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Chapter 18


Giles had come home from the Watchers’ retreat a few hours ago and was now sitting in his favourite armchair with his nose buried in a dusty tome while Buffy searched the room for her earrings. She and Faith had bought a fairly cheap bottle of scotch at a local store with Faith’s fake ID. In the hopes of covering what they’d been up to in his week long absence, they had poured it into Giles’ now empty liquor bottle. Hopefully, he’d never know.


“Aha!” Buffy victoriously scooped up the accessories from behind the television, and her cheeks reddened when Giles raised his eyebrow.


“You’ve been successful in your search, I take it.”


“Yup. Success is me.” Buffy put the little crystals into the front pocket of her jeans and sat down on the couch. “So how was your Council stuff?”


Giles squirmed in his seat and avoided her gaze. “Nothing too exciting. I believe you’d call it stuffy.”


“So… anything new on the Aurelians?”


If possible, Giles got even more flustered and it tipped her off that he was definitely hiding something from her. “We still couldn’t trace them. Perhaps they’re using some sort of cloaking spell. Drusilla has been known to dabble into the Dark Arts. You shouldn’t worry yourself about it.”


“Shouldn’t I be tracking them down instead of letting them run free all over England?”


“Ah... well, I can’t very well let you wander off on your own. Y-you’d need backup and given the current situation, it would be best for us to wait and see how things progress. As your Watcher, I think you have quite a lot of responsibilities here in Bath. You’re needed here, and it would be the best option to stay here and worry about it when they’re spotted in the immediate area.”


Buffy opened her mouth to argue, but instead let out a sigh. It wasn’t like she had money to go traveling all over the country in the search of them. Faith chose that moment to skip down the stairs and sit on the couch next to Buffy.

“How’s it rolling, kids?”


Giles rolled his eyes. “Hello, Faith. I take it you had a pleasant time while I was gone.”


Faith batted her eyelashes at him. “We missed you. Didn’t we, B?”


“Very much.”


“As much as I appreciate it, don’t think I haven’t noticed my missing scotch.”


“What scotch?” Faith pretended to be both confused and affronted while Buffy guiltily blushed.


Giles snorted. “Please, I’d notice a cheap imitation of the good stuff even half asleep.”


“Damn. Looks like we got caught,” Faith whispered to her. “So, I bet you had a great time drinking tea… and playing chess.”


The corners of Giles’ mouth curled up in a reluctant smile, clueing them in of that fact he saw right through the sudden change of subject and was willing to play along. “Yes, that’s exactly what we did.”


“Did you wear fedora?” Buffy asked with a grin.


“Why in God’s name would I do such thing?”


“No clue. But in my mind you wear it. It’s a funny visual.”


Faith turned to her, eyeing the casual jeans and t-shirt attire. “Buffy, your date arrives in a half an hour and you’re not even dressed.”


Buffy groaned and lifted herself up from the couch. “I hate you sometimes, you know that, right?”


Faith grinned and sent her an air kiss. “Love you too.”


Buffy trudged to her room to get ready, the sounds of Giles and Faith bantering bringing a smile to her face. One could find family in the strangest of people.


********


The door bell rang, and Buffy ran a nervous hand through her hair. Why did she let herself be talked into this again? Who knew what kind of man Faith fixed her up with? He probably rode a motorcycle and owned a bullwhip.


Determined to find out, Buffy put her hand on the doorknob, twisted and opened the door.


“Hi, I’m Josh,” her date for the evening said. “And you’d be Buffy, I presume.”


She nodded and shook his hand. “That would be me.”


“Shall we go then?”


“Let’s do this.”


********


The date was going well. There was food which she didn’t have to pay for. That was always a bonus. The man taking her out wasn’t dressed in leather, which she’d half expected and feared. It could be worse.


'Oh, who am I kidding? This must be the biggest fraud of a date in the history of dates.'


Josh kept talking and talking until Buffy thought her ears would bleed. Instead she tuned him out to preserve her own sanity, only nodding and smiling when it seemed appropriate. She kept glancing at the clock fixed on the wall of the restaurant over his shoulder. The minutes were dragging as if in slow motion, and Buffy resisted urge to bang her head against the table. Or his head.


'Definitely his.'


Buffy knew Faith meant well, but did she really think Buffy would get along with someone so… pretentious? Yeah, that was the word that described him perfectly. He wore a turtleneck and loafers! What was he, fifty? And he kept swirling the wine, sniffing it in a snobbish way, winking at her above the rim in a show of pretentious camaraderie. Did he really think she was impressed? She was kind of surprised they served her alcohol, but he seemed to know the waiter so that was probably the reason.


'Where are the demons when you need them?'


Then she noticed he stared at her expectantly, probably having asked her something. Now he finally started to inquire about her personal life?


“Sorry, come again?”


“I asked if you enjoyed opera?”


Was he kidding? She was seventeen. “Yeah… all that high pitched singing in a different language… can’t get enough of it.”


He smiled slyly, obviously having missed the sarcasm in her voice. “It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?”


“Totally. So listen… I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how old are you?”


He laughed and took a sip of the red wine. “Twenty-three. And Faith told me you were almost twenty?”


Buffy’s eyebrows almost shot up to meet her hairline, but she suppressed the reflex and nodded. “Yup, exactly.”


