Chapter 5 - Vampire Activity

The Watcher’s Journal of Sir Arthur Gosnard-Tisklin.

Skelton on Ure, September 25, 1900 – Another tempest from my Slayer. She refuses to don gear appropriate to performing her duties. She states emphatically that bloomers are unbecoming. I eventually persuaded her to attempt a pair of riding trousers. I was forced to send to London to acquire a matching hat of leaf green with a jaunty ostrich feather and cream-colored braid in order to obtain her concession. Perhaps her first introduction to a vampire will show her that practicality is more important than fashion.

There was no dissuading her from slashing at the family cat with her riding crop.

***

Willow returned to their dorm room late that afternoon. She’d checked the Bronze, Restfield Cemetery, the university library, the Magic Box, Buffy’s mom’s house and various other Buffy haunts but couldn’t find Buffy. Willow went back to the pub where Xander had been working, to see if Buffy returned there for more magicked-up beer. The Sunnydale Police Crime Scene Investigation Team swarmed all over the place and Willow was afraid to cross the yellow tape lines and draw attention to herself.

She’d run out of places to look, so she went back to their dorm room so she could call Giles and find out if he’d heard anything. To her surprise and annoyance and relief, Buffy was lying on her bed. She was wearing her black and white fluffy sheep pajamas, which, to be frank, had seen better days.

Willow had run around all day and worried herself sick and here was Buffy, tucked into her bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling with great intensity. She’d missed her Wicca meeting and their stupid bake sale and seeing her new friend. Missing the bake sale, not so bad.

“Buffy! Where have you been? I’m wearing my Aggravated Face. Do you see my Aggravated Face?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Willow wasn’t about to let Buffy escape a good talking to after what she’d been through last night and this morning and this afternoon looking for her friend. “Probably not, but you’re going to tell me.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for Consoling Girl Talk. Oh, my head.” Buffy attempted to sit up in her bed, then plopped back down so she could stare at the ceiling until her eyes could focus. Every part of her hurt. Her hair hurt. Her eyebrows hurt. Her earlobes hurt.

“Where were you? I was Crazy Girl looking all over for you. Giles and Xander were worried, too, for a half hour until they went home to sleep.”

“I’m sorry, Will. I got really drunk last night. I wasn’t thinking of the straight.”

“No kidding. The beer you drank had a magick potion in it.”

“It did?” So, Spike didn’t doctor her beer. He just took advantage of the situation. She was still going to kick his butt for giving her the best sexual experience of her life. Just as soon as she could figure out a way to get around this damn claim.

“Yeah, the owner of the bar told Xander he put a potion in the beer. Anyone who drank Black Frost beer turned One Million B.C.”

Buffy imagined herself in a furry bikini – not a good look. “Oh. The bar guy is dead. I walked past there on the way home and the police were taking his body out.”

Yesterday, she might have been upset about being drugged and the bar guy being killed by a vampire, but now she had much bigger worries. Spike worries.

Willow’s face relaxed into Concerned Best Friend Form. “Where were you all night? You didn’t hook up again with those four guys?”

“No, gutterface!” Why was Willow always asking her if she had sex with four guys at once? Not that she hadn’t done something just as bad, because sleeping with a vampire – sleeping with Spike - rated very, very high on the Slutapalooza Scale.

Buffy would have preferred to keep her rendezvous with Spike a secret, even from her best friend, but she needed Maxium Help Of The Post Hasty Researchy Kind to get rid of this mating claim.

“Will, promise you won’t tell anybody. Not even Giles. Especially not Giles.”

“Tell what?”

“I went back to the pub last night and drank some more beer and I passed out. When I woke up, I was with Spike.”

“You mean with Spike? Or, just with Spike?”

“I mean biblical with as in naked and in bed. And, withiness ensued.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The two friends didn’t talk for a couple of minutes while they contemplated the horrifying news.

Willow spoke first. “How was it? Compare and contrast.”

“I’m a ho,” Buffy said. “I can compare and contrast. It was … He … and I … we both … I never before … ”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Buffy raised her splitting head again and put her feet on the floor. I’m tough. I’m the Slayer and – owwww - I’m not sitting down again for two days. She rolled out of bed.

