Buffy knew something had gone terribly wrong when a bruised and battered Amy appeared suddenly in the middle of the room amidst a swirl of yellowish light. The young witch fell into a heap on the floor the minute the light around her dissipated, and Buffy, who was still picking herself off the ground from the spar she'd been having with Giles to stretch her muscles out, rushed over to the girl's side almost immediately.
"What happened?" Buffy asked, helping her friend sit up, "Are you alright?"
"It was a trap." Amy mumbled, as Willow and Tara came into sight. Tara immediately headed off in search of disinfectants and bandages upon seeing the brunette's wounds, and Giles came into view carrying a blanket as Buffy and Willow led Amy to the couch. "It looked like a typical vampire attack," Amy explained, accepting the blanket over her shoulders as she sat. "-Spike told me to stay put and watch his back, and he went off to kill the vampire." The girl shuddered slightly then, as she closed her eyes, "They came out from everywhere - I didn't even sense anything - they were just after Spike I guess though, cause the minute he went down, they dragged him off and ignored me." she shook her head, "I transported myself here as soon as I could, but it's too late."
Tara returned and sat a small armload of items down on the coffee table, then knelt on the floor beside Willow. "Too late?" Buffy frowned, as Willow reached for the items and started tending her friend's wounds.
"There was something dark blocking me," Amy explained wearily, "-it wasn't until they dragged Spike off that I could access my powers again and get myself here." she winced slightly as Willow dabbed at a gash along her forearm, "Something happened tonight, I *felt* that much, and Spike was a key in it."
Visions of her dream flashed through her mind as Buffy listened to what Amy was saying. She'd dreamt that Spike had returned to Drusilla's side - that Spike had been about to kill her to summon some 'Beast' - could such a threat be looming on the horizon? He had told her earlier that he wouldn't kill her for the end of the world or even for Dru, and she truly believed he meant it at the time too, but would he change his mind if his insane lover was actually holding him in her arms?
"Where were you guys?" Buffy asked, getting to her feet, "I'll check..."
"You'll do no such thing!" Giles refused, also getting to his feet and moving towards her. "You've healed incredibly well given the amount of bile you were exposed to, but you are still far from complete recovery."
"I can't just leave him, Giles. He's one of us now, as much as I hate to admit it, and we wouldn't just be sitting around here if it was Xander or Oz that had been taken, so yes, I *am* going!" Buffy resolved, making her way to the chest of weapons Giles kept by his bookcase.
"Buffy, you have no idea what you're going up against - Amy just told us that there was something powerful enough out there tonight to block her magicks - you're putting yourself at risk, and - I can't believe I'm saying this - you're putting Spike at risk if you think going off unprepared will in anyway help his case." Giles continued arguing.
Taking a moment to think about that, she knew somewhere deep down that Giles was right. They always researched before heading off to face the unknown. They always had, and they probably always would - it was that very thing that had kept her alive for so long too.
"Someone should still check to see if any clues were left behind." Buffy reasoned. "I promise I won't go off on some personal crusade, but I am going."
"Me too." Willow spoke up, rising. Giles sighed as he looked back and forth between the two young women. "They took Amy by surprise, but we're ready for them this time." Willow continued, sensing Giles' reluctance, "I could be like Buffy's radar - the minute we even feel a tinglie, we'll scoot." she assured him.
"Seeing as how you're likely to go regardless of what *I* say..." Giles started, before Buffy interrupted him with a quick hug.
"Where were you guys?" Buffy repeated her earlier question, directing a concerned gaze to her injured friend.
"The park," Amy answered, "-we hadn't made it very far at all when walked into their trap."
"Okay, we'll start there then." Buffy nodded, waiting as Willow gathered a few weapons for herself. "-and don't worry Giles, we'll be careful. I Promise." she called out, gathering her items and heading for the door, Willow close on her heels. The duo were gone before Giles could protest further.
Yet despite her enthusiasm for the search, the young woman who had already greatly exceeded her predicted lifespan, couldn't shake that sense of foreboding lingering around her. Something was looming on the horizon, something big, she only hoped she and her friends would be able to get through it. They'd survived the Master, they'd survived Angelus, they'd survived the Ascension, they'd survived Adam - the list went on and on - but some of those victories had been about luck as much as it had been about skill. The longer she lived, the more she experienced, the stronger she fought, the smaller her net chance of survival. She'd beaten all the odds for so long now, she occasionally found herself becoming a little too overconfident in herself.
