Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy own all the characters contained within. I hold no claim on them.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Set during Buffy versus Dracula and then goes seriously AU after that! Buffy is missing and Spike is the only one who has noticed. Where is Buffy and why is Spike the only one who is worried? Will the peroxide vampire be able to find her before it's too late? What has happened to the Scoobies and will they save Xander before he really becomes Dracula's butt monkey?

Chapter 33

“I love you… Oh, how I adore you...everything about you is pure perfection.” 

Glory glanced over her shoulder and grimaced and the fawning walking wart that was currently French kissing the floor where she had walked on. “Jinxy, this one is really bugging the hell out of me! Kill him.” She flicked her curly hair over her shoulder and turned back to the full-length mirror. 

The grovelling minion dared a quick look at his divinity. “Oh, let me let me let me do it! If it pleases you, oh radiant one, I will throw myself from the window.” 

Glory turned to face the brownnoser. “Sure, but make it quick. I want to get my hair done.” She looked over her shoulder at her back and her jaw dropped. Ignoring completely the small brown robed blur as it dashed past her and out of the window with a happy squeal. 

“Jinx, does my ass look lopsided to you?” Glory shrieked as she patted her backside with both hands, whirling around and craning her neck trying to catch sight of her posterior, totally ignoring the loud squishy splat as her admirer became intimately acquainted with the ground outside.  

“Oh no, mistress of my heart and damned soul…your buttocks are perky and luscious…a perfect peach and I would just love to have a bite of them,” Jinx lied as he stared at lopsided lower globes of his goddess. 

“Yuh.” Glory waved her hands at Jinx. “Duh, as if anything on my body would be less than perfection…” 

Jinx stared at the afore-mentioned body part and wondered if there was something that could be done with the hem length of her skirts to cover the way it rode up on one side. He would make an appointment with a seamstress and see what could be done about it. That way she’d never notice again that she was less than perfect. 

“Have that idiot Dracula send someone up to fix the window.  You’d think the idiot would’ve thought to open it before jumping.” Glory shook her head and trotted to her walk-in closet. 

Jinx nodded and began to back towards the door, followed closely by the rest of Glory’s remaining worshippers. 

“Oh, and Jinxy…tell him to kill the Watcher and bring me that new girl that has been hanging around with that freak of a Slayer.” Glory checked her lipstick absently as she handed down a death sentence for Giles. “Well, don’t just stand there…snap to it…I’m sick of waiting.  It’s time to get my Key and head for home.”  

“As you wish, my most stupendous one.” Jinx clapped his hands and then scurried out of the room. 

******

Darla edged away slightly from Angel's supine form with the warm draft of air that he had emitted, causing her face to scrunch up into a moue of disgust. She had forgotten about that-- something that she and Angelus had joked was a left over from his mortal cabbage eating days. She rolled onto her side and grimaced at the hard floor. 'So much for romance and treating a girl right,' Darla scoffed.

She stared sightlessly at the wall, wondering why there was a 1940s map of LA tacked up and, as she mentally picked out various hunting grounds from back in the day, she began to doze off. Her last thought on the massacre she and Luke had participated in on Sunset Boulevard, they'd both snuck out of Sunnydale for the weekend, tired of the Master's constant moaning and complaining over being stuck in the Hellmouth. She'd warned him not to do it, but no, he had tried to do the ritual anyway and there he’d remained, stuck like a cork in the mouth of hell. 

His loyal followers had remained by his side and pandered to his every demanding need. She and Luke was the most senior of his court, but even they had needed a break from his capricious demands and needs. So the bight lights of Hollywood had called them, a siren's call to all the beautiful people ready to play with. And how they had played. The two elder Aurelians had painted the town red with the blood of the innocent-- and the not so innocent-- turning a few more minions to take back home to the Master to keep him entertained.

She missed those days; everything had seemed so much easier, less complicated and there had definitely been no annoying little Slayer to drive her demented. Darla's sleepy eyes shot open as a blast of warm air caught her on the ass. She shuddered and sat up, pulling her dress down over her thighs, ignoring the stream of sticky cum that trailed down her thighs. Darla stared over at Angel who was curled up on his side snoring loudly.  She was amazed that the other occupants of the hotel weren't wakened by his stentorian snores.

Darla grimaced and rubbed her hands between her legs, then she reached over
and grabbed the remnants of his shirt and wiped herself clean with it. Casually she tossed the shredded and now stained silk over his head and stared down in disgust at her wrinkled and soiled red dress. Gone were the good old day when Angelus had finished seeing to her every need and whim in bed.  He would clean her up using his tongue, just like she'd trained him. But this time he’d rolled off her, fallen asleep and started 'saluting the Queen', 'Guess familiarity really does breed contempt.'

