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Ancient shades by Kur
 
5
 
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Thanks: To Melissa, best beta ever. See, I haven’t changed one single word. Thanks, thanks, thanks!!!!!

CHAPTER 5

The logs crunched and crackled in the fireplace. The place didn’t sop up the warmth and gleaming of the fire. It was still dark and fusty and there were no signs it was going to improve despite the three lamps that had been lit in the room.

“Well, Hobson, such a remarkable job. The ritual will…”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, sir but you do realized there’s another threat we haven’t foreseen? I’m trying to say…”

“I know what you are trying to say, Hobson.” Quentin Travers patted the other’s one shoulder with something between condescension and superiority. “But this can’t be stopped, no matter the unexpected circumstances that may surround us. She will be fine. We have taken severe measures just to keep things within the limits of this appalling place. Not to mention this is a secret ritual. A secret that only the Council knows about.”

“Angelus is a sly beast.”

“I am pretty aware of that fact, Hobson. If this Slayer is half of the things Giles had told us, she will succeed. Now, you were saying something about a cup of tea?”



Buffy yawned for the tenth time in the morning. She felt so tired. Maybe she had patrolled too much. Taking her payback on piles of dust that had done nothing to make her feel better. She knew she’d have been happy. She hadn’t even had to dump him or give a speech about her jumbled emotions and how they had made her slipped that mistaken phrase of love. Maybe the twelfth yawn was due to a poor diet. Fast food, faster than ever if she took into account that she had been eating like a dying bird lately. So that was the only and rational explanation for this lack of strength that had been threatening to send her to the floor all day.

Crap, couldn’t she have a decent, normal birthday? Eighteen. She had run downstairs that morning hoping to find another jam jar decorated with fresh flowers. Still an optimistic chick. There was one with raspberry marmalade. And toasts and a steaming cup of coffee and cereals and her mother’s sad smile as though she’d read her mind. Of course she did. Thanks God Joyce had said nothing and, probably, that would be the best present ever. Perhaps the best thing could be to slip in her bed early enough not to have to deal with a surprise party that would end in a disaster. As usual. Her bed and a sneaked bottle of wine, ‘cause after all not every day of your life you’re eighteen. And, in her case, that would certainly have to be celebrated with fireworks. He’d have lit fireworks for her… In her blood, in her skin, in her brains. Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh. A mistake. Repeat after me. A mistake...



“Well, well, well. And they say there aren’t surprises left in these days. Hi, Spike, my best friend. How have you been?” Willie grasped a cloth in his hands before cleaning the counter like a maniac.

“Have better days. A bottle. Make it worth it. Don’t want to puke in that shitty excuse for a pee-room you’ve got back there.” Spike headed for the further table. Wasn’t in the mood to listen to the chitchat… There wasn’t any chitchat. Everybody was in the most silent mood. Only whispers and furtive glances. As if they were expecting big news.

The bottle made a strange noise when it hit the table. Willie had the jitters or was his imagination? “I’ve heard Angelus is back.” He didn’t pay attention to Spike’s raised eyebrows. “Heard he’s looking for a certain blondie…”

“And that would be me? Afraid he can catch me here and tear the place to the ground, Willie? Don’t worry. He’d be dust before you could blink an eye. ‘Sides, I won’t stay that long.”

He hadn’t been in the mood for anything lately. He knew he had acted liked a chicken shit, leaving her like that… Flowers did it. Channelling geek William had scared the shit out of him. Made him think. Odd and astonishing. Should have marked it on a sodding calendar. He had to bury that wanker inside him for good. To dig a deep grave and stick him in it, pouring shitloads of lead on his damned corpse. Prevent him form rising again. From assaulting him whenever he didn’t expect it.

Day after day he had forced himself to sleep after four bottles of whatever he could find. Night after night he had stood under her window as the duffer he had turned into. He could taste her blood. Sleeping, awake. It didn’t matter. He’d taste her skin, the salty drops of sweat between her breasts… the coffee and the mint flavour of the toothpaste… He had left his refuge only to watch over her when she slept comfortable in her bed. Fag after fag he had sailed up and down her body, had slipped inside the covers, had stroke the smoothness of her curves. With his eyes fixed on the shutters. With all his being conscious of her presence.

