Mortal Allies Series
Episode 5
War and Roses
By: Passion4Spike
Chapter 6: Demonic Testosterone
Chapter Notes:
Thanks so much for everyone who is reading! You are so appreciated.
Extra sloppy puppy kisses to everyone whose left lovely comments, they really are cheezeburgers for my muse.
All my gratitude to MissLuci and All4Spike for their beta skills. All mistakes are mine because I just keep fiddling.
Thirty minutes after the pizzas had arrived there was nothing left, not even the 'bones', which the furry Spike eagerly devoured with deadly crunches of his jaws. The non-furry Spike even managed to snag a slice after his 'chat' with Giles before the others had devoured it all. Faith had returned, still sulky but with less dog hair on her clothes. She remained apart from the others, choosing to lounge on the stairs rather than sit at the table. Xander mostly managed to keep his judgy comments to himself upon Spike's return, though it had taken a couple of painful kicks from Willow under the table as reminders when his mouth started running away with him.
Once the food was gone, Lydia stood up. "If we might now get on with the purpose of this gathering," she said to the group. "Since there is no proper planning done of your patrols, perhaps I should simply observe your normal routine so that I may make informed recommendations. Do you generally patrol together?" she asked, looking between Buffy and Faith.
Buffy shrugged. "We have, sometimes, when she's around. Mostly I go with Spike... uh, the fuzzy one."
"I'm more of a DIY kinda girl," Faith put in.
"I see," Lydia continued. "Well, perhaps for tonight you could combine your efforts so that I may observe you both, then I can join you individually on subsequent evenings."
Buffy shot Faith a glance, then looked back at the Brit. "Fine with me," she agreed.
Faith shrugged carelessly. "I'm five-by-five."
"Splendid," the liaison chirped. "And what of the Sku-bees? What is your role?"
"We're mostly support of the moral variety," Oz explained.
"Not that we don't know how to make with the stake wielding," Xander added, cutting his eyes at Spike, who had once again taken the seat next to him. "There has been dustiness in my general vicinity before."
Spike snorted and rolled his eyes. "What happened, the Slayer shove a fledge at ya, and it just happened to dust on the stake you had in your great sweaty mitt at the time?"
"It wasn't Buffy—" Xander began, his eyes wide with shock before catching himself. "How did you—?"
Spike smirked. "Just don't see you as the hero-type, whelp."
Xander scowled at him. "I can be hero-guy! There's been plenty of totally intentional dustiness at the end of my pointy stick," he defended. "Tell him, Willow!"
"It's true," she began, but the library doors slamming open interrupted her. Everyone's eyes turned toward the sound, which even drew Giles out from his office, where he'd taken refuge from the children's banter.
"Oh, my word," Lydia gasped as Willow 'eeped' in surprise.
"Speaking of the need of staking," Xander muttered while Spike groaned, "Bloody hell."
Buffy, Cujo, and Faith all sprang to their feet, but it was Buffy who spoke. "Angel... what... what happened?" she stammered, moving toward the vampire warily, her dog right at her side.
Angel looked like he'd been to hell and back—actually, he looked worse than when he'd been to hell and back. His hair was a mat of blood and dirt, his face had been burned and bruised, his eyes blackened, his lips raw and swollen. His clothes, which Buffy recognized as one of his usual black, silken, button-down shirts and dark slacks, were ripped and muddied. They were stuck to his body in places by what she could only assume was blood based on the cuts and abrasions she could see through the ragged holes.
"This is Angel?" Lydia asked, aghast.
"The one and only," Xander confirmed, eying the vampire warily.
"He looks quite feral. What's wrong with him? Has he lost his soul?" Lydia breathed as she began rummaging in her bag for her cross.
"Be a bloody improvement," Spike muttered under his breath as he stood up as well, but stayed back, watching the scene, keeping his word to watch the Slayer's back. "Buffy might let me stake him then."
"Buffy... Buffy I got it... I found it," Angel spluttered, barely coherent, as he stumbled toward her, holding out a large, leather-bound book that looked nearly as filthy as he was. "I found what's been hurting you."
"You found... what?" the Slayer asked, confusion evident in her tone as she caught him before he fell.
"Poisons. You've been poisoned!" the vampire insisted, shaking the heavy book in his hands. "I got this... got it from the gypsies—it's all here! Someone... someone poisoned you and the dog," he explained. He lurched over toward the checkout counter, the closest flat surface, pulling Buffy with him.
Angel slammed the book down as if he didn't have the strength to hold it another moment. He fumbled with the cover, his fingers swollen and possibly broken, as Buffy kept him upright. Finally, flipping it open, he began turning pages as rapidly as he could, searching for the relevant entry. "It's got to be Spike!" he continued, as he rifled through the pages. "That's the only thing that makes sense! He poisoned you so he could ride back into town and be the big hero."
