Author’s Note: This is the answer to a BSV challenge, and as before, I will post the guidelines at the end of the story. Similarly, this story is radically different from anything I’ve attempted to write before. It is Spuffy, and after two or three chapters, that should be very obvious…I just don’t want to freak people out too badly with the first few. It’s all set-up.

I’m molding some popular vampire traditions in some of the vampire romance novels I’ve read – *sheepish* – so I will be tampering with a bit of the myths outside Whedonverse. As far as I know, these new venues are wholly my interpretation.

Author: Holly (holly.hangingavarice@gmail.com)
Rating: NC-17 (For language, violence, and sexual situations)
Timeline: Outside canon.
Distribution: Mandi, Yani, Stacy, Luba…it’s all yours. Everyone else, just drop me a line. You can have it as long as I know where it’s going.
Summary: For a hundred years, William the Bloody has led a trail of bloodshed and chaos across Europe and the Americas. That all comes to an end when the woman he’s devoted his existence to brings his mate to him in the guise of a late-night snack. A small girl with eyes of green and blonde hair. And suddenly, Spike is thrown into a world of color beyond the black and white, and his life is never the same.

Disclaimer: The characters herein are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. They are being used for entertainment purposes out of respect and admiration, and not for the sake of profit. No copyright infringement is intended.

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The air smelled of sunrise.

They had officially been searching for Drusilla for three hours, and it was growing harder and harder to convince himself that she had disappeared for a quick snack. Granted, his sire wasn’t the most reliable vampire; she went missing almost weekly, but never during their ‘family time.’ Such was what she lived for. She spent hours communing with the stars, foreseeing the best hunting ground, and generally getting on Darla’s nerves.

Normally, that last bit was what made the family hunting time worthwhile. On his best day, Spike couldn’t tolerate Darla. Her blatant disapproval of his dark princess and Drusilla’s choice in mate drove him to uncomfortable extremes. He would just as soon stake the old bitch and suffer the wrath of Angelus than deal with her nagging for another two centuries.

Granted, if he killed Darla, he wouldn’t be around to bask in the nag-less atmosphere. But it was almost worth it.

“Let’s go, already,” the bitch in question moaned. “If she dusts, she dusts. And honestly, after more than a century, she should know the rules by now.”

Angelus grinned and wrapped his arms around her middle, lapping at the blood that stained her throat. Spike rolled his eyes and looked away. “I wouldn’t be too worried about that,” he purred in turn. “Dru’s a resourceful girl. She always finds her way home.”

Darla cooed in approval. “Well, we can always dust her for fun.”

Her eyes leveled with Spike’s, a cruel smile splaying across her lips.

“Or we could wait around. See if she’s up for some fun later,” Angelus retorted, squeezing her breasts.

Spike’s jaw clenched and he glanced away.

Fucking typical.

They didn’t share any love. Not like he did with his sire. The great overbearing sod and his bint of a mate were about as callous to each other as they were to the people they preyed upon. Too often, they enjoyed fucking their food before killing them. He didn’t know how many times he had walked in on them during their ‘suppertime’; Angelus ramming into a sobbing co-ed as Darla held her mouth to her pussy. Or Darla riding her boy into oblivion as Angelus’s fangs tore into the most painful parts of a young girl’s body. They would meet in a bloody kiss and fuck until they both passed out.

They had no tact. No affection. Nothing beyond devotion to the same blood-drenched lifestyle. They enjoyed each other thoroughly, of course; if such a thing as best friends existed in the world of vampires, they were certainly that. Lovers, friends, cruel demons who got off on the pain of others. Who got off on inflicting pain upon each other.

Oh, and they were mates.

There was no love between them, and they were mates. They had the outward appearance of love, but it wasn’t there.

Spike hated them. He hadn’t always, but he hated them now. Hated Darla for her mocking, hated Angelus for pretending to be the mediator. He had eyes for no one but his mate, and yet, he enjoyed toying with his grandchilde by fucking Drusilla whenever he felt the now-peroxide vampire was too comfortable with the affections of his sire.

Dru loved it, of course. It was a big game with her.

She never screamed as much as when Angelus was bringing her pleasure, and Angelus brought pleasure to no one without payment.

Similarly, Dru never cooed as much as when her mouth was around her sire’s cock.

Dru was supposed to be his, but she never looked at him the way she looked at Angelus. She never stopped crawling to Darla for her grandmum’s impossible approval. She never attempted to please Spike the way she pleased her Daddy. She never attempted to be Spike’s girl.

Spike loved Dru. Why was it that loving her meant he couldn’t have her?

Darla loved taunting him with it. She absolutely loved it. When his eyes were wet with tears from sobbing over Dru’s joyous infidelity, Darla would straddle him, smile, and whisper in his ear about how his black goddess wasn’t his, and never had been. How it hadn’t happened the way it happened between her and Angelus. That the reason it hurt so much when the insane vampire fucked someone that wasn’t him was because he knew, deep down, that he had no right to lay claim on her.

Angelus and Darla were mated. They were meant to be mated. That was simply the way it was. As with humans and their simplistic sentimentality, vampires had their share of legends—some were true, most were not. Over the years, it became increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction; especially with the elder generations of vampires either already mated or dead, while the younger generation was simply apathetic.

One of the most popular stories of vampiric legend had been buried under myth, mainly because it hardly happened anymore. The same with humans and their delusions of finding their ‘true love.’ Vampires had the same thing, only love was optional. Love was the factor that too many felt weakened the bond. Spike couldn’t help but love. It was the way he was. The way he had always been. Turning away from that simply wasn’t an option.

Darla enjoyed telling him of the minute she knew Angelus was hers. The minute she saw him crawl out of his grave, and his eyes flashed gold.

It happened only once and was the subject for half of the world’s fairytales, as well as the universal obsession with gold. The gold at the end of the rainbow. Once a vampire’s eyes met another’s and their eyes flashed gold, it was over. That search. That longing. Darla had not sired Angelus with the pretense that he was the one she was supposed to be with; it had simply worked out like that.

Drusilla had sired Spike with the same hope.

Over a hundred years had passed. A hundred years of pretending Dru was the one he was destined to spend his eternity with. A hundred years of loving her, of willing servitude, of waiting for her eyes to glow. Convincing himself that fate would catch up with him. That Dru was his—she had to be. Else he would not love her as he did.

It had been over a century. He had done everything he could think to win her affection. He had slain two slayers, showered her with gifts, killed who she wanted, attempted to love her with his body the way he wanted, and bruised her in sex when she demanded it. Nothing helped. Nothing worked. He was hers, but she was most certainly not his. She belonged to Angelus.

She was her daddy’s girl.

“Ugh.” Darla shook her head. “My skin’s starting to peel.”

Bleeding tragedy that was.

“Don’t worry, Spikey,” Angelus drawled, jerking his sire to his side with another one of those wondrous pretenses of affection. “She’s probably just found someone with much more…stamina…to keep her occupied while we were out. No worries. She’ll be crawling back in no time.” He smiled cruelly. “She always does, right?”

Spike growled lowly but didn’t rise to the bait. It was useless—humiliating, but useless. Years of conditioning had taught him that much. Angelus was the head of the household; not even Darla could challenge his mastership. And surprisingly, he didn’t think that bothered the bitch. She truly seemed to only need Angelus. The women of the clan were completely enthralled by the enormous wanker.

Why was anyone’s guess.

And Spike stood on the sidelines. Always on the bloody sidelines. Watching as the brutal sod took everything he had away.

No. That wasn’t right. None of what Angelus took had ever been truly his. It had only contained the pretense of being his.

Lashing out got him nowhere. He’d learned that the hard way.

“My little prince needs to be taught his lesson. Never raise your voice to the elders. It upsets Miss Edith.”

Drusilla was frighteningly inventive when it came to punishment. She’d once conned Spike into chains that she usually captured him with to fuck him senseless, and performed maliciously similar acts only to inflict pain instead of pleasure. And the amazing thing was, her innovation paid off.

He simply didn’t know if it was what she did, or the way she did it.

The way she regarded him with such cold loathing when she was upset with him.

Not your mate.

That nasty voice had been haunting him for months now; now for no particular reason. Their hundred-year anniversary was just behind them, and he was realizing for the first time that what he wanted was forever out of his reach as long as he continued to expect more from Dru than she was willing to give.

She didn’t love him, and she never pretended otherwise. He’d simply made himself believe that she had to. She had to; else she would have never chosen him.

More than ever, he was realizing that the world he’d been living in was temporary. A gift of time until she discovered eyes that truly flashed of gold and locked him out of her bedroom forever.

And then he would be at the mercy of his family.

He’d be lucky if the only thing they did to him was feed him his own dust.

This town was eating him up.

As though reading his thoughts, Darla linked her fingers through Angelus’s and threw her head back, drawing in a deep, appreciative breath. “You know,” she said as they strode down one of the many glum alleys of a city gone mad with corruption. “I’m beginning to love LA.”

“Told you, babe,” Angelus agreed. “This town? Closest thing you can get to the Hellmouth without actually having to, you know, be there.”

Angelus had a strange aversion to hellmouths. Spike always reckoned it was a symptom of his ego. Hellmouths were demon breeding grounds. Every mischievous sprite within a thousand-mile radius unconsciously sought the warmth of home soil. Ancient mystics suspected that since hellmouths were literally designed to operate as gateways to Hell, the ground above them was the unholiest earth any evil thing could ever want. A playground for all the nasties that literally went bump in the night.

Angelus prided himself in his reputation as being one of the few vampires that gained respect from the hierarchy of Hell’s demons. On the Hellmouth itself, he would have to compete for notoriety. When he walked into a downtown LA bar, all he had to do was flash the fangs, order a drink, and he had everyone under his thumb.

Bloody ridiculous, was what it was.

Their current home was one of the many abandoned buildings that had long been scheduled for demolition but somehow never taken down. It lacked anything Spike would call comfort, but Angelus was confident he could fix it into one of the palaces he and Darla constantly referred to nostalgically.

A place with a view, he said. Darla loved a good view.

There were a few sofas, three beds, a set of chains, and plenty of bums to pick off the streets. It would do for now, but they wouldn’t stay. No matter how much they sodding liked Los Angeles, they wouldn’t stay. They never did. Angelus and Darla grew bored too easily. Not that Spike was known for his patience; he was content with someone to hunt, Drusilla to please, blood to drink. Location hardly mattered. With his elders, though, location was everything.

He was bloody sick of it.

“Here we are,” Angelus drawled as he threw the door open, his hands sliding around his sire once more, palming her breasts. “And not a minute too soon. It stank of daylight out there.”

“Mmm,” Darla cooed favorably. “I’m ready for a nightcap.”

“Breakfast, you mean?”

Spike rolled his eyes and stalked ahead.

Bloody right. We’re the Manson Family, ‘cept we have issues.

The minute he crossed the threshold, he knew she was here. Knew she was downstairs, just as the others had known all along. He couldn’t even bother to collapse in relief. To count his blessings. To praise the all-knowing maker for granting him one more day with his black goddess.

He’d reached his breaking point, and he couldn’t take it anymore.

That wasn’t all. The air hung with the scent of tears and vibrated with the thrill of terror. She’d brought home a snack. Honestly, he couldn’t even be bothered by that right now. Knowing Dru, she’d want to play and bathe in innocent blood, then shag until the sun had fallen again. Not this time.

Not this time.

This time, it would be different. He’d kill the unfortunate and face her anger. Better her anger than this sham of an existence he’d been conned into living for the better part of a century.

No more fooling himself. He couldn’t bear it.

It ended tonight.

“My prince has come home,” Drusilla singsonged the minute he pushed the door to their room open. She was lying across a settee, her body clad in black lace. The sort she knew instinctively drove him out of his nutter.

Okay. So this was going to be harder than he thought.

“The stars spoke to me tonight, my William,” she said, purring in satisfaction. “Whispered little nasties. Told me the circus had come to town, and that the elephants have no tea.”

She ignored the wails of what he now knew was a small child as freely as she might ignore a whining puppy. Pain of the young didn’t bother her—never had. And true, while he was too much of a monster to kill with anything that resembled prejudice, some inner shadow of the man he had once been had never rested well with burying children.

He would kill them; he simply took no pleasure in it.

“Tea-drinkin’ elephants, pet?” Spike sighed and stripped his duster down his arms. “What a bloody pity.”

“Miss Edith told me you were cross.”

“Bit wore out. We din’t know where you were.”

“But that’s the great secret, you see.” Drusilla shrugged her shoulders like an eager teen, her eyes shining with malicious delight. “Would have been in poor taste to tell. Little boys who whisper in the dark can’t picnic with the rest of us. I won’t allow it.”

He sighed again, feeling the beginnings of a headache stirring. “What’d the stars tell you, pet? That it’s February? To vamp Harrison Ford? That pink is the new ‘in’ color?”

A low whine tumbled through her lips, and she pouted at him. “My prince has lost his temper.”

“Jus’ not in the mood tonight, ducks.”

“But I brought you something!” She jumped to her feet, clasping her hands around his, walking him backward toward the sound of the cries. “What the stars told me, you see. What Miss Edith promised. She has come, my darling. The one to change it all. This one called for you.”

He frowned, confused. These mind games were hardly new to Drusilla, but she was playing something different tonight. “Called for me? What are you talking about?”

Her face fell at that, a sharp gasp rupturing through her stomach as though she had just been struck. “No answers,” she moaned. “All questions. No answers. No answers for my sweet tonight.”

“You brought me a child…”

“She was calling for you.”

“Is this like the time that orangutan was callin’ for me? ‘Cause pet, as much fun as that was, ‘m not up for a bleedin’ game of charades tonight.”

“It’s all new. All new. It itches.” She started scratching at her arms at that, as though the thought alone bothered her to submission. “It itches all over. And she waits. Taste her blood. Mummy brought her just for you.”

