Chapter Six – Hell’s Wrath Knows No Mercy

A Few Days Later…



The music pounded around the Bronze, blasting in the ears of the mortals, and screaming in those of the vampires that moved to its pulsating beat. The air was hot and heavy, the night full within its throw and the crescent moon high in the dark, frozen sky.

As people passed her they unabashedly stared, the men appraisingly, the women jealous – all hot and sweaty in the packed nightclub, making themselves only more aware of the beauty that swayed seductively; the very embodiment of cool.

She had to come here.

Had to remember what she was fighting for.

Had to feel normal, just for a little while.

He was everything she should despise, everything she should be repelled from…

…but everything she desired.

For the first time in… forever…she desired.

But, she was the Slayer. Vampire or no, she had a commitment. Lonely, hard, short – that was the life of a Slayer – all she had now to keep her going was the hope that she could change that last one from ‘short’ to ‘not so short’.

Even if it killed her inside.

So here she was, trying desperately to lose herself in the music.

Trying to let the throbbing pulse of the song strike away whatever urges she may have given in to the night before.

Pleading that the hammering sound take her away from this lonely place she dwelled so solitarily within.

Praying that its powerful beat devour her, consume her…take her.

Begging it to let her forget.

Forget what she was.

What she had become.

Forget her fears…

Her pains…

Her utter loneliness.

Forget how close she was to falling…

Just… forget.

Please…just forget…forget…

---

He watched her.

He knew others watched her too…but they didn’t see, they couldn’t truly see her.

His eyes followed every moment she made. His senses covered her entirety. His demon revolted at the close proximity that others came to her, but he forced it down deep with in himself.

He despised everything she once stood for – hell, what she still deigned to stand for, even after she should have embraced the vampiric world and all the many treasures it has to offer.

Spike had learnt…had been taught… to be always disgusted by the purity in those Chosen humans, the nobleness that Slayers adhered to at all costs – the very thought sickened him deep within his non-existent soul.

He had killed hundreds, thousands, had bagged three Slayers – had intended to leave this deadbeat town to bag his fourth wherever she may be called. It was his chosen decision. It was his chance at catharsis.

It was who he was. Who he had sworn to be.

But she, she was changing things.

His finding out what she was, who she is, had not quashed these tumultuous feelings storming within him. His body was still hungry for her touch, his being still cried out that it was connected with hers in some mystical, magical way.

It was more than their familial connection, he knew this. Never had he felt the pull to Drusilla this strongly – and she was his Sire, and the bond between a Sire and Childe was unbreakable...

Images flashed, unbidden, in his mind, of bloodshed, sex, screams, broken bones and tethers… and finally dust. Nothing but dust.

…supposedly, he completed wryly in his internal diatribe as the memories momentarily flooded his mind, then receded once more as if they had never been.

He shouldn’t want her, he knew this. She was everything he had sworn to hate, to kill, to destroy. It had been his promise to himself – to look out forever for number one…for himself. But, he wasn’t meant to be alone…

Not forever alone…

Without even realising it his feet had begun carrying him to the dance floor where still she gyrated sensually to the music’s hypnotic beat. His body easily slid into the crowd, slinking between the involved couples, his destination set well within his sights he only saw one person. One being. One goal.

Her.

He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop himself…he could deny it all; his beliefs, his world…but not her.

Never her.

His body was starved for her touch, he realised when his arms closed around her, demobilising her, as his undead heart seemed to swell with emotion.

She gasped, her head turned, and for a moment she paused, and he saw desire float in her emerald orbs before they closed off from him completely, flashing with an almost forced fury when she recognised the identity of her capture as that which she could not have.

“Spike.” She hissed, fruitlessly attempting to remove herself from his grip. He wasn’t ever going to let her go. “Let go of me! Now!”

---

His arms were harsh around her, and Buffy was grateful she no longer had a circulation to be cut off else she would be in some serious danger right now.

If she wasn’t anyway.

She opened her mouth to deliver another scathing comment but was forestalled by the commanding growl that rumbled into her ear, and shocked to find herself deferring to it. Something deep within her recognised that this was a Master vampire, an old, prestigious vampire… but none of that would have stopped her. Her demon recognised his – not as a Master, not as family; though she knew in some way he was – but as a Mate.

Buffy wasn’t sure what this term truly meant. It had been a chapter in the grand book of Vampyrs that Giles had never really tried to teach her. However, she and Willow had once snuck the book out of the main library and deep into the stacks, giggling and commenting on the lewd drawings that were contained within its bindings and the proper words that spilled from its pages as the stuffy watchers of the past tried to explain this ancient ceremony between one vampire and another.