"What?" Buffy asked again, looking at the book, which was in some language she didn't speak—in other words, not English.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Spike groaned. "You're a bit slow on the uptake, gramps. Wasn't me that poisoned the Slayer, was the bloody Watcher."
Angel didn't seem to hear him as he found the page, wincing as he jabbed a grubby finger at it. "Here! See? Wolfsbane, horse-chestnut, hemlock, and nightshade. They've been used for centuries to poison Guardians of the Twilight. It says here they cause 'lethargy' and 'general malaise'. Spike would know that! He was there—at the gypsy camp."
"What camp?" Buffy asked, her confusion building.
Angel sighed in exasperation, as if it should be obvious to her. "The one in Romania! The ones that cursed me. They would've had these books—they had one of the dogs," he related frantically. "It can't be anyone else! Darla's dust... Dru's... she's... she couldn't. It had to be Spike! Don't you see?!"
"Angel," Buffy said gently as everyone began gathering around the pair in a wide circle. "It wasn't Spike. It was Giles."
"No, Buffy, you don't understand! I'm telling you! It was Spike! He's trying to get in good with you, trying to show me up! He's always been jealous! Always wanted what I had. It's him!" Angel insisted desperately. His hands were shaking, and he was barely able to stay upright, only leaning on the counter and on Buffy kept him from collapsing.
"P-lease!" Spike spat. "Don't have t' try all that hard to show you up," he insisted, sauntering closer to the pair, moving inside the circle of onlookers. "All I've gotta do is not be an enormous git."
"Angel, where did you get this? What happened to you? Where've you been?" Buffy asked, ignoring Spike as Angel seemed to be.
Angel waved a dismissive hand. "It doesn't matter. You have to listen to me! Spike's the one behind all this! You can't trust him! I'm telling you, it's Spike!" he continued to insist feverishly.
Buffy sighed and rolled her eyes. "No, Angel, listen to me. It wasn't Spike, it was Giles. It was a... a thing, a test... the Council."
Angel shook his head agitatedly, turning then to entreat the others in the room. "Willow... you know—you believe me."
Willow gave Angel a wary look, taking a small step back. "It wasn't Spike," she told him. "He helped Buffy. It was the Council."
Angel became even more hysterical with her denial. Desperate, he turned to Xander. "You know—you know what Spike is! You know he's behind this! He's after Buffy... he'll... he'll kill her if we don't stop it."
Xander shook his head, looking at Angel with a mixture of disdain and pity. "While I'm all for the painful and violent removal of all undead dudes from Buffy's love life, it wasn't Spike. Not this time."
Angel's eyes flashed with gold, his temper on the verge of exploding, though it became clear that he hadn't fully understood or processed Xander's words as he turned to face Giles, clearly intent on making the same plea.
Before he could continue, Buffy stepped between the bedraggled vampire and her former Watcher. "Angel. Angel, please, look at me," she insisted, grabbing his arm, and making him focus his wild-eyed gaze on her. "It wasn't Spike," she said slowly and clearly. "Spike's not here to hurt me. You're right about the poisoning, but it was the Council."
"NO!" Angel exploded, seeming to see Spike for the first time as the blond vamp hovered just behind Buffy. "SPIKE'S BEHIND THIS!" Angel's rage suddenly animated his injured and exhausted body, his demon roaring to the surface. The abruptly furious and revived vampire caught Buffy by surprise, so she was unprepared when he shoved her to the side before he dove for the blond behind her.
Angel hit Spike with his full weight and the two vamps tumbled to the ground, making the circle of people around them all skitter back in unison. Ferocious growls rent the air as they snarled and snapped at each other, grappling on the linoleum like two feral lions fighting for control of the pride.
"ANGEL! SPIKE!" Buffy screamed as she scrambled back to her feet, trying to get them to stop, but her voice was drowned out by the growls and curses of the demons.
"WOOF!" the dog added angrily, moving closer to the pair, but it had no effect either.
"Damn it!" Buffy cursed, trying to find an opening to grab one or the other of them, but they were moving too fast, changing positions so quickly, she was afraid she'd get her fingers bitten off if she stuck a hand in.
"The old boot to the gut trick?" Faith suggested, tucking her stake away as she appeared next to Buffy. "Kick 'em apart—I'll take one and you take one?"
Buffy nodded her agreement and both Slayers tensed, waiting for a clear shot at one or the other of the raging vampires. It didn't take long. The next time Angel rolled to the top, Spike slammed an elbow into his grandsire's temple, temporarily stunning him and giving a small separation between the two demons. Buffy and Faith both kicked in unison, their boots connecting with Angel's ribs and stomach with a sickening thud and crunch of bone. The dark vampire flew off Spike, tumbling to a stop near the library doors, his head cracking into the card catalog along the way.