“Will, what do you know about vampires? I mean besides the killing-staking-holy water-sunlight-cut off their heads-garlic stuff?”

“Not much. I checked out Giles’ big Vampyr Book, the one with the green cover and the gold leaf lettering, a couple of times. Pretty dry, even for me.”

“Yeah, he tried to get me to read it.” Like only every day for the past three years.

“I could go look at it again. What do you need to know about?”

Buffy twirled a lock of hair around her finger and sniffed the end. “Vampire mating claims.”

Willow’s mouth fell open. After a minute, she pushed her chin up with her hand. “Did Spike?”

“He said he claimed me and I think it’s true because when I punched him in the nose, you know, like I do sometimes, my nose hurt, too.”

“Why did he claim you? I thought he’s all with the seething hatred?”

“Neither one of us was much with the seething hatred last night.” Or this morning. Or this afternoon. “I don’t know why he claimed me. He’s up to something.”

“Get dressed. We’ll go over to Giles’ place. You distract him and I’ll steal the book.”


***

Bob Beazzle, better known in Sunnydale as Bob the Warlock, slid onto a stool at Willy’s Place and ordered a beer in a bottle. He didn’t think much of Willy’s dishwashing skills.

Bob was a good-looking guy and young for a warlock. He had long, straight brown hair pulled into a pony tail, a straight nose and gray eyes. His manly beauty had once been marred by thick eyebrows that grew straight across his face and together in the middle until Giselta paid to have them lasered out so he didn’t look like Java Man in their wedding pix. He kept himself fit through a judicious use of a potion he’d concocted and wore blue jeans and a white wife beater most days. He didn’t like to draw unnecessary attention to himself by wearing fancy clothes and his new wife said he looked cool in jeans.

He didn’t like coming to Willy’s much, Willy’s was a dump, but if you wanted info, you had to go where the info got blabbed around. Nobody blabbed as much as Willy.

“So, Bob,” Willy said as he delivered the beer. “What’s up in Warlock World?”

“Working on a job. Gonna need some blood.”

“Sure. I got plenty.” Willy leaned over the bar to speak so only Bob could hear him. “Say Bob, are you still interested in hearing what the Slayer’s up to?”

Two vampires at the end of the bar turned to stare at Willy, their eyes glowing like golden plates of fire.

Bob sucked on his beer bottle. “I might be.”

“This is good info. It’s gonna cost ya.”

Bob took a wadded twenty out of his jeans pocket and flipped it on the bar.

Willy scooped it up. “This is strictly a rumor, but I heard that Spike’s back in town.”

“So?”

“Actually, the part about Spike being back in town isn’t the rumor. The part I heard about Spike putting a vampire mating claim on the Slayer is the rumor.”

William the Bloody getting the drop on the Slayer. That was news worth paying for, if true. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Word is the Slayer got snockered over at your brother-in-law’s pub and Spike had her upside down and halfway to Happyland before she knew it.”

Bob finished his beer. “Who’s your source?”

Willy polished the bar with his rag. “You know I can’t reveal my source.”

Bob raised his little finger and Willy found himself floating in the air, surrounded by a circle of large knives pointed directly at tender parts of his anatomy. “Don’t piss me off, Willy.”

“Okay, okay. Let me down.” Willy dropped to the floor with a thud. He got up and brushed himself off, slicked back his hair and wiped the grease on his apron. He checked to see that the knives had disappeared before answering. “You gotta promise not to tell anyone where this came from.”

Bob waved his hand in agreement.

Willy leaned over to whisper after glancing at the vampires sitting at the end of the bar. “Spike told me himself. He claimed the Slayer.”

Bob finished his beer, pushed himself away from the bar and walked over to the pay phone. He dialed a long-distance number to London.

“Agent Collin.”

“It’s Bob. Got some info about your Slayer and her new boyfriend.”


***

Buffy and Willow were up to something, although Giles couldn’t fathom what it might be. They never came over on weekday evenings unless an apocalypse was imminent. Since there was no world-ending event that he knew of, he concluded the two were engaged in some activity they didn’t want him to know about. Their secretive behavior stiffened his resolve to find them out.

“How about making some tea, Giles? I’d like some tea and so would Willow,” Buffy said.

