Eventually, the sun set, permitting William to move about outside. They would be able to search for Drusilla now. Hopefully, they would find her and she would be safe. Not that Willow was particularly fond of Dru, but William was. Willow wanted William to be happy, and he thought that happiness was being with Drusilla, so... off to find her.
"So, can you do that little guide spell again? To show us which way she is?" William's voice was thoughtful.
"Of course. It only takes a few moments. I hope... I hope everything goes well for you and Dru. You'll have each other..." Willow couldn't quite stop the tear that slid down her cheek.
William reached over, brushing the tear away with his thumb. His expression was almost tender as he looked at her. "What's wrong, Red?"
"It's.... it's a bit silly actually. You love Dru, and you'll have her to be with. Back at home, my parents are never home, my almost parent, Rupert Giles has a girlfriend, my supposed to be best friend is to busy with her new boyfriend to have time for me. My boyfriend cheated on me and left town. I don't really have anyone to go back to, even if I do figure out how to get there. I guess I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself." Willow's voice cracked a bit with the effort not to cry.
William smiled at her, running his fingers through her short red hair. "Don't worry. If we can't figure out a way to send you home... Willow, you are pretty, and so sweet and intelligent that it's hard to believe you're real. Not to forget the part where you taste divine. If you can't get back home, I could turn you. Make you part of my family. We wouldn't abandon you, not ever. We might be a bit much to adjust to, and the blood drinking would be a change, but... I'd be happy to bring you into my family. I'd turn you in a heartbeat."
Willow managed a small smile, part of her remembering Spike's words from the dorm 'I'd bite you in a heartbeat.' William sounded so sincere. "It's probably sad that that's the best offer that I've had in a long time. And it's actually very tempting. But... maybe we should try to figure out this whole thing with Dru before discussing me joining your family?"
William smiled, looking oddly pleased. "Dru, yeah. We should find her first. I meant it though, you'd be welcome in the family. Not just for a little while, and certainly not as a minion. You'd make a splendid childe."
Willow was actually smiling as she spoke the short chant that accompanied focusing her thoughts on Dru for the locator spell. The wispy globe of green formed, a bit more golden this time, and slowly began to move down the street, not to fast to comfortably follow.
She found it oddly reassuring that William would want her as his childe. Granted, her hormones were all in favor of the idea, especially since the Watcher's journals that she hadn't been supposed to read had made it clear that Sires and their Childer almost always had a sexual aspect to their relationship. Sexual relationship... sex with William... yum. Shaking her head and blushing, Willow tried to stop thinking about William and sex. They were supposed to be finding Dru, not allowing her to indulge in lustful fantasies.
They began walking through the dark streets, following the light, hoping to find Drusilla before anything irreversible happened. Willow was only seeking Dru to make William happy. After that... she would try to find a way to go home, home where she had nobody to comfort her, nobody to ease her loneliness, to hold her when she cried. She was quiet as they walked, her thoughts dark and unhappy.
The globe led then deeper into the maze of streets, twisting and turning until Willow was entirely lost. Finally, it hovered in front of a door, the building looking rather like a once sturdy warehouse fallen into disrepair. The bricks were darkened by soot, and the trash that had collected around the walls had a particularly foul and rotten odor, partly chemicals, and partly something like rotting flesh. It gave Willow a bad feeling to be near the building, as if her instincts were telling her to run the other way. She actually felt her skin quivering, and it was really quite freaky. So that was what 'your skin crawling' really felt like…
"I smell blood. Human, some fairly recent, some older... there's a lot of it. And the scent of fear..."
William's voice startled Willow, making her jump and give this little squeak, a noise that would have sounded more appropriate from a mouse. "You smell... uh... right. Is there... is there blood from more than one person? Can you feel Dru?"
William's face had shifted, and his teeth were sharp, his eyes golden and feral as he spoke. "Multiple people... most of them are older. I think it's all from women. And I can feel Dru... she's close, very close, but... she's shutting the link, I can't get any more than her presence."
Studying the door carefully, Willow felt for magic. Reading for energies here reminded her of searching through the Sunnydale sewers, but it was important. There was a feeling of gathered power, built up, but not focused. It hadn't been really 'stored' so much as just dragged out and left. The power felt dark, tainted somehow. There was a crude ward around the building, something that would most likely do little more than alert the caster to their presence. "Well, I think someone inside it trying to play with magic. There's power, and a really rough ward over the building... when we go in, someone's going to know. Before you ask, yes, the spell says she's inside."
"Time to go to the rescue then." He grinned with unsettling glee, and kicked the door down. He stalked into the darkness, his eyes almost glowing. Willow followed, and her spell globe zipped ahead, weaving along in the building. She was certain that he was glad to have something that he could do.
It lead down a hallway, and into a room that reeked of blood and something else, a fouler stench that spoke of ruptured entrails. There was a body crumpled in the corner, her dark hair matted with congealing blood, her internal organs laid out around her in a pattern, lines drawn in the blood forming a shape around her, a crude circle. The feeling of almost gathered power hung thickest near the body.
Willow gagged on the combination. The scent of blood and entrails and death hung thick in the air. She could feel it coating her throat, the stench clinging to everything in the room, the gathered energy felt of stickyness and carried the almost echo of tortured screams, and Willow knew that the woman had been alive while the circle was drawn, alive while her parts were laid out around her. Her muscles quivered, and her knees felt as if they had turned to water. She could feel herself collapsing.
William caught her, looking a bit unsettled himself. "She's dead now. Nothing that can be done... and that's a circle around her, isn't it?"
"He did this to her... carved her open as she screamed, drew the circle as she watched, and then he laid out her insides, and al she could do was scream and bleed and die. He wanted to gather power... magic from her death."
The light was hovering across the room, by a set of stairs that led upwards. Willow and William, both unsettled by the woman's body, hurried towards the stairs, carefully following the floating globe up the stairs. As they approached the top, they began to notice little noises, small, almost rhythmic creaking noises. Willow's bad feeling intensified, and she had the sudden certainty that she didn't want to see what was on the other side of the door at the top of the stairs.
William kicked that door open, and the greenish glow of the locator globe revealed the room. Small glass jars lined a shelf, each one containing a small bit of someone, eyeballs, kidneys, other bits that Willow's mind refused to identify. The floor and walls had been splashed with blood, and the only other furnishing was a metal framed bed. On that bed, Drusilla was naked, firmly and quite willingly rocking on the naked man, clearly taking and giving sexual pleasure. He was also naked, and the image seared itself in Willow's brain, a horrible, awful image.
"Dru... oh god..."
The words from William were a barely shaped breath of pain. Simply from hearing them, Willow knew that his world was crumbling out from under him. He spun around, and with a growl, picked Willow up, flinging her over his shoulder, and he bolted from the room, not stopping until they were outside the building.
Scarlet tears were streaming down his face as he carefully put Willow back on the ground. "She... and him... how could she do that? I gave her everything..."
"I know you did. I don't know why she would do that... I wish... is there anything I can do to... try to help?" Willow wanted to comfort him, wanted to sooth his pain. She knew exactly how much that had hurt him, her own experience of seeing Oz entwined with Veruca burned in her mind.
He looked at her, his expression hardening into determination. "You're a witch. Can you burn the place down around them?"
Willow looked back at the building, and then glanced at William, his golden eyes rimmed with bloody tears, their tracks down his face like wounds. "Yes. Just... if this makes me fall over, catch me before I crack my head on the street."
She focused, and with her own power, focused a barrier around the building, like a bubble. She shaped it like the uninvite spell, trapping them inside the building. Then, she reached out with her power, touching the gathered energy of pain and death, sparking it as if setting a match to oiled rags. The backlash from her action, one deliberately done with intent to harm, leapt at her, pain stabbing through her body, bright spots dancing in front of her eyes before everything faded into a dark haze of pain.
William caught her, watching in stunned awe as the building practically exploded into green and yellow flames, the heat washing over him, the flames caught, as if in a giant, invisible egg. The fire didn't crackle, didn't roar as he'd expected, no, this one howled like a soul in torment.
It was the perfect expression of his pain, giving voice to it as he could not.
He only smiled when he felt the bond with Dru burn away to nothingness, her death-screams echoing inside his head.
end part 13.
Finally, as dawn was nearing, William looked away from the towering fury of green and gold fire. He still held Willow in his arms, in a pose that would look lover-like to an observer. She had slowly regained awareness, although it was questionable if she would be capable of walking on her own. She was also watching the flames, her expression a mixture of pain, awe and a hint of fear.
"We need to go away from this place. Away before the sun rises. Preferably somewhere to try and help with the pain. You don't look your best, Red, so I'm just going to carry you." His words were quiet, and oddly without emotion, as if all his emotion had been captured by the fire, taken from him leaving his heart filled with dust and ashes.
Willow's voice was slightly groggy, and slurred as if she had only just awakened. "There isn't medicine for broken hearts. Ripped out, thrown to the ground, and danced on, with slices of lemon thrown at the gaping empty hole... it hurts so bad."
"Not planning that sort of medicine, luv. I was actually planning more along the lines of numbing rather than anything else. Whiskey works pretty good for that. It won't fix everything, but it will numb things down a bit. I figure it wouldn't hurt, especially since we need to go somewhere for the day anyhow." His voice was low, holding vast measures of pain.
Willow simply sighed, possibly consent, possibly from pain, she wasn't certain anymore. She knew that it had been necessary to cleanse the building, to burn away the corruption and evil that had become imprinted into the walls and floor, held in the very air within the walls. She also knew that it had been bad to use her power to kill, to end the existences of two creatures, even if those two had been Dru and the Ripper. Did that make her a bad witch? She had put her pain at Oz's betrayal into the fire, her rage and hurt and suffering, had that been wrong as well? The fire had certainly not been natural.
The next thing she was clear on, she was sitting on a brown leather couch with William, a glass of alcohol in her hand. She had somehow lost her shoes, and her feet were curled under her, causing her to lean slightly towards William. She wasn't certain where they were, or how exactly she had gotten to this couch. Did it even matter now? She had used her power to kill, the one person that had shown any semblance of caring about her in this time had just seen his beloved screwing someone else and watched the building burn down around her. She was stuck in this time, and most likely, nobody in Sunnydale would even care. She raised the glass, and drank down the alcohol, which burned down her throat like fire.
