Forever and a Day by Lilachigh


Chp 4 Not Magic


‘A plague!’ Buffy and Spike spoke together, exchanging startled glances. ‘What sort of plague?’ Buffy asked.

Rupert Giles stared down at Wesley’s last words and shook his head. ‘He doesn’t say.’

‘Is that all of the message?’ Spike cast a sharp look at Giles’s expression. He knew the Englishman too well not to know when he was being evasive.

Giles was still finding it difficult to accept the vampire and the slayer being a couple. Spike‘s possessive hand on Buffy’s waist, her hand curved round the bend of his knee, shook him to his very core, but perhaps, if there was some great new danger around, then this partnership was for a purpose.

‘Yes. Here, look for yourself.’ He handed over the paper and watched as the two blond heads bent over it.

‘But Giles, this is different to anything we’ve encountered before,’ Buffy said finally. ‘A plague? Does he mean all boily and pustules and painting crosses on doors.’

‘The Black Death,’ Giles replied.

Spike raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Crosses on doors - not my favourite scene, sweetheart, but before my time. Stopped vampires getting inside the house, I’d bet, even if it didn’t stop the plague.’

Buffy frowned. ‘But that’s medical, Giles. Not magical. If there was a plague, then the doctors would find a vaccine or something to stop it from spreading. It wouldn’t be treated by a spell, or a slayer finding someone to kill. This doesn’t make any sense. Do you think - ” she hesitated, then - “do you think perhaps Wesley was over reacting, because of all the L.A. trouble?’

Giles polished his glasses on the end of his tie. ‘Wesley Wyndham-Price may have been many things, Buffy, but he never over-reacted where research was concerned. To him a fact was just a fact, not good or bad or horrific, just a fact.’

Spike ran his hand up to caress Buffy’s neck and she arched against his fingers like a petted cat. ‘Doesn’t have to be boils, pet, could be a plague of spiders, or flies or rancid walking hot dogs!’

“Oh gross! What about the list of places and dates, Giles, does that help?’

Her ex-watcher picked up the paper and shook his head. ‘He seems to have been tracking something across the world for the past six hundred years. But he doesn’t say what. I imagine the answer is inside these books, somewhere. This is going to take some serious research to uncover.’

‘Did I hear the word research? Buffy! Hi! Oh heavens - it’s Spike!’

Buffy leapt up, beaming. There in the doorway, wearing a bright yellow jacket and tartan scarf, eyes sparkling, her red hair cut and layered very short, was her best girlfriend, Willow.
* * * *

A weak January sun was shining on the Thames, turning it into a river of gold silk. The office towers of Docklands glittered as the sun was reflected from their myriad windows.
Buffy and Willow were sitting on the balcony of Giles apartment, drinking coffee. Spike had gone back to bed, complaining of jet lag to the others and whispering ‘shag lag’ in Buffy’s ear and grinning as she went red.

Buffy pulled her coat tighter round her against the chill wind. “I suppose you think Spike and me being together is odd.”

Willow smiled. ‘It was quite obvious before he died in Sunnydale how you felt about each other, Buff. Love just happens. Look at me and Oz. Me and Tara.’

‘You and Kennedy?”

Willow shrugged. “Kennedy’s good for me. But do I love her? I love the type of girl she is, her strength of mind, her determination. I mean, I’ve left her down in Wales now sorting out the vampire problem we’ve got there. She’s quite capable of doing it on her own. But do I love her?’ She shrugged.

There was a long pause. ‘I like your hair,’ Buffy said at last. She knew better than most that sometimes it was impossible to put into words exactly how you felt about a person.

Willow grinned. ‘I’ve slashed mine and you’ve grown yours even longer.’

Buffy smiled. ‘I haven’t cut it since Spike died. Silly, I know, but he loved it being long and it seemed like a little thing I could do in his memory.’

‘I expect he’s glad.’

