Chapter 6


“That wanker,” he said.

“Who?”

“Old Stone-face. The one who doesn’t know how to smile.”

“Angel.” She grinned into his skin. “What about him?”

“I don’t like him hanging around.”

She kissed the side of his neck as he lay half over her, his thigh between hers and his face buried in her hair. “You’re jealous.”

“No. Yes! You’re mine, Slayer.”

“Yes, I am. So there’s nothing for you to get jealous about.”

“He’s had you.” A growl.

She hit his shoulder lightly. “Once. Years ago. And things immediately went south.”

“He’s still hoping. And he’s got the advantage. Fights on the side of light.” There was a sneer in his voice. “He can be with you. Out in the open, not hiding in the shadows like me. He shares your life. Your friends accept him.”

“What matters is whether I accept him.”

“He comes near you, I won’t be able to able to control myself, Slayer.”

“I’m not going to let him into my flat, let alone into my bed. That satisfy you?”

He raised his head to look down at her. His fangs were showing.

“Did he make you feel the way I make you feel?”

“No. Never.” Her arms tightened about him, cherishing him. “No one’s ever made me feel the way you make me feel.”

His face softened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He bent and his lips slid along her jawline, then down the cord of her neck. She felt the points of his fangs prick the skin.

“Could make you feel more.”

She could hear the smile in his voice. He was half teasing, half serious. And he was Spike.

She had never allowed him to drink from her. For a Slayer to allow a vamp her blood was one of the great transgressions. Oh, she had heard of how humans could get obsessed with a vamp taking their blood and she had seen it when Riley had become addicted. It puzzled her a little, because when she had been bitten, by Angel, by the Master, it had hurt. They had also taken too much, Angel by accident, the Master on purpose, and she had almost died.

But Spike wouldn’t take too much and she wouldn’t mind the pain if it gave him pleasure. And the word ‘transgressions’ was meaningless between them now when they had already transgressed so majorly.

“Do it,” she said.

She felt his little jolt of amazement. He hadn’t expected her to consent. “Slayer...”

“The blood is the life, isn’t it? Share my life, Spike.” In the most intimate way possible—proof positive, since he needed it, of what he meant to her.

He lay unmoving upon her for a moment, his weight on his forearms on either side of her and his mouth against her neck. Then she heard the little, sharp, indrawn catch of his breath and his fangs slid into the vein.

It didn’t hurt, just as the tiny stings during lovemaking had been no more than incitements. And then the draw started.

Pure euphoria. Pure fire blazing through her like a lightning strike. Unbearable ecstasy thrilling through every nerve in her body, singing through every vein. A glorious, indescribable rapture.

“Holy...!”

She felt him jolt into fierce urgency too. An aphrodisiac, he had said Slayer’s blood was. But he hadn’t mentioned that his taking it would be an aphrodisiac to her. Though she should have known that from the way Riley and the other humans had been obsessed with it.

She flamed up against him, dragging him down upon her, meeting his demand with her own. They just about devoured each other alive, feral and insatiable.

“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he said, lying weakly across her hours later, too exhausted to lever himself away. She couldn’t even lift an arm to push him off, didn’t want to because it felt so good to lie like this, the two of them limp in each other’s arms and still shuddering exquisitely with aftershocks.

“Been there,” she murmured. “This was better.”

“God, I’m wiped. That last one was the topper to the night.”

She couldn’t help giggling. “Aphrodisiac wearing off?”

They must have broken every record they had set previously, unable to stop, taking each other again and again.

He grinned against her temple. “Body wearing out. God, that Slayer blood! Amazed I’m still in existence. Thought you’d burn me right up.”

“Yeah, well, you melted my bones. I’m surprised I’m not just a puddle of goo on the floor. Oh, God, I need to sleep.”

“Me too. I must be squashing you,” he realized suddenly and heaved himself onto his back with an effort. His arm around her dragged her with him so that she was lying half over him.

“What time is it?” The clock that should have been on the night table had somehow got knocked clean over to the other side of the room, but there was a line of sunlight showing at a corner of the closely drawn drapes.

“Nine thirty,” he mumbled with a vamp’s infallible knowledge of exactly where the sun was.

“Thank God it’s Sunday.” She pushed away the hand that had slid down her spine to her ass. “Spike, if you start again right now, I’ll stake you.”

“Slayer, I’m incapable. I may stay incapable for a week.”