"She was my everything... I devoted myself to her. Gave her anything she wanted... pretty dresses, flowers, pretty jewelry, pretty dresses with pretty girls in them... Why couldn't I have been enough? I mean, I can see why she went to Angelus... he's ... was her Sire. She thought he could do nothing less than wonderfully. But... wasn't I worth anything to her? Why did she do it? Why would she give herself to... to that sick and wretched excuse for a vampire?" William's voice was low, as if he didn't expect an answer. He was just giving voice to the pain inside of him.
"Must have been the same reason he went to her. She had something he wanted... needed. Something I couldn't give him, no matter how hard I tried... and I tried so hard. I would have given him anything, all he had to do was ask. I couldn't be enough for him, and he went of and got all... primal and had sex with her... that's all it could have been. Hot, primal sex, no caring, no tenderness... what if he never really wanted the tenderness? Maybe I was too human for him after all..." Willow's own words were not truly directed at William. She was remembering her own heart break.
"I killed nuns and schoolchildren for her... brought them to her so she could kill them herself. Found her dozens of those blasted dolls... dozens of little songbirds that she always let starve away into nothingness... Am I such a failure, even as a vampire?"
"I couldn't curse him. I wanted to... to curse him, both of them, misery for the rest of their wretched existences. I couldn't do it then, I still loved him even after seeing them all naked together. But then she attacked me... he killed her, you know. Right there... and then he didn't know me anymore, and almost killed me right after. He was gone the next day. I felt like he took a part of me with him, ripped it out and left me behind to bleed..."
"Then he was a fool, your Spike. Leaving someone like you, just for a wild tumble. You're lovely, smart, think well under pressure... damn powerful too. That building..." William paused, frowning as he tried to take a drink from his cup and found it empty. He poured it full again, topping Willow's off as well. "You're a wonderful person, Red. All gentle and powerful... like the tide. Not all brightly obvious like the sun, but irresistible as the tide, and with as many secrets inside of you."
"And Dru was obviously a mental basket case to leave you. I mean, yeah, let's leave Angelus out of the discussion, preferably way out... umm... right, Dru was an idiot. You would do anything for her... give her anything on a silver platter... pamper her, protect her... went to the hellmouth to help her get better after that angry mob... Only an idiot or someone insane would throw that away for a few nights with some inept would be sorcerer with a fetish for bottled body parts."
Willow took a drink from her glass, feeling the cool liquid slide down her throat. "Anyone can see, especially with those eyes, and your cheekbones... having you would be wonderful." She paused a moment, and then twisted slightly, her eyes growing wide as she looked at William. "You think I'm pretty?"
"Of course, luv. Bloody gorgeous, all green eyes like emeralds, and pale skin and hair like fire reflected on blood... and I bet you'd look right gorgeous as a vampire. I could do it, turn you... make you my childe." He looked at her, his eyes wholly serious.
Willow thought about it carefully. "I think you're drunk. So am I. That's not good... I don't want to die drunk. Besides... if you were going to turn me into your childe, so that we would have forever together, I want to be sure I remember it all when I wake up."
William grinned, revealing a dimple in his cheek as he did. "So... the idea of being my childe sounds good? And how would you rather be turned, if not while the two of us are both half drunk?"
Willow swirled her glass, watching as the liquid lapped at the sides, briefly fascinated by the shifting golden hues. "I want to remember it... I want it to be worth remembering. Maybe kisses... and just drain me slowly, so that I sink against you in wicked delight... wake up on silk sheets covered only by a scattering of rose petals. Yeah... that would be much better than the two of us drunk in... where are we anyhow? I wouldn't want you to turn be and regret it later. I've never been enough for anyone before, wouldn't want to have a Sire feel the same way."
She didn't notice his jaw drop at her description of what she'd prefer, didn't notice his eyes go amber, filled with lust at her soft words, at the picture of raw seduction that her words painted. Nor did she realize quite how much of her tormented longing for him had crept out, the hopeless desire exposed and quivering beneath her words.
"You've... put a lot of thought into that picture, luv. It does sound better. What did you mean about not being enough for anyone? I'm almost wondering if I could handle you... let that fire out a little and you burn like a bonfire. You could have the world at your feet, screaming in blood and fire."
"I thought I loved Xander... best friend since we were four. I wanted him to see me, to realize that I wasn't one of the guys, that I wanted him... he didn't see me. I heard him say it... I wasn't the sort of person whose lips he thought about. Not until... and then, it was more like he was sneaking little kisses because I was dating someone else. Little Willow wasn't good enough, but Willow who was someone else's girlfriend?" She gave a short, bitter laugh. "Nobody even wanted to kill me for myself, it was always 'oh, the slayer's little friend, it will hurt her to find your broken body.' or something like that. No sympathy when I find someone else's broken dead body... no, nobody cares about Willow's pain. Then he cheated on me, and he left... and it was only a few weeks ago, and they think I should have moved on already."
Willow tossed back more of the whiskey, her eyes almost fever bright now. "Buffy should understand. She's still talking about how torn up she is over Angel... he didn't cheat on her. Left months ago for her own good, 'cause he didn't want to loose his soul again... bad curse, stupid gypsies."
"Gypsies? What do gypsies and curse have to do with the Slayer and her boy-toy parting ways?" William looked at Willow, puzzlement over his face.
"He wasn't always Angel. Angel's okay, broods a lot, but not to bad. But that's with his soul. Don't eat the gypsies, not even the little ones. Makes their wicked sorcerers all pissy mad, and they start tossing curses out. Gave Angelus a soul, and he went all broody and miserable. Came to Sunnydale, fell into the clutches of Buffy the golden, and they had this tormented forbidden love thing... they got together after the nasty Judge... Giant blue smurf guy... wait a minute, I thing Dru had him put together, why would she do something so... crazy?"
"Soul? Gypsy curse? How much have you been drinking, red?" William frowned at her.
"Dunno, you keep pouring. Is that still the same bottle? Angelus ate a gypsy... her clan Kalla... Kader.. Ashes... some clan got all mad, and gave him a soul... guilt, misery, tormented dreams... it was painful. He came to the Hellmouth, fell for Buffy. They had sex... soul went away, he went evil psycho stalkery on her... so I gave him back the soul. 'Cept Buffy didn't care and sent him to hell anyhow. But he had to go away... otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep their hands away from each other, and, y'know, Angelus. He wasn't our friend. He killed my fishies... and my favorite teacher. Didn't have anyone but Giles then... he's a nice guy for a Watcher."
"That's... soul curse? Red, that sounds entirely unnatural. You gave it back to him? How... why?"
"I wanted our friend back... and Angelus was trying to do something bad... Kathle demon... no, that's not right, Akathle... Acathala? Yeah, he was going to open Acathala. Why try to end the world anyhow? I mean, where would you live if you get rid of it?" Willow was looking at William, her finger tracing over his eyebrow.
Suddenly, she sat up, he brow wrinkled in confusion. "I shouldn't be telling you any of this! I could change the future by telling you about things that haven't happened... fuzz the timeline... alter history. You haven't killed your slayers, and Dru hasn't killed Kendra..."
"Luv, Dru's not going to kill anyone. We burned her down, remember?"
"Oh, right." Willow leaned against William, her hand touching him, trying to trace his muscles through his shirt. "So the timeline won't ever be the same now. Cause... you won't be doting on her, and... um... the Judge, and the whole ritual thingy with Angel..."
William glanced down, trying to figure out why her words had trailed away, only to see that she had passed out, and the gentle warmth of her breathing and pulse of her heart were the only sounds from her.
end part 14
Eventually, Willow woke up, her head throbbing. Her eyeballs hurt, and she felt almost raw, as if she had recently been sun burnt. Her tongue felt like it was being used to culture some possibly toxic mold, fuzzy and foul tasting. Her joints hurt, as if they had been bruised. She gave a small whimper, hoping to never ever again experience the combined cruel symptoms of magical backlash and a drinking binge. She had set the building on fire, the one where Dru and the Ripper were... doing horribly naughty naked things. Then, she had gotten extremely drunk with William... and where exactly had her clothing gone? She was naked, in a bed. Soft sheets and warm blankets had kept her as comfortable as she would get, but she was most definitely naked. She did not remember taking her clothing off last night.
What all had she done last night? Other than burning the building down over and around Dru and the Ripper... She could remember discussing heartache with William. He still thought that she had been dating Spike. There had been mention of lemons being thrown at wounds, or had that been metaphorical? She had mentioned the killing of Slayers, and how she could alter the future by mentioning...
Or by burning one of the key figures to death in a building a century before they could come to Sunnydale. She had just shattered the timeline, quite irreversibly. No Dru meant that she wouldn't be attacked by an angry mob in Prague, and Spike wouldn't go to Sunnydale to help her heal. She wouldn't have suggested the order of Taraka, or assembling the Judge, which had lead to Buffy and Angel... breaking his curse. Oh, she had talked at length about the curse. What if William told Angelus, and Angelus DIDN'T kill the gypsy girl and therefore didn't get his soul? That would set all sorts of changes into motion. Possibly bad changes. What could Angelus accomplish in another century of freedom? Willow cringed, and once again wondered what had happened to her clothes.
She was fairly certain that she hadn't removed them. So, someone else had to have done it. Had William undressed her? Had he seen her naked? Had he had her naked and at his mercy last night? If so, why hadn't he done something about it? She felt herself blushing at the idea, and more at the fact that she sort of liked it. The whole handsome naughty man taking advantage of the sleeping maiden was just so much like something out of a bad romance novel... But that didn't change two simple facts. One - she was naked. Two - she was certain nothing else had happened.
