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Based on a prompt from Always-jbj when I said I had no ideas for fic. She is also the beta and the banner-maker.
A Very Strange Vampire
1/8/2012 – 3/15/12
Buffy tried hard to meet the vampire’s yellow stare with her own best “I’m the Slayer and you can go… something more ladylike than fuck yourself” look, but inside she was quailing. Spike had always been one of her toughest opponents – including the Master – and he’d just proven why. The stake that had been so useless against his suddenly invulnerable body was long gone and she was exhausted. She had no idea how long they’d been fighting, only that the sun – to which it seemed he was also now immune – that had been high overhead when they’d begun was now dropping to the horizon.
With no way to cripple or dust him, she’d been reduced to fighting at his whim, using every trick she had just to remain alive. She was bruised, exhausted, and suspected she had more than one broken bone. Spike’s last punch had knocked her briefly unconscious and she’d opened dazed eyes to find herself restrained by some sort of carelessly tied electrical cable. Lying atop her inert body and growling, Spike lowered his head and ran one fang over the skin on her throat, licking the trickle of blood that followed its path.
He lifted his head and shifted back to his human mien. “Just as delicious as I knew you’d taste,” he said, leering at her. His motion pushed the erection she’d just noticed into her stomach. Her face contorting in the first fear she’d shown, she willed her exhausted muscles to struggle again. He frowned down at her. “What the bloody hell got into you?” Something about the revulsion and terror on her face made him draw back slightly, which drew his own attention to the hard-on he always sported when fighting Buffy. Sudden understanding widened his eyes, and he growled at her with what almost sounded like disappointment.
“Relax, Slayer, raping little girls is your ex’s MO, not mine. Can’t help what fighting you does to me, but I’d never take advantage.”
She blinked at him, temporarily stilling in surprise. “Wha—?”
“Want to kill you, luv. Want to drink your blood. Wouldn’t deny it if I could. Definitely can’t deny what fightin’ you does to me.” He nudged her just to see the revulsion cross her face again, then lifted his hips away. “But I wouldn’t humiliate you like that. You’re a warrior – best I’ve ever faced. You don’t deserve that. You deserve a good death after a fair fight. And I’m just the vamp to give it you,” he added, shifting back into his true face and reaching toward her, fangs out. “It’s been fun, Slayer, but—”
“Cheater!”
He halted, fangs just barely touching her throat again.
“I beg your pardon?”
Shaking off the incongruity of hearing the thuggish vampire begging her pardon, Buffy followed up quickly. “You’ve got the gem. I can’t kill you. I can’t even hurt you; so you cheated. It wasn’t a fair fight.”
“Fuck!” Spike’s weight was gone as he leapt to his feet and began to roar his rage. “Bloody, buggering fuck!” He glared down at her, looking more dangerous than at any point in their conflict. “You fucking bitch!”
“I’m just saying….” she responded, too exhausted to control the quaver in her voice, and too surprised to take advantage of the break to test her hastily-tied bonds.
“This isn’t over, Slayer,” he snarled, turning his head as a car skidded to a halt and her Watcher stepped out. He watched Giles aim a crossbow at his chest while Xander and Willow backed him up with holy-water filled Super Soakers. Facing the would-be rescuers, he smiled when the bolt flew toward him, although he did wince when it struck his chest. “We’re not done here.” He plucked the bolt from his chest and, snarling at Gilles whose horrified expression made him laugh, he broke it in half and threw the pieces at Buffy.
She batted them away with the hand she’d just freed. “We’re not done, Spike,” she assured him. “I can’t let you keep that ring.”
“Well, unless you’re planning to steal it from me while I’m sleepin’….” He began to edge away, keeping a wary eye on the advancing would-be rescuers. “Till next time, Slayer,” he said, blowing her a kiss and jogging off without bothering to worry about the humans staring after him with their mouths open.
“Buffy! Are you okay?” Willow ran up to Buffy while Giles stood guard, hoping he’d missed with his first shot and not that he’d really seen Spike pluck the quarrel out of his heart with only a small grimace of pain. Willow helped Buffy get the rest of the cables off, then helped her to her feet. Buffy staggered once, then pulled herself up straight, holding her painful ribs with her one good hand.
“Let’s go,” she gasped. “We need to get out of here and into someplace safe.”
They hastened to Giles’s car and dove in, casting nervous looks over their shoulders as they did so. They did the same hasty in and out in reverse when they reached the apartment complex, hustling from the car to Giles’ apartment. Buffy collapsed on the couch, holding her side and shutting her eyes, while Xander and Willow stood around, looking uncomfortable as they watched their inhumanly strong, demon killing friend lie on the couch with an ashen face and her eyes closed in pain.
