Part Two ~ What Dreams May Come
Buffy snapped upright under the thin sheet, her eyes wide with horror and mouth open in a silent scream. Sweat ran in rivers down her body and her hair was soaked with it, wet strings clinging to her flushed face. She pressed a trembling hand to her pounding heart and gasped for breath.
Every night it was the same dream. Sometimes it came to her more than once, ripping her from a sound sleep and leaving her sobbing as it continued to play through her conscious mind as well. Each time it was a little different. She was just a little faster, her honed reflexes sharper, so that at the last second she might be able to stop the swords descent and avoid piercing the blond vampire’s stomach.
Nothing was ever good enough, though. In spite of her heroic efforts, she was doomed to relive the effortless slide of the sharp blade into his flesh, his gasp of shocked surprise echoing in her mind. And all the time that gentle, accepting look in those extraordinary blue eyes that laid no blame upon her, yet added bucket loads to her guilt and misery.
She shivered. Her sodden nightgown clung to the knees she drew up under her chin. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rocked in an effort to calm herself.
For one heart-stopping moment, she had thought that this time would be different. She had actually been successful this time. Dream-Buffy had reared back at the last second and Dream-Spike had breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Bloody hell, that was too close!” She heard him say. Just as they were sharing a smile of unadulterated happiness, strong arms closed around hers from behind and shoved the blade home. Buffy’s shattered scream of denial reverberated through the chamber and she turned to confront the malevolently grinning face of Angelus.
“Better him than me, right lover?” he snarled before whipping her head back and tearing at her throat with his fangs.
Pain.
Pain so real and excruciating that it had ejected her from the nightmare realm. She could actually feel his cold lips sucking her life’s essence from her body.
Why had tonight been so different? Dreams and portents and just plain ‘wiggy’ feelings had been a part of her life for so long that she felt fully justified in her fears that there was more to this than she was immediately aware of.
She needed to talk to Giles.
But talking to Giles would be an admission that things weren’t quite so hunky dory as she had been letting on.
Her first attempts at expressing the utter wrongness of how the Acathla situation had been resolved had been met with only slight concern. The Watcher seemed certain that whatever misgivings she might have had would lessen over time. Angel said the same thing, but on a slightly more pompous level. He hounded her incessantly about it; in fact, he often accused her of wishing her aim had been true that day.
Angel.
Angelus.
Buffy shivered once more and kicked the clammy sheets from her legs. With a sudden burst of desperate energy, she bounded up and began to strip the ruined bed linens from the mattress. She made a neat pile by the door and threw her damp nightgown on top. Finding fresh sheets and clean pajamas, she made short work of making up the bed once more and dressing herself in fuzzy, comforting flannel.
But once the distractions were out of the way, the same issues still waited to confront her. As she lay there and waited to greet the dawn, Buffy finally forced herself to admit the truth, to accept the cold fact that was staring her so ruthlessly in the face.
Angel had come back wrong.
Angel flung himself down in his armchair and glared at the ceiling.
He was, quite frankly, bored.
Before the recent loss and restoration of his soul, his life had been simple. He had been content with his books and the occasional stolen moments with Buffy.
Now he was aware of a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with his life and any moments with Buffy, let alone stolen ones, were few and far between. Lately she had been avoiding him and it was starting to piss him off.
A picture of the petite blonde slayer sat on the side table and he scooped it up, staring at it intently. In the photo she was breathtaking; her hazel eyes sparkling with life and a smile lighting up her face.
Angel made a scornful noise and tossed the frame to the floor, heedless of the sound of breaking glass. She sure wasn’t like that now.
The serious face and big, tragic eyes were really getting on his nerves. She needed to get past her weird obsession with Spike. Her guilt over the blond vampire’s fate was eating her up inside.
Personally, he saw nothing wrong. To him, it was a win/win situation. He got his soul back and Spike got a side-trip to Hell. Something he felt the peroxided pain in the ass had so richly deserved. It was deliciously funny the more he thought about it.
Angel picked up a bottle of whiskey and swilled half the contents in one gulp.
“Better you than me, Will, m’boy!” he slurred, hoisting the bottle high in a drunken toast.
Buffy backed away from the door and slipped silent as a wraith across the sunlit courtyard. Tears streaked her face and dripped from her trembling chin. She had almost given her presence away when Angel had callously tossed her picture to the floor, nearly drawing blood where she’d bitten her hand to muffle her cry of outrage.
