AUTHOR:
1stRabid/Rabid/Raeann
RATING: NC-17
COUPLE:
Buffy/Spike
BETA BABES: Zyrya and Caia
SPOILERS: To S7
“See Author’s Note”& AtS S4 “See Author’s Note 2”
WARNING: MAJOR CHARACTER
DEATH
Pain and suffering ahead, but don’t lose all hope…oh…okay…go
ahead and lose it!
SUMMARY: Well,
there is this unstoppable hound and it has been called up to kill all the Slayers
starting with Faith. Buffy and Co. geared up for war…and won! Or did they? Things are getting spooky around the Summers’ house as all of our players experience separate
realities.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Some
of the events in this chapter mirror those in Get It Done, an episode that thrilled me to my Rabid
toes when it was broadcast. At that
point Joss Whedon and I were in perfect sync with our
stories. Alas, I expected the revelation
of Slayer origins to be pivotal to the overall arc of the season and the series
and in JW world it wasn’t.
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon, Mutant
Enemy, Fox TV, UPN and the WB own everything but my slightly outdated Windows
XP operating system…six…uhm…four more payments and
this puppy is MINE.
PART FOURTEEN
Buffy opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Her perspective was skewed. Puzzled by the angle, she shifted her
shoulders and pain lanced through her neck and back. Sinewy bands tightened around
her chest cutting off her air. Something
had her in a deadly grip. Cold, tentacle-like arms encircled her and sharp
teeth gnawed into her flesh, slicing through skin and muscle. She tried to
jerk away from the thing but she had no breath to fight, no strength in her
feebly pushing hands. Her flesh tore and agony smacked her in the head. The
room swirled and dipped to the left into blackness…into peace.
The next thing Buffy knew she was lying face down on the
floor beside her bed. The house was quiet and a velvety darkness, embellished
with bright buttons of candlelight, pressed in from all sides. A cold wind stirred
the curtains, creeping across the floor to chill her. The broken window had cast shards of barely
visible glass in the carpet. Buffy
shivered as the frigid breeze pushed the candle flames to the right, forming
bright directional arrows indicating the bathroom door. A single porcelain clink, something falling onto
tile, startled her.
There was someone, something, in the bathroom. Suddenly
panicked, Buffy tried to sit and discovered she couldn’t. The periwinkle blanket and white sheet were twisted
tightly around her chest, trapping her arms at her sides. Ungainly as a turtle,
she flopped over to her back and struggled to free herself from her makeshift cocoon,
pushing at the covers, wriggling to peel them down her body faster. She was
naked underneath, drenched in blood and mottled with grit. Wiping at the mess with one hand, she frowned
in confusion at the blood gluing her fingers together.
It didn’t take her long to trace it to a source. She had several minor cuts but a large jagged
wound on her inner thigh still pulsed crimson.
It was a ripping bite, ironically in the same spot where Spike had bruised
her on that terrible night last year. She
could see the canine imprints in her flesh where his razor sharp teeth had
severed a major artery. A wound this
serious would kill her in a few minutes. Buffy knew her Slayer healing was
racing against the clock of her beating heart.
Her mind refused to process the grit, though she’d seen
enough of it in her patrols. Ashes like
these could only come from a vampire's demise. There was a stake in her hand, part of a
broken chair leg. Choking on a sob, she
let the weapon fall from her nerveless grip.
She didn’t call for help. She was
afraid someone would come. Help her. Save her. Force her to live with what
she’d done. There would be questions: What happened? What were you thinking?
'Oh, God,' her mind muttered over and over again. 'What have
I done? He wasn’t ready for this. We weren’t ready.'
Hoping the wounds were fatal, she made no effort to staunch
the bleeding as she half-lurched, half-crawled toward the bathroom. At the threshold she levered to a standing
position, holding onto the door and its frame for support until the room
stopped spinning. Finally, taking a deep
breath, she limped forward. Her feet shuffled on the slick tile. Afraid of slipping, she kept a hand on the wall,
making her way along it to the sink. The wash basin glowed white in the darkness, an island of normal life.
Stopping before the sink, she stared into the mirror, appalled at the bite marks on her
face and throat. How could he do this? Why would he hurt her?
“Spike?”
The name was a catharsis.
It sent her into wracking spasms of grief. She leaned heavily against the sink basin,
bracing her hands wide on the rounded rim.
Her head hung low as she wept. She heard the floorboards creak but couldn’t
find the strength to turn and face whatever was creeping toward her. She wanted
to die.
"It's not as much fun if you want it," a familiar
voice drawled.
The bathroom light came on, a brutal glare, stark and unforgiving. Buffy raised her head so she could see the speaker's
reflection in the mirror. He was dark, yet pale and as beautiful as a coiled
serpent.
"Angel?" she whispered, not understanding what her
eyes were telling her. Doubting them,
she had to turn. She shifted her weight
onto her good leg, edging carefully around to face him. "How?"
she asked, convinced for just a second that somehow he was human. And then she remembered that her enemy could
impersonate any dead person. "Oh, it's you," she said flatly.