Giles knelt beside Buffy, holding a first aid kit and asking, “May I help you get cleaned up?” Without waiting for her nod, he began washing the cuts on her face – stopping when she held up her hand.
“I’ll do it,” she said, “just give me a minute… and maybe some aspirin?”
“This will work better.” He handed her two small white pills and signaled Willow to get her a glass of water. He sat back on his heels and frowned at her with worried eyes. “I take it he has found the Gem of Amara,” he said.
Buffy nodded, throwing the pills back and taking the glass of water from Willow. She swallowed, then said, “Oh yeah. And it’s everything it’s supposed to be. The sun didn’t burn him, my stake didn’t dust him… nothing I did could do anything but make him laugh. I even tried to get it off his finger, but it was stuck too tight.” She put the glass down and winced at the pull on her ribcage. “I hope it cuts off his circulation and his finger falls off.”
“I thought vamps didn’t have any circula—ah, right. Metaphorical wishful thinking. I knew that.” Xander turned away, the sight of Buffy so badly battered bothering him more than the thought that Spike was now invulnerable.
“Why aren’t you dead?” Willow blurted out. “I mean, not that you’re not… kinda damaged-looking… but he had you tied up. Why didn’t he bite you?”
“Because he’s batshit crazy? I don’t know. He was about to bite me – for real, this was just a taste.” She pointed to the long scratch on her neck. “I thought I was about to be dead – I was too tired to try to get loose and I don’t know if I could have kept fighting if I did – but I told him he cheated by using the gem and he….” She shook her head. “He jumped up and started yelling and calling me a bitch. Then you guys came and he told me he wasn’t done with me and he left.”
She dropped her head back and closed her eyes. “I need to get that ring away from him. An unkillable Spike is just…” She shuddered. “I’ve got to get it away from him.”
“We’ll do more research!” Willow said. “There’s got to be some way to kill him… or at least hurt him.”
“I think stuff hurts him, just not for very long. He just shakes it off and heals up, like, immediately. I need to carry a sharp knife. Maybe I’ll get a chance to cut his finger off.”
“I want you to be careful for a while, Buffy,” Giles said. “Don’t go up against him again until you’ve recovered from this battle.”
“Battle… warrior… that’s it!” All three people stared at her. “That’s why Spike didn’t kill me. He was telling me— okay, never mind what he was telling me, it was gross and disgusting— but he said he’d never treat me like that because I was a warrior. The best he’d ever fought. So when I told him he used an unfair advantage to beat me….”
“A vampire with a sense of honor?” Xander scoffed and rolled his eyes.
“No,” Giles said, picking up on what Buffy had instinctively understood. “Not so much honor as an overwhelming need to prove himself against the best. Don’t forget, this is a vampire that has already killed two slayers – one of whom was purportedly quite good and had several years’ experience.”
Buffy nodded, then winced as it reminded her of how many blows she’d taken. “That’s it. He said I deserved a clean death after a fair fight. When I told him it wasn’t a fair fight, he got mad, but he stopped trying to kill me.”
“So now what?”
“I don’t know,” Buffy admitted. “I couldn’t fight him again right now even if he took the ring off. And why would he do that? If he takes it off, I’ll dust him… probably. If he keeps it on, he’s always cheating, so he can’t kill me.” She perked up. “Maybe he’ll die from frustration?”
“Not bloody likely,” Giles said with a sigh. “We will all have to be extremely careful for a while. We don’t know if he might try to lure Buffy into another fight before she’s ready by kidnapping or killing one of us.”
“Well there’s a cheery thought,” Xander said. “I foresee a lot of prime time television in my future.”
“And a lot of time for homework in mine,” Willow agreed.
“As much as I hate to say it, that’s probably a good plan, guys. Until I know I’m 100% again, I really don’t want to have to rescue anybody.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spike watched from the roof of a nearby building as Buffy and her watcher followed the two young humans to the car. He had to grin at their obvious fear and haste. You’d think I was chasing them. He frowned when Buffy stumbled, watching closely when she grabbed her rib cage.
“Poor little Slayer,” he said. “Met her match this time, didn’t she?” Then he remembered that she would have had him several times if not for the ring, and he slammed his fist onto the low wall in front of him, breaking the bricks into powder. The sight of his smooth, undamaged knuckles was a reminder of exactly why he’d been able to inflict so much damage on the Slayer and he hit it again. “Fuck! Got to find a way to kill this slayer without cheating – not any more than is proper in a good fight, anyway,” he added as he thought about all the little tricks and moves that he and Buffy used against each other every time they fought.
