturing since she’d lost her home. Brimming with a
youthful measure of confidence obviously didn’t affect her calculations
either.
The Head Watcher smiled fondly at the two girls. “As I am coming
to continually accept, you are quite correct.” He turned from the proud teen and
faced the aforementioned super-powerful witch; she’d once been just a girl who
he’d first met when she was younger than Dawn. Exceptionally bright, but not the
type one would guess would carve out a destiny in their perpetual fight against
the world’s darkness. Marvelling at the amazing progress they’d all made, he
smiled and nodded his assent. “Willow, report to sector five and perhaps you can
claim the quick ticket to LA—just this once.”
“On my way, boss,” she
called facetiously, already out the door and half way down the corridor. She’d
only done the metaphysical jump twice before but both times it had been an
indescribable rush.
Giles watched as she disappeared around the corner
and then bowed his head in prayer. “And may all the gods give you every ounce of
luck.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
He didn’t usually drive during the day. The
heat of the sun beating down on the black paint of his car, while not making it
unbearable in the non-air-conditioned confines, always made him drowsy. The pain
in his chest wouldn’t subside, however, so Spike had made the decision to push
on and gain every mile ahead toward darkness, Sunnydale and the redheaded witch
before he could make his head settle. Before he would determinedly calm the call
for blood so he could think clearly enough to learn what he needed. And if he
found that Willow Rosenberg had killed Buffy, the little witch would be fast
finding out what it felt like to stare at the inside of a coffin.
He’d
been parked across the street from Buffy’s house now for going on three hours,
the sun the only thing stopping him from jumping out and kicking her door in
before giving the aging house a gory new colour scheme. The curtains had been
pulled open earlier in the day and Spike had watched as an obviously jittery
witch studied from a number of old, musty texts in between her anxious pacing.
If he wasn’t intent on slitting the treacherous bitch’s throat, he’d almost feel
sorry for her.
Waiting for the sun to go down hadn’t helped him think of
any workable plan, and now that the sky around him had long turned grey before
sliding into very late night, Spike found his own brand of panic settle heavily
in his heart. Buffy was either lost to him figuratively or literally and he was
sick of being a useless wanker passively waiting to find out which it was.
It wouldn’t pay to rush in there unprepared—or even with the rudiments
of a plan knocking around in his head. Willow had more ability in her little
finger than Spike had had hot dinners and he wasn’t about to bargain his only
link to Buffy for a quick kill. This town was notorious for twisting the normal
on its head, and Spike wouldn’t allow himself to lose everything by being
impetuous when he didn’t even know the full story.
The urgency to plan
carefully deserted him completely when the object of his murderous thoughts
suddenly came slamming out of the house and almost ran down the path into town.
He’d concede it was a pretty swift jog for a human—there’d been no conscience
decision to leave his car and follow, merely an automatic need to not let the
evil little chit out of his sight. Melting into the shadows was easy for him—it
was what a vampire did best—and not once did Willow betray she had any sense of
him on her tail. His eyes glinting with malice in the full moonlight, lips
twisting in pure hatred, he clung to her every step, breathed in her fear and
felt his senses heighten with the intoxication. By the time he was through, he’d
be drunk on her terror.
Not once did she look over her shoulder, and
even in his lengthy experience Spike knew that was unusual. Most felt the creep
of fear along their spine as eyes followed their path. Most could feel it in
their gut as a killer stalked them. That Willow hadn’t reacted to him in the
slightest told Spike more than he wished to know: either the bird was completely
confident in her power should she be jumped by something big and scary, or she
was distracted by something so serious and terrifying that it didn’t matter what
she came upon.
Neither of those options settled well with Spike.
He wasn’t surprised when he followed her to a quiet street and watched
as she stopped at the locked door of the little magic shop he remembered
liberating of its shop keep on his last visit. He smirked as he saw her lips
move, her quiet voice barely rippling the silence around her.
“Thought
you was one of the law-abiding folk,” Spike growled into her ear, smirking
finally at being dressed in her horror. Her back slammed into the glass door and
perspiration broke out on her forehead before she remembered herself and
straightened her spine.
“I wouldn’t look too closely at my throat, Spike.
I could dust you before you even tapped into the vein.”
He tilted his
head thoughtfully, all the while ignoring his gut as it roiled sickly at the
smug expression on her face. It was true—the stories Buffy had told him in her
darker moments had reassured Spike that ending up on the witch’s bad side would
be the last thing he ever did, which meant that he needed to be on her good
side. The quickest way he knew to do that was to remain in type. The bint didn’t
have the first idea that he wore his evil as little more than a scar these days.
And just because Dru had flogged all the big and the bad right out of him, it
didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to act the part.
The leer was fuelled
with repulsion, but Spike cheered on his ability to make anything look sexual.
“That right, pet? Maybe it’s not your blood ‘m after,” he suggested, though he
was bloody lost for words on what he could possibly want of her except her black
heart on a plate.
His stomach churned as she turned thoughtful eyes to
him. “What do you want, Spike?” She looked him up and down and he clasped his
hands into fists and braced them against his sides to prevent the urge to slam
into her soft body and do lots of beautiful damage.
“What do I always
want in this town?” he replied truthfully. He stared deeply into her eyes until
he was sure he'd touched her ruthless soul. "I want the Slayer."
Her self-imposed world of ice and nothingness was crashing around her
ears.
Buffy felt frozen inside; her mind, her heart, her soul were all
doing a slow thaw because that moment was fast approaching where she could no
longer hide. The inevitable was finally catching up with her and she didn’t know
what to do but sit as still as her airplane jolting through turbulence would
allow and hope that things didn’t explode once she made it to the ground. She
wanted to feel warm and after the experience of long and lonely months, Buffy
knew there was only one thing that would give her back the flush of heat that
had been so long missing from her life: Spike. Previously dead Spike would melt
the solid ice within her—the pain of it making her want to scream—and maybe then
she could see about breaking his nose for all he’d unnecessarily put her
through.
She remembered with shocking clarity the conversation with Dawn
that had unveiled the truth. Alone, at home, a bottle of antiseptic to clean her
latest wounds and news that almost battered her heart to pieces. Long months
spent alone and focused entirely on the mission because the pain of his loss had
almost broken her in two; long lonely months where she’d craved his arms around
her at night had been unnecessary—because for months Spike had been alive. He’d
existed again in her world and he’d not called, not sent her a letter, not even
sent her a stupid text message via stupid Harmony. If that wasn’t a sign of
retracted love, Buffy didn’t know what was.
“How much longer?” she asked
Juanita huskily, her throat raw and aching from hours of repressed
tears.
“Not long,” the Spanish girl answered. “Maybe twenty minutes till
touchdown.”
“Forty minutes to showdown,” piped in Emma a little too
loudly, her trepidation almost giving the aircraft full of slayers a
concussion.
Buffy rolled her eyes and then kept them shut. These girls
had no clue what a showdown was until they’d witnessed an apparently discarded
slayer beat unmercifully the vamp who’d claimed to want her so much but who then
turned a blind eye to her existence.
Despite it being months since she
witnessed his flame-ball rescue of the world, wandered through endless time of
hollow rejoicing that the universe had not been deprived of this lowly spinning
planet, Buffy felt the rapid flutter of her blood warning her that it was too
soon. She wasn’t ready to see his face again. So much hadn’t been resolved and
she needed that distance to sort it all out. Her feelings, her hopes and dreams.
