Chapter 9 - What’s Missing?


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

Brontley, January 3, 1901 - The evening commenced in the usual manner with Lady Victorine pouting about going out in the cold and voicing her doubts about the necessity of killing vampires when everyone would be traveling to town for the season and the “ruddy blighters” as she indecorously calls them, will starve to dust. I pointed out to her, rather tersely, that not everyone went to London for the season.

We rode our horses in silence (her Ladyship being in a sulk) to the nearby village of Brontley, where a vampire had been stalking the inhabitants for the past three nights. We had scarcely approached the village, when my Slayer tossed her reins to me and leaped off her horse. She signaled to me that she felt the tingling on her neck that warned her of the presence of a vampire and trotted into the darkened churchyard with her stake clutched in her daintily gloved hand. She vaulted over the cemetery wall, in an enthusiastically athletic manner that she hadn’t demonstrated before, and disappeared from my sight. Perhaps, I thought, she is beginning to embrace her duties.

Lady Victorine had vanished from view when the horses began to prance nervously and neigh – then scream – in fright. My horse reared wildly and spun around in absolute terror. I was tossed to the ground and had barely regained my feet, when I was attacked. ≈§ ≈ § ≈


***

“Wake up!” Buffy said.

Buffy was standing in Spike’s bedroom, dripping water all over the floor, because Spike still hadn’t gotten an extra towel for her. If he was going to kidnap her every time he wanted to have sex, the least he could do was get her a towel.

“Quiet down, Wifey. I’m trying to sleep.”

“I so don’t care. You kidnapped me again and tricked me into sex and we’re going to talk about it.”

Spike rolled over onto his back. He was exhausted. Keeping up with a Slayer was not easy. “Did not. And, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s skip to the Make Up Sex part and forget about the argument.”

Buffy tossed a pillow at his face. “No. No Make Up Sex. No any kind of sex.”

“Can’t a man get some rest in his own abandoned mansion?”

“No.”

“Fine.” Spike sat up in bed and yawned. “I’m awake. What are we fighting about?”

“You put something in my drink last night, some of that magick potion stuff, and tricked me into having sex with you.”

“Okay. I did. Come back to bed.” He opened the claim, and gave Buffy a little psychic sweet talk to get her to cooperate. He hoped she wasn’t going to be this cranky every afternoon. Or, maybe he did. Give him an excuse to give her a spanking.

Buffy found herself curling up next to Spike. “What did you just do to me?”

Spike put his arms around her and drew her close. “Called to my mate. Anytime I want you to be near me, I can call you and you’ll come.” Maybe. Which was why he had to potion her up. He kissed her lips to distract her. Then, he kissed her again and sucked on her tongue.

Buffy leaped on the bed and straddled him and kissed him back. “I will not. And, I want a towel.”

“Is that what this is about?”

“I want a towel and my own toothbrush. Angel had an extra towel for me. And, a toothbrush. I only had sex with Angel once and he got me a towel. You oughta get me a bunch of towels since I’ve had sex with you a bunch of times.”

Spike picked up his bedroom bottle of booze and took a drink. “Wifey. We need to get something straight. If you’re going to be staying with me, I do not want to hear about that Big Poufter first thing in the afternoon when I wake up.”

“Tough. He treated me a lot nicer than you do.” Angel never did anything bad. He was practically a saint. Until he went all Evil.

“Like when he was torturing your Watcher? Or, killing that school teacher, that gypsy girl, I forget her name.”

Buffy sniffed. “Before that. When he had his soul.”

“Christ. The soul. Tell you what. I’ll pinch you a nice towel, all for yourself, if you promise never to mention that wanker Angel and his bleeding soul ever again.”

“Angel. Soul.”

Spike picked up the pillow and wrapped it over his face. What had been going through his heart when he made this dozy bint his mate? Her tiny warm hand slid up his thighs and stroked him and he remembered.

***

Buffy and Xander crept closer to the New Age Meditation and Happy Feelings Worship Center, hugging the late afternoon shadows. Buffy stepped with care as they approached the building, placing her boots so as not to rustle leaves or make other noises that might alert the vampires inside.

Xander tripped over a stick and crashed into a steel garbage can.

Buffy peeked into the window. The vamps were awake, but sluggish from their day’s sleep. Spike was still back at the mansion sleeping off last night’s, this morning’s and this afternoon’s Sex Capades. Using the claim, she touched the murky wall around his dreaming brain. He was dreaming about her and handcuffs and biting. She shook her head to empty her thoughts of sexy Spike dreams. Focus. She had to focus.

“I blocked off the back door. The only way out is the front door and the two front windows. Let’s pull back so we can cover all three exits,” Buffy said.

They crawled behind a large tree by the front sidewalk.

“We should have brought more ammo and more weapons,” Xander said. He dropped their weapons bag on the ground with a loud thump.

“Shhh! This will be fine. I can stake any vamps we don’t get with the first blast or two and you can use the crossbow. You load. I’ll shoot. Ready?”