Best to go ahead with this and get it over with. Spike exhaled deeply and nodded, moving around Drusilla intently. Kill the child, drink her, make his sire happy.

Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow would be the day when things changed.

Doubt clouded his heart. As pleasant as the thought was, his future was a pattern of days like these. Days when he didn’t know if the woman he’d loved since crawling out of his grave would be home to share his bed. If she would admit him to her body, or save herself for the time when Daddy wanted to play. If she would go on the hunt and meet the one she’d thought he was so long ago. Meet the one, and leave him behind in search of sunrise.

He hated how weak she made him.

There were days when he hated pretty much everything about her. Hated her so richly that it was easy to forget she was the one that had taken him from a world he’d loathed and given him the night. Hated her to the point where it was hard to remember why he’d loved her so long in the first place.

He would snap out of it, though. He always did.

Spike huffed out another breath and pushed the door open, the child’s fear washing over him in strong, almost painful waves.

Snap her neck. Taste her. Have it over with.

The girl was small—no more than four or five. She was in her pajamas, her golden hair pulled back in pigtails. Her back was to him, and she was trembling hard.

“I want Mommy,” she wailed. “I wanna go home!”

Spike swallowed and stepped forward. “Where’s home, Pidge?”

The girl gasped at the intrusion but didn’t reply. Instead, she scurried further into the shadows; an ineffective move in the eyes of a vampire, but she couldn’t know that.

“There now,” he said, closing the door behind him gently. “’S jus’ ole Spike. Nothin’ here to hurt you.”

He’d never felt so uncomfortable telling that lie in the course of his unlife.

The guilt expanded when he felt her relax.

Bloody right. Wouldn’t Mum be proud?

Spike frowned and shook away the thought. What the bleeding hell was wrong with him? The girl was a girl and there were thousands like her. He didn’t have a full-out conscience about these things, and he wasn’t looking to grow one. The kid was food—plain and simple. Best to do it now and get it over with.

“The mean lady won’t let me leave,” the girl said softly, her voice tentative and exploratory.

A wry, bitter grin tugged at his lips. You an’ me both, ducks.

“Tell you what,” he said instead, walking forward slowly. Her back was still to him, disguising the mask of his demon that fell comfortably over his face. “Why don’ we leave together, yeh? I’ll take you home. We’ll make a run for it.”

An impossibly long beat passed at that. Then the girl turned around.

Something slammed into him hard. His lungs gasped for air that he didn’t need, and his body shut down completely.

Not possible. Not bloody possible.

But it was there. God, it was there.

The girl was beautiful, even with tears trekking down her cheeks. Her pajamas were rumpled and there was a worn teddy bear in her arms. She was looking at him with hope. With the beginnings of trust he didn’t deserve. With a thousand things he couldn’t begin to fathom.

And her eyes…god, her eyes.

Spike fell to his knees and his world collapsed.

Her eyes shined with gold.

He didn’t register how hard he was trembling until he felt a tentative hand on his face. The girl was close now. So close. The air around her had changed from terrified to curious. She wasn’t crying anymore. She was simply there. A small girl with eyes swimming in gold, looking at her captor with concern beyond her years.

“You have strange eyes,” she said softly, her soft hand sweeping across his forehead.

“Yeh?” Spike choked. “How’s that?”

“Shining.”

A long, controlled breath hissed through his lips. His mate. God, it was over. He’d found his mate. Drusilla had brought him his mate, only she was so small. So small. Not that the demon cared; not a lick. The demon was screaming and clawing at him, demanding that he get over whatever reservation he had and tie his mate to him forever.

No.

She was just a girl. He wasn’t going to do that to a girl. He didn’t even know how it was possible; humans weren’t compatible for vampiric mates. Darla had never seen Angelus’s eyes glow before she killed him—it had been a lucky break. The child in front of him was not a vampire. She wasn’t.

But she was his mate. There was no second-guessing that. After so many years of belonging to no one, he finally was with the one meant to share eternity with him. He’d found her in the most unlikely form. His destiny. His mate.

And the demon wanted the world to know it.

Take her. She’s yours.

No.

No.

She was so young. He wasn’t about to tie himself together to a child. Not now.

A heavy sigh rushed through his lips. He had to get her out of here. He had to get her home. Had to get her as far from danger as possible.

And then, what else was there but to wait? This girl was his. He had to get her out.

Then watch and wait until she grew older until he could take what was his. Make sure that no other big nasty brought harm to his girl.

“Am I gonna die?” the girl sniffled, her eyes welling with tears.

The thought that anyone could bring his mate harm made the demon snarl protectively and up the urge to sink his fangs in her throat and link her to him forever. Christ, he had to get her out of here now. Get her out and away from the others; away from him. Far away.

“No, sweetpea, you’re not gonna die.” Spike forced a smile and brushed her hair out of her face. “I’ll take you home, yeh? Back to your mum an’ dad.” He smiled as her eyes softened, warming him with the undeserved radiance of her tender trust. “What’s your name, pet?”

She buried her face adorably into the fur of her teddy bear. “Buffy,” she said.

He smiled. “Buffy, huh?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Your mum told you not to give your name out to strangers, right?”

Another nod. “Yeah.” She paused. “But you’re not a stranger, are you? I know you.”

Spike’s head ducked and he shuddered another sigh, tears stinging his eyes. It wasn’t fair. He’d waited so long, and now here she was. Much too young to claim, but his. Wholly his. He couldn’t have her. He couldn’t take her like this.

The world had fallen down around him. In simple seconds, whatever cause he’d dedicated his existence to for the past century was null and void. Decades worshipping Drusilla amounted to nothing. He felt the fabric of time around him had woven into a tapestry of lies. He couldn’t stay with his family. Not now that he’d found her. He couldn’t do anything but watch over her until it was time. Keep her safe from predators like himself. Keep her protected.

“Not a stranger,” he agreed, stiffening as Drusilla’s scent wafted near the door. “You know me.”

“But I don’t remember you.”

Don’t think that’s the way it works, ducks.

“I know.”

Jus’ somethin’ I’m gonna have to explain when you’re older. He cleared his throat. Much older.

There was a creak by the door. Buffy stiffened. “She’s back,” she cried, her eyes welling with tears. “The mean lady is back.” Her small body tightened in his arms. “She’s gonna hurt me.”

Something dark and dangerous fell over him, and he practically saw red. “Hurt you?” he growled. “Did she hurt you? Before I got here? Did Dru—did the mean lady—”

Buffy shook her head. “She said I was a surprise.”

“Surprise.”

“For you.”

Drusilla had brought his mate to him. There was no way she would have done that consciously. Intentionally. While his sire certainly entertained no aspirations of offering herself to him for all time, she similarly was possessive when it came to people she felt belonged to her. She would never have brought his mate to him if she knew that was what Buffy was.

The stars had told her that the girl needed Spike. But that was all. And as she would, thinking absolutely nothing else of it, she had brought the child to him because that was what she believed Miss Edith wanted.

Well, she was right about one thing. He hazarded a glance to the door. You, my darling Buffy, were definitely a surprise.

“My William…” Drusilla cooed, edging into the darkness. The girl gasped and threw herself into Spike’s arms, burying her frightened face in his shoulder. Her teddy plopped to the ground beside him. “Do you like her? Isn’t she a pretty dolly?”

He had never been so terrified in all his life. Buffy was shaking uncontrollably, her small arms around his throat. He felt the hum of her pulse racing just inches beneath his mouth. His fangs had no problem with their propinquity. He needed her blood. He needed her now. Now that his mate was with him, he needed to never let her go.

This is so bloody wrong.

“Sure thing, luv. Pretty as a picture.”

“I hoped you wouldn’t be cross with me, my dearest. Her blood is for you. Yours to taste. Yours to take.”

You have no idea.

Spike forced his eyes shut, his hands wrapping around Buffy’s small arms. “Let go, ducks,” he murmured soothingly. “Jus’ let go for a minute.”

“No!” the girl wailed. “The mean lady’s gonna kill me!”

“Ohhh.” Dru moved further into the room, a pout crossing her lips. “Does the dolly not want to play? Miss Edith won’t approve. No, no. No cake for uncooperative dollies. You make mummy’s tummy hurt.”

“Spike!” The girl was sobbing, and the man inside nearly broke at the sight. The demon raged on, demanding her blood, and he had never been so thoroughly torn. “Spike, don’t let me go! Please!”

His sire cackled in glee. “Ohhh, look at the dolly dance!”

“Dru—”

“Please don’t let her kill me! Please!”

“Shall we tie her up, my sweet? Take turns, you think?” She sneered nastily. “This one will scream for us. Scream all sorts of dreadful things.”

He vamped then; couldn’t help it. Amidst Buffy’s screams and Drusilla’s giggles of pure delight, the demon burst through, and he forfeited control. There would be no harming of the girl. He didn’t care what he had to do; what he lost. None of it mattered now. Nothing mattered.

He had to get Buffy out.

“No,” he barked, holding up a hand.

Dru whimpered. “Are you displeased?”

“’Course not, sweets.” He turned to her then fully, doing his best to ignore the feel of the girl wrapping her body around his leg. “Jus’ wanna enjoy my prezzie all to myself, right? ‘S what the stars told you, innit?”

The pout resurfaced. “Selfish boys don’t get to play with toys.”

“There now,” he cooed, brushing a kiss across her lips. “You can punish me later, yeh? Tie me up an’ tell me what a naughty boy I’ve been.”

She smiled a bit at that.

“See? I know what my princess likes.” He kissed her again. “You should go play with Daddy. See if your grandmum feels up for a game t’night.”

“Daddy!”

Spike nodded encouragingly. “He was talkin’ about you,” he said. “Told me he wanted a taste of your goodies. See if they were as delicious as he remembered.”

It worked. Thank the bloody maker, it worked. With an elated laugh, Drusilla clapped her hands together and bounded out of the room. He waited until he felt her leave their quarters of the half-furnished mansion before allowing the unneeded breath he’d been holding to rush through his lips.

Great. One problem taken care of.

Buffy’s arms tightened around his leg.

“Is the mean lady gone?” she asked softly, her voice stifled with tears. “Is it okay now?”

Spike willed his eyes closed.

“She’s gone, pet.”

“Is she coming back?”

Well, ‘f I know Angelus…

“Not tonight, sweetheart.”

That didn’t make it safe, though. Nothing made it safe. He had to keep Buffy safe until nightfall. Until the sun had submerged once more and he could take her home.

Had to keep her away from his fangs. Had to keep her safe from himself.

At the same time, he recognized this was all he was going to get. For years at that, this was the nearest he could be to his mate without endangering her. Whatever time he had with her was precious. He could coddle her through the day, envision the woman she would eventually become, and pretend that the next decade and a half wouldn’t be the longest years of his life.

Take her, the demon raged. She’s yours. Take her!

“No,” Spike murmured to himself, shaking his head. “I won’t.”

“Huh?”

He forced a small smile to his lips and gathered her in his arms, making sure to scoop up her teddy bear as well. Having been with a woman with an affinity for inanimate objects, he had a good idea how young girls grew attached to stuffed animals. Furthermore, he wanted to pamper her with as much comfort and familiarity as possible. Relax her enough so that she slept. “You’re gonna get some sleep, ducks. I’ll take you home as soon as I can, okay?”

“What about the mean lady?”

Her question coincided nicely with a noisy crash on the floor above them. Spike’s brows perked. He felt a surge of the same old irritation, though it was more obligatory than painful. William understood, even if he ached. The demon didn’t care. The demon had forgotten Drusilla in lieu of the radiance of his mate. The demon didn’t care for her age. The demon didn’t care for any human reservations. The demon wanted the girl in his arms, and he didn’t want to wait.

William wouldn’t allow it.

Spike just hoped his inner ponce was strong enough to overpower the thing that Dru had planted in his body over a hundred years ago.

“Don’ you worry your pretty li’l head about the mean lady,” he told her, carrying her over to the bed he shared with Drusilla. “She won’ bother you.”

He stopped and cringed when he reached the edge of the mattress, a shudder running through his body. No. He couldn’t take his young mate to the place he’d been with the woman before her. His eyes scanned the room before settling on a worn rocker that had likely been there years longer than the building’s recent occupants, and decided it would have to do.

“Where did she go?”

There was another crash and a deranged chuckle on the floor above him.

“That’s a conversation for you an’ your mum to have…but not for a few years, yeah?”

“A grown-up thing?”

He smiled. “Yeh, ducks. ‘S a grown-up thing.”

Buffy’s nose crunched up adorably, and she tightened her arms around him when he settled into the rocker. “I hate it when Mommy tells me that.”

“Your mum has her reasons.”

She nodded. “One time I saw my daddy watching a movie. I think it was a grown-up movie, because I don’t know what it was about.”

“Yeah?”

“This man was hurting this lady.”

Spike turned his head to smother his grin. “You pap was watchin’ this?”

“Mommy got mad at him.”

“Rightfully so, yeh.” He brushed a kiss across her brow and shuddered at the taste of her sweet skin. “How old are you, Buffy?”

She held up four fingers.

“Four, huh?”

Bloody hell.

Four years old. His mate was a tender four years old. And he had to wait.

“Mommy says I’m a very old four. I don’t know what that means, but she says it a lot.”

“Means you’re mature for your age, sweets.”

“What’s mature?”

“’S…you act older than you are, I guess. Know more than you should. ‘S a good thing. Your mum says it ‘cause she’s proud of you.”

Eighteen, he decided. I’ll wait until she’s eighteen. Eighteen’s a good, rite-of-passage age. I’ll wait till then.

A good fourteen years away.

“When do you turn five?”

“March.”

“Anythin’ you want?” He brushed wayward strands of golden hair out of her face, relaxing slightly when she snuggled into his chest. “Anythin’ you’ve been pesterin’ your mum for?”

