END OF THE BLOODY LINE
Chapter Twelve
by Slaymesoftly
Buffy rushed to Kendra’s side and applied pressure to the still spurting wound in the other slayer’s neck. She looked up at Spike questioningly and he nodded, reassuring her that the girl’s heartbeat was steady and strong. He went into Joyce’s room and pushed the buzzer for the nurse’s station and then joined Buffy in the hall, standing vigil over her as she comforted the sobbing girl in her arms.
“Dey was too strong. I tried, Buffy, but dey was jus’ too strong. De Gypsy woman, she is not like a fledgling – she is powerful already. I’m sorry…” the despair and disappointment in her voice was heartbreaking and Buffy struggled for the words to reassure the other slayer that she’d done her best.
Suddenly Spike was kneeling in front of them, forcing the distraught slayer to look him in the eye.
“Hey, Island Girl, you know all those times you threatened to stake me?”
Kendra nodded suspiciously.
“It wasn’t gonna happen, luv. You’re not a bad slayer, but you’re inexperienced and not as strong as you could be. Too predictable. Not like this one,” he smiled briefly at Buffy who was frowning, wondering where he was going with this.
“Angelus is a Master. He’s been around for a bloody long time and when he creates a childe, it ain’t gonna be your average fledgling. You throw Gypsy blood into that mix, and I’d say you did one helluva job to keep two of them busy and away from Joyce as long as you did.”
Kendra continued to stare at him suspiciously. She was just getting used to the idea that she shouldn’t be staking this unusual vampire on sight, and here he was trying to make her feel better about not being able to do her duty. She looked back at Buffy who was nodding vigorously.
“He’s right, Kendra. If I’d thought you were going to have to face two of them, I would never have left you alone here.”
She looked up at the night nurse who was rapidly assessing the situation and calling for an orderly to bring blood and a stretcher.
“She needs to stay in this room,” Buffy said firmly. “With my mother. We’ll be taking them home in the morning.”
The overworked woman left in charge for the night had been born and raised in Sunnydale. She looked at the wound on the dark girl’s neck and at the two lethal-looking blonds standing guard and nodded once. The orderly arrived with the rolling stretcher, but before he could move toward the injured slayer, Buffy had scooped Kendra up easily and deposited her gently on the rolling bed. He gawked at the tiny girl’s effortless lift, but the nurse just gestured to the room behind them and the man obediently rolled Kendra in and placed her bed near Joyce’s.
After Kendra had received several pints of blood and was napping peacefully, Buffy and Spike relaxed enough to sit in chairs outside the room. Spike had already checked the window and assured Buffy that it was as vampire-proof as a public place could be.
“Even if the gypsy bird has a few Drac-like tricks up her sleeve, it’s a long way down from here and nothing to climb. I can’t see either one of them getting up here and getting through that window without us knowin’ it.”
“I hope everyone else has the good sense to stay inside the house for the rest of the night,” Buffy mumbled.
“I doubt even the whelp is that stupid, ‘specially now that we know Angelus’s taken at least one of you down.”
He paused for a moment, wincing in sympathy as Buffy flinched at the reminder, then continued, “You know, don’t you, that he’s gonna keep comin’ after your friends and family? It’s the way he works. Takin’ the Watcher’s girl was jus’ the beginning. He’ll be furious at losing Dru…”
Spike closed his eyes briefly as the realization that she was gone from him forever truly sunk in. He was surprised to feel a gentle touch on his arm and found Buffy kneeling beside his chair and looking up at him with brimming eyes.
“I’m sorry, Spike. I know how much you loved her, but she’s happier now, don’t you think? She seemed really happy when she talked to us.”
She looked at him anxiously, torn between genuine concern for his feelings and the relief she felt that her one possible rival for his affections was gone. She reached up and cupped his cheek with her hand, allowing the love and empathy she was feeling to flow through their newly-realized connection.
