Chapter 3: Immortal Education

Author's Notes: Thanks for the reviews on the first two parts. This isn't on my site yet because I'm still rewriting the end of it. I HATE the end I have. ;)


Buffy made it back to her hotel before daybreak. She threw her bag into a chair and went straight for the small case that held the serum. Her hands shook as she filled the needle and inserted it into the vein where the IV had been. The relief was immediate. There was no pain, just anger, resentment, and purpose.

When she had met The Immortal she had been so swept away that one look at him made her legs weak. Of course, she hadn’t known that he was evil then and when she found out, how she found out, still made her sick at her stomach. That was the first time that Alyanna had come to her, telling her the key to killing the Immortal was inside of her all the time.

The Immortal could read minds, know your thoughts before you did, force you to submit to his will. The Gypsies gave her the serum to deaden her soul, deaden her heart, make it impervious to outside interference so The Immortal would never know her mission. She had watched as he slaughtered a child and sucked the soul from the lifeless body before it had a chance to move on.

He was immortal, yes, but he had to feed on human souls to exist and little by little, he had taken particles of hers. She hadn’t thought twice about leaving her friends, her duty, her place with the others. He had taken the piece of her that belonged to them, that belonged with them.

The key to killing him was to enrage him enough that he would take her soul, a soul dampened by the serum so much that it was incapable of emotion, and once it was inside of him, he would die. He would burn from the inside as his dead soul fought with hers ... a warrior’s soul.

It seemed very simple when it was explained to her. Of course, now that she was taking the serum regularly, she rarely felt anything at all except for rage. It weakened the good in her and strengthened the bad. She saw the world in black and white.

Until today.

Seeing Spike there had moved her to the point of tears, but she had fought them back, kept herself together.
Glancing at the serum, she wondered if maybe she wasn’t taking enough.

Because a long forgotten ache had begun to rise in her.
Swallowing hard, she filled the needle once more.

Then fell back against the bed and let it drop to the floor.



The phone rang far too early. Opening one eye, Buffy glared at it, wondering why there wasn’t a law that prevented telephones from working at all until the afternoon. Grumbling, she pulled herself loose from the jumble of cover around her legs and grabbed the receiver.
“Hello?”

“Buffy?”

“Uhm,” she felt her heart constrict when she heard his voice. “Giles?”

It had been so long since they had spoken that she had begun to wonder if they ever would again. They had parted ways on such bad terms that she doubted they would ever have the easy relationship they had enjoyed before, but it was still Giles and he had called her.

“Hello, Buffy,” he said quietly and wondered if she could tell by his voice that his eyes had gotten incredibly misty. “How are you?”

She wanted to tell him everything in that moment. She wanted him to know that she hadn’t meant the things she said, that she was not involved with the Immortal in the way he believed, that she was about to move into the final phase of her plan to kill the demon, but she couldn’t. “Fine. You?”

“I can’t complain. Things are going well here. The girls are all learning and doing a fine job with their training. Some of them are more devoted than others, but that’s to be expected with teenagers.”

Buffy knew it was her turn to talk. She scrambled with something to say. “That’s nice.”

“How is Dawn?”

“Okay.” Biting her bottom lip, Buffy listened to the silence for as long as she could. “What did you want, Giles?”

“Mostly to hear you. But also to see if you needed anything.”

“No.”

“Do you want to talk?”

Her jaw clenched as realization dawned on her. “Which one of them called you? Or was it a conference call that let all of you talk shit about me behind my back at once?”

“Angel called me last night. Said you’d been hospitalized and -”

“And you’re suddenly interested in what goes on in my life? I mean, other than judging my every move.”

“I didn’t call you to exchange harsh words again.”

“I have a tendency to exchange harsh words when I’ve been kicked repeatedly while I’m down.”

Giles sighed loudly on the other end of the phone. “So this is how it’s to be between us? You can’t get past your anger long enough to have a civilized conversation?”

