Chapter Thirteen

There was silence while everyone gaped at her, and then they all began to talk at once. Giles allowed the babble to continue for a few minutes before he cleared his throat and tried to get their attention. After the talking had tapered off, he cleared his throat again.

“You can do that?”

“I think so. I’d have to research the original curse, but if I can find it, I think I can restore his soul. Buffy would not have to kill him, just capture and contain him until we could do it.”

She looked around expectantly and saw a myriad of reactions. Xander looked annoyed; Willow eager, Giles conflicted, Buffy tentatively hopeful, and Spike thunderous.

Before anyone else could speak, he growled, “So, you’re going to put the soul back and what? Trust he isn’t going to go running after Dru again?”

“You could take her away,” Buffy said quietly. “Isn’t that what you planned to do? Make her better and then leave? If you went far enough away, maybe he’d be willing to stay here. With me,” she finished in a whisper.

Reactions from the men in the room were surprisingly similar. Spike’s demon burst to the fore, sending everyone except Buffy and Giles shrinking away in fear. The watcher’s face wore a look that no one had ever seen on it – his normally gentle eyes were cold and hard, his mouth set in a tight line and his fists were clenched at his sides. Even as Xander moved away from the demon sitting by his friend, he was spitting out his fury that Buffy would even consider allowing her former boyfriend to live, let alone continue to hang around.

Jenny was taken back by the negative reactions of the three men, but kept her eyes on Buffy as she repeated softly, “I’m sure I could do it. If he was truly chosen by the Powers to be their champion and to help the Slayer, then wouldn’t that be a better solution than turning him to dust?”

“And of course, this has nothing to do with wanting the poof to continue the suffering your ancestors wanted for him,” Spike said sarcastically.

She met his amber eyes firmly, if with some easily visible fear, and responded, ”That would be a happy side effect; although since the original goal was to make him dust himself after years of torment, I don’t think it would matter to them. It should be Buffy’s decision. She is the Chosen One.”

The Slayer looked from her angry Watcher to her glaring friend and finally into the amber eyes of the vampire whose lover was responsible for their current situation. She knew Willow would be supportive whatever she decided, and Jenny seemed genuinely willing to leave the decision entirely up to her.

She spoke slowly, clearly still working out her decision while she did her thinking out loud. “He hasn’t actually hurt anyone yet—“ a strangled snarl from Spike followed by a grunt of surprise from her watcher stopped her in mid-thought and she colored with embarrassment as she stared at the only partially-healed vampire with abject apology.

“Oh my god, Spike,” she reached toward him, cringing visibly when he jerked his arm away with another snarl. “I’m so sorry. I meant…I didn’t….”

“You meant he hasn’t hurt anyone HUMAN,” he growled. “Yet.”

Even with the demon still to the fore, it was possible to see the way her words had hurt him. He moved away from her and went to stand by the kitchen, effectively taking himself out of the conversation.

She looked helplessly from the angry vampire to her watcher, finding no help there as he looked at her with open disappointment. Willow’s face was scrunched into her most sympathetic look but she wavered back and forth between Spike and her clearly distraught best friend. There was no one in the room who didn’t understand that Spike’s unwillingness to kill Buffy had contributed to the damage Angelus and Dru had inflicted on him. Nor, that he couldn’t have dragged his depleted body from the warehouse and hidden someplace safe rather than coming to the school to warn them of Angelus’ return.

Leaving until later the task of convincing the vampire that she wasn’t discounting his own suffering at the hands of Angelus, Buffy squared her shoulders and continued.

“I meant that he hasn’t started feeding on Sunnydale’s population yet-“

“As far as we know,” Xander grumbled, earning a glare from the Slayer.

“And if I can get to him before he can get to any of you, then he won’t be able to…distract…me by hurting anyone I care about…again.”

She shot Spike an immediate glance to see if he’d heard what she said, but he stubbornly refused to look at her, instead turning away to get the last bag of pig’s blood from the cooler.

She sighed and turned back to Jenny.

“How long do you think it will take you to get the curse ready?” she asked the Gypsy teacher. “I can’t leave him – them - running around Sunnydale for very long.”

“I’ll get on it as soon as I get home,” she assured Buffy.

Spike spoke up before anyone else, avoiding looking at Buffy as he addressed the teacher and her librarian boyfriend. He really didn’t give a rip what happened to the other humans in the room, although he had to admit that the watcher had been surprisingly accepting of him and he felt he owed the man something.

“If he has any idea what you’re tryin’ he’ll be coming after you too,” he said forcefully. “And he’s got Dru to see things for him. You can’t be sure he doesn’t already know.”

“Dru? See things?”

He rolled his eyes and shrugged as he grumbled, “Thought those books told you all about us. They didn’t tell you Dru’s a seer? Was before she was turned and she still has it. O’ course you can’t always tell what she’s talking about, but anytime I could figure it out she was always spot on. She’ll be right interested in any plans to put that pesky soul back into her precious ‘Daddy’, “ he added bitterly.

Giles spoke up firmly. “I will go with you to get the materials you need and you can bring them back here to work on it. If we leave now,” he checked his watch quickly, “we can be there and back before sundown.”

“What do you want us to do, Buffy?” Willow was eager to help, even though she had no idea what she could do against two powerful vampires.