He covered her hand with his own and brought it around to his mouth where he placed an open-mouthed kiss on her palm.
“Yes, love, I’m sure she is happier. And she’s where she belongs – with the angels. Or what passes for them among the Powers That Be,” he grimaced at the reminder of how little they had to say about what happened to them.
“And,” he added with a wicked smile as he stood and pulled her against his body, “It seemed she was giving us her blessing.”
“Mmmmmmm,” Buffy murmured as she pressed up against him, “Somebody did, that’s for sure. I’ve heard people say ‘the earth moved’ for them, but I think we’re the first couple to be struck by lightning.”
He laughed and nuzzled her neck, inhaling her scent, now irrevocably mixed with his. “Yeah, I’ve gotta say, love, as good as I like to think I am, I might have a hard time followin’ that little performance.”
“You are gonna follow it, though, right? No more waiting till I’m old enough?”
“No more waiting. Think that genie’s out of the bottle and there’ll be no putting it back. You’re mine now, love. Forever.”
“Forever,” she echoed, pushing down the knowledge that her forever could come any time.
As though he knew what she was thinking, Spike tipped her head up and pinned her with iron-hard blue eyes. “There is no way you’re not gonna live as long as I do, Slayer. Whatever that power was that freed Dru and sent her to us, it affected us too. Made us somethin’ different, somethin’ more than we were before. You’re in me now, jus’ like I’m in you and I don’t see either one of us leaving this earth without the other.”
“If you weren’t on this earth, I don’t think I would want to be here,” Buffy said softly. “I don’t think I COULD be here. Not without you.”
“Well, there you go then,” he said, lightening the mood. “ ’M not gonna let you get killed, and you’re gonna be watchin’ my back. Ole Angelus doesn’t stand a chance. Don’ care how many Gypsies he turns.”
******************
Shortly before dawn, Spike slipped down the bare corridor, racing the sun back to Revello Drive and his bed in the darkened basement. He waited anxiously until he heard the commotion that indicated Buffy had brought both Joyce and Kendra home, then quickly ran upstairs. Without speaking to anyone, he picked Joyce up and carried her to her room. He deposited her gently on the bed and turned to leave, only to be stopped by her soft voice.
“Spike.”
He lifted an eyebrow at her and waited while she fumbled for words.
“I…I owe you an apology. You and Buffy. You tried to warn me and I…I was a foolish woman. I put a man I barely knew ahead of my…family.”
He tried to hide the warmth spreading in his chest as Buffy’s mother included him in her family and responded gruffly, “You were lonely and he made you feel special. I know how that feels. No need to apologize to me, Joyce, but I ‘spect your daughter’d like to hear it.”
“She will,” she said firmly as she settled back against the pillows. “She definitely will.”
He nodded and went out into the hall. Buffy was just emerging from the spare room where she had insisted Kendra spend the day resting and getting her strength back.
“We’re going to need everyone we’ve got when we go after them,” Buffy said firmly. “So I want you to rest until you are back to full strength, ‘K?”
There was grumbled agreement from the other Slayer, who snuggled down in the bed with a pout on her face, but was asleep within minutes.
Buffy sighed and leaned against the cool, comforting body in front of her.
“This isn’t going to be easy, is it?” she whispered into his chest.
“No, love, it isn’t. But you’re not in it alone. You’ll never be alone – I’m here, and I’m staying here.
**************************************************
Angelus was reveling in his new companion. He stared down at her, spread wantonly on his bed, waiting for him to take what he wanted. He licked his lips as he took in her lush beauty.
“The Master was always blathering for ages and ages about certain rules. Not that I paid much heed to auld bat nose, but I remembered him once telling us not to turn gypsies. I knew that old bastard was hiding something. He just didn’t want me to know what it could be like. Such a fine thing you are. Between us we are going to make the streets run with blood.”
He leaned over her and sank his teeth into her full breast, growling softly as she moaned and writhed under him. Her legs came up to wrap around his back and she pulled him down so that his cock was pressing into her sex.