“I want a pig.”

“A pig?”

“There’s a piggy in the store. That’s where we were. Mommy let me go birthday shopping, and I saw a piggy I want.”

Spike’s eyes fell shut. Dru had taken this angel while she was out with her family, looking for birthday presents. In hindsight, he suspected he would eventually have to thank her. Were it not for her intervention, he would have never found Buffy. There was no reason to think his mate was trapped in the body of a child.

He still didn’t know what he thought about that. What there was to think about that. And for now, he was satisfied with passive acceptance. There would be plenty of time to curse the card that fate had dealt him.

“Is this piggy like your bear, here?” He held up the teddy, doming his brows. “All…fluffy?”

“Mr. Jenkins is not fluffy.”

“Mr. Jenkins? You named your bear Mr. Jenkins?”

“Of course not,” Buffy replied indignantly. “That’s just his name.”

“Ah, I see.” He smiled. She was a picture of innocence. Purity. Pure vivacity. She was the sun to his midnight; the embodiment of everything he was not. Everything a creature of his nature did not deserve. “So is this pig like Mr. Jenkins?”

“He’s a stuffed aminal.”

“Aminal?”

She nodded. “Uh huh.”

“Well, you’re a smart one, then. Real pigs? That’d be a bloody mess.”

Buffy made a face. “Bloody?”

Gah. Why did he have to mention blood? His eyes were drawn back to her throat before he could stop himself, and he wet his lips as the strings of his self-control tightened even further.

You don’t have to wait. You can claim her now. You’ve earned it.

No! William screamed. I won’t!

He wasn’t going to turn Buffy into an eternal child. That wasn’t fair. Not fair to either of them.

He was going to wait. Wait fourteen years…then he’d have earned it.

“Never you mind,” he told her, tugging on one of her pigtails. “Jus’ be a good girl for Spike, an’ you might get a surprise on your birthday, yeh?”

“You’ll get me the piggy?”

“Ah, ah, ah, sweetpea.” He pressed a finger to his lips, eyes twinkling. “Don’ wanna spoil the surprise.”

“Humph.”

“Ohhh, pouty.” Spike grinned and kissed her forehead again. The demon roared in objection at the presentation of compassion, but he forced himself not to care. “Rest now.”

“And you’ll keep the mean lady away?”

“Yeh. I’ll keep the mean lady away.”

Buffy smiled and closed her eyes, seemingly content with this. She tugged her oddly-named teddy bear to her and sighed. “Sing me a lullaby.”

“Don’ know many lullabies.” None that he wanted to sing. “You fancy any bands?”

“My mommy likes the Beatles.”

He grinned. “That I can do, poodle.”

He’d sung Drusilla to sleep more times than he could remember. Never had it seemed as precious as it did now. The woman he’d spent his unlife with was mentally no older than the small bundle in his arms. He deserved more. He deserved what his mate could give him.

That promise calmed him from now.

“The long and winding road,” he began softly, rocking her back and forth. “That leads…to your door…”

She was asleep within minutes, her angelic face bringing him comfort, even with the drool that spilled onto his shirt.

In less than an hour, his world had been granted new life. He had a new reason for living. A new reason for surviving.

How it was in the body of a child, he didn’t know.

Only that he would die protecting her.

He was a vampire; she was his mate. That was simply the way it was. The mold of his making forbid him from even considering anything else.

The rest he would think about later.

All he had was time.

Chapter Three

Goodbye’s Such A Hard Thing To Say

“This is the one you want?”

Buffy nodded brightly, smiling into the face of a stuffed pig. The sun had been down for about an hour; the minute it disappeared beneath the horizon, Spike had taken his small mate, gathered what few belongings he carried with him, and left the only family he had known for a century. What little remorse he felt was quickly dwarfed by the promise of the future, however long he had to wait. It was as though he had experienced life without sight, and was suddenly bombarded by a rainbow of color.

He hadn’t said goodbye to Drusilla, and it bothered him that it didn’t bother him.

Being in the presence of his mate was all-consuming. Making her smile filled his small, dreary existence with sunlight. He’d never been around children; not unless he was tickling one of Dru’s fetishes. Had he known the simple pleasure of being the source of a child’s delight, he might not have wasted so much time with the Order. Not for the want of what he could not have—more for the promise of the world that was willing to love him the way he loved. The way he experienced love with the entirety of his being.

The way Drusilla never had, or could.

He had feared sleeping past sunset, and his worry transformed into an inability to rest throughout an hour without jarring awake in a panic. Buffy, it appeared, slept soundly, and had mumbled her complaint when he gently brought her out of slumber.

“Time to go, ducks,” he had whispered. “Time to go back home to your mum.”

It was easier said than done. The minute he stepped into the fresh night, his reluctance to let go of his mate intensified. And suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to prolong his time with her.

After all, it would be the last for more than a decade.

Now they were in a toy store near the same one that Buffy had indicated Drusilla had snatched her from, talking to each other over the head of a small stuffed pig.

“This is the one you want?” Spike said again, brows arching playfully. “Ugly li’l bugger, isn’t he?”

An insolent pout crossed the girl’s face. “Mr. Gordo is not ugly.”

“Mr. Gordo, is it?”

“Uh huh.”

He grinned. She was adorable. “Tell me he din’t tell you his name,” he said. “’ve had enough of birds who talk to dolls.”

“You know birds that talk to dolls?”

“One or two.” Spike placed the pig back on the shelf and sighed. “Right then, Miss Buff. I’ll have to remember that for the big day.”

“Oh, you don’t have to wait if you don’t want to.”

“Is that right?”

She nodded innocently, clutching her bear tighter. The employees of the toy store seemed to think nothing of it, especially since the stuffed animal looked more than a little worn.

Still, it had to be more than a little suspicious. A little girl in pigtails and PJs in a neighboring toy store the night after she vanished? Somehow, the vampire didn’t suspect her mother took her disappearance with a wink and a nod. There had to have been more than just a scene. And he didn’t particularly fancy getting arrested for kidnapping. The human police force was just tedious, and he doubted any cop would be sympathetic to his aversion of southern exposure when it came time to select a holding cell.

“Why’d you come birthday shoppin’ if you were ready for beddy-by?”

“We were on our way back from Nana and Papa’s house, and I saw the store and Mommy said we could go in if we made it quick. My jammies have footsies. See?”

She held up her foot; or tried to, and tripped. He caught her with a laugh, completely enthralled with her girlish charm. “Yeh,” he said, grinning. “You got yourself some footsies there. Your mum really thought of everythin’, din’t she?”

Buffy nodded brightly before the mention of her mother brought her back to reality, and a desolate look befell her face. “I bet she’s real scared, huh?”

“I’d imagine so, poodle.”

“I don’t want her to be worried.”

“We’ll get you home right quick, okay?”

That thought didn’t seem to rest well with her, either. “I’m not gonna see you again, am I?”

A small, sad smile crossed his lips. “Not for a while, no.”

“Why not?”

He paused. “’S a grown-up thing.”

“I hate it when people tell me that.” Her pout deepened. “I wanna be a grown-up so I know what that means.”

“I want you to be a grown-up, too.” For entirely different reasons. “You’ll know some day, sweets. I’ll be back for you then.”

“Back for me?”

Better bloody believe it.

“Yeh,” he said softly. “I’ll be back for you.”

“Back from where?”

Closer than you think.

“I’ll tell you when I’m back, yeh?”

The child’s eyes averted coyly to the abandoned pig. “What about Mr. Gordo?” she asked. “Will you be back for him?”

Spike grinned and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Well now,” he said. “Can’t leave Mr. Gordo behind, now could we?”

“I think he’d get lonely.”

“Yeh, I’d wager so.” He paused, then released a deep breath and lifted her into his arms. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s leave him for now. See if he finds…Miss Piggy…or somethin’…to keep him company.”

“Miss Piggy is married to Kermit.”

“Well, that doesn’ make sense, does it? Kermit’s a bloody frog. Interspecies relations are jus’ wrong.”

“What’s inter…speci…what you said?”

Spike groaned and rolled his eyes. “Another grown-up thing,” he replied. “Come on, poodle. Let’s get you home to your mum so she’s not worried anymore, right?”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t until they were outside that Buffy spoke again.

“I don’t want you to go away,” she said.

“I don’ wanna go away either,” he replied honestly.

“Then why do you gotta?”

Because I don’ want you to think of me as your bloody father or favorite uncle.

“’Cause we don’ always get what we want.” A note fell within him at that, and a deep breath rumbled through his lips. “One thing I’ll promise you, pet…you’ll see me again.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

An’ then you’ll never get rid of me.

“When?”

“When you’re older.”

Buffy lived not too far from the toy store, making their final minutes together regrettably brief. The neighborhood wasn’t everything he’d hoped for his little mate, but far from some of Los Angeles’s more noted slums. It didn’t much help that he had to duck behind a tree to avoid being spotted by a police car. Not that he was surprised; had the coppers not been patrolling the area, he’d be suffering even more reservations about leaving his little mate with her family.

As it was, he stopped outside the house a few minutes later, his heart heavy, the pangs of separation already beginning to set in.

There wasn’t anything to the girl aside the fact that she was the one destined to share his eternity. He found her unspeakably adorable, though he knew somewhere that it wasn’t the demon—rather the man he had once been. The demon wanted her blood. Wanted the words. Wanted everything that would betray the one he was never supposed to hurt.

It wasn’t just Buffy that wasn’t ready; he wasn’t anywhere near prepared. Not like he thought he would be. It was one thing to wish and hope—the game changed entirely when fate handed him what he’d been searching for. Especially like this.

“Here we are.”

“How’d you know where my house is?”

He smiled. “Your scent.”

“You can smell me?”

“Oh yeh.”

“Do I stink?”

His grin broadened and he shook his head. “Hardly. Now listen, poodle, never, ever let anyone as cold as me,” he pressed a hand to her brow, “into your house, ‘kay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.” Tears were welling in her eyes, and she wrapped her small arms around him. “I don’t want you to go away. Please stay. Mommy will say it’s fine. She will, I know it.”

Spike paused. “’S for the best.”

“No.”

“Buffy—”

“That’s just a thing grown-ups say when they don’t have a real reason.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Well, that’s part of it. It’s somethin’ we say when we know we can’t explain it very well.”

Amazing. His most adult conversation was being held with a four-year old. Dru never let him talk to her like this. Dru wanted to be a little girl, pampered by everyone around her. And while Buffy was like that to a degree, she similarly seemed to genuinely crave the wisdom that only age could bring.

He wished he could make it easy for her—easy for both of them.

“You promise me I’ll see you again?” she whimpered. “Y-you’re not just saying that?”

“I promise.”

“Are you gonna go back to see the mean lady?”

A bitter chord struck within him, and his soothing smile turned pained. “No,” he said. “’m not goin’ back to the mean lady.”

“Do you wanna?”

Bugger all, what a question.

“Not really.”

“She wanted me dead.”

“’S a good reason not to go back, then. Don’ want the mean lady after my best girl.” He forced a look of comfort and nodded. “Right then. Better toddle on home.”

“You’re not coming?”

“Buffy, I told you—”

“Not even to meet Mommy?”

Spike expelled a deep breath and raised his eyes to the house. It wasn’t a good idea, he knew. Knowing his luck, Buffy’s mum would be the sort that never forgot a face, which would make her severely distrustful when he reappeared in fourteen years to claim what was his.

And yet, the old fashioned sod in him that his little mate had resurrected couldn’t help but concede.

“Okay. Let’s go meet your mum.”

Since he had awakened a vampire, the thought of warming someone’s life with happiness had been a strong source of repugnance. His demon relished tears and not tears of joy. The moment the door opened, Buffy bounded from Spike’s side and propelled her small body into her distraught mother’s arms. The woman nearly fell to her knees, color flooding her pale cheeks as she sobbed her relief into her daughter’s hair.

“Oh, Buffy!”

“I’m okay, Mommy. Really, I am.”

It took a good ten minutes of Spike’s awkward tacit supervision to convince her mother that she was, indeed, okay. He didn’t think the woman even noticed him until Buffy tugged at her and pointed upward.

“Mommy, this is Spike.” She beamed. “He saved me from the mean lady!”

He suddenly found himself under uncomfortable scrutiny. The glare of the porch light made him look even deader than usual.

“Saved?”

“The mean lady was gonna kill me,” Buffy went on. “Spike made her go away. He saved me, Mommy!”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Really…Spike?”

He cleared his throat. “William,” he said instinctively, then growled at himself.

Meet your mate, an’ all goes to hell.

The name he had promised to bury was suddenly the forefront façade he was allowing everyone to see. He needed to get away from them and drain some co-ed just to feel like himself.

“William?”

“Willyum?” Buffy frowned. “No. I like Spike better.”

A grin tickled his lips. That’s my girl.

“She’s exaggeratin’ ‘bout the other,” he said. “It was no big deal.”

“No big deal!” the woman exclaimed. “You saved my little girl. Oh, what am I doing? Come in, please! Have some coffee, or…oh hell, have the whole house. I—”

Spike grinned. Jackpot.

An invitation. That was all he needed. Not that he needed the temptation to encourage further contact between them for the next several years, but he wanted the comfort of knowing he could get to Buffy if need be.

“No, thank you,” he replied politely, his accent dragging back to the days of bloody awful poetry recitals. He needed to get away and fast.

Buffy’s lip began to quiver again, and the demon once again found itself shoved to the back. “Please don’t leave, Spike.”

He gave her a stern look. “We talked about this, remember?”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“Buffy,” her mother berated, shooting him an apologetic look. “You heard Mr.…William. He probably has work to do…or something.”

That didn’t stop the girl’s tears from becoming heavier. “But—”

“No ‘buts.’”

“’S all right.” Spike flashed a disarming smile. “Come here, poodle. Give us a hug.”