Angel grinned and took an exaggerated, menacing step
forward. After a dramatic pause, he took
another huge step as if he were playing some personal version of Mother May I. Mother may I take
one giant step. Mother may I make you shudder with dread. Dazed from blood loss and the deeper wound in
her heart, Buffy watched the show indifferently, unimpressed by her nemesis
imitating her ex. She was getting sick
of the First. A powerless enemy held no
threat and Buffy wasn’t going to keep reacting to an essentially harmless
foe. Let it jump out at her and go ‘boo’
if it wanted. What did it matter now?
Spike was dead.
The faux Angel was quite close. Buffy waited until she could smell his hair
gel before clearing her throat loudly and spitting in his face. The mucus
struck him under the left eye, sticking.
He didn’t flinch but her act of defiance seemed to amuse him. Grinning
like a madman, he cocked his head at her as he wiped the goop from his cheek
with a finger. Buffy grimaced in disgust
when he stuck the finger in his mouth. The sucking noise he made roiled her already weak stomach.
She averted her face just as his arm lashed out. The backhand caught her under the jaw and
sent her flying head first into the side of the tub. There was a bong on impact. The sound echoed, bouncing around in her skull
as she collapsed onto the rumpled bathmat.
"Guess again, sweetheart," Angelus crowed.
He crossed the room in quick strides to straddle Buffy as
she tried to push up to her knees.
Fisting a hand in her hair, he jerked her head back.
"You think Spike showed you a good time in here?"
he chuckled shaking her like a terrier shakes a chew toy. "I'm going to give
you what you really deserve."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I so deserve a sandwich,” Dawn said, pulling open the door
of Robin Wood’s refrigerator. To her delight the fridge was full of food, most
of it fresh. “It’s not stealing if I’m a prisoner, right? Because
of the Geneva Convention? And
anyway I think he’s evil.” Her conscience nudged her and she reasoned with it.
“If he’s working with Ethan Rayne, they trapped me here and he owes
me. And if he isn’t working with Ethan then he would want me
to keep up my strength.”
Scruples assuaged, Dawn helped herself to food. She had been waiting in Robin Wood’s
apartment for what seemed like forever.
There was no way to tell how long it had actually been. The clock faces were blurry or, in the case
of the microwave and VCR, a series of red eights. The phone clicked oddly when she listened for
the dial tone and the television showed a rainbow haze of static. Dawn's stomach, however, had announced the
dinner hour.
She put together a ham and cheese sandwich on rye. She didn’t like rye but there wasn’t any
white. Even licorice-flavored bread was better than most prison food, she
reasoned, and contented herself with picking out the seeds before spreading on
mayo. In memory of
She wasn’t surprised when the cupboard doors she'd left open
closed without apparent assistance. She knew she wasn't alone. Periodically
during the day, she’d heard a waspish drone.
It seemed to flutter from room to room and was always accompanied by a
sense of movement, just a glimmer in her peripheral vision. A guardian watched
her every move. It took pains to clean up her messes and thwart any escape
attempts.
Dawn had learned of the guard while exploring the confines
of the apartment. There had been books shelved above Wood's desk, helpful
Watcher texts, such as a complete set of the unabridged Slayer’s Handbook.
The musty set caught Dawn's eye as she was trying to pick the drawer lock of
Wood’s desk. Blowing the hair out of her
eyes, she’d straightened up for a closer look and then pulled Decapitation to Defenestration from the
shelf. Flipping to a random page, she
had just started to read when an unseen hand slammed the cover of the book
closed.
There was a strident hum and the book instantaneously
returned to the shelf. A heartbeat later the entire set disappeared in a blur
of movement. Box loads of books had been vanishing ever since. The living room and bedroom shelves were
almost bare.
Dawn addressed the entity in the kitchen. “Hello Ethan,” she
said around a bite of sandwich. “Buffy is going to kick your ass for this.”
When there was no reply from the buzzing thing, Dawn took
her plate into the living room and settled on the sofa.
“Okay…there’s no way to contact anyone. I can’t leave. But I
have food.” Her eyes flickered down to her backpack. “Also candles, spices, and
the laptop. I could do the phantasm
spell. And I bet you couldn't stop me.”
The humming started again, just at the edge of hearing.
Dawn’s gaze flickered to the bookshelves but she was careful not to stare. Her guard was taking the books away. To do that it must go somewhere else and,
theoretically, leave her unguarded. Stuffing in another mouthful of sandwich,
she watched from the corner of her eye as a row of books vanished. Waiting for the sense of movement to end, she
nearly missed the slight blurring of the front door. Complete silence returned.
“Alone again,” Dawn said, dusting a few crumbs off her lap. “Time to get to work.”
She wiped her mouth and fingers with a napkin before hefting
After lighting five candles at the rim of the circle, Dawn
started the sweeping dance-and-chant ritual Andrew had taught her. She wasn’t certain of the steps, faltering
slightly, but she knew what to say and what to expect. If she did the ritual correctly, the
imprinted life forces on the keyboard and files, each a snapshot in time, would
merge into a facsimile, a phantasm of
Dawn watched in increasing wonder as a pale figure
solidified in the center of her containment field. Finally, it spoke, “You think you know,” it
said, “What’s to come…who you are. You haven’t even begun.”