“Somehow I don’t think so.” She ran her fingers up his inner thigh and laughed when his cock stirred.

“Have mercy.”

“That’s my line,” she purred into the hollow of his shoulder.

His chest heaved under her on a breath that was half laughter and half a sigh of deep satisfaction.

“You scare me,” he murmured. “You’re a bleeding miracle.”

“I scare you? You terrify me.”

His arm tightened around her. “Wouldn’t ever hurt you.”

“It isn’t that. It’s...I don’t know what you are and I want this too much.”

“Yeah, I want it too. Want it too much. Even though I know what you are. The Slayer. The Angel of Death for us vamps. Scares me how much I want it. Is it a death wish, d’you think?”

“No.” She smiled crookedly. “I know what that’s like. It’s not a death wish. It’s a life wish.”

“Yeah. You’re life, Slayer. You burn with it. So bright. A shining light.”

There was a sudden sadness in his voice. She pushed herself up on one elbow and leaned over him, wanting to see his face.

“Golden rain,” he murmured as her hair fell about him. “Like sunlight. Which is deadly to my kind. Matter and anti-matter. We’re so wrong for each other.”

“Don’t care. Whatever you are, you’re mine.” She shook her head lightly so that her hair slid across his collarbone and chest, the fine strands clinging to his skin. “See how it clings. It wants to hold on to you.”

He lifted a handful to his mouth. “Feels like silk. Silk and fire, you are. Nothing I could ever have expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Just sex. But this is so much more. You make me feel...”

“What?”

“Happy,” he said under his breath. “So happy.”

“Spike,” she said helplessly and kissed him. His hand cupped the back of her head tenderly, sieving through her hair, holding her mouth to his.

“So beautiful,” he sighed. “Too beautiful for the likes of me. We should never have started this.”

“You’re the one who insisted on it, demon.”

“I know. And now I’m drowning.”

“Do you want us to stop?”

“No! I’d bind you to me with fetters of steel if I could. But one can’t bind light. You’ll vanish in my hands.”

“No.”

“You will. Angel of death? No. Creature of light. And I’m a creature of darkness. You don’t belong in the shadows with me.”

She caught her breath sharply. “Do you remember?”

He frowned. “What should I remember?”

“Nothing.” She bent and kissed the taut drum of his stomach and felt the deep muscles flex beneath her lips. “Not going to leave you, Spike. Not now.”

“You will. You’re the Slayer. They’ll make you.”

“No one can make me do anything. Not anymore.” She had him back, even without his memory. However it had happened. She wasn’t going to lose him now.

His fingertips drifted over the contours of her face, slid down to the hollow of her throat where the pulse beat with fierce life.

“You like me touching you. You like me making love to you. But what you are is life, Slayer. The strongest life on this planet. And I’m unlife.” He flattened her hand on his chest so that the heel of her hand pressed against his breastbone and her fingertips lay against the hollow of his throat where no pulse beat. “See? A heart beat divides us.”

“There might not be a beat, but there is a heart.” She knew that now and maybe that heart wasn’t hers right now the way it had been before, but she wouldn’t let any chance of it being hers again slip away. “Just let it happen, whatever it is. Let’s just find out where this might go. Or do you want to leave, Spike? I won’t hold you against your will. Won’t do anything to you against your will.” Never again.

“God, no! Don’t want to leave. I don’t leave.”

“No, you don’t.” She had to smile. He didn’t even know why he said that, but that statement too was basic to him, ingrained in his nature.

She pushed his head back and kissed his throat, felt him arch it against her mouth. She smiled against his skin, ran her open mouth all over his throat and the underside of his jaw, felt him shiver with pleasure.

“The way you touch me,” he breathed. “The way you hold me. It makes something inside me...hurt.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s a good hurt. Wish it could always be like this.”

“We’ll make it so,” she said, her arms fierce around him, cherishing him.

***

Footsteps woke her. She turned her head groggily. From the angle of the bar of light falling over the carpet from the crack in the curtains, it was about two in the afternoon.

“Buffy, where are you?” Xander’s voice called.

“Oh, no!” she muttered and threw herself over Spike as he came snarling out of sleep, then dragged a sheet over herself just in time as Xander breezed into the bedroom.

“Whoa!” Xander jolted to a stop, his eyes saucer wide. Then he spun on his heel and fled back into the living room.