The image of Spike standing before her, pressing the dagger to her chest flooded her mind once again, distracting her momentarily from her surroundings. Her foot hit something as they neared the park, and before she knew it, she was falling. Cursing herself for losing focus like that when she knew there was a strong unknown power out there against her, she tucked into a roll and looked back to see what she'd tripped over.
Willow had stopped in her tracks, and Buffy soon realized why. It was a body. A human body, and only just recently dead. Focussing her gaze on the victim's neck almost immediately, Buffy felt her heart sink. There were two distinct bites, indicating a shared vampire feeding. That in itself, though disturbing, was not the worst of things though; there was also something sticking out the side of the deceased man's neck, which under different circumstances may have given him a slightly Frankenstein-ish look, a used-looking, rusted, metallic object: a railroad spike.
"Willow..." Buffy started, closing her eyes. He'd killed. Spike had killed. He was supposed to be harmless now, he was supposed to be on *her* side. It had to have something to do with her dream, it had to have something to do with the influx of demons...
"It wasn't him." Willow interrupted thoughtfully, causing Buffy to open her eyes and look up sharply at her best friend.
"It wasn't?" Buffy asked, hearing the hope in her own voice. Maybe he was still 'good', maybe he was still harmless, maybe he was still on her side...
"No." Willow concluded with more certainty. "His patterns aren't here... but there are familiar patterns..." her eyes were closed to half slits as she drew on her magical powers to read the ambient energy signatures that had been left behind. Giving up, she finally shook her head, "I don't know who did this Buffy, but it wasn't Spike - I'd recognize his ambient energies immediately if it was.
Buffy nodded gratefully at her wiccan friend and rose to her feet again. "If I had've come on my own, I probably would have just assumed it was him, and staked him the minute we found him again." she admitted, taking one last look at the body before turning to head into the park. Those vamps were going to pay for killing that man - they were going to pay for scaring her into thinking it had been Spike too.
"Maybe that was the point." Willow suggested. "I mean, I know there are some old fashioned baddies out there who're still into the swords and lances, but using a... um, *that*... was kind of going out of their way. I kind of don't think they're collectable items or anything really." Buffy bit her lip as the two continued and frowned. It was a little weird to have Spike mysteriously kidnapped, and a victim bearing his signature left out in the open shortly thereafter. "Well then they're messing with the wrong slaying team." Buffy stated, trying to lighten the mood again somewhat with a dramatic stance.
"That's right," Willow agreed, getting into the spirit, "Cause we've got witches, and werewolves and uh, Buffy, oh my." she quipped, editing her quote with a smile.
"And we're off to slay the wizard!" Buffy sang goofily, linking her arm in Willow's.
"The evil wizard of Sunnydale!" Willow continued, still smiling.
Making their way further into the dark park, they quieted, keeping their eyes peeled and their senses alert. Chanting softly under her breath, Willow cast a quick protection spell over them, then a locator spell for any evil in the near vicinity. Buffy looked over at her expectantly, but the red head shook her head.
"If there's a bad out there, I'm not sensing it." she whispered quietly, her eyes still half closed in concentration.
Nodding, Buffy led them further into the park, taking no chances nonetheless, after all, anything strong enough to incapacitate Amy, would probably be strong enough to bypass Willows general locator spell.
From the shadow, two amber eyes watched as the girls passed by. Whispered voices urged her to hold back from attacking though. It wasn't time yet. There were still preparations to be made.
Slinking further away from the two human children, the figure turned and left. Time to go tend to her black knight, time to reclaim what was hers. All would be ready in the fullness of time. Everything was falling into place quite nicely.
She smiled, then headed towards the cemetery, passing by the body she had left on the sidewalk only a short while ago. It had been quickly done, there hadn't been time to decorate the man's body the way her lover would have, but it would have been enough if not for the witch with the blood-stained hair. Oh well, soon it wouldn't matter - soon the Slayer would be dead - soon they would *all* be dead.
Giggling to herself as she continued on her way, she looked up at the sky and smiled at the stars as they winked knowingly at her. Yes, soon, very soon, she would have her revenge on the Slayer that had taken away her daddy, that had taken away her Spike. Soon...
"Be me..." a soft voice whispered from somewhere far away, "Be in me..." Spike sighed and relaxed as soothing arms closed around him. Something in the back of his mind screamed at him to get up, to open his eyes, to snap himself out of the haze that was surrounding him, but the comforting, cooing words continued to drift languidly to his ears, making a far larger part of him just want to stay exactly as he was.
"Love me, Spike." the voice plead, "Love me, and I promise I'll never leave you, never hurt you, never make you go through all that pain again..."
