full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
The Road to Hell... by All4Spike
 
Chapter 12
 
<<     >>
 

Chapter 12
 
Buffy stood in the open doorway to the training room and watched, entranced, as Annie held a very serious, largely incomprehensible, one-sided conversation with Mr Tigger and Cup Cake Chloe over a toy tea-set laid out on her child-sized table in the play corner.
 
“Buffy! We need more sandalwood candles! Better get some more patchouli and jasmine too. You were right. Setting them out on the display with the love tokens and massage oils is working!”
 
With a small sigh, Buffy turned to see Anya finishing her transaction with the latest customer. Giles was sitting at the research table engrossed in his books, oblivious to the sporadic bustle around him. Although she’d set her mother’s mind at rest the night before, and Dawn’s that morning, she hadn’t yet told Giles or Anya about her encounter with Glory’s minions. She’d decided to wait to tell that story until the whole gang was assembled otherwise she’d end up telling it a hundred times.
 
Besides, when she’d arrived, Giles had already been deep in research into her ‘impossible’ child. She didn’t mind. She was curious about the topic herself, not that it would make any difference. Just as long as his explanation didn’t come with the ominous word ‘prophecy’ tagged on.
 
She shouldered herself off the door jamb and made her way down to the basement store-room to collect more scented candles.
 
While Anya had fitted seamlessly in to the running of the store, it had taken Buffy longer to find her own niche. Her first few weeks’ employment had consisted mainly of fetching and carrying and tidying up as instructed by Giles and Anya, only dealing directly with customers when the shop was particularly busy.
 
For a while, she had seriously considered quitting and trying to persuade the Espresso Pump to give her a second chance. Preparing coffee in its many and varied forms had come as second nature to her and although the pay wasn’t too great, the perks had been good. How likely was it that they’d have a second infestation of Davrok demons in the basement that she’d have to burn out, sending all the patrons high-tailing it to get away from the acrid fumes?
 
Then one day she had made a random comment regarding the display of a particular range of spell components that hadn’t been selling well. Anya had agreed and persuaded Giles to make the change and four days later they’d had to order more stock to keep up with demand.
 
With this boost to her self-confidence, Buffy had begun making more suggestions and was gratified when Giles and Anya took her seriously. One thing she had always been good at was shopping. It turned out that this talent transferred to the related art of designing the layout of the shop floor and product display to maximise sales.
 
Her new-found assurance had been transferred to her dealings with the customers. With her encyclopaedic knowledge of the stock gained from all those trips to the store-room, she had quickly settled down to become an effective part of the team.
 
As she transferred a selection of scented candles to a box ready to carry upstairs, Buffy’s mind began to wander. The day seemed to be dragging interminably. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing Riley. She’d never had to end a relationship before; all the guys she’d dated before had dumped her! She didn’t want to hurt Riley, but she had an uneasy feeling that he wouldn’t react well whatever she said.
 
A little smile crossed her lips. She was looking forward to telling everyone that the threat from Glory was over. Particularly because by then, Spike would be there. She’d checked; sunset would be at about five-thirty. She pouted. At least half an hour still to wait.
 
As had been happening all day, once Spike had invaded her thoughts, he set up camp. Buffy was still assimilating and working through her recovered memories and now one interlude thrust itself forward in her mind. It had been the night they had made love for the first time. Oh, they’d had sex before and it had been a revelation, but this one night they’d both said the words and it had been so very different. So much more fulfilling.
 
Then afterwards, as they lay entwined on her small, lumpy bed, Spike had started reciting a poem to her. She couldn’t remember the words; she’d been too enthralled by the rhythmic rise and fall of his voice rumbling through his chest under her cheek to listen to the actual poem. One day she’d have to ask him what it had been.
 
“Daydreaming, love?”
 
Buffy yelped at the unexpected sound of Spike’s deep, husky voice right by her ear and the sensation of his body pressed lightly against her back.
 
A warm flush spread outwards from her core and her breath caught in her throat. “Spike? What? How?”
 
A long-fingered hand reached over her shoulder to take a candle. “Essence of slug? You can’t be serious.”
 
Buffy sniggered. “One of Anya’s few mistakes. A customer wanted some for a spell and Anya thought she’d ordered six. She’d checked the wrong box and ordered a gross.” She dumped the box of candles on a handy shelf, twisted in his arms and wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’s still daylight, how did you get here? Have you found it yet?”
 
“Came through the tunnels.” Spike huffed. “The search is gonna be tougher than I thought. Decided to recruit some help. Do you reckon the watcher might be up for a puzzle?”
 