God, her reality was so twisted and yet Buffy knew that the first glimpse of
Spike would shatter every preconception she’d clung to about her current life’s
path and she’d be right back where she started: clueless.
Not that she
didn’t want to see him again ever.
Knowing Spike had come back somehow
had made every one of Buffy’s limbs lose all feeling—she’d turned to goo at the
first impulsive thought she’d had to welcome him in her own special
way.
Until Dawn had told her how long he’d been back.
Knowing he’d
taken his time to contact her—and let’s face it, she was still waiting—had kind
of deflated the buzz of anticipation that had hit her like an avalanche. She’d
realised early on in those too quiet nights after the Hellmouth had sunk deep
into the ground that it would kill her to dwell on his rejection. Buffy knew
without a shadow of a doubt that Spike understood. Not once had she ever
tarnished the twisted thing between them with lies. And once it had straightened
out into something close to beautiful, Buffy had never even contemplated being
anything but brutally honest with him. Often it did little but reveal how
confused and scared she was regarding them, but at least she’d not painted a
picture even he couldn’t believe. At the last he had to know. He had to
know—because he knew her.
But what did it mean for them now?
The
question hadn’t stopped spinning around in her head since she’d taken the call
from Willow and directed her team to the airplane. The girls were used to
heading off at a moment’s notice. It wasn’t like all apocalypses advertised
themselves, though that would be totally helpful. Each apocalypse they’d faced
since Sunnydale had been little more than a storm in an obscenely British
teacup, but Buffy knew that this one would rival the worst she’d ever faced.
Knowing that both Angel and Spike were involved almost dictated it as fact. One
past lover had almost succeeded in sucking the world into Hell, and adding in
the one she’d like to classify as her current lover—despite the very long absent
activity that would give the term the literal ring of truth—Buffy didn’t expect
this to be anything short of dimensional catastrophe. Taking on evil on such a
level would bring retribution from planes they knew nothing of, and yet Angel
jumped in with both eyes open and a handful of willing sacrifices. She was going
to kick his butt from this world into the next, and if he managed to get Spike
killed again in the process, she was going to tie his butt to her foot for the
rest of eternity.
The wheels of the aircraft impacted the tarmac with a
stomach-lurching jolt. Buffy groaned sickly and braced herself for the final
roll to stop. She should be used to this by now but the mode of travel was
completely unmixy with her equilibrium. There was no more time for Buffy to
think—whatever was to happen with Spike would have to be left to the part of her
that reacted automatically and she just hoped he’d be alive at the end of her
outburst for her to say hello. Tears stung her eyes at the thought—to have the
opportunity to say hello to him again. To look into his clear eyes of love and
find the chance she’d been dreaming of. Such opportunities rarely presented
twice and Buffy had no choice but to grasp this one with both hands and cling to
it with her life. And if Spike wasn’t cooperative, she’d go all cave!Buffy on
his ass until he remembered what they were to each other.
With that
dilemma having seemingly reached a resolution, Buffy stood and ordered her
troops quiet. It had taken some getting used to—leading up to eighty girls a
turn—but like other challenges of her life she’d met it with charging success.
Buffy Summers was a squadron leader and every time she thought it, she pictured
Riley and giggled hysterically.
The doors were opened but Buffy blocked
the exit and all the girls stood respectfully waiting. This was the time where
orders were sketched out. Where goals and rousing speeches were released into
the air. Where the last glance of healthy, strong women were glimpsed before
they went out and devoted their lives to throbbing, conniving evil.
Buffy
assumed her general’s hat and looked every single one of her girls in the
eye.
“You all know why we’re here. There’s a fight out there that only we
can win—the White Hats. This one is bigger than anything you’ve faced before.
This one is one of the biggest and you need to know that you’ll quite possibly
be facing death in its yellow, gleaming eye every sword stroke and every breath
you gasp. It will see your fear and it will do everything in its power to win
you to its realm. Don’t let it. We’ve come here to do only one thing; win. We’ve
come here to keep the world as we know it safe for the generations of people
behind us.” A gentle, affectionate smile graced her lips and Buffy fought back a
sniffle. “I know you won’t let me down. Move out,” she barked, and stood to the
side as the girls stomped down the steps onto the hot tarmac and ran for the
number of buses waiting to take them to downtown LA. Buffy followed, making sure
no one was left behind and that nothing was going to sneak up and attack from
behind.
Willow stood beside the open door of the first bus, smiling
absently as each girl bounded up the steps and claimed a seat as close to the
back as they could. Without a word she preceded Buffy onto the bus and together
they shared a seat at the front.
“This kinda feels like excursions when
we were in school, except now we’re the teachers instead of the irrepressible
teen spirit in the back.”
Buffy breathed out in a whoosh and rested her
head back against the seat. “You have no idea how badly I wish that’s what this
was.”
Willow looked at her friend and recognised the dark circles under
her eyes as the dedication to duty that it was—peppered with too much emotion
about what she was about to encounter when they reached their destination.
“I’m sure there’s a really, really good reason,” she offered. There
wasn’t a person alive who could convince her Spike had kept his return secret
because he didn’t want Buffy back. She’d seen the love between the two for what
it was and Spike wasn’t the kind to turn his back on someone he cared about,
whether they kicked him down or not. Besides, they’d been trying to get rid of
Spike for years in one way or another. Willow refused to believe he’d let a
measly flamey death stop him now.
“I’m not sure that it matters what his
reasons are.” The Slayer already looked so defeated that Willow sucked in a
harsh, concerned breath.
“Buffy, you can’t think it’s because he doesn’t
love you anymore. I don’t think he’s capable of stopping an emotion that
strong.”
Buffy smiled before leaning back and closing her eyes again. “I
haven’t given up, Will. It’s just hard, you know? For so many months my heart
has had to deal with him being dead, and even though my head now knows
differently, it’s a huge hurdle to jump without the living, blindingly-white
proof. And now that I’m about to see him finally, we could all be about to die.
Again. It’s just…when does this ever get to be fair?”
Willow startled at
the intent green eyes that were awash with tears but staring at her so confused
and eager for the burden to be lifted. And she had nothing. Absolutely nothing
to offer her friend who had seemed to live though so much—and die through even
more—because she knew Buffy had it in a nutshell. Nothing ever got to be
fair—for any of them.
“Maybe all you really need is That Look. You know
the one, where he sees you and melts at the awesomeness of his dream come
true?”
Buffy giggled. Oh yeah, she knew the kind of look Willow was
talking about, and then some. Spike had perfected The Look in the most
complimentary way—if only she’d learned to appreciate it before he’d died to
save the world.
“Yeah, maybe that’s all we really need in life, to be
looked at like we’re the moon and the stars wrapped up in the universe.” She
kind of preferred that happier spin on things, and maybe if she could finagle
one of those adoring looks from Spike this time, she might not feel like beating
him senseless for leaving her in the dark about his return.
As for
Angel…
Her expression darkening, Buffy turned to stare at the streets as
the bus hurtled through. The traffic seemed to be flowing one way—and not in the
direction they were speeding. Police sirens were almost deafening as they
ignored the speeding bus and tore around them, the multitude of flashing lights
so bright it made Buffy’s eyes uncomfortable.
“I guess we’re approaching
Ground Zero,” she mumbled, not a little resentfully. Seriously, when was Angel
going to realise that bringing about Hell on earth was so not the way to win
friends?
“Definitely a big demony cloud on the horizon,” Willow agreed,
and like the hardened warriors they both were, that mask of serious intention
slammed down on both faces.