Darla stared assesingly at the body she knew intimately, every inch. He'd gained weight-- something she had never though possible in a vampire-- but he was definitely bigger and had what suspiciously looked like the beginnings of a blood belly. As soon as Angelus woke she was putting him on a strict regime of sit ups and blood rationing. Darla frowned, wondering if the diet of pigs blood he stuck to religiously since getting that stinking soul shoved down his throat was the reason for him porking up. Well that wouldn't be a problem soon.  Once her evil childe rejoined the fold, he would be on a nice diet of human blood. She couldn't work out why Spike stayed so lean and well formed, but Angel ended up piling on the pounds. And yet, she still wanted him by her side and in her bed, well at least for a while.

She sighed deeply, resisting the urge to kick him in his flatulent flabby ass. Instead she curled up in the desk chair and waited for her boy to return to her. The evil within her would not allow her to accept complicity in his being re-souled.  Instead, her demon plotted how they would kill the Summers mother and child.  She envisaged a scenario much like the Holtz one; mother drained and raped to death and the daughter turned and left to greet the Slayer and her toady William the bloody idiot. 'Always lead around by his dick, that one. Sees a pretty face and his backbone turns to jello.' She frowned, wondering why in all their years travelling together Spike had never made a pass at her. 

Darla stared at Angel's snoring form; she wished he'd hurry up and wake up. She wanted to get back to Dru, have a bath and find a small child to torture and kill to make herself feel better.

*******

"Love you."

Dru carefully rearranged the folds on Miss Edith’s frock before leaning over and kissing the cold porcelain face, then the scion of the Aurelian clan. She placed her carefully on the bed; the blindfold had been pulled off so that the doll could help her insane owner see what was to come. Behind the raven-haired vampire, Lindsey watched from the door for a moment before shutting it and locking the madwoman in.

The mad vampire then whirled around, her long dark curls fanning around and coiling over her pale shoulder like snakes.  She cackled. Her pale blue eyes focused on the ceiling as she let the visions flow into her raddled mind.

Raising her scarlet tipped fingers to her temples, Dru let her head rock from side to side as she watched the future unfold. A moue of discontent crossed her lips as some of it was not to her liking at all, and then other bits she saw were so delicious they made her quiver. Then she saw him, her darling boy, her Sweet William and her. Drusilla's face contorted with rage and jealousy. Her hand clawed and scrabbled at the air, as if attacking the nasty Slayer who took all her toys and broke them. But even in the midst of her insanity, the Aurelian vampire knew better than to confront the Slayer.

"No...noooo...mine, all mine and you dare to take him," she screamed. Her nails clawed at her face, causing rivulets of blood to seep down the doll-like face that enticed so many to their death on her fangs. Including the one that was utterly lost to her now.  Even with the tendrils of madness that clung to her mind, Drusilla's intuition told her that it would be to no avail if she even attempted to sway him from his new path or even worse, from her side.

All those decades ago she had told him that he would walk in worlds others couldn't begin to imagine, and now here he was, taking those first tentative steps and not with her. Her Spike was finally fulfilling his destiny and walking away from the darkness that she had thrust upon his willing throat. Dru dropped to her knees with a howl. He was hers to play with and discard-- no one else's.  And yet that whey faced Slayer had his heart and mind in the palm of her murderous hand. There was nothing she could do but leave Spike and his childe to their destiny.

"No one left for me. Grandmummy will be all round...smell fecund and love another ...Daddy...oh my precious daddy...hurry up and come home soon...miss you and need you...the lambkins have all gotten their tails and we must bash and crash to mend it to our will...Your little girl needs your touch, your whip...your hard cock and fangs to make her feel all full up and better." Drusilla muttered over and over under her breath, slowly plucking her fine hair from her head.

********

"Spike...I." Buffy stared up at his anxious face, his azure eyes seemed to pierce right through to her soul; their feverish intensity made her freeze. So much was hanging on these three words, the same words that whenever she uttered them to another man, they usually ended up leaving town and her. So she was utterly terrified about saying them to Spike, he was her everything.

Saviour, sinner, saint, family, lover, sire, friend and most of all, she suspected her soul mate. He was a curious amalgam of innocent boy and seasoned man.  The intense vulnerability was obvious to whoever chose to really look, and she did choose.  It may have taken her dying and being reborn as a vamp, but she saw who and what William the Bloody was.

And she loved it all.  Everything about him-- the good and the bad.

And she had screwed it all up. Buffy took a deep breath and smiled up at Spike through watering eyes.  Not realising that she had vamped out due to the intensity of her thoughts and feelings, her lavender eyes flashed at him. Absently worrying a fang with the tip of her tongue, Buffy reached up and caressed his angular face. She smiled slightly when he leant into her touch with a small sigh.

