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Cousin Arabella by Lilachigh
 
Chp 4 Anything at All
 
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Cousin Arabella by Lilachigh

Chapter 4 Anything At All



Spike gazed at Buffy as if she’d just grown two heads - which let’s face it, she thought, wouldn’t be that odd in this house tonight. There were some very odd demons at the party his cousin was giving for her wedding anniversary.

‘You want the car keys? You’re going to drive back to Sunnydale? What planet are you living on, pet?’

‘Oh, right, trust you to think I can’t drive!’ she spat. ‘I can drive, as long as I don’t have to turn left too many times!’

‘Forget driving anywhere, Slayer. You’re pissed as a newt! You must be to say that about shagging Bella. Bloody hell! She’s my cousin, for god’s sake.’

Buffy took a step back. This was a Spike she hadn’t seen for ages, angry, growling, his muscles tensed. She frowned and took a step forward again. She would not back down to him. ‘You were cuddling Arabella upstairs in one of the bedrooms. I saw you. And anyway, how can a newt get pissed! What is pissed?’

‘Sloshed. Drunk. Legless,’ Spike said impatiently. ‘Buffy, I don’t know what you saw, but OK, Bella’s had a few problems lately with Div’vid and she wanted a shoulder to cry on. That’s all. Bollocks, Slayer, you’ve had problems with the men in your life enough to know what that’s like, surely? Remember Peaches, all that young love ending in death and him walking away to brood endlessly in L.A. What about soldier boy flying off to hunt down demons in South America? I told you once, years ago, you’ve got bloody awful taste in men, so you should have some sympathy for Bella. And anyway, why should it matter to you what I’m doing? You keep on telling me I mean nothing to you.’

‘I hate you!’

Spike grinned and prowled towards her. ‘But I’m the only one who can make you scream, though, aren’t I, Slayer?’

‘Go away!’ Buffy pushed half-heartedly at his chest, but the champagne glass got in the way and she dropped it to the floor where it smashed, unnoticed, as he pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her. Suddenly, she found some strength and heaved herself away. ‘Uggh. You smell of Arabella. I’m not - well, I’m not doing anything - I’m not coming near you till you’ve had a shower, Spike.’

He reached out a long arm and touched one fingertip to where a nipple was poking against the white silk dress. ‘Really?’

She gasped and fought against the desire to grab at the buckle of his trousers. ‘Really.’

‘OK.’

The evil, rotten thing! He was walking away, grinning. How dare he!

‘I’ve got to go and find Div’vid. I need to have words with him about Bella. There might have been some sort of a misunderstanding. Go and have something to eat, pet. That champagne has gone to your head big time. I won’t be long.’

Buffy glared at his retreating back. If she‘d had the strength, she would have thrown the stake in her purse straight through his evil dead heart and that would have been the end of - well, the end of everything, a voice in her head said.

‘He wanted to marry me, you know.’

A soft English voice sounded from the darkness and Arabella glided out onto the terrace, the skirt of her long, royal blue velvet dress whispering over the marble floor.

Buffy felt the warm bubbly feeling of the champagne leave her system and icy water replace it. ‘Marry you?’

‘Oh yes. When we were teenagers. Can you picture William as a teenager? He was such a soft, ineffectual young man. But he loved me. He proposed one Christmas Eve. We must have been about seventeen, I suppose. It was very romantic. He gave me a ring out of a Christmas cracker.’

‘Did you accept it?’ Buffy’s voice sounded very small and far away.

‘Oh no, my dear. I thought he was the biggest idiot in Christendom. Of course, if I’d known what was going to happen in the years to come, I’d have said yes as fast as I could.’

Buffy stared at the beautiful vampire. The cheekbones and eyes were so like Spike’s, but harder, colder. ‘Did you tell him what you felt about him?’ She leant against a marble pillar, the icy stone pleasant against her fevered body.

‘Of course not. We were just silly children; I was his little cousin. A few years later, he fell for a silly, snooty girl called Cecily. He was completely besotted. I could never understand why. I hated her. She was very mean to William. Then, of course, Drusilla appeared on the scene and Liam and Darla and everything changed. William changed. And he came to the house one night....’

There was a long pause. Arabella gazed out into the darkness of the desert and said in a faraway voice, ‘It’s always so hot here. I want to grow roses, but Div’vid says the climate’s wrong.’

Buffy broke in. ‘Spike sired you.’

‘Oh my dear, how crude you Americans are. How to the point. But, yes, he did. He came to our house, killed my parents, my sister and my two brothers but not me. He said it was because I was so beautiful he couldn’t bear to see me grow old and die. I wanted to die - until he turned me - then, somehow, I just wanted him.’

‘Did he want you to be his wife when you became a vampire?’ An unwelcome emotion was beginning to creep over her. She hated Arabella just as much as before, but - she was astonished to find she was starting to feel sorry for her in some bizarre way.

She could imagine how terrifying it must have been - your family lying dead before you and the meek and mild cousin you had vaguely despised changed into a vampire who could turn your body into molten metal with one look.

Arabella turned and smiled, flicking back her long brown curls, her dark sapphire eyes sparkling like ice. ‘Well, I would have been more than happy, but , alas, there was Drusilla. Have you ever met her?’

