Summary: Spike decides to get Willow something special, and inadvertently brings a heap of trouble upon the two of them.
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Spike woke early the next day, and decided to let his minions sleep in. He wanted to do something special for Willow, who was still fast asleep, exhausted from the previous evening. He sat for a few moments and simply watched her dozing. She was like some sort of dark miracle. She had chosen him, he had given her the chance to go, and she had chosen to stay. He brushed a stray coppery lock out of her face, and thought of all the ways he could spend eternity pleasing her. He sighed, not wanting to leave her, even for a moment, but there were things to be done, so he slipped out of bed and quietly dressed before heading downstairs.
He had to call nine places before he found a grocery store that was willing to deliver. He ordered several types of fresh fruit, yogurt, and a bunch of other health food that Willow was always saying they should get. Meal times had been a bit hard for her, because she wasn’t allowed to go out before, and the florescent lights of the grocery stores could be a bit painful for a vampire’s superior vision, so grocery shopping was basically out. Instead the poor girl had been forced to live entirely on take-out and whatever was left in the house from when the owners had still been alive. In fact, Spike had always kinda gotten a kick out of how the chit would always order everything vegetarian, despite how many pints of his blood she drained during sex. He half wondered if she would only want to eat health nuts after she was turned, they may even have to move back to California to accommodate her feeding habits he thought with a smirk. Then another thought occurred to him, maybe it was time to turn her.
Spike had no doubts about her devotion, actually he knew from the first time she had bit him, there would be a pull between them. In the vampire world, blood was everything. It was more than life-sustaining, it was life-giving, it was power, and also a way to form bonds between vampires. Spike had tried to explain this bond to Willow once when she asked him how minions were made. With her inquisitive mind, she must have asked him a dozen questions on the subject, but in the end she still had trouble understanding the pull of a master’s blood.
He had explained that a minion was different than a childe because when making minions, a master only gives a few drops of his blood. The result is a weaker vampire, not just physically, but mentally as well. The blood is what reanimates their body after they die, without the proper amount, many of their higher brain functions do not reanimate. The result is a stupid, but often loyal and easy to control vampire, a minion. A childe however, is someone you’re hoping to have with you for awhile, possibly forever, so it is necessary to give them quite a bit more of your blood so that they will be strong enough to be worthy of your time and training.
It was true that Spike could have simply made Willow into a minion, it certainly would have been easier, but he wanted a mate, someone who could challenge him intellectually, plus as a minion she would’ve no longer had the capacity for magic. She had understood these basic concepts, but when he tried to explain the call of blood between a sire and their childe, she seemed a bit lost, or perhaps simply in denial of the feeling she was surely already having.
It was rare for a vampire to allow a human to feed from them, except when they were being turned. However, it was also rare for a vampire to bother trying to train a mortal before turning them either. Both were much more common in the old days, before Spike’s time. Back then childer were chosen with great care, they were trained for months, and fed their future sire’s blood daily, until they were finally turned. Such were the vampires of the old order, the most powerful and beautiful that ever were, like royalty of sorts. But nowadays, everything had gone to hell, minions were allowed to turn other minions, creating stupider, weaker minions, and thanks to the slayers, too few of the old ones were left to take control back. Chances were that in a few thousand years most vampires would be too weak to survive.
In any case, Spike was somewhere in the middle himself. He was borne of the house of Aurelias. The master of this house, one of the last ‘true’ masters, had been killed by Buffy a few years before, which was fine by him. He had once called Spike a half breed because Darla, his grand-sire, was a true vampire, but his sire Angelus was nothing more than a mistake; untrained, uncouth, and unwilling to show loyalty to anyone. But despite what the master may have thought about Angelus, his blood was strong, and he made sure to feed Spike enough to make him strong as well. As for training, Spike received plenty of it once he was turned, even if he fought it.
Willow was something special though. She was being trained in the old way. Chosen for her beauty, intelligence, and talent, and fed almost daily from her future sire. Once she was turned she would be a powerful vampiress. Plus the blood shared between the two of them would create an almost unbreakable link between them. She would still have her own free will, but they would be connected in a way that was almost primal. It was impossible for him to explain to her, but he knew that she was feeling it already.
In truth she was ready to be turned, she had been for some time, but still he wanted to wait a little. It would have to be done eventually, but the thought of her losing her warmth, and the ability to blush, made him sad. Yet the longer he waited the more likely the slayer was to show up. Part of him was surprised she hadn’t found them already. He hoped her and her little mates had given Willow up for dead, but he doubted it. However, once she was turned they would be too late.
