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Chapter Four
 
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Chapter 4



AN: I’m still waiting for the mods of the archives to get back to me about my penname change. I don’t want to open a new account and lose my reviews and make people re-fave me and have to re-fave all my faves...etc. Either way, the new penname is Blood Faerie, just so you know what to look for. Thank you to DreamsofSpike and Ruth for their spectacular beta skills.



******


Sunnydale, 2001


The Bronze was packed with young adults—the same as usual. There was a band playing on stage while people swayed to the beat on the dance floor. The light was low and perfect for those that hid in the corners to flirt—or do more than flirt. Sweat, arousal, and alcohol all wafted through the air, attracting the not-so-human to come mingle and sometimes lure a victim away if they thought they were slick enough.

Above the crowd in her customary place on the catwalk, Elizabeth wasn’t one of those looking for a meal; she came just to watch. Maybe she would catch one of those shopping for a meal and stop them before they killed. Sometimes she went down and just pretended to be a normal person hanging out in a bar, but that was rare, and only if one of her friends were there. The term “friend” was used loosely for the current slayer and her merry band of supporters, whom Elizabeth tried to help when she could.

Yes, things had changed for Elizabeth over the last century since she had sired her first and only childe. She now went by the name Buffy, for one. To go with her new identity as Buffy, she wore her hair blonde and to just past her shoulders. Of course, she adopted the modern style of clothing unlike some vampires who seemed to be stuck in a fashion time-warp. That was mostly the mindless minions, master vampires were a bit better at adapting; that’s why they were masters.

Buffy didn’t feel like a master vampire anymore, but she knew she wasn’t a minion. She just...existed. So while she just “existed” she helped the slayer and her friends, hoping that in some small way it might eventually make up for all the evil she had done before...that night.

“Thought I’d find you up here,” a voice said from behind her and Buffy whirled around to see said slayer, Faith. “Musta been in some deep, deep thought to have not noticed me walking in the door...then walking up behind you, B.”

“Yeah, well, tortured soul and all,” Buffy said with a nonchalant shrug and stepped away from the railing. Her accent wasn’t as pronounced as it once had been. “Are you here alone?”

“Pretty much. Willow and Tara are at some voodoo-fest thing up north while Anya is doing inventory. And yeah, Giles is there ‘helping’ her.” Faith made air quotes and rolled her eyes. “Nick and I had a date, but he got paged to work...so here I am.”

That wasn’t all that uncommon, as Nick was a Federal Marshall that had been stationed in Sunnydale. It had been interesting when he kept finding Faith and the others connected to all the weird things that went on there—even more interesting when an attraction had grown between the two of them. The decision was finally made to let him in on the whole slayer thing before he decided that they needed to be turned in no matter how much he liked Faith.

“How about we do a small patrol?” Faith finally suggested after they stood there awkwardly for a few moments.

“Sounds good to me,” Buffy replied with a nod.

They started toward the stairs and stopped at the same time as they both sensed the same thing. A vampire had entered the club. Their eyes searched the crowd, only being able to pick out a shock of bright white hair that stood out against everything else.

Buffy elbowed Faith lightly. “Lead him out back and I’ll be waiting for our usual trap.”

Without waiting for confirmation, the blonde vampire hurried down the last of the steps and out the door. She went around to the alley and waited in the shadows with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. This maneuver almost always worked, resulting in the vampire sensing Faith and following her right to Buffy.

The door opened and her eyes started to bleed yellow in preparation for the fight. First, Faith slipped out and darted away from the door, turning back to see if their target had taken the bait. When the door opened again, Buffy went into action and rushed the vampire, shoving him into the wall.

“Surprise!” she shouted with glee as she grabbed his shoulders, slamming him against the wall again and then raising her fist to swing at him.

Eyes met in the same instant that her fist was caught in a vice-like grip. She gasped as she recognized the face, the only thing remaining of the man she once knew. The rest was so different; she apparently wasn’t the only one who had gone through a complete overhaul. His hair was bleached and slicked back, while his clothes were a monotone black.

“William?”

“Surprise,” he repeated back to her with a mocking smile. “An’ the name’s Spike now.”