Finally opening his eyes, Spike looked around to see where the voice was coming from. It sounded so strangely familiar, but it couldn't possibly be who he thought it was. Curious blue eyes met passion-filled hazel ones, causing Spike to jerk himself up to a siting position. This was *not* happening - there was *no way* this was real...
A small, warm hand reached out to rest on his shoulder and he turned himself around to look at the vision before him once again. It was still there. It was still *her*.
"What's going on here?" he finally managed to get out, his eyes never once leaving Buffy's. His mind was still refusing to wrap itself around the strange situation he had suddenly found himself in.
"Don't you love me, Spike?" Buffy's hurt voice asked sadly, "Don't you want me?"
Hesitating, as a series of unwanted lust-filled thoughts drifted through his muddied mind, he opened his mouth to answer, only to watch with increasing confusion as Buffy shimmered slightly before him, taking on Drusilla's appearance. Frowning, he looked around at his surroundings once again.
He was sitting on the Slayer's bed in her campus dorm room, and as far as he could tell, there was absolutely nothing amiss. Looking back at her, he tried recalling how they had wound up together here and found he could not. Drusilla shimmered back to Buffy, and Spike closed his eyes.
Something tingled against his chest, and a scene flashed before his closed lids. He was in the park fighting against a horde of vampires that seemed to have sprung from nowhere. Amy had been trying to tell him something, but he couldn't hear her, then a familiar scent wafted by him, causing him to pause. A sharp pain to the base of his skull resonated briefly straight through to his brain, then everything had gone black.
Opening his eyes again he looked at Buffy carefully. "Of course I want you, pet." he assured her, giving her hand a small squeeze before standing and casually making his way to the desk at the foot of her bed. His back to her, he looked around again, this time trying to fight past the heavy fog in his mind. The tingling against his chest grew stronger, and he silently thanked Amy for the charm she'd given him as the whole room shimmered and a dull cement wall stood before him, where in fact the plaster wall of the dormitory should have been.
"Actually, you have no idea how much I want you." he continued as he let the haze override his senses again. Reaching the desk, he ran his hands along its edge, then turned around and gave her seductive smile as he slid her top drawer open behind his back, using his body to block her view of what he was doing. "Or, how long I've wanted you..." his hand closed around the object he was surreptitiously searching for, "-*dead*, that is." he smirked, withdrawing his hand and letting the knife shaped envelope opener fly.
Buffy's image shimmered back to Dru's, as the room shimmered away to reveal a smaller, cement-walled room he didn't recognize. Dru beamed as she clapped her hands happily and rushed over to him, throwing herself into his arms. "I knew you wouldn't really want that bad Slayer." she whispered into his ear as he staggered backward into the wall at the force of her sudden embrace.
Anger, hate, hurt, desire, lust, love - he couldn't tell what he was feeling anymore as she pulled herself up on him, grabbing the back of his head and plundering his mouth with a needy kiss.
His mind was in a whirlwind as he automatically kissed her back - he realized now that hers had been the scent that had distracted him during the fight, but why? What was she doing here? Had she gone to all that trouble just to 'kidnap' him? And what was with the mind game she'd just been playing on him?
Reluctantly he pulled her away from his body and looked down into her beautiful dark eyes. "Dru..." his intended words caught in his throat as he looked at her, the evil and insane princess he'd spent nearly a century loving - he hadn't ever really stopped loving - who had, in the end, ripped his unbeating heart straight out of his chest and torn it into fragmented little pieces he'd never been able to put back together.
The warring emotions continued to rage on within him as he searched her eyes for some clue as to why she had suddenly reappeared again. He loved her, he needed her, he hated her. He wanted to stop thinking and just kiss her again, he wanted to scream out in rage and tear her apart limb from limb; he wanted to feel her in his arms as he made passionate love to her, he wanted to throw her down to the floor and roughly shag her senseless; he wanted to wrap his arms around her and never let go, he wanted to drive a stake though her heart and make sure she would never hurt him again.
Closing his eyes against the torrent of emotions, he leaned back heavily against the wall and slid down to the floor, taking Dru with him as his hold on her only increased. "Dru..." he tried again, trying to focus his brain on something that did not involve having to face his conflicting feelings regarding her sudden presence. "-what's going on here?"
She leaned up against him as they sat together on the cold cement floor, and he could feel her smiling even without having to look at her. "One of the Beasts is ready to rise," she told him conspiratorially, "-we're going to make sure he has lots and lots of power to do so."
"*We* are?" Spike asked, resolutely keeping his eyes closed, even as his arms wrapped themselves around her cool body more comfortably, and his hand started stroking her soft dark hair.