Buffy nodded.

‘Really? And you’re still alive?’ Her expression sharpened for a second or two, then the dreamy look returned to her face. ‘Perhaps she never saw you as a real threat. A little American girl, no offence, but no contest. Darla warned me off, actually. Not Dru. Made it very plain that I wasn’t wanted in their cosy little foursome. She was the one with all the power; she would have killed me like squashing a bug if I had got in her way.’

Buffy shivered. ‘Spike didn’t know?’

Arabella laughed softly. ‘My dear, he might be a very evil vampire, rampaging across Europe and the world, laying all to waste, but he’s still a mere man at heart. Have you ever known one of them who fully understood that it’s us women who organise their day to day lives?’

‘What did you do?’ Buffy asked, curious despite herself.

Arabella reached up to pull out one of the tiny white flowers that starred in her hair. She twirled it round in her fingers like a tiny parasol. ‘Do? Oh, I had to make a decision. There I was, completely alone, newly sired, all my family dead and the man who killed them, the man who turned me, preferred to be with a mad woman, an Irish killer and his whore. What would you have done, Miss Summers, I wonder?’

Buffy shuddered. It was hard to remember that Spike had done all these things. But she knew he had. Knew. too, that she must never forget it. ‘I don’t know. You could have staked yourself, I suppose. Or let someone else stake you.’

Arabella burst out laughing. ‘Oh, how sweet. What a priceless idea. I can begin to see why my William is so smitten with you.’

‘Smitten?’ Buffy felt a hot flush cross her body, felt her anger begin to stir at the words, My William. ‘That’s not true. We’re just - ’

‘Whatever you are, please don’t say you’re just good friends!’

‘Don’t you think Spike could be a good friend?’

‘My dear, I’m sure he could be an absolute prince of a friend, but he isn’t yours. No, his feelings for you are not based on friendship. Nor are yours for him. He can smell the scents you arouse in each other. So can I. And so can every demon and vampire here tonight!’

Buffy shuddered again.

‘But we’re digressing. You asked me what I did. Well, I ran around with a bad crowd for a few years, had a few lovers, went to live in France which would have been acceptable except it was full of French people. I was waiting, of course, for William to tire of Drusilla.’

‘But he didn’t,’ Buffy said heavily, gazing at the beautiful face in front of her.

‘He didn’t! Then I began to realise just how alone in the world I was. I had no money, no home, no hope of any sort of future. So I made the sort of choice lots of girls of my time were forced to make. I married for security, for money, for a name and for convenience.’

‘Div’vid.‘

‘Yes. A seven foot, bright green, regurgitating Frovlax demon. He and William were friends. He’d been pestering me to marry him for years. And so I did.’

Buffy hesitated. Then, ‘He seems very nice.’

Arabella swung round, eyes snapping with golden lights, her face vamping out and then back again in temper. ‘Nice! He’s a regurgitating demon. Do you have any idea what that means? No, of course you don’t. He brings back his half digested food and chews it again after every meal. He won’t eat meat, only greens and grass and oats and porridge and fruit. And there’s a smell - all the time, in bed, while we make love, at the table, in every room, there’s a smell that’s so bad - Oh tonight he’s fine. But then he hasn’t eaten for three days just to be okay for the party. When everyone goes, he’ll eat tons of stuff and then I’ll have to go to bed and -

‘But, as you say, he’s very nice! That’s what everyone said - how lucky I was to catch such a prize. Because he’s rich and kind and why was I waiting for a man who would never come back. ’

‘But now Spike has come back and he’s on his own; Drusilla has gone,’ Buffy said tersely, trying to push the pity out of her mind and let the hatred remain. Because she could sense that all these confessions were being made for a reason.

Arabella’s expression changed and suddenly her beauty looked almost ugly. ‘Oh yes, my dear, as you so rightly say, he’s back and Dru has gone. And the one thing I know I can rely on is William’s sense of duty to his family and his own stupid, fool-hardy chivalry where women and love are concerned.’

All of Buffy’s built in alarm systems went off at once. She grabbed Arabella’s arm. ‘What have you done? All this chat, all these confessions, it’s a smoke-screen, isn’t it? Why are you trying to keep me here? Where has Spike gone?’

Arabella laughed. ‘It’s quite simple, Miss Summers, even to a colonial such as yourself. But I’ll spell it out to you in big letters if that will help.

‘I want William, I’ve always wanted him, but I’m married to Div’vid. So, Div’vid must die. And William will kill him. I’ve told him how intolerable my life has been recently. I’ve, well, I’m afraid I’ve embroidered a little, here and there, mentioned other women, the sort of things that bring out the old William’s gallantry.

‘He’s gone to confront Div. My husband has the short temper of all Frovlax demons and he’s also insanely jealous. He’ll think William and I have been having an affair, he’ll attack William and William will kill him.’

She looked at Buffy’s appalled face and shook off her hand. ‘There, you see, Miss Summers, it really isn’t complicated, is it? Not too difficult for you to understand. When I want something, I get it, no matter how many centuries I have to wait. I want William. And I know, only too well, that William will do anything, anything at all for his Cousin Arabella.’

to be continued.





 
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