Yes, it should be soon, but he wanted the occasion to be a special one. After all they had been through together, he felt the event deserved a little ceremony, and then it stuck him. He had once read about an old vampire mating ritual that could only be done during a full moon, he had hoped Dru would want to ‘tie the knot’ with him. So he memorized the ceremony and made all the preparations, but when the time came, she said she couldn’t go through with it because Miss Edith wasn’t feeling well, and she needed to stay in to care for her. He had known that it was just an excuse, obviously. She didn’t want to be his mate, only his companion. Her heart belonged to Angelus, but she didn’t want to hurt Spike’s feelings, so instead she had given him what she thought was a believable story. But this time it would be different because Willow’s heart belonged to him alone.
The more he thought about it, the more excited he became. He looked at the calendar hanging on the wall, the next full moon was in ten days, plenty of time for him to prepare. He would need some supplies, but he had already been planning to stop by a magic shop to get a present for Willow anyway, so that would be no problem. Yes, in ten more days, Willow would be his for eternity.
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Buffy sat on her bed, trying to hold back her tears. Over the last couple of months she had lost almost everything. First her best friend was kidnapped, and after all this time, was most likely dead. Then Faith had betrayed her, and she had been forced to kill her. And as if that wasn’t enough, Angel had left her too, moving to Los Angeles. Xander and Giles did their best to cheer her up, but they could offer her little consolation. She was overwhelmed with the feeling of loss and it was starting to effect her slaying. Two nights before she had nearly been killed by a fledgling. She needed to get her mind off things, maybe some training; that always made her feel better. As she sat there, lost in thought, the phone rang, pulling her back to reality.
“Hello”
“Buffy, I’m so glad you’re in. I need you to come over right away.”
“Giles? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’d rather not discuss it on the phone, it will take too much time. Please, just hurry,” and with that the line went dead.
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“Ok, I came as fast as I could. So, what’s the dire?” Buffy asked as she strolled through Giles’s door and plopped down on his couch.
She glanced around and noticed all the scoobies, or what was left of them, were in attendance, including Oz which came as something of a surprise. Once Willow was given up for dead, Oz had practically dropped off the planet, he had even quit the ‘Dingoes’. Buffy gave him a nod and a halfhearted smile, then did the same to Xander and Anya, who were too busy groping each other to notice.
“Well, I was hoping to wait until Angel had arrived,” Giles started, putting a hand up to silence Buffy as she went to interrupt. “I asked him to come, because we will need him for this, but since it will take a few hours for him to get here, he asked me to start with out him.” Giles paused then, expecting to be bombarded with questions, but instead all he got was silent stares, so he continued.
“I received a call last night from a man in Massachusetts, Salem to be specific. He believes that Spike was in his store yesterday evening, and was calling to alert us.”
“Oh not this again!” Anya said in exasperation.
“Anya, please,” Xander admonished.
“No, I’m not going through this again,” Anya continued to protest, “First you all get your hopes up that you’ve found Willow, and then it all turns out to be nothing. Last time Xander was too depressed to have sex for more than a week.”
“Anya!” Xander yelled, turning red before Giles took the conversation back under control.
“I’ll admit, there have been a few false leads, more even than you know. But this time I believe it is the real thing. The man I spoke to on the phone is somewhat of an expert on the occult. He knows a great deal about vampires, and he told me that someone matching Spike’s description was in yesterday buying a few spell books, but he also bought supplies which the proprietor believes are for an archaic vampire mating ritual.” As he spoke, Giles began pacing back and forth, cleaning his glasses compulsively.
“What are you trying to say, that Willow has already been turned?” Buffy asked stiffly. She hated to admit that she agreed with Xander’s demon playmate, but Anya was right, she had gotten her hopes up before, only to have them crushed. She wasn’t sure she could take it again.
“No, on the contrary, I believe she is still mortal. The man I spoke to, a fellow by the name of Mortensen, gave me a list of everything he had bought. The spell books must have been for Willow, because they were for an early practitioner. I can only assume that either Spike already has a copy of the text with the ritual in it, or perhaps he is working from memory, but from the ingredients he has purchased I’ve been able to deduce that it must be one of two ceremonies. Yet when one also considers that he purchased a star chart, most likely to track the path of the moon, that can leave only one possibility, the ritual of Lubov.” Giles finished his confusing ramble somewhat triumphantly.
“What?! That’s crazy. No self respecting vampire would use that ritual,” Anya said dismissively.
“I quite assure you, it is the most logical deduction, given the facts,” Giles said, somewhat put out.
