A/N Finally it begins...


6. Confrontation


The following night found Buffy charged with excess energy. She and Angelus had been hot and heavy for the first few nights after they had reached an agreement. But now she hadn’t seen Angelus for the past three nights, and she was feeling the lack. The Slaying had been agonizingly slow as well.

If she didn’t get some relief soon she felt like she was going to claw her way out of her own skin. She’d tried cold showers, hot showers, jumping rope, running laps, calisthenics, yoga, tae qwon do; nothing had helped. Then she’d tried watching soaps, listening to music, singing, and gossiping with Willow. Finally frustrated to the point where she was ready to slay anything that moved, evil or not, she tried giving in to the desire – she’d hid herself in her room and read dirty books, watched porn and masturbated with grocery products. That had only made the need more intense. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted Angelus desperately. Who knew she could get so dependent on him so quickly?

“God, they’re getting even more pathetic,” she groused as she dusted yet another newly risen vamp. Not nearly enough of a challenge for her. The brief fight barely dampened her frustration. “I mean, they buried him with his glasses on. A vamp with glasses – that’s just sad. Who would want such a sorry looking creature anyway?”

“I wanted him.” Angelus stepped out of the shadows behind the mausoleum.

“Angelus. Where have you been?” It was difficult to keep herself from throwing him to the ground and ravaging him right then, except that she needed to let him know that she was severely pissed that he’d been MIA for the last couple of nights. That SO was not going to become a regular occurrence. “And don’t you know a rhetorical question when you hear one?”

“No. I don’t. I asked you to patrol on the other side of town for a few nights.” By Angelus’s tone Buffy could tell that he was on edge as well. Apparently the separation had not been easy for either of them. “That one was one of mine, you shouldn’t have staked him.”

“Oh, I am so not taking orders from you, Angelus.” She didn’t want to admit that she had done just as he’d asked the past two nights, but that her frustration at the lack of exercise (and his touch on her flesh) had finally driven her to seek him out. “Just because we reached an agreement, doesn’t mean I won’t stake you if I find you’ve broken your word.” It was mostly a bluff, but she hoped that he didn’t know that. She didn’t know what she would do if she found him feeding again. Now that they’d been …close, she didn’t know if she could dust him if she needed to.

He moved so quickly, she was in his arms before she knew it.

“Don’t fool yourself, Buffy. You’ll never stake me. You are mine.” He nuzzled the barely healed scar where he’d last fed from her, but did not drink. This was the first time in days that the scar had had a chance to heal, and he didn’t want to re-open it right away.

He had noticed that Buffy had taken to wearing her hair down all the time now, accompanied by an assortment of turtlenecks, scarves and wide necklaces. If her Watcher had been paying her proper attention, it would have been obvious by now. He didn’t want to draw undue attention from the wrong quarters. The girl wouldn’t turn on him, her Watcher was another matter. Of course there were other, more intimate, places that he could feed from her. Her body was tattooed with his marks.

Angelus could feel her body giving in to him. She was so confused. She shouldn’t want him so recklessly, but she did. She guided his lips to her neck. Angelus knew that she wanted him to feed from her. Wanted it almost as desperate or perhaps more so, than the sex. Angelus had purposely avoided her for the past three nights, and it fascinated him that she seemed more disturbed by that fact than he was.

Weakly she gestured towards the almost forgotten grave, ready to make a token protest.

“You said – you agreed. No more killing.” How could he have a fledgling if he hadn’t been feeding? It had to be a mistake!

She summoned all her willpower and pushed him away. “You promised me Angel. How can I be with you if you are still feeding off innocents? By all rights, I should stake you right now.” It was an idle threat, and she knew it even as she said the words.

“I didn’t lie to you Buffy. I keep my promises. I haven’t been eating humans.”

“But…”

“I didn’t kill him, Buffy. I turned him. You’re the one who killed him.”