'Faith, you are so dead.'


“My family owns the restaurant. My father always tells me that business comes first. Then one can afford to shower pretty girls like you with shiny trinkets.” Josh laughed in what Buffy supposed was to be charming and flirtatious manner.


She forced a smile, and chewed on her food. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy, but he rubbed her in a really wrong way. She could just see him when he was older, walking into his big house and greeting his very own Stepford wife as she cooked in an apron, both of them smiling in that fake happy way.


Buffy couldn’t cook to save herself from starving. And she couldn’t for the life of her focus on another one of his monologues about women’s and men’s place in society.


'Oh, I’d show your place, you chauvinistic pig. '


Facing an angry demon, even those notorious Aurelians, would have been a better way to spend the evening. Really, there was no man that could ever get her, match her. She was doomed to die alone, surrounded by cats and smelling like mothballs.


Buffy viciously cut the meat on her plate and glanced at the clock again.


********


Spike hit the steering wheel with his palms and got out of the car with his duster billowing behind him before he stopped and kicked the car’s wheel. Repeatedly.


'Bloody useless piece of junk.'


He wondered why he couldn’t have stolen another car, one that would actually run. It was all Dru’s and Darla’s fault since they took his car and hid it, refusing to tell him where. They were purposely trying to keep him from going after the Slayer. When Drusilla started to babble all kind of twisted premonitions, Spike actually got worried there for a while. But facing the Chosen One was something he had to do, and no amount of Darla’s and Dru’s manipulation would force him to do otherwise.


Once he beat the information about the Slayer’s whereabouts from local demons and managed to slip out unnoticed by his Sire, Spike decided to hit the road. It took him a week to do so, and it seemed as if the fate itself was trying to prevent him from getting to Bath. It was just his luck that his car would not only break down once, but twice in a span of a few hours he’d been driving.


The sun would be coming up in three hours, and he needed to find shelter before he was only dust blowing in the wind. Sending a last spiteful look at the car, Spike started to walk.


*******


Smoke rose from Spike’s skin as he burst into the motel room, throwing the door shut behind him in relief. But even smelling like roasted pork didn’t dissuade him from feeling gleeful. He was finally in Bath, the residence of every demon’s nightmare and his newest challenge.


His eyes had almost bugged right out of his head when a car stopped right next to him as he walked along the road. How could anyone be so gullible as to take a stranger dressed in an ‘I-am-trouble’ outfit into their car boggled Spike’s mind. Not only did he get free ride from a pretty little thing, he also got a free meal out of it.


Attracting women had never been his strongest suite as a human so the attention he was given as a vampire naturally surprised him. Maybe it was the danger he exuded that drew the opposite sex in like bees to honey.


'No woman can resist a bad boy, right?'


Well, whatever it was, Spike was more than all right with it. It wasn’t all bad to have his ego stroked. He was after all, a male.


He doubted the Slayer would have the same reaction. Oh, she’d be all self righteous and stiff, he could practically taste the sweetness of her virtue on his tongue, the rich sweet nectar of her blood trickling down his throat. Just the thought of the Slayer being in the near vicinity made an expectant shiver race up his spine. What would she be like? All butch looking, just like Darla implied?


Spike chuckled and collapsed on a bed, the crisp impersonal odor of the sheets tickling his nose. Probably. It didn’t matter though; not to him. It was her power he was after.


Kill or be killed.


He couldn’t wait to stare death in its face.


*******


He weaved carefully around the tombstones and mausoleums, scanning the parameters for any disturbance. He went out as soon as the sun had set below the horizon, eager to seek her out. A demon that had told him of her location had also advised him to keep the distance as this one seemed to be all too talented at sensing her enemies. Spike didn’t want to engage her in a battle right away. He was no fool; he had a plan.


Watching. Learning all he could about the way she moved. Gaining an advantage.


Sounds of battle disturbed the silence of the graveyard and Spike grinned. Being careful of not getting too near, he clung to the shadows and climbed on top of a mausoleum, crouching down. If his heart was beating, it would have stopped at the sheer beauty of the violence going on in the distance. Something deep inside him roared unexpectedly to life--a primal impulse yanking onto his very core. Wanting. Needing. What, Spike wasn’t sure.


He couldn’t make out much of what she looked like, but the way she moved had him clutching the edge of mausoleum’s roof until his knuckles turned even whiter. She was unlike anything he’d expected. She was so much more.


'What kind of Slayer hunts in such a fancy dress?'


She spun and twirled, a ballerina dancing with death. Graceful and precise. Her blonde hair whipped around her head as she twirled on her feet and sent the pitiful vampire flying several feet away with her powerful roundhouse kick before leaping on the unfortunate demon and ramming a stake into his heart.


'God, but she’s merciless.'


Spike resisted the urge to jump down, march towards her, and engage her in a dance of their own. Just the fact that she was blonde made him growl in angry anticipation. The girls that bore any resemblance to his Buffy were the ones he wanted to hurt the most.


His fangs itched as he watched her walk away and his eyes zeroed in on her retreating form until she disappeared from his sight completely.


Soon.


He’d get closer. He had to see. Craved to glimpse pain and fear in her eyes as she realized she wouldn’t get out of the dance unscathed.


TBC