“
The phantasm waved in greeting and smiled
“No!” Dawn screeched.
But the damage was done before the single syllable left her lips. Her invisible guard scuffed and smashed
through her carefully constructed containment field, destroying the laptop,
blurring the circle of Baltic stone powder and extinguishing the candles.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffy started into wakefulness, adrenaline coursing through
her veins. Angelus was back. She had to
warn Faith and Giles and take steps to protect the remaining Potentials. Her own pain, the horror of violation, could
wait. Heart thudding, she shoved at the blanket covering her and rolled off the
bed, landing on her feet in a smooth cat-like motion. Defensive strategies
cascaded through her brain. They could
make a stand at the warehouse. Surely,
working together, she and Faith could stop him.
The periwinkle blanket trailed after Buffy as she backed
away from the bed, foam-like folds catching at her ankles. She kicked free of the
entanglement. Her panicked glance swept the room, taking in every detail. It was a remarkably serene setting. Twisted wax stubs, the residue of candles
left to burn themselves out, decorated every available surface. Someone had
cleaned up the broken window glass and, she noticed with surprise, repaired the
window. The bathroom door stood
ajar. Buffy could hear a tap dripping
softly in the distance.
Gooseflesh prickled on her arms. She shoved her hands up the sleeves of her
robe to rub warmth into her skin. Only
then did she become aware of the robe.
Why was she dressed in white satin? She shook the cobwebs from her head
and tried to regroup. She stared at Spike’s heavy leather duster, curtaining
the back of her vanity chair. She’d used
one of those chair legs for her stake. A cigarette still smoldered in the
ashtray on her bedside table.
"Spike?" Buffy whispered,
the ice-water in her throat strangling her.
"In the kitchen, luv,"
she heard him answer in a voice honey-coated with affection.
Buffy tingled all over with the vigor of relief. Fuzzy mind clearing, she twitched the corner
of her robe aside to check her thigh for the bite. Tiny spots of blood marred the robe’s creamy
satin and there were crimson smears on her skin but there was no sign of a gaping
wound. She blinked a few times, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her
hand. Nothing changed. The blood had no obvious source. She must be menstruating. Rare as that was, it wasn’t life
threatening.
She looked toward the unbroken windows, remembering Giles’
lecture on the stellar calendar. Slayers
didn’t menstruate as a rule, only during the Divergence, when the stars aligned.
Had it really been six months? She’d have to wait until nightfall to consult the stars. Judging by the diffused sunlight, it was late
afternoon. The room was bright with a
golden glow despite the closed shutters.
Sounds came to her from the rest of the house. The television blared.
Water swooshed through her refitted copper pipes and girlish chattering, punctuated
with bursts of giggling, floated up the stairs.
The house was alive and so was Spike.
Or at least he was safe, not dust. Giles voice seemed to
whisper in her ear, ‘And now, he knows what no vampire should ever know, that
the Slayer bleeds like an ordinary woman.’ It took a moment for reality to
finish sinking in but when it saturated her Buffy gave a hollow sounding laugh.
She didn’t have to worry about Spike, he wouldn’t betray her. She raked the hair back from her face with a
trembling hand. A dream, it had only been a dream, one of her wacky Slayer
premonitions warning her about big evil brewing…like she needed more terror in
her life.
As her mind cleared, the details of the preceding evening
returned to her. She recalled curling into Spike, after they’d made love, and
being rocked gently to sleep. She also remembered
the absurd parts of her dream. Angelus
didn’t show up in mirrors and the First couldn't take corporeal form. What had seemed so real in her sleep became
obvious fantasy in the light of day. A profound
sense of gratitude released the pressure in her chest and she sank onto the
edge of the bed.
“Buffy?” Spike prompted, speaking for her ears alone. He
sounded worried. “You okay?”
“I’m good,” she breathed and then spoke with more
confidence, “Better than good…giddy.
Down in a minute.”
Popping to her feet again, she bustled about picking out
clothes. A lacy pink blouse caught her eye.
She knew Spike would appreciate the sweetheart neckline. Black jeans and clean underwear completed the
look. Clutching the outfit in the crook of an arm, she headed toward the
bathroom. Palm up to shove at the door,
she froze. A sudden foreboding pulled
her hand back from the contact. Guided by instinct more suited to the cemetery
than her own home, Buffy carefully eased the door open, cautiously peering
around it to check for potential dangers.
The dripping faucet in the tub echoed eerily but the rest of the bathroom
was cheerfully bright.
Satisfied there were no monsters lurking behind the shower
curtain Buffy shook her head in a self-deprecating way as she entered the room.
She was becoming paranoid. She tried to shrug away her apprehension but
her flesh seemed disposed to twitch at the slightest sound. Crossing the floor quickly, bare feet slapping
on tile, she locked the hall door. A
pervading sense of evil in the room stirred the hairs on the back of her
neck. She could still taste the blood in
her mouth and hear the tolling in her ears as her dream self impacted with the
side of the tub. Her belly cramped, remembering Angel’s brutal violation.
It had all seemed so real.