“Actually, Willow, I had hoped you might help me work on the spell to put the soul back,” Jenny said with a smile, earning the redhead’s gratitude and devotion for the rest of her life.

“Well, I for one, refuse to participate in anything that doesn’t involve three piles of dust,” Xander spat out. “If Angel can’t hang on to that soul, then he needs to be someplace he can’t hurt anybody – like a vacuum cleaner bag. And that ho-bag of a girlfriend of yours,” he glared at Spike, “she needs to go with him.”

“That’s two piles of dust, Whelp,” Spike said slowly, beginning to move toward the boy. “Jus’ what did you have in mind for the last one?”

Xander grabbed the large cross lying where Giles had dropped it the night before, holding it in front of him defiantly as he said, “The last one should be you, Deadboy Jr. I don’t know what kind of thrall you’ve worked on Buffy, but you aren’t fooling me. You’d kill me in a heartbeat if she wasn’t here.”

“I’m seriously considering killing you while she watches,” Spike growled, slipping into game face and knocking the cross out of the suddenly terrified boy’s hand.

Xander screamed and retreated behind the couch, shouting for Buffy to “Do something! You see? He’s a blood sucking fiend just like the rest of them!”

Spike continued to stalk toward the couch, waiting until the jibbering boy had been reduced almost to tears as he begged Buffy to save him before shaking off his demon. As the vampire walked back toward the kitchen, he snarled at a bewildered Buffy, “Keep him away from me, Slayer.”

Giles sighed and rolled his eyes as Xander’s babbling changed from fearful entreaties for someone to help him back to a litany of reasons why Spike should be dust. He had little respect for the boy’s intelligence as it was, but to see his small mindedness demonstrated so blatantly just reminded him of the incongruity of the relationship between Xander and the two girls who were his best friends.

“Shut up,” he hissed at him. “You brought that on yourself. I’m tempted to let him eat you if you don’t stop that stupid babbling.”

Spike looked up hopefully, but the Watcher shook his head to indicate he hadn’t been serious. Giles pulled Xander up by his collar and said resignedly, “I suppose you had best stay here with Willow. Lord knows you are too bloody stupid to be out and about by yourself.”

Now that he realized that Spike was not really going to attack him – at least not in front of Buffy or her watcher – Xander’s anger came back and he pulled away from Giles roughly.

“I’m not staying here to watch you people try to come up with a way to save those bloodsuckers from a well-deserved dusting. I’m going home and I’m going to stay there until somebody gives me a good reason to come out! Like that there is no more Angelus and his evil family,” he added with a final glare at Spike.

The vampire’s only response was a flat stare that promised eventual retribution and was somehow more frightening than if he’d snarled. With a final epithet aimed at Spike, Xander slammed out the door and into the afternoon sunlight.

His departure left an uncomfortable silence until Jenny broke it by reminding them that the afternoon was advancing quickly and if they were to get where they needed to go and back before dark, they had to get going. Agreeing quickly, Giles offered to drive Buffy and Willow to Revello Drive so that Willow could do the disinvite spell at Buffy’s house before evening fell.

With a final lingering glance at the vampire, who still refused to meet her gaze, Buffy sighed and left the house with her watcher, her former keyboarding teacher and her best friend. She tried to focus on the importance of safeguarding her house from Angelus and finding a way to restore his soul rather than the obviously still-angry vampire now lying on the couch in her watcher’s apartment.

As the door closed behind them, Spike allowed his hurt feelings free rein and he indulged in several minutes of creative swearing in several human languages and one demon. When he’d vented enough of his anger at Buffy’s casual dismissal of his injuries to be able to think clearly, he flopped back onto the pillow that still bore lingering traces of her scent and remembered what she’d so bravely done to help repair those injuries.

With a sigh, he admitted that her actions were not those of someone who didn’t care about him; comforted, he relaxed and indulged in memories of what it felt like to have that soft but incredibly strong body in his arms. It wasn’t long before his reminiscing had him growing hard again and he groaned with the rembrance of how it had felt to have her warm hands stroking him with inexpert enthusiasm. As his pants became tighter and tighter, he gave up the fight and opened them to give himself some relief from the condition the Slayer seemed to inspire even when she wasn’t physically present.

This is just a physical thing I’ve got for the Slayer. Demon’s hot for the power she carries around in that perfect little body, that’s all. It’s not like I would give up my ripe, wicked plum for her or anything like that. I mean, yeah, poncy little William thought she was all that and more, but he also thought she was a bloody elf, so what did he know?

I’ll just take whatever I can get from her before I take Dru away and that’ll be that. I’m entitled- after having to listen to Dru shagging the poof for hours, if she says anything…she’ll get over this obsession with Angelus once I get her away from here and show her how much I love her. Leave the soulful poof to the Slayer if she wants him.. …

I hope she doesn’t want him. He doesn’t deserve to have that sweet little mouth, those hot little hands, that amazing body…no…can’t waste that wonderful…not on the great poof…know she’d feel wonderful…can imagine how tight she’d be…squeezing me with those slayer muscles…Buffy!

With a shudder, he came into his hand, thinking not about his cold, lush-bodied lover but rather of a small, strong body with warm, soft lips and innocent eyes. I am so buggered, was his last thought as he slipped back into a healing sleep.