Peering around the room, she found a pile of what looked like fabrics. It proved to be a mostly folded set of clothing, not her original things, or even what she had been wearing last night. She pulled them on carefully, every movement feeling like agony. Staggering a little, she moved from the bedroom to a hallway, and with one hand trailing along the wall, she slowly walked along until she came to a dreadful obstacle, a set of stairs. Groaning with dismay, Willow very slowly moved down the stairs. Eventually, she made her way to the bottom, and a lucky turn brought her to a place where she could get one of the most wonderful thing in the world: a cup of cool water to wash this vile taste from her mouth.
Slowly, she wandered back away from the kitchen, eventually finding a familiar leather couch. She allowed her body to collapse onto it, and inhaled, catching the familiar scent of Spike... William. It had permeated the leather, soaked up the scent of him, holding his presence here even when he was gone. Smiling, Willow allowed her eyelids to sink closed, and she settled into a light sleep, her dreams filled with Spike, and William. Filled with the sorts of passionate interludes that had never happened with their waking flesh.
When she next woke, she was surrounded by the scent of leather, and of William. There was also a hand stroking her hair. She still ached, and her head wasn't happy yet, but she felt much better. Before, she would have been tempted to ask a vampire to kill her, simply to make the pain stop. Now? She simply didn't feel good. Besides, she could only imagine one person in this whole century stroking her hair like that. "Hey, William. What time is it?"
"Almost sunset. I've had a lot of time to think. Or drink... although if I remember correctly, we did both of those last night. It was all real, wasn't it? No chance that it was just a very detailed bad dream?" His blue eyes were filled with pain and sorrow.
"I'm a bit fuzzy on some of last night. I remember that horrible building, and the poor sacrificed mutilated woman. That we walked in on something I would dearly, dearly love to forget seeing. Then we... I burned the building down. Then that backlash hit me, and there was a couch, and alcohol... we talked about pain. Somehow, lemons came into the conversation." Willow was staring at him, memorizing the smooth, unbroken line of his eyebrow.
"You were all worried that by talking about the future, you would change it. But we already did. Dru is dead, that's going to change a lot." William's fingers had moved, and now they were caressing her cheek.
Willow winced, sinking lower on the couch, as if attempting to disappear. "oooh, we did. We really messed up the future. I have no idea how much this will change things, but it's going to be really big. This has got to be really bad for my karma... although, a lot of the things I remember Dru doing or causing were among the lines of violence and pain, so, maybe only naughty for my karma instead of really awful?"
"Red, any power that actually looks at you will know you were only trying to help. You didn't want to mess up fate. You didn't want to end up with me getting my unbeating heart stomped on. Probably better to find out now rather than later. There's also the simple fact that of all the times I've gone out with someone for a bit of mayhem, it's never been quite so impressive as what we did last night. You're sweet and good, but you can be wickedly bad if you let it come out. I could teach you all about being bad." His eyes had gone dark with intense emotion, and the air of his words curled over her cheeks, caressing her skin.
She looked at him, his face only inches away, his eyes focused on her, and felt her insides flutter with something. Her words were a faint whisper. "You want to show me how to be bad?"
William smiled, golden flecks appearing in his eyes, like tiny fires on an ocean. "Let me show you the wonders of the night." His lips covered hers in a kiss. It started out slow, his lips caressing hers, his tongue tracing her lips, teasing them open, and sliding inside of her mouth.
It didn't stay quite so slow and gentle. Soon, their hands were roving over chests, shoulders and arms, their bodies close together, so close that Willow could feel every line of muscle on him, and he could count each rapid beat of her heart. It was as if he were devouring her, trying to taste her essence by kiss. Willow was kissing back just as intently, learning the contours of his mouth, the shape of his teeth, the feel of his lips and tongue.
Finally, his lips pulled away from her, and he kissed over her cheek, and along the side of her neck, causing Willow to melt against him, her knees going weak with pleasure and anticipation. Somehow, her blouse had slipped down, leaving her flesh exposed to his explorative fingers, and he was touching her, teasingly skimming over her curves, feather light touches that were driving her crazy.
She felt something almost like a pinching sensation, and then his teeth slid through the skin over her throat, and she could feel her blood flooding his mouth, coursing down his throat. An oddly primal sound of pleasure escaped her, and she pulled him closer, offering herself to him. Let her just have this one night... one night with him, all of him, man and demon, all hers, let her drown and crumble under his desire...
His lips pulled away, and she could feel him licking at her throat, the world having shrank to a narrow point of light. The pleasure and blood loss had left her dizzy again. Was this dying? Would he turn her, make her his childe to have at his side forever? As if from a distance, she heard his voice.
"Not yet, luv. You're so passionate, so warm... I want to feel you warm around me before I turn you. I want to feel myself sinking into your heat... but not tonight. I'm sorry, red. I took too much... and this is the sort of thing you should be awake and participating in. Should have remembered... shouldn't have drank so much so close to you being shot. But you will be mine, my flame haired childe... my lover and partner for the rest of our nights. Rest now..."
end part 15.
Willow woke slowly. Realizing that not only was she not dead, she had not been... well, apparently things had come to a crashing halt last night. Had it actually been last night? Had she really almost had sex or been drained by William? Why had he stopped if her memories of what had happened were accurate? Her fingers moved, brushing over the side of her throat, feeling a deep mark, a twinge of pain flaring at her touch.
Hadn't he said something about wanting to feel her around him? That had... between that and the touching, she had been so certain that he had wanted her, even if only for the night, even if only to let her go with a rush of passion and pleasure. There were hundreds of worse ways that a person could die. Actually, she had seen dozens of horrible deaths in Sunnydale, and a couple more here. Like burning to death...
Willow shivered, feeling cold at the accidental reminder of what she had done. She carefully pulled herself from the bed, whispering the words of the healing spell again. Was she doomed to a pattern? Get injured, pass out with William's mouth over her wound, bleeding and crumpling against him, only to wake up weak, shaky and alone? She didn't like the idea at all. If he was going to drink enough to make her pass out, then couldn't she wake up with him? 'Oh, bad Willow... we... I just burned his obsession to death, and now I'm lusting after him. Even more, what if he doesn't want me? Well... I know he did a little last night, I felt... and wow, but... did it mean anything to him? Did I imagine him sounding sad that I wasn't very awake? Did he say something about a lover? Arggh, this is important, and I can't remember.'
Did she even deserve the chance to be happy? To have something so passionate after what she had done? She frowned as she slowly combed out the tangles in her hair. Life wasn't fair, things didn't always go the way that they had 'deserved' to go. That was why Jesse had died, why Buffy was the Slayer, why Giles didn't have Jenny anymore... maybe she could have some measure of happiness? Yes, she would snatch desperately for this chance at happiness, and cling as long as it lasted. Besides, it wasn't as if there was anyone waiting for her to return. She didn't have a special someone, or a true love that simply couldn't be with her. She would see if she could find a little happiness here.
Right, she had made up her mind. Try to be as happy as she could with William for as long as it lasted. But first, she really needed to eat something. Red meat... there had to be a kitchen here somewhere, had to be food. She moved out of the room, her hair finally combed, in search of something to eat. Something to help replenish her energy. Then... maybe she would have to go find William again, see if he always slept naked.
She found the kitchen, and helped herself to a generous helping of foods. A small corner of her mind wondered if this food was kosher, before deciding that as it was in the house of a vampire, probably not, and that since it had been a while since she worried about kosher foods, there was no point in starting now. She decided to just eat, and not worry about how kosher the food was. Her practicing magic probably made her life rather non-kosher anyhow. She was having to many thoughts again.
"Too many thoughts... and so few of them worth it. Hmm... I wonder if there's any coffee?" She noticed that at some point she had gone from just thinking about things to actually muttering out loud.
"No coffee, luv. Perhaps we can get you by with a strong cup of tea?" William's voice filled the kitchen, practically touching her with it's overtones, and making something inside of Willow quiver in hope and anticipation.
"I guess that will have to do. I'll need to make some adjustments for living in this time anyhow... at least, until I can find a way to go home." Willow's voice was soft, but it betrayed a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
"You don't want to go home? What about your Spike? Your friend the Slayer?" William's voice was curious.
Willow sighed, putting water into a pot for tea as William lit the stove for her. "He's... not really my Spike. And it's pretty obvious that I can't keep a guy... assuming they even notice, I'm not enough for them. As for Buffy... she has Riley and his soldiers for help now. I'm not even useful to help her research. Xander was my friend, but... he doesn't have time for me anymore. Why race to get back to an empty house? I have no lover, my friends don't have time for me, and my parents are in... were they in France or Greece this month? My parents weren't there, and they weren't exactly there for me when they were in the same state, if that makes any sense."
William stepped closer, sliding an arm around her hip, curving his hand over her stomach, leaning his chin on her shoulder. "Then stay here. I can teach you everything you need to be bad, to release your inner fire. How to bring people quivering into submission at your feet... I can show you passion beyond your wildest dreams... pleasures beyond anything you've tasted."
Willow leaned back, feeling his body behind her, enjoying the feeling of him holding her. "Come to the dark side... together we can rule this galaxy. Except that you look so much better than Darth Vader... I thought you didn't want me? Why else... I mean, we didn't... there wasn't any wildest dreams of passion happening last night. It was last night, wasn't it? Did I miss an entire day?"
William chuckled, the feeling transmitting to her body by proximity. "That was last night, luv. You didn't loose a whole day. I promise, I want you... in my bed, under me, on top of me, screaming my name in pleasure and lust and passion. Last night... I got a bit carried away. You're mortal, and while I can't wait to feel how warm you'll be, I'm not used to the idea of a lover that's quite so fragile. I took a bit much blood, especially considering the injury to your leg. As for the wild passion... I always thought that would be more enjoyable with someone who was awake and participating."
He kissed the mark on her neck, and then kissed it again, his tongue caressing it. Willow gasped, the feeling so much nicer than when her fingers had brushed it when she had woke up, and leaned into him. One hand was wrapped around her waist, supporting her against his body, while the other was caressing patterns over her ribs, with delicate touches over the curve of her breast, teasing little touches that were reducing Willow to whimpering putty in his hands.
"Let me make it up to you... Let me feel how warm and passionate you can be. You've no idea how attentive I can be for you... how good I can make you feel." His words were a bare hint of sound and air against her ear.
