Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 4 - ANGELS AND DEMONS

I'm sure you love someone
And someone loves you too


(The Tourists)




Chapter 4.18
Friday, June 14th, 2002


Wes and Bee were still making their way along the ground floor corridor that led to the kitchen when one of the library doors opened. Neither paid any particular attention until they recognised Giles' hushed tones.

"Wesley? Bee?"

The pair turned around, weariness etched into their features but nevertheless, a smile crept onto Wes's lips and finally reached his eyes when he noticed the tumbler of amber liquid in Giles' hand.

"I don't suppose there's more where that came from?" Wes asked.

"I think it could be arranged. James and I were just catching up a bit before we turn in... and celebrating a small breakthrough on the research. I take it your own endeavours were successfully resolved." The returning heroes noticed the young man at Giles' shoulder for the first time and Wes took his cue from the elder man's discretion.

"Matters have been brought to the desired conclusion, you could say."

The youngest of the watchers cleared his throat, and Bee's appraising gaze scanned him from head to toe. His hair was brown, but the sort of shade she suspected would take on a distinct coppery tinge before too long in the California sun. The locks were rumpled as if he had run anxious fingers through it over the course of long hours. Unsurprisingly, given the time, so late that it would soon be early, his eyes betrayed his tiredness but there was also a glint of good humour, and slight creases at the side of his mouth told of a face more used to smiles and laughter than frowns. The white shirt he wore with the sleeves rolled up, the top two buttons undone and his necktie loosened did little to hide his broad-shouldered physique. "I think, maybe, I should be going." While it was equally correct as the speech of the other two watchers, the younger man's voice had a slight lilt that Bee found endearing.

"Don't leave on our account." Bee nodded at the glass he had slid onto an adjacent table. "That would be a waste of good whisky."

"Right then..." Giles stepped away from the door, allowing Bee and Wes to follow him in and making introductions as he poured two more measures of single malt. "James, this is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Buffy's other watcher, and Bee, who is his business partner. They work as private investigators... with particular reference to cases that may involve the local demonic population. Bee, Wesley, this is James Urquhart. I suppose you could say that his father was my mentor during my early years as a watcher."

"You mentioned a breakthrough?" Wes enquired as he took a seat at the table the two men had obviously been sharing, nodding his acknowledgement of the introduction as he did so.

"Yes," Giles responded, eyes glittering with enthusiasm. "Actually, it was James who found it. Perhaps he should tell you."

"Assuming you don't want me to explode, either literally or figuratively, one of you should tell me," Bee hinted.

"Well, it's your drawings..." Giles began before nodding to the younger watcher who took up the tale.

"We thought at first the etchings on the blade were simply a design, possibly with some significance, like the naturalist elements of Celtic art, but I'm almost certain now that it's not simply a design, but that they're characters in an ancient demonic language..."

Bee picked up her original sketch, holding it at first so that the stylised bumblebee with which she signed her work and the date were at the bottom left of the page, but then as the young man continued to speak she held it first sideways and then upside down, her eyes flicking from one view of the blade to the other and back again.

"We think it's a language called-."

"Tawarick." Bee dashed the heel of her right hand against her forehead as she held the sketch in her left before raising her glass to take a swift sip.

"Ye-es," the young watcher looked at the woman before him in some surprise. "We didn't spot it at first because of how the words wind around the blade. If we'd only had one view we would never have been able to do it. How did you know? It's one of the more common demon languages, but it's still relatively rare for anyone outside the council to be aware of it, and this particular piece seems to be one of the earliest written versions available."

Giles gave the younger man a wry grin. "As you will probably learn, our Bee is a lady of many talents, few of which are ordinary."

"Well, as I was saying, it's a very old version of the language so it may take some time to translate it but at least we know what it is now," James elaborated, somewhat perplexed.

Giles and Wes, however, simply looked at the petite blonde with whom they shared a table. Bee might not have seen the significance of what she had drawn as she drew it, but her mind had been on other things. Both men were confident, once she recognised the language, that she would hold the key to its translation without the need for primers or grammatical texts.

"'Let the blood that I spill be consecrated to the oldest evil.' It's sort of convoluted and when I say 'I', I mean the knife... or the blood that the knife spills will be consecrated to The First."

"Lovely," Wes drawled. "And do we know if there is some sort of link between the knife and the 'oversized Alchemy trinket' as Spike calls it?"

"Not yet," Giles admitted, "but I'll try to focus some of the research teams in that direction tomorrow... check out the iconography from the communities where this form of Tawarick was in use and so on."