Spike stood there waiting.  He was slightly surprised at his patience, but this was a pivotal moment in his un-life and it was time for quiet. Something that he abhorred; he was used to frenetic sounds and movements, anything to remind himself he wasn't totally dead.

He stared down at the small woman who had turned his entire existence on its axis and overwhelmed his body and mind with her sweetness and light. He could see she was struggling to understand all the vampiric frim-fram that they had gotten tangled up in and figured that Angel had probably copped out and given her a book to read.

But as much as he wanted to help, to make this all go away, he was also determined not to be Love's Bitch anymore. If he gave in and let her off then their relationship would be weakened and he was determined that wouldn't happen. He had survived one weak relationship and never again. It was all or nothing for him this final time.

"Spike...William, I love you." There, she said it. Buffy watched the maelstrom of emotions that ran across his still face. Her lower lip caught between her fangs as she stared and waited for disaster to strike.

But it didn't.

Instead there was a croaky laugh that erupted from Spike's taut frame.  It echoed through the abandoned building and disturbed the roosting pigeons. They fluttered around the nearly derelict dance hall, sending a shower of dust and feathers over them.

Buffy's eyes overflowed with the tears that had been lingering in them, great fat drops of water trailed down her cheeks and dropped unnoticed onto her skirt. He was laughing at her. Self-doubt swarmed to the fore and she took a tiny step back. Her head cocked to one side, wondering if this was a cosmic joke, she finally told the peroxided pain in her ass that she loved him and he laughed? At her? Why? Had all this been some cruel and elaborate plot to humiliate her?

Her hand flew to her mouth as if trying to catch the words she had willingly let lose. "Oh no." She stumbled away, absolutely terrified, humiliated and vulnerable.

Spike couldn't help himself, she had said it and meant it.  No one had meant it since before he'd turned his old mum. A relieved laugh escaped his lips as sublime joy filled his entire being. Buffy Anne Summer, the Slayer and his precious childe loved him, no one else, him. His moment of pure joy was suddenly tempered by a wash of terror that flooded his psyche through the sire/childe bond.

"Wait...No!" He growled and grabbed hold of her shaking hands. "Slayer, love, what's wrong?" Spike's heart was in his throat.  The tears she shed and the panic he had sensed through their bond made him fear that maybe she was already regretting saying it. But he was nothing if not stubborn and now she'd said the L word he was not letting her go, not ever.

"You laughed at me." Buffy wriggled her hands free and took a few steps away from Spike, her heart shattering with each tentative step. Her luminous eyes capturing his and pinning him with their vunerable intensity.

"Do wot?" Pure bewilderment coloured his countenance as he clung onto his struggling girl. Realisation dawned and Spike frowned. "Right, that's it!" he snarled and jerked Buffy over his shoulder in a fluid motion. "Am not putting up with the crossed wires and your proclivity towards angst and drama.  Enough is enough." He punctuated this with a firm slap to her backside.

"Spike, lemme go!" Buffy exclaimed and wriggled like an eel trying to escape his firm hold.

"Don't make me put my claim bite on your arse, missy.  Hold still," Spike growled as he paced the length of the room. Kicking open a door, he slammed it shut behind them and threw Buffy in the air with a flourish.

Buffy's stomach lurched at her unwilling airborne antics. She scrabbled at the air uselessly as she flew backwards in the darkness. Her eyes focused on the cocky vampire watching her. "Spike, ooff." Buffy grunted as she landed on the mattress that Spike had dragged with him from the hotel.

"Pretty as a picture, aren't you my love.  All flustered and hair flying all over," Spike drawled as he shrugged out of his duster and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans. Curling his tongue behind his teeth, he watched as Buffy blew her hair out of her face and dashed the dampness from her cheeks. "Now, where were we?" He cocked his head and then gave her the most obnoxious smirk he had in his arsenal.

"Oh yeah, that's it.  You just declared yourself." His cut glass accent completely belied his bad boy image and Buffy's eyes widened as he began to slink towards her. Confidence oozing from every delectable pore, he ghosted through the darkness. She was frozen in place, legs akimbo on the mattress, her hands propping her up and her mouth open.

Spike sank to his knees in between her open legs.  Reaching up he grasped her hips and tugged her unresisting body towards him. "Now where to start?" He eyed her shirt with serious intent and then, before she could even blink, his hands had ripped if off her, revealing her pert lace covered breasts too his appreciative gaze. Buffy wrapped her legs around his waist and stared nervously up at him, unsure of herself.

Spike mentally sighed at the big-eyed look she was giving him.  He stared down into her lavender tinted eyes and resisted the urge to shake her fangs out of her thick skull. 'Best spell it out for her then, Spike m'boy.'

In that sensitive, rough timbre of voice that he accomplished so well, "Buffy, I love you."

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