"mmmm ... you are evil. Utter temptation... the accent, those gorgeous eyes, the cheekbones... Oh! talented tongue... strong hands... nothing so tempting can be good for me... oh, right there..." Willow's words were low, deepening with desire as he teased her body, suggesting all the pleasures that he could show her.
"Do you want to be good? Or would you rather" His tongue caressed her ear, before his teeth grazed carefully over her throat. " rather be bad?"
"I've been good my whole life. As a result, I'm almost twenty and alone, with only a couple friends... I want to try something else now... oh god, do that again... show me passion, please?" She didn't care anymore if it was wrong. She didn't care if he was still grieving over Dru's betrayal and death. All Willow was aware of right now was the muscled solidness of his body behind her, especially a certain very male part of him, and the rising desire and need for him that she felt.
end part 16.
She woke up slowly, her limbs feeling heavy and stiff. As awareness returned, Willow realized that she was naked, her body entwined with an equally naked William. She felt herself smiling and blushing as she remembered last night. She and William... they had been very passionate together. She wanted to believe that they had made love, that she actually mattered to him as more than a willing partner, but she couldn't be certain. He had spoke of passion, and wanting her to be screaming his name in lust and pleasure and passion... which had definitely happened. But... was that it? Was there anything more?
Willow gave a small smile at the turn of her thoughts. Twenty four hours ago, she would have been delighted simply at the prospect of intimately being with William. Now, that wasn't enough, she wanted him to care for her as well. Couldn't she just manage to be happy with what she could get while it lasted? She should have gotten the idea by now that nothing very good would ever last very long, not for her.
Glancing at the various marks their passion had left, Willow could only smile again at the memories. Carefully, she slipped her limbs separate from his, reluctantly leaving the bed. She pulled on a robe, presumably William's, and headed downstairs to get something to eat. She was having trouble remembering what she'd last eaten and when.
She sighed, stabbing at the vegetables on her plate. It had occurred to her that she should consider looking for a way home, but she didn't even know where to start. More problematic, there was still the man that had tried to kill her, shooting her and William with the crossbow. She didn't even know why he had done it. She would almost certainly have a scar from it, and she didn't know why. Every other time she'd been seriously injured, there had been a reason, even if that reason was only that the thing responsible was evil and wanted to cause mayhem and bloodshed.
Could she even go home? Was it possible that there was no way to return to her proper century? What if she was stuck here in the eighteen hundreds with William for the rest of her life? That might not be so bad, actually... Oh dear, forced to stay with the incredibly sexy vampire that had just taken her through all sorts of passionate activities… Yes, she could live with that. Or unlive, if he decided to turn her. That idea made her shiver just a little, half worried how a vampire Willow turned here and now would develop.
Why did she keep thinking about going back to Sunnydale anyhow? It wasn't as if there would be anyone waiting to welcome her back with open arms. What did Sunnydale have that London didn't? That was worth going back to, that is? Running water, electricity, hot showers... computers and telephones, and no guys with crossbows trying to kill her. Hmm... well, maybe there was a few advantages to the twentieth century. Oh, yes, and a whole library of books to use for research.
But if she left, she wouldn't have William. Well, maybe it could be argued that what was going on now wasn't healthy, but... she had fallen for him. Hopelessly head over heels for him, and it didn't matter to her that he was dead, that he killed people, that he bit her and she had killed his Dru only days ago, she wanted to cling to what she could get as long as it would last. To build as many memories as possible with William. To snatch what fragments of pleasure and happiness that she could.
"I'm putting way to much thought into this. I'm here, and most likely, I'm going to stay here in this time. Best make the most of it." Having come to what she hoped was a decision about her current time, she decided to go sit and think about the person that had shot both her and William with a crossbow.
Considering the fact that the bolts had been carved with crosses, and possibly tiny letters around their shafts, whoever had shot them knew about vampires, and knew how to hurt them. It didn't explain why she had been shot, unless it was the idea that anyone with a vampire had to be a vampire or the next meal. Could the man have been a Watcher? Obviously, there were Watchers in this time, and a Watcher would have the knowledge and access to the weaponry. How could she tell if he was? What did it mean if he wasn't, who would he be working with and why shoot her and William? Finally, an idea occurred to Willow: use a scrying spell to try to gather information about her attacker. All she would need would be a bowl of water, some salt, and time, and that shouldn't be too difficult.
She found them easily enough, choosing a dark bowl so that the images would be more visible. Settling the bowl onto the table, she tried to clear away her worries about her relationship with William, about Sunnydale, about being killed in this time, and focused her mind on the half glimpsed figure of her attacker. Slowly, the water seemed to darken, and an image formed, a man with brown hair, dressed in a slightly worn suit. He was standing in front of a shelf with what seemed to be many books, and appeared to be talking to an earnest looking young man holding a stack of loose pages. She had no idea what was being said, but it looked as if the man was running some sort of store. He was moving now, checking another shelf, and was limping slightly, as if his right side pained him, or had been bruised escaping an angry vampire. She continued to watch, trying to learn anything of use, and then he looked upwards, as if hearing something, and she saw his face clearly. He reminded her of Giles.
Willow gasped, the surprise breaking her concentration, and the image was lost. The man looked like Giles. She had been shot by a Giles? Surely her Giles wasn't the first of his family, hadn't he said something about a family tradition of working for the Watcher's Council? And wanting to be a shop-keeper when he was a small boy? Well, actually, she thought it had been 'a shop-keeper, or possibly a fighter pilot.'
"Giles' ancestor or great uncle or great something cousin was trying to kill me. But why?" She whispered the question out loud, not expecting any sort of answer.
"Wasn't Giles the Watcher to the Slayer you mentioned? Fluffy?" William's voice was practically a caress all by itself.
Willow looked over at William, feeling herself smile at the sight of him. "Yeah, and her name was Buffy. I just can't figure out why he was trying to kill me. I mean, those bolts looked like they were made for vampires, which I'm not, and I hadn't even been here long enough to annoy anyone but you so I can't figure out why I was being shot."
"Not a hobby of yours? Ah, I'll just find him later and kill him, then he won't be a problem anymore. I thought maybe we should have a little chat about the future, now that we're both sober and all." He placed his hand over Willow's, settling on the couch beside her.
end part 17.
William shifted his weight, making himself more comfortable, still holding Willow's hand. "I wanted to talk to you about the future. Not Sunnydale future, but along the lines of what's going to happen next, with us."
Willow felt her insides tense, wondering if he was going to tell her that she shouldn't get her hopes up, that she was just a silly willing mortal... But a part of her was remembering his words, his promise that he'd 'turn her in a heartbeat'. Maybe he wasn't preparing for the brush-off speech? "Okay... the short term future. Although I'm not sure that I could make it back to Sunnydale if I tried..."
"Don't. Stay here, with me. I offered a place in the family to you before, and I meant it. Only, I don't think I'd be willing to let you walk away anymore. I want you, want you to be mine, to stay with me, to become my Childe, part of the Order of Aurelius." He was watching her, his eyes locked onto hers as if he intended to convey his seriousness through his gaze as well as his words.
She felt something inside snap loose, a thread of fear and doubt. He wanted her, wanted her to stay, to become his Childe, to belong with him. Tears welled in her eyes, and she flung her arms around him in a joyful hug. "Nobody ever wanted me in their family before..."
As Willow clung to him, part of her simply delighting in the novel feeling of being wanted, an unwelcome image floated tot he surface of her mind, rising from her memory like a killer shark. "oh... Vampire Willow... she was not fun. I don't think that you'd like her."
"Err... what? How would you know what a vampire you would be like? Why wouldn't I have liked her?" His voice showed puzzlement.
"ummm that's actually a bit complicated. To summarize, there was this alternate reality created, and in that world, I'd... umm, that Willow had been turned into a vampire when she.. I... she was sixteen. I was trying to help someone with a spell, and we accidentally brought VampWillow into my world, and well, she caused some problems." Willow could feel herself blushing as she remembered her vampire twin.
"You got to see yourself as a vampire? Was she one of the not eeeuuu looking ones? Why wouldn't I have liked her?" William was smiling, wondering why Willow seemed so disturbed by her vampire doppelganger.
Considering his question, Willow carefully considered the quiet, secretive conversation that she'd had with VampWillow before sending her home. "She was... yeah, she was pretty, although not my type, being female and, umm... me. She wore this tight leather outfit, which was rather binding, and these tall heels... But I think you would have been more upset at her recreational habits. She was sort of... skanky, actually. I mean, she was having sex with the Master, who had turned her, and he's so not what I want to picture naked, and she had Vampire Xander as her playmate and hunting partner, and she had her umm... 'Puppy' that she kept chained up in her own private dungeon, and I think she was hitting on... er, trying to seduce Cordelia, although that may have been just so she could kill her..."
"Binding leather? Now that would have been a sight..." William was clearly trying to picture it, his eyes half closed and flecked with amber.
"I can show you. All that would take would be a simple illusion spell, and you could see exactly what she looked like, although it wouldn't be real. I mean, not really in the leather, and not really a vampire, just... sort of a magical costume."
"Show me..." His eyes had snapped open at her offer.
Nervous, Willow stood up, and whispered a few phrases, watching as a shimmer of green gold sparkles cascaded over her, replacing the way she should look with the image of VampWillow. Her hair was longer, and a bit darker, her skin pale with the careful makeup accenting her eyes. Her body was hugged by the black leather, the burgundy sleeves hanging to her wrists. Deliberately, she'd chosen an image of her evil twin in her vamp-face, showing golden eyes and sharp teeth. She looked right at him before she spoke. "Well, what do you think?"
She barely even had time to register that he'd moved before he was standing there, kissing her fiercely, hands sliding over the leather that the clothing had inexplicably transformed into. He was barely willing to let her have a moment for breath, intent of making his claim known to her, a low growl in his chest. By the time he actually said anything, Willow was so caught up in the passion he'd stirred up that she almost missed his words.
"Damn all, luv, you aren't just a pretty vampire, you're gorgeous. Quite the picture of seduction... Effective seduction, mind you." He was pressed against her, so close that he could feel her heart beating, and she could feel exactly how much he liked the sight of her like this.