It hadn’t truly registered how hard this was going to be until he felt her small arms encircle his neck for the last time, her stuffed bear bouncing softly against his back; until the scent of her tears was right under his nose, her sweet skin touching his, the hum of her blood against his mouth. Never before had he heard of a vampire that couldn’t claim his mate the minute he saw her eyes flash for him. Never before had a vampire’s mate been trapped in the body of a child. Never before had any vampire had to say goodbye to the one that eternity had given him.

None that he knew of.

It wasn’t fair.

“Goodbye, Buffy.”

“No…”

“’S time to put this fairytale on hold,” he told her, low enough so that her mother wouldn’t hear. “’S not forever. I promise.”

She pulled back at that, hiccupping and wiping at her eyes.

Her mother looked as though she might cry as well. “You obviously made an impact on her,” she said. “Buffy never lets anyone touch her. Not even her father.”

Spike suspected that notion was well founded, but held his tongue. Instead, he smiled once more, and shrugged. “Guess she jus’…I dunno. She doesn’ strike me as the shy type.”

“Well, I…oh! I’m gonna go get my card. Just in case you, you know, ever need anything and can’t find someone to—”

He held up a hand. “No, that’s—”

“I insist. Please, it’s the least I can do.”

She wasn’t going to be satisfied until he said yes to one of her offers. And the longer he stood before the tearful girl, the more he wanted to grab her and run. Sod his plans. He’d watch over her and claim her when she was old enough. He’d do anything to stop her crying.

The connection between mates, even without the words and the blood exchange, was potent enough that he reckoned he would feel her pain for days before the sensation finally knew rest. They’d been together now for nearly fourteen hours. What she felt, he felt. It was a part of nature. A part of what made her his.

A part of his reasoning for turning away.

“Right,” he said, nodding. “Your card. Thanks.”

The woman disappeared down the hall at his acceptance, and he was alone with Buffy again.

“Here,” his small mate said, thrusting her teddy bear into his arms. “So you won’t forget.”

“I won’ forget you, ducks.”

“Mr. Jenkins won’t let you forget me.”

“Take Mr. Jenkins? Won’t he miss you?”

“No. He wants to go with you.”

“Does he, now?” Spike’s eyes rose once more as Buffy’s mother reappeared. “Your daughter is tryin’ to pawn off her stuffed animals on me.”

“She’s giving you Mr. Jenkins?”

“I want Spike to have Mr. Jenkins!” Buffy said stoutly. “Mr. Jenkins wants to go with him.”

The woman smiled awkwardly. “Well,” she said, “there is no swaying her when she sets her mind on something.”

“I don’ feel comfortable—”

“I don’t really, either. She loves Mr. Jenkins…she’s had him since she was born.”

“Well, then—”

“But if you don’t take him, I won’t hear the end of it for days. I guess you’re adopting a bear.” She handed him the aforementioned card. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me.”

His eyes fell to the name.

Joyce Summers.

“I won’.” I will. “Thank you.” He pocketed the card and turned his gaze back to the child. “You’re sure about this bear thing?”

“Take him. He doesn’t like it here anymore.”

“’m sure that’s not—”

Joyce raised her hand. “Trust me, if you start down this road, you’ll never leave the house. She won’t change her mind. You don’t know Buffy.”

I will, though. Better than anyone.

“Well…” He looked back to his mate. “’F you’re sure.”

Buffy nodded.

“Okay.” Mr. Jenkins found a temporary home under his arm, and he nodded with finality. “Thanks.”

“No,” Joyce objected. “Thank you for bringing my baby back.”

“Was nothin’.”

It was everything.

“’Bye, Buffy,” he said softly, eyes leaving her face for the last time as he turned and began his way down the walkway, forbidding himself from stopping when she called after him. From even glancing back to what he was leaving behind.

There would be a day. He knew there would be a day.

“Well,” he said, shifting the bear before him. “Look like it’s jus’ you an’ me, Jenks.”

A piece of her to remember her by.

He found it rather comforting. Not her offer; rather the idea that she wanted him to remember her. That she was so terrified he would forget.

Perhaps she would remember him, then, when the time came.

Perhaps.

Three weeks later, he sat outside her bedroom window, listening as an ecstatic shriek pierced through the air.

“Mommy!” he heard her cry. “He got me Mr. Gordo! Spike got me Mr. Gordo!”

Satisfied, he stuck a cigarette between his lips and turned to get on with his life.

No regrets, now. He forbade it.

His family was leaving the city today. He felt it. And if they were looking for him, they would be unsuccessful.

He didn’t care to see any of them again. His life was in LA.

No matter how long it took.

Chapter Four

Where The Road Goes

He truly could not stand the passage of time.

Before, when he was unaware of it, time seemed to fly as though the hand of God could not stop its course. He had barely blinked and the Boxer Rebellion came and went. His fifty-year anniversary with Drusilla happened nearly the day after he was turned. He’d lived through three major wars, witnessed a thousand smaller skirmishes, and with a few exceptions, had all but ignored the chances brought with each passing day. Technology was gained, but he took to it without fawning. He’d learned to drive, grew into music fads, and picked up smoking, it seemed, all in the same weekend.

When Buffy was six, he watched through the window as her mother prepared her for her first day of kindergarten. Watched as she was given the low-down on the dos and don’ts, and how Joyce promised six times within five minutes to be at the school the minute the dismissal bell rang.

He watched her as she struggled to find sleep. Watched and waited, and felt all the more useless for not being able to comfort his mate.

Felt more and more like some Angelus wannabe for the way he couldn’t seem to distance himself from the girl. Stalking wasn’t Spike’s forte—well, not in the manner of his grandsire. He knew how to be stealthy, but rarely enacted said knowledge for the greater thrill of being startling and unpredictable. Furthermore, it was difficult for him to remain secluded for any number of years. His nature wouldn’t allow him to stay away.

It was against everything he knew as a vampire. Vampires were destined to protect their mates. He couldn’t protect her if he couldn’t see her. If he didn’t know, every minute of every day, that she was all right. That she wasn’t sick, or hurt, or upset. He didn’t have the bloodlink yet. He couldn’t feel her simply by existing. He couldn’t do anything but watch and hope that some night, when he awoke, it would be her eighteenth birthday and this insufferable waiting would be over.

He dreamed of her often. Dreamed of the woman she would be when he could see her eyes again, wondered if she would even remember him.

If she would remember the night she had changed his destiny, and set the course for hers.

He didn’t know if he wanted her to remember him. As much as he cherished the thought of her brightening the minute he walked back into her life, he didn’t want their last moments together to be the foundation of their relationship. Didn’t want her to ever think of the way he’d turned and left her as she begged him to stay.

That and the thought of seducing his mate was simply too tasty to dismiss.

He wondered what she would look like. How much of the girl he knew would shape her into the woman she became.

He drove himself mad with the thought of her, but there was nothing else for him.

Nothing else to do but watch and wait.

She was eight years old the day she first came home with bruises on her arms. He watched from outside, as always, after the sun had gone down, and he was assuredly enveloped in darkness. There was a wall and a good twenty feet between him and the family inside, but distance provided no obstacle, nor did the physical barrier that kept them from each other.

Hank Summers, Buffy’s father, had arrived home late again, and was none too pleased with what Joyce had to say.

“So she got in a fight,” he told her dismissively. “Buffy’s ten—”

“Eight,” Joyce corrected, her face marred with ire.

“Eight. She’s eight. Getting into fights is what kids do.”

“This wasn’t a kid’s fight, Hank! The bruises on her arms…it’s a handprint. Do you know many eight year olds with adult-sized handprints?”

“You’re imagining things.”

“I am not!” Joyce’s temper finally spun out of control; she’d been working up to it for about ten minutes. Spike watched with interest as the plate she was washing smashed against the counter, sending sharp, orange shards across the floor.

Bugger. She ruined her fiesta plates.

The years had taught him that Joyce was a woman who liked order. They’d also taught him that he hated Buffy’s father with a passion, and respect for his small mate was the only thing that kept daddy dearest alive.

For the moment, though, his rage had shifted to the phantom that was harming his girl.

“Buffy keeps telling us that Mrs. Krane treats her badly,” she said. “That she’s strict with children, and she doesn’t—”

Hank waved his wife off with a snort and a roll of the eyes. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said. “Mrs. Krane? You think Buffy’s teacher is responsible for this? That’s a pretty serious allegation, Joyce.”

“Well, I happen to think black and blue marks on my daughter’s body are also pretty serious, Hank.”

“I never said—”

“No, stop it. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to arrange a meeting with Mrs. Krane and see what sort of disciplinary acts she feels are appropriate against eight year-olds.”

Spike had heard enough, and his demon was riled.

Joyce needn’t worry about arranging a meeting.

School had been out for a half hour.

Spike had spent the day in the basement of Buffy’s elementary building; pacing, smoking himself into a frenzy, and angering his demon to the point of homicidal outrage each time he replayed the conversation he’d overheard the night before.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard of this sort of thing. Hell, when he was Buffy’s age, a caning was a perfectly acceptable punishment for all sorts of misbehavior. Then again, girls, as he recalled, never got it quite so harshly as the boys. Furthermore, there had been a few cases, even recently, where teachers were criticized for their disciplinary techniques; spankings and the like.

He had little doubt that Joyce’s assumptions were correct, and he wasn’t exactly looking to garner proof. If he was wrong, he’d feel maybe the twinge of a twinge of guilt—but more likely a tug of annoyance at having wasted a perfectly good kill on the wrong victim—shrug, and then kill the one truly responsible.

Joyce’s meeting was scheduled for four in the afternoon, right after she closed her gallery. It was a holiday weekend, and a Friday at that, and he had learned that she liked to reward her employees by wrapping up shop early whenever the opportunity presented itself.

He found Mrs. Krane as he suspected he would; she was seated at her desk, grading what had to be spelling quizzes. She didn’t even notice him come in.

The sun was on the other side of the building now. It was dark, and she was alone.

All too bloody easy.

People never paid attention anymore; whether it be in a classroom, not a notably hostile scene, or walking down alleys after dark. The stupidity of the human race seemed to fluctuate by the year. Honestly, this was Los Angeles—and not a very respectable neighborhood, at that.

Mrs. Krane didn’t seem bothered.

“My, my,” Spike drawled, sticking a cigarette between his lips. The woman screamed and jumped out of her seat, and he felt her pulse intensify. “Looks like a li’l birdie is workin’ after hours.”

Seeing him only appeared to intensify her discomfort.

Yeah…that was good.

“C-can I help you?”

The woman leapt to her feet, straightening the few wrinkles in her skirt and adjusting the glasses on her nose. She was a small, mousy thing. Her hair was long and brown, pulled back into a severe bun. She couldn’t be more than thirty, but her fatigue gave her the look of forty-five.

Amazingly, Spike wasn’t moved to sympathy.

“’m here on part of a student of yours.”

“Ohhh…really? Which one?”

“Buffy Summers.”

“Oh.” Color returned to her cheeks, and she offered a tentative smile. “I thought it was going to be Mrs. Summers that—”

“Joyce is still comin’.” The strictness in his tone caused her skin to pale again, her eyes widening in fear. There was something, he admitted, about people that charmed him for their ability to sense danger the minute it was directly in front of them. Not before—not when it mattered—but they were extremely talented in pinpointing their final moments right before said final moments commenced. “You, I’m afraid, won’ be here to take her meetin’.”

He stepped forward; she stepped back. And then they were dancing.

“I…I don’t understand…”

“Buffy’s been comin’ home with bruises,” he said gravely, prowling another step forward. “Bruises that look to be a li’l…well, let’s jus’ say, adult, considerin’ the kids in your class.”

“I don’t—”

“Yeh, you don’t.”

“Mr. Summers—”

Spike’s eyes narrowed. “’m not Buffy’s father,” he growled. “’m her…benefactor. An’ I have a special interest in makin’ sure she gets her learnin’ in an environment where she doesn’ feel she might be beaten if she answers a math question incorrectly.”

“I would never—”

“Now, now. We’re both smarter than that.” He smiled thinly. “Let’s be adults about this, right?”

Her expression turned from fear to defiance in a matter of seconds. “You can’t prove anything.”

The smile turned malicious, and her bravado vanished. “Thanks to that,” he snarled, his fangs descending. “I won’ need to.”

Mrs. Krane threw her head back and screamed. She screamed loud and well. Screamed like a woman trained to scream when faced with actual danger, however fruitless it might be. He had her cornered in seconds.

Then her screams stopped, and he drank.

Five years passed before he found it necessary to directly interfere with Buffy’s life again.

She was thirteen. God, he couldn’t believe she was thirteen. She was bubbly and sweet, and popular from what he could tell, and blossoming in the way all young girls blossomed when they first entered the radar of the opposite sex.

Spike had promised himself somewhere along the way that, regardless of what happened, he would not let his jealousy motivate his demon. There was a protective need among mates, especially when approached with competition, to eliminate whatever factor stood between them.

He didn’t think Buffy would warm to him too much if she found out he was the cause of her adolescent boyfriends’ nasty habit of turning up dead. Thus, he watched as she experienced her first kiss from the shadows. Watched her fall into what she thought was love while barely maintaining his need to rip the boy’s head off his shoulders. There were a couple days when he found himself so consumed with possessiveness that he ended up killing three or four similarly-looking blokes simply to feel vindicated.

He didn’t interfere, though. It took everything he was, but he refused to interfere.

He didn’t want to do things now that would spurn hatred for him later. It wasn’t as though she knew any better. Wasn’t as though she was doing this to purposefully torment him. He wagered she had long ago dismissed his memory as a distant dream.

He didn’t know whether to feel valiant or like a big wanker for restraining himself. The years hadn’t seen him change his lifestyle. He still hunted. He still killed. He still enjoyed it. On the surface, nothing had changed to make him any more or less the vampire he had been for over a century.

