Chapter 17: Nightmares Realized

" . . . And that was the end of my dream," Buffy finished, shrugging uneasily when she was rewarded with looks of apprehension from her audience. Silence pervaded over the library as the Scoobies and Watcher struggled for a proper response to what Buffy had just told them.

Xander cleared his throat first, speaking with inappropriate alacrity. "Well, I think I speak for all Buffster, when I say . . . what the Sam Hill did you eat last night before going to bed? Because I'll go out of my way to avoid such nightmare-inducing indigestion."

Willow tugged on a copper lock of hair anxiously. "So you think it's a portent? A d-dream of the prophetic kind?"

Buffy continued to shrug ambivalently, but the hint of trepidation in her expression seemed to indicate that she did. "I don't know," she lied weakly. "The dream was really . . . vivid. Not like my usual dreams . . . t-they were more like the dreams I had about the Master . . . of course, there is no way to be sure," she countered herself nervously, sneaking a glance at Giles, who cupped his head in his hand, eyebrows furrowed. She was mostly fearful about these dreams for his sake. With his son guest starring in her dream as the role of the slain, Buffy didn't know how much fear Giles would invest in it. The last thing she wanted to do was to cause him more worry.

As if waking from a trance, Giles blinked twice and whipped off his glasses to grasp them irrelevantly in one hand. "Yes," he murmured, still thoughtful. "There's no way to be sure if Buffy's dream was a premonition, but there's still cause for worry."

"'Cause' being Angel acting the wacky or Buffy gutting Spike like a fish? 'Cause I gotta tell you, I'm kind of worry-free in the case of both scenarios." Xander retorted. Giles shot him a particularly severe look that silenced him immediately.

"I don't get it, why would Angel act that way?" Willow asked, still frowning in confusion. "And why would you ever kill Spike? It doesn't make sense."

"That's the dream Wills, in all its baffling glory. Not meant to be of the real comprehensible. The Powers That Be just love to send me this kind of crazy prophetic stuff so I can kick myself over the head with all the decoding fun."

"Still, Willow is right, the dream isn't connected to anything that's going on currently," Giles observed quietly. "When you dreamt of the Master, Buffy, it was because we had been battling him for quite awhile. The augury you had was a forewarning, but it was also a result of events accumulating in the direction of your final confrontation. This dream is different in that whatever event this portent is connected to has not even occurred, nor is there any undercurrent to indicate its happening----"

"Well Buffy isn't such a big fan of Spike," Xander pointed out, rather indifferent towards the whole prospect of Spike being killed in general. "Maybe that has something to do with it."

"Not so much that I'd ever want to kill him!" Buffy objected hotly.

"These dreams aren't to be taken literally Xander, I doubt Buffy would purposely kill Spike."

"See?" Buffy nodded gratefully, but realizing that this statement inferred that she could kill Spike unintentionally, she exclaimed a loud, "Hey! I would never kill Spike at all, all our hostilities aside!"

"You did dream it, Buffy."

"I didn't mean to!"

"Did you have an argument with Spike, any altercation or animosity that could have carried into your dream as the form of repressed aggression?"

Buffy snorted. "Animosity? Spike? That kind of defines our relationship right there. Still, it's not enough so to make me fantasize about driving a stake through his heart."

Giles rubbed his chin pensively. "Well what about Angel? That seems puzzling enough."

Buffy straightened awkwardly. "What about Angel? Angel's gone . . . he's just . . . as gone as gone can be." She tried to keep an apathetic composure in case any one word gave her away completely.

Giles frowned briefly, not needing to be reminded of this, but continued. "Well his behavior in your dream as you described it seems totally out-of-character . . ." Giles paused when he realized that this inferred that Angel was generally congenial. And as the one who had forced Angel out of Sunnydale in the first place, Giles felt it his obligation to hate him and vilify him. For his son, at the very least.

"Yeah," Willow agreed. "He sounded very . . . un-Angel. Not Mr. Nice Broody Pants, more like . . . Mr. Evil Vampire Broody pants. Like he was suddenly of the non-souled variety of the undead."

"What was that?" Giles sat up in his chair, as if the Watcher mental light bulb had suddenly gone off.

Willow exchanged a mystified glance with Buffy. "Umm, Mr. Broody Pants?"

Giles had already swept out of his chair and was stalking the library aisles, scanning some texts. "No, no, about Angel not having his soul."

"Oh. Yeah, I was just saying----"

"Because that reminds me of something I read early on about Angelus in the watcher diaries."

"Angelus?" inquired Oz, who, being a relative newcomer to the Scoobies, still had a lot of catching up to do.