“If you want conversation why don’t you talk to Faith? Oh wait, you said civilized and convicted felons are seldom civil. Hmm, that leaves Willow. If she can get her head out of Kennedy’s ass long enough maybe she’ll talk.”

“Kennedy was killed two nights ago.”

Buffy couldn’t stop the snort that escaped her. “Miss Bad Ass herself was killed? I hope it was long and painful. Since you’re in the mood to talk why don’t you give me every last juicy detail of it.”

“Good Lord, Buffy! What are you thinking?” Giles said, his shock evidenced in his tone. “I had hoped that we could talk with one another and come to an understanding, but I can see that you’re still being unreas-”

Buffy put the phone back in its cradle and stood, running her hands through her hair as she paced across the room. It was so hard to get used to the ways that the serum affected her. How could she have said that about Kennedy? The other Slayer wasn’t her favorite person, but Kennedy was dead.

And Willow? Poor Willow.

Before Buffy could feel one ounce of pain over her friend’s loss, she collected the serum and retreated into the bathroom for a long shower and an end to her agony.



“Well, she hung up on Giles,” Angel told Spike as he put the phone back on the hook. “He says that there has to be something more than just anger motivating her at this point. She was happy that one of the slayers was killed.”

Spike put a hand to his forehead, massaging the headache that had been plaguing him most of the day. “What does he think it could be?”

“Apparently he has gotten some new information that suggests The Immortal feeds on people’s souls. He thinks maybe Buffy has been losing bits of her soul for a while. Something similar happened to her during her Freshman year of college. A roomate of hers was taking her soul while she slept. Giles says that her behaviour is reminiscent of that.”

Spike said nothing for several seconds. Then he shook his head. “I’m so tired of the word ‘soul’ that I could scream. What the bloody hell is wrong with the lot of us? Your soul, my soul, her going around getting her soul sucked on! I say you get happy, I get exorcised, she loses hers altogether and we go wreak havoc someplace.”

Angel glared at him. “Your mind is terrifying.”

Spike rubbed his head again. “It’s also very painful. Headache. I think it’s stress.”

“We have to find out what’s happening.”

“We could ask Fred.”

Nodding, Angel picked up the receiver and dialed Fred’s extension. When she answered, he asked her to come to his office and bring along any reference material she could find about The Immortal or demons that had the power to remove pieces of a soul.

Spike and Angel both had their lunch, identical bags of plasma from the Red Cross, in his office and by the time they were finished, Fred had arrived laden with several books, three manilla folders full of documents, and a laptop.

Angel helped her relieve herself of the baggage and then she flopped into a chair next to Spike, blowing her hair out of her eyes. “I never would have thought that The Immortal would be so well documented. Or soul eating demons. I mean, I always thought that vampires held the trophy for taking human lives, but apparently soul eaters or Vespara Gorbathians, have been widely speculated to cause more-”

“Fred,” Spike interrupted. “Fascinating as this is, we need to focus on The Immortal. What is he?”

“From all accounts,” Fred paused, riffling through one of the folders. She pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Spike. “He appears to be some kind of hybrid demon. Part Vespara Gorbathian, part vampire, and part warlock. Or well, he was a warlock before he became a vampire and I guess you retain a lot of what you were as a human.”

Spike shot Angel a look. “Then you must have been a real dickhead as a human.”

“And you were a doormat.” Angel took the paper from Spike and scanned over it. “How did he become a hybrid?”

“His mother was a full blood Vespara. So before he was turned, he was already part demon.”

”That’s physically impossible.” Spike picked up one of the books and thumbed through it, thinking aloud. “I couldn’t go turn, say, a Bantha demon into a vampire. The breeds are distinct and separate. He can’t be both. It’s either or.”