Buffy smiled and turned to gaze at the river, hiding her expression. She couldn’t tell Willow of Spike’s face when he’d tangled his hands in her hair, wrapping it round his fists, smoothing it over her breasts, letting it fall round their faces until they were hidden in a net of blonde tangles, alone, safe, together again at last. She could never tell her of the joy she’d heard in his voice when he’d said, ‘Oh god, Goldilocks. I thought I’d never see you again.’

Willow swallowed the rest of her coffee. “Right, time to get down to work. Research, here I come.’

Buffy wandered indoors again and watched as the witch sat down at her desk with Wesley’s books in front of her and switched on her computer.

She peered round the door into the darkened bedroom, and grinned at the sight of a naked Spike sprawled across the bed, his face buried in the pillows. She was tempted to wriggle in next to him, but knew Giles and Willow would be shocked, and she didn’t want to spoil their tentative acceptance of him and her by pushing it too far, too fast. This was their home and she had to remember that.

‘So, research girl, what’s the news?’ she said, going back to perch on the edge of Willow’s desk.

“It’s difficult - Wesley made a list of places and dates - some of them are mentioned in this book he sent.’

‘And that’s where the plague is mentioned?’

Giles broke in. ‘No - these books aren’t about demons or vampires at all. They’re very old accounts of journeys undertaken by a noble family called Elliott from the middle ages right up to the last century. Every generation, one of the family would go exploring and write an account of it when he got back to England.’

Buffy shook her head. ‘I don’t understand, Giles. These the fairy tales Wesley is speaking about in his note?’

Willow’s fingers were flashing over the keys of her computer. “This is weird, Giles, I can see why Wesley thought it was all fairy tales when he read the books. But if he was able to get access to some of these sites, I can see why he was changing his mind. But he obviously didn’t have the time to take it further before he - before the end.’

‘He had a lot on his mind, Red,’ Spike spoke from where he was leaning in the doorway, barefoot. “We were under enormous pressure in L.A/. Bloody hell, the bloke’s gone up in my estimation that he even managed to write to Giles about it.’

‘So Willow, what does it mean?’ Giles said anxiously. “Is it a plague? Like the Black Death?’

Willow frowned. ‘No, it’s - it’s weird. Listen - I’ll read you this extract from Lord Eliott’s diary in the 1500s. He was in Turkey, I think, but it might have been Greece. He’s not clear. I’ll put it in ordinary English, not as he wrote it. ‘Reached next village and found it the same as last twenty. What are we going to do with all the children? My servants very alarmed. Wish to go home. But the children, the children....’

The others looked at each other. “So some illness had obviously struck that area and taken the adults,’ Giles said.

‘Yes, then again in the 1600’s, another Lord Elliott is travelling in Italy. “We have now passed thirty or forty villages, all the same. We are surrounded by starving children. There is little food, no crops in the fields. Where will they go? Last night one of my coachmen was slaughtered by pack of wild boys who ran back into the forest with his body. I fear they are cannibals. I plan to leave first thing tomorrow.”

Buffy shuddered. ‘A plague that kills adults! And did Wesley think it was coming this way, to England?”

“The last entry is by a Henry Elliott in 1900. “Mama and I horrified by what we have seen while travelling in the French countryside. Hundreds and hundreds of children. They die like flies but we cannot help them. I fear it is coming our way. Thank god for the good English Channel and the stout cliffs of Dover.’

‘And now another hundred years have passed,’ Spike said slowly. “So whatever was travelling across Europe, Wesley thinks will reach here soon.”

Buffy walked over to him and he wrapped his arms round her. “Looks like we’ve got a job on our hands, luv,” he said softly.

Buffy nodded gravely. This was like old times - trouble coming their way, she and Spike facing the Big Bad. But this time they were together. It was comforting.

Giles watched them out of the corner of his eye. One hand was plunged deep in the pocket of his tweed jacket, fingering the second scrap of paper he’d removed from inside the cover of Wesley’s book.

Obviously written as a very hasty afterthought, Giles had kept it hidden and secret.
‘Giles -” it said, the writing blurred and blotched - “ Discovered that vampires are immune! They don’t die. Be on your guard at all times.”

to be continued