“If you do, it will be the first time since I’ve known you. What are you two up to?”

“Don’t be so suspicious, Giles. Will and I are older now. We have more mature tastes. Hence, the drinking of tasteless leafy bits stewed in hot water.”

These two were not noticeably more mature than the day he’d first met them. He acquiesced and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle to give them an opportunity to accomplish whatever nefarious deed they’d come over to accomplish.

As soon as he went into the kitchen, Willow slipped over to the cabinet where Giles kept his most essential Watcher books. There were dozens – Constructive Comparisons of Vampire and Human Physiology with Emphasis on Significant Variations in Arterial, Vascular and Neurological System Deviations; Nesting Habits of Renaissance Vampire Clans; The Vampire and the Church – a Compendium of Canon Law and Exegesis on the Extermination of Vampires; Debrett’s Members of Her Majesty’s Watcher’s Council; Burke’s Vampyr Lineage – Volumes I and II; Lunar Patterns and Seasonal Disparities in Vampire Activity – and others.

She located the Vampyr book and shoved it in her school bag. She scooted the other books together so Giles wouldn’t notice the missing volume and flopped down on the couch next to Buffy.

Giles brought a tray into the living room and handed the girls their tea cups. They each put three cubes of sugar in their cups and stoically sipped the hot tea without making their usual faces.

“Are there any cookies?” Buffy asked.

Giles got up and rummaged through a kitchen cabinet and took out a dilapidated box. “I have some Chomundley’s Digestive Biscuits.”

Buffy swallowed hard. He’d tricked her into eating a Chomundley’s Digestive Biscuit before.

“Are you two ready to tell me why you’re here?”

Buffy avoided looking at Giles, which he interpreted to mean that the trouble primarily involved his Slayer.

“I came over to find out what’s-the-what on this Caveman Beer. Did you find out anything?” Buffy placed a single digestive biscuit on her saucer.

Giles looked around the room. Buffy or Willow had taken something, but what? And, why was Buffy asking about the magicked beer when Willow knew as much about the beer as he did?

“Xander obtained a confession from the pub owner, Jack Frostle. Frostle doctored the beer with some potion prepared for him by his warlock brother-in-law. Apparently, the owner became incensed at the rude behavior of your fellow collegians and determined to revenge himself on them by temporarily converting them into sub-humans.”

“Hey! I’m wasn’t sub-human.”

“I’m sorry, Buffy, but your behavior last night was astonishingly primitive. I’m relieved to see the effects of the potion appear to have worn off with no untoward consequences.”

Buffy stared into her teacup and pushed the biscuit around the plate with the tip of her finger. She was pretty sure Spike Sex and Vampire Mating Claim came under the Untoward Consequences Category.

“Where did you go all night? We were extremely worried about you.”

“Yeah, Giles,” Willow said. “You and Xander were so worried you both went right home and went to sleep.”

“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t worried. It’s important to get one’s proper rest in time of emergency. Buffy?”

“Well, I … I wandered around and I don’t exactly remember where I went. It’s all kinda fuzzy.”

Fuzzy was becoming clearer by the moment. Arriving at Spike’s – lair – did vampires still have lairs? – ripping her own clothes off – and putting his thing in her mouth, and oh, I so do not want to think about what happened after that.

“That’s not surprising. I suggest you stay out of that drinking establishment in the future.” She was obviously lying. Something had occurred to Buffy that she was most determined to hide from him. He’d have to question Willow later to find out the truth.

“I don’t think the bartender is going to be a problem anymore,” Buffy said. “I saw the police taking out his body this morning. Do vampires still have lairs?”

Giles spoke sharply. “Lairs? What do vampire lairs have to do with …”

“You know, lairs where they nest or hang …” or have sex with unsuspecting drunk and potioned-up persons and sneaky sneaked a mating claim on those persons, “or whatever vampires do when they’re not all bitey? Do vampires take their mates to their lairs?”

“I know what a lair is, Buffy. I don’t understand why …”

“I guess if they can drive, they can have apartments, or houses, or mansions even. Angel lived in a mansion one time, but he never called it his lair.”

Willow elbowed Buffy to shut her up.