All that she had seen and heard had both sickened her and affirmed her suspicions that Angel wasn’t quite himself. The Angel she knew rarely drank alcohol, yet now he was completely plastered at seven in the morning. He seemed… louder. Loud and coarse and abrasive. More often than not, he was short tempered and senselessly cruel. In short, he wasn’t the Angel she knew and thought she loved.
Instead of continuing on to school, she found herself back home. The thought of forcing herself to deal with classes and her friends and her Watcher was suddenly unbearable. Reaching the safe haven of her bedroom, she flung herself across the bed and buried her face in the pillows.
Something must have gone wrong with the restoration spell. That was the only reason she could think of for Angel’s bizarre behavior. She needed to talk to Willow and find out what could have possibly gone wrong.
But not now. Right now she needed a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Maybe then she could face the train wreck her life had become.
“Seems a bit strange seein’ you in this place, pet.”
Buffy could barely breathe in the intense heat and her skin stung as stray embers lit on her arms and legs. Flames leapt and danced all around her and the ground was littered with bubbling pools of molten lava.
“Is-is this…” she gasped. Oxygen was definitely an issue in this place.
“It’s Hell. Well, your version of it, anyway.”
“Spike?” Buffy slapped at her arm and cried out in pain as another ember scorched her tender flesh. She knew it was his voice, and it sounded as though he were right beside her, but she had yet to find him in the glowing crimson cave. “Spike, where are you?”
He stepped out of the shadows behind her, moving quickly when a good-sized coal landed in her hair. The hand that grabbed her arm was unbelievably cool in spite of the raging inferno around them. He held her still while he swatted out the smoldering swatch of hair.
“Not exactly safe for a little thing like you down here, Slayer.” His deliciously cool hand slid down her arm to grasp her hand as he led her to stand under a protective shelf of rock.
Buffy watched in awe as a huge dragon flew over their heads. Flames belched from its gaping, razor-toothed maw, sweeping the ground before it and incinerating everything in its path. Hundreds of creatures that she thought must have once been human shrieked as they met their fiery deaths.
Hundreds of tiny black creatures swarmed over the smoldering carcasses left in the path of the dragon’s destruction. They were no bigger than a foot tall, with glittering red eyes and outsized mouths filled with row upon row of jagged, bloodstained teeth. Each held a miniature pitchfork that it used to stab viciously at the unmoving bodies in between bites of charred flesh.
EWWW!
“What are those?”
“Imps. Annoyin’ li’l buggers. They handle clean-up.” He winced as one of the not-quite-dead figures screamed in agony. “And torture.”
She shuddered and moved closer to the vampire, welcoming the strong arms that drew her in protectively and shrouded her in black leather.
“Why am I here? Is this my punishment for sending you here instead of Angel?”
“You think you’re being punished?” Spike laughed “No, Slayer. This is a dream. Your dream.”
A sharp pain in her ankle made her look down. One of the imps had found them and was chittering excitedly. It grinned evilly at Buffy and stabbed at her boot with its pitchfork. When it failed to pierce the tough leather, it started to clamber up her leg with teeth bared.
Buffy shrieked and leapt straight up into Spike’s arms. Working around an armful of panicked slayer, a fully vamped Spike snarled and drew back his foot. One good kick and the little creature sailed across the cavern and splattered on the opposite wall.
She looked over her shoulder and gave the neon-green smear on the far wall a speculative glance. “Good distance,” she muttered. “You do that a lot?” The wall was covered with other bright blobs.
Spike shrugged. “It passes the time. You ready to get down yet?” He made as if to set her on her feet and she flung her arms around his neck with a squeak of protest. “Guess not,” he choked out, throwing in a few exaggerated gagging noises for effect.
“Oh, cut it out,” Buffy snapped. “I can’t be choking you because you don’t need to breathe!”
“Yeah, this is exactly my idea of Hell. Forced to play nursemaid to the bleedin’ Slayer. Just fuckin’ perfect,” he groused. With a sigh of resignation, he found a relatively smooth rock and sat down, cradling her in his lap. In spite of his pissy attitude, the large hands that held her were astonishingly gentle.