The bus almost immediately came to a
screaming halt on the side of the road and Buffy stood, once again assuming her
leader role and instructed the girls to fight for their world’s survival. And if
they happened across any souled vamps they were to leave their asses to the
boss. With an ear-splitting battle cry, the girls filed from the bus and took up
positions around the war zone. Willow followed Buffy off the bus and then
quickly scanned around for the most secure location to conduct her magic. She
gave the Slayer a quick hug and then ran for cover.
It was already dark
and Buffy looked up to see the approaching storm, and as the fact processed in
her brain, the heavens erupted and rain splattered her face. In the same second
she felt him: Spike. He was near and she was standing in the abandoned street,
her hands empty of a weapon, wanting nothing more than to run to him and demand
explanations and kisses, reassurances that he hadn’t been struck with the
Buffy-curse like all the other men in her life. At her feet was her bag of
weapons and almost absently Buffy rifled through it and let her palm close
around the scythe. They’d had one made for Faith—a perfect match for the one
Buffy now held in every way, blessed and everything—but the original would
always be with her. For once, Faith seemed to not only understand, but was
satisfied.
There wasn’t time for any more procrastination. The second had
arrived when Spike would once again fight at her side and as always, it filled
Buffy with an overwhelming sense of rightness. They belonged together and all
she could do was pray that it wasn’t too late for her to finally get
that.
Buffy ran, allowing her feet to guide her to where he stood waiting
for the approaching army, allowing her present to merge with the past. A length
away from launching herself into his arms and a flicker of the girl beside him
had her stumbling over her feet.
Somehow…she was already there.
Initially, he thought he could outwit the sodding Powers. Who were they
anyway? Did they really believe all they needed to do was hand a bloke a shiny
bauble and he’d just bow down and listen to the Slayer’s endless twaddle for the
pure fun of it? Well, right, there had been fun. In the beginning. He’d soaked
up all of the little blonde’s concerns and fears and he’d fed on them
voraciously, picturing vividly how he could use each humiliating fact to destroy
the girl who’d almost destroyed him, but who had definitely laid waste to his
life.
But somewhere along their path, he’d begun to change. Honestly,
he’d started long before then, but the realisation was slow to manifest in his
brain. He’d been too busy reacting by blood than to listen to reason about
anything, and when his blood started to feed him other, more vivid and sensual
images, he’d almost passed out cold. The Slayer who’d been instrumental in
breaking his back, making him hopeless and worthless and a victim of his insane
and vengeful sire, had suddenly changed from being the one he wanted to punish
with death to the one he wanted to protect above all others.
It was
bloody barmy, but here he was now, staring into the cold face of the girl who’d
held Buffy’s precious life in the palms of her hands, and all he felt was rage.
It was all he could do to restrain his impulsive urge to strangle her, clenching
his fists spasmodically at his sides instead of curling them brutally around her
slim, treacherous neck. Nothing would have given him more pleasure than to see
the life drain from her body as her shocked eyes locked with his.
Nothing but to see Buffy alive and welcoming right in front of
him.
“I don’t know you at all,” she said, her voice coloured with
surprise. “Not really. Buffy was the one that got the brunt of evil back then.”
But then she seemed to remember herself and her spirits perked up. “But that
doesn’t mean I can’t get to know you now. You look like someone totally worth
knowing.” Her grin exposed all her teeth and Spike gagged. If there was one
thing on this earth he’d really rather not do it was get to know Willow
Rosenberg.
“Maybe later, luv. After I’ve consumed enough slayer blood to
make a bloke fully relax.” He hoped it was enough to get the bint in a talkative
mood. He could already feel his usual impatience dictate a quick death and it
wouldn’t do to give into it now. Not when he still was without a clue where
Buffy’s body was. At the very least he could give her a decent burial, and then
slit her murderer’s throat in a fitting tribute of revenge.
The witch
darted a look behind her into the shop, the wheels of thought ticking over in
her head before she obviously reached a decision.
“Okay, I need to
level with you. Buffy’s in another dimension right now and I don’t know how to
get her back. I was just going to do some research in the magic shop. If you
help me, I can get her back faster and you can do us both a favour and drain her
dry.”
There was a coldness in the redhead’s eyes that Spike was
sure he’d never seen in another human being before. He remembered this girl,
friends with Buffy and keen to save the world by her side. She’d been flaky,
quirky but a good kid as far as kids these days went. It was terrifying how
someone could descend into the depths of evil so quickly and
thoroughly.
But Red wasn’t his concern; Buffy was. And if what he was
being told was true, he’d lost Buffy from this world unless he helped the witch
get her back. At least she seemed willing to do that, even if she was happily
handing the Slayer to him already-plated. Well, he’d do what he had to. What
choice did he have?
“The books...” he stalled. “Not really my
thing.”
“Making deals with demons? Never mine before, either. But we both
have a mutual goal here. Buffy is standing in my way and you want to kill her.
The quicker I can work out how to bring her back—and believe me, if I didn’t
have to, I wouldn’t bother—the quicker we can both feel satisfied.” He
didn’t miss the double-entendre, though he definitely wished he’d missed the
lusty sweep of her eyes. When he managed to catch them, though, there was a
brief hint of sadness that Spike fancied might be loneliness. He was just the
bloke to recognise it and understand the extent one would go to heal that kind
of pain. Not that it meant he should sympathise with her.
“So when you
say the Slayer’s out of town, you mean she’s really out of
town.” He figured if he had to rely on his jibes to get him through he was going
to condemn himself and Buffy to Willow’s wrath. Still, what else did a bloke
have left in the face of such bizarre circumstances?
“Yup,” the
witch confirmed, and for the first time since she’d revealed Buffy’s
whereabouts, Spike allowed himself to hope. “She’s in another dimension helping
to fight an army of demons from collapsing the fabric of the universe. I really
hope she makes it through because I’m kind of sketchy on what will happen to
this dimension if she’s killed.”
Buffy was alive, and Spike felt the lump
of grief that had almost destroyed him while on the highway shift. Cold, furious
determination to get his girl back fuelled him now and he looked beyond the
delusional witch into the dangerous depths of the shop. There was no thought or
fear of Buffy’s reaction when he pulled her back through the dimensional rip,
only zinging joy that she was alive and that he was going to rip Whistler’s
bloody head off for not telling him about the ‘leaving this dimension’ loophole
with the talisman.
“Bit careless, wasn’ it?” he wondered absently, barely
making out a bookcase of old, evil looking books in the nearly pitch black
shadows beyond the door. “Sending the Slayer off to save one world when it could
possibly end our own?”
Her expression turned hardened even more and
became downright arctic and Spike was unable to repress a shiver of foreboding.
“I’m confident I can get her back. And if you want to kill her half as
much as you did last time you were here, you’ll help me find out how.” Without
further consideration, Willow turned her back on him and walked into the shop,
muting the bell above the door with automatic familiarity of the place’s
layout.
Spike cursed his tongue and followed her at a respectful
distance. The bitch might have a head full of false superiority that would
surely do her in eventually, but he didn’t dare discount how easily she could
render him a dust mound with the embarrassingly simple flick of her
finger.
“Right then, let’s get to it. You’ve got a world to save and I’ve
got a slayer to kill.”
He only hoped it wasn’t too late for
either.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
“Buffy.”
He wasn’t mistaken. He could
even tell the difference now it was pointed out to him. His Buffy shone and it
had nothing to do with the reflection on that bloody beautiful weapon that was
glued to her hand. It had everything to do with the connection that no amount of
hiding could sever between them.