“I’ll come up with something. Not going to take a chance on her staking me, but I am going to find a way to kill her fair and square.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was several weeks later when he saw Buffy, now clearly recovered from the beating he’d given her, toying with a young vampire as she complained to him about something. He was so enjoying watching her play and quip, he never noticed the men sneaking up on him until the net went over his head. He saw Buffy turn her head at his roar, and their eyes met briefly before he was hit with something that sent pain shooting through his body. She set me up! That bitch!
With another roar, he tore the net off and slammed one of his attackers back against a tree. He was immediately hit with several more tasers, all at the same time, and fell to his knees, shuddering with pain and unable to make his muscles respond immediately. He was just recovering when two of the black-clad men approached to pick him up. Buffy’s scream of “Watch out! He’s not really down!” wasn’t quite enough to keep them from being knocked unconscious, but it did alert the remaining men and they backed away, weapons held in front, eyes disbelieving above their masks.
Buffy came running up the hill and got between Spike and the sinister-looking, but still to be protected, humans. She looked back and forth between the men and all their equipment, and Spike, who, while getting to his feet and snarling, was still visibly recovering from the effects of multiple taser hits. Taking her opportunity, she grabbed his hand and pulled on the ring until it slid off his finger and onto her thumb. She frowned as the commandoes approached, holding the net, their intent obvious.
Spike’s snarls increased as he began swearing. “You bloody cheatin’ … Couldn’t take me on your own, could you?”
“What?” Buffy stared at him, genuinely confused. “You think I…?” She stared from the furious vampire to the commandoes preparing to throw another net over him. Something about the idea of netting vampires rather than dusting them sent her slayer alarms blaring.
“What are you guys doing?” She frowned at them. “We don’t catch vamps here in Sunnydale, we stake them”
“Out of the way, blondie,” one of the men growled. “This is our vamp. We owe him”
Buffy glared, his dismissive words and the implied threat to Spike helping her make a quick decision. Putting one hand behind her back, she gestured to Spike to come closer. When she felt his presence sending her senses off as he moved uncomfortably close, she turned her head just far enough to keep her lips invisible to the soldiers lining up in front of her.
“Run!” she hissed. “Get out of here. I’ll stall them.”
With no time to argue, and no Gem of Amara to help him resist, Spike turned and sped for the nearby woods at a speed no human could hope to match. Buffy faced the men who now seemed intent on taking their anger out on her. She kept her thumb tucked into her fist and hoped she wouldn’t have to hit anybody before she got the ring someplace safe.
The tallest of the commandoes hesitated, saying, “Buffy? Is that you?”
“Riley?”
“Stand down, men,” he said. The small squad grumbled, but halted their tentative approach to Buffy. “What are you doing here? And how did you know he wasn’t unconscious? He should have been down for the count.” Riley pulled off his black mask and frowned at her.
“Heh. Well, that’s the funny thing about Spike – you never know what he’s going to do next.”
“Spike? It has a name?”
Buffy shrugged. “That’s what he calls himself. He’s really William the Bloody.” She waited, but there was no reaction from the men other than puzzled frowns. She cocked her head. “So… I’m guessing you don’t really know much about vamps and demons?”
“I know that as many hits as that one took, he shouldn’t have been able to move for hours. We need to get him for—I mean, he’d be an interesting subject— You know what? It doesn’t matter. We’ll find him again and we’ll be ready for him next time.”
“Next time he might be easier,” Buffy said, keeping her fist clenched around the ring. “But I’d rather you left Spike to me. He’s mine. I owe him.”
There were chuckles from the men and a cough from Riley. “Buffy, I’m just… well, honestly, I’m kind of flabbergasted at your courage. And really, really confused about what you’re doing out here by yourself at night… But, whatever it is, you need to leave the vamp hunting to us. We’re equipped for it, you’re not.”
In response, Buffy lifted one of the still-unconscious men off the ground and tossed him at Riley, snickering to herself when he staggered under the weight.
“What are you?” She couldn’t tell which of the men the question had come from, but directed her answer at Riley.
“I’m the Slayer. Couldn’t you figure that out?” She was greeted with more blank stares. “Slayer, the. Look it up. And leave Spike alone. I’ll take care of him.”
She waved her hand and walked off. Her eyes narrowed as she passed by the woods and felt the unmistakable tingles on her neck. She stopped and pulled out her stake, waiting to see if the lurking vampire would be as stupid as the commandoes, but the signature faded away. “Smart decision,” she muttered, tucking the stake away and jogging toward her dorm.