"The pre-soul, more unpleasant incarnation of Angel. He had a Gypsy curse placed on him long ago which supplied him with his soul---"

"And you're saying that you think now the soul isn't there anymore? It up and ran off on a whim?" posed Buffy, who tried to disguise her alarm at this idea. "You don't lose a soul." After some forethought she added, "At least not humans . . . which Angel isn't but . . . with the soul and all . . . you know what I mean!" She threw her hands up in frustration.

Giles had emerged from the shadowy shelves of the library armed with a voluminous book. "Well Angel could," he mumbled, peering down at the yellowed pages. "After all, he was given a soul, I'm sure it could just as easily be taken away."

"Sounds like rather shoddy curse-age on the part of the gypsies," voiced Xander. "Isn't anyone concerned with the quality of the product nowadays?"

"Here it is!" Giles held one finger up in the air with his eyes still on the book. "It says that the curse placed on Angelus ensured that his soul would remain intact and torment him for the rest of his existence, barring one possible circumstance in which he would be relieved of it." He looked up at the rest, and placed the book on the table with a thud. "A kind of 'clause' so to speak."

"So . . . that 'clause' means that if a certain something happens to Angel, his soul is taken away from him?"

"That's about the long and short of it."

"Well, what's the clause? What's the circumstance? What happens to Angel to make him lose his soul?"

Giles sighed, investigating the book more closely. "It doesn't say. The curse is right here in the book, and I'm guessing that it would provide the explanation. Unfortunately, it's in Czech, one of the few languages I'm not acquainted with. Perhaps I'll let Ms. Calendar take a look at it." He gazed back up at Buffy. Pausing a bit, he finally asked, "Buffy, was there . . . was there something that perhaps you remember happening to Angel that could possibly have triggered this?"

Buffy's eyes widened. "W-why . . . h-how would I know?" she exclaimed defensively. "I haven't seen Angel in three weeks." Funny how true that nearly was, for it seemed years had passed since last night.

Giles cocked his head, getting the impression that there was something Buffy was not saying. "I only ask because you were the one who dreamt of him. Maybe some encounter---"

"Look, how many times do I have to say 'I don't know'?" Buffy exploded. "Because I don't! I can't help what I dream, I don't know why I dream it, and I don't know what it means! Which is why I come to you, watcher-guy, oh-bookish-Brit-with-all-the answers! You read the books! I slay the demons! You explain the confusing stuff and I go out and defeat it! And then I get a cookie! That's the system!" Buffy was suddenly and mysteriously overwrought, prompting Xander, Willow, Oz and Giles to exchange worried looks.

Suddenly Spike stormed in, waving black duster in tow, halting breathlessly. "Well, here I am. I'm not one for the researching crap though, I just want to find Drusilla and want to find her now."

Giles approached his son in confusion. "Drusilla?"

Spike glared at Buffy in hostile surprise. "You haven't even told them? What was the point of coming down here then?"

"I was getting to it!" Buffy snapped irately. Out of all the problems she currently faced, Spike was the one most annoying, ergo, the one she wanted to avoid the most.

"What about Drusilla?" Giles persisted. "What's happened?"

Spike squinted at his father as the ravages of age had attacked Giles and left him irrevocably clueless. Sighing deeply, and obviously not in the mood to divulge into any heavy exposition, he barreled through explanations. "Drusilla's missing. Want to find her. Can't find her. Need help finding her."

Xander sat back in his chair and nodded towards Buffy, Oz and Willow. "He gets his brevity from his father," he remarked loudly.

"You mean to tell me . . ." Giles pinched the area between his eyes tiredly and squeezed his eyes shut tightly. "Drusilla's missing?"

"By jove, I think he's got it!" Spike exclaimed in a high Mary Poppin-ish accent before darkening again. "That's what I said, Rupert."

"Since when has she been missing?"

"Since last night. Didn't come home at all."

"And you've searched all you could for her?"

"Me and Munitz, all morning. Munitz is still out looking for her. This is all your fault y'know!"

Giles straightened self-righteously. "Me? Why is this bloody my fault?"

"You didn't even give the girl proper directions home! Too busy snogging that prissy li'l trollop schoolteacher to even offer Dru a ride!"

Giles set his teeth on edge. "Excuse me my dear boy, but Drusilla is not my responsibility. I'm not your girlfriend's caretaker."

"No that's right, 'cause you're too busy larfing it up with this bunch! Face it, you had your mind made up to ignore Munitz and Dru while they were here, just the same as me. You don't care shit about me and my friends, you'd rather waste your time with these kids and that slut you call a girlfriend----"

"Don't you dare address Jenny like that---" shouted Giles furiously as he lunged towards his son, presumably to smack the adolescent, sanctimonious rebellion off his face. Buffy jumped up and restrained Giles solidly while Spike maintained a scowl towards his father.

