Chapter 8 – The Better to Bite You With, My Dear

Shoving the stone coffin aside that was barring the sepulcher’s door, Buffy raced outside and through the cemetery. She raged internally at the Slayer while dashing angry tears from her eyes. ‘I can’t believe I said that! You made me say it, didn’t you? I NEVER would have said such an asinine thing before you came out of hiding! Are you happy now? We’ve both lost him, because I will never play second fiddle to anyone, not even you! Why couldn’t you just butt out and leave well enough alone?’

‘Hiding your feelings and insecurity from him will only cause problems between the two of you, little sister,’ Buffy heard in reply.

“Hah! You didn’t deny making me say it! How did you make me do it, you interfering demon thing?” Buffy raged.

“I can’t make you do anything. Free will, remember? I just nudged you in the direction you wanted to go but were too stubborn and inhibited to take on your own.”

“Arrggh,” Buffy growled, angry about being told that she was stubborn and inhibited as well as insecure. It was revolting, having someone in her head, calling her on all her stupidities. It was totally gross to think that the slayer demon had always been there, had seen every idiocy she’d said or done or even thought since being chosen.

‘Don’t get in a lather, my fierce little one. You’re no more foolish than any of the others, and are certainly a better slayer than most have been.’

‘Great,’ she thought mulishly, ‘I’m no more foolish than the others. Small comfort that is.’ Suddenly Buffy was pitched to the ground. She’d been so inwardly focused that she hadn’t heard anyone come up behind her. ‘Stupid. Way to get yourself killed,’ she scolded herself for running out without weapons, and then even worse, for letting her emotions blind her to her surroundings.

Spike had tackled her from behind in a flying leap. Skidding over the grass, they plowed through a little picket fence surrounding a new grave and knocked the tombstone askew. “What the bloody hell is the matter with you!?!” He cried as they leapt to their feet.

Buffy smashed him in the nose, sending him flying into the tombstone again, this time completely unearthing it. Spike pitched up against a stone angel in the next lane, knocking it off its stand. “Like I told her, I will NOT play second fiddle, so you can just stay the hell away from me!” She screamed and turned to run once more.

With a frustrated roar Spike jumped back up and tackled her again. Hauling her to her feet, he bopped her on the nose, though much more gently than she had him. They traded punches and kicks, leaping, flipping and throwing each other, dancing in a beautifully choreographed symphony of movement. Throughout it all, Spike scolded her.

“It wasn’t her I fell in love with over the past year, you dozy bint, it was you!...I didn’t even know for sure that she was still in there!...For all I knew, the Council of Wankers had long since…stripped her of everything but her strength!...In fact, I’m sure that if they could have found a way to…they would have done just that!...

“The only influence the demon had on me…is that she kept you alive...until I began to respect you...and then to like you enough...that I didn’t really want to kill you anymore...was having too much fun dancing with you...”

Buffy interrupted with, “I’ll have you know...that it was my mother who kept me alive...by bashing you in the head with an ax!...guess that damaged your brain and you don’t remember, huh? Mr. Full of Yourself?!”

“Fine woman, your mum,” he smiled fondly, “But she never would have gotten the chance…to brain me without the slayer...’cause you’d have been dead that first night at the Bronze...for make no mistake, missy…you were just my type...a delectable li’l bit of veal...shakin’ your arse out on the dance floor...teasing poor ole Xander ‘til he was near to frothing at the mouth...you were exactly the nubile little beauty I would’ve seduced away from him and eaten right then...if I hadn’t smelled slayer on you!...

“That made you worthy of a more elaborate dance... In time, and against my will, I fell in love with you, Buffy...not with the slayer, with YOU!...The fact that it turns out I love the demon as well should relieve you!...What if I hated her like Angelus does?...You can’t be rid of her, she’s part of you!...I love all of you, you silly twit!”

Neither of them noticed the audience they were attracting until a nearby conversation began to penetrate their haze of anger and absorption with each other.

“Well now, cop an eyeful o’ that!” remarked a female voice with a course English accent.

“Dibs on her. They’re both eye candy, but only she’s edible,” came the more refined reply.

“Oh, I don’ know, I’d be willing to take a bite out o’ him. Get a load o’ that six pack an’ woodie!” countered the first.

“I’m rather partial to HER tush, and check out the lines of those gams...”

From another direction, “Shut up you loudmouths! You’re interruptin’ the best show I’ve seen all year!”

“Yeah, I’m getting some great new moves, here! Haven’t seen a fight like this in a long time,” commented someone else.

“Hey, don’t stop now, you two and your angst are better than ‘Passions’,” called a feminine voice.

From yet another direction, “Forget angst, you two beat the nudie bar any day! You guys should sell tickets,” and a chorus of “Hear! Hear!” wolf whistles, laughter, and crude remarks about various portions of exposed anatomy filled the air.

Buffy and Spike whipped around to stand back to back, and found themselves surrounded by a circle of vampires jostling with each other for front row viewing.

“There must be forty or fifty of them, and we don’t have any stakes,” Buffy whispered.

“Time to put our new superpowers to the test, pet,” Spike murmured as the crowd surged forward. Picking his direction, he dove head first into the midst of them, bowling those in front of him down. Skidding on his belly, Spike slid past the picket fence and scooped up a couple of the posts. Jumping up, he tossed one to Buffy where she was punching and kicking her way towards him.