Cursing her vivid imagination, Buffy draped her clothing on
the vanity while she used the toilet. She had to shake off the sensation of
being watched as she peed and she wondered if the First could be
there…invisible…watching…waiting. It was
a troubling thought and it caused her, when she went to the sink, to sneak up
on the mirror. There was nothing in the
glass but her own face and a sliver of the room. Buffy sighed, feeling silly.
She studied her reflection, tilting her head so the light
picked up the scars on her throat. She
traced over them with a finger: Angel, The Master, Dracula. Not Spike.
Never Spike. Spike would never hurt her like that, like a vampire. He
wanted to be her man. It was his infectious madness. She’d caught it, too, and played the game
with him. When he’d hurt her it had been
as a man. Yet she remembered him as a monster. She could feel his teeth closing
on her throat as he forced her face down on the bed.
The mirror refused to support her memory. It refused to implicate him. No fresh bite marred her throat but there
was, she noticed, a faint bruise staining her cheek. Surprised, Buffy pressed her hand against the
purplish welt and winced. Where had the bruise come from? She tried to recall as she turned the faucet
on full blast. She replayed the battle
with Ichnobate, hoping to remember a fall or a blow.
Angelus had backhanded her in the dream. If his knuckles had been real they might have
marked her. But the very idea was
absurd. There were no other contusions
and certainly no sign she’d been raped.
Buffy doused and soaped a washcloth and bent to scrub the blood from her
inner thighs. In the sink, the water
swirled in great dizzy swoops around the drain.
Buffy liked the pink of the water.
It was a lovely shade, almost identical to the blouse she’d picked out
for Spike.
She washed absently like Lady Macbeth, continuing even after
the water ran clear, until pounding girlie footsteps ran past the bathroom door
and brought her out of her trance.
Recovering some sense of balance, she quickly took care of her other
sanitary needs, stealing a tampon from
Spike danced out of range.
“Hey! Whoa! Just came to check on you, pet,” he said,
laughingly raising both hands into the air like a captured felon.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” Buffy snarled. “Not in here.”
Spike’s face registered hurt confusion. His lips formed the
‘wh’ in ‘what?’ but something in Buffy’s coiled
stance checked his anger and he let the word go unspoken. He fought the urge to look toward the tub but
lost. His gaze slid to the side,
targeting the spot where over a year ago he’d held her down and…there on the
bath mat…she’d struggled and wept and…. Buffy dragged a sharp breath over her
teeth. A distant echo of her pleading
made them both tense for battle. A part of her mind Buffy scarcely recognized
responded to the barely audible sound.
Her primal anger sparked off his guilt, like gasoline blazing up from a
careless match. Yes, it growled, you are a monster.
Spike felt his hackles rise but he pushed instinct aside and
spoke with gentle consideration, “Heartbeat’s a little fast, luv.” She stared at him blankly so he added, “I was
worried.”
Without addressing his concern, Buffy shouldered rudely past
him and made for the relative safety of her bedroom. Her emotions whipped about like laundry line-drying
in a brisk breeze. She felt like crying
and raging and running all at once. She
couldn’t do this right now, couldn’t be in the bathroom with fear pressing down
on her and Spike hovering. It felt
dangerous, as if something unseen was about to leap on her. She banged through the bedroom door intent on
escape but Spike followed like a wolf on her heels.
He couldn’t let her go.
It wasn’t in his nature. As he closed the distance between them, the
need to defend herself, to turn and strike out at him, rushed Buffy from the
other side. She was caught in the
middle. The room shrank, walls closing
in on her. She gasped, clawing at her throat.
The world started spinning and her knees gave out as, hyperventilating,
she sagged toward the bed.
Spike was there in an instant, gathering her into his arms.
“Buffy? Sweetheart?” Pulling her up and back, he
settled them both on the edge of the bed.
“Talk to me. What’s happening?”
His mouth was next to her ear, close to her jugular. As his
grip tightened, arms locking around her waist, Buffy tried to find her
strength. She could sense him behind
her, the demon, the monster, the evil thing…changing, teeth elongating into
jagged razors, just like her dream. Any minute now, she realized, those sharp
fangs would rip into her throat. She had to fight but she couldn’t find the
strength. Desperate energy surged into
her extremities, demanding she flee.
Get away…get away,
now…away from him, from this house.
The voice shrieked in her head and Buffy responded. She made a desperate bid for escape, elbowing
hard into Spike’s ribs as she rolled across his lap. She lurched forward, arms outstretched,
reaching toward the drawer where she kept her bedside stake. To her surprise, Spike released his hold on
her as soon as she started struggling.
Unopposed resistance sent her to one knee. As she scrambled to her feet again, Spike’s
hand glided diagonally across her back, steadying her. He followed the curve of her bare arm to her
hand, his skin clinging to hers like static charged silk.
The feather light touch, the way his fingers curled
pleadingly around hers, stopped Buffy in mid-flight. Biting down on her lower lip, she glanced fearfully
over her shoulder. She was coiled tight
inside, braced for the fearful truth: the yellow eyes, the jagged teeth. Spike’s all too human face caught her off
guard as did the normality of their tableau.