“Down, boy.” She held Spike flat by main force as he struggled to get out of the bed. Luckily he hadn’t gone into gameface. “You awake? It’s only Xander. You don’t need to rip his throat out.”

“Any git comes walking into your bedroom without a ‘by your leave’ is asking to get his throat ripped out!”

“There will be no killing of my friends. Stay there. I’ll deal with this.” She got out of bed and reached for the robe she had left flung across a chair.

“Sod it, Slayer!”

“I want your word.”

He sighed and subsided. “Yeah, okay.”

Xander was pacing around the living room when she came out of the bedroom, closing the door carefully behind her.

“You left the front door unlocked!” he accused, apparently on the principle that the best defense is a good offense. “This is Rome, not Sunnydale! You could get into trouble that way.”

“Slayer here. I don’t think I have to worry about sneak thieves.” Especially when she also had a vampire in the next room. Talk about guard dogs. “And, yes, this isn’t Sunnydale, Xander. The next time try knocking and waiting for me to answer before walking in.”

“Guess I’ll do that from now on.” He stared at her. “William? You’re sleeping with William? I mean, really, Buffy!”

So he hadn’t got a good look at Spike. And she supposed that, naked under the sheets and with bed hair, he could reasonably be mistaken for William at a quick glance.

“That’s none of your business, Xand.”

“He’s not up to your weight, Buff. So he’s a human, but he’s not Angel and he’s not Sp...”

“Xander!”

“He’s not even Riley, Buff! You’ve got nothing in common!”

“Xander.”

The dangerous note in her voice finally reached him. His jaw clenched on the words sizzling on his tongue. Then he flung up his hands and flung away.

“All right, you won’t talk to me about it. But at least talk to Willow or Giles.”

“My love life is no one’s business but mine. I’m done with the bunch of you interfering with it. Why are you here anyway?”

“Giles and Angel found this prophecy. They want you to come take a look at it.”

“Yeah, okay. But I want to take a shower first. Go back to the College, Xand, and I’ll take a cab when I’m ready.”

“The car’s downstairs. I can give you a ride.” Then he glanced at the closed bedroom door. “Uh, maybe I’d better wait downstairs, huh?”

For Xander, that was surprisingly tactful.

“That might be a good idea. I’ll be about half an hour.”

“Take your time. Good thing I came instead of Angel,” he muttered under his breath as he opened the door.

“Pity you called him over to Rome at all,” snapped Buffy.

“Hey, I just wanted to rub the Shanshu in,” Xander said defensively. “I didn’t think he’d make a beeline over here. Spike turning into a real boy instead of him was just too good to pass up.”

Well, maybe he had a point. This time she was careful to lock the door. With Xander, one never knew whether he’d suddenly get a bright idea and come storming in again.

Spike was leaning back against the headboard of the bed when she came into the bedroom.

“Who’s this William?”

“No one.”

“Is he this doppelgänger you and Red were talking about?”

“Can we talk about it later? I don’t have much time.”

He considered her thoughtfully for a moment, his eyes narrowed, then shrugged.

“Okay. But we will talk about it, Slayer.”

She took a fast head to toe shower with scented soap, then hurriedly blowdried her hair and pulled on jeans and a sleeveless turtleneck that would hide the fang marks in her neck, conscious all the while of him watching her with amused, sardonic eyes.

“Still hiding our relationship from the ponce?”

“There are reasons,” she muttered.

“If you say so. And we’ll talk about that too when you get back.” He laughed when she sprayed herself with perfume. “Overkill, Slayer. The shower was enough to wash off my scent.”

“Better safe than sorry.” She shoved her feet into a pair of sneakers. “Stay here, okay?”

“No option. Trapped here until sundown.” He slid down a little in the bed, stretching luxuriously. “Didn’t really sleep before what with the interesting way we kept waking each other up, so grabbing some kip in a bed that smells of you and me and sex is no chore. I’m knackered.”

She had to laugh. “Think we’ll ever be able to get some proper sleep again?”

“Doubt it. Give us a kiss before you go then.”

She bent to do so and caught herself back just in time, realizing how he had almost tricked her. “You want me scent marked again! Troublemaker.”

He laughed. “It was worth a try. Want that poofter to know you’re mine, Slayer.”

“So not a good idea right now. Maybe later when I get a few things worked out.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Slayer.”