Spike kipped up to his feet the next moment, his entire demonic rage focused on the vampire who was now several feet away. Buffy grabbed his arm, jerking him back, keeping him from advancing on his downed grandsire, admonishing him to, "STOP!"
Faith swept past them and reached Angel before he'd gotten back up. She grabbed his arm and hauled him, still on his knees, out the double doors.
"Get him back to Crawford Street!" Buffy called after her.
"On it!" Faith yelled back as the doors settled closed behind them.
"Let go, Slayer!" Spike insisted, trying to pull free of her grip and follow.
"No! Stop. That's enough," Buffy retorted, yanking him back again before swinging him around and sending him stumbling away towards the research table.
"Bloody hell! I was winning!" Spike complained, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth with a finger and sucking it between his lips.
"I don't care," Buffy replied, staying between him and the doors, her arms crossed belligerently over her chest. "That was enough."
"He started it!" Spike reminded her petulantly, his human face sliding back into place with a crunching of bone and cartilage.
"And, if this was third grade that would count for something."
"He's a sodding git! Blaming me for the Watcher's bad deeds," he continued to protest, finding more blood to wipe away.
"True, but that was still enough of the demonic testosterone display."
Spike rolled his eyes and dropped back down into his seat. "Bloody unfair t' stop a fight that I'm winning," he grumbled.
Buffy pursed her lips together to keep from smiling. "Life is one big bowl of unfair cherries," she advised, ruffling his hair, before turning around to see what the others were doing. Oz and Xander were picking up some books that had gotten knocked down in the brawl, while Giles, Lydia, and Willow were looking at the book Angel had brought in.
Buffy walked over to the counter and the book. "So, what's the what with the non-English?" she asked.
Giles cleared his throat. "From what Angel said, I would assume it to be some dialect of Romani... though quite old. I'm afraid I'm not versed in the language, and there are many variations of it."
"Where the heck did he get it?" Willow wondered.
"Knowing the wanker, he pilfered it from some gypsies," Spike provided from his slouched position at the table. "From the look and smell o' him, he got caught."
"We don't say 'gypsy' anymore," Willow chastised. "It's the Romani people, or the Roma."
"Namby-pamby Millennials," Spike muttered under his breath, but everyone ignored him.
"Did they, the Romani..." Lydia cleared her throat nervously and began again. "Was that Angelus?" she wondered, still clutching the cross in her hand.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Angelus? Not so much with the crazy homeless guy look, more with the murderous Marquis de Sade vibes."
"S-so... that was Angel with a soul?" the British woman gasped.
"Yup," Willow confirmed. "You can tell on account of the fact that we're all still alive."
"So, Angel can read Romani, I guess," Buffy surmised, changing the subject before Liana—that was her name, right?—could question Angel's souled status further. She ran her hand over the stain Angel had left where he'd jabbed his dirty, bloody finger onto the page.
Lydia took the hint and looked at the book more closely. "I am somewhat familiar with the languages of the Roma people. If I were to hazard an educated guess, based primarily on what appears to be the subject matter, this is likely a sub-dialect spoken primarily in the Southern Carpathians, the area encompassing Transylvania," she suggested. "But it is certainly quite old, verging on archaic."
"Old like the spell to curse Angel was old?" Buffy wondered. "Old like 'no one speaks this actual language anymore' old?"
Lydia shook her head. "It is difficult to say without further research."
Spike had gotten up and joined them. "What're you thinking, luv?" he asked Buffy, catching the consternation furrowing her brow.
The Slayer snapped her gaze up, broken from her thoughts. "Oh... uh, it's probably nothing," she dismissed.
"Your words say one thing, your racing pulse says otherwise," Spike challenged.
"Stupid vampire hearing," Buffy muttered scowling at him.
Spike just raised his brows, widening his eyes, waiting for her to explain.
Buffy rolled her eyes, looking down at the book again. "I was just thinking, if Angel can read old-timey gyp—uh, Romani language... and he knew where to go to find this book, then..."
Giles finished her thought when she faltered, "Then he might've found other books in the past. Perhaps even the transliteration annals for the ritual of the undead. He might've known of the provisions of the curse and how to break it."
Buffy twisted her mouth up as if she'd swallowed a maggot-filled lemon. "Yeah," she agreed dourly.
-X-
"Stop... wait... Buffy, please listen..." Angel begged, trying to get free of the strong hand gripping his arm and dragging him along the smooth, waxed floor of the high school.
"Not Buffy!" Faith retorted angrily, fetching him up against a bank of lockers not far from the front doors of the school and releasing him. "Name's Faith. We've met."
Angel, still on the floor, rolled over to sit on his ass and leaned back against the cool metal as he squinted up at the Slayer who'd been dragging him. "Oh, right, sorry," he mumbled, letting his exhausted eyes fall closed.