“Aye, you want that, do you, Gypsy? You want Angelus to fuck you?” He held himself up on powerful arms, refusing to allow her the contact she was demanding. The vampire under him was snarling and baring her teeth, snapping at his neck that remained just out of reach.
Suddenly he backhanded her, snarling, “You don’t bite me without permission, Childe.”
Instead of cowering and pleading for forgiveness as Drusilla would have, Jenny twisted her head and sank her teeth into the hand that had slapped her, meeting the older vampire’s astonished eyes as she pulled his blood into her throat. He was torn between the demon’s rage at her lack of respect for her sire and his admiration of her viciousness.
With a guttural snarl, he pulled his hand away, heedless of the pain as her teeth ripped free. He used the bloody hand to punch her in the face. Then, sitting up on her chest, he systematically battered her face with both fists until it was a mass of swollen, bruised and bloody flesh.
When his new consort had stopped snarling and was lying still beneath him, whimpering slightly, he stopped and glared down at her.
“Such cheek! Don’t ever challenge me again, Childe. I made you to rule at my side, but I can replace you just as easily as I replaced Drusilla….”
He shuddered for a second, the memory of the dark-haired vampire’s torn body and final agonized scream dampening his anger and lust. His demon howled internally, aware that somehow, not only had his greatest creation been lost to him physically, but that in her final seconds she had escaped the eternal damnation to which his siring should have condemned her.
Shrugging off the uncomfortable feeling that he was missing something important about the night’s events, he focused his attention back on the softly sobbing childe underneath him. He slid down her body and rammed his cock into her, rejoicing in her gasp of pain and surprise. But when she once again wrapped her legs around him and began to push against his bulk, he growled softly and allowed her to take what pleasure she could in his rough love-making.
Confident that he had re-established his dominance, he failed to notice the angry glint in the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut or the defiance still visible on the battered face buried in his neck.
****************************
“We have to warn Giles about Jenny.” Buffy’s flat voice indicated that it was only her Slayer sense of duty that made her at all interested in what happened to her Watcher.
“I’ll do it,” Willow volunteered. “I have to get home and to school. I’ll tell Giles about Jenny.”
Buffy nodded her head tiredly, leaning back against Spike’s supporting chest and not even noticing her friend’s wide eyes as he nuzzled the new marks on her neck. The vampire saw, though, and said gruffly, “Tell him it turns out the Powers That Like to Fuck With People’s Lives have decided the Slayer and I are their latest toys. If and when he’s ready to start behaving like her Watcher and not like a bloody wanker, we’ll fill him in on what we know.”
“Fuck him,” Buffy growled, causing Willow’s eyeballs to expand past what should have been physically possible.
Spike chuckled and pulled her closer to his chest. “Does that little bit of channeling me mean I’m gonna be wanting to wear high heels and carry a purse, pet? Cause if it does, I’m gonna be having a serious conversation with those soddin’ Powers.”
Buffy opened her eyes and looked at Willow apologetically. “I’m sorry, Will. I didn’t mean that. Well, maybe a little bit, I did. We need to get some rest now, but I think we should get everybody together this afternoon so that Spike and I, and Kendra, can bring everybody up to speed.”
Willow nodded her head, trying to smother the curiosity that was demanding she stay there and fire questions at the obviously exhausted duo.
“Okay, I’ll let Xander know…and Giles. We can all meet back here this afternoon.”
With a nod, Buffy turned and started toward the basement, turning at the entrance to the kitchen to look at the vampire.
“Are you coming or not?”
As Spike’s chuckle rolled over her, Willow slapped her hands over her ears just as he leered at Buffy and answered, “I’m expecting to, love. Definitely expecting to…”
The Slayer roller her eyes and with a final flip of her hand at Willow, she opened the basement door and started down the stairs, the vampire following like a blond shadow. |