She stood as still as he recognised
shock could do to her, and he hurt for all the confusion. This shouldn’t have
been the moment they returned to each other, and not for the first time, Spike
cursed himself for the gutless wanker he’d been. He’d been fooling himself all
along: fooling himself that she wouldn’t care about his return, fooling himself
that she wouldn’t kill him for lying to her about being back, fooling himself
that Angel gave a toss about either one of them. He’d been fooled and a fool and
he almost laughed to himself. It always happened when he was in love. Bloody
always.
He shook his head at his own gullibility and then noticed where
her eyes were focused. As much as he wished he held her attention, there was no
fighting how bizarre she’d have to find it to come face-to-face with
herself.
Slowly she turned back to him and he huffed out a relieved sigh
at her look of comprehension. Until she opened her mouth and he realised she
didn’t understand a bloody thing.
“Is this why you didn’t call?” she
asked tremulously.
He hated when she did this, asking him stupid
questions with hurt almost pouring from her in suffocating waves. Truth be told,
he didn’t rightly recall why he’d never called. He didn’t know if he’d seriously
believed the bollocks that he’d gone out in the only way she’d be proud of, or
if he was too terrified to be rejected again. Whatever excuse he’d told himself,
which ever thing he thought Angel would support, it reeked of William’s classic
wankerish uselessness.
He’d spent a century killing every last part of
that in himself and he’d fancied he’d succeeded. Even souled he wasn’t such a
prat. He wasn’t a coward.
“’Course not,” he replied finally, cursing the
rain that obstructed the clarity of the moment.
“But you’ve made another
bot. An evil Wolfram and Hart bot. Is she evil Buffy? Wasn’t I enough? Did you
come back without your soul? Damn. Andrew didn’t mention that part,” she
criticised to herself.
And she had the bloody nerve to back up a few
steps.
Spike felt anger course through him and he wondered not for the
first time why everything had to be so bleeding difficult.
“I didn’t make
another bloody bot, Buffy.”
“Then…who is she?” Her slender finger shook
as Buffy pointed at herself and Spike could sense her fear in the way he sensed
everything about her—in a gut-clenching, knee-knocking finality. She was in his
blood—never mind that he’d never tasted the nirvana of her crimson vitality.
Buffy was everything he was and he’d been the biggest idiot on the planet for
not going to her the second he had the legs to do it.
“She’s you, pet,”
he started before being elbowed aside, none-too-gently by the pint-sized twin of
the girl he couldn’t take his eyes off.
“It would appear that I’m you,”
the Buffy at his side confirmed, “but from a dimension that makes a bucket load
more sense than this crazy place.”
His Buffy stepped closer, so close he
could almost taste the salt of her tears for him, but as usual, he was deprived
of the emotional moment by her preoccupation of her mirror-image.
“Wow,”
she said in wonder, not wavering in her intent study of herself. “I look
good.”
“I keep telling you that, pet,” Spike reminded, unable to hold
back the satisfied smirk as she finally looked shyly at him.
“Shut up,
Spike,” his Buffy replied automatically, but he could see the underlying smile
that she tried to hide at the opportunity to say the familiar insult again.
“Willow said this fight was gonna be bad,” she said, mystified eyes still glued
to her own image at Spike’s side, “but she didn’t give it a rating of two
Buffys.”
Nobody missed the other Buffy’s flinch at the mention of Willow.
She seemed to get taller before their eyes as determination straightened her
spine. “I appear to have come through without a weapon,” she told them instead
of satisfying their curiosity. “And if I’m not mistaken, the hounds of hell are
upon us.”
Buffy turned and Spike followed her gaze, frowning as a
stampeding herd of evil blew its dust closer. Buffy tossed her twin the open bag
of weapons and quietly approved as the seemingly younger slayer withdrew a
gleaming short sword and an axe. All suited up, both girls turned to
Spike.
“Come on then. Better find Peaches. Wouldn’t do to leave him
defenceless against dragons and the like.”
A combined force of power, the
three Champions ran toward the alleyway that was quickly filling with the
remaining survivors of Angel’s crew. It was a sorry bunch and both Buffy’s
looked on in sadness. It shouldn’t have come to this. The reality of death was
encompassed by the missing friends and yet they were grieved little because of
the fight still to come. Grieved unfairly. Gunn stood barely conscious and Buffy
blanched at the matter-of-fact way his death was predicted by the strange blue
woman in tight leather reminiscent of the best science fiction.
And
before they knew it, all the descendants of Hell were released and came raining
down on their heads—blades, teeth, nails slashing and bestowing
death.
Spike took one look at both Buffys and prayed. This was an
apocalypse he was determined they’d all three come out of alive.
Chapter Seven
“Found it.”
The emotionless burr of
her voice was setting his fangs on edge.
“’Bout bloody time. A vamp could
get serious eye strain from trying to decipher this garbled
rubbish.”
“You are seriously whiny for a demon. Maybe you should
hook up with an evil doctor and get some happy pills.”
The
distracted comment just pissed him off more and Spike showed his displeasure at
the lack of respect by slamming his useless tome shut. “Got anything to drink in
this place?” He stood up and stretched, looking around the Slayer’s living room.
It was homey in a rather bland fashion. Comfortable, but lacking in anything by
way of a personal touch. He’d have expected photos of her mum at least, if not
her now departed mates. Buffy obviously didn’t put much of herself into her
surroundings and he wondered if the witch had managed to take over her house as
well as her life.
“You can check the fridge. I think there’s some
juice, maybe some soda.” Her nose still in her book, she completely missed his
look of contempt as he stomped past her.
“I’m not a bleeding
teenybopper,” he fumed under his breath. Then, louder, “Bloody vampire, Red. I
don’t drink utter piss like juice and soda.”
She finally looked up and he
could see the haze of calculation clouding her regard of him. Not that he’d
condemn her for thinking more about how to get Buffy back than his temper
tantrum, but it took some time to get used to not demanding attention like he
was the centre of it.
“We don’t have anything else, and as for blood, you
can take your fill when you deal with Buffy.” Her focus shifted once again to
the answer to all their prayers and Spike held in the growl that wanted to rip
violently from his throat.
His fangs itched. He hoped like hell
that when he got Buffy back—after he’d calmed her hysteria over being saved by
her enemy and following his saving the world—that she’d let him crack Red’s
willowy neck. Nothing else was quite going to satisfy the yen he had for making
this bitch pay for all the stress she’d put him through—not to mention the year
of uncertainty and backstabbing Buffy had had to deal with. Seeing her corpse
was going to be one gorgeous picture of finality.
Schooling his
features so he didn’t betray his intense hatred, Spike turned away from the lure
of the kitchen—and the expected drawer of knives—and asked her about the rescue.
“So, what have you found? A list of ingredients? Some kind of barter?
Some bollocks incantation?”
She held up her hand to stall his litany of
obvious suggestions and read further in the text. Then she stood, a smile so
huge on her face he half wished it would just split her in two and save him the
job.
“See, there was no problem with opening a portal to the other
dimension. What I couldn’t do was open it exactly where Buffy would be, and as
I’m not exactly inhuman, there’s a limit to how long I can hold it open. This
text tells me how to aim the magic in the right place and with you here, we can
just pluck her back through and then move on with our formerly scheduled
lives.”
Of which yours will be severely shortened, Spike
churlishly promised himself.