“Yeah, but that ritual would completely bind them, if one of them died, the other would too, plus it would lower his status, making himself more vulnerable like that. From what I’ve heard about this Spike character, he’s way too smart to take that kind of risk.”
“I disagree, Spike has always been rather a romantic of sorts, I believe it is completely in his nature to risk not only status but also his life for his mate,” Giles argued back.
“Well, then he’s not much of a demon, is he? Then again, most humans aren’t that romantic either,” Anya said, giving Xander a pointed stare.
“Look, will you two stop fighting and someone explain what this ritual of goulash is!” Xander exclaimed, wanting to take the focus off of him.
“Ritual of Lubov. It’s a mating ceremony for vampires. It can only be performed during a full moon, which gives us a little time, but I’m afraid not much. The ritual is done outside, and involves rather complicated incantations as well as some other things. Then when the moon is at its highest point, the vampire claims their mate by draining them to near death, and then feeding them an unusually large amount of their own blood. As Anya pointed out, this creates an exceptionally strong tie between the sire and their new child, making them more vulnerable in some ways, but more powerful in others.” As Giles finished he looked around to see that Buffy, Xander, and Oz had suddenly gone very pale.
“Look, I know it’s a lot to take in,” he continued, “but we have a great deal of work to do, and not much time. The full moon is in only nine days, so I suggest we get started,” and with that the Anya, Xander, and Oz went to work, pouring over the texts, trying to learn as much as they could about the ritual, while Giles and Buffy worked on her training to help prepare her for any fighting that was to come.
When Angel, Cordelia, and Doyle arrived a few hours later, they were all still hard at work. Angel introduced Doyle to everyone, and talked privately with Buffy for a few minutes to make sure she was alright with the two of them working together. The truth was, as hard as it may be to be around the man she loved knowing they couldn’t be together, she was still glad he was there. If this all turned out to be just another false lead, having Angel there would give her some comfort, and if they really had found Spike and Willow, they would need Angel to help them fight.
By morning, the group had a game plan. They would drive up in two cars to Salem, stop the ceremony, kill Spike, and save Willow. It sounded simple enough, but they all knew it wouldn’t be. Timing would be everything. They didn’t know where Spike was keeping Willow, and it would take far too long to find out. Their best hope was to figure out where the ceremony would be, and stop it before Willow was killed.
They had spent half their time researching the history of Salem, trying to learn the location. The ritual had to be performed on unholy ground, which could mean a place where a great injustice had taken place, a place of great hatred, or a place of death and violence. With these requirements, in Salem the home of the infamous witch trials, it could be almost the whole damn town. But after a great deal of work, they were finally able to narrow it down to one of three most likely places; the site of the original courthouse where the trials had taken place, the jail where accused witches were held and often died, or the site where the convicted witches were hung.
Driving non-stop, it would take the group just over three days to get there, which would give them a little time to locate these places, and possibly even figure out where Willow was being held, but they would have to be discreet. If Spike got wind that they were in town, he would most likely take Willow and run, or possibly just kill her on the spot. This operation required finesse, a word that half the group had little understanding of. Needless to say; Buffy, Xander, and Anya would all have to be kept on a short leash. At least Cordelia, would be staying behind in Sunnydale, to baby-sit Oz during the full moon. With any luck they would all be back soon, with Willow safe and sound.
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Willow was having trouble keeping the grin off her face. Spike had woken her with breakfast in bed. She had been exhausted the night before, and had slept well past sunset. By the time she woke, she was completely famished, and thought she had died and gone to heaven when she saw what Spike had for her.
He brought her homemade fruit salad, yogurt, granola, and tofu. All of which she had been recently craving. The funny part though was the tofu. Spike had never tried it before, and when he did, he thought it had gone bad because it was all white and had no taste, so he threw it out. He tossed out three of the five cartons he ordered before he decided that it was supposed to be that way, and that Willow simply had no taste. He then brought an entire carton to her along with everything else, cut into slices. When he told her what happened she burst out laughing before explaining that it was generally cooked with other things. But for now, she simply mixed some in with her fruit salad, along with some yogurt and granola. Together it was delicious, but with every bite she took, Spike pulled a face like someone had stuck a lemon in his mouth, and shook his head like she was crazy.
When she was almost finished, Spike went in and ran a bubble bath for her. She wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve so much pampering, but whatever it was, she hoped she did it again. Their bath was luxurious, especially when they turned the spa bubbles on. Boy, rich people sure knew how to live. Spike gently washed her hair, and body with her favorite cinnamon soap, and then drained the tub before patting her dry with a fresh towel. When they came back into the bedroom, she saw a brightly wrapped package sitting on the bed for her.
