By The Pricking of My Thumbs... Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Megan & Schehrezade

Chapter Twelve

Buffy ran as fast as her Slayer powers would allow, her legs pumping and her lungs gasping for air. With each greedy breath, Buffy tried to calm down.

To no avail.

Rage filled her, and the jealousy!

Oh god, the jealousy. She had never felt anything like it before in her life. Not even when Faith had macked on Angel all those years ago-- and that had hurt. She had been positive she would never recover from watching the two brunettes together, and in a way she hadn’t.

Ever since that night she was slow to fall in love, and even more reticent to trust in anyone—from the moment Angel had walked away on Graduation Day without a goodbye. A little more of the green eyed monster had taken root in her heart when he had held Faith in his arms and then ordered her out of LA. And more still when he had turned up at her dorm and tried to make nice about Riley. Buffy knew she was scarred emotionally, but there was little she could do.

They always left.

Anyone she loved, she lost.

Angel and Faith. Even now, the memories of him holding Faith in his LA basement flat left a bitter taste in her mouth. The way he had struck back--something he had never done before-- and then ordering her out of his ‘town’. All because of Faith. She had in a sense lost her first love, Angel, to her sister slayer. Now Spike was being taken from her by another, and to make matters even worse, by her doppelganger.

But this, this was worse than anything she had ever experienced in her life. Buffy stumbled to a standstill, her legs aching from the sudden burst of Slayer speed she had put on. Her chest was heaving as her body greedily demanded air, sweat trickling down her spine.

Buffy stood there and stared ahead sightlessly; the images of Spike and Anne entwined and kissing devastated her on a level that she had never expected. She was a statue of misery.

This was Spike-- and yet she was in agony. A pain filled sadness that Buffy had never expected as a result of the peroxided menace, and yet she stood in total anguish. Angel had been her true love and the pain of their separation had been the worst.

But why was the sorrow she was experiencing from Spike and Anne kissing even more acute? What did it mean?

Why was she feeling like she had been hit by a wrecking ball?

Why was she feeling this badly over yet another Slayer sniffing around her vampire?

The freaked out, newly resurrected Slayer had not even paused at the idea that Spike was her vampire. It was a truth that was easy to accept, especially now that she was on her third life.

A life that was hers alone. Not one that was a victim to the whims of the Powers That Be-- or anyone else.

She could feel a vein pounding in her temple as the rage fired through all her synapses. Buffy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She was devastated because of Spike? Never in her wildest dreams had Buffy ever thought that she would react to Spike kissing Anne in this way. He was Spike! A cutie if she really was going to be honest, and since her return, someone she was drawn to. But he’d kissed Anne, and that wasn’t right. He was hers, even if he had ignored her.

She was starting to actively hate Anne, who was so unlike her it was almost funny. In fact, she was more like Faith the ho-bag, only interested in the kill, the hunt and the fight. The utilitarian way she dressed most of the time--unless it was in something Anne had stolen from her--reminded Buffy a little of Kendra. In a way, Anne was a curious amalgam of her, Faith and Kendra. The element stolen from Buffy was the attraction to vampires. She ground her teeth bitterly at that. Why couldn’t Anne go for a nice safe mortal and leave Spike to her?

Something uncoiled in her gut when Buffy admitted to herself that Spike was hers. When she and Willow had been girly talking, Buffy had said she was interested in Spike-- but not to the extent that she now secretly thought.

There was an all encompassing feeling of surprise tempered with relief. She loved Spike-- and funnily enough, there was no nausea involved with her latest and unexpected epiphany.

No nausea at all. Except towards Anne.

~@~@~

Willow stifled the groan that was itching to erupt from her chapped lips; a tickle of blood ran down her chin from a small split. Grimacing, Willow rubbed the back of her hand over the trail and tried to staunch the crimson flow. With a tired whimper she rolled off her back, her head hanging down between her shoulder blades as she shakily pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. The rank stench of urine and vomit filled the filthy alleyway where she’d collapsed. There was a scuttling of rat claws-- and not Amy’s for a change, she wryly pondered.

Taking another deep breath to steady herself, Willow felt her stomach lurch. With a toe curling retch, she emptied the meager contents of her stomach, adding to the filth of the alley. The exhausted redhead grimaced at the back of her vomit splattered hands, her nails digging into the concrete, splitting and breaking as she tried to anchor herself to something… to anything.

Wobbling slightly on her knees, the grimy redhead straightened and took a deep breath. The sparks of magic that Rack had infused her with were still spiraling through her system and their energy was intoxicating. There was a faint humming sound in her ears; a result of the expended magic in the air, as well as the ones her system was still trying to absorb.

