Chapter 19: To Break and To Burn

Giles and Ms. Calendar shared a casual bout of laughter while absently leafing through some old volumes while Xander, Oz and Willow tried hard to stay conscious amidst all the rigorous textual perusing. Xander was about to fail miserably as his head was two seconds from falling to the table with a resounding thud, but a loud slamming of the library doors roused him awake. Everyone looked up in surprise as Buffy stormed into the room with a foreign stone expression on her face.

"Hey Buff, you're back early. All anxious to hop in on all the research-y rowdiness? It's the spectacular kind of fun that isn't," Xander yawned.

Giles furrowed his eyebrows with perplexity. "Buffy . . . why, we certainly weren't expecting you back so soon, have you found Drusilla already?"

"What's the clause?" Buffy interrupted him, unsettling hardness seeping into her voice.

Giles just stared at her, her abruptness alarming him. He glanced to see if Spike was trailing behind her. "Where's Spike?" he asked softly.

Buffy's eyes betrayed a hint of something broken, but her outward demeanor refused to express the same. "What's the clause?" she persisted, her voice remaining unrelentingly cold.

There was something not right about this, Giles could feel it. And it had to do with Spike. His son. Buffy was not telling him something, and the guarded, warrior-like acerbity she was displaying made him suddenly feel sick inside. So he stood up with the same rigidity and stared back at her. "Where's my son, Buffy?" he asked her carefully.

Her eyes were shining and looked like they were about to brim over with tears, but nothing about her moved. She just stared and stared at Giles like she was seeing through him, past his figure into vacuous space. "He's at the hospital."

Alarm gripped Giles like a tidal wave and felt like it had the power to knock him over, but the only action it incited was a whipping off of the glasses. He pinched the area between his eyes and said quietly, "Again?"

"He's not hurt."

"Not hurt? So the prophecy didn't happen?" asked Willow, sitting up.

Buffy tightened visibly as if the innocent words had struck a deep painful chord. "It did. It happened already. I was too . . . it's too late."

Giles looked at Buffy sharply. "What? Then how is it that Spike wasn't hurt?"

"He isn't," she repeated.

"Then what is he doing at the bloody hospital?!"

"He's there because . . . he rode in on the ambulance when they brought Munitz in."

Wide-eyes from everyone in the room. "Munitz? Why, what's happened to Munitz?"

Buffy paused and a fluttering choke got stuck in her throat as she whispered it. "He's dead."

"Oh my god," where the respective responses from Willow and Ms. Calendar. Giles seemed deadened with shock.

"How?"

Buffy finally looked at him fully, tears now evident. "Angel. Or . . . the us version of him, apparently."

"You mean----"

"Angel's lost his soul?" Willow finished.

Buffy looked down at her hands and tried to brush off the wave of panic of fear and desperation and pain as she stood in front of her friends. "That's about the long and short of it," she murmured, trying hard to feign calmness.

"Wait . . . w-what's happened to Drusilla? Were you able to find her?"

Buffy sighed. "It's not a matter of whether we found her. It's . . . it's how we found her."

"You don't mean Angel . . . you know . . . too?" Willow let pregnant pauses and awkward hand motions convey what she wasn't able to say.

"No. She wasn't dead."

"Then what, Buffy?" Giles exploded impatiently. "Really, you must tell us exactly what happened."

"She's . . . s-she's . . ." Buffy was loosing her cool all could see it. " . . . Angel changed her." The name of her previously beloved felt like a barb in her throat.

"Dear god," Giles breathed, sinking into a chair heavily.

"Which is why I have to know more about this clause, Giles, I have to know what happened to Angel that made him this way." Buffy regained a little more strength when she was masked with initiative.

Giles was unable to respond as he cradled his head in his hand with disbelief, but Ms. Calendar got up carefully and handed Buffy a piece of paper.

"I translated the curse," she replied softly. Buffy picked the piece of paper up with a shaking hand. Ms. Calendar's scrawled handwriting was messy due to lack of use since she favored typing more. But amidst the sloppy and unintelligible writing, Buffy could clearly make out one phrase, which was underlined boldly. "One true moment of happiness" it read, and her heart was immediately wrenched at the sight of it. Her worst fears realized. She had an inkling of understanding before, nominal enough to still maintain some denial, but now . . .

"It's a little bit vague," Ms. Calendar admitted when she saw Buffy look up from the translation with a blank, aghast expression on her face. "The Czech was in a convoluted dialect that was hard to recognize, but that's about the gist of what I could make out. I don't exactly know what they mean by "one true moment of happiness", that could mean lots of things, but----"

It was only one thing to Buffy and she was aware of how much she was involved in bringing it about. So she turned, as abruptly as she had come in, and started to make her way out of the library, mumbling incomprehensibly under her breath.