On the surface, nothing had. It was all internal. He refrained from killing when he thought it might upset Buffy. He stalked her from the shadows because it was as close as he dared to get to her. And he hated every moment of it.

Spike didn’t belong lurking in the shadows. For the past near-decade, he had nearly gone mad with silence.

And it wasn’t over yet. Five more years waited for him. Five more years of watching.

If any bloke came close to taking Buffy’s virginity, though, they would die. He didn’t care what she thought of him. There were parts of her that belonged to him, and he wouldn’t allow anyone else to get close enough to even know the thrill of her scent.

Not that he credited human males for appreciating the musk of an aroused woman. Not that he’d been close enough to Buffy to know the scent, himself. She was still a child. She was blossoming into a woman, but she was still a child.

Something a git by the name of Thomas Randall didn’t seem to understand.

It was the first actual date his girl had ever been on. The boy even came by to pick her up at her house. Spike waited on the sidelines as he always did, and followed in his Desoto, and watched.

Thomas Randall took Buffy to a park. That was the first warning sign. A park, after dark, in Los Angeles. He might be a male kid, but he was still male. Either he wanted to show off, or he was interested in getting her somewhere secluded and vulnerable.

Buffy said no three times. Thomas Randall didn’t want to hear it.

And the minute he got forceful, the demon within Spike snapped. The demon didn’t think. He couldn’t. He vamped and roared, and it was over. In a blink, he rushed them, tackled Thomas Randall to the ground. Buffy was already across the park by the time the kid was dead.

Spike dropped by her house later to make sure she arrived home safely. She had, and he about collapsed with relief.

Buffy didn’t have any dates after that for a long, long time.

In eleven years, he’d only interfered twice.

In eleven years, he’d stood in the shadows and watched her grow up.

They were extreme circumstances, understandably. A power-hungry teacher and a kid who wanted to become a man much too early, and now never would.

Eleven years, and he only had to interfere twice.

Then the day happened. Buffy turned fifteen.

His girl turned fifteen.

And everything changed.

Chapter Five

The Minor Fall And The Major Lift

Spike sat in the driver’s seat of his Desoto, stunned motionless. For the first time in fifteen years, Buffy had snuck out of her house. He didn’t know whether to be proud or alarmed.

More over, she was following some tall bloke in a fedora and a long brown coat. No, no, no, he didn’t like the look of this at all. The old sod had the classic appearance of a pervy pedophile.

Buffy also looked fidgety. That bothered him more than anything. In the eleven years he’d spent following her, she’d never had a nervous moment. Right now, she looked downright terrified, and it was doing a number on him; every muscle in his body was wound tighter than a violin string.

The old man led her to a car that gave Spike’s Desoto a run for its money in the category of charm. The vampire allowed them a brief head start. Very brief. The numbers on the old man’s license burned in his mind; there was absolutely no way he could ever lose her. Her sight, her scent, the impression she made on him…body and the other thing. He waited about two minutes, drew in an unneeded breath, then revved the engine to life.

Fifteen minutes later, he couldn’t believe where he was.

The man had taken Buffy to a cemetery.

Bleedin’ fuck! He’s tryin’ to get her killed!

If not to administer the killing blow himself, then to certainly make her vamp meat for all the newbies rising that evening.

Good Lord.

As Buffy got older, the temptation for Spike to reveal himself to her had similarly been getting stronger. Watching as she wasted time with boys she had no future with. As human hands touched what was his. As others tasted her lips, ran fingers through her hair, and fumbled over his gorgeous girl.

She was gorgeous. Painfully so. It only served to weaken his resolve.

But he wasn’t going to do it. He forbade himself. She was still far too young, and he refused to pull an Angelus and turn a blind eye when it came to things that young girls weren’t ready to grasp. He’d stood by for a hundred years, watching little girls get sired and staked for fun. Watching and knowing what his wanker of a grandsire had done to Drusilla; what he did to pass the time.

It hadn’t truly bothered Spike until he mentally put Buffy in the shoes of so many of those faceless girls, and then it enraged him.

Truthfully, eighteen was still a bit too young, but he didn’t think he could stand to wait any longer than that. He would make his move the day California law saw her as an adult. After all, if it was good enough for the feds, he wagered it was good enough for him. Until then, there would be more nights like this.

More nights following her, hoping he walked into a time warp that dragged the years ahead.

This man was taking Buffy to a cemetery. If anything happened, Spike feared losing his heart’s desire. Everything he had been setting himself toward. Every goal he’d made. Every promise he’d sworn he’d keep to himself.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Buffy was saying. “I can’t believe I’m in a graveyard with a strange man hunting for vampires on a school night.”

Spike froze.

Hunting for…what?

Oh my God.

“Why didn’t you ever tell anybody about your dreams?” the man replied, his voice aged with an accent Spike was very familiar with.

And just like that, everything around the vampire collapsed.

No. No. It can’t…she can’t…bloody hell, this isn’t fair!

Buffy was the Slayer. Buffy had been called. God, Buffy had been called. Just a few days ago, Spike had gotten word that the one from Paris had died in a patrol gone bad. And now here he was, and Buffy was the Slayer. Buffy was the new Chosen One.

In a day—in one bloody day—his mate, his salvation, had been given an expiration date.

No.

Tears stung his eyes. The past few years had conditioned him to accept that his young mate was human. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t imagine he ever would, but it no longer bothered him. Rather, he had embraced the wonder and gratitude that he had found his mate at all. Whether or not he had to wait for her, that span of time would be nothing compared to the eternity they would eventually have.

And now this.

Buffy was the Slayer.

His Buffy.

Spike killed slayers. He’d tasted the life of two before her. Before he even knew her. Before he even knew it was possible that anyone out there was destined to belong to him.

Buffy.

Not fair. None of this was fair. Was he such a miserable excuse of a vampire that this was his punishment?

“Oh, yeah, tell everyone that I’m crazy,” Buffy retorted cynically. “’Cause that option is with the sense-making.”

Spike willed his eyes closed and muttered an oath. He had to have strength to get through this. To not lose it here. To watch and wait. To be given some sort of explanation for why he was forever the Powers’ punching bag.

My mate. My gorgeous mate.

“This is it,” he heard the man say. They had stopped at a headstone. “Robert Berman was killed three days ago. The body was found in the bushes out by the canal. Extensive tissue damage—tearing—at the neck and shoulders. Coroner thinks it’s a dog.” He turned and indicated a plot across from the grave. “You sit here.”

Buffy obeyed reluctantly, and plopped atop another stone.

Even now, with new knowledge compressing him, wrangling his willpower, he found her graceless beauty enchanting.

Mine.

Buffy was his. Slayer or not. Enemy or not. She belonged to him.

The man—whom Spike could only assume to be her Watcher—reached into his jacket, pulled out a stake and a cross. The latter he handed to the Slayer.

Buffy froze, and the vampire froze right along with her. “Wait a minute,” she said uncertainly.

“Just for protection. You won’t have to do anything. I just need you to watch.”

“All right. What do we do now?”

The Watcher paused dramatically, then moved over to the headstone opposing the girl. “We wait for Robert to wake up.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Spike could’ve sworn his heart was beating again.

“Do you have any gum?” Buffy asked after a minute.

The Watcher tossed her an irritated glance. Then there was nothing.

It didn’t take long. After a few moments of prickly silence, a low, almost indistinct moan filtered slowly through the soil and touched the night air. Buffy sat up straight, the cross in her hand shooting protectively to her chest. The moan became louder in a flash; a growl instead.

Spike’s ears tingled. He knew well that sound.

Some little boy was digging his way through his coffin.

The Watcher was pitching a newly called slayer into the thick of it without even telling her where to aim her stake? Spike’s horror faded to outrage, and he felt his face shift and his fangs descend. If this baby vamp came anywhere near his mate, there would be all hell to pay.

First the youngster, then her Watcher for pitting her against a fledgling without proper training.

The look on Buffy’s face was stunned; aghast. She watched the vampire climb out of his grave; stared as her Watcher grabbed the newly revived Robert Berman and raised the stake over his head.

Spike knew that she had seen this before, of course. Eleven years earlier after his former lover had abducted the little girl from a toy store; Buffy had seen Dru’s bumpies. Hell, she had even seen his. Spike honestly didn’t know if Buffy was now frozen with astonishment or if her mind had jarred a distant memory, and she was reliving something he was nearly certain she’d forgotten.

She didn’t notice the stirring beneath her. But Spike did.

Another vampire was going to rise tonight.

Shit.

The arms burst forward first, seizing her around the middle and pulled her to the ground. Buffy snapped out of her daze and screamed. She screamed like she had never screamed before, and Spike burst forward before he could help himself. His mate was in trouble; there was no way he could sit still and watch.

It didn’t make much of a difference. He stopped just as Buffy yanked herself out of the vampire’s grasp, began to run, then remembered the cross that her Watcher had given her. She shoved the small crucifix against the woman’s skin and her eyes widened in horror as the vampire began to burn.

“’Bye now,” his mate said quickly, turning and running toward for her Watcher.

Spike’s eyes fell to the abandoned woman, whimpering at her cross-burns. A familiar look of angered vengeance shadowed her eyes, and he cursed loudly. Buffy had already broken a cardinal rule; she’d left an enemy alive.

His eyes fell to the ground; a makeshift stake in the form of a fallen branch meeting his gaze.

He was about to break every law of his nature—throw himself in with a slayer. For her he would kill his own kind, and not out of defense or anger, or any reason justifiable to the unspoken vampiric code. Kill his own kind because his mate was the Chosen One, and she was in danger.

His mate.

He had the stake in his hand the next minute, and watched it spiral across the graveyard until the angered vampire was nothing but an explosion of dust.

Bugger.

Everything he had known for a hundred years was gone.

Spike glanced anxiously to Buffy, who was on the ground, staring at her hands, a cloud of dust falling around her. Her back was to him, her knees tucked under her body, and he could see her trembling even at a distance.

My girl.

He’d never seen a slayer the night she was called. Truthfully, he’d never even thought about it. Never cared enough about the terror that the girl must feel. Never thought of the life her calling interrupted. Never even blinked in consideration. To him—to all vampires—slayers were either feared or hunted. He’d killed two and spent every day thereafter either bragging about it or reliving it in times of staunch boredom.

Buffy was terrified. His girl was wholly terrified.

“Where’s the other one?” the Watcher asked, shooting a look in Spike’s direction.

“I…” She shook her head and shuddered. “I don’t…know.”

“You didn’t stake the other one; where did it go?”

“My answer hasn’t changed since the last time you asked me that question.” She slowly rose on wobbly legs, wiping dust off her body, her eyes trained on the ground. “I…I killed—”

“Staked,” the Watcher corrected. “Slayed. You didn’t kill anything. Robert was already dead.”

“I…”

“You did him a favor, I promise. Vampires are mere shadows of the people they once were. Robert was dead; you slayed the thing that killed him.” He placed a hand on Buffy’s shoulder. “This is what you do, now.”

What she does.

Spike’s eyes darkened dangerously.

What she does. She kills my kind. She hunts us. An’ they will never stop huntin’ her.

She’s the Slayer.

That thought had the demon raging. Kill Slayer. And then all chaos broke loose, as any notion to lift a hand against his mate was enough to rip his innards to shreds. He couldn’t fathom harming her. He’d walk into sunlight before touching her in anger or rage. He couldn’t make her bleed without dying.

Slayer…

Spike’s eyes fell shut and he expelled a deep breath.

Mate. The Slayer is your mate.

Mate.

What she does…what she is…is yours.

Her voice snapped him back, and his eyes absorbed her as though he was seeing her for the first time. She was gorgeous. His mate—his Slayer—was absolutely gorgeous. And she was all his.

“What I do. Why is this what I do?”

“Because you were Chosen.”

Buffy’s eyes widened. “Yeah, well, unchoose me.”

“That is not an option.”

Spike’s heart broke. Oh, Buffy.

If he ever found the sod that thought mucking with his unlife was so hysterical, he swore he was going to rip out his innards and feed them to hungry maggots.

“Not an option?” Buffy’s gaze flared as she tossed her stake to the ground. “Watch me make it one.”

She turned and stormed away in a huff, her anger doing little to mask how hard she was still trembling. And Spike was torn.

He needed to be with her. Needed to console her. Needed to hold her as they shared their mutual outraged confusion. His fear for the future; his fear for her. In a hundred years, he hadn’t had anything to fear. Not as a member of Aurelius, not even as Dru’s boy toy. There had never been anything to fear before. Not until Buffy.

Can’t. Can’t go to her now.

His earlier resolve remained; furthermore, even if it didn’t, dumping on her that she was the mate of a vampire the very night she discovered she was destined to dedicate her life to fighting vampires wasn’t fair to her.

Not that any of this was fair to him. It hadn’t been from the beginning.

He followed the Watcher, who caught up with Buffy without much effort. She had stopped at the entrance of the cemetery; the weight on her shoulders crashing down.

“Why me?” he heard her ask, her voice overwhelmed with emotion. She hadn’t even needed to turn around to sense the elder man there. She simply stood waiting for him to join her. “Why, Merrick? There are billions of girls in the world. Why the hell was I tapped?”

“That’s a perfectly fair question,” the Watcher replied. “And I don’t have an answer.”

“I’m only…there’s only one? There’s just me, right? And…how many vampires?”

“Considerably more than one.”

Buffy’s eyes welled with tears, and the scent only weakened Spike’s resolve.

“I can’t do this.”

“Well, no. Right now, you can’t. But you will be able to. With time and training, you’ll be ready.”

“Ready?”

There was a pause. “An exceptionally old vampire arrived in Los Angeles three days ago, foreseeing the calling of a new slayer.”