"Look," Buffy sighed, still trying to keep a seething Giles from committing the murder of his own son. "Arguing is the last thing we need right now. "Why don't we all cool off and focus on the task at hand. I'll go with Spike and we'll do some sweeps of the town, see if we can't find Drusilla. Willow, Oz, you pull up some databases and see if you can find any missing persons reports that fit Drusilla's profile. Xander, you search the Bronze, talk to anyone there who might have seen Drusilla leave last night. Giles . . ." She turned to her watcher and gave him a commanding nod. "You research that . . . thing we were talking about." Giles hesitated, but nodded wearily as Buffy dragged Spike out of the library.

"I bloody hate you," Spike muttered wrathfully under his breath as he swaggered next to Buffy through the moonlit park. She heard him, but continued walking in a confident stride, only acknowledging the comment with a slight shift of the head.

"Color me crushed," Buffy replied sarcastically, still a few steps in front of him.

"I'm serious. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be in this bloody mess."

Buffy stopped and turned, lilting her head, her eyes cold. "Got sick of laying the guilt on Giles, so you randomly turn it on me, do you?"

"Maybe. Whenever something goes wrong, the odds are, you're behind it."

"A man of sound reason you are."

Spike continued to stalk through the park hatefully. "If it wasn't for your bloody birthday party, I wouldn't have gotten so festive and drunk and Dru wouldn't be wandering alone out by herself----"

"Wait . . ." Buffy held one hand up in incredulity. "You're actually blaming me? You actually think it's my fault because, what . . . it was my birthday? What next, you gonna cut into my mother for giving birth to me, hence creating the day of celebration you could use as an excuse to get wasted? Were all the other excuses gone? Sick of using the one commemorating the days that end in 'y'?"

"God, you think you know it all, don't you?" Spike stopped and glared at her, anger overcoming and hardening his features completely. "Pretentious bint, thinks she's got all the answers, that she can do no wrong----"

"It isn't my fault you were too inebriated to baby-sit your loopy girlfriend!"

She had crossed a line, and the dangerous flicker in Spike's eye made that apparent. "Don't call her that," he snarled.

"What?" she challenged defiantly. "Don't call her what? Clingy? Possessive? Codependently deranged? Face it Spike, that girl is more a doll to you than a partner. And you're more like her lapdog than her boyfriend----"

"Shut your gob!!" Spike advanced near her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his anger steam off him, warming her body, already set in her fighter stance. He jutted his face a few inches from her, his hard cheekbones on edge and his fiery azure eyes flaming precariously.

She just shoved her face closer, unaware of how fast-paced her breathing had suddenly become, as if she was preparing to take on a legion of vampires in the glorious rush of battle. Her hazel eyes pierced vehemently into his. "Or . . . what?" she whispered huskily. "What are you gonna do Spike? Take on a Slayer? Just try me, and I'll introduce you to a whole new world of ass-kicking you weren't acquainted with."

Spike opened his mouth to respond, but to her surprise, faltered and just continued to stare at her, the blues of his eyes surveying her intently. Something wasn't right here. She glared back at him, but began to feel prickly. Like she was suddenly aware of his close proximity to her, and how it suddenly felt . . . not as rage-inducing and abrasive as she thought it would be . . . although there was more than enough friction and anger to spare . . . but no, it felt . . . it felt . . .

"Uh-oh, looks like trouble in paradise . . ." A facetious voice cut into Buffy's bewildered state and brought her back to life, forcing her to break out of the gaze she and Spike held. Looking to her left for the source of the voice, her heart immediately dropped to her stomach the moment she caught view of the speaker. Spike held the similar response.

Angel stood, grinning languidly. His arm was hanging off Drusilla, who had an unusually impish smile on her face. "Look baby," Angel purred, grazing his lips along the rim of Drusilla's ear and along the ivory nape of her neck. "It's our significant others."

Spike's face was ashen, his face painted with shock. "Drusilla?" he whispered in a haze. "Drusilla, luv, what are you----"

Drusilla just continued to smile cattily, sweeping one hand along her neck to clear her hair away slowly. And then Spike and Buffy's world stopped when they caught sight of the little two puncture marks on her neck, already scabbing over.

"Daddy's just been teaching me some new tricks," she lilted in a voice floating above the illuminated clouds of night. Sensuously sliding one hand across Angel's chest, she cocked her head and licked the edge of her teeth, two new fangs shining in the dusk. "Wanna play?"

AN: One of my reviewers told me I was becoming "quite the Queen of Cliffhangers". Lol, I suppose that's true. I tried not to leave this at this particular spot, but again I must apologize, AP Calculus calls (all math teachers should be assassinated . . . not to offend any math-lovers out there) and I had to end it there. With the way I'm going, this story will NEVER get done . . . and I have three more parts planned! Argh! Well I hope I can update soon! And that goes for my other fics as well! *Crosses her fingers*