“Hold on,” Faith cut in as she came up beside Buffy. “You know him, B?”

“Bee?” His brows went up as he released her fist.

Buffy looked at him worriedly then back to Faith, biting her lip. “Yeah, I do. I’m his sire.”

She finally let go of him and tried to back away, but he grabbed her and spun her around to reverse their previous position. Faith started forward to help, but Buffy held up her hand.

“This is...personal. You should go on that patrol without me and I’ll fill you in later,” Buffy said then looked back towards Spike, adding, “If I can.”

“What the hell is that s’posed to mean?” Faith took a step forward.

Spike finally broke the glare he had going so that he could turn his head toward the slayer he had originally come to find. “She said go; this is between us.”

The brunette’s jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed for a moment. She didn’t like being ordered around, but another look at her friend told her that this really wasn’t where she should be at the moment. So with a tightlipped nod to Buffy, she turned and stormed out of the alley.

“Just do it. I know that’s what you want.” Buffy looked up at Spike passively when his hard eyes turned back on her. “Though, got to admit, I didn’t think you’d still be around.”

“The desperation to survive will make you do surprisin’ things,” he responded, then tilted his head. “An’ just what is it that you think I want to do?”

“Kill me. Do it; I deserve it.”

“No. I’m not lettin’ you take the easy way out.” He shook his head then tightened his hand on her throat. “An’ besides, I want answers. Why did you just leave me there? What the bleedin’ hell happened?”

“Your soul...I think it...tainted me somehow,” she explained softly. “I couldn’t stay. At first, I thought if I got far away from you that it would go away. Then I thought I could ignore it, pretend it all never happened, but it just got worse, eating away at me. By the time I learned to accept it, I thought it was too late and that you...you were dead. I mean, I never taught you much about being a vampire and you wouldn’t feed on your own. Not to mention the state I left you in...so I thought...”

She dissolved into tears as the remorse and grief she felt tore at her all over again, as fresh as ever. He snarled and shook her harshly.

“You don’t get to cry!” He slapped her hard across her face and tossed her to the ground. “Yes, you tortured an’ starved me. You left me with only the key to my chains an’ bleedin’ little clue as to what I truly was. But then, you didn’t fully understand either because I was different, right? Even stakin’ me an’ puttin’ me out of my misery would have been better than what you did!”

“I’m sorry...so sorry,” she repeated as she held her hands over her face. “Just stake me.”

His duster rustled as he knelt beside the shaking vampire. He could hardly believe this was the same heinous bitch that had sired him and made his existence a living hell for so long. It could be true that she had been tainted by his soul, judging from what he had witnessed this night.

It didn’t mean he was going to forgive her, though.

He grabbed her hair and jerked her head back, leaning his face in close to hers. Her eyes were wide and fearful, then closed as she assumed that he was about to finally dust her.

“I told you; you don’t get the easy way out,” he hissed. “You need to suffer with that soul. Also, you workin’ with the slayer now?”

“Y-yes. I do help her and her friends.” She opened her eyes again and looked up at him pleadingly. “I want to make up for it. I want to make up for it all. There’s nothing else left for me.”

“You want to make it up to me too then?” He cocked a brow and dragged her to her feet with him. “’Cause you’ve got a lot to make up for, missy.”

“I know.” Her voice came out soft and resigned.

They both heard the sounds of humans approaching the door inside the club and he pulled her down the alley. She didn’t resist him, accepting her fate since she knew there was nothing he could do to her that she didn’t wholly deserve.

“We need to make this a bit more private. My revenge deserves the proper atmosphere...it wouldn’t be a fittin’ revenge if it didn’t live up to the crime.”

The mansion on Crawford Street seemed very fitting to Spike. It seemed the sort of place where nefarious things had always gone on behind closed doors—the sort of place that surely held many dark secrets. One of those secrets had to be why the grand house sat abandoned on the outskirts of Sunnydale, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Inside, they found a place that looked to be from another time, but covered with a healthy layer of dust. Spike eyed everything as he led her along behind him, weighing the possibilities of each room until he reached a bedroom with a large canopy bed. A sadistic smile curved his lips upward as he drew her toward the bed while pulling down the drapes so that he could use them to bind her to the four posts.