Buffy forced a humorless laugh. “I’ve been the Slayer for an hour, and I’ve already got a fan.”

“He’s old. He’s wise. He’s also as arrogant as any vampire I’ve ever encountered.” Merrick expelled a deep breath. “Perhaps with the exception of one or two from the clan of Aurelius.”

Spike couldn’t help it; he smirked.

“Who is it?” the Slayer asked.

“An ancient. His true name was lost to the ages; he goes by Lothos.”

The vampire froze in his tracks and moaned.

Bugger.

Lothos. He bleeding hated Lothos. Some buggering slayer-killer who enjoyed a good rampage every other century. And yes, while a brief run-in during World War I that resulted in making Angelus look even more the git than he was had briefly warmed Spike’s opinion of him, he still hated the so-called ancient just for his planet-sized ego.

Lothos was the only vampire in history whose slayer rap sheet was longer than his, and that was only due to the fact that he had a few hundred more years on his side. Admittedly, he was one of the oldest vamps that had made it to the twentieth century, and consequentially, he thought he was invincible.

He sired those who were too weak to fight him. He killed slayers that had only just been called. He took lives that weren’t worth living, or weren’t strong enough to give him a decent run for his money.

And Buffy was his latest conquest.

Not if I have a bleedin’ say about it.

If his mate was a slayer, she’d be the best bloody slayer the world had ever known.

That would be a challenge for him, too. He’d have to fight his demon’s urge to protect her against every threat that came her way. To step in when he felt her life might be getting too dangerous. She was the Slayer. Her life was destined to be dangerous.

She was also branded with an expiration date. She was also supposed to be alone.

No.

Not alone. Not his Slayer.

Even if she didn’t know it, she’d always have him watching over her.

He followed them back to the Summers’ residence, only he took the shortcut that would save him from looking overly conspicuous. He was outside as the Watcher walked his mate to her front door, talking to her quietly as she nervously searched for her house key.

“Go to school tomorrow,” Merrick told Buffy. “Try to act normal. Don’t let anyone know what’s happening. This is important. When the vampires find out who you are…you won’t be hunting them anymore.”

That was a load of bull, but it needed to be said, nonetheless. Spike knew only a handful of vampires that would openly attack a slayer. Furthermore, the older a slayer, the more notoriety she obtained in the underworld. Her name would be broadcast among those she hunted; no stretch of caution would change that.

“All right,” Buffy said shakily.

The Watcher handed her a slip of paper. “Meet me at this address after school.”

“I have cheerleading squad.”

Oh yes. The cheerleading thing. That had been the subject of many of Spike’s nasty fantasies over the past few months.

“Skip it,” the Watcher replied.

“Merrick…they can’t come in, right? Unless you invite them. Is that true?”

“It’s true.”

Spike sighed. He had an invitation to Buffy’s house. He’d had one for a long time. The last thing he needed, though, was for the Watcher to fill her mind with horror stories of vampires. While most—if not all—were true, he didn’t need any more barriers between them.

He was soulless as any vampire. He’d never felt it, but he was.

She’ll want me to stop, he realized. Stop killin’. Stop everythin’.

He didn’t know what was worse; changing his nature, or the sudden swell of devotion he felt to whatever it was she needed from him. Even if it meant defying everything he was and had been.

“You know, she’ll be able to sense you some day.”

Spike stiffened, his eyes narrowing as Merrick turned the corner, his expression unimpressed.

“’m not too worried,” he replied. “I’ve gotten this far, haven’ I?”

“Buffy is the Slayer. She’s going to learn to scope out her surroundings. Going to learn to sense when vampires are near.” The Watcher studied him gravely. “And what are you doing following her every move, anyway?”

“She’s the Slayer, isn’t she?”

“No one knows that yet. No one can. The only vampires she’s run into—”

“You know nothin’ of the vamps she’s run into.”

“Really? Try me.”

Spike snickered. “Well, ‘f you think Lothos is bad business, you really shoulda been around eleven years ago. She was snagged by one of the nastiest clans in history.”

Merrick gave him a long, cold look; then his eyes widened with understanding. “You’re William the Bloody,” he said. “You’re the one that went missing.”

“The one that went missin’? Is that what they’re callin’ me these days?”

“The Order of Aurelius lost William the Bloody eleven years ago. Coincidentally, that was when they were recorded for a brief stint in Los Angeles.”

The vampire fidgeted uncomfortably. “How do you know that?”

“I’m a Watcher. It’s my job to know that.” Merrick’s gaze flickered to the house, then back to the vampire before him. “So it’s happened, then. I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

But that was all he said. The look on his face went stony, and Spike all but screamed in outrage.

He knew something. The old bugger knew something.

“If you hurt her, you will suffer for it.”

Spike arched a brow. “Funny. I was about to tell you the same thing.”

“I’m her Watcher.”

“Yeh, an’ Watchers have a nasty habit of gettin’ their slayers extremely dead.”

“William the Bloody leaping to the defense of slayers? Now I’ve seen everything.” Merrick shook his head. “You’ve been with her for eleven years, haven’t you?”

“Din’t I jus’ say that?” Spike’s eyes darkened and he stepped forward. “An’ you know why.”

“Of course I know why. I just didn’t think it was possible.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” The vampire turned and fumbled through his duster pockets for his cigarettes. “I won’ hurt her, mate. It’s physically impossible for me to hurt her, even if I wanted to. I don’t. I can’t even…I don’ care if she wins the Slayer of the Millennia award. When she’s cut, I bleed. That’s the way this thing works, yeh? An’ for the record, I got that other vamp tonight. You think I’m gonna let my girl go out by herself?”

“You have to.”

“Bollocks.”

“You have to. If I’m going to believe this, she can’t be distracted by your presence everywhere she goes. It will throw her off. It will endanger her. Your being there could well get her killed.” Merrick’s eyes darkened. “You can’t stop her from being the Slayer, but you can stop her from being a good one.”

“So I’m s’posed to stand by the sidelines an’ twiddle my thumbs while my mate’s out there, possibly catchin’ herself an’ extremely serious case of dead? Don’ think so.”

“If you step in for her every time there’s a threat, she’ll never know what she’s truly capable of.” He paused. “Just out of curiosity, why haven’t you done it?”

“Done it?”

The Watcher arched a brow. “Taken her. There are no marks on her throat, and I don’t believe her stunned fear was a show. You’ve just been watching her, then. You haven’t enacted your right on her.”

“She was four.”

“She’s fifteen now.”

“Yeh, an’ everyone’s all grown up when they’re fifteen.”

“You’re waiting until…”

“She’s eighteen.” Spike threw his hands up. “Never said I was a saint. I can’t bloody well wait forever.”

“And you don’t want her to see you.”

“Gee, sparky, was it my ‘skulkin’ to the shadows’ game plan that clued you in to that?”

Merrick shook his head. “A vampire doing his best to respect the boundaries of a girl that is, for all intents and purposes, his. My, my, I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Well, I’m glad to make your ‘Top Ten Things I Thought I’d Never’ list, but ‘f you don’ mind, I have a mate to protect.” Spike nodded to the tree outside Buffy’s window. The same that had practically been his second home over the past decade.

“You sit and watch her every night?”

“Most nights.”

“That’s…”

“What I do. All I know to do.” The vampire kicked at the ground. “’m the firs’ of my kind, that I know of, that couldn’t claim his mate right off. What the hell else am I s’posed to do? Knit sweater sets? Take it with a sodding smile an’ a nod? When vamps mate, they feel everythin’. There’s a connection there that you can’t…there’s a connection. I don’ have that. All I have is this thing where I gotta make sure she’s all right, ‘cause my eyes are all I can rely on right now. So yeh. I stalk. I lurk. I take notes outta my wanker of a grandsire’s book. Am I proud? Fuck no. You got a better plan, an’ I’m all for it. But this is all I have right now. Some day, she’ll be mine, an’ I think you’re a smart enough bloke to know not to stop me from takin’ what’s mine.”

“Stop you? No.” Merrick paused. “But don’t think I won’t stake you just because you’re an exception.”

“Don’ think I won’ eat you ‘cause you’re her Watcher. I’m willin’ to bet that I got a lot more experience killin’ pulsers than you do stakin’ vamps.” Spike tossed his half-smoked fag to the ground and stomped it out. “Now, ‘f you don’ mind, I got a mate to watch over.”

“If word gets out that Buffy has a vampire mate, they’ll use her against you…and vice versa.”

The thought made him shudder, but he didn’t take the bait. “I like to live dangerously.”

Merrick didn’t move for about ten minutes. By the time he did, he was all but forgotten. Spike’s eyes were glued to the window separating him from his mate.

His small Slayer.

Why the Watcher left without making an attempt on his life, Spike didn’t know or care. Everyone had their reasons, and it seemed Merrick wasn’t quite as ignorant to this business as the vampire was. Perhaps there was something more there. Something to be learned.

When he was alone, the vampire took his usual place in the aforementioned tree. His mind was clouded with dark thoughts, but he refused to be moved. Buffy was the Slayer? So bloody be it. It wasn’t as though they didn’t have obstacles to overcome anyway.

If Spike was a pun to the fates, he was going to give them a run for their money. They obviously didn’t know who they were dealing with.

He didn’t call it quits when he was nearing the finish line. He didn’t. They could throw whatever they liked at him, and he’d take it in stride.

There was Lothos. He would deal with Lothos, and it had very little to do with Buffy. Rather, he’d been looking for a reason to kill the bastard ever since their first meeting, and now he had one.

He wasn’t a part of the Order anymore. He was just a vampire.

And master vamps didn’t take too kindly to their territory being threatened. Los Angeles had been his territory for over a decade, and he wasn’t going to let some big-name-no-show take over as though they were stuck in one of those drastically unfunny westerns.

Buffy was the Slayer. His small, innocent girl.

Spike fidgeted and withdrew his pack of cigs again.

He just hoped she was up for it. He wasn’t going to let her bow out. She would be the longest living slayer in history. She would live as long as he did.

She would be the best.

Two weeks later, Buffy was kicked out of school. She’d burned down a building. She’d come home every night with bruises and scrapes, tempting his fangs with the richness of her blood.

She’d burnt down a building.

And Merrick was dead.

Lothos was dead, too, but that was a different story. A short, funny story about a vamp that spent his time siring wimpy, Pee-Wee Herman like lackeys and very little time doing actual grunt work. He’d growled a threat at Spike and was dust the next second.

Buffy, in the meantime, had lost her Watcher and burnt down a building. In her second week, she was already the best. What a nymph she would be. What a goddess.

His Slayer. His little Slayer.

And he couldn’t wait to share the dance.

There was something about the ground of the Hellmouth that made his demon purr like a kitten. Truthfully, there were times when he felt uncomfortable with the demon’s need to be somewhere that he would just as soon leave were it not for Joyce’s strange determination to make life work in Sunnydale. The woman didn’t seem to understand that picking up the pieces didn’t mean the puzzle had to stay together on the first try. But then again, she didn’t have a hundred and seventeen years of undead living under her belt for the needed perspective.

What was worse, he felt himself growing comfortable in Sunnydale. The small town feel was a pleasant change from the fast-paced life he’d come to know in Los Angeles. More over, the graveyards were older, and the local mausoleums had a feel to them that was homier than most; like they needed to be domiciles as much as they were tombs. He’d found one perfect for his needs the first day in town, kicked its resident out—which didn’t matter much, as said resident was quite dead—and packed it in with all sorts of goodies that every vampire needs.

Eleven years in Los Angeles. He couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t stayed in one place that long since before he was turned. It made the move bittersweet, but he felt no pangs of loss. It didn’t fill his blood with reservation when Joyce announced to her daughter that they were leaving. No local school would take Buffy as it was, and LA had too many negative connotations for her anyway.

Some she knew about; some she didn’t.

Hank Summers had packed and left a week and a half after Buffy was expelled from Hemery High School. Spike had sat faithfully outside her bedroom window in the tree that now belonged to someone else, his heart breaking as she sobbed into her pillow. Hard sobs; sobs he knew even better than he wanted to admit.

He’d wanted nothing more that night than to open her window, take her in his arms, and promise her that he’d do everything in his power to keep her from that sort of hurt again.

She lost her school. She lost her friends. She lost her boyfriend—which was really better for the boyfriend, as Spike’s understanding of her girlish need to flirt had about run its course. She’d lost her father. She’d lost her Watcher. Then, to top all off, she lost her home.

But that had been three years earlier, and things were different now.

Buffy was rapidly approaching her eighteenth birthday. Yes, things were considerably different now.

She’d also blossomed into the fiercest slayer he’d ever known, and watching her was his favorite hobby. She moved as though she could twist the air around her into poetry. She was glorious when in the midst of a fight. When fangs were bared, it felt as though her prey had crossed the invisible line from their world and into hers; problem was, her world contained rules that she set out, whereas the vampire game never changed.

Spike kept a careful distance. Merrick, it turned out, had been right. She was all too talented at feeling when vampires were near. She was the Slayer. No longer a little girl. No longer set by the laws of society. No, she was definitely the Slayer.

His outrage at the Powers had long since quelled. He would never pretend to understand it, and he was far from all right with the twist that fate had handed him. There simply was no point in arguing with it. Nothing could ever change what he knew to be true; Buffy belonged to him. He hadn’t chosen it, but it was the way things were. The way things were supposed to be. And as much as his reputation might suggest otherwise, he wasn’t much for picking fights where he knew the outcome was already set.

There had to be a reason. A reason, or a cosmic mix-up. Either way, that didn’t set him apart from anything. Buffy was his.

And his demon was tired of waiting.

The hardest year was her seventeenth. Knowing it was the last. Knowing all he wanted was a short three hundred and sixty-five days away. Knowing that she was so close to him, he could practically feel her skin beneath his, and that the distance between them was no longer mapped by time.

That she was close to him.