“That’s so unfair. Turning is the same as killing. He has to be dead before he can be turned into a vampire. You had better not be making fledglings just to get around your promise to me…or this is so over between us. You know I have my sources of information, Angelus. If you’ve been feeding, I will find out.”

He briefly wondered which of his minions had betrayed him, who had agreed to spy on him and pass information on to the Slayer. But it didn’t matter. They’d all be dust soon anyway. Besides, there was nothing to tell. He’d stuck to the letter of their agreement.

“No, Buffy. I haven’t been feeding. And I’m not making a practice of bringing over new minions, either. I can barely tolerate the ones I have now. But this one was special. I needed him.”

She was perplexed, and she was getting angry now at his lack of response. For the first time since their bargain, she wasn’t getting what she wanted out of Angelus. After the last few days alone she felt like she was going to jump out of her skin if she didn’t get some relief soon. A girl’s hand could only do so much, and it did absolutely nothing to alleviate her equally strong need to feel his fangs tear into her flesh. She couldn’t go on like this.

“That guy?” she whined. “Why? What was so special about him? He looked like a dweeb to me.”

“That’s exactly why I needed him. When I first came back, the Judge killed some of Spike’s minions. One was a guy named Dalton. He knew all kinds of languages and a little magic. He was useful, Buffy. This guy was supposed to take his place.”

“So he was gonna be research guy for a bunch of vampires? Guess I saved him from a fate worse than death. Ha!”

Sometimes she was such a child. “It’s not funny, Buffy. It’s hard to find a vampire with the intellectual capacity and temperament to do what Dalton did. I spent weeks searching before I picked this guy.”

“If he was so important to you, you should have taken better care of him than to let him rise alone in the cemetery I was patrolling.” It was apparent that Buffy had already lost interest in the fledgling. She was pouting. She pursed her lips and appeared to be trying to strike provocative poses on purpose. “What’s with that anyway? Do vamps need to be planted like tulips or something?”

Angelus wasn’t going to be distracted either by Buffy’s obvious need of him or her inane questions. Although she was the Slayer, sometimes Buffy acted like the teenager she still was.

Exasperatedly, Angelus tried again to explain. “Buffy, you’re missing the point. I invested a lot of time and energy in this guy, and you knowingly defied me by dusting him. I asked you as a special favor to stay away from Shady Rest for a few days – while I waited for him to rise. A favor which you chose to ignore.”

Angelus looked at her then, and Buffy shivered as she imagined that she could see the yellow eyes of the demon flash as it suppressed the part of him that was still Angel. At least she thought it was her imagination.

Angelus realized that a few days of his absence had put Buffy in an odd and strangely needy mood. He wondered how far he could push her.

“You need to learn obedience, Buffy. You can’t have everything your own way. I’ve given in to you so far – whatever you asked. ‘Don’t eat people,’ you said, so I haven’t. Next it was, ‘keep your minions from hunting’ – so I forbade my clan from drinking fresh blood. Do you know how difficult it is to enforce something like that?”

That had been part of the reason he had been avoiding Buffy lately. He had organized his followers into two groups. The smaller number, including Dru and Spike, would live with him at the mansion, where he strictly and loudly enforced the moratorium on feeding. Spike was easy. He was still confined to a wheelchair and would eat whatever he was given to eat, or starve. Dru was easy too. Everyone knew that Dru was crazy and uncontrollable, so he didn’t even try. Let her do whatever she wanted; he wasn’t going to take responsibility for it. Anyone else who disobeyed his commands quickly learned their mistake.

The majority of the clan remained in the factory where he could deny they were his minions at all, let alone be held responsible for their nightly activities. They were free to live as they always had, so long as they did what they were told when he told them to do it.

What he said was, “You don’t know the half of it. And now everyone was expecting this guy tonight. Knew he was gonna rise. All I asked was one little favor, Buff – that you be somewhere else tonight. Turn a blind eye. But no, your conscience wouldn’t let you do that. You had to interfere in my business. And now you need to be punished.”