Xander patted his red, yellow, green and blue plastic, battery-powered weapon. He handed her an identical piece.

Buffy picked up a pebble and tossed it at a crystal wind chime hanging by the front door and ducked behind the tree. The chime spun and tinkled.

A vampire opened the front door, yawned and looked around. Hearing nothing but the tinkling wind chime and seeing nothing to interest him, he turned to go back inside.

Buffy pitched another pebble on the sidewalk to lure him away from the lair. She didn’t want to alert all fifteen vampires at once.

He stepped forward as far as he could without entering the last rays of the setting sun that sliced across the sidewalk. He sniffed the air. “Who’s out here?”

“Plasmagram,” Buffy said. Okay, that was lame, but Spike and potion and too much sex were putting her off her game. She stood up and squirted the vamp’s chest, right over his dead heart, with a powerful blast from her holy-water loaded Supersoaker.

The vamp looked down and brushed his shirt as smoke curled up from his chest. Before he could figure out what had happened, he dusted.

She picked up another pebble and hit the wind chime again. Two more vamps came out.

“What the fuck, Leroy? Quit screwing around. The Master said to hang around,” one of the vampires said.

Buffy squirted them both straight to vampire hell.

Xander tossed her a loaded soaker and she ran up to the front door and knocked. The sun was down now and vampires boiled out of the door and windows in a rage. She blasted three more and Xander aced a couple with his reloaded soaker. The vamps came out fast now, hissing, spitting and snarling and shoving each other to get to her.

She attacked to draw them away from Xander. She cracked her empty soaker on one vamp’s head, tossed remains down and whipped out Mr. Pointy. She kicked the next vamp in the face and sent him flying, but couldn’t pause to stake him, because five more vamps were circling and taunting her. Xander wounded a couple with the crossbow, but didn’t kill them.

One of the vampires, thin and scrawny with brown, puffy hair and an English accent yelled out to the others. “It’s the Slayer. Run!”

The vamps fled. Buffy chased after them, but they scattered and vanished into alleys and dashed behind buildings and houses before she could catch them.

Buffy dropped her fists and frowned. She’d been pinned down, but they’d backed off and run away. Why? Running when they had a completely unfair fighting advantage was so Unvamp Like.

She walked back to the tree where Xander was packing up their weapons. He flicked his lighter in her direction.

“Want to burn down the lair?”

“I thought you were over the flicking thing. No point burning down the building. I don’t think they’ll be back now that I know where the lair is.”

“Okay. I think we should use flaming torches next time you take on a whole lair. The Supersoaker as vampire weapon is not sufficiently lethal.”

“Why’d they run off? One of them yelled out that I was the Slayer, then they all ran off.”

“They pretty much had you surrounded, which I have to say was not the best action strategy you’ve come up with lately.”

“I wonder if it has something to do with Spike.”

“Spike? What’s he got to do with it?”

Oops. She forgot that Xander was on a Need To Be Kept Completely In The Dark Basis about her new relationship with Spike. He’d wig if he knew about the claiming, not to mention the honeymoon.

“Uh, I saw him here the other night talking with the vamps. I think he’s their Master.”

“Great. Let’s go find Spike and you can dust him. He’s either at the old factory or the mansion.”

Oh boy. How was she going to explain that she couldn’t dust Spike now, or maybe ever? Better get Xander off that subject.

“How many did I kill? I lost count.”

“Seven, I think, maybe eight.”

“That leaves at least another seven minions,” Buffy said. Not counting Spike who’d maneuvered himself onto the Protected Species List. “No use looking for them tonight. They’ve scattered. Let’s go.”

Xander packed their gear into their patrol bags and the two headed for the Magic Box to report to Giles after stopping at the Crispy Creamy for Donut Fortification.

***

As Buffy and Xander left the New Age Meditation and Happy Feelings Worship Center, Cleotus slipped out of the shadows and watched them leave.

He sniffed the air. There were a lot of scents on the evening air, the none too clean scent of male vampires who’d been cooped up together, the sweaty scent of a male human and the musky-sweet vanilla scent of the Slayer.

The Slayer also smelled of something else. She smelled of Spike. Not just the aroma of Spike having sex with the Slayer, but the scent of Spike’s mating claim on her. That was William the Pansy’s secret to ‘controlling’ the Slayer, not that he’d done much controlling tonight. It also explained how Spike had managed to best Cleotus in a fight. Spike had claimed the Slayer and he’d drunk her blood.

Cleotus had heard about Slayer blood – it made you strong, made you horny. He’d figured those stories about Slayer blood for old vampire tales, since the vamps who told them had never met a Slayer in their piss ant lives. Spike was different. He’d bested two Slayers, or so he bragged every chance he got. Cleotus had doubted those stories too, until tonight. If Spike had killed two Slayers, he would know all about Slayer blood.

Yes, that dumb bastard Spike claimed the Slayer. That made things a lot easier, didn’t it?