“I think I can safely say that Giles is always up for a puzzle. Kinda comes with the whole watcher gig.” She looked up as he looked down and as if drawn together by a gravitational force, their mouths met.
 
It could have been a minute or it could have been an hour before Anya’s strident voice from the top of the basement steps startled them and made Buffy break away.
 
“Buffy? Are you making those candles? Giles is being useless so I need your help with customers. Oh, and bring some more sandalwood massage oil too.”
 
Buffy gulped desperately for much-needed oxygen, straightened her clothing and smoothed her hair. The day before, she’d been reminded that Spike kisses were one of her favourite things, but she was desperately trying to keep to her resolution to forego Spike smoochies until after she’d broken up with Riley. Her visceral reaction to Spike every time he came within range was making that difficult, however. She rolled her eyes and gave Spike an apologetic little shrug. “I’ll be right there!”
 
She quickly finished filling her box with candles, tossed half a dozen bottles of sandalwood oil on top and turned for the stairs, grabbing a grumbling Spike by the hand and dragging him after her. “Come on honey. Smoochies later. For now, you can give Giles your puzzle to look at while I’m busy. Anyway, I’m guessing that by now he has, like, a gazillion questions for you.
 
 
~*~*~*~

 
 
“Well, that explains what took you so long,” Anya said with a grin as Buffy led Spike down the steps towards the research area at the rear of the shop. “Now please could you attend to business?”
 
Buffy grinned back, blushing slightly. “Sorry, Anya.” She gave Spike’s hand a squeeze, then released it and quickly went to refill the Valentine’s Day display.
 
Spike took a moment to look around and take in his surroundings. It was a very professional looking magic shop. Just the job for a town built over a Hellmouth.
 
Anya handed a customer her change, wished her a nice day and urged her to come back and spend some more money soon. Then she regarded Spike thoughtfully. “Spike? It’s a shame you didn’t claim Buffy while you were in L.A. As mates, you’d have been drawn to each other despite the forgetting spell and you’d have figured it out a lot sooner.”
 
“Thought about it, but the Slayer wanted to wait until her eighteenth birthday. Just to be certain that was what she wanted too. After all, a claim’s unbreakable, not something you do on a whim.”
 
Anya nodded knowingly. “Of course. Inconvenient under the circumstances, but very wise.” She then turned her attention to the next customer.
 
Spike headed over to Giles at the research table. He withdrew the ancient map tube from an inner pocket of his duster and deliberately placed it on the open book that Giles was concentrating on. “Watcher? Was wondering if you could give me a hand with something.”
 
Giles started slightly, but didn’t look up. Instead he picked up the map tube and slowly turned it over in his hands. “Ivory?” he mused quietly. “No, not ivory. The engravings are nautical so that means it’s most likely to be whalebone. Scrimshaw. An excellent example.” He looked up at last. “With what do you need my help, Spike?”
 
Rolling his eyes, Spike took the tube from Giles, pried out the waxed wooden stopper and tilted it so that the map slid out onto the table. “Not the scrimshaw, you twit. The map!”
 
Spike stood and watched as Giles cautiously unrolled the vellum map and bent to examine it.
 
“Oh, my. This does look old,” Giles murmured.
 
“Daddy! Mine daddy!”
 
Spike glanced over his shoulder to see Annie emerge from the training room, head down and chubby little arms and legs pumping madly as she ran straight for him. He automatically took a step back in surprise, so that when the toddler collided with his legs and wrapped her arms tightly around his knees, he overbalanced, toppled over and sat down hard on the chair he had backed into.
 
After a moment’s stunned silence, Spike gathered his wits and ruffled the curly head. “Well, hello, Moptop. I’m happy to see you too!”
 
Annie released his knees and grabbed his leather duster to help her haul herself up onto his lap. When first her elbow and then her knee jabbed him in a very tender place, Spike hastily gave her a boost and helped her to get settled comfortably.
 
“You did came back!”
 
“Yeah, pet. You won’t get rid of me now.”
 
Annie graced him with a blinding smile, curled up and nestled into his chest, grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt with one hand, jammed the thumb of her other hand in her mouth and promptly fell asleep.
 
For a few moments Spike just sat there, his arms out to the side, in total bemusement. What on earth was he supposed to do now? Where was he supposed to put his hands? He tried to clear the unaccountable lump in his throat, and Annie shifted slightly. His right arm went instinctively to wrap around her shoulder and back and he gently gripped her leg to stop her from slipping off him. Well, that felt all right. He glanced up to see whether Buffy was okay with the new development. Surely she’d want to take Annie off him?
 