Seated on the edge of the bed, he watched her, his head
tipped quizzically to one side. His blue
eyes registered only loving concern as he smiled in bemusement. Slightly reassured, Buffy found the courage
to face him. As she turned around, her
gaze dropped to their intertwined fingers.
The bridge of their flesh formed a tenuous bond. Silver droplets glistened on her lashes and a
single tear splashed onto the back of her hand.
“I had a bad dream,” she said in a voice held over from
kindergarten.
“Tell me,” Spike said as he softly brushed a strand of her
hair from her face.
After a few aborted attempts, she managed to say, “It was
Angel.”
“What, again? More mystical
warnings like last time?” he guessed.
Eyes downcast, Buffy shook her head in a crisp
negative. About to ask another question,
Spike saw her glance cut toward the bathroom door. Pain swirled into her face like mud stirred
up from the bottom of a clear pool and he understood.
“Oh,” he said, swallowing the syllable. His shame fell like
a fortress wall between them but he forced himself to move through it. Shifting
his weight forward, he rose into Buffy’s personal space, standing with his body
inches from hers. His free hand floated
to her cheek in a naturally fluid gesture.
Cradling her face, he whispered, “Oh, Buffy, I’m so sorry.”
Finding solace in the brush of his fingertips, she leaned
against his cupped palm. He drew her
closer, fingers sliding into her hair and around, following the contours of her
skull, until her forehead skimmed the ridge of his collarbone. Tilting his head, he let her breath become
his. Her essence, breath, life, soul, entered his lungs, warming the center of
his being. They were one in this pain, just as they could be one in pleasure.
“It was only a dream, luv,” Spike
soothed. As he continued to stroke her
shining hair, speaking nonsense, his voice caught slightly and his eyes misted
over with remembered and reflected sorrow. “I’ll keep you safe,” he promised.
In the crook of his arm, Buffy squirmed until she was
staring up into his face. What she saw
there made her hug him tighter. Her arms
folded around his waist and she nuzzled into his chest. She clutched at his shirt pulling him to her
as she fiercely declared, “I love you. I love
you.”
Spike recognized the note of desperate longing in the sweet
phrase. He’d spoken those words the same
way a hundred times over the last few years, wanting her so much that the
desire threatened to tear him apart.
“I know,” he said.
“I think it was just…we shouldn’t have done what we did. It was too soon.”
“Too soon?”
Sniffling, Buffy broke the embrace and took a step back so
she could wipe her eyes. “The bondage game,” she explained patiently as she
looked around for the box of tissues she usually kept at the bedside. Spike had moved them to her dresser. She strode over to pluck a few tissues from
the box. After blowing delicately, she said, “I guess I wasn’t ready.”
Spike closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them
again. Tipping his head to one side he studied Buffy’s profile. The light from the window teased coppery
highlights out of her bottle blonde hair. When the silence grew cumbersome, Buffy
glanced at him but she offered no further enlightenment so he raised both brows
and spread his hands to indicate confusion.
“What bondage game was that, pet?”
“Scarf? Slipknot?
Fun with vibrators?”
“Vibrators?”
Buffy almost chuckled as she dropped her used tissues into
the wastebasket. “Any of this ringing a bell?”
Taking a deep breath, Spike rocked back on his heels. Then he crossed the room in a few quick
strides and gripped Buffy firmly by the shoulders. His fingers pressed into her flesh as if the
strength of his hold could anchor them both in reality. He lowered his chin so he could stare into
her face and said, “Buffy? You’re not making any sense.”
“You tied me to the bed,” she accused, fear making her sound
angry about it. “I came home and there were candles burning everywhere.” She jerked
free of his hold and flung her arm in a wide arc, nearly hitting him as she
indicated the incriminating candle stubs on her dresser and bedside tables.
“And you said you wanted to see me…naked, vulnerable….”
Teeing his hands in the universal time-out sign, Spike said,
“Yes, alright, I get it. And you remember all this, do you?” he asked, an echo
of reverence in his tone. He took her
eye roll as confirmation. Going to the
bedside, he bent his knees slightly so he could reach under the edge of the
mattress. His hands charmed a black silk
scarf from its hiding place. “Was this what I used to tie you?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I remember thinking about it, planning it. But,” he paused
to give his next words weight, “I didn’t actually do it.”
“What do you mean you…?”
He held up a finger, catching her gaze as he spoke. “Don’t you remember? You weren’t in the mood.”
“What? Of course I was.
We did.” Buffy sniffed impatiently.
“My mood had nothing to do with it.” She checked herself not really sure
that seemed accurate. Would Spike force
her to do something she didn’t want to do? It didn’t seem likely? What had she felt at the time? “I mean, I
wasn’t not in the mood.”
They stared at one another, Buffy considering Spike. He seemed genuinely perplexed, worry lines
creasing his high brow. She dragged a
nervous hand through her hair, shaken by their conflicting stories. She
couldn’t understand why Spike was denying what they’d done. She wasn’t angry at
him but his resistance made her edgy. Her gaze traveled restlessly around the
room, from the unbroken windows to her partially open closet door. Something was wrong. Maybe, she realized with a shock, this was
still part of her dream. How could she
tell?
Spike was speaking.