Gradually easing up on her death-grip, Buffy leaned back with a slight frown. Her eyes followed her hands as they slid from his neck, across his shoulders and down over his chest. She could feel his hands skimming a path down her back and over the flare of her hips.
Lifting her eyes to his face, Buffy felt her stomach muscles clench. Spike’s eyes were closed and the expression on his face was one of complete rapture. Startled by such raw emotion, she snatched her hands back from the hard chest she had been idly caressing, nearly tumbling off his lap in the process.
Spike didn’t even try to stop the rumble of laughter that escaped him at her antics. “Don’t know why you’re fightin’ it, pet. It’s your dream, after all.”
He hauled her back up, this time to straddle his lap. His hands caught hers and laid them against his chest again, pressing down hard. A soft purring sound rumbled through him, tingling pleasantly under her palms and bringing an unexpected flood of warmth that left her gasping and kneading at his flesh like a kitten.
Letting one hand drift over his stomach, she lifted the other to his face, her breath catching in her throat as he shuddered and nuzzled into her touch.
“Oh, God. Yes,” he breathed. “Touch me, Buffy. Been so long for me.”
“How long?” she whispered. His skin felt wonderfully soft and inviting under her fingertips.
“Hundred or so. I’ve lost count.” His tongue snaked out and swiped at her fingers.
“Days?”
“Years,” he murmured. “Time is different here.”
The tears that burned her eyes weren’t only from the sulfurous fumes that rose around them. Both hands framed his face, thumbs stroking along his prominent cheekbones until his eyes opened to meet hers. Buffy found herself lost in an endless sea of blue.
“You don’t deserve to be here.” The moisture in her eyes overflowed and ran down her cheeks. “If only I had—”
One long finger pressed against her lips to quiet her recriminations. He leaned into her and replaced his finger with his mouth, his lips barely brushing hers as he spoke. “Shh. No one is to blame, Buffy. It just happened that way, so stop beatin’ yourself up over it, yeah?”
She could barely summon the effort to nod her head, lost as she was in the softness of those plush lips rubbing over hers in a kiss that wasn’t quite a kiss. Blind instinct led her to slide further down onto his lap and grind against him. He growled, his answering upward thrust dragging a harsh, needy cry from her.
After an endless, wanting time, his lips covered hers with a ragged moan. Buffy wrapped her hands around his neck and fell against him in complete surrender.
Kissing. Kissing Spike. She was dreaming of kissing Spike and oh, God, were they kissing! He bent her back over his arm, his lips plundering hers as his cool tongue slipped inside her mouth to twist and mate with hers.
She was enthralled. Mesmerized... Never before had she felt such fire and intensity. The taste and scent and feel of him assailed her senses.
Buffy was panting when he pulled away and buried his face in her neck. Hot prickles raced up her spine to end where his blunt teeth closed over her jugular, nipping and sucking fervently.
“Spike, please!” she begged. Her fingers tunneled through his hair and held him against her throat, body tense in anticipation of his bite.
With one last hard suck, he lifted his head, eyes midnight dark and nostrils flared as he dragged in air he didn’t need. “When the time is right, Slayer,” he said cryptically. “Be ready for me.”
He kissed her again and she knew she was lost. His fingers gripped her hips with bruising strength as she began to ride him once more. The friction of his hard cock against her engorged sex was pure heaven, even through two layers of denim. The tension in her belly rose to almost unbearable levels.
Spike must have sensed how close she was. His hands moved around to grip her ass, pressing down as he arched upward with a harsh growl. She cried out his name as her release exploded within. Feeling as though she were being sucked into a whirlpool of darkness, Buffy fell.
Her earlier dreams had catapulted her into wakefulness with her heart pounding with fear, but not this one. This one had her surfacing from her restless nap with a ragged moan and a heart that was racing with desire rather than fear. An all over shiver wracked her body and residual tremors radiated from her sex.
She pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Dragging a hand through her tangled hair, she blew out a huge breath before pushing herself to her feet and making her way down the hall to the bathroom. Once there, she ran the cold water and splashed it over her face. Grabbing a towel from the rack, she buried her face in its folds and dried off.
Tossing the towel into the hamper, she picked up her brush and lifted it to her hair. That’s when she saw it. Mouth gaping in disbelief, she pulled her hair away from her neck and leaned in closer to the mirror.
There, directly over the faded scar the Master had left on her throat, was a huge purple hickey.