Wes stifled a yawn and Giles' eyes darted over to him. "I have some other news, as well, of a more personal nature. It appears that Quentin is not above using whatever means he can to lure those of us capable of rational, independent thought back into line with council policy. Your father is here - somewhere in the building. I wouldn't be surprised to find that he was camped out in your room, waiting for you to return. From the... conversation I had with him earlier it would appear that Quentin has filled him in on all our most grievous sins... from their point of view, at least. He knows about Marie, her existence if not her name, and he's heard his own twisted little version of what happened with Clem and how you tried to speak up on his behalf to Quentin."

Giles couldn't help the knot of sympathy that curled in his stomach at Wes's look of dismay. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm reliably informed that the other Rupert felt it imperative to announce to the world in the most pungent terms possible that he owned your father's trousers."

First Wes's face twisted into a smile and then a small chuckle escaped. "Amazingly enough, yes... yes, it does."

---

Spike carried Buffy through a short stretch of corridor before pushing open a second swing door that led to the changing rooms proper. On their left, was a bank of metal lockers while, to their right, was an area with benches and coat-hooks set out like the letter 'm' but rotated a quarter turn clockwise. Buffy squirmed in Spike's arms until he gradually lowered her feet to the ground, but the arm around her back refused to relinquish its hold and his lips continued to pay homage to the graceful column of Buffy's neck as her head arched back.

The slayer tugged at the edges of Spike's shirt, using it to draw him with her as she shuffled backwards until her heels brushed against the lockers. She moaned in impatience as Spike's lips brushed and nibbled from jaw line to barely exposed collarbone on her sensitive skin, everywhere except over his claim mark. She pushed up on her tiptoes and slipped her hands around Spike's waist and down. Her fingers pressed into firm, denim-bound buttocks as she ground her hips against him. If he could tease, so could she. She waited until the vampire groaned loudly before she pulled one hand away, reaching out for the combination padlock that secured the topmost locker at the end, where, several hours earlier, she had left her toiletries and a spare towel. Even if she could have focused her vision on the dial, she doubted that she would have remembered the combination. Spike dropped to his knees, the nails of her other hand raking his back through his shirt and T-shirt. Then, he began unbuttoning her oversized satin top one agonizingly deliberate button at a time, his lips worshipping at the narrow line of flesh he exposed down the centre of her body. The feeling of adoration was as real to her as the touch of his lips and her fingers clenched around the lock until it broke apart in her hand.

Finally, the last button was undone and cool fingers slipped under the waistband of her panties at the left and the right, sliding the slick fabric slowly down until she could step daintily out of them one tiny foot at a time. His mouth pressed cool kisses along her inner thigh to her knee and calf, leaving a trail of goose bumps in his wake. He cupped her foot as she raised it off the ground, teasing her ticklish instep until she gasped and then his eyes caught hers with a positively evil gleam as he closed those pouting lips over her big toe and sucked. Buffy arched back, rattling the lockers behind her as the sensation surged through her body in a rush of adrenaline-charged blood, setting off warm tingles in her stomach and a rush of dampness at the apex of her legs.

"Ohh god! Oh god!" she cried, the cabinets behind her shaking as they supported her trembling body. The purely physical effects of the vampire's touch roiled through Buffy's being, vying for supremacy with the emotions it engendered. Not least of these was an empathic satisfaction bordering on smugness. Her vampire was getting decidedly cocky about the effect he had on her.

Spike rose to his feet once more, barely letting his hands skim her flanks as he did so, his teasing touch making her squirm far more than a firmer hand would have done. As she began to recover her senses, her fingers tugged frantically at the hem of his t-shirt, trying to pull it free from the waist of his jeans, but the vampire stepped away with a gloating smile as Buffy held onto the lockers to stop her quivering knees from giving way. "What's the rush, kitten?" he almost whispered, his voice husky with desire. He waited until he was out of reach of her questing fingertips before he tantalisingly stripped his own clothes away.

First was the midnight blue shirt, which slipped gently from his arms to reveal corded muscles. Then as she watched, mesmerized by his pale, strong fingers, he opened his belt and the top two fastenings on his button-fly jeans, relieving the strain on the material just enough to let him ease loose the hem of his t-shirt and give her fleeting glimpses of flesh as he moved. The black cotton jersey glided over his head in slow motion to land on the bench beside him, exposing starkly defined abdominal muscles and a thin vertical line of dark hair that drew her focus once more to the open V at the waist of his jeans. As soon as Buffy realised she was staring, her eyes shifted nervously to Spike's face. The vampire's knowing expression held her gaze as he raised one eyebrow and ran the tip of his tongue over his upper teeth. The simple suggestion hit its mark every time and Buffy felt another rush of heat between her thighs.

Keeping his eyes on her face, he sat on the bench to untie the laces of his left boot and toe it off before dropping his sock inside it. Once he had repeated his actions to bare his right foot, he stood again.

His hands dropped once more to the front of his jeans and Buffy couldn't help the way her attention flicked up and down between there and his lust-darkened eyes as he swaggered a couple of paces forward. He spoke in a drawn out sultry drawl, undoing one button for each word until there were no more left. "Reckon... I... could... join... the Chippendales, pet?"