Was it bad that she shivered with anticipation at his mention of the word punishment? There was something seriously wrong with her. She shouldn’t be feeling this way. She shouldn’t have allowed any of this to happen. She shouldn’t be permitting her personal feelings to overrule her good sense. She was a bad Slayer.

“Angel, where are we going?” They had been walking quickly and were out of the cemetery and half way to the other side of town by now.

“To the mansion.” Buffy hadn’t been there before, but she was going to see it now.

At the moment, for whatever reason, Angelus knew that he had the upper hand in his relationship with the Slayer, and he was going to prove to all interested parties how just much control he had over her.

“I’ve tried to be nice, Buffy. But you need to be taught a little lesson.”

They’d reached the house on Crawford Street. It was an imposing castle-like stone building, which had been vacant ever since Buffy had come to Sunnydale. She hadn’t known that the vampires had taken up residence here.

“Before you go in, you’ll need to leave your weapons here, Slayer.”

“Huh? Sooo not happening.” It was probably stupid, but she trusted Angelus. But only so far.

“Look at it from my point of view. You’ve already proved yourself untrustworthy by slaying my fledgling. I’m not letting you into my house fully armed. The minions might get the wrong idea and think you were planning to attack us. You have my word that anything that happens tonight will be your choice. But understand this, if I’m going to take you inside of my house, you can’t be seen to ignore my orders.”

“Fine, fine,” Buffy relented. This evening was so not going the way that she thought it would. She just wanted a little sex and biting to take the edge off. Not a lecture about doing what you’re told. She got enough of those from Giles.

“You want me to explain what happened to research vamp, I can do that. My bad, all right. But you and I know that I could stake your stupid minion’s sorry asses any time I wanted to. Weapons or no weapons.”

Idly she wondered if Angelus had an actual bed. They hadn’t made love in a bed yet. Did vampires even have beds? Cause a coffin, not so comfortable.

“These are my most loyal supporters here, Buffy. They’re the ones who agreed to live by your rules. You shouldn’t be so fast to stake them if they’re not feeding. Or does that agreement only apply to me?”

“Whatever. What do you need a bunch of hangers on for, anyway?”

Internally she was thinking that they so did not need an audience. Why couldn’t Angelus live alone, like Angel had?

“You think I should kill them? Even if they’ve agreed not to hunt?”

That caught Buffy’s attention, and she thought for a moment before replying. How did Angelus twist her words, make it seem like she was the one in the wrong? “Nooo. But I think you need to re-evaluate your life-style choices.”

“You may be right, Buffy.” Angelus stopped her in front of a closed door on the first floor. At last, his bedroom. Now they would be able to make with the sex fest.

So far, they hadn’t seen or heard any vamps at all. She was beginning to wonder if they were not at home tonight. They supposedly weren’t feeding – so where were they and what were they doing? What else did vamps do anyway?

“Before we go in, Buffy. I want you to know that you brought this on yourself. If you had only listened to me, it wouldn’t have come to this. But you’re stubborn and you need to be taught a lesson. As head of clan Aurelius, it’s my job to make sure that you learn it.”

What was he going to do to her? Tie her up and make her beg him for it? In the mood she was in right now, she just might not mind.

“So, here’s the deal. For your disobedience tonight you have won what is behind door number one.”

The door had been locked, and the key turned reluctantly at his insistence. He pushed Buffy ahead of him into the room and blocked the exit with his body.

His violent shove had pushed Buffy halfway into the room until she found herself staring face to face with a very surprised looking vampire, Spike. Apparently he had been sitting in his wheelchair and staring at nothing. Now he let his eyes roam up and down her body then cocked his head at Angelus, a question in his eyes.

Angelus didn’t even bother to look at him, his eyes focusing on the Slayer. “I’m sorry to say,” he began, but his voice sounded anything but sorry, he sounded pleased, and amused, “because of your intervention, Slayer, I’ve got other things to attend to right now. So I am going to allow Spike to administer your punishment. You, my dear, are going to stay here and keep Spike…entertained. Fully entertained, if you get my meaning.”