“Let’s do it then,” he demanded impatiently.
“A vamp’s not getting any younger.”
Stockpiled energy exploded to his
limbs; Spike was done waiting. There was a limit to his patience and if
the witch didn’t get her bloody act together soon he was going to put her head
through the dimensional thingamajig and hope it closed on her throat. He
wouldn’t complain at a headless corpse bloodying up the carpet—not one little
bit. Buffy might punch him in the nose but he was positive he could make her see
reason—if he could prevent her from lodging a redwood through his chest.
“But…I haven’t even told you what I need to get her back yet,” Willow
pouted, her voice and fake seduction technique thoroughly grating on his last
nerve.
“What do you want? A bleeding medal? I don’t care how you get the
bitch back here, I just want her here. Now get to it before I decide I’m
too hungry to wait.” He knew the second her green eyes turned black he’d allowed
his impulsive nature to destroy his chances of saving Buffy, but just as he
readied himself for the strike, she’d regained her control and strode past him
to set up the sacred circle.
Rolling his eyes, Spike took a second to
give thanks to whichever Power was looking out for him and then followed the
insane bitch. “What do you need?” he conceded begrudgingly, his lips tight and
his hands ready to fight.
“You,” she replied simply, plopping to the
floor and holding her hands out, eyes closed in a silent prayer.
“Oh
that’s rich,” he exploded. “I’ve bloody been here for hours, you barmy bitch.
You couldn’t have worked this out earlier?”
“Actually, no,” Willow stated
calmly. “It didn’t say you specifically. I just needed someone that really
wants Buffy back. I’m not even sure you’ll be enough, but it wasn’t
exactly specific on what kind of ‘want.’ I figured it could come under the
category of really ‘wanting’ her dead, so let’s cross our fingers and
hope for the best. Okay?”
Holy fuck, the stupid bitch was completely
off her tree.
“And what if I’m not enough?” he asked, knowing full
well how often that question was answered in the affirmative.
“Then it’s
back to the drawing board.” Her lack of interest was chilling and he wondered if
she’d turned megalomaniac in the hours since they’d begun their research. There
was suddenly no shaking this feeling that Buffy was doomed and Spike wanted to
break everything in sight to avenge his hurt. He’d been too slow. He should have
offered to come to her much earlier than this. Fear had held him back: fear of
himself, fear of how Buffy would react, fear that he’d not be enough or that the
Hellmouth would work its predictable charm and destroy his life some more. He’d
not been ready and in his waiting he’d probably cost Buffy her life. If the
Slayer didn’t make it, he’d never forgive himself. Not to mention he’d have to
stand before the almighty Powers and explain his reluctance to do the job they’d
bestowed upon him.
His rampage in this world would be over, no matter
which way his future was sliced. Spike dropped his head in futility, but then a
shot of heat hit him full in the chest and he looked up and coughed. A ghostly
figure stood in the corner of the room, obviously invisible to the witch. It
looked like the Watcher—the one obliterated by the other slayer—and the git
looked like he was smiling at him. ‘Help her’ the ghost mouthed and Spike was
filled with renewed vigour and determination.
“I’ll be enough,” he
affirmed, strength and purpose rushing through him like a bursting volcano
intent on a spring clean. “Let’s do this thing.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Had
they won?
The demons had seemed to recede back into the night, leaving
nothing but a widening stretch of corpses and a weary, wounded core of warriors.
The darker man, Gunn, had somehow surpassed the blue one’s dire predictions and
still clung to life, his breath laboured and his blood glistening, until this
dimension’s Willow had swooped in and helped to dull his pain. Buffy looked on
while the witch was thanked and hugged for saving the fighter’s life, but she
wondered if the burden had merely been shifted for the moment when the crowd
around him dispersed and he could pass without a condemning audience.
She
didn’t know if this was winning; if the battle-worn figures who stood around her
slapping each other on the back and congratulating their ability to stay alive
in the face of certain death brooked the classification of success. She felt
shell-shocked, confused, and not a little afraid as Willow’s curious eyes fell
upon her.
“Hey, don’t tell me. You’re Buffy, right?”
The blonde
was awarded a smile like she’d not received in so long and Buffy wondered if it
truly were possible that there’d been a world where her life and that of her
friends hadn’t been turned upside down and suicidal.
“Willow?” The second
she was enfolded in a genuine hug, Buffy burst into tears. This wasn’t fair. She
was standing alongside people who loved each other, who’d fought a fight
together in a way that she’d forgotten—without the expectation of a winner
between the only two fighting for the world. They were a team and she missed
that so much she ached. Like a bolt from nowhere she remembered the talisman and
wondered how her secret-friend had taken her disappearance. Despite wishing she
didn’t have to go back, she knew she had to find a way. If not just to save her
world, but to embrace the only person who gave her strength.
Suddenly she
heard her own voice from behind her and she felt dizzy at how surreal this was.
Turning, she caught her counterpart fawning over the vampire, brushing the
bloodied locks from his face, bestowing the sweetest kiss to his lips as her
eyes blurred with tears. “Don’t you dare dust. You hear me? Don’t you dare!” Her
voice collapsed into broken sobs and Buffy looked on, confused at what such a
situation should make her feel.
“But he has no soul,” she whispered, torn
between awe and reactive disgust.
“Sure he does. Well, here he does.
Quite a story too, if you hear him tell it.” Willow beamed at her and Buffy
swallowed hard at the automatic offer of friendship, just through speech
alone—the tone of a kind voice.
“She loves him?” How could this be? She
would never fall for such a creature, despite the way he’d made her belly feel
like it was experiencing an eruption of butterflies, nor with how his kiss made
her body flush at the madness of delight.
“It’s been a really long time
coming, and they’ve been apart for almost a year on account of Buffy thinking he
was all with the dust in the wind. But yeah, I think this time she really
does.”
Willow turned and watched her friend holding Spike tightly to her
chest. “Not that she’ll admit it,” she giggled knowingly.
Spike coughed
and all eyes were again fixed on him, waiting for his eyes to open and see the
angel staring watery-eyed at his damaged form. “Bloody hell. When did demons
become trucks?” He struggled to prop himself up and groaned at the useless
effort, collapsing back in his Buffy’s arms.
“Silly vampire,” she
sniffled and then the out-of-towner Buffy watched in horror and a strange sense
of envy as a look grew between the couple, one of warmth and understanding,
patience and love, awe and acceptance the likes of which Buffy herself had never
received. Not even Angel had bestowed such a look upon her before his death and
she found herself incredibly jealous, and once again her thoughts turned needily
to her connection through the talisman.
This connection
before her eyes was tangible, and it extended into quiet minutes before Spike
coughed again and then broke the intent stare he shared with his
slayer.
“Not that I want to draw your attention to Peaches, luv, but did
anyone see where the big poof ended up?” Both Buffys and even Willow heard the
fear in his voice and they automatically swept the surrounds to try and find
him. But before they’d surveyed very far, a great crash sounded to the left and
then a form of indiscriminate origin lurched out from beneath something huge and
bulky all covered in the deepest red of blood ever known. The form stumbled and
jerked spasmodically and finally it slithered and shook to a stop in front of
them; the face was submerged almost fully in gunk, but with one determined swipe
a face could be glimpsed as it swayed to the ground at their feet.
“Um,
looks like he’s right here. And I kinda think he defeated the dragon.” Buffy
squeezed Spike tighter and buried her face in his neck, leaving the onlookers to
suddenly feel embarrassed at still standing and staring at the long overdue
reunion.