Buffy caught it and staked the streetwalker vamp that had been vocally admiring Spike’s assets. “Cop this!” she cried as her entire hand rammed straight through the black bustier and out of her back before the sneering, red lipped face dissolved into dust. “Oops, guess I don’t know my own strength,” snickered Buffy.

A vamp in a pin striped business suit cried out in anger as his mate disintegrated, and grabbed her from behind. Throttling her with his forearm, he leaned down to rip out her throat. Without thought, Buffy’s fangs dropped. She slashed his arm through the bone, leaving it hanging by a flap of skin. The vamp screamed and let go, staring back and forth between her and his dangling arm in shock and horror. Wearing a bloody, fangy grin, she quickly put him out of his misery with the stake.

As Buffy was always within his field of awareness, Spike noticed and crowed with delight. “Hah, that’ll teach ‘im to leer at your tush! No one ogles you but me!” He’d been toying with a highly muscled seven foot tall vamp in a fistfight. Punching him rather more firmly in the solar plexus, Spike sent the ex-Sunnydale U football player flying back to hit a tree.

Yanking him back up and continuing to beat on him, Spike said, “See, Slayer, told you so! ‘Fist ‘n Fangs,’ there’s nothin’ like ‘em!” He leapt up to grab the creature’s head in both hands and twisted hard, wrenching it completely off. “Cool,” Spike said, brushing dust from his hands. He hadn’t meant to remove the head, had just planned on breaking the neck and immobilizing him so they could do a staking clean up at leisure.

Other vamps had taken Spike’s lead and grabbed stakes from the fence. “Traitor!” cried one dressed in the formal wear of the eighteenth century aristocrat. “Why do you align yourself with the Slayer and slaughter your own kind?” He rushed Spike with stake raised high.

“There’s no honor in killing defenseless humans. I prefer a more challenging confrontation,” answered Spike with the same upper-crust accent the other had used. He leaped into the air with a sidekick and struck the gentleman vamp so hard on the underside of his chin that his head snapped back with an audible crack. He fell motionless to the earth.

Immediately, several vamps tackled Spike at once. Driving him to the ground and piling on top, they ripped and tore at him with their teeth and claws. Pushing off with his hands and feet, he exploded from the heap, sending them flying in all directions. The blond vampire whirled through his dazed attackers like lightening, stake and dust flying. “YEEEAAAH!” he cried, exhilarated. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

Distracted by Spike’s war whoop, Buffy laughed as a spiky haired punk wearing stud covered leather attacked her. Swinging a heavy chain above his head like a lasso, he eyed her from head to toe and back again. With a grinning leer, he taunted, “Why Slayer, what big...teeth you have!” and sent the end whistling through the air directly towards her face.

Buffy reached out and caught the chain before it hit, gave a jerk and yanked him down to her level. “The better to bite you with, My Dear,” she quipped back, and slashed her fangs across his neck, severing his head cleanly, then sneezing several times as he exploded into dust.

“Got to watch that, Slayer,” Spike cried, as he ripped the arm off a long haired hippy that had rushed her as she sneezed. “Keep your face clear of the fallout, or at least hold your breath.” He whapped the hapless demon with his own arm, berating him for unsportsmanlike conduct in attacking Buffy when her eyes were closed.

“Ow, stop! I was just trying to take the opening I saw! You know how it is! Ow, Ow!” he danced around as Spike slapped him about the head and spanked him on the rump.

“Shame on you,” admonished Spike, and adjusting his hold so that the elbow locked, swung the arm as if it were a baseball bat, and sent the head flying across the cemetery. Dust billowed again.

Buffy turned to a group that were charging forward with stakes and knives. She kicked the stake from the leader’s hand directly into an adjacent chest, snatched the knives from the next two in each of her hands at the same time, and slashed both throats to send the heads flying. Simultaneously she kicked out behind her, throwing that attacker back onto the stake of the vamp behind him. Then she grabbed the remaining two and knocked their heads together so hard that their skulls were crushed and they fell senseless to the ground.

Before long the blond duo was chasing down the stragglers who lost their nerve and tried to get away. ‘No sense in letting them blab about my new secret weapon,’ thought Buffy. Upon their return, they staked the odd demon that had been left immobile in the grass. Then on Buffy’s insistence, they gathered up the scattered fenceposts, rebuilt the little fence and set the various disturbed headstones back into place.

“Can’t believe I’m on clean up duty after a fight. Not fitting for a master vampire, I tell you. Just plain boring, it is…” groused Spike with lower lip thrust out. “Hen pecked, that’s what I am.”

“Oh quit whining, Spike. Buck up and get used to the world of grown ups,” said Buffy, glancing up irritably as they headed back to the crypt for some clothing.

With pursed lips, he gazed at her from beneath lowered lashes and considered the ways that he’d soon have his little hen pecking him. A small, private smile formed.

She caught her breath at the swift rise of sensuality in his expression. Irritation morphed into excitement and launching herself at him, she cried, “Ooh, look at those lips, gonna get ‘em, gonna get ‘em!”

Remembering saying the same thing to her during Willow’s engagement spell, Spike laughed and caught her in his arms. Buffy landed against him and wrapped her legs around his waist. Lost in each other’s eyes, neither of them noticed the ancient that was observing them from the shadows of a nearby tomb.

Tbc…