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Angels and Demons by TalesofSpike
 
Chapter 7.10
 
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Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 7 - LAKE OF FIRE

People cry, people moan.
Look for a dry place to call their home.
Try to find some place to rest their bones.
While the Angels and the Devils try to make THEM their own.

(Nirvana, Album - MTV Unplugged with thanks to Zanthinegirl for the suggestion)




Chapter 7.10
Sunday, July 14th, 2002


Just as Buffy had expected, Spike was waiting for her in the entrance hall. His eyes seemed to burn into hers as soon as she walked through the door.

With a huffing breath that might have been an amused snort, Wes announced his intention to check on Marie and Rosa before he joined the debriefing in the library.

As soon as her arms wrapped around Spike's neck, she felt a rush of desire that swamped her awareness like a tidal wave, though it was equally matched by her own fight-induced arousal.

Spike's hands slipped under her coat and found the curves of her behind, lifting her and pulling her close against him. His human teeth tugged and nibbled at her earlobe in between whispered promises and endearments. "You know that you are soddin' amazing, right? You really showed that wanker. Could see it all so clear, it was almost like I could feel you makin' every turn, every jump, every damn handstand. Like I could feel my muscles movin' to match yours."

The words conjured images of a different sort of communion and Buffy reacted instinctively, even though a small part of her brain was telling her that they were right out in the open. Her legs wrapped around Spike's waist, so that she could feel the hardness of his dick pressing against her centre and, unable to help herself, she began to rock against him. Her back slammed into the hardwood panelling and she gasped as Spike matched her small but forceful thrusts.

"You make me hard as an iron bar... even when you're half a town away. The way you move..." His hands no longer needed to hold Buffy in place, he skimmed his fingers along her sides under her coat, feeling her shiver in response to the barest touch through the cotton of her top, even before his thumbs stretched across to brush against her breasts, teasing until her nipples stood so erect they almost seemed to grate against the lace of her bra, creating sensual pain with her every movement. "All that grace... an' all that power." He splayed his fingers as one hand slid down her body as if laying a territorial claim to her womb before it strayed even lower. His kisses became more open-mouthed, working his way down to her collar bone with playful nips and sucks that stopped just short of anything that might leave a mark. "Like a mountain lion."

Buffy's gentle mewl as his fingernail rasped its way over the central seam of her jeans made him grin against the golden skin of her neck, and he let it repeat its trail several times before he began to press more firmly against her, eventually using his whole hand to provide friction where she needed it most. When her mewling shifted to moaning he pressed his other hand over her mouth, and drew back his head, only to fasten onto the other side of her neck. Finding the scar that marked his claim with unerring accuracy, he didn't even need to draw blood. His tongue traced the raised lines on her flesh as he sucked at her skin. The writhing of their bodies became more frantic and Spike pressed down harder with the hand that covered Buffy's mouth, stifling her rapturous scream. It took every one of his one hundred and twenty two years of experience not to soil his jeans as he felt the waves of second hand euphoria wash over him. Buffy trembled through orgasm after orgasm with only the wall at her back holding them up as he pulled at the sensitised area on her neck until her body couldn't take any more and she slipped into unconsciousness.






 

Giles lifted the axe, turning it over in his hands, peering at the gleaming metal finish on the blade and trying out different ways of holding it. "This is really rather ingenious," Giles commented, trying first a hacking motion, then, gripping the side of the blade, he used a reverse thrust to stake an imaginary opponent, before reversing his swing to slash open the throat of another. "I wonder what it's called."

Faith shifted her weight onto one leg, tilted her head and gave the watcher a sceptical look. "Well, gee, Giles... What say, since it looks like an axe, feels like an axe and swings like an axe, that we call it an axe?"

"There's no need to be facetious. It's clearly intended to be used as a stake and almost-." Giles coughed as if to clear his throat before going back to his minute inspection of the weapon.

"Almost what, Giles?" James asked.

The watcher reddened slightly. "Well, almost like one of those Klingon ceremonial weapons. I mean I only watched it that year I wasn't working and it was really Spike who put it on. It was just that occasionally I happened to be in the room at the time."

James leaned forward and patted the older watcher on the forearm. "It's okay. She won't tell anyone other than all the... Scoobies, I think you call them, and maybe Lydia about your Sci-Fi habit. She doesn't actually talk to Quentin."

"But you say that you can feel a mystical connection when you hold it?" Giles asked the slayer, ignoring his future humiliation.

"It's not like I came in my pants," Faith retorted. "But, yeah, it feels like there's power there and it's like it's mine. Not in an 'I paid for it' sort of way, but more like it was a part of me that was missing only I never knew it up until now."

"In addition to being ancient, it's clearly mystical."

"Ooh," came a chirpy voice from the doorway. "I know this one... 'Cause it's all shiny?"

"Did someone announce a day of Giles mockery without telling me?" the watcher asked as Buffy made her way into the room, looking rather flushed, closely followed by a rather smug looking Spike.

"Not that I know of," the vamp responded, "but I'm sure we can oblige."

"Ooh!" Buffy's eyes widened as she got her first look at the axe. "It really is shiny. Does this mean that light bulbs are mystical, too?"

Faith reached out and took the weapon from Giles. Holding it by the handle she tossed it underarm, sending it spinning in a high arc toward Buffy. The blonde slayer grabbed it out of the air, twirled it a couple of times like a majorette's baton before imitating the moves that Giles had made a minute before, albeit in a slightly different order.

"Actually, B, there's also the whole Excalibur deal."