“I can check the coroner’s office,” Willow said to cut off Buffy’s odd questions, which could only be heading in the Spike direction, “and obtain the details of Mr. Frostle’s death. I suspect unusual circumstances are involved.”

“Yes. Unusual circumstances. Will, we’d better get going so you can check into things. And, biting. And, vampire activity.”

“Thanks for the tea, Giles. Got to run,” they said together. Buffy and Willow hurried out the door without finishing their tea or eating a single digestive biscuit or being exposed to that awful, sour marmalade that he liked.

It took Giles less than two minutes of inspecting the room to discover Willow and Buffy had stolen one of his essential Watcher books. His Vampyr book, a private edition published by the Council in 1911 to provide practical information for acting Watchers, to be precise. The very book he’d attempted to get Buffy to read for the past three years without success.

What the devil were they up to? Whose lair had Buffy been visiting? And, why?

***

Spike stationed himself in the alley behind the Bronze and smoked a cigarette. The Bronze was an excellent place for locating tasty victims who came to dance and get loaded and for locating vampires who came to feed on those tasty young victims. Spike was not looking for victims this evening. He was still topped off with Slayer blood. He was here for an entirely different purpose.

A male vampire with his arm draped around the waist of a likely looking young female came out the back door. “I’m starved, baby. Let’s take a walk,” he said to the girl as he clamped his fingers into her shoulder. His face wrinkled up and his fangs sprang out.

The girl screamed and tried to break free.

Spike stepped forward and punched the vampire in the nose. “Get lost, baby,” he said to the girl. He broke out his own vamp face.

The girl ran out of the alley, crying and hyperventilating.

“What the fuck, man? That was my dinner. Go find your own.”

Spike struck him in the face and kicked him in the ear.

The male vampire punched back. He was no fledge, but not as strong or smart or fast as Spike. He flailed at Spike’s gut, tried a few kicks, then tried to run.

Spike slammed him against a wall and worked him over, one punch after another to the vamp’s face, until he crumpled to the pavement.

“My name is Spike. You can call me Master.”


***

Bob the Warlock stirred a bubbling pot of jellied newts. He was using one of the new, fire-red Le Creuset pots he and Giselta received as a wedding gift. Le Creuset was perfect for brewing up concoctions that required long cook times, if you didn’t mind hearing your wife bitch about the aftertaste in everything you cooked for three weeks.

While he stirred, he kept an eye on his guest. He wasn’t about to turn his back on this bitch. “The price is not negotiable. Cash.” He could definitely use some cash. Giselta was turning out to be a very cash intensive female.

Rosamund propped her black boots on Bob’s glass-topped, aluminum kitchen table and teetered back on two legs of the matching aluminum chair with the steel-gray microfiber seat cover. The whole kitchen was the last word in Hellmouth Homes trendiness. Wood cabinets, Sub Zero stainless steel refrigerator, Krupp’s latte maker, ferns. The ferns were the worst. Must be the work of Bob’s new wife. The whole place reeked of Mrs. Warlock.

She spread her knees for Bob’s benefit. Bob wasn’t nearly as disgusting as Jack, his brother-in-law, and she was still horny from her last kill.

Bob was tall, skinny and had a cute, pony tail hanging down his back. Guys with pony tails could always be counted on for maximum wickedness. He hadn’t shaved for two days. Rosamund liked the unshaved look on human males. You didn’t get that often with vampire males, since it took weeks for their beards to grow out. Bob dressed like a dud. Blue jeans and a white wifebeater and a flannel shirt and brown shitkicker boots. How boring could you get? You’d think a warlock would magick up an Armani suit and a silk shirt for himself. Still, Bob wasn’t completely without studly attributes.

“Didn’t expect you’d work for free. There’s other means of payment.” She ran her fingers up the inside of her thigh and rubbed her crotch.

“I prefer my tail a bit warmer than room temperature and without fangs. Cash.”

She banged the chair down on the oak, factory-scarred floor.

Rosamund pulled two thousand dollars out of her leather vest, where she’d crammed it into her cleavage. It was the same cash she’d previously given to Jack and retrieved after she’d drained him. She tossed the wad of cash on the kitchen table.

“Two thousand.”

She didn’t mind offering Bob a nice sum of cash, since she didn’t plan on letting him keep it.