"I'm getting the feeling that our talk about the future is over for tonight... Shall we go somewhere... more private?"
end part 18.
"So, can you do that little guide spell again? To show us which way she is?" William's voice was thoughtful.
"Of course. It only takes a few moments. I hope... I hope everything goes well for you and Dru. You'll have each other..." Willow couldn't quite stop the tear that slid down her cheek.
William reached over, brushing the tear away with his thumb. His expression was almost tender as he looked at her. "What's wrong, Red?"
"It's.... it's a bit silly actually. You love Dru, and you'll have her to be with. Back at home, my parents are never home, my almost parent, Rupert Giles has a girlfriend, my supposed to be best friend is to busy with her new boyfriend to have time for me. My boyfriend cheated on me and left town. I don't really have anyone to go back to, even if I do figure out how to get there. I guess I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself." Willow's voice cracked a bit with the effort not to cry.
William smiled at her, running his fingers through her short red hair. "Don't worry. If we can't figure out a way to send you home... Willow, you are pretty, and so sweet and intelligent that it's hard to believe you're real. Not to forget the part where you taste divine. If you can't get back home, I could turn you. Make you part of my family. We wouldn't abandon you, not ever. We might be a bit much to adjust to, and the blood drinking would be a change, but... I'd be happy to bring you into my family. I'd turn you in a heartbeat."
Willow managed a small smile, part of her remembering Spike's words from the dorm 'I'd bite you in a heartbeat.' William sounded so sincere. "It's probably sad that that's the best offer that I've had in a long time. And it's actually very tempting. But... maybe we should try to figure out this whole thing with Dru before discussing me joining your family?"
William smiled, looking oddly pleased. "Dru, yeah. We should find her first. I meant it though, you'd be welcome in the family. Not just for a little while, and certainly not as a minion. You'd make a splendid childe."
Willow was actually smiling as she spoke the short chant that accompanied focusing her thoughts on Dru for the locator spell. The wispy globe of green formed, a bit more golden this time, and slowly began to move down the street, not to fast to comfortably follow.
She found it oddly reassuring that William would want her as his childe. Granted, her hormones were all in favor of the idea, especially since the Watcher's journals that she hadn't been supposed to read had made it clear that Sires and their Childer almost always had a sexual aspect to their relationship. Sexual relationship... sex with William... yum. Shaking her head and blushing, Willow tried to stop thinking about William and sex. They were supposed to be finding Dru, not allowing her to indulge in lustful fantasies.
They began walking through the dark streets, following the light, hoping to find Drusilla before anything irreversible happened. Willow was only seeking Dru to make William happy. After that... she would try to find a way to go home, home where she had nobody to comfort her, nobody to ease her loneliness, to hold her when she cried. She was quiet as they walked, her thoughts dark and unhappy.
The globe led then deeper into the maze of streets, twisting and turning until Willow was entirely lost. Finally, it hovered in front of a door, the building looking rather like a once sturdy warehouse fallen into disrepair. The bricks were darkened by soot, and the trash that had collected around the walls had a particularly foul and rotten odor, partly chemicals, and partly something like rotting flesh. It gave Willow a bad feeling to be near the building, as if her instincts were telling her to run the other way. She actually felt her skin quivering, and it was really quite freaky. So that was what 'your skin crawling' really felt like…
"I smell blood. Human, some fairly recent, some older... there's a lot of it. And the scent of fear..."
William's voice startled Willow, making her jump and give this little squeak, a noise that would have sounded more appropriate from a mouse. "You smell... uh... right. Is there... is there blood from more than one person? Can you feel Dru?"
William's face had shifted, and his teeth were sharp, his eyes golden and feral as he spoke. "Multiple people... most of them are older. I think it's all from women. And I can feel Dru... she's close, very close, but... she's shutting the link, I can't get any more than her presence."
Studying the door carefully, Willow felt for magic. Reading for energies here reminded her of searching through the Sunnydale sewers, but it was important. There was a feeling of gathered power, built up, but not focused. It hadn't been really 'stored' so much as just dragged out and left. The power felt dark, tainted somehow. There was a crude ward around the building, something that would most likely do little more than alert the caster to their presence. "Well, I think someone inside it trying to play with magic. There's power, and a really rough ward over the building... when we go in, someone's going to know. Before you ask, yes, the spell says she's inside."
"Time to go to the rescue then." He grinned with unsettling glee, and kicked the door down. He stalked into the darkness, his eyes almost glowing. Willow followed, and her spell globe zipped ahead, weaving along in the building. She was certain that he was glad to have something that he could do.
It lead down a hallway, and into a room that reeked of blood and something else, a fouler stench that spoke of ruptured entrails. There was a body crumpled in the corner, her dark hair matted with congealing blood, her internal organs laid out around her in a pattern, lines drawn in the blood forming a shape around her, a crude circle. The feeling of almost gathered power hung thickest near the body.
Willow gagged on the combination. The scent of blood and entrails and death hung thick in the air. She could feel it coating her throat, the stench clinging to everything in the room, the gathered energy felt of stickyness and carried the almost echo of tortured screams, and Willow knew that the woman had been alive while the circle was drawn, alive while her parts were laid out around her. Her muscles quivered, and her knees felt as if they had turned to water. She could feel herself collapsing.
William caught her, looking a bit unsettled himself. "She's dead now. Nothing that can be done... and that's a circle around her, isn't it?"
"He did this to her... carved her open as she screamed, drew the circle as she watched, and then he laid out her insides, and al she could do was scream and bleed and die. He wanted to gather power... magic from her death."
The light was hovering across the room, by a set of stairs that led upwards. Willow and William, both unsettled by the woman's body, hurried towards the stairs, carefully following the floating globe up the stairs. As they approached the top, they began to notice little noises, small, almost rhythmic creaking noises. Willow's bad feeling intensified, and she had the sudden certainty that she didn't want to see what was on the other side of the door at the top of the stairs.
William kicked that door open, and the greenish glow of the locator globe revealed the room. Small glass jars lined a shelf, each one containing a small bit of someone, eyeballs, kidneys, other bits that Willow's mind refused to identify. The floor and walls had been splashed with blood, and the only other furnishing was a metal framed bed. On that bed, Drusilla was naked, firmly and quite willingly rocking on the naked man, clearly taking and giving sexual pleasure. He was also naked, and the image seared itself in Willow's brain, a horrible, awful image.
"Dru... oh god..."
The words from William were a barely shaped breath of pain. Simply from hearing them, Willow knew that his world was crumbling out from under him. He spun around, and with a growl, picked Willow up, flinging her over his shoulder, and he bolted from the room, not stopping until they were outside the building.
Scarlet tears were streaming down his face as he carefully put Willow back on the ground. "She... and him... how could she do that? I gave her everything..."
"I know you did. I don't know why she would do that... I wish... is there anything I can do to... try to help?" Willow wanted to comfort him, wanted to sooth his pain. She knew exactly how much that had hurt him, her own experience of seeing Oz entwined with Veruca burned in her mind.
He looked at her, his expression hardening into determination. "You're a witch. Can you burn the place down around them?"
Willow looked back at the building, and then glanced at William, his golden eyes rimmed with bloody tears, their tracks down his face like wounds. "Yes. Just... if this makes me fall over, catch me before I crack my head on the street."
She focused, and with her own power, focused a barrier around the building, like a bubble. She shaped it like the uninvite spell, trapping them inside the building. Then, she reached out with her power, touching the gathered energy of pain and death, sparking it as if setting a match to oiled rags. The backlash from her action, one deliberately done with intent to harm, leapt at her, pain stabbing through her body, bright spots dancing in front of her eyes before everything faded into a dark haze of pain.
William caught her, watching in stunned awe as the building practically exploded into green and yellow flames, the heat washing over him, the flames caught, as if in a giant, invisible egg. The fire didn't crackle, didn't roar as he'd expected, no, this one howled like a soul in torment.
It was the perfect expression of his pain, giving voice to it as he could not.
He only smiled when he felt the bond with Dru burn away to nothingness, her death-screams echoing inside his head.
end part 13.
Finally, as dawn was nearing, William looked away from the towering fury of green and gold fire. He still held Willow in his arms, in a pose that would look lover-like to an observer. She had slowly regained awareness, although it was questionable if she would be capable of walking on her own. She was also watching the flames, her expression a mixture of pain, awe and a hint of fear.
"We need to go away from this place. Away before the sun rises. Preferably somewhere to try and help with the pain. You don't look your best, Red, so I'm just going to carry you." His words were quiet, and oddly without emotion, as if all his emotion had been captured by the fire, taken from him leaving his heart filled with dust and ashes.
Willow's voice was slightly groggy, and slurred as if she had only just awakened. "There isn't medicine for broken hearts. Ripped out, thrown to the ground, and danced on, with slices of lemon thrown at the gaping empty hole... it hurts so bad."
"Not planning that sort of medicine, luv. I was actually planning more along the lines of numbing rather than anything else. Whiskey works pretty good for that. It won't fix everything, but it will numb things down a bit. I figure it wouldn't hurt, especially since we need to go somewhere for the day anyhow." His voice was low, holding vast measures of pain.
Willow simply sighed, possibly consent, possibly from pain, she wasn't certain anymore. She knew that it had been necessary to cleanse the building, to burn away the corruption and evil that had become imprinted into the walls and floor, held in the very air within the walls. She also knew that it had been bad to use her power to kill, to end the existences of two creatures, even if those two had been Dru and the Ripper. Did that make her a bad witch? She had put her pain at Oz's betrayal into the fire, her rage and hurt and suffering, had that been wrong as well? The fire had certainly not been natural.
The next thing she was clear on, she was sitting on a brown leather couch with William, a glass of alcohol in her hand. She had somehow lost her shoes, and her feet were curled under her, causing her to lean slightly towards William. She wasn't certain where they were, or how exactly she had gotten to this couch. Did it even matter now? She had used her power to kill, the one person that had shown any semblance of caring about her in this time had just seen his beloved screwing someone else and watched the building burn down around her. She was stuck in this time, and most likely, nobody in Sunnydale would even care. She raised the glass, and drank down the alcohol, which burned down her throat like fire.