He straddled her waist and his fingers flitted over the V-neck of her wine-coloured halter, brushing against the swell of her breasts. His tongue darted out to wet his lips as he remembered what she looked like completely nude and he tore the top away. He lowered his mouth to capture one nipple between his teeth, giving it a tug and riding her when she arched beneath him. When he sat up again, he smoothed his hands over his bulging erection.

“I think you still owe me my release, yeah?” He arched a scarred brow at her. “Goin’ to take care of it for me now?”

Buffy’s eyes went wide for a moment as they locked on the area mentioned then darted up to his again. Her body went slack again and she nodded, closing her eyes as she opened her mouth.

This reaction brought a small frown to Spike’s face, but he shook it off as he decided that this was his lucky day. He quickly freed himself from his jeans and climbed further up her body so that he could slide his cock between those pouty lips. At the feel of her tongue massaging the underside of his shaft, he dropped his head back with a groan.

“Ohh, bloody hell, that feels good, luv,” he ground out and thrust his hips forward.

Revenge was the farthest thing from his mind as she used her talented mouth on him. Instead he was thinking things he shouldn’t be thinking about his former abuser. Images flooded his mind of other things he could do with her that would prove that he was quite different from that shy virgin he once had been.

Spike had gained plenty of experience over the years. The sad thing was that every time he had thought of her, unfortunately. She had completely ruined him in every way.

Not that he was really complaining as began to feel his body growing ever more ready to come into that lovely mouth. His hand tightened in her hair and that was all the warning she got before he started shooting his seed down her throat.

His eyes found hers and saw that she was prepared for him to take this further. That halted him—the same quiet acceptance that he still saw in her eyes, the same as he had seen when she had just opened her mouth for his cock a few moments earlier. The broken way that she was accepting his right to torture her in return for her own treatment of him—it just stopped him in his tracks.

Quickly sliding off her, he tucked himself into his pants and shook his head as he swiftly untied her. “No...no. If I did the eye-for-an-eye thing I would be no better than you. You deserve it...but I’m better than that.”

Buffy rose up on her elbows and swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “You don’t forgive me, though, and you’re not going to dust me. So...what does this mean?”

“It means that even if you did up your hair an’ talk differently, that I can’t look at you without seein’ the bitch that dragged me into hell. It means that I don’t bloody well know what to do with you takin’ away my chance at revenge by havin’ a soddin’ soul an’ wantin’ me to stake you!” His voice got higher with a note of hysteria on the end.

“Just tell me what you want me to do to help make it better,” she said as she started to rise from the bed to go to him.

“Stop! Stop!” Spike nearly screamed at her and stumbled backwards towards the door.

“O-okay, stopping.” She held up her hands defensively. “Please, just calm down.”

An inhuman laugh had her brows knitting together as he waved a finger at her. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Not you.”

“Oh...William...” She bit her lip and walked over to him even as he started shaking his head angrily at the use of his name. “Tonight has been too much for you, hasn’t it?”

His only response was to whimper and try to jerk away from her.

“No,” she whispered soothingly. “Let me start here with being the Sire you deserve so that we can begin again—the right way.”

With that, Buffy opened the Sire/Childe bond for the first time in over a century and thrust energy down the connection to Spike, forcing him to sleep before he hurt himself or did something worse. His face went slack and he collapsed into her arms to be cradled close to her chest.

She looked down at him tenderly for a moment before glancing around. “I don’t know where you’re staying, honey, and I know you don’t want to wake up here once you’ve had your rest. So the only other option is my place.”

That decided, she hefted him up over her shoulder so that she could carry him out of the mansion. From there she walked across Sunnydale, ignoring the stares as she made her way to her small apartment downtown. Inside, she laid him down on her bed and yanked his boots off with some trouble. Worse, she then wrestled him out of the duster so that she could put it along with the boots on the chair beside the bed.

As soon as she had him tucked into bed, she padded back to her living room where she made sure the curtains were tightly drawn before collapsing on the couch with a yawn.

What. A. Night.
 
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