He was surprised to see her smiling at him, her head tilted to one side and her eyes suspiciously shiny. He raised an eyebrow questioningly and she gave him a little nod of approval before turning her attention back to her customer.
 
Ignoring Giles’ contemplative muttering about the map, Spike focused upon the warm weight in his lap. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply to imprint her scent on his memory. Under the smell of baby lotion, milk and peanut butter, Annie’s personal essence was fresh and clean. A filtered, immature version of the slayer musk with which he was so very familiar, with an added hint of spiciness that for a moment he couldn’t place. Then it hit him. The basis of her scent was a blend of Buffy’s and his own. He swallowed hard. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t believed Buffy when she had announced that Annie was his daughter, but at the back of his mind there had remained the ‘known fact’ that vampires couldn’t father children, so a niggling doubt had persisted. He could doubt no longer.
 
“VampDaddy. You’re here. Uh… why are you here, exactly?”
 
Spike looked up to see Xander Harris scowling at him. “Where the hell else do you expect me to be, Special Ed? Better get used to seeing me around ‘cos where Buffy and Annie go, there go I.”
 
Giles sighed. “He’s right, Xander. Like it or not, from now on, Spike will be a permanent fixture in Buffy’s life, and therefore in ours.” He adjusted the position of the map and bent over it again.
 
“Well, for the record I don’t like it,” Xander grumped. “But last night Anya helped me work out a few things. Buffy loves Bloodbreath here and he’s sworn an oath to stay around and protect Annie. If I want to stay Buffy’s friend, I’m going to have to accept that, so I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and deal.” He plopped down in a chair by Giles and finally noticed what was holding the watcher’s interest. He leant forward. “Great jumping Jehosaphat, Giles! That must be the oldest map of Sunnydale I’ve ever seen, and I have seen some very old maps! Where did you get it?”
 
Giles glanced up in surprise. “Sunnydale? You say this map depicts Sunnydale? How on earth can you tell?”
 
“My Granddad collected maps of Sunnydale and I have them now. This is even older than the oldest of his.” Xander pointed to an area of coastline. “Look, this is Kingman’s Bluff before the big earthquake of eighteen twelve. This whole section here fell into the sea. There was another one in the thirties that did almost as much damage on the other side. Granddad had a whole story he used to tell about that one. He was a kid when it happened and it scared the bejesus out of him. And over here, these little tufty thingies show the swamp, near where they built the dam for the reservoir…”
 
“Then this must be the Hellmouth,” Giles put in excitedly, pointing to a small spiral symbol further inland. “I was trying to make out what this caption is, but now I see it must be ‘Ore ad Inferos’.”
 
Delighted that his search had abruptly taken a giant leap forward, Spike reached over to tap his finger on the little pyramid symbol. “Found this last night. It’s a tomb of some kind in a fenced off enclosure behind Shady Hill cemetery.”
 
He was about to go on to explain about the treasure, carefully omitting any reference to the Gem of Amara, when his attention was drawn to the front of the shop.
 
“Riley!” Buffy cried. “You’re here! Well, of course you’re here. I called and asked you to be here, and here you are!” She tittered nervously.
 
Spike frowned when Willow stepped out from behind the hulking great lummox and Buffy’s voice lost all its forced joviality. “And Willow. I’m not happy with you right now, but something’s happened and I need to tell the gang, so you should be here for that. I figured you deserve that much.” She flipped the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and turned to lead the newcomers down towards the research table.
 
“You know I’ll always come when you call, Buffy. And who’s this?” Riley asked suspiciously, gesturing at Spike. “Is he the something that has happened?”
 
Spike instinctively went to stand up to face the challenge that Riley represented, only to hurriedly sit back down when Annie stirred and started slipping off his lap. He sent a pleading glance to Buffy who darted forward.
 
She gently took Annie from Spike, careful not to wake her, and headed towards the training room. Just as she disappeared through the doorway, she gabbled, “This is… uh… this is William. He’s uh… he’s Annie’s father.”
 
A/N
‘Cup Cake Chloe’ is a soft doll in the Cup Cake range from the Early Learning Centre. I don’t own the Cup Cake doll company (if that’s even what it’s called) or the Early Learning Centre. I also don’t know if these dolls are available in the US (I can’t find a US based ELC website), or even whether they existed in 2001. Let’s just pretend…
 
I don’t know any Latin. I Googled like mad and ‘Ore ad Inferos’ is the best translation I could find for ‘The mouth of Hell’. Apologies if I have got it wrong.

 
<<     >>