She glanced at Spike, who grinned back sheepishly, before telling her to open it. Inside she found a black satin evening gown, along with a pair of long white satin gloves. All it needed was shoes. She looked back at Spike inquisitively, to see him holding another box out to her, undoubtedly the shoes.
“What’s all this about?” she asked, dying of curiosity.
“You’ll find out soon enough pet, I’ll meet you downstairs in thirty minutes,” and with that he tucked his towel a little tighter around his waist and headed out of the bedroom to dress down the hall in George’s room.
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Spike liked George. He was the last minion he had turned. After meeting in a nearby pub, and discovering that not only did they have the same taste in music, but that he was also a carpenter, Spike figured he would make a nice addition to the family. He had even given him a larger dose of his blood so he would be a bit stronger and smarter than the rest. It had worked out well, George became his second in command, and ran things around the house when Spike was too busy with Willow. At the moment, George was showing his usefulness again, by helping Spike tie his tie.
“Stupid bloody necktie! It’s only been fifty years since I’ve worn one, you’d think I’d remember how the sodden thing goes on!” Spike howled with frustration. George who didn’t say much, another plus in Spike’s book, simply smiled and tied it for him.
“You look good,” he said evenly, hoping his calmness would rub off on his master, who was obviously a nervous wreck.
“Of course I do, I’m a good looking fellow,” Spike responded with false smugness.
“She’s going to say yes.” George continued.
“She better say yes, or I’ll rip her bloody tongue out.”
“No you won’t, and she ‘will’ say yes.” Normally Spike would never tolerate a minion contradicting him, but in this case he was too busy worrying about the evening ahead of him, and besides he liked George.
Once he was dressed, Spike went downstairs to pace the living room while he waited for Willow. When she finally appeared at the top of the stairs, he was grateful he didn’t need to breathe, because at that moment she was so beautiful she could take any man’s breath away.
The dress fit her like a glove. It was a sleeveless number, with a high neckline, but plunging low in the back. She had worn her hair swept up, emphasizing her slender throat, which bore his fresh bite mark. She was gorgeous, and she was all his.
“You look amazing,” he said with reverence.
“So do you,” she replied, taking in his black suit, with black silk shirt, and surprise, surprise, a black tie with just a splash of blue across it. “As always, black is definitely your color.”
“You too pet, but I think something is missing.” He said, pulling out a velvet box, “I know it’s nothing fancy, but they made me think of you.”
As he said this, he opened the box to reveal a double string pearl choker.
Willow let out a small gasp as she ran her fingers across the necklace.
She had never seen anything so beautiful. She looked up into his eyes,
and started to cry.
“Bloody hell, I knew I should’ve gotten something else. It’s just that they looked so elegant, like you, that I thought maybe you’d like them. I’m sorry baby, please don’t cry, I’ll take them back and get you something else.”
“No please, I love them! It’s just no one’s ever treated me like this before. I mean the dress, the shoes, breakfast in bed, and now this, thank you!” and with that she threw her arms around him with such force that she almost knocked the pair of them over.
“You’re welcome pet. Here, let me put them on you,” he said with relief, “Now if you’re ready, I believe the limo is waiting.”
The rest of the evening was perfect. Spike had taken her to a concert being held in the Salem Commons. It was a warm, but comfortable, Summer evening, the stars were shining above, and beautiful music filled the air. They danced, and drank champagne, and pretended they were the only two people alive, or undead in Spike’s case. Some of the others at the concert pointed and stared, at the over dressed couple, dancing alone under a tree, but Spike and Willow didn’t care, for them everything was magical.
After the concert they took a drive by the beach, where Spike had a boat waiting to take them out onto the water. Once they were out from shore a ways, they were able to see the whole harbor, with all its lights, and Willow couldn’t help but think that her night couldn’t get any better. Then, seemingly from nowhere, Spike produced another gift.
“Spike, I can’t, you’ve given me too much already,” she protested.
“This is just the beginning luv. Now open it.” Willow did as she was told and found two beautiful old spell books.
“I’ve never had any of my own before, I always had to sneak spells out of Giles’s books, thank you,” she said as tears sprung up in her eyes again.
“One day you’re going to be very powerful pet, and when that day comes, I want to be there to share it with you. This is just the first step, the books I mean. It will help you to study them, but I want to do more, give you more.” Spike summoned all his courage to finish what he wanted to say, “I want you to be my mate Willow, not just my childe or companion, I want you to be with me, forever. Willow, will you join with me?”