"Nugh!" Buffy knew that actual words existed. She just couldn't quite convince her mouth to make any as Spike turned so that he had to watch her over his shoulder, pushing the heavy denim over his perfect butt and down his legs until, at last, he was naked.

"Was that a 'no', love?" he asked as he straightened and turned back to face her. "Don't you think I'm good enough looking?" His bottom lip stuck out in a mock pout that he knew she would be unable to resist and he came back to her with that inimitable snake-hipped strut. His eyes met hers and then looked down between them while his hands eased the pyjama jacket from her shoulders and, without a backward glance, tossed it to hit the wall behind him and slide down until it pooled on the bench. "Or maybe you think the other ladies would think I was under endowed?" This last was asked with the wicked grin of a male more than secure in his own virility.

This time Buffy's answer came out almost as a growl. "Mine!" Dragging his head down until she could reach, she seared him with her lips on his before she ran the tip of her tongue along his jaw and down his neck, her teeth pressing hard against the flesh covering his collarbone but not quite breaking the surface. "Mine?" she repeated. The bond between them echoed with both their maelstrom emotions but she needed somehow to hear it in words.

"Yours... always yours... for eternity and a day ..." Spike's voice rose and his hips thrust against her, shaking the lockers once more as Buffy bit down hard. "My beautiful, possessive girl."

She didn't bother to reply in words. Instead, she let her lips work their way down to a flat, pink nipple, sucking briefly on the already erect bud before biting down on the raised nub at its centre. The vampire's animalistic roar echoed around the room and by the time his fiancée worked out what he had done from her semi-inverted position and her view of a spectacularly firm ass, she barely had time to grab the toiletries bag that sat just inside her now gaping locker.

More to excite her mate further than from any real desire to be set free, she wriggled and squirmed on Spike's shoulder as he carried her around the end of the row of lockers toward the shower area behind. "Put me down, you fiend! I am so going to make you pay."

Spike had no intention of releasing his captive and Buffy's cries of protest ended in a sharp gasp as the hand that had formerly been holding her bottom in place curled between her thighs, stroking the slick flesh that was hidden there. There were no shower cubicles, just one large slightly sunken tiled area with a long row of showerheads. The vampire turned on shower after shower, letting them heat up before he worked his way backward along the line to adjust the scalding water to a temperature that wouldn't burn his mate.

"Isn't one shower enough for you?" Buffy teased as he finally lowered her to the floor, the hot spray splashing over both their bodies. "Or is your ego so big it needs the other three?"

"You really think we're going to stay upright the whole time?" the demon countered.

Hazel eyes gleamed with amusement as she dropped her bag on the floor just beyond the sunken area and reached down to circle the base of his shaft with a tiny hand. "I'll be very disappointed if you don't."

"Well, I'd hate to disappoint a lady." Spike slipped a foot between Buffy's and swept her off-balance, twisting as they fell together so that his body cushioned her impact with the unforgiving tile. His scream as he realised that the slayer had far too much practice keeping hold of her stake was, however, quite a manly one. After all, vampires get off on certain types of pain.

The falling water cooled rapidly and the drops that splashed their skin as Buffy straddled his thighs were only a few degrees above normal human body temperature. Droplets pounded tiny hammer blows on their flesh until the nerve endings screamed at the lightest touch. Buffy lowered her head as Spike propped himself up on his elbows to watch her. Her lips placed tiny nibbling kisses along the ridge that ran up the broad shaft between whispered promises. "I think... maybe... I should... just... make sure... everything's still... in working order." Her grip on him as they fell had already pulled back his foreskin and as she finished speaking, her mouth closed over the sensitive glans and a swirl of her tongue swept away the tiny pearl of pre-cum that decorated the tip.

Spike's hand tenderly caressing her cheek and wiping her dampened tresses away from her face made her hesitate as she lowered her mouth to take him in deeper. "I'm supposed to be making it up to you for leaving you all alone, remember?" His gentle touch eased her back up. The water slicking their bodies made it simple for him to draw her up his body and roll her beneath him.

He slid into her with the grace and slow momentum of a huge ocean liner inexorably making its way down the slipway to its true home in the water. His lips claimed hers in butterfly caresses allowing her the necessary time to adjust to his presence inside her. Then, he pulled back, his eyes locking with hers as he propped himself on his elbows and withdrew from her warmth. Desire played its part in the sensations that swept through their mutual bond but that element was dwarfed by the devotion that Spike let his tempered movements convey. Matching him in every way, her hips lifting from the ground with each stroke, his mate allowed her love for him to present itself in its most sensitive form. Hours seemed to pass with them moving beneath the artificial downpour that framed their world until inevitably, linked as they were, body and mind, they shuddered together to their silent completion.