Buffy had to strain to make out the words over the white noise in her
head. “Sorry to argue the point, luv, but that isn’t
what happened, not by a long shot.
Bugger it, maybe you were in the mood but I never found out about it.
You came home exhausted and feel asleep in the bath. I woke you, helped you into your robe and
carried you to the bed. The rest is just part of your dream.”
Buffy snorted contemptuously. “It wasn’t a dream.” She
indicated the scarf in his hand. “How would I know about that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe
it’s a Slayer thing, you sensed it somehow.” He frowned down at the scarf,
twisting it between his fingers as he considered “But I know for damned sure, I would
remember tying you up and having my way.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time your mind went blank,” Buffy
countered.
“That’s not fair, Buffy,” Spike snapped, pointing two
fingers. “This isn’t like last time. I’m not blank. I remember it all. I held
you, watched you sleep. Nothing kinky happened.
Absolutely nothing. And you’re the only one acting strange this
morning.”
A flash of memory, a wispy ghost of recollection, floated
into Buffy’s conscious awareness as her gaze slipped beyond Spike to the unmade
bed. In the new scene she was lying
beside Spike, safe in his arms and aware of his weight behind her. She felt completely at ease like she was
floating in a warm pool. Her knees were
drawn up under her robe’s skirt and she was holding Spike’s forearm against her
chest, hugging him close as he held her.
The new memory layered into the older one, a transparency of normal life
overlapping their panting, sweaty bondage sex.
Staring at the bed, she could recall both experiences, living them
viscerally. But both couldn’t be true.
Vampires can cloud your
mind.
The voice whispered in Buffy’s ear again but somehow it
didn’t sound as compelling this time.
Spike ducked his chin, favoring her with a shy smile. “I’m
not likely to forget what happened, Buffy. It was the best night of my life.”
“Mine, too,” she said and suddenly her memories came
flooding back. Bubbly cheer splashed through her. She’d been happy, content to be held and cherished.
“You were with me, then?” Spike asked, needing so much to
believe she felt what he felt. His gaze
held hers, layering meaning onto his simple question. He put all the longing a century of waiting
for her could create into the look.
“I was,” Buffy said simply.
“But?”
“But this is wrong!” She shook her head, pressing her
knuckles into one temple. “My memories are all jumbled up. It’s like…a spell or something.” She
struggled to convey her surreal impressions. “Like both things happened at the
same time. And my dream…Angelus left a
bruise on my cheek.” She touched the faint lump. “Do you see it?”
“A bruise?” Spike stepped
closer. Peering at her face, he saw the
blue-green tinge of bruising. “But how could he…”
“I don’t know…I don’t know why it all seems real to me.”
“You remember us, being close? And also being…wild?”
Buffy nodded. “The more you talk, the more real your version
seems but I can feel you…tying me down…doing things we haven’t done since….”
“Maybe it’s in your head. Visions. Something to do with the bleeding,” Spike
supposed and then he added, “I didn’t think Slayers did that.”
“We don’t usually. Only twice a year.
And the vampires can’t know about it. Technically, you can’t know about
it.” She focused on him, her dark eyes losing their film of confusion. Her gaze took on sharp-edged facets. “I need
you to tell me everything that happened from the time your shift ended at the
warehouse until you came upstairs.”
“My shift? You mean, last night?”
When she shot him a long-suffering look Spike sank down on
the edge of the bed and stared up at her, nonplussed.
“What?”
“Buffy, I didn’t take my shift,” he said, his voice raw with
worry. “You took it. You pulled a
double. You stood in this very room, almost on that very spot, and told me it
was more important I find Andrew.”
Buffy was already moving toward the door. “We need Giles,” she
said. When Spike didn’t respond, she snapped, “Now!”
The urgent bark shook him out of his astounded reverie and he sprang
up, hurrying after her. They thudded
down the stairs in tandem.
“I’m moving all the books in my apartment to the building
basement,” Wood said into his cell phone, huffily, because Ethan had just
complained about the bad signal. “What are
you going to do about Rupert Gi--?”
He broke off mid-question as the cell he’d wedged between
his ear and his collarbone started slipping.
Shifting the weight of the full box he carried to his hip, he trapped
the carton against the wall to free a hand and grabbed the phone. The hasty move saved his cell but
overbalanced the box, causing it to slide sideways and spill its contents.
“A wise precaution,” Ethan said on the other end of the call
as Wood spat an oath. “I knew instinctively you were the man for this job.”
“The girl is a menace.
I’ve been putting out fires all night long. Sometimes literally. And I think I caught her doing that phantasm
spell.”
“A definite chip off the old Buffy,” Ethan agreed. “One is
tempted to speculate on what might have been if Big Sis had stayed buried.”
“I’m tempted to strangle her and be done with it,” Wood
said, sharply.
“Really, Robin,” Ethan exclaimed. “And you a professional
disciplinarian. Surely one little girl can’t be that much trouble.”
Wood righted the cardboard box and began replacing its
contents. The dim wattage of the overhead bulb cast a yellow pall in the
stairwell, making it hard to discern shapes and distorting Wood’s shadow as he
worked. He gathered up books, tossing
them carelessly back into their container. He might have been loading trash as
he squatted awkwardly on the corrugated metal steps, his knees at odd angles.