Faith rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. "What happened to you, dude?"
Angel blinked down at himself, shaking his head. "Had to find out what was hurting Buffy."
"Yeah, I got that part, but what happened?"
The vampire sighed heavily. "Knew it all started with the dog. The dog was bred by the gypsies—they've had them for centuries. Knew there was a community of them living south of L.A. Figured..." He shook his head. "Didn't count on them having such long memories," he admitted.
"They knew who you were?" Faith guessed, moving over next to him, and sliding down the lockers to sit at his right side.
"Not right off, but as soon as they took me to the voivode—the elder—the one who would know about the fucking dogs... well, he knew me right away."
"Guessing that didn't go well," Faith surmised.
Angel just turned his bruised and battered face to her, his expression incredulous behind the swelling.
Faith rolled her eyes. "Why didn't they just dust you?"
Angel shook his head, looking away again. "They don't want me dust; they want me in pain."
"Yeah, huh? Well, looks like wishes do sometimes come true, Dorothy."
Angel sighed and looked back down the hall where he knew Buffy was. "Spike really didn't poison her?"
"Nope. It was Giles. Freaky, right?" Faith replied.
"When... how did she find out?" Angel wondered.
"From what the super-friends said, it was right after the crazy vamp attacked them in the library and sent the little red nerd one to the hospital," Faith related.
Angel swiveled his head to look at the dark Slayer again, his eyes turning hard as granite behind the bruises. "What?"
Faith's brows drew together briefly. "The crazy vamp—the one the Council brought for Buffy to fight—he escaped, came to the school, and attacked the whole Scooby gang. Willow ended up in the hospital. That's when Giles confessed."
"Little fucking brat," Angel spat, his expression stormy with anger.
"Willow?" Faith wondered, confused.
"Buffy."
"Oh, well, yeah." She shrugged. "I would've used a different 'b' word, but... You just now figuring this out?"
Angel scowled at her, then looked away. "She knew... before I went down there, she knew and she didn't tell me. I did all this for nothing... went through this..." Angel looked down at his burned, bleeding, and bruised body, his mangled fingers, his mud-caked shoes, his ruined clothes. "All for nothing," he ground out through clenched teeth.
"That's B for ya," Faith agreed. "Little miss holier-than always knows best. Her and her new vampire boy-toy."
Angel's head shot up, his brown eyes like dark beads behind his swollen lids. "What are you talking about?"
"Her and Spike. Didn't you hear? They're a thing."
Angel began struggling up to his feet, slipping on the smooth floor and leaving swaths of grime on the lockers at his back. "What? What are you talking about?!" he demanded again, finally making it mostly upright with only a slight lean to his posture to indicate the cracked ribs he'd just sustained.
"Buffy and Spike. They're 'dating'," Faith related as she stood up also, putting air quotes around the word 'dating'.
The growl that fell from Angel's bloodied lips made the metal lockers hum up and down the hallway, rattling the combination locks that hung from them. He turned to face the direction they'd just come from. "I'll fucking kill him."
Faith caught his upper arm again, holding him in place. "I'm with ya on dusting his pasty ass, but Buffy's moved on, dude. Killing the flavor of the month ain't gonna get her back."
Angel tried to pull free from her grip, but he was too beat up and worn out to do more than jerk her arm forward a few inches. "Let me go!"
"Look, I get it," Faith repeated. "No one would love to see those two taken down a few notches more than me, but it's not happening. This is Buffy's world, we just live in it. We're just pawns in her little games. The sooner you figure that out, the less she'll be able to pull your strings."
Angel growled, but it sounded more wounded than angry, and stopped trying to get free of Faith's grip.
"C'mon, big guy, let's get outta here," Faith encouraged with a bob of her head and a gentle tug on his arm.
Angel sighed, casting one more look down the hallway before turning and starting for the exit. "I'm done being made a fool by Buffy. Let Spike kill her, let him kill all of them. What the hell do I care?" he spat morosely.
"That's the spirit!" Faith flashed him a grin. "I call dibs on dusting him when he's done."
"Only if I get him for a week first," Angel challenged. "They didn't even have chainsaws last time I gave Willie proper lessons in respect."
Faith shrugged as she pushed the exit doors open and they stepped out into the cool night air. "Sounds plan-worthy to me. Now I guess we just wait for the bloodshed, huh?"
Angel nodded. "Knowing Spike, it won't be long. Patience never was one of his gifts."
"I say we get a drink to celebrate. Whaddya say I buy you one?" Faith asked cheerily.
Angel pursed his cracked lips and nodded darkly. "Maybe more than one."
-X-
Chapter End Notes:
"Pizza bones" are referring to the crusts.
I'm falling behind a bit on replying to your comments, but I love them each and every one! I hope once I get my taxes done I'll have more time.
Will have another chapter for you on Thursday.