Xander wasn’t able to tell her much more than that Wes had apparently found something in the Wolfram and Hart books and that Angel had wanted her to hear it. The College was quiet, most of the SITs having gone out to have fun as usual on the weekend. Angel, Giles and Willow were in one of the smaller meeting rooms.

Buffy glanced at all of them quickly. Willow gave her a tiny shrug that said she didn’t know what was going on and was puzzled as well. From the irritated look on Giles’ face, he too had been left out of the loop and wasn’t taking it well. But behind the carefully expressionless mask of his face, Angel was looking smug.

“Right. What’s up?” she asked.

The room was one of the ones set up for videoconferencing. Angel hit a button on the console in front of him and one of the four screens mounted on the wall lit up.

“Wes found something.”

Wes popped up on the three by two foot screen. He was sitting at a desk with a massive tome spread open in front of him.

“Buffy,” he said and nodded to the others behind her.

“Wes. What have you got? Another prophecy?” said Buffy wearily.

“I wouldn’t call it a prophecy precisely. I’m not sure what it is. More of a description of a possible sequence of events. But I think it refers to, er, William. In his present incarnation.”

Trust Wesley to find the right word. The screen was now showing the page at which the book on his desk was opened. Buffy frowned. It was a cursive, strangely snakelike script that flowed and twisted in a disturbing manner.

“What on earth is that?”

“Not of earth,” said Wes in voice-over. “It’s a demon language. D’Orcrathimish, to be exact.”

“And you can read this Dork-whatever?”

“No, no. But the good thing about the Wolfram and Hart books is that they provide a translation if you ask for one.”

The view on the screen switched over to the facing page which was entirely filled with very, very small print. But at least it was in English.

“How convenient,” said Giles in the driest of dry voices. “And the translation just appears the minute you ask for one?”

“Precisely!” said Wes with enthusiasm. “It saves so much time.”

“Indeed it must. And how accurate is the translation?”

“Well...” Wes’ voice suddenly became a little defensive. “No one actually speaks D’Orcrathimish, of course...”

“So it has to be taken on faith.”

“I have tested the translations on languages I do understand,” said Wes in a piqued voice, “and they have always been completely accurate.”

“Of course,” said Giles even more drily.

Buffy and Willow exchanged glances. Translations that couldn’t be verified were a perfect boon to anyone who wanted to play games. Since both of them shared Giles’ view of Wolfram and Hart as Evil Inc., they knew that anything coming from them should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

“What does it say, Wes?” Buffy asked. “It’s hard to make out on the screen.”

“I’ll send you a copy. But I can give you the gist of it.”

“Please.”

The screen switched back to Wes’ face. He looked animated and intrigued. Finding out new things always excited him, just as it did Giles. Wes might be much more the man of action now than he had used to be, but that scholarly reflex was ingrained in him.

“Basically, it’s talking about someone who’s shanshued and that has to be William...”

“Does it say ‘shanshued’, Wes?”

“No, no, that word comes from an entirely different language. No, the word used here translates as ‘transmuted’. But the circumstances surrounding the event are too similar to be ignored. A demon changed to human as a reward for services done to the light, his past transgressions forgiven in the light of his present achievement.”

“Sounds about right,” muttered Xander.

“The trouble is that the pull of the dark side remains. William may be human now, but humans are not exempt from the temptations and curse of evil. As we all know, no one is completely innocent and he, having been a demon, would be more susceptible to the attractions of that state.”

“Are you saying he’s going to go all Darth Vader on us?” said Xander incredulously.

“Our fluffy William? No way!” exclaimed Willow.

“The possibility always exists. ‘Consumed by the dark’, it says here. And there’s a lot about his heart being evil and about falling from grace and falling into the pit and surrendering to the evil within. It goes on and on about it.”

“Spike’s heart wasn’t evil,” Buffy protested.

“How can you say that after all the killing he’s done?”

“He’s been forgiven that!”

“And honestly!” said Willow. “Look at William. He doesn’t seem capable of doing anything worse that giving somebody a bad mark on a term paper.”

“The guy’s a wuss,” Xander nodded. “Now if it was Angel, I can see it happening.”

Angel looked offended. “Why should that be easier to believe?”

“Well, Liam wasn’t exactly a nice guy, with all that boozing and whoring and stuff.” He shrugged when Angel glared at him. “Way I hear it, anyway. And maybe Angelus would still be in there and might take over. But Spikelus? C’mon.”