"She was my everything... I devoted myself to her. Gave her anything she wanted... pretty dresses, flowers, pretty jewelry, pretty dresses with pretty girls in them... Why couldn't I have been enough? I mean, I can see why she went to Angelus... he's ... was her Sire. She thought he could do nothing less than wonderfully. But... wasn't I worth anything to her? Why did she do it? Why would she give herself to... to that sick and wretched excuse for a vampire?" William's voice was low, as if he didn't expect an answer. He was just giving voice to the pain inside of him.
"Must have been the same reason he went to her. She had something he wanted... needed. Something I couldn't give him, no matter how hard I tried... and I tried so hard. I would have given him anything, all he had to do was ask. I couldn't be enough for him, and he went of and got all... primal and had sex with her... that's all it could have been. Hot, primal sex, no caring, no tenderness... what if he never really wanted the tenderness? Maybe I was too human for him after all..." Willow's own words were not truly directed at William. She was remembering her own heart break.
"I killed nuns and schoolchildren for her... brought them to her so she could kill them herself. Found her dozens of those blasted dolls... dozens of little songbirds that she always let starve away into nothingness... Am I such a failure, even as a vampire?"
"I couldn't curse him. I wanted to... to curse him, both of them, misery for the rest of their wretched existences. I couldn't do it then, I still loved him even after seeing them all naked together. But then she attacked me... he killed her, you know. Right there... and then he didn't know me anymore, and almost killed me right after. He was gone the next day. I felt like he took a part of me with him, ripped it out and left me behind to bleed..."
"Then he was a fool, your Spike. Leaving someone like you, just for a wild tumble. You're lovely, smart, think well under pressure... damn powerful too. That building..." William paused, frowning as he tried to take a drink from his cup and found it empty. He poured it full again, topping Willow's off as well. "You're a wonderful person, Red. All gentle and powerful... like the tide. Not all brightly obvious like the sun, but irresistible as the tide, and with as many secrets inside of you."
"And Dru was obviously a mental basket case to leave you. I mean, yeah, let's leave Angelus out of the discussion, preferably way out... umm... right, Dru was an idiot. You would do anything for her... give her anything on a silver platter... pamper her, protect her... went to the hellmouth to help her get better after that angry mob... Only an idiot or someone insane would throw that away for a few nights with some inept would be sorcerer with a fetish for bottled body parts."
Willow took a drink from her glass, feeling the cool liquid slide down her throat. "Anyone can see, especially with those eyes, and your cheekbones... having you would be wonderful." She paused a moment, and then twisted slightly, her eyes growing wide as she looked at William. "You think I'm pretty?"
"Of course, luv. Bloody gorgeous, all green eyes like emeralds, and pale skin and hair like fire reflected on blood... and I bet you'd look right gorgeous as a vampire. I could do it, turn you... make you my childe." He looked at her, his eyes wholly serious.
Willow thought about it carefully. "I think you're drunk. So am I. That's not good... I don't want to die drunk. Besides... if you were going to turn me into your childe, so that we would have forever together, I want to be sure I remember it all when I wake up."
William grinned, revealing a dimple in his cheek as he did. "So... the idea of being my childe sounds good? And how would you rather be turned, if not while the two of us are both half drunk?"
Willow swirled her glass, watching as the liquid lapped at the sides, briefly fascinated by the shifting golden hues. "I want to remember it... I want it to be worth remembering. Maybe kisses... and just drain me slowly, so that I sink against you in wicked delight... wake up on silk sheets covered only by a scattering of rose petals. Yeah... that would be much better than the two of us drunk in... where are we anyhow? I wouldn't want you to turn be and regret it later. I've never been enough for anyone before, wouldn't want to have a Sire feel the same way."
She didn't notice his jaw drop at her description of what she'd prefer, didn't notice his eyes go amber, filled with lust at her soft words, at the picture of raw seduction that her words painted. Nor did she realize quite how much of her tormented longing for him had crept out, the hopeless desire exposed and quivering beneath her words.
"You've... put a lot of thought into that picture, luv. It does sound better. What did you mean about not being enough for anyone? I'm almost wondering if I could handle you... let that fire out a little and you burn like a bonfire. You could have the world at your feet, screaming in blood and fire."
"I thought I loved Xander... best friend since we were four. I wanted him to see me, to realize that I wasn't one of the guys, that I wanted him... he didn't see me. I heard him say it... I wasn't the sort of person whose lips he thought about. Not until... and then, it was more like he was sneaking little kisses because I was dating someone else. Little Willow wasn't good enough, but Willow who was someone else's girlfriend?" She gave a short, bitter laugh. "Nobody even wanted to kill me for myself, it was always 'oh, the slayer's little friend, it will hurt her to find your broken body.' or something like that. No sympathy when I find someone else's broken dead body... no, nobody cares about Willow's pain. Then he cheated on me, and he left... and it was only a few weeks ago, and they think I should have moved on already."
Willow tossed back more of the whiskey, her eyes almost fever bright now. "Buffy should understand. She's still talking about how torn up she is over Angel... he didn't cheat on her. Left months ago for her own good, 'cause he didn't want to loose his soul again... bad curse, stupid gypsies."
"Gypsies? What do gypsies and curse have to do with the Slayer and her boy-toy parting ways?" William looked at Willow, puzzlement over his face.
"He wasn't always Angel. Angel's okay, broods a lot, but not to bad. But that's with his soul. Don't eat the gypsies, not even the little ones. Makes their wicked sorcerers all pissy mad, and they start tossing curses out. Gave Angelus a soul, and he went all broody and miserable. Came to Sunnydale, fell into the clutches of Buffy the golden, and they had this tormented forbidden love thing... they got together after the nasty Judge... Giant blue smurf guy... wait a minute, I thing Dru had him put together, why would she do something so... crazy?"
"Soul? Gypsy curse? How much have you been drinking, red?" William frowned at her.
"Dunno, you keep pouring. Is that still the same bottle? Angelus ate a gypsy... her clan Kalla... Kader.. Ashes... some clan got all mad, and gave him a soul... guilt, misery, tormented dreams... it was painful. He came to the Hellmouth, fell for Buffy. They had sex... soul went away, he went evil psycho stalkery on her... so I gave him back the soul. 'Cept Buffy didn't care and sent him to hell anyhow. But he had to go away... otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep their hands away from each other, and, y'know, Angelus. He wasn't our friend. He killed my fishies... and my favorite teacher. Didn't have anyone but Giles then... he's a nice guy for a Watcher."
"That's... soul curse? Red, that sounds entirely unnatural. You gave it back to him? How... why?"
"I wanted our friend back... and Angelus was trying to do something bad... Kathle demon... no, that's not right, Akathle... Acathala? Yeah, he was going to open Acathala. Why try to end the world anyhow? I mean, where would you live if you get rid of it?" Willow was looking at William, her finger tracing over his eyebrow.
Suddenly, she sat up, he brow wrinkled in confusion. "I shouldn't be telling you any of this! I could change the future by telling you about things that haven't happened... fuzz the timeline... alter history. You haven't killed your slayers, and Dru hasn't killed Kendra..."
"Luv, Dru's not going to kill anyone. We burned her down, remember?"
"Oh, right." Willow leaned against William, her hand touching him, trying to trace his muscles through his shirt. "So the timeline won't ever be the same now. Cause... you won't be doting on her, and... um... the Judge, and the whole ritual thingy with Angel..."
William glanced down, trying to figure out why her words had trailed away, only to see that she had passed out, and the gentle warmth of her breathing and pulse of her heart were the only sounds from her.
end part 14
Eventually, Willow woke up, her head throbbing. Her eyeballs hurt, and she felt almost raw, as if she had recently been sun burnt. Her tongue felt like it was being used to culture some possibly toxic mold, fuzzy and foul tasting. Her joints hurt, as if they had been bruised. She gave a small whimper, hoping to never ever again experience the combined cruel symptoms of magical backlash and a drinking binge. She had set the building on fire, the one where Dru and the Ripper were... doing horribly naughty naked things. Then, she had gotten extremely drunk with William... and where exactly had her clothing gone? She was naked, in a bed. Soft sheets and warm blankets had kept her as comfortable as she would get, but she was most definitely naked. She did not remember taking her clothing off last night.
What all had she done last night? Other than burning the building down over and around Dru and the Ripper... She could remember discussing heartache with William. He still thought that she had been dating Spike. There had been mention of lemons being thrown at wounds, or had that been metaphorical? She had mentioned the killing of Slayers, and how she could alter the future by mentioning...
Or by burning one of the key figures to death in a building a century before they could come to Sunnydale. She had just shattered the timeline, quite irreversibly. No Dru meant that she wouldn't be attacked by an angry mob in Prague, and Spike wouldn't go to Sunnydale to help her heal. She wouldn't have suggested the order of Taraka, or assembling the Judge, which had lead to Buffy and Angel... breaking his curse. Oh, she had talked at length about the curse. What if William told Angelus, and Angelus DIDN'T kill the gypsy girl and therefore didn't get his soul? That would set all sorts of changes into motion. Possibly bad changes. What could Angelus accomplish in another century of freedom? Willow cringed, and once again wondered what had happened to her clothes.
She was fairly certain that she hadn't removed them. So, someone else had to have done it. Had William undressed her? Had he seen her naked? Had he had her naked and at his mercy last night? If so, why hadn't he done something about it? She felt herself blushing at the idea, and more at the fact that she sort of liked it. The whole handsome naughty man taking advantage of the sleeping maiden was just so much like something out of a bad romance novel... But that didn't change two simple facts. One - she was naked. Two - she was certain nothing else had happened.
Peering around the room, she found a pile of what looked like fabrics. It proved to be a mostly folded set of clothing, not her original things, or even what she had been wearing last night. She pulled them on carefully, every movement feeling like agony. Staggering a little, she moved from the bedroom to a hallway, and with one hand trailing along the wall, she slowly walked along until she came to a dreadful obstacle, a set of stairs. Groaning with dismay, Willow very slowly moved down the stairs. Eventually, she made her way to the bottom, and a lucky turn brought her to a place where she could get one of the most wonderful thing in the world: a cup of cool water to wash this vile taste from her mouth.