A hand waved in the air despite the figure remaining face first
to the ground. “Really did,” was heard in Angel’s distinctive
voice.
Exhaustion was worn heavily on every face, despite the relatively
short fight. “Did you do something to stop them?” Buffy asked the friendly
Willow, still nervous about how close she stood to her. For some reason, she
felt this Willow had worked hard for trust and thoroughly deserved the faith the
other Buffy seemed to have in her. There was a sinking sense of depression that
she’d been robbed in her world. Things could have been so different for her; she
might have had a friend to make the passage through time a whole lot more
pleasant, but all she’d had was a faceless friend through a talisman bestowed by
the Powers—an entity that was more than a little meddlesome in their supposed
support of her destiny. She’d fought for years for them, winning battle after
battle that had threatened to tear her world through all manner of hells, and
what had she received for it? A witch on the brink of killing her on a whim and
a secret confidant who wouldn’t tell her his name. Compared to this fullness she
witnessed in front of her, her life seemed barely worth struggling to
sustain.
She quickly grew tired of watching a happier, more rounded
version of herself become reacquainted with a vampire’s lips. The decision to
turn her back and walk away—to find a secluded spot to either wait out
her Willow’s return mission or realise her failure—was taken out of her
hands as another thunderous roar rocked the destroyed buildings around them.
A blindingly bright rip of light tore through the sky and suddenly
dimensions were split down the middle, shimmering and blending. All warriors
jumped to their feet, more alert than was possible considering their combined
injuries and exhaustion. Buffy stared in shock and then realised this was her
doorway home, but before she could step toward it, she was thrown into even more
confusion with the appearance of another Spike.
His entry was lightning
fast, his eyes spinning around the scattered army of slayers and finally falling
upon the Buffy that wasn’t her. He stared at the scythe apprehensively, but then
she lowered it and turned to look bewilderedly at her Spike. In that blink of
inattention, she was grabbed around the middle and yanked back toward the tear.
Before anyone could react, the Slayer had been pulled through the
doorway and was gone.
Chapter Ten
Liz sat on her hill, talisman clutched in
trembling hands, and prayed hard.
Night had been old in the sky
when she’d finally managed to settle her guests and then slip out the front
door. Spike had volunteered to watch his double and so Will had been given the
full run of her house. If she didn’t trust herself—or Buffy’s ability to protect
everyone under the same roof—she’d never have made it out. Liz was almost
grateful to see her own double sharing her room just so that she could finally
escape.
And now her body battled to ignore the chill
of the air so that she could beg an unknown entity to have spared the life of
her secret friend. There hadn’t exactly been the chance for interrogating Willow
about any strangers that might have been nosing around her house during Liz’s
dimensional absence. There’d been no knocks on the door since she’d been back,
either, and she knew how Willow worked. If someone had confronted the witch
about Liz’s disappearance, the result wouldn’t be pretty. Of that she had no
doubt.
The talisman tingled in her palm and Liz closed her eyes
and held her breath.
Did Willow kill you?
The silence
lasted too long. The suspended breath was a fire in her lungs; Liz gasped and
fell sideways, the pain in her heart more than she could bear. How could she
have procrastinated through the night without knowing she was now totally alone?
That wasn’t true. Not strictly speaking anyway. She suddenly had a
house full of people that were on her side and while the relief was dizzying,
how was she going to survive when they all went back home? How was she going to
survive with a cold talisman and a colder soul?
A scream was
building within her body, gathering all the pain and futility and grief and
preparing to blow her apart with its release. Every muscle tensed, wailing in
agony at this new loss that seemed even more unfair than all the others she had
suffered through. A sob came first, bulging in her throat and causing every part
of her to ache.
Loss; gut-clenching debilitating loss surrounded her and
Liz didn’t know how to cope. How to make the searing pain stop so she could let
go her clasp on the talisman and writhe around on the ground like the shell of a
girl that she was.
No, Sweetheart. I’m here.
Everything
stopped: the drone of the crickets, the howls of evil from closer to town, and
especially the rasping sobs wracking Liz’s collapsed frame.
It hardly
felt real—the voice that had echoed in her head. The answer she’d craved had
finally been given to her and she was acting like a depressive idiot that
couldn’t even wait on a simple reply before she’d given in to the belief he was
gone from her life. She’d had no faith in his ability to handle himself, despite
knowing he was more than forearmed against the witch. What had she been
thinking?
The sudden jolt of her heart pounding an erratic rhythm had Liz
rushing back and she focused on the link. Testing it, though for what she didn’t
know; for some reason the pause in his reply to her had her
worried.
Is everything okay?
Not that it possibly could be.
How could everything be okay when her life was in complete turmoil? The girl
she’d gone to school with, fought demons with, talked about boys with was tied
up like a criminal and her own image wore more experience as it played kissy
face with a demon that Liz was programmed to kill. And said demon doing
double-time in her own house, along with the twin of her power-mad friend, only
this incarnation a good witch.
Everything’s just peachy. How ‘bout
you? I was worried. Couldn’t find you. Thought the bitch had killed you like you
was expecting.
Liz couldn’t mistake the note of petulance and
disappointment she could hear in his voice. The talisman had always throbbed in
her hand or in her pocket so it hadn’t occurred to her that it might not work
the same way for him. She wondered if the stone would go cold if he should die;
if ridding the world of him would take all life from the talisman as
well?
I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, but Willow didn’t give me any
time. She said if I didn’t help in the other world then it could mean the end
for our dimension as well.
The quiet stretched on again and it made
Liz restless. She couldn’t stand it if he was mad at her. Even with the
reinforcements from another world, Liz needed him on her side like no
other.
Are you angry with me?
When had she become so
weak? She shouldn’t care if her duty didn’t suit someone else’s vision of her.
There were things she had to do in this world, and she’d long ago resigned
herself to the fact she had little time to achieve it. There was no time for
romance; no time for attachments of any kind—especially not ones that made her
second guess who she was and how she acted.
No matter how much it
hurt to be alone.
No, princess. ‘Least, not with you. I could
cheerfully rip Red’s head off and not mourn the loss. Please let me do it. One
word and she’s a footnote in history.
That was kinda more blood
thirsty than usual. It was a good thing Liz knew her friend or she’d be
approaching a very wiggy moment or two. Not that she could blame him. It hardly
bore mentioning how terrified she’d been that without a word Willow might blink
out of existence anyone who came looking for the Slayer. If she meant half as
much to him as he did to her, then Liz could easily contemplate how much despair
he might have encountered to arrive in Sunnydale and find her
gone.
It’s okay. Willow’s kinda all tied up right
now.
The thought brought a giggle to Liz’s lips and she
replayed the event in her mind. Sp-Will had taken great pleasure in roping the
witch up like a prize calf. His eyes had glittered with an intent satisfaction
for rendering her mute, blind and immobile and Liz wondered what could possibly
have motivated him to do it. Such thoughts of course leading her to contemplate
when he’d had a brain transplant and made saving slayers from other dimensions a
casual afternoon’s entertainment. She still had to find out what he was even
doing in Sunnydale, let alone in her house. And if Willow had allowed him inside
and through the portal to grab her, why had he then turned on the redhead and
been the first to destroy any chance she had to cause chaos with the newcomers
that had flowed through the rip?
Her head hurt.
Is that
right? He replied, pushing through her diverted thoughts. And what else
is happening?
