STRIP SNAP

Chp 23 “Did you Scream?”

Spike reacted first to the sound of a fight above them. He flung himself up the stairs and cannoned through the door with Buffy and William at his heels. The shop was full of fighting, struggling shapes. Buffy picked out Xander trying to hold off two demons with a chair and Anya and Willow were backing up the staircase to the top section of the shop, throwing priceless books at the vampires who were trying to reach them.

She hurled herself into action, aware, as she always was, of Spike fighting behind her, automatically watching her back, letting her control the battle, listening to her shouted commands. William, she noticed, was in game face, standing across Xander’s groaning body, too, but concentrating on the demons. He was leaving the vampires to her and Spike.

Buffy vaulted across the counter, grabbed a vampire round the waist as he reached for Willow and threw him at Spike, who dispatched him by twisting his head back to front.

“Behind you, Slayer!” Spike yelled suddenly and Buffy spun and ducked as a sword swung through the air. “Get him, William!” Spike roared and his double dived full length through the air and cannoned into the demon, his fangs bared and bloody.

Buffy winced at the spurting gore, then realised it had all gone quiet. The last couple of demons had vanished out of the shop door that was hanging from one hinge, obviously the way they had broken into the Magic Box.

“Willow! Xander? Anya? Are you OK?”

Xander picked himself up off the floor, shaking off William’s help. Clutching his head, he staggered across to the wooden staircase where Anya and Willow were sitting and collapsed between them. “I’ll live, Slayer. But not sure if I’ll ever play the piano again.”

William turned an interested face in his direction, “Mr Harris, I had no idea you performed on the pianoforte. I, too am - - ”

“That was a joke!” Spike spat angrily. “The boy’s never touched a piano in his life.”

“Oh!” William shimmered back into human face and stared, puzzled, at his double who was scowling at Buffy.

“Who were they, Slayer? The Master’s minions?”

Buffy rolled a demon over with her foot. It had the usual ugly, contorted face but there was nothing to mark it in any other way. “Well, I’m not at total war with anyone else at present, so I reckon that’s a good guess. This was probably just a probing attack to see how strong we are.”

“Well, they’d have got a nasty shock to see we had two Spikes on our side,” Willow said cheerfully, mopping the blood off of Xander’s forehead.

Buffy prowled across to the door and peered out. There was no one around. As was often the way in Sunnydale, if trouble started the ordinary population vanished off the streets. But heavy clouds lay across the sky and the air was thick and gloomy.

She glanced at her watch and winced. It was late afternoon and that meant Dawn would be back from school at any moment. “Xander, are you up to meeting Dawnie and taking her home? I don’t want her involved. She’s an easy target for The Master to use against me.”

“I know I’m not a great fighter, Buff, but I can still – ” Xander was protesting, then saw the expression on her face and sighed, getting to his feet. “Do you want me to tell her what’s going on? She isn’t stupid, Buff. She’ll guess. And where do I take her? Revello won’t be safe.”

Buffy bit her lip. She could just imagine her sister’s reaction, but she’d rather have a furious Dawn than a dead one.

“My crypt,” Spike said suddenly. “You’ll be safe there. Let’s face it, The Master isn’t going to attack his great great great grandchild’s home!”

Xander tottered away, wincing at every step. Anya began to clear up the wreckage in the shop, writing down every breakage in a book with the cost beside it and moaning gently until she remembered insurance policies and brightened up enough to ask Willow for help. The demon bodies were dragged out of sight, down into the basement. Buffy knew they would be cast into the sewers where the rats would eventually get them.

She picked up a chair, turned it the right way up and sat down with a sigh. Spike flung himself to the floor beside her and William crouched in front of them. It was so weird, she thought, like being in one of those odd fairground displays where the mirrors show you reflected hundreds of times over.

“OK, Slayer, what’s next on our task list?” Spike’s gaze was still bleak and angry. “The Master obviously knows where we are, and I imagine the vamps that got away will have told him by now that William’s here as well.”

“We were always taught at school that the best way of defeating an enemy is to attack him,” William put in eagerly. He’d enjoyed the fight, although he’d found it hard to kill another vampire. The demons, though, had been fun.

Spike gazed at him, his lip curling. “Bloody hell, you obviously haven’t taken in the vital point of this Charm that the Slayer has been going on about. If she kills the Master, even with our help, then all his clan’s descendants, all the Aurelians die – which includes her ex-lover, Angel, myself, countless others we’ve sired over the centuries who’ve sired others themselves and – last and very least – you!”

William frowned and a shiver ran across Buffy’s skin. When he stopped being sweet and endearing, he seemed so like Spike. “But I’m not an Aurelian,” he said slowly.

Buffy stared at him. “What?”

Willow and Anya stopped their clearing up and joined the group. “William, you are an Aurelian,” Willow said patiently. “I know it’s hard to accept. I know only days ago you were back home in London and it wasn’t even 1900, but – ”

“Exactly!” William said calmly and Spike drew in the breath he didn’t need as he realised what his double was saying.

“Hey, I’m just confused Slayer girl here,” Buffy said. “Someone explainy, please!”

“I haven’t been turned yet,” William said softly. “I may well be in this vampire body, but I, me, the person I am – I do not know how to word it in a clearer fashion - I am not William the Bloody.”

“You mean – ”

“He means the man inside my body hasn’t been to a certain soddin’ party, he hasn’t bumped into Liam, Darla and Dru. He hasn’t been bitten. He’s not an Aurelian.” Spike smiled in reluctant admiration. He didn’t remember having that many brains when he was William, but maybe he had!