Slowly, she wandered back away from the kitchen, eventually finding a familiar leather couch. She allowed her body to collapse onto it, and inhaled, catching the familiar scent of Spike... William. It had permeated the leather, soaked up the scent of him, holding his presence here even when he was gone. Smiling, Willow allowed her eyelids to sink closed, and she settled into a light sleep, her dreams filled with Spike, and William. Filled with the sorts of passionate interludes that had never happened with their waking flesh.
When she next woke, she was surrounded by the scent of leather, and of William. There was also a hand stroking her hair. She still ached, and her head wasn't happy yet, but she felt much better. Before, she would have been tempted to ask a vampire to kill her, simply to make the pain stop. Now? She simply didn't feel good. Besides, she could only imagine one person in this whole century stroking her hair like that. "Hey, William. What time is it?"
"Almost sunset. I've had a lot of time to think. Or drink... although if I remember correctly, we did both of those last night. It was all real, wasn't it? No chance that it was just a very detailed bad dream?" His blue eyes were filled with pain and sorrow.
"I'm a bit fuzzy on some of last night. I remember that horrible building, and the poor sacrificed mutilated woman. That we walked in on something I would dearly, dearly love to forget seeing. Then we... I burned the building down. Then that backlash hit me, and there was a couch, and alcohol... we talked about pain. Somehow, lemons came into the conversation." Willow was staring at him, memorizing the smooth, unbroken line of his eyebrow.
"You were all worried that by talking about the future, you would change it. But we already did. Dru is dead, that's going to change a lot." William's fingers had moved, and now they were caressing her cheek.
Willow winced, sinking lower on the couch, as if attempting to disappear. "oooh, we did. We really messed up the future. I have no idea how much this will change things, but it's going to be really big. This has got to be really bad for my karma... although, a lot of the things I remember Dru doing or causing were among the lines of violence and pain, so, maybe only naughty for my karma instead of really awful?"
"Red, any power that actually looks at you will know you were only trying to help. You didn't want to mess up fate. You didn't want to end up with me getting my unbeating heart stomped on. Probably better to find out now rather than later. There's also the simple fact that of all the times I've gone out with someone for a bit of mayhem, it's never been quite so impressive as what we did last night. You're sweet and good, but you can be wickedly bad if you let it come out. I could teach you all about being bad." His eyes had gone dark with intense emotion, and the air of his words curled over her cheeks, caressing her skin.
She looked at him, his face only inches away, his eyes focused on her, and felt her insides flutter with something. Her words were a faint whisper. "You want to show me how to be bad?"
William smiled, golden flecks appearing in his eyes, like tiny fires on an ocean. "Let me show you the wonders of the night." His lips covered hers in a kiss. It started out slow, his lips caressing hers, his tongue tracing her lips, teasing them open, and sliding inside of her mouth.
It didn't stay quite so slow and gentle. Soon, their hands were roving over chests, shoulders and arms, their bodies close together, so close that Willow could feel every line of muscle on him, and he could count each rapid beat of her heart. It was as if he were devouring her, trying to taste her essence by kiss. Willow was kissing back just as intently, learning the contours of his mouth, the shape of his teeth, the feel of his lips and tongue.
Finally, his lips pulled away from her, and he kissed over her cheek, and along the side of her neck, causing Willow to melt against him, her knees going weak with pleasure and anticipation. Somehow, her blouse had slipped down, leaving her flesh exposed to his explorative fingers, and he was touching her, teasingly skimming over her curves, feather light touches that were driving her crazy.
She felt something almost like a pinching sensation, and then his teeth slid through the skin over her throat, and she could feel her blood flooding his mouth, coursing down his throat. An oddly primal sound of pleasure escaped her, and she pulled him closer, offering herself to him. Let her just have this one night... one night with him, all of him, man and demon, all hers, let her drown and crumble under his desire...
His lips pulled away, and she could feel him licking at her throat, the world having shrank to a narrow point of light. The pleasure and blood loss had left her dizzy again. Was this dying? Would he turn her, make her his childe to have at his side forever? As if from a distance, she heard his voice.
"Not yet, luv. You're so passionate, so warm... I want to feel you warm around me before I turn you. I want to feel myself sinking into your heat... but not tonight. I'm sorry, red. I took too much... and this is the sort of thing you should be awake and participating in. Should have remembered... shouldn't have drank so much so close to you being shot. But you will be mine, my flame haired childe... my lover and partner for the rest of our nights. Rest now..."
end part 15.
Willow woke slowly. Realizing that not only was she not dead, she had not been... well, apparently things had come to a crashing halt last night. Had it actually been last night? Had she really almost had sex or been drained by William? Why had he stopped if her memories of what had happened were accurate? Her fingers moved, brushing over the side of her throat, feeling a deep mark, a twinge of pain flaring at her touch.
Hadn't he said something about wanting to feel her around him? That had... between that and the touching, she had been so certain that he had wanted her, even if only for the night, even if only to let her go with a rush of passion and pleasure. There were hundreds of worse ways that a person could die. Actually, she had seen dozens of horrible deaths in Sunnydale, and a couple more here. Like burning to death...
Willow shivered, feeling cold at the accidental reminder of what she had done. She carefully pulled herself from the bed, whispering the words of the healing spell again. Was she doomed to a pattern? Get injured, pass out with William's mouth over her wound, bleeding and crumpling against him, only to wake up weak, shaky and alone? She didn't like the idea at all. If he was going to drink enough to make her pass out, then couldn't she wake up with him? 'Oh, bad Willow... we... I just burned his obsession to death, and now I'm lusting after him. Even more, what if he doesn't want me? Well... I know he did a little last night, I felt... and wow, but... did it mean anything to him? Did I imagine him sounding sad that I wasn't very awake? Did he say something about a lover? Arggh, this is important, and I can't remember.'
Did she even deserve the chance to be happy? To have something so passionate after what she had done? She frowned as she slowly combed out the tangles in her hair. Life wasn't fair, things didn't always go the way that they had 'deserved' to go. That was why Jesse had died, why Buffy was the Slayer, why Giles didn't have Jenny anymore... maybe she could have some measure of happiness? Yes, she would snatch desperately for this chance at happiness, and cling as long as it lasted. Besides, it wasn't as if there was anyone waiting for her to return. She didn't have a special someone, or a true love that simply couldn't be with her. She would see if she could find a little happiness here.
Right, she had made up her mind. Try to be as happy as she could with William for as long as it lasted. But first, she really needed to eat something. Red meat... there had to be a kitchen here somewhere, had to be food. She moved out of the room, her hair finally combed, in search of something to eat. Something to help replenish her energy. Then... maybe she would have to go find William again, see if he always slept naked.
She found the kitchen, and helped herself to a generous helping of foods. A small corner of her mind wondered if this food was kosher, before deciding that as it was in the house of a vampire, probably not, and that since it had been a while since she worried about kosher foods, there was no point in starting now. She decided to just eat, and not worry about how kosher the food was. Her practicing magic probably made her life rather non-kosher anyhow. She was having to many thoughts again.
"Too many thoughts... and so few of them worth it. Hmm... I wonder if there's any coffee?" She noticed that at some point she had gone from just thinking about things to actually muttering out loud.
"No coffee, luv. Perhaps we can get you by with a strong cup of tea?" William's voice filled the kitchen, practically touching her with it's overtones, and making something inside of Willow quiver in hope and anticipation.
"I guess that will have to do. I'll need to make some adjustments for living in this time anyhow... at least, until I can find a way to go home." Willow's voice was soft, but it betrayed a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
"You don't want to go home? What about your Spike? Your friend the Slayer?" William's voice was curious.
Willow sighed, putting water into a pot for tea as William lit the stove for her. "He's... not really my Spike. And it's pretty obvious that I can't keep a guy... assuming they even notice, I'm not enough for them. As for Buffy... she has Riley and his soldiers for help now. I'm not even useful to help her research. Xander was my friend, but... he doesn't have time for me anymore. Why race to get back to an empty house? I have no lover, my friends don't have time for me, and my parents are in... were they in France or Greece this month? My parents weren't there, and they weren't exactly there for me when they were in the same state, if that makes any sense."
William stepped closer, sliding an arm around her hip, curving his hand over her stomach, leaning his chin on her shoulder. "Then stay here. I can teach you everything you need to be bad, to release your inner fire. How to bring people quivering into submission at your feet... I can show you passion beyond your wildest dreams... pleasures beyond anything you've tasted."
Willow leaned back, feeling his body behind her, enjoying the feeling of him holding her. "Come to the dark side... together we can rule this galaxy. Except that you look so much better than Darth Vader... I thought you didn't want me? Why else... I mean, we didn't... there wasn't any wildest dreams of passion happening last night. It was last night, wasn't it? Did I miss an entire day?"
William chuckled, the feeling transmitting to her body by proximity. "That was last night, luv. You didn't loose a whole day. I promise, I want you... in my bed, under me, on top of me, screaming my name in pleasure and lust and passion. Last night... I got a bit carried away. You're mortal, and while I can't wait to feel how warm you'll be, I'm not used to the idea of a lover that's quite so fragile. I took a bit much blood, especially considering the injury to your leg. As for the wild passion... I always thought that would be more enjoyable with someone who was awake and participating."
He kissed the mark on her neck, and then kissed it again, his tongue caressing it. Willow gasped, the feeling so much nicer than when her fingers had brushed it when she had woke up, and leaned into him. One hand was wrapped around her waist, supporting her against his body, while the other was caressing patterns over her ribs, with delicate touches over the curve of her breast, teasing little touches that were reducing Willow to whimpering putty in his hands.
"Let me make it up to you... Let me feel how warm and passionate you can be. You've no idea how attentive I can be for you... how good I can make you feel." His words were a bare hint of sound and air against her ear.
"mmmm ... you are evil. Utter temptation... the accent, those gorgeous eyes, the cheekbones... Oh! talented tongue... strong hands... nothing so tempting can be good for me... oh, right there..." Willow's words were low, deepening with desire as he teased her body, suggesting all the pleasures that he could show her.