What else was happening? If she only knew! How did she
explain to someone that three interlopers from another world—three interlopers
that just happened to be her, an apparently souled-now-but-formerly-evil-vampire
and an extremely powerful witch that put this world’s Willow to shame, if just
in power and emotional strength—had taken over her home and yet as bizarre as it
all was, she wasn’t in any rush to send them back where they’d come
from?
Spike. He’s in my house and yet I can’t stake him because he’s
kind of the reason I made it back home. How is that fair?
A blast of
cold hit her full in the face and Liz shuddered. Since when did it get arctic on
the Hellmouth?
Maybe the bloke’s turned over a new leaf. Maybe he
doesn’t go for the throat anymore.
Liz snorted.
That is so
not possible. Mr. I’m-gonna-do-my-third-slayer? I think he’d rather be dust than
change sides.
Something warned her that she was being extremely
judgemental—that all evidence to the contrary was not only staring her in the
face when she walked back through her front door, but was evidenced by the
obvious love her counterpart held for the vampire in the other world. It made
her feel envious that there was something possible for her future—but
Spike?
Why not? Maybe killing a slayer is the last thing on his
mind.
The thought gave her pause and Liz actually felt goose pimples
dart over her flesh at the possibilities that suddenly sprung to life in her
imagination.
She heard a husky chuckle inside her head and sighed, then
his voice rumbled suggestively, Maybe he’s thought of a more satisfying way
of ‘doing’ a slayer.
Okay, the tingles had burrowed under her skin
now and were blasting every nerve ending to exhilarating life. Liz sighed but
knew deep down that so many things had been different in her world and if she
was stupid enough to expect her Spike to end up like Buffy’s super-souled
Champion Spike, she’d wind up seriously dead.
Besides, she didn’t even
find him the least bit attractive, and as for any other redeeming features…well,
saving her life probably counted as the only one. Not that it was a bad feature
to have, it just wasn’t enough. She was just lonely, seeing possibilities where
none should even exist. Spike was loud, obscene, uncouth, and most importantly,
a vampire. It was best she remembered that and did her duty the first available
opportunity. For all she knew, Dru was holed up somewhere in town and Liz’s
preoccupation was leaving many an unprotected snack in town.
Oh
God, Drusilla…
Where?
There was a curious
mixture of confusion, loathing and desperation in his question and Liz wondered
what it could mean. Sure, she’d undoubtedly mentioned the crazy vampiress over
the course of her year talking to her secret pal, but why he’d find the
reappearance of the brunette to be so alarming was anyone’s guess.
It
just hit me that if Spike is here, then his hobag sire probably is as well. I’m
sitting here chatting to you, all comfy on my hill, and she’s probably snacking
on the Hellmouth’s clueless population.
He actually chuckled—and did
she fancy she heard a trace of relief in the sound?—and Liz revelled in the
spread of warmth it elicited inside her.
You’ll find out one way or
another, Slayer. Now, time for me to go beddy-byes.
Alarm erupted
from out of nowhere and Liz jumped to her feet.
You’re leaving? But
you haven’t told me where you are. Why you’re not here?
The wind
whistled through the trees beyond her hill and she shivered apprehensively,
waiting for the rejection she sensed was coming.
And as if her secret
friend couldn’t find the words to set her mind at ease or break her spirit
further, Liz felt the whisper of a kiss against her cheek and knew that he’d
gone.
She’d never felt so lonely in her life.
Chapter Eleven
He nearly dropped the talisman to
the carpet as he looked up and found piercing blue eyes shimmering with mirth.
He registered his double first, and as Will clamped his lips tight and
prepared himself for the ribbing he knew he’d be likely to give himself after
revealing himself as a whipped tosser, he saw her. It seemed wrong somehow—that
a Buffy from another world should know of his secret identity before he’d
gathered the balls to spill it to his own. That this Buffy should
hold no appeal for him whatsoever.
“What’s with the bauble? Dangerous
bits of gear, those,” Spike advised wisely, his lips set in a grim
frown.
Buffy immediately appeared contrite, turning to her vampire with
tears streaking her cheeks. Will looked on in fascination and knew he’d have to
extract that gem of a story, one way or another. First, he had to throw them off
about the talisman. He couldn’t chance they bring it up with Liz—the silly chit
obviously still hadn’t put two and bloody two together and he was going to be
staked good and proper if she got wind of who her secret confidant had been the
past twelve months from anyone but him.
“Nothing special,” he
replied and almost immediately wished he could kick his own rear. Yeah, he was
trying to fool his own double—probably the only creature in the world that knew
him as well as he knew himself. Typical—being that Spike was him. And he was
Spike. And they were all royally up the creek.
It was Buffy that
cocked a sceptical brow and then smiled through her remnant tears. “Looks kinda
special. And since you’re obviously trying to throw us off the scent, I’m gonna
go with really special. So what is it?”
Will blinked. Christ. When
was he ever going to learn to keep things hidden?
“It’s nothing you need
to worry about, all right?”
Lightning fast, Spike had the thing out of
the other vampire’s hands in a tick of the clock, and he and Buffy began to
busily examine it. “Doesn’t look like my Liz Taylor special,” Spike admitted.
Then his eyes narrowed and he looked all about to chastise Will like he was a
recalcitrant child. “You should just tell her. A secret like this is bound to
blow up in your face, and here’s a hint: you’re flammable.” Spike handed the
talisman to Buffy, then stared at his double, arms crossed while he propped
himself up in the doorway.
“Pretty,” Buffy commented distractedly,
apparently mesmerised by the flashy lights deep within the red stone. She shook
herself out of it and then handed the heavy jewel back to Will. “I’d tell her
delicately. I can be almost certain she’s not going to take it well that she’s
been worrying and sharing her secrets with a vampire—especially
you.”
“Steady on, luv,” Spike objected. “What about romance
and…romance?”
Buffy looked at him like he’d screwed his head on backwards
and was talking to the hall and not to her. “Let’s take a walk down memory lane?
How did I react when you first told me you had a little crush on
me?”
“Oi! Who said anything about a crush?” Will denied, but the stony
silence and the knowing twinkle in Spike and Buffy’s eyes was enough to crush
any other objections to nothing.
“Slayer’s right. Might want to go
delicately,” he advised. Then, as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, he
stared at Buffy and licked his lips.
Equally hypnotised by the heat of
fiery blue eyes, Buffy gulped and nodded. “Delicately. Uh huh.”
Will
rolled his eyes and shuddered at their revolting display of unguarded lust and
barged past them, not even apologising as Buffy bumped into the doorframe and
said ‘ouch.’ “Get a bleeding room already,” he suggested and stomped down the
corridor. Knowing he was in love with Liz and seeing another incarnation of
himself get to live the dream he knew he’d never be able to made him want to
hurl. God, he could really go for some killing right now. His hands itched to
bust open some beasties face and be bathed in their blood.
But before he
could make it down the stairs and out of the house, the witch stalled in fright
in front of him. Her eyes wide and apprehensive, she slowly stepped back, easily
recognising the twist of his lip and the flexing of his arms.
“Before you
go getting confused, I’m the other Willow. The…uh…good one. The one you
didn’t tie up and gag.” She grinned nervously and took a step back—which
unfortunately tipped her backwards over the steps and she windmilled suspended
in air, ready to feel the whistle of wind in her ears as she tumbled down the
stairs—until Will grabbed her and hauled her a good couple of feet away from
them.