"Buffy, wait!" Giles ordered. Grabbing her arm, he turned her so that she faced him. "Buffy, you have to tell us what's going on. Tell us all you can. Where was Angel, what did he say to you, what did Drusilla----"

"I can't," she whispered hoarsely in a broken voice, shaking her head tearfully in a daze. "I-I just can't . . . I c-can't deal with this, I c-can't . . ." Moments before she erupted fully into tears, she turned back and ran out of the library before anyone could call out her name in protest. She stumbled blindly out the school's doors and ran into the cloaked night, making her legs surge her into a stride that would not be broken until her lungs finally gave out, either from the exertion of running or the mad sobs that racked her whole body.

Angel had chosen the mansion on Crawford Street the night before, when he had first changed Drusilla. He knew that his own apartment was no longer a place he could stay----but it wasn't because he was afraid that slip of a slayer that was so enamoured with him would track him there and stake him. It was obvious by now that he could take her. He could do more than that, he would destroy her and break her by the time he was done. But doing that required time to think and to plan, and he couldn't very well do this with that lovesick schoolgirl always coming round to his apartment. Besides, the old crumbling mansion was more spacious, more his style. It was overrun with old foliage and dark enough to appeal to his gothic nature. It would be perfect for him and his new companion.

He was tickled and infatuated with Dru immediately. She was everything Buffy wasn't----enigmatic, adorably dependent, and child-like. She made a fella feel needed. That was refreshing. With Buffy, he had been a soppy, broody do-gooder who had been so ridden with humanity that he felt grateful to just help out her and her sad, drippy friends. Not anymore. He would make that bitch pay for ever degrading him that way and he would do it all with Drusilla on his arm.

Drusilla spun around the main room of the mansion gleefully. "Oh Daddy, I adore it!" she cried, twirling faster and faster, her feet crunching the dead leaves scattered about the floor.

"I knew you would, baby, I'll always know what you want."

Drusilla stopped and smiled lasciviously at him. "I want something right now," she purred, her eyes twinkling precociously.

Angel approached her in a seductive stride. "What is it you want, princess? You ask, and it's yours . . ."

Drusilla giggled liltingly and low. Leaning into him, she brought her face near his ear and danced her fingers about his neck. "I want . . . food."

"Is that all? That can be easily arranged. I can get you anything your little unbeating heart desires, sweetness. I could get you pretty dresses, pretty girls in pretty dresses, anything you'd ever want." He snaked an arm around her waist in a way that made her squeal. Backing her up into the fireplace, the two brushed by a piece of paper that lay on the floor. Suddenly, as if it called to her, Drusilla reached down and picked it up, inspecting it. It was the paper from only two days ago, and the headline read: "Mysterious Artifact Found Near Sunnydale, Museum Authorities Researching It". A black-and-white-photo displayed something that looked like a massive, ungainly block with some sort of ancient writing on it.

"Oh . . ." Drusilla breathed with delight. "You can get me that . . ."

Angel peered at the photo with a frown. "That? A hunk of stone? What would you want with that?"

"It calls to me, Daddy. It fills me head with all sorts of glimmering voices. It pulls me close and whispers to me all sorts of delicious nothings . . ."

This was one thing he had to get used to. Her incessant ramblings. Half the time, he couldn't figure out what the hell she was talking about, but sometimes he could hear something magical and forewarned in the words. He knew a few psychics . . . well ok, he had eaten a few psychics, and they seem to prattle on in the same way. Maybe he lucked out and chose a clairvoyant for a fledging.

"What kind of things does it say?" Angel whispered, his lips lingering along the outer rim of her ear.

Drusillia chuckled once more. "It says that Ms. Edith will have a party and everyone's invited. And they'll dance and dance and dance, even if they don't want to. The King of Cups will see to it that they put on a show so grand that we'll all shield our eyes from the burning. And they'll burn and burn and burn."

This sounded interesting. "Who'll burn?"

"Them. The ones with their games and their larks and their laughs and their light. Infesting the world with good, muddling it up with their righteousness. But they'll be gone. Poof----like ashes of nothing, they'll go asunder. " She blew out and flickered her fingers about to signify floating ashes scattering.

Angel smiled widely. This just got better and better. He couldn't believe his luck. "And the rock told you all this?"

Drusilla nodded, tracing patterns on his chest. "Will you get it for me, Daddy?"

Angel shrugged with a grin. "Hey . . . whatever my girl wants, my girl gets."

AN: I knew I had to write another chapter or else you'd all fear whether I had fallen off the face of the earth. Wanted to make this chapter longer as usual, but I'm trying to wean off the habit of rambling. Lucky for you guys, this means an update will be coming your way pretty soon since I had to divide this chapter into two parts. Thanks to those who are still reading!