Three words were stuck in his mind. Playing on and on. At least in those eternal moments in which he was as scatty as a lousy psycho in an asylum garden. Love… was it love? Or some twisted emotion he had clung to from his human days? And yet, he still remembered the first time he saw her. The whole world was rolling in slow motion. He’d wanted to shove aside whomever that was standing next to her just for her body to dance against his. He’d wanted to curl and rub and stretch against the red and yellow silhouette. Had intensified the desire of having her in all ways possible… He had never thought too much about anything. Made his noggin begged for mercy. Hadn’t found the answer yet. That hadn’t stopped the longing, though.

“… because of the ritual.” Willie was still talking and he hadn’t heard a word. Scatty. Yeah.
“You, the Slayer of Slayers, don’t know anything about the ritual? Eighteen’s birthday… Slayer, vampire… Fight. One wins. It’s said that there’s some sort of no special powers involved. But you can’t trust what you hear, now can you?”



He was a vampire. He had super strength and all that shit. The prince of darkness and blah, blah, blah. Wished he had been as those pathetic vamps from the movies and turned into a bat just to get to Giles’ house more quickly. He knew about her birthday. Had talked to Joyce when Buffy’d been at school. He had explained over a cup of hot cocoa. The lady had understood. Had accepted it. After all, whose mother wants a monster for her daughter? Not that he cared too much about that particular thing. But there was something in him that really wanted to do things right. For once. That had convinced him of his insanity. He didn’t recognize himself anymore.

The door throbbed under his fists. The faded shuffle reached his ears. If he had been a living being he probably wouldn’t have heard it. Muzzled steps as if the owner weren’t eager for reaching the house entrance.

“Invite me in or for bloody sake I’ll wait right here till I’ll fry! And don’t even start with that Watcher bullshit!”

Giles’ hand clasped the door till his knuckles hurt. If it hadn’t been for Buffy’s story he’d have shut that door and waited at the window for a morning dust show.

Spike flew inside when Giles finally muttered an invitation. His coat fluttered behind him, around him, like an ominous shadow.

“I’m not going to beat about the bush, Watcher. Just tell me if this little thing that I’ve heard is right. There’s a ritual and the Slayer is powerless. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“I would say that’s not of your business, Spike.” Giles appealed to his tough side. He wasn’t going to be inquired by a vampire of matters which belonged strictly to the Council. Despite all his doubts and his disagreement about procedures.

“I’ll take that as a yes. You are nuts. You and that bloody council of yours. Have you seen her powerless? I had. She was lost, for Christ sake!”

“This is not about strength.” Would he be able to reach his distant glass? He doubted Spike would allow him to move a toe.

“You can’t beat Angelus with your brains. He’s a cunning bastard. Had two hundred years to improve his sodding skills.”

“This has nothing to do with Angel. Security has been checked twi…”

“And you’re a buggering idiot, aren’t you?” Spike’s roars echoed all over the room. A comet would have been slower. Suddenly his blue eyes were a blurring image in front of his glasses. “He’ll slip in. He won’t miss this gift you’ve delivered to him in a golden tray.”

Giles stepped back. The hard surface of the wall stopped him. “I see what…”

“You don’t see anything!” There was a grinding sound. His glasses had vanished under one of Spike’s boot. “Those bloody things served you for no purpose! But I warn you…” His hands were on the wall, framing both sides of Giles’ face. “Pray Watcher. If you care for your bleeding soul, just pray. ‘Cause if something happens to her, I’ll torture you so slowly that you’ll wish you’d never been born. And then I’ll keep you as my minion. Just to torture you a little more. Here… - his hand forced Giles’ neck to one side and his fangs sank in his neck. He didn’t drink even one drop before he tossed back - have a sample of your future.”