“What do you want, Ethan?” he growled into the phone.
“Want?” Ethan said absentmindedly.
“You called me.”
“Oh, yes. I wanted to tell you to remove the witch’s laptop
from your apartment. Left it a bit too
late, did I?”
“Rather,” Wood said in a mocking British accent. “But I
broke the containment field and I have the computer.”
“Yes, but if she completed the incantation…”
Wood’s face fell as he caught on to the problem. “The
apartment is already inside a containment spell. Damn! Damn, what does this
mean for us?”
“Probably nothing,” Ethan assured. “I’ve taken most of the
pieces out of the game, cleared the way to the queen. I only hope our
“So, I can relax?”
“You can certainly rest assured you are helpless in the face
of events.”
“Comforting,” Wood rumbled sarcastically. “When do you want
me back at the Summers’ house?”
“Oh, I think in an hour or two. I’ve finished up at the warehouse and I’m keeping
them all busy. Just about now they should be shuffling through their memories
searching for that kernel of truth. Miss
Summers won’t know which monster has teeth until it’s too late. As for Rupert…I
would rather like to have him clear headed for the final curtain. For sentimental reasons, you understand.”
“Just as long as he can’t interfere,” Wood said as he dumped
his refilled box onto a stack of similar containers in the corner of the
basement. “Look, I’ve got to get back and check on our guest. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
“Toodles,” Ethan said his
perpetual good humor evident in his voice.
“I’m not in
“No,” Dawn gasped, forgetting for a moment that she needed
to breathe. She sucked in air as she
recovered from the mix of disappointment and shock engendered by her ruined
spell and
“I don’t feel dead,”
“W-well, m-ma-maybe you aren’t exactly dead,” Dawn said,
waving an emphatic arm as she struggled to explain. “But you aren’t
“Oh,”
“I know,” Dawn said, without modesty. “And it went wrong,
too. But you’re still here.”
“It went wrong?”
“There’s this…thing trapped in here with me.” Dawn twisted
her head from side to side, casting a glance around the room as if her
invisible captor might suddenly appear. “I can’t see it but it keeps ruining my
escape attempts. Not that I was all Papillon or anything. Going over the wall.
I did try to read the Slayer Handbook
but the guard took it away.” She pointed to the remains of her magically circle
of Baltic stone powder. “And then I cast the spell to summon you but the thing
stomped all over my circle.”
“I think so,”
Tears pricked Dawn’s eyes and she sniffled, “I just wasn’t
expecting you to be so soft…and real.”
They stood still and quiet for a time and then
“Couldn’t we just go on hugging forever?” Dawn asked more
distinctly, nose still buried in her friend’s honey colored, lavender-scented
hair. “Would that be so wrong?”
“Oh, right,” Dawn gave a mature nod. Straightening her spine
and pulling her shoulders back, she stepped out of
The phantasm blinked. “Nothing,” it said.
“But…but…
“Spike tried to rape Buffy?”
“What? No, she doesn’t!”
“I know she says she doesn’t, Dawn, but people are
complex. Sometimes they don’t understand
what they feel.”
“That’s just stupid.”
“But very human. Sometimes you don’t want to love another
person but you do. After Angel lost his
soul…became Angelus…Buffy had to see him as a different person so she could do
her job and stop him. It was hard for her to see Spike as a man when he had so
much in common with Angelus…the same bloodline, a vampire…no soul…when he
wasn’t really worthy.”
“He has a soul now,” Dawn said, petulantly. “But he still
kills people.”
“There’s so much I don’t know about your life now, Dawn. I don’t see how I can help you. Can you tell me…how long have I been gone?”
“Over a year. But I thought…if Buffy came back wrong you
would know. She said you researched the spell?”
“I did. And there was
a slight shift in Buffy’s cellular structure.
Her body didn’t quite make it back to full compatibility with our
dimension before the vessel for the spell, an urn, was broken. Her vessel was
broken, too, in a sense. Because of that, Spike’s chip no longer recognized her
as real. But she’s still human in her
soul and her mind and her emotions. Still Buffy.”
“But...”
“Look at it this way,”
Dejected, Dawn slumped over to the sofa and sank down on the
edge of it. She propped her elbows on her knees, resting her chin in the cup of
her hands. All her work, all her anger was for nothing. Buffy loved Spike and nobody could explain
why. She was acting like a general and
making everyone crazy just because she could.
Dawn cut her eyes toward
“I’m sorry I brought you here…I just thought…everything is
so bad with the hound hunting us and the First and then Faith showing up again and
all of the potential Slayers dying…”
“Potential Slayers?” The phantasm
stepped closer, its eyes darkening to solid black. “You’re asking the wrong
question,” it said harshly.
“What should I ask?”
“That’s the nature of the spell, I guess.” Dawn frowned,
concentrating and then asked, “Is Spike dangerous?”
“Yes, very.”
“Okay, so I knew that…dangerous to Buffy?”