On the nights that he was brave enough, he would climb up the tree outside her bedroom window and watch her sleep. Watch her burrow her face in her pillow and clutch the pig that he had given her forever ago close to her heart. Her love-worn Mr. Gordo that practically traveled everywhere that she did.

Seventeen years old, and she didn’t let anyone quite as close to her as she did that pig. Not her sodding ex of a pulser boyfriend, not her mates, not even her Watcher—the permanent one. The one that hadn’t gone dead in two weeks.

Buffy’s life since she arrived in Sunnydale had been the expected teenage melodrama of ups and downs, only with the added dose of a hellmouth’s touch. She had stopped the gates of Hell from opening twice now. Hell, she’d even done in the Master. The Master. He’d all but forgotten about the Master. Darla’s prince of a sire that had gotten himself under the ruins of a church.

Spike had nearly come out of the shadows then. Buffy slipped away to kill the Master when no one was watching.

He would never forget that feeling. He’d been asleep, kept with the lonely company of Mr. Jenkins, only to feel the deep, agonizing feel of his unclaimed mate in danger—a sensation he hadn’t even known existed until that moment. He’d practically shot out of his crypt. Had shut down all emotions except the one innate honing device that knew where she was at all times. That knew how to get to her. That felt her when she was out of reach.

It was on the night of some ridiculous dance. He knew that because she’d come home, bitching about the fact that she couldn’t wear her dress anymore due to the nasty cut on her arm.

The whiff of her blood was potent. So warm and welcoming. So his.

He was surprised to this day that he hadn’t tackled her to the ground then.

He’d watched her for so long. Watched her grow from a little girl to a slayer, then from a slayer to a young woman. He thought he might have reservations about this, regardless of his demon’s need. Thought it might be strange for him. Thought it might be anything but what it was.

He never fooled himself. Never tried to be a part of her life more than his nature needed. He’d interfered twice, and then she was a slayer.

He didn’t know how to feel about the rest. He reckoned he wouldn’t until he felt her flesh against his. Until dreams crossed that unspoken line into reality, and her eyes met his for the first time as woman.

Right now, she was patrolling in his cemetery. Christ, she was just ten feet from his front door. And she wasn’t alone.

“I can’t believe I got a B on that test.”

“Well, that just goes to show that the myth about studying helps preparing for quizzes is something that old wives didn’t just make up.”

That was Willow, Buffy’s little redheaded friend who thought the world would end if she got anything below an A+ on everything she did. He remembered one night where, during patrol, his Slayer had spent a half hour consoling the girl for the 92% she’d received on an English paper.

“Well, I must admit that it was nice to read a question and not feel like it’s phrased in Aramaic.”

They were chattering on the way young girls do. Her scent haunted him, even at a distance. Spike watched the door steadily, almost daring her to sense him. Daring her to come into his home and meet his eyes. It wasn’t as though she respected the privacy of vamps; he’d been following her too long, watched her stake too many, to think it otherwise.

And if she came in now, it’d be over. He’d scare the little redhead away, then take what was his.

“Though, totally, Civil War? Got it covered. At least it’s interesting history.”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause you discovered that Patrick Swayze looks good in Confederate gray.”

“Hence my appreciation of all things historic.” She giggled. “I have no reason to deny this.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet, I have a B on a history test. You know how I know it’s mine? My name’s on the top. Buffy Summers, it says. Even in my penmanship.”

“If that’s what you wanna call that illegible scribbling of yours, sure.”

“Funny girl.”

“I have my moments.”

Spike drew in a sharp breath and hazarded a step toward the door. It sounded as though they had stopped just outside; likely reclining against the headstone that was planted literally feet from his door.

“So are you going to the thing on Friday?”

“The ‘oh, as if there aren’t enough reminders that we’re seniors’ thing?”

“I think they’re calling it a mixer.”

“Yeah, well, my title’s more accurate.”

The vampire chortled lightly and took another step toward his door. He heard them as though there wasn’t a wall between them. As though he was beside his mate, and the barriers between them now no longer existed.

“You know,” Willow said, “Owen’s been giving you the eye all week.”

“Owen’s also obsessed with death. Me? He associates with death.”

“I’m just saying, it might be nice to have, you know, a date to the mixer.”

Buffy sighed. “I dunno, Will, I just don’t think I wanna go. It’s gonna be a big thing and I have more tests to attempt to get Bs on.”

“Okay…did the world just flip upside down on its axis, or are you seriously using homework as an excuse for missing a night of partying at the Bronze?”

Spike could practically see his Slayer shrug. “No…it’s just…you don’t need to feel obligated for the lack of action in the department of Buffy’s love-life.”

“I just really don’t want you to be all—”

“Third-wheely?”

“Yes. No!” Willow scowled. “Don’t do that.”

“Freudian-slip you into truth telling?”

“I’m not telling the truth…or…gah. You’re just a big bucket of sneak today, aren’t you?”

“I do what I can.”

“I’m just…I want you to have fun, too. And Xan’s gonna be there—”

“With Cordy. And you’ll be there with Oz, and third-wheel Buffy’ll be there, doing her third-wheel thing and making all her non-third wheel friends feel bad with the guiltage…and that’s never good.”

He could see every move she made. Every flicker of emotion that washed over her face. He knew her so well. Knew the crinkle in her nose when she found something distasteful. Knew the ire that tickled her eyes when a vamp or a demon refused to die quietly. Knew her harmonious laugh, and the way she could light up a room simply by looking into it. He knew her better than anyone, he wagered. Even her mum. He knew what went on after she closed the bedroom door. She was so close that he could practically taste her, and his demon was screaming at him to throw caution to the wind and be done with it.

He wanted to. God, how he wanted to. Seventeen years old; she was so close to eighteen. So bleeding close.

You’ve never been this patient in your life.

Oh, he’d been more than patient. He’d been a bloody saint. Somehow, he’d equated waiting for her in the same category as earning what was his. He didn’t know how that had happened—it simply had, and some blasted internal mechanism wouldn’t allow him to consider anything else.

“You understand, though, that now I’m gonna have guiltage over you being at home.”

“Make you think twice about going out to have fun without me, right?”

“You’re a cruel wench.”

“I’m the Slayer—I’m allowed.”

Spike grinned; he couldn’t help it.

That’s it, baby.

“What if Mr. Right’s at the Bronze and you’re not ‘cause you’re at home, harboring all these delusions of being third-wheelish?”

“Because the chance of that…”

“You’ll never know. All I’m saying is it could happen.”

Buffy snorted and shook her head. “I don’t have that kind of luck.”

Jus’ you wait, sweetheart. Just you wait.

“You’ll never know until you get out there and try to have that kind of luck.”

“Easy peasy says the girl with the boyfriend.” Buffy laughed and held up a hand. “I’m fine, Will. Seriously. Go. Party. Make with the fun. Really, who wants to be out on the town when I can be up to my ass in demon guts? It’s a total no-brainer.”

“I thought you were gonna study.”

“Yeah, because that’s, you know, happening.” She shook her head. “It was a total fluke, that B.”

“You said you studied.”

“Oh, I did. That was the fluke.” There was a sigh. “Well, I think Mr. Harrison isn’t going to appease us tonight.”

“I thought there were severe wounds to the neck…as in, vampire: mark of?”

Buffy worried a lip between her teeth. “Maybe he fell on a rake?”

“That went right through his neck?”

“Well, that’d cause him severe deadness, right?”

Spike smiled and leaned against the wall beside his door. He willed his eyes closed, envisioning her gorgeous face scrunching up in confusion as her quirky mind entertained a variety of assuredly creative possibilities.

“I don’t think we have that kind of luck,” Willow remarked unhappily.

“Let me live in my delusion, okay?”

No such luck. Predictably, the low growl of a vampire tore through the air just seconds later, effectively killing his mate’s adorable theory and rendering the fledgling’s unlife to a handful of regretful seconds.

“Wow, you’d think that vamps would just stop siring lackeys, for all the good it does them,” the redhead observed.

“Yeah, my job would just be so much easier if vamps just stopped making other vamps.” There was a droll note in her voice that forced Spike to stifle a chuckle. “Okay, well, that seems to be the big excitement for the night.”

“Man, and I was all riled up.”

A palpable note of loss struck the vampire’s heart when he felt his mate turn away and start back in the direction of her home. A feeling he was so wretchedly familiar with; that starving ache that whimpered at the loss of her. The wails of his demon had kept him company for a decade and a half, and with the exclusion of Mr. Jenkins in the corner, had served as the only constant he knew he could depend on.

Buffy was too unpredictable to call a constant. He felt her, and that had helped keep him calm; at least until she became the Slayer, and everything went up for grabs.

It wasn’t long, though.

His patience deserved some sort of prize after all this was over. Admittedly, it didn’t take much for Spike to impress himself, but having been a eunuch for fourteen years, especially with as much as demons needed the physical. Somehow, his left hand didn’t make a satisfying bedmate.

That much hadn’t been his choice. He figured the Powers might’ve granted him some leeway in that department, seeing as he got the fuzzy end of the lollipop where mates were concerned. However, his demon reacted just as violently when he even considered satisfying his needs elsewhere as it would under a full claim.

Moreover, despite fourteen sexless years, he found he didn’t want the solace of another woman’s body. That bothered him. His feelings for Buffy, while protective, had not touched what he thought to be traditional love. They were confused, stormy, and passionate, but didn’t touch love. At least, didn’t touch the sort of love he knew. There was no way to love her from afar like this. To love at her; he only hoped that the infatuation buried within the demon’s draw turned into something as powerful as what he’d had in the past. What he’d felt.

Though the longer he mulled it over, the more he was drawn back to the source of his insecurities. The lack of what Dru had given him, and what Darla had always told him would never be his. Buffy was his mate, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Chances were, she wouldn’t. Chances were, she’d put up a fight.

He’d tie her to him, but she might never love him the way he wanted her to. The way he was afraid to love her, especially without knowing her up close.

The demon didn’t want to admit it, but there was no hiding from the man. Spike needed love. He wanted it. He wanted it from his mate. And if she didn’t love him, he would spend eternity in mourning.

Thus for now, he kept delusions of love aside. Love would be saved for later; after he knew her. After her eyes met his for the first time since she was a child. For the first time as a woman.

He just hoped the demon could keep in line. The closer the day came, the more he itched to have it done with now before he burst with longing. The thought of her close to him was almost too much to even imagine, let alone categorize as inevitable. He’d waited so long, it felt, even with its imminence, that the day would never arrive.

The demon’s control was holding onto its final strings, but not tightly.

He was so close. So damnably close.

The next few days, he feared, would feel longer than the years that preceded them.

But he would get through it; he’d come this far. He wasn’t about to fail now.

There was an unmistakable scent in the air; a scent that froze his blood. A scent that gripped him with alien fear, and sent his mind spiraling through a thousand terrible scenarios. A thousand grizzly images. A thousand ways to inspire his demon to a chaotic snap, take what was his, and make a dash for it.

Couldn’t be. They’d found him at last.

The minute Spike stepped outside his crypt, he knew, and it all but crippled him.

The Order of Aurelius had come to Sunnydale.

Chapter Seven

The Gleam In Your Eyes Is So Familiar A Gleam

The arrival of his family changed everything. It wasn’t like before; it wasn’t a matter of simple interference because his demon couldn’t stand what was happening to his mate. This was a whole new ballgame. Angelus had come to the Hellmouth, and Spike could only hazard a guess why.

If they thought they could take his mate away from him—if Angelus was looking to kill his first slayer—they were going to be bitterly disappointed.

He’d made his decision, then. No more waiting.

Buffy was his, and she was going to know it tonight.

He watched her from his normal vantage point near her bedroom window as she scurried out her front door, giving her mother some well-rehearsed excuse as to where she was going. She was headed out in the familiar direction of his cemetery.

A slow smile crossed his lips. He ground out his cigarette, took in an appreciative, however unneeded, breath of night air, and started after her.

Spike’s mind raced. He’d envisioned his reunion with Buffy a thousand different times; a thousand different ways. In some scenarios, she remembered him, and her eyes would light up with joy at the simple sight of his face. In others, she’d spit some nasty gibe and attacked with her reliable stake, only to be overpowered, as he had spent years memorizing every delicious move her curvy, womanly body had to offer the hunt.

He preferred the latter of his fantasies. Seeing her angry in recent years never failed to get him horny. He felt at times like one of those nasty old men that camped outside high school football games to get a glimpse of nubile bouncing cheerleaders, but similarly, he took no shame in it. Buffy was his, and he intended to memorize every inch of her. It was his right.

Now that the wait was over, he could embrace everything he’d ignored for the past decade and a half. Inner barriers came crashing down, and the demon all but shrieked in delight.

Mine, mine, mine.

Spike ducked behind a mausoleum, his skin tingling at his proximity to her. She was so agonizingly close; closer than she’d been to him since the night he’d taken her home. Granted, he’d come pretty close to her the night he’d done in Thomas Randall. Close, but not close enough. Not like this. He could feel himself waging a losing battle with self-control. The scent of her nearly drove him out of his mind, and the promise of her blood was playing a dangerous game of chicken with what little reserve he had left.

My Slayer, his demon growled. She’s mine!

He could practically see her mind racing. She felt him. He was close enough that she had to feel him.

Small shivers were dancing up and down her arms, and her eyes were wide. She regulated her breathing to hide the hint of fear that was wrestling with her tenacity, her fingers curled around her stake.

Buffy never lost that knowledge that every fight could be her last, despite how good she was. He admired that. Too many slayers—including the two notches on his belt—mentally placed themselves in a rank above those before them; convincing themselves that they were different, and would not share the final fate of the Chosen Ones. They were good; both the slayers he’d fought had been a rush unlike anything he’d experienced. They’d similarly suffered from that dreaded superiority complex. They’d failed to recognize that he was a vampire of the ages, and that was what had gotten them killed.