"Faith said she could feel a connection with the weapon?" Giles prodded.

Buffy tossed the axe back toward Faith who caught it just as deftly as she had. "Hoo, yeah. There's a feeling. Can only think of one thing that feels more like it belongs to me."

Giles gave his slayer a puzzled look, but it was Spike who answered for her. "That thing had better be five foot ten, rakishly handsome, a bottle blond, an' answer to the name of Spike," he mock growled, as he stalked up the library's central aisle and wrapped his arms around her from behind, nuzzling at her neck.

Buffy twisted to get a view of his face and batted her eyelashes innocently. "Mr Gordo's not that tall."

Spike planted a string of teasing kisses down the side of Buffy's neck as she squirmed in his arms. "See what I have to put up with... an' this is before we're even married. God only knows what she'll be like once she gets the other ring on her finger."






Monday, July 15th, 2002

 

"Nothing?" Buffy asked the assembled watchers in a disbelieving tone.

"You can't always find the information you're looking for in the first volume that comes to hand," Penelope offered consolingly, "but I'm sure we'll find the answers soon."

Giles sighed. "We have teams working at the town library, the main university library, the archaeology department library and the town museum. There are people working on Bee's books and the curator's private collection as well as the council library. There has to be something somewhere about either the weapon itself or what was on the site before the vineyard existed to give us a clue as to what we're dealing with. If Caleb knew to look for the inscription at that mission, there must have been some clue that told him where to look. With enough time we'll track it down. I find it hard to believe that a weapon like this could exist without some word of it reaching the council."

"Who says they didn't know? It's not like they go out of their way to spread the news and we don't have 'enough time', Giles. In case you've forgotten, I am getting married in five days. I'd really rather not have this Caleb creep decide that he's officiating at the ceremony... and I can't say that I'm not worried about the guy who is doing it, but since he won't move from where his parishioners expect him to be, there's not a lot I can do about that other than try to get rid of these guys as soon as possible. We did our bit. We went out there and got the thing. The potentials and your guys are all keeping an eye on the seal... but sooner or later if you don't get your act together and get me some answers we're going to send a relief squad out there and it'll be our guys that have turned into the next generation of bringers or strung each other up over that seal."

"Buffy, I'm sure we'll find something soon."

"You better hope for all our sakes that soon is soon enough."






Tuesday, July 16th, 2002

 

Penny looked at her single page of hand written notes that condensed the progress of the various teams. "It seems that the vineyard was originally set up by some Benedictine monks. The site was sold into private ownership after a major quake destroyed the monastery building in the 1920's but the winery survived. However, there is some evidence to suggest that the monastery may have been built on the site of a Pagan temple."

"We talking Indian, here?" Spike asked.

"Native American, Spike!" Buffy corrected him rather sharply.

"It's difficult to say. The descriptions aren't exactly precise," the watcher admitted.

"Well, try," Buffy ordered, seeming to add the word, "please" as a conscious attempt to mitigate her short temper slightly. "We've got that purification crystal that we ordered now, and you tell us that we've got a volunteer to use it, even if he doesn't want people to know who it is until it's time. We've got the shiny axe. If you don't come up with something soon, then we're just going to have to raid the butchers, open up that hole in the ground and go see what all the fuss is about, but I'd really rather it wasn't a kamikaze mission."

"Isn't there some hocus pocus you could maybe do on the actual axe to get more information?" Faith asked, her fingertips brushing up and down the weapon's haft where it rested atop her thighs in an almost sensual caress.

"Frankly, unless we have some concept of the level of power that we're dealing with, or at the very least an intimation that the power within it is benign, I'm very loath to ask anyone to try," Giles told her.

"Too damn right," Spike agreed. "Not gonna let anything dark get its claws into Glinda."






Wednesday, July 17th, 2002

 

"So, hundreds of watchers looking at thousands of books and we're no further forward than we were yesterday?" Buffy demanded, almost hysterically, despite the soothing hands that caressed her arms and back with calming strokes. "We have a little over seventy two hours to deal with this thing, Giles! My aunt is flying into town in two days time. I already had to tell her that the hotel where she was originally booked to stay had been closed 'cause all the staff had gastric flu and book her in somewhere out of town, but I still have to meet her at the airport and take her to her hotel and make it look like the world is not about to end. We need answers, Giles!"

"We've found hundreds of references that could be it, Buffy. The problem is simply that none of the illustrations or descriptions are definitive. It could be The Axe of Dekeron, in which case it would be unspeakably evil or it might just as easily be The Reaper of the Tigris, in which case the power within the axe is neither good nor evil except in how it is used. Or it could be any one of a hundred others. You see our problem?"

Spike rose to his feet, taking Buffy's hand as his movement tipped her from his lap. "Come on, pet. Watchers aren't finding anything out while you're yelling at them."

"Watchers aren't finding anything out, period," Buffy countered, tears of frustration threatening to overflow her eyes.

"Shhhh..." Spike brushed his lips against her forehead and then leaned down to rest his brow against hers while his arms gathered her close, answering her in a soothing whisper as if she were a distraught child. "The answers might not be in the watchers' books, but that doesn't mean we can't get them. We can do this. We're meant to get through this. Ain't no force in the world strong enough to take what we've got away from us."

Buffy made a small noise that was half sob and half hiccup and Spike swept her into his arms. His gaze met Faith's and then dropped from her face to the axe she carried before travelling back up. The darker slayer stood and slotted the axe's handle into Spike's pocket before he carried Buffy from the room.

"We just need to do this our way..." the vampire reassured her.
 
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