“Any human being is capable of evil,” said Wes earnestly. “One can’t ignore what’s here or take it any other way.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” asked Buffy with exasperation. “Kill William because some demon book says he might go bad?”

“Oh, good heavens, that’s not what I meant at all!” exclaimed Wes. “We just thought you should know. For your own safety and that of others.”

“I have to agree,” said Giles. “The point of this research is to find out the implications of the change and the things you should be guarding against. The circumstances are so unusual and perhaps there’s something we can do to prevent...”

“You just have to be wary of him, Buffy,” said Angel. “Don’t take everything at face value. He’s not what he seems.”

“Right,” said Buffy, looking Angel over thoughtfully. “I think I see where you’re coming from.”

“I’ll fax you a copy of the translation with my annotations and you can look it over at your leisure,” said Wes. “I truly do think it refers to William and that there is grave danger, certainly to him and possibly to others. All you’d have to do is keep an eye on him from a distance. Since you’re both living in Rome, that shouldn’t be difficult.”

“From a distance sounds good,” muttered Xander. “Who knows, maybe it’s the sex that tips him over. You should stop sleeping with him, Buff.”

Then, from the poleaxed expressions on everyone’s faces, he realized what he had said.

“Uh...”

“Way to go, Xand.” Buffy sighed deeply. “Everybody shut up. I don’t want one word out of any of you.”

“Buffy...”

“No, Giles. William’s not a demon, so you don’t have any excuse to hassle me about him. But if he was, I wouldn’t care.”

Willow made a little gulping sound and Buffy saw that she had guessed it was not William that Buffy was sleeping with. But Willow had a hand firmly placed against her mouth and it was clear that she wasn’t going to say anything.

“My love life is my own affair. That’s something I should have realized years ago. I’d have been a lot happier if I’d told you all to bug out right from the start. Well, I’ve learned my lesson. No more lectures or pressure or emotional blackmail. This time I do what I want.”

She jumped off the table she had been perched on. On the other side of the room, Angel was gripping the back of a chair. His fingers had dug right through the leather. Even previously he had resented both William and the fact that Spike had been the one to shanshu. Now with this revelation, he was furious.

“Deal,” she said simply, then turned on her heel and walked out.

So William was going to go bad. In the cab taking her back home, Buffy thought about that, frowning. William was sweet and she didn’t want anything nasty happening to him. There would never be a romantic relationship between them, but she didn’t want to see a good man corrupted. She would keep an eye on him as Wes had suggested. There should be some way to prevent that. The Dork-whatever pronouncement didn’t have to be a prophecy; it could just be a warning.

But she’d worry about all of that later. All she wanted to do was crawl back into that bed beside Spike. Neither of them had gotten any real sleep last night. They would both barely fall into a light doze before one or the other of them would start playing games again. She grinned, thinking about it. But now she could use some real shuteye.

She was yawning by the time she let herself into her apartment. The door was unlocked, though she had thought she had locked it behind her when she left. Xander was right. She was getting far too careless, what with first Willow and now Xander just walking in like that. Break-ins were the last thing she had to worry about, especially with a vampire upon the premises, but even burglars didn’t really deserve to be eaten.

The bed was empty, its sheets flung to one side, and Spike was nowhere in sight. Buffy stopped short. The bathroom door stood wide open and even from here she could see that there was no one in it.

“Spike?” she called, turning to go back down the hall.

There was no answer. Living room, kitchen, Dawn’s room, all were deserted. She even checked the balcony, though it was sunlit from end to end and he would never have stepped out onto it.

Where could he have gone and why? It was full day outside. He had said himself that he was trapped here until nightfall.

But trapped not in the apartment, just the building. He could go anywhere in the building that he wanted. As for why...

‘Who’s this William?’ he had asked when Xander had mistaken him for William and then he had immediately made the doppelgänger connection. Had he possibly scented William going up the stairs sometime during her absence? Vampires with their heightened sense of smell would immediately catch the scent and he would have recognized that it was the same as his own. Just plain curiosity would make him go after it.

But how would he react when faced with a double? Spike with his direct ways of dealing with problems might just think that the simplest way was to eliminate it.

Buffy spun and ran out of the apartment.

‘Consumed by the dark.’ The word ‘consumed’ had another meaning, didn’t it? Eaten. That was the other meaning!



TBC