“His father was a human.” Fred rifled through another folder and produced a family tree. “The dad was some kind of genius scientist who was trying to invent a new breed of demons. Apparently he was a demon groupie or something. Once he found out about the different breeds of demons he was very interested. Several different theories abound that he used his own son, Gabriel, or The Immortal, as a guinea pig.”

“That was how long ago?” Angel asked.

Fred scanned the papers again. “Gabriel was born in the sixteen hundreds. From the looks of things he was around twenty-five when he actually became a vampire. And the reports of his sexual escapades and prowess really start to surface in the eighteen hundreds. Apparently he’s beautiful and really charismatic.”

Angel and Spike exchanged a knowing glance, both clearly remembering the fact that The Immortal had seduced both Dru and Darla. At the same time.

“Anything about soul sucking?” Spike growled.

Fred nodded and opened her laptop. “It’s so neat that Mr. Giles and Willow were finally able to create a demon database. I was able to cross reference some material and found out that Vespara demons, especially the women, will take the souls from dying or dead infants before those souls can pass this plane. It makes them impervious to harm and their beauty becomes enchanting, more seductive, with each infant that it takes.”

“What about the men?” Angel moved around her so he could see the laptop screen.

“They’ll also take the souls of babies, but fully grown women seem to be the soul of choice. Most Vespara men will enchant their mortal women and remove particles through a whisper.”

“A whisper?” Spike raised an eyebrow. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s what the Vespara calls the process of draining the soul through the body of a living person. It comes out in a whisper. The human never feels it and it’s never very much of the soul, but it’s enough to keep the woman entranced and the Vespara impervious to death or even pain.”

“Why? Why does it need souls?” Angel glanced at the screen and then went back to his seat. “Do we know?”

“As a matter of fact, we do. I just got off the phone with Willow and she enlightened me. She’s sending me an email attachment of the research they found about The Immortal. The basic principle is very simple. The same way a vampire needs blood to sustain immortality, a Vespara needs souls to sustain it. Human souls. That soul lasts for about three weeks and then the Vespara is drained, starved.” Fred smiled triumphantly. “Get it now?”

“No, brainiac. We don’t get it. How does a soul sustain anything?”

“A Vespara is drawn to humanity. It’s drawn to innocence and passion. That’s the why behind the babies and the lovers. It lives off stolen emotion ... everything a soul feels. As long as they are given a constant supply, they can’t be harmed because human emotion is quite possibly the most powerful thing in the world.” Fred shrugged her slender shoulders. “It drives us to kill, to love, to betray, to lie, to hurt in ways that we think aren’t possible. When a Vespara finds someone with all that in them? They’re set for six to eight weeks.”

“Buffy has all that and more.” Spike glanced at Angel. “She’s suffered. Her soul likely screams inside of her all the time. She probably feels like she exists without reason and rhyme.”

“That’s really poetic,” Angel mumbled. “How do we kill The Immortal?”

Fred frowned. “You can’t.”

“No one is really immortal, Fred.” Angel replied. “A vampire is only immortal until you put a stake through his heart.”

Spike stood up, walking toward the window and staring out at the bright sunshine. “It stands to reason that if we can walk around in the sun inside this building and not die then the same people who put this defense up should be able to bring his defense down.”

Fred glanced thoughtfully at the windows. “You could be on to something there.”

“What kind of mojo is on these windows? In the cars? What keeps the sun out? That same mojo could keep the soul out of him. No food. No nourishment. If the Vespara part of him is dying that leaves the vampire and then a pointy little piece of wood ought to kill him dead.” Spike was beaming, clearly proud of himself.

The corner of Angel’s mouth lifted up. “You may be useful after all, Spike.” To Fred, he added, “Find out what they did to make this place vampire friendly. Find out who was responsible and when you do, bring them to me.”

“How will you get The Immortal here? He’s so elusive.” Fred said.

“Have you met Buffy yet, Fred?” Spike asked.

Fred shook her head.

“No one, demon or not, would be able to stay away from her if she called.”