Everything ached in a good way, but there was something darker hovering on the edges of her consciousness and Willow was starting to get scared.

Where was Tara?

She needed Tara; her girl would make everything all right. Memories of the tension and angry silences between the two of them were gone from Willow’s mind. Her subconscious suppressed them easily as Willow swayed on her knees. Using the wall to drag herself up, she leant against it. Her thin frame shuddered intermittently as the magical infused high worked its will. She wanted Tara to come and hold her, cosset her and make it all right--but they were on the outs. Willow’s small mouth stuck out in a sulky moue that was starting to become a permanent fixture on her face.

Where the hell was Amy?

Willow glanced over to where she had last seen her fellow Wicca. The recently de-ratted girl was still laying flat on her back, staring blankly up at the fire escape that clung tenuously to the deserted factory wall. The wound on her neck clumsily sealed shut by the saliva of her evil counterpart. There was a slow seep of blood that trickled from the fang marks and dripped onto the dirty alley floor.

Willow’s aching spine straightened at the sight of the partially sealed bite on Amy’s pale throat. ‘Evil-Me is still around somewhere!’

She had aimed a bolt of something sparkly that erupted from her rigid fingers at Vampirella Willow. She remembered that, even in her magic hazed mind. She stared down at her lax hands and wondered where the cool electricity zaps had gotten to, and whether she would be able to do it again.

Pushing her filthy sweat-soaked hair off her face, Willow ran her fingers through her lank locks over and over, trying to anchor herself. Her skin itched and crawled, and her mouth was arid dry. She licked her chapped lips and sniffed hard, trying to find a calm in the magical storm that was waging a battle royal in her body and mind.

There was a faint scent of singed flesh in the air and Willow’s senses twitched slightly. She had managed to hit the not-so-good version of herself.

A version of herself that, every time she saw her vamp equivalent, Willow wanted to run screaming for the hills. Gone was the initial fascination of their first meetings. Now her leather clad vampy presence filled Willow with discomfort. She was the permanent reminder of how easily she could be bad. Which was not of the good. Dammit! She was a good girl-- not something wicked…

It had been all right seeing the vampy version of herself a few years back-- before she had even accepted that there was more to her than fuzzy sweaters, Oz and a secret nurturing of her ongoing crush on Xander. Glad that was over cos… ewww! With the whole Anya touching. Thousand year old ex-demon; God knows what she took to her bed. Anyway, Tara was the one for her, the only one. Willow nodded firmly.

That was before she had realised there was darkness inside her, just waiting to be tapped. Now that the young Wicca had tasted the strength of that darkness, she was afraid that she would succumb and end up in a leather corset and acting like a ho.

Willow pinched herself hard, trying to pull her frazzled mind into a semblance of order. Enough order for her to carry Amy home and crash, try to ride out the infusion of whatever the hell the scar-faced Rack had nuked her with in the comfort and peace of her own bed.

There was a faint groan and then the scrabbling of nails against brickwork.

Willow froze and stared hopefully at Amy, hoping it was her. But no, the ex-rat was still unconscious.

Which meant…

Oh crap…

Willow fumbled along the wall until she was nearer to Amy and then sank to her knees. Reaching over with a shaking hand, Willow grasped her unconscious friend’s shoulder and shook her hard.

“Wake up Amy,” the frantic Wicca hissed as she shook her comatose friend again and again, no gentleness in her touch.

There was a very familiar chuckle, filled with an edge of something else. If Willow didn't know better, she would have thought it was pain filled. But the vampiric version of herself didn’t show her face. Instead, there was a static buzzing sound in the terrified Wicca’s ears. Upon hearing it, her blood froze. She had hoped-- even prayed-- that the vampire was dead. Xander had managed to kill his counterpart easily. Willow pouted. How come it was so hard to get rid of the skanky version of herself?

Willow wanted her gone; no reminders of how it was good to be bad, or the temptation to succumb to the draw of the dark magiks. So much for it looking like being kind of naughty and fun. Instead, the Rack experience had given her a sharp reminder of how easy it would be to give into the siren call of the dark side. All of which was something Willow had already learned from her confrontations with the redheaded vampire. If her friends knew how much she longed to ‘play’, they would have panicked and sent her packing to Giles and some lame ass Wicca retreat. Instead, Willow kept quiet and tried to work out a way to get rid of the daily reminder of her temptations.

“Amy, please wake up. We need to get home.” Willow swayed as her body began to react even more to the magic rush. Her teeth were itching; was it possible that teeth could itch? Was all she could think as she shook the lax form of her friend.