The mating…

The ceremony that was one of the most revered, one of the most powerful.

The most binding.

---

She had stopped struggling. Not that it had done her any good in the first place, but she must have realised that he wasn’t about to let her go.

Or even better, she had decided that she wanted to stay.

He couldn’t allow himself to believe it was the latter – not yet. Not while things were so up in the air; it was too soon.

Arranging her more comfortably, but still just as securely in his arms, Spike leant down, pressing his lips to the shell of her ear before he began to speak, his low, sensual tones creating a web of seduction around them that not even the music in the club, nor the people jostling by them could penetrate.

“I know, who you are, cutie…” He began, his cool breath tickling her skin. “I know it should matter, that it should change how I feel, how you feel…”

He paused.

“It doesn’t.”

Another kiss, just below her ear – a reward for not revolting and running away from him so far.

“I know the loneliness you feel – the pain and the loss that weighs you down, that follows you, that you move around with every single day like a noose around your pretty neck. I know, because I feel it too, baby.” He whispered earnestly, the truthful words of a gentleman and a passionate demon long buried deep within his body.

Unable to help himself at her proximity, he nuzzled his face against her neck and felt her sigh, then snuggle further in to his embrace; seeking his touch.

“We belong together, I can feel it in my gut. You’re in my blood, love, I feel you coursing through my body, I feel you screaming within me; begging me to do your will. From the first moment I saw you, my entire being demanded that I claim you, that I take you far from this squalid town, shower you in the beauty that you deserve.”

Buffy blinked fast as the tears welled up in her eyes, his words washing over her like the sea after a storm.

“If you tell me now – if you can tell me that we don’t belong together, that you don’t feel it too – I’ll leave. I’m not going to force myself on you, pet.”

Spike shivered at the horrifying thought, tightening his arms around her body in an unconscious movement that betrayed his unwillingness to let her go, despite his words.

“You belong to me. I know you do. Just as I belong to you.”

Cool lips pressed themselves to the bite mark on Buffy’s neck, and a tremor of delight rang through her veins at both his certain words and delicious actions.

“Now. You have a choice.”

Around them, the world went on. The music played, the people danced as in the middle of the room, a vampire waited for a slayer’s response.

~~~

“This is a problem.” The first spoke suddenly, gazing heavily down at the portal beneath them and the two beings that continued to gaze at each other.

“And one we should have taken care of two hundred years ago when we had the chance!” The second chimed in, angrily.

The third tried for diplomacy. “What could we have done? We had bigger matters to contend with.”

“America.” The fourth agreed. “They would have destroyed the balance – the world!”

“You fool, they won, don’t you remember? They will destroy the world!” The second snapped back.

The first growled at the idiocy of the turn of conversation, bringing them back on track as usual. “They will not have the chance to, my friends. The balance is in greater jeopardy at this very moment, than ever before.”

Before anyone else could speak the fifth finally spoke, her soft tones an attempt at soothing the congregation. “Perhaps this is not so – the joining of the two forces may balance each other out.”

“No!” Denied the second. “That was deemed the case when the Slayer was turned. The balance was balanced then – we all agreed. This union can only destroy it.”

“How can this be so, brother?” The fifth rejoined with a delicate frown on her clear features. “This union could be exactly what the world needs – as she turns a little to embrace the dark, he would, in turn have to embrace the light to keep her.”

“NO!” The third and the fourth spoke together, suddenly changing their stance on the situation – too easily swayed by the other’s anger and self-righteousness. The third continued his denial of her words. “He will never turn to the light – he is darkness, through and through. He will sway her and she will be lost.”

The fourth completed the thought as he accused the fifth. “The balance will be lost – this is your fault, sister. It was you who turned away our attention before, when the matter could have been dealt with!”

“As you said,” She replied calmly. “What could we have done? America was the larger threat at the time.”

“We could have dealt with both!” The first barked at her.

“It is your fault!” The second accused harshly.

Her voice boomed out – no longer calm or dulcet in her tones, she revealed the authority she had always possessed. “It is no ones fault! We each have a fifth of this earth to govern, and to protect. And each of us had a choice. It was our own stubbornness to work together – our own inability to accept that more than one quandary needed attendance. We have only ourselves to blame for this path of ruin we now traverse.”

No one moved in the great above. No one spoke as they each took in and accepted her words of truth.

“Nothing will save us now.” She continued in the silence, her voice ominous.

The fifth paused, and then a smile – one the others had not seen before – graced her lips and she spoke again. “Except, perhaps The Vrekh’ir.”






TBC....in: Chapter Seven – A Promise Fulfilled

A/N: Still with me? Reviews are always welcomed :D