“Christ on a stick. Maybe I should have!” he exploded, unable to
decide if the hostility he still felt aimed at this one was because he could
smell the darkness on her as well or because he couldn’t differentiate between
her and the one downstairs. And then he took a quick count: Buffy and Spike were
making out in Liz’s bedroom, he and Willow were doing a jig upstairs to escape a
painful death for the witch, and Liz herself was probably in her safe zone where
she’d always go to contact him. That meant the witch was left downstairs
somewhere with no supervision. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, thrusting Willow to
the side and taking the steps in one graceful leap.
The anxiety in his
voice had been enough to ensure him a following and by the time the household
had gathered around him he was grasping nothing but a tangle of ropes. Four
worried sets of eyes met but William and Spike read each other as easily as a
book and immediately echoed the other’s sentiment.
“Balls.”
~
* ~ * ~ * ~
There were serious unity issues in that house, thought Willow
as she hurried away from her home-turned-prison. After struggling for hours both
physically and mentally to break free from her tethers, she was too exhausted to
do anything but a distraction spell to aid her escape. She was reasonably
certain it would buy her at least an hour to distance herself, but she’d never
cast a spell when this tired before, so who knew what she’d actually
managed?
She’d become too cocky. How else could she rationalise away the
fact that she’d never prepared herself a safe hole? One of those places the good
cop/bad cop shows always told about when you got caught with your hand in the
cookie jar and you needed to get lost fast—just long enough to hide from ones
enemies and work out a way to make them all pay!
Willow breathed deeply,
trying to centre herself and maybe regain enough focus to do a cloaking spell.
The absolute last thing she needed right now was for Buffy and her merry band of
clones to find her and mete out whatever punishment they’d decided on. She
needed time to recover—to plan what she was going to do to fight back and squash
Buffy into the ground. She had home world advantage here and she’d be damned
before she’d let them take it away from her.
Which didn’t quite eradicate
the cold or the dirt she currently found herself surrounded in. She needed
somewhere safe—somewhere warm and possibly with furniture. There was only one
place she could think of, and now that she’d reached the outskirts of town,
Willow rolled her eyes. How typical that she’d think of the perfect place to
hide once she’d travelled far beyond it.
Fatigue stretched along her
limbs and Willow felt her knees buckle. Pushing a weary hand through her tangled
hair, she heaved a sigh. There was nothing for it. Out here she was a sitting
duck for any vampire that moved. She needed to be somewhere where she could not
only hide out, but be protected as well.
Turning back to look into town,
determination rolled down her spine and she took that first vital step to
return. She wasn’t escaping like some nervous mouse. She was a force to be
reckoned with and there was no way she was going to show that degree of weakness
to her enemies.
Nerves made her skittish and Willow made sure to check
every street thoroughly before she walked down it, surveyed every shadow for
threats before she neared them. It felt like hours before she was forcing open
the once familiar back basement entrance to the Harris’s home. The creak of the
doors made the redhead feel sick inside. She rapidly blinked to stall the rush
of tears inspired by memories she refused to relive, then darted a look around
the property to be certain the sound hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention.
There was no point worrying about the Harris’s hearing her. She could hear the
blast of the TV from where she stood outside and had already noticed all the
windows to the house seemed to be closed. It didn’t take a genius to figure they
were both probably passed out drunk in front of the box.
Ice encased her
heart as she stepped into the basement, quickly pulling shut the doors behind
her. Nothing had changed. Xander had been preparing the space to be his private
getaway from the dysfunction of upstairs before he’d been… Willow grinded her
jaw and moved to the bed. She just needed to do the spell and then she could
sleep and rejuvenate.
Quickly looking around the basement, the witch
shuddered at the abandoned death of it. This would have been where Xander spent
his newly adult years—had he survived losing his virginity. They could have had
Scooby meetings here—well, ones that were of the unofficial because try as she
might, there was no way Willow could picture Giles entering the dark, below
ground living space.
Forcefully she pushed away the memories—the
feelings screaming at her. She was above this now. She had no time for trips
down memory lane. She had no place inside her willing to be opened up to the
pain that grief brought along with it. Her friend was gone—her mentor was
dead—and there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done about it but avenge the
senseless acts until the bitterness left her throat. It never would while Buffy
survived. Even if she hadn’t wrought the killing blow, it was the association
with her that ultimately killed everyone. Xander had had a thing for slayers,
and Buffy wouldn’t let him exploit it thus turning him onto the doomed path of
Faith. And Giles…wasn’t she meant to protect her watcher above all others? And
why had she left it to Jenny Calender and Willow to punish Faith to the full
extent she’d deserved?
Reinforced anger and hatred fuelled her now
and the witch hurriedly set up for her cloaking spell. Within a minute it was
complete and the lethargy of success filtered through her limps and nerves until
she could barely keep her eyes open.
Reassured of her safety for now,
Willow huddled on the mattress, clenched her eyes closed and willed herself to
sleep.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
“This is not good,” Willow muttered
nervously.
“The last thing we should do is panic,” Buffy said, though as
soon as her gaze met Willow’s, she couldn’t help but look down
guiltily.
“It’s okay,” Willow conceded. “I remember how scary it was last
time—even if I was on a huge power high and I was the thing that was
terrifying.” The witch looked ashen, as though history was about to explode into
a rerun, with her mirror-image as the starring villain.
“This isn’t you,
Willow. Just because she’s you in this world, she’s not you, and I know you’re
smart enough to understand what I just said, even if I’m not.” The weak grin
that accompanied the declaration was enough reassurance for both females of the
group, but it was short-lived as Liz entered through the back door and
encountered them all in a huddle, Will hanging on furiously to the loose ropes
as his jaw ticked in frustration.
“How the bloody hell did none of us
notice the bitch was getting free?” he demanded before staring pointedly at the
couple that had been unable to keep their hands to themselves since they’d
entered the dimension.
Spike stared pointedly at the pocket that hid the
talisman and Will’s lips straightened into a white line of fury. It was his
fault. He’d thought with so many supposed heroes in the house he’d be free to
touch base with Liz—and there was no way to express how eager he was for their
doubles to get the hell out of his world and back to their own so he could have
his and Buffy’s name back for keeps. He should have risked scaring her by not
replying to her call and kept his eyes on the witch.
“She’s going to
incinerate us all like bugs.” His matter-of-fact statement was met with cold
silence, Willow shrivelling up inside herself at the stark confrontation of what
she’d once been. “The bitch is going to go out there, power herself up and wipe
us off the face of the earth.”
“Steady on with the doom and gloom,
junior,” Spike ordered, his own tone toughened to an authoritative burr. “The
Willow in this world might have been dabbling in magic, but we’ve got the real
super witch right here. Our Willow could obliterate your Willow without batting
an eye, so how about you calm down and stop scaring the girl.”
“Okay, so
we actually have something in our favour,” Liz admitted grudgingly. “Thing is,
our Willow is not only resourceful, she’s vengeful and sadistic. I
suggest you think of something fast or our run here is going to end
abruptly.”
Disappointment rolling from her back, Liz turned away and
headed up the stairs to her room. She’d thought with Willow captured she’d had a
chance to survive her former friend. The prospect of death settled heavily and
Liz couldn’t think of one reason why she should bother to stay up and help plan
a path for self-preservation. She felt so tired. All year she’d sidestepped
Willow’s obvious objective to get rid of her and now it felt like whatever she
did, the witch was going to succeed. Even bringing back help had achieved
nothing.
“Where are you going?” Will demanded harshly, his patience all
but dried up.
Liz didn’t answer him.