Suddenly he was gone. As a dreadful nightmare in which one couldn’t tell apart reality from illusions. Giles was terrified. For one long moment Spike’s tone had changed to a thundering, coarse and deep voice. The sound of black, sordid and foul dungeons. Primitive and unknown creatures crept starving in its depth. The sound of true evil. Even his eyes had a hypnotizing gleam. Not yellow but red, as hot embers burning the edges of his soul. He’d fallen into them seeing that promised, horrifying future.

Giles knew about not-so-empty threads. Had thrown a few of his own back in his time. Spike’s behaviour had been excessive, though. And amazing. A vampire showing so much care… If he cared about her, he’d have known that every book of instructions began with the word trust. She was the Slayer! The most powerful and brave and… He, her Watcher, had betrayed her. He wondered if she would ever trust him again after all the needles, and the chemicals and the magical stones he had used to induce her a powerless state. He had had to save her! In the middle of the street as if she were nothing but a little lamb. That worthless vampire… he had been right. She was terrified. Screaming for help as if she had forgotten who she was. What she was. And her eyes… Was he going to forget that spark of true hate in the green depths? Her words, her obvious, so obvious pain for his disloyalty? Bet Spike had never betrayed her… As annoying and evil and disgusting and he could keep on going with the list for the rest of his existence, he surely as hell hadn’t. In spite of…everything, she trusted him. In her in and out circle of trusting him, she did… Joyce’s words jumped to his mind. “If he is out there…I feel relieved.”
Giles ran towards the chest where he kept the special weapons.



Darkness surrounded her, more throttling than the terrorized bump of her heart. Her hands waved in the air trying to find a switch. How in hell had they thought she would be able to stop such a crazy vampire with no strength at all? She had brought the weapons and the Holy Water but… they were nothing if she couldn’t even raise a stake in a trembling fist. She wouldn’t even show her face in that awful place if the bastard hadn’t messed up with her mother.

London murky, mucky streets flashed in her memories. Hands, obscene and indecent, fear and desperation… Yet, she had managed to survive. Okay, she had been helped in the end but those men… She had managed to fight them even as the ordinary girl she was back then. Not to mention her ingenious skills had been on top. She should have talked about the lack of strength, however. The nervous giggle magnified in the pitch-dark room. Like ugly, menacing worms crawling up and down the walls. Hoped he had been there. With all his smirks and stupid cocky attitude. Just there to help her. To share something of his strength with her. To imbue yarns of it in her blood. Like a sponge absorbing water. She’d had been more valiant, knowing he was behind her. Even if he’d stood in the furthest corner and watched her, she’d have been braver.

Her hand found a string hanging from the ceiling. A terrorized gaze, thousands of terrorized gazes looked at her from the walls. Photos of her mother. Her heart stormed as the door throbbed and pounded.
The pills were the clue. That bottle of pills she had grabbed from that batty vamp when, thanks God, he had lost his balance before he could choke her to death. He had gone even madder. Chasing her along those corridors, across that maze. Only perverted people could have planned such a trial for somebody they should have taken care of. Giles… As she entered into the basement, she forbade herself of giving him one second of her time. It was too precious to waste it in a traitor. Her mother looked at her from the chair she was tied to. But first…

The daft vamp finally smashed the door and nearly broke her wrist in his attempt of getting back his pills. She stared at him, silent, motionless, waiting as he gulped the bottle of water that had been on a table. She couldn’t stop watching even when his body burst into dust when the Holy Water finally performed its task. Relief washed over her features and she ran to her mother.

“Buffy, thank God you’re okay. Oh, that man…” Her eyes widened with horror. “Buffy…”

“Don’t worry, mom. I’ll set you free. He can’t hurt you. I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you won’t be able to fulfil, little girl.”

Buffy spun on her heels, frozen to the bones. Angelus. The most evil smile dancing on his lips. His tongue swept them as though he could taste her in delighted anticipation.

“And they say unlife is not worth it…”

The world shrunk only to two sounds. Her mother’s strident scream and the devilish thump of one boot on the wood step.

tbc...
 
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