Bob picked up the cash, sealed it in a baggie, and dropped the bag into a quart Mason jar of holy water and screwed the lid on the jar. “In case you change your mind.”

Fuck!

He plucked a shopping list out of his pocket and drew a cross on a chain out of his shirt.

“Here’s a list of ingredients. You can get everything, except the blood, at the Magic Box on Revena Street. They’re open till midnight.”

Rosamund snatched the list out of his hand. “And, where the fuck do you think I’m going to get a gallon and a half of human blood? Hmmm?”

“Willy’s Place. It’s near Dantesco and Center Streets. Once you get to the neighborhood, ask any demon or vamp you see. They can give you directions.”

He should really pay for all this crap as part of the deal. Since she’d foolishly let him have all her money, she was now going to have to kill two or three people to come up with enough cash to pay for the blood and other stuff. It could take fifteen or twenty minutes. “If I’m doing all this running around town and shopping for all this fairy tale crap, what am I paying you for?”

“You’re paying me to bring your sister back to unlife. Now, beat it. And, keep an eye out for the Slayer. Sunnydale is her town.”

“I’ll be watching for her. You can count on it.”

Rosamund stalked out of the house, hopped into the black Miata she’d stolen earlier that evening and roared away.


***

Damn, Slayer blood was good. The extra muscle power it gave him hadn’t even begun to wear off.

Spike had taken out twelve vampires outside the Bronze and forced them to acknowledge him as their Master, without breaking into a sweat, which he didn’t do anyway. He was about to call it a night and go over to the new lair and check to make sure that his vampires had shown up, when two fledges peeked out the back door.

“Hey, uh, Spike?” said a skinny vamp with reddish-blonde hair that stuck up.

“Yeah?” Who was this Nancy Boy? He looked vaguely familiar. Oh yeah, he was one of Harmony’s flunkies. The woman had no taste.

The skinny vamp, who was wearing a red and yellow restaurant shirt and a plastic badge that said ‘Hello, My Name is Tucker. Can I Take Your Order?’ stepped outside, followed by a big vamp wearing a purple and yellow Sunnydale High football jersey and purple satin baggy shorts that came below his knees. “I’m Tucker, and this is Brad. We’re like Wicked Evil Vampires and we heard you were putting together a Lair. We’d like to join.”

Spike took a swig from his flask. He should kill these two, but he didn’t want to waste any of his borrowed Slayer strength. “And, I should take in you two losers because?”

“We used to belong to Harmony, but we’re way too Evil to hang with her. And, also, dude, it’s like way embarrassing to have a girl for a Master.”

“Yeah,” said Brad. “Harmony’s a ‘tard.”

Spike almost felt sorry for the two morons. Having Harmony for your Master was an indignity not to be born by any self-respecting vampire.

“The lair is over on Camino Viejo. You can follow the last vamp I sent over there. I busted his fang and it’s dripping blood. If you two Special Ed’s can find the lair, you can stay.”

Tucker pulled aside the neck on his tee shirt and flopped his head over. “Do you want to bite us or something to make it official?”

Spike fixed them with a malevolent stare of excruciating intensity. “Get out of my sight.”

Tucker and Brad shuffled out of the alley, following the blood trail.

Spike was tucking his flask away, when another vampire stepped out of the shadows.

He looked about thirty vamp years and had the thick arms and legs of a professional boxer. His bare chest and arms were covered with black tattoos of devils and other magick symbols. He stood like a rock, his bald head and nose and ear and nipple piercings gleaming in the flickering candlelight.

“Very impressive couple of minions, Spike.”

“Who the hell are you?” Spike adjusted his leather coat. Here was a fine vamp to add to his collection. Not a bleeding fledge like the two who’d just left.

“Cleotus.”

“Never heard of you. Ready to get your ass kicked or do you just want to give in and spare yourself part of a beating?” Spike had no intention of letting this Cleotus character off without a royal ass kicking. Begin as you mean to go on.

Cleotus grinned and assumed a fighting stance. He flicked his fingers at Spike to show that he was ready.

Spike smiled back and kicked Cleotus in the face, launching him into a nearby dumpster and knocking him out with one blow. He bit a chunk out of the unconscious vampire’s neck and dragged him out of the alley.