"We are." she confirmed solemnly, "When it is all done, then we can be together again, just like before..." Her finger began tracing small patterns on his chest as she rested her head against his shoulder.
"And what exactly has to be done, luv?" he sighed, feeling himself calming down again somewhat.
"I will bring you the Slayer, you will offer her blood to the Beast, then everything will be better again, and the Beast will rise, and all the pretty little humans will die, and we can dance in the streets and watch the blood flow like rivers around us." she answered softly in a dreamy voice.
Opening his eyes again, Spike looked over at her. Her eyes were closed as she smiled to herself, no doubt at the prospect of all the chaos and blood and death that this particular venture of hers would create. How many times had he seen her like this, relaxing against him so peacefully, so lovingly? ....and then Angelus had come back and ruined everything.
Was she really telling him that they would be together again, just as they once were - before Angelus, before Sunnyhell? He leaned over and placed a small kiss on her forehead, then relaxed against the wall once again. If she was serious - if she really wanted him back... he stiffened and looked back down at her sharply. What was it Buffy had asked him earlier, just before he'd gone off to patrol with Amy? Would he sacrifice her for the end of the world and Dru's eternal love? He'd told her no - he'd honestly meant no - but things were different now...
Biting back a growl of frustration, he settled instead for banging his head against the wall behind him. Buffy, or Dru? Under any other circumstances, there'd be no dilemma in that choice - he hated Buffy, and he... well, he didn't completely hate... Dru.
But this time, going along with Dru's plans could very well entail some very serious, not to mention devastating, changes to a world that he, during his five months of bondage to that wheelchair, had been forced to admit that he rather enjoyed. Freeing a beast, especially a Hellmouth beast, would bring about a lot of death, a lot of bloodshed, and a lot of violence, three things he absolutely loved - *but* was wantonly killing off his happy meals really what he wanted? What would happen when the beast finished its rampage of terror and destruction? Would there be any humans left standing? Would the half-breed demons on the earth be next?
He groaned. This was all Buffy's fault. All her fault, because it was her blood that seemed to be needed; all her fault, because it was she that had caused Angelus to return, which had led to Dru leaving him, which had led to this very situation he was now completely immersed in. He hated that girl. Hated her with a passion that was slowly beginning to eat away at the control he had only barely managed to establish from seeing Dru again after all these years.
"Love me, Spike. Love me, and I promise I'll never leave you, never hurt you, never make you go through all that pain again..."
The words flooded through his mind from nowhere, hitting him like a hard slap in the face. Dru had pulled those words straight from his mind, straight from the fluffy, twisted vision of Buffy that had filled his mind that last night he'd visited her before the implant shorted out.
She'd been curled up on her side that night, and facing the door. She'd never been facing the door on any of his previous visits. Usually she was curled on her side with her back facing the door. But not on that night. No, on that night, she was facing him from the minute he stepped into the room, and the fool he was, he'd gone and sat right on the edge of her bed and watched her face as she slept.
Until that night, he'd never truly *looked* at her face, never truly *seen* her face, usually he'd watch her, her face partially darkened and hidden by the shadows, leaving him free to imagine whatever he pleased. But with the faint glow of the moonlight lighting up her features, he'd sat there, and every violent thought had fled his mind as he stared down at a face completely at rest and completely at peace.
Visions of seeing such looks on Dru's face had flooded his mind, and before he even knew what he was doing, he was gently running his fingers through the Slayer's blond locks. Yet when he closed his eyes, it was not his black queen that he saw embracing him, it was his mortal enemy. The only being he was truly made to hate and despise had been the one murmuring those sweet promises to him - and so help him, he had liked it.
Of course he'd gone out later that evening, before returning to Giles', and picked a fight with a drunk mortal, twice his size, just to kick the crap out of himself for even entertaining thoughts about the Slayer that didn't involve her death, but no amount of self-hatred had changed the fact that he'd had those thoughts - or those accompanying feelings.
Shaking his head at the turn his thoughts had taken, he glanced back down at Dru. He couldn't tell if she was sleeping against him, or just sitting there with her eyes closed, as she tended to do when she was having a psychic, or just plain psycho, episode.
Maybe he'd jumped to conclusions about her plans, maybe she was just talking nonsense - nonsense that just happened to echo a supposedly hypothetical scenario the Slayer had asked him about and coincidentally fit in with the sudden appearances of various apocalyptic demons. He silently groaned, this was the Hellmouth, nothing that fit together that conveniently was ever accidental. Or small.
End of Part 5/7
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