Angel had always made him feel like the village idiot, the one who had to be taught how to be a vampire, the rules and regulations – and punished him when he’d defiantly broken them. Somewhere along the years, he’d come to believe William had been a soft, stupid man. Now he was wondering if he’d been wrong.

“So, if we kill The Master, I won’t die,” William said softly.

“But I will!“ Spike said flatly. “I couldn’t be more Aurelian if I tried. And there’s still Mr Poncy Hair up in L.A. He’d vanish in a puff of dust, too. Be sad about that, would you, Slayer?”

“I don’t want either of you to die,” Buffy said flatly, refusing to be drawn into some jealousy driven spat. “Will, surely there has to be some way round this part of the Thrall?”

The redhead bit her lip and dragged the little black book out from where she’d hidden it under the counter when the Master’s minions had attacked the shop. She turned the parchment pages over slowly, hunting for the right section. Anya peeked over her shoulder and made noises of appreciation when the page with the pictures came into view.

“Goodness, Buffy, is that what you were supposed to do with William? I think it’s probably a good idea that you sent Xander away. He still has these ridiculous notions of chivalry where you’re concerned, and – well, doing THAT – certainly not chivalrous!”

Buffy felt Spike tense; his head turned slowly and she hoped to God he couldn’t see the little explicit diagrams of a vampire and a slayer having sex. What he was imagining had happened was bad enough. But then what right did he have to feel jealous? They weren’t a couple, they weren’t – heaven forbid! – engaged.

“Perhaps I can help with the Latin translation,” William said. “It only seems like a few days ago that I was translating some verses by Cicero for the Reverend Ingram and - ”

“It was only a few days ago!” Spike muttered and watched as Willow and William bent over the book, feverishly writing down words, then muttering and crossing them out, while Anya made unhelpful comments in the background.

Buffy straddled her chair and stared down at Spike as he sprawled on the floor. This was the first chance she’d had to speak to him on his own. “Do you – do you remember anything after the demon burnt you?” she asked.

Spike shrugged. “No, pet. Loads of friggin’ pain, thought I was going to die, then – bam! — here I was back in the Magic Shop, having lost days out of my unlife to find my girl has been shagging someone who looks just like me.”

“I’m not your girl,” she replied automatically, wishing the hot colour wouldn’t flood up into her cheeks in this juvenile fashion. “And William – he is you, Spike!”

The platinum head turned towards her; the eyes hard. “No, he isn’t, pet. I think we’ve already established that. He’s the man I was, borrowing my body.”

Buffy ran her fingers over the wooden chair back, feeling the rough splinters digging into her skin. “It was just – he was – he is you, Spike! OK, I knew it was William, but it was still your body, your voice. I wanted – ”

“You wanted a good shag, luv, that’s obvious.” Spike obviously wasn’t prepared to forgive and forget. “Hope it lived up to expectations, but then remembering what an inept fool I was before I was turned, I can only imagine that you were doing all the work! So what was it like, Slayer? I suppose his prick is as big as mine? Well, it would have to be, wouldn‘t it. Same body. But let‘s face it, we all know it isn’t the size but what you do with it! Or that’s what you girls always tell us. Did you get off OK? Did you scream for him like you do for me? Did you open your legs wide and beg him to rub your clit and make you come, over and over again? ”

“Stop it!” Buffy hissed angrily. “Just – stop it! You can’t lecture me about sleeping with doubles. You had that awful Buffybot thing living in your crypt for weeks! What were you doing with her? As if I didn’t know. Pretending it was me!”

“That’s different.”

“No. Yes. Oh, jeez, Spike, I can’t deal with this right now. In fact, hey, there’s nothing to deal with. I slept with William – either get over it or don’t. It happened. I thought you were dead, then you weren’t. OK, it was William, but he’s you, Spike. You’re both parts of the same person.”

She jumped up and strode across to peer out of the door into the street again. She didn’t think The Master would actually stroll down the sidewalk to meet her, but she couldn’t sit there arguing with Spike any more.

Her thoughts were all jumbled up inside her head and she desperately wanted to hit something – or someone, preferably Spike. OK, perhaps having sex with William had been wrong – but god, how enjoyable, a voice inside her head whispered – but he hadn’t been a stranger. He’d been a Spike she’d never had the chance to meet, a young, innocent Spike, untouched by Dru, Angel and Darla. And she’d never be able to find the words to explain to the vampire that she loved that part of him as much as the tough, snarky street-fighter she’d known all these years.

Love! There was that word again, the one she’d whispered to him days ago in the little lakeside hut. At least he didn’t remember that moment of weakness. She could just imagine how triumphant he’d be if he did.

“Buffy!” Willow’s voice sounded triumphant. “I think we might have found something.”

She and William were looking pleased with themselves. “Look, this line here, you can translate it in several different ways. The root of this Latin verb — ”

“Will, just tell me what it says. Please!”

“OK, right. Well, it’s talking about defeating The Master. When the Thrall happens and he rises, then the Slayer has to act upon the Demon Charm. I thought the wording meant you had to kill him, but you could read this, well, William and me think you could read this – ”

“Bloody Hell!”

Willow shot Spike an anxious glance. “It says, “Makes him pass away. Send him forth out of this world.”

Buffy frowned. “OK, that sounds like killing him to me.”

Anya pursed her lips. “That’s because you’re the Slayer,” she put in. “Everything you do has killing as the end result. I find it most disagreeable. To any sensible demon those words would mean you had to send The Master into another dimension altogether. And he doesn’t have to be dead for you to do that!”

To be continued.