“In the sense of any loved one being dangerous to your
heart, yes. But not as
a vampire. He won’t betray her. I
am surprised he even tried to…do what you said he did. Do you know any of the details?”
Dawn had never even considered there were details. “No, I
mean, there’s no excuse for it.”
“I didn’t mean to imply excuse. Your sister isn’t an
ordinary woman, Dawn. Raping
the Slayer, if she’s not drugged or chained, would be very difficult. Was she incapacitated in some fashion?”
“I don’t think so. She seemed fine later.” Dawn bit her lip,
remembering her confusion and the pain of betrayal. Her mind’s eye stared into
the blur of the night’s events, the horror coming full circle with
“Dawnie, Spike would never, ever
hurt you. He loves you. He took care of
you when Buffy died.”
“Stop saying that, everyone keeps saying that.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s not true. I saw how he looked at me while she was gone
like I was a shadow of her. You say he loves me because the rest of you just
don’t care at all…because I’m not real to you.”
“Ask your question,” the phantasm demanded.
“What would have happened to me if Buffy had stayed dead?”
There, she’d said it.
And it echoed hollowly in the room, her fear made real.
“The power would…”
“You don’t have to tell me because I already know. It
doesn’t matter if Spike kills me or rapes me or kills everyone I love because
I’m just Buffy’s shadow.” Dawn’s voice
lost some of stridency as she went on as if saying the words aloud diluted
their power over her. “That’s why I loved him, believed in him, isn’t it? Because Buffy loves him.
She was upset when she found out he was gone. Not upset like she meant to kill him, either.
Upset like her heart was breaking without him. And I felt that way, too, even
after I tried to stop, after Xander told me what Spike
had done.”
“Maybe I had it wrong,”
“I have to stay angry,” Dawn said, pointing at her breastbone.
“I have to be Dawn, a whole person with my own soul.”
“Is that your question?” the phantasm asked, shaking off the
Tara-esque reverie. “Are you real?”
Dawn shuddered as if an icy wind had entered the room.
“I am a person,”
she insisted. “Maybe not a Potential but I don’t need you to tell me I’m real. I’m
not a key…not a soulless thing. I want
to know about the Slayer? How can there be two of them? Is Buffy the true
Slayer or is it Faith?”
“The Slayer isn’t a person, Dawn. It isn’t Buffy or Faith…or any of the girls
who came before or will come after them.
The women are vessels. The Slayer
is a separate entity, living and working and killing through them. Think of it
as a vast power, waxing and waning.”
“A power? Like the powers that be?”
“Older even than them and just as abiding but dependent on
the strength of the enemy it battles. A
strong enemy will bring an equally strong aspect of the Slayer to the fight. This is why a weak, newly risen vampire can
kill what you call The Slayer and yet the most powerful wizard can not. Buffy
fought a god and won.”
“But she was helpless when Spike attacked her,” Dawn looked
perplexed as she asked, “Because he wasn’t really evil?”
“It’s not about good or evil. Right or wrong. It’s about the power. The Slayer is
death…pure, unadulterated destruction…contained and directed. But it comes to everyone, good or bad, sooner
or later.”
“But…Buffy’s not Death…Buffy’s my sister. How did this thing get inside her?”
“Men,” Tara said, making an entire gender sound like an expletive. “Shamans, so afraid of the dark they were willing to do unspeakable things. Long ago they called forth a hound to serve them…to hunt what they were afraid to hunt. They made a sacrifice to the power…a virgin, of course. A strong, young girl, the strongest of her generation. She had to be strong to bear what they put inside her. That, Dawn, was rape…make no mistake.”
“What happened?”
“She died. And when she died they sacrificed the next
strongest girl to the power…and so on…down through the ages. One
innocent girl after another.”
“The Slayer kills them.”
“It does. All Slayers
have a death wish. They die serving the very
thing that makes them powerful. It burrows into them…gnawing at their
soul. The killing, the fight against the
dark, makes them less and less human each passing day until one day they just
give up…they let the monsters win. When that happens, the power moves on to the
next victim, flowing into another pure vessel.”
“Potentials,” Dawn said softly. She could see them in her
mind’s eye, bright, strong-willed girls. “But the power didn’t move on. Buffy is still the Super Slayer and just a
little bit scarier than she used to be.”
“It has happened before…two Slayers…one pure, one tarnished…but
never like this. In the past they fought
to the death, until one emerged as the true vessel.”
“But Buffy didn’t kill Faith.”
“And another life was created.”
Dawn’s eyes flew to
“The vessel was weakened before it was broken.”
“Broken,” Dawn repeated.
Then she stared, shivering with comprehension. “Spike’s chip doesn’t
recognize her anymore.”
“Something has gone wrong with the spell. Dawn, you have to
tell them…it’s the Slayer. Tell them…”
Her voice changed, taking on an ominous reverberation.
“Now you will all learn what you are made of,” she intoned,
her costume changes increasing in frequency as the supernatural wind tore at
her clothes. Her eyes sank into her flesh,
becoming black pits in her skull. She seemed to be pulsing with color and
folding in on herself.
Just before she blipped out of existence the deeper voice
spoke again, coming from all corners of the room.
“Now, the Hound has been loosed on the world.”
THE END