"Do you want to be good? Or would you rather" His tongue caressed her ear, before his teeth grazed carefully over her throat. " rather be bad?"
"I've been good my whole life. As a result, I'm almost twenty and alone, with only a couple friends... I want to try something else now... oh god, do that again... show me passion, please?" She didn't care anymore if it was wrong. She didn't care if he was still grieving over Dru's betrayal and death. All Willow was aware of right now was the muscled solidness of his body behind her, especially a certain very male part of him, and the rising desire and need for him that she felt.
end part 16.
She woke up slowly, her limbs feeling heavy and stiff. As awareness returned, Willow realized that she was naked, her body entwined with an equally naked William. She felt herself smiling and blushing as she remembered last night. She and William... they had been very passionate together. She wanted to believe that they had made love, that she actually mattered to him as more than a willing partner, but she couldn't be certain. He had spoke of passion, and wanting her to be screaming his name in lust and pleasure and passion... which had definitely happened. But... was that it? Was there anything more?
Willow gave a small smile at the turn of her thoughts. Twenty four hours ago, she would have been delighted simply at the prospect of intimately being with William. Now, that wasn't enough, she wanted him to care for her as well. Couldn't she just manage to be happy with what she could get while it lasted? She should have gotten the idea by now that nothing very good would ever last very long, not for her.
Glancing at the various marks their passion had left, Willow could only smile again at the memories. Carefully, she slipped her limbs separate from his, reluctantly leaving the bed. She pulled on a robe, presumably William's, and headed downstairs to get something to eat. She was having trouble remembering what she'd last eaten and when.
She sighed, stabbing at the vegetables on her plate. It had occurred to her that she should consider looking for a way home, but she didn't even know where to start. More problematic, there was still the man that had tried to kill her, shooting her and William with the crossbow. She didn't even know why he had done it. She would almost certainly have a scar from it, and she didn't know why. Every other time she'd been seriously injured, there had been a reason, even if that reason was only that the thing responsible was evil and wanted to cause mayhem and bloodshed.
Could she even go home? Was it possible that there was no way to return to her proper century? What if she was stuck here in the eighteen hundreds with William for the rest of her life? That might not be so bad, actually... Oh dear, forced to stay with the incredibly sexy vampire that had just taken her through all sorts of passionate activities… Yes, she could live with that. Or unlive, if he decided to turn her. That idea made her shiver just a little, half worried how a vampire Willow turned here and now would develop.
Why did she keep thinking about going back to Sunnydale anyhow? It wasn't as if there would be anyone waiting to welcome her back with open arms. What did Sunnydale have that London didn't? That was worth going back to, that is? Running water, electricity, hot showers... computers and telephones, and no guys with crossbows trying to kill her. Hmm... well, maybe there was a few advantages to the twentieth century. Oh, yes, and a whole library of books to use for research.
But if she left, she wouldn't have William. Well, maybe it could be argued that what was going on now wasn't healthy, but... she had fallen for him. Hopelessly head over heels for him, and it didn't matter to her that he was dead, that he killed people, that he bit her and she had killed his Dru only days ago, she wanted to cling to what she could get as long as it would last. To build as many memories as possible with William. To snatch what fragments of pleasure and happiness that she could.
"I'm putting way to much thought into this. I'm here, and most likely, I'm going to stay here in this time. Best make the most of it." Having come to what she hoped was a decision about her current time, she decided to go sit and think about the person that had shot both her and William with a crossbow.
Considering the fact that the bolts had been carved with crosses, and possibly tiny letters around their shafts, whoever had shot them knew about vampires, and knew how to hurt them. It didn't explain why she had been shot, unless it was the idea that anyone with a vampire had to be a vampire or the next meal. Could the man have been a Watcher? Obviously, there were Watchers in this time, and a Watcher would have the knowledge and access to the weaponry. How could she tell if he was? What did it mean if he wasn't, who would he be working with and why shoot her and William? Finally, an idea occurred to Willow: use a scrying spell to try to gather information about her attacker. All she would need would be a bowl of water, some salt, and time, and that shouldn't be too difficult.
She found them easily enough, choosing a dark bowl so that the images would be more visible. Settling the bowl onto the table, she tried to clear away her worries about her relationship with William, about Sunnydale, about being killed in this time, and focused her mind on the half glimpsed figure of her attacker. Slowly, the water seemed to darken, and an image formed, a man with brown hair, dressed in a slightly worn suit. He was standing in front of a shelf with what seemed to be many books, and appeared to be talking to an earnest looking young man holding a stack of loose pages. She had no idea what was being said, but it looked as if the man was running some sort of store. He was moving now, checking another shelf, and was limping slightly, as if his right side pained him, or had been bruised escaping an angry vampire. She continued to watch, trying to learn anything of use, and then he looked upwards, as if hearing something, and she saw his face clearly. He reminded her of Giles.
Willow gasped, the surprise breaking her concentration, and the image was lost. The man looked like Giles. She had been shot by a Giles? Surely her Giles wasn't the first of his family, hadn't he said something about a family tradition of working for the Watcher's Council? And wanting to be a shop-keeper when he was a small boy? Well, actually, she thought it had been 'a shop-keeper, or possibly a fighter pilot.'
"Giles' ancestor or great uncle or great something cousin was trying to kill me. But why?" She whispered the question out loud, not expecting any sort of answer.
"Wasn't Giles the Watcher to the Slayer you mentioned? Fluffy?" William's voice was practically a caress all by itself.
Willow looked over at William, feeling herself smile at the sight of him. "Yeah, and her name was Buffy. I just can't figure out why he was trying to kill me. I mean, those bolts looked like they were made for vampires, which I'm not, and I hadn't even been here long enough to annoy anyone but you so I can't figure out why I was being shot."
"Not a hobby of yours? Ah, I'll just find him later and kill him, then he won't be a problem anymore. I thought maybe we should have a little chat about the future, now that we're both sober and all." He placed his hand over Willow's, settling on the couch beside her.
end part 17.
William shifted his weight, making himself more comfortable, still holding Willow's hand. "I wanted to talk to you about the future. Not Sunnydale future, but along the lines of what's going to happen next, with us."
Willow felt her insides tense, wondering if he was going to tell her that she shouldn't get her hopes up, that she was just a silly willing mortal... But a part of her was remembering his words, his promise that he'd 'turn her in a heartbeat'. Maybe he wasn't preparing for the brush-off speech? "Okay... the short term future. Although I'm not sure that I could make it back to Sunnydale if I tried..."
"Don't. Stay here, with me. I offered a place in the family to you before, and I meant it. Only, I don't think I'd be willing to let you walk away anymore. I want you, want you to be mine, to stay with me, to become my Childe, part of the Order of Aurelius." He was watching her, his eyes locked onto hers as if he intended to convey his seriousness through his gaze as well as his words.
She felt something inside snap loose, a thread of fear and doubt. He wanted her, wanted her to stay, to become his Childe, to belong with him. Tears welled in her eyes, and she flung her arms around him in a joyful hug. "Nobody ever wanted me in their family before..."
As Willow clung to him, part of her simply delighting in the novel feeling of being wanted, an unwelcome image floated tot he surface of her mind, rising from her memory like a killer shark. "oh... Vampire Willow... she was not fun. I don't think that you'd like her."
"Err... what? How would you know what a vampire you would be like? Why wouldn't I have liked her?" His voice showed puzzlement.
"ummm that's actually a bit complicated. To summarize, there was this alternate reality created, and in that world, I'd... umm, that Willow had been turned into a vampire when she.. I... she was sixteen. I was trying to help someone with a spell, and we accidentally brought VampWillow into my world, and well, she caused some problems." Willow could feel herself blushing as she remembered her vampire twin.
"You got to see yourself as a vampire? Was she one of the not eeeuuu looking ones? Why wouldn't I have liked her?" William was smiling, wondering why Willow seemed so disturbed by her vampire doppelganger.
Considering his question, Willow carefully considered the quiet, secretive conversation that she'd had with VampWillow before sending her home. "She was... yeah, she was pretty, although not my type, being female and, umm... me. She wore this tight leather outfit, which was rather binding, and these tall heels... But I think you would have been more upset at her recreational habits. She was sort of... skanky, actually. I mean, she was having sex with the Master, who had turned her, and he's so not what I want to picture naked, and she had Vampire Xander as her playmate and hunting partner, and she had her umm... 'Puppy' that she kept chained up in her own private dungeon, and I think she was hitting on... er, trying to seduce Cordelia, although that may have been just so she could kill her..."
"Binding leather? Now that would have been a sight..." William was clearly trying to picture it, his eyes half closed and flecked with amber.
"I can show you. All that would take would be a simple illusion spell, and you could see exactly what she looked like, although it wouldn't be real. I mean, not really in the leather, and not really a vampire, just... sort of a magical costume."
"Show me..." His eyes had snapped open at her offer.
Nervous, Willow stood up, and whispered a few phrases, watching as a shimmer of green gold sparkles cascaded over her, replacing the way she should look with the image of VampWillow. Her hair was longer, and a bit darker, her skin pale with the careful makeup accenting her eyes. Her body was hugged by the black leather, the burgundy sleeves hanging to her wrists. Deliberately, she'd chosen an image of her evil twin in her vamp-face, showing golden eyes and sharp teeth. She looked right at him before she spoke. "Well, what do you think?"
She barely even had time to register that he'd moved before he was standing there, kissing her fiercely, hands sliding over the leather that the clothing had inexplicably transformed into. He was barely willing to let her have a moment for breath, intent of making his claim known to her, a low growl in his chest. By the time he actually said anything, Willow was so caught up in the passion he'd stirred up that she almost missed his words.
"Damn all, luv, you aren't just a pretty vampire, you're gorgeous. Quite the picture of seduction... Effective seduction, mind you." He was pressed against her, so close that he could feel her heart beating, and she could feel exactly how much he liked the sight of her like this.
"I'm getting the feeling that our talk about the future is over for tonight... Shall we go somewhere... more private?"
end part 18.