Willow released Amy’s limp shoulder and began to rub her hands together, trying to control the tremors. Unbeknownst to the frenzied Wicca, she began to scratch at her arms with her sharp nails as her eyes scanned the deceptively deserted alley, leaving red welts in their path while nearly drawing blood in some passes of her torn finger nails.

“Show yourself.” The firmness of her tone belied the utter terror that was vying for position in her body with the magiks.

“Aww, and why would I want to do that? When me playing hide and seek with you and your extra yummy friend is just soo…scary that it makes you smell like crushed strawberries?” The insidious voice of her alter ego queried tauntingly with a salacious giggle added on for extra freakage. “And ohhhh what else can my lil’old nose pick up? Has Goody two shoes Willow been a naughty girl? Hmmmm…”

Willow grimaced at the reference to strawberries; someone else had called her that recently. To know that the vampire Willow could pick through her thoughts and say something seemingly so innocent sounding, only added to Willow’s rapidly snowballing terror. Willow wondered what the hell else the vampire Skankerella could smell. With a single-minded determination, she avoided the loose sensation between her legs and the trickle of something on her thighs - something she’d not felt since Oz.

One panic attack with a side order of peeing myself coming right up!

“Ohhh, is the lil’vamp me too scared to come out and face me?” The strength in Willow’s voice belied the screaming abdabs she was trying not to break out in.

There was another laugh. “But it’s so fun watching you squirming like a worm on my hook,” the disembodied voice taunted.

Willow reached down and yanked Amy up, her slight form bowing under the lax weight of her taller friend. “Go away!”

“Yeahhh, that’s gonna work. Want to stomp your cute little foot for me, too?” vampire Willow taunted.

Willow shuddered at the obvious sound of arousal in her nemesis’s voice. She ignored the feminine giggle and began to awkwardly drag Amy down the alley.

“I don’t know why you keep fighting it. I can sense it, you know?”

Willow halted. The hair on the back of her neck stood up on end and her pale freckled skin erupted in a flurry of goosebumbs.

“What do you mean?” Her voice wobbled and she mentally slapped herself for showing so much weakness. Not good letting the enemy hear how much of a fraidy cat you are.

“Nu uh, not telling unless you say pretty please,” Vamp Willow chuckled.

“Tell me!” Willow shrieked. Her eyes flickered black and a bolt of electricity arced out in the direction of her tormentor’s voice. There was a faint moan that went unnoticed by the Wicca.

“Now now, no need to get testy.” Vampire Willow giggled girlishly, secretly reveling in the terror and anguish she was provoking in the goody two shoes version of herself from this hellish dimension. Though, the raging pain tearing through her body implied that she was not as goody good as she had originally thought. The intoxicating stench of darks magics were pouring off the little lesbian Wicca and it was making her mouth water even more than usual. Being around her was such a turn on – it was a pity that the witch didn’t want to ‘play’.

“Stop it,” Willow screamed, her voice cracking in fear.

“All I was saying, Miss grumpy, was how delish the evil is within you. It calls to me, simmering away merrily. All I need to do is to get you to boil over and then—boom! The Hellmouth will tremble on its foundations.”

Willow stared at her hand and the scent of burnt ozone that filled the air; the bolts of lightening had made contact if the grunt was anything to go by. “Enough,” she said with chilling calm, the black hue of her eyes telling.

Without another word, Willow hefted Amy’s semi-conscious body against her shivering form and stumbled out of the alley.

“Urgh.” The leather clad Willow fell forward. Her face was a mask of torment. She shifted from her human face to her game face over and over as she tried to control the pain. She had remained in the shadows, unwilling to let her fluffy girl see how badly she had injured her. Her glove covered hands clutched at the two smoking wounds on her body as her pain filled growl echoed down the deserted alleyway.

Gingerly, she rolled onto her back, her fingers cautiously prodding at the fresher of the two wounds inflicted on her by her cute baby girl. The first had been from earlier when the witch had stopped her from chowing down on her friend. The bolt of electricity had gone straight through her torso and the wound was enormous but cauterised in places. Blood seeped sluggishly from the edges and trailed down her stomach, but it was the shoulder wound that had scared her.

It had been really close to her heart.

A few inches lower, and poof!

The hole in her shoulder was not burned at the edges for some reason and blood poured out of her; it was a siren’s call to all and sundry. She needed to get back to the factory, and soon. She needed her daddy-- he would make the ouchies go away and maybe even spank her a little for being so careless.

Crimson painted lips curved into a catlike smile as she staggered in the opposite direction to her favourite toy in this dimension. She needed to get back to the lair and have someone lick her wounds for her.

To be continued