Buffy was good and she knew it, but she likewise feared appropriately. And it was her fear that kept her strong.

“Okay,” she said after a few minutes, a delicious edge to her voice. “Not that I’m not enjoying this excerpt from a Sting music video, but whoever’s there better come out now.”

Spike grinned. Oh, such spunk.

“I’m serious. A moody slayer is a dangerous slayer.”

“Really? It’s a wonder that li’l tidbit wasn’ highlighted in the manual.”

Her head whipped up and her eyes met his for the first time in fourteen years, flashing with gold so vibrant he felt himself nearly moved to tears. Her gasp of surprise would remain with him until the end of days; he knew it.

Mate! his demon screamed. Mate! She’s mine!

Buffy saw it, too. She was frozen in place, shock numbing her body.

“You…” Small shudders began wracking her shoulders. “Y-you…your eyes.”

Inwardly, Spike grinned. That had been the first thing she noticed about him when she was four. It was fitting. It tied every end together. His eyes were gold for her, as well. “Glowing,” he agreed, taking a step forward. “Like yours.”

“Mine are glowy?”

“Effulgent.”

He was tormenting himself. The girl was shaken and confused, and he kept coming toward her. With every step, the demon screamed for more. Clawed with the need to touch her. To revel in the thrill of her pulse against his mouth. Sample the sweetness of her lips. Stake his claim on her now so that no one ever doubted that she belonged to him.

Buffy raised her stake again, taking a step back. “Wh-who are you?”

“Jus’ another vamp, luv,” he retorted with a disarming shrug. “Another nasty that stalks young girls while they sleep.”

“No.” She shook her head, her eyes not leaving his. “I know you.”

“’S that right?”

Take her! Take her!

The young woman studied him hard for a long, silent minute. “Okay,” she said, shaking her head again. “Well, maybe I’ve just…run into you on patrol…before. Vampire, right?”

“Jus’ confessed as much, din’t I? Though I gotta say, kitten, I’m an awful bit hurt that you din’t find me memorable.” Spike grinned as he continued to advance. Every inch of him flooded with excitement. “Change your mind, then?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m focused currently on the vampire part.”

His eyes flickered. “What a shame.”

Buffy might as well have offered him her throat. Instinct prevailed over sensibility; she leapt forward the next second, a kick aimed at his head, pleasantries foregone and the part of her that was destined against him setting her reflexes on autopilot. The demon likewise reacted on instinct, snarling to life, fangs descending in need for her soft throat.

At the same time, his body rejoiced as his arms closed around her, even in the heat of battle. God, she couldn’t know the dangerous game she was playing. Her skin was so warm; her hair smelled of vanilla, he could nearly taste her exhilarating rush of adrenaline.

His cock grew painfully hard and bloodlust washed him over.

No! cried his inner-William. No! Stop!

“So feisty,” he growled into her ear, shoving his inner-William aside. “So bleedin’ hot.”

He was intoxicated with her scent, and his control was quickly spiraling out of grasp. He needed her blood. He needed her taste. He needed to know the haven of her body, and tie her lifeline to his for eternity. She was against him, her breath hot on his skin, and he was irrevocably lost.

“Oh, Buffy,” he moaned, closing his hands around her upper arms, using his leverage to flip her beneath him. His mouth was automatically drawn to her throat, tongue peeking out to lave her skin worshipfully, his fangs moving over her jugular in a slow, seductive dance. “My Slayer. Christ, you taste good.”

She went rigid beneath him, her body tight with fear. “Wh-what…what are you…what are you doing?”

Spike lowered a hand to her wrist slowly, coaxing her stake away from her with his persuasive fingers. “’m takin’ what’s mine,” he whispered into her.

“What—what?”

“Buffy…”

“How do you…” A sharp gasp tore through her, and she arched into him when his blunt teeth sank into her throat. God, he was just tormenting his demon now, but Spike had an affinity for torture that hadn’t been fully tickled in years. He was touching her for the first time as an adult, and all sense of knowledge and reason had completely collapsed in the face of brute desire.

Too fast! Inner-William screamed. Too fast! You’re hurtin’ her!

Doesn’ sound hurt to me, Spike mused absently. He was burnt with a sudden need to erase her mind of every intimate touch she had received from foreign hands. The world had dissolved around them; he was emerging from a long famine, and what he needed was directly under his fangs.

Buffy shuddered violently beneath him, drawing in a sharp breath. “Don’t…”

“Stop me. You’re the Slayer, aren’t you?”

That seemed to snap her out of it. The next minute, Spike found himself smashed into a nearby mausoleum, an irate Buffy glaring at him as she jumped to her feet. “Yes,” she spat, reclaiming her stake from where he had dropped it, raising it with a perked brow. “I am the Slayer. Need a definition?”

“Don’ think so, luv,” Spike retorted, unable to hide his grin, eyes flickering as she approached. “’ve had my share of slayers. Jus’ not…” His gaze raked down her body. “Carnally.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not like other girls.”

“That’s for bloody sure.”

It was nothing of consequence, but the fire in Buffy’s eyes withered once more as she studied him carefully. He could see her thinking; could feel her thoughts unraveling as long buried memories fought their way to the surface. There was recognition there; recognition beginning to be called upon. He could feel her need, reveled in her confusion, and all while he kept against the wall and forced himself not to leap forward and take her in his arms. The hum of her blood echoed against his teeth. Christ, he needed her so bad.

Too soon. Too bleedin’ soon.

“I know you,” Buffy said again, her voice hesitant, stake aimed warningly. “I’ve seen you before.”

Spike nodded. “Yes, you have.”

“I don’t…” Her stake hand was trembling. He’d not once seen her so shaken on patrol, and he didn’t know if it was more appropriate to revel in his success or comfort her with an explanation. “You were a vampire when I knew you before?”

“All vampire, baby. Have been since 1880.”

“Then that’s a big yes.”

He waggled his brows suggestively. “Very big.”

Her expression turned stony. “Were you this much of a twisted perv when I knew you before?”

“Yes,” he replied shamelessly, “I jus’ din’t act it around you.”

Buffy’s brow furrowed, and recognition stormed her eyes. Recognition charged with ire and something else, adding up to an explosion of sensory. “Dammit, you weren’t supposed to exist!” she snapped, tossing the stake to the ground. Whether or not she intended to render herself unarmed, Spike didn’t know. Regardless, her outburst had the full of his attention now. “I’ve spent years convincing myself that you were just a dream! God, why now?”

“You remember?”

“No. I just…” She shook her head, licking her lips, which prompted a groan from Spike. “I’ve…you’ve…you’ve been there. Wherever I…”

Her eyes widened then, and the vampire could’ve sworn his heart leapt.

She remembers.

Buffy hazarded a cautious step forward. Her entire body was trembling, her breathing labored. And he swore she’d never been as beautiful in all her life as she was at that moment. “…Spike?”

For a split second, he felt he could lose himself in tears. The sound of his name on her lips was exquisite. It lasted all of an instant, but to him, that single beat was worth everything he’d given up; everything and more. The boundless look that overwhelmed her face, the way her eyes widened, the way she was both haunted and moved all in the same chord.

“Spike.” She tore away from his gaze, trembling. “Oh my God.”

He released a steady breath. “Promised you I’d be back, pet.”

“I thought…God, I thought…”

“Keep my word, right?”

“You…this can’t…” Tears welled in her eyes before she could help herself, and his heart about broke. “I can’t…you’re a vampire?”

A nervous chuckle sputtered through his lips. “Well, yeh, last time I checked. Come on, kitten. Tell me you don’ remember playin’ peek-a-boo with my bumpies.”

“I convinced myself I made that up.”

“Off what?”

“I don’t know!” Something erupted then, and indignation flooded her eyes once more. “So you’re just coming back now, to, what? Do what you didn’t do when I was a child? Was that entire ‘bringing me home’ thing a ruse to get on my good side for when my blood suddenly became Slayer-flavored?”

Mentioning her blood was a foolish thing, and to her credit, she realized this when her outburst was answered with an impassioned growl.

“Don’ toy with me, Slayer,” Spike snarled.

“What? You’ll rip my throat out? Puhlease.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because you decided to not kill me when I was four. I wasn’t born in a barn, and I didn’t start doing this just yesterday.”

“’m not here to kill you, sweetling.”

“Oh yeah?”

Spike nodded and took a step forward. “I told you,” he said lowly, “back then, an’ a few minutes ago. Before I knew you were a slayer…before everythin’…I told you I’d be back for you. I promised.”

She was giving him the strangest look. Lost, confused, but drawn. Oh, so drawn. Like a moth to the bloody flame. He knew that look well. Knew it, because for the past fourteen years, it had been nearly his only driving emotion. “Why?” she asked headily. “Why?”

He stopped when she was just a breath away, his demon screaming its need again. She was so near. Her fear both fed his lust and egged him to provide her comfort. The night was unfolding like a dream; he could barely conceive that she was actually there. Her eyes were glowing for him, and she was there.

He released a deep breath, raising a hand to run up her arm, shuddering when she shivered beneath his touch.

Fuck.

I gotta have her.

Control was slipping.

Tell her to run. Tell her to run now.

But he didn’t. He was much too selfish for that. His mate was standing before him, and he’d already waited far too long.

“Buffy…” he groaned, reaching for her before he could stop himself. The next second, his arms were around her waist, her body was against his, and he buried his mouth in her throat, peppering her sweet skin with hot, hungry kisses. “Bloody hell.”

She froze in his arms. “Spike…”

It was all lost. Completely lost. Control had snapped. He growled into her, twisted her in his arms, pressing her against the stone wall of the mausoleum. Her soft, supple body was against him, the warmth of her burning him from the inside. God, she smelled so good. So fucking good. And it had been so, so long.

“Buffy,” he whimpered, suckling at her flesh. “Oh Christ, Buffy.”

There was no response. She neither fought nor reciprocated his touches, and he was too far gone to notice. His hands explored her immodestly; he cupped her breasts, tweaking her nipples through her blouse, grunting brusquely into her skin. “So hot,” he growled. “Taste so sweet.”

Been forever.

The scent of her arousal was nearly as prominent as her fear, and once it hit his nose, he nearly fell to his knees. God, how long had he waited for this? How long had he followed her, led by the promise that she was his, and that he would be the one she kissed goodnight for the rest of eternity? His lips were on her skin. He was swimming in her desire, and the rush of her blood was his for the taking.

“My Slayer.”

“Ohhh…”

He dipped a hand between them, pressing his leg between hers so that he fell between them, and fumbled hastily with the zipper to her jeans. “You smell so good.”

Her nails dug into his forearms; the thunderous pounding of her heart driving him onward. The air around her hung in fear, but he ignored it. Ignored everything. The hum of her blood urged him onward, the sweetness of her desire giving him all the justification his demon understood or needed. She might not know it, but she wanted him. And he was a fool to think he could wait.

“What are you—”

He didn’t let her finish. Couldn’t. Gone was the quiet, reasonable voice of his inner William, lost irrevocably to the feel of his mate against him. The warmth that touched his fingertips, the rush of fluids that danced over his skin as his fingers traced her pussy lips, soaking up her heat.

“Mine,” he growled into her hair, sinking a finger inside her. And he was swallowed by warmth. “You’re mine, Buffy.”

“Please, I don’t—”

God she was so tight. So fucking tight. Spike pressed his lips to her forehead and plunged another finger into her, his thumb settling over her clit. His need was too great to keep it slow. Too starved for touch to treat her delicately. To remember that she was a virgin. To remember anything other than, for the first time in over ten years, he was with a woman he could have.

Everything else simply blanked out. He ground his cock against her, thrusting his intrusive fingers into her body, massaging her clit furiously. Hungry eyes soaked up the outrage and fear, the passion and the confusion. She was a thousand things at once, and all of them were his.

“Bleeding hell, you’re so tight.” He willed his eyes closed, pressing his brow to hers.

“Guh…”

“Buffy—”

It was over, then. Buffy threw her head back and cried out, spasming into his hand, drenching his skin with her spendings. She clung to him sweetly, her pulse hammering a thunderous cadence, and he about lost himself all over again for the feel of her against him. The scent of her orgasm in the air. Her juices dribbling down his fingers as her body exploded and came down.

He might have done it then, if it hadn’t been for what next hit the air.

Blood first. Then tears.

My God.

Spike reeled back in horror, devastated.

Buffy was crying, and not from pleasure.

Oh my God.

What the hell had he just done?

His demon didn’t care. His demon was riled and horny, and desperate for her body. Desperate to feel the welcoming warmth of her pussy strangling him into a new life. In terrible need of her, now that he’d given himself this first taste.

His demon didn’t care that Buffy was crying. His demon didn’t care that his force had hurt. Not the way it should. She was his, what he had done to her was the way it was between mates, and that was all his demon wanted or needed to know.

The part of him that was more than the demon, but less than the sobbing William—the part of him that was Spike—was thoroughly horrified.

“Buffy…” He wanted to hold her, but didn’t dare bring her into his arms. Didn’t even dare to take a step forward. He’d hurt her in a way that was far more than a flesh wound, and far more permanent. And in doing so, he’d gutted himself. “Buffy…run.”

She just looked at him.

“Run. Run now. Run home.” His jaw clenched. “Before I lose control again.”

Something different flashed across her eyes; something beyond confusion. Something that touched compassion. Something akin to awe and wonder beyond the fear and uncertainty. Something, he was nearly convinced, that he’d just imagined.

It was gone the next second, and so was she. Running like she never had. Running in the direction of home.

Spike collapsed.

Good God.

He’d hurt her. He’d hurt Buffy. That was supposed to be impossible.

So many things are supposed to be impossible.

He needed her, but he didn’t dare follow. Not now.

Not now, when he had made her bleed.

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